The Peace Mission And Your Life Purpose With Steve Robertson

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot. Welcome everybody, to another episode of Pivot Radio. You're going to absolutely love our podcast today. And I'm going to introduce you to a gentleman that I'll get to share space with and to be in his, in his grace. He is just a gentle soul, peaceful man, loving man, somebody that you're going to, all of you are going to enjoy spending some time with, learning some things from and listening to. But before we do that, I want to just, once again, as always, begin by sharing this space with all of you. What a precious moment this is. What a sacred moment this is really. Because as we collectively take our breath, and what's so really, really cool about that is that where you're listening now, wherever it might be, whatever country, whatever state, whatever internal state you're in at the moment, we are all breathing, this is, this is a connection point right now between myself and all of you and between all of you and everything. That is, we are all connected. And one of the ways that we can feel truly connected is through the breath. And as I am taking this deep breath, this conscious awake, awakened, more, even more awakened breath in this moment that I'm taking that breath, I realize there are people everywhere that are taking their very last breath. And we can all appreciate just how sacred it is that we get to be taking this, this breath now, knowing that there are people who are taking their last. And that makes this moment holy. It makes it sacred. It makes it special. And we get to share it. So with that, I want to just open by saying how grateful I am to be here, to be here with all of you and to. And to share this blessing time together. Speaking of a blessing. As I said, the gentleman that I get to share time with now and that you get to share time with is a gentleman by the name of Steve Robertson. And he is the founder and the CEO of Project Peace on Earth. He's an executive producer of the Unite of the To Unite all benefit album, To Unite All Benefit, which features Peter Gabriel. I love Peter Gabriel. Roger Waters, I'm a big Pink Floyd fan. Roger Lawrence, Bruno Mars, Stuart Copeland of the police and many, many others. And 30 major musicians in this project were also endorsed by Archbishop Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone and others. And I would say that this gentleman, who is a Grammy Award winner as well, is somebody that is doing some really beautiful work for many, many years in furtherance of peace. And peace is not an easy thing to wrap your arms around from a global perspective. And he and I had a wonderful conversation a few months back. We're going to, I think, pick up where we left off there. But I remember in that conversation that I was just sharing that our company has been committed to contributing to world peace for some time now. And the way that we've seen fit to contribute has been in helping individuals find their own, their inner peace. Because our theory is that each of us, as each of us is working on our own peace, that becomes our offering to the world. It becomes how we influence everybody around us through our peace. So while, yes, it's quite important to get our politics right and to be looking at our global leaders and the systems, including the economic systems, very carefully for greater leadership, better leadership and leadership that's interested in peace, our philosophy is that if enough people are simply selfishly working on their own peace, on creating their own inner peace, that at a certain point, there's a bit of a tipping point, if you will, that our world becomes more peaceful as a result of just everybody taking more personal and individual responsibility for creating peace within themselves. So with that, Steve, thank you so much for joining us on this edition of Pivot Radio and looking forward to our conversation today. I'm sure. I know that I've got a two page introduction for you and I wanted to leave it really more in your hands to say what it is that you're passionate about, because you've been working in this area for a very long time, you've worked with many, many celebrities, you've done a lot of projects primarily, I think, in the music industry, in the music space. But if you could fill in the blanks, fill in the gaps where my introduction was wholly, you know, inadequate or just didn't, didn't give us a flavor for what you're currently doing and why you do that work, that would be really wonderful. So welcome, welcome to the show, Steve.

Thank you very kindly. Appreciate it. Adam. I've had the privilege of working with a lot of Grammy winning musicians on several different album projects. I'm not a Grammy winner myself, though I would wish one day I would be. But.

See, I made you A Grammy winner. It's happened now.

It's happened. Well, that'd be great.

The universe is speaking.

The universe is speaking. So. So I've been very passionate about the mission of peace and in deep agreement with you. The reality is until each of us have inner peace, we won't have outer peace. It's really that simple. The Buddhist poet Thich Nhat Hanh says a very beautifully. The healing of the self is the healing of the nation. The course in miracles reminds us that the salvation of the world depends on me, depends on all of us. This is a very tender subject for me and I know this will be a very challenging way to begin the. But I really would like for people to contemplate this particular thought, which is what I've boiled this down to over a 30 year period of time of thinking about this. And I really do believe if you can hear me within context, every horrible, monstrous thing on the planet is really occurring because people are literally doing what Jesus said in his quote. Love thy neighbor as thyself. And that's the whole problem. We are loving our neighbors exactly how we love ourselves, which is horribly so. Until, until I have kindness and care and compassion for myself, I'm only going to project my craziness onto you and onto other people and onto the animals and onto Mother Earth. So this all begins with the self. A true authentic healing of the self. Not a non narcissistic love of the self, but a true appreciation for the authentic and beautiful gift that each of us have brought here to the planet. Each of us have a specific purpose and reason why we're here. I've written a book. I was honored to be by a lot of famed authors which I've had great years and the book is entitled the Power of Success in your life Purpose. My journey began as I was about age 8. My dad was a nuclear physicist. We moved to from California to a little city called Friends With Texas, right outside of Clear Lake City where NASA is. I was absolutely obsessed with playing football. One day at recess when I was again about eight, we were playing tackle football. Weren't supposed to be doing that and I wasn't big as I am now and I ran the ball. No one could tackle me this particular play and I made it across our goal line and I. I saw everything. It was a mystical moment of sorts. I can only describe it as such. I saw everything stop, like the Matrix stop. I saw everything 360 above, below, simultaneously. And I had an inward sense that I was to play some sort of role in facilitating peace on a planet. And the next thing I knew, I appeared to be multiple miles in the sky, free falling like a parachutist into what I now know as Manger Square, Bethlehem. And I didn't know where that place was from. Adam. That experience went away. I never told a soul about it. I didn't want to end up in a rubber room, quite frankly. And I'll flash forward to that, as you know, we discuss a little bit more. A lot of my work has focused in this Palestinian, Israeli, Middle east region. And this is because this is the birthplace, place, in my opinion, of the greatest psychopathic paradigm there is on the planet, which is, you know, I have the right God and so therefore you don't. And so I'm good and you're bad. And if I'm good and you're bad, I must be righteous and you're evil. And once I have you at evil, I can go into your village and murder men, rape women, kill babies, burn the village down and go home and sleep like a baby. And this is insanity, total insanity. So I figured if we could bring peace to this Palestinian Israeli conflict, we could bring peace anywhere to the planet. And so my background I was, I raced motocross professionally for three years of my life before an injury sort of sidelined me. And I went to college as promised to my father. I got a degree in business. I became a sales engineer. I was told by Johnson Controls, a company I work with. I was the youngest sales executive in that company's four plus billion dollar history. And I sold large scale industrial process control computers that automated petrochemical plants, refineries, municipal wastewater water treatment plants, etc. And I, in a 24 hour period of time, my entire life shifted. My job dumped me and my fiance dumped me. To say the least, I was lost. And I had a friend named Risa that recommended a book called the Game of Life and how to Play it by Florence Shinn. A classic metaphysical book written in 1924. My first metaphysical book. I've always been listening very carefully, as the Quakers might say, to this small still voice within and paying close attention to that as I could. And I got about halfway through that book and Florence asked this question that would not unring from my mind. And I would encourage the listening audience to begin to ask yourself this question if you have not done so so far and that question is, if you could do anything in the world and there were no limitations, what would you do? What would you love to do the most? And I said to myself, when I got to that point in the book. I said, this is the most important question any human being will ever ask themselves in the course of their life process. Because since I was a little kid, I was always asking, well, why am I here and what is my purpose and what's this whole thing about? And adults didn't seem to give me very good answers about that. And I determined that this was obviously something that I had to discover, if you will. And so I spent time meditating as best I could through the depression that I was experiencing and etc. And kept asking this question. I believe very clearly in that biblical quote, knock on the door will open, seek and ye shall fine. I said, I'm going to knock on the door of heaven until my knuckles are bloody. I'm gonna. I'm gonna know the answer to this question. And I did. And I. And one day, very loudly, like some booming voice in the room, said, music. And I said, music. I said, I have no clue what to do with that. And I remembered the second part of the question, if music is the answer, then what would I love to do most relative to music? And that answer was, was quite frankly very obvious to me because in college and during my racing career, we'd spend hours in the van listening to rock and roll. I went to college and then I was turned on to the musician. Mike Oldfield did Tubular Bells. And I went to school at Louisiana Tech in North Central Louisiana, which I promise is hardly the cultural mecca of the world, but had a very progressive radio station. They dropped the needle on Mike's album called QE2. I had no idea that this guy had been the first artist signed by Virgin Records. I had no idea what that meant. All I knew was his music was fundamentally unique from anything I had ever heard before. I came a DJ at the radio station, I played a lot of that music in new wave music. I began to notice the nuances between various types of music and I became basically an audio file on everything, as you might call it, New Age type music. And when the mission was presented to me, music and to share this music as the second part of the equation was to share this music around the world. It was like obvious to me, of course, and I promised at that moment, you know, rain, sleet, hail, snow, you know, whatever I'm guided to do, I'm going to do it. So, I mean, I'll give you a quick recap of that and then I can go into a little bit of the details of why this music and why music is so important And I began to conceptualize a large scale concert, much like Live Aid, that would broadcast sacred music from various sacred sites on the planet. And I pulled off three of these events from Bethlehem on Christmas day out to 80 million homes worldwide. In 2010, I brought a surgical team from here in Woodland Hills, Dr. Paul Dogherty, super wonderful, amazing soul. And we delivered in Palestine, in Hebron, over a two day period of time, 40 free cataract surgery surgeries, almost a half a million dollars in cataract surgeries to blind people, elderly blind people, and restore their sight. And then. So that was called Visions, Visions of Peace. And then the next piece we did, we brought a thousand Palestinian refugee children to the base of the Mount of Temptation in Jericho, had them form the image of the Picasso peace dove. Spell the words love all. Spell the word love in Arabic. The image was filmed aerially. It went around the world. The UN a year later, selected this image as one of the 49 most iconic images in the history of the UN out of 800,000 some odd photos. And then I followed it up with a large scale concert in Bethlehem on Christmas day out to 80 million homes worldwide. With the lead singer, Fox Lima from the group Enigma, Gary Nicholson, Grammy winning Texas hall of Fame singer songwriter Joanne Shenandoah. And Hani Nasser. And Peter Joseph from Zeitgeist did a video spot for us where we showed how Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, everybody, you know, all saying the same thing, which is just basically be loving, be loving. And not one single person in, you know, the Palestinian government or any organization attempted to censor anything that we said. And I promise you, I threw the metaphysical kitchen sink at them. So the following year we did an event called Free All. We brought several, my partner and I, John Quigley, brought several hundred Palestinian Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to the dividing wall in Bethlehem that marks the original road into Bethlehem under Israeli control. And we had them put their paint covered hands on the dividing wall to create a visual plea to the world. Bring the wall down. And the rest of the kids spelled the word free all. And we filmed that image aerially. And then the following year we did a large scale concert called Forgive all with Serj Tankin from System of a Down and Stuart Copeland from the police and a lot of other well known musicians. And then the last event I did was called an album, a benefit album called To Unite All. So as you may get it, Visions of Peace. Love All, Free All, Forgive all. To unite all. Right, so music is so really, it's fundamental to who we are. The great Sufi master Hazrat Nayakan and his book, really, in my opinion, the seminal book on music called the Mysticism of Sound and Music. He states that people say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality, the soul itself is the song. And then he goes on to say, there's no greater way to attain spiritual enlightenment and, or awareness than through music, if only the music is rightly understood. So I spent 30 years of my life looking for this rightly understood music. I had a beautiful moment just a last Friday I got to see Kitaro in concert. And I had met Kitaro 30 years ago and his manager Aichi in Dallas and the first North American tour. And I was backstage with him and this was sort of a full circle moment, as I'll describe, with that image of free falling into Bethlehem. So I spent 10 years. I realized something was radically different about this particular type of music. I was really interested in guitar, Vangelis Enya, you know, musicians of this sort. And I spent roughly 11 years writing a thesis paper on the effects of music and consciousness so I could articulate to people who were operating from the holistic medicine perspective, from the environmental perspective, from the self esteem perspective, all basically saying the same thing. John Robbins in his book Diet for a New America said, you know, basically love the self and you're gonna, you know, you'll. You won't harm mother Earth. You know, Jack Canfield in his book, you know, love this, you know, love the self. This is the first place to begin. I worked closely with Senator John Vasconcellas, who started the self esteem movement, launched it nationally. John was my roommate, I was his shadow. He was my best man at my wedding. And I've just been so honored to have so many beautiful connections with people and just to try to find the best thinkers on the planet of how do we create a loving and kind place? And I'm reminded that when Einstein would come home from school, his mom never said, did you. Did you make good grades? She said, did you ask good questions? And in large part we failed to ask these good questions. How are we the same? How could we create love and peace and kindness? Because when you do that and you knock with a. With a ferocious knock on the door of heaven with that, you will get the answer. And then the next step is to. Is to take, take action. So the distillation.

Let me ask you a question here, if I could. Do you believe in sowing and reaping?

Of course.

Of course. Right. Cause and effect?

Of course. This is just basic laws of karma.

Right. So when it comes to questions and answer, what do you see as the relationship there between question and answer? I have a thought, but I want to get curious. What your thoughts?

Well, if I can preface this a little bit, One of the very key distinctions in this book, the power of choice, success in your life purpose that I brought up, is the importance of words. And I'm going to preface that in creating a distinction between hearing and listening. Hearing, everybody does passively listening means you are, you know, there's a participatory state of paying attention to words. Inward, inward, if you will, guidance. Because we're always getting information nanosecond after nanosecond. The key is how to distinguish words which are serving the higher self or those which are coming from the ego mind and keeping us in a place of suffering and sabotage. Right? And there's a very. It's a super simple equation. Just say, if I can say, you know, in the Bible it says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. And God said, let there be light. The Word. The word in the Bible literally translates into primary harmony. That's what it actually means. The Bhagavad Gita means song celestial. And in the Upanishads it means the last song. So this all has to do with harmonics. Now, if you look at this in a really common sense state, so every word is made of letters, right? Every letter has its own specific phonetic sound based on whether it's the consonant or vowel sound, right? So in essence, every time you say any word whatsoever, it's really analogous to hitting several keys on a piano simultaneously. You're sending out a cord of causation. This makes sense. So as an example in that regard, if I gave you, you know, metaphorically, if I gave you a tomato seed and asked you to plant it in fertile soil, you know, out of the tomato seed, there's no way whatsoever you can get a pine tree right? Out of a tomato seed. You only get a tomato seed. And thus it is so with your words, you know, you look at the. The great parable, Aladdin's lamp. Aladdin was sent to retrieve a lamp behind, you know, in a special cave. There was a cave door. He had to say three words to open that cave door. I don't know if you remember that, but the words were open, says me. Now say that slower. Open, says me. Your words are spells. Your words are incantations. Your words are prayers. Your words are. Are mantras. And if you listen to the Way most people articulate their life, day in and day out, they're using, most of the time they're using words like I need, I need to do that. Right. So, you know, we look at the word scarcity.

Need is.

Yeah, yeah. So is the word ask yourself, is the word need closer to a state of abundance or lack of. Okay, it's obviously closer to a state of lack. If something's closer to a state of lack, is lack closer to a state of love or fear? Okay, obviously fear. If something's closer to fear, is it closer to a state of responding or reacting? Well, of course, reacting. So it means that anytime you think that word need, that is a certain frequency of causation. When you speak, speak the word, you're amplifying the field of causation. In other words, you're accelerating mass matter, people, situations, circumstances into form. When you write it down, as an attorney, as you once were, you know as well as I do, this is concretizing your intent. This is bringing thought into form. Look around you. I encourage everyone listening in. Look around you in the room. You're sitting on the chair, the screen you're looking at. All of this was just a thought in someone's imagination. Buddha said, all that we are is a result of what we have thought. King Solomon says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The word man is a Sanskrit word. It means consciousness, not male flesh and bones. It means consciousness. So this changes the dynamic very strategically in regards to understanding the Bible. When it says man was created in the image of God, we are co creating the world nanosecond after nanosecond.

Well, this is interesting to me because I think what your mom, you know, I want to go back to your mom's point asking you, did you ask good questions today?

Yeah. Well, that was Einstein's mom. Yeah. Did you ask.

Sorry, Einstein's mom. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you ask a question?

So what a powerful statement of awareness. Awareness and that there's a cause and effect relationship between questions and answers. And you had pointed out you'd said that the world in many ways is a reflection. I don't think these were your exact words, but this is what I took away. That our world and the challenges of our world have a lot to do with the fact that we're not asking these types of questions, that we're not asking better questions.

Indeed, indeed.

And therefore we're not getting a certain type of answer. We're not getting, you know, better answers. And my question to you is, why do you think it is? And I have a theory, but I'm more curious about yours. Why do you think it is that people are not asking these deeper, more profound questions? And when I. And forget profound. Profound is just a word, but let's say questions that you do not readily have an answer for. Because it would seem that the common denominator in the great number of people that are not asking certain questions is that those questions don't have easy answers.

When I began to ask these questions at age 28, very seriously, when I was in this particular point in time of my life, I was lost. And I have pulled off, as some people may say, some. Some fairly significant things. And I can promise the universe did not throw rose petals at my feet. You know, I got everything in the kitchen sink. You know, this is, you know, classic dark night of the soul. So I think, to answer your question, I think the biggest stumbling stone in most people's path is fear that they won't know what's the right answer. Do they have to have some mystical moment like I did? I didn't even intend to have that moment when I was a kid, you know, but have I, you know, when I committed at age 28 to really step onto that path, committed my heart and soul and my actions and my money and everything, you know, Father, I said, father, Mother, God, you know, you show me what to do, I'm gonna do it. You know, rain, sleet, hail, snow. And I did and I saw miracles. And miracles are just. They're always there. They're always present. It's just when we strip away the veil of illusion and can. Can go head on directly into that which we fear the most. It's like then you see it, the illusion that what you feel, that you're. You're most afraid of it, it vaporizes. And that because it's illusion. And so most people. There's a great quote in, again, in part answer to your question. Martin Luther King said, you don't have to see the entire staircase. Just see. Just take the next step. And most people want to see the entire staircase. I promise. I did not have a clue I was gonna end up backstage with Kitaro. I did not have a clue I would ever produce an album with Peter Gabriel or Roger Waters. I mean, I didn't have a clue, but I just knew I was guided by this vision to bring the most inspired and loving music I. I could to the world. So what?

So let's go back to this question now, because what questions were you asking? If you can remember. Were there questions that you were asking at the time that you did not have answers for, but you were asking those questions nonetheless?

Well, I was at.

And by the time. I mean, when you were 28 and when you were setting out on this path, that was an unknown path and a path that didn't guarantee you any success or any support, what were the questions that you were asking at that time?

Why am I here? What is my purpose? I kept asking emphatically, tell me. I demand to know. Yes, and when you do this, you'll be. You won't be given. I. I suspect you. You may be given insights. You may recall an experience as I did when I was that little kid of age 8. I didn't. You know, that wasn't something that I kept perpetually with me. It was sort of like, oh, yeah, I remember that. And I think most people are giving these sorts of insights. It's, you know, in Alex Huxley's book, Island, it's about an island of enlightened people. And they had left the mainland because there were too many distractions. They go to the island, less distractions. So they figure they get there, lots of distractions still on the island, and they gather and they go, well, how do we. How do we stay in the light in the enlightened state? And they said, well, someone observed there were thousands upon thousands of parrots. So they said, well, we're going to teach the parrots two words, the word we know. The parrots will Repeat the words 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and by listening to these words, we'll stay in the enlightened state. And the two words were, pay attention. Pay attention. The universe is always giving you clues. It's like Indiana Jones and that Last Crusade, right? The Germans have stolen the map. They beat Indy and the rest of the team, they're. Indy and the team are watching one German soldier, by commander's order, go through the cave, come back decapitated. They discover Indy. They bring them down. They tell Indy, you're going. And he says, you're out of your mind. And the German commander takes his Luger and shoots his dad, Sean Conway, in the stomach. He says, your choice. Get the Grail. He drinks out of it and lives. He doesn't, he dies. So Indy is forced on the hero's journey. He has the map back in hand. He makes it through the blades that try to cut his head off. He makes it through the floor that spells God in a particular way, so he's not impelled by spears he gets to the end of the cave, and he figures, well, last test. Then he sees a crevice hundreds of feet across, thousands of feet down. No bridge, no rope, no way to get across. And clearly on the other side, he can see the Knight of the Round Table guarding the. The chalice, the Grail. The Holy Grail. And they yell at the end of the tunnel, indy, you have to hurry. Your father is dying. He has the map in his hand, which clearly shows a person walking in midair to the other side. He's standing on the precipice of this crevice. He has no choice. And yet in his mind, you can see, and in his face you can see, oh, my God, about to die. And there is no other choice. So he chooses to take. And I emphasize this word, chooses to take this leap of faith. And he takes this leap of faith, and he steps onto an illusionary bridge, which you could never have seen or discovered if he had not first had the courage to take that leap of faith. The universe always operates this way. I believe when you have that courage to take the first step, not see the entire staircase, but take the first step, whatever it is, towards your vision of what it is you're here for and how you could be of loving, kind, caring service to the planet, the universe will give you clues. Your job is to pay attention to the clues and. And take action. That's why my book is broken into three steps. Discernment. The first step, differentiating between information coming from the ego mind versus that which is coming from the higher self. These word patterns are critical to that. When you hear words like, you need to do that, or you should do that, or you ought to do that, or you must do that. Let this be like a big flag and a big bell. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Information coming from ego mind, do the exact opposite. When you hear words like, this will serve you, or you would. You know, I would love to do this, or I desire to do this, or I want to do this, or you could even say, this is required. Spirit could even say, this is required. Spirit will never say, you need to do this. Spirit will instruct you through the this. These steps are required. All right. This way, you're empowered in the present moment. It's never usurping your power as a human being. It's only empowering you. And these words are clues. These are in a card game. These would be a tell. You know, in a card game, in a poker game, someone might get a good card and they go, hmm. Everybody knows he Got a good card. And he gets. He does this and he goes, got a bad card. And so when you hear these words and begin to pay attention to these words, this gives you clarity about where the information is being directed from. And when you pay attention to that and then take the next step, which I call the next D in this equation is discipline, and that's trusting in the word. So the first is listening. Not hearing the word, but listening to the word. And the next D is trusting in the word discipline. And the third D is discipleship, and that's acting. Acting on the word.

Yes.

And when you do that, you will witness miracles. I promise.

It's a miracle to ask a question in some ways that you don't have an answer to when you ask those questions. When you were just getting, you know, 28 is still a baby. I feel like at age where I'm at now, you know, I think a.

28 is still just turned 6, just turned 60. You know, I never thought I would be here, you know, but. Yeah, you're right.

But what's interesting to me about that is the idea that for when there's this cause and effect relationship, one exists in collaboration with the other, that one is a prerequisite to the other, that they're tied to each other. So to ask a question, you must receive an answer. That's what it seems to be, that you must receive an answer. And it would also.

It's a very fine line of part.

Of the reason why people don't ask questions, some big questions or questions that are beyond what they might consider, beyond their ability to understand or their ability to comprehend or beyond the ability of those around them or even of the Internet. You know, like, if you Google, what is my purpose on the Internet? You're going to get a lot of things referencing, you know, how other people can help you to find your purpose, books and things. But it's not going to answer your question. What is my purpose?

Look, the universe is giving you clues, if I can say. And the clues are basically this. What gives you the most joy? What gives you the most happiness? What makes you feel like a little kid on Christmas day, running on your tiptoes to open up a present? What gives you that level of passion? These. These are clues. Pay attention. You may not see the entire staircase, but take that first step in that direction, then you will see another piece of the puzzle, and that will go, oh, that connects with that, and this connects with that. And then you begin to see this mosaic begin to form, and this picture in Your mind's heart and, you know, just full circle here. You know, I told you about the kid free falling into Bethlehem when I was a little boy. And then the last event that we did in 2012 there, everything in the world went south on this. We were trying to bring Palestinians and Israelis to both sides of the dividing wall, have them form half the peace sign, and everything went south. Two days before, a Palestinian, you know, a militant had detonated a bomb up against the wall. There was a shoot to kill order from the Israeli military. And, you know, I was working with the governor, the mayor, everybody, and we couldn't pull that thing off. I was pulled down to Manger Square, midnight, you know, at Christmas Eve, and they said, we can't do this, we can't do this. You have to do it someplace else. And I already worked with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for a week. Everyone was in agreement. We were gonna truck them, we were gonna bus them off to this location and do this image. And so at the end, the mayor says, look, you know, we can't do it there. In the morning she called me, she says, we have to do it in Manger Square. And I said, manger Square? I said, I've been there. There are 7,000 plus people there where there should be only 3,000. How are we gonna do this? And this is Church of the Patriarch. Everybody, everybody you can imagine get down there. You know, I figure at least we don't. Good thing we don't have to bust the kids all the way over to the other side of the city. So they're right there. Church of the Patriarch comes in. All of a sudden, the Boy Scouts, they're out. They're not going to participate. I said, screw that. I started pulling bicycle gates in place. We were decided to put together a big piece symbol in Manger Square and then spell the words love all with the kids. And so I started pulling the bicycle gates in place and mapped the area out, cleared everybody out. And we had to draw a big piece symbol, big circle. We start with a string and you have people walk a big chalk around the outside perimeter of the circle. I'm at the center of the string, just happens to be. And at that moment, I'm at the center of the string. I look up, I promise that is the exact place I saw when I was free falling as a little kid at age 8 into Manger Square. And you know, all of a sudden the Boy Scouts were back in and we formed the image. And, you know, it was, you know, it's. I mean, we can see it on the web. It's a really beautiful place.

But what's really important, don't you think, Steve, is that. That people have a way to move forward. Like you said, that when the staircase is dark and when you don't have faith, where you question your faith that the stair will appear as you continue to move forward in the darkness. There's that great example you shared from that Indiana Jones movie that to step out toward what you want even without being able to see, even without the.

Money, even without the connections, even without. Even without whatever you could list. Because I didn't have this stuff, you know, I just said, father, mother, God, show me the way. Show, show me the way. And I just committed to doing everything, making every phone call. I don't know. I'm super afraid of making that phone call. I don't want to make that phone call. And I made the phone call. Boom, I'm right in. No secretary, nothing. I get the person right on the phone and happened over and over again. The Sufis call this place, you know, that we're describing here, you know, at this dark night of the soul. They. They call this the place of the. I don't know. That's what they call it, the place of the I don't know. And this is where addicts, you know, will sometimes, you know, find themselves, where they've. They've tried everything externally they possibly could, they bottomed out, and they're at the place I don't know. And that means they've exhausted every external parameter they possibly can. And the only place they can go is within. And at that place in the. I don't know, the mystics, the Sufi mystics say we're. We're this close to enlightenment. And so not knowing what your life purpose is is only something to be excited about.

And the reason, at least in part the reason is because. And I want you to confirm this or say it's not true in your experience, but the reason you're this close is because when you ask the question, you will receive that it guarantees the receipt of an answer. Again, the cause and effect relationship. So, as in, I think it was Jonathan Livingston Siegel, an old book. Chiang says something to the effect that the moment you decide, you've already arrived. Speaking about this movement from east, flying from east to west, he says, the moment you decide that you're going, you've already arrived. So the moment that you ask the question, you have already received the answer. Now, the answer may not be apparent to you at the moment, but you will receive an answer at some point. But if you'd never asked the question, that's the tragedy, the fear to ask the question, to ask, what is my purpose? And maybe you asked that question when you were 28, and when you're 38.

Or 48 or 68 or 70 or whatever. Whatever.

But at some other point in your life, fear might be to ask the question again because you know, you're no longer feeling passionate or on purpose about what you're doing, or you're not 100% confident that the path that you've taken is the. Is the. Is the path exactly that you ought to be on now or could be on right now?

Well, it's curious, you know, Adam, that you mentioned this book, because there's a quote out of that book, one of my favorites, and I do live my life as best I possibly can by this. And it's, you're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it come true. You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it come true. And that, you know, it's like, seek ye first. From a biblical Seek ye first. The kingdom of heaven and all else was given unto you. The Jesus figure in the Bible says, greater things I have done, and even the least among you can do greater than I. How can you interpret this other than I did it and you can do it, and you can go further than I. However, you must first find the kingdom of heaven which dwelleth within. And the Jesus figure says, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven until ye become as a child. So in other words, only in that metaphorical state of innocence can you, as it says in Psalms, be still and know that I am God. Only then can you know. And God said, let there be light, and that the Word was made flesh and full of grace and dwelt among us. Which is again why Einstein states, energy and mass are just different forms of the same thing. So this all begins with our thought. Again, King Solomon said, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Buddha said all that we are as a result of what we have thought. Emerson says, the ancestor of every action is thought. This is so common sense that yet you sit and look around your room. You see the computer, you see the phone, you see pictures. And you keep forgetting these were only thoughts in someone's imagination. These were goals in someone's imagination.

They were just ideas.

Yes, they were just ideas. And I promise of, you know, the album I just produced with Peter Gabriel and Roger Waters, And Philip Lawrence from Bruno Mars and Stuart Copeland from the Police and Sasha Cooke, Grammy winning opera singer and many other beautiful, caring musicians. You know, that was just, it was an idea. It was an idea and made manifest through prayer and persistence. And as a businessman, you know, you know as well as I do as a businessman, as a salesperson, engineer, as I was, persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence. Tenacity, tenacity, tenacity. Every time I couldn't tell you, Adam, how many times I was about to throw the towel and said, okay, thank you very much, I'm so glad you gave me this mission. Next. It's like too tough.

So we have a word we use in the sort of lexicon of pivot work. We call that resilience.

Yeah, indeed.

And one of the things that you and I started to talk about before we even hit the recording button was how important resilience is. And so my last question for you, Steve, is to share with us, what is it that helps you to cultivate resilience? Is it a ritual? Is it some other master habit or is it some other practice that you've got? I mean I call all sort of consciously created habits, so master habits, I call them rituals. But what is it that you do to cultivate resilience? That's the question.

I'd say two things. Paying very close attention to the inner still voice within and listening for words which are kind and caring and compassionate and prodding me towards being the most, you know, courageous expression of God's loving truth that I can be. And listening very carefully for that. And then acting tenaciously, single mindedly, laser focused, if you will, from the Apollo, Apollo film. Failure is not an option. I don't even use that. Failure isn't an option. Success is the only option. And when you frame things in this particular way, the brain goes, oh yes, of course, we agree with you. The universe is always agreeing with you. You say I'm going to be a failure or this is going to be difficult or I can't make enough money, the universe puts its arm around and goes, we agree. And if you say, I'm gonna be a super success, I'm gonna make this, I'm gonna accomplish this, the universe goes, you know, we agree, it's agreeing with you to whatever degree you choose to co create. And choice is an imperative part of this equation. Knowing, being aware that you are choosing nanosecond after nanosecond at the most granular level, you know what you can choose. So I wake up every morning, first thing I do, I Listen to the Course in Miracles or read the Course in Miracles lesson for me. That's a book I like. I meditate. I have a particular practice I do for, you know, five, 10 minutes. This is all available on my book. You can go to our site, you can download my book for free if you wish. It's project peace on earth.org and then go under, Take action, then go under Steve's book and you can download the book for free. It's just my offering. It's my way to just show you the, you know, the path that I've taken is that I'm only praying to pay attention. Listen as carefully as I can for the small, loving, kind, still voice within, which is always, always 100% of the time, guiding me towards creating a world of greater love and peace and good and care and compassion. Right. And first with myself. And this was a very difficult thing. I'm, you know, Scorpio by nature, and I have a lot of planets in Scorpio. And I'm very critical of myself. I had to find, you know, compassion for me and forgiveness for me and care for me. And. And you said it earlier, Steve, you said that.

And I wrote down this quote that I didn't get the author of the quote. So I'll get the author of the quote now, which is wonderful, that the healing of the self is the healing of the nation.

Yeah. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist poet. Yeah, it's a beautiful.

Yeah, beautiful. And so I wrote that down and was thinking of actually a particular section, of course, in Miracles. So this is a great place for us to conclude, which is reference to chapter 30, of course, in the New Beginning, which is a wonderful section about which the part I'm referring to is called Rules for Decision. And this is, in essence, the way that we create the day that we want. And we create the day that we want so that we can, by having it, by having the day we want, we are able to then give it to the world. It's our offering to the world so that the peace that we can have ourselves, that we give to ourselves, that we gift to ourselves, is the peace that we give to the world. The love that we give to ourselves is the love that we give to the world. And by extension, or for it to. It works both ways. So the converse being the judgment that we give ourselves, the judgment that we give to the world, the resentment or the anger that we give to ourselves, the brand of conditional love that we give to ourselves is also that which we share with the World. So that's where you said at the beginning of our session that loving thy neighbors as we love ourselves is the heart of the problem in some levels, in some way. Because we don't. We're not practicing what it means to give ourselves unconditional love and unconditional acceptance.

If I may say also, Adam, you know, the. One of the core principles of spiritual teachings I've learned is if you see something negative in something or somebody else, guess what? It's in you. If you see. You see something beautiful and kind and caring and someone else, it's in you.

Yeah, Right.

So. And if we see these. These things which we. We find painful and uncaring and unloving, and we begin to work on this, you know, father, mother, God, beloved friend, you know, help me forgive that. Help me forgive, you know, this thing that I judge now, you know, and we do that and we use the Native American, you know, the. The Hawaiian, the Oponopono. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

Thank you.

By the way, at the dividing wall, before we brought the little kids there to put their paint covered in, those children had never, ever touched that wall before. Never. And the guards that were in the conning tower above, I was told for the first time, the bulletproof glass, they had never, ever opened that glass. And they did. And they watched the entire thing as we. The first thing I did is I smudged the wall with an eagle feather and I said, die, Opponopono. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I'm sorry.

Please forgive me. Thank you.

Because if you feel yourself in judgment about somebody or yourself, and you say this, this dissolves your attachment to the judgment, to yourself or those people that you're judging. And so now you're free. The ego's mind be clear. It's to stick your hand on the fly paper of delusion and suffering. That's its sole function. And once you can lift your hand from that trajectory and see how everything is divinely and lovingly interconnected, because it is. We do see. As John London said, you know, all will live as one.

Yes. What a perfect place for us to conclude. As we began thinking about how it is that we connected and how we share so much, including this very sacred moment, the sacred breath, this heart space. Steve. I want to thank you, Steve Robertson, for your precious. Your preciousness, who you are in the world, how you have shown up and how you have followed that voice, how you. You followed. You sought the answers to those. Those important questions. When you were 28. Thank God that you did, and thank you for being a part of this community and. And for sharing your light and your love with us.

Thank you for having the vision to hold the space of a program, a space of sacredness where, you know, this sort of dialogue can occur, where people can feel, a space, where it's like, I'm not lost. I mean, at least I can go. I can go to Adam's show and I can pick up a tidbit. And I hope on some level, I've been shared something with you that may give you a spark of hope or give you an insight and really encourage you, because I do. I sincerely say if I've done what I've done, I promise you can do. You can do it. You can definitely do it.

Amen. I'm feeling like I gotta say amen, so it's a big amen to that.

Awesome.

Beautiful. Everybody. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day or evening, wherever we're meeting you right now. Remember, tomorrow, wake up. Most important thing is the be grateful, be thankful, incredible opportunity that we have tomorrow to wake up, to wake up, both physically and metaphorically. So step one, you wake up, wake up your consciousness in that waking moment, in that first conscious awakening, and that breath that you take, realize how sacred and special and even holy that moment is, because there will be people then taking their very last breath in that moment. So regardless of what challenges you may be having in your life, what things may be going right or may be going sideways or maybe pushing you up against your growth edge, take a deep breath and be grateful for that moment and for that breath. And there's so many other things you can be grateful for. So sit in that gratitude for just as long as you'd like. And then, of course, declare, state out loud, put your feet on the floor, throw your arms up in the air, put your hands on your heart and declare, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. And we will see you again very, very soon on the next episode of Pivot Radio. Ciao for now, everybody. Much love. And we're out. Awesome, Steve. Thank you so much, brother. Appreciate that.

Is that okay? Was that good?

Yeah, that'll be fine. We'll add a bunch of notes to the show so part of our show notes will have information about you, your bio, your website, all that kind of thing. The free gift. Perfect. Our production crew will put that all together or post. Production crew.

So good. I hope the interview was okay. And so, thanks.

Yes, Steve, thank you very much, as always. For what you bring to the table and what you're doing in the world. I know that, Randy. She is the president of our foundation of Art Peace feels like foundation. So she's very intrigued by what you're doing. So she may reach out and talk to you about some of those things where have an overlap or a collaborative opportunity together.

Sure. Welcome that conversation for sure.

Beautiful.

All right, have a nice Thanksgiving and enjoy the dialogue.

Yes. Thank you, Steve. All the best. Okay, so we're still recording and I'm going to do some pickups. Actually want to redo the introduction and then, and then I'll do one other pickup relative to. To Steve's show. Okay. So I'll just start at the beginning. This is for editing purposes. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Pivot Radio. Got an incredible podcast for you today. An incredible guest, somebody that I absolutely adore, somebody that I think you're going to learn a lot from, get a lot out of listening to. He's got a really incredible perspective on life. He's had a very varied experience of living and following his passion, following his purpose, which he didn't. He had a glimpse of when he was only 8 years old and then later on at about 28, started to ask some very deep questions about why he was, why he was here, why he was on the planet, why he was born, what he was meant to be doing here, what was his work to be doing. And his name is Steve Robertson. Steve Robertson is the founder and the CEO of Project Peace on Earth. He's also an executive producer of the To Unite all benefit album, an incredible album which features Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Philip Lawrence and Bruno Mars and Stuart Copeland of the Police, among others. He has worked with many artists, including many Grammy Award winning artists. And he, he's been working in furtherance of peace and creating peace on earth for many, many for more than 30 years. And this gentleman has an incredible history. He's been called to incredible service. He's a best selling author. He's a really amazing, amazing gentleman. And I feel so blessed to have him on our show today. So welcome Steve Robinson to the show. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Okay, so that'll be our new introduction to the point where Steve begins speaking. Now I'll just do one other pickup to join us today. Okay? Hey everybody, welcome. And you are in for such a treat on today's podcast. You're going to love this episode of Pivot Radio. We've got Steve Robertson, who's an award producer. He's the CEO of an incredible project called Project Peace on Earth. And he's worked with many, many Grammy Award winning artists. He's worked with them and collaborated with them and produced them. In fact, he's got an album, a benefit album called To Unite all, which features Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Philip Lawrence, Stuart Copeland of the Police and many, many others. And today on today's show, we're going to dive in really deep with Steve about sacred music. We're going to talk about what it means to be living on purpose and how it is that you answer certain questions about what your purpose is, especially when you don't know. When you don't know the answers to some of these deep, challenging questions, life altering questions. Steve's going to get to the root of how it was that he was able to answer some of those questions in his own life, starting at age 8 and then picking up again at age 28. He's now been doing the work he's been doing to change the world in so many powerful ways for more than 30 years. So you're going to love, love, love our episode, our podcast today with Steve Robertson. So stay tuned. All right, so I think those are the pickups and I'm going to hit the stop record button and let's hope we've got a good one here. Okay. To the editing team, thank you so much. Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.