TrueLife - Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester - Self Importance & Otherness

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester is the Madrinha and President of Céu do Montréal, a Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) Church she founded in 1997 in Montréal, Canada.She is a transpersonal counselor, she trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Assagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof.She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve an Section 56 Exemption to import and serve the Santo DaimeSacrament (Ayahuasca).She is an ordained Interfaith Minister with a Doctorate in Divinity.From 1986 to 2018 she has been a workshop leader, teacher, and in private practice.She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery and Self-Care, Volume One and Two.She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being and personal transformationhttps://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/https://psychedelicscene.com/2024/06/20/entheogens-psychedelics-nosc-and-the-search-for-wholeness/Self-importance is the veil that wraps the mind in illusions of grandeur—a kingdom built on shifting sands, where the ruler mistakes the walls for the world.Otherness is the doorway disguised as a stranger—an invitation to lose yourself in the eyes of another and find, at last, the ocean beyond the shore. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

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. I hope the sun is shining. I hope the birds are singing. I hope the wind is at your busy.

back. I have a beautiful show for you today. And I'm excited to introduce a friend of mine, a guest, an incredible teacher, and a wonderful woman. She is Reverend Dr. Jessica Rochester. She's the Mahadrina and president of the suit of Montreal, a Santo Dimei ayahuasca church she founded in 1997 in Montreal, Canada. She's a transpersonal counselor. She trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Asagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Graf. She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve a Section 56 exemption to import and serve the Santo Diamese sacraments. She's an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in divinity. From 1986 to 2018, she has been a workshop leader, a teacher, and private practice.

She's the author of two amazing books, Ayahuasca Awakening, A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Care, Volumes 1 and 2. She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health, and well-being, and personal transformation. And I am delighted to have you here, Dr. Jessica. How are you? Well, thank you for asking. I am really well on so many levels, you know, and, you know, don't ask about a few other levels. I think that that's the balance we have to come to in life is where we can live with gratitude for even if it's good and not let the difficult.

to challenging things to like Ram Dass says being here now and be in the stream of our consciousness and at the same time recognize the challenges in our life and today it's going to be kind of fun because we're going to be talking about but it's tricky what we're going to be talking about today and I apologize to everybody I've had to use my voice a lot the last while and so it may fade out from time to time and so everybody hang in with me and we'll get there in the end. I just want to thank you. It's always a pleasure, George, to hang out with you. And, you know, you're different from other hosts in that you don't have your set specific questions you're going to ask.

Or the ones that you particularly developed to try and trump me. Okay. Those are always so interesting. Those kinds of interviews, they're usually more like an interview. you done around specific topics by specific types of media where their joy is trying to catch you out. So I just want to really acknowledge you that you're the type of post who really wants to find the gold in the conversation and speak to the expertise or the skills or the knowledge

that your guest has rather than just run your own agenda. You know, I've been on a podcast where, you know, the podcast is going to be like maybe 40 minutes or 45 minutes. And the first 20 or so is the host talking about themselves. I was like, are you sure you want to be here today? You could just do a monologue. Anyway, enough of all that. What we're talking about today is something that I think that touches every single one of us on both sides of it, having some of it and experiencing it in our everyday life.

And so I first want to say that I want to have to, you know, chapeau to Dr. Monica Williams, a wonderful woman and a colleague. She's the research chair, psychology in Canada. She's at University of Ottawa. And we've worked together on research paper that we did and other projects. and it was a comment of hers, one of her LinkedIn comments that I commented on. And I asked her the question, because she was talking about microaggression and how we all need to be aware of when we're doing that, you know, and why we're doing it. Okay.

And she's doing some very thoughtful research and presentations on that topic. And so I wrote back to her and I said, what do you think the root is in the comments? What do I think the root is? You know, I see it as self-importance and otherness, you know. And a couple of people said, could you say more about self-importance and that otherness? And then I kind of got, I said, yes, I will. I'll probably write a post on it or something. And then, puk, got too busy with other things.

So I'm delighted today to talk about, or try and talk about, try and open the conversation around it, self-importance. and otherness. And let's start with self-importance. Okay, something we all have to really try on like, you know, Cinderella and see if the shoe fits. Soap importance is defined as, and here's where I want my PowerPoint presentation.

I never even asked you if I'd be allowed to do that, you know, because I really, in all my lecturing, I've got the fancy PowerPoint with all the gorgeous images and everything. But then that's mostly what I'm working with in conference. with students, so they actually may have to write a paper on it. What is it? What is self-importance? Can we define it as an inflated sense of personal value or importance?

So an inflated or exaggerated sense of personal value or personal importance. Is that a fair enough? I like it. Launching pad to go from? Okay. Now, what happens when we have this inflated sense of personal value and importance? It will lead to arrogance and an attitude underlying with a belief on being superior somehow to others. So the consequences of this exaggerated, inflated sense of personal value can be a belief system that develops that some way because of something.

that we are somehow more important, more valuable, or superior to others who are not us or like us in some way. Is that fitting so far as definitions? Yes? Yeah, I think that well. Okay. Where do we get this entitlement, this self-importance from? Where does it come from? Okay. So let's tick off where we can. Find it. First of all, culture and society. All we have to do is look around the world.

If we don't want to look too closely at home, we can see, look at the caste system. The caste system, whether you have the Brahmins, who are the most important, the most enlightened, the most what have you, and you have the Dalits or the untouchables. This is a system that has existed for thousands of years. And that's just one that is clearly defined and named.

We have this Brahman-Dadalit structure everywhere in every culture, don't we? Yep. And it just, what defines the Brahman society from the Dalit society? Okay, so carrying on. If we look, we're going to see closer to home, a culture that focuses on having, on having more than being. on having and doing. Remember those three states.

There's having, doing, and being. And so the focus, the light is really focused on having, on possessions. You can sum that up in one word, capitalized, bold it, more. I have more than you do. I have more, fill in the blank. Money, possessions, land, car, territory. power, I have more of something than you do. Therefore, I am more important. I am more powerful. I am superior to you in some way. And we can take that into almost every aspect of culture and society. I have more of something than you do, and therefore that makes me superior. Rather than I have this, that I have this, that I have, worked hard to gain and I'm happy to share some of it okay to serve culture and

society in some way to express my gratitude for what I have received okay not just paying my taxes but I'm not cheating on them but also finding a way to serve back to those who don't have more they have less okay and healthy cultures and healthy tribes and healthy societies find a way of managing the more and the less situations you know we go back over 2,000 years and one of the things that the great teacher Jesus said was the poor will always be among him why did he say that because he knew He knew. The hungry, the poor, the ill, the tired, the disenfranchised in some way or another will always be here.

I think he was a consciousness teacher who understood human nature, just like Buddha did. Understood human nature. Okay, carrying on. In the culture and society, we can also have something. all we have to do is look at an example would be China when they said, you know, you can only have one child. And all of a sudden, 10 years, 15 years later, they noticed that there were millions of girls missing. The balance of male to female in births is very stable. I don't know how the universe figures that one out, but it somehow does.

Okay. And isn't that a bit of a mystery when you think about it? Like, who's keeping count of how many male and females are being born? Who's keeping count of that? I mean, is this interesting? And how do they keep it at that almost perfect balance? You know, I mean, that's something for some area of science to look into if they can and figure out who's keeping countable with that and making sure it stays in balance.

So when we realized that millions of girls were missing, it was because of the belief system, the boy's male child was more important, more valuable. This came from a cultural belief system. You know, so we can see how powerful these beliefs around importance in certain areas of more, whatever the more is, can influence entire nations. Okay, religion. Self-importance, does it come from? religion. Parts of it, I would imagine it. You bet. Okay, some religions and spiritual traditions teach unity and respect. Some do. And some branches of some religions have more tight branches and more encompassing and embracing branches, you know. Others teach superiority

and self-importance. What we believe is the truth. have a great little story to tell you about that. I ordered this book, it's many years ago now, gosh. And I love a student of Joseph Campbell, and I love mythology and archetypal imagery, and so I've got all of Young's books on my bookcase. And these things, the symbols and the meanings and the archetypes,

it's just so inspiring to, you know, read about and understand and see them in everyday life. Okay. And I picked out or ordered this, and it's a great, big, thick, giant book on my bookcase back there. And it's thick and it's heavy and it's mythology, world mythology, okay? And it had everything in there. So you could look up, you know, Krishna, girl, look up this and that and so on and so forth. After a while, I thought, something I missed.

I go through, in this book of mythology that had everything, other spiritual tradition and all their deities and everything, there was absolutely nothing but the Judeo-Jewish Christian believe it without the Virgin Marian. None of that was mythology because that's the truth, right? We just can't go into a book about mythology because it's in a book that is the truth. How fascinating is that? Okay, so the powerful thing is we own the truth, we have the truth. truth, what we believe is the truth. And therefore, our beliefs are more important than your

beliefs. Our beliefs are superior to your beliefs. Another aspect that can happen in religion is God loves us best. Okay. So where do you go with that one? It's like, okay. You know, it's a belief system. That's all. It doesn't mean it's real. It doesn't mean it's true anymore. more than the people who believed that the world was flat and that the sun moved around the earth. That didn't make it true because people believed it. There's people who believe that the moon landings were staged in and a Hollywood backlog. Okay. You know, you can believe what you want to believe.

So far, I think that's still under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Only we are saved or chosen. Only we, based on our religion and our beliefs. Only we will get to some state of being or some heavenly place or some grace of God or because of what we believe. Whereas the rest of you a lot of sinners. Okay. And you get to go to another place that isn't very happy at all where you get punished for not believing but we believe. Now, of course, I don't have to go back since I'm three years old.

I'm a massive amount of years of traveling and studying here and there. And, you know, I got to watch the revolution of it being a Catholic state and it's shedding the Catholicism. So in 40 years of private practice, I worked with a lot of people I can only call recovering Catholics. And it's like there was a certain degree of deprogramming that they needed to go through what had been built in through ancestral, you know, teachings around certain beliefs that they felt. they didn't want to believe anymore that it wasn't in alignment with what they felt was right for their life. Does this make sense? Did you want to say anything about all this so far? Yeah. I got to, it almost seems like God loves, I think you could almost say that the definition of genocide is God loves us more. That'd be like my first point. Like that seems to lead to that.

Well, that's the very far end extreme. Right. Right. There are quite a few steps in between there, okay? You know, one drink doesn't make you an alcoholic. I mean, it could, okay, but it doesn't necessarily. And the second point I would find interesting, I would love to get your thoughts on is, I could see how giving up part of something may seem like giving up everything to a lot of people who hold dearly to a certain belief. if they give up something, they feel like they're giving up all of it.

So when you deprogram somebody from a different religion, it could be very difficult for them to just have some doubt in this one thing because that may question their faith in everything. Yes, and that's where, you know, I mean, I'm not a deprogrammer. I'm nobody should think I'm saying. I'm not an exorcist. I'm not a deep programmer. Okay, don't look me up for any of that, that people would come,

And it would be part of their personal search, their personal journey was, and I always put it in, work with these things in a way, hold them lightly. Hold them lightly. Maybe I believe this. Maybe I believe that. How does it feel? What happens to me if I don't believe that anymore? And more importantly, where did that belief come from? Does it come from deep inside of me?

Because this is where I believe that beliefs should come from. They should be coming from something that feels completely right, deeply inside of us, and preferably based on individual experience. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And so if beliefs come from, You know, we can say, well, I believe that exercise is really good for us. It's because somebody's usually exercising and points that they feel better and their breath is better.

And their body feels more relaxed and more open and more flexible. Their health improves and things like that. And so our beliefs can become more firm and by us experiencing them and practicing them. Because if we have certain beliefs that have no vitality in our life, no meaning and vitality in our life, then we really do need to sit down and have a conversation with that belief. You know, am I really? Me and my people who I believe and we believe this, are we really? You know, that old joke about, you know, someone dies and they go to heaven and then they're, pick your religion, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu doesn't matter. And they're being led by a guardian angel down a long haul.

There's many doors and all that the Jewish people are in this and the so-and-so of that. And then there's a very long hall, one door way down to the bottom. And the person says, well, what's that down there? What's that door? And then he said, oh, that's the Catholics. They think they're the only ones in heaven. It's a very old joke. I had a client tell me that.

A Catholic client told me that a long time ago. And that speaks to that belief, you know, about, about that our belief is the truth. And that can go really, really deep, and that can inflate a sense of importance and superiority. Our religion, our beliefs are something is more important than those other beliefs. We have a superiority in our beliefs. You know, so there's cultural, there's society, influences,

There's the religious, there's educational. That's part of our culture and our society. Educational influences. You know? And then there's family. Family. Family history or our ancestry. What did we learn about our sense of self

and our value as an individual from our family? did we learn that we are special and privileged and entitled because great, great, great, how many grades back is we arrived on Mayflower this happened a whole thing in your country. We don't have quite the same thing. We're up in Canada or in Britain, you know. So we can trace ourselves back to this and that makes it therefore more important and superior to.

Okay. And whatever that thing is, that has this great importance or you know your great great great grandfather founded this town okay thank you and okay does that really make me more important than anybody else does it I think there's a I think on some line it's easy to blur the ideas of self-importance and value because a lot of people they I think there's a value question in there somewhere you know people value value these things What is the demarcation line there? Ah, good question.

Okay. So we're going to come to otherness in a moment because there's a few things that are going to tie it together. Okay. So the difference between self-importance and self-worth. Mm, yes. Okay. Self-worth is a deep-seated belief in one's natural intrinsic value.

regardless of external forces, like who your parents or the grandparents were, which school you went to, or which language you speak, the color of your skin, blah, blah, all of the various sundry things that can be our identities. So we also need to talk a little bit about identities, and that's a whole other big conversation, you know. So it's a healthy self-worth is a healthy, grounded perspective on who am I? my perception of myself and my perception of myself in the world. Healthy self-work grounded. It has self-respect and self-responsibility, and it respects others. So it's an embracing myself as having an intrinsic human value is being,

and the experience of the in human, that I have my skills, my limitations are shortcomings. Now, if we take that and we see what can that cultivate, it can cultivate awareness, self-awareness, one of the basics, right? Self-awareness, self-respect, self-responsibility, self-love, those foundations. So it can promote awareness, it can promote compassion, it can awareness leads us to the web of life, the interconnectedness of all things, the interdependency

of all things. Self-importance separates us. I'm up here with my fill in the blank whatever I have that you don't have. So I'm up here with my thing. That separates me from everything. Whereas I'm here

and I have, I respect myself and I respect you. I'm responsible for myself. You're responsible for yourself. I recognize with as much compassion as I can muster up in any particular date because that's a continuum, okay? Compassion, right? Is that a deeper conversation? We don't, compassion isn't like the light switch.

We can't turn it on and off. It's more like taking care of. of a plant. Okay, we have to make sure it has the right light, right amount of water. So compassion is an aspect of the soul that we have to nurture.

We can't just kind of pull it out of the pocket when we need it. Yeah, am I doing a decent job of trying to explain this? So it's something that we have to have nurtured inside of ourselves.

It's not like a skill that we're born with. We can have empathy, which is different. and compassion. These are deep conversations about deep aspects of being human, right? Okay, so we're back to self-worth. So we see that we have this self-importance, which separates us, and we have self-worth, which can unite us.

Now, probably all of us are some combination of some self-importance and some self-worth. Yes, there are some people we can see that are, pathological narcissists, okay? And clearly self-importance is a main focus. It's a driving factor. And we can see some people where, you know, they're the Gondis and the Martin Luther Kings and the people that we can say, yeah, they got it.

They got it, you know. People in our everyday life that we can look at and we can see that they deeply get with some form of, And here's the keyword humbleness. How often do you hear that? That's like the antidote to self-importance, this humbleness. How often do you hear that word in modern conversation? Let's be humble here.

Yeah. Nature is good for that. Hmm, pardon? Nature is good for that, the ocean. As someone who spends a lot of time in the ocean, like it's really easy to be out there. And a while back, my daughter and I were swimming and we got caught in this riptide. It was clear as day.

We're in Hawaii, clear his day. And all of a sudden, this riptide developed. It was washed out to way past these rocks. And I remember my daughter clinging to me like, Dad, I'm like, okay, calm down, relax. We've got to swim sideways over here. But a really humbling moment. And nature seems to do that to us if we sit and watch. Yes.

The ocean can do that. The ocean can do that. Yes. Okay. Where we are, the snow, can do that. do that. We had 74 sonometers of snow in like two days. Okay. I was sending pictures of it down. We have a team coming back to work from the Caccio in Brazil. And so I was sending down to people in Brazil who never see snow. They never have a cloak. You know, they're just saying,

what is that? On that frozen white stuff up to here. So nature can give us an experience of humbleness. The power and the on awesomeness. Yeah. But that, just the current of life can do that. Yeah. When we take a long, slow to breath and we step back and we look at our self-importance and say, okay, I think it's time I kind of did some transformation on that self-importance,

you know. Now, we're going to come back to family in school because we didn't quite finish up on that in the self-importance department. So we can look at what happens in. family dynamics that we can have this. So one of the things is your ancestors did this and whatever and blah blah blah and we have this and you know the old school pie so you can get it from the school where you know you can have very difficult school situations that actually I've heard very difficult school situations from what are supposed to be the most prestigious schools and they were just

shoving it all under the rug because it's all the old school time you know. Yeah. And so So humbleness would be helpful in those circumstances. What can happen in a family is figuring one child over another due to valuing certain characteristics. We spoke a few minutes ago about that period of time in China where you can only have one child and how the male child is considered a greater value than a female child. And so they put out of violence their population for a couple of generations, you know. They'll take them a couple of generations to correct that. So they bring one child over another.

What are their characteristics can you see that might cause family to place more importance on one child over another? I think long-term relationships. I know that it from one. Oh, you're going too deep. Yes. Okay. Superficial thing. Okay.

How somebody looks. Oh, she's so beautiful. Oh, he's so handsome. Okay. So looks, we are such a superficial culture. Aren't we? I mean, really, Western civilization, we are very superficial. I mean, I'm all in favor and healthy and good and everything else. And, you know, I like nice clothes and jewelry too. You know, no problem with any of that, but that can't be who we are. So looks, academic achievements, athletic achievements.

Yeah. So there's many different things that can cause the family to over-focus on one child. Leaving the other children or child feeling less important somehow of less value. Another thing we have done, we probably still do a lot in our, you know, we're drifting into otherness now, is that as family societies and cultures, we don't have a great track record with, managing family members who are different, you know, diversity of, you know, neurodiversity, which is a term that's only arrived in our conversation more recently. But children who had, you know, and again, if you look back much further,

you're going to find that in older and very much older cultures, that diversity was respected. In the histories of many tribal peoples and indigenous people, diversity was respected. For example, when I was growing up, I was the only person in my family who was having these profound spiritual experiences. Nobody talked about anything. Nobody, there wasn't a book, there wasn't a story, there wasn't anything. Nothing about spiritual experiences at that time. It was the 50s, 1950s.

It was all about television and, you know, stuff and your dress and your hair. And it was all about this superficial stuff. And he was looking for desperately some level of conversation about spiritual things. It just didn't exist. I mean, fortunately, I had many good aspects in my family. My mother used to say that she didn't give birth to me. I arrived by spaceship. So I got tolerated teased, you know, if I tried to open, you know, a conversation.

And as I got older, as I was able to, you know, the big opening in the late 60s and 70s, East and East and East West, and all of a sudden this became part of the conversation. You could meditate. You could have these experiences. All of a sudden it became socially acceptable, you know. So being different, just being different from your immediate serenial. you know that can not be well tolerated so diversity which is an essential part of the human experience can you imagine if we were all the same we all love pink and we all love Chinese food and we only like one of the fill in the blank can you imagine creepy cartoon characters so how do we embrace

diversity and we're back to awareness, humbleness, recognizing the web of life, right? Okay, so have we anything else about that? Everybody had, you know, I know very few people who didn't have some difficult school experiences where they were either too tall or too short or maybe they developed and matured more quickly than the other kids in their class. And maybe they wore glasses or maybe they had a surgeon or maybe they had an accent because they, their family came from somewhere else, you know, in certain areas and in certain areas, that level of difference. Either everybody would flock to be your friend or they would just you out. You know, you'd be alone in the playground because nobody wanted to talk to you because you were too short, too tall, wore glasses, had a funny accent, whatever. And so how do we navigate with all of this?

And how do we make sure that what we're doing as individuals is bringing the best possible vibration of respect for ourselves and for others? What do you think? You've got such a serious look on your face. I know it's serious things. Oh, did I wash you back to the school yard? Sorry. Are you standing in the small yard?

A little bit. Like it takes me back and thinking about my relationships with different people and knowing some other kids that were different, that were kind of singled out or they got beat up or some of my experiences or people would like pants me or, you know, they make fun of you. And, you know, it's how. And I guess those patterns carry on forever. If you always, you know, neglect the weirdo, which that was probably a lot of us.

you know, then that's how you deal with weirdos later in life. And that's not the wrong, that's the wrong word. But I mean, I'm speaking from that perspective as a kid. Different. Different. Yeah. Yeah. In grade 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, whatever you call it down there, you know, the upper grade schools

and early high schools, kids are cruel. Yeah, totally. Let's try and dress this up. And that brings us to, you know, a comment that the human species, we're not a very nice species. Yeah, it's true. We're not a very nice species. You and I've discussed this before. We are essentially an aggressive, selfish species.

And now we're going to come to otherness, because this is a really important part of it. Okay, we're talking about diversity. And now let's talk about otherness. So what is othering or otherness? It's conscious and unconscious bias. So they travel hand in hand. They can.

Self-importance. sense of who I am and othering and otherness. If we already feel we're superior because of our fill in the blank, whatever it is that we have that we think is more important than what other people have, then othering and otherness is going to come more easily to us than if we don't have that or if we have a smaller amount of it. If through our educational process and our family development, if we've been exposed to things that are more diverse and more color,

I'll give you an example. When I was growing up, the one thing that I really have to chapeau to my mother to is we ended up one of the only, I think, three families on the entire street that wasn't Jewish. Nobody predicted this that this area in Montreal, Cote St. Luke, would turn out to be like, you know, there's an Italian district, a Greek district. You can go on and judge a wonderful Chinatown. It just happened where they were taking farmland and building houses that my father said, hey, this looks like a great area. and had a house built. And so what my mother did is she asked neighbors, can I visit a synagogue with my children so that they have an understanding of what it's like,

what it is that you believe and what it is that you practice? And you're welcome to come with us to the Anglican Church. Okay. And then she asked another neighbor who was Catholic. I bring my children to your Catholic Church so they could experience, you know, your beliefs in your setting. you know i have such a funny memory of being in that church i mean we're pretty young okay my mother was horrified here we are coming from the british you know very well behaved in church with the

little white gloves and our hat and everybody's church with our hat on you know and we would barely move my sister and i because that's how we were kind of brought up and how we were trained to behave in church with deep respect and solemnness and here were these other two children who've been given rosaries and they were banging on the pews and they were carrying on and we were just like horrified that you can actually do this in church, you know. That's why one memory of being in that experience. But, you know, good for my mom that, you know, here she is in the 50s trying to expose us to other belief systems so that we would have a deeper understanding about what people believed and how they practiced it.

And so if you've had some of that, it helped you rather than just, no, we're not them. We don't believe that. No, we don't. You know, that's them. They're over there somehow. Do you know what I mean? They're over there? There's this distance, this sense of separation,

distance that gets creative. So othering or otherness is being or feeling different in appearance, character, cultural, social, religious aspects from what is familiar, expected, or generally accepted? Is that a decent? Yeah, I think so. Right. So we can either feel that we're different, that we're other, okay, or we can feel that that person or those people are other.

And by kind of, it's this process of almost depersonalizing that then can give us some in our self-employee. and superiority that can give us some kind of a rationalization for actually treating someone or some people differently. You can look at the history of the human race and you see that happens over and over again. We have the superiority in your other, therefore we can treat you differently. It's okay to bully you in the school yard because you're different. It's okay to not allow you to join the club or the church or the thing or the whatever. It's okay to not give you that job. you that job. It's okay to not accept you in that university because we're this and you're that.

What about what happens? What about what happens when sometimes otherness can lead? Like it, I think that there is, let's try to think of an example. Like let's say you bring in someone to a group and say they're okay, but then that person who you brought in as an other abuses someone there. Doesn't that reinforce the idea of otherness and like, hey, this is why we don't bring these people in? All it takes is for like one example of something like that. Well, for sure that can happen. But then we'd have to look at that in our special little group where we're more important and nothing that ever happens.

Okay. Well, what a whopping great lie that would be. Okay. Right. That's true. That would be a perfect example of, you know, I mean, I mean, that's a way. You know, I mean, I'm sure it may have happened. Okay.

But that would be an example of why did that person select that person to bring in? They must have known that there was going to be a problem. So was there an unconscious bias that they actually set up the situation to make sure it didn't work? I mean, you know, whatever. Okay. So othering can be the process through which a dominant group creates and stigmatizes is out groups. So you have the in-group and the out-group,

you know, in high school there was the click and the in-kids and the out-kids. So this goes way back in our developmental process. We quickly learn that there's those that are in and those that are right in our society. Now, unless we have a family that makes that effort to be more inclusive, that makes, that has those conversations

about trying to understand people who wear different clothes or have different capabilities or follow different traditions, speak different languages, you know, have a different ethnicity. If we live in an environment that fosters that, let's call it an educational process. Because it basically is. We can teach our children to hate or we can teach our children to be respectful and inclusive. That doesn't mean being respectful and inclusive does not mean not having genuine and severe, genuine and sincere, sorry, sincere awareness around trust. We can't just trust everybody, sorry, we can't. Wouldn't it be nice if we could. Yeah. So it's always a power

dynamic. There's always power issues at play here. There's a one up and one down. There's a one in and one out. Okay. Do you see that? Yes. Okay. So it's always power is always a play. So where there's self-importance, an inflated sense of me, my group, my beliefs, my whatever it is. Okay? This is far more important. And therefore, power is given to that. Power is taken. Power is taken. for that. Then we start to see the misuse of power. We can see it in religions, we can see it in cultures, we can see it in politics, we can see it everywhere. So what is this about, this self-importance and othering, in which we have a reluctance to interact with people outside our own in-group? we feel threatened by people from outside ones in group.

We attribute negative qualities to individuals from a different group, which may or may not be at all realistic. You know, we can look at warring clans and warring tribes. The Hatfields and the McCoys, okay? Choose any group you want. Okay, what was that? The Hatfields and McCoys, that were there? Was that Kentucky, Missouri?

I don't remember. That's an American story. Isn't it? That feels like four, four decades. They had this tribal war going on. Okay, so this is a perfect example, that kind of thing. Okay, where you hate the other people because you've been taught to hate them. Yeah.

You know, and it's hard to unlearn hatred. It's hard to unlearn. You have to want to unlearn when you've been taught to hate something. when you've been taught to be frightened of something, when you've been taught for not something but people, you know, the different people. You have to want to learn them. It seems like, you know,

we can look at a real-life example of like Israel and Palestine right now. It's such a deep-seated level of education. And I don't know. I'm not from there. I don't know. I hear not. And on one level, let's put this right out here for anybody listening. I don't think either of us have a sufficiently educated idea of all of the complicated circumstances that go back thousands of years that, you know, that one has to be really very mindful of creating opinions either side of this.

okay and because you know I'm going to own it this is me being humble is I definitely although I can look at the situation and I've read the Bible in enough time so I think I understand quite a bit of the history okay but it's like no I I don't live there I am not of those faiths I am not of those traditions or cultures I haven't lived through it so I can have deep compassion

for both sides you know and I have a deep hope that that wise people will prevail in supporting some fear and just resolution to this situation

but maybe my hope is unrealistic there's what 34 armed conflicts or is that gone off recently I don't know approximately 34 armed conflicts going on.

Some of them we don't even pay attention to because we don't have sufficient people of that population in our culture. So here's where we are back to my tribe, my people. So if, for example, Canada has, I think, the largest percentage of Ukrainian people outside of Ukraine. We took in a lot of people through the years,

and it just so happened. Okay, so we have the largest percentage of the diaspora. At least this is what our prime minister has said recently. And so the people here who are from there are educating us on the situation or have family members who are fighting in that war. And so the local people get involved, the non-Ukrainian Canadian people can feel like,

okay, we know these people. There are our neighbors and their kids go to school with our kids. And, you know, we meet them in the clinics and the dentists waiting room. and we know these people so we can relate to them. They aren't the other. And then we can look at some of the places like, is it the Sudan, which is terrible civil wars and conflict and everything. But if we don't have any Sudanese people living in Canada,

we don't have that personal connection to relate more deeply. Does this make sense? I'm not saying that this is admirable on my or the Canadian population. populations, but it's just that the more we know people that we live with them, that we go to the grocery store with them, that their kids babysit our kids and go to school, we carpool with them, the more they're not other anymore and they become us. But isn't that, that sounds like a transference of unconscious bias, though. Like if you spend time with the training people, right?

Of course it is. absorbing other unconscious bias. Yes. Which is still otherness. Yes. Yes. And, okay, it's our awareness of that that's what we're doing. And we can either build awareness and humbleness and awareness of interdependency

without becoming politically involved. Right. Without becoming strident about issues that we don't know anything about. I think that is one of the most difficult things. that I see. I can only speak for myself. I don't think I'm alone in this thought. But the loudest voices seem to be coming

from the people who know absolutely nothing and very little about the situations. And I don't quite understand that because if I want an opinion or on an issue, I'd like to think that I'm listening to people who are close to the situation, educated on the situation, you know, why do people who've never visited the Ukraine have even opinions on it?

It's a kind of hard thing. I mean, opinions that they think that they know what's going on there, you know? Or, you know, so it's, this is more self-importance. Yeah. Instead of saying, you know what, I'm going to pray and send a lot of light to that situation because I realize or someone feels, you know, that they want to do some, fundraising in their book club or their you know whatever it is some group that they belong to or their spiritual center they want to raise some money and send some support some medical support when

the war in ukraine first happened we happened to have at the time um a person in our church from ukraine whose brother was putting on his army fatigues and going to be fighting okay and so what our church is we fundraised and we sent um per pact there was these additional medical supplies, okay, packages of medical supplies. And we sent, I don't remember how many, but we sent a whole half a cargo load full of those over, you know, thinking, okay, we can do that. We're not going to send bullets.

Can I want to buy them in Canada? Thank goodness. That's our job in the U.S. Yeah, that's your job. We send medical supplies and peacekeepers. That's the Canadian take on things, you know, and we get criticized for that. You know, why aren't we sending more bullets?

But it's not our culture. We don't carry guns in our culture. You know, who knows? Who knows? Everything changes after a while. Okay, we're back to it. So let's look at otherness, okay? I'm watching the clock tick away. There's seven main categories that research has identified

in which we will create or co-create othering. race or ethnicity. Somebody's a different race from us, a different ethnicity from us. Then that can plant us right smack into othering. Gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status. Oh, that's such a big one in our culture. Me, I have, you don't have. I'm not your friend then.

I don't like you, you're not my friend. You know, you're a different something or other. I won't hire you. I will do carpal with you. I won't let my kids play with you. You can't come in my house. Don't play in my backyard. I'll let my dog always cook on your lawn.

Okay. Yes. Seriously. Seriously, I think I've heard it all. Okay. Age, getting older, noticing ageism. Yep. And physical and or mental ability.

So that's the main seven categories in which we can puff up our self-importance and our sense of superiority and then feel very justified in practicing othering and otherness. So when, you know, Monica Williams, Dr. Monica Williams was, and this still is writing about microaggressions and paying attention and trying to educate the public at large about when you're doing this, that's how you're. people on the other side experience it, you know, and trying to awaken people to a sense of awareness. This is where, yes, self-importance in other things, what's really, I believe, at the root of all of that. But we all have it. Now, there's something so important to make a note on here, which is the biological aspect. It's almost part of the biological imperative, you know, the same as territory and breeding and, you know, food source and all of these things is there's a bio and we're hard-wired for it all of the research

if you look into the research and then you know they've done a lot with animals because it's so obvious with animals they you know the gorillas they beat their chest and they'll drive off anybody that isn't from their tribe or if one lone you know chimpanzee or something is trying to join a group they'll keep it very far away they'll watch it they'll run it off a few times we'll will do this. Birds will do this. It's like, no, you're not part of our block. Yes, you're still a Siberian crane, but you're not part of our flock.

And within the flock, you're not part of our family. So it goes family, flock, others. And so if this is in birds and creatures and animals, then are we foolish? Just think it's not enough. that there isn't some hard wiring in there, some part of our survival instinct, because it is part of the survival instinct, not trusting others

because we don't know what they're going to do once they come in the group. In the Salthadai, I mean, there's, no, I haven't been myself personally in this situation. I only visited this particular area and site the site of Mr. Inel's birth and not his birth, but where he died and his main community was and visited his crypt and some of the senior people there

but I never actually participated in any of the works there just our timing when we were traveling didn't work out but I do know quite a few people who have and they've told me the same thing. You know you can be a uniformed member of the Seltadain many years

when you arrive in their community if you wish to stay, they don't let you into the church in the works. There's benches and areas outside with a covering. Stay outside while they watch you. They want to see, who are you? What are you bringing into a sanctuary? What are you bringing into our sacred space? They see how you behave and you do.

Do you help? Do you, you know, one person described to me how it took many, many months. He went in, very humble, said he wouldn't be possible to stay. He was able to offer some donations for his stay. He's willing to help work. So they sent him cutting the difficult brush down around the edges. Perfectly happy to do it. Did it without complaint, you know.

It reminded me of the story of Jack Cornfield when he first went to his, Akachah, his teacher's Ashram. And he had to go and sweep the leaves on the path every day. And he muttered along an American rat, I have to sweep all these leaves for. And after a few days, he realized, oh, okay, that's why I'm sweeping nobody. I need to get over my self-importance. Yeah. The sweeping the leaves is beneath my dignity, okay?

It's not beneath your dignity. It's a very dignified task. It's beneath your self-reportance. And so this is how. they would deal with people coming in filled with self-importance, you know, just make sure they have humble tasks and see how they respond to the humble past. And if they respond well and they do, you know, graciousness and with dignity and with respect, then little by little they're allowed into the community and they're allowed into the works.

So this is kind of hardwired for that because how many times do we fling open the doors and let people in, especially in our society today. Where are these friends? No, we're not friends. I mean, I'm not talking about you and me. I'm talking about, you know, perfect stranger. You don't even know if that person is that person. That could be just some fake thing.

It's trying to worm its way into your life to take advantage in some way. You know, now that we're great friends, even though you think I'm a 30-year-old accountant, working at this firm who loves bicycling and her dog, Okay, and actually, you know, a scammer sitting in the basement somewhere and I'm going to get some scanning you. And so, you know, we in our current Western civilization society, we've lost a lot of that sense, balanced instinct about trust and mistrust. So we mistrust things that don't really need to be mistrusted.

and we willfully trust things that we should know better. We can have people saying one thing and doing something else, okay, and we don't pay attention to that. Whereas that's the one thing we should be paying attention to. We should be paying attention to people's track record with people and those responsibilities and duties that they've been given. And if we see that we invite them in and we give them the task of sweeping the leaves, then they don't sweep the leaves, and they bully somebody else to do it for them,

and they go and smoke a cigarette at the other side of the compound. Okay, do we really want that person in our group? So is there a place, is what I'm trying to say? Is there a place that does not have to be about superiority and self-importance? Is there a place where actually othering is actually part of an instinct, a survival thing, that we just need to come at from a different place, instead of a superiority in-group, inferior out-group way of looking at it, can we look at, yes, well, human yes, I can respect you,

but I've always said to people, I start with this much, respect and this much trust and it's on you to build it. I can respect you more. I can trust you more based on your behavior, not your words, but how you actually live your life. And that trust and respect that I start with can be diminished if I see how you live your life is not in alignment and harmony with actually what you say. what do you make of all of this? These are just my thoughts. I love it. It's, you know, it seems to me that so much of this unconscious bias are shortcuts or heuristics that we have because of not doing like the work for it.

You know, I, and no one teaches you the difference between testing someone for trustworthiness and othering them. Like that, at least I wasn't taught that difference growing up. But in my life, I. I can see it. I know when my cousin Betsy started dating the man to whom she's married now, Justin is a brilliant man. I love them both. But in the beginning, I was really mean to him because I was like, what are you doing with my cousin? Who are you? Why do you deserve to be around? And like, it scared him, you know, and I was trying to scare him away. But he never backed down. He's like, I think she's amazing. I'm like, why? But I would really challenge him in a way

because I love my cousin. And I would do that for all my little cousins or my sister. But We don't really learn that. Sometimes that's an innate thing, but people aren't taught the difference between testing for trustworthiness and othering. And there's a beautiful difference there. Yes, there is. And that's what we need to be educated on and to learn. It's not automatically trust everyone. No, it's start off respecting everyone and offering someone modest trust.

a modest trust and then that can be built on so trust and respect can be built on we can address our unconscious and conscious biases sometimes they're very conscious we were taught I hate that whatever that is

we were taught you know and we need to look at the roots of that okay my religion my culture my background my what have you my family ideology taught me to distrust and to hate that, okay, is it real? And do I self-examine? Like, why do I hate people I never met?

That doesn't make sense to me. Why do I automatically hate and not trust and try and malign a whole group of people just because they look different, dress differently, speak differently, have a different way of praying or of living their personal life? you know and and so that's where self-awareness comes in why am i believing these things so it all goes back to self-awareness so self-importance and self-worth self-worth the dean is a deep-seated sense and believe in one's personal intrinsic value regardless of external factors and in the words regardless of what we have or don't have so it's a healthy

grounded perspective on one's perception of self that includes one's strengths and one's shortcomings and limitations. Does that make sense? How can we transform self-importance and othering to healthy self-worth and compassion and humbleness? So first is, as I've said, recognize our own strengths and limitations. None of us are purple. We all make mistakes. And sometimes we're making the same mistake over and awarding. Embrace self-respect and self-responsibility. And no confusing, and they'll try to kid me that self-respect is the same as self-importance. Not buying it.

Don't try to run it by me because there's no sale. They're completely different. Cultivate awareness, humbleness, and the interconnectedness of the web of life. When we really recognize that I know. need you and you need me. I need all the people who do everything. I need the people who drive the buses and who drive the snow removal trucks and who work in the accounting departments to, and I need the big banks and I need the government and the provincial and the municipal and the federal, all levels of it. And yes, I would like more governmental efficiency. I think we'd all like

that. But no, I'm very sorry to say the example, but currently you're wonderful. country is practicing. Okay, Slush and burn. Okay. Okay, so I just want to say that the idea of government efficiency is really good is how to implement it, that maybe there can be different ideas on that, that maybe other options should be discussed and considered with a certain level of intelligent, educated oversight. Having said that, I do sound like I'm in the classroom, but that's what kind of.

Okay. Now, so we can transform otherness to unity. Unity that embraces individuality. Otherness can become unity. It embraces individuality. There's always going to be people that we like that. I'm sorry. And we like them because, hey, I love golf and you love golf. or, you know, I believe this and you believe that,

and you like this music and I like that music. And, you know, there's always reason there's kind of a vibrational fit with some people that we just don't have with other people. Even if we kind of want to like them or we kind of sort of do like them, but we don't kind of really want to spend much time with them because their vibration is completely off to what we're vibrating with.

Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. It's like I'm playing Mozart and you're playing, name some acid rock band I never listened to what? Led Zeppelin?

Led Zeppelin? Let Zeppelin was pretty awesome. Oh no, I like Led Zeppelin. That's a classic. No, yeah. I'm talking about those screaming, banging, burning a guitar and throw it on,

you know, rip around stepping for those people. It's just noise. So the vibration's different. Okay. And so that's part of respect. as well. We can respect each other's difference, but we don't have to like everybody and we

don't have to like someone to respect them. We don't have to like someone to treat them the same way we would like to be treated. And here we come down to the last couple of comments on it, which is a perennial philosophy. What every great spiritual teacher has tried to teach us, do as you would be done by. That's the bottom line on all of it. Is this how you would like to be treated? Is this how you would like to be spoken to? Is this the opportunity you would like to be given? Do as you would be done by.

That is a key piece in helping us to transform self-importance and otherness. Yes? Yeah, it's a beautiful lesson. It's a very beautiful lesson. I'm happy to hear it. And I know that there's definitely parts of my lap I can apply it to. And I think all of us can apply different parts of it to it and be more aware of what we don't know. Yes, of what we don't know.

And, you know, I'm going to go back to 1971, more or less, where I had these two LX2 experiences that in the end kind of merged into one. it's like very quickly even though they were two weeks apart or three weeks apart they quickly within a very short period of time just like one experience and part of that experience was

you know it was a question of this kind of unity of cosmic consciousness that I experience and I do very about this experience in my books and other spiritual experiences that I've had for those of you who are interested

and in this experience of unique oneness with everything, I opened my eyes and I looked at my body and I was looking at my hands and it's as if I could see into the entire structure and biology of my hand, my skin and the muscles and the blood circulating and my heart beating, like the level of awareness that is beyond understanding. understanding actually, you know? And so I'm looking at this fascinating experience of having this body. And then I realized that I have this, you know, we're so unconscious of so much.

Then I realize that, yes, I am, I do have this skin color. And this moment of cosmic consciousness at the same time as micro-consciousness, the cells of my body and the entire universe and it's like all of it is singing and humming and vibrating okay and i realize like there's absolutely no difference between me and people of any other ethnicity of any other tribe or clan or it's like we're all connected okay and from that moment any sense of otherness that I had from being a British, you know, born in 1949, came to Canada, you know, and Quebec was very kind of homogenous. I mean, it was kind of, you know, it was what it was, you know.

It's certainly Montreal that's infinitely more multicultural still to this day. But from that moment, I couldn't go back from that moment. It's not possible once you've had that level of deep understanding that there is no difference. Doesn't matter the language, the religions, the color of the skin, the absolutely no difference. On that level, and then on every other level, yes, of course there's differences. If I go to Japan, I can't speak Japanese. Okay. If I go to Peru, I don't, I, there's many cultural things, I won't be able to, you know, all the years that I travel to herself, I'm deeply aware of the cultural differences. And so, but they aren't differences that cause otherness. There are differences that are differences that awake interest in curiosity.

and discovery. And for me, that's the interesting piece. It is how do we turn that part? Because there is that part. Instead of looking at others with fear, how do we look at that with curiosity and interest and discovery?

Yeah. It seems like otherness is a mirror. Yeah, say more. Say more. Well, you know, I think it's, I've found that as I've gotten older, the things that I see in other people are a mirror to me, like especially the things that bother you about other people. Like you should pay attention to that.

Like if something really bothers you about somebody else, that's because that thing that bothers you is really in you. Okay, that's classic. That's classic Asagioli teachings. It's called the disowned self. Okay. Asioli, the, Italian psychiatrist, who's work I trained in, Roberto Isagioi, brilliant.

And he took these concepts and put them into such a simplicity that we can all understand them. It's called the disown self. I disown it in me, so I have to dislike it and disown it in you. Yeah. You know, you're greedy. You're jealous. Yep. You're just so self-important.

Yes, the mirror. We get to look at ourselves and go, yeah. Yeah. And so this is what I said earlier up about this is kind of an evolutionary process. Yeah. It isn't, you know, as you used it about compassion, we can't just flick a switch and turn on compassion. We can't flick a switch and turn on unity. These are things we have to be nurturing and caring for.

in our everyday life. And then it's there for us. You know, what I try to teach a lot of the, you know, people come in, well, my clients, my students, and then certainly this 30 years in the Santadain. One of the core things that I try to help them to do is, I teach them, and this is what my teachers taught me, you know, whether it was learn the yoga,

learn the breathing, learn the mantra, learn the chance, okay? Because then they're right there for you. You're sitting on the bus or the metro, you're in a plane and the turbulence or wherever you are. That prayer, that breath, is right there for you. And it's the same with attitudinal changes. You practice it on a daily basis.

You practice it. I mean, what year is it where Black Lives Matter and that dreadful incident with George, I think I've forgotten his last name. Floyd. Yeah, George Floyd, thank you. Okay, and that movement became very powerful. Okay, I asked a dear friend of mine, a person of color,

and I said, listen, this is what I'm doing. I can't see that I'm doing more than this. Are these the things on a simple daily basis that I can be doing? They're so small. you know, but it feels like something I can do. And she said to me, yeah, just keep doing that. Okay. So it was always making sure that if I think,

I know this is going to sound ridiculous. If I came to a stop sign, normally I'm pretty good if a person to my right goes first, okay? But I will let almost anybody go first if they're a person to come. It's just like giving that extra thing. I will give way on the sidewalk with a smile. I will make sure I hold the door. I will make sure I look people in the eyes and smile, even if I'm just walking along the street and they're walking their dog or their child or pushing the stroller.

And I see, because I'm an old white lady, which I hate, I'm not white. I don't hate that. It's beautiful. Yeah, no, I hate that I'm assigned as being white. I don't feel white. When I'm asked on forms, you know, where it says, I fill in,

Anglo-Saxon, okay, me too, I have a race, okay, I have an ethnicity. Right. Not just a skin color.

That's what I don't like as being boiled down to the skin color. So in all these tiny little ways, you know, holding a door, letting someone go in front of me, even if they're younger than I am and more able than I am at this point,

you know, looking people right in the eye. These are all strangers, looking people right in the eye and smiling. Yeah. Okay? And some people, the expression on their face is surprise. It's just surprise.

No, please go first. Oh, you only have two items. It's okay. You go ahead and you. You know, it's all these tiny little deal things that are saying, I respect you. I see you as another human being, just like me and I respect you.

Does that make sense, what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I do a good one. I want to share on with people that I do that really helps me. It always brings a smile to the person I'm talking to. Like wherever you go, like if you go to the grocery store or you're getting something somewhere and you're having an interaction. Like, it was at the grocery store the day.

And I always say, hey, thanks for working today. And you just look at them and say, hey, thank you for working today. And so many people would just go, what? Yeah. Every cashier. Every cashier I go to, I look them right in the eyes and I say, good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you very much.

How's your day? I mean, I don't get in some long complicated conversation. I don't want to know their family history or what their boyfriend did yesterday. I'm not, I don't have space for that. But I'm acknowledging them that, hey, you're doing your job and thanking them. Thank you. Go and have a nice day, you know. Yeah.

And this kind of respect and, you know, how I was raised, this was normal that you, it was called courtesy. I was raised in an era where you showed courtesy to others, where you showed kindness to others. On that note, I'm going to tell you a wonderful little story that I think is fun. My former husband, it's been interesting three years. First of all, my former husband, father and my children passed away, and then a year later my mother passed away, and then in January and my husband, a partner and husband of the last 30 years passed away, so it's been like one, two, three. And I hope I'd like a little pause now before the next. Okay.

Anyway, my first father-in-law, okay, he was a real gentleman. They were raised very much in the style that I had been named, and they had this beautiful home in Ottawa. It was called Maple Lawn, and a beautiful home and grounds, and it was right by. the river of the canal and the lawns went pretty much down to where there's this walking pass. And so it's not, it wasn't so much, they had the hedges and everything around, but there wasn't some big steel fence up or anything because it was right sitting in the middle of National Parkway, okay? It was still kind of a private home for generations.

And so they had, you know, were pretty getting senior when I was there. And there's this wonderful story about it was going to be a wedding. It wasn't our wedding, but it was a wedding of one of the other brothers at the house that day. And early in the morning, Roy, Rochester Sr., and my former father-in-law got up in the morning, and he realized that it had been foggy the evening before, and a little tent had sprung up, not quite in the back garden, but pretty much bright in the back garden. So he took out a silver tray and a couple of glasses of orange juice and went and he stood beside the tent and said, Good morning.

And the tent, Blackwell, and so here's Boyd, Rochester, in his morning suit. Like, you know, a morning suit is not a tuxedo, but it's a very fashionable British wear of her weddings. He's in his morning suit with this silver tray with some glasses of orange juice on and he says, good morning. You know, offers them this and they're like stunned. I really didn't wish to disturb you, but you are in our back garden and we have a wedding happening in about an hour and a half. So I will have to ask you to, you know, tidy up and move along. Okay. That's courtesy. Yes.

That's what courtesy looks like. I know, instead of going out and screaming at them or calling the police or something, okay, it was foggy. They didn't realize. They set up their little tent. There's two young college kids. know, probably that story went down on their children and grandchildren, you know. Sure. That's what courtesy looks like.

Courtesy looks like self-respect and respecting others. It looks like politeness. It looks like acknowledging people, acknowledging the work that they're doing, acknowledging the place, the important place that they have in society. Everybody has their role in society. And every job has value and every person has value and it's up. could each of us to recognize the worthiness of others? Yes?

Yeah, there's a lot of lessons. I better wrap it up my days disappearing. Always an enormous pleasure to hang out with you and talk about things that have deep meaning in our lives, share stories. And thank you so much for, you know, letting me hang out with you today. I'm always blessed that you get to spend time with me. So thank you. I'm always blessed that you allow me. me to spend some time with you. So thank you for that. And to all the audience. So it's always a pleasure.

And to everybody with the sound of my voice, go down to the show notes. Check out Dr. Jessica's new site that she has up. Do yourself a huge favor and check out both books. They're guidebooks. And you won't read them once. You'll store them and you'll have tabs and they'll be underlined. And they will serve as guides. And for me, they serve as moments of clarity. So thank you very much for it. And I hope everybody goes down to the show notes, checks out your site, reaches out to you if they're curious. I think you are available for speaking. And I love talking to you. So thank you very much.

Everybody with the sound of my voice, I love you guys too. Have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha.