Dr. John Demartini The Keys to an Extraordinary Life

[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 1:31) You are now listening to the Here for the Truth podcast hosted by Joel Raffidi and Erasmus Stilionesis. All right everybody, welcome to episode 57 of Here for the Truth podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Raffidi with my fellow co-host Erasmus Stilionesis and this is an episode today that we're both incredibly excited for. In the house we have Dr. John Demartini. Dr. John is a world-renowned specialist in human behavior, a researcher, author, and global educator. He was just recently selected as top human behavioral specialist of the year for 2020 by the IAOTP for his outstanding leadership and commitment to his profession. Dr. Demartini is the founder of the global education organization, the Demartini Institute, which has over 72 courses on self-development, life mastery, and leadership in its extensive curriculum. Dr. Demartini's knowledge is the culmination of over 48 years of cross-disciplinary research. As an educator, he travels full-time around the world addressing both public and professional audiences in media, talks, seminars, consultations where he teaches people self-governance and how to develop their leadership and empowerment in all areas of their lives. He has synthesized over 30,000 books. He's the author of 40 self-development books, including the bestseller, The Breakthrough Experience and The Values Factor. Dr. Demartini, such a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for being here for The Truth. [Speaker 1] (1:32 - 1:35) Thank you. Thank you for having me. I was looking forward to it. [Speaker 2] (1:35 - 1:52) Yeah, likewise. If you don't mind for us, just to give us a bit of your backstory, some of the major rites of passages you experienced in your life and really those culminating events, which I guess put you onto the path and the journey of self-discovery and also education and helping others as you are. [Speaker 1] (1:56 - 6:20) Well, I'll do a briefer version, but I was challenged as a child, learning challenged. I was told in first grade by my first grade teacher that I would probably never be able to read, not be able to write, not be able to communicate effectively, probably not go very far or amount to much. I had a speech impediment, I had dyslexia, had an arm and leg deformity. So I had a bit of a challenge at the beginning, which I'm very grateful for, because all the things that the teacher said I wouldn't do is what I ended up doing as part of that. I guess I was a dyslexic. So whatever they said, I did it everything backwards. So that just made sense. I ended up making it through elementary school by asking kids, smart kids questions, because if they would tell me stuff, I tend to retain a bit of that, but reading was not working and writing wasn't doing so well. I ended up at age 12, my parents moved from Houston, Texas to Richmond, Texas. We went into a farming area, really low socioeconomic area. And I didn't have a bunch of smart kids to ask questions to, and I ended up failing. I dropped out of school and left home at 13, became a street kid and lived in a bowling alley, lived in a diner, lived in a park, lived in cars, because in those days they didn't lock cars, you could just hop in a car sometimes if it was cold. And then I eventually at 14, I hitchhiked out to California because I wanted to go to California and I picked up surfing in Texas, but Texas wasn't the surf capital. So I went to California, down into Mexico, illegally. They're trying to keep people out of the board, I was sneaking in and out without paperwork. And at 15, I made it over to North shore of Oahu to surf. And I wanted to ride big waves because school was out and I wasn't interested in that. And I lived under a bridge first, then in a park bench, then a bathroom, and then an abandoned car and eventually a tent. And I became a big wave rider. And I rode big waves and got into some surf movies and surf magazine and surf books and stuff, and rode big waves with some really good surfers. And then I ended up dying almost at 17. I came really close to a death process and almost drowned and also had strychnine and cyanide poisoning. And in the recovery of that, I was led to a little yoga class where a guest speaker was speaking named Paul C. Bragg. And when he spoke the night I listened to him, he was talking to me. I mean, what he said was just, I was at the right place at the right time to meet the right guy, cause he said something that made me think, wow, I have more inside me than I realized. Maybe, just maybe I could overcome my learning problems, learn how to read and speak properly. Cause deep inside, I really didn't want to be the one that was ignorant and a dummy, cause I had to wear a dunce cap when I was a kid. And I never thought I was going to be intelligent, I believed the teacher, except I could do surfing, I could stand on a surfboard. I was good at that and throwing a baseball. But that night after listening to him speak, I thought, wow, maybe I could overcome my learning problems and learn how to read and speak properly. And someday, someday become intelligent. And that was like a dream to be able to be actually intelligent. And I always, at that time, I thought a teacher was intelligent. Cause you know, that's what you, in that age teachers are the people that know things. And so I had a dream that night to become a teacher. And I knew I wanted to travel cause I love traveling. So I wanted to be a teacher that traveled the world and taught what I learned and try to do what this man's doing for me tonight for other people. And my life changed that night. And that led me to a new trajectory. And here I am 50 years later, it's actually 50 years now, going on the 50th year and I'm now traveling the world. I've spoken in 163 countries and reached literally billions of people now. And I've just never gave up on the dream. And I try my best to help people realize that deep inside you, you have something extraordinary that you want to contribute, give yourself permission to go after it. Don't let anything on the face of the earth stop you from it. [Speaker 3] (6:22 - 7:11) Dr. Demartini, that's absolutely just amazing. And I want to just want to bring up something because you know, you're an educator and you love teaching. And one of the first things you said kind of hits close to home. My wife was told in first grade that she pretty much, she would never go to college because she had dyslexia and she ended up getting two master's degrees and just finished her PhD. So I want to ask you a first question when it comes to education, what is it in a person, in a teacher that would say that to a child, as opposed to looking deep within them and understanding the gift that's there to want to uplift them and let them know that anything that they want in terms of if they put the work towards is possible. Like what is it with our education system that you think that's an issue? I just want to go to that just because it popped up. [Speaker 1] (7:15 - 9:44) Well, I'm very grateful for that teacher. I never got to see that teacher again. If I did, I'd give her a huge hug because I think that put me on a journey that I needed in order to do what I did. I don't think I would have been able to pull that off if I hadn't gone through that journey. I had to leave home, be a street kid and be a surfer in order to get that experience. So I always say, anything you can't say thank you for in life is baggage. Anything you can say thank you for is fuel. So I am grateful for her saying that. I don't see it as an error. I see it as a void that she was generating in me. Now she was basing what she did based on the knowledge she had and the beliefs at the time and the strategies that were available. And she was trying to, she told my parents, look, because when I used to have to wear braces from age one and a half to four, I had to wear a clunking brace on my left arm and leg. And I didn't like that. And it was very constricting. And I think my desire to travel the world, I mean, I even travel full time as you know, I think had something to do with those constraints. So the voids in our life become our values. And so, you know, she was seeing that I had, you know, learning problems, but when I got out of those braces, all I want to do is run and be on the run. And so she saw, you know, that at lunch, instead of going out and just talking to people, he runs back and forth between these two soccer ball things. And he just runs, doesn't matter if anybody's with him, he's just running. He just wants to run because he can run. And so she said, look, he's probably going to do better in sports. He's not going to make it in school, find a sport he can do. So she cared. She just didn't have the resources to come up with strategies at the time of how to get past dyslexia. What's interesting is that void of the constraint was a gift. Because now I've traveled the world. I live on a ship that goes around the world. I've flown 20 million miles. I, you know, I've been to 163 countries speaking and more traveling. So, you know, I'm a firm believer that those are not mistakes. Those are perfections. And, you know, you don't want to compare your life to a fantasy about how it should have been. You want to honor the way it is, build from that. And so I'm grateful for that lady. She didn't do anything that was out of order. She did exactly what was necessary for my destiny. [Speaker 2] (9:45 - 9:47) So do you believe in coincidences? [Speaker 1] (9:50 - 10:54) Well, coincidences, when two lines join together, kind of, you know, like a synchronicity of these things happening. Yeah. I think that there are some events in our life that we just sit there and go, wow, how in the heck did that match up so perfectly? So yeah, I think when you're living congruently with what you really value, you notice the synchronicities and congruencies of your life and coincidences in your life that are even more synchronous. You're aware of it. Sometimes you're just oblivious. You're not paying attention to the magnificent things that are going on in your life and not seeing it. But when you get present and you're doing something you really love to do, you notice these things. So I believe that there's amazing synchronicities of why things can happen and how they happen. And I say to myself, you know, the universe is my playground. The world is my home. Every country is a room in the house. Every city is a platform to share my heart and soul. And I'm always at the right place at the right time to meet the right people, to make the right deal, to help me fulfill my mission on earth. So I'm a firm believer that it's all in order. It's all on the way, not in the way. [Speaker 2] (10:55 - 11:36) Man, I absolutely love that. And your whole journey speaks to something which I consider very important. And you mean that is this idea of the hero's journey kind of thing. You know, like we're all born with some kind of purpose, some kind of potential, some kind of underlying mythos or mythic journey, which we're on, which we begin to tap into as we go through life. But something about, I guess, our modern society or contemporary society, I feel is squashing or diminishing that spark or that spark of the mythos within the individual today to really connect and align with their hero's journey. What do you think about that? [Speaker 1] (11:38 - 13:47) Well, I think it was Ernest Becker, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who wrote the book, The Denial of Death. And he said that in order to deal with our perceptions of death and our fear of extinction, if you will, of our identity, we identify either with a collective hero or an individual hero path. And it is like a mythological path. The individual hero path is like the mythological path. And I think that that's true. And I think most people will subordinate to the collective and they'll fit in and they'll identify their identity through the herd instead of being heard. And they'll be the sheep, not the shepherd. And they'll subordinate to the outer authority instead of becoming the authority. You know, Ralph Waldo Emerson said it, my envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide. Don't be second at being somebody else, be first at being you. And Ayn Rand called it the unborrowed visionary, being willing to be the unborrowed visionary. So I'm a firm believer in being, you know, the unborrowed visionary. And Einstein said my contempt for authority, my contempt for authority is what made me the authority. So I'm a firm believer that if you live by what your highest value is, what's truly most meaningful and inspiring to you, you're automatically going to wake up the individual hero and you will be ridiculed. You will be violently opposed. You will get resistance. And that's a sign you're on your path. If you're not being crucified, you're probably not on purpose. So that's because the majority of people are going to want to fit you into the box. And if you stand out as the hero's path, they're going to try to put you back in the box. But if you go into the box, you've lost your identity and you became part of the collective. So I'm a firm believer in giving yourself permission to create an extraordinary life, not an ordinary one, to make a difference, not fit in, and give yourself permission to prioritize your life and live by the highest priority and delegate everything else and give yourself permission to do something extraordinary. And I want to exemplify that. I want to do that in my life. And I feel I've been blessed to live that. So I'm a firm believer that that's what's possible for any human being that's willing to make the decision to start prioritizing their life and do so. [Speaker 2] (13:49 - 14:57) Yeah. I mean, drop the mic right there. And, you know, I, this is another proof to me that synchronicity to me is everything, you know, Erasmus and I, in fact, are about to launch a group coaching program called Rise Above the Herd, which is literally designed to deprogram people from these ideas of collectivism and to own their individuality and live a life of exalting themselves, you know? So my friend, you've just hit every, you just ticked every box that's on our mind right now. Absolutely. And collectivism more than ever is becoming more prevalent as we go down this path, you know what I mean? And the way mainstream society is presenting itself at the moment, more important than ever, do we need an individual solution and people to turn their gaze inwards and really focus on what they value and what they want to achieve and to shut out the noise and, you know what I mean, go for broke. But I know this is a big topic in the brief talks that I've seen you give. Why do most people not know what they value and what is, what is preventing them from being realistic about their values and taking steps towards that? [Speaker 1] (15:01 - 19:21) Yeah, that's a great question. Thousands of years ago in anthropology, we supposedly were the hunter and gatherers, right? I mean, imagine the first man and woman, Lord knows how they manifested. We got to, you know, it's a very interesting question. Did a man and woman show up at the same location and find each other? I mean, these are interesting questions anthropologically. But let's say we start the first mother and father and they have some children and you start a little, you know, a family and, you know, you've got to survive out there. And then you end up running into another family somehow, or maybe through incest somehow other families come about, cause you got to go to the first parent and children. And then now you got a little kinship and then you get a, you know, a clan and then you end up creating a tribe. And then you end up, you know, creating a first community of sorts. And everybody starts to slowly differentiate these specialties. You know, you, maybe you make rope and maybe you are cooking, and maybe you make the bows and arrows, or maybe you flint or something, you know, people start doing different things. And the more they start to differentiate and start to create sort of a social hierarchy, the more they become dependent on other people. And so there's an instinct that we won't do well on our own in comparison to fitting into the group. And so we develop an instinct of avoiding being rejected and we have an impulse to try to fit in as a survival strategy. And this is part of our animal amygdala response that we end up having run our life. And most people as they go along and societies develop have that so embedded in their consciousness to step out of that is frightening, because you're going to be abandoned from the group and exiled into oblivion and possibly die because you can't do it all your own. So that's way wired in deep into our psyche for thousands of years. And all of a sudden you come out and you have, you're born with a completely unique set of values. It's completely fingerprint specific. No two people have the same set. And you to live authentically according to the true hierarchy of values is automatically going to be distinctly different than the herd, the collective. And so that's frightening. And very few people have the courage to do that. There are less than the 1%ers that have the courage to be the Nobel prize winners and think differently and originate ideas and be the great leaders and stand out and be ridiculed and stuff. But what most people do is they'll subordinate to the herd and brain offload decisions to the herd, because they don't know the risk reward ratios of their own decisions versus the herd, because the herd has been doing it. That must be the way to do it. It's tradition. It's convention. That's what you do. But having the courage to innovate and create is a rare thing compared to the average person. And so we have this built in anxiety about going against the herd. And this is the biggest challenge that people face. And the moment you look up to people, you'll minimize yourself and you'll be too humble to admit what you see in them inside you. And then you'll play small and doubt yourself, go into your amygdala and you'll want to avoid the pain and seek the pleasure. And the pleasure is fitting in. So you want to be praised and you want to avoid being criticized or rejected or exiled. So this traps people. And this is something that's evolved over thousands of years. And the individual that can go inside and look at what they spontaneously do and what their life is demonstrating really important to them and have the courage to stand out is an absolutely essential mechanism to evolve cultures, to innovate and create new things, or otherwise we stagnate. We're completely stagnant. And this is essential. So the individual that does that, they are going to get ridiculed. They're going to be violently opposed, but there's a part of them that can't lose their identity. They want to be an individual soul. They don't want to be part of the herd. And that is the individual that is the unborrowed visionary. They have the courage to walk out. And that's because they live accurately according to their own highest value, not fitting in. And the identification of what you really value and looking honestly with introspection and reflection about what's really important to you and giving yourself permission to pursue it is the hero's path, the individual hero's path. [Speaker 3] (19:21 - 21:10) Yeah. You know, one of the first books I ever read was, uh, Siddhartha. So hearing you, hearing you talk, it makes me think about walking the Siddhartha road and, and going on that individual path and, and saying, Oh, I know this is how I was raised and this is my family. And these are, you know, these are my experiences, but we know what's outside the walls of the castle, you know, or for many, obviously not a castle, but what's outside the walls. And if I do take that path and, you know, that's how it was for me. You know, I grew up in a, my parents were Greek immigrants, you know, they came to this country, to the U S to provide for me in a certain way. And, and, you know, a lot of first generation children, they tend to just kind of stay close to home, not all the time and, and kind of just, you know, follow, follow the tradition of the family. And, you know, for me, that wasn't it, you know, I had kind of had a little bit of that urge to travel and I've spent some time traveling and backpacking around the world for over a year and a half. And so, you know I just appreciate that. I appreciate that the individuality and to say, you know what people are going to look at you and they're going to say, well, why are you going to go study abroad in Australia? Or why are you going to go travel there? It's dangerous. Or why don't you just stay close to home? And it's just that inner, you can't, you can't ignore that inner voice, you know, within that's telling you that there's something awesome and amazing. And that if you take the next step towards that, maybe it's in the unknown, you don't know what's going to happen, but then what comes from after that and then what comes after that, before you know it you're living this vital full life where you're, you're experiencing things and you're maybe making quote unquote mistakes, but they're not mistakes because you have an opportunity to grow and evolve and expand even more. And it's, it just becomes more and more awesome. And I just, I just love it. You know, people, people that are on that path or on that road or on, are fully invested in that hero's journey. They're my kind of people, you know, I love it. I love hearing the stories. Even before we got on right now and you were telling us a story about 20 years and where you're living and it's just awesome. [Speaker 1] (21:11 - 23:01) Well, I relate to the Siddhartha. My mom gave me that book when I was 18, when I first started learning how to read. And that path was obviously my path. I mean, I could really relate to it. Jonathan Livingston Segal, she gave me another one. Then she gave me the Ernest Holmes book on the science of mind. And I started getting all these interesting books, but I was a, I wanted to hitchhike. When I was three years old, my parents said, you got to stay inside the boundary of the yard. Well, I was, of course I was like, Mr. Magoo, I didn't hear that. I said, go, go explore. So I was walking out, you know, going down the street, they were chasing me down the street. I'd run, I ran down in the gutter, you know, in the sewer, but I couldn't go. And I ran through all the sewers in the city and just started exploring the underworld. And then when I was nine, my dad made me pay for clothing, food and rent in order to pay and live at the house. And I had to do landscaping work in the yards and pull weeds around the neighborhood in order to pay for that. And then I got a bicycle. And then I started riding a bicycle 35 miles in different directions. When I was 12, I started hopping trains to different cities because I really loved running and hopping onto a train and riding it to the next city and then riding it back. And then when I was 13, I hitchhiked to different cities and 14 I hitchhiked across America and down into Mexico and Central America. And I was an adventurous kid. So I relate totally to your journey. At 15, I was living in riding giant waves in Hawaii with some of the top surfers. So I was not meant to do the herd. I was meant to be the individual and I was left-handed dyslexic. That's the perfect thing to wake up and find out that you are, you know, you're destined to do something different by that. So I'm grateful for my life because I was willing to go and do something different. I didn't fit into everybody else. I'm grateful for that. [Speaker 2] (23:02 - 23:59) Same here. It's yeah, it's, it's, it's unbelievable. And like, there's so many different layers of collectivism and collective, which and collectives, which hold people back on so many different levels. And I guess the one that we're tapping on now, which gets close, most close to home for most people is, I mean, that indoctrination of the family, you know what I mean? You may go stay close to the family, the family knows best, do what suits your father, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And just by the time someone gets to the age where, you know, they, they, they're tired of it and they want to do something on their own and have a new experience. It's almost like there's this guilt, right? That overcomes them now all of a sudden in their psyche, it's saying, hang on, am I an immoral person? Am I a bad person for going against this, this, this idea of this concept of the family or the tribe or the community, or am I wrong for making a decision that is beneficial to myself, even though, you know what I mean? The collective might see it as against them. [Speaker 1] (24:01 - 27:22) Yeah. Well, I love the question. I, when I was 18 and I first started reading, I asked my mom, I said, well, I was told by Paul Bragg to say to myself, cause I told him I didn't know how to read. I didn't, I couldn't do it. He said, that's not a problem. Say to yourself every single day, this one statement and it will change your life. I said, what's the statement? He said, say, I'm a genius and I apply my wisdom. So I started saying, I'm a genius and I apply my wisdom, didn't know what the hell that meant. I just kept saying it. And then I came to my mom and I finally came back to Texas. I said, well, what exactly is a genius, mom? She says, there's people like Albert Einstein and Da Vinci. I said, well, then give me everything you can get me on those two guys. And she got me this book by Albert Einstein. I started to read it with a dictionary. And he said, I'm not a man of my family. I'm not a man of my community. I'm not a man of my city. I'm not a man of my state. I'm not a man of my nation. I'm a citizen of the world. I live on a ship called the world, by the way, that goes all over the world. Now, then I read Epictetus talking about Socrates from Plato. And he said, I'm not a man of Corinth. I'm not a man of Athens. I'm a citizen of the world. In those days world meant universe, because that was the geocentric world at the time. And I always felt that that's my destiny. The world is my, I say the universe is my playground. The world is my home. Every country is a room in the house. Every city is a platform to show my heart and soul. That's how I see life. And so I said, instead of, you know, walking room to room, I fly room to room. Instead of talking to somebody, whispering to somebody, I use Skype and WhatsApp or whatever to communicate. And I've trained my kids to be global. Because I always say the greater the overview effect, the less you judge. And the narrower the mind you have, the more local and tribal in thinking you are, the more judgment and prejudice and, you know, subjective biases you have. The more global and more universal your perspective, the greater your life. And Seneca, the Roman poet and politician said, you measure an individual by the most distant ends. The end is the end in mind, the chief aim. What exactly is, how big is that thing? And I always say, if you want to make a difference in yourself, you need a vision as big as your family. If you want to make a difference in your family, you need a vision as big as your community. If you want to make a difference and be a leader in your community, you need a vision as big as your city. You want to be number one in the city, you need a vision as big as your state. You want to be a leader in the state, you need a vision as big as your nation. You want to be a national leader, you need a global vision. If you want to be a global leader, you need an astronomical vision. Our soul calls us to astronomical celestial visions. Our senses narrow us down to a terrestrial little tribal thinking. And giving ourselves permission to be our most authentic and brilliant self is allow us to see beyond it, the barriers that we get caught in on these things. And Bowen and his psychology said, one of the biggest resistances people doing to be self-actualized is the trap of the family, of the mother, the father, the preacher, the teacher, the convention traditions of the individual groups, one of these dynamic levels. So giving yourself permission as a Colberg in his psychology of moral development says, give yourself permission to transcend that, and allowing yourself to be who you are. At first, they're going to ridicule you, but the very people that ridicule you, the very people that later rally around you for doing it and wishing they had the courage to do it. [Speaker 3] (27:24 - 27:24) 100%. [Speaker 1] (27:26 - 29:17) Man. It's incredible. You know, as Schopenhauer said, and Gandhi, there's three or four people that said basically the same thing. First, they ridicule you, then they violently oppose you. Then they try to destroy you. And then eventually they go and they honor you. Welcome to the game. Einstein did that. He had a teacher named Philip Leonard and Philip Leonard was a Nobel prize winning physicist. And Albert Einstein was around 19 years old. And he was listening to the teacher and he was kind of bored in the class. And he then goes, wait a minute, that's not right. And he challenged the teacher. And the teacher was absolutely appalled by that. And because he had the Nobel prize, Albert Einstein was correct. He found a flaw in his teachings. And if he was to expose that, he might lose the power he had and influence. So he was worrying about losing his position because somebody that stands up with a new idea was challenging him. Turned out that Albert Einstein was accurate. He wasn't. So he went out of his way to try to eliminate and literally assassinate Albert Einstein. He was friends with Adolf Hitler. And Adolf Hitler had literally an agenda to kill Einstein because he didn't want to expose the flaws in his teachings and his positions. And it was really interesting. It's a really interesting story if you go and do it, but Philip Leonard. But Einstein said, he says, if all of a sudden God discovers something that doesn't match what I've discovered, I feel sorry for God. He wasn't interested in anthropomorphic models. He was interested in a universal intelligence. He said on a daily basis, it's enough for me on a daily basis to explore the intelligence, a panpsychic intelligence that permeates the universe. He was a much more vast thinker than much of his teachers at the time. And they ridiculed, they tried to violently oppose him, but he's the one that eventually left his immortal mark in here because he was willing to, he said, my contempt for authority is what made me one. [Speaker 3] (29:18 - 30:19) Yeah. You know, and you just, you hit the nail on the head earlier. You shared one of my favorite quotes of all time from Schopenhauer, which is like all truth passes through three stages. First, it's ridiculed. Second, it's violently opposed. And third, it's accepted as self-evident. And it just goes to show you again, the relationship between the individual and the collective is the individual of course, is going to, is going to think new ideas, is going to challenge the collective is going to challenge consensus viewpoints. And we see this over and over and over again. You can even relate it to our current world. You know, you can relate it to every single industry when it comes to innovation and it's just nothing shifts. And yet, even though people know this, even though people understand this history, when you're in it, depending on the person's state of consciousness, they're either going to align with the collective or the herd. And they're going to come out there with their pitchforks. They'd be like, you're wrong. How dare you challenge us? Or not. And I just, I just find it absolutely fascinating how that just shows up in time and time again, you know, and I'm only 41 years old. [Speaker 1] (30:22 - 32:20) I learned a long time ago that for every criticism, there's a praise and never see one without the other. When somebody is knocking me down, they're actually helping me become authentic. See if I puff myself up, I need criticism to get myself into authenticity. If I beat myself up, I need support to build myself back to authenticity. There's nothing going on in life on praise or reprimand that's not helping me be authentic. So thank you. So the criticism is a sign that I'm a little puffed up and I'm not respecting my communication and their values. I don't need to subordinate to them. I need to learn how to communicate what I do and what is inspiring to me in a way where they win. And then if I do that, I get to do what I love to do freely. And so I take the criticism. The criticism is a sign that you're actually going and doing something novel. I had a gentleman who's a professor here that is a Yale professor. He's a very articulate guy, very bright guy. And the first time we chatted, he was the authority and was talking down, he's older and everything. And I challenged him and I caught him in some of his little blips, right? I found some blips in what he was saying and I confronted him and he says, well, no, that's not true. This is mumbo jumbo. And I pulled out the internet and I started to give him the documents and everything else. And all of a sudden he goes, oh, and then we became more friends and equal, right? And now we have incredible dialogues. But first he was like, wait a minute now, you're not what's normal. You're an oddball. You're not fitting into my model about how people are supposed to be. And I, and I said, no, no, no, I'm not here for that. I'm here to be me. And now he's like close friends. He said to me this morning, he said, anytime we're having dinner and you happen to be there and you're not having dinner with somebody, you come and join us. His whole perspective. So first he criticized, ridiculed, tried to challenge and so forth. That's a normal process, normal process. Mediocrity always wants to, you know, cloud the opportunities for great minds. Well said. [Speaker 2] (32:22 - 33:24) Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about, if you don't mind the proliferation of these collectivist ideologies now being, I guess, subordinated in political spheres, right? Be it socialist ideologies or communist ideologies, which really at the end of the day are just propounding this morality of altruism, right? And we live in this realm where we think altruism is the highest virtue. And anything I do for someone else is good. Anything that I do for myself is bad. Like do you believe that these ideologies are just something that are proliferating by themselves in order to keep people within a container and trapped and not really rise, not really be the best of themselves and not express the most of their ability? Or do you think on some level that there is some kind of, that there is a, there is a, there is a control mechanism of some extent, which is intentionally perpetuating these ideas to keep people small? [Speaker 1] (33:25 - 37:42) Oh, I love you. That's a great question. That's a deeper question. Whenever you're living by your highest value and you're very congruent, your introspection within is very high. This has been physiologically shown. And you listen to the subtleties of your physiology and psychology, the symptoms and your intuition to guide you into authenticity when you get perturbed by any external perceptions. If you don't do that and live by lower values, you overlook your subtle feedback of your physiology and psychology, and you now depend on sociology and theology. And sociology and theology is going to promote traditional moral hypocrisies to trap you, to automatically keep you within governance, because they need to have a sheep to be governed. There's a great little video online. If you look at it, priest says no hell. You might want to look it up, priest says no hell. And it's a scholar in Catholicism that they're asking about the idea of heaven and hell. And he was saying that it was an invention in order to create people, to create guilt and make them feel easily disempowered so it's easy to control. And politics uses moral hypocrisies and religion use moral hypocrisies, anthropomorphic religions particularly, in order to keep people under check. What's interesting in the book that William Burr wrote, The Contradictions of the Bible, because society has complementations of pairs of opposites of value systems, for every person that supports something, there's something that supports the opposite. And there's a law of heuristic escalation as you promote one, the other one grows to keep things in balance, one to build, one to destroy because remodeling and transformation is what evolution really is about. You need these pairs of opposites. And so if all of a sudden the biblical writing has both morals for both of them, in The Contradictions of the Bible, it says this thing and it says just the opposite, that way both sides can get the Bible and use the Bible for its advantage. And he showed very carefully in this book that they use that as a way of mass marketing to get the people involved so it's easy to govern. So if you basically say that a moral hypocrisy, an idea that nobody can live by, be nice, never mean, be kind, never cruel, be open, never closed, be peaceful, never wrathful, be one sided, nobody can live that way. When you support my values, I'm like nice as a pussycat. You challenge my values, I can be mean as a tiger. I'm not a nice person. I'm not a mean person. Those are personas. I'm a human being with both potentials under different settings. So to try to get rid of half of myself and love myself, it's contradictory. I have to own both sides of my life, be the whole and allow myself both sides without having to judge it. So we get trapped in moral hypocrisies, which disempowers to make us feel guilty. And therefore we look to the herd to save us because we blame ourselves or blame things around us. And we look for the herd to save us. So the politics and religion use these tools as a way of keeping governance and easy management over the herd. And the question is, are you willing to transcend it? Kohlberg's work on psychology and moral development outlines this. The first lowest level of moral development is punished reward. That's an amygdala response. The second one is subordinating to mothers, fathers, teachers. That's the second one. The third one is subordinating to the collective, from individual authorities to collective authorities. And there's mores, traditions and conventions. And the final one is transcendence, where you realize that that's all just a particular power that you subordinate it to. Whoever has the power sets the rules and values of society and they go down from the most powerful to the least powerful. The people at the bottom live deontologically by duty, and the people at the top live by design and create their reality. The question is, is where do you want to go? All of my work is about how to transcend those limitations and get on with your living and set your own values and empower yourself and live by design, not duty and default. And people have the capacity to do that, but politics and religion is not designed for that. It's designed for managing the whole, the society, because the society is frightened to live individually. [Speaker 3] (37:45 - 38:06) Yeah. I just love the words that are coming out of your mouth right now. I really appreciate it. I want to talk a little bit, cause we keep talking about values. Like how does one determine their value system? Like really uniquely theirs as opposed to again, like, oh, what is the collective value? Like, what are your thoughts on that? [Speaker 1] (38:08 - 41:21) Well, anytime you hear yourself using imperative language, I got to do this. I have to do this. I must do this. I should do this. I ought to do this. I'm supposed to do this. I need to do this. You know that's an extrinsically originating value. Somebody that you've subordinated to and fear the loss of and depend on. So you've got, that's a guarantee. When you're doing something you really love to do, you're inspiring and you're enthused doing it, you now have a value that's intrinsic. Everybody has a hierarchy of values and the thing that's most intrinsic, there's a spontaneous action from within, the calling, the telos, you know, the metier of the human being. And that is an intrinsic thing. And so your life demonstrates what's truly valuable to you. And you have moral conflicts whenever you try to live outside that and try to fit into all the people. There's an automatically, what they call a super ego masochistic attack within yourself. You'll judge yourself not fitting in. So what I do is I look at how you fill your space, because you will unconsciously fill your space with things that are valuable to you. I look at how you spend your time. You'll find time, make time, spend time on things that are truly valuable to you. I look at what energizes you. When you're doing something high on your values, your energy goes up. When you're doing something low on your values, your energy goes down. I look at what you spend your money on. You find money, make money and spend money on things that are valuable. You don't want to spend money on things that aren't. I look at where you're most organized. You tend to bring order to things that are valuable to you. You tend to have chaos around things that aren't. I look at where you're spontaneously disciplined, where nobody has to remind you to do it, you just do it. That tells you what you value. I look at what you think about, visualize an internal dialogue with yourself about how you would love your life to be that shows true evidence of coming true. Not something that has no evidence, not something you don't want. I'm interested in what you actually would love that shows evidence, because that's the thing you'll persevere and you won't stop until you achieve it. I look at what you consistently want to bring the conversation to extrovertedly when you're in social settings. I look at what it is that brings tears of inspiration contemplating when you get to do it and look at the people who bring tears of inspiration when you get to interact with them. I look at what the most consistent persistent goals are that are coming true in their life that they're dreaming about working towards and achieving. And I look at what they spontaneously want to learn and what they want to study and watch on YouTube and want to study. If I look at that, there's a pattern, it's a common thread. I've been doing it for 40 something years. I've done it tens and hundreds of thousands of people. It's a very powerful tool. It's free on my website, dr.demartini.com. And simply taking the time to do that is eyeopening. But most people when they're answering the questions, they won't answer the question. They'll answer their idealism because they're afraid of actually breaking away from the herd. So I have to make sure to ask, don't write what you think it should be, write what your life demonstrates. Imagine a drone looking down on your life and looking at what is your space really filled with? Not what you wish it would be, not what you hope it will be, not what it used to be, but what is it right now? What are you really spending your time on? Honestly, let's videotape you for 24 hours a day for three months and look at where are you actually spending your time and be honest. And you'll see that it's pointing you in the direction of what's true. [Speaker 3] (41:22 - 41:54) Yeah. This is why, again, you bring up the term honesty, like radical self-honesty, awareness, really looking at yourself and being truthful, you know, like do I really want this in my life or am I doing anything to get it? Like in a previous incarnation in my life, I was an actor. Now I loved studying acting, I think partly because I loved the study of the human condition. I love the study of the mind and human behavior, but I wasn't doing much to try to get acting work, you know? So it's like, was that a reality? Was that a value for me? [Speaker 1] (41:54 - 42:21) You discovered that you wanted to know human behavior and you wanted to share anything to do with human behavior. And you were fascinated by people who are playing out roles of human behavior. Absolutely. That's why you and I are connecting here. And we're all connecting because obviously you both love learning and studying this stuff and you're scholars in that area. And that's my life for 50 years. So yeah, we have that in common. We have a similar path. [Speaker 3] (42:22 - 43:09) No, no, of course. And it's just cool. As time went on, I had to be honest because I was identifying as like, Oh, I'm an actor. I'm an actor. When I wasn't, when I was really like studying and reading books on health and wellness and personal development, it's like when you said before about like what lights you up and what you get drawn to, that was the stuff I was getting drawn to. But I had to be honest and look in the mirror and be like, well, do I really want to be an actor? Or do I care more about like introspection and really understanding the nature of my human psyche and who I was and you know, what were my parents were like and what behaviors that I get from my parents. And then how then because of that, was I interacting in relationship? And then did I want to learn from that and then share that with other people? You know what I mean? Like I started realizing that was it more. And that the acting and training of acting was the stepping stone was just part of my journey. Just like you were saying before, you know. [Speaker 1] (43:09 - 44:09) It's a means, it's a means to an end. Cause it allowed you to get interact and do the research on people. Well, I'm a firm believer in just being really radically honest with yourself about what's really your life's demonstrating. And my life demonstrates that I teach every day and I research and write. And so I've delegated, I learned a long time ago, don't do desperate things. Don't do low priority things. Give yourself permission to do the very highest priority one, the one thing as Gary Keller says, the one thing that you want to be the greatest at stick to that and delegate the rest away. So I haven't cooked since I was 24 and I haven't driven a car in 32 years. And I have a pilot and I have a captain and I have cleaners and I have cooks and I have, I delegate everything. You know, even, even when I go to my girlfriend, I said, look, I'm not a specialist in lovemaking. That's not my area of expertise. So I'm going to give you George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Gerard Butler, and they're going to take care of that for you. And I've yet to see them ever upset with that. They're always, Oh, I love you even more. So they appreciate that when I do that. [Speaker 3] (44:10 - 44:17) Listen, listen, if you ever find yourself in Topanga Canyon, I love to cook. So I'd love to cook a meal for you, Dr. Demartini. [Speaker 1] (44:17 - 44:28) Well, that's perfect. I would delegate that to you because you love doing it. I would say, don't do desperate things. Do what you love in life. Otherwise, how are you going to be appreciative and grateful for your life? Yeah. [Speaker 3] (44:28 - 44:29) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (44:30 - 45:55) I'm loving this conversation. One of the, one of the primary things, particularly in my own experience when we talk about values and what I find is keeping people trapped is this whole sentiment around money. Right. And this whole conditioning where money is evil, be it thousands of years of conditioning through the Bible or Hollywood or whatever it might be. You may always the rich guys or the bad guys, the people with money or the bad guys are the ones trying to destroy the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you get to the work of an iron rand and you learn about objectivism and you know what I mean? Her, her hierarchy of values, obviously is man qua man survival being the highest priority. And you look at it and you see for me to survive, I need money. So for me to have an adversarial relationship with money is literally for me to have an adversarial relationship with life. This is my means of survival. So, so, so to speak, you know and just in particularly in my journey, for the majority of my years, I'm 31 now for at least 25 of them. You know what I mean? I was pushing away money. I didn't want anything to do with money. I was raised as a Jehovah's witness, very fundamental dogmatist, for example. You know what I mean? So yeah, can you speak on that a little bit, the money indoctrination and the conditioning and you know what I mean? And even I guess pure capitalism as a means to a hierarchy of values as well. [Speaker 1] (45:56 - 49:55) Well, I mean, I think the organization that devalued the idea of money is the one that had the most money on the planet image. It's kind of kind of irony, you know, the largest organization with the biggest wealth is the one that said it's more blessed to give than receive. I never bought that, bought that because if it was more blessed to give than to receive, the people receiving are cursed. So they don't get to give, you know, so I don't think that's working. So, you know, I think that's a whole bunk. What is true, the only thing that I've seen that's true is sustainable, fair exchange. And so I like to think of it this way, spirituality is expressed in materiality, spirit without matters, you know, expressionless, matter without spirit is motionless. So I like to think of it this way, if you want to live an inspired life, it's the mastery of money that makes it. And here's how, if you exaggerate yourself and puff yourself with arrogance and look down on people with resentment and puff yourself up and minimize them and exaggerate you, you're going to be care less to them. You're going to care less about their values than yourself. You're going to wake up a narcissistic side. You're going to try to get something for nothing. And you're going to want them to live in your values. And that has automatically guaranteed to create hubris and pride before the fall and humbling, because you're not going to have customers. You're not going to have employees. You're going to have a revolution. You're going to have a, you know, a teamsters union formed. You're going to have a revolution fighting you because it doesn't work. And it never has. So puffing yourself up with elevated self-esteem and narcissistic, that doesn't work. Then if you minimize yourself, like Ann Wren said, she said in one of the things that, you know, altruism is sort of a suicide state of your own being. And it's not a self-actualized state. So you minimize yourself and exaggerate somebody. Like if you infatuate somebody, you'll go, Oh my God, I don't want to lose them. I'll sacrifice who I am to be with them, at least initially until you've built up enough resentment to say, I want my life back. What you'll do is you'll altruistically give and that's not sustainable. And you eventually get, I'm pissed off enough, damn it, I want, you know, what's in it for me? You eventually get that. And so that eventually gets lifted up. You know, pride before the fall, humility before the rise, and all it's doing, the whole world around you is trying to teach you to get into sustainable fair exchange. That's all it is. Every symptom in a business, I just did a presentation to entrepreneurs and every symptom in a business is trying to get you authentic. Every symptom is trying to get you to be living most objectively, according to your highest values and be authentic. That's where you maximize potential in business and fair exchange and money is maximized in that place. So money is a reward for sustainable fair exchange done with authenticity. Bang. So there's absolutely nothing immoral about wealth building. What's actually immoral is the two extremes, greed with narcissism or altruistic sacrificing and minimizing of self, and then becoming dependent. Cause the altruistic people eventually have a hidden agenda. I would say altruism is compensation for shame and guilt of the past and a hidden agenda of social welfare entitlement. And narcissism is compensation for pride and self-righteous of the past with a hidden agenda of philanthropy, having to give it all back. So neither one of those are in fair exchange. The fair exchange is the center point. And I did a presentation in Austria at the Milk Abbey about this in an Abbey with a bunch of monks and stuff and talking about this. And they just sat there going, oh my God, we've been told to condemn money, but actually it's a measurement of authenticity. If it's really mastered. Greed isn't and sacrifice isn't, but just sustainable fair exchange is a sign you care about another human being equally to yourself. And you have pure reflective awareness where the seer, the seen and the seen are the same. And you're not trying to get something or give something for nothing. You're giving something for something in a fair exchange. You're giving both people the opportunity to make a difference, make a contribution and be rewarded. [Speaker 2] (49:56 - 50:29) Yeah. Oh man. I love it. Like Ayn Rand exemplified, obviously the trader, you know, the T-R-A-D-E-R, not trader, the trader is the highest ideal. And, you know, it just hits home in so many ways. Like we just, we expect things for free. We build resentment with one another, you know, but literally when you, when you perform to the best of your ability, according to a hierarchy of values and you create value, and then you trade value in exchange for other things that are valuable to you. Like, isn't that why we're here on the really, the essential level? [Speaker 1] (50:30 - 51:59) That's it. That's it. I mean, when you look at it, the very idea of money, you know, started out with, with, you know, shells and various types of things, and eventually became coins, right? And heads of cattle first and coins, and then it became, you know, paper, you know, and then it became electronics and then eventually photonics. And it became more efficient as we go along. So we can do instantaneous transaction. Cause anytime there's a lag between give and take, you automatically have inefficiencies. So there's automatically an evolution to try to create the most sustainable, exactly fair exchange as possible. And the mastery of that is the mastery of life for that matter, because anytime you try to get something or give something for nothing, if you try to get something for nothing, people don't want to do business with you. If you try to give something, you don't want to do business with them anymore. When you actually do something for something in a fair exchange, you both want to continue to go down there. And that's the path of the transactions and productivity cycle. See the non-zero sum game is the productivity cycle that maximizes productivity in society. The zero sum game is the trade, not the transaction, but I get something you lose, you get something I lose. Those don't last. They're non-sustainable. But what is sustainable is buying a stock in a company that infuses capital, that gives people the opportunity to make a more efficient service to people where it serves people at a lower cost, everybody wins. And that is a sustainable system. And anyone that does that becomes fortunate. [Speaker 2] (52:05 - 52:17) Every part of this episode could be a snippet for sure. So based on that, let me ask you this question. You don't have to answer it. What are your thoughts on tax? [Speaker 1] (52:19 - 57:14) What are my thoughts on tax? Well, when I think of tax what pops to my mind is an ant farm. Believe it or not, an ant farm. And you're probably thinking, what? An ant farm? I studied ant farms and I found out that 7% of all the ants in the ant farm are unemployed. I found out that they, cause you've seen you probably walked in a field somewhere and you see an ant carrying this big load going down the path. And then you see this other ant wandering around just aimlessly, just looking around, looking for, they're searchers, right? Trying to search and find their path in life. And then you've got others that are sitting on the side and wiping off sweat and they're pretending to be busy. Kind of like if you drive down the street and you see 10 guys watching another guy dig with a shovel and they all have a shovel and they're all taking turns to dig a hole or something, you know, in the society. So you find out that some people are that way. And then they found out that in the most ancient times, there's a good percentage of people that are very young and very old that are not able to provide service anymore. And so there's a certain percentage of people that are going to be unemployed that are legitimate. And we found in the ant bed, you found the same ratio as you find almost in humans. And then you realize that they have to store grains or store goods. They're called the first fruits. That's what they originally called them to make sure that those people are taken care of in society, because we don't want to lose our grandparents. We don't want to lose our kids. We need that in our social structure because there's wisdom in one, and there's the future in the other. So they automatically set aside 10% because they found out the bull weevils and the other bugs and everything else wipe out about 3% and they need 7%. So 10% became the tithe, the first fruits that were there to take care of people. Well, when originally there was a kind of a tribal leader who was kind of the religious and politician together, you know, the king or whatever. But eventually those differentiated and the church and state kind of separated and religion and state kind of separated. And so one took on the same tradition and the other took on a tradition. One became taxes, one became tithes. And right now, the state needs the religion. So they kind of work together. They need both of those systems in order to guide people who can't govern themselves. If you can't govern yourself, you need people to govern you. So that's where taxes came in. So part of it is an essential component of society. Now the question is, is how they manage those taxes. And this is where philosophical debates come in. And how much are those taxes? And this is again, based on efficiency. And I think that if people were not, if you were trying to make people disempowered and easy to control, you also have to push them and motivate them. And you got to charge more taxes because there's less efficiency. So if we allow people in more of a, not exactly an egalitarian structure, but a little bit more egalitarian and sometimes the social structures we develop, we allow people to be inspired by what they do. They want to contribute. They contribute their percentage. We could actually get by on probably 10 or 20% tax, a minimum tax, and probably run the show if people were willing to do it. But when people are unfulfilled and not doing what they love, they go into their amygdala and they get addicted to lust, greed, you know, power, control, and everything else. And so people like myself and yourself are trying to educate people on how to live self-actualized lives and inspired so they're not letting the amygdala run society's structure. So is there a necessity for taxes? I think so. Is there a necessity for 50% taxes? Absolutely not. Can that structure in a society be done with more efficiency? Yes. And it all depends on the social idealism, but when people are living by their highest values, they're more balanced. When they're not, they're more into entitlement and pride and entitlement and government owes me things. So what we do is we have social structures based on whether or not people are engaged. So my job is to teach people how to be engaged and inspired and self-sufficient so they're appreciative of contribution, but at the same time, they're helping people have jobs and opportunities so the taxes don't have to be put up at extremely high levels because of inefficiencies and unfulfillment and dependencies. If every human being were to save just a small portion of it, the government wouldn't have to put social security systems in place, but people don't have self-governance. They don't understand the value of money. They've been falsely taught that money's evil. And so they end up, the government has to take more to set it aside because you can't set it aside for yourself. So there's a by-product of not living by highest values driving these social structures. And I have a class that I teach on the social structures, the evolution of social structures, because of this, because that's why I boil it down to living congruently, according to what you value most and being the most objective, because there you have the most neutral, most fair exchange, state of mind, and you're most likely you want to care about another human being as a reflection of self. [Speaker 3] (57:15 - 57:34) Yeah. It comes, again, it comes back to the individual. Like how do you change these large social structures? Well, if each individual is elevating their values, then it's like this butterfly effect on some level, you have more and more people that are changing themselves as individuals that are looking in the mirror first, and then that's going to have an impact on society. [Speaker 1] (57:35 - 58:13) So we have way more power to change the world than we think. You know, it's interesting. We don't give ourselves permission to be the one that actually makes a difference. But the truth is, Margaret Mead said it beautifully in her anthropological background. She said, if we look carefully, we find very carefully that the people that made a difference in the world, were as one individual that created a little following of a small group, and they stayed with something long enough to make a difference. So don't underestimate the significance of a small group of people for making a difference. That's the only thing that ever made a difference in the world. One individual leader with a small group who persisted and didn't give up on their objectives. [Speaker 2] (58:14 - 58:36) Yeah. Like something I say often is that you can only serve another, if your cup's full. But the problem is we have people with empty cups trying to give from depravity. And so they're just creating this entire cycle of resentment when no one's actually, I mean, it feels though, they can give themselves permission, as you would say, to fill their own cup, you know, and then actually be of service and actually feel good about contributing. [Speaker 1] (58:38 - 59:25) In the second century, the Christian heretics, the Gnostics said that there was Kenoma and Pleroma. Kenoma was emptiness, Pleroma was fulfillment. Kenoma came from judgment in the terrestrial world, the world of trial, down below in the underworld. And the celestial state was the love and fulfillment of love. And so their mission was to do what you love and love what you do, the people you love and you have fulfillment and not Kenoma. Because every time you judge, you're too proud or too humble to admit what you see in others inside you. You've got disowned parts, dismembered parts, deflected parts. Those disowned parts are called voids, emptiness. And we don't have fulfillment when we judge. We only have fulfillment when we love. And to demonstrate love is to have sustainable fair exchange. That's what love is. [Speaker 2] (59:28 - 59:54) At the same time, do you feel like as though the whole concept of judgment can be weaponized for the altruist morality? For example, if I can't, if I can't judge you, then how can I then determine what's right or wrong? And so then people end up in this zone of, I guess, moral greenness, all of a sudden where they can't discern anything for themselves. They can't make any decision for themselves. Because if I point the finger at you, then I'm exposed myself. [Speaker 1] (59:55 - 1:04:29) Yeah, but there's something transcendental about that. I transcend it to moral hypocrisies because what I did is I went to the Oxford Dictionary 37 years ago, actually, yeah, 37 years ago now, I can't believe it's, I'm going on 68 now. And 37 years ago, I went to this Oxford Dictionary, the largest dictionary I could find. And I went and I went through every page cause I'm neurotic. I went through every single page and circled every possible word that could be human behavior, you know, nice, mean, kind, cruel, honest, dishonest, deceitful, you know, caring, uncaring, every possible trait a human being can do and I circled it or underlined it. And then I wrote out to the side, the behavior that I had, I wrote out who do I know that is the most extreme example of that, that I can think of. I wrote their initial out there. Then I went inside and introspected and I asked, okay, John, go to a moment where and when you perceive yourself displaying or demonstrating that same or similar specific action, trait or inaction or behavior. And where was it? When was it? Who did I do it to? And who perceived me that way? And I went through 4,628 individual traits. And I found out I had every single one of them in my life. And when I finally realized that, I realized that the only buttons you have in the world are the ones you disown. So anything you disown, you're too proud or too humble to admit, that people are going to hook you with. They're going to hook you with a hero or a villain side. And you're going to praise or reprimand them. And I realized that that's my moral hypocrisy. My moral hypocrisy about good and evil is based on me not owning all the traits. The moment I owned all the traits, I don't react. I don't judge. I go and try to understand their reality and understand where I do that. Because when I realize whatever I see in them inside me, and then I ask the question, if I'm doing it, I must have a motive for doing it. And if it's on the planet, it must serve a purpose or it would have gone extinct. What's the purpose of these traits? And I realized that sometimes these moral hypocrisies trap us into thinking we're supposed to be only one sided and we're trying to get rid of half of ourselves. But you're not going to do that. And the same thing in society, we're supposed to be only one sided and we're supposed to get rid of half of ourselves. But you'll find out as Montaigne did as he traveled to the world and studied looking for a universal value system, it was none. For everything that you've labeled, in South Africa, the Zuma, the president had nine wives. In America, you're put in prison for that. There it's honored. In France a number of years ago, everybody smoked. In America, you were being fined if you were smoking. So when you go and study these things, you realize that there's a transcendent state that goes beyond the moral hypocrisies. And it's a place where you can actually love people for all the above. And in that state, you don't need to be governed by outside morals. You're governed from the state of fair exchange from within. And the self-actualized state doesn't do things, it doesn't do it because, Oh my God, I'm going to be punished if I do that, or I will be bad if I do it. It's not extrinsically driven by punishment and rewards. It's intrinsically called because it's the thing that allows the maximum fair exchange and fulfillment. And people acting from that transcend the moral constraints of the rules that are being set up. They don't need the rules on the outside. They have the golden rule on the inside, and that's the transcendent state. And people have access to that. So until we have that awareness in people, people are going to be subordinate to whoever has power, who sets the rules in society. The Pope, if you're Catholic, Bill Gates, if you're a businessman, Bezos, maybe it's Buffett, if it's finance, whoever has the most power sets the rules in society that other people subordinate. The question is, is where do you want to play in the game of life? If you don't empower all seven areas, you're going to be overpowered. If you don't empower yourself in intellectual, you'll be told what to think. If you don't empower yourself in business, you'll be told what to do. If you don't empower yourself in finance, you'll be told what to work. You don't empower yourself in relationships, you'll be told how to do things around the house that's uninspiring that you could be delegating. If you don't empower yourself socially, you'll get misinformation and propaganda. If you don't empower yourself in physical, you'll be told what drugs to take and organs to remove. You don't empower yourself spiritually, you'll be taught Aristotle and Ptolemaic constrictions of anthropomorphisms. But if you actually empower your life, you can transcend all of those constraints and rules and give yourself permission to walk a path of self-actualization and honor. And there you know that the only thing that allows you to have fulfillment is doing something you love and doing it with somebody you love and it's sustainable fair exchange. And that is something that goes beyond all the moral constructs. [Speaker 3] (1:04:31 - 1:05:29) All I gotta say is I can't wait to re-listen to this podcast episode again, because there's some definitely nuggets of gold that I love. And you know, you talk about something that started a big piece of my consciousness journey. You know, there's a term disowned selves that, you know, I don't really hear a lot of people talk about it. And in my, my mid twenties, actually my acting teacher trained with Drs. Hal and Cedric Stone. They developed something called voice dialogue in the psychology of the selves. And they talked about this idea that, you know, the thing, the people you over admire, the people you judge are reflecting disowned aspects within yourself or undeveloped aspects in yourself. And so there's this idea of standing between the tension of opposites, you know, where it's like, Oh, I can identify with this one way of being. And yet at the same time, there's something either repressed or undeveloped within myself. So how can I embrace all of myself, my subpersonalities, these different parts of me. So then I don't project them onto other people. So then I can see people in the world that go, Oh, I know that part of me. I know that part, you know, I behave that way, just like that experiment you did. [Speaker 1] (1:05:30 - 1:06:27) I always say, whatever somebody says about me, it's true. It just may not be in that context. And I learned a long time ago, I only resent people that represent a part of myself that I'm ashamed of. And I only admire people that represent a part of me that I admire in myself. And they're just reflections. And many times we project these reflections onto others and think it's out there. And we live in a causal world, which is kind of the Buddhist karmic world. And instead of an a-causal world where we realize that this is just our own perceptions. It has nothing to do with what's out there. It has everything to do with our perceptions out there. And we have to be owning our perceptions. If we have control of our perception, decisions, and actions, we don't have control out there, we have control of that. And so I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a good or evil person. There is simply an individual. And my job is to discover that and love them. Don't put people on pedestals. Don't put people in pits, put them in your heart, and then you'll have fulfillment in life. But everybody you put in pedestal pits is going to make you not be authentic and you will have unfulfillment until you eventually love them. [Speaker 3] (1:06:28 - 1:06:58) It's fascinating to think about, you know, and again, like when we talk about a greater awareness or expanded consciousness, you know, like the, I find the more parts of yourself, the more of the universe you've explored within yourself, have accepted within yourself, it allows you to be more successful, whatever that means. Or let's say this, respond appropriately to the situation based on the circumstance, you know, because you tap into those different parts of you. So I value that for sure and it's definitely helped me. [Speaker 1] (1:07:00 - 1:09:19) We become ourselves to the degree that we make everything else that we ever perceive as ourself. So whether it be the subatomic world or the astronomical, the quantum world or the general relativity world, no matter what it is, the classical world or the quantum world, it's all us. We have that all inside us. And when we finally embrace all of that, we get to be that self-actualized state. And so I'm a firm believer. I've studied the quantum level and have discussions on quantum. And I also have astronomical. I write books in all those areas because it's all me, as far as I'm concerned. There's nothing missing. And the Bampa Lama, when I was in Nepal, conversing with the Bampa Lama, who used to run Nepal and before that he ran Tibet, that culture before the Dalai Lama was even conceived of. It was interesting. We had a conversation and he says, nothing missing, nothing missing. And I said, exactly, nothing missing. Whatever I perceive is a reflection. So nothing missing in me. Micro, macro, all between. The universal law is reflected in the love of all things. So I'm a firm believer that transcends that. So when I see somebody that I judge, I immediately leave them displaying or demonstrating that I admire or despise them. I go, go to a moment, John, where and when you perceive yourself displaying or demonstrating the same specific trait in action to the same degree, quantitatively and qualitatively, go to a moment when I perceive them doing it in that moment, how did it serve me in my highest value or disserve me if I'm looking down or up at it? Where I did it, how did it serve others or disserve others to dissolve my pride and shame? Cause those are not my authentic selves. Where do they do the exact opposite? So I break my label that they're always that way or mostly that way, cause they're not, they have the opposite side too. At that exact moment, whenever they're doing things, who's doing the opposite because the universe is maintaining a pair of opposites so you wouldn't have perceived it in the first place. You can't judge something as positive without contemplating the opposite at the same moment, your mind won't allow you to see one without the other. And if they were to be the way you fantasize it would be, what would be the drawback to crack your fantasy? Cause you're not going to appreciate people if you compare them to a fantasy ideal about how they're supposed to be. You're only going to love them when you honor them for the way they are. Seeing things om tat sad as they are, not as they're supposed to be, is liberating. [Speaker 3] (1:09:20 - 1:09:21) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:09:21 - 1:10:22) Reality. Getting a little bit of technical difficulties, your visuals in and out, but we can still hear you. So it's all good. Just letting our audience know. Yeah. I mean, this is a, this is, this is, this is very interesting conversations. It's new horizons. I mean, it's happened some places that I've been and places where I am. And I mean, when you were telling us the story about the ants, you know, I could definitely identify with all four of those ants. I've been in all four of those positions and acted in all those ways. Certainly. You know, personally, personally for me on my current place that I am in, in my journey, you know, I guess we all have work to do, obviously, but for me like right and wrong is becoming more obvious, you know, and good and evil is becoming, is becoming more obvious on some level that that distinction, but at the same time, I do, I do understand the level of your thinking and where you're coming at it from. [Speaker 1] (1:10:24 - 1:17:31) Well, if you look very carefully, it takes a narrow mind to make a moral judgment really, when you stop and think about it, because nobody knows the consequences of any action. If you study consequentialism, you realize that, think about something like 9-11. Do we really know all the pros and cons of that? No, there's a heroes that came out of it. There's a, the death rate from, from the suicide rate dropped, the traffic fatality rate dropped, the overdose rate dropped, the number of deaths in New York that month was the same. So other forms of death stopped. So we didn't pay attention to that. We would just assume, Oh, that's an evil event. And now they got a beautiful new building and new engineers on there, flowers are doing it. If we stop and look at every possible thing on there and all the wrongs that happen and all the repercussions of the CNN coverage and all the people and all the businesses and everything else, we're going to find out that that's an event. In quantum theory, all things are events until somebody with a belief system with a subjective bias labels something good or bad about it. So I find it productive to sit there and start with the idea and have a self-evident idea, well, that's a bad thing, or that's a good thing. I start with the idea of it's an event, where the two sides transcend the label and now work with that in far as human behavior. I found that way more productive than to be boxed into an idea. Well, that's what that is. That's a bad thing, or that's a good thing. Never found that to be true. I found out that I've worked with all kinds of things that people have gone through from killings to rapes, to murders, to you name it. And when I go in there and find it, I look at on a collective scale, I find that there's a bigger picture going on, way more than our first meets. And we have to have a narrow mind to make that bad or good. But if we actually look at a bigger picture, we understand why that's occurring. And when we understand that, it may have nothing to do with what we think is there about good and bad. It may be something major over here that's addressing the whole society. And that to me is where I'd rather play there, where I'm looking at the bigger picture. And then what I do is I go back there and then I can talk to the individual that's the murderer or whatever, and understand and work in his world and find out his or her viewpoints and understand what's going on and what's the person that's actually got murdered and what's going on in their family dynamics. And I see a completely new way of looking at life when I do that. And it shocks people at first because they go, Oh my God, well there is just black and white. No, there isn't. There's no evidence of that. There's evidence of that in minds that are refusing to look beyond that. And that keeps people stuck because as long as we don't love events, we keep creating them. This has been shown. I had a very crazy situation. I was doing the Breakthrough Experience in Ireland, and there was a gentleman in from the government that was attending, and he watched me transform these people's lives by changing their perceptions, right? By asking them new questions and having them see things they never saw, that was unaware of. Afterward, he said, you know, our government needs to have a conversation with you. So they organized a meeting for the president and her husband, Martin McAleese and Mary McAleese. And I sat there in the green room, if you will, or the little tea room there at their white house. And they said, you know, we've been in victim mentality now for decades and decades and decades from the English and the Northern and Southern iron conflicts and everything else. And it's not working. We need a new model. So I came in there and I said, let's do a pilot study. And I took three murderers and three people who've lost their sons and husbands who got murdered. And I put them in a room with some Catholic nuns and the media and some people from the government and some psychologists watching. And I said, all right, what we're going to do is we're going to take the three murderers that are over here and they're being isolated in this one area and these other people that they murdered. So here's the killers of their families, the husbands and sons. And I have a Demartini method, which is a method of asking new questions. And I had the girls, the ladies, the mothers do the method. And I had the guys do the method on these people, the people that they wanted to kill and the people that killed them. And we spent five hours doing that till one o'clock in the afternoon. And we softened the judgment because I had them go in and look at where they've done the same behavior and own it and find the benefits and everything else. And I helped them do this with one of my facilitators. When they got through the energy was lightened. At first, when you walked in, you could put a knife in the room and it would just sit there and it was highly tense. And there was some fear and there's security there and everything else, because they did this pilot study. At one o'clock, we then came back and I decided to take the one woman who had her husband and son at death, got killed by the man who was sitting in the room. And we had her up in the front of the room and we did a grief process, because we only grieve the loss of the traits we admire in the person. We don't grieve the loss of the traits we despise. And we only grieve the gain of the traits we despise. And so I understand what grief is and I know how to dissolve it. And so I asked her a series of questions and in about an hour and 45 minutes, we cleared the grief of the son and the husband. This had been going on for almost 16 years. We dissolved it. When she got through, I said, who here represents your son and your husband? And we pulled up some surrogates up there and they shared their heart, an open heart and thanked them. When she got through, she walked over to the guy that killed her husband and son, put her arms around him and said, thank you. Her husband was a drinker, used to be aggressive to her. Her son was getting in trouble, causing her all kinds of craziness and sleepless nights. When they got killed, she got freed from that dynamic. She ended up marrying a new man who's now wealthier, new opportunities. She's now noted in PR because of her notoriety of the story. And she now has a new son, a new life, a new things like that. And she realized that she was actually liberated from something and she was praying, praying to be able to be freed of that in her life. And this guy came into her life to free it. And so when she got through, she went over and thanked the person and there was tears of gratitude at that moment. And all of a sudden this judgment that had been going on for 16 years, poofed. There was nothing but tears in their eyes of everybody there. There was nothing but tears and there was gratitude going on. And I said, this is what's possible. You can sit there and keep this thing going for decades after decades and blame and be angry and morals and everything else. So you can transcend it. Anyway, that was a major breakthrough in their thinking process at that point. And so I'm a firm believer in asking new sets of questions to transcend those boxes that are very narrowed instead of, because if we have an event in life we think is terrible, a day, a week, a month, a year, or five years later, we find out there's blessings in it. Why have the wisdom of the ages with the aging problem is why not look right now and find the other side of the equation? Because when you're resenting something you're conscious of the downside, you're unconscious of the upside. When you're infatuated with something you're conscious of the upside, you're unconscious of the downside. But when you love something you're conscious of both sides. Mindfulness. Yeah. Dr. Demartini. Pardon me. They've come into my apartment now. They're helping me clean up. [Speaker 3] (1:17:31 - 1:17:51) No worries. This is perfect timing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And really appreciate you. But real quickly before we close off, can you just let our audience know, I mean, we'll have everything on our show notes, but where to find you, anything maybe exciting that's going on right now? Any offerings we'd love to hear? [Speaker 1] (1:17:53 - 1:18:16) The best thing to do is just simply go to drdemartini.com, my website, and go on there and do the value determination process. It's free. It's private. It's complimentary. Take the time to go on the website. You can browse the website. You can stay on there for the rest of your life. There's so much information on there. It's valuable. But do the value determination process. It will definitely give you an eye-opening introspective view about the magnificence of who you are. [Speaker 2] (1:18:19 - 1:18:29) This has been one of my favorite conversations out of all the episodes that we've done. I'm grateful to have shared this with you. And thank you so much. That's all. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:18:29 - 1:18:30) Thank you. Thank you. See you next time. [Speaker 2] (1:18:31 - 1:18:32) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:18:32 - 1:18:37) All right. Look forward to it. Thank you guys both. Bye. Take care. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. [Speaker 2] (1:18:39 - 1:21:05) Guys, that was episode 57 with Dr. Demartini and wow. Definitely some massive eye-opening dialogue in there for both of us and hopefully for you too. Dr. Martini is currently aboard the world ship where he has lived for 20 years. So we apologize for the technical difficulties during that one. If the visuals were blurry or the audio was coming through a bit muffled, but we hope that the message was received. We completely wholeheartedly agree that values are the way to go and understanding your values and prioritizing your values and making direct action based on those values is super important to you being the best of who you are. So I absolutely implore everyone listening to heads of Dr. Demartini's website and go through his value quiz and I'll be doing the same myself. Most certainly. Hereforthetruth.com. You can go there, you can subscribe, stay up to date with all our episodes, all our previous episodes, which for new listeners, which contains so much wisdom from so many previous guests are available there as well. Yerasimos and I have our own offering coming out shortly. This will be launched next week. It's called Rise Above the Herd. Rise Above the Herd is an eight week transformational group coaching program where you sit with us for eight weeks individually and in a group setting. And our intention is to help you to understand the nature of these ideologies that is keeping you trapped within the herd and then to help you deprogram from them and then activate your true potential as an individual. If that's something that is of interest to you, you can now, at this point, head to riseabovetheherd.com.au to learn more about the course. You can hit the apply button and we can consider your application and potentially have you join the program. It is something that will be limited. We're taking in a maximum of 15 people for this eight week journey. And so I'll leave that with you. riseabovetheherd.com.au if that's hitting home on any level whatsoever. Guys, thank you so much for listening to our podcast, for supporting our podcast. We're 57 episodes deep and we're so grateful to share this with you. Love you all. See you next time. Save you two busy snooze and I'm in a DeLorean.