Ep. 60 - Empathy Rising with Bard Azima

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The way forward was compassion and non-judgment. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Welcome to episode 60 of Synchronicity. My guest today is Bart Azima. Gonna get to Bart in just a second. He runs a website called empathyrising.com, incredibly interesting, fascinating. One, ding dong, ding dong alert, ding Caleb, just for you, one of my favorite episodes, one of my favorite guests. This is 60, put him in the top five, how about that? You figure out the other four. Okay, let's talk about some quick things. Gamers, that's not all of you. Pick up the new Final Fantasy. If you like Final Fantasy, pick it up. It's not my favorite Final Fantasy, but it's a Final Fantasy. If you don't know what Final Fantasy is, you're probably wondering why I said the words Final Fantasy so much.

Don't worry about it, I'm moving on. We are doing a book giveaway this week. It's been a little bit, I know. If you don't know what I'm talking about, book giveaway, join the Synchronicity community, not the Facebook community, although that exists too. Join that, that's a great little group we got there. Going over 300 people right now, it's pretty fun there. But the email community, if you go to synchpodcast.com, you can join the email community. There are these book giveaways. I used to do them every week, it was costing me a fortune. So a small fortune, let's say. So I stopped doing them every week, but I am doing them every month, if not more frequently now.

So we got a book giveaway. We want to know what the book is, I bet you do. It is When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. One of my favorite teachers, a student of Chogam Trungpa and the Tibetan lineage, Shambhala, fantastic. She is incredible. I've never seen her teach in person, but I've enjoyed listening to her and reading her books. One of my favorite teachers, if you need somewhere to start with Tibetan Buddhism, she's a great person to start with. So I'm giving that book away, join the community, the email list, it gets me most from me weekly and also get this book. Maybe you're in a drawing.

And the good thing is you're in that forever. So you know the drill if you're already on there. All right, let's talk about a bit of good news. Last week, I referenced the Dakota pipeline. It was very concerning that this was a situation and by no means is this over, but there was a victory for the people, the water protectors, the native tribes, people saying don't build a pipeline under a lake right where we are, river. Please, that's not a good idea. This could affect our land, our water, drinking water, that's our lives. And the federal government did step in and say, hey, we are not gonna provide the easement for this, you can't do it.

That being said, it's not really the end of it. I mean, the corporation who owns, you know, and has interest in the pipeline, they're still planning to kind of violate that and just pay the fines and do all this stuff. So it's something to stay on top of, but it does highlight the importance of locally, you know, coming together on a community level locally is a good thing to do. That's an example of a protest that was peaceful, organized, and it built momentum, and you better believe if that wasn't happening, it just would've went in right there. There wouldn't have been no questions asked. So that's, I think, a bit of, that highlights what we can do when we organize on a local and communal level.

So that's a good thing. That's a, but then the good news category department. Okay, let's get to Bard. Bard, I was introduced to Bard, my friend Nikki, who I've known since high school, since middle school, truthfully, Nikki, one of my oldest and dearest friends, not oldest in terms of age, we're not that old, Nikki. Although we do both have children now, sailor, her wonderful daughter. All right, I digress. She said, hey, listen, my cousin wrote this piece on his website called empathyrising.com. It's about Donald Trump, I think you're gonna enjoy it. And it was really long. And she said, you know, it's really long.

I'm like, okay, I'm up for a challenge. I read it, and even though it was very long, it wasn't hard to read. I was completely engaged in reading the entire thing, and I was fascinated that someone was looking at this very volatile political situation, and being able to basically pull out, I think, very important granules of truth, and perspectives, and offering many perspectives, had a look in this in a different way. And they dealt with everything from socioeconomic factors, the relationship between, you know, what had happened with Brexit, the rise of populism. He weaved in how, you know, the subjugation of feminine principles, like vulnerability, compassion, empathy, were at the root of this.

There was Jungian stuff about not facing your shadow. It was just a really amazing piece. So I immediately got in touch with Nicky, and I was like, you gotta hook me up with Bard. I wanna talk to him for synchronicity. He was totally engaged. We set up a call and had an amazing discussion, and I really do mean that this was one of my favorite discussions I've had on here. Bard brings up a very interesting, I don't think it's really a theory. I think you could say it's pretty much a, if you really think about it, it's very, makes a lot of sense. It's this idea that many of the people who run our government institutions, businesses, CEOs, executives, really important kind of cogs in the wheel of culture and society top down at this point, were put into the system, the boarding school, or the military school system, that really is quite traumatic for people to have to go through.

My dad went through military and boarding school, and I think he kind of escaped as unscathed as you can, because of some psychedelic experiences he had, but for the most part, people do not, it's really a pretty brutal system, and Bard lays it out much better than I'm gonna do right here, but essentially the logic is this, if I was like this. You go to a military boarding school, then you go, and you're told this is an amazing place to be, regardless of whether what happens there, but it's an amazing place to be, then you go, suffered various traumas there, then you go to an Oxford, or a Harvard, or one of these elite institutions of your country, and then you get funneled into these elite executive positions, or political places, where you can kind of, dictate policy and kind of how the world is gonna be run.

And the point is, is that a lot of our leaders are dealing with these huge psychological and spiritual wounds, and they're just acting out a cycle that has been put onto them for generations. And he does a really good job of tracing this to kind of the UK in particular, and how the colonies of the UK kind of continue this cycle. It's a fascinating thing, we talk about that. We talk about a lot of stuff in here. I'm gonna have links on the podcast page, both on syncpodcast.com, and also mindpodnetwork.com. If you wanna check those out, I've simplified the process for finding episodes. If you wanna find them on the website, of course, you can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, wherever, and you'll automatically get updated.

But I'm just gonna make the, so this week's episode is gonna be syncpodcast.com/bard. Like, it couldn't be any easier. I wanna make it really easy for you guys to find these pages and resources that I'm gonna be putting on there, because I think this is stuff you may enjoy. So, this all of Bard's writing, links to his website, is gonna be up there, and I really encourage you to check it out, especially if you enjoyed this episode. So, I'm trying to keep this one a little shorter than the past weeks. I'm gonna go on 10, 15 minutes. Who needs to hear that, right? But I sincere gratitude and thanks to everyone who continues to download, listen, rate, review, donate, any way you get involved, join the Facebook community, join the email community.

I really, it really means a lot to me. This is a transitional period. You'll hear in some upcoming episodes, some things that are coming out. This Mind Pod Network book that I've mentioned, it is coming out, the tentative date right now is the second week of January. So, stay tuned for that. I know I've been mentioning that for at least a few months now. That's coming out, don't worry, I promise. But seriously, thank you guys and girls and everyone for listening to this and all of the episodes on Mind Pod Network. Check out some other podcasts on there guys. Really great stuff going on from Michael Phillip with Third Eye Drops and Corey Allen with the Astral Hustle.

I'll just mention those two this week, but there's so many others there that I think you'll really enjoy. So, without further ado, here is this week's guest, Bard Azim. (upbeat music) Hey.

Hello.

Bard, how you doing?

I'm good, how are you?

Here, let me turn my video on. I'm gonna turn my video off for the recording just 'cause of any potential bandwidth stuff, even though I don't expect it, but it's happened before.

Sounds good.

What's going on?

How's the, hi, good to see you.

Nice to see you. How's the sound?

Sounds great, sounds perfect.

Okay, cool. 'Cause I'm using these instead of my big headphones, and then I think the microphone of the computer would pick it up, so let's just go with this.

Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, honestly, I've had people call in with like who are just using speakers, no headphones, and like I can hear all of the ambient noise and everything.

Okay.

Luckily, I went to school like for audio stuff, and so like I know how to like clean stuff off and post production, but like you're more than okay.

Okay, awesome.

Cool, all right, I'm gonna turn off my video, but we'll get started soon. I'm super excited for this too, because I didn't, I couldn't finish 92 pages. But I did get through about 30 of them. And I was just getting to Boris Johnson, who I find to be a, you know, I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with UK politics. I do have two close friends, one who currently lives in the UK, who's Jack Carroll, he's like a comedian, he's a really awesome young kid, but like totally with it and on it. And then my, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I have my friend David Silver, who's like in his 70s, who grew up in England, but you know, emigrated to Boston in his like 20s and 30s, but still follows politics there, you know, quite fervently.

So I have like a very, you know, outsiders perspective on what's going on, but I obviously see Boris Johnson. I see the character he is at least portrayed in like popular culture. So like digging, this is where I stopped. This is why I'm on Boris Johnson. It was getting into kind of his addictions and how that was kind of a microcosmic view of what is going on in society. First of all, I mean, before we get started with all of this, I read a lot of stuff, like a lot. I read books, I read new stuff. I get sent stuff by people. And I got to say, man, your stuff is incredible. It really, really is.

And like, I find it rare to meet people who can both zoom in and zoom out, let alone meet people who can write about that process. So it really is like, I mean, I'm sure this has been related to you, but I mean, it's you're an incredible writer and the perspective that you're bringing on a lot of these issues not only is awesome, but I think really needed right now because it seems, you know, the people who are actually looking at stuff like this are few and far between. And like, I am actively trying to tune in to as many of them as possible. So I can only imagine what it's like for someone in like a filter bubble who's identifying with like a polarizing side.

So yeah, that's why I'm excited for this conversation because like, I have a decent number of listeners now. Like my podcast has been like experiencing kind of exponential growth. Like at, you know, a few months ago, I was getting about 10,000 downloads a month and this month I'm at 30,000 and it should continue to grow. So people listen to this stuff and I know my limited and inept thoughts about the election and Donald Trump. I had people like reaching out to me, both friends, people I didn't know being like, that really helped. Like that was good perspective. I'm like, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

So like this conversation I think is gonna be really, really awesome for people. And I just posted in the Facebook group for people to get your ebook and just check out your website because it's really, it's really great stuff, man.

Thank you, I mean, you give yourself, I know you're a humble guy, but I listened to in the last two days, I listened to four of the podcast.

Cool.

And really enjoyed it, but your breadth of knowledge regarding, you know, the esoteric and regarding in general what is going on, is a testament to why you are getting the growth you're getting. So it's really my honor to be with you.

Thank you, I appreciate that. It's also an honor for me. So I mean, I figure we can just get started. I mean, there's so many places to jump in. I think our issue won't be finding stuff to talk about, but rather trying to make it fit into, and I can already anticipate definitely doing this again. Like there's no way we can jam in all this stuff. Yeah, there's not. So why don't we start though, before getting into kind of your perspective on everything that's going on, which literally, can you tell me like, so we got introduced because my good friend Nikki, Yalda, she's like, hey, I think you're really gonna like this thing my cousin did on empathy rising, is his website, it was about the election, it was about kind of the suppression of the feminine, and how this was kind of a logical outcome, and how it parallel frecks it.

So I wanna get into all that stuff, but I wanna find out what's your deal, how did you kind of get to where you are now, and what was the trajectory that kind of led you to writing about and talking about so many of these important issues that we're facing? Yeah, absolutely. So, wow, you know, all of these are long stories. (laughing) You know, I was put into boarding school in England when I was six years old. So that was in the mid-70s, that was 1976. And like for a lot of people, it was not a great experience. And by all accounts, I went in a lovely little boy, and I came out an extremely angry young man at 10.

And unfortunately, no one knew what to do with that. So, you know, my parents, the culture, there's so much anger out there as it is, and it's basically just rejected, like a hand is put out. Instead of us, as we engage with this incredible amount of anger that's out in the culture right now, instead of rejecting it out of hand for us to say what's going on, that there's reasons for all of this. But instead, what we do is we are incredibly judgmental and harsh, even though what the anger is, it's a cry for help. That's what anger is. Anger has been given a really bad rap, but what's lower on the totem pole is apathy and resignation.

Anger, regardless of who it comes from, is the canary in the coal mine saying, there is something very wrong here. Unfortunately, when we are on the receiving end of anger, what we usually do is we respond in kind, either with anger, with the rejection, and that only exacerbates the anger in the other person, because when we receive anger, we tend to take it personally, where when a person is being angry, it's all about them. So then we get into this eternal loop. Anyway, so my healing journey began in earnest when I was 19, my dad gave me the seminal self-help book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

So that was in 1999. One of the first self-help books to come out, and now of course they're ubiquitous. And from the moment I read that, in 1946 now, 27 years later, literally every day, I was taking a look at myself, my behavior, the fact that for a lifetime I've gone zero to 60 in two seconds, my rage suddenly taking over, and then afterwards feeling the guilt, the shame, and wondering what the hell is going on. And I've been working on it ever since, with a lot of collateral damage in the form of my relationships and my family and friendships, because I was approaching things really from a really unconscious place.

And then three years ago, I came upon this boarding school trauma information, and that was an incredible liberation for me, because I found this material one day my wife was searching on the web and she found something. And we often do not look at the most obvious reasons, but we don't see it, like it's right in front of our eyes. I've done therapy before. I was in therapy with a really wonderful therapist for a whole year, seven, eight years ago. He found out I went to boarding school, it didn't come up. And it's because the thing of boarding school is the prevailing idea in the culture is that it's privilege, it's positive, you're rich, what's the problem?

Unfortunately, when you dig only a little bit deeper, you realize the catastrophe that it is for really every child, that the fact that so many thousands of people, all over the world, especially in the Anglo countries, England, Canada, US, Australia, the elite still send their children to boarding school. And those elite end up then running our government corporations. And that's been going on for 400 years. So, the basic aspect of it is that, so a child who, I was six when I went, which was a little bit early, most kids go when they're eight or nine, so a child is put into boarding school. They are told, they immediately fall into a double bind, which is really the double bind of our entire culture.

Right.

Which is that, oh, this is gonna be wonderful for you. Oh, the facilities, the camaraderie, and all of that. But meanwhile, you are dropped off and you are actually abandoned. And you're six or seven or eight. I have a nine-year-old now, and I see within her peer group, how much still those children need their parents, right? But then you are completely on your own. And it is so devastating that the only way that you can survive that is by cutting off from your emotions. Because if you feel the betrayal, you're not gonna be able to function. And in that environment, which is a doggy dog environment, if you show vulnerability,

You're dumb.

Your goose is cooked, and you might be there. I did this boarding school trauma workshop in London, in March and May. Some of these guys were there from seven to 18, and some of them, once the dye was cast as to what their role would be there, whether they became the bully, I became a bully, or the joker, or the jock, or whatever the case may be, if they became the victim, then they experienced that for 10 or 11 years. I mean, it's just overwhelming. So this has been going on for 400 years. And the American culture and the Canadian culture, the foundation of it, is the British culture. It is British subjects who built and created our countries.

And at the beginning of, I mean, boarding school's been around for 600 years, but about 400 years, the age of reason happened where a reason and the rational mind sort of came to the fore.

Right.

And the emotional sphere, the feminine was subjugated, and that has continued unabated. And so all of our institutions, our legal institutions, military, economic, governmental, are built upon this ultra-left brain approach, which, and so the boarding school is a specific and intense manifestation of that. So where the feminine, because in that environment, it's not a place for love. There is no affection, and that is our culture. Our culture is, we are divorced from our feelings that are emotions. We've, what you do when you receive trauma as a child. So then what's interesting is I did this research into the boarding school stuff.

And then in the last year, I started to recognize that these very same aspects are a complete part of all Anglo-cultures. Now, they also present themselves in all over the world.

Right.

But our aspect has this British, very cold, rational, ultra-left brain masculine perspective.

Right, it's like a hyper-focused version of what you're talking about. And I'd like to also even broaden the context of the subjugation of the feminine. I mean, we're talking about it from the cultural kind of scientific, how we shape the conceptual world. But before that, even before 700 years ago, we're talking about thousands of years ago with the Egyptian Isis cults and your mystery schools, even in Greece. The feminine was totally wiped out specifically by the Abrahamic religions. And the people, the nomadic people who eventually settled and took over various portions of the world in the East, it really changed the shape of how people had an ability to relate to the divine in total, meaning both aspects, the masculine and feminine.

At that point then, you started needing a mediator. So you had a step in between you, which is either the priest cast, there's a whole level of people which then can turn into more monetization opportunities, more cultural opportunities. So you had culture, this masculine energy take over from the religious part. So that's feeding people's spiritual and psychological kind of urges. And then, as you're saying, 700 years ago, the age of reason has just taken off. And really, the seat of it was in Europe and Britain and the colonizing forces. And we're seeing this continued. And it's interesting how you seamlessly jumped from your own, I mean, I understand completely how this happens.

You're talking about your personal story and then it goes into these cultural energies that are clearly emanating. And we're seeing this specifically, you're talking about boarding schools being a manifestation of this kind of hyper masculine, logical reason, no room for anything else. We're seeing this happen, right? We saw the first tidings of this, or probably before this, and not first tidings, but a big example of this with Brexit. Then we saw a huge example of this with Trump. And there's two parts of this. So like, I want to delve into, this is the issue, right? This is potentially the problem.

But what I love about what you write about, and I've been able to glean from what you're doing, is you're not just interested in pointing to the problem. That's what everyone is doing now in their own version. Donald Trump's the problem, or Johnson's the problem, the Tories are the problem, everyone's the problem. What they're not doing is saying, how do we figure out what's the source of the problem? And then what are the tools and skills we need to cultivate to address this divide? So you're doing both things. I'll give it like an office place analogy. If you have an office, if you worked in an office, and you have a meeting, and there's a meeting of a bunch of people from a lot of different departments, sometimes there's a person who's like, well, this is a big issue.

This is a huge problem. I don't know how we're gonna, this is what's going on, this needs to be addressed. And then there's the type of person who also sees the problem, but says, well, you know what, I've been thinking about it. Here are some potential ways to address this. So this is the type of thinking I think you're bringing to this situation. So not to interrupt, but continue with kind of the exposition of this subjugation of the feminine, the subjugation of the intuitive feeling aspects of ourselves and our culture, and how this is resulting in kind of what we're seeing out there in the external world at large.

Yeah, I mean, everything you've said exactly true. This, it's so deep seated now that we just do not see it. It is just taken for granted that this is the way things are. And so it's really interesting as I've put my Trump article on Facebook, and it's picking up real momentum, and it's fascinating. And sad at the same time to see people commenting on it. And so engaging with me, but also engaging with each other from both sides of the divide. And the cruelty is, and this is what's happened. I mean, for me, I have always been unconsciously a very judgmental and angry person. And a couple of years ago, I started writing a completely separate piece on a separate subject that best not to discuss.

But I was writing to a journalist to take him to task for his ignorance on the subject that he was writing about. And it was just gonna be a little, like a one page, like a letter, and it just kept going, going. And I realized that I was gonna be writing a large piece on this, but within a couple of weeks, and this came on the heels. When I say on the heels, I mean a month to two months after the almost dissolution of my marriage, the falling part of my family. And as I was writing it, I suddenly had the revelation that the way forward with this gentleman and in general was compassion and non-judgment.

So that was fascinating for me. And at that point, it was only an intellectual concept. It was not real. And so I've always been a very good writer. More importantly, a very quick writer. I write and it comes out very organized. I always did all my essays at university, laughing. And you know what, and I could do that and still get like 75 or 80 or whatever. And so the moment that I had that revelation, I realized, oh, the standard now has to be that every sentence that I write in this piece needs to come from a place of compassion and non-judgment. So I need to be aware of these hidden sarcasms.

I've also been a very sarcastic person my whole life. And these digs and whatever are not allowed. And the moment that I had that thought and then I went to continue writing, writing suddenly became very challenging. And so then it was a process of a few weeks as I started to really integrate this. And of course, then that started to become integrated into my life with a view that my desire at this point, which may come as a surprise to some people who've known me in the past, is that my ardent desire is to engage at all times with all people, whether it's through writing or in person, from a position of compassion and non-judgment.

Sometimes that's very challenging. We get stressed because of our lives and our work and this and that. But that is the line. And so when that happened, my healing ended up going to the next level.

Yeah, I bet.

Yeah, and my relationship with my wife and my child gradually improved. And then in March of this year, I went to England for part one of this boarding school workshop, which brought up an unbelievable amount of anger and rage and beauty and liberation. And when I got back, I ended up starting my blog. Now, starting my blog was interesting because the first piece that I wrote was regarding a very high profile case here, a court case against our biggest radio personality. And the verdict had just come in. And it was three women who had said that he had sexually harassed them and 20 other women, it was very Bill Cosby like.

Right.

20 other women had come out and said, "Yes, you know, he's done this kind of thing." And not only was he exonerated, but the judge went out of his way in his one hour verdict to castigate the women who had come forward. And so there was a real outcry for the tone deafness of the verdict and the approach. And that night, as I was thinking about it, I wondered about this judge and it was three in the morning and it's in my piece. And I woke up and I, you know, turned on my phone and my guests turned out to be right that he had attended Upper Canada College, which is the highest level elite boarding school here.

Now, to bring up boarding school is really, it's a non-issue at this point. What it is is that in the culture for three or 400 years, this is the pattern. So the elite are sent to those schools. They are abandoned and betrayed. They cut off from their heart. They grow up. They become our government and corporate leaders. What else are they going to do but betray the people? It's not on purpose.

It's an unconscious.

It's unconscious. They are not, none of these people, this is a really tough thing for people to understand because I think the idea in our culture is that a lot of our leadership are like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, like rubbing his fingers together saying, "Right Donald Trump's an evil genius. You hear this all the time."

And it's just not the case. Donald Trump, by the way, I don't know if you got far enough into, I don't think you did into my Brexit piece. He was sent to military boarding school.

It's, you know, what's fascinating about this is my dad was sent to boarding school and then military school. He was lucky enough to have psychedelic experiences at both of them. So he'll relay a story to me once in a while about how he bullied a kid and like he threw water or he broke his like this project he would be working on. And I can feel it now, like the sadness and regret in which he looks back and participating in that culture obviously was a catalyst for him even back then to help break him out of it. And my dad is one of the most compassionate and like non-judgmental people I've ever met.

But I will say this, I am sure rage has developed in him from that paradigm and being cut off and he had an even weirder situation where, you know, he was basically adopted by his mom's new husband who was uber wealthy and like put him in this boarding school. So he's dealing exactly, but it's interesting to see how he's not in a power position in life. He is not like, you know, an elite at all. But he's happy and circumstances you could even look and I know he's listening to this, but he's one of the happier people I know in life. And the fact that he was able to kind of get out of that paradigm is an amazing thing to me, but, and this is so many things are just clicking when you're saying this.

And it's really very, very powerful for me. But I also have a deep-seated rage in me that it never really comes out in this podcast. It's a fun, you know, happy, you know, non-judgmental place. But I mean, anyone, and what's funny is, is anyone who doesn't really know me will probably think I'm the nicest happiest and I know some crazy them. But if you get close to me and you start to have a real relationship on any level, I can be a monster and it's there. And I experience it and I experience it in such a horror. Like I am very aware, this is how deep it is. And this is why I think what you're saying is so important in touching on these things.

I am hyper acutely aware that when I wish ill on someone, it's not just me saying, oh, well, they're bad. I made a boo-boo. There is a karmic implication for wishing a bad thing for enough. It is horrible. It's one of the worst things you can do. If you read any Saint or mystic, they will say, don't do that. And I still do it when I get angry. That's the power of what these unconscious processes actually have over us unless you start shining the light on what is actually going on. So not to cut you off, I just wanted to point out that there's a lot of parallels here that I can identify with that just completely makes sense in a personal and just like a global level too.

So yeah, continue. Absolutely. I mean, one of the wonderful things for you, you have been very fortunate because your father isn't a minority. I also did a lot of psychedelics in my early 20s, which I know were incredibly healing for me and very powerful within my healing journey. But one of the things that you bring up is the generational aspect of trauma, which is so underestimated. And as I mentioned in my Trump piece, I mentioned the three great American traumas. The first one being the genocide of Native Americans, the second being slavery, and the third being the Civil War. And so the idea, the people, we are so disconnected from our emotions and our feelings, other than rage, which so many of us have, that we cannot see the patterns of betrayal and trauma they get passed down from generation to generation.

And it's very-- oh, Civil War was 150 years ago. Well, slavery, whatever. I mean, that's done with. Native Americans, but it's done with. And now, as I say in the piece, the nexus point, it really makes a mockery of our denial of the ongoing nature of trauma, as all three of these are coalescing at the same point at this nexus point to reveal for us in no uncertain terms that our avoidance of our trauma, both personal, because so many of us have childhood trauma. Some people, I know in my family, too, oh, get over it, boarding school, whatever. But if they read my Brexit piece and it goes further, they'll see that it goes way further, because now what I recognize is that my experience is a specific experience within our rational system.

But so many people have disowned and unacknowledged childhood trauma that continues. And on top of that are lineal and sessions trauma, which, just like jeans, gets passed down from generation to generation. And so, oh, I'm an alcoholic, and my father was an alcoholic, and his father was an alcoholic. And these things are just kind of glossed over. And what does that mean? As we are all so many of us, only really functioning with a cornucopia of addictions, which have become normalized, except when a few of us are unable to sort of color between the lines. And we lose ourselves a little bit. Then we single out those people and say, oh, look at this poor asshole who can't contain himself, even though that person invariably actually has more sensitivity and more access to it.

It's so funny. Yeah, the emotional realm. And so what do we do with those people? We jail them. We ostracize them, because they're drug addicts, like the people in our societies that need the most compassion. And who, if you sat down with any of these people and you really delved into their lives, you would want to hug them and say, oh, my God, I am so sorry for what you have experienced. What can I do to help? It reminds me of that's the Seven Habits book. There was one anecdote in it which really stuck with me when I was 19 and I read it, because I, of course, have always thought, like so many of us, that I'm right.

I know. My parents gave me a birthday card when I was 18, and I'm an aquarium. And it said that the aquarium motto is, I know. Everyone had a big laugh about that. But in this anecdote, there's a guy on a subway. Sorry, it's him. It's the author. And he's reminiscing that he was on the subway somewhere in New York or whatever, Chicago. And he's going along. And the doors open, they get to a station, and a man comes in with two kids. And he sits down, and the two kids proceed to run around and just make a ruckus and disturbing people. And the author, Stephen Covey, is talking about how he had incredible patience.

And he didn't say anything. And eventually, he said to the man, excuse me, sir, can you please control your children? This is totally inappropriate. And the man said to him, very matter of factly, oh, I'm sorry, we just came from the hospital where their mother died. So then I think he coined the term paradigm shift, where in that moment, we just make such quick assumptions about people without knowing a fucking thing about who they are and where they come from. And then what we do, because we are so prisoners of our right brain, and we have so little access to our conscience and our feelings to really feel that person beyond the veneer, then what we do when someone crosses us or delays us by 15 seconds while we're driving or something, we will look into that car and we will size up that person.

Are they fat? Are they black? Do they look gay? Are they ugly? Are they whatever? And very quickly, we will put together a profile of that person and then completely throw them under the bus as then we drive by. Well, you know what it is? It's a bastardization of the human tendency, the neurological ability to fill in the blanks. It's just like a co-opting of a very useful skill and for survival, for cognitive, you know, for-- If it was a tool, it would be great. Well, that's a tool. That's right, because the primary, that's a problem. This is a famous rhomba saying, which is the ego is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

And that couldn't be more true. And I'll also add, just to go back, when you were talking about the lineage and the individual trauma, I'll also throw on the esoteric dimension there, the karmic trauma, that like, listen, we all do come from ancestral lineages. But if you believe in reincarnation, you're probably not coming back in the same lineage every time. So there's a whole host of other stuff with you just don't even have access to. It's infinite, exactly. So here's where we are, right? We are honing in on the cause of what is going on. And I think you're trifecta of the United States traumas.

It's just so on point. And are we getting a better demonstration of this than right now? It couldn't be more clear. But let's look at some of the ways that, at least even in my peer group, my social media, which I will say, I mean, I am very rigorous about who comes into my feeds. I do not like to see people who are just tapped into this polarity and spewing stuff on both sides. I am very vigilant about that. That's my own little filter bubble. But I do actively seek out other opinions, too. However, what people are doing, it seems right now, especially let's just focus on Trump, because a lot of people are really concerned with this, especially as he continues to put people in his cabinet and key positions that really do not indicate that he has the interests of many people besides himself, which is not totally unpredictable.

What people are doing is they're denigrating him. They're accused of denigrating his supporters. They're lumping them all into a bucket of deplorables as Hillary Clinton did. They are calling them xenophobes, racist, sexist, misogynist, and then, as you astutely point out, to do so completely misses the mark that if you want to think that there are 59 million sexist, misogynist, racist living in this country, like, yes, I know the country isn't perfect, and I know there's a lot of things, and depending on what you look like and who you are, it can be a very scary place. But if there were 60 million of those people out there right now just feeling exactly like you think they are, if one of those people thinks that that's who's out there, this would not be the country we're living in right now.

Now, there is clearly an undercurrent of a lot of this stuff, not only collectively, but personally, too, and all people. The most high-falutin liberal progressive, I guarantee there's racism there, I guarantee there's classism, I guarantee there's judgment. So what I like to think of, and we were talking about this inability to kind of empathize or resonate with people, is this is where I think the skill of cultivating multiple perspectives is so important. If you can put yourself in the position of someone who has experienced trauma, regardless of their level of vitriol or hatred, in this case, let's say Donald Trump, but I honestly, when I look at Donald Trump at this point, every picture I see, every story I read, every tweet I read, I honestly feel genuine compassion for the guy.

And I spoke to my friend who's a political operative in the far right, not the far right, but he's on the Republican side, and I said this to him, and he's like, I don't feel bad for him, grow up. It was the stiff upper lip thing that you were talking about, and my friend is not really that type of person, but he's been in politics long enough where that's kind of cultivated, 'cause he's surrounded with people like that. But that to me, you're cutting off any road for growth or healing when you take that approach. So, talk about some of the skills that you think we individually and collectively need to be cultivating and putting into action to kind of counteract the regular tendencies of our ego to lash out and say, oh no, you did this, you think gay should be converted, fuck you, you're a horrible person, you know, I hope you die and your whole family dies, then you'll see what it's like is how horrible you are.

So like, what do we do in your, like, what have you noticed some antidotes? I know you have some.

Well, yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting that you use the word skills because the rational perspective is so embedded in us. So for example, there was something on Facebook the other day on empathy, and it was talking about how do we teach our children empathy, and the article was techniques and so forth. And I shared it, but I gave my thoughts on it, which is that empathy is not something to be taught. It's not a checklist. The way that we teach empathy to our children is being genuinely empathetic because children more so than anybody and God knows how much evolution of my consciousness rests on my nine year old daughter who, you know, I basically had a choice four or five years ago because I had trouble because I was still so angry.

I had trouble connecting with her and in, of course, creating the relationship that I so desperately wanted with her but was unable to because of my impatience and my anger, which fortunately never has taken a physical form with anybody. But as we well know, that's irrelevant because psychological and verbal abuse is as bad, maybe even worse because it's much more nebulous. At least if you're being hit, you kind of know what's going on. But when there's passive aggression and it's very confusing, especially for a child, but what I've done for my whole life and because, you know, I can run rings around anybody in any debate and conversation.

If I don't wanna lose that, I will do what I notice so many people doing within my Facebook feed with regard to the article and just out in the culture is that we will cherry pick one piece of information that we feel is the greatest vulnerability of the opposing argument and use that to completely dismantle and denigrate that person. So once I started to do that with my two-year-old child, fortunately, it started to become obvious to me how absurd that was. And, you know, there was one of my seminal experiences that I've been quite a few with my daughter of putting her to sleep. She was four, she's nine now.

And, you know, we went into her bedroom, it was sleeping time, and we ended up having like a clothing fight and a pillow fight and we had so much fun and we then, I read for her, she sat in my arms and at the end of it, I said, you know, do you want to sort of sleep with me tonight? Because my wife was home, and if my wife was home at that point, she would always lie down with my daughter. And so I offered and she said, oh, you know, I'd love to, but I really promised mommy. And I said, no problem, I just, I thought that I thought we'd had such a good time that maybe you would want to sleep with me.

And she said, you know, the thing is that sometimes you get in a mood. And then I was tearing up and I said, I know, but haven't I been better recently? Because I had, the build up to that moment had been two or three months of me being much more connected. And so I said, haven't I been better? And she said, yeah, like what she was saying. Yes, motherfucker, but you still have what you do.

That's a really matter, yeah. And then I said, I said, I got you. And I came out and I said to my wife Heather, I said, oh wow, it was, we just had such a great time. And she went and put her to sleep and came out. And when my wife came out, she said that when she walked into the bedroom, that my daughter was just like, so excited and saying, mommy, I had such a good time with that. And at that point, it was like, right. This is the way things are supposed to be. Not this rigid, rigid, everything is where is the emotion? Where is the connection? And so literally from that time, my sensitivity, which was crushed, right?

When childhood trauma, when it is not tended to in any of us, what happens is you build the wall, you go behind that wall to protect yourself and rightly so, but if there is no healing in that, the wall remains, and this is the case for so many of us, then we get older, we don't know the wall is there, and that's how we're operating. Meanwhile, our emotions, our deepest soul, or the gentlest part of us has been banished to some netherworld. And as I write in the Brexit piece, then our lives are this maze that the gods themselves would have trouble finding their way through to somehow get to the other side.

And for me to work through that maze for my whole life, to get to the other side and then to emerge from the maze and then be presented with the wall, like the wall in Game of Thrones. And then to be like, holy shit, what do I do with this now? And but the more that we open to our inner sensitivity has nothing to do with the outside and do our own healing, the more we are able to engage with the world with compassion and non-judgment. So for example, so this is axiomatic and it's very difficult for most people to understand and the reason why it's difficult for so many of us to understand is because it involves ourselves too and so many of us are in denial, not purposeful, unconscious denial of the ways in which we are self-destructive and destructive to the world.

So this is axiomatic. Someone like Donald Trump, let's talk about Donald Trump. The extent to which any person is angry, incongruent, an asshole, a motherfucker is perfectly commensurate with the level of trauma that they have experienced in their lives. Simple as that. Most people, what we wanna do is we wanna turn people into bad guys, like Trump is, like some people are just evil. This to me is absolute nonsense and it is a cop-out as we want to easily be able to not only reject other people but more importantly, and then so the corresponding aspect of that is that as we reject those things in somebody else, that means there is a corresponding energetic match for what's inside of us.

If we are reacting with the same of virulence and vitriol.

I mean, what's crazy about it, I mean, this is, this was what Carl Jung had a big interest in the shadow aspect of the personality and we all have some, not all of this, but we have some psychological understanding of the concept of projection and Jung even took it further when he was dealing with analysts and transference and a patient who was going through analysis might put, imagine their projections or their archetypes or their complexes onto the therapist. So what's interesting here is is that most of us, if not all of us, the very rare of those are projecting our inner selves and our inner awarenesses and complexes and all these things out into the world.

This is why, again, all of the really smart mystics, they all say basically the same thing. A, there's really no difference between you and someone else. It's the same thing. B, if you really want to enact change, don't go out there, go inside. And the reason they do this is because it is the fundamental same concept at work. You're maybe, maybe in some parallel universe, we're gonna change the world by yelling the others, the others into submission. That is not going to work here. We have enough historical evidence. We don't have to get into any esoteric anything but that is not how it works. We're not, we haven't reached that plateau of like everything is good.

We're in a utopian society. Despite marginal, and I'm not one of these doomsayers either. I think we're, like you're saying, this is a nexus transformational point. I believe everything like the internet and these are neutral. We project the meaning and value onto the same thing with money. I often talk about this on this podcast but I grew up in a paradigm. My paradigm was money was a rooted ball evil. How could it not be? Look at what corporations do for money. Look at what these people do for money. Wrong. Money is not the root of all evil. It's the projection and value and how it's used as an energetic source and your intention behind it.

Money can be an amazing thing. You give someone who needs $1,000 the money they need for their operation, for their pet. That's a great thing you just did. That's amazing use of money. So, yeah, I mean, the question is, is at this point, the story you described with your daughter is a wonderful example of you being able to use self-reflection and, you know, using your life as a vehicle for transformation. And I think I put up a Shanti Deva quote today for one of these pages I manage on Facebook and it hit me, once in a while, often I'll put a quote that resonates with me but once in a while it'll be like, "Oh, shit, that's the one for right now."

And this quote, what is it? It was when I look at others and realize that through them, I will reach enlightenment. I look on fondly with generosity and love. And that's what this is. We can look at the world and say it's a fucked up place, there is no God, everything is fucked, everything is wrong, there's no meaning, everything is nothing. Or we can say, this is kind of like a school for us. This is like a spiritual training school where we use all of these different things that are within us and without of us to kind of realize what you're talking about. When you say compassion and non-judgment, I'll use the same, the similar terms.

I use compassion and wisdom. What is wisdom if not clarity and what is clarity if not non-judgment? So, and I also to the flip point of this, and this is something that in our culture, and I'm sure you've bumped up against this quite a bit, especially with a blog named Empathy Rising, Compassion, Empathy, these words themselves, and this is a great example of the subjugation of these principles, have become almost dirty words. There are people, if you say beat compassionate, they're like, ugh, that's, why would you, ugh, that's mushy, you know, you're being too soft, you're not standing up for what you believe in.

How can you see an injustice and not yell and scream and call these people assholes? Because that's a clear injustice, you know, like what, whoa, Hitler? You should have compassion for Hitler. I'm Jewish, I can tell you for a fact, I have compassion for Hitler. That was a horrible, horrible existence and incarnation form. Ramdas, one of my favorite people, he has a Pooja table where he worships every day to Maharaji, his guru, and to the divine. He puts Donald Trump on his Pooja table. He put George Bush on his Pooja table because that is his reminder not that this is someone who's such a great, wonderful person, but someone who has a really kind of got a raw deal in terms of the existence incarnation card.

You know, Donald Trump is enacting like what you're describing. This is him playing out this myth and this archetype and it's so far beyond your control when you get to these upper echelons of society where it's seemingly the power resides. 'Cause you and I both know the power isn't the outside materialistic cudgel that you can wield this power. It's the internal freedom that if someone calls you a name, someone threatens you, someone says something you just don't like and you don't get really angry and upset and you can remain calm and express love to them, that's the power. That's like everyone from Jesus to Muhammad to every single person has been talking about who really kind of tuned into this for however long.

So yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you know, Donald Trump is simply a manifestation of our world and the direction. It's that he is, you know, the compassion that I feel for Donald Trump is and for a lot of our leaders who are burdened, they are, their burdens are greater than ours because they are saddled with the kind of decision-making that ends up like Tony Blair, for example. I mean, this poor man who has just been excoriated by a report that was done by the government regarding his malfeasance in the Iraq war and sending Britain to war but these people end up having the blood of thousands of people on their hands and making decisions from an unconscious place because they believe at their deepest levels that it's a doggy dog world and you get your own if you fall between the cracks too bad, it's survival of the fittest and that's the way it goes.

And so they are our representatives and what are we doing about it? You know, is anybody, you know, like you see thousands of people coming out for meaningless things like sports events and concerts on the big sports fan?

I've always had that in all of that but where are the people coming out? But this is the thing what you've talked about. Everything is a mirror. So the person who is engaging with let's say Donald Trump and they think they're on the left and they're approaching it from a place of anger, Donald Trump for them is a mirror except they are unable to see that that's the case. If I look at Donald Trump and I think to myself, this piece of shit, that is the way we feel about ourselves. I mean, it's very, very simple but nobody wants to accept that because then what is required then is for us to take responsibility for our own lives and our actions and if we're gonna do that, all kinds of things are gonna come up within our lives which are gonna be very difficult to deal with and are much easier to gloss over and focus the blame on somebody else.

If I can also mention something else. You mentioned compassion. These things can seem very fluffy. Empathy, what does that mean? And it's because from our ultra left brain perspectives where we are used to having solutions and everything fitting neat and tidy into boxes, the stuff that's in the right brain, morals, conscience, values, a big picture and all of that, sometimes it's difficult to get a hold of it. So if I can give you an example of empathy and lack thereof in myself. So when my daughter was 18 months old, I came upon on the internet a swim survival course and my parents had moved to Florida.

They had a pool. I live in Toronto, Canada. And I thought to myself, oh, this is amazing. And so you can't learn to swim when you're 18 months but what you can learn to do is you can learn to flip onto your back and survive until hopefully somebody comes and rescues you. And so I spoke with my wife. Oh, this looks really cool. That's a great idea. So we took her to that and it was 10 weeks, once a week, 10 minutes. And we took her there. Everything about, not everything, the lady who ran it is lovely. But everything else, the pool was cold, the room was cold. And my daughter, for that 10 minutes, every single class, for 10 weeks that she was in there, she screamed out for help from me.

My wife, after three sessions, said I can't do this anymore. So she didn't come. So I stood at the edge of the pool with my child screaming out for me to help her because the way that she was being taught of how to survive was by being dunked in the water and then coming up and then hopefully flipping on her back. For me, I didn't feel what was happening because for me, my left brain was calculating that this is worth it in order for her to learn this skill. Because what if she falls in the pool with Florida? Like everything we do from fear, right? So anyway, 10 weeks of this, traumatizing as I realized now my child.

And then after that, bathing her once she was two, three, four, five, was always a shit show because any water that got on her face, my wife washing her hair, was just a nightmare. And then needless to say, she wouldn't swim. So when we'd go to the pool, she'd have her head completely up in the water. And if any drops came because somebody splashed, it would just be whatever. And this past summer, as I've sort of changed my work and trying to create more space in my hyper-adrenalized life, which is what our culture is, to just snow down. And we started homeschooling her at the end of January. So, you know, but it was summer and I took her to the pool.

And I was just so happy to be there as opposed to just I'm taking her to the pool 'cause I have to and whatever. And her friend came and her friend was like a fish. So diving, swimming, going under the water. And I had realized in the last year, a part of the because my daughter has told me, she's been like, "Dad, do not tell me to do things. "When you tell me to do things, I don't want to do them. "I need to come to this myself." So I very gingerly, you know, the second time we went swimming, I said, "You know what? "If one of these days you just plug your nose "and just put your head under the water, "it'll be like a revolution."

And I just said it very carefully. And she said, "I know, I know, I know. "I get this, I know, throwing up me, of course." (laughing)

Of course. - Every day, 10 times. So, the next day we were at the pool. I was out of the pool and she was in with her friend and she called me over and she said, "I have a surprise for you." And I said, "What?" And she suddenly plugged her nose and docked her head and she came up and she was all excited. And, you know, at all of that, that day she started flipping in the water and I was swimming with her. So, living two weeks, she was swimming from three feet away from me. Within three weeks, she swam the 60 feet of the width of the pool to me. And it was really wonderful for me that she did this with me and not my wife.

Right. - That it was an indicator to me of where I'm at with my empathy and where I was before. So, this to me is like a real example of empathy when it's not there.

Yeah, and let me give you just another take on that, of using that awesome story as a metaphor, right? If we look at that through the lens of culture, we can look at that exact story in the same way we've been describing kind of the subjugation of the feminine and the lack of empathy and then how, let's look at your daughter in this example of the feminine energy of the world. Now, let's also look at this from a really other interesting point, which is water in itself is a symbol for the unconscious, right? This is rife with so many metaphorical and symbolic meanings.

And my wife is Pisces by the way.

There you go, so you're all, so there you go. So, if you look at it from that lens, you can see this process that actually led to healing for you and your daughter and just to your place. That's essentially what we need to be doing personally and collectively. We need to do the hard work of opening up kind of our hearts and our compassionate aspects of ourselves and then doing the very difficult and sometimes devastating work of plunging ourselves into the unconscious and trying to shine light on things that we can't actually see. Luckily, luckily, luckily, fortunately for everyone listening, we live at a point in time where there are so many smart people, so many people who came before us, there's so many paths to being able to do this.

All you have to do is find the one or ones that work for you, but we know what the problem is. We know what the kind of antidotes of this are. So now, this podcast is hopefully an attempt to do that. There are so many options and ways to go with this moving forward. So, I wanna wrap it up right here, but I definitely wanna have you back on again very soon because I think there's a lot, I mean, this is, there's so much stuff, I mean, let's say this. All of this conflict and controversy in the world is not likely to slow down over the next four to eight years. Who knows how long it'll last? So, there'll be plenty of stuff to discuss, but I wanna end, I ask three quick questions and then a big question at the end.

First question, what's your favorite color? Red. (laughs)

I'm wearing a red shirt.

Yeah, that's awesome. What is your favorite number?

49.

Cool, why 49?

About four years ago, I started seeing it everywhere and for me, it's just a touchstone. When I conjure it, when I see it, whether it's the time or signage or whatever, it just lets me know that everything is okay.

Yeah, I like it, four plus nine adds up to 13, which is my favorite number.

How nice.

So, what's your favorite animal?

You know what, as a part of my lack of empathy, I have not been connected to animals until the last four or five years and I got a cat a year and a half ago and if I told you that process of my interaction with this poor cat when it first showed up two years ago, right during the time when I was in an incredibly challenging time with my wife and with my family and this poor kid who came in and was not on the receiving end of happiness for me, but now we are unbelievable best friends and one of the wonderful things with the internet, sort of the good, the bad, and the ugly, but one of the wonderful things for me is the revelation constantly and little clips of how incredible all animals are and how conscious they are.

You just see the way they are behaving and acting and reacting, so I'm just really in love with the whole animal kingdom.

It's funny you mentioned that, so I have a guest coming on tomorrow. He's like a visionary artist and one of his big themes is animals and it's like a psychedelic portrayal of what happens and he does these kind of like aura, light kind of like tendrils out of them and I gotta say every time I've ever taken psychedelics and been around an animal, I see the exact same thing. It's this weird, weird thing. Okay, last question. Practical tip that has helped you in your life.

Yeah, for me, it's in creating space. So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, in our hyper-adrenalized society and so many people will, if they have space, they won't know what to do with it because it's scary because they might actually have to see themselves. But to make the changes that are required to create space in ourselves, which may require downsizing the house, which may require changing the job, which may require selling the extra car and simplifying things to create that space and what goes along with that, a friend of mine used this phrase a few months ago, is once you have that space, it's hard to do without the space, is to curate, I love that word, to curate what we ingest, what we engage with.

So total sidebar, but the other day, you mentioned on Facebook Westworld. And is anyone watching or whatever? And I can tell that it's brilliant.

It's okay.

But I'm not gonna be watching it. And the reason is, in the last year, I've grown up comic collector. It took my daughter when she was five, started taking her to all of these Avengers, superhero movies. And we started watching The Flash. And then last year, I started watching Daredevil, which is the Netflix show, which is so well done. And but all of this coincided with the increase, which is like happening every day, really, in sensitivity in me. And there was an episode, I think it was the fourth episode. And it was so brutal that I realized, unfortunately, I don't wanna watch this anymore. And this violence, which has become a normalized part of our news, our movies, our TV shows, I think is very problematic.

So it's tough because we are in the golden age of television. Stuff is so well done, but the violence is in it as if, as if it is a necessary aspect.

So I look at it. Here's how I parse that with myself. I obviously know exactly what you're talking about. I will say also the new Doctor Strange movie was really, there's movies seem to be, and TV and media seem to be coalescing into the more esoteric and spiritual. So how I like to look at a Westworld, which is rife with not only technological and AI consciousness, what is consciousness, all of that stuff, which I find fascinating and appropriate for our time, I always like to look at it through the lens of like the Bhagavad Gita, right? The Bhagavad Gita is such a powerful story and scripture because you have this guy in the middle of a battlefield with his family on one side and his other family on the other.

And they're about to fight. And he's like, I don't want to fight. What's the point of fighting? Let's just, you know, there's no reason for this. And then what Arjuna, who's Krishna, or Krishna says something. He says, what was the man like? This is the world. This is how it works. This is what needs to happen. Like I understand where you're coming from, but let me show you what is actually going on. And then the whole Bhagavad Gita gets underway. So I like to look at when there's, now this does not mean I consume, like in the same way I don't play the Call of Duty games. And I played those, you know, I had an experience five years ago, where it was actually on ecstasy at a club, and I had been playing a ton of Call of Duty for the first time in my life.

And I closed my eyes. And every time I would close my eyes, I would just see the scope. I would just see the scope of shooting. I was like, this stuff is embedded in my brain. No, no, no, no, no. So I stopped playing those. 'Cause that I do think is, that's fostering some other thing. However, if you can look and consciously look at violence as an allegory for spiritual conflict, then I think you can also consume certain, like this is one of the reasons I loved Lost. Lost wasn't a particularly violent show, but there were very violent moments in it. But J.J. Abrams has this very clever ability to wean out through symbols and kind of, you know, esoteric references, this other dimension, which I find very fulfilling.

And I love to see other people resonate with that, even if they don't know why. So I, you know, it's kind of like the Bodhisattva vow thing, not that I've ever taken that in this life at least. It's like you go into the world. You're staving off your ultimate enlightenment to go into the world, to engage with the things that are taking place. So you have a language to interpret and present other things. Like that's, I always wondered, like why am I such a big sports fan? Why am I such a big media fan? I used to blog about the real housewives of Orange County, like 10 years ago. Why was I doing that?

And I realized, hey, it's just what I'm naturally drawn to. It's a cultural thing too. But I also think there's a function of it, of being able to relate and talk about things that the majority of people are talking about, not in like a social engineering scientific way, but like this allows us an opportunity. I can now talk to my, I can talk to NFL football to anyone, literally from any side of the corner. I don't just mean sports fans. I mean, the neurological devastation that's taking place with concussions, the horrible gladiator-like mentality that we're putting these people through for our entertainment.

There's so many different levels, but I don't let it diminish what is the cultural enjoyment of it. But I totally hear you saying the violence on some of these shows is, especially when your sensitivity is ramped up, can be overwhelming. And I think what's interesting about this, you bring up Westworld is there's an episode there where one of the hosts, the androids deals with this, this realization, her awareness gets shocked up to like maximum and she has to process all of this horrible stuff that's going on. It's a very meta show, even if they don't, I don't know if they intend it to be like that, I imagine they do, but yeah, I hear you.

We could talk forever, I'm pretty sure.

We could.

Pretty sure we could, but let's not for the sake of our listeners this time around. Bard, thank you so much for coming on. We're definitely doing this again. I am going to share links to all of your stuff. Is there anything else you would like to say to people listening?

No, I mean, absolute pleasure. If I can give you one last little anecdote because I think you'll appreciate it and I'm sure you know it, but further to creating that space, whenever you create that space and open to the power of our intuition and our feelings. So there's an anecdote with Jung where he is going to visit with a colleague of his and a mutual friend, a scientist has recently died. And there is some debate as to whether this person's research and writings should be published posthumously and Jung is in disagreement. He feels very strongly that it shouldn't and his friend whose place he's going to feels that it should be.

So a lot of meeting time is five o'clock. So Jung arrives, they start chatting and Jung is not moved at all by his friend's arguments and some time goes by and then Jung looks at his watch and his watch says five o'clock. And he says to his friend, what time did I arrive? And his friend says five o'clock and it's actually five 25. So Jung sees that his watch has stopped at five o'clock and he is so connected that he sees that the stoppage of his watch is a metaphor for the stoppage in his thinking. And he says to his friend, let's keep talking. And by the end of that conversation, Jung has opened to another perspective.

So, but it's very hard for us to do this when we're in this go, go, go, go, go, go, hyper over scheduled lives that we have.

Man, we're gonna do this again so soon. Thank you, thank you so much. This has been awesome. Well, we'll talk soon.

Sounds good.

All right, bye-bye.

Take care, bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Does that exist?

The physics of universe is basically failing. (upbeat music)

There is real necessity for it or whatever. (upbeat music)

It isn't going. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Who likes dream boss? ♪ ♪ We like dream boss? ♪ ♪ Who likes dream boss? ♪ ♪ We like dream boss? ♪

That's my acapella dream bar ad. Guys, eatdreamb.com/sync. Go get some delicious dream bars. There's three flavors. There's not just the apple chamomile that I like. There's the tart cherry lemon balm. There's the banana lavender. Check it out, like I said. ♪ Get your dream boss today at eatdreamb.com ♪ This is why I get paid the big bucks, guys. Thank you for listening to that wonderful episode with Bard. A reminder, check out his stuff, his writing at empathyrising.com. There are links on the podcast pages, both at minepodnetwork.com/bard and syncpodcast.com/bard. It was pretty easy to remember, I think.

Really, everyone, thank you, downloading, listening, subscribing. I really, reviewing, I love the reviews too, truthfully. I have some really cool people coming up, all right? I got three, four podcasts already done this week as you're hearing this. I have four, five more scheduled for the next week. I have really cool stuff in the pipeline. I'm excited. Some guests who I think you will be both surprised and very happy to hear coming on synchronicity in the coming weeks and months. So thank you, everyone, just really. That's all I have. Thank you, and I will see you next week. (upbeat music)