March 27, 2025 • 35 mins
Patrick Belisle, Director of Philanthropy at the Hoffman Institute Foundation, is our guest today. A self-described practical mystic, Patrick embarked upon a spiritual journey that took him around the world and the country. In 2022, he participated in what he calls the pinnacle of his spiritual journey, the Hoffman Process.
In this conversation with Drew, Patrick shares his unique perspective on money as “financial energy.” He explains how philanthropic giving is a win-win; a way to fulfill both parties' goals and dreams.
Patrick's approach to money will inspire you to craft your own financial story. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Patrick and Drew.
More about Patrick Belisle:
Patrick Belisle is a self-described "practical mystic" who studied theology with Benedictine monks at his college in Minnesota, meditated with Buddhist monks in Thailand, and had a powerful spiritual awakening at the Osho Commune in Pune, India. He and his wife Jane, also a Hoffman graduate, traveled around the world for a year, and around North America for another three years, in search of the meaning of life. They live happily and authentically in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Over the years, Patrick has worn many hats: He is a longtime student and teacher of famous psychic Edgar Cayce’s readings. Patrick had a 15-year tenure as a Director at Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in Virginia Beach, VA. He's also worked for Dr. Ian Stevenson’s Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia for many years. UVADOPS.org applies rigorous scientific research to Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), children who seem to remember past lives, psychic phenomena, and other consciousness-related topics. Patrick has practiced hypnotherapy for many years. He has worked with young people in many capacities, facilitated various relationship workshops, and officiated over 60 weddings, baby blessings, and celebrations of life.
Patrick currently serves as Director of Philanthropy at the Hoffman Institute Foundation. He helps raise over $2 million annually for student scholarships and teacher training. Beginning in 2025, Patrick and Hoffman’s Board has set a goal to raise $25 million to purchase and renovate Hoffman’s new Santa Sabina campus in San Rafael, CA. Santa Sabina will open in 2026. His unique perspective on money as “financial energy” will inspire you to think of your financial energy in a whole new way; how it comes to you, how you use it, and how it all works.
As mentioned in this episode:
Ways to Donate to Hoffman
Catholic Benedictine monks
Eastern Philosophy
Mysticism
Breathwork
David Brooks
• How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
• The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
The Post-Process Weekend Integration:
Participants often feel very different after completing their Process, almost like a new self inhabiting a new life. It is important to orient and synthesize everything you have experienced and learned. We strongly recommend taking the weekend to complete this quiet integration.
Raz Ingrasci & Liza Ingrasci, Founders of the Hoffman Institute Foundation
• Listen to Raz on the Hoffman Podcast
Hoffman Scholarships
Hoffman tools mentioned
The Hoffman App
Join Hoffman's Instagram Daily Quad Checks at 8:00 am PT
Hoffman 1-Day Graduate Refreshers in the US and Canada
The Hand-on-Heart Practice
Left Road/Right Road - Making a Choice
Negative Love Patterns
• Pattern tools: Pre-Cycling, Vicious Cycle, Recycling
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Money,
which a lot of people attribute to being
part of the physical life, I don't. It's
not materialist
per se. You can use financial energy to
create whatever you want in your life. So
it's just a natural, normal thing for me
to help people meet their goals energetically
using money.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
(00:24):
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute
and its stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process and how it
lives in the world radiating love.
(00:50):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast. Patrick
Belle Isle is with us. Welcome, Patrick.
Thank you, Drew. I'm really happy to be
here.
Damn. We are happy that you are here
because
you take on an important role in the
nonprofit
Hoffman world,
and that is you care
for our future by providing the means to
(01:13):
keep us up and running.
How do you describe yourself? I guess,
chief fundraiser, philanthropist?
I'm both a mystic and a fundraiser. Yes.
It's true. I'm I'm one of a kind
on that
front. No. That's right. I'm the director of
philanthropy is my official title for Hoffman,
but spiritual seeker from way back when. So
(01:34):
I I merged those two worlds in
a Hoffmanesque
sort of way. Beautiful. And we'll get to
that. But let's just talk a little bit
about who you are. You've identified, as you
just said, and used the words practical mystic.
You've studied
with the Benedictine
monks
in Minnesota
and in Thailand.
(01:55):
You've been to India. You and your wife
have traveled around the world for a full
year
around North America for another three years in
deep search
of the meaning of life. Both of you
have graduated from Hoffman in
02/2022.
You live in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And as most people
(02:16):
in our world, you've also become
a Hoffman employee
who's done the process, who's a graduate.
What else would you add to that?
Well, I used the word spiritual seeker before.
Hoffman was sort of the what I'll call
the pinnacle or the the most recent version
of my
self exploration and
and quest for the understanding of the purpose
(02:40):
of life and and the meaning of it
all.
I was raised Catholic, as you said, at
Minnesota.
Even that was very meaningful to me, and
I was very
earnest, I guess, in my
approach and looking for the meaning of life.
And even then, I realized it was all
about love. Went to Catholic college, and the
monks at my Benedictine College in Minnesota
(03:01):
that first exposed me to some of these
ideas of the East,
meditation
and reincarnation
and all sorts of stuff. Who knew that
the cast of monks would be talking about
that? But it led me into a broader
spiritual
search that led to me and Jane, as
you said, taking our one year trip around
the world,
(03:21):
meditating with Buddhist monks in Thailand. And we
went to the Osho Commune in Pune, India
for a month. It was there that I
had this mystical experience
that I reference often.
How would you describe
a mystical
experience? What is it?
Well, for me, it was it came about
through breath work that I was doing. It
(03:41):
was actually a California
teacher
over in India who was leading us through
this thing called pulsation therapy in a group
called opening to emotions.
And we were doing some work in my
case, when she said, you know, bring into
your imagination someone with whom you have unfinished
emotional business. I think like most men, I
brought my father in,
(04:03):
and I had this beautiful conversation
with him, and it was very real. I
don't know if you've done breath work before,
but but when you're in this altered state
of consciousness
through breath work,
it feels very realistic. So I had this
conversation with my father. You know, why can't
you tell me that you love me?
You know, I'm I was crying and laying
on the floor like the other 15 people
(04:24):
in the room doing this conversation in my
own mind,
weeping and just really being vulnerable, exposing
all my inner emotions.
And the teacher at one point said, now
become the other person and answer yourself.
So my dad came in, and, of course,
it was me, but it felt very realistic.
And I said, hey. I was raised on
a dairy farm. You think I got emotional
(04:46):
language from my dad or my parents? You
know, I knew that my dad loved me
when he got up before sunrise every morning
and went and milked the cows.
Anyway, it was this beautiful sense of compassion,
much like what we get in the Hoffman
process when we do some compassion work with
our parents.
I had an advanced
view of that in this breath work exercise.
You know, at the end of that conversation
(05:08):
in my mind, I just felt so light.
I was laughing
uncontrollably like I'd been crying before. After the
laughter, I just was in this beautiful state
of peace.
In that state of peace, spontaneously,
this beautiful bluish purple light just washed in
and it was just pure unconditional
love and oneness.
(05:30):
I disappeared,
you know, the ego of me disappeared and
I could see everything in that room in
this bluish purple light even with my eyes
closed and, had a sense of what was
going on with everybody in the room. And
I knew in that moment that only love
exists
and that everything is okay, that we're all
taken care of. And it doesn't matter if
(05:52):
we're king of the world or in prison
that everything is okay. It was this beautiful
touchstone that I've gone back to a million
times since then that that only love
exists and that we're all part of that
unconditional love. Maybe just a a quick fast
forward for a second.
As grads
who are listening, who come out of the
(06:13):
process, who've had
these kind of beautiful moments,
obviously, not in the exact way you did,
but some sort of transcendent
moment
or moments during their process,
and then they go back to real life,
it's not over. You can access those moments.
You can call them back. Right? Is that
(06:35):
part of what you're saying? Absolutely. Yeah. That's
right. Integrating
that experience,
like the process,
into your real world is the real work,
let's just say. You know? I I feel
really blessed to have had both my mystical
experience and my Hoffman experience, but in and
of themselves,
that's just the beginning.
You know? Then the work really begins.
(06:57):
I'm grateful that Hoffman
has the wisdom to have that integration weekend,
for instance, right after the process because you
can really start to see yourself going back
into your life and figuring out how to
apply the tools and get through the work
situations, relationship
As you talk about that, you know, there's
(07:19):
some people who
who maybe don't choose Hoffman because they've done
so much work or wonder,
should I choose Hoffman
given I've done so much work?
How was your experience,
given that you had
really committed
your life
(07:39):
to personal growth and spiritual discovery?
Did it feel redundant at Hoffman, or were
you able to actually
continue that journey during your process?
Oh, absolutely.
Continuing the work. Yeah. That's and that's a
great way to say it. It's supplemental, and
it brought me from a certain level up
to a new level for sure. No. I
would I would definitely not say that if
(08:01):
you've done
previous spiritual work that you should not come
to Hoffman. Absolutely. It's gonna be beneficial to
everybody.
In my case, once I had gotten back
into my work life and my home life,
inevitably,
stuff comes at you. You know, I I
talk about it being as if I were
a lighthouse
trying to shine my light out into the
world,
and people keep throwing mud
(08:24):
at my light.
And, my lens gets,
a little dirty over time, let's say. So
both me looking out at the world is
a little darker, let's say, and the folks
out there aren't getting as much light from
me with all my crap on my
my lighthouse lens. So Hoffman,
in so many ways, helped me clear off
(08:46):
that lens or or clear off the dirt
and shine my light more brightly out into
the world.
I also talk about it, Hoffman, that is,
as a new lens
to look out from inside yourself out at
the world. And everybody just looks different after
Hoffman. You know?
(09:06):
They're full of potential and good intentions.
You can look past the ego
into the, I don't know, the spiritual self
of other people. At least I can. It
really helped me in that way, sort of
like what we do with our parents, coming
to know that they've done their best
and having compassion for them. I could do
the same thing with my colleagues, with my
(09:28):
wife, with people around me. So it's I
think it's super useful.
I just wanna stay here for a second
because
the process is really a peak experience, and
we try and dissuade them of it. But
some people have the the illusion that they
can live from this place and
that when
they inevitably
come down from it, they feel like a
(09:49):
failure or the process didn't work.
And so
I just wanna stay with this and ask
you from your transcendent moments both at your
process and
in the experience you just described in India,
how do
you keep it alive? How do you access
that
for your everyday practical
(10:12):
day to day life?
Yeah. Well, it's a great question. And I'm
I'll just say I'm so grateful to Hoffman
in particular for keeping the tools so readily
available to all all of us through the
app, through the Instagram
quad checks,
offering refresher courses around the country. I've been
to a few of those, including one with
(10:32):
you in Boulder, and I was at one
in New York and one in Los Angeles.
They're just great at helping you brush off
the tools and and reincorporate
them into my life. I haven't yet done
the q two. I'm really looking forward to
that, but I've heard really great things about
that. So, again, I'm grateful to Hoffman for
keeping those tools offered in front of us.
(10:52):
In terms of my day to day, like,
one day at a time kind of thing,
it's a good question because I inevitably get
sucked into the drama of life and do
forget about the tools. Even working at Hoffman,
I have to be reminded to get back
into the swing of things. How do you
do it? I feel like Hoffman is a,
in a way,
paradoxical
(11:13):
experience because it offers
big
30,000
foot large scale
perspective
taking,
seeing
the world
and oneself
in a very, very different way, seeing the
common humanity,
exploring
what it is to be human.
(11:34):
These big questions
get held
and answered
and explored at Hoffman. And on a very
granular level, there's the concrete, very practical tools
and steps.
As an example, I think I put my
hand on my heart
probably six times
(11:55):
just because for me, it's like, oh, I
have a body. Breathe. Check-in with my body.
Oh, there are feelings here.
Check-in with the feelings.
Slow it down a little. Whenever I get
sped up, I know
I'm on the left road. I know I
may be in pattern in more reactivity.
So just for me, the the very practical
(12:18):
step of hand on heart
can shift
so much.
That's a beautiful way to do it. And,
you know, because Jane and I have both
gone through the process,
she'll remind me once in a while, you
know, if I can't see that I've caught
up in something, she'll gladly remind me that
I'm caught up in something. You know, one
(12:39):
time we were on our way to a
party to see some friends that we knew
sort of pushed our buttons in certain ways,
And
so she suggested we do a pre cycle
on the way to the party,
and we did. And it was a huge
help. When we got there and the people
were doing what they do, instead of going
into the vicious cycle, we were able to
stay on our right road and respond in
(13:01):
ways that we just couldn't have foreseen, let's
just say, that ended up being really constructive
and and wonderful. So, yeah, it helps to
have a friend or family member that knows
the tools too. It's funny. Another thing I'll
just mention is I have his friend David
here in Charlottesville
who I didn't even know was a Hoffman
grad until we got together for lunch
(13:22):
one day last year, and I saw he
has a quadrinity symbol tattooed
on his forearm
right at his wrist.
And I was like, David, you're a Hoffman
grad? He's like, oh, yeah, man. Changed my
life.
And I said, I guess so if you
got a tattoo of it. He said, that's
what reminds me to do my quad check
at least twice a day. You know, it's
(13:42):
always in front of me, literally.
That is commitment.
Wow.
That is commitment.
So thank you for those shares, and there
is something about the partnership of a mutual
shared path towards the light. But I wanna
ask
your transition from
grad to employee,
(14:04):
how did that come about? Right. Well, so
you know Raz Ingresi, obviously,
one of the two founders with his wife,
Liza, of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
I had met Raz
about five years ago when I was doing
a fundraising workshop for
organizations that were vaguely involved in spiritual seeking.
(14:24):
He came up to me afterwards and said,
man, the way you talk about money is
financial energy and fundraising in general. He said,
you'd be a great fundraiser for Hoffman one
day. And I said, well, thanks for saying
so, but I don't know anything about Hoffman
Institute.
So
I looked into it, of course. And when
I was ready to leave my other job
working for Edgar Cayce's
(14:44):
ARE, the Association for Research and Enlightenment,
I called Raz, and I said, okay, Raz.
I'm about to leave this job after fifteen
years.
I think it's time for me to do
my Hoffman process. He said, great. Why don't
you come out here and and do it
in June
22?
And if it goes well, and we can
start talking about the possibility of you working
(15:04):
here one day. And I said, great. But
he said, don't let that idea get in
the way of you doing your work. You
know, you gotta do your process.
So I really appreciated that.
And then, you know, after it did go
well,
we started talking. And it was about a
year later, actually, that I ended up coming
on board full time. I've been doing some
consulting and sort of building that relationship,
(15:26):
the trust and rapport and all that with
Raz and Liza and the whole organization.
So yeah. So I started full time July
of twenty twenty three raising money for Hoffman.
How do you describe
the work you do?
You know, why why is it so important?
Well,
it's so important for obvious reasons. We all
(15:48):
love the Hoffman process and wanna get it
out into the world
best we can. So I was really motivated
to help make it accessible to everybody who
wants to do it, not just the process,
but all the programs, really. So scholarships have
been a huge thing that I've been involved
with creating an endowment. Hoffman's never had an
endowment, which gives financial stability to organizations.
(16:10):
You know, Hoffman's been around for forty years
or so and yet never had an endowment,
so we wanna provide that
long term financial stability for the organization.
The way I do the work, though, is
all through relationship.
It's meant to be a natural fit. I'm
just a channel for financial energy,
which
(16:31):
we all have at some level and Hoffman
needs, and some people wanna
give to what Hoffman needs. So I just
meet with them
and hear what their goals are and stream
it right through to Hoffman. It's meant to
be a win win in every every situation.
Previously,
(16:51):
when people wanted to give, it was a
more circuitous route
to financial abundance
and their
desire to give. That win win was a
little harder to achieve. And with you there
now, I'm imagining
that you're in touch with people
on some level who already have the means,
who already have the desire to give. You
(17:13):
facilitate
both of those, their means and their desire.
That's exactly right. Yeah. There was a a
new grad last year that called me and
said, this changed my life, and I wanna
give to people like single parents
who might not be able to afford the
full process. Heck, even getting a week off
of work and flying to California or Connecticut,
(17:33):
wherever they do their process, Even that is
a huge commitment,
getting childcare
and all of that. So they said, you
know, I wanna help give a full ride
scholarship
to folks like that who can't afford the
process.
And so I'm like, hell, yeah. We can
your goals are our goals. We we want
the same thing, so let's do that. I'm
(17:55):
talking to some folks now who wanna make
sure we make it more accessible to BIPOC
community.
We're working on ways to make that happen.
So, yeah, that's that's a huge motivation.
And, of course, the next thing in addition
to scholarships and endowments
is we just bought a new campus, as
you know, in San Rafael. We bought it
(18:16):
from some Dominican nuns. It's called Santa Sabina
Retreat Center. We're gonna be starting renovations on
that here in the next couple months. Gotta
do those relatively quickly and get in there
in next year, 2026,
move in and start doing the process there.
So we we have to raise, I don't
know, 10 or $12,000,000
at least to make it the home we
need.
(18:37):
When you talk about that,
it sounds like people can make restricted gifts,
which is
we will follow their guidance
and choose the area in which
they decide is important, or they can make
general gifts, in which case we'll use it
in the best case scenario and the best
fit
(18:57):
as we see it. Do you see it
in those two terms?
Yeah. No. That's exactly right, Drew. I mean,
as I said, my goal is to
listen to
the donor grad's goals and
make sure that it's a good fit. Some
people love the teachers, and they wanna help
us with our teacher training, which also donations
(19:18):
go for. And some people love the building
stuff.
Some people love endowments. So, yeah, we have
we have lots of
opportunities, lots of different pots into which they
can stream their financial energy.
I'm curious about what it's like for you
to do this work
given people love their experience so much.
(19:38):
You've been involved in fundraising in other areas.
What do you notice
in the difference
and also just in this work
with Hoffman
grads?
Well, I tell everybody that I feel like
I have the best job on the planet
because I get to go around the country
meeting with wonderful people who've been transformed by
(20:01):
this wonderful organization
and help them meet their goals to help
other people. I mean,
what could be better than that? So, yeah,
I I literally have sat across just in
the year and a half, I've been part
of Hoffman on staff, I've sat across the
table from people who have told me that
Hoffman saved their marriage.
Two people have told me that Hoffman saved
(20:22):
their lives.
I mean,
super dramatic and powerful
and real. This one woman told me that
when I asked her what Hoffman did for
her,
she said, Hoffman took away my lifelong depression.
And I said,
you mean it decreased your depression. Right? I
I didn't think any depression could go away.
(20:43):
She said, well, mine did.
She was, I'd say, in her sixties. I
mean, I get to hear all these amazing
stories about how Hoffman has changed their lives.
When I was meeting with this one guy
out in California,
his wife, who's not a Hoffman grad, came
over to me while we were meeting to
say thank you to me
for giving her husband back to her.
(21:05):
I get credit, or I get to hear
about it anyway, for the work that you
and your fellow Hoffman teachers have done.
So it's a great job. I mean, maybe
this is an obvious question, but why is
it so transformative?
Why is it so powerful?
Well, you've seen more people go through the
process than I have, of course, in your
(21:26):
role. But from my point of view, I've
come to think of the Hoffman process
as a modern day spiritual initiation.
So many of us don't belong to organized
religion anymore. And even those of us who
do, there just aren't many
initiation processes
that are available to us as humans, and
and we really need those kind of things.
(21:47):
When I did my Catholic confirmation at age
14,
that was something similar but nowhere near as
intense and meaningful as Hoffman.
Hoffman's so powerful because for a lot of
people, it's really the first time they've come
to realize that they have a spiritual self.
They know about the body. They know about
the mind. They know about the spirit kind
(22:08):
of idea, but they've never experienced it in
a way that Hoffman allows
us to.
So that that's a huge part of it
for me. You reference
the word experience,
and they they know it conceptually
maybe about spirit. But to have an embodied
cellular experience,
it's a different ballgame, isn't it? Absolutely. And
(22:29):
that's I tell people that all the time
too. You know, when when I worked for
Edgar Cayce,
we have tons of conferences
and classes,
workshops,
but
very, very few that are experiential.
It's almost all feeding the intellect
even at this spiritual organization.
That's where Hoffman is hugely different from pretty
(22:51):
much anything I've ever experienced. It is pure
experience.
You know, it's not somebody telling you what
you should do or what you should believe.
It's all internal. The stuff you take away
from you is something that happened inside of
you,
not that someone gave you from the outside.
It came from the inside, and that that
makes a huge difference.
(23:12):
Yeah.
I got goosebumps there. I love it.
You know, there's something too about
belonging.
And you talk about your belonging to the
Catholic faith
and
belonging in the communities you belong to, but
it
it seems like we're yearning
(23:32):
to have that kind of
belonging
to the human race, to our sisters and
brothers,
to this experience
of being a human
in this time,
and we're missing that.
Yes. We are.
Yeah. And I I have to say, you
know, one of the beautiful things about the
(23:53):
Hoffman community,
and I would say even more than
being Catholic
or having gone to my college, my alma
mater, we relate to being those things as
people. But for me, being a Hoffman grad
takes on a whole different level.
When somebody tells me that they're a Hoffman
grad, I feel like I have a deeper
connection with them than I do just because
(24:15):
they went to my college or happened to
also have been raised in the same faith.
Somebody says to me, they're a Hoffman grad.
All of a sudden, I'd invite them over
for dinner or stay at my house or
you know what I mean? There's an automatic
connection, a sense of belonging
because we've had the same experience.
It's it's beautiful.
We're yearning for that. It's a
(24:37):
I don't know. In this moment, as we
talk, it's both transcendent
and wonderful
and a little heartbreaking
that we're siloed
alone yearning for connection. It's true.
Yeah. Well and I hope, you know, people
after the process can take the lessons we
learned from there and
(24:58):
bring it into their own life. You know,
I think about me and Jane, my wife,
we really love connection
and but wanted to bring more of it
into our lives. And so we we're like,
okay. What do we like? Well, we like
good food. We like music,
and we love good people. So we put
together a party at our house on the
second Saturday of every month called second Saturday
(25:19):
Rendezvous, where it was a potluck dinner.
And then we'd invite people to bring their
instruments, guitars or harmonicas or whatever they brought.
And some people would perform
a song or two and then, you know,
sort of inevitably become a big jam session,
and we'd all sit around and laugh and
talk and make music all night. Oh my
gosh.
(25:40):
In Hoffman, we learn to make those playful
connections around music and food and joy, silliness,
playfulness.
So I hope other people do that same
kind of thing and find ways to bring
those levels of joy and play into their
lives. How long have you been doing this?
We did it for eleven years.
(26:00):
Wow. I know. It's it's kind of a
crazy thing, but we we just love people
and, like I say, music. So And what
do you hear from people about
what it means to them, why they come
back,
what they experience?
I mentioned that most of us, at least
in my circles, don't belong to organized religion
anymore. And a lot of people say to
(26:21):
me, this is the way for them to
break bread together and sing together. But this
is way better because you don't have any
of the dogma. It's just just pure joy
and connection.
Another thing is from single people
in the community, they'll say, this is such
a great way to meet people organically. It's
not going to the bar
or to church or whatever else. So we've
(26:42):
had anywhere from
15 people to 70 people show up
at Rendezvous.
We average between thirty and forty, I'd say.
It's been very popular. Just becomes friends of
friends. You know,
people invite other people.
I'm thinking of David Brooks
in his book, The Second Mountain,
talking about the experience of
(27:05):
Sunday dinners where he
would go to those kinds of evenings and
how it, in a way, changed his life
being a part of those weekly dinners.
Absolutely. Well, David came to Charlottesville last year,
and we went to hear him. And he
was talking about,
basically ways to create relationship and get along
with others. He's on the same wavelength.
(27:26):
Pat, he'd be a good Hoffman grad. We
gotta get him in here. Patrick, all of
this conversation
and raising money
go hand in hand, and the ease
of bringing
the beauty of the Hoffman experience with the
desire to raise funds in support of that
experience,
that just flows naturally for you, doesn't it?
(27:48):
Yeah. Well, I mean,
yes. The short answer is yes. Because I've
come to see the entire universe as just
being energy, different forms of energy.
And so
money, which a lot of people attribute to
being part of the physical life, I don't.
It's not materialist
per se.
You can use financial energy to create whatever
(28:10):
you want in your life. So
it's just a natural normal thing for me
to help people meet their
goals energetically
using money. In fact, it's funny. I'll I'll
tell you a quick story from my last
place of employment at the Edgar Cayce's ARE.
There's a gentleman that had called in to
say he wanted to make donation to our
(28:30):
prison outreach program. I said, that's wonderful. His
name is Richard. That's wonderful, Richard. How much
are you thinking about? He said, $10,000.
I said, wow. That's a beautiful gift. And
here's where it's different, Drew, than most people.
Most people would say, you know, what's your
credit card number, and thank you very much.
But instead,
knowing that he was really expressing
(28:51):
a a deep desire
from an energetic perspective,
I said to him, Richard, let me ask
you this, because I said we don't get
calls like this every day.
What inspired you or what motivated you to
give at that level? Why do you love
this prison outreach program so much?
Silence.
And then he said, because I spent a
year in federal prison for tax evasion.
(29:14):
And he said, I met so many guys
in there that have given up hope that
I came to understand that or believe that
Edgar Cayce's readings, these ideas
are the best thing to get them to
turn their life around. So my goal is
to get as many Edgar Cayce books into
the hands of prisoners as I can before
I die.
(29:35):
And I said, Richard, that's my goal too.
We can work together to make this happen.
And I said, theoretically,
could you do that every year for the
next five years to create an endowed fund
that will generate revenue
in perpetuity
forever
to put books into the hands of prisoners?
And he said, yeah. Let's talk about it.
And so the long and short of it
(29:55):
is he ended up giving us about $2,000,000
over time. He endowed a prison outreach fund.
He helped us build a building,
and it's all because I I heard
him expressing something beyond $10,000.
It was his desire to really be useful
and be helpful to other people
in ways that my organization was doing.
(30:15):
So that same thing has happened already with
Hoffman. There's a couple up in Napa.
He his name's Hal. Hal was one of
the first Hoffman teachers with Bob Hoffman back
in the seventies,
and his wife, Sonia,
said that
Hal has always thought of
Hoffman as a a little bit like his
religion.
And so they were the first people to
(30:35):
set up an endowed scholarship fund this last
year, and it was all because they just
love Hoffman and believe it's the best
thing out there to help
people change their patterns, their children's patterns, and
as you said early on, change the world.
What's it like for you to talk about
(30:56):
this, your work experience, your personal journey,
talk about Hoffman? What do you notice?
I notice how I feel connected to everybody.
So many boundaries that I used to have
that kept me apart from others
have just dissolved.
And whether that's
through talking about love or talking about money
(31:16):
or
or just feeling more love for other people.
I I don't know. But it's a wonderful
way to go through life.
Yeah. The money is energy. If it's energy
in the spending of it, it's also energy
in the saving of it.
In your work,
there's energy in the giving of it.
(31:37):
Absolutely. It is in giving that we receive,
someone said.
It's true. In fact, if anybody's interested in
learning more about these ideas, that was my
next question. What next steps for people? The
first place I learned about the concept of
financial energy was in a book called Money
and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman,
and he was great. He just he really
(31:58):
put it into useful terms for me. And
then the second book a few years later
was by Lynn Twist called The Soul of
Money. And, of course, Lynn
is a friend of Hoffman. She's on our
advisory board and just a wonderful human being.
So she also talks about money as financial
energy. So if folks are interested in learning
(32:18):
more about how that can be a useful
concept, go to her. And we'll put all
of these links in our show notes for
these two people you recommended their books and
also for David Brooks.
And for people that wanna give, I know
it's it can be obvious, but what are
your thoughts around how they should go forward
with their desire to help out Hoffman?
(32:39):
Yeah. That's a great question. Yeah. I mean,
that is the first thing. If they feel
genuine
as we might see in Hoffman, if they
feel an authentic
drive, internal drive to help, they can reach
out to me, patrickb@hoffmaninstitute.org.
That's probably the best way. They can call
Hoffman as well. They can reach me that
way and just start the conversation. That's always
(33:02):
the best way. You like it to be
a conversation, don't you? Absolutely. It's all about
relationship and me listening to what they wanna
achieve,
as well as what we need for Hoffman
and finding that fit. So, absolutely,
conversation's
where it's at.
One other thing that folks could do is
we just this last year started a Hoffman
(33:23):
legacy circle, which
allows people to put Hoffman in their estate
plans.
You know, again, we've been around a long
time,
and,
we're gonna be around a long time. And
so people putting us in their wills or
making us a beneficiary of a retirement account
or investment account is super useful to us
(33:44):
and can help their family sidestep
estate taxes and all sorts of good things
can come of it down the road. So
lots of good options.
Lots of options.
Patrick, I'm super grateful for your time, for
your heart,
for you sharing your journey, and
explaining
how money and energy and Hoffman all kinda
(34:06):
go together. There's so much taboo
around money, and I see you as, like,
the taboo slayer of money.
Oh, that makes me feel really good, Drew.
Thank you. And I guess I'd better mention
now too that I've taught sexuality education for
a couple years to teenage Unitarian kids.
So I take on sex and money. The
(34:27):
two biggest taboo topics.
Bring it on. Again, Osho is a big
influence on me, and he brings all of
that right into the light. So thank you,
Patrick. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Drew.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
(34:48):
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Rassen Grassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other, and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.
Money,
which a lot of people attribute to being
part of the physical life, I don't. It's
not materialist
per se. You can use financial energy to
create whatever you want in your life. So
it's just a natural, normal thing for me
to help people meet their goals energetically
using money.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
(00:24):
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute
and its stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process and how it
lives in the world radiating love.
(00:50):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast. Patrick
Belle Isle is with us. Welcome, Patrick.
Thank you, Drew. I'm really happy to be
here.
Damn. We are happy that you are here
because
you take on an important role in the
nonprofit
Hoffman world,
and that is you care
for our future by providing the means to
(01:13):
keep us up and running.
How do you describe yourself? I guess,
chief fundraiser, philanthropist?
I'm both a mystic and a fundraiser. Yes.
It's true. I'm I'm one of a kind
on that
front. No. That's right. I'm the director of
philanthropy is my official title for Hoffman,
but spiritual seeker from way back when. So
(01:34):
I I merged those two worlds in
a Hoffmanesque
sort of way. Beautiful. And we'll get to
that. But let's just talk a little bit
about who you are. You've identified, as you
just said, and used the words practical mystic.
You've studied
with the Benedictine
monks
in Minnesota
and in Thailand.
(01:55):
You've been to India. You and your wife
have traveled around the world for a full
year
around North America for another three years in
deep search
of the meaning of life. Both of you
have graduated from Hoffman in
02/2022.
You live in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And as most people
(02:16):
in our world, you've also become
a Hoffman employee
who's done the process, who's a graduate.
What else would you add to that?
Well, I used the word spiritual seeker before.
Hoffman was sort of the what I'll call
the pinnacle or the the most recent version
of my
self exploration and
and quest for the understanding of the purpose
(02:40):
of life and and the meaning of it
all.
I was raised Catholic, as you said, at
Minnesota.
Even that was very meaningful to me, and
I was very
earnest, I guess, in my
approach and looking for the meaning of life.
And even then, I realized it was all
about love. Went to Catholic college, and the
monks at my Benedictine College in Minnesota
(03:01):
that first exposed me to some of these
ideas of the East,
meditation
and reincarnation
and all sorts of stuff. Who knew that
the cast of monks would be talking about
that? But it led me into a broader
spiritual
search that led to me and Jane, as
you said, taking our one year trip around
the world,
(03:21):
meditating with Buddhist monks in Thailand. And we
went to the Osho Commune in Pune, India
for a month. It was there that I
had this mystical experience
that I reference often.
How would you describe
a mystical
experience? What is it?
Well, for me, it was it came about
through breath work that I was doing. It
(03:41):
was actually a California
teacher
over in India who was leading us through
this thing called pulsation therapy in a group
called opening to emotions.
And we were doing some work in my
case, when she said, you know, bring into
your imagination someone with whom you have unfinished
emotional business. I think like most men, I
brought my father in,
(04:03):
and I had this beautiful conversation
with him, and it was very real. I
don't know if you've done breath work before,
but but when you're in this altered state
of consciousness
through breath work,
it feels very realistic. So I had this
conversation with my father. You know, why can't
you tell me that you love me?
You know, I'm I was crying and laying
on the floor like the other 15 people
(04:24):
in the room doing this conversation in my
own mind,
weeping and just really being vulnerable, exposing
all my inner emotions.
And the teacher at one point said, now
become the other person and answer yourself.
So my dad came in, and, of course,
it was me, but it felt very realistic.
And I said, hey. I was raised on
a dairy farm. You think I got emotional
(04:46):
language from my dad or my parents? You
know, I knew that my dad loved me
when he got up before sunrise every morning
and went and milked the cows.
Anyway, it was this beautiful sense of compassion,
much like what we get in the Hoffman
process when we do some compassion work with
our parents.
I had an advanced
view of that in this breath work exercise.
You know, at the end of that conversation
(05:08):
in my mind, I just felt so light.
I was laughing
uncontrollably like I'd been crying before. After the
laughter, I just was in this beautiful state
of peace.
In that state of peace, spontaneously,
this beautiful bluish purple light just washed in
and it was just pure unconditional
love and oneness.
(05:30):
I disappeared,
you know, the ego of me disappeared and
I could see everything in that room in
this bluish purple light even with my eyes
closed and, had a sense of what was
going on with everybody in the room. And
I knew in that moment that only love
exists
and that everything is okay, that we're all
taken care of. And it doesn't matter if
(05:52):
we're king of the world or in prison
that everything is okay. It was this beautiful
touchstone that I've gone back to a million
times since then that that only love
exists and that we're all part of that
unconditional love. Maybe just a a quick fast
forward for a second.
As grads
who are listening, who come out of the
(06:13):
process, who've had
these kind of beautiful moments,
obviously, not in the exact way you did,
but some sort of transcendent
moment
or moments during their process,
and then they go back to real life,
it's not over. You can access those moments.
You can call them back. Right? Is that
(06:35):
part of what you're saying? Absolutely. Yeah. That's
right. Integrating
that experience,
like the process,
into your real world is the real work,
let's just say. You know? I I feel
really blessed to have had both my mystical
experience and my Hoffman experience, but in and
of themselves,
that's just the beginning.
You know? Then the work really begins.
(06:57):
I'm grateful that Hoffman
has the wisdom to have that integration weekend,
for instance, right after the process because you
can really start to see yourself going back
into your life and figuring out how to
apply the tools and get through the work
situations, relationship
As you talk about that, you know, there's
(07:19):
some people who
who maybe don't choose Hoffman because they've done
so much work or wonder,
should I choose Hoffman
given I've done so much work?
How was your experience,
given that you had
really committed
your life
(07:39):
to personal growth and spiritual discovery?
Did it feel redundant at Hoffman, or were
you able to actually
continue that journey during your process?
Oh, absolutely.
Continuing the work. Yeah. That's and that's a
great way to say it. It's supplemental, and
it brought me from a certain level up
to a new level for sure. No. I
would I would definitely not say that if
(08:01):
you've done
previous spiritual work that you should not come
to Hoffman. Absolutely. It's gonna be beneficial to
everybody.
In my case, once I had gotten back
into my work life and my home life,
inevitably,
stuff comes at you. You know, I I
talk about it being as if I were
a lighthouse
trying to shine my light out into the
world,
and people keep throwing mud
(08:24):
at my light.
And, my lens gets,
a little dirty over time, let's say. So
both me looking out at the world is
a little darker, let's say, and the folks
out there aren't getting as much light from
me with all my crap on my
my lighthouse lens. So Hoffman,
in so many ways, helped me clear off
(08:46):
that lens or or clear off the dirt
and shine my light more brightly out into
the world.
I also talk about it, Hoffman, that is,
as a new lens
to look out from inside yourself out at
the world. And everybody just looks different after
Hoffman. You know?
(09:06):
They're full of potential and good intentions.
You can look past the ego
into the, I don't know, the spiritual self
of other people. At least I can. It
really helped me in that way, sort of
like what we do with our parents, coming
to know that they've done their best
and having compassion for them. I could do
the same thing with my colleagues, with my
(09:28):
wife, with people around me. So it's I
think it's super useful.
I just wanna stay here for a second
because
the process is really a peak experience, and
we try and dissuade them of it. But
some people have the the illusion that they
can live from this place and
that when
they inevitably
come down from it, they feel like a
(09:49):
failure or the process didn't work.
And so
I just wanna stay with this and ask
you from your transcendent moments both at your
process and
in the experience you just described in India,
how do
you keep it alive? How do you access
that
for your everyday practical
(10:12):
day to day life?
Yeah. Well, it's a great question. And I'm
I'll just say I'm so grateful to Hoffman
in particular for keeping the tools so readily
available to all all of us through the
app, through the Instagram
quad checks,
offering refresher courses around the country. I've been
to a few of those, including one with
(10:32):
you in Boulder, and I was at one
in New York and one in Los Angeles.
They're just great at helping you brush off
the tools and and reincorporate
them into my life. I haven't yet done
the q two. I'm really looking forward to
that, but I've heard really great things about
that. So, again, I'm grateful to Hoffman for
keeping those tools offered in front of us.
(10:52):
In terms of my day to day, like,
one day at a time kind of thing,
it's a good question because I inevitably get
sucked into the drama of life and do
forget about the tools. Even working at Hoffman,
I have to be reminded to get back
into the swing of things. How do you
do it? I feel like Hoffman is a,
in a way,
paradoxical
(11:13):
experience because it offers
big
30,000
foot large scale
perspective
taking,
seeing
the world
and oneself
in a very, very different way, seeing the
common humanity,
exploring
what it is to be human.
(11:34):
These big questions
get held
and answered
and explored at Hoffman. And on a very
granular level, there's the concrete, very practical tools
and steps.
As an example, I think I put my
hand on my heart
probably six times
(11:55):
just because for me, it's like, oh, I
have a body. Breathe. Check-in with my body.
Oh, there are feelings here.
Check-in with the feelings.
Slow it down a little. Whenever I get
sped up, I know
I'm on the left road. I know I
may be in pattern in more reactivity.
So just for me, the the very practical
(12:18):
step of hand on heart
can shift
so much.
That's a beautiful way to do it. And,
you know, because Jane and I have both
gone through the process,
she'll remind me once in a while, you
know, if I can't see that I've caught
up in something, she'll gladly remind me that
I'm caught up in something. You know, one
(12:39):
time we were on our way to a
party to see some friends that we knew
sort of pushed our buttons in certain ways,
And
so she suggested we do a pre cycle
on the way to the party,
and we did. And it was a huge
help. When we got there and the people
were doing what they do, instead of going
into the vicious cycle, we were able to
stay on our right road and respond in
(13:01):
ways that we just couldn't have foreseen, let's
just say, that ended up being really constructive
and and wonderful. So, yeah, it helps to
have a friend or family member that knows
the tools too. It's funny. Another thing I'll
just mention is I have his friend David
here in Charlottesville
who I didn't even know was a Hoffman
grad until we got together for lunch
(13:22):
one day last year, and I saw he
has a quadrinity symbol tattooed
on his forearm
right at his wrist.
And I was like, David, you're a Hoffman
grad? He's like, oh, yeah, man. Changed my
life.
And I said, I guess so if you
got a tattoo of it. He said, that's
what reminds me to do my quad check
at least twice a day. You know, it's
(13:42):
always in front of me, literally.
That is commitment.
Wow.
That is commitment.
So thank you for those shares, and there
is something about the partnership of a mutual
shared path towards the light. But I wanna
ask
your transition from
grad to employee,
(14:04):
how did that come about? Right. Well, so
you know Raz Ingresi, obviously,
one of the two founders with his wife,
Liza, of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
I had met Raz
about five years ago when I was doing
a fundraising workshop for
organizations that were vaguely involved in spiritual seeking.
(14:24):
He came up to me afterwards and said,
man, the way you talk about money is
financial energy and fundraising in general. He said,
you'd be a great fundraiser for Hoffman one
day. And I said, well, thanks for saying
so, but I don't know anything about Hoffman
Institute.
So
I looked into it, of course. And when
I was ready to leave my other job
working for Edgar Cayce's
(14:44):
ARE, the Association for Research and Enlightenment,
I called Raz, and I said, okay, Raz.
I'm about to leave this job after fifteen
years.
I think it's time for me to do
my Hoffman process. He said, great. Why don't
you come out here and and do it
in June
22?
And if it goes well, and we can
start talking about the possibility of you working
(15:04):
here one day. And I said, great. But
he said, don't let that idea get in
the way of you doing your work. You
know, you gotta do your process.
So I really appreciated that.
And then, you know, after it did go
well,
we started talking. And it was about a
year later, actually, that I ended up coming
on board full time. I've been doing some
consulting and sort of building that relationship,
(15:26):
the trust and rapport and all that with
Raz and Liza and the whole organization.
So yeah. So I started full time July
of twenty twenty three raising money for Hoffman.
How do you describe
the work you do?
You know, why why is it so important?
Well,
it's so important for obvious reasons. We all
(15:48):
love the Hoffman process and wanna get it
out into the world
best we can. So I was really motivated
to help make it accessible to everybody who
wants to do it, not just the process,
but all the programs, really. So scholarships have
been a huge thing that I've been involved
with creating an endowment. Hoffman's never had an
endowment, which gives financial stability to organizations.
(16:10):
You know, Hoffman's been around for forty years
or so and yet never had an endowment,
so we wanna provide that
long term financial stability for the organization.
The way I do the work, though, is
all through relationship.
It's meant to be a natural fit. I'm
just a channel for financial energy,
which
(16:31):
we all have at some level and Hoffman
needs, and some people wanna
give to what Hoffman needs. So I just
meet with them
and hear what their goals are and stream
it right through to Hoffman. It's meant to
be a win win in every every situation.
Previously,
(16:51):
when people wanted to give, it was a
more circuitous route
to financial abundance
and their
desire to give. That win win was a
little harder to achieve. And with you there
now, I'm imagining
that you're in touch with people
on some level who already have the means,
who already have the desire to give. You
(17:13):
facilitate
both of those, their means and their desire.
That's exactly right. Yeah. There was a a
new grad last year that called me and
said, this changed my life, and I wanna
give to people like single parents
who might not be able to afford the
full process. Heck, even getting a week off
of work and flying to California or Connecticut,
(17:33):
wherever they do their process, Even that is
a huge commitment,
getting childcare
and all of that. So they said, you
know, I wanna help give a full ride
scholarship
to folks like that who can't afford the
process.
And so I'm like, hell, yeah. We can
your goals are our goals. We we want
the same thing, so let's do that. I'm
(17:55):
talking to some folks now who wanna make
sure we make it more accessible to BIPOC
community.
We're working on ways to make that happen.
So, yeah, that's that's a huge motivation.
And, of course, the next thing in addition
to scholarships and endowments
is we just bought a new campus, as
you know, in San Rafael. We bought it
(18:16):
from some Dominican nuns. It's called Santa Sabina
Retreat Center. We're gonna be starting renovations on
that here in the next couple months. Gotta
do those relatively quickly and get in there
in next year, 2026,
move in and start doing the process there.
So we we have to raise, I don't
know, 10 or $12,000,000
at least to make it the home we
need.
(18:37):
When you talk about that,
it sounds like people can make restricted gifts,
which is
we will follow their guidance
and choose the area in which
they decide is important, or they can make
general gifts, in which case we'll use it
in the best case scenario and the best
fit
(18:57):
as we see it. Do you see it
in those two terms?
Yeah. No. That's exactly right, Drew. I mean,
as I said, my goal is to
listen to
the donor grad's goals and
make sure that it's a good fit. Some
people love the teachers, and they wanna help
us with our teacher training, which also donations
(19:18):
go for. And some people love the building
stuff.
Some people love endowments. So, yeah, we have
we have lots of
opportunities, lots of different pots into which they
can stream their financial energy.
I'm curious about what it's like for you
to do this work
given people love their experience so much.
(19:38):
You've been involved in fundraising in other areas.
What do you notice
in the difference
and also just in this work
with Hoffman
grads?
Well, I tell everybody that I feel like
I have the best job on the planet
because I get to go around the country
meeting with wonderful people who've been transformed by
(20:01):
this wonderful organization
and help them meet their goals to help
other people. I mean,
what could be better than that? So, yeah,
I I literally have sat across just in
the year and a half, I've been part
of Hoffman on staff, I've sat across the
table from people who have told me that
Hoffman saved their marriage.
Two people have told me that Hoffman saved
(20:22):
their lives.
I mean,
super dramatic and powerful
and real. This one woman told me that
when I asked her what Hoffman did for
her,
she said, Hoffman took away my lifelong depression.
And I said,
you mean it decreased your depression. Right? I
I didn't think any depression could go away.
(20:43):
She said, well, mine did.
She was, I'd say, in her sixties. I
mean, I get to hear all these amazing
stories about how Hoffman has changed their lives.
When I was meeting with this one guy
out in California,
his wife, who's not a Hoffman grad, came
over to me while we were meeting to
say thank you to me
for giving her husband back to her.
(21:05):
I get credit, or I get to hear
about it anyway, for the work that you
and your fellow Hoffman teachers have done.
So it's a great job. I mean, maybe
this is an obvious question, but why is
it so transformative?
Why is it so powerful?
Well, you've seen more people go through the
process than I have, of course, in your
(21:26):
role. But from my point of view, I've
come to think of the Hoffman process
as a modern day spiritual initiation.
So many of us don't belong to organized
religion anymore. And even those of us who
do, there just aren't many
initiation processes
that are available to us as humans, and
and we really need those kind of things.
(21:47):
When I did my Catholic confirmation at age
14,
that was something similar but nowhere near as
intense and meaningful as Hoffman.
Hoffman's so powerful because for a lot of
people, it's really the first time they've come
to realize that they have a spiritual self.
They know about the body. They know about
the mind. They know about the spirit kind
(22:08):
of idea, but they've never experienced it in
a way that Hoffman allows
us to.
So that that's a huge part of it
for me. You reference
the word experience,
and they they know it conceptually
maybe about spirit. But to have an embodied
cellular experience,
it's a different ballgame, isn't it? Absolutely. And
(22:29):
that's I tell people that all the time
too. You know, when when I worked for
Edgar Cayce,
we have tons of conferences
and classes,
workshops,
but
very, very few that are experiential.
It's almost all feeding the intellect
even at this spiritual organization.
That's where Hoffman is hugely different from pretty
(22:51):
much anything I've ever experienced. It is pure
experience.
You know, it's not somebody telling you what
you should do or what you should believe.
It's all internal. The stuff you take away
from you is something that happened inside of
you,
not that someone gave you from the outside.
It came from the inside, and that that
makes a huge difference.
(23:12):
Yeah.
I got goosebumps there. I love it.
You know, there's something too about
belonging.
And you talk about your belonging to the
Catholic faith
and
belonging in the communities you belong to, but
it
it seems like we're yearning
(23:32):
to have that kind of
belonging
to the human race, to our sisters and
brothers,
to this experience
of being a human
in this time,
and we're missing that.
Yes. We are.
Yeah. And I I have to say, you
know, one of the beautiful things about the
(23:53):
Hoffman community,
and I would say even more than
being Catholic
or having gone to my college, my alma
mater, we relate to being those things as
people. But for me, being a Hoffman grad
takes on a whole different level.
When somebody tells me that they're a Hoffman
grad, I feel like I have a deeper
connection with them than I do just because
(24:15):
they went to my college or happened to
also have been raised in the same faith.
Somebody says to me, they're a Hoffman grad.
All of a sudden, I'd invite them over
for dinner or stay at my house or
you know what I mean? There's an automatic
connection, a sense of belonging
because we've had the same experience.
It's it's beautiful.
We're yearning for that. It's a
(24:37):
I don't know. In this moment, as we
talk, it's both transcendent
and wonderful
and a little heartbreaking
that we're siloed
alone yearning for connection. It's true.
Yeah. Well and I hope, you know, people
after the process can take the lessons we
learned from there and
(24:58):
bring it into their own life. You know,
I think about me and Jane, my wife,
we really love connection
and but wanted to bring more of it
into our lives. And so we we're like,
okay. What do we like? Well, we like
good food. We like music,
and we love good people. So we put
together a party at our house on the
second Saturday of every month called second Saturday
(25:19):
Rendezvous, where it was a potluck dinner.
And then we'd invite people to bring their
instruments, guitars or harmonicas or whatever they brought.
And some people would perform
a song or two and then, you know,
sort of inevitably become a big jam session,
and we'd all sit around and laugh and
talk and make music all night. Oh my
gosh.
(25:40):
In Hoffman, we learn to make those playful
connections around music and food and joy, silliness,
playfulness.
So I hope other people do that same
kind of thing and find ways to bring
those levels of joy and play into their
lives. How long have you been doing this?
We did it for eleven years.
(26:00):
Wow. I know. It's it's kind of a
crazy thing, but we we just love people
and, like I say, music. So And what
do you hear from people about
what it means to them, why they come
back,
what they experience?
I mentioned that most of us, at least
in my circles, don't belong to organized religion
anymore. And a lot of people say to
(26:21):
me, this is the way for them to
break bread together and sing together. But this
is way better because you don't have any
of the dogma. It's just just pure joy
and connection.
Another thing is from single people
in the community, they'll say, this is such
a great way to meet people organically. It's
not going to the bar
or to church or whatever else. So we've
(26:42):
had anywhere from
15 people to 70 people show up
at Rendezvous.
We average between thirty and forty, I'd say.
It's been very popular. Just becomes friends of
friends. You know,
people invite other people.
I'm thinking of David Brooks
in his book, The Second Mountain,
talking about the experience of
(27:05):
Sunday dinners where he
would go to those kinds of evenings and
how it, in a way, changed his life
being a part of those weekly dinners.
Absolutely. Well, David came to Charlottesville last year,
and we went to hear him. And he
was talking about,
basically ways to create relationship and get along
with others. He's on the same wavelength.
(27:26):
Pat, he'd be a good Hoffman grad. We
gotta get him in here. Patrick, all of
this conversation
and raising money
go hand in hand, and the ease
of bringing
the beauty of the Hoffman experience with the
desire to raise funds in support of that
experience,
that just flows naturally for you, doesn't it?
(27:48):
Yeah. Well, I mean,
yes. The short answer is yes. Because I've
come to see the entire universe as just
being energy, different forms of energy.
And so
money, which a lot of people attribute to
being part of the physical life, I don't.
It's not materialist
per se.
You can use financial energy to create whatever
(28:10):
you want in your life. So
it's just a natural normal thing for me
to help people meet their
goals energetically
using money. In fact, it's funny. I'll I'll
tell you a quick story from my last
place of employment at the Edgar Cayce's ARE.
There's a gentleman that had called in to
say he wanted to make donation to our
(28:30):
prison outreach program. I said, that's wonderful. His
name is Richard. That's wonderful, Richard. How much
are you thinking about? He said, $10,000.
I said, wow. That's a beautiful gift. And
here's where it's different, Drew, than most people.
Most people would say, you know, what's your
credit card number, and thank you very much.
But instead,
knowing that he was really expressing
(28:51):
a a deep desire
from an energetic perspective,
I said to him, Richard, let me ask
you this, because I said we don't get
calls like this every day.
What inspired you or what motivated you to
give at that level? Why do you love
this prison outreach program so much?
Silence.
And then he said, because I spent a
year in federal prison for tax evasion.
(29:14):
And he said, I met so many guys
in there that have given up hope that
I came to understand that or believe that
Edgar Cayce's readings, these ideas
are the best thing to get them to
turn their life around. So my goal is
to get as many Edgar Cayce books into
the hands of prisoners as I can before
I die.
(29:35):
And I said, Richard, that's my goal too.
We can work together to make this happen.
And I said, theoretically,
could you do that every year for the
next five years to create an endowed fund
that will generate revenue
in perpetuity
forever
to put books into the hands of prisoners?
And he said, yeah. Let's talk about it.
And so the long and short of it
(29:55):
is he ended up giving us about $2,000,000
over time. He endowed a prison outreach fund.
He helped us build a building,
and it's all because I I heard
him expressing something beyond $10,000.
It was his desire to really be useful
and be helpful to other people
in ways that my organization was doing.
(30:15):
So that same thing has happened already with
Hoffman. There's a couple up in Napa.
He his name's Hal. Hal was one of
the first Hoffman teachers with Bob Hoffman back
in the seventies,
and his wife, Sonia,
said that
Hal has always thought of
Hoffman as a a little bit like his
religion.
And so they were the first people to
(30:35):
set up an endowed scholarship fund this last
year, and it was all because they just
love Hoffman and believe it's the best
thing out there to help
people change their patterns, their children's patterns, and
as you said early on, change the world.
What's it like for you to talk about
(30:56):
this, your work experience, your personal journey,
talk about Hoffman? What do you notice?
I notice how I feel connected to everybody.
So many boundaries that I used to have
that kept me apart from others
have just dissolved.
And whether that's
through talking about love or talking about money
(31:16):
or
or just feeling more love for other people.
I I don't know. But it's a wonderful
way to go through life.
Yeah. The money is energy. If it's energy
in the spending of it, it's also energy
in the saving of it.
In your work,
there's energy in the giving of it.
(31:37):
Absolutely. It is in giving that we receive,
someone said.
It's true. In fact, if anybody's interested in
learning more about these ideas, that was my
next question. What next steps for people? The
first place I learned about the concept of
financial energy was in a book called Money
and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman,
and he was great. He just he really
(31:58):
put it into useful terms for me. And
then the second book a few years later
was by Lynn Twist called The Soul of
Money. And, of course, Lynn
is a friend of Hoffman. She's on our
advisory board and just a wonderful human being.
So she also talks about money as financial
energy. So if folks are interested in learning
(32:18):
more about how that can be a useful
concept, go to her. And we'll put all
of these links in our show notes for
these two people you recommended their books and
also for David Brooks.
And for people that wanna give, I know
it's it can be obvious, but what are
your thoughts around how they should go forward
with their desire to help out Hoffman?
(32:39):
Yeah. That's a great question. Yeah. I mean,
that is the first thing. If they feel
genuine
as we might see in Hoffman, if they
feel an authentic
drive, internal drive to help, they can reach
out to me, patrickb@hoffmaninstitute.org.
That's probably the best way. They can call
Hoffman as well. They can reach me that
way and just start the conversation. That's always
(33:02):
the best way. You like it to be
a conversation, don't you? Absolutely. It's all about
relationship and me listening to what they wanna
achieve,
as well as what we need for Hoffman
and finding that fit. So, absolutely,
conversation's
where it's at.
One other thing that folks could do is
we just this last year started a Hoffman
(33:23):
legacy circle, which
allows people to put Hoffman in their estate
plans.
You know, again, we've been around a long
time,
and,
we're gonna be around a long time. And
so people putting us in their wills or
making us a beneficiary of a retirement account
or investment account is super useful to us
(33:44):
and can help their family sidestep
estate taxes and all sorts of good things
can come of it down the road. So
lots of good options.
Lots of options.
Patrick, I'm super grateful for your time, for
your heart,
for you sharing your journey, and
explaining
how money and energy and Hoffman all kinda
(34:06):
go together. There's so much taboo
around money, and I see you as, like,
the taboo slayer of money.
Oh, that makes me feel really good, Drew.
Thank you. And I guess I'd better mention
now too that I've taught sexuality education for
a couple years to teenage Unitarian kids.
So I take on sex and money. The
(34:27):
two biggest taboo topics.
Bring it on. Again, Osho is a big
influence on me, and he brings all of
that right into the light. So thank you,
Patrick. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Drew.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
(34:48):
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Rassen Grassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other, and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.
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