Akshay: I don't believe in suffering. I believe in
Dave: pain.
Akshay: If you step into the edge of pain, it amplifies the experience of pleasure. You have to know the depths of the abyss to experience the heights of law.
Dave: Biohackers manipulate dopamine with the discomfort of a really cold blunt. You carried 190 pounds sled through freezing cold, dark temperatures for like a hundred days.
I
Akshay: literally pushed the body to the brink of death. I ended up getting diverticulitis, which is inflammation in the colon. War is this experience where you taste the extremes of the human condition. You see the absolute worst, the horrors of war, people doing awful things to each other, but you see the absolute best people sacrificing their lives for each other, jumping on grenades for each other, and.
Only on those edges can you experience that? The thing that I go out there seeking is what the suffering gives me access to. So the suffering is the means. It's not the purpose, it's the doorway and what it gives me access to is transcendence. Do you think trauma and
Dave: pain became your fuel for being a high performer?
Your listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey
Ashay, it's been four years since you came on the human upgrade.
Akshay: Yes sir.
Dave: You've done a few things since then. Uhhuh, what's been going on?
Akshay: It's been a wild ride since we first connected. Thank you, by the way, again for having me on the show last time and this time I just started training for this historic expedition in Antarctica, which I just got back from since then.
I've lost two fingers to frostbite. I thought you were flipping me off. It looks like that. I know. Lost two fingers to frostbite. Been all over the world in the Arctic, in Antarctica. Multiple times, a hundred days solo. Spent another 10 days sitting alone in darkness, trained for Antarctica and embarked upon this expedition, which I'm sure we'll get more into.
Just got back from Tica. But I would say the biggest thing in my life you have played an essential role in, and that's been the most amazing part of the last four years, is. Wife and I'd love to introduce her to you and actually bring her on if that'd be okay. That would be okay. 'cause you played a huge role in us getting together and I think it's a beautiful story.
All right. I am excited. Yeah.
Dave: Come on in. Melissa, this is my wife, Melissa. Hey Melissa. Hello. And I know we met, just met downstairs, but you were saving a story from me that I'm like all ears for.
Wife: Yeah. So how we actually met, we owe you a big thank you. I had gone to my second round of 40 years of Zen and it was in the last day.
We were doing a lot of work in Gamma, so tapping into intuition and I had a vision that was so real of what my future partnership would look like. I even saw palm trees. It was so visceral that I ended up. Breaking my lease of 12 years and moving from Portland, Oregon to Scottsdale, Arizona on pure intuition
Dave: without knowing who it was,
Wife: no, without knowing who it was.
All my friends and family thought this was a really wild move that came out of nowhere. But I was just so clear with my intuition that I knew he was there. And within two months of moving, we had met. We ended up getting engaged and married in less than six months, all from that intuition. But a second way that you played a role in this is before our first date.
I had heard that he was on your podcast. When I listened to the episode, I heard him say that he was more afraid of asking a woman on a date than going to war. And so I asked him on our first date.
Dave: That is the craziest set of coincidences.
Wife: Could not make it up.
Dave: The, the other thing is, as we're in the studio recording this, it's in the evening.
I spent all day today reading the manuscript out loud for my audio book of heavily meditated. And today I was reading the part and I didn't, none of this was planned. I didn't know this was happening. I was reading the part about how you can train intuition, what intuition is, and it's in heavily meditated so.
And the fact that you had such a strong, intuitive hit that you were willing to just disrupt your life without knowing the name or the face of the person you just knew was there for you. You're not making this up.
Wife: No. I promise I'm not making this up. And it was so real that I had so much trust and faith.
You know, I even committed to going to a new event every week when I got there, until I met him and the very first event I chose was put on by his friend. I could not make this up if I wanted to.
Akshay: Who also does a lot in biohacking as well. He runs a place in Scottsdale that has coal tubs, infrared sauna, and she went to learn how to do
Wife: ice baths.
Akshay: Wow. Yeah. He's a good friend of mine who owns that, and he
Dave: introduced us. That is incredible. What's, uh, I think I know the place. I, I know the guy you're talking about. Um, what's his name? Michael Ello. Yeah. With, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I've met Michael. Wow. That this is the coolest thing. And I had no idea when you came to the house that any of this had happened.
Akshay: Yeah. We, we were just, we were just so grateful to you and that's why we're honored to be here. Yeah. Well, uh,
Dave: welcome back on the show. Thank you. I was gonna talk about Antarctica and what it's like to lose some fingers, but this is even crazier. The, the whole idea that intuition is that real and that it's trainable.
Actually, can I ask one more question about that? Just Yes, please. There's a lot of people who don't think intuition is real or that they can't count on it. How did you know that this intuitive hit you got on your final day at 40 years of Zen, that as you know, it was real enough to just change your life?
Wife: So a big part of it for me was that it was calm. It was a calm knowing, you know, there's, there's urgency when you're in fight or flight. Mm-hmm. But there was no urgency to it. It was just a pure knowing and a trusting, and then noticing all the little moments of serendipity and signs along the way that led me to move.
And it was from a place of peace, not urgency that I ended up tuning in.
Dave: I love that. And if you're listening to the show, that's one of the big signs that it's intuition is that it's that first feeling. And it also doesn't come with baggage. It, it's that peaceful knowing and, well, I am really grateful that you did 40 years twice, and I'm a thousand times more grateful that you got the download you were there for and that you took action on it.
'cause it takes a lot of courage to do that. You guys are working together now at Vivana?
Wife: Yes. Okay. Yeah, now we're, we're going into business together and, you know, applying a lot of the skills that I had and, and his, and the combination allows us to, to do business together, which has been a beautiful evolution in our relationship as well.
Dave: Wow, that, that's incredible. Well, maybe we'll do another episode when you guys finish your book on how to do business relationship stuff together, but in the meantime, let's talk about Antarctica. Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you for that impromptu story. I'm blown away.
Wife: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Dave: I'm deep in the middle of recording the audio book mm-hmm.
For heavily meditated. Mm-hmm. And one of the chapters is called Go Spank Yourself. Hmm. And it's about intentionally doing something that's painful every day, but just for one minute to reset your dopamine.
Music: Hmm.
Dave: And in that chapter I was like, well, what is the nature of masochism? You carried 190 pound sled through freezing cold, dark temperatures for like a hundred days.
Are you a masochist?
Akshay: Great question. And I would say I'm, I get called that a lot, but it's not because the thing I'm seeking is not the suffering in and of itself, and I'm very clear on the distinction because when I was in high school, for example, I used to cut myself. I still have these scars in my arm.
I still have a scar on my arm from burning myself. At that point, I was, there was no virtue to that pain. It was pain for the sake of pain today, the things I do, whether it be running ultra marathons or what I just did in Antarctica, it was actually a 420 pound sled. The 190 pound was in Greenland. That was a separate expedition when I, when I did.
But in Antarctica, it was a 420 pound sled for 500 miles, 60 days, completely alone out there. I, I have a
Dave: question. Sure. Did you choose 420 pounds for SEO?
Akshay: That's hilarious. Anything about that? Now? Go on. That's hilarious. It was, had 115 days worth of food and fuel Yeah. And everything to survive in there.
And we'll get into it later. But before, before that, answer your question, the thing that I go out there seeking is what the suffering gives me access to. Mm-hmm. So the suffering is the means. It's not the purpose.
Okay.
It's the doorway and what it gives me access to is transcendence.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Akshay: It breaks down the walls, the mass we put on in this world, the illusions of duality, the constructs that shape our experience of reality.
And it becomes this pure, raw experience. And there are some incredibly low moments out there. Some of the suffering was some of the hardest moments I've ever endured, but their highs are so high. I had moments where I was tearing, just tears, streaming down my face, feeling connected to God, connecting, connected to all that is in these pure moments of bliss.
And so what I go out there is for that awakening. It's to battle the biggest dragons I could find, so I could unearth the greatest treasures of the human soul and see what I find out there. What did you find? There were many things. The many things that I found. There was some cathartic moments for me navigating my own demons from the war, although I had done a lot to process them.
I was a Marine. I spent seven months in Iraq, lost very close friend of mine when I was in Iraq. My vehicle drove over an active bomb that for some reason didn't explode. Wow. His vehicle drove over an active bomb. It exploded. He died.
Music: Mm.
Akshay: I've lost friends to suicide, to addiction, and so they were what I started calling these Antarctic therapy sessions.
Mm-hmm. Because I was completely alone, just to give context. I was completely alone for 60 days skiing into flat white nothingness. So there's no stimuli to engage you. Your mind has both the luxury and the burden to wander, and so in some of these wanderings. I processed my demons from the war. I had a conversation, at least to me, a conversation with Viktor Frankl.
It, it felt as real to me as anything else. Channeling the spirit of Viktor Frankl and processing how I relate to this blessed life that I've been gifted with. And many times in my life I should have died and didn't. And recognizing that, that to feel guilty for this life I've been blessed with is dishonoring the suffering of others.
It's dishonoring the friends that I've lost and to bring more joy. 'cause if that's what I hope to do through my work, through my book Vivana, the Work Fearna to bring Nirvana and bliss to others, I have to embody it. I have to be it. So there was realizations like that. There was moments, as I mentioned, of pure oneness.
And I think some of the most beautiful moments, the spiritual moments were. Channeling into just being here purely in the now without stepping into the future. And it's was very, it was hard to do because there were four times when I was out there, I would break 20 kilometers, which was a good milestone.
I really needed a break, hit 20 kilometers for that day, and that night it would snow.
Music: Mm.
Akshay: And the first time this happened, I hit 21.9 kilometers, and the next day it snowed. And my kilometers went from 21.9 to 17, to 14 to 13. And this two sleds that I was carrying, with all that weight, they would get stuck in the snow.
Every few steps I would have to wrestle it out. They'd get stuck again, wrestle it out. And this would go on for nine to 10 hours. And when that happens, you have to bring yourself back into the now or the mind's gonna break. And that's a really profoundly beautiful moment to, to tap into that nowness at a very high level and experience it fully.
Dave: I wanna go back to something you said earlier. You said that when you were cutting, that it served no purpose.
Akshay: Mm-hmm. Are you sure of that? I suppose looking back, it served a purpose now in that it shaped who I am through the mistakes that I made. I made a lot of mistakes in high school. I did a a lot of drugs, a lot of drinking, arrested multiple times.
But I think looking back now, there was some awakenings that have been realized since then. At the time, though, it certainly wasn't pain seeking pain for purpose.
Dave: There's a neuroscience argument that you actually were seeking that pain for purpose. Hmm. And I'm not an advocate for cutting. Mm-hmm. Just to be really clear here.
Yeah. Yeah. But one of the chapters in heavily meditated is about the neuroscience of pain. Mm. And it turns out briefly, intentionally exposing yourself to something painful, not harmful, like cutting, but just something painful. Yeah. That it reduces the amount of dopamine required to stimulate your dopamine receptors.
Mm-hmm. By up to 250% in one of the studies I found. And Oh, wow. I would argue that the reason that you do cold plunges Yeah. Is exactly the same reason you cut, the same reason addicts have tattoos all over themselves and piercings and all those things. It's just a innate desire to regulate dopamine. Mm.
Any relevance to that?
Akshay: I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's why the things that I do now, the, I mean, I've been, I continue to do it. I, I. Run ultra marathons. They do these expeditions on the edge. In fact, one the funny story about my wife and I, when we first met, the first time we had one-on-one to get one-on-one time together, I was on a seven day fast where I was training every single day.
So when we went on this hike, we went on a five hour hike, 102 degrees in Arizona, 2000 feet of elevation gain. And I got, so I hadn't eaten food in six days while training. Every day I got delirious, I got, I ended up throwing up full body heat cramps. So I play on these edges. And I think to your point, that's why it, it, it, it alters how you perceive
Dave: life.
It, it makes the rest of your day, the rest of your time easier and have more meaning. Absolutely. And sometimes it, it can be six weeks of regulation from, well, it could be just eating the world's hottest pepper. Yeah. And like going through the birthing pains from doing that. And all of a sudden. The world's clearer and you're grounded and things work better.
Yeah. Yeah. And I've certainly had times in my life like that, and it's one of the ways biohackers manipulate dopamine is with the discomfort of a really cold, cold plunge versus, oh, it was kind of cool. I got metabolic benefits versus, that one sucked. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So. If you and David Goggins were to get on a road and start running, who would stop first?
Akshay: It's hard to say. David Goggins is obviously a savage. He's definitely a faster runner than me. I'd actually stopped running to train for Antarctica. I had to get fat. Yeah, so it was pretty unique. I was tired, dragging was my core training. Okay. It'd be hard to say who'd stop first. I think we both have a very strong capacity to endure.
Tremendous amount of suffering. He's definitely faster than me, though. Hands down. No, no doubt. So you might
Dave: get there first, but would you keep going longer?
Akshay: I think we would both probably go till we die. I mean, that's what happened in Antarctica. Why I didn't end up completing the full mission. I literally pushed the body to the brink of death.
I ended up getting diverticulitis, which is, I'm sure you're familiar, but yeah, inflammation of the colon. And eight years ago there was an adventurer who pushed a bit too hard, and if you don't stop when you get diverticulitis, if you don't take rest and potentially medication antibiotics, it can lead to peritonitis.
Where it bursts, it flows into the bloodstream, gets septic. And that's how he died. I got diverticulitis, which is what ultimately ended the expedition after 60 days. So pushed the body to the brink of death. And so in a very literal way, I'd experienced that. And the amount of hardship I endured to get there.
I mean, moments where I was so dizzy like I was drunk, stumbling around, fell over, I couldn't, I couldn't catch my breath. I was breathing heavily. Pain in the spine, pain in the chest, pain in the gut, pain in the legs, and the mental hardship, the emotional anguish. But that's part of the draw. You know, when you asked me earlier, what I found was touching on the spiritual nowness, but building on what we're talking about with regards to pain, this was something I had played around with a lot.
And that's what fear Ofa represents. These this, this two seemingly contradictory ideas of fear and nirvana mm-hmm. Are in fact complimentary. But in Antarctica, it got crystallized in a more beautiful way into a concept that I have started to term the paradox of oneness. And what this is, is that it's the realization that all the opposites that encompass the human experience, pain, pleasure, masculine, feminine, light, dark life and death, so on and so forth, they are not in fact separate.
Separate. They're all just polarities. They're all polarities. And they're part of the same greater whole.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Akshay: And it's the demonization, it's the resisting or clinging to either side. Causes real suffering.
Dave: So, so which one is worse? Masculine or feminine?
Akshay: Setting me up on that one.
Dave: Well, it's really illustrative of our point. Uh, because you can't have one without
Akshay: the other. Exactly, exactly. They both coexist and that's the whole essence of what I do. I mean, you know, my wife will tell you when I'm not on the edge of suffering, I enjoy being comfortable. Very comfortable. And you know, there's this movement now that's gone to this other extreme of comfort is the enemy.
Comfort is inherently is not the enemy. Too much comfort. Sure, yep. But comfort is valuable because of discomfort. And discomfort is valuable because of comfort. Mm-hmm. They both, these polarities coexist and that's the essence I think, of finding not only. Inner peace, but freedom and even the pursuit of masteries, exploring and embracing both edges of any duality.
Dave: There are some curious alignments in our thinking. Mm. Every now and then someone will come along and say, how can you have something called danger coffee that's like death wish water or, or whatever. Mm. Or whatever. Murder wa what's that thing called? Liquid death. Liquid death.
Akshay: Oh, yeah.
Dave: And kudos to the guys who are building big brand.
I, I don't like the idea of drinking liquid death, but I chose the word danger because I don't want a world that's full of safety because that is the most horrifying thing ever. It absolutely a place where you cannot take risk at all because it's a dead world. Yeah. And so the positive side of danger is freedom.
And with vivana, what you're talking about is, well, you can't have the peace and you can't have that calmness without having fear and learning how to face it. Exactly. So it it, the alignment around, just pointing out the polarities is really similar. That's beautiful. Yeah. And neither one is negative at all.
Exactly. And some people will hear fear of Anna and all they hear is the fear. Fear. And you're trying to bring both sides of the polarity together to maybe depolarize it a bit. Yeah.
Akshay: You can't have a summit without a valley, you know? Mm-hmm. There has to be the lows. And I think a lot of times when I do talks around the world, I notice that people are scared to leap off the edge for the fear of falling, for the fear of pain.
Mm-hmm. And as a result, they live their lives, what Henry Thoreau would call the life of quiet desperation. But if you step into the edge of pain, it amplifies the experience of pleasure. You have to know the depths of the abyss to experience the heights of all.
Dave: So are you into BDSM?
Akshay: I
am not. It's a different world that it's just no judgment.
You sounded like it for a minute. There it is. Just, just saying. My friends say that a lot too. Why, why missing, blushing over there.
So that's hilarious. I'm just teasing. No, I love it.
Dave: You lost the ends of a couple fingers. Yeah. Frostbite. This was on this most recent,
Akshay: this was actually on the first, the first one four years ago. Got it. I think right after we,
We, that first time, yeah, it was right after the exact timeline. Yeah.
Dave: Mm-hmm. When's it gonna be enough?
Akshay: The thing that centers me from going so far off the edge to the point that I lose my life or lose myself into that abyss is constantly bringing it back to playing on the other edge of whatever the duality may be.
So, as an example, you know, there was this is one story that represents this beautifully. Many years ago, I'd gone on a run and I saw a sign that said 5K fun run. I had visceral subconscious disgust at the idea of a fun run. You don't run for fun. Every run has to be an exercise in suffering, and if you're not suffering, you're wrong.
And I, because I'd gotten so comfortable with that edge of suffering, and as a result, I was bringing in suffering in all areas of my life. Mm-hmm. Which was not healthy. So I started playing on the other edge of joy, and that's one way in which I regulate to make sure I'm not going too far off. One edge, is I'm always looking for a duality that causes me friction and I play on the other edge of it, and I consciously do this.
So one way in this example was I. Playing on the edge of fun. I was doing, I remember once I went to a retreat and at the every break they were doing light things like dancing and hula hoops. I would've rather been doing a hundred burpees in the corner than doing that, you know? But I would go into that.
That was my discomfort, was doing light, playful things. When I struggled with control and surrender, I started playing on the edge of surrender, which is what drew me into the darkness the first time. Currently, the duality, when you say drew you into the darkness, what does that mean? Oh yeah, sorry. I spent seven days the first time and 10 days the second time in a darkness retreat where I spent seven days in pitched darkness, isolation, so dark you can't see in front of you.
Mm-hmm. Because at this point I had gotten very good with doing hard things, but stillness was the thing that I struggled with, right? And so I wanted to play on that edge. And I went into the seven days of darkness to experience stillness at a very intense level. And even that was an experience of surrender and of stillness.
But even like for example, in my book, Vivana, everything is backed by science. Everything is research based and that's a beautiful thing. Obviously nothing wrong with that. But since then, I now have practiced the edge of practical and mystical. And in the darkness. One thing I saw among many things be beautiful, surreal things was I.
The brightest light I've ever seen in my entire life. It was so bright. I was blinding. I was covering my eyes like this. 'cause it was blinding me, needless to say, that didn't actually work. It was still, yeah, it was still there. But I started to embrace the mysticism of the human experience. And you didn't, before you bought your time and war, no mystical anything.
It was very much, I would've labeled myself an atheist. Very, everything was defended if even if not to anybody else, to prove to myself there's a reason for it. You know, practice the, uh, science of it, study the science of it, not embracing and accepting the mysticism of the universe. And that was in my own evolution to find that and experience that fully.
Dave: I have done just about every kind of esoteric practice you can name. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that's been on my list for, hmm, the last 15 or so years has been to do a darkness retreat. Mm-hmm. So I asked chat, GPD, so there's a lot of my work in the world. I said to, you know, one of those prompts you find on Instagram, you know, what, what are the things about me that you wouldn't know, blah, blah, blah.
Music: Hmm.
Dave: And it came up with some stuff that was nonsense and I told it so it, it redid it. And I said, okay, based on what seems like a pretty good diagram of who I am, what are the practices that would evolve me spiritually?
Music: Mm. And
Dave: it went through a list of everything I've done. Not because it chose it, knew that I did them.
It was just saying, well, based on your personality, these would be likely. I'm like, check, check, check, check, check, check. Including stuff no one knows I've done.
Music: Mm.
Dave: And on the list was darkness. I'm like, Hey, that is on my list. Yeah. I figured that out. But then this was interesting. I said, okay, I know that there are different lineages that practice different forms of darkness retreat.
Yeah. Which form of darkness retreat should I do? And to its credit, it mentioned five different types, including the one that I had targeted that I wanted to do whenever I get around to doing it. I see. So what kind of darkness retreat did you do? What lineage was it based on?
Akshay: Forgive my ignorance. I wasn't aware that there were different kinds to the, the experience was the universal element in the, the two, both times I went in was the darkness and then everything else was sort of customized.
Do you want to eat food, do you not? Okay, do you I chose to do both times I did a juice fast. The fir the second time I did eight days of juice fast last day, not, no nothing. Okay. And uh, and then just sat in the dark and. Experience deep profound insights, meditations. But what were the, some of the lineages that there, there
Dave: are the postal related ones, and the one that I was interested in is called Vara armor.
Okay. And it's an old Buddhist tradition. Hmm. And they say if you have certain mantras and certain meditations while you're in darkness for 10 days Mm. That you develop a certain kind of energetic shielding. Mm. And I don't remember the names of the other ones off the top of my head. Okay. Yeah. But it's interesting that different line it's interesting that different lineages certain shamanic practices, there's one tribe.
God, I don't remember what continent they're on right now, where for certain kids who have special energies, they will take them and put them in a cave with parents for like two years or something so that they evolve different powers. Yeah. Like they're, there's organs of perception are very different than they're supposed to be blind after two years of darkness, but they come out and then they learn how to see much later in life and you're like, oh my God, this is some pretty heavy duty stuff.
But it's documented that humans have done this.
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: So when you did it, there wasn't like, think about this every day, pray to this certain deity, visualize the Buddha wearing whatever. This was really just go in the darkness and face your
Akshay: face, your fears. Surrender to the darkness to see what is revealed.
The first time I went in, I had gone through this very challenging divorce. I broke my sobriety, did not like that about myself, and went in. To heal. The second time I went in, it was for training for Antarctica. Okay. So I had, I went in specifically to master the experience of solitude, to build the kind of person I need to be to ski across Antarctica.
I went deep into studying method acting that actors used to become a character. Mm-hmm. And so I went into the 10 days of darkness, so to practice in order to create that experience of solitude and shutting off the, the external reality through the visual lens. So I'm forced to go within, and it was more of an act of creation rather than healing the past the second time.
But as far as, there was no particular rule, so to speak. It was just surrender to the dark. Do what calls to you. Okay.
And
allow what, what will show up. And you came outta the darkness. A spiritual, we'll call it believer. Very much so the, the first time, embracing the mysticism, I would say, of sort of magical light bulb.
But that would definitely the trigger from there. Books like Why why Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner movie, Hacksaw Ridge. Some of those books combined with my own experiences, reshaped my relationship to what I perceive to be God. And that has continued since, and these experiences since then, since we last connected, I've spent a hundred days alone in the polar regions, 16 Antarctica 40 on training expeditions, 17 days alone in darkness.
And all of these have been profoundly sp paradoxically, some of my most connected moments ever. Mm-hmm. With not just God, but even my wife. Even the people I love with my myself, were in pure solitude. Is there one God or many? To each their own. But to me, I don't believe in higher power. God, I believe God is an expression of humanity at its finest.
God is the thing that comes from us within when we see someone suffering and we feel pain for that person, it's this. It's this ethereal force, if you wanna call it, that allows us to transcend ourselves. For something greater. And that's why that movie hacks are, have you seen the movie Hacksaw Ridge?
Yeah. A long time ago. So it's a true story based on Desmond Doss, a Medal of Honor recipient. He single-handedly saved 75 people off this cliff. It's profound. It's unreal. What he did. And even the, the deeper story beyond the movie, his, if you read his Medal of Honor citation, there's a documentary about him.
And after each person, he would pull off sometimes as far as a football field. And he was injured when he did it too. Right? He got injured later, later on. Yeah. He jumped on a grenade to save somebody. I mean, it wasn't just one act that he did, it was multiple. Mm-hmm. But after each person, he would save and pull off, drop, save off this cliff.
He kept saying, please God, help me save one more. Mm-hmm. Now, he didn't say, please God, save, save one more. And I'm just gonna kind of hang back and, and chill. Right. So to me, God is that expression that allows us, what he did was impossible, but he did it. And that's tapping into God in my, my paradigm of it.
And Harold Kushner puts it beautifully when he says to me, the surest proof of the existence of God is that when people pray for strength, hope, and courage. They find a level of strength, hope, and courage they didn't have before.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Akshay: So it's not about bargaining with God. Hey, I'll do this if you give me that, doesn't work.
Exactly. It's about tapping into this, call it the human soul consciousness, the universe, whatever you, God is another word for it, whatever you wanna call it, that allows us to transcend the limitations of this mortal body and mind. Do you think God arranged your meeting, your wife? It certainly seems like it.
It certainly seems like it. There's something in the coming back to the mysticism of the universe. Uhhuh mean the odds of all of those things to happen the way they did. You know, she was even considering not breaking her lease and moving a little later. At which point, I don't know if we would've met, I was gone on a training expedition.
Wow. And she decided, no, I'm gonna break the Lisa and move and mm-hmm. First event she goes to, she meets one of my very good friends. And the amount of stars that had to align for that to happen is pretty profound.
Dave: Got it. So you can't have action without moments of mysticism. It's the duality, right.
Strategy and serendipity. Yeah. One of the teachers I reference in heavily meditated talks about serendipity on demand on Dr. Barry Morlan, who's been on the show a couple times, and that when you are paying attention, whether it's because you've embraced spiritual mysticism, whatever, yeah. Or just when you're present or when your brainwaves are in the right place, you can generate serendipity on demand.
Mm-hmm. And I always wonder. Am I generating it or am I noticing it? And it was always there, and I'll probably never be able to know for sure. Yeah. I like to tell myself that I'm generating it because why not, right? Why not? Exactly. I mean, even the serendipity of you guys showing up with this incredible story, I had nothing about on the day that I was recording that.
Wow. Right. What are the, like the odd, what are the odds of that? Yeah, that's beautiful. How do you handle boredom?
Akshay: Funnily enough, that's the duality I'm currently playing on the edge of. Because even my friends that are like, yeah, you can practice stillness, but you even do that in a kind of extreme way.
Yeah. You're feeling the
Dave: darkness. You don't do stillness, you cannot move your body, but your mind is always moving even when you're in the darkness from what I hear. Right?
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: Okay.
Akshay: So now the duality, I'm playing on the, as I mentioned, at every point in my life, I'm looking for a duality causing me friction.
Mm-hmm. So the current duality I'm playing, playing on is what I would call a meta duality. So the nature of duality itself is there's two edges. What's the opposite of the edge, the middle path. So that's what I'm currently playing on. And that simply means, I mean, in many ways that experience shows up as a one way.
For example, the other day I went on a run and my wife dropped me off and we didn't set, usually we run, there's a heart rate monitor, you know, measured target outcome. Oh yeah, it's just gonna go wherever it takes me, wherever it takes me. I don't have a route plan. I don't have a target plan. And so that was one expression of it.
Other ways are simply, there's a great teacher, I forget his name, who said to me, if somebody asked me the definition of spirituality, I would say it's the sanctification of the mundane. So embracing that, there was a very, I mean, when I came back from Antarctica, there was a desire to go back instantly.
You know, I felt I wanted redemption. I was unfulfilled with how it ended up. And even though I gave my soul to it, gave my all to it, literally the body broke before the mind did. I was unhappy and I wanted to go back. But that was calling, that was from the same place I was choosing from. And my wife very profoundly helped me see that.
So right now I'm practicing embracing the mundane, sanctifying the mundane, embracing the middle path, and seeing where that takes me.
Dave: There's a path called left-handed tantra. Hmm. And that's about sanctifying the mundane and even the most repulsive things where the goal is to find God in everything in existence.
I. And so this is a very ancient practice, but they would seek out things that were intentionally repulsive so that they could still stay in a spiritual state of gratitude and surrender and forgiveness and all the compassion, all the good stuff, and be unflappable about it. Yeah. And that includes, sadly, boredom.
Yeah. Which is not my favorite thing either, but there are ways. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. What's the longest period of time you've been bored?
Akshay: I, I would say, I mean, I did experience the, when the first thing comes to mind is in the darkness.
Dave: Yeah. You
Akshay: know, granted, again, that was an extreme expression of stillness, but there were very, the darkness was essentially if I wasn't sleeping, I was either meditating or journaling.
It was actually journaling in the dark or between those, it was periods of extended boredom moments sitting there like, mm-hmm. I have god knows how much time left still in here. And having to sit with that was part of also the draw of going in to just be with that and see, allow itself to fully express itself.
Dave: That's fascinating. I know one of the hardest parts for me as a parent. Was just letting my kids be bored. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because boredom's a good teacher. Yeah. It's boring.
Akshay: Yeah, it is. That's very nature of it, right? Yeah. But it does teach you so much and it does, it, it it, it helps you stop resisting and clinging.
Right. We talked about the resisting or clinging is a cause of fall unnecessary suffering.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Akshay: But when you free yourself from that, the acceptance of isness is the foundation to freedom from that unnecessary suffering. And one way I would practice that, for example, on expedition, if I get soft snow and I far from perfect actors, this, there were many days I wish I had hard snow, but I would say, thank you, God, for these perfect conditions because they were perfect.
'cause they cannot be anything other than what it already is. This became a mantra of mine. Everything is perfect in its business because it cannot be anything other than what it already is.
Dave: Mm.
Akshay: So it's perfect in its business.
Dave: Do you say that when you get a tax bill,
Akshay: not so much, again, still a work in progress.
That's That's
Dave: That's the practice, right? Exactly.
Akshay: Yeah,
exactly.
Dave: Have you ever been betrayed?
Akshay: In my younger years, I would say my early relationships, yes.
Dave: Got it. That's another one of those times where it's really hard to stay grounded in all the things you just talked about. In fact, I think it's one of the most difficult things for entrepreneurs to deal with.
Mm-hmm. I see a lot of people just with trauma. It's not the same as war trauma, but it is. But it does. Spiritual scarring. Absolutely. And where someone you trust intentionally does something to harm you and that, that's a tough one. Yeah. And just learning how to go through that and not have it take you off your path sometimes permanently.
Yeah. It's one of the more difficult things. Is comfort really the enemy of greatness?
Akshay: I think it's an ex, it's a on, it's a part of the path to greatness. Comfortness comfort is absolutely, if you look at anybody, look at the great in any craft, the legends in athletics is kind of where I go to fitness and sports.
They spend as much on their recovery as they do on their training. The the ones who win, spend even more on recovery. Exactly. Yeah. So to your point, you know, this demonization of comfort is as is as mistaken as the demonization of discomfort. And this is your go. It's, it's the, this is coming back to the, the, the paradox of oneness.
This is the foundational mm-hmm. Spiritual concept that I believe is the key to attaining peace and freedom and to free your mind from those constructs that create the demonization of. One element or the other. And what I mean by that, I just, I believe this, I love your name of your pod podcast, A human upgrade.
I believe this to be one of the core fundamental human upgrades is the ability to free your mind from the constructs that limited. And what I mean by that, at a very simple example, so when I see this, I see a black wall. How do I know that thing is black? That that structure is a wall. I was taught at a young age, this thing is a wall.
So all conceptual mind, all words are limited by constructs and by the the things we are taught, right? And they shape us in every way. As an example, when I did a 24 hour ultra marathon, there were a lot of people in my family who had never heard that was possible. The longest they'd ever heard was a marathon.
So their construct of reality was a marathon is long. When you run ultras, a marathon is a warmup. But that's all just shaped by a paradigm, by a construct, right? And the point, and it's not to say constructs are good or bad, the point is to, once you recognize these constructs exist, when I first went on this path, every time I would drive, I would start saying, I would repeat this mantra.
I'm awakened to the truth that all of my realities and illusion, I'm awakened the truth in all of my realities and illusion. Why is that a red car? Because that's what I've been taught. And so first, the first step was simply becoming aware that everything I'm experiencing is not reality as it is. It's the lens of reality.
That's how we engage with reality, not as a real thing, but through the lens. Once you recognize it's a lens, so like in your case, you're wearing these glasses, the world is seeing the color. We're all wearing glasses. But once you recognize it, you can alter it. You can create a new paradigm. You can create a new construct that serves you on your path.
And that becomes, that is, I think the mission now and pure experience allows you to open the doors to seeing the. Release of those constructs, the oneness that exists. I mentioned some of these experiences in the darkness in Antarctica, and once you get a taste of it, it's like a kid first hearing that Santa isn't real once heard, you can never go back.
Music: Right?
Akshay: Even no matter how many Christmas uh, presents you see under the tree, it's shattered. That illusion is shattered. And that was the same thing for me. The illusion of separation was shattered. The illusion of how I engage with reality was shattered. And that's why even to me, the answer of that question, who am I, is I'm the creator of my own illusion.
And that gives me agency, it gives me ownership over my own reality and how I choose to experience it.
Dave: You just landed on one of the two models of the brain that has the most evidence behind it.
Music: Hmm.
Dave: And one of them is that. Nature, whether you wanna call it through design or evolution, uh um, just nature always for all things alive will evolve a user interface on reality that's fit for purpose of survival.
Hmm. So that by virtue of being in our meat bodies, we see the world in the way that makes our meat bodies survive the best. Mm-hmm. Which is why we don't see ultraviolet. 'cause we didn't need to. Right. Yeah. And we sense certain things that other animals don't sense. Yeah. In fact, even time itself, provably doesn't exist.
Yeah. If you understand quantum math and all that kind of stuff, we just perceive time because it's really useful to not die.
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: And so that's one model is user interface fit for purpose. Mm. So of course you can edit your user interface every time you read a book, you edit your lens on reality a little bit.
At least if it's a good book. Right? Yeah.
Music: Yeah.
Dave: Right. And then. The other one is that your body predicts the future of microsecond in advance and only notices things that are out of expectation. Right. And this is Jeff Hawkins work. The guy who created the first palm pilot, like the first handheld PDA, the great, great, great neanderthal ancestor of the iPhone.
Right? Yeah. And either one of those is relevant to what you're saying.
Music: Yeah.
Dave: Right. Because this idea that, okay, I do have a lens on reality. Yeah. I have to have a lens and it's editable. It's like installing a new app on your iPhone. Right? Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Fascinating. You do that, you create your reality as you, as you wish to live it.
You can also look at saints like, uh, REPA. Have you heard of Repa? No. There's a cave in India where there's hand prints on the wall.
Music: Hmm.
Dave: And he did this apparently in front of thousands of people. He'd go up. And I actually believe that all of reality is just a fantasy of consciousness. Yeah. That if there weren't conscious.
Beings, there wouldn't be any reality. Yeah. And it's called biocentrism. But what he would do is he'd go up and he would convince himself that the wall of the cave wasn't really there, and his hand would go into it and hand prints are still there, and people would make pilgrimages to go see it. And so like, wow.
It starts to get pretty spiritual when you're spending a hundred days out in the darkness and you're dealing with this existential stuff. Yeah. I guess a hundred days it wasn't dark the whole time. A hundred days in the whiteness. A hundred days in the whiteness. Exactly. 10 days in the darkness, days in the tear.
Akshay: Exactly.
Dave: Okay. Yeah. Got it. It, it's fascinating that you've pushed yourself this far.
Akshay: Yeah. It's been,
it's
Dave: been a
Akshay: profoundly
beautiful journey. What I'm very grateful for.
Dave: You're in a relationship now. Mm-hmm. You gonna keep putting your life at risk like this.
Akshay: So, to clarify, Antarctica is not nearly as dangerous as people think The, it's not, it's way more suffering than I've done.
I've climbed mountains, I've run all through marathons. I've done, it's almost every outdoor sports you can think of. And polar travel is far more mental and physical suffering, but it's not nearly as dangerous. On a mountain. For example, I was on Denali, 16,000 feet. Mm-hmm. There's a thin ridge line thousand foot drop on each side.
You can fall off the mountain. Yeah. In polar travel, you're skiing on flat white nothingness. Oh.
Dave: And there's no cre crevasses, the AR
Akshay: area that I was on, there was no crevasses. There could be on a, on a, on other sections, depending on Okay. Where you did. But in the 60 days I was out there, no crevasses. I mean, as long as you know how to set up your tent in a windstorm, obviously that wasn't my first expedition.
Yeah. So I could not have been more comfort comfortable in the sense of Sure. My ability to survive out there. Okay. So you
felt well prepared.
Exactly. So I'm not. I, I'm not drawn to the danger as much as I am drawn to, again, not the suffering in of itself, but the hardship that that suffering opens doors to.
Mm-hmm. Right. The bigger the dragon you battle, the greater the treasure you on earth. So I seek those dragons.
Dave: Got it. So you're choosing suffering but not danger. Exactly. Okay. It reminds me of Laura Logan, the famous 60 Minutes reporter. She was in multiple wars, just on the ground as a woman where she at even more risk than men embedded with soldiers.
Yeah. And ended up having a really horrible thing happen in Egypt when we talked about it on the show. And, and I asked her, I said, Laura, why do you keep putting yourself in danger? And she actually kind of got mad and she goes, I'm not, she said, do you think I didn't do all my preparation? Do you think I didn't have a backup plan?
Do you think I didn't have people with guns protecting me? Like I took reasonable risks that were worth it? Yeah. And what I'm hearing from you is you managed the danger. So you could experience the suffering.
Akshay: Exactly. And again, it's not to say that there was zero, have clearly lost fingers to it. Right? I got pushed to the brink of death, but there was an evacuation plan.
Even the next thing that calls to me right now is cave diving, which some would say is the most dangerous sport in the world. But there is some cave divers who would say, you can do dangerous thing in a safe way. Even when I did get trained as a cave diver, I spent the first three, four days not even going into a cave, just mastering in a very shallow pool.
So I take calculated risks, but I'm not pushing the edge of danger in a way. Like back in the day, I used to free solo, nowhere near Alex Han Hall level, but I climbed big rock walls with no rope. And many great free solos have died, even some of the best in the world. So that's a, and to each their own, there's no judgment.
But that's a line of risk I'm not willing to take because I have a wife and perhaps a
Dave: family. I feel like the cave diving thing just isn't enough. Like isn't there such thing as like ice. Cave diving or something that could be more experience. There is. I think you're wising that a little bit. Iceberg cave
Akshay: diving.
Different beast. Exactly. But it also like something like that also allows us to not be gone for months on end. It's something that we could go to Mexico together and I go off for a day and come back and allows us to spend more. More time together. There is an adventurous side of me that will always be, I will always be drawn to, and you can even do adventurous things at home.
You don't have to go to the edge of the air to do it, but it's, you
Dave: ever think about just going into the forest and taking five tabs of acid and saving yourself a lot of time and money and just
Akshay: going, exactly.
Dave: I, I'm kind of
Akshay: serious about that. I, uh, I've, I've done a lot of LSD back in the day. I don't, I don't do any of, even now, back when I did it, it was not to an conscious evolution just to get wasn.
I,
Dave: I'm talking about using psychedelics in a spiritual concepts a spiritual way, just to be clear, fully get that. Of course, I
Akshay: totally get that today. The psychedelic experiences I get are from these things, the, the solitude and Antarctica from the darkness, and there's absolutely no judgment. But for me, I prefer that path rather than, I don't, I choose not to go down the path of psychedelics anymore.
I, I feel judged.
Tisha, most of my friends, uh, do it on respect all day. I, I'm totally,
Dave: I do go to Burning Man, but honestly, if you were judging me, I still wouldn't feel judged because I don't care when people judge me. Love it. Exactly.
Akshay: That's the key. Absolutely.
Dave: Do you think trauma and pain became your fuel for being a high performer?
Akshay: Very much so. When I first climbed out of the abyss I was in after the war, I was at a point that I was drinking a full bottle of vodka a day for days on end. Wow. Literally a full bottle. I would drink as soon as I'd sober up, go to the store, get another one, and this would go on. And one morning after five days of this, I was seconds away from slitting my own wrist, picked up a knife, and was almost ready to do that.
That shocked me out of the stupor I was in. That's when I began my climb out of the abyss, started reframing my relationship to trauma and how we view trauma, and recognizing that even this label of disorder that we attach to post-traumatic stress. There's a construct that does not have to define us. So yes, I struggle with survivor's guilt.
I was hypervigilant of loud noises, didn't like being in crowds. All things I was told were symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder until I started doing the research on trauma, reading a lot of books on it, and going through navigating it through myself, my own spiritual seeking that I spent seven months in a war zone.
Loud noises meant death. Mm-hmm. Being hypervigilant was not a disorder. It's a normal human response to war. It was an adaptation. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And. This is something in the book Vivana and what I continue to call second Dart syndrome, how we respond to it. So Buddha said, we're all stabbed by the two darts of suffering.
The first dart is the one we don't control. In this case, a loud noise hits, I'm hypervigilant. I didn't choose that. That was a response beyond my control. The second dart is what we do with that. It's the dialogue we go into in our head. And then if I have that label disorder, what's wrong with me? I hate me.
Why did God do this to me? Bad things only happen to me. The world is evil, so on and so forth. And if you don't control this, if you don't pause with awareness to stop that spiral, it will psycho psychology called negatively bias, right? It'll go in a negative day and that second dart syndrome. So I freed myself from this by first just being with it, but then using it as fuel.
So this survivor's guilt I struggled with for a long time. What I, what I did was I had a picture of my friend that I lost in the war up on my wall, and it said, this should have been you. Wow. Earn this life. And that guilt became fuel to earn my life. Like anything, what works, what, what, what got you here?
What won't get you there? So the tools are different wherever you are on the journey. I believe you talk a lot about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? So the tools to get from survival to the next stage are different than if you're playing on the edge of absolute mastery and playing on the edge of self-transcendence, self-actualization.
So that's what I needed for a time. It became my fuel and it's still a place I can't consciously access. Guilt is, or P-T-S-D-S I would say the trauma, the pain, the guilt, all of it. It's a place that I'm very much more conscious of accessing. So at times, like in, like I was about to say in Iraq, in Antarctica, when I was really struggling, I would remind myself that you, you are lucky to be alive.
There's people who don't celebrate this. You get to choose your suffering. That's a privilege. Many in the world don't have many in the world. Don't get to choose that. So honoring that, respecting that, that I've been through this. I've seen not only in war, I've worked with survivors of sex trafficking with former child soldiers, been in post-conflict zones, been in some places where you see people suffering in a level that's hard to even comprehend.
Mm-hmm. And they didn't choose it like, I got to choose mine. So I recognize that and I use that as fuel. And again, far from perfect at it, but more often than not now at this point on my journey, it's something I'm able to consciously access instead of being a prisoner to. It was something I also moved through in Antarctica in one of those therapy sessions I mentioned.
Mm-hmm. Where recognizing that there was a part of me that still felt, um, to very small degree, well, much less than before, restricting myself from joy. Mm-hmm. For the feeling that I, what have I done to, even if I look at, separate from all the war things, I was born to good parents in India, I. As a result, I was blessed with a million times more opportunities than most.
I didn't do anything. One could argue, some would say I chose this body, but to deserve it. And so feeling that, that there's so many others who suffer, why do I get this life? But this was where I had that conversation with Frankl when I was out there who said to me that, you know, by you using my suffering, this is Viktor Frankl talking to me again in my, my perception of reality.
Sure. In my Viktor Frankl saying, by you, using my suffering to create more for yourself is not honoring me. It's not honoring life. It's not honoring anything. You're dishonoring that. You're dishonoring that. And so recognizing that if I choose to bring more joy to people, it's on me to be more joyful. Be the change you wish to see in the world, right?
There was even more freedom that I found out there. It had been processed a lot, but found even more freedom. And something I learned from my wife, you know, she always, one of her mantras is, it gets to be easy, my mantra, like we did a hard hike in Hawaii and she was really struggling. I was going through my own challenges and we both were silent so we could be in our own head, navigate that internal dialogue.
Her mantra is, it gets to be easy. It gets to be easy. Mine is like, suck it up, push harder,
Dave: you know? And she actually told me that her real mantra was, don't push him off the edge. Don't push him off the, is that, that's probably more accurate, isn't it? I was intuiting that
Akshay: probably far more accurate. This clown took me up on this hike.
She called herself an indoor person before me. So,
but the point is, it's that, it's that duality again. You don't, and I myself again, you know, find myself demonizing one side from time to time until I become aware, recognize it's a construct. And then you find the freedom of mind through that.
Dave: I don't believe in suffering. I believe in pain. Hmm. You can experience pain. You can experience things you don't want. Like the first dart of Buddha you talked about. Yeah. The second one though is what you do in response to it.
Music: Absolutely.
Dave: Right. And I've gotten into debates with, uh, a Navy seal once on, on stage somewhere saying, no, I don't believe in struggle.
I don't believe in suffering. Mm. I believe in applying every ounce of effort towards achieving something. Yeah. And if I fail, I don't have to suffer. I just failed. Yeah.
Music: But
Dave: I put a hundred percent into that, and that is the measuring stick I hold myself to, which is really, really difficult. Yeah. Right. So every time I catch myself wallowing or suffering, like, oh, that's my choice.
Akshay: That's, yeah. That's the second word. Well,
Dave: you are choosing. To do things that you're labeling as suffering, but all your words tell me that you're choosing to do painful, hard things, but that you're not suffering.
Akshay: Yes. So use, it's to a certain degree, I suppose it's semantics, but in in from what you're saying, it would be pain.
And that's the unnecessary suffering is what I would call that second dart suffering. There you go. It's the response to the stimuli as opposed to the were, were there moments of pain, physical pain, uh uh, and emotional hardship out there, of course. But it's what I do with that. It's how I respond to that.
And that's the second art, that's the, the resistance or the clinging to, as opposed to the acceptance of business. And part of what draw the draw is, is to build that muscle of the acceptance of business. And when you're out there on the edge, it really teaches you to do that. You start to agree you have to in order to keep moving forward or you're gonna break.
Mm-hmm. And that's a beautiful teacher.
Dave: Do you think you're ever going to get over the PTSD and the guilt?
Akshay: I think I've learned to transmute it as opposed to. Let it consume me. And this is even my own frame on trauma that mm-hmm. You know, it's there as a great, as an example of this, Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the leading researchers in positive psychology.
Mm-hmm. He went to West Point, he asked the cadets, how many of you have heard of post-traumatic stress disorder? Something like 90% raise their hand.
Music: Right.
Akshay: Then asked him, how many of you have heard of post-traumatic growth? Less than 5%.
Music: Mm-hmm. And
Akshay: so that paradigm becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that to me is the demonization of traumatic experiences as well.
So, to me, I don't think I'll ever get over that. Some of the, the buddies that I've lost, my brothers that I've lost, one of my very close friends died in combat right before gonna Antarctica, and he was my mentor in the Marines. Mm-hmm. And those things stay with you. They, they live even in Antarctica, there was a day where I was skiing and just tr crying, thinking about my brothers that I lost in combat.
And, but now they don't, they don't plague me. I just definitely don't find myself drinking every day. So you can transmute your trauma, you can alchemize your trauma. So instead of viewing trauma as something too. And this may sound controversial, to heal from, in order to go back to normal view it as something to evolve into, as something that can make you better.
And I think it has made me better. It has made the work better to help others navigate their own pain, their own suffering. And I have zero doubt there'll be future trauma. That's the nature of life. You're gonna be thrown into the fire from time to time. People you love die. Things happen. But the key is using it is transmuting.
It is evolving from it. So not just for yourself, but for the work you do. Whether that work is impacting one person in your family or at a much larger scale like you're doing, touching so many lives, right? And your pain can be fueled to do that.
Dave: Pain can be fuel. It just tends to burn you if it's what you usually use as fuel that it feels like it's a good spark.
But isn't there something else besides pain that's
Akshay: motivating you? Very much so. There's the joy of the work. Okay. When I see people being impacted, I just spoke once at an event recently and this woman came up to me after she had lost her husband very recently before the event. And she was struggling with grief, understandably, and just said how much that moved her.
This talk reshaped her relationship to her grief and that kind of thing touches my soul. Mm. So there's the joy of the impact it makes. There's the joy of what it allows us to do with our life. Obviously making money, building a brand that all comes with, with freedoms that, that, that allow you to live life in a different way.
So there is joy. There is, and I think that's coming back to playing on both polarity. Mm-hmm. I think it was Nietzche who said, you know, beware, he who stares under the abyss so that for the abyss will stare back. So it's about being careful of not leaping so far off the edge. Or into any duality that it consumes you.
That's why one of my many mantras is also stretch and reflect. So when I do push myself, like in Antarctica, I come, but there was a time in my life I would just do hard thing after hard thing after hard thing. Right now I make sure to pause, reflect what did I learn from it? What did I get from it? What's the value in it?
Am I going to far off this edge and uh, and leaping into the abyss so it will consume me or not? And as long as you're doing everything with that awareness and intention, you can play on both edges. So as much as pain as a driver, so is the joy, so is the laughter. And when I'm hanging out with friends and my wife will tell you, I'm always laughing.
I'm always shooting the shit. Very playful. But at the same time, I can get into those modes of eye, the tiger, pure intensity, leveraging trauma, leveraging pain. And that's, I think the value is when you could play on both edges. You explore both. You find something that transcends the limitations of each side of every duality.
Dave: Is there a duality between the first art and the second dart of suffering from Buddha, where you said, well, there's nothing you can do about the first art, so I'm just gonna do something about the second Dart. That's a great question. Why is there nothing
Akshay: you can do about the first? That's a great question.
I think in time you can shift even the first start that arise a hundred percent. So like I'm no longer hypervigilant of loud noises. Right, exactly. You got the point. So, exactly. So I think, I think at first, yes, I was. Mm-hmm. And it didn't instantly shift. Right. But you take conscious actions. So even crowds, just to make it tangible for someone listening, I struggle with crowds and I had to go into New York City at the time for, for work.
And so what I would do is I would practice gratitude and appreciation. I would look at everything the road I'm walking on, think about how many people came together to make this road possible. Mm-hmm. These magnificent, tall structures, the things human beings can do to the thousands of people came together to, for me to experience this very moment of reality.
And so by, by focusing on gratitude, on appreciation for all that is. In time, I no longer struggle with crowds. So I think you, to your point, you can change the first star that arises.
Dave: There you go. Gratitude is the first step on doing that, which is awesome. Yeah. So you are doing that.
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: And I feel like there's a duality you're talking about there where like, I just accept this, this first one, so I do everything The second I'm like, no, it's, I think your first one's doing a little bit there.
Okay. I
Akshay: think you could, yeah. I think you use the second to then shift the first, and you know, as you keep moving through life, the first start becomes different. And if it's one that's not serving you, I think now I'm, I can change that more rapidly than I could many, many, many years ago. And that I think is mastery.
I just saw a video from Novak Kovic talking about that even he, one of the greatest tennis players of all time mm-hmm. Still has moments of doubt. You know, it's a bad swing and still feels a little doubt. But what dif differentiates him from some of the ones who aren't as great is the ability to bring it back to center rapidly.
Mm-hmm. Is to not let that consume him and bring it back to peace. And I think that's the. Goal. It's just like meditation. Your mind wanders, but you bring it back, right? It's not about never letting the mind wander. It may go, but you bring it back and you bring it back and that's the process.
Dave: Is isolation really the key to a good relationship?
Akshay: Today's world, we've seen so many people struggle with loneliness. Even when I do talks, the number one thing people seem to struggle with is isolation. They were most awed by me spending 60 days alone. Right. And I get that, but we're it, it seems like we often use connection as a bandaid for solitude. And if you're doing that, if you're not truly comfortable with yourself.
How can you truly build a healthy relationship with another? The most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves Bad. So I think the, I think the key is, and look, there was a time when I, when I was struggling with drinking, I could be in a room with hundreds of people drinking and zero desire to drink.
My trigger was being alone. Mm-hmm. Whenever I did drink those bottles of vodka, I would do it. When I was alone, my demons would rise to the surface. So I went from that to now spending 117 as days alone in the last few years, because I've now developed a better relationship with the self that allows me to, the reason why my wife and I could move at the pace we did.
Two months engaged, five and a half months married. Now we've been together and thriving. Could not have a better relationship and it's because we both did that work. She went into, into her experiences in 40 years of Zen, the experience of that. She spent time alone. She was alone for a long time, becoming comfortable herself just as I was in my way.
That allowed us to create a thriving connection. And that's coming back the duality. I'm, as much as that's why I don't like to label introvert or extrovert, I'm as much as an introvert as I'm an extrovert. I thrive being alone, and I love being around people. And you can be both. You can choose to be both.
But it starts with first being alone. So it's not that you shouldn't hang out with others and not connection is a bad thing and not at all. But don't use it as a bandaid for solitude because you're uncomfortable alone.
Dave: So much wisdom there. If you are not fully comfortable being alone, I don't think that you're truly free to be in a relationship.
Akshay: I couldn't agree with you more.
Dave: And, and that can be a little triggering for people. Yeah. And as I like to say, if you can be triggered, it means you're carrying a loaded gun. You probably should go hide in a cave for a while and be alone.
Akshay: Yeah. It'll open you. There was one kid who was so inspired by what I shared.
I love this kid. He locked himself in a closet for a few hours. Just sit in a dark room, practice that. And I'm not saying you have to do that, but start with 15 minutes if that. Mm-hmm. Let it push you a little bit and go deeper and deeper and deeper. And the more you develop that comfort, the more you'll find peace and the better your relationships will become.
Dave: It's not 60 days in the Antarctic, but back in what, 2008, I realized I would eat if I was lonely. It's not the primary reason I was obese, but I definitely was like, I want the Ben and Jerry's. Mm-hmm. So I said, well, drop me off in a cave where there's no people and no food. So I can just face the loneliness and just realize, okay, there's nothing to eat, I'm just gonna do it.
And I had other beliefs and all that I was working through. Yeah. When you first said 60 days all by yourself, I'm like, that sounds like an absolute spa experience minus the whiteouts and the cold. But you know, you drop me off in the desert with some water and some little food for 60 days. I was like, all right, I got this.
Yeah. You know, gimme a hat. It's beautiful. Yeah. Okay. I love that. And I think a lot of people in the world today. Cannot comprehend being alone. Yeah. Even for a few minutes. Yeah. And it's one of the most important skills I think we can develop, especially if you wanna be in a long-term happy relationship.
Yeah.
Akshay: I was the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, who I believe said all of humanity's problem stems from man's inability to sit by himself in a room alone. And to your point, when you afraid of stillness, when you're afraid of that solitude and facing your own demons, as Carl Jung put it, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
And what stillness does, it's, what solitude does is bring that to the surface so it no longer runs your life without your awareness. It's a beautiful quote. Wow. Yeah. Carl Jung is one of the most profound teachers for me. He's had a huge Carl Young Viktor Frankl. They've shaped my life in big ways.
Dave: What's the most important book you've ever read that inspired all this adventure?
Akshay: I would say Man's Search for Meaning ranks up there. I reheard it in Antarctica. That book has touched my soul in so many ways. That's, yeah, that, that ranks up there.
Dave: Were you actively meditating during those 60 days of just pulling that 420 pound sled? Or was your mind just going places?
Akshay: A bit of both.
There were moments of wandering for sure. There are other moments of repeating a mantra, silence in the mind. Other moments where there was no mind, there was no me, there was nothing. There was just oneness. I barely remember these moments because in some sense I wasn't there. There was no I, it was pure oneness.
Mm-hmm. And there was other moments where I was just consumed by what I call the struggle bus, where it was just so hard and every moment just felt like a brutal amount of work. But that's part of what draws me to this is one microcosm of time. You experience multiple lifetimes worth of experiences. The highs, the lows, the stillness, the everything.
The connection. You know, the, even the experience that I had with my wife out there, I was calling her on the satellite phone. And the way she supported me, the tremendous love. Even love has this duality, connection and separation where if you're 20, around 20 somebody, 24 7, it'll probably drive anybody crazy.
And I'm not saying separation means you have to go to Antarctica for 60 days alone. That's an extreme example. But the way it amplified our love, even with so profoundly beautiful. Hmm. And so there was very much these meditative experiences that I got to feel and go through out there, which was one of the many draws for this, is that transcendence, the transcendence above all and feel the oneness.
Dave: Did you ever have spirits, maybe like your friend who passed in the military show up to you when you were in Antarctic and you were having all these visions? Yeah. You see angels, dead people. What was that like?
Akshay: I had more of that in the darkness. In this particular expedition, Antarctica, I didn't have as many of those moments of oneness and channeling.
The spirits and experiencing God because it was so hard. I've had that on other solo expeditions, but this one where it wasn't as hard so I could kind of get in flow a little bit that allows that oneness. Sure. But in the darkness I did, I had moments where I was channeling the Marathon Monks of Mount Heier, if you're familiar with them, Sai Saki, the unitus from 300 mm-hmm.
My friends, and again, real or not as relevant to me, they was as real as this experience was, as real as anything else. So I've had that more in the darkness in some of my other solo expeditions where I could channel the spirits of people, call them forth to, to serve me in this moment and, and to keep, to keep moving forward.
And that, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Dave: No. Okay. Keep, keep going. It's
Akshay: that, that, that transcendence of the self to something greater is what, you know, Viktor Frankl said that self-transcendence, self-actualization is the side effect of self-transcendence. So in Maslow's hierarchy needs, he has self-actualization as the highest.
But actually what's not as well known is that self-transcendence was higher than that. Mm-hmm. And as Frankl puts it, is that self-actualization is a side effect. So to me, suffering is a prac, is a training ground for self-transcendence. As is of course service, putting yourself. But that's what's so raw about the experience.
It's inherently not pleasurable that it pushes you into a place of surrender. And that surrender is the thing I seek. That surrender is what the suffering opens the doorway to, as I said earlier. Right. It's not the suffering in and of itself, it's the surrender. It's the shattering of the self. It's. The shattering of the masks.
When you're in the depths of pain, you don't care what you look like, what any, what anything is, especially when you're completely alone in Antarctica. And it's such a raw, unfiltered experience for moments without all the constructs that cloud it.
Dave: Wow. Willingness to suffer is a, is a different thing than actually suffering.
And the people who are unwilling to suffer, I think are not in a good place. You're not. Its
Music: more,
Dave: yeah. When you're willing to suffer. 'cause it's the only thing that's possible even then is, am I going to suffer or am I going to do the hard thing and fail or experience pain and then not suffer? And that's the edge there.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I was asking about your friend who passed in war because another friend who had dinner with a few months ago here in Austin. I'm not gonna say who it is, 'cause I don't know if he's public about this, but he went on a similar trip and fell down a CVAs and by No, he made it
Music: Oh.
Dave: He told me this at dinner afterwards.
Oh. Oh, that thought. Okay. Yeah. He, he said I was going to die. Like I was in a place where I could not reach above me and pull myself out.
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: And he said a friend who had died in an accident, and he'd always felt guilty about it, showed up. And he's like, I don't know how, but as soon as he showed up in his visions, yeah.
He lifted him out in a way that he could not do himself. Wow. And he just looked me straight in the eyes and said, I think he showed up and saved my life. And we actually had a cathartic like apology moment. Wow. And I'm like, wow, maybe that happened to you too. That's beautiful. So in the darkness though, you Yeah.
Got to re experience those. Okay. Yeah, there can be some just incredibly mystical things, but people don't talk about them because they're afraid of being judged. It sounds good, but it happens to so many people. So I, I love it that you're talking openly about,
Akshay: I mean, in the darkness I have what I perceive to be a perception with upper conversation with God.
That led me bawling in tears. Oh, Israel, to me as anything else.
Music: Oh,
Dave: yeah. I've been in similar places and I couldn't even talk about it for a couple days. Yeah, it's too much. I'll just blow a fuse. Yeah. So I, I can imagine, I, I get it. Can you really train courage like a muscle?
Akshay: I believe you can. The more you put yourself in situations that demand courage, the more you build a comfort zone with it.
And it doesn't mean the fear goes away in the other hard thing you do, but. You build the muscle of actually moving through the fear to tap into courage. And you can't have courage without fear. So in order to train the muscle of courage, you have to do something scary. And that could mean walking as, as Melissa said earlier, I was more scared of asking a woman out than of going to war.
And I had asked women out, not a lot, but Melissa, thankfully she asked me out, but I didn't have to face that. But the point is, you can put yourself in situations that are scary and the more you do it, it doesn't mean it gets easier, but you get stronger. Mm-hmm. You, you have more ability to do the courageous thing.
And even the things you aren't confident in, you become confident to own that. There was a time in my life I was too embarrassed to even admit that I was scared of mm-hmm. Walking up to a girl. Now I don't care because I trained the muscle of courage in so many arenas that even if I'm not good at something, I own up to it.
I don't care. And I'm scared and I'll own it. Mm-hmm. And so I think you can build that. There's, I was not this way to be clear. When I was younger, I was scared of Ferris wheels. Not even let alone a rollercoaster. My mom will tell you our Ferris wheel terrified me. I still remember we went snorkeling once in, I think it was Australia, great Barrier Reef with my family.
And I remember seeing the ocean drop off into the black nothingness and I was too scared and I turned around right. And now I've been cave diving. So the point is I systematically trained that muscle by doing scary things.
Dave: You know, in some ways you remind me of my friend Neil Strauss.
Akshay: Oh yeah, familiar Neil.
I know of him. Yeah.
Dave: He has a great book called Emergency where he basically says, look, I'm paraphrasing is like, I was a scared New York Jewish young man, and I had all the New York neuroticism and I couldn't stand it. So he put himself through all these really scary situations like. I, I think he went, he hung out with, with Skinheads to learn survival stuff and he went through urban Escape Innovation.
Kidnapping School actually inspired me to do that. Oh. It was this whole book of like conquering Scary thing after Scary thing. Yeah. Great book by Neil. I think we got to be friends years later. I'm like, oh, that's so cool. The book was kind of impactful for me because, you know, it led me to being handcuffed in the trunk of a car that's Sony Hunters chasing me.
Right. But actually that scared the shit out of me making him mad. I did it. Imagine. Even though I knew it was fake, but still would, you know, my heart was racing. Yeah. So, you know, he went through this path and you're on that similar path of Yeah.
Akshay: And that's partly why I'm drawn to many different pursuits, not just one because, 'cause I look for the different thing that scares me.
And that's really what the book Vivana is about is Right. Building the muscle of courage so you can experience nirvana on the other side of it. What are you gonna do when nothing is scary anymore? I don't know. I. If that will arise, there might be a time when, 50 years. Right now, the thing that scares me the most is kids, so, right.
That terrifies me. They're pretty scary. Having a child is terrifying to me. And that I think it should be scary. It's not a bad thing, but there will be a time maybe when I'm 80, 90, a hundred, who knows that I would've transcended all of it, but I'm not sure. I think a different fear might present itself and a different experience might result from that.
So right now there's still many fears, and I don't think that's a, I think that's part of the, the joy and the seeking is, is playing on those edges to see where else it will take you. The middle way is now a scary thing.
Dave: You know what Buddhist says? All fear is ultimately,
Music: what's that?
Dave: It's fear of death.
Yeah. There is no other fear. All the fears we have tied into the fear of death, procrastination, shame, embarrassment. Yeah. Because it's all fear of death when you peel all the layers away. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been my finding with all the neuroscience and all the, yeah. The journey work I've done. So what's your take on death
Akshay: at this point in my life?
There is a tremendous fear of death.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Akshay: But I also think if you have a healthy relationship with fear, the fear of death is one of the most powerful tools to awaken life. Mm. It's, it's a when, when you have a healthy relationship with fear, you know? So today I'm scared and people sometimes hear the things I do and they think, no way.
And I'm terrified of dying. I don't want to die. I'm 40 years old, I have a grand life ahead of me.
Dave: And wow, that surprising, it surprised me to hear you say that,
Akshay: and I think, but I think being present to your own mortality and when you have a healthy relationship with fear, the fear of death will awaken the gift of life.
It amplifies how you live your, live your life, and it changes your experience of it, because, you know, this will end very soon. And soon is a relative concept, obviously, but soon, and let me live this to the fullest and I'm blessed. In my 40 years I've lived a grand life with unbelievable amounts of epic experiences.
And I'd say being present to my mortality has been a huge factor in contributing to that.
Dave: And being present in this
Akshay: way is the same as fearing death to you when you have a healthy relationship to fear? Mm-hmm. If
not, yeah. The fear of death can drive you into a hole. Oh, it certainly, to run away from everything.
Dave: I, I guess this is a first start versus second art conversation from earlier. Yeah. I, I don't have any fear of death. I, I look at death and birth as exactly the same thing. Yeah. And so I prefer not to do it. I got a lot of exciting things to do. Yeah. But I, when I look into, I really don't have, I. An internal Oh no, not that.
Yeah. Because I know it's inevitable. Yeah. Right. Even though I'm planning to live way longer than I'm supposed to. Yeah. Yeah. The universe will come to an abs like at some point, like my meat body will dissolve and that's all fine. Yeah. Right. And it, it's interesting because I would've said, of course I'm scared of dying.
That would've been a, a major thing. And Yeah. And having done the work I've done, it's sort of like courage, willingness to feel fear and do it anyway. Yeah. Which is what you're doing. Yeah. And then the other path is to dissolve the fear as much as you can. And so for me now, if I feel resistance or something that I'm afraid of, and it's not actually dangerous, you know, gonna kill me or maim me or something.
Yeah. I'm going to do it intentionally. Yeah. Because it's still a trigger that's left. Yeah. And I'm just, I'm mining for things that push my buttons. 'cause I don't want any buttons you can push.
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: Right. And it's a different thing. That's not courage at all. Mm-hmm. Right. It's something different and it's, it's.
It's, uh, fun and interesting and amusing to be able to compare notes. Yeah, absolutely. With the way you're approaching this existential problem, the way I'm doing it, death.
Akshay: Yeah. And, and again, there's no right way. What works for, no, there, this isn't about right or wrong. Exactly. It's about shared knowledge.
Yeah. It's beautiful to,
Dave: and I'm, I'm thinking I've, I've done, you know, the high-end or, or the high altitude and mountaineering stuff Yeah. At negative temperatures. Not to the extreme you do, but enough that there's been times when I'm like, I might die situations. Yeah. Like, if I don't find the guest house, I'm gonna freeze it out.
I've been there. Yeah. And yeah, there, there's a, there's a, a terror that came up at that time. Yeah. And I was younger at the time. Yeah. And I, I don't know how I would face that today. I, I think I would, in both cases I would find it, or, you know, whatever powers that be would help me find it. Yeah. Or I'd freeze to death, like one of the two, one of the, but I prefer to just tell myself the story, that there's a conspiracy in the universe to support me.
Versus one against me. Yeah.
Akshay: Yeah.
Dave: Do you believe in that?
Akshay: I think it was a, this has been an evolution as well. The words from Joseph Campbell who said, F uh, follow your bliss and the universal open doors where they weren't none before. That was, that was a thing that didn't mm-hmm. Resonate with me before, and now I think it does.
So I think when you're the alchemist, right, when you're pursuing your path, the universe will open doors and there's magnificent things that happen, and the stars align. But as Melissa said, it's serendipity and strategy. It doesn't mean you don't act, it doesn't mean you wait for the magic to land in your lap.
You take purposeful action and combine that with the mysticism of the universe. As long as you're following it with, you know, following your bliss, with all your soul, with obsession, with, with cons, with consuming every five of your being. There is a magic in the universe. That things happen. Look at, look at our life.
Dave: Right? Yeah. Beautiful. Well, you're living an incredibly interesting life and you're, thank you. You're teaching a lot of people with your Vivana book and the concept and inspiring a huge numbers of people, which is, it's awesome because a lot of us are, are stuck where the things that you've done multiple times now seem absolutely impossible.
The fact you're willing to share it, including the fact that, you know, you had a problem with cutting that you were an alcoholic, they had PTSD, and that you faced those things and you've learned how to have meaning from that and being able to hold yourself out. There is an example for people, and I don't get a sense, you're doing this out of ego, you're doing this out of service, and sometimes people confuse the two, and sometimes people think it's service and it's ego, but you're, you're doing this for the good guys and I genuinely appreciate that.
So thank you for coming back on the show and thanks for an amazing and completely unexpected story.
Akshay: That
Dave: was incredible.
Akshay: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for bringing my wife and I together. I so appreciate you, brother. You're very welcome.
Dave: If you liked what you just heard and you'd like to know more about these adventures, go to fear ivana.com and learn more about actually's work.
It's pretty cool. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.