Ep 25 This Too Shall Pass A Conversation with Sylvain Hache

In this episode of Remembering the Forgotten, host Markus Neukom interviews Sylvain Hache, a former severe stutterer turned speaker‑coach and spiritual practitioner. The dialogue explores the distinction between performance (the forced, scripted self) and presence (the unforced, coherent self), defining coherence as the alignment of body, mind, emotion, and action. Sylvain recounts how his stuttering forced him to juggle multiple verbal alternatives, which later fostered a creative linguistic flexibility. He describes a lifelong practice of meditation, Kundalini work, yoga, prayer, and periods of sobriety, noting how these habits, alongside earlier drug use (LSD, occasional MDMA), contributed to heightened self‑awareness. The most vivid anecdote is a bathtub “awakening” where, after setting an intention for divine grace, he lost consciousness and awoke folded in the tub, unharmed, which he interprets as his core self briefly overriding his conditioned “shell.” This leads to a metaphor of human beings as high‑voltage power sources that lose voltage through societal conditioning, requiring a reconnection to the original “core.” Sylvain details his transition from a corporate career—marked by a stifling job, substance abuse, and a sense of living someone else’s script—to a path of spiritual inquiry, vegetarianism, and eventually coaching others. He reflects on the impermanence of thoughts, urging listeners to recognize themselves as the observing awareness rather than the thoughts themselves, and concludes with the timeless reminder that “this too shall pass.”
Chapters
Welcome to Remembering the Forgotten, a space where leaders think out loud without polish or performance. No scripts, no personas, just the quiet clarity that emerges when the noise drops and the mind is free to speak for itself. Today, I'm joined by Sylvain Anchet. Sylvain has spent his life inside moments, where pressure is real and performance matters on stage, on camera, and in rooms where words decide outcomes. But this conversation isn't about speaking tips, frameworks, or personal branding. It's about what happens inside a person when expression is no longer forced, when fear loosens its grip When presence replaces performance, and when the voice finally matches what is already there. Sylvain brings a rare combination of lived experience and internal precision. Having moved from a severe stutter to coaching speakers, leaders, and experts under real stakes, he understands what it means. to move from effort into alignment. He has seen how clarity changes outcomes, how pressure reveals structure, and how stillness allows something real to come through when it matters most. And with that, Sylvain, welcome to my show.
Thanks for having me, Markus. This is great.
It's you. Nothing made up, just you. So before we begin, when I say coherence, I'm pointing to a state where nothing inside is at odds. Body, thoughts, emotions, and action move as one. There's no push, no urgency, no fear driving the moment. And when I say stillness, I don't mean silence. I mean the part of you untouched by expectation or performance, the place that already knows before the mind takes over. That's where I'd like us to meet today. So, Silva, Where in your life do you meet the you untouched by expectation?
Where in my life do I meet the me untouched by expectation? Good God, everywhere. It's not even funny. Um,
tell me about it.
I mean, people just tell me all the time, man, you're just so free. You, you're just you no matter where you are. And I don't realize it that much until— uh, the one time I realized it the most is whenever I say something, sounds natural, sounds normal, sounds good, sounds almost sane when I say something. And I say it to people and it's good. Say we're 7, 5 people together at a party. I say something, people laugh, we're having fun, it's okay. But then like my girlfriend or somebody's around me, she's saying like, somebody says, man, like you say things that are just insane. So to me it's like, okay, it's normal. But then one time there's a thing called HeyGen, okay? Like an avatar AI thing. I don't want it to be my avatar. But about 6 months ago, my assistant and I, we made an avatar, HeyGen. And we thought, who is the most opposite of Sly? So we took like a very sophisticated-looking English accent lady with brown hair, all nice. And so, and we just took my transcript, whatever I say. So some of my masterclasses or some of my articles, and we just fed that to the AI. So we had— it was the first time, Markus, I saw somebody else say what I'm saying, man. You realize, okay, there's something wrong with this. There's something going on here. Same thing if like somebody says one of my jokes. I have sayings, jokes, idioms I say all the time with my friends. It goes under the radar. It's just smooth. But whenever somebody else repeats it, I go, oh my God, That's where I realized it's like an unleashed, un— I don't know, an unleashed thing. So I'm learning to reel it in sometimes in some situations, but most of the time, the answer to your question is always yeah.
That's beautiful. So what do you think is the cause or the origin of that freedom you're having?
Cause or the origin of that freedom? I got no idea.
Because we can agree it's not normal society, right?
I got no idea. Since we have a spiritual angle here, the whole concept of cause is negotiable because it depends on higher. If you go higher, the concept of cause is irrelevant. But maybe I'm just trying to back think back if it has to do with the stuttering days, because as a stutterer, you always have five different ways of saying the same thing going on in your mind.
Interesting.
Say I want to say, "Hey Marcus, pass me the salt." Could you please pass me the salt? Could I please have the salt? Is there any way I can have the salt? Because at any given time, a stutterer knows that one syllable or one letter can jam. On him or her at any time. So it's like always a— if, okay, if that's it, there's always like 5 ways of saying everything.
Yeah.
So maybe this makes some sort of a creative way of saying things. It could be that, could be the drugs. Uh, I'm clean now. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I meditate, I pray. I'm clean, clean. Maybe I drink like a glass, maybe 2 glasses of wine a year. Maybe I've been really clean, sober, no drugs, no alcohol. I eat clean, meditate, yoga, prayer, meditation. But when I was younger, young and reckless, maybe the drugs have something to do with it. Maybe it's just the successive undenting of the self through progressive realization of identity internally in spiritual ways. Maybe it's the Kundalini shaking the shackles off the spine and the energy and the aura. And maybe it's the mindset work of— Markus, I don't think you have many friends like this, but I was recently— oh, sorry, microphone. I was recently reminded that some people don't do personal development. Some people don't. Grow internally.
So I need them from time to time.
So it's like, maybe it's the 20 years of, oh, I just identified a limiting belief. I just identified here a limiting belief, stifled emotion, something not up to par, and the active surrender and letting go of that or working on it. Maybe it's luck, maybe it's, uh, a few episodes of grace and miracles, or maybe it's inborn. But I certainly know—
Let's dive here a little bit. You mentioned drugs, and you know I don't want to go too personal. However, have you done MDMA? Nope. Okay, so you never did stuff that was basically enlarging or enhancing your, your perception?
Uh, LSD.
Okay, so that goes very much into the same category.
Yeah. Would you say that—
yeah, so would you say before you went on that kind of trip that you were different? Then you got to know yourself through it. You did not, right? So it enhanced what was already existent.
I never really thought about what it did. I know what I like about this is that it's a self-limiting drug. So it's a kind of drug where after a while, okay, I've done enough of this. In French, we say, j'ai fait le tour. I mean, I've been around the block, done enough. So, LSD, we used to call that acid back in the old days. It's like a self-limiting drug. I think it's called acid. After a while, you've done enough of that. And, I don't remember it having changed, not really a lot of hallucinations per se. One time, kind of a mini bad trip, nothing too crazy. I just remember maybe making it me, making it me more self-aware, because I remember most of the time just wondering, has it kicked in yet? Is this it? Is that it? So maybe like the intense scanning of my— maybe the scanning, because part of the inner work I do now includes embodying.
Mm-hmm.
So being highly aware of the sensations of the body and all that. So I remember for like, for Maybe for the longest time, just scanning. Maybe it was the first time I was doing active scans of the body. Maybe that could be a thing. But I remember, is that it? And then by the time it hits, like, you're too late to realize what happened there. But I remember that. Yeah.
Because it's interesting, you know, you and I, we had quite a few conversations, and probably with most people who told me, you know what, There aren't that many situations where I am actually met by expectations or touched by expectations. But with you, I really believe it, which is interesting. So yeah, because, you know, I'm more a scientist than anything else, and, and I question everything, which is probably the best thing in terms of my traits. However, I still have a question. Was there any moment in your life when you experienced all the noise fell away and something in you exactly knew what was true?
Oh, many times.
Can you share about one of them, please?
I don't know which one. You want to take it somewhere in particular?
Which one was the most profound one?
Oh my God, the most profound one was, uh, oh my God, this time. So just for context, I'm 6'1, uh, a bit more than 6'1, and, um, I was in the shower one time in one of those, those, those baths that it's like a bath on this side with like, like this, and I'm taking a shower in this section of the bath. Mm-hmm. And I remember in under the shower thinking to myself at that time I was about to become a monk. I was this was when I was about to leave the world or during those times, Kundalini working every day, sometimes eight twelve to eighteen hour days of the spiritual stuff. And I remember praying being single on purpose in my twenties to cultivate sexual energy for enlightenment. Okay, not recommended unless you really want to go for it. And I remember thinking to myself, I would read all these books and these experiences of gurus and saints and shamans and mystics of talking about the grace of God.
Mm-hmm.
I would hear that, maybe, you know, like how it is that when you have something on your mind, you kind of see it everywhere and all that. So it was— this was kind of on my mind. I was reading these things about it, and I kind of, in the shower, kind of decided, you know what, I want to experience the grace of God. I want to experience that too. So kind of a setting of an intention mixed with resolved, mixed with underlying anger of not having it so much. Kind of a mixture of a melting pot of stuff in the shower. That's my last conscious thought. Conscious thought. I don't know what happened after, but when I woke up, Markus, 6-foot-1 dude, folded in the bath, not on the length of the bath, on the width of the bathtub, folded in 2 like this in the width of the bathtub.
Okay. Wow.
With water pouring down my face in total bliss. So I must have—I don't even know how long. No, no, no, no stretching, no bruise, no hit. So for a six-foot-one dude to go from standing to being folded in half on the width of it while the water sprung in my face where I'm passed out, but in no trauma, no hit, no stiffness in the shoulders, fully relaxed. When I woke up, there's water in my face, and I can slow motion kind of feeling. Oh my! God. And to this day, I still don't know what happened. I just— that thought, I woke up. God knows how long I was there. For example.
That is fascinating. You see, the one thing that comes to mind, actually not so much to mind, which comes from inside, is you touched most likely your inner core. And your inner core literally took you in by putting you into unconsciousness. But you were never in threat. You're never in danger.
Totally safe. Totally safe. Exactly. You said it well. But there's no way. If we just think, if you talk in terms of wattage, like electricity, My current sense of self at that time,
yeah,
could not handle— I was thinking of this today.
That's exactly it. I
was thinking, okay, I'm with Markus today. Like, my regular day-to-day stuff, what I do in a day,
yeah,
that's in relaxed, whatever. My former sense of self could not even do 30% of that. It cannot fathom. So maybe there's a glimpse of the self or whatever Current self cannot handle it, passes out, and then very, very gentle, metaphorically. And it's just a matter of, it seems to be a process of being able to withstand more wattage.
Yeah. Because you see, when we look at it a little bit more from a strategic standpoint, remember when I explained my stillness, my stillness basically is Remembering what the world taught you to forget.
Great line.
Right? So basically what happened was so much has been piled on us in regards of us adapting to stuff that isn't us and it isn't ours. So when we have this experience of touching stillness, When coherence comes into play, it literally can jolt and short-circuit our inner system.
Yeah.
So badly that we actually go unconscious.
Can't handle it.
Which is incredible if you think about that. So that means now we could say, okay, mystic, it was an entity from somewhere doing that. But I believe it was actually your core self.
Oh yeah. It's all one entity.
That came online.
Oh yeah.
And your shell wasn't able to cope with what you said, that voltage.
Yeah, like a power supply. Let me find one. Like a power supply, right? This thing, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Like if you run 220 in there, the circuit just fries.
Exactly.
Yeah. And so it's successive transformers twisting down the power. So we end up working with 9 volts and then wondering why, you know, doesn't work for you.
That's exactly the thing. So, so let's run a little bit with your metaphor right now. Let's say we are born with high voltage, right? And then we start adapting based and according to our environment. We start taking on beliefs. We're taking on, you know, whatever the environment teaches us. And let's be honest, it's not malintended. It's just people who adapted teach other people how to adapt because they believe that's what makes you safe in the world.
Survival, number one.
Generation to generation to generation to generation, right? However, when we're born, we are born with a very high voltage. And this is something I want the viewer to understand. We are born with a very high voltage, which only gets diminished by us adapting to the current which society and our environment has.
It's like just an operating system with no software installed and then keep on installing software on top of the operating system.
Exactly. And I sometimes say it's almost like a little field with all the little seeds planted already in the soil. And all it takes is nourishment. And then it actually begins to blossom. So basically, all our executive functions, creativity, find me a grown-up who still has a vivid creativity. who still has vivid fantasy, imagination, intuition. This is almost all gone. And you know the people I'm talking of, the people in management. They're basically living a life almost like void of those executive functions. And it is so beautiful to see they all have it still in them. But it's buried underneath whatever has been piled up. And then something like this happened. Like, how many years have you studied spirituality before that bathtub incident?
Oh, that was the beginning. That was maybe— has to be no more than 2 years in.
Okay.
In this life.
I'm not surprised. And it was deep. Right. I see what you— where you're going. And this was deep when you did it. So now think about basically it's 2 ways for me to get to this kind of an incident. It's either through life getting us to the point where it says, you know what, Markus, this cannot be it. There must be more.
Has to.
Or you're going into such a depth that you did, that the system says, you know what, now you touch something that your low voltage is not capable of coping with. So I need to take you off the current system, power grid. Because he had no bruises. It's almost like, have you ever wondered, and I know you know people, who got so drunk when they fell, they had no bruises.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Isn't that incredible? So basically their system collapses. So this is how I kind of explain it, what you just shared, that that system collapsed, but not through alcohol, not through intoxication, but literally through your inner core taking you off that power grid. Which I think, gosh, that must have been an awakening, right?
Well, funny, and you talk about there has to be more. So the pain of the atheism and the pain of there has to be more to life than this and the pain of the drugs and the alcohol triggered the spiritual path to go deep, really, like, really fast in the deep end of the pool. which 2 years in, that was an experience of the things. It was a series of successive realization basically where something, you know, God knows what, pulls the rug out of under my sense of identity inside. Yeah. Which I, you know, I love this, I am like that, this is how I am, this is what I believe, I is good, you is wrong, I fight, you win. All that. All the— how do you call in French? We call them bouées de sauvetage. Bouée, like the things in the water that float so that you can hang on to. Bouée. Yeah. So all the buoys of like the references. This is who I am. This is what it— gone. And then there's a principle in NLP and other systems where When a system is destroyed, it rebuilds stronger. It rebuilds a new version of the system. So now a new identity emerges. As soon as that was stabilized, pulled under the rug again. It would this thing would destroy like this every two three weeks for two three years.
I think makes sense, Silva.
So it really makes
sense why
I was so far from. And I'm still not there, but I was— I'm still on the way. But I was so far from what you call the core or the truth that it had to self-destruct and dematerialize, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 times. Even after 5 times that that happens to you, at one point you start taking your own thoughts seriously. Like, oh, there we go, there's a thought. So then it's easier. It gets like the momentum of transcendence. Creates gives you the momentum to transcend the next one when it comes up. It kind of builds a in French we call it jurisprudence. I've seen this before déjà vu in court. If there if there was a case that happened, oh did this case happen in 1705? Whatever that's called in in court, you have a precedent. Oh yeah, we got that that trick again. Yeah, and it's just a never-ending cycle of. undenting the sense of self back to the natural, which is always there. We just don't identify with it.
And, you know, I went a little bit further after our last conversation where we talked about NLP and you introduced me to the Human Design thing by Brandl.
Yeah.
And you said what you heard or actually felt from me is almost like a different level.
Yeah, exactly.
What I realized is everything around NLP believes that you have kind of fallen out of that coherence and it helps you to cope with that level out of coherence. But what your system did is something beautiful. It said, Every single identity you, Silva, have now created, I destroy.
Literally.
Because you were not to stay in that state, which NLP says, look, you're screwed. Now I help you to deal with your screwedness. And you know, my thing is, you can absolutely restore that initial innocence, which you had at 3, 4, 5 years old, with all the executive functions intact, Just not developed yet. You can absolutely restore that.
That's solid.
And I believe that's what your system did. Every single time when you use the methodology to identify or build a new identity, it said, done. No, no, no, no. Until you come to the core, I am going to knock you down every single Oh,
yeah. It's
beautiful.
It's, uh, well, that, that was the internal experience to me. And, um, I plan on teaching that stuff in my 70s. So, and I'm not even in my 50s yet. So in 22 years-ish, I'm gonna start teaching that stuff. Hopefully I found it by then, an escalator Rather than a ramp up for people, because I wish that to anybody who wants it. Any spiritual devotee who says, "Screw this, I'm get I'm sure there's no more to life than this. This is not the be-all end-all. There's something before and after. There's something else. There's something more we just don't see." And the person decides, "I'm doing this." I wish that upon them. But if that is what happened to me happens to somebody who is not. I don't know, willing, which I don't think which can happen because there's kind of safeguards in place, um, at the karmic level. Maybe. But I just wish that anybody that that happens to is, um, ready, willing, and able to go through the transition because that thing's not messing around. It's— for me, this thing is going there. Big boy, you coming or not? And we're going. So, if there's resistance or pull or suffering, it's my queasiness about letting go something. It's my resistance. It's my— I got my handbrakes on.
Mm-hmm.
So, the internal cooperation of the process and the building of the trust muscle internally to start to trust that intuition and that guidance and that knowingness that reveals itself slowly over time was not possible at the beginning because it was nonexistent. It was not even a, like, shut up, what are you talking about, idiot? It's not impossible. So the building of gradually, which there are some people that have literally this, the whole switch broken out at once, like Eckhart Tolle goes to bed depressed, wakes up enlightened. There you go. What happened there? That's something, that's something else. That's not my experience. It's a gradual being. The rug pulled out from under in my sense of identity.
Over and over and over.
Yeah.
Just go ahead.
I'm listening. It's okay.
It is so interesting to see how we believe what we see and what we feel is I am.
Yeah.
And most of the times, it's literally what society taught us we are.
Oh man, that's so good.
And made us believe.
By definition, if you see something, it can't be you because you're the one seeing it.
That is the interesting thing. Yeah.
The flashlight. I mean, the reason enlightenment is so hard is because the flashlight can't light itself. So if you look at The, the thing you're looking for is what's doing the looking. So if you see something, oh, and say, that's me. Well, can't be that because you're the one looking at it. If you feel it, you can't be it because you're the one feeling it. If you hear it, you can't be the one hearing it. It can't be you because you're the one hearing it.
You see, I literally go to a place where Well, I believe in the meantime that the entire enlightenment which people crave is literally only a passage to the actual. And I believe if someone stays stuck with, I'm enlightened, that's the highest level. Yeah. I believe we could not be more wrong.
It's a black belt, but then you got first dan, second dan, third dan. It goes up in dans.
Exactly. And I understand someone who says, you know what, Markus, what are you talking about? I am kung fu first black belt. How many of those do you know? I said, it doesn't really matter. But for a reason, there are 6 dans.
Yeah, there's dance after the black. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
Right. So, so there is a reason why more is coming, right? So, so let's switch, switch gears for a moment. Was there a time when you suddenly realized, gosh, I am not living my own script? This is actually the script from someone else or the script from society And what cracked it open?
Well, it's when I was— well, uh, I was playing in the band, and then the band I had, we were supposed to go out and move to the big city and play in the casino there for a few months. So I moved to the big city, and then 2 weeks or before the actual show started, the producer went bankrupt. Just something happened, so the show got canceled. So there I'm in the big city, I got no more contacts. Wow. All my band is gone. I got— I know nobody in the big city, so I just got a job, I guess. So I started— I got a shitty job, and then maybe 6 months to a year-ish, I forget because I was doing so much drugs at the time. So whatever, just to numb the pain, plus the pain of the stuttering, pain of acne, pain of shitty job, pain of living someone else's life, pain of trying to fit into the mold, and what I wanted to do not being able to do it. But after a while, I was like, well, if I'm gonna have a job, I might as well get a good one, you know? Because I mean, I got marketing degrees, I'm, I'm well educated. So, well, I'm not like a PhD, but I got good, good grades and all that. So,
all
right, so I just got a good job. And then I had to wear a tie, and I really wear it in their high-rise towers and the whole thing, you know, working in big corporate The high-rise towers. It was so terrible. I had to do drugs in the parking lot on the way back. I couldn't even wait home. It's terrible. I couldn't stand it. Could not. So that's when I realized, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. After maybe 2 years of that, this is where I'm going, whoa, whoa, big boy. There has to be more to life than this. And then poof, that thing started. The, the, the shaking and the flash in the mind.
That was the preview.
Oh yeah.
And the overture to what happened then in the bathtub in the end.
Yeah, so the bathtub thing was like 2 years, maybe 2, max 2, 3 years after that, there has to be more to life than this moment, which spawned— so I mean, somebody goes, say on a Tuesday night, drugs every day, alcohol every week, like a half-professional sport, cigarettes, a pack a day, a bunch of other nasty habits, ask himself one question, a lightning rod in the head, and then really goes to become a vegetarian. I'm healed now, but I became a vegetarian at that time. Yoga every morning, started Kundalini exercises, alternate nostril breathing in the morning, working at 6 AM and meditating in the morning before getting to work, before quitting that thing to start a business. Helping the authors and coaches and speakers market themselves. That was—
wow,
quick shift.
So how long did you do that, that corporate gig thing, which literally made you numb yourself entirely?
Well, it, it, I mean, if I look back, 2005-ish, I quit because I started the other one. So, and I believe 2000 could be maybe 2001, 2002-ish. I got the shitty job. So the shitty job is God knows how long, and then the good job is like— so there's like a 4 or 5 year span there somewhere in the middle.
Okay.
Yeah,
interesting.
I, I, I mean, I don't know where I'd be, um, uh, if I'd still be there. Yeah, probably at one point when it maybe overdose Or settle in and fit in the box somewhere and die inside.
Yeah.
Which would lead to an overdose. So probably an overdose of some kind,
which
is, yeah, which is quite interesting. I don't know. I mean, I'm just fabulating. I don't know. I'm just making jokes, but I, I don't even know where to be.
Yeah. No, I think there is a part of truth behind what you just said.
Oh man. Well,
that's
where all the vices come in. That's where all the vices come in to try to feel alive somehow. Like, this can't be it. Let me go get something. And then it just keeps on, is, doesn't stop because you can never get there.
Yeah. And interestingly enough, you know, I, I have met a few people who did LSD and MDMA and all that kind of stuff. And they always talk about the, um, consciousness enhancement because that's what it comes down to, the awareness enhancement and all that kind of stuff. And what I realized is they are usually quite sensitive people.
Yeah.
They're usually, probably in another era, they would have been artists, musicians. You know, in your case, it's pretty evident. And in order to cope with what this world actually asks you to do, And, you know, we remember we talked about that maybe just in the generation of our parents, our dads went to work to earn so they could have a living. And in our generation, we go to work to have reason to be alive. We go to work to find purpose, which honestly can barely work. Because the place you go to work is usually not so much interested in you finding your purpose. It's much more interested in taking all the resources you have and use it for its own good, because that's why they're paying you. So if you think about that moment where you ask yourself, is this it? Or is there more to life? What went through your mind when you asked yourself that question for the first time?
We're at time, and I gotta go get a new cat. But what went in my mind before I asked the question, during or right after? Before?
Right when you asked it.
Okay. As far as I can remember, I was looking inside my mind because I'm sitting at the table and I'm thinking about life. So wherever— when, when you do that, we're looking— this is from inside our own mind. So, so in my mind, I was thinking about life, and I was— I remember thinking, wait a minute, they told me I had to get a good job and I'll be happy. Check. I got a good job. I'm set for life, dude. Set for life. Done. Forget about it. Done, done. All good. No problem there. It was— I saw the road. It was all traced. Good advancements and all, the whole thing. They told me, uh, miserable out of my mind. They told me I just needed a good woman. Check right there. Awesome lady. Done. Check. Totally miserable. They told me I had to have, you know, 2 cars. Check. Nice place to live. Check. Didn't have the white picket fence, but I mean, everything they told me I needed to be happy, I got it. Miserable. Can't even stand it. And I realized at one point, the realization was, man, I've been lied to. This, whatever they told me, this ain't it. And then I, I, at one, at that moment, I was Devout atheist, so I could not look up to God and pray because I did not believe. I thought there was there was a ceiling. I didn't even know, but I kind of looked up. But at that moment, something—it's like it's like I said, "Please God help me." I didn't say that because I was insane at that moment for me to think that, and it literally just. It wasn't even a question. It was a realization, a crystallization of all the thinking that went, there has to be more to life than this. And then boom, it all shifted. A little like a lightning rod hit me on the side of the head right here.
That's incredible.
Yeah, but not a physical one. Like, there's not a hole, but the feeling— there's something inside, like a lightning rod hit me on the side of the head. And proceeded this way from here over the next 15 years.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
One last question, Sylvain, before I let you go.
Yeah, I gotta go get the cat.
If someone—
I know, I know.
If someone listening feels lost in the noise—
Oh my God.
What is one thing you would want them to remember is still true?
My God. I can think of this guy. I think, think of me a few days after that lightning rod incident. I was smoking cigarettes and I somehow became aware that health was important at that moment. Before that, whatever. And I remember I read a book, maybe it was During those times, I was reading maybe Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer, one of those guys. Or, and I went, I wanted to stop smoking cigarettes. And one of those guys says, if you want to stop a bad habit, just go do it in full conscience. So I went outside and rather than just, you know, we're talking, right, Markus and I, right, just cigarette and we're just talking. That's kind of a social thing. And I remember sitting down on the sidewalk, full attention, relax your shoulders, ground yourself, fully present, fully breathe. And I smoked a whole cigarette in full conscious awareness. Stopped after that. Wow. So, the settling down, the thoughts are running, the thoughts are scaring. We'll talk again the next time. That same person, I'll tell him about the time where there was a— I had a vision in the bathtub in Hong Kong that brought me closer to baseline reality. But there's always— think about the good one. A king goes to a monk in ancient India and says to the monk, my kingdom is falling apart. Sold my soldiers are ruined. We can't provide for ourselves. Where our people are sick, women are not fertile. The grains are not growing. It's terrible. We can't do anything. And then the monk says to the king, "Don't worry. This shall pass." So now the king feels a sense of optimism. All right, the bad stuff's gonna pass. So you're right. Renewed sense of optimism goes there and builds the whole company and builds the the kingdom and. Grows and it grows, and then they're taking over the world, and they're freaking out, and everything's good. Ten years go by. Sees the monkey. Oh, monk! Thank you so much for your. You were right. You had the vision. You saw it. You were right. This passed. Now we're on top of the world. We're winning. We're the rat. And the monk says, "This too shall pass." What a beautiful
word to end.
The remembrance of the freaking out. So as your thoughts are freaking out. Remember that you can't be the thoughts. You are what is aware of the thoughts. And that split-second separation gives you the lever you need to center yourself back into yourself and realize— just observe them fade away. And then when the good thoughts come, oh my God, this is great! Same thing. You are not these good thoughts. You are what is aware of them. And at one point you realize that all these ups and downs you're going through, you are the constant, unchanging, eternal, constant awareness aware of all that. And when you start identifying with that, you're unmessable with.
Beautiful. Silva, thank you so much for having been my guest.
Markus, it's an honor. Do this, do this again. Thank you.
This was Remembering the Forgotten, a conversation held in clarity, not performance. If something in this exchange helped you see differently, let it stay with you. You'll find a few quiet pointers in the description below.
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