It was 2008 in San Francisco. Casey Berman sat at his kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the morning edition of the New York Times...a ritual he'd kept religiously for years. He prided himself on being informed, on staying connected to the world through the paper's masthead promise: All the news that's fit to print.
Then his daughter climbed into her high chair.
She was maybe eight or ten months old, that age where everything is wonder and innocence. Berman glanced down at the top right corner of the Times, then at his child. Coup. Murder. Politics. Scandal. Despair.
Then he looked back at his daughter.
Something shifted.
"I remember thinking," Casey tells us in our conversation, "wait a minute...this is not all the news that's fit to print. This isn't real. This isn't balanced." He called the Times that day and canceled. No fanfare, no careful deliberation. Just a clear recognition that he could no longer reconcile what he was consuming with what was true about the world he was bringing his daughter into.
We didn't expect that detail to become the thread that unravels the entire conversation about waking up. But it did. And what Berman would reveal over the next hour of talking with us, about identity, fear, consciousness, and the nature of the "matrix" we're all plugged into...starts right there, with a father choosing his daughter's future over his old patterns.
This is where the real unplugging begins. Not in some dramatic courtroom scene. Not in a moment of crisis. But in noticing something doesn't feel true anymore.
What We Expected vs. What We Actually Discovered
When we invited Casey onto the show, we thought we'd be talking about leaving a law career for a spiritual awakening. The narrative was simple: burned-out attorney escapes the billable hour, finds freedom, builds a coaching business.
What we didn't expect was to discover something far more radical, and far more actionable.
We expected the conversation to be about lack. You know, the spiritual narrative: "I didn't have enough. I wasn't fulfilled. I needed to find my truth."
Instead, Casey kept bringing us back to something else entirely: alignment. And the distinction matters profoundly.
"I wasn't aligned with what I was doing," he says. And that's not the same as lack. Lack implies you need more. Misalignment means you're giving your energy to something that contradicts your core sense of truth. One is about accumulation. The other is about integrity.
We also expected him to tell us that unplugging from fear means becoming fearless. That the spiritual path is about ascending into some blissed-out state where you no longer feel anxiety, stress, or doubt.
What we heard instead was refreshingly honest: "I don't stay unplugged. I recognize when I'm plugged in."
That single sentence reframes everything. It's not about achieving perfect enlightenment. It's about awareness. It's about catching yourself when you've been sucked back into the matrix of fear, identity, and external validation, and gently, persistently, pulling yourself back out.
We realized, talking to Casey, that we've been approaching this all wrong. The spiritual path isn't an escape. It's an awakening to what's actually real. And what's real isn't always comfortable. It's often more work. It's definitely less numbing.
But it's true.
The Real Matrix: It's Not Simulation...It's Narrative
Let's be clear: Casey isn't talking about living in the simulation from the sci-fi film. The "matrix" he's referring to is something arguably more insidious; a psychological and neurological prison that most of us have willingly inhabited because we didn't know we had a choice.
It's the system of fear, media consumption, identity attachment, and societal conditioning that keeps us running on autopilot. And the scary part? It's engineered.
Here's what's happening in your brain right now: Every headline that triggers you, every social media notification that dings, every piece of breaking news designed to outrage; these are dopamine hits. According to research from Mayo Clinic Press and neuroscience, our brains are wired to seek information, and sensational, negative content releases a dopamine-like response that keeps us coming back, similar to an addictive cycle. The Boston Marathon bombing study found that people who consumed six or more hours of news coverage about the attack showed nine times higher acute stress symptoms than those with minimal exposure—even though most had no direct connection to the event.
"The media is actually feeding off of that energy," Berman notes. He references what we all know intuitively: If it bleeds, it leads. Media outlets choose the extremes because extremes drive engagement. Extremes drive ad revenue. Extremes drive clicks.
But here's what's fascinating, and this is where Berman's observation cuts deepest: "If we were to doubt that people are waking up, it's because of the media, because of the extremes. Look at the Drudge Report, one of the most visited websites. It's extreme. It's Newsom, Trump, whatever spectrum you're on. They're always choosing the extremes. But 80, 85, 87 percent of us who are moderate, who want to care for our families, who let people pass in traffic...all of us, I think, are waking up."
The matrix isn't failing to wake people up. The matrix is just a very effective filter that shows us only the things designed to keep us plugged in. The quiet awakening isn't being broadcast because quiet doesn't sell.
Most people, right now, are choosing different content. They're listening to podcasts like ours. They're following spiritual teachers on Instagram. They're building communities with like-minded seekers. But it's not sexy enough for CNN. It doesn't trigger the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, so it gets no algorithmic boost.
The news cycle is literally wired to keep your threat-detection system activated. When that system stays constantly "on," you experience elevated cortisol (the stress hormone), higher adrenaline, and what Berman calls being "plugged in." Constant vigilance. Constant anxiety.
The first step to unplugging? Stop feeding the machine.
The Second Matrix: Identity
If the first matrix is external; media, noise, endless stimulus...the second matrix is internal. It's the identity you've constructed around your role, your status, your achievement.
Berman spent years as a lawyer. Not just as a job, as an identity. "I'm a lawyer," he would say. And then, at cocktail parties, he'd feel that small hit of status, of social recognition. The identity became armor, a way to say: I am somebody.
One moment crystallized this for him: At a company-wide meeting, his name tag read "VP of Operations, In-House Counsel (Admin)." He saw those two words—Admin, Administration—and something in him recoiled.
"I knew I wasn't aligned with that," he says. And it took him nine more months to leave. But in that moment, he'd seen the truth: the identity he'd built wasn't actually him. It was a costume. And he'd gotten so used to wearing it that he'd forgotten how to take it off.
This is where the work of spiritual teachers like Michael Singer and Eckhart Tolle becomes practical. Singer teaches in The Untethered Soul that we are not our thoughts, not our emotions, not our identities; we are the consciousness that observes them. Imagine watching a James Bond movie. You see James Bond act, feel, decide. But you know you're not James Bond; you're the one in the audience, aware of the entire experience. Singer says we live as James Bond, completely identified with the role, forgetting that there's a witness inside us, an awareness that's separate from the character we're playing.
When you're identified with your role as "the lawyer," you experience anxiety because the role is threatened. You experience depression because the role isn't fulfilling. You experience burnout because you're trying to be the lawyer 24/7.
But what if you're not the lawyer? What if you're the consciousness that witnessed yourself playing a lawyer for ten years?
That distinction, between the role and the witness of the role, is liberating. And it's the key to what Berman calls leaving the matrix.
Eckhart Tolle adds another crucial dimension: the pain body. The pain body, in Tolle's teaching, is the accumulated emotional trauma from your past that's formed into an actual energetic pattern. It's the wounded part of you that needs to feel more pain to survive. Yes, it sounds dark, but it's recognizable: the part of you that sabotages success, that creates drama in relationships, that picks fights to feel the familiar pain.
The pain body feeds off reactivity, off taking things personally, off staying identified with negative emotions. The moment you become aware of the pain body as a separate pattern, not as "your true self," but as energy moving through you, it starts to lose its power.
This is why recognition is so important. Berman says: "I recognize when I'm plugged in." He's not trying to be perfectly unplugged. He's practicing awareness. And awareness, the ability to watch your identity, your emotions, your patterns, is the first step out.
The Consciousness Shift: From Character to Witness
Here's where it gets really interesting, and where Berman draws on Michael Singer's framework of the five senses plus thoughts and emotions.
Your entire experience of reality is constructed from seven channels: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, thoughts, and emotions. And right now, your consciousness is so identified with the character playing "your life" that it experiences those seven channels as solid, as real, as you.
But what if you could step back?
Singer describes what meditation practitioners call "witness consciousness"; the ability to observe the seven channels without being completely consumed by them. When you watch a film, you see and hear everything the character sees and hears. But if you were experiencing all five senses plus the character's thoughts and emotions, you would no longer be you; you would be James Bond. You'd lose the awareness that you're in a theater.
We spend our lives convinced we're the character, not realizing we're the audience.
"When I can pull out of that meditation, quieting the thoughts, pulling out and kind of look at myself, which is so hard to do," Berman says, "then I am observing my own movie in the same way I'm looking at James Bond on the screen."
This isn't escape. This is clarity. And from clarity, different choices become possible.
When you're identified with anger, you can't help but be angry. When you're identified with your lack of confidence, you can't help but shrink. When you're identified with "I'm just a lawyer, what else could I do?", you can't help but stay.
But when you can observe anger moving through you, not as your identity, but as energy you're witnessing, something shifts. There's a space between you and the emotion. In that space, choice appears.
The Pain Body: Why It's So Hard to Leave What Hurts
One of the most powerful insights from our conversation with Berman came when we asked about staying unplugged. He referenced Eckhart Tolle's teaching about the pain body, and something clicked.
The pain body is the accumulated emotional trauma and negative patterns that we've internalized over years. It's not something we inherited; it's something we created by refusing to fully feel and release emotional pain. So the pain body needs suffering. It needs drama, conflict, reactivity, because that's how it maintains itself.
Here's the trap: your pain body can become so familiar that being out of pain feels wrong. Leaving your high-paying lawyer job, stepping out of your identity, choosing alignment over status, this triggers your pain body because it's stepping into the unknown. And the unknown doesn't feel safe.
Berman admits this with disarming honesty: "It's so fun to be angry, isn't it?" He's not being flip. He's acknowledging that reactivity, that charging of emotions, that drama, they're actually stimulating. They feel alive. When you step out of that drama and into peace, it can feel like nothing is happening. It can feel boring. Unreal.
This is why so many people return to their old patterns. Not because the new way is wrong, but because the pain body rebels against peace. The ego doesn't know how to survive in calm. So it will manufacture crises. It will find reasons to be stressed. It will pull you back into the matrix of fear and reactivity because at least that's familiar.
The antidote isn't willpower. It's awareness. It's noticing: Oh, there's my pain body, doing what it does. Interesting. Not judging it. Not trying to destroy it. Just observing it with compassion, the way you'd watch a wounded animal.
The moment you recognize the pain body, according to Tolle, it's no longer your ego. It's just energy moving through you. And energy can be transformed. It can be felt, released, and integrated. But only when you stop identifying with it.
The Practical Map: How to Actually Unplug
This is where Berman's real genius emerges. He doesn't leave us in the abstract realm of consciousness and observation. He gives us a concrete map.
Berman has spent years helping lawyers, people who are perhaps the most identified with their roles, transition out of their careers. And through that work, he's developed a repeatable process. Here it is, broken down:
Step 1: Recognize Your Blockers (Acknowledge the Fear)
You can't move beyond what you won't acknowledge. The first step is to simply see what's stopping you.
For lawyers (and many of you), the blockers sound like this: "I'm afraid I'll never make as much money doing anything else." "My parents will be disappointed." "I've invested so much time in this, how can I start over?" "I don't even know what else I could do." "What if I fail?"
These are real fears. Not all of them are irrational. But they're all operating in the dark, running your life from the background.
Berman's approach: grab a pen and paper. Write down every fear, every doubt, every "but what if" that comes up when you imagine leaving your current situation. Don't judge them. Don't try to logic them away. Just let them land on paper.
This single act, externalizing your blockers, is the beginning of disidentification. You're moving from "I am my fear" to "I have a fear I can observe."
Step 2: Audit Your Identity
Next, look at how your sense of self is tied to your current role.
Ask yourself honestly: How much of my identity is "I'm a lawyer/doctor/executive"? What would I lose if I left that role? How would people see me differently? Would I still be me?
Berman asks it differently: "What is my identity?" And then he maps it out. Because your identity is like a costume that's grown so close to your skin you forgot it was a costume.
The question isn't whether you should shed your identity. The question is whether you're willing to see that it's not fixed. You're not "the lawyer." You're a person who's been playing a lawyer. And you can play a different role. You can even play multiple roles simultaneously.
This recognition is huge. Because it dissolves the binary: either I stay in my role (and stay identified) or I blow up my life. No. You can step out of one role and step into another—one that's more aligned with who you actually are.
Step 3: Discover Your Unique Genius (The Skills Inventory)
Here's where most career advice fails people. It asks: "What job interests you?" And most of us have no idea. We've never given ourselves permission to wonder.
Berman's approach is different. He calls it your "unique genius", your actual strengths, skills, and the things you naturally do well.
To discover it, do this: Reach out to 3-5 people who know you reasonably well. Ask them three questions:
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What am I good at? (Ask them to compliment you, specific things you do well)
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What advice do people come to me for? (What do they see as your natural expertise?)
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What have I done or do I do for free? (What would you do even without payment?)
This is golden data. Because the things you do for free are often the things you're actually good at and enjoy. The advice people seek you out for reveals your natural gifts. And the compliments will often include things you didn't even know about yourself, your blind spots of competence.
Berman did this exercise when transitioning out of law. The results were eye-opening. People said: "You're a storyteller." "You're empathetic." "You listen." "You see patterns in systems." None of these things sound like "lawyer skills." But they are transferable. They apply to coaching, to strategy, to content creation, to research, dozens of roles outside of law.
Once you map these out, you're no longer working from a place of lack ("I don't know what I'm good at"). You're working from a place of clarity ("These are my actual strengths").
Step 4: Match Skills to Jobs (Make It Real)
Now you know what you're good at. Jobs are just collections of needs. A company needs someone who can listen and understand (storyteller + empathy). So they create a "strategy" role. Or a "customer success" role. Or a "content director" role.
Berman frames it beautifully: "A job is like Casper the friendly ghost. The only way to see a paranormal entity is to throw a sheet over it, throw dust on it. Well, that's all a job is. Your skills and strengths are invisible. A job is the sheet that gives form to your invisible gifts."
So you look: What jobs call for the strengths you've mapped? Not "What job am I interested in?" But "What jobs are calling for who I actually am?"
This reframes the entire search. You're not trying to become someone else. You're finding the roles that were built for someone like you.
Step 5: Network with Purpose (Take Baby Steps)
And here's where the fear comes up hard. Because now it's real. Now you have to actually talk to people.
But Berman is clear: you don't have to quit. You don't have to burn bridges. You take baby steps.
A baby step is: going for coffee with your nephew who works at a company you're curious about. No commitment. No interview. Just 20 minutes: "Hey, I'm curious about what you do. Can you tell me about it?"
A baby step is: sending a message to someone working in a role you're interested in. "I see what you do. It resonates with me. Would you be open to a brief conversation?"
A baby step is: applying online, sure. But more effective is reaching out directly. "I've been thinking about this field. I know you work there. I'd love to understand more about how you got here and what the work is actually like."
Most people won't see you as a threat. They'll see you as curious. And from those conversations, opportunities emerge. Berman sees it all the time: someone has a coffee chat with an adjacent role, and three months later, that person is helping to create a job description for a new role, a role made just for them.
The key: you're not trying to convince anyone to hire you. You're researching. You're learning. You're building relationships with people doing work you respect. That's it. That's the whole thing.
The Missing First Step (The One Nobody Talks About)
Before all of this, there's one more thing. The actual first step. And it's so simple that we almost skip over it.
Put the phone down.
This is where Berman and the hosts aligned completely. Before you can even begin to think about your life, your desires, your alignment, you have to unplug from the noise machine that's running 24/7.
"The very first step is put the damn phone away," one host says. "Stop doom-scrolling. Stop reading the headlines. Stop getting pinged by notifications every 3 seconds."
Berman adds: "One exercise I love is when I walk my dog, I do voice-to-text on my phone. I'm using it as a tool to create, not to consume." He walks his dog with his phone, but he's not scrolling. He's dictating ideas into a Google Doc. He's turned a consumer device into a creative tool.
The second step: turn off the news. Or at least, curate what news reaches you. Don't let the algorithm decide what you see.
Why? Because your brain is literally in survival mode when you're consuming constant negative news. You're in fight-or-flight. You can't access creativity, clarity, or the kind of introspection required to figure out what's actually aligned for you. Your nervous system is too activated.
So before the five-step process even begins: stop feeding the matrix. Put the phone down. Or use it differently. And notice how your clarity shifts.
The Other Side: What Freedom Actually Feels Like
We asked Berman what's been the best thing about unplugging, about leaving the law, about stepping out of that identity. And his answer surprised us.
"The best thing that has happened to me is personal responsibility," he says.
Now, that doesn't sound like freedom. That sounds like more work. And he acknowledges it: "It is nerve-wracking. It's scary. Past week or two or three, I have had some very unmotivated times."
But here's the shift: when you're working for someone else, for status, for security, for an identity, the work feels imposed. It feels like you're running in place.
When you're working because you chose it, because it's aligned with who you are, because you're building something that matters to you, the work still hard, but it doesn't drain you. It uses you. There's a difference.
"I have a lot of work to do," Berman says, "but there's freedom about how I create my day."
He blocks off his Fridays. He played baseball in a men's league (at an age he admits is "way too old"). Someone asked him, "Casey, you don't have a job. You don't work. Come to practice." And it made him laugh because from the outside, it looks like he does nothing. But he's actually working more than he ever did, just on his own terms, toward things that matter.
"There's freedom about it. I have to get the kids to school, so it's not like I'm sleeping until noon. But I block off my Fridays. I choose when I work and when I don't."
That's the other side. Not endless leisure. Not perfect bliss. But autonomy. And autonomy, it turns out, is worth way more than the golden handcuffs.
The Reframe: Prison or Classroom?
At the very end of our conversation, Berman offered something that captures the entire philosophical shift we've been exploring.
"You can view this matrix reality, whatever, as a prison or as a classroom," he says. "And I prefer the classroom."
A prison is something happening to you. You're a victim. You're trapped.
A classroom is something you're learning from. Each difficulty becomes data. Each fear becomes information about where you're still identified. Each moment of reactivity is feedback.
"What am I gonna learn from this? What am I gonna learn from staying plugged in? What am I gonna learn from unplugging? Because good and bad are just constructs. It's just how we view things."
This is the spiritual sophistication that Casey brings to the conversation. It's not "positive thinking." It's not spiritual bypassing ("everything happens for a reason, so I should just accept my miserable job"). It's genuine discernment.
Some things in life are genuinely painful. Some parts of the matrix are genuinely oppressive. That's not your imagination. But how you relate to that pain, whether you see it as evidence that you're a victim, or as feedback that you're misaligned, that's where your freedom lives.
And freedom, it turns out, isn't a destination. It's a practice. It's the daily choice to notice when you're plugged in and to gently, persistently, pull yourself back out.
What You Can Do Today
If you're feeling the resonance of this conversation, here's what to do right now:
First: Put the phone down. Not forever. Just for today. Notice how your mind quiets. Notice what you think about when you're not being fed a steady stream of doom.
Second: Write down three fears that are keeping you from making a move toward more alignment in your life. Not to be dramatic. Just to externalize them. The moment they're on paper, they're not running your unconscious anymore.
Third: Reach out to one person, someone who knows you decently well, and ask them one of Berman's three questions: "What am I good at? What advice do people come to me for? What do I do for free?" Just ask. Listen to what they say. You might be surprised.
Fourth: Notice where you're identified with a role. Not to judge yourself. Just to observe: "Oh, interesting. I've been so focused on being 'the [lawyer/parent/provider]' that I forgot I'm also the consciousness experiencing that role." That separation is freedom starting to emerge.
And finally, this: Consider whether the life you're living is aligned with who you actually are. Not in a dramatic way. Just as a question worth asking. Because the difference between a life lived in alignment and a life lived on autopilot is everything.
You don't need to burn it all down. You don't need a dramatic moment. Sometimes all you need is to notice, like Casey did with his daughter and the newspaper, that something doesn't feel true anymore.
And then, with baby steps, you move toward something that does.
To explore more about career transitions and life alignment, visit Casey Berman's resources at Leave Law Behind (leavelawbehind.com) for attorneys, or Casey Berman (caseyberman.com) for broader audiences. For deeper understanding of consciousness and identity, explore Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul or Eckhart Tolle's teachings on presence and the pain body.
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