TrueLife - Eric Kaufmann - Mirror, Flame, & Threshold

Starting point is 00:00:01 Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:40 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. Hope the wind is at your back.

Starting point is 00:01:16 I got an incredible show for you guys today. Ladies and gentlemen, there are moments when the world doesn't need another leader in a tailored suit with bullet points and buzzwords. It needs a guide, a mirror, a fire starter. Today's guest initiates warriors. He walks them to the edge of their identity, hands them the flint and says, now light it up. For over two decades, Eric Kaufman has been guiding CEOs, founders, and senior leaders through the crucible, helping them break down the illusions of self-importance, shed the skin of performative leadership,

Starting point is 00:01:48 and step into something real, something forged in the fire of clarity, presence, and sacred responsibility. He's the author of Leadership Breakdown, The Four Virtues of a Leader, books that don't just sit pretty on a bookshelf, they initiate. Eric's work is where Zen meets the boardroom,

Starting point is 00:02:05 where ancient wisdom meets modern chaos, and where the right of leadership is not handed to you. It's earned through trials, through courage, grit, faith, and focus. This is not about optics. This is not about quarterly gains. This is about inner revolution, the kind that echoes outward and recalibrates the system itself.

Starting point is 00:02:23 So if you're ready to trade comfort for consciousness, if you're ready to drop the mask and meet the mirror, then hold fast because today we're not interviewing a guest. We're crossing a threshold. Welcome to the show, Eric Kaufman. Thank you for being here today. That is just gorgeous. I love the intentionality of the care

Starting point is 00:02:42 and your own creativity that pops through that presentation. So thank you for that. That's beautiful. Yeah, I'm excited you're here. You have a lot of life experience and you've helped lots of people. And more than that, like your own path is something that sort of shines a light on what is possible. And so, you know, you and I talked previously a while back just about initiation and kind of thresholds and stuff. And I thought I just kind of opened this up with a fire starter right here.

Starting point is 00:03:10 what is the price of initiation and how does one know they've truly paid it not with money not with time but with something that doesn't grow back you know the price of initiation is um comfort quite frankly you know the the the coin that we have to pay the the the fee that we have to give to be initiated is that we have to be courageous enough, as it were, right? And visionary enough to see ourselves on the other side and pay that price of comfort. Because that's what initiation does fundamentally, right? You know, we talk a lot about protection and wanting to be safe and things of that nature.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Yes, yes and yes. What I found over these many years of doing this, you know, in my own life and with lots of other people, it isn't just safety, it's comfort. And I think we underestimate the power that comfort has in our lives. And to be initiated, certainly it's scary, but it's uncomfortable. We have to leave the familiar, the known,

Starting point is 00:04:34 the rehearse, the easy, which is not just in the environment around us, but it's also in the relationships that we have. And fundamentally, it's about our own sense of who we are and ourselves. And we have, you know, the price we pay the fee, we have to give is the discomfort, right? The departure of the things that are easy, normal, familiar, and natural, and be willing

Starting point is 00:04:56 to be bent and beaten a little and disassembled a little bit, because that's what an initiation does, right? It says that you as the initiate have been really consistent and have learned something, you've achieved something, you've arrived somewhere, you've completed something. And now it's time to take all that you've achieved and arrived and completed and make that not the pinnacle of your life, but the foundation for the next phase, for the next stage. And so we come to the initiation with resources and abilities and experience and value. And we have to, so we're asked to set that down, set it aside and walk through the discomfort to discover, to become what's on the other side of the threshold. It's so well said.

Starting point is 00:05:47 You know, in my life, I've found that initiation for me on some level comes from this idea of discomfort, like losing a child or your wife having cancer or losing everything you have or all your possessions at the age of like 45. It's really hard, Eric. Like, you know, you read these books or maybe you've gone to school or something, but nothing initiates like life, man. It's these things that hit you on an idle Tuesday, you know, where you're, you're, in the dark man like you want to cry but you try to force yourself to laugh you know but these situations like i i feel on some level like the world we're living in it's like we've traded initiation for like a handful of cash like we're trying to teach initiation to people like you know it's like

Starting point is 00:06:31 try to hey let me take this business course or take this particular transformation course and we'll teach it to you but it never works it never works it seems like to me what do you think well i think one You're making me think of a Pink Floyd song, right? Wish you were here. It's totally wish you were here, right? What have you traded, right? So there's that whole, I mean, we're not the first ones to contemplate that and they put it into a gorgeous song.

Starting point is 00:06:55 They did. I mean, I love that song. Look, initiation is a part of the human journey. Right? Now, we can choose to participate in that journey or we can opt out. For the most part, opting out is a capitulation to the forces of conformity and ease and comfort. And so now I'm going all pink floored on us, right? I love it.

Starting point is 00:07:27 In fact, if we prioritize or if we are inculcated or if we're convinced or if we are bribed or if we are guilted into comfort and conformity, Hey, I didn't go to school in the U.S., right? So when my kids came home from school, like elementary school, and I saw their report cards, right? On the report card, this didn't happen when I was a kid, but on the report cards in my kid's school was a column that rated them on what was called citizenship. I don't know if that's still a thing or if you saw that in your kids, but citizenship, right? And they would get like an A, B, C, D, E sort of on citizenship. And what is citizenship? It's really a grade that the teacher gives a kid on how compliant they are to the structures and the rules of the classroom.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Now, there's a certain part of that that makes total sense. You don't want a bunch of kids flying off the handle of the classroom, but that it exists as a rateable construct. In other words, in our society, we are valuing conformity, right? And the society needs conformity to sort of stay intact. but that's what we get. And the comfort that comes with conformity is the comfort of I can just get my life by. I don't have to be in too much pain. I can just get by.

Starting point is 00:08:45 That's not available to those of us who say we want to live our lives as a spiritual devotion. That's not available to those of us who say we want to live our lives as a creative expression. It's not available to those of us who say we want to live our lives as a conduit for love, for power, for beauty, for meaning, for purpose, for contribution, for giving. that's just not available. If we are going to live our lives as a conduit for these things, as a beacon for other people, as a search for spirituality and meaning, then we must go through initiation. If we want to live our lives for conformity, if we prioritize ease and comfort as a primary thing, physical comfort, social comfort, financial comfort, relational comfort, reputational comfort,

Starting point is 00:09:30 if that's our guiding force, we will circumnavigate anything. initiations. But those are not the people in my life. Those are not the people that I enjoy being with. Those are not the people that I'm drawn to. And that's not me. And so I've had to be, I've been initiated over and over because that's what is the journey of unfolding. That's the journey of becoming. That's the journey of meaning. So we can avoid initiations. We can avoid going into the initiation. The initiation will come at us. We can avoid going into it. I don't think that's anybody that's listening to your show. Thank you. Yeah. It's, I see it in my life and like, I think people that find themselves on the

Starting point is 00:10:23 threshold of initiation, they get back to Pink Floyd, they get comfortably numb. You know, and you start seeing, like, I talk to a lot of psychologists and stuff and they bring up like the, the DSM and all these mental illnesses and these ailments, whether they're eating disorders or you know, these things that are just weighing on society. I can't help but think that that comes from a life of living unrealized dreams. I'm just pushing this stuff down and it pops out like a balloon. When you squeeze a balloon, like it pops up over here, they've got an eating disorder. I'm angry, you know, like is that a fair assessment?

Starting point is 00:10:59 You know, my wife is a psychologist and she's a, she taught at, you know, the PhD level for, I'll forget one of 10 or 12 years and her specialty was teaching on the assessment. So we've had a lot of discussions about DSM, right? And one of the things about it, for people who don't know, right, the diagnostic statistic manual, it's like it's the textbook on all mental conditions that are defined by the American Psychological Association, right? And so two things. One, when I first met her, I started reading the DSM and it was like, holy shit.

Starting point is 00:11:35 This is me. Yeah, this is me. All of it. It's a very disturbing thing to read through these diagnostics of, you know, social anxiety disorder, psychopathy, you know, detachment disorder, you know, whatever. You just name it. I'm like, oh, damn it, you see a lot of me on that. So I'm not going to, you know, there are times and conditions where we are really, where we really

Starting point is 00:12:05 are, you know, outside of the realm of typical, right? We really need help and we really need, you know, there are times when being diagnosed as bipolar can be super helpful, right? Because it gives somebody who just thinks they're, you know, like this so difficult, there's a path, there's a, there's a support system. So that's on the one side, right? On the other side, I don't know what the hell normal means. You know, I don't know what normal means. And quite frankly, normal for the most part means conforming. That's really what it means, right? When you say someone shows normal, it just means they're conforming, right?

Starting point is 00:12:45 They're in the majority. And so a life of meaning, a life of purpose, a life of contribution, life of creativity, a spiritual life is disruptive. It's disruptive, right? And there are times when we feel down by crazy. Yeah. You lose a child. nobody in their right mind would expect to be normal.

Starting point is 00:13:09 You are literally crazy, right? The grief rips away the threads of normalcy, right? The sheer shock of being in this unexpected place where not only your family but your heart and your identity, your sense of meaning and purpose has been rendered and torn. How can you be normal? You have to be a little crazy for that period, right? But if you cling to that as the crazy, the reason to be crazy for the rest of your life, you missed the initiation.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Right. And I'm talking to some of you who's gone through this, right? So there's a period. There's a grieving. There's a pain. There's a loss. There's a tearing down. And then there's a healing.

Starting point is 00:13:51 There's a coming back together. You will never be the same person again. Never. You will move on, though, to include that as part of your personhood. Right? And that initiation, you know, an initiation like that, you know, George and something like that just like just rips the veils. And you're either going to then be blinded by the light that's come up from the veils be opened or you're going to be awakened by that light and move towards a new direction. And from all our conversations, it seems, you know, that's certainly been true for you.

Starting point is 00:14:29 It's really well put. It hits home. You know, there's something about. the fire of righteousness that burns inside you though. And what I mean by that is like when you find yourself, and anybody listening to this, think of something you've been through that changed you, that fundamentally changed the DNA of which you live your life through, your worldview, your lens, your ideas, your relationships. There's a certain sort of righteousness that comes out of there.

Starting point is 00:14:58 And for me at times, and I think other people, that righteousness can be dangerous. Like I find myself sometimes like, whoa, I am being like, who am I to be this righteous person? Like, how do you balance that? Like, because you have these incredible feelings. That is wrong. You're commodifying. That's wrong. You get all mad.

Starting point is 00:15:14 Like, for me anyway. And then I have to pull back and be like, wait a minute. Who am I to say that? Like maybe they're going through their own thing. But how do you balance the righteousness that comes through the fire of initiation? That's such a great question. I've been a great question. It's so subtle.

Starting point is 00:15:32 and it's so profound and it's so real. There's an expression in Hebrew. It's not going to translate. Well, I'll try it anyway. It says essentially there's nothing worse than the morality of a reformed whore. You know, so forgive me, I'm but I'm butchering it, but it's sort of down that alley, right?

Starting point is 00:15:52 It's like, you know, I've reformed therefore no sex for anyone. Right. You know, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Back up, right? Or, you know, you know, you. you know, the 56-year-old man who's divorced and now he's done his first, you know, you know, mushroom ceremony and he's come out. It's like, the purpose of life is to promote mushrooms. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, slow down for a second here, right?

Starting point is 00:16:15 So there is, I think it speaks to that, that righteousness, but it's, you know, that righteousness is essentially, you know, the zeal that is the unpacking of a brand new set of possibilities coming into our neural system and nervous system. That righteousness is, is an inevitable sort of first leg post initiation, right? It's raw, but it's not yet sort of mature or sophisticated, right? And so I don't see that righteousness is inherently bad. I see that righteousness is a delightful sign that something has been unlocked, right? I am no longer the person I was, and I need to convince myself first and foremost, because the revelation is like spiritually complete, but intellectually, emotionally, I have to catch up

Starting point is 00:17:06 with that heart of me that's now light years ahead. And that quote-unquote righteousness is not just me trying to convince everyone else. It's me trying to convince myself. I need to, I need to be that sort of black and white about it so that I can buy into it and eventually internalize at an operational level. What's come to me so clearly at the spiritual or to sort of the transcendent level. Now, if that person sort of doesn't mature, right? So the initiation brings this big, giant boost of energy, right? You cross the threshold.

Starting point is 00:17:40 You've gone through the travails and the challenges. You've digested it. And now you're like, you know, you're like a bigger human. There's more energy in you. There's more life force in you. There's more possibility in you. There's more vision in you. The last thing you want to do is stuff that, right?

Starting point is 00:17:55 But now are you walking around? you're like, I have seen the truth. I am the truth. And my turban has wrapped nothing but truth. You know, I am like the preacher, God, the prophet upon the planet. It's a beautiful thing, right? And it, and it, with practice, with spiritual maturity, with guidance, right, with some really good mentoring and teaching and guiding from other elders who've gone through this before,

Starting point is 00:18:21 that intensity can mature into confidence, right? And then when I'm confident and then the confidence matures into actual personal power. And what happens when we arrive in our personal power is we feel less of the need to prosely us, less of the need to preach. Oftentimes we're preaching out of either excitement or fear, right? But when we're in the mature space, we want to enroll, we can honor the person. You get a little more nuance. But that zealot, that sort of righteous energy, it's kind of cool, right? It's also, it's like it's the movement of energy and power.

Starting point is 00:19:04 But I think, and this is one of the things that, you know, in our society we struggle with greatly. We don't have structures for elders. You know, the initiation was never, ever. There's no indigenous or there's no culture. There's no tradition with the initiates. We're just doing all this shit on their own, right? It was within a context. There was a communal context.

Starting point is 00:19:22 It was a social context. It was a spiritual context. There was a process. And so you would go through the initiation. You'd almost crash and burn. You made it through. Hallelujah. They'd receive you.

Starting point is 00:19:31 They'd celebrate you. They'd hold you. They'd honor your sort of righteousness. You'd make big declarations. And then there was a process for how do you turn this spirit into flesh? How do you turn this idea into neural system? How do you make your nervous system live into the new stage you're existing? And because we don't have.

Starting point is 00:19:51 that we see people having wonderful initiatory experiences going off the deep end you know now they've got you know they are the truth they are the new religion this is the way to do things i welcome it and i want to help people sort of mature it i love that it when you said you you step in like this you step into the zeal and you have this initiation and you've moved through this threshold it makes me think of joseph campbell and like the different masks that we wear And I think when you do step through the threshold, you're now looking at this mask. And the question that comes to me is, do you burn it, do you bury it, or do you bow to it? Do you have more B options, my friend?

Starting point is 00:20:41 I'll go for alliteration here. That's very beautiful. Do you bury it, do you burn it, or do you, what was the third one? Bow to it. To the mask. The mask that you recognized you were wearing. I'm going to put this in the way that sort of I've sort of discovered and hopefully that answers the question, right? Please.

Starting point is 00:21:14 I go through a lot. Let me see if I can make this personal. 2018 to 2022, right, a period of time and my personal life was really intense. It was the most intense initiatory journey that I've been on in 25 years, right? It was it had sort of torn asunder a lot of my assumptions. My wife and I ended up in deep therapy on the verge of separation, on the verge of separation. I wanted to recast my business or just walk away from it altogether. I felt utterly without the ability to communicate effectively with my friends and family.

Starting point is 00:21:52 It was a very intense four-year journey, right? Something precipitated it. I welcomed it. I, you know, for all the decades that I've been doing this work, it took everything in my skill, in my experience, in my resource to navigate this and hold my shit together. You know, it was really hard, really hard. So the 2022, it ends. It took me about through the year, 2023 to digest it.

Starting point is 00:22:23 Like, actually, because, you know, again, there's the zeal at the 2022. And now it took a year to become like, you know, okay, this is in my nervous system. What changed? I now have new language. I have new possibilities. Some of my old childhood drama was resolved. And so, you know, so at the end of that period, I am Eric and I'm not Eric, right? That's the nature of going through the sort of the integration part, the completion of the initiation.

Starting point is 00:22:50 I'm done on the same person, but I'm not the same person. The Eric that lived in 2018 is no longer the Eric running the show in 2022, 2020, 2023, 2024, right? So that mask, do I burn it, do I get into it out? I don't actually see it as a mask, but I see it is what we have is there is me up to a point. There's a process that I've gone through. That could be a day, it could be a month, it could be four years, it can be 10 years, right? But that initiation is over. There's a new version of me on the other end of it, right, on the other side of it.

Starting point is 00:23:23 The guy that's left behind, he's my inner ancestor. I have a series of inner ancestors. I have a series of erics who've been initiated. And every time this sort of consciousness moved on to the next Eric, there's a previous version that is an inner ancestor. And so I have these inner ancestors, and I can treat these in ancestors as we treat ancestors in most traditions. I'm grateful.

Starting point is 00:23:48 I turn to my ancestors for advice. They inform me. They're excited. There's an ancestor of me that ended around 34, 35. And I'm doing stuff now that he wanted to do. He's literally cheering me on. That's so beautiful. He's literally cheering me on because it took like 20 plus years to accomplish what he wanted to do,

Starting point is 00:24:11 but he wasn't the guy who could pull it off. He just wasn't. He tried all this. He, I, right? That guy tried for all his might to pull off, couldn't. And it required like three more initiations before this version could do what that guy wanted to do. So I don't see it as a mask that needs to be discarded and burned. I don't see it as something that has to be like deified a glory.

Starting point is 00:24:31 and bowed with, I see it as a series of inner ancestors. And these ancestors are there as my resources. They're me and they're not me. Right? In this lifetime, I'm not talking about other lifetimes. I'm just talking about from the day I was born to today. And these inner ancestors can be a very rich resource for me. I can go back to them.

Starting point is 00:24:49 I can ask them. They can encourage me. Now, if I don't treat the inner ancestors the way they want to be treated, if I don't enter them, if I don't honor them, they become inner ghosts. and they haunt me. So the past, the sort of the pre-initiatory versions of us can be haunting ghosts, right? Unfinished business, unrealized material, undigested, uninternalized aspects of us. And they hang out like ghosts kind of like.

Starting point is 00:25:17 And those ghosts are especially vocal around 3 a.m. Totally. That's when they come on. Yes. Oh, remember me? You. You know, and mostly what they're what they're mostly pointing at is our lack of integrity. Most of what our ghosts are showing us is where we didn't follow through as we said we would,

Starting point is 00:25:39 where we fell short of our own possibility and expectations of ourselves. They're holding us to account. Yeah. Right. So this is a long answer, but I don't stand this only as a mask or persona that needs to be buried or burned because I find that to be, you know, more violent than what my system works for. You know, but to say that there's a version of me that is me and not me and lives there as an inner ancestor and can be honored and respected and accessed, that works really well. So I know this is a different than your mask. I'm curious how that lands for you or what it makes you think.

Starting point is 00:26:14 I love it. I love the way of looking at it like that. And a while back, I was listening to an interview and forgive me, I don't, I can't cite who it was, but it rings in my mind. And the guy said, the gentleman was interviewing him. And he asked him about something he did in the past. And his answer was, he paused for a moment. And he goes, you know, I don't think I'll betray my former self. And I was like, whoa, that is a great.

Starting point is 00:26:38 And then all that made me start thinking about shame and guilt. And maybe that's just you betraying your former self, like this idea of shame. Maybe it's not, maybe those particular emotion are there to remind you to do the right thing. You know, and it doesn't have to be this heavy weight that hangs around your neck. Or, you know, you can stop the ghost at 3 a.m. by doing the next right thing on some level. And then maybe you get a pat on the back instead of a visit from the ghost of Christmas past. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:06 No, that's, that resonates for me, right? And that's why I said, you know, most of the ghosts function, most of the ghost's beef is us being out of the tech. Right. Yeah. That I didn't actually, that I didn't, you know, that version of Eric that's 25 years younger, he's not a ghost. He's literally cheering off. I mean, I don't mean to sound like I have multiple personalities, but, you know, that's how to be else.

Starting point is 00:27:32 There's a version of me who's 25 years younger, who is goddamn stoked that the collective we have arrived here, right? And I give him all the credit in the world for being the visionary he was and for sending off his successors, you know, the versions of me that would stay the course and keep going at it, right? So I stayed in integrity with that mission, with that intention, with that vision with that sense of purpose. And I needed to go through a series of initiations to be not ready, because I was ready,

Starting point is 00:28:03 to be ripe. Between ready and ripe. You know, ready means that I'm sort of, you know, intellectually committed. Right means that I am like completely available, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, physically. And I wasn't ripe 25 years ago to do what I can do now. for me sometimes the question comes up of self-importance you know what what does what is self-importance why are you doing this and what does it mean to do this why is it important but particularly the idea of

Starting point is 00:28:41 self-importance and integrating that into your life what do you think of when I say self-importance I think you have a remarkable way of putting your finger right on the most significant source spots of our human experience. What else do we struggle with at the end of the day, right? The self. And what is it that the self is struggling with is to be continuously affirmed of our value? You know, and we are quaking in our boots, in our, in our pants, in our underwear. We're quaking in this, you know, this, um, this, um,

Starting point is 00:29:26 How did Ed? One of my Zen teachers would call it the anxious quiver of being. Anxious quiver of being. You know, it's this perennial undertone that what? I'm not enough. You feel in me enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough.

Starting point is 00:29:45 I'm not loved enough. I'm not capable enough. I'm not desirable enough. I'm not enough. I'm not enough. I'm inadequate. I'm inadequate. And quite frankly, you know, we learn that as tiny little beings, right?

Starting point is 00:30:01 We're a tiny, tiny little being. We're coming to this world around age 18 months. We developed this thing called object permanence. You're familiar with that term? When the train goes behind peekaboo. Peekaboo, that's exactly it. You know, because after 18 months, the kid doesn't laugh at peekaboo anymore. You know, because they figured out, I got you, man.

Starting point is 00:30:23 you put your hands and taken way you're still there. I got you. You know, okay, not fine. So, but object permanence is, you know, yields a few things. One, we start realizing that the thing that's there, even if I don't see it, is still there. So we actually, that's the, that's when we form our conceptual thinking, symbolic thinking. It's also when we can begin speaking, right, because we can use words to symbolize things that aren't really there. And it's also when we cultivate this other thing at 18 months with object permanence.

Starting point is 00:30:52 I am a thing that goes on there. I am a thing. Self-awareness comes online. So we don't have classical psychological self-awareness until about 18 months with that object permanence. Right? So kind of psychology 101 is it war. The other thing that emerges when we're self-aware is we immediately realize we can't handle life. Right?

Starting point is 00:31:13 I'm self-aware. I'm hungry. I can't get my own food. I'm self-aware now. I'm aware that I, you know, I'm uncomfortable. My diaper is full. My diaper is wet. I can't get this diaper off me.

Starting point is 00:31:24 I don't have the motor skills, right? So the sense of inadequacy is like, it's part of the human design. As soon as we become aware, self-aware, we're also become aware that we're inadequate. We can't actually do the things we want to do. We can't get the things we want to get. We can't have the things we want to have.

Starting point is 00:31:40 So we are dependent. And that sets off a chain of events, right? Where we want to be fulfilled. We want to be affirmed. We want to be safe. We want to be loved. We want to be connected. We want to have opportunities. You want to grow. We want to learn all those things. But fundamentally, it's like this self is not adequate.

Starting point is 00:32:00 So I must be first and foremost adequate or safe. And then I need to feel special. And so we now have this human ego that has these two big fires, right? The one fire is a fire of safety and the other fire is a fire of specialness. And a fire of specialist might even not stretch a fire of safety. you know so this kind of self-importance is this lifelong pursuit and quest for proof and affirmation a never-ending quest to prove that I am enough that I can survive right then we have our own shades and coloring you know I want to be particularly powerful I want to be typically smart or you whatever our DNA gifts are we want more of that to prove that we're but then the self-importance

Starting point is 00:32:49 becomes, you know, the term that I use, I put this in my book, the leadership breakdown, I talk about the number one barrier to executive effectiveness, right? This is also one that has life effectiveness, but my audience is executives. I've come to call it egomyalopia. Ego-myopia, not being able to see and manage our ego. And at the heart of that, egotia is a self-importance, right? need to constantly be pumped up so I can be important. And in every spiritual tradition of on record, you know, the great quest of spirituality and religion for that matter is what we would ultimately

Starting point is 00:33:33 call surrender. Right? In Buddhism it's got its own version, Christianity has got a sort of a version, Islam, Muslim, literally the word Muslim, and it's a person who's Islamic is one who has surrendered. That's what it means to be a Muslim, right? You surrender the Allah, you know, in the Tao you surrendered to the path of the Tao and right, every tradition is surrender. What does that surrender if not, you know, this way to learn to give up self-importance, right? And the thing is when we're not self-important, it doesn't mean we disappear. It doesn't mean we're not unique or beautiful or creative.

Starting point is 00:34:11 I mean, the universe has conspired to produce this one being called Eric, George, Shane, Tara, Bob, what a goddamn orchestration is taken to produce one human, right? We need to celebrate the bejieus out of that because we are unique. We are unique. It's an honest-to-God thing. You know, when I came into this universe, never before was this expression brought into the universe. And when I pass, never again will the universe see this exact expression of itself. It's true for you.

Starting point is 00:34:45 It's true for any of us, right? So we are unique. but the pursuit of being special self-important. That is at the heart of all our spiritual efforts, right? Can we go from the need to be self-important? And this is what I call sort of household or enlightenment. I believe we can do it in this lifetime. In this lifetime, we can arrive at self-acceptance.

Starting point is 00:35:06 Self-acceptance is not the same thing as so important. Self-important is a sense of lack. Self-acceptance is a sense of actual grace and power. And I call that householder enlightened because I don't know that I'll ever get to sort of the, you know, Buddha level, Jesus level sort of like complete surrender. I have glimpses of it. Glimpses enough to know that I'm not pulling it off day in and day out. But there's like a lower level, you know, what I call householder enlightenment, self-acceptance, where I can actually arrive in my skin and bone, arrive in my mind and soul and be at home in it without needing the world to affirm me on a constant level. And that feels fantastic.

Starting point is 00:35:50 Yeah, that's the zone when you get in. Like I see it sometimes in the creative spaces when I'm doing something where I'm just in it. You know, that people use that term, oh, I'm in it right now. Like that seems to be the moment when you're at home or when you're really fully acting out as who you are sometimes. It's so easy to slip out of it, though. It's so nice to catch a glimpse of it, but it's so slippery. And when I think of self-importance, for me, sometimes that, moves into self-harm.

Starting point is 00:36:17 You know, it's very easy for me to, to, maybe it's a continuum. You know what I mean? Maybe there's self-importance in the middle. Same more. And so, like, in the moments of contemplating self-importance, I find myself questioning, is this self-harm? And then, or is this self-discovered? But sometimes in that moment, like, maybe it's contemplation or maybe it's paralyzation.

Starting point is 00:36:41 You know what I mean by that? Like, sometimes you can drive yourself crazy thinking about what is self-disclosure. self-important? Is this self-harm? Or maybe that's where grace comes in. Maybe that's where grace comes in to be like, okay, maybe I just need to sit with this for a little while. But how do you deal with that? I want to know more about the self-harm piece. I'm not, it makes sense to you. You're saying it in a way that makes sense. I'm not grasping it in the way that I think you are. So take me a little bit deeper on that self-harm, self-importance piece. Okay. So sometimes I'll give you an example. Like recently, I've been writing quite a bit about some particular things happening in the psychedelic world.

Starting point is 00:37:15 And I look at it and it's this form of righteousness. Like I'll see some schools that are out there. And I see them in my mind, I'm like, what these people are doing is commodifying vulnerability. They're making tons of money from it. I personally don't agree with it. I think it's bad. I think I should say something about it. And so I've written all these different pieces.

Starting point is 00:37:33 But at the same time, I come to the, is this self harmful? Why am I doing this? Like, is there real implications for these people if I say this thing? Like, maybe there is. Is that something that I want to be responsible? for, like that might be self-harm. Maybe I'm doing, you know, maybe I'm doing, maybe that's harmful or is that self-import? Is it harmful to who?

Starting point is 00:37:54 Is it harmful to you? Harmful to the audience? I'm still trying to, I'm not, so you're saying self-harm, you're seeing something. You're naming me. You're calling that out. Right. And so you're saying that's righteous. Okay, maybe it is, maybe it's prescient, or maybe it's necessary, maybe it's prophetic, or maybe

Starting point is 00:38:14 is just the truth, right? But I'm not seeing the harm. The harm is like you're harming yourself because the blowback that's going to come at you or because you're harming other people. Where's the harm these? I think the harm is in showing people what you're doing is wrong. Like that's wrong. Like that seems very judgmental to me.

Starting point is 00:38:35 And I think the judgment is harmful. Harmful to others. Yes. Yes, harmful to others. Like I feel like if I say that to them, maybe there's real implications for them that they're not ready for. And I don't know if I'm the arbiter of, like I struggle between, is that judgmental? Is that harmful? If I say something about these people and there's real legal implications for them, maybe people come and shut them down.

Starting point is 00:39:02 Maybe people come in and take this guy's stuff away. Like, how do you deal with that? Because you said something, there's going to be real world implications for somebody else. Like, is that self-importance? So am I really that important? Is that really going to happen? But I struggle with that. I love that you're struggling with that.

Starting point is 00:39:19 I've got to tell you. I mean, I love it. I just, I have such respect for the fact that you're grappling with that because what you're describing in some ways, at least in my ears, is you're offering a form of leadership, right? You're saying, I see a vision for something possible.

Starting point is 00:39:33 And I'm going to lay it out and invite people to take this up as a real, as a calling towards which we can move together or they can move on their own, right? So there's a leadership element in what you're doing. You're saying there's a better way, and let me tell you what that way is, and let me lead the way. Right. Now, with leadership, there's responsibility. And I think I am profoundly, I can't tell you the depth of the profundity of my concern

Starting point is 00:40:00 is for leaders who don't have doubt, who don't have doubt, right? Leaders for whom certainty is so goddamn black and white and so simple that they go around And they just, you know, espouse sort of as though they are gods without doubt. That to me is terrifying. So to hear you be a leader who's really challenging people to move in a direction that you see as valuable, meaningful, necessary, helpful, and that you doubt yourself in the process is incredibly affirming and very, very sort of, you know, satisfying. Right? Because you are grappling with your responsibility. You know, there are implications to being in leadership.

Starting point is 00:40:45 I mean, this is a reality. I'm a guide and a coach to executives. These folks live in a world with what they say has real implications to jobs, to families, products, to environments, to communities, to markets. And lack of doubt to me is not a sign of enlightenment. It's a sign of delusion. Absolute delusion. You know, to believe somehow that what I know to be true is so true that it's unassailable,

Starting point is 00:41:15 terrifies the shit out of me, right? I want people in responsible positions to question themselves, to question their motives, to question their methods, to be constantly attuned to their capacity to serve from a place of, from a place of, of contribution and not just from a place of, you know, affirmation, right? So kudos to you for doubting yourself, you know. And rather than letting that doubt just be something that gnaws at you, let that doubt be sort of an element that sits with you and go, let's evaluate our conduct here. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:55 Let's honestly evaluate our conduct here. Where is this coming from? Where is it going? How am I contributing here? But I wouldn't let the doubt shut it down and I wouldn't let it eat you. I would say, hey, down, welcome to the party, have a seat. there's an extra chair right here. Let's chat. What you got? What do you mean? What are you guiding me to? What should I know more of? What should I do less of? Right. So and the only other thing I would

Starting point is 00:42:22 add to that is, and this is a tricky one, but, you know, ultimately people are responsible for their choices. Right. If they said, I listened to this guy on True Live podcast, he was amazing. I read this piece that he wrote it blew my mind and I decided to do something about it. It's a shared responsibility right somebody made a decision made a choice you influence them we're not going to take that away that's your point you want to influence that's leadership but you can't take all the responsibility that becomes a little because that's maniacal on the other side right right if you sit around go oh whatever i say has had this implication people are going to just get blown out because they listen to me that's very diminishing to other people's agency

Starting point is 00:43:14 yeah it brings up another you know what does it mean influence What happens when you start leading the way and people start listening and start doing and start accomplishing? I've seen that in my life where I've gotten to a point and all of a sudden I've talked to some people and they've done some things and they're like, dude, George, that's amazing. Thank you. Like for me, it's sort of new to see people succeeding by reaching over and talking to them, by volunteering my time to hang out with them and all of a sudden I see them.

Starting point is 00:43:49 It brings me profound joy, like profound joy. I'm so excited. Like it makes me want to cry sometimes. Like I just spent like all these times like what they did. They did it. Yeah. Like I get to celebrate that. But there's real there's real responsibility that comes with that too.

Starting point is 00:44:04 What do you tell new leaders or in your executive courses when they start turning that corner and they start seeing some successes? What are some blind spots that they may not see? Oh, um, there's, you know, um, there's a lot of blind spots. Right. You know, I'll talk about my own experience for a moment because, you know, I was a manager and a leader in corporate before I started my own firm, right? So not only am I responsible for the firm, right? There are other people who work here.

Starting point is 00:44:38 But, you know, in my, I get paid as an advisor, as a coach, as a consultant, right, as a guide to help people make really intense decisions about their lives. I was on the coaching call just this morning with the CEO. and we realized the person that she had hired has been there for three and a half months, it's just not going to work out. It's just not going to work out. And this person that she hired is a new mom, a six-month-old baby who's got financial responsibilities. And so, you know, where do you go, right?

Starting point is 00:45:05 Do you keep this person on because you feel a sense of obligation to their family? Do you let them go because they're not a good fit? Do you find a new role for them where they can thrive? You provide them coaching so they can get better. There's not an easy answer here, right? But, you know, that literally is the role of a leader is to affect people. That is, what else does a leader do? That's right.

Starting point is 00:45:31 Really. And so there's different forms of leadership, right? You can be the boss and a team and an organization. You can be a guy with a podcast who's producing ideas. You can be a coach to people. You can be a parent, right? You can be a spouse. You can be a priest, a rabbi, right?

Starting point is 00:45:48 I mean, but if you're going to lead, you are going to bear responsibility. Right. And the higher you are in the structure and the construct, right? If you're the supervisor of marketing, that's one thing. If you're the chief marketing officer, it's another thing. If you're the CEO, it's another, right? But with every leader, the proverbial buck stops here. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:09 Right? And so, you know, the leaders who are uncomfortable or unwilling to bear that responsibility are going to be harmful to their environment, right? They're going to end up being potentially, I mean, I don't know everyone, but some of the proclivities are micromanaging, right? Because you get all freaked out about stuff going on. You want to be able to make sure that what I'm responsible for, I have a hand in, literally, and so they touch everything and they become micromanaging. So that's a potential blind spot. The other side that I see of it is that there's a tremendous amount of blaming for leaders who are not willing to take responsibility.

Starting point is 00:46:54 It was the weather. It was a regulation. It was a change in market. It was a changing thing. It was my boss wasn't clear. The team wasn't right. We didn't have enough funding. There's always some excuse for something to blame for that piece. Right. There's another piece where they don't take, you know, not not comfortable with responsibility where they just avoid. I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to have this difficult conversation. I don't want to start this difficult project. We're not going to change the strategy and challenge ourselves to be innovative. just want to avoid, right? And then there's this sort of beautiful version of not taking responsibility, which is anger, just pissed off, you know, just pissed on, right, right, right, right, bar, barking, yelling, threatening, frightening, you know. So, you know, micromanaging, avoiding, blaming, anger, those sort of the masks, the fear that's underneath the lack of responsibility.

Starting point is 00:47:47 And I think that, you know, a manager, a leader to take on responsibility has to really check their motives, really check in with your motive. This is to me the distinction between an egotopia kind of driven leader and what I would call a conscious leader. Right? If you're caught an egotia, sort of might need to be special, my own blindness to my own sort of needs, And the egotomyoopia has three distinct sort of what they call them like primary colors, right? Primary features. The first one is the need to be right. Then it's the need to be liked and the need to have might.

Starting point is 00:48:33 Right? Those are the three basic colors of egotia. The need to be right. Look how smart I am. Look how clever I am. Look how capable I am. Right. The need to be liked.

Starting point is 00:48:43 I want to be part of the group. I want to have good relations. I want to have, I want to be included and they need to have might. I want to have control. I want to have authority. And if we don't manage those needs, we become what I call an egotemic manager, right, leader. And now rather than sort of graciously shepherding people towards some great outcome, we want the people around us to keep feeding those needs.

Starting point is 00:49:08 So the person who has the need to be right is now sitting in the meeting, taking up 80% of the air time because they need everyone else around them to know just how clever they are. The person who has a need to be liked is so focused on being liked that they're not making difficult decisions. They're not pushing a team because they don't want to alienate everyone and be thought of poorly. The person who has a need to be might is so focused on not failing that they're micromanaging the bejesus out of everything. And people can't get ahead and can't really grow in their careers. So that's what we need to look out for. We need to look out for that egotia and bear the responsibility with what I would call some of the conscious leadership lens,

Starting point is 00:49:41 which I can get to in a minute because it's already a lot of information. the lookout is to look out for our own tendencies to be important, right, to be in our ego state. Yeah, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. We talked about my three Bs earlier, but you got the right, liked, and might right there, man. It seems like you're on the same page, man. I love it. I can respect alliteration, my friend.

Starting point is 00:50:05 When I heard the B's, I'm like, my man, yes. Let's talk more about this consciousness lens. Like, this seems like a great segue. So, you know, kind of the preface to it, right, is we have to pause and take a look at the historical context we're in. The historical context is that the industrial revolution happens in the mid-1700, 1750s or so. It was a sea change in human experience, right? Because up until that point, everything was local, everything was artisanal, everything was, you know, regional at best. and the kings and they have the kingdom,

Starting point is 00:50:44 but the kingdoms were made a bunch of feetims that were kind of self-ruling, and then they would pay taxes to the king, right? If you wanted shoes, your local cop-bole-make shoes. If you wanted food, the local baker would bake your bread, or you would break your own bread and bake your own bread, right? The Industrial Revolution creates scale. That was literally the revolution,

Starting point is 00:51:03 is that suddenly we had means of production where one factory could turn out 200 pairs of shoes in a month as opposed to having one person take a lifetime to make to own shoes or whatever, right? So with the Industrial Revolution, the means of production became sort of the path to power and wealth. It wasn't just because you were born a king or because you went the priest. You know, the priests collected money because the church was that powerful. The kings collected money because they could. The rest of the people just did whatever they could in between. The Industrial Revolution introduced a third

Starting point is 00:51:39 sector to society, which was the powerful merchant. right. Fast forward to 2025, that Industrial Revolution Powerful Merchant has the order is really eclipsed, right? Who's now running the world? Merchants. Yep.

Starting point is 00:51:55 Right? The industrial, the commercial class is running the world. Yeah. Governments are there for the people, but visibly, deeply affected by commercial leaders, right you notice i don't know if you've noticed like billionaires sort of twisting the government of course to meet their own needs right and the church has sort of come to a far third i'm using

Starting point is 00:52:21 church broadly as in the religious institutions right so here we are man the world is being shaped and architected by commercial drivers not government which was social drivers and not not you know churches as a religious institution which are spiritual drivers it's a commercially driven architecture that governs our lives, the shape of the planet, the actual ecology, what society deems acceptable and unacceptable, the way we communicate, what we ingest for information, what we think of as priorities, fashion, tastes, foods, you know what I mean? It's driven by commercial architects who are ultimately using it to enrich themselves and their ecosystem of investors. Am I sounding delusional? Is that sort of track? without a doubt I think there's a great piece that says if you want to know who rules the world throughout history look at the tallest buildings it was the castle it was the church and now it's the seer you're the one of these towers of like j p morgan or something like that commercial right the banks man that's right that's really well said that's i haven't heard that i love that that's she said that in the beginning just to save for the last five minutes of gambling on man that was amazing that's brilliant i will be using that in the future um So that haven't been said given this moment in history, right, the context of history.

Starting point is 00:53:47 How the hell are we going to get through this? How are we going to ensure that these architects of society, of humanity of the planet, that these, they're not just sort of shapers and users, but that they're stewards. Because that's what happens, right? We talked about responsibility all along. a whole host of new set of responsibilities that are now squarely on the shoulders of commercial leaders. Whether they want it or not, it's irrelevant. When you're in power, when you're in charge, you have responsibility. Right. And so my theory of change, as it were, is that we need to get

Starting point is 00:54:30 NMOS, these folks who are the commercial leaders to become conscious leaders, to be conscious leaders. right and in this particular case to me the conscious leader is somebody who is not being guided by their egotopia and their sort of basic human need to be special so what does that look like fundamentally it looks like instead of the need to be right the need to be like the need to have might that those can mature and we can do that we can train that we can teach that we can coach that it's been done for millennia this isn't part this is not an unusual part of human experience, but that we can cultivate in these leaders who are the architects and shapers, three qualities that I refer to as wisdom, love, and power. And that is my mission, and

Starting point is 00:55:20 that is my work. But as a human in my own life, doing this, you know, in my own life and with others, right, working to cultivate wisdom, love, and power as the three foundations of this way of being a conscious leader. I love it. I mean, I think those are three brilliant points to explore. Sometimes in my darker moments, I don't, I don't think, I think a Phoenix has to rise from the ashes. Like when I look at higher education, my sister's got a PhD. And I know so many people that have spent so much time in school. But it seems to me, someone who spends 30 years or 25 years in school, they've learned to be indoctrinated. And you can't take people that have been indoctrinated and tell them to teach a new system. So on some level, it's a it seems to me that a lot of what we're teaching is just the old ways. And if I put that into the business sense, I see them come out hungry, thirsty, and wanting to have this external validation, but all they knew how to do is build the old system. So I don't think that leadership's going to come from higher education.

Starting point is 00:56:22 I'm not trying to slander anybody that's done that. My heart goes out. Like I, and I, there are some brilliant people out there that are working really hard. But I don't see higher education as being an outlet for a new system of wisdom, love, and power. Is that, is that too harsh on higher education? I can't find an argument with that. I mean, I agree. I think that, you know, systems tend to want to perpetuate the system.

Starting point is 00:56:50 Yes. Right? And so the legacy system wants to maintain its own stability and validity and self-importance. Self-importance and existence, right? Absolutely. So no, I wouldn't turn to the universities to be the bastions of teaching this, right? This is, I think what the university is particularly, adept at is training the mind. What we're talking here is about wisdom, love, and power. We want to

Starting point is 00:57:19 train the spirit. I love it. Right. And so, you know, I wouldn't say that our religious institutions are set up for this either at this point. And so given that the world is drifted and shifted away from the familiarity, my parents don't necessarily recognize the world they grew up and my grandparents who passed away wouldn't even know what the hell's going on here. Right. So, in times of transition and crisis, new structures have to emerge. And so I think we have to have kind of a non-theistic spiritual construct that brings in the tense the spirit without requiring devotion to a particular deity. You know, and that's what we can cultivate more consciousness.

Starting point is 00:58:04 Literally we call it consciousness. And what's emerging now, and so there's a lot of work around, you know, what's it like neuroscience, right? It's sort of semi-spirit, but it's still very much within the context of science, right? So there's all those neuroscience, but it's not enough to just explain all the synapses and neural pathways and so forth to explain everything in life. It's not sufficient. So how do we cultivate kind of, and this is something that I'm thinking about a lot, right? How do we cultivate a non-theistic consciousness development, spirit-tending sort of institution that is fundamentally not,

Starting point is 00:58:41 there to just affirm its own institutionalization right how do we build something this this has been my vision for a long time like even my work as a coach right as a coach as a guide as a consultant as a teacher I'm interested in building you know helping people walk down a path right this path though this initiatory path right it goes through initiation after initiation after initiation we never arrive at a cul-de-suck right there's no dead end was this path ends and now we all sit down and say we've arrived right this person I you, we, as we walk this path, over time, the path becomes lighter and lighter until the path

Starting point is 00:59:16 eventually just evaporates because I have become the path. I don't need to walk the path. I am now the path. Right. And building crafting systems that can do that is possible. It just takes a higher level of consciousness and less self-importance, which is often correlated to higher level of consciousness. right in fact the rising levels of consciousness is a diminishing of a sense of our centrality and our self-importance and so we can we can teach wisdom love and power we can teach people to do more conscious it's not new it's been done for for millennia but to your point I don't think we can teach it from within the exact systems that are committed to their own goals but you know the cultivation of wisdom is the ability to see beyond the you know below the surface and beyond

Starting point is 01:00:09 obvious, right? Wisdom. You are steeped in wisdom orientation. Look at your penetrating questions, your poetic language, your capacity to like deconstruct things from multiple perspective. I mean, wisdom is just oozing out of you as a guiding force. But what about love? You're clearly a man whose love is online. You are heart-driven. You care deeply. You care so deeply to the point you're willing to put yourself in peril and danger and uncertainty in order to serve those people whom you love and people whom you don't even know because your love extends far beyond this name. Your love is a wave that moves through you into the world. And what about power?

Starting point is 01:00:49 You're clearly a man of power. You are authentic. You're creative. You allow your own sense of purpose and integrity to shine forth. And you bring that in a way that leverages movement in the world. So here's a man I'm talking to right now who's got wisdom, love, and power. Does that mean you don't have a self-impleasure? importance need or your own ego need. It's not an either or a proposition, but you have come to

Starting point is 01:01:10 train yourself or you have learned through life or you have been guided. And here you are as a man with wisdom, love and power, a conscious leader, deliberating and doubting your impact because you care, not because you're confused. We want more that. Thank you. Thank you for that. on some level it and curious to get your thoughts it seems to me what we're going through as a world is what we go through as an individual in crisis

Starting point is 01:01:47 like if all these things that we just talked about about needing conscious leadership about needing new ways about needing new things it almost seems like the world is going through the same initiation that we are as individuals or is that just through the lens of someone who's at maybe a middle age crisis or someone who's going through that initiation is what are your thoughts on that?

Starting point is 01:02:08 Has it always been that way maybe? I think it's, I think that's the nature of nature, right? There's initiatory, there's initiatory cycle. You start to see it. And you see it as you get through some of them and you begin to see that there is an initiatory cycle, you know. Right. Yeah. So when we're young, we're going through it for the first time and it's just either

Starting point is 01:02:26 terribly pleasant or terribly painful or a little of both or confusing or just uncertain. But once you go through it a few times, you cross a threshold once, you cross a threshold twice, you begin to see crossing the threshold is normal. And then you start looking around and going, it's the nature of nature. Yeah. It's the nature of aging. It's the nature of evolution.

Starting point is 01:02:44 It's the nature of, you know, transmutation. So yes, writ large. We go through it as a society. And I think when you're saying the world, you mean people in the world, right? Because I don't think you mean like butterflies or koala bears, right? And so, yeah. I mean, societies are sort of these, these sort of, you know, meta-humans, right?

Starting point is 01:03:09 And that's why we have different cultures. You travel the world, it's a beautiful thing to behold, right? We go to Japan, and there is not, you know, Japan is probably a little more monolithic than some other countries, right? But there is a very distinct culture, the Japanese culture. Then we go to Europe and you can go to, I'm going to be in Italy today, and then I'm getting my little car and I'm going to drive from Italy to France. I'm going to go, wow, the Italians are the French. French are really different, right? There's a cultural. And I'm going to drive to Germany. I'm going to go, who, what happened here? Right? This is

Starting point is 01:03:38 really different again. And then I'm going to cross the border into Poland. And you know what about the U.S.? We're like one United States, but we are an incredible regional collection, right? My family that lives in Atlanta has some very different cultural vibes and my family lives in San Francisco, you know, and my friends in Dallas are very different than my friends in Austin and they're just not that far from one another. So, societies have characters, that's what we call culture, right? And so an individual has an ego, that's our sort of identity, and a group of people has a culture.

Starting point is 01:04:17 That's the collective ego, right? And so we go through this journey individually, and we go to this collectively. And I think the gift of going through this over and over and being an initiate, right, who continues to be initiated, is the gift of seeing it more broadly and less selfishly. And to the point of the conversation earlier, you know, the great gift that we can give ourselves

Starting point is 01:04:44 is this gift of evolutionary sort of consciousness or growing because we take it less personally. And when I take it less personally, I can see it less personally in others and appreciate the process for what it is. And I can lean in and serve if I want to serve. I can lean back and avoid if I want to avoid, but I can do it intentionally, consciously.

Starting point is 01:05:01 Not so much from a place of judgment, but from a place of wisdom, I see what needs to be done. From a place of love, I care enough to involve myself. And from a place of power, I'm going to make certain things move and I'm going to hold some real boundaries,

Starting point is 01:05:14 which is what power allows me to do. Yeah, it's really well said. I want to be, like my, I have some audience members that got questions flying in here, and I'm stealing all the time. So to my audience, I love you guys, Thank you so much. And let me just shift a couple questions here and get to some more people in the conversation here.

Starting point is 01:05:35 This one comes from Desiree. She says, you speak about wisdom as a path. How do you distinguish wisdom from intelligence and how do leaders learn to trust one over the other? That's a great, wonderful sort of segue in here. So intelligence, in effect, is the ability to see patterns and recombine patterns. Really, at the end of the day, that's what intelligence is. That's why intelligence tests are mostly pattern tests. It's so true.

Starting point is 01:06:13 Right? If you've taken an IQ test, it's a bunch of puzzles and puzzles and numbers and letters, but it's all about patterns. So really, to be intelligent is to be able to see patterns and then rearrange them. That's what intelligent people do, right? Whether there's a math problems, whether that's a, oh, that was a really clever way to solve the problem, right? What does it mean to solve problems? I saw the problem is, you know, we're trying to reduce our shift.

Starting point is 01:06:39 shipping route in the eastern region by 10%. Let me take my thinking cap and put it on. Oh, I see it. You know, the shipping route is going through this. If we went this way and peeled back the hours where there's less traffic, I see the patterns. I'm going to rearrange the pattern there, 10% off. Congratulations, I've accomplished it, right?

Starting point is 01:06:56 That's intelligence. Wisdom has some of that, right? Wisdom has some of that to do with patterns. wisdom tends to be less in my sort of interpretation of this, right? Wisdom to be tends to be less self-centered, right? So the wisdom that I can bring as a leader is because I'm sort of diminishing my need to be right, right? Intelligent people can be really pushy on their need to be right.

Starting point is 01:07:31 I'm smart. And what our ego structure does is our ego uses. our natural gifts to accelerate its own ability to get what it needs to get, which is the sense of being special. So if I'm intelligent, what I'm going to push really hard on is my intelligence, and I need to be the smartest guy in the room. Right. So wisdom has sort of a bigger pattern, a bigger context, right? Wisdom sees that below the surface beyond the obvious, right? I'm connecting an even bigger field and I'm depersonalizing. The nature of wisdom isn't just my own learned wisdom. Like people use the word wisdom in different ways.

Starting point is 01:08:07 I can say, oh, you know, I went through a terrible divorce. And so I know that women can't be trusted in the way that they are. So my wisdom says, I'm going to have my own bank account over here in my second marriage because women can't be trusted. We call that life wisdom. It's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the wisdom that is much bigger than that, the wisdom that comes from not just seeing patterns, but getting super still. Like one of the features of cultivating wisdom is mindfulness. Right?

Starting point is 01:08:37 Another feature that cultivates wisdom is curiosity. Another feature that cultivates wisdom is self-awareness. So if you notice what's happening with self-awareness, mindfulness, curiosity, these are yin elements. They're very receptive. They're open. They're spacious. It's not about focusing my intelligence and solving a problem. It's about really allowing myself to step back and see the bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger

Starting point is 01:08:58 picture to where my own sort of need diminish and diminished. And what arises is a collective service, right, is something that's good for the collective. So that's how I make a distinction in this case, and particularly as it pertains to leadership. Yeah, it's really well said. This one comes to us from Neil. He says, you've lived in both the corporate world and the contemplative. Do you believe great leadership is ultimately a spiritual practice? I'm grappling a little bit with, with great leadership because these sort of labels right what's great i to grapple with that a little bit and i and i and i'm i'm sort of philosophically against platitudes like great leaders are contemplative you know so i'm i can't go on record with just sort of i'm pretty more hardly i will go with

Starting point is 01:09:56 niels sort of invitation and direction here because um i do believe that leaders that are not contemplative are destructive there's some pretty good evidence going on right now, right? And I think that I see that, you know, to lead, even to your question earlier about your own sense of questioning about the harm. Right. That's, that's a contemplative exploration, right? Am I doing something that's righteous and helpful or righteous and destructive? Am I doing something that's ultimately in service to others or do we just need to get my own, you know, horn pumping so that I can get a lot of attention?

Starting point is 01:10:32 The contemplation is, I mean, wisdom and contemplation are, you know, in the same family. These are brothers and sisters. They're not even cousins, right? And so I do believe that to achieve greatness and leadership requires a contemplative practice 100%. And every one of my clients that I work with, you know, we have this year-long program called the Leadership Evolution Program. It's a phenomenally well-crafted and well-crafted. delivered year-long journey for intact executive teams. So like a whole team, right, six, eight, ten people go through it for a year together. And each person gets a coach and there's team,

Starting point is 01:11:12 there's team dynamics, there's business planning, there's assessments. There's also a woven in year of instruction in contemplative mindfulness. So to Neil's point, I guess I've kind of tipped my hand. Do I believe that's important? Yes. I think that non-contemplative leaders are destructive. And I think that contemplative leaders are more generative, right? And I also believe that contemplation to the point that you sort of alluded to, I think, earlier George, was, you know, it can sometimes be depressive and frustrating because to contemplate means I don't exactly know what the answer is. I'm going to mull it around. I'm going to think from different angles. But yes, phenomenal leaders are willing to look from different angles and different perspective.

Starting point is 01:12:00 That's what makes them phenomenal leaders. Otherwise, they're zealous, you know, they're cult leaders. They're singular in their perspective. So to both avoid platitudes and answer the question, I do believe the great leaders are contemplative. It's not the only thing they are. There are the features, but I mean, I do this, you know, you can see by, there's my meditation cushion, right? So I get up in the morning and I come and meditate in here when it's cold. I have a meditation temple in my backyard where I go and it's a little warmer.

Starting point is 01:12:31 Yes, I want some comfort too. And then I get up on my chair here at the desk and go down and sit there on my cushion, you know, between conversations when I can so that I can like drop back in, digest what happened, get my center back and return to the conversation, the next conversation from that place of center and presence. And that contemplative process is part of that. Yeah, it's great. I appreciate it.

Starting point is 01:12:59 This one comes to us from Nuwan. He says, can a leader be powerful without being dangerous? Yeah, absolutely. What's the other question? I don't know. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:13:17 I can expand. Yeah. I believe in wisdom, love, and power as sort of the triad of being a conscious leader, right? Power is we've got, we are so freaking twisted around the axle on power. in most cultures, not just in this culture, in the U.S., in the Middle East, in Europe, in Asia, the human condition around power is not a very evolved one.

Starting point is 01:13:42 It's not a very sophisticated one, right? And most of the encounters we have with power are diminishing ours. It's someone else is more powerful and I'm less powerful. Every organization, I'm going to say this, and I issue generalizations. This time it's a generalization. every organization I know is trying to figure out how to empower their people. Why? Because collectively we have been disempowered.

Starting point is 01:14:10 You can only empower people that are disempowered. Somebody asked me a few years ago, if my girls are, did I empower my daughters? I have two daughters. Did I empower my daughters? And I said, no. And he looked at me like, wait, you're talking about power and empowerment. You didn't empower your daughters? I said, no, no, no, you're missing the point.

Starting point is 01:14:30 I worked really hard. My wife and I spent a lot of cycles of effort, not stripping power from my daughters in the first place. I don't need to empower those who are already in their power. My daughters are in their power. These beautiful young ladies in their power, and they're not dangerous. They're in their power. And what does it mean to be in their power?

Starting point is 01:14:54 It means that they are, you know, they have integrity. They have authenticity. city. They are present. That's what to me means to be powerful. Can you be powerful and not be harmful to other people? Absolutely. If you see where your power is coming from and if you recognize that everyone has got power. If you take power as a zero-sum game, then you're dangerous because I can only be powerful to the degree that I strip it away from you. Yeah. If I see it as an infinite game, which I believe power is an infinite. game, I can be as powerful I need to be. You can be as powerful than you need to be. And we don't

Starting point is 01:15:31 have to, we don't have to curtail one of the power. Yeah, I love that. I think it's brilliant, especially on the topic of power. You know, there's so many books about there. Like, the great one is Robert Green's book, The 48 Laws of Power. Like, that was a pretty interesting book to go and read, you know, whether it's from Confucius or just, it gives you a great aspect of the way in which power has been used throughout the world. Maybe it's, Maybe it's in studying the way in which people use power. Like there's, I think there's five kinds. There's a coercive power, legitimate power.

Starting point is 01:16:08 But there's all these different types of power. And once you begin understanding, they're all like a different sort of flavor of power. You can kind of taste the whole palette. But it's interesting to think about the ways in which power has been used against us, the way we use power, like the different forms of it. You have any thoughts on that? Oh, tons of thoughts of that. I mean, you know, again, going back to childhood, right? We are immediately in a disempowered position.

Starting point is 01:16:32 For the most part, right? My mom had, you know, I'm one of four kids, right? My mom didn't want to, she didn't sit out to disempower me on my brothers, right? She just wanted to stay sane, which, you know, didn't work out all that well for her. It was challenging to be with all of us. But, um, so she, like most moms, like most dads, like most parents, would just say, no. Go to your room. Do as I say. follow the rules, right? We're back to conformity. So the conformity, the urge for conformity has largely to do with just survival and not going crazy, right? But when we insist on people conforming, we are saying that I have a certain structure that I have the power to make you abide by my structure.

Starting point is 01:17:18 And so we're disempowered, right? And so, you know, you walk, and we're disempowered by parents for the most part. Then you go to school and the teachers give you a grade on citizenship, right? They will grade how much you conformed and how little power of your own that you bring forth. Then you go to college and you continue. And you go to work and it gets really interesting. Then you get in trouble with the law and now the cops have all the power or the lawyers of the power, the judges have the power. And then the government has all these power to affect regulations and rules that will affect you in every way from Sunday.

Starting point is 01:17:46 So in every way we turn, there are structures that are containing us. And so our relationship with power is one of two flavors, right? I hate it and I want it. Yes, yes. That's not the power that I'm talking about. That's power over people. That's the power to compel people. I'm talking about coming into our innate power.

Starting point is 01:18:12 I think of power is living with purpose and relaxed presence. Love it. Living with purpose and relaxed presence. So when I'm in my power, Bruce Lee, I'm going to do this real quick, right? Yeah. There's a big movie called Enter the Dragon. If you know Pink Floyd, you're probably watching Enter the Dragon. Of course.

Starting point is 01:18:29 There's this great scene in the dragon where they're on the boat going off to the island, where they're going to have this great battle to determine who's the greatest martial artist. Bruce Lee is standing at the helm of this Chinese junkist of this boat. And I forget the guy's name. He's wearing a brown suit. He's one of the American, you know, martial artists. Was that Kareem? Was that?

Starting point is 01:18:50 No, it was a. Chuck Norris? It wasn't Chuck Norris. It was, I forget the guy's name. He walks up to Bruce Lee and he like, he throws him. a punch like within an inch of his face and Bruce Lee like doesn't move and he and he's like he's Bruce Lee's like looking out into the distance right and he throws another punch an inch from his face and he goes what's your style and Bruce Lee this kind of ignores him and he goes what's your style

Starting point is 01:19:12 and Bruce Lee goes I have no style of some of that right and he goes show it to me he goes okay fine but not here over there on that island the guy goes okay because let's take the boat over there he goes okay so he goes you first and the guy climbs over the boat, goes down to the dingy, and then Bruce Lee proceeds to, you know, untie the string and let this guy sort of loose into the waves. And you're like, wait a minute, Bruce Lee, the greatest fighter of all times, didn't engage in a fight with this guy? He's in his power. Bruce Lee is in his power. He doesn't have to prove himself. He doesn't have to even defend himself. He's relaxed, right? He's in his purpose. That to me is the power that we arrive at. It's not the power

Starting point is 01:19:56 over people. It's can I move about the world in that sense of purpose and relaxed presence where I don't have to prove myself. I don't have to extend myself. I can show up and do the things that are naturally meaningful and creative and expressive of my genius and spirit. That's the power I'm interested in. Bring that to leadership. And it's generative. It switches that on in other people to be authentic, to be creative and to be in their own power too. My favorite quote from Bruce is be like water. Be like water, my friend. It's so brilliant.

Starting point is 01:20:31 It's like, yeah, just be like water. Yeah, right. And how much more relaxed can you be than be like water? That's it. And that's what you're saying. You're in your power. You flow. I mean, you talked about being in the zone, being in the flow.

Starting point is 01:20:44 In our power, we're in flow, right? And so it doesn't require that I diminish or control others. And I can use it to influence. Yeah. Because influence is fluidity, right? It's literally to make things flow in a particular way. When I'm in my flow, I can influence because things are already flowing. I have the ability to cause things to flow in a particular way.

Starting point is 01:21:08 That's my influence. And the more I'm in my power, the more I can influence, right? It's all about the flow. Yeah. I love the concept of flow. And sometimes I'll listen to like some of the Upanishads. And they talk about, I am the fragrance in flowers. I am the light and radiance.

Starting point is 01:21:26 I exist and all that exists. And if you just take time to really sit in a place and really let that sink in, you realize that your power is everybody else's power. Your power is our power. And it's really brilliant to start listening to some of these other traditions. You had mentioned different cultures and just different texts. And it seems like you can probably find it the same message in Alice in Wonderland that you can in a Tao or something like that. But it's interesting to listen to these things and watch the way they influence you and help you move through the world.

Starting point is 01:21:58 Like the message is everywhere. I feel like it's constantly being revealed to you. Like nature is the real school. And it's revealing to you the ecosystem under a tree, the ant taking apart the cockroach and moving around over there. Like there's so much wisdom in nature. We're just willing to pay attention to it. Yeah. I think that you're naming something very beautifully.

Starting point is 01:22:20 And I think that the notion that I put forth that life is an initiatory journey, you're paying attention to these things that are inviting us to the initiation, to the transition from our self-centered. I am, you know, only I can make things happen to, you know, I am the scent and the flower. I am the radiance in the light, you know, that there is this interconnected sense of life. And that is, as our consciousness grows, as we move to initiate, and become less self-centered, less egomiochic, right?

Starting point is 01:22:54 We become more conscious. We do literally move into this expanded state of interconnectedness, right? That interconnectedness is not just intellectual. That's what, you know, even in the Western tradition, the theologians will give God three qualities, right? This is sort of, you know, normal trade in the theological world, right? the God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Right? God is omnipresent, right?

Starting point is 01:23:24 It exists everywhere simultaneously. He's omniscient. All knowledge is there. And he's omnipotent. You know, the power exists in all these things. Now, omniscient is wisdom. When you take it to the degree of the divine, right? Omniscient, all knowing, all the knowledge is integrated into oneness.

Starting point is 01:23:41 That's a divine definition of God. And that's what I call wisdom, right? omnipotent, right, the power to affect all. That's the divine feature in the human experience. It's our personal power. An omnipresent at once connected to everything else is literally the expression of love. Love is the sense of oneness and interconnectedness. And so it is, wisdom, love, and power as the definition of the divine features.

Starting point is 01:24:04 And I believe humans are divine features, right? Yeah. It's because wisdom, love, and power that is assigned to God, we can cultivate too. But we need to pay attention and be somewhat intentional about it. Turns out it doesn't just happen on its own. I don't know why. It just doesn't. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:20 I think that's part of the sacrifice, right? It's what you're willing to leave behind. Like that's what I'm learning is that it's not about what you, first off, I don't think you can make anything. I think you can only grow things. But I think that the true power comes from being able to leave things behind. Like, what are you willing to leave behind? And when you go into an initiatory phase, whether it's, some people do it.

Starting point is 01:24:44 through breathwork or sometimes life happens to you, I think a good question that has helped me, and maybe you can help some of the listeners, is what are you willing to leave behind? How much are you willing to leave behind? Because that sets the path for how much you can grow. If you're just going to hold on to these things, there's no way, there's no room to grow, whether there are ideas, whether they're attributes, whether they're relationships, whether they're ideas. Like, what are you willing to leave behind?

Starting point is 01:25:10 But that's hard. But I think that's the sacrifice. Like when I look at some of, you know, the biblical text or just other readings that I do, that seems to be something that's coming through for me is the sacrifice is what are you willing to leave behind? What are your thoughts on that? It reminds me very much of your opening question. Like, it was very much your opening question. Yes.

Starting point is 01:25:33 What is the fee? What is the prices were? What's the leave behind? Yes. Yes. There's a story of a man who was sent off to, by his own spiritual tradition, he arrived to a series of initiations at the readiness to go forth and seek for this particular treasure that these highest initiates could find. And the treasure was, it was known as the pearl of great wisdom. And anybody who possessed the pearl of great wisdom would be able to then tap into this pearl of great wisdom and be at one with all.

Starting point is 01:26:06 the knowledge of the universe, literally a divine being if you could, if you could possess this pearl. And so he goes off and he, you know, sallies forth on this great adventure journey to find the pearl of great wisdom. And he travels through deserts and he has to sort of, you know, lose his skin in the sunburn and his eyesight and the glaring light. And he had to travel to the forest where he was stung by mosquitoes and creatures and sort of bitten by other, you know, creepy crawling things and he had to navigate through frozen tundger where he literally lost a finger to frostbite and you know all along sort of drawn by this you know the pearl of great wisdom was awaiting him but there was sacrifice he had to give things up sacrifices comes from the word

Starting point is 01:26:51 sacred to make something sacred right and so when you sacrifice you are required to give something of great irreplaceable value in anticipation to receive something of even greater value You can't, look, if I sacrifice my big pen for this initiation, that ain't shit. I'm not getting right, right? If I sacrifice my sense of identity, my sense of, you know, upstanding my reputation. If I sacrifice my, you know, my attachment to my job, if I sacrifice, you know, it has to be something of great, significant meaning that's irreplaceable. Yes. That's what sacrificing.

Starting point is 01:27:30 So he journeyed it and he traveled and he journey, travel, and he ended up in this little bizarre somewhere. the northern side of the African continent and he's going to this, you know, bizarre. And all along, all he's ever had is these two bags, right? One bag on his back and one bag in his hand that he would go through the desert and the forest and the tundra. And he found these amazing little things along the way, little jewels, little stones, little statues. And he put them in these bags, collections of these wonderful, beautiful, valuable sort of objects that he's worked so hard to acquire.

Starting point is 01:28:02 And he finally arrives at this place and he navigates through these dark, dingy little sort of stalls. And he arrives at this place covered entirely by cloth and barely any light coming through. And there's a luminescence coming from the back end of the stall. Just a luminescent light all of its own. There's no electricity. Something is glowing. And he's thinking to himself, finally, I have arrived. And so he trembles over towards that little table in the back corner.

Starting point is 01:28:28 And as he goes to lift, he's trying to reach for this pearl of great wisdom. to him, but he can't. Because when he goes to move his arms, he is downladen by the stuff in these bags. He has accumulated all these incredibly valuable things that was so hard to come by. And here he is at the very end of his journey. And he can't lift his arms because they're laden down by the stuff he's collected. So he has to let go of all the bags, of all the treasures, of all the things is accumulated, all the hard-earned stuff that he's burned, lost fingers for, been half-eaten alive, and he had to put it all on the ground and let it go, never did he picked up again to grasp that pearl of great wisdom.

Starting point is 01:29:12 You are a masterful storyteller. That was awesome. That was awesome. I love it. I love it. I could feel it, man. You know, what are we hanging on to? What's in our bag?

Starting point is 01:29:23 You know, what are the treasures that we feel are so valuable, so important that we are not willing to put them down? and everything that we are holding on to, that is what we need to bring to the altar to sacrifice for this next sort of evolution of our soul and spirit and being. And that's a lot to ask with someone. That's a lot.

Starting point is 01:29:43 But you asked, you know, what do we need to sacrifice? It's these things that we hold dearly to. You know, I had to, you know, you know, I told you, I went to a real challenging period there for four years. You know, my wife and I, we were now married 26 years at the time. It was 20 somewhat years, right? And so I had to really let go of some of my defense mechanisms that I learned as a child.

Starting point is 01:30:18 And quite frankly, the defense mechanism, the particular way that I engaged with my wife in this way, was a life. This felt like a survival mechanism. This wasn't a luxury. This was a survival mechanism. And it was when I was eight. And I had hung on to it for decades, long past its utility, but it was still there. And it was part of my identity. It took real effort to let that go.

Starting point is 01:30:44 And the sense of unbelievable vulnerability of not having that defense mechanism on deck was terrifying. It was a huge sacrifice. I lay that on the altar of our marriage, right, as a sacrifice so that something greater can come forward. My wife did the same with her stuff, right? She had to put stuff on the altar of our marriage, too, to sacrifice some of her defense mechanisms. And we could step on the other side, quite frankly, more intimate. But it was terrifying.

Starting point is 01:31:18 It's beautiful. Thank you. Sometimes I wonder. I used to wonder a lot more. Or I came to the conclusion of, like, am I fighting with my wife or am I fighting with my mom? You know what I mean? Yes, you are.

Starting point is 01:31:33 Yeah. That one for me was like, I'm ridiculous. But it takes so long to get there. It takes so long to get there and realize this is just a projection, man. I'm living a lie. And you go through the period of like, ah,

Starting point is 01:31:46 like the despair a little bit and the disappointment and the depression of like, I just wasted all of that. Then you got to come back to it and be like, okay, well, do you want to move forward or not? The good news is you're aware of it. That means you can move forward from it.

Starting point is 01:32:00 That means you can start acting on it. Like it's just the power of awareness, Eric, to me has been something that, has really transformed my life. And a lot of the people in my relationships, transformed all my relationships, just having the courage to be aware of some things that really bother you inside.

Starting point is 01:32:15 And then having to hunt those things down and bring them forth into the light. Like, are you going to tell people that? I don't know, man. They're going to think you're crazy, man. You know, like all of these things. It's so beautiful and so difficult. But I guess that's where the courage comes in, right?

Starting point is 01:32:30 There can be no sacrifice without courage. There can be no sacrifice by courage. that that is sort of unassailable fact. I would I would press you to consider that in addition to the courage and the awareness which are like the ground zero for this work. There for this to be sustainable because you just mentioned something a moment ago that's really pre that's really perceptive right. The sort of the depression, the questioning, the uncertainty, the difficulty, right? And then the possibility of like pushing yourself to keep doing, you know, berating yourself or not having done it sooner, right?

Starting point is 01:33:10 Awareness is first, without awareness is no movement. Courage is second, right? Without courage, you won't take the motion. So you have to be aware enough to see what's possible. And then you have to have courage to make the motion, right? Perseverance is the third. You have to keep persevering because, you know, the courage gives you the first step, but it's going to take many steps to get there.

Starting point is 01:33:27 Yeah. And then to sustain it requires, and this is one of the most difficult parts, because from an ego that needs to be affirmed or the need to be special, we don't do a lot of this. We have to, we have to learn to bring some grace, kindness, and self-love. Because if we take that away, this initiatory path becomes a path of literally self-harm to your point because we beat ourselves up. Yes. How come I didn't do it sooner? Why couldn't I do it better?

Starting point is 01:33:59 What took me so long? What an idiot am I being? That self-critic, that inner critic? If we don't find a way to soothe that with some inner love, this initiatory path is depressing. So we can go through all the initiations and rather than come out empowered and soothe and more at ease in our skin, we can also come out being quite bitter and mean to ourselves. I do not recommend that. So the cultivation of love, the cultivation of self-care, the ability to say, you know, I went through it.

Starting point is 01:34:31 Why didn't I go before? Because my ancestor could only go so far. That Eric could go that far. He went through the gate of initiation. The next Eric took over, went to this gate of initiation. This Eric is here today going through this gate of initiation. Thank you to all the previous ancestors, the many me's inside of me. I'm not holding them hostage as being bad stewards of our process. I hold them as great guides and courageous beings for bringing me to here. And I love them as me, right? I love them. love me. If I can't project love towards myself, this is a very, very, very bitter journey. Even in meditation, right? And I've been meditating for next year, it would be 40 years of regular meditation. I've put on meditation retreats twice a year. I say to people all the time. This is one of my sort of

Starting point is 01:35:20 favorite things to share with people. You know, why do people start meditating and then stop? And there's lots and lots of reasons for that. What's unnatural, it's weird, it's hard. One of the, one of the sort of unexamined thing that I've now examined for decades in myself and in hundreds of people, right? We sit to meditate, we have a hard time and we beat the shit out of ourselves. So we're having the hard time. Come on, man. What a needy. I can't believe I thought again. How hard is to just focus on the breath? Where did I go this time? What's wrong with me? And that was for, you know, 15, 20 minutes on the cushion, you beat yourself up. What are the odds that you're going to show up the next day and keep beating yourself up?

Starting point is 01:35:53 I mean, who's going to show up to the scene of the beating? What the same person is going to volunteer to be beaten up. And so we've got to cultivate this kindness, this gentleness, this love or this path is unavailable, just unavailable as a sustainable thing. I love it. It's so true. Lighter, what's up, my friend? Lighter is an awesome human being. He's always here. He's always chiming in. I'm so grateful you're here, my friend. He says, I think a lot of the time I miss what life is trying to initiate me into. I can somewhat sense it, but I often grasp onto some lower interpretations. What do you think about that, Eric?

Starting point is 01:36:31 I'm not having a conversation with lighter, so this is a non-dimensional opportunity. But if you read that up, there's a few things. There's a few things that come to mind. One, I can somewhat sense it, but I often grasp onto some lower interpretations. You know, it's important not to bring our self-importance into our initiatory experience, right? Who's to say that there's something higher than this going on? So one possibility is it isn't that there's actually some lower interpretation, as much as there's too high an expectation of ourselves, which could be, you know,

Starting point is 01:37:12 our need for achievement could very well bleed into our spiritual efforts, right? I need to be more spiritual, I need to be more initiative, I need to be more brave. And so I just want to hold that as one option. It's possible that it's possible the interpretations are too low. It's possible the expectations are too high. Yes. And that the self-importance is running the show in the spiritual quest. So that's one.

Starting point is 01:37:33 The other thing I would say is that, and I said this earlier, you know, we live in structures that don't give us the support and the ecosystem for our initiations, meaning other people, other elders, other initiates, other practitioners, other devotees. And so in order for us to be able to fully realize it, we go to the initiation, it's difficult to interpret it all in our own. I've been working and studying with teachers since I'm 50 years old. I've been, I've had a teacher since I'm 19 years old. I lived in a with my teacher for 13 years. I studied with another teacher for 21 years. I had

Starting point is 01:38:15 now have another teacher. So, you know, it's evident to me that I cannot entirely interpret my own experience from the inside. That's where trusted elders are so critical, right? I use word elders, not that the day have to be older and age, but, you know, that they've gone through the process and they have a perspective. We need sense-making help. Yeah. We need sense. So those are my two takes on that, on that comment. Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you, Leiter for chiming in over there. It brings up the point of unrealistic expectations. Like, that seems to be a barrier at times that is insurmountable. You know, you have these ideas. And that's the first time I've heard the idea of, of, I'm using the word,

Starting point is 01:38:58 unrealistic expectations being tied to self-importance, but that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you know, we're, we're, you know, this was a realization of mind at a very young age, you know, the ego has no loyalty. It will do whatever it needs to do to keep feeding itself, right? And when we enter into our spiritual path, when we enter into initiatory path, whatever it is, that grasping of the ego to be special is, has got new fuel, right? And what better way to be special than to be enlightened or the most spiritual or the most initiated or the most wise or the most loving right the most because we will just bring that same intensity and quest and sense of inadequacy to our spiritual practices and again practicing spiritual path initiatory path in in

Starting point is 01:39:50 in isolation as an individual is materially a setup Finding a trusted teacher, for a trusted guide, a trusted therapist, a trusted coach is difficult, right? And it's vulnerable and it's necessary. We are made by virtue of humans coming together and having an ecstatic experience, right? We are raised in the context of a relationship and we do not discover ourselves. Self-awareness can only go so far. We need others. You know, we're not entirely self-reliant.

Starting point is 01:40:28 to produce all this. We weren't made alone. We weren't born alone. We didn't grow up alone. And we won't be enlightened alone. There's a community involved in here. There's other people. I love that part. A part of my journey and I think a lot of other people have been influenced by the idea of go it alone. And I think on some level, there are parts that only you can go. Maybe it's walking through the threshold. You have to go it alone. But I'm realizing that asking for help is like there's no way to do it. Like you get to a point where you've gone it alone so far. And maybe for me the crisis is like you have to ask for help.

Starting point is 01:41:05 And I'm like, no, I can go with it. I got to go it alone, man. I read the book. You got to go it alone. But there's real healing and there's real humility in asking for help. And I think that for me, life is showing me, you're going to stay in the dark until you ask for help. You know, like those are, those are hard things to grapple with. Eric, what are your thoughts on that?

Starting point is 01:41:24 at least for me they are. So I lived in a community, a spiritual order, there was actually an initiation-based order, right? So there were stages of initiation based on the participants, sort of demonstrable of their work, right? So I was in one of the, I was being initiated into, I was going to an initiation. And it's formal and it's very dramatic, right?

Starting point is 01:41:49 There's people in like medieval clothing with swords and there's all these, you know, labyrinth that we have to go through and challenges you have to do. And it's like a, you know, it's like a six-hour kind of, there's things you have to do up to it. And then there's a six-hour psychodrama process. And then you come out on the other side, there's a feast and celebration. That sounds amazing. At one point in this initiation, this was some of the night, I think the third one or so over the course of several years, I found myself in the center of this large tent on the ground, surrounding.

Starting point is 01:42:23 by the other initiates that kind of the officers that were guiding this process for me. And three of them were standing there with like swords pointed at me. Like I'm on the ground and they're standing over me with actual sharp swords. And they're like, Eric, your initiation and your ability to step on the other side of this threshold depends on your ability to ask for help. Because I'm like, you know, I took autonomy to the to the anthony. degree, right? Like, I can do this on my own. My, literally sort of my, my, my traumatic reaction to my family experience was to cultivate a massive amount of autonomy, which worked well

Starting point is 01:43:02 with my personality because I can sort of figure most of the shit out on my own anyway. Right, right, right. And so in particular, I remember this guy, Bruce was his name, and he's looking at me and I look at him, and I'm like, I'm probably all of like 26, right? And I'm looking at him and Bruce, give me that, give me the dagger. He says, I will cut off my finger and demonstrate my devotion right now. And he goes, Eric, nobody here has any questions that you would cut up your finger and show your devotion. But nobody has any confidence that you will actually ask for help.

Starting point is 01:43:41 You know, and I was like, sons of bitches, those guys really nailed me, right? I mean, they knew me well enough to know this was my initiation, right? I had to sacrifice my sort of anxious, clinging to my autonomy as a survival mechanism and find ways to engage and fit in and be vulnerable because asking for help is vulnerable. So this whole notion of going alone, initiations definitionally have a loneliness to it, right? You will go and you will be lonely. And for a while, people will be strange and you will be a stranger, right? You will be a stranger in a strange land when you move through that initiatory portal. Yes. So you have to do some stuff

Starting point is 01:44:24 on your own. But no, it's not about being an isolated figure. And it's not just asking for help. It's connecting. Yeah. Right? It's being available. It's being vulnerable. It's being connected. So, sure, let's cultivate our capacity to do things on our own. That's agency. That's real,

Starting point is 01:44:39 you know, beautiful individual capacity. But don't let the ego sort of turn that into, I must do it all on my own. Yeah. Yeah, it's well said. It's well said. We got a, we're coming up on 130, Eric, and I forgot if you have till 130. I think it's time.

Starting point is 01:44:58 It is, my brother. You are an engaging human being in a remarkable species of humanity, and I'm enjoying the hell of this, but I have other commitments. I know you do. I know you do. Before we land the plane, where can people find you? What do you have coming up or anything you're excited about? I am absolutely excited about.

Starting point is 01:45:25 having the opportunity to keep doing what I do professionally. This is going on 25 years of doing what I'm doing. And I can't believe I'm still as energized by it as I've been. I continue to evolve and be initiated. So the people who work with me 20 years ago are not exactly getting the same version as an Eric that they worked with. You know, my website is sagatica.com, S-A-T-I-C-A-C-G-A-Sagatica.com. It's from the Latin words sagacitasita, so it's C-E-E-E-Sagacity, wisdom.

Starting point is 01:45:54 So sacatica.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm probably most active on LinkedIn in posting ideas and thoughts and things of that nature. I do a lot of sort of slightly longer form. I don't think as long form as you do, but sort of in that neighborhood, right? I don't like the platitudes.

Starting point is 01:46:11 And I'm excited to work with anybody who's in a leadership role that has turned on to want to be a more conscious leader and wants to do it either as a one-on-one in a coaching engagement or taking the whole executive team, leadership team, through a year-long initiatory journey around the Leadership Evolution Program. I love it.

Starting point is 01:46:31 Ladies and gentlemen, if you found this interesting, reach out. The links will be down in the show notes down there. Eric, I had a brilliant time. It was really helpful to me, and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for hanging out with us today, and that's all we got. Hang on briefly afterwards. Everybody else, I hope you have a beautiful day.

Starting point is 01:46:48 Aloha.

TrueLife - Eric Kaufmann - Mirror, Flame, & Threshold

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