Alexi Panos

It’s quite the journey so it started off with me at a very young age being interested and fascinated by this world of personal development and self-help. My parents were divorced when I would spend the eight-hour car rides going to my mom’s house on the weekends listening to Tony Robbins on tape, Wayne Dyer, Marion Williamson and at the time I didn’t think it was really cool I wanted to listen to Madonna or Michael Jackson but when I hit that teenage you know, pre-teen 11 to 13 and I was feeling really awkward. I started accessing those wisdom nuggets that were dropped into my brain at eight years old and at that point, I realized that I actually had a choice. It’s like oh I’ve got a job now I was working at my family’s restaurant on the weekends. I have money, I can buy whatever books I want, I can you know, take in whatever information I want at this point so that’s when my journey started and it’s been such an interesting and fascinating journey from there because then I got into modeling at 13 years old and traveled the world at a very young age doing that which turned into getting a music deal at 15 and I travel the world opening for a major artist at the time all over Asia, all over Europe, all over Africa from 17 to about 20 years old and at that point, in my life, I was living this crazy kind of rock star lifestyle that every kid dreams about. You know, I was playing with fame, I was playing with um keeping up with the Joneses and image and I was witnessing what was happening when people made a lot of money and had a lot of attention and I got caught up in it sure enough, our final stop on tour was in Africa and in Cape Town Africa we went, we played a show, went to the nightclub for the after party spent. All this money on champagne. We were there for 20 minutes, went to go right back on the tour bus and as everyone getting on the tour bus I looked to my left and there’s a Shantytown, a slum and I saw these two worlds staring me in the face one that represented excess and money and sex and drugs and really kind of the surface level of living and another represented to me what I saw the rest of the world was up against and it was this moment where I felt like such a fraud because here I was as a young girl I had so much within me where I wanted to give back, I used to watch the commercials of kids on in Africa and say mom I want to help and I lost that, I forgot all of that because my ego was so focused on being somebody, on making something of myself, of making money of being recognized and respected and at that moment it hit me and I came back to New York changed my entire life, got out of the music industry, got a bartending job and a waitressing job to afford my rent and I started to ask the big questions in life what do I want to create, how do I want to serve, what do I want my life to mean, do I want to just waste it, and do the same? old same or do I want to answer this call that I’m feeling deep within me And I decided to answer it and it was quite a long process to find what exactly that meant but I was always on purpose and always on time in the right place because I kept answering those questions and sure enough I started my non-profit organization epic which stands for everyday people initiating change and that came because I wanted to give back. I wanted to be an everyday person like any of us in the world who just have a calling on our hearts to do something and my friend and I started it and we drilled clean water wells in East Africa and now we do 10 years later we’re doing women’s development and we help young girls go to school and we refurbish schools all over Tanzania in these amazing, amazing remote villages and epic has always been such a teacher for me in my life because while I got back into the entertainment industry in my 20s with television and modeling. I was constantly grounded and humbled by what I saw every year when I went to Africa and that for me was just really profound because the people in Tanzania taught me how to be happy without stuff and when I first started noticing that it was a shock to me because I think in the Western World we’re told that happiness comes from nice cars and big houses and pretty things and status and leadership and here I was with these people who nobody knows about in these remote villages in Tanzania and Africa who don’t even have a door they’ve got a doorway. They don’t have a door they have a curtain they maybe have two pieces of cloth that they use for wearing, washing, wrapping, cleaning everything and they’re happy they don’t even have electricity or clean water but they’re happy and it hit me how can they be happy without all the stuff that we were told equals happiness and that whole shift for me happened because of my work in Africa because they showed me that there was another way to live and really, it started with love. It started with community, it started with tapping into our Humanity which I feel like we’ve forgotten about so much in the Western world.

I think the Western World isn’t happy because we’ve been looking for it outside of ourselves. We’ve been constantly searching and hoping that if that one thing happens if I get the job, if I make the money, if I have the beautiful partner, if I have the kids whatever that thing is we’re told that equals happiness and so we work and we strive and we go towards the goal we do you know our vision boards and our affirmations and we put so much on that goal making us happy. Then the minute we get it we realize oh here I am I’m still here and then that’s not enough. Now we need a new goal and so it’s this incessant, never-ending process of more better, different and we keep looking out here versus going okay, all that is great, there’s nothing wrong with having stuff there’s nothing wrong with having a beautiful house but if you’re not happy in here first without any of that then it’s irrelevant and I think a lot of people who have tapped into that lasting happiness have tapped into the inner greatness versus the outer greatness.

The process of tapping into that inner happiness is really about starting with asking who you are. I think a lot of people don’t even ask that question and I think in today’s world our younger kids are asking that at a younger age which I’m thrilled about because they’re exiting college and they’re realizing this system that was promised to them that would work. You know, you go to college you get a good degree you get a job the system’s not there anymore the system’s broken so now that they’re entering the world with a broken system they’re going, “Wait, what do I want to actually create? what’s important to me? what’s meaningful in my heart? what am I passionate about? What are my gifts? how can I serve using those gifts?” I think if we start asking those powerful questions we’ll get some powerful answers. 

So to me, the ego is the wound itself and in my work I teach that we come in as this divine higher being and you look at children and they’re the perfect example of what we as adults are all trying to give back to is that innocence that boldness that courageousness to step into all of who we are but somewhere along the line something happens to us and we get hurt we get wounded all of a sudden the ego builds this wall up and goes okay I need the wall so I’m protected and we live our life from behind this wall and one more thing happens another brick on the wall another thing happens another brick on the wall and soon enough we’re living this life that we have no idea who we are because we’ve been living from behind a wall the entire time so in our relationships people never get to see the true us in our desires we’re not actually going after what we want we’re going after what our ego is telling us we want so that we remain safe, validated, worthy because remember the divine self already knows it’s safe, validated and worthy and the ego is going after this idea because it’s  believing that I need to feel validated, I need to feel worthy, I need to feel good enough

because I’m not because I got hurt and so for me, my work is all about breaking that wall down and giving people a little bit of insight into the truth of who they are and that means not necessarily resisting the ego because the ego is a part of our personality and it can serve us in so many ways but aligning with it and saying I see you and I’m going to choose something higher.

The ego is all about strategy. The ego says, how can I win at all costs, how can I stay safe at all costs and for a lot of young women it is about looking good, being a certain weight, having our face look flawless and perfect because media is telling us that’s what’s acceptable, that’s when you win when you look a certain way. For men, a lot of men it’s having money and power and so the ego goes in to strategize how can I win, how can I level up my life so I can feel worthy, so I can feel good enough, so I can fit into society. Meanwhile, our higher self is dying on the inside because it’s not, it’s not being seen, it’s not being lived, and that life needs to come through it needs to live, it needs to be seen and heard and if we let the ego keep strategizing what happens is eventually we wake up 30, 40, 50, 60 years old. We have a midlife crisis and we go, “Who am I, why am I here, what am I here to do, whose life am I living? and that’s when the dark night of the soul normally comes and we get to answer some of those big questions.

So removing the blocks it’s a process and it is the journey and a lot of people want the quick fix, they want to be fixed overnight and say okay if I do this one thing my life will be different and it is a different process for everyone. It depends on your upbringing, it depends on the shoulds that you’re living your life by, it depends on how much you’ve been playing into the wounded self or ego versus living your truth and owning your truth but some of the work that we do is. We have people actually start asking their higher self for guidance and it sounds weird at first but even just journaling and saying what do I need to know and letting the pen do the writing and people are shocked no matter how often we do this exercise and with no matter who we do it with people are shocked that the answers that come through because they knew it but they never sought and they never actually listened and heard it. So, things like that, things like and we have a process called allowing where we allow our past wounds to complete themselves because a lot of times emotions people like to stuff it down and go oh that’s not there we justify it and say, “Oh yeah, well I’m over that, I’m over that but as human beings emotions have to come through they have to complete themselves just like we breathe in we breathe out. We’re in and out beings, emotions come in they have to come out and when we stuff them down and repress them we keep building on that wounded self and we make the ego a lot stronger so a big part of pushing the ego aside and allowing that true self to come through is allowing the emotions to complete themselves.

Childhood wounds are going to be different for everyone. A lot of times it’s understanding with perspective about what we’ve made it mean for us currently because the past is the past we often can’t change it right? A lot of us want to change it mentally and we can change our story around it but really the important thing is about going, “What am I making it mean for me now, how is it holding me back now?” So if you’ve got to deal with a lot of people who have been molested or sexually abused as children, and of course as children they didn’t play a role in that right? But now as adults how are you letting that run your life, how are you living from that wound and letting that wound take your life over, what are you making that mean about trusting people, what are you making that mean about men or women or mother, father, uncle? And when we can start deconstructing what we’ve made our life mean based on a past story then we can rewrite it and we can rewrite a new story that’s more effective for our lives.

Hmm, well forgiveness, I believe is something that we do for ourselves and I had an interesting journey through forgiveness where I thought it was well, I forgive you because what you did was wrong to me but that in and of itself denotes that something was wrong and I’m better or I’m right and what I’m learning as I keep kind of being on my journey and going through this whole work in progress called life is right and wrong is just a construct. It’s based on my upbringing well, I believe it’s right because of my agreement based on my parents based on their parents based on their parents and for you, it’d be the same thing. You’ve got your sense of right and wrong. And I was raped at the age of 20 at gunpoint and had a very traumatic experience around that and forgiveness started as let me forgive this person for what they did they didn’t know, what they were doing and that forgiveness journey took me down the road to realize compassion when I actually thought about what that human being might have been going through or have been through as a child to commit an act like that to another human being my heart burst like it just. I cried for him, I did my own catharsis where I cried for myself prior but I cried for him I was so sad at the pain that he must have experienced as a young boy, or as a teenager, or as a young man that he could do that to somebody else. So forgiveness for me is now a process of understanding our own humanity and knowing that you know, any of us were not far away from committing heinous acts. You know, we’ve all had those moments where we’re so flustered or so angry or so passionate about something that something could happen and to recognize the humanity in it and to have compassion and empathy for what somebody else might have been through themselves for me is what the forgiveness process is about.

Um, I believe everything I do is a part of my daily practice of spirituality. From my gratitude Kata in the morning which is a series of movements to give gratitude to all directions to Mother Nature to all people to my food to my breath um to the Cable Guy not coming to install my internet after the third time of him not coming to install my internet all of it’s a practice because we can know all of the tools, we can know all of the right things to do but if we’re not in practice of them in the moments that count which is every moment of life then it’s just knowledge it’s not wisdom. So for me, my practice is getting the knowledge into a space of wisdom where it lives in my body and I actually access it when it’s needed most so through meditation, through gratitude, through one of my biggest ones is nature so walks on the beach, hikes, sitting with plants, and just seeing what comes up as I sit with plants being with people of all ages, of all backgrounds, traveling, becoming completely uncomfortable in my surroundings with my language, with smells, with culture, with money, and having to learn new things it’s all a part of the spiritual practice because it expands who I am as a being and the more I dive into that with that kind of perspective the more I understand this journey of humanity.

Dealing with triggers is interesting. I think, for a long time when I first got into my spiritual journey I thought that the triggers were supposed to go away. I’m like, “Oh! well, you know, I’m spiritual now” Aren’t the triggers supposed to go away and no, I believe now down the road I’ve got a bit more humility and I can see that the more we take on and the more we say, we know the more the universe God whoever, whatever name’s on the door for you goes, “Okay, so you can handle this then right? and sure enough a trigger, a trigger will come and then I get to sit with it and go, “Okay! what am I making this mean, this isn’t personal, what about me is being triggered right now for my past, what story is my ego telling myself right now to try and win in this scenario or what expectation do I have that’s not being met versus just being present with life” and I start asking questions and deconstructing the moment so that I pulled the ego out and I go, “Okay! higher self is here, ego’s here what’s the ego trying to do let me just watch it hmm interesting wow my ego was triggered out of insecurity whoa my ego was triggered out of a man yelling at me because my dad yelled at me once when I was five years old” and at the more connections I can make to kind of to realize that wounded self and to remind myself that the wound itself is separate from the higher self the easier it is for me to make a choice at that point and the triggers will always show up but I always have a choice of how I want to be with it.

Awareness, awareness is the step back. Breath first because a lot of times when we’re triggered we go into this mode of reaction and when we’re in reaction we’re often not breathing, we’re tensing up our body, and we’re stressful and overwhelmed so I drop into my breath, I drop my breath all the way, into the center of my body, relax my muscles, get present to the stillness that is to the choice that I have and with that choice I then get aware of what’s occurring in the moment and without awareness I make a choice from that.

It’s a cosmic joke to think that anyone’s perfect spiritually. I think um what a lot of people don’t see is that we’re still human, we’re all human you know, the Gandhis of the world, the Mother Teresa’s everyone is still human and things come up because that’s a part of our humanity and life is impartial. You know, a lot of us think that well once I’m spiritual or once I have my deep connection to source that life is going to be good. Life is impartial, life is just life and it’s going to keep on lifeing whatever that means good, bad, tsunami, sunshine it’s all a part of life, and the suffering comes when we attach an expectation on life and think it’s supposed to go a certain way versus just aligning with what is okay this is life impartial and going okay now how do I want to show up to it and the more we can do that, the more we create a sense of humility and space to remember that we’re all just human, we’re all works in progress, we’re all figuring it out but some of us are in the practice of doing it more often than others and that’s what I believe spirituality is.

Um, spiritual Fitness is not a diet. It’s a lifestyle and I think a lot of people want the diet, the bite-sized version of spirituality you know, they want to read one book take one workshop, sit with one master and get it and have it all be explained and understood and it’s a lifestyle you know, you can’t, you can’t expect to lose weight off of a three-day cleanse. Will you lose the weight and get some quick results? Sure but they won’t be long-lasting, they just won’t. You’ve got to create the practices, you’ve got to create the discipline, you’ve got to create the momentum of being in the dance, of being in the practice day in and day out, moment in, moment out because that’s what spirituality is. It’s the moment-to-moment occurrence of how you show up. It’s the choice of how you show up and it is a lifestyle change, you have to take it on as a new way of looking at the world because it’s a new pair of eyes. It’s you know, walking through the world with eyes closed versus ah my higher self has been awakened I can see now like really see not just for my ego wounded self but my higher self, my truth, and when your truth can see you can’t close those eyes and now it’s about honoring that truth. 

I do believe that expectation is the root cause of all suffering. Life is what it is and human beings want to have some sort of sense of security but security in and of itself doesn’t exist. Um, how do I know that because at any moment any of us could die and we never know when our time is and that is the biggest bit of security. You know, people think if they have a good job, if they have enough money if they’ve got a partner that they’re married to with kids and you name it then they’re secure but it can all be taken away if you cross the street and somebody wasn’t looking and ran a red light. So security is an illusion. The only thing that is permanent is change. That’s the only thing we can count on in life is a state of impermanence and so when we relax into that universal truth of impermanence and state of flux that everything is in then we can release our expectations and our hold on what the world should be or what the world should look like and just accept what is and then decide to move powerfully from that point.

Yeah, to become aware of your expectations literally, it starts with going why am I triggered? If you’re triggered and you’re upset or if you find yourself complaining about something that means that you had an expectation of it. So in the case of “my plane is late I’m gonna be late for my meeting I can’t believe this isn’t working this isn’t efficient” maybe we can go what’s the gift here what good is here that I presently cannot see and it might be that the planes delayed just enough so that you miss a flight that could have been 9/11 and we don’t look for that, we don’t look for the higher meaning or the higher purpose and things. We’re looking at the right now, how is this affecting me, “Well, this shouldn’t be this way well, I need to be on time” Well, you’re running late or traffic sucks or whatever it is if we just notice when we’re triggered, when we’re complaining or when we feel that bit of suffering or that thing where we roll our eyes we can go, “Okay what’s my expectation here, my expectation is that every, every highway shouldn’t have traffic okay, that’s kind of unrealistic I get that people are going to work I get that I’m going to work how do I want to get to work I want to arrive to work safely” Perfect! now you’ve just aligned with what is, everyone’s trying to get to work and how do I want to align? I want to align and get there safely so you’ve now made a choice with that alignment.

Yeah so for a beginner, aligning with what is is not looking at life and thinking it should be any other way than what it is so even the really crappy terrible moments where you’re like, “This shouldn’t be this way I’m a nice person why is this happening to me” It is the way it is and when we just say that sentence “it is the way it is” we go okay! I’m no longer gonna resist it because resisting it means it shouldn’t be this way, it shouldn’t be this way, it shouldn’t be this way when we just align with it, it is the way it is, it’s life, life is impartial, life is just lifeing this is all a part of the journey then we can step back and go, “Okay! let me breathe, now that I know that this is just the way it is I’m now aligned with what life is now what’s the gift here for me” if it’s a breakup or a divorce, maybe the gift is you got a big learning about how you get to show up for your next relationship. You know, if it’s a tragedy where you lost your home in a natural disaster maybe it’s a gift that now you know what it’s like to have nothing and now you can support others from that sense of knowing. And I think a lot of times we don’t want to look for the gift in it because we like our pain, we’re addicted to our pain sometimes because our pain bonds us to each other you know, the misery loves company they say that because it’s true it bonds us. You ever notice how one person can come in and say, “Oh! I had the worst day” Oh! you think, your day was bad well let me tell you about my day versus my life is really good. You know, I don’t know if people could actually be with that if things were just okay.

Gratitude is everything. It’s next to awareness I believe that awareness and gratitude are like the two secret sauces of spirituality um if you have gratitude you have everything literally and figuratively if you are grateful for what you have in this moment, you have everything you need and I think a lot of people are grateful when things are good. You know, when life is going well I’m so grateful when money’s flowing in I’m so grateful when you’ve got the amazing partner by your side I’m so grateful but what if you have none of that can you still be grateful with none of that and when you can and have gratitude for your breath, the fact that you’re breathing the experience of life even if in this moment it seems crazy and incomprehensible when you can be grateful for that you have everything and you need nothing and that vibration of gratitude ultimately attracts abundance in your life because you are the space for abundance to occur.

I think heaven in the way that we’ve kind of constructed it mentally and linguistically um obviously it’s just a construct. I do believe that heaven is here and now I do believe that hell is here and now I believe it’s a state of mind. I believe that whatever you choose to live in you will choose to receive as your reality and a lot of people bank on Heaven being this out-there concept but it’s here it’s now, Some days I’m in heaven mindset where everything is glorious and some days I see when my mindset goes into a hell mindset where everything’s going wrong and one bad thing after another happens but it’s here and it’s here first and if we can choose to see that I’m creating my reality I’m creating heaven I’m creating the hell that I’m witnessing right now I’m playing a part in it I’m instrumental in it and responsible for all of it then we can shift it.

We’re constantly creating our own realities with our thoughts, our words, our actions, and our non-actions. So a lot of people look at the reality that they have and say I want a different life I don’t like my reality I want more better different of fill in the blank whatever it is you want to lose weight, you want more money, you want whatever you’re constantly creating the results called your reality and a lot of times it’s feedback for how you’re showing up in the world so a lot of people say well, where do I start you know, I’m new on this journey and I don’t really have an awareness muscle that I’ve built over the years so where do I start? And I say look at the results called your life let’s look at your relationships are they deep, are they intimate, are they meaningful, are they transparent, or do you still feel like you’re hiding? Look at, look at your career do you feel like you’re on purpose and aligned and living your passions and your truth or do you feel like you’re kind of hiding? And when we get real about our reality and say, “Okay, I’m seeing what I’ve created at this point” don’t really like that that’s really ineffective oh I love that then we could say, who am I being in the ineffective part of reality or the part that I don’t like that’s creating that and who am I being in the part that I love that’s creating that and for the new, the new person or the beginner in this work when we, you can see how you’re actually creating the things that work and don’t work you can then deconstruct and say, “Oh the person I’m being in my job that I love is I’m being authentic to my passions I’m saying what’s on my heart, I’m saying what my voice needs to say, I’m being transparent with my co-workers, and I love my job but in my relationship, I’m hiding out because I’m fearful that I’ll get hurt again and then we can start to make the comparison and go, “Oh! I’m missing my truth here, missing my truth” so then with our words our thoughts our actions and non-actions we can then begin to form and shape a new reality for ourselves.

I think if somebody comes to me with an issue that somebody else is doing something to them I always say well how are you responsible for that? how are you the space for that to occur? and that’s often the hardest thing to answer because a lot of us don’t want to look at us we want to look out there and go, “Well, they did this to me what do you mean they’re the ones punishing me, they’re the ones yelling at me and I always say, “Well, you’re the space for that to happen because the context determines the content and it’s like a glass if you’ve got a glass that’s shaped you know tall and thin you pour water into it the water is going to look tall and thin, you have a glass that’s short and wide water is going to look short and wide” so we are that glass in our own lives and the water the content is the boyfriend who’s talking down, is the job that’s not paying you enough, is the life that’s not working but we are the context we’re the cup that can hold that so if we want a different life we have to first look at the context that’s creating the life that we have right now and I bring it all back to the self because at the end of the day can we control anybody else? no, but we can have some say in how we show up to the world and that’s where it all starts.

Well you know, I say, we can’t know peace in our relationships, in the world until we know peace within ourselves and a lot of us are at war with ourselves, a lot of us speak so nasty and abuse ourselves, and then we wonder why somebody else can do it to us because we’re doing it first, we’ve allowed the space for abusive conversations to happen here first or here first so that when somebody else does it we make them wrong for it but yet we’re unwilling to look at how we’re doing that ourselves.

I think, we all beat ourselves up for different reasons but uh I think what it comes down to, it’s a war, it’s a war of the ego. It’s the ego trying to keep us small, it’s the ego trying to stay safe, it’s the ego wanting you to not live a bold big life because then it can be damaged and the ego just wants to be right, the ego just wants to be safe, the ego just wants to be validated at all costs so it’ll tell you all these little nasty things to make sure you don’t try that thing that you’ve always wanted to try. It’ll whisper in your ear I don’t think so you’re not good enough, you can’t do that, who do you think you are when you’ve got a big idea that could change the world because that’s risky it’s risky to be yourself in today’s world, it’s risky To boldly claim here’s who I am and here’s what I’m up to that’s a risk and the ego wants to avoid that at all costs so I believe it’s the ego trying to keep us small and say stay down, it’s safe down here.

Ego Annihilation is what it takes to have a blissful life and you know, people ego annihilation well what do you mean like you have to get shot, or like I don’t understand what that means? Ego annihilation is the willingness to stand out on a ledge and take blow after blow to the ego have people tell you you’re not good enough, have people tell you, have people tell you how dare you think you can do that, have people tell you all the things that you’ve never wanted to hear and you spent your whole life avoiding because you have a commitment that’s bigger than the ego. It’s not about you, it’s about your message and that’s what we teach is that your message, your truth needs to come forth, your truth needs to emerge and if you live by the ego your truth will always come second so the minute you say I am a commitment to the message to my truth all these things will show up for you to stay small and for your ego to be fully annihilated you have to keep showing up and keep saying I’m a commitment to my message, I’m a commitment to my truth no matter what and the more you do that the smaller that ego voice gets and eventually, you can override it a lot faster than you could before. 

So the last thing the ego wants is for you to find that heaven within, for you to live your truth, for you to be in bliss because that means it’s got to die and the ego has been trying to keep us safe our entire lives by telling us no no no not you, you’re not good enough who do you think you are oh, you think you can do that really? Tries to keep us small so that it can live because the smaller you stay the bigger the ego gets and now there’s this inner truth that higher self that’s calling, that’s tugging on your heartstrings and saying, “Hey, you’ve got a bigger life, you’ve got a sense of purpose and passion let’s do, it let’s do it and we, we’ve all had those little moments where we listen to it. So it’s our ego’s job to keep a small because the smaller we stay and the more that we resist that higher voice, that higher truth of who we are the bigger the ego gets but the more we listen to that truth the more we tap into our passions our purpose the truth of who we are our message the reason we are here on this planet, heaven bliss all of that the ego slowly begins to die off and it’s got less control over you so the more that we can decipher between the two and keep choosing to be a commitment to our truth the smaller the ego gets.

So I believe that self-sabotage is our ego’s way of chiming in when something really big is about to happen when we’re right on the cusp of a breakthrough or a tipping point in our growth or in our spirituality or in our learning in life the ego chimes in and goes, oh! Really, oh! Really and then we start listening to the ego and we go okay maybe I’ll listen, maybe I’ll listen and we sabotage that growth that we could have had to bring us right back down to where we feel comfortable and you know, they call it “Set Point Theory” where it, we’re used to a certain amount of joy in life, we’re used to a certain amount of bliss in life and if we are just about to go over that bliss or that set point of joy we bring ourselves right back down because it’s what we know and sometimes what we know that comfort zone is way more easy even though it might be way more painful than the unknown and the unknown represents possibility bliss, joy, expansion, evolution all sorts of amazing things but the comfort zone is what we know, even if it’s painful and even if it sucks.

The first thing to do with self-sabotage is notice it. You have to notice it first if you’re not aware of it happening then you can’t intervene you can’t do anything about it so my biggest thing is if I notice something coming up where I’m in an ineffective state I then bring awareness to it huh, okay what am I trying to do right now what, what’s happening, what’s my ego trying to do am I trying to win, am I trying to be right, am I trying to stay safe, am I trying to remain small so I don’t have to do that big vision that my heart’s calling out for, what is my ego up to? And when I ask that question I can normally find the answer and then I can intervene and choose something else.

And a lot of people want to get rid of fear and say, oh! Be fearless and that’s just ridiculous. You know, fear serves us in so many ways and what we teach is that fear is a flagpost it’s like a big sign going hey there’s amazing opportunity over here, there’s a massive breakthrough for you here, there’s, there’s so much change and growth for you here or it’s this is really bad stay away and I always look at it as one of those two things and a lot of times my ego will try and trick me and go, “Oh, I don’t know this is really bad” public speaking used to be a big thing for me and I would have that fear of this really bad run away no no no and I’m like this is my ego tricking me because really this is a breakthrough moment, this is one of those catalyst moments that’s gonna launch me into the next phase of my career, of my personal growth, my spirituality, of understanding my story better but my fear, my ego wants to go, “Oh, believe it’s, it’s bad you don’t have to do this” and then it’ll justify and make up some excuse but for me fear is always a flag post, it’s always a moment to go, “Okay, I’m feeling some fear this is either going to be a massive breakthrough or this legitimately isn’t a really great idea.”

Separation to me is the biggest issue facing humanity. I think you know, there’s the idea that we’re all one and while I don’t believe we’re all one we’re certainly not all two. You know, we’re all individual, we’re all unique we’re all dramatically different, dramatically different in so many ways but we’re all the same in so many ways, we’re all nature, we’re all on this planet together trying to survive and we’ve forgotten that, we’ve forgotten that we’re a part of a human race not black, not white, not yellow, not whatever a human race and then we forgot that we’re nature, we forgot that we’re just like these trees and the birds and the plants and, and the animals we’ve forgotten. We’ve separated ourselves and we said that we’re better than that we know more because we’ve got more consciousness but you read “The Secret Life of Plants” and you recognize that plants have massive consciousness as well as do animals, as does the ocean. So separation from life from all of life is what causes pain and suffering in the world and it’s what’s caused this kind of disease in society, and while I don’t believe it’s going to be an easy journey to get back to that place of unity with all that is us the cosmos, the sky everything. If we can just take our own personal responsibility for recognizing that it’s all a part of us, that we are in fact, made of Stardust we can take that personal responsibility and move through the world with that I think it would be a lot more beautiful of a place to live.