The end of history as we know it, navigating emotions, the new humans arising | Gaia’s Custodians 03
In this episode of the Gaia’s Custodians podcast the host reflects on humanity’s current "meta‑crisis" and the inevitable phase‑shift toward a new kind of human—what he calls a "hyper‑agent" or modern‑day Leonardo—who can steward the planet. He uses five physical objects (two leaves, a set of scooter keys, a broken coconut‑knife, a quote from Ilya Prigogine, and his newly finished book) as metaphors to explore themes of impermanence, ethical technology choices, the historical role of tools in human evolution, and the emotional work required to become a custodian of Gaia. He critiques the dominant orange, material‑centric paradigm, outlines the transition to green/yellow value memes via spiral dynamics, and argues that love, emotional purification, and systemic thinking are prerequisites for the emerging paradigm. The host shares personal anecdotes about switching to an electric scooter and a fair‑phone, discusses the limits of current tech (battery minerals, planned obsolescence), and highlights the importance of incremental, imperfect steps. He introduces the concept of hyper‑agents—visionary leaders who can design new economic, educational, and healthcare systems—and stresses that a relatively small number of such agents can catalyze systemic change. The episode concludes with an invitation to support his book, which is offered as a gift‑based, circular product, and a call for listeners to embody custodianship by feeling fully, acting wisely, and aligning with the emerging collective consciousness.
Welcome to another deep dive in our Gaia's Custodians podcast. Today we'll explore what it means to embrace who we are meant to be collectively as a species and individually as persons, and how we might be the key to create a paradise for all living beings on this planet. And in order to do that, in order to follow this enormous North Star and this quite daunting endeavor, I brought a couple of items, as always, that might guide today's exploration. Let's have a look. What is there? The first thing that I brought are two leaves. I have a green, vibrant leaf, and I have a brown, already dying, already decaying leaf. Every time I'm in the forest, I get reminded of the cycle of life. How there's no. There's no standstill. Like, everything, everything is moving, everything is transforming all the time. And that this brown leaf contributes to the next generation of these green, alive leaves through it, when the time is ripe, falling down to the floor. And then it becomes one with the soil. It serves as food for many different organisms and then becomes one with the soil. And it nourishes the amazing trees and amazing bamboo. And then the next generation of leaves can grow out of it. And in a while, this will fall down and will look like this. And that always fills me with an incredible gratitude to be able to witness that. And at the same time, a sense of the impermanence of all things. I think we collectively as a species are trying to neglect the impermanence of things. We are trying to hold on to the youth, to the new, to the shiny, to the vibrant, to the powerful. And we collectively develop the distaste for the old, for the dying, for the decaying. And through that, we are robbing ourselves of an essential part of the experience called life. Because if all the leaves would stay green all the time, the whole ecosystem would be dead because there would be no renewal, there would be no adaptation, there would be no chance for evolution. If everyone and everything would live, like, forever, then everything would stay the same always. But through this process of dying and renewal, new life forms can emerge. Forests can adapt, Trees can, can, can adapt. And I find that tremendously, tremendously beautiful and at the same time, an invitation to align myself more with this cycle of life and to be. Be immerse myself more fully into it. The next thing, I brought the keys for my. For my scooter, for my motorbike. I recently switched from a, like, standard. Standard motorbike. Like, it's super common here in Bali or in even, like in the In Berlin, where I lived before, more and more of these scooters are, are popping out. And I recently made the switch from a standard one gasoline scooter to an electric scooter. And still I'm not very, I made, of course I made the decision because I don't, I don't want to support this huge, this huge industry of burning, burning the oil, burning the coal, burning the natural grass that was extracted out of the ground and then burning that and contributing to what we see now manifesting as the climate catastrophe. I don't want to contribute to that anymore. And at the same time, through switching to an electric scooter, not all the, not all the problems are solved as nicely as they are marketed. Oftentimes like when you dive more into the details, you see that in order to produce these high performing batteries that can take me for like 50km or even more, many of the rare earth minerals need to be extracted out of the ground, probably in living conditions that are, or in working conditions that are not very nice for the people doing that. And at the same time they're like rare and probably will not be possible to serve all of humanity with the limited amount of minerals that we have and that we need for these batteries. So it's not perfect. I'm not like, oh my God, wow, now I solved this problem. It's more like I made a step in the right direction, but it feels far from ideal. And still I believe we are living in times where it's important to make steps in the right direction without knowing the perfect solution. Without the perfect solution being present. Yeah. And with this kind of attitude and driving my electric scooter, the next thing I brought is a knife, a knife that looks a little bit funny because I broke it. It's a knife I open my coconuts with. Every morning when I get up sunrise, first thing I do is I take this knife and I open a coconut and I hydrate myself. And yeah, of course, as you can see, I opened a lot of coconuts with it. So the, the part where you usually grab the knife is missing, but still it's working. With this, I can open my coconuts pretty well. I get used to it. And this knife for me is a representation of humanity's use of technology. Because if I would be lost in some kind of forest without those technology and I would see a coconut palm tree and I would be able to climb to the top and get one of these coconuts without this knife, I would be pretty, would be pretty weak. And my chances of even Though I'm probably thirsting, like really, really, really, really much. My chances of trying of opening the coconut are tiny, but with this knife, it's a matter of seconds and then I open it. And this use of technology that we human beings started to cultivate a while ago, we'll dive into that more in a couple of minutes. Led to our ascension to the top of the food chain. Without our technology, we are pretty helpless creatures. Just our physical capabilities, without tools like these, we probably wouldn't even have survived because there are many other animals that are way more capable on a physical level than we human beings are. But with our use of technology, be it knives like these, we are pretty fucking powerful species. The next thing I brought is a quote, a quote by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogin, and this is one of my favorite quotes. And he said, when a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence have the power to shift the entire system to a higher order. And this quote always reminds me when I. When I'm prone to falling into despair about the state of the world. And I see how the majority of human beings on this planet still contributes way more to the problem than to the solution, that the majority of people on the planet don't care about all of that, don't care about Mother Gaia. They are just like living their lives, doing their things, doing their consumption. And in these times when it feels like so far away that we see a massive awakening, a massive expansion of consciousness, people suddenly caring about their environment, caring about other people, caring about the biosphere. When these emotions, like, take me, then I always remind myself that in order to create the more beautiful world on this planet, we don't need all people. We don't need 8 billion. We probably don't even need a billion. We only need a tiny fraction of leaders, of visionaries, of pioneers, of designers who are creating systems for the majority of the population in which they can personally thrive and at the same time do less harm to the bigger whole. And I think that with a couple of million people that are stepping into this new paradigm fully and that are dedicating their lives to the creation of those systems, those new economic systems, that new education systems, that new healthcare systems, that new, like living environments, designing those kind of spaces where other people can come in and raise their consciousness and raise their awareness and develop a broader perspective and do less harm to the, to the, to the bigger whole. And this always gifts me with a profound sense of hope and optimism and the drive to do something, the drive into Action. Because I see how many of those leaders are already emerging and that are awakening even more and more and that are getting more and more powerful. We can call them hyper agents as a term that the first time I heard about it was in Daniel Schmachtenberger's podcast. And he talked about hyper agents being people who have an extraordinary influence, be it entrepreneurs or politicians or thought leaders or authors or philosophers or shamans or people with an extraordinary influence on the world around them. And a couple of those hyper agents may be enough to create the more beautiful world. And this is what this reminds me, this quote by Elia Prigogin. And then the fifth and last thing that I brought is, I'm very excited, my book, it's finished. Gaia's Custodians Embracing who We Are Meant to Be. I worked on it for many, many months now and holding it in my hands now, of course, it's a digital version. It was just finished. And probably very soon I will be able to hold the physical, the printed version in my hands, too. But this book is probably the most sacred thing I created so far in my journey of almost 34 years walking on this planet Earth. The thing is that is most closest to my heart, that is a gift to the world, and that hopefully contributes to those thought leaders, those hyper agents, developing an even broader perspective and collecting the essential design criteria and bringing them all together in order to build thriving companies for the future, thriving communities for the future, thriving families for the future, maybe even thriving nations for the future, a whole big global community. And having created this book gives me a profound sense of pride and at the same time, a profound sense of humility. Because through creating it, I got a sense of how little I do know and how I'm just starting out on my journey. And that it's. That it's my task to embody this archetype of a custodian in my individual life and to document this journey in order to probably inspire some people to embark on the same path. And for me, being a custodian is somebody who is a steward, who is a caretaker, who is a guardian, who is a protector of the whole, who makes decisions with as many implications as possible as we can hold as we can grasp in mind. Not just following my own personal desires, my own personal ego games, my own personal needs, but really checking in the decisions that I'm making and the behavior that I'm expressing, like, which effects do these have on other people, on other animals, on other plants, on this whole whole beautiful ecosystem called Gaia Gaia, the sum of all life on Earth. And that's a very complex and challenging task. Because this like deeply, deeply challenges our lazy minds that always look for shortcuts, that always look for the one solution, the one thing like the quick fix, the magic pill to get rich, to lose weight and so on. But developing the capacity to hold all of that complexity that opens up if we step out of this just like pure ego driven lifestyle and open ourselves up to the, to the multitude of things that are going on both on a global level and on a personal level. And life gets for me personally a lot richer and at the same time more challenging. But this is what these times ask for. Because our narrow, focused acting and decision making process caused the mess that we are living in right now. Because if we only optimize for earning a lot of money, then we cannot not exploit this beautiful planet, we cannot not extract all its treasures and as a result rob Mama Gaia of so many of its, of its children. Like so many species that has got, that have gone extinct due to the, due to the collective actions of humanity. That's why the current era is called by geologists the Anthropocene, Anthropos, meaning human. The first epoch in the history, in the 4.8 billions history of this Earth that is driven by the activities of a single species. That's crazy. Never before in the, in the history of this planet hasn't this existed. That one single species is driving. It's driving, yeah. This, the fate of our planet. And since we humans arose to the top of the food chain through our use of technology, we developed these godlike powers that we can basically do whatever we want to. We are invited to develop the wisdom of gods too. Because if we only have the power of gods, without the wisdom of gods to put this power to good use of the whole, we will pretty likely fuck up the whole and blow the whole thing up. So yeah, these are our five items that I brought that will guide today's exploration. The knife, my book, the keys to my electric scooter or two leaves and the quote by Ilya Prigogin. And I think where I would like to kick things off is with a deeper exploration of the role technology played and still plays in making us human beings so incredibly powerful. And with the intention of probably learning something for the future and for the present of how we might use technology in a more wise, more enlightened way. Because for the past, or almost 100,000 years ago, around 100,000 years ago, when human beings were still, like the earliest Homo sapiens roaming around in the African savanna, we started our use of technology with the first stone axes, with the first spears, with the first bows and arrows. We used to hunt mammoths and all sorts of other species that served as our food. And those first technologies, like the cultivation of fire and the development of oral language, all of that made Homo sapiens from a pretty weak and pretty like, unimportant creature to the dominant species of our planet. Because if we wouldn't have, like, if the first, if the, if our first ancestors, if the first Homo sapiens wouldn't have a, wouldn't have a spear, like a stone spear, they did not have any chance to, to hunt a mammoth because, like, with their fists, like, what do you want to do against like a thing that is, that is like so much bigger than you? You cannot do anything. Only through our use of technology in combination with the ability to coordinate like a single human being, even if it has a spear, is not very powerful at the same time, a group of human beings without technology, without spears, is not very powerful either. But when these two worlds come together, like we coordinate in a group and we have technology bomb, we become unstoppable. Like these two developments enabled everything that took place in the past 100,000 years ago, 1,000 years. Our use of technology in combination with our coordination where our group, yeah, human beings becoming a social group, a group species. And this, even though, like these first, first stone tools look pretty unintimidating, they laid the foundation for what we use now, like smartphones and artificial intelligence and, and brain, brain implants that make us, that make us cyborgs like Elon Musk company Neuralink, working on, or not even working on, they are like, doing it. The first, the first trials have already been run. Like the first patients already got their chips implanted in their brains in order to gain functions that they lost or to gain functions that they probably, maybe even never had. What will, what will emerge when biological human beings will merge with artificial, technical, silicon based life forms? What, what will emerge out of that? That's a crazy question that nobody of us is able to answer, but that we will answer in the future. So we have been cyborgs from day zero. Like our first stone tools, like this almost prehistoric knife that I hold in my hands is just a couple of steps in evolution before the artificial intelligence that will eradicate so many of our current jobs in the future. It's just like one technology that built upon the last and that multiplied by 100, 100,000 years ago. And this is where we are right now with the possibility to sit in the middle of the forest with a, with a microphone and with a laptop that's recording that and with a camera. And then later with an AI power tool that is extracting short clips for Instagram out of my two hour podcast and posting that immediately. And AI power tools that create thumbnails like, like that create worlds that are not existing anymore, that are not existing yet that our minds can imagine. And then I put a couple of commands into a tool like midjourney. And then I get an image as a thumbnail for this podcast episode that no photographer could shoot because it's not existing. You cannot photograph that. But it still looks so real. And as much as Steve Jobs with, with his work wanted to create like a bicycle, like a bicycle for the, for, for, for the mind with the computer, like, to make things easier to, to enable us to work in a way that, that enhances our capabilities. Like something like artificial intelligence feels like a bicycle for like fucking everything. Because this will have implications on all areas of our lives and all the detrimental effects we see nowadays that the use of technology possesses. Like young teenagers getting addicted to their smartphones, and if their Instagram posts don't get as many likes as they. As they wish to, they feel bad for days. And even teenage suicide is on the rise because of all this comparison. As much as we blame things like the current manifestation of social media of Instagram and TikTok, it's important to see that it's woven into the fabric of us, humanity trying to create technology that makes our lives easier. And of course, we could argue that at the, at the moment in time where we are right now, that we went a little too far. You could definitely argue that. But I believe we did went too far. We are just in the middle of a phase shift, in the middle of using technology in a way that is more wise, that is more enlightened. Because in the past we used technology for our own personal gain. Like, this knife makes my life easier. Even though with this knife I can, I can cut the throat of a pig and take its life and then eat it. The value of this technology is mostly determined by what it can bring for me. And Instagram arose out of, out of the same. Like when Mark Zuckerberg acquired Instagram. And he wasn't doing that, which is my guess, my assumption, but he probably wasn't doing that to bring a lot of beauty into the world. He was seeing this as a, as a smart business transaction to enrich his company and to make his shareholders more wealthy, including himself. This is how businesses is operated in the old. In the orange and the materialistic paradigm. We make decisions for our own personal gain. But when we and we explored a little bit of the spiral and spiral dynamics, a model that describes the evolution of human consciousness in our first Gaia's Custodians podcast episode. If you haven't dive into that, then I want to invite you to do so. Because this gives us with a framework as a foundation to realize that the current phase shift that's taking place away from the orange materialistic ego driven paradigm where everything I do and all the people in my life are just there to, to enrich myself and to fulfill my own ego driven needs. That this paradigm is slowly shifting and we are seeing more and more emergence of the green and of the, of the yellow. Value, value memes, how the, how the spiral describes them that are more community oriented, that are more characterized by empathy, by the desire to create win, win, win situations where not only we win or maybe even our business partners win, but our customers win too and our and our employees win and nature wins and the local, local environment where our company is situated in wins. And that's a completely different way to look at business and a completely different way to look at life. So this is a phase shift that we are witnessing right now. And that's a phase shift that is really essential because if this wouldn't take place and we would still continue on this orange trajectory of exploiting everything and everyone around us, then we would, yeah, as I said, blow the whole thing up. And this is what is, what is what was coined the metacrisis. The meta crisis is the multitude of crises that are converging in our lifetimes. Like our broken economic system that must grow at all costs and that leads to us needing to consume more and more and more and more, which obviously on a finite planet, like a linear materials economy, that is, that must grow exponentially. On a finite planet, that's something that is impossible, like physically impossible. If your economy produce certain things and later on discards them as waste and is not a circular economy. When something is created and at the end of its life cycle, it turns into fuel for the whole system and enables the next phase of, of life. This is not the characteristic of our economic system. It's economically much more lucrative to build something as cheap as possible that only lasts for a year or two because you know, people will discard it then and they will come back as customers and buy some More things from you. I have the feeling that. And that's one of the reasons why I switched away from the iPhone. Although I loved my iPhones for many, many years, I switched to the fairphone because this is repairable. You can just open it and you can change the battery, you can change the camera, you can change the screen easily. The fairphone was created with a circular, with a circular approach in mind. And I have the feeling that Apple on purpose designs their phones in a way that after two or three years they somehow don't work so well so that people will buy the latest version. I think over my life I already bought five, maybe even six iPhones. I don't know. And of course that's not nice for the planet because the old ones, they just sit somewhere and have like these valuable things inside them and they will just land on, on a landfill. And of course they are moved in the direction of recycling them and so on, which is nice, but the majority is not being recycled yet. And this is just how you approach your business in the current, and the current orange materialistic paradigm. It makes sense to not design phones that last for 10 years because you will lose a lot of revenue of recurring customers that buy a new phone after three years. But ultimately, if we would perpetuate like this, this behavior more and more and more and more, of course our planet pays the, pays the bill for that. So designing our products, designing our companies in a way that respect this design criteria of circularity as an essential undertaking that must take place more and more for humanity and all other species on this planet to thrive into the indefinite future. Because what we're doing right now, producing something and then discarding it somewhere down the road as waste and for the next cycle of production, needing to extract even more from nature that will end in a landfill three years down the road. This cannot work forever. And if this system, even through our broken economic system, needs to grow exponentially, like even faster and faster and faster and faster. Of course, some, somewhere down the road the planet will be empty. There will be no resources to extract. There will be no, no other animals to eat. There will be no other trees to cut. And then human, human beings will go extinct because we are debasing our own habitat. We are like, we are really like the branch on which we're sitting, we're cutting that. Which is not a very smart decision if you see it clearly, what's going on. So I believe we are approaching either the end of human history or we approaching the end of human history defined by the Characteristics of the meta crisis. So either humanity will go through a profound phase shift where almost everything will change, not almost, where everything will change, or our days are numbered. And since we learned, within our exploration of the spiral dynamics model, we learned that consciousness cannot not expand. Consciousness cannot not take on broader and more complex forms. You cannot stop this process. That's an inherent characteristic of consciousness. It's for me, not an either or. It's not, will we continue on our current path and then go extinct and destroy everything, or will we do this phase shift to a higher, more enlightened version? It's obvious what is taking place. The phase shift is inevitable. And so I don't want to perpetuate like so many people who are talking about the meta crisis are perpetuating this like, doomer, doomer narrative of we need to act now, otherwise everything will collapse. We are acting now. The, the, the phase shift is already taking place. It's, it cannot not take place. It's the same with all the phase shift that took place before. When we connect with the spiral, we see all the phase shifts like from beige to the purple, from the purple to the red, from the red to the blue, from the blue to orange. There were already so many phase shifts and now the next one is taking place. And this is characterized by the emergence of a novel kind of human, a kind of human that on scale has never existed before. There were certain, like individuals even like 50 years ago, maybe even 100 years ago, that approach life with this systemic view, people who were way far ahead of their times. I think of somebody like Leonardo da Vinci, who lived like 500 years ago. And for his time he was one of the first true polymaths, the universal genius that educated himself in so many different areas in order to develop the complex synergistic wisdom to design those innovations. He was a musician, he was a painter, he was an architect, an engineer, an astronomer. So many things. Like most people know him for painting the Mona Lisa, but he did so much more. And developing the synergistic wisdom, like combining all these different areas enabled him to create innovations that were so far ahead of his time. And that's what we need right now. Like Gaia calls for the emergence of modern day Leonardo's, for the next generation of Renaissance men and women who are developing like profoundly different responses to the meta crisis, who are designing systems with all its implications in mind and who are looking into this world with a systemic worldview and not with a narrowly focused how can I achieve my goal of earn, of earning more Money. And of course, as I said, this asks a lot, like, cognitively, emotionally, to hold this complexity. Because my process over the last one, one and a half years of opening up myself more and more into for what is going on in the world and really deeply connecting with the meta crisis on every level. There were a lot of moments of overwhelm, of existential sadness, of like, it's hopeless, we can give up. We even passed planetary boundaries. The narrative out there is like, climate change is moving fast and we need to change now in order to. And so on. But what most people don't see is that we, we surpassed planetary boundaries on so many different levels already, so many, like, everyday species are going extinct. The more I opened myself up for that first, the harder it got. Up to a point where I almost felt like nothing, nothing I can be doing me as a, like a little small individual, like, nothing I can do will play any role in the whole global thing that's playing out. Like, I'm so insignificant, even if I fulfill all my potential, I'm still so insignificant that I will not be able to turn the whole arc of human history around by myself. So why even bothering? And over the past month, I talked to a lot of people who are feeling the same, who are in the midst of this existential overwhelm and sadness, and maybe even anger because of the injustice that the current system is how it is right now. And we probably feel bound to continuing the exploitive behavior even though we know better. Like, even before I switched to the electric scooter, I knew that the gasoline scooter is detrimental for the planet, but even the electric scooter is detrimental for the planet in another way. So it feels like, okay, if I want to move, if I want to go to another place that is not within a kilometer or two from my home, I'm participating in the meta crisis. The same with the fairphone. I know that with my previous iPhones, I was participating in the meta crisis big time. And even with this one, I'm still participating in the meta crisis because even though it's modular and you can take it apart and you can repair certain things, you still need a battery. And in this battery, in this lithium ion battery, there are like components that are super rare on this planet and that they like. Better would be to not drive a scooter. Better would be to not own a smartphone. But yeah, we are living in a time between stories where the old is crumbling and the new is not fully there yet. So we are invited to move forward with this Systemic understanding and the systemic worldview, and at the same time acknowledging that we are still living in a predominantly orange, materialistic world and we need to navigate in it. For me personally, it's not a solution to just, like, go into the forest and leave the evil world out there behind and just, like, do nothing and meditate, like, this doesn't feel like an option either. So I'm invited to navigate, to work in the current, in the current meta crisis defined world while trying to move every single day a little more in the direction of the more beautiful world. And both the electric scooter as well as the fairphone are a step, even though they are, like, far from perfect. So this is one of the characteristics that this novel kind of human that I see emerging right now possesses. The courage to open ourselves to everything that is out there, to open ourselves up to the sadness, to the anger, to the overwhelm and not push that away. It's very easy to push things away and to keep ourselves distracted, keep ourselves busy with these little devices and not see all that. And if there are like, bad news on tv, on social media, the newspapers, when people are telling us something, or if we see something, if we feel something, like, every time I'm, like driving here in Bali and with my scooter, I'm driving behind one of those trucks that are loaded with chicken, like, probably hundreds of chickens, like, crammed into this little, little truck. And of course I know where they are going. They will probably not live for any longer. And this is not the end of a graciously and beautifully lived life. This is the end of a. Of a pretty miserable existence. And every time I see that, every time I witness that, and every time I let it touch my heart, it's difficult. But this openness and this allowance, like, really allowing for things to touch us, really allowing for things to trigger us, really allowing for things to make us upset, to make us sad, to make us angry. This openness is an essential criteria to go through a purification process that I witnessed over the past year, year and a half. A purification process of allowing all that while in the past thinking that, okay, if I allow myself to feel all this existential sadness, probably it will swallow me and I will never be able to, to do coaching anymore or to do some work in my business, or to even be there for my son, because I will just like, sit in a corner and cry and it will never stop. This is what our minds tell us. No, no, no, don't. Don't open yourself up to this emotion because if it swallows you, we will not be able to participate in the world anymore. But exactly the opposite is true. The more we open ourselves up for any kind of emotion and let it really like pass through our system, the sooner it goes away, because it's not meant to stay here. Energy is emotion is energy in motion. It's moving like. I've never met a single person who fully and fully allowed themselves to feel a certain emotion. And after years and years and years are still in this emotion every day. No, that's probably not even true. For like weeks sometimes it's only minutes. If I allow myself to feel something fully, maybe even 10 minutes later, it's already gone. Of course, the longer I have suppressed this certain type of emotion in the past, of course it takes longer because the more dead bodies I have stored in my basement, they first need to come out. They first need to come out. And this purification process of fueling everything that the meta crisis, both on a global level, when we connect with the extinction of species, or with the factory farms, or with the polluting of beautiful valley rivers with an incredible amount of plastic, and we connect with all that. And on a personal level too, when we connect with all that, like the ongoing separation and the loss of community and that people are feeling more and more lonely and getting more and more depressed and getting more and more overweight and are addicted to those devices more and more. When we connect to all that, of course it evokes certain things in us, but allowing ourselves to feel them has the power to deeply purify us. And that's what I was able to witness. And I'm like nowhere near to finishing this process, of course. Still, when I drive behind one of those trucks, like, I feel a profound sense of sadness and it does something to me, but it's not all encompassing and swallowing me anymore. It's like, okay, I can work with it, I can, can hold it. I'm able to hold this emotion and I'm able to channel it into, into something productive. That's, that's the moment I say that I, I start to question it because I don't want to, I don't want to create the, the, the belief that only feeling the emotion without doing anything after is not productive. That's. And the same, that's productive in a different way. But when the moment naturally arises that you are feeling something and it doesn't like knock you out, then you are capable of doing something with it. Starting, starting a business, being more loving in your personal relationship, so on and so on. Then you're feeling this profound sense of purification. It's the same with when we have an argument with our partner and we are really like fighting and things seem so bad at a certain moment, things like, they switch and it's like, oh, now I get you. Oh, it was just a big misunderstanding. And then it's the. It feels like unity again and unity on a deeper level than before. So I believe every emotion that's coming up is purifying us and it is connecting us deeper with the essence and with our love for the sacred. Yeah. Because if we allow ourselves, if we allow ourselves to open into one dimension, other dimensions get broader too. So if I'm able to feel the sadness, I'm able to feel the joy too. And if I don't allow myself to feel the sadness, then I'm disconnecting myself from the joy and from the excitement and from the profound gratitude of just like being in this forest, sitting here, being able to speak my, my thoughts, my. My perspective into this camera and knowing that it is recorded. And then some people with whom my words resonate will be able on the other side of the planet to watch that or to listen to that. And then we can develop a relationship through that. That's like, oh my God, that's incredible. But even like things that are less complex, just, just like the taste, the taste of this coconut water that I brought with me, I have the feeling that everything like through me, allowing myself to feel all these quote unquote negative emotions deepened, deepened my my zest for life and deepened my appreciation, deepened my excitement, deepened my. My sense of bliss for the smallest things. Just like I could sit here and observe this leaf for like eternity because it's so fascinating, it's so incredible, like it's a miracle that this exists. And that's the antidote to the meta crisis. Connecting with the beauty, connecting with the gift, and out of that, developing a strong dedication to preserve what is sacred. And that's for me, at the essence of custodianship. That's what I mean when I talk about a custodian of Gaia, as somebody who developed a profound sense of love. Like falling in love is one of our two prerequisites for the coming of age of humanity, for the phase shift that we see right now. The first moment, maybe 16 years old, at 18 years old, the first moment you kissed your first partner, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, like the first kiss, and you really fell in love, another world opened up for yourself. Of course you loved your parents before you loved your Mother, you loved your father, but it was something different. Like, this love called forth the best in you. You were, like, from one day to another, you started cleaning up your room and you groomed yourself, you bought new clothes and you cooked a nice meal for three hours to only gift your beloved, like, the nicest possible food. And it called out the best out of you. Like, when we truly are in love, it changes us. It gives us so much meaning and it gives us a sense of. A sense of. Yeah, a profound sense of meaning that manifests in all other areas of our lives too. So I believe falling in love again with the whole. Falling in love again with Guy, and not just falling in love with our partner or falling in love with ourselves or falling in love with our bodies, how nice they are, or falling in love with our business or whatever, but really falling in love with the whole. Whole falling in love with the leaf, falling in love with the coconut water, and even falling in love with the destruction that is going on, that's something else. But that's required because love is the greatest force there is. If we truly see somebody who's probably expressing some kind of destructive behavior right now, if you truly see them for who they really are, that they are only expressing this destructive behavior because they are lost themselves. They were hurt themselves, hurt people, hurt people. And we, if we embrace, still, as hard as it is, as easy as it is to just, like, punch them in the face into not wanting to have to do anything without them with them, like, but to stay in this love and to see them for who they really are, it has the possibility to change people big time. I'm thinking about a story that Nora Bateson told about her father, Gregory Bateson. And they were doing a road trip and father and daughter. And then there was a hitchhiker on the side of the street. And of course, as friendly human beings as they were, of course they stopped and weave the hitchhiker in and like, yeah, we can take you, no problem. Come in. And then when they started driving again, the hitchhiker pulled a gun and said, like, give me your money. And what, what would be a situation for almost everybody where people would freak out and where people would condemn. I will never take on another hitchhiker. And my trust into humanity was, Was. Was not justified. And I will never do this again. And I need to fight and I need to get, get out of the situation. What Gregory Bateson did was something completely else. When he saw this gun, he just asked the man a question. How the hell did you get into this mess. Like, he was deeply concerned with, why does this person need to do. Need to. Need to express this behavior? Why is there so much pain, so much lack, so much separation inside him that he needs to, like, steal money from other people? And he was deeply concerned with him. And he asked him this question, and he asked more questions. Tell me. Tell me what is going on inside yourself. Tell me what is going on in your life. Tell me what is. What was going on in your childhood? And they had a conversation for hours and hours and hours. And of course, the gun faded away. They had a beautiful conversation. And then in the end, Gregory Bateson said goodbye to this man, brought him to where he wanted to go. Of course, he gave him some money. Here. I want to support you. I want to. I want to help you. And I see that you are in a deep, deep kind of trouble right now. Let me help you. I was there for you. We had a nice conversation. I gave you some money. I can. I will do everything that is in my power to make your situation a little bit better. And with that, he said goodbye and they parted ways. And what seemed like a terrible situation was turned into a huge gift for everybody involved. And this had a profound effect on, of course, on his daughter, on Nora Bateson, and inspired her to do the amazing work that she's doing right now. So what I'm trying to convey is that if we fully step into this new paradigm, if we embrace another way of seeing the world, it has a incredible effect on our surroundings and it even has the possibility to change somebody who's like, full on angry and like, ready to. To show. To show any kind of violence and prepares his gun and ready to. To ready to shoot you if you. If you want, give your money to him, like, to turn this man around. I think for. For the. For the hitchhiker, it was probably the turning point of his life. We don't know how the story continues. So this novel kind of human that I'm seeing emerging right now is capable of such an ex. Of such a behavior. But being able to do that only comes with. Before feeling everything that is there and not pushing all those feelings anymore into the basement. As Michael Singer beautifully puts it, relax and release everything that's knocking on your door as an invitation to sit with it. Oh, there's this invitation. Oh, there's this trigger. Oh, there is this sadness. Oh, there's this overwhelm. Oh, there's that. And just be with it and then release it. And this is a process that takes. That takes Place naturally, organically. We don't need to do anything with it. We just need to allow. We just need to stop, like locking the door. We just need to let the door open by itself and be there. And the same is true for our quote, unquote, positive emotion. Of course, if we feel the joy, if we feel the bliss, if we feel the excitement, if we feel the gratitude, if we feel all that, if we are connected so deeply with the beauty of this whole fabric of existence, be with that too, and know that it will pass and that probably most human beings will never reach a state in their lives where this will be permanent. This doesn't mean that this is not possible. I think there are some masters who are in this never ending bliss. But that's not a goal that we can follow. It's something that when the moment is there, will manifest. And until then, we are invited into the impermanence of things, into the impermanence of negative things, and at the same time into the impermanence of positive things. And this is what for me characterizes a custodian of Gaia, being in connection with this, with the impermanence of things. And don't fighting it. Yeah. Developing the capability to hold all of that complexity and not taking this as an excuse to not do anything because we feel like, oh my God, we are such a tiny speck in the whole vast cosmos. What are we to do here? No, we play our parts, we fulfill our roles. Whatever truly calls us right now, we embark on. And this is not this. I'm the change maker. I'm going to change the world. Like I'm going to go out there and save the planet. No, this is not the attitude. The attitude of a custodian is somebody who, with deep humility, takes time to learn, takes time to observe, takes time to connect, to fall in love. And out of that follows the impulses, follows the calls that present themselves and surrenders to the greater forces and approaches life with this question of I'm curious where life wants to have me next. I'm curious what will be the next adventure, what will be the next endeavor. Let's see. This is living from a place of surrender. Yeah. And it does not mean that we don't do anything. It means that we do the right thing when the right moment is there. But in order to see what are the right things, when the right moment is there, we're invited to cultivate this inner peace, this groundedness, this centeredness. And that can only go through feeling everything that's there and connecting Fully connecting fully with the. With all the pain and with all the joy and letting all that purify us and bring us into a state where we are not attached anymore. We're not attached to. No, I don't want the pain. And we are not attached either to. Oh, my God, this joy. I want to have it stay for the rest of my life. No. Things are just coming and things are going like the waves, like the cycle of life. Yeah, like spring and then summer and then autumn and then winter and then again. This is what these two leaves reminds me of. Yeah, that's the process of a future custodian taking time for all that. And every time we see ourselves deeply caught again in the destructive rat race of consumption and of social media and of all the things out there, recognizing that and not condemning ourselves of, oh, no, you are not there yet. You. You're not perfect yet. No, it's a journey. It's a journey. And it's a journey that's unfolding naturally. As I said, this phase shift, humanity is going through this new. This novel kind of human that's emerging. We cannot stop that. It's inevitable that will take place regardless of what we are doing. If I would say no, like, no, no, no, I'm not participating in that. I don't open myself up to become a custodian of Gaia. I will just continue in the orange materialistic paradigm, which is something that I will not be able to do because it's not who I am anymore. But even though I did it, this process would materialize regardless of me and regardless of my actions. So it's my invitation to just participate in it, in the process of evolution, in the expansion of consciousness, that is inevitable. And I feel that through the emergence of more and more people who are approaching life from this place of custodianship, from this place of let me be a steward of the whole, whatever that means. However daunting this might seem, the more people who are approaching their lives from this standpoint, when the time is right, not forced. If you're watching this video and you don't feel the resonance, no, that's not something I want to convince you of. Not something that you can motivate yourself into. It's just like when the timing is right, when this connects you, when this message finds you, and when this really hits you in your heart, then the moment is there that this manifests and that you open yourself up more and more and more and more to what's going on around you. And letting this purify you and broadening your perspective and embracing this systemic worldview and seeing the entangled world, seeing the interconnected world, seeing the inter being that Gaia is just one big organism that's consisting of many, many parts, like all the leaves, all the humans, all the monkeys and all the dogs and all the whales and all the birds and all the bamboo and all the moss and all the mushrooms, and everything is part of one big organism that's called Gaia. So if we realize that, and if we feel. If we not only understand this from our heads, but if we really realize that in our hearts and connect to that and can really feel it, you cannot exploit anymore. You cannot make decisions that are harmful to other parts of the system. It's impossible anymore. It's not possible anymore. And we need to be practical. Of course I know that through driving this electric scooter or through using this phone or through creating this video with this camera, of course I will create harm somewhere. I know that. I know that. And I recognize that the perfect solution is not present yet. Because to say I don't drive the scooter and I don't use the phone and I don't use a camera and I just sit somewhere in the forest and wait for durian to fall down. And if not, then I will just starve. Like this would cause harm to in my personal life and the lack of the value that I can bring out there. It's like holding. Holding being in this awareness that not everything is perfect. And through that, everything is perfect because it is a journey. It is a process that's not easy because there is this inner perfectionist inside myself that wants to find, like the one thing, the big solution, and then everything is aligned. No, that's still a manifestation of the kind of thinking that brought us into the meta crisis, this kind of reductionistic thinking that is fading more and more away. Yeah. So, yeah, if all these ruminations and explorations and processes resonate with you, I want to invite you to get the book. Deeply moved by the process of creating it, which asked everything of me, which was definitely not easy, but it was so worth it. Looking forward to write the next one. Gaia's Custodians is not a single piece and then it's finished and the truth is out there. And it's a journey that's a constant journey, a journey on which I am on. A journey on which we collectively as a species are on. And it will continue into the indefinite future. And I will continue to walk this path and I will continue to share my perspective with the world as long as it is helpful for people. I think there is a certain beauty in the right message, finding us at the right time. And there are so, so, so, so many realizations and epiphanies and changes in my personal trajectory that took place over the past years that were inspired by the right book, the right video, the right podcast, the right conversation, finding me at the right time. And if you sense that there are people in your life with whom this, like, this is the right time for the right message, then it would be an honor if you would give this book to someone close to your heart and in the process, support the spreading of this message, which for me, is so meaningful, so deeply, deeply meaningful. And not with a sense of we need to push it as fast and as hard as possible, and everybody needs to know that. No, but the right people will know it. And at the same time, it requires us to play our part in that and to not stand in the way. And at the same time, not to force anything into existence. Like, if we see these as opposite ends of the spectrum, standing in the way, not doing our part, and doing way more, that is our part. And trying to force something into existence. No, both ends of the spectrum are not helpful. And instead, we are invited to find equilibrium of doing the right thing when the right moment is there and not doing the wrong thing when the wrong moment is there, but really connecting to this perfection and allowing ourselves to step more and more into the flow of life. So if there's somebody in your life that could benefit from getting into contact with what we explored today, it would be an honor if you gifted the book to this person. And, yeah, the whole book is living in the gift. There's no, like, fixed price. It's not like a regular book launch with a huge company behind it with an agenda and many bookstores and so on. No, it's just like a slap of my heart that I created, that I'm putting out there. It's a piece of art. It's not like a regular book, just written hours upon hours upon hours of just running text. No, it was our intention to bring the medium of books into the 21st century. It's really interactive. There are a lot of QR codes with additional resources, and they are graphics and beautiful images. And it was our intention to create. To create really something beautiful. On a rainy Sunday afternoon with a cozy blanket and a delicious tea or a coconut, you dive into this book and you get lost in this world that is opening up for yourself and Four hours later, you're like, wow, wow, wow. What kind of world did I immerse myself in? And how can I bring this into reality even more? That's my intention with this book. Everything I put in there is a gift. I don't charge. Like my work, my hours that I, that I, that I spent on creating this book. It's all a gift. And I want you to know that I will receive all gifts that result out of gratitude on your side that are flowing to me. I will receive all of that with tremendous appreciation. So if you order the book, you have the possibility to select by yourself what kind of contribution you want to make. Yeah. If you dove into the last podcast episode, this is what it means for me to live in the gift. Because this book, creating this book was such a sacred work for me, was such a process of. I cannot sell this. It feels deeply wrong to sell this. The only thing I can do is to gift it away and to receive all the inflowing gifts in return with a lot of gratitude. And I want you to know that all the gifts that are flowing back, of course, support the creation of more pieces like this and the spreading of it. And so, yeah, any contribution is highly valued. Thank you for that. I will put the link in the show notes. You can dive deeper into this new world that is opening up and into the question how we might transition through this phase shift humanity is going through, how this might look like, and how we might come up with viable responses to the meta crisis, how we might embody the next generation of Leonardo's, the next generation of polymaths, of universal thinkers and doers and feelers that develop this capability, the synergistic wisdom to be a steward of change, an agent of change in these turbulent times where most people are freaking out more and more and more, and we're calm and centered and wise human beings with a broad perspective and an open heart and a smart mind and a vigorous body are needed. And to bring all of that together. This is what it means for me personally to lean more into this archetype of becoming a custodian of Gaia, a caretaker, a steward of the whole. I thank you for your openness for today's exploration. Would be an honor to see you diving into the book. And besides that, I'm sending tremendous love from the heart of Bali and look forward to our next exploration here in this podcast.
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