Spiritual Awakening After Loss: A Skeptic's Story with Nico Martens | EP 494

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, welcome to Grief 2 Growth. I'm Brian Smith, and I'm glad you're here. Whether this is your first episode, or you've been walking down this road with me for a while. This show exists because grief cracked me open. And what I found on the other side actually changed everything. Here on Grief 2 Growth, we talk about loss, we talk about love, consciousness, and what it means to keep living, to keep really living when someone that you love is gone. We ask the hard questions. Is death really the end? Who are we without the people we've lost? And what if the breaking apart is actually the beginning of something? And I bring on guests who have lived the questions, not just studied them. And Nico Martins is one of those people. He's also one of my oldest and dearest friends. Now, Nico and I met about 11 years ago, a little bit over 10 years ago, in the most sacred kind of way. It was right after my daughter Shayna transitioned in 2015, and our mutual friend Jenny mentioned that she was coming to Shayna's service. And Nico told her that Shayna had already visited him, and that's how our relationship began. So Nico and I started having lunch together, and Nico walked me through some of the darkest, most disorienting days of my life. He was a guide before he really ever called himself one, I guess. Nico began as a skeptic. He's a classically trained electromechanical engineer who had no use for anything that couldn't be measured. Then, at the age of 36, he sat beside his mother as she took her final breath. And that moment didn't just break his heart, it broke his entire framework for reality. The identity that he had built, built the career, the achievements, the carefully constructed life began to fall away. And instead of rebuilding the same structure, he walked into the rubble and asked, what's actually here? Now today, Nico is a consciousness educator, a speaker, and a guide in emotional integration and inner transformation. His work bridges science, subtle energy, and grounded spiritual practice, helping people move from suppression and survival into something far deeper—true integration and embodied presence. He created the Mind Body Atlas, a remarkable resource that maps the emotional root patterns behind physical symptoms. And everything he does is built on one core belief: that life's breaking points aren't detours, they're actually portals. So in this conversation, we're going to go to places that don't often get talked about out loud. We're going to explore what happens to your identity when grief strips everything familiar away, and why rebuilding yourself from scratch might be the most important thing you will ever do. We'll talk about why the subconscious mind clings to the pain it knows, rather than finding peace that it doesn't recognize yet, and what it actually looks like to work with grief in the body, not just in the mind. So if you've been trying to just get through your grief rather than transform it, If you feel like you've been carrying something you can't quite name, something that lives below thought and shows up in your body, in your patterns, in your choices, this conversation is for you. So if you want to continue the conversation after the episode, head over to grieftogrowth.substack.com. You'll find an article there about today's discussion where you can comment and you can connect with me and other listeners. And with that, I want to welcome my friend Nico.

Thank you, Brian. Such a pleasure to see you again. It's been so long.

It has been. It's been, it's been a few years. When I met you, you were, you were living in Cincinnati where I am now, and then you kind of went off and you've been all over the world.

I have been, yes. I've been on my journey, but I'll never forget those days because they was, they were transforming. And you know, you're talking about grief today, but look how it's often what we perceive to be the worst moments in our lives that we actually to find the closest connections. And yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And you and I share that. So let's tell people that don't know about your, your experience with, with your mother and her passing. Yeah, yeah.

So my mother, uh, got— first of all, I moved from Belgium to the United States when I was in 2003, uh, and I really got into alternative health. Because I went to a doctor here once and quite frankly, coming from Belgium, it wasn't a good experience. So I went way deep into health and into alternative health. And my friends would jokingly call me Dr. Martens because, you know, I was always having— my home looked more than a lab because I was always trying new health things. And because I'm an engineer at heart. And then my mother got sick and I was like, you know, I'm going to help you. She got breast cancer. Right. But when it was diagnosed, it was already like pretty far advanced that it couldn't operate all that. And she didn't really believe in the traditional, you know, treatments either, the mainstream treatments. So I was like, oh, I'm going to help you get better. Right. And, uh, but she, you know, she got a little better, but then ultimately it came to a point where I was for work in Texas and they called me back like, it's time. To come home, your mother is gonna pass, right? And then I came home and she got better. And then she ended up in a hospital again because when she got better, she went outside to cut the flowers and she fell and she broke her femur and another bone. And I'll never forget that day because she wanted to do euthanasia. Which is, which is legal, uh, in Belgium, because she wanted to be fully conscious when she passed, even though she or me, we didn't believe in anything, right? It seems so silly for me that I even speak that today, right? That's how much I've changed. But we thought you would just fall asleep and never wake up again, right?

But she wanted to be fully conscious for that.

Yeah, she wanted to be, and I was the opposite. Anything I could get my hands on. I was drinking myself to death. I mean, just being honest about it. And because I couldn't deal with like the pain, just the thought. My mom was my best friend, right? And then one day on a Tuesday, I'll never forget it, I walked in and she was all proud because it's a whole process to go through. You can't just decide you're going to do this. You know, it's a panel of doctors and You know, and she got it approved. She had a big smile on her face. And partially she got it approved because I had been away from the US for so long and she brought that up. She said, probably it doesn't matter, but my son has been here, he's got a life too. And it's kind of like, yeah, it does matter. So Friday, 5 o'clock. And that's kind of a surreal feeling in and of itself. Yeah. Yeah. To know when it's like gonna be. And I'll tell you, my mind was playing tricks. I still couldn't believe it up to like a minute before. My mind was still, something was going to happen and this wasn't going to happen. It's very interesting. Yeah. You know? And she looked at me and she said, like, "I'm really proud of you, son, of everything you've achieved. And please make something of your life still after I've passed." And I felt like a total hypocrite because on paper, I made it. The great job, you know, the, the successful career and all of that. But I was drinking every day because I couldn't cope what was going on. And I just felt when I deeply inside, I was empty. Nothing really truly lit me up anymore. And that came back later, not to haunt me, but in like a good way, you know, leading to me even quitting like the corporate job. But anyway, what started to happen after that, I ended up back in the US and I just fell apart. I remember lying curled up in a ball crying on the floor, uh, in my house. And, um, then I started to meditate, not for anything spiritual, just because I thought it could make me feel better. Mhm. So it started to quiet my mind, and then these weird things would start to happen. I could feel like somebody touching me on the cheek. Like I could smell my mother. And when I was deep, I mean, not superficial, but I was getting these like thoughts. It was so weird. Like so out of character for me. And one day I asked the question, what if I had this whole thing wrong and this is my mother reaching out to me? And that's when the crack kind of happened. And then everything went on steroids because when you're like waking up, how do they say it? Universe conspires for you to go down that path. Yeah, right. And then what happened is, it's like, I started to study that. I was like, maybe I had this whole thing wrong. I've been so arrogant. Anything that we can measure and that fits the scientific— all this rest is like woo-woo, you know? There's no higher power. There is none of that. There is no— and I was like, holy shit, I had this whole thing wrong. So I learned how to meditate, and then I met my first mentor. Kelly. Have you ever met Kelly? I have not, no. Okay. And she was born a natural channel. Okay. And she had never met my mother because my mother has always been in Belgium, Kelly in the US. And, um, I met her for the first time and we had this connection, and she could channel my mother as she was at the table. So Kelly and I became friends, and we would have lunch every 2 weeks. Kelly me and mom, and not trivial stuff. It was like continuous. Ask Nico about when he was 10 years old in school, what he did. And I even had to like go back, like, what was that? You know? And then my mother said to her, I think part of Nico thinks that he's going crazy, but I want him to be able to trust this. So here are 5 things from his future he cannot possibly know now. And when they happen, he knows he can fully trust it. And sure thing. They happened. Like, his dad's gonna have a new girlfriend soon, uh, the new girlfriend is going to be 7 years younger than him. Her name is also going to be Godalieve, like my name, but she's not going to want to be called that. She's going to want to be called Liva. The first time Nico's gonna meet her, they're gonna eat this special fruitcake from this one bakery in Belgium. And mind you, my whole family thought I was going nuts, right? Because my dad called, it was like, uh, Hey son, how are you doing? I got to tell you something. It's like, what, you got a new girlfriend? So I can't believe your sister told you.

I told her clearly not to tell you.

I was like, no, my sister didn't tell you— tell me. Uh, she's like, oh, who would have told you then? She's the only one that knows. I was like, Mom told me. He's like, oh, you're talking to your dead mother again? Yeah. I talked to my therapist about that, and he pretty much says whatever makes him, you know, makes him feel good led him, right? But you know, too, for me, I had so many experiences. I, I've seen it like with my own eyes because that's the way I am, right? I want to experience it, right? Right. So it becomes a lived experience and real for me, and that's what happened there. So that sent me on a whole different path. I always say I'm very grateful because I, you know, have an amazing mother, because not only did she birth me physically, but she also birthed me spiritually. Yeah, yeah. For which I am enormously, like, grateful because, quite frankly, before then I was following the playbook that's supposed to make you happy, but it wasn't doing it for me.

Yeah, you know, and, and it's really interesting, Nico, because grief can, you know, a lot of times when people go through a grief event, that's when they fall apart, that's when they start drinking and everything. But for you, it was kind of the, the catalyst for your waking up.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because I was so far gone in like mainstream science dismissing all of this. So I was like really the worst skeptic ever. And then I have all these experiences myself. And then the last years of my life have been all about, hey, what's the science of this subtle energy? Not because it has to prove something to me, but just out of pure curiosity. Yes. Yeah. And that—

I love— that's a really good point that you make, because I'm an engineer also by, by background, chemical engineer, and I, and I, I want to kind of know the science behind it too, but I'm no longer interested in to prove something, but just because, just really to understand it and to understand that there is, um, there's an integration, I guess, between the physical world and spiritual world. They're not two separate things.

Yeah, absolutely. They're one and the same. Yeah, right. They're just different wavelengths, if you want, right? You tune into a different station. Yeah, exactly.

So then when you and I met, because, uh, I, I did— of course I didn't know you, and you, you knew Jenny and a friend who's a mutual friend of ours now. And I don't remember the exact story, but I know she told you she was coming to Shayna's service, and you had had some visions or dreams or something of Shayna.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

Yeah, and I don't remember all the details because to be honest with you, it will happen to me. Yeah, that comes true. But it's not even through me. It's just like kind of comes out. And it's like afterwards, like, oh my God, what did I just say? The people are like, How'd you know that? You know, The Color Purple kept coming, like all these different things, right?

Yeah, exactly. I remember that because Jenny said something like, um, you had said something about The Color Purple, which is Shayna's favorite color, and then you had a crystal that you ended up giving me that you said Shayna had picked out. Um, so I was like, who is— who is this guy?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, that just happens. I had to learn to trust that. That was quite something. Yeah.

And the thing is, it was, you know, we talked about the universe, you know, conspiring. Because when Shayna passed, I was of course lost, like anybody would be when they lose their 15-year-old daughter. And you were gracious enough, you know, start having lunch with me and meeting and talking about the stuff. And again, we have that kind of the same perspective. You were talking about the experiences that you had with your mother, which at that time in my life I had no idea that those things were even possible.

Mm-hmm. Yes. And that was the same for me. And, you know, I'd just been a little bit ahead in the journey, and I met amazing people on my path, so I always like to pay it forward, right? Yeah, yeah. Share with, with those that are open, because I mean, first of all, like, grief is totally normal and part of the human experience, but there is kind of like, uh, where it just becomes more than natural, where it just keeps pulling you down, you know, for decades and you can't get past it. Right. And I think it's so different for me now. I can't even go back in my mind. And I don't know if you have that, but it's just like it feels so foreign to me. And I think of a lot of our suffering, at least for me, came from totally accepting what I was taught in university and science about reality. And because of having this limited view of reality, Right? That actually then caused me a lot of, like, unnecessary suffering because this is gonna sound crazy, right? But I learned a lot from my mother and a lot of things that I learned, I learned after she no longer had a body. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, she could teach me different things and, like, you, do you know Thomas Windlow, the psychic in Cincinnati? Oh, I've heard his name.

Oh, when— yes, yes, I do. Yeah, yeah.

So I took his classes and my mom would just love it, right? She's like waking me up. I was like, Mom, it's another 2 hours before we go to class. And then she would be there like, hey, pick me, pick me in the unseen world, right? Yeah. And he would even say like, pick Nico's mom, she's so easy to talk to and she wants to participate. And it was like really amazing because He is really good at it, right, to tune in. He has that natural gift. But when you're around people like that, you know, it kind of through osmosis goes to you. And I was blown away because not only of my own things, my own abilities to tune in, but also quote unquote regular people that came to the class and would relay stuff from my mom that was just like, wow. Yeah, no way they could have known that, you know. That was really cool, like in, in the beginning, you know, the developing that. Just like we have senses through which we form an image of the world, there's much higher ranges, right?

Yeah, I was, I was talking with a client the other day and she was saying something about, um, seeing her, her mother. She goes, but I didn't see her like with my eyes. She said, I can't really describe it, it was like, you know, she was like off to the side or whatever. And that's the thing. We were taught we have 5 senses, but we even know from a lot of biologists we have way more than 5, even physical senses. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's— I mean, it's something we can develop. And it's not even so much that we have to, quote unquote, learn something new. It's more of an undoing of all our programming. We naturally have that when we're in our natural alignment. That's the way we are and we interact. And we observe a much larger spectrum. Yes. Of reality. And we're born that way. But then what happens, like your child can, have you looked at a baby when they're first born? They're not looking at you physically. Yeah. It's almost as they're looking at your energy and through you. Yeah. Right? But then what starts to happen, they see your aura's color change. They're like, daddy, you look blue. Oh no, daddy doesn't look blue. You're just imagining that. Right? And we form a filter and we start blocking all that out. Yeah, that's a really good point.

I think we've all seen babies— the people say they're— some people say they're looking at the angels, you know, you know, kind of, uh, not really meaning it literally, but we've seen babies looking off into, you know, and interacting with someone that doesn't seem like they're there. Um, or we've seen our pets do it, right? We've seen our cats do it, we've seen our dogs do it. So we, we do— we have these senses, and as you said, We're taught to shut them off, but I was listening to a physicist talking this morning about dark matter and dark energy, and he was saying how they're, you know, they're just more subtle things that physics actually predicts, or, you know, predicts that these things will be so. But it was funny, he was talking about from a totally materialistic perspective.

Yeah, absolutely. But there's, there's been a lot of science done around that now. I was amazed. How much was actually out there. It's just not mainstream, you know. Yeah, but, you know, we're going through an evolution of consciousness, so people are naturally waking up again. I think we are.

I think it's kind of like we're going back to what we had before, you know. We would— in our Western mindset, we said none of this stuff can be true, so we basically just shut it down. Um, and I think now we're starting to open up to that, you know, and people— more and more people are becoming open to it. And I think it's because we realize, you know, when we only focus on the material, which is only a small part of what's out there, it doesn't satisfy us. You know, we can, we can have the job, we can have the cars, we can have all that stuff, and then we realize, I'm still miserable.

Yeah, because there's that deeper longing. Call it your soul, come on, what you came here to do. And that's also what I realized a few years after my mother passed, and I'd gone through this whole awakening. I can't be in this corporate job anymore. I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but I know what I'm no longer gonna be a part of. Yeah, for now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because when I met you, you had— yeah, I think you'd taken your— you'd taken a buyout, um, from, from your corporate job, and you were just— you were still in that transitional phase. Yep.

Yeah, I was in there for a long time. I traveled around and Yeah, but then things start to unfold and I learned from a lot of great teachers and I actually was very interested in like superhuman abilities. I'd read about it in the Tibetan traditions, Rainbow Body, all those things. I was like, and you know, I dabbled in the New Age stuff. It wasn't my thing. You know, I just like, that's what I want to see. I know that that's possible, but I want to see it with my own eyes. And that's where a true Taoist master came on my path. And then I got to see that with my own eyes. Like, really, I mean, you can't even call it that. Like, our nature or full human potential embodied. And that got me really excited because I got to see it with my own eyes. It flies in the face of anything science tells you, but I saw it. Right. And then not only that, but I also learned that, yeah, it's something we all have within us. We've just strayed so far from it, you know?

Yeah. As you said, I remember sitting with you at lunch one day, we were talking about something and I said, you know, that's not possible. And you said, isn't it? And I will never forget that because, you know, we do, we have this mindset that says that's not possible. And so you've gone and tell me about some of the things that you've seen.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I've seen limbs disappearing. Um, my teacher was very telepathic, and I always kind of been that way. So he would teach the class, and I would have a question, and it would just be in my mind. And then he would look at me, and he would give me the answer. He did that like 4 or 5 times, speaking it, and then he kind of has this nod. He would just just get the knowledge. It was really wild. And then, you know, saw him move people with barely any effort. And I saw hundreds of pictures of people transforming into their light body, you know, where this gold light comes out. And I have pictures of people disappearing. I always knew that that was possible. But then you get to Lexia, it's like, okay, I'm Jedi, there's no turning back now.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so now you're, um, you're actually helping other people through some of the things, or helping other people experience the things that you've, that you've experienced. So tell me about the work you're doing now.

Yeah, a lot of actually what happened after I, I met that Taoist master was in 2017, and my dad had just passed in, in May of that year, and I met him in October, and like he has such a strong presence, like he's like a true master, even though he would never call himself that. He's very humble in that way. And I walked out of that room and I couldn't even think about thinking. My mind was gone. And this went on for the rest of the day. It's like the weirdest feeling without that constant stream of thoughts being there. It was just pure presence. And that, that changed my life, uh, just witnessing. I was just experiencing that. And, uh, what happened then, because when you boil water, the impurities come to the surface. So what happened is all my shit that was not processed just started coming up, you know. And then also what I didn't realize at the time, it's like anything your parents don't, like, resolve, that flow of the stream has to go somewhere, and you inherit it like energetically, right? So I was dealing with some weird patterns again where I'm like, huh, where's that coming from, you know? So that's how I got into— because I mean, he's been trained like this since 5 years old. I was like, I have all these thoughts, these emotions, just relax, you know, just let them go. I don't know, just let shit go. Yeah, you know, so I was I had to figure out something without borderline suicide. It was so dark and it was just like, oh my God. And then I found the work of Dr. David Schneider and he was like one of the top hypnosis teachers in the world. And I started studying with him and I started to learn how to communicate with your subconscious mind, which is really the part of you running the show, like the iceberg. It's not our thinking mind, it's really our— it's everything that's underneath in our subconscious that runs the show and determines, right? Because else it was easy. If your conscious mind runs the show, you say January 1st, I'm going to the gym 5 times a week.

Yeah, yeah, exactly right.

But then these feelings come up and this resistance come, but I really needed help with that. So, uh, not only did I learn to clear it for myself by learning how to communicate with my subconscious mind, but also how our neurology codes, experiences, and then you can change them. That sounds really weird because I worked in tech all my life, but somehow that made sense. Well, in my world, I just had to understand the new UI, a new user interface, and, and a new coding language, and I could start rewriting that, which what I did, and which I then helped, helped other people do. And no belief is like required, it's just how your nervous system codes things. And then I started to see in movies and in our technologies how it actually mimics how our nervous system codes experiences.

Really? Tell me more about that. Yeah.

Have you ever seen, uh, like, what's that movie, Minority Report, where they pull up these windows? Yeah, right, like these screens. Well, what I learned from my teacher is that if something is like bothering you, if you can point to where you feel it, you can let it go. Right. There's always a response from the body. Right. So when you point to where you feel it and then, you know, you learn to access where that information is stored, call it your aura, but call it an information field through which we basically see the world. Right. So you can really, like, learn to just communicate with your subconscious and find where that record is. In your aura, and then you can change it, and then you can very quickly clear it. I had somebody with a fear of flying for two decades. She tried everything, and we cleared it in like 8 minutes because it's how your neurology codes things. Okay. And I love that because for me it was like the spiritual, because I started to see auras after I woke up, and now I'm like, oh, that's how that works. Okay.

So yeah, it's kind of putting, putting together the, the spiritual with, with this understanding of how we interface with our, with ourselves. As you said, our subconscious are, um, the part of us that, that is running the show.

Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, for me, that really worked at that time because even though I'd gone through a lot of spiritual experiences, very much still in a doer mode, you know. Now it's more like coming back into stillness and just relaxing and just being with, with the feeling. And feelings just go. They come and they go. But what happens as human beings is the mind picks up on that and it starts going to work. Okay. Starts judging it, starts creating stories. And then what happens? The feeling can never go through its natural cycle. —of where it ramps up, it peaks out, then it goes again. Mm-hmm. Right? Because the mind grabs it and keeps retriggering it. Yeah. Before the body can complete, you know, its natural process. I mean, if you look at animals out in nature, you see a duck getting chased by a dog or something, right? What happens right after the danger is gone? They shake. Yeah. Right? That's the nervous system's natural way to reset and to let that tension go. Mm-hmm. What does a human being do? Probably goes 100 times for the next hour, what if that dog bit my wing off? Like, you know what I mean? What if that dog got me or whatever? And we keep retriggering it. Yeah. And we never release that charge. And then the problem is we start suppressing that. Right? And it's like pushing a ball underwater in a pool, right? Every time it wants to come up, you got to push it deeper. So you got to exert the same amount of pressure or more pressure to keep it there, right? Versus naturally letting it, letting it process.

Yeah, I, I love that analogy, uh, and I, that, that's actually really good. I love that because we do, we all have these things that, that come up and and we naturally want to just like suppress them. I don't want to feel this, this feels uncomfortable, so let me just push this back down. But it did— that doesn't get rid of it, it's still there.

Yes, exactly. And that's how I was raised. That's pretty much how we were raised in our society. Yeah, I mean, especially in Belgium, as a male, you were not supposed to show emotion. And you know what happens? We come in a blank hard drive and we get basically imprinted with Uh, the emotions, the patterns of our caretakers or authority figures, right? So that's when our operating system is written and we learn to certain coping strategies, right? And then what happens is if you never revisit that, that still runs decades later. And that's what then gets you in the way because it was very beneficial for your nervous system at that time to protect you. But now it's getting in the way. Yeah, yeah.

And I think we can all relate to that, right? We all have these things that we do and we're like, why do I keep doing this? You know, it's not— it's not what I want to do. It's like you said, you know, if we could all just control things consciously, we would all— we would all just— we'd go to the gym every day and we would— we would eat right and we'd actually, you know, we'd do all the things that we know that we're supposed to do. But that's— that's not the part of us that's really driving us.

No, it's a subconscious mind, which is really— it runs 90 percent or more of like the show, right? And it doesn't communicate through thoughts, it communicates through feelings. Yeah. So for me also, spirituality, it's not about ascension and going there and leaving the body. No, it's about coming more into the body, and the body has the wisdom. Yeah, your body knows before your mind knows. How often have you met somebody and you got a feeling or something came to you, you had a gut feeling, and then you rationalized it and you pushed it away, and then later something happened or something turned out. You said, I knew it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, and that's a really good point. And the other thing, you know, people like with minds like ours, right, who— because one of the reasons I went into engineering is because I wanted to know how things work, and I wanted to know what the right answer was, right? So there's always the right answer. There's, you know, there's always something I could— I can figure this out. This, this is the right thing for me to do in this moment. And it's been a huge shift for me to try to get to, like, to say, I'm going to try to see how I feel about this and trust it. That's, that's a hard thing to do when you've been raised in the way that I was raised, and it sounds like the way that you were raised.

Absolutely. I wholeheartedly agreed with you because what happens then, we started going to school, right? You're 5 or 6 years old and everything becomes mental. And you're being taught that all the solutions to your problems are up here, rational thought. And what happens on top of that? You cannot express these emotions. Yeah. You have to express these. Right. So now you start suppressing certain feelings and then faking others. And, um, and that's where the issue then lies because then we make the switch into the mental realm and we pretty much, most of us start living up here. Mm-hmm. Right? But then your traumas are things that happened that are unresolved from a young age. You'd be surprised, like, how often when I regress somebody back because they have a particular issue right now that's bothering them in their life, I always end up somewhere between age 0 to 5. And when I talk 0, I talk about still being in the womb. Oh, wow. Like, what the— like, if your mother experiences fear or whatever, you as a, as a consciousness, as, as a, as a fetus, you experience that, right? And it starts shaping how you see the world, how you see yourself. Yeah, right. And then what happens is that, uh, you can never solve what's bothering you down there rationally because it was installed before this even came online. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's such a good point. It's interesting. I was talking with the guy, I was interviewing a guy, and he does Chinese, uh, zodiac stuff. And so he did my chart and everything, and he goes, something happened when you were about 7 years old. And I was like, okay, I don't know. And I really hadn't thought about it up until that point. My grandfather, who lived with us at the time, passed away suddenly. And, and I was, I was 7. It happened in 1968. And I never thought about that, put this thing about me, like people leave suddenly. And I've had that fear my entire life. And until that guy said that, and he said, I see this in your chart, I never put those things together.

Wow. Yeah. And, and you're exactly right. And it's all those little things, they form like your operating system, it forms your perception. Through, through which you, you see the world. But it also is what really manifests your experiences in life, because it is, in a way, you're broadcasting it out continuously. Uh, so yeah.

So yeah, let's talk about that, about manifesting your experiences, because that's another thing that, again, for this is— it's like you said, it's hard for you to go back and remember what things were like before. This is something that I would have never even thought about, you know, like manifesting. So what is that? What does that work like for people?

Well, it— in a way that, uh, like we, we shape our experiences in this realm. Like, for simplicity's sake, we're all in this one intelligent field and we're all a part of it, but yet we're an individual lens, right, that sees a different variety of possibilities of how a life could play out Right. But ultimately, when you put it all together, it's one consciousness that has a separate— the illusion of a separate experience through you. And then what happens to bring it really down to earth here is that you agree as a soul with your parents and your caretakers to help shape your life in a certain way. And these are the things that were pleasant, but more importantly, also the things that were not so pleasant, but that really set things up for us to have a particular experience or to overcome a particular challenge or grow a particular skill. Yeah. Right. So that's more from like a high-level point of view. But then there's also, because there's also always this dichotomy. So is it then predetermined or is it Free will. Yes. Yeah. And it's both for me, which sounds like an illusion, you know, to the rational mind. But if you go more in the quantum realms, if you go more in the reality beyond this linear realm of cause of effect that we, most of us, consider all of reality, it is very different laws that are at work, right? So then it becomes a matter of like What is the vibrational signature that you're emitting? And that's then going to determine, you know, what's going to play out. Yeah. Just like you change the frequency on your radio dial, on your radio, and you're hearing completely different music. It's the same for us. And it's really basically from what I learned. And this is the key thing because most people think, oh, just think positively. It doesn't work. You know, because it's not about the thoughts. It's really how you're feeling on a day-to-day basis, which includes all those little suppressed feelings and all of that. That forms, in a way, your vibrational signature. And that's why things keep playing out in life. Yeah. Too, right? You have a certain view of relationships that you got from your parents. And then people are like, I just keep dating the same person, same problems, different, different looks. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you talked to— you mentioned the different laws, right? So we have— we, we do know we have laws of physics in the physical universe, and there, and there are laws that when you go— when you go beyond that. And I love what you talked about, like, and I, I, I wrestle with this all the time, you know, free will versus predeterminism. And as you said, the rational mind says it's got to be one or the other. And my, my conclusion at this point in my life is it's actually both. It's kind of a, it's kind of a marriage of the two. Uh, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Adjustment Bureau, uh, where I, I really love that movie because I love the way it shows it's like this balance of these, these forces, but also we do have free will and we do, we can determine our paths to some extent.

Yes, I'm, I'm at that same way, and I don't claim to know everything. And that was a great relief for me once I had so many experiences. Like, you know, I don't really know, and that's okay because I felt it, I've experienced it. But now, like you, it's also more profound for me and with curiosity.

Yeah, well, and that is an interesting thing too, when you finally give up and say, you know, with, with this limited brain, this limited mind I have, my limited perspective, because I only see so much, I can't know everything. It's, it's not, it's not possible. And that's, that's so freeing. It is very freeing.

I don't know, right? And because so much of what we think we know, we don't really know. Somebody else told us. Yeah. Yeah, if you really go down the rabbit hole and say like, where did I like get that from? The only thing I can tell you for sure is that I'm having this experience here.

You're absolutely right, you know. And it's funny, I say that all the time and it sounds crazy, but it's true. The only thing that we absolutely know is that you're having an experience. You don't even know. I tell people I could be a brain in a jar in a lab and, and be like, well, no, you couldn't be because you can feel and see things. But I can only see and feel what my brain allows me to see and feel.

Yes, yes, exactly. And that's one of the things I also did. I went— kept coming back to the one thing I was sure of, which is coming in this pure awareness, just observing, and then realizing that awareness had been with me for all of my life and it had never changed. Yeah, yeah. Nothing sticks to it. Yeah, it's not changed by what happens here. So I kept coming back to that because that was the only thing I really knew for sure.

All right, that— I think that's a really big revelation. When we can get to that point, you know. And, and even because people, people will think, well, I'm my body. But again, play a little thought experiment. You were a 7-pound infant at one point. Is that the same as, as the, you know, whatever we weigh now, you know? Uh, but that— the thing that stays with us is that awareness, you know. From the time I was— from the time I can remember to this time, that's always been the same. Yes.

Yeah. And, and then through my own experience, I realized that that awareness doesn't stop as that, because we think life and death— no, birth and death. Life has no opposite. Yes. Yeah, all is life. And the one thing we know about form, because that's part of like why we suffer so much, we get so attached to form even though we know damn well that it's temporary. Yeah, it's a permanent, right?

Yeah, yeah, that is, that is another thing that's really hard because you're, you know, we do, we, we want things to stay the same even though we know that nothing physical stays the same. And so really understanding, you know, who we are. And it's funny you mentioned that because I don't— I just wrote an article on Substack a little while ago, or post on Substack about— I said the exact same thing. That birth and death are opposites because one is us coming into the physical body and the other is us leaving the physical body. But life doesn't start at birth and it doesn't end at death.

No, it's all of it. Yeah, right. I'll sometimes tell people, like, if you have a car wheel and you only pay attention to where it touches the ground and you say this is what the experience is, but then it moves through this whole other cycle till it touches the ground again.

Ignore that part of it. Yeah, but, but having said that though, we talked about like how you were transformed and I was transformed by these grief events. So there is kind of a dissolution of an aspect of ourselves that I guess that's that structured part of ourselves.

And that happens every day, Brian D Smith, just not as abruptly. Yeah, yeah. None of us— I mean, we're changed since we started on many levels. Physically, we're changed. Cells have died, new ones have been born, right? But also just simply because of our energy connection. Yeah, there's always— when there's resonance between people, there's an exchange of information. Yeah, after that, we're changed. It's just that most of our life it's really gradual, so we never really question it. It. I'm Brian, I'm this. Well, when I met Brian 11, 12 years ago, Brian was something different. Exactly. So who is Brian? Yeah, yeah.

And that's, that's, you know, again, that's why we can— I love to play these like little thought experiments with people because they'll say, like, for example, like people that have lost children, like, like I have, you know, with my daughter Shayna. I'm like, but Shayna wasn't the same at 15 as she was when she was 2. She was— there was always a different change. She was constantly changing and evolving and growing. And my daughter Kayla, Kayla's 29 now, you know. And so I, I would, I would mourn every— like when they were little kids, like, and I couldn't carry them anymore. So we're always, as you said, we're always going through those changes. The death of the physical body is just, it's another one of those changes.

It is. And it gets How should I say? Our perception gets formed in a certain way because of our beliefs. Because you go in old other cultures where they believe differently about it and they celebrate it and it's completely different. Yes, yes. Yeah, right.

Yeah, there was a culture, and I'm pretty sure this is true, I was never able to verify, there was a culture that when people would pass, they just, they just said they went to live with the ancestors. They didn't say they, they died. It was basically like if you moved into a different apartment. And they had no shame around suicide or anything because it was just like, well, they went to live with the ancestors. So just a very completely different, you know, perception that we have because we say, if you're not in the body, you don't exist. Yes, exactly.

And I think for me, I'm grateful. Like, it's really interesting because our memories are not a fixed thing either. Right, right. I can go back now and look at the whole experience with my mother and tell you a completely different story of what my experience of it was versus, you know, 12 years ago, because we change. And when we change, all our memories change, right?

Yeah. And people don't want to believe that. We want to believe our memories are fixed. And by the way, we also want to believe our memories are perfect, right? And if you've ever been in a relationship with somebody, like I have been for a long time with my wife, it's like we argue incessantly about like what someone said like 5 minutes ago. You said this, and I, and I finally realized it's like none of our memories are, are even close to perfect.

No, it all runs through a filter. Yeah, right, a perceptual filter. And that filter can be changed, and a filter can change. And the moment you do that, not only do you perceive your reality different, but you're also creating a different reality. It's not a one-way street.

Yeah, that, that is also a really good point because again, we just have this idea that everything is so, so fixed. And the, the thing about the grief events is that they, they will— they can break you open. And what I've also found is a lot of times people say, well, I just want to go back to the person that I was before, you know, how do I get back to that, that person? And as we're talking here now Everything that happens to you changes you. There is no going back.

No. And look at nature. Do you see that tree outside and say, I'm gonna go back to what was last year? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I— because nature is always my ultimate teacher when I really want to get a feel, and, and, and nature always models, you know.

Yeah, I found that to be true also, that I, you know, I actually I was listening to Swedenborg a lot, you know, several years ago, and Swedenborg calls it correspondences. And whether you want to believe in God or whatever source, whatever, there, there are models out there for us to show us things that we can learn from. Just like you said, just looking at nature, looking at trees, looking at birds, looking at the way a river flows, all these things are there to, to give us hints as to what's, what's ultimately true.

Absolutely. And ultimately, we are nature, and we've forgotten that as human beings, because what I breathe out, the tree breathes in, and vice versa. Yeah. There is no us without nature. We're not separate from it. It's not something for us to conquer or to pound into submission, or nature, you got it wrong, you got to behave this way. Right? No, we're a part of it. Right, and that's— yes, so besides my mother, and then nature's my— been like one of my greatest teachers. Yeah, like, plus there's just this regenerative quality too. When I was like super depressed, I would just go walk for 2 and a half hours, just be in nature, you know. It was very not only soothing but also transformative. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, there is— there, there is a— it's really interesting because there is a biological component to us. As you said, we are, we are part of nature. And I love your thing about the trees too, because we like to think we're so independent. It's like, try living without the trees for a while, you know. It's like, we, we breathe out CO2. We can't create oxygen, you know. We, we're reliant on, on those trees to take our CO2 and convert it into something that we can use. So we're, we're definitely, you know, we're dependent on each other. We're interdependent.

Yeah, we're nature. And the sooner we realize that as a species, the better off we are. Because to me, the Earth's conscious. This whole universe is conscious. All the way from the atom, all the way through the universe itself, right? Which was one of the big gaping holes when I was taught science. And that kind of led me on a different path. Yeah. You know, because we look at us conscious and it's a hallucination in our head. Being dropped off here.

Yeah, you know, one of the most ridiculous things I think I've ever heard is— was it— I don't want to get the name wrong— there's Dennett, I think is his last name. I think it was Daniel Dennett that said that consciousness is an illusion. And I'm like, it's the only thing that's real, you know? It's the only— like, we were— you and I were just talking about the only thing that we know is that we're having experience. That's all that we really— that we really know. All we really know is our consciousness. Everything that we experience comes through our consciousness. And we start to understand, like, people think when we're looking at something, we're seeing the thing we're looking at. No, our— there's light reflecting off of it that our eyes are picking up that's being converted to electrical signals that's going into our brain that then somehow makes it into something that we perceive as an image, which that nobody knows how that works.

Yeah, and it gets run against the database, and then depending on the type of being you are, you experience a different reality. A dog's senses operate in different ranges. So for a cat, so they experience a completely different reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's— well, I was, again, I was just listening to something this morning. They were talking about the dog's sense of smell, which is like, uh, 40 or 50 times more than ours. And dogs can sense cancer. They can, they can bring a dog in it can tell you this person's got prostate cancer, this person's got breast cancer, or whatever. So it's living in a different world. And I watch my dog when she goes out in the yard and she's sniffing. I'm like, what are you doing? You know, I'm yelling at her, get back in here. And it finally dawned on me, it's like she's having a totally different experience when she walks out in the yard than I have when I'm walking in the yard. It'd be like someone seeing spirit, you know. You know, you look at someone, a medium, and say, what do you mean you're talking to spirit people? There are no spirit people. And they're like, oh yeah, they're right here.

Yes, sorry, my battery.

Oh, so, uh, you still there?

Yeah, I'm still here. Sorry, my, my power— my laptop went in the power saving and my light was hooked up to it, but I'm here. Oh, okay.

Yeah, not, not a problem. So I know that, um, you're doing some really exciting stuff now. You're, you, you're, you're teaching people hypnosis. Um, but you're also working on— and I heard you mention another, another podcast, um, some devices that can help us to create more healthy environments. Yes.

So I've been working with the Cosmic Towers for a few years now, and they're devices that are produced in Germany, and they create harmonizing energy fields. And, uh, I studied also with an Egyptian professor, Dr. Ibrahim Karim, because I wanted to be able to measure these subtle energies, not have it just be like I was like, how can we do that more objectively? So I started learning of how to measure subtle energies, then make changes, and then measure it again. And then I realized that we've had these ways of doing that for thousands of years. And also in more recent years. So then the Cosmic Tower came on my path, which is a device. And you know how you have sacred power spots in nature, like in Sedona? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, for example, what churches are built upon or temples. Well, it functions on that same principle because they're created by underlying underground water lines. And this is special living water that might be tens of thousands of years old, and it has a lot of different light frequencies in it. So when those underwater, underground water lines cross, it forms a vortex or a toroidal field. And that emits a lot of beneficial qualities into the environment. And it also harmonizes detrimental man-made qualities. This is why if you look at temples and you dig, you find another temple, right? Because it's not about the temple. It's about the energy that was naturally already there. And then they built structures upon it to amplify that energy and to spread it through the entire community to not only uplift the humans, but also the animals, the plants, right? To have a lot of life force and to harmonize the energies.

Yeah, it's fascinating. And I heard you mention that on another podcast, and I was thinking about, like, I haven't been to Egypt, but I know Egypt Egypt, there's, there's places like that. And, um, I have been to Sedona, and for people that, that go to Sedona, they will, they will say that they can, that they can feel these things. And then of course science says, well, it doesn't exist because we can't measure it. So, um, but we could— we know from experience that these things do exist.

Absolutely, they exist, and we've known it for thousands of years, right? And that's why I, I lived in Egypt for the last 4 years. During the winter, and I would go to all the temples, and I know a lot of the elders. And then I studied this biogeometry, which is a way of measuring those energies. Okay. Right. And then a whole new world, yeah, goes open, of course. Yeah.

So with the Cosmic Tower, is that something that people can, can experience for themselves, or where— what's, what's the function of it right now?

Yes. So people can buy ones for their home, which is really like bringing nature into home, like a power spot of nature. Mm-hmm. So it changes your water energetically, uh, the energy. So it's almost like being in a spot in nature. And then we have really, really big ones that go for hundreds of miles. So we're actually building a grid to help offset all the damage we've done because of, of our technological choices, right? Like 5G and all like the man-made EMFs, they come from that scientific mindset of this much of reality exists, right? Right. But it's not because you don't take into account the other levels of reality that it's not affected by it. So because of that, we've created a lot of distortion, um, in our environment to where people not only suffer physically but also mentally and emotionally. Think of it as this continuous noise in the background. You can't quite hear it, but your cells are listening to it 24/7. Yeah. Right? And it zaps our life force. And yeah, that's really why I brought that project to the United States to help become stewards again of nature versus cannibalizing it. And putting solutions out there that harmonize the energies. I do the hypnosis and all that for the inner work for people, which I think is really important and comes first in a way, but then also putting solutions out there to help harmonize our environment and support nature.

Yeah. Well, as we were saying, we're both biological and spiritual creatures. We got to take care of the body as well, and we are affected by what's going on around us. And it's— and I'm really excited to hear there's something maybe we can do about all the, all the stuff that's going on around us, you know, and, and that way, as you said, as well as doing the inner work and connecting with our spirit through things like hypnosis.

Yeah, like when I studied with the Egyptian professor, he talks about one scientific principle that we use in the subtle energy, which is principle of resonance. And most people know that if you have a tuning fork and you hit it and there's another one in the room at the similar wavelength, it will also start vibrating. Right. So there's an exchange of information and energy. Right. Well, our awareness also creates resonance. So whatever we put our awareness on, whether it's a person, whether it's a plant, whatever it is, we either change it for better or worse. Yeah, yeah. And when I realized that, then yeah, everything shifted for me.

Yeah. And that's— again, that's a really good point. It goes back to the fact that we are not as isolated as we'd like to believe that we are. And that, you know, and again, we talked about the, the thing of nature, right? So if there's, if there's resonance in nature between— with frequencies, why wouldn't there be with, with people and, and our own energy that we're putting out and energy that we're absorbing from other people?. And learning how to better manage that would be something that'd be really desirable. Yeah, absolutely.

So that's— I do lectures all over the US. Maybe should have a stop in Cincinnati. We're going to be up in Michigan. And I really just talk about the science of subtle energy and how to deal with the challenges that we've created now and how we can create a better world. Yeah, it's one of the things I love to do, especially because I come from that skeptic background, that engineering background, and then, you know, have a little bit of a foot in both worlds now.

Yeah, well, I think it's important that we have— you know, the thing is, I don't want to, uh, deny the fact that science is— science is allowing us to have this conversation today. Yeah, you know, we're sitting— you're sitting in Belgium, I'm sitting in Cincinnati. We're using technology to talk, you know, the science is a great thing. Um, so if we can understand things from both a scientific but also not ignore the other bigger part of who we are and what we are, you know. And, you know, when people— when I first heard about dark matter and dark energy, they're like, that's like 95% of the universe. It's like, well, maybe that's important if it's, if it's 95— whatever it is, maybe it's important if it's, if it's the majority of what the universe Yeah, you're absolutely right.

And I'm not against technology. I've been in technology my entire life. And I would have never have been able to learn what I learned if it was without technology. But it should not come at the detriment of our life force. Yeah, yeah. Right? And we can design things and we can create technologies that are not harmful to nature and that are not harmful to us. And that's what I'm more like advocating for, if you want to call it, or let people know about. Because I know when our consciousness shifts, the collective consciousness shifts. When that shifts, our reality shifts. So I just like to plant seeds.

Yeah, well, exactly. And I know a lot of people are talking about a consciousness shift happening. You know, that, that we are— because we are, we, we are not as— we're not individuals. We think we're individuals, but we're not. We, we are part of a larger organism. And as we each raise our own consciousness, we raise the consciousness of everyone around us.

That's true. The individual and the collective, you know, it's a two-way street. Yeah. We as an individual affect the collective and, and, and vice versa. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, Nico, uh, we're coming to the end of our time. It's really great catching up with you. Um, I know you have a website where people can check you out, so tell people what the website is. It's nicomartens.com.

Yeah, and they can find out what, what I'm up to or where I'm gonna be.

Yeah, so yeah, so when you get back to the US, we'll definitely have to get together. Yeah, absolutely.

I will let you know when I'm in Cincinnati area. It would be great to see in person again, but in the meantime, I'm really happy, uh, catching up now. And I have to say, I'm really proud of everything that you've done because I saw you there just like from the start. So I didn't see your entire journey, but I was privileged to witness, and then what all came out of it. And that, that just brings me a lot of joy.

It's really amazing, and it's really great catching up with you because it takes me back to to 10 years ago now and remember, you know, meeting you. And I, I am— I'm a totally different person. And, you know, I know people come into our paths for a reason, and you've been a big influence on me. So I appreciate you, you being ahead of me on the path.

My pleasure. It's always my pleasure to share too. So thank you so much.

All right, well, uh, have a good evening.

It's evening for you, right? I will, yes. Thank you, Brian.

Catch you later. Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 lessons that you can learn from the near-death experience without going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe the NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grief-the-number-2-growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.