Know Thyself
E135 - Yung Pueblo: Reflections on Awakening & Becoming a Presence of Love
Tue, 18 Feb 2025
This week we dive deep into the transformative insights of writer Yung Pueblo, exploring his journey towards becoming a presence of love. He shares his experience of sitting through a 45-day Vipassana silent retreat, shedding light on how such profound stillness can deepen our wisdom and awareness. He discusses the importance of embracing impermanence and the practices necessary for honing the power of the mind while erasing conditioned responses.Reflecting on his personal evolution from darkness to brightness, Yung Pueblo reveals how he began sharing his poetry on Instagram, igniting a movement of self-love and healing. He opens up about the power of relationships to serve as a container for growth and transformation. He explores why love alone isn't sufficient for sustaining relationships, highlighting the value of solitude and the skills needed for cultivating long-term connections. Through discussions about the miracle of life, the significance of listening to our intuition, and staying grounded in spirituality, this episode is a heartfelt invitation to awaken and embody love in all aspects of life.Energy & focus without the jitters? Try MUDWTR & Get Up to 43% off + a free frother:https://mudwtr.com/knowthyselfAndré's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro1:59 Writing as Yung Pueblo3:33 Becoming a Presence of Love5:11 Sitting a 45 Day Vipassana (Silent Retreat) 8:03 Deepening Our Sense of Wisdom & Awareness16:36 Embracing Impermanence 19:48 Honing the Power of the Mind & Erasing Conditioning29:07 His Life: Going From Darkness to Brightness34:05 Starting His Instagram & Poetry35:31 Ad: Mudwtr - Energy & Focus Without the Jitters37:03 Facing off With the Ego40:11 Relationships as a Container for Growth45:35 The Qualities of Enlightened States48:52 Learning to Love Better: From Arguments to Allowing59:08 Why Love Isn’t Enough to Make a Relationship Work 1:01:44 The Value of Solitude1:06:20 Skills for Cultivating Long Term Relationships 1:14:54 This Life is a Miracle1:18:17 Listening to Intuition1:22:58 Staying Grounded with Spirituality 1:27:43 The Power of Meditation1:32:18 Mystical Experiences 1:38:52 Conclusion ___________Diego Perez is a meditator and #1 New York Times bestselling author who is widely known by his pen name, Yung Pueblo. Online he has an audience of over 4 million people. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. He has sold over 1.5 million books worldwide that have been translated into over 25 languages. Diego is a general partner at Wisdom Ventures and a founder of Ready Platform, a dating and relationship support app. Diego’s new book, How to Love Better, will be released in March 2025.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yung_pueblo/?hl=enBooks: https://yungpueblo.com___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/
Chapter 1: What insights does Yung Pueblo share about his journey?
There's something very different and powerful about the wisdom that comes from your own direct experience. It's not easy to be open to deleting your conditioning. You can talk to your therapist, you can talk to your teachers, you can, you know, read stuff online, but ultimately it's up to you to bring it into action to make it real in your life.
Vipassana, it's a path of purification that leads to the end of suffering. When you observe the body with this crisp clarity, what you get is this truth that's pervasive throughout the universe, this truth of impermanence. It's awareness. It's a sharpened awareness. The mind can become like a cannon. Like it becomes so much stronger. I went into meditating because I needed to save myself.
But in the act of saving myself, immediately I noticed that my relationships were very surface level and that I could do something about it. When you cultivate your emotional skill set so that you can have more peace in your mind, it immediately helps support you in your relationship. Through meditating has really helped me see that this life, it's a giant miracle. Hey, how's it going?
Thanks for coming, man. I'm so happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this day for a while now, so I'm glad we get to connect. Me too, man.
It's been really cool to see your content online. I feel like we always have these, you know, these parasocial relationships with people's content, their message.
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Chapter 2: What is Vipassana and how does it lead to self-discovery?
Yeah.
And you hope that they live up in person to the energy that you see online. And pleasantly reassured that was the case.
Likewise. Yeah. I wasn't I wasn't trying to put any expectations, but I knew that like just from what you were giving off that it was going to be good. good to be friends. And it was funny because it's fun to be on a podcast, but I was like, I think we should be friends.
Yeah, 100%. So your pen name, Young Pueblo, which a lot of people know you under, that means young people, right? What was the kind of setup for that in terms of how you feel like where we are, where humanity is?
yeah the the name you know it's funny when i got on instagram back in 2012 when i opened my account that was a name that like immediately came to mind was young young pueblo it didn't really take meaning until i started meditating and i started realizing how immature i was and i'm like wow i have a lot of growing to do but then i've always been a big fan of history and have been just you know read a lot of history books and
have noticed how humanity as a whole is incredibly young. Like we just, you know, we don't know the basic fundamentals of what we try to teach children. And I'm talking collectively, right? As humanity as a whole, like we don't do, you know, we don't know how to clean up after ourselves. We don't know how to stop hitting each other. We don't know how to tell the truth.
We don't know how to properly care for each other. So whatever we try to teach children, you know, four-year-olds, three-year-olds, like collectively as a humanity, we haven't mastered these important things.
Yeah. So you've been writing so much, sharing so much content, writing a lot of books. Your fifth one's coming out now, How to Love Better, which was amazing.
Thank you.
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Chapter 3: How can embracing impermanence transform our lives?
And yeah, it's interesting because that's like one of my goals too. It's like to try to, and I use a different terminology. Like I'm just trying to move through the world gently where I felt like when I was younger, growing up, like I grew up in a lot of poverty and that made me create a very like hard outer layer.
And I felt like when I was younger, I was moving through the world rather roughly because I was, you know, in survival mode, trying to figure out how to get to the next week. And But now I feel like I'm just trying to move through gently.
And part of moving through the world gently is just, you know, being like a vehicle of love and trying to deliver as much kindness and compassion as I move through.
There's innumerable paths and ways in which life reflects back to us and then the practices that we take up on the journey and just living life has its way of refining us to deeper levels of awareness or pain that will lead us to make that choice to deepen our awareness. I know you have deep familiarity with both.
And we were just chatting beforehand how Dhamma and Vipassana has been a big part of both of our journeys. And you recently came back from a 45-day silent retreat.
How long ago? That was the beginning of 2024. So January to February. Yeah, that was the second 45-day course that I did. And it was awesome. Yeah.
For people that aren't familiar with what Vipassana is, I'd love for you to share just what that consists of. Because quite frankly, sitting, for better or worse, you're essentially alone for 45 days meditating on average 7 to 10 hours a day. And that sounds pretty... Intense.
Yeah. In the longer courses, you're sitting a lot. You're sitting like 11 hours a day and there's no interaction. The teacher during the 45 day course only checks you two times during the 45 days. And it's, you know, they're literally like four minute long conversations just asking, how are you doing? How's it going? And in Vipassana, it's a path of purification that leads to the end of suffering.
And it's really driven by observing reality as it is, where you're not trying to project onto reality. You're not trying to manipulate it. You're just rawly observing through the framework of the body. And when you observe the body with this crisp clarity, what you get is this truth that's pervasive throughout the universe, this truth of impermanence.
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Chapter 4: What are the qualities of healthy relationships?
You know, you either like it, crave it, or you don't like it and you have aversion towards it. And that's what creates all that difficult conditioning that makes the mind really cloudy.
I'd love to hear you break down in your words the process of becoming aware of those more subtle sensations. For people that don't know Vipassana, where you first start with the observation of your breath and then you're moving into the deeper awareness of the vibrations within your body. If you could share a little bit about that and then we can dive deeper into it.
Yeah, sure. It's really interesting. So when you go to your 10-day courses, you'll start the first three and a half days with just being aware of the breath. And being aware of the natural breath, it's very difficult. It's not easy. The mind just loves to jump around.
But when you keep putting effort, a very calm effort towards it and bring yourself back to it, it makes the mind so calm and so sharp. And what ends up happening is that the mind, the ability to be aware becomes magnified and strengthened. I tell people like when you're going to these courses, it's like taking yourself to the mental gym.
Like you're specifically developing awareness, you're then developing non-reaction and you're developing compassion. And once you develop that awareness, you then take that new strength, the strength that you've developed, you turn it into the body And your body can feel so clear in a way where you can always feel your body.
You can feel when pain's happening or when something pleasurable is happening, but you can feel your body to a new level of crispness where it feels like, you know, there are times for me personally where my body just feels like a rushing river of atoms, where it's just so clearly like, even in this moment, I can feel my hand and it looks like you know, solid, but it doesn't feel solid.
It feels like it's just changing vibrations.
It's so fascinating because I think when it comes to wanting to grow in our life, a lot of people are familiar with physical change and seeing somebody go to the gym and get shredded and they have six pack abs or something. You can see the physicalness of it and the externalization of growth. But why mental health is largely also such a big epidemic is because it's invisible.
We can't see into the aspects of each other's minds outside of the actions that come out and stem from them. But it's much more difficult to have a reference point for what it can feel like to be a liberated being where you're not so closely identified with this voice in our head that runs our life, that won't leave us the heck alone.
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Chapter 5: Why isn't love enough to sustain relationships?
Chapter 6: What is the significance of solitude in personal growth?
Vipassana, it's a path of purification that leads to the end of suffering. When you observe the body with this crisp clarity, what you get is this truth that's pervasive throughout the universe, this truth of impermanence. It's awareness. It's a sharpened awareness. The mind can become like a cannon. Like it becomes so much stronger. I went into meditating because I needed to save myself.
But in the act of saving myself, immediately I noticed that my relationships were very surface level and that I could do something about it. When you cultivate your emotional skill set so that you can have more peace in your mind, it immediately helps support you in your relationship. Through meditating has really helped me see that this life, it's a giant miracle. Hey, how's it going?
Thanks for coming, man. I'm so happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this day for a while now, so I'm glad we get to connect. Me too, man.
It's been really cool to see your content online. I feel like we always have these, you know, these parasocial relationships with people's content, their message.
Yeah.
And you hope that they live up in person to the energy that you see online. And pleasantly reassured that was the case.
Likewise. Yeah. I wasn't I wasn't trying to put any expectations, but I knew that like just from what you were giving off that it was going to be good. good to be friends. And it was funny because it's fun to be on a podcast, but I was like, I think we should be friends.
Yeah, 100%. So your pen name, Young Pueblo, which a lot of people know you under, that means young people, right? What was the kind of setup for that in terms of how you feel like where we are, where humanity is?
yeah the the name you know it's funny when i got on instagram back in 2012 when i opened my account that was a name that like immediately came to mind was young young pueblo it didn't really take meaning until i started meditating and i started realizing how immature i was and i'm like wow i have a lot of growing to do but then i've always been a big fan of history and have been just you know read a lot of history books and
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Chapter 7: How does meditation enhance our awareness?
So what's really unique about Vipassana and its path is really a scientific approach to the awakening and purification process of our spiritual journey. And an aspect, which is, you could say, largely it's helping us cultivate is paññā, which is wisdom, right? Yeah. And I love how they sort of break it down into the three different types of wisdom.
You know, there's the wisdom acquired through external means where you hear somebody or maybe an Instagram quote that could lead to the second type, which is like an intellectual understanding. And then the third would be the experiential knowing, right? Where it's the wisdom that actually lives in you as you through you. And as somebody who's been such a advocate and, um,
leader and teacher and sharer of thoughts throughout the past decade online, especially. I'm curious what you think about the difference between those levels of knowing and wisdom and how it's important to deepen our sense of wisdom.
That's a lovely question. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think we can be really inspired by each other, hearing each other's wisdom and hearing about each other's experiences. And that can inform the mind. It can encourage you to behave in certain ways and better ways.
And then there's also, you know, the information that you can like sort of spin around in your own mind and understand intellectually. But there's something very different and powerful about the wisdom that comes from your own direct experience.
When you have these moments of either by being aware of what's happening internally or by moving through life and you're directly experiencing what you were doing wrong and the shift into doing it a little more skillfully and how that just will bring you this deeper insight that can be quite life-changing. And I think that's why a lot of these, whether there's different forms of Vipassana,
but a lot of them are based in direct experience. And that's why they become such transformative tools for us because when you're in moving through that direct experience, it's like the reality of life and the reality of how to move about more skillfully just hits you so much harder than it can if you were reading a book, you know?
And I say this often to like, to the audience, like you can talk to your therapist, you can talk to your teachers, you can, you know, read stuff online, but ultimately it's up to you to bring it into action to make it real in your life. Yeah.
Yeah, very much so breaking the barrier between our conscious and subconscious mind. Exactly, yeah. Because you speak and write so much about healing and the journey of awakening. And...
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Chapter 8: What role does mental volition play in our actions?
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with cool little sayings over it. It's pretty affordable for the quality of the product that it is. Again, it's up to 43% off at mudwtr.com slash know thyself. I hope you enjoy. I'm curious, did you have any like egoic inflation in that period where I think there's the genuine urge to share insights that will be helpful to people?
Did you have any ego stuff that came up on your process of gaining millions of followers?
Yeah, I think there, you know, people think about the ego not just in the sense of like... Grandiosity. As grandiosity, but there's also like, there's also ego in... hating yourself, not thinking that you're good. And you're like inflating your ego in this like negative range. There was a lot of that happening where it wasn't like, like, dude, I know I'm not the best writer.
Like, I know I'm not like, you know, I like reflecting on things and sharing things that hopefully help people build self-awareness. But I was really hard on myself back then. Like I was, you know, thinking about quitting all the time, thinking about, and this is also like a period where
um like i didn't have a lot of support from friends like i didn't have a lot of you know a lot of people were confused they're like why are you doing this like why are you you know writing about why don't you just get a job and um and because i had been working in the non-profit world for a long time and i um intentionally took a little pause and asked my wife if she could give me time to see if like writing could be a thing for for us and was really fortunate as she did but
There was definitely ego inflation, definitely attachment to like, you know, seeing numbers grow and stuff like that. But I think in my mind, the path, like the Dhamma path that we're on helped me see that if my ego is growing, my freedom is shrinking. So like, I have to be really careful with that because if my ego is growing, then I'm just going the other way. I'm going back into the dark.
Yeah.
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