#77 - Christian Sundberg - Pre-Birth Experience - The Nonduality Podcast

The constraints that we agree to adopt and to wear in order to have the physical experience—it's like a huge, huge drop in vibration in the being, in the body of awareness of what one is, to plummet from a place of total knowing, total connectedness, total love, total freedom, down, down, down, down, down, down vibrationally into this point of perspective that was so dense and so firm and dark. It felt so separate, and it felt like all of what I am was erased, like I have lost all of everything that I am.

We're just on a walk, on a journey where we are visiting this place for actually incredible purposes—great, great purposes. The purpose of the expansion of love and joy through the integration of experience, through choice-making in a rich context. This rich context where we've even come so far into separation that we've forgotten that we're connected and that we've forgotten that we're unconditionally loved.

This is still what you are. You can never not be this. We've forgotten what we really are for a while, and that is the nature of the human experience. So we vastly transcend this experience, and there is nothing to fear. This is just a story or a play that we're experiencing for a while. What we really are is beyond any description. All that is—it exists within the great ocean, which you can call God or Source, the great that which is. There's no such thing as truly being separate from it. We are completely and intrinsically connected and one with the whole, having the potential of the whole.

So to have the opportunity to play a character here is like being given the most precious gift in the universe. And how then you choose to use that experience to make choices in it—choices that are hopefully more love-based and less fear-based (fear being reflective of the illusion of separation; it's not a real force)—but to really make choices that are in alignment with the truth of our being, even here.

Now, the physical reality is extremely limited. Like, we are in an extremely limited state right now—extremely dense, very different vibrational context, extremely different. But it's neutral. So to act in fear is not our natural state. It's an okay choice, absolutely, but it's very much sub-optimal. Our natural activity is to integrate experiences into what we are, to really know them, to really come to terms with them, you could say, to really allow them to be a part of us without any barrier.

Our true nature is non-dual. We use duality, we use context, we use form, but we transcend form. We are much greater than form. So enlightenment is just a very natural return to what we really are.

You're listening to The Non-Duality Podcast. This is Nick Ham from nissangayoga.com. In this episode, Paul Dobson speaks with Christian Sundberg.

Paul Dobson: You, sir, have a very unique perspective on reality that I haven't come across before. If you don't mind, I know you've had to tell the story a few times, but if you could go into what has created the context for this perspective you've got—the pre-birth experience, mainly.

Christian Sundberg: Yeah, so thank you very much for having me, sir. I will try to describe this, but I have to disclaim that everything we could possibly describe in this topic is vastly beyond language. You know, words are symbols; they're form. And who we truly are totally and vastly transcends the form of our world. We transcend form entirely. So to be able to use some language, some sense of form to describe it, it's just not possible.

So, I'll try to summarize. I've shared this story many times, and there's a lot we could go into, but I'll just say for context: I remember a very long time ago coming across a being who had been physical before I had ever had a physical experience. So I existed long before I had physical experiences. And I came across this being who had been physical, and I was completely and totally inspired by the quality of this being's nature, his essence, the quality of what he was.

This is really hard to describe because it's just so rich and deep. But I asked him—and again, this isn't words; it's telepathic. We all exchange naturally; we exchange information in huge amounts. That's how we typically communicate. I asked him, "My goodness, what did you do? How could you be this? How could you be this being?" And do you feel everything that I feel that you feel? And he shared, "Yes."

And I felt in him this incredible sense of power and love and freedom and expansion and refinement. And I said, "I want to do that. I want to do that. I will do whatever it takes. This is amazing." And he shared that he had lived physical incarnations, and there was one in particular where he had had a chronic long-term ailment, a health condition that was very painful for him. And the way that he chose to meet that experience, the quality of being that he brought into that experience, and how he met that experience allowed an incredible refinement in his being.

So I said, "I want to do that. I'll do whatever it takes. This is amazing." And he said, kind of in a playful way, not negative, but like, "Yeah, that's what they all say. You know, it's hard in a way that you don't know." Just very like, not judging me, just like, "You just don't know how hard it is to be physical in this way and to have this type of experience."

And I said, "No, I want to do it." He said, "Go talk to your guides." Okay, so I did.

Now, I'm going to jump to a period that is somewhat immediately preceding this life, where I had lived many times, and I was taking a long break after a previous life experience. I put off coming back for a long time. I just was done with the physical thing for a while. I was taking a long break.

And this guide kept coming back to me over and over, asking, "Are you ready to go back yet? Are you ready to go back yet?" And I just kept putting him off for a while, saying, "No, I'm not ready yet. No, I'm not ready yet." And finally, I felt like, "Okay, I'm ready."

And then I reviewed with this guide what I can only describe as my state—like, this is so hard to describe, but like who I am, who I have been, and what I knew, what I understood, what I had integrated, the qualities of my being, you might say. And I could see very clearly the thing that I needed to work on—I don't really like the words "work on," but the thing that I needed to do that would be best for me to evolve through and to integrate.

And it was this extremely low-vibration fear, a perspective that was such a low vibration that it had bested me in a previous experience. And I had, in a previous experience, been overcome by this fear, and I had been a very egoic monster as a result of this fear in one life, and I caused a lot of damage to other people.

So I was very excited—incredibly excited—at the opportunity to re-engage this fear and to integrate this because I knew if I could do that, there would be this absolutely profound expansion of being, growth, and refinement, not only for myself but for the whole. It was an incredibly powerful thing if I could bring love and some amount of acceptance and the term I like to use is "quality of intent." You know, what intent? If I could bring the right intention deep into this experience and integrate it, it would be the most beautiful, amazing thing.

But I knew even then that it seemed very daunting in its scope because the vibration was so low. I could just see very objectively, like, "Wow, I have a lot of fear. This is a huge challenge."

So I asked the being, "Is it even possible? Has it ever been done in all of creation? Has any other being ever integrated a vibration of this extremity, this lowness?"

And the guide said, "Yes, and you have all the time available to you to do so. There's no hurry."

So I was super excited, and so they brought me a life that was perfect for this intention. And it wasn't this physical life; it was somewhat immediately preceding this life. The sequence gets very strange to try to describe because these experiences take place in a system higher than linear time.

But anyway, they brought me a life that was extremely appropriate for my intention, and I reviewed that life in great detail, and then I accepted that life. And after I accepted it, I remember then accepting the veil, which is just the term I use to describe the constraints that we agree to adopt and to wear in order to incarnate and have a physical experience.

It's like a huge, huge drop in vibration in the being, in the body of awareness of what one is—at least that's how I experienced it. And I like to describe it like if you have an amplifier that produces a pitch, and you're at a really high vibration, like me, you know, it's really high vibration, and then the knob gets cranked down to the bottom, and then when it gets to the bottom, just keep turning lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, more lower still, go some more lower, lower, lower, lower.

That was what it felt like to plummet from a place of total knowing, total connectedness, total love, total freedom, down, down, down, down, down, down, down vibrationally into this point of perspective that was so dense and so firm and dark. It felt so separate, and it felt like all of what I am was erased, like I lost all of everything that I am.

And it was such a breathtakingly low vibration, and I immediately had fear. You know, even though I wasn't even born yet, I just said, "Come in." I was in the womb, and I was in this physical experience only for a few moments or some very short amount of time. And I was like, "You know what? I am not doing this. This is not happening. There is no way I'm going to tolerate this for a whole lifetime. I'm not doing this."

So out of my fear, I immediately summoned my strength, my might, and I smoked the veil. I fought my way back out again, and I was successful in doing that. I found myself back on the other side, but I became aware that I had inadvertently killed the fetus that was to be the body that I was to use, that I was to have and be.

And I had a life review, just like your death experience was described, but even for this very short life. And I could see how my fear affected not only the mother but hundreds of others because the mother had grief now. I had heaped sorrow on her shoulders, kind of feeling, and I had affected her, and not only her, but hundreds of other people, and ripples out from her, that their lives would be made more difficult because of my fear and how I affected the mother.

So I knew, okay, so from that side, it's so you know, everything's okay. Like, there's no real problem. It's just a big play. It's okay. But I could see very objectively, like, "Oh my gosh, I have so much fear. I really got to do something about this."

So that opportunity was wasted, but I still wanted to do this. So then they brought me this life, and this life was not as appropriate as the first one would have been. It was okay; it was pretty good. But considering the specificity of my intention and the qualities of my being, it was just like, it was still a good opportunity, and it was like what they could come up with, kind of thing. But it was good enough.

And I reviewed this life in vast detail, and I reviewed what I can only describe as like a flowchart of millions and millions of possibilities of how this life might unfold. And I reviewed it all in the blink of an eye, you know, like within seconds. It was just so easy for me to review millions and millions of possibilities all very quickly. And I reviewed how it would feel like to be me, to be this human in this place and have this type of experience. And I could feel all these different branches of how the life might unfold.

[Music]

And I knew that it was very likely that in my 20s, my early 20s, I would be crushed by a trauma that would just really crush me, traumatize me, and give me the opportunity to re-experience this fear. And that did happen. I could tell you now that happened. My body is 41 right now, but when I was 22, I had a very traumatic experience.

So, okay, then I remember there having to be a moment to say yes, and I don't remember that moment, but I do remember then being in this area I can only describe as like a waiting area, where I was in this realm of light, and I was excited. And then this guide came to me to get my attention, like, "Go now, like right now," very almost like rude, like grabbing my attention in a very firm and forceful way.

And I said, "Okay, okay, now." And I found myself then in this room—it's not really a room, but it was like a place that's kind of like a mechanic shop or something, where these beings were very technical in nature, helping apply the veil.

And they do this thing where they make the veil fit. It's like an organic thing, and they say, "So there's like the life and the constraints of the body and all the context, and then the soul is all these rich qualities." And so they do this thing where they make it all fit.

And I remember them asking me one more time, "Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do this? Because once you say yes here, I knew that once I said yes here, I was in for the ride. It's like getting into a roller coaster, and once you're strapped in, you can't get out until it rides over."

And I said, "Yes."

And so once again, I had the experience of the veil coming over me, and my vibration plummeting down, down, down, down, down, down, way lower, lower, lower, lower, and all of my knowing being cut off, and all of the being that I was feeling like it was erasing, being just and disappearing, and arriving to this place that I mean, I like to describe it like arriving to the vacuum of space, you know, like a place that's just so empty, so dark, so without heat.

That's what it felt like to be in this dense, very dense experience of being in the body, in the womb as a fetus. I was there for a short bit, and this time I tried just not to fight it. Like, this time I knew, okay, because I remember what happened last time, I just said, "Okay, just let the veil do what it will do."

And I let that happen, and then eventually, after I had let go for a long time and I was in the dark, I remember sending one message back to the technicians, "Did it take? Did the veil take?" And I'm sending one message back, "Yes."

So I knew I had made it, which was super exciting. And I was there for a while, and I said, "You know what? I am not doing this. This is so low vibration. This is so dark. I am not going to tolerate this. This is ridiculous."

And so once again, because of my fear, I began to summon my might, my strength, to fight my way out. And when I did that, the most holy moment of my entire physical life happened. This is so beyond language that the great spirit of God, Source, the I Am, whatever word you can use, came to me in its grand fullness of being, and it said to me, "This."

So it showed me. I felt the galaxies, and I felt the universe, and I felt they were still in me, and I was them. And I felt the churning bliss of our sun, the sun the earth orbits, and I felt so much just burning bliss, burning peace, and happiness, and just even in the sun. And I knew that that was still in me.

And the voice said, "This is still what you are. You can never not be this." And that was so powerful for me. I was like, "Oh, because then I knew I didn't have to fight anymore because if I was still that, oh, that okay, so I haven't lost all that I am. Okay."

And I surrendered. I let go. And so then I was in the womb for a while, and then the next memory I have is the day I was born. I remember the experience of stimulus, just like I had no understanding of what was happening. I just had this feeling of cold and touching and shock and light and like, "What is going on?"

And I remember looking at these beings, like the nurses even that were there, and I knew that there were beings taking care of me, doing something to me, and I felt so much love for them actually, and I felt this incredible amount of curiosity, like, "Where am I? What is this place? What is going on?"

And I have one just one visual image memory of the room. I know they say babies can't see, but somehow I saw the room, and I drew the room later from my mother when I was older, and I said, "You were here, and then the window was here, and he was the heating grate, and here was the doctor." And she confirmed I was right. I mean, I know I wouldn't be, but it was just cool to have that confirmation.

So then I have no memory after that for years. I remember just sparse, very vague memories of being in a crib and things like that. But as I got older, like the ages of maybe three or four, I remember drawing upon this pre-birth experience memory and the flowchart in specific and trying to cheat and see what was going to happen in life. And that ability greatly diminished as I aged. You know, by the age of five or six, it was completely cut off, and by the age of six, then I had no memory of this at all.

So my body is 41 right now. I had no awareness of this at all until the age of 30, after I had taken up a long-term meditation practice. After a few months, I began to have non-physical experiences, out-of-body experiences that were brief at first but very eye-opening, very not subtle, very worldview-shaking.

And so then, in a similar time as those happened over the next few months, I just this memory was just there. It wasn't like a big discovery. It was like it had always been there. It was normal. It was the most normal thing in the world. It was like leaves had just blown over the ground, and now they're blown away. That's it. Oh, there it is.

And in fact, it was so normal that now I feel very clearly that the strange thing is that we don't remember. That's the stranger. Yeah.

So that's a summary. It's very difficult to put these things into words, and I actually don't think that—I mean, people are interested in hearing the experience, but I don't think that's what's really that important. I think what's more important is that we remind each other of what we really are and what we're doing here.

You know, because all of us are on this incredible walk in the physical. You know, that's the name of the book that I wrote. We're just on a walk, on a journey where we've visited this—we are visiting this place for actually incredible purposes, great, great purposes. The purpose of the expansion of love and joy through the integration of experience, through choice-making in a rich context. This rich context where we've even come so far into separation that we've forgotten that we're connected, and then we've forgotten that we are unconditionally loved.

And you know, we've forgotten what we really are for a while, and that is the nature of the human experience. So I think the more important thing then that we can remind each other is then that truth—that we vastly transcend this experience, and there is nothing to fear. This is just a story or a play that we're experiencing for a while.

Yeah, so I went on for a while there, but no, that's great. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I've heard it before, but I always enjoy hearing that, and every time you mention the great spirit of God bringing you back out and showing you what you are, I feel it every time. Every time you mention it, and talking to you one-on-one now, I really felt it—that relief, that absolute relief. Just absolutely, God, literally.

I miss it so much. It's like even thinking about it is so painful. I just have so much emotion attached. I want it—maybe "want" is the bad word, is a shallow word. I deeply yearn and desire to have to be that again in a full sense because that's what we are. And that's one of the reasons we're veiled actually, because that yearning would be so intense, it's like almost impossible then to do the human thing.

Christian Sundberg: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm someone who's experimented with psychedelics and all sorts of exploration methods over my life, and in some ways, it made it easier, but in also a lot of ways, it made it harder, dipping back into that state and back out again over and over. It made normal life almost unbearable at some points where you just want to spend the whole time in that state. So I can totally empathize with that feeling.

Yeah, absolutely. But here we are. There is, as you say, a beautiful, rich experience that we're in, and there is definitely beautiful reasons for being here. And just based on your perspective and your experience with things, what do you think we are really, and why are we here ultimately?

Christian Sundberg: Yeah, what is that? Well, what we really are is beyond any description. Hmm. You know, quick question while we're human: we learn to view reality as a place and as a bunch of objects. We see an external, apparently external world, and then we learn about things, and it forms, you know, the sky, gravity, all these things. And there's certain fundamental properties—no, there's certain non-fundamental properties that are specific to our reality that we think are fundamental, like linear time and discrete location, for instance.

Discrete location seems like the most obvious thing to us. We're separate; that thing is over there; I'm over here. You know, so I'm just saying that we perceive the world in that way, and we come to believe very deeply in objects and in form. So then when we want to know what we really are, we ask, "What thing? What are we? What form are we?"

Well, we are that which transcends and knows all form, all things. We are life itself with the capital L. We are the substance of being that knows all these rich forms. And that substance of being cannot be described; it fully transcends all descriptors.

So we—there are some metaphors. I think metaphors are the best way to try. We could say that all that is—it exists within the great ocean, which you can call God or Source, you know, the great that which is. And we are drops in that ocean. We are part of it forever. There's no such thing as truly being separate from it. We are a part of the whole, and we are simultaneously totally free-willed individual pieces and also completely and intrinsically connected and one with the whole, having the potential of the whole, each one of us.

So that is very much beyond language, to try to describe that. So we could say we're individuated pieces of the one, and we are like maybe you know fragments or—I don't know—I like the word "drops in the ocean" better because drops, you know, a drop in the ocean is still connected; it's still part of the ocean.

So what are we doing here? Okay, there are many layers of the self, and the human personality is just a lower—again, we transcend duality, so I'm going to use terms in duality. Yeah, it's not real; the duality terms are not real. But we are like the lower end of the self. It feels like, you know, the human personality, which belongs to higher levels of the self.

And the higher levels of the self participate in the process of evolution, which is a process of expansion, and that is the growth of what is the growth of love and joy ultimately because our true nature is love and joy and freedom and peace and fun. You know, that is our substance of what we are.

Okay, so then we will venture into manifest experience—that means experiences where discrete things are possible, like here, where someone is watching this video, sees a certain shape, you know, they see this guy talking, and they hear a sound, and then we have to interpret that. We apply our own meaning to it, and then we got to think about it and use thoughts, which are a new type of form—their form in the mind—and we have to think about what we think about that.

That whole process of form, context, permits an incredibly powerful expansion of the self and of the whole. And that expansion is then a refinement of what really is, a refinement of spirit, of consciousness, which is a refinement and an expansion of love and joy ultimately. You know, that's really what it is.

So we come for that purpose. And so, but we often hear though we don't experience that every day, right? I mean, this is like super, super, you know, Earth is a context that is extremely unique. We could even call it alien in how separate we feel. It is such a high-contrast level that there is an incredible amount of opportunity on Earth—or other physical worlds; it doesn't have to just be Earth.

So to have the opportunity to play a character here is like being given the most precious gift in the universe. It's like being handed this precious, precious thing, and you, out of all the trillions and trillions and endless trillions of beings and all the vastness of all creation, you specifically were given the chance to be this, to play this character, to have this human life.

And how then you choose to use that experience to make choices in it—choices that are hopefully more love-based and less fear-based (fear being reflective of the illusion of separation; it's not a real force)—but to really make choices that are in alignment with the truth of our being, even here. If you can do that, there is an incredible growth that is only—I don't even want to say it's only possible here, but it's practically speaking, it's only possible here to grow in certain ways.

So the world, the universe, is like an assimilation that is provided to us for the expansion of being, and it's so convincing as well, isn't it? I mean, it's unbelievably convincing. I find it ridiculously convincing. I mean, I know as I say these things, it sounds woo or something, but I'm a left-brain type person. You know, I worked in the nuclear power industry as a project manager for a long time, so I'm used to using that. I know how this sounds, and it is extremely convincing.

But the thing is, the more—how do we put this?—the greater the depth of the realness of it, the greater the opportunity. So it's very convincing because if you want to really be you, the human, you got to be you, the human. You know, if you really want to know what it's like, you got to actually do it. You can't just metaphorically stay in a higher state and read it in a book. You got to come and be it because the growth of being that we're doing, the integration of experience that we're participating in, is about actually doing it, actually being it, actually actualizing love, not just talking about it.

You know, coming in and really knowing. And so, yeah, so it's highly convincing, very consistent. The physical reality experience is ridiculously consistent and personal.

I remember the first time realizing that in a—you could call it a peak experience—and thinking, "Oh my God, I thought that the human stuff was the real thing, but this is yet—you know, it's not that it's not real—I just found it hilarious though. I actually couldn't stop laughing. I was in hysterics that I was 100% invested in the human stuff."

Exactly. Yeah, this other state, so to speak, was clearly the home state. You know, yeah. Yes, absolutely. It is hilarious then because I'm so reminded of the near-death experience of Amy Call when you say that. She described how after her NDE, when she was aware of who we really are, she remembers these two guys coming to her front door. They were cable repair guys, and they came to her door, and they said, "We're here to hook up your cable." And she could not stop laughing because she felt and saw who they really were. They were these totally free beings of joy who had no limitation, no need, acting real serious, "We're here to fix you. We're here to hook up your cable."

And it just seems so ridiculous. So we take it so seriously. We take our roles and our stories and our demands and our pains, our fears, so seriously. And I'm not making light of it because I get sucked back into it over and over and over. I mean, that's the nature of it. But it's just like you said, it's hilarious how free we are and how we really don't need to take the human condition seriously that seriously.

I mean, it's important to—I try not to say the words "don't take life seriously" because then that implies you don't need to ever wield effort, and sometimes it is very much appropriate in a spiritual context to bring your strength to bear. Yes, that's true. Yeah, but we also don't need to take any of it seriously at the same time. No, it's just a play. Everything's fine. You can do whatever you want with life. You're free. You're free to change your beliefs. You're free to go outside right now. You're free to whatever you want.

Now, there will be a result of your choices. You know, there's a cause and effect that's going to happen, but you're still totally free. You're completely free to make any choice, and there's a beautiful joy in there. Absolutely.

And yes, it's just—I do wish everyone could maybe tap into that at some point in their lives or at least come to know it just in some way that everything is fine. As everything is absolutely fine, actually, the state of affairs is the best possible state of affairs imaginable and beyond that. As what we are, we're just kind of going through this seemingly pretty drudgery-type human existence, vibration by comparison.

Yeah, very, very. And as you say, if we can bring that though, if we can bring that love—I mean, we're at the advantage that the fact that we are that love, you know, we are that love and joy. I love that. I love that statement that we are at an advantage because we are that. Oh, I love that so much.

The house always wins. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, I love it, man. The house always wins. I totally agree. You know, like here in the physical, we tend to think "the house always wins" means reality is cruel and cold and harsh and uncaring. No, the cruel, cold, hearthstone caring is very limited in its scope by comparison. It's, you know, but yeah, yeah, I totally love that. The house always wins.

I have one of the essays in the book called "Goodness Can't Help but Win." Yeah, it can't help but win in the end, no matter what happens, no matter what tragedy or devastation happens. Life uses all experience for the good. All experience. It can't fail. Even if the entire human race were to be wiped out in a nuclear event or something, like something that seems terrible, it's fine. Yeah, it's totally fine. It's just a small part of all it is. It's a simulation. It's okay. We go do something else. It's fine. You're fine. Even death is not a problem. Death is not a problem. Yeah, it's beautiful, man. I love that. That's how good this is though. That's how good this is. You can say stuff like that, and people think that just sounds crazy. That's how good this is, isn't it?

There's a good—I like to sell that this is a good conversation because the reason it sounds crazy is because we become that deeply associated with the negative perceptions. We become so deeply associated with the negative beliefs, negative self-perceptions, and negative beliefs about the world. But that sounds crazy.

I'm pointing that out because it's important to remind the individual that the power is actually in you. You applied the meaning.

Now, the physical reality is extremely limited. Like, we are in an extremely limited state right now—extremely dense, very different vibrational context, extremely different. But it's neutral. It doesn't actually have a charge. It's just like if you're laying on a couch, and somebody comes over and puts a very heavy weighted blanket on you, the weighted blanket is neutral.

You get to decide. It's okay if you decide, "I don't like this. This is too heavy. I don't like this." Or you can decide, "Okay, it's heavy. I'm gonna go for a walk. See what I can do." We have all the choice in our reality with how to meet the physical, how to meet the circumstances of our lives. We absolutely do.

And it's only because we've forgotten that we get so deeply wrapped in the thought patterns and the beliefs that we seem like that good—the truth of the goodness can't be true because look at all the pain, look at all my fear, look at all the story.

I'm not making light of that because I know that once we get a momentum built up, it's very hard. It can seem hard at a given point in time to relieve ourselves from the momentum—the momentum of thought, the momentum of fear. But we always have the power in the current moment to stop and change that momentum, even just a little bit.

Like, the universe wants you to succeed. Put it that way. Like, maybe not—I won't even limit it to the universe. The higher context, the spiritual context, you are it. It's a part of you. It loves you. It wants you to succeed. So when there are these moments, you know, so that's why we get these little nudges because you don't have to do it all at once. Just meet your experience wherever you are now in the best way.

Whatever small thing can be brushing your teeth, it could be how you blow your nose, it could be how you interact with the person next to you at the store, how you admire the sunset. It doesn't matter. Every time, you get to choose how you meet reality, and that's what's so powerful. That will allow the individual to return closer back towards the truth of what we're talking about because it's like basically let go.

Like, if you have your death grip on a rope, and you're holding on, your knuckles are white, and you're bleeding, your hands are bleeding, the way to relieve yourself is actually to let go of the rope, not just squeeze more rope. We do that with our stories and with our ego, our ego responses. You know, we get addicted to the ego patterns, to the thoughts, everything. Just relieve my fear, relieve my fear, fill the hole, fill the hole, whatever I need next, whatever next substance, next person, next event, next action, tell me something else I need to distract myself now.

We do that our whole lives. When you let go, face the fear of letting go of the rope, it actually is a move back towards peace. Yes, the rope is what hurts. Yeah. It's so backwards to how we generally feel it is, isn't it? It's like I would say intuition, but that's not our real intuition. Our real intuition is actually to move back towards that peace, but maybe our human intuition is to grab tighter onto the rope.

You know, it's a metaphor that you used quite a lot is when you've got your fist really clenched up, it becomes difficult to then open your palm, but the natural state of the palm is to be open, isn't it? So it's like the rope metaphor, but it feels like the momentum's gone that way. The momentum has gone in the direction of fear, in the direction of our stories, the egoic stuff.

But every time, there's never anything wasted if we can just bring just little aspects every single time. We spend even just a second in presence, you know, just bringing a bit of love, a bit of presence, just to smile, whatever, in any way you can, it builds up momentum, doesn't it? The momentum then switches the other way, and it unravels itself.

Absolutely. So it's not impossible. It's not you know, it might seem impossible, but it's not impossible. We will succeed. Like you said, the house always wins. Yeah, the question is how much friction will we create with ourselves and with others until we do that?

You know, we just—you know, are we gonna have more friction? That's an okay choice too, but you don't have to.

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That's it. There's no wrong experience, is there? There's no right and wrong. Right and wrong is another sort of human mindset, you could say, an egoic kind of mindset or whatever we want to call that. But there's no actual right and wrong. All experience seems to be ultimately sacred and valuable and rich.

Yeah, it's one of those topics that the ego of the mind, the thinking mind, has a really hard time getting its head around. So exactly what you said, all experience is sacred, and there is no moment that is not sacred. There's no choice we can make that is not okay.

Okay, simultaneously though, it's—I'm very careful with this to say the words "there's no right and wrong" because then people take that in a certain direction. Yes, yeah. Well, I'll say that you may be able to say that as long as it's deeply understood that love is our true nature, and there are ways to actualize and reflect love versus fear.

So to act in fear is not our natural state, and acting in fear—ego arises from fear—is painful. So yeah, it's an okay choice, absolutely, but it's very much sub-optimal, you could say. If you and then when you pass, you can see very clearly how you affected everybody else because they are you too. We're all connected. So you experience it from their point of view, and then it can be seen, "Wow, that was like when I was angry at that person, that really wasn't the most optimal way to help that person."

So in that way, there is definitely a sense of—I'm careful about the words "right and wrong"—I'm just saying in that way, there's definitely a sense of love-based choice-making versus fear-based choice-making. That's the kind of—I 100% agree with you saying that.

That's kind of the difficulty in talking about this because there's an understanding that all experience is absolutely just—well, it's all God essentially, and it's all sacred, and it's all perfect. Yet there is that aspect where, you know, it's if you can bring as much love to each passing quality of experience, those interactions, etc., as you can, you know, that's what it is.

Yeah, that's what we're here to do. Is that what you said? Yeah, that's what we're here to do. Absolutely.

So there's a kind of—that's the kind of irony, isn't it? If you can see the sacredness of all experience, you tend to be doing that anyway. Yeah. So it's not just the kind of theory, is it? It's not another theory to be taken on. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The reality of our being and the reality of our being—the loving choice-making makes sense.

It's not just like, "Oh, we're trying to be trained into some new behavior, and that's why we come to be human." No.

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There may be behavior that will arise. We will use behavior, but our nature is love.

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Yeah.

I know it's very difficult to talk about this kind of thing, but I was wondering if you could maybe try and put some words to this. So in my experience of whatever it is we're calling the soul, when I've sort of dissolved into that state—whatever we want to call that—it's a completeness. It's not lacking whatsoever. It feels full. It feels full of love, joy, bliss, all the things you mentioned as well. And it just feels not lacking anything whatsoever from that vantage.

How can we expand and evolve what that is?

Christian Sundberg: Yeah, I understand. Yeah, so this is one of the topics that in duality sounds like a paradox. So here, okay, so there's two things that are simultaneously true. One, the soul is totally perfect, needs nothing, has no requirements, none, not a single requirement, and is in a substance of what it is, is perfect.

And yet, within all realms of manifest experience, the soul is only so good at actualizing its true loving nature in a context. And so it participates in the process of evolution to ever refine itself in that direction.

So how can they both exist at the same time? It's very difficult to describe in duality because, like I said, it seems paradoxical, but they're simultaneously true. You could say that the substance of the soul is always perfect, always. It can't be anything else. And yet, that substance refines through manifest experience.

You know, we have engaged in a deep and rich multi-dimensional process of evolution. It's not just on Earth. Many, many reality systems exist within this great process of refining ourselves ever and ever towards—we could say—the perfection of the whole.

We could say that each drop in the ocean has the potential of the whole, and so always is in the process of evolving itself towards that perfection, which also grows the whole. So does the whole need to grow? No. Is it happening? Yes. Because why? Because love is good. Because joy is good. Joy and love are good.

And also, in the same vein, that sounds different, but it's actually the same—and because we're curious. We're powerful, creative beings who are curious. So we will come even into a state like this, really push the boundaries here, really do it. We'll even do that, even as we are simultaneously without any need. We choose to do it.

I mean, that's really important to understand. It's not forced upon us. It's not like we're being used in some engine or something, and we're just hapless factory workers or something. Yeah, no, we choose to engage experience for the purposes of the refinement of being and for evolution because we see what it is, and the opportunity is amazing. And we know that we can't be harmed. We can't fail. We can't truly fail.

So why not? So why not try, man? Like, why not try that? I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna do that. And then we get here, and we found out, "Holy crap, I am vastly imperfect."

I mean, I think you would probably agree that this is really hard to describe, but if you even touch with the tip of your pinky, metaphorically, the higher self, it is the most humbling, just incredibly humbling. And not just the higher self, but the whole. If you even approach it, it is identity-shatteringly humbling because you see your own depth of your own imperfection.

So we are both perfect and deeply imperfect. So yeah, it's a very difficult one to sort out for the human mind, isn't it? Because it can't use one or the other, isn't it? But it just happens to be that things are that way.

Paradox is a good word for a human being because it admits that we can't really go beyond that. Exactly. I try in my book to identify paradox and why, you know, what it is and why it's not really paradox. It's only a paradox from this perspective. It's only a paradox when you buy into a perspective of duality that's not fundamentally real.

And now, from the dualistic vantage point, you're trying to look up back towards the transcendent, it will look goofy because from here, it's either A or B. That's the very nature of duality.

Okay, so but we don't need to fear that because the deeper parts of us know it. Like I'm saying, if you really feel into this topic, do you not feel the preciousness of who you are? The "I"? Do you feel, do you know that you feel the preciousness of life? That's the perfect nature of life.

And then you can feel that, and then even though that's true, do you also not see you have fear? That's okay. They both are arising. Like, I actually rephrase that. It's not that the perfection arises; the manifest arises within the perfection. We can put it that way.

Yeah, the perfection is. And then perfection is exactly yeah. So again, that's the advantage. The perfection is, and then you've got this fear, but the perfection is—well, the perfection is just not even comparable to this tiny little fear that's appearing. You know, it's so—it's um—amen. Yeah.

So how best—I mean, we may have touched on it already—but how best can we meet that fear? How best can we not work through but just be with that fear? I mean, maybe for example, how did you in your experience because you had that really difficult time in your 20s—how was there part of you that was able to come through there and just be with that and recognize that I need to be with this experience in some kind of way which I can't do as an egoic self and just really be with it fully in your sort of loving presence?

I mean, I'll let you describe how that was.

Christian Sundberg: So not at the time. At the time, I was only traumatized, and I had PTSD for eight years—or maybe seven or six or seven years. So the key—there's a key mechanism happening that it's really important to identify, I feel.

So the fundamental substance, we could say, is consciousness. That's what's real. So what's the fundamental thing that it's doing? It's intending; it's wielding intent, which means it's making choices. The choice-making is actually not directly in intent. Intent operates seamlessly through choice-making, but the intent itself is the key active ingredient and the power.

So why do I identify that in the context of this question? Because it has to do with what intent you are bringing into your own life and your own fear. Okay, so what intent helps to process fear? Well, it could mean a great number of things actually, but I'll just highlight what's been very important at least in my own walk.

It is the intention of completely feeling everything and allowing everything.

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Not fighting, not rejecting because fear happens because here's when we associate with a self-perception or a perception about the world that is not in alignment with the truth, and that hurts. And then we reject, and rejection hurts. So we need to reverse the rejection.

Now, the problem is that when we get to our deepest fears, they feel too big to face. That's why they're fierce. That's why they're down there. That's why the ego is trying so mightily to fix the problem. Even the very experience of being separate is one heck of a problem that the ego is trying so mightily to fix.

Even the experience of being separate itself, even the pain, even the negative self-perceptions, we can allow ourselves to feel and know all of it, eyes wide open. You know, it's not about fixing. You don't go into it, "Okay, I'm afraid of—you don't say, 'I'm afraid of being afraid. I'm afraid of being in pain. So I'm going to go feel this just so I can get rid of it because I don't like it. I can get rid of it.'"

You almost have to—I mean, that's why intent is the key. The quality of why you're doing it, how you're doing what really are you, how are you meeting the experience of your pain? You don't need it to get rid of it. You need it because it's there, and it's in you, and you honor yourself enough to feel everything you feel.

Just if you just sob as the little boy or girl that was still four years old and is still rejecting being criticized by the parent or abuse or something, to feel it, to know it, to really allow, and because we're here to integrate experience, that's what we're doing. We're integrators of experience.

And that means when we have an experience—even painful experiences, all experience, good experiences too—we are trying naturally, like our natural activity, to integrate experiences into what we are, to really know them, to really come to terms with them, you could say, to really allow them to be a part of us without any barrier.

And so when it comes to our deepest fears, that is so powerful. Now, if you do that, and you got really, really deep fear, okay, so first of all, the deep fear may be buried underneath hundreds of layers of ego story. So it may be difficult to even locate the fear.

But if you can get all the way down to the bottom, and when you find the core, that root, it will feel like the fear is too big for you to even feel, too big to even process. It will feel like it will kill you if you even touch it. It will feel like lifting up a rug and finding a monster of such size and scale that you will die. You'll feel like you'll die if you look at this, if you feel this.

So you could say the metaphor is like if a tornado comes to you and it picks you up, and you know, like it feels like a tornado is going to kill you, so it picks you up off the ground, it swings you around in a bunch of circles, and then it throws you to the ground. And when the tornado is done with you, it can feel so intense that the tornado is throwing you around, but when you're thrown to the ground, and you finally come to, you look, you open your eyes, you're not dead.

You're actually alive because now all that energy that was in the tornado is gone. It was able to deliver its message. It was able to be felt and known, and now it can just dissipate in the wind. You know, and then what's left? The you that is there is far stronger because now you've done that. You've processed that. You felt that. It can go, and now you know forever in the eternal one now what it is to know that depth.

You know, and now it's not greater than you. You've integrated it. So willingness—so to make a very long story short—willingness to face everything and to feel everything is key.

So in some ways, it's fairly—it's very simple, but also very challenging. You could say I mean, you literally just—it's ridiculously challenging. You've got to be there for it. So that's simple, but at the same time, it's challenging because being there for it involves being—what most humans aren't willing to do, including myself—which is be uncomfortable.

Exactly. Yeah, you've got to be incredibly willing to be uncomfortable and to be vulnerable. But here's the thing: Am I saying that now you need to be an uncomfortable person? No. What's uncomfortable is rejecting being uncomfortable.

And what's uncomfortable is not processing. Living in fear is painful. And I still have fear. I'm still working through this. This is not a simple thing. I'm just saying that being in fear all the time hurts. It is a relief—a deep and profound relief—from the pain of being in fear when you face it and process it and allow yourself to be uncomfortable and feel it.

And it can mean anything. It can mean being in a place where you're vulnerable in some way or naked or exposed, or it could be you don't want to face some perception or some experience that you couldn't come to terms with. I mean, it could be so many things, so many contexts and forms that seem to trigger and give rise to the fear.

The fear is the—when I say fear, I'm talking about not the story. I'm talking about the deepest, deepest vibrational like why it's not okay. Go feel that. Yeah. And then—I don't know how you feel about this—in my own experience, it's almost like you can also be with the rejection as well.

So you say, "Okay, I can't deal with this now. I can't. I just can't do it." You know, and then there's that. There's another layer, and as long as you pick it up somewhere along one of those layers, it's like the whole house of cards is pushed over. All the layers are broken.

So you can just—it's not like, "Okay, I can't be with this right now. Fine. Can you be with not being with it? And then can you—"

That's beautiful. That reminds me so much of an Eckhart Tolle quote. I don't remember the exact words, but it's something like, "Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The instant you accept your non-peace, your non-peace will be transmuted into peace. That is the miracle of surrender."

Absolutely. Yes, that's perfect because yeah, that's not bringing more of the same to it then, isn't it? It's bringing peace to it as opposed to—we basically just gotta stop the violence, stop the war. You know, obviously on a whole human civilization level would be nice, but in yourself, like, and go, "Okay, now I need to be with fear, and I'm gonna be with fear." And then, "Oh, I'm so stupid because I can't be with fear."

Yeah, then that's a new struggle. Exactly. So one thing about this—you don't have to go looking that hard because what's in you that wants to be processed arises into your experience over and over. Like, in the deeper parts of you know, and so you don't have to look very far. Just look at your experience. Look at what you feel right now. Look at your relationships right now. Look at your habits, your thoughts right now, and just, you know, and just like you said, be at peace even if you're not at peace, and work with them.

This whole thing, this whole process, doesn't even though I just described a very visceral, strong—I just described the tornado throwing you around and throwing you to the ground. Simultaneously, while that may be the level of willingness to feel that you may need to have, simultaneously, you don't need to approach it as if it's a dire problem.

It's not a dire problem. None of it is dire. Nothing is dire except that you've bought into it that it's dire. So when it arises, deal with that non-dire problem. Just face it. Just be there with it, and you know, be gentle with yourself. Put it that way.

Yeah, exactly. Sort of self-compassion is important, isn't it? And it's so strange because it's again—this is going into what we might refer to as paradox—but it's one whole. You know, there's one always God, you could say, but then we've got these what seemingly individual soul situations, and we're each experiencing these human lives, but there's just the whole.

And yet, everyone is so unique and individual, and their whole journey through this human life is so profoundly unique, isn't it? So yes, you might not necessarily have a massive trauma in the same way you've had to go through. It might just be tiny increments at a time or—oh yeah—almost not even noticeable. It might be a whole different thing going on for a particular person. So it's a really interesting situation where everyone's got their own little thing going on.

Well, I'll just make one comment about that. So when we're human, it appears that we all have very similar experiences because we all have two eyes and a head and shoulders and a similar body structure. You know, we see a human experience that looks like it's quite shared, but the nature of the soul is unbelievably unique.

Like, each one of us is so unique, has had so much rich, varied, beautifully different experience, different qualities, different history, different core nature that's very unique. I just think that's important to mention because you know, we tend to look around and say, "Oh, everyone is just—oh, I'm just another human." No, you are not just another human. You are a precious, beautiful, very complex, unique beauty.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's beautiful. I think that's really worth mentioning as well because our temptation is to judge others as what we think is right and wrong from our own experiences, like, "Well, I would have done this, you know, and they shouldn't be doing that," based on our own experience, based on their own very unique, you could say, energy system and soul system, what have you.

And so really, it's impossible to judge another human being for what exactly they're going through. It really is. The true judgment is not a judgment. It's a knowing. How do I describe this? The system knows the totality of all of your experience—every single constraint, every pain, every decision everyone ever made that impacted you, every cell in your body, every piece of food you put in your body, everything, and how everything has affected you. It knows, and you are completely understood for making the choices that you made.

You know, it's not like if you're wearing a heavy weight, and it's difficult to run fast with a heavy weight on your shoulders, that's not a bad thing. You're honored for carrying a heavy weight and trying to run. It's not like you're judged, "Oh, you only made it 10 feet." You know, it's not like that.

And here we all are in an extremely constraining, difficult context by comparison, and it's seen. Like, I've heard a couple of near-death experiences where they describe that from the other side, you know, we here, as humans, are seen as like superheroes or something because we're willing to come into this level of context.

And that resonates with me because my pre-birth experience, after that first failure I had, I could see I had so much respect for the incredible players in the game that were willing to do this and play this ridiculously constraining, difficult game on Earth. Like, "Oh my gosh, I can't even tell you." And here we all are thinking that we're just these little inconsequential humans that are subject to the powers of society and the system and money and all these things. We're not just that.

Yeah, so I just think that's an important message too.

Oh, absolutely. And the issue with that as well is—I was thinking that we're just these little humans, and you know, subject to all the laws of society, the laws of physics, the laws of everything. You know, it's—the science is our kind of seems to be in this day and age seems to be the gods, doesn't it? And everywhere, that's everyone's go-to point, most people anyway, is science. They go, "Well, you've got a brain, and you're just a brain, and all this kind of stuff."

I don't know if that's the kind of thing you've come up against and how you deal with that sort of thing.

Christian Sundberg: So, I mean, of course, on the surface, that's a very basic conclusion that it looks like the brain is producing consciousness. Of course, but it's that is a very surface-level thing that's happening.

And I love the process. I fully support all science because the process of determining what reality is and using objectivity and skepticism—that's a really important process. I mean, I'm one to say, "Don't ever just believe something. Go look, go experience, go make your own determination."

This is not about establishing new beliefs. I mean, everything that I say, I don't want people to just take something I say and start believing in it. That's not gonna help. But you really gotta go see it yourself, like evaluate it, and what happens.

But here in the physical, our scientists and so many of them, we're so deeply focused in the material that we think the material is reality. So of course, within the material system, which has certain rules, you know, our science is the study of those local rules of how the physical system actualizes.

But eventually, science will expand because that physical rule set is a subset of a much, much bigger reality—a real reality, the spiritual reality. The spiritual reality is not a woo-woo fairy-tale thing. It's not just happening like in some imagination land. It's real.

So eventually, science will expand and realize a lot of what's arising in the physical is actually originating deeper. You know, you could call it in a higher dimension. You could say that.

So yeah, I think it's very normal for now to look at this. It's just where the human race is at, and our understanding. We're actually a very young species when it comes to where we are in our understanding. You know, we like to think we're nice and advanced. We're actually in the dark ages with our understanding in relation to the larger context into what's really going on.

So you know, we will eventually get there. Until then, one last comment I'll make: as a process of investigation, science is a wonderful process. I encourage people to take that process of investigation towards something that we don't typically think to investigate, and that is consciousness itself, awareness itself.

That is, if we can investigate what our own awareness is beneath thought, just go look. Don't make anything up. Don't make up any new stories. You know, you don't need a new—don't even think about it. Just go very, very objectively and faithfully just go look.

And so that we call that process meditation. And it's so important, I feel, because as we investigate what our own awareness is itself beneath thought, don't settle for a thought. Don't settle for a new thinking understanding. Go and look. Go and feel. Go and actually engage it yourself experientially because there's so much there.

The truth and the vastness of our being is there to be discovered, not as a new human thought, but it can be known within the deeper mind, which you are a part of. So it can be—I could even say it can be understood, but I don't tend to use that word because that implies human thinking, and I'm trying to direct towards something that transcends human thinking.

It is a very deep, tangible, personal interface with that which knows thinking.

Yes, and knowing isn't it? It's a knowing, isn't the correct word either, but there is no correct word. But it's a knowing. It's a change almost, a change of gears where you go from thinking mode, and thinking mode, once you go into the knowing mode, you could say the thinking mode just looks so tiny and so—yeah, just not dumb—is quite a harsh word, but almost a bit dumb in comparison because knowing is like instantaneous. There's no time lag. It's just boom, there. Exactly.

And it's much more complete and thorough, and it's broader. And human thought is—if you think of it in a vibrational context, in a larger spiritual context, human thought is like very slow and crude and dense. It's like throwing around dense baseball bats slowly by comparison to the incredible amount of knowing and information, I could say, that is there that we can very easily interact with.

So but it's while we're used to the dense, clunky, painful human thoughts all the time though, that seems like all there is. It's like Windows 95 versus whatever operating systems on their super quantum computer in a thousand years or something. It's just not comparable.

Obviously, within the context, I usually speak within non-duality, and there's a lot of coming from Advaita Vedanta, sort of a Hindu tradition essentially, but we kind of have quite an open context where it's not specifically in any tradition, but there's obviously a lot of talk about enlightenment within the Eastern traditions.

And I wondered where that fits in with all of this. Is human enlightenment a human-made idea? Is that something that's not really relevant to what we're talking about? Or if enlightenment is what we are, then yeah, I just wondered in your particular experience or what your perspective on that is.

Christian Sundberg: Well, I think enlightenment means something different to different people. I'm very careful to use that word or quantify it. I'll simply say though that the process of awakening to our true nature is a very beautiful process, and that is really what we're talking about because our true nature is non-dual.

We use duality, we use context, we use form, but we transcend form. We are much greater than form. So enlightenment is just a very natural return to what we really are. It does take a certain level of—oh boy, be careful how I say this—there is a natural mastery.

Okay, so if we integrate experience of form to a certain degree, we eventually always discover it's not really the bottom.

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You know, when we really integrate our experience and really go through the process of seeing what we really are, what our thoughts really are, we will naturally return to what we really are beneath the form. You can call that enlightenment if you like, but it's very non-special because it's just what we are.

And of course, all of us are into it varying degrees of like art. We each have our own relationship with the experience of form in our own consciousness, reach at different places. We each have different fears, different limitations, reach at a different stage of evolution, you could say that. And evolution is complex and multifaceted. It's not one line.

So because of that, each individual's relationship with the higher divine, with their deeper selves, is unique. So enlightenment can mean very different things for different people. But yeah, I think it is pertinent because, like we've been discussing, that's really what we are. We are that higher nature.

Yeah, beautifully put. I totally agree with all of that.

You've got a great book, A Walk in the Physical, which does discuss some of what we've been talking about and some non-dual stuff. It goes into your story in a bit more depth and just has some great, wise advice from your perspective of living in general. And I think it's a great book. I'd highly recommend it to anyone listening. I believe it's up for free. I got the Kindle version, but yeah, no, that's something I want to make sure everybody knows that it's available for free. It's certainly not about money.

If you go to my website at walkingthephysical.com, there's a book page. The third link down on the book pages is to the free Google Books version online.

Yeah, the book is something that I felt for six years really needed to come into the physical, and I only wrote it as I felt spirit came to me and I felt what I needed to put down. I never once sat down and said, "I'm gonna write a book now." Like, I just wrote down as it was there, and then when I had all the pieces, I just allowed spirit to help me. I felt, "Where does this go?"

And so I don't actually feel quite like the author. I mean, I know I wrote it, but anyway, I'm just very happy to share, and it's simply that I wish to encourage each person to help feel the deeper them that they really are. You know, really, the intention is to direct the reader back towards knowing their own self because there's nothing that I can give you. There's nothing anybody can truly hand you. You already are that fullness of life.

So yeah, the book is an attempt to try to speak through the human mind to that larger context so that we can best know that and then hopefully bring love into this situation here on Earth because it's a great opportunity. It's a beautiful opportunity.

Perfect. I was just wondering if there's any final word you want to leave us with or if you're quite happy leaving it there. I'll just leave that up to you.

Christian Sundberg: Yeah, just a final comment. I just wish to reiterate: whoever you are listening today, you are not just this human story. You are a beautiful, free, loving, powerful spirit. Your consciousness, you are you—the you that feels like you to you, the most you to you. That's who you are, and it cannot be truly threatened.

You know, things in life will change. Bodies can die, but there is nothing at all to fear. So whatever walk you have here in the physical, it's beautiful and precious in its own way. See if you can sense that deeper nature at least in a small way and bring it into today, just today, in whatever small way that you don't need to move a big mountain. Just go enjoy your day. Even just go enjoy something. That alone is a great service.