Cultivating Compassion & Creativity | Episode 116 with Siva Fiske

Transcript:
(00:05) [Music] [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] oh oh [Laughter] [Music] so Shiva I want to start by asking you about peace I know it's a a passion of yours to spread peace um and you have a lot of experience in this realm I'm thinking it it might be a good idea to be clear on what peace is and why this is something that should be appealing to more people well you could ask any human being what pieces and they would give you a different definition uh but I do believe that
(01:10) peace is much more than just a cessation of violence and War and conflict I think that peace is a state of consciousness that invokes a sense of wonderment and awe with the the beauty and Grandeur of creation and and that within that wonderment and that state of awe there comes an inner realization of the breth of creation and the beauty and the magnificence of God's presence in this world moving through nature and moving through each and every one of us in each inspiration so to me peace is a state of consciousness that
(01:58) reflects uh a healthy integration of Body Mind and Spirit and wholeness with the natural order of the universe which in yoga we call Dharma how do you find that State of Consciousness yourself well I think it began as a child when I was lost in play in in my imagination just inventing my game with my toys or my dolls or whatever it was that I was playing with and in that absorption in that complete uh focus of play I was lost in that no thoughts no pains no struggles no uh Illusions just that play and I was good at that as a
(03:00) kid I I think all children are it's a natural inclination to become imaginatively involved in your focus of Play That's natural that's a natural thing and so then the meditative process evolves naturally out of that and all you're doing is continuing that state of absorption in play except now you have an inner Focus which is your inner Spirit your inner calling your connectivity to the unity in the universe so you feel as an adult now you're still able to enter that space similar to what you
(03:47) experienced when you were a child yes absolutely all the time and I find that through creativity in the Arts specifically most specifically because I've been a professional musician but also in art itself or in sculpting or in writing or in communicating it's a to me life is an art form and we are we are instruments of divine the Divine energy moving through us and through that with our individual abilities we paint we sculpt we write we do surgery we do whatever machinations are coming to us so what have you noticed takes you out
(04:36) of that state of being when you're in that state of of Peace play and then something something occurs and you enter a different disturbance disturbance uh issues conflicts uh you know things that happen every day some minor and some pretty serious ly like an illness or an injury to somebody or death uh and that can uh capture your thoughts uh for the time being until you have a contemplative AB ability to process and and take the time to uh recover from whatever it is that has happened and and process it to the point where say
(05:31) Okay God's got this and so do I hopefully so the so obviously like specific activities like playing music or drawing uh that although I return to that all the time right so in those states that we love and we have a relationship with uh maybe it's easier to be in that state of consciousness that you're describing but is it a goal of yours to experience that State of Consciousness do just doing regular daily things eating having a conversation driving whatever it is as much as possible yeah right and so through the practices you
(06:15) cultivate a reliable sense of balance or equinity or you know we're talking yogic terms balance equinity and a nectivity to to the Divine source that gives you breath and gives you heartbeat and that every moment every breath every heartbeat is that Divine Source coming through each of us each and every one of us and we forget because we get caught in The Duality we have two eyes looking at objects and things out here in the material world and that creates uh a I guess you could say it's a uh illusion we talk about Maya as as an
(07:04) illusion of this world that is always transforming we get caught in that we get caught in that and that can be distressing disturbing and uh captivating so is that more of an illusion than you know drawing or making music well in that sense it's all an illusion but the when you are engaged in being a channel for inspiration and inspiration simply means to breathe in spirit so you're just you you surrender your ego self to just being an instrument just allowing that Creative Energy of the universe to just move
(07:53) through you and through your interpretive self you're you have your own valve of your own hose so to speak and the the the the current of existence of God's grace is moving through you and you have the individual control of that and so that becomes an expression hopefully of that divine nature so what do you think is the like the opposite of what we're talking about the opposite of peace is what violence is violence violence disturbance uh distraught uh cathartic emotionality uh caught in that world of
(08:40) constant stress tension and uh violence abuse you know in so many ways we're talking about not just abuse that happens physically but abuse verbally and abuse mentally we abuse ourselves mentally we can we can get caught in in berating ourselves in judging ourselves in thinking of ourselves as limited or less than someone else that we might be comparing ourselves to so you think external violence is often uh a reflection or the next step from violence that's occurring internally within oneself yes absolutely absolutely
(09:27) we from from time and Memorial we've been predatorial creatures we attack we kill to eat but that's what we have done of course today it's easy to be a vegetarian you go to this you go to the Whole Foods Market or wherever you're going and you can just pick out really healthy beautiful food but when we were uh in our Primal stages of of human being human beings we had to hunt and we had to protect ourselves and we created enmity and we created this whole way of being in conflict and being en of enmity
(10:11) being enemies to each other conquering enslaving controlling dominating each other and that is you know that's what captures us still you know we we we're caught in that but but even back then do you think that was a bypro product of what was happening for those people internally that they had violence happening internally I think it was just a matter of survival we we had in order to survive we had to hunt in order to survive we had to uh protect ourselves we had to create Weaponry we had to utilize our
(10:52) abilities to mobilize Defense Forces to protect ourselves and also we became engaged in building and exploring and enlarging the scope of our civilizational Enterprise whatever that was by conquering others enslaving others and abusing others and thinking of others as less than and I think that this historical Primal kind of construct that we've become involved with is a source of a great deal of our neurosis and our dysfunction as a human family and the the predatorial nature with which we attack our environment we are exploiting
(11:40) and extracting from our environment instead of serving and nourishing we're fighting with each other instead of sharing the Bounty of our existence and that's what the the the movement towards wokeness and there's a big movement against wokeness from the from the the what we call the political right and the wokeness is really just being aware of the gifts that we have as human beings to be here to be alive to be sharing to be sharing this world with each other and to coexist in in a in a peaceful manner
(12:20) it's interesting with our relationship with words and how it changes if you could take this word woke or awake becoming awake right that that means one thing like just waking up how you define that and then now it can be taken and put into a movement and lots of labels could get associated with it which change it yeah what have you learned about words and the different relationship that we all have like what you said about peace how you can ask so many different people what peace is and you'll get different
(12:53) definitions is it important for you to be aware of this relationship um this this different relationship that everyone has and that how you define a certain word might be quite different from how someone else does yeah well this is a this is a problem that has existed and we have different languages and different languages different words in different languages can mean multiple things in one culture and in another culture mean exact opposite so there there's always a problem in the manner in which we communicate to with with each other and
(13:29) so for me select I'm a Wordsmith I'm a writer a songwriter a poet and so selecting words is extremely important and choosing words that bring oneself to alignment with Dharma or the natural order of the universe and an alignment with that is extremely extremely important but also even going back to childhood right and that for the first you know year or two of life this concept of of language isn't even developed right and then just starts to develop slowly right and then we're so immersed in words it's how we operate
(14:14) everything is is words um but then also to know and maybe that's the well not everything is words because there's also tonality and there's also the uh the way in which we feel each other in terms of like talking to you there's a chemistry that is there between us and it's really not uh it's it's more abstract than it is linear words are very linear and we think in terms of linear progression like B follows a and C follows b d follows so forth but in music for example once you get involved in the
(14:55) tonality of things you you're not thinking linear in a linear way anymore you're thinking in terms of tonality and you're thinking in terms of Rhythm and you're thinking in terms of pulse and you're thinking in terms of feeling opening your heart opening your biomechanism to the Resonance of sound around you which really gets back to that Primal state where we are in a connectivity with the Primal sounds of nature around us which is a derivation of music and the derivation of language like if you sit by a stream and you hear
(15:37) the water bubbling and you hear b boom b boom bom and there's a rhythm and a pulse so the way the the the river of the stream is flowing and within that you hear a TAA or a drum or a violin or a chorus or a chant you know music is everywhere but it's not that's not necessarily a linear way of thinking it's it's a feeling tone and Mantra is a feeling tone it's not a linear you can't translate a mantra in a literal way it becomes more abstract becomes more tonal and it it reaches us
(16:18) in a way where our Consciousness is then uh removed from that literal yada y mind Babble and you get into the tonal Groove that a mantra sets up and complete repetition and it's a little bit like dropping a pebble into a pool and if you can drop a pebble of the same weight in the same exact way into the center of that pool again and again it permeates a vibrational wave field through the pool which is pretty much a steady beat or steady Rhythm or steady tonality and that's what happens with Mantra as we
(17:07) use Mantra in our Consciousness it's dropping the pebble of the tonality of the Mantra into the pool of our Consciousness and that creates a rhythmic uh evenness which is a conduit or an entry point to go deeper into the Divine source of that of this breath of this heartbeat of this life and connecting with that is what we're here to to be to ody that Divine self is what we're here to do I believe does it take a certain trust in the way that you're created in order to do that a certain trust uh I don't know if it's a trust as much
(18:00) as it you know when you're a child you you have to trust that your parents are are the adults in the room and that they've got you know they're going to feed you they're going to house you they're going to they're going to hold you hopefully touch you and love you deeply uh that's that's a certain level of trust but as you get older the trust becomes a faith that there is a Divine hand at work here that God's got this God's Got this moment no matter what and we forget that we lose that all the time
(18:35) and that's a source of our disconnect and that's a source of our our uh problems much of our problems but when I when I do have that does that allow for Freedom does that open up Freedom then absolutely absolutely it it it of course because uh that source is it's it's something that you can't you know we human beings like definition we want to Define and delineate but really trying to Define and delineate God is something that pundits and sages and and Scholars and and and religious people have been pondering for centuries
(19:25) and it's really impossible it's like clouds you you can't Define it you can't fully grasp it it's grasp but nevertheless here moving through and throughout the Continuum of all creation it's high in the mountains it's deep in the sky it's deep in the sea it's everywhere that everywhere can be and it really has no beginning and it has no end it has no birth it has no death it has no I me or mine it's free so Freedom that sense of Freedom that you asked about is really where what human beings
(20:03) long for we long for freedom and we long along with that which is a democ democratic Quest We long for equality and we long for Justice and Justice is another word for God like peace or love you know if God be named May It Be Love may be peace you say we you think everyone has that even the people that operating from the perspective that it doesn't really matter to me what everyone else has I just want it for myself and that's not equality that's not Justice people don't seem to give much care I mean right for
(20:42) equality for for justice they just want they just want the good things for themselves well that's the wrestle we have the wrestle we have with our ego with our quest for control and power and wealth you know we're materialistic Society we uh Pro the the material Society promotes the spin that success means you acquire this or you acquire this product this wealth this clothing this ring for your finger this car this material wealth this property and that that's the key to well-being and good health and happiness
(21:28) and I think that's that's that's going down the wrong path but but you're saying deep down there is a un more unconscious desire that that those same people have for equality for justice they do they do I I believe that they do and that's what Gandhi saw uh in everybody that there was a goodness there was an inherent Divine self Namaste an inherent Divine self in every human soul but it gets covered over it gets forgotten it gets lost it gets trampled on in our ego in our quest for ego satisfaction power greed wealth
(22:10) materialistic gain that equality though as as something to try to you know strive for attain is tricky thing right I mean can you make everything equal no no you can't but but what you can have is equal opportunity how well if there is a real democracy where uh equality Justice and freedom were really what we experienc everyone would be born into a home of love and care and equal opportunity to grow and have your dreams whatever that may be your talent your skills your intelligence be fulfilled however this
(23:04) Society uh is really uh not allowing for that kind of Freedom we have a a great deal of Injustice racism and so forth but even if those were the pillars every parent is going to be different every parent is not going to be the same and who would want that anyway to be everything so cookie cut so can there be equal opportunity because depending on if you have a certain parent that's uh more adequate more depth has more training on how to parent well maybe is funnier is lighter is more connected to God that's going to
(23:43) allow the child to have more opportunity to the other person they're both trying to be parents but one has greater capacity than the other right or or there's addictive or there's health issues or there's social dilemmas that come up and and or one parent dies a single parent exactly well there's lots of stories of of of many many many many people who have come through deep holes in their life and have manifested amazing things so there's there's also an inner prompting that happens inside
(24:19) us there's an inner impulse that calls us to a deeper Reckoning with existence and and that's the the I believe that's the sacred pull that's the Divine impulse to come to our own fulfillment our own sense of understanding why are we here why are we human beings why are we born what's going on in this world you know there's there there's an inner impulse for Truth For Truth for longing for truth and I think that's for the sacred I mean I think that's what we're talking
(24:55) about in terms of like equality too is we're interested and what is what is the truth here like equality is I mean it's wonderful notion to have you know opportunity for for everyone um but is nature set up that way for equality you know is like what's the truth there what is actual Poss is it possible to be equal and is understanding what is the truth around this topic going to allow for greater progression towards that goal well we have as I said we have this this inner impulse this inner calling
(25:31) that brings us to the opportunities that open to us if we allow ourselves to see it we are often encultured and socialized in ways that create an implicit bias inside us where we are become blinded or stuck in in stuck spaces where that we cannot see out of and so we can't see all the opportunities nor have we been afforded the availability of those opportunities by the constrictions of our parenting our societal uh limitations and and so forth so we are we are evolving creatures opening opening opening like a flower a flower a
(26:27) seed that is stands in the ground is encoded with the DNA to bloom into its blossoming right and to give of its seed every seed has that within itself every human being has that within themselves to grow into their blossoming but there are obstacles in the way there stuff we need to overcome that's why we're here in this world that's why we're born we're like scholarship students given a body and breath and along the way we have this curriculum of trial and error and it's tough It's really really hard
(27:06) sometimes to get past the trial the tribulations and the errors and the missteps that we make but in Judaism for example they say uh you can rewrite your script you have the power within yourself to rewrite yourt script to reconcile the transgressions and the missteps of your past and rewrite a script in yoga terms we can correct our Karma we have that opportunity do you feel like you've done some of that in your life hopefully but you're not sure well I think life is is a NeverEnding uh process and it's like you write uh you
(27:57) write something a song a poem a book and you you diddle with it you fiddle with it you you refine it you rewrite it you go through draft after draft after draft is it ever really finished I sing a song each time I sing a song I may have completed writing the song I may have practiced the performance of that song to a large degree but every time I perform it it's completely new and that particular performance I would want to make the best I've ever done it the best I've ever done it that's new that's that's an
(28:38) expansion that's that's and the people who are listening to it the audience that moment that you're doing that performance is completely new and everyone is there giving you in input which affects your performance it's part of your performance it's an interaction we're constantly interacting with the world which is constantly changing so we're constantly changing too and we have to learn to surf through it in a way what yoga teaches is balance Equanimity a state of mind that is always in in in a state of grace you
(29:19) God's got this this is a distur I'm I have a disturbance today I'm not feeling good something's happening but in the end we see that you know it's all here for learning so AS Scholarship students in this world we have this curriculum and the curriculum is trial and error we learn from our experience and if we're open to our experience it will teach us what we need to know and we evolve in our Consciousness and we open up like a flower hopefully and then the opposite was being being it would be being closed off
(30:01) cut or cut off being mowed you know like like war war is the is the ultimate epitome of the lowest denomination of human endeavor you cut and you kill you exploit and you and you crush but even there is opportunity for people to learn right and shift something in their lives how many PE how many soldiers have M learned a lot from their experien of course absolutely the other day we were sitting at the birthday party of a gentleman who was a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War and sent bombs down and gunships down on the
(30:47) enemy and so now he's into yoga and practicing meditation and beautiful beautiful soul and that was part of his learning experience that made that was part of making him who he is today for me I was a teenager during the Vietnam War I was caught up in the turmoil of that time and I was also a keen follower of Martin Luther King and his strategy of nonviolence for social change and that captivated my imagination and then later on Martin Luther King condone uh condemned the Vietnam War and I go I was caught up in the
(31:44) uh protests against the war against Vietnam and I became a conscientious objector and I decided that nonviolence was the path for me and if I if I had a religion it would be to be nonviolent and to be kind and be a loving person and like you said that that starts with the self or that's happening with the self how can I be non-violent to myself all the time all the time everything is a test of that and but you don't have to get caught up in the test you just are you you you cultivate the ideologies and the consciousness
(32:29) of love and kindness and generosity and compassion and you do the best you can to eliminate greed and lust and jealousy and anger and hatred how do you and violence you do the practices you you cultivate through the practices and the practices you know yoga is a whole set of practices there's eight limbs of of yog yoga and the classic pangali uh School of yoga but there's many schools of practicing and I know many people who don't know a thing about yoga or or meditation or anything on a spiritual
(33:13) sense they're Simply Good People they they're people of Goodwill they're people of kindness they're people of generosity heart and who's to say that they're not any more spiritual than someone who meditates hours and hours and hours a day but are you saying that person is practicing something or they don't even need to practice they're just that's the way they they've learned over the course of their lives and the influences that have come to them to be good people to be kind to be generous to
(33:45) be loving to be compassionate to be empathetic to other people's needs to serve others service is you know the pillar of of yoga to be of service to others what do you think the importance is of setting an intention like I have the what you're speaking about I have the intention to be more compassionate to be more kind to be more grateful all these things how important is that to get clear this is my intention this is where I want to go right and and the intention is the foundation of everything your intention
(34:25) you I intend to clear my mind of hatred I intend to clear my emotional being of ill feelings towards anybody you know and that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy within yourself I will do this I will stop being hurtful to others I will stop being condescending I will stop being abusive you know and you can do that by cultivating within yourself the opposite so but but it helps to cultivate the opposite if you've had loving parents if you've grown up in an environment where your parents are compassionate and kind and
(35:18) gracious you know I was born into a mom who was an opera singer I was literally born into the womb of Music mom played the piano every day she was a professional musician she played the piano every day and vocalized without fail so I grew up in a womb that was literally vibrating with my mother's voice every day and so that was an encultured part of me even in the womb growing up and the soundtrack of my childhood was my mother's Opera and classical music played on the record player you know and for someone that you
(36:02) know did not have that childhood did not have that experience and had a lot of hardship trauma that they experienced so maybe they look back and they say well I didn't have those opportunities I had really difficult childhood therefore I can't do those I can't do those things I can't I can't change this ill feeling this hatred that I have this is just how I am because of the way that I would brought up and it's it's not my fault well the first thing is to recognize that if you can
(36:33) recognize that and then you can Embark upon the process of change and what will that be well maybe you walk on the beach and you have a revelation maybe you go to some kind of uh consultant or some sort of health professional who can help you through the difficult times in your life and help you see another way we are capable of change we are capable of evolving to new levels of unlimited potential every human being has unlimited potential I believe and we get constricted and we get we get to argue for our limitations we fight for for our
(37:22) limitations and that's a tragedy of of of being alive instead of seeing the unlimited potential that we are born with if you I don't know if you do or not but if there's some kind of ill will animosity hatred that you notice coming up inside of yourself these these things that you don't want to cultivate but all of a sudden it's here right here it is what do you do well I try not to react out of an emotional discontent out of emotional reactivity if someone attacks me you know they blame me they
(38:08) call me names they whatever it is uh I try not to react in kind I just try to take it and actually try to take it like water off a duck's back because there's something more that you can see in this interaction there's something to learn from here there's always something to learn from every thing that happens every moment in life as a teaching for you if you are able to see it it's like I grew up in a world where I became athletic I was gifted athletically and Athletics was my total absorption as a kid as a teenager to the
(38:55) point where I was I became very skillful and I was very competitive so I would be up against an opponent right and specifically in basketball or in contact Sports of various kinds you're up against an opponent and they're trash talking at you and they're trying to tear you down and you know dominate you and I learned that if I trash talk back it just becomes a a disturbing conflict that doesn't have a resolution but if I just stay within my game and I play my game to the best of my ability and do not return the trash
(39:42) talk do not engage in that but just simply be honest with who I am in that moment as a good player I learned that by his opposition by his trash talk is helping me to be a better player and ultimately to be a better person so that's an evolution of thought about challenge because we're always going to be challenged in life every moment is going to present to us so even to stand up you got to you're challenged against the pull of gravity to pull you down and so you can see it as an obstacle or you
(40:26) can see it as an opportunity for growth and learning and that's the way I choose to see it we have Choice every choice is a thread in the fabric of our lives and we can create that thread to be whole and strong and sturdy and good or we can create it to be weak and torn and and uh unsteady so when that come arises in you and you notice you you don't notice that you have a tendency to make it wrong or to suppress it um push it away you know cuz that seems to be a you know I've set the intention you know I
(41:13) want to experience love I want to experience peace well this is not that now and but it's here if I'm being honest of course uh so what I'm hearing you say is that it's more of just embracing it allowing it being patient with it and and that it's transformed somehow right it it becomes transformed eventually for example if you have a conflict with another person and you cannot resolve that conflict in the interaction that you're having this too emotionally polarized you can't get
(41:51) through that then you have to step back and then maybe at a later time from a different perspective you can see that there is perhaps another approach that you could take because the approach in that moment of emotional reactivity may just escalate the polarization instead of trying to come to reconciliation or a resolution that is win-win there's a win-win resolution that can be found if we are patient and if we are open to it it might not always find it in the other person at that moment you know I've had many conflicts
(42:38) conflict is part of existence you can't exist without some kind of conflict like standing up against gravity in a way that's a conflict but there are ways to resolve conflict and nonviolence the whole uh basic principles of nonviolence are ways that through study and reflection and experience you can learn to resolve conflicts through modalities and methodologies whether it's mediation or active listening to someone to someone else you hear someone else but you may be already projecting your response instead of really
(43:28) listening to them so by really listening you put aside your ego you put aside your already thought of answer and you try to put yourself into the other person's shoes you're angry at me you're mad at me okay let me try and understand why you are mad at me and let me then if you attack me with a verbal uh accusation or allegation let me say to you I hear you saying this and this and this about am I wrong is that is that the correct and that person will understand that by you coming back to them with repeating what they told you they
(44:16) grasp that you have understood and have heard them and when someone realize that that they have been heard that there is a level of respect and there is a level of uh communication that's going on then they will respond to you more affirmatively and more positively than in in an antagonistic way you understand what I'm saying of course yeah yeah yeah it's big that's quite the practice um do you think that there's ever an appropriate time for violence or never well that's an interesting
(44:54) question uh goodev would say that if there's a person who's shooting a group of people in the room if you were able to take that person out even by shooting them then that's not an act of violence that's an act of Life preservation So within the philosophy of nonviolence within that school of thought there is some degree of difference between being totally pacifistic in other words not even protecting yourself as a matter of fact there was a point where Gandhi himself said the principle is more important
(45:36) than your life give give your life to the principle of peace and Justice and nonviolence I on the other hand would say if there was someone that was going to attack me or my family or my loved ones or my friends I would do all I could to to stop that violence and if in stopping that violence I would act in what was could be interpreted as a violent act then I would say that is necessary to be done to protect life to preserve life to be to to defend life is of ultimate importance not necessarily an act of violence but an act Act of preservation
(46:28) and protection which comes from the term a aimsa aimsa means love and respect for all living things and doing no harm to any living thing or to the environment which is a living thing and so you're acting within the realm of aimsa but there is a dis there is a disagreement within the school of nonviolence about that there are some who say don't do anything and there's some who say I must act Gandhi was proactive he was one of those rare individuals who was able to take the spiritual teachings of yoga of vidanta he was a
(47:11) Mahatma or Great Soul he was able to take those teachings and transform and translate it into Political activism and I think political activism is very important today I mean it's it it's you know a good discussion whether a person who is meditative and spends their whole life in a meditative state is doing more to help the world than the person who's out in the street protesting and marching and advocating for legislation and policy change what do you think I think it's a combination of both I think you can you can have
(47:49) both I live a life as much as I can of meditation and contemplation and thoughtful uh rendering of the experience that I have that has come to me and I've also been an activist because I was there in 1963 when Martin Luther King gave the I Have a Dream speech at the great March on Washington I had prior to that I was in high school I had learned to be a folk singer during the Civil Rights days and the and the song songs of protest the songs of Freedom the songs of spirituality the spir the spiritual songs uh and that I loved voices singing
(48:37) together and I loved the marches and I felt it was for a righteous cause and I went to Washington DC I was 17 years old just I was a kid I was just learning to play the guitar and sing and there was music everywhere there was Peter Paul and Mary there was Bob Dill there was Joan bayz there was mahelia Jackson there was Marian Anderson so forth and so on and and and in the March itself people were chanting and singing and and the tonality the tone of it was impactful for me and so I became uh embroiled in it and I learned that it's
(49:20) the people who make a difference because right after that March in 196 64 and 1965 there came the legislations the civil rights legislation the Voting Rights Act and so forth and that was significant and that showed me that it is activism it is the people who who take it upon themselves to make the world a better place and do something about it that make a difference prayer is important prayer is important but you can pray for end Hunger in the world or for peace in the world but unless you do something to enact that prayer into actuality and
(50:02) some degree the prayer is just a thought form how about the process of of moving the unconscious to the conscious and I wonder if that's what happened um you know in those years 63 64 65 that it it would almost forced people who didn't want to see the reality of the situation of the inequality of the Injustice it forced it into their Consciousness and forced them to see it and contend with it right like right on the television screens or or whatever it is so I wonder about that in today's world too like is
(50:42) there's is this this tendency we kind of get the sense that like there's some injustice happening here you know maybe it's in the meat and the dairy industry or something like that but like I don't really want to look at that or whatever it is because more comfortable living my life the way that I'm I'm living it um so yeah anything to say about this process of of moving the unconscious into the conscious right well part of that unconsciousness is our connectivity to Divine source to to love to to peace to
(51:19) Joy and so forth and so on the disturbance comes because those inclinations to peace are natural to us they're naturally what we want but when we see a world of violence and a world of uh cruelty there's a disconnect there there's a terrible uh cognant dissonance that happens and that cognant dissonance is painful because you've you're experiencing something that doesn't compute with the reality that you have been a part of and that has been enculturated within you to be your truth if you grew up in an abusive home and
(52:10) you see the world through an abusive lens and then someone tells you that this abuse is not the way you need to live there's a cognitive dissonance you can make that change you can make that transformation but you have to overcome the cognant dissonance that is going to come it's painful because you've been living a life uh that is based on abuse or violence or addictive behavior or a reality that you have been enculturated in which is your Norm it's become your home to that to that sense it's your reality and when
(53:01) your reality gets Disturbed then you have to learn how to cope with it so when there's cognizant dissonance there's two ways to deal with it one is to say whoa uh I'm learning something here let me go deeper into this and figure out why I'm experiencing this disturbance and what is here for me to learn and grow from it's it's called educating ourselves the other part of that is deny deny defuse deflect turn it away and go deeper into the polarized mindset that you're already imbued in and enforce it with
(53:47) weaponized talking points attack you know there's something called darvo have you ever heard of darvo it's it's a it's a uh social psychologist interpretation of how uh sexual predators uh self approve of their behavior the first one is denial the darvo is is an acronym D is for denial A is for then you go on the attack oh no it's you not me you're and then V is victim I'm a victim it's a Witch Hunt right a victim and then the r r r comes before the V the r is reversal of the attack you reverse it oh you're
(54:44) calling me a racist you're the racist and the last one oh is on the offense you go on the offense to obliterate your opponent wipe them out destroy their argument darvo d r v it's what Trump used it's it's Trump's modus operandi yeah and when we begin to understand that we begin to uh revise the way in which we cooperate understand each other uh resolve our disagreements we look for ways to resolve our disagreements so that there can be a Reconciliation there can be perhaps hopefully a new understanding to come
(55:38) out of this disagreement to come out of this polarized position but sometimes it's not possible it's just not possible if another person is so polarized and so closed to see in another perspective you can't penetrate that you can't so you said okay but you could have faith that it's going to change at some point if you continue to do your work and maybe pray for the person or love that person or not hate that person and it might not change right now but at some point right Namaste yeah I see the
(56:12) God on you but we're just not talking on the same level right now uh and I hope you can see the god in me as well and we can come to be brothers and sisters and in in family coexisting on the beautiful planet that God has given us that's difficult to do it's the hardest thing for people to do sharing is the hardest thing for people to do the simple Act of sharing we don't share well is that true I think it's very true unfortunately uh and so uh the wokeness or the awake ening of Consciousness is
(56:58) learning how to to coexist and learning how to better share and learning how to listen and truly hear each other and within that this part of non nonviolent training is to understand that there are conflict resolution methodologies or technologies that we can employ and also to see that the person who you're up against is not someone who is your enemy is but is actually someone who's just an actor acting out a socialized and cultured uh idea and they're coming at you with it and so you don't try to uh
(57:42) take it personally which is difficult to do very difficult to do but you try to see you try to be the witness there's another part of non-violent training is to be the witness to see what's going on the cruelty the horror the nightmare of it all be the witness at the same so you can in a way step back from it Divorce Yourself from it hold the truth that you witnessed this and then from a point of uh honest and clear realization you can take action to amend it or to bring Justice to the situation and Justice Means having uh
(58:34) the allegation recognized or the accusation recognized number one number two uh accepting it or having it and then having it proven actually and factually and then being held accountable for it and then having a consequence for it that's the way Justice works it's not always possible because people use the darvo technique to deny to Blind to [Music] control yeah I'm personally more interested in what's happening for me internally and I see that if there's a larger problem in the world it's it's
(59:19) it's the this total focus on external which I've had most of my life but being the witness I I see that that's a distraction for how much I can continually do work and grow internally for me to see and one of those specific things is is the ne negativity bias so I witness that I witness myself focusing on what is negative so that's why I ask the question even like we're not good sharers so I would question to myself like is that true or is that me having a negativity bias on you know because I
(59:56) think there's probably arguments to be made for both sides well it's it's probably true for both sides because when we're witnessing we're seeing something but we're also witnessing our own reaction to it and that internal processing that internal witnessing is very very important to each of us because that's the way we come to terms with whatever is happening you know we're in a relationship our our wife is angry my wife is angry at me my child is upset whatever is going on in that
(1:00:30) immediate moment I witness it I try to help it if I can I try to um heal it if I can but part of that witnessing and part of that processing has to happen within myself it's not just out there it's dual we're dual we're we're we're we're in the world and we're in within ourselves but the world we're in is imperfect and transigent and is an illusion it's always changing constantly changing and in the yoga teachings they tell us we are that we are that Divine self which is Immortal and never always
(1:01:16) the same always Divine always Eternal the Eternal self I wanted to ask you more about music because I know it's been such a big part of your life and it's great to hear about that with your mom and being an opera singer singer and playing the piano while you're in the womb and all of that um anything to share about your early relationship with music and introduction and and your love for it yeah well music was just the the soundtrack of my life you know it was always it was always there from the time I was in the womb as I
(1:01:57) said before um but music was not my first real uh dedicated effort I didn't really it came easily to me I I wasn't really uh challenged by music I was more challenged athletically I I was good I could run fast I had good reflexes I could jump I could play ball all any kind of ball well and I just loved it I loved playing ball I lived with a spalding pink ball in my pocket and I was always I would walk down the street and I'm throwing the ball against the wall and catching it so so Athletics was was really the first
(1:02:44) thing that I dedicated myself to and became good at and I learned through that that you become through practice and dedicated to to getting better you get better and then music I was good I could sing I could act I was always in the school plays it was like something I just did naturally uh but at a certain point music took over it became number one for me and it happened it evolved you know from the civil rights movement and the songs of protest and the songs of freedom to writing my own songs to realizing that I had something to say or
(1:03:27) something to give something to express and I wanted to do it through music there wasn't enough to express that I wasn't expressing myself well enough through sports or through basketball there was something more that was calling me and that that was music and then I began to dedicate myself to music and thought hey I can do this professionally and I had opportunities that were given to me that I had I had uh opportunities to join bands and do this and do that and to make recordings and and one thing led to another and and
(1:04:10) I went into it I just went into it and but I also had this uh I guess you call it an intuitive or instinctual uh connectivity to sound to the sounds around me I mean I grew up in New York city so the sounds around me were cacophanus sounds of the street the Subways I live right next to the George Washington Bridge so every night in my room I would go to sleep and the bridge was you could hear the traffic and the noise the bridge was also it groaned and it moaned and the sounds but then I would go down to Riverside Park and
(1:04:52) there were a little patch of a few Acres of woods and I'd sit there amongst the trees and there was a different sound different tonal uh come influence coming to me and resonating with me and that I really loved that I really felt comfortable with and then later on I was absolutely and completely desirous to go into the mountains and immerse myself in nature totally and completely so I became a Backpacker and a mountaineer first hiking in the cat skills of upstair New York and the outer andex of Upstate New
(1:05:29) York and then down through uh the Appalachian Trail and so forth in into Virginia and uh I became a lover of Nature and the sounds of nature and that was music to my ears the streams the wind and the trees the birds singing that was all it was all music to me and I realized the derivation of Music in in any culture was coming from these sounds of nature The rhythms of nature the day the night the rain falling the bird singing the wind the water uh you know that's all music it's all music and and it's and we we in our uh
(1:06:19) materialistic World in our attempt to uh control culture the the culture of nature we divorce ourselves from nature and that I think is a is a is a source of much disturbance and neuroses in the human being that we are completely divorced from nature so I always attempted to get as much as I could to get into nature to immerse myself I once spent an entire summer in the sieras hiking the jamu Trail North and South and uh that was like 2 months in the wilderness embedded totally in the wilderness changed my life and and became so important to me
(1:07:05) which is one of the reasons why it became important to me to move here to yogaville because we live in the forest and those sounds every day I wake up to the sounds of nature and and feel the I can walk to the creek I can walk through the woods uh I can feel nature re resounding Within Myself and hopefully this is important to my family as well so I bring my family here as often as we can my my son my daughter-in-law my two grandsons my daughter and two granddaughters in Los Angeles and my daughter other older daughter who's
(1:07:51) going to John Hopkins nursing school now so she's closer in Baltimore what does family mean to you well family is really the core of existence to me it's the core of existence it's the heartbeat it's the love that you feel it's Community uh it's it's uh togetherness with your fellow human beings we're we are human beings in general we are creatures that need each other we're here to be together with each other and we're born in the womb of a mother for crying out loud you know and
(1:08:35) so we're never alone we're we're always with each other and family is an extension of that togetherness and the procreation of Life uh is a beautiful thing it's a wondrous thing and to be able to be a part of that to experience that to nurture that that as a husband as a father as a grandfather that's the most important thing to me it's more important than career it's more important than making money or you know anything else it's number one so although I've had and continued to
(1:09:15) have a career that I enjoy and love in M primarily in music and the Arts uh it it takes a second seat to family and family empowers that it it it hey my kids I'd be working on a song in the living room and one of my daughters might come in or my son might dad that's terrible what are you doing you know they be they' be the harshest feedback and that's great you you you live with it you accept it it's all good it's all helping it's all part of growth and family enhances the growth
(1:09:55) of the human being it's it's a it's a gift it's a gift of of of Grace to be able to have family and loving family I've been married 50 years 50 plus years uh and I've been blessed to have a beautiful wife and we we worked at it we worked at our relationship we you know we went through the human potential movement and going to all kinds of workshops that deal with how you how you relate to each other and how you can coexist in a way that you're serving each other and you're helping each other
(1:10:35) of course yoga is a big big part of that but as a as a performer and a public speaker I also found myself in numerous environments where the teachings the teachings were coming and being digested within myself and I'm learning and digesting the teachings every day and processing as best I can and hopefully growing and and uh being being a good guy try to be try to be a good guy are you are a good guy Shiva thank you so much appreciate this time with you oh you're welcome thank you home home thanks for listening if you've
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