EP 6 | Finding Sufficiency in a World of Abundance

Foreign.

Welcome to the Jack Canfield Podcast. And in today's episode, I'm talking with Lynn Twist, a renowned global visionary, transformational leader, author, and activist. And Lynn has dedicated her life to ending world hunger and then to creating a world that works for everyone through creating an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet we call Earth. And as a co founder of the Pachamama alliance, which we'll talk about today as well, Lyn's also fostered a unique partnership with the indigenous Otjwar people of the Amazon rainforest, who I got to meet and get to know when Lyn took a group of us, including me and my wife Inga, to meet with them in Ecuador. And in part of our discussion, we'll discuss Lyn's work with the Pachamam alliance and the predictions that the Otuar people have made about about the future of our planet, which I think you'll find quite profound. Lynn's most recent book is entitled Living a Committed Life, and it explores the power of intention and commitment in creating meaningful change in the world. In our conversation, we'll dive into the lessons she shares in her book and how they can inspire all of us to live with greater purpose and passion. So join us as we explore Lynn's insights on living a committed life, her experiences working with indigenous wisdom, and the importance of coming together to protect our planet for future generations. Welcome, Lynn.

Oh, thank you, Jack. It's delightful to be with you, as always.

I know, you know, you're one of my favorite people on the planet, so I'm so glad to have this opportunity to introduce your work to our community. And, you know, we've. I don't know how long we've known each other. At least 12 years, maybe longer. You've had a big impact on my life in so many ways. And my only regret that is we only have 50 minutes to talk together today, so we should jump right in. Let's start with your most recent book, which I love. It's called Living a Committed Life. What inspired you to write the book, and what do you hope readers will take away from it?

Well, what inspired me to write the book is you. And I say that in the book because I was at a conference in Santa Barbara or San Diego, one of the Sands, and. And I made a speech, like always we do at these conferences. And at the end, you came up to me and said, these stories have got to be in a book. You've got to make a book out of this. You've got to make a Book of these stories. And I said, well, I. I'm an activist. I'm a pro activist. I call myself a pro activist. Not an activist against, but an active activist for. And I said, I'm just too busy, you know, ending hunger and saving the Amazon. I don't have time to write a book. And you said, I'm going to make it so easy for you. And then I went to your home. You invited me to your beautiful home in Santa Barbara. You got 20, 30 people in your living room. We took one, two, three days. And I told you story after story after story after story after story. And you recorded them and we had them transcribed. And that was the beginning of this book. And I just, you know, to tell you the honest of God truth, what inspired me to do this book is you. And what inspired you to make me do this book is the privilege that I've had of working in so many different places with so many different people and learning so much from so many that there are stories galore. So those are two ways to talk about what inspired me to write this book.

Okay, so the key word here is stories. Let's. Let's share some of these stories. I know the book has a lot of, I don't know what you want to call them, principles, messages, you know, implications of things we should be paying attention to or doing or whatever, but share a couple of the key stories. I mean, we could literally do that for days, as we did here. But you mentioned some in the book that are really transformational, both for you and for the reader. And then, you know, what the story was and what it led to, because the unfolding of these stories are really profound.

Well, I think that's the best way people learn. And you've taught me that yourself with your wonderful books, the Chicken Soup, the Soul series, and even your success books always have stories about people and places. And that's, I think, how we learn. So that's how I learn anyway. And so, for example, one of my great friends and one of yours is Van Jones. He's a great CNN journalist now and commentator. And for him, his path has been from a rural town in Tennessee where he grew up poor and black and under the, you know, the kind of the rule of a pretty intense and somewhat violent sometimes, but harsh father who had a little bit of a drinking problem and also was sometimes pretty unfair to his two children. Van's a twin and, you know, there's a lot of things to say about Van, but he ended up with all kinds of fortunate breaks with Affirmative action and other things, and just being an amazing person that he got himself into the White House with President Obama. And while he was in the White House, he was head of Green Jobs, which was a huge new initiative of the Obama administration. And for a black, young, incredible activist lawyer, he went to Yale Law School. To be in the Obama administration was the dream of his life, lifetime. Suddenly he had a bill, you know, a budget, I can't remember, but lots of money, a whole staff. He's in the White House, the first African American president in the history of our country. It was like a dream. And then he got attacked, brutally attacked by someone on Fox News or really, you know, Glenn Beck was his name, who. Who had a agenda to take down the Obama administration, really, but targeted some of his key players and targeted Van. And so I tell the story of Van literally falling from grace, having to leave the White House because he didn't want to tarnish. He was there about getting jobs for other people, not about saving his own job. So he left, resigned in that terrible attack. And he went to the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. And even though he grew up, you know, black and relatively poor, this was like, you know, the height of what anybody would want for their life. And then just a complete, total destruction, a breakdown of the immense proportions. And he went into, you know, 18 months of depression, and he recreated himself. And I'm trying to remember what I wrote about in the book, but what I'm. I've just been talking to him, so I'm very fresh with this experience. He literally recreated, created his entire life out of the breakdown and became now one of the leading voices of our time as a journalist, as a commentator, as someone who started all these nonprofit organizations. And he was so impressive and so eloquent and so, first of all, so humbled by the horror of what happened to him and so inspired that he was able to find his way again. That Jeff Bezos gave him a hundred million to give away. It gave him the civility and something courage and civility award, the first one. And now he's in incredible position to make an even bigger difference with his life. And that's a story that illustrates one of my distinctions in the book, that every breakdown, no matter how serious, no matter how heartbreaking, no matter how devastating, has within it somewhere, if you're willing to look for it, the seeds of a breakthrough that's greater than the breakdown. Not everybody looks for them, not everybody recovers from breakdowns. But if you know that every breakdown is actually a gift to find the seeds and water them, fertilize them and let them grow of a breakthrough that's greater than the breakdown, then that's what you can create out of your life. So that's an example. And I tell stories about other people myself.

Let me interrupt you for a minute and I want to talk about, about what you said about the breakdown and the seeds of a benefit that can come out of it. Because I was just rereading Napoleon Hill is a famous quote. Every negative event contains within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. But the part that never gets stated, you have to look for it. And when you find it, you have to water it, which is what Van did. I mean, I remember just reading about, like how he started getting computer programming programs into the inner city schools and into rural schools for black children and so forth. But I want you to go back a little bit before you tell another story, but different kind. You were doing the Pachamama alliance, which I want you to explain real quickly as some context for this question before you answer the part about vam. But you, you wanted to the black community more involved in the sustainability and you didn't quite know how to do it. You wanted to get Van involved because you reached out to him because you knew and he, he basically challenged you, which I thought was very interesting. What I thought was more interesting is how you rose to the challenge and did what he wanted and then forced an amazing alliance that has all this incredible things that have happened as a result of it. Do you mind telling that story?

Well, yes, well, I'll just say that the environmental movement from when it began to even just maybe 10 years ago, was really kind of seen as a white movement. It didn't include social justice, it didn't include, you know, fairness and equity. It didn't include racism. It didn't include the horrors of colonialism. It didn't include that it was really about kind of like polar bears and, you know, certain kinds of birds.

And the polar bears are white too.

Yeah. But people who are living in conditions of poverty and oppression, you know, thought about, you know, what do they, they care more about polar bears than they care about us or some kind of weird bird that's going extinct? What, what is the deal here? And, and, and it had that face, I'll say whether it was valid or not. That was the impression particularly people of color had of the environment. And, and the Pachamam alliance was founded by three white people. So we, we knew, but we were really in, in total communion with Indigenous people who are, you know, in. In many ways of looking people of color. So we. Part of the environmental movement only what we were really talking about was bringing forth what we call now an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet. And that these three prongs were not three different tracks, but it's all one. You can't. The environmental crisis, the climate crisis is. Is very of a profound spiritual crisis in our relationship with life itself. It's a profound social justice crisis that the people who are harmed by environmental degradation are at first and worst are the people living in poverty and oppression and on the margins. That's where these pipelines go. That's where the pollution is. That's where the nuclear plants are. These are the people who suffer the most. Their kids have gas masks on all day long at school before the rest of us had to wear masks. So we, very early on in the Pachamama alliance, creative moments, we realized that we wanted to create something much more holistic, much more comprehensive. Because the indigenous people told us our job was to change the dream of the modern world. And that dream is a trance that has us not in relation not only to the earth and other species, but with each other. So Van came into the picture and was really, really helpful. He didn't make us wrong. He didn't accuse us of anything. He brought in his way of seeing and being and helped us design the programs in a way that we would address mass incarceration. A primary commitment of his to abolish mass incarceration. To really talk in a way that didn't make people wrong about racism. Like, it's scary to talk about it, but to bring it up, not be afraid of it, but to bring it to the surface so that we all own it, no matter what color our skin is. So it was really an important part of the creation of the Pachamam Alliance's transformational educational programs so that we weren't working on some track that was incomplete and blind and clueless and another piece of the trance. And I'll just say, you know, Jack, because I know you were trained to lead it. That and you incorporate it in the training of creating people to lead the Awakening the dream or changing the dream program, which was our response to the request to change the dream. We realized that the people designing it, we couldn't wake people up before we woke ourselves up. We needed to be awake enough to point to the trance that we were into. And. And Van really woke us up and woke himself up actually in his own way, because people of color have. They're part of the trance, too, in their own way. We all woke up in creating a program to wake people up. So that's what happened.

Well, I remember he said something like, you know, if you want to talk to me, go read these books, and once you've read them, come back and we'll talk. And you did.

Yes, that's right. I forgot about that. Yes.

Yeah, I just thought that was great that you didn't. You took the challenge. You did it, and that's what. Move it forward because you're willing to be awakened. Explain what the Pachamama Alliance. We get what it's about because you said, but they're like phrases, you know, spiritually, you know, fulfilling and environmentally sustainable and all that kind of stuff. But didn't go back to the beginnings of it a little bit, because I think that's pretty amazing a story. And then talk about how it's evolved and, you know, the rainforest part of it and more than that, the wisdom that comes from that to the north, and there's so much richness in all of that. If you would.

Yeah. Well, I was. I was very devoted to ending world hunger. I was one of the executives of something called the Hunger Project. And we had made a very, very bold and. And powerful worldwide commitment to ending world hunger. And I thought that would be my work for the rest of my life or the end of hunger, whichever came first. And I was managing the. The volunteer and. And staff operations in 57 countries. So I was very, very, very stretched. And we had, you know, to give you the kind of magnitude of the Hunger project, we had 200,000 volunteers in the United States alone, another 40,000 volunteers in Bangladesh, another 75,000 in India. So we're talking big numbers here. Lots and lots of people who relied on the messaging that I was responsible for to keep them ignited and inspired and moving forward on ending world hunger. So I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I had three children, too, so that was kind of a big job. And my husband Bill was very successful. And, you know, I was supposed to be one of those wives that was at his side. So I had. I didn't have a free second. And I got invited to go to Ecuador. Sorry, go to Guatemala to help out a friend who was a donor with my friend John Perkins, who was another friend who was trained as a shaman and had been in the Ecuadorian Amazon in. When he was a young man in the Peace Corps, and he had been trained in shamanism, and he had a Very deep bond with the Shuar people. And in this Guatemala trip that I took to do a favor for a friend, we were invited to see a shaman. And at that time, this is 1994, I never really. I didn't know how to spell shaman. I'd never been with a shaman. I was all about ending world hunger. I was all about sub Saharan Africa, India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, you know, Ghana, Senegal. That was my world. I wasn't. I didn't speak Spanish. I wasn't thinking about Central or South America. I wasn't thinking about the environment or anything. 1994. And in this shamanic ceremony which took place in the middle of the night, I was captivated, mesmerized, and literally transformed by the shaman's voice. The drumming, the fire, the crackling of the fire, the incredible process he took us through when he told us to lay around the fire with our feet towards the fire like a wagon wheel, 12 of us, and told us to journey. He's. He's drumming, whistling and chanting. And I'm lying there thinking, I'm just going to take a little nap, because it was midnight when we started. And then I started to have these quivers in my arms. And my right arm seemed to turn into a wing, as did my left. I started to feel something hard growing on my face. I had to fly. I couldn't lie there for one more second. And I began to fly up into the starry night sky. No moon, Very, very clear night sky, sky. And eventually I realized when I looked down that this great bird and I could hear the shaman's voice, I could see myself down on the ground, yet I had become some sort of a gigantic bird. And when I looked down again, I was flying. And it was dawning over a vast, vast, vast, unending forest of green. And it was so magnificent, so beautiful, so incredibly blissful. And then these disembodied faces of men with orange geometric face paint like this on their faces, and yellow, red and black feather crowns on their heads started floating up from the forest floor, calling to me, this bird, in a strange tongue, and then disappearing back in the forest and then floating up again and then disappearing back in the forest as I was flying in slow motion over this bird, vast forest. And this was this, you know, kind of divine encounter that was kind of mesmerizing, hypnotic, extremely moving and beautiful with these faces, this encounter with me, the bird and these faces and these, their voices, which were in a strange language. And then I heard this big bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, loud drumbeat which was the call by the shaman and to come back to the circle. And I sat up and I remember realizing, my God, I'm. I'm not a bird. I'm. I don't have a beak. I'm. I'm me. What was that? Wow. And now those. The fire was down to embers, and the shaman asked each of us to share what had happened for us. And I shared what I shared with you, and all of us had become some sort of an animal. It was a very, very powerful shaman. There was no medicine, by the way. This was just his voice and a drum. Just amazing. And when it got to John Perkins, who was sitting next to him translating, John told a vision very much like mine. And it was sort of stunning, like, how could he have the same thing that I did? So then the shaman completed the ritual, dismissed everyone but John and I, and told us we were being called, communicated to. It wasn't a vision. It was a communication that we had received from people who were looking for first contact, indigenous people. And I thought, what? I don't know anything about this. I have to. I gotta go back to Africa and end world hunger. And John Perkins, however, he said, lynn, I know who they are. I know where they are. They're the Achuar people in Ecuador. I was just with Shuar before I came here to Guatemala. The Shuar welcomed a hunting party from the Achuar who came into their camp and said, we're ready for contact. We're going to start dreaming people to us who can help us understand the modern world before the danger comes, because we know contact is inevitable, so we're going to create it before it happens to us in ways we can't control. And then after that, I just left Guatemala thinking, I don't have anything to do with that. That's not my work. And I went to Ghana. And then one more chapter of this story, if you don't mind. I was in a meeting in Ghana, in Accra, Ghana, the capital, at a. At a conference room on the main floor of the NO hotel. And there were five Ghanaian men, three Ghanaian women having a board meeting. And I was sitting in on the Hunger Project Ghana board meeting, as a representative from the global office. And at a certain point in this wonderful conversation, the men, the. The Ghanaian men and people in Ghana have very dark skin, blue black faces. They're just beautiful people. The men, five men, started having orange geometric face paint appear on their black faces. And it was like stunning and terrifying and no one said anything about it. So I started to think oh my God, I'm going crazy. So I went to the ladies room, splashed my face with cold water, went back in, everything was fine. Everybody was still talking. They knew I'd just gone to the ladies room. And then it happened again. And I burst into tears. And everyone said, what's wrong? Even the guys with the face pain. And I just said, I'm sick. I'm feeling very, very sick. I need to go back to the United States. I have too many time zones, too many countries. I need to go home. And so I did. I went home. I left and went to the airport and flew to Frankfurt, to New York, to the San Francisco. When I got home, I was embarrassed to even tell Bill. I thought it was going crazy. But the faces did not stop. And so I tried to reach my friend John Perkins, the man who had become a shaman, knew the Ecuadorian Amazon, knew the Shuar people, but he was in the Amazon. I couldn't reach him. And this is 1994. No cell phones, no Internet. So, you know, yikes. I didn't. I couldn't reach him. Then he finally comes home. He says they're waiting for us. We need to read them. 12 people from the modern world, including you and me, Lynn. People with global voice, people who have open hearts, people who know the rainforest is critical to the future of life, people who, who know indigenous people have a huge contribution to make to. To the world right now. And people who will respect the ways of the shaman. So we picked 10 other people, including my husband Bill, and we went down to the Ecuadorian Amazon just as you've gone yourself. And. But this was the first encounter. And we flew in little tiny planes out into the Ottawar territory and were dropped off on a dirt landing spot. And when we were all there, all 12 of us, they came out of the forest with their orange geometric face paint, their yellow and black feather crowns and spears. Actually remember the spears. And. And we. They loaded us in canoes and we told us where to camp. And that was the beginning of an encounter, a profound encounter with indigenous people that completely changed my life. And that's when they said, we need modern world friends to understand the modern world, to help us with it. And we also need to. To tell you that the big job is to. Is to change the dream of the modern world. Will you be our partners? And that was the beginning of the Pachamama alliance. And the word Pachamama, sorry this story's so long. Pachamama means Mother Earth or the Earth, the sky, the universe, and all time. And it's an alliance between the indigenous people of the Amazon and conscious, committed people in the modern world for the sustainability of life. So that's the story.

That's beautiful.

I was trying to tell a short version, but I don't have one.

That's okay. It's okay. It's phenomenal. Because what I love about it, in a macro way, is how you did get called. And I think all of us get called at some point by something, and we feel it as a yearning, as a desire, as a irritation that occurs, something we're either unhappy with or something we feel drawn to express or to communicate or to be part of. And you got it in a way that's a little more dramatic than most of us, but you responded to that. And when you go back to your book and you talk about living a committed life, which you were living with the Hunger Project and then with the Pachamama alliance, you know, can you extract that concept of, like, you know, we're all living in this time of evolution. The. The planet's evolving consciousness is evolving. You know, we're being challenged with, you know, climate change, with the mass extinctions we read about. I just read something recently about New York is sinking with a million buildings on it at the same time, the sea levels rising. Lots of people are, you know, things are going on, and people realize we can't keep going the way we're going, or something's going to not be good. Relate that back to the. All of us who are. Maybe we all won't become such an activist as you are, but. But, you know, you even told a story, I think it was you, about during the pandemic, there was a woman in San Francisco who decided to bake cookies or something for the neighbors. You remember that? Because I love that story about how it represented what you might call a normal person who wasn't necessarily called to go to Washington and change the world, but by responding to that inner urge, made a difference.

Yeah, Well, I think everybody who's born today who's on this planet now has a role to play. It's not necessarily a big role or a small role. It's just your role. And if you play it, your life will have the kind of meaning you're dreaming of. And this calling that I received was quite dramatic, but really, everybody receives callings all the time, I think. You know, it's almost like if you take what breaks your heart and what makes your heart sing and put those two together, you start to realize what your life is really ultimately about. And my book is really about letting people know that there's the possibility. And I can't prove it, but I just recommend it that we have the opportunity to live a life beyond the life that, the small life that we live just for ourselves. So a life that's committed to something larger than our own life starring us, if I can put it that way. And you know, your life starring you or my life starring me. You know, you, you, you're into that for a while, but that becomes boring after a while. And then you get all caught in your thoughts and am I good enough? Am I thin enough? Am I tall enough? Am I smart enough? Am I impressive enough? All of those thoughts about doubt and insufficiency can take over your life. And then you end up sort of working on yourself, but not in service of something greater. And that's when you get kind of, you know, navel gazing. And, you know, it's. So you become very self absorbed, or you can be. Not everybody is. I don't mean that. But when you have a purpose larger than your own life starring you, it lifts you out of the negative conversations. They don't go away altogether, but they move to the background. And your commitment to make a difference with your life moves to the foreground. And you get into a kind of action that calms down those voices. You don't have time to entertain them anymore because you're busy making a difference with your life. And you're an example of that. I'm sure the people listening can think of many people that they admire, that they like, that are like that. But I say each person listening is like that. You know, whether you're a waitress or a bus driver or a kindergarten teacher, you have the opportunity to make a difference with every person you meet. And, you know, I like to think about this, this thing that Mother Teresa said. I love this quote. She said, the unadulterated love of one person can nullify the hatred of millions. And that phrase really, really inspires me. Because even just loving fully, that changes the world. That really does if you're doing it in service of a better world rather than just because it makes you feel good. But it does make you feel good. So, you know, I, I talk about, you know, a kindergarten teacher who, you know, was only going to teach for three or four years and then she was going to go on to bigger, better things because that wasn't really an important job. But then she realized that being with people, human beings, when they're five and six years old, teaching them to Read and write. Teaching them to know who they are, having them feel seen and appreciated and loved and heard and valued can impact their entire life. Rather than just getting through the workbooks and making sure that you do what you're supposed to do for the board of Education, no, to be the kind of kindergarten teacher that leaves an imprimatur of love and caring and appreciation and seeing them and you know, I get you, I see you on the, on the hearts and souls of five and six year olds that changes life forever. That goes on and on and on for future generations. I say, and you know, especially if you, if you live in that context, if you declare, I'm going to be the kind of kindergarten teacher that these kids never forget, not because I don't want to be forgotten, but because they felt so seen and loved by me that it healed them of any previous trauma and it gave them a taproot for the rest of their life. So a waitress can do that by the way she waits on a table or a waiter. A bus driver can do that by the way. They create a vibe, an environment, an ecosystem of acceptance on their bus. So it doesn't need to be ending world hunger, saving the Amazon, you know, having every single person read your books. It can be just whoever you are in service of something larger than your own life starring you.

You know, I remember two things you talk about this. It was a story of a bus driver in Connecticut. Friend of mine used to take the bus. And it was just a normal bus, you know, you get on here and you get off downtown kind of thing. But it had one of those microphones like they do on a tour bus. And he would just tell jokes the whole time, all the way down. People would get on the bus, all bummed out to get off, all happy, smiling. And he was impacting all those people as a bus driver. And I remember, as you probably know, I started my career as a high school teacher in inner city school in Chicago. And a number of years ago, I got home and I opened my luggage and there was a note inside my suitcase. And it said, if you're the same Jack Canfield who taught at Calumet High School, I want you to know that you changed my life. I'm now the supervisor in charge of all the baggage handling that goes on at o' Hare Airport. And I just want to say thank you. I mean, it was like, are you kidding me? So it's like you're saying about this teacher, you know, who is working with these little kids. It's so True. You know, the other thing I thought of someone once, there was a quote that said, how many apples are in one seed? And you think about it, you plant this apple seed, it grows a tree. The tree grows 100 and more apples. All those apples have like, you know, four or five seeds. All those seeds have more trees that can grow more. And eventually there's like a million apples because of one seed. Like, you know, the old story of Johnny Appleseed going out and, you know, planting all those apple trees across America.

Exactly.

So you never know how much you touch somebody when you just show up and be present and love them and be yourself, loving you, expressing you. I think that's the thing that I think often people forget is that when you're you authentically in the space of other people, something transformational happens and.

Right.

And it's wonderful. Talk about, you know, you talked about the achwar, and when I heard you speak in January, the Transformational Leadership Council conference, you talked about one of the prophecies and had to do with birds. Would you share that? I thought this was profound.

Yeah. Well, this prophecy, I love it that we're in the 21st century, and I know it's tough and we've got breakdowns galore, political breakdowns, health breakdowns, education breakdowns, climate crisis. It's like the world's kind of a mess. But another way of looking at what's happening is through the eyes of the prophecies about the 21st century. And let me just say that it's helpful for me at least to realize that this is the first century of the third millennium. So we're actually at the beginning of something, and we're only 23 or 22 and a half years in not even 22 and a half years into the third millennium, if you think of it that way. So the first century of the third millennium has been prophesied, the 21st century, by many, many, many ancient, ancient cultures. And one of them is not as ancient, but has a beautiful prophecy. And it's also been validated by the Cherokee, which is an ancient culture. The Baha' I people say that the bird of humanity has two great wings. And I hope you can see my arms here. I'll move back and. Male wing, a male wing and a female wing. And for hundreds of years, the male wing of the bird of humanity has been fully extended, fully expressed, and the female wing of the bird of humanity has not yet fully unfurled or fully extended, sort of flowed in a little bit, while the male wing has been Fully expressed, fully extended, and has become very muscular and has become almost a little bit overdeveloped and has actually, to keep the bird of humanity afloat, has become somewhat violent. And so the bird of humanity has been flying in circles for hundreds of years. It's been afloat, but in circles. And the 21st century is when the female wing in the bird of humanity, the female wing in all of us, in women and men, will fully extend itself. And thus the male wing in all of us, can relax a little bit. And the bird of humanity, instead of flying in circles, will soar for the first time in hundreds and hundreds of years. And I love that prophecy because it doesn't make the male wrong and the female right. It just explains that the feminine has been not yet fully expressed. And when it is in all of us, in you, in me, the male, in you and me, particularly men, but also women, can relax a little bit and will soar. I love that prophecy. So thank you for asking me about that.

No, it's so beautiful. It makes such sense when you hear it and when you see it with your beautiful wings there. From lying there in front of a fire with wings to now being with your wings going around. I love it.

I think it was a bird in the. In another lifetime.

There you go. There you go. A cardinal, because you're wearing red. But I'm curious. Let's go back to one of your other books for a moment. You wrote a book called the Soul of Money, which I had the good fortune to write the forward for. And you, you make a distinction, because we talked about sufficiency earlier. You make a distinction between abundance and sufficiency. And there's so much talk in the human potential movement about abundance consciousness. And everybody wants abundance, and. And so can you talk about the distinction between abundance and sufficient and why that's so important for us to get right now?

Yes. I learned this from Buckminster Fuller, the great Buckminster Fuller, many years ago. And Bucky said that he really distinguished. And I had never even thought of this before, this distinction of enough. And in consumer culture, we're so brainwashed to want more and more and more of everything. And it comes from a mindset that I call the condition or the mindset of scarcity. And the mindset of scarcity is kind of built in now to the way we think. It's not like we look out and say, oh, that's not enough. And that's not enough. It's before discernment, before thinking. It's almost like the frame of Reference is it's not enough. There is not enough. We don't have enough. There is not enough. It's not enough there. It's like a framework from which we think rather than what we think now. And that really comes from the economic system and the consumer culture and the commercial culture that it's kind of like there's three toxic myths, I think, that make up this mindset, the mindset of scarcity. There's not enough. More is better. More of anything and everything is better. And that's just the way that it is. And we're all kind of sucked into this mentality. And Buddha said the source of all suffering is a lie. And I say that that's a lie about the way we see the world. And that's the source of such suffering in our relationship with money that we've gotten sucked into or kind of, you know, brainwashed to think there's not enough to go around. And someone's going to be left out. And it can't be me and mine. So I have to. To get way more than my need, than I need, or than we need to make sure me and mine are not among those that are left out because there's not enough to go around because it's scarce. The. It is kind of like everything. Time, money, love, vacation, sex, you know, everything. There's not enough, Someone's going to be left out. I want to make sure it's not me and mine. So I'm going to take way more than that need. And then someday I'll help the people who are left out. But I have to have way more first, so I'm secure. That's the mindset. And then more is better. More, more, more, more, More is better. I mean, it's almost obscene to me what CEOs are being paid now. I mean, it is obscene. It's not right that anybody should make that kind of money. It's not right that anybody should really be billionaires. I work with some of them, so I. Forgive me, but I don't think it's right because it's not appropriate. No one needs that kind of money. But let me go on to the three toxic myths, really, if you clear them away just for the moment. This mindset of scarcity, what's waiting for all of us is the. What I call the radical, surprising truth of sufficiency of enough. And enough is distinct from abundance. So that's really what you're asking me. Enough is being met by the universe with exactly what you need, exactly when you need It. And that actually happens all the time. That's actually what is happening all the time. I say enough is sufficiency. It's not actually an amount of anything. It's a way of seeing the truth about the world. And there's a principle of sufficiency that I write about that I kind of made up, but I think it's true. I call it the radical surprising truth. And that's if you let go of trying to get more of what you don't really need, which is what we're brainwashed to want more of, it frees up oceans of energy to turn and make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, when you nourish what you already have, when you appreciate what you already have, and when you share what you already have, it expands. And I say this on every podcast, so I know people have heard this before, but the short version of that is what you appreciate, appreciates. And I really, really mean that. I think that's the truth of life. And so it's a radical view. I'm not against abundance, but I say that sufficiency is something that's precious. We race so fast towards more. We race right past enough. We don't even know it happened. It doesn't live in a consumer culture. That's why we have an environmental crisis. That's why we have an obesity crisis. That's why we have an addiction crisis. People think that more is the answer to anything and everything, and it's just not. We have enough, and we are enough. And the scarcity mentality and the chase for more even gets into our way of seeing ourselves. So we. It's not just there isn't enough, and there. There's not enough. It's not enough. It starts to be, I'm not enough, when in fact, you are enough exactly the way you are. And when you share that, that's when your life expands. That's what you teach. When you know that you're enough, then it overflows into natural abundance. And all you want to do is share what you have. So abundance isn't a bad thing. It's just when it's in the mindset of scarcity, it's excess and landfills and garbage and storage. When it's in the context of sufficiency, it's natural abundance designed to share with other people. And so that's a kind of a short form of the soul of money book.

No, no, no. But I so get it, you know, because it's like it's so much damage is done to the world because people feel that they're not enough. And so I have to have more than enough to be enough. And then what happens is you never really solve the problem. Can't get enough of what you don't really need, as you said. And people are searching, but they're searching outside themselves for what can only be fulfilled inside themselves. I was. I quoted earlier today to somebody, a quote I read from Dr. Pankash Naram, who said, I don't come here to teach you. I come here to love you. The love will teach you. And the idea is that you are enough as you are. And then Anita Moorjani, in her book Dying to Be Me, said, my life changed when I realized God wasn't a being, but God was a state of being. And when we realized that we are that state of being, that we're in that state of being, being that which we are, then what happens is we are enough. And then you stop this crazy rat race, if you will, to get that which will never fulfill you. It's so, at some level, it's so freaking simple, but on another level, it's so endemic, as you said, you know, we're in it. It's like the fish don't know they're in water because the water is just all they've ever known. And we've all grown up since the 1930s with this. Make more, have more, be more to be secure so when the next crash comes, we don't have to jump out of a building. And I think too, the other thing you write about is that when you appreciate, you said what you appreciate, appreciates. And I know for me, I've been doing some work with Esther Hicks and Abraham that she channels and she teaches this thing called a rampage of appreciation, where you just take five minutes and you walk around and you just appreciate everything you see. I appreciate who made this microphone so we can have this. I appreciate Bill Gates, who. Not Bill Gates, but into the whole computer revolution. Steve Jobs, who created the Apple computer that I'm speaking to you on right now, the rim light that's there. I appreciate the carpeting that makes this room sound better than the, you know, just go on and on and on. You do that for five minutes, you almost start to cry. Because what happens is we don't appreciate what we already have. And when you start to appreciate we already have, you realize you do have enough. You know, like, I could never. I never have to work again if I don't want to. So I'VE got enough, you know, so my work now doesn't come from trying to fill that void, but from sharing from the overflow. I have both of my ideas, my joy, my love, my relationships with people like you, etc. That I can share with people and in life becomes wonderful. It's a miracle every day. It's like I live in a lot of joy. It's not that things don't happen, you know, there's challenges and so forth. I did get Covid, you know, whatever. But the point is that, you know, I lived through it, and here we are.

Yeah, I love, I love the idea of that I shared with you at tlc that the indigenous people say Covid was in many ways feedback from the mother. Everything comes from the earth, including Covid. And that it. That we've been, at some level of our being as a species, at a primordial level, been longing and waiting for something sacred enough to disrupt the way we were living, because we knew it wasn't quite right. And so we, we. We can be grateful that this thing came and disrupted the way we were living so we could rethink, reimagine, reset, rejuvenate, redesign our lives. And that I. I call it morning sickness. For a species that's pregnant with a new way of being. And morning sickness is not pleasant. You throw up, you feel sick until you find out you're having a baby, and then it's kind of exciting that you're throwing up. It's kind of exciting that you feel sick because you've got this vision. And that wonderful phrase of Michael Beck was, pain pushes until vision pulls. You know, we're in pain now, but we need a vision. We need to know that we're being reborn as a species and we're recreating what it means to be human. And that's your work. And you do it so well, Jack, that we need to rethink what it means to be a human being. So we relate to each other, to the other species on this planet, the Earth, and the long term future of life in a new way. And I think that's what's happening. And we're getting the feedback we need to push us to do that.

No, it really is true. I think what happened is when all of us cocooned for a year or two, we had a lot of time to think about things and to start to go like, you know, I don't really like that commute to work. I don't really like working in an office building where the kid there's no fresh air. And it's all, you know, these weird lights that affect my beingness. And I'm living in this. All this pollution. I don't get enough time to be with my family. You know, all these kind of things started to occur to people. People started, you know, someone once said when the pandemic hit, you either became a hunk, a chunk or a drunk, meaning you either started working out, you started drinking too much, or you started working out and you got fit, you know, but the point being. Or you ate too much and you got fat. But I think what really happened is a lot of people got time for introspection and began to realize, wait a second, I've been so busy, I couldn't even feel how unhappy I was and how out of balance things are in terms of family and community. And. And we started missing each other in a way that we didn't when we couldn't see each other. And we started communicating in deeper ways. And people wrote books they've been thinking about for a long time because they had time. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. And I love the idea of pregnancy, you know, and birthing. You know, I've not birthed children, but I've been there at the birth of two of my children. I took a midwifeing class and actually learned how to be a midwife. And we had two homes.

You did?

Yeah. By the way, the Chicago Policeman's Manual for Emergency Childbirth is the best midwife ing book on the planet because they teach you what you have to do in an emergency. If you are a policeman and you have to deliver.

Is that what you took? Do you take that one?

Well, I took a course with a local midwife in. This was in Massachusetts with my oldest son, Oren. But the point I'm making is that when both of my wives went through. One went through Lamaze, one went through Bradley, their courses that teach you how to give birth more naturally and how to breathe and all that. And when you know what's happening and you know that you're going to hit that point where you're going to give me an epidural. I don't care about natural childbirth, that you're getting really close to where it's going to come out and it's like, yes, that the pain is there, but if you know what's coming, you're less likely to resist it and less likely to fight against it, more likely to cooperate with it. And I think what your work is doing in your book does. And Pachamama alliance does is it's helping people to kind of have a Lamaze class for the evolution of our. Our species, our planet, and so forth. So I think it's a very cool thing. I want to just switch the focus for a minute. You. You know, make it a little more personal, and it has to do with birthing and mothering and all that.

So.

You mentioned you're the mother of children. You have your wife to Bill. A lot of people talk about wanting to make more of a difference, but they talk about, you know, I've got my family, I've got my job, I've got my husband, I've got. You managed to get through all that. Were there times when it was, like, seemingly untenable or difficult or challenging or you're getting pushback or. How did you manage all that?

Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. There were many times they still. I still have them, but when my kids were really little, it was when I kind of got swept off my feet by the Hunger Project, the founding of the Hunger Project and realizing I could make a difference with any real hunger. But it was totally inconvenient because I was a substitute teacher, and then I was teaching. I was doing all kinds of stuff. And then my kids were 3, 5, and 7, so they really needed me. And Bill was traveling a lot, and, you know, it was just, like, completely inconvenient to get involved in any world hunger, but I couldn't help it. So there was a. You know, this is a story that I. I was just going to help out a little bit with the beginning of the Hunger Project. And then, you know, three years later, I've been in Ethiopia. I missed the soccer championships. I missed the PTA meeting, the parent teacher conference, Spring Sing. I didn't make the plane from New York to San Francisco, and I missed the this, that, and the other thing. And I was just, like, a complete, complete wreck. I remember once being in Ethiopia, and I realized it was snack day in third grade, and I was in charge. Oh, my God. Oh, what am I gonna do? So anyway, I. I had a. I felt so guilty, and I'm Catholic. I was raised Catholic, and so I'm. I have expertise in guilt. That's one of the things that you learn as a Catholic. Get really good at guilt. So I felt so guilty that when I was in Ethiopia, I thought I should be home. When I was home, home, I thought I should be in Ethiopia. When I was at the un I thought I should be at the high school. When I was at the high school, I Thought I should be at the un. I was always. I was never where I was. I was a wreck. So yes is the answer. And. And this is what happened. I wanted to share this story. My. My kids were probably 6, 8, and 10 by the time I realized I can't. I gotta. I gotta tell them the truth because I'm not going to stop, but I can tell. I can't stop. And so we sat on our family room floor in a big circle. And I'm crying, and Bill is there, and our three children, Billy, Summer and Zachary. And my middle daughter, Summer. You've met her, she's the funny one. She's the comedian in our family. And she was. They were 6, 8, and 10. So she's 8, I think she was 8. And I said, you know, I'm so sorry and I miss everything and I need your permission to keep going. I know I'm ending real world hunger for everybody in the. In the world, and I'm really doing it for you, and I need your permission to keep going because I know I can't stop. I'm totally dedicated to this now, and I'm so sorry. I'm missing so much and I'm not here. And Summer said the greatest thing. She said. She was. She was 8. She said, mom, if you can end world hunger, we don't want you taking us to the orthodontist. Someone else can do that. And she said it just like that. And we all burst out laughing. And. And then they gave me their blessing and they said, you know, we're so proud of you. We get, you know, we have people from Ghana and Senegal in the guest room on vacation. Some people go to Disneyland, we go to Micronesia. We have the coolest life. We have the coolest stuff to bring to show and tell, you know where. And they just gave me their love, their permission, their blessing, and build it too. And from then on, I still had to manage my hither and yon angst. But I ended up being much more present wherever I was when I was there. And that's what they wanted. They just wanted when I was home. They wanted me to be with them. And I let go of everything else when I was home, and I started to be where I was when I was there. And that was the gift of my daughter and the mom, we don't need you taking us to the orthodontist. You know, it was so funny, but it was so true. She really meant that. And I'm so grateful that I learned that. And I learned it the hard way. And I still get stretched, and I still think, oh, my God, I can't do all this stuff. But on the other hand, I know that this is my calling. And if I'm being true to myself, that's the best model I can give my kids.

That's great. That's great. And I do think that's true. When you model following your passions, your heart, your calling, you're. You're teaching the kids that that's what they should be doing as well. And that's so much more important than a lot of the stuff that gets passed on from parents to kids. I love that. As you sit here in this moment of time and I ask you the question, if you were to say, what's the greatest moment of your life or the greatest achievement that you can remember or you're most proud of, what would that be?

Oh, my God. I didn't know you were going to ask me that. It's good you don't prep people with that question.

I like it to be spontaneous, I would say.

My family. My husband Bill and I have been married for 56 years. He's the love of my life still, and we're partners now in our work. And for years, we were on two tracks. I was doing ending world hunger, and he was doing business. And when the Pachamama alliance was born, and we were there together when it was born, as I shared in my story, we began working together and we were grown up enough and evolved enough to be able to do it well. And so together, we are creating miracles, real miracles, for Pachamama alliance, for the sacred headwaters of the Amazon, for really looking at the world that we all want. And we're doing that in a way that honors our children and our grandchildren rather than is at the expense of them. So I would say my family as a living, in a context large enough to include my family and my work as one whole, rather than competing commitments and doing that with the love of my life, Bill Twist.

Beautiful. Well, Vegas odds makers always say, can Lynn Twist get through a talk without crying? The odds are very much against.

No, never. Especially with you.

Today we get it again. No, I love. I love how open you are with your heart and how vulnerable and transparent, authentic you are. So thank you for that answer.

And I would say working with indigenous people, I mean, I have so many answers, so it's. I have to do a P.S. working with Indigenous people now in the Amazon rainforest to preserve the most important ecosystem on Earth, the lungs of the planet and the hydrological heart of the earth that we. That we have that privilege. And, you know, it's not a done deal, but we're on the path. And I'm. And you've been helpful for that, and millions of people have. And that. That will be. Not my accomplishment, will be theirs, but that. That I've had the privilege of working with them and Bill and Belen and the other people that we love so much to. To make that kind of a difference is. Is. It's just extraordinary and such a privilege. Yeah.

Well, thank you very much for joining us. I will refer people to the Pachamama Alliance. You can go to the website. It's P A C H A pacha. And then mama m a m a.org can learn more about that and work and Bill's work there, and then also the Soul of money dot org. Soul of money dot org. And I really encourage you to do that and learn more about what they're doing, because it affects all of us and it will inspire you to be more of who you really are as well. So thank you one more time for joining us, Lyn. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Jack. And thank you for the great friend you are to me. And so many. I mean, I know there's so many people would call you their best teacher, their most important ally in many cases. Many people would say you're their best friend. And I honor all of them, and I'm one of them. And I'm so, so grateful to you. And thank you for having me on your podcast and for bringing out the best in everybody, including me. So you're. You're a. You're a bodhisattva. You're a teacher, you're a mentor, you're a mensch. I don't know what that is, but I think it's good. And you're my friend, and I love you very much.

And that's everybody's homework assignment. Look up Bodhisattva and mensch in the dictionary.

All right. Okay.

Thank you, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Be sure to join us next time where I'll be in conversation with another author, expert, thought leader, change agent, talking about how to live a happier, more fulfilling, more successful, more sustainable, more socially. Just all those wonderful things. We've been talking about life. And we look forward to seeing you next time. Till then, take good care of yourself and anyone you care about.

Ra.