Shining the Light on Light Therapy with Jacob Liberman

In this Episode

• [01:31]Jacob talks about light therapy and color therapy so listeners can understand what the two things are and why they’re important. He also dives into the question of what light itself is.
• [03:54]Jacob started working with light and light therapy in 1971, when he was an optometrist and vision scientist.
• [10:21]We learn that Jacob’s main focus is to bring people into a state where they are more comfortable with more of life, leading to less stress and more contentment.
• [11:21]Most of us are allergic to being uncomfortable and want everything our way, Jacob points out.
• [16:38]We hear more about how our discomfort with certain colors can reveal blockages in our energy pathways.
• [20:56]Stephan shares his experience with light and color as therapeutic healing modalities.
• [22:08]Jacob explains the reason that we have two eyes, and how this relates to reading or doing work on the computer.
• [27:50]Stephan had pretty severe myopia until he got LASIK several years ago to treat it. Now, he has noticed his myopia returning. Jacob then talks about a dramatic experience with his own vision.
• [34:20]In a particular episode of Get Yourself Optimized, Stephan got the concept that fulfillment comes before desire.
• [35:08]If desire is a prerequisite for fulfillment, then we will become habituated or addicted to desire, because we’ll need it in order to feel fulfilled.
• [37:50]What’s the one-minute exercise that people can do a few times a day to help with vision?
• [43:50]Jacob had panic attacks for six and a half years, but got rid of them using the techniques he has been describing.
• [46:07]Stephan works to evolve meta-awareness, or awareness of his awareness. Jacob then digs deeper into this concept, elaborating on what Stephan has said.
• [53:02]Jacob uses the example of a TV to explain his point in more detail, clarifying that just as we’re not the TV we’re watching, the observer is not the activity that is being noticed occurring in the mind.
• [60:46]What Jacob has been saying about direct experiences rings true for Stephan, who offers an example.
• [64:13]Jacob digs into something that Stephan said about “truth without mercy.”
• [67:30]Jacob’s next-step advice for listeners is to always say yes to the opportunity to say “thank you” or “I love you.”

Jump to Links and Resources

You may have heard of color therapy but how about light therapy? It’s a healing modality that pardon upon needs more light shined on it and that’s exactly what we’re gonna do with today’s guest, Dr. Jacob Liberman. Thought leaders from Deepak Chopra to Eckhart Tolle have lauded Dr. Liberman’s insights about light, vision, and consciousness. His newest book, Luminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living reveals how light guides our every step so we may fulfill our reason for being. Welcome to episode number 139. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, now on with the show. Jacob, it’s great to have you on the show.

‏‏It’s wonderful to be here with you today, Stephan.

‏‏Let’s talk about light therapy and color therapy a bit so our listeners are aware of what those two things are, those two modalities, and why they’re important.

‏‏I think the first thing to recognize is that part of the universe called the Solar System. Solar System essentially means that everything is or derived from light. Essentially, one of the most important things to recognize is that everything within our Solar System is created from invisible energy called light or photons. This is probably why in the Bible, they speak of God as light, and why quantum physicists relate the ground of reality, the fundamental energy from which everything emerges as light. Light is something that is fundamental to our existence and to the existence of all matter. The renowned quantum physicist, David Bohm, once said all matter is frozen light. Everything that we experience as solid is actually something that is transmuted from this energy we call light which is very interesting because everyone thinks they know what light is. You look outside and it’s bright then it’s light. But light is actually totally invisible. If you went into outer space which is filled with light, it will be as black as black could be. What we experience is not actually light, it’s brightness. It’s something that we perceive as brightness because of the makeup of our perception called consciousness. How that actually occurs, no one actually knows.

One of the things that I’d like to share with our listeners is that light is inseparable from life. Not just that we need light to exist in the same way as plants and animals, but light is the formless energy from where the formed expression, what we call life, comes from. This connection is very profound. That’s really what the heart of my work is about. I started working with light and light therapy in 1971. Initially, used different portions of the light spectrum, what we perceived as color, in the treatment of different conditions. At that time, I was an optometrist and a vision scientist so I was interested in issues having to do with seeing and vision. That’s the way that I was utilizing it at the time. However, I had a few epiphanies in the late 70s and came to the realization that there was a very interesting connection between the experiences in our life and the colors of the rainbow. What I began to recognize as I ask my patients questions and monitored their physiology while they looked at what we perceived as different colors is that people had colors that they liked or felt comfortable with, and others that they seemed to recoil from.

Light is inseparable from life.

As I investigated this further, I began to realize that the colors that we feel receptive to or we feel some connection with are related to the experiences in our life that we embrace easily. But the colors that create discomfort or we recoil from or in some way make us feel at unease have to do with unresolved issues, something that may have occurred early in life or something that we may be totally unaware of that maybe in the matrix of the DNA of our lineage. But something that we’re not yet able to embrace. Those pieces of life that we’re unable to embrace are the aspects that continually come up, they trigger us, if you will. The reason that they trigger us or they come into our awareness is that once we become comfortable with the aspects of life that used to be uncomfortable, something expands for us. There is a greater acceptance for more of the life experience which essentially means that there’s less going on in our experience of life that is upsetting or turbulent for us. I started working with color therapy initially utilizing it as a healing modality for conditions. Then I started utilizing it homeopathically. In other words, I began to notice which colors a person was uncomfortable with and would gradually give them very small amounts of it so that they could gradually expand their ability to be with it without having a significant emotional reaction to it.

What I noticed is that as we become receptive to more of the light spectrum, we become receptive to more of life spectrum. That there was a direct connection not only with the colors we disliked and unresolved psycho-emotional issues, but it was also a connection with the colors we disliked and where certain conditions would end up in our body. What I have uncovered in the 1970s, I had read that the body had seven major energy centers that in the East they referred to as chakras, and that these chakras were associated not only with states of health but states of our evolvement, states of our consciousness, our personality, I didn’t find any science to validate this so I didn’t pay much attention to it. But as I started working with color, and I started asking not only how people responded to colors whether they were comfortable or uncomfortable with them. But then when I started asking them where they had issues in their body, did they have lower back pain, did they have bladder issues, did they have neck aches or dental issues. When I started asking them about that, I found a very high correlation between the colors that they disliked and the parts of their body associated with those colors. That’s where the condition seem to reside.

Over the years of working with tens of thousands of individuals, I discovered that by utilizing color in a very gentle and therapeutic way, as people became comfortable with these colors that they used to be uncomfortable with, not only did they find that they became less triggered in life by emotional issues that used to be sensitive for them, but their health and wellness improved dramatically. It was almost as though when a certain color was uncomfortable for us, something we recoiled from, on some level we blocked that portion of the light spectrum from entering our being. Part of our body, if you will, a part of our evolvement remained in the dark in the same way as if you took a plant and you put it in a closet. It might grow but it would dwarf. It wouldn’t really develop fully. I started seeing empirically the same thing with patients and clients that I was working with over the years. I utilized this approach now with many of the clients that I work with to, aside from trying to assist them with different conditions that they may have, my main focus is to essentially bring them into a state where they are comfortable with more of life so that in general, they get stressed less easily than they used to. There’s more contentment. The whole purpose of my work is to come to a place where we gradually become more and more accepting of life and less and less reactive of it.

‏‏I like that a lot. This idea that the happiness that you get out of life is directly proportional to how comfortable you are with being uncomfortable. That’s something I aim for is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable so that I can experience being outside of my comfort zone, and that’s where, of course, all growth happens. I wanna spend as much time as there is possible, as much as I can stand.

‏‏Well, you know something, you hit upon something that’s very, very profound. Most of us are allergic to being uncomfortable. We want things our way, so much of today’s talk about creating your own reality and so on is so often related to the fact that we want to change the subject of life with like, as my parents used to say, “Can’t we just change the channel or change the subject of life?” What I’ve noticed, because my background initially was in science, and medicine, and so on, is that all processes that are fundamental to life, whether it be physics, biology, chemistry, any biological functions, in order to expand, transform or what you could call evolve. For things to expand, you need a disturbance. You need a purge of bathing agent. Something that disrupts the status quo and allows something to regroup. When things don’t go our way, we must have done something wrong. But what I’m suggesting that I’ve seen in all of these different facets of science and even in life is that disruption or perturbation is actually a sign that lets us know we’re actually in the right place, and that we’re moving in the right direction.

For things to expand, you need a disturbance.

To give you an example, a lobster as it’s growing, the inside of the lobster, the portion that many people eat and so on, it grows but the shell doesn’t grow. When a lobster has gotten to the point that the shell is too small, it starts to feel irritation on its skin. What the lobster does is it goes and hides under a rock or somewhere where predators won’t notice it. It leaves its shell and then it remains in this protected state until it grows a larger shell, something that is more appropriate for where it is at this time. The lobster does that over, and over, and over again in its life cycle. Humans, we do the same thing. When something perturbing occurs in our life it’s because something, in many cases, is reformulating. It’s reorganizing itself. When we put our clothing in our washing machine, it isn’t the water and the soap that gets the clothes clean, it’s the agitation. That’s why we use the expression ‘it all comes out in the wash’.

In life, getting comfortable with things that used to upset us is a great piece that has to do with our evolvement. Over time, what happens is that what we used to call discomfort actually just becomes something that becomes a part of life because there is discomfort, illness, and things that occur in life that just occur. No one feels comfortable when they lose a lover, or lose their money, or have a sudden transformation in their life that was unexpected. All of us are going to experience a certain degree of discomfort in life. Once we begin to recognize that this is a part of life that occurs not necessarily because we did something wrong or we made the improper choice but because life is literally providing us a human or experiential homeopathic remedy that awakens something in us because this is the precise moment when we can finally see it. What I’ve seen about the intelligence of life, just as we say ‘God doesn’t give you more than you can handle’. Usually, life provides us the curriculum that we need, the precise experiences, at just the right time when we’re finally able to appreciate it, or see it, or embrace it in some way.

Life provides us the curriculum that we need – the precise experiences at the right time.

‏‏You said earlier that the colors that are associated with different chakras, if we are not comfortable with certain colors, that those correlate with the chakra colors that could reveal blockages in our own energy pathways?

‏‏Yeah. In the book, I speak about several things, a lot of things in the book. I speak about that for instance when we encounter something that we’re allergic to in life, see I relate these reactions to colors, and these incidences that occur in our life that trigger us as allergens. Because when we run into a person or a situation that we’re uncomfortable in, we have psychophysiological reactions just like if you run into poison oak, or something. They may not be quite that acute but we have an allergic-like reaction. The thing that I have noticed is that color is something that’s extremely primal for us. To give you an idea, we think that our eyes see what we consider these forms. Right now, I’m looking at a window, and I see trees, and the sky. My sense is that’s what the world looks like to me. But when I began looking at this very deeply, what I’ve discovered scientifically is that the human eye is actually capable of sensing and responding a single photon of light which is the cutting-edge of quantum mechanics.

What I’m saying is our systems are designed to detect and respond to the formless before it transmutes into form, in other words, we are being provided very, very sensitive guidance all of the time. Sometimes we feel something or we sense something we say, “Gee, I just had a feeling about something.” All of a sudden we follow that and we say, “Oh my god, how did that happen?” All of us have had those experiences of all of a sudden someone that we know enters our awareness, we feel a strong impulse to call them, and they say, “Oh, Stephan. I was just thinking about you.” Well, I had been noticing for years that our entire life is that way. That is not something that occurs once in a blue moon. We are continually receiving guidance, energetic guidance, and I’m not speaking metaphysically right now, I’m speaking scientifically. Our bodies are continually being guided by this energy we call light.

We literally align ourselves with the energy of light to receive its nourishment.

Our receptivity to the spectrum of light which you perceive as the color of the rainbow is very critical to our ability to sense the guidance that we are receiving continually because, for instance, we think that when the sun shines, the plants grow. The average person doesn’t recognize that when the sun rises in the morning, a plant literally, it positions itself to be able to receive the precise amount of light nourishment that it requires for the process called photosynthesis. Humans do precisely the same thing and so do animals. We literally align ourselves with the energy of light to receive its nourishment. The energy we call light is nature’s optimal fuel mix for life. Nothing can grow without light. Our receptivity to it, our ability to allow it into our being is profoundly impactful and inseparable from every aspect of our growth, development, and evolvement as human beings.

‏‏My experience with kind of light and color as a therapeutic or healing modality was pretty interesting. I was not expecting this. I got interviewed by Dr. Helen Irlen on whether I had Irlen Syndrome or not. Are you familiar with Irlen Syndrome?

‏‏Sure, absolutely.

‏‏I’ve actually had her on this podcast. We discussed Irlen Syndrome. It was after I had been diagnosed which is fascinating that I didn’t even realize that I had Irlen Syndrome. I did try to avoid being too much in direct sunlight. It was a bit overwhelming. I wouldn’t get headaches triggered by the light but I would avoid getting too much direct sunlight. I prefer having the shades or blinds to keep my room pretty dark when I was working. I would also get exhausted reading. That’s not normal, apparently. Reading for a period of time would put you to sleep if you’ve got Irlen Syndrome. But you could read for quite a long period of time without getting sleepy if you don’t have Irlen Syndrome.

‏‏Well, there are some pieces of that that I’d like to share with you that I think are important.

‏‏Sure.

The reason we have two eyes rather than one in the center of our head is so that we can have a three-dimensional vision.

‏‏Human beings have two eyes. The reason we have two eyes rather than one in the center of our head is so that we can have a three-dimensional vision. We are designed for a world that’s three-dimensional. Whenever you read or look at a computer, the two eyes which are designed for three-dimensionality are now limited to two-dimensions. The moment that you put something in front of someone’s eyes that blocks that third dimension, you immediately create stress. That stress is measurable in terms of heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response, muscle tensions, and so on. When that occurs, if you have to prolong, which of course we all have had to, because reading, and now computer work, is supposedly the way we learn.

Because of the impact of that prolonged stress visually, because a two-dimensional environment confines our vision which is anatomically, and physiologically designed for three dimensions, when you do that you develop nearsightedness or myopia. If you put animals in a cage where they can’t see beyond a certain point, they become myopic very quickly. If you put a naval personnel into a submarine where the walls of the submarine block their vision from escaping, within weeks they become myopic. That is why nearsightedness and vision deterioration is the biggest health epidemic in the world. Besides the Irlen Syndrome that you mentioned, the main reason that people have difficulty with reading and specifically falling asleep and so on within a short period of time is because it is exceedingly stressful to keep your eyes at near point for prolong periods. We evolved for millions of years looking far away. Keep in mind, we’ve only been reading to the extent we read now for a few hundred years.

Because of that, if you go to any highly developed countries, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Israel, the US, you find that the number of college students that are myopic is probably nearing 90%. If you to go the postgraduate level, it’s above 90%. What we’re beginning to realize is this epidemic of nearsightedness is caused because of visual confinement, working upclose so much of our day, and also because of a deficit of sunlight. We spend more time indoors and less time outdoors. I can very much relate to the experience you’ve had because I was a non-reader growing up. I thought something must be wrong with me because I fall asleep after reading five minutes. When I got into my professional training, I was given some very, very simple visual exercises that I did for about 10 minutes a day, and within three months, I made the dean’s list for the next two years until I graduated. It was a life-changer for me.

Over the years, I’ve worked with more than 10,000 children who had the same kind of issues that you described, and that I experienced, and was able to help them dramatically with an area called vision training. I also incorporated color in a different way than Helen Irlen did. I essentially provided the colors that they weren’t able to receive and when that expanded, their life changed. What I mean by that is they didn’t have to use the colors as filters to look through when they read in order to be comfortable. Once the impact occurred internally, then they were able to regain many of the skills that previously were missing that caused them to have difficulty with vision, and learning, and so on. What I uncovered from all this is that my inspiration, my work was about trying to assist people in finding their maximum potential. What was that place that athletes call as ‘the zone’ that one could step into and how could the use of vision training, how could the use of color, and a certain understanding of what we call awareness or consciousness assist someone in seeing something in a way they had not seen it before so that that awareness became curative.

Nearsightedness and vision deterioration is the biggest health epidemic in the world

‏‏This is pretty mind-expanding right now. I knew that sitting is the new smoking but I did not know that prolonged exposure to two dimensions like reading on the screen or reading from a book is stress-inducing as well. I had severe myopia and then I got Lasik. My myopia is developing again. It’s been six, seven years since my Lasik surgery. I’m getting myopic again.

‏‏How old are you now, Stephan?

‏‏I’m almost 47.

‏‏Well, we’ll speak at some point specifically about that and perhaps some things that you can do because what I didn’t share with you is that I wore glasses. I was nearsighted and had a significant amount of astigmatism. For almost 10 years I wore glasses, I couldn’t drive without them and so on. And then I had a very, very profound experience in 1976. My vision changed instantaneously. But it not only changed, I was seeing 300% better. But the numerical value, in other words, the optical measurements of my eyes which you call the nearsightedness and astigmatism, didn’t change at all. Let me repeat that again because that’s significant.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏I was measurably able to see 300% better on an eye chart. But my prescription had not changed at all. What came from that experience is a realization that we don’t see from the eyes. There is something else that is seeing. The reason I share this with such conviction is that that happened in 1976 and I just turned 70 a few days ago. I have never had a pair of glasses on my face for distance or reading since that day. If I go to the eye doctor, what’s really fascinating is I’m not nearsighted anymore. I’m now a small degree of farsightedness. But I have even more astigmatism than I had back then. When you’re nearsighted, it’s easier to see up close. When you’re farsighted, it’s more difficult, especially at my age. And yet I work all day at a computer, and my eye doctor can’t imagine how it is that I see, as well as I see to pass my driver’s test, and so on. I don’t see the same better than 20/20 that I did 40 years ago, but I see well enough to pass all of my tests, and to be totally comfortable, and to drive a car day or night, or work areas that I have come to know in a very intimate way.

The work that has evolved for many of these direct experiences that I had didn’t come to me because I read them somewhere or somebody told me. They came to me through a direct experience, something that profoundly shifted my life. The new book, Luminous Life integrates current science, clinical experience, and what I call direct experience over the last 40+ years. To speak about things in a very unique new way and the book contains a lot about the process we call presence which is very different than people saying ‘being present’. It speaks about consciousness or awareness in very different kinds of ways. I provide some practical things but not like exercises in the typical which where you think, “Well, if you do something over and over, things will change.” It’s not based on repetition, it’s based on having a revelation. There are certain things I discovered about breathing and stress. I provide little one-minute meditations that people can do many times during the day that don’t interfere with their daily routine. The use of color I’m presenting so that people can do it as a visualization and have the experience that I have noticed over the years, and have the revelation of seeing what is that connection between colors I’m comfortable with and my life.

All of us have the same experience.

And then I provide a very, very simple vision experience that people again can do for just one minute a few times a day that can profoundly change the way they see things and the way they respond to things. I’m excited about this at this stage of my life because what’s become really important to me is the science of life because I realized it’s one thing to be successful in business and all these other things that we were trained were important. But very few of us have that incredibly touching experience of just feeling content, not because something special occurred in life, but because you just feel a fullness. You feel touched in a way that’s hard to experience and to talk about. Here, I’m 70 and I’m experiencing the greatest love of my life on many, many, many levels. I feel very moved just to share this with others because I realized we all have the same experience. All of us have the same experience. Once we realize that we’re all in the same boat, we can all say, “Oh, thank god we’re on the same boat.” I hope that I’ve been able to share a little bit that has been helpful for your listeners.

‏‏Yeah, for sure. There’s this one episode on the show where I interviewed my Kabbalah teacher. Of course, Kabbalah’s all about light and connecting to the light and so forth. One concept that I got from Yehuda is that the fulfillment, which is what you’re describing, presence and fulfillment, and that fullness, ‘fulfillment comes before desire’.

‏‏Oh, absolutely.

‏‏Yeah. People think that desire comes first and then you get to fulfillment. From a linear standpoint that makes sense but it’s not real because if you hadn’t experienced that fulfillment in some other reality or some other existence, some alternate universe or whatever, parallel universe, then how would you know that you wanted it.

‏‏If desire is a prerequisite for fulfillment, then we will become habituated or addicted to desire because we will need that in order to feel fulfilled. In the vision field you hear people saying, “Hindsight is 20/20,” because most of the time, we become aware of the things after they occur, but in actuality, foresight is actually 20/20. We are experiences that we have an experience and then we have an awareness of perhaps why that occurred later in time. Ram Dass, in his first book, Be Here Now, spoke about that instance where experience and awareness are coincident. You are in the center of an experience and seeing it simultaneously. What I came to recognize many years ago is that awareness actually precedes experience. As we begin to gradually notice more, and more of life, we begin receiving these glimpses or the guidance, if you will, from light.

Awareness actually precedes experience.

We have an awareness of things and then later, often they occur and it’s not, “Oh, I created my own reality,” but it’s a very humbling experience because you, once again, uncover the magic of life, and that magic is, I think, what Yehuda was speaking about when he spoke of fulfillment or contentment. It’s the simplicity of recognizing how beautiful it is when someone is caring for you at the restaurant and bringing you your food. I find myself touched by the most ordinary events in life which for me are absolutely extraordinary. Just helping each other. These are the things that have become really tender and nourishing in my life. This new book is just sharing things that I learned, things that I’ve come into contact with, in hopes that if they can be of service to someone, that could be a wonderful thing.

‏‏You mentioned there is a one minute exercise that you can do a few times a day to help with your vision, would you mind sharing that exercise with us?

‏‏Well, that particular exercise requires a little string and a few beads which would be a little more complicated to try to describe without a pictorial representation. But I can share something that has been vital to my life which is this. In the very early 70s, I was introduced to meditation. At the time, I thought meditation was about quieting my mind, because it was on overdrive like so many of our minds. I would do this meditative practice for 20 minutes twice a day and it was incredibly helpful. But then in the late 70s following a sudden and unexpected divorce, I started having panic attacks which I had for 6 ½ years. Sometimes 30 or 40 a day. I was in a really bad shape. I, of course, got very excited about doing my meditation because that was a way that I could bring myself some peace. But that meditation for 20 minutes, when that was over then I would be back in the ‘real world’ again, and I’d be having these panic attacks and unable to really function in my life.

I had to uncover ways to traverse this dark night of the soul that I was in. I took the 20-minute meditation and I transformed it into 21-minute meditations. For instance, let’s say I needed to use the restroom because I needed to urinate, I stopped standing up to do that. I would sit down and while I was there and had nothing to do, I would close my eyes and I just began to notice something very profound. My body was continually expanding and contracting. I used to think that it was because I was breathing. I came to realize that we don’t voluntarily breathe. Something is literally inflating us or inspiring us and then deflating us. I noticed this very primal rhythm where our body is always expanding and contracting, so as long as I was in the restroom, I would just close my eyes and notice that. When I got up in the morning, before I got out of bed, after my eyes open, I would just close my eyes, and I was awake, I will just notice this fundamental angulation. My body blowing up like a balloon, expanding up like a balloon, and then contracting again. I started doing that just before I close my eyes to go to sleep. I began doing that before I ate, after I ate.

My body was continually expanding and contracting.

Then I found that it was really powerful when I drove. I could literally do this with my eyes open, and so I would pull out of my driveway and I knew that this first stop sign was a block away. From the time that I backed out of my driveway until I got to that stop sign, I was just aware of this fundamental rhythm. The body expanding and then contracting, then when I got to the stop sign, I knew that it was going to be three blocks to the traffic signal, so then I would watch this expansion and contraction. Then it was gonna be a little further till I got to the freeway. I would watch the same process. Initially, I was doing it maybe 20 times a day. And then I found that if I just did it even for 10 seconds, it was incredibly powerful. After introducing this awareness expanding process into my life which I did for a few seconds here and a few seconds there, I started noticing that all these little 15 and 20 second intervals started to connect.

My whole day was, aside from the experiences that I was having in life, there was a continual overview, or a witnessing, or awareness of my body expanding and contracting. After years of getting incredible value from that, it really helped me when I was going through difficult times with panic attacks, and emotional issues, and so on. After doing that for years, I realized that this primal rhythm that I was experiencing in my body that I initially thought was me breathing, is going on for all living things, is going on everything in this universe, including the earth itself continually expanding and contracting. I got to see what we call the respiratory cycle is actually the heartbeat of life. It’s the frequency of wellness that is being entrained into all living things. When we encounter some aspect of life that we’re uncomfortable with, the first thing that happens is that frequency of wellness is disrupted and we find ourselves holding our breath or breathing in a very shallow manner. This very simple little one minute or 30-second awareness expanding tool is a life-changer.

‏‏Your panic attacks went away completely from that?

‏‏Yeah. I had them for 6 ½ years. My panic attacks dissipated. My whole life changed. What’s interesting is I don’t do any practice or exercises in the way people think of them. I haven’t for many, many years but this is now an integral part of my life. It’s just something that occurs very naturally that is very much with me. What’s really fascinating is that I’m rarely aware of mental chatter.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏Which is really fascinating for me because when I was going through these panic attacks, I remember being in an aerobics class one day, and I thought I was going crazy. The voice in my head was so loud, and I left the class, and I didn’t know what to do. I ran home. I ran a couple of miles to get home. When I got home, I realized I left my car parked in front of the aerobics studio because I was in such a place where I needed to do something to stop this continual chatter. Well, what I realized is we don’t really need to stop the chatter in the mind. We just need to discover that the only reason we’re aware of it is because something is observing it. As we begin to identify more and more with that part of our humanity that sees from no point of view, that merely notices, but has no desires or commentary associated with it. As that occurs, this noise that we call thinking, that I refer to most of the time as worrying, just seems to subside to a great degree on its own. We no longer associate that with our essence. We realize that our essence is a silent field of awareness. It’s just something that notices.

‏‏One thing that I worked to evolve in my own consciousness is meta-awareness. Awareness of my awareness.

‏‏Right.

‏‏Not just being aware but being aware that not being aware. Kind of like observing the observer. Not just seeing that I have this observer and has a point of view watching over me or from some angle or whatever. But observing that I actually have an observer that’s doing that is pretty powerful.

‏‏There is a key which is when I think of awareness, I refer to it as the final set of eyes, What I mean by that when you describe something that is aware of that which is aware. What I’m speaking about is a final field of eyes. It’s something that notices but it has no point of view. It’s absolute. There is a purity of awareness that I don’t knowhow to describe. But it’s like something settles in to our essence, and again, I don’t have words for this but it’s not the observer within us that changes its observation from the mind thinking to our breath. It’s something that is just aware of all of this all the time. Sometimes when religious people speak of God or godliness. They say, “what we refer to God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.” It’s all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, everywhere at the same time. This which is what I’m describing is something that is a field of awareness. It’s almost as though whatever is noticing, is noticing from everywhere simultaneously.

Again, I don’t know exactly how [inaudible [00:53:37] that has become a very fundamental or primal place. It allows me to have a deep sigh of relief. Again, I don’t know how to speak about this in terms of words, it’s very much something almost beyond an experience. But in doing these little one-minute meditations, I found myself touching into this place and then literally disappearing, the Jacob that I knew, and so on. Something just disappeared and of course, when we think of such things, we think of people living caves, it’s not like that at all. Your life is essentially the same as it’s always been but there’s a sense of peace, of quiescence, something that is very, very touching. You feel very, very ordinary. It’s so humbling. It’s so humbling. My gosh, I just realized we’ve hit 1 ½ hours.

‏‏No, no, no. It’s just 1 hour.

‏‏Oh, you’re right. You’re right. I thought we started earlier. Do you know what’s lovely about this conversation, Stephan? Is that neither one of us have ever met before. Neither one of us knew what was going to occur here and yet within seconds of reaching each other on the phone, a conversation emerged. That conversion had a life of its own and took us both on a journey into what’s truly essential in life. I love the magic of how that occurs all by itself. I’ve come to live my life that way without a new, if you will. When I’m asked to speak somewhere, this has been going for 40 years now. I never prepare anything. Not that preparation is bad. I don’t have any point of view about that but I can no longer do that, because some part of me has no idea what wants to be shared.

That in each moment what’s catching our eye is actually looking for us.

I find that whether I’m having a conversation with a new friend like yourself, or I’m asked to speak in front of a large group of people, it becomes like an intimate conversation with a life of its own. I guess one of the things that I’d look to share that is so important is that we can actually live life that way. That in each moment what’s catching our eye is actually looking for us. It’s the next step of our journey. We so often spend time trying to make things happen, or looking for things, and we don’t realize that the light is actually looking for the eye rather than the eye looking for the light. It is that insight, that guidance, that inspiration which catalyzes this process of moving us in a certain direction in order to fulfill our reason for being. The manifestation or the implementation of things in our life is initiated by an inspiration, something that breathes life into us. That inspiration comes from the intelligence of life guiding us so that we may fulfill our reason for being.

‏‏Very nice, very nice. One thing that came to my mind when you were describing the observer not really having a point of view but just noticing, it reminded of a conversation I had with Sanjay Sabnani on a previous episode where we discussed that I’m not my thoughts and feelings, I’m not my body, I’m not my mind, and therefore, what am I? Wow, that was a really profound conversation. One that a lot of people don’t seem to have. They tend to think of themselves as their thoughts and feelings or they associate their existence as being a brain or a mind. They’re just inhabiting a body. They’re not defined as their body. That’s pretty profound.

‏‏It’s very simple. We all have had the experience of watching our television. We’re aware that the TV screen is 10 or 15 feet away and that we’re sitting on the couch or a chair observing it. When we are observing the television within the mind, the inner chatter and all of that, the only reason we’re aware of it is because something is observing it. Just like we are not the television we’re looking at. The observer is not the activity that is being noticed occurring in the mind. Look at it in a slightly different way. We all go to sleep at night and we have dreams. In our dreams, we can see, we can taste, we can touch, we can feel, our physiology changes depending on the dream, there is even light, and color in our dreams. But there’s no light. It’s dark. What’s going on? What is it that is noticing the dreams? It’s very, very powerful. There is an organization called the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine. It’s one of the first organizations that came about, I think around 1990, that had to do with the integration of scientists and mystics, speaking about all of these things that have become of great interest to science today.

I used to be President of that organization. I was inducted in 2010, shortly after, I became President. The conference was in Colorado, I came back to Maui where I live. About three weeks later, I went to sleep. During the night I began noticing what I initially thought as a dream. I saw myself doing the presidential address for the 2011 ISSSEEM conference. I saw that I was being introduced by my daughter and a close friend of mine. I saw the talk from beginning to end including getting a standing ovation. The next morning when I awoke, oh, let me share that during the night, not only did I notice that but I was aware of my body laying in bed because I was aware of the sounds that were being emitted from my body as I breathe. I was aware of the rising and falling of my chest, and my partner at the time sleeping next to me. It was a very unusual lucid dream. I woke up the next morning and I shared the whole thing with my partner more than once because I was so amazed. Months later, my daughter contacted me and I won’t go through the whole story, but some way or another, her boyfriend ended-up being a speaker at the scientific conference which would normally never accept someone with his background.

Our concepts, our ideas, our thoughts, our beliefs are just theories.

The guy that was supposed to introduce me, who was a former president, got sick the night before and couldn’t make it. I ended up being introduced by my daughter on a personal level and my very dear friend Brian Breiling on a professional level. During the talk which was totally live, I shared this experience. [inaudible [1:03:43] noticed a year earlier. That’s a mind-boggling kind of experience. I have no idea how that occurs but I’ve had enough of these types of occurrences in my 70 years that I realize we understand very, very, very little. Very little. Our concepts, our ideas, our thoughts, our beliefs are just theories. So often the conversation today is about changing beliefs or belief systems. But if you look up the word belief in a thesaurus, you’ll see that as I mentioned before, it means the same as idea, and thought, and theory, and concept. But when you look up the antonym of belief, what’s the opposite of belief, you’ll find a very interesting word, truth. Truth is something that is very different from what we think. This is, perhaps, why when we say ‘I think’ it really means I don’t know. I mentioned the term direct experience earlier in our conversation.

These direct experiences in life where there is awareness but from no point of view, like what I was having during the night about my ISSSEEM talk a year into the future. These direct experiences, they occur once and your life is totally changed. It’s like what happened to me in 1976 with my vision which occurred during a state of meditation. It has now been present in my life for 40 years without having to practice, or exercise, or do something over, and over again. So often we think that repeating something is what sets it into stone or what sets it in place. What I’ve come to realize is that the body, like the universe, works effortlessly. It follows the law of parsimony which means the very least amount of effort for anything to function. It’s highly, highly efficient. If it requires effort to create change, it will require effort to maintain it, and it if requires effort to maintain it over time it will dissipate. It will disappear. We won’t find ourselves doing it because it’s taking effort.

What I find is that the real neuroplastic changes in life are those revelations where you see something or hear something as if for the first time in a way that one has never seen it or experienced it before. The impact is life-changing. That is essentially what I try to share with people based on the experiences that I’ve had and the ways that I have found that perhaps can facilitate one’s ability to see these things. The little practical tools in the book and so on which is just a few of them but they’re quite powerful are just about fine-tuning the visual acuity of awareness. It’s about seeing a new way. What more can I say?

The body, like the universe, works effortlessly.

‏‏Yup, that’s awesome. This idea of direct experience without having to repeat an exercise over, and over, and over again that really rings true for me. I can think of multiple direct experiences that I’ve had that have shaped who I am today. They were inward experiences, for example, during an entrainment where I was getting this energetic work done to me by Donny Epstein.

‏‏Oh, I know Donny very well.

‏‏Yeah. I’m actually gonna have him on this podcast as well. Looking forward to that. I was on the table getting the entrainment by Donny and I had this incredible experience after I was lifted off of the table. I just had this, I guess, direct download from the fabric of creation that I could give these Deekshas which are oneness blessings remotely. I didn’t know that I could do this. I’ve become a Deeksha giver in India previously, a few months earlier to this experience. I get this intuitive, I don’t know, this direct download, that I could do this, and so I blessed all these people while I was laying on the floor in the state of bliss. One of the people, it was somebody I hadn’t thought of pretty much for 15 years. It was somebody who used to work for me, and I had fired him really unceremoniously and not very kindly, and he filed a lawsuit against me which we then settled eventually because I would’ve won, it’s a work at will estate. I was within my rights to fire him like I did. I had my reasons that made sense and all that.

But I did it without mercy. Truth without mercy creates distraction. It’s another concept from Kabbalah. I came with my truth and didn’t have any mercy, and then we had this full protracted legal battle which was cheaper for me to just pay him off to leave than it was to fight and win. My point in all this is this direct experience that I had where I was laying on the floor and giving remote Deekshas, what they’re called, intent Deekshas which I found out several weeks later when I went back to India that it was a real thing, that you could do this without touching the person’s head. One of the people I thought of was this person who I had fired and he had sued me. I hadn’t thought about him for 15 years prior to that pretty much. And then out of the blue supposedly, calls me four days later.

‏‏Beautiful.

‏‏That forever changed me. It changed him too because we had a beautiful conversation for almost an hour, then we ended-up several months later meeting-up in person. I gave him a Tony Robbins DVD that I thought would be quite helpful to him. I hadn’t seen him for 15 years. We lived in the same city for a number of those years, but is just gone from the face of the earth, it was very strange. Then two months later, I run into him randomly at a Petsmart. There are no coincidences. We’re all connected. I get it in my bones in a way that I had just from that one direct experience.

‏‏You’ve made a statement about truth without mercy…

‏‏Yeah.

Truth without mercy is not truth.

‏‏What came to me immediately is truth without mercy is not truth.

‏‏Our truth, our beliefs around what is fair, and just, and correct, and everything. We can have those thoughts or that perspective but if we have that without mercy – in Kabbalah they teach there are two kinds of light. There’s the light of wisdom which comes from the creator and then the light of mercy which comes from us, so we can reveal light, and that’s the light of mercy. That’s not the light of wisdom. We’re receivers for the light of wisdom from the creator. When our light of mercy meets the light of wisdom from the creator that creates fulfillment. When you come with your ‘truth’ and you don’t have the light of mercy coming with that, you’re just like, “Well, that is not cool what you just did. I’m cutting you off. I’m cutting you out of my life.” Or whatever it is. That creates destruction because we might make a solid case that this was the right action to take but we did it without mercy, and therefore, we created destruction.

‏‏Yeah, yeah. I can certainly relate to that in trial times in my life. I’m just grateful that at this time of my life, everything is inclusive. I can’t imagine a situation of being involved in anything that would harm anything. But that would be against for one but against another. I’ve really enjoyed our time speaking today.

‏‏I have too, very much.

‏‏I just wanna share with you that when Jeffrey Zavik introduced us. I’ve known Jeffrey for many, many, many years even though we haven’t seen each other much in the last several years. But I really feel very much the goodness of your heart.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏I don’t know anything about you. I’m sure that you are quite masterful at the areas of your life that you are here to gift the world with. And yet within all of that, there is this huge heart that’s very humble. I really appreciate this conversation with you. It’s been very enriching for me this morning, so thank you.

‏‏Aww, thank you. I’m sure my listeners are very appreciative as well for you sharing your light with us. If you could give our listeners the next step, something that you would recommend they do, I’m guessing it’s to pick up your book, and read it, and do the exercise, isn’t it?

‏‏Well, always say yes to the opportunity to say thank you or I love you. What’s really important that I’ve come to realize is love is the answer regardless the question. Every opportunity where I can help someone or someone has been kind to me, every time I get that feeling, I automatically move in that direction. That’s something that I’d like to share with the listeners. As far as the book, the book will be released in February 2018. The title is Luminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living. If people would like to know where I’ll be going on my book tour, just to get a little bit of background about what moves me in life and what I’m excited about, they can visit jacobliberman.org. God bless you and God bless your listeners.

‏‏Thank you, Jacob. God bless you as well. Listeners, if you would like to take the next step here and apply some of what you learned, do pick up the book. This is Stephan Spencer, your host, signing off. Catch you on the next episode of Get Yourself Optimized.

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