Awareness Is A Superpower

Making his 9th appearance on the podcast, today marks another mind-bending deep dive into the multiverse with Guru Singh, my treasured friend and favorite wizard of all things mystical. For those newer to the show, imagine a modern-day Gandalf who rocks like Hendrix while dropping pearls of wisdom that beautifully fuse Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism. A celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi, master spiritual teacher, author, and family man, for the past 40 years Guru Singh has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga. He is the author of several books, a powerful lecturer, and behind-the-scenes guide to many a luminary, including Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, and artists. Guru Singh is also a talented musician who rocked alongside Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead in the 1960s. When he isn’t recording tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. The focus of today's discourse? Awareness. We talk about the importance of self care, crucial as we near the pressures that accompany the holiday season. We discuss cancel culture. The critical distinction between awareness and judgment. And empathy versus endorsement. And we dive into the incredible power of awareness to cultivate an objectivity about ourselves, others and the world we inhabit. As always, Guru Singh takes us out with a song, so make sure to stick around to the end. You can watch it all go down on YouTube. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Guru Singh?

  Well, when I say "in a world of ignorance," I'm not discrediting the world. I'm witnessing the world. Because the word "ignorance" simply means to ignore. And that's a little bit what's happening in the world. The people have gotten so used to the world the way it is, that they're ignoring the implications of the way it is. And I think that what we're looking at in a world of awareness dealing with ignorance is that the onus is upon the awareness, not the ignorance. We're all saying that they're the ones that are destroying the world. Well, the world is being destroyed. Whatever's causing it, we're the ones that are gonna save it.

• 1:46Guru Singh?

  And I'll tell you, if we get enough people to be successful in their life, in their health, living longer, living healthier because of plant-based diet, if we get enough people who are more intuitive because of their mindful and meditative practices, that's how we outflank the problem.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  That's Guru Singh, and this is another very special edition of Guru Multiverse on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Salutations, good people. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. This is a podcast, my podcast. Welcome to it. Okay, today marks yet another deep dive with Guru Singh, my favorite wizard of all things mystical, newly rebranded from Guru Corner to Guru Multiverse. Why? Because the infinite has no sharp edges, my friends, just pure expansiveness. The good guru has paid many a visit to this show. I believe this is his ninth appearance, if I'm not mistaken. But briefly, for those newer to what we do here, Guru Singh is, in addition to a good friend, he is a celebrated master, spiritual teacher, author, musician,

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  father, gift to humanity, who has been teaching and studying Kundalini Yoga for the past 40 years. As I think you gather at this point, I enjoy tapping into his wisdom and experience and awareness on the regular. And today's discourse is all about that. It's all about awareness. As always, Guru Singh provides the most enlightening conversations, and I cannot wait to share this one with you. But first, let's hear from our sponsors.

• 3:43Rich Roll?

  Okay, Guru Singh, today we discuss awareness. And that's all I'm gonna say. You're gonna have to trust me. It's a great one. And with that, I once again give you Guru Singh.

• 3:59Rich Roll?

  And we're back. Another edition of the Guru Multiverse. Circle Multiverse.

• 4:05Guru Singh?

  Yeah, no more corners.

• 4:06Rich Roll?

  Which way are we going with this?

• 4:08Guru Singh?

  Well, you know, we painted ourselves into a corner, and that made us strong, because they say that there's nothing stronger than a cornered animal.

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  And now we're expanding in 360 degrees. I like multiverse.

• 4:22Guru Singh?

  Yeah. And think about 360 degrees, which is one plane.

• 4:29Guru Singh?

  Three hundred and sixty degrees to the three hundred and sixty, the power of three sixty, which is all planes. Can you imagine what that number is?

• 4:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know. You tell me.

• 4:41Guru Singh?

  Yeah, right. It's in the, it's in the illions that are beyond anything we've ever said.

• 4:45Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 4:46Guru Singh?

  You know, not trillion, quadrillion, whatever.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  My beard is growing longer with every second.

• 4:52Guru Singh?

  That is a notice.

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Julie likes it? I, I don't know. I'm, I, I, I don't, how long did it take you to grow that beard?

• 4:59Guru Singh?

  Forever.

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  Your whole life, right?

• 5:00Guru Singh?

  Forever. I've never shaved.

• 5:01Rich Roll?

  You've never shaved?

• 5:02Guru Singh?

  No.

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  When was the last time you shaved?

• 5:04Guru Singh?

  I didn't.

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  You never did?

• 5:05Guru Singh?

  No. My beard actually came in late. So by the time my beard was actually becoming a beard, it was, um, my early twenties.

• 5:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Guru Singh?

  So who gave a damn about whether you shaved or not? It was, my early twenties was in the middle sixties. And so, you know, I mean, like beards were it.

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  And how much hair do you have underneath that turban?

• 5:28Guru Singh?

  This is all.

• 5:28Rich Roll?

  Has anybody ever asked you that?

• 5:30Guru Singh?

  Yeah, of course they do. This is all balled up and put right here, you know, and.

• 5:35Rich Roll?

  Have you ever cut that? It's just gross.

• 5:37Guru Singh?

  When I was, when I was a child.

• 5:38Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. But if you, do you ever just let it, let it down?

• 5:41Guru Singh?

  At night.

• 5:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, at home, right?

• 5:43Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  So how long is it?

• 5:45Guru Singh?

  Oh, it's, you know, down.

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  All the way down to the butt?

• 5:49Guru Singh?

  Wherever on my butt is.

• 5:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 5:52Guru Singh?

  Yeah, it's a, it's just one of those things that you sort of get used to not doing, right? It's the, it's the convenience of not needing to deal with that part of your world.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  And then it just makes, it takes that out of, uh, out of, you know, the decisions that you have to make, right? It's just taken care of.

• 6:13Guru Singh?

  Yeah. You look at our closet and, you know, there's a lot of white robes. It's not like a big deal to determine what it is.

• 6:21Rich Roll?

  But you rock the colors.

• 6:23Guru Singh?

  I do.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  You always, you always, you, you always have this amazing, um, combination of beautiful pastels and.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  You rock it well.

• 6:32Guru Singh?

  We are expressive in our discipline.

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 6:40Rich Roll?

  All right, so today, we're going to talk about the role of awareness in a world of ignorance. So what does that mean?

• 6:49Guru Singh?

  Well, when I say in a world of ignorance, I'm not discrediting the world. I'm witnessing the world because the word ignorance simply means to ignore. And I don't know if you've ever had a moment in your house where, you know, people are coming over and you notice, oh, my God, the house is kind of a mess. But you hadn't noticed that the house was kind of a mess because it was your mess. And so you were ignoring the fact that the house was kind of a mess until you thought about the people that you've invited over for the evening. And now you're starting to see the house through fresh eyes, through their eyes. And you're going, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to have to clean the house up or I'm going to have to fix the house up.

• 7:34Guru Singh?

  And that's a little bit what's happening in the world. The people have gotten so used to the world the way it is that they're ignoring the implications of the way it is. Introduce yourself as a person of awareness into that world that is ignoring it. And you look around and you say, wow, there's a lot of things to clean up around here. And it's really what's happening in this so-called debate about, you know, the health of the world and the health of the planet and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

• 8:10Guru Singh?

  Because those that are claiming that there is no problem, let's just put the pedal to the metal and accelerate industry even more, they're ignoring the signs that awareness is seeing. They're ignoring them so vehemently that when awareness points it out, ignorance says it's false fact, false news, some conspiracy. And so what we are going to have to do as the people of awareness, and I know with

• 8:50Guru Singh?

  your, with your plant-based diet and my plant-based diet, we have tremendous amounts of awareness around food. With your exercise routine and our exercise routine, we have tremendous awareness around bodily function. But a person that's just eating whatever and lollygagging, so to speak, around in their life, they don't have those advantages. And so they can't see from that angle what we're seeing. So the response ability on our side of that equation is that we have to do two things.

• 9:32Guru Singh?

  Point out the problems very gently, and that's not what we're doing. We're pointing out the problems very aggressively. And refer to alternatives very actively. It's the same way as raising successful children. If you point out a children's inability very aggressively, you'll stigmatize the child. But if you point out the, the inabilities very gently, but more energetically point out alternatives to those abilities, you'll inspire the child to seek those alternatives.

• 10:14Guru Singh?

  And that's what I really feel we as human beings, conscious human beings, need to begin to do. We need to get off the soapboxes and saying, you know, world gonna end tomorrow. We can talk about that between ourselves, but in our public voice, we need to be able to say, like, for example, we were, before we started filming this moment, we were talking about some of the alternative burgers, right?

• 10:42Guru Singh?

  And what they've done is, instead of saying eating flesh food is bad, they've gone out and they've reproduced the, they've simulated the flesh food in a plant-based way. And they're becoming, I mean, look at all the fast food restaurants that are adopting these things. So that's my point.

• 11:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I like that idea of looking at, sort of redefining ignorance, not through the lens of stupidity, per se, but through ignoring. But I think there's a distinction between...

• 11:22Guru Singh?

  And ignoring by habit.

• 11:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, this is what I want to get into. There's a difference between willful ignorance and, on the one hand, and on the other hand, somebody who simply doesn't know better, or hasn't been exposed to the ideas that could break them out of that perspective.

• 11:42Guru Singh?

  Yeah. And willful ignorance is a harder one to break, because when you start tampering with it, you're tampering with that willfulness. And that willfulness has produced an identity around that ignorance, which is very firmly held.

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a big investment, an identity investment...

• 12:06Guru Singh?

  Perfect word.

• 12:07Rich Roll?

  ...in that idea. And it becomes very difficult to break the chains of that.

• 12:12Guru Singh?

  And so, pick your battles, right? The idea of attracting through, through a loving attitude, a more willful attitude toward awareness, we will be able to attract the more innocent than we will be able to attract those who are willfully ignorant, who are staunchly ignorant, you know, who are committed to their abilities to ignore certain aspects. It's also, we have to understand that, once that person starts down that willful path of really ignoring and sticking to it...

• 12:59Guru Singh?

  It becomes habitual, so it reinforces itself. And in reinforcing itself, it also sets up sentries, guards, to watch for anything that's trying to mess with that attitude because it's a sense of identity.

• 13:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it's important to point out that on some level, I think all human beings are willfully ignorant of one thing or another, and we're all creatures that gravitate towards a certain worldview. I think that same bomb could be levied at the plant-based community. We're very invested in this idea that this is an appropriate or favorable way forward. And we're resistant to anything that comes out that contravenes that perspective. Right? And I try my best to be objective and not tribal, but let's be honest, I'm invested in this lifestyle.

• 14:00Rich Roll?

  It's a way I've been living for a long time. I'm convinced of its benefits, the health spectrum and the environmental spectrum, and from an ethical point of view. And I can feel my own resistance rise up if somebody challenges me on that. And I have to then step back and marshal my awareness in order to get into a place of listening and objectivity. So I want to be careful and clear to not say, hey, we're over here on the good side, and all these other people are on the bad side. I think this is something that we all do to one degree or another along the spectrum

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  in a variety of perspectives and ideas that we hold and harbor.

• 14:50Guru Singh?

  If we are able to invest in listening, you used that word a moment ago.

• 14:58Guru Singh?

  If we're able to invest in listening, we will be able to find a pathway in for more information to be delivered until we reach that tipping point in a person's awareness in which they have one of those aha moments and go, "Wow, I see. Now I see what you're talking about." And that only comes from those of us who... And let's remove it from the right and the wrong, but a more sustainable, you know, a more ethical, a less cruel,

• 15:43Guru Singh?

  you know, because to produce enough flesh food to feed 7.7 billion people, you've got to destroy lives in the millions every day.

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 15:58Guru Singh?

  And to destroy lives in the million every day, it's got to be a factory operation. It's got to be an automated operation. And these are lives that have been grazing in pastures, have been feeding in yards or in cages or what have you. There's a lot of cruelty in that. So how do we dive into that ignorance and shift it? And the answer is gently and slowly and through a lot of deep listening, which in Sanskrit is called sunya, a lot of this deep, deep listening so that we can find just a glint of an avenue in.

• 16:43Guru Singh?

  I always look at the opposition of those who are heavily invested in ignorance as energy.

• 16:52Guru Singh?

  And if they're giving me this big, big, massive pushback, I appreciate, I am grateful for this energy. And the moment I start acting in that gratitude for the energy of the force of their pushback, it calms them a little bit too, because they see that they're not getting my reaction. And then all of a sudden, we start to lower the temperature of the entire conversation. And it's a little bit like, I remember as a young child, it's an odd metaphor, but there was a Western program called Maverick. And Brett Maverick and Bart Maverick. And

• 17:35Rich Roll?

  Television show?

• 17:36Guru Singh?

  Television.

• 17:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I vaguely remember this.

• 17:39Guru Singh?

  And, I mean, you're younger than me, so, but it was, it was my growing up kind of show, right? And so, one time, Brett Maverick always had a thousand dollar bill, which was back in the day when there was such a thing. A thousand dollar bill pinned to, pinned to the inside of his lapel. And somebody had stolen his thousand dollar bill. And he went to the sheriff and the sheriff said, you know, that's crazy, everybody in this town is honest. And if you do anything wrong in trying to get back your thousand dollar bill, it was kind of a setup against him. If you do anything wrong trying to get your thousand dollar bill, then we're going to arrest you. And so what he did was he got

• 18:23Guru Singh?

  a stick of wood and a knife. And he got a chair and he parked himself on the porch of the sheriff's office for the entire sixty minutes of the show, or thirty minutes of the show. And called on some friends of his, right? He sent telegrams to some friends of his. And he sat there whittling away. And he would direct his friends in this very sort of indirect way as to how to investigate, how to get back his thousand dollar bill. And it was a beautiful example of the angles that you have to use when combating willful ignorance. Because willful ignorance is going to want to see you fail.

• 19:05Guru Singh?

  They're gonna want to see you make mistakes in your argument for a plant-based diet, for good exercise, for this, for that, for conscious mindful meditation. They're gonna wanna see you make mistakes, and then they're gonna jump on those mistakes. So you have to do everything using that energy of observation that they're giving you, that they're gifting you, and work your way through it, kinda like just sitting on that sheriff's porch, whittling away on something that doesn't seem to be involved, so that you can get them to drop their guard enough to expose what's going on, and then you'll find a pathway in. It's a tough one.

• 19:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, right now, what I see is a lot of lecturing and shouting, a lot of professing, a lot of tribalism, like we talked about the other, the other day, and, and not a lot of listening.

• 19:59Guru Singh?

  Last month?

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  And I think that listening really is the key, and I think that there is an epidemic right now of people who are lonely and disconnected, um, and in a state of varying degrees of desperation in how they live, and the internet, whether it's Twitter or what have you, is a, is a, is an outlet for that frustration. But ultimately, if you can see past that, you can develop a level of empathy and awareness that this is a person who, if somebody's lashing out all the time, this is a person

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  who is in pain, this is a person who is suffering, uh, and fundamentally, this is a person who is just desperate to be heard, right? And if you can be available to hear that person, if you can suspend your judgment and be present for that person's perspective, even if you disagree with it, then you have a chance at true connection, and through that true connection can come, can, can, that can create a, a dialogue that can be productive. But it's a two-way street, and it, I think it requires, you know, a lot of, a lot of awareness and patience, um...

• 21:25Rich Roll?

  To be able to navigate without falling prey to, like I know for myself, like I wanna lash out too, and I wanna, I get defensive, and I get angry, and all of these emotions are swirling around, to be able to kind of set that all aside and just like be present for another human being, to let them know like, I see you and I hear you, even if I totally disagree with you, or I think what you're saying is, you know, ignorant or wrong-headed, to validate the humanity in that person, I think is fundamental to trying to create the change that you wanna see in the world, or even setting that aside, because that, to me, that kind of comes off

• 22:09Rich Roll?

  as, as pretentious, to really just, without agenda, if I can just connect with this other human being, that's a, that's a win regardless of anything else that might transpire out of that exchange.

• 22:21Guru Singh?

  You use the word patience, and in the, in the ancient teachings, the masters would oftentimes call patience as, how much time have you placed in the imagined trajectory? So if you imagine that something has to be changed by this date, then that's going to stimulate the amount of tolerance that you have within that period of time, but if you extend that, you may actually finish before this previously stated date, but you've

• 23:02Guru Singh?

  extended the amount of time that you're going to allow something to be completed, and therefore you're much more relaxed within each moment of the completion, and when you relax down as that highly aware being, dealing with ignorance, whether it's willful or just, you know, unintentional.

• 23:24Guru Singh?

  You're actually in a relaxed state, which you've said. And in that, you can find that agenda-free commonality. I'll find it quite interesting going to gatherings, you know, large gatherings where there are people of all different varieties. And what I end up doing is I'll end up having a conversation with someone. And they'll usually come in and start talking, okay, why do you look like this? And why do you, what do you do? What is the whole thing? And I have found over the decades that if I take that, let's call it bait, and start talking,

• 24:06Guru Singh?

  eventually, we're going to get into discrepancies because what I'm going to be saying is not going to be coinciding with what they're accustomed to. So what I'll usually do is I'll say a few words about what they've asked. And then immediately turn it around to them and let them express themselves. And I find that eventually, I'll be able to interject enough of what it is to be me that they'll have a better understanding of who I am and what I'm about than if I had actually just, you know, maintained a monologue and explained to them in detail what it is to be a yogi

• 24:50Guru Singh?

  and a meditator and a vegan and on and on and on and a musician, et cetera. And so that's what I find is that you have to, if you're aware, you have to always apply your awareness. And if you're claiming to be aware and you're applying your awareness, you will find those little moments in which you can interject a plant-based comment, an exercise or a meditation-based comment. And you can put it in words that they'll understand rather than words that are more inclined towards people of your understanding. Hmm.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that it's delicate and it does require patience.

• 25:36Guru Singh?

  A long runway.

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a long runway, but then I start to think about, let's use, let's use global climate change as an example. There are certain scientists that say we have 100 years left if we continue along this path, or 50, or whatever it is, like, there's varying degrees of opinions on this.

• 25:58Guru Singh?

  And they're accelerating.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  Yes, but let's just agree for the purposes of argument and conversation that, you know, we have a limited window of time here in order to solve massive problems. And that then truncates that runway. And with a truncated runway and less time, that heightens the emotionality of the argument because without patience, we then are feeling compelled that we have to change minds rapidly. And then we descend into this strategy or tactics that are actually working at cross purposes with the goal that we're trying to achieve.

• 26:40Guru Singh?

  Yep. That's why I say if you extend the runway, even though you know that it's beyond the time limits that science is setting, everyone relaxes. And in that relaxation, we can hit that point, that tipping point, much more rapidly. For example, in a Petri dish, as bacteria is forming, it takes 95% of the time of the total experiment to fill 50% of the Petri dish. But based on the conditions of scale, the last 50% is just doubling, it's just overnight.

• 27:24Guru Singh?

  And so 50% is filled in 95%, and the rest is filled in a minuscule amount of the remainder of the experiment. And the same thing could hold true as we are more relaxed, as we are more patient. By the way, patience is defined in Sanskrit, not as waiting, but as knowing the outcome. And when you know the outcome...

• 27:52Guru Singh?

  You are very patient, you are very methodical, you're very intentional, you're very purposeful. And when you're methodical, intentional, and purposeful, and you're loving and gentle, you can get things put in place very specifically and very effectively without having to force people into it. This, and this is the new attitude. That we'll have to, and right now, we're just sort of reminiscing in the spoils of old attitudes. The right going against the wrong, right? And everyone intensifying and creating a screaming contest.

• 28:37Guru Singh?

  Those of us who are really going to make the difference, and I include all of us that are listening to these podcasts, because the inquisitive mind is the beautiful mind. Those of us that are going to make the difference, if we take a half step back, and then start to produce, "Okay, I know the outcome is going to be one of success." I can go to my death knowing that. I can go to the disaster of the world knowing that. But I'll be more effective between now and then if I know this for a fact, if I believe this absolutely, and I'll be effective.

• 29:22Guru Singh?

  Now, all I have to do is get more people to have that attitude. And really, we can change the world with about a few tens of millions of people with that attitude. And I think that what we're looking at in a world of awareness dealing with ignorance is that the onus is upon the awareness, not the ignorance. We're all saying that they're the ones that are destroying the world. Well, the world is being destroyed, whatever's causing it. We're the ones that are going to save it. And so, rather than spending any energy claiming that they're the ones destroying it, let's invest all of our energy into, as the military would talk about, let's not build a greater punch through the middle. Let's outflank, right?

• 30:07Guru Singh?

  Let's come around and surround, you know, that, this problem. Because this problem is huge. I mean, life is not going to be expelled in the universe, in the multiverse, because life is everywhere, life is all over the place. But if this planet dies in its ability to sustain life and human life on our watch, when we go back to the home office after this assignment, we're gonna be in deep shit.

• 30:36Rich Roll?

  We're screwing up.

• 30:37Guru Singh?

  We get ourselves fired, man.

• 30:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Guru Singh?

  You out of here.

• 30:39Rich Roll?

  Well, we should have been fired a long time ago, based upon...

• 30:43Guru Singh?

  Our performance?

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  I, you know, I've been, we were talking before the podcast, like you asked me, like, if I've been traveling, and I was like, yeah, I've been, I've been, like, I've crazy traveled recently.

• 30:55Guru Singh?

  Yeah, well...

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Which has given me the ability to be around a lot of different kinds of people, and in a lot of airports, and a lot of gazing down from, you know, 7,000 feet or whatever it is, you know, on planet Earth. And, and I just kept thinking, like,

• 31:12Guru Singh?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:12Rich Roll?

  Everywhere I go, people have just taken over the planet and have, and have literally made it their domicile, like every nook and cranny of it, which is kind of an amazing thing, but then I think, I don't think that's so good.

• 31:30Guru Singh?

  When you see a night shot of, from space of planet Earth, and you see all that light, all that electricity illuminating all that amount of sky, and you think, and then you, landing into an airport, and you see all this massive buildings and roads and structure? Unreal. We may have to tone it down a bit.

• 31:54Rich Roll?

  A little bit, you think?

• 31:55Guru Singh?

  Couldn't say.

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  I mean, the craziest thing is, is when you're descending into Los Angeles, when you fly over LA, like, I've never seen sprawl like we have here.

• 32:03Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  This, this never-ending grid of humanity that, like, that is just, you know, laced itself, like this matrix on the crust of planet Earth, consuming it at an, you know, a remarkable unsustainable rate. And it is that Petri dish, like, we are filling the Petri dish right now, and there's only so much left, and... You know, whether humanity makes it or not remains to be seen. I'm interested in how you get to this place of knowing. But I have no doubt that life will prevail on planet Earth and beyond. I think it's more a question of whether humanity is going to be able to make it work without having to dig caves and go underground.

• 32:45Guru Singh?

  Well, that may come. You know, we may have to alter dramatically. I mean, I don't know if we've covered this, but on one of our podcasts together, but there's this thing called the equatorial bulge.

• 33:05Guru Singh?

  And the equatorial bulge is caused by the spinning of the planet. The equator spins faster than the places closer to the poles. It's just like when you're on one of those spinning things in a playground. If you get close to the center, you're spinning less rapidly than if you're on the edge. And so that centrifugal force at the equator of the planet has thrown the oceans up to a level of 481 feet higher, and it's 1,500 miles wide. Well, that's a massive amount of water. And what happens is not that just the ice melt from the ice caps in Greenland

• 33:49Guru Singh?

  is going to, you know, cause the oceans to rise. But these waves, these chunks of this equatorial bulge, when the planet gets a different nature to its spin, start to break off. And these then become these massive, massive tsunamis. So there's a lot going on that we haven't even begun to construct in our imagination.

• 34:15Guru Singh?

  Fires, earthquakes, displacement and the shifting of the tectonic plates, the displacement of the ice and how that causes tectonic plate shift, earthquakes.

• 34:28Guru Singh?

  Droughts, they say that India, that eighty percent of India will start, will begin desertification in twenty years. Eighty percent of India, which has been the breadbasket of Asia. And so what we have going on here is this awareness which is intensifying our need to make it different. And we've got to have a meditative attitude, not that everything's going to be okay, no. But I know that it'll be okay if we accelerate the awareness in this many people. And we can't spend any of our energy, in my estimation, we can't spend any of our energy attacking the core of the problem.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:13Guru Singh?

  We have to, like I was saying, outflank it. We have to spend our energy outflanking the problem with those who have an innocence, rather than a willful ignorance, those who have an innocent ignorance, that are more able to be cultivated into a new way of thinking. And I'll tell you, if we get enough people to be successful in their life, in their health, living longer, living healthier because of plant-based diet, if we get enough people who are more intuitive because of their mindful and meditative practices, all

• 35:55Guru Singh?

  of a sudden, by that very nature of if you see something you like, you're going to want it. If you see health, you're going to want it. If you see intuitive natures, you're going to want it. That's how we outflank the problem.

• 36:09Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 36:17Rich Roll?

  What about the idea that maybe we're not... Supposed to make it like what if we reserve judgment.

• 36:24Guru Singh?

  That's thrilling.

• 36:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like what if we, what if we take away our judgment on, on, you know, the, the.

• 36:32Guru Singh?

  I almost said something.

• 36:34Rich Roll?

  The goodness of humanity and our prospects for survival like and, and, and instead entertain the idea that much like the caterpillar and the butterfly or the tadpole and the frog, that we are here to birth a new type of consciousness that we're now seeing emerging in the form of AI and that our entire purpose as human beings who are, who are driven to constantly innovate and innovate and innovate and advance and grow, that this is all one big macro organism, stage play crafted and created simply to give rise to a new type

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  of intelligence and life and consciousness in the form of these technological entities that are now starting to gestate.

• 37:30Guru Singh?

  Yeah, that, you know, I am very open minded about this.

• 37:38Guru Singh?

  In addition, you know, so I, I segment my brain.

• 37:44Guru Singh?

  And there's a part of my brain that is remains open to that idea because I don't want to deny it because I want to remain, I want to, I want to test it.

• 37:54Guru Singh?

  And then there's another part of my, my awareness that says, okay, let's focus on ways of creatively achieving a benevolent outcome.

• 38:07Guru Singh?

  And then there's another part of my brain that goes into this form of.

• 38:15Guru Singh?

  When you think about a single-celled animal, getting together with another single-celled animal in the early stages of the world biology and botany, it was called the, you know, the multi, the multi-celled animal that every one of the cells did its, did everything, right? They were colonies of cells. And then eventually that evolved into the colonies specializing in certain areas and in one form to stomach and another form to brain and another form. And all, and now we're living in that biology. And maybe you're, you know, not, maybe it's not AI. And maybe it's not just saving the planet.

• 39:00Guru Singh?

  But maybe it's that there's a collective that is the next stage of that collective. That is all of us working together, which is really a peaceful operation because the majority of our body likes the rest of our body. Our heart doesn't fight our fingers and our fingers don't fight our liver, et cetera. And so when we recognize ourself as the body of life, which is what plant-based living often does, in that, you know, the cows are as important as the humans, they're as important as the pigs are. And we think about consciousness and the non-local nature of consciousness.

• 39:42Guru Singh?

  And I look, and I came in and the first animal to greet me today at your house was, were your two, um, what are their, their breed?

• 39:52Rich Roll?

  Great Pyrenees.

• 39:53Guru Singh?

  The Great Pyrenees, I mean, these massive dogs. And I just came from a household and our massive dogs are three chihuahuas. You know, and the, these creatures have their own languaging. And for us to differentiate and say ours is superior is ignorant. And my awareness when I approached your Great Pyrenees is that wow, they have this whole world happening, which can interface with my world if I'll take and slow mine down, right? So maybe AI has the answer? Maybe just all going plant-based in, you know, doing, you know, recyclable and sustainable is the answer?

• 40:38Guru Singh?

  Or maybe there's this whole other way in which we all start to serve each other in life, in love. So there's so much going on right now and we're at the threshold.

• 40:52Rich Roll?

  So paint that utopian picture for me.

• 40:59Guru Singh?

  It acts like the heart center, which is made up of the lungs and the heart and the thymus gland. And the nature of the heart center is that the lungs at rest are full of air. A collapsed lung is an oddity. The heart at rest is full of blood. It gives effort to serve the body. And then it surrenders and the body floods it back with blood. And if we were to literally 180 degrees

• 41:44Guru Singh?

  switch our attitude, very much like the sobriety world in which being of service is a very high ideal, is a very high value, being of service. And so if the early stages of this utopian world are simply turning the table from how can I get to how can I serve?

• 42:12Guru Singh?

  That in and of itself will create a surge of opportunity for us to be able to take care of each other's needs, and in doing so, all of our needs are going to ultimately be taken care of as well.

• 42:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think in order to achieve that, we have to erect systemic changes because our incentives are misaligned with that ideology in that the structures that form our society and our culture create massive incentives for us to be people who go out into the world and try to extract or to get, and we are not only encouraged to do that, we are handsomely rewarded for doing that.

• 43:06Rich Roll?

  How can we create political and cultural systems that counteract that or provide healthier incentives that encourage us to serve and to be selfless and to embrace the macrocosm over the selfish wants and desires of sort of serving ourselves?

• 43:29Guru Singh?

  Kind of like inside of our body, we have unfriendly and friendly bacteria. You know, the unfriendly bacteria are the bacteria that are depleting our strength, and the friendly bacterias are the bacterias that assist our efforts. They assist our digestion, they assist other things, too. I look at it, again, in the Petri dish scenario. Let's become the friendly bacteria. Let's become the bacteria that spreads over time by demonstrating how all your needs

• 44:11Guru Singh?

  are met as long as you're of service to others. And...

• 44:17Guru Singh?

  This idea of, you know, God and this and that. And then there's the atheist, we talked about that off, off camera. You know, we, we don't even, we don't even get into that because we get into the holism of life. And how, what's good for one aspect of life is, is going to be good for all life. And what's good for the forest is good for the animals. So let's keep the forest and let's stop destroying the amount of forest that we're doing for the sake of raising animals for killing and slaughtering and eating. And let's really start to demonstrate in large swaths, you know, let, let's paint

• 45:01Guru Singh?

  large pictures of ways in which, in a, in a very non-attacking way. Not attacking the ignorance, but displaying the awareness. Because people can have aha moments that change their world. I can remember back in the early days of computers, having an aha moment around MS-DOS. When I finally figured, you remember how you, I don't know if you remember, but you Mac users never had to really deal with it, but us PC users, you had to type in all these things just to get it to do one little thing.

• 45:38Rich Roll?

  Right, for it to boot up, all the code.

• 45:40Guru Singh?

  Yeah. And when I had an aha moment of what I was actually doing, that's when it started to make sense to me. And when that happened in one small little way, many other things, there was a domino effect, many other things started to make a great deal of sense to me. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for awareness producing the potential of aha.

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I certainly subscribe to the idea that living a life of service is, is the optimal path for fulfillment and

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  Blazing a purposeful life and also for making sure that your needs are met. And it's a weird spiritual conundrum that contravenes our Western, you know, everything Western about the way that we live and, and, and think in the sense that rather than going out and trying to extract and get and maximize your income by freely giving yourself in service to others is actually the way to make sure that your cup runneth over.

• 46:50Guru Singh?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:51Rich Roll?

  I don't know why this works, but I found it to be universal law. But as you're explaining, you know, this idea, I couldn't help but think, you know, to sort of empathize or put myself in the shoes of somebody who might be listening, who's thinking, that's great. Like, I understand what you're saying and I even intellectually, you know, perhaps agree with it, but I'm working two jobs. I'm a single mom, you know, I, I, I just, you know, I don't have time to entertain, you know, to like wap rhapsodic about this idealized utopian world because I'm just struggling to put food on, on, on the table and my options are limited.

• 47:33Guru Singh?

  So I would say to the single mom, single father, working two jobs to make ends meet, three jobs to make ends meet, that in amongst all of that, you must set aside five minutes in which you very consciously sit down and do nothing.

• 48:00Guru Singh?

  Just breathe.

• 48:03Guru Singh?

  Five minutes, three minutes. If you get successful with three to five, there will be some mornings that you want to extend it to seven or 11 or 15. And then all of a sudden, it will become as important to you as putting food on the table.

• 48:27Guru Singh?

  And then out of those seven minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it becomes.

• 48:36Guru Singh?

  All of a sudden, ideas will start to enter in. Ideas of how you can do more for less. And what you've actually been doing is you've been of service. And the first person that you have to be of service to is yourself. And so by being of service to yourself, you will start to gain a little bit of, you know, balance and equanimity. And you will start to push out that which is pressing in on you. All of those bills, all of those responsibilities. And you'll start to push out and you will start to learn how to, and it's an old cliche, but you'll start to learn how to work smarter rather than harder.

• 49:20Guru Singh?

  And it's not going to come, and this again, you know, give yourself enough runway. It's not going to come, you know, like in 30 days. We're not talking about, okay, money back guarantee in 30 days, you get, you know, blah, blah. No, it might take a year. It might take a couple of years. But in amongst those moments that you have gifted to yourself, in which nothing is going to interfere with being of service to yourself in those moments, some ideas are going to come up, some connections are going to come up, some I need to call so-and-so is going to come up. And in making that phone call, so-and-so is going to say, hey, did you know what? I've been looking for someone that could do exactly this.

• 50:01Guru Singh?

  And all of a sudden, your two or three jobs gets reduced down to one job because you have some kind of integrity and quality. Because if you're working two to three jobs, you've got a lot of responsibility, you've got a lot of integrity, you've got a lot of really good qualities. And there are people all over the world that are looking for those qualities.

• 50:23Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of truth in that. And I couldn't help but reflect upon my own path and experience, my own process, dating back 20 years at this point. Like, it is a long game. Who was it who said?

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  Something along the lines of man's suffering is directly related to his inability to be alone with his thoughts, like speaking to the difficulty that we all have. Just you're proposing this idea of like, just sit for five minutes.

• 51:03Guru Singh?

  Was that Viktor Frankl?

• 51:04Rich Roll?

  I think I think it is. I think that's right.

• 51:06Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  And I didn't get the quote exactly right, but that's

• 51:10Guru Singh?

  That was close.

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  The general sentiment.

• 51:11Guru Singh?

  Yep.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  We're so resistant. You say five minutes. It sounds so accessible and yet we're like, we fight that, like, I don't have five minutes, or when that five minutes arises, we'll come up with an excuse to not do it. And, you know, in truth, my experience, as imperfect as it has been, you know, began with getting sober 20 years ago, and it started with that five minutes or that one page of journaling. And, you know, it took a very, very long time to arrive at this place. And to draw it back to the Petri dish analogy, for years, there was no indicia of any progress whatsoever, because those cells dividing, you know, one

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  by one, don't seem to make a discernible difference. And then one day, you know, there's enough mass where the subsequent division is meaningful. But you have to be willing to put in all of that time, all of that, you know, effort and diligence in anonymity to wrestle with, you know, who it is that you are and who it is that you want to be, and exploiting those instincts as they arise one by one, before anything is tangibly perceptible in terms of how your life has changed.

• 52:35Guru Singh?

  And what started this segment of our conversation here was you saying, what about the person, be it a man or a woman, who's working multiple jobs, trying to make ends meet?

• 52:48Guru Singh?

  Already the qualities that that person should recognize in themself are the qualities of ability to respond, which is responsibility, integrity, dedication, love, because they're doing it to support certain fundamental aspects of life. So the qualities are already there. I don't think that we're going to be effective in changing the indolence, the ones that are just living in dire conditions, that are not thinking that there's any way through.

• 53:31Guru Singh?

  Those will be inspired by the ones that we inspire. It's sort of a multi-level marketing routine in that we can inspire those that are already putting forth great effort by just saying, "Take a section of time out, very small to begin with, and let it expand in and of itself, so that you can apply those same tendencies of diligence, and dedication, and devotion, and responsibility, and integrity." You can apply it to just sitting, and breathing, and noticing your world. Noticing your relationship with the people around you,

• 54:15Guru Singh?

  the people that you work with. Noticing the way in which you interact. Noticing the way you interact with yourself. Somebody once said that if we had a friend that treats us like we treat ourselves, we wouldn't have that friend. Right. And so what we have to be able to do is just give ourselves that little tiny piece, and let it expand like the bacteria in the Petri dish.

• 54:48Rich Roll?

  If somebody's listening to this and it's their first exposure to such a practice, is there any kind of technique that people can bear in mind or utilize if they have that five-minute window?

• 55:02Guru Singh?

  Yeah, if they, if they, if they command that five-minute window, right? Not demand, but command that five-minute window, then just sit comfortably. You could sit in your car in the parking lot before you go into your office or your place of work. And close your eyes so that the optics don't distract you of what's going on around you. If you're self-conscious and you don't want to be seen in your car with your eyes closed, then do it before you get out of your garage, or do it before you get into your car.

• 55:41Guru Singh?

  But just close your eyes and begin to breathe in through the nose and be very aware of your breathing. And then just blow out through your mouth as if you're blowing through your lips, as if you're blowing out a single candle. And because the difference between inhale and exhale is nose to mouth, it's going to start triggering an awareness, an awareness of some differences. And so you inhale, and you exhale.

• 56:23Guru Singh?

  And you inhale, and you exhale. And so that's taken care of the upper body. In the lower body, in the belly, in the abdominal area, what you want to do is when you inhale, you want to push your belly out and let your diaphragm drop. And what this will do is this will create more volume in your lungs, and you'll be able to take a deeper breath. It's like what singers do when they learn how to sing from their gut. And so you push the belly out and you inhale, and then you pull the belly in as you blow out through your mouth. And literally, after three minutes,

• 57:04Guru Singh?

  you're gonna be noticing you're a little bit less frenzied, you're a lot less anxious, and you're starting to breed this quiescence, this calmness. Now, the moment you engage life, it's gonna go away. The next day you do it, the moment you engage life, it's gonna remain with you for a nanosecond. The third day you do it, the moment you engage life, it's gonna remain with you for two nanoseconds, right? And as you keep doing it over and over, day in and day out, all of a sudden, you will find that after doing your meditation,

• 57:49Guru Singh?

  after doing your contemplation, whatever you wanna call it, mindfulness, whatever you wanna call it, you extend the amount of time that it takes for the rummaging of the world to get back on your shoulders and drive your buggy. And eventually, after doing it consistently for a few weeks, sort of a round figure is six weeks. After you've done this for six weeks, you're gonna notice that which you just spoke about a moment ago, and that is that, you know, the number of cells that activate are not really noticeable, the number, the amount of change that you're creating is not really noticeable, until it is. Those of you that cut your hair,

• 58:34Guru Singh?

  you don't notice you need a haircut until you do, right?

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that, that the common experience is that the change remains unnoticed within the self, but noticeable to others. So, the first indication that, that, that you have made some level of shift will be made aware to you by somebody else. You won't, you won't see it in yourself, but somebody will reflect it back to you. And you'll be like, "Really? Oh yeah, you seem different," or "You seem more grounded," or "You're more present," or, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:08Guru Singh?

  They'll say, "What are you doing?"

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. During these periods of meditation, or whatever you wanna, whatever nomenclature you wanna attach to it. I'm interested in your technique for dealing with thoughts as they arise. So the way that I've been taught and the way that I kind of deal with this is to not have judgment. Like, you think, the common conventional wisdom is, I can't meditate because my mind's attacking me. It's too busy, so I can't do it. But that's the nature of the mind. And the idea is to notice those thoughts when they arise. And then gently and without judgment, try to return your attention to the breath or whatever technique that you're using to try to get into that state of no mind,

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  which you may experience for a nanosecond. You're lucky if you get two seconds of that before the next idea pops into your mind. And it's a constant process of trying to move past the thinking mind in a gentle way. So how do you think about dealing with the mind as these thoughts arise? Or, you know, the attacking of thoughts that are invading this space that you're trying to carve out as peaceful and sort of idea-free? Or is that totally a scant from the way that you think and look at this?

• 1:00:34Guru Singh?

  Once again, as you do it more consistently, you form a new habit. The brain introducing thought is a habit. And it hasn't been managed for however many years you have been living. And when you start a practice of meditation, you're starting literally a practice of changing a habit. And the more aggressively you try to change a habit, the more aggressively the habit will resist your change. And that's why the way you described it was very beautiful. And that you, you know, you gently...

• 1:01:18Guru Singh?

  coax your focus back to the breath or whatever it is that you're focusing on. So, you know, a lot of times people say, "Oh, that's that stuff. I'm a Christian," or "That's that stuff. I'm a Muslim. You know, I can't do that because that's not Christian." I said, "No. This is, this, if you're a Christian, then when your mind starts to wander, bring Jesus in, or bring Mary in,

• 1:01:55Guru Singh?

  or bring, you know, Jesus-loving nature in, or bring something out of the Bible in. Just replace it. And let that be the way in which you segue. If you're Muslim, the same thing holds true. Just bring the stories from the Quran. Bring in the ideals of the values of your faith. And so, this is not about having a way of faith. This is about having a way of using your faith to enhance your meditative process, to calm down the inquisitive, the persistency of thought,

• 1:02:39Guru Singh?

  and allow you to get a broader perspective because the thought is just this noise that's right there in front of you. And when you can relax the habit of that noise, you see beyond it. You can see beyond, let's use cliche, you can see beyond the horizon of your noise. And in that seeing beyond, or hearing beyond, or feeling beyond, whatever it is for you, you end up beginning to have new ideas, new concepts, new thoughts of, "Wow, I could do this, this way." I remember one time, back in the early 80s, I was running a business for, for the organization

• 1:03:23Guru Singh?

  that promotes Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan.

• 1:03:30Guru Singh?

  And we were in the middle of the 1980 collapse of the economy. The, the interest levels were at like, prime level was at 18%. You could have a CD that'd make more money than you could make, right? Right. And, not a CD that you play, but a certificate of deposit. Yeah. Yeah, I knew you did, but I was just making sure the audience did. And I went to Yogi Bajin and I said, you know, these major stores that are buying our products are not selling it, and so they're damaging it and shipping it back to us and claiming that it was damaged in shipment. And I said, I have no, I have no response for that. I have no way of getting around it.

• 1:04:14Guru Singh?

  And he said, I want you to meditate on this particular breaths style and come back to me in five months. And I thought, oh, God, this is insane. I'm gonna be bankrupt in 30 days. But I wasn't bankrupt in 30 days. By focusing on this meditation, this thing that I was doing every single day, ideas were starting to come into my head. New ideas that I hadn't ever thought of. And eventually, not five months down the road, but about three months down the road, much sooner, you know, I went back to Yogi Bajin and I said, hey, I've come up with this crazy

• 1:04:59Guru Singh?

  idea. And he said, great, go to the lawyers, go to the lawyer, go to the accountant, tell them what your idea is, tell me what they say. Went to both of them, they said, it's the worst idea in the world, it's gonna fail, don't go there, you'll get sued, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went back to Yogi Bajin and he said, perfect, prove them wrong. Because it came to you out of that, being able to see beyond the noise. So let's value that and let's act on that and let's see, let's see if all those bad things happen.

• 1:05:36Guru Singh?

  And I'll tell you that within nine months, we had turned the whole business around. We were making, instead of making miniscule profits on the bottom line, we were making significant profits on the bottom line. And what we did was we just took it from being a manufacturer wholesale to being a manufacturer direct to retail. And the whole world opened up.

• 1:05:59Guru Singh?

  It's not about the specifics of the moment. It's about the fact that when you reduce the noise of the constant chatter, which being responsible, being full of integrity will increase that noise, not that it's bad, but you just have a really strong attitude towards life. But by relaxing that for a few moments every day, you'll be able to catch glimpses of a future that has possibilities.

• 1:06:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that that's a beautiful story and very illustrative of your point.

• 1:06:34Guru Singh?

  That's what happens in sobriety, isn't it? You catch glimpses of what a sober life is like.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  Yes, over time and you accumulate those beads and you draw inspiration from the people around you that are living their lives in a, in a manner that you would like to. And, you know, you, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a long drawn out, it's slow briety. It's a long drawn out process.

• 1:06:55Guru Singh?

  Oh, I like that word.

• 1:06:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, you hadn't heard that one before?

• 1:06:58Guru Singh?

  No.

• 1:06:59Rich Roll?

  Slow briety.

• 1:07:00Guru Singh?

  A nice word.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  But what I was gonna say was even the incessant chatter of the thinking mind is instructive. Because if you're new to this practice and your brain is attacking you, understand that this is the low background hum of your life that is going on all the time. And the more awareness that you can draw to that, you become more consciously aware the extent to which that thing that's running in the background that you seemingly don't feel like you have any domain or control over is dictating how you respond and react to the world and driving your decision tree and ultimately the actions that you take.

• 1:07:47Rich Roll?

  So that in and of itself is like a grand epiphany that should then Essentially prove to you how much this practice is needed to quell that voice, so that you can start to get the upper hand on how your brain is functioning, so that you can reprogram it

• 1:08:05Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Rich Roll?

  to create better decision trees and less reactive modalities for how you interact with the world.

• 1:08:16Guru Singh?

  Well, you know, a moment ago, we were talking about influencing the world, you know, and the world is aggressive and influencing. And one of the greatest things to be able to influence is to sit down and actually listen, so that you can find the way in. So as you're talking, I'm thinking, as you're talking, I'm thinking, these thoughts are suggestions, right? They're your brain reaching out there for answers and solutions. And they're coming up with all of these crazy ideas, not all of which are going to be crazy. But you're not usually listening to them. And so what the earliest stages of meditation are, is just shutting them up, right?

• 1:09:00Guru Singh?

  In this way, and actually listening to what's going on in what you just said, the background din, the background sound. And when you start to listen to this, every once in a while, you'll hear a pattern repeat.

• 1:09:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:15Guru Singh?

  And a pattern, you'll think, oh, my gosh. Maybe that's a good idea. And you'll write it down. By the way, I highly suggest that in your five minutes, in your three or seven, whatever the amount is that you're going to set aside for yourself to do this practice, keep a notebook and a pen or pencil. And be able to, don't do it digitally. Be able to write these ideas down. Because eventually what happens is your brain starts to drop into what's called alpha and theta mode in meditation. And that's, the theta mode is the same as your dream time. Only you're consciously dreaming in this mode. And you will come up with ideas.

• 1:10:00Guru Singh?

  They won't all be, you know, earth shattering. But they'll be different kinds of ideas. And you need to write those down. Because if you don't, you'll forget them.

• 1:10:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. My experience is that that background hum, and I think this is the experience for a lot of people, is a lot of negative reinforcement. It's never gonna work out. They're gonna figure out that you don't know what you're doing. This isn't worth doing. Like, you know, it's a constant loop of negative thought patterns, self-defeatism, fear, anxiety, like, all of these all of these impulses that are, however, you know, deeply ingrained in me are, you know, programmed there. And the initial awareness, before the good ideas come in,

• 1:10:52Rich Roll?

  is just recognizing like, wow, this is like what I'm telling myself all day long. It goes back to what you were saying earlier about, you know, you would never maintain a friendship with somebody who talks to you the way that you talk to yourself. So, for me, the first phase of this whole thing is is acknowledging that this is what's going on in the background. Then it becomes about deconstructing it to understand that, you know, this is, you know, what do they say? Fear is, is, is facts not in evidence appearing real? Like, is this really real? Like, I'm creating my reality out of, out of this tape that's playing in the background, but that, that tape necessarily isn't rooted in reality.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  I can create a new story and try to build a better, healthier foundation for the tape that gets played in the background, or to stop the tape altogether. And that's when you start to see glimpses of those newer, better ideas starting to percolate up.

• 1:11:51Guru Singh?

  Yeah, and there's, there is a great master that once said, "If, when you begin meditating, all hell doesn't break loose in your brain, then you're not meditating." And that is that it's always going on in the brain, in the brain-mind connection. When you start meditating, you start paying attention to it. And that's why it seems to be so overwhelming. The moment you start paying attention to it, it's like a child. If you pay attention to a child, it will stop, ultimately, it will stop disrupting you, trying to get your attention, because it knows it can easily get your attention if it just comes and pulls on your shirt or something. And that's the way thoughts are. Thoughts are like little children.

• 1:12:34Guru Singh?

  They're always trying to bombard you with their importance. And if you can turn to them and listen to them and go into them and take time with them, all of a sudden, they don't feel like they have to attack you and bombard you.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:12:48Guru Singh?

  And that's when mindfulness, meditation, whatever you want to call it, that's when it starts to become effective. And one of the things that I find to be very good is that when you are treating yourself poorly, you know, when you, when you go, "Oh, my God, is this what I, is this what's going on in my brain-mind connection all day and I'm just not aware of it? I'm just not paying attention to them? I'm ignoring it?" You know, bring in your heroes. If, if Lord Buddha is your hero, if Jesus is your hero, if Muhammad is your hero, if Guru Nanak, Guru Govind Singh, if, if Lord Krishna, if, if Aunt Char-, if, if Aunt Harriet and Uncle Charlie are your heroes, whoever they are, people that you have great respect

• 1:13:32Guru Singh?

  for, iconic beings that you've heard great stories about. They may not be true stories, but they're inspiring stories. You know, like the, like the ancient scriptures. They're not necessarily all true. Some of them are more symbolic. Let those also wash over you. Mindfully, reach out and bring those into the equation, bring those into the sound current. And that's one of the reasons why we also use what's called mantra, which are just basically sounds and syllables. And so sometimes I have found that if I use long vowel syllables, like "ah" or like "ma",

• 1:14:15Guru Singh?

  that I can slow down the jagged nature of the thought attacks. So if I'm inhaling through my nose, and I'll exhale through a "ma".

• 1:14:35Guru Singh?

  And just keep it going and going and going and going. What I'm actually doing is I'm opening like a doctor says, say ah. Well, a ma is like an ah. And you're opening the throat, you're opening the eustachian tubes, you're opening up all of this mechanism that is actually resonating with your thought patterns. It's actually you hear in the inner ear, your thoughts. Your thoughts are often in the same voice that you speak with, but just a different kind of different tonal quality. And so using sound, using breath, using all of these various techniques and technologies

• 1:15:17Guru Singh?

  is very Christian, is very Buddhist, is very Hindu, is very Islamic, is very Sikh, is very Zoroastrian, is very whatever you want to say.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  Or atheist.

• 1:15:29Guru Singh?

  Atheist, perfect.

• 1:15:32Rich Roll?

  People get freaked out with mantras, though.

• 1:15:35Guru Singh?

  People get freaked out with mantras only because it's a habit to get freaked out with mantras and it's a common fear to get freaked out with mantras. But, you know, people used to get freaked out with all kinds of things, including flying. My grandfather was born in 1872, said that he would fly if he could keep one foot on the ground. So people got freaked out, but now we all fly.

• 1:16:04Rich Roll?

  Mantras are a small leap compared to getting over fear of flying, I think.

• 1:16:09Guru Singh?

  When I'm talking to people that haven't had the experience, I don't refer to them as mantra, but the word man means mind and tra means projection, it just means a projection of the mind. What I refer to them as syllables and sounds that will occupy the same area in your brain that has got all these thoughts coming through. So if you, if you go ah, you can, you can overcome all those little meaningless thoughts.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  What's the charge? It's free.

• 1:16:45Guru Singh?

  Yeah, it's free.

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 1:16:47Guru Singh?

  What's the charge? You know what I heard when you said, "What's the charge?"

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  I knew you were thinking something else.

• 1:16:51Guru Singh?

  I was thinking the electric charge.

• 1:16:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know you were.

• 1:16:53Guru Singh?

  And I was about to give you a scientific explanation.

• 1:16:58Rich Roll?

  All right, so what have we learned here? We have learned that awareness plays a role in the world of ignorance, and the path forward is by being kind to yourself and consciously carving out that time for mindful practice.

• 1:17:14Guru Singh?

  And never attack ignorance face front. Work around the edges and help to dissolve it. Because ignorance may be bliss, but it's still ignoring the what is. And if we can make people who are willfully ignorant feel a slight bit safer, they will become a slight bit less ignorant. They will ignore things a slight bit less.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  Beautiful. Before we drop the mic here, will you take us out with another song?

• 1:17:56Guru Singh?

  Wow, I'd love to.

• 1:18:15Guru Singh?

  You know, the idea of infinity is hard to comprehend with our head brain because infinity is very much a nothingness. Because if infinity has anything in it, it can be measured. And then it's not infinite, it's just measurable. But infinity...

• 1:18:41Guru Singh?

  It's the way things are because if they weren't, they'd have to stop. But then there'd have to be something on the other end of that stop. So infinity is a reality, but it's not one that can be perceived. So it's one that has to be looked at in what's called faith. But it's not faith in some religious form, it's just faith in the fact that infinity has to exist. It's just the nature of nature. Because whatever stops has something on the other side, continuously.

• 1:19:21Guru Singh?

  So this is a little ditty that I made up with some kids in India.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  To be confident that the infinite can take care of it, we're so fortunate. To be confident that the infinite can take care of it, we're so fortunate. To be confident that the infinite will take good care of it, we're so fortunate.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  So open up your heart, let the music start. Open up your voice and rejoice, rejoice. Open up your mind.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Let your light shine open, flap the soul and let the good times roll. Nonsectarian, you know, not religious, not anything in any way, but just the energy of life, and I call it soul, not religious in any way, to be confident

• 1:21:13Speaker 02

  that the infinite takes good care of it, with soul for judgment.

• 1:21:30Rich Roll?

  All right, my friend, you are my favorite mystical, magical, spiritual court jester.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  That is exactly what I am.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, to be continued.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  To be continued.

• 1:21:46Rich Roll?

  All right, I love you Guru Singh.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  Peace.

• 1:21:50Rich Roll?

  Peace, plants, satnam.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Satnam.

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  Namaste.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  Namaste.

• 1:21:56Rich Roll?

  Blessings, grace.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  And be aware in the ignorance without judging the ignorance.

• 1:22:08Rich Roll?

  Boom.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  Boom.

• 1:22:14Rich Roll?

  I don't know about you, but I always feel more expansive after spending time with my friend Guru Singh. Hope you guys enjoyed it as well. Please hit him up on the socials and let him know how you felt about today's conversation. You can find him on Instagram @GuruSingYogi and on Twitter @GuruSing. And to learn even more, go to gurusing.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the program on Apple Podcasts. That really helps with discoverability. Share the show on social media, subscribe to my YouTube channel, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and you can support us on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. I appreciate my team for all the hard work

• 1:22:55Rich Roll?

  they put into putting up these episodes every week. I do not do this alone. Thank you Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Thank you Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Thank you Jessica Miranda for graphics. Thank you Ali Rogers for portraits. Thank you DK for advertiser relationships, and thank you to Analemma for theme music. Appreciate the love, you guys. I will see you back here in a couple of days with John and Molly Chester from a little documentary you might have seen called "The Biggest Little Farm." It's a great episode. I really enjoyed this conversation. In the meantime, here's a clip. You're not going to want to miss this one. Until then, peace, plants, namaste.

• 1:23:38Speaker 03

  The conversation has to change around admitting to ourselves that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources that we have been unconsciously allowing to be destroyed. And I would say that no political or religious side owns the conversation around the planet. I would say all of us innately know that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources of this life-giving blue marble floating through space. And allow yourselves to be made fun of for desiring a vulnerable reconnection back to nature. And when someone tries to bring up the ideas

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  or the conversation around economics, or practicality, or logic, stay focused on that reconnection. Because I feel ultimately what we're all starving from starts with that reconnection to nature, and then from there, to each other.