Inner Journey with Greg Friedman welcomes Brian Seth Hurst

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, This is Greg Bradon, Jack Canfield, Mariam Williamson, James
Van Praut. Everyone, this is Neil Donald Walsh and I'm
happy to tell you that.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
You're listening to Inner Journey with Greg Friedman. Stick around.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Your life will change any minute.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
You are the man. You are listening to Inner Journey
with Greg Friedman on k x F M one O
four seven, broadcast from Laguna Beach, for Laguna Beach and
for the entire world. All right, y'all, you know the
gig sex Relationships, dream interpretation. We talk about it all.
We don't tell you what to do and we don't

(00:42):
tell you how to do it, and there's a very
good reason for that. It's not our friggin lives. It's
your life, which means it's your love, it's your happiness,
it's your divinity, it's your choice. We do one thing
and we do our best to do that well to

(01:04):
help you understand you are the magic and we just
get to help you realize it. And we'll be back
with more Inner Journey right after this. Is it againing better?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Do you?

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Steel say?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Will it make it easier on you?

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Now?

Speaker 5 (01:42):
You got someone to play?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
You say? Wall one?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Lie one wyne.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Water, get to.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
The share, please your darling.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
You don't care. Did I disappoint?

Speaker 6 (02:20):
You want the bad taste in your mouth? You act
like you never had them and you want me to
go back? Where is it to live? To die, to

(02:44):
drag a past out to the lie?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
But with none save we get to.

Speaker 6 (02:54):
Carriach other, carry each other?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
How have you come here to talk for game?

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Have you come to raise the day evening?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Have you come here to say?

Speaker 6 (03:32):
Geezesus to the levels in your head?

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Head? Where is not so?

Speaker 7 (03:44):
I'm not?

Speaker 3 (03:45):
You can't rememb.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Something for soul? I got out.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
We're up with not the side, same with its jocko
with god. Guys, don't say that's most. There's a hug
a lot of us.

Speaker 7 (04:06):
There's some spre's ah, you're asking me a lot time?

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Thank you me the crow to what your gun to
the you guys hung on? You don't get to do ship.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
When the jokes just ask.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Not the same?

Speaker 2 (04:49):
I get to carry supper.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Cany Hi, this is Greg Braden and you're listening to

(05:39):
Inner Journey with Greg Friedman.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Man. I love me some Mary J. Blige. She is
just amazing. All right, y'all? You are listening to In
a Journey with Greg Friedman on k x F M
one O four seven broadcast from Laguna Beach four Laguna Beach,
And for the entire world, we are living to be

(06:10):
as understated as I can. In some strange, weird and
wacky times, what it's important to remember is they are
also wonderful times. It is an opportunity, over and over
and over. And I'll tell people that we are living
in the time of Callie, and people that know go, wait,
you're we're living in the time of the great Destroyer.

(06:32):
And I said, no, Collie is not a destroyer. She's
a farmer. And what she's doing right now is she's
tilling the fields. And if you happen to be in
the area that's being upturned, it does feel like chaos.
It does feel insane. And what I'm asking you to
do is understand that we're just preparing the seed for

(06:56):
the new growth. We're just preparing an opportunity unity for
our world, ourselves, our attitudes, our energies to be reborn.
And in order for that to happen, often, not always,
but often, it's necessary for things to go into some
state of upheaval. It's not the end of the world.

(07:17):
It's just the end of the world as we know it.
And it's important for us to realize and remember now
more than ever. Speak, speak your heart, speak your soul,
because right now is a greater calling for us to

(07:40):
be ourselves than ever before that I know of. In
the course of human nature. It is vital to speak,
even if your voice trembles, even if you're scared. Courage
is not the absence of fear. Courage is doing it anyway.
And this is the time, little Ax, big Ax. You know,

(08:03):
I've always liked Sheryl Crow. This last week she did
something that made me like her even more. And I'm
going to piss off some people by saying this, but
oh well, I always piss off people, So what So
she decided, as her own way of really personalizing what's

(08:24):
going on right now, to sell her tesla, take the
proceeds from that and give it to MPR. Is that
going to make a difference for either Elon or for NPR.
Not in and of itself, however. The Sahara is a

(08:45):
series of seeming seemingly insignificant granules of sand. Together they
make a huge, vast expanse together we make a huge,
vast expanse. Never underestimate your contribution, even if you feel
like you are a minuscule, almost microscopic granule of sand.

(09:12):
You count your voice, counts your heart, your soul, your presence,
and you're beautiful for it. And all I'm asking you
to do this is not about left right, good, bad,
up down. This is about be you and understand that

(09:33):
all this divisiveness that we're called to engage in right
now is an opportunity for unity. And if you understand,
we don't have to attend every fight that we're invited to,
then we just get to be ourselves, our own voice
without negating anybody else's, and just in that act alone,

(09:55):
we will flourish, we will grow, and we will learn
to love in new and spectacular ways. And speaking of
love in new and spectacular ways. Our guest tonight is
Brian seth Hurst and we are going to dive into
his book that deals with exactly that we'll be back

(10:19):
with in a Journey with Greg Friedman and Brian Sethhurst.

Speaker 8 (10:23):
Right after this, Sad.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Said seconds.

Speaker 5 (11:18):
Also says it about anisode woman as side.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Where you're why.

Speaker 7 (12:28):
Not not to.

Speaker 4 (12:42):
Show as guy snack cap.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
What at the mess up?

Speaker 2 (13:48):
I say you truth for me.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
She's to be fun to stop.

Speaker 5 (14:03):
She's gonna closesome.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Hi, this is James M.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Frog and you're listening to Inner Journey with Greg Friedman
Sunday from seven to nine pm.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Enjoy you heard the man. You are listening to Inner
Journey with Greg Friedman on k x f M. All right,
y'all buckle up because we are going to have a
wild time. Our guest this evening is Brian and Seth Hurst.
He's built a career at the forefront of storytelling and
technology innovation and I got questions about that because a

(15:09):
lot of that has to do with VR. And he's
also co author of a book with Olivia Newton John
called a Pigtail from Simon and Schuster, and his latest
offering is Whole, a collection of essays on life's challenges
in congress with a workbook that will help you not

(15:34):
only navigate those challenges, but find a way to flourish,
not in spite of them, but because you'll understand that
everything in our world is an opportunity. Brian, Welcome to
Inner Journey. Thank you for having me. Greg. I'm honored
and excited to be here. Very cool. All right, you

(15:54):
know what we're gonna do. We're gonna jump in with
that first question. Everybody and their cousin's been on this program,
and I'm blessed for that, and so's our listening audience.
We've had authors and artists and shaman and medicine men,
people from pretty much every different walk of life to
be of service. And to a person, there was an
event or series of events that really thrust them on

(16:17):
a significant aspect of their journey and made them say, hmm,
the spirit thing, I should give it a try.

Speaker 9 (16:23):
What's your story? I think it's more like a hundredth
monkey thing because I had to be dragged, like kicking
and screaming. I have memories of being very intuitive as
a kid, knowing what people were feeling emotionally even before
they knew it. I can remember being in the car
with my mother and saying, when we turned this corner,

(16:44):
we're going to see a father and son and they're
going to be playing throwing, playing catch, and we would
turn the corner and that's how it would be. And
I had invisible friends, and all kids have invisible friends,
but mine were really real, you know, I just felt
like I was in community cation. And I can remember
when I was eighties to close my eyes at night
and say, Okay, I'm gonna talk to John F. Kennedy

(17:07):
tonight in my dreams. That's what I'm going to do.
And then I dreamt the deaths of both my uncles
exactly as they happened. And I was ten, and they
died when I was twelve and thirteen. So did that
freak you out? Totally freaking out because you think you
don't know. You think as a kid that you you

(17:28):
must have done something, you must have caused it, especially
since it was so visual. My dreams tend to be
really visual, and especially since it was so visual. So
I completely shut down.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
What does that mean? It means I didn't pay any
attention to any intuition anymore.

Speaker 9 (17:43):
I just what about my life. I did what I
was supposed to do, what was expected of me. It
was kind of like my Emperor's not wearing any clothes moment,
you know, And I couldn't tell anybody. It was like,
this is going to be I'm just going to shut down.
This is going to be a secret. Can you turn
it off? I was very successful at turning it off,
And how did you do that? I just ignored it.

(18:04):
I mean I just said I don't want this, and
I just shut down. And it's funny because later on
in life, when I was dealing with voices, because I
always had voices, there was a woman who was an
intuitive who had come from MAUI oddly enough why she
called herself the Butterfly Fairy, and she said, it's a switch.
You can turn it off anytime you want. And so

(18:25):
I had to realize that. But when you talk about events,
I was hit on the head and I hear many
into it, as many psychics have been hit on the
head as teenagers. And I was hit on the head
by an iron grid gait that basically scalped me, lost
a lot of blood and had a near death experience.
And that's when I kind of recognized that there was

(18:47):
more than what we were living. And I was sixteen
and then shut down again.

Speaker 10 (18:52):
No no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Before you shut down, you had to open up again.
Let's go there for a second. And by the way,
I understand what you're talking about. One of the first
things that I teach when I'm working with novice empaths
is you have a volume nob you have a channel changer,
and you have it on and off switch. But they
had you. I didn't have anybody. Yeah, so you know what,

(19:16):
I got hit up upside the head. You got hit
upside that we go, we do come about it any
which way that's appropriate. So you're sixteen, what made you
decide to turn it on? At sixteen? I got hit
in the head.

Speaker 9 (19:28):
I literally was bleeding out, and I had this German
intern or whatever in the emergency room saying, I can
find some bleeders, I can find some bleeders. And the
next thing I know, I'm floating above myself and I'm
looking down and I'm looking up and what they say
is true. I just saw light and I felt so light.

(19:49):
And then, believe it or not, my mother arrived and
she fell on my stomach. And you know, there's the
Yiddish word geshry for a scream. And the moment my
mother screamed and she fell on my stomach and she said,
my son, my son, It was like right back in
the body. And then it was like, did this happen?
Did this not happen? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (20:09):
How much did you remember?

Speaker 7 (20:11):
Well?

Speaker 2 (20:11):
I remember the whole thing. I still remember it, still
remember being really vivid, and.

Speaker 9 (20:16):
I remember my mother, and I remember the feeling, and
I remember the feeling of getting back in my body.
I felt like I felt like I hit something. I
felt like I landed when I was back in my body.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
And then yeah, and then almost everybody has had a
near death experience, and it's very funny because they will
choose different vehicles for it, a lot a lot of them.
For a while, I had ten shaman or medicine men
on in a row and they almost all drown or
and I was like, Okay, you got boinked in the head.

(20:47):
I got boinked in the head before you're there. And
it's interesting, and I've never brought this up on air before.
One of the things that I've been hearing over and
over again is maybe we shouldn't go to the LFE.
Maybe instead, there's another way to navigate the after death
experience that's more appropriate for us in our own evolution.

(21:12):
You're giving me a look which they can't see on air,
by the way, that says I've never heard that before.
That's why I was asking, I have not and believe
it or not? Before that happened to me.

Speaker 9 (21:25):
I hadn't heard about any near death experience, so I
didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know I
didn't know if I was dying or not. I just
was a really weird experience. It was only afterwards that
I realized what it was because I wasn't going to
talk about that either. I wasn't going to tell anybody
that that's what happened, and as a matter of fact,

(21:45):
I still rarely talk about that.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
So you came back into your body and all of
a sudden, the voices were on, the visions were on,
the whole shooting match was back in play. Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (21:55):
No?

Speaker 9 (21:56):
No, okay, So then I'm going to make a very
long story short. So I was living in New York
and I was studying at the Actors Institute. I was
an actor or wanted to be an actor, and I
was studying at the Actors Institute and they had this
woman there, her name was Ria Power. Since she was
doing past life regression therapy mm hm, and everybody was

(22:19):
going to her. So I thought, Okay, I'm going to
do that. So I went and did a past life
aggression therapy and it was just the whole experience was
really weird. But when I came out of it and
I walked on the street, I just knew things. I
would see people, and at that point I could also
look in someone's face and I could see them.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
I don't talk about this either.

Speaker 9 (22:43):
I could see them age before me, and I could
see when it stopped, so I could literally see when
they were going to die.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
And I didn't want that, so I shut that down.

Speaker 9 (22:52):
Meanwhile, the same people that were going to real powers
were going to this woman named Linda Waldron who had
come from Maui to New York to do readings, and
she was reading the show business community. And I lived
with Tommy Tooon, Broadway star and director. I lived with
his assistant, and he had mentioned her, and so I thought, oh, well,
what the hell? Everyone I knew was going to her.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
So I went to her.

Speaker 9 (23:14):
I go to her and she says, oh, you're one
of the purple people. Everyone that comes to see me.
I came to New York to read one hundred purple people,
and each person that's a purple people who comes to
see me wears purple. Okay, And I had made a
deliberate move to wear purple socks that day and I
was like, okay, and she said, you are going to

(23:37):
make a huge difference in people's lives. You're psychic, you're
an intuitive, and you're a healer. And I said to her,
oh no, no, no, no no no, I'm not doing that.
I'm going to be a Broadway star. I was still
very much in my ego and I said, and I'm
going to be a singer. And she said, well, be
that as it nay, you will still do this. So

(23:59):
I was like, So she said, I'm going to send
you business cards. The next thing I know, she sends
me business cards and they say holistic, heel around them
and she starts sending people to me to be yield.
And I called her and I said what am I
supposed to do with this? And she said, just let
spirit be your guide. And I'm like, well, okay, what
does that mean? And she said, you know, just put

(24:20):
your hands not on them, but just on top of
them and let them move. And something was happening and
it was too much for me. So I called her
and I said, please don't send me anybody else. You know,
people are coming to me with cancer. I can't do that.
That's not what I'm here for, and you know, please
don't send me anybody else. And she said, okay, I won't.
Then she calls and she says, hey, I'm supposed to

(24:42):
go to this party and do readings tonight, and I'm
not feeling well. Would you go in my place?

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Oh, she's sneaky. I like her. I said what, and she.

Speaker 9 (24:51):
Said yeah, just I said, I don't know how to
do that. She said, it's easy. Just relax, close your
eyes and say what you see now, mind you. I
had been intuitive mind entire life, but I'd been closeted
about it and didn't pay any attention to it. So
there I go, and I sit in the corner and
I put up this little sign that she told me
to put up it and says psychic readings. And I
sat there at eight o'clock with my hands folded on

(25:12):
this little table, and no one came over. At ten
forty five. It is supposed to end at eleven. This
woman comes over and she sits down. She's about five
foot one and she's as wide as she is tall,
and she sits down New Yorker and she says, read me.
And so I close my eyes and I say what
I see, and I don't worry about being right or wrong.

(25:33):
I just say what I see. I do what Linda
Waldron told me to do. I open my eyes and
she's looking at me and her eyes are really wide,
and she goes.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Carol's, Carol's, you have to talk to the sky. You
have to talk to come. Come, Come, And the next thing,
I knew there was a line.

Speaker 9 (25:49):
So I called Linda Waldron the next day and I
tell her what happened, and she said, oh, I'm so
glad because I need to send you my overflow. And
she said you should charge twenty five dollars read him
for an hour, blah blah, blah blah. And that's how
the whole thing started, and I kept trying to resist it. Now,
just before that happened, I was in a piano bar
called Brandy's in New York to sing and this guy

(26:11):
was sitting next to me and I said, Oh, is
your name Jeff? And he goes yeah, and I said
you have some sort of French last name. He said
it's Archimbau. He goes, how do you know this? I said,
I don't know. And then I was hearing three one
one three three one one three and I said, is

(26:31):
your birthday January third? And he goes, no, it's March first.
I said, are you here for a job interview?

Speaker 2 (26:42):
He goes yes. I said in banking. He goes yes,
How do you know these things?

Speaker 9 (26:49):
And I was like, I just I don't know. And
so then the more I did it better I got.
But Greg, here's the bad thing that I happened. So
I didn't have great self esteem at the time, and
I wanted approval. I was twenty five twenty six, and

(27:12):
I remember having the thought, this is the thing that's
going to make people love me.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
You had that thought consciously yep, whoa And that was
all ego.

Speaker 9 (27:26):
And shortly after that I was laid out flat for
five days with this unexplained illness.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
I was just so tired.

Speaker 9 (27:37):
And another friend of mine, Sally Fisher, made it clear
to me. She said, you do not get to use
the gift that you have to better your own life,
feather your nest, or for your ego. She said, You've
been given a gift to serve and that was the
ego lesson is like. And she said people that do

(27:58):
use it for their ego eventually they get burned and
you just got burned, and I was like, Okay.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
I get it all right, So slow down, let's back
that up a little bit. Yeah. Wow, I haven't talked
about this in years. God. Okay, literally, God. So when
people refer to ego, they're all often throwing the baby
out with the bathwater. It's what I understand you to
be talking about as the shadow ego more than the
ego as a whole, because the ego is the sense

(28:23):
of self and it's important for us to carry it
going forward.

Speaker 9 (28:27):
Yeah, I'm talking about the ego that's based in fear. Yep, exactly.
Nobody's going to love me, nobody's going to care. I
have to do something to get approval, to make people
love me, because.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's the way I was raised. That's the belief right now.
If you could approach those same things without that shadow
ego instead, you know. So I'm doing this. It's okay
for my nest to be feathered. It's not that I'm
doing it to feather my nest, but it's okay for
my nest to be feathered.

Speaker 9 (28:57):
That's how I live now, because I know that I'm
providing value. I know that I'm here to serve. My
purpose is to connect and engage authentically and inspire. And
by inspire, I mean to inspire people to know themselves
at the deepest level, to have the best life that
they can. And whether I do it writing a book,

(29:20):
whether I do it as an intuitive doing readings, or
whether I do it as a performer or as a writer,
I use that as the filter for everything I do.
So I'm not here to be a martyr for the
work that I do. I'm not here to sacrifice myself
for others. I always say, if someone's on their knees,
I'm happy to extend a hand, but I'm not getting
down on my knees with you, because then two people
will be on their knees. It'll be really hard to

(29:41):
get up. And I have also learned, as someone on
my knees that I have to accept help. That was
a very big thing for me.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Talk about though, will you please.

Speaker 9 (29:51):
I was sexually abused as a kid, and it completely
blew any sense of trust I had for any one,
and I lived that way until I was fifty seven.
I didn't even realize it. Didn't trust my parents, I
didn't trust anyone to It was like they were The
thought was you will always want something from me, You're

(30:12):
not going to get it. And so I'm just going
to be somebody else right now, and I'm not going
to let you in, and I'm not going to trust you.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
And you didn't have any recollection that until you were fifty.

Speaker 9 (30:23):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
No, I knew it when I was thirty. Okay, I
remembered it.

Speaker 9 (30:26):
When I was thirty. I told my parents. My mother said,
do you need help? And I said, no, I don't
think it's nice answer.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
My mother.

Speaker 9 (30:36):
A mother was something else. She'd been gone fifteen years
and she was something else. And I said, no, no, no,
I'm I'm good.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
I'm good. It's just something that happened.

Speaker 9 (30:49):
But then life became tougher and tougher and tougher because
you can't be a rock in an island.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
You can't. You know what is it.

Speaker 9 (30:57):
I'm a rock. I'm an island. I trust no one
in whatever the lyrics are. That's how I was living.
Friendship is I don't need that. I'll be a personality.
I'll be the second vice chair of the Television Academy
and I'll serve my community that way. I'll be the
chairman of the Producer I'll be that person I'll be
that personality, but you will never get in and you

(31:18):
will never know me. And so it kind of I
had a twenty year relationship where the other person didn't
even know how I was because I was too busy
being that someone else, being that people pleaser.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
But well, and did that cause you also to choose
people that just wanted to be vacuums and receive no
interesting Because.

Speaker 9 (31:38):
It caused me to choose people who continually tested my trust.
It's like the universe kept sending me people who were
bullies because I wasn't dealing with it. And finally, a
very good friend of mine said, and she was an alcoholic,
and she said, I think you're about to hit bottom,
and when you do, I'll be here.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
And the bottom was.

Speaker 9 (32:01):
Remembering everything that happened in detail and finding a men's group,
both of straight and gay men who had all experienced that,
and being in that room and sharing what had happened.
And when they came around at the end to ask
you for one sentence about your experience that night, and
I cried the whole time. It was two hours worth

(32:21):
of tears. And they came around to me and I said,
I have never trusted anybody in my entire life since
that happened, Now I do. I had to work through it.
I had to have trauma therapy. I was very, very
fortunate in that I had a very experienced therapist. But
I'll take something great when I look at my own nature.

(32:45):
My nature is to take the worst things that happened
and pick the best things out of them. My nature
is to recontextualize and say, I can't change what happened
in the past, but I can change how I respet
onto it and how I react to it. Those are
very different statements. One is sounds very Pollyanna, and the

(33:08):
other one sounds like I'm going to choose to take
this coal and make it into a diamond through the
pressure that I put myself through. It's that I can
look at this as something that's against me or is
an opportunity for me here over here. It's like I'm
just going to look at the bright and shiny parts
and forget about the rest.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, I'm more inclined to do this. Second.

Speaker 9 (33:30):
If the first sound at Pollyanna, it isn't. Because I
will throw myself into the fire to learn, and I
have done it now. I'm not doing that anymore because
I've learned and I talk about this in the book,
I've learned about the observer self. You know that I
can cry and sob and take care of myself. And
there's a great book which changed my life called Self

(33:50):
Compassion by Kristin Neff, something I never knew how to
provide for myself. It's made an enormous difference. So for me,
it's like, how can I recontentualize it. I have all
my feelings about it, I have all my anger, I
have all my emotions. I would say, you know, why
did that happen to me? Why didn't that? And I
have this weird sense of justice because that those two

(34:12):
people were never caught, They never I never got justice.
So it's like, how would my life have been different?
And I went through all of that first, and all
the emotion that goes with it, and finding that that
poor six year old inside that you know, needed that
attention and needed that care from me as an adult
to let him know that he was safe.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
And this is hard stuff. This is like you weren't
kidding your publishers public issue have warned your baby. Yeah, it's.

Speaker 9 (34:44):
But I hope it inspires other people I'm still standing
and I am. No, you're flourishing. You're doing more than standing.
Now do you feel in order to matriculate that you
have to go through it again? You have to recogniz
is it, realize it, go into it or do you
feel like some people do some people don't? You know,

(35:07):
I can only speak from my own experience. Nice I
do not know that that's going to be true for
something someone else. When I'm working as an intuitive that
is not the guidance I give people based on my
own experience, here's what you need to do, and never
say you should or you need. I try not to
say those things because everybody's case is different. It's just
like grief. I was a grief counsel for six years.

(35:29):
Grief is different for everyone, and there is no right
way or wrong way to grieve. To be receptive to
the grief is very valuable. But no, that is my
personal experience. That's what I went through. I don't know
that everyone has to be forged in that fire that way.
I believe there are many different ways to come home

(35:51):
to yourself. This was my experience in my life. This
is what happened to me, so that I could be
the person that I I am today.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
It was what it was.

Speaker 9 (36:02):
I cannot change it. But what I can change is
my my perspective on it. I can change the way
I feel about it. It's just like, it took me
a long time to get to forgiveness, but I was willing.
I was like, I'm willing to forgive. I'm just not
going to do it right now. So what is your

(36:23):
feeling about that word? For me, that work was essential forgiveness.
I mean, oh, forgiveness. That's again I speak from my
personal experience. Of course, it has set me free. And
you know you've had Marianne Williamson on the show. There's
a line in one of her books that I forgive

(36:45):
you so that I won't hurt anymore, and that that's
an act of self love.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
To me, Buddha says that carrying around angers like drinking
poison and expecting the other person to become ill. It's
you know, for me, on one level, forgiveness is absolutely
a necessity. On another level, there's nothing to forgive because

(37:14):
it's all divine. You know.

Speaker 9 (37:16):
That reminds me of the phrase that when you've said
everything that needs to be said, the only thing left
to say is I love you, and so I do
believe in that. But I'm also human being, and I
also get angry, and I also get upset, and I
also take things personally. That's another big lesson I had
to learn was wait a minute, I'm making this about me,
and it's probably not this is that person is behaving

(37:40):
the way they're behaving. I just happened to create me
being in relationship right now in this situation. But I
don't need to take this personally and to stand back.
That's what I love about Don Miguel Ruiz in the
Four Agreements. He was seminal word God, It's just like great,

(38:02):
that is that is the answer. And you know, I think,
you know, in the book and in my life, I
I don't think I'm delivering new information, but I do
think that people create the right teacher for them, or

(38:23):
the right language, or the right ways that things a phrase.
That's why certain books will resonate with me and others won't.
And I just know how powerful and resilient people are,
and I think we're built with resilience.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
I really do. And you know, I just went we
talked earlier.

Speaker 9 (38:43):
I just went through the fires and the eating fire
in Sierra Madre, and I documented that on Facebook each day,
documented it.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
But what I said is from my perspective, resilience.

Speaker 9 (38:58):
Is empowered by passion, and when people have compassion, it
supports other people's resilience. And so that's the one thing
I try to carry in the world. I try to
remind myself of you know, yes, there but for the
grace of God. But I try to come from a
compassionate place to support people in there as a grief

(39:21):
counselor you. You didn't have to say anything, you just
have to be there.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
I've had a gazillion people on and I've never asked
this question, Uh oh, what does that word compassion mean
to you? How would you define it? Compassion is for.

Speaker 9 (39:36):
Me sometimes it's born of having had a similar experience.
You've lost your sibling, I've lost a sibling.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
I know what that is. I can feel what's going
on with you, and I can be there and support you.

Speaker 9 (39:55):
But the other is asking myself, what if I was
in that city situation, what would I need?

Speaker 2 (40:02):
What would I want?

Speaker 9 (40:04):
What could I ask for? And what wouldn't I be
able to ask for? Because I'm in trauma and I'm
in shock, and I try and ask myself that it
like right after the fires, I said, okay, dude, because
our house was spared. A firefighters stopped at within a
thousand feet of the house, and it was like, okay,

(40:26):
Just like during the AIDS pandemic, it was like, what
can I do here? And I thought about it, and
I thought, there are so many people volunteering right now.
But just like grief after two weeks, like you know,
I'm Jewish, we should say a shit sit shiva and
the people leave and you're left. Yeah, and you're left.

(40:50):
And it's in that moment when you were alone. That's
where compassion needs to be after the fact, after all
that there again, going to Mariann Williamson in Divine Law
of Compensation, she says, if you can't, if you have
no one to lean on, lean on me. This most
beautiful line in that book. If you have no one

(41:12):
to lean on me, that's compassion.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Nice. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. You're welcome.
I thought it was going to be a super tough question.
That's you know, for some people it would have been.
For other people, it's not. You know, you've gone through
all of this where you've resisted yourself, and you've come
to yourself, and you've gone through battles over and over again.
And there's so many things that you're talking about that

(41:37):
resonate with me on multiple levels, including when I really
first started walking down this road, I thought I had
to be pristine. I thought I had to I couldn't because,
trust me, I got anger in me and I thought,
I can't be angry anymore, and I can't do this

(41:58):
and I can't do that. And two monumental things happened.
One is I had a client come in and we're
working together and something she said triggered me to the
nth degree, and I took it and I put it
in a box and I put it way back here
because I wanted to be there for that woman. And

(42:18):
I went in because I worked with a lot of
Indigenous people, and went into an elder's home and I
was so excited for me and I was so proud
that I was able to do that and to prioritize her.
And what he said was the Indigenous equivalent equivalent of
you putts and he if it comes up, it's there

(42:42):
for you to use. Have you done that? Yep? Yep?

Speaker 9 (42:47):
That's when I learned an acting class with Michael Howard.
Not to deny what was present. I mean, I had
the best moment. I had had a really, really, really
bad It's funny where you'll learn these lessons. I'd had
a really bad day, I think it maybe twenty eight
twenty nine, had a really bad day, and I had
a scene to do and I was having that bad
day and there was no escaping it. And I did

(43:10):
the scene, but I allowed that bad day to be there.
And I walked over to the window because there was
a window in the studio and we were on like
the tenth floor, and I just looked out and the
thought that I was having in my mind was what
if I just freaking jumped right now, just ended the pain,
just jumped. And I was doing the scene. I was
still on the scene, but I was living that. We

(43:32):
came down afterwards, we sat down and Michael said, Brian,
what happened over at the window.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
I told him.

Speaker 9 (43:39):
He said, that was an incredibly alive moment. You were present,
and you were alive, and you lived in that moment,
and you took what was going on in that moment
and you used it. And I said, well, it wasn't intentional.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
It was just so powerful I couldn't deny it. But
that's repeat that because there are people looking out those
windows in their lives right now, and the idea is
to understand that in that moment, you are incredibly powerful,

(44:13):
You're incredibly alive, and that's an incredible force that you
could apply in so many other areas. God, you just
took me back to a memory. Okay. I was living
in New York. I was very poor. I wasn't succeeding

(44:35):
at what I wanted to do. I didn't feel like
I could bear the pain any longer.

Speaker 9 (44:43):
I lived in a walk up where the kitchen sink
was the only sink in the apartment, and there was
a bathroom that had a bathtub in a toilet, and
I said, oh, this is it. And I got a
knife out of the drawer and I walked over to
the mirror at this se and I was like, this
will be good. I'll just bleed out into the sink

(45:04):
and that'll be it. And I looked in the mirror.
I have never talked about this. You don't have to
hear I looked in the mirror. No, because I think
it can help. I looked in the mirror just say
goodbye to myself. And the person that looked back said,
if you have this power to take.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Your life, you have the power to make your life.
Put the knife down. Thanks for listening. I'm still here,
So I said, thanks for listening.

Speaker 9 (45:35):
Yeah, there's those moments. I've had a few where the
pain is just so so great that, especially if you
don't trust anyone, the pain's so great you just you
don't know if you can bear it.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
And now I've had.

Speaker 9 (45:52):
A few friends leave the planet commit suicide, and I
was like, I have in there, but something held me back.
What was it that held me back? And I think
it was the desire to serve. I think it was
the desire to just make a difference.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
I don't know. You know, there is a gentleman named
Justin Ballard who does a lot of wellness work based
in light, frequency and sound, and he's done things like
take an old partner of mine, his wife was in
stage four terminal cancer and she is now completely cancer free.

(46:34):
When he's doing an intake, he will always begin by
asking the same thing, why are you here? What's your
reason for being on this planet? What are you passionate?
About what makes you be willing to get up in
the morning, Because if you could find that it, everything

(46:55):
else follows suit. If you cannot, then that's the first
quest that you have, even before you do any of
the other devices or healing considerations. Find out what rockshire world?
Why are you here? And everybody that I've had on
this program, the answer is the same. It's to be

(47:19):
of service. How they do it, how they express it,
how they embody it is as vast and as different
as the entire universe can be, and yet everybody has
that at the core that I've run into. Now, do
you find that prevalent throughout everybody or do you find

(47:41):
that mostly with people that are here to help others
on their path?

Speaker 9 (47:49):
Well, again, you know, I work as a coach, an
intuitive coach. I work with people who are authors all
walks of life, and it is about that very thing.
It is about finding purpose, and that purpose in all

(48:12):
those cases that I can think of, has been about serving,
has been about making a difference. Hasn't been about self
sacrifice or martyrdom. It's like, I'm here to make a difference.
What is that journey?

Speaker 2 (48:24):
What is that path?

Speaker 9 (48:25):
Same thing with all of the intuitive clients I do
when I do reading sessions, and this is his public
I gotta tell you, Greg, this is as public as
I've ever been about that because I had this whole
career in the entertainment industry and I had to keep
it separate from my whole career as a metaphysician. And
then when I ran for chairman of the Television Academy,

(48:47):
we tied the first ballot, we tied the second ballot,
and the third ballot they delayed for a month, and
in the month there was oppo research and it was like,
do you want to size show psychic for your chairman?
And the jig was up, So then I had to
bring it all together. That's actually what I think the
title the Whole is about, because I had to be whole.
I was fragmented in so many different ways. Anyway, the

(49:08):
point then, answering your question is I do find that
with the clients that I work with that they are
looking to define their purpose in the context of service.
And when they get that phrase that purpose I stated, mind,
that becomes the filter for what they do. So purpose

(49:29):
is the context for what you do in the world,
not necessarily what you do well because then that's why
that vast expanse that you talk about expresses itself a
million different ways.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Well, because if you do find the purpose, then it's
just a question of am I in alignment with that?
Because if I'm not, that's what causes the disease or
the lack of ease. And if I could then go, oh,
my purpose and I are out of alignment, what do
I need to do to put those back in sync?
I'm golden. You'll notice I'm shaking my head. They don't

(50:01):
know that, but I saw. Thank you.

Speaker 9 (50:03):
Yeah, yeah, I wholeheartedly and I mean wholeheartedly agree. I
also think that the stuff that you stuff, you know,
the body is an amazing map, and the stuff that
you stuff is still there until you go and deal
with it. So this is something that totally intuitive to
me that I later found out other.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
People had talked about.

Speaker 9 (50:25):
But you know, it's like, if I have shoulder the
right side of the body, to me, represents the relationship
with the world. The left side represents the relationship with
the stuff. If I'm having shoulder pain on the right side,
I'm burdened by something in the world, and I have
to pay attention to what my body's saying. I have
to listen to that conversation it's going on and pay
attention because it's doing its best to get my attention.

(50:47):
So there are many ways that intuition works, and I
believe all of us have this ability. I don't consider
myself to be remarkable. I just you know, it's like
a bodybuilder. You know, I've worked that muscle for forty
five years. I can rely on it. I can I
can close my eyes on a plane and meditate in

(51:08):
ten in less than ten minutes. You know, I can
call up what I need to call up. The thing is,
learning to use the intuition for myself was a challenge
because I'm glad to use it for other people. But yeah, yeah,
you're right. When you're on purpose, it's usually indicates a
flow state because you're in service. Now I want to

(51:30):
come because you've mentioned this in different ways throughout our
conversation so far, we don't have to throw ourselves onto
the fire. It's that when things are tough, they're tough,
but we don't have to make them tough in order
to validate our strength. There's no glory in suffering, and
pain is inevitable. So yes, and I mean, I agree that.

(51:58):
You know, sometimes suffering is uncommon, just sometimes you're taught
to stuffer. Sometimes there is a belief in suffering. Dostoyevsky
suffering purifies right in the book, right in the life
of Ivan Denisovitch. Suffering purifies if you believe in that
die on the cross for other people's sins. You know,
I just there are beliefs that are active, and you

(52:19):
have to For me, I had to know what beliefs
that I had taken on. Now I you know, if
I cut myself there's pain, that pain is to get
my attention to heal that cut, to take care of
that cut. So when there's pain, it's the opportunity to
pay attention. Yes, Yes, so that's what I look at that.

(52:41):
I think that no one and I have learned this.
No one, regardless of the outside appearance that some may present,
no one gets through life unscathed.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Absolutely, Bryan, your website, oh uh, justn't even thinking about this.
Oh yeah, shift gear Whole Life Book dot com is
where you can find out about the books. And just
to be clear, whole is w h O L E. Yes,

(53:11):
it may sound silly, but it's worth saying. Yes, someone
said to me, are you talking about Hollywood? I said, no,
this is w H O L E. So Whole Life
Book Allen word dot com. You can find out more
about the book there. The audio book is was what
was released in January. The workbook was released the day
of the fires. Wow.

Speaker 9 (53:32):
Yeah, so that was kind of like we forgot about.
I couldn't do anything but pay attention to what was
going on with the fires. But yes, Whole Lifebook dot com.
And then my personal site is Brian seth Hurst dot.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Com, Brian seth Hurst dot com. Hurst is h U
R s T. And what are some of the things
that they can find if they go when they go there?
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 9 (53:51):
Well, you know, if you just google me, you will
find my performances, my singing, you will find my my history.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Now I understand unerasable. So it's all there.

Speaker 9 (54:04):
With the book site, you'll find out more about the books,
the audio book. I have to say this in all modesty, aside,
I really feel that I just took dictation. The story
of the book was I had a crash and burned
with a show that I had with a production company,
not once, but twice.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
I sat in the.

Speaker 9 (54:20):
Moulin Airport, and Molleen Illinois said, what do I do now?
I heard, give us thirty days. At the end of
thirty days, you'll have a book. And the name of
the book is Whole. So basically I took dictation for
thirty days and had a book at the end of
thirty days called Whole. And that's how the whole thing
came about.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
And you know, Paul has written thirteen books that way.
Paul Selig, who we just had on same thing, he said,
I don't really write books as much as just take dictation. Yep.

Speaker 9 (54:43):
And you know, when I was recording the audio book,
I wasn't paying attention. I was just doing my voiceover work,
you know, just reading the book and making sure that
I got the meaning over to the people who were listening.
And then in January, when it came out on audible,
I started to listen to it again. It was like, oh,
my gosh, this is really good stuff. This is I

(55:05):
wish i'd read this the first time. And I had
friends that would say, when I was going through something,
you need to go back and read chapter nine of
your book, you know. But it's timely and it's timeless
and given where the world is now, and I totally
align with what you said at the beginning of the show.
Such an opportunity. It's like, you know, the fires I
already have noticed on the hillside above us that burned,

(55:26):
that new growth is already coming in.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
And that's what I'm talking about. We're here with Brian
seth Hurst. You are listening to Inner Journey. Stick around.
We're going to find out about the book and Brian
may do a reading live on air as well. We'll
be back after the top of the hour.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Back school.

Speaker 7 (56:07):
Wait, dad, honey, want to give your mother?

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Only give your mother?

Speaker 7 (56:18):
Say wait, way that sound hia that.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
Go to give your mother? To give your mother? Oh

(57:38):
ma a.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
H huh.

Speaker 9 (57:53):
Look got up.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
Hot hi ho hi h and and and and she

(59:14):
was said, why sun like banda.

Speaker 9 (59:21):
Like?

Speaker 3 (59:27):
She dies? Right, Dad, it's sad warma you ne.

Speaker 6 (01:00:43):
K x r N LP Laguna Noguel, Laguna Beach k
x f M on one oh four point sentent k
x f M Radio dot Org.

Speaker 9 (01:00:52):
This disclaimer is a statement notifying listening audiences that any
opinions expressed on our shows are not representative of Laguna Radio, Inc.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Its management, or its board of my name is Greg Friedman.
I am a modern version of those that have existed
in every culture. I am a guide. For years, I
have taken people all over the world to work with
indigenous elders in exotic locations, only to show you that
you are the magic, and we just help you realize it.

(01:01:22):
It could be terrifying to look at our fears, and
sometimes even more so to look at our strangers. I
take you out into the wild, into the unknown foreign
interet journey. All right, y'all buckle up, because if you

(01:01:49):
didn't listen to the first hour, you have no idea
what a roller coaster we're going to bring you on
in the second hour. You are listening to In a
Journey with Greg Friedman on KXFM one O four seven,
broadcast from Laguna Beach, California, for the entire universe. Tonight,
we're hanging out with Brian seth Hurst. Brian is many

(01:02:14):
many things. The man wears a lot of hats. He's
a channel, he's a guide, he's been a grief counselor.
He is an author and his latest offering is called
Whole And it's also got a companion book and the
idea of you know what I was about to describe
your book, and I'm thinking there may be somebody in

(01:02:38):
the room that could do a better job than I
could on that. What is your book about?

Speaker 9 (01:02:42):
So when the book was originally written, which is over
a decade ago, it was it was really I thought
it was coming from me, but it was really for
me because it was addressing a lot of the issues
that I needed to pay attention to in my life,
whether it was about money, whether it's about relationship. But essentially,

(01:03:03):
the book was about belief and it was about the
transformation of beliefs. In other words, you are raised within
a set of beliefs. You get those beliefs from your parents,
or you get those beliefs from teachers or society. But
are those beliefs consistent with who you truly are? And
so the book takes you through various things to examine
those beliefs. As I said, I was listening to it

(01:03:26):
and I was like, boy, this is good stuff. And
I kept talking about his own audio books. I am, well,
you know, since I consider it to be a channeled work.
Whoever brought that book to me, thank you very much
because it is extremely helpful. And then what happened was
I did a revised edition the book is. I have

(01:03:47):
to say, I think it's pretty profound, and there is
you know, all good spiritual stuff comes with a sense
of humor, so there's a sense of humor in the book.
But I talked to a friend of mine who does
pr sally owns, and I said, look to I've known
it for twenty five years, knew it from the television
Ecademy and I said, look, I revised my original edition
and there's going to be an audiobook. And she said,

(01:04:09):
nobody is going to be able to publicize a book
that is that old. And then she looked at me
and said, you know, you ought to do a workbook
and a bell went off. That's one of those the
universe gives you a prompt and you either pick up
one it or follow it or you don't. And I
knew to follow it. And so now the workbook allows

(01:04:30):
people to read the book. And then the recommendation of
the book itself is to read a chapter a day.
But any way you do it will be right for you.
And there is there are exercises that go with each
chapter that allow you to dig. I don't want to
say dig because it's to venture more deeply into self

(01:04:53):
discovery looking at your beliefs in certain areas. My favorite
exercise on the whole book is called the belief grid.
On the left side of the page, you write down
the ten most influential people in your life, and across
the top of the page is love, family, creativity, sexuality, money.
I can't remember all the ones, but then you do

(01:05:15):
the exercise. If your mother was the first one, what
does your mother believe about family?

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Family is?

Speaker 9 (01:05:20):
And you write that down, and you go through the
whole grid, and then you put it away and you
can do this exercise with it without the book, and
then you put it away, and then two days later
you bring it out and you get a highlighter and
you highlight those beliefs that have become your operating system.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Okay, stop right there. You told me a story off
air about your mother. Are you okay telling that story
on air? Yeah? I don't remember it was, so you'll
have to. So your mom had macular degeneration, yes, and
as a result, you would take her certain places to
help her perhaps either slow the decree and vision down,

(01:06:01):
or maybe to possibly help get her vision back.

Speaker 9 (01:06:04):
One day you're out. One day we're out. We went
to Will's I Hospital in Philadelphia. Mom is going to
find out she had the wet macular degeneration, which I
think is the bad one that they don't really have
a treatment for. And they were trying different treatments and
we didn't know what the result was going to be,
and she was going to find out the result. We
were standing on a corner and there was an older

(01:06:26):
woman who was about to cross the street. She was
hunched over and she had a cane and my mother said,
wait right here, and she crossed the street with that woman.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
And then she came back and she said, Okay, let's go.
That was so typical of my mother, which was to
help other people. Now, take that incident, put it into
the grid that you were just talking about in your workshop,
if you would wow.

Speaker 9 (01:06:50):
I don't know what title that would be underneath. I
really don't, but I know that my mother had this
belief that it was important when you because she took us.
My mother was also involved in charity work, and we
used to volunteer as kids. She would take us to

(01:07:10):
firm and charities in Philadelphia and we would volunteer once
a month, even when we were small. And my mother
would say, when you have, you have to give to
those that don't. And I think that I was raised
with the belief that you are here to give to
other people. You know, in Hebrew it's zadeca, and it
is about when you have to give to take care

(01:07:31):
of others. And that was instilled in my sister and
I growing up. And that belief, I don't know where
it fits on the grid because I didn't memorize the grid,
but that was really important, and it just you reminded
me of something else. My mother was stalwart and when
she finally did go blind, she said, I need you
to take me shopping and I said okay, And we

(01:07:53):
went to the store. And she had, knowing that she
was going blind, had memory the store. She knew what
each aisle was, She knew where the things that she
would buy would be in the aisle, and even the
shelf where it would be. I was dumbfounded. I was
absolutely amazed. She knew what was going to happen, and

(01:08:17):
she prepared herself for It was a great example of planning.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
She was the television producers. Of course she planned, you know,
but it was it was remarkable and I thought, you
know what that is something I don't know that I
would have thought of. All right, now here's my yes
and moment for you, Okay, yes. And it seems to
me that she took something going on and decided to

(01:08:47):
create opportunities for herself by the event itself. There are
plenty of people at that juncture that would have said
I'm giving up or I'm going to give up and
I'm just going to muddle through with a cane and
with no understanding of my environment. And there's other choices. Now.
The thing is not one choice is the right choice

(01:09:10):
or the wrong choice. However, it's a great illustration of
choosing how to be vivacious no matter what the exterior
environment is.

Speaker 9 (01:09:23):
It was an amazing lesson. She also had chronicle emphasific
leukemia and she was an excellent patient. I remember standing
behind her in the bathroom when she was brushing her
hair and it was coming out in her hands, and
she said, oh, my beautiful hair. And then she said,
but you know what, there are people that have it

(01:09:43):
worse than I do. I'm gonna choose a really good
wig was Wow And a friend of mine who lost
their house in the fire. I saw him at the gym,
and he said, you know all these people that want
to point the finger and blame, and they're all angry.
He said, I had my anger, but I can't go
forward that way. I have to just put one foot

(01:10:05):
in front.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Of the other. And by the way, look I have
new sneakers. And it was like, wow, look at that.

Speaker 9 (01:10:12):
That is someone who has gone through hell, has a
lot more hell to go through, but has decided to
put one foot in front the other. And also, to
be honest, I had an amazing aunt, my Annadel. I
had a twenty year relationship and my mother had died
lost two dogs. At the end of that relationship. I
called her and I was in tears. She had buried

(01:10:36):
two husband, buried two children, and was remarkable in her strength.
And I said to her, Annadel, how do I do this?
And she said, Darling, you wake up in the morning
and you put one foot in front of the other
because you have no choice, but you do. But I

(01:10:57):
needed to hear that in that moment, so I decided
to make that choice to put one foot in front
of the other. And then she said I had I'm
much as as strong as you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Think I was.

Speaker 9 (01:11:09):
I had plenty of days and plenty of nights. I
had two children to raise on my own. I pride
myself to sleep at night. But I couldn't let my
children see that, she said. But I was determined to
put one foot in front of the other. And if
we're going, yes, there are a choice to me the universe,
if you will. I asked her for guidance, and she
gave it to me. And that was absolutely right to

(01:11:30):
put one foot in front of the other. And also
if I couldn't do it, to ask someone else to
help me lift my legs.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
So a good well. And that's something that's been a
common thing throughout your life, and then you've spoken about
throughout this program, is that asking for help is possibly
your worst thing. Now it's the best. Now it's the
best I can do. It tell a story. How did

(01:11:57):
you get from being and that person that was so
afraid that they forced themselves to be imprisoned in their
own isolation to the person now that allows others in
to give them the gift of assisting you, of being
of service to you, of loving on you.

Speaker 9 (01:12:20):
I think it started after my twenty year relationship ended
and I went to the doctor to get a baseline
exam because I was a mess and I thought, you know,
I didn't want to carry grief around for two years
and have it turned into something else. And he said
to me, you need to lean on people now, you
need to let them help you. And then he said, yeah,

(01:12:41):
I know, you wrote the book on it, and you're
really good at helping others, he said, but you need
to ask. So I think that was the beginning of it.
The Men Support group for men that were abused. They
were there to help each other and you could fall
apart in that room and they would be there for you.
They would carry you through. And then the relationship I'm

(01:13:01):
in now for ten years. The question almost every day
is how can I help?

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
He says, how can I help? And I'm like, I
don't need it.

Speaker 9 (01:13:10):
In my mind, I don't need and I do resist it,
but he's very persistent. So I have to, you know,
accept that help because it is easier when I do. Yeah,
And I'll tell you something. Helping other people is a
great thing, but the negative side of that is you
get to be the one in control and you get
to be the control freak. If you're helping somebody else,

(01:13:31):
then you get the attention off yourself and you don't
need any help. So learning to receive that's what's helped me,
and it's actually making I'm tell you something else. Standing
in front of an audience and receiving their applause and
watching them stand and keeping your heart open to let
them thank you for what you've given. That was a

(01:13:53):
tough lesson. And now I open my arms and I
receive it. Not from a hey, aren't I a great
point of view you, but oh, you're welcome point of view.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
It's like, thank you. We connected.

Speaker 9 (01:14:05):
I love that you love what I did. I love
that you acknowledge it, and I'm going to receive it.
And that was tough to learn because so many people
have the belief that they're not enough or there'll never
be enough.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
I had to go I'm enough. I had to start
from that place to change that. We're going to take
a short break and when we come back, we're going
to dive into some of the things that inspired you
to write the book, the process of the book, and
then how this not only book, but the work, the
Companion workbook can really assist people in their own journey.

(01:14:39):
You are listening to Inner Journey with Greg Friedman and
we are here with Brian seth Hurst. We'll see you
on the other side.

Speaker 10 (01:15:00):
Gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
Mega moon thing.

Speaker 10 (01:15:08):
Don't really matter if you're out of a home, so enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
Yourself a lost and home.

Speaker 10 (01:15:19):
I'm put in my foot doup and slaying my.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Playing background and playing my favorite it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
Web are the shoes off? You ain't on our day.

Speaker 10 (01:15:48):
Three on my tick? Chin?

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
What are you doing?

Speaker 10 (01:15:56):
Just hanging around saying it he put down to I'm
put in my foot down and playing my pain name.
I'm playing my favorite ita ut.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Id's so that an laser pull my head out of
the same.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
I'm tun whiskey with my catcus a spade.

Speaker 10 (01:17:08):
My weather raining, gonna shove.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Tell your man you'll wet the line.

Speaker 10 (01:17:19):
Whatever heard of it ain't gonnabouts.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
I'm hard and fee you.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
He's a loud.

Speaker 10 (01:17:30):
I'm put in my foot dyes s playing my pain batter.
I'm put in my foot die this hip back up
and playing mom down.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Talk to play.

Speaker 7 (01:17:47):
A little.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
What about them?

Speaker 10 (01:18:10):
Hi?

Speaker 7 (01:18:10):
I'm Carlin Mason.

Speaker 5 (01:18:11):
You're listening to Inner Journeys with Greg Friedman.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
You have no idea how much I love that lady.
She is crazy and direct and if you are not
made as strong stuff, she's going to leave you in
the dust. But you are going to follow that trail anyway.
And speaking of peoples who you would follow down a trail,
we are here this evening with Brian seth Hurst and

(01:18:39):
his book is called Whole and the Companion Book is
a workbook that you could really really employ to not
only read it and ingest it, but practical application in
so many different ways. Now, Brian, we have a bunch
of stuff on the table, and we have people are
going to look at the clock and really, but we

(01:19:00):
have limited time. We have your book, the Companion Book readings,
and you know what, You've alluded to it a number
of times and I just haven't bit on it completely.
You just finished a one man show, and you have
so many other things that you do in performing. Well,
let's hit the workbook first.

Speaker 9 (01:19:19):
Okay, So the workbook actually how I decided to do
it after Sally said you should do a workbook. Was
I have a long mailing list of clients that have
been both coaching clients. And if people want to know
more about the coaching program, that's at Whole lifebook dot com.
Just click on Coaching Both coaching clients and regular clients,

(01:19:39):
and so I asked for volunteers. I asked for fifty
people to volunteer. Why I wrote the book, because they
really didn't want to send him over the cliff. And
so they did the exercises. We met on the weekends
from all over the world. We did zoom calls, and
they gave me feedback on the exercises and they were
supporting each other. And I'm actually thinking about now doing
a roundtable group so the community can support each other

(01:20:01):
and hold each other.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
Accountable for doing the work. Nice.

Speaker 9 (01:20:03):
But they said the feedback from those volunteers was that
the book was life changing.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Now, mind you.

Speaker 9 (01:20:10):
I also did all the exercises myself, which was kind
of brutal for me because really, yeah, because I wouldn't
ask you to do it if I hadn't done it myself.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
And so that part I understand, yeah, And also I
want I understand the brutal because in my life when
I'm getting a lot of clients that are on the
same theme, that's the universe going. Yo, I'm sending this
to you so you could work on this for yourself.

Speaker 9 (01:20:33):
Yes, absolutely, it happens every time listen to what you're saying,
because it's for you too, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
So that's the workbook.

Speaker 9 (01:20:42):
And I've decided that I just thought about this over
the weekend, that it would be really helpful for people
to get support.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
So I will lead for those doing the workbook. I
will lead.

Speaker 9 (01:20:51):
Various support groups and discussions around each chapter and give
people the chance to do that. Now, you can subscribe
to the mailing list and you can tell me what
you want on the website. You can say if you
want to be part of those groups, and I will.
I will acceed to that and make that happen. As
far as coaching goes, I just mentioned that that's been
really fun because some of the exercises out of coaching

(01:21:12):
have gone into the book. But what you get when
I coach you is my intuition. So it's it's working.
And you have a sixty eight question questionnaire to fill
out in the beginning, and it allows me to read
between the lines. Okay, it tells me where you are.
It's that's all channel dude.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
That's all.

Speaker 9 (01:21:28):
All those exercises that are in coaching were channel two.
So that's the coaching program well, and the and the workbook.
What was next and wait, and that's all on your
website career. Yes, at Whole Lifebook dot com. Whole Lifebook
dot com. Put it up on social media when we
post this podcast. Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram

(01:21:48):
which is Bshurst and also god, I get you know,
they just fill up my Philip and Nikki the agency people.
They established new new social media. So just look up
Whole Life Works and Whole Life Book. Instagram I think
is whole Underscore Life Works.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Yes, that's it.

Speaker 9 (01:22:10):
So Instagram and Facebook is Hold the Book and that's
where the groups will be formed is on Facebook. So
if you go to Facebook, Hold the Book, you'll find
the group there. I think there are a thousand people
there already, so that's pretty good. I'm just starting to
get into supporting people.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
So that's that. What was the next one? So you
have the book, the companion book, you have you know
the audiobook which is the audio scene. Now, yeah, I
love that. I've been having to I've been getting to
drive up to LA and back all the time listening
to audio books along the way is heaven.

Speaker 9 (01:22:42):
Yeah, it's exclusive on Audible, so yes, I made that
deal with them. You know, you get to be exclusive
or non so I thought we was just like having
one place. Yeah, and you did the voiceover for it?

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
I did.

Speaker 9 (01:22:55):
I did, which was really fun. Like Andrew my other
half as an editor, and he sounds edited. And so
every time I made a mistake, I could click the
button and so there's a sign in here. This is
absolutely no sworring. So I will not say anything, but
I would get to i'd go but at aheep.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
And so it was really hard.

Speaker 9 (01:23:13):
I did it in my home studio, which made it
great because it didn't have to travel, but it was
it was quite the lesson.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
It was quite arduous to read the book. Oh so
I'm not doing that for a career. I'm not going
to be reading anybody else's book. Oh no, it's people
do not understand. It's like I have produced one or
two of those. And I actually went down to San
Diego Writer Conference and taught a workshop on that, and
the authors in there were saying, well, would it be

(01:23:41):
less expensive if I were to read my own book.
I said, I would actually charge you twice as much,
and they looked at me like I was crazy. It
is so much easier to do this with a professional.
When you're doing this you're very close to it. You
don't understand the different kinds of consideration with and intonation

(01:24:02):
and so many other things that it makes it just
a much much more difficult process. You, on the other hand,
have done theater and film and tell My father was
a broadcaster and your father was. His father was in
radio in Philly in the old days. My father created
the format that became American Bandstand. There you go, long

(01:24:25):
before it happened in Baltimore. So you understand theater and
you understand production, and as a matter of fact, you're
doing a lot of that stuff as well right now.
Is that correct? Yes? So my first dream was to perform.
There's a long story about why I left it.

Speaker 9 (01:24:39):
But during the pandemic, I kept running into Michael Orland,
who had been my musical director forty years ago when
I did an act in New York. I also did
a bazillion Fiddler on the roofs with theater Piquel. But
I one day asked him during the pandemic, because I
would run into him in my walks, what if I
sang again? And I started went back and started to
sing again. It took me about three years to get
my voice by up to Broadway quality and to get

(01:25:02):
used to performing again. And then thanks to Michael, I
ended up doing a one man show, scripted because I'm
a writer, and it basically tells the story of growing
up in a show business family with people like Tony
Bennett and Rosemary Clooney in your living room, meeting the.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Beatles when I was eight.

Speaker 9 (01:25:17):
Wait what yeah, Atlantic City's Convention Hall, working with the
Livy Newton John and my relationship with her working during
the AIDS epidemic and as a grief counselor. And so
the show has its high points and at low point.
Every song that I've chosen means something. And I used
to be a singer songwriter, but I never really sang
my own songs. So I sing some of the songs
that I wrote with other people, including Michael Orland. And

(01:25:40):
I did the show in Palm Springs, then I did
it twice in LA.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
We'll be doing it again. If you want to go
to that, you can go to Brian seth Hurst.

Speaker 9 (01:25:49):
Just look that up on YouTube and you'll see the
performance videos and if you follow me on Facebook you'll
see them there too. I really love doing it because
for me, it's all about the audience, we have a
great time. Most shows that make sure there's birthday cake
there because it's somebody's birthday cake and we all love
birthday cake. So not me, yeah so, And I really

(01:26:13):
that is on purpose for me. My purpose being to
you know, connect and engage authentically and inspire. I just
it's a journey and I asked people to join me
on the journey. And we do have a really good time.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):
And you know what, for the first time in my life,
negative ego side, I can say I.

Speaker 9 (01:26:32):
Am really good at that. I am really a good performer.
And it's what I dreamed about being when I was
a child. And now it's sixty eight I finally get
to do it. And there's a line of sing a
Stephen Schwartz song. The name of the song, the lyric
in the song is now I've known the tears. I've

(01:26:54):
known the fears of sixty eight years. I've had troubles
and tears by the score, but the only thing I
trade them for is sixty seven more. And that is
a true statement in my life. And that's from time
to start living from pippin that Stephen schwartzort and if.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
You cannot feel it through the airwaves. The light, the
energy and the grin on Brian's face right now can
light up a small town. It's you could see how
excited you are about life as it is, not when
this gets right, or when that gets right, or when
this thing gets fixed. It's right here, right now, and

(01:27:32):
you're a man that's living in some ways around to
surrounded in many ways by a whole lot of toxicity,
literally by all the fire debris and so much else.
It's a choice now. One of the other things that
you've done throughout this program is you've talked about feelings,
but you've spoken about them in a very specific way.

(01:27:54):
And I wish I could remember the Irish phrase, but
it's something to the effe of I'm wearing sadness or
I'm wearing this, and I see what you're communicating in
a very parallel way. In other words, you are doing
your best to encourage people feel your feelings.

Speaker 9 (01:28:15):
And you are larger than your feelings. You have them
some days they will have you, but you're larger than
your feelings. And they I always say to people, they say, oh,
you're such a good intuitive bah blah, And I say,
you know why, because I feel everything, and after I
felt everything, the feeling underneath it is intuition.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
And the other thing that you've been encouraging is once
you felt your feelings, let it go. Because it's like,
you know, there was a that's why a journal. That's
how I let him go. It's there's an old philosophical
conversation about a professor coming into a room of new

(01:28:56):
students and he tells a joke and everybody laughs. Then
he tells this same joke and a lot of people laugh.
Then he tells it again, even fewer and fewer and fewer,
and he uses that as an illustration of it's no
longer that, So why are we making it into something
that it isn't any longer. Time to let go and

(01:29:19):
be present with what is here and now, not to
deny what was, But you don't drag that kicking and screaming.

Speaker 9 (01:29:27):
And sometimes people will hold onto that because there's a
belief inside that if I'm less fortunate, someone will love me,
or if this is my story and I had horrible
things happened to me, I will be taken care of her,
I will be loved, And that's another way to approach it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:43):
I don't make that wrong. But that goes to the
book where you're talking about what I heard you say
is essentially learning the lessons that you've been offered and
indoctrination and then choosing for yourself what's appropriate for you.
Right here in this moment, there's a difference between something
being wrong or you go recognizing that you're dragging something

(01:30:07):
along with you, and if you could understand that, it
doesn't mean you have to let go of it, but no,
that you have that rucksack full of boulders that you're
carrying around. Now, do you want to Some people are
going to say yes, I do. Other people are going
to say, what are you crazy?

Speaker 3 (01:30:26):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
And it's not right or wrong, because it's your timing,
it's your life, it's your choice absolutely, all right. Where
do you want to go?

Speaker 10 (01:30:39):
Well?

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
I want to say thank you. I don't know how
much time is left, but I really want to say
thank you because.

Speaker 9 (01:30:45):
I think, I think if we're I think humanity, in
other words, recognizing our humanity comes from a willingness to
be who we are. And so I mean, you've asked
me questions that have you know, dug deeper than any
public interview I've ever done.

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
I almost wanted to.

Speaker 9 (01:31:05):
I think, God, my parents are dead, but I so
appreciate that, and I so appreciate the genuine environment that
I'm in to do this. I feel very blessed in
my life. And you know, people talk about, oh, I
keep a gratitude journal, and I could be better at that.

(01:31:27):
I could be better, but I do recognize what I
have in my life right now. The one thing I
want to share is about transition, not dying, but transing
in life. And you know, here I had this identity
in the entertainment community.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
I was a leader. I wanted to put people back
to work.

Speaker 9 (01:31:46):
I just did this speaking workshop and I realized I
had done over forty keynote speeches all around the world,
and I had been that guy. And then when the
pandemic came, I realized I didn't want to be that guy,
So choosing the other path, going the author, going to performance,
still doing intuitive readings with people. Still I've done that

(01:32:07):
my whole life, even when I had to do it
on the side and not let people in the entertainment
community know that I was into it. So still doing that,
but then all of a sudden, going, oh my gosh,
that guy is gone. And I'm in grief. Like here,
I'm choosing the life that I'm pretty sure I want,

(01:32:29):
and yet I'm grieving over the one I let go of.
And Andrew, my partner, just said, if you had to
choice the life you have now or the life you
had where you flew all around the world because United
million mile or I spent when they offered it to me,
I said, I don't know whether to be depressed over
this or happy. He said, you could have that life

(01:32:50):
or this life. So I said, well, I'd probably choose
somewhere in the middle. He goes, no, you have to
choose one or the other. And I said, I would
choose the life I have now. But I did grieve
the loss of that community, even though I might not
have liked it. I grieved the loss of that identity
and I did not realize that what was that's what
was happening.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
And so now when I'm.

Speaker 9 (01:33:10):
Coaching people and they're in transitions like that, or they're
leaving jobs. One of my plug for one of my
clients who's written Wisdom for the wayfarer Ivon Corpus. I mean,
she was a major executive with an international bank. Now
she's an author and her writing is absolutely beautiful. And
all I did was pick up on one thing. She said, Oh,
I'm doing this little thing. I did the tour of

(01:33:33):
the eighty eight temples on Chicugo in Japan, so I
were a little thing for my friends and family so
I could share my experience with them. I said, send
it to me, and there it was. I said, you
have a book. I'm telling you you have a book.
You're a beautiful writer. So being able to recognize that
people do make these transitions, and in making those transitions
there might be grief in letting.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
Go that is huge because so often we talk about evolving,
we talk about growing, we talk about letting go behind
those things that are no longer serving us. We don't
talk about what that might elicit in us. I'm so
glad you said that, Yeah, just to change an identity.

(01:34:15):
So do I have time to read you?

Speaker 9 (01:34:17):
Because you sort of mentioned it. I've done your if
you want your walks u quically okay, so believe it
or not. Before I do a reading, I always say, God,
please allow me to transcend my ego, my judgments, my reality,
your reality, so that I can be really there to
serve you. Now most lines do not know that I
say that invocation before and then I like to let
people know how this works. So I close my eyes

(01:34:37):
and sometimes I get an image. Sometimes I hear it,
sometimes I feel it, sometimes I see it. So give
me a second. Okay, Okay. So I feel like you
are up against a breakthrough, and you, as much as
you like to be the rebel and as much as
you like to innovate, you also like routine. You like

(01:34:58):
something that you can rely on and something that you
can count on. So and also you really are good
about honoring your commitments and your values. Integrity is really
important to you. There is some change just ahead and
I think you probably feel it, and it's coming in
the spring that requires you actually to go further out
in the world. It won't feel safe to you at first,

(01:35:21):
and that's an inner feeling because it's the unknown, because
this is something you haven't tried before or haven't done before,
and you've done a lot, but this is something new.
There are new people involved. It is a greater opportunity
to take your experience into the world. But it's a
clean slate. It doesn't mean you abandon everything that you're
working on now, but this is a clean slate. There's

(01:35:44):
help coming in.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
There are two people.

Speaker 9 (01:35:50):
One is a male, the other's female, but they they
are providing like unconditional support. You really like your autonomy
and you're dependence. You will still have that, but this
is a chance to go further out. You will want
to pull back. You will not approach this as you've

(01:36:11):
approached risk in the past. There's a different approach to this.
It's it's not you're not jumping. You are contemplating. You
are allowing yourself to be guided, and you are negotiating
for yourself. But you're not negotiating on like the terms
of a contract. You're negotiating on how you will appear

(01:36:32):
in the world. You are negotiating on what's important to
you and what has value. It is not about crafting
an image. It's actually about allowing an authenticity to shine through.
I feel like you're wrestling with you're wrestling with relationship,
and that there's a parenthesis around that. That's an s

(01:36:54):
So I think I think there are some people you're
going to be letting go of that you might not
have thought in the past. You might have thought, well,
this person will be in my life for a long time,
but you're about to go through this like major acceleration,
and so sometimes when people go through major accelerations, there
are people that get left behind. You know, you need

(01:37:16):
to take better care of yourself health wise, that's going
to become clearer to you and getting rid of things
like pairing down, traveling lightly so looking at the material
things around you and getting ready to move. There is
travel ahead. There is opportunity. You know you had said

(01:37:40):
before on air never to meet your ears, but you're
actually going to meet some people that you haven't. It's
not hero worship, but it's people that you not that
you want to interview. It's kind of like sitting down
with a cabalistic rabbi that you just want to sit
down and discuss certain things that are happening in the
world and gain their person effective and understand from their

(01:38:01):
wisdom and their experience. You are also a channel, and
it's time to channel just for yourself, not so much
for everybody else, so that you can get the guidance
that you need. Lead through management. So these people that
come to help you, you must manage them. You must
be the CEO here and you must be very very

(01:38:22):
clear in your vision but there's a major swing out
to the right, which represents going further out in the
world to me, and in order to do that, you
are going to be called upon to take much better
care of yourself. The interesting thing is, probably, I won't
say probably, I would make a bed on this. The

(01:38:43):
greatest joy in your life is ahead. It's almost like
you're set free from past things that you've carried and
you're setting those things down and you might be without direction,
you might be lost in the forest for a minute,
but there's a willingness on your art to be lost,
and that's what will lead to discovery.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
Do you have any questions? Actually, no, not at all.
Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. This is.

Speaker 9 (01:39:13):
It's not requiring you to be humble. It's just requiring
you to be present and accept what's being given to you.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
Again, thank you. We're gonna take a short break and
when we come back, we're gonna have the last question
of the evening, and then unfortunately we're gonna call it
a night. You are listening to and a Journey with
Greg Friedman and we're here with Brian seth Hurst on
k XFM.

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