Lecture by WAYNE DYER - "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, Living The Wisdom Of The Tao"

[Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you thank thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you please thank you so much it's so so wonderful to be back on public television it's now 10 years we've been Creating public television programs um it's been a wonderful wonderful journey i obviously support public television it's it's a way to bring higher consciousness to our entire country and i'm proud and pleased to be here this is a program about changing your life not in the traditional way that we think of when we think about changing our

Lives usually that means changing your behaviors retraining yourself getting new habits going out and trying them out and changing your life this is about changing your thoughts and then your life will change change your thoughts change your life it's the name of this program it's the name of the book it is something that i very very Strongly endorse that we have within us the ability and the capacity through the way that we use our minds in the way that we process things and events to make our lives totally shift and change around and i can

tell you that it doesn't make any difference what age you are whether you're a teenager watching this or whether you're someone uh in your 60s 70s 80s or anywhere along the way You can make that change and i'll tell you it happened for me uh two years ago on the 10th of may i turned 65 and the next day on the 11th of may i had a life-changing thing take place for me i changed the way that i was thinking about who i am about what kind of a man i am about what kind of

a person i intend to Be for the rest of my life and where i'm going and something began to resonate with me that i had to make a shift and make a change at the age of 65. i had a a wonderful office which was really a townhouse it was filled with over 20 000 books it was filled with clothing it was filled with uh records of all kinds it had uh pictures On the wall i had awards that i had received over the years and everything that i had accumulated literally in this physical world

had accumulated in that office i turned the key and handed it to my manager maya who's been with me for almost 30 years and i said i would like you to sell everything Or distribute everything that's in there sell the townhouse get rid of it take all the records all the books i got rid of my shoes [Laughter] and i um left it all behind and turned it over to her to get to get rid of everything i detached myself from a lifetime of accumulations and i moved full time to a place over in the

middle of the pacific ocean On one of our great islands called maui and in the next months i began to get a lot of things coming to me about what my life was to what was to unfold things that i wasn't even expecting and i think about this idea about what age you are and whether or not changes and shifts can be made and how difficult so many people attribute this to they say it's just that's an impossibility i couldn't Possibly do that i'm so attached to all of these things or i'm too old uh

i've been i've been living in the same place too long whatever it might be right here in this audience is one of the uh one of the women that i revere i think more than more than any other woman i can think of in the professional world at the age of 60 she changed her thoughts and her life changed dramatically She started a publishing company called hay house which is one of the world's largest publishers of spiritual and higher consciousness materials she wrote a book called you can heal your life she's here today my name

is louise hey louise would you stand up louise with a great number of people from all over the world just celebrated her 80th Birthday so i should look so good even at 60. all right and i'm just so deeply honored that you're here dear thank you um what happened for me in the next few months was was absolutely life-changing i had a friend tell me who was uh severely Addicted to uh all kinds of drugs and alcohol who was basically very close to uh to death he refused all kinds of treatment he wouldn't go through

the programs and so on but he read a book and the book was called the dao the ching the dao to ching t-a-o t-e-c-h-i-n-g dao to ching dao in ancient chinese means the way the great way t e Is the term that means the application of or the virtue of and ching in ancient chinese means book so it's the book for applying the virtue of living the way that's what this book means and he told me that and i thought i've heard of the dao de chang i've heard of taoism i've been i'm familiar with

that i had read about it when i was in college i'd even lectured A little bit about it when i was teaching at a university in new york city at st john's university it was uh something that i had sort of a a cursory awareness out but it wasn't something that i was really profoundly interested in i was watching a tv show one night and someone talked about the dao on there i walk into a bookstore and there's a copy of the dao This is all happening in the six months or so that uh between

uh when i had left and knowing that it was time for me to detach myself from all of the things that had been so much a part of my life and move on into a new area of my life so i i couldn't resist it any longer and i said i really want to i really want to read the dao and i'm going to take the next year a full year and in that year what i would like to do is i would like to Read each verse there are 81 verses in the doubter chain

you can read it in an afternoon but you can study it for a lifetime and in the studying of this i said i would like to just take those 365 days for the next year and uh in every four days i'm going to read one verse some of them are only four lines long some of them are 12 16 lines long i'm going to create for myself a uh a way of seeing if i can live this dial And what i did was i would read it then i would meditate on it i would walk

on it i would get go swim on it when i would do yoga i would practice it and then i would sit down after the fourth day and i had a picture of the man who was considered to be the author of this although there's no historical actual record of his name as lao tzu this is the visage that i looked at this is the image of an artist Drawing of lao tzu in ancient chinese means old man old man he was the old man who was living in the in china in the time of

the warring states and he decided he didn't want any more to do with war and violence and hatred and killing and all of the things that were so much a part of his world and he got on his oxen and he left and before he left to go off and be by himself he dictated Some five thousand chinese characters these 81 verses that became the dao da ching there are some people who call the dao to ching the wisest book ever written if you google this thing called the daoda ching you'll come up with over

1 million three hundred thousand hits on the dao to change not only that there are fourteen thousand translations of the daoda chain That i have come across so what i did is i took ten of those translations the ones that seem to be the most relevant the ones that seem to have the most meaning to those people who lived in this part of the western world and i combined them into what i consider to be uh the most useful uh translation of the doubted thing and each morning i would get up and i would look

at this picture and i would ask what is it that You would say to the people who are living now at this time given the conditions that we have in our life right here what is it that you would do many people call this a manual for achieving a way of life that literally guarantees integrity joy peace and balance in our life now there was a man who was a contemporary of lao tzu his name was confucius he was many years younger than Lao tzu but he kept hearing about this old man who had all

of this great wisdom and one day he decided that he was going to go legend says and visit lao tzu and he spent a full day listening to this man because confucius was someone in china who was trying to lay down all the rules of etiquette and how to conduct yourself and trying to dictate to the people what they should be lao tzu had nothing to do with any of that And when he went to see uh lao tzu he came back and he talked to all of his people and this is what he said

he said of birds i know they have wings to fly with a fish that they have fins to swim with of wild beasts that they have feet to run with for feet There are traps for fins there are nets for wings arrows but who knows how dragons surmount wind and cloud into heaven this day i have seen lao tzu and he is a dragon and there he is a dragon And a dragon in ancient chinese was a a picture of someone or something that was so mysterious and so uh difficult to comprehend because it could

always be something else it was a great teacher who came many years after that his name was roomie who was a jello luton roomie who was a great poet a persian poet in the 14th century and he had uh he had a line he said the day that you Were born a ladder was set up to help you to escape from this world i believe that the dow to chain and this thing that i have done this change your thoughts change your life effort that i've spent one full year on every single day doing exactly

what i just said is A ladder that will help you to return in the dao there's a very famous line the 40th verse of the dao says returning is the motion of the tao returning is the motion of the tao so that all of us came from a divine spiritual essence invisible everything in the world of form emanated from something that is formless there was a split second when you went from non-being To being and what lao tzu was trying to teach was to be able to return to that place from which you came and

live your life from the spiritual perspective and become a god-realized being another great poet t.s eliot once said we shall not cease from exploration And at the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time for the first time what what i'm asking you to do and what lao tzu seemed to be saying was learn to die while you're alive because you will ultimately return all of us have a return trip a round-trip ticket when we came in didn't we But if you

could learn to die while you're alive and there's a great story i i have to tell you this so i want to read this story to you it's um a way to look at this idea of dying while you're alive it's uh it goes like this to die while we are alive gives us the only opportunity we'll we will ever have to get outside of this package that Houses us temporarily there's an ancient parable that repeated generation after generation by the spiritual masters of india which illustrates this point listen to this wonderful story a traveler

from india went to africa to acquire some local products and animals and while in the jungle he saw thousands of beautiful multi-colored talking parrots He decided to capture a talking parrot and take it back as his pet at home he kept his parrot in a cage and he fed him and he gave him wonderful seeds and honey and played music for his pet and generally he treated him very well when it was time for the man to return to africa two years later he asked his parent if there was any message that he could deliver

to the parrot's friends who were back in the jungle Well the parrot told his master to say that he was very happy in his cage and that he was enjoying each day and to convey his love well when the traveler arrived back in africa he delivered the message to the parrots back in the jungle just as he finished his story a parrot with tears welling up in his eyes fell over dead the man was alarmed and he decided that the parrot must have been very close to The parrot in the cage and that this was

probably the reason for the sadness and for his demise when the traveler returned to india he told his pet what had happened as he finished his story the pet parrot's eyes welled up with tears and he kneeled over dead in his cage the man was astounded but he figured that his pet died from the despair of hearing of the death of his close friend Back in the jungle the traitor opened up the cage and tossed the dead bird outside onto the trash heap immediately the pet parrot flew up to a branch on the tree outside

the traitor said to him so you're not dead after all why did you do that you tricked me and the parrot responded because that bird back in africa Sent me a very important message what was the message the traitor wanted to know he told me that if you want to escape from your cage you must die while you're alive we must indeed die while we are alive in order to be able to look back at our waking consciousness and see ourselves trapped in our cage which in our case is our body and then We will

see how unnecessary it is to remain caged not a great story i love that story yeah you can applaud what i encourage you to do is to create for yourself a sacred space and in this sacred space i would like you to place everything that has energy value to you photographs I have this photograph that i looked at every day for one year and began to talk to after a while it's a little weird but you begin to get this idea and those of you who wonder why i am wearing no shoes i'd like you

to know that uh where i live you never walk into a sacred space with your shoes on it would be considered Dishonorable to do so and to me this stage this setting this beautiful place and this beautiful symbol is a sacred sacred space i live without shoes i heard it said once that if you wear shoes everywhere you go the whole earth will feel like leather and it's nice to feel what the earth feels like and to feel that naturalness so in that sacred space You will feel the energy of the photographs of the of

any mementos that you have of pictures of your children of drawings of statues of anything at all that you can think of i have a beautiful sacred space and it calls me and as it calls me when i go into that place that is so profoundly sacred to me the most beautiful things begin to happen for me particularly in the middle of the night When no one else is up and i feel closest to god and i feel closest to this beautiful old man who sent so many important messages to me through his dow to

ching and in my meditations to help me to create this program change your thoughts change your life living the wisdom of the dao what i would like to do now is to look at the some of the key thoughts that i would Like you to think about and consider changing as you as you become a person who becomes more god-realized that is someone who has died but stayed alive and returned and went back on that return trip the first of these thoughts to change is to change the idea that i can't trust in my own

nature to I trust in my own nature did it ever occur to you that you have a nature that that nature is so profound and is always calling you you know it no one else can know it no one else can impose it on you no one else can tell you what it is that you feel in here that you know is why you're here and what you're doing here there's no one else can explain that or explore that with you you can't you can't share It everything in the universe has a nature your dog

has a nature a crocodile has a nature a duck has a nature a crow has a nature everything has its nature everything has a dharma including you but what we've learned and we've grown up to believe is that i can't trust in that nature my nature to trust in your nature to know that you came from a divine place of well-being and to trust in it listen to this verse 38 of the dao A few lines the great master follows his own nature and not the trappings of life a truly good man is not aware

of his goodness and is therefore good think about yourself the first the first moment of life the very first moment that spec when you went from nowhere n-o-w-h-e-r-e to now here n-o-w h-e-r-e from nowhere to now here Same thing just a little question of spacing just a little different spacing all right so you went from nowhere now you're in now here and where do you think you're going nowhere right back to nowhere who out there watching who in this audience isn't going back to nowhere that's where we're all headed back to nowhere so in that

split second then you lived inside your mother's womb for nine months And in that nine month period of time you trusted your nature you didn't have a sonogram and say my god i don't have a nose this is very scary what if it doesn't show up on time or you didn't do any of that you trusted completely in your own nature right and so does your mother there's very little that you can do because what you were to become everything that this physical body Needed was all handled in there and also beyond what was needed

for your physical world and what lao tzu called the ten the world of the ten thousand things the ten thousand things there's ten zillion things obviously in the physical world but that's what he how he named it the world of the ten thousand things and in that world of the ten thousand things everything returns back to its source but while you're in that place and why Wouldn't you believe even maybe for a second that not only was my physiology all handled for me but everything else that i needed if i could just stop interfering with

it and stop other people from doing it that everything i needed and that's a big part of understanding change your thoughts change your life it's a big part of that the idea that i have a nature that i can trust not something that i have to be afraid Of and i can stop letting other people interfere with it as well so what happens we go through those nine months totally uninterrupted we have no questions everything works out and then what we say the very first thing we pop out after nine months we'll take over from

here that was good work nice work god thank you very much and so what we'll do is just sort of edge you Out of here you know so we edge god out we take on an ego e g o and we edge out and we say we'll take over and we have an ego and this ego what this ego does is it takes on a set of beliefs and these beliefs are that i am what i have but i am what i do that i am what other people think of me so we're raised to

believe that the more stuff i accumulate the more there's more Things that i get this is who i am the more that people like me this is what i'll get and on and on it goes i want to tell you a story it's a story of one of my children her name is tracy we lived in detroit uh when she was born she came in as a little rebellious she came in in the middle of the detroit riots when they said nobody is allowed to go out anybody that goes out is going to be arrested

And she said this would be a good time for me to show up which is exactly what she did so when she showed up after about the second or third year tracy went to preschool and she came home from preschool she was about three and in that time she came home and she said she handed me a paper and it had a gold star at the top of the paper And i looked at it and i said she said daddy daddy daddy daddy i got a gold star i got a gold star i said uh

i'm not really interested in gold stars i said but uh what is what are you doing what is this what what she said well we did something in school called adding and i got them all right and i know how to i said adding i can't believe you're three you can't learn to add when you're three and i Went to this whole long thing about adding and how terrific it was and she could say daddy the gold star excuse me but i was the only one in the class that got a gold star i got

them all right i said you know tracy i said honey that i said some people just need to have gold stars and and teachers sort of like to give it out and make make that the reason why you're doing something i said And set you apart from everybody else i said but your dad doesn't really care much about that and how you stack up with others and they're going to be uh i'm more interested in what you're learning and she said okay she was used to that she had a weird daddy and she knew that

so about another month or so she came home with a uh with a paper that had uh looked like it had had a gold star on it but it Obviously been taken off her little thumb prints were all over but there's a place that had been a gold star it was taken off and i said what's this oh she said we're now doing subtraction and i said subtraction that's amazing and i took over by her dresser i said you know that money you got in your piggy bank i put it in my pocket i said

that's called subtraction isn't that great she'd give me that money back we talked to talked About subtraction finally i couldn't i couldn't take it anymore i said honey what happened what was this what was here at the paper and she said oh she said that she said the teacher gave me one of those gold stars i said really i said well what happened to it oh she said i took it off i said well what'd you do with it she said i gave it back to her i said well what did you tell her she

said oh i told her to Give it to someone who needs that sort of thing true story yeah and there she is she's standing right here she's going to be 40 this year my daughter tracy so what we have to do is learn how to take this ego of ours this part of us that believes that who we are is what we have and what we do and what other people think of us but Remember if you grow up believing that you are what you do then when you don't you aren't and if you believe

that you are what you have when it's gone you aren't and if you believe that you are what other people think of you your reputation which we raise people to believe it's my i have to be concerned with what other people think of me take this ego and retrain it and one of the ways that you do to retrain it is First you take this idea that the ego has of fear what are you afraid of anybody out there what are you afraid of shift from fear to curiosity become curious about what you're afraid of

that's what lao tzu taught me become curious about what you're afraid of you're afraid of flying get curious about that get interested in that you're you're afraid of snakes you're afraid of disapproval you're Afraid just shift from fear and say i'm going to become more curious about what i'm afraid of and then take all of the things that you're attached to like all of your photographs like all of your furniture like all of your clothing like all of the stuff that you find so much attachment to and start letting it go start letting it go

you know the day that i turned that key on uh may the 11th and 2006 i didn't even know Where it was going i just knew there was a shift taking place i felt freer than i'd ever felt i think in my life in my mid 60s out there on a whole new adventure and here we are talking about on national television on pbs take that idea that you have to be attached to things and know that you came in with nothing With no thing and you're going to leave with nothing with no thing and

understand that your life is a parenthesis in eternity live there without attachments and then take your need to be in control of yourself of others of the situation and shift from control to trust begin to have a true lao tzu is profound About this in each one of the 81 verses it comes up about 60 times as you look at letting go and letting god allowing yourself to trust in your nature allowing yourself to no longer believe that everything has to be controlled by me and that other people no longer have to be in control

of me as well begin to trust in just like you did for the first nine months You trusted your nose showed up your height showed up your eyes showed up whatever it all showed up it's all perfect it's all the to why not wander through your life and have this wonderful peaceful knowing that it's all fine and finally shift from your sense of entitlement what nobody nobody can treat me that way i'm entitled to have this well i paid for That i let go i mean that in one year i let go of all of

my entitlements i have i don't feel i'm entitled to anything i'm just here shift from entitlements to radical humility lao tzu speaks about it so often stay humble stay low the greatest leaders are the ones who do the least the ones who stay back and and just model and allow and at the end of the day in one of the verses of the dao it Says the people will say we did it ourselves we did it ourselves in verse 49 of the doubt of chain here's an exact quote the sage is kind to the kind

and kind to the unkind because the nature of his being is kindness and also be wise and help all beings impartially abandoning none You know what i do just before i did this program i have to admit i was nervous i was humbled by it like who are you wayne dyer who are you to read the dao and believe that you can interpret it on television and interpret it in a book and spend a year inside like i got real humble with that and you know What i say dao which is just another word for

god or source or krishna or allah or whatever you want to call it guide me guide me now i have that awareness before i come out if you if you knew it says in the course of miracles if you knew who walked beside you at all times on this path that you have chosen You could never experience fear or doubt again i remember mother teresa saying to a dear friend of mine who was asking what could he do what could he do to uh to do something for her he was uh his name was pat

mcmahon he was on ktr radio and phoenix and finally mother teresa said to him you can do something for me She said tomorrow morning get up at 4 am and go out onto the streets of phoenix and find someone who's living there who believes that he's alone and convince him that he's not that's what you can do that's how saints talk that's how lu lao tzu spoke okay let's go on to the next thought the change so you're changing from not trusting in your nature to trusting in your nature you change your thought From i

need more to what i call living contentment what is this thing about moore it's the it's the mantra of the ego isn't it i have to have more i have to collect more stuff i have to have more friends i have to have more money it's more more more more more when where you came from came from nowhere you don't need anything it's a continuous Bombardment that we are all exposed to in this whole world of believing that we have to have more it's one of the reasons why i love public television so much you

don't see ads on pbs you don't have to be constantly exposed to the idea that you have to have more and you have to get more and if you don't have this then you're not complete and so on so we get bombarded with this idea of attracting more and lao tzu says Contentment live in a state of being contented here's verse 81 the last verse of the doubter chain my favorite translation of it and i put it right into the book sages do not accumulate anything but give everything to others having more the more they

give it's a great lesson my son sans who's uh You know we're very very close we just spent a couple of months together over on maui just just being together just being it was a divine time and he came home with um this last summer he came home with four t-shirts that he loved and i said well honey i said which which one do you like the best he said well that one over there that blue one it's got the wine and it's got the drawing and it's got a surfer and i Said that's great

i said uh i'd like to have that one he said no no dad that's my favorite that's the one that's the one i like the best i said i know i said that's the one would you mind if i had that one he said i would mind a lot if you had that one he said maybe you can have one i'm not so crazy about this one over here i said so you're going to give me something you don't like you know i said I want i that's the one i love that because we have

the same taste could i have that one he said dad you're crazy he said you can't have my favorite t-shirt i said well i want you to think about that i want you to think about detaching and letting go and not needing to have more and he's heard me talk about this stuff his entire life so finally he just you know i went in and i tried it on and i said Ah this thing looks so great looking in the mirror he said dad that that really is mine i said yeah i said but you're

gonna give it to me he said no no i said yeah well just think about it you know because i i'm your dad and i'd really like to have this and so he reluctantly parted with it and uh so the next ice the next uh that evening i was still wearing the shirt and he looked at me and he said oh that's my Shirt i said you know what sans i said you gave me the shirt i said i'm gonna wear this shirt until you are happy that i have your favorite shirt i'm gonna just

i'm never gonna take it off until you are happy he said well you'll be wearing that shirt a long time i said well that's okay so i wore it the Next day i got up i slept in it that night i got up and i did i got up the next morning i put it on and that sands would come in and look at me i said oh you're still not happy that you gave me something that you really love because that this is what it really means to be a sage this is what it

means to be a divine being to be someone who's willing to depart with not the things they don't like but what they do like i wore it the next day i Wore it the next day i wore it for two weeks take it off only to wash it put it right back on two solid weeks each one of my children will tell you finally one day he said dad i'm so happy i am so thrilled that you have that t-shirt i said oh that's great i can finally take this thing off you know i'm gonna

just give it away but it's like what a great lesson in that the idea that you you take you know there's a Rule it's called the 80 20 rule and in the 80 20 rule it says everything that you have all of your stuff twenty percent of it is what you use all of your clothes in your closet twenty percent you just keep using the same twenty percent over eighty percent of the clothing that you have in your in your closet for so many people is something that you never use you don't wear you look

at it you store it You think well there might come a day i can't part with that even though you've been carting it around every time you move you're moving and you put take the 80 percent that you don't use says lao tzu and give it away give it away lao tzu said that when your cup is full stop pouring your cup is full stop pouring we have an obesity crisis in the in the united states in the western world The obesity crisis can be handled if you just read the dao if you realize in

verse 33 it says if you realize you have enough you are truly rich if you could just learn something called portion control where you just take a bite and you say is my cup full stop pouring stop pouring in other words instead of filling yourself with with that which is already a surplus in the dao it teaches Us to take surpluses and to reduce them and to take deficiencies and increase them so that we create balance in our lives to be in balance you can take the jewelry that you don't use you can take the

clothing and then once you've given away the the 80 that you don't use take one of the things that you really like and practice giving that away it's such A wonderful way listen to this poem it was written by a great persian poet named hafiz it says even after all this time the sun never says to the earth you owe me just look what happens with a love like that it lights up the whole sky it lights up the whole sky there's no Owing there's no owing you don't have to be you can practice living

a state of contentment this was so powerful for me you just can't imagine how good it felt for one entire year to walk through every day and say i'm content i'm content i start out every morning of my life the first words hafiz says if there's only one prayer that you say every day make it thank you Just say thank you that's how i start wake up thank you god thank you thank you source thank you dao whatever you want to call the opening line of the dao says the dao that can be named is

not the dao as soon as you put a name on it it dissolves there's no name for it it's just endlessly invisibly constantly in a state of creating out of a state of love the next thought that the tao Teaches us to change change your thoughts change your life you really do see so much of the previous pbs specials that i've done on inspiration and intention these were teaching people generically how to think differently what lao tzu taught me was what to specifically think in place of thinking that instead of thinking that i don't trust

my nature he Said trust your nature instead of saying i need more he said you need less more is less that comes right out of the dial next thought move from thinking in a rigid way to thinking and being flexible soft and allowing from rigidity to softness what a wonderful transformation that is I was standing looking at with my son sans and we were on maui and we were looking at water as water was going against some rocks and some cliffs and so on and in these pictures in this in this moment i said to

my son i said uh which do you think is stronger The water or the cliff the water or the rocks which one do you think is more powerful and stronger and he said well he said the rocks obviously they're stronger and they're bigger and all they said but i said water is very very patient isn't it how much chance do those rocks have if they if they if they want to survive i mean what chance do they have that would and and Lao tzu is speaking to us about understanding our nature by examining how nature

works and then making it apply to our thoughts so that a soft thought a thought that isn't a rigid thought a thought that doesn't say you have to be this way or you have to be that way a thought that is not stiff a thought that water he there are so many references to water and what we can learn from water you're 75 water the planet is 75 percent water we are water the rest of us is just muscled water it's just it's all water and water is soft water can enter anywhere you get into

a conflict with somebody else and you picture yourself as water you can enter with water in any place that there's an opening if you can visualize yourself as a being who moves into the space of water if you can see yourself that way you can just enter into those Places and the people that you love and your children and your spouse and anyone at all and and enter there softly here's verse eight the supreme good is water which nourishes all things without trying to and verse 78 right smack out of the dao nothing in the

world is softer and weaker than Water but for attacking the hard the unyielding nothing can surpass it there is nothing like it here it is i asked when they they designed this set this beautiful set and thank you designers for this i asked if i could have water on the on the stage they did it they figured it out there's a now i'm gonna try to get some of this Water okay so you get down here and it just doesn't i'm gonna just scoop this up and i okay the tighter you hold it the less

chance you have of doing anything with it isn't it how can i experience water the way to experience water is to just get saw just get uh unbending and there it is that's what water is the minute i grasp at the minute i try and lao tzu is saying the same thing is true in Everything in your life the more you grasp the more you try to hold on to it the more you try to be rigid with it the less control you have the softer you are the less rigid you are the more flexible

you are as a person the more you can accomplish and this is a great way to practice in parenting as well and this idea That a rigid thought how many times have you heard this idea that if i tell you something i'm going to stay consistent with it we have a set of rules these are the rules and we'll do it this way in the dow it says the more rules you make the more rule breakers you create it's true the more rules you have in your house about how everything has to go we had

in our house my wife would have a big jar of m m's Peanuts you know different all these different multicolored ones and so and the kids in our house because we didn't feed them sugar and we didn't give them sodas and stuff like that so they you know they were just more like a decoration every once in a while someone would take them they'd hardly ever be replaced now when we had kids come over to our house who weren't ever allowed to have such horrible things you should have seen their behavior you know they Would

scoop them up they'd be putting them in their pockets and they'd get their purses and they'd open it up and you know the whole thing would be empty i said what are you doing well well you mean you could just have these whenever you want them i said well we don't really have any rules about that it's just it's not something that we encourage or discourage it's just there it's like Emerson had a wonderful line he said a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds a foolish consistency a rigid consistency so that there are

many people who will say if i say it on monday you can be absolutely certain that on wednesday i'm going to believe the same thing regardless of what might happen on Tuesday now tuesday might have something real that you might want to be changing your mind you might want to say you know i thought that this time but now i've seen this and now we can shift and you can see how this can become when and so much about the dao is on leadership leadership in the family leadership in the community leadership geopolitically Less rigidity

more openness more willingness to listen and say i changed my mind because a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and what i believed on wednesday has changed because of what happened on tuesday now another important thing to say to your children to your friends to your lover To your spouses to whomever to the people you work with words that we're so terrified to say but which give us a sense of living with the tao i don't know i don't know i'll look it up say it i don't know doesn't hurt say it again

i don't know isn't it fearful i mean so many and it's like very freeing because my kids call Ask me something and i said i don't know they say dad you know everything you know everything i said well i don't know that and i'll look it up or we'll try to find an answer to that but i don't quite know i know that um even you know i spent 20 years running and i ran every day for 20 years for 22 years without missing a day eight miles never missed a day that's Rigid all right

some call that obsessive but you brush your teeth every day i used to say and you don't call that obsessive and you go to the bathroom every day and you don't say well he's obsessively doing that again today you don't do that but anyway what i learned is that in even in the world of exercise there are certain things that are built in to make us rigid to make us stiff to make us hard and we lift and we run and we Kick and uh we this is what we call working out there's another kind

of working out that is ancient it goes back to the time of lao tzu and before which is called yoga and yoga means union it means union with your source and when you do yoga you can stay in the same place you can do the equivalent of eight miles when i used to run eight miles i had to run four miles that way turn around four miles back And i'd be sweating now i can do yoga and i can just stand in one place and in 90 minutes by being supple by making myself stretch by

not being hard and rigid i can you know i can get that out there i can get that leg up i can do these kinds of things and 90 minutes later you know it's like i'm totally sweating and so and i feel so different i used to when i would go out at night to eat or something after running so many miles Running marathons and doing those things i'd go to get up and it would be okay it's going to take a little while all right because everything was selling that doesn't happen anymore because i've

given up hard i've given up being rigid and substituted it for being supple for being flexible for living a life in which i don't have to always be so fierce listen to this verse of the doubt of jake it's one of my all-time favorites verse number 76 A man is born gentle and weak at his death he becomes hard and stiff all things including the grass and the trees are soft and pliable in life dry and brittle in death stiffness Is thus a companion in death flexibility is a companion in life and it's not just

for how you exercise it's how you think how you think in front of my place on maui there is a beautiful set of 11 or 12 palm trees and these are like 30 40 50 feet tall they've been there for i don't know how long decades and when the winds come and when the storms come the storms will blow them over there they are watch and they're just these amazing elastic things i learned so much from these things i go out there when i would when i did this when i wrote the uh essay in

the book on the verse 73 i just went out there with The palm trees and i would just commune with these palm trees and they go all the way up and then they come all the way back that's a symbol for how we need to think in our own lives in verse 73 it says it is heaven's way to conquer without striving it does not ask yet it is supplied with all that it Needs it does not hurry yet it completes everything on time one of my favorite lines from the dao one of favorite beliefs

from the dao is this that you're doing nothing all of you you're doing nothing you're just being done just like you were the first nine months of your life you think you're out there and you're making this happen and you're making that happen and you've got all These rigid things and you have to apply your life this way you're not doing anything any more than you were having your fingernails show up when they were supposed to and look at you look at all of you look around you know it's like you know what held it

in yesterday you know i don't know i'm not doing anything they fall out and they don't fall out no matter how hard i tried to keep them in there finally my Kids said give it up give it up so i was over in england and they told me that i couldn't take my shampoo bottles on the plane and there's nothing you can do about it i said yes there is i'll just shave my head [Laughter] i no longer need shampoo okay so we want to move from stiffness to flexibility the next thought that i'd Like

to see us change that the dow taught me so much was living by interfering to shift that to living by not interfering do you know that every one of your children have the anchor of the universe located within them and that khalil gibran this is a paraphrase he said your children are not your children They are the products of life's longing for itself they come through you but not for you they're not there for you so what are you doing interfering in their lives now i'm not talking about letting them play out in the traffic

or play at the edge of a swimming pool if they don't know how to swim i'm talking about that i'm talking about i called this when i was when i was Working on this and living this and practicing this for that full year of 2006. the bite your tongue zip your lip verses of the dial verse 29 of the dao do you think you can take over the universe and improve it i do not believe it can be done everything under heaven is a sacred vessel And cannot be controlled trying to control leads to ruin

trying to grasp we lose allow your life to unfold naturally allow other people's lives to unfold naturally as well we have parents i see them a lot they're called helicopter parents because they're always hovering They're hovering over their kids and they're telling them what to do and what not to do and my son came over from england my son shane and he was going to get ready to go to college going to college in america and my wife said to me uh so you're going to take him uh and show him about registration right i

said oh yeah i'll be doing that she said well make sure that you help him because he doesn't know have any idea how to register at the school this Great big school with thousands of people yeah and i do right i would know how to register kids at school you know and so shane got in the car and i said it's all going to be fine you all be fine and we drive over to the campus and i drop them off and i have my tennis racket in the back and he said where you going

i said well I'm a prophet i said i get paid by the thought and i have a tennis match and then i have to walk on the beach so that i get paid by the he said but what about the registration i said well the registration i said you'll do a lot like i did when i learned to register he said well what do you mean i said you'll just go up to the people and say where is registration and they'll say it's over there where All of those people are all lined up because i

remember those days in a college of 40 000 students or so finding out how to register tracy did i take you to register honey no so he said you mean you just got i said yeah you just go with i said you want daddy to walk with you over and take you through graduate you're 18 years old and you want daddy to register you he should oh no i wouldn't want that so we got home at the end of the uh the End of the evening uh when i when i got back home and my

wife had said to me she said did you help shane had registration oh i said i gave him so much help probably the most help he ever had in his life i taught him how to do things for himself and so that i wouldn't have to be interfering and hovering over and figuring it all out for them my children know that when their science project Comes up that i'm there for consultation but i pass science i got through that myself and you'll be doing your own science project if i can help you i'll be happy

to help you but i'm not going to be getting the glue and figuring out how to make a time clock and all of that i said you know just just look at a clock that's how you tell time for me whatever it might be and and it's it's not an uncaring and it's Not a callous attitude at all it's an awareness that your children have the anchor of the universe located within them that's what lao tzu said now my dear friend who i love so much she's right here in the audience carrie right there carrie

evans from molly she has two beautiful little daughters and she asked me if i would watch them one afternoon when my grandson carter was visiting I said i'd be happy to watch them she said but you don't understand i mean they're gonna they're gonna do this and they're gonna do that i said you just go off and she was studying for an exam i said you go study do whatever you have to do i can handle three little kids out at the swimming pool for three or four hours i can handle that so she went

off very nervous gave me lists told me what to do what they might say what they might not say and Then if she says now if kylie says this you tell kalyan if kamali says it was kylie kamali and carter all right so they go out there and right here there's a little pool over here little swimming pool and i watch them over in the swimming pool and kylie uh takes the water and splashes my grandson carter and splashes kamiley and kamali comes over to me and runs over Within two minutes says kylie splashed me

now of course i'm working on the doll not on interference i said splashing honey is in the way of things when you're near water splashing will take place she says yeah but but she splashed me i said You'll probably work this out this will all be fine she stood there for the longest time with her little lip and so on and finally she realized she wasn't getting anywhere with me she went back before you know it one of them had taken now kylie and kamali are teaming up against carter and they push them under or

whatever now one of them is five and one of them is four and one of them is uh seven or Eight and uh carter comes running over as fast as he can runs on he calls me bampa i'm grandpa miley miley pushed me under the water i said carter i'm a daoist master but you pushed me she put me under i said you'll just have to work this one out carter i'm a dallas master this went on all for the for the first hour or so but I noticed as i was less interfering and less

interfering that they were working it out they tried again after a few times they'd come over and they wanted this and they wanted them pushed and wanted that but each time when i let them know that i was watching and making sure they were safe but i wasn't going to interfere i wasn't going to resolve it i wasn't going to settle their disputes for them i wasn't going to be a helicopter parent even for an afternoon And the way that it resolved itself was they had the anchor of the universe within them they have a

nature they know what to do one of my favorite things always to say to my children when there's a conflict is you know what the right thing to do is what do you think you know you have it in your heart you are a divine being they all know that i've said those words to them Over and over again you'll figure it out you'll work it out now that not i'm going to interfere i'm going to tell them what to do you can practice this so many places so many ways in your life particularly as

parents even in business it's very important in businesses to allow the people to say at the end of the day right out of the dao oh we did that ourselves we did it ourselves In the dao it says there's a time for everything and everything in its time there's a time for everything listen to this uh there's a time for being ahead and a time for being at peace there's a time for being in motion and a time for being at rest there's a time for being vigorous and a time for being exhausted and in

the bible to everything there is A season a time for every purpose under the sun i practiced this was so helpful to me particularly as i do my yoga practice in my yoga practice it's there are some very exhausting postures i do this bikram hot yoga all right so it's 105 or between 105 and 110 for 90 minutes and there's one that i used to hate it's called triangle you know and so you Put your foot out here and then you do this and then you get yourself up and you go all the way down

and you get yourself in balance like here so you balance balance down here and you take your arms out here and then you take these like this and it's 105 degrees in there you take one and you're looking up here at your arm and you look and you're looking you look and then you bring it back and it lasts a full minute and i used to just Wait for that minute to be over i'm like that when are they going to bring me out of this posture it was so exhausting i started practicing what the

dow teaches and i remember there's a time for being exhausted there's a time for that and as i practice that i said and there's a time for being at rest and it's coming hopefully soon but in your life in your life there's an awareness that There is a time for all the things that are going on that you think shouldn't be happening in the tao it says that hidden in all misfortune is good fortune hidden in the misfortune that you have is good fortune because no storm can last forever even nature cannot create a storm

that lasts forever ultimately hidden within every storm is Calmness hidden within every flood is drought and dryness hidden within all of the storms of your life is the peace that you desire and it leans on you if you stop telling yourself and just let yourself go with it to be at harmony with it rather than trying you can see why this is called the wisest book ever written and we're just touching on it here just Touching on this lao tzu was green before al gore he was this is verse 39 of the doubter chain when

man interferes with the tao the sky becomes filthy the earth becomes depleted the equilibrium crumbles creatures become extinct therefore nobility is rooted in humility finally i'd like to say to you in understanding this idea of the dao Is to take time yourself for being in nature take an hour a day every day of your life take an hour a day no matter how busy you are no matter what scheduling that you have to get out in nature walk barefoot on the grass walk there it's one of the great uh ways to overcome an inability to

sleep at night just go out when you can't sleep and just walk on the grass walk on the Earth and reconnect yourself down go out and be with the tree and look at what you can learn from nature look at these trees look at these animals you can study you look at that look i mean you can study a flower like that that is so magnificent as it's unfolding that's an actual photograph of this thing growing and unfolding there you know be with that you have much to learn from nature from water from the sky

from the winds From the trees from the birds the more you do it the more you see yourself in all of them the more you'll feel yourself as a connected being living the dial another thought to change to change from thinking big to thinking small it's so much of the dao has in it statements That seem so paradoxical and so confusing to us more is less less is more think small and get great things done accomplish great things listen to verse 64 of the doubter chain a tree that fills a man's embrace grows from a

seedling a tower nine stories high starts with one brick and here's the most famous line out of The dao a journey of a thousand miles begins with what first step one first step okay so today i can stand up here on this stage in this beautiful sacred place and this beautiful yin yang symbol on this incredibly beautiful set that feels so much like nature and i can say to you that in a very short time this year I will have completed 20 years without taking a drink of alcohol 20 years okay thank you now that's

big that's big because i drank every day not to get drunk but i drank every day two three beers every evening after running and it was like i couldn't remember a day when i hadn't had i thought back 10 years 12 i couldn't think of a day not one day in the previous decade or two that i had not had a beer or several beers so that's big and if i would have tried if i'd have said to myself 20 years ago wayne you're going to quit drinking for the next 20 years i would have

gone immediately and had a drink Because it's just too big isn't it it's just too big you don't do big things you do small things and thus accomplish great things it's a very important distinction to make whatever it is that you would like to create or contribute or become in your Life take one step how did i let drinking go for 20 years and i don't even know about tomorrow i never think about tomorrow and whether i'm going to have a drink all i know for sure is that this won't be the day i do

it one day at a time that's how you overcome anything called an addiction in your life you take it you reconnect yourself to the source From which you came which is a source of what well being isn't it and you get back and return get on the return trip and say i am connected to well-being and i'll do this one day one hour one minute one second if i have to at a time and when you do it i mean it's behind in in all of the programs for overcoming addictions and all of the work

of bill w all of the work of alcoholics anonymous all of the work of Any kind of addictions it isn't just alcohol it can be food it can be addiction to your emails it can be addiction to work it can be addiction to so many things that so many people find that they can't get past and to move themselves into a place where i think small i've i ran seven marathons in my running years and About the 22nd or 23rd mile you begin to ask yourself about your sanity and what am i doing here and

my body is breaking down but the way that you finish the marathon is not by saying i'm going to run 26 miles you don't do that especially when you still got five or six to go you just say to yourself can i put my foot in front of the next one can i take one step at a time can i do it one step At a time and before you know it you've accomplished great things i watched my wife give birth to uh four children in right there in her uh in the delivery room with

her and she does not you know when you when you have a baby it takes nine months doesn't it you don't say to yourself oh my god i got to have a baby i got to get pregnant i got to deliver it i got to go through labor because that will just drag it and There are people who do that and it's a it's a torture for them but i watched her do it one moment at a time in labor not what's going to happen an hour from now what's going to happen this afternoon am

i going to have to have the none of that and she did it all naturally because it was all and her mind was so strong as she was doing it that i couldn't even penetrate i couldn't even communicate With her she was so focused on just being here she would say these are not labor pains these are just signals just and i can take this signal i can do this for one minute i can do this i can it's the way everything gets done i watch the great tennis players on the planet roger federer pete

sampras these people that are really masters at this game that i played for so many years not even close to those kinds of levels and they're they'll be in a tournament They'll have a seating and they'll say here's the first round here's the second round here's the third round there's no such thing as playing the fourth round before you've played the first round and then when you get to the first round you don't go out there and say well um i've got to beat this person in three sets you say i'm going to think one

serve at a time i'm going to think one point at a time and every great athlete i don't care who They are they will always say i can't think out there in big ways i can only think small thinking small is what gets great things done verse 63 achieve greatness in little things take on difficulties while they are still easy do great things while they are still small the sage the sage one of my daughter's names the sage does not attempt anything very big And thus achieves greatness greatness comes from being in the moment here

present in the now the sage confronts difficulties but never experiences them this is the idea of thinking small and finally i'd like to see you change from this thought change from seeing yourself as Separate to seeing yourself as connected to everyone and everything in the universe our ego tells us that we are separate that who we are is this body that we have and everybody out there is separate from me nothing has been more profound and more powerful and important for me than this verse of the doubter chain this idea That we are all one

that all of us emanated from the same source and by doing so by emanating from the same source we need to see ourselves as connected to every single being every single person every single flower every single tree every single animal if you can see yourself in everyone We're all connected it makes about as much sense to me to have a smoking section in a restaurant as it does to have a peeing section in a swimming pool right oh no no no kids no no no no no don't pee over here we pee over here does

that make any sense the native americans one of my favorite Quotes i've used it many many times the native americans would say no tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves no tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves we are all branches on a tree called humanity when you read the doll when you read this idea about changing These thoughts and changing your life you're going to see endless verses that speak to the absurdity of the idea of you having an enemy the idea that you and anyone else on this

planet is an enemy in the dao it says i and enemy cannot exist in the same sentence And he said even those who go to war the ones who will triumph in war are those who go to war without an enemy and they will treat every victory in war not as something to celebrate but as a funeral as an indication that we haven't reached the highest place within ourselves to see that even those people that we judge To be our enemy are really connected to us and it says in the dow that a bad man

a bad man is a good man's job and a good man is a bad man's teacher a good man is a bad man's teacher so finding that and seeing that listen to verse 10 carrying body and soul and embracing the one Can you avoid separation one who heeds this power brings the tao to this very earth this is the primal virtue this was so helpful to me as i thought about it remember i spent four and a half days on each one of these verses and in those each one of those four and a half

days i wasn't writing i wrote the last four or five hours of those four and a half days for four and a half days i took that verse and i went out into The world and i looked at everyone that i encountered everyone that i saw and i tried to see myself in them the person that was you know dressed differently than i would dress the person who was uh not as attractive the person who was very old the person who was very young the person who used language particularly that was possibly offensive when i

would look out there and i would practice not judging because the only difference between a flower And a weed is a judgment isn't it it's just a judgment it's just a judgment and if we want to end violence in our lives and in our society we have to learn to change our thoughts remember that the dandelions when i was growing up out in michigan they had we had these these dandelions the dandelions would have um uh At a certain time of the year they would get all these little fuzz balls at the top of them

the yellow little flower part i always liked the dandelions i thought they were really beautiful uh and then these they have these little fuzz balls now imagine if you want to end by the the problem of dandelions on your lawn and you see them all out there with all their little fuzz balls so you go out There and you take a shovel and you turn it upside down and you start smacking all of the dandelions like this and what do you do when you use violence to attempt to end the presence of these dandelions which

are problems for you on your lawn is they all scatter and then in the spring guess what you got you got more you got new generations New generations of dandelions there's such a lesson in that isn't there there's a great lesson that when we use violence as a means to resolve our disputes whether it's individually with each other or whether it's in countries or whether it's in communities whenever it is that we resort to that kind of not seeing myself in others and out of this kind of a consciousness will emerge those people who will

ultimately begin to get this because if We don't get it if we don't get it like if we don't really get it civilization as we know it will not survive it will not survive we have to learn that the people that we call enemies no matter how horrendous they may behave toward us there is still something of us in all of them and we can figure out a way yes we of course have to defend ourselves and yes we don't allow People to push us or all of those kinds of things but at a deeper

and a higher level lao tzu was asking us to go within and find that place of pl of peace and try to reach out to that and help someone to make a u-turn those people can be reached because they have the anchor of the universe located within them in verse 25 of the tao it says thus to know humanity Understand earth to know earth understand heaven which is where earth came from to know the way understand the great within yourself within yourself look within and see it now every single person watching this program will have

conflicts With somebody in their life on a fairly regular basis especially if you're in a marriage or in a partnership of some kind certainly if you have children you're going to have the you're going to have conflicts now think about what you do when you have a conflict and that conflict comes to a an end the conflict is over you've expressed your opinion they've you may have yelled at each other you May have screamed at each other you may not have understood each other but it's over now how do you end the conflict lao tzu

says the person of dao the person of dao will eliminate all of the pain all of the stress all of the anger all of the hatred if they decide to end the conflict with love just Be the one who ends the silence by saying we don't agree but i love you and it's all over you have moved a person from staying in the world of the ten thousand things into the world of god into the world of source because the source has no violence in it it creates endless numbers of flowers and beings and creations

without using any force at all There's no force there here's one of my teachers who lived in bombay which is now mumbai in india his name was nisargadatta maharaja he said wisdom is knowing i am nothing love is knowing i am everything and in between the two my life moves in between the two the ability to take a conflict and to end it with love Is one of the most powerful things that you can do it has been a great lesson for me when we have a conflict what we do is i will be the

person that will pick up that phone you can be certain of it i will i will end that conflict with love and guess what that does to the conflict it's over it's over you can't pick a fight with someone who just doesn't want to fight anymore who just sends you love So i want to summarize some of these thoughts and there are so many change your thoughts based upon the wisdom of the tao and your life will change there's many principles to live by in the dao first remind yourself that there is no way to

happiness Happiness is the way bring happiness to all that you do you accomplish much by trying less it's just it's so inconsistent isn't it what we lived in the western world but the less you try when i go out and swim in the ocean and i do it almost every day i try to do between 30 and minutes and an hour every day being out there in that ocean and i just get out there and if i try less my arms just seem to know What to do and the breathing just all works and it's

all and i can swim all day as soon as i try as soon as i struggle as soon as i start the minute that i move myself into trying it's like if i were to take this little cap here and drop it right there and say i'm gonna try to pick this up i'm gonna try to pick this up this is what lao tzu was speaking about so all of this all of this all of this all of this all of this This i'm trying i'm really trying i'm really trying all of this is called

in reality not picking it up that's what that's called not picking it up but when i just get easy and do less see yourself the dao says in everyone you encounter a great lesson every single being especially the ones that we read about who were told are our enemies See yourself in them know that whoever they are wherever they live they want what we want they want what i want they want to be at peace they don't want to be always struggling they don't want to be sick they just want to be loved whoever they

are i know the skepticism of that it's like yes but all of the yes but but if they got it too laosu wasn't speaking to well some are going to get this and some probably Won't he was speaking to all of us trust in others the tao says to know what's best for themselves trust in that trust in the pliability the flexibility of your babies had those little babies they're so great when they're like you know two weeks old you can take their foot put it behind their neck stick it around here like this put

it in their mouth they're so flexible i mean you can do Anything you pick them up you turn them upside down you watch them when they're starting to learn to walk and they run run run crash they go down into the walls and all of this and you think oh my god this kid will never walk again up they go and they don't trust trust in their flexibility live without attachment and be generous be strong by bending By bending we need to learn this in our lives we need to learn this in the world it's

not so important to be right it's so much more important when you have a choice to be right or to be kind always pick kind always pick kind practice radical humility live low live low like the ocean stay low And all the streams will come to it that's why it's so powerful because it doesn't lower anything over anyone and rather than looking for miracles see everything as miraculous everything in your life there was a man who had a dow experience what i call a quantum moment his name was john newton he lived back in the

beginning of the 18th century And he was crossing the ocean he was a a slave trader he had a ship full of human cargo that he was going to trade into slavery in the most hideous practice that was so common at that time in our in our history and in the middle of a storm on his way over there with all of these people he was 22 years old or 23 years old and he thought he was going to die and he thought the whole it was like he must Have hit a hurricane or something

out there that was before satellites could warn people and while he thought he was in that state of dying he took out a pencil and a paper and he wrote on the back of an envelope he wrote i once was lost and now i'm found and it was grace it was grace that taught my heart to feel it was Grace that brought me home and when the storm was over he had a moment he reconnected to his source anybody out there can recon reconnect the source to the dao and become a being of doubt remember

it's a return trip and you can make that return trip while you're alive remember the parrot he knows much more than we did and he returned back to africa and he Released the slaves that he said and for the next 55 years of his life for the next 55 years of his life he shifted and became the most ardent spokesman as an abolitionist to abolish that hideous practice of slavery that what he devoted his life to it a former slave it's like going from saul to paul you know from being a person who crucifies and

murders christians to being the author Of a big portion of the new testament as saint paul in a moment in a moment it's possible for any of us and there's a lady who i think has one of the great voices on this planet today her name is cecilia and she has been traveling with me she's from norway she has sung at con at conventions and places that i have been she sings We call her the nightingale don't we lee she's an angel she sings like an angel and she's accompanied by the whales these whales these

beautiful creatures who are in my front yard every morning on maui the humpbacks who have these beautiful tails that flash and flash and and they jus and some days you can i'll be walking along the beach and i will hear someone say honey this guy was having on a honeymoon there and he said honey come on in come on in you can hear The whales singing they're all singing and she's going i don't i don't think i want to get my feet wet and i don't think i'd get my hair and he said no but

you can hear them and i just flew into there with my clothes on and went underneath and i stayed under there for like an hour up and down up listening to these sounds of the whales these beautiful creatures in nature these natural beings who i feel so Connected to and so a part of and she sings accompanied by the whales now getting those whales into the sound booths and getting the earphones on very very difficult you got to really appreciate what we did here to bring this to you and here she is her name is

cecilia she sings amazing grace accompanied by the whales one of my truly Favorite people and greatest singers i've known cecilia thank you namaste i want to close this beautiful presentation on the dial cecilia with a poem that was written by a woman her name is naomi long magit she's from detroit went to wayne state university she was named the poet laureate of Detroit an acclaimed african-american poet listen listen to these words it sums up all that i've been saying i wouldn't coax the plant if i were you such watchful nurturing may do at harm let

the soil rest from so much digging and wait until it's dry before you water it The leafs inclined to find its own direction give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself much growth is stunted by too careful prodding too eager tenderness the things we love we have to learn to leave alone thank you thank you Thank you thank you you