It Was All A Dream | Hear For Now Ep.14

The secret of self-realisation is not in the results that you achieve but in the character that you develop.

We live in a world where success is measured by how many 0’s are on the end of your bank statement, or how many followers you have on Instagram.

We recently discovered that you can find your purpose through understanding your personality and through understanding your personality, you can understand your soul.

In this episode, you will discover why the education system fails in teaching us emotional and spiritual intelligence, how to get out of the anxiety of keeping up with the Jones’s and how to be compassionate to those who don’t understand your spiritual journey.

Tune in to discover your personality type so that you can have authenticity in your material and spiritual life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

In one sense, as we were speaking about to start this episode, trying to understand oneself and who you are, but also trying to understand other people and their nature and their background. In this way, you can create a more purposeful and directional society based on acceptance and love rather than fear and misunderstanding. With myself, Joseph, and where's Abby? Abby is engaged, so I apologize to all the listeners, but you're gonna have to put up with myself and not put up with, but listen very happily, I'm sure, to Joseph once again. You're very lucky. Anyway, so we were kind of discussing things to speak about, and um just before the cameras started rolling, Joseph had a moment of inspiration. Something spoke to him from his heart, and I said, wait until we started filming to share what that might be. So I'm very curious to hear what it actually is. Um if you can share, Joseph.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Well, before we we mentioned faith, and then just before the episode started, I remember hearing a talk about having purpose through knowing your personality. And then I remembered um this business course I did, and they were doing this personality test on everyone, and there would be like four different areas of different personalities in the room. They would call it disc. Have you ever heard of disc? No, so it's like these four different personality types. Like D is like dominant personality, I is like influencer, S is uh someone who's very stable, and uh C is someone who's like compliant, conscientious. So maybe if I give an example for each, like a D would be like an Annan Sugar, maybe an I would be maybe like uh April Winfrey. Um S would be maybe like a Ryan Giggs. Okay. It's like good relationships with people, takes their time, thinks about things.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

What did you say S was again?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Um like stibb stable, stable and C was um conscientious, like a like an accountant or like someone who's like thinks heavily about things and they have different colours for each one. So anyway, we did this test and uh we all went to our different based on a certain type of questions, we went to different sections of the room and then we find our supposed personality and from there we can know what we're suited to in life, whether that's um sales or marketing or accounting and all these things. Um and then I was hearing a talk recently at Studio 108, a spiritual talk, which was about finding your purpose through your personality. And in the Vedic literature, there's different sort of personality tests, but there's also four um there's one who's like more business-minded, one who's um more scholarly, one who's more orderly or or maybe authoritative, um, and one who's um maybe more creative or like a general worker. Anyway, so I was thinking about about this topic and about actually knowing who you are allows you to have faith, allows you to be situated in um in the right consciousness for for your activity and that will give you faith. Like actually f actual faith comes through action, not just believing, or something I was thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

What were you out of interest? Just curious. In this uh business one. I was dominant. I was a mixture between D and I. Wow, that's a very powerful combination. Dominant and influential. But I wasn't why we're doing podcasting. But I wasn't SOC, which means I don't think a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Um about I mean I'm I mean it means I'm a fast decision maker rather than a so decision maker.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

I'm definitely someone that likes to contemplate things and things like that. It's interesting because sometimes I think when it comes to spiritual life, people consider that um you know spiritual life means the uh flunking of responsibility. Not that people think that, but it means you know living a life which is ultimately free and that you can do what you want when you want, um, and that your kind of character, your ability to express yourself naturally will emerge only once you leave the confines of um the kind of um designated roles that one has to play within society, you know. But yeah, like you're speaking about in the Vedic literature, it's explained that everybody has a subtly different nature, or we all have a unique nature actually, um, and that it's not through running away from that, but through taking responsibility um and utilizing whatever assets we have in spiritual activity and in service that we can best contribute. And you know, you can see that now with you know what you're doing, what many people are doing. It's like that you say you've got this perhaps you have this if the correct if the test is correct, then you have this dominant influential nature. Um and you're being pushed into areas, perhaps would you say that you can utilize those?

unknown 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

An interesting thing that I got from that test was that it showed that the school system was meant for people who are SNC, and I was the opposite of DNI. And so SNC is like conscientious, thinks about things a lot. And you need what they were saying is that you need both. You need to harmonize. So if you're a business owner, for instance, you need to look if you if you already have a lot of DNI people, you need SNC people to balance them out. You need like a a mix, which is the same in the Vedic literature as well. They said that like one is like the feet, one is the belly, one is uh the chest and arms, and one is the head, and it all works together. So spirituality isn't independent, but it's interdependent on different personalities and yeah, there's so there's four types that are described in the Vedic paradigm.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Yeah. Which are called Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisha, and Sudra. Yeah. And so the Shudra is like the um yeah, you can say someone that's more inclined to maybe artistry, to work, to craft, this sort of thing. The Vaishya, someone who's more inclined to mercantile activity. So they might be a businessman or this sort of thing. Satya, like you said, the ruler, the manager type, and Ben Brahman as other ones of the scholarly or traditionally the priestly class, because for the ideal society, um, you would have these four different types of people working in harmony. And I think, you know, if we observe ourselves, perhaps we have a subtly heavier weight leaning towards one of those one of those categories. It's not always the case. It's said that in ideal spiritual societies, um, those divisions were more clear, but nowadays there's less of a clear, uh there's less of a clear division because people aren't living in such a dharmic or spiritually aligned way to maintain those sorts of systems. Um but I just find it interesting that in the ideal civilization to the ruling class of people, the managers, these people, um, that they would have to take counsel and advice from um the spiritual individuals, the Brahmanas, because that was the essence of upholding and maintaining ethics and morality and all of these things. That there was some sense of um what is the right way of doing things. It's not that it was a complete free-for-all, but there was a spiritually aligned and correct way of doing things. Whereas now the people that are in positions of power in the world, um, you know, I mean, I don't need to name all the names, but virtually all of them, they're either more inclined towards money making than they are to protection and um ruling in a way that's gonna maintain spiritual value. Um, yeah, or they're simply self-interested, it's sense gratification that they're looking for. And so, yeah, when you have an imbalance in this way, then the world tends towards chaos and you can just see it playing out. It's just very I find it all so fascinating when you look at it from the Vedic paradigm when you look at it like that.

unknown 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

One thing that I took away from that talk I mentioned on this personality, this is this at Studio 108, this one, on the personality of the Buddha Bhavana for real. Same with Bhutta Bhavana, he gave this talk on personality through purpose. By knowing your purpose, oh no, by knowing your personality, you can actually then go towards your spiritual life and then understand your purpose. And one story he mentioned was in a text called Shrimad Bhagavatam, which is a set of 18 books, and he there's this story in in one section of an elephant having a fight with the crocodile, and normally the elephant in any other setting was much stronger, much more well built, and could have easily destroyed the crocodile in any situation. But they were having this fight in the water in the crocodile's habitat, and so although the um although the elephant started up here in terms of strength and the crocodile here, as the fight went on it gradually changed, and so the crocodile was stronger, and then the elephant was um overpowered, out overpowered by the crocodile. And so, um yeah, it reminds me a lot of I guess my own life in many ways of trying to find myself and then it's it said that when you f match your worldly duties with your spiritual duties, your your worldly you could call it dharma, with your spiritual connection, then there's actual love. But if there's they're not aligned, then you can't properly focus on on your spiritual duties.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Um Can you speak a bit more about that, like what it means, how the how what you mean by actual love and then how actual love can manifest from aligning your spiritual nature with your material duties, how actual love can manifest there.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

How actual love can manifest in through your your activities, you mean?

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Yeah, because you were saying if your spiritual nature and your material nature are in harmony or then you there can be there can be love, like actual love with you.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I said that we're whatever we do, we we exploit material nature. So let's say we want to be vegetarian because it's better for the environment, it's better for morality in general, so okay, I'm gonna be vegetarian, and then you start eating like soybeans, avocado, and all these things are like not good for the environment, and then you realize okay, well everything I'm doing is having some negative impact, so I might as well just give up and just not um not work on that aspect of myself. But then if you become vegetarian vegetarian for maybe a spiritual reason rather than just um including the environmental reasons and the morality reasons, but for realizing that I'm a spiritual being, this animal that's being uh slaughtered is also a spiritual being, and so I want to be vegetarian and see the soul in everyone, and then your activities it's it's it the the effects of that are on a spiritual plane, not just a material plane, so the karma for that is is reduced or nullified rather than um yeah, or not just just focusing on the material plane, okay. This is the my life I'm gonna set out. This is um the certain values and principles I have. But everything in the material world has a negative impact, no matter what you do, and so without having the spiritual spiritual side to it, it will be flawed at some point, there'll be some negative consequence and all of these things. But if you see the unity within diversity, actually that spiritual element will allow for any material contaminations if that makes sense, because you're doing it for a higher, higher purpose, a higher principle. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 13:29

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense, it makes sense. Um yeah, it's like kind of what you were saying about the the story with the elephant and the crocodile as well. Um, like you said, you know, depending on where you're situated, first of all, you have to situate yourself correctly and then you can go where you want to go more easily. Um yeah, because he was saying that if you're situated in a uh in the wrong place, so you're doing something that's not really according to your nature, you know, maybe you have an amazing ability to express yourself artistically, but then you find yourself doing accounting, you know, it's a pretty painful experience. Um But you know it said I think in Bhagavad Gita, it's better to do your duty imperfectly than to do someone else's duty perfectly. Like, because if you're doing your your duty perfect uh imperfectly, but you're doing your duty, um and someone else can is is able to do to fill that space as well, and then you're able to contribute to a more cohesive whole. You yourself become more satisfied and more happy, and if you yourself are happier, then naturally um yeah, that spills out. Everyone's in a position where they're more satisfied and the level of happiness is greater, the level of harmony is greater, and socially there's more cohesion like that. Um but if you're doing someone else's duty and you're do even if you're doing it perfectly, it's like the the net loss is a bit greater on a personal level because you know to make progress you expend a lot more than you know if you're doing something that's natural to you, you can make progress without expending so much in terms of energy, time, emotional drain, all of these things, you know. Um so yeah, the the benefit of trying to understand um a little more about who you are and what makes you tick is fundamental. But then another thing is having the courage to to do that and to acknowledge that. Because I think for a lot of people it's very scary to um yeah, it's very scary to live truth to live truthfully, like according to what's actually meaningful to you. If you're in a relationship and you're not quite happy or you know, if you're doing a job which isn't satisfying, but it's paying the bills, you know. It's like it's very hard for people to um yeah, to be honest in that regard and Yeah, I think in my own life as well, like for whatever reason, by God's grace, I was quite stubborn about doing things that felt um right to me. Like going to uh university from secondary school Yeah, I remember, you know there were a lot of people uh quite a few people doing subjects and things that perhaps weren't that they were very interested in, but they were um quite practical and they were vocational. Um But if I was honest with myself, I mean if a lot of young people are honest with themselves, at the age of 18 it's quite rare to know what you want to do with your life. And so I just chose to do something that I enjoyed in a place that I liked as opposed to do something that I don't really enjoy and doesn't mean anything to me in a place which um has social acumen and status. And so I studied English literature, which I would I found fascinating and I loved, and philosophy. And I did it uh in Nottingham, my undergraduate. Nottingham University, it's like one of the most idyllic places, beautiful lakes, rolling hills, wonderful campus. Anyway, and it was I was very satisfied and I felt very peaceful when I was walking around, and so I based my decisions on yeah, what I thought would lead to my ultimate happiness, really. And then after leaving university, um, I didn't want to lurch into a job that I didn't necessarily enjoy without knowing why I was doing it, and so I took time to consider, you know, how can I live a meaningful life? What is it that um I can do which will earn me some money, because you need money to survive practically, but where I can also do something meaningful. And I eventually settled upon the idea that doing something that's which can open people's eyes to the reality um there was something deeper than the mind and body. I decided to do something which could um communicate that message to a lot of people. And I thought that art was a way of doing that, because it oftentimes a f a great film or a great piece of music, um, it connects with you very deeply emotionally. It kind of bypasses the intellect, the analytical mind, to a certain extent. And so I thought if you can communicate a message that's powerful through those means, then it can touch more people and have more effect. So my plan was to travel around the world actually, making documentary films, um, interviewing people of different cultures and faiths and backgrounds, but trying to find a common thread. Um because as we often speak about in this podcast, pretty much all the suffering that exists in the world is because of people's identification with the body. Um but there's something beneath that that connects us, which is the soul or consciousness, which all faith speak about. Um yeah, I ultimately wanted to help people. And I think a lot of people want to do that, but aren't quite sure how to do that in the ultimate sense. So yeah, taking some time to and I can say I'm quite satisfied now, you know, because ultimately it wasn't easy. It was actually quite difficult going against the grain in that regard, but it brought me to a place where I'm a lot more satisfied than I was previously. Um to a path which is taking me in a wonderful direction. So there's some difficulty initially with um introspection and holding back from acting impulsively and just following what everyone else is doing, uh, to try and understand oneself a bit more truthfully. But there's a great deal of benefit that can come in the long run from doing from doing that. I think, from my own experience.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Um I heard uh recently that when you study yourself, you actually study the universe in many ways because we're all made of the same thing. We all have a body, mind, intelligence. And so when you study yourself, you actually study another person too. You can understand them more. And so having a practice where you you know yourself, you know why you're doing what you're doing gives you a deeper foundation in life. An example of this is when I was in India a year ago, there was a teacher called Nimai Leela, and he was like the most amazing teacher ever. And he said for many, many years he was practicing spiritual life, but he didn't quite know what his role in society was, and he said he was never fully satisfied. He said he only became fully, fully satisfied in his spiritual life when he started teaching it to others, and so he started teaching everything that he was running to others, and then he was like, okay, I j I felt fully fulfilled and fully complete, and you could see he was like so expert, expert at it, and he had these God-given talents with these analogies and these stories and metaphors, and and it just made me realize that he he spent some time understanding himself, understanding what he was good at, applying it, and then it's like the two go hand in hand. It's like a circle of um knowing myself, acting in the world, knowing myself, acting in the world, and you get knowledge from both. Similarly, you get you know a lot of modern day preachers who actually aren't very happy within themselves. And they preach on a level out of fear. It's like, okay, if you don't follow me, you're going to hell. Or if you don't follow this religion or faith, there's something wrong with you. And so they want to attract people in through fear. Whereas this person, Neemai, Neh Leela, he understood who he was, why he was here, and he taught out of love. And so the quality of people that came towards him was high because they wanted to follow that energy of love that was emanating from him rather than an energy of fearful preaching, of fearful um advertisements, even. You attract a lower kind of person. I was hearing a talk recently of a spiritual teacher called Daven Rutaswamy, who had an association with um a president of New Zealand a while ago, and the president was saying that there are two types of people in this world. There's the controlled and the the controllers. And he was saying that you know you seem like a very very intelligent man, so you should join the con controller group rather than being the controlled. Because you can be in the controlled and you know everyone's phones are being tracked. We advertise to everyone uh exact exactly what they want to see, and then separate people based on uh body identification and division and all these things. And then they're easy to control because they're anxious. Um or you can you know join the controlled one with like what's your two best. And so controller. Yeah, but the spiritual path is separate from these two groups actually, being the controlled or the controller. You could argue in many ways. In more way. Say again. In more way. Well you you're no longer basing your happiness based on societal pressures or values, you're basing basing your happiness based on an internal feeling of happiness. It's like the deer that has musk within its own nostrils, it's it's always looking for this this scent that's that it's it's smelling this musk, it's looking everywhere for musk, because it's a very sweet scent for the deer. Um but it's actually within its own nostrils and it doesn't realise it. So, in a similar way, uh we're looking for happiness in so many material things which are obviously temporary. And the most amazing thing is that we never question death, but it all goes with death, and so yeah, having this spiritual third path, not being in the control or controller group in society, um, you have inner satisfaction, and then when you act in the world, you act out of love, and so the followers you have the people that come to the studio are high quality quality people because they come out of their own um their own intuition, their own love, their own determination rather than out of fear or anxiety or it's not that type of leadership, it's a different type of leadership.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Yeah, so people are naturally attracted based on what you're giving out. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Isn't that those people are naturally attracted based on so there's I've heard that there's four types of leadership. There's like the one who leads out of love, and so and they're they're dutiful and they all all things are necessary, but they have a genuine love for what they're doing. And so this person, Nimalila, I could tell that he like he loved what he was doing. He was so happy the whole time, he told told so many stories, he got people in tears, and he was just he loved what he was doing so much. And then there's um I had teachers at school who you know were very strict, but you could tell that they weren't happy in their life, so people followed them because they didn't want to get a detention or they didn't want to get shouted at or something like this, but they didn't actually build the same amount of passion for the subject because it was taught out of out of fear because the person wasn't inner, wasn't satisfied internally. Um so yeah, there's there's the leadership out of love, the leadership out of you follow a certain type of leader because they're very dutiful and they do their duty, they're they get results, and so you think you know, this is a good person, he's following everything that he says, and so I'm gonna follow that person. And then there's the third type is uh you want to get something in exchange, you know. So let's say the leadership of the Conservative Party, they're gonna they say they're gonna give you X, Y, and Z and take okay, I'm gonna get a lot of benefits from voting for conservatives, so there's that. And then the last type is the one that leads out of fear.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

And that's what everything is governed by nowadays, really.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah, in many ways, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

You know. Um someone was saying, who was it? I can't remember. Someone was saying the other day that oh yeah, it was a a spiritual teacher um that I had the pleasure of meeting recently. Yeah, he said that nowadays in the in the kind of material society, people are um just trying to survive, actually. It's like people are trying to enjoy as well, but a lot of people are just trying to survive now. That's the state of the world that we find ourselves in. Um because there's such a fearful, like everyone's in a state of fear, so you know diminishing resources, or even if resources are available, they're not are there, they're not made immediately available to everyone, and people are struggling for money, all of these things, it's like a yeah, it's a sorry state of affairs. Um and so when people come into contact, like you said, with that other end of the spectrum where you know you're not being forced into something, but through your own independent will and experience you become attracted to something, it's the most revolutionary thing. Yeah. Which is which is what, you know, this isn't solely a Studio 108 glorification episode, but which is what places like Studio 108 Um do and the atmosphere and mood and um environment they create. You know, I remember when I first started going to places like Studio 108, you know, you'd you'd sit at the table and have dinner with people. Um I'd be used to sitting at tables and having dinner with people, and at those dinner tables there'd be lots of different types of people, but everyone would really be trying to impress everyone else in some way. Or you tried to say something which was worthy of recognition or that reflected well in your own ego and boosted your status and all of these things. Um and that creates a little bit of tension, and in one sense, you can say anxiety or fear as a social dynamic, the need to prove oneself, you know. For what reason? Just so I feel secure like that. But then when I was coming to places like this, there was a mood that everybody actually wanted, didn't want to take from other people, or didn't want they weren't so worried about themselves, but they were just worried about um giving to other people or trying to understand somebody else, you know. And when you are sitting at a dinner table where that's the mood, um then automatically you yourself want to connect to and understand the other person as well. It leads to immediately deeper relationships, deeper understanding. You know, that person wants to understand me, I want to understand them, they want to give something to me. That's so kind, I want to give something to them. You know, that's it's very simple, but it's very hard to find. It's subtly revolutionary, sadly, nowadays, yeah. Um it reminds me of a story from um Yeah, my spiritual teacher who lives in India And when he was younger, um when he was younger, he would visit a an old Hindu man who lives on the banks of the Ganges and he would read with him, but when they were reading, after an hour or so, the man would say, Oh, I'm going to go and see my friend. And so he would get up and leave. Anyway, this happened many days in a row, and so finally uh my spiritual teacher said, You know, who is your friend? Where are you going? I'm curious. And he said, Oh, would you like to come with me? He said, Yes, yes, I'd love to. So he took him with him, and they walked a couple of miles down the river, and they got to a small house, and they went in, and uh, there was a Muslim man, and they sat down and uh this Hindu man he took out Bhagavad Gita and the Muslim man took out the Quran and they would read to each other extracts and they wouldn't judge what the other person was saying, they would just listen, they wouldn't respond, they would just listen, and then after about half an hour of reading, they kind of packed up, embraced, and then left again, and then he left like that, simple. And my spiritual teacher thought, you know, this is so interesting, um, and so wonderful. And he said to this Hindu man as they were walking back, you know, how um in a country which is actually rife with tension between you know Hinduism and Islam in many ways, sadly, um, you know, how is it that you you were the old man like deeply committed to your faith? Like, how is it that you have this relationship? And the man said, um a dog recognizes his master no matter what clothes he's wearing, like this. And you know, this mood and commitment to trying to understand in one sense, as we were speaking about to start this episode, trying to understand oneself and who you are, but also trying to understand other people and their nature, their background rather than judging. Um in this way you can create a more purposeful and directional society based on acceptance and love rather than fear and misunderstanding. Tune in again to the next episode, we're gonna have to wrap up now. But it's good to be back. We hope to be uploading a bit more regularly in the coming weeks as well. Please forgive us for the delay. We've had some uh technical difficulties. But we'll see you guys soon. Thank you so much, Joseph, and thank you guys for tuning in.