Are We Victims of Politics? with Michael Benner

Air Date - 24 December 2025

Michael Benner, author of Fearless Intelligence — The Extraordinary Wisdom of Awareness and the breakthrough self-awareness training, Internal Vigilance, commissioned by the Orange County, California, Sheriff’s Academy. He is also well known throughout Southern California for his popular “human potential” talk radio programs on KABC-AM, KLOS-FM, KLSX-FM, KCBS-FM, KRLA-AM, and currently on KPFK-FM. Michael left broadcasting as a full-time profession in 1987 to begin his own business, Personal Development Strategies. He provides counseling and personal development training to individuals and couples, as well as consulting and training for business executives, managers, and teams. Strategies include self-awareness and emotional intelligence, stress management, critical thinking, and relationship management.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Perfect Life Awakening Show hosted by Royce Morales.
Royce has been a transformational facilitator, teaching groundbreaking spiritually based
courses for more than four decades. She is the author
of three books about her teachings. Join Royce as she
takes you on a journey into how to live your
best life and find your true purpose through discovering the

(00:31):
origins of subconscious, disempowering notions and releasing them. She talks
with experts and inspiring people just like you who learned
to trust their intuitive inner wisdom, which led to life
changing shifts. Today, her guests live in empowered existence and
are helping change the world to a higher consciousness place

(00:52):
based on truth and love. You deserve to awaken, to
align with and embody your true self and live a
life filled with love. Transform yourself from triggered to empowered
and create your perfect life. Here is your host, Royce Morales.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Welcome everyone. I'm so glad you're here and I'm calling
this podcast. Are we victims of politics? And I have
somebody here today that will give you a whole different
way of looking at all the stuff that's going on.
But before I even introduce him. I want to talk
a little bit about myself, just to give you a

(01:33):
background in my experience in politics. I have not been
too immersed in politics since my activist hippie days back
in the sixties and seventies, which I think my guests
can relate to, and then I started up again a
little bit during the Obama era, and then of course

(01:54):
afterwards I became very immersed in politics, and of course
the most recent election that shall remain nameless. I do
have my spiritually based thoughts about why we as a
collective world chose to and needs to be experiencing all

(02:16):
that is happening, and I'm sure we'll get more into
that with my guest, but as far as I'm concerned,
it is a huge wake up call on every level,
every level. And what is it waking us up to.
The list is pretty long, but I think basically it's
waking us up to everything that's hidden in the world
and in ourselves. I look at this as one big mirror,

(02:39):
one big reflection for us to look at. So it's
waking us up to the lies and the true history
and the denial, all the part of us that we
are in denial of. Like I said in other words,
it's a huge mirror for all of us, and I
think a lot of us feel so victimized by what's

(03:00):
going on. We'll talk about that as well, And I
think ultimately it's about getting our power back, really getting
our power back finally, and getting us to wake up
to what our true purposes and the true purpose of life,
which is of course consciousness and love and feeling deserving

(03:22):
as a being. Here I find, as in everything in life,
whatever it takes to wake us up, the universe gives
us that gift and said, here you go. You're in denial,
so here you go. This will wake up. So that's
what I think is going on. And I have invited

(03:42):
my amazing guest, who I always announce as my number
one hero in life, to chat about all that's going on.
But just as a warning, he's not going to bitch
and moan about politics and certain political leaders, I hope. Rather,
he's going to talk about politics as a way to

(04:02):
help us develop consciously and spiritually, and how our perception
of the world and the events are just reflections projections
of ourselves, our expectations, our beliefs, our fears, our feeling
like victims, all of that, and so let me introduce

(04:23):
you to my hero, Michael Benner. Michael is an author, journalist,
college instructor, and he's best known for his popular Human
Potential radio programs, which is where I first came into
contact with Michael, driving home late at night listening to
this beautiful voice on KPFK saying all these things that

(04:45):
I said, Oh, I believe in all of that. Thank
you so much for putting it out there in the world.
And he was on those stations in LA for decades,
and he wrote a breakthrough self awareness training for the
Orange County Sheriffs at which I would love to hear about.
And he published his book Fearless Intelligence, which features practical

(05:08):
tools for developing awareness, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking.
He left broadcasting full time as a full time profession
and he began his own business called Personal Development Strategies.
He provides counseling and personal development training to individuals and couples,

(05:29):
as well as consulting and training for business executives, managers,
and teams. Strategies include self awareness and emotional intelligence, stress management,
critical thinking, and relationship management. Welcome Michael Benner. I'm so
glad you're here, Royce.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Thank you. It's so nice to see you again. It's
been a while. I know, I know, yeah, I really
look forward to today.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Me too, Me too. So let's talk about what's currently
going on in politics and how it's helping us develop
spiritually and consciously waking up our consciousness. Give us your
viewpoint about that.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Well, that's a pretty pretty pretty big bite to chiwan.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
I know you can handle it.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah. Thanks. First of all, I think what we call
politics today has gone far beyond politics to include basic
decency or the lack of it, respect or disrespect, cruelty,

(06:50):
arguably sadism, and other forms of psychopathy and theopathy. Why
this current leadership has been elected twice could be the

(07:12):
topic of half a dozen shows, like some Bill Moyers
special What's Wrong with America? And Yet I see all
of this in a metaphysical or spiritual context, as you
might expect, particularly when I get exhausted by current events

(07:38):
and our daily life and affairs, I try to step
back to the bigger picture, and I understand that while
the spiritual world is non dual, the material world is
very dual. Yin and yang is probably the most common

(08:01):
way people think of it, or there could be gender,
it could be polarity, as in the basic magnetism of things.
It could be what sometimes is called the union of opposites,
the idea that a road going uphill is at the

(08:22):
same time a downhill road, that what we often see
as opposites and in opposition are really two sides of
the same coin. So to speak, Everything in the material
world has its in breath and its out breath. It's

(08:44):
light and its shadow, and we're currently immersed in a
deep shadow side. Now an idealist might say, well, why
what in the world would be the of this? Sometimes
it's asked by people pondering why do so many bad

(09:07):
things happen to good people? And then we look at
patently evil, selfish, self centered people who seem to be
cruising through life with lots of money and lots of
security and what might appear to be happiness. And as

(09:29):
I think you know, and the reason that you've asked
me to be here today and chosen the theme that
you've chosen is that adversity is always an opportunity for
us to transform ourselves. The keyword here is opportunity. Why

(09:49):
do bad things happen to good people? It's an opportunity
for them to be even better people. For example, how
do we benefit from a broken heart? Well, it is
then able to grow our emotional nature, our heart, our

(10:10):
ability to love because of our ego nature and our
identity with our body and the feeling that we're separate
is very survival oriented, and so the heart sometimes gets
concretized and rigid and it needs to break every once

(10:31):
in a while. A roomy says, that's where the light
comes in is through those cracks. So grief, for example,
is an extreme form of that, or a romantic breakup.
It could be a divorce. It could be your home

(10:52):
is foreclosed upon, or you lose your job, or the
dog dies, whatever, and that hurts. Why does life hurt?
It's an opportunity for us to grow. It's a kind
of a cosmic cattle prod to get us off the

(11:12):
sofa and looking around and and moving. If life were
a rose garden and everything was fa la lah and happy,
happy joy, we just sit on the couch. We wouldn't
do anything. We wouldn't promote our own evolution. So I

(11:36):
think is a way of getting started here and wading
it up to the ankles at least that's where I
would begin. This darkness, this horrible period that we're in
is an opportunity.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
So we, in other word, like I said in the beginning,
on some level, chose to be going through this, maybe
on a collective level, on a personal level. So you're
saying that basically it's just too I like your word unconcrete,
your hearts and you know what about karmic implications? Is

(12:17):
there something there? Because I always talk in my class
as I talk about how everything is attracted to us
to wake us up, to clean up something we're in
denial of. You know, when I look at certain presidents
talking and he's saying things that really irk me, I
have to look inside and see, well, what have I

(12:39):
done that's similar? And why am I choosing to have
this in my face to push my buttons to remind
me of where I set that up? Karmically speaking? Does
that make sense?

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Of course? It's very advanced though you say you have
to do that not to be nitpicky, but you really
don't have to do that, and most people it would
never even occur to them. Royce. It's your advanced level
of study and and your devotion to your own personal
revolution that if you will require you to to do that.

(13:15):
But most people don't. They don't take responsibility for their
lives or accountability for their even their emotional feelings. It's
it's it's odd. We we know somehow that we're responsible
for our thoughts, but often we don't take responsibility for

(13:40):
our behavior and buy in large we never take responsibility
for our feelings. Uh, he made me angry, right, Well,
my my vengeance, my need for retribution. I can't let

(14:04):
them get away with that.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, I'm justified.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
I can't let them get away with that. I can't
let that stand. I've got to set them straight. And
so we engage in the same behavior that we oppose, yes,
without realizing, as you said so clearly at the top

(14:30):
of the show, without realizing that we're standing in front
of a mirror, that we're perceiving a reflection of our projection.
And in time you talk about karma in time, because

(14:50):
it may not be this lifetime, it may be hundreds
of lifetimes before we begin to awaken. There's another favorite
word of mine that you use as well, to awaken
to the realization. I like that word to make real

(15:12):
that this is how the material universe operates that it
mirrors us, that what we love about another person is
something that we recognize in ourselves, and therefore love about them.
It helps us to feel comfortable, and what we despise
in other people represents our shadow side. Remember, all human

(15:37):
beings stand in the middle between energy and mass, or
more metaphysically, between spirit and matter, between father spirit and
mother matter. We are the child, the son, the daughter,
the offspring of waves and particles, meaning that we're both.

(16:04):
Christ is described equally in the New Testament as the
Son of God but also the Son of Man. And
this is true for each of us, whatever degree of
Christ's consciousness we have, or how awakened we may be
to our Buddha nature. We are not humans with souls

(16:26):
so much as we are spiritual beings trapped in these
soul cages, these animal bodies, these prisons, if you will,
And every day we're battling with our instinct and our intuition.

(16:48):
The animal side. The instinct as oh no, what to
avoid run away? The intuition is oh boy, far out
what to move toward? And both are called gut feelings.
Because we usually sit in the middle in the solar plexus,

(17:10):
the instinct is the root chakra, or to some extent
to sacral. The intuition, of course would be the heart center.
So the solar plexus is in the middle. It's like
the barmac, being in the center between the two poles
of instinct and intuition. We feel a little bit of

(17:33):
a no and a little bit of old boy, and
it all gets mixed up. But you have to work
at it for a while before you recognize that the
oh no, that's really your basic bottom of the mas
Low hierarchy, animal survival, self centered, selfish, and the self

(17:58):
stud is a fraud. Isn't real that we made up?
Intuition leads to a capital s self, a higher self
that knows that it's part of the collective to use
your phrase, or indeed part of the one life, the

(18:18):
non dual nature of reality, infinite and eternal, unbounded consciousness,
And so evolution is moving away from the animal nature
toward the spiritual nature and our karma. Yeah, that's just

(18:38):
the lessons or the consequences of not only our behavior,
our thoughts and feelings, but more fundamentally our intention. As
a little aside, quickly, let me say that if in
when we ever feel bad or remorseful, regretful about something

(19:03):
that you know, we're ashamed of or feel guilty about it,
we wish we hadn't done, or said, ask yourself what
was your intention? And most of the time you'll find
that you didn't intend to insult that person, You didn't
intend to hurt their feelings, You did not intend to

(19:24):
be cruel, even if it were perceived that way. And
so karma doesn't really accrue in that regard. It's the
intentional cruelty, the intentional selfishness or self centeredness, that causes
the negative karma, so to speak to her crew. And

(19:47):
so again I hesitate to even call it negative because
the benefit is that it puts us in a situation
where adversity demands a response, and we can see it
as an opportunity to learn and grow and say, well,
I'm I'm not going to make that mistake again. I

(20:08):
know better down and you know I can attract better
circumstances with honey than vinegar.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
M Yeah, if we choose to learn it, if we
choose to recognize it. And that's the step that a
lot of people are not willing to take, because it's.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
In which case the cammera will spiralists down further into
the southern polist suffering and torment and adversity of life,
which we then, as you say, project among other people,
hold them responsible and try to change them or change

(20:48):
the world. Now we're back to politics trying to change
the world without any consideration about maybe I could change
myself in the way I look at the world.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
So let's talk about that for a minute. So back
in my activist days in the sixties and seventies, I
really thought I was going to change the world. I
think we all thought that, you know, and things did
change for a while. There were lovemans, yeah yeah, But
now you know, I find that now that I'm more

(21:24):
spiritually aware, I find that, well, should I really be
doing that? Or should I trust the fact that everybody
is learning what they need to learn and I'm learning
what I need to learn? And why I go out
on peace marches and you know, should I hold up
a sign about ice? And you know, how much action?

(21:46):
Do you feel as though what's going on now demands
from us on a spiritual beings that we are well?

Speaker 3 (21:55):
I think the first action that is, without a doubt
demanded is to be informed and to be well informed
by seeking out diverse and even antagonistic sources of information
and allow that conflict to stimulate your thinking so that

(22:19):
you're not looking for the one right source of information
and then rejecting all others. Very binary way of thinking.
There's another old topic, binary thinking, all or nothing, black
or white thinking, part of the duality of the material world,

(22:42):
and we need to break out of that look for
multiple sources of diverse information to stay informed. But I
think Royce, it's important to emphasize that action should always
begin by looking inward and managing ourselves. That's the first

(23:05):
and most important action that needs to be taken. It's
like that old It's like that old allegory of the
air mask on the airplane, and every time you fly,
they have to tell you to put your should the

(23:27):
air mask drop? To put yours on first. Sometimes I
ask my clients and students why that's not selfish, and
they struggle to explain it. It makes enough sense when
it's explained to them. You have to care for yourself
before you can care for others. But to make that

(23:51):
a heart and fast rule in all regards even compassion
for other people and they're suffering, should be begin with
self compassion for our own suffering and self imposed torment.
Only then and you could say the same thing in

(24:13):
a positive way. How could we love another beyond our
capacity to love ourselves or receive love from another beyond
our willingness to look at what's lovable about me? And
these are exercises that most people don't do. I would

(24:34):
argue that, and we talk a lot about this in
my first book, Fearless Intelligence, that the greatest fear is
People are surprised when I say this. It's not root canals,
it's not the fear of death or even public speaking.

(24:56):
It's the fear of knowing yourself. We're terrified as a
result of our failure to really understand why we think, feel,
enact the way we do. And again, evidence that we
don't practice self inquiry, we don't look inside is obvious

(25:19):
when you consider how concerned people are by what other
people may be thinking about them. And the truth is
other people are not thinking about you. That's just your
fear that you know, you stand in front of the
full length mirror before you go out, and you know

(25:44):
a certain amount of that makes sense, But to fixate
or obsess on it as many people do to find
their identity in the degree to which they're accepted by
other people. What a tragedy that you're not going to
find yourself in other people's opinions of you.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, well, let's go back a minute. You were talking
about the importance of understanding both sides in this political
arena that we're in, and I had something interesting happened yesterday.
One of my dear friends is a very staunch mega person,

(26:30):
and she posted something. She reposted something that was basically
written by somebody who is he refers to himself as conservative,
and what he wrote so beautifully was just kind of
straightening out everybody's viewpoint of what it means to be conservative,
and he made a list of what it means to

(26:51):
him and everything on that list. I said, Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah,
I'm kind of for that, but I'm certainly not for
how it's going on right now, you know. I mean
I call myself a progressive, of course, But all of
the things that he listed, you know, like not going
to war with other countries, I mean, I wish I

(27:12):
had written them down because they were written so beautifully.
And at the end, I was like, Wow, my whole
perception of conservatives shifted, and I know that there's a
real difference between MAGA and conservative that it was really
quite enlightening to me. So yeah, I think it is
important to read and listen to both sides. I don't

(27:34):
know if I can quite get into Fox News, but
you know, it'll be interesting for a while.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, it's like calling a dictator Kim John Unn or
what's the name of that dictator inside the Arabia that
took a bone saw to the journalist mostly yeah, yeah,
Muhammed had been Salam or something. Yeah. These are not conservatives,

(28:04):
these are dictators. And Trump has never been a conservative.
The MAGA movement has nothing to do with conservativism. It's
off the chart, so to speak. It's off that continuum
more or that spectrum. There's nothing political about cruelty. There's

(28:25):
nothing political about calling a woman reporter piggy God. There's
nothing conservative about kidnapping Christian refugee children and babies and
putting them in dog cages. There's nothing conservative about blowing

(28:49):
up fishing boats and killing eighty people, all of whom
are non combatants, no uniforms, no guns. These are not
war crimes because there's no war. There's nothing conservative about
that much less things like tariffs, you know, which is

(29:13):
you know, anti conservative is as could be. This is authoritarianism.
This is an attempt by oligarchs in the West to
align with Russian oligarchs and dictators elsewhere and dismantle not

(29:33):
only America but NATO and the West all that the
West represents, so that the rich get richer and the
poor continued to get poorer. I mean, I think one
of the most obscene things I've seen in the last

(29:56):
what's it been now nine years, is the richest man
in the world, Elon Musk, worth at least four hundred billion,
and some say he's on track to be a trillionaire,
taking his chainsaw to the AID money that goes to

(30:21):
the poorest children in the world, saving hundreds of thousands
of lives, and also benefiting farmers in America by purchasing
their unsold food and essentially creating price supports that help

(30:43):
them with their profit margins. So the farmers benefit, the
starving children benefit, and Elon Musk does not benefit from
On Trump's behalf cutting these phones completely. And then not

(31:05):
only in the Third world, but you have to remember
one in five American children are food insecure, and Trump
cut their snap benefits and meals on wheels for seniors,
and insurance rates are going to in some cases quadruple

(31:27):
at the first of the year and at least double.
Nothing conservative voice about about any of this stuff. These
are the actions of the death spot of a tyrant,
megalomaniac and clinically a psychopath.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
But the conservative attitude would be, and I'm just playing
devil's advocate here, the conservative attitude would be, you know,
everybody can take care of themselves. They don't need assistance
from outside. Why should we help them? Why should we
help those other countries that are being bombed by Russia?
You know, just focus on ourselves and you know, pull

(32:10):
yourself up by your bootstraps, and all those attitudes. And
that's a very common attitude.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Well, the reason that we should help the Third world,
beyond the morality of it, is if we don't, then
our adversaries will. So if we don't feed one hundred
children in the Third World, then China will, and then

(32:37):
they align themselves, their leaders in your way, with those
who are truly out to destroy us. You know, Well,
we're a very adversarial nation and We'll always have our adversaries.
It's good for business, just as war itself is very,

(32:59):
very profitable. The most profitable industry, beyond insurance and beyond
pharmaceuticals and tobacco or anything else you can imagine, is war.
Build things, blow them up, and build them again.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
The the military budget this next year will be one
trillion dollars. That's s obscene trillion dollars for war. But
we can afford meals on wheels for seniors, or it's
not benefits for hungry American children, most of whom are

(33:44):
in red states. They're white, they're not of color. And
again that benefits the farmers, as I've already explained. So
there's nothing conservative about it.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, well, I have lots more questions. We need to
take a bit of a break and we'll be right
back from talking to Michael Finner about politics. Hang on.

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Speaker 2 (36:44):
Welcome back. I am talking with Michael Benner and we're
talking about politics and all kinds of stuff. And we
were talking a few minutes ago about getting both sides listening,
being informed and watching the news and all that. But
I was obsessive about that the last few years, listening

(37:06):
to MSNBC all the time and NPR, and I would
be in my car for an hour and that's all
I would listen to. When I would get home, and
I would be like a basket case. So I started
two weeks ago forcing myself to listen to music. I
found some stations that play great music from the sixties

(37:28):
and seventies, and I find myself feeling so full of
joy at the end of my commute that it's like
a night and day so different. How do you feel
about either taking a break from the news or giving
yourself kind of like having a little vacation from it.

(37:50):
What do you How do you feel about that? Because
I know you talk a lot about emotions and emotional intelligence,
and I find that my emotions were out of control.
I would come home and I'd be pissed at everybody,
you know, instead of Oh I just heard this great song.
You know, what are your thoughts about that? And it's
not a permonification, it's a temporary reprieve.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Buddhists would talk about the middle way, an old Greek
philosopher would talk about moderation and all things even in moderation.
So yeah, it's a matter of equanimity or serenity is
found in balance or centeredness. And so I continue to

(38:38):
promote the idea of being well informed, to do that
by seeking out diverse and even antagonistic sources. But more
is not better. Enough is enough. You know that old
Asian story about the student, I mean to the teacher

(39:01):
and wanting knowledge, and the teacher listens for a while
to the student babbling on and then begins to pour
tea into a cup until it's full, and continuing to
pour until it's spilling over the edges and fills the
plate and runs over the table, and the student says, stop, stop,

(39:24):
and the teacher said, this is you, you know, you just
too full of yourself. You need to stand open and receptive.
And so we need quiet, we need meditation, we need introspection, contemplation.
Oh lord, do we need music. Music is celestial and

(39:48):
spiritual and its very nature. Music is vibration, it's light
at a lower frequency. Plus it has like complimentary colors,
harmony and rhythm to it, and then lyrics on top
of all of the various instrumentation. And oh, I'm with

(40:13):
you on music. It's part of what I loved about
all my years and radio and why even when I
was doing talk shows, we always included music. Music is loved.
Music is consciousness. So just keep in mind that serenity

(40:33):
is a balanced state piece, is not an extreme but
a centeredness.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yes, And I think that's maybe what we're aiming for,
and that's what I want to talk a little bit
more about that. With all that's going on, And as
I said in the beginning, I know that this is purposeful.
It's transformational. It's waking us up. What do you see
as the end place that eventually we will get to,

(41:08):
you know, is it going to be sitting around you know,
everybody loving everybody and there's peace on earth and everybody's
getting organic food that they're growing themselves. And you know,
what does it really look like? Because I think I
don't think people can accept that that could ever be,
or maybe they don't even want it to be that
way because it sounds so boring, you know what.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
You know, Christ said the poor will always be with you,
and that's not a bad saying. We think of extreme
poverty and suffering, but there are many poor people that
are very happy, and without doubt, many extremely wealthy people

(41:54):
that are miserable. Elon Musk, the richest man in the
world and perhaps the most evil. Despite his genius in
certain areas, he is addicted, by his own admission, and
almost proud to say that he uses ketamine every day
as an antidepressant. Now, Royce, if somebody handed you four

(42:20):
hundred billion dollars, would that depress you or would you
just be thrilled at all the good you could do
in the world without money?

Speaker 2 (42:32):
That's how I would feel. Yes, exactly, have my help.
What can I do with this?

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah, setting up food kitchens or saving lives of animals,
or the environment, the ecosystem itself. Elon mus could end
world hunger in an afternoon, and instead he exacerbates it.
So again you talk about karma, it goes beyond that.

(42:59):
There will always be adversity to some degree in the world. However,
at the same time, I would hasten to add and
let me point out that Christ only taught one prayer,
and in that prayer, which few people ever listen to
because they know it too well, they repeat it by rote.

(43:24):
Christ says to the Father, suggesting we pray this way,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Thy will, divine will be done. May divine will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. This is

(43:46):
Thy kingdom. Come, Thy will be done. This is bringing
heaven to earth. This is redeeming fear and ignorance with
love and understanding. This is our mission, This is our purpose.
This is who we are and what we're for. And

(44:12):
presuming we survive, and that's not clear, keep in mind
there are eleven human species that came before us, all
of which are extinct. Eleven human species before us, all
of them extinct, and the current specie Homo sapien. We

(44:37):
all share the mitochondria. There is a mitochondria Adam and
a mitochondria Eve. We can be traced back to two
people who lived in West Africa two hundred thousand years ago.
That's not very old if you consider that the universe

(44:57):
is thirteen and a half bi years old. We just
got here, right. If the length of time the universe
has been the material universe has been in existence were
a twenty four hour day, the existence of human beings

(45:21):
would be less than one second. We just got here.
My God, we haven't had language except two or three
thousand years. My mother's father was born before the light
bulb was invented, and before the automobile, and before the airplane.

(45:46):
That's my mother's father, my grandfather, who I knew really well,
and he was born in a logging camp and remembers
the invention of the light bulb, the airplane, and the automobile,
much less the phonograph and the telephone than on god,

(46:06):
computers small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. So
I'm not sure we'll make it. We could easily extinct ourselves,
or an asteroid could wipe us out. But the planet
will continue, and life will continue, and I think humanity

(46:28):
will continue, though perhaps in a much higher more evolved form.
In the Bailey books, theosophy, they talk about in Emerging
Kingdom of Conscious Souls, a species of human beings as

(46:49):
different from us as we are from the animals that
will be aware of themselves as spiritual beings who temporarily
inherit or incarnate into physical bodies. But they know that
they're not separate, and so they will suffer much less.

(47:13):
All of our suffering comes from this fear and anxiety
that we're alone and adrift and alienated and not connected
to anything. So we attach, We hold on. We cling
not only to objects that we want and material goodies,

(47:37):
but to relationships even when they don't work, to ideas
that don't work, to emotions that hurt us. Even fear
itself through what may appear to be aversion or resistance
or pushing away, is still a kind of clinging or
a kind of holding on. Fear is not holding on

(47:59):
to us. We're holding on to it.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Yes, amen, Yeah, yeah, that belief that we're separate, which
kind of leads me to another question. We're getting short
on time, but just talk about tribalism. You know what,
I find that we have such tribal attitudes our consciousness
is you know, we're over here, you're over there. We're

(48:27):
better because we have brown, curly hair, and that guy
with that white hair over there, he doesn't matter. You
know what, what does that? How does that fit with
what we're going we're going through right now, because I
know that if we didn't have those tribalistic attitudes, there'd
be no war. We would just say, oh no, my
shared guys are fine, let's get to know them.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
You know, it's a it's a tricky thing, Rice, because
the positive side of tribal is is and again this
is in Meslow's hierarchy and a lot of work done
in the field called evolutionary psychology, and that's a sense

(49:13):
of belonging. We all have a very positive need to
belong and so tribalism can feed that. But the problem
is the flip side, which is it's rooted in fear,

(49:34):
fear of the other. So the problem with tribalism is
if you're not with me, you must be against me.
And if I don't feel safe with you, there must
be a good reason why I'm afraid of you. And
again I will hold on to that fear even though

(49:56):
it causes such torment anger for example, or hostility or violence.
The antidote to this is well known in the spiritual
community and whether religion or ben the physical spirituality, and

(50:22):
that's compassion. Compassion is the antidote to anger. And as
I said before, it has to begin with self compassion.
But if we look at let's take a Donald Trump,
how could you not see him suffering? How can you

(50:45):
not see the torment and the suffering. Now, let me
hasten to add, compassion is not pity. This is not pity.
This doesn't like let him off the hooks, so to speak,
for the evil that he consciously and deliberately foments. This

(51:10):
is not pity. It's compassion. It is recognizing the very
first truth in Buddhist philosophy, which is you shall know suffering.
Everyone knows suffering, even people who are psychopathic or sociopathic

(51:31):
and have no conscience, so they don't have compassion for others.
They don't have the capacity to even consider the suffering
of others. But Donald Trump suffers greatly every day. He's tormented.

(51:55):
It's just that, as we said at the top of
the show, like most people, he project that out and
blames other people for him. Is suffering because he's just
not awake enough. He's not woke to recognize that he

(52:15):
is the cause of his own torment. So when we
talk about see yourself and trump in your own shadow side,
to what extent are we willing to consider that all
of our suffering is self imposed, and it comes from
defending the self that isn't real and doesn't exist, a separate, alienated,

(52:43):
as if cast adrift, as if threatened by everything around us.
If I go on a hike or just sit in
my garden, I never feel threatened. So I guess I
got to get on the freeway before I begin to

(53:04):
feel any degree of threat. But we've never been safer.

Speaker 5 (53:11):
You know.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Parents don't let their kids walk to school anymore, they
don't ride their bikes, they lock their doors at night.
They need to know where their kids are at all times.
I'm not opposed to that. Fine, if that's the way
you want to live your life. But in fact, the

(53:32):
world is safer than it was when you and I
were growing up. Yeah, and I said, I was writing
my second book now it's a memoir, and one of
the stories I tell in that is about riding the
city bus, the municipal bus, unescorted alone at five years old,

(53:57):
wow to the YWCA for swimming lessons about two miles away.
And I know it was five and that I was
in kindergarten because I couldn't read. And my mother there
were only two buses that came to the drug store
next to the hy and my mother wrote in big

(54:20):
block letters on a piece of paper the name of
the street that appeared on the bus above the windshield.
And she said, if it says this, or if it
looks like this, get on the bus. If it doesn't
look like this, wait for the next one.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yea yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
And I remember, I mean clearly holding that piece of
paper up and saying, yeah, those letters look like and
getting on the bus the first time. It was easier
after that. But who would allow a five year old
kid in America?

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Never?

Speaker 3 (54:59):
Never to do that today?

Speaker 2 (55:01):
So Michael, we have one minute, show your book and
tell people how to reach you and do your little promos.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Thank you, thank you. This is my first book, Fearless Intelligence,
The Extraordinary Wisdom of Awareness. You can find it on Amazon,
Barnes and Nobles Abes Books wherever books are sold. You
can also read about it at Fearless Intelligence dot com

(55:32):
and I am at Michaelbenner dot com.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Thank you so much, Michael, You're even more a hero
after listening to Thank you so much for all you
do and all you continue to do. And thank everybody
for watching and joining us. And know that we are powerful.
We have roles to play during this moment in time.
We chose to be here for the challenge because we

(55:59):
knew we're up for it. So thank you, thank you,
thank you, and I will see everybody next week.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
Honesta.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Yes,