Hello, I'm A .J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English.
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I'll be doing another member meeting in a couple of weeks.
So a Zoom call with members.
I got busy. I've got a couple weeks here where I'm really busy it's hard for me to do a live call and the other problem is that my computer the screen on my computer is broken one of my children did it so I've got to get my computer screen fixed so I can't really do any live live calls or streaming, and that's why I'm also not doing a live video show for YouTube or any of the other video channels, because the screen doesn't work very well.
I think it's good enough where I can upload this audio show, but I can't do anything, work very long on it.
so these things happen in life I watched it's quite interesting there's something called a synchronicity synchronicity Carl Jung the psychologist Theologist wrote about synchronicities, talked about them.
He believed they were important.
There are a good many people who believe that synchronicities have an important meaning.
They're like a sign in our life.
I don't know if that's true or not, but they're interesting.
So here's the interesting thing.
A few days ago I was thinking of Tony Robbins and I was thinking of, I don't know why this this thing kind of just popped in my head, I was thinking about Tony Robbins and a speech he gave, a talk he gave, where he talked about peer groups.
Peer groups are like, you know, basically the people you spend time with.
A lot. That are not family.
That are not family.
So this is ... It might be friends, but it could also be co -workers.
Like one example of a peer group would be like a business mastermind.
and that's like a group of business people who get together and meet and talk and share ideas and encourage each other in order to help each other become more successful in business.
So that would be a kind of peer group and a long long time ago, I mean a long time ago, long, long, long time ago, Tony Robbins gave a talk about a peer group he had joined, back when he was a young man, like in his 20s, but, you know, Tony Robbins became very successful at an early age.
In his 20s, he was already a multi -millionaire already very very well known for being a you know motivational speaker coach positive psychology expert trainer so he joined this group or was invited into a group of men I can't remember how many there were but they were very successful men I think many of them were already billionaires.
He doesn't say their names but a group of very successful men wealthy men and I guess they saw in him a lot of great qualities and he was really powerful and successful in other areas of life.
Not as financially successful as those men but still very successful.
So we talked about what they would do is they would meet, I can't remember how often it was once or twice a year and usually they would take some kind of trip together I think the talk he gave that I remember a long time ago he talked about how they went on a white water rafting trip together camping and whitewater rafting that whitewater rafting is when you get on a boat or raft and you go down a big fast River it's fun I used to do it when I lived in the south United States down in Georgia in South Carolina there's some nice whitewater rafting and these guys they gave them selves a name they
called themselves the Scorpions it's kind of a funny name I think for a bunch of billionaires and multimillionaires they call themselves the Scorpions it sounds like some kind of biker gang or something but anyway Tony talked about how he benefited so much from this group because you know he was financially successful he's a multimillionaire but but not at their level, so he's talked about several times how much he learned from those men just going on a trip with them once a year, twice a year, and just having conversations and talking to them, he learned tremendously from them, and now I don't
know if Tony Robbins is a billionaire, but he has hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe, from what I last read.
he's very, very wealthy.
And he talks about how, you know, just being in a group of men like that, like it kind of pulled him up.
Like he was, he just became influenced by them.
And because of their great, great, great financial success, he improved financially also, just by being around them, just by being connected to them and being in that peer group, P -E -E -R, peer.
Now, what's the synchronicity?
So I was thinking about this.
I have no idea why I just started thinking about that, that specific talk that Tony Robbins gave and, you know, the name of his group, the Scorpions.
But what's interesting then is suddenly yesterday Yesterday, on my YouTube channel, like a day later, after I thought of this, up popped a video, a suggested video, of Tony Robbins, where he talks about his peer group, the Scorpions.
And now Tony Robbins is in his 60s, and in the talk he talked about how, you know, he was kind of the youngest member of the group, they invited him in when he was quite young and they were billionaires, they were older than he was so he's talked about how, he didn't say how many but at least one or two have died now and how the rest of the men are in their 80s, Tony's in his middle 60s I believe but it's interesting to me because I don't know Google has not suggested a Tony Robbins video to me in I don't know months and months and months probably years a couple of years or two while I drink I'm
outside again it's another hot summer day sipping on lemonade so anyway it's just kind of weird that two days ago I'm thinking about Tony Robbins and this Scorpions group this one talk he gave so long ago and then the next day I see a suggestion for a video where he gives an update about his group the same exact group and I hadn't been seeing any Tony Robbins videos and suddenly that one pops up the day after I'm thinking about that exact topic.
That's called a synchronicity.
Now, I can't remember Carl Jung's exact teachings on this topic, but he believed that synchronicities like this were significant, kind of a message from, you know, whatever, the universe, a message from your own deep unconscious.
I don't know. but he believed we should pay attention to these kind of synchronicities so I watched the video and I thought well yeah this is a synchronicity so I did, I watched, I played that new video and it was Tony Robbins and his wife was in the video too and they were talking about relationships relationships.
And Tony was just saying, you know, like, oh, now, you know, this group had such a strong effect on me, and now, you know, a couple of them have died, and the rest are in their 80s, right?
And how, you know, time flies, people, older people will, The older you get, the more it feels that way.
And his conclusion, what he's talking about, is just how important relationships are and how more important than the money, more important than any other kind of success, that it's our relationships, the friendships, the love, family, that end up being the most important to us.
And, you know, there's a little bit of a bittersweet element.
Bittersweet means bitter, meaning, you know, kind of a little bit sad, and then sweet meaning you know happy this bit or grateful an element of this bittersweet because on one hand he's so grateful for this peer group he had and these friendships that lasted such a long time like 40 years or something but on the other hand you know he because now some of them have died the rest are very old you know he realizes this truth of impermanence that this life we all die nothing less it was a nice talk and very heartfelt from him you know my first impression of of course, I felt that it's quite, of course,
it's an important thing to realize and an important thing to talk about and an important thing to teach younger people, because younger younger people can easily forget all of this.
Teenagers, people in their 20s, even in their 30s, it can be easy for young people to feel like that they're going to live forever, or even though, of course, they know they're not.
Death doesn't seem like a close thing or a real thing for them personally, right?
And they don't want to think about it.
So it can become, it can be very easy for young people to just focus on the material, on money and status and lots of other things and worries and to forget this, that there's the love and the relationships, it's your family and these other close relationships you make that that are the most meaningful.
But I think I think there's more to it.
But at the end of listening to Tony's talk, I actually found myself disappointed.
Disappointed with Tony and his wife's message.
And I'm generally a big fan of Tony Robbins for what he talks about.
But for a long time now I've realized that he has a really big, I don't know if you want to call it a weakness or a blind spot, we say.
It's an area of life where he just, I don't know, I feel like he misses.
And that area of life is the spiritual.
The spiritual. element of life.
Because while what he said is true, relationships are meaningful, they're more important than money, and it's true that they're not forever, right?
That this life is not forever.
But then, that's it.
That's all he said, and I feel like, okay, he's in his 60s now, he's mid -60s.
And I would think that by his age, that these questions would really become very, very important.
So, the question is, you know, why are relationships more important?
And I think that spirituality, spiritual life, spiritual realization, spiritual truths, are the most important.
because as I've talked about before you know if this life this material life is all there is there is no spiritual element to life it's just materialistic it's all random material which a lot of scientists don't even and believe that anymore.
But if so, then nothing matters, right?
You say, oh, it's relationships that matter.
But if you die and then you just become dirt, you are just your body and that's all you are, well then, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you have friends.
It doesn't matter about love.
None of it matters.
I think the reason relationships matter is that because we are spirit, we are soul we are Atman therefore eternal which means the love and the relationships you have in this life that you create in this life will continue in some form after this this life, that what you do, how you treat people, your spiritual life, your moral life has consequences that are eternal, meaning they go forever.
They continue on after we're done with this body and this life here.
and that's why we can kind of instinctively understand that well okay in the end everything else does disappear the money you can't use the money you can't take any of it with you but but the love and the relationships and this is this is really what the law of karma is in Sanatana Dharma is that everything has consequences and those consequences continue on even after this body dies the consequences of your actions thoughts, etc. continue continue.
Never ends. And it's interesting because I can't figure out what Tony Robbins' views are on this because he has kind of hinted at spirituality at times in some of the events of his I've attended and some interviews he's conducted, things like that.
At one point, far back in the past when he was younger, I thought he was Christian or he kind of at least would make very vague general comments or quotes from the Bible or something, but not much and very vague.
And then, you know, more recently I think I've seen him interview a guy named Saad Guru, who's like, I think he's a Shibite follower.
So I thought, oh, maybe he's going that path.
But I don't know. But what I do know is he seems to mostly just avoid the topic of spirituality.
And I think that's a shame because I think it's the most important topic.
it is a tricky topic to talk about, because for me it's a very tricky topic to talk about.
It's tricky because of religion.
So when I talk about spirituality and the spiritual life, I try my best to avoid...
I'm not trying to promote one specific religion.
You know, I have my own religious, I have my own religion, my own path, but I don't believe it's for everybody.
And nor do I believe there's, you know, only one religion that contains, that points to the truth.
And unfortunately, though, there are a lot of people who do believe that.
and so you're not part of their religion then they think you are there's something wrong with you and you can only be saved by their specific religion and so then what does that mean that just creates a whole lot of argument it becomes like politics right and of course at the worst it becomes violence and and killing and all kinds of terrible stuff and rightfully so many many people view all of that very negatively because it is negative it's really anti -religion that kind of behavior anti -spiritual another problem another thing that turns people away from this topic are bad experiences in life
typically especially especially in youth, childhood or youth.
This is also tragic.
So, for example, someone may grow up in a particular, in a house where there's a particular sect or very specific religious group or teaching, and then they have very, you know, have very negative and bad experiences in that group, for whatever reason.
I mean the worst cases are, you know, we've all heard of like scandals and terrible things that have happened where people have been abused by people from their church or something, or you'll see on the news some religious leader who is caught doing terrible stuff, I don't know, some sex scandal or drugs or something, right?
So people have some of these terrible experiences, these negative experiences, and unfortunately what can happen, what often does happen, is they then conclude, well, all religion, all spirituality is false, there is no God, there is nothing more, and they become these kind of like militant materialists, not for any clearly rational or philosophical or truthful reason, but really just an emotional reaction against the hypocrisy, against the corruption, against the scandals, against the negative experiences that they experienced in their life.
And sadly, you know, they so many because in most places people grow up in a culture and sure, most places, not all, but most countries and places, there's one dominant religion, right?
I mean, in the West, it has been historically Christianity, since the Roman Empire.
In other parts of the world, it might be Islam.
In India, it's Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism.
Nepal, too. In other areas of the world, it's Buddhism.
Shintoism, whatever, right?
So sadly, many people have a bad experience with their particular religion of their area, their town, their family.
And then they not only reject that particular group, so for example, if they grow up Catholic, and they have a whole bunch of bad experiences at their Catholic church, they reject Catholicism, but in their mind, kind of unconsciously I think, in their mind, Catholicism equals God, equals religion, and so they just reject it all.
Because, okay, this one particular church or priest or group was bad, therefore it's all bad.
which is not true, of course.
And I'm not picking on Catholicism because it happens in every religious group.
And of course the media and the world is happy then to push this kind of radical nihilistic atheistic materialism as the alternative.
Which is sad because that worldview is depressing.
That worldview is leads to despair.
It's also amoral. It has no morality at all.
it can't because basically philosophically if all we are is just matter just stuff and then at the end of this life we die and then it just dissolves away it doesn't matter what you do because you're not going to remember anything and all the people anything bad you do to somebody else well they're going to die and they won't remember it ever either there's nothing that continues on so do what you want and that is indeed the real philosophy of the rulers of our world right now and of our culture.
Just do whatever you want.
Do whatever feels good.
I mean, it's it's actually the motto of, you know, a great many people who consider themselves Satanist or occultist demon worshippers do what thou will is their famous motto.
But I think this is the most important topic of life.
What is the meaning of life?
I keep discussing this.
What's the meaning of life?
What's the purpose of life?
What is the nature of life?
What are we really?
Are we just these physical bodies?
Or is there something more?
It's disappointing to see people like Tony Robbins who seem scared of this question.
Scared to talk about it.
because there's no more important question or questions, there's no more important area of life.
If you can't figure out what the meaning of life is, if you don't have any idea of what you really are, your true nature, if you have no idea at all about the nature of life itself and what happens after life you're lost you're just gonna follow the culture and do whatever and then die and kind of be and die kind of sad the way I'm kind of this same kind of like feeling that Tony was talking about talking about you know the friends that had died so it's very important to talk about and to think more important it's very important to think about and to figure it out for yourself and I have no intention of trying
to promote any specific religion religion.
And on our website, our community site, you know, we're not going to allow that to people to try to promote just their own specific religion and, you know, recruit people or criticize other religions.
We don't do that. It's the same as the no politics rule.
so it is tricky so my approach is this is I just want to talk about it in a very general way and let people find their own way because in my opinion all this religious fighting and bickering and bad feelings between religions and the desire to recruit from each other and dominate each other and lie about other religions, which is very common. I grew up in the South, in the United States.
I've experienced this directly.
theoretically, in the United States, in the South, the dominant religion in most places is a kind of evangelical, Protestant, Christian religion.
And it's quite common for some of these guys to walk around on the streets, just coming coming up to people on the streets, and then try to engage you in a conversation, and of course their goal is to try to recruit you into their religion.
It's kind of like a marketing approach to religion, which I don't like.
And I would talk to these people, and at the time, this is way back in my 20s, at that time I was a Buddhist. My path was from Buddhism to Sanatana Dharma.
Dharma, although it's certainly easy to argue that Buddhism is just part of Sanatana Dharma.
But anyway, I would have these discussions with them, and yeah, they would, when I would say, oh, I'm a Buddhist, I'm sorry, I'm not interested.
And then they could just get so nasty, you know, and they would just make up lies about Buddhism, and I'm like, oh, yeah, well, Buddhists believe this, and Buddhists believe that.
And I'm like, well, no, they don't.
I should know. I've read, I know more about it than you do, Mr. Evangelical.
But it doesn't matter, because from their mind, they're just marketing.
They're recruiting.
And they saw it as a competition, right?
It's their religion, and not just Christianity, because they were against lots of other kinds of Christians, too.
They didn't like Orthodox Christians.
They didn't like Catholics.
they didn't like a whole lot of other Protestant Christian groups so they were very sure that it's only their one group that was correct and that they viewed every other religious group as a competitor to beat and if necessary even to just lie about.
So this is fairly common. And yeah, it turned me off to them.
I immediately thought, well, okay, I don't really, I'm certainly not going to join your group because when you're lying like this.
And I think it's madness.
I mean, I know there's like a whole long history of religious conflict.
I know it still goes on.
I know there's these kind of attitudes that are still common around the world.
I still encounter them from time to time.
But it's madness because the way the world is now, it is absolutely crazy for people who are basically virtuous, who are sincerely spiritual, who are sincerely seeking truth and beauty and goodness.
and yeah okay they believe their own particular path is the best one that's it's fine to think that it's certainly the best one for you it's okay but to think that all the other groups are somehow evil and demonic when it's clearly not the case is insane so then what you get is all these people who you know are otherwise fairly moral and good all just attacking hacking each other and trying to recruit from each other and say bad things about each other and compete with each other.
Meanwhile, the dominant culture is indeed demonic and evil and terrible.
And so many religious groups and people, they spend so much time focused on other religions and yet they seem to spend no time at all or very little time attacking the true enemy those who are truly terrible and horrible and evil.
But because much of that evil is socially accepted, it's pushed by the media, they're afraid to go against it.
It's just easier to attack some other religious group.
I mean, it can always seem madness to me that, again, like some of these evangelical groups, would go down to Catholic countries as missionaries and try to recruit the locals into their one specific group.
So they're going down and instead of trying to...
I mean, they've got all of America filled with people who are lost with no devotion, no spirituality, no religion, no meaning in their lives.
But instead they go down and try to recruit people People who are already Catholics, already Christians, just a different kind of Christian.
It's crazy. I mean, there's so much spiritually horrible in this world.
Why are religious people so focused on just competing with each other and just proving, no, no, no, we're the best, no, no, no, this is the best, and everybody else is bad.
There's real bad in the world.
I think it's a kind of cowardice, honestly.
I think it's a kind of spiritual cowardice because the bad people are powerful.
A lot of the bad people, either individually or as groups, are powerful.
They're strong. So going against them, kind of scary.
In some cases, dangerous.
In some cases, you can't go against them directly, or they'll destroy you.
But, you know, just attacking some other sincere, good, kind, religious people, oh, that's easy, because they're not going to do anything bad to you.
So that's the madness we have to avoid, and it's the madness that has driven a lot of people away from religion and from spirituality and it's quite sad.
But don't let it discourage you because these are still the most important questions.
It's still the most important part of life.
You know, Tony Robbins, for all his hundreds of millions of dollars and influence and friendships with powerful people like, you know, I don't know, the Bill Clintons and the former presidents, and on and on and on and on and on.
He seems to be lacking this.
And all of that success is finally meaningless when you get to the end of your life.
You can't take any of it with you.
It's a cliche. People say, you can't take it with you.
And they kind of joke about it, and then they go right back to focusing on material things completely, thinking that's most important, but it's not.
Don't reject this area of life because you don't like specific religious groups or because you don't like organized religion, you know, religious bureaucracy in general.
It's still important.
you still need to think about it and find your way.
And I think the best starting point, which I have talked about many times...
Ooh, can you hear the thunder?
Suddenly I'm in the shed, the garage door's open, and suddenly a huge downpour of rain.
It's raining hard. Thunder, lightning.
Oh, it's just like a...
is that a synchronicity too?
I'm talking about spirituality and religion and God and suddenly the heavens are speaking let's take it as a good sign I recommend for people who if you already have a religious path and you're already you're satisfied as a Muslim as a Buddhist as a Vaishnava, as a Christian, boom, then that's great.
Then continue on that path.
You should go deeper into that path.
But for people who aren't and who maybe who have had a lot of negative feelings about religion and spirituality in the past, I encourage you, you know, start your investigation.
Start your learning, your thoughts.
with the non -religious.
And I believe the best starting point that's not religious, that has nothing to do with any specific religion, are near -death experiences.
I did a whole book club about that book, Life After Life.
there are actually now quite a few books on that same topic of near death experiences there are lots of YouTube channels where people get interviewed and talk about their near death experience I just saw another one like it was a Catholic priest who died and came back I haven't watched it yet I'm actually quite curious since he's a priest to see what his near death experience was like but what you'll find when you read these stories and these interviews or listen to them you'll find that actually the vast majority of them are not do not talk about any specific religion they are very spiritual
they have very similar experiences when they die of what happens to them after they die they come out of their body they see things they shouldn't be able to see in other rooms and other locations and these get tested and confirmed so it's pretty powerful just that shows you that we're more than our bodies but then it continues on they go through a tunnel and then they come into some kind of spiritual realm which they will describe in various ways but it is extremely beautiful almost all of them talk about meeting some kind of being of light and most of them if they have no religious background
they don't give a name to it a being of light they might say, or kind of like an angel boom man it's like dramatic sound effects for the topic of my podcast the lightning and thunder now some, you know, they might some have described the being of light as Jesus it was Jesus I've seen interviews where they say it was Shiva Shiva, that I saw.
That was the being of light.
It was Buddha. People give a different name to this being of light.
Mostly they just describe it as a spiritual being, a being of light, an angel, something like that.
Many then describe meeting loved ones who had already died and even having a chance to talk with them, to communicate with them.
and then of course since this is a near -death experience and not death they come back so at some point it ends and they end up back in their body back here again usually in a hospital or something because they died so they usually wake up in a hospital room wow this is a strong strong rain big strong thunderstorm storm.
So in America, we call this a thunderstorm, where the big thunder usually happens mostly in the summers, right?
Where it's clear, and then suddenly a bunch of big dark clouds come in.
Big thunder, lightning, super hard rain, and then it blows off.
It's a little bit like if you're from Southeast Asia, these are kind of like monsoon rains, where it, like in Thailand, it'll dump the rain in the rainy season, rain for an hour, and then it disappears years and it's all gone again.
But when it's raining, it's raining very, very hard. It's good for our garden.
So I think this is very important.
I think it's very important to start here.
If you don't already have your own spiritual or religious path, but if you're interested and if you realize this is so important, you don't know where to start, maybe you have negative feelings about, you know, the most common religion where you live.
Start here at the non -religious.
This is good because it's just the direct experiences of people who died and came back just talking about what happened.
What they saw. What they experienced.
That's all it is. and pretty much none of them focus on a specific religion they don't say, oh yes this proves Christianity, this proves Islam this proves Sanatana Dharma, nope they just say, they talk about it and one of the things they talk about is the importance of love because in these interviews they often get asked the question well, did you learn anything about this experience experience.
And the most common message, number one, by far, is they come back saying that love, love, love, love.
And in fact, they say that this being of light, what was he like?
It was like pure Your love, spiritual love, agape, right?
Number one, and that is when you, these near -death experiences, these people will say again and again and again, it's absolutely the top number one thing they learn.
and for most of these people their life changes from this experience quite deeply and they begin to live the rest of this life here with that knowledge with that deep understanding of how important love spiritual love is is.
And the number two thing they mention that they learn is the importance of learning.
This is not as important as love, but it's kind of a secondary point to life, let's say, and that is to learn.
But to learn what? To learn physics?
To learn to play the guitar?
No, to learn spiritual laws, to learn what is our true nature, what is the truth about our souls or spirits, of why we're here, right?
So to learn about spirituality and the true meaning of life, the true nature of life.
I agree with Acharyajee, of course that not all religions are the same but on the other hand I also do believe that there is something that there is truth and that any group of people in any religion if they're sincere and they do what's necessary can find these truths and so it's not surprising you will find these messages in many, many, many different religions, religious groups all around the world.
Now, sadly, you can also find a good number of religious groups that seem to have forgotten the importance of these two things and focus on other things.
So please do this. Please spend some time getting on YouTube and listening to as many of these near -death experiences, the interviews, as you can.
And buy a couple of the books I've recommended or you can find websites where people write down or keep different interviews of near -death experiences.
It's such a great place to start and it's free of specific, anything about any specific religions, any of your bad experiences you may have had in the past or negative ideas or beliefs, you can just let go of those because none of that will be involved in the near -death experiences.
My second recommendation to someone who knows this is an important area of life who's beginning to realize it maybe because you're getting older maybe because someone close to you that you loved died and now you're really thinking about these things and now you realize maybe my score on the TOEFL test is not the most important thing in life So the second thing you can do is that after you read, read, read, read about these near -death experiences, and read, read, read them, then to make more sense of them, you can begin to explore different religious groups.
And really I should say not the groups.
Don't focus on the the groups.
It's not a social club.
Focus on the philosophy.
What's important is you find truth, beauty, and goodness.
Not that you find a cool group of people to hang out with.
You can do that, you know, on our community site, talking to people to practice your English.
You can do that with any hobby.
And if you really have negative feelings about one particular religion or group, fine, just put it aside and explore other groups and other religious philosophies and teachings.
You know, like if you, let's say you grew up in the South like me and you just have, ah, evangelical Christianity, not for me.
That's fine. Read about Islam.
Read about Sanatana Dharma.
Read about Buddhism.
And of course, each of these religions has many different groups in it.
Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism and then all these different Protestant groups can be very, very, very different in their philosophy and their approach. So while one may not be good for you, you might find that you may be just like, okay, I don't like Orthodox Christianity, but maybe you still have an attraction to Christianity.
Maybe if you don't like the evangelical, sorry, you don't like evangelical Christianity, Protestantism, you might find that Orthodox is beautiful and wonderful for you.
so explore that read about it find some intro, introductory, beginner level books for lots of different groups then you can also compare the philosophies with your own experience, with your own thoughts with the near death experiences and you begin to see which ones attract you which ones lead you to goodness Truth, beauty, learning and knowledge of the spiritual laws, love, God.
So like for Buddhism, for example, I would say, I don't know, there's tons of books.
Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh's book, What the Buddha Taught.
That's a good one on the actual philosophy of Buddhism.
A lot of his books are just about mindfulness, mindfulness.
I wouldn't say they're very, not particularly spiritual, honestly.
But that was a good one, because it really does teach the key elements of Buddhism, at least the kind of Zen Buddhism that he, Thich Nhat Hanh, practiced.
However, there are other kinds of Buddhism, which are very, very different, can be quite different.
Tibetan Buddhism, for example.
Shingon Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, both of those Japanese, are extremely different than Zen.
So read up on those.
For Christianity, my personal opinion, and I know the opinion of many, many Christians that I have talked to or seen recommending this book online, Mere Christianity by C .S.
Lewis one of the best fairly modern introductions to Christianity it really is excellent I love that book it's great I'm not Christian but I like it wow did you hear that bang so Mere Christianity by C .S.
Lewis. And another one for Sanatana Dharma which happens to be my particular religion would be Intro Introduction to Sanatana Dharma and it's by Dharma Pravartika P -R -A -V -A -R T -A -K -A Pravartika Dharma Pravartika it's a Sanskrit name Acharyaji's book Very, very simple, great direct introduction to Sanatana Dharma, especially Vaishnavism.
You could also get any book by Prabhupada or any of other Acharyajis' books.
You understand, right?
It's the same with Islam, right?
You can find some introductory -level books books on, you know, Sunni, Sunni, Sunniism, Sunni, Islam, Shia, and I don't know, Sufi.
I've read some books about Sufism.
And then you might also even read some books like The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, where he talks about some of the key important philosophical Philosophical similarities of religions, especially the monks and the saints from different religions.
He's not saying they're all the same, but he's finding some of the truth, some of the teachings that you find again and again and again and again.
And of course, that's not proof that it's 100 % true, but it's definitely strong evidence that why all these different groups from all these different cultures are finding and realizing these same spiritual truths.
So that's a good one, too.
It's a little bit of a difficult book.
It's in terms of its vocabulary, quite philosophical, might be a little challenging, the English.
The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, another like popular author that wrote about some of these topics alan watts a -l -a -n and then w -a -t -t -s alan watts I believe alan was specifically a zen buddhist I know he used but he used to be a christian this is what makes him interesting is that he was a minister I believe presbyterian anyway Christian he was an actual Christian minister and then and then he went to Japan and studied at a Zen Buddhist monastery I believe it was and became a Zen Buddhist I believe Zen but he also wrote another big lightning boom he also wrote on other Dharma philosophies.
You'll find he also wrote some about Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism.
He also wrote about general Buddhism, Buddhism in general, not just specifically Zen.
So explore all of this and connect these teachings to your life.
connect them to what you learn from the near death experiences and then in this way you can begin to answer for yourself the question what is the meaning of life what is the nature of life is there life after life if so what is it like is there a God if there is a God what is God like what is his nature his her nature right Not blindly just accepting whatever you were taught as a kid and not blindly rejecting whatever you experienced when you were young or were taught when you were young.
Becoming a philosopher yourself and then you find your way and maybe your way is to join a specific group and you're like ah Orthodox Christianity that's for me or you know vishnuism that's me that's this is my path but you might also maybe not you might you might not find that or at least maybe right now you're not that's not what you want but you can still answer these questions you can still find truth beauty beauty and goodness, a lot of the people they interview who had near -death experiences, a lot of them never join any organized religion.
They never become members of one religious group, and yet they're very, very spiritual, spiritual meaning they have strong, strong understanding and belief about these questions and truth, beauty and goodness.
It will give you so much confidence in life, so much more confidence in life, so much more peace, equanimity, stability.
This is why I talk about it and And this is why I kind of criticized Tony Robbins a little bit.
Because you can have all the psychological tricks and techniques in the world, positive, motivational methods.
You can do all that and you can even achieve tremendous things and become a billionaire and have, you know, a super gorgeous desirable husband or wife.
You can have all of that, but if there's no deeper meaning, no deeper purpose, if you have no deeper philosophy, sooner or later it will feel empty.
Sooner or later you realize it's all going to end, certainly as you get older.
And then a great depression, a great sadness, a great meaninglessness creeps in.
It comes in. You see this all the time with famous people.
You know, they seem fantastic when they're in their 20s and 30s.
When they're, you know, they're hot and sexy and famous and rich. everybody wants to know them, they go to all the parties, fly around on private jets, it's all great.
But so, so, so, so many of them, I think the vast majority of them, when you see them in their 50s and in their 60s, it is pretty darn sad that you can just you can just see and feel there's something like desperate in them something empty something missing and and it's like it's just you know you realize that all that material success has not brought them lasting happiness or peace or meaning you don't want to do that you don't want to become 60 years old and then look back and say say, oh my God, everything I did was a waste.
I have no meaning or purpose in my life.
Right? Certainly don't want to get to the end of your life feeling and thinking that.
So start now. Start now.
And of course, it's also true that you can find a great, great many very happy, beautiful people, fulfilled people, who have tremendous peace and love and courage in their lives, who are not rich, they're not famous, nobody knows them except the people around them.
they're the really successful ones.
They're not going to be on the television.
You're not going to see them on Instagram.
But they are the ones with the most successful lives.
They're the most fulfilled.
They're the most happy.
They're the most grateful.
And from what I've seen, these people are always spiritual.
it's always their spiritual life that is the foundation of that deep, powerful peace, love, confidence, and courage.
There's a message there.
There's something to learn there.
don't neglect this even if you think okay I don't know if I believe all this does it hurt you to read about it does it hurt you to think about it so many people just push this away no no no I don't believe this because you know they learned in school that everything's random and material or they learned it maybe from their parents or they they learned the opposite and they had bad experiences with religion and philosophy and now they're just going to reject it all.
That's a foolish and childish approach. There's no more important questions than this.
This is it. The meaning and purpose of your life.
And the nature of your life.
And what happens after you're done with this body?
Something or nothing.
You better get very clear about that.
even if you arrive at a non -spiritual answer you should be totally confident about it because you thought about it deeply and not just for one year I mean, this project is for years and years and years really, for your whole life I mean, this is one of the purposes of life is to figure these things out.
We're born and we have no memories or knowledge or anything.
We're kind of completely clueless when we're born as babies.
And then you have your life to focus on these questions and figure them out and then live according to your answers.
So don't neglect it.
It's so easy to get caught up, so easy to get distracted Distracted by all the problems that happen in this life, material life, by all the material goals and dreams we have or to have a career, make money, improve your English, make your body, get your body in better shape, find the right girlfriend, boyfriend, husband or wife, raise your kids.
On and on and on, it's very easy to get distracted by all these things and ignore the most important area of life, which is the spiritual.
All right, let's see, how long have I been talking while this rainstorm has been happening?
Oh, an hour and nine minutes, kind of long.
Tell you what, I'll talk for probably about five more minutes, the rain is blowing over it's almost done, you can probably still hear the thunder rolling over me.
As soon as the rain is done I'm going to stop and walk back to the house.
So on to just to, you know, walk and talk casual topics.
We are in a heat wave right now.
It's been very hot this week and so actually this rain is kind of nice it cooled things off a bit.
But it's been incredibly hot and humid this week.
I just can't seem to motivate myself to do any kind of physical training outdoors, like ah, other than just going to the pool so I've just been swimming with the kids we've been going into the pool twice a day you know getting up going in the morning and then usually in the afternoon sometime now this does remind me to it's kind of another a topic related to learning and education homeschooling natural learning whatever you want to call it effortless learning natural learning the way you're learning english just another example of this of how this is universal is that my kids are getting better
and better at swimming in the pool and i haven't taught them anything so we gave them these little life jackets you know little floating jackets obviously because Because they can't swim yet.
Don't want them to sink to the bottom.
So last year we did that.
And this is really last year was the first year they really had any experience, you know, playing in a pool, swimming around in a pool that's kind of deep.
They had like a kiddie pool they could sit in right at our apartment in Japan.
But my sister has like a real pool.
It's deeper than them.
so this is last year was the first year and they were kind of nervous about it they would just kind of float there they didn't do a lot they they started learning to paddle around a little bit just just on their own but then this year now their second summer in the pool they are just doing great they uh my daughter now she's taking off the jacket a lot of course i'm watching her i'm with her but she's around she's and she's in the shallow end so she doesn't go over her head but still now she's starting to you know she holds her breath and dives down to the bottom of the pool and touches the bottom
and then pops back up and play games where I throw stuff you know that sinks down and she has to go down and pick them up and she's uh and she's you know paddling around I'm still not letting her go into the deep end but she's basically swimming now now.
And this is with zero instruction.
I haven't taught that, and I haven't like had a swim lesson with her and say, okay, this is what you do.
First you got to put your face in the water, and then you hold your breath like this, and then you move your arms like this.
You know, that kind of very detail -focused lecture or teaching.
Right? It's kind of like Like in English, you learned, okay, this is the grammar, and this is the past perfect, and this is the present, and this is the progressive tense, and da -da, right?
It's that kind of thing, this analytical method of teaching and learning.
And we know it doesn't work.
You know it doesn't work.
It's a terrible way to learn English.
Well, guess what? It doesn't work even with swimming.
She's just figuring out how to swim by doing it, by doing it in a safe way where I'm there, of course, to make sure everything's safe, but mostly I just let her ...
I have just let her the last two summers just splash around and figure out how to move around, and okay, she's not doing any official Olympic level swimming stroke.
She's not doing the freestyle.
She's not doing the breaststroke.
That can all come later, but just to learn how to swim around a pool and survive and not drown right and be able to dive down and go to the bottom and come up and swim over to the wall and play and all that she's figuring it out just by being in the environment in a safe way and then just playing and playing and playing and trying different things and my son doing exactly the same thing he also know he's skinnier so he sinks like a rock, so we kind of leave the jacket on him mostly.
But he's still on his own.
He's now just, you know, he sees what his sister's doing.
He just, he loves the water.
He's like a little fish.
So he's just by himself.
I didn't tell him to do it.
He's just doing it.
He just holds his breath, sticks his face in the water.
He tries to dive down.
He's got the jacket on, so he can't go very deep but he goes puts his head under the water for a long time he's swimming all around the pool paddling kicking his legs paddling his arms same thing I haven't given him one single lesson he's just in the environment playing and exploring and trying things and figuring it out himself and they're both getting this summer they've both made, have made great, great, great improvements.
They're doing fantastic in a pretty short time.
Just with this natural approach. You know, we're natural learners, kids especially.
But even adults, if we would just be more patient and have more faith, this is the best way to learn most things, especially in the beginning.
Now, later, as you, as they, as anyone becomes more advanced in a skill, that's where a little bit of coaching then can start to help, right?
So, for example, once my kids are safe in the pool and they can, you know, dive down to the bottom and come to the top and swim over to the walls and swim around and they're safe.
Okay, at that point, you know, they can swim at that point.
At that point, okay, you want to learn faster.
Oh, you want to learn some of the official strokes.
You want to learn how to do the freestyle.
Okay, I'll say here's how you do it.
You know we can watch a video, I can teach them a few points.
Or, oh, you want to learn breast stroke?
Here's here's how you do the breaststroke.
But at that point, those really more advanced and specific methods of swimming, the strokes will be much, much easier for them to learn because they're already super comfortable in the water.
They're already natural swimmers.
And then you can add add on these other things, and they already have tons of experience and confidence in the water, so they can pick up those things pretty quickly, right?
This is where I do see the wisdom in jiu -jitsu of kind of just, you know, throwing people in at the beginning of white belt, and just letting them wrestle around.
There's some coaches I've I've seen online and their approach with beginners is they, they play lots of games.
So they play these basically wrestling games with them.
Okay. You just, okay.
Here's you, you start here, you start here.
You just got to get the person, you got to take the other person down, get them on the ground.
That's the end of, that's the game.
If you do it, you get a point, then stand up and do it again.
And so they just will go boom, boom, boom, use back, just play this game of get the other person, you know, basically tackle them.
Right. And they just let them, they don't give them any instruction.
They don't say, you know, perform this technique, this exact takedown.
Just figure it out, try anything.
So then they do it, they do it, they do it, they do it, and then they start to figure out a bunch of stuff just by themselves.
And then, after they're pretty good just doing it this natural way that they've figured out themselves, and they're really comfortable doing, doing, these are called take downs in grappling, Jujitsu, wrestling.
Then at that point, that's the point where they're the most ready then to learn a specific technique because now they've got a ton of experience.
They're confident, they've tried things, they've got to play, play, play with it, figure out things that work for their body and how their body moves and what the other person might do.
then you teach them okay this is called a single leg takedown and try doing this when you're playing the game and they'll pick it up much faster this is what the coaches say and I believe it I believe it it makes sense if you try to teach them the single leg technique as total beginners it's overwhelming there's like uh now what they're do what do they do what did you do when you you learn grammar. You try to speak English, but then you start thinking, oh, what's the verb tense?
How do I conjugate this?
And then you kind of freeze up, and you actually don't do well.
Well, that happens in jujitsu too.
It happened to me so many times, where I would be in the middle of sparring, practice fighting with somebody, and okay, maybe we're standing up, and I've got to do a takedown.
So then in my head, I've got all this technique, okay, I've got to try to do a single the leg take down so let's see oh step one i gotta step forward with this leg don't step with the other leg and then i gotta you know catch it with this arm and then i gotta get close here and then i gotta do this and i have like 10 things i'm trying to remember but it's all happening super super fast and the other person is reacting and moving and changing all the time and they're trying to do the same stuff to me it's just totally overwhelming like and so like i couldn't couldn't do it at all so then i just
kind of you know almost like freeze you just kind of like you start to hesitate.
It becomes very unnatural.
This is why how you're learning English now is so important.
Listening, listening, listening to the real language, listening to my podcast, listening to my lessons, listening to my shows, listening to movies, listening to audiobooks.
It's real, real English and you're just putting yourself deep into that real language environment.
You're not analyzing it.
You're not trying to conjugate verbs.
None of that. And when it's time to talk, you just talk.
You don't think about mistakes.
You don't think about grammar conjugations.
You don't think about grammar at all.
Just talk. Just communicate.
Get it out. If it's not perfect, who cares?
It doesn't matter. And that's when you find you become really fluent.
Fluent, fluent, fluent.
fluent. You start speaking effortlessly with great confidence.
You can communicate in English, really communicate, really understand people.
Your English shoots up.
And then after that level, okay, that's the time where you think, okay, you know what?
I really need English for business.
I think I'll do this business English course, right?
I'm going to start learning business English vocabulary, right?
Or maybe you have a need to get better at writing in English.
Okay, now you might need to review and remember some of those grammar rules, right?
You're like, oh, let's see, it's, I -T -S, is it apostrophe or no apostrophe in this case, right?
Those little rules.
But even native speakers forget those things and have to look them up.
I do it all all the time.
I'll be like, ITS is a good example.
I mean, I remember it now, but I used to forget.
Is it I -T -apostrophe -S or I -T -S?
And I would forget which one and what situation and I'd have to always look it up on the computer.
Which one is it? Ah, I forgot again.
Okay, so that's fine.
But you don't start with that.
That's only at the very, very end when you have a specific need.
Until then, it's madness it's crazy do what you're doing now with effort it's English it's the way to go it's just amazing how in the modern world now everything is so kind of anti -natural because we know that's the situation for learning English but it's This is the situation pretty much for all education and training.
In almost every area of life.
It's crazy. I'll give you another example.
Business. My sister was talking about a friend of her son's, like a teenage boy.
That is the school.
And this teenage boy is great.
He's got a business.
he does sports cards, he collects them and sells them, he trades them and he's got this whole business where he does it now that he's created like baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, you know, and each card has a player on it and people collect them and it's almost like Pokemon, you know, like people will pay a lot of money for some card that's not common or that's super popular and apparently this kid is making thousands of dollars every month at this business and she was telling me well the kid's goal what he wants to do he wants to his plan is to go to college get a business degree and then
continue doing this business after he gets out of school after he gets out of college he wants to continue doing this business and try to grow it and my first thought And my comment to my sister was, well, he's crazy to go to waste four years at business school because he's going to learn nothing useful.
He's already running a successful business.
He already knows how to do it.
Instead of spending four years sitting in a room listening to some professor talk about marketing theory, a professor who probably has never even had his own business.
wasting those four years just learning a bunch of crap from textbooks and writing papers about it.
Instead, he could spend the same four years just working on the business he already has that's already successful.
And he can buy business books online.
Just get on Amazon.
He's making money already.
He can afford it. He can just buy if he wants to learn more about marketing.
Well, there's only like 10 ,000 books about marketing on Amazon.
He doesn't need to go to some super expensive university to learn from a textbook that will give him nothing useful.
It's crazy, but this is the mindset.
People are so brainwashed with this certificates and degrees and, like I said, anti -natural.
this thought that the kid oh he's not a real business person until he goes off to college for four years and takes a bunch of tests and writes a bunch of papers and memorizes useless facts from a bunch of textbooks and at the end of that four years somehow oh then he'll be a real businessman it's crazy he's already a real businessman in fact he's probably already better than almost every professor at the school whatever school he would go to it's just it's so sad to me like that you know so many people they don't even think that well i can just learn this myself i don't have to go off to school
i mean why does he i don't get it it drives me crazy people are so brainwashed now it's like it's like obviously you're already doing great just buy books about marketing and read them buy books about accounting if you need to understand accounting well fine again tens of thousands of books on accounting online you can buy you can also do like little seminars or courses you can just go and do like a one week course on accounting that's all he would need the kind of business he has instead of taking, you know, I don't know how many years he would be required, like, you know, one semester, two semesters
or more of accounting, learning a bunch of theory and garbage that will be of no use to him at all, spending tens of thousands of dollars at this university.
It's crazy. and just to finish up and tie it back to our original topic the same is true for spirituality and religion for answering these questions you don't have to just blindly accept the answer of somebody at your local religious group, temple, minister, priest you don't have to You don't have to go off to seminary school for four years and study a bunch of theory about the meaning of what a certain scripture or holy book says.
You can read that book yourself and study it.
You can also find on Amazon or online anywhere where the writings, the direct writings of gurus and saints and religious philosophers who have written about that scripture, people far more intelligent, deep, virtuous than some professor at a religious university or something.
I don't know why people are so afraid to just do these things themselves it's your life you've got to figure these things out yourself you can't just go somewhere and sit down and expect someone else to give you the answers or make you good at something it never works that way and all the people who try to do it that way are unsatisfied And they still find that after doing it that way, they still have to figure it all out themselves anyway.
And I'm guilty too.
I tried to do it with, let's say, I don't know, social work, my first master's degree.
I went off, I studied it, you know, how to help people, how to do counseling and psychology with people.
and after finishing that degree program I had zero idea of what I should actually do you know actually sitting down with a teenager who was suicidal thinking of killing themselves what do I do I don't know I no idea I still had to figure it all out myself I could have just started there and then instead of wasting the time right I could have figured it out and been quite good at it it's the same with business you can go up to business school and get your degree in business but guess what as soon as you get out you're still gonna have to just figure it out yourself especially if you start your
own business because you're gonna find that oh okay I took four years of business classes now what do I actually do how do I actually make this business I want to make uh guess what now you gotta just you gotta learn independently anyway so skip the four years of garbage and just start learning independently right now.
And the same is true for religion, as I said, or spirituality, I think it's a better word. That's really the topic we're talking about.
Obviously, you're just starting.
For most of us, you're not a saint, so it doesn't mean you can just figure everything out all by yourself unless you want to go sit under a tree and meditate for for ten years and fast every day and, you know, do what Gautama Buddha did.
Most of us aren't that powerful.
He also left his family to do that, his baby and his wife and his parents.
So most of us aren't that tough or that dedicated or that disciplined.
So it doesn't mean you have to figure it all out by yourself, but it means you are responsible, that it's you who must be the leader of your own spiritual life.
It's you who must find the answers.
And so, yes, you go and look for help.
But this is where books come in.
We have thousands and thousands and thousands of years of books of great saints and spiritual teachers and philosophers.
We have great books now and websites and videos by people who died and came back.
So you have a big...
There's so many books of great gurus and saints and Buddhas.
There's too many for you to ever read in this lifetime.
I mean, that's great.
And of course you can find people who are alive now, you know, teachers or coaches.
but you're not going to just get it by just sitting and expecting one person to give it all to you it's not going to happen that way it doesn't happen that way it's your life so that means you're responsible for it you have to figure it out yourself with help but it's your responsibility to get the right help to find those books to read them to think about them to find the interviews interviews, to find the teachers, and ultimately to answer all of these spiritual questions, finally the answer comes from you.
There's no other way.
That's what free will means.
it has to so we have a lot of adult babies in the world who are afraid to just take responsibility for themselves who are afraid to just realize in all areas of life it's always you who has to make the decisions it's always you who must figure out how to learn things it's always you who must do it who is responsible no one else can do it for you or will i guess most people find that scary i find it exciting i think it's motivating i think it's powerful saying you have the power and responsibility to do this for yourself and that you must so see that as a great thing as a gift lift, and do it.
Lots of love to you.
I will see you next time.
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EffortlessEnglishClub .com Lots of love to you.
Bye for now.
