SSP 027: Adam Evans - Meditation and Being True to Yourself

For those that have followed my journey, they know how important meditation has been for me in transforming the way I go about the things that I do. And it really wasn't until I started meditating for up to an hour was when a big shift started to happen. And I know for a lot of people who meditate, you know, an hour seems like a long time. And I really believe to really get the true benefits out of meditation, you need to sit for an extended period more than your regular 20 minutes that most people do. Now, the biggest challenge for most people, I've realized, is getting past that first phase, which is quietening the mind enough so that you can truly experience the benefits of meditation. For me, those benefits are connecting with just pure oneness, a place of pure love and energy that fuels you, that stays with you throughout your whole day, and it actually changes everything. You start to change your reality when you start to tap in and tune into this energy. For me, it took an hour to connect with it. Sometimes it takes two hours. But the biggest challenge for most people was quieting the mind. So that's why I've gone ahead and decided to create a free guide to quietening the mind. And you can get access to this free guide either on the podcast page where you're listening to this episode, or if you just type state-shifters.com There'll be a popup that come up where you can download that free guide, and it'll help you get access to these amazing benefits meditation can offer. Hello, you beautiful people. Welcome back to the Stage Shifters podcast. My name is Jordan Kanlish, and in this episode I interviewed a really interesting person who's based out of Toronto as well. And I connected with him on Instagram because he was putting out some posts that really resonated with me. And I was just really intrigued to learn more about his perspective. And his name is Adam Evans, and Adam is founder of a media company here. And he has quite a big presence online. And I enjoy connecting with these types of people because when you have these level of conversations that go beneath the surface of life, and you talk about things that can really start to shift your waking reality. When you start to apply some of the things that we talk about into your life, you are going to notice changes quickly. And Adam really talks. We talk a lot about things such as using visualization as a way to come to terms with darker emotions, such as death, using things such as psychedelics, how exercise and holistic health can really help you tune into a higher state of being. So this is a really interesting conversation with Adam. Adam's an awesome dude. I encourage you to check him out online. It's adamevans on Instagram. He's got some. His posts are awesome. Check him out, but enjoy the episode. All right, Adam Evans. Welcome to the State Shifters podcast, my friend. How are you?

I'm good. How you doing?

I'm very good. We are both here in Toronto on a snowy morning. Where are you based out of? Where are you living at the moment?

So I'm like 30 minutes east of the city, I mean, just around in Ajax. So it's about a 30 minute drive. It's a little bit too chaotic in the city for me nowadays. Yeah, I can't stand it ever since leaving, like moving out of it. I'm glad. Like, I couldn't even go to drive and get groceries when I was living in that.

So, yeah, I can see how it starts to take its toll. It tests the patience downtown Toronto. But we connected. I came across your Instagram page page one day and I really resonated with your content that you're putting out. And I've reached out to you and I've really wanted to get you on as a guest here because you're doing some pretty cool stuff. You have your own media company, you have, you know, close to 50,000 followers on your Instagram page. You're really spreading a positive message around health, wellness, mindfulness, spirituality. Do you mind giving some of the listeners a bit of a background on your journey to where you are now and how this kind of. Did you have a spiritual awakening? Was it a sudden or gradual thing? And explain your journey for me, man.

Yeah, so it was. I don't think it was that gradual for me. It was actually probably about five or six years ago, distinctively. I remember it because it was around the time I was living downtown and I was just getting overwhelmed with all the. Just the chaos and of the information and the people. And I was actually just working really hard, pretty successful. But I was drinking like constantly. And actually to the point where I would like, I would be drinking Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It was every single day of the week. I would even drink in the middle.

Of the day, like going out or was this at home?

This would be a little bit of mix of both. And a lot of times this is where it's like a fine line because I would be working and drinking. It's like I'd be in meetings, but drinking. So I'd be like closing deals but getting drunk or getting tipsy. It's almost like it's like reassuring when you're doing it because you're having a good time, you're making money, but it's detrimental. And even just longevity, there's no longevity in it. I felt pretty. Just empty, hollow, like depressed at the end of the day with the whole situation. And then I actually decided to just make a shift from drinking and that type of lifestyle to, I guess, more of a holistic type of lifestyle. So I kind of cut out drinking. I started doing. I started uploading to YouTube and creating content. This was all around the same time. So I decided, like, I'm gonna start making content. I'm gonna start, like, losing weight. It almost like held me accountable. Having to upload all the. All the content was like, I'm showing the journey means I, like, I have to do it. So I was just, like, losing weight, doing intermittent fasting. I made an intermittent fasting video and almost like a million views. It's pretty crazy, really.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was. That was a pretty popular one for me. And that was actually motivating as well, because people would message me and they're losing weight and they're going on a journey and all this other stuff. So I was like, okay, we're in together. So I just continued and I started reading books, listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts. So again, this was like six years ago. And then I just made a big shift, kind of cut out drinking. I still drink now, but it's like a beer now and then. And then I made a shift to actually smoking cannabis as a opposed to drinking, which I had never done before.

Right.

Like growing up, all through my teens, until I was like 20, 25, I thought cannabis smokers were just lazy. Like, I took. I had that old school business mentality of, like, cannabis smokers are lazy. They don't do anything. Da, da, da da. I was like one of those guys, and I was the guy that threw on a suit and tie every day and said that type of stuff. It's funny, now I'm like the opposite now. I don't really wear the suit and tie. I'm more on the cannabis side. They're creative people. I think that, you know, it's a tool that can be used. Like, I wouldn't wake up right now in Blaze for sure because I have tons of stuff to do. But if I knew, like, my designers, like, hey, man, we gotta work on this for the next two hours. I need your eyes on this. I might do that because I know that the next two hours creatively I'm gonna be just doing one task focused on one thing. I don't need to juggle, so I find cannabis help for that. So that was part of the, that's just part of the journey was like I shifted from drinking and just partying and all that boots and bottles type of stuff to just more of a laid back type of hippie lifestyle.

And you weren't like, as active as you were now. Like, you're obviously now you're, you're a heavy lifter. You're, you know, you openly like going to the gym. So this wasn't sort of your path before, before you took this turn. Wow, that's cool.

I mean, I grew up, I grew up doing sports. Like all through my, through my childhood I did sports. I did taekwondo for nine years. I played football for about 10 years as well. But once I, once I moved downtown and once I started that grind, that work grind, I cut out all activity. Like, I wasn't going to the gym. It was just a recipe for disaster because it was like a sedentary lifestyle mixed with partying, you know, which a lot of that's what people get into. They go into an office, they go into like this box 9 to 5 type of thing, and then they work, work, work, work, go party, come back, work, work. They don't exercise. They don't examine any sort of, any part of their psyche that, you know, is outside of the realm of this thing that they've been doing.

So it's a recipe for like anxiety and, and stress and all kinds of, you know, mental, mental issues that people have when they start, when they neglect to look, take care of their health. This stuff starts to build up and take its toll. And that's why people are in chronic stress all the time, because they don't. It becomes a new norm. Like they don't exercise. Yeah. So I had a similar experience when I started my corporate job a couple of years ago. You know, I can't. Had a very. I was always active, always played sport, always jimmed. And then I got thrown into this, you know, corporate environment where I'm sitting down all day and it was making me feel really restless, making me feel really like down. My energy was so low because I was just. Wasn't used to sitting down all the time doing medial tasks. And I was just. That was kind of where this journey began for me. I started reading, I started meditating, started to go to yoga, started doing like some introspection to find out what it is that I actually wanted to do in Life because I knew it wasn't tax accounting. And similar to you, man, once you begin that path and I started sharing myself online in a blog, once you begin that path, it's really. It sort of keeps you accountable as you sharing the journey with other people. Why do you think for you it's so important that. To bring that holistic approach to health and wellness in the mind, body, soul. Why is it important to have all three and not just one without the other?

Yeah, so like just. Yeah, I guess just bringing like the, the mental, not just the physicality is what you mean. Just like.

Yeah, because I used to, I used to train all the time. I was at the gym all the time, yet I was still chasing something.

It feels like I still am working on that myself, you know, I'm still, I'm still working on. It's like attachment to physical form, you know. And then, yeah, it's funny, I had a conversation with a spiritual teacher of mine, Ram Dass, and he kind of alluded to the fact that I still might have some hang ups on that as well. And obviously I'm in my 30s, I train and all this stuff. I'm into strength. I just basically try to. There's a meditative practice I use which is basically bringing myself to death. And when you bring yourself to death and you practice this visualization, it's actually kind of like a stoic. It's tied in with stoic philosophy as well. But you just lose everything, all assets, everything you own, everything you've known, your identity, you just lose it all. And you bring yourself to death, basically, during the meditation. During the meditation, yeah.

So you visualize what that would feel like.

Exactly. Yeah. To lose absolutely everything. I mean, I'm about to pass. I have some sort of illness, I'm laying in a deathbed, I'm about to kick it. So in this meditation and if I, if I lose that feeling of a being about to die, I constantly bring myself back to it. Bring myself back to. So if my mind wanders, I bring myself back to about to die. It's also kind of a samurai. It's akin to a samurai philosophy of carrying death by your side. When you do that, you don't. You're able to let go. I find it's like if I, if I take too many days where I don't do that practice, or I don't kind of at least examine that aspect of my ego, which is the attachment to form and attachment to things, you know, then, then I can get caught up in it. But I think it's just, it's about longevity again. There's no longevity in just, just exercising and, and having so much invested in your physical self because 50 years down the road that's entirely going to change. So I find that that meditative practice, that visualization exercise helps me with, you know, letting go or not having too much attachment to it. It's funny, I've done psychedelics before as well, and I find during the process that that's always a little bit of a tricky part for me is actually like, you know, people talk about like they go into an astral plane or they exit their body or anything like this, or they come back into their body. I always find a little bit, if it's like a bumpy road, it's like speed bumps when I'm exiting the body and things like this because there's some attachment there. But this is like the nearest way to psychedelics, of course, or near death experience is the nearest way to bring yourself to actually detaching from the body, releasing yourself from the body and then being completely okay with that, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Definitely, definitely. Psychedelics are becoming now more openly spoken about for that particular reason. Like, you know, I'm not sure if you too familiar with Aubrey Marcus. I listen to a lot of his podcasts and he speaks openly about his experiences in Peru and how his, his experience on psychedelics shows him. That shows him that the death shows him death. Like literally he feels like he's experienced death in, in this waking reality. So therefore when he comes back from his, his trip that he's essentially more immune to life. He's not as attached to the physical forms of life. And that's an interesting practice, doing a visualization technique. So what would you get into a deep meditation and then kind of bring.

A lot of breathing. Yeah, a lot of breathing. Because the thing about Aubrey, I love Aubrey, but the thing about him and a lot of other people is they tend to. And I have a lot of buddies that go to these ayahuasca retreats and they'll go to Peru and they'll do this stuff, but they do it often and there's even quite a few that are held in Toronto now, surprisingly. Yeah, I find that people get. It's like. And I've had conversations with some people with like a Lama Buddhist teacher on this as well. But it's like people get too attached, attached to the tools, to those tools. So I find the visualization and just a meditation is the best approach again for longevity because I Can do it right now, I need about 10, 15 minutes I can get into it. And when I come out of it, I have a similar feeling as I would if I did. Psychedelics, all of those things are naturally available to all people. It's just about knowing how to tap into yourself. I mean, if you're familiar with Kundalini yoga, a lot of those people just with breath work can establish certain realizations within themselves just from that alone. And it's a similar effect to taking a psychedelic to have that sense of separation, of ego. So, I mean, I think it's. Psychedelics are really great as long as they're just seen as tools that you can use. But I think people start to get too attached to the tools and they start to think that those things are the only way or the best way. But it's like it's not the best way is your natural state of being. You go to sleep every night, you have a DMT dream every night, you.

Know, That's a good point. Yeah, really good point. I mean, so have you tried ayahuasca yourself?

I haven't tried the ayahuasca plant. I've tried the synthesized for acodmt, which is like. It's very similar. Yeah, it's made in the lab. It's made in a research chemical lab for aco. DMT is made to. It's actually for botanical use in order to help plants grow. So a lot of people use it for that, like scientists and stuff. But it is basically dmt. So I've tried that and had some pretty crazy experiences from it. Yeah, I'll name off a few. So, like, just looking up into the. Into the. Into the sky. Normally I would see empty space, but I just would. I was seeing like fractals flying all over the place and interchanging, intertwining with each other. Just geometric shapes everywhere in seemingly what was open space. So just looking up in the sky was pretty nuts. I was looking at my wife and her skin turned into these rotating seashell fractal patterns that were all moving around her body. And then light was beaming through the cracks. So she was just looking at. She was completely sober. She's just looking at me. She's on her phone, she's looking at me. She's like, what's going on? And I was just like, like, eyes completely wide, like, what am I seeing right now? I also, at that point, I looked behind her and it seemed like the trees that were behind her, like, started to spiral and vortex into like a black hole type of shape. So that was kind of neat too. I was just like eating my breakfast. I like did this for ACO dmt. I was like eating my eggs and breakfast and I just looked over and saw this on her. I was like, oh, I guess it's kicking in now. Yeah.

So I mean this stuff's not for the faint hearted man but like for people who are ready to kind of take a, take a deep dive into a life beyond this physical form. It's certainly a good way of really testing the boundaries and seeing what's out. Like I'm getting to that point now. I'm curious, you know, I've done mushrooms and psilocybin obviously, but I haven't dipped into DMT in ayahuasca yet. Heard five Meo DMTs, another one that people are trying that you can get. But yeah, any, like, obviously not. It is not for everyone. Like it's sort of something you have to treat.

Yeah, definitely. It's like jumping. It's like if you don't know how to swim, you're not going to jump into a pool.

Correct?

Yeah, you know, it's really jumping into the water as opposed to just getting your feet wet and staying in the shallow end. That's why I think it's good to do the meditations, to do the visualizations first and then get into the psychedelics because that's really where you lift the veil. The only reason I really wanted to do it was for research purposes for myself because I had already spent a lot of time doing meditation. I just wanted someone to, not someone something to kind of give me that reassurance that I'm. What I'm experiencing during meditation, what I'm intuitively feeling is I want some sort of visual representation. So I just wanted to have that experience. Shrooms did it for me as well. And yeah, I mean I don't do it too often. I still have the stuff, I just don't do it that often. It's been sitting in my fridge. I even have shrooms that are like made with like made into chocolate. So it's like I just don't bother.

We're gonna have to keep chatting after this episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, there's. That's the perfect caveat for me is, is do, do your own level of inquiry through meditation or through contemplative practices before you start diving into the world of psychedelics. Because it's a, it's an unknown world, you can't predict what's going to happen. But I want to Bring up meditation, man. Because I'm big on meditation and meditation's had a pretty big impact on my life and my practice has evolved from, you know, 10, 15 minutes a day. And I experimented with two hours a day for a couple of weeks and just to see what it was like, because I, like you said you can really go deep with meditation and really connect with something beyond this physical world. What does your practice look like at the moment?

So what's really effective for me and I've been using it for the past six months, so I do a morning meditation where I'll. I like to do it in the mornings just because it sets me up for the day.

Yeah.

But actually, just side note to that, I've actually taken on a practice of meditating throughout the day as well. So. And this is more of like an Islamic, Muslim type of faith. So I have like an interfaith belief system, I guess you can say. I'll dabble in a little bit of everything because I want to understand it and I want to align myself to that practice and the people that are practicing it. So with the, with the Islam or Muslim faith, I'm basically facing Mecca five to seven times a day. And I'm doing a 15 minute, 10 to 15 minute prayer. So it's pretty time consuming. I have an app that notifies me, but really what I use that for is a time to. It's like it reminds me just to take that time to take a break. Sometimes it doesn't work because I'll be like driving. It's like, how can you take a break and pray right now? But with that faith you're allowed to even shift around your prayer times if need be. So as long as I do it after I'm driving, as long as I get in that five to seven prayer times per day, I feel like I'm a bit more connected throughout the day. And I can see the value in that on a day to day basis. That's what I've been trying to tap into with that religion and with that faith is trying to understand and also trying to intuitively feel the connection of everyone around the world facing one direction and praying with one intention. And it doesn't have anything to do with terrorism or any shit like that, which a lot of people think it does, especially in the States. That's just completely misinformed. So that's part of what I've been doing. But one really effective practice for me has been a morning meditation where I'll do eyes closed, head down. I do it in the shower because I like the natural water flowing on me and I like the sound of the water. It's almost like a white noise type of sound.

Yeah.

And then I also do it in the shower because it's like a stone shower. So it's like more of a natural raw material. And I do it in my basement because I find that when you're lower, deeper into the earth, I just find more of a connectivity as opposed to being up. And I've been in buildings and skyscrapers and condos and all this. I don't find them as connected as when I'm deep into a basement of a house, my house, any random house down the street. I go in and I'm just like, I'm a shower.

Can I just shower?

Yeah, yeah, I just shower. I just need to meditate. So I do this meditation practice again, visualization. And I find visualization works the best for me because as long as, and I think most people are creative individuals, you can close your eyes, you can come up with anything. You know that the universe is mental. Humans can come up with anything they want. So close your eyes, visualize what you want. I visualize a completely dark space and then I see the outline of a doorway. And it's almost like light is coming through the outline of the doorway. And I'm approaching the doorway. And during this process I have to really prepare myself and accept the fact that I'm going to pass by or pass through the doorway. So I'm going to basically open it up and go through and see what's on the other side. And in this practice I'm kind of confronting my. I don't like the term higher self, but it's the best way I could, I could use to describe it. I think every individual is like a multifaceted being. So I think that they have one, say, central point in the middle of a circle and then they manifest and project creatively outward multi dimensional aspects of themselves. So I think I'm confronting this creative space source energy of myself basically. So I'm going through the doorway and when I do this, I pass through the doorway and then I'm confronted with this energy and it's this strong, powerful, radiant, loving, compassionate, altruistic energy. And I can offer up anything to it. I can offer up any of my ill feelings, anything I'm dealing with in this world. And it's like it disintegrates before this, before this energy. And it doesn't do it in any negative way. It does it just in pure love. So it's just like this radiant love that just evaporates all things. And then about after it works through all my garbage, all my hang ups, then it starts to actually tear me apart. It tears apart my skin, it tears apart my bones, tears apart my flesh. I'm basically. If you ever imagine like a nuclear bomb going off and then that radiant wave, you know, just tears you apart.

Yeah.

So it's done in a somewhat destructive way, but it's also done in a way that it's very like. It frees me.

It's like dissolving into oneness type thing.

Yeah, exactly. So then from there, I basically just embrace this whole process. Don't freak out. The same. This is like psychedelic training. Don't freak out. Embrace this process. At that point, I can even open up my chest, open up my heart. And I do it in a way that's like, metaphysically, it's like Christ or Hanuman opening up the heart, exposing the heart to the world. And then from there, I'm almost brought into union with that energy. It's like I'm realized in that energy and in that love. And then I know that that is my truth, that energy, that love is my truth. That's a representation of it. And all other things that just evaporated, disintegrated, are all just mere illusions, part of the dream. So when I come out of it, it's like I just came out of a dream. It's like I just woke up and I'm like, whoa, who am I?

You know, when I carry that energy through your day, right? That connection, what am I wearing here.

For the whole day? It's like someone can say to me, hey, Adam, what's going on? I'll go, oh, me? Oh, yes. How you doing?

You know, that's cool, man.

It's that connection.

So you say it was a breathing exercise you did to get to that state where you can visualize that? Because it would take. How long does it take you to kind of break?

That would take. It's not even like, I can always do that one. That one if I want the full effect. Takes me about 15 minutes. I don't nail it every day. Some days I'll be trying for 10, 15 minutes. I won't get there. But yeah, on a good day, it takes me about 15 minutes. Breathing, definitely. I think breathing is a huge part of it all. Yeah, it's not anything like a Wim Hof breathing or a holotropic breathing, really. It's just a steady, controlled breath, full Belly breath, in through the nose, parasympathetic nervous system activation, out through the mouth. Nothing crazy. Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's heavily focused on the breath, but I think that's a big part of it. Obviously, you don't want to be hyperventilating or anything like that. Just a relaxed, relaxed breath.

Any exercise is going to help get through the conscious mind to break through the initial mental noise and get to that place where you're ready to be receptive to connecting with source. But, yeah, meditation, man, that's. It's a key. It's a key practice. I mean, for people who are starting out, just beginning their own practice, there's a lot of different ways of tackling meditation. Did you have a preferred way for someone who's starting out, who wants to start to tune into this level of connection?

Yeah, binaural beats is a good way because it'll help bring you into that zone, that focus, where you can then get yourself to visualize. Because a lot of the thing about visualization is just so much cluster get hit with like, I got to do this, I got to do that. Just worldly things can kind of interrupt. So I find something that's going to bring you into a steady state there where you can actually focus on visualizing. So binaural beats, also shamanic drumming. So actually I have a drum here, but basically you can listen to shamanic drumming, and it's very steady, and it's more like just 10, 15 minutes of that, and you can. It's the same thing. You can just ride that, and it's like a journey again, it's just another tool. It's like a psychedelic.

But it's a drum, like, very trance like, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of, like, that type of stuff. Yeah, trance type of things. Also, if you listen to speakers, certain speakers, I find this works for me. But Alan Watts, Ram Dass, and his younger years, Terrence McKenna, to some extent. But if you listen to these people, they're so poetic in how they articulate themselves. They can actually bring. They can bring me, but they can bring a lot of people, and I'm sure they do, into a state. Similar state of just like the shamanic drum.

I've noticed that, man. Yeah, same deal. I find that one of my. One of the biggest influences on me was Eckhart Tolle, and I would listen to his love teachings just hours. I have hours of his audio on my phone, and I find it just puts me.

He has that voice too.

Yeah. Man, it's just like he just puts you on.

So if you examine yourself.

Yeah, he's exactly, yeah. So, like when you're on the train, you can literally listen to him talk. And it really just puts you in that peaceful present state. Yeah, good, Good point.

That was one of my first books. That was one of the first books I picked up was Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now. And then I just kind of crushed all of his other books.

Mine was New Earth. Someone gave me New Earth, and that honestly changed my life. And that's how it began for me. And just, yeah, went crazy from there. But it was something that. It opened up another dimension to living to me. But you finished the book. You're. Holy shit. I've just understood the essence of life. And then I. And then all of a sudden I went back to my conditioning and that's when I was like, wait a second. So I've just. I've read, absorbed this knowledge, yet my body and my living stayed the same. And to me, that was where the practice began because it's basically unconditioning yourself to living in this world where you're just living out conditioned behavior patterns, opening up the dimension of presence in your life, which takes practice. And for me, like, took meditation, took building new habits to ensure that I wasn't living out just yet. Behaviors that I just adopted from other people, other things that I've read. So that I think, yeah, converting knowledge to wisdom, man, how do you do that in your day? Like, what's your practices like? You read a book, right? That's just knowledge that you absorbed. How do you then take action and apply some of the things that you've learned?

Do you mean. You mean more of like a physical, sorry, a spiritual type of thing?

Yeah, more the spiritual books. Because you can. People can read a bunch of spiritual books, but until they actually apply the principles, it's only that you're not going to really learn too much.

Yeah, I mean, I think the simplest and most beautiful explanation is. And it's from Maharaj Neem Karoli Baba, which is Ram Dass guru. It's just love everyone and always tell the truth. And that's it. It's like you can read all those books and it's just love everyone. Because the truth is, if you examine oneness and you examine even our conversation here, you, yourself and me, if I don't love you, I'm doing myself an injustice. Because if I see myself in you, I need to love myself. I need to love everyone. Because I need to love myself. If another quote from Ram Dass is everywhere you look, all you see is God. If all is. And God is a triggering word. You can use source, you can use the one. You can use anything you want. You can use the creative matrix, whatever you want to call it. But it is all kind of an outward reflection of what's. It's all within and without. Love everyone and tell the truth. And the love everyone is a huge focal point because for me, and I told this to Ram Dass too, I was like, I don't. I don't love everyone. Half the days I want to strangle a bunch of people that I see. So it's really just working around that and putting. Constantly being able to put yourself in someone else's position, kind of see through their eyes and just having that intuitive empathic nature and then trying to stay connected with that and then always just again going back to love everyone. So even if no matter how upset I get with someone, I have to return to that because it's so transformative and it's so transmuting that it causes an immediate shift in the perception of the individual. Even if I can't stand the person, it causes an immediate shift. So much so that I can put myself, at least to some degree, in their shoes.

I think that's one of the most powerful perspectives to develop is. Is that. Is that selflessness is seeing yourself in everyone. You're then able to forgive people. Forgive people for. Yeah, for me, it came back to forgiving, like my close friends and family, because I noticed they would trigger me so much. But then I realized that it's like I'm. When you're speaking to someone, if you can see, notice the fact that you're actually talking to yourself, then it's. You can't hold a grudge against someone else because then you're holding a grudge against yourself. So, yeah, that's a great, That's a really great perspective for you. Right now you're working a job where you're able to connect and work around your own schedule, essentially. And you're doing work that you've chosen to do for a lot of people. They're stuck in jobs that they haven't necessarily. They know they're capable of working more. Perhaps they've started to adopt this level of perspective where they've, they've gone below the surface of life and touched something that's, that's, that's fuel now, opening up a higher purpose. Yet their work doesn't quite align with that, how do you then integrate that? How did you have to go a period of integration with your career and this new perspective that you've developed? And then at what point did you realize you were ready to kind of step away and start creating? You started a couple company, obviously.

Yeah, you know, actually, I mean, I started the first one before I even had the perspective at all. I think. Like I knew nothing about spirituality. Actually, God was a triggering word when I was younger. Like, I didn't really want to hear it because I was kind of brought up Catholic, Christian, and it was very overbearing in that religion. I appreciate that religion more now than I did then as a kid. But I think, I mean, I just think it's confidence if anyone has, if anyone's in a job that they don't like. It's like if you're gonna spend the majority of your day in something you don't enjoy doing. See if you, if you try that meditative practice where you have everything disintegrated before you or you, or you bring all your stuff and bring it to your higher self, higher purpose, and you just watch how it just disintegrates it all. Like people think that that job is so important. You know, most people could quit that job and it won't matter. Like the things that people think matter. All that matters is their joy and happiness on a day to day basis when they wake up. That's the truth of what matters. Not sitting in a chair, not sitting with a cubicle. Because that's all part of what you offer up when it gets to disintegrated. Your joy and your happiness doesn't get disintegrated. It aligns to that because it's in resonance with that same, it's the same vibration of love. So people need to shift their focus on what's important in truth, to their higher purpose. And I don't think it's sitting in a desk or sitting at an office. So I think it's just developing the confidence to recognize that. And I think the meditation helps because it builds that confidence and it makes you realize that all those things that you thought were important are illusory. So now it's a matter of connecting to what's more important to you and what makes you feel good every day. So like every day, even on days where I'm like, like some days I feel like shit and I have to slap myself because I'm like, you know what? Like I don't have a boss over me, yeah, I can really do whatever the hell I want. It's been like that, like, my whole life. And it's only because I've set myself up with that, with confidence. Like, I worked in a grocery store when I was 15 for, like, three months. And I went to the owner of the grocery store, and I was like, man, I'm making, like, 10 bucks an hour. This is bullshit. I need to make at least 60 an hour. And at the time, he laughed at me. At 60 an hour, 60 an hour is like, nothing. At the time he laughed at me, and he's like, man, if I could make 60 an hour, I'd quit my job. And he owned the grocery store. So I was like, all right, well, I'm out of here anyways. And it was just like, that confidence, you know, because I just. I had so I knew I had so much more value in me than $10 an hour that, you know, I went out. I literally did that within the first, like, couple months, I was making 60 an hour. So, you know, it's just that confidence, it's actually part of a Taoist belief system. It's like, if there's a million potters, and the story goes like, this Taoist monk was taking people for a walk in the park, and one of them is a potter, and he says, you know, my potting business isn't doing well. You know, there's, like, a hundred potters in the town. How are people gonna buy my pots? You know, it's so competitive. And then the monk basically just instructs him, like, because you're going to put your best effort into making your pots. And it's just the confidence and that the sales will come. People will buy your pots. So it's not getting paralysis by analysis. It's not overthinking. It's not getting. You know, it's literally having that confidence, taking up that confidence to make the shift in your life and then going in that direction again, confidently. And meditation, as I mentioned, would probably help with that because it reveals so much, you know?

Yeah, that totally resonated with me, because when I was at my corporate job, I remember when I started, and I hadn't really delved into meditation yet, and this kind of. Kind of world was. Everything was so serious. I remember it's like my job was serious. Everyone around me took work so seriously, and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy the work. So it compounded the. Compounded the misery, compounded the purposelessness. Because I was just like, everyone else is taking this so serious. Yeah. I, I, I should be, yet I don't enjoy it. And then once you, I discovered meditation, asking questions like, what, what am I passionate about? What do I want to do? What is my purpose? What would I do if money wasn't an issue? I started to tune into that connection, that source, that when you start meditating and doing proper practices, you can light that flame and carry it throughout your whole day. And I realized that, wait a second, this job isn't, I don't actually need to be here to feel this. I don't technically need anything outside of me to feel this. And it took the seriousness away. And then when it came for me to leave my job and move out to Toronto, I had faith and trust because I knew where my happiness came from, came from within. And I'm still in the journey, man. I'm still practicing this, the faith and trust all the time, because now I'm working for myself. And now I don't know when my next income's going to be. But I trust in the fact that I am the source of my happiness, fulfillment and purpose. And when I trust that the universe is going to give me what I need to continue to grow and serve others, it allows you to just flow through life with a lot more effortlessness, a lot more flow. And when you connect with that, you realize you don't need to work a job that doesn't fulfill you because you're free to go and explore life without that constraint of being tied to something that you feel like you have to do out of fear, out of fear of not having enough, fear of letting someone down. And it's the problem with a lot of millennials now, man. We get brought up by parents telling us what we should do. You should go to university. I see. In Toronto, especially because everyone's so well educated here, you should follow this path. You should go and study and become a lawyer, doctor, or accountant. And people are stuck, they're stuck in their, in their parents idea of how their life should be. I'm never really asked the question, what do they want out of life? So you clearly didn't have that much pressure from your parents. But if someone's getting pressure from their parents, like, do you have any advice for them who can start to maybe tune into their own inner voice to find out what it is they actually want?

Yeah, that's a tricky one because it's almost like you gotta help your parents tune into their own inner voices as well, actually.

Or just leave the country.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You certainly took a leap of Faith, that's for sure. Yeah, I wasn't pressured too much. I mean, I was pressured to go to college. I did go to college. I think I was already. I already had a company when I was going into college.

Yeah.

And then I had it when I was leaving. I didn't really learn much. I just kind of went because it was a thing to do. Kind of like what you said, like, you're in Toronto, you're in Canada, whatever, you got to go. So I just did it. But yeah, it's a really tricky one for a lot of people that are getting pressured to go down a road that they're not too passionate about. I think just keeping open communication is really important with your parents not being too closed off about it. But sometimes they are very, I'm sure, tunnel visioned about the whole concept and it's in large part based on their upbringing and their belief system. And it's really just a matter of breaking that conditioning and that pattern. It's this weird paradigm. That's a really tricky question. I would have to give it some thought because I really need to put myself into someone's using visualization. I need to put myself in something like I get questions from people just like that and they'll say I'm in this situation, this and that. It takes me like five minutes, but I can actually. I'll try and visualize myself in their situation and then I'll see what intuitively comes to me as the most reasonable answer for that. In a lot of cases. As long as you're not getting like smacked around at home, anything like that, I say ride it out. Yeah, like I moved out of home maybe a bit prematurely. I was just eager to get out, but if I stayed, I could have saved up more money, you know, just being practical. So yeah, it's just like if it's not too bad, patience is my. Is my answer. Because again, it doesn't really matter, you know, even if someone went, even if someone went to school for two, three years for something they weren't too like I went for three years, I wasn't too passionate about. If I think back, it doesn't matter. Yeah, you know, it doesn't matter to me. Like in hindsight. But yeah, just, just patience and open communication is the only thing I could really think of right now that would help that.

Yeah, I remember the biggest challenge for me was just, you know, when I started to read Eckhart Tolle's books, I started to meditate. I started to connect with, you know, connect with Something deeper. Was explaining that to people. Was explaining. Explaining that, you know, this isn't that important. Like, I. I'm connected. I'm starting to tune into something that's. That means more than this. And, like, your parents don't understand that, so how do you explain that to them? But like you said, I was just open and inspired. I just told my parents straight out, like, this is. I'm taking this leap of faith. You need to back me in, or I'm going either way. And initially they weren't. They weren't too happy. But they come around when they. When they see. As long as they see you're happy, that's all they want at the end of the day, is for you to be happy. If they see that, they'll always support you. It might take a few months for them to accept the fact that you've just knocked back the law job or the accounting job, but they will always support and encourage you if you're on the path to happiness and fulfillment.

And you'll notice that because it's happiness and it's their love for you. So these are things that are more rooted in truth, as opposed to the visceral, superficial job they want or the things that people get attached to as being very serious, as you mentioned. So when you tear away all that stuff, and this is why I think the meditation practice is great, because it visually tears away everything, it disintegrates it all, and it reveals just that happiness that's important. Just that truth that's important. So even if someone thinks their parents care so much about those things, it's really deeply rooted in your parents to love you. So once you connect with that, then that's all that really matters. That's why I say the other stuff doesn't matter at the end of the day and in hindsight, because it's not rooted in truth, for something to matter, it has to be deeply rooted in truth. And a lot of. I mean, Sam Harrison, Jordan Peterson made a huge debate around what truth means. But I'm more on Jordan's side of it, which I think truth is something that's rooted in love and things that happen are more eternal as opposed to, you know, the job and the career and the money and the whatever.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Yeah, it was that, you know, during this, like, learning phase that you're going through and as we constantly learn and evolve, was there any, like, you read a lot of books I've observed from your page that you listen to podcasts. Like, at what point then do you, you know, you can absorb a certain level of knowledge, but until you start to question your own beliefs and understanding what it is that you want to stand for, how do you find that balance of like learning, reading, gaining new knowledge, but then also doing your own level of self practice, your own inner work to getting a clear understanding of what your truth is?

So my. What I've been working on is my own ability to absorb those books, those informations, and, and being able to articulate it. So almost as you said, it's difficult to explain Eckhart Tolle to someone being able to. Someone that's had no. And I know a lot of people that have no meditative experience, no psychedelic experience, nothing. They are consensus reality 110%. Being able to articulate and communicate to those people in a way that resonates to them and that they can carry away with them something, a seed of something that it may not sprout in that moment for them, but at some time something could happen. So that's been my practice is being able to take all the. Because it's a cluster of information out. There's a billion books, there's a ton of different. Taking it all and articulating it. In a way, it's almost like when you think of Einstein's E equals MC squared coming up with a billion beautifully simplistic equation that a layman can't quite understand. E equals MC squared, but did the average person would be able to wrap their heads around. So coming up with all that spiritual woo woo stuff and then putting it all through a meat grinder, so to speak, and then being able to actually get something out that someone could actually digest. That's kind of my practice. And it involves, yes, the spiritual books, the metaphysical stuff, yes, the religious stuff studies, but also science as well. Like, I love physics, I study that quite a bit. The tricky part about physics is that if I'm not doing it every single day, it tends to slip away from me because it's so, so heavy. So, I mean, I've gone through like 10 different physics books, but if you were to ask me to articulate coherently physics stuff and quantum physics and explain it, it's challenging for me. So, yeah, basically being able to improve my ability to articulate and explain different things from, from like all different aspects of life. From the physics side, from the, you know, and I even did a podcast which was a little bit challenging for me, which was basically one, I think it was called Science and Religion Bridging the Gap.

Yeah.

And it was just Kind of comparing the two because again, I do like to examine like Hinduism and just different type of mythologies. And then I like to compare it with science because, you know, it's just fun or the philosophy of science and things like that. But yeah, just being able to take everything and then articulate, that's my only goal. And then hopefully someone could then do the same. Hopefully someone could then go to their friend and it's just perpetuating that.

Yeah. How much time do you carve out in your day to invest in this sort of level of self inquiry or like.

Quite a bit actually. Quite a bit. Because. Because of how things are structured for me, like, you know, I could, I could listen to a book all day long. As long as I don't have any scheduled calls or meetings or anything. As long as I'm just overseeing people's work, then that's why it's actually really convenient for me because I can, I can polish off books constantly just, just because of that. Like I don't get distracted too easily by all those different things. I also have two dogs, so I constantly take them out. So I'm listening to audiobooks then. So yeah, I mean it's pretty easy for me to. I would say I'm in a position that most are not in my ability to absorb information, even when it comes to like podcasts and stuff or like if there's a Joe Rogan experience on, I can put it on one of my screens because. And a lot of people wouldn't be able to sit there and watch three hours of a Joe Rogan. But I mean, I'm already working, working on like my other four screens. So I'll just allocate one screen to Joe and I just watch it. Or if I'm working out because I have a TV in my gym, I'll just throw him on there. So I'm just always about like my buddies ask me, hey, do something about this new game. I don't play games anymore because my time is. I'm just about that longevity again. I don't see any longevity in me taking up a video game and playing it. I rather listen to a book, read something because I'll carry something with me long term. So that's it. Just allocation of time and resources. I don't do any gaming nowadays versus when I was younger. I did a lot of gaming.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the podcast. How has that been? You know, you started your podcast last year and you talk a lot about these kind of topics where we're covering now. And how have you found the podcast? That's as it's evolved. How have you evolved along with it? Because I know when I started my podcast, it was really just a way for me to discuss stuff like this with my friend, and it's kind of evolved now. And so I interview people and people contact me for interviews, and I just. I feel like I've noticed I've gained a lot of life skills from podcasting and interviewing as well, because I believe questions are the keys to unlocking life. Like, if you can ask better questions, you're going to get better answers. Not enough people even ask questions at all. Like, just asking a question, like, what. What's my purpose today? Or like, what. What do I want to do today? Or what do I actually want? How have you found. Podcasting has helped you personally? And then how have you found the. It's evolved over time.

I mean, I'm still. As yourself. I'm still very new to it. Yeah. Going into it, I kind of feel like I almost had a cheat code because I'd spent so many years now having phone conversations, having video conference calls, everything. But they're all business. They're all talking about business, so it's not too much. I actually did one business podcast with a client of mine, which was kind of cool. He's in Hong Kong. So I feel like I already was kind of armed with the necessary tools in order to be able to carry on a conversation, especially long form. Because, I mean, I'll go into. I mean, I don't do it much anymore occasionally now and then, but I would go into boardrooms. You know, this is when I was like 18, full suit. And these guys are in their 50s and 60s, like multi millionaires in these boardrooms. And I'd close deals full of these people that are fully skeptical of me. I even had like these blood earrings back then. Like, I was pinstripe suit and everything. Very confident. But, you know, I developed that. So doing introspective work, I saw that in myself. I was like, I've already kind of trained myself to hold these conversations, so now it's just very natural that I should do it. So the only thing I've found that I've learned so far is I'm just improving my ability to listen more to what people are saying and just understand the position they're coming from. And that's basically what I've. That's. That's my takeaway so far. It is. I find it's better to do them in person. Like you were suggesting we'd meet in person at first, but it's just very difficult sometimes. Like, it would take quite a bit of time for me to go in and meet, unless I already had some sort of scheduled meeting. Then it's not too difficult. We could even have probably done it in the boardroom or something, because then usually that's what I do. Like, if I have to go into the city, I'll stack a bunch of things I have to do at once and then I get the hell out as quick as I can. So, yeah, my takeaway so far has just been the ability to listen better to people. But, yeah, again, I'm still learning, so I'm learning so much about it.

Yeah, I definitely echo that as well. Do your episodes, are they once a week? What's the frequency?

Like, um, it's really just whenever I haven't. Like, I have. I don't have any set. Set plan for it. Even with YouTube and everything else. It's like it's whenever I wish I was a bit more consistent and maybe I should just keep working towards that. It's tricky when it's not like, my main thing that I do every day. Like, it's not directly connected with my work or anything else. Although it may seem that way. Especially if you're looking at, like, my Instagram. You're like, oh, this guy's involved in fitness. It's like, not really. I mean, I do it, but it's not like, what pays me. So I'd say probably about two. Two episodes a month I'm doing right now on the podcast, and then maybe like two to three videos a week on YouTube.

Have you found that how you find the YouTubing? Because I haven't really delved too much into the YouTube world. So you do vlogs. What do you talk about? Is it just stuff that comes up that you're interested in learning about that you want to share with people?

Yeah, it's pretty random. Like, I think I'm actually going to do a video today or tomorrow and just ask people what the hell they want to see. Because sometimes I'll get caught where I'm like, am I making stuff that I want to produce or that people actually want to consume? So I'm probably going to do, like just a quick question video and be like, hey, what do you all want to see? But it's usually just products that I'm using. So if I. I've been taking more, like, NCT oils, I've been doing more ketogenic type stuff or paleo type of diet. Like I've just been going really hard on meat and I'm really into intermittent fasting so it's really just stuff that I'm interested in. But occasionally I'll do a video just on some random topic, some like news worthy topic. But yeah, I don't have much of a direction for the YouTube channel and actually the growth of my YouTube channel channel hasn't been that substantial. It's been relatively slow and I don't know if it's because it's not too niched up and the content isn't all in one direction. If it is just because it's also spread out but I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, it kind of grows. I think if you don't spend too much time investing in the growth, it just grows organically by itself as people kind of tune into the energy you're putting out. I mean before I ask the final question, man, because I want to be mindful of your time. Where can people find you online? Instagram, the podcast, YouTube.

So Instagram is adamevans, the YouTube. I think you just search Adam Evans, you'll probably find it. Podcast is WeTheEther.com or just we the ether on itunes, any other social network like Tumblr or anything like that. Again, Adam Evans, same thing. I post on those. But it's like if people ever message me on those, I. I don't even know if I've ever checked them. But so like the best way to get ahold of me is probably Instagram or. Yeah, it's probably the best bet.

Yeah, beautiful. All right, man. We've covered a fair few topics here, a few different avenues around self growth and self development and spiritual inquiry. But we've. You've tried a lot of different things, you've experimented a lot different stuff. Diets, like meditation practices. If you had to recommend one or two things for someone to implement some, some actionable items that someone can take away from this, this podcast and apply to their life that's going to yield a big impact in them starting to tune into their higher purpose or tune into their higher self, what would you recommend they do?

So I think the morning meditation is really important. I think waking up every morning and even if you don't want to try a full visualization practice where you confront your higher self and you're torn away and all this because it sounds pretty intense. If someone just wanted to wake up and just apply a practice of I think kneel down, head down is important because I think bowing is important, but in that practice, just simply affirming that you are open to receiving and you are ready to serve. So you are ready to serve whoever, whatever, throughout the day. Because the only purpose here is to serve, to serve another. So if someone just starts their day with a feeling of, or an intention of gratitude, servitude, then I feel like they're setting themselves up for success every single day. Because you've already put yourself into that state of thinking, that state of being where it's not about you, it's about your serving others in this world every single day and doing it from a place of love and compassion. And then if you just apply this. I find I just left someone a comment because I think I put something like better things are ahead and I posted it on my podcast Instagram. I feel like better things are ahead. Type yes if you agree. It got like 200 yeses comments or something. One person said yes, they couldn't get any worse. So to them they think they have the worst scenario ever. And I can't remember, but I wrote something to them. It was something to the extent of it was like, rise each day with gratitude. Okay, so rise each day with gratitude for breath and light. And then witness as each of those days starts to become bright, you're really just rising and you're happy for your breath. You're happy to open your eyes and embrace that light. You're receiving breath, you're receiving light, you're receiving love. And now you can project that back out to the world in servitude and everything will just start to come after that. Then don't hold any attachment to time frame around these things. Don't expect that the next day it's going to be great, the same day you're going to crush a million dollar sale. In an absolute sense, time is not relative, it's not there. So when you affirm these things, expect that the feedback you get will be gradually over time. No set time frame, it's just going to come at random. Opportunities are going to pop up in your life. All sorts of different stuff. We'll get into that like woo woo, law of attraction stuff. But that's what it's all about basically is you have to align yourself to it, stay consistent and then just be patient and open and receptive and it'll all start to unfold like a lotus flower coming out of mud. It'll start to unfold.

Yeah man, it's just planting the seeds, right? These little practices of planting seeds and then keep your Vibration higher through gratitude. Meditation, exercise, healthy living. The seeds just flourish at random times and become Exactly. Journey. Adam, I really appreciate all the valuable information you've shared here, mate, and taking the time out to jump on the podcast with me.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Yeah, really enjoyed this, mate. So until next time.

Yeah, next time maybe if I'm popping in the city.

Yeah, we'll do an in person one. Yeah, yeah, we'd love that. All right, thanks for joining me.

Take care of.

For those that have followed my journey, they know how important meditation has been for me in transforming the way I go about the things that I do. And it really wasn't until I started meditating for up to an hour was when a big shift started to happen. And I know for a lot of people who meditate, you know, an hour seems like a long time. And I really believe to really get the true benefits out of meditation, you need to sit for an extended period, more than your regular 20 minutes than most people do. Now, the biggest challenge for most people, I've realized, is getting past that first phase, which is quietening the mind enough so that you can truly experience the benefits of meditation. For me, those benefits are connecting with just pure oneness, a place of pure love, an energy that fuels you, that stays with you throughout your whole day. It actually changes everything. You start to change your reality when you start to tap in and tune into this energy. For me, it took an hour to connect with it. Sometimes it takes two hours. But the biggest challenge for most people was quieting the mind. So that's why I've gone ahead and decided to create a free guide to quietening the mind. And you can get access to this free guide either on the podcast page where you're listening to this episode, or if you just type state-shifters.com There'll be a pop up to come up where you can download that free guide and it will help you get access to these amazing benefits meditation can offer.