The Threads of Awakening, with Pierce Salguero.

In this conversation, Ilona Ciunaite speaks with Pierce Salguero — scholar, author, and long-time meditator — about his book The Lamp Unto Yourself and his multidharma model that honors the many paths of awakening.

Together they explore how different traditions point to the same essence of truth and freedom, how awakening unfolds beyond conceptual understanding, and how the light of awareness guides each of us from within.
 This dialogue offers both a wide view of the dharma and a grounded invitation to live what we see.

You’ll hear about:
– The multidharma approach to awakening
– The balance between scholarship and lived experience
– The universality of awareness across traditions

If you’re interested in the intersection of awakening, mindfulness, and diverse dharma paths, this episode will widen your view and bring the teaching closer to home.

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Music by Valdi Sabev. Visit his channel for more calm and relaxed music:
https://www.youtube.com/c/ValdiSabev/featured

Transcript

Awakening isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about seeing through what you are not.

You’re listening to Awakening Now —
a podcast about the journey of seeing what is real
and living from that recognition.

This is episode number 111 — The threads of awakening, with Pierce Salguero.

My name is Ilona Ciunaite.
I’m a guide, an author, and co-creator of the Liberation Unleashed community.
If you are in the process of awakening, this space is for you.

In this conversation, I speak with Pierce Salguero — scholar, author, and long-time meditator — about his book The Lamp Unto Yourself and his multidharma model that honors many paths to awakening.
We explore how different traditions express the same essence of freedom, how awakening unfolds in real life, and how the light of awareness guides each of us from within.

Let’s begin.

A heartfelt hello, Pierce. Great to have you on the show. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Good to be here. Thanks for the invitation. Oh, it's my pleasure. because somebody recommended you and as soon as I looked up what you are talking about it was like yay this is the right person for awakening now podcast because you're speaking in a way that it's simple to understand and also it's so useful but let's start from the beginning okay so today I'm speaking to Pierce Sggerero and he is a scholar He he's working with something that he's calling multi dharma which combines all different aspects of awakening in a way that he's describing is as threads and we're going to get into that but I think it's so helpful for people because when people have their experience or they arrive at some kind of point and it looks different than somebody else is talking about it's like what is going on. So very welcome to the show and the show is called Awakening Now. So my first question to you Pierce is what is your definition of awakening? Yeah, that's a great place to start. Yeah. Um yeah, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you and and your uh your listeners. Um yeah so uh you mentioned that I'm a scholar. I I I have done a lot of research over decades in uh the field of religious studies particularly focused on Asian religions. Um but I'm really in in talking about multiharma I'm really drawing um I have you know I'm drawing some perspectives from that reading and that that scholarship. I'm also drawing a lot on my own personal experience and conversations I've had with people. So, um, this isn't really scholarly work. What I'm going to be talking about today is more, you know, maybe maybe you could say it's my opinion based on personal experience. It's a way of talking that I've developed based on personal experience, but of course, as a scholar, I have all of that kind of background also shaping who I am. So, it's shaping my opinions and my my uh experiences. Um so uh you know one thing that we can say I think pretty clearly is that um there are many different cultures across the world across time who have described let's say some kinds of spiritual states we could use that word um mystical states religious states um you know states of consciousness um possibilities for transformation that have been described by different cultures over time and described in different ways, different words, use different techniques to get there. Um but I think we, you know, even even contemporary scholarship, but also, you know, contemporary spiritual communities can see that there's a lot of common ground between those. Um but it's been difficult to try to figure out how they all fit together. there's um you know some people are want to just lump everything together and say oh it's all really just the same thing. Some people want to say they're you know they're they're really different. Um and and each tradition you know has its own maps and its own kind of ideas about what awakening looks like. What I'm trying to do with multiharma is create kind of like a meta map like a overarching umbrella map that's going to kind of make sense of the whole territory. show how things fit together, show how things are different, um, and have a common language to kind of bring all of these different traditions under one roof to be able to speak about them using a a common model or a common vocabulary. Um, so my definition of awakening, you know, every different tradition is going to have their own definition of what they consider awakening or enlightenment or self-realization or whatever other terms they use. They're all going to have these competing different distinction, different um definitions that are uh you know, specific criteria for one tradition or another. Um so I'm going to I'm going to actually default to the most general description or definition of awakening that I think we can use to kind of fit everything else in. Mhm. Um so I'm going to zoom way out and I'm going to say that um awakening the way that I mean it um is a series of experiences or transformations um that uh involve a fundamental shift in three things. So it's identity that is who you thought you were completely changes uh perception. So how you see not not not conception how you think about what you see but how you actually see how you actually experience how you actually with your senses experience the world that that changes. Um and then worldview. So how you understand you know based on the changes in identity and perception is how you understand kind of the the world to be made the world to be constructed um you know under goes a fundamental change as well. So these are all experiential changes. They're not thought-based philosophy based um changes but actual you know um lived experiential visceral um transformations across those three things. So if you're having a spiritual, mystical, religious experience that transforms those three factors, I'm going to call that awakening. So that excludes certain kinds of spiritual experiences. Kind of narrows the the focus a little bit. So, let's say you just like, I don't know, saw an alien or a spirit or a ghost or an angel came to you and told you, you know, some information. Um, if you if it didn't transform fundamentally how you experience yourself, that might have been a perceptual event where you saw something, but if it didn't fundamentally transform like who you are and how the world works, then that would not qualify for me as a spiritual experience. Or let's say you like meditated and you had some kind of energetic experience in your body or something like that. didn't fundamentally transform who you are and what your world, what the world is, what reality is, then that wouldn't be a spiritual, it wouldn't be an awakening experience. It would be a spiritual experience, but not an awakening experience. Um, so awakening would be the then like a series of these kinds of experiences, fundamentally transforming those three things, and going deeper and deeper and deeper as, you know, as as time goes on. Um so that that's kind of like my working definition and I think that fits we can fit into that definition everything from Christian mysticism, Hindu devotional practice, Buddhist kind of style of meditation um dowist kind of self cultivation, energetic cultivation, we can fit into that all sorts of new um contemporary spiritual movements um you know it it it Sufi Islam you know all kinds of traditional Jewish mysticism and so forth. Shamanism, it we can I think we can incorporate a very very wide range maybe not all but a very wide range of um uh historical contemporary um spiritual um traditions within that kind of definition. Wow. Respect. You gave the the definition that is f looking at from the furthest point of view. Love it. Yeah, that's kind of how my mind works. But this whole conversation is going to be like that because my mind always like zooms out to the big picture narrative kind of you know bird's eyee view um and tries to sort of like make sense of a larger landscape. That's just that's just how my brain works. It's what it's everything I've done, you know, in my scholarship is like that and and it's kind of um yeah, of course, that's how I would talk about spirituality as well because that's just how wonderful because you know, we can look at something really close, but when you zoom out, you can see a bigger picture, right? Yeah. Yeah. And as many people as I interviewed, everyone had a a different definition of awakening, but you could feel the sense of it like different words from different points of view from different experiences. But there is something there that everyone agrees it's a shift a shift in identity and perception and how you see the world. Yeah. Yeah. And so the the the models that I talk about are they're they're they're neutral or agnostic as to like the language people use to describe it. Um how how you whatever language you use from is is a product of culture and tradition and it's it's totally fine. Um yeah, I'm I'm thinking more sort of yeah structurally how how people are talking not exactly what they're saying. So So can you give a little bit of a taste of what happened in your experience this awakening? what happened? Um yeah, so my own personal experience is largely um throughout my life I've largely been drawn towards Asian traditions. Um so primarily um primarily in in terms of like um u meditation practice or something like that primarily in terms of uh for me it's been primarily Buddhist um oriented. I shifted a little bit from Terravada Buddhism to Mahayana Buddhism you know over the last couple of decades. Um I also had a pretty active um you know daily yoga practice as well for like 30 years at this point. Um and then philosophically kind of orienting towards um Chinese philosophy, Dowoism um things like that. Um and and that's sort of like been a kind of a backdrop for um I don't know 30 years now at this point. Uh and I would say like there have been experiences along the way that have been kind of little um mini shifts, minor shifts, some of them sometimes bigger shifts. um looking across the whole span, you know, of my life, I can see um how these little shifts over time sort of like deepened or moved in a kind of a trajectory. In my own case, that trajectory uh seemed to you kind of like looking back seemed to sort of like accelerate over time. It seemed to kind of hit a point where there sort of became a center of gravity to those kinds of shifts that just sort of like swallowed me up. Um, so in my own case, it kind of that's I would say that started slow, accelerated, hit a kind of a point of no return, and then just sort of like supercharged right into into some very like deep kind of experiences very quickly. That's just me, though, because other people um experience the trajectory, I think, in in very different ways. Some people experience like very large initial kinds of experiences that then they sort of like take a long time to process and deepen into. Other people it seems like they have experiences and then there and then nothing happens for a very long time and then another experience and then nothing happens for a very long time. So, so part of what I'm trying to do with this model is to get away from prescribing, oh, it an awakening means that you have this sort of trajectory and rather just to say like, look, trajectories are different. They're different for many different people. We have different lives, lifestyles, we're wired in different ways. Our brains are are working differently. We come from different cultures. There's there's no reason to expect that that would be the same from person to person. Um so and then and then also like the flavor of the experiences is also different from person to person. Um which is something we can get into. This is what I call the threads. Um so so for me I have a particular kind of like configuration of things that happened or flavors or types of experiences that took place for me personally. That doesn't mean that that's the only way an awakening can happen, right? The the the the the varieties of people's experiences I I think very very variable um very different between people. Um so I usually try to deflect away from stories about myself because it's just one person and it's not really like a mock. Yeah. But it's just a little a little taste of what happened to you. I know I don't I don't really like to share stories as well because I think how is that going to be useful or helpful for anyone. anime just gives some expectations or how it should be but still you know it's just a little taste the thing so the thing that I can say that in terms of like having a taste and maybe that would be helpful to say for other people is that um you know my the way my experience sort of evolved over time is I think similar to many people living in the 21st century where we have access to all of these different traditions right? We have like workshops and books and podcasts and you know we can travel the world and study with teachers everywhere and all of this stuff is available now and that's different than the way it used to be. It used to be like you know I mean you know centuries ago it used to be just like you only had the temple or the church or the whatever up the street from you know in your village and that's all you knew and that the the world was much more was much smaller. Um so nowadays I think people are having the experience of you know kind of experimenting with different kinds of traditions and different sorts of experiences opening up and none of the particular traditions that you're studying can actually capture or make sense of the whole range of possibilities that are out there. So like if you're in a you know in my case I was in a terraata Buddhist kind of meditation context um and then also doing you know a daily yoga practice which has to do with moving energies in your body and so forth you know but those those traditions wouldn't necessarily be able to make sense of you know like a shamanic opening let's say right whereas a traditional indigenous shamanic system wouldn't necessarily have much to say about you know Christian notions of God or what have you. Right? So, so I think what you know in my case um I I would have what I would call a fourthread awakening. We can talk about the threads later, but a fourthreaded awakening um just naturally opened up for me and I I had to find different traditions or teachings or practices to address those four threads because no one practice, no one system, no one um you know practice framework had all four of those threads kind of prioritized. So I had to do this sort of like based on what was happening in the awakening experience, I had to shift or pivot or or search for combining different traditions together in a way that served me or that worked for for my system, what was happening within my own system. Um, and and I think that is is a common phenomenon for contemporary spiritual people who are having these awakening experiences kind of with this whole range of different options that are out there and that we're stuck sort of like scrambling to piece things together or not or we're really really not able to understand how they fit together. and we're, you know, maybe sometimes getting frustrated or hitting um, you know, hitting our heads against the wall for for for years trying to struggle through something u because we don't have a a broader framework. So that's exactly what Multidharma, the book, the website, my work in that area. That's exactly what I'm trying to address is to provide sort of like this larger framework that can combine and weave together all of these different approaches um so that they're not kind of in conflict with one another but they're actually like integrated into a full you know whole system so that you can understand how to combine Buddhist meditation with shamanism and yoga and you know a couple other things too. So you can understand you could have a um a solid framework for combining and and and and building a synthesis out of those different practices. That's very helpful. So I think okay years ago there was only one church and there was only one guru or something but nowadays you look at the YouTube there's so many people talking about this and somebody who genuinely has an experience or is on a path Oh, it's just so confusing, isn't it? Yeah. It's too much information is also not very good. And the only thing really is that we need to look in our own experience and find what works for us. That's that's where the answers are in our own experience. And the mind cannot understand what's going on. And yeah, some people say there are maps, some people say there are these stages or you need to do this or you need to do that. But it's so helpful to have somebody with a bird's eye view that would kind of guide gently but surely into the right direction. For the modern day seeker, it's very very confusing. So let's talk about your threads. Yeah. So So just to mention before jumping to the threads just on what you were saying. So I I have two kind of I have two different books or projects that are sort of like bookends in the multi-dharma world, right? So so one one bookend is or one one book is a um called lamp a lamp unto yourself which was published uh this year. Um and that book is kind of like an introductory book. It's for I think it's it's really written for people who have absolutely no background whatsoever with spirituality. Um looking to kind of get situated. Um it could also be good for somebody who's who's got experience in spirituality but really only in one area and you're wondering about the larger landscape. So like if you've only ever done you know advita style self inquiry for example like what does what does dowoism have to say? what does you know uh I don't know yoga have to say or whatever that book can kind of like kind of give you a broader view of the of the landscape but that book is kind of like um entry entering into these practices. So you know describing the practices for in in a beginning kind of way sort of giving you a taste of what different things have to offer. Also some historical information just kind of like understanding what's out there and why you know why Hinduism is different than Buddhism and so forth. Um so that's a lamp unto yourself um that came out this year. So the the other book sort of the other end of the the the book end is is um uh called Multi Dharma and that book is coming out next year but I have the PDF of the you know because the press takes a while to proofread and lay it out and and you know print the books and all of that stuff. So so the book is written and it's available in PDF on the website multidarmma.net. Um, and that book is kind of more for people who are already already kind of in an awakening process, already know what I mean when I say, you know, shifts in identity and and perception and worldview and already are sort of like in that kind of process. um this that this book is meant for for for you to sort of like again get you situated to a larger landscape than what you might be kind of hearing from any one tradition. Um and and uh you know I I do want to say though for both books they are both very kind of like you know they're maps. They're mapmaking books. They're books about sort of what does the territory look like? They're descriptive books written by from this world from this kind of like bird's eye view of the territory. So if that's not your thing, if that's not what you want because you're you know you're you're very experiential, you're very sort of like immersed in your own kind of um you know uh corner of the territory and quite happy there. You know, you're you're you're the maps are working for you. the the the tradition that you're part of is is is explaining things well and you're happy, then don't read these books because that's not that's not who they're for, right? They're for people who are who are sort of like struggling a little bit to understand the larger picture, struggling a little bit with the seeming conflicts between different traditions and how do I fit them together? This is the book is for people like that. Um both both books are for people like that. Yeah. Um wonderful. So let's get into threads.

So um lamp unto yourself that book didn't use the metaphor of threads. Um that book is a introduction to Asian spiritual practices only. Um so it it also is limited in that way. Um the book the book is uh it it it it is multidharma but it's doesn't use the threads metaphor. So the but the threads are there. The the threads metaphor comes from the second book from the book called multi dharma. Um the idea here is uh to describe four different kind of categories or types of spirituality or paths of spirituality or dimensions of spirituality. Um the four different approaches. Um, and again here I'm I'm kind of like, you know, taking a bird's- eye view. So, so I'm I'm using language that is meant to be generic and not kind of like particular to any one tradition. Um, so the four threads are um to just to give the names that I've given to them are um emptiness, oneness, energy, and psyche. And just to really quickly kind of go through all four of them, the first one, emptiness, is about the emptying out of concepts or the seeing through of concepts, the deconstruction, the um the deification, you could say, like seeing the unrealness of um concepts and and and and objects, perceptional objects, um sensory objects, um you know, thoughts, um seeing through them. So, so there's a lot of traditions that focus on that um you know just traditionally in terms of you know long-standing kind of like you know religious and spiritual traditions. This is the emphasis in uh most forms of medit Buddhist meditation um advita style um inquiry practice right where you're kind of taking something as an object and really kind of like seeing its impermanence seeing its illusury quality seeing through it you know look looking through it um it falling away to reveal a deeper truth or a deeper or um um unrealness or illusurary quality behind it. So that's that's the what I call the emptiness thread. Um and that's really different from the oneness thread. So a oneness style practice is moving almost in the opposite direction. A oneness style practice is you know emptiness style practice is to see that the self is an illusion. Perception is an illusion. Right? World the world is an illusion. So but but but on thread is to see to expand the self kind of to include all things right to expand to see a more expansive um um interconnectedness, intimacy, uh oneness, unity of all reality. So some traditions have a deified version of that where they say like this is like everything is God, right? They'll use a word like that. Some traditions have a less deified version of this. Everything's the Dao or everything is Brahman or some some other term like that. But the idea is unity, right? Aiming for unity, aiming for oneness. Um and so that is uh um what I call the oneness thread. You know, it's kind of like I just said, it's it's a common um idea in certain forms of Dowoism, certain forms of Hinduism, certain forms of Christian mysticism, Sufi, Sufism, Western traditions more generally. Also, Mahayana Buddhism that talks about interconnectivity of all things. Um, Buddhism is interesting because it uses the word emptiness in two different ways depending on which thread it's emphasizing. So that one word can be used in sort of a more um deconstructive mode or a kind of a more interconnected sort of mode. So the language that different traditions have I sort of leave that aside and I'm trying to talk in more generic ways. Um then you get to the energy thread. So this is the third kind of category of spirituality. Energy thread is is um really primarily working with the energetics of the body. um initially kind of experiencing the energies flowing inside the body and then one kind of the like the boundary between the body and the world breaks down and it's just sort of like energies you know kind of like like within and beyond the body that inner outer kind of distinction um sort of breaks down. Um ultimately this is about sort of everything dissolving into sort of pulsating pixelated kind of like um you know um um mo momentary nanocond by nancond sort of like flashing in and out of existence right um everything is dynamic nothing is solid everything is sort of like you know um bursting forth with this kind of like creative potential maybe maybe ultimately this is about like things don't ever even arise because they're all just sort of like just potentials, latent potentials that never actually manifest. Um so a lot of lot of ways of talking about that in different different traditions, different vocabularies. Um but here obviously we're talking about the sort of um you know yogic and tantric traditions from the Indian context. This is also kind of where Dowoism has a little lot to say about about you know in terms of in East Asia they talk aboutqi instead of prana but it's a very similar notion. Um also tantric forms of Buddhism also are involved in this kind of practice. That's the third thread. The fourth thread psyche thread. Um this one is a little bit complicated when I try to get into the details of it. If we want to talk more about it we can. um sort of uh it's it's complex because um this is this is an area where I think there's there's like radically different ways of talking about um this thread in different traditions um depending on sort of what the worldview is and what the kind of the culture is. There's like very very different vocabularies. Um but here I'm essentially talking about the realization one way or another um that that that that the unconscious layers of the psyche right the the the the material it's the realization that you're that everything you think that reality is or that you are that the self is the perception is all of the things you take for granted are actually being um you know initially you see them as being influenced ultimately you see them as completely constructed by unconscious layers of your own mind of your own psyche. Um so some common examples are um there's yung yian psychology right where we have these kind of like transpersonal archetypes and it's like oh I thought I was pierce like an ego like making all these decisions but actually there's this whole sort of unconscious world you know all of these archetypes and all of these complexes and all of these other kind of transpersonal forces underneath the surface that are that are actually like um responsible for my choices and I, you know, I thought I was I was making decisions, but I'm not, right? Um, I'm just sort of living out this unconscious u material. Um, you you could say there's there's forms of shamanism that are like this, right? Where it's like um rather than, you know, peers, I'm actually I have all of these kinds of like spirits and and and entities and so forth that are influencing me and my world. Uh there's like new age style um um spirituality that talks about like oh I thought I was pierced but actually I'm like I realize I'm a star being that's come down from whatever realm that is like living out some kind of destiny you know or some kind of cosmic plan or I have some kind of like you know um um you know previous ma mandate in you know that or vow or some kind of mission that I'm that I'm doing in my life and I'm I'm I realize Oh, I thought I was Pierce, but I'm actually this other kind of entity. Um, you know, Kashik records and things like that are sort of variations on this theme. Um, so the the the languaging is really different. The worldviews are different, the cultures are different, but the whole idea is um you know, I thought I was an individual me, but it turns out there's all of this unconscious influencing this this material that's influencing me to do uh to to to to do things and I have very less and less control or less and less kind of like agency or less and less um decision-m um ultimately down each one of these threads kind of goes down to the kind of extreme dream to the to the to the very bottom of the thread. Um, it becomes like the thread becomes the whole world, right? So, at the bottom of the emptiness thread, it's like there's nothing that's real. At the bottom of the oneness thread, there's nothing that's separate. At the bottom of the energy thread, there's nothing that's solid. At the bottom of the psyche thread, there's just nothing that's not conditioned or constructed um by my unconscious. That's beautifully. Okay. So, these are the four threads. Mhm. Very nice. And um I I talk about kind of like a fifth. It's not really a spiritual thread. It's it it's not even really kind of like a thread, but it it's useful to talk about this as a thread. Um which is just like your ordinary daily life, like going to work, taking care of the kids, feeding the dogs, like you know, driving a car, like normal stuff like that. Um it it works for my metaphor to call that a thread too. Um, reason being, um, part of what I think is happening in an awakening process as as you're kind of like deepening into these spiritual experiences, it if if you have, you know, more than one thread going and and at least you're going to have two threads going because you're going to have one spiritual thread and then your kind of your daily life. But some people have like oneness type experiences and emptiness type experiences and energetic experiences, right? All kind of happening. And you can think about if you think about them in terms of threads, you can kind of visualize the threads sort of like weaving together, right? Braiding together. I call it braiding together. Sort of like one comes on top and then the other one comes on top. And now I'm having oneness experiences. Now I'm having emptiness experiences. Now I'm like, you know, just some crisis at work and I can't really focus on spirituality. But now there's some really deep spiritual experience and I can't focus on work, right? So there's this sort of like an oscillation or like a like like like a braid being made between all of these different um spiritual experiences and during an awakening process. And ultimately over time those kind of oscillations tend to smooth out and become more what I call integrated more kind of blended together. So that ultimately most people wind up eventually having the realization that oh it seemed like oneness and emptiness were really different than one another or it seemed like you know my spirituality and my daily life were really different realms. It seems like when the energetic difficulties I was having were really separate from my um you know emptiness experiences or or or whatever. It seems like there's this oscillation. And it seems like there's this difference, but over time it kind of becomes more clear that these are all sort of facets of the same thing. They're there's no difference between them. It's it's just kind of differences in the way that I'm conceptualizing them. Not not actual the threads are not actually different things. They're just different perspectives or different lenses or different kind of um frameworks for experiencing like a hand. It's four fingers and opposing thumb. That's a daily life playing and it's all the same hand. I didn't think of that metaphor, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um yeah. So they start out, you know, they start out seeming separate and then and then they Oh, look at that. they haven't daily life is part of it of it all.

I'll stop there because I said a whole lot. So yeah, go back to you. That's beautiful. Uh what would be your advice to uh a serious spiritual seeker who has been into this for years and years and years and still trying to awaken like having read all the literatures, having done all the practices, having been to gurus to India and whatn not and they are still kind of stuck in that I am looking to awaken and it's not happening for me. Um what would be your advice to to these people? Um one thing that I think is pretty common is for people to um so they they they're interested in spirituality and so they they align with a certain kind of tradition or teacher or teaching. they they they sort of like align with that. Um I mean well let me back up. So the first problem is it may be that people are just sampling everything very very superficially and not actually like doing the thing that is that it takes to have an awakening experience. Right? So none so none of these tech if you're doing meditation or like yoga practices or things like that like none of them are going to work if you're doing like 20 minutes a day you could do it for 50 years that it may not have any effect whatsoever right these all of these techniques have a certain dosage level at which they are effective right so we think about like when you think about like meditation you know training in in Buddhist circles for example you know these techniques or tools for awakening, but like how were these actually practiced? You know, they were practiced by like full-time monastics, right? Meditating for like hours a day, right? So, so you're doing doing like 15 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day. like is that going to is that going to actually produce the effects that are being advertised like I mean maybe maybe for you somehow you're wired up in a way that you just do 20 minutes of vasha meditation a day and suddenly you're having the the a deep awakening experience but but most likely not um so you know so so part of the so initially the initial problem is dabbling right um then then there's the problem of like people like diving in and being like fully committed to a particular tradition and really like really doing it. Um, but maybe you have, so if you do that and you're doing, let's say, like I was just describing like serious meditation, a couple hours a day, you're doing that for, you know, decades like you said, and not getting anywhere. I think it's it's likely or it's possible, let's say, that um you you've chosen the wrong um thread for your own natural configuration. That's interesting. I I want to I want to give a personal example of this. Here's another place where maybe my own story might be might be useful. Um so when I first got into Buddhist meditation the first the first kind of serious spiritual structured spiritual practice when I was in my 20s was vipashna you know terabata Buddhist kind of vipashna meditation um and I got very into it and was doing I was I did a lot of silent 10-day retreats in a row you know just multiple um ve very very kind of deeply into that for a period of about um four four or five years Um I had some kind of in initially the first first retreat I did I had sort of like an interesting kind of experience. I don't wouldn't call it an awakening experience but that certainly there was some power there that I could see and it got me sucked into it or got me like drawn into it. I really wanted to sort of experience the kind of awakening potential of this practice and I I all I did for four or five years was make myself miserable. I I you know it made me um it it it whether it was my approach to it or it was kind of the environments that I was in or whatever it just it just didn't actually produce any of the awakening. But what it did produce was a sense of striving, a sense of disconnection, a sense of not um uh not really kind of like being in the world, not being able to talk to other people, which all of which I perceived as sort of like negative sort of um you know, undesirable, moving in an undesirable direction. And I just was I just was sort of, you know, um confused about all of this. Um and and and then I had the opportunity to spend um the summer at a at a at a different style of Buddhist temple. Um and and there one of the monks just just advised me, "Oh, well, it it if you know, you're having this frustrating experience, just just just drop that all of that practice and do this other practice instead." And taught me this um loving kindness meditation practice of just spreading kindness to other beings and so forth. So, so I did that instead again like multiple hours a day doing that practice cuz I was sort of like wanting to approach this in a more intensive way. But anyway, after after doing that for wasn't even a month um doing this kind of like ma ma baba style practice just you know loving kindness practice I was like you know like um having huge experiences of like oneness and interconnection uh you know just like all sorts of like very transformative what I would call awakening experiences according to my definition. Um and and the way I interpret that is to say that my oneness thread was primed was was more primed for opening than my emptiness thread. So I was like beating my head against this emptiness thread practice for years not getting anywhere. Do this oneness thread practice for like a couple weeks and I'm I'm you know I'm having an awakening experience. Um I think I think we're all like that. I think we're configured in certain ways that are individual and and one person might take to the emptiness thread really easily. Another person might it really might be all about the energy thread. Another person you know possibly has more than one thread that they can work with. And what we need to do is just discover our kind of like natural talents and dispositions. And I and I talk about it's a little bit like, you know, when you have kids and you're like, I don't know what this kid's going to be interested in. Like, so you take them to piano lessons and to dance lessons and to volleyball practice and to swim team and to, you know, this that and the other because you don't know what they're going to be good at and then suddenly they discover what they're good at and they love it and they and they dive into it and that's what they that's what they have joy doing, right? So, if you're if you're only going to teach, you know, you're going to insist that your kid has to play the violin and they're you're going to force them to take violin lessons, you know, maybe they're good at the violin, maybe they're going to have joy out of that, but m but maybe not, right? So, maybe they're they're actually really a swimmer. Um, and you're just forcing them to do violin. you're I think we're doing something similar to ourselves in spirituality when when we when we choose based on our ideas, based on what our friends are doing, based on some other kind of like Yeah. Yeah. This this teacher has the highest hits on YouTube. Yeah. So so therefore they must be the best. So therefore I'm going to dive into that teaching. Right. Yeah. and you're not actually following or or trying to discover your own configuration, your own natural configuration and talents, right? So, you're gonna you're gonna be playing the violin for hours a day for decades when really you're actually, you know, your your your your dharma is to become a you know, a swimmer or a gymnast or I don't know, a painter or whatever. Um, right? So, one person's dharma is not the is not everybody's else's dharma. Right? So dharma meaning like your path or your your you know your your um you know your your yeah your path or your way. Uh so it's important to recognize your own calling, your own calling, your own um cuz maybe people can be practicing for years but not because of their own calling and that's why they're not getting spirituality. You're called to spirituality but you're in the wrong genre. That's interesting perspective. Mhm. So yeah. So right, it's my perspective. That's right. So I'm I'm I'm just sharing kind of my observations based on, you know, my own experience, based on my, you know, readings and understandings of traditions, based on conversations with people. Um I I I would say your your question was how what would I advise people when they're when they I would say change it. Change it up. Um Oh, I love it. Yes. you know, find find something totally different. And what what the the multi-dharma kind of approach or or the you know, the the lamp onto yourself also has this approach. Um what it what it advocates is, you know, like, okay, so I understand, oh, I've been really involved in a in a in a in a emptiness style practice for the last, you know, several decades, but there's these other options out there. Let me try, let me go dive into for a little while and see what it's like to do, you know, energy thread practice or to do a psyche thread practice or to do a, you know, oneness thread practice and let me just dive into that and see if see how I feel about it. See if it works for me. And and um yeah, and and there's an art to it, right, of like discernment of your own kind of inner guidance about what is working and what's not working. And you know, you do have to sort of like trust your own compass when you're sort of navigating this territory. What what's going to be what's going to be fruitful for you? I I I think that's important to empower people to have their own um inner guidance and their and and to to learn how to listen to that and to learn how to trust that and to learn how to and and empower people to listen to their own guidance and not be sort of like blinded by traditions and gurus and other kinds of noise. um when you're looking to get started with this sort of practice that that's that's all what lamp unto yourself is about is like how to do that. How to how to find the right fit and how to how to trust yourself when you find it, how to jump in. And I and I think that this is one of the biggest difficulties because of the um there is no trusting yourself until you feel safe and you know that this whatever is calling from here is right for you. So there there's a lot of doubting going on in the search like not being able to hear your own voice, not to be able to hear your own yes or no because we haven't been trained for that. We've been trained to follow who knows best. And that's one of the biggest difficulties finding finding and recognizing that trust that life is going to take you where you need to go. already Mr. K. Yeah, I agree there. And and but there's like a there's like a razor's edge or like a like a threading the needle that needs to take place because on on the one hand you're right. So we we are trained by, you know, the messaging of the culture, the messaging of spiritual communities, right? I mean, we we're I I I don't think it's too extreme to say that a lot of these spiritual communities are just fundamentalist, right? They're like this that our way is the one and only way that you can experience awakening. Everybody else is deluded. Everybody else is, you know, sinful. Everybody else is like, you know, I don't watch these channels. That discourse that discourse is everywhere. That discourse is everywhere. I mean that's what that's the way you know you know most of these religious traditions operate. I think it's the way a lot of gurus are you know maybe they're not using exactly the words that I that I just said but there's like kind of like a superiority our traditions better than others and you know and that that's that's you know rampant. Um so I so I think it's it's it's natural that people might doubt themselves and when the whole teaching is about overcoming the self right there there's also the the the kind of the idea that oh I I shouldn't trust myself. I I have to place myself into a under a guru who's going to teach me what what's best. Right? So there's there's there's a lot of pressure in that direction. On the other hand, there's there's also pressure coming from the sort of like narcissistic, you know, like self-absorbed egotism, right? on the other side which is like oh well I you know uh I'm I'm I'm the author of my own spirituality and so I'm going to say this that and the other and I'm going to make these choices you know that are best for me can very easily lead over into kind of the opposite of that right which is a inflation of the of the self and and um you know narcissist narcissism and things like that too. So there's sort of like, you know, a cliff on either side and you have to walk this narrow path, but of of authenticity of really authentically

authentically attuning to what is what is best for me here. Um, you know, and it it's a it's a it's a it's a challenge. And sometimes your what your mind is telling you or what feels comfortable right to you is is sometimes that's that's right and sometimes that's wrong. Right? So so how do you develop that kind of inner compass that inner guidance um where you're really sort of trusting your intuition and your gut and you know not getting confused by the messaging on either side. It's a I think it's a challenge when you're starting out. I think it's a I think there's a real challenge there. Um, but I do think once you once you hook into the right um thread that is a good fit for you, you just know it, right? It's like, you know, the kid the kid who's going to grow up to be Picasso like knew it when he started painting that that was the right thing for, right? Like like there's no way I I don't know anything about Picasso's biography, but like you know what I Like if somebody's destined to really really sort of like click with something, they're going to know it when they find it, right? They're going to they're going to feel joy and connection and they're going to be drawn into it. It's going to feel like I was built to do this, right? This is this is this is um you know somehow this is who I am like to to to go in this direction, right? So there's something like that that happens with spirituality when you click into the right thing. It's like, oh, this makes sense of everything I've always thought and felt. And it's just it's just a natural fit. There's no kind of feelings of um you know, doubt and shame or or or you know, there's no feelings of like um you know, um questioning whether or not this is right for me or or or you know, just you just kind of click with it and you're like you're like, "Oh, this is it." And it's effortless. It's I mean I mean you still you still might be doing a lot of practice, right? But it's effortless. It just is just like joy, right? when you click in with it. Yeah. I can I can confirm that from experience. Yeah. It's why those Olympic swimmers can wake up at 5 in the morning and go swim in a freezing cold pool. You know, it's not it's not always easy, but but but they're it's like Oh, you find your juice basically. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Juicy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's what I'm trying to do is help people find their juice. Oh, that's nice.

You know when you squeeze an orange really hard, what happens? The juice comes out, right? So to find the juice, we just need to squeeze people really hard so we see what comes out. Yeah. Maybe I'm saying you got to pick the right fruit though, right? Because you if you're if you're trying to get the juice, but you're going around squeezing I don't know what cucumbers, right? It may not Well, it will be cucumber juice. It's not going to result in orange juice. Oh. But you know what what's inside that comes out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So um yeah. So that's that's what that's what um multi dharma is about is about um helping people connect either at the beginning right with lamp yourself or when you know after being immersed in a kind of awakening process and things are really starting to click then you know multiharma that book is is um um yeah it's kind of how how to continue to squeeze even more juice we just squeeze ourselves

right and what is the website can You just stealing a website. Uh it's multidharma.net. So um oh the word multidharma is right here. Sonet after it. Okay. And uh the book the book is there. The PDF um of the manuscript is there. Like I said the book will come out in uh in next year. So it's 20 in 2026. Um but the um the m the materials are there. There's some kind of um you know the book is there but there's also some materials that are sort of like summary you know quick quick sort of like you know um organized in an easy to capture way so you can kind of you know see more details about the threads and so forth. Um and then I've done I'm putting all the interviews that I've done about multidharma there as well kind of separate out between more beginning level more kind of like advanced level you know depending on where people are either getting started or or want to go deeper. So all of that's all of that's there on the website. I think it's really useful to know that there are all these different threads and we need all of them. It's not just one. Well, we can go to a certain point on one and then there's something else opening up and something else opening up and they all are valid and they need to be explored otherwise it can get just stuck in this um how to say some place or pitfall or um trap there are many places that people get stuck and yeah it's good to know that there is a way out and it's not the only the only way Are they ways to see and experience? Yeah, it's it's very similar to what we were just talking about when people are starting out and sort of like um needing to find the thing that they click into. So I I think quite similarly to that when when people are in like an authentic awakening process um you know it can be that you've had this this shift in identity and perception of worldview you know on one of the threads let's say you know you're doing advita style inquiry practice and suddenly you have the you know the the the flip from oh I'm pierced to like oh I I I see that I'm awareness like I experience myself as awareness right I I everything is kind of within this container of awareness or something like that um so you've had you've had a shift like that you you you are deepening into that proc into that thread right so realizing now not only the self but also time and space and all these other concepts are starting to dissolve evolve and you're seeing like more and more as part of you know this more and more is like um deconstructed or deified or whatever you want to say um and let's say at a certain point you know some kind of um I don't know re like traumatic kind of past experience um comes up your your your emptiness style training is going to encourage you to approach the the trauma or the kind of negative um um memories or whatever you're experiencing in the same way as you've deconstructed everything else right oh this is just um you know passing phenomena that's arising within awareness I'm not identifying with that I am I am awareness and this is just you know sensations whatever right Right. And and so you're just kind of like like sticking to your emptiness style practice. Um yeah, that that is potentially, you know, that kind of bypassing is potentially going to just kind of like get you stuck in one spot. Um whereas shifting gears there to say in this case more of a psyche thread style approach that is going to it's going to it's going to approach this traumatic material in a entirely different way. It's not going to be about seeing the deer reunification or the seeing the the unreality of it. It's going to be about, you know, d really delving into it and really kind of exploring how that conditioning is operating. Um, you know, but but there's there's plenty of really skillful approaches within the psyche thread kind of like family of practices to do that with. um just kind of like pivoting over to some oh now is the time in my awakening where I see that the psyche thread has opened up and and and there are other tools that can be used skillfully to manage that thread. Um similarly an energetic kind of experience. A lot of people are they're doing their emptiness style whether it's meditation or self inquiry or whatever and then they have like a condalini opening and suddenly it's like you know this is very difficult. There's all kinds of like you know mental and physical symptoms and so on and so forth. Well there's plenty of practices within the energy thread style traditions that are very skillful and very helpful with dealing with energetic stuff. And if you just get if you just kind of only know the emptiness thread practices, you're going to try to sort of like keep approaching this phenomena with this only this one kind of tool. Yeah, they deconstructed. Yeah. It's like Yeah. Like I I've used this hammer to hammer in all these nails and now I get to a screw and I'm trying to I'm trying to hammer it in when you know, hey, did you ever hear of a screwdriver? Right. So, it might just be useful to kind of like go do some exploration of these other threads. And they're going to require a different approach. They're going to require you to sort of like like oscillate away from seeing the emptiness of things, seeing, you know, deconstructing, deifying, seeing the illusory nature of things. It's going to require you to set that down. Set that tool down for a bit. Pick up a different tool that that takes the phenomena Seriously, it takes the that takes those phenomena as real and and works with them in a certain way. Doesn't mean that the emptiness style realizations aren't still aren't valid. It doesn't mean they're not still available. Those tools are still there. It's just this braiding process that I was talking about earlier. Emptiness thread was on top for a while. Now the energy stuff's on top for a while. And you have to like work with that. And oh now the psyche thread comes on top. Now it's time to pivot to those kinds of practices, right? Oh, now it's back to emptiness. Oh, now it's oneness. Right? Whatever is arising in the moment, right? Using the tools that that address best that particular kind of phenomena. So I'm advocating like an integrated toolkit that you've collected tools from different traditions to to bring to bear on whatever is happening in the moment, right? Use skillfully navigating between different tools. So some traditions have multi-thread have multiple threads and they they have within the tradition they have tools for for more than one thread. So some traditions do that other traditions just have one thread that they work with. couple rare traditions work with all four threads. So, but but but we have access to all of this material out there. All of this knowledge, all of these workshops, all of these books, all of these podcasts, all all of this stuff is like a lot of it is fully available. Um, and we can we can draw we can build our own toolkit, right? That's right. by combining these things and and have tools that allow us to be able to do this kind of braiding process that I'm talking about um in a skillful way that leads us to continue to deepen and leads us to continue on this awakening kind of journey leads us you know to be able to you said pitfalls you know to be able to kind of navigate these pitfalls and keep keep keep moving forward right you're going through the jungle sometimes you need a machete sometimes Sometimes you need to swing a rope to swing across the, you know, the the chasm. You know, sometimes you need a shovel to dig something up, right? So, you want to keep going, not getting stuck in one of these pitfalls, right? You want you just need to use different tools as you go. Yeah. And also, you know, if you used the machete and now it's not useful, you don't just say that it's wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's wrong maybe for a joke, but it's not wrong. Exactly. I need to throw it out. Yeah, even if on YouTube there's some people saying, you know, machete uh vendors are saying like the machete is the only tool you'll ever need. This is the best tool ever. All the other tools, you know, are not as good as the machete, right? That even though there's people saying that online, you don't have to actually or even if those traditions are 2,000 years old, you do not have to listen to them. Um because you can you can understand that that you know all four threads are valid. All four threads, all four. What comes to mind is like if you look at the crystal, you can look at the crystal from from different angles and it will look different, but you're still looking at the same Yeah. Yeah. crystal at some point. It's like, oh, okay. That's right. This view or that view or that view, it's that's right. and and multiidharma, you know, the book where it goes is from like introducing the threads separately to this braiding process where you're oscillating between the threads, right? however many threads you have. You might not have all four. Like some people just have three or two or whatever, but like whatever threads you've got, you're oscillating between them and eventually coming to the place where you see exactly like you said, oh, these are all just like facets or dimensions or aspects of like the same thing just seen through these different lenses. So what I what I previously thought like, oh, oneness is so different than emptiness, it actually turns out they're just sort of like different takes on the same thing, right? Um different different frameworks, different perspectives um on this kind of like multi-dimensional integrated sort of reality. Um so so you know I I in in the book I call that integration. And so there there's like an arrival at sort of a more integrated understanding that the oh all of these tools are are all of these tools, perspectives, identities, worldviews, ways of perceiving. All of these are kind of like um optional uh viewpoints or do they all lead to love? Do they all sorry do they what all lead to love?

So if you're sitting in the in the oneness in the oneness thread um if your oneness thread is really kind of like deep and and and and that's like your principal thread let's say um yeah you might see like oh all of these things are actually love. But if you're sitting in the emptiness thread and that's your your primary thread, you're going to be you're going to be like, "Oh, all of these are actually ultimately just illusurary, right? If you're sitting in the energy thread, you're going to say like, oh, all of these different things actually come down to just, you know, um creative potential or dynamic potential for reality to show up however it is in every moment is just the aliveness of the moment, you know, manifesting as this that or the other. If you're sitting in the psyche thread, you're going to see that, oh, all of this is just like produced by my own unconscious conditioning. Um, and and so the the kind of maybe I should have said this earlier, it's the starting point for all of my work, but it's the answer to this question here. um the the kind of the the the common theme in all of my work um on this both books, everything I'm I'm talking about is a um it's a a on my part a shift out of talking in terms of ontology

and preferring phenomenology. So these are these are just like academic ways of saying or like fancy philosophical terms for saying I am not interested in what it actually is or what is real like pinning down a definition of ultimately what is real that's doing ontology and that's what that's what pretty much every spiritual tradition I know of is is interested in doing right Oh, ultimately it's all this and whatever whatever this is is is an ontology, right? So ultimately it's all love. Ultimately it's all um empty. Ultimately it's all energy. Ultimately it's all unconscious, you know, or or conditioning or whatever that whatever that is, ultimately it's all blank. You're doing ontology. I'm not interested in ontology. Uh because ontology is is is is always pinning down the viewpoint. It's always pinning it down to one thing. I know what it is. Put it on the shelf. Right. Yeah. It's collapsing it down to one thing. I've now know I now know what that is. So in in full integration, what you can see is oh like pinning it down on any one thing, pinning it down to any one of these threads, pinning something down to any one definition, pinning down an ontology is just another viewpoint. It's just another kind of like filter that I'm applying on reality. I'm I'm It's just another um um idea. It's just another thought. Um and so ontology the project of ontology itself is a is is just the mind trying to produce an explanation. Um and that can be set down and instead what I talk about is phenomenology which is just like what do things seem like right? Instead of what it what is it is what is it what does it seem like? So it seems like all of reality can be collapsed down into emptiness. It seems like it can be collapsed into love. It seems like it can be energy. It seems like reality can be just the conscious unconscious conditioning manifesting. Um, it it it seems like reality could be all of those things. It seems like reality can be none of those things. It seems like it seems like it seems like it seems like just constantly referring back to what it seems like instead of what it is. Um, that's that's my kind of like um like basic orientation for all the work that I'm doing. It's like let's not worry about what it actually is. Let's just talk about what it seems like. Um, so yeah. So that's that's in my language is I don't know. It's a mystery. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The the I don't know. Um there's there's the I don't know. So, so, so I talk about this in the in the book as well like like full integration is like um you know understanding all of these perspectives of the threads like having having woven all of them together in your own way in a way that sort of like sees the multi-dimensionality of everything that sees you know that it can be this, it can be that, it can be simultaneously both, it can be neither, right? These are all sort of like that's like full integration. Um and then I I talk about what's called thread release. Um which is sort of the the arrival at the place where after you've seen all of that you can just sort of realize like oh um I don't have to know like I don't have to pin anything down. I don't have to have a position on it. Um, I don't have to engage in spiritual practices in order to achieve a certain kind of perspective on things. I I I it's kind of like I've seen it all. I understand that none of it is ultimately pinned downable and the whole thing can just kind of be let go of. Um, sort of like pinned downable. Unpinned downable. Unpinnownable. Yes. I got that from somebody, I'm sure. Um but yeah, you can't pin it down, right? You can't you can't um Yeah. You can't define it. You can't you can't um Yeah. So, so after after trying to pin everything down for long enough, you realize you you just sort of the whole project of trying to pin things down is seen as being superfluous and oh, you know, this which means really ultimately, you know, at a certain point the whole spiritual project, the whole notion of awakening, the whole experience of awakening, the whole the whole thing, all of it, it turns out, in the end,

was an effort to pin things down in a certain way that can be let go of. Um, and so at that point, it's like the whole thing just kind of evaporates. Um, so I so in the book I talk about that as being the the release of the threads, right? It's the you you've worked your way down the threads, you've braided them, you've integrated them, and now you just let them go. And then it's just just human experience. Yeah. It's just just uh feeding the cats going to the show. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Um it's the the I if we want to it's difficult to kind of talk about this in ways that are um going to make sense to people that aren't sort of like at this point. And so it's not a rejection of spiritual interpretations because that would be a perspective. That would be a position. Like pushing away the threads is not what I mean by releasing the threads. Like holding the threads is not the is not what I'm talking about. And pushing away the threads is not what I'm talking about either. But there just comes a point where you realize you've been clutching the threads, you know, and or having opinions about reality, having having interpretations of reality constantly, sort of like needing to make these um the these judgments about reality in certain ways, and you just realize that you don't need to do that anymore. So, it's not it's neither grabbing it nor pushing it away. It's just sort of like, no. accepting, no rejecting, just yeah, it's kind of a not not really thinking or caring about it anymore. It's kind of it's not even really registering anymore. It's not even really like on the radar anymore. Not cuz I pushed it off the radar, but just cuz it's just faded away. It significance has faded away. Its meaning, its meaningfulness has faded away, and it's no longer kind of like on the agenda anymore. And you just get on Yeah, like you said, get on with life. um uh going to work, feeding the dogs, doing the thing. Um and and there isn't uh there isn't this sort of like Yeah. the spiritual yearning, spiritual project seems to have sort of untangled itself and fallen away. Yeah, that's beautiful. I love how this conversation just came to the point of of this and yeah, it ate itself. Like it waved itself and then it ate itself and now we can happily finish it and yeah, we're always listening.

They take what they need to take from it. Well, thank you so much. It was such a honor and pleasure to talk to you. Yeah. Wonderful to talk with you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, this was fun. This was fun. Yes. And thank you everyone for watching and for listening. And if you like to get in touch with Pierce, you can go on his website, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's um so multidharma.net that has uh a place where you can put in your email address and I and I will you you will only get a very occasional announcement of new things that are on the website or when the book comes out or when there's something like a new interview or something like that. Um so I don't I don't do I don't do any marketing. I don't do any kind of like um I don't I don't run any workshops. There's nothing to I mean I you can buy the book but that's all you can buy from me. So, um there's no there's no sort of like um promotional emails or anything like that. So, people just want to like follow the work, they're they're welcome to drop the email address there. Um uh I I at the moment I I'm doing some um Zoom uh gatherings that are also just sort of free discussion groups for multidharma if you're interested. Um so that you can also get information about that. um uh by dropping your email into that subscription. Um yeah, so I'm I'm just sort of trying to get the ideas out there. there's nothing there's nothing to buy. But um but yeah, if people are interested in in getting more information, connecting that way, I I don't do any kind of like personal one-on-one kind of um um guidance or anything like that, but if you're interested in in connecting through the the groups or or um you know, reading more, being alerted to interesting new interviews, then yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Such a pleasure. And thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Bye for now.