The Way of Integrity and Finding the Path to Your True Self | Martha Beck

The moment you stop saying, I can't and I have to, you really remove yourself as the victim. In your language, you start to put everything in alignment. Once you're telling yourself the truth, you start to live according to that truth.

I'm a big mind, body, soul, spirit. Like, figure out how those things merge together and, and your work obviously just centers all around that. How did you get on this journey to begin with? Because I know it wasn't always the. This wasn't always your primary passion.

No, I was kind of, you know, I didn't go on an entrepreneurial pathway to begin with. I was very much. My father was a professor. I was going to be a professor. I liked school. Professors are just people who never stop going to school. And I was. I was raised Mormon and religious, and my, My life was sort of mapped out for me to go from here to here.

Yeah.

And instead it sort of goes.

And.

I think it started going wonky for me when I. When I got into Harvard at 17. And Mormon girls don't go to Harvard.

But I wanted to prove them all along. Let's go.

And then I just kept staying there. I got married and had a kid, and then I had a second child who was diagnosed with down syndrome prenatally. But it wasn't just a simple diagnosis. The fact is that from the moment I became pregnant, I began having experiences that I could not explain in the models I was learning at Harvard. I had psychic experiences. It took me years and years, decades to even say that out loud, but there's no other language for it. I would see things that other people were seeing. When I thought about the person, I'd see what they were saying. And that just took. My little life had gone and went phew. My advisors and the doctors told me that if I didn't have a very late term termination of the pregnancy, that I'd be throwing my life away. And I'm very pro choice. But I realized at that time that the life I had wasn't all that wonderful, that I wasn't really happy. I mean, I'll tell you a psychic like experience. When the nurse practitioner called me to tell me that my son had down syndrome, I picked up the phone and she said, hi, Martha, I have some not so good news from you for you. And there was this pause, that pause where you go, oh, no. And in the pause, a very clear, very soft voice said, martha, are you happy? And I said, what? And the nurse said, yeah, your son's been diagnosed with. And I was like, no, not you. Hush. Yeah, this voice was so strange. And then she told me that he had down syndrome. And I. The first thing I thought, I said, I've heard that people with down syndrome can be happy. And the voice said, that is right. And then it was gone. I didn't hear it again for many, many years. But it was enough to make me decide that the life I had wasn't making me happy. And maybe throwing it away wasn't the worst thing I could do. So I did, in many ways, throw that life away. Not because of my son, but because he took me on a different path. And then I just was following my joy. I kind of thought the reason to have a baby is that this human being can experience joy. That's really, in the final analysis, the thing that makes life worth living. So I set out to follow joy, and it's just taken me all kinds of crazy places.

Yeah. No, I love it. You know, it's funny, I. I used to. I used to. I got into a bait one time with a friend of mine. You know, they were going. Trying to go through a similar decision about what to do. They had been, you know, was pretty certain that was going to be a Down syndrome child. And I was like, you guys don't understand, do you? Like what? What do you mean? I said, name one down syndrome kid in the world that doesn't come out of the gate with just absolute, pure love.

That's true, right? Yeah. It's not true that they all have great lives. I mean, I've seen tragedies. And I would never say to someone, you have to keep a baby that has a disability. Disability.

Yeah.

My whole philosophy is that we all know our own destinies and that only you at any given moment can make the decision that is right for your mission in life, for your experience of joy, for your soul. So it's all about staying really true to yourself. And it's not about saying, oh, yeah, people with down syndrome are X, Y and Z. They're all different. We're all different. So that I ended up in this world where, look, everybody is completely different. How do I know how to be happy? How do I know how to help other people be happy? Which I know is what you do. And it's interesting to me. I think we have very similar philosophies that you get up there and shine for your audience, but you're actually shining their own light toward them.

Yes. Their mirror.

Yeah. And we both know that we can never be the source of anyone else's light. We can be a Mirror. And that's the best of it. But everyone has that light inside that no matter what they're born to, we all have that destiny, that unique ability and the light that shines toward it.

Yeah. No, I love it. You know, it's funny. I was making my way through the way of integrity, which is phenomenal, by the way. Everybody should pick it up. No, no, no, no. No hands. No hands barred there. And you and you and you actually articulated in a very simple phrase what I used to do when I wasn't what I would refer to as my awakened self. Right. I was just kind of like going through the motions, which is this. We're meant to live in peace, but we end up living in mania. Like, you kept using the word mania, and that was so powerful to me. Would you mind breaking that down for the audience? Because I feel like they'll get a ton from that, because I feel like we're all on a rat race, a rat wheel of some kind.

Yep, absolutely. So I was trained as a sociologist, and I briefly was a sociology professor. So I always am doing research, even when I'm, like, coaching people or whatever. And one of the things that most interested me was this sense of truth that we all have. And it's how we know the answer to a math equation or who we're supposed to marry or whatever. Yeah. And though I would test to see what made that sense of truth wake up in someone. And I would try different approaches. And I've worked with beggars on the street. I've worked with people in prison. I've worked with billionaires. And I found one thing that makes everyone come into alignment or integrity. Integrity just means intact. It means whole. It doesn't mean virtuous. It just means whole. So one thing puts you more in integrity than anything else, and that is the belief. I am meant to live in peace.

Yeah.

And if you just say that to yourself and anybody out there watching, if you say that to yourself a few times, I am meant to live in peace. What you'll feel is the alignment, like a puzzle piece clicking into place that says yes. It's like that voice saying, that is right.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

And it's so quiet. Our culture tends to exalt constant progress toward extreme heights, especially material wealth, but also power, fame, and everything. And you and I have both worked with lots of people who have those, and you have them. And there's actually not that of peace in most folks who reach those heights. There's this energy that's like.

That's exactly what it feels like. Yeah.

It's kind of like the difference between a healthy diet and cocaine.

Yeah.

You can stay on cocaine for a while and it'll make you happy, but it's got a cost. And it's not just financial. You'll end up crashing.

Yeah.

And then you end up coming to someone like Stephen or me for coaching.

No, I love that. And it's such a good reminder, because, you know, I. I was trying to tell somebody the other day. You know, my first mentor told me a long time ago. He said, what's the difference between a rich man and a poor man? I'm like, well, Dub money. He's like, no, it's the way they think. So he called. You know, that was my first little light switch moment. And I had a similar person come to me maybe. Maybe a few weeks back, and they were saying, well, you know, you have this, you have that. If I had what you have, I would be happy. I'm like, no, I don't think so. In fact, let me tell you a story. And I began to tell them a story, like, look, I got all the way to this point, like, all the way here, and I was completely isolated, alone, and empty. I was running on E, and I wasn't even sure what I was striving for. Why do you feel like we, as humans chase that the way we do?

It's really simple. It's because we're born with a really strong desire to do what other people want us to do and show us. So we're born whole. We're born completely whole. We know who we are and what our destiny is. But before we can even talk, we've started to receive pressure, especially from people around us, but also from just life itself that says, oh, the way I am isn't right for this person. Okay, I should cry less, smile more, or I should play less and be calmer. And so we start to modify our behavior. Now, the moment we do that, when we turn away from what's true for us, we start in integrity, which means one thing, integer. And then we split, and we become two things. And that's not integrity. It's duplicity.

Yeah.

And it's innocent. Babies do it. Right. What happens then, though, is the part of us that is socialized is also the part that has language and cognitive thinking. So that's the part we identify as self. So that's okay. This is who I am, the person people wanted me to be. I'm chasing all of the things that they tell me are valuable. I'm getting all the admiration I expected, but where am I? And it's that part we abandoned early. Early, yeah. Is still waiting for us to come home and pieces home. And when we come back to that and sort of embrace what we really are and sometimes break from the things around us, from the people around us, that's when it's like, oh, my life now has me in it.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. You know, it's funny, on my journey, my duplicity back to integrity has been actually moving from selfishness into selflessness. Like spending a lot of time in that transition understanding that there really was no in. In goal, but more of a journey to experience kind of methodology. And as a result, I'm able to kind of look back, and I've said it a few times, is, you know, that to me, the greatest purpose in life you'll ever have, a serving the person used to be. So all the work that you're doing, you know, serves Martha, you know, way back in the day, it's Stephen, way back in the day. And I keep trying to help people understand is like the reason you're not feeling that fulfillment because you're. We're. We're not taking steps towards. Towards that. That identity, that, that. That future integrity identity. How do we come into complete alignment? What. I mean, what can we do tangibly to. To get out of the duplicity and get us back to our wholeness?

Well, the first thing, your greatest ally is unhappiness, suffering in various forms. And the people who come to me, the biggest sources of suffering are loss of a sense of purpose, which you wouldn't think that's the worst thing, but it is. It's worse than sadness or anything. But after that comes emotional problems, hostility, anxiety, depression. And then you start to have physical problems. I was bedridden for almost 12 years. Then you start to have relationship problems. Your career stops going as well because you can't put that cocaine energy into it anymore.

Yeah.

And sometimes, speaking of drugs, you'll try to medicate all that suffering with. With drugs or alcohol or some behavior. Okay. So if any of that is true of you, if any level of emotional suffering is present in you, you can know right there that you're not whole, you're not in integrity. And the first step back is simply to accept that and to tell it to yourself. And this is why 12 steps works so well, because you stand up there and you go, I am a. Whatever it is. And my life's become unmanageable. It's not A magical cure. It's just the first step toward absolute truth, the truth of your whole being, which knows that you're lost. And that sets you on the road of more truths, which ultimately can take you all the way to your life's incredible, amazing things. You know, you can't even talk to people about how magical it can get because it doesn't sound real until you experience it well.

And when, you know, we're kind of even, it's hard for people to articulate until they experience it. I'm like you. I've had many, many spiritual encounters. I am where I am today because of a massive one, just one massive one. A lot of little ones. And as a result, I kind of get to walk around in a. In many respects in a steady state of micro miracles.

Yes, right. Yeah, right.

Micro miracles. And you don't realize how fulfilling these things are because you're constantly being touched by what I would refer to as the divine right. You're in complete alignment. All, you know, everything that's in your soul and your everything is coming out of you is like vertically orchestrated, you know, but at the same time, I also have to remind myself that I can't spend all of my time there.

Right?

But I have to, I have to have my feet on the ground. I still have to take care and provide. One of the things I love about your book is it also gives you techniques on the practical side and not just the mind body connection. Why was it so important for you to kind of merge those two theologies together?

Well, I mean, I was, I was teaching business school when I started to like, develop my philosophy of life. I kept going, you know, that my son did not ruin my career. My PhD and I was working at the American Graduate School of International Management, and I realized I was teaching career development. But I also had three little kids at home by that time. And I was sick all the time because of all this not being in integrity stuff. And I knew that a life couldn't be divided. One of the worst things our culture does is it says that your home life, your heart life, your soul life should be divided from your work life. Work life is all about just pursuit of, of material wealth and excellence and all that. And I thought, no, no, no, no, they have to come together. Those two sides of my personality didn't like the split that the culture gives them. And so I decided I was going to try for both, try for a combination. And I ended up just as you said. I had, by that time, had some massive spiritual breakthroughs. Experiences that never leave you, you can't ever quite.

You can't undo them once they're done.

So instead of saying, okay, here's your career, here's your family, here's how to mix them. My doctoral dissertation was on how they can't really be mixed, I would say to my students, find this line of connection to yourself, and I would call it spirit. But they didn't need to find this divine spark and let it teach you which things are necessary for you to succeed in your career and give the world what you're meant to give. For you to succeed with your children, with your spouse, with your friends, ask yourself step by step by step, because nothing in the culture will give you your destiny. But if you're connected that way, you'll always have it. Yeah.

Yeah. One of the. One of the. It's kind of like, to me, it's an undertone I picked up on it. But I also love your work. So, you know, there's that. Is this. This essence of the way you actually get what you want is by letting go of the expectation of getting it?

Yeah.

Like it's a. It's a. It's a percentage of letting go. Would you say that's accurate that I. Did I get the right undertone?

Absolutely. And there's a way that I. I sort of stumbled across thinking of this that makes real sense to me. All these people that I work with, if they say I am meant to live in peace, there's this. There's a relaxation of the body. The heart feels easier, the soul feels free. Everything. The mind goes. Yeah, yeah. So all the parts are in alignment. That means that pieces are home. And here's what I believe. Anytime you've ever asked for anything from the force, whatever you call it, the answer is always yes. If it's a true desire, if you want something one told you to want.

Yeah.

It's not work. But if it's your heart yearning and you ask for it, bam. The answer is always yes. And it is always given to you immediately, but it's always sent to your real home address.

So you're over here in desperation going, I need it. Where is it?

Yeah.

You go to peace, which is the feeling you think you would get if you had this wonderful thing, if you had all the money in the world and all the love, and you just sit in it and say, how would I feel if that were true for me? Oh, this is very peaceful. And wham. The miracles start happening. Everything you've asked for since you were a kid, it's crazy. It's so fun to talk to somebody else who's experienced it.

Oh, man. I like. This is. I told you, this is my jam. You know, people are always asking me, you know, because, you know, I can talk about business, I can talk about spirituality. I could talk about a variety of things. But what lights me up is the methodologies that wake people up. Right? That. That's what lights me up. Because to me, that's. That's how we actually make an impact. You know, that kind of thing. I feel like. And you. And you spoke a lot about this in the book. I feel like people get lost, if you will, in these. What's. What's the word I'm looking for? The complexities or the. The. The. Just the daily mundane. And they're just kind of like sleepwalking. How can we break through that sleepwalking side? It's kind of like they're. They're kind of identified. They almost identify themselves with their circumstances, like their illness or this or that. The other thing, how do we shake loose of that?

Well, one of the techniques. I don't think this is in the book, but the book is all about telling the truth to yourself. And one of the ways we lie to ourselves the most is we use the phrases I can't and I have to, and those if you take out. There's really good research that shows if you take those two phrases out of your vocabulary and you don't say them unless they are literally true. So I can't fly to the moon without a rocket ship. Okay, that's true. But I can't fly to the moon. That's not strictly true. Under the right circumstances, I could do it. And do I have to go to my friend's party? No. I am physically capable of staying home. The moment you stop saying I can't and I have to, you really remove yourself as the victim in your language. And this is sort of in the third part of my book, where you start to put everything in alignment. Once you're telling yourself the truth, you start to live according to that truth. And if you. If you stop saying I can't and I have to, it gets you out of that victimized role. And then you're going to end up saying, I choose to. I will. I. I'm going to. And then you realize, oh, my God, I really am creating every single day of my life with this series of choices, and it's up to me to choose the ones that make me happy. It's that simple.

Yeah. I Love it. You know, it's interesting to me. You know, I was thinking, you know, you start talking about culture and how. And how when we start becoming truer to ourself, it tends to disrupt our culture. Oh, yeah. And that. And that's been my experience too. And I, you know, my heart is. Is to get people to just lean into that a little more, which I know that was what, your heart as well. What. What did the research show? What did you discover as you become closer to the real, truest version of yourself? How does that shape the culture around you or. Or kind of go at odds with it?

It's so interesting. And first of all, almost everyone lies. Evidence shows that we lie about three times within the first 10 minutes of every conversation.

But when people stop lying just for an experiment, if they say, hey, try not to lie so much for a while, or after three weeks, people who have just said, okay, I'll stop lying as much, they have better health, they have more happiness, they have fewer doctor visits, their relationships are improving. So why do we lie so much? Because it's the way the culture fits itself together. Cultures don't like anyone rocking the boat. If you say the emperor has no clothes, everybody at the parade feels embarrassed, and then they have to do something different. So for me, like, it was leaving my home religion, which is the one sin that you can commit that's considered worse than murder in that particular religion. And then, well, this all started because when I was 29, I decided I wouldn't tell a single lie for a year. And I kept my promise.

And congratulations. That's. That's is an achievement.

But I ended up losing or leaving my religion. That meant my family of origin, community of origin, friends. You know, I was. People would literally turn their backs to me as I walked through my hometown, and it's intense. So then I realized I was gay. So there was my marriage. I didn't like academia, quit my job, like, couldn't really live where I was living anymore, so I left my home.

Yeah.

I recently read that transformation is liberation plus loss.

That's good.

And that's what happens as you become free.

Yeah.

Everything that wants you to be captive falls away.

Yeah.

And that can be incredibly painful, as you know.

But the liberation is the only way to happiness and to the true representation of ourselves in the world. So what does it profit you? It says in the Bible, if you.

Gain the whole world and lose everything in the process. Yeah. No, no, that is good. You know, I was just thinking, you know, I. I've discovered Kind of something similar to me. There's no transformation without transparency. Right. Being transparent with yourself, being transparent with others, being. Being honest. Um, I can tell you that my personal transformation started with me being radically honest with myself on my strengths, my struggles and my blind spots. Right. Not condemning myself, not beating myself up, but like, more of like, Dora the Explorer approach. Let's go explore this cave. Let's see where it goes. Let's see what's in here. And it never fails. You know, sometimes I would go through really dark moments where it was like, oh, this is really, really scary. And then I would come out the other side of the cave and there'd be, like a big shiny diamond, like, off to the corner. I'm using, you know, figurative speech, but you know what I mean? But this is what I. This is an emotional emergence, emotional transformation, which. And I think the way of integrity is such a good resource to experience that when so many people are. Especially after Covid, you know, they're trying to shake off the COVID hangover and trying to get themselves back to normality and trying to re. Engage with people and. And stuff like that. Which leads me to something that you said in the book, which is the importance of having your soul live in freedom. Right. How do we. How as. As people who love life and love light and want people to have the best versions of themselves, how do we encourage them to live their life in freedom?

It's so interesting because you were talking about going from selfishness to selflessness, and what I've observed is that people are selfish when they're actually starved of self. If nobody lets you be who you really are, it's like somebody. You don't think about breathing until someone stops you from doing it.

Yeah.

And then it's all you can think about. Right.

Yeah. Very true.

A lot of people are running around and they're chasing money and they're chasing fame, and at the same time, they're not themselves and they're desperate and they don't feel free at all. They feel trapped by sometimes by their very success, but also by the pain and the. It's just an awful situation.

Yeah.

The way out of it is freedom. The Buddha used to say, whenever you find water, you can know if it's the sea, because whatever it looks like, the sea always tastes of salt.

Yeah.

And wherever you find awakening or enlightenment, you can know it, no matter what form it takes, because enlightenment always tastes of freedom. But when we get free to be ourselves and then we start saying, okay, I'm suffering, but this feels better and then this feels better, and then this feels better. We start taking these one degree turns toward what makes us happy and the self comes back in. And then it's nature, once it's on track, is to disappear.

Yeah.

It's to go out and free everything.

Yeah.

And that feeling of walking free in the world. Toni Morrison says the function of freedom is to free someone else. So you. I'm walking, freedom walking, awakening. And I truly think that's the reason we're even on the planet. To experience that.

No, I'd agree with you. You know, it's funny, it's crazy. You know, going back, going against culture, I. My faith side is more Jesus oriented than not than anything else. I believe is divine was divinity in him. I believe there's humanity in them at the same time. However, my spiritual side, my spiritual awakening allows me to do the things that he would operate in. But yet people in a traditional church mindset say that that stuff doesn't occur anymore. I'm like, wait a minute, he's supposed to be the illustrate. I'm really confused. Right. And then Dr. Wayne Dyer, who. I loved his work before he passed away. I still love his work. He used to say that the ocean is no less the ocean, even if it's in a bucket.

Yeah.

The ocean's still the ocean. So your, your divine nature, your ability to have that, that meaningful moment, the experience of the planet is super big. And then I stumbled into a good friend of mine who's an orthodox Jewish rabbi who spends a lot of time doing research. What they refer to as Jewish mysticism. And in Jewish mysticism, it's their, their, their understanding of all the, everything that they've done over thousands of years is that when we actually come for the divine, we're coming from the divine on purpose, with a mission that we are then, you know, essentially challenged to basically put into action and correct to experience the refinement that then when we go back to God, we essentially have. Have learned something amazing.

Right.

So I'm curious where your brain. I just threw a lot at you at once, but I'm curious where your brain falls on that.

Well, it brings up my big life changing experience which was during that year that I didn't tell any lies. I ended up in surgery one day and I became conscious during the surgery and sat up and looked around, which is weird because I was lying back on the table with my eyes taped shut and I thought, what in the.

What?

What? And then I lay back down and this was in the midst of incredible turmoil. I mean, all those losses, I laugh about them now, but it was not fun. I was losing everything that I thought mattered to me. So I'm lying there on the table and up above my head, between the surgical lights, another light appeared. Like little, like this big, but incredibly brilliant.

Yeah.

So full of different. I mean, it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And it started to grow. And as it grew, it touched me and it filled my body with this incredible warmth and sweetness and joy. And just like it was. It was a massive homecoming. And I actually started to cry. And my body was leaking tears and the doctors thought I could feel the, the, the operation. And the anesthesiologist went to increase the anesthesia. And he told me later a voice said to him, don't worry, she's crying because she's happy. And he said, I just pulled back and did I do the wrong thing? Anyway, I had this discourse with this light, which was total homecoming. And I. And the thing it said to me last was before it went away was, you're not supposed to die to feel this way. The whole reason for human life is to learn to feel this while you're alive.

Yeah.

Or you die, not hang on until you go to heaven. It's right now. And I came out of that and started making choices that made me feel like that light made me feel. I was just dead set on finding it. And, yeah, it's there for us all.

Yeah. And it's beautiful and it can be experienced. You know, it's funny, I've been telling people recently, so I've overhauled my meditative life in a big way in the last 12 months. So my meditative life used to consist of only prayer with me talking, asking, thinking. Right. And then I've learned that I kind of mixed it up a little bit. I pray to say, but I meditate to listen. And as I'm sitting there listening and, you know, a lot of times I'll. I'll have a specific type of, you know, music on that's soft and it's, it's. I will actually have those spiritual encounters. And it surprised me that a 10 second spiritual encounter can last you three weeks.

Oh, and more.

Yeah.

One of the things is that those experiences don't go fade in memory the way they other experiences do. My son, when he was like 20, his best friend's mother died. And on the way back from the funeral, he said, you know, I didn't cry. And I said, it's okay to cry on a sad Time. And he said, yeah, it was sad, but it's not as bad after the light comes and opens your heart. And I was like, what? A light came your heart? And he said, yeah, in my bedroom. And I said, when did this happen? And he said, May 10th.

It was like four years before. And he said, these two people came to him and said, you can do this. I'm your teacher. You can do this. And then the light opened his heart. And then I said to him, wow, that's incredible. I've seen it too. And he was surprised. And I said, it told me it's with us, no matter, even though we can't see it. And he said, oh, I can see it.

Wow.

I was like, really? And he said, yeah. And I was like, where is it? Like. And he said, mom, it's everywhere.

Yeah. What's crazy, because science is, you know, science has finally caught up to some of the spirituality beliefs, right? And spiritual things. We can now see that there's energy flowing in us and through us at all times. We can now see that there's an energy band around our entire body, like from the outside. And that's why I was telling somebody one time who was going through a really dark time. I said, look, you need to put yourself in an environment where you're around other people. Put your earbuds in, go to a Starbucks, have a cup of coffee, work on your laptop, but just go and be present with other people who aren't necessarily struggling with what you're. You're picking up on. And they were like, why? I was like, because you were actually going to absorb and actually illustrate some of that same energy. I said, it's why you can go into a dark room with nothing. With nothing in there, completely pitch black. And if another person is in that room, you will know that they're in the room without actually having to feel. It's the same technique. And it's not, you know, it's not something.

I guess, spiritual only. It's. It's scientifically proven now. You can see, you know, they can.

Measure it with all kinds of things. We are wireless electrical communication devices. Our neural systems are electrical. We carry around iPhones and to call each other. They're electrical devices. Why shouldn't we be able to do that? We can. We actually can't. And we do all the time without knowing it.

Really long time. Like thousands of years. Long time.

Right?

Yeah. You know, it's funny, actually. It's not funny. It's. It's. It was interesting to me. I was you know, one of you and Jay are two of my favorite people. And I was listening to the interview you guys did, and he brought up Dante's Mount Delectable. Right. And how. And kind of like how that played a role in your life. I thought you. You articulated it beautifully and why it was important and why it matters and what we can learn from it. Would you. Would it be all right if you also told our audience the same thing?

Yeah, I based this whole book around Dante's Divine Comedy, which was written in, like, 13, 20. And by the way, when he gets to the end, he starts describing quantum physics.

Yeah, he really does.

20 something because he was experiencing it. Okay. So anyway, the book starts. The whole poem starts. I came to myself in a dark wood in the middle of my life, and I had no idea how I got there, but I knew I'd lost my way. And then. And it's this terrifying jungle place. And then he looks and he sees this mountain that's all bathed in sunlight. And he calls it Mount Delectable. And all these people are, like, clawing to get up to the top. And he's like, okay, that's the answer. And he starts to climb, but he's so tired. And then he starts getting attacked by animals that he describes as emotion. So the endless need of this leopard and a wolf that is sad, and a lion that is terrifying. And even the air is afraid, and he keeps falling down, and he can't make it up the mountain. And even the people at the top aren't having any fun is what you find out later. But the reason he can't get up there is that his destiny is to find his. His truth again. And so he ends up having a teacher that shows up and says, actually, there's one way out for you. And it goes through something called the Inferno, a little something called hell. And he has to go through and confront his inner demons. And as he does, and as he owns them, he becomes freer and freer and freer until he goes down through the center of the Earth, past the very worst part of his life. And suddenly, because he's past the center, down becomes up.

Yeah.

And that's true for all of us.

Yeah.

Collectible is not the way.

Yeah. It kind of reminds me of going through the center of the Earth. Like you start in America and supposedly you can end up in China or Australia or something. It's kind of reminds me of that. And my experience was that, right, my. You know, I. My awakening happened directly following my crushing, directly following that yeah. And I feel like people are trying to stay away from the crushing, therefore, they missed the awakening.

You got to go to the crush. He goes right to the center of the earth. And. And his teacher says you have to keep going. And as soon as he gets through the center, the lowest possible place, suddenly he's free. He's. He's not all the way to paradise yet, but he's so free. So the hell. And therapy works this way. You work your way down or 12 steps or whatever, and you get to the bottom of it, and then suddenly, fool, you've gone through the center and you're. You're. You're headed toward paradise and you're free. It's amazing.

Yeah. Emergence. I love it. I love it. Well, help me understand this. You've done a lot of amazing things already, had a lot of amazing books and work that you've already done. Why was now the right time to write this book? Why did this book call you right now to then share with the world?

It's so interesting because I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know that we were going to have a pandemic. I mean, I sold the book right before that. The book. The first draft of the book I delivered the day the lockdown started in Manchester. My editors were the hills, but I knew it the way I know everything. I get up in the morning. I try to be. I get still, I get calm. And I think, what feels like that light? What does it want me to do today? And I experience it as joy. And there's also often fear. Like, I don't know how to write.

A book about that.

But one thing I've learned is that if something fear is not necessary, it's a passenger that will come with you. But always put fear off to the side and see what's pulling you forward with. With enthusiasm and love and joy and a sense of connectedness and go there, no matter how scared you are, because it is the way. And I just started writing it, and then all this stuff happened.

Yeah.

And it fit right in. So that when the book was published, I felt like it was really a good moment for it in history. And I'm so grateful that I was told to start when I was told to start.

Yeah. No, I love it. No, and it's real. I mean, it's. Like I said, it's a work. It's a manuscript that I think it helps you go work from the inside out.

I hope so. And it's very gentle. I don't Want anybody else, like, throwing their lives away the way I did many times. If you feel like it, you can, but it's about just gently moving. The analogy I use is an aircraft. An airplane, if all its parts are in structural integrity, is going to be able to fly. If it's not in integrity, it won't fly at all. Once you get it to be in structural integrity, if you then steer it just one degree, say, north every few thousand miles, you won't even notice the plane turning. But you'll end up in a completely different spot. And that's what you can do with your life if you just gently get it in shape and turn it toward your happiness. Oh, my gosh. I. I just. The. You're going to end up in paradise, which is where Dante ends up, and that's where the miracles start happening. And you're so right. They are real.

Yeah, no, they're definitely real and they're beautiful and they're to. You can't. You can't really articulate them in the words. I am curious. You know, as an author myself, typically when I start a manuscript and start writing something new, I've got a specific person in mind that's going through a specific set of things or they're having a specific transition.

Yeah.

Who is that person for you in the way of integrity?

Well, for 20 years, 20 some years, I wrote a monthly column for Oprah's magazine. And I always tried to. I was given a lot of liberty to write whatever I wanted. And then one day, a warden at a woman's prison told me that when they tossed the cells, the most common thing they would find under the mattresses were copies of my column. The women would have torn out these cups. They had them under their mattresses. So when I just sit down to write, I am sitting across from a person in prison who may have been born without any of the privileges that I was born with, who had no opportunity for education, who was basically doomed, but has the same light that we all have in us and the same potential for joy and for service and for self realization. And it's always like my job is to make something simple enough for that person and easy enough for that person and still powerful enough to liberate that person.

Yeah.

And I don't think I ever quite get there, but that's the goal.

Yeah. No, I think that's good. I think, I think, I think far too. I actually think the far too many people, I would say the vast majority, in fact, Time magazine did a study, 2017, they did it again right in the middle of COVID That said over 67%, almost 70 plus percent of the population, the American population, would say that they're living someone else's life.

Wow.

Right. So they're in this modality of I'm living the life. My mom said, my dad said, my brother said this, that, and the other thing, I'm chasing this because I need my dad's affirmation or my mom's affirmation or. And which is why I think this type of work is so important. I'm a big believer in learning to live from the inside out. Right. And all we're taught is to live from the outside in. And your book is a fantastic resource to get them on the journey of that. I'm curious, do you have like a local bookstore or somebody that you'd like to support from now and again? Because obviously you can get the book anywhere.

But, you know, I, you know, I've been out of the house for two years.

I don't. I haven't seen a bookstore since I was like, quite a bit younger than I am now. I would get it anywhere. Barnes and Noble, Amazon on. I get everything online.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's good.

So, yeah. But I also love independent bookstores, so put on a mask if you want to and go on out and buy a copy if you want. If not, borrow it, read it, steal it, I don't care. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, when you, when we start looking at your life impact, right, and you're, you've lived, you know, you go through the process of living through life. You've. You've hopefully done as much as you can on the earth. What do you want that impact to be? What do you want that impact to be?

Seriously, I. You and I both experienced something that felt revolutionary inside ourselves, where we went from miserable to excited and from darkness to light, whatever.

All my life I have felt that the reason I'm here is to help. Help facilitate a huge change in the way people are. And I remember this at 4, 5, 6, thinking, what is it? What is it? Thinking in high school, what the heck? And then I thought, okay, I'll be an academic. I'll do research. It'll shift. No, no, no. And then after I had left everything, I was in Africa and I was facing a rhinoceros that I'd been tracking. And I thought I was going to die on the horn of this rhinoceros. And I was like, this is the most awesome way to die. And I literally fully gave up my life in that moment I thought I got this flash of, no, we're all supposed to have that encounter, like the one that I had with the light. The ones that you've had, where suddenly you're like, oh, that's what we are. That's what we are. And then we're going to start to create a life that is where we're all moving toward paradise and we can support other living beings and all things. I want to help. I want to help. That's my mission.

No. And you're doing such a great job at it. I love it. You know, it's. For me, it's. It's much of the same thing. Right. You experience something that is essentially miraculous, and you're watching people sleep, walk through life. You're like, no, it doesn't have to be that way. Right. I really believe we are truly a soul or are having a human experience.

Yes.

I really believe that. As I'm studying more of quant. The quantum realm, as I'm studying more of my own faith that I've. That I've shared and had for many, many years, I see a lot of overlap. I do. And I see a lot of people that have tried to tell you that the overlap doesn't exist when the overlap does exist. Right. And I feel like that's such an important message for all of us.

Well, Jesus kept saying, I am the way. I am the way. And so the way he went, he went within himself. You know, the. The job of integrity is to go within the self, to find that part of divine intelligence which is our essence and start manifesting that, living that the way he did. And I think. I think the Buddha had a similar type of inner experience. And if you look all through history, there are individuals who talk about the same thing, and they always. They always are talking about the divinity within them. They stop identify. They stop identifying as the selfish little me. They become self, that is all things. And then they start speaking as that. And that's. Every one of us is connected to that. Which Jesus would say. He's like, there's a. Why call you me good. There is one good, and that is God. There's one huge spirit.

Yeah.

Of which we can become aware. And then we can begin to live it in these little monkey suits and have the best time.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Two of my favorite verses in the biblical scriptures are actually when someone comes to Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, which one of these commandments is the most important one? And he says, it's actually really Easy. So love your God, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul. And the second one is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. And at the core of both of those is love. And I believe the divine, the God, the Creator, the Father, whatever terminology you're going to use essentially, is that love, which is not necessarily full of the hurt, condemnation, and the things that I think as humanity, that we put on people as a, as a methodology of some level of control. You know, I think about some of the traditions that I see in the, in the traditional church environments, and there's some great churches and there's some not so great churches as far as how they handle themselves and people. But the one commonality that I saw, that I used to pay attention to with Jesus is if you focused on the tradition and the religion, then you're missing the whole message to begin with. Yeah, right. And I always thought that was beautiful. I have absolutely loved hanging out with you. Our time, like, flew by.

I just think you are amazing. It is so wonderful to see you, like, sending this huge blaze into the world.

Thank you.

Oh, somebody else is doing this so well.

We're new besties.

Yay.

Put on pajamas, do each other's hair.

That's right. Well, you're gonna have a hard time doing my hair, but, you know, polish.

Your head, it'll be great.

Powder. Powder. Look at this was pretty shiny. Powder. Excellent.

Yeah.

Well, seriously, I've loved it. I've loved hanging out with you. Where can our audience go and find out more about you and more about your work and what you're doing?

My website is marthabeck.com so that's the place to go. But also Instagram, Twitter, all the things, the social media things. We're all everywhere, aren't we?

We're. Yeah. We're learning to be more omnipresent than we used to be, that's for sure.

What a time to be alive, right?

That's right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your big time.

It's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for everything you do. You're wonderful.

We'll see you soon. If you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here. One of the really cool things about NFTs that don't exist other places is that as the creator, you can also create a kicker for yourself, so you get a percentage of any ongoing sale that happens.