Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Choosing Happy podcast.
Speaker AI'm your host, Heather Masters, and in this episode, I speak with Adrian Emery, who is an author, an entrepreneur, and a philosopher.
Speaker AAnd we cover a lot, a lot of ground in this one, from spirituality through to the current financial system and a lot, lot more.
Speaker AIt's worth staying around.
Speaker AIt's a conversation I really enjoyed, and I recommend that you stay with me for the Choosing Happy podcast.
Speaker AHello, and welcome to the Choosing Happy podcast.
Speaker AI'm your host, Heather Masters, and today I have the great pleasure of speaking with Adrian Emery, who is an author, an entrepreneur, a philosopher, and has devoted his life to creating a new philosophy called Lifeworks, which based on the understanding, the laws, the principles and the codes that make life work easily, effortlessly, and successfully.
Speaker AWelcome, Adrian.
Speaker BThank you, Heather, and it's a pleasure to be with you and talking to your wonderful audience.
Speaker AI'm so looking forward.
Speaker ACould you begin by telling us a little bit about yourself, your journey, and what lifeworks is all about?
Speaker BFrom a very young age, I guess I had a bit of a trouble working out what life was all about, like a lot of people and feeling like I really didn't belong here on this planet and in this western system, which I now call a paradigm.
Speaker BAnd I used to look at, and I'm talking about a very young age, probably don't know, four or five.
Speaker BAnd I used to look at all of my parents friends that would come and visit to try and find a role model or someone that I thought, yeah, they got a good angle on life.
Speaker BI like that because there was something about the way that the western societies organized that just didn't gel with me.
Speaker BBut I couldn't find a role model, and that only grew as I got older.
Speaker BAnd so I decided or determined that I wanted to create a new way of looking at life, a new philosophy.
Speaker BNow, obviously, as a young child, I couldn't really use all those words that I can use now as an elder, but I'm just trying to give a bit of an encapsulation of how the journey began.
Speaker BSo as a teenager, obviously, when most teenagers are going through this tumultuous period of what is life all about, it only got more pronounced.
Speaker BAnd so I really started researching all the philosophies, religions, cultures that existed, trying to find one that made sense to me and for me, and again, never really finding one.
Speaker BSo I pretty much decided to start from scratch and to try and create a philosophy that worked.
Speaker BNow, it was really important to me that I wanted a spirituality that I said worked.
Speaker BIn other words, I wanted it to work in the here and now to make my life better today, not to give me promises of a hereafter or in another life or that.
Speaker BAnd I really didn't agree with that whole premise that we're here to suffer or to earn salvation or that life was a means of to an end in some hereafter.
Speaker BSo that was sort of really what I was always looking for, that.
Speaker BSo I wanted to build a bridge between spirituality and practicality because I really saw them as the same thing.
Speaker BAnd that's what I've devoted my life to.
Speaker BAnd that's why I call it life works, because I really believe.
Speaker BAnd if you look at the universe, if you look at anything, if you look at nature, if you look in the stars, if you look at the micro subatomic particles, life works everywhere and in every area.
Speaker BIt's just that humanity who doesn't seem to be able to grasp this philosophy.
Speaker BI mean, what's an unhappy plant?
Speaker BWhat's an unhappy animal?
Speaker BI mean, you know, the universe is abundant.
Speaker BIt's happy, it's free.
Speaker BIt's pretty much all the things that we aren't.
Speaker BAnd so I figured that we were the one out of step, and we needed to get into step.
Speaker AExcellent.
Speaker ASo many questions with that.
Speaker AYou came up with the philosophy.
Speaker AIs there a structure to it?
Speaker AHow does it work?
Speaker AHow do you.
Speaker BOh, definitely.
Speaker BIt's actually quite detailed.
Speaker BAnd so I've written now a trilogy called the temple of understanding.
Speaker BIt has three books.
Speaker BSo the first one is called personal sovereignty.
Speaker BAnd it's the beginning of the structure, because I believe that we do create our own reality and that we need to be able to make decisions for ourselves.
Speaker BAnd I think this is part, if not the main part, of the problem.
Speaker BAnd if you think about it, that if most people have got a major decision to make, the first thing that they do is they go and talk to friends or they look for advice, or they ask somebody else.
Speaker BAnd that other may not even necessarily be a person.
Speaker BIt might be a religion, it may be a philosophy, it may be an ideology, it could be any number of things that they go and seek to help make a decision, meaning that.
Speaker BAnd so one of the things that I say in personal sovereignty is that human beings are bad at making decisions and bad at making the right decision.
Speaker BSo the structure begins with the premise that we need to find what is right for us, that we are all unique, we are all individuals.
Speaker BAnd what is right for us is not necessarily right for somebody else, and it may also not be right tomorrow.
Speaker BTherefore, you can't follow a set of rules, whether that's the ten commandments or anything, because change is the only permanent and abiding constant in the universe.
Speaker BEverything changes permanently.
Speaker BAnd so what is right and what is wrong changes as well, depending on the situation.
Speaker BThen the second book is called tuning, and that's the one that I'm just releasing now.
Speaker BSo once you know where you want to go, in other words, once you've made your decision and figure out what your life purpose is, then you need to know how to do it.
Speaker BYou need to know how to get to your destination.
Speaker BSo dark tuning is all about the fundamentals, the techniques, and it's very, very detailed.
Speaker BIt's a.
Speaker BI would, you know, it goes into a lot of how does one live one's life?
Speaker BWell, because basically, I am saying that life is abundant, life is beautiful, life is a joy, life is a delight, but you need to live it right.
Speaker BAnd I am basically saying that life is a skill.
Speaker BNow, if you think about it, and most of us have had approximately 15 to 20 years of education, we've never attended a course called life 101.
Speaker BSo we've never really been taught how to live or how does life work.
Speaker BAnd life works is all about how life works.
Speaker BSo it's very thorough.
Speaker BIt's very detailed.
Speaker BAs I said before, it's also very pragmatic.
Speaker BAnd then the third book in the trilogy is called becoming one, because I also believe that one needs to arrive at a oneness with oneself, at a oneness with others, and at a oneness with the universe, for life to flow, for one to be at peace, and for things to happen joyously.
Speaker BSo there's a very detailed structure.
Speaker BObviously, I'm not going to go into all the details right now, but, yeah, I put a lot of.
Speaker BI put.
Speaker BI've actually put 70 years into understanding.
Speaker BSo my quest was, okay, how does life work?
Speaker BThat's a pretty big question.
Speaker BAnd I really kept going until I was satisfied in myself that I had figured it all out very, very thoroughly and in a lot of details.
Speaker BAnd also not only figured it out, but then, like any scientist, used my life to.
Speaker BTo calibrate and to validate the hypothesis.
Speaker BIn other words, by really being very, very strict not only with myself, but in my observations of the, of the people that I came in contact with.
Speaker BAnd I did a lot of counseling, I did a lot of consulting.
Speaker BI've employed probably up to about a thousand people in my life.
Speaker BSo I've always been watching, learning, validating and rejecting those parts that didn't work and, and honing the parts that did.
Speaker BSo it's not only very detailed and very thorough, it's been, what's the word that, you know, like when you've got a hypothesis and then you want to, you want to test it over and over and over again to make sure that it is applicable, not just once, but also in many different situations with different people.
Speaker BBefore you can say that, this is a principle of life.
Speaker ASo you said it's taking you 70 years.
Speaker ACan you tell us a little bit more about, for instance, I know everyday life is a lesson, really, or it should be, if you're aware.
Speaker AAnd how did you, I know you said you've tested it, but how did you kind of formulate things?
Speaker AHow did you decide, I'm going to try this, I'm going to try that.
Speaker AWhat was the kind of process you went through to pull that together?
Speaker BWell, there's a John Lennon line, I think it's in the song that he wrote to his son Julian.
Speaker BAnd the line is, life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
Speaker BAnd when I, meaning Adrian, have to answer your question, have decided to do something, it didn't really ever work.
Speaker BBut when I allowed life to lead me, to guide me, and when I flowed, then I always found it work.
Speaker BSo the lessons came from life.
Speaker BI believe that life is a university.
Speaker BYes, I do believe that the planet is a school, and we are here to learn.
Speaker BBut your life, and this is where it is very important that each of us look at our own individuality and our own story.
Speaker BYour life is your curriculum.
Speaker BSo your life brings you the lessons.
Speaker BAnd as you just said, if you're aware enough, once you start tuning into this concept, you become.
Speaker BIt's almost like the lessons hit you as a two by four forefront.
Speaker BI mean, I'm not meaning that in any aggressive way, but it becomes very, very obvious.
Speaker BBut I think the real answer to that question, Heather, is that you must be a scientist.
Speaker BAnd so when something happens, and unfortunately for most of us, it's usually negative, but it doesn't need to be.
Speaker BIt's when anything happens, whether it's really good or whether it's something seemingly negative, you need to stop and ask yourself why.
Speaker BBecause going back to your previous question, the fundamental premise of life works, and all the spiritual work that's coming through at the moment, is that we create our own reality.
Speaker BFull stop, no exceptions.
Speaker BThat's it.
Speaker BSo when something happens, I think the first thing that one must do is instead of immediately blaming somebody else or making an excuse or making a justification, which human beings are fantastic at, which basically exonerates us and passes the responsibility, oh, well, it wasn't my fault.
Speaker BYou know, I was.
Speaker BIt was just an accident.
Speaker BYou know, it.
Speaker BThey did it to me, you know, whether they is the government or my parents or my hereditary or the system or whatever it is.
Speaker BNo, I did it.
Speaker BI created it.
Speaker BNow, why would I create that?
Speaker BAnd so that's such an empowering question, because when you just look 100% full frontal at what is going on in front of you and go, I created that.
Speaker BFantastic.
Speaker BNow, if it's something really beautiful and positive in your life, take acknowledgement, take the praise, but also look at, well, how did I do that?
Speaker BWhat did I do?
Speaker BWhat steps did I actually take to get to this marvelous result?
Speaker BSimilarly, if something really negative comes at you, you go, well, why would I do that?
Speaker BI mean, why would I want to create that?
Speaker BWhy would I, for example, why would I want to create that inverted commas accident?
Speaker BOr why would I want to create that disease?
Speaker BOr why would I want to create that calamity?
Speaker BNone of which are because if you're really honest and you look back at your life, you can really see that the.
Speaker BThe best things that ever happened to you and the best learning experiences were at the time, the most traumatic.
Speaker BOr when you're right in the middle of it, you know, you think it's probably really, really negative.
Speaker BAnd the second part, the second answer to your question that I learned very easily is sorry, very early, is that when you learn to meditate deeply and you're facing something, and let's say you're in pain, emotional pain, psychological pain, spiritual pain, when you really go inside and as I said before, first of all, accept that you created it and then start looking at why you created it.
Speaker BThe first thing that happens, and this is how you know you're on the right track, is the pain goes away.
Speaker BBecause the pain is resistance.
Speaker BSomething happens, you resisting it.
Speaker BWhy did that happen?
Speaker BAnd, you know, poor me, you know, well, you know, why did that have to happen to me?
Speaker BAnd so there's a lot of resistance, there's a lot of fighting rather than going, okay, this is what, this is what is happening right now.
Speaker BI have to accept that.
Speaker BAnd because you can only change what you own.
Speaker BYou can only give away what, for example, you can only give money away that you own.
Speaker BYou can only change something that you own, meaning that you acknowledge it you recognize that you own that you have created it, and now I am the master of it.
Speaker BSo therefore, the first thing that I noticed was that, as I said before, the pain goes away, the resistance goes away, and now I can start to mine, so to speak, the depth of this lesson and really find out why I did this.
Speaker BAnd in that is the change.
Speaker BSo that if you are resisting, fighting, denying, exonerating, justifying, making excuses, you're not really going to get the lesson, you're not really going to get the benefit, and you're not really going to get the change, because.
Speaker BBye.
Speaker BPassing the buck of responsibility, you're basically saying, well, I'm okay, I didn't do it, therefore, I don't really need to change.
Speaker BBut when you accept 100% that you created it, you did it, then obviously, if you don't want to do that again, if it's something negative, you change.
Speaker BBut similarly, if it's something really positive and you look at something that you've created and go, wow, that's beautiful.
Speaker BThat's wonderful.
Speaker BHow did I do that?
Speaker BBecause I want to repeat that recipe, and therefore, I can make my life more successful by using the recipes that worked as opposed to using the recipes that didn't work.
Speaker BI'm not sure if that answers your question.
Speaker BNo, no.
Speaker AIt's.
Speaker AIt's.
Speaker AIt's fascinating.
Speaker AThere's this something you said.
Speaker AYou said it's about flowing with life.
Speaker AIt's about taking full responsibility because we create our reality.
Speaker AWhere does.
Speaker AIn terms of flowing with life and with connecting with life, where does the decision making come in?
Speaker ABecause I think, and I could be wrong.
Speaker AI think sometimes, especially in spiritual areas, our decision making skills are eroded because we're expecting the universe to give us an answer rather than us making a decision.
Speaker BYeah, that's a great question.
Speaker BI struggle.
Speaker BNot only did struggle, I do still struggle with that.
Speaker BI think it's a real, very fine line, and I think there are probably three octaves of that answer.
Speaker BAnd so I need to introduce the concept of what I call the corporate structure of consciousness.
Speaker BSo most of the time, and you and I are verbally communicating.
Speaker BSo we are using our left brain, linear, logical language, consciousness.
Speaker BWe're using rationality.
Speaker BAnd unfortunately, humanity has got stuck there.
Speaker BWe are in the paradigm of rationality.
Speaker BEverything has to be proven.
Speaker BEverything has to go through logic.
Speaker BEverything has to.
Speaker BYou know, this whole western paradigm is based in logic and rationality, and it's a very, very small and limited part of our consciousness.
Speaker BWe also have intuition, which is the right side of the brain.
Speaker BWe also have gut feeling.
Speaker BWe also have gestalts of awareness.
Speaker BWe also have our higher consciousness.
Speaker BSo there are many, many parts of our consciousness, which is I call, which is why I call it the corporate structure of consciousness.
Speaker BAnd so quite often we're going, God, tell me what to do.
Speaker BYou know, rather than understanding that it is our higher consciousness.
Speaker BAnd so when one develops, as I said before, when you develop the ability to go deeply into meditation, you're actually touching other parts of you.
Speaker BIt's still you.
Speaker BIt's your soul, it's your higher self, it's your spirit.
Speaker BAnd but to sort of just let me put something else in there that might sort of make it a little bit easier to understand is that part of the rationality and the paradigm that we live in has put God out there somewhere else.
Speaker BSo coming back to your question, going, God out there somewhere else, please tell me what to do, rather than understanding, and not in any blasphemous way that I am goddesse, because God is everything.
Speaker BYou know, I'm no more God than a grain of sand or a plate of grass or whatever.
Speaker BBut so when we're asking that question, what we really want to do is contact our divinity and, and be guided, as I said before, in that line, you know, yes, if you, if you're coming from your ego, if you're coming from your petty self, the decisions won't be good.
Speaker BBut I teach people rather than going, God, please tell me what to do.
Speaker BBecause then you're opening yourself up to a lot of mythology and error.
Speaker BYou need to be able to go within and contact your own divinity to guide you.
Speaker BAnd that will come from your intuition, from your gut, from your guest of awareness.
Speaker BBut they'll all be in harmony.
Speaker BAnd also it will sit well with your rationality as well because it will be good for you.
Speaker BSo there won't be any split.
Speaker BWhereas if we look at the paradigm that we live in now, there is always this split between what I want to do and what I should do, between spirituality and physicality, between, you know, there's always, well, I shouldn't be doing all those things because they're wrong.
Speaker BI shouldn't really be enjoying myself, you know, so.
Speaker BAnd that's why the third book is because is called becoming one.
Speaker BBecause once we embrace this wholeness and we understand that the whole of life is divine, all of us are divine.
Speaker BEverything is divine.
Speaker BThere is no more separation.
Speaker BThere is no more good and evil.
Speaker BAnd, you know, because if you're going to ask goddess to give you an answer, then you're also putting a lot of belief in the opposite, which we call the devil or Satan or whatever you want to call it, evil.
Speaker BAnd so you're really accentuating that polarity, which does exist, but it exists in a duality.
Speaker BIt's a polarity within a duality.
Speaker BSo it's still a wholeness, a oneness.
Speaker AOkay, very good.
Speaker ADo you actually have courses?
Speaker ADo you coach people, teach people?
Speaker BNot anymore.
Speaker BI did a lot of counseling, and I've run a lot of businesses.
Speaker BMy courses were really.
Speaker BSo going back to what I said before about, I found that my businesses were my laboratory, and where I, you ask me, you know, how do you, how did I, it wasn't so much that the lessons came.
Speaker BWell, it was because as an entrepreneur, it's very important that you know, particularly if you want to be in business.
Speaker BAnd I must paraphrase that by saying that when I was very young, I thought, it's very easy to be a capitalist, and it's very easy to be a mystic, but I wanted to be a mystical capitalist or a capitalistic mystic, meaning I wanted to run businesses from on a spirit with spiritual principles, because I believe that that's the only way that we can build a new society.
Speaker BSo the marketplace pretty much determines the lessons, and it's probably best if I give you an example.
Speaker BSo my first business was a vegetarian restaurant.
Speaker BIt was actually the first vegetarian restaurant in Australia.
Speaker BBut I could see, and this was within very early days, within a few weeks, I could see, even though we were using the best ingredients, healthy ingredients, probably not organic back in those days, we're talking about the early seventies, but certainly we were trying to use whole foods.
Speaker BBut I could see this energy from, from us in the kitchen going into the food.
Speaker BAnd this is before, like, water for chocolate and before putting love in the food.
Speaker BSo this is very early days, and as anyone who's ever worked in a kitchen knows, they're notorious as pecking orders.
Speaker BThere's a lot of conflict, there's a lot of tension, because services is quite intense.
Speaker BAnd I thought, hmm, okay, this is no good, because on the one hand, we've got all these pure ingredients, but on the other hand, we're putting all of this negative energy into the food.
Speaker BAnd so that was my first, that was my real.
Speaker BAha.
Speaker BWhich was, okay, how does one get a group of people to work harmoniously, joyously, creatively, and in love for what they're doing?
Speaker BThat was a, that was really, that was the beginning of my quest.
Speaker BSo that also answers your question, where do the lessons come from?
Speaker BThat was like, wow, that's, that was a huge, and I was 20 years old.
Speaker BAnd as I said, that was before.
Speaker BI'd never heard of putting love into the food.
Speaker BIt had never, ever been said.
Speaker BBut I had read that in the Zen monasteries, only the highest monks were allowed into the kitchens because they realized that the vibration of those monks went into the food.
Speaker BWhereas in the west, back then, in the early seventies, kitchens were a lowly job.
Speaker BYou know, we didn't see it.
Speaker BThere weren't, there weren't celebrity chefs back in those days.
Speaker BSo, yeah, it, life gives you the lessons that you need to learn, and then, and then you need to solve them.
Speaker BI think that that's the only way that, that I can put it.
Speaker ASo working with businesses, and you touched on businesses, especially small businesses, are likely to create the new economy, if you like, going forward.
Speaker BI agree.
Speaker BI think they will.
Speaker BI mean, if you look at it the.
Speaker BAnd again, I don't like using the word evil, but most, well, we can say pretty much all of the pollution comes from multinationals.
Speaker BI mean, it's, it's only since humanity has created the corporation and we have these huge multinationals.
Speaker BI mean, Milton Friedman said the only purpose of a company is to generate profit for its shareholders.
Speaker BI mean, that is just such an absurd statement.
Speaker BIf you go back to the pre industrial revolution, you had artisans, you know, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.
Speaker BYou had small businesses.
Speaker BMedium to small businesses are still the backbone of the economy, are still the backbone of the middle class, and are still the backbone of a capitalist system.
Speaker BThat is why I don't want to get too distracted here.
Speaker BBut it's important for people to understand that.
Speaker BThat is why there is such a push on at the moment, to destroy the middle class, because that will destroy capitalism and democracy.
Speaker BAnd we will go back to a feudal type system where these have these huge corporations and the serf class.
Speaker BI mean, the World Economic Forum has said, by 2030, you will own nothing, but you will be happy.
Speaker BThat is a feudal system.
Speaker BIn a spiritual economy, you will be, you will revert to an artisan because you will be doing what you love.
Speaker BYou see, it's incredibly important to understand that if we look at the whole modus operandi of this system, one goes to work.
Speaker BYou know, we get up in the morning, we get in a car, we go to work, and generally we go to work to do something that we don't really want to do in order to make money to bring that money home and to generate, and we're on this economic treadmill.
Speaker BBut if you're an artisan and you do what you love, you're doing what you want to do to create either a product or a service that does good for people, the money comes secondarily.
Speaker BIn other words, you're not creating, you know, if you're a shoemaker, you're not making that shoe in order to make a profit.
Speaker BYou're making that shoe because you want somebody to wear it.
Speaker BSo goods and services usually come from a small to medium business.
Speaker BThat is, I'm calling it an artisan.
Speaker BBut, you know, it's a small business where someone, going back to what I was talking about in terms of the restaurant, is putting love into what they are doing.
Speaker BAnd it's that love which ultimately is good customer service, a good product, harmonious teamwork, you know, because you're all working together to create this whatever it is that you are creating.
Speaker BAnd so you get a lot of joy, you get a lot of reward, you get a lot of satisfaction from creating that product as opposed to generating a profit.
Speaker BBecause if the profit motive is all there is, then you start cheating.
Speaker BYou know, greed comes in, you start cutting corners, you start reducing costs, because obviously all you really want to do is maximize profit as opposed to optimizing the product that you want to create.
Speaker AJust thinking about where we are at the moment, as you say, in terms of kind of pushing out the middle class and closing small businesses down and making it really difficult for them, there are, I suspect, and this is only my mind read, a lot of businesses that are focused on money now because they're fearful they won't be able to survive.
Speaker ASo how do you balance putting that love and maintaining that in an environment where there's so much pressure on financial systems and on keeping your business afloat with all of the taxes and costs that they're creating as well?
Speaker BI mean, that's what I keep saying.
Speaker BThat is the whole point.
Speaker BI mean, we have created particularly, I think it's quite interesting.
Speaker BI mean, you're in England or Great Britain, and the industrial revolution started in England.
Speaker BI mean, I saw in the news the other night you have just closed down your last coal power station, and the first one was in England.
Speaker BSo, you know, you're the first, first ones to start it and, and the first ones to stop it.
Speaker BBut, you know, but you're also incredibly now wound up by red tape.
Speaker BAnd, you know, it's this whole woke world.
Speaker BIt's a bureaucracy of, because we are just creating a whole class of people who are not really doing anything.
Speaker BYou know, they're not really generating.
Speaker BThey're not really creating a product or a service.
Speaker BThey're just tying everybody else up in knots.
Speaker BAnd you're right.
Speaker BSo it's creating, it's making it very, very difficult.
Speaker BAnd again, as I said before, that, you know, a pure market system, rather than calling it a capitalist because capitalism has now got a very negative connotation.
Speaker BBut a pure market system doesn't really need a lot of regulation because the market does work.
Speaker BIn other words, if you are a small business and you are not making a product that is either good or serviceable or competitive, then you are going to go.
Speaker BThe market will, you will go out of business.
Speaker BSo the market does keep people honest when they say now, well, the market, capitalism doesn't work anymore.
Speaker BIt only doesn't work anymore because they have started tinkering with it.
Speaker BAnd we have these huge multinational corporations that are not really, they're not really working in a market anymore.
Speaker BThey've created their, and, you know, I mean, I study it a lot.
Speaker BIf you look at any of the really, really large, you know, the FAANG companies, for example, they all got to be there by buying out their competitors and by monopolistic practices.
Speaker BThey didn't get there fair and square.
Speaker BThey didn't get there in a true market economy.
Speaker BAnd most of them accrued the beginnings of their wealth fraudulently and then started, as I said, so it's a very predatory nature, whereas when you have a level playing field, which is much more a meritocracy, then you have to be good at what you do or you just won't survive because the competition, there's a lot of competition.
Speaker BSo if my shoes are no good, someone's going to go and buy.
Speaker BAnd that's what happens in small businesses.
Speaker BYou know, they come and go.
Speaker BSome of them fail, some of them go bankrupt, or some of them just decide they want to go and do something else.
Speaker BSo it's a, you're right.
Speaker BI mean, we have created a paradigm of fear within which.
Speaker BBut it's not even, I don't think it's even so much the fear of, well, I better make money now because they might close me down.
Speaker BIt's just that that's the world we live in, that we're not really, you see, because if you're, if you are going back to life works, if you're really attuned to your life, if you're learning your lessons, if you're enjoying your life, if you're having fun, if you're really attuned to your product and service and being creative, it making the most amount of money is, is irrelevant.
Speaker BYou know, it doesn't, it doesn't come in.
Speaker BBut in this society, with its acquisitiveness and with the negative ego.
Speaker BSo you asked me a long time ago about the structure one needs to understand the negative ego.
Speaker BAnd the negative ego is all about acquisition, so it's all about accumulating more and more material possessions to bolster its own emptiness.
Speaker BAnd so this whole concept of wanting one of my favorite sayings is more is never enough.
Speaker BSo we have billionaires on the planet who not only want, need more money, you know, we have these incredible elite who have so much power, need more power.
Speaker BSo if you are an addict, more is never enough.
Speaker BSo unfortunately, we now live within a paradigm.
Speaker BAnd I'm going back to the very beginning here, which is, this is all of what I could see as a very young child thinking, there's something wrong here.
Speaker BThis is not working.
Speaker BThis is not the way humanity was meant to live.
Speaker BNow, in the intervening 50 odd years, it's got a lot worse.
Speaker BBut even then, I could see the beginnings, the embryonic beginnings of this whole road that we have traveled as a western society, as a western paradigm, which has exponentially gone berserk in the last 50 years.
Speaker BBut somehow, as a child, I could see that it was the wrong way to go.
Speaker BAnd so going back to the negative ego, which is all about accumulation, so I need more.
Speaker BI always want more.
Speaker BI need more because more is never enough.
Speaker BSo greed has taken over, and people are pursuing accumulation for accumulation's sake.
Speaker BMoney for money's sake, you know, power for power's sake, rather than.
Speaker BAnd I think it's very, very important that one is wealthy, because if you are, as I said before, creating a product or a service that is creating benefit to people and delivering good customer service, you will make, you will make good money, you know, but it's not because you're focused on the profit, it's because you're focused on delivering what you really love to do.
Speaker BAnd you obviously, as an entrepreneur, need to price correctly, which is a big problem for spiritual people, because spiritual people tend to believe I shouldn't be making money.
Speaker BSo therefore, you know, I'll set a price that's giving it away and I'll go broke, and then I won't be able to, you know, I won't have any viability, so there's nothing wrong.
Speaker BAnd this is going back to the very beginning when I said I wanted the spirituality that worked.
Speaker BThere is nothing wrong with making a good profit.
Speaker BThere's nothing wrong with being wealthy because we live in an abundant universe.
Speaker BAnd to have abundance, to create abundance is to be spiritual.
Speaker BBeing poor is not being spiritual because you're a burden on somebody else.
Speaker BAnd going back to your point about the government, the whole problem now is that any time anything happens, people go, well, the government needs to fix it.
Speaker BBut if the government is going to fix it, then we're giving them our power, and we have to give them their money, and we're giving them more and more responsibility in the GDP, which means that the government is now taking up more and more space within the economy, and there's less and less space for small to medium business.
Speaker BSo if you think of big government, big business, it's a huge component of the economic system, squeezing out small businesses.
Speaker BSo you're right.
Speaker BThere is this, this almost, you know, join us or die type threat for small businesses.
Speaker BAnd as I said before, you also have the negative ego coming in as well.
Speaker BSo it's a mess, you know, and that's why I agree with you that in the new spiritual society that is definitely coming, I think it will be based very much on, look, I tend to think that when we go through this quantum leap of consciousness that I am talking about, I think that you will find that multinational corporations will be outlawed.
Speaker BI don't think they will exist.
Speaker BOr if they do exist, they'll be based on a very, very different premise because most of them don't pay taxes.
Speaker BMost of them don't abide by any government.
Speaker BYou know, they're, a lot of them are now bigger than most governments, and they just have become unwieldy and a law unto themselves.
Speaker BAnd of course, now most governments are beholden to big business.
Speaker BIt's become a revolving door between big business and big government.
Speaker BAnd, you know, the, and certainly the little guy, you know, us, the people, we're irrelevant.
Speaker BKnow, we're just the cattle fodder, you know, the grist for the mill, so to speak.
Speaker AThere's so much to unpack there.
Speaker ABut I think a key thing, and I think this is really crucial because I know I've struggled with it myself, is that because I worked in banking for a long time and was always wondering why I was so uncomfortable working in.
Speaker BWell, you would have seen that whole transition that I'm talking about.
Speaker BI mean, you think about it, when we were young, the bank manager was a very honorable honored person.
Speaker BYou know, it was a great.
Speaker BYou know, if you were a bank manager, particularly in a small village or community, you know, you were almost on the equal as a pastor or a priest or a reverend, because you could help people.
Speaker BYou could give loans.
Speaker BIt was a very.
Speaker BAnd also because those managers took their jobs seriously, they wouldn't give money to someone who they knew couldn't pay it back because they knew that they would be tying a noose around their head.
Speaker BNow you don't have bank managers anymore.
Speaker BI mean, you're pretty lucky if you've even got a personal representative.
Speaker BSo.
Speaker BYes.
Speaker BSorry to interrupt, but you would have.
Speaker BYou would have seen that whole transition, basically from banking to financial derivatives, you know.
Speaker AYeah, yeah.
Speaker ABut as a.
Speaker AAs a business, as a spiritual business, that whole relationship with money, as you said, often underpriced.
Speaker ABut at the same time, there's this element of feeling that money is evil, but then not understanding, because it is kind of a fine thing to really wrap your head around that the universe wants you to expand.
Speaker ASo the universe does want you to be wealthy and have whatever the universe has for you.
Speaker ABut there's that paradox.
Speaker AAnd I think it's never been as strong as it is now.
Speaker AOnce you actually understand how the current system, the monetary system, is founded and that it is actually a complete Ponzi scheme and everything else.
Speaker AAnd so balance as we go through as well.
Speaker BYeah, yeah.
Speaker BI mean, currency, you know, it's really no longer money, is it?
Speaker BIt's currency.
Speaker BAnd unfortunately, you know, once Nixon took us off the Bretton woods gold system, really, it is now just a fiat currency.
Speaker BAnd so I think it is.
Speaker BI think it's very important.
Speaker BI'm very passionate about.
Speaker BAnd we.
Speaker BWe come back to this, okay, spiritual people, or just, you know, because that even has negative connotations.
Speaker BBut I think if you're aware, the first thing you need to understand is money and currency and the difference.
Speaker BAnd abundance and the difference.
Speaker BSo those three things are all different because I can have a lot of currency and be completely in debt, and therefore, I'm not very wealthy.
Speaker BI can be very wealthy and have a lot of money, but not be abundant because I'm very mean and I can't enjoy it.
Speaker BSo it's a really important concept, and try to get your head around is that the universe is abundant, but it's not mean, and it doesn't create that abundance at somebody else's peril.
Speaker BSo the most important thing to understand is this zero sum game where we see, you know, it's the darwinist philosophy, again, going back to my concept of life works and why I'm calling it a philosophy is that darwinism basically says it's survival of the fittest.
Speaker BSo therefore, if I win, you lose.
Speaker BIf I, if I've got an extra $2 or two pounds, you've lost two pounds.
Speaker BI mean, it's a very zero sum game.
Speaker BAnd therefore, if I'm spiritual, I think, well, I don't want to be wealthy because I must be taking from somebody else rather than realizing that if I am creating, going back to my initial analogy of the shoes or whatever product or service that I am creating, I am creating more.
Speaker BI am creating wealth, and I should only be generating money or currency or whatever it is, reward via that productivity, not by merely, you know, derivatives or financial pieces of paper or the price of a stock on a stock exchange, which is all totally artificially inflated bubbles or buying something speculatively, because I know it's going to go up and therefore I'm going to make money.
Speaker BThat's all irrelevant.
Speaker BIf you want, if you house, for example, you should buy a house because that's where you want to live and raise your family and because you enjoy it, whether you enjoy that environment or that.
Speaker AUnfortunately, at this point, I lost Adrian.
Speaker ASo what we're going to do is have another interview with him in the coming weeks.
Speaker AI hope you enjoyed what we do have, and I hope you look forward to meeting Adrian again soon.
Speaker AThank you listening.
Speaker AThank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.
Speaker AIf you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share.
Speaker AAnd if you really enjoyed it, please leave me a review.
Speaker AIt really helps the podcast.
Speaker AAll of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the choosing Happy podcast.
Speaker AIt.