Philosophy, Spirituality & Royalty | Ajume Wingo

The beautiful thing about The Perfect Walk is, as we're talking about, you can learn things conceptually by hearing or observing, and then you can learn things through experience, which I believe is much more powerful.

A Cameroonian political and social philosopher currently serving as an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ajumi Wingo. One of the biggest things in life is fear. One thing is that Americans, particularly in the academy, They don't know how to celebrate joy. They don't know how to be happy anymore.

I wrote this book because there's tons of books people can read, but this book gives a practice that you can do and get an experience, which I think can help a lot more. And that's my practice that I use in the morning. What's up, guys? Welcome to the Zen Hard Podcast. Man, this is an incredible episode. I can't wait for you to listen. I have with me Ajumi Wingo, and we went deep Not only is he a professor of philosophy at CU Boulder, he's also part of the royal family at Nso, which is a kingdom in the northwest region of Cameroon. And we go real deep, guys, in changing your life, in spirituality, in philosophy. Uh, this is a good one. Strap in, listen up, and enjoy. Well, this has been— this is one of those, uh, conversations where I had to stop myself from asking questions before the podcast because I didn't want to ask all the questions. I got tons of questions. Very interesting scenario here. I want to know, first of all, you, you went from Cameroon, from a kingdom. Now you're teaching philosophy in Colorado and you were teaching philosophy in Berkeley. How did you end up going from, you know, living there and being part of something like that to ending, you know, ending up here and, you know, becoming a professor?

Wonderful. Well, I'm happy to be here. I left my kingdom mainly— I was born, I grew up in the palace. And so, and out of curiosity, and the yearn for knowledge, to know more. And it was much more geared towards going back to my kingdom and making my kingdom and my country a better place. So I started my education from a Baptist primary school. And then I was trained by a Bedouin, a Bedouin who came to my kingdom as a stranger from another part of Cameroon. So he came in and somehow my family find it better that he train me. He was actually called Malam Gargary, which is the invincible teacher.

Invincible teacher.

Invincible teacher. So he was my tutor, more or less like a private teacher. And that's how my journey started. And he was a Muslim. And so I went to the madrasa because of that and did some Islamic school. And when I graduated, then I went back to the capital of the kingdom, which is Kimbo. Kimbo actually derived from the word Kemet because we originally migrated from Kemet. The name has gone from Kemet to Kimbo and then now to Kumbu. So I went back to the capital where I was from and then went to a Baptist school and actually went to a Bible school for 2 years before continuing my school. Then, then to secondary school to university in Cameroon, actually to a high school called Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology. It was meant for training elites who will be ruling the future Cameroon.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So I left from there and went to the university. I'm from university. I went to University of California, Berkeley to pursue my education there. From Berkeley, I went to University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison to Harvard for my postdoc, and then Harvard I started teaching. I taught at Emerson College, at Clark University, at the University of Massachusetts Boston before moving to University of Colorado Boulder.

So education has been a huge part of your life.

It's been a huge part of my life, the yen to know. You know, the yearning to know more than anything else.

And so you studied the Muslim religion and the Christian religion or the Baptist religion first?

Yes, I'm Christian. Yes.

And were there— I'm curious, does that tie into things you've learned in philosophy from a religious standpoint or?

Yes, of course. That influenced my— it influenced my background. In my study of philosophy, to talk about Christianity. Christianity form a very big background of Western philosophy.

Okay.

Yeah, and Islam also form a very big background because basically these are Abrahamic spirituality, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So that gave me some background. I think that's the only background I had coming here, nothing else.

Yeah, and so what type of, you know, people go to church or they go to the mosque, and a lot of people go to a church and they hear the words, but they don't live by the words they hear. You know, maybe they leave church and then they're leaving the parking lot and they're honking at people and, you know, calling them asshole, whatever it may be, and they're not living what they're learning in the church. What type of things did you find were similar between the different religions you studied?

Were—

was there like kind of a singular message that you think, or—

uh, you know, I started with my own spirituality, which is, uh, I, I call it spirituality of vitality.

Okay.

And that spirituality is my own indigenous— that's the spirituality I gave birth to me. That I have that together. And so with that background, I was able to go now into— then I went to Christianity and to Islam. And I think they have one thing in common. And as a philosopher, I have to speak as a philosopher. I think one of the things that they all do is they try to answer a basic human question that every human being asks everywhere. You know, why am I here?

What is life?

What's the purpose of life? What is the point? Yeah. Why does it matter? You know, why is there— you know, why do good things happen to bad people? Why do bad things happen to good people? I think— and how do we even begin to think about this? When someone die, I mean, people stand there, they wonder, you know, Why is life absurd? The absurdity of it all. I think they all spirituality, they have this in common. Then of course, then you have the Judaism, they take their own path. Christianity took their own, takes on Islam, and then my own spirituality. Of course, the Abrahamic spirituality, they are religious, religious in the sense that you know, they have— they require people coming together and they have practices.

Yeah, frameworks, things that they do.

And my own spirituality is basically a way of life. Yeah.

Well, can you elaborate more on your spirituality of vitality and what that means?

The spirituality of vitality is still the same, is still the question is the The question that is there to answer is really, what is the purpose? What's the meaning of life? Why does it matter?

Now, do you think when you search for that answer, do you think it's a search outward, or is it a search inward, or is it a combination of both?

One of the things that at one point I have— after spending a lot of time here, I've gone back home, and I wanted to relate what I've learned to the king, and I was trying more— we call the Fon, His Royal Highness, Sembenglo I. He is the ruling king now. And when I went, I was very proud of what I've learned. I've learned stuff, Western democracy. I've learned all of this. So when I was trying to relate it to him and to the counselors that were present, So I took time to narrate to them. And when I finished, as I was narrating, they looked baffled. And when I finished, the king called me. He said, Ajumi. When I answered, he said, you have everything. What? You have everything.

Okay.

And meaning that You know, what is possible, what is not, whatever will be, what is, what has been is inside you, it's not outside of you. So, in our spirituality there is looking inward. It doesn't mean I don't look outward, but more or less looking inward, the answers are all in you. For example, if you are walking along the road and you happen to encounter an elderly woman or a man. Normally, as a young person, you make way, and then the elderly woman or man will greet you, "Ayuma," which means "listen." And he might also say, "Ayenma," which means "look." When they say "listen," when they're asking you to look, they are not asking you to look what you are already seeing you. I mean, that's how you saw them. They are not asking to listen to what you are already listening. You already— you— that's how you hate him. They ask you to look inside of you. If you are baffled, if you are worried and you wondering what it is all about, first look inside of you.

And how would you tell someone who has an overly chatty mind that's judging everything all the time and it's hard to quiet themselves to even look inward, how would you tell someone to start to look inward?

Uh, it's a practice. I mean, you don't— you— and that's what spiritualities do, right? Like Judaism, like Christianity, like Islam. They find— they create a channel, they create a way that whereby when you have a child that is still small, they If you are in Judaism, you have bat mitzvah, you have, you know, you have the Sabbath, you have all of this. So in all of this there is— and then they sit on the table, they are debating. When they are debating, they are not— the idea is not just looking out. They are asking you questions and you are finding stuff from you and putting it out. Yes, there are ways to do this. And for someone who joined, let's say, spirituality new, There are always things that they say, do this, don't do that. Right. Do this, do— the whole thing is to orientate your gaze so that at some point you can look inside, to orientate your ears so sometimes you can listen to yourself. Yes, there are, I think these are very powerful. This question is a very powerful question and it is a question that for people who have asked for a long time. I mean, some of the time asking is to appreciate, is to appreciate the elusive nature of the answer, because that's why you ask.

It's very true. And as you go down the path, you start to have experiences, and you can build on those experiences.

There's kind of—

yes, and the experience and the journey is—

yeah.

you know, you get one of them.

Exactly. And it's very important to also realize that these are— these spiritualities, particularly Western spirituality like Islam, like Judaism, these are very powerful because one of the things that they do or that they did from the beginning, like Judaism, is to level people up. To lift people up, to empower people. You know, you have Moses with a bunch of slaves, you know, who they— all they know is saving people is— and the idea that they can now— they have the Ten Commandments that is not construed by Moses. Yeah. The idea that they can come together And the idea that they have rules that are coming from above is something very— that's how to lift people up. Islam was even much more so. Islam came in the desert with people who were roaming about, life expectancy very low, maybe 30, 40 years. The teeth fell off when you are probably around 13, 14 years old. Killing one another, fighting, and dying early. And the idea that Muhammad, the prophet, will come in and get people to pray 5 times a day, which will be equivalent to doing yoga, you know, 5 times a day. The idea that they'll get— they will prescribed dietary, the diet that people should be undertaking, you know, don't eat pork, don't do this, and the idea that they would even say don't drink alcohol.

Yep.

The idea that you wash your hands before prayers, and the idea that people come together, even the idea of saying people can lend money at no interest, that was really— and this was to everybody. The Christianity is the same way, Judaism same way. It lifted people up. Yeah. And therefore the idea— when I say this, I'm saying that, uh, these spiritualities, they are not, uh, to be taken for granted, right? It might be that later on then things start changing, and then you have people that use it that take over power because one of the things that Moses forget to do and that Muhammad would have forgotten to do, even Jesus was to, one of the things that they didn't realize that these are very powerful tools and that people can use it to do other things. So they didn't like US government create checks and balances and devolution of power and put them in tension so that no one can use it.

Yeah, so people don't access.

So they were unable to do that. But the one thing that they did do was distribute power and make sure that everybody had a piece of it. And that alone is a very big achievement, and it is an aspect of spirituality. Our own spiritual vitality is the idea of the vitality is physical, is intellectual. And one of the— there is a saying that I grew up with, which is that scoundrels or tyrants or bad people, they are like Nubian vultures. Yeah. You know, they don't have unlimited power. Right. So they look for signs of death. And they look for sign of death. That's where they go. Right. So the idea of vitality is staying alive. If you are walking in the desert where you have this Nubian vulture, you walk, you show vitality, you move. If you start going down and sloping and, you know, they start coming in because they know that, you know. So the vitality here is really in terms of energy, you know, exuding energy, exuding happiness, even wealth. Yeah, because that's a sign of, of internal vitality.

Not only do you ward off the vultures, but you also become magnetic to the good.

You become magnetic and you ward off the vultures. You become magnetic, and that is one of the, uh, our spirituality. And part of it is One of the biggest thing in life is fear. And the fear is a very powerful aspect of human life. It saves us evolutionary, but there are excesses of it. You know, the poet, Yeats, is an Irish poet. He said, "Man created death." You know, he didn't— when he said it, this is my own interpretation, he didn't mean that people don't die, we don't die. He just meant that, Unlike Fluffy the cat, Clifford the dog, and all the animals, we humans are very, very obsessed with death. I mean, we use it for selling products, for many things. And Aristotle was aware of this. He said that who is unafraid of death is either a beast or a god and doesn't belong in human society. But the founder of my Matilina ancestors, Ngonso, who founded my kingdom, said, "Who is unafraid of death belongs here." Yeah. And so one of the things that we do, one of our important ritual is bloodletting ritual, basically with chickens and goats. And that is more like, I would say, exposure therapy.

Exposure to the death.

Yes, you don't become scared of it. So you are not, you are not scared of death.

I think there's a point in spirituality where you no longer become scared of death because you understand that you're more than just your physical body that dies.

Well, in terms of, uh, Abrahamic spirituality, these are merchants of fear and death. You know, people that are the excesses of it, the, the— I call them the merchants of fear, of fear, fear and death, because I'm talking about what happened in Africa nowadays with, uh, now, uh, latter-day prophets and pastors and, and, uh, sheiks. You know, they come in and they, they trade on this. You know, you make people to be afraid, they give you a lot of money. You know, you get them to be hopeful, you know, they do things. But there is far from, from, from eliminating it like our own spirituality does. It is much more incorporated and put in so that, you know, if people are not— if you are not careful, you spend your life overwhelmed by the fear. Yeah.

And then at the end of your life, you're like, why did I spend my whole time overwhelmed? I could have enjoyed it.

Exactly. Exactly.

Do you believe there's an end goal in spirituality, right? Some, some call it enlightenment, you know, where you're just totally present. Do you think there's an end? Is there like a level you can reach? Have you met anyone who you'd consider enlightened in your journey?

Yes. I mean, you are enlightened. I mean, I'm talking about sitting here. It is— you are inability to look inside. I mean, there are people that are grown up than you that are out of order.

Yeah.

In terms of not being able to, they can't be able to do anything uplifting. Maybe they are a bunch of despairers. I think in our spirituality, one of the most important aspect of it is really about the development and exercise of your intellect because our— we call it sem, S-E-M, is basically looking inside and lifting yourself upward. In fact, we have just like the pyramids and we came from northern and southern Egypt And we do have these symbols of where you have like the obelisk, you know, at the top, whereby when people look at this pyramid, when people go to Egypt, they put their hand to have the picture taken.

Yeah.

And they can see all the way to the top. But if you are trained in our spirituality, the important part of this, of the pyramid is After that top, it is that infinity. And we have it in some of our most powerful masquerade. In fact, the masquerade is from the main secret society, is ironically called the mother of the Ngwerong. Ngwerong is part of the nocturnal council, or the mother of Ngiri. And the mask is always facing up. In terms of aesthetics, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, because it looks up there. If it is meant for seeing, then it should be facing you. Yeah, but it looks up, so to see it is very difficult. You might have to go to a, to a high place to look, but people are— that's what people are looking at.

Yeah.

And this mask is also worn by the by the masquerade that start open up the occasion, like this celebration of someone who live a full life. And it's also worn by the future Supreme Court judges of the land. And, and it's always facing up, and that facing up is very important. Yeah, it looks up to infinity, right? It says that there is Noting what you see, you can always go up and up and up to infinite. And that is the point of appreciation, and that's very important in spirituality. You can dive into this universe, which I will say that is not open to many people, and there is a lot to be seen. Even now we're sitting here in the podcast, you think that this is the end, you are out of your mind. There is a philosopher, a political scientist called Francis Fukuyama, who wrote a book entitled The End of History and the Last Man Standing. And he was talking about liberal democracy. He's at Stanford. He's a wonderful intellectual, very powerful person. But that to me, when I saw it, it was really having the kind of background that I have, I thought it was ridiculous that someone would say this. Because to say this is it, we should just start from here and looking backward, and what I thought was lack of imagination.

Yeah.

This is really shortcoming of spirituality.

Yeah.

Someone who is imaginative, you realize that we are here, we think that is the best that we've ever had.

Yeah.

We We think that ChatGPT or artificial intelligence, it is. There is even more.

Oh yeah.

And those who are trained to— not even trained, those who can get into their spiritualities, people that can, that are spiritual, they are able to see beyond. And I say spiritual, I'm not saying religious. Yeah. I'm very careful between the two.

Yeah.

Because religions, religion can be, it can freeze. People of their spirituality, actually it moves you out of this kind of zone.

100%. Yeah, like, I didn't grow up religious. Technically I'm Jewish, but I never practiced. But I'd consider myself very spiritual.

Yes.

And as a philosopher, I, I kind of have a philosophy about life that I live by. I'm curious what your thoughts are. It's that we as humans are essentially some kind of energetic pattern. It's a combination of our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, and the way we feel in the moment, I believe, creates our life around us, outside of space and time, outside of what our minds can comprehend. And I think a problem based on that philosophy, a problem that many people run into, is that they have expectations of how things should go. Yeah, but if we live in an unlimited universe, anything over infinity is zero, right? So you can't expect things to go a certain way beyond maybe 1 or 2 points because we live in an unlimited place, right? So you, you think, hey, I want to start a business, I need to talk to this person, he needs to do that, this person needs to write a check, I need to do this. And what happens is things don't happen the way you expect them to. And then what happens, most people are attached to the outcome, so then they feel a certain way based on something not happening up to their expectations. So they feel fear or lack or scarcity, and then that changes their energy in the moment and it creates more of that same thing that they've been getting in life. So my philosophy is change your state in the morning, and I have a practice I want to share with you maybe in a moment here that I do to change my state, and then just let go, completely let go, and know that things are happening and not be attached to each outcome.

Yes.

I'm curious, what are your takes on that type of philosophy?

I totally agree. I mean, this This coincide with our spirituality. I mean, at the end, if you describe it very well, then it become universal. It's particular, but describe very well, become universal. Like what you are saying, I think the Stoic also said, want things to happen the way they do happen, not the way you want them to happen. Yeah. And you'll be happy. I think people that make life that create the world. They are not people that are sitting around worrying a lot about outcome. These are people that can unfreeze themselves and let their minds loom.

Yeah.

And that's in essence what you are saying. There are many people that are sitting around, they worry a lot. And one of the things that the founder of my— my matrilineal ancestor who founded our kingdom in 1394, she said something that is very powerful. She said the enemy of our enemy is mainly ourselves. And she said also that And our savings in which way? He talk about the absolutism of the pew. When you sit around and you sit, you say this is the outcome that you want. You know, this is, you need this, you going to meet this person and you expecting this from the person, you expecting that. I think that is one of the, I'm just following on the path and this to, Show you that, you know, spirituality is universal because the same language at some point when you hit the right point is exactly what I'm saying, talking about. You leave your mind open, you open to— there is infinity, there is a lot that is still to be done.

The thing is, for, you know, listeners or people, you know, a lot of people that listen to podcasts, they're people that want to achieve something, they want to learn something. It's easy to understand what we're saying, comprehend it, but it's another thing to experience it, right? So someone who's new and just getting started in something, they're like, okay, I gotta let go of my expectations, but their subconscious is like, well, no, it really needs to happen that way, right? They're still attached.

Yes.

But after a few times, like, at least in my life, I've had maybe 5 or 6 kind of outcomes in, in business and family and just life in general that are so far beyond what I could have expected and happened in ways that I never could have imagined.

Yes.

That it kind of validated my ability to let go.

Yes.

But someone who's just getting started hasn't had that validation yet. So I feel like getting over that first hump or two to start to be like— to actually believe from an experience is a challenging thing to do.

Well, I think like a good lawyer, a good lawyer never asks a question unless they know the answer. I mean, what are you saying here? You just told me that in the morning you get up, you know, you do this.

Yeah.

You know, and I think this is part of the essence of probably one of the gifts that you can begin to give the world also is to begin to take this and tell people and they will latch on to. I mean, I think this is not far from Grant. You know, this, you and Grant, you guys coincide in that. You know, let go. How do you even begin this? How do you even realize this? How do you know when you are already there? And I think this is the kind of, like you just mentioned, the simple practice that you do, like when you wake up in the morning. You know, I remember Machiavelli, the Florentine Renaissance philosopher who talk about when he get up in the morning, he will shower, he wear his courtly clothes, he sit down on this wonderful spot, and he open up communication with his ancestors. He consult them. At that moment, as he said, I'm not afraid of death anymore. I'm not worried about my debtors. About what I owe people. I'm not worried about the apocalypse that people are talking that is around the way. I forgot about that, and I'm right here, right now. And he said, at that moment, I asked my ancestors question, and he said they never failed to answer me. You see, that is in essence, this is part of what you talking about. And again, it's people like you, if you really want to help the world, because when you find something that is good, I think you should share with the world. And when you share, you get more. And that's part of our spirituality, is that you cannot achieve. Like, one of the things that you mentioned, you mentioned the word enlightenment, or you cannot evolve alone, you know, is being with other people, you know. Yeah, give and take. And when you're doing that, you, you're lifting yourself and you're lifting others. In fact, when you— that just reminded me about the idea of a market in my own home, a marketplace, which for us is the center of spirituality, because that is where spirituality at the highest is practiced. When you go to the marketplace in, in, in a long time ago, the caption in my home was, 'Nso is open for business.' Yeah. You know, because you go into the market because the market is like war by another, by another name. Yeah. You know, you still getting— before people get things.

Yeah.

If people— self-interest is just something that I can't take away from people, right? That is part of who we are.

Yeah.

And the way that people get stuff was to go out, kill others, and just take it. Yeah. And we used to say that my Matilena ancestors converted war into business. And so you still get— because in war is a zero-sum, right? You go get and someone gets nothing.

Yeah, yeah.

In this business is a positive sum, right, where everyone can get and there will still be plenty out there, which means there's, there's enough for everyone. Exactly.

Following down that path.

Exactly. And so the business is more than a place where you're making money. In my home, it's a spiritual realm. Why? Because he said in the worst of transaction, when you go to a market and you enter a transaction and you lose, you are not really a loser because in that, in that, in market you are exercising your intellect, right?

You're learning, you're stretching.

Yeah, you're learning. You are, you want to win, the other person want to win, and so you engage. In this war is not like that. War is, is corporeal. You just beating. But in, in market now is about what matter to us. And one of the thing that give us cosmic significance is our minds. Yeah. Is our possession of the intellect. That is what you have in the market. So what you saying here in your part of us, I said, is to invoke that this is a practice that is important. One man has asked in my— I asked him what is business. He is long dead and he said business— he's speaking— he spoke in Pidgin— is using the small to get the big. Yeah. And so you go to business, use the small to get the big. And the question is, what is the small? And actually it happened that the small is much more spiritual than just saying that you use $10 to get $100. Yeah, it's much spiritual because, uh, in, in, in, in, in our spirituality, someone has asked, you know, where is the intellect? And he said it's in the head. You say where in the head? He says in the head, but it has no particular location, right? And, and the head is very important in that way. And coincidentally, the word capital, capitalism, come from a root word, root word in Latin, caput, which means head. Ah, yeah. Capitalism wasn't really the way people think about it. It was actually the deployment of your intellect. Ah, that's what capitalism stands for. And so in my— we have it very well in my own spirituality, in my language, that Capitalism is actually the use of your intellect, you know, to get stuff. That is a practice. Someone who is not going to market, that's why the worst thing is to give things to people for free. You haven't done any good to people. Because in the course of people acquiring things, you lift yourself up, you lift the other person. You lift yourself up, you lift the other person. And that is the importance of capitalism that people don't hear. I know that I can't bring this, try to get funding for this. I already got denied from Templeton Foundation, which is a sort of edgy kind of foundation. When they deny you that, you know that you African, you can't get this hearing. But more importantly is the rhythm of speech. That is where people become vibrant. That is when this vitality takes place.

Oh yeah.

That's when imagination looms.

Yeah.

You know, you want to get— you use a little to get the big. Yeah. And in that way, there is a starting point for everybody.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. I know that the MBAs in universities, they've made it look like you have to go to school.

Yeah.

To go and get an MBA, have to go to school to do— the richest person or the wealthiest person, not just wealthy in terms of money, but in terms of having developed their intellect in my home, they never went to school. Yeah. So it is that deployment of that intellect. And in fact, the market also become a very important part of politics because if you think about checks and balances, people only talk about checks and balances like they talk about the Supreme Court, the judiciary, the executive, and all of these, they check and balance. But they are just checking among the same people, even the governor, even the states themselves. If you look at it now, you see that when the president of United States, the president-elect won all of this, he won everything. But there is no one to check the power. The most important check is the people. But the market, the beauty of the market as a very important check in power where people never understand this. Even in the Western world, except in place like us where we are cognizant of that and we are deliberate about it, is that it decentralized decision-making.

Yes, exactly.

It— that idea of decentralizing decision-making is very important. That also is very spiritual, for sure. And you think about the practice. So he asked me, what are the practices that I do? What you talking about before, that this is also the practice in my home market is so important. That's where the king, when you want to enthrone the king, that's the first place they go. When they want to do, they want to posit the laws, to basically announce the laws, that's where they go.

Yeah.

The biggest ritual in my, in the kingdom are done there. So you go to a market, not just you go there to buy and sell, but not only that, it's much more than that.

Yeah, I mean, business is a spiritual practice because spirituality is about growth.

Yes, and that's why I said to Americans, some of the people that are very myopic, when Jefferson talked about a big war between the religion and the state, and I said, don't be fooled by that. I mean, you have the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Yeah, you know, it is because spirituality is so Religion is so important to this society that you want to keep it away from politics. It's not that they did that so that you can relegate, make spirituality little. No, it's not like that, or separate it completely. It's not like that. Because when Plato even came up with the idea of the central theme of spirituality, he was asking a very powerful question. He said, what will stop You know, somebody from just going around the killing spree, you know, he was asking the question, why do good things happen to people? I mean, to bad people? I mean, what will keep you if you had— if you could disappear and do all sorts of things, what will keep you from not stealing? And he talked about the future states of reward and punishment, and he came up with the avenging God. In fact, that's how they seep into Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam, and they become central parts of it. Yeah. So it's not— it's very important that we begin to realize the Padas preach, so that if you now think that, okay, American democracy is very pure because it doesn't involve spirituality— yeah, be careful. Yeah. Because the market is there. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'll say about Africa. Be, be watchful with China. When China come in into the market, they say, we are not coming to politics, we are not coming to spirituality, but we're just coming for the market. Yeah. Be watchful because that is a very important part of our spirituality.

And just circling back, um, you had mentioned, um, What was the name of the person you mentioned? They would wake up, they'd put on their comfy clothes, they'd talk to their ancestors.

It was Machiavelli. Niccolò Machiavelli. So Florence.

I think in today's society it's a lot more challenging for people to live that way because there's so many more things that steal our attention and so many more things that remind us of our problems or the things we don't have. Our phones mainly, right? You're getting notifications, your, your mind is addicted to social media. It pulls you away from that. We can call that, uh, that more— that morning moment he has, we could symbolize that as like his, you know, his, his own space. But in today's society, there's a lot more powers that pull you away from being able to be in that space.

Yeah.

Which is why I think it's much more important now than ever before to have the discipline.

Perfect. And, and I was going to say that, that highlight why it is important to have that. I think one of the things that The success in America is one of the most, the richest place on earth that I can, in the recorded history. One of the thing that has happened, something, there are at least two things that I want to mention here. One thing is that Americans, particularly in the academy, they don't know how to celebrate joy. They don't know how to be happy anymore. You know, the most important, the most interesting thing are evil. It's only talk about colonialism, talk about how the white man did this, they destroyed the world, they are destroying the global south, they doing this, they doing that. It's about colonialism, it's about this, it's about what— 'Jefferson, he fathered a child with a slave' is about— every— is about racism.

Yeah, why is that?

I'm not saying that they don't exist. People have just forgotten how to have joy, how to be happy.

It's like they're looking for some kind of thing to not be happy about.

No, I mean, yeah, you don't do that anymore. Yeah. And I mean, I assumed there was a time that was very exciting here. I mean, this is just my observation. And you mentioned about in the— when you get up in the morning, how life is so busy. D'Hittorville, who came from France to study prison and end up writing, working on writing some of the most wonderful corpus in philosophy and— political science. One of the things he's observed is that in democratic time, life is so busy. People are planning vacations, you're worrying about your debt. Yeah. You're worrying about this, you're worrying about that, so that there's less time even left for politics, much less spirituality.

Yeah.

And I think that, um, podcasts like you're on, if you really want to make a difference, this is the kind of thing I have to remind people that they they can. Life is much more grand. Life is— there is joy, you know. You can look at it half a glass half full, but you have to give yourself the space to re-realize that on a regular basis.

So like the, the, you know, I mentioned the practice that I do in the morning. Like, just like you, I've always been a seeker. I've always looked to try to learn from different people, events, meditation retreats, plant medicine journeys, like always looking you know, fitness challenges, diets, always looking for like what, you know, works the best. And I personally derived a practice I do in the morning that's— it's, for me, it's like the most efficient way to get back aligned, right? And it's, uh, I call it the Perfect Walk. Um, I actually wrote a book about it, and the book is not for sale yet, but it is done, and we'll be putting it out there eventually. And the beautiful thing about the Perfect Walk is, you know, as we're talking about You can learn things conceptually by hearing or observing, and then you can learn things through experience, which I believe is much more powerful.

Yes.

The walk is a 5-part walk and it goes with music, right? It takes 20, 25 minutes. You listen to music and, you know, the first part you're, you're feeling grateful, you're opening your heart. So like, think about your family or the things you love. Second part is you feel your power, your strength. So the music gets more intense and you walk like you're, you know, 20 feet tall and nothing can get in your way. The third part is you completely let go and be present in the moment, which leads to the fourth part, which is you start to feel connected with God or a higher power. And the fifth part is a celebration where you celebrate that you got up, or you celebrate something that you want to happen as if it already happened, and you're walking as if you've, you know, you've had the victory or whatever it may be. And it activates all this energy, and you're, you know, you're not thinking about your problems. And I wrote this book because there's tons of books people can read, but this book gives a practice that you can do and get an experience, which I think can help a lot more. And that's my practice that I use in the morning.

I don't read many books, but this one that I would like to read. I think this is deeply, deeply, deeply spiritual. One of the things that you are doing when you're doing this by yourself, there is the looking inside, listening to yourself. And in that listening, in that looking, the universe open. And when the universe open, there is a vast, is a vast thing. In fact, in very crude ways, many, I mean, you've refined this so well and that's why I love What you are— I love the stages of it that very, very much. This could as well be a cardinal spiritual book in my home. That's why I'm saying that in this conversation, you come to a point where it's no longer— if you are really serious about it, or if you are not, you don't make it too serious where you relax. You reach a particular point where you can begin to realize that, oh, we're talking about the same thing, like what you are just saying now. You know, what you are saying here, you are not— you get up in crudely. People will do this in form of yoga, but in yoga then you have to pay. You know, you have gone to prana yoga in Boulder. You don't pay that. There is power yoga. Yeah. Then there is literal yoga. There's all these yogas in Boulder that I've attended. You have to pay. You have to If you are not paying, you are a member of gym, you have to schedule. Yeah, you have to do this. This makes it— then I'm not saying that commercializing is bad, but it just makes it very— it removes it, something more. It becomes a worry. Yeah, more than really what you talk about. That's— I'm talking about the beauty. Yeah, you know, the aesthetic, the sublime nature of your book. Yeah, it's also even in terms of, uh, people getting like the Muslim getting one, having a morning prayer. Prayers is also part of that kind, but it doesn't go far enough.

Mm-hmm.

Like what you're saying here, because that one, it become forceful. You have to do this, you have to. But if you have the practice, if you can enact it, probably have the way of enacting it so people can see, like the music and all of that. That will be important because most of the time when people try to do this in the atmosphere that we have, unless, you know, you see, you have it in stages, you may start stage 1 and you don't go to stage 2, and you can begin to calibrate. Then you start one point when you open, then you think about all the dead that you, ooh, you think about it. You know, you think about, you know, these people, they are after you, you know, you know, this is happening. You think about, like I said, that people don't know how to celebrate joy anymore.

Yeah.

They think about the war in Ukraine, they think about the conflict in— It's always something you can worry about. You think about now Syria, you think about, you know, Hezbollah, and all of this. There is always some bad And that makes, you know, this spiritual practice I'm saying even more important. I'm saying that if you were to deploy this to my people, except the one that have been taken over by the new spiritualities, you deploy Soman Maom, there will be Seriously at home with this. Yeah, totally.

It's amazing.

And that's why I'm saying that when you think about it, if you describe very well like the way you do, then it becomes universal. The particular turn out to be universal. And I think that I can't wait to— yeah, to read this. What's the title of the book?

It's called The Perfect Walk.

The Perfect Walk, like W-A-L-K.

Yeah, because you do it while you're walking. I'll give you a copy of the book afterwards.

I would like to have a copy. And actually, one of the ways that I also meditate is taking a walk or jogging, where as I'm doing this, it become like the Machiavellian period, where at the end, you know, everything become one.

Yes.

You know, it's no longer you are there and this, because One of the worries, something that was started by the Greek and continued by Western academies, is the bifurcation of life, you know, is the intellect, the emotion, the over there, here, the hereafter, the here and the hereafter. You know, you have God, Satan, you know, evil, good. You know, they bifurcated everything.

Yeah.

And some of the time it becomes difficult to bring this together. Yeah. And from your, your, your spiritual practice, which is very, very important here, is the idea that, you know, is the merging of all of this together. It's like a rock climber. I'm not encouraging people to go to rock climbing. They are already climbing rocks. They know this. When you are sitting on the rock at some level, you're holding the rock, there is no difference between you and the rock anymore, right? And you don't— you are not thinking about tomorrow, yesterday. Basically, you come down, it's as if you surrender your dignity. Yeah. And you come down and you become like Fluffy the Cat, right? You know, and that's the moment Yeah. That's a very powerful moment. That's a moment that you, in your work, that's the moment that you want to reach, you know, you reach it. So in other words, I'm saying this to basically highlight what you have to say. You can't wait. I'm sure that Grand Zuki is someone that very spiritual in this aspect. That you're talking about, not in this elaborate and very well thought out, deliberate form.

Well, it's a, it's a practice that just came from other things. And I, I just want to highlight that I think in today's society there's just so many— it's like almost a fight between good and evil, meaning like there's a lot of good information, conversations like this, books you can read, but then there's so many things that take your attention mainly social media, right? Like people in their teens, 20s, you know, people in their 30s like me, and even older people are, are completely addicted to their phones.

Yes.

Which pulls them away from the moment. It pulls them away from their truth.

Yes.

And like my philosophy is that when you can cultivate a certain energy in the moment, you don't have to worry about anything else. Everything else happens the way it should. But you can't think your way there. You have to feel feel your way there.

Yes.

And it's good, it's nice to have frameworks. Like, after doing the walk for a long time and kind of having those experiences— my wife is, uh, is Christian, right? And, and we'll go to church for like Easter or something, and I would just go to make her happy, and I never really resonated with anything. But after a couple years of developing the spirituality, I would listen to the words they're saying and they would mean totally different things to me. I'd say, oh, that's what they're talking about.

Yes.

But it wasn't something someone could have explained to me. It was something I had to learn inside to be able to then understand on the outside. So it's like, as you grow, things mean different things to you. You might read a book today and it means something, and then you grow for a few years and you read it again, and those words mean something totally different. So like you said, it's infinite. There's no end to the growth.

You are right. I mean, there's a lot of noise, like the social media, like I mean, you have kids, you have to be very careful about this. There's a lot of information. It's like information jamming, you know, they are jamming at you from all angles. But one of the things that you're saying, even in your spiritual practice, that I love and that I love is that it's something that you are implying is that, yes, we might have this information coming from all over. But one of the things about it is that we remain the same people that we were, right, a long time ago. And what that means is that there's a difference between having the information and the difference between processing it. Our minds, they process it exactly the same the way that they've done. Yeah, they cannot process it faster. Our minds have become faster. And one of the, one of the beautiful thing about the spiritual practice that I hope that you get this out there is that that's one of the things that you are emphasizing, that in all of this, there is the being in the moment and being able to calm down, you know, to calm down, not in spite of, but because of all these noises that are around.

Right.

And this is good. One of the things that people have achieved is sometimes through very bad ways. Sometimes people do this through drugs, and that's why drugs can be really bad. Yeah. Because if you go there, you don't want to come back, right, until you die. Yeah. Or until you are totally messed up. Yeah. Because one of the things that drugs can do is that they get you to the point where At some point you come to this level like there's just you.

Yeah.

And nothing else. And basically what you have here is a war without drugs, without alcohol.

It's like your own— I heard a rabbi say something. Basically we were talking about addiction and he said, you know, drugs are not the problem. Drugs are the solution. The problem is the discomfort you have with yourself. The discomfort comes from the foods you eat or the things you do physically. Yeah, the, the things you let into your mind. Yeah, and the lack of a practice to bring yourself back to center. You become very uncomfortable. Yeah, you take the drugs and it's like, oh, I feel good, but then there's a new low afterwards. Yes, so drugs aren't the problem. They're the, they're the solution. So you have to solve the problem in a different way.

Yes. And I think that's where you come in very well. That's where your spiritual practice come in. And that's why this should be made widely available so that people can find alternative ways of this. And as you said, one of the things that you said that is wonderful and which I I love so much is that when you, when you go to church with your wife, even though she drag you there, yeah, or you go to listen to a rabbi, even though you sluggishly go there, but when you go there, if you are engaged in this walk that I talking about, you start to hear, you listen and you hear because There are many people, you know, you can tell your good stories and the people that may hear, they are refusing to hear what you are saying. But there are many that cannot even hear what you are saying, right? You know, because to be able, to be able to be moved by an argument, to be moved by, by, to be moved by, by, by logic, logical argument It's not something that just comes, right, naturally, particularly in this noisy world, right? Today is something that has to be cultivated. And I think what you're talking to me here is about the cultivation. Yeah. Of this.

I have a question for you that I'm curious your take on this, and it's something I battle with all the time, and it's identifying the difference between your intuition and your impulsive mind or your procrastination, right? I'll give you an example. I'll use the book as an example, right? I wrote this book. I haven't done anything with it yet. I haven't like released it yet. The whole thing's done. I got custom music made in different frequencies to go along with the walk. Everything's done. And there's a part of me that's like, it's not quite the right time, but it feels like the right time soon because I'm running my business. I, you know, my family, I have a lot of things I need to settle first. But part of me is like, well, is that my intuition that's guiding me to say hold on a little while, or is that my impulsive mind that's distracting me because it, you know, it's fearful of what might happen? And how do you tell the difference between intuition and impulse?

I think what you, you talk about intuition and impulse, I think there's a third aspect which is fear.

Yeah.

One of— I had this conversation with, with Mr. Grant Zukiya coming when I have mentioned, when he, we sat down and we are talking and I said the one thing that I love, I said he was very rich and that he was very wealthy, irrespective of whether he had material thing or not. And when we spoke and he said that he, we should go travel to Cameroon I'm very surprised. We just pack our bag and then we went. So there is this view of— there's a distinction that people make between impetuousness and being careful.

Yeah.

You know, and I think what I hear you saying is, it's not, it's not your intuition and your impulse as it is fear. Even though you are not entertaining this very— you are not deliberately sitting around entertaining it, but it's there. You're worrying about what if this come out, it doesn't work very well. What? I mean, it might be I need something more. Maybe I need something less. Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do this. If I do this now, then people start calling, you know, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I have a business that to run, I have a family to run. I mean, what do I do? And what I'm going to say is that, you know, it's not like— there was Zeno's paradox. Zeno said, when he said, um, we know everything or we know nothing, because he said, uh, why look for something if you already know it, or if you know it, why look for it?

Yeah.

You know, why look for something unless you know what you are looking for it? Then you already know why you're looking for it. Why look for it? I think there is this sitting around thinking that there's something objectively out there that you have to go get at. And then you can move. No, I think when you come down, you put something like this, you put it out there. Yeah. It's not the end. Like you talk about Fukuyama or think that, who talk about it, who talk about the end of thing. You know, I say that's, you know, a very good work is, walk that you suspend. You say, okay, I will stop here, then I continue.

Yeah.

It's not one that is finished. I mean, who are we? Why should— just like what you are saying to me, one of the things in your walk, tell me the name again.

Perfect Walk.

The Perfect Walk. In your Perfect Walk, what you're saying is there is imperfect walks in between. And the Perfect Walk is not like you— it's not a walk of a destination.

Right.

It's not like you go in, then you reach this destination, right? In fact, when you read it, then it opens up infinitely.

Infinite growth.

Yeah, infinite. So, so it's that kind of perfect walk, and which is preceded by imperfect walks. And that those imperfect walks is what you'll be honing and honing to read. So when you finish the perfect work, put it out there. Yeah, yeah, put it out there, put it out there. It would be a travesty if that was it.

Yeah, for you, for sure. And I've never been the type to not, you know, obviously I've taken tons of action and done a lot of things.

It doesn't mean that you are impetuous. Yeah, you know, that you are not thinking about it, you're just putting out there. No, that's not what I'm talking about, right? In fact, it's part of the perfect work that you put it out there. Yeah, that, that's what I'm hearing, right? You know, that's what I'm hearing when, as I'm saying, what I'm, what I'm saying is that, you know, we can listen to the same thing and hear different things, but when you struck that chord, I think I get it. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. You know, and it is that perfect walk. And so do not say, you know, intuition and then your impulse. These are, you know, this kind of dichotomy, right? It doesn't work. The point is there is in between. There is the most important space are the ones that are in between and is moved around by fear. You know, saying, should I do it now? You know, where is the time? You know, what, how would they take it? Yeah. You know, how will this be happening? It's not up to you. You know, a good cook does not cook for themselves. You cook for other people, right? You know, I think that's a good analogy. Yeah, you cook for other people. And so it's not up to you to sit around and judge. That's kind of arrogant, which is what the perfect walk is against, right? Yeah.

But what was the name of the paradox you said before?

Oh, I call it Meno— M-E-N-O— Meno's paradox.

So yeah, and I just want to circle back to that for a second because I think about this often, and I think this kind of ties into what we're talking about.

Yeah.

Um, we'll use an example of someone who, uh, started a meditation practice, right?

Yes, yes.

And, uh, and they do it and they have a great experience, and they do it again and they have a great experience. Eventually, they wake up and they're like, "Oh, I should meditate," but their mind tells them, "Oh, we already know what the experience is going to be like meditating, so we don't actually need to do it. We already know what it's going to be like." And then maybe they do it and they're like, "Oh yeah, that's why I did it." But the mind likes to tell you that you already know what's going to happen. You've already experienced it. You don't need to experience it again.

Yes.

Is that the same thing as the paradox you're talking about?

I mean, it's more or less, even though the paradox is an epistemic paradox. Is a paradigm about knowledge. But it's also, there are at least two kinds of people. I say at least because there are many.

Yeah.

I mean, in between, there are people who want to know where they are going before they start the journey.

Right.

But there are people that start the journey and find out where they are going when they arrive there.

Yeah.

And I think that The Perfect Walk is the former, or it combined the two in a way that you need very serious thinking to unscramble it.

Yeah.

The idea is that with A Perfect Walk, when you start and you are going, you know, you have, the destination you have in mind is not like this, you know, that like when Grandmaster Steve took off, we are coming to Florida. It's not like that.

It's a—

yeah, it's not like that. In fact, just like the tip of the, the, the obelisk.

Yeah.

Of the pyramid, or like the mask that I was talking to you about.

Yeah.

The most important point is not when you start from the bottom, like people will look at the pyramid And they wonder how it was put together. Yeah. How the rocks, was it dragged here? How was this massive thing? When was this done? Some people say it was done by alien and other people say it was done. Some people say it wasn't done by Black people, by Africans.

Yeah.

So because they cannot imagine that happening, these are people with very limited imagination. But, but, but, and they look at it and they marvel and they marvel to the top. And then that's where they stop, right? But that's the perfect walk. It's still that. That's the imperfect walk. The, the, the, the— this part of the pyramid, the imperfect walk. The perfect walk, when you reach that level— I mean, the perfect walk is the entire journey, right? But it's from that top, yeah, onward. Perfect. Yeah, that doesn't have a particular destination. Right. In fact, that's where discoveries are made. That's where the person who discovered the light, right, you know, Edison.

It's— and it goes back to how society makes it more and more challenging to get to that top of the pyramid and beyond because of all the things that take our attention away. But discovering the light came from being in that place.

Yes.

Any great greatness— I mean, from my personal experience all the— I don't want to call them ideas, but it's almost like downloads from the universe that have guided me, have came from a place of not thinking my way and fearing my way. It came from a place of letting go and being. And like, getting into that state more often is, is where growth comes from.

Actually, that is where growth comes from. For one matter, what makes us— give us cosmic significance, you know, that's where growth comes from. And being able to navigate yourself to reach there is— that's why I'm saying that even people, some people, when St. Augustine of Hippo, when he wrote the Just War Theory, and he didn't imagine that— he imagined a world in which war was here to stay. And it was here before he was born. It's here now. It's here after. And it's not— it's just here. Right. So the way to do it is to find the morality, the way to fight it well. You know, how do we reason to go into war and all of that? That's the way to do it. But again, that is lack of imagination. And I mean, it was high imagination at its time. But if we get frozen only to this, we are doomed.

I think the reason why so many people get frozen is because, again, in society we have access to so many other people's lives. You know, the person who's wanting to do something but consistently gets frozen, they look at someone else that's done something amazing and they think, oh, that person had a plan, they knew what they were doing, everything happened the way they wanted it to. And they're like, well, I don't know yet, so I'm just going to sit here and wait. But the truth is, at least again, I can't speak for everyone, but from my experience and the people I know, you never know what you're doing. You're always surprised by what happens next. And like you said, the only way forward is to get unfrozen. But not understanding that, or not nobody telling someone that, makes it really easy for you to get frozen with all the access to this external information that we have access to today.

And that's why people who do this, they are few and far in between. Not that they couldn't be many, like I was talking about war. We can imagine a world without war, and we can achieve such a world. And I think that that is the biggest problem that we have. One of the things, and we had this conversation with Grant, whom I praise, I say that he's going to be successful. In his endeavor very much because of what I saw in him. What I saw in him is a perfect walk. But let me keep that aside. Let me talk about Machiavelli again. It's not that I— he's this Florentine philosopher. I happen to have gone to— I went to Florence. I went to where he used to live. I went to his office. He was a Secretary of State in the Renaissance. When he was in the last days of his life, a few friends have gathered around, you know, to pay homage to him before he dies. And he's laying there, and one point he just say, "I have a dream." And all the friend, they run, they rush there to listen. To what the dream is, because someone who is dying said they have a dream.

Yeah.

And he said he was walking along and he saw this bunch of people. They are dressed in rags. They look miserable in appearance. And they are walking along, and he approached them. He asked them, who are you and where are you going? They said, we are the elect, we are the chosen. Where are you going? We say we are going to heaven. Then he said he passed and he's going along and then he saw this other group of people. They, they are nobly dressed, they are wearing courtly regalia, and they are talking about important things of life. Yeah, politics among them will have people like Plato. He mentioned some of them, and it would have been Moses and the rest of the people, and he asked them, who are you and where are you going? And he— they said, we are the damned of earth. And where are you going? He said, we are going to hell. And he said, that's where I belong.

Wow.

Well, the reason why I'm bringing this is that, uh, to be able to make a difference, like to put this perfect world It's not that easy, and don't blame people because there's a lot that happens. You have these other people, a lot of them, that we are going to heaven, and it's wonderful, it's laudable. But Machiavelli, what you're saying is people like Moses, like Jesus, like Muhammad, like like Plato, you know, like now, like him, to bring freedom to a people, to put life into people's lives, biological life, so you can raise them up, you know, to bring maybe democracy. I'm not talking about democracy the way we use it today. Yeah. To empower people, to level people up, rather than to come around and think that we need to bring down billionaires. You know, why don't make everybody into a billionaire? Why should bring down billionaire? Or like people say, want to bring down the monarchy when in fact you can make every woman into a queen. Yeah, and every man to a prince in the sense that this is a privilege. Yeah, to do that, uh, takes a lot. Yeah, and, and, and you must be capable of dating your hands, not just your hand, all the way. Yeah, because people who do this, uh, they have to be above— I'm not just going to say Christian or Abrahamic morality, that's what I'm not going there, right? That's a very important morality. They have to be courageous and be above the normal things of life, right? They must not be afraid, right? And meaning that, like Moses, you might have to go to a bush and come back and said you spoke to God. Yeah, yeah, you know, and, and, and spoke to God, and this is what God said. Yeah, you know, God gave this Yeah, to give to you. And look at what their lives are. I'm not saying that we should go there to investigate whether Moses actually sees God or not, but that's something different. That's a metaphysical question. Yeah, that we don't— we can't answer. But people like that, they see God in your perfect world. That is what you are talking about.

100%.

These are the few that can actually see God, experience God. Yeah. Even see, you can see with the eyes of the soul.

Yeah.

Or is the same thing that you are saying. And to do this, you have to be courageous to realize that, you know, the perfection is actually imperfect.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. That's what you are saying.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's needed. Like, you know, I look at, at, at the, the things that people consume on the news, for example. You know, there's people that are living in poverty or their lives are very hard and they're watching the news and the news is saying groceries are too expensive or, you know, this food's unhealthy now or you know, this person needs to get elected into government or your life is going to be really bad. And people are just waiting there for something else to happen. And consuming this, I think, is the biggest virus in society because it's conditioning people's subconscious to not even want to try because it's like, oh, it's beyond me. I need this person to get elected in order for my life to get better. I need the price of gas to go down in order for me to do this, whatever. And I think it's the biggest virus in society and it's keeping people down. And there's a— it's a huge system that's very hard to break. But the truth is, anyone, no matter what your circumstances are, you have to take radical accountability for your life.

Yes.

And you could be a single mother with, with 3 kids and living in poverty, but you can still get up in the morning, you could still exercise, you can still do things like the Perfect Walk or the meditation or whatever it may be, and your life can change. But when you consistently consume things that keep you chained down, It's very hard to break free of that. So it needs to be a societal shift.

Our chains— what you are saying is that our chains are on our hands. Yes, in our own hands. Yeah, they are not, they are not somewhere else. There's no someone coming. You may feel that way, chains are on our own, but they are all in our own hands. And you can chain yourself. This is— this come to where I talk about kaput, which is from the word capitalism, right, from from the word the head, you know, like to talk about the head of state.

Yeah.

Head of, you know, the capital of United States is like where the everything. We all have these. And if you, so the chain is all in your own hand to handcuff yourself with. If you think about the slaves in United States, people, many people think that, oh, they were freed. By, by, by, you know, by this, by the white people, by the enslaver. I mean, why will you free them? Why will you free them? I mean, that's the question to ask. If they are doing well for you, why will you free them? You know, there's— we say, there's a saying at home that who pins down somebody is himself pinned down. What's that?

Say that again.

Who pins down somebody is himself pinned down, right? Yeah. When you enslave someone, you enslave yourself.

Yeah.

And I think that at some point the slave, they become so much problem that you have to free them. But to coming back to what you are saying is that within the slaves themselves, the, the, the, the, the key to unlocking their chains was all in your hands all along.

Yeah.

To whatever, to cut the chains off. Is all there. It's not like it came from somewhere. It's not Abraham Lincoln, right? Abraham Lincoln may have come down and taken the credit. I'm not saying that that credit is not warranted, right? I'm thinking, in fact, that's the only poster I used to have in my house before. Yeah, it's Abraham Lincoln. But what I'm saying is that, you know, you, you have the perfect walk. That's it.

That's the, that's the key to the change.

It's in our hand. Our— if you, you have all this news that you are consuming, you're sitting around waiting for the next king. Yeah. Or for the next elected official that you're looking forward to where you think that they will now free you. You sitting around waiting that, okay, this— you know, one of the things that that the founder of my kingdom, Gwonsor, my matrilineal ancestor, said is that, you know, if— let me use the language I understand— evil is here to stay. Let's use the language that even God created the world and created Satan. Yeah, it's not in God's power to take it away, right? It's here to stay. Yeah, so you make your life in spite of, even because of. Yeah, you don't stay around and say, well, until he leaves. Yeah, like a skillful sailor. Sailor, S-A-I-L-O-R. A skillful sailor doesn't sit around, you know, sit there falling asleep waiting for the pirates to leave the water. Yeah, oh, the storm to start to to subside, or the wind to stop, or this. The skillful sailors study the ocean and study direction of the wind and study where the pirates are. Yeah. And navigate to the wayside where they want to be.

Right.

You see, so my view is that the chains are in our own hands. Yes, there is a way that we say that they come from outside. That's why I always say to to Africans who talk about colonialism, and people don't like to hear this. I'm not— when I say this, they say, "What manner of people were they?" They pointing a hand across the great ocean, the mighty mountains of the world. "What kind of people were they that will cross the great oceans?" Talking about white people, "To come and enslave us?" Who were they? What manner of people were they? And so they sit around saying that if logically, if they are the one who did it, then they have to be the one to decolonize us, do this. No, the right question is this: where did we go wrong so that a bunch of nitwits with no army will leave their homeland, go through mosquito-infested land, come and do this to us? If we ask ourselves the question, where did we go wrong? Then at that moment, you look to yourself and you can begin to imagine, use that what you're saying in your perfect walk. The whole premise of your perfect walk is that there is something that is on in combat, something that no one can push down, no one can do this. It is that where you want to unchain yourself through the imperfect God, the perfect world. It is that where you have to go. That one don't— you don't require even a lot of money, right? You know, you don't require all of this. That's what you are saying in effect. Yeah. And for many people thinking that, okay, if it is sold at very expensive prices, therefore that's why it works.

Yeah.

If it's this, that— I mean, this is all going to be here. Right. You're not going to stop people from selling junk food.

Yeah.

You're not going to stop all these companies from doing what they are doing. They are going to be doing it. But the, the key to unlocking yourself is in you. That's what I hear the Perfect Work— yeah, that's telling me.

And, and the, the thing is, like, you know, the— there are people that have access to these types of conversations and this type of knowledge, but my whole thing is we're up against a lot, right? Not only is the media, you know, putting a virus into the minds of society, but it goes even further where victimhood is patted on the back. You know, I saw a post on LinkedIn. I saw a post on LinkedIn and it was a woman who was— who wrote this long story about how she was fired because she was a woman of color.

Yes.

And, and that, you know, the bottom line is if you're adding value to a company, you're probably not going to get fired. Now, what actually happened, I'm not sure. Yeah, but the problem was everyone commenting was saying, oh, good for you. Good job speaking up.

Good, good, right?

Which is embracing victimhood as opposed to how could I have done better? Or maybe I should do something different. Now, maybe there was something wrong and I don't know the circumstances, but I do know as a business owner, if someone's adding value to my company, they're not going to get fired no matter what they look like, no matter who they are. There might be other bad people out there, it's probably very rare, but patting victimhood on the back and making people feel good about acting like a victim at scale, yeah, is a double chain. You're chained down here and you're chained down here now.

I agree. I mean, people call that blaming the victim, you know. They say you're blaming the victim of this, you're doing this. Yeah, I think the idea in, in a society like this, like I'm saying, don't just make The paper work available only to the people of Palm Beach. Yeah. I hope that you can go beyond to all other places because the idea of leveling up people, lifting people up is very, very important.

So accessing what we already have.

Accessing what we have. And in our society, we have ways of, you know, keeping people in different places. Like if you are in the school in Florida or in Boulder, where I come from, you can basically close your eyes and do what America call mini, mini whatever. And then when it fall on this side, you say, go to that school and you'll be fine. But you have a situation to where people, you have this school in poor areas that the kids end up— their dreams end up deferred and all of this. But when you reach a certain point, you grow up and reach a certain point, you have to unchain yourself because the chains are you. And the question is, you know, how do you get the perfect walk out there?

Yeah, the chains are more abundant than ever. I know when I was a kid, we didn't have social media, we didn't we weren't sitting around watching the news all day. The news wasn't as good at scaring us as it is now because of the algorithms and the data and the smart people working on it. There was less information holding people down. Yes, there's more. So we, on the other hand, need to be more strong in delivering things that work and putting out, you know, the things that allow people to access what they have inside of them.

Exactly like the kind of Davis news I have. I mean, as I said, what we are good at celebrating nowadays are just— we are not good at celebrating joy, no happiness. So the good— the news that you hear, someone has killed someone, it's sometimes it feels like nothing good ever happened in this country. Yeah, I'm talking about my own personal experience. It seems like nothing good ever happened.

It never gets shared.

It's like, you know, this one has been killed, it's this one was shot, this one was— and that is what really populate a media. And I think that you are, again, your perfect work is premised on something that is wonderful. You know, it is premised on something wonderful, which is the sort of self-liberation and, you know, being able to rise up.

Yeah, I think, you know, people be a god.

I mean, yeah, just put it that way because we name, we name chosen by whom. God is a person. Yeah, yeah, God is a person. We don't say so, is a different kind of view. It's not a metaphysical idea or God is a person, meaning the what you are doing here is you can uplift yourself, the resources. Everything are within you. Then how do you unchain yourself where the key is with you?

The liberation's in there. Most people only feel that kind of liberation a handful of times in life.

And it would be scary if it was— there's one singer in my home, she was a poet laureate from my home. Her name is Weeba Abin. Weeba Abin once sang, that he was talking about the intellect and this kind of perfect world, the premise of perfect world I talk about. She said, if it was for gifting, who will have gifted me? He said, no, it's not for gifting. It's an endowment that everybody has equally, universally, everywhere, man or woman. She was a woman. Yeah. And this is an endowment that we all have, whether you're a child or you're grown up. And it's that endowment that, which is that seed that you're talking about, that you can use to do your perfect work.

I love it. I think that is a great summary of the entire conversation. It's accessing that more, spending more time. It's more of the time that you have here as a human Thank you. Accessing that, knowing it's there, knowing that by being there, things will happen beyond what you can imagine. They'll happen in unexpected ways, and you have the power to unchain yourself. I think that's a really good summary and ending point on this incredibly deep and philosophical conversation.

Thank you very much.

This was, this was great. Do you have anything that you'd like to share with the audience that you want to leave them with?

As I said, I think that I didn't come here when you said that we should have a conversation. I didn't know anything about what you've written and the book that you've written, The Perfect Walk. And I said that that really shares a lot of the spirituality that gave birth to me and raised me. I think the seeds are there. And as I said, Wiba Abidin, the poet laureate of my kingdom, has said, she said, it was for gifting who will have given me He said, "No, it's not for gifting. It's an endowment that is available to everybody." And all you need to do, like the elders in my home, they greet a child, "Look," you know, and then they will say, "Listen," you know, look inside you, listen to your inner self, and you unlock, you know, that's the key. Unlocking the chains is not from somewhere coming from outside to come and do it. I think that's an all— I think you asked me what is the best way to understand. Thank you very much. I didn't expect us to do this, just random thoughts.

Amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the conversation.