The Rich Roll Podcast - Dare To Be You In A World That Values Conformity

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

Welcome to another edition Guru Corner featuring my favorite teacher on all things mystic and metaphysical, Guru Singh. Fusing Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism, Guru Singh is a celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi and master spiritual teacher who has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga for more than 40 years. 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. A peer of rock legends like Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, Guru Singh is also a supremely talented musician who began his recording career on Warner Bros’ Reprise label in the 1960s. When he isn’t laying down tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. Today's conversation focuses on the importance of cultivating your true self in a world that values conformity over individuality. Too many of us live disconnected lives. Lives led not mindfully, nor from a place of personal agency, but rather in reaction to external expectations and pressures. Personal expression is left repressed. The authentic voice is silenced. As a result, we suffer. No longer. It's time to sing your song. May this conversation with one of my very favorite people help you find the notes. Note: If you missed my previous conversations with Guru Singh, start with episode 267 and then enjoy episodes 332,368, 393 and 400. Final Note: You can watch our conversation on YouTube at bit.ly/gurucorner418 and the show is also now available on Spotify. Let the master class resume. Peace + Plants, Rich

You're going to be a mess, and you're going to get embarrassed, and you're going to make mistakes. And that's the steps about opening up that which is unknown to you in the world of growth and progress. If you're going to step out, you're going to have to expect the pushback, right? In a material space, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And they should actually gauge their progression by the amount of pushback that they're receiving. They could use that. In other words, when things keep blocking you, they're a good teacher because they're giving you a consistent opportunity to learn the lesson of how to get through the blockages. That's Guru Singh, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome to the show. Today marks the first Guru Corner edition of 2019 featuring, you know who, my favorite wizard of the mystical forces and the spiritual arts, master of kundalini yoga, mindfulness, and basically just general holistic awesomeness, Guru Singh. Many of you are familiar with this man and his work, so I'm going to dispense with the long introduction. But I do encourage you to listen to our previous conversations. He's been on episode 267, 332, 368, 400. I feel like there might be one or two more in there. Maybe not. In any event, I love this man. I love today's conversation, which is all about living your authentic self, your true self. But first, let's take care of a little business.

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,

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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. 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 Corner, Guru Singh. Today we're going to talk about the journey to connecting with, expressing, embodying, manifesting, what else? Cultivating, personifying, imbuing, radiating, exuding. All right, you get the picture. Your true self in a world that values conformity. And I know this is a bit of a woo-woo concept, but I think it's also not only incredibly important, but very relatable. Important in the sense that we live in this culture in which we all wear masks. We comport to certain standards about what we should do, how we should act. We live in a society in which so many people live disconnected lives in isolation, in loneliness.

Lives led not from a place of necessarily personal or mindful agency, but rather in reaction to external expectations, external pressures. And my personal experience is that not living one's authentic self, not pursuing the things that truly make us happy, not living the lives that we want to lead, that our instincts and our impulses are sort of driving us towards leading, well, that can and ultimately will manifest a whole litany of problems, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So this is about finding a way out. It's a beautiful conversation with a beautiful man that I think is very much needed right now. So let's have it. Good to see you.

It's good to see you. I'm super excited to reprise our Guru Corner sessions. It is a joy. And in watching them, i noticed that you not only have a a strong sense of where the conversation should go but you your team also has a strong sense of how to edit and the editing is remarkably accurate i mean it's just like yeah they're doing a great job blake's right here and and margo thumbs up yeah they're doing well great job. Blake's right here and Margo also. Thumbs up. Yeah, they're doing well. You go back and watch them? I never go back and listen or watch. You know, I go back and watch just to see how it all pieced together.

But yeah, you're right. It's hard to go back. And when you're always going forward, it's hard to go back and inspect things that have been. Yeah, now I'm just moving forward. But I went back and looked at it just for the curiosity of how it was all being assembled. Remarkable. Well, the people that listen to this on audio only are always fascinated by the jangling of your bracelets. It's not until you see it on video that you actually understand what's going on.

Oh, that's what's going on. Right. Well, we have a great subject that we're going to dive into today. But before we do that, I want to catch up with you because you've been on some interesting travels lately. Yeah. Went to the Middle East. We went to the Middle East. We spent a week in Abu Dhabi on the coast there of the UAE and taught to a group of people that are change makers in the world. That was part of the Tony Robbins thing? Correct. Like his behind the velvet rope, like heavy hitting clients, right? His group called the Platinum Partners. And yeah, it's a solid group of people

that not only have succeeded in three dimensions and in four dimensions, but that are really seeking to succeed in their spiritual life too, in their compassionate life, in their love life, in the world that's beyond that world of... Beyond the scene. Beyond the scene.

Your specialty. Yeah. So what does that look like? I mean, what is the practical sort of schedule? Like how do you... Well, we start with yoga at either 6.30 or 7 in the morning. And we go through yoga before breakfast. Then we'll all go to breakfast.

It was about just under 300 people. Does Tony do the yoga? Tony does his yoga, yeah. And then go to breakfast and then come together for a day of working with Tony and a variety of other people. This year, everybody was brought into Abu Dhabi. Some years, there's been some Skype-ins with some teachers like Ram Dass from Maui. But this year the people that were to teach and to present all flew in, and it was a powerful, powerful gathering. Who were some of the other teachers?

Master Ko, and he's a lot of work with the energy field. He's a Qigong master and other. And then also a professor of religious studies at Boston College at BC. And his was just really bringing the five major religions into a focus and letting everybody see the similarities and differences and historically where that all took place. So that's another topic. He had an incredible medical doctor who lives both in Italy and in Israel and a profound energy worker. And then Byron Katie.

Oh, wow. And she presented. So it was beautiful. You have breakthroughs with some of these people, with the attendees? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the attendees have breakthroughs in morning yoga, in Tony's presentations, and in others. Yeah, breakthroughs right and left. Right.

Well, speaking of breakthroughs, the subject that we kind of discussed diving into today, I'm very excited about. I think it's an important one. I think it's relevant to a lot of people, if not everybody on some level, which is this idea of how to be true to oneself in a world that values conformity. in a world that values conformity. I personally have quite a bit of experience with this. And I think we could probably talk about this for many hours. Yeah, we could because Confucius had a favorite saying, and that is that the tallest tree in the forest catches the most wind. Every other tree just thinks it's calm.

And so when we're living in a world of psycho-emotional wind in the form of judgment, in the form of inspection and observation, people like to hide down in the forest because it allows them to be less of that outstanding self. And they don't catch as much attention, wind, as Confucius said? Well, not only do they want to avoid that wind, there's a lot of external pressure, whether it be familial or professional, to hide in that way, to conform. You know what I mean? Like there's not a lot of, I feel like we speak out of two sides of our mouth. On the one hand, we're saying be different, you know, like the Apple advertising campaign. But in truth, I think we're just giving lip service to that because most

of the energy goes into trying to make sure that we conform to a certain sort of preordained set of behaviors, rules, professions. And anytime anybody steps just a little bit outside of that, there's a lot of energy that goes into saying not so fast. Get in line. Yeah. There's a couple of pieces of that too. And there's the familial piece that you spoke of. And that goes back through the generations.

What did the family find convenient, comfortable, which is conforming? Because if you are too different, then you will be judged, you will be analyzed, you will be investigated, inspected, all of those things which feel uncomfortable. But the other piece of that is also that there's a thing called a fraud factor in evolution. And, you know, anthropologists have studied this for a long time. And it takes place in all of the species. And the fraud factor is that if you if you change too much too quickly it's considered a mutation and that gets struck down by this psycho-emotional fraud factor you feel you feel like you feel like a fraud you feel like a fake and so that evolutionary thing has kept the species from accelerating too quickly because

you know in some species if the if the offspring were too different than the parenting generation the parents wouldn't recognize them and therefore wouldn't take care of them right would reject the offspring would reject it's like a rejection of a of an organ inside your body. I mean, it all in microcosm and macrocosm is the same event. But you can also see that this fraud, this sense of feeling like one is a fraud can also blossom in somebody who is trying to, who's doing their best to conform, even though deep down in their unconscious mind, they know they're living the wrong life for themselves. Yeah, I'm thinking, so are you a fraud to the culture or society in which you live?

Or what you're saying is, are you a fraud to yourself? Exactly. Yay. Yeah, I like that because, and that's those, you know, quote, crisis moments that take place in our lives when, as you were saying earlier, when we were just talking before going on mic, that, you know, you just couldn't do it anymore. Right. You couldn't reconcile the vast difference between what you were passionate about and what you were doing every day. Yeah. I mean, that's why this subject matter is so personal for me because I was somebody who tried very hard to conform. I did everything

that I could to be that person I was expected to be or that I intuited I was meant to be. You and I came to the same place from two opposite directions. Keep going. Right. Yeah. So I was the good boy who was studying hard to get the good grades, to get into the good college, to get into the grad school. But my vision was very focused on just what was in front of me to do next on this habit trail of success and progression in the context of our western developed world capitalistic society that prioritizes security and upward mobility and respectability above everything else and I did my best to play this game and I feel like I was successful in playing that game. And it took some serious crises in my life for me to step outside

of that and reckon with it. I feel like if I have a talent, it's the ability to suffer and to endure, to outlast somebody else. And I could do that as an athlete, but I can do that. Good for triathlons. Yeah, but it's also I could do that emotionally too. So even though early on I realized like, hey, this lawyer thing or this law school thing probably isn't for me, I could will myself through it. Yeah. Even though I knew I was wearing the wrong pair of shoes and wearing the wrong pair of glasses.

Even though I knew I was wearing the wrong pair of shoes and wearing the wrong pair of glasses. And I really had to get my knees capped in order to make some changes. It took that for me. So I think kind of extrapolating out of that, this is something that I think people experience on a spectrum, right? To a matter of degrees. On the very far end, there are people who are fully expressed in their own unique blueprint, somebody like yourself. On the very other end, there are people who are extremely repressed, who feel like they're, who know they're living somebody else's life or who are so disconnected from themselves that they have no conscious awareness of that.

Which is an important thing to put on there, a numbness. In order to survive. In order to continue, yes, to survive. And then in the middle, just to finish this thought, in the middle is probably the more typical person who's kind of going about their day-to-day. Their job isn't that great, but it's not so terrible that they're going to do anything about it. They wish they had made this left turn or that right turn along the way, but they didn't and everything's okay. They got a roof over their head. They can pay their bills just barely. And hey, maybe in the next life.

And there's a settling that occurs with that. And I think that's the real tragedy and where I'd like to kind of focus this discussion. So the person in the middle, you think of it as a middle child, right? That doesn't go to either extreme, doesn't get completely wiped out by conforming, but also doesn't test themselves to see how far they can go. You used a word will. You said you willed your way through it.

It's an interesting mechanism, will and willingness and willpower. It's an effort that comes from the chest. It's an effort that comes from the heart center. It's willingness and the willful implementation of your desires does not come from a thought process. It comes from an emoting process that you actually have that will. That's why if two athletes are the same and one exceeds the other one, they say they put their heart into it, right?

Because on paper they were matched up very well. Those that live in the center, that's one of the most agonizing places to be. I mean, I was in the center because of the Vietnam War. I was trying to stay inside of something called college, which my passion was music. And it was not until I had a health crisis and went through a process that took me out of school that I had to go through the ordeal of proving to the draft that they had no want or desire for me in any way, shape, or form, and then I was free. But there are often those extenuating circumstances that people have built up, like you said, meeting their mortgage, their car payments, barely, or even successfully. Those extenuating circumstances that life builds up, you need a shelter, you need a place to live,

you need transportation, you need a car, you need food, you need clothing, you need all of these things which cost. And then you have to build up that cost. The agrarian time, we were quite unique. But over the last three or four hundred years in the industrial times is when we've become very conforming think about when you were uh oh you you were talking about your high school your prep school you said suit and tie or coat and tie you know the tie comes from uh the slave days i mean i'm talking way back in the Roman slaves. You had this steel collar, iron collar around your neck,

and you had this chain that went down to your belt, which was a piece of rope. And that chain that went down to your belt would be hooked to that rope during the day. And then at night, that chain would be attached to the rod that held everyone in bed. And that's why they called it a tie, because it tied you to the job. You think about all those- How did that morph into the modern day version of the tie?

It's kind of poetically beautiful. Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, the bottom line is, is that it morphed into, there was dress codes to show your allegiance, to show your dedication and your devotion, not even that, to the company. I mean, it's not so much now. There's a big movement away from ties, but this is what got everybody into that. It was your parents' generation. It was my parents' generation, even though I think I'm more in age, your parents, I feel like your child. You know what I'm saying? I do not feel anything near what I am in age,

but that tie was part of the dress code. It's interesting. I mean, in thinking about agrarian times, I would imagine the opportunities for individualistic expression were probably pretty limited. Like if you grew up in a farming family, you were going to be a farmer and there weren't a lot of options. Now, we have an unlimited number of options and opportunities for young people just the awareness of what's possible is now at everybody's fingertips because of the computing age that we live in and yet at the same time there is this pressure to adhere to a certain set of standards in terms of what's acceptable to do and pursue and what isn't.

You know, I agree. And the agrarian times before the industrial times, just imagine everyone was an entrepreneur. Everyone worked for themselves for the most part, right? You had your crops, you planted them in your own way. You planted them in relation to the moon you were very much attuned to some of those things which people have completely lost sight of now but your clothes you know whether you wore a bandana or you wore a hat or what kind of hat

was it straw was it leather was it cloth you know everybody was very individualized. There was, yes, you were a farmer and you were raised by farmers and you were going to give birth to farmers. But what are you going to raise and how are you going to do it? And all of those other things, which in the world of today's industrial condition, we may feel like we have a lot of options but we boil ourselves down to trying to be like so that we won't stand out as we were saying that middle that middle group that's neither at neither extreme they are on a they are on a progression towards individuality in most instances and that's why in some cases that's where the greatest agony is

because as they are still trying to fit in, like in your world, what you were describing, as they're still trying to fit in, they know full well that there's no way that they're passionate about doing so. They've developed enough awareness that they've slid from being completely numb to being aware enough to feel the discomfort.

Yeah, that's the most painful place to be. And it's the pain of birth, being born into yourself. The bottom line of, what do they call it, midlife crisis? It doesn't really happen at the middle of life it can happen at any point but all of a sudden in that crisis the person just starts blaming their surroundings for having held them into this place that they don't want to be

and the crisis is to use anger or whatever they can do to break out of, to have a breakthrough yeah, or victimhood good, yeah and stay Yeah, or victimhood. Good, yeah, and stay in it through victimhood. So in order to even get to that middle place, though, you have to develop that base level of self-awareness to kind of understand what makes

you tick, what's uniquely you, what is it that you would like to more fully express, who is the person you would imagine yourself to be in a best case scenario. But just to get to that point requires a level of heart connection, I would imagine, just to initiate that process out of the haze, the waking daydream of just existence and following the commands of society. You know, people have many different ways. Children breaking out of this will oftentimes have a pet that gets them out, a dog or a cat or something in which they could truly be themselves.

I was interested in your story because when you went into prep school, you said that swimming is what pulled you out because all of these things that cause sports that cause us to breathe particularly things like running and swimming and bicycling that cause us to breathe deeply and consistently that'll get us out because that is a heart-centered event right the two lungs that surround the heart so go into a little bit of that what happened to to you in swimming? Yeah, I very much felt out of place in this school and was confused about who I was and what I wanted to be. I knew that this academic institution was not an ideal situation for me.

I didn't fit in. I was a sensitive kid in a very kind of alpha male lacrosse and football- focused situation. Helmets and face masks. There was a lot of that, all boys school. I got an amazing education. So I don't, it's not like, it was terrible, but it just wasn't, it didn't fit who I was.

And I found swimming and I gravitated towards that. And there was something about that endeavor that fit me like a glove. And a lot of it, I think, in retrospect, looking back on that experience, I think I was in a lot of low level emotional pain that was confusing for me. And there was something about the water that made me feel grounded. When my head was underwater, all the noise went away. And it was very simple. It's just put in effort, move forward. And there's a binary kind of linear equation with these workouts,

where the harder I worked, the better I got. It made sense. Plus you were floating. And at home. You were buoyant and floating, which is an anti-gravity. Yeah. What's interesting, this is a little bit of a tangential aside, but I think it's relevant. Julie said, she's been saying to me, she has this weird theory that I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum.

Oh, good. I take real issue. I'm like, really? She's like, no, you're much more sensitive than you think you are. I would take that as a compliment. I don't know. So she's like, you're a lot more sensitive than you think you are. So she's always trying to find ways to help me.

And she came across this thing called a gravity blanket. Have you heard of these? Oh, yeah. Some friends of mine put it on the market, Futurism. Oh, really? Yeah. So she's like, you should try this gravity blanket. What I understand, this could be wrong, was that this blanket, which has weights in it, basically. It's very heavy. It's like when you go to a dentist and you're having an x-ray.

It's like being put in a womb. From what I understand, these were developed for autistic children. They were. And when you put them on top of them, they calm down. They feel grounded. They feel like they can relax. She's like, I think you would really like this. And, and we got one, I got one like four days ago. I struggle with sleep. It's always difficult for me to fall asleep unless I'm training super hard, which is why I sleep in a tent. And that's a whole other story. And I got to tell you,

I have had the best last seven nights of sleep since I was a little kid. She's like, how would that feel to be in the middle? I go, that actually would feel really good. So we got it. And I got to tell you, being under that thing, I feel fantastic. And I'm having the most restful sleep in recent memory since I was a kid. Well, I'll put you together with the company. I want to know more about this. So this is like a revelation to me. And I was talking to a friend

of mine who's a therapist and an addiction medicine specialist. I said, hey, do you know about these gravity blankets? He's like, dude, I've been on this for a long time. He has one. He's all about it. I was like, I wish I discovered this years ago. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, what is it about this that is making it work so well, that's agreeing with me so much? It's the embrace. He said that a lot of addicts and alcoholics in recovery respond very well to it because there's something about their background that was chaotic or emotionally destabilizing where they never felt like they could let their guard down and just relax this is a 20 for those of you listening this is a 20 pound

blanket yes that literally hugs every portion of your body against the mattress exactly and what it's doing is it's giving you the womb sensation. It's the reason why the native indigenous people would create that papoose, right? It's in biblical times, it's what they called swaddling clothes, where they would wrap the small child so that it would feel more secured. But it's just taking you back to that mother point in that womb in which everything was taken care of. It's a very secure sensation. It's just taking you back to that mother point in that womb in which everything was taken care of. It's a very secure sensation. It's an embrace.

Yeah. I feel I can relax. I can let my guard down. And so this friend of mine was saying, yes, when you put the blanket on, it allows your sympathetic nervous, it sends signals to your sympathetic nervous system like it's okay, it's safe. And it moves you into the parasympathetic. Yeah, and it's been amazing. And it's made me think about, reflect on other decisions that I've made

to kind of create these womb-like environments. You need to be a spokesman for the company. Yeah, I know, this sounds like an ad for this thing. It's not, but I recall when I was in high school and I had to study for an exam, I would pull all the blinds down and turn all the lights off in my bedroom and shut the door and just have a desk lamp. And now I have this container space, my container office. And when we were constructing it, Julie's like, don't you want windows? We can put a big window in it. And I was like, no, I don't want any windows. I want no windows. I want to be able to just

seal it and be in my womb. She's like, you got to have some windows. So we put these little windows on it. And now I put like a blanket over the windows because I don't want that. I want to feel like I am in the womb. And so I think these are very similar impulses that I have to create an environment that is like being swaddled as a baby. My morning practice is done, the portions of it that are just deep, deep meditation are done in a very large walk-in closet in the center of our home that has no wall to the outside, right? And when I shut the door on that walk-in closet, it's pitch black. It's like the Tkwotsi in my previous days in deep Mexico. But the bottom line is that those cave-like components are very much where we can go back to our seed, right? In Sanskrit,

it's called bij. When you can go back to that bij in your existence, that seed in your existence where every branch of your life is still possible. And then you can sort of recapitulate, And then you can sort of recapitulate, recalculate your life and form new challenges and form new efforts and form new possibilities and form new opportunities. You were talking about how in swimming when you were a child, the water made the age of five. But performing music in front of people was really challenging for me because I just wanted to go out there and out into the music and do it. But a performance, you had to be right in each moment, right?

So that was so limiting. So what I did in my middle school and high school days is I got into acting where you were literally applauded for being off the map. And that's what allowed me to come back into my music and be able to be that same act on any stage, which then allowed me to come back into my life and basically say to heck with conformity to the nth degree and be able to do that. So you used water and I used just a, I used a volcano. So you use the element of water

and I use the element of fire. Yeah, well, I think you're, that's beautiful. I think your trajectory towards non-conformity, I don't like that that's a negative to individualized expression was a little less circuitous, took me a little bit longer. But you're somebody who cuts a very unique image, right? Like when you walk down the street, like you don't look like everyone else. Yeah. And I don't even notice it anymore. I blend in. Do people give you a hard time?

No. No, not at all? Like when you're traveling or anything like that? No. When you went to the Middle East, when you're in airports and stuff? No, it's like, I am so at ease with who I am that I don't know that I'm different than you. I'm so at ease with who I am that I don't know that I'm different than you. And the fact that you're, if I don't know to the nth degree that I'm different than other people, then there's a sensation of connection.

And I think people feel it. I think people feel it. People feel, oh, he's really weird, but he's really connected. He's kind of harmless. You know, he's like, he's not, we don't need to hassle him, you know? And so, yeah, no, it's rare. It's rare that my wife and I actually have any kind of imposition pushed upon us because of the way we are. I mean, I've heard people say that when, when I, when they arrived and I arrived at a particular setting, like for example, the ones that we just did in Abu Dhabi, they say, oh, my God, what have we gotten ourselves into here? And then after the first encounter, they go, oh, this is cool.

Right. Because. You have all these high- powered business people who are. Yeah. That you're in front of and they're like, what's this guy going to tell me? Yeah. And all of a sudden they realize that I'm talking to them like their own psychoemotional consciousness talks to them when it's friendly. The idea that the middle patch of that conformity, nonconformity of the individualization and the non-individualized, that middle path being the one of agony, those are oftentimes the ones that are most driven and tend to succeed also because the agony is something that they're running from. And so maybe it's, if I do more of

this, I'll have it. Maybe if I achieve more of this, I'll be, I'll get away from it. And so it's a stimulant. So it's not just a, it's not a negative in total. It's, it's, it's got a lot of positives as well. That agony and a growth through pain. Obviously, you practice that on a day, week, month basis, right? Yeah. But I mean, this journey to self-actualization can be forged through pain. It doesn't have to be. No, it doesn't. And I feel like somebody who is in their full expression is an individual we generally celebrate. Like once somebody's, you know, at the fruition of that experience and they're fully expressed and they're in their creative flow or they're doing whatever they're doing and they are who they are,

even if they're completely off the map from that conformist idea of what a person is supposed to look like, what a person is supposed to look like, we do as a culture tend to celebrate those people as inspirational or aspirational. The challenge or the difficulty comes in the early phases of that journey for that person when they're just starting to step outside the boundaries a little bit, right? They haven't fully developed yet to the place where we can celebrate all their unique glory. It's those early phases where it's easy to swat somebody down and say, not so fast, come on, get back in line. You know, these are the people that in many instances that are listening to your podcast, that are listening to this broadcast. Not all, but a good portion. And the bottom line for those people

is that they should understand what you just said. If you're going to step out, you're going to have to expect the pushback. In a material space, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And they should actually gauge their progression by the amount of pushback that they're receiving. They could use that. But it takes courage and it takes fortitude and it takes a real sense. That's a very fragile state for most people. And that's why it's so easily quashed

because you'll second guess that impulse that's driving you to do something a little bit different because everybody around you is telling you it's a bad idea. You just use the word courage, right? Which is core is French for heart. As is French for time. So courage is a time of the heart. This getting into your heart, that's what the opposition and that's what the swat down is all about. It's forcing you, if you're going to come up with courage, it's forcing you to get into your heart. And then it's in your heart, which is non-linear, non-logical,

non-language oriented, just ton-ton, ton-ton, ton-ton. That's when you can really become that person that you're going to be. So all of these things, like you dam a river and it rises to the occasion and flows over the top, that's the nature of evolution because evolution touches us in the same way. It creates a crisis. The crisis needs a solution. Solutions are tried and tried and tried, and finally something works,

and we move forward in evolution, just like what's happening in the world at large, in the macrocosm. Yeah. Well, I truly believe that every person has a unique blueprint. Yeah, yeah. And it's our job to bring expression to that. And that doesn't mean, I've said this many times before,

it doesn't mean you're going to be a world record-holding athlete. You're not going to necessarily play in the NBA or be a rock star or be a YouTuber or whatever it is. Or play the violin well. Exactly. But there is something unique to you, something that gets you excited when you wake up in the morning. Generally, it's something that you experienced as a young child that got kind of erased along the way on this gestalt toward responsibility. Conformed along the way. Yeah.

Conformed to normal. And I find it imperative that people find a means to bring voice to that spark, to that impulse. And it doesn't mean that you quit your job overnight and reorganize your life on a dime. But I don't believe that you can be fully expressed and actualized if you're repressing any of those instincts to engage in something that brings you joy. There was a time in my life that I wanted to change something really important. It was vital that I make this change. And I gave myself a five-year plan. I succeeded and completed in three years. What was that?

It was just that I was going to come out of this work that I was doing, which was I was doing to supplement the teaching. I was doing to supplement the music, right? And I was going to just go all in teaching. And I gave myself a five-year plan. And in three years, all I was doing was just teaching and playing music. And it's, I think, essential that when you said just a moment ago, it's not that you're going to turn on a dime. I think it's essential that we explain, you from your examples, me from mine, what that means. What does that mean to set a goal so that it's not so close that you don't have enough runway and then we'll suffer the disappointments and the setbacks. And it's also not so dream time that there's no pragmatics,

there's no things that you're measuring along the way. So how do we do that? Well, how did you do it? Very messily. Well, that's an important component, right? For the people that are listening and watching for us to say, you're going to be a mess and you're going to get embarrassed and you're going to make mistakes. And that's the steps about opening up that which is unknown to you in the world of growth and progress and so you know we get to a place and we go through school and everything is based on getting it right

but if we're going to do what i did and what you say is a less circuitous way and there go my jangles and my bangles. And you did. But as we were being ignited to make that move, we had been involved in a programming through school to get it right, get it right, get it right. So some of the pain was just the natural pain of getting so many things wrong. was just the natural pain of getting so many things wrong when you decided to go out, be yourself, do your own thing. Because like you said earlier, every single one of us is completely unique. Unique fingerprints, unique eye print,

unique voice print, unique DNA print. And so if we're really going to be ourself and not conform, then we're going to be unique and we have to go there gradually so that we don't get so much pushback on our uniqueness that we get squashed. Yeah, I think that's wise counsel. just to kind of play this out in an example. So let's say violin is your thing. You played violin as a kid. I did. Did you? Yeah. All right. So this is a real world. It's one of the instruments. It's the worst sound. Real world example. As you're starting, you sound worse than any other instrument in the world.

As a kid, you loved it. But then along the way, it's like, no, time to get on the path like everyone else. It falls by the wayside. You find yourself 20 years later with this impulse to reconnect with that. Or the violet in the attic. You're repressing it, though, because you don't have time and you've got to pay the bills and all of that. But you finally summon the gumption, the courage to pull it out of the closet and start playing it again. I think it's, if you find passion in that and you have the audaciousness to then set a goal, maybe that goal is to be a professional violin player. I mean, that's a very ambitious goal.

That's a very ambitious goal. I think it's just as important to, and let me back up, like set that goal and then set stepping stone goals along the way towards achieving that goal. I think it's just as important to sort of place that goal in your unconscious awareness and just fall in love with the impulse that brought it up in the first place, which is that you like playing violin. And it doesn't matter whether you become a professional violin player or not, you are committed to making sure that you make time to engage in that on a daily basis. And if you're coming from the heart, the core, And if you're coming from the heart, the core, I believe that the universe will show up with a path or opportunities that will direct you if you're adequately anchored in yourself enough to be aware of those as they arise.

Beautiful. You just talked about both sides of the brain because you said, in addition to setting the ultimate outcome and the steps along the way, which would all be using the left rational side of the brain, you've got to put it in the dream time, which is the right creative side of the brain. Or at least that is the side of the brain that has a greater access to that unconscious. And that is how anybody that has ever really succeeded at something really dramatic, whether their success was just enjoying the heck out of something or being noted professionally, they've had to put it in both sides. Because I believe that that's where a lot of people that are more inclined towards, let's say, spirituality, than they are towards formality, the conditions of form. of form, I think that's where they might also lose track because so much is put into that right creative side, that access to the unconscious, that the stepping stones along the way are neglected. So I would say if your goal is to come out of conformity to whatever degree you want to come out of it, that you need to use both of exactly what you were just describing. You need to have some

stepping stones and an ultimate goal, and you need to activate your dream time brain. Yeah. So that you, you can work with both the measurements and the visions. with both the measurements and the visions. Most people are better at one than the other. I agree, you need both, but it's why musicians need managers to organize their life for them so they can do their creative thing. And they also need sheet music.

Yeah, right? And it's why accountants need some kind of muse to counterbalance that. One time, Dizzy Gillespie, I think it was Dizzy, was asked if he could read sheet music. And he said, yeah, but not well enough to spoil my style. Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah, so I think the most successful

have a healthy combination of those two things. But I really believe that if it is what you're truly meant to be pursuing or engaged in, that it shouldn't matter because it is the process and the journey. It is the experience of the doing that is far more important than whatever destination you're driving towards. So in other words, we put the GPS system in the unconscious and just let it play out in the background. And if we completely get off course, it will beep or set off a siren. I guess.

If you're paying attention, those bumpers will become apparent. If you're paying attention, those bumpers will become apparent. And then going in your inspiration, right, in spirit, inspired, you'll be just naturally, intuitively guided. But what about the person who is listening to this or watching this, and they're so stuck in their current situation and so disconnected that they don't know the first step. All I know is that I'm settling in my life. I'm in a job. It's okay. It's not great. It's not what I thought I was going to do,

but I can do it and it's fine. And they're just in this semi-numbed out state. They know that perhaps their life could be a lot better. They know that they're not maximizing their potential. But what they don't know is what that thing is that's going to get them excited. How do you begin to unravel that knot for somebody? I love that. It's like the Chinese finger trap. The harder you pull, the harder you're stuck. The person that is so in that malaise that they don't even know the first step needs to go before the first step and then before that and the movement inside of them really can only happen in breathing

so very practically i would have them sit down and set aside five minutes sit down and set aside five minutes. Every single day, start with five minutes. After a month, increase it to 10. After a month, increase it to 15. And in that five minutes, just sit, be aware that you are breathing, and be breathing diaphragmatically like the proper way that we breathe when we're exerting in any kind of effort, great effort. That the belly goes out as you inhale and the belly comes in and the shoulders remain relaxed. And ultimately what's happening is that you're massaging the diaphragm, you're getting a lot of engorgement in the heart center, in the heart cavity, and all of a sudden you're oxygenating your blood and brain more.

And you're doing nothing except breathing. And things will come to you. So that like that finger trap, the Chinese finger trap, you're not pulling hard, but you're sliding out. You're sliding out of being stuck. That's how I have found people to be the most successful. But it means setting aside five minutes. Everybody's got five minutes.

Everybody's got five. Yeah. And I think when you do that, over time, you do start to develop a deeper heart connection and your awareness starts to blossom. And I think it's important when those impulses start to arise, like you have a flash of inspiration, something out of the blue, to write it down or take it seriously. Because the impulse, the kind of built-in reaction to that is to dismiss it because it's anathema to whatever life. We have this habit that we've developed over many, many years of sloughing off those kinds of things when they arise because they don't comport with the trajectory that you're on.

And people should remember the pushback because even when you're celebrating your uniqueness and you have found a degree of success, there will be moments along the way in which you're going to hit a rut. You're going to get pushback. You're going to get opposition. And nobody likes it.

But you've got to remember that that early stage of pushback is getting you accustomed to that. And once you're accustomed to it, you figure out a way of overcoming it. In other words, when things keep blocking you, they're a good teacher because they're giving you a consistent opportunity to learn the lesson of how to get through the blockages. I think it's also important to understand that the reason people don't like it has nothing to do with you. Correct. Right? It's

basically one of two things, and I'm interested in your thoughts on this. It's either because they're projecting this idea that they have of you onto you, and the minute you don't conform to that image, it's threatening to them. It doesn't fit their mold of who this person is that they think you are and are supposed to be,

which has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. And secondly, it can be threatening, especially the further down the line you are, because if you start to blossom and flourish in a new and different way that they were originally not very excited about, that is proof positive that somebody can change their life and do something different. And that's threatening to somebody who is perhaps not as self-expressed as you are in that moment of time. And it's reminding them that they too could make some changes and that's very frightening. And what we have to remember is that that which we are trying to hide by conforming, by striving to be normal, is ultimately only hidden from ourself or not. I went to my 20th high school reunion many years ago.

Oh, that must have been hilarious. And I looked just like I look now. My beard was darker, but I looked just like I look now. And people would come up to me and say, I knew you'd end up like this. Because the reality is, is that that which you're trying to hide people know about it and so if you would feel a little more comfortable take a little more risk

and step into yourself people would to a degree applaud it to a degree feel threatened by it, and to another degree feel like it's too much. What is it they say? What is the journey from being not enough to being too much? I don't know. What do they say? Well, the bottom line is that when you're not being you, you feel like you're not enough. So that's a stimulant. And ultimately, when you're really being you, people say you're full of yourself, you're too much. And so you have to be able to, as you were saying just a moment ago, the idea of it's not about you. When people are opposing you, it's not about you. It's about what they're seeing. Imagine in today's world the bigotry that's coming up. All of this is a genetic bigotry.

This is a DNA seeing something that is different than what I am. This is why this whole race thing, and there is no such thing as race. There's paint jobs. There's no such thing. We're the human race. We're no race within the human race. And the idea that our DNA is noticing a difference. So what are you controlled by?

Are you controlled by your physical body or are you controlled by your soul spirit? And the more that you're controlled by your soul spirit, the less you will see the differences as being meaningful. And so you will be very encouraging to those who want to become their uniqueness because them being their uniqueness is just like you. But on the reverse side, those that are feeling trapped in their physical environments are also feeling trapped in their own DNA. Well, my experience is that people who are fully expressed and self-actualized, or more so

than most people, they are people who are very generous of heart because they feel good in their own bodies. They know that they're living their lives in a manner that's consistent with their deepest values. And so, other people don't pose a threat to that. It's only when there's dissonance in how you're living between your lifestyle and your values or this person you wish you could be or think that you should be, but you're not, that other people being fully expressed pose a threat.

It creates this zero sum game perspective. You don't like seeing people fully expressed because you know that you're not. When you were talking, I was thinking that zero-sum, the universe is not a zero-sum environment. the universe is not a zero-sum environment. And that zero-sum of that which gains must equal that which loses is an interesting attitude that is very much an industrial attitude. Imagine a farmer who thinks that every amount of gain through the growth of his crop means that he's going to lose something. So in the agrarian times, when we were more natural thinking of

plant-based foods, right? A plant-based condition is not a zero-sum game. An animal-based diet is a zero-sum game. A flesh-based diet is a zero-sum game. And so if we were to think of ourselves in breaking out of conformity, because conformity is a zero-sum game. Conformity means that everything is equal and we're just sitting inside of that equality. But if we break out, we have to also break away from that zero-sum ideology. We have to become that which is more prosperous, pro-spirit, prosperous. We have to become that which is abundant. You, in your running and in your swimming and in your bicycling, if it was a zero-sum game, you'd collapse after a certain number of miles. But the fact that you have this incredible energy to push you through those painful moments is the same thing that we have to be expressing when in our lives we're striving to become not normal, not conformed, but our unique self, because we hit those walls.

Like we hit, I remember hitting a wall once back when I was running a lot. You hit them all the time. Yeah. Did you? Our daughter and our son, super athletes. Yeah, now that I knew. Yeah, but the bottom line is that you hit them a lot and

they are the consolidation of all of your agonies in that moment. I think it's important to point out that it's a hard journey. I've called it the warrior's path. It's not easy. Nonconformity. And I think, kind of thinking about you being at your high school reunion and people saying, yeah, of course, like I always knew. People look at me and they're like, yeah, I always knew you'd do something a little bit off kilter or whatever. Well, I was like, well, where were you back when I was – nobody was saying that then. When you were in your agony. Yeah, so it requires that level of deep seeking, whether it begins with the breath, like you said, meditation, yoga, physical exercise, journaling.

I mean, for me, this started when, back in like 1998, when I started doing breath exercises and I started journaling. And if I was to go back and read my journals from 1998, when I was doing morning pages in the artist's way from 1998 through 2005, most of them are about how I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know what I wanna do or be, like time and again and again and again, but just consistently showing up for that. This doesn't happen overnight. People look at it now and they're like, look at you, Guru Singh, you get to teach and you do all these things and you go to Abu Dhabi and you're fully expressed

and you can just rock these crazy outfits and everybody loves it. And it's like, how does this happen? Or how, Rich, how do you go from being this person who was unhappy to doing something that's fulfilling and getting to connect with people all over the world through the podcast and the books and things like that. I don't have a pat five-step answer to that. It took me essentially 20 years to figure this out. But you have to plant those seeds. You have to invest in yourself. You have to fertilize that soil and just perpetually keep showing up for it,

even if you're seeing no results. Going between inspiration and desperation. That's what I would say to people. Desperation being the pain of that push and pull that goes on, the agony. And the inspiration, that thing which wakes you up and gets you excited about moving forward with your day. I can remember moments of desperation. I can remember moments of inspiration. And I know that walking in between the two and never getting, that's the middle path that the Buddha talked about. Never getting distracted or overly attracted to either one. See, I look at you and I think, well, this guy just knew who he was from the minute. Yeah, right. From the first minute, right? And just

was like, this is who I'm going to be, like it or not, man. Let's shatter that myth because if we go forward with that myth, then I am worthless as far as my ability to reach and teach. Because if people think, well, good for him because he was born that way. Yeah, I was born, you know, in a very special family. But I'll tell you, my agonies came from inside and outside, just like everybody else's. And so, yeah, shatter the myths of, you know, the hero always sat on top of the pedestal because it's just not true. It's not true with any of the great prophets

and messiahs of the world. The Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Moses, Abraham, all of them. I mean, the patent stories, the marketing stories are that the one and only and always was and from the moment of birth, nonsense, nonsense. We all have to go through the pain. Pain is a great teacher. Whoa.

And so is inspiration. pain is a great teacher. Whoa. And so is inspiration. But if we don't, if we're not willing to go through the pain, then we'll always become less than and less than and less than until we die. And then all we feel in the moment of death is just the incredible agony of I could have. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's not about avoiding the pain. It's about trying to figure out what the message and the opportunity is within the pain. How beautiful. Do you ever look back on your career? I'm sure people have said to you, like, why didn't you just become a rock star? Like, you had a moment where you were kicking it with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

And you had this record deal and the dead. and Jimi Hendrix and you had this record deal and the dead and you were all positioned to go on this certain skyward trajectory towards musical fame. Yeah, and all my friends are dead. They're all dead, right. But you could have burned in infamy forever, right? Yeah, I was actually thinking about that because as I was driving out here today, I'm driving through a neighborhood that was very much a part of that moment in my life, right? Early 20s. And not the neighborhood of a small neighborhood.

I mean, just the, you know, thinking wow how blessed to have had the hardships the change of directions the challenges and all of those things that took me away from the trajectory of just being another great you know musician so when you were in that situation and had to make that decision, how did you know that you were making the right choice? I wasn't making a choice. It's interesting you say when I was making that decision. The decision that I was making was to become safe. Because if you read my book, Buried Treasures, you find that at a certain point, my trajectory, even within the conformity of a record deal and corporate musical promotion, et cetera,

there was a lot of pressure on me to get even more silenced get it even more conformed and because it just wouldn't work inside of me because i couldn't play and write in that genre you know boy meets girl and everything's cool and you know like it just didn't work for me right i left that to other artists um that the pressure coming down on me um did exactly what had happened to you when you were trying to be a lawyer uh the pressure coming down on you was from the inside just like a volcano erupting from inside and i i i couldn it anymore. So I basically ran away from the structure and pursued my music in a way that was less confining.

Right. And here you are today. And here I am today. And here you are today. All right. Well, let's wrap this Guru Corner session up with a song. You brought your guitar. I did.

I thought I would play a version of this song that I recorded with a group. I am who I am Exactly who I am I am who I am Exactly who I am, I am who I am, exactly who I am, I am who I am, exactly who I am, thank God I am. You are who you are, exactly who you are You are who you are, exactly who you are You are who you are, exactly who you are Open up your voice Rejoice, rejoice Open up your heart

Let your own music start Open up your mind Let your God lights shine And open up your soul Let your God light shine and open up your soul. Let your good times roll. I am who I am. Exactly who I am. I am who I am.

Exactly who I am. Yeah, man. That's awesome. Exactly who I am. Yeah, man. That's awesome. Always a pleasure, my friend. Love you, man. Love you, too. So if you're digging on Guru Singh, you can find him on the internet at Guru Singh Yogi.

You should read his book, Buried Treasures. And soon to be back on the podcast. And if you're in Los Angeles, go to Yoga West and experience his kundalini yoga class in person. Which is a combination of all that Rich and I have been talking about. Right. All right, so I have a feeling I'm going to see you again soon, but until then, peace, plants, namaste. Beautiful man that Guru Singh. I love it. Can't wait to have him back on again. I'm always a better human after spending time with that lovely gentleman. And I

hope you guys enjoyed it as well. Let him know how this one landed for you. You can hit Guru Singh up on Instagram at Guru Singh Yogi or on Twitter at Guru Singh. Visit him online at gurusingh.com. If you happen to be in Los Angeles, please make a point of checking out one of his amazing Kundalini yoga classes at Yoga West. And you can find all of that, the schedule and all that kind of stuff online. Again, if you're looking for a nutritional guidance, check out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com. A plentitude, a bounty of amazing, delicious, nutritious, easy to prepare, totally customized, plant-based recipes, all designed to help you get as healthy

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I want to thank, as I do always, everybody who helped put on the show today because I certainly do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for production, audio engineering, show notes, interstitial music. He's doing more and more and more. I'm giving him more obligations on this show. He's doing a great job. So give him a shout out at Jason Camiolo on Twitter. Blake Curtis and Margo lubin for

videoing and editing the show jessica miranda for graphics dk for production behind the scenes stuff advertiser relationships and the music as always by analema thanks for the love you guys see you back here next week with another great episode. Who's up next week? Let me check. Hold on. Oh, it's Damian Mander. That is an amazing episode. What an incredible human being.

Ex-Australian Special Forces guy who now is combating poaching efforts in Africa and making great headways. His story is incredible. His TED Talk is amazing. Just Google Damian Mander TED Talk. Watch that in preparation for next week. And that's going to go up next Monday night or Tuesday morning, depending on where you live. So until then, be well, love widely, take that mask off, be your most beautiful, authentic self,

and share your gifts with the world. All right. Peace. Plants. Thank you.