The Kiss of Grace: Awakening in Ordinary Life with Philip Weber

Lorne Brown 

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. I’m joined today by Philip Weber, author of Grace Happens and Reflections of Consciousness. Now, Philip experienced a spontaneous awakening. He calls the kiss, which dismantled his sense of separate self and opened him up to a life guided by grace. His journey rooted in both mystical insight and real world service, including hospice work reminds us that true awakening often requires an inner death. The letting go of who we think we are. His voice is both raw and refined, offering a grounded path to remembering what we already are. Philip, thank you for joining me here on the Conscious Fertility Podcast.

Philip Weber

Well, thank you for inviting me. I really look forward to our chat today.

Lorne Brown 

Alright, I got to set up why we’re chatting today and kind of the intention behind this. My listeners know, and we talked off camera. I’m curious, and on this journey, like so many people are in this world and today we’re kind of talking about a topic on, the words are used interchangeably, self-realization, awakening, conscious enlightenment. And in the world today, so many people are struggling and suffering and we’ve had so many conversations on our podcast that life seems to be inner work. You’re not going to find that peace, that sustainable peace anyhow, that joy outside of you. There’s not enough cars, not enough relationships, not enough money to fill that void. And I know our topic or our title of the podcast is called Conscious Fertility Podcast. And if there’s a group of people that I see in my practice that are suffering, struggling, they often say that an infertility diagnosis is similar to a terminal illness diagnosis, the amount of stress. So I wanted to have you on here because I think there’s a paradigm shift. I think individuals have been having their awakenings and I think collectively there’s awakening. And I wanted to talk to what I would call an ordinary guy. And I don’t want to insult you, but you don’t seem to have a big temple named after you. And so that’s why I want to have this conversation with you. So thank you for joining us.

Philip Weber 

Thank you.

Lorne Brown 

I would love for you to define and discuss these terms that we’re discussing here, enlightenment, self-realization. And I’d love for you to share your story and define what this is and how it has changed before Phil and after Phil of this kiss of grace.

Philip Weber 

Well, thank you. Right. There’s a lot of misconceptions and a lot of baggage that comes with the enlightenment words, so I usually don’t use that one. Awakening I think is more descriptive in the books that I wrote and then all the spiritual literature throughout time. There’s a ton of detail out there, but I try to keep it pretty simple. And so what I would tell people self-realization is it’s simply a shift in perception. And that shift in perception is from separation consciousness to unity consciousness. So what does that mean? Well, in classical text, there’s only two ways of seeing things vidia and vidia. So either it’s the clear seeing of direct perception or it is the illusory subject object awareness that we all, most of us have lived in and still do. It’s a turning within. And when there’s sufficient ripeness, the subject object dissolves.

Or another way to put it maybe is the subject object perception collapses. And for me personally, I wrote about how the outside suddenly became my inside. When that happens, there’s to borrow from Christian mysticism, there’s a cloud of unknowing in the unknowing. The universe presents itself in every moment and then knowing happens. So it’s almost a non-experience, almost a non-experience because we’re going from I am experiencing something to there is no I or thing. There’s just one happening. It’s a very different thing and you can’t miss it when it’s happened, at least the way it happened for me because it was a very sudden shift. That said, I think everybody has these moments throughout their lives, particularly people who are on a spiritual path, but they may miss them or they may say, well, that was, and then the mind rationalizes it away and then they miss the moment.

But there are moments of, you hear people call it timeless moments where thought is suspended and you’re just there. Ram Dass said it best, awakening is simply being here now. Sounds really simple and it is very simple, but it turns out, at least in my case, it wasn’t that easy to do. But it is our true nature. It is always there. And so I really stress this that well, a couple things. One is if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. Because I was in my high school yearbook, I would’ve been the least likely person there to have been awakened. It was not something that ever crossed my mind. And then secondly, it’s not something that we attain. It’s impossible to achieve awakening because we already are it. So it’s a remembrance, it’s a capital R remembrance or it’s a realization, a capital R realization where we discover that that’s the cosmic joke.

A lot of tales of awakening as they have their satara, they break into laughing and I did too crying as well as it turned out for me. But due to our ignorance, what we already are is what we’re trying to attain and what was never there to begin with, we think is holding us back. And when the curtain comes down and you see through that dissociative boundary would be one way to put it, then you see that you always were what you were seeking. I would say an experience, but it’s not even really an experience, it’s just, again, it’s a shift in perception between separation and unity consciousness.

Lorne Brown 

So let’s talk about both of those points that you made. And the first one being you thought you’d be in your yearbook, most likely to be self-realized. So who were you before? How did you perceive the world? How did you live in this world? How did you experience the world? How did you work in this world before your realization? Just so we can let people know that you didn’t have to be born like, oh, you’re the next Dalai Lama. You weren’t chosen, you had this awakening, what you call it, the kiss.

Philip Weber 

Before I was, I mean, early on, I think the best way of describing myself was a fun loving idiot. But eventually I got lucky. Not really anything called luck, but it’s just a term that’s convenient. I got lucky and I ended up working in a hotel and I was 23 and I just loved it and I was good at it. And within a very short amount of time, I rose into management. And then it became a career. During those years, I was very focused on what most people were focused on is making more money, trying to get a house, trying to get a decent car, trying to find Ms. right, certain level of status and respect and all these things that the ego, you’ll latch onto all these things and suddenly it’s who I am. And around I would say probably my mid thirties, I wasn’t aware of it and I couldn’t have articulated it, but there was a growing inner dissatisfaction with everything.

Suddenly I had a beautiful place to live and a great convertible Beamer, and everything was going pretty well. But inwardly, there was something that was just gnawing at me that kept getting worse and worse. And it was just at that point, an unconscious feeling that all these outward things were never going to bring me the happiness that I wanted. And probably I kind of bottomed out. I didn’t have any serious issues like addiction or things were going pretty well outwardly, but inwardly, when I kind of hit rock bottom, I was sitting at home on the couch watching tv, but I really wasn’t watching it. I was just channel surfing and everything was pretty inane. And it lasted about 30 seconds and I’d hit the remote and the next channel would come up and just everything. I was world weary, I think is one term that you hear sometimes.

And suddenly this guy is on the screen, bald guy in a sweater. But he mentioned somebody that I should say in my early years, even though I was a fun-loving idiot, I had an interest in philosophy and metaphysics to some degree, that I really liked a guy named Alan Watts, who was a great disseminator of Buddhism and Zen in particular. And he was kind of an irreverent guy and he kind of fit my personality a little bit. So all of a sudden, this bald guy says, the wake of the boat doesn’t determine its course. And he said, I’m quoting Alan Watts on that. And as soon as he said that, it was like a light bulb went on and I was just transfixed. And I watched the rest of his lecture and the bald guy turned out to be somebody. Of course everybody knows now, but I didn’t know then, was Wayne Dyer.

Lorne Brown

Okay. Yeah.

Philip Weber

And so the next day I went out and I bought a couple books from Wayne, I think wisdom of the ages or wisdom of the Masters. I forget. He wrote a bunch of essays in this book and I bought that and it was just like everything shifted. And that was really the first shift. So I went from a materialistic direction to a spiritual one. I guess I had to go through all this stuff to realize that this wasn’t going to do it. And then I was ripe and I was ready for the shift to happen. And within a couple months I knew there was something else, something deeper that I needed. I didn’t know what it was. I went to the, it was a Barnes and Noble near where I lived, and I walked down the metaphysical book aisle, which of course was huge, and I didn’t know what I was looking for, but there was kind of a magnetic pull and I just kept walking down and looking around and picked up a couple things and that’s not it.

And suddenly on the spine of one book, there was an Indian man who looked like a yogi on the spine of the book. And Lorne, if I hadn’t have picked that book up, I think it might’ve just flown off the shelf and hit me between the eyes because there was a real, all I can say was just a strong magnetic pull. And I pulled it down and it was the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. And that was it. And I knew it was it. And bought the book, went home within, I think half the way through the book I’d signed up for the SRF lessons, self-realization fellowship lessons. And that was my path. And it found me miraculously just when I needed it and it was perfect for me. And then that from there followed an 18 year path of meditation and spiritual practices and studying. I’m very ecumenical by heart, so I studied all types of teachings and I still do. I love them. And about 18 years in, I ended up in a job that was like the worst job I’d ever had. And that’s saying something.

And suddenly my health started to go, everything started falling apart. I was on disability, I was maybe having to look at heart surgery or whatever. There was blocked stuff in there. And I was sliding into depression. I wasn’t clinically diagnosed that way, but looking back on it, I was in pretty bad shape. Fortunately, through the help of a couple good friends, they said, you better get off your pity party butt or you’re going to have some problems. And I thought, well, if I’m going to go down this year, I really thought that this might be my last year. I felt an impending death coming, and I took it to be physical. So I thought, if this is going to be my last year, I’m going to go down swinging. And so I got my act together and I had been talking about downsizing for years.

And now that I wasn’t working when the lease ran out on my house, I gave away pretty much everything I owned. I was working with the homeless shelter, so they had facilities that people could stay in. And so my furniture went to that, and I just kept a very little bit in storage. And I went out to the Hidden Valley Ashram, which was an SRF facility that I had actually been the operations manager of a couple years prior. I knew the Abbott of the, it’s a monastery, but it’s also a place where guys could go for extended work visits and they could have an ashram life and a meditation in the morning and at night. And you work on the farm during the day. And I ran the thing for a couple of years. And so I went back there feeling the best that I’d ever felt in my life.

I felt free, I felt ready to face the unknown. And of course, that’s when it happened. Two weeks later, I had lunch, went back to my room, and I was listening to a James Finley talk, a guy I really, really love. And just a dear man. I was listening to a talk on Meister Eckhart and I had my computer open. I was playing a little spider solitaire, and all of a sudden the beauty of Eckhart’s words through James’ voice hit me in a way that nothing ever had. And I started tearing up and I just kind of sat back and just said, it’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. And within about 20 minutes, there was just this dissent of grace, which is why the book is called Grace Happens, an Awakening of Consciousness. And that descent, I was ripe enough, nothing I did, but I was ripe enough. And the curtain came down. It was a pretty wild ride for the next nine months because there was a lot to assimilate and acclimate to. But that was what I called it, the kiss, because it really felt like a kiss from the divine.

Lorne Brown 

And so in that moment you shared, people have all had these moments, they’ve had glimpses of this and they dismiss it or whatever way they excuse it away was this like that, but it just continued for, it was intense. It was one of those glimpses. But it wasn’t just a glimpse for you.

Philip Weber

Yes, the glimpses I think give us little openings. And sometimes, I remember during my spiritual 18 years of Sadhana that I remember a crown chakra opening that lasted for a few hours and I was in that state even though it is not a state, but I was in that thoughtless, timeless being here now kind of thing. And it lasted a couple hours. And then maybe a year later I was at the Meher Baba Center, I was meditating in his bedroom where people do on Sunday mornings. I felt some wraps right here, three of them. And I was gone for most of the day. Gone meaning gone out of separation consciousness and in unity. And then about a year later I was meditating with some SRF friends up in the North Carolina mountains.

Lorne Brown 

Can we define SRF as self-realization? What’s the F? Stand for?

Philip Weber 

Self realization? Fellowship.

Lorne Brown 

Fellowship. Just because people aren’t going to be as familiar with that. And I know you said it earlier, but we’ll take in a few words. So SRF is a self-realization fellowship. Thank you.

Philip Weber 

Yep. It’s a Los Angeles based international religious order. I would say

Lorne Brown 

That had a big impact on your preparation for this awakening to remember the truth of who you are.

Philip Weber 

It did. Yogananda was my guru and still is. The relationship’s changed now that the awakening has happened. But yes, Yogananda I’d had connections with. And so the next big shift came, lasting all weekend. And then it was a very gradual thing over time, but I noticed the amount of thought was being reduced in my head. I know Ramana Maharshi said one of the great benchmarks of spiritual evolvement is the reduction of thought. It’s certainly not the only one, but it is one of them. For me it was. So these momentary lapses of lucidity I think were preparing me for the ultimate shift when it happened with a kiss. And then

Lorne Brown 

That’s a metaphor. You weren’t kissed because you did talk about you being that fun loving idiot. So the kiss of grace, we’re talking about.

Philip Weber 

The kiss of grace, and that’s how the book got its name. Grace happens and it is the awakening of consciousness. It’s not anything that I would take credit for. It happens when you’re ready, but it always happens eventually. We can’t screw it up. We’re always playing with the house’s money.

Lorne Brown 

Can I unpack that a bit with you?

Philip Weber 

Sure.

Lorne Brown 

And just like you don’t take credit for it as well, it’s going to happen, meaning you’re going to die and leave this body. So it happens. Is that what you mean? It’s going to happen regardless if you don’t figure it out or it doesn’t happen to you in this physical body when this body retires, you experience that remembrance, is that what you mean? It’s going to happen anyhow?

Philip Weber

Well, I do think a greater remembrance happens when we drop our bodies, but that ‘s been said, and I think it’s true that awakening happens through form, not in spite of it. So that’s actually why we incarnate is to develop. This is a perfect contextual field for our evolution. And we’re always in the perfect contextual field even though it may not seem like it at the time. So we actually awaken in the body. So that’s why people keep taking bodies. So the theory goes, is that we are working out our stuff, we’re shedding karma and we’re evolving as a soul. And in doing that, since we are an inseparable part of the divine, the divine is knowing itself through us eventually. So when I say we eventually awaken, we’re already awake, but we just haven’t realized it yet. And that’s the key.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. So let me put it that way then the self-realization, the remembering will happen either while you’ve had it, now you get to play in this virtual reality we call life on earth. Or if you didn’t, you were the old Phil and you were still miserable on the inside, you get a second BMW, you get another relationship, but you’re suffering on the inside. Eventually that heart kicks out on you. Then you would be like, oh, you remember the truth of who you are. Is that what you mean by eventually it will happen because when you die, if it hasn’t happened by then, that’s when it will happen.

Philip Weber

No. Again, I think after death there is a greater understanding of our nature. But actual realization, self-realization only happens as far as I know. And there are, I don’t believe in absolutes. So there are probably exceptions to everything but it happens when we are in physical form.

Lorne Brown 

I’m just curious. You’re not suggesting, oh, go ahead and continue abusing your children and drink alcohol, grace, it’s going to happen. It seems like there has to be some preparation. Can you?

Philip Weber 

Yes, and that’s a great point and it’s a paradox in the sense that Adyashanti has a great term. He says it’s becoming grace prone. All this work that we’re doing makes us more prone to the opening of grace. But ultimately, if grace is grace, then we can’t control it. So we do our best. And I think the more we do, the more likely it is for grace to appear. But it’s still going to happen when it happens. But it’s always going to happen. In Buddhism, there’s a term called enlightened intent. And the enlightened intent in the universe is that it discovers its true nature. So that’s what I mean by we can’t mess it up because that’s what the universe is doing is awakening to itself.

So we do our best with whatever practice or technology or a method that seems appropriate to us at the time. But what many longtime spiritual practitioners find is they come to a kind of a wall where they keep doing all this stuff and they’ll say, Phil, I’ve been on the path for 40 years and I don’t feel any different. What happened to me when I let everything go and went out to the Ashram and felt like I was facing a physical death within a few months, was a total surrender to life. And this is anathema to an ego, but the absolute letting go and trusting the process and saying, you know what? I can’t do this anymore. I’m not going to be able to make it happen. I’m just going to let go. And letting go wasn’t for me. Even a conscious thing. It is such a deep level that I wasn’t even really aware of it, but that letting go allows. It’s like opening a camera aperture. It allows the grace to come in.

Lorne Brown 

Alright, I feel like I’m on the right path because what you shared there in my conscious work for myself, which I think is a big practice of witness consciousness, and I teach in my practice, it’s called the practice of notice, accept, choose again. And acceptance is a letting go of surrender. It’s not that you resign to it, it’s not that you like it, you just don’t suppress it, deny it, repress it, project it out. There’s a surrendering. And the way I understand it for myself through my experience is when you’re fighting with it, you’re creating resistance. And that resistance, we call it chi stagnation in Chinese medicine, it prevents you from experiencing or that perception you’re talking about. But when you fully let go and surrender, then the resistance drops and outflow and receptivity comes through you. And that’s what I will interpret as consciousness comes through you.

Philip Weber 

Yeah, yeah. Surrender is beautifully put. Witnessing consciousness is a fantastic tool to pull yourself out of identification as the content of consciousness. So now you see I’m the witness and there’s consciousness. It’s still dualistic, but it’s about halfway there. And then eventually the dualism just collapses. And you never know when that’s going to happen. And that’s the fun thing about it. You don’t know when it’s going to happen or how it’s going to happen, but I would say regardless for everyone, eventually it will happen.

Lorne Brown 

When it happened to you. A couple of questions around that, and again, thank you for that part of the witness consciousness. I’ve had other what I’d call non-ordinary states. And what I want to ask you, because what you’re experiencing, the way you’re describing it, it sounds like that’s still duality. So I’d love to know what it’s like and why are you still alive in this world? If your self-realized, what’s the purpose?

Philip Weber 

The purpose is easy. That always comes down to service. I had a difficult nine months after the kiss, I had a lot of bliss, bouts of bliss, which I would define as kind of a fluid mix of peace and joy with a dash or three of euphoria.

And then with that, my sleep patterns were whacked. I had difficulty focusing, and couldn’t read really that well. Just practical things like driving a car at times became problematic. So I was fortunately in a very safe space, the ashram and the minister in charge. I’d known him for 20 years. He was keenly aware of what was going on and he was in my view already awake at that point. So he was a big help. He was the single most wonderful aspect of grace in the body that I could point to. I mean, he really was a lifeline for me. But in terms of what’s the point, I struggled with that for months. I lost personal will and I couldn’t figure out a reason to get out of bed. It’s just like, what’s the point? There’s no me. And this is a very common thing that happens to people when they’ve had a big ego mind collapse. Ultimately though, it dawns on you that the purpose of existence is to be of service. So you’re coming from a place of love. What would love do? And then there is no one particular type of service that’s better than another. If you’re coming from a place of love, service is service. So some people go out and teach, like Eli, my editor and best friend is doing as you know now

Lorne Brown

He’s on the Conscious Fertility podcast as well. Everybody that’s Eli Recht and he was the editor of Grace Happens and Reflections of Consciousness, Phil’s books.

Philip Weber

And other people, they write a couple of books and they occasionally talk to people on a podcast. And I enjoy a more behind the scenes kind of a role. And so if Eli is Batman, I guess I’m Alfred, okay, and bat caves need dusting, so that’s what happens. But other people, occasionally people don’t keep their body and throughout history, people have apparently awakened and then just drop the physical form. But the idea in my mind of self-realization then becomes, first you’ve got to work through the bliss because it’s really difficult to work in that state. So I know in the Sufism tradition, IBEN Arby made it very clear in his writings, he pretty much looked down his nose at people who were the Sufis who were wandering around in ecstatic bliss because they really weren’t much help to anybody. And so his idea was, and I agree with this, that even bliss has to be surrendered. And then it’s back to the old Zen saying after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

Lorne Brown 

Moving along here, I have so many curious things from curiosity questions for you. In 2022, I did psychedelics. I don’t do drugs, so my body probably wasn’t adapted to it, and I did 5-MeO-DMT, and I thought I was in hell or I am hell or whatever it was. And it was pretty clear to me afterwards, based on my training, what I do in my practice that I had totally broken my nervous system and dysregulated it. Now things are great, but maybe took nine months, but after the fact, it almost felt like, oh, I think I accelerated some karmic burnoff there if that’s what I experienced. It really felt like things moved through. 

Philip Weber 

The spiritual practice for me isn’t about addition, it’s about subtraction, and we’re letting all this, the false beliefs and we’re letting all these things go ultimately because all we are is a modulation of the one consciousness is you can’t add or subtract anything to that, but it seems that way. I would encourage people to not look at it as an additive process, but as a subtractive one, and you’re just getting rid of all this stuff. And the Kundalini can really accelerate that. I know psychedelics can definitely, you use the metaphor of the sun and the clouds. Psychedelics can definitely punch through the cloud and provide a glimpse into reality that one has not had before. So I don’t recommend ’em, but I don’t not recommend them either because I’ve done and they can be helpful. But ultimately I think meditation and self-inquiry and witnessing consciousness and these types of things are better methods than trying to do psychedelics over and over and over. Because if anyone’s read Ram Dass’s journey, he proved that that really wasn’t the way to go.

Lorne Brown 

I’m glad you’ve said that and I kind of want to share that I don’t have a strong opinion or bias on either. I know from my experience, I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it, but what you said, and every guest I’ve had so far that we’ve brought up psychedelics, we’re well over a hundred episodes, but not every episode we talk about psychedelics. But these are neuroscientists that have come on their PhD in psychology, a lot of clinicians and physicists, and they all said the same thing you said, so I just want to repeat it. They said it. It’s a great tool. It’s a great way to give you an opening, a glimpse of that oneness. But in the end, you have to have a practice. You have to be able to access that through natural means. And people do it. It’s one, two, maybe three times, and you’re done for a lifetime. What people are doing now is becoming a weekly event and their opinion, it’s their opinion. I’ve only done it once, so I don’t have an opinion, but their opinion is that’s probably not the way to do it. They basically said, that’s not going to do it. It’s just letting you know you bought into an illusion. That’s all. It’s there to let you know.

Philip Weber 

Yeah, those things wouldn’t be in existence if they didn’t have some value. And in fact, the way I perceive things now is that everything without exception, everything, and everyone has value by the very fact that it exists and it is a reflection, a unique once in eternity reflection of the divine and that we all express it in our own unique way. And so technologies like meditation or in the or what have you are all there. But the trick sometimes is finding the right thing at the right time.

Lorne Brown 

Right. I have some non-ordinary questions for you. Some of the questions I’ve been asked to ask you as well, I’m in a program and I’ll give a shout out to Randine Lewis’s program called the Daoist Death Medicine Mentorship, where we’re talking about death from a Dao’s perspective, literally death preparing the body for death and the death of the ego. So the whole idea is to be alive, the ego has to die. There’s a rebirth like you described. I told people, I mentioned your books that I’m reading and I’m going to interview, and somebody wanted to know, when you have done hospice, were you awake during working with hospice? Because they wanted to know, were you able to sense or have any astral or out-of-body discussions with these souls that left the body? Because people have shared that when a relative dies, for example, they get visits from them, they know it’s them or they see them, but when they open, their eyes are not there. So they wanted to know the non-ordinary stuff that you may not want to share often. This sounds crazy weird if there’s any crazy weird stuff that’s kind of outside the materialistic worldview that you’ve experienced in hospice, working with people who are dying or died.

Philip Weber 

I took a break from my hotel career for a couple of years after I had my shift back in the thirties because I didn’t feel any inner satisfaction in the corporate world anymore. So I was looking for something else. And originally I started volunteering and I thought at some point maybe I could switch careers into the administrative side of things. And so I spent a year as a volunteer coordinator and at the same time sitting with people. I specialized in people sitting with people at their bedside when they were actively transitioning. And secondly, then I was a bereavement coordinator for about a year following up hospice. Typically, I think most of them are the same. They provide postmortem support for family members for 13 months. And so I did that and I think I had a total off and on about 12 years of volunteering that included this.

So I’ve been around a lot of death. Death is the word we all use, but I really think transitioning is a better term. And to answer your point about, I wasn’t awake at this point, this was quite a while ago, but the only thing that was really, that might fall under the category that you’re asking about is I went to see an elderly woman who was our, was a client on our hospice roles. Well, actually before I got there, the nurse, it was in a nursing home and they told me that she had just passed within 15, 20 minutes. So I went in there just to pay my respects I guess, and I instantly felt her in the room and I couldn’t see her, but I knew that her astral forum was just kind of over the bed and she was looking down on it, and sometimes I think it takes people a while to let go of the body.

I was with my mom when she passed. I mean she died looking right into my eyes, but she didn’t linger at all. She was just, I’m out of here, and there was no sense of her at all, but this woman was there. So I pronounced and I sat down and I just meditated and I tried to do as best I could, impart that she was safe, that she was okay, that it was all right to let go of the body that wasn’t ever her to begin with. And within maybe 15 minutes or so, I could feel her depart. I just didn’t feel her presence anymore. But that would be the only time I remember anything like that.

Lorne Brown 

I’m going back to you saying when the realization happens and you understand this illusion, there’s a lot of them talking about laughter, right? When they can see how it is. I remember, I don’t know if you’ve heard or read the book, Awake by Angelo Dilullo. He’s an anesthesiologist that shares that he’s awake and he wrote a book on it and I was listening to a podcast and he was talking about it and he couldn’t stop cracking up and laughing because he’s talking about the world and the state it’s in. But yet he couldn’t stop laughing. He just wasn’t buying into it. He could see it was genuine. He was trying to be unconscious, not trying to be unconscious, but to realize his, to reach his audience. He was trying to have that compassion, but he could not stop laughing. He just could not believe what was, it was such a joke to him, and that’s my word. It was just that he couldn’t believe in it. It was so bat shit crazy. He couldn’t do anything but laugh was what kind of made sense from it. It was a contagious laughter. Do you sometimes just sit there and give your head a shake as in laughter, like people have really bought into this, or do you have a different experience perception?

Philip Weber 

Well, I shake my head at it every day.

Lorne Brown 

Okay.

Philip Weber

But it’s rarely with laughter because of the enormity of suffering. I’ll tell you one thing, Lorne, that self-realization for me has brought with it a much deeper level of feeling than I ever thought possible. It’s difficult to see it and know that in one level, at a high altitude view, it’s perfect, but for someone who’s suffering and they don’t know that, that’s not very helpful. So wisdom tells me that it is just the way it should be. But love tells me that I need to do everything I can to help people. If they come within my field of influence or they read a book or they hear this podcast, love, wisdom without love is a cold place and I wouldn’t want to reside there. So I see the suffering every day. I see it for what it is. And the beautiful part about wisdom is that it allows me not to become, generally speaking, sometimes it doesn’t. But generally speaking, wisdom allows me to not become overwhelmed by the heartache and the suffering and the war and the famine, and you name it, the child abuse and the animal abuse. Those two really hit me hard for whatever reason. And so I can still function at a high level from the wisdom place in me, but from the place of love breaks my heart to see what we do to each other as a species. We haven’t even stopped figuring out how to kill each other.

Lorne Brown 

If everything is one, then how is their suffering in this? If this is what consciousness is, I’m asking you if somebody who self-realized when you’re self-realized or when you’re in that oneness, do you suffer?

Philip Weber 

I do not suffer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain, and that doesn’t mean that I don’t have feelings that break my heart, but suffering I think the most concise definition of suffering that I could offer is that suffering is the resistance to what is. What’s odd if you look at it is our society rewards it because the jury will say, here’s $10,000 for the broken leg, but here’s a hundred thousand dollars for the suffering. They reward pain and suffering, and the fact is you just had a broken leg. The resistance to what is really is at the core of what we’re trying to release in our spiritual path, because you’re trying to see that everything is a contextual field that is perfectly coming together for everyone to evolve in. And so why would you want to resist that? Now, having said that, there are things that are happening in the world that I don’t like who would want to see war and disease and starvation and all the things that we see on the news every day. And so part of the perfection then is doing what we can to alleviate it for those who are still mired in the separation consciousness. That is the illusion.

Lorne Brown 

You’re not saying there is no action. It’s not saying, oh, loving what is just, that’s it.

Philip Weber 

Absolutely. I’m not saying we turn the blind eyes of suffering because, well, I’m enlightened, so screw it again, it gets back. We were always here to serve, and we do it in, however, in whatever ways we’re called to do so, to take a stance that, well, it’s all perfect, so I’m not going to worry about the guy next door who doesn’t have enough to eat, or the dog that’s being abused. That’s not the message. We do all we can, but we do it from a place that even though I see, to use that example, somebody abusing the dog, I see that person’s ignorance that they just don’t know any better. Everybody’s doing the best they can from where they are. So while I’m going to do what I can to stop that action, there’s no judgment or there’s no malice. I don’t hate the guy.

I mean, it is like when you see little kids doing things that they don’t know any better, you take that into account. And so what I take into account every day is the actions that are being perpetrated around the world are by people who are deeply ignorant of their unity with the people that they’re doing these things to. And so I treat both compassionately and with love, but I still would probably, well, not probably, but if I saw somebody abusing a dog or a child, I would do whatever I could in that moment to make sure it didn’t continue.

Lorne Brown 

Couple more questions for you. If you have some time. There’s some suffering in the world. Do you believe that we’re having or undergoing a collective awakening? And do you have hope?

Philip Weber 

Yes and no. So we are always undergoing a collective awakening because that’s all the universe does. But I think what I’m intuiting from your question more is, is it accelerating or is it more rapid now than it has been in a thousand or 2000 years prior than I would say yes, it does seem to be accelerating. Why I am not sure, other than maybe we’re coming to a point where our technologies are getting so powerful. You talk about AI and autonomous weaponry and bio weapons, it may be getting to the point where if we don’t evolve a bit quicker, we may not make it as a species. And so I do think there’s an acceleration of things. And then of course with the internet and things like we’re doing, we’re finding out how many people are actually awakening and it doesn’t have to be 80% of the planet. There’s a tipping point, Malcolm Gladwell’s, the tipping point kind of thing where there’s just enough and it’ll shift things. So I do see that. I think we’re in an ascending arc, right now, and that’s going to continue for a long time. I used to be a turnaround specialist, so I’d go into underperforming operations and make them the way the ownership wanted them. And sometimes to do that, you’ve got to tear things down before you can rebuild them, before

Lorne Brown 

You break through they say

Philip Weber 

That’s right. So I think a lot of the structures of our civilization are going to be radically transformed over the next a hundred years. And if they’re not, I’m not so sure how we’re going to do. Hope. I don’t have hope. And that may sound paradoxical, but I also don’t have fear. So hope, I know the Dalai Lama said, be optimistic. It feels better. And I agree with him, but hope is also an overlay onto things that it is subtle, but that a hopeless person sounds awful, but it actually, that’s where the peace lies, because I’m not fearing how things are going to go, and I’m also not wishing that they were either better. I’m doing what I can. But if you’re truly here now, then the projection of hope onto things just doesn’t exist. I don’t know if that makes sense or not.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you. Again, the more I dive into this, the more everything sounds paradoxical.

Philip Weber 

Yeah, you have to be able to embrace paradox at some point because they are there

Lorne Brown 

When you do this work. My experiences intellectually, and then I’ve had experiences which I like to share with the people I work with is when you no longer desire the healing, that’s when the opportunity for the spontaneous healing happens. When you no longer need the relationship, you’re no longer looking for the relationship to fulfill you. That’s when all the suitors come. And so I always say when you do this work, one of two things happen. One is your perception of the situation changes, because you’re present, and two, which doesn’t always happen, but you don’t care because number one happened, your perception, the situation changes. Two is the external environment changes. The miracle happens where it reflects what you want, but once you have the first, you don’t need the second. You’re good. And then that’s when it can happen when you don’t really need it. Anyhow.

Philip Weber 

I agree. I do encourage people to be optimistic in general. I think it helps. And I do think that I am optimistic for our future as a civilization, even though we have some severe challenges ahead. Overall, I’m optimistic. I’m not sure if that’s the same as hope, but I trust basically I just have implicit trust in what is

And so from that point, you just do what you do to help in the way that you can. And again, it’s not like I don’t feel pain in watching things that are happening, but I do trust the process. And that’s an important point.

Lorne Brown 

Trust the process. That’s the key. Michael Singer, when I read his surrender experiment, he had to trust the process, right? You sure should I really surrender to this? But he kept on and it worked out. So trust the process.

Philip Weber 

I think Singer is a great voice and his books are really beautiful, especially I think the Untethered Soul and I really like Mickey’s work. It’s great stuff.

Lorne Brown

And on that note, you’ve shared, I see there’s some books that we’ve read. I’ve read the Autobiography of a Yogi, Wayne Dyer, Rupert, Michael Singer, and I’m curious what books or teachers continue to inspire you? 

Philip Weber 

I’m like a kid in a candy store. The bookshelf behind me here is about a quarter of the books in the house. So in recent years, I’ve really done deep dives into Longchenpa, the Sufism of Ibn’ Arbi, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, the Kashmir Shaivism of Abhinav Gupta. And the beauty of these things, I guess for me, is just seeing the esoteric commonality of them all. Esoterically, they may look very different, but esoterically, I think all the world’s religions share the same common goal, and even though they look very different, so broadly speaking, those currently, I don’t know. I don’t read to get anything out of it. I just read it for enjoyment and to see the beauty of how they express what ultimately you can’t express. Occasionally I’ll find something and go, oh man, I’m going to keep that one because that’s really good. One of the teachers and collections of work that most impacted me early on and that vocabulary remains to this day is the Conversations with God Material by Neale Donald Walsch.

Lorne Brown 

How old is that? I have an imagination of reading that in the nineties. Is it that old?

Philip Weber 

It came out in the nineties. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I got turned onto it in 99. I think he’d been out for a few years. I’d met Neale a couple of times back in Atlanta when I lived there. A gentle, beautiful man. I love Neale. And so his work was super important to me. Mehor Baba’s work, God Speaks, is one of my desert island books. And he said something you mentioned earlier that he said, you probably won’t understand much of this if any of it, but just read it anyway because there’s a transmission that happens and that stuff gets embedded in our consciousness and then it finds it flowers when the time is right. So I think Mehor Baba, his work was great, but there have been so many. I tell you, the guy I just love right now, even though he tells everyone he’s not awake and I believe him, but his articulation of the awakened experience is right there with Ruperts.

And that’s Bernardo Kastrup, K-A-S-T-R-U-P. Bernardo he’s a double PhD, and he got his first PhD in computer science right out of university, I think. And he went to work at cern, but he started looking deeply into these things and he had a shift of some sort, and he really started looking at the nature of reality in a profoundly deep, and I would say an analytically rigorous way. And he realized to do it the way he wanted he needed, he felt anyway, that he needed a PhD in philosophy. So he went and got that Schopenhauer, I know, really reflected his inner sensibilities. And so his analytic, he just had, for anybody that wants to get a taste of Bernardo, he just published a book a few months ago called Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell. And analytic idealism is his way of rigorously, methodically, and scientifically explaining the mystical state.

And for someone to do that without actually being in it is remarkable. He’s a very good friend of Rupert, Rupert Spira. They’ve done some beautiful talks together, and his website is the Essentia Foundation, E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A think Essentia Foundation, that is real, I kid you not cutting edge science, not just the woo woo stuff, but hardcore science as it relates to spirituality. And so guys like Rupert, Donald Hoffman is another one that I really like is, Conscious Realism. These guys are so articulate and so aligned with my awareness experience that I really think anyone interested in this kind of stuff should check out.

Lorne Brown 

Perfect. I just looked up. I’m buying his book as we were talking, by the way, Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell, he has Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics, The Idea of the World. It goes on and on, Why Materialism is Baloney. Great. Seems like a prolific writer. Then the last question for you is if you could whisper one thing in your pre awakened self, your pre realized self, what would it be?

Philip Weber 

I wouldn’t wish for anything to be different because it all worked.

Lorne Brown 

That’s my litmus test, actually. My litmus test. When I see people, if they can’t accept their past, that victim mentality or hating what’s happened to them, then I know they don’t love the now no matter what they say. But when people love the now, although they may not like what has happened, they wouldn’t change it for the world because they’re very clear that if it did not happen the way it did, they wouldn’t be where they are in the present moment, and they love who they are in the present moment. So to say that again is if you hate your past, you can’t love yourself now, because if you love yourself now, you realize your past is what brought you to where you are now.

Philip Weber 

Absolutely. When I look back at my life, there have been countless things that I’ve done that were hurtful to people or to myself, to anyone listening to this that may be listening to this, that can think of those things that knew me. I’m sorry for that, but we’re all doing the best we can from where we are. And that was me then. But I certainly wouldn’t try to change anything because it worked out the way it did. If I could somehow magically still end up where I did today and not have hurt anyone, then of course I would change that. But you can’t. And regrets are self-destructive and they’re not useful. What we need to do is identify, okay, this was an action that I don’t remember fondly. Then learn from that action, and then you’ll never repeat it. And then that action actually becomes grace in its own way because everything ultimately, from my perspective now, the good, the bad, and the ugly, it is all grace because it had all helped me evolve in the way that I needed to evolve.

Lorne Brown

And now you experience peace. You like where you are now for, I’ll put it this way, the self-realization more fulfilling than the BMWs, the dates, the titles and the money and the nice materialism. Would you trade that for all the tea in China as they say? 

Philip Weber 

Oh, of course not. And I think actually that’s what all of this stuff in the world is teaching us, is that those things are never going to be fulfilling. That’s what they’re there for, they are grace in their own way because they’re teaching us. They taught me anyway, that material possessions and relationships. And

Lorne Brown

I just had a memory. I want to ask you something like Bernardo, I’m aware that I’m not awake, but I’m aware I’m on a process as in I know what I was like and I know what I’m like now, and it’s different and I experience life differently. And I work with people and thank God you can become enlightened from an unlightened master because the tools I have to work, and they’ve been working for me, but I’ve had experiences. So I’m just curious. This is way back when in my twenties, in the early nineties, I lived in Montreal and I got into spiritual practices, going to retreats and meditating, and I used to get quite excited watching sports, and I remember this experience watching the Montreal Expos play, and I remember thinking, how come I don’t care anymore that they don’t win? I totally remember I had nothing invested in the game. I was able to enjoy the hot dogs and being with friends. I loved the community. I thought the game was interesting, but whereas before I identified with it and if they lost, it was personal.

Philip Weber 

Oh, yeah.

Lorne Brown 

And part of me was like, do I want to continue this? I really enjoyed my sports. And I was like, is this what life’s going to be like? I don’t care anymore.

Philip Weber 

I can remember those years where the wrong loss to the wrong team would send me spiraling for a week or two, or at least until the next game when they had a chance to win. So it’s a terrible way to live. Now I can enjoy the games without having any vested interest, and I’m always going to want to see the Red Sox beat the snot out of the Yankees, but it’s not important, and it’s just, you take it for enjoyment, but it’s not the life and death thing that we make it out to be here. At least I used to make it out when I was younger.

Lorne Brown 

I love how we’re ending the podcast because we said chop wood, carry water. It’s not like you’re sitting there in a white robe and talking a certain way and everything’s beautiful and perfect. You’re still having a human experience still that, what’d you call yourself? The fun-loving idiot on some level, right? There’s still a bit of that. And thank you for writing your books, Grace Happens and Reflections of Consciousness and making the time for us to talk today as well.

Philip Weber 

Well, I appreciate it, Lorne. The books are helping. We had some amazing reviews, and I get some incredible emails from people that have been touched, and so that makes the blessings that I’ve been graced with all the much more beautiful, because now those experiences are helping others. So it’s a privilege, and I take it seriously, but not too seriously.

Lorne Brown 

Great. There’s a paradox again, and if somebody’s interested in your books or wants to reach out to you, because at the time of our recording, you don’t have a social media presence.

Philip Weber

I don’t even have a website. I don’t have anything

Lorne Brown

So another part, which is nice, you’re interested in sharing, but you really don’t have this, but it doesn’t seem like an obvious agenda to try and really sell books or get people into a program. You’re just out there to share. So that makes it difficult for people to find you and your book. So why don’t we let them know how, if they want to connect with you or get your books, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Philip Weber 

Sure. One thing real quick about the books I don’t promote, even though SRF and Yogananda and the Kriya Yoga technique was very important in my unfolding. I don’t promote any ideology or methodology. I think that people have to find that for themselves, and I offer some tips on how to do that. You want to use your discrimination if you’re picking a spiritual teacher and you want to look at their lineage and you want to look at the followers that they have and try to get a sense of, does this feel right or not? So use your intuition as well as your discrimination. But I praise all the teachers that have helped me, and there’s a list of resources at the end of Grace Happens that of all the, I think the best books and audios and movies and things that have touched me. So there’s a lot there for people that dip their toes in. But if you find something that’s calling to you, then I would say hang on to that and see where it goes.

Lorne Brown 

How do you find your books?

Philip Weber

Yes. As far as my books go, both of them are on Amazon, both in paperback and Kindle. We also sell them here. If somebody wants an autograph copy or whatever with a bookmark and stuff, then we can do that. And my window to the world, since I don’t do social media or websites, is my editor, Eli Recht and elirecht.com, E-L-I-R-E-C-H-T.com. I guess it’s probably be a link or something in the notes

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes and a shout out to Eli, as he’s also on the Conscious Fertility Podcast, so check that out. And I’m having an interview series with Eil starting in August of 2025. We’re going to do a series of self-realization.

Philip Weber 

Eli is someone that I came in contact with because he was going through his own awakening and didn’t know what was going on. And so one of the former monks from SRF knew me and said, you told him that you ought to get in touch with Phil. And so I helped him through his process, which helped me as well. And one last thing I would like to say about both Eli and I is we’re not doing this for money. So all of the proceeds that Eli gets from his teaching services go to the local Humane Society, Rancho Coastal Humane Society.

Lorne Brown 

And I can confirm that because I’ve done work with Eli and I went and donated to one of the animal shelters.

Philip Weber 

And if people want to donate to an animal shelter near them, he says, by all means, they all need help. So he does it strictly as a vocation and not, there’s nothing wrong with making money in this kind of thing, but that’s just not what he’s doing. And the same with me is all the profits from both books and I’m almost at a breakeven point now. It’s just pretty exciting. When I first published these things, there’s so many of these books out there that, and I’m a nobody figuratively and literally, nobody. So I thought, I don’t even know if I’m going to sell 50 books, but as it turned out, we sold a lot of them and all the profits are going to go to the homeless shelter that I worked at when I was working through my awakening. And one of the beautiful things I learned from the conversations with God material is if you’re struggling, find someone who’s struggling worse than you and help them, and you’ll receive much more than you can possibly imagine.

Lorne Brown 

Alright, everybody, this is Phil Weber. Check out his books. Grace Happens, Reflections of Consciousness. I’ve used an app, so I’ve been listening to them. I have the PDF versions, the Kindle versions. However, I have a collection of books signed by people I’ve interviewed. So now I’m going to purchase some books. And so I’ll talk to you at Eli off camera so I can get those sent out here to me in Vancouver and add to my collection. Phil, thank you very much for spending time with me today. I appreciate it.

Philip Weber 

Well, I appreciate the invitation, Lorne. It’s been a great chat and I admire your work, and I think it’s a valuable contribution to us all evolving in the way that we are. So thank you.

Lorne Brown

Thank you.

Speaker 3 

If you’re looking for support to grow your family, contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance. They help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach, using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to acubalance.ca. That’s acubalance.ca.

Lorne Brown

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne_Brown_Official. That’s Instagram, Lorne_Brown_official, or you can visit my websites, Lornebrown.com and acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.