Give Meaning to Life with John Graham

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:22):
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Rainbows Rising,
where we ascend together.
I'm Rainbow Raja, and today Ihave John Graham on the show,
and he is gonna help us explorethe different planes of reality
that we all um only get littlesnippets of here and there.

(00:43):
This entire season is all aboutthe different realms of reality.
And luckily, John has anextensive background all the way
back into the 70s about thedifferent realms, and I would
love to dive in and understandhow he has gotten himself
involved and how it shaped hisjourney.

(01:05):
Welcome, John.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07):
I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11):
Thank you so much for coming.
So tell me, John, how long haveyou considered yourself like
spiritually attuned?

SPEAKER_03 (01:18):
It all started for me in the mid-70s, um, but there
were plenty of signs beforethat.
My whole first half of my life,I'm now 83, so getting old as
dirt, but uh the whole firsthalf of my life was one violent
adventure after the other.
And I kept walking away fromthem all.
And after a time, I began to askthat classic question: why me?

(01:40):
Why do I keep walking away fromstuff that should have killed me
and did in fact kill a lot ofother people?
I mean, we're talking about warsand revolutions and stuff.
I was a real adrenaline junkie.
We could talk about some ofthose stories if you'd like,
because they shaped a whole partof my life.
But I think that the firstinkling, and believe me, that's
all it was, was just aquestioning.
I mean, I I'd have a close call.

(02:01):
I'd be lying there on the groundwith a bullet having just
missed, or a rockfall havingjust missed, or a drowning not
quite happening.
And I think, well, why am Ialive?
I mean, why am I alive?
And I kept wondering about thatuntil finally I didn't I I I uh
after after a time in the war inVietnam and I came back messed

(02:23):
up with a lot of what we nowcall PTSD, I began to uh look at
a lot of alternative stuff in mylife.
Uh and one of them was uhtransmeditation.
And from there, fromtransmeditation, I I spent a lot
of time uh um in uh for want ofa better word.

(02:44):
I use the word mystical pursuitsbecause people sort of
understand what that means.
And I I did that, and it wasreally important.
It was important to me, and itwas important in shaping my life
because out of body I could seethat I really was part of a one
in this.
I use maybe you do too, I use alot of metaphors, none of them
are accurate than that.

(03:04):
And that's when I came back, Icould see that that had to shape
my morality, my ethics.
If in fact I was part ofeverything, uh then when I faced
an enemy, for example, which Idid a lot of, I had to look at
that enemy or that that trial orwhatever in a whole new light.
Um, but in the beginning, againit's a long answer to your
question.

(03:24):
In the beginning, it was it wasway off in left field.
It was just this vague,annoying, vague, annoying
question that went on for tenyears as to why I was alive, why
I was being spared.
I was being spared forsomething, which meant that
there was a higher power.
I mean, logically, I mean I havedegrees from Harvard and
Stanford.

(03:46):
A lot of uh I'm very much in myhead.
Uh so I I kept wondering why.
Because if I'm being spared forsomething and a higher power is
doing that, then I better knowwhat that higher power is.
Otherwise, I'm living anincomplete life.
I'm gonna shut up now, butthat's that's the beginning of
my answer to your question.

SPEAKER_01 (04:07):
No, I love that because I I mean, I'm sure a lot
of the the listeners can relate.
I know I sure do, because I'vebeen through so many things in
my life where I'm like, Idefinitely should have died.
Just a couple years ago, a150-foot cedar tree fell on my
bedroom while I was laying in mybed, and the firefighters had no

(04:29):
idea how I survived.
I'm so grateful to have survivedthat.
But that's just like literallylike one out of hundreds of
situations where I have beenplaced somewhere where something
happened.
I should not be here.
And I think that the fact thatyou have recognized so early,

(04:50):
like it was back in the 70s soearly, that there was something,
something driving the trajectoryof your life, that there was
something greater than yourself,and that you were able to tap
into that vast, infinite pool ofconsciousness where you are
feeling so minuscule in the seaof all that is.

(05:13):
What practices brought you tothat that realization, that that
connection point?

SPEAKER_03 (05:20):
Yeah, it was crazy.
I uh, like I said, I come backfrom Vietnam and uh my next
poaching, I ended up a few yearslater as a U.S.
Foreign Service officer workingat the United Nations.
It was a great job, and uh, andit was a one that allowed me to
start doing a lot of good in theworld instead of a lot of bad.
I used the same skills that mademe so good at handling wars and

(05:43):
revolutions, and I was able touse those skills uh to help uh
generate progress on a lot ofpeace and justice issues on
global issues at the UnitedNations.
Anyway, I I so I thank you fordoing that.

SPEAKER_00 (05:56):
Thank you.
Thank you for applying yourgifts in a good way.

SPEAKER_03 (06:01):
Well, I did.
I'm very I'm proud of the factthat that uh because of what I
did, I I I was able to do a lotof good.
In fact, I'm uh uh I I did a lotuh that contributed to the end
of apartheid in South Africa,and I took great risks to do
that.
Uh and I can we can talk aboutthat later if you wish, but I I

(06:22):
took I took all kinds of risks,mostly risks in my career, but
sometimes risk of being jailedto work on peace and justice
issues in ways that my ownmasters in the State Department
didn't want me to do.
Anyway, I mean to answer yourquestion, what prompted it?
I'm sitting there again with allthis discomfort about what the

(06:42):
hell's happening with my life.
These things keep happening withmy life.
My life is now this is nowmid-70s.
Well yeah, about mid-70s.
Uh and uh what am I why is allthis happening to me?
And my my then wife, my firstwife, heard a radio
announcement.
So we were then living in uhNorthern Virginia, okay?

(07:05):
She heard a radio announcementfrom a group called the Inner
Peace Movement, um, and uh ithad a guru guru named Francisca,
and I thought, oh, you've got tobe kidding.
That's ridiculous.
Nonetheless, um I I was at mywit's end, so I I go with my
first wife to this lecture at aholiday inn in Arlington,

(07:28):
Virginia.
And there's this guy, he's a fatPuerto Rican guy in a bowling
shirt.
I mean, he looks as much unlikea guru as you could possibly
imagine.
So he goes on to talking aboutthe fact that you really don't
need any intermediaries, youdon't need priests or rabbis or
or imams or anything like that,that you can have a direct, a

(07:49):
direct connection to what youmight call God, a direct
connection to the all that is,whatever.
And it will change your lifealmost like sticking your
fingers in a light socket.
Uh, you can have a directconnection.
And I said, I was full ofdoubts, of course.
So he does a demonstration.
He has one of his team sit in achair, and she goes into uh deep

(08:13):
meditation, and then she goesinto what seems to be some kind
of trance, and she's a you knowa hundred and thirty-pound
woman.
All of a sudden she begins toshift in your her chair as if
she was a 200-pound man, and adeep guttural voice comes out of
her, and Francisco says thatshe's channeling.
And so he asks her somequestions, asks this entity that

(08:36):
was in her body some questions,and in a deep guttural voice she
answers, and he asks her somequestions about existence and uh
uh uh uh physical, uh spiritualtype questions that she answers,
and then he claps his hands andshe uh apparently pops out of
this trance, if in fact that'swhat was happening, because any

(08:57):
good actress could have donewhat this woman did, right?
Uh so uh uh uh my wife and I gohome that evening and we're both
thinking, oh, it was all acharade.
What a waste of time.
Uh it was an actress.
But then we say he didn't askfor any money.
That's interesting.
If it was a sham, he should havepassed the hat or something if

(09:18):
he was trying to bilk us out ofmoney.
So I says, Oh, that's that'sit's kind of interesting what
happened.
Also, the answers from thisentity that was in this body of
this woman were not profound.
I mean, they were stuff that,you know, Jesus taught.
They were stuff that this basicyour basic how to live your life
properly type stuff, you know?

(09:39):
And so I thought, okay, I mean,anybody could have done anybody
could have done that.
There was nothing profoundthere.
I knew all that stuff.
So we go to bed, and in themiddle of the night, I'm woken
up, I wake myself up, and so itappears the room is full of
smoke.
Oh my god.
So I I wake her up, my wife, Iwake up our two kids, and I say

(10:00):
the house's on fire, the houseon fire is full of smoke.
And they look at me as if I'mnuts because there isn't any
smoke in the house.
I shake my head a few times andrealize that, yeah, I guess
there isn't any smoke back inthe house.
And then I go back to sleep.
Same thing happens the secondnight, then a third night.
So now it's like, this is reallyweird.

(10:21):
I don't know what's happening.
So I I call up one of the PuertoRican gurus lieutenants, a woman
named Sarah Bassett.
I don't know how I remember allthis stuff from Sarah Bassett.
Her name was Sarah Bassett, andshe said, Well, that happens all
the time.
I says, What?
She says, Yeah.
People who have natural psychicproclivities, who are naturally

(10:46):
psychic, can easily slip intothe states.
They have no idea what thestates is.
They're skeptical, so they don'tknow how to defend themselves,
and they fall into these states,and it it's really weird, but
it's also dangerous.
Because you're out thereteetering on the edge.
You're out there teetering onthe edge of moving into realms
that you have no idea how todeal with.

(11:07):
And I say, okay, what do I do?
She said, Why don't you come touh a session?
I'm dealing I have a half adozen other people who are
dealing with similar things.
Come to a session, and we'lltalk about it and we'll
demonstrate some stuff.
Because I also had questionsabout this woman that went into
a so-called trance, and itseemed like it was probably a

(11:29):
scam.
And so we got this woman'shouse, and the first thing she
does is says, Well, we're gonnahave to first start by learning
how to meditate if you haven'tmeditated.
Well, I hadn't meditated.
So the first couple sessions atSarah's house were basic
training in meditation.
Seemed really stupid to me toturn your mind off, huh?
But I I did, I went along.
Um, and the minute that thisthese sessions at Sarah's house

(11:53):
started, the nightmares, ifthat's what they were, the
smoke-filled room stopped.
So I said, hmm, interesting.
So anyway, about the third orthe fourth time, I'm in a
trance, and Sarah says, Look,I'm just gonna let you I want
you this time not to try to comeback from a trance.
I I want you to drift as as deepas you possibly can into what

(12:15):
we'll call a trance state.
And don't worry, I'll c if Iclap my hands, it'll bring you
back instantly, so no harm done.
So I do that.
I go into a trance, and um uhand it and it's a it's a
difficult, it's a it's a it's anew feeling.
I feel like I'm losing control.
So she claps her hands, I comeback.
The next week I go there, andthis time she says, you know,

(12:38):
I'm gonna let's let it go evenfurther.
So I go into this trance, andall of a sudden I'm in this
trance and I'm falling.
And I'm like falling over acliff, and there's a bottomless
cliff, and I'm gaining speed andmomentum, falling off this
cliff, and I want to scream, butI can't scream.
There's nothing come out of mythroat.
And then just before I hit thebottom of the cliff, I stop and

(13:00):
turn back up.
And when I come back up, I'm notin the chair anymore, but rather
I'm floating in the room up nearthe ceiling.
And I found that I can willmyself to move out into the then
summer night, you know, in outinto this was in Rockville,
Maryland.
I can move out into the nightand then move around and I can

(13:21):
look back and I can see my bodyin this chair.
And it all seems like totallyweird.
So I keep doing this with withSarah.
It gets weirder and weirder.
And she then says, Okay, nowwe're gonna do something with
this.
When you're out there, I wantyou to look for a white light.
You know, the classic whitelight.
It happens to lots to otherpeople, I guess.

(13:42):
And follow that white light.
So sure enough, I I take thisfall off the cliff, only now I'm
confident I'm not gonna getmyself killed.
I follow this white light, um,and and uh and and when I
hesitate, it stops.
And then when I start goingagain, it starts again.
It just stays five, ten feet infront of me.
And finally we come into thisarea.

(14:05):
I don't see any physical bodies.
It's kind of like being in apark in a heavy fog.
I can sort of see the outlinesof trees, but it's a really
dense fog.
And I hear other entities, or Isense other entities, and
they're greeting me.
And then I sense sense, I justpick up stuff about metaphysics,

(14:27):
but about metaphysical life,about the nature of the
universe, about the allness ofcreation, that I never would
have picked up in a book.
And again, because I'm so muchin my head, I never would have
believed it had I read it in abook.
But here I'm experiencing it,and I keep getting these
messages about what's reallyhappening.
This whole bit about being adrop in the middle of an ocean,

(14:48):
that happened to me in thesefirst episodes into this place
of total peace and white light.
And that's where my life reallybegan to change.
Well, anyway, I come back fromthat and and again, being in
Harvard and Stanford trained, Icome to a conclusion that one of
two things must be happening.

(15:09):
That either, with Sarah's help,I have gone into realms that I
never knew existed, that seemedcompletely foreign to me.
Either that's true, in whichcase, boy, my I uh my knowledge
of what is real has changedbetter change quick.
The other thing was was that Iwas going crazy.
That I literally was goingcrazy.

(15:30):
One of those two things had tobe true.
So there you are.
I'm here I'm still working as aforeign service officer, right?
And I'm still doing veryresponsible stuff.
In fact, at that time, I uh thisis even actually, yeah.
At that time I was doing a lotof this difficult work and it
required a lot of brain power,and here I was half a a good

(15:51):
part of my life.
I wasn't even on a planet.
I mean, it's like it's weird.
Hey, okay, all right, all right.
I gotta know.
Either I'm crazy or this newreality is real.
One or the other, I need a sign.
I'm sorry.
I don't have enough faith toaccept it.
I need a sign.
I said that to nobody inparticular.
I just said it.
Well, a week after that, myfirst wife and I are on a farm

(16:15):
in Southern Virginia, owned bysome Foreign Service friends of
ours.
It's a lovely place.
It's a nice farm inCharlottesville.
And uh we spent a weekend thereas a way of getting away from
the pressures of the job.
And so my first wife and I, andanother couple and that couple's
parents are sitting on thefarmhouse porch having a drink,
and all of a sudden there's thisgreat hue and cry coming from

(16:38):
the fields.
There's a bunch of kids, ourkids, their kids, and the kids
are all running toward usscreaming, but not happily.
And it turns out that one of thekids, a little boy, maybe six,
seven years old, had put hishand on a red-hot tractor
tailpipe, burnt it badly.
Okay?

SPEAKER_02 (16:54):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (16:55):
So he was screaming back toward the house and his
mother.
And the other kids, of course,had in had wept up in his panic
and they were screaming.
So it was a real mess.
So the doctor the the older man,the the the the the father of my
foreign service friend, he goesin to call uh 911 or get the

(17:16):
first aid kit or something, andI look at this little boy, his
mu his m her his mother hasgrabbed him, she doesn't have a
clue what to do.
She's crying and screaming.
And I quietly ask her if I canhold the child.
And she is surprised, but she'stotally discomforted, she
doesn't know what to do.
So she gives this kid with theburned hand to me.

(17:40):
And I try to put myself back inthat space, in that field, with
that heavy fog, back in theplace that that has no name,
where I had gone following thewhite light.
I do.
I fall into a trance, stillholding that boy's hand, and
this goes on for twenty seconds,thirty seconds.
I pull my hands away from thelittle boy's hand, and there

(18:03):
isn't the slightest sign of aburn on the little boy's hand.
Ah, I'm not kidding.

SPEAKER_01 (18:08):
I love that.
No, I I believe it.
As a healer myself, I've seenmiracles, so I I believe it for
sure.

SPEAKER_03 (18:15):
Well, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 (18:17):
Yeah, but you can imagine that's a powerful
connection that you you have.

SPEAKER_03 (18:21):
I mean, not only did it answer my question, it also
demonstrated that somebody outthere was listening.
Some entity was listening andheard me and gave me the sign I
needed.
So from then on, man, it wasnonstop.
I I I would take a day uh offwork and go to occult book
bookstores in Georgetown, and uhI'd sit in the back so none of

(18:43):
my friends would see me becauseit was like really weird.
And I would start reading andreading and reading, you know,
St.
Teresa, Avala, St.
John of the Cross, Hindumystics.
And I found out that what washappening to me, it happened to
hundreds, thousands of otherpeople throughout history, and
then I was experiencing verymuch the same things.
The field, the fog, the whitelight, the healing.

(19:06):
These all happened before toother people over millennia.
And so I was simply doing whatit happened to other people, and
people called it mysticism.
I didn't know I could acceptthat term, but it really uh
helped me understand that uhthat's what was happening to me.
I had no idea why, because afterall, again, the first part of my
life was a bunch of violentadventures.

(19:28):
I wasn't a particularly lovelyperson to emulate in those
years.
I'm ashamed of some of the stuffthat I got into.
But nonetheless, this happenedto me, and it was certainly the
reason why I kept surviving allthese violent adventures.
The only logical reason for itwas that I was being saved for
something.
There was something I needed todo, and a good part of that was

(19:51):
understanding who I was, and ifthat took a mystical connection,
then it took a mysticalconnection.
So I got deeply into it.
In fact, I became the directorof the inner peace movement for
Northern Virginia at that point,back down in the State
Department.
And at that point, I I wasdeeply involved.
I mean, I would do stuff likehealings, exorcisms, leading

(20:13):
seances.
I would do a lot of what I'dseen this woman do three years
before, whatever, at that firstmeeting with the guru in the
bowling shirt.
I would start I would go into atrance, I would leave my body,
and another entity would comeinto it and start talking.
And sometimes that other entitywould provide a healing,

(20:34):
sometimes it would provide anexorcism.
Often often I was able toconnect people with with
difficult and dangerous peoplein their past, people who had
passed on.
And and and and and that that'swhat I did.
And it all made a certain amountof sense because now I
understood what was happening.

SPEAKER_01 (20:53):
Yeah.
Wow.
So you were working for theState Department all while also
doing all of these kind ofesoteric spiritual kind of
occulty activities on your freetime, correct?

SPEAKER_03 (21:08):
That's right.
I was.
I was.

SPEAKER_01 (21:10):
So how involved in the State Department were you,
sir?

SPEAKER_03 (21:15):
I was very much involved.
I was very much involved.
In fact, at a certain point, ata certain point, I wasn't just
the United Nations, I was inNATO, and I was planning nuclear
war for NATO.
I was literally planning how toincintegrate Levin Leningrad.

SPEAKER_01 (21:32):
Wow.

SPEAKER_03 (21:32):
I mean, I would be I would spend most of the week in
Brussels or Bonn or someplace inthe NATO alliance helping draw
up plans to fight a nuclear warin Europe, which of course is
idiocy, but it's what I did.
Uh and it took uh a lot of toughminded thinking to do that.
And then I'd come back, andmostly on the weekends, I would
do all this trance stuff.

(21:53):
And a few people in the officewho were more open minded than
others knew what I was doing,and they just laughed.
And I said, Well, you're gonnacome in next Monday in a white
robe with uh with uh withlightning flashing out of your
ears or something.
And we just laugh about it.
But I was doing both thosethings at the same time.
Don't ask me how, but I did.

SPEAKER_01 (22:13):
I don't need to ask how I was actually gonna ask if
you had ever crossed crossedthose two paths where working
for the State Department, youwere also engaging in that
spiritual psychic warfare thatwhen you get to higher levels of
actual like warfare where you'reyou're kind of interacting with

(22:35):
the other entities on the otherside, or were you just kind of
this is my job, I'm going tomake this very mundane.
This is just a very physical,like I this is what I'm paid to
do.
I'm gonna do this, and then overhere, this is where I'm gonna be
my eccentric, like free self.
This is my sovereign self overhere, and then over here, this

(22:57):
is my work, you know, gotta paythe bills job.
Or did you actually like go intothis job?
You're like, okay, well, Ibelieve in this cause.
I'm gonna go check on the theenemy.
I'm gonna Russell target myselfall the way over there.
Give me a second.

SPEAKER_03 (23:12):
No, it was uh what it was the former, it was like I
was Jekyll and Hyde.
I mean, first of all, I wouldn'thave got anywhere if I'd gone to
one of these nuclear planningmeetings and says we have to
stop doing this, killing 10million people is just not the
thing we should be doing.
I didn't do that.
I got so swept up in the powerthing.
Because being a nuclear warplanner for NATO was an

(23:34):
extremely prestigious job.
I was promoted rapidly and uhbecome quite a senior in the
Foreign Service.
I was really good at my job.
I was known as a real tough guy.
I didn't dare say, excuse me,but no, no, we can't keep doing
this.
I didn't call it a lack of guts,that would be appropriate.

(23:56):
I didn't have the courage toquit.
It was too enticing to do what Iwas doing.
So I kept planning nuclear warand uh at the same time leading
seances and holiday ins.
And it was a remarkablestraddle.
That's all I can say.
It was a remarkable straddle,and I did both things at the
same time, and the twain reallydidn't mix.
Weird, but that's the way itwas.

SPEAKER_01 (24:17):
I mean, you had all that power in your hands.

SPEAKER_03 (24:22):
When I started working full-time at the United
Nations, it did change because Ihad a lot more power.
Um, I was in an area where I wasput in charge of Africa and uh a
large part of Asia, uh basicallythe so-called Third World, uh,
because uh the United Statesdidn't much care about the
so-called Third World.
We were only interested in theCold War stuff of the Soviet

(24:44):
Union, Western Europe.
So I had a lot of freedom.
And then I was I found thecourage, I and I did a lot of uh
stuff, like I think I said tenminutes ago, that I took a lot
of risks, including the risks ofgetting fired.
I even passed some secretsecrets to some of the other
diplomats on the SecurityCouncil that they could use to
embarrass my own government andforce us acknowledging our

(25:07):
hypocrisy.
We are at a time in Americanpolicy where we kept saying the
right thing but doing somethingdifferent.
We really didn't give a damnabout the poor brown and the
brown and black peoples of theworld, but we said we did.
Well, I did give a damn, and Imoved a lot of stuff, uh and
including helping end apartheid,which really pissed people off

(25:29):
because there were a lot of richguys in America that were making
a lot of money off shipping gunsand other commercial
relationships with the whiteSouth African government, and by
blowing the whistle on what wasgoing on with these alliances,
the way we were supportingapartheid when saying we
weren't, could easily have gotme fired, if not worse.

(25:49):
So I did take these risks, and Idid I took those risks because I
realized what was at stake.
It wasn't just me doing the goodthing.
A lot of people do the goodthing without being mystics.
It was me realizing that I wason a planet part of everything
else, and I had no choice aspart of everything else.
Use whatever I could to try tomake life better for uh for

(26:12):
people that were fighting a lotof peace and justice issues.
It all made sense to me now, andthe fact that I no longer saw
myself as a singular entity, butas part of the all that is, made
it much easier for me to do someof the tough stuff I had to do.
Dealing with difficult people,for example, understanding that

(26:32):
that at some distant level thatdistant person that person w was
me and I was him or her.
Well, you know, I'm not talkingto the choir here, talking to
you, but maybe for some of yourviewers.
That kind of understandingreally does change your ability
to be compassionate, to try todevelop trust.
Other half, having spent thefirst half of my life as John

(26:54):
Wayne, if you will, tough guy,also you didn't mess with me.
So I was able to combine thatunderstanding and use it in a
way that others did not perceiveas naive at all, but as part of
powerful moves that worked in abureaucracy.
So I was perfectly situated.

SPEAKER_01 (27:11):
And I think that really made me real that made me
you were extremely strategic inin how you developed yourself
and like y you had this uhstrategy on how you went into
not just your job, but also inin the spiritual community, it
seems like you positionedyourself to be able to have like

(27:33):
pretty decent effect ingovernment without anybody
really questioning you.

SPEAKER_03 (27:37):
That's true, but you're giving me too much
credit.
You're making it sound likethese are all well thought out
moves and they weren't.
Most of it just happened becauseI understood where I had to go.
I understand which door whichdoors I understand which doors
were open and which doors wereclosed, and and so I I just
moved forward.
And then it all stopped.

(27:58):
It all stopped.
It's interesting.
I toward the end of my career atthe United Nations, I got a set
of clear guidance in trancestate that all of these
connections that I had beenmaking were gonna stop, or at
least a lot of them would stop.
Why?
Because I was never meant to bea disconnected mystic.

(28:20):
I was always meant to be a partof the real, real world because
I was so damn good at managingmyself in that world.
And I didn't need theinstructions any I didn't need
the instruction book anymore,you know?
I knew by that point I knew.
I knew I'd like I like Franciscothe Guru said, I put my hand

(28:40):
into the light socket, I'd feltit, and once I felt it, I never
lost it.

SPEAKER_02 (28:45):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (28:46):
I had a grasp of the way the entity uh that existence
worked.
I had developed a real sense ofcompassion and connection using
that, and the voices finallysaid, Okay, now you're on your
own.
You don't need us anymore.
You just keep doing what you'redoing.
And I did.
I mean, I I can still, you know,I can still re-or stuff like

(29:08):
that, but it the whole idea ofbeing a full-blown mystic just
stopped.
And I had to accept that.
It was a loss.
I I I I missed it, if you will.
Uh, but uh the idea was that Iwas never meant to be out of
this world.
I was always meant um to beright in the middle of all the
dirt and grime and bad stuffhappening because I was so darn

(29:31):
I was getting so darn good atdealing with that.

SPEAKER_01 (29:34):
Yeah, you were a transmuter, you were there to
transmute other people's chaos.
You were put right in the frontlines of all the war stuff, you
were in there just sucking upeverybody's junk, you were
transmuting it, you werealchemizing it, you were turning
it in into this powerhouse of ofyour life, and you know, you're

(29:57):
trying to redirect certainthings.
That's very you have such aninteresting life.
Like, I think it's veryintriguing how Spirit had guided
you through that journey wherethey gave you a taste of the
beyond, right?
They gave you a taste of theseother realms.
They were like, hey, we're goingto let you interact with these
realms, but because you werejust such a master of the

(30:20):
physical plane, you were such amaster of alchemizing trouble
and chaos and you know,catastrophe in in in the I guess
in your own life.
Like as you were going, andmaybe you took those bad luck
things off of other people, youalchemized it or however it was.

(30:43):
That's that's usually how whypeople have so many strings of
bad luck is you're alchemizingfor the collective, you're
alchemizing for the rest ofhumanity, and you were put in a
lot of different positions, youknow.
You were hiking, you're not evenhiking, climbing mountains.
You're sitting there like withthe ancients, because the

(31:05):
mountains are the most ancientsouls on our planet, and you're
sitting, you know, you'reclimbing up them, you're
communing with them.
They're helping you to groundand anchor yourself in reality.
And then here you are on thefront lines in in government
work, you know, alchemizing allof this war, war talk, war

(31:27):
energy, and then you're going tothe hotel down the road to do
seances.
It's like the life that you youhad was just such oh goodness,
it must have been so much fun.

SPEAKER_03 (31:43):
Well, it was also a fun journey.
It was, uh, except that I soonrealized that I couldn't keep up
this this this tr this thisdance forever.
Uh uh, and then sooner or later,as I got more and more senior,
the State Department was goingto recognize what I was doing.
And when Ronald Reagan becamepresident about that time, I I

(32:05):
realized that I had to quit.
I couldn't stay in the ForeignService anymore because people
were noticing what I was doingand they were about to clamp
down on me.
So I I quit.
At the top of my career in theForeign Service, that is, I
quit.
But then I was just so totallyhooked on this stuff.
So many other people.

SPEAKER_01 (32:25):
How many other people in would you say like the
State Department or ingovernment agencies were kind of
involved?
Because it sounded like you atleast had communities that you
could like talk with.
And it sounded like there wereother people at your job that
either were tolerant of what youwere doing or didn't, you know,
or were also kind of involved insome way.

(32:47):
How many people in the StateDepartment were doing kind of
woo-woo things?

SPEAKER_03 (32:52):
I knew of one.
That was a guy that I saidlaughed at me and said he
expected me to come to work in awhite robe.
But I never got out there.
I never got out there with asandwich board and said, I'm a
mystic, sign up.
Are you one too?
I mean, I couldn't do that.
So yeah, I I was probably therewere probably others and in a

(33:12):
pro in super privateconversations.
If you, you know, if you inthose years, you couldn't be
weird uh uh and stay in theforeign service.
I mean, you couldn't even belike uh homosexual or
transsexual or something.
You had to be straight andnarrow.

SPEAKER_01 (33:29):
You had to you had you had to be, you know, um
Christian, you had to have thetraditional family, you had to
have all of that.
You had to be completely clean,maybe smoke cigars every so
often.

SPEAKER_03 (33:44):
Yeah, so I didn't I didn't look I didn't look for
any sustenance within the StateDepartment.
Once I left, of course, I fellin with others, mostly from my
associations with the innerpeace movement.
And of course, sitting down withthem, I could have a
conversation like the one I'mhaving with you now, talking
about all these things, and thatwas a great source of support.

(34:04):
But you know, it was that I so Ileft the United Nations, and by
then, like I was saying, I wasso imbued with this energy and
so directed uh that I ignored alot of practical things like how
to make money, to keep myselfand my family alive.

(34:25):
And by the way, at that point,my marriage, first marriage, was
falling apart.
It just became too weird orweird.

SPEAKER_01 (34:31):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (34:31):
I won't go into details, but it's anyway.
So I uh but I I left the ForeignService without giving any
thought to making a living.
I just thought that, you know,it's kind of like a good
Christian says God will provide.
Well, that's how I felt, not ina Christian sense, but that's
how I felt.
I'll just do all this stuff.
I'll I'll go out there.
This was in the middle of theCold War, so I thought, okay,

(34:54):
what I'll do is start givinganti-war speeches.
I'll start running around thecountry giving anti-war speeches
because I always had a good giftof Gab and I know a lot about
war, and so that's what I'll do.
And so I started doing that, andI even I even developed a whole
series of workshops.
I called them Change the Worldwith an exclamation point.

(35:16):
That's that pretty much says whoI was at the time.
That that someone 40 years oldwould start a nonprofit called
Change the World ExclamationPoint.
You might do that when you're19, but not when you're 40.

SPEAKER_01 (35:29):
So I hey.
I mean, if you think about it,be the change was a presidential
thing.
So you weren't that far off.
You had a good slogan.

SPEAKER_03 (35:40):
I guess that's right.
Anyway, so I started doing theseworkshops and uh I didn't have
any money, so I did them in abase base in hotel basements
with um, you know, uh uh uhsteam pipes running through the
top of the room.
And six people may come, ormaybe sixteen if I was lucky.
Uh I charge a few bucks.

(36:00):
I never made any money at it.
Um and people left theseworkshops sort of shaking their
head.
A few of them really caught it,but not many.
And and I was gettingdiscouraged and also completely
running out of money, whichbrings us to the next big shift,
if you're willing, if we havetime, it'll take five minutes or

(36:22):
so for me to tell the story.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So uh I'm I'm doing theseworkshops, very few people are
coming, and I finally realizedthat hey, this is this no money
thing is getting serious.
So I've quit the ForeignService.
Uh I do something really stupid.
I think, okay, I'll go, I'llwork for a bank or something.

(36:42):
So I interviewed with banks, butby then I was so steeped in what
I was doing, so steeped in avision of positive change and
doing good in the world, thatI'd no sooner walk into a bank
boardroom to be interviewed bythe president or something than
I would be shown the doorbecause I kept saying things
that made me completely uselessin terms of being a banker.

(37:04):
I mean, for example, I wouldsay, okay, take your money and
invest it in the low-incomehousing or or or stop uh stop
funding loans to South Africa orwhatever.
And they would look at me andsay, No, no, not you.
No.
So I got we got less money.
I didn't fit in.

SPEAKER_01 (37:24):
You went in there and you were like, I know
exactly where the weak pointsare.
Here we go.
Low income housing.
Let's take out all the theseloans that are gonna end up
being little pyramid schemes.
I love it.

SPEAKER_03 (37:37):
So I got thrown out, and it was clear I I I didn't
have a career in businessbecause I kept saying the wrong
thing, and I couldn't I didn'tgive a damn if uh a company uh
sold more motor cars or chairsor whatever.
All I cared about was thatcompany doing good in the world.
And I would lecture them ondoing good in the world, and

(37:58):
people didn't like to belectured.
I mean, I was so stupid.
I just I didn't I set up in alot of wrong areas, but in
retrospect, it was totally rightthat I went on the wrong
direction because it veryquickly disabused me of of
working in that world anylonger.
So money, where does money comefrom to support all this?
Oh, wild ass work.

(38:18):
Oh well, a friend comes up to meand says, you know, you can
lecture on cruise ships.
Really?
They pay you to s give speecheson cruise ships?
He says, Yeah, they pay you alot.
Sure enough, I applied for to bethe guest lecturer on a cruise
ship.
Now, in those years, we'retalking 1980, cruise ships had
550 people, 600, not 5,000.

(38:40):
They were much, much smallerthan today.
And anyway, I got a job on thiscruise ship sailing from
Vancouver, British Columbia.
It was going to spend the summerin the Far East where people
would, you know, do all thethings in Japan and the
Philippines and whatever, HongKong.
And all I had to do was give twolectures on this trip, and and I
was paid absurdly well for them,and I got to take by then

(39:02):
13-year-old daughter Mallorywith me.
So at least I found a way todeal with the immediate crisis
of not having any money.
And so I started off from thiscruise ship.
And three days off the coast ofVancouver, I think the day or
two days before I was to give myfirst lecture, in the middle of
the night, this cruise shipcatches fire and starts to sink.

(39:23):
Uh and we're 140 miles off thecoast, off the Alaskan coast,
heading off into the NorthPacific.
And the ship has come to astandstill because this is
there's a fire burning.
And the the ship's uh the the uhthe ship uh captain uh puts out
a disarming message that it's amild fire and they put it out
and and they'll blow the thesmoke out of the hallways and

(39:46):
would be all please come up tothe ship's lounge and they'll be
serving free liquor uh and allwill be safe and the next
morning we'll laugh about it,etc.
etc.
So we do that.
All these people go up to theship's lounge and disarmed by
this message, we don't take warmclothes or anything like that.
You can't stay in the ship'slounge because it too is full of
smoke.
And any fool can see that thesmoke coming up the stairwells

(40:07):
that we just come up from ourstate rooms was getting blacker
and thicker, so the captain hadlied to us.
The fire was obviously not out,and people were getting worried,
and so and it was cold.
I was this is October in theGulf of Alaska.
And they were uh were rippingdown curtains and using
tablecloths to try to stay warm.

(40:28):
It was one o'clock in themorning, two o'clock, smoke
getting thicker and thicker,people getting worried.
We're all moved to the ship'sstern, the fan tale, and they
serve more drinks, and then theybring out the ship's orchestra.

SPEAKER_01 (40:40):
The Titanic.

SPEAKER_03 (40:42):
I know what it sounds like.
They weren't playing Near My Godto thee.
They were playing Go ToOklahoma.

SPEAKER_01 (40:50):
Uh and everybody's drunk, everybody's listening to
music.

SPEAKER_03 (40:57):
Everybody's house.

SPEAKER_01 (40:58):
At least they're not freezing to death.

SPEAKER_03 (41:01):
No.
It was like, I mean, I took uhdecades later, Mallory and I, my
daughter and I, uh go to see themovie Titanic in the local
theater, and we just hold eachother because the parallels were
so exact.
Oh my god, this is crazy.
And you can imagine, and I tellthat story, and a lot of people
just don't believe it becauseit's just so fantastic, but I

(41:23):
swear it's the truth.
So we get the captain finallysays, Oh, well, uh, we we want
you all to go to your lifeboatsnow.
And so Mallory and I crawl up tothe uh a port bow on the left,
and we have uh uh lifeboatnumber two is our lifeboat, and
it's uh it says on the side ofit is said it on the side of it

(41:45):
that it's made for 45 people,and Mallory counts almost 90
people waiting there becausethis was a brand new cruise
ship.
They never expected anythinglike this to happen.
So the rescue operations andwhile lifeboat operations were
very poorly rehearsed, the crewdidn't know what they were
doing.
So we're sitting up there atlifeboat number two, and only
not there for long, two o'clockin the morning now, two thirty.

(42:06):
When the fire, which had neverbeen put out, burns through the
last of the retaining walls andblows out the windows in the
ship's dining room.
So the fire takes a huge gulp ofoxygen in the night air, and
flames start shooting 30 feetinto the air, and everybody is
now totally freaking out.

(42:27):
But you can't fall into thewater or you die in five
minutes.
It's hype of hypothermia.
Gulf of Alaska, right?
So we're looking at this, and Isee the fire reflected off my
daughter's eyes.
And we're ordered to get into alifeboat, and we do, and I'm off
on the on the edge of thelifeboat, so I have to keep
pushing against the steel hullof the ship to keep from the

(42:50):
lifeboat keep from bashingitself to pieces.
And I can feel the heat of thefire on my fingers, and but by
some miracle, I think it's six,yeah, six or seven lifeboats are
lowered.
Miracle, there's no loss oflife, nobody falls out, and
these lifeboats are now setadrift.
And for a time it's fine becausethe the the sea is relatively

(43:12):
calm and everybody's packed inthe lifeboat, and it's a way of
staying warm.
So we're now waiting for rescue.
Difficult rescue, 145 miles fromthe coast.
And the only the rescuehelicopters have to fly 145
miles, hover over a lifeboat,take people up one at a time at
the end of a chain in a chair,kind of like uh at a state fair

(43:35):
where your kids whirl around atand chairs at the end of chains.
I don't know how how manyviewers.

SPEAKER_01 (43:42):
Anyway, so I I see map It's the uh the carnival
ride where where you're in aswing and they Yeah, yeah,
you're in a swing.

SPEAKER_03 (43:50):
Just like that.

SPEAKER_01 (43:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just like that.

SPEAKER_03 (43:52):
The helicopters are big enough to take seven or
eight people up at a time.
So uh then they work as fast asthey can, three o'clock, four
o'clock, and all The middle ofthe night.
I finally see Mallory rescued uhuh early morning.
Uh and uh now it's light and thehelicopters can move faster
because now we can see things.
Um and uh uh and and thehelicopters take uh a helicopter

(44:16):
load, seven, eight people, to atanker that had answered the SOS
and drop the seven or eightpeople on the deck of the tanker
and come back and collectanother seven or eight people.
But it's very slow, very slowwork.
So now it's uh it's gettingmid-morning set.
Uh the worst thing is that thistyphoon is bearing down on us.
So what was calm seas is nowgetting rougher and rougher.

(44:38):
People are getting deathlyseasick.
In fact, everybody is gettingdeathly seasick.
Helicopters keep going and goingand going until finally, uh
finally early in the afternoon,uh, just about everybody has
been rescued.
There's eight of us left, eight,in lifeboat number two.
And I'm one of those eight.
Eight guys.

(44:59):
Again, some of the crazy things.
Uh who goes first in thelifeboats?
We don't know.
All we've uh it's just themovies we've seen is women and
children first.
So all the women and children,there aren't any children
because it's a bunch of oldfolks.
All the women go first.
There's eight guys left inlifeboat number two.
And uh the helicopters uhsignals that they can't come
back because now the typhoon hashit.

(45:22):
And the typhoon brings on 30foot C.
Now, uh 30 foot C is something.
Uh because that means you'regoing up and down 60 feet,
right?
Up, down, up, down, at least.

SPEAKER_01 (45:33):
Yeah.
Right.
Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (45:34):
It's uh it's really cold.
We're all dying of hypothermiabecause, like I said, there's no
warm clothes.

SPEAKER_01 (45:40):
Uh and you're all soaking wet from the rain.

SPEAKER_03 (45:44):
Of course, we're and we're trying to bail, but we
can't bail.
We're totally seasick, and sowe're just waiting there.
And the only our only hope ofrescue is with a Coast Guard
cutter, small ship that isfrantically searching the wide
this wild ocean, visibility nowdown to maybe a hundred meters
uh to try to find us because thehelicopters can't fly anymore.
Um so we're looking at this, andthe storm is getting worse and

(46:07):
worse.
The key thing though is nowwe're like in at 4 o'clock, 4
30, 5 p.m.
It's close to winter.
It is winter, and so the sun isgonna it's gonna get dark pretty
soon.
It's a miracle if this CoastGuard cutter can find us even
with daylight, because we haveno no flares, the radio doesn't
work, uh, there's there's nosignal device of any kind, uh

(46:30):
nothing.
Uh we're completely at the mercyof the storm.
Like I say, a miracle in thedaytime.
But once it's night, the CoastGuard cutter has no way of
finding us because we have nolights and no reflectors.
Uh so uh we'll be dead.
And I reckon from mymountaineering experiences that
we'll be dead in four or fivehours before we're dead from

(46:51):
hypothermia.
So really, it's gonna be dark inone hour.
So we have like I get an hour tolive.
And once it's dark, we're dead.
So I'm thinking about this.
I'm thinking about everythingthat's gone before in my life.
I'm thinking about the innerpeace movement, I'm thinking
about the all that is, I'mthinking about that meadow, I'm
thinking about all the goodthings I've been doing with my

(47:12):
life, and now I'm being wipedout.
And it looks like with all theadventuring I've done at this
time I'm not gonna survive.
Unlike the early part of mylife, I'm not gonna walk away
from this.
This is the end of it.
So I get to a point where I lookup into the sky at the all that
is, call it God, call itwhatever you want to call it.

(47:35):
And I all I can feel is anger.
I don't know.
This may seem strange to you.
All I feel is anger that I'vebeen cheated.
Like, hey, I made this hugeU-turn in my life.
I helped end apartheid.
Now I'm doing good in the world.
I have another maybe 40, 50years to live, doing good in the
world.
And I'm being wiped out.

(47:55):
That doesn't make any sense atall.
Because I went, you know, I wentto a Jesuit high school, and I
learned the purpose of existenceis order, you know, like
crystals, snowflakes or sugarcrystals or something.
The universe orderly.
And so there has to be a reasonfor all this.
And I demanded to know why I wasbeing wiped out since it made no
sense at all to wipe me out.

(48:16):
Here I'm an engine of good inthe world, a great engine of
good in the world, and I'm beingwiped out just as I'm getting
started.
And I scream, scream into thestorm.
Why?
And I hear something back.
It's like I hear it loud andclear.
The other seven people, ofcourse, don't hear a damn thing.
I hear this voice and it says inso many words, stop kidding

(48:38):
yourself, stop, stop trying tokid me.
You changed your life, did somegood things, helped end the
project, great.
And now you're panicked.
You're panicked because ofmoney.
And if you get out of this one,you're gonna go on another
cruise ship because it's apretty copacetic existence,
isn't it?
You're gonna forget the idealsand the visions and that meadow

(48:59):
and everything, and you're justgonna start lecturing on cruise
ships because you haven't gotthe guts to continue.
You haven't got the courage totake the risks you have to take
to live a life of service forwhich you're now well trained.
You have a choice to make.
Either you can fully accept thatmission, or you can die out
here, because the next 50 yearswon't be worth living.

(49:21):
It's your choice, John.
It's your choice.
Live or die.
That's what I heard.
Well, I didn't want to die, andI just remember looking up into
the storm, talking to whateverit is, all that is, and saying,
I thought it was a whisper, butmaybe I shouted it.
Yes, okay.
All right, I got it.
And in that instant, an instantof total submission, this Coast

(49:46):
Guard Cutter, the bout well,comes crashing through this wild
storm.
It would have cut us in two hadthe lookout not seen us.
It was that bang on out of thiswild storm.
So I obviously am rescued.
And I never looked back afterthat.
I went back to New York, andthere the second part of my life
starts, and we can talk aboutit.

SPEAKER_01 (50:06):
But did you do what you promised you were gonna do?
Did you go back to doinghumanitarian efforts?

SPEAKER_03 (50:12):
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, I actually I kept mypromise.

SPEAKER_01 (50:14):
Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (50:15):
And I've kept it to this day, since 1980.
What is that?
1980, what 46 years?
I've kept look at that.

SPEAKER_01 (50:21):
The the force, the force kept you living well, it
seems like.

SPEAKER_03 (50:27):
Well, uh the the living well part the living well
part of it is uh is the nextchapter of the story.
Uh I come back um uh totallydetermined that I'm gonna keep
my promise, and it so happened,and almost exactly at that
moment I met a remarkable womannamed Anne Medlock, who had
started a national internationalmovement called the Giraffe

(50:48):
Heroes Project.
Giraffe Heroes Project is notabout animals, it's about
sticking your neck out, hencethe metaphor does the giraffe
has a long neck.
And Anne had started it as a wayof telling the stories of
heroes, because she was fed upin the media, looking at the
media.
It was all gloom and doom andviolence and wars and rapes and

(51:09):
pillage.
And she knew there were goodpeople doing good things.
Nobody was telling theirstories, so she would tell their
stories.
In much the same way thetroubadours in the Middle Ages
told the stories of heroes,Lancelot, etc., and as a way of
inspiring other people to becomeheroic themselves.
Well, Anne Medlock wasdetermined, uh, she didn't
language it this way, but I do.

(51:30):
She was determined to become thetroubadour of our age.
And so she started findingpeople, uh, it wasn't hard
because there were quite a fewof them, uh, doing good things
in the world but taking risks todo them.
They were, of course, male andfemale, every color in the
rainbow, every walk of life.
Uh I think the youngest wasmaybe thirteen, the oldest was a
hundred, I think, anenvironmentalist in Florida.

(51:53):
People doing important work buttaking risks to do it.
They became what she calledgiraffe heroes.
And she would then tell theirstories.
Now, back in 1982, when shereally got going, the the the
storytelling was not socialmedia.
It began with uh with writing upthese stories as press releases,
stuffing them in envelopes, andsending them to broadcast
stations.

(52:14):
And then she started recordingthem on on vinyl discs.
I'm laughing now because I'mbetting that half of your
audience doesn't even know whata vinyl disc is.
Otherwise call it records.
They go round and around in aturntable.

SPEAKER_01 (52:27):
I mean, I have a record player.

SPEAKER_03 (52:30):
All right, okay.

SPEAKER_01 (52:31):
I know what my both my parents were born in 51, so I
know exactly what you're talkingabout.
I've got records for days.

SPEAKER_03 (52:40):
All right, all right.
So I got uh and she would thenget uh a movie star or stage
star, after all, this was NewYork City, um, and to do a
voiceover, and she would createthese four or five minute uh uh
r radio spots and send them offas PSAs, public service
announcements to radio stations.
At first, it was just smallstations that would play them,

(53:01):
but they quickly caught on, justas people had learned with the
troubadours, or maybe athousand, two thousand, five
thousand years before that, withNeanderthals dancing around
their campfire, telling thestories of heroes to inspire
their people.
These records were doing that,and it really caught on.
People were listening to thesestories and saying, What the
hell?
Why am I sitting on my couchcomplaining about this problem,

(53:25):
this local problem in my town,or this big problem uh out in
the world, or whatever, andblaming other people.
Here's a woman, here's a manwho's actually doing something.
That woman or man is no smarteror tougher than me.
Why am I not doing anything?
This broadcast has inspired meto do something.
So we were right away we beganto see the impact of that.

(53:47):
That Anne really was becoming,again, in my words, the
troubadour of our time.
These stories were reallyguiding people, coaching them,
inspiring.
So I caught on.
I finally got it.
My lectures on on uh uh endingglobal war were going nowhere,
but I saw that what washappening with Anne was
succeeding rapidly.

(54:08):
I mean, within a year or two,there was a nice article in the
New York Times on what Anne wasdoing uh because people were
beginning to realize here wasthe storyteller of our age, is
something called the GiraffeHeroes Project.
So I I met Anne at that time.
I drew closer to her because Ifell madly in love with her, and
uh we were get we got marriedand we've been together as

(54:29):
husband and wife as well aspartners and running the giraffe
heroes project now for 44 years.
Um and and uh during that time,now we've honored and found
something like 2,000 of thesegiraffe heroes, told their
stories.
Now, of course, it's not vinylrecords, it's it's the latest in
social media, and we're gettingpretty good.

(54:50):
We're pretty social media adeptuh using the latest forms we can
find.
Uh and we have a staff of uh ofpeople, including some technical
experts, who help us find betterways of telling the stories.
We've created programs forschools, for example, as part of
this uh uh curricula that helpedguide young people to build
lives as courageous and andcompassionate citizens.

(55:12):
Uh, we've written between usfour or five books all about
making a difference in the worldand and and practical stuff too,
like how to stick your neck outwithout getting your head
chopped off.
So, again, once again, it's likekind of like uh years before.
You mentioned that I'd been ableto collapse these two worlds.
Well, I'm doing it again withthe giraffe project.

(55:33):
I'm operating on that samevision, but at the same time,
I'm using all my street smartsto help people, like I say,
stick their necks out withoutgetting their heads cut off.
Practical stuff, like dealingwith conflict, dealing with
court fights, organizing streetdemonstrations, whatever.
And we combine all this in thegiraffe heroes project.
We've been doing it successfullyfor 44 years, and so I mean

(55:55):
that's where I'm at now.
Uh the latest thing I'm doing iscalled, and I urge you, if you
haven't already, to look atshort form a short form video
series, which I call badassgrandad.
Badass, all one word.

SPEAKER_02 (56:09):
Yeah, you told me about it.

SPEAKER_03 (56:11):
Grandad has two D's in the middle, and you can find
them all now on TikTok,Instagram, and YouTube.
I've done, I just sent off thelast the latest one, the 69th
one.
I've been doing this for a year,and it's been remarkably
successful.
I didn't, I I did it justbecause I was guided to do it,

(56:32):
um, and pushed by uh a grandsonwho's a professional journalist,
and he'd written uh uh a nicestory about me and my mountain
climbing exploits.
And in the last paragraph, hesays in the article, I found out
that my granddad's a realbadass.
So I said, That's it.
That's it, that's the meme,that's what I want.
So badass granddad came out ofthat.

(56:53):
And each each story is a storyof one of my adventures, but
then it's tied to some kind oflife lesson that might help
people overcome some uh somesome strife, some challenge that
they need help with.
So I've been doing that, and uhlike I say, it's been remarkably
successful.
I have, as of last night,120,000 followers and two and a

(57:15):
half million viewers.

SPEAKER_01 (57:16):
That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 (57:18):
Really?

SPEAKER_01 (57:18):
That's that's phenomenal, dude.
Good job.
You're you are a badassgranddad.

SPEAKER_03 (57:25):
I it's funny because I don't understand, you know, uh
what all this is.
Uh and someone I I know gettingcalls from social media
producers or whatever you callthey call themselves wanting to
put ads on my shows and willingto pay me absurd amounts of
money to do that.
Of course I refuse, but I knowthey say, look, you're not only

(57:47):
an influencer, you're a seniorinfluencer or a big time.
There's a word for it.
I I'm so out of it, I don't knowif the word is.
But when you pass a hundredthousand followers, you're going
into this this this great realmof super influencers.
So I'm now I I always thoughtbeing an influencer was like,
you know, a young ladies showingyou how to paint your nails, you

(58:08):
know?

unknown (58:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (58:10):
So now they're they they're in there.

SPEAKER_03 (58:13):
Yeah, right.
So that's great fun.
I mean, you talk about youmentioned a long time ago this
must be fun.
Badass granddad is a lot of fun.
And occasionally it's political.
For example, now I've done acouple of episodes on the war in
Iran, which I fiercely oppose.

SPEAKER_01 (58:30):
I am so glad you brought that up because I was
really curious earlier when youwere talking about your your job
with the State Department.
I was like, I wonder how hefeels about this war.
And I mean, there's such apsychological, spiritual battle
going on with Israel and Iran,and you know, I don't want to
get flagged or anything, butman, it would be so great.

(58:50):
Yes, flag me! Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 (58:53):
Well, absolutely.
You know, the business of Imentioned earlier, that was in
the early part of this.
I hadn't quite developed thecourage I have now.
And if you listen to number 69,I urge everyone listening to his
podcast to dial in on one ofthose three channels.
And you'll see that uh that Itell everyone without any
problem at all that Donald Trumpis a damn dangerous fool.

(59:14):
And my foreign service life as awar planner has taught me that
just about everything he'strying to do with Iran is wrong
and unworkable, that we'reheading into another
Afghanistan, we're heading intoanother Vietnam, et cetera, et
cetera.
And I fully expect to getanother call from the Department
of Homeland Security.
I've gotten one already in aneffort to shut me down, but no

(59:38):
way I'm gonna no way I'm gettingthey're gonna shut me down.
They're gonna I would I would Iwould relish Emily, I would
relish a court fight.

SPEAKER_01 (59:46):
I would love it if they would drag me so I could
tell you I'll I I'll cheer youon.
I mean, seriously, that thereare so many people who are
trying to speak up forprotecting the main people.
I don't agree with what is goingon.
And as someone who has seenenough media and understands

(01:00:10):
psychological warfare, I see alot of manipulation going into
some of these war tactics.
And it seems as if it's like amulti-layer chessboard going on
with how we're navigatingcertain assets around, and we
are distraction over here fromthis over here.

(01:00:31):
I think it is very, veryinteresting, and also how the
market is actually not reallyeven following what's actually
happening.
It's there's a lot ofmanipulation in a lot of
different areas, and I am veryconcerned.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:48):
I just yesterday I did a podcast that went on for a
full hour on nothing but Iran.
So I was able to talk abouteverything I know about cruise
missiles and drones and minesand warships, and of course I
spent that year and a half inVietnam, and I totally
understand that that you can'tdeal with these wars with
military power alone.

(01:01:08):
There's so many other factors,including the resiliency of your
enemy.
And the Iranians are showingthemselves to be very resilient
people with a deep net strength.
You could blow up nine-tenths ofwhat they've got, and they've
got one-tenth left to hit youback with.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:22):
Yeah, they don't even what's so interesting is
our leader is kind of throwingout these false flags where he's
like, Yeah, no, we talked itover.
We're not actually going to war.
And Iran's like, we nevertalked.
And in fact, I'm going to blowup all your stuff that you you
really need.
I don't need to blow up yourcountry.
I don't need to do anything.

(01:01:43):
I'm just going to make sure youdon't get the resources you need
to have a stable, I don't know,economy.
And then and then Trump's like,oh, what am I going to do about
this?
I'm just going to play more mindgames.
Because that's a great idea.
Let's play some mind games.
I don't I don't know what he'sthinking.

(01:02:04):
Does he really think he can playmind games with a bunch of
warlords?
I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:09):
No, like I say, I I I don't it does not get into
that because it's a huge,complicated conversation.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:15):
It is such a huge topic.
So we'll get off of that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:19):
I leave it with Donald Trump who's an ignorant,
dangerous fool, and let's justleave it for that.
Leave it at that for a longmoment.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:25):
It's okay.
He he's playing a role rightnow.
He's playing a role.
He's getting he's gettingeverything set up for everything
to fall apart so that we canrebuild.
And that's fine.
We'll we'll we're just we'rejust gonna let it play out.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:38):
Uh your mouth to my ear or God's ear, whatever that
phrase is.
Yeah, maybe.
Well, I mean that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:44):
Let's let the moron play it out.
Because I mean, if you thinkabout it, every court needs a
good gesture.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:51):
Yeah.
Well, I don't know about applythat to Donald Trump.
I I think he's a truly evilperson and an evil force and
needs to be viewed that way,especially by people like you
and me, who are well aware ofthe huge nature of uh good and
evil in the world and and themassive forces uh that help
guide us in right or wrongdirections.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:12):
I I think if we don't give him too much power,
because really I mean, in ourconversation, a lot of these
situations you've been throughin your life, yeah, you never
gave up.
Even when you felt like you weregonna die, you still were
pleading your case to theuniverse.

(01:03:35):
You were in conscious connectionwith the conscious universe.
You've always been in consciouscommunication with source.
You've always told source whatyou wanted, source gave you a
method to get there, you tookrisk, you set your intention,
and you made it happen foryourself because you committed

(01:03:56):
to it and you didn't let anydistraction get in your way.
And I feel that because you havebeen so diligent with your path,
like even though you're able tosee bad people, right?
Like I've I feel like I'vewalked a very similar path.
If you see bad people, you don'talways need to necessarily do

(01:04:18):
anything about it.
They'll take themselves out.
The worst people always kind ofthey they get they they take
themselves out.
You don't you have to touchthem.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:29):
Well, I'm not sure I totally agree with that.
Some pretty bad dudes out there.
Uh and they will disappear maybesooner or later, but they can do
an awful lot of damage.
And also I want to say one morething, and that is that you keep
complimenting me on my courage.
And I'm telling you that I'vehad this bipartite life, right?
And the whole first half of itwas an adventure, but it wasn't

(01:04:50):
for nothing.
There's a reason for thatadventure, and that I learned to
be tough.
You have to be tough to survivein the mountains.
You have to be tough to survivewars and revolutions.
So I learned to be tough, andthat toughness has served me in
good stead and far morespiritual pursuits than wars and
revolutions.
So it's all come together.
And now at 83, man, does it allmake sense?

(01:05:13):
Yeah, I totally get.
Even some of the things that Idid early on in my 20s, early
30s, uh that I, like I said, I'mI still cringe that I did them,
but I maybe I needed to do them.
I don't know.
But I turned I learned to betough, and then finally I
learned that the toughness isnecessary, but it's it can be
applied to doing good in theworld.

(01:05:33):
So now I'm a tough do-gooder,and that's a pretty damn good
combination.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:38):
It is.
It is.
Would you consider your yourmental fortitude more important
than a physical strength inregards to like your dreams,
navigating life?

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:53):
No, I I I I don't not sure that's the right
question to ask.
I don't uh uh uh the two aretogether, the two the two.
Work together.
I mean, physicality, I mean, I'm83.
I have to hesitate going upsteep stairs now.
I can't, there's no way I couldclimb a mountain anymore.
Um, so I hate that that I'mlosing the physicality, uh, but

(01:06:14):
that's inevitable.
Like I like I say, I'm 83, uharthritis and stuff like that.
Uh, you know, so okay.
So now um so now I uh myadventuring is now uh uh totally
uh uh using my computer for themost part and talking to people,
using the insights that I'vegained beginning with that foggy

(01:06:36):
field many years before, manydecades before.
And I use it now to greatimpact.
I don't need to be physicalanymore.
But the physicality wasimportant.
The other reason physicality isimportant is that I talked to
lots of difficult audiences.
I don't preach to the converted.
There's no point in that.
Uh other people can preach tothe converted, and God bless

(01:06:57):
them.
But I I like to preach to touncommitted or or even
antithetical audiences.
And I start, if I'm given backbefore COVID, I was running
around the planet doing a lot ofplatform speaking.
If I was given 45 minutes, I'dspend 35 or 40 minutes telling
my war stories until all thesesuspicious, cynical CEOs and

(01:07:19):
stuff would put down what theywere doing and lean forward and
listen.
Because they begin to realizethat I'd done more tough guy
stuff and the whole room forthem put together.
And then I would segue, I wouldpivot, and I'd say, look, I what
I learned about was that thereal courage of my life has come
not from dodging bullets, it'scome from it's come from taking
what I'll call spiritual risk,changing my life, which means

(01:07:42):
challenging a lot of otherpeople and a lot of things that
are going on in the world, andtaking entirely different risks.
Um, and and it has shaped mylife because I've learned that
nothing is more important thanfinding meaning.
It's true for you too.
Most important thing in yourlife is finding meaning.
I thought I'd found meaning inphysical adventure.
I really did.
That adrenaline rush was themost important thing in my life.

(01:08:03):
But then I finally discoveredthat the real source of meaning
in life is some kind of givingback, some kind of service.
And I end my speech by saying, Ithink the same thing's going to
be true for you.
I'm not saying you have to quityour job or quit being an
entrepreneur or whatever or apolitical leader.
All I'm saying is that you cando everything.
If you're a a businessman makinga good product, selling it for a

(01:08:24):
fair price, being fair andhonest with your employees,
mindful of environmentalconstraints, a good neighbor in
your communities where yourplant's situated, that's a
service.
I'm not saying become MotherTeresa or sack cloth and ashes.
You can be of service in lots ofdifferent ways.
And at a certain point you'regonna understand that, I
guarantee it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:45):
So what traits or what steps would you say are the
most important for finding yoursoul purpose or your life
purpose?
Because it seems like you onceyou found your life purpose,
things really aligned for you,right?
But there was so many, therewere certain things that I'm
sure locked that into place alittle better.

(01:09:07):
It seemed like there werecertain um certain connections
you had with source, there werecertain commitments that you
made to yourself.
You had told this story of beingin the boat, right?
Like you were being asked to beselfless instead of just
considering your own abundanceor your own sense of security as

(01:09:29):
a as a means or purpose.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:34):
I recommended this for the last 40 years.
I think, you know, uh going backto, I guess, my my my military
security background, there's twothings to think about.
One is strategy and the other istactics.
Strategy is the most important,tactics follow the strategy.
And what I discovered as a as aas the global strat the strategy

(01:09:54):
for every human being, as I saida few minutes ago, is finding
the meaning of your life.
That's really important.
And I urge everyone not to stopuntil they find a meaning that
you feel is in sync with yourdeepest ideals and passions.
And and and one way to startlooking for that meaning is to
look at who you are, what yourskill set is.
I mean, if you're really good atmath, then then maybe you're

(01:10:18):
you're you're s you're you'refinding you should find a
meaning in your your life forsomething that's in science or
engineering or whatever.
If you're really good at music,then perhaps it's it's it's
enriching people's life throughmusic, whatever.
But there's a way to find thatmeaning.
And I even I remember this stufffrom workshops.
I'm sorry to repeat workshoppystuff, but I have uh I used to

(01:10:39):
No, please do.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:40):
This is an educational podcast.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:42):
I would say, I would say uh one of the things I said
often was the was the red light,Cambodia, and that is you come
up to a traffic light and youjust miss the green.
It's a long traffic light, andyou know that.
So you're gonna be there for 60,70 seconds, maybe 90 seconds.
Normally, because you haveyou're late for a business
meeting, you're drumming yourhand on the steering wheel, and

(01:11:04):
maybe you're cussing out thefact you missed the reason.
You're wasting your time gettingangry because of that red light.
Well, if you're stuck for someplace and can't do a damn thing
about it, then maybe you canjust shut off your mind for that
90 seconds and just get quietand see if you hear something
different than just gettingpissed off at the red light.

(01:11:26):
Maybe you might, when you getthe green, you might drive
another mile and a half and seea billboard advertising a loaf
of bread or a car.
But on that billboard are two orthree words strung together in
some pattern that all of asudden means something to you,
perhaps because during that redlight you were knocked off your
pivot a little bit, you're opento stuff.

(01:11:47):
So I'm saying that findingmeaning in your life often comes
from small things.
It also comes from being alone,it comes from a quiet walk in
the woods, it comes from lookingup at a starry sky, it comes
from perhaps talking to a dearloved one who's going to be
totally honest with you.
And again, it comes from takingstock of your own skills and
resources.
What is it that you're good at?

(01:12:08):
Because that points you towardan area where you might really
end up doing some real good.
Uh and and and and I offer theseas a way of pinpointing what the
strategy is.
Once the strategy is set, youfeel good about it, and by good
I mean, well, you know what Imean.
It's like, man, I look at the atthe myself coming back at me in
the mirror in the morning, and Ifeel good about that image.

(01:12:30):
I feel good about that image.
I realize I'm on the planet fora reason.
And the reason is not makingmoney or being powerful.
The reason is something biggerthan that.
And you look at that and yousay, okay, that's that's it.
That's that's the purpose of mylife.
So now I need to exercise it inthe most effective possible way.
Now we're talking tactics.

(01:12:51):
You find a way that you canexercise that sense of meaning
by by uh by doing something thatdirectly translates it into real
actions in the world, which iswhat the giraffe project,
giraffe heroes project, islooking for.
For example, my badass granddad,that's a tactic.
My strategy finding meaning inmy life has been set for 45

(01:13:14):
years.
It won't change.
It's service.
I know that.
And I have absolutely no doubtsabout it.
So my life is all about findingnew and better ways to give
back, new and better ways todeal with tough audiences,
because I am a pretty tough guy,so I can deal with tough
audiences.
Someone responds to me with froma blog or a podcast or something

(01:13:34):
with some snark, some23-year-old, uh, who is this old
fart telling me what to do?
Whatever, yada yada yada.
Okay, my tactic is to learn howthat to to look back at that
person, summon up the compassionI have, and try to find some way
to establish a little bit oftrust so that I can get a little
deeper into that person'spsyche, heart, whatever.

(01:13:56):
So uh strategy and tactics,that's the way to look at it.
And the strategy is always aboutfinding meaning and not to be
satisfied until you find it.
I'm telling everybody that ifyou find that strategy, that
sense of meaning, and you'refacing a really difficult
challenge, a challenge that'sright in front of you, like a

(01:14:18):
mountain face that seems likeyou can't possibly climb over
it.
But then you realize that thatchallenge is made up of other
challenges, and together youhave the skills to surmount it.
And so you set to work tosurmount it.
And then you realize all thework you're doing, the risks
you're taking to get over thatmountain in front of you,
they're all uh the the they'reall stuff that's that's part of

(01:14:41):
your your life purpose.
This is what you're supposed tobe doing.
And all of a sudden thatmountain in front of you turns
into a speed bump.
I know this sounds silly, youknow, and people say, oh wow,
that's Nambi, that's that'snaive.
It isn't.
When you are doing things thatare meaningful, maybe it's
dealing with the out-of-controlteenager, and it looks like
isn't he's never she's nevergonna change, whatever.

(01:15:04):
But then you realize that lovingthat teenager and that sense of
compassion that it takes to be agood parent, that's a core part
of what makes your lifemeaningful, makes you of service
to develop yet another life inthe world.
Then the mountain that theout-of-control teenager has been
facing becomes more of a speedbump and you're much more adept
to come up with the tactics whatto say, what to do with that out

(01:15:27):
of control teenager.
Whereas if all you see is themountain, you're gonna make
mistakes and the kid will feelit.

SPEAKER_01 (01:15:34):
I relate to that, yeah.
I think your perspective of kindof reassessing how you perceive
your struggles and reassessinghow you perceive your
trajectory.
Like once you have the feelingbehind what you want in life and
you're passionate about whatyou're doing, that seems to be

(01:15:56):
kind of almost like strikingflint.
Like that's that's the sparkthat ignites the trajectory and
the momentum for kind of havinglife fall into place.
Is that is that about right?

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:08):
Yeah.
That's close, yeah.
Everybody's different, you know.
Uh and your path is obviouslydifferent than mine, although I
I think I see a lot ofparallels.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:18):
I I'm so grateful for you joining us today.
And um I encourage everybody togo and take a look at John's
projects.
I'm going to leave the link forthe Giraffe Hero Project.
I'm going to leave a link forbadass grandad.
And I'll also leave any of hiscontact information in the

(01:16:39):
description.
I'm just really grateful thatyou were able to join us today
and to help um kind of give thisperspective on how to quantify
your passion, your drive, yoursense of purpose from the
physical plane and how toactually like utilize that

(01:17:00):
energy to create the life thateverybody, you know, everybody
wants the dream life.
We all want to accomplish ourdreams.
And it's very challenging toactually make that happen
without the risk, without beingin connection with the divine
source, without having thatgumption, that determination to

(01:17:21):
complete, you know, what youneed to do.
And you have been such adaredevil in your pursuits.
And I think that having such ahealthy way of looking at
challenges where you didn't seeit as like, you know, woe is me,
I'm a victim, uh blah blah.

(01:17:43):
Like you really were like, hey,this is a challenge, I'm gonna
take it on head first.
Those are some really powerfulmental paradigms that people can
maybe start to alchemize intheir own lives so that they can
start to harness that power, youknow.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:00):
Well, Emily, you've you've been so positive about
your descriptions of my life.
I remember now that I needed tosay something.
I'm not very good atcommercializations.
I forgot to mention that I havea memoir that really sets in
context a lot of the good stuffthat you're talking about.
It's called Quest,Q-U-E-S-T-Risk Adventure and the

(01:18:22):
Search for Meaning.
And it thoroughly explores, Ithink, in a very honest way, my
descent into hell, my the firstpart of my life, my my my my my
shallowness of a lot of myadventuring, and then the
terrible struggle for two orthree, four years to crawl out
of that hole after coming backfrom Vietnam.
So, anyway, Quest, it's it's anaudio book as well, and it

(01:18:44):
fleshes out some of the stuffwe've talked about, but it's a
book, so you can spend as muchtime or as little as you want in
reading about it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:51):
I'll be leaving that in the description as well, you
guys.
Please go check out John'swebsite, his book, his
organization.
Thank you again, John, so muchfor joining us.
And I hope that everybody has awonderful rest of their week as
we ascend together.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Hey Jonas!

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Give Meaning to Life with John Graham

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Hey Jonas!

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

Give Meaning to Life with John Graham

Hey Jonas!