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Buddha at the Gas Pump

639. Marc Leavitt

Buddha at the Gas Pump

Rick Archer

Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.7695 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2022

⏱️ 106 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I was born 11-11-69 into a nonpracticing Jewish family where the subject of spirituality never came up. So when I discovered an intense spiritual yearning within myself at the age of nineteen, I was completely on my own. After graduating from Towson University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and Philosophy in 1994, I had become an avid practitioner of meditation and contemplation of the nature of Reality. As a solitary practitioner, I found my path to be an oscillation of understanding the Nondual view of Dzogchen and experiencing nonordinary events that expanded my understanding of the classic out-of-body experience, astral realm, and the Bardos. The first book of the Trilogy titled "Reality Explained" centers on the peak period of my spiritual journey just after returning home from a weeklong meditation retreat at the world-renowned ‘Monroe Institute’. I had been home less than a week after attending one of their advanced programs when without warning I began to have profound Visions while living out my day-to-day life. I could be taking a walk with my wife and daughter or going about my daily routine at work when I would find myself spontaneously thrust into a vastly more expansive perspective that placed my entire world in a wholly new context. These Visions were progressive in nature as they clearly and pointedly demonstrated the Grand Design of Reality. Some of these Visions were existentially devastating and some were downright terrifying, as they exposed the true nature of the ‘self’. Others were so blissful that they could only be tolerated for brief moments. Ultimately, they coalesced to reveal a model of Reality that is as elegant in its simplicity as it is mind-blowing in its implications. In the first book, I outline a play-by-play account of how four of these Visions shaped a new understanding regarding the true architecture of Reality and how this understanding resolves one of our greatest philosophical paradoxes, the relationship between mind and matter or God and the world. Given the universal nature of these experiences, you will be able to verify each truth for yourself. I wrote this book to demystify the subject of Spiritual Awakening. There are already many excellent books on this subject otherwise known as ‘Nondual Wisdom’ however, what I found to be missing was a book that chronicles the day to day, month to month, and year to year unfolding of the Self in detail. This book is a very personal account of an incredibly impersonal process broken down step by step and presented almost in slow motion. The reader is invited on a journey that chronicles each step along the path to Spiritual Awakening. The details of the climactic experience itself and the final understanding that results from undergoing such a radical and permanent shift in perspective is where I intend to lead you. It is also my hope that this book will serve to demonstrate how the experience of Spiritual Awakening is not something mythical or a fable belonging to some other time or place but an actual shift in perspective that is available right here and now to anyone that is curious enough to explore the true nature of ‘being’. I speak to you from the point of view that we are all sharing the human experience and when we explore the depths of our minds we find the same treasure awaits us all. The fact that I am a husband and a father with a full-time career stands as proof that you don’t have to choose between worldly life and Spiritual Awakening. Books (Reality Explained Trilogy: Enlightenment: Behind the Scenes Being, While Knowing That You Are Not: Surrendering to the sadness and madness of life A Triunistic Model of Reality: What It Is, Does and Emerges As Jed McKenna & The Suicide Letters: Our time together prior to the Invisible Guru Website: thisawarespace.com Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group. Summary and Transcript of this interview.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the gas pump is an ongoing

0:30.5

series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. We've done well over 600 of them now. And if this is new to you and

0:39.3

you'd like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com, BAT, GAP, and look under the

0:46.3

past interviews menu. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners

0:52.3

and viewers. So if you appreciate it and I'd like to help support it,

0:56.4

there are PayPal buttons on the website,

0:58.7

and there's also a page about alternatives to PayPal.

1:01.9

My guest today is Mark Levitt.

1:04.0

I've just spent the week listening to or reading all of Mark's three books,

1:10.5

which I found very interesting and enjoyable and

1:15.3

down to earth and yet really profound.

1:18.5

So we'll talk about the content of those books during this interview.

1:22.1

Mark sent me a fairly long bio, but it's just basically the kind of stuff he's going to

1:26.8

be talking about. So I'm just

1:28.0

going to let him tell us about himself by way of introduction. So welcome, Mark. Thank you. Thank you, Rick.

1:33.7

I appreciate that. And I think you're right about the introduction because the way I introduced myself or

1:41.0

I present myself is just as an ordinary person, just like everybody.

1:45.0

I never had a teacher or a guru, never went to India, never even really got into any particular

1:50.8

path, except for what I read it, read on my own.

1:53.7

So the whole reason that I wrote the book was basically just for my own myths, because

1:59.5

basically when I was growing up up I had my own myths.

2:02.1

This is before the internet.

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