Asatru Folk Assembly - 8⧸27⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 164 - Mindfulness

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:12.740 I am joined tonight once again by our law speaker, Alan Turnage, for another episode of Adulting with Alan.

00:03:24.300 Tonight, we're going to talk about mindfulness.

00:03:26.300 this. But before we start, a couple of things. First off, big congratulations to the leadership

00:03:33.520 in Baldershoff District for a fantastic Freyfaxi. Last weekend, we celebrated Freyfaxi at Baldershoff

00:03:42.840 and it was absolutely wonderful. A great time was had by everyone. It was a powerful weekend.

00:03:51.720 end and uh yeah i'm appreciative of everyone out that way's hospitality and the amazing job they

00:03:58.920 do and taking care of that uh spectacular hoff to shining lord balder um

00:04:11.240 oh uh stuff of note that kind of came out of it i think a lot of things all hit at once it was

00:04:17.480 auspicious that they did we have a number of new apprentice folk builders to help

00:04:23.800 build our folk across across this country and around the world we have a as far as i know

00:04:34.920 a first um folk builder from ontario canada that's spectacular um i would encourage you know

00:04:45.800 everyone to get involved with that as best they can if you are in that area if you are

00:04:54.280 because we get i realize we have an international audience on the program

00:04:58.440 it's really neat to have um a folk builder in your own country and not have to rely on american

00:05:05.320 folk builders so we've got jared davison in ontario folk building for us so welcome aboard

00:05:13.320 We have also got a couple few other things.

00:05:20.580 We have a new folk builder in Wisconsin.

00:05:29.420 Sorry, I'm managing a bunch of computer stuff on my end.

00:05:32.140 I apologize.

00:05:33.560 Austin Merwald is folk building for us in Wisconsin, so that's fantastic.

00:05:38.760 If you're in his area, he would love to, even if you're not in this area, he'd love to help you out.

00:05:44.580 We also have Jacob Rutledge trying his hand at folk building again in Indiana.

00:05:50.960 And Brandon Larson helping us out in New York State.

00:05:56.340 So that's nice. 0.96

00:05:58.960 We've needed a folk builder in New York State for some time.

00:06:03.120 So it's great to have him on board.

00:06:05.400 And like I said, if you are in any of these areas or if you just want to reach out to a new folk builder, I'd encourage you to do so.

00:06:12.300 And thank you guys for stepping up.

00:06:15.240 Also, top of the show things.

00:06:17.860 As you know, we are continuing our efforts to get phrase off.

00:06:22.860 You guys have been very generous.

00:06:25.220 As we sit now, we've got 12,800 and.

00:06:31.300 No, I'm sorry.

00:06:32.240 12,965.

00:06:33.400 365. We got $100 donation just before the program today. So thank you, everybody who has participated.

00:06:44.620 Big things are happening. I'm hoping that we've got some really, really good news for you guys

00:06:48.740 very soon. Thank you for everybody who is contributing. You guys are extremely generous.

00:06:54.440 It's always very impressive, and it enables us to do the amazing things we've been able to

00:07:00.960 accomplish. So thank you guys, everybody who's helping out. Speaking of generosity, as always,

00:07:07.600 GW Farnsworth has made his donation to start off program $50, $25 to Victory Never Sleeps,

00:07:14.900 and $25 towards Barger's Steeple. So as always, thank you very much. You are an exemplar of

00:07:25.160 generosity. And yeah, it's always nice to start the show off that way.

00:07:30.960 And that said, I think that's the top of the show, you know, bits and bobs I have for us. Law Speaker, would you like to tell us about mindfulness?

00:07:44.620 us? Well, little I know, I am always eager to share as anyone who has ever gotten within range

00:07:53.700 of a conversation of me when I'm talking about meditation. You know, I think it has worked

00:08:01.060 vast improvement on my headspace and I advocate it strongly for all those who

00:08:06.980 um who have a brain and want to see it work a little better um one of the questions i always

00:08:14.180 ponder when we're having these shows matt and i appreciate you having me on

00:08:18.660 um but one of the things like how what does this have to do with

00:08:22.900 also true and our religion and you know i think a couple of things one you know i think religion

00:08:31.300 like in the bigger picture one of the purposes of having a church and one of the things that

00:08:37.780 keeps me active in our church is the idea that we should be helping each other improve

00:08:44.020 um you know and and certainly self-improvement um improvement for the betterment of the folk

00:08:50.500 that's one of the reasons that i stay with my shoulder on the wheel as much as i do um

00:08:55.860 even though sometimes I'm slow to respond to emails and texts and so forth,

00:09:01.960 I do have a vigorous and healthy interest in the health of our people.

00:09:10.420 And so, you know, that's one of the reasons that I put this segment together in general

00:09:17.420 was because I think that we should, while certainly theology and the fine points of

00:09:24.240 um that are critically important i think it's also important to you know for us to bolster each other

00:09:31.600 as um and you know as members and um so i'm happy to share what insights i've developed over the

00:09:41.780 last however many years i've been pondering at this problem the other thing is that i think that

00:09:47.520 But the Odinic mindset, you know, years and years ago when I first found Also True, I was, one of the things that engaged me about our faith is that we have, that our primary God, Wotan, lives at the conjunction of thought and memory.

00:10:10.640 so that in and of itself is mindfulness like odin is mind odin is awareness and um so that

00:10:22.680 so that brings that to the fore in the way that it is not

00:10:27.620 addressed in any of the faith that i've ever run across and i think in a lot of ways this topic

00:10:35.980 Mindfulness is kind of a conjunction of a lot of the other things that I've talked about on these on this segment of the last few months, because, you know, any of the things that you want to talk about, like even health, for example, you know, health is about awareness.

00:10:55.980 It's about how many calories have I eaten today? Should I eat this sugar or should I have a salad? Should I, you know, go have this overloaded fatty cheeseburger or should I go home and cook a chicken breast?

00:11:12.700 I mean, those are the sorts of things that if you have some degree of self-awareness, mindfulness, then you can ponder those sorts of things out for yourself.

00:11:23.640 in uh in so many ways this question like a question of mindfulness

00:11:31.620 you know fits in with a lot of the other things that we do in also true because it there there's

00:11:40.600 no line between this and that you know it's kind of a process that you have to engage in and you

00:11:47.780 And by being by having self-awareness and by actually being engaged in your life, then you can ponder these questions out as you go.

00:12:01.100 One of the examples that always comes to my mind years and years ago, I was in a philosophy class and it wasn't like a college philosophy class where they were talking about Heidegger that I still don't understand.

00:12:17.780 or other less interesting philosophers, but it was, there's a class, and I think it's basically a derivation of Vedantic philosophy,

00:12:30.200 but the teacher of the class, it's adult class, it's an adult kind of informal class, and the guy teaching it, facilitating is what he called it,

00:12:41.520 But he's you know, but he used the example of driving like when you're driving, you're doing whatever.

00:12:48.160 And like one of the guys says, I just zone out.

00:12:50.980 You know, I'm just driving along and like that's the most boring part of my day is the time that I spend in the commute.

00:13:00.900 Which irritated me on two levels.

00:13:02.620 Number one, you should never turn your brain off like that.

00:13:05.260 Number two, he's that guy daydreaming when the light turns green and sitting there for three or four seconds while the rest of the line is waiting to go.

00:13:18.460 Or he's driving along at 72 miles an hour in the passing lane, you know, while the rest of us, you know, are late to the food pantry.

00:13:25.640 and but and all those are the kinds of things which and it's fine if you want

00:13:35.560 sorry you know and matt you've ridden with me so you know i'm a veteran road ranger and um so

00:13:43.000 and it's fine if you want to drive slow that is that is certainly an approach to driving in a

00:13:49.960 a vehicle. Just not on the same road as Allen. You can be on the same road, but just be in the

00:13:56.120 correct lane. If you're going to drive slow, drive in the slow lane. Don't make me bright my lights

00:14:03.100 and honk my horn for you to get out of the passing lane. That's just being unmindful of the fact that

00:14:09.640 there are other people who have a different approach to driving. On that note, I saw a guy,

00:14:16.940 There was a bumper sticker on Capital Circle here a few weeks ago on the back of this guy's pickup truck, and it said, I'm retired.

00:14:25.040 Go around me.

00:14:27.340 And, you know, bully for him.

00:14:29.600 You know, at least he's cognizant of the fact that he is not in a hurry, and you're not going to make him get in a hurry.

00:14:34.860 And so bravo for him.

00:14:36.560 You know, and I wish now that I had sourced the quote, but it was either Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius or one of the Greeks who wrote the stuff that I think the Teutonic tribes were thinking.

00:15:01.400 although you know there were greeks the pre-socratics who thought that even that you

00:15:07.040 know writing was a an improper advance because you know if you wrote stuff down it it weakened

00:15:14.600 your mind you were less likely to memorize things if you wrote it down um and there's something to

00:15:19.960 that um but uh the uh but this now an attributed quote um says become such as you are once you

00:15:33.160 determine what that is and that's one of the um aspects that i think um early also true

00:15:46.920 suffered from frankly um and i think that a lot of other aspects of life um would do well to

00:15:57.000 um pick up on and that and when i relate that to also true like when we when we were first

00:16:03.720 getting started and there were many many fewer of us than there are now you know we many of us and

00:16:12.920 maybe me too for a while you know it's like you you you can't be also true if you don't understand

00:16:18.360 it at like some super high level unless you've read all these books and you know understand

00:16:25.080 how these pieces of the lore all interact together and unless you know all these stories

00:16:30.200 you can't call yourself one of us and now i realize how absurd that is and even then

00:16:39.160 um you know i would tell people who were trying to take that position you know we don't need a

00:16:46.560 nation of priests and we have never been a nation of priests we um you know we are people each of

00:16:54.880 whom understands these matters at their own level and frankly i um am honored to serve as one of the

00:17:04.400 gothar of our church and it and as we have discussed um that and the gothar you know you

00:17:15.260 membership if you're a member you don't need to bore yourself with these excruciating details

00:17:24.000 that we agonize over you know but we do that's our job okay and your job is to

00:17:30.440 believe that we have your best interest at heart and that we have ironed the stuff out the best

00:17:36.920 way that we can. If I could interject super quick, the Greek who said that was Pindar,

00:17:45.800 a lyrical poet who composed victory songs for athletes. Oh, cool. So that's good. I appreciate

00:17:56.520 you saying that and now i'll have to go run upstairs and write that where i have that quote

00:18:00.200 written down um but uh you know so um but that certainly the victory aspect of it that's uh

00:18:06.840 that's great that he's so he was one of us um an area in in uh body and spirit um

00:18:16.360 so and i'm you know like i'm no athlete i'm not a weight lifter i'm not a bodybuilder but you

00:18:23.240 know so but on those questions I absolutely would defer to those who have that expertise

00:18:28.040 um I'm not a plumber I you know I hire those things done I you know I know the stuff that

00:18:33.080 I know and I know that I don't know the other stuff I try I've tried to expunge the Dunning-Kruger

00:18:39.640 effect from my, from my legacy. The, so then in the rest of it, right? One of the videos that I've

00:18:57.300 watched, and again, I've saved you from hours and hours of watching videos about mindfulness,

00:19:02.700 perhaps, or maybe I could encourage you to watch hours and hours of video about mindfulness,

00:19:07.520 Because like a lot of other things, it's one of those, it's a topic that you can't say it is one thing and not another.

00:19:17.140 It's a way of being.

00:19:18.720 It's a process of being.

00:19:20.580 And one of the groups that has studied this in some degree is they have come out with,

00:19:29.860 they have distilled in their manner of thinking um the the idea of a healthy mind into four pillars

00:19:38.140 and um the first of those pillars is awareness so um and again it's awareness of where you are

00:19:46.420 when you're driving it's awareness of like in an hour i need to eat so i need to gravitate my way

00:19:53.660 into a place where there is some healthy food in an hour so i don't have to stop at the first

00:19:58.060 fast food place before I pass out from hunger.

00:20:03.120 Not that any American is going to pass out from hunger.

00:20:06.140 You know, we could go a couple of days without food,

00:20:09.340 as we talked about in the healthy eating aspect.

00:20:12.800 But if, you know,

00:20:13.440 but having that awareness about where you are and what is happening next and

00:20:19.720 what's coming tomorrow and next week.

00:20:21.820 And the idea of awareness and mindfulness is often conjoined with the idea that, you know, the way that sports people and even craftspeople, writers, talk about being in the zone.

00:20:42.480 And that's the sort of thing that is, you know, certainly is a Zen mindful way of doing your thing.

00:20:56.800 And there's absolutely nothing wrong with sitting and thinking, contemplating, meditating and acting.

00:21:04.900 But those are all different things.

00:21:06.280 And if you do those things mindfully and take a mindful approach to your planning, you spend some time planning, you spend some time thinking, and then you can enact those plans and thoughts in a mindful way.

00:21:27.280 And it's, and it's, and you're more fully occupying your life.

00:21:39.740 You know, you're occupying your body.

00:21:42.560 You are occupying your mind so completely that you're not living on autopilot.

00:21:49.460 Um, you know, like this blackberry lemonade, you know, how does it taste?

00:22:01.380 You know, it tastes the same as it just tasted, but if you taste it again for the first time, then you're doing it more mindfully with a degree of awareness.

00:22:11.800 The second pillar, um, is connection.

00:22:17.020 And these sort of overlap in a lot of ways, and here they mean that horizontal connection, which is what we have in the church, in the Hoffs, certainly in the time that we are together individually, when we're together as a group, we have that connection.

00:22:43.600 And all of us who have been to a Hoff or when we go to a national event and we see people that we haven't seen for a long time or we meet somebody for the first time, you know, so many of us have said, you know, it is like coming home.

00:23:00.260 And it is because we feel that connection to people who are like us, to people who are traditionalists and have a traditional right minded approach to doing these things.

00:23:13.120 and then whatever these things are and so those uh those ideas all mesh together and by having

00:23:24.240 that connection to each other to our family to our extended family um that helps us live longer

00:23:33.600 lives every study that's ever been done demonstrates that people who have more friends live longer

00:23:40.320 doesn't bode I mean I whatever I don't want to get in all that so the other part of it sorry is

00:23:48.960 an other part is having an insight into your personal narrative so which again is a type

00:23:59.720 of self-awareness so it's like how did I end up here you know I recognize in myself like I

00:24:09.200 drive a car that's a little older than a car because I don't that because I'm even though I

00:24:14.800 could drive a car that was newer and nicer but I don't want to have a car payment so that that is

00:24:21.920 a way that I occupy my own space so that I can do that in a way that is healthy to me for some

00:24:29.360 people they want a nice car and they are willing to live with the stress and strain that comes with

00:24:36.000 a car payment so that they can have a nicer car. And that's good for them. I'm not positive

00:24:44.300 that's the healthiest way to do that, but if that's what they want to do, that's on

00:24:47.480 them. I have acclimated myself to rotate my car through the shop and doing a lot of maintenance

00:24:54.300 so I don't have to have a car payment. And again, I am occupying the way that I live

00:24:59.240 my life in a way that's comfortable for me because that's my personal narrative i am look because my

00:25:06.280 profession if anybody doesn't know i practice bankruptcy law and so um you know i have become

00:25:15.400 very debt averse because of seeing what debt does to people to people's health and well-being

00:25:23.160 to their spirit and so i try to avoid debt and i manipulate my way around that

00:25:30.740 and then the fourth aspect of this part of it is having a purpose and

00:25:39.220 here again um i think for many of us um perhaps matt for you uh you know the church is uh the

00:25:51.160 church and our folk gives us a purpose you know i want to see our people do well i want to see

00:25:56.720 our church do well and as i throw my shoulder into the wheel and try to figure out what's going

00:26:04.700 on with the phrase off or you know the problems that we try to solve every day um you know that

00:26:13.380 gives me meaning and purpose in my life and um and my children the uh you know to try to help them

00:26:25.280 help themselves and our members to help them help themselves that gives me purpose it gives me a

00:26:31.280 reason to fight my way out of bed every morning and um you know put on my big boy pants and

00:26:39.160 go down and return emails, not Matt's, but everybody else to return emails and make phone

00:26:48.220 calls and talk to people and counsel people, you know, because I feel like I need that part of

00:26:54.920 myself. Even my clients who frustrate me sometimes, I feel like I get a lot of appreciation

00:27:03.720 internally by helping them, even sometimes against their, you know, against their overwhelming tide

00:27:13.780 of mindless, you know, bad decision-making, you know, I managed to get them to a good result.

00:27:24.760 And, you know, that helps me feel like I have a purpose in my life.

00:27:28.340 so i'll take a breath and let you throw some stuff in i was gonna say i'm i'm i'm taking down notes

00:27:37.740 and uh first note i am mindful that uh ronald blake donated 45 towards the phrasehoff fund

00:27:46.380 and we really appreciate that thank you so much for that ronald um got a couple of

00:27:53.920 so we've heard from in comments like advertising this episode and folks in the chat room we have

00:28:04.680 heard from a i don't know a segment of the audience that we don't typically hear from it's

00:28:11.200 not always the same folks that are very excited you wanted to talk about this this evening i think

00:28:16.880 it's something that have been has been on folks mind uh quite a bit so a lot of people are are

00:28:22.880 excited to get into it a little bit. Something that's always been, I don't know, fundamental

00:28:31.200 to me with the concept of us as Aryan noble people is to make choices to direct the course

00:28:43.180 of our life as opposed to aimlessly being tossed about on the, you know, choices of others.

00:28:52.880 it's very important not well i feel it's a very important expression of ousatru and i should dial

00:29:00.800 this back one more step you mentioned in your preamble that you know you think about how these

00:29:08.320 topics relate to ousatru and i think what bears repeating is you know an ad infinitum ad infinitum

00:29:16.800 is that

00:29:18.540 Oust-A-True isn't like we go to church on Sunday thing.

00:29:24.860 It is a holistic approach to living our life

00:29:28.920 and to conducting ourselves as men and women.

00:29:32.980 And this is key to so much of that.

00:29:39.820 I think everyone, or a great many thinkers,

00:29:43.360 have recognized the tendency for the great unwashed masses of mankind to just aimlessly

00:29:53.820 wander through life, subject to outside forces.

00:29:59.900 And we've created the NPC meme of these non-player characters that just kind of are automated

00:30:08.020 about stuff that they do.

00:30:10.380 And they don't live with intention.

00:30:11.780 They don't live with purpose.

00:30:13.360 often I um couple it with magic but I shouldn't I think any amount of spirituality is directly

00:30:29.260 related to proportionally to intentionality if you're just happening to do the things you do

00:30:38.380 because you're roped along to doing them because that's what the guy next to you is doing and

00:30:42.580 that's not an intentional existence and living intentionally is the key to your efficacy as an

00:30:51.780 Aryan man or woman and it builds up a spiritual might that you put into the horn when you make

00:31:00.500 your offerings if you do so with full intention it is a powerful gift to the gods if you're just

00:31:08.900 touching the horn because dude next to you touched the horn and you know you're going over the lyrics

00:31:14.580 to a prince song in your head or something while you're supposed to be bloating that's not that's

00:31:19.860 not intentional and i think you know when we talk about as gothar how to do bloat a lot of what we

00:31:28.700 try to think about is the mechanics of keeping people focused and keeping their intention sharp

00:31:34.760 So I think it's very relevant to the Ausitru practice. Also, the NPC thing, we believe in Ausitru fundamentally, and this is something that separates us from, I would say separates us certainly from Christianity and also from Eastern faiths of, you know, wanting to disappear into oneness. 0.61

00:31:57.020 our individual expression of ourselves, the heroic ideal of being a person of agency

00:32:07.440 is so crucial to all the things that we do. And you can't do that unless you are mindful.

00:32:14.900 Now, there are plenty of, you know, over expressions of mindfulness, and I'm sure the

00:32:20.380 law speaker will get to but as at a fundamental level being aware of the things going on around

00:32:30.420 you and consciously choosing your method of engagement with the life that you have before you

00:32:37.440 it is it's sad that that's a mark of distinction but in today's world it really is

00:32:46.840 And I think it's a really special one. And I think it is one that is available to all of us outside of all of the different situations we find ourselves in.

00:33:04.920 There's a lot of opportunities that are afforded. Those who maybe are born into wealth are in are particularly robust, are particularly bright, are particularly any number of things that are advantageous.

00:33:18.340 Because anyone at any state of what they're doing, barring comatose people or the severely retarded, are capable of recognizing where they are in relation to others, in relation to the gods, in relation to the world around them, and acting with purpose and with meaning within the days of their lives and within the abilities they have. 0.94

00:33:42.820 that's the first step of the heroic ideal is taking ownership of your behavior and choosing 0.99

00:33:51.480 to live intentionally and I think it's it really ties in in a very important way and

00:33:57.580 the other thing I wanted to say on it and I'll yield the floor is

00:34:03.740 one of the things that particularly besets our folk is a over stimulus of negative information

00:34:19.160 we are hyper aware of all of the things that are wrong geopolitically and in these huge macro

00:34:27.500 machinations of the world that we have very little direct interaction with to change in a positive

00:34:34.860 direction. When we allow that to take the driver's seat and we become nihilistic, we don't take

00:34:43.520 advantage of all of the small opportunities we have to act for the things that we believe in

00:34:50.560 within the circles we actually have an effect over.

00:34:55.180 We become so dominated by the current of, you know,

00:34:59.860 things not being the way we want them to be

00:35:02.180 that we miss daily opportunities to move things a little bit better

00:35:07.260 in the circles we're in, with those around us,

00:35:10.980 to set ripples in the world that do good things.

00:35:15.420 Alan mentioned that many people, myself included,

00:35:20.560 Find meaning through our faith, find meaning through the Astro Folk Assembly, because the truth of it is so many people are atomized in the world and have, you know, maybe a couple of friends, maybe the nuclear family they find themselves in that they can actually affect.

00:35:41.220 in the AFA, you have direct access to make significant effects for hundreds, if not thousands

00:35:49.680 of people. And that's an opportunity that most people that you run into at the grocery store

00:35:54.300 don't have. You're very fortunate to have it. What do you do with it? Many of the people that,

00:36:01.080 you know, the folk builder apprentices that I mentioned at the beginning of the show,

00:36:05.300 they've chosen to step up and try to make something of that positive for what we're all

00:36:10.860 doing. And that's awesome that they're doing that. Alan and myself have chosen to advance that to a

00:36:17.360 bigger proportionality in our lives by becoming ordained as priests to the Iser. There's a lot

00:36:25.000 of ways to do it and there's a lot of opportunities, but we have to be mindful in order to recognize

00:36:30.680 those opportunities. I got some more stuff for later down the road, but those are the thoughts

00:36:35.340 I had so far with what you're saying. No, and I appreciate that. And for those new folk builders

00:36:40.560 and for those who have been at this for a while, you'll be frustrated by a lot of that, but keep at

00:36:49.680 it. It's also greatly rewarding. When I was folk building, it was almost every time I called

00:36:59.040 somebody for the first time, they would say, man, you're the first actual heathen that I've ever

00:37:06.720 talked to um and so it was you know it was really rewarding to be able to help them feel included in

00:37:15.360 our family in that way um nomenclature aside and um you know one of the this is one of the

00:37:26.480 frustrating things that that we have felt and it's odd because you know how i'm about um the word

00:37:35.680 weird right and but they're one of the books that i listened to some time ago um is titled

00:37:45.200 the weirdest people in the world and what they're talking and weird in their nomenclature it's all

00:37:50.480 caps and it stands for western educated industrialized um and democratic so what

00:37:59.520 they're talking about is the western world which has been fractionated by its exposure to

00:38:08.320 christianity and the um and the

00:38:15.760 that could be five shows you know dissecting that book which was you know 14 or 18 hours but

00:38:22.480 But their sociological studies demonstrate that, like in Germany, the closer you are to where an early church was formed, like in the 800s to the 1200s,

00:38:37.720 the closer you are to that, the more impact that you have felt because the church had a deliberate policy.

00:38:45.060 And this is now sociologically just part of the rote nomenclature of the way sociology is taught now.

00:38:55.100 The church deliberately broke up the tribal structure by determining marriage policy, for example.

00:39:03.200 And what that did is it broke up the tribes.

00:39:06.340 So instead of being a tightly knit, close community, it made people diffuse into towns and become more metropolitan.

00:39:15.060 Um, and that process, um, explained one of the things that I had seen in a documentary years previous, there was a documentary about joy, about girls joining the nunnery.

00:39:39.040 Okay. And they they highlighted these two young girls, one of them Catholic and one of them Hindu.

00:39:50.380 And like the Catholic girl was. 16, 17, 18 years old.

00:39:57.500 And, you know, they showed her going through the process of talking to her family, talking to the members of her church, talking to the hierarchy within the nunnery about joining the nun.

00:40:09.040 about joining the convent the other one was this hindu girl much younger 14 or so

00:40:17.520 um but when they what struck me was the

00:40:27.680 um when each girl took her i forget what it's called but when you take your oath into the

00:40:39.040 Catholic convent, right? The girl joining the Catholic convent, her family was there, a few friends. There were 30, 40, 50 people in the church.

00:40:48.780 But when this Hindu girl gave herself as a member to the temple in her village, there were 5,000 people in the streets of her village watching her take her vows because she was part of something that the whole village was a part of.

00:41:17.300 And so that's that meaning through, you know, meaning and purpose and connection all in one thing.

00:41:26.220 And that's something that has been lost largely in Western civilization.

00:41:32.860 And we, you know, we've been lied to about our purpose and about the, about what Western civilization is,

00:41:43.560 as if we are some, I don't want to get too far down that tangent, but the, but it makes

00:41:56.860 me rededicate myself to our people so that we can find that connection to each other

00:42:06.080 and across that, you know, across those divides again.

00:42:11.480 So I apologize for taking so long to make what maybe is sort of an obscure point.

00:42:19.700 So part of the other stuff that I want to talk about with mindfulness, and it is, you know, and it's about the cell phone.

00:42:27.820 Like my cell phone went off. I thought I'd left it in the other room.

00:42:30.820 My cell phone went off a few minutes ago. I'll get to it later.

00:42:34.240 But but so if you if you read them, if you watch the videos on mindfulness, right, one of the things that they talk about is having your phone with you all the time.

00:42:47.080 This is something, first of all, that, you know, has only been a thing.

00:42:51.040 We haven't evolved the right decade about, you know, being too available too much at the time.

00:43:04.240 You know, I remember when I was a child and it was it was considered rude to call somebody during the dinner hour and that's that sort of thing.

00:43:14.580 So we're, you know, hopefully we will evolve to a point where our technology is not ruling us like it is now.

00:43:20.780 But one of the things that I picked up, one of the stats here, I wrote it down.

00:43:26.500 It must be true. But one of the things that they that they studied was.

00:43:34.240 People who have their phone with them, but they turn it on silent, but then they would text them while they're trying to accomplish some other task, solving a simple puzzle or doing something like that.

00:43:47.960 And just having your phone with you on silent increased your error rate 30%.

00:43:55.240 So, you know, that's why I'm such a bear about not having your phone in there with you when you're doing Hoff stuff.

00:44:02.980 I, you know, I want to go back to leaving your phone off for the whole weekend.

00:44:07.220 The other part of that is this idea of multitasking, which was never something that, you know, if you try to talk to some writer or craftsman or something like that about, you know, that's, you know, what that is, is a form of distractiveness.

00:44:27.620 It's mindlessness to think that you can do two things at one time.

00:44:35.060 And again, this is one of the things that psychologists have studied.

00:44:42.460 And what they show is that when you think you're multitasking the brain, your attention is a single thing.

00:44:51.740 And when you're multitasking, and I hate air quotes usually, but when you're multitasking, you're not doing two things at once.

00:45:01.700 You're alternating, and the term that they call it is task switching.

00:45:07.260 So I would say if I was to text and drive, you know, it would not be that you're texting and driving.

00:45:16.780 It's you're texting and then you're driving and you're texting and then you're driving.

00:45:20.100 And so every time that your brain switches from one task to the other, there's two or three seconds that's lost going from one task to another.

00:45:34.080 So multitasking, you know, if you're trying to write an email while you're texting something else, it's, you know, you're losing time.

00:45:44.660 minute, but your attention, which is that one thing that you have there at the conjunction

00:45:50.220 of thought and memory, that one thing that you have, your attention is focused all the

00:45:54.780 time, so it seems like you're doing two things, but you're not doing two things at once, you're

00:46:01.020 doing two things alternately, and your attention is being used all the time, but it's not being

00:46:07.680 used in its most productive way when you when you're jumping back and forth like that so um

00:46:15.760 you know that that sort of task switching is part of the modern era where we've come to think that

00:46:26.160 that the only way to because that's that's the model that we're that we're force-fed

00:46:34.320 in this modern computer over connected age is to you know is that we have to be doing

00:46:42.560 uh you know we have to have a phone in each hand while we're you know voice texting or whatever

00:46:49.420 that is so that we so that we can maintain maximum productivity and all that's just you know it's

00:46:55.340 just wrongheaded. And what that has led to is, again, this is a different study, when

00:47:09.700 people are asked, where is their mind? Like, where are you right now? If you're waiting

00:47:17.580 in line at the grocery store or you're driving or you're at work or whatever you're doing

00:47:27.020 according to these studies people are only occupying their space about 47 percent of the time

00:47:36.440 so what that what that says then is that the other 53 percent of the time more than half the time

00:47:45.340 you're not in your own headspace. You're thinking about the future.

00:47:50.220 You're regretting something about the past. And there's time for that.

00:47:54.800 Don't get me wrong, but it's not 53% of the time, you know,

00:48:00.900 you, you know, 88% of the time you should be in your headspace.

00:48:05.920 You should be where you are doing what you're doing, being with your family.

00:48:10.420 You know, it hurts my soul to go out to a restaurant, as I did last weekend.

00:48:18.740 I met a friend of mine for dinner, and I came out, and there's a family of four in the waiting area waiting to get seated.

00:48:26.920 And each of them is on their own phone doing their own thing.

00:48:32.320 And, you know, that's time that they will never have and that they'll never have back.

00:48:38.600 And they're spending it, you know, somewhere far, far away with people who do not care about them.

00:48:53.280 So that's an interesting thing that you bring up because we live in a time where stimulus comes at us at an unprecedented rate.

00:49:07.200 um for good or for ill we are bombarded with stimulus most of us from the moment we wake up

00:49:19.920 until the moment we put our head down to sleep if not after that and there's a lot of information

00:49:25.800 coming in and it becomes one of the challenges of the modern age is to maintain focus or to be able

00:49:35.100 to and as alan kind of rightly points out your brain doesn't really multitask it bounces back

00:49:43.980 and forth quickly between different tasks but the more of those you stack and in the closer

00:49:52.140 proximity the more your ability to handle them begins to degrade um so if you find yourself

00:50:03.020 and i often find myself there to where you are attached to your phone and attached to your

00:50:09.600 computer and attached to things you have to and this is also part of mindfulness you have to

00:50:15.020 build in time to take a break and be mindful and that's would have gone without saying

00:50:27.100 in our ancestors' day, and it's not what a lot of us face as our reality. So having to

00:50:34.540 make a special point of not doing those things is something that we should seriously consider.

00:50:45.940 You know, Alan mentioned the thing about you go out to eat and everybody's stuck to their phone.

00:50:51.360 it's, and again, I'm not, I'm not that guy. Law speaker might be. I'm not that guy. I'm on my

00:50:59.300 phone a lot. You may have plenty of circumstances where you need to be on your phone at dinner.

00:51:05.300 Maybe that's the time you can do something with people in the same room, but you're still on call.

00:51:10.980 Maybe you have loved ones in the hospital. You need to be able to get alerts on.

00:51:16.260 There's a lot of circumstances, but there's also a lot of times you can just leave it in the car.

00:51:21.360 All right. I'm going to let that pass.

00:51:29.740 I'm being mindful. I'm choosing not to respond to that stimulus.

00:51:34.180 So what I was going to say is that there's a lot of times you can put your phone in the car and you can carve out chunks of time to be very present at stuff with your family.

00:51:47.000 and it's one thing if you're with these people 24 7 but in the world that we live in very often

00:51:54.480 you may just have a few hours a day that you get with your spouse or you may have a limited time

00:52:00.100 that you have with your children as alan did rightly point out it's time you'll never get back

00:52:05.160 And when you're able to, finding ways to engage in, like, taking a break from the overstimulation is really important.

00:52:20.000 Now, something that I find myself having to do a lot, having to be kind of aware of,

00:52:26.580 the more that we do and the more that we grow and the more that we succeed, these are all awesome things.

00:52:35.160 But it adds more and more and more and more stimulus. So learning how to manage the stimulus that comes in and how to take breaks when necessary and find time in your life to do the things that are important is really crucial. And it's an interesting challenge.

00:52:58.320 i'm sure that this probably come up later i'm talking more about it later but one thing i did

00:53:05.000 want to mention that i found really helpful with it is the gym and the dojo

00:53:10.740 you can be in spots where you're just not connected to your phone and everything else

00:53:19.560 you have to be in the moment and what is useful is things that put you there by the nature of

00:53:28.100 by just the inherent nature of what you're doing as opposed to you choosing to set it aside like

00:53:35.200 no if you're in the dojo and it's in your gym bag and you're doing stuff you are focused on what's

00:53:41.820 going on or else you get hurt or you might hurt someone else you have to be very focused on

00:53:46.580 something physical that is a very good trigger for me to be very intentional very mindful and

00:53:55.760 very in the moment. And I also feel that way at the gym when you're working out.

00:54:00.660 When you're under the iron lifting and doing things,

00:54:06.240 your mind may go to stuff, but it's much more focused on what you are doing. And the more

00:54:16.920 intense the lifting you're doing, the more you are highly focused on that ever-present activity

00:54:22.700 that you were engaged in i think that helps to train to train yourself to be mindful and be

00:54:31.740 actively engaged in the thing you're doing right 100 and you know there are

00:54:44.060 there are guys who come in you know i do i'll work out at the quoon is the term for a kung fu gym

00:54:51.420 rather than dojo, which is also a perfectly respectable term, but the term quen in the unlikely event that you care is actually the Chinese word means workout temple.

00:55:03.940 And it was always a place where the ancestors and the progenitors of the style were revered and rightly in their place.

00:55:12.400 um but you know it it makes me cringe just have those guys in there and you know when they're

00:55:21.620 working out and touching hands and doing their stuff and their phone rings and they go answer

00:55:26.160 the phone i'm like and with the rare exceptions that you mentioned like if you have a loved one

00:55:33.460 who is in the icu or if you're a heart surgeon who may be called away at an instance notice

00:55:41.540 for a life-saving procedure, then yes, you should have your

00:55:45.560 phone with you. For all the rest of us, all the

00:55:49.520 time, although Matt, I know you

00:55:53.440 run the AFA through your phone, and that is a wonderful

00:55:57.240 sacrifice that you make so that we can all

00:56:00.660 keep our shoulders to the wheel in our own way.

00:56:05.980 And I know that it is a lot of

00:56:08.720 um satisfaction and frustration for you to um to to have to do all of that all the time and i

00:56:16.880 although i gently put fun at you occasionally for having to do that um i recognize that uh that you

00:56:26.080 do it in a in a purposeful way so you know thank you for being my no i appreciate you saying so

00:56:34.440 something I was going to mention too that I try to figure out ways to deal with. I thought about

00:56:43.120 this the other day. I am constantly connected to my phone, but I had to turn off my notifications

00:56:48.840 or else it would just not stop. Right. So I have to do these little frequent check-ins to kind of

00:56:58.620 make sure I'm not missing something, but the notification's not stopping. Now, one thing I

00:57:03.020 want to, I do want to stress that as Gothar, we try to do one of those things that we try to do

00:57:12.680 is to be available for our folk when emergencies happen and stuff. So we try to plan coverage when

00:57:20.200 we're not able to be by our phone. We try to rotate that around and do different things to

00:57:26.520 manage that. Because I do realize there's some people that are attached and there was a

00:57:32.860 There was a time that was managed through like beepers. I say this theoretically, not personally. I'm aware it's a thing. But when you had people and you had like a beeper, it was less than, oh, I'm getting this message. Oh, perhaps it's a member in distress. But wait, look, there's this funny reel.

00:57:53.100 what's this guy doing that's crazy look there's a puppy what's the puppy doing oh he's look how cute

00:57:59.660 he is oh the next thing you know you're completely off on that and i'm being silly but not not that

00:58:07.100 silly we see the stuff pop up and you click on it you get you get lost in it um and that's hard 1.00

00:58:13.980 enough just when you're doing normal stuff i one thing that i hate women you guys know you do this 0.96

00:58:23.980 don't hate women don't don't get it twisted i there's a fuller thought here but they have

00:58:28.860 a tendency justified though hey what hey what what are you thinking what's what's on your mind

00:58:35.820 what's going on nothing truth is one of our virtues so this is a preamble to set this up

00:58:45.420 i enforce that rigorously at my home we don't do that so somebody asks hey what are you thinking

00:58:53.500 about you know where are you or whatever if you're zoning off and looking off in the distance

00:58:59.340 i make real sure i give an honest answer to it all the time and it leads to really strange things

00:59:05.420 especially when you articulate them out loud. I remember one time Mandy and I were driving.

00:59:10.300 She's like, Matt, what are you doing? You're just like gazing off into space. You're not

00:59:15.660 paying attention. What are you doing? I'm like, I'm training my imaginary baby bear.

00:59:22.940 The whole process in my head about this whole fictitious situation.

00:59:28.860 and uh yeah that so i think if i ever asked you that and that was your answer i would never

00:59:36.020 ask you again that would be a way of life i will never have it

00:59:40.240 it's a valid option these these are the things um

00:59:46.280 there is also something that i wanted to mention though while we're on that really

00:59:53.740 i want to say really special um perhaps valuable we have an ability to

01:00:06.300 imagine and be creative in our minds and recognizing that and choosing to make use of it

01:00:18.260 for purpose versus getting lost in it is an interesting an interesting thing being able to

01:00:30.340 take control of the immense ability that we have to think to plan to reason to imagine to create

01:00:42.660 All of those things are really special, and finding an ability to harness them intentionally with mindfulness is a very potent part of being human, a very potent part of being Aryan.

01:01:02.480 And I don't know how it displays in other varieties of earth fauna.

01:01:09.520 But I think it's a special thing.

01:01:14.300 And it's something that we would all benefit, I think, from making more intentional use of.

01:01:23.340 And, you know, there are some out there that make tremendous intentional use of that creative spark.

01:01:30.380 And I'm in awe of those people.

01:01:32.480 it's a really beautiful thing so it's neither here nor there it's just something that came to

01:01:36.960 mind while we were on it and before i relinquish the floor gilbert donated 150 towards our phrase

01:01:44.080 off fund thank you gilbert we appreciate you appreciate your donation and i appreciate your

01:01:49.840 generosity overall thank you so much and i know how you made that connection from the wonderful

01:01:55.600 craftsmanship that gilbert displays and is so generous with you know taking a little block of

01:02:02.080 wood and turning it into a that is impressive yeah that was just a happy synchronicity that was not

01:02:11.200 not sketched that was not baked in that's the holographic way in which thought and memory

01:02:16.800 coalesced i uh oh while we're on that to to continue to overplay that hand i think um

01:02:24.560 Um, often I talk magically on this show about one of the benefits of the runes and a number

01:02:38.880 of other things in our circles is the lens that we perceive the world through.

01:02:46.600 When our head is in a spiritual place and we're in a place of mindfulness, we notice and we pick up on those special, perhaps weird little synchronicities and points of connectivity that bind us together as folk, as friends, as family.

01:03:09.980 but that bind us also with our gods, with Ausatru, with our AFA family in the things that we're doing.

01:03:20.080 When we're in the moment and we are mindful, we can see these subtle currents in earth.

01:03:27.820 We can see, you know, the weave in the tapestry, and we can make note of it, and we can, you know, manipulate has a bad connotation.

01:03:43.240 We can make wise use of it.

01:03:47.580 We can recognize the beauty of it.

01:03:49.920 And we miss out on a lot of that when we're filtering information in an automatic way

01:03:57.740 as opposed to an intentional way.

01:04:00.280 Sleepwalking our way through life.

01:04:02.760 You know, one of the, and it's funny how these synchronicities work themselves out.

01:04:08.980 My interest in Monty Python led not only to me doing several long but hilarious recitations, sometimes unprompted, but also one of the things that I read an interview with John Cleese years ago.

01:04:32.440 And one of the things that that that he mentioned is that he was reading the philosopher Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff is one of those obscure philosophers.

01:04:44.460 He was a Russian or Serb. And but that was his emphasis is that people are asleep, you know, and that they have to be awakened.

01:04:59.960 And, you know, and honestly, for a long time after reading, yes, I do sometimes say me, and I love shrubbery.

01:05:12.220 But the two shrubberies with a little path, the after reading Gurdjieff, again, very difficult to understand.

01:05:26.900 um but one of the things that i did was i thought that like if i was rough you know if i was you

01:05:35.140 know kind of that scowling and what you know back in those days you know we didn't have this

01:05:42.260 black belt but that was kind of the thing you know like i'm going to present myself as

01:05:47.620 aggressively as possible in order to try to jolt these people into some kind of awareness

01:05:54.020 But what I've learned low these many years later is that really happiness is the best way to to bring people out.

01:06:11.980 Right. Like I stopped by Aldi on my way home today. And, you know, I had like a four minute conversation with the checker at Aldi.

01:06:22.340 And you could you could you know, he's just how you doing? How you doing? You know, right.

01:06:27.680 Ringing stuff through the dinger. And, you know, but I just engaged him in a way that I could tell it made him made him happy.

01:06:36.600 And it made it made his day a little better. It made my day better because we talked, you know, whatever it was, it made it, you know, it made our day shine a little better.

01:06:48.900 And I think I've said it on the show before, but I'll say it again now. I think we need to move into like a post ironic means of conducting ourselves.

01:07:00.780 You know, an irony or ennui is that, you know, that sort of that holdover of, you know, the posh put on, you know, you're too cool for this world and all sort of stuff.

01:07:16.360 that's all just a little fabrication you know what here we are here to engage with

01:07:27.400 and bolster each other and you know in that way and by and by doing that at every opportunity um

01:07:36.280 you know when i picked up the pizzas from domino's i mean i you know whatever there's there's there's

01:07:43.960 a way to do that and there's a way to stand glumly in the corner scrolling through your phone looking

01:07:49.800 for a cat video to put a thumbs up to that you know that it just it erodes your humanity

01:08:01.240 to do that and every time you do that you're a little bit less of a human i think

01:08:06.520 yeah i think that we have

01:08:14.280 i've earlier i was talking about like the tremendous power our minds have to do different

01:08:22.440 things one of those is to dilute ourselves um we have a lot of tools at our disposal now to

01:08:33.800 compensate for lack of social skill by artificially engaging in social things on social media

01:08:49.960 that in a way alleviates the all we as it were of not being able to engage socially and feeling

01:08:59.880 isolated it's nice that we have that solve if that's what we struggle with but it's very easy

01:09:11.560 to get lost in that and to live a virtual existence as opposed to a real existence

01:09:18.600 and i think that you know many of us have through the circumstances of

01:09:24.280 of, I don't know, last few years we live in, I keep going back to 2020 and the COVID lockdowns

01:09:33.140 and social effects that they have when we deal with younger people. At, you know, at my stage 1.00

01:09:41.080 in life, in my mid-40s, doesn't feel like that was five years ago, but it was. But for people who

01:09:50.880 were coming of age in that time or developing their social skills in that time they have a

01:09:55.520 significant obstacle to overcome that the rest of us didn't have to deal with when we were developing

01:10:00.160 those skills i think it's really apparent i think it's easy to like poke fun at or you know look

01:10:07.520 down on that but i think that the greater challenge is to pry our brothers and sisters away from that

01:10:16.240 and i could drag them out on the dance floor of life and get them to engage socially

01:10:22.880 that was hard enough to do for introverted people before that it's much more difficult now for a lot

01:10:29.840 of introverted people one of the things i was talking about okay so side note one of the cool

01:10:35.040 things about um doing things at baldur's hoff is the hot tub sample so a bunch of people coming in

01:10:43.680 or whatever hanging out at the hot tub after the event talking about life talking about stuff

01:10:50.640 perhaps aided by uh by spirits um one of the things we were talking about last weekend was

01:11:02.000 was just that was you know we had and this is something that we are building through the astro

01:11:09.040 folk assembly and i've also come to the realization that we're never going to be where i want us to be

01:11:18.560 because i will always find a new horizon where i want to elevate us to and i think that's just

01:11:25.920 part of how i'm wired and my drive for some of these things but what i said to say this we are

01:11:32.640 making big strides they may not seem earth shattering but they're very significant to

01:11:38.160 individuals in regaining that social structure to where we help the introverted amongst us to

01:11:46.320 engage socially by providing context you know there was a time where if you didn't have you

01:11:56.640 you know, if you weren't outgoing, your friend would drag you along. You'd have people that put

01:12:03.140 you on double dates that you, you know, whatever, you'd get thrust in there. You'd have a brother

01:12:07.840 or a sister that would, you know, get you involved. You'd hang out with their friends.

01:12:13.380 You'd have people that would help pull you up instead of you feeling like there's a gap that

01:12:19.820 you can't master to get out and engage in the world in the way that you want. In the AFA, you

01:12:25.480 have that. You have men and women who have been through similar things than you might be dealing

01:12:36.480 with. You have folks that are happy to bring you along and help facilitate and ease your engagement

01:12:45.180 in situations that you might not be used to. And I urge all of you guys to take that opportunity

01:12:52.400 and allow, you know, allow your brothers and sisters to pull you along with them

01:12:58.980 and to help facilitate those kind of real connections and, I don't know, authentic engagement in life.

01:13:10.740 And I think that is absolutely true for those who come to things.

01:13:16.920 And I think it's even more true for those who are just outside, like they're waiting to come to their first thing.

01:13:25.580 You know, it's like, you know, those people are kind of interesting, but I don't know if I could, you know, we will we will enfold you with love and acceptance.

01:13:37.300 You know, this is the place where you can be. What is it? You can be you can become yourself having determined what that is. Right.

01:13:48.960 Right. You are because for a lot of us, you know, having reached a lot of conclusions, rightful conclusions about, you know, the traditional way of life and the metanarrative of history and so forth and so on.

01:14:08.640 you know, this is where we are, right?

01:14:13.320 This is the religion of those who have found their way across the wide gulf of

01:14:22.140 obstacles that have been placed between us and the truth.

01:14:32.080 You know, because once you see, once you've, I wish I could remember the brand of sunglasses that Rowdy Roddy Piper gets in the, I need to look that up, you know, in They Live.

01:14:45.980 And once you've seen that advertising is just a way to suck your soul out of your body and, you know, bring you into corporate obedience.

01:14:57.080 obedience you know there's a um show that i've uh there's a youtube channel that i've watched with

01:15:07.320 some and it's i can't remember exactly what it's called but it's like the medieval lifestyle or

01:15:12.520 something like that and you know that that medieval peasants were freer and happier than we are now

01:15:20.120 that they worked 15, 20 hours a week and paid like 10% of their total net income was taxation.

01:15:31.800 And they lived in close proximity to their closest friends and family. And we think we're

01:15:38.760 free working 60 hours a week and paying a 60% tax rate. It's just, yeah, we have better stuff.

01:15:45.480 you know the air there's air conditioning and internet but man you know there's a there's a

01:15:52.860 lot to be said for and i've been listening to a book about the avish lifestyle right and like

01:16:00.140 it's the same thing they have a 90 percent recidivism rate or whatever you know like

01:16:08.880 like at the one things about their culture is like when you start to come of age when you're

01:16:15.040 25 or whatever. They kick you out for a year.

01:16:18.980 You have to go see the world. They call it like

01:16:22.900 Romspringa or something like that because they

01:16:26.500 use a lot of Swedish words. They're from Sweden.

01:16:30.160 But 90% of them come back because 1.00

01:16:34.360 they're enfolded in their

01:16:38.880 close friends and family. Their suicide rate is 70%

01:16:43.420 lower than the suicide rate in the rest of the culture.

01:16:48.940 I think that says something about having a simpler, slower-paced lifestyle where you

01:16:56.720 have close friends and family all around you all the time, and you have those connections

01:17:01.060 like we're talking about.

01:17:04.620 And that's honestly what we're trying to do in the AFA.

01:17:07.520 I mean, that's the way I see this, you know, and one of the reasons I'm willing to throw

01:17:12.640 myself at it like I am. I certainly feel it. I know you do, man. I do. I want to throw out this

01:17:18.480 caveat. One of the things, and this is something I really believe, it's why my family and I are

01:17:24.360 going to move to Sigurheim in Jackson County, Tennessee. There is a beauty to having that

01:17:36.800 home base of people that genuinely care about you that you can share meaningful experience with

01:17:43.920 and that you can have the the fuse that tied together traditional community that have been

01:17:50.960 lost to most of our countrymen whatever country whatever country you were watching this in um

01:17:59.120 um that matters and is huge and the thing that i would say you know as a point of variance with the

01:18:08.480 Amish they get there and stay there i think it's really valuable to have a home base from which to 0.76

01:18:17.180 operate from to be a force in the world around you it's really not only is it refreshing and 0.98

01:18:25.940 healthful but i think it's essential to have a place to recharge to experience and to enact the

01:18:34.740 world you want to have and then to take that perspective and that wholeness in your you know

01:18:45.060 battles with the struggles of life i don't think we should disengage from the world around us but

01:18:51.220 But I think our engagement in the world around us should be, you know, mindful and of our choosing and for us to have home base of community from which to operate from.

01:19:07.280 I think that keeps us sane. I think it keeps us oriented and grounded and gives us a stable base from which to approach the challenges of the world around us.

01:19:18.200 I think that was I think that's been lost as part of the I think that's the downside of the Faustian bargain, you know, and when founder, when Father McNaughton said that, you know, sometime back, you know, that we are the people of exploration.

01:19:37.120 Well, you know, that's the downside. As we have plunged into these new horizons, we've left all that behind. And hopefully we're, you know, we in the AFA are trying to heal that rift and bring that back together for us.

01:19:52.340 Yeah, the balance of those those two impulses, I think, is really important.

01:19:57.100 And we've we've come so far with that.

01:20:02.560 We've we've built we have built meaningful community in so many places for so many of our folk.

01:20:12.040 And we've got a long way to go, but it is it's beautiful what so many of us have experienced.

01:20:18.720 And I think this is as good a time as any to make the sales pitch.

01:20:22.340 And it's what you do on these broadcasts, but I'm not trying to sell you a product. 0.57

01:20:29.840 I want you to seriously consider if you're hearing this, better yet if you're seeing this, if you are heterosexual and white, you should join us, get on the team, be part of the family and help make all these things happen.

01:20:48.400 and i say that as somebody who sat on the fence for a long time like i get it that's not it's

01:20:54.860 not aimed negatively at folks i get it but happiest best thing i did in my life was get

01:21:02.760 off that fence and get on team afa um obviously it's a beneficial thing for me to say as i'm you

01:21:11.160 know running the house true folk assembly but it's what i said when i wasn't and it's the reason i

01:21:19.480 joined the afa to begin with it really is like coming home we're doing so many important things

01:21:27.780 together when you have something really beautiful in your life

01:21:34.380 you want to share it we would like to share that with you i think that you know if you're

01:21:44.200 if you're thinking about joining best time best time to join is 30 years ago second best time is

01:21:50.880 today so uh think about that so while you're looking for the next question to answer i want

01:22:01.700 but I do two things that I keep forgetting to do.

01:22:04.760 One thing is I feel like I should throw a little bit of my chops in here,

01:22:13.660 if that's the right word.

01:22:15.260 Like who am I to talk about mindfulness, right?

01:22:18.120 in 2010 I took a kundalini teachers training course one of the requirements of that course

01:22:35.760 was to meditate every day for the six-week course it went six weeks it was six months

01:22:42.960 spread out over six weeks at a time that's how it went and um by by the time i had finished that

01:22:52.800 training course i was in a meditation habit and i've meditated almost every day since then

01:22:59.940 and i can tell you that it changed it is a fundamental shift in the way that your mind

01:23:09.960 works um and i think what it does and and this is why like when when matt's talking about the

01:23:16.920 over stimulation this is a way to bring that gain down right it's like it's like turning the lights

01:23:24.200 down and coming to a still place so that then everything else is new and refreshed and so you

01:23:35.000 know i feel like by having engaged in this practice and in the kung fu and tai chi that i've done for

01:23:43.080 even longer than that albeit with a long gap in between while i was raising kids um you know i

01:23:49.400 I feel like I do have at least some perspective on having lived 2010,

01:23:59.240 having lived, you know, 50 years of my life without this practice

01:24:06.680 and then the last 15 years with it.

01:24:09.840 And I can tell you that being in a mindful, meditative place is, you know, is a better place to be.

01:24:24.780 There's just, you know, that's just the simple way to say it.

01:24:27.440 The other thing I want to do is, because I will forget if I don't, is, you know, well, no, but I'm going to skip that.

01:24:44.640 What I do want to say, though, is that when you're talking about having your cell phone and the way that it sucks people out of their life,

01:24:58.200 One of the things to recognize is that Meta and X and TikTok and all that stuff, they have teams of psychiatrists who are manipulating their data.

01:25:22.240 they're manipulating their websites and they're there because and it's the shorthand way of

01:25:29.280 that i've saw it was that you are the product it's your eyes that that it's your attention

01:25:36.560 that they bring to their advertiser you know it's you know it's free to you but it costs you your

01:25:42.960 soul because you know that's you know they they you know what color blue will be the exact thing

01:25:50.400 that will make people most likely to stay on this site for 62 seconds instead of 38.

01:25:59.440 And those are the kinds of questions that they have, high-paid people doing big studies to try to

01:26:10.000 suck your brain out of your head. So when I talk about this being a sole bifurcation device,

01:26:16.560 i don't mean that entirely metaphorically

01:26:23.520 sorry that's that's today's rant sponsored by luddites for america

01:26:32.080 so

01:26:37.360 and in this this goes to that as you can tell uh alan and i have a mostly playful feud about

01:26:46.560 Like phone usage and stuff.

01:26:52.640 What I think is a really important message on today's mindfulness, and I'll get into questions directly after this, but we as noble Aryan men and women are the choosers.

01:27:10.640 don't get sucked in because you fell for the tricks engage because you want to

01:27:19.920 if it is an expression of your will that you want to spend the next three hours looking at

01:27:24.960 cat videos go for it share them if they're cool um but do that because it's your choice

01:27:33.040 not because it's something that you've been sedated into like falling into

01:27:40.120 um we've talked about this you know i've said this a number of times we always have new listeners and

01:27:48.280 as i age you guys are gonna have to bear with me more and more with my old man stories that i

01:27:53.160 repeat uh when i was running uh security with the bouncers i tell the new guys like

01:28:01.800 i'm down like if you want to go pick a fight with people or whatever you want to do 0.99

01:28:05.720 okay i got you but don't stumble into one because you're stupid if you have a situation that you 1.00

01:28:14.280 choose to engage in all right but if you fall into something because you're dumb and now i've 1.00

01:28:21.720 got to bail you out of it that's the abdication of your job um we don't want to spend our lives 0.96

01:28:29.080 counter punching or being at the whim of other things engage in things on your terms according

01:28:36.900 to your will and not because the current around you suck you into it and that goes for a lot of 1.00

01:28:47.640 different things it goes for the doom scrolling it goes for you know stupid social media things 0.99

01:28:56.520 on your phone, but it goes for everything else too. It goes for getting wrapped up in, you know, 0.96

01:29:03.320 the whims of the people you surround yourself with or in unexamined emotions that you may be

01:29:13.240 feeling for any number of reasons. Wonder why? Like, are you really depressed about something

01:29:20.180 or is it just crappy weather outside? You know, are you really, is there really a problem

01:29:25.440 or are you just reacting to something silly and can you reset and readjust i make it sound way

01:29:32.880 easier than it is it's not easy at all but that struggle is part of our obligation as aryan men

01:29:41.500 and women is to engage in our lives as the hero in our story and not as the npc and elevate and

01:29:52.440 And this is, it's perhaps most annoying because he is typically right when he does it.

01:29:59.980 One of the things that I appreciate about our law speaker, one of the reasons I am very glad to have him on my witness,

01:30:08.500 when we are succumbing to silliness or things around us, he is very quick to remind us of intentionality,

01:30:19.780 of a need to elevate the discourse or the thought process to be mindful of things we say or actions

01:30:29.000 we take. And again, I may want to counterpunch and just be disagreeable, but stopping and processing

01:30:39.300 and be like, it's kind of being a jerk, but he's also right. So, okay. I mean, that's, 0.98

01:30:46.720 that's important it's funny and it's and we're both chuckling but i absolutely he does that

01:30:53.600 i absolutely do think that way and i'm better for it so i think that's really important to do

01:31:02.800 we've got some questions stacking up and i think it may take the conversation in

01:31:06.640 in different ways um human slayer says uh would that be a trinity of ours the priest the warrior

01:31:14.880 the caster what say you alan

01:31:21.680 i'd have to give that some cogitation i think the the triumvirate um would certainly be

01:31:28.880 um would typically work something else you know i i think uh i do believe in

01:31:37.920 Dumazil's tripartite division, I think lawyer is more of a trade.

01:31:49.220 And and so I think that's part of the craft.

01:31:54.160 Sorry, I lost the rest of the other two.

01:31:57.140 You know, priest, priest, warrior, poet, you know, is another way that I've is another way that I've heard that divided up.

01:32:05.400 But, you know, that's, you know, internally, you know, to be a whole man, you should be part priest and part warrior and part poet.

01:32:17.060 Yeah, I tend to, and Svan, if he's listening somewhere, he may rage at this or it may summon him.

01:32:26.620 But I don't do that.

01:32:28.300 I don't believe in this, like, strict compartmentalization.

01:32:34.080 I think it is a symptom of an over-reverence for Dumazil and his, you know, well-conceived.

01:32:51.800 So it's a tool to help understand things.

01:32:54.760 And I think that it speaks of a generality that's often the case, but I don't think we're limited to that.

01:33:01.600 there are plenty of of priests or deeply spiritual men who are profound warriors

01:33:10.800 there are warriors who are you know also abundant farmers and craftsmen there are you know

01:33:20.420 priests who are there's there's a lot of overlap i think those functionalities are worthwhile to

01:33:27.740 keep in mind um but i don't think that's the case and it was interesting because i've never seen it

01:33:35.220 expressed in priest warrior and caster as if like dungeons and dragons classes i don't i don't think

01:33:48.200 that's yeah magician is what i heard when you said caster that's what i'm taking from it as well

01:33:56.720 Like, and so, all right, I'm going to play that game.

01:34:00.700 I'm going to roll my D20 on this.

01:34:06.020 I think there is a tremendous overlap between the cleric and the mage

01:34:12.980 if we're going to go full Dungeons and Dragons on how we're doing the stuff.

01:34:17.680 I think the source and the methodology is different,

01:34:21.860 but I think that the functionality is often similar in interacting with metaphysical forces.

01:34:31.360 And joking aside, I think we see a tremendous overlap because the people that want to engage

01:34:37.220 in magical practice without the spiritual grounding are often lunatics and are, well, 0.97

01:34:49.200 so okay and here's and i should point this out there are lunatics that are tremendously 0.91

01:34:55.440 magically potent because the line between divinely touched and crazy is paper thin

01:35:02.720 and frequently traverse back and forth across sometimes 1.00

01:35:08.320 but there's also a lot of lunatics that are just they're just silly and they're just lunatics and 0.99

01:35:15.120 And I think you get a lot of those with the people that divorce themselves 0.99

01:35:19.940 from the community aspect of our faith or from the piety of our faith

01:35:25.860 and just on day one want to be exalted, ruined maguses.

01:35:31.400 And from tradition in general, I think you see that so much

01:35:35.240 in the New Age spiritual buffet.

01:35:38.820 Those folks can't conjure themselves up. 0.87

01:35:40.960 girlfriends they can't you know cast the get out of mom's basement spells so i don't i don't put a

01:35:49.480 lot of stock in that where i've seen a lot of metaphysical efficacy is from people who are

01:35:56.260 devoted to realistic engagement in our faith community and those who've proceed who've uh

01:36:06.600 chosen to become gothar they have magical efficacy both

01:36:12.120 through invoking or asking of the divine but also through their own spiritual potency

01:36:19.980 but they're grounded they're based as the kids would say in um something authentic i've often

01:36:29.620 said that magical things are like frosting they accent a really good cake but they're not the cake

01:36:38.660 in and of themselves you can't just have frosting i suppose the fatties can but in general

01:36:44.740 like it's not just about the frosting you frost a cake if you don't have your life in order

01:36:50.180 and you're not oriented towards the gods in a meaningful way then all the hocus pocus stuff

01:36:57.460 really lacks gravitas and i think if your life is not in order you cannot bring order to the

01:37:11.300 the mass of chaos around you no and if you can't if your basement bedroom is untidy

01:37:17.940 you're not going to invoke so you know the if you can't

01:37:22.500 if you are not able to use your magical efficacy to get the girls down the street

01:37:33.480 to talk to you or to get friends or to get yourself a job and get out of mom's basement

01:37:39.780 i don't think you're fooling the greater powers on the other side of the veil that

01:37:47.900 you're trying to interact with, I think it's just delusion and maya.

01:37:58.500 Alan, I believe you said before that you practice meditation.

01:38:02.680 Can you speak on meditation in an out's true context?

01:38:06.500 Can Galder meditation increase mindfulness?

01:38:11.400 Says Spear of Wotan.

01:38:13.900 Spear of Wotan, yes.

01:38:15.860 Um, I have taught, uh, and would be willing to teach, you know, and especially now that I'm

01:38:22.720 entering quasi retirement, um, you know, I would be happy to teach. I don't, I would be happy to

01:38:29.920 teach my meditation class, which Matt has suffered through. Um, and I would be happy to bring that

01:38:36.540 to you um you know do it over a weekend um i will i will add to the part that i said you know where

01:38:46.240 i've started where you know meditation blah blah last 15 years um one of the things about

01:38:53.740 and it's not all the meditation that's done in kundalini but the the meditation the type of

01:39:00.800 meditation i was drawn to was a mantra meditation um but what i've done is i bring i've brought

01:39:08.740 galder into that um meditation that i do every day and so the the the kundalini meditation is

01:39:22.280 done with runic galder and i think this would this would be a good spot for that

01:39:28.960 bucket picture the um the you know i i think that our folk meditated and um you know because you

01:39:38.300 can't reach the types of insights that our people brought about the soul um without you know having

01:39:46.380 turned your mind inside and uh sat on the mat spend a lot of time on the mat which you used to

01:39:53.780 able to do when you lived as a peasant and only had to work 15 hours a week but the um but yes

01:40:00.660 absolutely i think that um the restoration of the combination between meditation and galder

01:40:13.780 is in is here i mean i i'm i'm trying to do it there are others who are doing it

01:40:23.780 Um, and I appreciate you asking that question. I think it's important to know that, um, that many of us are trying to recombine, um, insight, meditation, and Runic-Galder.

01:40:43.580 Yeah, I'd say this on, uh, well, okay, pause, because I forgot to mention it earlier, and I don't want to forget again.

01:40:49.680 uh ronald blake also bought us a uh five coffees it's $25 donation thank you ronald we appreciate

01:40:57.520 it um so one of the things that i have found and i don't think that meditation is never something

01:41:10.640 that has come natural to me it's very hard for me to

01:41:19.040 banish all the just thoughts of logistics and business and everything else going around and

01:41:30.240 songs that get stuck in my head and whatever else it's hard for me to consistently keep that

01:41:37.680 at bay and what i found is very helpful is galder in meditation um galder allows me to start with a

01:41:48.880 focus on an intonation of something that's inherently spiritual that puts me in a spiritual

01:41:55.440 place that directs me towards whatever intentionality has caused me to meditate

01:42:00.320 by intoning that sound

01:42:05.880 I

01:42:06.760 sure there's a better word but in a way

01:42:12.040 hypnotize myself to the purpose of what we're doing

01:42:15.480 and as

01:42:18.420 as my body

01:42:21.680 as my

01:42:22.320 my brain rises and falls with that intonation

01:42:28.020 repetitively

01:42:29.180 eventually if i do it right something takes over to where and bifurcate in a good sense of the word

01:42:38.620 all of my automatic senses keep that noise going and i notice that my mind and my myself

01:42:49.380 separates i'm not really making the noise anymore i've turned the noise on in my body and it's

01:42:57.280 making the sound. And then my mind is in a really introspective, contemplative, mindful state

01:43:06.740 outside of it. And I'm not going to lie and say I can hit that every time. I can't. But when I do,

01:43:13.260 something really special is there. And so I absolutely support and endorse the use of

01:43:21.140 Galder to enhance your meditation. And one thing I would suggest, like, if you want to start that

01:43:26.680 practice the um the way i started this particular galder that i often do and i'm going to start

01:43:34.840 doing more now that we're having this discussion again is um highlung has a great uh one of their

01:43:45.880 songs and in the middle of it they just galder the futhark over and over again and you know that got

01:43:52.480 me on the spot and I don't, that got me on a spot where I, that taught me that that's

01:43:57.600 something I should do. And that's, you know, so sometimes like if I'm getting ready in

01:44:03.300 the morning and some Britney Spears lyric or whatever starts coming into my head, you

01:44:10.580 know I'll just I'll start doing the food and just do that over and over again and

01:44:22.280 it that's very different than singing JLo although she has her place it

01:44:30.440 should be in the kitchen but you know that's a different discussion see

01:44:35.000 senor um so what's up next all right ah good evening also your gofie uh i was harry gofie

01:44:50.840 matt law speaker alan and producer nick how do we deal with thoughts that are uninvited

01:44:56.840 and unwanted particularly the dark ones

01:45:00.520 Alan, you want to take a swing?

01:45:04.520 I'll take a swing and let you gather your thoughts there.

01:45:08.520 So I'll say two things.

01:45:12.520 The first thing, and it's

01:45:16.520 one of those pillars of healthy mindfulness

01:45:20.520 or healthy mind, is awareness.

01:45:24.520 If you can see it from that

01:45:28.520 that outside perspective to say you know this thought is not me you know and this is a negative

01:45:37.960 thought that is coming into my head and that give that that bit of awareness gives you the opportunity

01:45:43.800 to deflect it the um and to think this is not me you know this is a thought that's being imposed

01:45:51.080 from without you know i i am not a bad person i am a worthy person you know uh my folk like and

01:46:02.340 love and respect and need me you know so that's the kind of thing that can help you overcome that

01:46:08.120 is but but i think one of the important things and this is one of the things i learned in my

01:46:13.820 meditation practice is that you can't do it from a an oppositional place like you can't

01:46:22.940 push back against it that just creates resilience you know it's more of a judo you deflect it

01:46:29.580 when i'm on the mat and i have a thought come in i just think

01:46:36.940 i i let that thought go by saying i'm not doing that now we're not i'm not doing that now this

01:46:42.620 is not a time for me to think about the way this work problem is right now i'm meditating i'm just

01:46:51.100 let that go and that's the you don't give those thoughts power over you because those you know

01:46:57.180 those thoughts are not you you know that's you just go that's not me and let it go right back

01:47:03.580 out the door yeah i think um and i've i've read this about meditation practice a lot i don't know

01:47:21.180 if your question is specifically about meditation or about things in your life but

01:47:28.300 But if you reactively run and hide from it, I don't think that's effective because you're too smart for that.

01:47:45.260 You can't hide from it. It's there. It exists.

01:47:48.300 exists, you spend more time being scared of it than you would addressing it. So an acknowledgement

01:47:58.960 of it and then a dismissal of it is a much better thing. And I also think, and this is part of

01:48:11.880 mindfulness. I think a sober, what is it that is haunting you? Is it something that you, and I

01:48:23.100 think this is a first thing that needs to be tackled. Are you living wrong and do you need

01:48:29.680 to start living right? Is there some thing that is haunting you that you do need to correct

01:48:36.760 or is it just mistakes of the past or unpleasant things that are trauma that you there's not an

01:48:45.040 action item you need to do to fix them because again if you have something wrongs that you need

01:48:51.300 to make right then I think you should embrace those and do that if not an acknowledgement

01:48:59.140 And then a dismissal, much like Alan said, like, okay, but I'm not doing that right now. Okay, back to what I'm doing. I think that is much more effective than a, a frantic fear response of trying to hide from them or, or something.

01:49:22.120 And I know that suppression is sort of what I was thinking, you know, like, I'm not that I'm, I'm good. I don't need this thought. You know, that's, you know, how so some of the unhealthy behaviors that we learn from other sources.

01:49:39.700 Anything that, it's funny with kids or with toxic people or immature people that haven't developed, it's funny when things need attention.

01:49:54.800 Often it doesn't matter to them whether it's positive or negative attention, they need attention.

01:50:00.160 if your intrusive thoughts seek to get your attention 0.95

01:50:05.940 oh wow i suck why it's horrible that's a way of giving them intention but like no i'm not 0.96

01:50:15.300 gonna do that i'm not gonna think that that's not true that same frantic nonsense is attention 0.98

01:50:21.560 giving it the like, okay, that's there, but that's not what I'm doing now.

01:50:32.280 So I'm going to set that aside and re-engage with what I'm doing.

01:50:35.660 And I think it's also important, you know, as another aspect of that is,

01:50:42.520 why would I think that, you know?

01:50:45.960 And yes, because Matt, that raises a good point, you know,

01:50:50.960 is that gives you that opportunity to think why would i think i'm unworthy you know maybe i should

01:51:00.080 you know make a little better use of my time or

01:51:07.600 and those sorts of things i think it's also this is a good jumping off point to again emphasize

01:51:12.960 the idea of the dopamine cycle that you get from social media and um you know online gaming and

01:51:24.240 those sorts of things because that can suppress the dopamine cycle um so that normal life seems

01:51:35.680 dim in comparison and you know so and you know i think certainly one cause of the dramatic

01:51:51.760 rise that we see in depression especially among teenagers especially among teenage girls

01:51:58.000 is overexposure to social media, overexposure to the Internet in general.

01:52:04.960 And, you know, and because it sucks all the dopamine out of your head

01:52:10.240 and then normal life just seems bleh.

01:52:14.440 So this is a may seem like a rabbit trail on it,

01:52:25.140 but I do think it relates.

01:52:28.000 when because it has to do with depression and i think that often

01:52:38.880 goes hand in hand with unpleasant intrusive thoughts so if you are struggling with

01:52:48.160 depression in your life with events that are very unpleasant or with whatever

01:52:55.760 However, I have noticed that a great many of us, myself included, want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world and, like, isolate when we are depressed or when negativity is overwhelming.

01:53:14.760 That is the exact wrong thing to do.

01:53:17.600 Don't do that.

01:53:19.860 That's way easier said than done, I understand.

01:53:24.140 Engage with your folk.

01:53:25.760 You know, get your mind off of negativity, being around good people who are engaged in positive purpose. Do that. If there's nothing you can do, again, sometimes we've got good instincts to where if you're plagued by something, maybe you need to fix something.

01:53:44.160 But if you can't, if you can't fix it right now, or if it's not a thing that you can do anything about, put your mental effort into engaging with the folk in something good.

01:54:00.600 And get your mind off it, but more importantly, get your mind on to something beneficial.

01:54:07.480 Especially if it's not something you can undo.

01:54:10.360 Sorry.

01:54:11.400 No, you're fine.

01:54:11.860 But another thing is, you know, if you if you are genuinely struggling with these sorts of things, call one of us go thaw.

01:54:21.160 I mean, you know, one of the things that I've learned in my 42 years on this planet is that, you know, I feel like I'm like farmers insurance.

01:54:33.260 Right. I've seen some some things that I've done some things or whatever it is that they're saying is.

01:54:39.280 And, you know, all of us seasoned veterans have, you know, we've been up and down and, you know, we faced a lot of this stuff.

01:54:48.020 And talking through these problems with somebody, with one of those old guys, with somebody more your own age, that's what we're here for.

01:54:58.780 You know, don't feel like you have to struggle with this stuff on your own.

01:55:03.120 We want to be able to help you.

01:55:05.700 One million percent.

01:55:07.000 That's why I keep my phone on at dinnertime.

01:55:12.000 No, joking aside,

01:55:16.660 let's put it out there because it is what it is.

01:55:24.120 Suicide is the leading cause of death in the Astro Folk Assembly. 0.89

01:55:29.400 Suicide is an epidemic amongst young white males. 0.99

01:55:34.060 what I know to be true at 44

01:55:40.020 that I did not know to be true in my 20s

01:55:43.880 stuff that seems overwhelming in the moment

01:55:50.840 passes with the passage of time

01:55:54.900 in many many cases

01:55:57.600 talking to people who have

01:56:01.980 been through things in their life

01:56:05.520 and can offer perspective

01:56:08.160 is very valuable.

01:56:11.140 When you are in the thick of something

01:56:13.660 that is stressful or devastating,

01:56:17.820 you don't see life beyond it.

01:56:22.860 Those of us who've been through similar waters

01:56:26.500 and have emerged on the other side

01:56:28.840 do take strength from that.

01:56:31.980 Let folks have the opportunity to talk to you and help you out. 0.63

01:56:36.180 So here's the secret that the Gothar and other folk, for that matter, don't always let you know.

01:56:46.580 Yes, we want to help the person who is going through some stuff for their sake.

01:56:53.260 allowing us to help you in your thing makes us happy and gives us validation and makes us feel

01:57:03.100 better do us the favor of letting us help you so many of us want to help and want to find ways to

01:57:10.220 feel useful helping people because that gives us a sense of purpose absolutely it does

01:57:20.360 the chunky amongst us might get a sense of purpose the rest of us get a sense of purpose

01:57:26.400 um maybe the chunky get both i don't know real talk though

01:57:32.840 let us help you people want to help and it makes everyone benefit when we have the opportunity to

01:57:43.780 help our folk afford us that opportunity talk to one of us we would love to talk to you i genuinely

01:57:49.720 only mean that that's why so many of us are here. People. So

01:57:54.400 people are always and I appreciate this. And not always

01:57:57.940 people are very often hyper respectful of my time. And they

01:58:05.280 act like it's burdensome for them to contact me. It's not. I

01:58:09.760 do my best to get back to everybody. If I can't because

01:58:13.240 I'm engaged, then I can't. But it's never, it's never problematic. I genuinely want to help all

01:58:23.800 of our folk that I can. And that's why we're here doing what we're doing. If we didn't want to help

01:58:31.160 our folk through the stuff they're dealing with, we'd be doing something different with our lives.

01:58:36.900 We've engaged in this because this is what gives us meaning, gives us purpose, and what we truly 0.96

01:58:42.640 love doing so please seriously talk to the gothar if you need to talk through something doesn't even

01:58:48.720 have to be crisis i tell you what one of the coolest um gothy calls i ever got this woman

01:58:58.640 called me my member and i was like all right what am i getting into this is going to be something

01:59:04.480 deep something heavy all right let's get ready for it no they were just so happy at an event in their

01:59:12.160 life they had a new love in their life that they met through the afa and they were so happy they

01:59:17.440 just wanted somebody to tell how happy they were that they found somebody that was a really cool

01:59:24.720 call to get so yeah talk to the gothar that's what we're here for what else we got tonight

01:59:35.280 can a christian join the afa let's just assume that they are very confused

01:59:42.160 Well, they would have to be.

01:59:47.620 So the specifics matter of the answer to that question.

01:59:57.100 Yeah, but if you're joining the AFA, you're not really a Christian.

02:00:01.440 like that's one of the things it is so

02:00:08.720 it is so antithetical that you're you've you've already broken from your christianity if you're

02:00:14.320 considering joining you know the astro folk assembly what i would say is this and i always 0.82

02:00:21.680 say if you're a heterosexual white person and you want to build a relationship with your gods

02:00:33.040 your gods you should join the astro folk assembly and if you need to be if you need that last little

02:00:41.680 pull if you need that last little pivot away from well this is why i'm entertaining the question if

02:00:47.920 you're like i just went to church on sunday practicing christian then no you need to sever

02:00:54.400 that relationship before you begin this one but if you are nominally christian that is your

02:01:01.520 and this this is the the terms you cannot be a worshiper of jesus and a worshiper of the

02:01:10.800 icier and be in good standing with either that they are mutually exclusive

02:01:19.920 so i'm assuming that someone is raised christian and that's their worldview and has yet to develop

02:01:28.560 a relationship with the icier this is the detail that i think matters i don't know if this hits

02:01:34.560 your exact question i hope it does you do not have to be fully convinced and fully

02:01:45.840 embraced into also true to join but you do have to want that

02:01:54.240 it's not the message of our gods that you need to have

02:01:58.640 you know some completely unexperienced faith in your bad if you don't no you develop a relationship

02:02:07.520 by interacting by engaging in the gift cycle and by allowing that to take hold if you want to go

02:02:15.000 down that path absolutely you should join us and hopefully we can facilitate that faith to take

02:02:22.160 root and to shape who you are. But no, you cannot be actively Christian and actively 0.64

02:02:28.640 ouster true simultaneously. That's not compatible and not a thing you can do. 0.99

02:02:34.780 And if you need help, making that little pivot will help.

02:02:39.580 Absolutely. Law Speaker, what meditation techniques have you practiced? And what have

02:02:48.440 learned from them what meditations fit best for you today and for our tradition well i talked a

02:02:57.160 little bit about that when i'm i will wax on and on and often do um but the but and again i'll

02:03:07.960 one of the things that we did in that teacher training course is that we were we did several

02:03:13.480 different forms of meditation and um each one we had to practice for at least six weeks

02:03:24.820 and so i did i feel like i had some insight into different forms of meditation into what

02:03:35.140 worked best for me and i'll tell you what works best for me is what i think of as very

02:03:41.200 basic in a certain manner of speaking kundalini chakra activation meditation

02:03:54.540 you know what I do is I have a galder that I have

02:03:59.220 been inspired with where I work my way up the chakras right and I sit in a one of a couple

02:04:10.600 of different postures, and galder for at least 15 minutes.

02:04:19.120 One of the, I mean, a couple other things, I mean, just for the, since you asked,

02:04:27.060 the particular type of kundalini meditation that I was taught is called kriya meditation,

02:04:34.920 which is a series of body movements, um, followed by a period of meditation.

02:04:42.920 Um, and so Kriya yoga, if you want to look it up, um, is what I do.

02:04:49.060 Um, and so I, again, there's a particular Kriya that I was drawn to.

02:04:54.160 I don't think of it as the only Kriya.

02:04:56.280 It's just the one that, that worked best for me. 0.96

02:04:58.500 and so I do

02:05:02.820 you know

02:05:04.540 these series of body manipulations

02:05:06.660 which again is basically

02:05:08.380 spinal manipulation stuff

02:05:10.260 I do that runic galler

02:05:11.460 I also

02:05:13.720 and here's the full disclosure

02:05:16.720 I took a different

02:05:18.460 training course called

02:05:20.640 Kundalini Awakening

02:05:22.660 Practice, it is still

02:05:24.300 out there on the internet

02:05:25.560 I did get

02:05:28.340 some out of some benefit out of that uh you know it is i mean it was a weekend so it was not nearly

02:05:35.720 as thorough as the teacher training that i underwent but i think it did help me it taught

02:05:42.840 me a couple other things that i still do quite frequently um and i also there's a there's some

02:05:49.140 taoist um longevity exercises that i do uh not as often as i should but um you know that i engage

02:06:02.660 that practice as well i also do tai chi um once a week i do old it's called old frame chin which

02:06:11.780 is the original tai chi that long before yang and all the rest of that stuff this is the old form

02:06:17.300 um and so i i do that once a week i do for an hour um and you know and what i've learned from all of

02:06:30.800 that is to try to live inside my head right it's try to live in your body and to live your life

02:06:39.320 And that, you know, all of this is giving me perspective in the, you know, in the, in that life is joy and wonder and amazement.

02:07:03.240 And it is just such a beautiful, wonderful thing to be here.

02:07:08.960 And I feel blessed by my gods and by my ancestors to be allowed to participate.

02:07:20.440 All right.

02:07:21.480 So, sorry, my computer did a thing.

02:07:39.380 All right, now it's back where I need it.

02:07:44.760 What do the crows mean?

02:07:46.620 I assume that he's talking about the two ravens behind you.

02:07:51.480 One of them's got something in his beak. Tell us about it.

02:07:58.020 Well, you know, this is my personal banner, and so I don't give a lot of the meaning of this because I like people to, you know, just ponder it and wonder.

02:08:07.320 But, yes, that is Hugin and Munin.

02:08:09.660 and so um the one is speaking um the one who has returned from his flight and the that is a

02:08:21.200 hagalos rune in his mouth the root rune and so he is bringing the runes

02:08:27.520 that's the exoteric meaning there cool

02:08:33.420 Are there some cases of domestic violence in Ausitru?

02:08:41.020 If so, does the community get involved?

02:08:45.720 Sure.

02:08:48.700 So as any, when we have members and people involved,

02:08:58.260 then the struggles that all of our folk go through in life,

02:09:02.540 happen in the context of people

02:09:06.900 being involved in Ausitru.

02:09:15.580 So the specifics

02:09:18.680 on all of these things matter tremendously.

02:09:22.740 Does the community get involved? Well, it depends if it's done

02:09:26.640 in the community's face or not.

02:09:28.640 um i will tell you this as gothar we absolutely counsel people if that is something that people

02:09:37.980 deal with um and what the depth and breadth of that are is really different in a lot of different

02:09:48.140 cases it's always the intention of the gothar to first we we take an oath to um

02:10:06.940 believe the wording is to to um

02:10:09.980 to honor to support or to to reward the the brave the wise and the true

02:10:21.380 it's really important to understand equality isn't a thing if there is a party that is

02:10:32.840 victimizing someone else, we're going to side with the party that is victimized if that's

02:10:40.740 what has to happen. But what's a lot more realistic is couples that experience that at times

02:10:51.680 want to address it in a way to where their relationship is preserved.

02:11:02.840 If that is the case, then certainly our GOTHAR do our very best to help for everyone in that circumstance to be safe and to be healthy and to get back to a place of healthy family interaction.

02:11:25.100 And that's very complex, and the details really, really matter.

02:11:29.140 no domestic violence is not good it is not acceptable it's not tolerated yeah it's not

02:11:39.540 something that we tolerate or deal with but it is something that we try to correct and try to get

02:11:43.900 people to heal and move forward from depending upon the circumstance and depending upon the

02:11:50.520 intention and the will of the person who is aggrieved by it it's also i think important

02:11:57.840 to say that that also true for all the good that we try to do i mean we're people you know what

02:12:06.160 we're doing is not perfect and the people who come to us are not perfect we try to we try to do our

02:12:12.800 best to make our people better um just if nothing else as matt often reminds us you know that we are

02:12:20.240 we are the people of light we are the noble aryan people who should be above that sort of thing

02:12:28.320 So I'll put this out there.

02:12:30.360 People will not only should they, but truth is one of our virtues.

02:12:36.800 Our folk are really broken.

02:12:39.660 Our people are often very broken when they come to us.

02:12:44.260 And one of our jobs as Gothar is to be healers and to help our people heal the soul sickness.

02:12:52.200 And it displays in a lot of different ways.

02:12:56.260 but no that's not tolerated it's not okay the community typically doesn't become overly involved

02:13:03.940 but that's entirely based on what the participants want to share with

02:13:08.980 the folk around them or not but no it's not okay it's not tolerated it is something that we do

02:13:16.940 provide counseling on if that's a situation people find themselves in and uh you know our goal

02:13:25.140 is to heal families and to heal our folk.

02:13:29.200 And we do the best we can to facilitate that,

02:13:31.700 and it looks different depending on the circumstance.

02:13:36.260 These guys are Aryan. 0.97

02:13:38.340 Hope we are not promoting fascism. 0.99

02:13:43.960 At this point in 2025,

02:13:46.760 that ends up becoming name-calling.

02:13:51.160 The word Aryan is an ancient, ancient word,

02:13:54.340 And it predates concept of fascism is a 1920s Italian term to talk about the relationship between corporation and state.

02:14:09.420 Now, in this day and age, it means a lot of different stuff and trying to parse out the meaning of, you know, politically charged terms doesn't really get us somewhere.

02:14:19.060 What I will say is the term Aryan is a very, very ancient term.

02:14:24.900 And the reason that it's cool and that I use it is it's not sterile.

02:14:30.180 It's a self-descriptor.

02:14:31.720 It's something that our people describe themselves as they are the noble people.

02:14:38.500 As they encountered other types of people, they marked themselves as being noble.

02:14:47.880 and it's a self-identifier but it's also a an aspirational charge it sets a bar for us to try

02:14:59.660 to live up to and raise our standards to in a way that would please our ancestors

02:15:03.920 but it's a i mean it's a very ancient term and it pre it predates you know the term fascism by

02:15:15.780 four thousand years something very long thousands of years right and so

02:15:27.180 yeah i judge us by our deeds and you know the things we stand for and not

02:15:33.500 as is very tempting and what is done in this age is you know name calling stuff because it

02:15:41.100 it's lost its context. And it's just something kind of people say against people they don't

02:15:47.260 agree with these days. So I take a deeper dive into what Arian ends up meaning. It's the root

02:15:54.540 of the word aristocrat. It's the root of a lot of words that imply high standards, nobility,

02:16:04.140 um achieving greatness as opposed to and this goes really into our mindfulness thing today

02:16:12.800 we talk about all the npcs um arian is a is a reminder that it's our obligation to

02:16:23.060 be actively engaged in the world around us to lift ourselves and our folk up to higher standards

02:16:31.400 What is the difference between fascism

02:16:35.560 Okay, cool, this is where we're at

02:16:37.860 So what is the difference between fascism and ethno-nationalism

02:16:43.280 Some people think it's the same thing

02:16:45.940 Alan, would you like to break down the nuance?

02:16:51.460 Nope

02:16:51.760 We don't do politics

02:16:54.380 So that was quick

02:16:56.920 All right. So, in a historical context, fascism doesn't have to be inherently ethnic. There were a number of competing political ideologies in the early 20th century.

02:17:18.040 And the idea of fascism was simply that state was in control of industry and all were working together under the unification of state leadership that could be applied and has been applied in ethno-national circumstances, but it certainly doesn't always have to.

02:17:48.040 And I think that's one of the things that you see a tremendous variety of in the 20th century on how things play out.

02:17:56.420 But again, in today's world, fascism is a mean name that you call people who like rules and you don't like rules.

02:18:07.720 That's not really something that's, I don't know, meaningful to fight about because it's often not a historical reference.

02:18:20.960 It's a pejorative to use against people who like tradition and like order versus people that don't like those things.

02:18:37.720 What is the AFA's interpretation of the Black Sun, and how do you explain it to outsiders that only connected to the bad mustache man?

02:18:49.780 Which is unfortunate, because he had a really tiny mustache.

02:18:56.140 I don't know.

02:18:57.180 I think that Tom Selleck is much more of a mustache man than the person being referenced.

02:19:03.220 so I looked at I saw this coming down the coming down the pipe and I think this is worthwhile

02:19:10.480 the black sun is a symbol of solar of solar might it is a sun wheel as is used in all

02:19:24.700 Aryan face since the dawn of time what you see really specifically in Germany in

02:19:31.860 hundreds of years B.C. is the Zersheba, which is the decorative circle.

02:19:46.840 But if you look it up, and I should have sent Nick a link to this, and I did not.

02:19:51.200 z-i-e-r-s-c-h-e-i-b-e you will see a variety of these discs with patterns that will be very

02:20:07.540 familiar to you they're all radiating patterns they're all you know beautiful solar patterns

02:20:16.460 of our folk some of them are very very similar to the black sun design with any number of different

02:20:23.980 spokes to it some of them are artistically different in different ways but it's the

02:20:32.540 idea of movement it's the idea of the solar um solar aspiration and solar movement as we

02:20:40.700 We come to know more and more that idea of rotating around a center and of consistent and perpetual movement is the core of our folk.

02:20:59.380 So it captures the steadiness of the sun paired with the movement around a sacred center that's so fundamental to our worldview and our cosmos and almost a great many of our sacred symbols.

02:21:19.220 And Nick's throwing up a couple of them. There's a variety of them from the Alamani tribe. And it's a very common motif. And again, some of them look really different.

02:21:33.680 But what's captured with the bent spoke is the rotation. And that's fundamental moving forward, because if we're not moving forward, if we stay stagnant, then we suffer entropy and we move towards, you know, our lower selves, towards disintegration, towards negativity and disillusion.

02:21:58.460 we always want to want to be moving forward it's the idea that i in a way is inspired and encompassed

02:22:05.340 in victory never sleeps you don't stop you have to stay in motion you can't rest on your laurels

02:22:12.460 so that's why we use it in a in a sacred way that's the exact same reason it was used by

02:22:19.660 folks with mustaches is its potency to our full potency towards those things it's a very ancient

02:22:28.380 symbol it's like the most modern version of that symbol but you can see the similarity and it's

02:22:35.500 it goes back to ancient times and again it's that solar might radiating and in movement

02:22:41.580 that's why we use it as a halo around our gods and our heroes

02:22:44.780 if mindfulness is about being fully present in the moment

02:22:53.340 does practicing it change the way we relate to our memories and expectations of the future

02:23:01.000 does it diminish our connection to the past alan what say you uh i think it enhances all of that

02:23:10.060 um by giving it its proper place like we like one of the things that people who are mindless

02:23:24.700 tend to do and i and and one of the best examples i think of mindlessness is that

02:23:32.700 people when you when you're talking with someone they're not listening they're waiting

02:23:40.060 One of my favorite all-time expressions, you know, people who are not listening, they're waiting for their mug to be refilled.

02:23:51.280 The, you know, they've already decided what they're going to say.

02:23:55.620 They're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can start interjecting their side of the story.

02:24:01.420 The rest of it, I think, falls into place in there.

02:24:06.620 and and and i think some of it is a mix and match of terminology i think that there is absolutely

02:24:13.820 a place for recollection um you know to to recall the the times that you know and to tell stories

02:24:22.540 and to think back through happy times and to think back through mistakes that you've made and to do

02:24:28.940 that in an organized way that's not anything wrong that is spending mindful time in recollection

02:24:38.940 spending mindful time in nostalgia the same thing in you know in the to think about the future

02:24:46.780 there's absolutely it is absolutely 100 okay to plan to spend some time planning so that's

02:24:53.500 absolutely absolutely what you do is you know i've been working on some stuff out here a thousand

02:25:00.620 i've drawn you know you make a plan and you draw it out and you so but the but what you what where

02:25:07.580 where and that's mindful time spent in planning but what but where you lose the mindfulness of it

02:25:16.380 is when you're lost in thought when you should be you know like you're you're daydreaming about

02:25:25.020 the future when you should be engaged in the present you're ruining the past when you should

02:25:30.460 be engaged with the people around you so all those things even um i can't think of a way

02:25:40.940 of presentism being harmful but it but any of those practices in and of themselves are not

02:25:50.860 wrong it's the it's the it's the way that they interfere with your ability to be present in the

02:25:59.740 moment um you know another example might be you you know you you run into you have a conversation

02:26:09.100 with somebody and you're so lost in the last conversation that you had with them.

02:26:15.760 Maybe, you know, they offended you in some way that they didn't even know.

02:26:21.860 And you're so engaged in your misery over that last conversation that you don't notice

02:26:31.420 that they're trying to engage with you in a meaningful way right now, right in this

02:26:36.500 present moment.

02:26:37.160 Um, the, so the, you know, so those thought patterns are absolutely okay, but you, but you have to do it in a way that's, um, that's organized in your, you know, in, and not just a mishmash of, uh, the past, the present, the future all at the same time.

02:27:05.380 Um, you know, and I, and I think that's one of the other things that, um, that one of the reasons I don't like pictures in ceremony or really too much in general is it leads to this sort of instant nostalgia that we've developed.

02:27:28.460 Remember a couple of minutes ago when we were doing this?

02:27:31.340 I mean, when I was a kid and, you know, you'd have to take the pictures that you took and send them off to the lab and develop them.

02:27:42.740 And then like a couple of weeks later, when you got the pictures, you could say, oh, remember a couple of weeks ago when we went to this thing and we did these?

02:27:51.200 You know, so it's spending too much time in too tight a circle that can cause problem for your mental abilities.

02:28:05.400 You used to have to stand really still when you'd take the pictures, and you had to hold it there for a few minutes while the flash went off.

02:28:13.060 Yeah, and then you'd have to get another bulb and script.

02:28:15.620 Wait just a couple minutes till we get another bulb in here. 0.99

02:28:18.940 Hold.

02:28:19.880 No, I appreciate that. 1.00

02:28:21.200 Your goddaughter required my sending her off to slumber.

02:28:28.040 Well, it is that time, and good for her.

02:28:32.480 It is that time, and she was very amused that I was talking to you, and she was excited about what goes on.

02:28:38.720 It's been really cool.

02:28:39.220 Oh, it's been new cameras, so, you know, there you go.

02:28:41.580 It's been really cool to watch her grow and figure these things out.

02:28:49.900 It's neat.

02:28:51.200 I wax parental for a second.

02:28:55.560 It's been cool.

02:28:57.160 She's five now, but watching as she learns different things and as she grows as a person and suddenly out of nowhere is able to have, you know, meaningful conversation and stuff.

02:29:13.400 It's really cool.

02:29:15.980 Having kids. 0.90

02:29:17.080 If you haven't done it yet, I would encourage you to do so, 10 out of 10, long as they look like the rest of us.

02:29:28.960 So, I heard some of what Alan said, some of it he was covering.

02:29:35.560 What I would like to say on it, though, is I think it provides context and meaning and enhances all of those things, your sense of past and your sense of future.

02:29:47.080 having the perspective of being mindful of where you are implies a

02:30:00.560 positioning of yourself in relation to other things.

02:30:07.200 Not being mindful.

02:30:08.900 You don't think about the past.

02:30:10.760 You don't think about where you're going.

02:30:12.540 You're just coasting.

02:30:13.800 When you stop and you are mindful, then you profoundly are aware of the things that got you where you're going.

02:30:21.860 And you're also profoundly aware of what you're aiming for in the future that you want for yourself.

02:30:28.020 I think it enhances all of those things.

02:30:32.700 Does meditation help you sleep?

02:30:35.620 Do you have any sleep meditation?

02:30:38.100 Do you take any sleep medication?

02:30:41.100 Alan?

02:30:43.800 Well, you know, I don't know that these two are conjoined, but I sleep, you know, I meditate and I sleep like a baby.

02:30:55.820 I wake up every two hours crying.

02:31:00.480 I'm so funny.

02:31:01.760 I do, but I don't know if you're joking.

02:31:06.100 I'm not.

02:31:07.280 I am?

02:31:08.440 I'm not.

02:31:10.340 So, no, here's the thing of it, right?

02:31:13.240 There are sleep meditations that can be done.

02:31:20.280 There's a certain type of yoga.

02:31:22.700 Yoga Nidra.

02:31:24.220 Yeah.

02:31:25.100 And I've done that and still do occasionally.

02:31:33.100 Like if I have trouble falling asleep, I will really do kind of a reverse

02:31:40.740 kundalini meditation but but no i have never taken any sleep medication if i i mean there are

02:31:48.100 now there's a lot of process involved in avoiding that i think i think it's taking medication

02:31:59.740 especially for something that is as rudimentary as sleep can take you down a dangerous path

02:32:05.540 Not that it always is, but, okay, so here's some more of this mindfulness stuff that ekes into all of my headspace, right?

02:32:15.660 One of the things I read about some time ago and try to practice is that as it starts to become, so, like, think about light, right?

02:32:30.400 Because we've been indoor people only for like the last 50 years, where we have this phenomenon now that you have bright white light directly overhead that is on like that up until right before you go to sleep.

02:32:51.160 and studies have shown that that's harmful and that what you should do by like you should your

02:33:00.980 inside light should start to imitate the light outside so like so like by late afternoon or

02:33:11.020 in the evening you should be using lamps that are at a lower level so that your the your eyes

02:33:18.200 then become acclimated your eyes into your brain become acclimated to the idea that the sun it's

02:33:26.280 the same sort of concept that the sun is sinking the sun is not directly overhead beaming down

02:33:32.520 noon daylight at 11 o'clock at night the sun is over here and is you know it is sinking down into

02:33:39.400 the horizon so now it's evening and so your body's natural rhythm can then bring itself

02:33:48.280 into a place where sleep will come naturally um so you don't need that sort of medication um

02:33:58.040 now all that being said sometimes i have a night where i can't sleep and i'll get up and

02:34:02.200 read i mean i'm finally about halfway through war and human civilization um which disabused 0.67

02:34:12.360 a lot of anthropologists about the idiocy that brousseau thought about native american

02:34:19.040 civilization such as it was um but you know those kinds of things if you can't sleep get up 0.99

02:34:25.660 for a while and do something else. I think another item of interest that

02:34:29.660 I haven't practiced myself

02:34:33.620 but I think would be a good idea if you're having trouble sleeping, especially if you

02:34:37.640 have trouble staying asleep once you fall asleep, is biphasic sleep.

02:34:42.280 I mean, if you read about the way that people

02:34:45.400 slept, again, up until just 150, 200 years

02:34:49.720 ago when we developed Inside Lights, people slept

02:34:53.920 a little while in the evening, like 8, 9 o'clock,

02:34:57.320 they'd lay down and go to sleep for a couple, three hours,

02:34:59.280 and then they'd get up and do stuff for a couple hours.

02:35:03.320 Then they'd go back to sleep.

02:35:05.260 I mean, in the historical literature,

02:35:07.800 they talk about, you know, second sleep.

02:35:13.120 That's what it's called.

02:35:13.920 And it was just, it was universal.

02:35:17.740 You sleep for a while, get up,

02:35:20.200 maybe read a book for a while with a candle

02:35:23.360 or do some knitting or something like that

02:35:26.140 or stir the stew pot and then go back to sleep.

02:35:31.260 So this thing of eight hours regimented sleep

02:35:35.940 that, you know, this is the only way to do it.

02:35:38.800 If that is not a good pattern for you,

02:35:41.040 then you can find a different one.

02:35:44.620 The other thing is,

02:35:45.980 you're not having television in your bedroom.

02:35:49.440 don't take your cell phone into your bedroom either

02:35:54.320 that'll help you sleep

02:35:57.440 so read the literature that's what it says i'm not saying that i'm repeating it

02:36:06.580 i didn't think of it i'm just i'm just saying the literature says a lot of things

02:36:13.460 So a couple of points.

02:36:17.240 Yoga Nidra. 0.86

02:36:19.600 When I first met Mandy, she took me to a yoga place a couple of times.

02:36:25.640 I did this yoga Nidra, which we colloquially refer to as sleepy time yoga.

02:36:32.200 And it was awesome because you lay down in this room with, you know, cool lights and funny yoga stuff.

02:36:42.480 and this Hebrew woman would go around and like put essential oil on you that would smell good

02:36:51.740 and you could take a nap for a few minutes and that was kind of cool I don't know that it gave

02:36:58.780 me any profound benefit, but it was fun. Sleep is hard for me. One thing that I found that is

02:37:18.820 really useful for sleep overall i think this is really a useful thing for people magnesium magnesium

02:37:32.260 i there's all kind of supplements that people say they do different things i have a pretty

02:37:37.060 high tolerance for stuff so it's hard for me to tell magnesium supplementation at night

02:37:44.820 I can really notice a difference when I do that versus when I don't on how I sleep.

02:37:54.500 I have had a lot of different times in my life, and I say this is better than what it used to be.

02:38:07.660 There's a lot of my life that I've had.

02:38:10.480 I've been up all night stressing about things.

02:38:13.840 that's awful

02:38:15.260 I don't usually do that as much anymore

02:38:20.540 but often I do

02:38:23.540 I find

02:38:25.240 times where I'm up

02:38:28.100 I just can't shut off my mind

02:38:32.060 on all the different things that I'm thinking about

02:38:35.560 and then there's other times

02:38:38.420 that are really good

02:38:40.060 where I'm just

02:38:41.080 literally i'm in ecstasy about stuff like i'm excited and happy and on fire about spiritual

02:38:50.120 things but again my mind is really active and i can't shut it off to go to sleep

02:38:55.740 and i understand that you know left to my own devices if i were by myself you could

02:39:04.800 do the multiple sleeps or the different stuff

02:39:10.540 or experiment with things, but I can't.

02:39:12.640 I've got a five-year-old who gets up at 6.37

02:39:16.480 regardless of what I want to do.

02:39:18.320 So I either get my sleep or I don't.

02:39:27.780 I do find that watching something to fall asleep

02:39:32.620 focuses my mind on nonsense.

02:39:38.120 I don't think it's a good idea

02:39:39.360 to try to watch something

02:39:40.340 that you care about watching. 1.00

02:39:42.100 I think watching something stupid 1.00

02:39:43.760 to where it's just noise. 1.00

02:39:46.780 And this is anecdotal.

02:39:48.560 I realize this is not law speaker approved,

02:39:51.060 but it works.

02:39:52.920 I zone out super quick.

02:39:54.340 I can almost,

02:39:55.240 if I try to watch a movie

02:39:56.440 when I'm falling asleep,

02:39:59.360 oftentimes I don't make it past the credits

02:40:01.440 and I'm out. 0.68

02:40:02.620 because again, I'm zoned out on something stupid and I'm able to take my mind off of something 0.94

02:40:08.900 that is resource intensive and focus it on something that is resource negligible because 0.99

02:40:17.140 I don't care. I'm not advertising that as the best way to do it. I'm just saying it is a tool

02:40:25.160 that I've used. Also, you asked if I've used a sleepy time medication. Yeah, there've been times

02:40:31.480 where like man i need to take some cold medicine and knock myself out you want to don't have a

02:40:35.800 cold i don't like that that's how you end up coming like michael jackson and having you know

02:40:42.360 i don't want to be in that habit if you're in that habit it's very easy for you to

02:40:50.120 develop tolerance and just keep doing more and more and more to knock yourself out and eventually

02:40:56.360 I think, you know, borders on being dangerous.

02:41:00.200 There is different stuff to where they take the stuff that makes you go to sleep out of the cold medicine and they just make that.

02:41:07.000 So you're not taking the cold medicine stuff.

02:41:08.740 You're just taking the sleep stuff.

02:41:11.840 I have I have absolutely done that.

02:41:15.220 I'll still do it if I need to, because it's better that I have sleep and I'm able to function the next day.

02:41:20.640 Because, again, I'm a father. It'd be different if I was a single guy by myself or I didn't have that kind of a schedule. It is what it is.

02:41:31.960 What I would say that helps sleep in a way that I think might be law speaker approved is the magnesium. 0.99

02:41:42.240 and rather than letting yourself be at the whims of whatever repent like i'll just get stupid

02:41:52.380 songs stuck in my head it's one thing if you are plagued by regret or stress that's awful and i

02:42:01.380 hope that you're not there and i'm very fortunate that that's not where i am with my sleep but it's

02:42:07.680 also hard to turn my brain off from all the other things. I'll be up all night contemplating

02:42:13.580 Tiershoff design. Many nights I've been up for hours just thinking of cool stuff.

02:42:21.820 Still makes me real sleepy in the morning when Aubrey insists on waking me up at seven. So

02:42:27.880 I think focusing your thoughts on something intentional and important

02:42:36.060 helps creating a story or a narrative in your head

02:42:43.000 or a thing you're trying to think about intentionally

02:42:46.960 as opposed to just being at the whim of random stuff

02:42:49.800 that takes your mind.

02:42:51.420 I have found when I try to think about things specifically,

02:42:55.840 boom, I'm done.

02:42:57.740 I can't even start the process before I'm out.

02:43:00.880 So that's kind of mental tricks that help me.

02:43:02.980 I think my sleep thing might be irregular, but I'm going to keep it a buck, as the urban youths say these days.

02:43:16.120 How do you translate meditation being an internal practice, but how do you quantify its usefulness in external practice?

02:43:26.420 Alan?

02:43:32.980 you have to take the meditation coefficient and you multiply it by your

02:43:41.620 mindfulness factor squared with the X bone.

02:43:50.280 I am mockingly referencing the quantification aspect of that question.

02:43:55.760 So, and it is, but the honest answer to that question, as far as it can be answered, I think, is that there's no, there's no easy way to answer the question.

02:44:20.820 And that may be where that's the way that sentence completes.

02:44:25.320 Like for a long time, when I was doing meditation, I don't mean like for like the first couple of weeks.

02:44:31.660 I mean, like for the first couple of years that I was meditating, I was doing it out of momentum.

02:44:39.980 And, you know, this is supposed to help me, so I'm going to keep doing it.

02:44:43.840 And then eventually, I guess in a certain way, it's like exercise, right?

02:44:51.220 Like the first couple of times you exercise, it's like, man, this is just a waste of time.

02:44:56.300 You know, I could be doing something else that's more fun.

02:45:02.480 But eventually your body is better and you are better with it.

02:45:12.120 And, and I think that meditation is that way that yes, it takes a while and it's, and the, and the, and the change is slow, but like eventually now the days that I skip my meditation, I can tell like in my head is less orderly.

02:45:40.020 and my interaction with people is less coherent.

02:45:50.820 So, I mean, there's certainly not any one-to-one quantification that you can make.

02:45:59.500 And it's funny because I've had to answer this question a couple times in different contexts.

02:46:07.640 and the analogy

02:46:10.440 that I like

02:46:11.520 is it's like stirring

02:46:14.360 a swimming pool with a straw

02:46:16.400 right

02:46:18.540 you gotta keep at

02:46:20.580 it but eventually you can

02:46:22.560 make a whirlpool

02:46:23.460 take an awful lot of

02:46:30.520 stirring I think

02:46:31.420 very vigorous

02:46:34.320 stirring

02:46:35.360 um so again truth is one of our virtues i don't ever get anything out of meditation

02:46:47.380 people say you're supposed to do it and i say that as a caveat there's there's caveat to this

02:46:54.400 meditating doesn't do much for me doesn't mean it's crap doesn't mean it doesn't do stuff for

02:47:01.640 lot of people i genuinely believe that it does a lot for you alan and i don't think you'd be doing

02:47:07.480 it if it didn't what i have found and i don't know if this counts because i don't i'm not as

02:47:16.200 familiar with the nomenclature intentional meditation like there is a concept in meditation

02:47:26.360 of emptying your mind that has never done anything good for me

02:47:35.080 but there's something else and again correct me if i'm wrong or if i'm using the wrong terms for this

02:47:42.920 directed intention meditation to where i have a laser focus on a thing that i'm meditating towards

02:47:51.240 its enactment or its fulfillment where i'm channeling all of my energy towards an objective

02:48:01.780 i have found that to be very beneficial if not frequently used but i've gotten a lot out of that

02:48:11.220 i don't know if that counts or what the wording is for that to make it you know match with with

02:48:18.620 The nomenclature, I have found that to be powerful in projecting will towards a goal.

02:48:30.400 Well, that's what you're talking about is two different forms of meditation.

02:48:34.720 So, and I will tell you, like that empty stillness type of meditation doesn't work well for me either.

02:48:48.620 i mean i tried occasionally again for a while but that's why i do kundalini meditation because it

02:48:54.780 gives it you know it's it is direction of a certain specific type um and especially when

02:49:02.380 combined with runic galder you know it it um it manifests that intention in a very

02:49:10.860 traditionalist way for a very specific purpose so at the same time and you know and that's why

02:49:21.820 and there are you know in that that sort of intention meditation that you're talking about

02:49:26.380 is a different kind of thing and absolutely 100 valid yeah i've again it's not something i could

02:49:35.100 i don't think i could have the same intensity if i was doing it daily

02:49:40.820 but there have been pivotal excuse me pivotal i did it again pivotal moments to where i've

02:49:52.720 done very directed meditation towards a goal and i've been very surprised with how powerful that's

02:50:02.160 been the times that i've made use of it so i think they help you pivotate pivotation um very ran all

02:50:14.960 right trigger warning on this next one it's a very random question but i think it's a really

02:50:23.680 anybody who reads about this comes in contact with this concept and i think it's worth

02:50:28.800 it's worth speaking on very random question but what are your thoughts on semen retention

02:50:36.400 does it actually help a man become more powerful and disciplined

02:50:42.240 alan as the you know senior yoga practitioner do you have thoughts on that in specific

02:50:53.600 i do not i've read about it

02:50:58.080 I, to those who do practice it, I would have certain specific questions if I ran into anybody that practiced that in a serious way.

02:51:10.340 So the answer is, I don't know enough about it to have an opinion, although I would, I guess I would say I'm skeptical, given some of the deep reading that I've done on it.

02:51:26.100 I question it. But again, that's, you know,

02:51:31.740 it's easy to say from an outside perspective,

02:51:33.900 like that doesn't seem like the thing,

02:51:37.080 but maybe to the guys who do it, it works.

02:51:56.100 So, yes, people talk about it a lot.

02:52:01.580 That's something I've encountered a lot in reading.

02:52:05.360 We have this whole tongue-in-cheek, Vril equals semen thing that people talk about.

02:52:13.780 And it's funny to make references to Vril and Chuckle.

02:52:18.180 I get that.

02:52:19.120 But I've also, I've encountered this a lot reading a number of different people's works.

02:52:35.020 When you read Metaphysics of Sex and Yoga of Power, I think they both touch on this by Evola.

02:52:49.120 so i i'm sorry for the awkward pausing i'm trying to

02:52:59.020 i'm trying to think of the

02:53:02.620 trying to characterize this in the nicest way as possible

02:53:08.140 people that can't get laid like to come up with a lot of cool justifications

02:53:16.720 and i think that's illusion and i think it's maya i think that one of the delusions that

02:53:26.960 commonly happens is the you know christian young man that saves himself for marriage

02:53:32.260 if you're tim tebow and that's absolutely something you're doing and you're the jock

02:53:38.340 that can get any chick he wants and that's what you're doing okay i respect that

02:53:42.160 But it's also really easy to use as an excuse for you can't get laid.

02:53:52.080 There's a lot of esoteric stuff about this semen retention ritual things.

02:53:58.780 I don't feel that that's fundamentally sound.

02:54:03.620 I think it metastasizes.

02:54:07.140 First, I don't think that that's healthy biologically.

02:54:10.700 I think that the expression of said is healthy overall for male health, but also spiritually.

02:54:24.280 And I liken this.

02:54:27.080 And so, again, we can chuckle about Vril and its relation to semen, and I get that.

02:54:35.760 i'm a guy and as old as we get i don't think that there ceases being a 14 year old boy inside of us

02:54:43.380 that chuckles at some of these things but realistically i think with any currency be it

02:54:52.720 like physical currency be it spiritual currency or anything else one of the great truths of our

02:55:01.020 lore is the idea of circulating things it's always been a negative to be the dragon that hoards stuff

02:55:12.940 hoarding things metastasizes and it makes things that would be beneficial turn negative and turn

02:55:23.820 dark. The free circulation of energy is really important, and it's a big part of the Rune Fehu

02:55:33.400 and the mystery behind it, is the circulation of wealth. Again, there's nothing wrong with a king

02:55:42.400 being lavish in his, you know, gold and regalia and finery, but fundamentally a king's job was

02:55:52.840 to circulate and be a ring giver one who you know bestows lavish gifts on his retainers

02:56:01.880 and you know aids the people in his realm and circulates the currency of the realm

02:56:10.680 you become a dragon and something ugly and mutated and gross when you hoard wealth and

02:56:18.360 you sit up top your hoard greedily. To offer up the other side of that analogy, I think

02:56:33.120 It's also the spot where you don't spill your gold uselessly and without cause.

02:56:47.820 That is a different kind of exercise, which is also...

02:56:57.600 I suppose it is, in fact, exercise.

02:57:01.480 So, so again, there's, all right, let's contemplate semen or Vril in the sense of masculine potency having some kind of,

02:57:23.520 let's assume that that particular fluid does have that kind of limited

02:57:31.140 potency to it to where there's a scarcity like a currency

02:57:37.000 spending it intentionally I think is important again a king needs to circulate the wealth of

02:57:50.140 the kingdom, but also you don't want it just squandered frivolously on nonsense all the time.

02:57:59.780 So I think there's something in your drawer in the bottom of the laundry basket.

02:58:07.180 Cool. We're just going to take it all the way there. We're going to take it all the way to the

02:58:11.900 to the mundane um no real realistically though as a principle no i don't think the

02:58:24.140 hoarding it up in the sense that it develops magical potency

02:58:33.580 and i and again ladies or anybody watching this i'm not trying to be gross i am trying

02:58:38.780 to answer the question though and i think it's it is a valuable one to what we're talking about

02:58:43.900 because it is something that's talked about in meditative practice in sexual magical

02:58:51.900 excuse me something that deep thinkers have given lots and lots of 0.98

02:58:57.260 really really is and i i wouldn't entertain this if this was just us like joking about semen you

02:59:05.340 would you do it's something that is talked about a lot and everything else aside it is a very

02:59:12.540 perhaps the most tangible

02:59:17.660 expression expression of male potency in a very very real way and in a magical way

02:59:24.860 for a second let's pause it literally plants the seeds of life and lets life take root

02:59:35.700 there is something really special to that there is magic imbued within that substance i get that

02:59:46.240 um i don't think the retention of that honestly it reproduces i think trying to

02:59:52.480 hoard that up is really unhealthy. I think that the free outflow of that particular thing is

03:00:02.820 good for male health. But I also think that, you know, expressing male virility and not trying to

03:00:11.900 like the idea of holding things back as an expression of discipline it is a in the moment

03:00:22.940 expression of discipline that you can do that because one of the practices that's often talked

03:00:28.060 about in this type of thing is getting yourself to the edge of release release of said and then not

03:00:37.980 in order to get a magical benefit from heightening the energy there with all,

03:00:46.680 but then choosing not to express that.

03:00:49.620 I don't think that, again, it is well attested.

03:00:53.720 It's something folks talk about.

03:00:55.440 I don't think it is.

03:00:58.060 I don't endorse that.

03:00:59.700 I don't think that's powerful.

03:01:00.960 I think that metastasizes and makes things happen in a very strange way.

03:01:06.840 What I will say is Evola was a big proponent of that.

03:01:13.020 A conversation that also happened at Hot Tub Sumble, and I think it's relevant to this.

03:01:20.360 I don't know if his later views on that were because he was a paraplegic or not.

03:01:26.280 And I don't know if that affected his ability to function in that way in a normal manner.

03:01:32.040 um but yeah i don't think that the storing up of that particular fluid or that particular energy

03:01:40.920 is helpful in magical efficacy i've seen the most magically effective people that i have seen in my

03:01:49.460 life don't practice the storing up of that particular thing um

03:01:58.600 the people that are the least

03:02:02.160 effective that I've ever seen in my life

03:02:04.500 do not express that

03:02:10.060 in any kind of shared experience

03:02:11.940 in my

03:02:12.560 I was trying to keep it dignified

03:02:18.080 Al

03:02:18.380 I think that we've

03:02:22.060 talked about that enough

03:02:23.760 but

03:02:24.120 beat that into the ground

03:02:26.120 so next question what are your thoughts on chakras and kundalini uh just a hindu thing

03:02:40.160 or is it something you believe our shared ancient arian ancestors would have practiced

03:02:45.260 alan what are your thoughts on chakras and the kundalini and if you know if you could also for

03:02:52.840 our audience that may not be familiar explain to them what chakras and the kundalini are okay the

03:03:02.440 22nd version chakras are energy centers that are postulated or recognized to exist along the

03:03:15.720 The spine and upward, basically they are coalescences of the subtle energy channels within the body.

03:03:31.820 Kundalini is the...

03:03:38.220 I don't know that Hindu is the right word.

03:03:42.180 Kundalini is the Indian word that has been used primarily to refer to that energy, the energy, the subtle energy that can't be seen or detected except internally by the practitioner or any individual that flows through the body.

03:04:01.520 It's not blood. It's not the other stuff, but it's like the electricity that makes life happen.

03:04:15.740 Okay. Kundalini is a word for that.

03:04:19.240 The Chinese call it chi or ki.

03:04:21.900 um the uh wilhelm wright called it owned so the so kundalini then as a is a word for that energy

03:04:36.120 um and what we've seen in the west is like the traditional seven i mean there are thousands

03:04:49.360 millions of pictures of that out there where, you know, it's the spinal thing where there are seven

03:04:53.780 energy words that are shown in the body, but that's just one chakra system. There are

03:05:02.360 dozens or hundreds of different chakra denomination systems, and that one system

03:05:10.860 system is just one way of looking at that.

03:05:17.940 Another related system is the the Daoist system talks about the three cauldrons and this is

03:05:30.180 directly parallel to Founder McNallan's work in his book where he talks about the three

03:05:38.660 Three self-same cauldrons where the energy is brought up from the lower center up through, you know, there it's basically the Dantian, the heart center, and the pineal gland center.

03:05:55.400 Okay, that's sort of the Taoist system.

03:05:59.860 And so those systems parallel each other.

03:06:04.000 So I don't think that, you know, that either one of them is right or wrong.

03:06:08.200 I think they are just different expressions of the universal human existence, right?

03:06:21.240 That there is an energy that underlies life, which to me is the meaning of the black sun.

03:06:33.000 You know, that is the life energy that the sun expresses through fusion, give us life and to breathe life into our existence here.

03:06:51.140 And so the body, our body takes that and kundalini meditation then is a directed form of taking that energy from the lower centers, which is the center of physicality, reproduction, and eating, but, you know, engorgement, right?

03:07:19.100 like gluttony so you're talking about those lowest possible centers and you

03:07:24.200 raise it up like to your heart center where you can start to feel empathy and

03:07:33.620 you know like as if there are other people on the planet for example that is

03:07:38.780 a new concept to lots of people many of whom blah blah and so and then so bring

03:07:47.360 Bring that up into your place where then you can interact with the highest power.

03:07:52.580 And that's kundalini meditation or the purpose of kundalini meditation.

03:08:01.480 Does that answer the question?

03:08:03.100 Or did I get lost in the explanation?

03:08:05.300 No, I think you're getting where he's trying to go.

03:08:09.920 Also, Spira Votan, yes, I absolutely did just bring that up in that way.

03:08:14.900 It is literally that.

03:08:16.680 Nick, I posted a link. Anybody who is curious, this, The Metaphysics of Sex, Eros, and the Mysteries of Love by Julius Evola, it's more than just that, and I think it is a really interesting read.

03:08:34.300 I think, you know, anything that he wrote is very well thought out.

03:08:40.760 This one was, you know, off the beaten path of what we often interact with.

03:08:47.320 But I do think it was an interesting read, and there's a lot of stuff to consider there.

03:08:51.360 I don't agree with his conclusions on that, but I also have the use of my lower extremities.

03:08:59.620 I didn't like his book on yoga for what it's worth.

03:09:01.900 all right so all right you you brought this up so we'll take him aside the yoga of power

03:09:09.340 i disagree that's one of my favorite evola books it has zero to do with yoga in the sense that

03:09:21.120 we're talking about yoga i think it is a very misnamed book i think it's a very good book

03:09:28.640 but again if you maybe if i reread it as as not a book about yoga i might but when i read it i was

03:09:37.500 trying to like grasp the esoteric essence of yoga no i don't fault that at all it is horribly

03:09:45.820 horribly named for what it's about um it's not about yoga that we're thinking about as yoga it

03:09:55.660 It is yoga distilled as a concept on a lot of different things.

03:10:01.460 As I recall, I think it's a lot more about self-mastery than it is about what we would think of as a yoga practice.

03:10:11.080 But I really liked it.

03:10:13.180 It's like I don't think all of metaphysics of sex is about copulation.

03:10:18.760 I think a lot of it is about gender as relates to metaphysics.

03:10:25.240 I think it's a really interesting read, but I don't know if you got it thinking it's going to be dirty or some kind of erotica or something.

03:10:34.660 It's not.

03:10:38.800 I am.

03:10:40.560 This is something that I don't know that our audience understands.

03:10:44.360 I don't agree with Evolo and everything at all, but I think it's fascinating.

03:10:51.140 I think he's a brilliant, brilliant man.

03:10:53.020 And I think it touched, he and his writing touch on a lot of the things that we discuss in a very deep and well-thought-out way.

03:11:01.740 And he is my favorite philosopher to read once I grasped how he wrote.

03:11:11.940 Again, another aside, but it is where it is.

03:11:15.640 So, um, or whatever your, your penander quote was.

03:11:24.080 So what I was going to say is though, um,

03:11:31.120 Avala's tricky because you have to understand the way he writes.

03:11:36.400 I picked up at the wrong point.

03:11:39.300 I read a, uh, I'll find the graphic for this to show you guys later.

03:11:44.440 i don't know how to quickly access it now right have producer nick throw it up he's very fast

03:11:49.720 there was a uh i think it was from the elders of the black sun uh there was like a study guide

03:11:55.800 on how to read avila in what order to make it most accessible to a new reader

03:12:04.200 i had originally read ride the tiger literally because looking at his catalog of books

03:12:11.160 It's relation to the Dio song was the only reason that I, I'm just being honest.

03:12:18.740 It's absolutely laughable.

03:12:20.860 You are justified, sir, but it is what it is.

03:12:24.040 It's why I picked it up.

03:12:26.620 And I was like, any, any path that gets you there, right?

03:12:32.220 You can see his stripes, but you know, he's clean.

03:12:35.420 Don't you see what I mean?

03:12:36.660 I did not see what he meant.

03:12:38.800 So I picked it up.

03:12:41.160 I could not make heads or tails, and I put it down.

03:12:45.040 When I picked up this Elders of the Black Sun reading guide to it,

03:12:50.200 I went through and I read every Evola book that's been translated into English.

03:12:58.720 And it made a lot of sense.

03:13:00.460 I had originally thought that the stuff that sounded like it didn't make sense was a fault of translation.

03:13:05.860 Most of Evela's works made it to us through Italian, translated into French, and then into English.

03:13:16.300 So I wrote it off to that.

03:13:18.420 I was disabused when I looked at a YouTube video of Evela from the 1970s.

03:13:25.920 And it was cool.

03:13:27.060 I mean, he was at the very last stages of his life, but to see the author of the works that I've read in his own voice say things was really interesting that we live in that time period where we can see and hear some of these people speaking.

03:13:48.880 it was really interesting but yeah no it just takes a little bit of deciphering but once you

03:13:54.320 get it it's it's very much a quest worth taking i think uh yeah i would certainly not say i think

03:14:02.400 evil is a is a worthy read and you know a lot of the stuff that he says i just you know i just

03:14:09.200 thought that one book was errant but you know i may i may try to reread it actually i don't

03:14:15.760 I probably don't even have the book anymore.

03:14:20.780 You should get it if you genuinely want to reread it.

03:14:23.580 I will send you a copy.

03:14:25.360 It was good.

03:14:26.620 I liked it.

03:14:27.580 It was one of my top Evela books.

03:14:33.720 I really like Mystery of the Grail.

03:14:38.020 I like Yoga of Power.

03:14:41.060 I like

03:14:44.600 Revolt Against the Modern World is

03:14:52.780 overdone, but the reason everybody suggests it is

03:14:56.380 it's kind of the quintessential book of that if you don't

03:15:00.780 want to delve deeper.

03:15:05.060 I'm reading Guillaume Faye right now.

03:15:07.440 it's a sort of, it's disheartening in a lot of ways.

03:15:14.940 Yeah, I couldn't get into that.

03:15:17.540 What another one I want to suggest by Evola that's really good is,

03:15:24.340 and I forget the name of the book.

03:15:26.280 His book on hermetics was very interesting to me and it made something that

03:15:32.260 was very confusing, a lot clearer when I read it.

03:15:35.760 so his book about hermetics is really interesting to me also the hermetic tradition symbols and

03:15:42.300 teachings of the royal art yes that one um i thought that one was a really good one too

03:15:49.860 um what words should you okay addressed to the astro folk assembly as a whole

03:16:03.360 what words should you say to a dying relative who doesn't believe in the gods or any god

03:16:10.360 i feel bringing up hell the goddess and odin uh would be alien to them but it is hard to see um

03:16:22.940 with what you're specifically cogitating on lately alan would you like to take first

03:16:31.300 crack at this or would you like me to thank you um to i think the first of all

03:16:43.060 i think that certainly the the you know the content neutral way to to get there and i

03:16:48.740 think it's comfortable for a lot of those even for practicing christians is

03:16:54.260 and to directly answer your question what i would say like if my if i if i was in that position to

03:17:06.000 hold to to be present with a dying relative um who did not believe in the gods um your ancestors

03:17:16.500 teachers prepare to meet you. You are a worthy person and you will take your place by their

03:17:27.120 side and you will rest in summer land.

03:17:37.060 Yeah, it's

03:17:37.900 syncretic that

03:17:45.900 this question's asked. It's funny because it's something that 1.00

03:17:50.920 funny is not the right word. It's weird

03:17:54.540 that Alan and I have talked about this very subject

03:18:00.200 because he's preparing to do a funeral.

03:18:01.740 when we do an uh house true funeral very often the audience is mixed faith some no faith it's

03:18:17.260 it's kind of a random assortment of people that want to pay their respects to the to the fallen

03:18:22.340 and i know your question was to someone who's dying as opposed to you know to mourners

03:18:31.260 But I think it's similar in a lot of ways.

03:18:44.600 Absolutely what Alan said, I think that the truth that we know as people is that our ancestors await us on the other side.

03:18:55.180 Now, I say that.

03:18:56.940 Alan answered assuming that the person you're talking to is not a complete dirtbag.

03:19:02.900 If somebody is a terrible human being, then maybe their ancestors aren't awaiting them. 0.82

03:19:09.040 Maybe their terrible and their worthless existence is going to mercifully come to an end for the rest of us and whatever.

03:19:17.540 But I don't think that's the question you're asking.

03:19:19.980 The question you're asking is about somebody you care about.

03:19:24.480 um so i just i i want to put that in context though i don't think anything is gained from

03:19:32.880 promising them something you can't deliver like ascension to the halls of the gods

03:19:38.980 or something along those lines if that happens great but i don't think that's

03:19:45.080 something for you to just offer to those people and if you mention they don't believe in our

03:19:52.700 gods anyway i think it's kind of a waste but assuring them that they go to be with the

03:19:58.460 ancestors i think is a valuable thing to do i think speaking to them about promises of them

03:20:08.140 being remembered is valuable i think more than generic promises of remembrance specific

03:20:18.300 commitments to remember them

03:20:21.440 is important.

03:20:27.360 And again, I would

03:20:29.420 focus their attention to

03:20:33.820 seeing their fallen loved ones on the other side.

03:20:39.300 And I think that's absolutely

03:20:41.660 supported by our lore, but I also think it's something that we see

03:20:45.620 In folks that have had near-death experiences, very commonly it's expressed that your ancestors who passed before you are there to welcome you and to help you in that transition.

03:21:03.680 And I think we know that to be true. 0.96

03:21:05.540 It's one of the things that kind of cuts past religion when we talk of gods and theism in specific.

03:21:15.620 Um, even atheists do this. 0.94

03:21:25.640 Christians do this. 0.98

03:21:27.980 We certainly do this. 0.56

03:21:29.600 We do it unabashed.

03:21:33.220 You talk to your dead ancestors in a moment of struggle or a moment of joy.

03:21:40.240 You know, hey, mom, I wish you were here.

03:21:43.760 This is really cool.

03:21:45.620 Or, you know, hey, Grandpa, I saw a thing today, I'm thinking about you. 0.86

03:21:51.780 Christians will walk by a picture on their wall and do that, even though it's contrary to their faith, because it's so instinctive. 0.99

03:22:03.520 And it's instinctive because it's real and it's true. 0.94

03:22:07.420 So I would direct their attention towards their ancestors.

03:22:11.720 I think that's always a good thing, and it cuts past, again, our ancestors are real.

03:22:22.920 It's not a debate.

03:22:24.760 There's no intellectualization about whatever.

03:22:29.140 No, Grandpa was real.

03:22:31.240 You knew Grandpa.

03:22:32.240 I knew Grandpa.

03:22:33.280 We knew Grandpa.

03:22:34.340 Grandpa's there.

03:22:35.100 that that cuts past the analytical phase of what i think a lot of people have pre-gamed

03:22:44.420 so somebody that's dying their die is cast chances are there's not a lot they can do in

03:22:50.720 the remaining time once you've identified that's the case to rectify whatever you think might need

03:22:58.380 be rectified so trying to reassure them of a meaningful place with their ancestors

03:23:09.820 i think is a comforting thing it's a true thing and i think it's a thing that connects

03:23:16.380 so that's what i would i would encourage you know exactly along the lines what alan said

03:23:22.860 and the second part of that which i thought only while you were talking um and and this

03:23:27.980 comes out of direct personal experience is to is to reassure them that they have done their part

03:23:38.860 right because you don't want them laying there in their final moments of think of in regret

03:23:48.460 you want them to think to be in a place of peace you know you have fought the good fight

03:23:56.060 You have made my life better.

03:23:58.740 You have made our lives better for your being here.

03:24:02.720 You've done enough.

03:24:03.940 You can rest.

03:24:12.220 Funny that you say that.

03:24:13.960 Absolutely.

03:24:15.200 And like, so absolutely, and this sounds silly, 0.99

03:24:21.300 but giving them permission to die.

03:24:25.100 is something one of the most beautiful essays that i've read um was it's called i know you love me

03:24:38.620 let me die and it's written from the perspective of an elderly lady whose daughter is doing

03:24:47.180 everything she possibly can to try to keep her alive for another couple of months because of

03:24:52.140 her cancer diagnosis it's like i don't want any of that i just want to sit at home and

03:24:58.540 watch my grandchildren play and ease into the next life so

03:25:09.660 it's really personal but i want to share it um i think there's an obligation to share it

03:25:15.580 because it was between two gothar of the astro folk assembly i had the tremendous honor of being

03:25:25.740 by uh gothe thorgrin's side when he was passing i wasn't there at the moment he passed but i got

03:25:32.380 there a couple of days previous he hung on for a long time um but we thought he was going to pass

03:25:39.180 this day that i was there and i got to spend you know full day at his bedside with his widow and

03:25:51.340 their close family friend and i cherish that i wouldn't trade it for anything

03:25:56.380 um one of the things that i felt was meaningful is he

03:26:01.740 you know he was he was on on morphine and he was had moments of lucidity during it

03:26:09.180 And he, you know, he kind of have a moment of clarity and, hey, I think I'm dying.

03:26:19.160 And we acknowledge that we didn't try to, you know, trick him into that wasn't the case.

03:26:26.100 But we did try to make it, you know, okay.

03:26:30.100 Like, you're right, you are.

03:26:34.520 But we love you and we care about you.

03:26:36.600 and you've done well, and it's okay.

03:26:40.740 Go be with your ancestors.

03:26:45.140 And I think that was a, you know,

03:26:50.080 I think that was an okay thing for us to do at the time.

03:26:54.960 So I think that, as Alan said, you don't want them to be stressed.

03:27:02.660 Their hand is played.

03:27:04.620 So trying to help them to be comfortable without lying or being dishonest, but comfortably easing them into the transition they're about to make, I think is a really good, dignified thing to do.

03:27:22.240 reassuring them about anything else they have in this world that they're

03:27:27.320 stressed about, you know, the care of their loved ones

03:27:31.500 or their estate or whatever else they're worried about, reassuring them

03:27:35.460 hey, we got it, it's okay, we'll take care of so

03:27:39.360 and so, we'll take care of such and such

03:27:41.960 helping them to be at peace with that transition I think is a really

03:27:47.380 good thing to do

03:27:48.280 um the next question is specifically for you alan law speaker alan have you ever studied

03:27:58.200 uh bija mantra or seed syllables it's a meditational technique used to meditate on

03:28:07.220 the essence of a deity by meditating on a glyph or sound associated with them i studied it while

03:28:14.840 studying Buddhism, and I found it very similar to runic practices. Some runes are even named

03:28:22.760 for gods like Tiwaz. Do you remember my essay, Matt? Yes. As a matter of fact, I have written

03:28:40.200 an essay that incorporates um uh he's the guy who brought the seven chopper system into the west

03:28:51.300 from india in the 1890s or something like that but he has a long chapter in there in about the

03:28:58.040 beach mantras and so yes i'm familiar with it and i definitely absolutely

03:29:04.220 see the parallels between that and runic practice.

03:29:14.300 So, Alan, you had a couple of visual aids that you have neglected to make use of.

03:29:20.600 Would you like to talk about them at this stage?

03:29:24.200 I think it's more I neglected to take his hints on them.

03:29:28.660 perhaps producer Nick

03:29:33.040 was not mindful enough

03:29:34.720 I say it all the time

03:29:37.720 ADHD and coffee is my superpower

03:29:40.780 mindfulness is not one of them

03:29:43.620 so yes

03:29:47.520 the ancient peoples

03:29:49.280 practiced meditation

03:29:51.080 and contemplation

03:29:53.360 as was shown in the

03:29:55.140 Gundestrop

03:29:58.400 cauldron, which is widely believed to be primarily Celtic, which is a close cousin of the Germanic

03:30:11.240 Teutonic Aryan tribes. But you can see this shaman seems to be conducting a type of meditation

03:30:20.220 specifically directed at, you know, merging himself with his animal selves. And there's

03:30:26.500 certainly an aspect that if you got too literal, you could think, well, you know, he's raising his

03:30:34.480 kundalini by, you know, picking up the snake and raising it up toward his god point. And then

03:30:44.180 there's also the, um, the bucket of whatever it is, that bucket that, um, was part of the

03:30:52.640 Oseberg Ship Burial, where, I mean, that is a guy sitting in meditation with both forward and reversed swastikas on his chest plate there,

03:31:11.400 which there are not a lot of that type of artifact around

03:31:18.540 and the fact that the folk decided to manifest that exact image

03:31:26.220 into something that would be memorialized with a king in his burial mound

03:31:37.980 that strongly suggests that there were meditative practices that were used by our direct lineage of Germanic tribes back into the before the dawn of time.

03:31:55.400 So so there are those lineages out there. And I and I think that, you know, the I certainly have a certain admiration for the Indian branch of the Indo-Aryan people because they were able to preserve their culture more or less intact and wrote down a lot of this stuff.

03:32:20.560 And I think if we had been able to do that, that our, you know, we would look, you know, that our, our, the manifestation of our religiosity would look a lot like that culture, just paler, bluer eyes.

03:32:40.420 Yeah.

03:32:43.080 First, the Hussberg Ship Museum is awesome.

03:32:48.860 if you can go to that in the Oslo Fjord, do, because it's really cool, and it was shut down

03:32:56.280 for a number of years. I got to see it on an AFA trip, and it was really neat. It's a really

03:33:04.900 special museum. I was telling Alan and Nick, I got to see both of those artifacts in real life,

03:33:15.860 and it was really, really cool and special.

03:33:21.060 I think there's absolutely something to that.

03:33:24.180 I was in my 30s before I understood that sitting Indian style was dot, not feather. 0.53

03:33:34.040 I was today years old, so that's okay.

03:33:37.600 Thank you, Matt.

03:33:38.840 You're welcome, Nick.

03:33:42.060 That's what we do.

03:33:43.140 We share our knowledge.

03:33:44.160 So, um, such as it is, such as it is, um, yeah, there's something to that.

03:33:55.280 And I think that the well actually crowd is always very hyper focused on what we don't have versus what we do.

03:34:18.240 i don't know exactly how our ancestors practiced their contemplative meditative practice

03:34:27.680 but i know that they did and i think there's probably a lot of right ways to approach that

03:34:36.340 there's probably a lot of experimentation to approach that

03:34:41.160 We can lament all of the ways that we don't know how ancient peoples did a thing. 0.87

03:34:51.580 But to harken back to an earlier topic, that's masturbatory. 0.99

03:34:57.160 masturbatory. Instead, we could spend our time knowing the things that we do know and experimenting 0.96

03:35:06.880 to find meaning and value in that practice in a way that honors our ancestors.

03:35:15.660 Instead of complaining and bemoaning what we don't have, we can make an earnest attempt in

03:35:22.600 the present to actualize what we do have and see what works and what doesn't and there's been

03:35:30.220 absence of evidence is not evidence of absence absolutely

03:35:40.920 and so I think that we owe it to our ancestors we certainly owe it to our descendants to take

03:35:50.620 the things that have been passed to us and do our best to innovate a way forward on the things that

03:36:01.700 we don't have complete knowledge of. That's in keeping with our tradition. It's in keeping with

03:36:08.020 the example of the All-Father. I think it is a very prudent thing for us to do, and there have

03:36:14.200 been many pioneers to help us towards doing that. It is a steady refrain on victory never

03:36:25.920 sleeps, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Go out and figure it out. I'm not

03:36:34.140 going to tell you any authentic Viking meditation practice. We don't have that. But did they

03:36:41.020 meditate on stuff? Absolutely. Does that look the same way that, you know, brown people in Delhi

03:36:48.560 meditate? Probably not. Does it call upon some similar principles and similar techniques? 0.96

03:36:57.480 Likely so. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Make use of the tools you have available

03:37:04.840 and innovate, try things, see what works, see what doesn't.

03:37:09.080 Don't hate, extrapolate.

03:37:12.180 Well said.

03:37:15.500 All right.

03:37:17.280 And with that, final question we have for tonight.

03:37:21.080 Is there a concept of redemption in Ausitru?

03:37:26.460 What say you, law speaker?

03:37:28.700 well redemption um redemption is a making whole um so

03:37:41.980 unlike the christian religion the damage that you do when you cause a grievement to a person

03:37:52.420 is not done to God or to the gods

03:37:56.440 but more likely is done

03:38:00.000 to another person. So you can

03:38:04.680 redeem yourself

03:38:07.300 by making it right with them, by paying wereguild

03:38:12.280 or paying shield, by paying

03:38:16.640 a priced

03:38:18.460 and the term restorative justice has a very bad connotation at the moment but that's essentially

03:38:28.040 what it is if you have wronged a person you have to make it right with them to their satisfaction

03:38:33.720 so you can be restored um if you get your mind right and uh and and make it whole with them

03:38:47.800 So there's a couple of pieces here.

03:38:51.580 One thing that stands out, everything Alan said, but also, and again, I hate to relate it to the previous thing, but it does.

03:39:08.560 Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

03:39:11.500 There's no expectation of perfection.

03:39:14.720 in our life we all do the wrong things sometimes we all have

03:39:24.840 done things that we're not proud of we've all hurt other people

03:39:30.340 the longer you are in the tooth the more years you have on you the more regret that you develop

03:39:44.720 But also true is about a heroic path.

03:39:52.880 You have agency.

03:39:55.560 You can fix many things that you break.

03:40:00.280 Where you can't fix it, you can certainly compensate for it sometimes.

03:40:08.380 Those efforts count.

03:40:10.920 um redemption in other faiths that we are all more familiar with have to do with making it

03:40:22.480 right with a god or with you know cashing in and somehow having bankruptcy with like being born

03:40:32.120 again um no this is your life this is what you have you can't escape it without some bars and

03:40:44.620 some dings to your reputation do what you can to fix the things in life that you've broken

03:40:52.720 express regret for ways that you've done wrong and try to heal the wounds that you've made

03:41:02.540 with those you've wounded those are all the first steps

03:41:08.200 if those are able to be healed by those actions great if they're not your next best thing is to

03:41:20.280 try to outrun the bad with an overwhelming amount of good, go out there and do great things.

03:41:30.600 Accomplish things. And better yet, if you can accomplish and do great things in the names of

03:41:39.160 those you might have wronged, even better. It'll help settle the score. We believe that

03:41:46.340 all of your actions, good or bad, are laid in the well.

03:41:52.360 That well shapes your existence.

03:41:56.760 It shapes how the tree of your existence grows.

03:42:02.980 You can't

03:42:04.440 magically have things stricken from the well.

03:42:09.220 Once they're done, they're done. But you can water

03:42:13.080 them down with a tremendous amount of great things and you hope that the gods and the ancestors are

03:42:21.280 merciful in their judgment of you and i think that our faith is a realistic one and i think that they

03:42:28.300 might be if your intentions are pure and if you're making the effort to fix the things that you've

03:42:33.620 broken we don't have a concept of erasure like you can't confess your sins and have them forgiven

03:42:42.640 this on how it works but you can try to fix what you've broken and that is restorative and its

03:42:52.080 truest meaning and it's aspirational and something we should all seek to do

03:42:59.840 and that's what we have for the evening um thank you to everybody who has joined us tonight i think

03:43:08.640 we've had a really good discussion i think we've talked about a lot of really important things

03:43:13.520 appreciate you guys appreciate your generosity appreciate your questions

03:43:18.560 uh law speaker we always love having you on the program thank you so much

03:43:24.560 for sharing your wisdom with us this evening

03:43:30.240 producer nick thank you for all that you do you do so much behind the scenes that

03:43:34.320 that often people don't know,

03:43:36.820 but we would certainly notice if it wasn't there.

03:43:39.120 I can guarantee you that.

03:43:40.980 Thank you for what you do.

03:43:44.620 Let's all strive to be mindful in our thoughts

03:43:49.060 and in our deeds as we move forward.

03:43:52.760 Until next week, 0.97

03:43:54.540 hail the Iser, 1.00

03:43:55.800 hail the folk,

03:43:57.340 hail the AFA.

03:43:58.260 And remember,

03:43:59.800 victory never sleeps.

03:44:04.320 to be continued...

03:44:34.320 Transcription by CastingWords

03:45:04.320 Thank you.

03:45:34.320 We'll be right back.

03:46:04.320 We'll be right back.

03:46:34.320 Thank you.

03:47:04.320 Amen.

Asatru Folk Assembly - August 28, 2025

8⧸27⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 164 - Mindfulness

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