2 Questions to Find Your Purpose in Life | Lynne Twist & Marie Forleo

we're all kind of guided we all have a kind of in in our innate uniqueness something that's ours to bring ours to do ours to commit to and I say that a commitment or we also call it a stand is not something you can check off and accomplish or actually even take credit for so that's an important distinction here it's something you can contribute to it's larger than your own life starring you hey it's Marie forleo and welcome to another episode of the Marie forleo podcast and marietv the place to be to create a business and life you love I cannot tell you how long I've waited to have today's guest on her first book made such a huge impact in my life and today she's here to talk not only about that but also her second book if you're someone who's interested in a life of making an impact if you're interested in having abundance in its true form this is a conversation you do not want to miss lindtwist is the author of the best-selling book The Soul of money and founder of the soul of money Institute she's been a featured speaker for the United Nations Beijing Women's Conference state of the world forum and synthesis dialogues with his Holiness the Dalai Lama Lin's latest book is living a committed life finding freedom and fulfillment in a purpose larger than yourself oh my goodness Lynn like I cannot tell you how excited I am to have you here I have admired you for so long so first of all you have this beautiful book living a committed life I love this this is your new one thank you and I have to hold this up the soul of money oh my goodness I was telling you this and we were just talking uh before coming to record like your work has made such a huge difference in my life and I just want to thank you and like I've been looking forward to us having this conversation for so long so we're gonna talk about lots of things but we'll start off with your latest book in this notion you write you say ordinary people become extraordinary when they take a stand for something larger than themselves can you tell us about the first time that you took a stand for something larger than yourself and what impact did that have on your life wow well there's probably been several examples of that sure I'll just say the the first that comes to mind is when I got fortunate enough and blessed enough to be in the company of two great leaders who started the hunger project and the hunger project is now and was then the first organization or group of people to commit to something so bold so exciting so life-altering that it just captured my heart the end of world hunger not uh just alleviating the suffering not just making it not so bad not doing the best we can but actually ending hunger and starvation and the idea of ending something that that I could be part of something that bold something that powerful it it lit up my life and it transformed my life and it reshaped me into the kind of person who could actually deliver something like that and was that that speech that Buckminster Fuller gave in 1976 that you heard well that had a lot to do with it I mean that was my first encounter with Buckminster Fuller who was called the grandfather of the future one of the great people of the 20th century and he was in his 80s when I first met him so I didn't know him that long but I knew him pretty uh deeply for the years that I did and um in in this setting in Marin County California with 2 000 people in an audience he told a lot of stories but what he really communicated was the intellectual Integrity Integrity of the universe and how powerful that is and if we pay attention to that the guidance is everywhere and in that um setting he talked about his own life as being an experiment a laboratory could one little individual make a difference that would impact all of humanity in a positive way and that was the experiment of his life and he did that and that idea that one little individual and he always called himself ordinary could make a difference that would really literally transform the world was so compelling and thrilling to me and Bucky said then and I've found it to be true that an ordinary person with an extraordinary commitment becomes the kind of person who can fulfill that commitment you become extraordinary out of the commitment it's not like you have to be extraordinary first yeah to make a big commitment it's kind of the other way around I feel like that is such a cool distinction because you know we were talking before the camera started rolling you were asking me like how long I've been doing this and I was like about 22 years and so I get this incredible opportunity to hear from people and so many times they'll bring their doubts and their fears uh their feelings that they're not enough their inadequacies and I love what you just said because it turns it's on its head it's like oh no we can show up extra ordinary and the very active commitment of living a committed life is what can bring out the extraordinariness that we have I love that so much so you also say when seeking a life of commitment the mindset of scarcity can become our greatest Challenge and you've also written this in your other book the fundamental misconception of scarcity on this abundant planet is at the root of all of our Global crises I remember when I first heard you talk about scarcity I want to get into the three toxic myths of it in a few minutes because it rocked me to my core Lin so um tell me more about how the mindset of scarcity can become our greatest challenge when we're seeking to live a life of commitment well I want to make sure I acknowledge that Buckminster Fuller really taught me that and then Werner Earhart who founded EST in the landmark work uh really deepened my understanding of the um unconscious unexamined mindset so it's unconscious and unexamined like that means you don't know you have it it's a lens through which you look and don't know you're looking through it so it's before thinking before consideration before decision making we have this unconscious unexamined belief that there's not enough to go around and someone's always going to be left out and this unconscious unexamined belief system that we don't know we have it's like looking at your own eyeballs is the water we swim in in the consumer culture actually the money culture the commercialized culture actually Fosters foments exaggerates you know deepens this unconscious belief that there's scarce resources and there's not enough for everyone so you've got to get as much as you can to to provide for you and yours whoever you consider that to be um even if it leaves some people out you'll help them someday when you have way more than you need because there's not enough to go around and someone's going to be left out and you want to make sure it's not you and yours and that notion that unconscious unexamined notion creates an us into them creates uh you know unbridled and Unholy competition for resources financial and otherwise and makes us into people that are inconsistent with our own Humanity on a a planet that's abundant with resources really truly I learned that from the Hunger project that there was plenty of food even in 1977 to feed everyone on the planet three or four times over yet we believed that there wasn't enough to go around and to have at that time 44 000 people most of them children under five dying every day of hunger and starvation every day was so shocking to me on a planet just abundantly loaded with food it became clear that it's an Integrity issue the hunger issue and the integrity and the way we see the world the lack of Integrity of our relationship with one another that we would let 44 000 children die every day on a planet that had plenty to feed them so that notion of scarcity really started to when I understood scarcity as a mindset not a reality now let me just say there's plenty of places and I've been there where there's not enough jobs not enough clean and safe water not enough opportunity not enough food I worked on hunger and poverty I know that I worked with Mother Teresa actually I know very intimately that that's very often the case I'm really talking about the affluent world the the the um probably you and I and the people listening to us now um we may need this and we may need that but we think as if there's not enough and that's the first toxic myth and what I call the great lie of scarcity and that toxic myth governs Our Lives makes us think a certain way makes us compete with each other in ways that are inconsistent with our love for each other divides us um and and creates a kind of you or me Consciousness which is what Bucky said um if either you make it you make it at my expense or if I make it I make it at your expense that's a way of thinking it's not a reality but a way of thinking so that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy a you or me Paradigm and Bucky talked about the fact that at least when he was speaking about this which was a long long ago in 1976 before many people were born probably including you he said we've shifted now to a world where there's enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy and productive life and I remember when he said that in 1976 I was in an auditorium in Marin County California as I said I was sitting I remember exactly where I was sitting I remember what I was wearing you know how when you have a revelation everything becomes crystal clear and when he said there's enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy and productive life I remember I started crying I had a Kundalini thing up my spine my hands started to perspire I was literally shaking I didn't understand what he said but I got it and it entered my my being and this experience of there's enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy and productive life was so palpable so beautiful so moving and then when he said but the you or me Paradigm in which we live won't allow us to experience that quite yet we need to move from a you or me Paradigm to a you and me Paradigm a paradigm that says you and I can both make it at no one's expense because there's enough for everyone and he said and I always want to say this because this was 1976. he said even though that's the reality it'll take 50 years or so 1976. 50 years or so for us to realize this experience of enoughness because all the institutions we live in clearly the economy also the education system also the governance system all the institutions we live in even he said religion are rooted in a you or me understanding of the world clearly the economy is clearly governance is rooted in a you or me understanding of the world education is really really unfortunately rooted in a you or me understanding of the world and then when he said religion that was like the Capper religion being rooted in a you or me understanding of the world he said it'll take about 50 years for these great institutions to become so dysfunctional that we cannot repair them we can't prop them up we can't fix them we'll need to let them die their natural death and will need to recreate the institutions of humankind from a new paradigm a paradigm of you and me a paradigm where there's enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy and productive life and I say that's exactly where we are right now that's fascinating there's been some spiritual books that I have been dipping into and um you know some of what is revealed in them it talks about this notion of these incredible tectonic societal shifts that we're experiencing and that yes they can be quite scary but you know a very natural part of life is the death and birth process yes sometimes things need to come to a close before something new can be born and open up so much to talk about okay we mentioned the first toxic myth right the not enoughness let's walk through the other two and then I want to go back to the hunger project and how that put you on such an incredible path well the first toxic myth is there's not enough right there's not enough time there's not enough money there's not enough vacation time there's not enough sex there's not enough square feet in our house there's not enough shoes there's not enough there's not enough there's not enough we live in a there's not enough mentality it's almost like the siren song of the consumer culture and if you really believe unconsciously there's not enough then you're hoard you take more than you need you're scared you're going to run out no matter how much you have you think you've got to have more which leads to toxic myth number two more is better more of anything is better more of everything is better more more more more more more and that's the source of our so many of our breakdowns you know it has us on a consumer culture track that is so intense that we're swimming and stuff um one of the largest and most uh challenging and most fast just growing Industries in the world is storage if you think about what storage is just more of our stuff that we like can't fit in our houses and then we want to spend money and construct these buildings to just pack more of our stuff away that we forget about anyway yeah it's almost like a little village outside of every Big City there's a storage you know apartment buildings and for our stuff now in every Big City there's there's now thousands of homeless people but we're not building houses for them we're building houses for the stuff we can't fit in our houses our closets our garages and that's the sign of a culture that's lost its way also waste is a burgeoning culture I mean sorry burgeoning industry it's also a culture but I'm just saying the more is better culture has turned us from citizens which we used to be the word citizen means he or she who's responsible for the well-being of the community the well-being of the state the well-being of the world to Consumers and the word consumer means he or she who takes depletes diminishes or destroys we even call ourselves consumers that's how we're spoken to that's how we're marketed to yes but also how our political leaders decide what we care about what do we spend what do we consume what do we take what do we deplete and that's a terrible label for a human being yet that's who we've almost become to ourselves so second toxic myth more is better and advertising and marketing you know is very very very powerful and psychologically driven and algorithms and now the Bots are getting involved with deciding what we want um so it's it's very powerful and if people are in that industry you know you're you're doing really well however we need to realize that there is something uh off about that it's too much and we all know that we can feel it and then the third toxic myth is that's just the way that it is and that's just the way that it is sounds not so bad except it holds the whole structure in place it's the source of resignation it's the source of depression it's the source of obesity it's the source of over over indulgent it's the source of so many things that haunt us now oh that's just the way that it is there's nothing I can do about it so it holds this whole toxic myth structure more is there's not enough sorry more is better that's just the way that it is in place and it's a way of thinking and seeing the world that has Us by the throat yeah have you encountered um Kate rayworth's work I have and I love donut economics she's brilliant when I saw her Ted Talk I remember like I almost fell off my chair because everything that you're describing now I have you know felt and again being exposed to your work now for years I'm like yes it moved me so much and I remember seeing Kate's talk about donut economics and like this notion like that GDP should always go up and that's the only model that we have and her brilliant notion of Shifting us to a very simple donut it made me think of you and I had wondered I was like wow I wonder if those two have cross paths because it feels like there's so much Synergy In This Very what when you talk about it Lynn it's like oh my gosh this is so obvious but it's this fundamental wisdom that we've all been kind of brainwashed out of so that was just a little bit of a side note yeah I think her work is brilliant too um so the hunger project let's go back to I believe right that's what took you to meet Mother Teresa for the first time it was your right and oh God I love the story that you told in the book I think you know when we start talking about money and scarcity and enoughness and even when we think about money and we start to have these conversations there can also be so much judgment whether people judge folks that don't have resources or that have enormous resources judgments there I'm wondering if you can tell us about your first experience meeting Mother Teresa and the incredible Insight that you walked away with yeah I'd love to well first of all Mother Teresa was a icon for me like she was and is for many many people and I was raised Catholic so I really admired her um you know she was part of my religious tradition and when I got uh when I grew up and went to India for the very first time with with the hunger project I realized gosh I'm in India I'm working on Hunger maybe someday I'll meet Mother Teresa and I share that with a friend whose name was Indira dear coitrell never forget her and she said well I know Mother Teresa you know she said it like I know Mother Teresa you know kind of like I know I'll introduce you I got so excited I thought oh my God that would be the bee's knees that would be the you know the purpose of my entire life that would be a gift two years went by before I actually saw Indira again and I was in Delhi and I called her in the morning I remember it was 7 30 and I called her I said I'm in Delhi and she said oh fantastic Mother Teresa's here she's at her orphanage for little girls I'll arrange a meeting with her she called me back and she said yes mother would love to meet you tonight at 7 30. so I had 12 hours to get ready for this I had meetings all day with UNICEF and other organizations I canceled everything I think I might have lied and said I was sick but don't tell them that yeah don't tell I didn't want to tell mother truth and then I realized I haven't been to church in like 10 years oh my gosh I hadn't been a Catholic in a long long time I I practically bathed myself in holy water I was like you know did everything to kind of make up for all these years that I hadn't been anywhere near what she stands for and then I made my way finally that night across New Delhi to Old Delhi if you've ever made that trip it's a long difficult drive and when I got to Old Delhi uh we uh the car I was in was a you know private car that I hired because I was so nervous we got to the square and it was a Cobblestone Square not that big about as big as this room and across the square was this beautiful picture Mother Teresa with her blue and white sorry above the door said missionaries of charity so I walk across the square and I'm a kind of obsessive trash picker-upper person so I pick up trash wherever I go in India that's a big assignment when I got to the steps leading to the door there were two steps and I remember looking down and seeing a crumpled piece of newspaper on the first of the two steps and I leaned over to pick it up and uh inside of the newspaper was a tiny tiny tiny baby a live baby girl she was so small she was the smallest human being I've ever seen I know she couldn't have been this small but she was almost the same size as my hand a little bit larger than my hand and she was in this bundled up newspaper left on the doorstep so I took off my shawl I wrapped her up in a little swaddling thing I I knocked on the door of the missionaries of Charity and a nun opened the door and I said this this tiny tiny child was on the doorstep I'm here to see Mother Teresa my name is Lynn twist and she said oh thank you so much come in I'm so sorry to say she said Mother Teresa's not here right now she went to the local jail to bail out some prostitutes local prostitutes girls because we have so many babies we need help so she's bringing as many of them as she can back here tonight but while you're waiting for her would you help us and I said oh of course so they put an apron on me and led me over to us there was a whole Bank of of sinks and by the way I walked through the orphanage main room first and there were 39 iron cribs I counted them each with two or three little babies in them these are all little girls under two unwanted there was also a blue gymnastics mat with more little babies you mean there were babies babies babies babies babies and one little boy I don't know how many girls but a lot of little girls and all under two so these were little little people and um I know it's impossible but I did not hear anybody crying wow now this is my memory I I can't imagine that that's true but it was just a state of absolute Bliss and I'm not kidding the experience of being with all these little babies and the nuns and the lay people tending to them hugging them this was very modest you know a a a a wire with a light bulb you know every few feet that was the lighting no rugs or anything and we're over at these sinks I was assigned to rinse the little babies after they were washed and then dry them off and pass them on to the next uh naan or lay person and I remember standing there washing these little ones and many of them had no fingers or they were blind or there was something amiss about the child had been born with some malady or or they were just unwanted but they were so beautiful and I remember standing at the sink and realizing Mother Teresa said um to know me to know me is to know my work that's who I am and I thought well this is my meeting with Mother Teresa and the nuns were singing it was just Blissful I was in absolute Heaven I kind of forgot about her and then at a certain point someone tapped me on the shoulder she's here she's ready to see you so I immediately get all nervous again scared and follow the nun down down through the the hallway past a chapel and then there was this long skinny Hall I think you can picture it and there was a table a wooden table with two chairs against the wall in the kind of in the Long Haul and uh the nun who took me there she said sit here Mother Mother Teresa will be here in a moment so I sat there you know praying and suddenly being you know totally religious all of a sudden again and I looked Down The Long Dark Hall and ahead of her was her black Labrador Retriever she had a very very beloved dog which was it was an old dog he had a little beard you know Gray beard and he was a little crippled and he preceded her and behind the dog was this beautiful being Mother Teresa and I'll never forget when I first saw our burst at a Tears like I'm doing now and I um you know ran to her and knelt in front of her and I remember kissing her hands and her feet and everything I could kiss and uh when I was kneeling I was about her height she was very very small and she had osteoporosis so she was all bent over as everybody knows they're little gnarly hands and a little gnarly feet I mean oh it was such a thrill to to be in her presence and she took my hand and said stand up stand up come over here and so we sat down uh in the two wooden chairs in the wooden table and she took my hands and I you know the thing is I don't remember the conversation but I remember the experience of Absolute Total unconditional love for her and from her it was as if the whole world was about love and unconditional love um and every time I tell this I'm right back there now and then at a certain point um and I was crying the whole time holding her hands at a certain point I hear these loud angry voices behind me Down The Long Hall and that preceded two very large uh Indian people a man and a woman pretty clearly a husband and wife the man was a Sikh man and seek men wear a turban and he had a very large topaz right in the middle of his turban plus I remember noticing he had a ring on every finger in one of his hands including his thumb because I remember that he was opulent he was overdressed he was overbearing he was over perfumed he was over over over and he had a very uh you know fancy kurta the kind of thing men wear in India and uh behind him was this angry noisy woman she was um she she had a diamond in her nose and then a diamonds that went all the way to her ear and um on a kind of thing like this and lots of Bangles and she had a very very fancy sorry um and they were angry and pushy and rude and ugly and smelly and I did not like these people in fact they got me so upset that when they started interacting with Mother Teresa and they went right to her and they said the woman said in a loud ugly voice we did not get the picture you promised us I want the picture that's what I remember her saying and very loud and aggressive so the woman handed me this is a long time ago an instamatic Cameron old-fashioned camera a little you know throwaway camera and she said you you take the picture so then she pulled Mother Teresa up very violently it seems to me by the elbow from her chair and said Mother Teresa over here and she placed Mother Teresa between her gigantic husband and herself so there are these two huge people and then in the middle little Mother Teresa all been over with her osteoporosis just being as sweet and kind as possible and uh and the woman telling me take the picture take the picture so I took the picture and then I was so angry with these people they were so rude to her and rude to me but mostly rude to her and then the woman did the most unforgivable thing in my view she said to Mother Teresa chin up Mother Teresa chin up for the photo and she went like this and pulled up Mother Teresa's chin you know mother tree said osteoporosis and held her head up like this and she said take the picture now so I took another picture and then she took her hand away and they left they grabbed the camera they left they didn't say thank you they didn't Embrace her they didn't say goodbye to me they just left and my blood was boiling how could they treat her like that who were these people Mother Teresa sat down in her chair as if nothing had happened I was just furious and um I uh you know she took my hands and continued as before but I was tense my body was tense my veins were probably popping out of my forehead and I tried to calm down as we completed our meeting and then she said she prayed for my mother and my son who was sick at the time and gave me a scapular medal and we embraced and then I walked with her through the said goodbye to the nuns through the babies and I started to calm down and I got in my car and it took about 45 minutes or an hour to get back to my hotel in New Delhi and during that ride I realized that I had been in the presence of a living saint and felt the deepest and most profound unconditional love in my lifetime and the most profound anger resentment and Hate in the same space and that wasn't true for her she saw Christy in every face those people were Christ for her but not for me so um when I got back to my hotel I realized that was my teaching from Mother Teresa so I wrote her a letter and thanked her for the teaching of my lifetime and she wrote me back and she said something really profound she said you're naturally drawn to the underserved the underfed those who obviously need support and assistance but your circle of compassion you must widen it you must enlarge it to include the wealthy the entitled the rude the angry the Misunderstood she said the Vicious Cycle of wealth can be as intractable and as painful as the Vicious Cycle of poverty and they too are part of your work they too Need Your Love so after that letter and that encounter it became clear to me as the chief fundraiser for the Hunger project that this was a lesson that I uh that I was meant to have she was the person to deliver it to me and I've become very clear now that um that I have the great privilege and the opportunity to deal with people of enormous power and wealth and um the rude the righteous the overbearing the entitled that's part of my world too part of my capacity to love part of my compassion um and uh I'll never forget that meeting with Mother Teresa hey real quick before we get back to this amazing conversation with Lynn so if you're already dreaming of different things that you want to do of dreams that you want to bring to life I've got something you need right now it's a free audio coaching program called how to get anything you want you're going to learn three steps to take any dream and turn it into reality you can get it at marieforleo.com subscribe that's marieforleo.com subscribe one of the other distinctions I think is so incredible that you've made is between sufficiency and abundance can you talk us through that well um I learned from Buckminster Fuller once again when he said there's enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy and productive life in this setting I was in in the in Auditorium and it went right into my soul I started to re-see the the Universe I mean everything showed up for me completely differently after that even though I didn't understand what he said I got it um and I started to see the enoughness in everything even when I worked in Ethiopia after the 1984-1985 famine what I saw was the resilience the Courage the Deep um powerful spiritual power of life in the people that were you know bereft and yes they were hungry yes but the the human Spirit can't be crushed it's it's incredible so uh Bucky taught me about sufficiency and let me just say what I think sufficiency is because I actually think it's the radical surprising truth about life and there's a a principle that I like to cite that I kind of invented or discovered or I don't know what principles or maybe they're already there yeah um but if you let go of trying to get more of what you don't really need which is what we're brainwashed and want more of it frees up oceans of energy that's all tied up in the chase to turn and pay attention to what you already have when you pay attention to what you already have when you nourish what you already have when you love what you already have and when you share what you already have it expands so let me say that again when you let go of trying to get more of what you don't really need it frees up oceans of energy tied up in the chase to turn and pay attention to what you already have when you nourish what you already have when you make a difference with what you already have when you share what you already have it expands before your very eyes a shorter way of saying that is what you appreciate appreciates what you appreciate appreciates so a sufficiency or enough is actually as Bucky said not an amount not an amount it's not halfway between more than you need and less than you need no it's a way of being in life it's what you teach Marie it's who you are that I am enough there is enough we are enough that is the fundamental truth about life no matter who you are and where you are yet we Chase more and more and more and more and more thinking that will give us quote unquote abundance and I Define abundance a little bit differently than most people I know it's in all the holy books and I I love abundance but in the in the mindset of scarcity abundance is excess it's what's in our landfills it's waste it's storage it's what's causing so many problems in the world the distinction of enough as I say is not an amount of anything it's a way of being where everything in life you have reverence for it you have respect for it there's an Integrity with the distinction of sufficiency and at consumer culture we race right past enough and we don't even know that it happened towards more but we never achieve more really yes so it's a hamster wheel but when you rest in the distinction I am enough we have enough and there's moments we all have that you know when you see a a newborn baby when you're when you're up early enough to witness the sunrise um you know we all have moments of absolute profound awe and wonder where there is enough it is enough things are not only sufficient they're profoundly radically sufficient um so abundance I think true abundance or what most people want is true Prosperity they really want to prosper you can't get to True abundance or Prosperity through the doorway of more because it will always lead you to lack and you'll need more again which ultimately will lead you to lack and then you'll need more again that's a constant it's never ending but if you go through what I call the portal or the distinction or the house or the being of enough then it overflows into abundance Natural Abundance Natural Abundance and all you want to do is share it because you know you don't need it so um Brother David sindelrost has this beautiful metaphor can I tell that yes please so I seem to be drawn to these 80 and 90 year old teachers Brother David stendel Ross is still on this planet as we do this wonderful conversation and he's 96 and he's a Benedictine monk with no possessions other other than his little monk outfits and you know maybe a Bible or two and he's the happiest most contented most beautiful guy on Earth he he's uh he's the icon of gratefulness and he has a website called gratefulness.org he's just awesome and in a conversation I had with him he I asked him what's the distinction Brother David between gratitude and gratefulness and he said the coolest thing that helps me just answer your question yeah he said um gratitude has two great branches one is gratefulness and the other is Thanksgiving gratefulness is the experience of life when the bowl of life is so full that it's almost overflowing but not quite when the bowl of life is kind of bowed at the top and not yet drilling over the edges you know when things are just incredibly exquisitely filled with contentment and that's so fulfilling that you know that you're in the great fullness of life and when you're in the great fullness of Life the bowl of Life Starts to overflow and that puts you in the other branch of gratitude called Thanksgiving and when you're in the branch of gratitude called Thanksgiving the bowl of life is overflowing like a fountain and you're so grateful suddenly to find out there's an other because all you want to do is give and serve and contribute and share and that's so fulfilling it puts you over here in the great fullness of life and when you're in the gratefulness of life you actually feel like you're one with God or the universe and there is no other it's all one and that's so fulfilling that the bull of Life overflows and then you find out oh no there are other people and all I want to do is give to them because I have more than I need so this is sufficiency yes and this is true abundance true abundance comes from the radical and exquisite experience of having enough which overflows into uh this beautiful thing called abundance and that's actually the source of our prosperity you don't feel Prosper unless you share yes you prosper by sharing we feel prosperous when we share let's talk about what I know you are so passionate about the pachamama alliance when we talk about sharing can you introduce people to what it is and why it's so important and you're working it for the past almost three decades um well I worked on hunger and poverty for about 25 years of my life and then through a series of mystical events I ended up being invited to the rainforest actually called through a whole series of mystical experiences to the achwar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon the archwork people had very little contact with the outside world and I was lucky enough with my husband and another person John Perkins and others to be uh in first contact with that indigenous group and out of that encounter came something called The pachamama Alliance and the word pachamama means Mother Earth Pacha Mama it's all one word but to the quechua people whose language it is it means more than that it means the Earth the sky the universe and all time and um I love saying that because it it actually demonstrates that indigenous people have a much bigger understanding of the reality of of the world than than we do we've kind of narrowed it down um but they believe that pachamama means the Earth the sky the universe in all time and the pachamama lines is an alliance between the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest and the Andes in the sacred Headwaters region of the Amazon the Andes and conscious committed people in the modern world like you and I and the people listening to this for the sustainability of life it's an alliance and we work with the achwar the Shi we are the undoans the walrani uh the zapper people we work with indigenous tribes that have their uh total Traditions intact are living in pristine tropical rainforests much of it is totally roadless still and they're protecting it fiercely with their lives not only for themselves but for the future of Life they see themselves as the custodians of the future of life and um working with them to empower them to succeed in that commitment has been one of the great privileges of my lifetime and in the very first encounter with these indigenous people they told us and this is a very famous indigenous quote if you're coming to help us don't waste your time even though we invited you here but if you're coming because you know your Liberation is bound up with ours then let's work together and that is the ethic of the pachimum alliance because they know that we're in trouble they're in trouble they have a force to protect and they know that it's endangered and the source of life which is what they're protecting they know that's endangered we're living in a way that we know we're um we're off course we all know that this is not uh right we're we're you know destroying the very life support system on which we depend we all know that we don't know how to stop that we're trying our best but it's very difficult and so the indigenous people and the modern world People Are People Like Us have come together in the Pacha mom Alliance to um to work with each other to create what we call an environmentally sustainable spiritually fulfilling socially just human presence on this planet that's our mission that's incredible I don't know well I don't know how deep you want to go into it but maybe just a little bit of a dip because I felt that it was so powerful you said okay well the way I was called to this I had some mystical experiences and I will tell you in my audience when we think about the context of living a committed life and we think about what is it that we want to commit to sometimes it doesn't occur to us from necessarily our mind sometimes there are messages or we feel called or we have experiences that are beyond what most of us would encounter every day so can you tell us even just a little bit about the mystical experiences because I think it's fascinating um well okay let's see um I'm going to give you my short version because it's a very long one but I was lucky enough to be in Guatemala with a close friend named John Perkins who's uh who is in the Peace Corps in Ecuador as a young man and he and I were you know middle aged at the time and um we we were working with the Mayan people and John could feel because he's he had been trained in Shamanism that there was a shaman directing our the activities of the people we were working with but they weren't um letting us know that there was a shaman involved they were a little nervous about Americans and this is in 1994. so uh but John with his skill and his capability ended up connecting with that Shaman and inviting um uh and having us get invited to be in a small ceremony with the shaman on a on a Hilltop in a rural area near Toto nicopan Chichi castanango in Guatemala and it was a starry night we met the shaman at midnight on the on this in this rural area there were no lights anywhere around and he had built a big fire and there were 12 of us and when we got there he didn't speak Spanish or English but John spoke a little Mayan so he was translating and we were told to lay down on the ground on the dirt around this fire that he had built in the middle of a circle and so we we arranged ourselves like a like a wagon wheel around that fire and then the shaman he started drumming and there were stars and the crackling fire I mean if you can imagine this scene was so awesome it was midnight so it was the middle of the night there was no moon and the the fire was crackling and the stars were incredible you could see forever the Milky Way was so bright you could practically read from it and the shaman uh and the drumming John was drumming and the shaman was singing and chanting and he started to whistle and sing and chant and a Shaman's voice you know they they have some incredible power that comes through their singing and chanting and he told us to Journey close our eyes and journey and you know it's midnight so I kind of figured I would end up sleeping through whatever this was going to be but no that's not what happened and through the chanting and the drumming and the crackling fire and the night air and I closed my eyes and after a while I started hearing the Shaman's voice and it went almost entered my body and I started to have my right arm shaking and quivering and I could not hold it next to my body I had to extend it and then my left arm wouldn't stop quivering and shaking and I had to extend that and soon I felt something hard and and difficult and and you know kind of crusty grow on my face and I realized I think it's some sort of a beak and these are wings and I have to fly and I began to lift my body up into the sky and I felt the architecture the skeletal body uh interior began to change and reshape and I was able to fly in slow motions up in this glorious Starlet night sky it was so glorious and beautiful and gorgeous and awesome and I'm flying in slow motion and I can still hear the Shaman's voice and the whistling and the drumming it was still right there but I was far away from it but I could still hear it and then it started to become Dawn and I looked down and I was flying over a vast vast literally unending Forest of green it was so vast and so beautiful it was Exquisite and it went forever and in the sunlight it was glorious and the Mist came up from the trees and then there was this amazing thing where these disembodied faces of men with orange geometric face paint on their faces and yellow red and black for their crowns on their heads start to float up from the forest floor through the canopy and call to me the bird in a strange tongue and it was uh one of these kind of amazing mystical encounters that was deeply moving I couldn't understand what they were calling for I couldn't understand the language but it was beautiful it was it was an encounter it was a Divine appointment of some kind and then they would float back down into the forest just the faces and I would keep flying in slow motion like this it was so glorious and I can feel my body doing it again and then the faces would reappear and come up through the canopy and call once again to the bird and then they would disappear again and I would keep flying and then they would appear again and then they'd disappear and it went on for a very long time and then there was a big loud bang bang bang bang bang bang a drum beat and I remember being sort of stunned by that different noise and I remember opening my eyes and sitting up and I had no wings I had no beak it was just me and I realized oh my God that was some dream unbelievably real so then the shaman through John asked each person to share their Vision everybody had become an animal a snake a wolf a butterfly a hummingbird Etc until it got to me and I shared my story and then it went all the way around to my friend John and John had had a very very similar Vision almost the same then the shaman he was kind of a strange looking guy and that fire had gone down to Embers so this was quite a while and he kind of looked weird across the the circle for me and then he dismissed he completed the ritual dismissed everyone and asked John and I to stay and he sat us down and he said that was not a normal Journey or Vision that was a communication someone is communicating with you and you need to go to them well I could not I couldn't I couldn't a dentist didn't compute for me I didn't know what to do with it it wouldn't compute for most people no and by the way did you do any plant medicine or that was just no medicine actually I forgot to say that no medicine just his voice okay he told us we need to go and I said go where I I had taken uh by the way I didn't say this I had taken a two-week leave from the work of The Hunger project to do this Guatemala trip for my friend John um but John said Lynn I know who they are I know where they are they're they ought to our people I was just before I came here I was in the Amazon with the schwa the neighboring indigenous group and an achwar Hunting Party came into the schwa camp and said we're ready for contact we're going to be sending contact messages to the modern world to bring modern world friends to us because we've seen that contact is inevitable it will come in the year 2000 so we're going to initiate it before it comes to us in ways we can't control so John said that's the achwar they're calling for contact Lynn this is a huge privilege you have to come with me we've got to go to our territory I know who they are I know where they are I recognize the markings the headdresses I said John I have to be in Africa and I needed to be in Accra Ghana for a board meeting so I told him you go that's your thing I've got to end real hunger and we're not even close to done so I went to Ghana I was in the Accra Ghana Novotel at a board meeting just a week later with uh eight Ghanaian people five men and three women sitting around an oval table in a conference room on the main floor of that hotel we're sitting at this table the Ghanaian people have very very very dark skin almost blue black we're sitting at this table having this conversation I'm not leading it I'm sitting in for the global office and at a certain point in the conversation and very slowly the men only the men the Ghanaian men started having orange geometric face paint appear on their black faces and I was like is going on and no one said anything about it so I realized oh my God I'm hallucinating I didn't say anything but what I did was I excused myself and went to the ladies room splashed my face with water I thought I'm a God boy that thing in Guatemala that weird thing is haunting me I can't function now so I uh I came back into the room everybody was normal they're still talking and a few minutes later maybe 10 minutes later it happened again slowly but clearly orange geometric face paint appearing on the black faces of the men only the five men and I just burst into tears and um and then everybody said well what's wrong what's wrong and I realized no one sees this but me so I said you know what I'm feeling very very ill I need to go back to the United States I've been in too many time zones too many countries I'm just exhausted I I was supposed to stay for six days I can't do that please let me just go up to my room by myself now this is 1994 no cell phones no internet I just went packed went to the airport flew to Frankfurt Frankfurt to New York New York to San Francisco by the time I got home I was so rattled because the faces just kept coming and um I I told my husband that I felt that I was having hallucinations I didn't understand them but I didn't tell them like I'm telling you because I thought there was something wrong with me you know how how you are um but the faces didn't stop and I just was desperate to reach my friend John who went straight to the Amazon from Guatemala and wasn't home and wasn't reachable so I left him faxes and voicemails until he came back he was just loaded with messages from me and he called me and he said Lynn we need to go they want 12 people from the modern world people that have Global voices and can be heard around the world 12 of us people who have Open Hearts very important to them people who know the rainforest is critical to the future of all life people who know indigenous wisdom is critical for the modern world and people who will respect the ways of the shaman and so John and I put that group of people together I picked my husband bills number one and then we put a really beautiful group of 12 people together and we traveled to Quito which is the capital of Ecuador we went over the Eastern side of the Andes Down the bastaza River Canyon to the edge of the vast vast Amazon rainforest with stretches which stretches all the way across the continent to Brazil and to the Atlantic Ocean it's larger than the United States and when we flew in little tiny planes to schwar territory than a Schwab pilot picked us up and took them in little tiny Plains three at a time into Ottawa territory and when we got there eventually when all 12 of us arrived they came out of the forest with their orange geometric face paint their yellow red and black Feather Crowns and Spears um and it was both remarkable and otherworldly and confusing and beautiful and moving and everything you could possibly imagine and that encounter lasted about six or seven days with the Ochoa leaders and that was the beginning of the pachamama lines and I knew then that something was calling me that I couldn't explain didn't make any sense to me I hadn't been to South America we weren't working there we were working in Africa and Asia on Hunger I didn't speak Spanish I wasn't thinking about the environment I wasn't even aware that much of the Amazon rainforest and neither was my husband Bill he was a business guy but somehow we we did take medicine there and we were the first white people the shaman had ever seen or worked with something took place in us and we knew this is not an accident this is not a one-off we're being called this is our destiny and that was the beginning of pachamama lines was there a challenge for you because you are such a committed person and like your experience with us and I've had not experience with Landmark but something similar and this notion of integrity and keeping your word and you had committed to the hunger project and now there was clearly this incredible calling that was otherworldly and you could not deny it how is it navigating winding down your participation there or did you to really commit to pachamama well in 1994 1995 I had become a kind of a folk hero for the Hunger project we had hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the world um so and I had said to everybody I've been here since the beginning and I'll be here till the end of hunger the end of my life whatever comes first and I meant it but somehow this thing that happened to me Jarred me so deeply and I didn't know what to do I was trying to do the pachama alliance I was trying to do ending world hunger I was responsible for the fundraising operations in 57 countries I believe at that time and I I was just and I had three kids by the way um ill got involved right away but I was trying to do both it was just I was stretched so thin I was just a wreck yeah and then I got really really really really really sick now I don't recommend this but I got malaria and um I got it not from the Amazon I got it from like Tana in Ethiopia and uh and from India two strains V vaccine Valley at the same time so I was so sick I couldn't do anything for anyone and I look back on it now as a a huge gift that intervention I was sick for nine months interesting nine months like that not eight months not ten months nine months and when I came out of that illness I the hunger project had found a way to replace me I mean they had to yes because I couldn't even be on a conference call I was so sick um and I knew that that this was a you could say a pivot this was a it was your next Evolution yeah the next Evolution but how I made sense of it yeah Marie which was really amazing I realized that I I went back to Ghana after I got well and I was with Elders uh on a a Sandy a hill overlooking the ocean that was a desert and the elders they were probably 70 80 90 these old men that was all men and we were sitting in the sand and they told me they were raised in a rainforest I said where they said right here I said you're kidding this was a rainforest and they said yes it's been gone for 40 years and then it started to occur to me and I started to realize and found out and I'd never known this that much of where I had been working in India in Bangladesh in Nepal in Sri Lanka and all across Africa had been rainforest and much of it was totally gone particularly in Africa from colonization from extraction and it become desert and that to go and work in the Amazon was to get in front of the coming problem be on the preventive end because South America that continent will become a savannah like Africa if we don't if we don't stop the destruction of the Amazon so I was able to create a context large enough to include the pachamama lines as as a part of my commitment to end world hunger and to create the transformation of the of the Human family so that allowed me to to make sense of it and also just being sick and having quiet time and having no responsibilities for that long I really went deep into my soul and knew that I needed to pay attention to what was calling to me yeah isn't it amazing how sometimes experiences like that being sick which we wish upon no one the experience of pain or being taken out like I loved reading in your book you're an all-in kind of person I am you know and I love that you you shared you know being overwhelmed and pulled in a million directions like that's kind of home for you and for me for so much of my life like that was home and like oh this is comfortable this is normal and I just really appreciate um you know that there's like wisdom and illness for all of us it was a couple years ago I got taken out for a while and we discovered these uh tumors around my uterus and it was the first time as an adult like I've been working since I was nine and it was the first time in my life that I had I had to like take six weeks off like that was unheard of for me and there was so much that came to life because I couldn't do my normal things you know what I mean because it was like the body was just like nope you are gonna sit and you are gonna heal and you're gonna look at everything differently Lynn you are just so amazing and I'm so happy that we're like finally having this conversation obviously the how to's of living a committed life people can get the book which is amazing and the soul of money um but if they're excited by hearing your story and someone is watching right now thinking to themselves God what's the first step to take if this notion of finding freedom and fulfillment in a purpose larger than yourself sounds really exciting to them what would you suggest um well there's lots of guidance I think if we say so and we listen um you know I got heavy duty guidance when I got malaria um so for example but I didn't realize it was guidance until kind of later yeah um but I would say that there is guidance for all of us and especially now because we live in an epic epic epic time in history and we know that everybody can feel it and it can either be discouraging and you can be in Despair and like you know oh my God it's hopeless or you can step it up and to me uh that's what's happening you know the climate crisis is Guidance the climate crisis is not happening to us it's happening for us it is this horrendous huge incredible crisis yes but it's here to help us evolve to the next level of what it means to be human you could say that whether that's true or not I don't know but that's one way to look at it and so um I often say to people how to find what your calling is or what your Dharma is or what you're meant to do is to look and see what breaks your heart and what makes your heart sing and how do those two things relate that's one way of looking at it another way is to look at when you were child what were your Natural Instincts you know I often talk about the playground you know there's people on the playground who are bullies there's people on the playground who would always pick the the the the kid for their team and in kickball that was the one that was the least able and that's somebody who's all about inclusion and diversity inclusion and access you know you can see you we're all kind of guided we all have a kind of in in our innate uniqueness something that's ours to bring ours to do ours to commit to and I say that a commitment or we also call it a stand is not something you can check off and accomplish or actually even take credit for so that's an important distinction here it's something you can contribute to it's larger than your own life starring you it's not something you can say well she did that no it's more she made a huge contribution to that and was in that flow of History because I think we're being used by something larger than we know we're the instruments of something and we all have a role to play on this planet right now I think you know if you're alive today you have a role to play maybe it's not a big role maybe it's not a small role it's just your role and if you play it with all your heart your life will have incredible meaning and the noise in our head am I good enough am I doing the right thing who Am I who are my friends do I look cool all that noise in our head that doesn't go away but it moves to the background and what moves through the foreground is what you've given your word to what you're committed to that's louder has more grip more a more pull more Vision more juice more joy than the noise in your head and the noise in your head starts to calm down it doesn't go away I can I can report that but it's not interesting anymore and you realize it's just noise because you're so busy making the world work so I say that that's the key to a life of fulfillment prosperity and knowing who you are Lynn thank you so much for who you are thank you for making such a difference to me personally and taking the time out of your incredibly full and Rich life to be here with us today I just adore you thank you I adore you too and thank you for the work you do for the voice that you are uh for people to find their own fulfillment their own enoughness uh their own Dharma their own path you are um one of the great Sears on our planet right now and I'm really really grateful to sit with you and thank you for all you do all you say in the example you are you know you're an inspiration I'm sure people admire you but more powerfully than admiration is inspiration and you are and you in spirit people you bring their Spirit to the fore and you've done that with me and I'm deeply deeply grateful well that was pretty amazing thank you so much for tuning in and of course Lynn and I would love to hear from you I'm super curious we talked about many incredible things today what's the one thing the one Insight that's standing out for you and most importantly how can you put that insight into action starting right now leave a comment below and let us know as always some great conversations happen over at the magical land of marieforleo.com so head on over there and leave us a comment now and until next time stay on your game and keep going for your Big Dreams because the world really does need those very special gifts that only you have thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you next time now you might be super pumped to go live a more committed life and if you are I love it you might be feeling some fear like oh my God can I actually do it you have to watch this next episode it's right here how to find the courage to do anything it is so good perfect follow-up click here go watch it now there's only one question that you need to ask ask and answer to find the courage to make that big leap and the question is this what's the worst thing that can happen

Channel: Marie Forleo

Views: 32,944

Keywords: Marie Forleo, Maria Forleo, personal development, personal growth, self-help, motivation, inspiration tips, inspiration, spiritual tips, self-help tips, be motivated, business tips, productivity, MarieTV, career tips, small business tips, tips for business people, tips for entrepreneurs, lynne twist, the soul of money, pachamama institute, world hunger, mother teresa, life purpose, find your calling, find your purpose, living a committed life

Id: JTSMvoS2DEk

Length: 68min 33sec (4113 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023