Gary Zukav, Linda Francis and Alexander Green: Creating Authentic Power, Fear Into Love, Letting Go of Attachments and Investing through Crisis. #6

My long-time colleague and Chief Investment Strategist for The Oxford Club, Alexander Green and I, were honored to sit down with  the legendary American spiritual teacher and the author of four consecutive New York Times Best Sellers, Garv Zukav, in addition to his partner Linda Francis (who co-wrote two of the bestselling books with him). Their books have sold over 6 million copies and have been published in 32 languages. 

Gary Zukav graduated high-school early and was offered a full scholarship to Harvard. The day he graduated, he volunteered for the US Army Special Forces, becoming a Green Beret officer.  Beginning in 1998, Gary appeared 36 times on The Oprah Winfrey Show  – more than any other guest – to discuss transformation in human consciousness concepts presented in his book The Seat of the Soul.  Oprah calls The Seat of the Soul, her favorite book other than the Bible.

He and Linda have gone on to found The Seat of the Soul Institute where they provide programs and tools that help you create emotional awareness, responsible choice, intuition, trust, and spiritual partnerships – partnerships between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth (creating authentic power).

I hope you enjoy these amazing human beings!

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Show Notes: 

Gary, Linda and Alex each describe their definition of a "Rich Life" [6:20]

Gary explains how he came to write his first book "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters" with no background in Quantum Physics, which went on to win The American Book Award For Science. [19:37]

Gary explains what it was like to get a cold-call from Oprah and what happened after he appeared on her show for the 1st of what ended up being 35 visits. More than any other guest! [28:30]

Gary introduces the difference between five sensory perception and what he calls "multi-sensory" perception and first defines "Authentic Power". [34:08]

Gary explains how to develop "Authentic Power" [36:42]

Gary goes through what he calls the 4 Intentions of the soul [37:08]

Linda Francis explains how to notice different emotions in your body. She describes what they feel and where they tend to appear. They she shares how to shift fear-based emotions into love [39:15]

What fear does to investors in the market, especially during moments of contraction.  Alex describes market psychology and how to handle investments during moments of contraction. [43:26]

Gary describes the many forms of both fear and love in detail, then describing the most important tool to discern between them and manage your life [47:27]

Alex revisits some practical tools to address and work through fear during market volatility like we currently have, then Linda explains why not to "avoid fear", but rather convert fear into awareness with simple practice. [51:55]

Gary describes the power of attachments and how to avoid letting external circumstances define your life and happiness [54:30]

Gary describes what he believes is the new social structure of business, currently forming [1:00:00]

Linda explains the concept of "Spiritual Partnership" and how to cultivate deep, loving, connected relationships in life [1:04:00]

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www.richlifeguy.com

Transcript

Nathan Hurd (00:03:49): 
Welcome. And thank all of you for being here. Thank you, Linda, Gary, Alex for joining us here. My name is Nathan Hurd and I am the chief growth officer at the Oxford Club. And we're so grateful to have you all here and have this conversation together. Before we get started, let me just... For anyone listening or viewing that isn't unfamiliar with the work that the three of you have done, let me just bring them up to speed. Alex, I know after working on Wall Street for 16 years, you joined the Oxford Club as the chief investment strategist where you're still today. The Oxford Club is the world's largest financial fellowship, whose mission is to help its members create richer lives, but your financial newsletters have garnered over 800,000 subscribers and many more readers of your daily e-letter Liberty Through Wealth, and they showcase your ceaseless passion for figuring out the challenges of the markets and frankly of life. 

Nathan Hurd (00:05:08): 

In addition, Alex has recently released the revised and expanded second edition of his New York Times bestseller, The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy...and Get on With Your Life and he's also written three other New York Times bestsellers, including the Secret of Shelter Island, Beyond Wealth, which I have here, The Roadmap to a Rich Life and An Embarrassment of Riches. He's also someone that I have had the great pleasure and good fortune to have worked with for a number of years now, which is an experience I'm very grateful for. So thank you Alex, for being here today. 

Alexander Green (00:05:42): 

Thank you for that generous introduction, Nate. 

Nathan Hurd (00:05:47): 

And Linda, Linda Francis is the co-founder of the Seat of the Soul Institute and an internationally known speaker, teacher and bestselling author. Her warmth, presence and love for people, which I can personally attest to, has made her a global popular speaker for people looking to create lives of meaning, purpose and joy. After a career in the healing arts as a registered nurse, and then a doctor of chiropractic, she turned her attention to supporting people around the world and creating authentic power, a topic I hope we can discuss. The alignment of the personality with harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for life. Something I think we could all aspire towards. She's coauthored two books with Gary Zukav, our other guest here, the New York Times bestseller the Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness and the Mind the Sole: Responsible Choice. So Linda, thank you so much for being here. 

Linda Francis (00:06:42): 

So good to be here, Nathan. I'm looking forward to it. 

Nathan Hurd (00:06:46): 

And, Gary. The one and only Gary Zukav. Gary Zukav for years has conveyed the most complex insights in a language all can understand. Over and over again he challenges us to see the depth of our potential in the world and to act on that awareness. Gary is the other co-founder of the Seat of the Soul Institute. He's also a Harvard graduate with a degree in international relations, a former U.S. Army special forces green beret, Officer with service in Vietnam, a member of the Club of Budapest, a recipient of the World Business Academy Pathfinder award for his contribution to the global business community and the Einstein award from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1979, Gary published his first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, which became a New York times best seller winning the American Book Award for Science. 

Nathan Hurd (00:07:41): 

In 1989, The Seat of the Soul, which is another book I have here marked up, was released and became the number one New York Times bestseller for 31 weeks and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for three years. In 2000, Gary wrote Soul Stories, another New York Times bestseller. And then co-authored two more bestsellers, which I mentioned before, with his spiritual partner, Linda. Then in 2007, he released Soul to Soul and in 2010, his revolutionary book, Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power. And his latest book was just least last year called The Universal Human, which is a wonderful read. Gary's insights, warmth and contagious enthusiasm have endeared him to millions of viewers through his 36 appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show. 6 million copies of his book have been published in 32 languages. So thank you, thank you, Gary, for joining here today. 

Gary Zukav (00:08:43): 

That was a wonderful introduction. I thank you Nathan. 

Nathan Hurd (00:08:48): 

Well, I couldn't think, I couldn't imagine, three better people to sit down and talk with about one of the things that I know the Oxford Club holds near and dear as a core mission, which is to help people connect with experience and live a rich and fulfilling, purposeful life. And maybe that's where we can start if it's okay with you all, is just go around and share kind of what thoughts come to mind or how would you characterize, personally, a rich and meaningful life and maybe Linda, if you'd like to start, and then Gary and Alex? 

Linda Francis (00:09:28): 

Oh, what a wonderful question. I didn't really know very much about a rich and meaningful life for a long time. And I encountered Gary's first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, in 1979 when it was published. And I was so surprised to read it, because I thought, "Oh, I know this is true. What physicists are thinking is something that I know it's true inside me, that were all connected," and many things in that book that were just so important to me. And so 10 years later, Gary published another book, as you said earlier, The Seat of Soul. And at that time when I saw his name on the book, I thought, well, whatever this author writes, I'm going to read. So I read it. But it actually shifted everything for me, because I began to see myself in a very different way. Instead of just someone who was kind of doing their life unconsciously, I began to see that there was so much more to me and to everyone. 

Linda Francis (00:10:37): 

And so I began changing everything in my life. I began to look at everything inside myself that when I was creating from fear, I could see that there were parts of me that were fearful and there were parts of me that were loving. And most of the time, the fearful ones had been in control, like wanting to please people feeling jealous. Many, I could... Feeling inferior, feeling superior, judgemental, many things. So I could say there were many, many things. But, when I read the book, I realized, oh, there's something else I can do, this is not my life. I realized that I was spiritual, not religious, but spiritual. And that all of us are, even if we don't see it that way, doesn't matter. And by the way, anything that I say, I don't expect anyone to believe anything that I say, you can try out what I'm saying, Gary and I always say this, just say whatever we need to say. The lens that I see it through the that I see it. And, and I just offer it as something, if someone wants to look at that. 

Linda Francis (00:11:46): 

So this book, The Seat of the Soul, really changed everything for me. And I began to look at my life differently and began to do some things differently. And what I knew I wanted is I wanted to create in a loving way all the time. And so I began that process of learning how to do that. And then I met Gary a few years later, I was actually connected. I feel like I was connected with him. There was some reason we were supposed to be together and I didn't understand it, I don't know why. And so I began living in a loving way and meaningful way for the first time. I just began to do that after I read The Seat of the Soul. And so I began to make choices that were in love, rather than fear. And then we came together and we began to do that with each other and share with everyone, the things that we were learning together. And so that's what we've been doing for all this time, all these years. 

Nathan Hurd (00:12:53): 

Very nicely put. Thank you so much. 

Linda Francis (00:12:55): 

Yeah. 

Nathan Hurd (00:12:57): 

Yeah. Gary, how about you? How do you characterize or how would you personally characterize a rich and meaningful life? 

Gary Zukav (00:13:07): 

For me, a rich and meaningful life would be more that allows me to go through the earth school, my life, with an empowered heart, without attachment to the outcome. I touch that now and then, it has taken a lot of work, but it's so good that it's worth continuing to strive for. 

Nathan Hurd (00:13:42): 

Hmm. Yeah. Very well said. Powerful words. Alex, how would you define a rich and meaningful life? 

Alexander Green (00:13:51): 

Well, I don't know if I've arrived at a definition of a meaningful life, or a richer life. It's a question I'm never tired of exploring. I do think there are a few elements to a rich life. I think the first of which is gratitude. I think if we all take a moment and stop and be grateful for what's going right in our lives. We're sort of evolutionarily programmed to focus on what's wrong, to solve problems to imagine how things could be better, but probably less programmed to stop and think about how many blessings that we have that we don't properly appreciate. I think good health or the best health we can have is an element of a rich life. That's why I recommend a plant strong diet and people get enough rest and regular exercise and so forth. I think family is hugely important. I know with my own parents, that family was so important that I don't even know what was second, that it was all about taking care of each other and taking care of their children, making sure their grandchildren were happy and so on. And it's a beautiful way to center your life I think. I think good friends are important part, it's something you have to work more on maintaining as you get older. To have schoolmates and classmates and colleagues that you're hanging out with after work necessarily, especially in these remote work times. I think having strong interest, I mean, I have a lot of hobbies and I love to read and that's sort of a ceaseless journey there. 

Alexander Green (00:15:34): 

I know that in a minute, we're going to talk about fear, but I want to talk about one of my fears up front, and that is, my whole life I've had this desire to remedy my ignorance, in every area. And so I would just read and read and read and I have volumes of books and stacks of documentaries. And so of course now you have streaming and eBooks and so on, but I've devoted a significant amount of my free time to just sort of trying to know what I don't know. And of course, what I eventually learned is, the more you the start to understand, it's only then you really know how much you don't know. That there's just a world out there that you can tackle to the best of your ability, but there're some things that you'll never know. But to me, I am sort of driven, not just in my profession to understand as much as I can about the markets and interest rates and currencies and stock movements and so on, but about how the world works, from a nature standpoint, from a government standpoint, from a business standpoint. 

Alexander Green (00:16:46): 

So that desire to know drives me, but it is kind of a fear based thing, is that I'm afraid I'll, I'll die without understanding it. So I'm sort of on this mission to understand. And I want to say, something we talked about briefly before we turn the cameras on, that I am a huge fan of Gary and Linda and Gary has mentored me indirectly. His great accomplishment is not that he sold so many books, but that he touched so many people. Because you cannot help but read Gary and Linda's work and not feel like you're understanding something really important about how to live. So I'm so happy and honored that Gary and Linda are here and look forward to this conversation and future conversations with them. 

Nathan Hurd (00:17:36): 

That's wonderful. Thank you so much for that. And I would just add one thing that I've, I've seen, I know you've written about and I've certainly thought a lot about, and that is that perspective, maintaining a healthy and a rationally optimistic perspective about what's possible about the future, about what you're capable of accomplishing or creating. For me personally has been a really important part of that. And I know we'll get here in a little bit, but part of that has to do with the seat of your intention about how you view the world. But before we get there, the people watching this are likely to be very familiar with Alex, but maybe not so familiar with Gary and Linda. 

Nathan Hurd (00:18:29): 

So Gary, would you mind just taking us through a little bit of your backstory, because it's fascinating and it's so interesting to understand where you've come from and how you came to some of the ways that you view the world. I know you were born in Port Arthur, Texas, if I'm not mistaken, which my wife reminded me the first time we spoke is where Janice Joplin was born as well. But also you moved to Kansas, I believe in the fourth grade or somewhere thereabouts, and you grew up there. Could you share with us just how did you come to, it seems like you were very effective young man and you ended up in Harvard and then onto the army and so forth. Could you talk us through some of that? 

Gary Zukav (00:19:16): 

Well, it took me about 80 years to live it, so I don't know how long it'll take to talk it, but my growing up was so painful internally. You know, it was always a puzzle to me why. We were lower middle class, my father owned a small jewelry store in a small town in Kansas, although we had managed larger ones in larger cities. And I learned from him, integrity, loyalty, and those were wonderful gifts, but I wasn't happy as a child. My mother doted on me, my father was a provider and a protector and I was miserable and I never understood why. I was never abused, we always had enough food, we were warm in the winter and dry when it rained, but that's the way it was. And then I got a scholarship to Harvard and I went. I think they needed me because Harvard was transiting from an Eastern finishing go to a national university. And I was the valedictorian of Pittsburgh Senior High School in Pittsburgh, Kansas. And I got a great review from my debate coach. And so I wound up in Cambridge. 

Gary Zukav (00:20:50): 

I learned a lot there about intellectual excellence, very high standards of academia, not much about caring for people. That wasn't in any of the course catalogs, and I had a feeling it wasn't really that important to the people I was learning from, but I did learn a lot from them. And then I wanted to go into the army, and I did. This was when everybody else was going to graduate school or having children, to keep from doing that, because that's when Vietnam was becoming a very serious war. And I went because I was drawn to it. I was probably the only person at Harvard that had posters of paratroopers exiting an aircraft in flight on the way down. And I even had a picture of some people lucking out of a submarine and going ashore and they've got camouflage paint on their body. And later I wound up in a special forces, a detachment as an exo, an executive officer, and one of the men there had been at that shoot when army produced that brochure that I was looking at. So I wound up in the army. I became an infantry officer, went through basic training, all the training for enlisted infantry. Became an officer, went to jump school, went to special forces, got assigned to Special Forces Officer School at a school for special warfare at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. 

Gary Zukav (00:22:38): 

And I got a lot of experiences in the army that are not things that I would repeat today, although I thirsted for them then, but they gave me an understanding of people who wear uniforms and have rank and mission and equipment, such as police departments, coast guard, fire departments. And after that, I became an adventurer. I was diving for sunken treasure off the Florida Keys, Key Largo in particular, looking for a Spanish Galleon that sank in 1733, didn't find it. Just found a few pieces of silver, highly oxidized, but it wasn't mine. Enterprise, there were investors and there were 12 of us diving and tending with someone from the state of Florida on board to catalog what we did bring up. 

Gary Zukav (00:23:40): 

And then I decided I wanted to see California. So I drove straight across the country from Miami, and then I got to the ocean and I turned right, because it felt like the right thing to do. And I wound up in San Francisco where I lived for 13 years on Telegraph Hill. And there, I never lived that long any one place in my life at that time. And I found an apartment which was just hanging off the edge of Telegraph Hill. I couldn't afford it then, but I rented it anyway. And in those years in San Francisco, they were really interesting to me at the time. Still more pain though. most of my life was motorcycles, leather jackets, drugs, and sex. I was addicted to sex for all of that time that I was in San Francisco some quite a few years before and some after. 

Gary Zukav (00:24:45): 

But it was during that time also, I got an invitation to attend a Friday meeting of physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. And I went to see what physicists looked like, because I really had no idea. And they were speaking qualitatively in language rather than quantitatively in mathematical formulas. And the question they asked themselves that day was, are we creating the reality that we're experimenting with? Oh, did that take me, just grab me because this was the conversation I was having with some of my fellow intellectual, isolated, arrogant friends, which was my whole life isolation, arrogance and superiority. But it was our coffee shop conversation- 

Linda Francis (00:25:39): 

It's all fear, right? 

Gary Zukav (00:25:41): 

All fear. 

Linda Francis (00:25:41): 

Fearful principal. 

Gary Zukav (00:25:43): 

But these were some of the most renowned, theoretical physicist in the world. Henry Staff who was a senior theoretical physicist at LBL was there Jeff Chu, who ran the department down the hill at UC Berkeley. Wonderful people that supported me. I came home from that meeting with sparks... 

Gary Zukav (00:26:00): 

I came home from that meeting with sparks coming off my fingertips and my mind. I felt like I'd had three cups of cappuccino. I couldn't contain my excitement and I could not articulate what was exciting me. I asked them if I could return. They said, yes and I began to buy you used books in Berkeley. This was a time of very little money for me and as I read these books, I began to comprehend and be able to express some of the things that was so exciting about quantum mechanics. 

Gary Zukav (00:26:37): 

At one time I decided I want to write a book about this. I'd been invited to Esalen, which was a wonderful new age center on the California coast, around Big Sur. There I met the chair of the physics department at [inaudible 00:26:57] University, David Finklestein and I met a wonderful Tai Chi master, Al Wong and at the table I said what I was doing and Al said, when I was studying physics at National Taiwan University, we called it Wu Li. I said, well, what does that mean? He said, it means patterns of organic energy. I thought, organic energy. Physics? What am I missing? That's not possible. There is no organic anything in physics. Well, Al said, here's how we write it and he wrote on one of the paper napkins there, two characters and he said, this is Wu Li. He said, but because Chinese is his tonal, you can pronounce each of these characters in four different ways and combine them to mean different things. For example, he said, look at this one and he wrote another two characters. He said, this means my way and he did it again and he said, this means nonsense and he did it again and he said, this means enlightenment. 

Gary Zukav (00:28:03): 

By the time he was finished, I had the outline for the book that I said I'm going to write and I did. I decided that I knew I wasn't going to be interested in physics indefinitely and I wanted to give a gift to liberal arts majors like me who didn't like science and didn't like mathematics. A silver platter, fun to absorb, understanding of this thing called quantum physics and I did. This is all still an answer to your question, but I'm accelerating it quite rapidly compared to the 80 years it took to- 

Alexander Green (00:28:44): 

Gary, I do have a quick question for you. How much time elapsed between your first meeting with those physicists and your finishing the manuscript to The Dancing Wu Li Masters? How long did that take? 

Gary Zukav (00:28:58): 

Took 18 minutes to write it- 

Linda Francis (00:29:00): 

18 minutes? 

Alexander Green (00:29:01): 

You're good. 

Gary Zukav (00:29:05): 

Took 18 months to write it and probably a few months to get to know them well enough to say, would you help me in this project? Almost all of them said yes. Said yes, but they said they required one thing. They said, what we want of you is to get it right, get it factually, conceptually, historically, accurate. I agreed. They agreed and I would write a chapter on my Smith and Corona electric portable and I'd copy it and send it over to them and they would return it with more typed on the back of each page than I had on the front of each page. They mentored to me through this period of time and there's other things to share, but I wanted to share this part. When I started to write this, I had made an outline for each chapter and then thrown them away as I started to write because the energy diverted from the outline. The outline came from here. The energy came from some place deeper and I always followed it. Then after six months I had six chapters and I wondered, how did that happen? They fit together, but I didn't plan it and that's when it happened. That's when I realized I'm not writing this alone. Then I realized it's not possible to be alone for anybody. Every creation is a co-creation and that was my first introduction to non-physical reality, in a way that I understood what it was. I'd experienced it earlier in my life, but not like this. Now I knew what I was experiencing and I decided I'm going to live my life the way this book is being written, which is spontaneously, intelligently, joyfully and I still do my best to move in that direction. 

Alexander Green (00:31:12): 

Gary, let me, as a novice, let me ask you, when you say non-physical reality, what does that mean, exactly? 

Gary Zukav (00:31:21): 

It means I can't see it or taste it or touch it or smell it or hear it, but it's there and it's real. It's real. Now mind you, I feel I have credentials to say this because I wrote a book on quantum physics that won the American Book Award for Science and I graduated from Harvard and nothing in any of that could prepare me for a non-physical reality except one thing, Alex. When I was writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters, it didn't all come from here. A lot of it did, but it was with joy that he came from here, but now and then I would touch into something and that was the metaphor of the Wu Li Masters. 

Gary Zukav (00:32:08): 

For example, I would finish a chapter and then I would write something about the Wu Li Masters. Most physicists believe that they're experimenting with reality. The Dancing Wu Li Masters know they're experimenting, they're dancing with Kali, who's the Hindu goddess of illusion. When I would write sentences like that, it would film me with a kind of meaning that I really liked. Well, that was an experience of something deeper than my intellect was generating passion for. Then 10 years later, first of I got pretty inflated after I got that award. The American book award and the book got picked up and published everywhere in all the book clubs and foreign publishers. 

Linda Francis (00:33:03): 

That was your first book? 

Gary Zukav (00:33:03): 

It was in my first book. I'd never written anything, much less about science, but my big head didn't come in the usual way, like look at me. I'm pretty great, huh? It came the other way, on it was nothing really. Let's not talk about that. Both of those are distorting experiences and [crosstalk 00:33:27] of fear, fear and so I decided afterwards between San Francisco and between.... Well, I wound up on a ranch in the Fallen River Valley in Northern California, a little bit of acreage in the middle of 75,000 acres of timber and that's where I lived for a year. It was in that time at this little home that used to be a ranch house, that I realized that my next book wasn't going to be physics and consciousness, a magnificent trilogy of which I already wrote one part of it and I realized it was all coming from my forehead up and I knew that I was going to write a book about evolution, consciousness and the soul. 

Gary Zukav (00:34:27): 

That's what came. I left San Francisco. It was a wonderful story of adventure, but I wound up in San Francisco and you know what happened there. Then I decided to write the Seat of the Soul and that book took about a month and a half, Alex, but it came quickly, like water flowing. 

Alexander Green (00:34:56): 

You wrote it in six weeks? 

Gary Zukav (00:34:57): 

Yeah, pretty much. I had been given this information previously. I kept understanding and understanding and understanding, so it wasn't to figure it out. Then I sent it off and it got accepted. Actually always had been accepted by my publisher, although they thought it was going to be something else. Then when I sent it in, before I sent it in, I had this thought. Oh, everyone expects me to write a sequel to the Dancing Wu Li Masters about cutting edge science. Now I'm writing a book about this. I wonder how that's going to be received. I heard this voice, a voice that's become familiar to me and it said, don't worry about that. This arrow will find its mark. 

Gary Zukav (00:35:45): 

I published it and people started to buy it and read it and that was a good experience and then Oprah called when I was living in Mount Shasta. She called once, maybe twice more. I didn't recognize her at the time because television wasn't a part of my life, but then she invited me to meet her and Linda and I flew to Chicago so we could do that. It was just great. It turned out Oprah had been teaching her company, Harpo, from the Seat of the Soul and before she called me for quite a while. We flew out and I'll tell you those stories too because they're really wonderful and I enjoyed them so much, but the result was that I wound up doing some shows with Oprah. That just exploded my life out of the back country in Mount Shasta where I was living. 

Linda Francis (00:36:47): 

That was like nine years after the book. 

Gary Zukav (00:36:52): 

That was nine years after the book was published. Then the entire world became like the little town I was living in. People would recognize me and say, hi Gary. How are you doing? They weren't groupies. Oprah said, that's not going to happen to you and she was right. Right about a lot of things. She said, they'll appreciate what you're sharing. It was people, just friends, sometimes friends from afar, but it changed my life from being a recluse to looking at a larger world to which I was responsible and to which I was making some impact. 

Nathan Hurd (00:37:34): 

Gary, could I just ask a question, just jump in one second? It sounds like you had a number of different experiences through schooling and through the army and through that period after, where you mentioned or you touched on the fact they were based in fear or I think you even referenced an inferiority or superiority. Of course those concepts are very much present in the Seat of the Soul, which resonated with me. When did you start to realize that there was a main difference between those two positions? 

Gary Zukav (00:38:19): 

That's the heart of what's in the Seat of the Soul. The heart of what's in the Seat of the Soul is an epic and unprecedented transformation of human consciousness that's happening now and it has been happening for about a generation. It's that transformation, which is the expansion of our consciousness beyond the limitations of the five senses, which is why your question, Alex, was germane. This new consciousness allows now, hundreds of millions of us to experience non-physical reality, to experience the world in ourselves differently than we have before. This is multi-sensory perception. A perception beyond the limitations of the five senses. We now have another sensory system. 

Gary Zukav (00:39:09): 

For example, if you've ever had the question, am I more than a mind and a body? That question comes from a multisensory perception. If you've ever looked at the sky at night with the Milky way and you've lost yourself in wonder, that's a multisensory perception. That's just some of the few that five sensory humans have. I started to write about these things and then Oprah and I started to talk about them. Then we started to talk about them once a month. Each time we were doing that, 10 or 12 million people were listening. All of a sudden people started buying the book and I started talking to groups and so my life changed a lot slowly. Then I met Linda. 

Linda Francis (00:40:04): 

No, you met me way before that. 

Gary Zukav (00:40:09): 

I had written the The Seat of the Soul when we met, of course. That's what you were saying. 

Linda Francis (00:40:15): 

Yes. You'd written it. 

Gary Zukav (00:40:17): 

What happened was I met Linda and she moved to Mount Shasta where I was living, a small town in California in the mountains and that changed my life in every way because Linda connects with people and I communicated with people and there's a big difference. I like to say things precisely and unambiguously. After all, I wrote a book on physics. Linda would speak in ways and sometimes they were just sort of abstruse and I would say to me, but I noticed that she talked to people and they're shaking their hands like this so they knew what she was talking about. I told her about that and she looked at me and just said, beloved, language is my second language and I knew what she meant and that was part of my change. 

Gary Zukav (00:41:27): 

We've been together for, well, we just figured it out, 29 years. Interesting, just this morning when we were cuddling, the thought came to me to tell her, oh beloved, I found you again at last. 

Alexander Green (00:41:48): 

That's great. 

Gary Zukav (00:41:50): 

It took 29 years. Now I had hints because one of the first things I noticed about Linda was, I love her, which had never happened to me before. I'd never felt anything for women except sexual gratification and the desire for it. It was a different experience to me to love someone, but that was almost the sideshow. The main show was I loved loving her. Where did that come from? That's older than both of us and that's what I discovered again this morning, after 29 years of our being together. 

Alexander Green (00:42:33): 

Wow. What unusual lives you've had together. Gary, let me ask you a question. I'm interested in your ideas. We started off by talking about living a richer life and you have had so many epiphanies that you've talked about in your books and so on. In talking to our Oxford Club members now, what would you say are some of the most important things you've learned that have made your life so much richer? 

Gary Zukav (00:43:03): 

I'm more than a personality. I'm a soul and so are you and if you haven't turned off this interview by now, that means you are multi-sensory. That was important to learn because from the impersonal perspective of the soul, everything that used to be, it changes everything as you become multi-sensory. It changes your understanding and your experience of yourself and the world and the universe. It changes your understanding of relationship, of community, of culture, religion. It changes your understanding of ethnic group. 

Alexander Green (00:43:48): 

How do you become more multisensory? 

Gary Zukav (00:43:51): 

Multisensory is something that comes as a gift from the universe. You don't have to develop it, although we will develop it as we developed cognition, but that also was a gift. As you become multisensory, you begin to see more. You don't lose your five senses. I still have a zip code and I still have passwords for my computer and I still see and touch and smell, I hear things, but everything has more meaning, more depth, more purpose to it. It's just though you're watching a black and white movie and it's turning into color as you're saying it. Experiences become deeply meaningful and they teach you about yourself. The biggest thing that changes as you transit from five sensory to multisensory perception, is your understanding of power. 

Gary Zukav (00:44:48): 

The five sensory understanding of power is the ability to manipulate and to control and people pursue that. That's the pursuit of external power, but multisensory humans, when they have painful experiences, they don't try to make themselves better by changing the world, they turn inside. They put their attention inward to find the dynamics, the internal dynamics that are generating those painful emotional experiences and change them. That's authentic power. That's the creation of authentic power. That's how your life changes. 

Gary Zukav (00:45:27): 

Now Alex, multisensory perception is the gift. All we need to do is take off the wrapping and use it. 

Linda Francis (00:45:38): 

The gift from the universe. 

Gary Zukav (00:45:39): 

The gift from the universe. Part of that gift is a new potential. The potential of this new power, authentic power, the soul- 

Alexander Green (00:45:54): 

I was just going to say. I'm so intrigued. How does someone go about developing authentic power, in your view? 

Gary Zukav (00:46:03): 

Yes. That's everything. That's everything. That's every book that we write, every talk that we give, including this one. That's every interaction that we have with people who are open, is how do you do that? How do you create authentic power? Authentic power is the alignment of your personality with your soul. Your soul has four intentions. Harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for life. As you begin to thirst for these things, you are becoming multisensory. In other words, creating authentic power is creating love in your life. Put it that way. The only way to do that is to remove, in your personality, everything that prevents you from loving and that's the process of creating authentic power. 

Gary Zukav (00:46:51): 

You begin to see that all our experiences are experiences in, we can call it the earth school. It's the span of time between your birthday and your death day. It's a domain, it's a learning domain of time and space and matter and duality and the fundamental duality in the earth school is love and fear. These are the two fundamental intentions that underlie every deed and every word. 

Alexander Green (00:47:26): 

How do people become less fearful and more loving? 

Nathan Hurd (00:47:34): 

Before we get in there, if I could, let me just share something that's really pertinent here because this was my first personal experience with your work and it was the thing that resonated with me the most. When we first met each other, it was in Austin, Texas and we were attending a business conference, a business conference for Conscious Capitalism. Which, Alex, you write about and I know you're dear friends with John Mackey, the Whole Foods founder and the creator of Conscious Capitalism. We were there and it was about 200 CEOs and business leaders, founders. They were there to share and listen and learn from one another and Linda and Gary spoke. This was a three day conference and I think you spoke on the second day and that evening at dinner, I remember asking 10 or 15 of these business founders and CEOs who their favorite speaker had been during the whole conference up to that point. Mind you, there were some visionary, amazing speakers, all of them and 10 people, to a person, one after the other, all said, Linda and Gary had been the most impactful. 

Nathan Hurd (00:48:43): 

One of the things that you spoke about, which I think impacted everyone there that in our lives, we're making decisions every day. Some of these are big decisions, some of these are small decisions, some of these decisions affect a large number of people or just ourselves and in all of those decisions we have a choice, to make a decision from a place of fear or love. My own experience and this is what I shared with you there, I've started, particularly as we've been remote, there's less human interaction. We're working every day and we're interacting with people, but it's virtually and I've started to be much more acutely aware of feelings of anxiety or fear. I can feel them in my chest or in my throat. That distinction and that ability to notice that is what we ended up talking about. 

Nathan Hurd (00:49:40): 

I say all that to maybe ask you to share some of what you shared with us there and this whole notion of, we make a lot of decisions and they come from one of two places and it makes a big difference about which one of those two places they come from. 

Linda Francis (00:49:55): 

Oh, absolutely. 

Gary Zukav (00:49:58): 

I think one of the important things about our talk was that Linda in a few minutes gave everybody the experience of creating authentic power. I've never seen it done so beautifully. I hope you can do it. I know you can do it again. 

Linda Francis (00:50:16): 

It's really interesting Nathan because as so many people now don't have all the distractions that they had before the pandemic and when they were face to face with each other, they were often doing things that would cover up what they were feeling. Whatever it was, the usual distractions. When we're home and there's no one there to distract or nothing else to do, things come up in the body and the physical sensations you feel in your body are your emotions. It's the same thing. Physical sensations and emotions, that's the same, but most people think of it as I'm sad or I'm happy. They label an emotion, label rather than feel it. It's so important to feel what's going on in your body because then if you're having sensations, physical sensations in your body and usually we have people focus on three areas, although there are seven energy centers, energy processing centers. People often call them the chakras in the east. 

Linda Francis (00:51:27): 

In your throat is a really good place to practice to feel. Also, in your chest area, your heart and all your solar plexus. Those are the areas that most people can begin to feel physical sensations. Most people aren't feeling them because they're thinking a lot or they're distracting themselves in some way, so they don't even know what's going on in their body. They have no idea, but once you realize that if you can be aware of what's going on in your body in terms of physical sensations and you'll notice if they're... 

Linda Francis (00:52:01): 

And you'll notice if they're uncomfortable sensations or if they're pleasant sensations. If they're uncomfortable in any of those areas, it means that fear is active in you. There's a part of your personality that's based in fear, that is active. And if you act on it, you put out fear and doubt into the world. You act and you create destructive consequences when you act on that. You can't stop an emotion from coming, it comes. You have an emotion, like someone says something to you and they're rude and you feel pain in your throat or your heart or your solar plexus. But then you have a choice. You can feel those sensations and say, "Oh, I really am activated by this." But you can decide whether you're going to act the way that that part of your personality would want to do like shout or judge or withdraw. You don't have to do that can choose differently. 

Linda Francis (00:53:03): 

So that's basically, it's not easy to do, but basically you're trying to change yourself. In other words, creating authentic power rather than trying to change everyone outside of you because they aren't doing things the way you want them to. That's a very different way of being in your life. So you're not blaming someone for causing an emotion in you. You're saying, "Oh, I need to learn something from this emotion. I need to learn what is going on in me right now, so that I can decide whether I want to act in that fearful place or that loving place." And so, it's so simple to talk about, but to actually practice it all the time as a heartfulness meditation, as a way of noticing what's happening in your body so you can change yourself, rather than trying to change other people. Is something that is an ongoing meditation. It's an ongoing way of looking at your life. So does that explain? 

Nathan Hurd (00:54:14): 

It did yeah. And it sure is. I hope everyone that's watching and listening is connecting how foundational this is. So for me, if I'm making decisions like Alex, I know you've written many times about let's take investment, which is something that the Oxford Club write a lot about. Well, investing a lot of it is psychology. If you're making decisions about anything, like the decisions I make with the things I say to my dear wife, if they come from fear, those choices and those words are very different and they create very different outcomes. And sometimes those outcomes are very painful if they've come from a place of fear, versus a place of love. But the same thing is true, if I'm thinking about investments I'm making with my time or my energy or my resources. And so can you just maybe talk for a second about what are the consequences of making decisions from a place of fear? Since really it impacts everything we do. 

Alexander Green (00:55:17): 

Are you talking to me now Nate, or to Gary? 

Nathan Hurd (00:55:22): 

Well to Gary and Linda or you, yeah feel free to... 

Alexander Green (00:55:26): 

Okay. Well, I'd love to hear Gary's thoughts on the subject, but let me just say from a stock market perspective. It's funny, in university, I majored in business and psychology. And you can never learn enough about business to know all the intricacies of how it affects what's happening in the market. But what's happening in the market from a psychological standpoint is very easy to understand. When people are terrified, which is when you see big plunges in the stock market, if you resist the temptation or maybe just if you can resist identifying with your own fear and try to think rationally about how even if we're faced with a severe problem, how long this is going to last and what the outcome might be. 

Alexander Green (00:56:20): 

Let me just give two examples. We had a financial crisis in 2008 and the market absolutely collapsed. And people thought that was the end of the world and capitalism was coming to an end and who knew where things would go from there. And yet it was one of the greatest buying opportunities for stocks of all time, for people who were willing to not be fearful, but to be optimistic and patient. And try to think rationally rather than emotionally. And the same thing happened in the first quarter of 2020, when we realized that the virus had escaped China and there was no stopping it, we were going to have a global pandemic. And once again, we had a market meltdown with the fastest bear market in history. And a lot of people thought, "Oh my gosh, they're closing down the economy. They're shutting store. You can't travel. You can't go anywhere." 

Alexander Green (00:57:13): 

Terrible for business and the market plunged. And then more rational people begin to realize, "Yes, but we've got vaccines on the way and business will reopen and things will eventually get back to normal." And of course the market staged a tremendous comeback. And so from my perspective, as someone who, as an investment analyst and tries to help people achieve financial freedom in their lives, I try to make clear to them that if they can just stand apart from the emotion and think longer term and rationally, they can end up doing the right thing. You can't stop the feeling of fear, or maybe Gary has some thoughts on that idea. It's hard not to feel fearful sometimes, but if you can avoid acting out of a sense of fear, then you're probably on the right track. Gary, your thoughts on fear and how it affects your life? 

Gary Zukav (00:58:06): 

Oh, that's beautiful Alex. A part of multisensory perception is the ability to see everything in your life symbolically, it carries meaning. And you're talking about, this is an example symbolically as well as historically and psychologically of recognizing fear and choosing not to act on it. 

Alexander Green (00:58:33): 

Right. 

Gary Zukav (00:58:33): 

Because if you act on fear, it will create destructive consequences. And the opposite of fear is love. So you might say, I've never thought of it this way, maybe I'm an investment analyst too. But the investment is in Life with a capital L. What am I putting into Life? And that is not a quantitative thing, it depends upon intention and the intention is either love or fear. So what am I investing you might say in Life? Capital L bigger than my life, bigger than your life, Life, that is all. If I make the investment with love, it's a positive contribution. So how do I know, what's love? Well that's where emotional awareness, not emotional intelligence, but emotional awareness comes into the picture. 

Alexander Green (00:59:35): 

Right. 

Gary Zukav (00:59:36): 

And it's a matter of knowing that if I create, if I contribute with an intention of fear, it will create painful consequences. For example, fear, I'm talking about a blanket synonym for anger, rage, resentment, jealousy, superiority, inferiority, vengeance, lack of forgiveness, entitlement, need to please. And every compulsion and obsession and addiction. All of that is in the category of the basket called fear. And the basket called love contains experiences such as gratitude, appreciation. Some of the things that you mentioned when we talked. Gratitude, appreciation, caring, patience- 

Linda Francis (01:00:27): 

All the universe. 

Gary Zukav (01:00:28): 

All of the universe, contentment. So as you become emotionally aware, you're able to determine which of these energies is active in you in the moment, fear or love. And then make a responsible choice. Well you could say, a rational choice. Because that's the symbolic circumstance that you're describing. But taking it as I would take it symbolically. 

Gary Zukav (01:00:56): 

It's seeing when you are experiencing, when I am experiencing fear and to be more precise, when a particular part of my personality is experiencing fear. Which feels like I am experiencing it. And choosing to make a decision that comes from the heart, not rational, but comes from the heart. But the structure of the example that you gave us is isomorphic, it's beautiful. There is a distinction between two kinds of energy, a recognition that one of them is destructive and one of them is constructive. And the intention, the commitment to pause, no matter what it is that you are experiencing in the moment, and make the most constructive action that you can, and that's creating authentic power. 

Alexander Green (01:01:51): 

Yeah I love that. I love that idea Gary. Because first of all, I'm the kind of person who thinks that you create the quality of your life with the quality of the choices that you make. And that you have to... I think it was Robert Lewis Stevenson who said that "Eventually we all sit down to a banquet of consequences." And I think if you can find ways to practice, I want to hear more about the exercises or what you would suggest to come more from a place of love or understanding versus fear. I know that in the investment arena, I often tell people that if you can, first of all, avoid the impulse to act impulsively that oftentimes people regret that they sold everything in a hurry at the bottom because they acted impulsively. 

Alexander Green (01:02:39): 

So sometimes doing nothing often, Warren Buffet says that we look at Berkshire Hathaway, look at sitting on our hands as intelligent behavior. Sometimes doing nothing is better than reacting to a feeling of fear. I often have mentioned too, that, when the stock market is doing well, people love to pull up their portfolio online, "Look at this, it's a new high, I've never been worth more than this." They're so excited. They share it with their family and friends, whatever. And then it starts sinking and they have this high water mark that they hit in there and they start to feel bad and feeling that they should do something about it. And I'm not saying that they shouldn't take some actions, if they're too heavily invested in stocks or they have certain companies that are not performing well. But oftentimes it's a matter of putting things in perspective. 

Alexander Green (01:03:27): 

Like for instance, you never would've hit that high water mark if you hadn't had a portfolio of stocks, and if you own stocks, you're going to have volatility that you don't have with a bank account that just rises steadily. Doesn't rise very far, very fast with interest rates this low, but it's a smooth glide. Where with stocks, the returns are higher because you're willing to accept the volatility that's inherent in owning equity. So just turning off the cable news or not looking at your portfolio online, those are steps you can take to avoid having a fearful reaction and hurting the performance of your portfolio. But maybe you have more suggestions for what people can do to avoid the consequences of having a fearful reaction to something. 

Linda Francis (01:04:11): 

Well, I just want to say one thing. Alex, I really love what you're saying. And I don't think that people have to worry about avoiding a fearful reaction, because actually you can't stop fear when it comes up, it does. Like they could see something, hear someone say something, even though they're avoiding the paper or whatever they're avoiding. They could hear it, and that could bring up a reaction immediately. But the thing about it that's so amazing about when you create authentic power, you don't avoid the emotion, you actually feel it as a physical sensation and say, "Oh, I'm feeling some fear in my heart right now. I can feel pain. I feel stabbing."- 

Alexander Green (01:04:57): 

In your chest area. 

Linda Francis (01:04:57): 

In my chest area. Yeah, the middle of my chest and, "Oh, I can hardly talk. I just feel like I'm losing my voice. And I have a big lump in my throat." Or solar plexus is a big area, right? It's like right in this abdominal area, I'm feeling this burning pain, this churning, this tightness in my chest, just really feeling it as a physical sensation. And realizing that's a fearful part of your personality that has come up. You don't have to avoid it happening. Just say, "Oh, there you are. Again, I am not going to act on you. I'm not going to act in this way right now." Because what I would do if I were reacting would be to do what I usually do instead feeling what's going on in your body and realizing, "Oh, there's fear in my body right now. This is a fearful emotion. I do not need to act from this." 

Linda Francis (01:05:52): 

And being willing to feel that pain because it'll be painful. But it's okay to feel the pain, much better feeling it than not feeling it and acting on it. And so feeling it and realizing that you have a choice is such a powerful experience. And people can do that. It's not just about the market. It's about anything in their life, anything that's going on, it doesn't matter. If your child makes you upset or someone is rude to you or you're in a power struggle with your partner. At any time when you're feeling... If you're noticing what's going on in your body, you're noticing, "Oh, I have painful sensations here in my throat right now and in my heart. And I don't want to act from this." And then stop. Don't do that and just open yourself. 

Linda Francis (01:06:49): 

And this is where opening yourself to higher guidance support. Say, "I really don't want to act from this. What could I do right now that would be most." You can just ask yourself, "What could I do right now that would be most healthy for me to do? What would be the highest, most healthy thing I could do right now?" Rather than act in the way that I could. And that's a practice that Gary and I have all the time, just really looking at what we're... Wouldn't you say that beloved? 

Gary Zukav (01:07:21): 

Yes I would. And also Alex, you've given another gorgeous, symbolic analog. People feel so good when the market goes up. When the market goes down, it's the opposite. As you create authentic power, you begin to see those ways that you are anchored, hooked onto the external world. In other words, your attachments. And your attachments are all so very, very, very important to the frightened parts of your personality, because their value is determined by the external world. 

Linda Francis (01:08:01): 

If the market goes up- 

Gary Zukav (01:08:03): 

In your case- 

Linda Francis (01:08:03): 

Then they feel valuable. 

Gary Zukav (01:08:04): 

Yeah. In the case that you mentioned that's exactly it. But it could be others. It could be, "Did I get the job? Didn't I? Did I get the girl? Did I get the guy? Did my child survive the accident?" In other words, what you are internally as your five sensory and pursuing external power is all in the hands of the external world. When I needed to become a green beret, I thought it was all so noble because I've always gone to the heart of the matter and I wanted to join. I wanted to fly fighters. I couldn't because of my vision. That's symbolic too. I didn't have much vision in those days and I needed glasses too. They're separate things. And so I joined the army and the heart of the army is the infantry. But once I got into the army, I realized the special forces... Anyway everything is going to the heart of it. The heart of creating authentic power is you become the authority in your own life. You don't hand your sense of self worth and value over to anyone else or anything in the world. Like the stock market, like the bond market, like the market for single people. If you're a single person, is your stock high or is your stock low? If you are righted up and down, you're in a frightened part of your personality that needs validation. As you create authentic power, you become aware of yourself in a way that is independent, a validation. The most that successfully pursuing external power can provide for you as happiness. It's a temporary feeling. You have a new Ferrari and you're on top of the world. And then you come back and you find that somebody has scratched the side of it with a key or somebody's run into the back of it. And suddenly you [crosstalk 01:10:13] Lamborghini. 

Alexander Green (01:10:14): 

Yeah. So what do you say to those people Gary, who've just naturally looked around and they see that people are following conventional lives, where they look for a high status job and they look for a high status mate and they surround themselves with very nice material things. What do you say to these people? How do they need to start reorienting themselves toward what's meaningful from what's ephemeral and things they can't control? 

Gary Zukav (01:10:42): 

I wouldn't say they need to do anything. Everybody's got their own path through the earth school. The thing is, what you learn from it. If you are acting with fear, you will create consequences that are painful for yourself. Anything that has attachment to it comes from fear. But you can live the life that you're living now from love, if you're not attached to it. You might say, we're all practicing. We're all practicing for the big attachment. We're going to die. How attached- 

Linda Francis (01:11:28): 

Letting go of that big attachment. 

Gary Zukav (01:11:29): 

How attached our you to this life? Of course- 

Alexander Green (01:11:33): 

I think when you're dead, you're not attached at all. 

Gary Zukav (01:11:37): 

You're not, you're joyful. Beyond joy beyond, beyond. But what I'm saying is that you have given a wonderful example of what it is to pursue external power. You give your value to someone else. "Do you like me? I hope you like me. Do you really like me? Are you marrying me? Well at least come home with me. Well at least smile at me." There's no self worth that a frightened part of your personality can experience. Creating authentic power puts you in touch eventually in a way that doesn't need to be explained with what you are. 

Gary Zukav (01:12:15): 

You are a compassionate and loving, creative and powerful spirit. And the pain in your life is the distance between that reality and your self image. And wherever your pain is, look and you will find a frightened part of your personality that you can experience and choose to move beyond the control of. Our friend Ram Das, Guru, not our guru just our friend, told us once, and he put it on the back of a book. He said "I intend for my life to be a statement of compassion and love. And where it's not, there lies my work." [crosstalk 01:13:09] There lies my work. Thank you Ram Das. 

Alexander Green (01:13:13): 

I like that. 

Nathan Hurd (01:13:16): 

Gary and Linda, one of the things that I have, that really struck me about what I've learned from you is this notion that real power... And I think a lot of our Oxford Club members frankly, will resonate with this. One of the reasons that people tend to become part of the Oxford Club is because they want to take action themselves. To not leave it up to the external world, to take responsibility for this area and other areas of their lives. And what you're describing authentic power, we think of powerful people as powerful people that have positions of authority and have control over others. This is the traditional concept of power. Certainly the one that I have come to learn throughout my life. 

Nathan Hurd (01:14:03): 

And what I realized from you is resonant, and I think probably will be resonant with our members is that the ultimate power is inside, is always inside. At least as I've come to understand it from what I've learned from you. Another thing that you taught me, and I'd like your feedback on this is that, for me, fear is something that I've come to understand more and more and come to recognize more and more. But every one of us can identify with the experience of rumination. Where you're just lost in thought. And for a long time I used to say, I would try to think my way out of problems. It never worked. It never worked. 

Nathan Hurd (01:14:51): 

And I remember the first time we spoke, it brought me to tears almost when you helped me to see that one of the things that I was doing for a long time was I would skip the part about feeling fearful experiences, actually feeling that sensation. And it would click in and I would just start ruminating, intellectualizing and thinking about it. And that never led anywhere. And so what I've started to do now is what I've heard from you. And maybe you can speak to this, because Alex, you were asking about this. And I believe what I've seen you say is, it's a combination of emotional awareness and responsible choice, those two. Am I saying that correctly? 

Linda Francis (01:15:39): 

Yes. 

Nathan Hurd (01:15:39): 

Those two are really the path that I've come to practice more and more when I'm making decisions about investments. When I'm making decisions about something I want to present to my wife. Or when I'm making decisions around my kids, if I'm afraid that something's wrong or I haven't said something correctly. Can you react to that? Is that an accurate way to describe this practice, emotional awareness and responsible choice related to various areas? 

Linda Francis (01:16:09): 

Well, I know you said that you were talking about ruminating. Have you been noticing when you have those thoughts that you notice what's going on in your body now? Or is that what you're being able to feel sensations in your body when that happens? 

Nathan Hurd (01:16:24): 

Yes. In fact, I just want to add one thing, because I think this is maybe helpful for people. What I've realized is when I start to feel fearful, everybody knows what it feels like to get punched in the gut or to have that tightness in your chest or throat. When I feel anxious feelings or fear come up, what I realized I was doing is I try to reject those feelings instead of accept them. So for a long time I would say... Inside, I would say, "Oh no, oh no, oh no." Or "Not right now, not right now." And that anxiety, essentially I was responding to anxious feelings with more anxious feelings and that's what would start the rumination. 

Linda Francis (01:17:05): 

So where did you feel it? 

Nathan Hurd (01:17:11): 

Yeah, usually I tend to feel stress I would say in my chest or in my throat. 

Linda Francis (01:17:20): 

In your throat or your chest. And so you'd feel uncomfortable or painful sensations in that area right? 

Nathan Hurd (01:17:24): 

That's right. 

Linda Francis (01:17:24): 

Is that what you're saying, yeah. Now it's true, like you said, you try to reject them. But the only thing is that they're always there anyway. And if you actually have the courage to feel them and see, "Oh this is fear, these are fearful parts of my personality that are here. And I have all these thought and I'm believing these thoughts." But instead you can feel what's going on and notice the thoughts, but make a different choice. You don't have to make the choice that you would normally make. You can make a choice- 

Linda Francis (01:18:00): 

Make the choice that you would normally make, you can make a choice to do something healthy, to go talk to your wife about what's going on, and maybe not as a way to complain, but as a way to say, "Wow, this is going on in me. I know it's fear, and I'm doing my best to challenge it right now, because I do not want ... I'm not going to act on this and I don't want to continue feeling ... I'll feel, but I'm not going to continue believing this." So that's ... 

Nathan Hurd (01:18:30): 

Yeah. So observing the sensation more objectively and then making a different choice. 

Linda Francis (01:18:37): 

Well just, yeah, feeling it right. Actually feeling what it feels like as a sensation, not being afraid to feel that. Because most people are doing everything they can to avoid feeling, getting angry and shouting or smoking or drinking or whatever way they can, anything they can do to stop feeling. But if you're willing to feel the sensations, you can see, "Oh, there's fear active in me," or, "There's love." And if there's fear active in you, then you can make another choice. You can make a different choice besides acting the way you usually do, to avoid or to act out that emotion, shouting with anger. 

Gary Zukav (01:19:23): 

And you can apply these to every arena, for example, which you shared Alex. You can look at the stock market going down. You're saying, "Oh my gosh, we're going to lose the second home. We might even lose the first home." Or you can look at it with love and say, "Oh goodness, how are we going to support those people in Africa now?" And then we'll just get around to figuring out another way to do it, instead of figuring out a way to get another two homes back. One of them's from fear and one of them's from love. You ask, "How would we be towards someone who has a fine home?" We know lots of people with fine homes. The way I strive to be toward everyone is to love them. And we don't attempt to proselytize or convert or persuade anyone. 

Gary Zukav (01:20:19): 

But this is a human-wide, a species-wide transformation of consciousness that's maybe one third of the way complete at this time. But if it's touching you, now's the time to act on it, because it's not going to go away. You can try to make it go away, but it won't. If you're waking up with a need for harmony and cooperation and sharing and reverence for life, and you look around you and you say, "What am I going to do now?" Because you're looking at a world of discord and competition and hoarding and exploitation. That's the position that hundreds of millions of people are in right now. How am I going to be in a spirit ... How do I become a spiritual person? Or I am becoming a spiritual person in a world that doesn't yet recognize spirit, but you recognize spirit and you are in the world. 

Gary Zukav (01:21:16): 

Linda and I had this remarkable experience in Austin at the CEO summit there, because it validated everything I had just written about, the collapsing social structure of business in universal human, and its replacement with a multi-sensory social structure of business. And that is that the new emerging intention of business is startling. It's pure service. And it stands in dramatic contrast to the oldest intention of business, which is pure profit. In practical terms, that means that business is shifting from an endeavor that generates profits by selling goods and services, to an endeavor that generates goods and services, that generates profit in order to provide goods and service. I hope I said that clearly. It's turned the energy 180 degrees [crosstalk 01:22:35] 

Alexander Green (01:22:35): 

Right. Well, I agree with you entirely, Gary. There's a growing realization that the best business, which coincidentally often are the most profitable businesses, are the ones that realize that it's only when all the stakeholders in the business are properly accounted for and heard and treated with respect, not just the shareholders, but the employees, the customers, the suppliers, the communities that they're in. Only when everybody feels a part of something and realizes its purpose and feels good about what they're doing, only then are those businesses able to reach their true potential. So the idea that it's all cutthroat competition, dog eat dog, we got to get them before they get us. 

Alexander Green (01:23:27): 

It's really quite the opposite in that the healthiest companies that grow the best are the ones that have satisfied employees. They're happy to work there, so they're not leaving. Satisfied suppliers, they're not saying, "I'm not dealing with them. They're too slow to pay. They drive too hard to bargain." Whatever, the customers are happy with the prices, happy with the quality. They become raving fans. And it's all because the business is connected to purpose and everyone is rowing in the same direction. It makes a huge difference in the way that an organization operates. And as an analyst, I'm looking to identify those kind of companies where they're doing what needs to be done in order to have not just a profitable business, but happy customers, suppliers, shareholders, managers, everyone's pleased with the direction of the business. 

Linda Francis (01:24:15): 

Yeah, that's beautiful. 

Gary Zukav (01:24:16): 

Wonderful. Isn't it? 

Linda Francis (01:24:16): 

Yeah. 

Gary Zukav (01:24:16): 

Wonderful. 

Linda Francis (01:24:18): 

Gary, I decided that we [crosstalk 01:24:21] 

Alexander Green (01:24:20): 

I also want to pick on what you said, pick up on, is that you talked about how this is something that people within them have to change within themselves. We all look at the world and we think of things. We want to change government. We want to change business. We want to change our communities. We want to change the people around us. We're powerless to do those things to a great extent. I always think of Gandhi's words that we have to be the change we want to see in the world. And you talked about how you become a more conscious, more loving human being. And maybe you haven't changed the entire world, but you've changed a part of the world because you're in it. And I think if everyone adopted that mindset, that I'm going to become something and set a standard that maybe other people will look at and say, "Wow, you seem like a contented, happy, grateful person. What are you doing? And I think leading by example, in addition to your books, which have affected millions, is something we could all strive for, is to live the message that we want to present to the world. 

Gary Zukav (01:25:27): 

That's it exactly. Well ... Sorry, beloved. 

Linda Francis (01:25:32): 

Well, I just was thinking about ... Gary and I've been ... Because we were learning about how to do this so many years ago, about how to create authentic power and how to live a loving life. I mean, that's really what we were doing, and how to be in spiritual partnership with each other, which is not something we've talked about yet. But the way that people ... The way relationships are now ... Can be now, are very different than before. It's like business. It's the same. It's the same thing, where we're authentically empowered. We want to support other people. And I that's what I hear you saying, you want to contribute to ... That businesses now, the kind of businesses that you're working with and speaking to, people you're speaking to, are people that want to make a contribution to everyone around them. 

Linda Francis (01:26:29): 

It's the same way with each person. And when everyone ... So in other words, if I'm creating authentic power, aligning my persona with my soul, my purpose is to make a contribution to everyone that I am with or that I think about or that I'm around. And so that's what Gary and I practice about all the time. And we also have been sharing that with people for so long. I think that we were doing events way before Gary went on the Oprah show, because I knew Gary ... We needed to do that, because most people didn't really know at that time, 30 years ago they didn't really understand what we were talking about, but they were resonating. And so the practicing with each other, the supporting each other is so important too. If I notice that ... If Gary notices I'm in a fearful part of my personality, and I don't see it, he'll say something to me. He'll ask me ... What will you say to me, beloved? What do you say sometimes? I mean, you say many different things, but ... 

Gary Zukav (01:27:36): 

Well, my intention is always to support my beloved. If I use the basic agreement between spiritual partners, which is, "If you think you see something in me that you think I don't see, and you think it would me if I did see, will you tell me?" In other words, something I might say to Linda, "Do you think that a frightened part of your personality is active now, or a loving part?" And if it's a frightened part, I would say something like, "How can I support you in challenging that? Which means not acting on it, experiencing it fully and not acting on it. And if it's a loving part, I would say maybe how can I support you in cultivating that? 

Linda Francis (01:28:28): 

And I mean, they're really simple things that you can do with the people around you. And it's so helpful if there's an agreement. And I don't say things to people if they don't have an agreement with me, but for one thing, I don't ever want to be doing anything from fear. And I really appreciate my spiritual partners. And I don't mean ... It's not just Gary, it's other people in my life too ... Because it's so new in the human experience to be ... I'll give you an example. So in a friendship, people are in agreement with each other a lot. That's what I notice. And they don't really want to say anything to rock the boat about what they might notice. 

Gary Zukav (01:29:17): 

When they're in agreement, frightened parts of one personality are in agreement with frightened parts of another. In other words, that's the coffee conversation at the break. "Hey, did you see how my manager treated me?" "Yeah. He treated me just that way too." "How could even get employed?" And another one would say, "Yeah, I had the same experience with that." That's one frightened part of a personality communicating with frightened parts of others. The frightened parts seek agreement. 

Nathan Hurd (01:29:47): 

Yeah. And isn't that so true nowadays with media and with all the sound bubbles that we keep ourselves in with messaging, of fearful messaging oftentimes. This has been wonderful so far. [crosstalk 01:30:10] Go ahead. 

Gary Zukav (01:30:09): 

I wanted to say Ralph Waldo Emerson explained, in his own terms, what was to become in this transformation in the social structure of business, more than a century later. He said, and he used the word man, because that's the way it was in those days. "A man takes care that he does not get cheated by his neighbor. But the time comes when he takes care that he does not cheat his neighbor. And then his market cart has turned into a chariot of the sun." 

Linda Francis (01:30:48): 

Will you say that one more time? I just want to make sure I got that. 

Gary Zukav (01:30:50): 

A man takes care- 

Linda Francis (01:30:51): 

No, I meant the whole thing. 

Gary Zukav (01:30:52): 

A man takes care ... Oh, the whole thing? 

Linda Francis (01:30:54): 

Yeah. The whole thing. 

Gary Zukav (01:30:55): 

Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed what was to become this transformation in business that we're talking about, or I was talking about, more than a century after his life, by saying that transformation in business we're talking about is a transformation of business from exploitation to contribution. It's radical. And what Ralph said was, "A man takes care that he is not cheated, that his neighbor does not cheat him." [crosstalk 01:31:30] You might say that could be analogy for old five century business. "But the day comes when he begins to take care that he does not cheat his neighbor." And that is an analog to the business, to the new social structure of business that is now emerging as the old one becomes nonfunctional and destructive, continually. 

Nathan Hurd (01:31:57): 

That's great. Well, I'll tell you what, I think this has been a wonderful discussion so far. And there's actually so much we haven't even gotten to. So maybe we can talk about that in a future conversation. But I wonder if ... There was a story that you told from the stage at the conference and I believe it's an experience you had on Oprah. Would you mind sharing, because this story is a great example, or I thought was a great example of authentic power. Could you share the story of Thomas Ann Hines? Would you mind? 

Gary Zukav (01:32:28): 

Oh no, I wouldn't at all. One of the early shows that I was on, Linda and I met her. Her son was 21 when he was killed, in a shooting accident, and he was killed by another young man about the same age. And this young man was sent to prison. And we didn't know it, but years later we were to meet and did meet the district attorney of Travis County, Ronnie Earl, who's a remarkable man. And Thomas Ann would call his office and say, "Tell me that ..." I've forgotten the boy's name. "Tell me that he's been killed. Tell me that he's been killed in prison." She wanted his death so much. She wanted it. And this went on for years. 

Gary Zukav (01:33:17): 

And eventually she had the idea she wanted to meet the boy. And it was arranged for her to do that. And they were in this cage and they were sitting across the table from one another, and the security cameras were on them both, and Oprah was showing footage from these security cameras. And one of them, they showed the boy and Thomas Ann. And Thomas Anne was saying ... Oh, she was saying, "If you'd just known my son, you wouldn't have done that. You wouldn't. You'd known, you would've liked him. He was such a good person. You wouldn't have done this." 

Gary Zukav (01:33:52): 

And while she's saying this, she begins to weep, and she falls forward on the table with her head on her hand like this. Oh, I can't hardly ever tell this story without crying. But you can see the young boy, who's black, looking at her hand, which is why it's stretched out, not toward him, just stretched out while she's sobbing me. And he hesitantly reaches out and touches hers. 

Gary Zukav (01:34:32): 

That's the kind of transformation that we all have the potential of doing. And Thomas Ann, it wasn't as though she became his godmother in prison. It didn't work out that way. But I think she did keep track of him and the healing in her was enormous. She put a copy of The Seat of the Soul in every Texas prison. And of course she lived in Austin, which is where John Mackey started his first Whole Foods. 

Nathan Hurd (01:35:05): 

All right. He's still there. 

Gary Zukav (01:35:07): 

He's still there. [crosstalk 01:35:09] And he's still there, John Mackey. 

Linda Francis (01:35:11): 

Oh, yes. 

Gary Zukav (01:35:12): 

And when you go to Austin to visit him, Alex, you'll see right across from the courthouse, a very high building for Austin, maybe 11 or 13 stories high. It's the Ronnie Earl building, named after Ronnie Earl, who came to one of my workshops that were tiny, even before I met Linda. And then we kept in touch all this time. And Ronnie was known for his commitment to justice rather than convictions. And that was the DA that Thomas Ann was going to see. And Thomas Ann is the person you ask about, Nathan, whose son was murdered. And she was carrying around that burden of hatred. 

Linda Francis (01:36:01): 

Yeah. 

Gary Zukav (01:36:01): 

And revenge. 

Linda Francis (01:36:02): 

Well Ron and his wife and Twila, and many others, have been involved in the restorative justice and circle sentencing movement for ... They were for a very long time. And I think that was Ronnie's orientation with her. Anyway, she had a complete transformation and realized that she didn't want to hate this boy anymore. And it shifted everything for her and in her life, because instead of hating, instead of all that fear, those fearful parts of her personality, wanting him dead, she began to help other people, not only this young man, but other people in prison to help them when they had things like that happen with them, when their children were killed, or family members were killed, she helped them to be able to support themselves and create an authentic power rather than continuing to live in fear. It was really quite a moving experience. 

Nathan Hurd (01:37:12): 

Thank you. 

Alexander Green (01:37:13): 

Thank you for telling that story. 

Gary Zukav (01:37:18): 

Yeah. That [inaudible 01:37:19] story from Austin. And Thomas Ann is still in our hearts, strongly. 

Nathan Hurd (01:37:25): 

Well that's wonderful. And I think that's a great place to close our conversation today. It's been really wonderful. Thank you both so much. And before we close, I hope everyone can just consider some of the main concepts you shared, fear and love, and how that affects all aspects of our lives and think about authentic power. But is there anywhere that people can learn more about you, Gary and Linda, if they're interested in reading one of your books or continuing to learn more about some of these concepts? 

Linda Francis (01:37:58): 

Sure. Well, all of our books are shown on our website so people can see them. Our website is just seatofthesoul.com, like the book S-E-A-T of the Soul, S-O-U-L dot com. And they can look there. They can see the things that we're doing. 

Gary Zukav (01:38:15): 

Yeah. We started a new community. I mean, the community was there. We just, we decided to give them technological infrastructure. It's called Soul-to-soul Community, and that's in beta testing. 

Linda Francis (01:38:26): 

That'll be opening soon. 

Gary Zukav (01:38:27): 

Yeah. That'll be open to the public soon. And we've- 

Linda Francis (01:38:31): 

We offer live online events and we're developing a number of things, so people can get a hold of us and just see what they resonate with. Yeah. Love to have them part of what we do. 

Gary Zukav (01:38:43): 

Yeah. Go to the website. We're always trying to make it more supportive versus informational. So if we can improve it, let us know how we can do that, too. 

Nathan Hurd (01:38:53): 

That's perfect. 

Alexander Green (01:38:54): 

We will. Thank you, Gary. 

Nathan Hurd (01:38:56): 

Before we close, any parting words, Alex, from you or from Gary, you and Linda? 

Alexander Green (01:39:02): 

I will just say that number one, I'm so honored to be here with Gary and Linda. As I said, Gary's books have had a huge influence on me. I think he touched on some ideas that he's able to build out more fully over the course of a book. And I guess The Seat of the Soul is sort of your foundational work, would you, even though Wu Li Masters was your first, would you say that The Soul is probably the place most people should start? 

Gary Zukav (01:39:26): 

I would say The Seat of the Soul, but I feel the two ... Well, The dancing Wu Li Masters is a foundational work, but it's about physics, so be aware. Now the other two books, The Seat of the Soul is foundational in all of the things that we've been talking about, and Universal Human is that also. So I consider that my second foundational book. 

Linda Francis (01:39:49): 

Yeah. Because Gary and I were- 

Alexander Green (01:39:49): 

That's what I'm looking forward to reading next, because I've read the other two. I'm looking forward to it very much. 

Gary Zukav (01:39:54): 

Oh, let's talk again after you do. 

Alexander Green (01:39:57): 

Oh. I'd like to. 

Gary Zukav (01:39:59): 

I want to say you're taking the words out on my heart, both of you. I'm so grateful to be able to spend time with you and to talk about these significant things. I don't think there's anything more exciting to talk about, especially with an open heart, without attachment to the outcome, and see where that leads.