S2E44 — Piercing the Veil With Bernhard Guenther

THE SMOKE TRAIL

S2E44  —  Piercing the Veil

Bernhard Guenther on Shadow, the Time of Transition, and Discernment in an Age of Deception

EPISODE

Episode:  S2E44 (standalone guest episode)

Guest:  Bernhard Guenther

Recorded:  In person, Sedona, Arizona — June 2026

Format:  Guest conversation, approx. 80 minutes

GUEST BIO

Bernhard Guenther is a psycho-spiritual researcher, teacher, and guide whose work explores the deeper architecture of reality and the evolutionary challenges facing humanity in what the esoteric traditions call the Time of Transition. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Munich, Germany, he came to the work first through music — moving to Los Angeles at 22 to study drums and percussion — and then through bodywork and somatic healing, which he practiced one-on-one for two decades. Over more than twenty years of study and inner work, his path has integrated depth psychology, trauma and shadow work, esoteric wisdom, and a clear-eyed engagement with the spiritual forces he says influence human consciousness. He is the founder of Piercing the Veil of Reality and co-hosts The Cosmic Matrix podcast with his wife, Laura Matsue Guenther. Through courses, mentoring, retreats, articles, and podcasts, he supports those who feel called to reclaim their inner essence, strengthen discernment, and navigate these times with self-responsibility.

EPISODE HOOK

Two men who arrived at the same trail from opposite directions. Smoke spent decades building businesses before the hollow set in. Bernhard rejected the material world entirely in his twenties, chasing the question of who he was and what life was actually about. One had to learn to let go of the mountain. The other had to learn to stand on the ground. This is a neighborly conversation — they live five minutes apart in Sedona — that goes straight to the deep end: shadow, evil as a teaching function, the spiritual forces that hook into our blind spots, and how a sincere person tells genuine awakening from its counterfeit.

SHOW NOTES

•     How a sensitive kid in Munich who couldn't relate to careers, houses, or making money found his first transcendental experience behind a drum kit — and followed it to Los Angeles at 22.

•     The morning Bernhard woke up crying on the floor, heard a voice say figure yourself out or you're going to die, walked into a bookstore, and found the Krishnamurti book that cracked everything open.

•     Why both men insist the work is twofold — inner and outer — and how spiritual people who ignore the world get manipulated by what they refuse to understand.

•     The trap of the driven life: clients at seven, eight, nine, and ten figures whose suffering came from chasing aims that were never their own, built on trauma responses and the attempt to fill a hole within.

•     Plant medicine as a portal, not a destination — why both men did the deep work, why the integration is 95 percent of it, and why dozens of repeated ceremonies is not a good sign.

•     The Johari Window as Smoke's working frame for consciousness, and how it maps onto Bernhard's language of the unconscious and the unseen.

•     Evil as ignorance and as a teaching function — the two extremes to avoid (the love-and-light denial and the doom-and-gloom prison-planet despair), drawn from Aurobindo and Steiner.

•     The three things modern spirituality quietly removed: the spiritual hierarchies, the confrontation with evil, and the levels of consciousness Hawkins spent his life mapping.

•     Why Bernhard frames this as spiritual warfare — the forces that know your psyche better than you do, that tag into your entry points, and how self-knowledge closes the door.

•     AI as a tool that is neither good nor evil — Smoke's not-for-profit project to carry Hawkins' calibration research forward, and Bernhard's caution about outsourcing our organic technology.

KEY MOMENTS

The Drummer's Awakening

Bernhard traces his origin: born in LA to parents who escaped communist East Germany and Poland, raised in Munich, a sensitive child who could not relate to the business-and-career path his friends took. A friend introduced him to drums, and the first time he sat at the kit he felt one with the universe. He moved to LA at 22 to study music, toured, and used heavy emotional music to process feelings he could not yet name — shadow work before he had the word for it.

“I almost come from the opposite end as you did. My friends were all getting into business — let's make money — and I could not relate to it. I had other questions. Who am I? What is this life about? There must be more.”  — Bernhard

The Bookstore and the Floor

After his band broke up and the depression bottomed out, Bernhard woke one morning crying in the fetal position with a voice in his head telling him to figure himself out or he would not survive. That day he walked into a bookstore and found Krishnamurti's Freedom from the Known. One line reorganized his life.

“It's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”  — Krishnamurti — the line that started Bernhard's path

Opposite Ends of the Same Trail

Smoke names the symmetry that runs through the whole conversation. He built the entrepreneurial career, made and lost fortunes, and only later discovered the shadow material driving it. Bernhard rejected money so completely it became its own shadow — he could not bring himself to charge for his work. Both had to integrate the thing they had rejected.

“I came from the other zone. Into my 40s I was living paycheck to paycheck — I don't care about money, who cares? But then I had to face it: I have to integrate the material world too.”  — Smoke

The Driven Are Filling a Hole

Bernhard's two decades working one-on-one with A-list and high-net-worth clients gave him a clear diagnosis of high-achiever suffering: the aims were never their own.

“Many of them are driven by internalized, unconscious toxic shame. They need to create something, pursue something, to make themselves feel better. Have you ever questioned where your desires come from?”  — Bernhard

The Fan in the Attic

Smoke offers his own lived version — the constant background noise he only noticed when it stopped.

“I had a fan going off in the back of my head. Always on. I thought it was normal, and it would go off when I'd drink. When I cleared a lot of this stuff, the fan went off — and I didn't need a drink anymore. It just fell away.”  — Smoke

Friction Is the Portal

Both men land on the same practice: the person who irritates you is showing you yourself. Bernhard shares a vulnerable example — talking smack about a fellow practitioner until he realized he was projecting envy he would not let himself feel.

“The one who irritates us gives us a good insight into ourselves. I realized — I am jealous of him. I want what he has, but I cannot allow myself to have it, because I think that's wrong. My projections were based on unconscious envy.”  — Bernhard

Evil as a Teaching Function

The philosophical core of the episode. Bernhard defines evil, following Aurobindo, as ignorance — and warns against both spiritual bypassing (the idea that because only God is real, evil isn't real) and its opposite, the despairing prison-planet worldview. Smoke names the inversion he sees in the world. Both agree evil cannot be eradicated by arrest or force; it is faced, within and without.

“Aurobindo and Steiner both said this time, we need to face the problem of evil. We cannot avoid it. Evil is a cosmic teaching function for the evolution of consciousness. The dark forces are teachers — they show us where the work is.”  — Bernhard

A Father's Deepest Disclosure

In the most personal moment of the hour, Smoke speaks — with the steadiness of someone who has done the work — about the childhood abuse he had blocked out entirely, the grandparents responsible, and the forgiveness process his coach Dani walked him through: writing letters until he reached one of forgiveness, then burning them.

“I got to a point where there was nothing to forgive. It was part of the awakening journey. My greatest teachers are those grandparents who did that — because the trauma was the portal.”  — Smoke

The Three Things Spirituality Removed

Bernhard's clearest teaching frame: modern flatland or Apple-store spirituality, while not without value, has de-emphasized three things every complete esoteric tradition kept — the spiritual hierarchies (the unseen forces, benevolent and malevolent), the confrontation with evil, and the levels of consciousness that Hawkins reintroduced.

“We have an Apple-store type of spirituality now. Three things got taken out: the spiritual hierarchies, the understanding of evil, and the levels of consciousness.”  — Bernhard

Spiritual Warfare and the Entry Points

Why Bernhard uses the word war. The forces he describes find the unhealed wound, the blind spot, the shadow, and feed on it. The defense is self-knowledge — knowing yourself so well there is no entry point left open.

“If you don't know yourself, they know your psyche better than you know yourself. They tag into your entry points. We close them by bringing forth more of the true self — that's how we actually gain free will.”  — Bernhard

Carrying Hawkins Forward with AI

Smoke shares the practical project: an app and not-for-profit to continue David Hawkins' calibration research through a panel of integrous testers, built with AI he could never have afforded to commission before. Both men hold the same line on technology — it is a tool, neither good nor evil, and the danger is using it unconsciously.

“Hawkins' whole point was that this opens a realm of research accessible to humanity that we never had, and his intention was that we continue it. No one has. I'm trying to build a mechanism everyone can benefit from.”  — Smoke

STANDOUT QUOTES

“I had other questions. Who am I? What is this life about? There must be more.”  — Bernhard

“It's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”  — Krishnamurti, the line that started Bernhard's path

“Have you ever questioned where your desires come from?”  — Bernhard

“The dark forces are teachers — they show us where the work is to be done.”  — Bernhard

“My greatest teachers are those grandparents — because the trauma was the portal.”  — Smoke

“If you don't know yourself, they know your psyche better than you know yourself.”  — Bernhard

“Follow your energy. If it gives you energy, that's something higher telling you to do it.”  — Smoke, on what his teacher Ivan taught him

JOHARI THREAD

Blind and Unknown toward Open.

This whole conversation is a guided tour of the two quadrants Season 2 keeps returning to. Bernhard's life work lives in the Blind (the projections, the envy he could not see, the patterns running underneath) and the Unknown (early trauma, the unseen forces, the spiritual capacity never accessed). The practices both men describe — tracking your irritations, questioning where your desires come from, observing yourself before trying to change — are all Blind-to-Open mechanisms. And the disclosure Smoke offers about his own childhood is Hidden-to-Open in real time: material kept private for a lifetime, named and integrated, and now offered as service rather than wound.

TAKE-HOME LESSONS

1.   Do both halves of the work. Inner without outer leaves you vulnerable to what you refuse to understand. Outer without inner leaves you projecting your shadow onto the world. A grounded life requires psycho-spiritual integration, not one or the other.

2.   Question where your desires come from. High achievement built on an unexamined trauma response will never fill the hole. Before you chase the next thing, ask whether the drive is yours or a program running underneath you.

3.   Your irritation is a portal. The person who gets under your skin is showing you something you have not integrated. Turn the curiosity inward: where is this hitting me, and what does it say about me?

4.   Evil is faced, not denied or despaired over. Avoid the love-and-light bypass and the doom-and-gloom prison-planet trap alike. Understood rightly, difficulty is a teaching function pointing exactly at where your work is.

5.   Self-knowledge is the defense. Whatever influences you cannot find purchase where there is no blind spot. Know yourself — observe yourself before trying to change yourself — and you close the entry points.

TOOLS, PRACTICES & REFERENCES

Practices

•     The irritations test: track who and what triggers you as direct data about your own shadow.

•     Forgiveness letters: write to those who harmed you, repeatedly, until you reach a letter of genuine forgiveness, then release them.

•     Conscious media intake: be deliberate about what impressions you take in — the subconscious does not distinguish real from depicted.

•     Following your energy with discernment: enthusiasm as a yes signal, with the nuance that positive resistance (fear to face) differs from negative resistance (genuine misalignment).

•     Self-observation and the inner witness, as a foundation before attempting change.

Frameworks and teachers referenced

•     David Hawkins — the Map of Consciousness, Power vs. Force, muscle testing and its honest limits.

•     Carl Jung — shadow, projection, individuation.

•     Sri Aurobindo and the Mother — Integral Yoga, all life as yoga, evil as ignorance, the disciplined will given to the Divine.

•     The Bhagavad Gita — the yoga of divine works, offering action to the Divine.

•     Rudolf Steiner — anthroposophy, spiritual beings in all things.

•     Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way — mechanicalness, self-observation, self-remembering.

•     J. Krishnamurti — Freedom from the Known.

•     Ken Wilber and Robert Moore — on flatland spirituality.

Guest's work and offerings

•     Embodied Soul Awakening — Bernhard's psycho-spiritual group program with Laura Matsue.

•     Mastering Spiritual Warfare — course.

•     The Cosmic Matrix — podcast, with Laura Matsue Guenther.

ARC PLACEMENT & REGISTRY

Standalone guest conversation, woven into the Season 2 solo arc as a lived companion to its central themes — shadow, consciousness, and discernment.

Season 2 bridges

•     The Fan in the Attic — Smoke's background-noise story, told here in the guest's presence.

•     Shadow Work — the projection and irritations material is the practice in action.

•     Mapping Consciousness (Hawkins) — both men are deep Hawkins readers; the calibration project is a direct extension.

•     The Supramental (Aurobindo) — evil as ignorance and all life is yoga anchor the philosophical core.

•     Navigating the Spiritual Landscape — the discernment and false-light material is this episode's spine.

•     Forgiveness Is a Technology — Smoke's letter-burning process is the technology, demonstrated.

Season 1 parallels

•     S1E1 — Smoke's Nepal prayer at Buddha's birthplace, referenced again here.

•     S1E10/11 — Ivan Rados, the plant-medicine teacher named in this conversation.

•     The recurring high-achiever pattern: build, feel the hollow, find the trail.

FIND THE GUEST

Website:  veilofreality.com

Substack:  bernhardguenther.substack.com

YouTube:  youtube.com/@TimeOfTransition

X:  x.com/veilofreality

Instagram:  instagram.com/veilofrealityofficial

Facebook:  facebook.com/bernhard.guenther

The Cosmic Matrix podcast, with Laura Matsue Guenther.

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What is The Smoke Trail?

The Smoke Trail, hosted by Smoke Wallin, is a journey into awakening consciousness, weaving authentic stories and deep discussions with inspiring guests to unlock high performance and perfect health. Each episode delves into spirituality, leadership, and transformation, offering tools to transcend trauma and find your bliss along the way. It’s a reflective space for achieving peak potential and inner peace in a distraction-filled world.

Smoke: 00:00

My next guest is Bernhard Guenther. He's a psychospiritual researcher, teacher, and guide whose work explores the deeper architectural reality and evolutionary changes facing humanity in what esoteric traditions call the time of transition. Bernard, welcome to The Smoke Trail.

Bernhard: 00:18

Thanks for having me.

Smoke: 00:19

I'm super excited that Well, first of all, we're neighbors.

Bernhard: 00:22

Yes.

Smoke: 00:23

I've been a fan of your and your wife's work for a while. Discovered you not that long ago, but became a subscriber and was following you guys. I decided, You know what? I'm going to reach out and see if you'd like to join me. Turns out you live five minutes from me.

Bernhard: 00:43

Yes, here we are.

Smoke: 00:44

So this is our neighborly meetup, and super interesting times we're in. As I was telling you, my spiritual journey's been the last four or five years, and so I'm a newbie to this compared to you've been doing work for decades now, But I'm a fast learner, so I'm fairly up to speed on things. I think there's so many interesting things happening now. I'm waking up at the right moment in terms of the Kali Yuga and all the other things that are happening. And love to just have a a dialogue around what you see and what's going on and what's important for people to to know.

Smoke: 01:28

And our our our audience is primarily business leaders, but, you know, anybody who wants to follow, but that's who my friends are. So we've been building there, and I kind of look at The Smoke Trail as something where I'm sharing my journey, bringing guests on who can help share and bring insights and information. And we're hopefully opening the Overton window a bit to get mainstream leaders to think about the world a little differently. Yeah. And try to understand it from a different perspective than perhaps what certainly I was living and what a lot of them are living.

Smoke: 02:10

Excellent. Welcome.

Bernhard: 02:11

Thank you.

Smoke: 02:13

I'd love maybe a little origin story if you don't mind, give me a little bit of background how you got to this.

Bernhard: 02:20

Right, so give me a nutshell. When people always sometimes ask me why do you do what you do? Usually I can answer the shortest version in two sentences because I always question early on in my life there must be more to life, more than what I've been told and taught, and my suffering. I had to figure myself out. So those two things were the driving force, but it started early on in childhood growing up in Germany.

Bernhard: 02:47

I was born in Los Angeles by the way. My parents, my dad escaped Eastern Germany back when it was still the Berlin Wall. He escaped from there, and my mom escaped from communist Poland. Oh wow. And then he fulfilled his dream to come to The US, went to UCLA, got his doctor's in engineering.

Bernhard: 03:07

I was born during that time, but then when I was one year old they moved back to Germany. So I got the citizenship out of this too, so. Yeah. But I grew up in Germany, Munich, and early on, being a sensitive child, always not being able to fit in, right? And I remember after I graduated high school going to university, I did what everybody else was doing, my friends.

Bernhard: 03:32

Like I almost come from the opposite end as you did. So my friends were all getting into business, know, creating a company, let's make money and all of this, and I could not relate to it. I could not like, I had other questions. I was just like, I'm not interested in the material world, I'm not interested in career, family, house, nothing. I like, Who am I?

Bernhard: 03:54

What is this life about? There must be more, right? So there was a deep questioning already in hand with me. And then like what I call divine intervention, one of my friends back then after I graduated high school, I was studying at the University of Munich, introduced me to drums. Played the drums.

Bernhard: 04:11

Now I was big into music, was listening music. And I remember the first time I sat on this drum set, had a natural knack, I literally had my first transcendental experience of just feeling one with the universe and just in this rhythm and music and just like I've never had that kind of experience, and then when I decided that moment this is what I want to do for my life, I just want to be a drummer. I do the music thing, so I, very dedicated, played eight hours a day and actually then moved to The US in 1994 to LA at the age of 22 to study drums and percussion, like this very popular, very great music school there. And I stayed in LA. Right?

Bernhard: 04:51

So I played in bands just fulfilling chasing the dream, so to speak, played out jobs, but during this time as I was expressing myself musically, helped me to also express emotions I couldn't express. I already started doing shadow work during that time. Playing very heavy emotional music to kinda like use it for processing without even knowing I was processing, right? But then I also become disillusioned of the whole music scene, music business and all of this, right? I mean I had my band, we toured in all of this, I did the whole rock and roll thing, and then I got introduced to for my friends to win some raves, some desert parties back in the nineties.

Bernhard: 05:35

We always went out to Mojave Desert and kinda like with the generator, and then I was introduced to mushrooms, so let's have a mushrooms. Yeah. So that was a big turning point. I went to Terrence McKender in the ninety's and then even I was so profoundly affected by the mushroom experience I even stopped partying and like I need to explore this myself. So I locked myself into my rehearsal room and like took five, seven grams of mushrooms like just go, go, go.

Bernhard: 06:01

And in these experiences, like a psychonaut, was really fascinating because I always associated mushrooms like a spiritual experience, maybe seeing more, you know, but I encountered forces, beings, aliens, all kinds of entities so I realized hold on there's a whole other reality, there are other forces influencing us. That's when I first came face to face with these spiritual realities and other beings that affect us, both malevolent, benevolent and all of this, so it just blew everything open. Yeah. At the same time, I got more into conspiracy. I found David Ike, so blew that out into the open.

Bernhard: 06:36

Right? Yeah. So I went down the rabbit hole, basically. But at the same time, a lot of my own personal came up. I was dealing with depression and just stuff I didn't know how to handle.

Bernhard: 06:52

And I remember waking up one morning I was literally crying in fetus position like I was so depressed I didn't know what's going on in my life. My band was breaking up. Was just working at odd jobs, know. And I had this voice of my head literally like saying to me like, you need to figure yourself out or you're going to die. You're going to kill yourself.

Bernhard: 07:13

And I went on that day to a bookstore and then synchronistically I saw this book on the table there by this guy Krishnamurti, never heard of him, but his head, you know, with this, his white hair and like very stern, and it says freedom from the known. Yeah. And I read that book and it blew my mind wide open. Especially the line that really set everything off where he said, It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. So I realized what people are doing, world is not in alignment, but we're trying to adjust to it constantly.

Bernhard: 07:53

The rat's race and going after and this and that. You know what I mean? And that's why I realized that a lot of people are depressed or sick because they're following something that's not inherent who they are. So that started my interest into spirituality. I got into Alan Watts, these kind of things, and then more into what I would call mainstream spirituality, Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Deepak Chopra back in those days.

Bernhard: 08:19

But then I went deeper. I definitely got then into more I was introduced to yoga, bodywork. I had a gift all of sudden I found for healing work and bodywork, so I pursued that at my own practice for twenty years in Los Angeles. Working that, I was introduced to a mentor of mine. And really fastened my whole life trajectory changed from really wanting to just be this drummer and tour.

Bernhard: 08:40

All of a sudden I have a healing vessel and people come to me wanting to be worked on. Discovered gifts or talents I didn't even know I had. So I already felt there's something else guiding me. Because even like back in the nineties I got into Tony Robbins, Awakening the Giant Within, you know what I mean? All of that like you know

Smoke: 08:59

That's where we passed,

Smoke: 09:00

we crossed over because that was from a business standpoint.

Bernhard: 09:03

Exactly, you know that I was also applying that even my band and I was visualizing and like this and that and I remember Tony Robbins' three month plan, six months, two year, ten year and then visually, you know, all of this and did the best I could but it didn't happen. So I also realized even looking back, you cannot override what God has in plan for you. No. No matter how much you're trying to manifest, visualize, you cannot force your reality onto it that's not aligned with you. It just creates more stress, depression, right?

Bernhard: 09:33

You just gotta let go and align. So put me on that path. And then I've started, you know, I was living by myself in Topanga and I got deep into esotericism psychology discovered Carl Jung, shadow work and all of that, somatic work. And early on I realized, and it's the foundation for the work I'm doing now with my wife as well, that the work is twofold. It's inner and outer work.

Bernhard: 09:58

Yeah. Right? Because I found too many people, they are just focused on inner work, right, or just psychological work or spiritual work, and then they avoid what's happening in the world or not even aware of it and can easily then get manipulated by evil because they don't understand evil, which we saw for example with the pandemic so to speak, many people kind of fell for it who I thought should know better so to speak, no judgment. Or see it also had issues with the so called trucer movement, conspiracy movement, which is always out there, the cabal, the luminati, but they're not involved in any inner work. They project in their shadow.

Bernhard: 10:35

So for me it's about psycho spiritual work, doing the inner work, the psychologic work through shadow work, trauma work, somatic work, embodiment, all of that, absolutely. That process you cannot force as well. And then a more spiritual orientation to a higher nature, to something that is guiding you bigger than you are. I don't really adhere to any specific religion or spiritual teaching modality. I draw from esoteric Christianity, integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Sufism.

Smoke: 11:12

That's what attracted me to you guys.

Smoke: 11:13

You had

Smoke: 11:16

the same things I discovered later

Bernhard: 11:18

Yeah. You were deep into. And by the way, it's interesting that it's interesting to speak to you because I came from the other zone still in into my forties. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I just living in the now.

Bernhard: 11:30

I didn't care about my future. Money, who cares? But then with meeting with Laura, had to also face, no, I have to also integrate the material world. I have to learn with what we have going on some business skills. I have to understand money, not to reject it.

Bernhard: 11:43

There's a spiritual way of just money is evil and all of this. I had to analyze my beliefs around it. Yeah. Right? To integrate this as well without rejecting.

Bernhard: 11:53

Yeah. That's been my journey over the past few years to become more grounded in the material reality because I saw a lot of people in the conspiracy world and spiritual world also like demonizing, you know, capitalism or business people and all of this. Right? Mean, but no no, hold on. We need to and that's why I'm really drawn to Shiro Bindo's yoga as you know.

Bernhard: 12:13

He's not about escaping life but bringing the divine here

Bernhard: 12:16

Into life.

Bernhard: 12:16

Spiritual life. All life is yoga. Right? Not to reject anything, but infuse everything with spirit.

Smoke: 12:24

Yeah. Right?

Bernhard: 12:24

And I think that's probably your path as well. Right?

Smoke: 12:27

Yeah. For sure. And and it's funny because I I mean, there's so many parallels. I won't spend a lot of time on my story, but the I I'll mention the things that kind of resonated in, you know, grew up in a in a very traumatic family situation, a lot of abuse and things, blocked it all out. Mhmm.

Smoke: 12:45

Didn't remember anything, but knew I had to escape. And my escape was I have to we had no money. I had to, like, go find ways to make money. Yeah. And that was how I could get away from them.

Smoke: 12:56

Yeah. And by doing that, and then I had then I had kids early, so I had a family, so I had a reason. They saved my life. I had a reason to live.

Bernhard: 13:03

You had a responsibility too.

Smoke: 13:05

Yeah. I had this crazy entrepreneurial career, and made a lot of money, and lost a lot of money, and I kept doing it a few bunch of times. Didn't realize I had these shadow things that were, you know, causing me to, you know, do that too. But, you know, then when when my initial awakening started happening, there was a period after the shadow work where I was like, well, do I, like, do I I don't want money, and, like, I don't need any of this stuff.

Bernhard: 13:33

Almost the other thing.

Smoke: 13:34

I was kinda rejecting it, and and it for, like, a like, a year, was like, I I don't really know if I can do what I do, like, I've been doing anymore. And and and that settled down. Like, I got to a more of an integrative view, which is, of course, it's part of this realm. When we talk about embodiment, it's about everything. It's about the whole story.

Smoke: 13:56

And and they're like, wait a minute. I have the ability to do great things. I can go travel. I can go speak. I can influence.

Smoke: 14:03

I and I got this download that said, you're a globetrotting leader of leaders bringing God's love and light to the world. Mhmm. On on the re re what was it? The Rishi machine? This guy in Vegas created this machine that he got to download, and

Smoke: 14:16

so it's

Smoke: 14:17

and I was using that at my friend's house, and I was like and that was the message I got. Like, that's not how I talk. It's like I got that. I was like, okay. Well, that that's integrated.

Smoke: 14:26

That makes sense. I can do what I do, and my friend group is a bunch of entrepreneurs. And what I'm seeing during my time is that there's a big awakening happening in that world. It's happening in every sector. But there's so many people who are business leaders, are going on journeys and doing plant medicine and going on retreats and breath work and all kinds of things.

Smoke: 14:52

There's, just in the last five years, the interest level and the opening to, well, maybe there's something more, I've seen it dramatically change. Yeah. And so what I got was, okay, that's part of the role. I'm supposed to help with that some way. Yeah.

Smoke: 15:08

Somehow.

Bernhard: 15:09

Some of role. Role and the role will unfold itself.

Smoke: 15:12

Yeah.

Bernhard: 15:13

You know what I mean? Yeah. There's always a danger when we become to identify it with the mission.

Smoke: 15:18

Right.

Bernhard: 15:18

Right? So I think that's when the ego hijacks the process. Yes. The special bypassing, and I go, know what I mean? What's called an esotericism, the luciferic temptation, so to speak.

Bernhard: 15:28

See it in the new age too, I'm a starseed, I have a special mission. You can apply it to anyone. The key point is really to have that humility to align with the higher force and understanding, for me at least, that's the unit.

Smoke: 15:41

I completely agree. And the more I learn, the more I feel like I'm gaining bigger understanding, the more I know I don't know.

Bernhard: 15:50

Yeah.

Smoke: 15:50

And I keep I always remind myself of that. Like, oh, that's why I'm, you know, I I keep, you know, touching on different traditions and learning different things. You know, I went really deep on Hawkins. So it was one of the things that You're

Bernhard: 16:04

with Hawkins.

Smoke: 16:04

And and I have probably I've probably listened to or read all of his books, you know? Yeah. Some of them 20 times. Right? So like and you get I get something new every time I listen.

Bernhard: 16:17

Of course. That's right.

Smoke: 16:17

Feel like it's a different level. Oh, that's what he meant.

Bernhard: 16:20

Yeah.

Smoke: 16:21

So that was another thing that resonated. You had an episode not that long ago with another guy here who maybe studied with Hawkins or was

Bernhard: 16:30

Oh, Daniel.

Smoke: 16:31

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was cool. I liked that. Yeah, yeah.

Smoke: 16:34

Enjoyed that. And, yeah, and and so it's it's really interesting. But so the the the I'll just say this funny thing, and then let's talk more about some of the things that we're you're seeing. Once I got my, well, I say I cleared my shadows and I know that there's always something more, right? So there were always healing in different levels, but I cleared a lot of stuff and got my memory back, had a different perspective.

Smoke: 17:06

Went through the process of forgiving, and then realizing there's nothing to forgive, that it was a plan that was set up so that I could wait. It was all for me.

Bernhard: 17:17

Yeah.

Smoke: 17:18

But that took a while. And then I was like, well, I need to understand what the heck this stuff is. Like, I don't know what I didn't know the word shadow work. I didn't know alchemy. I didn't know any of this stuff.

Smoke: 17:29

And so I just went on this journey, liken it to kind of the way I would start a company, like as an entrepreneur. I would figure out an opportunity or a business need or some kind of I need in the would learn everything about it. I would figure out the industry. I'd recruit the right people. I'd write a plan and build a model, I would raise capital, get the resources I needed, and then I would go execute like crazy.

Bernhard: 17:51

Yeah.

Smoke: 17:52

And I was really good at that, and did it a bunch of times. And I kinda did that not because I meant to, but that's what I did with my spiritual journey. So, like, I I probably read 400 books in the last couple years and have watched a million things. For some in the spiritual community, they'd be like, that's not how it don't do it that way. Well, it's just my intensity, just the focus shifted.

Bernhard: 18:16

Then you all realize that realized the limitations of the mind though, right? A 100%.

Smoke: 18:21

For me, had to Hawkins helped me the most in that frame because it gave me an understanding that my mind could just calm down. Like, okay, so there's a framework, there's this, and so that gave me like

Bernhard: 18:33

I need frameworks. That's the most important thing. Yeah. You know, and I've worked mean, I've worked Lorna, my wife, we have worked with thousands of people over the years. Mhmm.

Bernhard: 18:41

Right? And there's also the saying, as Carl Jung said, that shoe that fits one perfectly stings another, meaning there's no one approach that fits all. Yeah. It sort of has to be as good if let's say like a living school, or like Sri Aurobindo would say, that's why a lot of people when they get into the work of Sri Aurobindo, he doesn't really say what to do and give me no rules because he understands the sadhana, the spiritual practice is highly customized, individualized, personalized for the He even said, you know, I'm big in the Bhagavad Gita, the yoga of divine works, offer everything to the divine. That's the yoga of knowledge, yoga of the bhakti, devotion, whatever path it is.

Bernhard: 19:21

Some people are even maybe not wired to meditate, he even said. Just put everything into work but offer it to something else. So the key point is having the self honesty, humility, and we need a teacher, we need a guide, right? And the teacher and guide doesn't have to be this guru, but can be books, others, you know, or working with people, whatever it may be. I would not be where I'm at right now with my teachers, mentors, guides that I met along the way.

Bernhard: 19:47

Sometimes they're informal, right? It's not like there can be everyday person that teaches you something. But the key point is even with Carl Jung's process of individuation, which is a very important part as well, is that it is very personalized to you. And then you kind of figure that out as you go along. There's lot of trial and error.

Smoke: 20:07

Yeah, lot of trial, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a tremendous amount of trial and error. I went through a phase when I was doing the shadow work of doing a lot of plant medicine. I did it with a great teacher, Ivan Rados, who's up in BC, who's just an extraordinary individual, helped me a lot.

Smoke: 20:31

He removed an entity from me. He helped me a lot with some of the initial stuff. But then I was like, Well, wait a minute. I need to understand this. I was living in California.

Smoke: 20:41

Our next door neighbor was a, let's just call him, he had lots of sources. He's an old deadhead guy and lots of sources. So I was in, I had access to whatever I needed and I was like, Okay, well I need to figure this out. I can do I did a lot of journeys on my own, like you locked myself in a room and just trying to figure it out, not for recreational, to understand it. And I saw a lot of those entities and things, and really a lot of the dark ones I experienced directly, and so I don't recommend this to people.

Bernhard: 21:12

Yeah, a whole other topic in itself, psychedelics, medicine, plants.

Smoke: 21:15

Yeah, well, and for me it helped. I think it did, what would have taken thirty five years of therapy, and maybe not even that. Think it accelerated my process to clear.

Bernhard: 21:26

It can open something up. Know, I worked myself heavily in the nineties, early two thousand. I got into ayahuasca DMT before the whole ayahuasca

Smoke: 21:34

Before it got super, like, trendy.

Bernhard: 21:36

Yeah. Yeah. So and I'm not throwing out the baby with the bath water but I've seen a lot of abuse about black magic, a lot of issues in the Ayahuasca communities especially down in Peru.

Smoke: 21:49

Especially these big group things. I sat as an angel for, Yvonne had a men's retreat in Bowen Island last month. He invited me to come and sit and be an angel for the ceremony. It was the second time I did that with him. It's really magical to see him work and to see these men, some of them all different lives, but successful doctors and different lives, clearing stuff and just seeing him do his work.

Smoke: 22:23

That session, just last month, one of the guys there, he recognized there was an entity in him, he did a removal. I got to be present for it, which was in some ways more powerful than when he did to me because I got to witness it, and I was just holding space. But when I see that, realize this is not a game. You don't play with this stuff. If you go to these group sessions and you've got people that don't know what they're doing, or maybe they know what they're doing, but they've allowed themselves to If you have 50 people in a room or in a place and they're all doing the same thing, there's entities and there's things coming up, going into someone else.

Smoke: 23:04

They don't have enough people watching. So I do agree that there's

Bernhard: 23:08

a danger there. I mean, I've been a bit lucky to work with Shibibo Shaman, just me and my friend one on one in the Peruvian jungle. That was it. I did some of the bigger groups, but that was no good. And again, the Western mind, we like to have shortcuts.

Bernhard: 23:28

Give me just a pill. Just give me something and I will be done with it. That's a trap. I have to acknowledge myself many things I thought I'd play it. Oh, I did Ayahuasca.

Bernhard: 23:36

Did mushroom. DMT. I'm done. No. I an insight like you know Ram Dass, as it had, and he talked about Maharashi, his guru, and Maharashi told him like you know with LSD or any psychedelic you're allowed to be in the house of Christ for a little bit, but then you have to come back, And then we take this experience and think we are enlightened, we and are then all of a sudden we easily engage in spiritual bypassing.

Bernhard: 24:06

So also from what I have to say from an esoteric occult perspective they are dangerous to your strong etheric body if you do these medicine plans with psychedelics too much. So if somebody tells me fifty, sixty, 70 Ayahuasca ceremonies I'm like, oof, that's not a good sign.

Smoke: 24:24

Yes.

Bernhard: 24:24

Right? Because for me, if you have a good medicine journey, you need just a couple. One, two. That's it. So I'm not a big fan of the repeated over and over.

Bernhard: 24:36

I would also argue a question, let's not fall into this indigenous romanticism or romanticizing shamanism, right? Because I've spent a lot of time in Peru and some of the curanderas, they take advantage of the Westerners, the gringos, right? They have a different context. For what I realize, we have to understand our culture, our social conditioning. We also need a different approach.

Bernhard: 25:03

That's why I feel like without Carl Jung, I call him Navatara, he did, especially for the Western man or woman, incredible work to combine depth psychology as a bridge to spirituality. Very important, this integration process, the process of individuation before jumping maybe into Eastern spirituality or shamanic traditions. So if you really know how to do the shadow work, if you can apply it in the sober state, like Terrence McKenna said, it's not what you do when you're on these things, on mushrooms, but when you're off them. Off

Smoke: 25:33

them. Yeah, no. 95% of my work was integration, working with coaches, and trying to understand what I was learning. I think this is a good message because a lot of my business leader entrepreneur friends, they have resources, so they can go to these places. There's a whole group going and doing whatever it is and they have access.

Smoke: 26:00

They can spend whatever. I would say that's good, but listen to Bernhard. Don't think that's the journey. That's an opening.

Bernhard: 26:12

It's a portal. You cannot, I mean, I wish I would do it, but you cannot buy your way to a nightmare.

Smoke: 26:17

No. No, but look, if you've got resources, you've got, in some ways you have more hurdles because what I found and what I see a lot is if you've been very successful in the material world, have a Hawkins talks about that there's a barrier. The more successful you've been with your ego mind, the more you trust it.

Bernhard: 26:41

The more you identify with it.

Smoke: 26:42

Identify with it. Have to and at the end of the day, that has to be dropped.

Bernhard: 26:47

Can I share something Because about I used to work back in LA, used to also work at a high end retreat center? I worked on a list celebrities, some of my clients, very rich people, had one on one, you know what I mean? Also doing coaching sessions back in the days. Here's the thing of what I've seen over the twenty years working one on one with people, is that the biggest cause for their suffering or depression with this is that they were following aims, goals, and desires that were not even their own. Even though they're highly successful.

Bernhard: 27:27

Seven, eight, nine, ten figures. Sure. Popularity, fame. But they were based on trauma responses. Mhmm.

Bernhard: 27:36

Meaning trying to fill a hole within. Yeah. Right? So a lot of the things we see in this world, we see like workaholics, Elon Musk and all these driven people, like work, work, work, like do, do, do. But many of them, not all, are driven by almost like internalized unconscious toxic shame.

Bernhard: 27:54

So Mhmm. They need to create something, pursue something to make themselves feel better. And then it creates I'm sure you have seen this around. I it. I lived it.

Bernhard: 28:03

I more and more like everything you achieve, it doesn't make you feel any better. Right? So the key point is not necessarily that materialism is bad or the stuff is bad. No. It's just what has been your driving force?

Bernhard: 28:16

What is that's why to ask people sometimes, even The US, when they come here, follow your dream, follow your desires, make it happen. But I ask the question, have you ever questioned where your desires come from? And then think with what you're maybe alluding to, many people get on this path and they maybe realize, oh my god, I've been living a lie. This, you know, life I live, I don't maybe really love my wife, I don't like this work, I don't I'm just playing something that is not me. Right?

Bernhard: 28:47

And that can be harsh. Yeah. Disillusionment.

Smoke: 28:50

I was lucky you just met Anitra, but she was far advanced from me.

Bernhard: 28:55

Yes, I can see that.

Smoke: 28:56

Yeah, and she held space and was very patient. As this happened, we've been on the journey together. It's been a really beautiful thing. There was moments when my shift made her feel like, Wait, did I Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, because it's like, Oh, I don't have to take care of any I don't have to I'm not she was like looking out for me and now it's more we're together.

Smoke: 29:24

Yeah. And so that that was a shift but but it's been Yeah.

Bernhard: 29:27

But it seems like in your way you were able to integrate it more. Yeah. Yeah. To kind of fuse it, right? Well, I dedicated And and my the same time still going because you I'm sure on this path there's no progress without disillusionment.

Bernhard: 29:40

Oh yeah. You know? And the thing is people are afraid of this disillusionment because they're so attached, the attachment to everything. But if you think about the word, disillusionment is a great thing to free you from illusion. It frees you to be because when I look back and look at my life, if you would have told me that ten, fifteen, twenty years I would not believe you that I'm doing what I'm doing now.

Bernhard: 30:02

Right?

Smoke: 30:03

I definitely wouldn't.

Bernhard: 30:04

And I'm also looking back. I'm so glad I was so hoping that I'd do my music thing, do the rock nothing but on tour. You know what I mean? I was so working for it, manifesting, and I'm so glad it was ripped apart from me, including some relationship. When you're in the midst of it, you're like, oh, this sucks.

Bernhard: 30:21

You know what mean? But then looking back, hold on. That was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because we are in this mindset, in the moment we overly judge things as, this is good and this is bad. Never realizing that what we perceive as something bad leads us to something much better in the end of the day.

Smoke: 30:41

Yeah, and all these things are for us. So there are things that, however you think about it, but we, the universe, set it up for us to awaken. The bad is the portal. My trauma is my portal. I lean into it, and by leaning into it, things

Bernhard: 31:00

That's opened in armored setup.

Smoke: 31:01

I was like, Okay, well, didn't really, did I really have to make it like that? Couldn't I pick a different way? But no, that's just the way it was. Yeah, so that's been a great learning, and it is. Was one of those people who, if you came to me and said, Smoke, have this problem, and whatever, I'm like, Let's go get a drink.

Smoke: 31:25

I coped with alcohol. I drank a lot for a lot of years. I realized that when I cleared, that I had a fan going off in the back of my head that was always on. And I just thought that was normal and it would go off when I would drink. So when I had a drink or two, I'd be like, oh, now I feel normal.

Smoke: 31:46

And then when I cleared a lot of this stuff, the fan went off and I didn't need a drink. It just kind of fell away. So it was, yeah, but it's really interesting. You have to be curious, right? Like you have to be, why did I do this?

Smoke: 32:03

Why do I react this way?

Bernhard: 32:05

Curiosity is the key point to self, because most, when we are very identified, automatically externalize. Best of shadow work. Greatest quote from Carl Jung is, I'm just paraphrasing, the one who irritates us, or anybody who irritates us gives us a good insight into ourselves. But mostly we just gossip, we talk, smack about others. I'm not taking myself out of equation.

Bernhard: 32:30

Still get triggered by people annoyed, right? I can even project on them all the time. But the key point is like why, this curiosity, this person getting, why am I getting so upset what this person is doing, saying it doesn't matter? What does it say about me? Where is it hitting me?

Bernhard: 32:48

Where is the entry point? That's really, once you turn that around. Yeah, the friction

Smoke: 32:52

is the portal It It's the, okay, that's, alright, what is that? Exactly. Yeah. It's really fascinating.

Bernhard: 33:00

So that's what beats you more to your true self. Because then you realize you have all these mechanical condition programmed reactions, right, and it's a waste of energy of your life force, right, when you get thrown off by other people or project on them and whatnot. Yeah. Like this and that, right. And then that leads you to your shadow and what you need to integrate.

Bernhard: 33:20

Shadow meaning like, for people who are maybe not aware of it, it's just anything that's unconscious. So it could be negative, quote unquote, parts we don't like to see within ourselves but project on others. And the best example is, sorry, political spectrum. The left projects on the right, the right projects on the left. That's kind of what the game keeps keeps happening.

Smoke: 33:40

And they just keep at it, at it, and it triggers and that's a good that's a great one to to see where you are because Exactly. It's really easy to get get upset about it. It's really fascinating. The fact that the things that get to you are the things that can be your portal is one of my greatest learnings as

Bernhard: 34:06

I've Can I share a little example? With my journey because I come from the opposite end. So I have my journey, the advantage of my journey, I realized no materialistic achievement, money stuff, things will ever bring me happiness. So I have a certain detachment, but to the point of I was rejecting it. So that was my shadow.

Bernhard: 34:23

For example, I told you I was working at this high end retreat center in Malibu as a massage therapist, and there was another massage therapist who also taught yoga there, and he would always be very, what I call him like an ask is a very slimy, just to get clients, and he would get them for their, he was also already hosting a retreat in Peru, you know what I mean, and he was doing pretty well for himself, had his own thing going on, making good money, and I just would talk smack behind his back. Like what an ask is at this and that, and just talk shit about him and all of that, right? Yeah. Like just talking down on him, being in front of him, all nice of course, right? So really like that kind of type of thing.

Bernhard: 35:03

And then as I dove deeper into Jung's work and I had to really applying shadow to myself I realized, oh my god I'm projecting on him.

Smoke: 35:13

Yeah.

Bernhard: 35:13

Right? I'm projecting my shadow on him. I have to work with this. What is it about him? Then in my own inquiry I remember this moment, it's like, I am jealous of him.

Bernhard: 35:25

I am envious. I want what he has. But I cannot allow myself to have because I think that's wrong, that's greedy. So if I would be like him, expand myself, be more embraceful for making more money, have this unconscious belief that I would be like him. Ask as a greedy and whatnot.

Bernhard: 35:44

So I had all these unconscious core beliefs, wrong beliefs, my projections but based on unconscious envy and jealousy. So there was a big, oh shit, I had to take responsibility for that. And that was my turning point. It's like no, how can I also do my work because I had the hardest time at the beginning to charge actually for my services? Yeah.

Bernhard: 36:05

There was this weird like context, I shouldn't be of service, shouldn't this be you know what I mean? Dealing with this all false spiritual beliefs but not understanding that even money is energy and that needs to be in exchange,

Smoke: 36:18

right?

Bernhard: 36:18

It needs to be like flowing and going and I had to really work on my own, you know, core beliefs and self value to like, no, this is who I am, this is my experience, this is what I charge and Well if

Smoke: 36:28

you lived in a Hashram or some mountain where the village would take care of you and give you food and That's take a different story.

Bernhard: 36:35

That's a

Smoke: 36:36

different story. You're living in a world where you have bills you need a car.

Bernhard: 36:42

But it was a very confrontation of my own shadow. And I see this a lot nowadays. You can see now I can see other people's shadow easier because I've seen it within myself. When people get upset about even when people project on rich people, you know what I mean? As if every rich person is a psychopath or something, which is not true.

Bernhard: 37:03

You know that, right? The point is like we project onto others, right? What we actually truly want for ourselves sometimes.

Smoke: 37:11

Yeah, for sure. I have, I don't know, thousands of acquaintances and lots of friends, friendly relations that are leaders and business people. You get the spectrum like in any other part of the world, like any other segment of the world. But a lot of them are Nick, they're they're good people. They're they're you know, like YPO is a group I'm I've spent a lot of my life in, it's been really important.

Smoke: 37:38

And it's been a it's a very positive overall field. Most people are I calibrated it. The typical is in the March. Well, Right? Yeah, the pockets.

Smoke: 37:50

In the March. Some are a little right around there. That's a really good field, right? And they're employing thousands of people productively, and they're taking care of their families. If you're in YPO, you're giving back, and you're trying to figure out how to be better people.

Smoke: 38:06

So they're on a path of some sort. But there's exceptions, and there's people that make unbelievable amounts of money and they can't see anything else. You get a range of it, but that's the path. I use the Johari Window. I don't know if you know that, I but think it's big in coaching.

Smoke: 38:25

That's why I learned it through YPYO. The Johari Window is the four quadrants. The quadrant that I know and you know. The quadrant I know and you don't know. The quadrant that you know and I don't know.

Smoke: 38:37

So it's blinding me, it's in my unconscious, and the quadrant that neither of us know. As we move things from those unknown quadrants to the known quadrants, we're gaining consciousness. I use that as a frame for how I think about it just because a lot of my audience understands that. We've used it a lot.

Bernhard: 38:58

Yeah, you've to use that framework that works.

Smoke: 39:00

Yeah, but it really makes sense. The more we can move from the unknown to the known that we know, the more consciousness we gain. It's just a different way of thinking about consciousness, but it's the same process.

Bernhard: 39:15

Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. The word consciousness itself means to become aware, to be more aware, to know more, so to speak.

Smoke: 39:24

Yeah. Well, one of the things that you've done a lot of work with, I know you've got a class, a whole thing you're teaching about the dark forces and what's happening in the world. Maybe let's spend a few minutes on that. I don't like to dwell on it, but I think it's important for people to be aware, right? Because it's a real thing, this is not just like, know, live in my Zen garden and everyone is love and peace, although I love that and that's what I desire.

Smoke: 39:53

That's where I spend my energy is on positive love. I made a decision a long time ago. Was never one of those social media guys who was shitposting and stuff, but I would criticize and judge and stuff. Pretty quickly I was like, Wait a minute. I'm only going to put out things that I believe are positive, that are helpful to people.

Smoke: 40:15

Because we don't need any more doom and gloom and we don't That need being said, there's inversion happening all over the world. In our society, we have inversion. We have, you know, what is obviously right and true and good, you know, love supporting is being inverted as not that. And the others, you know, things are obviously not good, not love. The opposite is being touted as good.

Smoke: 40:44

And so that's part of what is happening and I think it's a disservice to anyone not to be aware of it.

Bernhard: 40:51

Yes. Let me put it this way. So number one, we're dealing with duality. David Hawkins, right? But you don't want to take the duality bypass either.

Bernhard: 41:03

A lot of people, I've done myself, the intellectual duality bypass, right? They're like, oh, it's just, you know. But understanding peace and love is one duality. We cannot ignore what's called evil. Evil is real.

Bernhard: 41:15

Yeah. Right?

Smoke: 41:16

And how do you define evil?

Bernhard: 41:19

I would define it as Shere Bina does it, ignorance. Ignorance. You have to understand that we can approach from different levels, but all is one. All comes from God. Nothing can exist out of God.

Bernhard: 41:34

So good and evil is not even a true duality. Evil is an aspect of God, unconscious ignorance on the lower levels, on the planes of creation. Right? So there are various things people react to evil or the dark side or bad things, like you just mentioned. Number one, there's the denial.

Bernhard: 41:58

Dark doesn't exist. The the new age. Right? I'll just love and like. Think positive thoughts.

Bernhard: 42:02

I don't wanna avoid you know, the more I focus on it, the more I I give it power, and, like, if I don't focus on it, I I will go away. That's a big deception itself, which I would be, say, planted by quote unquote the devil himself. That idea. Right? The other extreme, which is also helpful, what you just alluded to, is doom and gloom.

Bernhard: 42:23

Right? The negativity every, oh my god, the world is ending, it's going to shit, they're enslaving us. I see this a lot in the quote unquote truth and movement to the point of that Earth is a prison planet insanity. That's the other extreme. Both is a misunderstanding of evil.

Bernhard: 42:40

So for me I was always interested in also what's happening in the world. You have to look beyond appearances and beyond our wishful thinking rose colored glasses. And if you put it in the context of really what's going on in the world from a higher perspective, as we're in in the Kali Yuga, it's important to understand the Yuga cycle is really the darkest point of human consciousness right now as we're ascending to the higher.

Smoke: 43:06

Unfortunately, I learned from you that the we're at the end of it and that so we're heading into a good phase, but the transition could be a thousand years.

Bernhard: 43:14

No. But that's why we're here for a reason.

Smoke: 43:16

Yeah. And

Bernhard: 43:17

then also understanding we're, like, we're coming back around and around. We get eternal. Right? This is just the vehicle for now. Right?

Bernhard: 43:22

And we all chose to be. You are being activated right now as we you know what I mean? So it's all part of the plan, to speak, but we need to play our part. But that's when even the dark forces of Sri Lanka said have the strongest grip on humanity. Mhmm.

Bernhard: 43:36

Right? And that's why also humanity is mostly identified strongly with the lower nature, egoic consciousness. Yeah. And there's a spectrum to evil. You know, speaking of David Hawkins, I like what he says with the of the, you know, the map of consciousness.

Bernhard: 43:49

It's not like, oh, this is good. This is evil. It's like a phenomenon. It's like, at some point, this is very cold, cold, hot, hot. When do we decide what is cold and what is hot?

Bernhard: 43:58

It's just a spectrum. So evil, when we think of we have all aspects of evil within ourselves. That's the core of shadow work, to face it within ourselves, at least the potential. There's a reason, for example let's give you some real life example why the highest gay porn consumption is right around the Bible Belt in the Midwest where they project on the gays and think they are sin, right? There's a reason why Grindr has the highest use when there's a conservative conference in Phoenix and whatnot.

Bernhard: 44:35

So I'm not to single out that one group. I'm just saying what we strongly project onto others is our own and who knows what all these people who virtuous signal are doing at night behind closed doors.

Smoke: 44:49

That's it. 100%.

Bernhard: 44:51

100%. There's that. Right? So we need to acknowledge it within ourselves. I can see myself, or I have certain ways and my own hypocrisy or something.

Bernhard: 44:59

Absolutely. I need to be aware. Have to have the humility to see that within myself. So that's just one level. But it really struck me when Sri Aurobindo, who I consider the last truly enlightened avatar, said the same thing as Rudolf Steiner, that this time we need to face what both call the problem of evil.

Bernhard: 45:18

We cannot avoid it. And understanding evil as a cosmic teaching function, because that's what it is for the evolution of consciousness, right? Even the attack teaching saw the dark forces as teachers, so to speak, that show us where our work is to be done. We cannot avoid it. We cannot look past it.

Smoke: 45:39

Because it's not real at a certain level, but it's absolutely real in this realm. Exactly. Is what I said. In this density.

Bernhard: 45:46

That's special bypassing. When we see the high level only God exists. Yeah. That's true from a higher level. We are not there.

Smoke: 45:51

Right. We're we're here right now.

Bernhard: 45:52

Yeah. Here right now we did deal with you know what I mean? Yeah. Even all is one. People are yeah.

Bernhard: 45:57

All is one. Even you and the most evil pedophile are one, but we still need to differentiate and do the action within and without. Another big mistake is the truth of movement that we need to just try to eradicate evil. Just just arrest all the pedophiles, put them in prison, death penalty, and that's it. We're done with it.

Bernhard: 46:19

That's not how it works. That's not how you

Smoke: 46:21

eradicate No. That one, it's something like my childhood trauma, I had a pedophile grandfather, grandmother who was in on it with him. They decided the kids were easier, less risky. The grandkids were less risky than other people. So I lived with that as a child, then they got me to bring my friends over.

Bernhard: 46:43

Yeah.

Smoke: 46:43

And then I had to live with that, and what happened to some of my friends. And when I remembered it, it was horrific and it was traumatic and it was really emotional. Then I was really angry, and then I got to a point of, Okay. Danny, who we mentioned earlier, is a great coach, lives here in the village. She helped me.

Smoke: 47:08

She had me write letters to everybody. I wrote letters over and over again. She said, Just keep writing letters. Say whatever's on your mind, whatever you feel, until you get to a letter of forgiveness. It it didn't take that long.

Smoke: 47:22

Three or four letters each to the people that did the worst things, and I burned them in kind of ceremony they would write another one. Helped a lot. That got me past the anger. Then I was like, forgive, forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. Then I got to a point where there's nothing to forgive.

Smoke: 47:44

Was part of the awakening journey, and I understand that. My greatest teacher are those grandparents who did that to their grandchildren.

Bernhard: 47:51

It

Smoke: 47:57

sounds vulnerable, but it's not if you've healed. Don't share it all the time because it's it's not

Bernhard: 48:04

No, thank you for sharing that.

Smoke: 48:05

I mean

Bernhard: 48:05

I've been, even before the whole app, for me the Epstein thing is like the tip of the iceberg. Back in the early 2000s I was researching in-depth pedophilia, child trafficking, you know what I mean? I had some satanic ritual abuse victims on podcasts and all that. It's dark out there.

Smoke: 48:23

It's dark. Extremely dark, right? Yeah. It's

Bernhard: 48:25

real. And it's real and it's and I understand why people don't also like it because it brings up too much, it's too disturbing. Yeah.

Smoke: 48:33

And my grandmother had power. She could freeze a grown man with her hand. Wow. Saw her do it a bunch of times. Yeah.

Smoke: 48:38

She could make your memory disappear. She could do She had these incredible powers.

Bernhard: 48:42

Yeah.

Smoke: 48:43

So I saw that too and I was like, all that, I blocked out.

Bernhard: 48:46

Right? The thing is, you know, it's also not so many people like, oh, the Epstein files for any arrests. I understand the sentiment, but I would also the collective consciousness is not ready to face that. Yeah. You have to understand a big part of of shadow work or understand Jung's, he's very spiritual in the sense that whatever we have not faced within ourselves manifests as evil in the outside world.

Bernhard: 49:07

Yeah. It's chaos, it's war, it's abuse. Yeah. Right? We're not on a level of It's

Smoke: 49:11

a reflection of

Bernhard: 49:12

where we are. Integrate within ourselves.

Smoke: 49:14

Yeah. Well, but the disclosure and the the fact that the Epstein Fellows are now in the consciousness

Bernhard: 49:20

That helps.

Smoke: 49:21

Is actually saying that we are getting more ready.

Bernhard: 49:24

Right? More than it was in the past. We're actually surprised Yeah. Exactly. That it came out.

Bernhard: 49:28

Exactly. But it doesn't we're still externalizing everything.

Smoke: 49:31

Right.

Bernhard: 49:31

Right? Because you talk about pedophilia high levels. It's a whole topic in itself. But then you see millions of people saving images on Instagram for little children in swimsuits. You know what I mean?

Bernhard: 49:47

So people have dark closets. I'm not calling anybody out, but we all have, especially topic of sex as a whole, topic in itself, right, and the dark shadow of sexuality and all of this. But what I'm trying to get back at is we really what I realized for myself, and that's the work I'm doing also with my wife and talking about the programs you hinted at, I realized also over the years we need a more grounded psychospiritual approach. And psychospiritual work, it's a term I've been very hyped. But the way I see it, when you do psychological work as you're done, you need a quote unquote map of your psyche, right?

Bernhard: 50:26

You understand your ego structure, maybe subpersonalities, inner child, wombing, right shadow, all these parts. At the psychological level, people when you engage in spiritual work, even like I would consider medicine as somewhat spiritual work or meditation or prayer and all of this, you open yourself up to the higher arms. You need to understand the spiritual forces you're subjected to. Because the biggest illusion we have is that we think we identify with our thoughts, our emotions, all of this, realizing that the mind is porous. There's constantly forces, beings, forms flowing through us at all times.

Bernhard: 51:03

The mind is not isolated. Brain doesn't even produce thoughts. A bunch of antagonistic. Just trying see others. You know what I mean?

Bernhard: 51:12

So we never question what's coming from. So the point is differentiation. I think the future we're moving to, because if you just do psychology, you kind of end up in childhood with your parents or grandparents. If you just do spiritual work, yeah, you may have some experiences but you can easily spiritual bypass, dissociate, get out of body. You need to bring both together.

Bernhard: 51:33

And so in my work I want to really dive deep into the psychological work by understanding the spiritual one. Both they're malevolent beings, which have been written in all esoteric spiritual traditions, spiritual forces, that are very tempting, very deceiving, they are not this obvious evil, but they tempt us, distract us and whatnot. And there's obviously divine angelic beings as well, But they act according to their own laws, they respect free will. It's not like they're bailing us out or saving us, but they can assist us.

Smoke: 52:02

You have to ask for help though.

Bernhard: 52:03

Exactly. For us to help and then be very discerning what is coming through for example, right?

Smoke: 52:07

So

Bernhard: 52:09

in this work, like I'm doing one program with my wife embodied soul awakening, it's my overall psycho spiritual program and the one I offer is mastering spiritual warfare because we are in a spiritual war. There is a war of our minds that's happening through us over us. Yeah. Right? And people get maybe offended by the word war, but even Sri Aurobindo said if you really sincere in the inner work, realize it becomes a battle.

Bernhard: 52:30

Mhmm. Battle of force within you. Right? Not easy. Right?

Bernhard: 52:33

There's a resistance, and he made a good point, the more you do the inner work, more you bring forth your true self, the more you expand your consciousness, automatically you become more aware of other forces of humanity, of the larger collective consciousness of archetypes, Carl Jung would say, so naturally it becomes even a bigger war because you become almost, like he said, carry the burden of the world by extension because you have enlarged your being. Yeah.

Smoke: 53:05

You can't not see it once you see it.

Bernhard: 53:06

Exactly. Right? You know what mean? So it's it's a natural progression because I think the the the deception we have of how easily ego hijacks this process is just, I want to just awaken, I just want to have peaceful life, right? And I've seen this so many times where Laura and I, my wife, we talked about this the other day.

Bernhard: 53:24

A lot of people like the idea of shadow work. They like the idea of awakening, the idea of a spiritual life, but don't realize what it actually entails and can bring up.

Smoke: 53:33

Totally. Totally. Look, like the idea of being a champion wrestler, you know, was a wrestler in high school and college. But to be it, it's not easy. Actually, I actually give credit to that sport, wrestling

Bernhard: 53:51

in

Smoke: 53:53

my spiritual journey because of the discipline. I took that discipline to business and entrepreneur. If I had to do something, just figured out I'll do it. There's no shortcut. You've got to put the work in.

Smoke: 54:05

Now, this is harder in many ways, but it's the same principle. You have to, and it has to be, it's not like one time, it's not a retreat. What do we do here, what's our daily practice? I mean, you see my hot tub right and I've got the sauna in the back there, and my routine is I'm up at four, I do meditation, I go do a sauna, I do this continue my meditation, and then come out here, I do it again.

Bernhard: 54:32

Yeah.

Smoke: 54:33

And then I write in my journal, I write a lot of poetry and

Bernhard: 54:36

stuff.

Smoke: 54:37

And and for a while, I couldn't even talk about this stuff except through poetry. Yeah. Like and I I never, you know, I I just started public I just started putting them out there, like, just writing poems. And it was way to communicate it.

Bernhard: 54:50

Yeah.

Smoke: 54:51

But I do that every day. It's not just the morning. I'm now at more of a, I would say, more in a contemplative meditative state all the time because it becomes not just a sit down. It's just how you be, how you are. But you don't get there without having some discipline.

Bernhard: 55:11

You have to engage the will. What David Hawkins talked about, the spiritual Because is you can also be able to sit with discomfort, right, and not escape and all these kind of things. So there needs to be an engagement of the will. For me it's all about why I'm at alignment of divine will, like something, give my personal will to the higher will. Like my daily prayer is not actually wishing for something, money like, how can I be your best instrument?

Bernhard: 55:37

I'm very student of the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga of Divine Works, give it up to God and wherever I'm being led, right? But I still need to engage the world. And the mother, Sri Aurobindo's spiritual collaborator, said the importance of developing concentration, focus, attention, and will because you need to have developed a strong will before you can give it to the divine. We have this, the Western when people talk about, or even Sri Aurobindo talks about surrender to the divine, in the Western world it's like defeat or like passivity, non action, just letting God do everything for you enough, that's not how it works. You need to have a strong will in order to become truly God's instrument to manifest his will uniquely through you.

Smoke: 56:24

That's what I liked about Gurdof and The Fourth Way. I like certain aspects of it. Some of it, I think

Bernhard: 56:33

he It It can be harsh. It's pretty rough.

Smoke: 56:36

Seems to be like, there's some love, there's a little bit of love around it would be nice, right? But I did like his, you know, he taught me some good things in my journey, just like learning about it and just having everything dedicated to your mind, your motion, your body, to becoming aware of the subtle energies.

Bernhard: 56:59

Yeah.

Smoke: 56:59

And You can't get there without actually having a balanced mind that is actually It's like a muscle that we didn't know existed.

Bernhard: 57:08

You build the spiritual organs. Yeah, you

Smoke: 57:11

learn how it works and then you're like, Oh, okay. Just because you know about it doesn't mean you can do it. You have to do it. True. That's true.

Smoke: 57:21

Do it exists. You teach this course and it's, you know, you, know, are the things people should think about? I mean, obviously the main work is your own work. It's embodying your own consciousness, it's expanding it, and as you do that, you're not as susceptible to this stuff.

Bernhard: 57:41

Yes.

Smoke: 57:41

Right? Is that the

Bernhard: 57:43

Yes. And everybody will be interfered, targeted by these forces at some journey, even at high levels. Even Jesus the Buddha had to face it. Of course. So here's two things.

Bernhard: 57:53

Number one, I wrote about it recently, it's also Robert Moore talked about it and Ken Wilbert, too. We nowadays, we have a sort of what he called a flatland spirituality. A lot of stuff has been diminished, diluted, taken out, maybe not out of to deceive, but typical, like Ram Dass said, we take these teachings and trying to form it into for the Western mind, how can I use this for my daily life, right? And then we diminish it, kind of like neuter it almost, so to speak. And there are certain things that have been taken out.

Bernhard: 58:27

We have like, you know, almost this Eckhart Tolle type of Adyashanti, Deepak Chopra like opera style spirituality most people get into, which is not bad. I love Eckhart Tolle. Love listening to him. Great insights. It can be a great step.

Bernhard: 58:39

Exactly. So I'm quoting them all the time. But it's flat. It's like, Robin Wood said, almost like we have an Apple Store type of spirituality nowadays. So there are three things that have been taken out or deemphasized.

Bernhard: 58:56

Number one is the spiritual hierarchies. Understanding there are spiritual forces and beings affecting us, all esoteric traditions teach us, both the good guys and the bad guys, so to speak, so we need to know how to navigate this. That was taught in all the traditions. Number two, evil. Understanding evil, confronting evil, seeing as a teaching function was also inherently all complete Esoteric traditions.

Bernhard: 59:22

And number three, which David Hawkins is bringing back, levels of consciousness. His work can be very controversial with his levels of consciousness. There are different levels of consciousness and humanity. And that was almost even and that's why also this idealistic idea that, oh, there will be collective awakening. There won't be a collective awakening anytime soon because there are different levels of

Smoke: 59:49

I like how he described it. Know, it's like you got preschoolers, you got middle schoolers,

Bernhard: 59:53

you got

Smoke: 59:53

high schoolers, you got postgraduate

Bernhard: 59:55

That was more integrated in the past. Now even the case system of the Indians, has become, yes, more distorted, used for discrimination, that's based on a truth.

Smoke: 01:00:03

Right. Because we're we're all made of the same stuff, but we're at different levels of understanding. Exactly.

Bernhard: 01:00:08

And it's not about judgment, high or lower, that's when the ego hijacks it, but understanding you don't judge a child for being a child.

Smoke: 01:00:16

No. And if you were born in Haiti or Gaza or someplace, there's a reason for that. People don't like to talk about that, but it's

Bernhard: 01:00:23

Yeah, his work on calibrating different countries fascinating too. Know. It explains a lot, but it goes against the social activists. Right? Whatever is.

Smoke: 01:00:34

Yeah. But, like, if you wanna if you wanna negotiate with some, you know, military, you know, Islamic, militant group, if you don't understand what you're dealing with, you're incapable of navigating that.

Bernhard: 01:00:52

Yeah, so these three things are important to understand. Understanding evil, That's part of any spiritual teaching. And the spiritual hierarchies, which we're not aware of, but is influencing us. So my attempt is to bring this grounded psycho spiritual approach to fuse it all together, But I approach also a very strong foundation. The most important thing, even in my first lecture in this course, I say is, Who do you think you are?

Bernhard: 01:01:18

Meaning, know thyself. This is the most important part. Know yourself. Question yourself. Again, where do your thoughts come from?

Bernhard: 01:01:25

Where do your desires come from? Your beliefs? Who are you really? That's the first step to any path, shadow work, psychological work, inner work

Smoke: 01:01:34

because whatever the evil is Observe yourself. It knows your blind spots.

Bernhard: 01:01:38

Yes, so

Smoke: 01:01:40

if we have blind spots, it's gonna easily

Bernhard: 01:01:43

Yeah, it's very subtle. I can see these forces, and it's known to always attack traditions, Shia Bunda called them the adverse forces, hostile or cold forces, hidden forces, Arcanic forces, or the Jing and the Sufism or many other names given. It doesn't matter. They all point into the same. But yes, they know you.

Bernhard: 01:02:08

If you don't know yourself, they know your psyche better than you know yourself. They tag into what I call entry points. So whatever your weakness is, they try to emphasize it. Wherever there's trauma, they they try to emphasize that. Right?

Bernhard: 01:02:22

Wherever there's a shadow part, that's where they tag in and feed off and and and emphasize it. So because

Smoke: 01:02:29

we're mechanical if we don't aren't aware of it.

Bernhard: 01:02:31

Exactly. So I'm go back to Gerdau. The mechanical is

Smoke: 01:02:34

We're just reacting.

Bernhard: 01:02:37

You're just reacting.

Smoke: 01:02:37

If we're not aware of it. Yeah. And if you are aware, you at least have the ability to recognize it.

Bernhard: 01:02:43

Yeah.

Smoke: 01:02:43

And make a choice.

Bernhard: 01:02:46

Exactly. That's a good point. The point is also what Roshiya Binder talked, what I need to integrate as part of my nature and what I need to reject. That's the differentiation. It's not easy.

Bernhard: 01:02:56

You need a certain level of con because it's not an intellectual process. So the more we need to observe ourselves, like Gujjaf said, first we just need to start, before even trying to change yourself, just observe yourself. That's the foundation, being able to establish the inner witness. And if you go deeper with this process, at some point you will sense other things and forces coming from the outside which you mistook for your own. So that's why, by the way, even we are influenced by these forces all the time.

Bernhard: 01:03:25

Entity attachment is not that common but influences constantly.

Smoke: 01:03:30

There's a lot of entities out

Bernhard: 01:03:32

there. There's a whole world out there we're not aware of. We just live in this ignorant ego consciousness limited by our five sensory perception. But they tag into that. So what we need to be doing, and that's what I teach you, we need to close our entry points.

Bernhard: 01:03:48

So we bring forth more true self, we raise our frequency level of consciousness, then less subject it. That's how we create actually game of free will. Otherwise we are manipulated by forces we have no awareness of constantly. And so from the esoteric traditions, they saw these forces, quote unquote evil forces, dark forces, as teachers. Again, what do they teach?

Bernhard: 01:04:11

Well, they show you where you have to do your work. Because they only get you where your blind spot is, where your weakness is, whatever it may be in your life, specifically to you. So they were seen as that. And then once you take more ownership of your stuff, take responsibility, you move on to the next stage. But we need to have an understanding of what these forces are, how their influences are, and all complete spiritual esoteric teachings were teaching them in the past.

Smoke: 01:04:40

That's one of the practical things that is controversial because some people can't accept the muscle testing and the kinesiology and what it shows you, but as soon as I got that I was like, Woah, you mean we can test anything? Hawkins' whole thing about 50% of the teachers are probably not in truth integrity. Always test. I still do business. I I do M and A.

Smoke: 01:05:07

I sell companies around the world. I sold a brewery in Nepal last summer to a big to Carlsberg. In fact, my whole journey started. I went to Nepal for a business trip, I got to go to Buddha's birthplace, and I my friend sat down and prayed and I did too and I asked for peace and love and that opened up everything that was in between peace and love. So like that started my journey.

Smoke: 01:05:28

But I don't even engage in dealing with someone if they don't test integrity. So I just it saves me a lot of time.

Bernhard: 01:05:37

That's good for you, but keep in mind, I think Hawkins could emphasize that more and he did it always at the end of the book that not everybody is able to muscle test. You have to be true. 200

Smoke: 01:05:49

It's about 200 and you have to be unattached to the outcome.

Bernhard: 01:05:52

Yeah, the bias can easily

Smoke: 01:05:54

Yeah, for sure. But if you are

Bernhard: 01:05:57

But if you are, exactly,

Smoke: 01:05:57

it It's amazing. You can test anything. I have a whole not for profit project I'm doing, which I'll share later, but it's I'm basically like he said in Power Versus Force, and he said, I've watched every lecture a year. Right? I subscribed, so I listened to every single lecture multiple times.

Smoke: 01:06:18

Because I was just fascinated by this whole thing. But his whole point was this is opening up a whole realm of research and knowledge that is accessible to humanity that we never had.

Bernhard: 01:06:30

Yeah.

Smoke: 01:06:31

Right? And his intention was that we continue it. Who's doing it? I know people do it individually, so anyway, I'm using Claude and building it. I built an app and I'm putting it into a not for profit.

Smoke: 01:06:45

I'm going to invite people who are Integris, who want to be part of a community, to continue the work. He tested everything, but he's been gone more than a decade. Everything from movies to politicians to

Bernhard: 01:07:01

Yeah.

Smoke: 01:07:02

Whatever it is. But you can so it creates a panel of Entegris testers, and everybody does their own testing and puts their results in. And if we get nine out of 10, then we'll publish a result in the app. I don't know if I can get enough people to do it, but I think it's a way to carry the work forward, I think, for the benefit of everyone.

Bernhard: 01:07:25

That's right. Absolutely. Have you listened to my interview with Daniel? He was one of the testers. He worked with him personally.

Smoke: 01:07:34

I want to meet him. I know Morgan who has Grace Grove. Do you know Morgan? It's a plant medicine retreat nearby, and he was one of the testers. Was he came here to study for Hawkins.

Smoke: 01:07:48

But, yeah, I'd love to meet him sometime and talk to him.

Bernhard: 01:07:51

Because I think he had some valid criticism about David Hawkins as well Yeah. To a degree. Know what I mean? He's also a great man. Even with some of the testing in truth versus falsehood, I think it was, you know what I mean, Maybe take with a grain of salt.

Bernhard: 01:08:09

Overall, his model works, and I agree with you that it should be more developed, actually, even scientifically approached, studied, taken from there because it's left a tremendous body of work.

Smoke: 01:08:20

Yeah, It's a tremendous body of work and it stopped. No one's been doing it, right? I'm trying to create a mechanism that's not to make money on but that everyone can benefit from. You can only join if you're Integra, so the community would test new members.

Bernhard: 01:08:37

Okay.

Smoke: 01:08:38

And if they test above 200, then they can be part of it. So I think it'll work, I have to get enough people to do it.

Bernhard: 01:08:45

It's an experiment.

Smoke: 01:08:46

Yeah, it's an experiment. That's a good example of AI is not good or evil. It's a tool. And so I would never have done this project because it would have cost me $100,000 to hire developers and do all this stuff. I wouldn't have done it before.

Smoke: 01:09:03

But I'm like, wait a minute, I can build anything I want. I just own a software company. I know enough about tech, but I'm not a programmer. Yeah. So I'm like, I could do this.

Smoke: 01:09:11

So I wrote a spec, I went back and forth, and then I actually hired a programmer to take the spec and turn it into something I have for a version now. And it's a it's a great use of technology. It's a way to you would never do that if you didn't have AI.

Bernhard: 01:09:27

Yeah.

Smoke: 01:09:27

You know, now I think there's a lot of risks with AI because people don't use it consciously and it can Well, see

Bernhard: 01:09:35

it even from a spiritual warfare perspective. That's sort of Stanton talked about, Aruman. Right? Yeah. The forces, there are beings and forces that use these machines as well.

Bernhard: 01:09:44

Yeah. And and make us more dependent on it. And the way I see it, I'm with you. I'm not throwing other people at the bathwater, you know? We are using technology right now to do this and help other people, Absolutely.

Bernhard: 01:09:56

I'm all I even use AI here and there. But we can easily lose ourselves within it, you know? Because the way I see it, when you even look at the colleague, we have this under illusion that we are on the pinnacle of human evolution. No, no, twelve thousand years ago we even had more spiritual powers than we had now. We went into the descent down because everything works in cycles, right?

Bernhard: 01:10:16

That's what people, it's not linear. In this lower state of consciousness, descent of consciousness, the Kali Yuga, and we have externalized technology at the cost of activating our inner technology. And now we are being asked to activate what I call our organic technology, so to speak. Because the more we outsource to AI and it's very tempting that you start to question every question without using I your own can see it myself. There's a temptation behind it.

Bernhard: 01:10:44

Right? Yeah. But it's wrong a lot.

Smoke: 01:10:45

And because it's been trained That's true. It's been trained on a lot

Bernhard: 01:10:48

of Many people take it as the oracle.

Smoke: 01:10:50

Yeah. It's And been trained on all the false narratives and everything.

Bernhard: 01:10:54

Exactly.

Smoke: 01:10:54

But good use, I took, I had probably, I don't know, it was 300 because that was the maximum you could do. I had 300 PDFs of spiritual documents. Yeah. Bhagavad Gita, Upanishad, different teachings, Meister Eckhart, all these different teachings. And I just I was I did a big search, found stuff, got all that, I loaded into a notebook which is Google's AI, private AI thing.

Smoke: 01:11:23

You can load everything in. And then I was able to do all kinds of really cool querying and analysis on it, that was like, what are all these guys saying that in common? You know, it's only it's only using what I put in there. Yeah. So I know the sources.

Smoke: 01:11:38

I know that, like, generally they're all integris, and it was it was really cool. Like, I put the Ramic translated Bible and the Saint, you know, King James Bible, and I and I was able to, like, compare the two. Right? Like Hawkins did that at one point, but I was able to, like, go Yeah. At a detail you would be very hard to do, by just reading it and looking back and forth.

Smoke: 01:11:58

So anyway, there's really cool uses of it used correctly. I just finished Greg Braden's little retreat he did here in Sedona, and his whole thing is pure human, and his big concern is, you know, it's fine to use these things, but then to start implanting them and putting these chips and technologies into us, we are giving up our divine abilities.

Bernhard: 01:12:19

The way I can see that, but the way I said it's already influencing through these other forces on what I call hyperdimensional or spiritual level. Know what I mean? So you have to understand from the Steiner perspective, everything the has consciousness. Everything has a spiritual being tested. Everything.

Bernhard: 01:12:37

Even this microphone, this computer, everything would be used. I had this really fascinating man on my podcast and I featured him a couple of times, Thomas Meyer. Fascinating man. I don't know if some people are ready to his work but he wrote a fascinating book about the spiritual consequences of the COVID vaccine on spirit life, on the spirit, soul, and life after death, right? But he is very deeply versed in Anthroposophy and communicates with elemental spirits and mental beings, nature spirits, right?

Smoke: 01:13:15

Yeah.

Bernhard: 01:13:16

And he could verify from the standard perspective that even technological gadgets have beings in them that affect us. So whatever you expose yourself, whatever you watch on social media or you take in, you're being infused with the being at the same time. Yeah. It kinda puts you in a trance. Yeah.

Bernhard: 01:13:35

So the point is not being afraid of it but developing more conscious relationship to it and being really aware, as Gujarat would say as well, what impressions

Smoke: 01:13:45

do

Bernhard: 01:13:45

you subject yourself to? What are you taking in? Oh, I think that's the danger now. Maybe not to you, for you because you're just watching social media, but a lot of people just mechanically

Smoke: 01:13:53

just taking everything in, right? When you see a murder in a movie or a murder in person, your subconscious doesn't know the difference. You're seeing violence, so you think about all the media and all the things that are out there. When I figured when I when I like, in my journey, when I started to understand that, I was like, wait a minute. I can't I don't need Fox News and all this stuff.

Smoke: 01:14:14

I don't like, I don't want any of that coming in. And I started like putting on Hawkins and

Bernhard: 01:14:19

Yeah.

Smoke: 01:14:19

Syria, Abedo and whatever. Any anything I could find. The Bhagavad Gita, we were there's some beautiful, you know, audibles. Yeah. And I would put those on at night and I would go to sleep and that's what was playing.

Smoke: 01:14:32

Exactly. And I did that every night for the last four, you know, literally four years. No, I don't listen every night but like, if I'm gonna have something playing, it's gonna be teachings.

Bernhard: 01:14:41

Yeah.

Smoke: 01:14:44

People like don't think about it.

Bernhard: 01:14:45

I think that's the danger, nowadays, especially younger generation. I think we're just so subjected to just, they lose their attention span, they lose their will, right? Their focus, their easily getting programmed. I think that's more the quote unquote challenge and danger I see 100%. Especially for parents nowadays raising children.

Smoke: 01:15:06

And you get entrained and the games. I got to tour one of the big giant multi billion dollar game companies as a private tour with CEOs and they were, you know, they're one of the big games that's violence. I asked the I asked the CEO. I said, you know, I didn't do it in front of everyone because I didn't I'm not there to, you know, judge or embarrass him, but I'm like, how do you guys think about, you know, the the violence and the these kids that are, you know, playing these games for long periods of time, and they're and they're, you know, killing people to steal a car or do whatever, you know, do the thing in the game? And he's like, yeah.

Smoke: 01:15:41

We think a lot about that, but, know, our games aren't as violent as others. You know? And then one of the the president of one of the divisions, she said, oh, I don't let my kids play these.

Bernhard: 01:15:49

Yeah. By the same of, like, you know, big social media, I think some big developer on Facebook or even Instagram or they don't let their own children use these apps.

Smoke: 01:15:59

So what does that tell you?

Bernhard: 01:16:00

What's his name? Steve Jobs didn't let his own children use the iPad.

Smoke: 01:16:06

Yeah, well. Yeah, so yeah, it's so easy, like hand them the iPad so they'll be quiet. Yeah, that's a temptation. What are they learning? What's it doing to their brains?

Smoke: 01:16:19

Well, I don't know, I haven't paid attention to the time, but but anything else you'd like to jump into or talk about or rap or or No. No. No.

Bernhard: 01:16:28

Those those lovely thing, and we could probably go forever.

Smoke: 01:16:30

Oh, Definitely. Well, hopefully we hopefully we can we can continue our dialogue whether it's on camera or not.

Bernhard: 01:16:35

I think it was it was a pleasure to meet you. It's great, it's interesting, we almost come from opposite ends, so to speak, And you know, it's about integration and navigating these times. These are intense times. So I agree with you, we need to keep the spirit up, right? We all have our role.

Bernhard: 01:16:52

I definitely see myself more archetypal of the spiritual warrior. It's been always these kind of topics diving deep for the past twenty, thirty and I feel my intention is really to let people know that we need to have more holistic integral approach of psychospiritual work, right?

Smoke: 01:17:11

Yeah, think it's a great message and we all look, we're all coming at it from different places, everybody, but we need to help each other. Because no one's doing this alone, we're all in this together.

Bernhard: 01:17:24

I like the word interdependence. We're too much, even like when we pursue our bet, we like to be independent. I want to be independent. I want to be sovereign. There's something to be said about sovereignty, but then when the ego hijacks it again, we don't realize that no, everything is one way.

Bernhard: 01:17:39

Interdependent. Right? We all like So really having more for gratitude in everyday life. That's the key point. And you know if there's something for the listeners to give to, you know, always question whenever you pursue something, is this really what you want?

Bernhard: 01:17:57

Is it coming from your true self? Is it a deeper drive? Or is it coming from something else? Or maybe just some conditioning? Some mechanical automatic response?

Bernhard: 01:18:08

Because we need to become more aligned with who we truly are. Ivan taught me he said this early on and I didn't understand it at first but now I feel like

Smoke: 01:18:18

I do which is follow your energy. If it gives you energy, if doing whatever the thing is gives you like it Like feels enthusiasm, right?

Bernhard: 01:18:26

Yeah, enthusiasm. It's like what's his name? Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss. Yeah.

Smoke: 01:18:32

If it excites you and it brings you up, that's telling you, that's something higher telling us, do that. Yeah. And if it doesn't, it's a no. It's a hard no. Like if if it like, you're on you're on the fence, you're not sure I should do this or take this job or do this thing, don't.

Bernhard: 01:18:49

Yeah. I would add some copy some nuance to it. Yeah. Because sometimes, even Robert, when we follow your blister, if you have addiction issues, you're probably, oh, heroin, I love it.

Smoke: 01:18:58

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Bernhard: 01:19:00

No, but I'm saying we all have it. And the other thing sometimes I have to say, even to myself, things that, oh, I didn't feel good, is discomfort. Sometimes you need to follow that as well. Give you a quick example because when I started my journey I was become a prolific writer and people became aware of my work ten, fifteen years ago. All of a sudden I was invited to podcast, I was at a conference, they paid me flights here and there.

Bernhard: 01:19:22

I had so much fear I didn't want to do this. It was uncomfortable. I had extreme fear of public speaking. If I would have just listened to that, it doesn't feel good. I would have just like, no, I'm not going to do True.

Smoke: 01:19:32

That's a point.

Bernhard: 01:19:33

You know what I mean? I had to like, no, I have to face that fear to speak publicly. For example, I'll just give that example. So it's funny that nuance what one of my teachers said as well, there's positive resistance or negative resistance, Positive resistance is in a sense when you set your own stuff coming up, which means you look up and face that fear. And negative resistance is clearly, no, this is not aligned with my path.

Bernhard: 01:20:03

So being able to differentiate them both, that can be triggered but that's the nuance.

Smoke: 01:20:08

Yeah, that's good. Good nuance, yeah. Well, thank you. So much appreciate you joining me and it's a great pleasure. Likewise, thank you man.

Bernhard: 01:20:16

Thanks man. Thank you.