Dare To Be You In A World That Values Conformity

Welcome to another edition Guru Corner featuring my favorite teacher on all things mystic and metaphysical, Guru Singh. Fusing Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism, Guru Singh is a celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi and master spiritual teacher who has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga for more than 40 years. 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. A peer of rock legends like Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, Guru Singh is also a supremely talented musician who began his recording career on Warner Bros’ Reprise label in the 1960s. When he isn’t laying down tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. Today's conversation focuses on the importance of cultivating your true self in a world that values conformity over individuality. Too many of us live disconnected lives. Lives led not mindfully, nor from a place of personal agency, but rather in reaction to external expectations and pressures. Personal expression is left repressed. The authentic voice is silenced. As a result, we suffer. No longer. It's time to sing your song. May this conversation with one of my very favorite people help you find the notes. Note: If you missed my previous conversations with Guru Singh, start with episode 267 and then enjoy episodes 332,368, 393 and 400. Final Note: You can watch our conversation on YouTube at bit.ly/gurucorner418 and the show is also now available on Spotify. Let the master class resume. 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?

  You're gonna be a mess, and you're gonna get embarrassed, and you're gonna make mistakes. And that's the steps about opening up that which is unknown to you in the world of growth and progress. If you're gonna step out, you're gonna have to expect the pushback, right? In a material space, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And they should actually gauge their progression by the amount of pushback that they're receiving. They could use that. In other words, when things keep blocking you, they're a good teacher because they're

• 1:44Guru Singh?

  giving you a consistent opportunity to learn the lesson of how to get through the blockages.

• 1:51Rich Roll?

  That's Guru Singh, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:05Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome to the show today. Today marks the first Guru Corner edition of 2019 featuring you know who, my favorite Wizard of the Mystical Forces and the Spiritual Arts Master of Kundalini Yoga, mindfulness and basically just general holistic awesomeness, Guru Singh. Many of you are familiar with this man and his work, so I'm gonna dispense with the long introduction, but I do encourage you to listen to our

• 2:46Rich Roll?

  previous conversations. He's been on episode 267, 332, 368, 400. I feel like there might be one or two more in there, maybe not. In any event, I love this man. I love today's conversation, which is all about living your authentic self, your true self. But first, let's take care of a little business.

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  Okay, Guru Corner, Guru Singh. Today, we're gonna talk about the journey to connecting with, expressing, embodying, manifesting, what else? Cultivating, personifying, imbuing, radiating, exuding, all right, you get the picture. Your true self in a world that values conformity. And I know this is a bit of a woo-woo concept, but I think it's also not only incredibly important, but very relatable. Important in the sense that we live in this culture in which we all wear masks.

• 3:58Rich Roll?

  We comport to certain standards about what we should do, how we should act. We live in a society in which so many people live disconnected lives in isolation and loneliness, lives led not from, not from a place of necessarily personal or mindful agency, but rather in reaction to, in reaction to external expectations, external pressures. And my personal experience is that

• 4:29Rich Roll?

  Not living one's authentic self, not pursuing the things that truly make us happy, not living the lives that we want to lead, that our instincts and our impulses are sort of driving us towards leading. Well, that can and ultimately will manifest a whole litany of problems mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So this is about finding a way out. It's a beautiful conversation with a beautiful man that I think is very much needed right now. So let's have it.

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  Good to see you.

• 5:07Guru Singh?

  It's good to see you.

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  I'm super excited to reprise our Guru Corner sessions.

• 5:14Guru Singh?

  It is a joy. And you know, in watching them, I noticed that you not only have a strong sense of where the conversation should go, but you, your team also has a strong sense of how to edit. And the editing is remarkably accurate. I mean, it's just like

• 5:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're doing a great job. Blake's right here and Margot also.

• 5:37Guru Singh?

  Thumbs up.

• 5:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're doing well. You go back and watch them? I never go back and listen or watch.

• 5:43Guru Singh?

  You know, I go back and watch just to see how, you know, how it all pieced together.

• 5:51Guru Singh?

  But yeah, you're right. It's hard to go back. And when you're always going forward, it's, it's hard to go back and inspect things that have been.

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I'm just moving forward.

• 6:02Guru Singh?

  But I went back and looked at it just for the, just for the curiosity of how it was all being, you know, assembled. Remarkable.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  Well, the people that listen to this on audio only are always fascinated by the jangling of your bracelets. It's not until you see it on video that you actually understand what's going on.

• 6:22Guru Singh?

  That's what's going on.

• 6:24Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, we have a great subject that we're going to dive into today. But before we do that, I want to, I want to catch up with you because you've, you've been on some interesting travels lately.

• 6:33Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  Went to the Middle East.

• 6:35Guru Singh?

  We went to the Middle East. We spent a week in Abu Dhabi on the, on the coast there of Of the UAE. And taught to a group of people that are, you know, change makers in the world.

• 6:50Rich Roll?

  That was part of the Tony Robbins thing?

• 6:52Guru Singh?

  Correct.

• 6:52Rich Roll?

  Like his behind the velvet rope, like, heavy hitting clients, right?

• 6:57Guru Singh?

  His, uh, his group called the Platinum Partners.

• 7:00Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 7:01Guru Singh?

  And, um, yeah, it's a, it's a solid group of people that not only have succeeded on, you know, in three dimensions and in four dimensions, but that are really seeking to succeed in their, in their spiritual life too, and their, in their compassionate life, in their love life, in their, uh, in the world that's beyond that, you know, that world of...

• 7:27Rich Roll?

  Beyond the scene.

• 7:29Guru Singh?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:29Rich Roll?

  Your specialty.

• 7:31Guru Singh?

  Yay.

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So what does that look like? I mean, what is the practical sort of schedule? Like, how do you?

• 7:37Guru Singh?

  Well, we start with yoga at, um, either 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning. And we go through yoga before breakfast, then we'll all go to breakfast. Um, you know, it was about just under 300 people.

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 7:52Guru Singh?

  And...

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  Does Tony do the yoga?

• 7:55Guru Singh?

  Uh, Tony does his yoga, yeah.

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 7:57Guru Singh?

  And, um, then go to breakfast and then come together for a day of working with Tony and a variety of other, um, people. This year, um, everybody was brought into Abu Dhabi. Some years, there's been some Skype-ins, you know, with some teachers like Ram Dass from, from Maui. Uh, but this year, the people that were to teach and to present, uh, all flew in and it was a powerful, powerful gathering.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  Who were some of the other teachers?

• 8:33Guru Singh?

  Um, a doc, uh, Master Ko, um, and he's, you know, a lot of work with, um, the energy field. He's a Qi Gong master and other. And then, um, also, um...

• 8:53Guru Singh?

  A professor of religious studies at Boston College at B.C. And his was just really bringing, you know, the five major religions into a focus and letting everybody see the similarities and differences and historically where that all took place. So that's another topic. He had an incredible medical doctor who lives both in Italy and in Israel and a profound energy worker. And then Byron Katie.

• 9:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:33Guru Singh?

  And she presented. So it was beautiful.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  You have breakthroughs with some of these people, with the attendees?

• 9:41Guru Singh?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Guru Singh?

  I mean, the attendees have breakthroughs in morning yoga, in Tony's presentations and in others. Yeah, breakthroughs right and left, you know?

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, speaking of breakthroughs, the subject that we kind of discussed diving into today, I'm very excited about. I think it's an important one. I think it's relevant to a lot of people, if not everybody on some level, which is this idea of how to be true to oneself in a world that values conformity. I personally have quite a bit of experience with this. And I think we could probably talk about this for many hours.

• 10:24Guru Singh?

  Yeah, we could because Confucius had a favorite saying, and that is that the tallest tree in the forest catches the most wind. Every other tree just thinks it's calm. And so when we're living in a world of psychoemotional wind in the form of judgment, in the form of inspection and observation, you know, people like to hide down in the forest because it allows them to be less of that outstanding self. And they don't catch as much attention wind, as Confucius said.

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  Well, not only do they want to avoid that wind, there's a lot of external pressure, whether it be familial or professional, to...

• 11:13Rich Roll?

  To hide in that way, to conform, you know what I mean? Like, there's not a lot of... We... I feel like we speak out of two sides of our mouth. On the one hand, we're saying, "Be different," you know, like the Apple advertising campaign. But in truth, I think we're just giving lip service to that because most of the energy goes into trying to make sure that we conform to a certain sort of preordained set of behaviors, rules, professions, and anytime anybody steps just a little bit outside of that, there's a lot of energy that goes into saying, "Not so fast, get in line."

• 11:49Guru Singh?

  Yeah. There's a couple of pieces of that, too, and there's the familial piece that you spoke of, and that, you know, goes back through the generations. What did the family find convenient, comfortable, which is conforming? Because if you are too different, then you will be judged, you will be analyzed, you will be investigated, inspected, all of those things which feel uncomfortable. But the other piece of that is also that there's a thing called a fraud factor in evolution,

• 12:30Guru Singh?

  and, you know, anthropologists have studied this for a long time, and it takes place in all of the species. And the fraud factor is that if you change too much too quickly, it's considered a mutation. And that gets struck down by this psychoemotional fraud factor. You feel like a fraud, you feel like a fake. And so that evolutionary thing has kept the species from accelerating too quickly because...

• 13:03Guru Singh?

  You know, in some species, if the if the offspring were too different than the parenting generation, the parents wouldn't recognize them and therefore wouldn't take care of them.

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  Right, would reject the offspring.

• 13:14Guru Singh?

  Would reject. It's like a rejection of a of an organ inside your body. I mean, it all in microcosm and macrocosm is the same event.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  But you can also see that this fraud, this sense of feeling like one is a fraud, can also blossom in somebody who is trying to, who's doing their best to conform, even though, deep down in their unconscious mind, they know they're living the wrong life for themselves.

• 13:42Guru Singh?

  Yeah, I'm thinking, so are you a fraud to the culture or society in which you live? Or are, what you're saying is, are you a fraud to yourself?

• 13:52Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 13:52Guru Singh?

  Yay. Yeah, I like that because, and that's, that's those, you know, quote, crises moments that take place in our lives, when, as you were saying earlier, when we were just talking before going on mic, that, you know, you just couldn't do it anymore.

• 14:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:15Guru Singh?

  You couldn't reconcile the vast difference between what you were passionate about and what you were doing every day.

• 14:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's why this subject matter is so personal for me, because I was somebody who tried very hard to conform. I did everything that I could to be that person I was expected to be, or that I intuited I was meant to be.

• 14:37Guru Singh?

  You and I came to the same place from two opposite directions. Keep going.

• 14:42Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, so, you know, I was the good boy who was studying hard to get the good grades, to get into the good college, to get into the grad school. But my, my vision was very, um...

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  Focused on just what was in front of me to do next on this habit rail of success and progression in the context of our Western developed world capitalistic society that prioritizes security and upward mobility and respectability above everything else. And I did my best to play this game and I feel like I was successful in playing that game and it took some serious crises in my life for me to step outside of that and reckon with it. You know, I feel like I have, if I have a talent, it's the ability to suffer and to endure to outlast somebody else.

• 15:39Rich Roll?

  And I could do that as an athlete, but I can do that.

• 15:42Guru Singh?

  Good for triathlons.

• 15:43Rich Roll?

  But it's also, I could do that emotionally too. So even though early on I realized like, hey, this lawyer thing or this law school thing probably isn't for me, I could will myself through it. Even though I knew I was wearing the wrong pair of shoes and wearing the wrong pair of glasses and I really had to get my knees capped in order to make some changes. It took that for me. So I think, kind of extrapolating out of that, this is something that I think people experience on a spectrum, right, to a matter of degrees. On the very far end, there are people who are fully expressed in their own unique blueprint, somebody like yourself.

• 16:24Rich Roll?

  On the very other end, there are people who are extremely repressed, who feel like they're, who know they're living somebody else's life, or who are so disconnected from themselves that they have no conscious awareness of that.

• 16:37Guru Singh?

  Which is an important thing to put on there, a numbness.

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  In order to survive.

• 16:41Guru Singh?

  In order to continue, yes, to survive.

• 16:44Rich Roll?

  And then in the middle, just to finish this thought. In the middle is probably the more typical person who's kind of going about their day to day, their job isn't that great, but it's not so terrible that they're going to do anything about it. They wish they had made this left turn or that right turn along the way, but they didn't and everything's okay. They got a roof over their head, they can pay their bills, just barely, and hey, you know, maybe in the next life. And there's a settling that occurs with that. And I think that's the real tragedy and where I'd like to kind of focus this discussion.

• 17:17Guru Singh?

  So, the person in the middle.

• 17:21Guru Singh?

  Think of it as a middle child, right? That doesn't go to either extreme, doesn't get completely wiped out by conforming, but also doesn't test themselves to see how far they can go. You used a word "will." You said you willed your way through it. It's an interesting mechanism, will and willingness and willpower. It's an effort that comes from the chest. It's an effort that comes from the heart center. It's willingness and the willful implementation of your desires does not come from a thought process.

• 18:06Guru Singh?

  It comes from an emoting process that you actually have that will. That's why if people, if two athletes are the same and one exceeds the other one, they say they put their heart into it, right? Because on paper, they were matched up very well. Those that live in the center, you know, that's one of the most agonizing places to be. I mean, I was in the center. Because of the Vietnam War, I was trying to stay inside of something called college, which, you know, my passion was music and it was not until I had a health crisis and

• 18:46Guru Singh?

  went through a process that took me out of school, that I had to go through the ordeal of proving to the draft that they had no want or desire for me in any way, shape, or form, and then I was free. But there are often those extenuating circumstances that people have built up. Like you said, meeting their mortgage, their car payments barely, or even successfully. Those extenuating circumstances that life builds up. You need a shelter, you need a place to live, you need transportation, you need a car, you need food, you need clothing, you need all of these things which cost, and then you have to build up that cost. The agrarian time...

• 19:32Guru Singh?

  We were quite unique, but over the last three or 400 years in the industrial times is when we've become very conforming. Think about when you were, oh, you were talking about your high school, your prep school, you said suit and tie, or coat and tie. You know, the tie comes from the slave days. I mean, I'm talking way back in the Roman slaves. You had this steel collar, iron collar around your neck, and you had this chain that went down to your belt, which was a piece of rope.

• 20:14Guru Singh?

  And that, that chain that went down to your belt would be hooked to that rope during the day, and then at night, that chain would be attached to the rod that held everyone in bed. And that's why they called it a tie, because it tied you to the job. You think about all those-

• 20:31Rich Roll?

  How did that morph into the modern day version of the tie? It's kind of poetically beautiful, though.

• 20:37Guru Singh?

  Isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, the bottom line is, is that it morphed into, there was dress codes to show your allegiance, to show your dedication and your devotion, not even that, to the company. I mean, it's not so much now, there's a big movement away from ties, but this is what got everybody into that. It was your parents' generation, it was my parents' generation, even though I think I'm more like your, I'm more in age, your parents, I have, I feel like your child, you know what I'm saying? I do not, I do not feel anything near what I am in age. But that tie was, was part of the dress code.

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. It's interesting, I mean, in thinking about agrarian times, I would imagine the opportunities for individualistic expression were probably pretty limited. Like, if you grew up in a farming family, you were going to be a farmer, and there weren't a lot of options. Now- We have, you know, an unlimited number of options and opportunities for young people. Just the awareness of what's possible is now at everybody's fingertips because of the computing age that we live in. And yet, at the same time, there is this pressure to adhere to a certain set of standards in terms of what's acceptable to do and pursue and what isn't.

• 22:00Guru Singh?

  You know, I agree. And the agrarian times before the industrial times, just imagine, everyone was an entrepreneur. Everyone worked for themselves, for the most part, right? You had your crops, you planted them in your own way, you planted them in relation to the moon, you were very much attuned to some of those things which people have completely lost sight of now. But your clothes, you know, whether you wore a bandana, or you wore a hat, or what kind of hat, was it straw, was it leather, was it cloth? You know, everybody was very individualized. There was, yes, you were a farmer, and you were raised by farmers, and you were going to give birth to farmers.

• 22:45Guru Singh?

  But what are you going to raise? And how are you going to do it? And all of those other things, which, in the world of today's industrial condition, we may feel like we have a lot of options, but we boil ourselves down to trying to be like, so that we won't stand out. As we were saying, that middle, that middle group, that's neither, at neither extreme, they are on a, they are on a progression towards individuality in most instances. And that's why, in some cases, that's where the greatest agony is. Because as they are still trying to fit in, like in your world, what you were describing, as they're still trying to fit in...

• 23:29Guru Singh?

  They know full well that there's no way that they're passionate about doing so. They've developed enough awareness that they've slid from being completely numb to being aware enough to feel the discomfort.

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's the most painful place to be.

• 23:47Guru Singh?

  And it's the pain of birth, you know, being born into yourself. The bottom line of, of, what do they call it, midlife crisis? It doesn't really happen at the middle of life, it can happen at any point. But all of a sudden, in that crisis, the person just starts blaming their surroundings for having held them into this place that they don't want to be. And the crisis is to use anger or whatever they can do to break out of, to have a breakthrough.

• 24:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or victimhood.

• 24:18Guru Singh?

  Good, yeah, and stay in it through victimhood.

• 24:31Rich Roll?

  So, in order to even get to that middle place, though, you have to develop that base level of self-awareness to kind of understand what makes you tick, what's uniquely you, what is it that you would like to more fully express, who is the person you would imagine yourself to be in a best-case scenario? But just to get to that point requires a level of heart connection, I would imagine, just to initiate that process out of the haze, you know, the waking daydream of just existence and following the commands of society.

• 25:12Guru Singh?

  You know, people have many different ways. Children breaking out of this will oftentimes have a pet that gets them out, a dog or a cat or something, in which they could truly be themselves. I was interested in your story because when you were, when you went into prep school... You said that swimming is what pulled you out because all of these things that cause sports that cause us to breathe, particularly things like running and swimming and bicycling that cause us to breathe deeply and consistently, that'll get us out because that is a heart-centered event, right? The two lungs that surround the heart. So go into a little bit of that. What happened to you in swimming?

• 25:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I very much fell out of place in this school and was confused about who I was and what I wanted to be. I knew that this academic institution was not an ideal situation for me. I didn't fit in. I was a sensitive kid in a very kind of alpha male lacrosse and football focused situation.

• 26:19Guru Singh?

  Helmets and face masks.

• 26:21Rich Roll?

  There was a lot of that, you know, all-boys school.

• 26:23Guru Singh?

  Right.

• 26:24Rich Roll?

  I got an amazing education, you know, so I don't, it's not like, you know, it was terrible, but it just wasn't, it didn't fit who I was. And I found swimming and I gravitated towards that. And there was something about that endeavor that fit me like a glove. And a lot of it, I think, in retrospect, looking back on that experience, I think I was in a lot of low-level emotional pain that was confusing for me. And there was something about the water that made me feel grounded. When my head was underwater, all the noise

• 27:04Rich Roll?

  went away. And it was very simple. It's just put in effort, move forward. And there's a binary kind of linear equation with these workouts where the harder I worked, the better I got. It made sense.

• 27:18Guru Singh?

  Plus you were floating.

• 27:19Rich Roll?

  And at home.

• 27:20Guru Singh?

  You were buoyant and floating, which is an anti-gravity.

• 27:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what's interesting, this is a little bit of a tangential aside, but I think it's relevant.

• 27:31Rich Roll?

  Julie, Julie said, she's been saying to me, she has this weird theory that I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum.

• 27:42Guru Singh?

  Oh, good.

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  I take real issue. I'm like, really? You think so? She's like, no, you're very, you're much more sensitive than you think.

• 27:49Guru Singh?

  I would take that as a compliment.

• 27:52Rich Roll?

  So she's like, you're a lot more sensitive than, than you think you are. So she's always trying to find ways to help me. And she came across this thing called a gravity blanket. Have you heard of these?

• 28:03Guru Singh?

  Yeah, some friends of mine put it on the market, Futurism.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 28:07Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Rich Roll?

  So she's like, you should try this gravity blanket. As I, my, my sense, what I understand, this could be wrong, was that this blanket, which has weights in it, basically, it's very heavy.

• 28:20Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  It's like those, it's like when you go to a dentist and you're having an x-ray, you know, the

• 28:23Guru Singh?

  It's like being put in the womb.

• 28:26Rich Roll?

  She, apparent, from what I understand, these were developed for autistic children.

• 28:31Guru Singh?

  They were.

• 28:32Rich Roll?

  And when you put them on top of them, they just, they calm down. They feel grounded. They feel like they can relax. She's like, I think you would really like this. And, and we got one. I got one like four days ago. I struggle with sleep. It's always difficult for me to fall asleep unless I'm training super hard, which is why I sleep in a tent, and that's a whole other story. And I gotta tell you, I have had the best last seven nights of sleep.

• 28:59Guru Singh?

  Yep.

• 29:00Rich Roll?

  Since I was a little kid, like being, she's like, how would that feel to be like, I go, that actually would feel really good.

• 29:05Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Rich Roll?

  So we got it. And I gotta tell you, being under that thing, I feel fantastic. And I'm having the most restful sleep in recent memories.

• 29:17Guru Singh?

  Well, I'll put you together with the company.

• 29:19Rich Roll?

  I want to know more about this. So this is like a revelation to me. And I was talking to a friend of mine who's a therapist and an addiction medicine specialist. I said, hey, do you know about these gravity blankets? He's like, dude, I've been on this for, you know, a long time. He has one. He's all about it. I was like, I wish I discovered this years ago. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, what is it about this? That is making it work so well, that's agreeing with me so much.

• 29:45Guru Singh?

  It's the embrace.

• 29:47Rich Roll?

  He said that a lot of addicts and alcoholics in recovery respond very well to it because there's something about Their background that was chaotic or emotionally destabilizing where they never felt like they could let their guard down and just relax.

• 30:03Guru Singh?

  This is a 20, for those of you listening, this is a 20-pound blanket.

• 30:06Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 30:07Guru Singh?

  That literally hugs every portion of your body against the mattress.

• 30:13Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 30:14Guru Singh?

  And what it's doing is it's giving you the womb sensation. It's the reason why the native indigenous people would create that papoose, right? It's in biblical times, it's what they called swaddling clothes, where they would wrap the small child so that it would be, you know, feel more secured. But it's just taking you back to that mother point in that womb in which everything was taken care of. It's a very secure sensation. It's an embrace.

• 30:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I feel I can relax. I can let my guard down. And so this friend of mine was saying, yes, when you put the blanket on, it allows your sympathetic nervous, it sends signals to your sympathetic nervous system, like, it's okay, it's safe.

• 30:58Guru Singh?

  Yeah, and it moves you into the parasympathetic.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's been amazing. And it's made me think about, reflect on other decisions that I've made to kind of create these womb-like environments.

• 31:11Guru Singh?

  Well, you need to be a spokesman for the company.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, this sounds like an ad for this thing. It's not, you know, but, but I, I recall when I was in high school and I had to study for an exam, I would pull all the blinds down and turn all the lights off in my bedroom and shut the door and just have a desk lamp.

• 31:29Guru Singh?

  Yep.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  And now I have this container space, my container office, and when we were constructing it, Julie's like, don't you want windows? We can put a big window in it. And I was like, no, I don't want any windows. I want no windows. I want to be able to just seal it and be in my womb. She's like, you gotta have some windows. So we put these little windows on it, and now I put like a blanket over the windows because I don't want that. I want to feel like I am in the womb. And so I think these are very similar impulses that I have to create an environment that that is like. Being swaddled as a baby.

• 32:04Guru Singh?

  My morning practice is done, the portions of it that are just deep, deep meditation, are done in a very large walk-in closet in the center of our home that has no wall to the outside, right? And when I shut the door on that walk-in closet, it's pitch black. It's like the tahuatzee in my previous days of, in deep Mexico. But the bottom line is, is that those, those cave-like components are very much where we can go back to our seed, right? In Sanskrit, it's called bijj. When you can go back to that bijj in your existence, that seed in your existence where

• 32:49Guru Singh?

  every branch of your life is still possible. And then you can sort of recapitulate, recalculate your life and form new challenges and form new efforts and form new possibilities and form new opportunities. You were talking about how in swimming, when you were a child, the water made a lot of sense. I was, I started music at the age of five. But performing music in front of people was really challenging for me because, you know, I just wanted to go out there and, you know, out into the music and do it. But a performance, you had to be, you had to be right in each moment, right? So that was, that was so limiting.

• 33:33Guru Singh?

  So what I did in my middle school and, and high school days is I got into acting where you were literally applauded for being off the map. And that's what allowed me to come back into my music and be able to be that same act on any stage, which then allowed me to come back into my life and basically say, "To heck with conformity to the nth degree." And be able to do that. So you used water and I used just a, I used a volcano. So you used the element of water and I used the element of fire.

• 34:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think you're, that's beautiful. I think your, your trajectory towards non-conformity, I don't like that that's a negative.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  Uh, to individual, individual, individualized expression was, was a little less circuitous, took me a little bit longer. But you're somebody who cuts a very unique, you know, uh, image, right? Like when you walk down the street, like you don't look like everyone else.

• 34:38Guru Singh?

  Yeah, and I don't, I don't even know, I don't notice it anymore. I, I blend in.

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  Do people give you a hard time?

• 34:44Guru Singh?

  No.

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  No, not at all? Like when you're traveling or anything like that?

• 34:48Guru Singh?

  No.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  When you went to the Middle East, when you're in airports and stuff?

• 34:50Guru Singh?

  No, it's like, it's like, I am so at ease with who I am that I don't know that I'm different than you.

• 34:58Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 34:58Guru Singh?

  And the fact that you're, if, if, if I don't know to the nth degree that I'm different than other people, then there's a sensation of connection. And I think people feel it. I think people feel it. People feel, oh, he's really weird, but he's really connected. He's kind of harmless, you know? He's like, he's not, we don't need to hassle him, you know? And so, yeah, no, it's rare. It's rare that my wife and I actually have any kind of, um, imposition pushed upon us because of the way we are. I mean, I've heard people say that when, when I, when they arrived and I arrived at a particular setting, like for example, um, the ones that we just did in Abu Dhabi.

• 35:42Guru Singh?

  Um, you know, they say, oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into here? And then after, after the first encounter, they go, oh, this is cool.

• 35:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:55Guru Singh?

  Because.

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  You have all these like high-powered business people who are, that you're in front of and they're like, what's this guy gonna tell me?

• 36:03Guru Singh?

  Yeah. And all of a sudden, they realize that I'm talking to them like their own psycho-emotional consciousness talks to them when it's friendly. The idea that the middle, the middle patch of that conformity, non-conformity, of the individualization and the non-individualized, that middle path being the one of agony, you know, those are oftentimes the ones that are most driven and, and tend to succeed also because the agony is something that they're running from. And so maybe it's, if I do more of this, I'll have it. Maybe if I achieve more of this, I'll be, I'll

• 36:45Guru Singh?

  get away from it. And so it's a stimulant. So it's not just a, it's not a negative in total. It's, it's, it's got a lot of positives as well. That agony and a growth through pain. Obviously, you practice that on a day, week, month basis, right?

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But I mean, this journey to, to, you know, self-actualization can be forged through pain. It doesn't have to be.

• 37:10Guru Singh?

  No, it doesn't.

• 37:11Rich Roll?

  And I feel like somebody who is in their full expression is an individual we generally celebrate. Like, once somebody's, you know, at the fruition of that experience and they're fully expressed and they're in their creative flow, or they're doing whatever they're doing and they are who they are, even if they're completely off the map from that conformist idea of what a person is supposed to look like, we do, as a culture, tend to celebrate those people as inspirational or aspirational. The challenge or the difficulty comes in the early phases of that journey for that person, when they're just starting to step

• 37:52Rich Roll?

  outside the boundaries a little bit, right? They haven't fully developed yet to the place where we can celebrate all their unique glory.

• 38:01Guru Singh?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:02Rich Roll?

  It's those early phases where it's easy to swat somebody down and say, not so fast. Come on, get back in line.

• 38:08Guru Singh?

  You know, this is, these are the people that, in many instances, that are listening to your podcast, that are listening to this broadcast. Not, not all, but a good portion. And the bottom line for those people is that they should understand what you just said. If you're going to step out, you're going to have to expect the pushback, right? In a material space, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

• 38:35Guru Singh?

  And they should actually gauge their progression by the amount of pushback that they're receiving. They could use that.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  But it takes courage and it takes fortitude and it takes a real sense. Like it's very, that's a very fragile state for most people.

• 38:52Guru Singh?

  It is.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  And that's why it's so easily quashed because you'll second guess that impulse that's driving you to do something a little bit different because everybody around you is telling you it's a bad idea.

• 39:05Guru Singh?

  You just used the word courage, right? Which is cour is French for heart. Ag is French for time. So courage is a time of the heart. This getting into your heart, that's what the, that's what the opposition and that's what the swat down is all about. It's forcing you, if you're gonna come up with courage, it's forcing you to get into your heart. And then it's in your heart, which is nonlinear, non-logical, non-language oriented, just tonton, tonton, tonton. That's when you can really become that person that you're going to be. So all of these things, like, you know, you dam a river and it rises to

• 39:47Guru Singh?

  the occasion and falls, flows over the top. That's the nature of evolution because evolution touches us in the same way. Creates a crisis. The crisis needs a solution. Solutions are tried and tried and tried and finally something works and we move forward in evolution. Just like what's happening in the world at large, in the macrocosm.

• 40:17Rich Roll?

  Well, I truly believe that, that every person has a unique blueprint.

• 40:22Guru Singh?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  And it's our job to bring expression to that. And that doesn't mean, I've said this many times before, it doesn't mean you're gonna be a world record holding athlete. You're not gonna necessarily play in the NBA or be a rock star or, you know, be a YouTuber, whatever it is.

• 40:40Guru Singh?

  Or play the violin well.

• 40:42Rich Roll?

  Exactly. But there is something unique to you, something that gets you excited when you wake up in the morning. Generally, it's something that you experienced as a young child that suddenly, that got kind of erased along the way on this gestalt toward responsibility.

• 41:00Guru Singh?

  Conformity along the way.

• 41:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Guru Singh?

  Conformity to normal.

• 41:04Rich Roll?

  And I find it imperative that people find a means to bring voice to that spark, to that impulse. And it doesn't mean that you quit your job overnight and reorganize your life on a dime, but I don't believe that you can be fully expressed and actualized if you're repressing any of those instincts to engage in something that brings you joy.

• 41:32Guru Singh?

  There was a time in my life that I wanted to change something really important. It was vital that I make this change. And I gave myself a five-year plan. I succeeded and completed in three years, so I...

• 41:48Rich Roll?

  What was that?

• 41:49Guru Singh?

  It was just that I was going to come out of this work that I was doing, which was I was doing to supplement the teaching. I was doing to supplement the music, right? And I was going to just go all in teaching. And I gave myself a five-year plan, and in three years, all I was doing was just teaching and playing music. And it's, I think, essential that, when you said just a moment ago, it's not that you're going to turn on a dime, I think it's essential that we explain, you from your examples, me from mine, what

• 42:30Guru Singh?

  that means. What does that mean to set a goal so that it's not so close that you don't have enough runway and then will, you know, suffer the disappointments and the setbacks? And it's also not so dream time that there's no pragmatics, there's no things that you're measuring along the way.

• 42:51Rich Roll?

  So how do we do that?

• 42:53Guru Singh?

  Well, how did you do it?

• 42:54Rich Roll?

  Very messily.

• 42:56Guru Singh?

  Well, that's an important component, right? For the people that are listening and watching, for us to say, "You're going to be a mess, and you're going to get embarrassed, and you're going to make mistakes." And that's the steps about opening up that which is unknown to you in the world of growth and progress. And so...

• 43:22Guru Singh?

  You know, we get to a place and we go through school and everything is based on getting it right. But if we're gonna do what I did and what you say is a less circuitous way, and there go my jangles and my bangles, and you did, but as we were, as we were being ignited to make that move, we had been involved in a programming through school to get it right, get it right, get it right. So some of the pain was just the, the natural pain of getting so many things wrong. When you decided to go out, be yourself, do your own thing, because like you said earlier,

• 44:06Guru Singh?

  you know, every single one of us is completely unique, unique fingerprints, unique eye print, unique voice print, unique DNA print. And so if we're really gonna be ourself and not conform, then we're gonna be unique and we have to go there gradually, so that we don't get so much pushback on our uniqueness that we get squashed.

• 44:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's wise counsel. Just to kind of play this out in an example, so let's say violin is your thing. You played violin as a kid.

• 44:44Guru Singh?

  I did.

• 44:45Rich Roll?

  Did you?

• 44:46Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 44:47Rich Roll?

  All right, so this is a real world.

• 44:48Guru Singh?

  It's the worst.

• 44:49Rich Roll?

  Real world example.

• 44:50Guru Singh?

  As you're starting, you sound worse than any other instrument in the world.

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  As a kid, you loved it, but then along the way, it's like, no, time to, you know, get on the path like everyone else. It falls by the wayside. You find yourself 20 years later with this impulse to reconnect with that.

• 45:09Guru Singh?

  With a violin in the attic.

• 45:11Rich Roll?

  You're repressing it though, because you don't have time and you gotta pay the bills and all of that, but you finally summon the gumption, the courage to pull it out of the closet and start playing it again. I think it's, if you find passion in that, and you have the audaciousness to then set a goal, maybe that goal is to be a professional violin player. I mean, that's, you know, that's a very ambitious goal.

• 45:39Rich Roll?

  I think it's just as important to, and let me back up. Like, set that goal and then set stepping stone goals along the way towards achieving that goal. I think it's just as important to sort of place that goal in your unconscious awareness and just fall in love with the impulse that brought it up in the first place, which is that you like playing violin.

• 46:02Guru Singh?

  You just talked-

• 46:03Rich Roll?

  And it doesn't matter whether you become a professional violin player or not, you are committed to making sure that you make time to engage in that on a daily basis. And if you're coming from the heart, the core, I believe that the universe will show up with a path or opportunities that will direct you if you're adequately anchored in yourself enough to be aware of those as they arise.

• 46:33Guru Singh?

  Beautiful. You just talked about both sides of the brain because you said, in addition to setting the ultimate outcome and the steps along the way, which would all be using the left rational side of the brain, you've got to put it in the unconscious that you have this dream. You've got to put it in the dream time, which is the right creative side of the brain. Or at least that is the side of the brain that has a greater access to that unconscious. And that is how people, anybody that has ever really succeeded at something really dramatic, whether it's, whether their success was just enjoying the heck out of something

• 47:13Guru Singh?

  or being noted professionally, they've had to put it in both sides. Because I believe that that's where a lot of people that are more inclined towards, let's say, spirituality than they are towards formality.

• 47:31Guru Singh?

  You know, the, the conditions of form. I think that's where they might also lose track. Because so much is put into that, into that right creative side, that access to the unconscious, that the stepping stones along the way are neglected. So I would say if your goal is to come out of conformity, to whatever degree you want to come out of it, that you need to use both of exactly what you were just describing. You need to have some stepping stones and an ultimate goal. And you need to activate your dream time brain.

• 48:11Guru Singh?

  Yeah, so that you, you can work with both the measurements and the visions.

• 48:18Rich Roll?

  Most people are better at one than the other. I agree, you need both, but it's why, you know, musicians need managers, you know, to organize their life for them, so they can do their creative thing.

• 48:30Guru Singh?

  And they also need sheet music.

• 48:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right? And it's why accountants need some kind of muse to counterbalance that.

• 48:37Guru Singh?

  One time, Dizzy Gillespie, I think it was Dizzy, was asked if he could read sheet music. And he said, "Yeah, but not well enough to spoil my style."

• 48:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah, so I think, um, you know, the most successful have a, have a healthy combination of those two things. But I really believe that if it is what you're truly meant to be pursuing or engaged in, that it shouldn't matter, because it is the process and the journey. It is the experience of the doing that is far more important than whatever destination you're, you're driving towards.

• 49:18Guru Singh?

  So in other words, we put the GPS system in the unconscious and just let it play out in the background. And if we completely get off course, it will beep or set off a siren.

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I guess. If you're paying attention, those bumpers, you know, will, will become apparent.

• 49:38Guru Singh?

  And then going in your inspiration, right, in spirit, inspired, uh, you'll be just naturally intuitively guided.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  But what about the person who is listening to this or watching this? And they're so stuck in their current situation and so disconnected that they don't know the first step. Like, I don't know. Like, all I know is that I'm settling in my life. I'm in a job that's okay. It's not great. It's not what I thought I was gonna do, but, you know, I can do it and it's fine. And they're just in this semi-numbed-out state. They know that perhaps their life could be a lot better. They know that they're not maximizing their potential. But what they don't know is what that thing is that's gonna get them excited.

• 50:34Rich Roll?

  How do you begin to unravel that knot for somebody?

• 50:38Guru Singh?

  I love that. It's like the Chinese finger trap. The harder you pull, the harder you're stuck. The person that is so in that malaise that they don't even know the first step, needs to go before the first step, and then before that. And the movement inside of them really can only happen in breathing. So, very practically, I would have them sit down and set aside five minutes. Every single day, start with five minutes.

• 51:21Guru Singh?

  After a month, increase it to 10. After a month, increase it to 15. And in that five minutes, just sit, be aware that you are breathing, and be breathing diaphragmatically like the proper way that we breathe when we're exerting in any kind of effort, great effort, that the belly goes out as you inhale and the belly comes in and the shoulders remain relaxed. And ultimately, what's happening is that you're massaging the diaphragm.

• 51:59Guru Singh?

  You're getting a lot of engorgement in the heart center, in the heart cavity. And all of a sudden, you're oxygenating your blood and brain more. And you're doing nothing except breathing. And things will come to you. So that like that finger trap, the Chinese finger trap, you're not pulling hard, but you're sliding out. You're sliding out of being stuck. That's how I have found people to be the most successful. But it means setting aside five minutes.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  Everybody's got five minutes.

• 52:36Guru Singh?

  Everybody's got five.

• 52:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I think when you, when you do that over time, you do start to develop a deeper heart connection and your awareness starts to blossom. And I think it's important when those impulses start to arise, like you have a flash of inspiration, something out of the blue, to write it down or take it seriously. Because the impulse, the kind of built in reaction to that is to dismiss it because it's anathema to whatever life, like we, we have this, you know, habit that we've developed over many, many years of sloughing off those kinds of things when they arise because they don't comport with the trajectory that you're on.

• 53:20Guru Singh?

  And people should remember the pushback. Because even when you're celebrating your uniqueness and you have found a degree of success, there will be moments along the way in which you're going to hit a rut. You're going to get pushback, you're going to get opposition.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, people don't like it.

• 53:45Guru Singh?

  And nobody likes it, but you've got to remember that that early stage of pushback is getting you accustomed to that. And once you're accustomed to it, you figure out a way of overcoming it. In other words, when things keep blocking you. They're a good teacher because they're giving you a consistent opportunity to learn the lesson of how to get through the blockages.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  I think it's also important to understand that the reason people don't like it has nothing to do with you.

• 54:14Guru Singh?

  Correct.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  Right? It's basically one of two things, and I'm interested in your thoughts on this. It's either because they're projecting this idea that they have of you onto you, and the minute you don't conform to that image, it's threatening to them. It doesn't fit their mold of who this person is that they think you are and are supposed to be, which has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. And secondly, it can be threatening, especially the further down the line you are, because if you start to blossom and flourish in a new and different way that they were originally

• 54:54Rich Roll?

  not very excited about, that is proof positive that somebody can change their life and do something different, and that's threatening to somebody who is perhaps not as self-expressed as you are in that moment in time. And it's reminding them that they too could make some changes, and that's very frightening.

• 55:15Guru Singh?

  And what we have to remember is that that which we are trying to hide by conforming, by striving to be normal, is ultimately only hidden from ourself or not. I went to my 20th high school reunion many years ago.

• 55:42Rich Roll?

  That must have been hilarious.

• 55:44Guru Singh?

  And I looked just like I look now. My beard was darker, but I looked just like I look now. And people would come up to me and say, "I knew you'd end up like this." Because the reality is, is that that which you're trying to hide, people know about it. And so if you would feel a little more comfortable, take a little more risk, and step into yourself, people would, to a degree, applaud it, to a degree, feel threatened by it, and to another degree, feel like it's too much. What is it they say? What is the journey from being not enough to being too much? I don't know, what do they say?

• 56:29Guru Singh?

  Well, the bottom line is, is that when you're not being you, you feel like you're not enough, so that's a stimulant. Right. And ultimately, when you're really being you, people say you're full of yourself, you're too much. And so you have to be able to, as you were saying just a moment ago, the idea of, it's not about you. When people are opposing you, it's not about you, it's about what they're seeing. Imagine in today's world, the bigotry that's coming up. All of this is a genetic bigotry. This is a DNA, seeing something that is different than I, what I am. This is why this whole race thing, and there is no such thing as race, there's paint jobs. There's no such thing.

• 57:12Guru Singh?

  We're the human race, we're not anything with, we're no race within the human race. And the idea that our DNA is noticing a difference. So what are you controlled by? Are you controlled by your physical body? Or are you controlled by your soul-spirit? And the more that you're controlled by your soul-spirit, the less you will see the differences as being meaningful. And so you will be very encouraging to those who want to become their uniqueness, because them being their uniqueness is just like you. But on the reverse side, those that are feeling trapped in their physical environments are also feeling trapped in their own DNA.

• 57:54Rich Roll?

  Well, my experience is that people who are fully expressed and self-actualized, or more so than most people, they are people who are very generous of heart because they feel good in their own bodies. They know that they're living their lives in a manner that's consistent with their deepest values. And so, other people don't pose a threat to that. It's only when there's dissonance in how you're living between your lifestyle and your values, or this person you wish you could be, or think that you should be, but you're not, that other people being fully expressed pose a threat.

• 58:34Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  It creates this zero-sum game perspective. You don't like seeing people fully expressed because you know that you're not.

• 58:42Guru Singh?

  Hmm. When you were talking, I was thinking that zero-sum, the universe is not a zero-sum environment. And that zero-sum of that which gains must equal that which loses is an interesting attitude that is very much an industrial attitude. Imagine a farmer who thinks that every amount of gain through the growth of his crop means that he's going to lose

• 59:23Guru Singh?

  something. So, in the agrarian times, when we were more natural, thinking of plant-based foods, right? A plant-based condition is not a zero-sum game. An animal-based diet is a zero-sum game. A flesh-based diet is a zero-sum game. And so, if we were to think of ourselves in breaking out of conformity, because conformity is a zero-sum game. Conformity means that everything is equal and we're just sitting inside of that equality. But if we break out, we have to also break away from that zero-sum ideology. We have to become

• 1:00:05Guru Singh?

  that which is more prosperous, pro-spirit, prosperous. We have to become that which is abundant.

• 1:00:14Guru Singh?

  You in your running and in your swimming and in your bicycling, if it was a zero-sum game, you'd collapse after a certain number of miles. But the fact that you have this incredible energy to push you through those painful moments is the same thing that we have to be expressing when in our lives, we're striving to become not normal, not conformed, but our unique self. Because we hit those walls like we hit, I remember hitting a wall once back when I was running a lot. You hit them all the time.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  You used to run a lot?

• 1:00:50Guru Singh?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Rich Roll?

  Did you?

• 1:00:52Guru Singh?

  Our daughter and our son, super athletes.

• 1:00:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, now that I knew.

• 1:00:56Guru Singh?

  Yeah, but the bottom line is that you hit them a lot and they are, they are the consolidation of all of your agonies in that moment.

• 1:01:04Rich Roll?

  I think it's important to point out that it's, it's a hard journey. You know, I've called it the warrior's path, like it's not easy.

• 1:01:12Guru Singh?

  Non-conformity.

• 1:01:13Rich Roll?

  And, and I think, you know, kind of thinking about you being at your, at your high school reunion and people saying, yeah, of course, like I always knew, you know, people look at me and they're like, yeah, I always knew you'd do something a little bit off, you know, kilter or whatever. Well, I was like, where were you, you know, back when I was, and they weren't, nobody was saying that then.

• 1:01:34Guru Singh?

  When you were in your agony.

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so it requires that level of deep seeking, whether it begins with the breath, like you said, meditation, yoga, physical exercise, journaling. I mean, I started, for me, this started when, back in like 1998, when I started doing breath exercises and I started journaling. And if I was to go back and read my journals from 1998, when I was doing morning pages in The Artist's Way, from 1998 through 2005, you know, like, most of them are, are about how I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I want to do or be, like time and again and again and again, but just consistently showing up for that. This doesn't happen overnight.

• 1:02:18Rich Roll?

  People look at it now and they're like, look at you, Guru, saying you get to teach and you do all these things and you go to Abu Dhabi and you're fully expressed and you can, you can just rock these crazy outfits and everybody loves it. And it's like, how does, how does this happen, you know? Or how, Rich, how do you go from, you know, being this person who was unhappy to doing something that's fulfilling and getting to connect with people all over the world through the podcasts and the books and things like that? You know, I don't have. A pat five-step answer to that. It took me essentially 20 years to like, figure this out. But you have to plant those seeds. You have to invest in yourself. You have to fertilize that soil and just perpetually keep showing up for it.

• 1:03:01Rich Roll?

  Even if you're seeing no results.

• 1:03:04Guru Singh?

  Going between inspiration and desperation. That's what I would say to people. Desperation being the pain of that push and pull that goes on, the agony. And the inspiration, that thing which wakes you up and gets you excited about moving forward with your day. I can remember moments of desperation. I can remember moments of inspiration. And I know that walking in between the two and never getting, that's the middle path that the Buddha talked about. Never getting distracted or overly attracted to either one.

• 1:03:38Rich Roll?

  See, I look at you and I think, well, this guy just knew who he was from the minute.

• 1:03:42Guru Singh?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:03:42Rich Roll?

  From the first minute, right? And just was like, this is who I'm gonna be, like it or not, man.

• 1:03:48Guru Singh?

  Let's shatter that myth. Because if we go forward with that myth, then I am worthless as far as my ability to reach and teach. Because if people think, well, good for him because he was born that way. Yeah, I was born, you know, in a, in a very special family. But I'll tell you, my agonies came from inside and outside, just like everybody else's. And so, yeah, shatter the myths of, you know, the hero always sat on top of the pedestal. Because it's just not true. It's not true with any of the great prophets and messiahs of the world.

• 1:04:28Guru Singh?

  The Buddha, the cry, Jesus, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Moses, Abraham, all of them. I mean, the patent stories, the marketing stories are that, you know, the one and only and always was. And from the moment of birth, you know, nonsense. Nonsense. We all have to go through the pain.

• 1:04:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Pain is a great teacher.

• 1:04:55Guru Singh?

  Whoa. And so is inspiration. But if we don't, if we're not willing to go through the pain, then we'll always become less than and less than and less than until we die. And then all we feel in the moment of death is just the incredible agony of, I could have.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it's not about avoiding the pain. It's about trying to figure out what the message and the opportunity is within the pain.

• 1:05:19Guru Singh?

  Hmm. How beautiful.

• 1:05:21Rich Roll?

  Do you, do you ever look back on your career? I'm sure people have said to you, like, why didn't you just become a rock star? Like, you had a moment where you were kicking it with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. And you had this record deal and the Dead. And you were all positioned to go on this certain, you know, skyward trajectory towards musical fame.

• 1:05:45Guru Singh?

  Yeah, and all my friends are dead.

• 1:05:47Rich Roll?

  They're all dead. Right. But you could have burned in, you know, infamy forever.

• 1:05:52Guru Singh?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was actually thinking about that because as I was driving out here today, I'm driving through a neighborhood that was very much a part of that moment in my life. Right? Early twenties. And not the neighborhood of a small neighborhood. I mean, just the, you know, the valley and what have you, and the hills. And but, and I, and I'm thinking back in time and I'm thinking, wow, how blessed to have had the hardships, the change of directions, the challenges and all of those things that took me away from the trajectory of just being another great, you know, musician.

• 1:06:36Rich Roll?

  So when you were in that situation and had to make that decision.

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  How did you know that you were making the right choice?

• 1:06:46Guru Singh?

  I wasn't making a choice. Yeah. It's interesting you say when I was making that decision. The decision that I was making was to become safe. Because if you read my book, Buried Treasures, you find that at a certain point, my trajectory, even within the, you know, the conformity of a record deal and corporate, you know, musical promotion, et cetera, there was a lot of pressure on me to get even more silenced, get it even more conformed. And because it just wouldn't work inside of me, because I couldn't play and write in that genre,

• 1:07:31Guru Singh?

  you know, "Boy meets girl and everything's cool" and, you know, like, it just didn't work for me, right? I left that to other artists.

• 1:07:41Guru Singh?

  That the pressure coming down on me

• 1:07:44Guru Singh?

  did exactly what had happened to you when you were trying to be a lawyer. The pressure coming down on you was from the inside, just like a volcano erupting from inside. And I couldn't take it anymore. So I just, I basically ran away from the structure and pursued my music in a way that was, you know, less confining.

• 1:08:08Rich Roll?

  Right. And here you are today.

• 1:08:10Guru Singh?

  And here I am today. And here you are today.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  All right, well, let's wrap this Guru Corner session up with a song. You brought your guitar, didn't you?

• 1:08:19Guru Singh?

  I did.

• 1:08:23Guru Singh?

  I thought I would play a version of this song that I recorded with a group.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  I am who I am, exactly who I am. I am who I am, exactly who I am. I am who I am, exactly who I am. Thank God I am.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  You are who you are, exactly who you are. You are who you are, exactly who you are. You are who you are, exactly who you are.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Open up your voice, rejoice, rejoice. Open up your heart, let your own music start. Open up your mind, let your God light shine. And open up your soul, let your good times roll. I am who I am, exactly who I am. I am who I am, exactly who I am.

• 1:10:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:10:19Guru Singh?

  Ha, ha.

• 1:10:20Rich Roll?

  That's awesome. Always a pleasure, my friend.

• 1:10:24Guru Singh?

  Love you, man.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  Love you too. So, if you're digging on Guru Singh, you can find him on the internet at gurusingyogi. You should read his book, Buried Treasures. And soon to be back on the podcast. And if you're in Los Angeles, go to Yoga West and experience his Kundalini Yoga class in person.

• 1:10:47Guru Singh?

  Which is a combination of all that Rich and I have been talking about.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  That's right. All right, so I have a feeling I'm gonna see you again soon. But until then, peace, plants, namaste.

• 1:11:04Guru Singh?

  Sadhana.

• 1:11:05Rich Roll?

  Sadhana.

• 1:11:10Rich Roll?

  Beautiful man, that Guru Singh. I love it. Can't wait to have him back on again. I'm always a better human after spending time with that lovely gentleman, and I hope you guys enjoyed it as well. Let him know how this one landed for you. You can hit Guru Singh up on Instagram, @GuruSingYogi, or on Twitter, @GuruSing. Visit him online at gurusing.com. If you happen to be in Los Angeles, please make a point of checking out one of his amazing Kundalini Yoga classes at Yoga West, and you can find all of that, the schedule and all that kind of stuff, online. Again, if you're looking for nutritional

• 1:11:47Rich Roll?

  guidance, check out our meal planner at meals.ritual.com. A plentitude, a bounty of amazing, delicious, nutritious, easy to prepare, totally customized, plant-based recipes, all designed to help you get as healthy and as fit as possible in 2019. And it's affordable, just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. So again, meals.ritual.com, or click on the meal planner on the top menu on my website. If you'd like to support our work that we collectively do here on the podcast, there are a couple of ways to do just that. Tell your friends about your favorite episode. Take a screen grab on your phone of what you're listening to and share it on your favorite social media platform. Subscribe

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  to the show on Apple Podcasts. We're now on Spotify. I'm trying to build the audience there, so subscribe there. YouTube, as you guys know, we're now sharing all of these conversations filmed on YouTube, youtube.com/ritual. So subscribe there, that would be huge. We're also on Google Podcasts, on Stitcher, basically everywhere you listen to podcasts. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, that's helpful. And you can also support the show on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. I want to thank, as I do always, everybody who helped put on the show today, because I certainly do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for production, audio engineering, show notes, interstitial music. He's doing more and more and more. I'm giving him more obligations on this

• 1:13:12Rich Roll?

  show. He's doing a great job, so give him a shout out @JasonCamiolo on Twitter. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. DK for production, behind the scenes stuff, advertiser relationships, and the music as always by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here next week with another great episode. Who's up next week? Let me check, hold on. Oh, it's Damian Mandar. That is an amazing episode. What an incredible human being. Ex-special forces, Australian special forces guy, who now is combating poaching

• 1:13:53Rich Roll?

  efforts in Africa and making great headways. His story is incredible. His TED Talk is amazing. Just Google Damian Mandar TED Talk. Watch that in preparation for next week and that's going to go up next Monday night or Tuesday morning, depending on where you live. So until then, be well, love widely, take that mask off, be your most beautiful, authentic self, and share your gifts with the world. All right. Peace. Plants. Namaste.