When Facing Your Monsters Becomes Your Path to Freedom

The divide between pain and pleasure, escape and presence, runs through the core of human experience. In this riveting conversation with Amrit Singh Reinsch, we venture beyond conventional thinking about consciousness and healing to discover what happens when we stop running from discomfort.

Amrit's extraordinary journey took him from Germany's regimented structure to two decades in India, where meditation and yoga became his pathway to experiencing the profound internal highs our bodies naturally create. "It's a fascinating subject," he explains, comparing these states to the runner's high many already know. "Your human body can do this."

The most compelling aspects of our discussion center around intention versus escapism. While many use substances or activities to numb pain, Emerick describes his recent therapeutic psychedelic experience as transformative precisely because it wasn't about avoiding reality but seeing it more clearly. "It's not about going high... it's about having the experience and then taking that with you into our human experience."

What emerges is a radical reframing of life's challenges. Rather than obstacles to happiness, difficult emotions become doorways to freedom when we face them directly. This applies not only to our inner work but also to parenting, where witnessing our children's pain without immediately trying to fix it becomes one of the most challenging and necessary forms of love.

"Have fun," Amrit reminds us in closing. "It's all just one big game." This isn't dismissive but profoundly liberating – an invitation to approach life with curiosity instead of control. By embracing both the light and shadow aspects of being human, we discover a wholeness that transforms how we experience everything.

Ready to explore your own relationship with presence and pain? Listen now and discover how accepting the full spectrum of human experience might be the most healing choice you'll ever make.

Find out more about Amrit here: https://coachingnow.info/

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Lift One Self
• 2:15 Emerick's Journey Across Continents
• 5:36 Mindful Meditation Moment
• 9:00 German Strictness vs. Human Freedom
• 13:24 The Internal High and Kundalini Yoga
• 21:18 Psychedelics as a Therapeutic Tool
• 30:25 Integration and Embracing All Experience
• 38:15 Parenting as Spiritual Practice
• 48:33 Final Reflections and Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, where we break mental health stigmas through conversations. I'm your host, nat Nat, and we dive into topics about trauma and how it impacts the nervous system. Yet we don't just leave you there. We share insights and tools of self-care, meditation and growth that help you be curious about your own biology. Your presence matters. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. Help our community grow. Let's get into this. Oh, and please remember to be kind to yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. I'm your host, Nat Nat, and I want to thank you for being here and I have a wonderful guest where we're going to do a really deep dive because we were talking before the recording. So I'm looking really forward to this conversation that we're going to get into and before that, Emerick, could you introduce yourself to myself? Give me a little bit more detail about you and the listeners before we go into this deep dive?

Speaker 3: 1:04

Hey, nat Matt, thanks for having me on your podcast. I'm super excited about this hour coming up, so I'll give you a quick, one minute summary of what's going on in my life. I'm originally from Germany, where I lived first 25 years of my life and I foundundalini yoga around when I was 20. Before that, I was smoking a lot of weed and then suddenly, you know this, this yoga journey opened me up to oh, there's more. Out there I can feel high without being stoned and lying on the sofa and not getting anything done. That's exciting.

Speaker 3: 1:43

So with 25, I decided to move to India and I was like, oh, I'm just going to India and explore. You know, that was like the thing to do. And then I ended up staying in India for 20 years and living there and, you know, starting a family and raising my kids and really having the deep India experience. So there was a lot of space for meditation, a lot of space for yoga, a lot of really deep internal work. And then just recently, three years ago, I moved to Mexico because my ex-wife is Mexican and we decided we wanted to have the kids have an experience here in Mexico and experience the Mexican roots. And so now I've been living for three years in Valladolid in Mexico and, like I was telling you in the beginning, living in this beautiful spring climate all year round and really, really enjoying having made this choice all year round and really, really enjoying having made this choice.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Wow.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Now I'm even more curious to get into some dialogue about the different environments, because from Germany to India to Mexico, those are like very significantly different environments, weather-wise, but also culturally.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Yet I'm sure there's a lot of similarities that make it see that we're much more closer connected than we are separated. Before we do that, will you join me in a two minute mindful moment so we can ground ourselves and open our heart for the time and for the listeners? As you always hear me with my spiels, safety first. So if there's any prompts that would jeopardize your safety, please stop and just fast forward over into the conversation. So, emerit, I'll ask you to get comfortable in your seating and, if it's safe to do so, gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose and you're going to bring your awareness to watching your breath go in and out through your nose. You're not going to try and control your breath, you're just going to be aware of the rhythm, allowing it to guide you into your body. There may be some sensations or feelings coming up, and that's okay, you're safe to feel.

Speaker 1: 4:13

You're safe to let go.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Be with your breath. Release the need to resist and just be.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Be with your breath Now. There may be some thoughts or memories that have popped up, and that's okay. Gently, bring your awareness back to your breath. Creating space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping even deeper into the body, while keeping that awareness on your breath and allowing yourself to just be. Again, more thoughts may have popped up. Gently bring your awareness to your breath, beginning again, creating even more space between the awareness and the thoughts, and dropping even deeper into the body.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Keeping the awareness on the breath and allowing yourself to just be now at your own time and at your own pace, you're going to gently open your eyes while staying with the breath. How's your heart doing?

Speaker 3: 5:49

My heart is doing great. Thanks for asking.

Speaker 2: 5:54

So tell me a little bit about how life was in Germany and what had you make the move to a totally different continent and culture and language.

Speaker 3: 6:05

Oh wow, things were so different before. I had my India experience, just because it was so dominant, right. 20 years living in India, I mean it comes with a whole. You could probably write a whole book on it. But then I went back to Germany. We ended up living there for two more years before we moved to mexico here and we ended up getting locked down doing covid and that was just so rough.

Speaker 3: 6:37

The germans are so good in following rules and they're not. Like there was a lot of rules during covid and guess what? Everybody was following the rules and it was so strict and there was no going out, there was no social contact, there was no. You know, like I, what really the biggest thing I realized about my own germanness because this is something fun, I'm gonna do this as a little anecdote on the side when I'm in Germany, I'm the least German guy out of all the Germans, right? And I was like, oh, you guys are so German. This is ridiculous with your being on time and this precision and this and that, but when I'm outside of Germany, I'm always the most German out of everybody. So that is just like a little side effect. But you know, being in germany and being in this strictness. That's what the germans are great at.

Speaker 3: 7:32

The germans are great in getting shit done, organizing stuff and having like 100 rules and following the 100 rules. You know, I think really that the only culture that is more intense in that level than us Germans is probably the Japanese, you know. But the Germans are a pretty close second and so there's a lot of benefit in that. I mean, germany is a great country to work in.

Speaker 3: 7:58

If you are going to work and you're getting stuff done and you're on the computer and at nine o'clock everybody's available and you know like you can go to a shop. You're on the computer and at nine o'clock everybody's available and you can go to a shop and it's supposed to open at nine o'clock. It's open at 8.59 and 30 seconds. I mean it's just great. You can plan stuff. Lots of fun. But on the other hand also very limiting. As you're getting more disciplined and more structured like this, it narrows you and you start getting stiff and you start resenting things because it is not human to live like that. It's very effective to live like that, but just not very human.

Speaker 2: 8:38

So you mentioned for the kundalini, so some listeners may hear, may hear. Okay, he was talking about getting high. Yet once you started doing kundalini and really diving into meditation and regulating that nervous system, you spoke of an inner high, getting high off your own supply. So can you let the listeners know a little bit more of what your experience is with that and let them see a sneak peek, because some may not even know what that experience is? I do, yet I'd like to hear what your experience is with it.

Speaker 3: 9:13

Yeah, it's a. It's a fascinating subject. It's something I think the most common relationship mainstream people have with it is the runner's high right. If you've ever been a runner or you've ever gotten a little bit even into running, if you go running and you train your body for two, three months to actually have that strength build up, or when you were younger, and you can go run 10K run, you get this internal high and that's why runners keep running. That's why they wake up at 5.30 in the morning to go running in the dark in minus five degrees and you're like are you insane? Why would you do this to yourself? But they get this high from it and so that's something your human body can do.

Speaker 3: 10:04

Maybe another common thing is when you're just really happy and your heart opens and you have this really loving experience. You know, for a lot of us, we know that maybe in sex, you know, when we're connecting with another human being. You know, unfortunately, because it is so unconscious, this is much bigger in the beginning of any relationship than 10 years into it, when it really should be the other way around. But you know, we all have had those experiences, maybe when we were 16, 17, 18, or whenever you know, like this, when this deep, profound connection is there, and so these internal pathways are very human.

Speaker 3: 10:44

That's what we have the capacity to experience Kundalini yoga and meditation and really many other paths of yoga and meditation too, and Tai Chi and I mean, like sacred Indian medicine and traditions and shamanism, they all have these techniques where you're using your breath, your body and the whole human process to have a deep and profound experience of connecting with the infinite. And connecting with that. There is more out there, and so one of the cool things I like about Kundalini Yoga is it's a discipline which has been practiced for over 5,000 years and you know there's been a lot of lot of yogis before us who have practiced and refined and added and changed and adjusted and really fine-tuned this machine and it really works. So if you don't understand any of the stuff I just said, but you want to experience it, go find a Kundalini Yoga class, commit 100% to the exercises, do it, do the breath, do the singing, do the mantra and then have your own experience. Don't believe a word I'm saying.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Yeah, that's what I tell my clients all the time. I'm like I could tell you all the things that you want, yet your mind will argue it because you don't have the lived experience Yet. Once you experience something, you can try to argue yourself that it didn't happen Yet once it's happened for you, it's truth for you. So a lot of times people are trying to replicate other people's story rather than create their own story and really understand the physiological aspect of our body. Because what you were explaining is, for those that are science heads, it's chemicals that are being released, like sex, it's oxytocin, and when we have oxytocin it makes us feel real good.

Speaker 2: 12:41

And oxytocin is another chemical that helps with labor and birth and life to proceed. There's adrenaline, there's endorphins, there's cortisol when we have fear, so there's epinephrine. So there's all these chemicals that we can activate internally. Yet we just haven't been taught the method of activating those things. We've just been really geared on activating cortisol with fear and stress, like you said in the regimental German aspect of thinking that you're a system of productivity rather than humanness and experience life and have that connection. Before we started recording, you said that there was something that you recently started to, that you recently had an experience with, and that was in the realm of psychedelics. Are you willing to share what that experience?

Speaker 3: 13:41

was. Oh yeah, I would love to. I mean, it was such a profound and life-changing experience and we all, you know, have heard about psychedelics, right, if it's LSD or mushrooms or MDMA or whatever, and very quickly it all gets clumped together as, oh, drugs, and drugs are bad, right, which is very much the conditioning of our society. And it's so interesting because it throws in, you know, heroin and cocaine and alcohol and all these heavy duty destructive drugs which are really bad for you. And I think we're kind of having a been having a renaissance around the marijuana use, you know, even though that comes with a lot of side effects too. But it is, you know, especially in the field of of health and healing, an amazing tool to be used.

Speaker 3: 14:30

And so mushrooms have been around longer than we as humans have been around, and the psychedelic mushrooms are very common actually, you know, they're everywhere, they're part of the life around us, and ancient cultures have used these psychedelic mushrooms for spiritual journeys, for connection with spirit, for going high and connecting, and I think, with, you know, the development of the modern world. We pushed all that aside, right? Ooh, this is crazy. And all this shamanistic healing stuff and all that non-scientific can't be true, because we can't prove it in the laboratory. But then really, when you really deep dive and take a look at it, you recognize how this whole natural approach, this whole approach which has been there for thousands of years with our ancestors, is actually much more scientific than this current scientific model. We have where we're, you know, where we're in our baby steps, right, where we're just figuring stuff out. I mean, we can't even understand how the human body works, but we're just, you know, where we're in our baby steps, right, where we're just figuring stuff out. I mean, we can't even understand how the human body works, but we're just, you know, we can do little cells and now I can do a little bit of chromosomes and it's great, right, I mean there's a lot in there. I'm not dissing science here, I'm just saying hey, like let's allow both to come together.

Speaker 3: 16:09

So this showed a little bit as a preference in my experience I had just recently with the mushrooms, and it was life-changing and I was in a therapeutic setting with a deep, essential level with the universe, with the creator, and experience myself as one, and you know, not just as part of it but as unity with it, unity with it, and it was such a profound, life-changing experience that I came out of it really saying like, oh my God, you know, I need to do more in the world, I need to give more back to the world, I want to be a kinder person, I want to, you know, have more uplifting relationships. And so it gave me so many positive things to work with in this integration phase. Right, because it's not about going high. This is the interesting thing in working with mushrooms or any of the other psychedelics. What's much more important in the process is to go high and have the experience and then take that with you into our human experience, with you into our human experience.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Because, although we are spiritual beings coming here on this earth to have a human experience, this connection, it's not about escaping from our humanness. It's not about getting away from the pain, the emotions, the suffering, the heaviness of the human experience. No, that's why we came. This human experience is really this special and unique thing. My spiritual teacher always said like you guys don't understand it, there is angels standing in line, souls standing in line waiting to have this human experience, and you guys are down here pissing it away Like, come on, wake up. This is such a unique gift to be human, experience in this mushroom journey where, coming down from it and feeling back into my body, feeling back into my humanness, I could make that connection between God, the infinite, and myself and my humanness and really appreciate every little struggle and every little challenge and every little pain and every raindrop in my face, because it's so easy to appreciate the good things in life. Oh my God, I had an amazing talk with my good friend, or I had this amazing thing. But to appreciate the pain is much more challenging, right, and to really embrace it and to come to the point to say this is just as powerful and as human as these wonderful moments and I'm going to stop judging them and going to stop saying I only want beautiful and positive experiences in my life and I'm not willing to experience the pain and the suffering.

Speaker 3: 19:19

And then something really interesting happens. The moment you mentally connect, that piece happens. The moment you mentally connect that piece or you say I'm embracing the full experience. Now, suddenly you only have amazing stuff happen to you. You stomp your foot and your toe is bleeding and you're saying, oh my God, you know, this helps me to be conscious and be more grounded and be more aware of what's going on and you take care of of your toe, but you're not cursing the world anymore saying, oh my god, poor me. I'm suffering. Life is so horrible. Please release me. I need to have my bottle of whiskey so I can enjoy my netflix tonight, right? No, it's not about that anymore. It's about arriving here and recognizing that everything we get to experience is a gift.

Speaker 2: 20:07

Yeah, you just mirrored what my experience has been for the last decade, and I know a lot of people will say that I'm weird. What do you mean? Lean into the pain? What do you mean lean into the challenges, when we have a society that has everything in the market to numb pain? And I think a lot of times with the psychedelics it's used as disassociation and they want to be in the high state and they're not realizing it's integration.

Speaker 2: 20:42

You're trying, as you said, escapism, trying to escape from the experience of life, the reality, the as is of where you are, and also reframing your perception of what you're considering to be abundant, because we're so tethered in thinking accomplishments and success and materialistic things are abundance. When seeing a sunrise is the most abundant experience, not the most, yet one of the most abundant experience that you can have Hearing a baby's laughter, smelling fresh grass, feeling the warm breeze, feeling the ice cold, being fascinated with the whole experience, when you can allow yourself to be whole with a W, as you said, the way that you show up in life is such a fascinating way. Yet there has to be a choice of how you're going to reframe your mindset, because your nervous system is built out of negative bias, so it wants to be primed of only getting it your way. Yet once you can rewire that and recognize I don't need expectations to put me in an elevated state. The world doesn't need to go my way to have me in an elevated mental state. I can actually accept the as is of this reality.

Speaker 2: 22:12

Is it painful? Yeah. Does it suck sometimes? Yeah, yet you can still feel that sucky part and still allow joy to be present. It's not one or the other, it's actually allowing a multitude of feeling your humanness.

Speaker 2: 22:28

And so I really appreciate you explaining what that psychedelic aspect and for some that they're hearing mushrooms in this world and I know it's really a big hype for psychedelics it's psilocybin that he's referring to and so being able to use that, because a lot of times people are using the psychedelics as a party drug, as an escapism again, as a way to disassociate, to take the edge off of the pain, the edge off of what reality is. Yet when they have to come back into their reality, there becomes a real, sometimes a significant depression, because there's missing that integration, and that's where it can be very harmful for people. That's why it's, I think, very important that you're around people. That have your best intention, not the best intention of profiting off of people. It's actually the best intention for theiting off of people. It's actually the best intention for the collective in the community.

Speaker 3: 23:29

Yeah, and I want to jump in there because this is such a powerful point. You know, there's nothing against parties and going in a high elevated state into a party yeah, amazing. But don't use psychedelics, then drink alcohol on top of it and then then smoke some weed and then jump around for five hours like a crazy person and then completely miss the most important piece, which is the integration, and then pass out somewhere on the lawn. That doesn't make any sense. Do it in a ritualistic setting, do it with a guide, do it with someone who brings experience to it.

Speaker 3: 24:08

One powerful thing I realized in this process is if you have someone by your side as you are journeying into these realms, who is holding a powerful meditative state with you, holding presence for you, that is life changing and that allows you to really travel down this path with a lot of confidence and with a lot of support, because you know you got this powerful presence with you. And another interesting thing I want to share from my psychedelic experience was one of the thing which everybody who has tried psychedelics knows about is there comes the point where it gets a little scary. Right, there's something happens where you go like, oh, and you want to turn around and run the other way and that's like the worst thing you can do.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:02

What you need to do is you need to turn around and face it and sit with it and be like, okay, let me look in your face, and then that dissolves just in milliseconds and it shoots you up higher into the next level of experience you can be in.

Speaker 3: 25:18

And so for me, doing this psychedelic experience, which was really powerful, was that, after this happening a couple times, I I caught on to it and I was like, oh, and then I started looking for all the, the monsters and the painful and the scary things and I really I found them and I was like, oh, let's sit together. Now and again I got shot up higher and then a funny thing happened there wasn't any more monsters to find. Well, I was like, oh, I must have arrived. And that was very cool. And so what I again in this integration phase, took with me is that when these undesirable things happen in life, they're actually a gift. They're a gift to look closer, they're a gift to sit with it, and when you sit with it and you feel the pain and you feel the contraction and whatever happens inside of your body, that will then be the fuel to catapult your higher, into that true human identity.

Speaker 2: 26:24

For some that they need some. Other context, which you just explained, is that shadow work. There are places within ourselves that we've, you know, kind of pushed away or put into a junk drawer or thought that we got over it. Where it's all about the integration. And if you're not doing psychedelics, the other way to go through that is feeling your authentic emotions. These emotions feel really big and really scary, yet if you feel them, they only last a few seconds. Going through it without psychedelics can feel like an eternity, yet when you do, there's an opening and there's a flood of energy that comes up in a rush and it's like this is always naturally here and it's like, yeah, you've just been suppressing it with these emotions that you haven't been able to feel and release, so that the defense mechanisms of that nervous system that are protecting your vulnerability, the sensitivity that are protecting your vulnerability, the sensitivity, the oneness that they open up and you're fully connected because, how you just explained, it is what trauma is Trauma, those experiences that were painful separated you from self, the big S, the oneness, god, divine whatever that word you use for that higher power, and it's the journey to reconnect into that self. So, like you said, those big monsters and scary. It's like I don't think I have the capacity to face this, to go through it, to feel it. And it's like you do, though, because it's just feeling some pain and it's redefining what pain is. A lot of us don't realize we're creating a lot of psychological suffering for ourselves that feels like pain, and we don't even realize we're the one doing it. We think it's on the outside, from people's judgments, people's perceptions, people's authority, which some of it does have its contribution.

Speaker 2: 28:27

Yet the empowerment is recognizing. You have the choice of how you're going to view things, how you're going to perceive things. Does it happen right away? No, not for many. It's a tool that you have to develop and reframe your mind that when it's trying to go this way, it's like no, no, no, you forget there's just this way that we go now. It's just moving forward. Yet it takes profound depths of willingness and it's a simple term and it's not complicated. It might be complex, it's just being able to practice it continuously. Yet the gift of psychedelics is it opens you up very quickly If you're willing to, and you have a really great guide to hold that space to let you know you have the capacity to experience this experience. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 29:21

Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's so powerful. And I think the one thing that came to my mind as you were speaking is you know, for me it was always hard to surrender my mind. You know, when you're very mind dominant and very powerful, you know like and you're depending in your ego identity, a lot on your mind, how quick you can think, how much faster you might be than other people, how well think for people like me, I think it's if you want to generalize it, it is probably more with male or very masculine human beings. You know, because women can also be very masculine.

Speaker 3: 30:17

In this mental approach, right, in this very ego focused approach, in this very like ah feeling is for weak people, right, it's this lower thing of ah, no, no, no, we don't feel we don't want to be like a and I say this very much on purpose like a little girl, because really the little girl is like such a beautiful manifestation of this authentic, pure connection with life. Right, and we're using this upside down in a way to put someone down. I mean, it's like it blows my mind, right, because really we should all want to be like little girls. You know, like, that's like the most amazing state you can be in. Now, I lost my track of mind, but no, what I wanted to explain is it's this Now I lost my track of mind, but no, what I wanted to explain is it's this when we're that stuck in our way of thinking, mind is everything, emotion is nothing. Anytime I feel emotion, it gets in my way. Let me just mentally resolve everything here, and that's where something powerful like psychedelics can really be a tool, because it allows to shortcut this path, which otherwise might take 10, 20, 30 years, and you can get there right away.

Speaker 3: 31:34

And suddenly you realize, oh my God, I was on the wrong track for my entire life and I need to reevaluate everythinguate everything. And that's scary too. I think that's why a lot of people are scared of psychedelics, because they're like oh my god, now I'm gonna not want to be a software engineer anymore. Oh, I not want to be, you know, like making a lot of money and buying a big house and buying a big car anymore. No, no, no, let's not mess with that. You know, I think I kind of like it.

Speaker 3: 32:04

But there comes an interesting part in the, in our midlife, where we're questioning these things or we're saying like why am I going to work for 10 hours a day, every single day, and have one week of holiday a year, like, where is the sense in all of this? And I think that's where it all ties together. You know, when you really find that why and that reason, why are we alive in the first place? And when you experience that for yourself, rather than just read someone else talking on it or listen to what the religion says, or listen to what the new guru from India says about it, or you know like and really experience it for yourself, where you can say, oh, I know why I'm here, why am I am alive, and that's very cool.

Speaker 2: 32:49

Yeah, I think also too, from my own experience, is that you come to see the things that you used as coping mechanisms to kind of soothe the wound, that you no longer need those things. So it shifts your lifestyle and how and the things that you thought were needs were actually just wants in order to soothe that pain, that deep ache of a wound. That you can actually face the wound and be there for yourself, not go on the outside of yourself. That you start creating safety within your body, not trying to grasp it on the outside. In this world, like in a lot of religious texts, the statement is you're in the world but you're not of it and really embodying that like to. Really there's a difference. Like you know, a lot of people are like I know that and I'm like you know what we all know and you know what. If that were to work, the world would be so much different. Yet take that knowing and be it. Like you know, you say to do acts of kindness and it's like can you be kind? Can it just be in your being to be kind, so you don't have to analyze it and think of the steps and do it's like it just opens up and evolves and presents these moments where you might even have challenges to be kind because the feeling of anger or protection is activated. And what does kindness look like? Kindness evolves. It's not a passive state, like saying a no to somebody is kindness, but people think it's all opening and just being passive and being walked all over and it's like no, like this is not that aspect. It's giving yourself redefinition and allowing you to embody your uniqueness.

Speaker 2: 34:45

In a world that talks about diversity, so many people are averse to it. They want utopia, and there is no such thing as utopia. There is going to be pain, there's going to be destruction. Like you know, people are talking about babies. The birthing process is very painful and ugly and, you know, very violent. Yet nobody really wants that. They think it's all like oh kumbaya and beautiful and it is a beautiful experience, yet there's a lot of violence and pain in it and we want to just compartmentalize things rather than look and accept it all, because God is in all of that, yet no, no, no, it's just the beauty part and it's like no, god, life is in all of that, yet once you can come out of your head and drop into your body and allow your nervous system to regulate and release these BS, which are belief systems. Somebody put me onto that because I used to say the BS for bullshit. Yet really the bullshit is the belief systems that keep you imprisoned rather than be curious of what's beyond this belief that I have, how do I experience life in the unknown and that uncertainty? And the way that you described your experiences is exactly that and I thank you for you know being vulnerable and sharing that so that it helps somebody else to be curious about it. Yet also be informed. So be informed, and I highly highly when I talk about party drugs and not using it in that way.

Speaker 2: 36:29

We all go through our phases. When I was in my teens and my 20s, I had a very colorful life, very colorful. Okay, some of it I want to be like oh my gosh, was I really like that? Yet I have that, those experiences, because now I hold a space of non-judgment because I've experienced it. I have radical compassion because, just like me, you're not aware of certain things.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Yet now that I've opened up some of my awareness, it's recognize if you are trying to numb your pain, the pain doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. It actually is a superpower that can empower you to show up? Is it a process? Yeah. Is there requiring some stillness? Yeah, it's stillness. In a world that wants to stimulate you 24-7 feels like a threat, yet your healing is in that stillness. So allow yourself to journey into that stillness. But once you start, it doesn't mean, like you said, when you're smoking weed and just sitting on the couch watching Netflix, this kind of high gets you going into. I'm using time as a tool, not a toy. How am I going to use this tool wisely? How am I going to use this energy to really be curious and alive in life?

Speaker 3: 37:57

Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2: 37:59

You mentioned that you are a parent.

Speaker 3: 38:02

Yes.

Speaker 2: 38:03

How many children do you have?

Speaker 3: 38:05

I got two my daughter is 16 and my son is 12.

Speaker 2: 38:09

Okay, so you're teenagers. Okay, and preteen. What I've learned for myself? I think my highest spiritual practice of learning about myself was the reflection that my children were mirroring to me. Did you share that same experience in your parenting journey?

Speaker 3: 38:31

Oh, big time Actually. For those 20 years I lived in India. I worked at an international boarding school, so I got 20 years of practicing being a dad to 100 teenagers and that was big and so really, on one hand, prepared me more than a normal parent is prepared, right? Because the thing with parenting always is, you know, by the time you figured out a two-year-old boy, you got a three-year-old and you're like, oh shit, nothing of that stuff which worked with two works now. And then you know like in my case it was like I figured out how to work with a girl for every year, and then I got a boy and I was like, oh my god, now everything changed again, and that is challenging by itself. There's no, no structure and no baseline in there.

Speaker 3: 39:28

And they're so real and what I always remind people of who have children of their own and say, oh my god, my kids are not listening to me and they're not doing what I'm doing, especially with teenagers, right, how were you when you were 15? Exactly, what were you thinking about? The capacity of your parents? And then they get really quiet and they go like, oh yeah, I thought my parents were such freaking idiots, right? And so, yeah, guess what your kids are thinking about you, especially when you behave like one on top of it. So what I love about the relationship with my kids and it's more dominant with my daughter just because she is like full-on teenager with 16, you know it's like it's all right there is she will call me out on my shit like regularly, and then I can either pretend that I'm the adult and she better shut up because I'm doing the adult stuff here and I'm paying the bills and you put your feet under my table, or I can go like, oh shit, she's right. Like how can my 16-year-old child see where I'm tricking everybody else so perfectly and playing such a good show, right and pretending I'm this, and she looks right through all my bullshit and that's uncomfortable and that's uncomfortable to look at. And I have a lot of compassion for myself and for other parents who just say you shut up now and you don't tell me stuff like that again, because you know it's really hard to not say that and to actually say oh shit, you're right, I'm sorry, I fucked up. And then you're thinking like, oh my God, this is the wisest human being I can be around with and five minutes later they're doing the stupidest thing in the world and you're like how can this wise human being be so stupid? I'm so confused, what's going on here? Because there are kids, right, and they got those two sides, they got this deep wisdom, but they're also so freaking stupid.

Speaker 2: 41:27

It's fun to watch yeah, uh, my children have been calling me out since they've been young. They came here to be disruptors. They were not here to conform, so, um yeah, and I leaned into that. I leaned into no longer drinking the Kool-Aid as a parent and thinking you know it all and wanting to avoid the emotions. They're rising up in you and then look at it like what was I experiencing at six that might've had some trauma that they are showing me that I'm not willing to experience and let flow through.

Speaker 2: 42:10

Because you know, the most challenging and difficult thing that you will do as a parent is witness the pain in your children and not be able to do anything about it, and it activates a helplessness. Yet if you can allow the helplessness to coexist and realize, just like you, they have their internal compass, their GPS, their God programming system within themselves and they have to develop their tools and they're going to make mistakes. They're going to have to go through their emotions. They're going to have to experience whatever path it is, without you always interfering, because you don't have the capacity to witness the pain. And I think that's where we aren't educated enough as parents. We're told that we're not good enough and we need to do better to make sure we create a really cozy nest for the birds and it's like no, the birds have to fly out of the nest eventually and keeping it cozy all the time doesn't allow them to develop their wings and their ability and balance in that.

Speaker 2: 43:19

So I thank you for the humor and the calling out, because sometimes parents for myself, I still fall into it at times, especially with the teenagers, and the autonomy and the arguing and it's like some of it it's like you don't even see and other parts it's like, oh, I'm not even seeing about myself and I'm being a hypocrite and I can call that out after of saying you know what?

Speaker 2: 43:44

I'm being a hypocrite, I just don't know how to feel my emotions and feel the fear right now and I'm just barking and projecting it on you and actually repeating things, the generational things that my mother did onto me, that I haven't resolved within myself, and I'm just pushing it right back down the generational gap and it's like, no, it's supposed to stop with me because I have the awareness. Yet, just because I have the awareness, there is some process to be able to access that behavior part, that nervous system part that you're not just in the reactivity of it, because it's a lot of build up, um. It's very easy to just stop where it's like, communicate and feel, um, but parenting who, it can be a shit show. I tell you, can you let the listeners know where they can find you, because I know they've been hearing a lot, so now they want to know where can I find emirate singh?

Speaker 3: 44:41

probably the easiest is to just find me on Instagram. On Facebook, a more fun place is to find me on TikTok and write me. If you want to know more about me or you want to connect or you feel like some sensation of oh my God, I need to connect more and deeper, just write me a message. I still manage all my own accounts. I respond to my own messages. It's not that I'm getting a lot, so it's very easy to do for me and I really want to invite people to be open and to connect.

Speaker 3: 45:18

If you feel like you have something important you can share with me, share it with me. Reach out. Like we're human beings, we're meant to connect with each other. We have this amazing tool of the internet where you can just type in my name and five seconds later you can send me a message. I mean, this is something you know we didn't have 10, 15, 20 years ago. So let's use this tool. Let's use this tool to create connections, see how we can uplift each other, support each other and just start a communication and start those conversations that are so important for us, as human beings, to experience ourselves.

Speaker 2: 45:58

So all that will be in the show links and at any time in this conversation, if there was, you know, the raising of your hair or you're getting goosebumps, or it felt like an aha, that's your limbic system letting you know that Amrit has something for you. So, as he said, reach out. You see how approachable he is and, you know, ask the question. You have no idea what opening there may be with that connection, yet you have to take that first step. You have no idea what opening there may be with that connection, yet you have to take that first step. You have to start trusting your body and its intelligence that it's trying to communicate to you, to reach out. So you know, take those steps and, like I said, all his information will be in the show notes so that it's easily clickable, so that you can connect with him. Emerit, I want to ask you is there anything that you want to leave the listeners so that they can continue on their journey?

Speaker 3: 46:53

Yes, have fun. It's all just one big game and when we're playing games, the most important thing is not to take it all so serious and not want to have to win and everybody else has to lose so I can win. No like come on, let's have some fun.

Speaker 3: 47:08

It's a little bit like you're playing a game with your five-year-old You're not going to just crush them and be like yeah, I won again in Monopoly, like let them buy something too, you know, even if they don't know the numbers or whatever, like it's all one big fun game and I think the more we can remind each other of that and we can recognize, even when we see someone struggling or someone making mistakes or treating us badly and we're just saying, oh, it's just part of the game. You know, like I don't have to take it all so personal. That's kind of what I want to leave people with.

Speaker 2: 47:39

I want to thank you for honoring me and the listeners with the most valuable thing you have in life, which is your time. So thank you so much for being here, for having this deep dive, and thank you for the light that you shine in the world. It is deeply appreciated and I thank you for being here with us.

Speaker 3: 47:59

Thanks for having me, Nat man.

Speaker 2: 48:01

Please remember to be kind to yourself.

Speaker 1: 48:06

Hey, you made it all the way here. I appreciate you and your time. If you found value in this conversation, please share it out. If there was somebody that popped into your mind, take action and share it out with them. It possibly may not be them that will benefit. It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast. You can find us on social media on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self, and if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people, come over on my website, come into a discovery call liftoneselfcom. Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.