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Guaranteed Human.

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You started out as a third-generation pastor, and then something happened.

You had a moment that sort of awakened you to a greater consciousness.

So can you bring us into what that was and get us up to speed here?

Sure.

Yeah, I'll try to encapsulate it as briefly as I can.

I woke up out of religion at around 23 years old after taking my first full-time

pastoral career position and just started to realize I didn't believe in the version of God that my church was teaching.

And that caused a long series of questions for a few years of what do I believe about God.

And so I naturally went to the Eastern philosophies, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and gained a lot of helpful answers there.

But it wasn't until I was 28.

And I was actually working as a full-time personal trainer at Google in Mountain View.

And I was going through a really heavy period of depression because I had left my religion,

which can be very upending, as you can imagine.

I would imagine with your family being very involved in that that wasn't a really great place for you to be. Yeah, super tough because I literally didn't know anybody that wasn't Christian. And so you know what happens when you leave, you know, I don't want to say the cult, but that's kind of what it's like in a sense, is that everybody ostracizes you. You're the new heretic, you know, and you're going to lose all your friends, all your family. And I had to deal with that fear for like three or four years before I could work up the courage to just make the leap. And I was right. Everyone that I knew in my life basically abandoned me as a heretic. And I had to start my life over. And so that led to this period of depression when I was in my mid-late 20s. And I was on the balcony of my gym at Google for my lunch break. And I was listening to a lecture from Eckhart Tolley. Are you familiar with him? I am very much so, yeah. I've listened to quite a few

of Eckart Tolle's books. He's phenomenal, and he was my gateway into non-duality. Am I still here?

Yeah, sure about that. Go ahead. That's right. So he was my gateway into Enlightenment teachings

and those kinds of things. And I just had this really remarkable experience where

Eckhart was sort of making fun of things that our ego says to us, the stories in our head.

If only people would recognize how special I am, then I could truly be happy and those kind of things.

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