What’s the difference between changing yourself and changing the world? Only one of them actually works. In this wide-ranging conversation, Keith Martin-Smith and David Arrell diagnose the core pathology of contemporary life: we’re living in an attainment culture that measures worth through accumulation—more status, more recognition, more stuff—while starving the qualities that actually make life worth living. The result? Epidemic levels of anxiety, polarization, narcissism, and a quiet desperation that no amount of productivity hacks or self-optimization can touch. The alternative isn’t another framework to add to your collection. It’s a fundamental reorientation toward attunement culture—a shift from quantity to quality, from getting to becoming, from conquest to meaning. David lays out the architecture of this shift across three temporal dimensions: HEALTH (The Past): Most of us are operating from developmental anchors—unconscious wounds and reactive patterns that keep us stuck at earlier stages of maturity. When you criticize, control, or comply automatically, you’re not responding to what’s in front of you; you’re responding from an old script. The work is to turn toward these patterns with curiosity, reclaim the energy locked there, and stop letting the past hijack your present. DEPTH (The Present): Your attention is under siege. Billions of dollars have been spent engineering super-normal stimuli to keep you distracted, metabolically aroused, and scrolling. But presence—the capacity to remain grounded when life gets turbulent—is the foundation of wisdom. Character and virtue aren’t abstractions; they’re your ability to tolerate weather without capsizing. The fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) emerge spontaneously when you create the conditions, like apples from a healthy tree. GROWTH (The Future): Beyond your current capacities are your leading edges—the places where you’re stretching into new territory. Growth means tolerating the unknown, throwing aspirational grappling hooks into territory you can’t yet see clearly, and expanding your container of authenticity. It’s not about becoming someone else; it’s about becoming more fully who you already are. Throughout the conversation, Keith and David return to a revolutionary foundation: dignity culture. Unlike respect (which must be earned), dignity simply is—every human being has equal claim to worth by virtue of being human. This creates common ground from which we can build toward higher ground. It dissolves the false choice between dominator hierarchies and victim narratives, between attainment Olympics and oppression Olympics. The examples are visceral: Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t change America by attacking his enemies—he changed it by cultivating such depth of character that he could march from Selma without taking opposition personally. Lama Tsering Everest changed a room simply by walking into it. The power of alignment—when your intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural dimensions move in the same direction—is magnetic. The conversation offers practical wisdom for the current moment of cultural chaos: shift from grievance to gratitude, from entertainment to enrichment, from tribe of the chosen to tribe of the chosen ones you intentionally create. Track your attention. Practice humor. Grant dignity to yourself and others. Get your butterflies in formation. This isn’t self-help. It’s a blueprint for becoming the kind of person who can actually create change—not by trying to fix everyone else, but by doing the work that makes your very presence a form of influence.
Tag: loving kindness
PAPAJI – Look within yourself and you will find that You Are God
The first 9 and half minutes of this amazing satsang from the 12th of February 1993 are in silence. Papaji speaks about Consciousness: “You are already free, and this freedom is consciousness. You think that contact with the objects of the senses gives you happiness, therefore everybody is involved with the objects of the senses. Whenever there is pleasure, it is from the Self, of the Self, of the consciousness; not of any objects. Objects are temporary. It is the Self that is bliss. Once you know it and you are one with it, then whosoever you will meet, you will meet from the Self and you will not find any difference between you and other objects. Your love will be forever; not with the name, not with the form, but of the Self, to the Self, of the Self, within the Self.” Highlights of this satsang are: *Riya: “All doubts have been removed. All that was ‘I’ has disappeared into stillness. Who is free? It isn’t ‘I’ because ‘I’ isn’t there.” Papaji quotes Kabir: “Let the body be still, and let the mind be still, and let the intellect be still. That’s all you have got to do, and then this stillness will attract what is called enlightenment, freedom, emancipation, emptiness. They will follow behind.” Papaji gives her the name Aruna. He speaks about no need for any sadhana, and asks her to explain her experience. Aruna: “I realized that there was no ‘I.’ It was like the ‘I’ was absolutely a thought and had nothing to do with anything else. It was fiction. And when I realized that it was fiction everything else disappeared. And every thought that came, I asked to whom is this thought addressed? And I got nothing. It disappeared.” *Sambuddha: “I get hooked wanting to open my heart more to deepen my understanding.” Papaji: “This ‘I’ is a hook, and you are being fished. Around that ‘I’ some meat is there and everybody goes there. So, wiser are the fish who don’t touch it. This net is samsara, slowly moving. Get out of it any time.” *Angelica: “Please talk to me about love.” Papaji: “Love can be only of the Self. All the rest is lusting about. If you want to see what is love, direct your mind not to any person but to the source of the mind. Love is so pure, immaculate and there’s no demand, no command. Love is to give away without any kind of interest, to give yourself up. Nothing in exchange. Only that person can be happy who loves That.” *Jerry: “I am consciousness.” Papaji: “You are that which has no limitations, and no time, and no space also. Everything is included into this consciousness because there are no limits. We construct a veil between emptiness and ourself, therefore we get into trouble. And emptiness, consciousness can never be touched. Look within yourself and you will find that you are God.” *Sammy: “In a flash I experience that the Self is everyone, everywhere, everything; that the Self manifests in whatever form, or as whatever experience is needed to lead one back to the Self. Sometimes I see a bright white dot in front of my eyes. Is there any, any significance to this?” Papaji: “All lights are still subtle mind. You have become seer to see the lights, then light has become object.Let your mind not abide anywhere, let it be anything, gross or subtle, light or darkness. You go on going, go on going, without abiding anywhere, and then you will continuously go on going.” This is the official YouTube channel of H.W.L. Poonja, well known as Papaji, run by the Avadhuta Foundation, a non-profit organization supported by donations and grants. To donate (thank you) to help this channel continue and keep all content accessible for everyone, visit http://avadhuta.com/donate To learn more about Papaji and his teachings, visit http://avadhuta.com To buy physical copies in India of Papaji videos, books and audio CDs, see http://satsangbhavan.net
Mindvalley’s Vishen Lakhiani’s Mind-Blowing Technique to Bend Your Reality
Vishen Lakhiani is an author and entrepreneur in the ed-tech space. He is the founder of Mindvalley, an education technology company building a new model for human education that aims to give everyone the same quality of life and benefits of an Ivy League education for 1/100 the price.
Mindvalley creates tech and platforms that power online academies in areas that traditional education ignores. These include mindfulness, personal growth, wellness, spirituality and more. Mindvalley employs 400 people and has 20 million students globally. In addition to founder of Mindvalley, he is the founder of the transformational festival A-Fest. Vishen quest is to help move humanity to a more holistic, integrated education system that caters for the whole being.
Now, Vishen is leading a revolution in meditation—and he says that trying to replicate ancient monastic practices within the chaos that is modern life is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. That’s why he developed his breakthrough technique. The Six Phase Meditation Method isn’t just about spiritual centeredness (which of course you’ll get)—it’s also about performance.
It actively impacts the way you show up in the world so you can help make it a better place. It’s a condensed, magic-making, joy-creating, productivity-inducing meditation that empowers you to get focused, find peace, and manifest your goals.
In short, Vishen hacked meditation to make it work for anyone, no matter how busy, prone to a wandering mind, or allergic to the lotus posture they are. Over years of study in personal growth that led him to consult with neuroscientists, monks, yogis, and meditation experts, he pulled from thousands of years of psycho-spiritual wisdom, cherry-picked the best bits, translated it all into plain English, and put it into a 20-minute practice that anyone can master.
His new book is called The 6 Phase Meditation Method: The Proven Technique to Supercharge Your Mind, Manifest Your Goals, and Make Magic in Minutes a Day
Don’t be fooled by the title. This book has nothing to do with meditation as you know it. We just didn’t have enough space on the front cover to call it The 6 Phase Multi-Faceted Psycho-Spiritual Transcendent Mind-Training Technique . . .
Leading a revolution in meditation, entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author Vishen Lakhiani interviewed nearly 1,000 neuroscientists, monks, yogis, and meditation experts over years of study. He distilled thousands of years of psycho-spiritual wisdom to create The 6 Phase Meditation Method—aka, meditation for badasses.
Used daily by athletes, artists, rock stars, and CEOs, the 6 Phase Meditation is a magic-making, joy-creating, productivity-inducing protocol that empowers you to get focused, find peace, and manifest your goals.
No matter how busy, prone to a wandering mind, or allergic to the lotus posture you are, the 6 Phase Meditation is suitable for absolutely everyone, no exceptions. And this transcendent sequence is custom-designed to produce these peak states in its practitioners in minutes a day. No boredom, special breathing, or “clearing your mind” required.
Please enjoy my conversation with Vishen Lakhiani.
Love Stream 8 – Excerpt 2 – On the subtle level, the light has already won. English subtitles
Christina is here because she fell in love with humanity… and because she saw how the light was able to break through, she knew that it was worth coming here…
Official Trailer Beyond Two Worlds: Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche IX
Beyond Two Worlds Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche IX
The Goodman Lectures: The Relatable and Extraordinary Life of Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé
“As the most prolific historical Tibetan Buddhist woman prior to the 1950s, Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé presents a candid and nuanced female perspective on what it means to embody Vajrayana Buddhist ideals. The eloquent and subtle Tibetan prose and verse that comprises her long autobiography is as inspiring as it is intensely expressive of a range of relatable human emotions, including rage, grief, love, and humor. In this talk I will share some tastes of a project I am currently immersed in to translate the richness of both the relatable and extraordinary elements of Sera Khandro’s writing from Tibetan into English.”
You Are Not What You Think- by David Richo (audiobook)
My Octopus Teacher – Watch Free Online
Many Minds, One Self: Evidence for a Radical Shift in Paradigm- by Richard C. Schwartz, Robert R. Falconer (book)
In Many Minds, One Self, Richard Schwartz, the developer of Internal Family SystemsSM, and Robert Falconer challenge the notion that we each have one mind from which emanate various thoughts, emotions, images, impulses, and urges. Although we were all raised in this mono-mind paradigm, it is an illusion because the mind is naturally multiple, containing an inner family of sub-personalities. Evidence for this comes from a wide variety of sources from thousands of years ago to the present. Each of us also contains an undamaged healing essence—the Self, which virtually every spiritual and shamanic tradition has discovered. Schwartz and Falconer chronicle this widespread evidence and present a compelling argument for the potential of this groundbreaking paradigm shift to bring harmony, connection, and positive leadership to the distresses of our planet.
Letting go of “I, Me, Mine”: Gary Weber
Gary Weber discusses his techniques and perspectives on meditation, presence, and allowing. He talks about his own awakening, the “default mode network”, the collection of “I’s” collapsing into the present moment, persistent Nonduality, psychedelics, the evolution of thinking, and has thinking in the modern-day human outlived its purpose?