Stop trying to fix your life with Stuart Perrin

Here are longer versions for the mirror reel:

Option 1: Stop trying to fix your life.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. But hear me out.

If you looked in the mirror and saw a pimple on your face  you wouldn't try to wipe it off the glass. You'd go to where the pimple actually is.

That's exactly what most people are doing with their lives.

They see something wrong  in their relationships, their career, their circumstances  and they spend all their energy trying to fix what's outside of them. Never stopping to ask: what if the real work is internal?

Stuart Perrin put it in a way I'll never forget. The moment you change what's within you you will literally see the world differently. And when you see differently, everything changes.

This episode will challenge how you've been approaching your own life.

The Healing Space Podcast with Stuart Perrin is live now. Link in bio.

The Loud Whisper Podcast: The Healing Space is your health and wellness podcast  the place where you can pause, breathe, and heal. Here, we explore conversations that nourish the mind, body, and soul, guiding you back to balance, clarity, and truth.

✨ Stay connected with me, Isabel Draughon:
 Website: www.isabeldraughon.com

 Instagram: @isabel_draughon

LinkedIn: Isabel Draughon

If you loved this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review—your support helps us amplify these soulful conversations. Together, we’re creating a community rooted in healing, wellness, and conscious living.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

You are entering a safe space. Please take a moment to center yourself and allow every thought, worry, and care to fall away right now. Focus on taking deep breaths and allow yourself to feel the healing freedom that is waiting to be ignited within you. Welcome to the Love and Whisper Reading Nature Voice podcast. This is your healing space providing you with hope and inspiration as you become more connected to yourself. I am also an alpha life transformation spiritual coach. Most importantly, I am a perpetual student of life just like you. So let's explore together. Welcome to the Loud Whisper Reignite Your Voice podcast. This is your healing space. I am your host, Isabel Drawn. Thank you for joining us today. As always, it's always a pleasure to have you on here. You could be listening to any podcast. This is your health and wellness podcast where we speak about anything and everything. Humanity, our healing, becoming more conscious, and becoming the best version of ourselves. I'm excited today because one of my favorite guests is on the show again. I know you guys enjoyed it a lot because I got a lot, a lot of messages from my podcast. And then when I would share the bits and pieces of what he was saying on my social media, a lot of people got excited. So I decided to invite him back, Stuart. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

You're welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Thank you. It's such an honor. It's such an honor. It's a blessing to me to be able to, you know, when they say that once you start opening your heart, the people that you need come into your life. And I feel Stuart is one of those people for me. He's so in-depth, and I can have conversations with him that I can't have with most people because he understands. So I'm going to jump right in and um tell you, for those of you that don't know about him, I'll tell you a little bit about what who he is. My guest today has spent 56 years doing the inner work, not writing about it from the sidelines, but living it, teaching it, and watching thousands of people transform because of it. He trained directly under Swami Rudanada, one of the most reverent spiritual teachers of the 20th century, and has become a master teacher in his own right. He's the author of multiple books. He actually told me about one that I'm going to pick up called Little Sisters. It's on Amazon. I will be getting that today. So you do that, you do the same too. He writes really good books. Um so he's the author of multiple books, has centers around the world, and still shows us how to teach seven and still shows up to teach seven classes a week of meditation. What I honestly love about him is that he's not here to give you a philosophy. He's here to show you what actually what's actually blocking your healing and what to do about it. Please welcome Stuart Perrin. Thank you so much again for being here.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Welcome, Isabel. It's just great.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

It's always an honor. So I'm gonna jump right into it. So 56 years is a long time to do anything. 56 years is a long time to do anything.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

In terms of time, 56 years is like the blinking of an eye.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

It goes by so fast, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Very fast. Very fast. It really depends on how you use it. It's gonna go by anyway. And if people, you know, I mean, you know, we either we time age, or we we're not here anymore. So we have that gift called time. And then it's how we use it consciously to develop ourselves, to become, you know, more deeply spiritual inside ourselves, to have consciousness and compassion for humanity, to build kindness in ourselves. I mean, we are given the gift of time. Yeah, I was given the gift of 56 years. I'm older, a lot older than that now. Given the gift of those years. Yeah. Those years, I used it for a singular purpose, and that was to develop my inner life and my connection with a higher force of energy in the universe, and never take the time I'm given for granted. So I I think people have to realize what a treasure. I mean, time in many cases just freaks people out. Yeah. I'm getting older, I'm gonna die, I'm not gonna be here anymore.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

It's either moving too fast, I'm moving too slow, I'm not where I'm supposed to be, or I won't have time to do it. Well, always with this battle with time, are they still slow, I'm behind, I'm ahead, it's like okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

But if you use time consciously, yeah, 56 years is like the blinking of an eye, and yet it's also an eternity. And in that eternity, so many rewarding experiences can manifest for a human being, especially if they begin to tap that vast source of energy inside themselves, that connection in every human being that's spiritual. You know, my teacher Rudy, Swami Rajananda, he when I first met him, he told me the problem in the world is people are spiritually malnourished. Yeah. They're not connected to a higher force in the universe.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

And what do you mean by that, saying people that are spiritual? I understand it, but could you elaborate to our audience what do you mean when you say people are spiritually malnourished?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

They haven't developed inside. Look, when the body is hungry, we eat. Yes. And if we don't eat, we starve. Yeah. Uh when the inner life of a human being is hungry, they have to be able to eat spiritual and have to be able to absorb spiritual energy. We have inside ourselves what's called a chakra system. Now, you know, most people look at this as something extremely esoteric or they think it's just Hindu Buddhist, or it's not. It's basically a psychic muscle system that exists inside every human being. And it deteriorates. It deteriorates because people don't know how to develop it in themselves. If you don't go to the gym, if you don't do yoga, if you don't do some kind of exercise, your muscles deteriorate. The system in a human being also deteriorates. The system provides foundation, it provides balance, it provides harmony, and it builds an inner strength inside a human being that enables them to keep their hearts open, to be able to experience unconditional love, to experience the highest levels of their own humanity. Now, people very rarely have even a you know a notion of what I'm talking about. But when I was younger, when I was younger, uh I I talked about it in our last session, how I met my teacher and what happened, and you know, my father dying and nurse telling me something that changed my life. To her experience, just before people leave the world, they undergo a state of complete serenity. It's like they have let go of everything. There's a oneness in them. And I said to myself, why is it RIP? Why isn't it LIP? Live in peace. Oh, instead of rest in peace. Everybody says rest in peace.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Why can't we live in peace live in peace? Well, the whole problem exists because people do not develop a system inside themselves that gives them the inner strength that can connect with spirit, with higher energy in the universe, call it God, call it whatever you want to call it. And the lack of that connection weakens the human being inside, to where all that goes on in themselves is the chaos of mind, chaos of emotions, and tensions that are so extreme, you know, that they make people, you know, really capable of even functioning in a deep way every day of their lives. We need to learn how to transform the chaos in ourselves. What is the chaos? Mental energy, emotional energy, sexual energy. And you put those three energies together, you have the internal insane asylum that goes on inside people. They have to learn how to master the chaos. And this is what I was looking for when I was a young man, somebody who could teach me how to master my inner life. And I meant endless numbers of teachers, and basically it was kind of love, peace, and eat vegetables. And you are supposed to do this, but how do I do this? Yeah. How do I learn to get my mind quiet? How do I learn to get my emotions quiet? How do I learn to master sexual energy? How do I learn to use these internal forces that are very powerful to give me life instead of taking my life away? Yeah. And when I met my teacher, he showed me a breathing technique and made it possible for me to attend meditation classes with him at Port Stewart, this young, very neurotic young man. Erotic. Neurotic, not erotic. Young man.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Was that 56 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

You know, a long time ago. Yeah. You know, and I I to learn how to master my inner life. No, I didn't learn this in a week. Yeah. It took time years of working on myself to be able to get these forces, these incredible conflicting forces to give me life instead of taking my life away.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

And you know, it's interesting. I'm gonna uh I'll piggyback a little bit. You talked about chaos a lot, you know, about living in chaos and being in chaos. The world that we're in right now feels so chaotic. It not only feels so chaotic, it is chaotic. How does one stay grounded in all the chaos? We already have chaos in our own personal lives. I don't even want to call it as chaos, it's just what life is, it's the ebb and flow, right? The dark and the light, it's the duality of it. So once you call it chaos, that's when you make it a problem. It's honestly not chaos, it's just life, and life happens. But the world that we're in is really life right now, and it's so chaotic. And with the conversations that I have with a lot of people, it's trying to be grounded and stay sane and really within themselves as they're trying to navigate not only their lives, but what's going around in this world.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Well, Isabel, there's a place inside every human being that is uh grounding. I once wrote in a book of mine, you know, uh book called Navigating the River of Time. In the book, I would talk about a tree. If a tree has healthy roots, a hurricane is not going to blow it over. Roots have to be healthy. Roots inside people are not very healthy.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

It's an area inside a human being, it's an area of grounding. And it's called in the Japanese call it the hara, the Chinese call it the Tatyan. It's an area right below the navel, inside a human being that needs to be developed inside. When people do the martial arts, you know, and you know, one of the first things they're taught is to build qi. Qi is the air chi is inside the hada, the tatien, the chakra in right below the navel, the core of our being, the place when great singers, ask a great singer where they sing from. They sing from that air. That's where the power is of their voice. Great dancers dance from that area. The athletes, when they're in the zone, they're not in their heads. They are grounded in that area that gives them the ability to deal with whatever is going on in the moment. So that has to be developed in a human being. If it's not developed in a human being, people are like that tree without roots. Life is a hurricane. Yeah. It's a hurricane. All this madness that's going on with genocide and bombing countries. I mean, it's it's a hurricane. And unless you have that, you've developed that grounding inside yourself, this hurricane is going to take over and it's gonna it's gonna destroy people. It's not only genocide in Iran, it's genocide on the entire world. People have to deal with this impossible tension, and they don't have the capacity to deal with it because they've never built a system inside themselves that's strong enough to do it. And that basically is what I learned from my teacher. You know, I learned that the world I see is a reflection of my reality. On the inside, yeah. It's a reflection of my own life, of how I see the world. You know, the world, this incredible political magnetism is a reflection of Donald Trump's mind. He's imposed it on the world and he has the power to do it, you know, because he's the most powerful person in the world. So he's made the world crazy. Because his mind is like that. Yeah, yeah. You know, how do you deal with that? You've got to build the system inside that is strong enough to not be the tree that's being blown over. You've got to keep your heart open because then you see a world full of love, full of compassion, a world of kindness, you know, a world of generosity, a world of truly understanding, you know, the human element of it, the need the needs of people are to have to be happy and to have successful lives. But how do you see a world like that if the roots of the tree inside you, you know, they always talk about the tree of Yeah, the tree of life. And that is the tree I'm talking about. That is chakra system inside a human being is the tree of life.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

And those roots I like how you talked about the grounding. Um, my biggest thing, I always say that, you know, people talk about balance all the time. We need to find balance. And I the more work that I do, not only with myself and with other people, I'm starting to understand that are we really looking for balance or is it alignment that we need, you know? Because balance can only last for so long. This is how I feel, in order to for somebody to be balanced, you know. But alignment, alignment means that you're grounded within yourself. And as you mentioned, you talked about the wind. I always say that um being aligned within yourself, it does so it doesn't matter where the wind blows, you still feel grounded within yourself. So even at this moment, as we live in this chaotic world, how can somebody really feel safe within their space? My thing is be aligned with your soul, be in alignment with yourself, be grounded. And how does somebody get grounded? Because most people are doing everything right, right? You know, on the outside therapy, journaling, movement, but still, but they still feel stuck. So what are they missing?

SPEAKER_00 16:46

What they're missing is we are born with the tools to make this possible. We're born with the instruments. The instruments are the mind and the breath. We have to learn how to use these instruments consciously. Yeah. And you know, breath is life. Understand, look, there are 8 billion people.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

It is life. When you say that, even my heart smiles because breath is life.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Try not to be for five minutes and see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

See what happens. We'll be saying rest in peace.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Every time you inhale, Isabel, every time you inhale, you take in life. Yeah. Every time you exhale, you are letting go of a part of yourself. The inhalation, the ex There's a wonderful mantra that they use in India and Nepal, and it's called so hum. It's a prayer. When people inhale, they say to the hum. They say so. When they exhale, they say hum. If people listen to the breathing, it becomes so hum. So hum means translated, I am that. I am one with everything. And it the first thing it does is it gets the mind quiet. The mind becomes quiet. And then we learn how to use the mind as a surgical instrument. The mind is an extremely powerful instrument. It's also making everybody crazy.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

I'm so glad you say that, because I say that and people look at me like I'm crazy. I say that the mind is powerful, but then we have to remember our mind is a tool. But we're living in this world that, yes, use your mind, your mindset, what you believe, that's extremely powerful. But as I have discussed with you before, right? I'm a firm believer that the heart is where we make all the real decisions. The heart is where the truth of who we are. And the longest journey for a human being really is from the mind to the heart. And I think society literally takes the mind as something that governs the whole humanity. In my perspective, powerful. It's great to have a powerful mindset. The mind is a tool, though. It's an extremely powerful tool. It will protect you, but then it can also sabotage you.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

What's killing us can give us light. Look, the mind, the longest journey, Isabel, is not from the mind to the heart. The longest journey is from the mind to the core of our being. Okay. Being able to focus the mind in the chakra right below the navel, in the hada, the tatyan, whatever one wants to call it, you know, enables the mind to become a surgical, just the energy, not thinking about it. Because thinking about it just keeps us up here. Energy of mind, focused there, will open and develop that chakra, that energy center at the core where the foundation is, where the core of our being is. The longest journey is not from here to here. It's from here.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

Well, I've always believed it's here to here. So you're saying it's here to the navel.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

The navel, right below the core of our being, the foundation. Okay. And that what that does is it gets the mind quiet. All that tension in the head begins to flow down. And what's killing us begins to give us life. It also gives us the strength inside so that we can open the heart center and we can experience unconditional love. We can experience kindness. We can experience compassion. And not only just experience it, you understand, but to sustain it. To be able to live with this thing all the because we have built that system inside that enables us to live with an open heart. I'll tell you a story that it was relevant to this. When I was younger, I was studying with my teacher, and he had purchased uh a place up in the country, up in uh, you know, the Catskill Mountains, which we were using as an ashram and to go up there on weekends and do meditation and work and just you know fix the place up. And one day I I was working so hard that winter, I went to him and I said, Rudy, I said, you know, I'm I'm dead tired. Do you think I can go up to Big Indian and just rest? So he said to me, That's what is for us to go up there. So I took a bus up there and I found a room and I unpacked all my stuff. And I said, You know, you're not gonna sit in the room looking at the grass crow. Maybe do something. Use your energy and make and I looked out the window and there was about an acre of land where the grass I'm talking was up to my chest. There was also a tractor there with a mowing machine on it. So I said, Oh, that's something I can do. So I went down, I got on the tractor, turned it on, I started mowing the lawn in the garden. And about ten minutes into it, this guy who is the manager of the meditation center up there comes running across the center, screaming at me. Screaming at me. What are you done? Oh, you did this, you did that. I said, I've been here 10 minutes. How much wrong can I have done? He said, How much wrong can I do? In ten minutes. Anyway, this went on for like 15 minutes. And ordinarily in my life, it would have started a fist fight. It was so intense. And I said, Stuart, no. Don't get into a fight with him. He's a friend of yours. You know him. You know, he and I just listened to him while he was venting. I just listened for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I didn't say a word, Isabel. Just listened to him. When he finally exhausted himself, he looked at me with tears in his eyes. And he said, Thank you, Stuart. Oh wow. He just needed to drop his tension. He just needed somebody to listen to him. And he said, Thank you, Stuart. And he gave me a big hug. He said, I mean, I knew him, I knew his wife, they had a kid, I was friends with them. But I said, it would be better. Listen to him and let him vent. What does it matter? I'm not taking this personally, you know? Yeah. The world isn't coming to an end. And he just, with tears in his eyes, he just said, Thank you. So this is what I'm talking about. Building the strength inside by getting grounded, keeping the heart open, the mind is quiet, to be able to listen to other people and not have to be right, not have to justify our rightness because somebody else is a little crazy. Listen to them. And you know, I'm telling you, it I I've used this over and over again in my life, and it is just an amazing tool. And yet the only way I was capable of using it is I built that kind of system in myself that was not intimidated by, I mean, I look at my president and I say, I feel sorry for this guy. I have never seen a more unhappy person in my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

So you talk about being grounded and you where does where does somebody start? Because we have to be realistic and honest that when it comes to the spiritual journey, the world that we're living in, well, now it's opening up more. The world that we live in, it's not something that a lot of people have been have seen growing up. So getting into it feels foreign, it's different, and more people are starting to get into the space of whether let's call it wellness, because that's what the world calls it. It's wellness. How does one start to even either do the meditation, get into that space of being grounded and being one with themselves? If this is something that number one, they've never done. And we all know meditation requires stillness, and we live in a world where stillness is considered laziness, weakness, unless you're in the hamster will is when your humanity is validated. Unless you're in the hamster will you're constantly moving and constantly on the go, is when you're seen, you're heard, and you're validated. But when it comes to the actual space of humanity, which stems from the stillness, which our truth, who we are, stems from us being still, being connected to God. For me, it's God, the higher power, whoever people subscribe to. You can't do that on a hamster wheel. You can't do that while you're running on a track. You have to be still with yourself. So my question to you is there are people listening right now, they've never done it before. The thought of sitting down with meditation is like, oh my goodness, how can I be still? And it's fascinating to me that people find being still so difficult versus constantly being on the hamster wheel. Because I'm the total opposite. Let me be still. I could care less about being on that hamster wheel.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

So let me tell you how I began this. First of all, the meditation I teach, uh, I tell people that meditation is not a spiritual life. Okay. The first thing is it's a craft that you learn that enables you to develop your humanity. Because without a developed humanity, nobody's gonna have a spiritual life. Without being able to keep your heart open, without having a quiet mind, without being nobody is gonna have a spiritual life.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Let's go a little bit deep on that, please. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 27:31

I I'll tell you what, I when I first started this thing as well, uh I used to try to sit on my own and do this. What I do, I couldn't sit for five minutes. My mind was bouncing and I said, Stuart, you've got to learn. And it took time to learn. It's like, you know, you go into a uh, you know, in order to do uh high-level mathematics, you gotta learn that one plus one equals two. You know, you gotta learn the basics of mathematics to prepare yourself to do algebra and all these high things that people do. This, you know, astrophysicists, and and you gotta learn that you gotta get the foundation in before you can do. So the foundation has to be built inside a human being. It takes time. It takes time, it takes the work that one is willing to do on themselves in order to attain this. Now, when I first started doing this, I mean, I if I try to sit on my own and do the meditation my teacher was teaching me, I couldn't sit for five minutes. And then I kept doing it. Why is that? Your mind kept on ruminating. It was like a it was like you know, a ping pong match, you know, going on in my head, birds, thousands of areas of a stage in my mind. Yeah. And I and I couldn't sit. And then I said, no, Stuart, you gotta learn how to do this. And I would do it every day. I would sit down for five minutes, five and a half minutes, six minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Just like anything, you're building the muscle.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

You learn how to do it. You build a system inside that enables so if you can't do it, I uh a lot of people tell I can't sit, I can't sit. Say, well, I couldn't sit either when I first started this. You know, I had to learn how to do it. And I think this is a really important thing for teamaroo. You go to school, you don't start school going for a PhD, you start school in kindergarten, you know, and you learn the most basic elements of education, and then you build it up. And 20 years later, you're getting a PhD, you're getting a this or that, you know, because you have built a system that can truly deal with the knowledge that is required to get uh become a doctor, become a neurosurgeon, become an astrophysicist, become a, you know, whatever, you know. Uh you need to build a system. You know, it's like I always tell people the pyramids were not built from the top down. From the bottom up. They were built from the bottom up. And the bottom is this broad space, this huge foundation. The top is like the third eye, you know? It's a tiny brick. It really is, yeah. The bottom is this broad, and that is what's missing in the light. They don't build the grounding, the foundation inside themselves that enables them to eventually sit quietly.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

You know, you said you mentioned something about how as human beings, you we go through the process, you get your PhD, you get your master's, or you start, let's start kindergarten, then you go to school, you go through all the different tiers, right? And then you get to the point where you either you have your PhD or master's. It's it's fascinating to me that as human beings, we can endure that, but we cannot endure sitting with ourselves for five minutes. To me, that says a lot about how humanity is. It says a lot about how us as humans live outside of ourselves. Because what it shows me is that anything that's on the outside of ourselves, we're willing to put ourselves through it. We have the courage, the resilience, as long as we see maybe something that's tangible, the degree or the title, or you know what I mean? But then when it comes to us, when when I talk to people and I say, just rest for five minutes. I I work with women and women, we're constantly on the hamster wheel. You know, we we are, we've been conditioned and um to live this life where all we do is serve and perform and perform and perform. And women are exhausted, women are depleted. And I'm not talking about just exhausted, I need a nap. I'm talking about an innate exhaustion where it's not just your body, right? It's your mind where you can't even think. But we continuously have to keep going because the world, quote unquote, you know, is depending on us. So, but when I when I talk to women and I say rest, it's kind of like I said, I don't know. I don't I don't even know what to equate it to. It's like, what do you mean? I can't rest. I mean, I have this, I have that, and I had this, and I have that, and I have that. And what's happening is, which has been happening for years, is the illness that's happening in our bodies, women getting sick, the autoimmune diseases. I mean, even as far as cancer, research shows that cancer is not only coming either from food or if it's hereditary, it's coming from suppression, suppression of self, your feelings, your wants, your desire, and essentially suppression of your own humanity. So we're functioning on this space where it's this human being at call who doesn't really exist, and that's why we're constantly on that chase. But we're willing to live our life and sacrifice ourselves to get to know this human being that does not exist, that society has given us. But when someone tells us rest, it's like, oh my God, what are you talking about? I cannot do this. What is it with that?

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Well, it's just, you know, look, the most thing people are the most frightened thing. The most frightened thing people are uh uh you know have in their lives is really an image of who they are inside themselves.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Can you say that again?

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Yeah, most frightening thing that people uh that people are up against in their lives is a discovery of who they are inside themselves. And what I why? Because that means they have to be completely responsible to change inside and honest to develop and be honest with themselves. Most people that live this endlessly giving, giving, giving, giving, giving are covering that up. They're afraid to go inside and you can't give unconditionally unless you can receive unconditionally. And receiving unconditionally means that we have to open inside.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

And transform it into something that is open to receive what life is giving us and teaching us. And people are afraid to do that. It means they you know, I mean, it's it's just you know, look, if you look in the mirror and you see a pimple on your cheek, you're not gonna pick up.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

Oh, it's me and that pimple for five minutes. It's on, trying to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

You're not gonna put the salve on the mirror. Yeah. Understand? You're gonna where the pimple is, that's where you're gonna go. People look in life at life and they see exactly what's wrong with them. And they're constantly trying to fix life instead of fixing themselves and transforming themselves in stuff, and then their life is gonna change because they will see the world differently. Yeah. Every you have eight billion people, every human being sees their own unique reality. Yeah. Everybody's trying to fit everybody else into their reality. Nobody fits. So all you have is this conflict going on all the time.

SPEAKER_03 35:33

And it's interesting you say that, Stuart. I this this idea of wanting everybody to the reason why I'm saying this is this idea, I I say that living our lives based on other people's expectations. When you think about it, everyone in your life wants you to show up in their life as a certain person. Think about how confusing that is. That means if I'm I'm speaking to you at this moment, you expect me to show up as a certain type of Isabel. When I walk out of this door and I'm and I go somewhere else, that person is expecting me to show up. And that's what the world is living like in this constant state of adjustment, depending on where they're at. And that's why it's important to know yourself. So no matter what room or area that you're in, you stay grounded. But a lot of us live a life where in whatever environment or section we are, we're there to perform and please those people. So we are constantly adjusting ourselves on a daily basis. And we wonder why when we get home, we're so exhausted. It's the performance piece. We're so good at performing, but and yet we're disconnected from who God created us to be.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Another thing I've learned just recently is about look, spiritual energy is not positive or negative. It's pure. And it's the energy that is creating the universe, but it's pure. It comes into people, and because people have no training inside and they live in a dual world, positive and negative, right and wrong, this kind of conflict and as I call it chaos that exists. How the energy manifests as it flows through them is according to exactly who they are. So they are giving off into life their reality. Now they want everybody else to fit into that reality, but nobody fits. So the practice of meditation is just about getting a state of openness inside oneself. Yeah. Keeping the heart open, keeping the mind quiet, being centered and balanced inside. So what's creating the universe, the spirit that flows through us, manifest, you know, in as love, compassion, joy, happiness. I mean, I always say happy people are enlightened people. Yeah. You know, it's almost impossible to find somebody that can live with joy every day of their lives.

SPEAKER_03 38:15

You know, um, not to cut you off, I have a family member, and we always talk about him like, why is he like that? I mean, he's the type of person where I don't care what's going on, he is a happy person. He may have lost his job today, doesn't have this, but he was always, he's always a joyful person. And my truth is, we always looked at him like something is wrong with him. Something is wrong. Why can't he be serious about life?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Well, it's a great Japanese story, yeah, really. Uh and I I used to, I was for 30 years in the Asian art business where I saw Hindu Buddhist art, big collectors and museums and stuff like that. Yeah. And they there was there's a Japanese legend, and this is great, of two monks, I forgot their names, always painted like drunken monks. Yeah. They're drunk on life, these two guys. And uh and when the abbot of the monastery died, took his samadhi, they had to get, you know, replaced the abbot, but they had to replace it with someone who truly was a living example of Zen, of Zen Buddhism.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

The only people they could find in the monastery that were living examples of Zen Buddhism were these two monks. They would they weren't drunk on alcohol, they were drunk on life. On life. And the Japanese, they used to paint these guys. I mean, I used to love those paintings, you know, these two drunken guys.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Yeah, yeah, they're drunk on life. And I wish the world would be drunk on life, but it's it's it's really unfortunate. And um, there's so much pain, you know. There's so much I wanted to ask you this question. Yes, now I remember. Like there's so much pain associated with we talk about meditation a lot. You talk about the chakras, and a lot of conversation that's happening now, it's becoming common conversation, is trauma. Okay. A lot of people are talking. Can you talk to me a little bit about trauma? What do you how can you define it? I know trauma is really not what happened to you, it's how it's what you experience uh because of what happened to you. It's not the actual act of it, it's the experience that you're having because of what happened.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

I can only talk from my own living experiences as well. Yeah. Uh my life transformed itself the day my father died. It was like my life transformed itself the day my father died. Okay. It was talk to us about that. I was 16 years old at the time. The trauma of discovering that my father was dying was very profound. And I I I was a young kid, and I remember for one entire week he was suffering from a fever that he didn't recognize, my mother, my sister, or myself. And I remember going into his hospital room just before he died, and he was lying in bed in a state of complete serenity. Complete serenity. I had never seen that kind of energy in anybody before. I looked into his eyes, I could see a thousand miles. The room was full of light. It was full of an energy I had never experienced. And then I left the room for a minute, and I met his nurse in the hallway. And I'll never forget this woman. She she basically changed my life. She said to me, to her experience, just before people die, they go into this very deep state of serenity. It's like they have let go of everything, all the battles of life, everything they they have let go of everything. And I said to myself, at that point, why did my father have to wait 49 years to let go? To let go. I said, why didn't he? I never saw him that serene in the 16 years I knew him. Why, you know, why you know you know, and it transformed that trauma of that experience transformed my life. I didn't know what way it I began to look for somebody who could teach me how to do it. Oh, okay, okay, that's when you met your nine-year journey until I found this person. And then the same thing happened when with this person who I found. I studied with him for six years. We were flying in an airplane in the Catskill Mountains, going up to upstate New York, where this group had invited my teacher to come and teach. We hit a mountain. We were in an airplane crash. And my teacher died. He passed on in that airplane crash. Now he was the person I was the closest to, even closer than my parents. I loved him so profoundly and unconditionally, because of he saved my life, basically. And I was holding his hand when we hit the mountain. And you talk about trauma, you know? And my first thought was when I realized that he had passed, now you'll find out what the last six years were really about. Can you sustain his teachings? Can you continue to grow in your life? Yeah. Can did you really learn what he taught you? He is not around anymore to to kick your ass. You know, he's not around anymore to push you. Can you do this? And it was, I mean, those were probably two of the most traumatic things that ever happened to me. Both of them gave me life. They instead of getting depressed and unhappy and miserable. Said, no, how can you find a way to grow in your life because of these things that are happening to grow in your life? I think what happens to people is negative things happen to them and they get into states of depression, unhappiness, not realizing they are in a way these negative things are a kind of gift. Yeah. We haven't arrived yet. We have to grow inside. We have a life to live, this precious thing called time that we have to spend. And how are we going to use it to develop ourselves as human beings, to grow, to become more? And this is exactly what my teacher wanted me to do. Because he used to tell me, he said, Stuart, when I pass on, don't build shrines to me. He said, Don't lament my death, don't cry at my grave. Just learn what I have to teach. And by learning what I have to teach, continue to grow in your life and follow your path and to nurture other people and to become a servant of a higher energy, of two things, of a higher energy in the universe and of humanity. This is what he told me before he died. Yeah. And I think this is what's missing in people. They don't understand. These tragedies come to I mean, it was one of the great plays ever written was Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus' wisdom came after he was blinded. You know, after the trauma, the biggest trauma that happened in his life. He was blinded. He gained all this wisdom. You know, and it's really the thing that life teaches us, because we can't determine what is going to happen in 10 minutes. No. No. No.

SPEAKER_03 45:51

Yeah, I say that all the time. Um, I tell people, I don't know what's going to happen in 10 minutes, let alone the next 30 minutes. Like this is now. Life is lived now. You know, we're not here to perform. We have to be in the in order to live life, you have to be in the present moment. There's no other way about it. I don't care how much money you have, I don't care what your title is, but the whole human concept, the aspect of being a human being, requires being in the present moment, which is the hardest thing to do for a world that's constantly on the go. And I think that's part of humanity's battle today, is really deciding what it is that we want to lean into, what we want to feed into. Because if if you sit with yourself, you feel like the world is moving without you, because it's constantly going and everybody's moving, you know. But then when you come on this side, you're living outside of yourself. There's no being in there, being in your humanity, there's no being in your presence, there's no actually being yourself. So it's that people are trying to juggle the two. I have to keep constantly moving in order to survive in this world, so they think. But if I turn into myself and sit with myself, what am I doing? You know, and it's for me that's that's extremely sad. And I feel that if I could scream on the mountaintop as to how important it is for us to be with ourselves, to sit with ourselves, I found that's been the most powerful thing that has happened for me. I may not have a million dollars on my lap, but just how I view life now, I view myself. Um no longer in a victimhood space. I had to do that. Not kill, not anybody, not a therapist, not a coach. I had to sit with myself and connect to my higher power and understand where was this coming from and why, and then not look at it as a problem. I had to have compassion for myself. Oh, okay. So this is what it is. This is how you've been showing up. Oh, okay. How has this been serving you, Isabel? Not too well. But what I found interesting is throughout my journey, those places, even the time when I was showing up as a victim, living in the victimhood, I stopped judging myself about that because that victimhood mentality kept me safe for a very long time. Because I doesn't make sense to you, it kept me safe enough until when it was time for me to change. So, and I tell my clients this all the time as you're moving through life, it's so important to have compassion for yourself. We've taken away the things that bring the humanity out of us, compassion, right? It's it's the love we say love, love, love, love, but do people really exercise it? Do you really practice unconditional love? And what does that look like to you? And that's that's my only frustrating thing. It's just I feel like, can we just be human? Can we be human again? Can we make mistakes? Can we stumble? Can we say, I don't know how to do this? And it's okay. Can I not have the best degree in the world and you still value me as a as a human being? Can I just be myself and still be seen, heard, and valued as a human being first before you put the titles and all the other stuff? I think that's where the frustrating part is in the world that we're living in.

SPEAKER_00 49:31

I agree with that, Isabel. You know, look, when I was look, I taught meditation in prisons. Yeah. And at the same time, I ran a business and I had to deal with very wealthy people. Yeah. In order to run my business. So I I used to see both ends of the spectrum. And uh I discovered is it was one thing, rich or poor, everybody was afraid of. Why? The unknown. What's up? And that creates so much tension inside everybody is afraid of death. They're afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of what the future is gonna bring. I don't care how rich you are. I mean, all these billionaires are trying to make hundreds of billions of dollars.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

It's never enough, right? They keep going and going and going.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

And and I think that this is something that's amazing because it's in the unknown that all of creative energy exists. It's in the unknown, you know, that we get the inspiration to do remarkable things in our life. People are afraid of, they're afraid of stepping into the unknown. They're afraid everything has to be familiar to them, you know, where they control everything. And it's familiar. That's it. The control. And uh I I think that, you know, look, I I I once had a client, and this is really interesting. You know, I won't mention any names here, you know, but I had a client, but I got this work of art that was really extraordinary. And I called him up, and this guy was worth maybe at that time, this is 20 years ago, he was worth$15 billion, you know, and called him up, and I said, You got to come by, and I had a partner in this thing, and we met with him at my loft in Manhattan where we met. And he came out of the elevator of my law bitching and complaining about everything in the world. There was nothing right in life. Complaining. And this guy is worth$15 billion. And there was nothing right in life. I'll never forget this. It was like a Buddha talking to me. Anyway, I looked at him and I said, Look, what are you complaining about? You you you were born into this, you know? Yeah. The right sperm, I told him, you know, you were born into this. And he looked at me and a little excited. He said, You want it? You want it? Wow. What he said to me. It was the Buddha talking to me. It was the Buddha telling me how it's all an illusion. And how totally freaked out people are about stepping into the unknown, what goes on. They haven't built a system, and no matter how rich they are, they haven't built a system inside themselves to be able to deal with the chaos of life. They get swept into it and it eats them alive. Yeah. I'll never I mean, I'll I I was so grateful to this guy. I never sold him anything. I think he was so upset at me. But I was so grateful to him that what he said was like uh this and one of the great lessons I had learned early on in my life. Yeah, yeah. How you know people, money doesn't do this. You know, uh people need to build an inner life that gives them a secure connection with higher energy in the universe, where they have developed an open heart, a quiet mind, a grounding. They have mastered their sexual energy and they can use it to activate a force inside which will give them a spiritual life. So, you know, learning these things takes time. My teacher Rudy told me if anybody ever asks you who the guru is, just tell them the guru is life.

SPEAKER_03 53:34

Life is the teacher of all.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

Oh, it took me life is the teacher of all. Life is the teacher. Took me 20 years to master that teaching, Isabel. To learn what he was. Life is the greatest university. And every experience, there are no accidents, every experience is teaching us about ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

What we have to learn in order to grow inside and to become more human. And I'll never forget, if anyone asks you who the guru is, and I tell people I am not the guru. I said, you know, Swami, they're not the guru. My job is to help train people to sit in front of the real guru, which is yourself life. And nobody's gonna sit in life if they're living with profound insecurity inside themselves. Yeah. They're living with fear inside themselves, if their mind is chaotic, their emotions are chaotic, and they can't deal with that stuff that goes on inside.

SPEAKER_03 54:32

Yeah, yeah. And constantly on this um chase. You know, I I I sit and think like, wow, you know, people we're in this space of acquiring. We want to acquire this, we want to acquire more money. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, um, even God says, I'll give you the desires of your heart. So whatever you want, you can have. I find it sad though that we spent our time acquiring and not acknowledging and knowing ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

You can do both at the same time, yeah. I'll tell you some one more stories, I'll tell you a story.

SPEAKER_03 55:11

All right, tell me one more story.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

Look, when my teeth my teacher, Rudy, was probably one of the biggest dealers in Asian art in America. He had lofts full of stuff that he had bought that he was and when he passed on, his mother took over the business for him. His mother and I were very close. You know, I uh you know, she was a difficult Brooklyn woman who, you know, you know, tough and ground, you know. New Yorker. I loved her. I loved her, you know, because I grew up in the Bronx and I knew people like that. And I just loved her, you know, and we had a great kind. She calls me up one day and she says, Stuart, how would you like to buy two truckloads of art for me? So I said to her, I'm living in Texas. And I said, Ray, do you know where I live? She said, Well, I said, Ray, I live in a very conservative Christian town. If I start selling Buddhas and Shivas here, then I come and probably They'll have the HOA kick you out. Come set a fire and burn me, you know? I I so she started to laugh. She said, Okay, just think about it. So I thought about it for 10 minutes. And I said, Stuart, you have a thousand dollars to your name. And I called her back and I said, Ray, I know I'm this is crazy, but I'll do it. I'll do it. And I went to New York and I went to her gallery, and the first day was impossible. All the prices were twice as high and this and that, and you know, and it was all the complaining about life, and you know. And I finally walked out of there and said, to get it. You know, uh my Oriental career is finished with. Anyway, I taught a meditation class that day at a friend of mine's apartment in Manhattan. And in the class, my teacher Rudy came, his soul force came into the class, and he said to me, Stuart, buy my mother a bottle of scotch. And, you know, and I don't drink. I didn't get drunk since I buy my mother a bottle of scotch. And I said, A bottle of scotch? Buy my he said, repeated it three times, buy my mother a bottle of. I went down the next day, I went to a liquor store, bought a bottle of Shivers Regal, because I knew she liked Shivers Regal. Went down to her gallery, walked in, gave her the bottle of Shivers Regal, and all the energy changed. Suddenly all the things were half price. Oh my goodness. It was unbelievable. I filled up two truckloads because I bought this woman a bottle of Scott. She made me lunch, she was hugging me and thanking me and telling me stories about Rudy. And I mean, it was it was an incredible day. Yeah. And I uh and I look back and I put myself in debt. I had about$1,000 to my name for$175,000. And at that time, it was probably$2 million in today's work. And I said, How are you going to do this to it? And what I did is I used my meditation and my inner work to draw the energy out of the cosmos that gave me business sense and how to run this business and how to become successful in this business. And two to three years later, I paid off the debt. Yeah, I paid off the debt. And I, you know, and I wound up having this extremely successful Asian art business. What enabled me to be successful at it and not be swept away in the greed of it was I kept remembering to go up and tap this higher force in the universe. This was my purpose. This was giving me money to run a meditation center. This was giving me the money to do, you know, wonderful things in my life that were helping other people. That energy. So it was the business that reminded me that I had to get deeper into the spiritual energy in order to keep myself getting deeper into the business and sucked into all the money and greed. And I used to meet endless people that were sucked into that money and greed. Yeah. I had to deal with these people all the time. If you run a business, you have to deal with people like that. Yeah. The only way I was capable of dealing with them is I kept building a stronger system in myself that enabled me to connect with the higher force of energy in the universe.

SPEAKER_03 59:46

Yeah. Because it's spiritual. I mean, it honestly, everything is spiritual when you think about it. Well, this has been truly amazing, but before I let you go. So for someone listening right now who feels like they've been trying for years, they've been trying for years, Stuart, and nothing, they've been trying to heal for years and nothing is working. What would you say to them? So this person they've just been going through this journey where they want something different, be different, live different. But they feel stuck. Nothing is moving, nothing is changing. What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

I can say to them, well, first of all, I spent nine years living in the same condition. Something, nothing changed for me, looking for it, never stopped believing that I would find something that would work for me. I finally met, and I knew, I I knew that in my state I was incapable of doing it. I needed somebody to teach me how to do it. And I spent nine years looking for this person, and I went half around the world literally looking for him or her, whoever it was. And I came back to my hometown in New York City and found him. And I found him, which was seemingly an accident. And it wasn't an accident. No. It completely but it's my need to find that in myself. I need to say you're not gonna go and get a house in Scarsdale with a white picket fence, four television sets, and five cars, and consider that to be your life. I needed something more, something more creative, something you know, on a higher level of my life. And it kept me looking and looking until I found what I was looking for. This person will find what they're looking for if they never stop needing to have a spiritual life. Okay. If they stop needing that, it'll all become a desert. All just try up. But if they have that need inside, that hunger in themselves, they will find somebody who can help them master that and grow to the point. And a teacher is not somebody that just wants disciples. A teacher is somebody who will uh train a person, teach a person how to build their own connection with the divine, and have their own independent life being connected with the divine. I always tell my students, if I ever saw a bunch of clones sitting in front of me, I'd be the first one to leave here. You know, my job is to help people build that strength inside themselves so they can have their own independent connection with God. And a teacher will teach that. And I I would tell this person that. They cannot forget that need in themselves. Sometimes that need is very painful, you know, but one has to be willing to go through it until bingo, suddenly the universe hears them. They are ready, they have exhausted everything and they are really ready to grow inside themselves.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

I like that you said that need is painful, because it is painful. Yes. And um I believe that's why a lot of people, people don't want to be in pain, but it's transformation and healing requires to go through what you've been through. And I think people don't want to experience that pain. Because it is painful to be able, there's a lot of unlearning, there's a lot of self-reflection, there's a self-reflection for me is the biggest part of it. It's easy to say these people are doing A, B, C, D, and E.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Yeah. Just one introduction. There's gonna be pain anyway. Okay. My teacher Rudy told me, you either suffer consciously or you suffer like a conscious. This is what he told me. You suffer consciously or you suffer like a schmuck. And if you suffer consciously, then you use the pain to find a way to get past it. If you suffer like a ash, you know, that pain uses you in order to make your life more miserable.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:16

It's powerful. I'm gonna take that. Thank you for that correction. I like that. There's pain anyway. Yeah. So the the point is, do you want to use it consciously or not? But when you use it consciously with that, with that being said, I hope I'm using mine consciously because I always say that I use my pain to serve. My pain used to control me. It used to make me feel like a victim, but then now I'm ahead of it. Now I have the power because I understand I didn't create the pain. It's things that happen, and as you say, pain is everywhere. So instead of being sad and be like, oh my God, why did this happen to me? I'm like, okay, this is perfect. So how are we using this to help my audience? How are we using this to help the people around me, including myself? So I love that you say that there's pain anywhere. I just need to use my pain concept.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:12

I used to have a painting of a Japanese Zen painting of a staff, a staff, just a staff. Okay. It was then there was uh you know, writing on the side. I mean, those that are on the path get hit by the staff, and those that are not on the path get hit by this staff. It happens anyway. Anyway, so you might as well use all the stuff you complain about as a means of growing in yourself and not as a means of defeating yourself. I love that.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:44

Anyway, might as well use everything you're talking about as a means to growing yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Instead of as a means of defeating yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:52

Of defeating yourself. Well, Stuart, thank you so much. This is an end. Before we go, I'm gonna let you go. I know you have other things to do. Where can people find You learn from you and go deeper with you in this work. Could you share with us where people can find you?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

Yeah, they can. I have a website, uh Stuartperin.com, www.stewartperin.com. I have this book which you've been reading and people can read. And this book really goes into what I teach in enormous depth. It's amazing. And it just does it in a simple way that anyone could understand it. It's not written with a lot of Sanskrit terms and metaphysical terms. It's in basic language. It's a lot of poetry too. And it's literary. But it's a book that anybody could understand. And uh and I just lowered the price on it. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, uh Walmart, you can get it. Any bookstore, local bookstore can order it for you. You know, and uh and I suggest they read this. Uh another thing is I have about 1,400 talks I've given, videos of talks I've given on YouTube and Facebook. Okay. People can easily find me there. Podcasts, I've been doing a lot of them lately. And so I'm available and I teach seven times a week on Zoom. And I have people that attend my classes from four different continents. So being far away is not an excuse. It can be in your living room and you can learn all these things that I've learned in my life now in these Zoom classes. So it's readily available, and I God bless, I hope people take advantage of it. My job My job, Isabel, is to give away everything I've learned in my life. That's true. I can't take it with me. I'm not getting younger, and I have to give it away. And I dream about having people that want to take it. You know, I I don't have a fee for what I teach. Yeah. There's no cost. I mean, I ask people, yes, at the month I send out my digital, like virtual begging bowl, make five dollar donations.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:03

You're offering.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:05

And you know, and I get enough money to pay the rent and to live, and but I don't I don't make money on this. Sure. So poverty is not a reason. And you know, you know, you can find me, have Wi-Fi. That's the only thing that keeps you from what will enable you to do it and not do it, just to have Wi-Fi.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:24

Yeah. Well, Stuart, as as always, for me personally, I'm I'm truly honored, um, truly blessed to know you and to have you in my life. And again, thank you. Thank you so much for what you do. Thank you for giving your heart, your knowledge, and thank you for wanting to make this world a better place because people are suffering. The truth is, people are suffering, and it's people like you who are so selfless and you just want to see the world a better place. You know, thank you, thank you so much. I can't tell you thank you enough, and it's been an honor to have you on here.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

You're welcome, and God bless you. Thank you for doing this, for having me here, and for us having met because it's something really terrific.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

Yes, yes, I'm honored. Thank you. Take care. Thank you for listening to the Loud Whispery Nitro Voice Podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please be sure to subscribe so that you never miss a conversation. I would also be honored if you would consider leaving a positive rating and review on Upper Podcast. As always, you can connect with me through the links in the description. Thanks again for listening. We're so glad you could join us today and look forward to supporting you on your greatest journey. Have a great day.