Alex Ferrari 0:00
But haven't we given away so much of our power in so many different areas of our life, because we're always chasing at least most are always chasing pleasure without the work.

Dr. John Demartini 0:12
If you live in the illusion that life has a one sided thing, and you're trying to get a one sided system, the pursuit of a monopole will create a bipolar condition, and you'll basically be trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure all your life. You can't. It's a waste of time. Even pursuing that whatever is low in your values, you'll procrastinate, hesitate, frustrated, whatever is high in your values, you discipline, reliable and focused on it. And a discipline is a disciple of your soul, if you will. That's when you're being almost authentic to what its calling is. So your time and your space are great indicators of what your life demonstrates, the fear of losing that which we seek and the fear of gaining of that which we try to avoid. That's all stress is, and stress is simply an imbalanced ratio of perceptions.

Alex Ferrari 0:52
So is that what Buddha was trying to say, when attachment is the root of all suffering?

Dr. John Demartini 0:56
I really believe that we have the capacity to transcend it. But trauma is not what happens to us. Trauma is what is based on what we expect and how we perceive it.

Alex Ferrari 1:05
So can trauma actually be a spiritual advantage? And if so, why does it feel like punishment while you're in it

Dr. John Demartini 1:13
Very simple. I believe that..

Alex Ferrari 1:20
Now, before we get started, I want to thank you so much for clicking on this video and getting ready to watch this amazing conversation we're about to have. But one thing I've noticed is that about 40% of you who are watching are not subscribed. It is the easiest way to continue to support the work we're doing at Next Level Soul and it has been the joy of my life to have these amazing conversations with some of the most remarkable and profound souls on the planet. So from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you so much for giving me the ability and the privilege of doing this work for you. So please just hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, and it really, really helps us out a lot. Thank you so much, and let's dive in.

Alex Ferrari 2:13
I'd like to welcome back to the show returning champion, Dr. John Demartini, how you doing Dr. John?

Dr. John Demartini 2:18
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me back on the show.

Alex Ferrari 2:21
Thank you so much for being back on the show. Are you've been on the show twice before. You're one of our early guests back in the olden days of next level soul. I've always been a very big fan of your work and and what you've done, and obviously I enjoy you were introduced to me by the Secret back in all those years ago. But your work is is pretty remarkable. What you're, you've been doing, trying to help souls around the world. So first and foremost, I want to just give you my my heartfelt thanks for all the hard work you've been doing all your entire career.

Dr. John Demartini 2:52
Thank you that's what I love to do. I don't, I don't even think of his work sometimes, just for whom I love doing?

Alex Ferrari 2:56
Yes, absolutely. So I'm going to dive just right into the deep end. If someone feels lost right, like in life right now, how do they know whether they're actually lost or just redirect, or just being redirected into something deeper?

Dr. John Demartini 3:12
Well, I think if you were to take a something that's round, you're always at a turning point going around it. So at any moment, it's always a turning point towards where you're going. So that would be a general statement, but it's whatever you're perceiving. It depends on if you perceive an event that you think is in the way, instead of on the way. You can ask a new set of questions help you see how it is on the way and turning into on the way. So it's it's all depends on the perceptions and expectations and the questions you asked and how you perceive life.

Alex Ferrari 3:50
That's a good question, because a lot of times like you don't see what the universe has in store for you. All you see is like you just lost your job, or I just broke up with my girlfriend, or I just lost my house. But if you look at it from a if you look at down the line and look back, which, if you've been around the around the earth a few times, you kind of start seeing that perspective where you're like, Oh, thank God, I lost my job there. Oh, thank God, I broke up with that, that that girl, she would have been a nightmare, kind of thing.

Dr. John Demartini 4:22
Well, every event has two sides, and you can make a heaven out of a hell or hell out of heaven, as Milton said. And we have in our brain the cortex, the walnut shell and the nut inside, which is the nuclei, people that function from there are the nutty ones.

Alex Ferrari 4:46
You know, many of those do you?

Dr. John Demartini 4:47
I think we all have moments of nuttiness that amygdala wants to seek prey and avoid predator. Yes, it wants to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It. Wants to eat something which is pleasureful instead of being eaten. It wants support without challenge, ease without difficulty, the pause without negative the peace without a war. It's once a one sided game, but the two sides are united like a magnet and striving for that which is unobtainable, trying to get one side without the other, and trying to avoid that which is unavoidable is a source of suffering. So if we choose to see an event as positives without negatives or negatives without positives, then the amygdala is going to make us have an impulse to seek or an instinct to avoid, and we're going to be an automaton reacting to these misperceptions. But if we ask a new set of questions, which our intuition is constantly trying to help us do, what is the downside to that new relationship that I'm infatuated with, and what is that upside to that person that challenged me or criticized me or hurt me or whatever in mind, if we balance out our equation, we don't have the intrusive thoughts that occupy space and time to mind, from the infatuations and resentments. So if you if you think about it, when you have insomnia night, you're having all this brain noise going on and all this stuff you can't sleep. It's because you're thinking of something that's pleasureful, that you're fantasizing about, or you're thinking about something that's painful, that you're nightmareing about. And it's occupying space and time to mind, because if it's one, it's prey. If it's the other, it's predator. You don't want to lose food and you don't want to be eaten, so it keeps you awake and alert, because the fear of starvation, the fear of being eaten, is part of our nature inside, even though we don't call it prey and Predator. It's just support and challenge in our mind, or positive and negatives. So we have these intrusive thoughts in our brain that occupy our mind and make us have this noise, and it stops the message of our inner voice and our inner vision, which calls us to do something really magnificent. It distracts us. So when somebody thinks something is terrible in their life, and they just don't see the blessings they can ruminate on that they can have it keep them up at night. They can choose to be traumatized by it, or they can choose to ask, okay, what is the benefit to this? How is it serving me? How is it helping me intellectually? What am I learning? How is it helping my business? What is it catalyzing? How is it helping me financially? What is it raising the value of how is it helping my relationship? How is it helping me socially? How has it helped me physically? How has it helped me spiritually? If you ask those questions, the quality of your life is based on the questions you ask. If you ask those questions, you become conscious of things you weren't conscious of, and the label of one sidedness can be dissolved, and you can see both sides and be freed. And the moment you see both sides of the event, you're neither infatuated or resentful, neither you know impulsive or instinct, and you're out of your amygdala, and you're now in your executive center, which, according to Scientific American, would call the seat of the self.

Alex Ferrari 7:49
So when you were saying that the predator or prey thing, when you're sleeping, where would stress come into

Dr. John Demartini 7:56
That is stress. That's stress. There's only two forms of stress known. You could take any moment you've ever been stressed of any age of your life, any moment in your life, and it's only two forms, the perception of loss of something you're seeking, or the perception of gain of something you're avoiding. That's all there is. It's the perception of loss of food and the perception of being eaten in the brain, the brain only sees those two things. Basically, we may call the prey what supports us. We may call the predator somebody that's challenging us or praise or criticism or giving us money or taking money from us. The outer forms all get in the brain, down into the amygdala, as simply prey and Predator, seeking that which we know, the fear of losing that which we seek, and the fear of gaining of that which we try to avoid. That's that's all stress is. And stress is simply an imbalanced ratio of perceptions. You balance the ratio of perception stress is gone.

Alex Ferrari 8:51
So if you're overwhelmed with work and you've got too many plates spinning in the back where that would obviously be predator in that sense. Or could it?

Dr. John Demartini 8:59
Well, you're, if you if you blame something as causing it, instead of looking at the way you're prioritizing your day, if you're filling your day with the highest priority actions, and you set realistic strategies in place to achieve something that same activity, if it's delegated to lower the lower stuff is delegated to somebody else, it's a catalyst that stress is a catalyst for you to look to prioritize your life and delegate lower priority things and get on with the thing that's produces the most. It's helping you.

Alex Ferrari 9:28
Very true Sir, very true. Now you say every once in a while, in your in your teachings, that everyone, that everyone, lives according to the hierarchy of values. How can someone discover their their values without lying to themselves.

Dr. John Demartini 9:44
Great question. If you just ask somebody their values, which I've done, I don't know few 100,000 people over the last 47 years, I'd have to say that most people don't know their values. I. They think they do okay. And I'll give an example that. Before I go further, I was speaking in Johannesburg at the Success Summit in 2012 there about 5000 people there. I was the opening speaker. I think Richard Branson was the last speaker, and there's a bunch of speakers in between. And I, when I got up on stage, I said, How many of you, because it was about business and wealth, says, How many of you would love to be financially independent, where your passive income exceeds your active income? Every hand went up. Some people put two hands up. Some people put their leg and hands up. In there, fair enough, and there's a VIP section in a general audience. And I said, Great. And there's roaring. People are all roaring, yes, yes, that's what we want. I said, Great. Now in a really humble manner, how many of you are financially independent where your passive income has exceeded your active income? All the hands went down, except seven. Now this is, this is, wow. This is lower than I ever imagined. I would have thought

Alex Ferrari 11:04
20% Yeah, 20% maybe 30.

Dr. John Demartini 11:15
Oh, no, I wouldn't say 20, but I would have guessed, well, there's only 1% of the population that achieve it.

Alex Ferrari 11:16
Interesting, but that's a much smaller even in 5000 people. Seven.

Dr. John Demartini 11:16
You would have thought that that would have been

Alex Ferrari 11:19
100, 50, 50, or 57 Wow.

Dr. John Demartini 11:25
And I said be honest, because financial independent doesn't mean you have your own job and don't work for somebody else. Financial Independence is you have passive income exceeding needs of active income. You don't have to work. You work only because you love to seven people. And I said, Isn't that interesting? You all claim that you have a value on financial independence. You're all coming to a seminar thinking that's what's going to happen, but only seven people have their hand up. Isn't that interesting? And I said, let me explain to you why everybody get a piece of paper out. And on that piece of paper, I'm going to hand you in a palette, 10 million US dollars. Every one of you here will be receiving 10 million US dollars, and it's a palette. Picture it in front of you right now, sitting in front of you jurors. Now, on this piece of paper, you have 60 seconds to write to 10 things you're going to do with that money. Wow, right, what you're going to do with that money? You got 60 seconds on your mark. Get set. Go. Rise fast as you can what they're going to do with that money. I said, stop. 60 seconds up, hand it to the person on your left. Everybody there calculate how much of that money is still an asset and how much has been spent on consumables that depreciated in value, or will depreciate in value, between 20 and 80% of the money was spent on consumables and depreciated, which meant that they had a value on lifestyle versus not financial independence. And when they think of financial independence, people who market financial independence sometimes put fancy boats, fancy cars, fancy jewelry, fancy stuff to appease their fantasy, instead of actually teaching ground them on the fundamentals of building wealth. So I said, if 20 to 80% of you just bought things, then you don't have a desire in your hierarchy of values to build wealth. You have a desire to spend it on consumables that depreciate. So unless you have a change in values you are not going to be financially independent, because the hierarchy of values dictates how you manage money, and every decision you make is based on what you believe will give you the greatest advantage or disadvantage according to your values at that moment, and they all kind of got quiet. Oh, I said now you can either accept that you're not going to be financially independent, or you can have a shift in values today. We can shift that. If that's of interest to you, I'll be glad to share with you how that can be done, because a lot of people live in the fantasy. They know what their values are, but then when you actually look it's your life that demonstrates your values, not what you say, it's not what you say, it's what you live.

Alex Ferrari 14:20
Well, let me, let's, let's dig into this for a little bit, because that's a fascinating idea. Now let's, instead of turning it into building wealth, let's turn it into spirituality. Sure, spirituality, because so many people claim that they want to be spiritual and they want to be closer to source and God or whatever it is, whatever they call it, and yet they don't do the work. How can you? How can you because, because our audience is very obviously heavily spiritual, and they're they're searching for spiritual guidance and spiritual ideas and and they're trying to figure this whole insane thing called life out. But I've discovered through my experience. Says, and myself included, early on, where you put on the suit, the character, the facade of, I am so spiritual. That's you and I both know people like this. Yeah, that are we've all done that moment. No, there's always a we come and go from character to character, exactly, and clothing and suits that we put on and off. But there's a lot that will say I'm so spiritual, I'm so spiritual, I'm so spiritual. But when I when a team member of mine shows me an email from a from a customer who I literally had an email the other day, it was fascinating. They were berating us because we just couldn't get to them fast enough. I'm like, it was Sunday. We were off. We're a small company, so on, and they just, we got bombarded with, like, seven or eight. Just it started getting nasty. Got nastier, nastier. But at the bottom her tag was peace, love and what different spirituality or something. And I was just like, wow. So it's one thing to put yourself out there as someone who's spiritual, but to walk, the walk is a whole other conversation. So how would you frame that in the same kind of framing that you just did with the wealth

Dr. John Demartini 16:15
You know, the story of Guru Nanak, or at least one of the many he goes to the Kaaba?

Alex Ferrari 16:19
No, I don't know that one.

Dr. John Demartini 16:21
Okay. So Guru Nanak, who is the head of the Sikh movement, founded the Sikh movement. There's a story, and there's variations of the story. So it's probably not a true thing. I think it's a metaphor. But he supposedly goes to Mecca, the Muslim Kaaba, sure, before they restricted it, sure people could go there. And he's laying there with his feet facing the Sacred Rock and the wall. And the people of the Muslims are irate. You can't put your feet to the Sacred Stone. This is sacred. This is godly. You can't put your feet in the direction God. You have to submit and humble yourself and prostrate forward and face God. You never turn your feet that direction. And he said, Oh, if you can tell me where God isn't I'll put my feet there. That's a good story. Okay. Now, Einstein said something really, really nicely. If divinity was omnipresent, then we're is God? Not? It's in every experience. He said. It's in every act, every experience. We go along with our human judgments and label it good or evil, spiritual or not spiritual. And then we sometimes over the months or weeks, years later, we find out, ooh, it wasn't what we first thought. It was actually something that was helping us in our development growth. So it was spiritual, but we didn't see it. So I'm a little leery about boxing in spirituality, because there's pairs of opposites in the world. There's a great book that of of the old, old and new testament that William burr wrote, called contradictions of the Bible. It should be fun, yeah. And what he did is he took every quote in the Bible that said this, and then every quote it said just the opposite of this in the Bible, yeah, yeah, throughout the Bible. And it's a nice book my mom introduced to me when I was about 18, I think. And so people that have one belief will read that part. People have the other belief will read that part. Both will believe they're spiritual and they are. But the thing is, is that person over there will think they're not spiritual, and that person over there will think they're not spiritual because it doesn't match their idea what the spirituality is. So I'm not I found many years ago that I was trying to be kind of one sided, nice, without mean and kind, without cruel and positive, without negative and this kind of thing. And then I found out that those repressed sides eventually surfaced, and when I was really honest with myself, I found I had all of them. I went through the Oxford English Dictionary 41 years, almost 42 years now, and went through and underlined every behavioral trait that I could find in the biggest dictionary I could find, there were 4628 traits I found. I literally isolated them out. And then over on the side, I went over and who is it that I know that displays that trait more than anybody I know. And I put their initial out there, and then I went inside myself, and I went, Okay, John, go to a moment where and when you perceive yourself displaying or demonstrating that same behavior, that same trait, action, inaction, and identify where you did it, when you did it, who'd you do it to, and who perceived you doing that. And I kept doing that until I could see that I did it as much as the most extreme people I knew, and when I did, I kind of woke up and realized nothing's missing in me. I have all the traits, I have all the behaviors, and it's only the traits I'm trying to get rid of that make me feel empty and that make me attract events in my life to help me see that I have. That trait, to humble me from my pride and to lift me from my shame so I can be authentic and whole. So at the level of the Soul, nothing's missing in us. At the level of the senses, things appear to be missing in us. It's the things that we're too proud or too humble to admit, that we see in others but we don't see in ourselves that are the emptinesses that drive us the experiences to eventually discover that nothing missing to wake up our soul.

Alex Ferrari 20:24
Would you agree that we are all walking around life with the story that we have built our foundation on narrative more, not just one story, multiple narratives that build our foundation, and then occasionally, as you get older, that narrative starts to shift. I assume things that you believe, that 18 you don't believe. Now they're evolving, evolving correct some though they might evolve, but as long as they evolve within the same field, in the same box, work, because there's one thing you can have this story and evolve within that box. But when there's another box out there who's saying, Well, wait a minute, that's not it. That's where war start. That's where,

Dr. John Demartini 21:07
But that's that's also where rigidity is softened. Because, yeah, the second we think we know what that divine nature really is, and that what that spirituality really is, we just boxed ourselves in. Because Michael Montaigne, a French philosopher, traveled all over the world trying to find a universal morality. And he found that in time and space, over time, things that were considered good over here were considered bad over here. I mean, right now, for instance, we have in some Middle Eastern traditions, older men and very young girls are married. Absolutely in our country, that's prison, correct, yeah. So is it good or evil? In that culture. It's normal this culture, it's not so the question is, is is spirituality limited to a culture, a language, a time, a space, or is it omnipresent? And does it include? Is it inclusive? Is it exclusive? Is it based on our limited understanding? Is it based on something transcendent to that? Is it imminent, transcendent, fear based, not fear based? Is it? Is it emotionally based and judgment based, or is it love? Empedocles outlined, he's the one that gave rise to the four elements, fire, air, water and earth, right? This is back sixth century BC, and he basically said there's love and strife. Love is the integration of the elements of and the all the elements are pairs of opposites, and strife is the dissimilarity and the differences between the elements. Seen Heraclitus came along and said that there's a hidden order in the unity of opposites. There's an evidence of love in the opposite but there's judgment when we see one side without the other. So when we first meet somebody, we'll have a first impression. May not be the whole, it may just be the part we see. If we're infatuated, we're blind to the downsides. If we're resentful, we're blind to the upsides. We have intrusive thoughts. Our amygdala runs us wild. We seek and avoid we're an automaton reacting to our misperception and our expectations. But then, if we get to know that person, days, weeks, months, years, we find out that the person we infatuated with had downsides. It's called marriage, and the person that we thought was terrible catalyzed some of the greatest growth in our life. So which one is it? It's neither the state of unconditional love which is the authentic self sees neither, but the inauthentic self sees either one or the other, because the amygdala sees one or the other and is frightened of losing one and frightened of gaining the other, lives in gain and lost illusions. The master lives in a world of transformation and honors the transformation and sees it all part of the spiritual experience. So the question is, is at what level of is our awareness there? There are some people that are living very much in the amygdala, and their idea of black and white and good and evil is way down here. The people at the top have a very broader perspective. I sat with the sheik Valhalla, who is a scholar, Muslim scholar, and we had a very great conversation in Cape Town, South Africa for about two hours. And he's a very cosmic being, very aware. And he studied, he knows the Quran by heart. And I've also met people when I was doing a movie called oh my god, and I met jihadists that are really radical and really polarized and really black and white, both of them reading the same book, interpreting it differently, same as you see in Christianity and Judaism. You see the same thing. Almost every group of religious instruction has fundamentalists and Universalists more amygdala based and more executive based and. And so it's all you know, where is God? Not? It's all part of the Divine, if we know how to ask the right question, to see both sides of the event and not have the illusion of our instruction and our moral hypocrisy stop us from seeing the whole so it's about asking really broad questions to see how whatever's happening. How is it helping me fulfill my spiritual mission

Alex Ferrari 25:22
That I never actually thought about that, but you're absolutely right in every, every spiritual path, no matter and philosophies could be confucism, it could be Taoism, it could be Buddhism. There is

Dr. John Demartini 25:36
The fundamental that are absolutist and black and white and

Alex Ferrari 25:40
White, and then there's gray and the gray. So yeah, there's the mystical Christians, and then there is the fundamental Christians. Exactly that take the literally the Bible.

Dr. John Demartini 25:48
The mystical is one that's attempting to gnostically communicate with the divine, individually the gnostic, and they may use the traditional beliefs of that particular faith to guide those descriptions, but the fundamentalist is more of a literalist, and they take a particular text and they read it a certain way, and they there's literally a hell, there's a literary heaven, hell and stuff like that. But I always say thinking makes it so. You know, hell is basically when you're ungrateful for the order of your life, and heavenly is when you're actually can see the hidden order, and you're actually see there's nothing to fix, as long as we're infatuated with somebody, we're going to want to change. To want to change ourselves, to be more like them and be in their life. Think about the first weeks you get in a new relationship and you're highly infatuated, you'll sacrifice what's important you to be with them for fear of loss of them. But after you resent them and you now want to get away from them, you'll sacrifice them for you when you're infatuated, you'll almost sacrifice them as a homicide when you're on the narcissistic side, when you're really angry at them and resentful to him. But those aren't who they are. That's not who you are when you're too humble to admit what you see in them, that's an imposter syndrome when you're too proud to admit what you see in them. That's an imposter syndrome when you come and realize that they're both sided and so are you, and you actually bring those into the balance. Now you're at the soul, the state of unconditional love, not the state of judgment. And that's what Empedocles was trying to say. And Heraclitus was trying to say,

Alex Ferrari 27:10
It's fascinating, because you're absolutely right where when you are infatuated with somebody. I remember back in I've been married for many years, so I've had that for a long time, but early on, especially when I was a young young man, you would do anything, you sacrifice, you sacrifice to be with that person, and then you put on this perfect mask, and everything which can't, you can't sustain. It's non sustainable. It's not, it's so and they do too dependent, yeah, and so it then this thing start to crack.

Dr. John Demartini 27:37
And then, well, no, the fantasies crack.

Alex Ferrari 27:40
Right! That's what I mean.

Dr. John Demartini 27:42
The truth about you and them emerge. And that is the path of the unconditional love. The path the unconditional love is says that I see both sides if you meet somebody, there was a beautiful little Instagram spoof. The other day I saw 103 year old woman's being interviewed by this individual, and her husband is like 100 and they're on the show, and he falls asleep on her, on her chest, right, right over your breast. And the guy's interviewing and says, how long you've been married? And said, 80 something years. And they said, Well, did you ever think about divorce? She said, Nope, not once, murder, murder. She said, I thought about murdering every day for these last 80 years. What a great but it was the guy fell over his chair. He's laughing sorry, because the reality is, our amygdala wants a pleasure without a pain always, but our executive center knows that's not real, and it knows that if you're going to grow and reach the soul, the state of unconditional love, you're going to have to embrace both sides of the individual. You don't need to get rid of part of you to be loved. You don't need to gain something or lose something to be yourself, but people think they do in these facades and these imposters, and they think they need to put on this facade for fear of loss, or put on this facade it's tough for fear of gain.

Alex Ferrari 29:11
But haven't we given away so much of our power in so many different areas of our life because we're always chasing at least most are always chasing pleasure without the work.

Dr. John Demartini 29:23
Well, that hedonistic pursuit has a thing called hedonic adaptation. I first found out about this about 41 years ago, also that striving for pleasure without pain will be futile. As Kipling says, the pleasure and pain, though distinguishable by the senses, are inseparable. In actuality, can't separate them, because the very thing that you have pleasure of the fear of loss, of its pain, the very thing you have pain about the fear of gain of it is is pain, but the fantasy of loss of it is pleasure. So you can't separate this. You know, if you got your ex boyfriend coming over, that's painful, the fantasy is to escape them. If you got your new boyfriend coming over and. If he leaves you That's painful. So pleasure and pain are inseparable. They're Anaxagoras said that again, 2500 something years ago. He said you can't separate the two. They're lopsided perceptions. They're incomplete awarenesses. When you see both at the same time, you actually see what's actually there. Actuality is different from reality. Reality is that what you realize through your senses, actuality is what's actually there. It's what's actually there. And when you're actually there at the soul, there's nothing to seek or avoid. You're just present and empowered with fulfillment.

Alex Ferrari 30:29
John, let me ask you, so many of us are, you know, looking for our purpose of what to do while we're here in this insane video game that we're all walking through this exact movie or play, and we're looking for our purpose. We're looking for our quote, unquote, Soul calling, what do you how do you discover what that is? Or do you build a life that's aiming at towards its in some way, like, how do you find because so many people are lost. They don't know what to do. They're just doing the nine to five, they're doing the rat race. They're unhappy. And there's like, you know, I have this great job, or I have this bad job, but you know, what I really want to do is I want to sing, or I want to be an artist, or I want to open up a business, or whatever that is. How, how can we find that soul calling or that purpose within us?

Dr. John Demartini 31:18
That goes back to the question that I didn't get to answer that, I'll answer that you asked about how you determine values. Everybody's got a set of priorities, a set of values in their life. It's a hierarchy of values, whatever is the very highest on the value, the thing that's most important, the thing that's highest in priority, the thing that's most meaningful, most fulfilling, most inspiring. You're spontaneously inspired to act on it. You don't require any external motivation to do it. It's like a boy with video games. He doesn't have to be motivated to do video games, but he has to be motivated to do his chores and homework. So whatever is high in your value, we spontaneously feel called to do we are inspired whenever we're doing our highest value, the blood glucose and oxygen goes into the medial prefrontal cortex, and there are spontaneous action potentials that spontaneously fire there that help bring gamma synchronicities in the brain, which are confirmations of authenticity. Your ontological identity revolve around your highest value, your teleological purpose revolve around your highest value. Your epistemological area of expertise revolve around your highest value. That's where you're going to excel. So knowing the value, the highest value is in setting sail by filling your day with the highest priority action daily is the highest priority thing anybody can do to fulfill what's meaningful to them, and that is what they feel their purpose is. In my case, it's teaching. I teach every day. I do podcasts every day, or write every day, or do consults or meetings, or, you know, I'm teaching every day. That's what I love doing, researching and teaching. So that's what I feel my calling is on this planet. I've been doing it 53, years. If you have a mother whose highest value is her children, taking care of those children. If you asked her, who are you, she'll say, I'm a mother. That's her on geological identity. Mine would be teacher. If you I worked with a lady who was a three time gold medalist in pole vaulting. You ask her, who are you? I'm a professional pole vaulter. I'm an Olympic medalist pole vaulter. If you meet a person that's running businesses and entrepreneurs, highest value is entrepreneurship. I'm an entrepreneur. So your identity and your purpose is an expression of your highest value. So knowing what that is is the first step, and acting as it and when you're living according to your highest value, the blood glucose and oxygen goes into the forebrain where you're most neutral and objective, the media prefrontal cortex sends signals down and uses GABA, GABA and glutamate transmitters, to calm down the amygdalas vicissitudes, all the emotions of the of the amygdala, and calm it down and help us see both sides simultaneously, where we have reason and objectivity and we're not swayed by the impulses and instincts of our animal nature. And that's our soul nature, that's our angelic nature, which is the messenger of the light and state that we have inside. So when we live by our highest values, we have the closest thing we have. And in Scientific American, I think it's September, October, 2022 there's a fantastic article that they described the medial prefrontal cortex as the seat of the self, because it's where we have the most integration and integration. Information theory, the global workspace theory, shows that's where we have the most integration and neutralization. That's where we're most unconditionally loving in a state of grace. That's where we have gamma synchronicities and aha moments and tears of gratitude and Gestalt in our brain when we function from it. So determining what's highest on a value is the first step in opening the doorway to a purposeful, clear calling in life. Now I didn't get to answer that from the earlier question, but how do you determine the value? Values. If you ask people, I assure you, I've done millions of these, you're not going to get an accurate answer. But if you ask them a set of questions that kind of hit them from a back door, you can your space is a great indicator of what you value. If I gave you a gift and it had zero value to you. The second I left this room, you toss it if I gave you something like cufflinks that say love and wisdom on them, that guy gave me because I told him a story about the day I met Howard Hughes, and he told me, there's only two things they can never take away from you. It's your love and your wisdom those have meaning to me, so they travel wherever I go around the world. These cufflinks so you there's a thing called intimate space, individual space, social space and public space and proxemics. The more proximal it is, the more intimate it is, the more 18 inches around you. Anything that's extremely valuable you keep there, the more it is distal, the more it has no value. So you can look at somebody's space and look at where they spend their time most, and what they fill their space with most, and what it represents, and get a really good indication of what they really value. Because every decision they make is based on what they believe will give them the greatest advantage over disadvantage in that moment, every perception, decision, action is based on their values. Now the second would determine it is time. You find time, make time, spend time on things that are valuable to you, procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate on things that don't. So you won't miss your podcast. You know you're going to do those podcasts, but you might miss some social function that's not really inspiring to you that you come up or go to the I'll miss a gym or the gym or something like that. Exactly, whatever is low in your values, you'll procrastinate, hesitate, frustrated, whatever is high in your values, you're disciplined, reliable and focused on it. And a discipline is a disciple of your soul, if you will. That's when you're being almost authentic to what its calling is. So your time and your space are great indicators of what your life demonstrates, and what many people do is they compare themselves to others, envy other people, think it should be that, and then beat themselves up when it's not that, because it's what it is, instead of honor what it is, they're trying to be second to being somebody else, instead of first to being themselves. The third indicator is what energy they have whenever they're doing something that's high in their values, their energy goes up. The mitochondria in the prefrontal cortex fire, and there's vast amount of energy sitting in that area. The second we do low priority things, our mitochondria shut down, and they start actually going into a danger zone and shut down. They start to disassemble. So we when we're living by our highest values, our energy level lets us know it we have more energy at the end of doing something that's meaningful. If you're doing a great podcast, you're energized when you're done. If you're doing and it's like, oh, that was a long one, we weren't energized. You weren't engaged. So anytime you're doing something that's extremely meaningful, inspiring, and it's really high in your value, your energy goes up, and it goes down if you're doing anything low in value. And the reason it's doing that is to let you know that you're not being authentic to yourself, and you're not delegating those job duties to somebody who is inspired to do it. And you keep doing something that's devaluing you, because anytime you do something low on your values, you devalue yourself. Anytime you do something high in your values, you value yourself. The fourth one is money, and I just used that as an example earlier. The hierarchy of your values dictates your financial destiny. If you have a higher value on spending all your money on your kids, it will go there. It won't go towards financial independence. It'll go towards having great kid experiences. If your highest value is on the house, it'll go there. If it's highest on travel, it'll go there. It's on food, it goes there. The hierarchy of your values dictates where you spend your money. So where's most your money going? First, second, third, most that tells you where your highest values are, and the one that goes most is where your highest one is. So when I was in my 20s, I was buying 40 to 70 books a week, reading because I read at least four to seven books a day. And in the process of reading books for everything, classes, seminars, education. You prioritize. Man, I've always had money for that, but I didn't have money to go party. I didn't have money to go do this, things that other people want to do. They had a different set of values. So your hierarchy value shows in your way. You manage your money. Where your money goes. The fifth one is, where do you bring the most order and organization to? I walk in your your studio. It is highly organized and ordered, highly it's a beautiful studio. This is important to you, obviously, thank you, because the discipline and the order of this is really evident because I pay attention these things. And so you tell me where you have the highest order and organization, and people will say, Well, I don't have it. I'm a mess. No, not in your highest value. It may be your social calendar that's highly organized. It may be your workout routine. It may be your spiritual rituals, whatever that is. It may be your education. It may be being with your kids every single day. It may be going and making sure you're fit. But you have an area that's highly organized your calendar. Is probably very organized and making sure that you get to the exactly what you're going to do on what days, because that's where it's that your high value is. Then you also look at where you're most disciplined, reliable and focused. You will not let yourself down on your highest value. I won't let I will do a seminar. I don't care if I haven't slept in a day or two, I will still do my seminar. I won't let that down. I've never missed a seminar in 53 years, so I'm that's something I just do. My research is daily, but I'll procrastinate on some of the other stuff. I don't cook. I haven't cooked since I was 24 haven't driven a car in 35 years. I don't do that. I learned that anytime you're doing high priority things, your self worth goes up. Anytime you're doing low priority things, it goes down. So why would I want to do low priority things? I delegate that to people who'd love to do it, surround myself with those people and get on with what I do and that I'm excellent at my core competence that I'm inspired by, and that liberates yourself from a whole lot of drama and tragedies and crazies and amygdala behaviors that you get. So you look at where you're disciplined. The next one, next three are, what are you thinking about? What are you visualizing and what are you affirming? Internal dialog about how you would love your life to be that shows evidence of coming true. If there's no evidence it's not high in your value, if it's not what you would love, it's not high in your value. So don't tell me something that is showing up, it's not what you love, and don't show me something you would love, it's not showing up. But what is it? You would love that showing up in those three areas that tells me what's valuable. Because if it's really valuable, you make it happen. This is valuable. When I walk in, I see all the posters, and I see all the equipment, everything else you've you've put your money into it, you put your effort into it. You're not gonna let anything stop you from achieving what's in that area. That's it shows up in here, very obvious, but maybe in your workout, that's not priority.

Alex Ferrari 41:46
I mean, I'm trying,

Dr. John Demartini 41:47
But that that's second. If somebody comes up and says, Will you do a pod, do a podcast, or a show or a new movie, you pass that up easily for that movie, I'm sure.

Alex Ferrari 41:55
Yeah. But the thing is that when Yeah, but when I was a young man, physical

Dr. John Demartini 42:00
That was a different set of value. That was, values are changing.

Alex Ferrari 42:03
Oh yeah, I had to look good. I had to feel good. I had to, you know, all that you found a mate, yeah, until and then you let I saw and then you let yourself go.

Dr. John Demartini 42:10
Probably good cook.

Alex Ferrari 42:12
She's a very good cook.

Dr. John Demartini 42:14
But the reality is that the hierarchy of values is dictating these things. So the next one is, what do you externally converse with other people about? So people come up to me and they say, Well, Dr Demartini, how's your kids? What does that tell you? Children are important to them. How's your business? Does that tell you? How's your golf game? What does it tell you? How is your exercise coming? How's your investments? People will lead the conversation to what engages them most. And you are leading conversations conscious or unconsciously, towards what is inspiring. And if people converse about it, you get engaged and forget time. If you're talking about something else, you're like, gotta go right? So what do you want to converse with other people about most? The next one is what is inspires you that brings tears to your eyes when you're doing it, and what's common to the people that brings tears to your eyes when you're interacting with so in my case, studying the great philosophers and the Nobel Prize winners and the great thinkers and things else that's tear jerking to me, to study their lives and how they thought the way they didn't come up with solutions, or Seeing people do extraordinary performance and achievement at young ages, tear jerking. Oh, I love that. So because that represents what I'm dedicated to, how do I maximize human awareness, potential and performance in life? So that's really in line with my values. So that's a tear jerker. So I use the tear jerking inspiration as a guide to authenticity, back to the soul. It's a it's a confirmation of the authenticity of the soul. The next one is, what are the three most consistent, persistent goals that you're you're dedicated to, that you are actually bringing into reality. It's coming true slowly but surely. They're coming true that you have not given up on. You just keep persevering on. And that's why you're doing what you're doing with the podcast. You're going to reach millions of people with that podcast. You got a message. Man with a mission has a message, you're going to bring that out there, and you're going to do it in visual, and you're going to do it in auditory, and you're going to do it clean, and it's going to be a special thing that's going to change their lives. So that's obviously comes through, because I can see it just walking in this place. And the last one is, what do you study? Read about, learn about and keep wanting to feed your mind. What are you watching on YouTube? By you look carefully, you'll see that it's got a pattern to it. There's a certain area of the bookstore you go to a certain area in the Amazon you keep going to certain things you like, reading certain things you watch on YouTube. There's a pattern. What's that core? If you go through and answer three answers to each of those 13 questions, those 39 questions reiterate. And then you take and count up how many answers are reiterated the most, the second most, the third most, it'll give you a bang on shot, if you're honest with the answers, bang on shot of what's really important to you, what your life really demonstrates, not your fantasies, not what you think it ought to be, but what it actually is.

Alex Ferrari 44:54
Well, you mentioned something in regards to that pole vaulter, the gold medalist, and. You were saying, like, if you ask her, Oh, I'm an athlete or an Olympian, and the other person was an entrepreneur. I found it. And I want to hear what you're thinking about. This is I found it. When I was growing up, coming up, I associated myself as a director, filmmaker, and as long as my career was going well, I was good, but when that career wasn't going well, because I associated wholeheartedly with my career, my life was in shambles. So how do you balance that

Dr. John Demartini 45:32
Your hierarchy of values are changing based on the pains and pleasures that you experience. So if you associate enough pleasure with something, it goes up on the value list. Enough pain with something goes down on the value list. So you ran into a situation as a director, either you were doing things in administration that you didn't really want to be doing and it was bogging you down, or you ended up having an expectation that was elevated and that didn't live up to you saw it as a failure, instead of as an opportunity to do like Edison and just go and read them, do the thing. And so that painful wound, if you will, or that association, would make you withdraw something from that direction, but not obviously, forever, but it would withdraw from that and you'll then go off on a tangent trying out new things that will add more value to what that real calling is eventually again. So you'll go and learn new things about business, or new learn things about delegating, or new things about what I did, managing people, or whatever, and you'll come back to it because you realize that that was a part of the business that wasn't inspiring to you, that needed to be addressed, and either you had to learn it or you had to delegate it. Now I found it's more efficient to surround yourself with people that know what they're doing and not have to go through the learning curve because you run out of time otherwise. So you surround yourself with people that are masters of what they do, to do the things that you would love to delegate so you can get on with doing what you love doing. I don't do anything but teach research and write. That's about it. I don't do anything else. I don't I don't have any other responsibilities. I just teach research right every day. These are the three things I love doing. The rest of it. I delegate to experts. John, I have to ask, Oh, by the way, somebody said, Well, that's because you're independently wealthy. No, I became independently wealthy because I did that. Right? You were you weren't born. No, I was 27 I learned about delegation and my life really cattle catalyzed. I was broke at the time, but I was just coming out of school, I had massive debts, and I mean, all kinds of stuff. I learned to delegate, and I became wealthy because of that, because I went on and did my core competence and stayed in my core competence and followed my calling.

Alex Ferrari 47:33
John, I want to ask you, because you, you're such an interesting character in this world. I love you, man, because you obviously are very in the mind. You've read so much, many books, and you teach, and you're on the mental level, but you're also extremely deep person with connections to the soul and spirituality. How do you balance that so well? Because it's a lot of people will go so hard into the academic that they lose the soul, or they go so far into the soul that they forget. I got to live in this planet, you know. So how do you do that?

Dr. John Demartini 47:46
Very simple. I believe the wisdom of the ages is both spiritual and mental. I don't see them as separate. I don't see that. I don't see I'm a scientist too. I don't see I've studied 300 different disciplines. I don't see science interfering with spirituality. True science and true spirituality can't fight pseudoscience and pseudo spirituality and the biased black and white dogma of both fight interest spirituality, because there's, I'm going to make a statement that may be shocking to some people, but remember, where's God, not where is the intelligence of the universe, not if it is in the quantum field. Let's just say that's the quantum field and there's a pan psychism, let's say a Spinoza thing, or like Einstein. He said it's enough for me, on a daily basis, to sit and contemplate the intelligence that permeates the universe. That's a that's his idea of God, that's a spiritual quest rising. Newton was a scientist who figured out the Principia, the gravitational laws, movements of the heavenly bodies. He was deeply dedicated to his spiritual quest, and studied alchemy also, and he was very, very fascinated. But he was incredible scientist. Some of the greatest scientists I know are very deeply committed to this. Then think about this. If there was no inherent order in the universe, we can never make a science. We would never even waste our time pursuing it, because it would be all random, and there's no way of finding any laws of the universe. Yeah, there's no rules, no rules of the universe. So the really deeply committed individual, I was just with Peter Dougherty the other day. He's a Nobel Prize winner. We had a great conversation. He reminds me of me when I'm older. And he. Said, I remind him. So he very, very funny guy. Very, very bright, very bright, Polymathic, very, very well read and but he said, It's the pursuit of the magnificence of the universe that drives us. It's the acknowledgement. And Einstein said, I just want to know how God thinks. Newton said, I just want to know the Divine Master Plan. Swedenborg says, I just want to know the Divine Master Plan. They were very deeply spiritual mystics, but at the same time, scientists grounded very strongly, because true science is just a way of honoring the mystical path. When you study the laws of the universe and you go deeper into the laws of the universe, you get to people like Schroedinger, who was a mystic. You get to Max Planck, who's a mystic. You get to, you know, some of the great Dirac was a mystic. He was studying Heraclitus and studying philosophy. You get to people that are probing the mysteries, because that's what they're doing in science. So true science and true spirituality are not fighting at all. They're really the same thing, in my opinion, and that's why I explore as many disciplines I can. Because if it's if, to me, that's the highest spiritual quest, and the highest spiritual honor is to to know what the universe is made out of, how it's how it's structured, how it works.

Alex Ferrari 48:00
And that's the thing that so many people think that, oh, this is all just by accident, or there is no organizing idea or power behind it all. But there are so many rules that there's certain things that are unbreakable rules.

Dr. John Demartini 48:00
Well, that's the laws are unviable. Human laws are unlivable. We come we come up with all these little moral constructs that are just trivial, and it changes decade from decade. Yeah, it's culture. You know, smoking was terrible now, but it was once cool. They used to have cool cigarettes.

Alex Ferrari 48:05
The doctors used to go the brand that I smoke is

Dr. John Demartini 51:50
I read a book The serpent and the staff is about the history of the medicine. It's a fantastic book, and it showed that at one time, Coca Cola that had cocaine in it, yes, opium, morphine, opium, caffeine, sugar, they were sold there as a marketing to bring people into addiction, to build the business. That's where you went. You went there to get that stuff. You got the cough syrup that followed with opium and codeine and pleasure, right? Everything that was there that was sold pleasure was sold as treatment. So they started out, you know, with finding operations for surgery, which is removing evil spirits, and they came in with with, you know, potions to get rid of evil demons or whatever. So they're started out spiritual and became sort of a science, but it's really still based on that spiritual quest. How do we bring order to they call them orderlies in the hospital. Try to bring order to people's lives.

Alex Ferrari 52:58
Beautifully said. Now, I wanted to touch upon trauma, because so many people, not one of us gets out of this. Well, none of us get out of this alive. That's first off. Secondly, every one of us has some sort of trauma or pain that we go through in life. That's part of it, the rules that's a universal, yes.

Dr. John Demartini 53:18
Pain and pleasures can serve through time and space.

Alex Ferrari 53:20
Absolutely, so can trauma actually be a spiritual advantage? And if so, why does it feel like punishment while you're in it?

Dr. John Demartini 53:29
If you live in the illusion that life has a one sided thing, and you're trying to get a one sided system, the pursuit of a monopole will create a bipolar condition, and you'll basically be trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure all your life. You can't. It's a waste of time. Even pursuing that, trying to do that, because they're inseparable. As I said, the pleasure of the person that you and that and infatuated with, enamored with, is the pain of the loss of them. If they go away or they criticize you, it's terrifying. So that that pleasure is the pain they can't the second, when you're neutral to somebody, the pleasure and pain is now neutral, but the second you have a pleasure out of it, you have the fear of loss, the pain of loss, the second you have a pain about something. You have the pleasure of leaving, the pleasure of loss. The pain of being around somebody you hate is the pleasure of escaping, and the pain of the person you like is the loss of

Alex Ferrari 54:18
So is that what Buddha was trying to say when attachment is the root of all suffering.

Dr. John Demartini 54:21
Yeah, the Buddha was saying that the desire for that which is unobtainable and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable is the source of human suffering, and that's the attachments. The attachments are all the intrusive thoughts of the things you infatuate and resent, all of the distractions from being present and whole the soul. So I really believe that we have the capacity to transcend it. But trauma is not what happens to us. Trauma is what is based on what we expect and how we perceive it. I'll give you example. If I put your hand here, I don't know if anybody can see this here, yeah, if I take the hand here, yes, and I take a sledgehammer, I got a big sledgehammer, yeah, boom, slam it. Sure. Just slam your finger. Sure. To just flatten it. You're gonna go, Whoa. You go, wow,

Alex Ferrari 55:05
I probably do more, but yes,

Dr. John Demartini 55:07
You'd want to punch me with the other hand. Punch me. Go. What's the heck? Because your expectation didn't think that was coming, and you thought that's negative without positive. But now let me add a few twists to it. Okay, situational ethic here. You're not motivated by money. Are you good? Really?

Alex Ferrari 55:07
Not really. Not anymore, okay, not anymore.

Dr. John Demartini 55:26
But let's just say I was going to offer you a billion dollars, okay, billion cash, sure, and you could donate it to any spiritual quest you want. And you are going to have when, when I'm through, you're going to have an enlightened mind that's able to be present and appreciative and inspired.

Alex Ferrari 55:48
Oh, so you're giving me both the material and the spirit.

Dr. John Demartini 55:51
Yeah, and I'm giving you a non stop flood of the best movie opportunities that you could ever dream of coming your way

Alex Ferrari 56:00
With a billion dollars I can make my own essentially,

Dr. John Demartini 56:03
yeah, sure. So you can make your movies and be spiritual,

Alex Ferrari 56:05
Whatever. I can make avatar. Sure.

Dr. John Demartini 56:07
If I told you I'm gonna, I have a magic wand, and that's coming. If I get to slam that finger, it's all yours. Wow, if I, if I slam that finger, that will be sore for about a week, maybe 10 days, the black and blue will be gone. You'll be back to normal, just like I've done as a carpenter, smashed his thumb many times. But if I gave you all that, you put your hand down there and slam away. Interesting. So the expectation and the perception change from the same exact act slamming the thumb. So it's not the slamming of the thumb that determines whether it's trauma or not. It's the expectations and the perceptions and what you believe you're going to get out of it. So if you believe that, that's an opportunity, for instance, you know, Bruce Lee got busted up pretty good. He had bad backs and injuries and neurologicals and all kinds of stuff. But if he saw that, that's going to get him the opportunity to do a TV series and a major movies and everything else. He endured it because the outcome was worth it. Football players know they're going to have concussions, they're going to have probably brain damage and everything else. They still play football knowing that probability. So if the advantages are still outweighing the disadvantages, it's not trauma. Trauma is a perception that sees more drawbacks and benefits. I have the opportunity to work with people every week, literally every week. In my breakthrough experience, my signature program, and I had people come in there, and I was traumatized by this. My dad did this. My mom did this. My you know, I was in this car crash, and I lost this. I have stories all the time. People narrative, and I ask them, good. So okay, I'm not denying some of those things that happened. The question is, what's the benefit? And they go, there is no benefit, really. You've never looked look, what is the benefit that came out of it in that moment? What trajectory did that shift? Can I give a story about that? Sure. So I have this lady that comes to my breakthrough experience in Florida. She's her mom abandoned her when she was a young child, four. That's what her story is. That's the story she's had for 35 years, going to a therapist. So 35 she's 39 and her mom abandoned her so she's this wounded, abandoned child, victimized by her mom and thinking she's not good enough associating with people that treat her that way, because she's treating herself that way. And the whole story, and I and she wanted to run the story. She wanted to run her narrative and get sympathy, right? Which her therapist, you know, was obviously collecting on, you know. And so I said, I said, All right, so let's go. What did you think you missed out on when your mom left? And she said, Well, I didn't get guidance, and I didn't get attention, I didn't get affection, and and she listed all the things she thought she missed out on. Nothing's missing. It just is in a different form they're not acknowledging. So who provided you guidance when your mom left at age four? Nobody, nobody. I didn't ask that you answered before you even thought. You didn't even try to look who gave you guidance? And she finally said, my aunt, great. Who else? My best friend's mom? Who else another best friend's mom? Who else a teacher? Good, and when they faded, who emerged? And I showed her and traced who was giving her guidance from the day her mom left all the way till today. And then we did that. For every one of those traits, you were breaking down her story, I'm breaking down her story. And I said, So now, what was the benefit of these people providing that instead of your mom? What was the benefit of them providing it? I can't. See any you haven't looked try again. She said, Well, I learned a different language. I was, I was in with my aunt. We've learned a different language, and she had took me the movies, and I have a love for movies, and she's taken me and we go and read all about movies and what else. I got to go on adventures, because my aunt was married to a guy that took us out camping and doing things, and yeah, all because her mom left her for and then I we did it. And so she got a tear in her eye, and she goes, this is a lot of blessings that came in my life. I said, Now let's go back, if your mom had given you that guidance, what would been the drawback? At first, she said, well, there wouldn't be any. I said, No, that's the fantasy. If your mom had been there the whole time and didn't leave, what had been the drawback? And she stared in space for a minute, got a tear in the eye, and then shook. I said, What is it? She said something my aunt told me when I was four that I just remembered, what was it? I couldn't hear it until just now. I just got it. My aunt said your mom had bipolar condition. Oh, she wasn't capable. And your mom put you in a bath and forgot you were there and the water was not it was getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and you almost scalded and you almost drowned. And luckily, she came back, and she realized she forgot all about her daughter, and so she asked her sister. She said, I almost killed my daughter. I can't face the idea that could ever happen again. I'm not in a position where I can raise my child. Will you help me? So she gave the child to the aunt, the sister, and the sister understood and wanted to have a child.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:57
So it worked out for her as well.

Dr. John Demartini 1:01:58
So when she stopped and realized that the entire story of 35 years that I was an abandoned child disappeared, gone, and then her self image changed. Her desire to see her mom changed. She wanted to see her, her desire, her fear about rejection was gone, her appreciation of all the options she had changed, and the so called story of the traumatic abandonment was no longer even in existence. She then lost weight. She ended up allowing herself to date really quality people, instead of just the guys that were beating her up because she was not worthy and useless and rejected. All that story changed, and she went on to write a book. I mean, her life changed the moment she changed her perception. That's why William James said the greatest discovery of his generations of human beings can alter their lives and altering by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind, the expectations. So when she asked a new set of questions and held herself accountable to do it, I held her accountable. I was a mean booger doing that, but I got her over the hump. She gave me a big hug. At the end. She says, You just transformed 35 years worth of story into the positive, a love for my mom. I said, now we're talking, and now we're seeing the hidden order in the apparent chaos, and now we're seeing the spirituality and what we thought wasn't spiritual, and that's where we labeled things out of our ignorance instead of love, things out of our wisdom.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:30
Wow, that's so part. Thank you for sharing that story. You know, I'll tell you a quick story of myself when I discovered this is when I was 26 my first book I wrote was based on probably the most traumatic time of my life, which is when I was kind of locked in with the mob to make a $20 million movie about a mobster's life. And I was my life was threatened on a daily basis for a year, and but then at the same time, I was flown out to LA and I met the biggest movie stars in the world and billion dollar producers and so on. But I was 26 I had no I had no defense, I had no way to deal with this situation, the pain and the pleasure, the pain. I mean, it was like it was so extreme. Yeah. I mean, you're sitting here next talking to Batman.

Dr. John Demartini 1:04:16
That's That's why that when you when you're able to embrace your villain, you get to be your hero.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:21
So that's what happened. So then it took me probably 17 years before I wrote the book. And as I was writing the book, I started to unravel it all and the order I saw, the order of it, it was extremely painful to go through, but once I saw it, I was like, you know, if it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing today, exactly because my first instinct was, I want to teach others how to avoid this pain. Yeah, so I started teaching filmmakers how to make it in the business, and then years later, I took the next step and opened. End up a podcast, and then that led me to this opening up a spiritual podcast, helping people find but the instinct to help and to put myself out there in the world, opened up all because of him. He did his job in this life, you know, and he was a but he but he did what he needed.

Dr. John Demartini 1:05:20
Anytime you're addicted to one pull of a magnet, the other pull the magnet smacks you until you see both sides. Say that one more time. Anytime you're addicted to one pull of a magnet the other pull, the magnet smacks you until you see both sides. So if you're addicted to praise, you attract criticism. You're addicted to protection. You attract, attract the perpetrator. You're addicted to innocence? Sexual innocence? You attract the perpetrator. These are all pairs of opposites that try to teach you that if you're addicted to something, you'll stay juvenile dependent, and you need the challenger to make you Precociously independently and grow up. One stimulates the the estrogen that keeps you youthful and young and like a little baby independent, and the other one gets the testosterone ready for you to fight and fight ready to go. You need both in life. Maximum growth and development occurs at the border of all pairs of opposites.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:08
So with all these, all this talk about the negative and the positive, and we, you know, seeing both, like what you just said, the the world seems a bit upside down now, John, it seems a little crazy and highly polarized. Very highly polarized. So so many things are happening in every industry in the world, from politics to food to religion to every it seems like things are just crackling.

Dr. John Demartini 1:06:34
And as AI becomes more intelligent, emotions have to be volatile to balance it.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:39
So say that again,

Dr. John Demartini 1:06:40
The as the AI comes in and integrates the intelligence and makes us have access to things that we hadn't seen before, the emotional polarities will have to be balance that process. That's part of the nature of the creation. There was a it wasn't Nietzsche, it was Sri Shri no arabindo Sri Aurobindo, and then life, life divine. The book he did life divine. He said that as spirituality expands, so does materiality. As unity expands, so does duality, and as we strive for one, so does the other, to make sure we maintain an equilibrium to keep us growing.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:21
So everything that's going on right now, so many people feel so fearful about what's happening. What advice do you have for them?

Dr. John Demartini 1:07:27
If they are infatuated with how it should be, they're going to fear the loss of it, and if they are resentful about how it is, they're going to fear the gain of it, and they're going to be caught. Instead of asking the questions, how do I see both sides of both sides? I whenever I see something that somebody says, that's terrible, you know, it's like the story about the guy, remember whether he has the farm and he has a son? Yeah, yeah, the old Chinese proverb, yeah. And it may be, if you say so, because you think this is terrible, my son, and, you know, he injures himself, he can't work in the fields the town. People say, that's terrible. And then, you know, next day, and then they find, well, he gets a horse, and now you can plow the fields. And that's now it's good, if you say so. And it goes back and forth and back and forth. People want to quickly jump to a conclusion and put a label on things, which is an amygdala response, instead of an executive center where reason occurs. But wisdom is asking questions to see both sides simultaneously. Where we liberate ourselves from the emotional vicissitudes and see things as they are, because right now, there may be polarities, but the law of heuristic escalation keeps those polarities in equilibrium. Even though they're non local. We just have to open our eyes and see on a broader scale where the other side of the equation is

Alex Ferrari 1:08:38
That is something that I've noticed that throughout human history, that when a great negative comes up, a great positive always, always,

Dr. John Demartini 1:08:46
How can you have a villain without a hero? Yeah, he can't have a hero of 911 without a villain.

Alex Ferrari 1:08:51
Yeah, you can't have a villain in World War Two without

Dr. John Demartini 1:08:54
And the people we thought were heroes, the, you know, the guy that rode the bicycle, Lance, Armstrong. He's a villain. And Bill Cosby, I learned a long time ago when I went through that dictionary, I have every trait. I'm both hero and villain. I'm not a nice person. I'm not a mean person. I'm an individual with a set of values, and you support my values. I can be nice as a pussycat, just a gentle soul. You challenge my values. I'm mean as a tiger, I have both sides. I'm both kind and cruel and nice and mean and pleasant, unpleasant and generous and stingy and thoughtless and thoughtful. I'm I have all the above. And any part that you can't own in your life and embrace in your life is a disowned part, and that disown part, you're going to keep attracting people in your life to help you see it.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:39
So what do you what is the science behind attracting the people and attracting the situations? To teach you these

Dr. John Demartini 1:09:45
Whatever you run away, just like Carl Jung says, Whatever you run away from, you keep running into. Because if you're running away from something and trying to get to the opposite pole, that pole comes with a magnet. It's got the other side so it smacks you with unexpected so if you think you got this relationship. It's going to be all pleasure, no pain, or 51% pledge without pain. Wait just a matter of time before you start to realize that's not what I what I expected, because you had an unrealistic expectation that people can be one sided, not going to happen.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:14
So that is why a relationship that lasts 20 years, is because they understand that there's both. There's no delusion.

Dr. John Demartini 1:10:24
The longer with somebody, the more you can say both the things you like and dislike, and rattle them off equally. Oh, god yes, if you first meet somebody, you can rattle the pauses you short on the negatives because you're ignorant. That's a sign of ignorance.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:35
That's why that thing you said, like, do you ever think of divorce? No murder. That's a murder. Murder all the time. Yeah? And I think anyone who's married, it's such a perfect like, I never thought of divorcing.

Dr. John Demartini 1:10:49
Well, look at lovemaking. You know what love making is? It tugs and slugs. Yeah, come close to me, honey. Get away. Come close. Get away. That's lovemaking, right? Attraction and repulsion.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:01
So that is the that is the law of the of of our existence here.

Dr. John Demartini 1:11:05
Well, I don't know it. And at the, according to Paul Dirac and his principles of quantum mechanics, in 1947 he said that there was every particle had its added particle. And so and the purpose of marriage, I think it's foolish to think its purpose is happiness. The purpose of marriage is to find somebody you can delegate low priority stuff too, that you don't that you don't want to do, that they love doing, and get cheap labor value out of a spouse. I'm joking.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:28
Yes, it's it's a joke everyone,

Dr. John Demartini 1:11:31
But there's enough laughter there, because people, that's my spouse, you know you. The purpose of that is to have somebody to talk about things that help you go to sleep at night.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:42
I find it that having a spouse, having a partner in life, is about balance. They if they are, if you're both the exact I've told my wife necessary, then, yeah, when I told him, I tell my wife that all the time, and she's like, if I'm up in the air, I'm the balloon. She's the guy. She's She's the rock on the floor, yeah, holding the balloon now, without the balloon moving, the rock goes nowhere. But if the rock wasn't there, the balloon would just fly off. That's it. That's description. That is the balance that a good relationship has,

Dr. John Demartini 1:12:14
Yeah, what they call psychology, means psycho logo was like Wayne, logic and psycho

Alex Ferrari 1:12:21
When white wait the great way back when Wayne Dyer was I had the pleasure of meeting him and and seeing him speak on multiple occasions. He said this one thing, he's like, anytime I hear a new a person come up, oh, I have this girlfriend or this boyfriend, he finishes my sentences. Oh, I'd love them that they do. They watch the same movies I watch a murder in the making. It's like they're done in a few weeks. They're not gonna make

Dr. John Demartini 1:12:47
They're highly infatuated, and they're blind to the downsides. They're gonna be smacked, and they're gonna be resentful when it happens.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:51
Yeah, exactly, exactly. One thing I wanted to ask you, you know, we're surrounded here by some of these masters that on the wall here, great walking masters, the Ascended Masters, and Buddha obviously popularized the idea, at least, that I understand, of enlightenment. And people in the spiritual space who are in the spiritual quest are always looking for this destination called enlightenment. What is your understanding or misunderstanding that people have about this idea of enlightenment.

Dr. John Demartini 1:13:24
Well, I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of people who think they're enlightened.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:28
You've been to Hollywood too.

Dr. John Demartini 1:13:31
But there's how I think about it. I'm going to do a little development of this too. We live on a planet it's about 24,000 miles away, around about 8000 miles, you know, diameter. It spins around in 24 hours, 86,400 seconds. It's 93 million miles, or one astronomical unit, away from the sun. And there's a little guru that's sitting in a lotus position, going around in the hamster wheel on the planet, I am enlightened. I am enlightened. I am enlightened. From the sun, we can barely see the Earth. We need a telescope. It's non discernible. It's a little dot that can't even be seen 93 million miles away. It's too small without a telescope.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:24
If you were on the sun,

Dr. John Demartini 1:14:27
If you're on the sun, the sun is 26 to 27,000 light years away. That's 186,000 miles a second times one in 86,400 seconds in a day. How far is the sun from us? The sun is 93 million miles, 93 miles from the center of the Milky Way. Oh, yes, 26,000 lights. Yes, yes, okay. Now light year, the light travels 186,000 miles a second. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. There's 365 days in a year. A quarter. Multiply those numbers, then multiply that times 26,000 27,000 that's the distance to the Milky Way that light has to travel for an observer to see our solar system, which is indiscernible because of the dust and our planet's non even existent. The Milky Way is part of a local group that's part of a Virgo cluster. The Virgo cluster is part of a super Laniakea Supercluster. And that's part of a even a bigger system and a great wall and a Great Attractor and repeller, and that's got voids and clusters all around it to infinity. There's trillions of those, and that's just the observable universe. So now this little guy sitting on this little speck on this planet that thinks they know they're all enlightened, as Socrates said, Whatever you know is an infinitesimal compared to what you don't know. So to say, as Einstein said, to live with holy curiosity and to continue expanding your awareness would be wisdom. To think that you're all enlightened would be folly. So we have what is called relative awareness, relative enlightenment. You only know what you know, and even that's sometimes questionable. So when I meet somebody that thinks they're all enlightened, I question that, because they don't know whether you're going to pass gas in the next two minutes, right? You're not all you know. I have relative awareness in the areas of expertise that I've pursued, which is an infinitesimal, an insignificant nothingness that will turn into dust and be poofed. So I'd rather live with holy curiosity and continue to expand my awareness and honor that and relative to maybe somebody who thinks I know something in an area of my expertise, I can be help them see things they don't see, but they can certainly help me see things I don't see. Now, what's interesting is I met a gentleman who was a professor in Nashville, Tennessee. He had a PhD, very intelligent guy. I asked him what his PhD was. He said it's it was on the Life of William James on a portion of his life, a portion of his life, a tiny aspect of William James, father of modern psychology's life. He got a PhD at it. Now he's got a very advanced doctorate PhD, and very well respected for this piece he did, but he just studied a tiny little piece of one man's life. So is the person that's raising a child for 30 or 40 years any less knowledgeable about that particular thing? You know they know that child, don't they, of course, and so they're enlightened in the area of their expertise, but they may not have the same area of somebody else. So to label somebody just because they study spiritual scrolls or texts doesn't mean that they're more spiritually aware. It just means they've studied a tradition and they're scholarly about that tradition, and that's just one of many traditions on this tiny speck on this this distant planet. So I'm a firm believer that it's it's wise to study all of them, right? Learn and find as much as you can, and be inclusive and not be trapped by any of them, because they can trap you into thinking that's spiritual. And if you're not that well, then you know it's an in group, out group bias, I'm spiritual, you're not. Well, oh no, I'm spiritual. You're not. That's not it's about the soul, the state of unconditional love, which is more inclusive than the exclusions and the limitations of a of a time and space. You know, our brain likes to isolate. Well, at 600 BC, there was an enlightened person, or Buddha. Zoroaster is about the same time, sure, right? And Confucius about the same time. And these were relatively aware individuals with some differences and some similarities and teachings extract what is wisdom out of that honor that they're they've given you a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and continue to grow, continue to awaken to what you don't know tomorrow.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:22
Do I find it that the masters who are actually that I like to study and follow and explore are the ones who say I am here just to show that you have the power with it to you and those, anytime anyone goes, I'm the guy follow me I run.

Dr. John Demartini 1:19:39
Yeah, because they're, they're now, as long as you're green, you're growing in a season, you ripen your rot.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:45
So, oh, that's great

Dr. John Demartini 1:19:47
If you're, if you're humble I always say, when you when you have a humbleness to the what you don't know, and you just keep learning, like Socrates. Socrates consider himself the most unwise person of all and everybody else. Thought he was the wisest, because he was aware of what Lilly knew compared to the infinitude of what was there, right, right? That's because, I mean, I study. I've been studying pretty well every single day for 53 years. Once I learned how to read a book I started and but there's no end to what I get to learn tomorrow, because the amount of knowledge is growing faster than any one human being can. Human being can do even AI won't be able to keep up with it, because it's just don't be able to keep up with all the new variations and insights, because the vantage points is constantly changing and the insights are compounding.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:35
Fascinating. If you could give people one spiritual principle that would immediately change how they experience life? What would it be, and why do we resist it?

Dr. John Demartini 1:20:45
No matter what you've done or not done, you're still worthy of love, so powerful, because whatever you've done is participating in a pair of opposites that somebody is doing the opposite to make sure it's balanced in nature. Wow. So if somebody is critical of you, look for the Praiser. And if you're addicted to praise, which keeps you Jubilee, independent, honor the criticizer. They're going to make you grow. They're going to make you look at what you don't love about yourself. So no matter what you've done or not done, you're worthy of love, and so are the people around you. And that, you know some people, what about this person? Or what about that person? What about this? Yeah, the only person you're afraid to love is the part, the person that represents the parts you haven't integrated and loved in yourself.

Alex Ferrari 1:21:30
Are we afraid of what we're not capable of doing, or are we truly afraid of what we are truly capable?

Dr. John Demartini 1:21:38
Yeah, we're we're probably frightened of what our power is, and we're also frightened of not living our power at the same time, same time. That's the difference between actuality and potential that Aristotle addressed when he was writing.

Alex Ferrari 1:21:52
That's amazing, John, where can people find out more about you and the amazing work you're doing?

Dr. John Demartini 1:21:56
Well, they just go to drdemartini.com and they can go do my value determination process, it's free. Or they can go and check out what we're doing, breakthrough experience or products, or whatever. Or they can just go and read there's, there's enough information on there that's going to keep them busy enough for more than one life.

Alex Ferrari 1:22:14
Fair enough, John, it is. I could. I would love to continue talking to you for hours and hours. Next time you're around, my friend, please stop by. This has been such a pleasure and honor speaking to you, and I truly hope that this conversation breaks some paradigms for people with their minds out there. So I appreciate you and everything you're doing to awaken the planet, my friend,

Dr. John Demartini 1:22:36
Thank you for doing exactly the same thing. Thank you!