Healing the Collective & Awakening to Unity w/ Charles Eisenstein #392

[Music] i'm luke story for the past 22 years i've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality health psychology and personal development the lifestylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you [Music] Charles welcome to the show thanks luke good to be here yeah i'm so glad you rolled through town and i got wind of it and was able to track you down uh you're someone i've wanted to have a conversation with for a while and as

i was telling you before we recorded i'm just like i'm just i'm gonna wait until it's not a zoom and then magically you appeared i want to start by asking you what is the most the World is in such a strange transition right now and i think from one perspective people could say we're in a really bad way uh others could say we're in an awakening about which we don't know the outcome yet but ultimately good will prevail to you what's the most exciting and amazing thing in your life right now oh i have the

feeling of a lot of new horizons opening And the shifting of my tribe uh through this process of that we're calling covid there's been a lot of rearrangement uh people who i had thought of as deep allies have taken a different path and i've learned um i think one thing maybe i would say we've learned who is brave And who is reliable and who is willing to change [Music] one of the most important character qualities that i've come to appreciate and to cultivate in myself is the willingness to be wrong and and to accept that

and to not hold so tightly onto a story and narrative in which i'm the hero in which i've been right all along In which i'm going to be vindicated uh it's that's all kind of a domination mentality that it's been very uh freeing to i can't say i've totally let go of it but but to to let go of it a bit and i think that that maybe one thing to answer your question that gives me a lot of hope and optimism Is that i'm starting to see signs on a collective level even at the

same time as there's a lot of doubling down on old stories i feel like they're loosening their grip and that gives me a lot of excitement and and hope for the future yeah it's it's really interesting to see as all these changes have taken place that um sort of addiction or attachment To positionality right and because we're dealing with so many things that seem to just i mean literally threaten one's life right and so you have people just kind of push to the edges of their base instincts and within that that rigid perspective of who's

right and who's wrong and that sort of ego gratification of self-righteousness i mean i see a lot of that but as you Said also i think there's a lot of moderate people that may be in weren't involved in some of these difficult conversations that are sort of being brought to the table because of the necessity of their contribution or lack thereof and i think it's also really important to hold that for each other rather than seeing each other Especially people on the other side as so set in their beliefs that they're never going to change

and to cast them as the enemy who have to be overcome and defeated in order for change to happen i don't think that that is even a realistic formula for change i think that that It's not that changes is going to happen not as a victory over the other side right but because many in the other side defect because in fact they were never as ideologically committed as we might have thought they were and why did we think they were well it actually is validating to yourself to hold the other side as these Irreconcilable enemies

so there's a lot of psychology in here um that that is coming up through the the conflictual uh social political environment that we're in like huge opportunity for for learning about ourselves yeah i guess if we're willing to do so What about the kind of phenomenon that i see so much um outside of like the victim perpetrator narrative in us versus them but just this massive large-scale cognitive dissonance that people are experiencing i think so many people are realizing oh wow this system in which we live as a human species is um is broken and

there's so much deceit and corruption within that system um specifically kind of from the Top of the pyramid of the system trickling down and as long as we had our job and our family and our food and everything was kind of covered we didn't have to question it and um now that many people have been given the opportunity to question it there's also a large sect of people that are sort of covering their eyes and ears and saying no it can't be so and kind of towing you know the party line and and just Adamantly

siding with the state and unable to acknowledge that there are in fact um nefarious characters at some of the highest levels of uh of our cultures and there's just this incredible uh uh denial in that so for yeah for one thing it's really hard to let go of a belief especially when it's not some disembodied abstract intellectual belief But it involves your own identity and beliefs about the world how the world works involve yourself because you play a role in that world and and who you are is defined in relation to the system so so

when when your view of the system begins to Disintegrate when contradictions appear more and more undeniably it's a crisis in identity and therefore a threat a threat to the ego's construction of itself someone recently i recently read about how the um like when when your life is threatened like like say i you know had a gun to your head the part of the amygdala that responds is exactly the same As when i assault one of your beliefs oh wow yeah it's taken up at that level of threat and i think we have to we have

to understand that you know and not be contemptuous of people who are clinging to their beliefs but we have to understand like this is a huge challenge that a lot of people are facing now and and so the question then is how do we make that easier For people to go through the process of cognitive dissonance and release and stepping into the i don't know because that's the way station in between the old story in the news story the i don't know that's good it's the space between stories yeah where where you where you have

to be comfortable with not having the answers to the questions that the old story Answered such as what's real how does the world work what's important who am i what's the purpose of life like to to to be in between stories you don't know who you are you don't know what's real you don't know how to do this thing called life and it's a very tender and sacred place to be and i think that we can actually Encourage change to happen faster by holding a gracious gentle and generous space for people to move through that

process wow i like that yeah the weigh station i think that that that spot is a is uh informed by humility and open-mindedness right i mean to me that's kind of the Gateway of personal and interpersonal and even uh change on a larger scale is that hey this is what i think and this is what i believe to be true i i know that i'm i have an awareness that i'm deeply identified with this position but there's a willingness to surrender the positionality and and to have the courage to weather the perceived storm of being

wrong right yesterday luke yesterday you said That xyz was true and now you're saying you're flip-flopping you know there's that whole thing they're flip-flopping you can't trust them i mean i love people that flip-flop right i mean not out of integrity but someone who has a point of view that's firmly held and says wow you know what i have to admit there was another way to look at this it's so healthy i mean just saying it feels good in my nervous system to just like let go Of that clinging to what i think is right

and what i think is a representation of who and what i am versus just an idea yeah and and just in case anyone thinks i'm being preachy like the it's not that me and my side and our side we're we've arrived at the truth and other people still have to go through This process of letting go okay there's i don't care who you are the the the nature of our times the initiatory moment that we are in will offer every single person an opportunity to go through this in one way or another and maybe i'm

exaggerating a little bit for rhetorical effect but the offering is that there's something that you held dear that may not be true or may be true no longer And what is true mean partly it's a state of being that because the story that we live in co-resonates with a state of human beingness and as we grow and fulfill the that story and that state of being then The story that contains our growth becomes confining and we want to break free and often the breakout at first it's like it's just another version of the same thing

because you haven't actually gotten to that point of total surrender the total i don't know it doesn't have to be like every aspect of life i don't know but there's Something that was held dear something that was part of who you were and and that's why i think that these times are initiatory and so like if you don't mind i could i don't want to dominate the conversation no you're supposed to dominate the conversation and please do because otherwise i will afterward i'll be like luke shut up you talk too much so no please i

love Listening to you talk okay and there's a lot of my mind and and right i mean i think people that are aware of your work and those that weren't are going to be after this conversation but no i mean when you when you rap bro like i dig it so please thank you yeah so one of the things that that struck me as as you were talking um so like you like the cognitive dissonance of Of of seeing that there are nefarious characters at the apex of the power structure administering a system that is

not to our benefit and that is an awakening and it can also be a return to the comfort zone of a deeper story which is the fundamental pattern of diagnosis Of if there's evil in the world it's caused by a perpetrator caused by a pathogen like that's the basic diagnosis and the solution then is if you get rid of the pathogen if you get rid of those horrible people in the power structure the problem is solved and it can be A bewildering revelation to encounter people in the power structure and experience them as not particularly

evil at all but as avatars of a system of an ideology that prescribes their roles and has them do things that cause a lot of evil even if they have no consciousness of malice so you know i think if people like like Bill gates in that regard i'm not saying like he's you know a good guy necessarily but like i could see how somebody who is fully immersed in the ideology of control and technology and the ideology that human advancement means that we apply technology to more and more areas Of life that we datify quantify

track and control everything rationally administer it so that we can maximize the good of all and and and you know who's in charge of this well the good guys are i am and and so i can imagine bill gates having The consciousness of wanting to serve humanity and the way to do it this is good this is good you're stretching my capacity for a greater understanding this way you do it is to control everything right you know like including the population and yeah yeah like maybe maybe there's people out there who are going to commit

some crimes But we can anticipate that we could have implants in everybody that would measure the stress hormones that precede violence and there could be like a kill switch i mean maybe not kill them but you know render them um incapacitate them like why wouldn't that be good and okay yeah it could be abused but luckily We good guys we smart guys we rational guys chileans guys uh are in power and so we're not to let that happen we're only going to use it for the good and part of the good is protecting our power

from those who would usurp it who may not be good so we have to control The opposition who are poisoning the body politic with fake information fake news disinformation so like this mentality of power can exist without anybody malicious at the top now there could also be highly psychopathic individuals in the power structure even at the top i'm not saying that that's not possible but In my understanding it's not necessary to explain things and then so i go to the deeper pattern of diagnosis and i see a parallel between the diagnosis of evil in the

world being a diabolical cabal and the diagnosis of the decline of health Being a pathogen or a bunch of pathogens there was a comfort almost a relief when coveted hit because here we have an entire generation that's getting sicker and sicker whether you talk about you know autoimmunity addiction depression um like all of these chronic conditions Allergies uh just just at levels many times what they were when i was a kid but there's something not going it's not this is it's not going well and we don't know what to do about it like there's no

pathogen they try they would love to find the gene that causes x The virus that causes y they would love that because why because we know what to do there's something to fight something to control so finally covet comes along and this latent anxiety and it's not just about health okay i mean our society is degenerating in many ways ecologically socially politically Coveted comes along and now we can focus all of that latent anxiety and fear onto something that we can control through lockdowns through distancing etc like all that stuff masks vaccines it fits the

old story so i just want to put a word in for a deep questioning of all of the Dimensions of the story of progress through control because i think that the the real revolution here is not gonna happen by you know hauling out the the perpetrators the psychopaths the corrupt and sending them to the guillotine we've seen that Story before they're not the first i mean they're not the last to be guillotined yeah nope well this this brings me to i mean one of i think the major um inquiries not only for myself but for

so many people and it's sort of at the base of uh atheism in many ways and that is okay if there is a benevolent all-intelligent all-loving creator or being then How how and why is there the existence of evil and the humans and entities that perpetrate this evil and i've been able to zoom out from that pretty far at times specifically in in ceremony and i've looked at someone like bill gates or people that i perceive to be these diabolical evil characters and gotten to the place where in a world of duality they're playing their

role perfectly Right but then coming out of that awareness and back into being this guy they call luke's story walking around and wanting to make a positive contribution to my own life and the lives of those i interface with they're still then comes back yeah but we still have to stop them but there's just going to be another one and another one and another one until consciousness collectively Is able to um sort of rise above or supersede that duality and without this duality we don't really have the grist for the mill in earth school to

have contrast of choice so if i incarnate as this guy and i don't have something on the other end of the spectrum of the most diabolically evil political person in power Versus you know the dalai lama or whoever mother teresa these holy people are these people that we at least hold up to that it's like if i don't have options then what am i doing here there has to be the contrast of duality in order to have that human experience so that leaves me with kind of a um almost not like apathy in a in

a sad low-energy way but it's just like i don't know maybe i shouldn't try to change anything except myself and then That leads us back into kind of what i was alluding to before we recorded um i don't know that there's a question in there but it's almost like the world is perfect just as it is do your own work and just focus on getting along with your stepmom you know what i mean it's like the the kind of mass spiritual bypass of focusing on the externals and wanting to change and get Rid of all

these characters that are just going to be replaced versus what can i do interpersonally within myself to elevate consciousness and escape my own trap of duality and good versus evil and all that there's totally not a question in there but there's lots just kind of you know anything you want to grab in there these are the things just i wake up going huh what do i do with this because it's all Perfect really it's all the way it's supposed to be yet i for some reason feel within me i need to change things yeah okay

so first this is not a question that can be resolved by principle so here's another basic solution template that we need to question which is that in order to know what to do in life you formulate a Differentiating principle so like the principle of okay do the inner work first or don't try to change the system or it's all good like like we're looking for some kind of crutch i want a definitive answer that this is the way you do it that's not the way right you do it right but in fact you already know

what to do and and the the The evolution of the collective organism of humanity and beyond gaia it's actually even cosmic it you have a role in that and the role is communicated to you mostly through the body and through the heart and through the blood that soaks up everything happening uh through the how esoteric should i get here or how Woo should i get here all the way take it as far as you can so so you know how water is a carrier of information yeah and and and the blood is especially um sensitive

to everything happening in the world so it is patterned by the ecological and psychic field of this planet and moving through the heart the heart is is Primarily a listening organ not a pump in fact this isn't a pump at all like how could a pump push a viscous fluid through like miles of vessels it's not a pump it catches and passes forward and listens to the blood and receives that information translates it into Passion into care into love so like so the signal from the coordinating power of the evolutionary process comes through the heart

in the form of what do you care about and at one moment in your life you may know that repairing the relationship with your mother-in-law is the best thing you could do for the Planet but you don't don't even frame it in those terms like you know what to do because you are life just like an animal knows what to do contacting that knowledge and and the truth of what i said is a powerful awakening of that knowledge So that that's like my preamble to this um you said but these people have to be stopped

right yes they have to be stopped and sometimes that that signal of care will have you you know like put your body between the perpetrator and the victim like i'm not advocating any kind of withdrawal From engagement in the issues of our day they have to be stopped as part of the change when that is what's calling to you they don't have to be punished when you slip that's the juice right there yes you know that that's when i think the ego feels like the change that it wants has transpired is that those people who

are causing suffering suffer right it's The whole thing we saw in 2016. i hate these people that hate people right that that mentality right i want to punish them because they've hurt people you know it's this vicious cycle of the egoic victim perpetrator model that just goes around and around in circles which is the the template the template of that is imposing suffering for the good oh right and that is what Dictators tyrants have done for thousands of years it's always justified oh but our justification justifications are good and theirs are bad we're well yeah

like yeah we're on the side of good so that gives us license to do evil because we're on the side of good it brings up my My favorite quote um philip k dick to fight the empire is to be infected with its derangement this is a paradox whoever defeats a segment of the empire becomes the empire it proliferates like a virus imposing its form on its enemies thereby it becomes its enemies Like you are actually part of the empire when you participate in the mentality of vengeance of punishment of imposing suffering for the good because

they deserve it there will come a moment where you have to decide and this could be in your personal realm it could be as a in your social political engagement there will come a moment where you have To choose between punishment and healing and you'll have to choose if if it is necessary for the healing of society if it is necessary for all of this to stop that the perpetrators get off scot-free do you accept that they walk and maybe they're never humiliated and you're never vindicated But it changes right but it stops right are

you willing to do that that's good if you're not willing that means you're serving something else besides healing on a subtle level and the call the the call to participate in the transformation that is before us requires absolute Impeccable dedication to the aim of healing if we want to experience that in our lifetimes we have to put everything else on the altar and commit to that and you know if you don't if you do that ninety percent we'll live in a ninety percent heal healed world if you do it even one Percent the world will

still be much more beautiful in a generation than it is today but we have an opportunity to give it a hundred percent well this brings the contrast of power versus force right because what you're describing to me is an unconditional love and unconditional compassion unconditional forgiveness For the totality of human expression even as it expresses individually through these quote unquote enemies right and that energy field of love and forgiveness is infinitely more powerful than the biggest fit of rage that you could summon right i mean you know anger has some power right fear has power

courage has power but Nothing has power of love i mean this is where a mother lifts the car off the baby and this is where people are able to endure great suffering and victor frankl you know to turn it around and help thousands of people with their message right it's like nothing beats that right that's that's the trump card not to say the t word i try not to say the word trump on my Show i mean the listeners i don't think get triggered but this is the funny thing i always say uh at least

i think it's funny but you know i mean this really is it so if the way to a more fulfilling uh subjective experience is to universally and objectively just throw more love and compassion at this whole thing and understand that every perpetrator that i have vilified is Truly doing what they believe to be right and at one level are inherently innocent i mean everyone's really innocent right because each person is doing what they believe to be right but within that you know i think you kind of alluded to this where sometimes love is like no

stop you that's also love right that's you know someone's victimizing someone That you care about and that love expresses itself as a firm boundary that's also still love so i think that's where i get kind of caught up because i have a pretty easy time of forgiving all of these baddies you know and just going wow i don't know the full picture in in 200 years 500 years we'll look back and go ah this george soros was like the perfect thing we needed at this point in time Because look at you know the ball of

of thread that unraveled after that and here we are living in utopia and that was a necessary um linchpin of that um great yes experience so as you were saying before the the perpetrators whether they're you're talking about people or ideologies or systems they give us an opportunity to love when it's hard Oh yeah yeah yeah they give us an opportunity to be brave otherwise we would never really know who we are we would never know we would never know ourselves to be capable of choosing love when our lives are threatened where our livelihoods are

threatened so this process of revelation and growth requires what we're calling evil and i generally agree that You know whatever bill gates george soros that that they are very much products of their conditions their subculture their upbringing and the reigning ideologies of modernity that are in a specially distilled form in the worlds of tech and and power politics you know and if i were in that totality Of circumstances i would very much very likely do as they do right that's forgiveness forgiveness is simply understanding it's not an act of indulgence it's not patronizing it's not

tolerant it's not saying oh well i would do better than you if i were in your circumstances but i'm a nice guy so i'm not going to hold it over you that's not forgiveness Forgiveness is the authentic understanding that yeah if that were me i might do that too and how deep can you go into that there was a case a number of years ago of a woman who drowned her five kids in the bathtub one after the other each one knowing something was horribly wrong waiting their turn And i it was like that's one

of the ones that really got under my skin as a parent i mean unimaginable and i really went like what would it take for me to do that how what would it take for me to be in such deep despair and despondency and psychosis what would have to happen to me what would have to happen To me to to act like you know the people that i demonize act can i go there because if i can't if i say well they're just evil that means i'm shying away from actually going there and maybe i never

will know exactly the reasons and but but but that's what forgiveness is It comes as a result of trying to understand and the marker that you do not fully understand is when you're in judgment judgment meaning they're just different i wouldn't do that if i were them so all that said there is also the phenomenon of a psychopath but i think that psychopaths true psychopaths are A misunderstood and b much rarer than we think that psychopathic tendencies are brought to the brought in are activated by the system um but like the real psychopaths are Usually

not in positions of of top power because one of the really underappreciated traits of psychopathy there's a fantastic book the like original book on psychopathy by this guy collectly it's written in the 40s called the mask of sanity and and the ruthlessness and Total lack of compassion is one of the axes that describes a psychopath the other axis is impulsivity right taking like taking ridiculous risks for trivial rewards you know just to get a kick like that does not lend itself well to being in power So anyway i could i don't want to go too

far down the raffle of psychopathy but but just to say like yeah sometimes you just have to stop somebody from doing something but to diagnose the whole system on that term is a trap like be and okay Maybe i'm wrong but again i can understand pretty much and sometimes okay i'll try to say two things at once i can understand pretty much everything that's happening without thinking that it's a consciously conspiring diabolical cabal in charge and that is disorienting Because then we don't know what to do we know how to save the world if it

is a diabolical cabal that can be removed yeah you just you just uh you know pick all the ticks off the dog same solution as everything else kill something yeah same solution as weeds in the field kill them same solution as terrorists kill them kill destroy conquer you know force the perimeter like we're comfortable with that But if it's if if the evil is systemic if it enrolls each of us as participants in it and if it can't be reduced to specific individuals then what do you do that is a pregnant question and if you

are able to step into that unknown into that uncertainty New powers will be born and you are speaking of one of them you call that the power of love tremendous creativity comes from being in reality the reality of if i were you mr soros i might be doing the same as you're doing so what is it like to be you that's that's what compassion is what is It like to be you it's not again an indulgence and maybe the result is yeah i'm gonna fight you with every force-based tool at my disposal that could be

the conclusion but it's not the predestined conclusion as it is when i see people as Irredeemably evil seeing him that way we're locked into war as the only way to change things and so much of our discourse you know around say health freedom it's framed in these war war metaphors which are i'm not saying that that's never appropriate but we have to open our palette Uh to to other colors to paint a picture of a more beautiful world i mean it goes to the the line of thinking that you know spending one's energy or collective

energy on tearing down a system right so we have this industrial pharmaceutical system which to me is at the present time especially is a great threat to to humankind in general i mean just to blanket the whole thing I'm like totally wow so we gotta fire the ceo put this one in prison yada yada right like that's kind of the immediate you know perceived gratification versus the other idea of just cool you guys do your thing over here we're going to build this other thing and we're just busy constructively building this other thing and you

know hoping that it kind of out out grows yours right Um it seems to me that that's probably the most effective way to do it i'm using a really simplistic example of that but that could also be interpersonally so again like that i think that's important but again i would say you can't say that that is the solution as a principle but a lot of people are called to that and you know you can make the argument that That's the way to go but you know then again like you create your beautiful parallel system and

then it gets crushed so there's also oh man there's no way out of this um one thing i i want to touch on that i think is is really important especially because we have so much division now i mean things have really gotten quite black and white and at least in this country and i guess In many western countries you're with us or you're with them i mean it's just there's not a lot of overlap and this idea that when i look at someone with whom i vehemently disagree and judge that if i can project

myself into their life experience if i was born to their mother in that hospital with that missing or abusive father and so on and so on and so on That i would be making the exact same choices they are right but it's difficult for me to get there because my experience was different right so to find that compassion um but i think that's such a beautiful exercise and it sort of stops i think what we just covered is okay yeah so i'm there but how is that not um you know co-signing or sort of enabling

them to perpetuate however that Experience is manifesting that's negatively impacting so many other people you know it's like how do we forgive someone and still stop them well one thing you can do is to introduce a new element into their circumstances every interaction you have with somebody changes their circumstances so you could take say like a very stingy ungenerous person And you give a gift to them that's important to them that disrupts their view of reality and human nature that yeah everyone's in it for themselves that we live in a world of scarcity that it's

not safe to give and you provide a glaring exception to that In the right moment and it gets under their skin and that data point doesn't fit into their story which means that it is an offering for them to let go of that story not a guarantee that they will but it's an anomaly and and so that's like just a little micro example that's really good that's Really good i i do that on a good day it's one of i don't know where i picked this up uh one of my teachers must have passed this

along to me but you know like you walk into the bank and and you're in a good mood you're just chilling living your life you got to go do the thing transaction and you go up to the counter and the person is just hateful you know just being super super dicky and of course that Well not of course but at times that impulse would be like uh meet them with that right and i've made a practice not perfectly obviously but getting much better at this is just like especially like actually sending that energy field of

love to people it's really easy to do when it's when it's met with a smile and that's what they're automatically giving you but to just like Love the anger out of someone in that situation and almost use it as a as a challenge to myself like can i pattern interrupt this person's negative experience of their life or of me interacting with them can i watch that transmutation happen can i be a willing participant in that micro experience of turning the energy around in in an interaction i love doing this just but not in a um

you know like because you could be like Oh how are you you know you could fake it right and be sort of um what's the word i'm looking for like placating or kind of one-upping someone because you're being more compassionate and they're you know lower on the totem pole of their spiritual evolution or whatever but no but really really doing it and really loving on them and seeing that grimace turn into a smile and i mean it's like who knows what the ripple Effect of that is right they go have a meeting with the manager

and that goes better or they're subordinate or they get home and pick their kids up from school and they're just a little more compassionate and that kid had a hard day and so on and so on so on this ripple effect just of a 1 10 000 of a second decision on my part to just go go that way just lean that way just a hair that's all it takes And i think it's a it's a beautiful uh a beautiful way to live you know it gives us something to work on continually right because it's

never oh yeah that thing yeah i read that in that spiritual book and i did that i passed that stage well no you didn't because you're still in a body right there's still going to be an opportunity to exert that level of unconditional compassion empathy love for the people with whom you interact Yeah it's an orientation i mean most of these interactions will be micro interactions and you know maybe i mean you don't want to like say it's going to you know change someone's life because i smiled at them in the checkout line but but

the more that like those are those micro interactions are also practice For the more significant interactions oh right yeah kind of building that muscle so when it when it's a higher stakes exchange or interaction like familial something like that you're in a divorce now or uh separation of a business partnership and how can you bring the temptation to hold them in a story of right they're deplorable they're horrible It's so strong totally and this it's really like it's a basic form of solidarity you know it's like i refuse to see you as an enemy and

yeah maybe you know circumstances have converged so that we are on opposite sides of something but fundamentally You are you're we're in this together in this drama of life and i'm not going to forget that and i'm constantly making peace offerings constantly making invitations to step into that knowledge of solidarity because our differences of opinion even the ones that erupt into conflict they are based on a delusion All of the conflict that comes from the people on the other side are just horrible that is all based on a lie you have to paint people as

horrible in order to go to war against them and we see in our politics right now both sides painting the other side as horrible you get rid of that okay there so might be differences of opinion but this common agreement That the other side is horrible that both sides share disappears and the agreements the the disagreements are then so easy to resolve because there's not this other agenda of winning you know it's like yeah right i will so this is this is solidarity that if you think that this planet is going to heal That life

is going to improve without solidarity you're gonna be disappointed because this is the nature of the revolution right now so in some of these micro interactions it's hard to know like you know what to do in a situation where someone's just being really rude to you and maybe sometimes you can't reach them but the orientation you're always Attuned to an opportunity and that attunement becomes a habit like you're always looking for the right thing to say and the the willingness and desire to do that generates creativity and spontaneity often taking the form of humor like

when all else fails the deepest common denominator we have is humor Because humor is an offering that it's an invitation to step outside of these roles and opinions that we take so seriously and that's why humor is offensive to highly ideologically committed people right you know the stereotype of the feminist that's not funny you know right like or the you Know it's happening in politics a lot today like yeah like but but so so humor actually you have to actually accept the peace offering to laugh with somebody because really what you're saying is it's not

all that serious and so you step outside the matrix through humor with someone and so that's that's like if i'm you Know at the airport or and you know something like that that's the offering that i that i like to make i mean yeah i like to smile at people you know be polite you know be friendly but uh sometimes it's the it's the humor that makes people feel not alone anymore yeah that it's it's one of my other favorite things to do is to kind of break someone out of their Social role by just

pattern interrupting by saying something that i at least perceive to be funny you know i mean i mean right like airport's a great example right you're at the ticket counter and every person just like ah give me here's the idea you know and not necessarily being outgoing or friendly and just i love when someone's especially in a uniform and i just ignore their whole uniform and just like what's up dude like you Know just talk to them like i would one of my friends or a normal person and have the same sort of lightness and

sense of humor and you can't always do it there's a guy at the ups store over here i've been working on him for a good three months and hi sir how are you oh okay what could i do for you today he sounds like he's like on a tv commercial yeah but i'm standing there right with him and i haven't gotten to him but many others i have where i'm just like hey Man human right here you're a human i see you you don't have to see me but i see you let's have some fun

yeah like you know like just patterning out an invitation break that wrong people can say no to the invitation and you have to be okay with that yeah i guess i'm not because i'm still working on this one but i'll i'll get through them or i won't you know you won't i mean sometimes you know like it's also a bit Of boldness and and holding that solidarity more important than maybe some image you know like one thing that just came to me is like i'm at the juice bar at the airport you know like there's

a juice thing and i'm like yeah don't put pineapple on that please pineapple gives me hemorrhoids did you really want to know that maybe not Never mind i didn't say that like just something like that like it's pretty hard to and you know pretend to be normal like when you you know talk about your swollen hemorrhoids you know like but yeah it's just it's just it's like the creativity that that uh it creativity comes from letting go [Music] And there's sort of a i don't know you can just feel the ease in your nervous system

when when one stops taking themselves that seriously the ability to kind of laugh at yourself without being you know false humility or being self-deprecating or coming from a shame place but really just coming from uh i mean i guess it's just humility right it's like seeing yourself more realistically for who and what you are And where you are and where you aren't kind of um taking some degree of ownership for the good parts about yourself and also acknowledging the things you need to work on right because i used to view humility as like it was

more of the false humility like you give me a compliment i'm like no no no not me i'm not that smart or that talented or whatever you're complimenting me for but That's actually kind of not humility because i'm not just acknowledging uh a truth right it's like not wanting to um play too big or play too small playing small is also kind of a shadow ego thing right it's it's not humble to play small and not be in your full expression but to be in your full expression at the expense of others or in a

self-perceived way of being Superior to others then you lean into ego but somewhere in the middle there is kind of just a loose light-hearted humorous way of being that is always kind of the place i'm wanting to stay as much as i can it's kind of a center line of being on that beam of kind of wearing the world like a loose garment and not taking anything too serious you know including and especially myself You know yeah and i want to just add in one thing here another one of these like really deep patterns that

it will be overturned in this revolution don't take any of what we're saying as a new instruction set about how to be good it's like like okay now i know how to be a good person i'll walk this balance beam you know I'll be compassionate i'll be like that's not the reason we're doing this and really if you excavate this being good what it really means is being acceptable what it really means is getting approval from the internalized parent and the Internalized social group and that craving to be a good person to see really is

to see yourself as a good person is really what the craving is and for others to see you as a good person that comes from a deep-seated self-rejection and history of conditional love that is You know we get it from our our parents along with the unconditional love we get it from society i mean it's endemic in society so that it comes from a wound and to recognize that and to to touch the part of you that doesn't need to be seen as a good person But can trust yourself without that that reward shame bludgeon

that we think we have to use to keep ourselves on that balance beam yeah without that then who do you become can you actually trust yourself without this enforcer it's kind of scary to step into that well it's as you were talking about before with the heart rate that the heart is this soul gps system you use this term but You know it informs the nervous system and the blood and the water in our blood that's carrying information and i know that for myself the closer i can get to following my heart the further i

am i from carrying if i'm fitting what's in some model of what's a good person you know because even if if i'm following my heart and i believe that i was And then um you know there was a i inadvertently offended someone or hurt someone or made a decision that maybe didn't get the outcome that i would have hoped it did all i can really come back to is well i'm pretty sure i was following my heart and that can't be wrong you know it's like that seems to be the the way to avoid um

that perception of Myself as perfect or imperfect good bad right wrong like there's no duality in the heart it's just like go in the heart move forward proceed i mean i was talking to my wife about this morning she was feeling um some guilt around a situation and and i remembered the situation and when it was about to happen she's like my heart's telling me to do this this is what i'm guided to do she Did and then afterward the intellect kind of came in and like ah i think you up and i was reminding

her no no remember this was this was a heart-based decision and you followed that and we have to just trust that ultimately it was you know for all intents and purposes the right decision right and there's there's to absolve her of guilt and that no actually you did something really Courageous and you followed the plan that was given to you by what you perceive to be your heart by intuition by source your higher self call it what you will i think that's a really good way to live because it falls outside of self-perfectionism or spiritual

pride or any of that stuff that baggage and then i guess when you make a mistake and it's revealed that you did You know you uh you amend that however you can you know and maybe maybe you thought you were listening to your heart but there was something else speaking to you and it might have you know got you off track for a minute uh one thing i wanted to cover with you let me let me check the time because i know it's 11 26 a.m right now you have until 12 you said yeah we

can go for Okay another 20 minutes okay perfect so that'll kind of inform where i where i want to go with this um because i do want to ask you yeah there's one thing i definitely want to get to but something that i'm just fascinated by is socially and i guess socio-politically this Reaction to the whole covid situation and really even maybe before that when donald trump ran for president and was elected for president um this strange axis polar shift of uh liberal and conservative sort of mindset and it goes into that cognitive dissonance as

it pertains i guess like the culmination of that is Like the people that are really into the experimental gene therapy and the people that are really not into it right um and growing up in the 70s with a mom who was really liberal born and raised in berkeley i've always thought of myself as a peacenik liberal you know like i don't like war i like um human rights i accept all races sexuality do whatever you want mary you Know what i mean like i have no desire in anyone controlling how someone's live is long as

long as not hurting other people basically um now and also that government should not intervene and trample the rights of people whether under the guise of medical procedures or lack thereof right uh the positions that i take and i try To hold them loosely as we've been discussing maybe imperfectly i think i'm like on the side of a right-wing extremist or something you know if you had to label me as something in today's climate and i see that what is um labeled kind of left or liberal has become somehow aligned with the state and more

totalitarian and authoritative Authoritarian it's just weird i don't know what to make of it and sometimes i just kind of step back and look at social media and and even mainstream media go how did they manage to do this how did this inversion happen and or has it happened is it just me what what's your take on all of that where you have like you know someone who would uh call themselves refer to themselves As a liberal who's saying no it's appropriate for the state and these you know pharmaceutical companies to tell you what to

do with your body and if you don't you're a horrible person and you should die like how did how did we get here how did how did it get flipped and if so who flipped it okay there's there's many tributaries Into the that stream yeah and you're like yeah i probably got 20 more minutes i'm like have a six hour answer no i can i can probably condense it um so yeah part of it is an inversion but part of it is just like everything going into the mixing machine so but it has been pretty

perplexing because like i like you i've always Thought of myself as like i would say even a leftist you know not just a liberal but like a strongly anti-war anti-imperialist anti-colonialist um radical environmentalist leftist who like you is like yeah of course like people should should choose without shame whatever sexual expression that they want you know and of course like Like there should be no discrimination based on race and we have to re-humanize each other et cetera and like all of a sudden um the um label of liberal or left is going toward people who

are accepting with little question the messages of The corporate political complex and you know believing what the intelligence agency's saying and believing what the pharmaceutical companies are saying i'm like hold on i thought that that questioning authority was left you know and the right was supposed to Be authoritarian i'm like i'm confused here why are you calling me me too right winger when i'm doing the same thing i've always done like since when is is like believing the messaging of the pharmaceutical like big pharma big ag big chemical uh embedded in all of the other

bigs the and the captured regulatory agencies and all that stuff like why we all of a sudden so it's it's it's A it's a interesting question and partly it's just that the label the the the concept the category of left has been essentially co-opted and turned into its opposite it's almost like a branding thing it's like yeah let's use brand progressive okay but there's more to it than that another element has to do with with science as an Institution which for most of my life was offered in contradistinction to um right-wing fundamentalist religion which said

god hates gays a woman's place is in the kitchen um was used to justify racism was used to justify social inequality um was um yeah you know biblical fundamentalism Like so that was the choice we were offered and of course as somebody who believed in equality for gay people and for women and for you know all races and so forth it's like yeah i don't want any part of this irrational deluded religion you know science man Science so now that science has been co-opted by and and you know occupied by authoritarian powers they are leveraging

this old distinction and this old identification but there's another aspect even deeper Than that which is the ideology of progress itself and it's in the word progressive which means basically that we are marching toward a more rational more scientific more enlightened society and that the very essence of good government uh and progressive thinking is to do things more scientifically by By using quantity by making quantitative decisions based on measurable costs and benefits by by reducing things to quantifiable values and and and we will and it's related to the mentality of control too that we'll be

able to make a better world if we can label everything And deploy our resources rationally so this is one of the deep solution templates to any problem you find something you can quantify and you control that variable so applied to climate change like how do we solve the ecological crisis find the one thing that everything else hinges on and address that one thing so this mentality of progress is deeply woven Into the ideology of quantity and the science that is built around it because science is fundamentally the study of quantity to put something into scientific

terms you have to quantify it so and there's like this is starting to fall apart like there's like qualitative research and what does that really mean that's a whole other rabbit hole But but so there's this this uh ideology of progress that includes an imperialist aspect like we go to countries go to places in the world where people are superstitious and we edu educate it's progress for us but if you ask them i mean speaking of an indigenous culture that gets decimated by these imperialistic power-hungry resource-hungry Demons uh they're happy the way they are they're

fine or they leave us alone if we weren't if we weren't undermining their way of life yeah i mean like thinking of the amazon right it's like um the people that were living there and are living there probably aren't like we need progress they might seem to be doing just fine before right so there's a missionary aspect to this yeah yeah that is that closely parallels christian Missionaryism in the last century um so as a die-hard anti-imperialist i really question all of this and question the idea that that that the increasing control and quantification of

life which is the domestication of life it's the subduing of the wild and caging it into our categories And our numbers the dominionistic yeah over a very deep pattern so i you know i've questioned that my whole life and i think more and more people are questioning it as science and technology have really failed to deliver their promises life is not qualitatively better than it was when i was a kid and you can even like measure Happiness indicators and stuff like like it is not qualitatively better we were supposed to be in utopia by now

yeah flying cars man flying cars the end of disease you know a rational my father was a political scientist you know oh wow he you know studied in the 50s got his phd in like this early 60s and he was like he was he was absolutely sure it was it was just not even a question That we're going to have amazing enlightened government because the politicians are going to look to the research that we're doing so that they can administer the system better like we're going to bring science to the realm of politics and we're

going to bring it to the realm of of like sociology and psychology and like the the triumphs in the material Realm will now be replicated in the social realm and certainly by the in unbelievably futuristic year of 2020 we're going to have a much more rational society we're gonna engineer all of these social ills out of existence this was like this this Flush of enthusiasm for progress and so there's in like the progressive ideology there's still a clinging to this vision therefore it is very orthodox in the sense that this scientific ideology and the ideal

of a data-driven quantified rational society is The religion of our time that is the orthodoxy of our time and i say it's a religion and this would be another rabbit hole because it is based on metaphysical principles for example that you can reduce everything to number that you can isolate and control variables that you can separate the experimenter from the Experiment or from the experiment fundamentally this is a i'm i won't go any more into that i have stuff written on that but but i guess just to like say the turning which is what revolution

means goes that deep this is the moment it's not just like throw the old people Out and put new people in and it's not only systems change it's mythology change it's the answers to the deepest questions that that we ask as human beings who am i what's real how do i do this why am i here that is what is changing and along with it all of our relationships to each other and especially to other Life that we call nature like the whole division between human and nature that's not sustainable oh my god yeah everything

is changing how much how much of that change you describe is um dependent on a change in the overall level of consciousness of humanity versus is the massive change in consciousness coming As a result of that change is is that a chicken yes before the egg carp for the horse thing it's kind of all one thing right it's a gestalt it's it's it's the human consciousness and the systems that are built on human consciousness are both changing All together and it can't be any other way neither one is necessarily prior to the other like you

you might say that consciousness comes your consciousness comes first and when you change it then your circumstances change but i mean haven't you ever like been put into different circumstances and you find that your consciousness is changing yeah it does go both ways it's it's not An either or because of course like there's always self-referential arrangements that i'm doing while you're talking i'm like oh well how does this relate to me and my past and experiences but yeah there have been times of um benediction right just an up leveling of awareness sense of being understanding

dare i say wisdom and then change externally has been affected yeah like you find yourself a Burning man and i mean i've never been there but or whatever in a similar situation yeah like who you thought you were just does not apply anymore right it's not even relevant and parts of you that have not been visible including a consciousness that has not been visible comes to the surface yeah and conditions are changing now and so people are You know on the one hand afraid of it and trying to stop it and retreat into the familiar

but as reality invades the fortress uh more and more people are are being called into to explore new parts of their consciousness yeah it's the best time ever you know who's the who's the quote from uh it was The best of times it was the worst of times yeah charles dickens thank you yeah yeah i think of that even though i can't never remember who who said it but i'm like yeah because i'll look at just just the most insane uh collective experience that we're having now i mean just all you have to do is

like look at twitter for five minutes and i'm just like wait what This is the worst ever but like subjectively in my own life and you know i guess there's i have some karmic um merit perhaps or grace and some hard work but like if i ignored everything going on in the world that i perceive to be like the worst ever and things are going terribly for humanity in my personal life it's never been better by all measurable metrics like if i had No tv no phone and i was totally cut off from the world

i would be happier than ever been in my life and more successful internally externally every single way so like how do you how do you even hold that that dichotomy you know because i mean it goes like ramana maharshi right and this is the thing i always hit up against when i feel like i see a thing in the world that i don't like and i think it could be better i want to Exert my will over it and change it ramona marshy said don't bother trying to change the world because the world you see

doesn't even exist meaning that everything you see is but a projection of your own consciousness and and your positionality of perception that's actually creating the world that you see now i don't know what the the answer is so just don't do anything but no i'm not yeah uh like i'm not gonna try to entangle that Untangle that because i could interrupt that with paradoxes who is this i whose consciousness is generating the experience right but there's one thing i wanted to to say when you you were saying like you know i don't know why i'm

i'm you know having such a good experience now maybe there's some karma there's some you know Something that i have done and i'm heavily influenced by daoist thinking i spent a lot of my life in taiwan and there's a concept of fortune in [Music] that way of thinking that like sometimes like fate and fortune ming and like things happen to you And you don't try too hard to tame them with explanations which is a kind of a control mindset if i can explain why i'm having a good experience and why he's having chronic disease if

i can reduce that to some choice that i've been making then i'm in control again yeah because i can keep Making that choice and getting the desired out let me figure it all out let me reduce the wildness of this universe to principles so that i can be in control now and i would invite um at least temporarily a release of that for a lot of people and to to greet your good fortune with Gratitude well you know it's funny you say that because there's almost a guilt like even when i was saying like my

life's better than ever i'm like god what about all the people who are really struggling i mean even before the situation we find ourselves in now um but even before that you know the starving kid in bangladesh whatever right it's like oh god it's like that plain small thing i god dare i announce My success and happiness um because it it it's going to hurt someone's feelings or offend them maybe you don't announce it like you just what comes from the gratitude might be that you do you do hold it close and what comes from

it maybe is that you like from gratitude comes generosity gratitude is really taking in that you've received Something that you've received a gift to create a narrative that well i've earned this that's a repudiation of the feeling of gratitude gratitude is scary to feel in a way because the ego says well if i accept that this was a gift then it's not really mine and i need to Give forward and i'm under obligation it scares the ego to feel full gratitude or just uh acknowledging its own impotence and affecting change that's true too right like

i remember trying to get sober and it was like i can do this i can do this you know it's like i just got to try harder just i need more discipline you know more will and it just that failed and then eventually the ego's shell Had to crumble and uh make room for the grace of god literally to come into my life and just go poof you're good yeah maybe you can't do this yeah and then kind of you know after the fact going either at times like yeah i did this you know but

more than anything going okay it's even scarier that i didn't do this i just kind of showed up you know in in in a in a humbled state humiliated and humbled state and something of benediction went poof waved Its magic wand and here i am 25 years later sober you know and i'm not saying that there's no such thing as a choice but even when it's clear that you're that you made a good choice and brought good things to your life and yeah maybe you celebrate having made that choice however there's also the gratitude for

having been in the position to even know that there was a choice to be made And a lot of because most of the choices we make are unconscious so even as you um [Music] hold for somebody that they are not victims of circumstances like this is this is a paradox coming in because we talked before about how people make their choices from the totality of their Circumstances but it's also true that we are not slaves to our circumstances and one way to see the maturation process that's happening today is that we are becoming aware of

our capacity to choose in areas where we had not been aware of it before and we can be allies and brothers and sisters to each Other in reminding each other of this truth of being in choice so what i'm saying is that even our capacity to choose can be greeted with gratitude there's a truth in that and the release the surrender is the surrender of being able to take credit for it Because that's a trap because then the next step is well i'm making these choices and so and so isn't it's i'm better than you

sneaking in through the back door and then you emanate the stink of sanctimoniousness and you become no longer no longer a walking invitation for others to be in choice yeah yeah well i I love what you said before too about the gratitude kind of um facilitating the ability to serve right i mean if if you know that some benefit that's reached you in your life is coming out of an act of grace and maybe you were in the right place at the right time or you made decisions that aligned you um for that experience but

anytime and especially going back to The just the phenomenon of being able to be sober for me all those years ago it's like not that i was even available to be of service and to start caring about other people it's like i had to because i knew there was something that had been done for me that was so miraculous there was i was just was and am continually maybe even more Now than ever compelled to give of myself because i'm going god look at this amazing thing that i've been graced with i just i have

to have other people have that experience you know amazing grace yeah to just be able to play even a minute role in that thing happening that's above and beyond all of us you know just kind of the sound that saved a wretch like me exactly exactly and i mean that's really The i think the one of the fundamental principles of um addiction recovery in the 12 steps obviously it's like take the 12 steps which are just such a fascinating and powerful teaching to arrive here on the planet when they did and the culmination of the

whole 12 things is that now you go out and be of service like that's the goal is to have this spiritual awakening where you're Fulfilled enough that now you can go help other people it's not like at the end of that they're like and now you just chill and get what you want you know and i i love the formulation of the 12 steps in its purest form it's not a prescription of here's what you have to do next it's a description of what happens and it's phrased like that exquisitely Interesting right what's the first

one i realized that i was powerless admitted to my uh admitted to myself that i'm powerless over alcohol and that my life has become unmanageable yes yeah it's it's a description of a process and oh right right i see what you're saying and and so it's not like this is one of the deep traps is to turn everything into a t into a to Do therefore an accomplishment and therefore you know another source of of stress and conditional self-approval and self-righteousness and all that stuff but if you really go to the pure essence of the

12 steps it's a description of a process oh my god you're so right dude this is great yet even though it's just a description of a process it has A potent transformational effect and this goes back to power versus force you don't have to force yourself to go through the process you can trust that when the information comes in the description of the future comes in it's written in the past tense the 12 steps But you can trust when that comes in it works on you you have taken in a medicine and then you find

yourself fulfilling the description wow so true yeah that's such an interesting observation i'm of course thinking of all the other ones like even the next one came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity it's like it's that's this was Always used this always used to kind of bug me in the within a certain perspective of the 12 steps and whatever kind of group it manifests to whatever pathology they're set to address is like people have this um really short-sighted understanding that the steps are like this process that you do

once like i worked the steps people in recovery of and said well i worked The 12 steps and now i'm going off and doing this and that and and thankfully i met people that introduced me to them um in a way that was more this is a lifelong application of spiritual truths the steps work you yeah exactly the steps work you exactly and that there's no it's not like there's no point at which like oh i finished the steps like there's not a being done with them because like you just take that one came to

believe like Well there's no ending to that right it's like it's an ongoing process or step 11 sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with god asking uh only for uh his will for me and the power to carry that out i mean how do you do that's not a done no that's a doing this right sought what is sodding saudi and seeking well it's not really seeking like you did it it's sought as an ongoing thing i don't Know it's the naming of something that's already true ah okay but just because

it's already true doesn't mean that it's active like the naming of something already true that then paradoxically makes it true that's called prophetic speech and the 12 steps have a very strong quality of prophetic speech wow so cool god i didn't know we were going to get to This i feel like we could do another one sometime we just like dive into the steps they're so it's so interesting there's a technology inherent in the 12 steps and and you know i don't want to to be like in a like it's just an example of a

much broader technology that accomplishes things without pushing this is another one of the Metaphysical foundations of science that things only happen if you make them happen if you push on a mass it will move and if you don't push on it it will not move all by itself so so the technology of force is a realm that can only accomplish certain things and we're talking about a much more powerful kind of technology Where you don't have to push but something happens i'm going back step three made a decision to turn my will and my life

over to the care of god as i understand him right it's like what did i do i just made a decision how long does it take to make a decision that fast right it's it's really it's fascinating i mean i've looked at it from this perspective But so imagine a different lens imagine what a society or civilization would look like if we took that kind of technology as our guiding light as fundamental if we built a society around that rather than the technologies of force we are no longer then at Odds with the universe we

are no longer in opposition to creation seeking to impose our intelligence onto a world that we think has none but we've become participants in the creative process it's a it's a total revolution in human beingness well also within the 12-step movement is that are the 12 traditions right sometime after the deployment of these 12 steps and some of the literature in Order for the groups to start forming there were certain principles that were imbued within those groups like autonomy and one can't control the other and you can do whatever you want as long as you

don't with aaa as a whole and and no one can get famous no one can get rich it's never profitable it had this um i don't know sort of insurance policy built into it of other troops that were related more to the group versus the individual As the steps pertain more to the individual it's it's fascinating and if you look at um just the fact that aaa and and the 12 steps in general uh whatever group they they take form in have really never been corrupted you know like there's not many things that eventually don't

get up because of egoic uh yeah just the whole thing it's it's kind of just it's just it's there in its Little church basements and does what it's supposed to do and like i think people do misunderstand it you know and misapply it and stuff and turn it into a to-do list and all that kind of stuff but but it's it's spiritual essence is still there and yeah and you know some of the foundational texts like there's one just for today yeah i'm familiar with it because my my amazing Wonderful former wife was an addict

and there was a time when she was working that book um and i saw its power you know like some of so some of the foundational texts are like i mean they're scripture i i agree i mean it changed my life you know i mean that was the absolute what really is like the i think the foundation of everything That i am and everything i do although i've you know gone off and gone to india and done all these other things plant medicines even um but still there's just kind of a core of those truths

that just never fail you right open-mindedness humility willingness making amends prayer meditation service i mean they're they're not like out of the 12 steps they just happen to be put together in a way that There's kind of a logical order to them and they build something they build um a character within you you know and it's like any time i'm off it's because i veered away from those truths right it's like oh how do i get back on last point go back to the truths you know because they're just universal and um and they work

yeah so thank you for kind of bringing us there um it's 11 59 so all right i think we're about on time there's so many more things i want to Talk to you about so we're gonna uh i would love to do a part two at some point um because i mean the people that well the people that don't know of your work will now know it you know by the time they've listened to this but the people that do i think what they enjoy about you is just your way of thinking and when you

verbalize the way that you think it's just fascinating and it um evokes i think more thinking for those that are Reading your work your books your essays hearing you on other podcasts a podcast you put out whenever i hear you talk or read your writing it's like oh never thought of it that way cool it's just a really unique gift you have and thank you for sharing it with us well thank you for for appreciating it and seeing it and yeah i'd like to uh do this again sometime when the vortex Of austin sucks me

back in yes be happening more and more good i'm glad to hear that yeah i'd love to um discuss with you two other things which we for sure don't have time for and that is next time to just put a pin in this how psychedelics have informed your worldview and your work and i'd also really like to talk to you about um your worldview and perspective that you've shared here today and how that pertains to parenting yeah i would love to do That you know be really cool because i i'm hoping to be a parent

and realize like i know nothing about it you know so i always i always tend to talk about things on the show that i personally want to learn about i know right now you know we really man we've got an opportunity here to kind of create um a template and we can do a whole thing on parenting because yeah let's do that something that i've you know i'm assuming you have to be Pretty good at it by now because you're really bright guy and a very conscious guy and you've got a few kids so i'm

like oh i bet he's made lots of mistakes that i've learned from so yeah yeah i would love to shorten the learning curve for others cool man yeah okay great um one last question for you who have been three teachers or teachers don't ask me to make three three lists of three things you know my teachers of my most important Teachers have been people who are utterly unknown okay and they teach me by through love um they're the invisible people the humble people and but to tell you that i would have to tell their stories

yeah so i can't just name names okay i love that that's maybe The best answer ever and i know exactly what you mean you know it's the uh it's the enlightened master that comes to fix your toilet and you just look them in the eyes and you go oh yeah they have it i've had that happen so many times in my life right you know i meet someone or great souls come and do thankless work yeah yeah unlike me i mean you know people are always telling me how Important my work is and stuff but

but yeah you know not like when my wife and i were um living in l.a we had this lovely woman that we used to pay to come clean the house and um she was the happiest person i have ever met in my life or that i've you know been around a number of times i'm sure i've walked by someone and they have a big smile oh they look happy but She she had the game figured out you know what i mean i don't know exactly what she did but she was so full of joy and

gratitude and she just lit up the room we were so excited for her it's like just come over and sit on the couch don't even do any work just be here your energy is so contagious and so beautiful and um that's what i'm talking about yeah it was a great lesson in because i I might look at it like this i could um sort of project an experience on her and go oh man poor lady she's over here clean our house like god that's gotta suck and again back to that perspective apparently for her based

on you know her gratitude graciousness the joy that she exuded she loved it and she would tell me how much pride she took in her work and how she loved being in these beautiful homes and all of her Clients were such great people including us and she is living the dream but i project my experience onto that like oh my god i would kill myself if i had to go around and clean houses all day you know so yeah i totally get that sometimes our teachers are unassuming and even more profound than the ones that

we see on stage or you know read a book by so thank you speaking of books uh tell Us where we can find uh your books website all that stuff the internet the internet um my most recent essays are all on substack it's charles eisenstein dot sub stack or sub stack dot charles eisenstein something like that and those are linked on your website too sort of yeah charles eisens my websites have been in disarray but but charles eisenstein.org is that that's right okay Because i was researching some of your writing and i found links to

them on there i mean i dug a little bit but it wasn't that hard to find so thanks man thanks for coming by and taking the time i know you're on your way to the airport here soon i appreciate you carving out a a monday morning really set my week off to a great start yeah my pleasure is great great to get to know you too yeah Yeah likewise [Music]