The Rich Roll Podcast - The Power of Owning Your Story

Episode Date: June 22, 2018

Today's podcast is a conversation and interactive audience Q&A with me and Julie Piatt, excerpted from the first group session conducted during our recent retreat in Italy. For those brand new to the show, Julie is an accomplished yogi, healer, musician, mom of four, and host of the Divine Throughline podcast — musings on all things spiritual and living a life divine. She also happens to be my wife. This is a very raw and open freewheeling exchange oriented around the theme of storytelling. It’s about the courage of vulnerability — how owning and sharing your story can serve as a vehicle to connect with yourself and others, cultivate community, and ultimately bring all of us closer. It's about how to better meet life’s challenges and obstacles. And it’s an open conversation about the transformative power of holding the highest vision for ourselves and others. I sincerely hope you enjoy the offering. Peace + Plants, Rich

You can't get away from life's challenges. You can't avoid whatever your life plan is for you. But what you can do is you can shift the lens and you can meet it in a different way. So again, we have all heard people say, it's not what happens to you, but who do you become in the face of what happens to you? You know, no human gets

a life that's easy. Life isn't about ease. That's Julie Pyatt, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome or welcome back to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host, your emcee, your captain, your cruise director, beaming into your earbuds while you're out on the trail, on the road, on the treadmill, on the bike, in the car, the office, on the treadmill, on the bike, in the car, the office, the kitchen. On this spiritual, educational, informational, conversational entertainment journey, we have collectively decided to call a podcast.

I've got a great show for you guys today. This is audio excerpted from our first group session at our recent retreat in Italy, Plant Power Italia. It features Julie, powerful Julie Pyatt, my wife, yogi, healer, musician, mom, and fantastic podcast host in her own right. If you haven't already, please check out her show, Divine ThruLine, for all things spiritual. And today we're talking about a variety of things, a variety of things oriented around one central theme, the power of story.

The power of story to connect, to cultivate community, to bring us together. And ultimately, the power of story as this vehicle to help all of us transform, to live more connected, more fulfilled, and more purpose-driven. 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 Thank 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, we did it. So let's get on with it. This is Julie Pyatt and me coming to you from the Tuscan countryside in a sort of intimate, open, freewheeling discussion about, yes, the power of story. It's about meeting life's challenges and obstacles. It's about the power of vulnerability. And it's about the transformative power of holding the highest vision for ourselves and others.

So that's it. Roll tape. Welcome again. We have a beautiful day here, and we're excited for the week to come. And Julie and I were sort of wrapping our heads around how to kind of kick things off, how to initiate this week, and set really the intention and the spirit and the energy to create this sort of open vessel that's safe for all of us to share who we really are. I mean, ultimately, we're here to grow, we're here to learn, we're here to love, we're here to play, and confront and overcome these obstacles that

have held us back. And in my own experience, I found that the most powerful method for doing that is storytelling. And for everybody who's here today, on some level, you have been impacted by either my story or Julie's story or the stories of the people that I've had on my podcast. And I think that that speaks to the power of story to be transformative. And so I don't think it makes sense for Julie or I to share our story because you guys already know our story. But I think on some level, there's value in perhaps sharing the story behind the story, or the story behind the story behind the story, to kind of provide the permission for everybody here to be open as well. We can't expect you to be open with who you are with us

and with each other if we're not willing to do the same. So on some level, it's about vulnerability and it's about trust. And I think that trust is something that if we can all hold sacred throughout this next six or seven days is something that really holds the potential energy to transform all of us so that we can go forth into the world after this experience and continue to grow and build upon what we learn and experience here together as a group. So do not tell anyone what we're about to tell you. No, I'm kidding. I'm just joking. There's no scope. Yeah, so, I mean, you know, Rich gives an amazing keynote talk, and it's brilliant, but as he said, you guys know us, and that's why you're here. So, we were just going to share a little bit, just really casually, about some of, maybe some of the inner workings and things that we experienced or went through that haven't been necessarily a part of the mainstream dialogue of how we came into this life.

And I think that there's a lot of people that it's very easy to look at us from the outside and say, oh, well, they had it easy, or they had financial stability, or they've had no trauma in their life, or they had no challenge. And we understand why it looks that way because we happen to live in a really gorgeous architectural house. But what most people don't know is that we were unable to pay mortgage, property taxes, or insurance for five years. So I guess that's a good point, good place to start. Let's just jump into that. No, but I think

in the context for this is, I want to thank everybody for sharing in the circle last night and for being vulnerable. And it's always a good sort of temperature taking for me to hear everybody. But I think we can say collectively that we're all suffering from some sort of disconnection to ourselves, right? And at some

level, every single one of us has a pain, a trauma, a challenge, something that's, you know, really deep in our life. It's, you know, humans are not void of these challenges. And so what we want to share with you openly about is that we're just like you. Everybody is. No human gets a life that's easy. Life isn't about ease. And so if we can share our experience and sort of share how we shifted our perspective so that we embraced it as a spiritual challenge instead of a sentence on who we were or a commentary on who we were. And I think the financial thing is a really good thing to start because I think collectively as a human race, you know, we've been worshiping the money god or greed thinking that that is our salvation or that is going to make us happy or solve. I mean, somebody shared so

beautifully last night that they're ready to let go of abundance. And I want to shift that dialogue for that person, maybe help with a different wording, maybe to say, maybe ready to receive abundance in a holistic type of way, because we are deserving of abundance, but maybe just not through the normal channels, you know? But I think it's important.

I mean, as a being, that experience of holding that vision for my family, despite all appearances to the contrary, was a worthy one, and one that I feel blessed, and I feel like it alchemized me into a new, kind of a new way of being. And so we were going through financial collapse. And when I say this, it's if you're being dismantled in any way, and it can come in different ways. It can come in financial ways or loss of a loved one, death, divorce, illness, deep illness, all these ways. instead of it being that I was a deadbeat or we were unable to provide, I instead chose a perspective of that this was my sacred moment. This was my moment.

And I seriously embodied this. And I used to look at people and go, I'm not a loser. I'm in my sacred moment. And people were like, she's insane, like completely insane. And, but I, you know, it's my spiritual conviction or the way, just the way that I made, you know, the way that I've always been. And I accepted this as a spiritual challenge. And when you're going through a dismantling, if anybody has been dismantled, it's like, I describe it that the universe just turns the faucet off. So my whole life, like I lied to get my first job at age 12. I was working the cheese board at Burger King at

age 12. So I was, grew up in Alaska. They didn't check any IDs. I, of course, was lying left and right, total rebel, fake ID, all this kind of stuff. But it's not like I have a problem working. It's not like I don't know what to do or don't know how to connect to people. And when this sacred moment appeared in the form of financial collapse, it's an unbelievable quality.

It's like the faucet just goes off, off, off, and there's no energy. And for the first time in my entire life, I heard not a voice of a man or a woman, but I just had an inner knowing. It was sit down. Sit down. I had just given birth to my fourth child and here I was like a multifaceted entrepreneur creating in all different kinds of ways and yet for the first I had never stopped. I had never just sat down and done nothing and I used my children as an excuse to explain to people why I could stop, but that's not really why I stopped. I would just say, oh, I'm a mother of four and I've got my hands full. And so, because that was how people could understand. But really it was this message to me that if I did not stop what

I was doing, that I would face intense karma, which means if I kept doing interior design, which is how I was making most of the money at that point, it would end in a lawsuit. So you could feel it was like, no, that's not good. Like, that's a problem. So during this time, this is sort of birth of the fourth child of Jaya, and we could feel everything just falling.

Like the boulder was just going down. It was going down the hill, going down the hill. And at the same time, Rich was going through his awakening. And I knew that he had found eating plant-based. He had had this awakening. And I knew that he had to do what he loved and as I'm sitting here with all of you I'm telling you the same secret. You must do what you love. That's what you must do in your life You must do what you love and so it made no sense

It made no intellectual sense whatsoever We had no money We had cars repossessed. We lost our health insurance. I lost my bank account. I didn't have a bank account for four years. Like, how does that happen? I was like a real person, like making real money. And, you know, in the bank, you know, I go in the bank and I've had like how many car leases with them and like how and, you know, in the bank, you know, I go in the bank and I've had like how many car leases with them and like how many, you know, and I go in to talk to them and I'm like, okay, I'm in this problem. And, you know, and, and I overdrew my account and there's all these charges

and I need you to reverse them. And they were just like, fuck off. And I was like, really? Like, I thought we like had a thing. I thought you were, what do you mean? You know? And I was like, really? Like, I thought we, like, had a thing. I thought you were, what do you mean? You know, and I wasn't making, like, tons of money, but, you know, I was there. I was in the system. So within all of that, we had these experiences. So I knew I was telling Rich, I was like, what you have to do is you have to train. I was like, what you have to do is you have to train. You have to go out and cycle and run and be in that vibration because I always believe what I just told you guys that you have to do what you love. Because if we do what we love, then the world will be brighter and better because

creation is beautiful, right? So how could I want that for myself and then yell at him and tell him to go get a law job? It's not right. Just, it wasn't right. And I also knew that wasn't the way through. I knew that he could take a law job if he needed, needed, or if he wanted to, and it might give us some medium level of band-aid, but it wouldn't be the transformation that was the life I wanted for me and for him and for our kids. And so I begged him, I said, you train first, you see to me and the children second, and if a law job literally lands in your lap,

you service it with complete neutrality. You just do what needs to be done and just get it done and that's it. And he was in agony many days just looking at me and I would just be good. I mean, whoever is giving you the message to sit down, that's not the message that I was getting. And I don't know who was delivering you that message, but I was freaking out throughout this whole process. And it was her conviction, her complete strength in this knowingness that allowed me to have the space to explore in this way. But there were many times where I was like, this is totally insane. What are we doing? We had no money coming in. And I would go out and train and think, this is not really a smart thing to do right now. And then I would feel ashamed and it was very emasculating as somebody who's sort of supposed

to be the guy who's providing and I was really unable to do that at that time. It was very confusing. And there were also plenty of times where I would be at the park with the girls, like in the middle of the day with the other moms, and thinking like, what am I doing with my life? Like, I used to be a lawyer, and I had this stuff going on, and like now I don't know what I'm doing. This was very disorienting, and I think that's part of the alchemizing process that Julie was referring to. And on some level, it was a test of like, how deep are you willing to go?

Like, how much are you willing to suffer? Like, are you willing to put yourself on the line to this extent every day providing a new challenge and a new obstacle to overcome? That was really like a test of your mettle, like are you really committed to this or not? And looking back on it now, it's this weird thing of having 20-20 vision in the rear view where it all looks like it was perfectly designed and it all makes perfect sense. And it appears as if it happened seamlessly

and in a compressed period of time. But in truth, it took, you know, a decade basically for us to be in a place where we can sit here before you guys now. We had to suffer tremendously to get here and I wouldn't change a thing, you know. And I think without that process, we wouldn't be able to carry the vibration of non-judgment and compassion and presence that allows us to do these things that we get to do now. Yeah. And because we understood this as a spiritual alchemy process, as an opportunity. And let me back up. So when I first started doing these retreats here, I had a really beautiful vision for a lifestyle company. It was called Jai Lifestyle. That's why I call the yoga Jai Yoga. Jai means hail or praise or victory. And it's a great three-letter word

that you can, beautiful for branding, right? It's good. So I had this whole vision and my home is called Jai House. and it was Jai yoga and we were doing these retreats and then I was doing Jai environments. So I was designing people's spaces and we had a community that would come and sing kirtan in our teepees called Jai tribe. So we had the whole thing. We had the whole thing and it was good. It was really good. And like a good idea and a good intention. And yet, in order to really be the way showers that we were meant to be, we were too immature. There was too much personal ambition in there. And I always refer to Derek Zoolander is like, we want to make a school for kids who can't read good.

But the problem is we hadn't really gone through the alchemy. We hadn't really gotten real. We were still wanting it for a different reason. We weren't totally empty. We weren't really totally empty because there were still some wounds or some image or some things that we were trying to achieve for that reason. And so we had a beautiful sacred wedding on our land. It was magnificent. One of the most

beautiful days of my life. So gorgeous. We had Bhagavan Das doing a Vedic fire ceremony. We had gospel singers. We had channelers. we had African wedding singers. My boys were adorable and walked me down the aisle and we were on our land. And it was truly just a joyous, joyous day. And on that day, we activated the initiation that would lead us through the fall transformation that would lead us through the fall and allow us to rise up. So many of us in this room are being faced with challenges. We have very serious things that are going on in life. I don't know all the details, but I just know because we have a collective group of around 50 people. So within that, there's going to be a whole sort of array of things. And so what we can offer you is that you can't get away from life's challenges. You can't avoid whatever your life plan is for you.

But what you can do is you can shift the lens and you can meet it in a different way. So again, we have all heard people say, it's not what happens to you, but who do you become in the face of what happens to you? And mostly every time that something's happening to us, we can't imagine that our higher soul would have chosen this for us. We're just kind of like, what the fuck? Are you kidding me? Like, this is not what I want. What? Like, how is this happening? Right? But if you shift the way you come to it and you view it as a spiritual test or an initiation and you refine your emotional reaction to it, your judgment, your labels of what you attach to it, you will find that you can transform it. And I'm here to tell you that the energy today

is a lot faster than it was 10 years ago when Rich and I went through this. So I'm not saying that it's going to take you guys 10 years to get through your alchemy or at least a portion of your alchemy because this goes on forever for eternity. So you're never done. But I will say that if you're willing and if you're open to developing a deeper love of yourself and taking this perspective, choosing a spiritual perspective, you have immense energy here to support you in this transformation. It could be very fast. You could get through it quickly. So let me give you just one physical example of what this would look like in a daily basis. So we had our cars repossessed. We had one

car repossessed, and then after that, the second car repossessed. And again, it was like my fourth Volvo. And I contacted Volvo. I'm like, hey guys, I'm the Volvo customer. I've been with you for four Volvos. I can't make this payment. Can you reduce it? And they were like, fuck off. I did try though. I mean, I always was like, I always try to do something, right? So I remember the kids asking me, I was driving in, you know, a borrowed van. Like then I had this like old smelly, like, you know, mom van, something. So I was driving it and my kids were like, mom, what happens if the car gets repossessed? And I just took my hands off the wheel for, and I was like, look, nothing. I was like, nothing happens. It's a car. That's it. They take the car. And they're like, really? And I go, yeah. And they

go, oh, then that was it. So again, that's showing you a demonstration of my, I refuse to be emotionally like this about it. And I would work with Rich and I was telling him, I need you to be neutral. I need you to hold that neutral no matter what happens. Because all this shit is happening to us. And if you freak out emotionally, that makes it worse for us. It makes it last longer. So I was like, we are in the fire right now. I can't afford for you to lose your shit. You got to be Jedi. You got to go total Jedi warrior. you got to be Jedi. You got to go total Jedi warrior. You guys have seen Star Wars. Jedi comes in. They're not like, oh God, no. You know, they're like, they're like, okay, what's happening? All right, act, right? Completely unemotional. So the Jedi is a really good example. So for instance,

the car, you know, I didn't pay the car payment for like a long time. And, you know, I knew they were going to be coming at some point. And then the time, you know, they shine like a flashlight, like in your window at night. And I looked at Rich. I just remember he was in the kitchen. He was just nagging. And I was like, don't off the center. Like, that's it. So I opened the door and I go out to the guy and I just go, hey.

And he's like, yeah. I go, are you here for the car? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, hey, what's up? I'm like, what's your name? I'm like, hi, I'm Julie. And I was like, and he's like a little bit off kilter. And I said, do you have any paperwork? And he goes, no. And I'm like, you don't have any paperwork? And he's like, come on. And I was like, all right. So he didn't even have any paperwork. But I just invited him to have a cup of tea. He didn't really accept it, but I still spoke to him for a minute.

And I made the decision that in that experience, I wasn't going to let him take my humanity. It really wasn't that big of a deal. It's a fucking car. Like, what does that say about me? Does it say that I'm a loser? Am I? Do I really believe that about myself?

You know, what God are we worshiping? Like, do we really believe that we're just our credit score? That know, what God are we worshiping? Like, do we really believe that we're just our credit score? That that's what we are? No way. We're so much more than that. And during the process of fighting for my home, which involved a lot of fire ritual and ceremony and crazy stuff that I'll share some of this with you this week. But I went to see a bankruptcy firm, and I was just trying to learn, you know, and I found out soon that I was really becoming an expert because even the big bankers and lawyers,

they didn't know what was going on because we were in the middle of this mortgage crisis, and there was no rule book for what was happening. So every once in a while, I'd meet somebody at a party, and they'd say, you need to talk to my friend Joe, who's an amazing lawyer. And I'd talk to him and find out very quickly that I knew way more than Joe knew. And so I also started to trust myself and grow into me, even though I'm an artist and I'm a spiritual being and I'm a healer and a teacher and singer, I still have awareness. Even though I'm not trained in money per se, I still have an intuition.

And for the first time, I started to trust myself and go, these dudes don't, they don't know what's going on. So when I was in this meeting, I walked into the bankruptcy meeting alone because it was really my, this was my battle for the house. It was really my battle. It wasn't Rich's battle. I had built the house with my money, and that's another sort of projection. People project that Rich had a huge law career, and so that built the house, and that's why we live there, but no.

I was already building the house when Rich came into my life. And so the house is mine, and I was fighting for the house because this was my karmic, this was my karmic play. It was not his. So he was training, going through his transformation and I was going through this other aspect. And I had this amazing mala that I used to wear everywhere. It has huge Rudraksha beads and this huge altar that's all beaded. And I took it to every spiritual guru that I've, you know,

sat with, which are double digits and, you know, I've done everything. And I took it to every spiritual guru that I've sat with, which are double digits. And I've done everything. And I had this around my neck. And I just went into this lawyer and I said, I have no shame. I have no emotional attachment to the scenario, to what's happening right now. I just want to know the scenario. Tell me A, B, C. That's all I want to know. And his mouth was just open. And he said, no one is having this experience in my life. None of my clients are having this experience. And I said, well, it's because they don't understand that they're not the credit score. That's all. So in the middle of the meeting, my mala broke and the beads rolled all over the conference table. And it was such a beautiful moment because I just knew that I had hit bottom.

I knew like that was the sacred sign that I was at the bottom. And now it was going to start going this way. So those are just a couple examples of little things, huge things, ways that I faced events. And so while I'm sharing this with you, if you can grab that perspective and you can

face these events in those ways, you can start to understand that everything in your life is happening for you instead of happening to you. And the key is, is if you can reduce your freak out moment to smaller and smaller increments of time, Take it like a test. You're being tested. So I would try to monitor my body when these explosions would happen. And then I would try to keep go less and less and less neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral. And the quicker you can get to neutral, disappears. It's gone. Yeah, it's the half-life of the emotional reaction. It's not about saying, I have no fear or eradicating fear, but quickening the half-life of the fear response or the sort of knee-jerk, programmed-in response to that kind of stimuli. And so I think as Julie sort of

laid out in this story, our challenges have been financial. We've had emotional challenges. We've had health challenges, each in our own different ways. And I think everybody here has their own challenges, be they emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, financial. None of us get out of life without these things, nor do I think are we advised to sidestep them, but rather to use them and leverage them as learning experiences, as spiritual experiences to grow and learn. And one of the things that I learned early and often in recovery is you spend a lot of time in rooms and gatherings like this, listening to other people share their stories. And what you come to understand is that the facts of another's

experience or story may be very dissimilar to your own, but their emotional through line, their approach to overcoming those obstacles is something that is universal, that we can all relate to. So whatever your respective individual challenges may be, they're all going to be individuated and different for all of you. But is there a more universal approach that we can all connect with for how we tackle these obstacles and ultimately work through them. And I think, you know, if there's one nugget to take away from this session, it is having that

neutral reaction to whatever it is you are experiencing. Because if you get caught up in your ego or your shame or your fear over whatever it is that you're enduring in the moment, you're hamstringing your ability to ultimately transcend it. And so, for example, in the recovery community, when you hear people sharing the facts of their experience, what it was like, what they went through, and they're doing it not just from a place of neutrality, but total ownership, ownership of their story without shame, without fear. And I think it's that ability to really own our own stories in our respective ways that allow us to then look at them from an objective, dispassionate, neutral point of view that allows us to then deconstruct,

allows us to deconstruct them and figure out the pathway forward. Yeah, and one really important distinction and a really powerful practice and one that we all could cultivate is understanding that when you're embodied in a system like earth, when you're embodied in a system like Earth, you have both light and dark within you. Every being does here. And rather than judge yourself for the dark and love yourself for the light or feel shame about the dark,

what we're doing is we're integrating the entire holistic experience into one so that we can become neutral, digest it, and transcend the experience. So think about when you're challenged to find a way to love it at some aspect, to love the fact, in my case, that I suffer, have suffered occasionally. No. That I have had a history of very intense head trauma. So now when that arises, my mantra is, I love it.

I love it that my body's expressing and communicating to me this way. You know? It's almost like you, rather than going like, oh, that happened again, and I don't want it, just be like, come closer. I love it. I love that part of me. Isn't it beautiful that my body speaks to me that way?

And that's a really interesting perspective that I think allows a lot of power, really, embodiment, integration. What you resist persists. Right? Did you say that? I just came up with that. You just came up with that. No, I didn't come up with that.

That's not mine. No, I'm kidding. I came up with that. Well, should we open it up? Yeah, so we had two ideas. The first idea was Rich's idea was to call you guys up and put one of you in the spot. No, we're going to do that later.

We'll do it later. No, so we're just here in this session for you guys sort of as a beginning place. So just to ask us anything, you know, anything that you'd like to ask us about, whether it's fitness or our relationship or any aspect of anything, just as an open Q&A for, you know, based on what we just shared. If there's anything else that we can share with you guys that can assist you. You know, what you would like to experience this week. That would be good, too.

Hi, I'm Richard. I'm from London. And my question is, how do you know that this is the right path? At what point do you think this is the one um because you talked about uh going through struggles and uh i loved the science sound of all the stuff you're doing with uh jai and i was wondering how what is the different feeling you get when you think, oh, this is it? So I was talking to, I'm here with Gemma, my wife,

about different paths I've gone down in my life. I thought, okay, this isn't working. Maybe I'll try this one, this one. And the path I'm on now sort of found me and seems to have worked out and feels good. But then now I'm striving forward, have more ambitions with where I'd like to take it, and it really resonated what you said about put aside personal ambitions or maybe ego ambitions

and just ease into where the universe wants you to go. I was just wondering, how do you know? Well, that's beautiful that you shared that the life path that's feeling really good to you found you. Okay. So if we take that for all of us in yoga, that's what I'm talking about. It's that merging into the breath, into your heart and really getting close with yourself. And then you feel that this energy kind of holds you, right? So when you're trying to do things out of ambition, you're just creating karma. It's like you could be okay at it, or it could be good enough, or something like

that. But is it really your dharma? And the only way that I know that is I find when I'm doing it if I lose time, if I'm in no time space, if I'm surging with energy and I can feel a quality of something beyond me that comes in. So it sounds like you're there. So what I would say is keep cultivating this inner knowing, this relationship with yourself and keep allowing. And it doesn't mean you don't do anything. And I think that's the thing we get tripped up because we're like, what is this detachment? Then you're just going to sit everywhere, sit down and not do anything. But it's detached action. So you find this connection with who you are. You learn to love yourself more, fall deeper and deeper in love with yourself.

And really feel yourself as this beautiful child. The most precious. And start from that point. And then in the yoga practice, you feel that allowing holds you. And then the universe just gives you like this plate and you're like, oh, I'll eat that. You know, it's much different. And you know, our world has been built on this will driving. Okay. So probably many people in here make lists and goals. They're like, okay,

I've got goals and I'm going to go get these. The world is really shifting. it's much more of a feminine frequency so think of magnetizing think of falling in love with yourself so deeply that you're so nourished that you're just radiating this beacon of like sonar and all your tribe is going to find you in a way that's what you guys all are

you heard our call at some sense in your being I mean of all the the people that listen to us or read our books or are alive, we're here together. There's something very sacred about that. So drop into your heart and relax your brain. Relax your brain.

And trust this natural mechanism of life that's pulsing through you. So my experience is if you can do that, life will paint your mandala much more beautiful than you could have ever imagined it yourself. Yeah, I mean, just to echo that, I would say that you know when you know. And I could tell you from my own experience that I would have never imagined that this was what I was going to be doing with my life. It certainly wasn't my idea

of what I wanted to do or where I thought I was headed. But I think it occurred when I got to that place of letting go completely. So what happens when you release your attachment and your ego association with how you make your way into the world? And nature abhors a vacuum. So what would it feel like if you approached a professional situation not from a place of what am I going to get out of this or what is it how is it going to feed my ego or how is this going to advance me in the pecking order of society or how will I be perceived but rather how can I contribute right and I think when you find yourself waking up in the morning excited about the contribution that you're going to make as opposed to what you're going to extract from and gauging that feedback and making little micro decisions that you become more and more intuitively aware

of how to properly navigate for yourself. So I don't think it's any clear-cut, like, oh, yes or no kind of thing. It's more of a nuanced, like, feeling into a situation that is very gradual, but over time delivers you to a place where there is a knowingness that you are on the path that you are meant to be on. And if you find yourself in a situation, like let's say you're in a life experience that you don't think is your dharma, and it's a job that you're in now, or even a relationship that you're in now,

you can experience action from a receptive place, meaning you can cultivate your own experience within yourself, and work on that relationship and that connection to life. You can choose to meet everybody in your life as an aspect of some sort of divine nature, whatever it is, even the person that annoys you at work, whatever it is.

You can just shift your lens and meet that person in neutrality, in a knowing that we all have preferences, but ultimately we're just all playing some game out for some experiment of knowing ourselves better. And then by cultivating that within yourself, so you don't have to go, okay, now I'm going to do this,

so I'm going to go blow up my entire life today. You can deal with it in a more subtle way and just make yourself the main focus of that. And if you're in a job that you're not supposed to be in, once you start to cultivate this inner, the job will drop you. You'll just get fired or something. You know, it will leave you or your spouse will leave you. If you start to cultivate that and it's the right thing, it will get stronger. You know, It will start to magnetize to you that which serves you. So again, making all these decisions and being like, okay, I have to do this by this date,

or I have to do that. Get out of the mental and get into the feeling and feel what is right for you. And if you can do that, I think it's a more natural and spontaneous way of life unfolding if you can imagine a flower a bud just blooming more of that then all right I'm gonna cut this and plant this and move to this other garden and you know that's a lot of mind thinking so Tommy from Singapore um hi so uh I blew up my life last year and um uh divorce number two so almost a relationship expert like yourself I do remember the podcast so nice to meet you um and uh so yeah I can understand what you said about, well, following your heart and the other things kind of just fall by the wayside. But I kind of did a pre-emptive attack, I guess you could say. And when, before you get on a particular path, choosing that path, we're kind of dancing around a little bit, I think, choosing that path to begin with.

choosing that path, we're kind of dancing around a little bit, I think, choosing that path to begin with. In other words, how would you advise someone to follow their heart? It's like, cool, sounds great. I've got so many things that I'm peeling off right now and preconditioning and programming. Where is my heart? What's the efficient route based on your experience to find your heart? Well, let's get really specific about this. Are you willing to tell us more specifically about the decision that you're trying to make? Yeah. Well, I'm starting, I have been working on a digital business. I divorced number two last year. I left, I resigned a month ago, gave them a long runway because they may become my first customer.

You know, I've started to do certain courses in an area around, for example, StrengthsFinder 2.0. I'm becoming a Gallup coach. But I'm feeling health tech because I come from a technology background and I was speaking with someone else last night about this who also works in IT. And I love the fact that technology can change the quality of life

and change quality of business. I'm not so interested in the business piece anymore. I want to see how it can change people's lives directly. And so I'm using my background to basically move into health tech and digital health. And so what is the decision that you're facing? Well, I mean, I could refer and say and say okay am i heading down the right path is this optimum me um so before i make that decision i'd like to think okay uh is this

just some intellectual shit and i'm going to hustle through this again and make it work or is this really coming from here? Okay, well, I have just a couple things to offer to that. Awesome that you made those decisions and that you felt, you know, drawn to take action in your life. That also works beautifully. So I support you and trust you in the decisions that you've made. And it's the cultivation of your own connection to whatever you experience as the life force, whatever your interaction with that is. So

your life is about your interaction with consciousness or that one breath or life. that one breath or life. So especially because you're in technology, you have a responsibility to develop your spiritual connection. Because technology in the way of AI is not divine human experience. There is nothing that is more divine than a human connected to its knowing, its source. And that cannot be replaced by any technology. So I trust you and believe in you. And I know you're talented. And I know you have a lot to offer. And I would send you back to meditation, back to the yoga practices like you're going to develop throughout this week.

We're going to do some other more advanced yoga techniques, meditations. But you have the other part developed, the technology developed, and you have an idea how that's flowing. So I would say in order to really know, you really need this natural connection developed. And then you'll have the whole picture and I'm sure your life will lead you exactly where you need to go. I would add to that just this idea that I think trips a lot of people up, which is that this sense that you need to know like, oh, I know this is right. This decision is right for me.

My heart is telling me this. I know it is my dharma. And I am moving forward with conviction. I don't think that's how most people operate in this space. It certainly isn't how I was functioning. I think it's okay to not know with utter conviction. I think it's okay to not know with utter conviction. And it's more about, it's less about like some big, huge decision looming in the future about a life path you're going to choose or not choose and how certain are you.

And it's more about the little decisions you're making every day about how you're living your life. Are you making that choice when you wake up in the morning to connect with yourself, to connect with consciousness? Are you being mindful in your small decisions that you wake up in the morning to connect with yourself, to connect with consciousness? Are you being mindful in your small decisions that you're making throughout the day? Are you exercising self-care? Are you compassionate to others? then you are being directed in a way that will make those other larger decisions ultimately more self-evident as they arise. Yeah, and it's important to also point out that Rich and I didn't have this specific vision on a vision board or on a list.

We were like, okay, we're going to be, like, I didn't even know I was going to be doing food. I mean, I think I did once, you know, I bought a Nobu cookbook and I was like, yeah, there'll be a cookbook that kind of goes along with the house. And I put it in a cupboard for 10 years. But a lot of these things that we did, they weren't like on a list. I mean, first of all, Rich never, we never imagined there was no intellectual possibility that him racing or doing endurance races would amount to any financial, you know, flow or model or strategy whatsoever. In fact, it was insanity. He also wasn't even the fastest. He was just a dude that was just doing races, just like anybody. So why is it him you know and I remember after

his first Ultraman race you know and he talked to a friend of his and he was like yeah I'm trying to figure out what's what race is next and the friend was like what's next like go back to work you know it was like what do you mean what's next nothing's next you know so, it's not, we can't see from our perspective. And in addition, even though like I had begged Rich, you know, Rich was hanging on to a couple law clients. You know, I remember giving him this epic speech like in her bedroom, like, you have to let go of the shore and swim with me to the other island. Like you're hanging on and it's holding us back. You've got to let it go. And I was sure when he let go and started swimming with me

that I used those wordings because he's a swimmer. So I was like, that would work for him. So I was like, come swim. We're going to go. Now I understand. He's like, I can swim. We're going to go. He's like, now I understand. He's like, I can swim. No. So I was like, sure that when we did this, cause I was like, we were just so raw and we were so in it. Like we were so in it with every part of our being that it was like, as soon as we do this, the universe is going to support us. Right. And then it was a long, dry period. Like, talk about getting your ass kicked.

We were literally so raw, so immensely raw. And we didn't know if it was going to work. You know, we felt it. We were convicted. We were committed. But then we would just be like, we were like, babe, we're on the verge of realizing all of our dreams are being completely annihilated. And it could go either way. It wasn't clear. And so again and again, we were put in a position to literally, for me, get down on my knees and just say my life

is not mine. It's yours. You know, I had recorded this beautiful music with my boys. I had become a musician over seven years. The most beautiful experience of my life. Incredible. And nothing was happening with it. And I was like, I know how powerful this music is. It seeped in my soul. It kept me alive. You know, when we would play it, people would cry. my soul. It kept me alive. You know, when we would play it, people would cry. But literally, like, no one heard it. And after a while, I was like, well, maybe no one needs to hear it. Maybe this music isn't really important in the scheme of things. So it's like, we're in this human experience, and we're very important, and very unique, and very, you know, very significant, and we're also completely insignificant. So when you

really are just a channel for this life force and start to really receive yourself as divine, you have to understand that you're just in this to express what is given, And it doesn't belong to you. And so when you wake up in the morning, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is hit the ground. I touch the ground. Thank you for my life. And when I go to bed at night, I give everything back. It's not, you know, I don't get the triumphs and I don't get the fuck-ups either. It's just like I do my best. I show up the best that I can. I'm not perfect. I'm in this journey. I'm learning as I go. And so ultimately everything to me is this spiritual connection because it's the beginning of everything. It's the beginning place. It's not the extra thing that you put on afterwards.

Like I've got my job and I've got my relationship and my car and now I'm going to add a mala. It's the beginning place. It's not the extra thing that you put on afterwards. Like, I've got my job, and I've got my relationship and my car, and now I'm going to add a mala, and now I'm spiritual. You know? No, it's the beginning. It's the core of what we're doing here. And, you know, if you guys are not taking your bank accounts with you when you leave the body, you're not taking your credit score with you,

how many of the people in your businesses do you think are going to be there at your funeral? bank accounts with you when you leave the body. You're not taking your credit score with you. How many of the people in your businesses do you think are going to be there at your funeral? Really, really standing there for you going, well done. Thanks for working weekends. It was awesome. They're not. So it's your life. This is it. You know, this is so sacred. So, yeah, I don't know how I got off on the tangent, but just keep developing that and then trust that it will naturally arise. And also, it doesn't have to be one way. It can be many different ways. You have something else?

Yeah, I mean, like, I think what Rich said kind of resonated with that. We consciously don't really know. We start to take some personal risk as to what we think may be. And it's those small, as you get deeper, some of those consistent little decisions that you make each day and evolve and learn. Without the fear of anything that has died,

you don't hustle through. Yeah, and I think that the more you do prioritize those mindful spiritual practices, the more you can centralize, like what Julie said, to make it first and foremost your priority, then what happens is that your intuition becomes more and more refined and it becomes more and more trustworthy. So that when an impulse arises like, hey, I should do this, you're more convicted that that's not your ego speaking or that's not some wayward impulse that's going to take you away from that which you seek, but which will, in fact, provide the path forward in the direction that you want to go.

John from Malta. Hi. It's great to be here with you guys and everyone else in the room. There's a statement which struck me when you said you have to be emotionally neutral. And we all go through challenges and it's a roller coaster sharing it with a loved one you know with same journey but different approaches is also sometimes fun and great but also provides challenges but what if you feel that sometimes you start doubting that you're too neutral that you're the eternal positive and you get these thoughts in your mind when you say,

I should be fucking stressing out and I'm not. What's wrong with me? And you start doubting because you work to reach that stage, but then you reach it and you become kind of comfortably numb. And it's like everything will be okay. And you look around you and people say yeah, but how you shouldn't I mean, you know what? It could really not be okay, and you're like everything would be okay But then it you start doubting that am I kind of now have I gone over this am I kind of

Like smoking something and I'm not You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. Thanks. So you engage in sports, John, right? Completely. Okay. So when you're engaged in sports and you enter a situation, does your body tell you when you're in danger or when you need to adjust something? Yeah, it tells me go for it even more. Go for it? Okay, you're really insane. Well, I mean, I would say, I was going to say trust your body.

Okay, let me use a different example because you're really engaged in sports but um let's say um if you see a life form hurt do you feel that in your body come again if you see any life that's hurt whether it's a person a loved one a dog it destroys me completely okay so you can feel that completely okay and do you ever feel fear that's valid? Like, have you ever been attacked or something happened, you know, like a fire and you knew there was danger? Do you know when there's danger? Do you know not to put your hand on the flame and burn it,

put your hand in the fire? Do you want to try that. I don't know if she's good. Do you want to try that? I don't know. He's thinking, oh, maybe I'll try that when I get back to the apartment. I don't know, fear, you know it's, yeah, not fear, but yeah, kind of.

A communication. Yeah, my wife taught me how to communicate, so thanks to her now. Well, unless you're completely insane, and I don't know, No, I'm kidding. I would just say that the neutrality is beautiful. It's a very powerful place to be because most of the fear that we're experiencing is not valid.

It's from projection to a past, or thinking about the past or projecting into the future. So what I know is that the bodies are divine intelligence and they will tell you what's happening. So paying attention to your body will give you the signals. So I don't think you have to create a lot of thoughts or emotional drama over situations. thoughts or emotional drama over situations. And maybe you're just prepared to walk through whatever life gives you because you'll still be, you still have you. Nobody can take you from you. You know, again, it's not what happens to you. It's who you are in the face of what happens to

you. And, you know, you may be a very extreme guy. You may live kind of on the edge. That's kind of where you're comfortable. And there's nothing wrong with that. So that's my perspective, Rich. Yeah, I think the emotional neutrality is fantastic. And I think your discomfort with it comes in when other people are reflecting back to you that it's making them uncomfortable and that's making you question your own response to that because that will make everyone else uncomfortable because fear loves company and most people are in fear and when they meet somebody who's unfazed by something that would make most people afraid that's a disconcerting social interaction right so then it gets reflected back to you, and then you start questioning your own response to these sorts of things. So in certain

respects, I think you're having a healthy response. Now, let's be clear. There's a difference between emotional neutrality and emotional repression or denial. So if you're so emotionally locked down that nothing phases you, or you're depressed, or you're somebody who just is unfazed by life because you're checked out emotionally, that's a very different situation, right? And I don't know you really at all, so I'm not diagnosing you in any respect, but I think that that would be something to really look at and get to the bottom of. Thanks. Hello, I'm Sarah from London.

Thank you for sharing your story just now and for just sharing your story on your podcast because that's why I'm here because it really so I'm going to get a bit emotional really has resonated with me my question is around transitioning and moving into the highest vision that you hold for yourself because there is a question here I just have to give a backstory to sort of understand it so where I'm at now is I sort of had this awakening and this realization that I spent my entire life not being me and sorry this is crazy and living what I think the world needs me to be so that started off I had some trauma as a child and then I just

entered well and then I had a really bad eating disorder and then I was in a cycle of addiction for 11 years and the only way I knew how to be was to just join the family business and try and impress my family and be of service to them without even checking in on who I was or what I was doing and the only thing that kept me alive through this

I think when I was 22, I'm 29 now I started reading and I had this I started reading and I had this like awakening of like there is something more but I'm really scared to just like jump right in so I'll cling on to financial security of my family and then I had my addictions which were like giving me substance in a world that I wasn't connected in because I wasn't in my body and then the last three years I realized that this wasn't my life but I wasn't in an environment where I could question it uh and then I had the whole complexity of like maintaining a family business because my family were with me when I was really badly sick and I

just had to give back to them but then the only way I could maintain some sort of sanity with listening and opening myself up to a different aspect of myself was starting a business that was more aligned with what I wanted to do, but I could still have that security. It was like a sister business to the family business, but very much like you shared with Jai House, was it? I wasn't ready to hold this, even though I can see it and still feel it, but it's sort of like I'm trying to put something out in the world, but I haven't gone through that yet.

So now this isn't my intention, but when I was further along in my recovery, because I didn't give any of that up, but I was like, why am I still feeling how I'm feeling? And it was because I just needed to let go and stop for a bit, but I didn't have that willingness. But the universe decided and everything's kind of stopped right now so I'm

taking time out and sort of trying to move somewhere to just get in more alignment with myself but there's like you were talking about light and dark and trying to see it as a whole like for me there's been lightness and darkness but it's a battle and that has been my experience

and I think there are blockages stopping me from really getting clear I know what I don't want and I know sort of where home is and myself but when I take this energy and go out into the world it's like the brainwashing that I'm still trying to undo just captures me again and it's sort of like I can be millions of people in one day living like what's my question uh so I easily get plugged back in let's just say to the matrix but then I meditate and I'm like oh no that's not it so it's not like a linear thing or even it's literally like this on one day and I guess my question is around how to remove like mindfully remove that brainwashing and what I can do when I start to really tap in to something greater I don't know if that makes sense sorry thank you for sharing well first thing that I want to say is that

um please receive that you're exactly on time, that your life is unfolding exactly as it should be. So as I hear you speaking, you're sharing a story that many of us share. Many of us are still, I'm still getting, I'm still getting to embodying myself authentically still. You know, there's a place where we all sort of like make some sort of adjustment for something else in our life, you know, and, you know, many of us are just learning who we are in different and different and different layers. So, you know, I could look at you and I could say you're so intelligent and you're so efficient because you're just coming into this now. And this is when the energy is here to support you.

So it would have been much harder to do this five years ago, 10 years ago. So you're right on time. And everyone should just take a deep breath in right now and close your eyes for a minute. and exhale. And really feel this, that you are loved unconditionally simply for the fact that you exist in a body at all. Right now, as you are. That's it. There's nothing else beyond this

so there's no title you could get or achievement you could earn or life you could be that would make you more loved than you are right now and so just coming back into the space I'll attempt to share something about your question it's just all a process of discovery Sarah I'll attempt to share something about your question. It's just all a process of discovery, Sarah.

So you just, you have so much awareness now because you've, the first step is, of course, understanding that you're in a cage. If you don't know you're in a cage, then you're not going to get out of the cage. So, and there's different levels of cages, you know, it goes on. It could be in your, within yourself. It could be within your family, then within your community, then within the city, then within planet earth, then the solar system, then it keeps going. So just honor yourself for the awareness, for the fact that you're sitting here today.

And do you listen to my podcast? So there's lots of healing techniques on there. I would love to work with you one-on-one and help you to integrate this. So talk to Mel and find a spot. But in my experience of life presently, it's really important that we gather all parts of ourselves and all parts of life and we integrate them into unity. That's what we're doing. So everything in your life has happened for you. You chose your family makeup because it served your evolution perfectly.

So even if it's not a new paradigm business or the best environment, it was prepared for you to serve you, to provide you this awakening that you're having right now. And in the same way, your addiction is also providing you the friction, the something to bump up against to remind you of yourself, of your true essence. So I think more self-love and relax, like relax in the process, relax into the week, and just know that everything's right on time. Thanks. And to kind of bring it to transition from the ethereal to the more practical,

I would say to you that, you know, your, your addictive tendencies, your behavior patterns are very much a manifestation of, of trying to deal with emotional trauma that you suffered as a child and you're coming into this awareness, this understanding that there is this duality, this black and white, this rubber banding between the behavior that you want to exhibit in yourself and a sort of regressive behavior pattern that's impulsed by that emotional trauma and the signaling that you're receiving from your environment and your family. And with this developing awareness, I think it would be a great tool for you to develop a practice

of creating an inventory on a daily basis where before you go to bed at night or upon awaking in the morning, if you can chronicle the instances in which you're impulsed, right? They say that, you know, those family members, they installed the buttons. They know how to push them to get a certain action or reaction out of you that you just do reactively without any mindfulness. So the more mindfulness you can develop around those behavior patterns, where those buttons are, how they get pushed and impulsed, and the more mindful practices you can cultivate around that, then you can create that space in between the impulse and how you're reacting to that. so that you're not reacting impulsively,

but that you have that mindful moment in which you can pause, reflect for a minute, and say, I have a choice in how I respond here. And I think the more you can kind of cultivate that as a practice, the greater width you will experience in that gap, and that's where the progress can be made. Short question, follow up to Sarah's. I'm Alexis from Philadelphia. What does one do a little bit with the guilt they feel

as we try to figure these things out for ourselves, the guilt we feel for spouses who are patiently just waiting for you to figure your shit out. So, I don't know. Julie spent a lot of time waiting for me to figure my shit out. In fact, I'm still trying to figure out my shit. She's still being patient with me. Yeah, that's tricky. I think a lot of times that guilt is conflated with this sense of obligation about how you're supposed to feel about a certain situation.

And I don't know your particular situation, but perhaps there's a little bit of codependency in there. The more you can kind of understand that you have your journey, your spouse has their journey, and you guys can come together for, you know, to create a greater whole in the union that you have. But at the same time, your job is for yourself and your spouse's job is to, you know, grow in his respective self as well. And the more you can kind of individuate that process, I think the better off you can become. Because you're not responsible for his journey and he's ultimately not responsible for yours. That is between you and yourself. Yeah, so it's really all about you. And I think it's very mixed and complicated for us

because we've been told the opposite and in fact we've been told that like a compassionate person or a spiritual person that you know that framework just looks like Mother Teresa and you know Mother Teresa is a beautiful being I mean I didn't know her personally but

you know I'm sure she had good and bad aspects like every human being, you know, probably the more darker ones are not talked about. So, but the thing is, is that's just a, that's a choice of life. And in consciousness, from an existential point of view, she's no more loved than you are, than anyone in this room, than anyone. It's simply a choice. So this is getting back to this retreat that I'm teaching right now, Beloved. It's about cultivating this relationship, this love with yourself. And whatever partner you're with, if you are truly in love with yourself,

and that's not obviously in a narcissistic way, but fully embodying your unique blueprint, you will love them at a level that they never imagined even existed. So guilt is maybe an ancestral implant. You have to break out of these ideas, thought forms, belief systems. And it's challenging to go against culture. I would say one of the most difficult things that I weathered was judgment from my community when I was going through my sacred moment, when they were like, she's the crazy

person in the back of the room. And I was like, no, this is my sacred moment. And I knew I had a vision, I had a conviction of what, that we would rise, that we would, that we were being alchemized, but there was no appearance to back that up for many, many years. And it's lonely to sit in that kind of judgment, to be the outsider. It's very, very lonely and very painful. And one thing that I always vowed to myself or promise I made myself is that when I worked with people that were in trauma, what I would tell them is that I trust you and I believe in you to find your way.

Because usually what we get is a lot of advice. Well, you should be doing that and you're really not very nice because you're focusing on yourself, and this other person wants you to do this, or show up at this event, or be like this, or what about me? What about the, it's always that, and often when you're leaving these cages, or these fences, and you're looking beyond, you're also scaring the people around you because you're challenging their buying into the belief system. So it's like if you break out, then they're like, wait, you know, you ruined my boundary and they become angry at you.

So again, more self-love, more unconditional love and acceptance for yourself and forgiveness. And this is a process through yoga, meditation, and reminding yourself that this service to self is really the greatest thing you could do. It's the greatest act you could give humanity is to know yourself and to live that completely. And just to explore this a little bit more in depth, so just so I understand, you're experiencing guilt yourself? Guilt over the fact that I'm not a whole fully realized person. I'm very disconnected from my true self.

Right. And you have a partner who's been very patiently just kind of, um, trying to be, wait for me. Um, right. And probably has had to come up with his own coping mechanisms, um,-year marriage for my own issues. Right. And is he imposing a sense of guilt upon you, or is that self-generated? That's self-generated, but I feel guilty that he maybe hasn't fully realized himself because he's had to be dealing with me a little bit.

Right. And so the guilt really stems from you feeling like you're holding him back. Yes. But I would say, I would submit to you that the predominant emotion that you're experiencing is more shame. emotion that you're experiencing is more shame. Shame because you're measuring yourself up against some standard that you've either imagined for yourself that you're missing the mark on, that you're not living up to, or that some other person is imposing upon you to which you are measuring yourself, right? And so the exploration for you is to try to understand where that shame comes from and why you feel like you have to measure up to some standard of self-actualization that you have yet to achieve.

We're all somewhere on that spectrum. None of us is completely self-actualized. We're all short of that mark in some regard, and we're on that path, that journey to greater self-understanding, etc. But none of us probably measure up to some idealized version that we've set for ourselves. The difference, I think, with you is the extent to which this provokes shame within yourself. Yeah. Ultimately, none of us really know who anybody really is. Ultimately, none of us really know who anybody really is. He may be a vastly expanded being that's chosen to play that role while you search.

That may be your agreement. I do feel that there is some cosmic reason why we're together. I feel like we just have to sort of blow things up and reinvent the reality that we have. So, yeah. Yeah. So in order to have the play called life, everybody has to play a part and some people have to play, you know, maybe the darker aspects or, you know, less expressed aspects. But we really don't, you really just don't know who anybody is in this experiment of life that we're all interacting so that we can bump up against each other and remember ourselves and

know ourselves. So again, understanding that if you are divine, he is also divine. If your life is right on time and everything is perfectly evolving, then so is his. So he doesn't have to be on your timeline. It's not required for you to be in a relationship. And, you know, I went through this with Rich. This was the catalyzing, really, this was the transformational moment that is not written about. I had spent seven years in a relationship with Rich, seeing him polluted by processed food, drinking venti coffees with three ad shots, struggling, being unhappy in law. There was a density around him. I couldn't quite get to him because there was all this, you know, some weight

and also just malice and his addiction was up, although he wasn't using, it was very present, you know, all over. And I was the healthy one. I had healed myself of a cyst in my neck. I was into practicing yoga. I knew of many of these practices I'm sharing with you. And it seemed like the more that I reached out to him, the more paralyzed he became. And it was a very tricky thing for me to discover because I was, obviously, I was eating bright. Obviously, I had more knowledge into health. It wasn't like he was happy doing what he was doing. He was suffering and I was trying to offer him my hand. And so we hit this bottom point and we broke up for 24 hours and it was a long 24 hours.

But I, you know, it's my third marriage and we just had a new baby and I was just like you know I'm sure that I love this man and I made a commitment and I just I had a teaching that was given to me by an Indian master who said the concept of divine love, divine love is like the sun just shining on all of us without

any discrimination doesn't care, simply doesn't care doesn't care if you're religious, doesn't care if you doesn't care. Doesn't care if you're religious. Doesn't care if you look for it. Doesn't care if you're a rapper or if whatever you do, it doesn't care. It's just shining. A rapper. Is that a rapper? Well, it just came out. So then the human love is a business arrangement, which we make with each other, which we say, if you act in a certain way that we've agreed upon and wear certain clothes

and change those gross shoes that you're wearing, by the way, and then I will love you. And if you stop doing those, then I'm going to take my love from you. And so it's two very different concepts. And it was the kind of thing for me, like when the ski instructor, you know, the 12th ski instructor gives you the tips, which you've heard before,

but finally the 12th time you get it. I just got it. And it fully entered my cells. And I called Rich and I said, I'm sorry that I was in your space. I'm sorry that I was involved in your life. I had this idea that we had to self-realize together and like rise into the clouds or something. And I just let it go. I was like, if I'm God, he's God. You know, I don't have to worry about it. And I literally released him to his life. I think he was very suspicious when I first told him. He was like, okay, now I'm going to get ambushed tonight when I go home. But I really, really was able to own it, and I released him to his life. And it's that action that catalyzed Finding Ultra, that catalyzed this entire journey. It was that moment. He didn't have his scare on the stairs until a couple months

after, but it was that release. I released him to his life. Your partner's life is not yours. Give it to him. It's his choice what he's doing. Yeah, before we put this completely to bed, I had one more question that I think is important, which is, completely to bed, I had one more question that I think is important, which is, do you feel a sense of, do you feel it's self-indulgent for you to be here? And is that what is provoking some of the guilt? No, I actually, I don't, because I know that, I don't. I mean, I think that he knows that he's seen positive changes in my life already from listening to the two of you. So, in fact, that's probably allowed a shift in him similar to the one that happened with you to Rich.

He's just letting me be me now um i think um the final thing that i would ask julie but also rich um to a lesser degree um how how teach me uh self-love for the challenged. I mean, you know, I think that's the key of my issues is not starting to believe that I'm divine, but really coming at it from a place of lack. So, my dear, you're just speaking to the exact core issue of humanity. It's the core issue for all of us. And of course we don't know how,

because we've been raised completely separated from it. If we understood, I go through this in school because I have a thing with school and I'm a big homeschool advocate and unschooling, and I feel like we're, we impose all these systems and structures and ideas and thought forms onto our beautiful children who are the sacred messengers with the quantum answers for the future. And then we hurt them by telling them truths that are not true, that are not expanded. And we have this bullying situation that is set up in the culture that takes place in human groups. And no matter how much anti-bullying is talked about, it's happening rampantly. I mean, our daughters are going through it at one of the premier open plant-based schools in the country. You wouldn't believe the level. And what I did

this morning is I spent some time looking at the young man who shot his peers this morning and held him in meditation in the recent shooting in Texas. And this is a boy. He's a being. He's a boy. Just like all of us here and all the people, all the kids that he killed. The problem is that we are not connecting with our divinity

from day one, from the beginning. It's left our culture, this connection with ceremony, ritual, understanding our connection to nature if we understood that at that fundamental level you would never harm another being you wouldn't think a thought

that was violent to another being and you may say well that's really altruistic or that's like thinking in fantasy land or fairy tale land but you know when I looked at all those kids' photos today, I wanted to see them. I wanted to receive them into my field

as an honor, as a recognition for the role that they're playing in bringing this violence to light. But it's a violence that exists in all of us that we are not free from. So it made me more happy that we were here. It was kind of like, we're not teenagers, but I was so happy we were here because we're cultivating this love, this connection to self-love. And when you get into aspects of that, and it's a gradual process,

but when you fully start to receive yourself and we shift this self-talk from, oh, I wish I was, I wish my hair was brown, you know, my eyes are okay, but, you know, my friend has prettier eyes than me, or, you know, my body's too heavy, or I wish I was stronger, I wish I was shorter, I wish I was, whatever we do, think of the self-talk that you've given yourself since day one. It's been a relationship with yourself where you're telling yourself you're not quite the right one. So how would that work in a relationship if you were telling another person that that's how you felt about them?

So how we develop that is by really learning to receive ourselves as beloved. And it's not some stupid new age idea that's dumb. It's the core of everything. And if you know that, you will be merged in love and you will bless everyone around you just by being who you are. You don't have to be Mother Teresa. You can just be you. You can just be an artist. You can just be whoever. Because every single one of us is here. It's a miracle of life. And so for those kids, and as that answer,

and as an answer to your tears, we all feel that. So this is the purpose, is really to know ourselves. So thank you for bringing that up. Thank you. So I think that's a good place to stop. Awesome. All right, you guys. Cool. Have lunch. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that. It's a good one, right? We actually recorded a bunch of the sessions from

our retreat in Italy, and I'm going to be sharing those with you, rolling them out over the next few weeks. So you have that to look forward to. Let Julie know what you thought of today's conversation. You can hit her up on Twitter and Instagram at Srimati, S-R-I-M-A-T-I. And once again, check out her podcast, Divine ThruLine for all things spiritual and how to live a life divine. Once again, I'll be in Dublin on June 30th for an evening event with a happy pair of guys,

link to tickets in the show notes and on the appearances page of my website. If you are struggling with your nutrition, make a point of checking out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com. Thousands of recipes, unlimited grocery lists, grocery delivery, everything's super customized. We have amazing customer service, everything you need to really, uh, get your plate sorted out, uh, not just for the coming days, but in the years to come really proud of this program.

And it's really helping a lot of people. So we love it and it's affordable, which I love as well. Just a dollar 90 a week when you sign up for a year. So check it out. Once again, meals.richroll.com or click on meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. If you want to support my work, uh, easiest way to do that, share the show with your friends and on social media, what's your favorite episode, uh, hit subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. Google, for you Android listeners out there, just released a Google Podcast app. So I would highly suggest you check that out if you are an Android user and you've been struggling with how

to listen to this show. And that's it. All of your love really helps extend the reach in the audience. And I really appreciate it. You can also support the show and my work on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. Thank you so much to everybody who has contributed. I really appreciate it. It really helps me take care of the people

that helped me put on the show because I certainly don't do this in isolation. On that note, I want to thank those people. I want to thank Jason Camiolo for audio engineering production, work on the show notes and the interstitial music, Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for graphics. And they also do the video and the editing, no video on this because we did it in Italy, but for all the ones we do in my studio, we are now videoing all of the podcasts, which is really great. And that's Blake and Margo who are taking care of that. And theme music, as always, by Analema.

Some of you have asked, what is Analema? That is my son's band, Tyler Trapper, and my nephew, Harry, who put together that theme music many, many years ago to accompany episode one of this podcast. And it has just remained the theme song from day one. Anyway, thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome podcast with the great Des Linden. Super excited about that. Des was the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in 33 years.

It's a good one. So once again, I'll see you then. Until then, may you own your story. May you share it. May you hold the highest vision for yourself and others as you navigate this tricky thing called life. Much love people. Peace. you