Impact the World: davidji

[Music] welcome to impact the world the show for and about creatives change makers and entrepreneurs this is a conversation episode where a special guest shares with me what they are creating and the behind the scenes journey of their experience [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to impact the world and my guest today is david g who is a world renowned mindfulness teacher meditation guide and a stress expert david g has a unique story he went from a successful career on wall street but one that made him miserable and after a personal quest turned that into his current work which is helping individuals corporate executives and sometimes members of the police force with their relationship to stress and meditation it was a delight to get to speak to him while we're in lockdown via zoom and i hope you enjoy this conversation [Music] david g thank you so much for being with us for this show um i will share with anybody who's listening to the show or watching the show my co-producer for the show wendy was super excited to have you on because you've been a hugely influential person in her life as you have in the lives of many hundreds of thousands at this point but i know that your role in the world is very different to how you started out and yeah by your own story you you share that you were originally on wall street but that you were on wall street for many years but quite miserable so i wonder if before we dive into where you went next could you just give us a sense of of of the beginning of your life your early life what your focus was and how you ended up in wall street yes i think it's important to share my misery because i'm not miserable now so i hopefully that gives hope to anyone who's miserable um out there um yeah well my life uh right now is really um it's all about serving it's all about meditating it's all about teaching people to connect to that uh that innermost aspect of themselves to have them awaken their own energy awaken their own vision uh really awaken their voice and how i got here is a very very circuitous group and if we look at you know how we how we typically get from a to b in life it's never a straight line at least i haven't met anyone who has a straight line there and so i started meditating innocently enough well my first i guess introduction to like the kooky world was my mother uh was really big on ouija boards so we would you know use use a ouija board when i was when i was a kid that was so i knew that she always thought that there's something else beyond here uh whether it's a cookie realm whether it's another realm whether it's many realms but there's definitely an intelligence beyond this realm and so that was you know embedded in me at a fairly young age in college i took an experimental asian studies course and part of that was a cool thing where we were meditated and so we had a zen master and we would there were 12 of us in the class we would all go to this you know special room and uh we sat in a circle and um we were instructed to uh raise our hands when we had a thought uh in his hands uh our zen master held a keisaku an 18 inch bamboo stick and so when we would raise our hands he would come over and thwack us on the back and so uh it definitely changed whatever was going on there but i was like i don't i'm not really sure i want to do this thing anymore so i left that and i got into candle gazing because i really enjoyed the stillness that was like a really really seductive aspect of that process and i figured well maybe it's just not that style maybe i could like this thing so i did candle gazing and then i got into tantra and then i got into mindfulness and vipassana and i did a couple of these you know silent retreats for for 10 days or two weeks then i got into mantra and then i really started exploring a lot of other types of meditation and really stuck with that some of them for years others for for days and then i started getting involved in the corporate world and it was originally as a bond trader and that led me uh ultimately to become a mergers and acquisitions advisor and you know that's like helping people take over companies and then figuring out how does one plus one equal at least two and a half um and so i did that and i wasn't really enjoying it i was good at it but i wasn't really enjoying it um long term certainly and i found that as i got deeper and deeper involved in working you know 15 hour days seven days a week and suddenly working for other people to help them get rich and i wasn't in that process getting rich so that was just like like what am i doing why why am i doing this you know is it just because of a conditioned thing and as i got deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into someone else's vision someone else's journey uh i got further and further away from my own and uh suddenly i realized i had stopped meditating i had given up my morning meditation ritual for an early morning train ride to the world trade center i'd given up my uh afternoon and evening ritual for a nice tall glass of scotch and like that um meditation was gone and then suddenly i realized you know it's also gone uh balance in my life there was no bad balance my relationships were strained at best uh i wasn't a great uh partner i wasn't a really great husband uh i wasn't a great friend like i only had this singular vision uh to show up do this thing go home pass out and i would wake up at two in the morning with a knot in my stomach but only every day for like 10 years of that and um i had tried to wash it away you know uh with uh with a late night drink but like that never worked um and i would just wake up and and just be in agony and uh i figured well this is pretty much you know gonna be my life i didn't know there were tools i didn't really go back to like oh well maybe if you brought a little balance into your life or started meditating again or you know whatever that was and i didn't really know that there were tools and so um in the wake of 9 11 and i i worked on the 82nd floor of tower 2 and just a few months before 9 11 had the great fortune to get the worst job ever in my life which took me out of the world trade center working for the worst most despicable people and um but you know here i am so um you know it's a combination of like survivors remorse and uh blessings and who can i thank you know every single moment for that um but in the wake of 9 11 i was walking in southern manhattan passed a row of cardboard boxes that people were living in and i walked past this particular box and uh his hand reached out and grabbed my pant leg and pulled me in and these blue crystalline eyes looked up at me and this guy said what's going to be on your tombstone you know it's a fair it's a fairly reflective moment and never what you expect from that situation i like reached into my pocket because i figured oh i should give this guy you know some money or something along those lines but we like held in that gaze for what seemed like hours probably just a you know a few seconds and in that moment like everything stopped the world stopped the traffic stopped the people stopped it was just me and him i call these like butterfly moments where there's there's something something deeper here perhaps god speaking through this you know magnificent being um that most of the times we don't really even pay attention to these people as we're walking past them and this was my deep deep deep connection um probably the most profound conversation i ever had with anyone in my life and we continued to to talk just a little bit um and then i staggered away and suddenly i found myself tears were streaming down my eyes my my legs were weak i had to sit down on the steps of an apartment building just about you know 300 feet away and uh i i was hyperventilating i couldn't even catch my breath and i i went home and i shared this with my wife and she was like you need to quit your job and there's this guy deepak chopra he's doing a meditation retreat in oxford england and maybe you should probably go to that and return to your you know your meditation thing and i was like okay i'm fairly obedient so i was like okay um i'll do that and um within weeks i had registered for that and there's supposed to be like 3 000 people there but no one was flying right after 9 11. and so there were just like 50 and just like a couple from the united states most of them were europeans and so suddenly it was like whoa meditation i'm doing it again and we were meditating for like six seven hours a day i'm practicing yoga and you know going deeper into some timeless timeless wisdom but by the third day i realized that my heart had been so blackened over these years and i had been so shut down and so purposeless and so empty inside that um each day of meditation was sort of like draping my my let's say my heart was this white linen that had been like submerged in black india ink and every day it was like being draped through a stream and it was just like washed away and cleansed and lightened and on the third day so i felt this emotion that was so unfamiliar to me because i hadn't experienced it in years maybe 20 years and it was joy i was like oh my god there's like there's another way to like experience existence and i was so happy and i was so giddy that i you know instantly you know spoke to deepak and i said what do you think my next step is he was like well you should probably go to india so of course i'm fairly obedient so i didn't even come back home i went to the embassy uh in um in london and um got you know got my special visa to head off to india and headed off to india in in search of the guru and i searched high and low for the guru i was looking for that guru um you know because i was like i was lit in that moment so receptive it's like whatever it is bring it and i was like meditating every morning and practicing yoga you know twice a day and bathing in the ganges and praying in the temples and talking to all these people um you know i searched high and low i went to dharamsala to see his holiness the dalai lama he was not there that day um then i traveled you know to to the south of india and it was about five and a half months that i'm like looking for the guru and as i was laying in a hammock in a cashew forest in kerala in south india i'm reading the bhagavad-gita you know this ancient indian text and i'm reading suddenly i read this you know chapter 2 verse 48 which i have read i don't know 200 times before that you know because i was reading it every single day and suddenly i read it and it starts off with yoga star kuru karmani you know the the protagonist arjuna uh the great warrior is talking to god krishna and he's like how am i supposed to live my life just answer me just tell me how am i supposed to walk through the world and god as krishna in the form of krishna replies to him which means establish yourself in the present moment and then perform action and i don't know that just hit me like a lightning bolt and i got so excited i only had a few days left on my visa anyway and so i raced you know well racing in india is not the same thing you know i waited for two days got a bus that took me another two days and then sat in the airport for now another 40 hours but that was racing back raced back to new york and um like i had the answers and a friend of mine after like three weeks said you know dude all you do is sit around and meditate as and i replied i know isn't it amazing it brings me such joy and i'm so happy and he said well you know you're not doing anything else you know you're not you're not doing anything else so why don't you share this with other people why don't you teach other people to meditate and um i uh sarcastically replied to him uh come on i'm from new york i don't care about anyone else's meditation and it was true this was just about me and he said well if you really want to learn something learn to teach it learn it from the inside learn the mechanics learn the science learn all those details and i was like okay how and he said come on reconnect with your boy deepak he's got that center in california he's like it's the chopra center and uh so become a meditation teacher i was like again i'm fairly obedient lee just make a suggestion to me and clearly i will do it so i headed off to uh to california to attend this workshop which would be a component of uh of the teacher training and uh at that workshop it was sort of like a love connection between david simon um deepak's partner for 20 years uh me and deepak and like in that space on july 14th the bastille day the last day of that workshop um they hired me to run the chopra center and uh that was like i never went back home i never flew well six months later i flew back to get all my stuff but i just said like i'm here i'm showing up this is it this is what i've been waiting for all this time this is why i've been doing nothing for two years i'm just like allowing this uh you know to settle in and um that began a magnificent journey where i got to apprentice under the two of them for a decade um ultimately becoming the lead educator and then becoming um the dean of chopra center university and where i got to certify thousands of people in yoga ayurveda meditation i got to teach meditation every single day i got to launch those uh the sunrise meditations with wendy and i got to you know really just immerse and suddenly like listen to people after i would teach them like well why aren't you doing it and what are your experiences and what are your challenges and that allowed me to become a better teacher because at first i was just like telling everyone what to do and then i realized well to be a great teacher you actually need to listen um so that was a that was one of the blow away lessons um in that process and um at about the 10-year mark david simon it's the cosmic joke he was my closest and dearest friend neurologist dedicated to healing diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and when he passed away um i was sort of like you know what i think i've i think i've i think i've really given my all to this process let me you know really challenge you let me let this dream go because i'm maybe i've done 85 of it of what my vision was what my dream was and let me start a new dream and so i left the nest with deepak's blessing and which was probably the most difficult you know really difficult conversation um to have telling him and of course he was like you're always part of the family don't worry about that you've done a great job and you know how can i help you um so he's so gracious you know so ridiculously gracious and uh then i began just doing my own thing traveling to different countries working in hospitals working in south america into the jungles working with kids i've worked in the prisons i've worked in the corporate world and so suddenly this thing really took on um really a life of its own and uh you know there's a big difference with between teaching people at bank america and teaching um uh the dutch special forces you know so i really got to explore all these other areas and really study study the science study the neurology study the practical application in a secular way in a you know sanskrit kooked out woo-woo way in a spiritual way in an emotional way and uh i'm hooked that's what i do now i i meditate probably for you know at least a few hours every single day and uh i get to share uh these things and people say like what do you do for a living and probably my most common answer is i help people connect to the stillness and silence that rests within so they can make a better decision that's that's that's it and and i think that when we can really reconnect that yoga style kamadi you know connect to that stillness first and then perform action we're probably going to show up with a little higher vibration just a little higher energy to make a better choice not always but there's a higher likelihood so that brings us to now i guess beautiful thank you david g one thing that's interesting to me because i knew i knew a little bit of your story and and you know kind of where where you were before you got to the chopra center you mentioned your wife and it's interesting that you know you clearly have well there's two things that hit me number one that once david passed your time with the chopra center was was done and it's interesting that you said you you guys were like a triangle relationship you he and deepak you were this formation and so i'm always interested in that how people and our relationships and our soul contracts with others kind of keep us in a place and then if that dynamic changes so too often does the form around it but i'm curious with your wife who who was you know you said earlier your relationships weren't great when you were on wall street for those years where you felt kind of dead but she's it sounds like she's been this uh champion companion and also that you two had a certain level of um autonomy in your relationship and freedom to be able to explore what you needed did she go with you to india or was that a period where you two were apart no and it's a really common question that i get because you know here i was lost and needing something clarity um reconnection to purpose um meaning in life uh and she was uh totally selfless in that she's like you know don't worry i'm committed to you you just work out your stuff and i'll be here you know which is like ridiculously rare i think in in any any context uh i've been fortunate to to whether it's deepak or david simon and there's been a whole bunch of other people in that product wayne dyer was another one uh louise day um you know there's been a whole bunch of uh people who have seen um more in me than i was ever seeing at that time and uh thank god for them for just like trusting that whatever whatever i was going to do next uh would uh be an an evolution you know uh really take me to a better level because you know i came back so clear i came back um so happy i came back um you know so peaceful in my heart which had been turbulent for many many years and you know also you know uh i i don't mean i don't want to gloss over it you know when um you know for me 911 was a was a was a a game changer um you know like i said i was at this other company at the time and i was running that company i was i was the ceo of that company and we were on the roof 20 blocks north of of the twin towers and you know i'd worked on and off in that building for for a decade and there were people with me whose loved ones were in that building as well and we were like standing there as you know they're watching watching the buildings burn and when tower two collapsed and i know that everyone on the floor that i was working on you know if you were there you died in that um watching tower two collapse is like watching something uh vanish that's impossible to vanish i had grown up looking at the world trade center i had driven by that you know trillion times so so that really hit me uh so deeply um and made me question everything uh in life it was probably the deepest trauma that i had ever experienced and i believe you know obviously that we can rise from the ashes but i but i believe that some traumas you know they're so deep they hit you so so hard um that i wasn't really uh i wouldn't consider myself functional even right after that because i was still trying to figure out how'd that happen how could that how could that happen and um you know i believe that that's what resilience is and i believe resilience is not being bulletproof because i was i was knocked down i was depressed i was at times suicidal um but i believe that when we can find some kind of purpose some type of reason no matter what our loss is that uh and it takes everybody at a different time and everybody needs to grieve in different periods of time um but i believe that we can actually come back and and be stronger and um you know nietzsche said it and and kelly clarkson said it you know uh what doesn't kill you makes you stronger if you get back up you know so um sure so yeah and i i think pain uh for for my life and i've met so many people you know their core relationship we suddenly shattered it and they thought it would be that way forever they work at the job you know and they've given their heart in their life and suddenly someone says we don't really need you anymore uh someone's so close to you suddenly dies um and i think that uh you know i've had a couple of these you know traumatic experiences in my life and and i believe that they've always made me stronger my mother dying when i was relatively young you know certainly you know 9 11. um david simon my best friend you know i had like given everything to that that relationship we were like inseparable and uh you know we must have spent like six hours every day talking about the yoga bashishta and sufism and you know and the bible and like all this cooked out stuff really deep deep stuff and um so his dying also was sort of like that was one of those moments that just rocked me to the core and like in that moment i had to after that experience i just had to say like what value can i bring to the world now okay what nothing can ever get worse than everything that's happened so far where can i really you know i really like looking up to the heavens and asking the universe what will you have me do now what shall i do um and i wake up every day with that i wake up every day like how can i add value to this place and there are times where i say you know what today i don't know that i can add value i'm not creative enough to come up with something that is worthy and other days i'm like oh yeah this is it let's do it let's bring it and so i have deeper conversations with myself about my place in the world rather than just sleep walking through it yeah yeah i so i so relate to the piece around knowing the days where you don't have it and knowing that knowing on those days then go within and deepen with yourself whereas for many years i used to fight that both spiritually and creatively i used to have a belief about uh about holding holding myself in a certain place and once i let that go everything got a lot easier yeah yeah i mean you know because you know if you're a high achiever you know and pretty much or a pitta in ayurveda you know we call those fire people um you're you're gonna be pretty harsh to yourself when you're when you're not bringing it and and who can who can bring it every day no one can you know think of your greatest archetypes and heroes you know uh we we're we're often only seeing them when they're in thrive mode we're not seeing them when they're just trying to tread water and uh and just breathe and um maybe they're in pain emotionally or physically so uh you know that taught me a lot too it taught me uh it taught me a lot about empathy and compassion you know as well because i think those those you know those are also there's no end point for that you have to keep evolving your emotional intelligence and and because we can't even guess other people's pain you know we can we can witness it and it can hurt us a lot but when someone's in a unique situation that you could never be in it's agonizing you know and you can only guess the the the depth of that so i'm on a journey to you know i want to feel it i want to feel you know the excruciating pain that someone else is feeling not to take it on not to take that energy on and not to steal their their moment but i want to feel it because i i believe my heart can love more if if i can get to certain places that i'm otherwise protecting myself from um it's interesting when you talk about 911 and the impact that had on you and and you know i i feel like especially for people in the younger generation right now who who were either too young when 9 11 happened or who weren't affected by it in a way what we're experiencing in this past five six months with coronavirus uh stay-at-home orders everything that's been going on around it and through it too i feel like this is one of those transformational times um for everybody right now in the world i'm curious how because clearly you know your work is more needed than ever at a time like this helping people center helping people work with stress how has it personally affected you to not be out there with people working with people you know what would you say perhaps the gift and the challenge for you have been through this this last four or five months of social distancing yeah well thank you for phrasing it like that the gift and the challenge because i believe you know i have a gratitude practice you know i'm sure you do you know and it's part of my meditation practice every single morning simply just asking what am i grateful for and just like going there for for five or 15 minutes and you know the obvious things are all the things that that that we see you know people circumstances situations that are nourishing and loving to us and uh but what about all the stuff that pushes us in directions and makes us feel that's not on the surface nourishing to us um you know yeah uh you know 911 was was was core uh to me i don't know that you need a 911 to even have that you could just have someone that you loved so deeply you know get sick or or die or or leave you you know everyone's got that you know that that or those moments and i think that um yeah in five years no one will even know what i'm talking about when i say nine eleven think of me like you mean dial down one one um so so i get it uh you know that was you know for me that was a defining touch point and i think everyone has those and i think you know if you're if you're like five or more in 2020 guess what you know this this was a defining weird you know year for you you didn't go to school if you were a kid you know where you stopped going to school you couldn't really connect as a teenager and that's like those are the years when you need desperately to connect um if you're a parent you had to suddenly home school um and and simultaneously do a job if by the grace of god you you kept your job um i call this period of time low tide you know i go to the beach i live pretty close to the beach and i go to the beach with with my dog a lot and um we like to go at low tide because at low tides beaches really really wide and we'll go like crack a dawn you know six o'clock in the morning and there's no one there and at low tide um it's a very very different experience and now i've been to the beach at low tide you know what happens every you yeah realistically it's going on you know it happens twice a day every six hours low tide but at um especially closer to the new moon it's really really really low and so we all know high tide we've been living in high tide for the last decade or so or maybe longer than that um you know high tide you're you know you're bouncing on the waves you see the clouds you see the trees you see the other boats on the water you can look down you can't even see the bottom you know everything's beautiful it's high tide is amazing low tide's the opposite low tide suddenly all is revealed low tide suddenly all the sharp edges come out so for us who are beings of connection and energy to be suddenly compressed into this space where we are told you can't go out you can't do this you can't do that and then simultaneously for us to suddenly see the rapid fire symptoms of systemic racism in our in our world um which and the message there is get out get out the streets are talking get out there and join the streets and so one part of the world is squeezing you in and another part is telling you to to squeeze out i believe that this is such a critical time regardless of where you're intellectually or philosophically or politically or socially this is a critical time for self-care and so when you know our governor closed down our our state and like gun ranges were open gun stores were open that was an essential business but not meditation teachers and i was like hey what someone's got their priorities reversed on this one definitely you know you want to keep your gun stores open well at least allow the meditation teachers also to be to be doing stuff um and so um that really you know it was that moment where suddenly you know we started to feel the walls coming in at the same time that something inside of us was telling to go out and uh you know the level of depression that people have experienced and you know just look at the dogs you know i'm i'm i'm big on uh i'm i'm not big on dogma but i'm really big on dogs so you know the dogs who suddenly have had their routine turned on its head and the kids whose routines have been turned on their head and even our circadian rhythms we're supposed to like do this or at least we've trained ourselves to do that and the funny thing is we've been praying for this probably for 25 years we've been begging for this we all have said oh my god if i could just have two weeks with nothing happening i would feel so much better right now i would feel so clear-headed you know and then it arrives not in the form we requested and not going away so quickly either and uh you know suddenly two weeks later everyone's like can we just get back to what we were doing and it's like no you begged for this thing so i think we're confused i think we're overwhelmed i think we were probably all not eating as good as we could uh i i know that uh alcoholism has been on the rise i know depression is on the rise um and there's a lot of dysfunctionality in in relationships that thrived because there was always space being put between them and now no space or certainly less space and so i believe that um now more than ever people who can offer some some peace of mind piece of heart um to others and teach them how to do it you know that's always been like a thing i don't want to like have like an amazing session with a person and they go wow that blew my mind i was so chill you totally connected me to my stillness because then it's just like going to a movie it's like all right well that was interesting how do i then get you hooked on showing up the next day and the next day and the next day and really weaving this timeless practice into your life so that everything has a little bit of of uh of elevation from that and so uh i've been this has been like one of the hardest periods of my life because you know we have events where people are like you know hugging or where they're gazing into each other's eyes or where they're you know doing stuff that's you know uh even if it's like you know sound healing and things along those lines and now it's all via zoom now it's all via this this thing i'm also doing a lot of training that i would otherwise do in person and that it's harder to get feedback from me yesterday i i was working with um the executives of the san francisco police department you know that was like a really really intense you know it was all an all-day thing it was like eight hours of me staring into the green dot you know um for for that whole period of time and i think that's um and i get it's good because like just like we're gazing into each other's eyes right now but when this you know 30 people on the screen and you don't really know you know someone's like checking emails while they're doing that um or we're watching you know watching youtube videos it's hard and there's no room for that spontaneous aha moment from someone who's just sitting there so you know um i was supposed to take a group uh in september to india i do that every year to take a group of people and um it just didn't feel right to do that um india's not even allowing flights from the united states right now so it's really hard for me to say yeah sure everything will be fine so i pushed that off till next year um so i'm sure it'll be in big demand you know but that was sort of like a bit of a heartbreak for me that these people wouldn't get to experience that because this would be the time you know when you could really connect to some of that timeless wisdom and i've got a whole bunch of in-person events set up for october november see what happens there um all of our events sort of you know got canceled when the governor's order came down uh in may so i've just you know i've i've pivoted and i'm like i don't want to stop teaching still teaching every day still connecting to hundreds of people every day um but if this is if this is it then let me become a zoom expert you know if this is if this is the way to do it you know let me just um let me step up let me step up my game and see if i can create the greatest you know as as you do you've created this magnificent platform uh for people to heal and thrive um you know so that's i can only aspire to uh to follow your lead lee thank you and the one thing that we said is you know the one thing you just said which i'm very aware of especially in our zoom culture like you i'm grateful we have zoom i'm grateful that we have this what to me seems like a slightly psychic telepathic communication portal that we can use but i'm really aware that our bodies get left behind our physical senses get left behind that part of us that when we're in a room with each other is reading and communicating energy completely unconsciously subconsciously so i think it's a it's a tricky it's a tricky thing like for me personally nothing really slowed down if anything i felt like the um i felt the need go up in the world for the kind of stuff we do so i kind of for the first few weeks really and also we like you we had to cancel some things and change some things and but but what i also recognized for myself was because so many people were new to zoom or it was like a novelty for them there were all these people going hey should we zoom at like five and i was like no because i'm you know i'm like i i do my four hours a day on zoom sometimes more and that's enough and then i need to back away otherwise i start to lose balance because it's it's a slightly confusing way of communicating if you do it too much and you don't have the physical mirroring and the the physical response that i think we're all we're all craving and missing and and trying to find our new balance point with because it this is a time like no other when it comes to that yeah and in person um and all of my workshops they're small workshops i try i always cap whatever i do i cap it at 30 people because i for me i want to you know by the end of the day i want to know everyone's name i want to know everyone's voice after two days or something along those lines there's something about it's not just my connection to that person but if there's 30 of us that creates this unbelievable uh amplified energetic connection which um that's the thing i find most missing people can you know and and i've done i just come i've done two teacher trainings now virtual on zoom um where i've certified uh meditation teachers and gone through another um you know done a few events there's there's you know some some really really familiar with like what was missing on that one what was how can i engage this one at a higher level and um so there are some things that i've that i've done sort of like a speed dating kind of thing if we've got 30 people i break them up into zoom rooms and suddenly it's four people and it's like okay for 10 minutes talk to each other and then you know that happens and then it's like do it again do it again so they're sort of like speed dating and and workshop simultaneously but still like i'm missing that like i'm offering that to them and then they all come back to the main room so there are um i'm always trying to raise the bar i'm always trying to figure out what's a newest technique that someone's doing that's adding value but there's nothing like um listening with your eyes closed to the room breathing you know there's nothing there's nothing more powerful than that where you suddenly like suddenly you know i'm big on entrainment and we you know we know that if there's you know five people in a room or eight people or 30 people in the room ultimately if we spend enough time together you know our energy will entrain our heartbeats will all start beating at the same highest i always say the highest vibration always wins so whoever's got the slowest heartbeat everyone's going to get pulled down to that whoever is you know the most loving person everyone's going to get elevated to that and i and you know i think that's missing when we when we're looking at 30 boxes on a screen like hollywood squares or or brady bunch it doesn't have that same that same energetic feel so you're right we leave our bodies behind we go from being these you know three four five dimensional beings into just these two-dimensional little boxes on a screen um don't worry i'm sure i'm sure we're just a couple of years away from suddenly everyone going like oh you don't have the uh the 3d app you know for the 4d app so that'll be the next wave of this i think the sensory replication app you just put your hand in it and it yeah yeah yeah i don't know if i want to think about that but you're probably it's a little hard fine there are so many things that i could talk to you about and i'm aware that you know partly because of the time that we booked with you and partly because i think most people an hour long conversation tends to be enough i was trying to think today okay what is most relevant because you have such an enormous body of work and the one thing that really stuck out to me and you just mentioned it especially with our recent climate around police brutality was your blue courage awareness training yeah um perhaps you could just tell us what is that what does that look like and and how how did you get started with that yeah um i i guess it was about 10 years ago um i stumbled and i got invited it was a trick it was a prank on me um to um go to camp pendleton which is the largest marine you know uh reserve uh in the united states um and these guys had just come back from too many tours of iraq and afghanistan and i was you know i just come off the beach i was wearing a giant home t-shirt my hair was like scraggly and and really long and um and it was a prank i i somebody thought it would be really funny to suddenly put me in front of these guys and it was in that moment that i that i suddenly realized i'm not going to mention the word meditation i have taught people who have been to iraq and afghanistan i have worked with soldiers before i have several of my students um have died in in iraq and afghanistan and so i figured i would let me just share what i do know and then let me call everything tactical breathing let me just talk about this you know we're going to do some time tactical breathing here yeah and and it was basically um you know something that i evolved into i called 16 seconds uh 16 seconds to clarity and so everybody could like breathe in and watch their breath to the count of four let's just do it here just like to create this so um think about something that's been bothering you or disturbing you don't go too deep this isn't therapy but something that's irritating something was supposed to happen over the last couple of days and it didn't turn out that way and now get clear on that and now close your eyes and through your nose take a long slow deep breath in and watch that breath and when it gets down to your belly hold it there and keep holding it and keep watching it and keep witnessing it and keep observing it and then very very slowly release that breath and keep watching it as it moves up your chest watch it as it moves through your throat out through your nostrils keep witnessing keep exhaling and now breathe normally and open your eyes so that was 16 seconds classic pattern interrupt in those 16 seconds if you were playing along and you did blee thank you um you were not thinking you were not you were not thinking about that thing that i asked you to think about i'm not going to miss out on on a on a free david g session in the middle are you kidding me that was fantastic i might be i might be calling you every day at this time from now on i would love that i would love that i'll put it on i'll put that on my calendar um so if you were playing along you weren't thinking about that that irritation and i didn't say stop thinking about that irritation and and that's the key um you just closed your eyes and really found yourself another object of your attention and i believe that so that's what i taught these marines and uh it worked and they said would you please come back tomorrow and i said it took me a half hour just to get through security here and and they're like no we'll leave your name the next time and they did they was there they just keep kept wanting to prank me so uh so i came back the next day and led another 16 second meditation they said keep coming and i kept coming and then after a week they were doing that and then they said would you come back next week i said if i come back next week we're adding a minute so we did a minute and 16 every single day and then two minutes and 16 and we did that every single day for 26 weeks i was gone for like week 17 to 22 because i had to travel but these guys now a decade later are all meditating for 26 minutes and 16 seconds every single day but it was that experience um that really you know clicked it for me um and then the department of justice found out about that and reached out to me and said there's a group that works with cops and they need this too if you're open to it and i was like of course i'm open to it whatever your opinion may be on defunding the police on hating the cops on doing whatever they're here just like we had a million soldiers come home from iraq and afghanistan they're here so we can either say death to them and then they're here where we can say oh my god they're so wounded emotionally physically psychologically how can i support how can i help how can i make a difference in helping these people de-escalate how can i make a difference in helping these people breathe as they pull up on a crime scene how can i make a difference in how they talk to others and so i have taught i've worked with blue courage teaching them you know don miguel ruiz's four agreements and the teachings of the buddha i took ten of them to india last year and we were like meditating in the beatles ashram and like going deep and swimming in the ganges and going up into the himalayas you know i want them to connect to the softest most tenders parts of who they are you know i want them to move beyond their stoicism because i know that who signs up to protect and serve and risk their lives for people they don't know not me yeah not me i'm not i'm not i'm not taking that job you know they you know between soldiers and and cops you know they're doing that for people they might not even like and i'm not doing that so so i there's a certain nobility to the original why why someone would become a cop and i'm thinking most people do that for a good intention they want to serve they want to protect um are there a-holes out there yeah sure and guess what pick the profession unfortunately these people are a lot you know have a lot more power than someone who's running the marketing department you know at ebay um so you know there could and i'm not saying that person's an a-hole i just took that out of nowhere um but so my feeling is you know that's how i work with people in the corporate world i work with people you know and like i said dutch special forces i've worked with the ecuadorian police i've worked with um uh the the dublin street gang guardian you know i want to work with people who we've served we've given up on you know and and i'm and i'm not giving up on them i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna make that difference um and you know i can't force anyone but these 30 people who i worked with yesterday and i've worked with sfpd and i've worked with nypd a whole bunch of different police departments these guys had to apply and be accepted by the blue courage leadership division so you know these weren't like showing up in a room and everyone's like sitting there like this going oh what do you have to teach me these are people who said i want to learn to connect to stillness and silence i want to be more reflective i want to be more patient i want to be more purposeful with with my policing i want to restore the nobility of my profession and i was like like i'd love hanging out with them it was great you know really really powerful so you know i get a lot of haters all the you know wherever i go there's people like why do you do that or what you know whatever and i'm like i'm i'm just trying to follow my heart if i can spread more love and if i can allow people to be better listeners um and maybe raise their vibration that's that's my intention you know do i make mistakes tons of them do i stumble and bumble and and you know get defensive about stuff like that yeah sometimes but you know my feeling is you know we've got to love each other we've there's more things that connect us than separate us we've got to love each other and if we're not treating each other with respect i don't care what side of anything you're on you know if you're not treating people with respect you're never going to convince them so then what we suppress the voice and then it comes back with violence yeah that's what's been going on for the last 400 years in the united states you know suppress the voice you know how long can you hold a balloon under water what happens to a dream deferred you know so i mean this is happening in all the quarters of the of the planet i think and every time we suppress a boy i also go to israel and hang out um with groups of palestinians and israelis who have children who have been killed by by suicide bombs and by israeli bullets who work together to create peace and people say to me oh my god you can't go to israel it's apartheid there they're these horrible people i'm like what are you doing sitting on the couch pointing at me you know i'm trying to i'm trying to bridge that piece and i'm trying to raise them and i bring groups of people to experience that so they can come back here and understand that we have a deeper obligation to love each other which is no one is taught that in school whatever school you go to so sort of like my side mission of like you know and so it's rough sometimes and these are rough times and and they should be rough times yeah you know so rather than going like oh my god it's so hard it's like isn't everything worth having hard there's no shortcuts here you know earlier when you said that you got incredible support from louise hay wayne dyer deepak all those people who you you seem genuinely surprised by when you said that i was sitting here you know my intuitive mind is a big part of my identity and um i just i just heard yeah he's an engine they saw he's an engine and they knew that he's an engine that's going to keep driving his energy around the world and so they supported him because your design is a little different to theirs perhaps but that they could see that your design was going to do exactly what you just said you're doing it's like you're the engine that will you're the engine that will drive that will go over there and sort this out and so that that just came to me again when you were speaking about the bridging work that you do that you're this you're this energy engine and that that's its own kind of superpower and that's a really important role in our world and i love that you talk about superpowers because i believe that we are mutants you know and you know everyone should watch x-men over and over and over and just allow yourselves to realize oh my god that's really why i wrote sacred powers because they're resting within and of course every mutant is is not necessarily appreciated for their superpowers you know lots of you know look at any mutant out there and they're like you know now they're they're trying to shut me down so that's why we have to really go deeper with our with our superpowers um when i was watching a video where you were talking about superpowers and i was just like in glee i was just like so giddy watching it so well it's funny you bring up sacred powers because i i probably have room for two more questions with you but one of the things that i wanted to ask you about you have three books um and in sacred powers you have a chapter called divine formula and you touch on looking at what's your winning formula so explain what a winning formula is to the listeners and what would you say yours is well so a winning formula at a certain age we realized here are the blockages maybe i'm not as attractive as that other person who's always getting pic you know called on i'm getting picked on they're getting called on uh maybe i'm not as smart as that person who's suddenly you know going to have this path to success in their life um you know we can you know we we all do this you know we at some point someone said no we're like come on you you're not that you know and um and so we had we we adapted and we said okay what's what's my template you know what's the paradigm that i'm going to use what's the persona that i'm going to sort of create to walk through the world and it helps us get to that point but i believe that at a certain point because so many different stages and phases of life that a certain point you know what was critical and getting us through high school or critical for us getting our first job or maybe meeting someone you know to to partner with um or establish ourselves in the world that's not necessarily the same paradigm that we need now and so my winning formula for a solid 30 years was class clown it was you know i was like in my home i grew up i grew up in a fairly you know violent and loud household where the only person who got hurt was the person who yelled the loudest and i did not have the loudest yell so i never got hurt i was invisible but when i could trot out a joke and make someone laugh suddenly i would get that attention i realized that at home i realized it at school i wasn't necessarily the best study here but i definitely could say the funny or sarcastic or or whatever thing and so i was always getting the attention that i felt i wasn't getting in other critical core areas i did it when i got my first job you know and people were always like oh that guy he's so he's so fun to hang out with but as i got deeper involved in the corporate world and as i got deeper involved in my education and advanced my education i realized i'm not really being appreciated for what i want to be appreciated for i want people to say wow you studied that you've been doing that for like all this time that was so brilliant what you said and instead they were saying that was so funny and it happened and it clicked on me when i was introduced like to speak at some place so i was speaking to like you know i was teaching uh law school um teaching lawyers about finance at cornell law and they introduced me as like you know he's one of the funniest people i know and i'm like really here i am i'm teaching at cornell law and that's my intro it was just like uh kill me now you know the knife was just like twisting inside of me and i realized you know what it's time to take out my contact lenses that i've been living my life through shake them out wipe them out and come up with a new winning formula because i realized that i was defaulting to conditioned behaviors because that had been my winning formula on a path i was no longer on yeah and so i dove deeper into going you know going deeper into education and going deeper into school and studying and going deep into the ancient teachings of the bhagavad-gita and the yoga sutras and the dhammapada and the rigveda and the upanishads and sudden like all this stuff that was like so new to me and i said let me let me own every single word let me memorize it and etch it into my heart let me make that you know my new formula so now i'd rather you know come up with a one-liner that's something that i read you know like yoga star kuru karmani or some kind of profundity that has been a timeless wisdom and i get to translate it in modern times than the joke and you know um and you know and i use humor to teach because i think it's very disarming and i think you know people can can sit there and and have a great time and take on all this information and once in a while someone says you know you should do like stand-up comedy and i'm like thanks it's my old winning formula my new winning formula um so i would say that you know i i leveraged my humor um as my first winning formula it was it was the end now it's the means and that shift for me realizing that you know the goal isn't to get a laugh the goal is to see the aha moment in the student in front of me and they didn't even know that they got it in that moment you know a week later they'll be walking across the street and they're like wow that was really cool where did i hear that i don't need to get credit for it i see it at the moment it happens um so really shifting humor from the end to the means changed my entire life and that's my winning formula now you know i want i want to sit in a casual way talk about something so deep that no one would ever want to talk to or listen to and have it be so light that they get it but here's here's what i love about that so you were talking about tactical breathing was how you reframed meditation and breath training and it's i think that's the irony to me like one of the things because i i did not uh i never envisaged that i would go by the names of variously channeler intuitive guide spiritual teacher um i didn't think i would add those to flawed human and somebody trying to figure it out you know all the other names that we have in any other in any other capacity because i think there was so much separation for me in those terms and more importantly in the way that people see those terms you know there's still this guru ideal idealization so i think a lot of the time the separation that we have around spirituality is because we forget it's in us and it's close to us so tactical breathing oh yeah i totally the way i think and the way i have been entrained and programmed to think tactical breathing sounds like a benefit but meditation sounds like this weird oh hang on a second there is this barrier and so i love that what you're talking about is finding ways to to constantly connect people to that which is already in us and to in a way um normalize or ground some of this stuff because i use humor in the same way and especially when i'm live in the room because it moves energy and it's a way of moving energy which can otherwise be too heavy because the other side of what you're saying which i find really powerful as a student of self-growth and healing because i needed it desperately in order to survive in my early in my late teens and early 20s what i then found as i went into being a facilitator for other people's healing and self-growth as well as being a student of it was that it's it's very common that we will start to focus people are more comfortable focusing on what they need to let go of what they need to heal then remembering that the gift of self-actualization spirituality healing is it brings back your creator so you can create a new story you can create a new winning formula that's the beauty of life we aren't the programs that we have become or been and trained to think we have to stay as the beauty of life is the physical body is going to change you this world around is going to change us those two things are going to change our perspective in our relationship all of the time but i find it really exciting that you know this chapter that you have and this method that you have is i think that's one of the things that i think would set the world on fire very fast is if we remember our ability to create and our ability to recreate because i think that's one of the things that we are very asleep at the wheel at as a society and it's one of the things i've seen now working in healing for 16 years that's the hardest thing for a lot of people to get it's very easy for people to think oh yeah i need to heal what happened with my mother yeah maybe and if you invent something on the right at the same time you know heal on a tuesday and then on a wednesday go and learn something new that healing is going to be so much easier than if we just look down and behind and i say that as someone who hey i've played the victim i've had all the dark knight of the soul i don't want to be here moments too i get it but i think that creator power is so what we need right now and i think that's the gift of self-actualization so brilliantly really i'm just i'm just bouncing with you david because i loved you know everything but it was it was kind of you know that was a clarifying moment for me hearing you say that it was that's always been one of the things that i've noticed in the healing and the spiritual worlds um that i you know i i sometimes say that i'm a new age recovery so people go oh yeah lee does that new age work but if you really know what i do no i'm kind of like new age recovery i'm all about intuition and i love a lot of stuff around the new age but i'm not you can just love and light your way through everything i don't think that's who we're here to be i think we're here to to really become so no i i love i love that part of your work and i think it's very important so david g we we're at the end sadly i could oh my god i'm having such a great time oh my god me too me too but we had a meeting about a week ago and it was suggested that we need to be careful about how long the into the kind of interviews and conversations go and i get it because you know people told me they said oh people don't like seeing that something's over an hour and i'm like okay anyway um this could be the bonus track it could be the one one ends at 59 minutes and the other one is like and a 15-minute bonus for those of you who have who have all the time in the world we're now going on to the six hour debrief about that one aspect um you know impact the world is the reason this show is called impact the world is because i paid attention to what my community was saying before i started training groups around the work they wanted to do in the world because i was doing it a lot one-on-one i kept hearing people going i feel like i'm here to impact the world but i don't know what so that's why this show is called impact the world you have impacted the world externally you have impacted your own journey internally because you've you've had this rich and varied journey so far and it ain't over yet what's next for you like if you if if you have an idea about your next decade or just in this moment what feels important to you perhaps in your next decade yeah well um great question and i and and my tagline which i've had for 20 years is we transform the world by transforming ourselves so it's the you know so i believe that um and i'm not all about love and light you know i'm i i i i think you know you and i really see eye to eye on this you know um yeah i want to show with my best version um but uh boundaries are like so critical to everything oh yeah andrews are so critical to you know because because if i really understand boundaries then i can really be fully vulnerable and if i'm fully vulnerable then i can get so strong and be so courageous but if i have boundaries you know if i don't have boundaries then you know or if i have porous boundaries then i'm suddenly i'm not going to be in in my best place because i'm going to be putting my attention on trying to stop something or or defend something and you know i think that's you know really such a such an important part of of of what we do because i believe everybody who's on this journey um is on a journey back to their wholeness back to the memory of their wholeness at least and um and that's not always love and light that's that's sometimes tears and crawling through glass yeah and um and if you think oh no no no it's all good it's all good it's all good yes yes yes at the highest level you know the ancient teachings say yes it's all brahman it's it's it's all godhead but here we are with bills to pay and relationships to heal and you know to actualize ourselves yes it is all godhead but what about all that other real world stuff um and we could say oh it's all an illusion okay stop paying your bills for a couple of months and then you'll see how much of illusion so um so you know uh i i guess you know it's it you know i guess there's another book that that that's in the works but you know i never like wrote my you know i never i never like wrote a book on like on demand you know hey house has said tons of times man okay we're ready for your next one and i'm like but i i really want to live this one a little bit and they're like uh everyone else is not they're coming out with a new book every three months and i'm like that's not me i want to i want to be so deep talking about the same thing that i wrote about i don't just want to like here's the next one and the next one so um so i like to to really relish you know uh it's a great album by joan osborne but you know i love to relish um the stuff when it's feeling good and so uh i've been you know i've been i've been a student of a lot of these ancient texts for a long time and you know over the last several months [Music] i've been doing these these five week online sessions and the funny thing is lee they're all supposed to be an hour twice a week sunday and wednesday and as we hit the two hour mark and there are people who are like in the chat and we could have like 150 people on there and the people in the chat are saying can we get to the meditation already and so i have i have been scolded so frequently other people are like oh my god i wasn't doing anything anyway this is like the most amazing thing but you know since i said they were going to be it was going to be you know five weeks one hours eat one hour each and they've they've all gone over gone like two hours so i have no temporal integrity so um i i don't i don't and it's not because i don't care about anyone else's time but it's something like oh oh oh this thing is like so amazing you have to let me just take you know but i do that suddenly like eight times in a session and one hour turns to two so so that's what's you know so funny that you're saying that because i was just scolded just yesterday two days ago for having no temporal integrity um so like what's next for me you know i don't i don't have a an end game um you know on this july 14th is coming up july 14th was the day that i started at the chopra center that's bastille day that's uh liberation day that's moksha day and it's actually the last day that i was there as well july 14th and july 14th so i view since that was like the last official day that i was there i'm still in the glow so what i'd every july 14th that's sort of like my celebration that like where i say like you know what's next what what can i do i believe we're going to be in the age of covid for a while i believe until there's either a drug or a vaccine we're still going to be you know not moving around as freely as as we want and that's going to put up again that extreme constriction so i've been you know studying more of the ancient texts because whatever we're going through they went they went through similar things as well and so you know really what i'm what i'm what i've been really putting my time and attention on is finding the commonalities in so many different indigenous societies i've been really spending a lot of time exploring african societies from like 75 i shouldn't say societies cultures from 75 000 years ago because they really were more tribal than societal um at that time and that seems to be the foundation of where everything has come from starting in africa 75 000 years ago and so i've been really spending it probably for the last three years i've i've been putting my time and attention on that seeing where the various migrations occurred what are some of the rituals and routines that those people elevated out um which things be happening spontaneously and naturally so i'm sure there's another book where i really go deep into the commonalities of virtually every um culture um but that just fascinates me now simultaneously i'm fascinated by um our solar system do you know that the sun has this thing called the heliosphere and it wraps our entire solar system and protects us as it showers us with gamma rays constantly but it protects us from all the other radioactive stuff coming from every other part of the galaxy so how come we're not getting like shredded by gamma waves because there's something also called the magnetosphere which only earth has because we have this this liquid weird center and that protects us from the gamma rays of the heliosphere so like talk about like divine whatever in in terms of setting us up so you know i've been spending a lot of time exploring you know our solar system and and you know that kind of stuff because i believe that you know there's a an expression in sanskrit yeah you know yata pindet you know as is the cosmic mind so is the personal mind as is the cosmic body so is the personal body so i know that you know so we have our own little heliosphere and magnetosphere inside of us as well as a people and as individuals and so i i see us as like the 7.6 billion people and we're all wrapped in our own little heliosphere and yet there's like how do i really like elevate my individuality it's because i've got my own little liquid center right in my heart you know my own little magnetosphere that's allowing me to like move through the world so i don't know that's where i've been that's where i've been that's what i've been studying uh you know going back as far as we can go back and going out as far as as i can go out and trying to come up with some type of really um some translation of that divine convergence so it's it's i i'm excited i'm listening to you and i'm like the if if anyone at hay house is watching this right now you're probably gonna get a call and they're gonna say yeah we would like uh those tribe of the universe volumes one to ten books that you're working on and it'll just be called the david g volumes like you know decades from now so no that's that's awesome that's awesome and it's exciting and um and yeah it's it's beautiful so david g i am gonna have to because apparently there are these things called there are these rules around linear time that we're supposedly supposed to stick to even though i too have trouble with all that stuff but it has been absolutely delightful to get to be with you connect with you talk to you and i i know for a fact that anybody listening or watching they're going to have some little pings going off from the beautiful engine that you are so thank you for being you and thank you for doing what you do in the world thank you so much thank you for being so gracious um and um such a such a such an amazing person to have a conversation with so you know this time flew and uh and it's not enough so like how amazing you know is that thank you thank you and uh to all of your um all of your fans and followers and listeners and students um how how fortunate they are to be on this journey uh with you as the guide because you know you are you're guiding us all into magnificence and i appreciate that thank you thank you thank you and for anybody listening or watching davidji.com is where you can find all of all of davidji's work and we will as usual put the links in the show notes and underneath the video and uh david g i hope i i feel there will be some other conversation collaboration something in the future and i really look forward to it thank you so much lee yeah thank you [Music] you have been listening to impact the world for more of my work please visit lee [Music] harrisenergy.com this august i'm doing something a little bit different from the 18th to the 26th me and my team are bringing to you a virtual soul magic experience we've run soul magic retreats for the last four years and we would have been going to costa rica this october for our fifth one but because we can't and also because i've been feeling a calling to hand over the microphone to my guides the zs a little more of late we have created a brand new experience for you called transmissions 2020. in it there will be five live broadcasts which will be entirely channeled these broadcasts will focus on you accessing more of your magnetic energy i've chosen to broadcast all of these live because that way i know the material will be specially curated for those of you who show up to take this experience with us added to this we have for you a special music album and it's sound healing pieces from devore bozique with my spoken words weaved throughout and when you do sign up the first track from the transmission sound healing album will be available for you immediately so to find out more about what transmissions 2020 entails you can visit transmissions2020.com and if it resonates for you to take this special journey with us we'll look forward to welcoming you [Music] there [Music] you

Channel: LeeHarrisEnergy

Views: 15,585

Rating: 4.9237056 out of 5

Keywords: davidji, davidji guided meditation, davidji meditation, davidji morning meditation, A Powerful Technique to Manifest Your Desires | Davidji

Id: _dqmS2ykjUE

Length: 76min 52sec (4612 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020