Every Soul Knows: How Grief, Loss & Purpose Led to a Spiritual Awakening (w/ Peter Alessandria)- EP 423

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, welcome to Grief to Growth. I'm your host, Brian D Smith. And whether you're a longtime listener, or you're joining us for the first time, I'm really glad that you're here. This podcast is all about helping you navigate the challenges of life to gain a deeper understanding of who we are, why we're here, and what comes next. We explore the mysteries of life and the afterlife, blending personal stories with profound insights. And today I'm honored to welcome Peter Alessandria. Peter is a man of many talents. He's an award-winning photographer, a filmmaker, an author, a TEDx speaker, and a former entertainment attorney. His journey is one of transformation, going from a successful legal career to losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis, only to reinvent himself as a creative force. And his latest work is a documentary, Every Soul Knows: The Joy of Remembering Who We Really Are, which I am honored to have been a participant in. It's a powerful film that features interviews with more than 60 near-death experiencers, mediums, channels, and psychics, all pointing to the same truth: that we are so much more than our physical bodies. But the story behind the film is just as compelling as the message itself. So in this episode, we're going to explore the incredible journey that led Peter to create this film, the common threads among near-death experiencers— what do they reveal about who we truly are? We're going to talk about the unfortunate, unexpected loss of Peter faced during the filming and how that affected his work. We're going to talk about how the film is reaching audiences worldwide. And we'll talk about his book, Be Bigger Than You Think You Are, which offers lessons on overcoming self-imposed limits and stepping into the life you truly want. As a special treat, we're gonna have a little clip of the film included along with the interview. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Peter's story is one of resilience, curiosity, and a deep search for meaning, something I know that's going to resonate with a lot of you. So sit back, Open your hearts and let's dive in. And the conversation doesn't have to end here. Afterwards, after you listen to this, go to grieftogrowth.com/community to join the conversation there. And with that, I want to welcome Peter Alessandria.

Hey, Brian, thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for being here, Peter. I was gonna say, I really enjoyed being a participant in the film. I got to watch it. It's fantastic. I really love the way that it turned out. So tell me about, like, what led you to make this.

So, you know, that's a good question, and I often ask myself that. Uh, I will say this, I've kind of been on a spiritual journey for like 30 years. I'm a seeker like a lot of us, you know, and, you know, a lot of it was just to, you know, uh, questioning the bigger meaning of life and why we're here and, and all that. But a lot of it was just to alleviate some of the suffering in my life. You know, I had a lot of challenges, you know, beginning with— I mean, listen, I had a great childhood, great family. I'm grateful for all of that. And like everybody, I had my challenges and whatnot. And so, I guess it was a combination of things. When I moved to California right after law school, I found that it was a very interesting place to be at the time. This is in the '90s. And there was a lot of opportunities to do spiritual growth, personal growth, workshops, retreats, seminars. There was a lot that was coming out in the popular media, things like Conversations with God, The Celestine Prophecy. All kinds of stuff like that was coming out around that time. I found my way— I have no idea how— I found my way to A Course in Miracles. 30 years later, I still study the Course. It's my main spiritual text. Um, eventually I got involved in some 12-step programs to clean up my life, uh, and there's a huge spiritual component to that. And so I've just kind of been on this journey, this trajectory, you know, where I just want to know, you know, who are we? And why are we here? Um, and, and what can we do to make our lives better while we, while we still think we're here? And we can talk more about that. That's the main point of the film, is to, to help people begin to see themselves in a new way.

Yeah, I think that's— I, I can resonate with all that. Now, it sounds like you, like a lot of us, have reinvented yourself, uh, at least one, one time or more. So tell me about your, your journey through life coming up to becoming a filmmaker?

Yeah, so, so like I said, so I grew up in the New York City area. I went to college in Upstate New York, and I ended up going to law school and business school. So I have a law degree, I have an MBA, I have an undergraduate degree in economics. Um, you know, I've never taken an art— I've never taken a photography class, I've never taken a filmmaking class, I never even took like an art appreciation class in college. Wow. I'm, I'm completely self-taught when it comes to being a creative person. And so, um, I had this goal that I wanted to get into the entertainment business. I wanted to, to to practice entertainment law. So literally, after 4 years in Buffalo, New York, I bought a one-way plane ticket for Los Angeles and I moved my whole life out there. I was in my 20s, you know, so, uh, that was— it was exciting, you know. There was never, never a second thought about it. And, um, I eventually got into the film business as an attorney, and one of the cool perks of my job was that I got to go on the film sets while they were making the movies. Now, you know, I grew up, as I said, on the East Coast. I had no exposure at all to the creative process. I didn't know how they made movies. I didn't know any of that stuff. And so I will never forget the first day I walked on a film set. First of all, it was just really cool because there was all the lights and the camera and the crew and everything that was going on. And I thought, wow, this is really cool. And then I— so I was representing the company that was producing the film. So I had read the screenplay, so I knew how the story went. And it was one of the first days of filming, and they were shooting one of the last scenes in the movie. And I was like— I thought, I just assumed that they filmed the movie in the order that we watch it. But it has nothing to do with that. It's based on availability of the cast, availability of the locations, you know, all of that. So that was just— it was just kind of interesting to me, and that was my introduction. This was the 1990s, so it was the rise of the independent film world. The Sundance Film Festival was becoming popular. Uh, and I, I was young and hanging out in Hollywood. I started meeting all these young filmmakers. And the other thing that happened at that time, Brian, which is a big deal, was a big deal then. It's not a big deal at all now, but it was also the time when digital video was first coming out. So now we think of nothing, we pick up our phone and we film something. But back then it was still film film for the most part.

Right.

So digital video opened up a whole new, uh, plethora of opportunities for people to express themselves in a filmic creative way. So all of that conspired, and I just, I just became totally enamored with the creative process. Eventually, I became an amateur filmmaker, and then eventually I got into photography. But I was in my 30s. I mean, I didn't pick up a camera until I was, I was 33, 34, something like that, for the first time. And I became obsessed with it to the point where, you know, I had my day job and everything I was doing, but my nights and weekends were spent learning how to light, how to, you know, camera angles, focal lengths, camera equipment, how to record sound, you know, all of that stuff. And it was thrilling for me. I loved it. So I became that amateur filmmaker, photographer. And then in 2008, I literally lost my law practice in a matter of months. It was gone. And at first it was really distressing. Now people remember the global financial crisis. It was a little bit like the pandemic and everything else that's been going on in the last few years. But, It was really, it was scary, you know, but eventually I looked and I did whatever I could to try to resurrect my law practice. I was looking for clients. I was applying for jobs at law firms and stuff like that, and nothing was coming. So eventually I thought, well, maybe this is an opportunity, right? Maybe this is a chance for me to do something that I'm really passionate about. While I enjoyed the law, it was never my passion in life. Um, and so eventually I looked at it as an opportunity, and I said, you know, I asked myself, if I could do anything with my life, what would it be? And the answer was always photography and filmmaking. So I thought— and, and you got to remember too, again, I've been reading books like Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow, and I was, you know, Law of Attraction, visualization, all that stuff. And I thought, all right, maybe this is an opportunity, maybe it's not a crisis. So I packed everything up, I decided to move back to the East Coast to be closer to my family. My parents were getting older. I don't have any kids of my own, but my sister started having kids, so I was constantly flying back for dance recitals and birthday parties and holidays and all that. And so, um, I moved back to the East Coast, and for 2 and a half years, Brian D Smith, nothing happened. I'd set up some websites. I was telling people that I'm, I'm, you know, my family thought I was nuts. You know, I've had practiced law for almost 20 years, and now I'm just going to give it all up to take pictures, you know. But God bless them, you know, they stuck by me. And, um, but nothing was happening. And I, and, and I had all kinds of excuses, you know. At first I thought, well, it must be the economy, right? Because the economy was still trash after the global financial crisis. I thought, well, maybe it's not the economy. Maybe it's because I don't have an education, any kind of formal education in art or photography, you know. At one point, Brian D Smith, I was even convinced it was because I didn't have the latest and greatest camera equipment.

Mm-hmm.

But eventually I realized the problem wasn't out there. The problem was in here, right? And it turns out I had a very negative self-image when it came to being a creative person. I was terrified to put myself out there because I was afraid of criticism, rejection, you know, all of that stuff. It was a lot of unhealed baggage that I was carrying around that I wasn't aware of because it didn't really affect my life so much, at least as an attorney. But once I became a creative person, and now I was putting my work out there or not putting my work out there for the world, it was really a problem. The blessing was eventually the money started to run out. I'd saved up a lot of money and I was burning through that. And so I had to, you know, it was time to put up or shut up, you know. And so I started doing all the things that I was afraid to do, basically. And it was everything from— so I had an idea for commercial photography business as well as fine art photography business, along with some video production.. And I started doing things like cold calls for my commercial photography business, calling, you know, local— one of the things I was doing was portraits and headshots, executive portraits and headshots for, you know, accounting firms, uh, insurance people, medical practices, law firms. The— my tagline for the law firms was, I used to be a lawyer, now I shoot them. Um, and so it was doing all the things that I was afraid to do. And I have to say, this was, this was transformational for me because what I realized was It wasn't anybody else's criticism of me that was the problem. In 2 years of cold calling, I never got hung up on once. People, I mean, they must have felt sorry for me because people were giving me the names of their friends to call if they weren't interested. You know, people were so nice. But before, during, and after every call, I was beating myself up. You know, who do you think you are? Nobody's going to want to hire you. You don't know what you're doing. All those, that negative self-talk. That's what was creating the fear, and fear manifests as resistance. And so that's why I was stuck for so long. So I started to push through a lot of that, and I was doing things like affirmations, visualization, you know, all the stuff I'd been studying for at that point probably 15 years. I also found an action partner. Somebody was also starting their own business, and we connected every day, and we had a plan, and we supported each other and all that. And Brian, in, you know, in a couple years, I went from somebody who never won an award for anything in my life to somebody who's won more than 75 awards for my photography. I went from somebody who was afraid to post photos on Facebook— I was literally afraid to post my, any of my photos, my work on social media— to somebody whose photos have been published in newspapers and magazines around the world. I've been featured on the National Geographic website. Huffington Post did a piece on me. The local, all the ABC TV, NBC TV TV New York, Fox TV New York. They all featured me, and literally millions of people have seen my work. The only thing that changed, all right, was how I saw myself. And I went from that, that self-image, that self-concept that says, I'm not good enough, they're not going to like it, I don't have what it takes, I'm going to be rejected. And not only am I going to be rejected, but I'm not going to know how to handle that, so it's going to be painful.. And, and it was all of that stuff that was conspiring to keep me stuck on the couch for, for almost 3 years, 2 and a half years. And once I let go of that, and the other big thing, you know, and I talk about this, so this is my book where I describe the whole process actually.

Mm-hmm.

So it's Be Bigger Than You Think You Are, Overcoming Our Self-Imposed Limits to Have the Life We Want. It's set up as a workbook, by the way, and it has everything that I did to move my life from where I was to where I am now. And, and again, one of the biggest changes, and I talk about this in the book, is that I, I went from being my own worst enemy to my own best friend. I had to learn how to love myself. I had to learn how to support myself, because to take all those scary actions, right, because nobody likes to be rejected and criticized and all of that. If I don't have the foundation of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-forgiveness, then I'm not going to be able to push through that that fear, you know, that resistance. I know so many people who are, especially, you know, filmmakers and photographers who are so talented, and yet they can't get past that to share their work with the world. You know, one of the things I did is I started submitting my photos for exhibitions, right? So, um, the contests and exhibitions and all that. The other— and that was huge for me to do that, just to say, you know, I'm good enough, I'm worth it. To try, just to try, right? Uh, you know, most of us talk ourselves out of greatness like 20 times a day by all our negative thoughts and all our negative beliefs about ourselves. Another thing that was— that I wanted to do is get my photos in the newspaper. And so I, I just one day I cold-called the local newspapers in New York, and I got the— yeah, I called the biggest paper. I'm not going to name it, um, but it's the biggest. It still is, I think, the biggest paper. Cold-called them. I got the receptionist on the line. I said, I want to talk to somebody in the photo department. She put me through, which was amazing. And then somebody picked up, which was amazing. It was one of the photo editors. And I introduced myself and I said, you know, I'm a local photographer. And I, at that point, I had a pretty good portfolio. I was doing a lot of photographs of New York City. I grew up in the city, so it's, it's, it was really coming home for me. And we, we were doing, friends and I were doing photographs of the moon. Uh, I don't know if you've seen some of my photos, but we, we have an app that tells us where the moon is gonna be each night, and we can align it with the different landmarks. Landmarks. So the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, you know, all of that. And I had some really spectacular photos that at that time— now everybody's doing it, but 10 years ago nobody was doing it but me and a couple other people. Uh, and then we were also storm chasing. So if there was a big storm coming through, we would get all the lightning strikes because of the skyscrapers, you know, the lightning hits there first. Anyway, I had all these fabulous pictures. So I said to her, I said, look, I'd like to send you some photos, maybe you guys want to run them in the paper. She said, great. She gave me her email address. For the next 10 months, at least 10, maybe 11 months, probably 3 or 4 times a month, I sent her photos, okay, to that email address. Never heard a word. I had no idea if I even had the right email address. So I got to this point, I was like, I'm not gonna curse, but it was like, shit, what am I gonna do? You know, do I keep sending these in? You know, am I, am I fooling myself? Maybe I'm really not good enough. Maybe I don't have what it takes.. And I thought this was a really crucial thing for me. It was like, I can't— if I want to have a bigger life, I can't give up on myself. And in the past, I would have done that. I would have quit. I would have just said, oh, I'm not good enough. She doesn't like me. She doesn't like my photos. And that would have been the end of it. And I really— it was a choice point. It was just a decision point. And I said, and I realized, I can't do that. I don't want to be that person anymore. I'm not going to give up on myself. So I continued to send pictures, and within a couple of weeks, she calls. Right out of the blue. I didn't even know who it was. I didn't recognize, I thought it was like a spam call. She calls, she says, oh, uh, we love that photo you sent of the Statue of Liberty with the moon over it. We wanna run it in the paper on Sunday. I was like, great. She's like, how much do you charge? I was like, oh, how much do you pay? You know, I had no idea. So we negotiated a rate and the next, that Sunday my photo was in the newspaper. It was like amazing, right? And, and then what happened was, Brian D Smith, they started calling me, right? So I don't hear from her for almost a year, and now she's calling me, did you get any of those photos over of this, of the fireworks, of, of, you know, whatever. So that was really, really important for me to, to understand that it was all in my mind, right? I get to decide who I am. I get to decide how I treat myself as a result of that, you know. And it, you know, they talk about persistence, you know, success is like, what is it, 90% uh, perspiration and 10% inspiration. I don't know what it is. You gotta put— you gotta— you have to take the steps, right? You have to get into action. It's not enough. I love the law of attraction, I love visualization, but— and I talk about this in my book— positive affirmations, visualization, and all that. And Tony Robbins talks about this. It changes our state, okay? So we move from being in a state of, of, uh, inactivity to a state of activity. It gives us that energy we need to take the action that we need to take. It's not just that we sit around and dream about the Ferrari and then the next day it's in our garage, right? We have to do— take it— well, at least while we're in this physical incarnation, we have to take the steps necessary to create the life that we want. So things like positive affirmations and all the stuff I was doing, I realized that's to change my state. Because with a negative state, right, you're not going to do what you need to do, right? It's fear. You're stuck. You're resistant and all of that. Yeah. So, so my life changed and then I started doing some public speaking and people said, well, you have to write a book about all this. And I thought, I thought I have to write a book about all this. And, and I didn't do it for years. And I'll stop there because I'm going to tell you how I wrote the book. But you have any questions or comments about all that so far?

I think it's fantastic. I mean, there's so, so many lessons in there that, that I just want to kind of reemphasize to people, you know. One thing is, you know, I was just listening to something this morning. They were talking about for something to be created, something else has to be destroyed. We go through this cycle of creation and destruction, and as humans, we don't like that destructive part of the cycle. Like when you lose your business, uh, when we go through those financial crises. But sometimes those things are the things that knock us off the path that we're on, can put us on to another path. And I love what you said, it's like Okay, maybe I'll look at this as an opportunity. What is it that I really want to do? Um, the other thing I think is really interesting, because I, I, you know, I hear about the Law of Attraction and The Secret and, and all those things we all hear about, and I, I think like a lot of lessons, there's a lot of truth in it, but it gets, it gets misunderstood, misinterpreted. So we can say, okay, well, all I have to do is have a vision board and just keep putting things in my vision board and this, this thing will happen. But you talked about it's a lot of work. And the third point I want to, I want to make real quickly is like a lot of times we feel like, and I've heard this, if we're doing the right thing, it'll come easy. So it's like we should, if we try something for 2 or 3 weeks or a month and it's not working, let's move on and try something else. Um, but you, you have to be persistent to get to where you are. So what are your thoughts about, you know, all, all that in terms of especially, I think is really interesting. I said the persistence, I think that's really key because I think we can all relate to that imposter syndrome. I'm not good enough. I think we all have that voice telling us that. So how did you, how did you overcome that? Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

Well, it was literally— and it starts— and again, I lay all this out in my book. It starts with that awareness, right? You have to be present enough to hear your own thoughts. I mean, it's really that simple. And then you— then, and then it became a process of questioning all that stuff. I'm not a psychologist, you know, but my best understanding is that when we receive negative messages, especially as a, as a kid, we kind of internalize that. And a lot of it is so painful that it gets repressed. It gets pushed down in the subconscious, basically. But that becomes the subconscious program that runs our life, and we're not even aware of that, that that's what's going on. It is literally like a computer program. So it starts with a lot of awareness. And one of the things that I realized was you can't always catch yourself in the moment. What you're thinking. But if you come back to it later and say, and look at what happened and say, gee, and so it's a very simple formula that I lay out in my book, but it's basically thoughts lead to feelings. Thoughts and perceptions lead to feelings. Feelings lead to words and actions, and words and actions lead to the outcomes that we experience in life. So if I start with crappy thoughts, I'm going to have crappy feelings. If I have crappy feelings, I'm going to speak crappy words and take crappy actions. And if I speak crappy words and take crappy actions, guess what I'm going to get back from life?

Yeah, yeah.

Of course, the opposite is also true. So we have to bring some conscious intention to all of that. Again, a lot of it was just being nicer to myself, you know, just being kind to myself, being gentle with myself, you know. If I didn't get— and here's the thing, so I say, you know, I won over 75 awards for my photography and, and all that, but for every one of those awards, there's been at least 10 failures, rejections, and disappointments. You know, so being successful is not really learning how to be successful. It's learning how to deal with the disappointment.

Mm-hmm.

It's learning how to deal with the failure. If you can do that, then you can do anything. Because what would happen to me was I would be der— in the past, I would be derailed by all of that. Take it personally. It became more evidence that I'm, I'm don't have what it takes. I'm not good enough. So it's being conscious, being aware, looking again, you know, how must— how must I see myself? And this is the basic premise of the book and to a large extent the premise of the film. The most important question we can ask ourselves is, who do you think you are? Who do I think I am? Who am I? This is a question that ancient, you know, wisdom teaching has been telling us to ask forever. Who are you? And it's really important because whoever we think we are is exactly who we're going to end up being in life. And if who we think we are, if that self-concept is— has been created by a subconscious program that we're not even aware is running, then we're not going to be able to redirect all that and change that. So it's a real commitment in the moment, you know. And you could say, you know, how must I have seen myself in that situation with my mom if I reacted the way I reacted, right? So instead of blaming her for how I feel, And this is chapter 2 in my book. I talk about taking responsibility as well as a definition of true power. And the basic premise is this: nobody makes us feel anything, right? Whatever, however we're responding is about us. It's never about the other person. Now, people get all bent out of shape the minute I say that, and I have to qualify that. I have to qualify that by saying we're not condoning somebody else's inappropriate behavior. This is not about saying what they did was okay, but it is about saying that I get to choose as a free will sovereign being how I'm going to respond to that. Okay, so I'm responsible for how I'm resp— for how I'm responding to that situation. Okay, you're going to say something?

Yeah, I was just going to say, again, I think that is such an important lesson, and it is, it is a hard one to receive. People hear that and say, what you're saying is that whatever they do is, is okay. Yeah, no, they did make me feel this way. You know, someone cut me off in traffic, they made me, you know, no.

And I—

that's a, that's a hard lesson for us to learn. And so the things you're saying, um, are so simple, but they kind of go against our nature, it seems like, even. And I love what you said earlier about, you know, being your own best friend. It's something I, I tell my clients all the time. You need to be your own best friend. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend, because we will, we will lay into ourselves. We will beat her. And I'm really— I, I was really quick to do this. I find myself calling myself stupid, you know, things like that, which I don't allow myself to do anymore. I don't let— I don't let me talk to me like that, just like I wouldn't let someone else do it. And that's something that, that you brought out. So it's— you're, you're giving great wisdom here, and I hope people can, can accept it and receive it.

Yeah, thanks. And, and it's, it's from 30 years of getting my ass kicked by life, you know, basically. Yeah, it was— it's really been a journey for me. The thing I was going to say is, so, uh, chapter 7 in my book is about forgiveness, but as part of forgiveness, I talk about, uh, boundaries, right? Healthy boundaries are the primary way that we take care of ourselves in all our relationships. Without healthy boundaries, then other people are going to have a negative impact on me. I have to learn, but it's my responsibility to set those boundaries. I have to know how to take care of myself in all situations and with all people. So when I— but when I do that, then I don't feel the same resentment or the anger or whatever that I used to feel. This has been one of the biggest changes in my life. Now, I will give A Course in Miracles a lot of credit for this. Course in Miracles is all about forgiveness. It's also about responsibility, which a lot of people don't realize. Um, and, and in my book, I talk about the relationship between responsibility and power. Okay, this is really important. And so what is power? Well, I define power— see, most people think power is, um, you know, making somebody do what they don't want to do. You know, having power or dominion over somebody else means kind of, you know, controlling them or, you know, forcing them to do something they want to do. That's not power. That's coercion. That's manipulation. That could be brutality, whatever. But that's not true power. True power— and I have this definition in the book is the ability to consciously choose and/or change our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. So remember before I said the formula is thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to words and actions, words and actions lead to outcome. To consciously choose and/or change each one of those is how I create my life the way I want to create it. Now, here's the relationship between power and responsibility. As long as I'm blaming somebody else for how I feel, then guess what? I don't have the ability to change that. I have to wait for them to change before I can be happy or whatever.

Right.

And I say this in my book, you know, people who are truly happy are probably happy despite the events and circumstances of their lives, not because of them. You know, if we can learn to be happy when the stuff is hitting the fan, that's mastery, right? That's what Jesus was about. That's what all the people that we admire are about. It's like they're not— they're in the world but not of it. They're not perturbed By what's going on in the world, but it's beyond that because then the other part of the equation for me is having compassion for the people who are attacking me. Mm-hmm. Now, if you watch my TED Talk, my TEDx Talk was all about this. Somebody attacked me on social media from when I finally got the courage to post my photos on social media. Somebody was attacking me saying they're too good to be true, they're Photoshopped, right? Oh, and he went after me. He went after me, right? And it had happened before, and I realized, all right, so I haven't— I have a choice, right? I get to decide how I'm going to respond to this situation, right? And A Course in Miracles says all attacks are a call for love, right? So I'm thinking, all right, I know how this goes. If I get into a pissing contest with this guy on Facebook and I try to prove to him— and I had this happen You know, because he wasn't the first guy, and, and, and I tried to prove to the other person that, that my photo was legit. I even had other people who, who, who sided with me who didn't even know me, but they knew like the location that I was shooting from, photographing from, or, or the, the equipment I was using. And the, and the person still wouldn't get off their, their position that they were right, that I was a fraud or whatever, right?

Right.

So I realized I can't go down that road. I could block this guy, I could, you know, do all that stuff, but I thought maybe there's something here, maybe there's a lesson here for me, right? So I reached out to him, uh, private message. All right, you can't, you can't do anything in public because once the pub, you know, once other people are watching, the ego gets totally entrenched in his position, right? So I private messaged him, I introduced myself, I said, look, I really appreciate you, you know, commenting on the photo, and, and you seem really You know, uh, adamant about your position. I said, you know, I told him who I was, and it was a photo. I, uh, I might be able to actually show you the photo. It's, uh, it's in the TED Talk. Uh, and I said, I assure you this photo is legit. And I explained to him how I took the photo. I told him who I was. I'm a professional photographer for 15 years. I traveled the world doing this, you know, whatever. And I explained to him how I took the photo. He came back 2 minutes later, he says— it's— this is— he's a New Yorker. He's a tough, really tough New Yorker, right? He says, I don't give a shit who you are or what you do. That's— that photo is fake, right? This was his response. So I'm thinking, oh, that didn't go— that didn't go the way I thought it was going to go, right? So, so I, I, I cooled down. I took responsibility for my feelings. I said, okay, who do I want to be in this situation? This is the most important question we can ask, guys. Who do you want to be in that challenging situation? Right? And I thought, okay, I don't want to be who I've been in the past. I'm not sure who I want to be, you know, but I know who I don't want to be. And so I reached out to him again and I said, look, I said, I'm sorry you feel that way, but, you know, and I, and I, you know, I, I never stooped to his level, but I also kind of stood up for myself, you know. I was taking care of myself, but I wasn't accusatory, I wasn't attacking him. And we went back and forth like this for a while. Eventually, Brian, what happened was, as I offered to take him to the location where I took the photo, and so you could see the alignment— basically, it's a photograph of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty where they look like they're right next to each other. And, and it's an actual photograph, but it's taken with a telephoto lens, one of those, you know, those big— the lenses you see on the sidelines on the football games on Sunday, those big long lenses. And It acts like a telescope, so it brings distant objects closer together, so it looks like they're right next to each other. Obviously they're not, but it's all done in the camera. There's no manipulation, there's no Photoshop, there's none of that. So I offered to, to, uh, take him to the location. He eventually calmed down. Uh, I then commented on some— it turns out he was also an artist and a photographer, and I commented on some photographer and a film and, uh, artist.

So he didn't know how camera lenses worked, apparently.

But anyway, well, he did a different— he did a different kind of photography. So, okay, so, so basically, I, I never stooped to his level, and I never attacked him, and I eventually created a relationship with him. I friended him on Facebook. He friended me back, and, you know, offered to take him to the spot where I took it if he wanted to see for himself. And, and then what I discovered was, Brian, he had a business that he took his photographs and he put them on souvenirs like postcards and coffee mugs and all that, and was selling them in the souvenir shops in New York City. So when tourists come in from out of town, there's all these— especially by the Empire State Building, there's all these souvenir shops.

Sure.

And what I found was that he had a photo that was very similar to mine but it was clear it was like a collage. It was clearly Photoshopped.

Wow.

So he was— what, what happened was he was projecting his stuff onto me. Yeah, yeah, right. And once I realized that, I was like, oh, so this was never about me, this was always about him, you know. Maybe he, he feels less than— I don't know what his deal is. So, so that was eye-opening for me. So, so I continued the relationship, and what happened, Brian, was he eventually became a customer of mine. He ended up licensing one of my photos for his souvenir business.

Oh, wow.

He became a paying customer, right? He went from accusing me of being a fraud to becoming a paying customer.

Right, right.

But wait, it gets better. So then he introduces me to another company that does all the souvenir shops in New York City. They're like, that's their whole business is souvenirs, right? And he puts me in touch with them, and I didn't end up doing any business with them, but I learned the whole business through them about how it works. And I took that information and I went to an even bigger souvenir company. They, they're the biggest company in the US. They do all the national parks, you know, they do all the, when you go in the gift shop, they supply all that stuff. And they ended up doing a 5-figure license deal with that company for my photos. Right? Every 3 years they get, send me a royalty check. My photos, if you go now, so if you go into New York City, If you go into Fifth Avenue by the Empire State Building, those souvenir shops, my photos are on all the coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, you know, t-shirts, all of that. And the only reason that happened, right, was I didn't take what this guy was doing personally on Facebook.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right?

If I had gotten into a pissing match with him, none of this would have ever happened.

Yeah.

So when I changed who I thought I was, when I learned not to take things personally, And then I had the confirmation it was never about me. It was always about him. Right? And then A Course in Miracles, you know, all attacks are a call for love. I thought, how can I help this guy? How can I, you know, not that it's my job to fix or save anybody, but how can I, you know, maybe have some compassion? I had a very strong sense of having healthy boundaries. So again, this is really important. You know, we don't want people to walk all over us. But once we have those boundaries in place, then you can move forward in the relationship and see where it goes.

Yeah.

So, you know, this was transformational for me. I, I love that.

I love that story. And I think it also, you know, having compassion for him, not taking things personally— I completely agree with that. I also believe that anybody can be a teacher to us, no matter how they come across. And I was listening to something this morning about soul planning. This person had pre-birth memories, and they had a memory of someone's going to come into their life and said, I'm going to be a real ass to you, and this is what I'm— this is what I'm going to do in your life. And so I— when I encounter people like that, I'm like, maybe this was something, you know, he might be your best friend on the other side, and he said, I'm going to do this to you to teach you this lesson, right? So you, you learned, okay, this isn't about me. You got curious. What can I learn from this? How can I— how can I pursue this? How can I help him? Um, and you took your ego out of it which allowed you to have this, this unfolding of a relationship. I think it's a, it's a beautiful, um, illustration of what can happen when we try not to take things personally. And I know a lot of people, as we're recording this in March of 2025, are going through a lot of stuff right now. And I was just talking with some people earlier today, and I'm like, guys, we got to calm down a little bit. We got to not take things so personally. We have to wait and see how things play out. So this, this happens to us, you know, all the time as we go through life.

So you're right, and we do talk about this in the film. We talk about soul planning, we talk about soul groups, soul families. And, uh, everybody that I interviewed basically said, you know, the people who challenge us the most in our lives are generally our, our most beloved companions on the other side, you know. And we, we, we agree to play roles in each other's lives for the purpose of growth. Of evolution, you know, of becoming more, of knowing ourselves in our own experience as the soul, right? That's why we could talk about all this now if you want, but I cover all this in the film. The film has 35 questions, and if you go to everysoulnose.com, you can see those questions. And it's questions like, you know, many, many people experience challenges in their lives. Does the soul seek such challenges? And if so, why? We talk about, are there soul groups?— or soul families? Are there contracts or agreements between souls? Do we plan our lives in advance? You gave a great answer to that question, you know, the soul plan and all that pre-birth planning. So it's like integrating all of that now into our everyday lives. We come from it at a whole, you know, from a whole different place now in terms of what's really going on here. This is, I say, the film is You know, we're not who we think we are, and what's going on here is not what we think is going on here. Yeah, you know, there's something much bigger happening.

Let's—

I, I do want to, I do want to shift and talk about the film, but before we talk about the film itself, what motivated you to make this film? It's such a— first of all, I think it's an extremely needed subject, and I, I love the fact that you did it, but it's not something a lot of people take on. So, you know, you talked about you had this, this journey of self-discovery very— not very much rooted, but, you know, you're talking about really kind of what we do, nuts and bolts here, being on Earth. And this film goes into the bigger picture, right? The higher perspective. So what motivated you to make this particular film?

So, you know, I— again, I can't point to any one thing. I will say, um, so what happened was the way I wrote my book— I'll tell you this very briefly because it is, it is related. Um, I've been thinking about writing the book for years. People kept saying, you have to write a book. I kept saying, yeah, one day. And I was so busy being creative and doing— winning awards and literally was traveling the world as a photographer and filmmaker. And I was in California. It was 2019. I hadn't been back since I had moved in 2009. And I did a photo shoot for a client in LA. And then I went up to Yosemite. I was going to take pictures of the park for my fine art business. And I never made it to the park, but I got to the visitor center. I get outta my car and I'm looking for a restroom and somehow I tripped. There was a curb, it was hidden by these vending machines. I didn't see it. I caught my leg, I tripped. I didn't even fall, but somehow I caught my foot in such a way that it tore my calf muscle.

Mm-hmm.

Now, I don't know if you've ever torn a muscle, especially calf muscle, but I was instantly debilitated. I was instantly rendered lame. Couldn't put any weight on my right foot.. And it was so painful. I mean, it's brutal. It's so— and one minute I'm fine, the next minute I'm, I'm outta my mind with pain. But in that moment, Brian D Smith, I heard very clearly through all the pain and the agony, I heard in my head, now you can write your book. All right. It wasn't now I can write my book. It was now you can write your book. And I was like, what the— you know, it was the last thing on my mind in that moment, writing any kind of book. Right. But they needed to get my attention, and this was the way they to do it. And that night, somehow I made it to the hotel. I knew what the injury was, so I didn't go to the hospital. I knew because I had actually had the same injury about 5 years earlier in the other leg. I knew exactly what was going on, and I was in the middle of nowhere. I was alone. I wasn't going to go sit in an emergency room for 6 hours. Somehow, uh, I managed to get a pair of crutches, and I had a— at the hotel was booked for the week. I had just stocked up on groceries So I made it to the hotel, set up, and that night I started writing the book. And I didn't stop until it was finished almost 9 months later.

Wow.

Wow.

And the reason I'm telling you all that is while— and, and so this is the— this is February 2019. Now we're going into 2020, and I'm just getting back on my feet, literally, and the pandemic hits. So now we're home again, right? Got a lot of time on our hands, and I read a book a novel by William Buhlmann. Now William, he's a big out-of-body guy. He's been having out-of-body experiences for 40 years. He was affiliated with the Monroe Institute, Robert Monroe's Institute. Robert Monroe wrote all these great books about out-of-body experiences, and he wrote a novel. So William writes this novel called Adventures in the Afterlife, and I knew a little bit about near-death experiences and, and all of that, but I wasn't— I hadn't really investigated any of it. I read that book, and while it was written as a novel, all of it was based on his actual experiences out of the body, and it was fascinating to me. He talked about a lot of the stuff that we hear NDEers talk about. Very compelling. Eventually I reached out to him. I just said, this has to be made into a film. Long story short is we went back and forth, and I eventually optioned the book, the novel, and I started writing a screenplay. Once I finished my book— I knew I had to finish my book— once I finished it, I started working on a screenplay for this novel. And that's when I started doing research by going— and now we're home because of the pandemic, so I'm watching all these YouTube videos with NDEers. That's when I discovered your podcast. You know, your podcast was one of the first that I found that really helped me on my way. I met Frankie Key after watching your—

Frankie's awesome.

Yeah, Frankie's great. We became fast friends, a bunch of people, I think, through your, your podcast. So it's an honor to be here, and thank you for all that you've done for the, the last How many years you've been doing this? At least 5 years, right?

5 or 6. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah. So, so I started doing this research. I started watching all these NDE videos, and I just started reaching out to people that I was— what interviews that I was watching, like Frankie and other people. So, you know Christian Sundberg? Christian, I watched his interview and I reached out to him and I said, I said, let's do a Zoom. I just want to pick your brain. I'm working on this book by— he knew William Buhlmann. And I— that was kind of my way in with him. I said, let's— I want to meet, pick your brain, whatever. The morning of his Zoom call with him, I'm making breakfast and the toast is, you know, I'm waiting for the toast to pop. The toast— this literally happens— the toast pops out of the toaster and this idea pops into my head. You have to make a documentary film about all this, and you got to do it. You have to do it. It can't be webcams, right? You have to have people in the same room and do it, do a high-end production. So I was like, oh, all right. Um, and I talked to Christian a couple hours later. We had a great conversation and I said, look, would you be interested in me interviewing you for this? I'm, I'm going to do a documentary about all this. You know, an hour earlier I didn't know that's why I was reaching out to him. And he's like, yeah. The only problem was he wasn't traveling. So if I wanted to interview him, I had to go to Erie, Pennsylvania.

Right.

There's a whole story in that, but I eventually made it there. And, uh, and I just started reaching out to people. I started locally. So I think you know Irene Weinberg. She's local to me, and she's got a lot of people in her network here in New Jersey that are psychic mediums. Uh, and I just started asking people if they wanted to be interviewed. I came up with that list of questions. And, and here's the other thing: I didn't want to sensationalize the near-death experience. Or the death experience. I didn't want to sensationalize, you know, the car accident, the botched surgery, you know, all of that. I felt like it was almost a distraction. So I didn't— I, uh, my idea was not to, to have people tell stories for the film. My idea was to get these questions answered because I thought these are the questions that everybody has.

Yeah.

And I, I was just— I was really, in retrospect, I had all these great NDEers and I didn't let any of them tell their story. Uh, about a year later, I've been working on this for 2 years now. It's 2 years this month. Uh, I realized, you know, there is value in telling the story, right? So I went back to a bunch of people and I've been, I've reached out to a bunch of new people. I'm still interviewing. I have an interview tomorrow with Carlos Vivas. Carlos was, was saved by a dolphin in a drowning incident.

Oh yeah.

Fascinating story. Uh, Tricia Barker is coming in. Um, you probably know Tricia and then Peter Panagore is coming. So I still have more people coming. I'm still interviewing, but hopefully by the end of this month I'll be done because I've got— I now have 100 hours of footage and a 5-hour film. Um, but anyway, so I started reaching out to people and I, and I said, let's, let's do the stories, right? So then I— so I started incorporating the first-person accounts as well. So you'll see in the clip I'm going to show you in a minute, you'll see one of the questions, which is, are human incarnations voluntarily chosen? And then, uh, the second part of the clip is Eben Alexander's, uh, first-person account of, of his birth sister who turned out to be his guardian angel when he crossed over. And so the film is like that. So it's the Q&A and then the first-person accounts, and it kind of staggers through the whole movie like that.

Yeah, it's, um, so I want people to understand, you, and you kind of touched on it, Putting something together like this is not a simple process. You know, we get to see, we get to see the end result. We don't realize, and I know a little bit from, you know, doing my interview and seeing you work that weekend that we were together with the, at the IANS conference, um, it's a, it's a process. It's, it's where it takes years to put these things together, um, and, and the finished product.

I'm sorry, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Yeah, well, I remember when you talked to me, you said, well, I don't want to do it over webcam. We've got to be together in the same room. I'm like, I don't like to travel, Peter, so I don't know how it's going to happen. But, you know, it worked out, you know, so it's awesome. So yeah, let's go ahead and let's do the clip.

All right, let me share my screen. I make sure the sound is still enabled. Okay. Each soul selects its own destiny and path, which includes the choice of incarnation. The Law of One. Are human incarnations voluntarily chosen? Absolutely. This whole question about Whether or not we had a choice to come down here, did we get forced down here? Are we forced to even stay here? Everything is about free will. You can't even imagine how much interest there is everywhere to participate in this. This is the hottest ticket in the entire universe. Oh, I think this is the best thing going on anywhere, to be in human form incarnated on Earth at this time. I truly believe souls line up to be part of this experience. There is a big demand, I've heard, on the other side to come and experience life. 100%, we have a choice to be here, and I believe there are millions of souls that want to come to Earth. It is a gift for us to be here. It is definitely the soul's choice, as Earth is the densest, hardest learning ground for us to expand and experience, and we bring so much with us after.

When we experience things that are very difficult, we might say, well, I would never choose this. And from our human perspective, you might not, but from the higher perspective, from the soul's perspective, in order to grow, I think sometimes we choose to experience hardships.

This is something we wanted, and we wanted to do it with, you know, we couldn't wait to do it. We're like, put me, put me in the game, coach. I've often thought about this question, and I've thought many times that I might be mandated to Earth. What did I do wrong? Why am I here again? You know, when a climber is climbing Mount Everest, he's going to be suffering. He's going to be cold and tired and miserable. And there's going to be times where he says, "Why the heck did I do this?" But he did it because he's taking on a big challenge and he's growing and getting stronger from it. And it's the same with these lives. You know, we are doing the Mount Everest of physical incarnations by coming down here on Earth, and it's something to be proud of. If you are here, you absolutely volunteered. And I do love the other one that I always hear: I'm not—

when I'm done on—

I'm never coming back. No, you're coming back. You know, I hear so often people go, I would never have chosen this, I would have never chosen this. And that's how I know that's exactly how chose it.

On some level, we all chose to be here. We chose our parents, we chose our basic circumstances, and we knew for the most part what we were getting into.

It's only after we get here that humans forget who we are, and then we say, "Are you kidding? I am never coming back here again." We know that it's going to be challenging. We know that there's going to be pain as well as pleasure, but the soul also knows goes, that's how we're going to grow. And the soul wants nothing more than to bring back more love to this beautiful experience of simply being the soul. In 2008, Dr. Eben Alexander III, a former Harvard neurosurgeon, had a near-fatal bout of bacterial meningitis that left him in a coma for 7 7 days. While in coma, he had a life-changing near-death experience during which he was guided around the afterlife by a beautiful but mysterious spiritual being.

I remember being a speck of awareness on a butterfly wing. There were millions of other butterflies looping and spiraling in these vast formations, just a scene of incredible richness and beauty. Down below us, a meadow surrounded by a rich forest. And in the surround, there were waterfalls into crystal blue pools. There was incredible plant life, everything growing. There was no sign of any death or decay. That realm is sharp, clear, detailed, meaningful, powerful, filled with emotional truth and depth. Most beautiful part about it was I wasn't alone. There was a lovely woman, sparkling blue eyes, high cheekbones, high forehead, broad smile. She looked at me with a look of pure love, and she never had to say a word because her deep and powerful emotional truth was driven straight into my awareness through this mind meld, this telepathic connection we had. And in that messaging, she gave me what I think was the central message I was to bring back to this world, a message for all of us. You are deeply loved and cherished forever. You have nothing to fear. Uh, you are richly cared for. And I cannot tell you how reassuring, how validating, how comforting that message was, because it really underlined the spiritual reality that I was feeling, that this was home. This felt very familiar. When I tell this story, I mean, the chills run up and down my spine. It's an incredible sense of love and connection, overflowing with this unconditional love of the divine, that feeling of that God force that is so reassuring to all near-death experiencers across all cultures, that helps them to realize they are much more than a physical being in a physical body limited by birth to death. And so when I came back from all this, in looking back on it all, I reflected on the great power more of that beautiful spiritual guide, that guardian angel on the butterfly wing, who was so important to me. Now it turns out that in my reading I'd never really paid much attention to the near-death experience literature because I thought it was all hallucinations of the dying brain playing tricks. Who cares? And now that I had my own experience, I realized it was far, far more than that. What they said was the guardian angel, you know, that spiritual guide, is someone very important to you in your life. And yet I knew I had never met her in my 54 years of life before my coma. Turns out I was adopted. Of course, that was knowledge to me from my earliest age. That adoption abandonment wound plays a huge part in my story overall. But in that kind of situation, this beautiful guardian angel with this message of love that I connected me so much with the universe. I didn't know who she was. And it was through reuniting with my, my birth family, which only happened one year before my coma, that I met them. Four months after my coma, my birth sister Kathy promised to send me a picture of Betsy, the birth sister who had passed from this world in 1998, two years before I even found out about her existence. And when Kathy sent me that picture and it arrived in the mail and just brought me to tears, just this incredible sense of loss of this beautiful birth sister who I never knew. And that's why when I was next day was reading a book by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Life After Death, page 28, I'll never forget it. This young girl who had a profound near-death experience was welcomed to heaven by her brother. But when she came back to this world, was explaining it all to her father and said, "I don't understand. I don't have a brother." And he told her, "Well, you did, but he died 3 months before you were born. So we never told you about his existence." And that's when I looked up at that picture on the dresser that had just arrived the day before that had sent me into such an emotional tailspin. And I looked at it and it was like Betsy's looking at me. Do you finally get it? Yes, Betsy, I finally get it. To connect the dots and recognize my beautiful birth sister as the guardian angel on the butterfly wing was an incredibly revealing moment in my life.

Yeah. So that's— I still get goosebumps every time I hear Dr. Alexander tell it, tell his story. That's just— that's amazing. That's just a little bit of what the film is. And I want to say to people that are listening that aren't able to see the visuals, the film is also visually beautiful. Uh, my wife and I watched it, the, the, the— watch it together, and the, the graphics and the music and everything is, is awesome. It's really well done.

Well, thank you. Let me give a shout out to the composer. Um, so Joey O'Connor, he's 20 years old, he lives in Wisconsin He's still in music school. He has been doing all the, all the original music for this. He's amazing. And then I did hire some designers for some of the backgrounds. The mandalas I did myself. So I created the rotating mandalas and all of that in the backgrounds. You know, it's been a journey for me and it's been a great opportunity for me to express my creativity, you know, in ways that I didn't even know I had. You know, and so it's been a great creative outlet for me. Huge amount of work, but great outlet.

Yeah. So I have to ask you, how do you know as a filmmaker, how do you know when the film is done? I mean, you've, you said you shot, what, 100 hours now? And so how do you know when you're done?

Well, I could go on. I mean, I love this process. And Brian D Smith, the best part has been meeting you guys in person and spending time with you guys. You know, people, a bunch, about half the people came to my location here in New Jersey. And my deal was, I'm doing this tomorrow with Carlos. My deal was, if you fly into Newark Airport, not JFK, but Newark, I'll pick you up at the airport. I'll bring you to the location. We'll do the interview. If we have time, I'll take you out for dinner. If not, I'll take you back to the airport the same day so you don't have to stay overnight. And some of the best times were in the car, you know, on the way between the airport, hanging out with people, just getting to know them. Every one of you guys just touched me in really, really powerful ways, you know, and it's exactly You know, we haven't talked about this yet, but in, uh, April of 2023, I lost my younger brother.

I'm sorry.

Completely unexpected. Um, and it was— I had started on the film, you know, a couple months earlier, and it was devastating. I mean, it was really the most difficult experience of my life, my— for my family, you know, completely unexpected. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years, and I went to visit him, spent a week with him, And then I came back to New Jersey. He was living in Florida at the time, came back to New Jersey, and 2 weeks later he passed. And it was really— so, so it's— I can see how this is all part of our soul's plan together now, looking back on it. But what happened was I really had to decide how much I believe this stuff, Brian. I really, I really had to. It forced my hand. Yeah, because up until that point I was like I want to believe, right? And, and I think I believe, and it seems like that's the truth, you know, like it's got to be more than what we think it is. But it wasn't until he passed, and, and for almost 3 months I was out of commission. I mean, I was so distraught, I was so, so much grief. And here's something I'll say to your audience, you know, intellectually I had this understanding that life is eternal, there is no death, that, you know, he's just, he's just a, a frequency away, he's probably with me right now. But man, none of that mattered in that moment. You know, it was just the pain, the grief. I also had some regrets. You know, it was my younger brother, and I wondered, was I the big brother that I could have been for him? You know, and all of that. And for almost 3 months, I couldn't do much of anything. And I thought about giving up on— 'cause I really started to question everything, and I was gonna just give up on the film and everything else. And at a certain point, I came back and I started watching some of the interviews that I hadn't edited yet. And slowly it kind of brought me out— the film and you guys brought me out of that. It brought me out of that grief, you know, and it— and I was able to turn a corner finally. And then now all of a sudden the film really had important meaning for me personally. And it's funny, I laugh about it a little bit now because my brother was a very hardcore New Yorker. You know, and I, when I was visiting him before he passed, I, um, I was in the living room and I was watching on my tablet. I was watching probably one of your podcasts, and he overheard it and he said, turn that shit off, you don't really believe that stuff, do you? He was a non-believer in the afterlife, you know. He was very, you know, very not, uh, oriented that way. So, so now the film is dedicated to him. And he's become a part of this process. I talk about him in every podcast now that I do. And I was with, uh, I was actually with a medium, uh, when my sister called me to tell me that he had passed. And my phone was— I was ignoring my phone, and the medium said, you should really answer your phone. And, and he has since come through many times now because half the people I've interviewed for the film are mediums, right? They're like, they're like, you know, there's somebody here, his, his name starts with a J. Does that ring a bell? I'm like, oh yeah, that's my brother John. You know, he's here again. So he's part of this now. I'm sure he's a believer because he's living it.

Yeah.

And, and it's really been transformational for me. Now the last person on my list is, is my mom. So I love my mom. We have a great relationship now. We didn't always, but we have a great relationship. And she said to me recently, she said, Peter, I'm so proud of you. You're doing such a great job. The film looks amazing. I love how passionate you are about this, but you have to understand, I think this is all a big fairy tale. Hmm. Right. So here's another nonbeliever in the family, right? So it's been a real process for me to not try to convince her, not try to change her mind. And I say at the beginning of the film, I say— I do say this. I say, look, when it comes to the existence of an afterlife, none of us are really going to know until we get there ourselves. Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, we hear some great stories and all of that, but until we get there, we won't really know. So I say, look, don't take anybody's word for anything, whether in this film or elsewhere. I think every one of the people that you're going to meet has something important to say, but don't take anybody's word for it. I say, you have to take everything that you see and hear in this movie and use it to discover your own inner wisdom and your own highest truth. Mm-hmm. Because that's the place we have to go for this. And as you know, I stopped the film 3 times and we do a guided meditation, right? I say, basically, I say, you've heard what everybody else has to say about this. Now what's your truth?

Yeah.

Because that's what I, I don't want people to leave with my truth. I want people to leave the film with their own truth.

Yeah.

What's true for you? And if you really don't believe any of this, then, then I've done my job because you've discovered your own truth about all this, which is the most important thing. So for me now, I'm a believer, you know. I'm— there's no doubt in my mind that everything that we say in the film, in your podcast, that you hear from the NDEers is all— it's, it's, it's different for everybody, but it's the same for everybody. And I know you know this, right?

Yeah.

So, so embracing that, and, and here's the big point now. Well, great, so now we know about all this. How do we make our lives better while we still think we're here in these bodies? Because that's the main point of it, right? It's not so much the curiosity about what happens after death. It's certainly not the curiosity of what happened to their body in the car accident or any of that. It's about how do we take that knowledge and make our lives better while we're here. Yeah. And for me, there's 3 main components to that. All right. And this comes from the NDE experience. Number 1 is we're not our bodies. All right, I just interviewed Tony Sicoria. I don't know if you know Tony. He was hit by lightning in the '90s, uh, and had a near-death experience. He came back and now he's a master pianist. He's a concert piano— one of the gifts that he got from his NDE was he's now a master pianist. He had never played the piano before in his life. Anyway, he describes very graphically how he realized in the moment he was hit by the lightning and he saw his body on the floor, that, that is not who he is, right? He recognized very clearly that's not— and you hear this a lot, a lot of the NDEers say, I didn't even recognize that body as mine on the operating table or in the car wreck, you know. It's like, so number one is we're not our bodies. Number two, and I know you've heard this a million times, is the description of unconditional love that people talk about, right? And it's beyond words. They all say we don't have words to describe it. And it's not just how you feel, it's who you are, right? We are that love. That's who and what we really are. So we're not these bodies. Who we are at our core is love, is goodness, is divinity, is holiness, however you want to say it. And then number 3, the 3rd thing that comes that you hear a lot is the sense of oneness and unity. Right? They all say, you know, I was part of this greater whole, but I was connected to everyone and everything. You know, and not only as an intellectual concept, but I felt it. Right? I experienced that oneness. So these three things, my personal take on this is, you know, if we can implement those three things in our lives while we still think we're here, it could change everything. Yeah, right. So if I'm not my body, what does that mean? It means I'm a soul. It means I'm something much greater. So I don't have to spend so much time trying to protect the body or do all this other stuff. Now I'm going to say upfront, this is not about being reckless. This is not about ignoring your body. It's not about any of that, but it's recognizing that you're more than that, right? So it gives us a little room. And, and the other thing is everybody else is more than that as well, right?

Right.

Number 2, many of us— Course in Miracles says you think you are the home of evil, darkness, and sin. Most of us feel so unworthy. We think we're sinners. We think we're bad, and not in a Michael Jackson kind of way. And it's all this negative— this is what we're talking about earlier, the negative self-image, you know, how that holds us back in life. What if that's not who we really are? In fact, what if that's just something that our mind made up based on what we're told when we come into this incarnation by other people who themselves believe the same thing? What if that's all wrong? And number 3 is, what if we really are all leaves on the same tree, fingers on the same hand? We truly are connected to something greater. We're part of a unified whole. That means that what I do for you, I'm really doing for myself if we're connected. And by the way, what I don't do for you, I don't do for myself. So beginning to bring these understandings into our physical existence and begin that shift, that transformation. And I think that's what the awakening is about. Everybody's talking about the move from the third dimension to the fifth dimension. You know, there's all kinds of channeled stuff coming in now from the Galactic Federation and all these other places. You know, the message is very simple: you're not who you think you are, right? And there's something much bigger going on. Start living. And, and so I set up a website, another website, it's called it'stimetoremember.org. It's a nonprofit website and it has 7 of the core messages from the film on that website. And I'm not taking donations. I'm not— there's no subscriptions. There's nothing. The only thing is, if you resonate with those 7 core messages, 3 of them are what we just talked about, find a way to share them. Everybody says, well, what can one person do? You can share the truth as you understand it. You can, you can be a, you could be a force for a positive outlook on our current situation, which honestly is a freaking mess, you know, in the world and in this country and all of that. Bring something positive to that with the understanding that it's not about that. It's not about what's going on in Washington or in the Kremlin or whatever, you know. There's something much bigger going on here. And you came— the last part of that, of that 7-message from it'stimetoremember.org is You know, you came with a purpose. You're here for a reason.

Yeah.

Right. And then the last part is, isn't it time that we got on with it? Because a lot of us are wasting a lot of time on things that don't matter. I'll stop there.

Yeah. Well, Peter, uh, we're, we're coming to the end of our time, but you, I, this has been awesome and you've shared so much with us. So, um, I will put in the show notes, show notes, the links to your book, to the film, and to your, uh, your nonprofit website. Um, but for people that are listening, just repeat all those because not everybody reads the show notes. So tell people where they can— well, they can find out more.

Yeah, so Every Soul Knows, 3 words, everysoulnose.com, all about the film. If you want to find out more about my book, it's 3 words, bebiggertoday.com. Title of the book again is Be Bigger Than You Think You Are. You can just Google my name, you'll find it. Um, it's timetoremember.org. And the film, there is— so I have a preview happening on Sunday in Long Island, but I'm planning a bunch of other previews for the East Coast. So I'm looking at— this is in-person previews because one of the great things, Brian, is that after we do— so I did a preview here in New Jersey last month and we had 100 people showed up. Most of them stayed after the screening because we had about 10 people from the film there. And we did a Q&A with the audience. So people asked questions. People stuck around for an hour just to ask questions about the film. So I love doing the in-person screening. So I'm trying to set up one in Boston, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., uh, somewhere in North Carolina down by Angela, and then, uh, in Atlanta, uh, and then, then eventually we'll move out towards the rest of the country. If you can't make it to an in-person screening, there is a preview that's available online. It's a $3.99 rental. For 72 hours. I have to set it up that way because trying to offset some of the costs, the, the web hosting costs and all of that. If the $3.99 is a stretch, just let me know, I'm going to refund your money. It's not about the money, I want people to see the film. That preview is up, it's on, on the website. And then there's the YouTube channel. Now this is really important because what I did was I took everybody's full interview. So I've, I've interviewed over 60 people. Most of their interviews run about 60 minutes, but most people only get 3 or 4 minutes in the film. Right, just because of the way it's edited. So to honor the people that honored me by coming to be part of this, I wanted to make everybody's full interview available. And it's available on the website everysoulnose.com, as well as the film YouTube channel, which is at— what? Every Soul Knows? At Every Soul Knows. And the thing is, all those interviews— there's 55 interviews up there now. And the best part of this, I even So I wanted to create a resource for people to watch the film, to then go and hear the rest of what people have to say, because everybody has something really important to say. And so there's this reference library now. It's totally free. There's— I even cut out the mid-roll ads on the interview so you can watch from beginning to end without interruption. And I— that was my way of giving back to the community. I want people to have a resource. I, I say this film is like Afterlife 101. This is for people who may not have even heard of an NDE, or they don't know what the life review is, and they never heard of soul contracts. So I wanted them to have a place to go. And the best part so far, Brian D Smith, other than screenings, is that people are binge-watching all the interviews now.

Yeah.

So every morning, I— instead of Netflix, they're binge-watching these interviews. And I wake up in the morning and there's comments in my inbox. We've gotten like one negative comment in 6 months. And thousands and thousands of positive comments. People are loving this, and they're so grateful to have a place to go to have all this information in one place.

Yeah, it's, it's a great, it's a great resource, and I want to thank you, I, uh, for, for doing this work. And I know it's a lot of work. I know I only have a small picture of what it is, but I've seen, you know, I know you've been working on this for, as I said, for a couple years, and it's still ongoing. Um, but bringing these people together And like I said, it's put together in a very digestible format. I love the way the film is laid out. You said you got the time for reflection. Um, it's really, really well done, even at this point now where it's— I know it's still, still evolving. So, um, thanks for being here today. And, uh, any, anything you want to say as we wrap up?

No, I just want to thank you. I mean, you literally were one of the first people that, that kind of led me into this world. So, you know, and if you hadn't made that decision, you know, when, when your daughter passed, if you had that, you know, we can go in any direction with the events that happen in our lives, you know, but you made a decision to make something positive out of that, and it's benefited a lot of people, including me. So I want to thank you for, for what you do, and, you know, the fact that you're still doing it. You know, a lot of these people who telling their stories, they've been telling their story for years. Most of them are not getting rich off of this, right? You know, most of them are actually being subjected to all kinds of— not so much today, but, you know, unkindness and all that. So the fact that You know, these are— they're my heroes, the people who are still telling their story after 20 years because they want to help humanity. They want to make a positive— have a positive impact on the world.

Yeah.

So I want to do my part in that, and I'm just grateful that we're all connected in this.

All right, well, thanks, Peter. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 lessons that you can learn from the near-death experience without going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grief-the-number-2-growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.