The Rich Roll Podcast - Awareness Is A Superpower

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

Making his 9th appearance on the podcast, today marks another mind-bending deep dive into the multiverse with Guru Singh, my treasured friend and favorite wizard of all things mystical. For those newer to the show, imagine a modern-day Gandalf who rocks like Hendrix while dropping pearls of wisdom that beautifully fuse Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism. A celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi, master spiritual teacher, author, and family man, for the past 40 years Guru Singh has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga. He is the author of several books, a powerful lecturer, and behind-the-scenes guide to many a luminary, including Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, and artists. Guru Singh is also a talented musician who rocked alongside Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead in the 1960s. When he isn’t recording tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. The focus of today's discourse? Awareness. We talk about the importance of self care, crucial as we near the pressures that accompany the holiday season. We discuss cancel culture. The critical distinction between awareness and judgment. And empathy versus endorsement. And we dive into the incredible power of awareness to cultivate an objectivity about ourselves, others and the world we inhabit. As always, Guru Singh takes us out with a song, so make sure to stick around to the end. You can watch it all go down on YouTube.  Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich

Well, when I say in a world of ignorance, I'm not discrediting the world. I'm witnessing the world, because the word ignorance simply means to ignore. And that's a little bit what's happening in the world. The people have gotten so used to the world the way it is, that they're ignoring the implications of the way it is. And I think that what we're looking at in a world of awareness dealing with ignorance is that the onus is upon the awareness, not the ignorance.

We're all saying that they're the ones that are destroying the world. Well, the world is being destroyed. Whatever is causing it, we're the ones that are going to save it. And I'll tell you, if we get enough people to be successful in their life, in their health, living longer, living healthier because of plant-based diet, if we get enough people who are more intuitive because of their mindful and meditative practices, that's how we outflank the problem. That's Guru Singh, and this is another very special edition of Guru Multiverse

on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Salutations, good people. How are you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll Podcast. Salutations, good people. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. This is a podcast, my podcast. Welcome to it. Okay, today marks yet another deep dive with Guru Singh, my favorite wizard of all things mystical. Newly rebranded from Guru Corner to Guru Multiverse. Why? Because the infinite has no sharp edges, my friends, just pure expansiveness. The good guru has paid many a visit to this show.

I believe this is his ninth appearance, if I'm not mistaken. But briefly, for those newer to what we do here, Guru Singh is, in addition to a good friend, he is a celebrated master spiritual teacher, author, musician, father, gift to humanity, who has been teaching and studying kundalini yoga for the past 40 years. As I think you gather at this point, I enjoy tapping into his wisdom and experience and awareness on the regular. And today's discourse is all about that. It's all about awareness. As always, Guru Singh provides the most enlightening conversations, and I cannot wait to share this one with you.

But first, let's hear from our sponsors. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming

and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage,

location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, Is he exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself? I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at

recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Guru Singh, today we discuss awareness. And that's all I'm going to say. You're going to have to trust me. It's a great one. And with that, I once again give you Guru Singh. I once again give you Guru Singh. And we're back. Another edition of the Guru Multiverse. Circle, multiverse.

Yeah, no more corners. Which way are we going with this? Well, you know, we painted ourselves into a corner and that made us strong because they say that there's nothing stronger than a cornered animal. And now we're expanding in 360 degrees. I like multiverse. Yeah. And think about 360 degrees, which is one plane. 360 degrees to the 360, the power of 360, which is all planes. Can you imagine what that number is?

I don't know. You tell me. Yeah, right. It's in the, it's in the aliens that are beyond anything we've ever said. Yes. You know, not trillion, quadrillion, whatever. My beard is growing longer with every second. I noticed that. It's a notice. Yeah. Julie likes it. I don't know. I don't, How long did it take you to grow that beard? Forever. Your whole life, right? Forever. I've never shaved.

You've never shaved. No. When was the last time you shaved? I didn't. You never did? No. My beard actually came in late. So by the time my beard was actually becoming a beard, it was my early 20s.

Yeah. So who gave a damn about whether you shaved or not? My early 20s was in the middle 60s. And so, you know, I mean, like beers were it. And how much hair do you have underneath that turban? This is all- Does anybody ever ask you that? Yeah, of course they do.

This is all balled up and put right here, you know? Have you ever cut that? No. Because it just grows. Oh yeah, when I was a child. But do you ever just let it down? At night. Yeah, at home, right?

Yeah. So how long is it? Oh, it's down. All the way down to the butt. Wherever my butt is. Wow. Yeah, it's just one of those things that you sort of get used to not doing, right? It's the convenience of not needing to deal with that part of your world.

And then it just makes, it takes that out of, you know, the decisions that you have to make, right? It's just taken care of. Yeah, you look at our closet and, you know, there's a lot of white robes. It's not like a big deal to determine what it is. But you rock the colors. I do. You always have this amazing combination of beautiful pastels and you rock it well.

We are expressive in our discipline. Yes. we are expressive in our discipline. Yes. All right, so today we're going to talk about the role of awareness in a world of ignorance. So what does that mean? Well, when I say in a world of ignorance, I'm not discrediting the world. I'm witnessing the world because the word ignorance simply means to ignore.

witnessing the world because the word ignorance simply means to ignore. And I don't know if you've ever had a moment in your house where, you know, people are coming over and you notice, oh my God, the house is kind of a mess. But you hadn't noticed that the house was kind of a mess because it was your mess. And so you were ignoring the fact that the house was kind of a mess until you thought about the people that you've invited over for the evening. And now you're starting to see the house through fresh eyes, through their eyes. And you're going, oh, I'm going to have to clean the house up or I'm going to have to fix the house up. And that's a little bit what's happening in the world the people have gotten so used to the world the way it is that they're ignoring the implications of the way it is introduce yourself as a person of

awareness into that world that is ignoring it and you look around and you say, there's a lot of things to clean up around here. And it's really what's happening in this so-called debate about the health of the world and the health of the planet, et cetera, et cetera. Because those that are claiming that there is no problem, let's just put the pedal to the metal and accelerate industry even more. They're ignoring the signs that awareness is seeing.

They're ignoring them so vehemently that when awareness points it out, ignorance says it's false fact, false news, some conspiracy. And so what we are going to have to do as the people of awareness, and I know with your plant-based diet and my plant-based diet, we have tremendous amounts of awareness around food. With your exercise routine and our exercise routine, we have tremendous awareness around bodily function. But a person that's just eating whatever

and lollygagging, so to speak, around in their life, they don't have those advantages. They don't have those advantages. And so they can't see from that angle what we're seeing. So the response ability on our side of that equation is that we have to do two things. Point out the problems very gently. And that's not what we're doing. We're pointing out the problems very gently. That's not what we're doing. We're pointing out the problems very aggressively. And refer to alternatives very actively. It's the same way as raising successful children.

If you point out a children's inabilities very aggressively, you'll stigmatize the child. But if you point out the inabilities very gently, but more energetically point out alternatives to those abilities, you'll inspire the child to seek those alternatives. And that's what I really feel and that's what I really feel we as human beings, conscious human beings, need to begin to do. We need to get off the soapboxes and say, you know, we're going to end tomorrow. We can talk about that between ourselves,

but in our public voice, we need to be able to say, like, for example, before we started filming this moment, we were talking about some of the alternative burgers, right? And what they've done is instead of saying eating flesh food is bad, they've gone out and they've reproduced, they've simulated the flesh food in a plant-based way. And they're becoming, I mean, look at all the fast food restaurants that are adopting these things. So that's my point. Yeah, it's interesting.

I like that idea of looking at sort of redefining ignorance, not through the lens of stupidity per se, but through ignoring. But I think there's a distinction between- And ignoring by habit. Yeah, like this is what I want to get into. There's a difference between willful ignorance and on the one hand, and on the other hand, somebody who simply doesn't know better

or hasn't been exposed to the ideas that could break them out of that perspective. Yeah. And willful ignorance is a harder one to break because when you start tampering with it, you're tampering with that willfulness. And that willfulness has produced an identity around that ignorance which is very firmly held yeah there's a big investment an identity investment perfect word in that idea and it becomes very difficult to break the chains of that and so pick your battles, right? The idea of attracting through a loving attitude, a more willful attitude toward awareness, we will be able to attract the more innocent

than we will be able to attract those who are willfully ignorant, who are staunchly ignorant, you know, who are committed to their abilities to ignore certain aspects. It's also, we have to understand that once that person starts down that willful path of really ignoring and sticking to it, it becomes habitual. So it reinforces itself. And in reinforcing itself, it also sets up sentries, guards, to watch for anything that's trying to mess with that attitude because it's a sense of identity. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's important to point out that on some level, I think all human beings are willfully ignorant of one thing or another.

And we're all creatures that gravitate towards a certain worldview. I think that same bomb could be levied at the plant-based community. That same bomb could be levied at the plant-based community. We're very invested in this idea that this is an appropriate or favorable way forward. And we're resistant to anything that comes out that contravenes that perspective. And I try my best to be objective and not tribal. But let's be honest. I'm invested in this lifestyle. It's a way I've been living for a long time. I'm convinced of its benefits and the health spectrum and the

environmental spectrum and from an ethical point of view. And I can feel my own resistance rise up if somebody challenges me on that. And I have to then step back and marshal my awareness in order to get into a place of listening and objectivity. So I want to be careful and clear to not say like, hey, we're over here on the good side and all these other people are on the bad side. I think this is something that we all do to one degree or another along the spectrum in a variety of perspectives and ideas that we hold and harbor. If we are able to invest in listening, you used that word a moment ago. If we're able to invest in listening, we will be able to find a pathway in for more information to be delivered until we reach that tipping point in a person's awareness in which they have one of those aha moments and go, wow, now I see what you're talking about. And that only comes from those of us who,

and let's remove it from the right and the wrong, but a more sustainable, a more ethical, a less cruel. Because to produce enough flesh food to feed 7.7 billion people, you've got to destroy lives in the millions every day. Yeah, without a doubt. And to destroy lives in the million every day, it's got to be a factory operation. It's got to be an automated operation. And these are lives that have been grazing in pastures,

have been feeding in yards or in cages or what have you. There's a lot of cruelty in that. So how do we dive into that ignorance and shift it? And the answer is gently and slowly and through a lot of deep listening, which in Sanskrit is called sunya, a lot of this deep, deep listening so that we can find just a glint of an avenue in. I always look at the opposition of those who are heavily invested in ignorance as energy. And if they're giving me this big, big, massive pushback. I appreciate, I am grateful for this energy. And the moment I start

acting in that gratitude for the energy of the force of their pushback, it calms them a little bit too, because they see that they're not getting my reaction. And then all of a sudden, we start to lower the temperature of the entire conversation. And it's a little bit like I remember as a young child. It's an odd metaphor, but there was a Western program called Maverick. And Brett Maverick and Bart Maverick. Television show? Television show. Yeah, i vaguely remember this and i mean you're younger than me so but it was it was my growing up kind of show right and so one time brett maverick always had a

thousand dollar bill which was back in the day when there was such a thing a thousand dollar bill pinned to the inside of his lapel. And somebody had stolen his $1,000 bill. And he went to the sheriff and the sheriff said, you know, that's crazy. Everybody in this town is honest. And if you do anything wrong in trying to get back your $1,000 bill, it was kind of a setup against him. If you do anything wrong trying to get your $1,000 bill, then we're going to arrest you. And so what he did was he got a stick of wood and a knife and he got a chair and he parked himself on the porch of the sheriff's office for the entire 60 minutes of the show or 30 minutes of the show and called on some friends of his, right? He sent telegrams to some

friends of his and he sat there whittling away and he would direct his friends in this very sort of indirect way as to how to investigate how to get back his thousand dollar bill. And it was a beautiful example of the angles that you have to use when combating willful ignorance. Because willful ignorance is going to want to see you fail. They're going to want to see you make mistakes in your argument for a plant-based diet, for good exercise, for this, for that, for conscious, mindful meditation. They're going to want to see you make mistakes and then they're going to jump on those mistakes so you have to do everything using that energy of observation that they're giving you that they're gifting you and work your way through it kind of like just sitting on that sheriff's porch whittling away on something that doesn't seem to be involved so that you can get them to drop their guard enough to expose what's going on. And then

you'll find a pathway in. It's a tough one. Yeah. I mean, right now, what I see is a lot of lecturing and shouting, a lot of professing, a lot of tribalism, like we talked about the other day, like we talked about the other day, and not a lot of listening. Last month. And I think that listening really is the key. And I think that there is an epidemic right now of people who are lonely and disconnected and in a state of varying degrees of desperation and how they live. And the internet, whether it's Twitter or what have you, is an outlet for that frustration. But ultimately, if you can see past that, you can develop a level of empathy and awareness that

this is a person who, if somebody's lashing out all the time, this is a person who is in pain. This is a person who is suffering. And fundamentally, this is a person who is just desperate to be heard, right? And if you can be available to hear that person, if you can suspend your judgment and be present for that person's perspective, even if you disagree with it, then you have a chance at true connection. And through that true connection can come, that can create a dialogue that can be productive. But it's a two-way street. And I think it requires a lot of awareness and patience to be able to navigate without falling prey to,

like I know for myself, like I wanna lash out too and I wanna, I get defensive and I get angry and all of these emotions are swirling around to be able to kind of set that all aside and just like be present for another human being, to let them know like, I see you and I hear you, even if I totally disagree with you, or I think what you're saying is, you know, ignorant or wrongheaded, to validate the humanity in that person, I think is fundamental to trying to create the change that you want to see in the world, or even setting that aside, because that,

to me, that kind of comes off as pretentious, to really just, without agenda, if I can just connect with this other human being, that's a win regardless of anything else that might transpire out of that exchange. You use the word patience. And in the ancient teachings, the masters would oftentimes call patience as how much time have you placed in the imagined trajectory. So if you imagine that something has to be changed by this date, then that's going to stimulate the amount of tolerance that you have within that period of time. But if you extend that, you may actually finish before this previously stated date, but you've extended the amount of time that you're going to allow something to be completed.

And therefore, you're much more relaxed within each moment of the completion. And when you relax down as that highly aware being, dealing with ignorance, whether it's willful or just unintentional, you're actually in a relaxed state, which you've said, and in that you can find that agenda-free commonality. I'll find it quite interesting going to gatherings, large gatherings where there are people of all different varieties. And what I end up doing is I'll end up having a conversation with someone and they'll usually come in and start talking,

okay, why do you look like this and what do you do, what is the whole thing. And I have found over the decades that if I take that, let's call it bait, and start talking, eventually we're going to get into discrepancies because what I'm going to be saying is not going to be coinciding with what they're accustomed to. So what I'll usually do is I'll say a few words about what they've asked and then immediately turn it around to them and let them express themselves. And I find that eventually I'll be able to interject enough of what it is to be me that they'll have a better understanding of who i am and what i'm about than if i had actually just you know maintained a monologue and explained to them in detail what

it is to be a yogi and a meditator and a vegan and on and on and on and a musician etc and so that's what i find is that you have to if you're aware you have to always apply your awareness and if you're claiming to be aware and you're applying your awareness you will find those little moments in which you can interject a meditation-based comment. And you can put it in words that they'll understand rather than words that are more inclined towards people of your understanding. Hmm. Yeah. I think that it's delicate and it does require patience. A long runway. delicate and it does require patience. A long runway.

Yeah, a long runway. But then I start to think about let's use global climate change as an example. There are certain scientists that say we have 100 years left if we continue along this path or 50 years, whatever it is. There's varying degrees of opinions on this. And they're accelerating. Yes. But let's just agree for the purposes of argument and conversation that we have a limited window of time here

in order to solve massive problems. And that then truncates that runway. And with a truncated runway and less time, that heightens the emotionality of the argument because without patience, we then are feeling compelled that we have to change minds rapidly. And then we descend into this strategy or tactics that are actually working at cross-purposes

with the goal that that we're trying to achieve yeah that's why i say if you extend the runway even though you know that it's beyond the time limits that science point much more rapidly for example in a petri dish as bacteria is forming it takes 95 percent of the time of the total experiment to fill 50 percent of the petri dish but based on the conditions of scale, the last 50% is just doubling. It's just overnight. And so 50% is filled in 95% and the rest is filled in a minuscule amount of the remainder of the experiment. And the same thing could hold true. As we are more relaxed, as we are more patient, by the way, patience is defined in Sanskrit not as waiting, but as knowing the outcome.

And when you know the outcome, you are very patient, you are very methodical, you are very intentional, you are very purposeful. And when you are methodical, intentional and purposeful, and you're loving and gentle, you can get things put in place very specifically and very effectively without having to force people into it. without having to force people into it. And this is the new attitude that we'll have to... Right now we're just sort of reminiscing in the spoils of old attitudes.

The right going against the wrong, right? And everyone intensifying and creating a screaming contest. Those of us who are really going to make the difference, and I include all of us that are listening to these podcasts because the inquisitive mind is the beautiful mind, those of us that are going to produce, okay, I know the outcome is going to be one of success. I can go to my death knowing that. I can go to the disaster of the world knowing that. But I'll be more effective between now and then if I know this for a fact, if I believe this absolutely, and I'll be effective, now all I have to do is get more people to have that attitude. And really, we can change the world

with about a few tens of millions of people with that attitude. And I think that what we're looking at in a world of awareness dealing with ignorance is that the onus is upon the awareness, not the ignorance. We're all saying that they're the ones that are destroying the world. Well, the world is being destroyed. Whatever is causing it, we're the ones that are going to save it. And so rather than spending any energy claiming that they're the ones destroying it, let's invest all of our energy into as the military would talk about let's not build a greater punch through the middle

let's outflank right let's come around and surround you know that this problem because this problem is huge i mean life is not going to be expelled in the universe, in the multiverse, because life is all over the place. But if this planet dies in its ability to sustain life and human life on our watch, when we go back to the home office after this assignment, we're going to be in deep shit. We're screwing up. We'll get ourselves fired, man. Yeah. You out of here. Well, we should have been fired a long time ago based upon.

Our performance. You know, I've been, we were talking before the podcast, like you asked me like if I've been traveling and I was like, yeah, I've been like crazy travel recently. Yeah, well. Which has given me the ability to be around a lot of different kinds of people and in a lot of airports and a lot of gazing down from 7,000 feet or whatever it is on planet earth. And I just kept thinking like, everywhere I go, people have just taken over the planet and have literally made it their domicile, like every nook and cranny of it, which is kind of an amazing thing.

But then I think, I don't think that's so good. When you see a night shot from space of planet Earth and you see all that light, all that electricity illuminating all that amount of sky. And you think, and then you're landing into an airport and you see all this massive buildings and roads and structure. Unreal. We may have to tone it down a bit. A little bit, you think? Couldn't say. I mean, the craziest thing is when you're descending into Los Angeles, when you fly over LA.

Like, I've never seen sprawl like we have here. Yeah. This never-ending grid of humanity that has just laced itself like this matrix on the crust of planet Earth, consuming at an you know a remarkable unsustainable rate and it is that petri dish like we are filling the petri dish right now and there's only so much left and you know whether humanity makes it or not remains to be seen i'm interested in how you get to this place of knowing but i have no doubt that life will prevail on planet earth and beyond i think it's more a question of whether humanity is going to be able to make it work without having to dig caves and go underground.

Well, that may come. We may have to alter dramatically. I mean, I don't know if we've covered this, but on one of our podcasts together, but there's this thing called the equatorial bulge. And the equatorial bulge is caused by the spinning of the planet. The equator spins faster than the places closer to the poles. It's just like when you're on one of those spinning things in a playground. If you get close to the center, you're spinning less rapidly than if you're on the edge.

And so that centrifugal force at the equator of the planet has thrown the oceans up to a level of 481 feet higher, and it's 1,500 miles wide. Well, that's a massive amount of water. And what happens is not that just the ice melt from the ice caps in Greenland is going to cause the oceans to rise, but these waves, these chunks of this equatorial bulge, when the planet gets a different nature to its spin,

start to break off. And these then become these massive, massive tsunamis. So there's a lot going on that we haven't even begun to construct in our imagination. Fires, earthquakes, displacement and the shifting of the tectonic plates the displacement of the ice and how that causes tectonic plates shift earthquakes droughts they say that india that 80 of india will start will begin desert desertification in 20 years. 80% of India, which has been the breadbasket of Asia. And so what we have going on here is this awareness which is intensifying our need to make it different. And we've got to have a meditative attitude,

not that everything's going to be okay. No, but I know that it'll be okay if we accelerate the awareness in this many people. And we can't spend any of our energy, in my estimation, we can't spend any of our energy attacking the core of the problem. We have to, like I was saying, outflank it. We have to spend our energy outflanking the problem with those who have an innocence rather than a willful ignorance.

Those who have an innocent ignorance that are more able to be cultivated into a new way of thinking. And I'll tell you, if we get enough people to be successful in their life, in their health, living longer, living healthier because of plant-based diet, if we get enough people who are more intuitive because of their mindful and meditative practices, all of a sudden by that very nature of if you see something you like you're going to want it if you see health you're going to want it if you see intuitive natures you're supposed to make it? Like, what if we reserve judgment? That's thrilling.

What if we take away our judgment on the goodness of humanity and our prospects for survival? The goodness of humanity and our prospects for survival. And instead entertain the idea that much like the caterpillar and the butterfly or the tadpole and the frog, crafted and created simply to give rise to a new type of intelligence and life and consciousness in the form of these technological entities that are now starting to gestate. Yeah, I am very open-minded about this. minded about this. In addition, you know, so I segment my brain. And there's a part of my brain that remains open to that idea, because I don't want to deny it. Because I want to remain, I want to, I want to test it. And then there's another part of my, my awareness that says, okay, let's focus on ways of creatively achieving a benevolent outcome. And then there's another part of my brain that goes into this form of when you think about a single-celled animal,

And when you think about a single-celled animal, getting together with another single-celled animal in the early stages of the world biology and botany, it was called the multi-celled animal that every one of the cells did everything. They were colonies of cells. of the cells did everything. They were colonies of cells. Then eventually that evolved into the colonies specializing in certain areas, in one form to stomach and another form to brain. Now we're living in that biology. Maybe it's not AI and maybe it's not just saving the planet, but maybe it's that there's a collective that is the next stage of that collective, that is all of us working together, which is really a peaceful operation

because the majority of our body likes the rest of our body. Our heart doesn't fight our fingers and our fingers don't fight our liver, etc. And so when we recognize ourself as the body of life, which is what plant-based living often does, in that the cows are as important as the humans, they're as important as the pigs, and we think about consciousness and the non-local nature of consciousness. The cows are as important as the humans, they're as important as the pigs. And we think about consciousness and the non-local nature of consciousness. And I came in and the first animal to greet me today

at your house were your two, what are their breed? Great Pyrenees. The Great Pyrenees. I mean, these massive dogs. And I just came from a household and our massive dogs are three chihuahuas, you know, and these creatures have their own languaging. And for us to differentiate and say ours is superior is ignorant. And my awareness when I approached your Great Pyrenees

is that, wow, they have this whole world happening, which can interface with my world if I'll take and slow mine down, right? So maybe AI has the answer, maybe just all going plant-based and, you know, doing, you know, recyclable and sustainable is the answer. Or maybe there's this whole other way in which we all start to serve each other in life, in love. So there's so much going on right now and we're at the threshold. So paint that utopian picture for me.

It acts like the heart center, which is made up of the lungs and the heart and the thymus gland. And the nature of the heart center is that the lungs at rest are full of air. A collapsed lung is an oddity. The heart at rest is full of blood. It gives effort to serve the body.

And then it surrenders and the body floods it back with blood. and then it surrenders and the body floods it back with blood. And if we were to literally 180 degrees switch our attitude, very much like the sobriety world in which being of service is a very high ideal, is a very high value, being of service. And so if the early stages of this utopian world are simply turning the table from how can I get to how can I serve, that in and of itself will create a surge of opportunity for us to be able to take care of each other's needs.

And in doing so, all of our needs are going to ultimately be taken care of as well. Yeah. I think in order to achieve that, we have to erect systemic changes because our incentives are misaligned with that ideology in that the structures that form our society and our culture create massive incentives for us to be people who go out into the world and try to extract or to get. And we are not only encouraged to do that, we are handsomely rewarded for doing that. How can we create political and cultural systems that counteract that or provide healthier incentives that encourage us to serve and to be selfless and to embrace the macrocosm over the selfish wants and desires of serving ourselves.

Kind of like inside of our body, we have unfriendly and friendly bacteria. The unfriendly bacteria are the bacteria that are depleting our strength. And the friendly bacterias are the bacterias that assist our efforts. They assist our digestion. They assist other things too. I look at it again in the Petri dish, you know, scenario. you know scenario let's become the friendly bacteria let's become the bacteria that spreads over time by demonstrating how all your needs are met as long as you're of service to others and this idea of you know god and this and, and then there's the atheist, we talked about that off camera. You know, we don't even get into that because we get into the wholism of life and how what's good for one aspect of life is going to be good for all life. And what's good for one aspect of life is is going to be good for all life and what's good for the

forest is good for the animals so let's keep the forest and let's stop destroying the amount of forest that we're doing for the sake of raising animals for killing and slaughtering and eating and let's really start to demonstrate in large swaths you know let's paint large pictures of ways in which in a very non-attacking way not attacking the ignorance but displaying the awareness because people can have aha moments that change their world. I can remember back in the early days of computers having an aha moment around MS-DOS. When I finally figured, you remember how you,

I don't know if you remember, but you Mac users never had to really deal with it, but us PC users, you had to type in all these things just to get it to do one little thing. Right, for it to boot up all the code. Yeah. And when I had an aha moment of what I was actually doing, that's when it started to make sense to me. And when that happened in one small little way, many other things, there was a domino effect,

many other things started to make a great deal of sense to me. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for awareness producing the potential of aha. Yeah. Well, I certainly subscribe to the idea that living a life of service is the optimal path for fulfillment and blazing a purposeful life, and also for making sure that your needs are met. And it's a weird spiritual conundrum that contravenes our Western, you know, everything Western about the way that we live and think in the sense that rather than going out and trying to extract and get and maximize your income by freely giving yourself in service to others is actually the way to make sure that your cup runneth over. I don't know why this works, but I found it to be universal law. But as you're explaining this idea, I couldn't help but think to sort of empathize

or put myself in the shoes of somebody who might be listening who's thinking, that's great, I understand what you're saying and I even intellectually perhaps agree with it, but I'm working two jobs, I'm a single mom, I don't have time to entertain to like waps rhapsodic about this idealized utopian world because I'm just struggling to put food on the table and my options are limited. So I would say to the single mom, single father, So I would say to the single mom, single father,

working two jobs to make ends meet, three jobs to make ends meet, that in amongst all of that, you must set aside five minutes in which you very consciously sit down and do nothing. Just breathe. Five minutes, three minutes. If you get successful with three to five, there will be some mornings that you want to extend it to seven or eleven or fifteen.

And then all of a sudden it will become as important to you as putting food on the table. And then out of those 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it becomes, all of a sudden ideas will start to enter in. Ideas of how you can do more for less. And what you've actually been doing is you've been of service. And the first person that you have to be of service to is yourself. And so by being of service to yourself, you will start to gain a little bit of balance and equanimity, and you will start to push out that which is pressing in on you, all of those bills, all of those responsibilities.

And you'll start to push out, and you will start to learn how to, and it's an old cliche, but you'll start to learn how to work smarter rather than harder. And it's not going to come, and this again, you know, give yourself enough runway. It's not going to come, you know, like in 30 days. We're not talking about, okay, money back guarantee in 30 days you get, you know, blah, blah. No, it might take a year. It might take a couple of years, but in amongst those moments that you have gifted to yourself in which nothing is going to interfere with being of service to yourself in those moments, some ideas are going to come up.

Some connections are going to come up. Some I need to call so-and-so is going to come up. And in making that phone call, so-and-so is going to say, hey, did you know what? I've been looking for someone that could do exactly this. And all of a sudden, your two or three jobs gets reduced down to one job because you have some kind of integrity and quality. Because if you're working two to three jobs, you've got a lot of responsibility. You've got a lot of integrity. You've got a lot of really good qualities. And there are people all over the world that are looking for those qualities.

There's a lot of truth in that. And I couldn't help but reflect upon my own path and experience, my own process, dating back 20 years at this point. it is a long game. Who was it who said something along the lines of, man's suffering is directly related to his inability to be alone with his thoughts. Like speaking to the difficulty that we all have. You're proposing this idea of just sit for five minutes. Was that Viktor Frankl? I think it is. I think that's right. And I didn't get the quote exactly right, but that's- That was close.

General sentiment. We're so resistant. You say five minutes, it sounds so accessible, and yet we fight that. Like, I don't have five minutes, or when that five minutes arises, we'll come up with an excuse to not do it. And in truth, my experience, as imperfect as it has been, began with getting sober 20 years ago. And it started with that five minutes or that one page of journaling. And it took a very, very long time to arrive at this place. And to draw it back to the Petri dish analogy, for years, there was no indicia of any progress whatsoever because those cells dividing one by one

don't seem to make a discernible difference. And then one day there's enough mass where the subsequent division is meaningful. But you have to be willing to put in all of that time, all of that effort and diligence and anonymity to wrestle with who it is that you are and who it is that you want to be and exploiting those instincts as they arise one by one before anything is tangibly perceptible in terms of how your life has changed. And what started this segment of our conversation here was you saying, what about the person,

be it a man or a woman, who's working multiple jobs trying to make ends meet? Already the qualities that that person should recognize in themselves are the qualities of ability to respond, which is responsibility, integrity, dedication, love, because they're doing it to support certain fundamental aspects of life.

So the qualities are already there. I don't think that we're going to be effective in changing the indolence, the ones that are just living in, you know, dire conditions that are not thinking that there's any way through. Those will be inspired by the ones that we inspire. It's sort of a multi-level marketing routine in that we can inspire those that are already putting forth great effort by just saying, take a section of time out, very small to begin with, and let it expand in and of itself so that you can apply those same tendencies of diligence and dedication and devotion and responsibility and integrity. You can apply it to just sitting and breathing and

noticing your world, noticing your relationship with people around you, the people that you work with, noticing the way in which you interact, noticing the way you interact with yourself. Somebody once said that if we had a friend that treats us like we treat ourselves, we wouldn't have that friend. And, you know, so what we have to be able to do is just give ourself that little tiny piece and let it expand like the bacteria in the petri dish. If somebody's listening to this and it's their first exposure to such a practice, is there any kind of technique that people can bear in mind or utilize if they have that five-minute window? then just sit comfortably you could sit in your car in the parking lot before you go into your office or your place of work and close your eyes so that the optics don't distract you of what's going on around you if you're self-conscious and you don't want to be seen

in your car with your eyes closed then do it before you get out of your garage or do it before you get into your car. But just close your eyes and begin to breathe in through the nose and be very aware of your breathing. And then just blow out through your mouth as if you're blowing through your lips, as if you're blowing out a single candle. And because the difference between inhale and exhale is nose to mouth, it's going to start triggering an awareness, an awareness of some differences. And so you inhale, and you exhale

and you inhale and you exhale and so that's taking care of the upper body in the lower body, in the belly, in the abdominal area what you want to do is when you inhale you want to push your belly out and let your diaphragm drop. And what this will do is this will create more volume in your lungs.

And you'll be able to take a deeper breath. It's like what singers do when they learn how to sing from their gut. And so you push the belly out and you inhale. And then you pull the belly in as you blow out through your mouth. And literally after three minutes, you're going to be noticing you're a little bit less frenzied, you're a lot less anxious, and you're starting to breed this quiescence, this calmness. Now, the moment you engage life, it's going to go away. The next day you do it, the moment you engage life,

it's going to remain with you for a nanosecond. The third day you do it, the moment you engage life, it's going to remain with you for two nanoseconds, right? And as you keep doing it over and over, day in and day out, all of a sudden you will find that after doing your meditation, after doing your contemplation, whatever you want to call it, mindfulness, whatever you want to call it, you extend the amount of time that it takes for the rummagings of the world to get back on your shoulders and drive your buggy. And eventually, after doing it consistently for a few weeks, sort of a round figure is six weeks. After you've done this for

six weeks, you're going to notice that which you just spoke about a moment ago. And that is that, you know, the number of cells that activate are not really noticeable. The number, the amount of change that you're creating is not really noticeable until it is. Those of you that cut your hair, you don't notice you need a haircut until you do. your hair. You don't notice you need a haircut until you do, right? Yeah, I think that the common experience is that the change remains unnoticeable within the self, but noticeable to others. So the first indication that you have made some level of shift will be made aware to you by somebody else. You won't see it in yourself, but somebody will reflect it back to you

and you'll be like, really? Oh yeah, you seem different or you seem more grounded or you're more present. They'll say, what are you doing? During these periods of meditation or whatever nomenclature you want to attach to it, I'm interested in your technique for dealing with thoughts as they arise. So the way that I've been taught and the way that I kind of deal with this

is to not have judgment. Like you think the common conventional wisdom is I can't meditate because my mind's attacking me. It's too busy, so I can't do it. But that's the nature of the mind. And the idea is to notice those thoughts when they arise and then gently and without judgment try to return your attention to the breath or whatever technique that you're using to try to get into that state of no mind which you may experience for a nanosecond you're lucky if you get two seconds of that before the next

idea pops into your mind. And it's a constant process of trying to move past the thinking mind in a gentle way. So how do you think about dealing with the mind as these thoughts arise or the attacking of thoughts that are invading this space that you're trying to carve out as peaceful and sort of idea-free? Or is that totally askance from the way that you think and look at this? Once again, as you do it more consistently, you form a new habit.

The brain introducing thought is a habit. And it hasn't been managed for however many years you have been living. And when you start a practice of meditation, you're starting literally a practice of changing a habit. And the more aggressively you try to change coax your focus back to the breath or whatever it is that you're that you're focusing on so you know a lot of times people say oh that's that stuff i'm a christian or that's that stuff i'm a. You know, I can't do that because that's not Christian.

I said, no, this is, this, if you're a Christian, then when your mind starts to wander, bring Jesus in or bring Mary in or bring, you know, Jesus' loving nature in or bring something out of the Bible in. Just replace it. And let that be the way in which you segue. If you're Muslim, the same thing holds true. Just bring the stories from the Quran. Bring in the ideals of the values of your faith. And so this is not about having a way of

faith. This is about having a way of using your faith to enhance your meditative process, to calm down the inquisitive, the persistency of thought and allow you to get a broader perspective because the thought is just this noise that's right there in front of you. And when you can relax the habit of that noise, you see beyond it. You can see beyond, let's use cliche,

you can see beyond the horizon of your noise. And in that seeing beyond or hearing beyond or feeling beyond whatever it is for you, you end up beginning to have new ideas, new concepts, new thoughts of, wow, I could do this this way. I remember one time back in the early 80s i was running a business for for the organization that that promotes um kundalini yoga as taught by yogi bhajan and we were in the middle of the 1980 collapse of the economy the the interest levels were at like prime level was at 18 percent you could have a cd that make more money than you could make right right and not a cd that you play but a certificate of deposit yeah i knew you did but i was just making sure the audience did

and i went to yogi budget and i said know, these major stores that are buying our products are not selling it and so they're damaging it and shipping it back to us and claiming that it was damaged in shipment. And I said, I have no response for that. I have no way of getting around it. And he said, I want you to meditate on this particular breath style

and come back to me in five months. And I thought, oh, God, this is insane. I'm going to be bankrupt in 30 days. But I wasn't bankrupt in 30 days by focusing on this meditation, this thing that I was doing every single day. Ideas were starting to come into my head, new ideas that I hadn't ever thought of. much sooner, you know, I went back to Yogi Bhajan and I said, hey, I've come up with this crazy idea. And he said, great, go to the lawyers, go to the lawyer, go to the accountant, tell them what your idea is, tell me what they say. I went to both of them, they said, that's the worst idea in the world, it's going to fail, don't go there, you'll get sued, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went back to Yogi Bhajan and he said, perfect, prove them wrong. Because it came to you out of that being able to see beyond the noise. So let's value that. And let's act on that. And let's see. Let's see if all those bad things happen. And I'll tell you that within nine months, we had turned the whole

business around. We were making, instead of making minuscule profits on the bottom line, we were making significant profits on the bottom line. And what we did was we just took it from being a manufacturer wholesale to being a manufacturer direct to retail. And the whole world opened up. It's not about the specifics of the moment. It's about the fact that when you reduce the noise of the constant chatter, which being responsible, being full of integrity will increase that noise. Not that it's bad, but you just have a really strong attitude towards life but by relaxing that for a few moments every day you'll be able to catch glimpses of a future that has possibilities yeah i think that that's a beautiful story um and very illustrative of your point that's what happens in sobriety isn't it you catch glimpses of what a sober life

is like. Yes, over time, and you accumulate those beads and you draw inspiration from the people around you that are living their lives in a manner that you would like to. And, you know, you, it's a, yeah, it's a long drawn out, it's slowbriety. It's a long drawn out process. Oh, I like that word. Oh, you hadn't heard that one before? No. Slowbriety. It's a long, drawn-out process. Oh, I like that word. Oh, you hadn't heard that one before? No. Slow briety. A nice word. But what I was going to say was, even the incessant chatter of the thinking mind is instructive. Because if you're new to this practice and your brain is attacking you, understand that this is the low background hum of your life that is going on all

the time. And the more awareness that you can draw to that, you become more consciously aware the extent to which that thing that's running in the background that you seemingly don't feel like you have any domain or control over is dictating how you respond and react to the world and driving your decision tree and ultimately the actions that you take. So that in and of itself is like a grand epiphany that should then essentially prove to you how much this practice is needed to quell that voice so that you can start to get the upper hand on how your brain is functioning so that you can reprogram it to create better decision trees and less reactive modalities for how you interact with the world.

Well, you know, a moment ago we were talking about influencing the world, and the world is aggressive and influencing, and one of the greatest things to be able to influence is to sit down and actually listen so that you can find the way in. So as you're talking, I'm thinking, as you're talking, I'm thinking, these thoughts are suggestions, right? They're your brain reaching out there for answers and solutions. And they're coming up with all of these crazy ideas, not all of which

are going to be crazy, but you're not usually listening to them. And so what the earliest stages of meditation are is just shutting them up right in this way and actually listening to what's going on in what you just said the background din the background sound and when you start to listen to this every once in a while you'll hear a pattern repeat and a pattern you'll think oh my gosh maybe that's a good idea and you'll write it down by the way i highly suggest that in your five minutes in your three or seven whatever the amount is that you're going to set aside for yourself to do this practice keep a notebook and a pen or pencil and be able to don't do it digitally be able to write these ideas down because eventually what happens is your brain starts to drop into what's called alpha and theta

mode in meditation and that's the theta mode is the same as your dream time only you're consciously dreaming in this mode and you will come up with ideas. They won't all be earth shattering but they'll be different kinds of ideas and you need to write those down because if you don't, you'll forget them. My experience is that that background hum and I think this is the experience for a lot of people

is a lot of negative reinforcement. It's never going to work out. They're going to figure out that you don't know what you're doing. This isn't worth doing. defeatism, fear, anxiety, like all of these impulses that are, however, you know, deeply ingrained in me are, you know, programmed there. And the initial awareness before the good ideas come in is just recognizing like, wow, this is like what I'm telling myself all day long. It goes back to what you were saying earlier about, you know, you would never maintain a friendship with somebody who talks to you the way that you talk to yourself. So for me, the first phase of this whole thing is, is, is acknowledging that this is what's going on in the background. Then it becomes about deconstructing it

to understand that, you know, this is, you know, what do they say? Fear is facts not in evidence appearing real. Is this really real? I'm creating my reality out of this tape that's playing in the background, but that tape necessarily isn't rooted in reality. I can create a new story and try to build a better, healthier foundation for the tape that gets played in the background or to stop the tape altogether. And that's when you start to see glimpses of those newer, better ideas starting to percolate up. Yeah, and there's a great master that once said, if when you begin meditating, all hell doesn't break loose in your brain, then you're not meditating. And that is that it's always going on in the brain, in the brain-mind connection. When you start meditating, you start paying attention to it. And that's why

it seems to be so overwhelming. The moment you start paying attention to it, it's like a child. the moment you start paying attention to it it's like a child if you pay attention to a child it will stop ultimately it will stop disrupting you trying to get your attention because it knows it can easily get your attention if it just comes and pulls on your shirt or something and that's the way thoughts are thoughts are like little children they're always trying to bombard you with their importance and if you can turn to them and listen to them and go into them and take time with them, all of a sudden they don't feel like they have to attack you and bombard you. And that's when mindfulness, meditation, whatever you want to call it, that's when it starts to become effective.

And one of the things that I find to be very good is that when you are treating yourself poorly, when you go, oh my God, is this what's going on in my brain-mind connection all day and I'm just not aware of it, I'm just not paying attention, I'm ignoring it, you know, bring in your heroes. If Lord Buddha is your hero, if Jesus is your hero,

if Muhammad is your hero, if Guru Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, if Lord Krishna, if Aunt Harriet and Uncle Charlie are your heroes, whoever they are, people that you have great respect for, iconic beings that you've heard great stories about. They may not be true stories, but they're inspiring stories. You know, like the ancient scriptures. They're not necessarily all true. Some of them are more symbolic. Let those also wash over you. Mindfully reach out and bring those into the equation. Bring those into the sound current. And that's one of the reasons why we also use what's called mantra which are just basically sounds and syllables and so sometimes i have found that if i use long vowel syllables like ah or like ma that i can slow down the jagged nature of the thought attacks.

So if I'm inhaling through my nose, and I'll exhale through a ma. Ma. And just keep it going and going and going and going. What I'm actually doing is I'm opening it like a doctor says, say ah. Well, a ma is like an ah. And you're opening the throat, you're opening the eustachian tubes, you're opening up all of this mechanism

that is actually resonating with your thought patterns. It's actually you hear in the inner ear your thoughts. Your thoughts are often in the same voice that you speak with, but just a different kind of, a different tonal quality. And so using sound, using breath, using all of these various techniques and technologies, is very Christian, is very Buddhist, is very Hindu, is very Islamic, is very Sikh, is very Zoroastrian, is very whatever you want to say. Or atheist. Atheist. Perfect.

People get freaked out with mantras, though. People get freaked out with mantras only because it's a habit to get freaked out with mantras. And it's a common fear to get freaked out with mantras. But people used to get freaked out with all kinds of things, including flying. My grandfather was born in 1872, said that he would fly if he could keep one foot on the ground. So people got freaked out, but now we all fly. Mantras are a small leap compared to getting over a fear of flying, I think. When I'm talking to people that haven't had the experience, I don't refer to them as mantra, but the word man means mind and tra means projection. It just means a projection of the mind.

What I refer to them as syllables and sounds that will occupy the same area in your brain that has got all these thoughts coming through. So if you go, ah, you can overcome all those little meaningless thoughts. What's the charge? It's free. Yeah, it's free. Beautiful thing, right? You know what I heard when you said, what's the charge?

I knew you were thinking something else. I was thinking the electric charge. Yeah, I know you were. And I was about to give you a scientific explanation. All right, so what have we learned here? We have learned that awareness plays a role in the world of ignorance, and the path forward is by being kind to yourself and consciously carving out that time for mindful practice.

And never attack ignorance front, face front. Work around the edges and help to dissolve it because ignorance may be bliss, but it's still ignoring the what is. And if we can make people who are willfully ignorant feel a slight bit safer, they will become a slight bit less ignorant. They will ignore things a slight bit less. Beautiful. Before we drop the mic here, will you take us out with another song? Wow, I'd love to. Wow.

You know, the idea of infinity is hard to comprehend with our head brain because infinity is very much a nothingness. Because if infinity has anything in it, it can be measured and then it's not infinite, it's just measurable. has anything in it, it can be measured, and then it's not infinite, it's just measurable. But infinity is the way things are because if they weren't, they'd have to stop. But then there'd have to be something on the other end of that stop. So infinity is a reality, but it's not one that can be perceived. So it's one that has to be looked at in what's called faith, but it's not faith in some religious form. It's just faith in the fact that infinity has to exist. It's just the nature of nature, because whatever stops has something on the other side, continuously.

So this is a little ditty that I made up with some kids in India. To be confident that the infinite can take care of it We're so fortunate to be confident that the infinite can take care of it. We're so fortunate to be confident that the infinite will take good care of it, we're so fortunate. So open up your heart, let the music start. Open up your voice and rejoice, rejoice. Open up your mind, let your light shine. Open up the soul and let the good times roll. Non-sectarian you know not religious not anything in any way

but just the energy of life and I call it soul not religious in any way to be confident that the infinite takes good care of it

with so fortunate Alright, my friend. You are my favorite mystical, magical, spiritual court jester. That is exactly what I am. To be continued.

To be continued. All right. I love you, Guru Singh. Peace. Peace. Plants. Sat Nam. Sat Nam.

Namaste. Namaste. Blessings. Grace. And be aware in the ignorance without judging the ignorance. Boom. Boom. I don't know about you, but I always feel more expansive after spending time with my friend Guru Singh.

Hope you guys enjoyed it as well. Please hit him up on the socials and let him know how you felt about today's conversation. You can find him on Instagram at Guru Singh Yogi and on Twitter at Guru Singh. And to learn even more, go to gurusingh.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the program on Apple Podcasts. That really helps with discoverability. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Spotify, Google Podcasts.

And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I appreciate my team for all the hard work they put into putting up these episodes every week. I do not do this alone. Thank you, Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Thank you, Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Thank you, Jessica Miranda for graphics. Thank you, Allie Rogers for portraits. Thank you, DK for advertiser relationships. And thank you to Annalema for theme music. Appreciate the love you guys. I will see you back here in a couple days

with John and Molly Chester from a little documentary you might've seen called The Biggest Little Farm. It's a great episode. I really enjoyed this conversation. In the meantime, here's a clip. You're not gonna wanna miss this one. Until then, peace, plants, namaste.

The conversation has to change around admitting to ourselves that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources that we have been unconsciously allowing to be destroyed. And I would say that no political or religious side owns the conversation around the planet. I would say all of us innately know that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources of this life-giving blue marble floating through space. And allow yourselves to be made fun of for desiring a vulnerable reconnection back to nature. And when someone tries to bring up the ideas or the conversation around economics or practicality or logic, stay focused on that reconnection because I feel ultimately what we're all

starving from starts with that reconnection to nature and then from there to each other. Thank you.