Know Thyself - E60 - Charles Eisenstein, Visions For A More Beautiful World: A Wake Up Call

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Charles Eisenstein shares his vision for a more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible. He explains why all the crises we experience today, are rooted in the single origin of separation, and how by healing this wound within ourselves, we can heal the world.  Charles dives deep on the importance of energetic intention within any revolution for change, the limitations of labeling things as 'good' and 'bad', and how to alchemize anger into a collective awakening. In this era of change, everyone plays a role. And each person's role is just as valuable, no matter how big or small it may seem. Charles shares the vision of a harmonious collective consciousness, and how you alone can contribute to it. ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 2:37 The Peril of Separation in Our Society 11:31 Why Energetic Intention is Essential for Change 16:35 Transforming Our Anger into Awakening  22:04 Why 'Good' and 'Bad' Labels are a Limitation 26:11 The More Beautiful World That is Possible: A State of Interbeing 29:50 Charles' Personal Experiences & Working with Robert F Kennedy 33:38 How our Purpose is Unveiled to Us 39:57 The Power of a Harmonious Collective Consciousness  43:34 How You Alone Can Make a Difference 46:17 Creating Spaces & Communities to Experience Our New Reality  49:31 Will Things Get Worse Before They Get Better?  54:29 Robert F Kennedy as a Presidential Candidate  58:31 Life is a Gift  1:01:39 Conclusion  ___________ Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. His writings on the web magazine Reality Sandwich have generated a vast online following; he speaks frequently at conferences and other events, and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts. Writing in Ode magazine's "25 Intelligent Optimists" issue, David Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World) called Eisenstein "one of the up-and-coming great minds of our time." Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, and spent the next ten years as a Chinese-English translator.  Website: https://charleseisenstein.org Books: https://charleseisenstein.org/books/ ___________ Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927 André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/

All that we see today that troubles us is the expression of a story that I call separation. Every innovation, every technological revolution, all of these were a step into greater separation. Every time that it gets uglier, every time that there's a new crisis, we are offered a choice. Consciousness constructed this realm with all of its hellish attributes in order for us to grow. Now the return journey begins to deprogram from that. way of thinking. You have to traverse a territory of bewilderment, of everything I thought I knew was wrong. Who I thought I was, I am not really. And I don't know what's on the other side of it. This return journey home, it's not something that happens through a moment of enlightenment and

then we're living in utopia. It's going to take many, many generations. A thousand years from now, our descendants are going to be giving thanks to their ancestors. But there's no guarantee that we're going to go in the right direction. We have to make a choice. Beautiful beings, welcome back to the Know Theyself podcast where every single week we get the honor and privilege to sit down with a brilliant mind and open heart to learn more about the world and ourselves at deeper and deeper levels. My guest today is a public speaker, a teacher, an author of many incredible books. And in my words, he really is so profound in his ability to use his intellect and reason in those faculties to help synthesize and communicate what his spirit,

his emotion, his heart tells him as possible. And I think it resonates with so many people on the planet right now because we do feel this possibility of a new Earth, in my words, that is being birthed. And so he is somebody that I feel like puts a lot of beautiful perspective on the pain and justice and tyranny that we see happening worldwide on the planet right now. And he reminds us how the stories and ideologies that we hold within ourselves have cosmic consequences on the planet within ourselves and the world around us at large. So Charles Eisenstein, thank you for coming on the show, brother. Hey, thank you. Thanks, Andrea. Andre. Yeah. That's so good to have you here. I'm really looking forward to diving in. Being able to like just in preparation read more of your books. And man, I just love the way in which you communicate the place that we are currently in the timeline of humanity that we're on right now. When we look at so many external manifestations of what people, you know, feel like is just horrendous, which it is with climate change, you know, systemic racism, poverty, war. They're deeply rooted in this. of separation. And so I love how you speak to the story of separation. What do you, in your words, how do you describe what the story of separation is? I came to it from this intuition that all of the

crises today are linked. And it's not necessarily obvious how, you know, desertification or forest destruction in the Carolina swamp forest is linked to the prison industrial complex. And various people have, well, it's all capitalism or something like that. But I also wanted to include the psychology and the spirituality in addition to the economics and the history. And what I came to was that all that we see today that troubles us is the expression of a story or a mythology that I call separation. and it has a dimension of humans seeing ourselves as separate from nature and also the way that we see ourselves as individuals rather than as relational interconnected beings.

Like if I said, Andre, imagine yourself just existing. What's your picture? Most people will make a picture of themselves alone. to exist does not depend on others. And that's very much a modern conceit. Other cultures would not have made that picture and maybe still do not make that picture. That for them, existence was relationship,

relationship to family, to community, to place, to the beings of nature. And when we conceive of ourselves as alone and separate, then we enter into the mindset of control, because it's other. Everything out there is other, and it's either a competitor or a threat. So your well-being and the progress of humanity comes through domination. So you can see all of this play out in whatever realm of activism you're interested in. And I could say more, but maybe I'll leave it at that for the moment. Even inherently in the word nature, if you look up in the definition,

it literally delineates us as separate from nature. There's like plant, animal, life, as opposed to human or human creations. So deeply embedded in the ethos of humanity is this materialistic, reductionistic-minded, just idea and story that we've held on to that is so linked to this paradigm or story of separation. And so how important do you feel like it is to place the time that we're currently in in a larger context of the human story? Because if we were to feel into, and I'm sure many of us that are listening to this right now, have had those moments of feeling our inherent interconnectedness, right?

That more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible, which is an incredible book of yours, feel that. And yet when we look around us, it feel like society, humanity, we haven't fully, you know, raise ourselves to that point. And so if you were to project yourself into that state, into that feeling, looking back at the time that we're in now, how do you place this space in between stories and the purpose it serves? Okay, yeah, you've brought up an awful lot here. Maybe I'll tell you how I came to this.

I love that. I came to it through despair, through anguish. Because it's not like the more beautiful world is some place where we're raising ourselves up to out of the dirt and grime of the human condition. Ancient cultures and even existing indigenous cultures in many ways, not to idealize them, but in many ways we're already there or in various aspects. We're already in a state of relatedness, of kinship, of belonging that we can hardly imagine today.

So I looked at this history and it sure looks like we're going in the wrong direction. Every innovation, every technological revolution that this textbooks celebrate, the agricultural revolution, the agricultural revolution, the information age, all of these were a step into greater separation. agriculture separated us from the wild and divided nature into two realms, the domestic and the wild. Industry put us in a world that wasn't even natural, that was all square and hard and mechanical, you know, not alive. And then information, the internet, the metaverse, that separates us from materiality itself. So it looks like we're going in the wrong direction, and I felt a lot of this kind of

genetic nostalgia for what has been lost, for the experience of being embedded in a world full of beings where we're not the only being, but we relate to everything as a being. And we're at home in the universe. And so the way that I resolve, that despair was I came to understand this whole journey of separation as part of a much larger process, a process of exploration and return, a process of plunging into all of the dramas and all of the stories that this world, with all its troubles, makes possible. Incredible stories and incredible ways to develop yourself. You know, to really develop, you have to face adversity,

to develop the muscles of love, I mean that figuratively, but to develop the muscles of love, to develop the heart, you need to face situations where it's hard to love, where it's hard to be generous, where your ability to be patient and kind is challenged, and that's how you grow the soul.

So on like a metaphysical level, consciousness constructed this realm, with all of its hellish attributes in order for us to grow, and in order for all of these stories to play out. And now, now the return journey begins. We've reached the extremes of separation and the crises that separation causes. Because it looks like we'll be better and better off by dominating the other,

but in fact it is the opposite. We can subdue nature, but then we end up being alone marooned in a mechanical or digital universe where we're hungry to return. We can dominate other people. We can build walls and bomb everybody into submission. But the violence that we visit upon the other sneaks back under the fortress walls. And now we have civil violence. We have domestic violence.

So the whole program of domination and control is causing more pain for ourselves than benefit. And so this is causing a crisis in the way that we make sense of the world and the way that we have, we've defined ourselves in terms of rising above. I mean, even like the spiritual metaphors, like to ascend, to raise your vibration, like what's wrong with low vibrations. What's wrong with earth? What's wrong with matter? What's wrong with flesh? What's wrong? Like, we have to stop repudiating the world that we have designed for ourselves as both a playground and a learning experience. That perception to be able to see how this can be one big playground for our soul's evolution. You know, we find that, I mean, that beautiful video that you showed me that you just

produce the fall before so visually it's just so representative of us falling into this illusion of separation but it could be perceived as a choice in order for us to go through the necessary refinement in this 3D dense reality because we have the possibility of separation and to be able to experience our difference in diversity and that can actually allow the evolution of consciousness to to unfurl so how do you as you feel into the a new energy of interbeing that is already here within us possible to tap into, but yet to be fully realized on the collective. How important do you feel like it is for us individuals and whoever's listening to this right now to, yes, of course, the actions that we take in life are

important, but also we need to be paying attention to the energy in which our actions are coming from. Because if we're not, then we can very easily fall into recreating the same issues, is we are creating it from the same level of consciousness. And so how can we avoid that internalized oppression being spread out in our actions? Yeah, I've become very wary of anybody who comes with a plan to save the world. So much harm has been done in the name of good in the name of saving the world. Because there's a kind of a fundamentalism there. If you're on a crusade, then anything that helps your cause and helps you.

you have the power to administer your solution is good. So in the name of the greater good, people become power hungry. And they replicate all of the structures that they're trying to change. We see this in NGOs, for example, in philanthropy. And so another thing you were saying, like speaking about Einstein's maxim, you know, that we can't solve our problems from the same level of consciousness that created them, we're often very blind to what our assumptions are. We think that it's just reality, but it's actually a belief system. But if we assume that it's just reality, we end up replicating it through our actions. So, for example, one of the deep assumptions of the myth of modernity, the story of separation,

is that the way to create change in the world is to exert force, to make something change. How do we make a change happen? How do I force somebody to change? How do I pressure corporations to change? Or how do I convince somebody that they're wrong? How do I win a debate? Like there's this oppositional mindset that comes from really Newtonian physics. Nothing changes unless you exert a force on.

it. Otherwise, the pendulum just keeps swinging forever. But if there's some air resistance, okay, then it will slow down. So there's a force against it. That way of, that oppositional way of relating to the world and to each other is based on a metaphysical assumption. And it's not actually true. Quantum mechanics has shown us that it's not true. When we understand and And to deep program from that actually takes time. That's the space between stories that you referenced earlier. To deprogram from that way of thinking, you have to traverse a territory of bewilderment, of everything I thought I knew was wrong. Who I thought I was.

I am not really. And I don't know what's on the other side of it. Yet, on some level, you know that there's something on the other side of it. Some part of you understands that this descent into darkness has a purpose. And in those moments, we need allies, actually, to remind us of what we know. When we go through that process, then we're able to act from a different place, from a different consciousness. And the key tenet of that state is the understanding that we are not. not the only intelligence in the world, that things happen and not just randomly, that are

expressions of a larger intelligence, and that our power to enact change doesn't depend on how accurately and powerfully we can exert a force and how big an audience we have on our podcast, you know, and how big an audience our writing reaches and all that. There are other very mysterious principles of change at work. And that this inconceivable orchestrating intelligence will deploy each of us in the right place, at the right moment, with the right gifts, and with the right instructions to do what needs to be done. And the instructions come through our emotions.

not through our calculations. That's a really powerful distinction, and I want to pick that up in a moment. For those that feel this anger, this vengeance, this retribution when they witness the atrocities happening on the planet, and they want to point the finger as to that's the reason why this is all happening, what do you have to say to those people that feel that emotion? It's obviously important to honor that anger,

but to realize that actually if you want to be part of the global awakening in that process, then you have to, again, like we were speaking to, internally look and do that deep work to see where the energy is coming from in the first place. Yeah. So the anger is totally valid, and it's a powerful force, a sacred force for change. Anger is a response to the violation of a boundary. It could be your own boundary, could be a boundary violation that you witness, and it gives the energy to overcome fear to do something about it. The way that the status quo is maintained is that the, that this sacred force of anger is diverted onto targets and solutions that shield the

kernel of the problem from action. So, you know, for example, one time I was at a, this was a few years ago, I had a little kid, I was at the playground, and I was watching the other parents, you know, with their kids. and there was one woman who was just incredibly mean to her child, you know. And so that caused anger. The main diversion of anger is onto hate and blame. Judgment. Judgment.

So the problem is this horrible woman. But then I thought, well, you know, and maybe I could go tell her off. You know, maybe I could report her to child services even, something like that. me versus her. Then I thought, you know, what's it like to be her? How did she wake up this morning? What pressure does she have in her life? Does she have, you know, maybe an alcoholic husband? Are they facing bankruptcy? Did they just, you know, have a car repair needed that they can't afford? Like, is she in chronic pain? Did she just get a cancer diagnosis? Like, what are these pressures that she might be subject to.

And when I felt into that, instead of channeling my anger onto blame, I was able to channel that energy. Transmute it. And I was like, hey, having one of those days, huh? You know, she's like, yeah, you know? And so she starts talking to me, and the kid is no longer being micro-refermed.

managed and he's allowed to play, you know, and maybe she feels a little bit better. And maybe all of those conditions that are, that were making her into such a horrible parent were a little bit changed, you know, a little bit because I am part of those conditions. And then there's the level of who put me at that playground at that moment as maybe one of a series of encounters that prepares the ground for her to have a transformative experience. I don't know. I never met her again. I have no idea. But this is the kind of faith that when you step into the faith of I am in the right place at the right time and I know what to do,

it becomes more and more true. You're entering into a reality, into a vibrational alignment with the reality of purpose, of intelligence. Because we are powerful creators. When we live in a story that the events of the world are the random result of physical forces and the self-interested calculations of genetically driven competitors or economically driven competitors, when you enter into that world in which matter is dead and mechanical and there's no spirit, it becomes true. and the allies of synchronicity that would otherwise be available abandon us.

And we are marooned in a soulless universe. But there's part of us that maintains a tether to a much bigger reality. And the more that we trust that knowledge, I am in the right place, at the right time, with the right gifts, and I know what to do. it activates it and it becomes more and more true and we end up living in a very different world. We have so much cultural reinforcement from media movies that, you know, I've heard you share about how it's like you beat the bad guys, right, by getting stronger than them and winning, overcoming by force like we're speaking to. But that story that you just shared, the energy that

you came to that woman with, however small or someone say is minute and its impact in the world, I would assert is so much more impactful and the ripples that it could have on her life or how she might choose to show up for her kids or other people than trying to just figure out the right actions to take to correct something, right?

But you're actually siding and finding kind of harmony in that moment with her. Yeah, and there are moments where a violent intervention might be called for. Like, you know, I mean, we can all think of those kinds of situations.

Yeah, think of somebody like beating an animal or a kid you're going to step in and do what's necessary. But those are rare. Yeah. And so the problem isn't fighting or forceful intervention per se. It's the habit of doing that. And the habit comes from the division of the world into good guys and bad guys.

And this solution template that we are inculcated with from a very young age through media, through films, through books, through our cultural stories, where you see anything wrong, And the first reflex is, okay, who's the good guys? Who are the bad guys? And the solution then is simple. Defeat the bad guys. But that's actually a recipe for despair. Because in general, the bad guys are more powerful.

They're more ready and willing to use guns and lies and violence to achieve their ends. And if you're up against the military industrial complex, if you're up against a security state, if you're up against the human trafficking elite, or wherever you have decided to locate the dominating evil of this world, if you're up against them and it's a matter of force against force, you're going to lose. But if you understand that you have a secret ally in any institution and within any person that does not want to live in separation, that is weird.

of having to control everything, that wants to rejoin the community of all life on earth, and to be part of the unfolding of more life and more beauty through the instructions of spirit, then you can speak to that ally, and you can activate that ally. And, you know, you see, like, even in social revolutions, the key moment is not when the protesters finally kill all the police. Never. it's when the police change sides because part of them

is already on the side of the protesters. That's a much more realistic formula for change, I think. It's so much more realistic and like we spoke to you, there's almost never the case in media and the movies, right? It's the complete opposite.

It's always you beat the bad guys and the bad guys, quote unquote, if you want to label them as that, are always going to like you spoke to be incentivized by greed and hunger and power to come together and be more powerful and will win by force, right?

So it's coming from that. completely different energy. Yeah, and the movie's like, like there's usually not even an explanation why they're bad. They're just bad. You know, the world is very simple,

good and bad. With some exceptions, and recently, this is one of the more hopeful signs in our culture. That storyline is being subverted now. Like, for example, in the Lego movie,

I don't know if you remember that. But, you know, like toward the end of the movie, you know, when you had, expect the team of heroes to vanquish what's the villain's name, Mr. Business, Lord Business, something like that.

That's great. Yeah. He actually wins. He defeats all of them. But then there's an appeal to his heart, and he relents. You know, that doesn't mean that we take a submissive pose and try to submit our way out of tyranny. but we but we have to recognize that no one is irredeemable and and that our resistance and our struggle always leaves a door open for you know the police to turn sides for the powerful to relent like you have to leave that back door otherwise it's a battle to the death can you speak to when you wrote the more beautiful world that our hearts

know is possible and you feel into your heart and you feel into your being about the new timeline that's that's becoming more and more real every single day how do you describe that state of interbeing what becomes available what does that look like how does that feel for you the reason that I know a more beautiful world is possible is because of these experiences these these where I feel like I feel like in those moments I'm already in a different world and I feel like they're not exceptions to normality, but they are promises or premonitions of a different normality. So they're the moments of joy and connection, you know, where it could be with a lover or with a child or in nature.

I'm sure you've had these experiences where it feels like more real than all of this, you know, all of normal society. And the more, I find the more that I, I find the more that I, hold these precious and don't discount them as, oh, well, that was just a peak experience, or, oh, that was just a little bubble of privilege, or, oh, like, there's so many ways to denigrate these experiences. But when I really take them in, then normal reality starts to seem less real and less acceptable. And I tend to be less complicit with it, less submissive to it. because it just doesn't hold any sway. Like, no, I don't believe that.

No, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want to sign your contract. You know, I, it's not, it's not necessary. Come on, let's be real here. You know, like it, and, and the, the rules that keep everybody quiescent, um, are much, like, okay, there's still threats, you know, consequences. break the rules. But much more powerful is the inner authoritarian, where I'm afraid to break the rules because then I'm bad. There's a, you know, I'll punish myself. That kind of tentativeness diminishes the more that I'm connected to the reality that I call the more beautiful

world our hearts know is possible, which is already present. It's like, But it's present in little blips, you know, in little sanctuaries and special moments like temporary bubbles. Like, you know, maybe you go to Burning Man and it's not like it's perfect. But you'll have moments there and you'll see aspects of what the world could be. And it seems like a very extravagant event, you know, and I don't know, you could calculate its carbon footprint or whatever. You know, its entire carbon footprint is probably less than a single B2. bomber. You know, I mean, imagine if we turned our society's resources and attention away from weapons, away from, from war, and onto beauty. Like, that's a kind of extravagance I could embrace.

It feels like in the pursuit or the active realization of that more beautiful world, it comes through us as we start to begin to listen and pay attention to these more subtle frequencies within ourselves, these intuitive forces that guide us in a direction. I'm just curious, is there any moment in your life that you feel like that intuition internally has really guided you into revealing a more beautiful world in your own personal life, but then also in your impact in the world? Yeah, it's been quite a process. It's not like I form a positive intention and then it's immediately realized. Often it seems that the universe says, oh, are you sure that you want that?

Are you going to stay faithful to that intention when it becomes difficult? When you face a setback. And that setback then will bring up hidden contradictions, hidden wounds, things that need healing in me, that when those are healed, then maybe I'm ready to fulfill the intention that I had formed, that I thought I had.

And sometimes that process of facing the wound and healing from it comes with a lot of despair and a feeling of futility. And, okay, I'm never going to... Like, for me, one thing was, you're just like the impact of my work in the world. You know, it felt like it really hit a glass ceiling. It just wasn't getting out there. Like I had, you know, by most people's standards, a pretty large audience, but, you know, it wasn't tens of millions, you know what I mean? And I know that there are tens of millions who would be deeply nourished by many of the things I'm saying. And maybe a lot of, maybe hundreds of millions who wouldn't be, you know. But just like this feeling of being stifled and not being put to good use. Like there's a use to which I'm supposed to be put and it's not happening. And I try and I try and I try and, you know, and I try to create. And I try to create. create some program and try to put myself in some situation, you know, and it just doesn't pan

out, you know, and that one turned out to be a total waste of time and then like finally giving up and kind of and resigning myself, but not all the way. But hey, maybe I'll become a hermit. Maybe I'll stop writing entirely. Maybe I'll, you know, do something totally different in my life. and it was only then, then not right away, that I got involved in the Kennedy campaign, where I never thought that a relatively mainstream politician, I mean, you know, a serious candidate anyway, would be open to the kind of things that I've been talking about, like what I was talking to you about, about the necessity for the end. enemy to join the power of redemption, the secret ally in the hearts of all, the underlying moral

unity, like that kind of stuff. I never thought that that would be part of a political campaign. And now it is, you know, I'm not saying like, I don't want to overstate my influence in the campaign, but it is influencing the campaign. Very much so. And so that just came, it fell out of the sky as a gift. It wasn't, for all I could tell,

it happened by random. So it was like my failures were a kind of a prayer that showed God that I'm serious. So then it was given to me. it feels like energy, time just collapse in those moments. When you decide you want to choose a feeling or a reality that you want to live in and your impact in the world,

you're also choosing everything that's in the way to get there, that you have to reconcile within yourself. And so those moments of despair, and I know you've talked to when you were kind of more of a stay-at-home dad and your work wasn't picking up, you know, in those moments of, you know, those peaks and troughs of our careers and our impact, there's this Taoist saying that the master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone.

And I feel like that's the energy in which when we're fully in our Dharma and fully in alignment, then the universe just drops in those, hey, here's this campaign. Here's your impact for billions of lives potentially, right? But it only becomes available by virtue of you being willing to go through all the hard stuff. Right. Yeah, that's really well put. Yeah, you're choosing everything. When you choose something, you're also choosing everything that's in the way.

If you're really committed and devoted to it, right? Yeah. And then if you're not, that's valuable information too. Yeah. You know, you get shown, oh, you've been saying to others and to yourself, more importantly, that this is what you want. But when the heat is turned up in the furnace, it turns out you don't want that. That's good to know, because then it brings up what do you want? So, like, this is not, I'm not saying stick to your goals no matter what.

It's more that by your success or failure in sticking to your goals, you're going to your goals, you will understand whether those are the right goals. If your child were lost in a crowd, I'm a parent, you know, like, I would do everything in my power immediately to find that child. Nothing would get in the way of it. And so that's like, you know, an extreme. But a lot of things that people say they want, they'll give up on it. and that means they don't want it as much as I would want to find my child who's lost in the crowd. There is something that each of us is meant to do.

And it may not be something that you can identify as a mission. It may not be something really dramatic like finding a lost child. But in a way, we're all contributing to the finding of a lost child, which is ourselves. this human civilization that is lost in separation. All of us have a role to play in reunion, in coming back home. And it could be something really dramatic, like working for a political campaign, you know, or, you know, making a film or a book that reaches millions

or something dramatic like that. But that's not the only thing that needs to be done. Most of what needs to be done to fulfill reunion is very humble. It's invisible. No one will ever celebrate it. You might not ever get thanked. But, you know, I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of the single moms. I'm thinking of the daycare workers. Thinking of the home health workers. The people who go into these jobs and maybe they're getting $15 an hour. and they're not getting paid to love the children, but they do anyway. They bring something extra to it.

Those contributions on a 500-year time scale, on a thousand-year time scale, you know, that kid grows up having received just a little bit more love and passing on, therefore, a little less pain. Because this return journey home, it's not something that happens through a moment of enlightenment and then we're living in utopia. There's a lot of territory between here and there, just like you were saying on the personal level, on the collective level,

there's a lot of territory that we have to, that we're choosing when we choose to return home to the more beautiful world, our hearts know as possible. And it's going to take many, many generations. I mean, the level right now of trauma and disease and spiritual,

sickness is just enormous, you know, the degradation that people are living in, the legacy of violence, the epigenetic trauma, like, it's not, you know, it's not like you, you know, sit in an ayahuasca ceremony and you're healed. That's part of a healing process. I'm not dismissing that at all. In fact, I think it's essential for the healing of, not for every person, but for our species. But, you know, I mean, you know, those of you have had that experience, for a few days it might seem that all your problems have been solved. But no, the medicine then works on a deeper level. It works you. And it might intensify the things that had been kind of under wraps, that had been in an emotional cyst. And now the cyst has been punctured and they're coming

out and you've got to deal with them. And this is true on this on on on the species level as well. And and the lifetime of our species is far greater than an individual. So the healing process could take thousands of years. And so these invisible contributions are active on that time scale. They may not win you fame and fortune and recognition, but but they're active on that time scale. and they are equally important. A thousand years from now, our descendants are going to be giving thanks to their ancestors. Even if the healing journey is not done in a thousand years,

the world is going to be a lot better than it is now, even in 50 years. In some ways, it'll be worse, but we'll be able to say, we're on the return path. In a thousand years, our descendants will be thanking us, and they won't just be thanking the big visible people. they'll be thanking especially the ones you did the humble work.

That energy feels like we are, we're in a remembrance of our future. It's, we're coming to this pace of realizing and especially in those moments of despair, of feeling so lost and not connected, that the power of our togetherness is so felt. There's that Ticknat Han saying that the next Buddha is a Sangha, right? Why do you feel like the next Buddha is a collective? And more so, just also just the power of. community and how a lot can really become available when we unite our energies aligned. I'd like to talk about how our systems and our psychology draw from a story, from a mythology

that tells us who we are and what's real and why we're here and what's important and so forth, how change happens, you know, makes, that we used to make sense of the world. A story, so these stories are very powerful, like the story of separation, the story of control, the story of interbeing. An individual cannot hold a story by themselves. When you are trying to hold a story that is violently at odds with the surrounding social beliefs, usually over time you end up kind of gravitating toward the perceptions of the people around you.

So to really establish new stories, we need groups of people. We need communities. We need storytellers. We need people to hold it together. I need people to hold the story of a more beautiful world for me because I have moments of weakness where I completely give up on it. And it's only the people who I have held in that story before.

And they've become strong in it because of me. Now I'm weak. And they can hold me in that story. too. It's like if you're struggling to keep your head above water in stormy seas, now there's many other people who are also struggling with you and we're holding each other up. So that's one, that's the human dimension of it. But there's also the more than human dimension of it. The story of separation necessarily excludes the beings of Earth and, animal, plant, fungi, wind, water, like all of the material influences.

And these, even if you don't have a lot of other people around you to help sustain a story of interbeing, these other beings can also help sustain it. They're also important, just having your feet barefoot in the earth. Like, no matter what you're thinking, like, try it sometime. If you're feeling really hopeless and you've calculated that we're doomed, try walking barefoot and listening to some birds sing. They're not going to logically persuade you of anything. They're not going to say yes.

However, the fourth generation nuclear plants could offset enough coal power. They're not going to make that argument. But having that experience will bring information to you that totally changes the math. And you will believe different things, the more that you have those kinds of experiences. What do you say to those that overlook the impact that they have in the world? Sometimes it feels like with such an enormous, I guess, what people would perceive, especially through media's momentum into this negative dystopic reality. with the advent of AGI,

with the possibilities of climate destruction, all of it, right? And that maybe just feel like their impact doesn't make a difference. What do you say to those people? The story of separation says that you're only making a difference if you're making a big visible difference

that you can quantify. So just think about what that story says about hospice workers. They're not making a difference. Those people are going to die anyway. What does it say about daycare workers? Well, maybe they're making a little difference. What does it say about you when instead of growing your audience,

maybe you take a week off because you have a friend who's really in need of support? It could have been making a bigger difference if you had, at least if you make that relationship go viral and tell the world about it, then you'd make a difference, right? No. The heart knows better what makes a difference and what doesn't. Unfortunately, we live in a story that contradicts what the heart knows. So I would just say, trust your own sense of what is important.

You always know what's the most important thing I can be doing right now. You may not always listen to that. And there may be a lot of forces that contradict what the heart knows. But the heart knows. and that doesn't mean that the knowledge of the mind is irrelevant. The mind is supposed to go out there and collect information and feed it to the heart, and then the heart will make the right choice. Man, I love you. You're so brilliant. I love the way that you put all of this.

It's so such a refreshing take, and it feels very wholesome and integral within the multi-dimensional ality of how many just different aspects there are to encounter. But it is true. the heart does know. And we can find that integrity and alignment with our intellect, with our reason, with those faculties, and with our emotions in our heart. And I feel like the heart kind of pulls us in a direction and then the mind, those faculties of reason allow us to synthesize and kind of bring it together. Yeah. And it's not just the heart. You know, it's also other aspects of the body. Yeah. The body knows. Yeah. Yeah. But the heart is a key organ in knowing. in choosing. How important do you feel like it is for us to create spaces and experiences for people

individually and collectively to feel into that reality? Because until you feel it, you don't really know it's possible in a way. Yeah, you know, some people make like intense spaces where you can feel that kind of thing deeply. But also just in daily life, you can create many spaces for that simply by asking the right question or making the right observation, you know, like, like that story I told, one of those days, huh? You know, like, like, just, it's just kind of shifting the attention. I find in my own personal life, sometimes it just takes one, one deeper breath to be able to pivot in that way, take that slow, you know, slow down. And there is this paradigm of urgency. of when we see the atrocities on the planet,

that we need to be kind of evangelical about the solution, right? And we spoke to many different aspects of how actually slowing down and discovering the place we're coming from might be more important. Yeah, because if you're in a hurry, you're going to use the solutions that are already familiar to you.

And sometimes those are the right solutions. But I think it's pretty obvious after how many thousand years of the human condition that we have not really made any progress. you know, the kinds of suffering have changed. But my gut feeling is that the general prevalence and intensity of suffering is about the same. Like we don't have public torture anymore like they did in the middle ages. But, you know, now we have 50, 60 percent rates of chronic disease.

And I don't know, 30, 40 percent rates of domestic abuse and child abuse. and then kind of the normalized misery of children being, you know, penned up indoors all the time and not being able to play outside with packs of other kids. Like when I was a kid, like the action was happening outside. The roaming radius of children, someone just told me over the last two generations, has fallen from three miles to like, you know, less than 100. meters. Like that kind of stuff, you know, is invisible to all of our metrics. Most people don't even think about that as a kind of trauma or a kind of suffering. But it's invisible, you know,

but it's important. So I don't think that, you know, you can give the metrics, people like Stephen Pinker, you know, they'll lay out the evidence that life is getting better and better. By their measures it is. But what about what they don't measure? I mean, I'd love to just ask, do you feel, because of course it'd be nice if we could just all realize our own inherent interconnectedness and, you know, the cliche transmutation

into the butterfly sounds great. And there's, like we spoke to earlier, choosing that requires a death and rebirth of old stories, our own internalized, oppression, misogyny, all of it, right? And so do you feel like it's probably going to be necessary for things to get uglier before they get pretty... Well, you know, interconnectedness is not just an idea. Like, you can tell it to somebody as an idea.

They might agree with it intellectually. But our society gives us an experience of separation all the time. Theoretically, you're interconnected. But if you, you know, buy something on Amazon that is causing ecological harm somewhere or social harm somewhere, it doesn't come back to you. You don't see that at all. You're shielded from it by so many layers of abstraction.

So our lived experience contradicts this teaching of interconnectedness, which is why it is important to create experiences for people or to host experiences for people where they can get back in touch with that. Every time that it gets uglier, every time that there's a new crisis, we are offered a choice. Whereas when things are kind of going along pretty well and there's no immediate crisis, theoretically we have a choice to change, but the choice isn't put it in our face.

And we tend to just go along with things. Same thing in the course of an addiction. You know, if you're supply of whatever you're addicted to, is uninterrupted, you know, and you're still holding things together. How many people quit then? No. It's only when they hit bottom, which means a crisis. But it's not just, there's no such thing as bottom independent of choice.

It only becomes bottom when you choose to rise out of it. If you do not, there's another bottom underneath that. And underneath that and underneath that forever. There are people who are smoking their last cigarette through their tracheotomy hole, you know, as they're dying of lung cancer. Like, that happens. We will never escape from choice. The crisis, the collapse is not going to save us from ourselves.

Collectively, just as with the addict heading towards bottom, we have the same thing. When times are normal, we're not going to change. When we hit a crisis, then we have the opportunity, but not a guarantee. We're shown unconscious choices. Choices that had been unconscious are shown to us. This happened during COVID, where these trends toward isolation, toward social distancing.

We've been becoming more and more distant already. The closing of brick and mortar stores, the migration of education online, of work online, of dating online, of entertainment online, of everything to this box, these boxes that we look at all the time. The weakening of civil liberties, the censorship, all that stuff was already underway, but we got to see it. like it was put right in our face and thereby, oh, and the increasing technicalization of life, the increasing dependency on drugs, you know. I mean, I think the average America in my age is on like five or six different medications. So all of that was kind of normalized, but we were shown it in extreme form. And therefore, we were asked, is this the direction you want to go?

Here's the future. It's separation to the end. degree. Do you want that? It was a crossroads. I can't say right now what we have chosen. I think that choice, we're still in the process of making that choice. What direction are we going to go from here? But there's no guarantee that we're going to go in the right direction. We will not be saved from choice by crisis or by collapse. We have to make a choice. Speaking to that part of our hearts that help us kind of realize what choices to make as we continually plunge forward into this somsauric conditioning on one end, but then also the more

beautiful world that we feel as possible. It's like we're moving into this unknown reality that we feel as possible. And I just find it so powerful. If we can instill true leadership on the planet that holds this possibility within themselves is going to be so supportive for the collective being able to realize and have trust in that in a world that's lost all all trust and systems that appeal to our bigotry and our hate right and this Kennedy campaign that you've been now working on is it's really inspiring for me to see this energy and the conversation that we're having today very much be infused into the messages of a new presidential candidate but then also the possibility that holds for the ripples it has on the planet.

Yeah. So I'm just curious. What has been inspiring in you on this journey of being able to infuse these messages on that and just the power of awakened leadership? Of all the themes of the campaign, the most important to me is heal the divide and related and peace. You know, he's very much a peace candidate. Whether or not he gets elected depends on whether or not. this country is ready for that. And there are ways in which maybe he has imperfectly

embodied those principles, you know, like all of us, myself included, like we're, we all carry a lot of the programs of the past age. But it's definitely in him. And the more that society is ready for that, the more it will be called forth in Bobby Kennedy as well. It's not like a leader is going to come to save us. A leader is an avatar of the collective. Trump was like that too. He was an avatar of certain energies, a certain consciousness. And I'm not going to say it's all good or all bad in the collective.

And Bobby Kennedy is another avatar of certain energies in the collective. But who he is, like none of us are separate individuals. who he is as a man is not separate from where society is and not separate from what is called forth from him by society through conversations he has but also just through the psychic field. So, you know, I don't put too much on the candidate RFK Jr. per se. It's more of a barometer of what we're ready for.

and he could be any number of presidents. Like, I think he has a very real chance of winning. But who is the man who's going to win? That will reflect what we're ready for. That will reflect what choices we make, political choices, but even on the personal level. So I would say, let's ready the field for the highest expression of an RFK Jr. Let's ready the field. Yeah, let's ready the field.

Let's not stand for, for, you know, name-calling and this, these, these, this venomous political environment where we try to arouse as much hate against our enemies as possible and paint them in the worst possible way. What preparing the field means standing in non-judgment, looking at others through generous eyes. listening for the real need, for the highest ideal, to try to find, to see other people as as divine and beautiful and striving and yearning to return home. Like the more that we do that, the more the field of consciousness changes and the more more inspiring our leaders will become. As we start to wrap this podcast up, I'd be curious to hear,

for everybody that's listening and tuning into this right now, to maybe take a deep breath, to feel into your body, and to really feel the gift of life that has been given to us. And Charles, I want to hear how when we realize this gift of life has been given to us, then it is our opportunity to give back to life in utilizing those gifts. And the gifts that we have been given to us have been given to us, I believe, for very powerful reasons.

And as we start to enact those in the world, they become the vessel in which we creatively express this new world that we feel is possible. And so any words that you have last for our audience in activating our gifts and sharing them? I think what you said is actually the key to activating them to realize that, like, is a gift that you didn't earn it. You know, you didn't earn your mother gestating you. Like, you never paid for that. You didn't earn the sun or water. It's a tremendous gift. And acknowledging that and really taking that in is transformative when you have grown up in a culture that ignores that fact. Because when you, when you have grown up in a culture that ignores that fact. Because when you know that you have been so richly gifted, the natural response is gratitude and the desire

to give in turn. Like you said, generosity comes from gratitude. And that is really half the purpose of life. To give of all of the gifts, to give of the gift of life that we received toward life. That's what life does. It creates moral life. And that's half our purpose here. The other half, obviously, is to receive. Because the gift of life is not a one-time gift. It's an ongoing gift. And I mean life, not just in the sense of the organism staying alive,

but I mean the fullness of life, which includes the richness of experience, all of the joys and pleasures and awestruck apprehension of the miracles, the magnificence of nature, the sights and the sound, and the, yeah, the pain also, but also what's on the other side of the pain and the love, the connection, like all that we receive, we are here to receive. And the more fully that we receive, the more grateful we are and the more we have to give.

So, yeah, just not wanting to overemphasize the giving part. it's exactly half. And maybe sometimes in life you have more to give, sometimes you have more to receive, you know, there's an ebb and flow. Yeah, becoming a flow with that reciprocity. Yeah. Yeah.

Such a potent reminder. I feel like I want to leave it there because it's a beautiful note to end on. And I hope to have you back on the show in the future. I think this conversation is ongoing and we all play pivotal roles along the process of its realization. And just thank you so much for who you are

and the work that you're doing. and I'm just so grateful for the way in which you've been choosing to show up in this planet. Yeah, well, thanks, Andre. Yeah, is there anywhere else? Also, people can find you, anything you have going on that you want to point people towards, any books or things that are upcoming? Well, I'm running something called The Sanity Project. It's a kind of a, originally it was a six-month program.

We're just in the first month, but it's going to be kind of rolling. So, yeah, that's one thing. Love the name. The Sanity Project. Yeah. It draws on some of what we were talking about. Sanity is a group project. Yeah. And then also I write on Substack. You can find them where you want to find. Or maybe the film, if you want to put the short film on your. Yeah, we'll link all that below. Gathering of the Tribe, the fall. So many beautiful animated different visuals that I just resonate so much with. When we started at the beginning of this podcast and you said to tap into what does it feel like to exist? I in my own internal experience actually kind of envisioned myself. as being alone and existing, and I find a lot of beauty in that too. But you spoke to this possibility of realizing that our existence is so interdependent within all life. And so thank you for

providing that reminder that we're so much more powerful when we realize our togetherness. Yeah. I mean, I like to be alone sometimes too, but that's not the condition of existence. Absolutely. Yeah. Poet and reminders, so many amazing reflections for myself on my own journey. again, thank you, Charles. And for everybody that's been tuning into this episode of the Know Thyself podcast, please let us know what resonated in the description down below. We post clips on social media as well. Everything that we mentioned where you can find Charles will be linked down in the description below. You can hit the subscribe button to join this family and check out our separate clips channel where we make short form content from this,

from these podcasts. And until next time, thank you for playing your part on realizing the more beautiful world that our hearts know as possible. Be well.