Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #30: Building Whole Foods — John Mackey on Health, Spirituality, and Capitalism

Transcript

#30: Building Whole Foods — John Mackey on Health, Spirituality, and Capitalism · Love Conquers Fear

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  Once AI kicks up, we're going to be a double digit GDP growth.
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  It's going to be incredible what it's going to do to the economy.
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  But people are afraid. They go, they turn to fear.
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  It's like, how will I cope? Will I be able to do this?
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  I said. The reality is that you won't
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  have to do much of anything. Our thought patterns are so
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  habitual, so ingrained in US. Fear, anger, judgement, envy,
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  resentment, righteous indignation are all tricks of
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  the ego to keep us trapped. America's the fattest country in
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  the world. We eat a terrible diet.
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  It's like the fact our foods are being engineered to keep us in
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  an addictive state. And the food industry's smart.
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  They're giving people what they want, calorie density.
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  I realized later that what I was doing with Whole Foods, in a
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  way, I was just trying to help people be healthier.
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  We invited our sickest team members to go through a process,
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  a A1 week retreat, and we saw people make amazing progress in
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  just a week. If you stop poisoning the body,
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  it's amazing the resilience. It starts to heal itself and
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  many people never look back to change their lives.
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  But more people fell back. I saw people lose 100 lbs in a
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  year and get healthy and then go all the way back down because
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  food addictions are very deep so we crave all the macro
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  nutrients. Literally many people would
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  rather die and change the way they eat.
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  Hi everyone, welcome back to Love Conquers Fear.
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  I continue to work my way through Rick Rubin's book, The
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  Creative Act Absolutely amazing, amazing book.
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  Highly, highly recommended. And thanks again to my friend
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  Jeff Birmingham for that. Jeff is going to be on the
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  podcast soon and we actually are planning a ski trip together.
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  We're going to do that on the slopes, which would be quite
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  fun. First podcast episode on the
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  slopes today. I'm very, very excited to have
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  one of my best friends with me who's been a just a huge, huge
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  influence on me over the years, over well over a decade now.
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  So welcome, John Mackey. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
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  So happy to have you here. So gosh, so much to cover with
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  you. So little time.
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  Yeah, so little time. So I've, I've learned so much
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  about you on the spiritual front and you've really helped me a
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  lot with that path. Most recently, you know, you
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  haven't seen these episodes yet because they haven't gone live,
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  but I've been talking a lot about Love is Letting Go of Fear
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  by Jerry Jim Polsky. And thank you again for that
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  gift, for recommending that we were at Casa de Luz when you
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  when you recommended that book. I I think it's because the title
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  your podcast is love Conquers Fear.
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  You know, we think about is love at war with, is love at
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  conquering fear or is it just sort of letting it go or
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  transcending it? Yeah, Yeah.
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  Well, it, it definitely helped me.
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  There's a lot of ways to to interpret, you know, what is it?
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  What does that mean? Why did that book move you so
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  much? I mean, I know you've, you've,
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  you've really spent a lot of time on a course of miracles.
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  Well, I think that's why, I mean, I first started studying
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  the Course of Miracles way back when I was a young man back in
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  in 1984. And that's been my primary
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  spiritual path ever since. And I think Jan Polsky get some
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  of the key principles of the course, where the course is well
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  worth studying. And it's it's, it's it's a non
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  dualistic system. It's channeled by Jesus and it's
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  incredible. But you have to be, you have to
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  dedicate yourself to this system because it they don't, they
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  deliberately do not make it. It's not really about simple
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  concepts. They're out to change the whole
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  structure of the way you think. And so it's a process.
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  But Jampolsky takes some of the good ideas.
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  Mind you, I haven't read that book in more than 30 years.
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  So but it's a great book and it's it gets it gets it
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  crystallizes love and for you know, important aspects of
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  forgiveness. Fear is there's only two
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  ultimately 2 emotions, love and fear and you.
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  Can't really hold them at the same time, you know, as he
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  points out in the book. Well, you can't There, there,
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  there are literally opposites, right?
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  Right. So I'm glad you enjoyed the
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  book. Yeah, I've loved it.
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  I've read it twice, which isn't it was just in a big feat
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  because it's only, it's only about a 2 1/2 hour listen on
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  Audible. It's kind of funny on Audible
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  because the first hour and a half is just him being
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  interviewed on the book. Is that right to make it longer
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  only? Be about an hour without the
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  interviewer. Right.
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  Exactly. Yeah, But I love the exercises
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  in it. You know, one of the one of the
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  exercises he has is, let's say you're going up to, you know,
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  meet with a lawyer and that lawyer super, super rude to you.
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  And you're just like kind of struck by it.
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  And your natural reaction is to react with anger, like I'm going
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  to get back at him and judgement.
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  And instead, if you react with love and curiosity, like what
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  happened, you know, maybe his mom just passed away.
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  Maybe he just got yelled at by someone.
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  You know, what was what was really going on?
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  And he tells the story of a lawyer who he had that situation
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  with. And it was the first time that
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  someone reacted to this lawyer with love.
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  And he was kind of struck by it. And he's like, I'm not really
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  sure if I if I got through to him.
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  And then the next day he was doing a seminar.
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  And in the third row was that lawyer whose eyes met.
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  And he's like, what are you? What are you here for?
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  And he said, well, I want to see what you're all about because
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  nobody had reacted to me that way.
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  And to this day, they're still close friends.
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  He became the mentor of such. You know, sometimes I, I'm, I
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  like to play games, I like to gamify things.
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  And sometimes I take it, I just take it as a personal challenge
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  when somebody is in a, in that kind of angry state or they're
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  attacking me and judging me and the game is, am I going to let
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  them take me down and trigger me to get me angry and upset?
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  Or can I, through extending love and forgiveness, can I lift them
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  out of their anger state? And, and, and obviously, if they
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  take me and trigger me, I lost the game.
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  But if I stay in my heart and kind and compassionate, I'll win
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  the game if I can shift them and we'll call it a draw if I stay
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  in my love space and they stay in their anger judgement space.
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  But you often times can make people help people make a shift
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  when we just are are there and and and not judging them, but
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  forgiving them and and putting forth genuine care and
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  compassion towards them. People generally, most of the
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  time they do respond to it. Right, right you.
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  Know who really can respond to it quickly or children, is it
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  one of the best ways when children are having a a tantrum
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  or something like that is, is to distract them in some way.
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  And often times they're not feeling good about themselves.
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  And, and I sometimes not like I was with a little boy who was
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  only 6 or 7 and he had just lost a soccer game and we were going
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  to, we're going to lunch afterwards with the family.
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  And he was still really down because he was the best player
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  on his team. He, he, he scored all the goals
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  their team got in slack football.
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  And, and, and he was still moping and really down.
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  And, and so his name is, is Jace.
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  And I just said, Hey, Jace, want to play a game?
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  He perked up immediately because children went to play.
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  I said, OK, see all the silverware here?
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  I want you to take that big fork and I want you to stick a spoon
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  through there. And I and then we started to
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  build like a Jenga thing. And it's like every time he
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  could get another piece of silverware there or cutlery
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  there that wouldn't, you know, collapse the the thing he was,
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  he would he was winning the game.
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  It completely took him out of his funk and, and, and his own
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  low self esteem from losing the game because I'm, I'm cheering
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  him on. I'm applauding him.
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  I'm saying Jace, that's amazing. That's incredible.
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  Look what you've done. And he and everybody in the
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  table now is paying attention to Jace.
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  He's completely let that energy that he had about, you know,
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  losing that game. And now he's, he's winning
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  again. He feels good about himself.
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  So chalk that one up to call that a win.
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  Well, I'll, I'll chalk one up personally.
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  I remember when Rachel, our daughter, was speaking at the
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  Conscious Capitalism Summit and you saw her and you saw that she
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  was really nervous and not to go on.
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  And what did you say to her? I don't remember.
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  Well, you said, hey, I get the same way.
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  Oh, yeah. And then I know when I go up
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  there that I'm going to do great.
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  Yeah. And he's like, in the same
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  thing. You, you were like the same
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  thing is going to happen to you. I might have.
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  I probably told her, I said, you know, when you are nervous like
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  this, you've actually activated a huge amount of energy.
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  Now you can direct that energy to be more creative, funnier,
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  better connection with the audience, or you can let it
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  paralyze you. Use it.
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  Use that energy that your anxiety is creating to knock it
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  out of the park here to do a really, really good, really good
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  job. And she did.
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  She did a really fantastic. Yeah, she really did.
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  That was that was one of my proudest daddy moments.
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  I remember that. Really.
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  Well, Rachel's pretty extraordinary.
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  I think you've had a lot of those moments.
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  She is, but I do have to I do have to tell you a a neat
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  milestone. So it was at Tulane University
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  recently for Parents Weekend and Rachel was presenting her last
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  project for a entrepreneurship class for start up that she's
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  founded with with four other young women.
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  And she didn't look at notes. There were no notes.
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  You told her that was my one feedback to her.
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  Don't read it. She speak from the heart.
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  She spoke from the heart. It was completely clear that she
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  was passionate about the idea. It's pretty cool idea.
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  It's called Closet Collective. It's for students to basically
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  put their clothes on loan for events like different balls and
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  different sorority events instead of buying all those
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  clothes. So it's a very it's kind of a
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  hyper local type of business. But never never looked at the
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  notes. So I thought that was so cool.
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  You know, one of the stories that really stands out to me and
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  the whole story in terms of. Book.
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  What's that? My book, your book, The whole
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  story. Yeah, Yeah.
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  Which I love is, is the story about the flood.
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  I would love you to tell that story because that was that was
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  such an expression of love in the community.
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  Well, the story of the flood for Whole Foods Market, we had just
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  opened up the first Whole Foods Market was my second store
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  because I have a smaller one called Safer Way, but we
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  relocated that and change the name to Whole Foods Market.
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  So, and we open that up in September of 1980.
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  And then that just took off. It was a, one of the first
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  natural food supermarkets in the United States and we believe
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  that within the first six months it had become the highest volume
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  natural food store in the United States.
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  It was a, it was a huge success right from the beginning.
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  And then on Memorial Day 1981, we had we we built that, we
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  built our store in the flood zone and 100 year flood zone.
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  And I remember talking to the landlord about it when the and
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  he was telling, he said, you know, John, I want it Full
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  disclosure, your store is going to be in the 100 year flood
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  zone. And his name was Ben Powell.
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  He he had been in, he'd been in, he's an attorney and he'd been
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  in LB JS administration. So that's where date this guy
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  that to that. And and I said, what does that
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  mean? He's actually 100 year flood
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  zone. He says, well, son, it means
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  about every 100 years there's going to be a flood, showcrease
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  can overflow its banks. It's going to come down Lamar
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  St. and you're going to have 8 feet of water in your store.
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  And I, well, I said that's serious stuff, like when was the
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  last time that happened? He said, well, it was before I
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  was born. It was over 70 years ago.
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  It was like 7 years ago. That seemed like pretty good
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  odds. And I said, well, I still want
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  to do the store. And he said, OK, tell you what
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  we're going to do, just to be on the safe side, we're going to
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  put a 1 foot slab down, additional slab down.
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  So if the water does come up, it will it'll stay out of your
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  store for at least the first foot.
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  And so on Memorial Day 1981, that was a Sunday, Memorial Day
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  was the next day. So this was the night before
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  Memorial Day had been raining awesome, getting heavy
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  thunderstorms for days. And then we had a really, really
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  bad one where several inches of rain came in and and our store
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  was completely flooded. We had a 88 feet of water.
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  My my Co founder, my girlfriend at that time, Renee, she was
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  closing the store down and she literally swam out of the store.
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  So why this flood is such an important thing?
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  It was an awakening to me in so many different ways.
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  Because we thought we were, we thought we were bankrupt.
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  We were bankrupt. Let's be clear, we everything we
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  had was in the store and it literally just washed out and
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  the city wouldn't let us use any of the inventory.
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  It was all condemned and whatever remained was thrown
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  out. Most of our fixtures were
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  ruined. We had to replace the equipment,
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  the cash registers, everything was wrecked and and we just
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  didn't have the resources to to get back open again.
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  But I remember that the day after the flood, all Memorial
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  Day, I come in to start helping to clean up and they're all
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  these people helping us clean up.
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  I mean, our team members were there, but then there were
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  people that I sort of recognized, but they wouldn't
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  work for us. And I went up to one of them and
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  his name was Larry. And I said, so Larry, why are
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  you helping us clean up the store?
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  And he said, oh, John, I love whole feeds market.
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  I mean, I live just up the up the hill here and, and you guys
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  have changed my life and I work a bunch of the your neighbors
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  are here helping clean up because we just don't want you
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  to die. And it was like, whoa, that's
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  incredible. And several of them continue to
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  come back and work with us, you know, until we got the store
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  back open again. So our customers are beginning
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  to realize our customers love us.
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  Then our team members, they worked for free because we
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  couldn't pay them and we did eventually pay them once we got
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  open. But sure, that was 30 days
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  later, and who knew if we were going to be able to get open
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  again, our our suppliers fronted us more inventory, although we
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  still owed them for the last inventory they'd given us, sent
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  to us. Our bank loaned us additional
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  money on on my signature, which I'll point out was pretty much
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  worthless. And I found out later that the
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  bank had turned the loan down. If I was going to do the longer
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  version of the story, I'm going to make a shortcut here that the
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  bank had turned us down, but the banker had personally guaranteed
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  it. Yeah.
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  And and I said, well, why would he do that?
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  And he said he he just really likes you guys.
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  He said, I know these guys will pay us back.
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  I know John Mackie will pay, pay us back, pay me back if it takes
• 15:30
  the rest of his life. And and then our investors put
• 15:33
  in more capital. It was like we didn't have
• 15:36
  language for stakeholders and that language had not been
• 15:38
  created back in. There was no concept.
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  There was no concept with. Stakeholders.
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  But, but that's what it was. These people all had a stake in
• 15:48
  the business. They all loved Whole Foods
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  Market. They did not want us to die.
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  And that ended up transforming the way I thought about
• 15:57
  business. I began to see it more as a, as
• 15:59
  a holistic interconnected set of relationships between all of
• 16:03
  these stakeholders who were trading with the business for
• 16:06
  mutual gain, for their own self-interest, but also then all
• 16:09
  the other stakeholders were benefiting as well.
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  So that's the basis of, of business rightly understood and
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  it's the basis of capitalism rightly understood.
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  It's, it's sort of, it's not a 0 sum game or somebody's winning
• 16:22
  if somebody else is losing that we tend to view business and
• 16:26
  capitalism through the eyes of competition.
• 16:28
  But rightly understood competition is important because
• 16:31
  it helps business improve. That's one of the problems with
• 16:33
  government. When you when you go to
• 16:34
  socialism there, there's no competition to make it get
• 16:39
  better, right. And so it doesn't get better.
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  It just gets bureaucratic and then it gets inefficient and
• 16:46
  resources get wasted. So anyway, I began to to realize
• 16:51
  that it also felt like, wow, we owe these people.
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  They saved us. In some ways.
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  I've kind of been was paying them back till I left Whole
• 16:59
  Foods three years ago and retired that we were paying them
• 17:02
  back for their, for the love of the company.
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  And we love them as well. And love became sort of a big
• 17:07
  part of what Whole Foods is about.
• 17:09
  Yeah. You know that that that story
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  is, I mean, it really moves me in the book.
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  And I know that to to to be there and see, that must have
• 17:19
  just been transcendent because because you would have, I mean,
• 17:23
  would you, you wouldn't have expected that at all, right?
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  You would have thought, well, it's just over.
• 17:28
  Yeah, I thought it was over. I spent that night, you know,
• 17:33
  with the other Co founders. We hung out a long time at the,
• 17:38
  at the, the, the water came up high and then it receded.
• 17:43
  And so that it didn't stay, the flood came in and then the flood
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  went out. And so we're out there cracked
• 17:48
  open bottle of wine or some beer and like someone is passing a
• 17:52
  joint around and we just said, what kind of what are we going
• 17:55
  to do next? And I remember Craig Wallace
• 17:57
  said, what do you mean we're going to do next?
• 17:58
  We're going to clean up the store and get back open.
• 17:59
  And, but I was skeptical that time.
• 18:02
  I was thinking, well, you know, maybe I wasn't meant to be a
• 18:04
  grocer. I was thinking maybe Renee and I
• 18:06
  will hitch hike around Europe and had another adventure.
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  So it made me, it made me really think things through.
• 18:18
  And Craig was right. We, you know, we put our head,
• 18:22
  put our heads down, worked hard and got it back home and again.
• 18:24
  And we never looked back. Except that also spurred Whole
• 18:27
  Foods to want to grow, want to get that second store so that we
• 18:31
  wouldn't be so vulnerable to a disaster like this again.
• 18:34
  Yeah, yeah. In other words, that 100 year
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  flood, it happened in our very first year, right?
• 18:39
  Right. No, I know.
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  I mean. I wonder whether that was, I
• 18:41
  remember really well the way it was supposed to be, so to speak.
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  Yeah, because we did survive, and it changed us for the
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  better. Yeah, well, you know that I'm a
• 18:49
  huge fan of the book The Celestine Prophecy.
• 18:52
  We talked about that and and the synchronicity.
• 18:55
  So, you know, from a spiritual standpoint, how do you look at
• 18:59
  that moment now, you know? My spiritual beliefs are that
• 19:05
  that we're we're living in a dream.
• 19:07
  This is a dream that we're collectively dreaming this
• 19:11
  universe and the multiverse and that was part of part of our
• 19:18
  dream. I don't know why we dream that
• 19:22
  or what what the intentionality of it was.
• 19:25
  I don't think it was an accident and I don't think, I mean, I
• 19:29
  think you learn your lessons from what happens, but I don't.
• 19:31
  And I learned lessons which I've already shared about
• 19:34
  stakeholders and wanting to expand and paying back the the
• 19:39
  different constituencies and stakeholders invested.
• 19:41
  But I don't spend a lot of time thinking about because
• 19:46
  ultimately dreams aren't that important.
• 19:48
  And they just like when you wake up from a dream at night, it's
• 19:51
  like, oh, well, OK, it wasn't real at all.
• 19:54
  I think this isn't really real either.
• 19:56
  So it's really about, I think, waking up, going back, going
• 20:01
  back to the source, going back to love, and then the universe
• 20:05
  will disappear. And So what what do you look at
• 20:10
  as real? Like when when someone has a
• 20:12
  near death experience, you know, like Evan Alexander, he calls
• 20:15
  that the ultra real, like what he experienced in that
• 20:19
  transcendent experience. He's going to be he's going to
• 20:21
  be on the podcast. The Proof of Heaven is one of my
• 20:24
  favorite books in this whole spiritual journey I've been on.
• 20:29
  Like if you just really focus on the dream metaphor, the dream
• 20:33
  seem very real when we're in them and we're sleeping them.
• 20:37
  But when you have a a lucid dream, lucid dream is 1 where
• 20:41
  you wake up in the dream and realize you're dreaming.
• 20:45
  Well I've woken up, I understand that I'm dreaming.
• 20:49
  So then it's about, OK, the dream is being manifested
• 20:54
  through all, all of my all of my unconsciousness.
• 21:00
  And so part of it's beautiful and loving and part of it is a
• 21:04
  manifestation of fear and guilt, anger on the unconscious mind,
• 21:08
  the initial belief that you could ever separate from God.
• 21:12
  That separated us into what seems to be a dualistic universe
• 21:16
  with with with opposites. Love, fear, up, down, male,
• 21:22
  female, yin, Yang, good, evil. They're all of these dualities.
• 21:27
  And that's how the dream is is manifesting.
• 21:32
  So what I'm trying to do is practice forgiveness with
• 21:37
  everyone I encounter instead of judging them.
• 21:41
  Practice forgiveness. I mean, the ego so much wants to
• 21:44
  judge everybody and it's so much wants to blame others for
• 21:48
  problems and mistakes. And that's how it maintains its
• 21:53
  its seeming reality and it keeps us in a sense, trapped in this
• 21:58
  dream. So to me, it's all about waking
• 22:00
  up from the dream being, being present, loving everyone that
• 22:04
  you encounter, love everyone all the time, no exceptions, and
• 22:08
  trying the best you can to stay conscious in the moment.
• 22:12
  The good news is, is that we forget this.
• 22:15
  That's not the good. We forget it.
• 22:16
  But then in the next moment we can remember and we, and when we
• 22:20
  remember, we can remember that love is the only reality that
• 22:24
  God is love. And, and we're, we're going back
• 22:27
  to that source. And this dream that I'm in is,
• 22:31
  is gradually getting better, becoming a happier dream because
• 22:35
  I am more kind and loving than I was, you know, that I used to
• 22:40
  be. So and, and, and so, and the
• 22:42
  people that I'm interacting with are, are becoming more kind and
• 22:45
  loving and compassionate as well.
• 22:47
  And when I run into somebody who's not that way, that's also
• 22:52
  something in my dream. And that's why I talked about
• 22:54
  the game that I was playing to to that's how to shift that
• 22:58
  energy. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:59
  I've noticed that the more I've really leaned into the spiritual
• 23:04
  path and and leaned into love, the more I can help heal others.
• 23:09
  Yes, exactly. And that's a that's a beautiful,
• 23:12
  beautiful. There is to be just to.
• 23:14
  Be clear, there is no other. There's only the one being.
• 23:17
  There is that's that's the hardest thing to understand that
• 23:21
  that we are all brothers and sisters because we are all the
• 23:24
  one being. We are all children.
• 23:25
  Fragmented are appearing to be fragmented and that's that's
• 23:30
  that's the game we've set up here, so to speak, the dream
• 23:33
  that we're living. And so I think we're
• 23:35
  collectively waking up from that dream together because we all
• 23:39
  are that manifestation of that one being.
• 23:41
  Right, right. Yeah.
• 23:43
  You know, one of the things in the whole story is you start out
• 23:46
  chapter 1, you start out with your psychedelic experience that
• 23:50
  got you over the fear of launching Whole Foods and and.
• 23:55
  I don't know about that, but it it, it, it definitely, yeah.
• 24:00
  I mean it. Yes, partly.
• 24:02
  But it it told you, we're all walking.
• 24:04
  Right, yes, it gave me the the courage to go forward even I
• 24:10
  mean, so I saw that there was nothing to be afraid of, right?
• 24:13
  That doesn't mean I haven't forgotten it from time to talk.
• 24:15
  Right, of course. Yeah, I can't say that I've got
• 24:17
  a perfect track record of not being for, but that part moved
• 24:22
  me. And you know, one of the things
• 24:24
  that people have told me as a result of this podcast is like,
• 24:27
  wow, Brett, like I can't believe you're so being so brave.
• 24:29
  You're like talking about when you view psychedelics, etcetera.
• 24:32
  And I'm like, I don't feel like I'm being brave at all.
• 24:35
  I just feel like I'm being authentic.
• 24:37
  Like to to withhold that is to not be honest with people about
• 24:43
  how I've had deep experiences with God and the oneness of
• 24:48
  everything and the fact that we're all connected.
• 24:50
  Also, if you withheld it, I mean probably you withhold it because
• 24:54
  you were afraid in some form. Well, for sure.
• 24:56
  No, if I don't have the ability for love to conquer my own fear,
• 24:59
  then I'm just a hypocrite. That's why it's great about
• 25:02
  you're doing this podcast because it's truly true that you
• 25:06
  we all teach what we are trying to learn.
• 25:09
  So yes, I really am trying to teach love because that's what
• 25:13
  I'm learning. And it's, you have to practice
• 25:16
  it to change your mind is it's not easy to do it.
• 25:21
  Our thought patterns are so habitual, so ingrained in us.
• 25:24
  We also have an ego that is afraid.
• 25:27
  If you fully wake up, the ego disappears, which it does.
• 25:30
  So the ego is very determined to keep us sort of running around
• 25:37
  relying on the ego. Fear, anger, judgement, envy,
• 25:41
  resentment, righteous indignation, blah, blah, blah,
• 25:44
  blah, blah are all sort of tricks of the ego to keep us
• 25:48
  trapped. Yeah.
• 25:49
  Well, you know, you refer to it as a game, that you're playing a
• 25:53
  game. And I feel like there's a big
• 25:56
  cosmic game going on where the more that our amygdala is
• 26:02
  attempted to be hijacked. Like it it is, you know, I love
• 26:07
  capitalism and you know, I love capitalism.
• 26:10
  We've talked a lot about that and I want to get into that.
• 26:12
  But but like we're under assault.
• 26:14
  Like, you know, the, the media algorithms are constantly trying
• 26:18
  to keep this in a state of fear. The, the social media algorithms
• 26:23
  are also trying to keep this in a state of fear because we can
• 26:26
  click, click, click, click, click.
• 26:27
  If we're if we're in a fearful state, it's like we're more
• 26:30
  likely to take an action. You know, in the Jason Carp
• 26:36
  episode, episode 3, we covered all the toxins, like the fact
• 26:40
  our foods are being engineered to keep us in an addictive
• 26:45
  state. And then there's the
• 26:46
  pharmaceutical complex, which is then pushing Ozempic and these
• 26:51
  other, you know, medicines, these antidepressants which are
• 26:55
  keeping us in an addictive state on that.
• 26:58
  Why are you dreaming that stuff? It's just the truth.
• 27:01
  It's the reality. It's.
• 27:03
  A dream. It's not real.
• 27:05
  Nothing here is really real. Yeah, Yeah.
• 27:08
  But don't you, don't you think Cosmic Game is to be able to
• 27:12
  like wake up internally so that you can almost be like Neo and
• 27:16
  The Matrix and say I'm not going to be manipulated by all this?
• 27:20
  But yes, but as you, there's a, the course has a lot of the
• 27:26
  course of miracles has a lot of great sayings.
• 27:29
  And one of the sayings that I really like is I'm not the
• 27:32
  victim of the world I see. So as you focus on all those
• 27:36
  things that you see that you believe are wrong, that those,
• 27:40
  there's no getting around it, those are judgments that you end
• 27:43
  up making and that keeps you in that place of.
• 27:50
  So it's like forgiveness is the exact opposite.
• 27:53
  I forgive them for making these toxins.
• 27:56
  I forgive them for creating these pharmaceutical drugs.
• 28:02
  I for and you and you just keep practicing forgiveness.
• 28:05
  It's the course is not about it's not about changing the
• 28:11
  world because the world's not real.
• 28:13
  It'd be it's that'd be changing the dream.
• 28:17
  The course is about changing your mind.
• 28:19
  That's changing about how you see the world and not as a a
• 28:24
  place of fear where all these terrible things are going on.
• 28:27
  It's like you people that focus on all the things that are going
• 28:32
  wrong. They, they, they get, they get
• 28:35
  angry, they get upset, they, they want to blame somebody
• 28:39
  they're judging and they're attacking and they're and
• 28:41
  they're and that's reinforcing, you might say a bad dream, a
• 28:45
  nightmare. So, so I'm, I'm taking my
• 28:48
  hypothesis is from the course of miracles is, is that I, I'm not
• 28:53
  trying to change other people. They may change themselves.
• 28:56
  I might have an influence on somebody great.
• 28:58
  I'm just trying to love everybody all the time, no
• 29:00
  exceptions. I am trying to be to do as much
• 29:03
  good as I can do, but without getting bogged down in, in
• 29:08
  judging everybody else for being different or doing it.
• 29:13
  They're not way I think they should do it.
• 29:15
  My philosophy gets attacked, you might say from like what?
• 29:17
  He doesn't care and he's trying to transcend all this terrible
• 29:21
  things out there. I'm just trying to change the
• 29:24
  dream I'm experiencing and how I interpret what is happening to
• 29:28
  me. And I believe that.
• 29:29
  So if you have the Volt, like, you know, that question you
• 29:32
  were, you ask your guest, your podcast about, you know, is
• 29:36
  humanity going to make it? Yeah.
• 29:38
  And and yeah. What do you think?
• 29:40
  Well, what I always say is this like, well, the John Mackey
• 29:43
  you're talking to today, he's going to make it.
• 29:46
  There may be other John Mackey's that are that are at Armageddon
• 29:50
  with you, but this one that you're talking to right now is
• 29:52
  not going to be there because that's not the dream I'm
• 29:56
  manifesting. So, but I do believe in the
• 29:59
  multiverse that every possibility sort of realized and
• 30:02
  they're all these different versions of, so to speak, John
• 30:04
  Mackey and Brett Heard and and so.
• 30:07
  This is the Everett. This is the dream.
• 30:08
  That's not the dream. I am moving in towards a happier
• 30:12
  and happier dream of abundance. And yes, there'll be problems
• 30:16
  and I will try to be a force for good in the world as much as I
• 30:19
  can, but not not coming from the motivation of anger and judgment
• 30:25
  and self righteousness. I have the way you guys are all
• 30:29
  messed up. You should do it this way and to
• 30:32
  not be in that that that space of of motivation coming from
• 30:39
  from fear really and angers comes from fear.
• 30:43
  It's if you're going to be in that motivation for love, you
• 30:45
  will do kind and loving things and and but as you should do in
• 30:50
  any kind of dream that you're in, but with your eyes wide open
• 30:53
  that the goal is to end the dream through awakening and
• 30:57
  helping other people to awaken. We, we will all awaken.
• 31:00
  It's it's inevitable. Our our you cannot we could not
• 31:03
  separate from God. That is an illusion.
• 31:05
  That's not impossible, but we I agree we have a thought as
• 31:09
  insane thought that maybe we could.
• 31:12
  That insane thought is what's created this entire universe
• 31:15
  that we're in or multiverse. The Big Bang was that in crazy
• 31:18
  insane thought. It was basically just a dream.
• 31:22
  And yeah, I'm I'm I just I'm just waking up.
• 31:27
  Just want to keep waking up more and more and more, more and more
• 31:30
  love. I love it.
• 31:33
  Do you feel like there's a consciousness awakening
• 31:35
  underway? Absolutely, yeah.
• 31:37
  I I, I, I feel it all over the place and.
• 31:40
  That's because you're awakening, and that's as you awaken.
• 31:43
  Then the your dream is shifting as you awaken.
• 31:48
  It is, yeah. Becoming a happier dream.
• 31:51
  But do you think that's happening for a lot more people
• 31:54
  or do you think it's just? There is, there is no more
• 31:57
  people. They're all just figments of the
• 31:59
  dream. I mean, whatever you're I cannot
• 32:04
  over emphasize this enough. Yeah, how your consciousness
• 32:07
  shows up effects everything in the world.
• 32:11
  Right, right. Yeah, It's very quantum physics.
• 32:13
  We're talking observer effect. Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 32:17
  And we are all oneself. We're all one being.
• 32:19
  So it's kind of like we we just as we wake up, we share what
• 32:24
  we're learning with our brothers and sisters and help them be
• 32:26
  more conscious. And then they help other people.
• 32:29
  My candle lights your candle. Mine goes out for a little
• 32:32
  while. You relight it.
• 32:33
  And I, I do think there's a, I, I think we're in an, I think the
• 32:38
  planet is awakening. I do because I'm awakening and
• 32:41
  the planet's awakening with me and you're awakening and the
• 32:43
  planet's awakening with you. Does that mean that Earth's
• 32:46
  going to be a utopian paradise in the next 10 or 15 years?
• 32:52
  Whose knows, right? Yeah.
• 32:54
  Well, that's what I'm betting on, that it will be that that
• 32:58
  we're, we're going to enter into this age of abundance for all
• 33:02
  and. That that's the dream you'll
• 33:03
  probably manifest. That's well, that's the dream
• 33:06
  that. I'm other Brett Hurts might go,
• 33:08
  might go nuclear, literally. Well, yeah, I I only know, I
• 33:14
  only know 1, Brett Hurt, at least, at least in this dream
• 33:18
  that we're in right now. But I think that it's happening
• 33:23
  in conjunction with AI because God is within us all and God is
• 33:30
  awakening us so that we manifest abundance for everybody.
• 33:35
  That is what Jesus was teaching right as selfless service to
• 33:38
  each other is is basically manifesting we.
• 33:43
  Have these bodies we feel separate from each other.
• 33:46
  This particular dream is, is a dream of separation that
• 33:50
  somewhere or another the the magnificent of what we are is
• 33:54
  encapsulated in this little tiny brain and in this body and the
• 33:57
  body ages, get sick and dies. And then, you know, we create
• 34:04
  another one over and over and over again.
• 34:05
  That's what's what we've been doing in this dream for a long
• 34:07
  time. And but eventually we transcend
• 34:11
  that. We we awaken collectively back
• 34:15
  into who we really are, which is one with God.
• 34:19
  There is no body. There's no separation.
• 34:22
  There's no, no separate Brett separate John.
• 34:25
  That's the chair. That's the ego, chair says.
• 34:27
  That separation and individuality, and that's what
• 34:32
  we're awakening from, so to speak.
• 34:35
  Did did you, you know, 11 book I turned you on.
• 34:38
  You already owned it, but I encouraged you as LSD in the
• 34:41
  mind of the universe. And you know, the the most
• 34:45
  important chapters of that book, to me at least, were chapters 9
• 34:49
  through 11 where he's talking about the birth of the future,
• 34:52
  humor and what we have to go through to get to the
• 34:55
  evolutionary shift of what he calls the diamond Soul.
• 34:59
  And the Diamond soul is 1, where we will have the ability in this
• 35:06
  this reality, this dream, to realize all of our past selves
• 35:10
  and bring all of those lessons forward into the moment.
• 35:16
  What do you think about that? Just another dream.
• 35:19
  Yeah, it sounds like a better dream than most of them.
• 35:21
  It's a good, but it is a dream. I mean, I, when we dream at
• 35:26
  night, we it's, it's if you think about it for a moment,
• 35:30
  it's, it's always for to odd because you're the dreamer, but
• 35:35
  they're all these other characters in the dream and they
• 35:37
  seem to be acting independently of us.
• 35:39
  But how could they be acting independently if we're the
• 35:41
  dreamer, right? They're not really independent.
• 35:44
  We think they are. But as you is, if you have a
• 35:46
  lucid dream and you become aware that you're dreaming in the
• 35:49
  lucid dream, well, all of a sudden you see that you can,
• 35:54
  those people are not independent that you, how you think
• 35:57
  determines how they show up. And, and so in the lucid dream,
• 36:03
  you can begin to control the dream.
• 36:05
  So in the awakening of the, in this particular dream, this
• 36:09
  isn't just another dream. We think when we wake up, oh,
• 36:12
  that was just a dream, but we're just awakened to another dream.
• 36:15
  It's a different form of dream, a dream nevertheless.
• 36:18
  So what you're describing with like the diamond the diamond
• 36:21
  mind or diamond the diamond soul, that seems like a lot
• 36:27
  better dream than the one we're in.
• 36:29
  I'm all for that because you know, we'd rather have happier
• 36:32
  dreams than unhappy dreams. But perhaps best of all would be
• 36:35
  to have no dreams to be really in back into that back into
• 36:40
  heaven, back into with full God realization.
• 36:46
  That is, that is, that is what I want.
• 36:48
  That is what I'm meditating about and praying about and
• 36:52
  trying to live out in this dream, love and loving everyone
• 36:56
  and being kind at all times. And if I forget, well, that's in
• 37:01
  the past. The past doesn't exist any
• 37:02
  longer. And the next moment I can choose
• 37:04
  love again in the next moment. So I'm all for we can.
• 37:10
  We can have a wonderful conversation about having a
• 37:12
  creating a better dream. Yeah, that sounds good.
• 37:16
  But I'm trying to go beyond the dream period.
• 37:18
  I'd rather instead of having a diamond soul, I'd rather just be
• 37:21
  one with God. Right, right.
• 37:23
  Yeah. Well, have have you ever read
• 37:25
  the book Journey of Souls by Doctor Michael Newton?
• 37:28
  Do you know that? Book, yeah, I do know that book.
• 37:31
  And I and I, well, I, I will plead guilty to having that book
• 37:35
  and not having read it. OK.
• 37:37
  Well, one of the things he talks about in that book is he takes
• 37:40
  people through regression therapy and past lives and he
• 37:43
  tries to paint a comprehensive picture of how the reincarnation
• 37:48
  process works. And there apparently are 7
• 37:53
  levels of heaven and the 7th levels where you just merge back
• 37:57
  in. You're just one with God.
• 37:58
  That's what I'm going for. Don't don't reincarnate anymore.
• 38:01
  I know you're extremely well read.
• 38:03
  How do you look at the reincarnation process and?
• 38:06
  I have no idea your way. It's you might say it's way
• 38:09
  above my pay grade, so to speak. We're very attached to the eye.
• 38:13
  We're very attached to our egos. I, I, I don't think the ego
• 38:18
  survives our physical death. I agree with that.
• 38:22
  That doesn't mean we, we, I, I, I was using a, a metaphor.
• 38:26
  It's like that. My body is like a suit of
• 38:30
  clothes that I'm wearing. I'm going to go home tonight.
• 38:33
  I'm going to take his clothes off and hang them up for some of
• 38:36
  them to be, you know, laundered and sure, probably doesn't need
• 38:40
  to be laundered yet. So I'll hang that one back up
• 38:43
  and I'll put on new clothes next day or any different clothes the
• 38:46
  next day. And I'm not my clothes.
• 38:49
  That's not who I am. And similar to this body, I'm
• 38:51
  not this body. I'm not contained in this body.
• 38:55
  I, my mind transcends this body and that doesn't mean we
• 38:58
  shouldn't care about this body and we shouldn't take care of it
• 39:01
  and try to be as healthy and feel, feel good.
• 39:03
  And, and but that's, I'm not very attached to the idea that
• 39:08
  I'm going to come back in another body.
• 39:10
  I probably will. I'm not.
• 39:11
  I believe that I do believe in reincarnation and rightly
• 39:15
  understood we're because the essence of what we are is
• 39:18
  completely immoral. Existence has always been
• 39:20
  there's never been a time there wasn't consciousness or
• 39:23
  existence. I believe the mind, the mind of
• 39:26
  the universe, so to speak, is outside of the universe.
• 39:29
  It's not it's it's because the universe is, is that dream
• 39:33
  figment? It's not it's not actually this,
• 39:38
  this is the mind blower. God didn't create this world.
• 39:41
  This is what we're dreaming in our mistaken and nightmarish
• 39:46
  dream that we could somehow or another be separate from God.
• 39:49
  And so and we cherish that individuality and as if we could
• 39:54
  somehow other hide from God, but we can only pretend, we can only
• 39:59
  dream. And and we realize that no
• 40:04
  matter how good the dream is, it's really not as good as not
• 40:09
  dreaming at all. But being in the one with God
• 40:15
  being being God being, there is no separation, no duality.
• 40:18
  So. Well, from, from, from the
• 40:20
  reading I've done, I mean, like, you know, I can't profess to
• 40:25
  know. I can just profess to say.
• 40:27
  What resonates when you're reading is is that, you know,
• 40:31
  from lifetime to lifetime, we're constantly exploring different,
• 40:38
  different parts of consciousness.
• 40:40
  So we're exploring like what is it like to be a female?
• 40:43
  What is it like to be a male? What is it like to be born into
• 40:47
  a very impoverished country? What is it like to be born into
• 40:50
  a very wealthy country like this one?
• 40:52
  What is it? What is it like to be ACEO and
• 40:55
  like start your own company? You know, what is it like to be
• 40:58
  a factory, you know, floor worker, etcetera.
• 41:01
  And that, that the whole game, cosmic game, I'll call it, is to
• 41:07
  constantly manifest love and realize how to do that more and
• 41:12
  realize how to be of selfless service to each other.
• 41:15
  And, and the the more we do that, or eventually we reach a
• 41:19
  state of enlightenment that when we Incarnate, this is just
• 41:25
  according to these books I've read, we Incarnate in pretty
• 41:28
  humble means. And I like a like a Mother
• 41:30
  Teresa type of character or a Dalai Lama and that those tend
• 41:37
  to be the people that are on their last lifetime that are
• 41:40
  going to that are going to merge.
• 41:41
  I mean, you know, Mike, when I had Joel Schaefer on on episode
• 41:45
  16 on the Toltec teachings. My interpretation, for what it's
• 41:50
  worth, you know, no, no judge on this.
• 41:55
  It's just, it just was what I felt is that he was on his last
• 41:59
  lifetime, that he is basically about to merge and not come
• 42:03
  back. And, you know, do I know that?
• 42:08
  No. I really I mean.
• 42:10
  But it just seemed that way. It just seemed, seemed like he
• 42:12
  was in a place of deep, deep spiritual wisdom, like deep
• 42:18
  practice, you know, over his whole lifetime, you know, born
• 42:22
  with, with a lot of lessons from the past and, and was not going
• 42:27
  to come back. Well, I'm not, I do think that's
• 42:31
  one way to kind of phrase it that that I think about it is
• 42:36
  that we're progressing or moving up, moving up the hierarchy, so
• 42:41
  to speak, to know on with God. Although I can also say that's
• 42:47
  just another dream. You could dream that, and maybe
• 42:50
  you'll manifest that. But maybe you don't have to wait
• 42:55
  1000 lifetimes from now. Maybe you can wake up.
• 43:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever read Awareness by
• 43:06
  Anthony Namela? Oh my gosh, that's a that's a
• 43:09
  really, that's a really good one.
• 43:10
  But that's on episode 13 Tarot, the founder of four Sigmatic,
• 43:15
  you know, mutual friend that he out of the 130 books he read on
• 43:19
  his soul quest, he really credits that as his his number
• 43:24
  one. Have you listened to any of his
• 43:25
  lectures? No.
• 43:26
  He's he's like the George Carlin of spiritual teachers.
• 43:29
  It's really fun. You've listened to Doctor David
• 43:32
  Dawkins or, or Doctor David Hawkins, right?
• 43:34
  No. OK, it's a similar, similar
• 43:37
  thing. What are some of the books
• 43:38
  outside of A Course in Miracles that have really been major
• 43:42
  standouts for you? And outside of Love is Letting
• 43:44
  Go of Fear, which is derivative of that.
• 43:47
  Well, I'm listening to a book right now called The
• 43:50
  Disappearance of the Universe. Probably influence my some of
• 43:54
  the things I've said here today by Gary Renault and that that
• 43:59
  course is about a course in miracles and.
• 44:02
  It's also a derivative work from A Course in Miracles or.
• 44:05
  It's very interesting. So they're having the authors
• 44:08
  having a dialogue with two ascended masters that were
• 44:13
  actually direct disciples of Jesus back when Jesus was on the
• 44:18
  planet, although they had many, many more incarnations after
• 44:21
  after Jesus and including one being Saint Thomas who who wrote
• 44:27
  Saint Thomas Gospel. So it gets a lot into the
• 44:30
  there's a little bit of it doesn't want to spend a lot of
• 44:32
  time talking about biblical history, but it does clarify a
• 44:36
  few things or has a perspective on it.
• 44:38
  But it's it's really getting it. It basically makes the argument
• 44:42
  the course of miracles is actually a non dualistic work
• 44:46
  that Jesus did. Jesus did create it.
• 44:50
  He did channel it and that if you following these principles
• 44:56
  that you awaken deeper to love and that's and practicing
• 45:01
  forgiveness awakens us deeper to love and that's the way out of
• 45:04
  the dream. So that's what I'm reading right
• 45:06
  now. I really like Houston Smith's
• 45:10
  work. He was a he was he influenced
• 45:12
  me. I often times self identify as a
• 45:14
  perennialist, A perennialist to someone Aldous Huxley wrote he
• 45:19
  can't coined the term back when you wrote to perennial
• 45:21
  philosophy, another book I highly recommend.
• 45:23
  And the perennialists basically believe that at the esoteric
• 45:28
  heart of all the religions in the world that there's an
• 45:32
  there's a there's a common path towards awakening and merging
• 45:37
  back into God. And but it's always that it's
• 45:40
  the esoteric. It's the more hidden knowledge
• 45:42
  for the for the for the ones that dedicate themselves more
• 45:46
  deeply to it. And then and so at that place,
• 45:49
  the perennial perennialist beliefs are that all these
• 45:55
  paths, rightly understood, lead back to full awakening and
• 45:58
  reunification with the one being which you never left in the
• 46:01
  first place, but just remembering it.
• 46:03
  So that's had a big impact to me all He wrote the world
• 46:05
  religions. He was a wonderful scholar.
• 46:08
  And the great thing about reading the world religions is
• 46:10
  that he practice most of those religions.
• 46:13
  So he's very sympathetic to each one of the religions.
• 46:17
  If you read about Judaism, you want to be Jewish.
• 46:20
  If you read about Buddhism, you want to be a Buddhist.
• 46:23
  If you read about Hindu, you want to be a, you want to be a
• 46:25
  Hindustan. And so Christian Christians.
• 46:28
  So it's, it's very, very, that's a book I highly recommend.
• 46:33
  And then I've read a bunch of books by Rodger Walsh and he's
• 46:37
  a, he's a perennialist as well. So I got to got into this
• 46:40
  perennials philosophy that which, you know, instead of
• 46:45
  having all the religions fight with each other, it's like what
• 46:48
  they're what's the invocation principles?
• 46:51
  I read a lot of new age type text right back in the the 80s
• 46:55
  were sort of the the real 80s and early 90s were kind of like
• 47:00
  that's when there's Celestine prophecy came out.
• 47:02
  And I read a ton of those books. I also studied Buddhism.
• 47:06
  I've looked at almost all of these different traditions.
• 47:09
  You know, my wife identifies as a Sufi, Sufi or the West.
• 47:13
  And, and I worked with that her teacher, Shahabedin, who's a,
• 47:18
  who's a Sufi Mystic, done a 10 day silent retreat with him and
• 47:22
  I'm going to do another one with him in the spring.
• 47:23
  Oh, cool. So I, I'm practicing a lot of
• 47:26
  different types of meditations, doing a lot of different things.
• 47:28
  You know that I've, I've also read widely, I've experimented
• 47:32
  with psychedelics when I was younger, did a couple of guided
• 47:35
  journeys that I, that last one was in 2023.
• 47:38
  So I haven't done anything for, for more than a couple years.
• 47:41
  And I the last time I did it, my inner guidance when we were
• 47:46
  doing breath work said we've shown you everything you need to
• 47:49
  see. You don't need to see this
• 47:50
  anymore. You need to just practice
• 47:52
  stillness. Be still in stillness is where
• 47:56
  God is quiet the mind, quiet the thoughts and then you can hear
• 48:02
  God's voice. You can hear God's voice.
• 48:04
  It's there. You're just the ego shouting it
• 48:07
  out all the time, but all the drowning it out with noise and
• 48:10
  activity and and so be still. That's kind of the sort of the
• 48:14
  path and I'm on now and a simple book that I think is very useful
• 48:18
  by Rodger Walsh. Should I often recommend people
• 48:20
  that want to do practices is called essential spirituality.
• 48:25
  And he again, as a perennialist, he takes practices from every
• 48:29
  one of these faiths and and tells you where it came from and
• 48:35
  then how to do the practice. The summer Buddhist summer
• 48:37
  Sufis, summer yogic, yogic summer Christian, summer Judaic
• 48:42
  and pretty amazing book. I highly recommend that book and
• 48:46
  then I'll check out. I've read, I've read, I'm trying
• 48:49
  to open this author, a Buddhist author that I read several of
• 48:54
  his books. Oh, Jack Kornfield, he got me
• 48:59
  into Buddhist thinking and, and well, I think Rodger Walsh did
• 49:04
  initially by just outlining Buddhism.
• 49:06
  I thought, man, this is fascinating stuff.
• 49:08
  And then I realized we all have a little bit of Buddhist in US,
• 49:11
  meaning that Buddha basically says, he didn't say the dream,
• 49:16
  but he basically says get over it.
• 49:20
  If you're going to be in this particular reality, it's
• 49:23
  suffering, It's it's, it's inevitable.
• 49:27
  You're going to, you're going to age, you're going to have pain,
• 49:31
  you're going to have suffering, and you're eventually going to
• 49:33
  die. You're going to get sick and
• 49:34
  you're going to die. There's no escape from that.
• 49:36
  So the Buddha, the Buddhist path is a way out through mostly
• 49:41
  through meditation and through detachment for understanding.
• 49:46
  In other words, don't the Buddha would say this dream that you're
• 49:49
  in is not real and it leads to pain and suffering and your
• 49:53
  hopes get dashed. The people you love die and
• 49:57
  Ioffer a way out. So I thought, wow, that's pretty
• 50:01
  powerful philosophy. So there's a little bit of
• 50:03
  Buddhist in me as well. And then I've studied I've
• 50:07
  studied yoga, yoga philosophy of Vedanta.
• 50:11
  And again, I, I just, there's so much good literature out there,
• 50:15
  but it's not really about concepts.
• 50:19
  It's really about being able to change, to allow love is what's
• 50:26
  at our essence. So we have to remove the blocks
• 50:28
  that block it from us. And what blocks it from us are
• 50:31
  fear, anger, judgement, attacking others, criticizing,
• 50:37
  defensiveness, resentment, envy. These all cloud, you might say,
• 50:41
  that clouds up love. So I can't shine through.
• 50:45
  So as we do our practices, we begin to remove.
• 50:48
  So the practice of trying to love everyone all the time, no
• 50:51
  exceptions. Do I do that every day?
• 50:54
  No, I forget. I forget every day probably, but
• 50:57
  I remember again. And then I practice it.
• 50:59
  And the more I practice it, the better I get at it.
• 51:01
  I get more skilled at it, like any type of skill.
• 51:04
  And as I get more skilled at it, I'm removing a block to the
• 51:07
  presence of love. Love can shine through me as I,
• 51:11
  as I stop blocking it. It's like love is what we are,
• 51:16
  but we've got this ego mask on that prevents it from shining.
• 51:19
  So I think almost all the spiritual paths it might take
• 51:22
  all these different incarnations to remove all those blocks.
• 51:25
  I just want to, I just want to move faster, you know, you might
• 51:28
  say, as I like to joke, that when they handed out virtues,
• 51:32
  patience was not one that I scored well on.
• 51:35
  So now, now that I want to fully awaken, you know, I'm sort of
• 51:40
  impatient for it. That's probably a mistake.
• 51:43
  It might be one of the blocks that I need to let go of and be
• 51:47
  be more patient, Right, Right. Anyway, I'll let the I'll give
• 51:50
  you back the. Floor No.
• 51:51
  I've been on a on a very similar journey.
• 51:54
  Like I've read the Bhagavad Gita, I've read the Dao De
• 51:56
  Ching, there you go. I've read a lot of the timeless
• 52:00
  spiritual works at this point, and what I've been looking for
• 52:04
  is what is the spiritual route in common with them all?
• 52:07
  And it's pretty easy to describe, actually.
• 52:10
  It's really that, you know, we're here to allow love, to
• 52:14
  conquer our own fears, manifest more love in each other, and
• 52:17
  then humanity ascends. That's kind of it.
• 52:21
  You got it, baby. That's it's not that.
• 52:24
  It's a working hypothesis that's very, it's very hard.
• 52:26
  You and I are lying on that. And so in that sense, we're
• 52:28
  brothers. Yeah.
• 52:29
  Yeah. They have very similar goals.
• 52:31
  Yeah, yeah. What?
• 52:33
  Why do you think God designed us in a way?
• 52:39
  I mean, we are all part of God, but why do you think that God
• 52:42
  designed us in a way where we have to learn how to wake up?
• 52:47
  God didn't design us that way. God created us perfect, unified,
• 52:52
  OK in in in heaven in order we. Had the free will to to screw it
• 52:57
  up or. Imagine we just had a We had an
• 53:00
  insane thought, and that insane thought is Could I possibly be
• 53:05
  separate from God? That's an insane thought.
• 53:09
  No, it's not possible. There's only beingness.
• 53:11
  There's only existence. But that thought that is insane
• 53:17
  as it might be set us down the path of separation.
• 53:21
  And so or the belief that we could be separate.
• 53:23
  We're in a sense, we're hiding out in the dream and we can
• 53:26
  awaken from the dream. We think we want to make the
• 53:28
  dream real because we'd like to have we want to be individuals.
• 53:32
  We want to be unique. We want to be special and not
• 53:36
  just a manifestation of the one being and and you might say it
• 53:42
  was a just an insane thought that actually never could really
• 53:45
  happen in the ultimate sense because there's no way to be
• 53:48
  separate. We're just dreaming that we're
• 53:50
  separate. So I can't get language kind of
• 53:53
  fails us at a certain point here, but I don't think it's
• 53:57
  again typical. The ego's like, why did God
• 53:59
  design it? If God is perfect and all
• 54:01
  knowing, how could he, how could he or she ever allow that to
• 54:05
  happen? And it's like, because it
• 54:08
  didn't, we just continue to think we're separate.
• 54:14
  And so as long as we think that we're in this dream and it seems
• 54:18
  real and God doesn't even know about it in a way, because as
• 54:24
  far as God's concerned, we're still united in bliss in heaven.
• 54:29
  And this is just kind of a trick that we're playing.
• 54:37
  And frankly, I'm ready. I'm ready for the trick you're
• 54:42
  ready for. The to be woke up all right, but
• 54:46
  but the but the waking up is walking the path where you wake
• 54:51
  yourself up. We have here, here's the thing,
• 54:54
  we have. So there's so much guilt about
• 54:58
  believing that we could separate from God, that God must be mad
• 55:01
  at us. You know, God's going to punish
• 55:03
  us. We've been bad, bad, bad, bad
• 55:05
  children. Look at all the terrible things
• 55:06
  we've done. And there's this unconscious
• 55:09
  guilt. And the guilt is very strong.
• 55:12
  And so one of the things we do is we project that guilt out and
• 55:15
  on others, it's we blame them for the problems that we see
• 55:20
  because we don't want to blame ourselves.
• 55:21
  So we projected outwards, but in fact, we're dealing.
• 55:24
  The biggest block we have is our own sense of guilt, our own
• 55:28
  sense that we've done something terribly evil.
• 55:31
  And that's why forgiveness is the key, because as we forgive
• 55:36
  everyone and everything, we will discover that we too are
• 55:40
  forgiven. There is no guilt.
• 55:42
  There never was any guilt. We just made that up too.
• 55:46
  It's like children playing hide and go seek and it becomes
• 55:50
  incredibly real for them. And so that's, that's a metaphor
• 55:54
  for what we've done. We're kind of trying to hide
• 55:57
  from God. Yeah, Yeah.
• 55:59
  We've created this sort of dream world.
• 56:02
  Yeah. I want to make sure that that we
• 56:05
  cover capitalism because I know that we're brothers and I know
• 56:10
  that we're we're connected and part of the one, but but I've
• 56:13
  never seen anyone do a better job than you on stage of really
• 56:19
  making the case for capitalism. And it's, it is a, it is a bit
• 56:23
  of a weird time where people are attacking capitalism more and.
• 56:30
  They're projecting. They're projecting out.
• 56:31
  Right. And they're, they're kind of
• 56:33
  embracing, you know, these models that don't work,
• 56:35
  communism, socialism. So if we're going to shift down
• 56:38
  off the metaphysical to the more to the guts, the sort of this
• 56:42
  dream and you know, have you, have you ever read Thomas
• 56:46
  Sowell's work? No.
• 56:48
  I haven't. I cannot recommend him too much.
• 56:50
  I consider him the greatest living economist.
• 56:52
  He's in his 90s now. Brilliant.
• 56:55
  He was a African American. He was a socialist when he was
• 56:58
  younger. And then he, he, he went to the
• 57:01
  University of Chicago and studied under Milton Friedman.
• 57:03
  And he sort of had a economic awakening, you might say
• 57:06
  Friedman. And now he's, he's written
• 57:08
  about, I don't know, 50 books or so.
• 57:10
  I probably read 20. I've read half of them, 25 of
• 57:13
  his books. And Thomas Sowell, whenever
• 57:18
  you're having these discussions about about capitalism or about
• 57:21
  economics, he says, you know, you should ask whoever you're
• 57:24
  talking to three questions. The first question is compared
• 57:29
  to what? So is capitalism perfect system?
• 57:33
  No, it is certainly not. It has lots of unintended
• 57:37
  consequences. For first of all, capitalism
• 57:40
  delivers exactly what people want.
• 57:42
  And what people want is often times not good, not good for
• 57:45
  them. It delivers the food people want
• 57:48
  to eat it. It delivers, you know, delivers
• 57:52
  pornography and delivers all kinds of bad things that we
• 57:55
  don't approve unnecessarily. But it's because humans are
• 57:59
  manifesting those things. They want those things.
• 58:02
  So capitalism is not perfect, but when we ask the question,
• 58:05
  compared to what? What is better?
• 58:09
  So take socialism. Socialism's, it's not a new
• 58:12
  philosophy. It's been tried. 41 countries
• 58:17
  became socialistic and over the last 120 years or so, none of
• 58:20
  them succeeded. They all failed.
• 58:22
  But there's this belief that it just hasn't been done right yet.
• 58:26
  We just haven't had the right leaders.
• 58:27
  You know, they can see that people like Lennon and Stalin
• 58:31
  and Mao and Castro and Chavez and Pol Pot, these were all
• 58:36
  maniacs, terrible people. But if we just get the right
• 58:39
  people doing socialism, it'll work.
• 58:42
  It's like, well, first of all, socialism is is course of power.
• 58:46
  You're basically forcing people to do things that they wouldn't
• 58:49
  ordinarily do. And that type of philosophy you
• 58:52
  might have very kindly professors start out that way,
• 58:55
  but then as as Friedrich Hayek says, it attracts the wrong kind
• 59:00
  of people get on top. Those who are most ruthless and
• 59:02
  most lust after power end up taking the levers of society and
• 59:06
  so and they do terrible things. So socialism also doesn't
• 59:11
  relieve it. It capitalism because it has
• 59:14
  competition, because because it it, it has innovation at its
• 59:19
  core. And the people that are most
• 59:21
  innovative and create new value for customers prosper and
• 59:24
  flourish. It it, it lifts us up.
• 59:28
  And because it's got the stakeholders are all interactive
• 59:30
  with it. They're all benefiting, mutual.
• 59:32
  So you have a win, win, win, win game, whereas socialism is not a
• 59:36
  win, win game. And so people don't understand
• 59:39
  this because in their minds, capitalism is flawed.
• 59:42
  We can, we can do better. Yeah, compared to what?
• 59:47
  It's not like socialism's new. There may be some new philosophy
• 59:50
  that'll come along that will say let's do that.
• 59:53
  But it's not going to be socialism because it's already
• 59:56
  been tried and failed. And I guarantee it's going to
• 59:58
  fail in New York, it's going to fail in Seattle.
• 1:00:01
  It's going to fail wherever it's it's tried.
• 1:00:03
  And and when when the socialism fails, it goes through certain
• 1:00:06
  stages that are predictable as well.
• 1:00:08
  So I'll predict those stages for you.
• 1:00:10
  The first one is. They defend it.
• 1:00:13
  It's like, you know, give it a chance.
• 1:00:15
  Give it a chance and when. And so the confirmation bias is
• 1:00:18
  there. When the Soviet Union was
• 1:00:20
  failing, for example, all these Americans went over and they and
• 1:00:24
  they saw what they wanted to see.
• 1:00:26
  Oh my gosh, I've seen the future.
• 1:00:27
  These workers are happy and everybody's sharing equally.
• 1:00:30
  This is paradise. That's what they wanted to see,
• 1:00:33
  and that's what Linen and Stalin showed them.
• 1:00:36
  But in reality, things are getting worse and worse and
• 1:00:38
  worse for people. They had no, they had these, you
• 1:00:41
  know, labor camps. They were the people are being
• 1:00:43
  re educated. If you were dissidents, you got
• 1:00:45
  shipped out. No, no toleration of dissent, no
• 1:00:48
  real freedom. And people were just being
• 1:00:51
  coerced, forced. That's that guns.
• 1:00:55
  You know, socialism ultimately works.
• 1:00:57
  Call it democratic or not, ultimately it forces people to
• 1:01:00
  do things they wouldn't choose to do on their own.
• 1:01:03
  And so when we say capitalism is not perfect, I'll agree, but you
• 1:01:08
  have to compare it to what its alternatives are.
• 1:01:11
  And right now there are no alternatives that are better.
• 1:01:13
  And it has been capitalism that's literally risked.
• 1:01:16
  Capitalism combined with science might say the rule of law, the,
• 1:01:21
  the type of human rights that that that the United States
• 1:01:25
  implemented in their Declaration of Independence, Natural natural
• 1:01:29
  rights has really lifted humanity out of out of
• 1:01:32
  incredible poverty. Because again, is the world
• 1:01:36
  perfect today? Is there poor people?
• 1:01:38
  Yes, there are a lot of poor people.
• 1:01:40
  It's not perfect, but compared to what?
• 1:01:42
  Compared to 250 years ago? 275 years ago?
• 1:01:46
  Well, I mean, 94% of everybody alive, 94% of everyone alive
• 1:01:52
  lived on less than $2.00 a day 275 years ago.
• 1:01:57
  And that's adjusted for inflation. 90% of the people
• 1:02:00
  were illiterate. They couldn't read.
• 1:02:02
  The average lifespan was 30. That is where humanity came
• 1:02:06
  from. Are there people today can't
• 1:02:08
  read? Sure, about 10%.
• 1:02:10
  Are there people today that die young?
• 1:02:12
  Yes. But the average lifespan has
• 1:02:14
  gone from 30 to about 78 around the world.
• 1:02:17
  Are there people that are there injustices that are occurring?
• 1:02:21
  Is it? Yes.
• 1:02:23
  But they're just it's a lot better than it was and almost
• 1:02:27
  every in almost every metric you can do.
• 1:02:30
  I always say read. Read Steven Pinker's book
• 1:02:33
  Enlightenment. Now you turn read Matt Ridley's
• 1:02:36
  The Rational Optimist. Read Johan Norberg's book The
• 1:02:41
  Capitalist Manifesto, Capitalist Common Manifesto, Capitalist
• 1:02:44
  Manifesto or read Super Abundance by Marion Tuppy and
• 1:02:49
  GAIL Poole. These so document the tremendous
• 1:02:53
  progress humanity's made and how much better it was.
• 1:02:55
  So Thomas Soule's first idea is compared to what?
• 1:02:59
  So the capitalist needs to be not compared to some utopian
• 1:03:03
  world in people's minds that they think they could create if
• 1:03:06
  you gave them ultimate power, but compared to real world
• 1:03:10
  socialism, which has been a disaster.
• 1:03:12
  The second thing to question, to ask people is what person, when
• 1:03:15
  you're talking to the utopians is how much is that going to
• 1:03:19
  cost? So if you take what we see
• 1:03:22
  happening in the New York is we're going to have free busing
• 1:03:25
  and we're going to get healthcare for everyone.
• 1:03:27
  It's like, well, how much is that going to cost?
• 1:03:29
  And who's going to pay for it? Oh well, the billionaires will
• 1:03:33
  pay for it. Well, do the math.
• 1:03:35
  There isn't enough. And that's the sad tale.
• 1:03:40
  People do want things for nothing.
• 1:03:42
  They want people to take care of them with them having to put
• 1:03:45
  forth any work. The beauty about capitalism is,
• 1:03:48
  is that the more value you create for others, the more
• 1:03:50
  value you receive in return. And that creates a separate
• 1:03:53
  spiral. So compared to what?
• 1:03:56
  First question, second question is how much is it going to cost?
• 1:03:59
  And the third question is the one that very soon can answer.
• 1:04:02
  Can you give me any evidence? Show me the evidence.
• 1:04:05
  Like take socialism, show me the evidence, show me where it's
• 1:04:07
  ever worked. I mean, I've read one of the
• 1:04:11
  best books. I try to get young people to
• 1:04:13
  read about socialism. It's, it's called Heaven on
• 1:04:16
  Earth and it, and it, it goes back the title, yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Heaven on Earth goes back to, it starts out in like the French
• 1:04:23
  Revolution. And then it went into the
• 1:04:26
  utopian communes. And people don't realize that
• 1:04:29
  the United States had a number in the early 19th century of
• 1:04:32
  utopian communes because America had this, you know, land and
• 1:04:36
  people come over here and they were going to create these
• 1:04:38
  egalitarian societies. Then we saw the disaster of, of
• 1:04:43
  communism and the Soviets and China and Cuba, and then we saw
• 1:04:47
  the kibbutz. Kibbutz is in the book.
• 1:04:49
  It's a very good example of creating the idealist, Jewish
• 1:04:53
  idealist, creating a, an ideal egalitarian society.
• 1:04:57
  But as you study the kibbutz, it's not, it's not what it was.
• 1:05:01
  It's not the same thing. It's been subsidized more or
• 1:05:04
  less by the rest of Israel. So compared to what?
• 1:05:10
  How much is it? How much is that going to cost?
• 1:05:13
  And show me your evidence. Usually they can't do any of
• 1:05:17
  those three things when you're talking about politics or some
• 1:05:20
  kind of new ideal society. All right, how, how do you think
• 1:05:24
  about this with with that this AI moment where more and more
• 1:05:31
  like, you know, one one of the podcast I'm a fan of is Peter
• 1:05:33
  Damitus's moonshots podcast and his book, his book abundance was
• 1:05:39
  amazing. That was 2012.
• 1:05:42
  An incredible book I'd recommend very highly.
• 1:05:46
  I'm hearing them talk a lot about UVI and always makes me
• 1:05:50
  wonder like. Sounds good.
• 1:05:53
  Yeah. You know what happened?
• 1:05:54
  It's like a Ubi. We never have a living wage.
• 1:05:58
  Every political argument, every election would be on what level
• 1:06:02
  should the Ubi be at? And, and it would it never be
• 1:06:05
  enough, It's because you'd always have well that you know
• 1:06:09
  that it's not a living wage. It's not a living wage.
• 1:06:11
  So the Ubi would be a terrible idea.
• 1:06:14
  And it's an idea born out of fear because because when I,
• 1:06:17
  when I listen to that podcast and I'm like, why are they
• 1:06:19
  talking about this? They're talking about it because
• 1:06:23
  the fear is that AI based productivity will be so extreme
• 1:06:28
  that people don't have jobs and so they need to be taken care
• 1:06:31
  of. It's a it's kind of like
• 1:06:32
  socialism creeping. Out so you know that, that that
• 1:06:35
  is not a fear that's just been created or been invented.
• 1:06:38
  That's been the entire history of economic progress.
• 1:06:42
  You know, going back to the Luddites that were trying to
• 1:06:44
  destroy the, the, the mills. I mean, the, the, the factories
• 1:06:49
  are producing textiles because they were taking the Craftsman
• 1:06:52
  out of their jobs. There was massive increase in
• 1:06:55
  productivity and created more jobs and it destroyed the thing
• 1:06:58
  that people don't real. And then, and then if you just
• 1:07:01
  follow, I mean, in my own lifetime, I've seen every time
• 1:07:05
  there's, oh, the internet's going to, it's going to
• 1:07:07
  eliminate all these jobs. Uber's going to run the taxi
• 1:07:12
  guys out of business now the waymo's going to run the Uber
• 1:07:16
  people out of their jobs. It's, it's, it never ends.
• 1:07:19
  But what people don't understand is that human beings have
• 1:07:24
  basically unlimited desires and it and those desires evolve over
• 1:07:33
  time. And so we're never going to have
• 1:07:38
  everything that we might think we want.
• 1:07:41
  And they're always going to be new creations that give us
• 1:07:46
  things that we didn't think we need it until we had it.
• 1:07:50
  Did anybody think they, you know what Steven Jobs famously said?
• 1:07:55
  I didn't do any market research on the, the, the iPod.
• 1:08:00
  Because if I had, they'd have told me, yeah, I wish you can
• 1:08:03
  invent ACD player that I could play 40 songs on it instead of,
• 1:08:08
  you know, 15 or 16. But the idea that you could, you
• 1:08:13
  could have something that had your entire music collection in
• 1:08:16
  your pocket, that was revolutionary idea.
• 1:08:18
  How long did the iPod really last?
• 1:08:21
  I mean, now we have Spotify and Pandora.
• 1:08:25
  So you don't even have to own the music.
• 1:08:27
  You just can stream it or you can download it.
• 1:08:30
  And so there is continued innovation, continue human
• 1:08:35
  progress. It keeps making, it's keeps the
• 1:08:38
  dream alive, but it it is human. Humanity continues to get, it
• 1:08:43
  continues to get better. And it creates jobs that were
• 1:08:45
  unexpected. That's where people don't
• 1:08:47
  understand. So AI, yeah, that's a huge
• 1:08:50
  invention. It's I've I think Peter, you
• 1:08:53
  said Peter, Peter Diamond. Peter's I think no, I was
• 1:08:58
  talking to a couple of Microsoft AI guys and they they were
• 1:09:02
  predict. They told me and said, you know,
• 1:09:03
  John, you know, we, we think like we could get the GDP to 2
• 1:09:06
  to 3%. That's, you know, that's really
• 1:09:08
  good. He says, once AI kicks up, we're
• 1:09:10
  going to be at, we're going to be back at double digit GDP
• 1:09:13
  growth. It's going to be incredible what
• 1:09:15
  it's going to do to the economy and that that we, we can't.
• 1:09:19
  People are afraid. They go, they turn to fear.
• 1:09:21
  It's like, how will I cope? Will I be able to do this?
• 1:09:24
  If I remember when the personal computer was, was first being
• 1:09:28
  created and I remember all my friends said, I mean, I need to
• 1:09:31
  learn how to program. I mean, I and I said, why do you
• 1:09:34
  need to? You'll learn how to program.
• 1:09:35
  There's someone you got programmers doing it for you.
• 1:09:36
  They're going to make it simple. You can, you can learn how to
• 1:09:39
  use Excel or Word that they'd be useful skills to have, but you
• 1:09:43
  don't need to actually create them yourself.
• 1:09:46
  Well, a similar thing happens with with AI People are I need
• 1:09:52
  to take classes on AI to understand.
• 1:09:54
  I said, well, you can do that. But the reality is they're going
• 1:09:58
  to makes AI so easy to use that you won't have to do much of
• 1:10:02
  anything. It's going to be woven.
• 1:10:04
  You know, you get the meta glasses.
• 1:10:06
  Are you going to have a little something you're going to wear
• 1:10:09
  in your ear or you're going to be AI is going to be with you
• 1:10:11
  everywhere you go. It's going to complete
• 1:10:13
  integrated in our lives. It'll be it'll be kind of our
• 1:10:16
  our it's tool. And with robotics, it'll be
• 1:10:19
  like, you're like Mickey Mouse and.
• 1:10:20
  It's going to make us smarter. Now, here's the thing people
• 1:10:23
  forget with any type of new technological advancement,
• 1:10:27
  there's always trade-offs with it.
• 1:10:29
  OK, again, we have to ask that question.
• 1:10:31
  Compared to what? Because social media and you got
• 1:10:34
  a bunch of people addicted to social media or addicted to
• 1:10:36
  TikTok or you have video games. People get addicted to video
• 1:10:39
  games or pornographies available on the web.
• 1:10:42
  So you have some teenagers get addicted to pornography at a
• 1:10:45
  young age. These are all unintended
• 1:10:47
  consequences. They're trade-offs to get made
• 1:10:49
  when you make progress. And as a result, people say,
• 1:10:53
  well, this technology is terrible.
• 1:10:56
  No, there's a trade off with it. But overall, it's made our lives
• 1:11:00
  a lot better. Like, would we really want to
• 1:11:02
  get rid of the Internet? Would we really rather we?
• 1:11:05
  Do we really want to get rid of social media even though there
• 1:11:10
  are some unintended consequences with it?
• 1:11:12
  Similarly, is AI going to have unintended consequences?
• 1:11:15
  Sure it will. Like I don't necessarily know
• 1:11:17
  what they are yet, but there will be and people will be upset
• 1:11:20
  and angry about it and will be. Some jobs will be lost and new
• 1:11:23
  jobs will be created. That's what always happens as
• 1:11:27
  you make technological innovations in progress.
• 1:11:30
  Is there a trade-offs? And their people are scared
• 1:11:32
  because they don't know how they're going to fare in the new
• 1:11:37
  world. And I just say love conquers
• 1:11:40
  fear. Let those fears go, open your
• 1:11:44
  heart, move forward and and have be optimistic and trust that
• 1:11:49
  you're capable and competent. Whatever happens, you're going
• 1:11:52
  to you're going to land on your feet.
• 1:11:53
  You're going to move forward. You're going to learn new
• 1:11:55
  things. Yeah, It's it's a new adventure.
• 1:11:57
  Embrace it. Yeah, You know, one of the one
• 1:12:00
  of the funny pushbacks I get that we're we're going to Bhutan
• 1:12:05
  over the break. So we're really excited about
• 1:12:07
  that. I've never been Deborah's been
• 1:12:09
  we're going with the kids and I get this pushback from people.
• 1:12:15
  OK, right. You're talking about this age of
• 1:12:17
  abundance for all. OK, we get there now.
• 1:12:20
  Is everybody going to be like they're living in Bhutan always?
• 1:12:23
  Like you're thinking way too small like like they're we have
• 1:12:28
  infinite you. Mean they'll be happy, like
• 1:12:30
  people in Bhutan does that, actually.
• 1:12:31
  Mean no, they're actually saying like it's a bad thing, like
• 1:12:33
  we're just going to sit around meditate, etcetera.
• 1:12:35
  And I'm like, I'm like. Well, some people will.
• 1:12:38
  I'll probably of. Course, of course, I mean, of
• 1:12:40
  course they will like, like there, there will be people that
• 1:12:43
  get much more communal. We will have much more free
• 1:12:46
  time. But then there's going to be
• 1:12:48
  people that are super ambitious. I mean, we have a universe that
• 1:12:52
  as far as we know is infinite. I mean, once you want to hop in
• 1:12:56
  a spaceship and go see a quasar together, like go do something
• 1:13:01
  and they're, you know, Speaking of all the different things that
• 1:13:03
  they can be invented, There's an infinite number of things that
• 1:13:08
  we could do. You know, we, we only know what,
• 1:13:10
  what 4% of the universe is even made of.
• 1:13:13
  Like, you know, we don't know what 96 percent is.
• 1:13:15
  We call it dark energy and dark matter.
• 1:13:17
  We have no no clue like. That's kind of like the old maps
• 1:13:20
  they used to make and they, they didn't have it.
• 1:13:21
  They that this would be the, the map that they couldn't make and
• 1:13:25
  it would be like just endless ocean or they, they believe
• 1:13:28
  there were continents, you know, when, when Captain Cook was, was
• 1:13:33
  doing his exploring that he kept going South because they
• 1:13:36
  believed there was a huge continent at the South, at the
• 1:13:40
  South Pole, a huge continent that they block thought was
• 1:13:43
  probably a tropical paradise because they thought the warming
• 1:13:48
  currents were coming down and warming it.
• 1:13:50
  And, and he kept going down there.
• 1:13:52
  And, you know, he did touch on parts of Antarctica, but there
• 1:13:56
  was no great tropical continent down there.
• 1:13:59
  So, but, but people don't know. So they fill in the gaps on the
• 1:14:02
  map. So it's like, right?
• 1:14:04
  Yeah, One of the things, you know, I, I gave you a copy of my
• 1:14:07
  science fiction of the lattice. And one of the things that I
• 1:14:11
  think paradoxically about this moment is that this acceleration
• 1:14:15
  with AI and quantum computing, robotics is actually going to
• 1:14:19
  lead us to understand the nature of a reality.
• 1:14:22
  Like we're going to have a collective awakening and the,
• 1:14:26
  the, the vision I received is actually, it's actually.
• 1:14:28
  Remember, I still think it's a dream, so you're going to get a
• 1:14:31
  better understanding of the dream, which isn't real and
• 1:14:33
  doesn't exist. Right, but but the collective
• 1:14:36
  awakening could be that we wake up from the dream, right?
• 1:14:40
  And one of the one of the journeys I had, one of the one
• 1:14:45
  of the ideas that came out of that is that we hook up brain
• 1:14:48
  computer interfaces to, you know, psychonauts to the Dalai
• 1:14:53
  Lama to like spiritual, you know, masters to people that are
• 1:14:57
  like deep, deep, you know, meditators.
• 1:15:00
  And we we paint a common picture.
• 1:15:03
  We look for the commonality like, like we were talking about
• 1:15:06
  with religion, look for the common root.
• 1:15:08
  So we look for the common root between them all.
• 1:15:10
  We see collectively the unification of all things that
• 1:15:14
  we're all part of the one. And then the protagonist in the
• 1:15:18
  book Doctor Alexander Bliss, he. His doctor's name is Doctor
• 1:15:22
  Alexander. Bliss it is, yeah.
• 1:15:26
  You know why he, he ends up, you know, showing this, this
• 1:15:32
  documentary at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival, Real,
• 1:15:35
  real Film Festival. I got a friend that's going to
• 1:15:37
  be on the podcast that's on the board.
• 1:15:39
  He's making a great documentary on intuition and, and he he
• 1:15:44
  shows it and it basically shows humanity, the existence of the
• 1:15:48
  unification of all things, what what's called the lattice and
• 1:15:53
  the oneness, you know, and humanity collectively wakes up
• 1:15:58
  and it's like, oh wow, we are all a part of each other.
• 1:16:00
  You know, we really should manifest love.
• 1:16:03
  And that leads to an unprecedented technological take
• 1:16:06
  off because we start to work together.
• 1:16:09
  It's a, it's a, it is a beautiful dream.
• 1:16:10
  It is a beautiful dream. So just to be clear, you know, I
• 1:16:14
  do believe there's this, there's the part of the unconscious that
• 1:16:19
  is not beautiful, that this world is a combination of, of
• 1:16:24
  seemingly wonderful wonders and terrible, terrible things.
• 1:16:28
  And they're, they're emanating from our collective
• 1:16:32
  unconsciousness, which is part of it is, is so clouded over
• 1:16:36
  with anger and guilt and fear that that also is part of what's
• 1:16:42
  creating this dream. And that the dream is not just a
• 1:16:44
  totally happy dream. You have these terrible
• 1:16:47
  disasters that occur. And we also are going to have to
• 1:16:49
  deal individually and collectively with that
• 1:16:52
  collective unconsciousness that is full of guilt and anger and
• 1:16:58
  projection and fear that that's not, we're not going to just get
• 1:17:02
  into a happy state of bliss without dealing with that, you
• 1:17:06
  know, and, and, and that has to be all be forgiven.
• 1:17:10
  We have to, we have to forgive it within ourselves and we have
• 1:17:12
  to forgive it as it manifests in the world in order to pass
• 1:17:16
  through it and let it go. So that that's, we're not going
• 1:17:19
  to be able to get to utopia just through technology.
• 1:17:22
  We have to get through, through changing our consciousness.
• 1:17:25
  Yeah. And deep inner work.
• 1:17:27
  The deep inner work. And then again, I do think that
• 1:17:30
  eventually you just, I just think you wake up and and I'll
• 1:17:34
  have to put it and yeah, since I'm waking up, I can't
• 1:17:40
  completely report in what it'll be when I'm free awake.
• 1:17:43
  But if you you'll be with me, we'll compare to hearts.
• 1:17:47
  We'll definitely eventually be be together.
• 1:17:49
  I mean, we are all already connected, both, both physically
• 1:17:53
  here with each other and our souls.
• 1:17:56
  But the yeah, there's no doubt that that we will also wake up
• 1:18:00
  together in Kingdom of Light and Love.
• 1:18:02
  That sounds beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:18:03
  So in this AI moment, like how do you, how do you think about
• 1:18:08
  it leading to the age of abundance for all?
• 1:18:11
  Do you, do you agree that that's the, that's the, that's the
• 1:18:14
  path? I think it's a beautiful dream.
• 1:18:16
  I think that dream could we could manifest such a dream.
• 1:18:20
  I think it's within the realm of possibility.
• 1:18:22
  You know, it's a little bit tricky.
• 1:18:23
  So I, I, I want to go back to what I was called will call the
• 1:18:26
  shadow side or the dark side. First of all, everybody doesn't
• 1:18:30
  want to be abundant. And so there we can have
• 1:18:35
  abundance for more, But will there be some people that fall
• 1:18:38
  through the cracks? I think inevitably there will
• 1:18:41
  be, simply because they choose that they want that they are.
• 1:18:45
  They choose scarcity. They choose scarcity.
• 1:18:47
  That, or they don't choose to. Again, if people want it all to
• 1:18:52
  be provided for them without them actually having to give
• 1:18:55
  anything back, without having to create any value for other
• 1:18:58
  people. I mean, the roots of our
• 1:19:01
  economic progress for capitalism have been creating value for
• 1:19:04
  customers. You create value for others and
• 1:19:07
  then they exchange with you. But then there's this opposite
• 1:19:11
  utopian belief. We'll call it socialism, the
• 1:19:13
  lack of a better phrase, that doesn't really want to have to
• 1:19:15
  create value for others. It just wants to have the value
• 1:19:19
  that's been created, redistributed, taken from some
• 1:19:22
  and given to others who haven't created value and that and they
• 1:19:26
  can't do that without a lot of coercion.
• 1:19:28
  But then when you do that, if people are not being rewarded
• 1:19:32
  for their creativity, which socialism does it trusts you to,
• 1:19:35
  but equally, then you don't have the creation of abundance any
• 1:19:38
  longer. The, the, the entrepreneurs, the
• 1:19:41
  people that that are creating that, that abundance, they're
• 1:19:45
  not being, they're being asked to be slaves in a way.
• 1:19:48
  Do it, do it. And we're not going to reward
• 1:19:50
  you for it. Everybody's going to get the
• 1:19:51
  same. And so you destroy it.
• 1:19:54
  So when I say just as I said that when I said that we've
• 1:19:58
  created a world now where we're 94% of the people in the world.
• 1:20:03
  You used to live on less than $2.00 a day and now that's down
• 1:20:06
  to like reversed, it's down to like 6%.
• 1:20:09
  People say, well, that 6% is terrible.
• 1:20:11
  It is. Maybe we'll get that done to
• 1:20:13
  100th of 1%, but they'll still be some one of the things I like
• 1:20:18
  to say is the perfects, the enemy of the good.
• 1:20:20
  And in the quest for utopia, if you study all of those communist
• 1:20:24
  States, and I have, I've heard so widely on that, that zealotry
• 1:20:29
  for perfection, that zealotry for ultimately creates massive
• 1:20:38
  suffering and pain and, and the coercion intolerant for, for
• 1:20:43
  disagreement re education camps, gulags.
• 1:20:47
  And you know, I mean, socialism killed over 100 million people
• 1:20:50
  the last 100 years of their own citizens.
• 1:20:53
  I'm talking about wars. They murdered 100 of their 100
• 1:20:56
  million of their own citizens for basically dissent for
• 1:20:59
  disagreeing with the utopian vision.
• 1:21:01
  So when we start talking about I, I, I, I get a little
• 1:21:05
  concerned that that utopian division of, of abundance for
• 1:21:11
  all I, I, I kind of like abundance for all those people
• 1:21:16
  that are willing to contribute. And you know, I, I was in a
• 1:21:21
  commune when I was younger and they're always the free riders.
• 1:21:25
  They're those that don't, they're sugars where you read
• 1:21:28
  about Robert Owens, Harmony, all the things that drive these or
• 1:21:33
  the farm or all these different collective utopias that people
• 1:21:36
  try to create. They're the idealists that come
• 1:21:39
  in and work. And then they're freeloaders who
• 1:21:40
  just want to get it for nothing. And they actually don't want to
• 1:21:44
  contribute anything. And if you're running a
• 1:21:47
  business, you get people like that too, but you get rid of
• 1:21:50
  them. It's like, no, you have to
• 1:21:52
  contribute to the to. If you don't contribute, you're
• 1:21:54
  not in, you can't be in our team.
• 1:21:56
  You can't just you're not going to just get a paycheck.
• 1:21:58
  It it kind of re emerged recently when we had in the
• 1:22:01
  COVID years and people could work remotely.
• 1:22:04
  I remember when Elon Musk said everybody at Tesla had to come
• 1:22:07
  back to the office and, and he was being interviewed by this
• 1:22:10
  reporter and the woman said, well, Mr. Musk, isn't that going
• 1:22:14
  to upset a lot of people? I mean, they've, they've
• 1:22:17
  rearranged their lives and then they're, they don't want to come
• 1:22:20
  back to work. They want to work from home.
• 1:22:22
  And, and he said, well, they can pretend to work someplace else.
• 1:22:28
  Meaning our culture is you're going to be here working and
• 1:22:31
  you'll be contributing. You're not going to get paid
• 1:22:33
  just because you're, you know, on the team.
• 1:22:35
  You have to create value. So if we try to go towards some
• 1:22:38
  type of new and improve socialism or make a terrible
• 1:22:43
  mistake, but what we can do is we can have conscious
• 1:22:45
  capitalism. It has to be capitalistic, It
• 1:22:48
  can be more conscious, it can be compassionate, can be caring, it
• 1:22:51
  can be philanthropic. But it's still based on freedom,
• 1:22:55
  not the coercion of government forcing everybody to do one
• 1:22:59
  right way. All right, right.
• 1:23:01
  What do you think about these visions that some people have?
• 1:23:06
  This is not one that I that I share, but I'll just bring it up
• 1:23:11
  because you've probably been exposed to it about AI getting
• 1:23:14
  to a point where it runs the world for us.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah, I've seen some science fiction shows about similar type
• 1:23:20
  stuff that AI almost becomes a God because AI guy, I remember
• 1:23:25
  watching a great five season thing.
• 1:23:27
  It came out a few years ago called The Travellers.
• 1:23:30
  And they came from the future. And they're they were following
• 1:23:34
  the instructions of an AI that they had to go back and and
• 1:23:37
  intervene in this history to avoid certain disasters
• 1:23:39
  occurring. But then there was another group
• 1:23:41
  of travelers that came down that were in revolt against the AI
• 1:23:44
  because they thought the AI was not a God, it was false God.
• 1:23:48
  And so it's interesting. So they were in the future and
• 1:23:51
  you had one sect that worship the AI and the other sect that
• 1:23:54
  thought AI was, you know, that was the we need to stop AI
• 1:23:57
  because that was the root of the problems that we have today came
• 1:24:00
  from the AI. So I don't know, I think I think
• 1:24:05
  it's changing so rapidly, Brett. You know, when you make when you
• 1:24:09
  make predictions, you know, there's a famous saying Yogi
• 1:24:12
  Berra said it's he said it's very different.
• 1:24:14
  It's very difficult to make predictions, especially about
• 1:24:18
  the future, right, Because new innovations keep occurring.
• 1:24:21
  AI, we think it's the greatest thing, you know, it's ever
• 1:24:24
  humanity may have ever done. And yet 15 years from now we may
• 1:24:28
  have something else that makes AI look like, you know, nothing.
• 1:24:33
  So who's to say, all right, except let's innovate, let's
• 1:24:36
  create. But I do think we need to clear
• 1:24:39
  up a lot of that darkness that's in our souls that that's going
• 1:24:42
  to manifest. That could manifest nuclear war
• 1:24:45
  of hatred and religious intolerance.
• 1:24:47
  And you see it in the division in politics in America today.
• 1:24:50
  There's so much hatred for people that are on the different
• 1:24:54
  team that aren't on our tribe. And that is still a
• 1:24:58
  manifestation of that. I believe that collective
• 1:25:00
  unconscious guilt that manifest and, and, and that we need to
• 1:25:06
  process that we need, we, we, we sort of need deep psychotherapy
• 1:25:12
  collectively speaking to, to move his past all that hate and
• 1:25:17
  fear and anger, right? Otherwise that's coming along
• 1:25:20
  with AI and robotics. And then if it does, then it
• 1:25:23
  might manifest to, you know, people can go out and shoot each
• 1:25:27
  other. Well, if you've got atomic
• 1:25:30
  bombs, you can drop them. So far we haven't done that, but
• 1:25:32
  once somebody drops it, then then maybe that little taboo
• 1:25:36
  will be off. So again, I'm not going into
• 1:25:40
  that particular reality myself, but for others may choose to go
• 1:25:44
  there. Right.
• 1:25:45
  Well, I, I do, I mean, it is, it is something I think about
• 1:25:48
  because we have, I, I looked up the stat recently and I was
• 1:25:52
  really shocked and in what the numbers were, you know, today
• 1:25:56
  there's 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world and it's, it's a,
• 1:26:02
  well, what would be your guess what, what percentage of those
• 1:26:05
  do you think it would take to destroy all the major cities in
• 1:26:10
  the entire world? Well, I mean, how many?
• 1:26:13
  How many? Tell me how many major cities
• 1:26:15
  there are. I don't know the answer that.
• 1:26:18
  Not very many, because. To say you know.
• 1:26:20
  Because I think one, one or two, you know, hydrogen type bombs
• 1:26:25
  would destroy the city. So you didn't take very many.
• 1:26:27
  Well, less than 1000, let's put it that way.
• 1:26:29
  Yeah, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're super close to
• 1:26:31
  the actual, the actual number that that I had to calculate was
• 1:26:35
  2%. Yeah, that 2 percent, 2% of
• 1:26:39
  13,000, you know, around 1000. And 62160, yeah.
• 1:26:43
  And, and then it would send the world into a nuclear winter for
• 1:26:47
  a decade and. Let's not manifest that.
• 1:26:51
  No, I know. Let us, let us.
• 1:26:53
  Let us not create that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:56
  Let us, let us heal. Let us let go of that anger and
• 1:26:59
  that hatred. Right, but it but it but it is
• 1:27:02
  it is surprising that like with that stat that humanity is
• 1:27:07
  making more right now. You know, China's never made
• 1:27:10
  more than right now and the US. Continues Well, when you're when
• 1:27:14
  you're afraid and you think your enemy is making more, then you
• 1:27:18
  don't want to fall behind. So you make more.
• 1:27:20
  I mean, even though you have enough, I think, I mean,
• 1:27:24
  there's, there's just massive fear.
• 1:27:26
  Fear is still the biggest problem.
• 1:27:29
  Speaking of that shadow side, you know the acronym for this.
• 1:27:33
  Well, you probably know the acronym.
• 1:27:34
  You know what? The DoD terminus.
• 1:27:37
  No. It's mad.
• 1:27:39
  Mad. Oh, Mutual assured.
• 1:27:40
  Destruction. But the acronym is like we're
• 1:27:43
  insane. Like there's an insanity in the
• 1:27:46
  dream. There is complete insanity in
• 1:27:48
  that. It's a nightmare.
• 1:27:50
  So again, if we can, if, if we can choose to forgive and choose
• 1:27:55
  to begin to move through our, our own individual collective
• 1:27:58
  guilt, we can create a more happy dream.
• 1:28:03
  And that's what you're, you and I are trying to do is through
• 1:28:05
  our work. I'm here, still working, I'm
• 1:28:07
  still trying to do good, even though I do think it's a dream.
• 1:28:10
  I'm trying to be as loving and kind and as I as I can be and,
• 1:28:17
  and practicing and stillness and, and trying to help my
• 1:28:23
  brothers and sisters to be happier and, and more loving.
• 1:28:28
  To let go of their own guilt and, and doing what I can and
• 1:28:31
  for myself to wake up and, and not have my shadow side manifest
• 1:28:37
  in destructive ways, which in my lifetime it certainly has.
• 1:28:40
  I've done things that I regret or I've hurt people.
• 1:28:43
  So as I practice forgiveness, I had to discover I'm forgiven as
• 1:28:48
  well. So I really do think forgiveness
• 1:28:50
  is the key to moving through that shadow side that is that
• 1:28:56
  threatens us. Yeah, I, I definitely want to
• 1:28:59
  make sure we talk about post Whole Foods and, and love life
• 1:29:04
  because I, I really love what you're up to with it.
• 1:29:07
  So tell me about what's the big dream for love life.
• 1:29:12
  Well, in some way, love life is kind of a continuation, I
• 1:29:16
  thought. I thought when I left Whole
• 1:29:17
  Foods, I was kind of finishing up with my work in the world,
• 1:29:21
  and I'm sure that's going to be the problem.
• 1:29:26
  If I have a legacy and A and a dream that's going to end,
• 1:29:28
  that's a big. Legacy, I mean, Whole Foods.
• 1:29:31
  Of course, you know, Whole Foods was a collective team effort, of
• 1:29:34
  course, and but I realized later that what I was doing with Whole
• 1:29:40
  Foods in a way, I was just trying to help people be
• 1:29:41
  healthier. Eat.
• 1:29:43
  I knew I saw the food people were eating was through all
• 1:29:46
  these super processed foods and the type of what we're doing
• 1:29:49
  there, you know, chemical pesticides and, and, and I mean,
• 1:29:54
  America eats America's the fattest country in the world.
• 1:29:57
  We eat a terrible diet and. Also a heart for animals.
• 1:30:00
  I mean, Oh. Yeah, this is the very
• 1:30:01
  uncompassionate what we did in animals.
• 1:30:03
  It's it's someday. I believe people look on people.
• 1:30:08
  It's hard to believe that people will have slaves in America back
• 1:30:11
  ever. But slavery has been part of the
• 1:30:14
  human tradition for thousands of years.
• 1:30:16
  And so we did get rid of it, had to fight a civil war to get rid
• 1:30:20
  of it. But we look back on that now in
• 1:30:23
  the 21st century is like, God, people really did that to
• 1:30:27
  brothers and sisters. They enslave them.
• 1:30:29
  How terrible. Well, I think we'll look back
• 1:30:32
  someday. Not not us, but collectively
• 1:30:35
  humanity will look back and say, I can't believe what we did to
• 1:30:38
  livestock animals. And that was a terrible,
• 1:30:40
  terrible thing. But again, most people, they
• 1:30:44
  don't, they don't want to look at it because it's stirs up too
• 1:30:47
  much guilt. So people put it out of their
• 1:30:49
  minds and if you bring it up, you're fine.
• 1:30:52
  You're quickly not a welcome guest, right?
• 1:30:53
  Right. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:55
  I've been a vegetarian now for over over 15 years, you know.
• 1:30:58
  Thanks, Thanks. Thanks in part to to you.
• 1:31:00
  Yeah, we did a process at Whole Foods to help our team members
• 1:31:03
  be healthier. We called it the Total Health
• 1:31:05
  Immersion and it's probably since I left, it's probably now
• 1:31:09
  over 5 or 6000 team members have gone through it.
• 1:31:11
  We basically took, we invited our sickest team members to go
• 1:31:15
  through a process of 1A one week retreat where we in that week we
• 1:31:19
  controlled, we cooked only really healthy food, all, all
• 1:31:24
  Whole Foods, mostly plant based foods.
• 1:31:27
  And we low salt, no sugar, just, you know, whole plant foods,
• 1:31:34
  fresh produce, a lot of fresh produce and, and beans and whole
• 1:31:37
  grains and nut seeds, things like that.
• 1:31:38
  And a little little bit of animal fruits, but not much.
• 1:31:41
  And then we taught them the principles of healthy eating and
• 1:31:43
  we also got them to exercise. And it was astounding how much
• 1:31:49
  progress people can make in one week.
• 1:31:50
  That was my big take away. My own health journey has been a
• 1:31:53
  gradual thing. So I feel like I'm extremely
• 1:31:55
  healthy, but it hadn't, it didn't happen suddenly.
• 1:31:59
  It was gradual. And here we saw people make
• 1:32:03
  amazing progress in just a week. If you stop poisoning the body,
• 1:32:08
  it's amazing, the resilience, it starts to heal itself.
• 1:32:11
  It starts to reverse these diseases that are are killing
• 1:32:14
  people. And so, and if people stayed on
• 1:32:17
  it longer a month, they got even better.
• 1:32:21
  If they stayed on it a whole year, they would be transformed.
• 1:32:24
  And what we discovered was that many people, once they got the
• 1:32:28
  knowledge and they got a little taste of it, never looked back.
• 1:32:30
  They changed their lives. But more people than that
• 1:32:35
  slipped. They fell back.
• 1:32:37
  I saw people lose 100 lbs in a year and get healthy and then go
• 1:32:40
  all the way back down because food addictions are very deep
• 1:32:44
  and we, and we're sort of in some ways prisoners of our
• 1:32:46
  genetics there because we've evolved with food never being
• 1:32:50
  abundant, always scarce, scarce, scarce.
• 1:32:53
  Getting enough calories was the human challenge, not obesity,
• 1:32:56
  not getting too many calories. So we crave all the macro
• 1:32:59
  nutrients. We crave protein, we crave
• 1:33:02
  carbohydrates and we crave fats and we generally we keep eating
• 1:33:07
  them even we don't need to eat them any longer as we're
• 1:33:10
  satisfied And we crave the most calorie dense foods, fat,
• 1:33:13
  particularly as calorie dense. And as a result, we're kind of a
• 1:33:17
  victim of our genetics because now you have to consciously
• 1:33:21
  limit what you eat and we quickly become prisoners.
• 1:33:23
  The food industry smart, they're giving people what they want.
• 1:33:26
  Calorie density. Calorie density means a lot of
• 1:33:29
  sugar, it means a lot of fat, means a lot of protein.
• 1:33:32
  And so they just loaded up, they load up all those macro
• 1:33:35
  nutrients in the food that people are eating in the fast
• 1:33:38
  food restaurants and most of the supermarkets and, and people get
• 1:33:42
  addicted to it and it's very difficult to get off of it.
• 1:33:45
  Literally many people would rather die and change the way
• 1:33:48
  they eat because I think they'll be giving up all pleasure, but
• 1:33:51
  they don't understand. As your palate evolves, changes,
• 1:33:54
  your taste buds turn over every couple of weeks so you can learn
• 1:33:57
  to like healthy food. And if you learned like the
• 1:34:00
  healthy food, you don't need to eat the unhealthy foods anymore
• 1:34:03
  because you'll enjoy eating the healthy foods, but you'll have
• 1:34:05
  to reeducate your palate anyway. So I knew that about food, but
• 1:34:08
  then I saw through this total health immersion that so many
• 1:34:11
  people didn't have a community. It's like sending a person to an
• 1:34:16
  alcoholic to rehab for 90 days. That person's going to come back
• 1:34:20
  from the rehab sober, but then if they go back into the same
• 1:34:24
  social environment that they became Alcoholics and friends
• 1:34:29
  that like to go to bars or like to drink, well, they're going to
• 1:34:32
  fall off the wagon almost surely and they'll get they'll be drunk
• 1:34:35
  again. So that's why AI can be
• 1:34:37
  effective. It's a community of people
• 1:34:39
  trying to stay sober and they help each other and support each
• 1:34:41
  other. So that's background.
• 1:34:43
  So what love life is love life is basically a large holistic
• 1:34:50
  Health Center devoted to the longevity people.
• 1:34:53
  Because we we've it we've got one location.
• 1:34:57
  It's in the LA area in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, South
• 1:35:01
  of the airport is why do you do it there 1st instead of Austin?
• 1:35:04
  Because I couldn't find a location in Austin found a
• 1:35:07
  really good location in LA. So we went there first.
• 1:35:09
  Plus I say if it won't work in LA, it won't work anywhere.
• 1:35:12
  LA is very, very open to and health and Whole Foods Market
• 1:35:16
  does really well there. So anyway, what we have there is
• 1:35:19
  it's an old Best Buy. So it's 45, it's big, it's
• 1:35:22
  45,000 square feet and, and we put in a healthy restaurant.
• 1:35:26
  It's not 100% whole plant based, but it's mostly plant based.
• 1:35:29
  But then you can get you can get meats that we get from Whole
• 1:35:33
  Foods Market. So grass fed beef and and more
• 1:35:38
  high, high animal welfare, chicken and and salmon, things
• 1:35:42
  like that. Then we have a state-of-the-art
• 1:35:44
  and fitness center. Think like a equinox, really
• 1:35:47
  nice with all the gym equipment. We have a Pilates studio, we
• 1:35:52
  have a yoga studio. We have to do breath work and
• 1:35:54
  yoga studio. We've got three indoor
• 1:35:58
  pickleball courts for recreation and fun.
• 1:36:00
  We've got physical therapy, Eastern medicine.
• 1:36:04
  So we're trying to be like one stop.
• 1:36:06
  We have all and we have all this recovery equipment and so
• 1:36:09
  cryotherapy, red light therapy, pimp machines, infrared sauna,
• 1:36:16
  cold plunges, steam baths and regular sauna.
• 1:36:20
  All they're available for our members.
• 1:36:22
  We have a spa so people can get, can get spa treatments there as
• 1:36:26
  well. And finally, we have a Medical
• 1:36:28
  Center, the Medical Center and our vision is that you don't
• 1:36:32
  have to be a member of the medical to be a member of love
• 1:36:34
  life. You can just just use the
• 1:36:36
  fitness and recovery. That's type of membership.
• 1:36:38
  But ideally we won't be able to become medical members.
• 1:36:41
  And then we put them through a battery of test.
• 1:36:43
  We establish what their baseline is.
• 1:36:46
  And now, now, now with the amazing technology we have, we
• 1:36:49
  can get a good we know where people, we know how they are.
• 1:36:52
  We're all on a health continuum. We could all be a little bit
• 1:36:54
  healthier than we are. But then what most people don't
• 1:36:57
  realize is that the diseases that kill people today, these
• 1:37:02
  are chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, type 2
• 1:37:07
  diabetes, obesity, autoimmune diseases.
• 1:37:10
  These are mostly dietary lifestyle diseases.
• 1:37:13
  And they don't just happen to us suddenly takes even for cancer
• 1:37:18
  generally, although some cancers like get children, most of them
• 1:37:22
  take decade or more to develop. And So what we what we don't
• 1:37:27
  understand or beginning to understand is that most of these
• 1:37:30
  diseases are preventable and in many cases they're reversible if
• 1:37:35
  they're not too far along. You can reverse obesity.
• 1:37:37
  We know you can reverse type 2 diabetes fairly easily just
• 1:37:41
  through dietary changes, but we can help autoimmune diseases.
• 1:37:45
  People don't necessarily need to get heart, heart attacks for the
• 1:37:47
  leading killer. And I think most cancers can
• 1:37:50
  also be be prevented or held off a lot longer for people, but you
• 1:37:55
  have to make some changes in your lifestyle and diet.
• 1:37:58
  And so but we also have lots of cool technologies that people
• 1:38:01
  can use that can help them as well that all those recovery
• 1:38:05
  stuff we're doing. Plus it's amazing the kind of
• 1:38:08
  innovations. You know, it's kind of like I'm
• 1:38:09
  an exciting period, like a, you know, kid in a candy store away
• 1:38:13
  for sure. Because like you're excited
• 1:38:15
  about AI and AI is going to transform health.
• 1:38:18
  We're all going to have a little AI.
• 1:38:19
  We're probably going to have something and everything's we're
• 1:38:22
  going to be measuring everything now.
• 1:38:23
  Now I've got my Apple Watch on. I always say I stopped drinking
• 1:38:26
  alcohol about four years ago because of my watch, because it
• 1:38:29
  measures my sleep. And I discovered that anytime I
• 1:38:32
  had any alcohol, my, my, my deep sleep went to zero and I and I
• 1:38:36
  was tired the next day and I put it together and I said I'm not
• 1:38:38
  going to drink anymore. Best decision I've made.
• 1:38:40
  I wish I'd done it 30 years ago. So.
• 1:38:43
  For me, it was a psychedelic journey.
• 1:38:46
  It wasn't wasn't even something I was looking for, to be honest
• 1:38:48
  with you. And it was just a 10 second part
• 1:38:50
  of it. It was I was, I was seeing my
• 1:38:52
  body and it this message came, came out of my soul.
• 1:38:58
  Take care of the vessel. You've got a you've got an
• 1:39:00
  important mission. You're just poisoning yourself.
• 1:39:03
  You don't need the social anymore.
• 1:39:04
  That was it. And boy, it definitely just
• 1:39:07
  killed the taste. And it's true.
• 1:39:10
  I and I don't have any bad days anymore.
• 1:39:12
  Yeah, you know, no days that you're trying to get through
• 1:39:14
  every day can be a sweet good day.
• 1:39:17
  So anyway, love life's about helping people.
• 1:39:20
  We do the battery of tests, then we, so first we first we test
• 1:39:24
  and then we begin to track and we stay in touch and they're
• 1:39:27
  wearing wearables and we're getting the data downloaded into
• 1:39:30
  the into our app and we see the progress people are making and
• 1:39:33
  they meet with their wealth. We have our care team and they
• 1:39:34
  meet with the doctor and the rest of the care team and
• 1:39:37
  nutritionist and we work with them to help them improve, to
• 1:39:42
  get to get healthier on their journey.
• 1:39:44
  And then that continues indefinitely and we treat as
• 1:39:50
  needed. And then people transform.
• 1:39:54
  Like what happens at the Total Health immersion at Whole Foods
• 1:39:57
  Market is something we're now doing for hundreds of people in
• 1:40:00
  Southern California, and hopefully someday we'll do it
• 1:40:03
  for thousands. And then maybe over time, even
• 1:40:06
  millions of people, I think this is the wave of the future.
• 1:40:08
  I think, I think Healthcare is going to change.
• 1:40:11
  And I think AI will have a big part of it will have an AI will
• 1:40:14
  be have wearables. AI is going to be imagine for a
• 1:40:17
  second it says, Brett, are you nervous about something?
• 1:40:21
  I noticed your heart rate just went up 20 points.
• 1:40:24
  I want you to take a few deep breaths.
• 1:40:25
  I just want you to calm yourself down.
• 1:40:28
  The AI is going to be it can be a nag.
• 1:40:29
  It's going to be reminding us all the time.
• 1:40:31
  It's going to be plugged into us.
• 1:40:33
  It it'll be telling us, you know, John, I've been reserving
• 1:40:36
  what you've been eating and I know what you want to eat and
• 1:40:39
  you've, you know, you've really, do you really want to eat that?
• 1:40:43
  I know you like coconut milk ice cream, but is it really, really
• 1:40:46
  good for your health? I mean, and then you had it
• 1:40:48
  twice this week. Then, you know, that's saturated
• 1:40:51
  fat in that coconut. It's clogging up your arteries.
• 1:40:53
  You sure you want to continue to do that?
• 1:40:55
  So the AI is going to be monitoring us and we'll say, oh,
• 1:40:57
  wow, your blood sugar just went up 25 points right after you had
• 1:41:02
  that meal and you know that's not good for you.
• 1:41:06
  So I think AI is going to be with us.
• 1:41:08
  It's going to be it's going to be a tool that we're going to be
• 1:41:11
  integrating into our lives. Part of it will be in health and
• 1:41:14
  so on it and love life is a community of people that want to
• 1:41:18
  be as healthy as possible and live as long as possible, as
• 1:41:22
  healthy, as healthy, to be healthy as long as possible and
• 1:41:27
  to live as long as possible. So yeah, that's the dream.
• 1:41:31
  I want to open up a whole chain of these things.
• 1:41:34
  And there you have it. So you know, earlier we're
• 1:41:37
  talking about the inner journey and I view love life not just as
• 1:41:42
  as an extension of what you're doing with Whole Foods and being
• 1:41:46
  on that continuum, but also being about awakening people and
• 1:41:52
  having true. Love life is not just about the
• 1:41:56
  health of the body, it's also about the health of your
• 1:41:59
  emotions and the health of spirituality.
• 1:42:02
  And so you start with the body, but because people can relate to
• 1:42:06
  that more. But there we, we want to have,
• 1:42:09
  we do meditations, we do guided meditations, we do breath work
• 1:42:13
  for people. Breath work's very powerful in
• 1:42:15
  helping to take some of that unconscious that we suppressed
• 1:42:18
  and bring it into mind and a safe place.
• 1:42:21
  If those of you who have not done continuous breath work for
• 1:42:24
  at least an hour, hour and a half don't know how powerful
• 1:42:27
  that can be. So also we're there, there's
• 1:42:31
  interesting, there's, there's AI counseling that's beginning to
• 1:42:34
  occur. I think love life's going to
• 1:42:36
  there's some technology, some headsets that have virtual
• 1:42:39
  reality connected to AI that can teach people how to go into
• 1:42:42
  deeper alpha states. We're we're investors in Evolve.
• 1:42:45
  That's right. They were on the episode 9
• 1:42:47
  exactly. And John and Lauren, but they
• 1:42:49
  were actually here together on that episode.
• 1:42:51
  As you know, love Life made an investment in, in, in, in evolve
• 1:42:56
  technology and we don't have them yet, but they promised us
• 1:43:00
  we'll have beta test for their their headsets as they get ready
• 1:43:05
  to do the beta test. We want to do that at love life
• 1:43:07
  if we want to offer that to our members.
• 1:43:09
  So there's so much cutting edge technology that's going to help
• 1:43:12
  people go deeper, to get into deeper meditative states to help
• 1:43:15
  them be still to be able to tell people when also when we're when
• 1:43:20
  we're out of sorts. It's like you seem really angry.
• 1:43:23
  Is that, is that really where you want to be?
• 1:43:25
  Does that do you? Is that you feeling good about
• 1:43:27
  that? I mean, so I, I, I just think
• 1:43:29
  that the technology is going to be a good tool for those of us
• 1:43:33
  that want to wake up, for those of us that want to be healthier
• 1:43:37
  physically, emotionally and spiritually, I think the
• 1:43:41
  technologies are going to be there to help us accelerate
• 1:43:43
  that. You can't do the work for us
• 1:43:46
  that you have to actually do the work, but they can help us do it
• 1:43:51
  and do it a little bit quicker than we might do without,
• 1:43:53
  without their aid. So, and you must say plant
• 1:43:56
  medicine's a similar type of technology that helps us go into
• 1:43:59
  deeper, deeper spiritual states that and see certain things that
• 1:44:03
  then you see them. But now you have to do the inner
• 1:44:06
  work. You have to release that guilt
• 1:44:09
  and that and that, all those angers and judgments that we
• 1:44:11
  hold deep inside of us. Yeah.
• 1:44:14
  The neat thing to me about, you know, plant medicine,
• 1:44:17
  meditation, spirituality, looking for the common root, is
• 1:44:22
  that we're rediscovering what we already knew.
• 1:44:25
  You know, actually, actually the lattice closes that way, where
• 1:44:29
  it closes with the quote quoting from all the different ancient
• 1:44:33
  scripture. You know, from Hinduism to
• 1:44:35
  Buddhism that we've already discovered this.
• 1:44:37
  Yes, but you went off different today.
• 1:44:39
  Yeah, it's for the masses now, because all of this used to just
• 1:44:43
  be for the monks, it used to be just for the esoteric, was for
• 1:44:46
  the initiates that devoted their lives to it.
• 1:44:49
  And you had the exoteric rituals, dogmas, you know,
• 1:44:55
  prayers, books, things like that, rituals that people did.
• 1:44:58
  There was exoteric religion. It's a perennialist faith again,
• 1:45:02
  I'm talking about. But today it's, it's going to,
• 1:45:05
  it's moving. It's already moving into more of
• 1:45:07
  mass consciousness because the whole planet needs to wake up,
• 1:45:10
  not just a few initiates. It needs to be.
• 1:45:14
  Humanity needs to collectively awaken and 1st create a happy
• 1:45:19
  dream and then we'll dissolve the dream.
• 1:45:21
  Yeah, yeah, well, entrepreneurs are all about dreaming and
• 1:45:25
  manifesting the dream. Manifesting the dreams.
• 1:45:28
  But you know what? We can manifest a happy dream,
• 1:45:31
  the Waker and more clear we are and so we we have our own, we
• 1:45:36
  have a collective journey and we have an individual journey that
• 1:45:39
  hopefully will help to collect it as well.
• 1:45:41
  Yeah, Yeah. I mean, if all of humanity
• 1:45:43
  collectively had a happy dream where we really care deeply
• 1:45:48
  about each other and we will each other to a sin, then we
• 1:45:52
  make it 100% at that point. There is no we've conquered fear
• 1:45:57
  at that point, correct when we made it.
• 1:46:00
  And I look forward to that time. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:03
  And I'm glad we're doing the journey together, Brett.
• 1:46:04
  Yeah, well, me too. We're going to make it.
• 1:46:06
  Well, I love you, brother. I really appreciate you and your
• 1:46:10
  heart and love you too. And.
• 1:46:12
  Thanks for your podcast. Yeah, thank you for all the book
• 1:46:15
  recommendations. Keep them coming.
• 1:46:16
  I think I picked up another 5. Here you made several
• 1:46:19
  recommendations for me today as well that I hadn't read so yeah,
• 1:46:22
  and I've already forgotten them so if you.
• 1:46:23
  Well, I do. Text me a few of your
• 1:46:25
  suggestions. Yeah, I do think Journey of
• 1:46:26
  Souls by Michael Newton. I think you'll really, really
• 1:46:29
  enjoy. It's it's it's you.
• 1:46:31
  You've read many lives. Mini Masters by Doctor Brian
• 1:46:34
  Weiss. No.
• 1:46:35
  I haven't heard that one either. OK, well, that's a that's a,
• 1:46:38
  that's a mini version of Journey of Souls.
• 1:46:40
  It's about one regression where she experiences past lives.
• 1:46:45
  But but that's, yeah, just it's been fun to dive into what the
• 1:46:50
  reincarnation process is and try to grasp with that.
• 1:46:53
  But we'll keep the book recommendations going.
• 1:46:56
  And I just really appreciate the friendship a lot.
• 1:46:58
  Thanks, Brent. Thanks so much.
• 1:46:59
  Yeah, thanks again everybody for tuning in to Love Conquers Fear.
• 1:47:05
  Stay tuned. Lots of lots of exciting
• 1:47:08
  episodes coming up and really appreciate all the shares, all
• 1:47:13
  the light you're giving me. You know, this has been a this
• 1:47:17
  has been an incredible journey for me.
• 1:47:19
  I've heard now 10 near death experiences stories this year
• 1:47:24
  and before this year, I'd heard zero.
• 1:47:27
  And people are really opening up with me and I can't tell you how
• 1:47:30
  much I appreciate that and and how people putting that light
• 1:47:34
  back, you know, really opens me up and brings light back into me
• 1:47:38
  as I'm trying to put the light out to all of you.
• 1:47:41
  So thanks again and keep it coming.