Being Present: How Mindfulness & Meditation Can Change Your Life with Davidji

How Mindfulness & Meditation Can Transform Your Life with Davidji

What if stillness could be your greatest strength?

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Davidji, internationally recognized meditation teacher, author, and creator of the 21-day meditation process. Known as the “Velvet Voice of Stillness,” Davidji has taught millions of people around the world to release stress, plant powerful intentions, and step into their most present, purposeful lives.

We explore his incredible personal journey—from a high-stakes corporate career in mergers and acquisitions to becoming the lead educator and first Dean of Chopra Center University under the mentorship of Drs. Deepak Chopra and David Simon. Following the events of 9/11, Davidji experienced a profound inner shift that awakened a lifelong path of self-discovery, healing, and service.

Together, we discuss:

• The impact of consistent meditation on the brain and body
• How mindfulness supports healing from stress, anxiety, and burnout
• Vipassana, Zen, and other meditation traditions explained
• The science behind telomeres, aging, and cellular health
• How forgiveness and gratitude elevate your consciousness
• Reclaiming your inner fire through beginner’s mind

Davidji bridges ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience to show how meditation is far more than a practice—it’s a portal to a more vibrant, connected life. Whether you’re new to meditation or returning to your practice, this episode is filled with insight, encouragement, and practical tools to begin again.

davidji.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

We can actually change our DNA. We can actually change our physiology, our neurology, our electrical circuitry. We can impact our blood pressure and our pulse and the way we perceive the world and receive the world, and then how we flow back out into it. Whether you're the most secular engineering brain or whether you're an angel card reader, you're still going to feel those same physiological, neurological psychological benefits from these practices, as long as you keep doing it.

Speaker 2 0:47

Welcome to the Field Dynamics Podcast. We're here to facilitate inspiring dialogues about the nature of consciousness across disciplines, communities and practitioners, all with a holistic perspective.

Speaker 3 0:55

From energy healing to somatic therapies, from neuroscience to meditation. We believe the most interesting things happen at the boundaries of disciplines.

Speaker 2 1:04

I'm Christabel.

Speaker 3 1:05

And I'm Keith.

Speaker 2 1:06

Thanks for joining us today and enjoy the episode. Hello and welcome to the Field Dynamics Podcast. Today we are joined by guest David G. David G is a globally recognized mind, body, health and wellness expert, mindful performance trainer, meditation teacher and author. After a 20-year career in business, finance and mergers and acquisitions, david G began a new journey to wholeness, apprenticing for a decade under doctors Deepak Chopra and David Simon, serving as the Chopra Center COO, lead educator and then as the first dean of the Chopra Center University.

Speaker 2 1:53

Creator of the 21-day meditation process, his teachings on stress release, conflict resolution and mindfulness are now practiced in Fortune 500 companies, the military and law enforcement. He has taught millions of people around the world to heal their hearts, plant powerful intentions and manifest their dream lives. A certified Vedic master, he hosts empowerment workshops, corporate trainings, life-change immersions, transformational retreats and teacher trainings across the globe. Transformational retreats and teacher trainings across the globe. Often referred to as the Velvet Voice of Stillness, more than 1,000 of his guided meditations are available on Insight Timer, daily, om and more. Welcome, david G. It's an absolute honor to have you here today.

Speaker 1 2:38

Thank you so much for inviting me. It's great to be here with you guys.

Speaker 2 2:42

Thank you. Can you share something of your journey initially perhaps, into meditation and mindfulness and how this has influenced your life and work?

Speaker 1 2:52

I first started meditating when I was in college. It was an experimental Asian studies course and we there were 12 of us Every every Wednesday, we would all meet up. Uh, we sat in a circle in the corner of the room. Um, our Zen master stood as we meditated. Uh, we were instructed that when we had a thought come into our head we would raise our hands, and in his hand he carried an 18-inch bamboo stick known as a keizaku, and he would thwack us on the back when we raised our hands. So ultimately I dropped that class.

Speaker 1 3:36

When you find yourself lying to your Zen master like no, I'm not having any thoughts, it's time to move on. But I immediately dove into other forms of meditation because I really love the benefits. You know, in college there's lots of anxiety and lots of stress, and when I was meditating it really seemed to all go away. And so I got into candle gazing, I got into mantra and tantra and vipassana and mindfulness and chocolate tasting meditation still one of my favorites and then some of them for days, some of them for years. And as I got more deeply involved in the corporate world, I noticed that my meditation was slipping away and slipping away and slipping away and at a certain point I realized, oh, I've traded in my early morning meditation for an early morning train ride into the World Trade Center, I've traded in my evening meditation for a nice glass of scotch and like that, meditation was gone from my life. But also I noticed that balance was gone from my life and in the wake of 9-11, as I was walking past a row of cardboard boxes that people were living in, a hand reached out, grabbed my pant leg, pulled me into it. These blue, crystalline eyes of this man gazed into mine and he said what's going to be on your tombstone? And it's a fairly reflective moment.

Speaker 1 5:14

In that moment I had just, you know, I was in a swirl of feeling unfulfilled and feeling out of balance. During the 9-11 attacks, I had lost, you know, dear friends and people in my life and I was struggling with you know. Why am I here? What is going to be on my tombstone? What am I here to do? What have I been brought here in this lifetime? To contribute to the world? Or what will be my legacy? And I call these butterfly moments where suddenly, in that moment, there was no traffic in New York, there was no people on the streets, there was no one except me and this man and in that moment everything seemed like one. You know, everything was energy, this confluence, this merging of all this energy.

Speaker 1 6:17

And ultimately, as I staggered away from that encounter, my knees were weak, I was hyperventilating. Tears were streaming down my face. I couldn, hyperventilating Tears were streaming down my face. I couldn't even support myself anymore and I sat down on some steps of an apartment building next door and just sobbed. It was quite a powerful moment and I don't know if that guy was just a guy or if that was God speaking through this person or the universe talking to me, or you know whatever that was.

Speaker 1 6:51

But in the days that followed that, I left my job, quit that world, headed off on my little eat, pray, love journey to find out the meaning of all existence. It was an eat, pray, love journey to find out the meaning of all existence. It was an eat, pray, love journey without the eating and the love, just a lot of prayer. And I went to this retreat in Oxford, england. It was a meditation retreat hosted by Deepak Chopra, and we were meditating for like eight hours a day and by the third day, suddenly my heart, which had been so heavy and I was in such pain. It was like my heart was this white linen cloth that had been immersed in black India ink. It was so dark, there was so much sadness and so much grieving and by day three it was like that cloth had been draped into a stream and all that darkness had been washed away. And for the first time in many, many years, I felt joy. And it's like whoa, what's this? I don't even remember. It's like Robert Plant's line, you know, does anyone remember laughter? You know? So suddenly I was like, oh my God, joy. This is how life can be. So I headed off to India on my journey to like, explore and find deeper meeting, looking for the guru who would give me that deeper, deeper insight, deeper meeting, looking for the guru who would give me that deeper, deeper insight. I traveled up to the north of India, to the Himalayas, visited Dharamsala where His Holiness the Dalai Lama was, but he wasn't there that day. So I continued to travel through India and I prayed every day and I practiced meditation and I did yoga and I bathed in the Ganges and I visited the temples and did all this stuff and still in search of the guru, looking for the guru.

Speaker 1 8:55

And one day, as I was laying in a cashew forest in Kerala, in the very south of India, all these parrots were squawking and I was laying in a hammock reading the Bhagavad Gita. And I must have read this line a hundred times before the Bhagavad Gita, this ancient text. Einstein read it every day, thoreau read it every day, emerson read it every day, gandhi read it every day. So I figured well, every day, emerson read it every day, gandhi read it every day. So I figured well, I should probably do that too. And I was reading it.

Speaker 1 9:28

And suddenly I came across chapter 2, verse 48, which begins with the line Yogastha Kuru Karmani, when the Arjuna, the protagonist of the Bhagavad Gita, is talking to God. This is the original Conversations with God. Many people have written Conversations with God since then. Course in Miracles. Neil Donald Walsh wrote the book Conversations with God as well. These are the original, 2,300 years ago, the original Conversations.

Speaker 1 9:58

And when Arjuna says to God how am I supposed to live my life? And God replies yogasta kuru karmani, yogasta, establish yourself in the present moment, kuru karmani, and then perform action. And that hit me like a lightning bolt, just zapped me, and so I raced home. I'd been there for about five and a half months. And of course, there's no such thing as racing home from India. You know, I raced to the bus station. A bus came in 30 hours, took me three days to get to Mumbai, waited in the airport for 30 hours and then flew home, took another 22 hours. So that's racing home.

Speaker 1 10:36

But when I got home, all I did was sit around and meditate and ultimately, after a few weeks, my friends came to me. It was sort of like an intervention. They were like dude, all you do is sit around and meditate. And I was like I know, isn't that amazing, it's so great. And they were like no, it's pretty unproductive. And if you're claiming yoga, stha kuru karmani, establish yourself in the present moment, then perform action. You're forgetting the second part of that. You're just getting still. You're not performing any action.

Speaker 1 11:07

And they suggested you know, why don't you teach other people to meditate? And I replied I'm from Queens, new York, I don't care about anybody else's meditation. And they said well, if you really want to learn something, why don't you learn to teach it? Forget the altruism part, just learn to teach it from the inside out.

The Transformative Power of Meditation

Speaker 1 11:31

So Deepak Chopra was having a workshop in Southern California at the time and I said, oh okay, I'll head off there and get certified to be a meditation teacher, and at that event it's called Journey into Healing. At that event there were only 30 people. I thought there were going to be like 2,000 people and there were 30 of us and we went around and everyone shared what they did for a living and I said, well, I used to in a past life, I used to turn companies around and there's only 30 people here. You could definitely use a little assistance. And it was at that event that they hired me to run the Chopra Center and that led to me being the lead educator and becoming a certified meditation teacher and having the privilege to teach people every day to meditate.

Speaker 1 12:27

I got to travel the world with Deepak Chopra and David Simon and they didn't really want to be doing the. You know, deepak likes to talk about metaphysics and David Simon liked to talk about emotional healing, and so I was the meditation teacher and I did that, apprenticing under them for about a decade. And there came that moment, just in the first few months after I got certified to be a meditation teacher, where I was like, oh my God, I could share this with other people. All I want to do is share it, and so that's how that happened, and after 10 years, I set out on my own, established the Devaji Meditation Academy.

Speaker 1 13:08

I've trained thousands of people to become meditation teachers and to be rock star meditators. I've gotten to teach in the most unlikely of situations, with Dutch special forces and the Dublin gang unit and police forces and members of the military and people in the corporate world, as well as a whole bunch of yogis and angel card readers and energy healers and everyone in between. And so that brings me to where we are right now. I've just had, I consider, a very, very right now, I consider a very, very privileged journey through the world of teaching people to connect to the stillness and silence that rests within, so they can make better choices in their life.

Speaker 3 13:57

Meditation can sometimes be a somewhat vague or diffuse word because we can throw so many things into that bucket, like you said Vipassana, zen, mindfulness, scanning techniques, mantras, et cetera. Blah, blah, blah, so many things. And obviously the general public is well aware and familiar with the word meditation. But there are all these different techniques. How do you define meditation? Or what kind of glues all different forms together that makes meditation meditation?

Speaker 1 14:27

Well, meditation itself is simply a tool, it's just. It's a tool to help you cultivate your ability to witness, to help you cultivate your awareness, awareness of self, awareness of your own energy, awareness of your own emotions, awareness of how you respond to various moments, awareness of other people, how they're responding. It cultivates emotional intelligence and it's one of those things that's been scientifically proven, it's evidence-based. Now there are so many studies some are 10 days, some are 56 days, eight weeks, using all these various types of techniques that you mentioned, keith. And so it's just a tool. And you know, 600 BC, 2600 years ago, the Buddha walked the earth and mindfulness, or simply watching your breath, was just a component of a much broader way of living life, with compassion and reducing your suffering and being kind to others and forgiving and living a life of greater love. So in our modern times, sort of like, the mindfulness practice watching your breath rise and fall without judgment sort of has been stripped away from all you know, from that vast spectrum of all these other teachings, and so I think it's really meditation, indefinitely practicing it in any of the forms that you recommended, whether that's using a mantra or using some type of physical technique or a body scan or yoga nidra or watching your breath or so many techniques where there's an object of attention that acts as an anchor for you to keep drifting back to. It's scientifically proven to increase the size of your hippocampus, the gray matter of our hippocampus, which is the part of our brain responsible for learning, memory, spatial orientation, hand-eye coordination. That gray matter starts shrinking when we're 25 years old and it just keeps shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, which is why, as we get older, our memory fails us at times and we're not as articulate or we don't remember that thing. But it's been scientifically proven through various studies. There was a landmark study done at Harvard Medical Center in coordination with University of Massachusetts and Massachusetts General Hospital. Yale was in there too. It was directed by Dr Sarah Lazar and a small study but 16 people simply watching their breath 30 minutes a day for 56 days, eight weeks All of them unanimously increased the gray matter in their hippocampus by more than 5%. So something that should be shrinking until the day we die was actually able to not just shrink but actually increase by more than 5%. So there's been thousands of studies since then, but that's sort of like the landmark one that shows that we can actually change our DNA, we can actually change our physiology, our neurology, our electrical circuitry. We can impact our blood pressure and our pulse and the way we perceive the world and receive the world and then how we flow back out into it.

Speaker 1 18:13

So, whatever technique and I think when people say, oh, meditation didn't work for me, as far as I'm concerned they haven't found the right technique, they haven't been exposed, or their teacher didn't teach them that, or they weren't in the right technique. They haven't been exposed or their teacher didn't teach them that, or they weren't in the right frame of mind at the time. So, whether you're the most secular engineering brain, or whether you're an angel card reader or a dolphin, mermaid, rainbow, unicorn person, you're still going to feel those same physiological, neurological, psychological benefits from these practices, as long as you keep doing it. You know it's like Rogaine. You know Rogaine. Rogaine helps you. You know, keep your hair and grow your hair. As long as you take it every single day for the rest of your life. The second you stop taking it, it's like Ozempic. You know you'll lose weight, but the second you stop taking it, you put the weight back on. So same thing with meditation. When you stop meditating and I had. You know, in my earlier days I stopped and started a whole bunch of times, but in the last probably 15 years I've had a consistent daily, twice a day practice and if you skip a meditation there's a halo. It stays in you and probably after the second or third day then the benefits drift away.

Speaker 1 19:29

So I think, as long as we can find the technique that resonates with us and we have such casual conversation now, you know, someone says something to you or makes a request and people say let me meditate on that. They're not really talking about meditating, they just mean let me think about it. So meditation and mindfulness have become so ubiquitous in our world that everyone uses it for everything. But having a meditation practice is one of the most beautiful joys that I have and that anyone that I've worked with or trained or taught various techniques to, and that's really what I've tried to do. I believe in dogs, not dogma, and so I don't have, like, any rigidity to the types of practices. I love body scans and I love mindfulness and I love, you know, watching the breath and I love repeating ancient mantras and modern mantras. They're all scientifically proven to bring you to that same place.

Speaker 1 20:37

So I think, if you have a technique, as long as you show up every day. And a lot of people say, oh, riding my bike is my meditation no, that's riding your bike. My bike is my meditation no, that's riding your bike. Gardening is my meditation? No, that's gardening. They're beautiful present moment experiences, but they're not actually cultivating anything inside of you. They may reduce stress in the moment, they may make you feel great or feel like time has stood still, but the moment you stop that, you're back in the real world. With meditation, there is that halo effect, as long as you keep showing up and do the thing. So, as far as I'm concerned, find a technique that feels good to you or that resonates with you, and then show up and do the thing every day.

Speaker 2 21:18

And you're raising something really important here, this sort of ubiquitousness of the sort of phrase and the use of oh, I'm being mindful, I'm practicing meditation. We have a balance in what you're describing as well previously, between traditional teachings and modern applications. Right, so maybe a differentiation. It might not be quite as clean as this, but we have this sort of physical and mental, psychological benefits of meditation practices, and then the spiritual aspect or that other and this brings me to this question, or this principle that your teachings often emphasize on the connection between meditation and powerful personal transformation, profound inner shifts and changes, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit to that.

Speaker 1 22:04

I wouldn't call it necessarily a differentiation, but that step into other Well, probably this goes back to Dr Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel. Dying it sort of like, prints it over again and the new cell is birthed from that same blueprint. And as long as it's printing the exact same thing that existed in the moment before it dies, you continue. Your cells keep reproducing skin cells, eye cells, blood cells, all that and everything you know seems to reproduce perfectly. And when the telomeres are long and lubricated, our reproduction sort of like doing a block print on fabric, you know where, you just press it into it and sometimes it picks it up perfectly. Or when a printer, when the toner in a printer starts to fade, it doesn't really print as clearly. Well, these are your cells that are recreating, so they need to be at the perfect level. So when your telomeres are long and lubricated, that's a sign that and you can do this by taking a drop of blood and looking at it under an electron microscope but the cells reproduce perfectly. And when your telomeres are short and dry and craggy, then they're not reproducing at that level. So we could look at a drop of any of our blood and say in six months, not looking good for you, or in six months looks good. And so she discovered this telomerase, the lubricant material that seems to cover these. And when she was asked by, you know, lots of people were like, tell us about this, where is it made? And she said I don't know where in the body telomerase is made. We don't know where it actually comes from. And they said well, how is it made? And she said it's made every time we introduce these are her words every time we introduce a pattern interrupt into our default mechanism. What's our default mechanism? Activity. So anytime we introduce a pattern interrupt, put a break into our regular rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling of activity. That's when telomerase existed. And then they said to her well, do you know any techniques to how can we create more telomerase? And she said the only technique that I know that creates it is mindfulness. So it would seem that there is some kind of correlation to this concept of the pattern interrupt, the break in the action.

Speaker 1 25:00

And Viktor Frankl, the great Austrian psychiatrist, philosopher, holocaust survivor is known to have said in between stimulus, what comes into us, is known to have said in between stimulus, what comes into us, and response what goes out of us, there is a space. In that space rests our ability to choose. In that choice lies our growth and our freedom. So it's that space. So when we can cultivate space, if we think about, every single thing in your life is an activity, whether it's gardening or drying the dishes, or just sitting watching TV or taking notes or scrolling on social media Pick it. We're an activity, from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we close our eyes, and even while we're dreaming we're in activity. But there's only one stillness. And so when we can connect to that stillness, that space in between what comes in and what goes out, that's a place of infinite possibilities. That's where creativity is born. That's when a brand new reaction can unfold. Otherwise, we're just going to move from one conditioned behavior to the next.

Speaker 1 26:12

We've all been watching a movie or a TV show or watching, and suddenly somebody comes on the screen and you're like, oh, oh, oh, it's that guy who was in that thing. You know, in that moment, suddenly you forgot even the name of the movie, the other movie that he was in, you forgot everything about it. You can't, it's just on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't do that. And then someone says, hey, you want some popcorn. And you look at them, you reach over, you pick up that popcorn and suddenly you're like oh yeah, george Clooney, you know. So.

Speaker 1 26:42

We know that when we can introduce these spaces into us, it allows the neurological connections in our brain to sort of like pull apart for a moment, and when they come back, there can be that creative boost. So this space in between, I believe, is the secret to everything. It goes back to that line in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 2, verse 48, yogastha kuru karmani First get still and then perform action. In that pulling back of the bow you can re-aim anywhere. In that moment where we take a breath and step back, that allows our next step forward to be more intentional, to be more creative, to be more expansive, to be more of a conscious choice. And so I believe, cultivating that space in between what comes in and what comes out determines the fabric of our life. And so it's the space between. That's who we truly are Infinite, whole, perfect, pure and beyond our conditioning.

Speaker 3 27:52

Using that as a jumping off point. There's the beginner level of meditation, or rather when people first engage with it and it has its practical applications, let's say, for reducing stress, et cetera, improving general quality of life, being more connected to or understanding of through the witnessing of the movements of mind, sensations in the body, emotional intelligence, etc. A lot of people come to meditation for these reasons. Initially, what do you think of personally? And also as a teacher, as people use meditation from this initial application, where most of the population are coming to it, for all the way through to and in particular, for what you were mentioning, going back to the origination of something like the Buddhist teaching, which is like meditating to basically achieve Samadhi, jhana rarefied advanced states of meditation and consciousness like nirvana and to attain things like a full awakening or enlightenment.

Speaker 1 28:51

Yeah, it's a great question. In my book, de-stressifying, I talk a lot about how, if you're going to be a teacher, you have to figure out how to speak the language of the person who you're talking to. And I've had a lot of, you know, weird experiences where suddenly I find myself in a room of Marines Well, I'm not going to talk about, you know, I'm probably not going to sling any Sanskrit to them, probably not going to talk about the Bhagavad Gita, probably not going to talk about the universe holding space for you. And, you know, I'm going to talk about the more clinical or more secular, not to be manipulative or calculating, but I need to figure out what's the language that you speak so I can speak that language to you, so you'll understand what this is. So I think that everyone's got a different access point to these types of teachings.

Speaker 1 29:46

Some people and I've worked with people who they just need to lower their blood pressure, that's it. They don't believe in any kind of gibberish that I, that's it. They don't believe in any kind of gibberish that I'm otherwise talking about. They don't care about compassion or, you know, mindfulness or any of that stuff. They're like I'm trying to lower my blood pressure. And so I know, just do this thing and it'll lower your blood pressure. But how do I get them to do this thing? If I talk about, you know, the woo-woo stuff, they're never going to go there, and so I've got to be a little more articulate in how I express it. And the beauty of this stuff is that it is evidence-based, it is scientifically proven. So if I can talk in that language, you know, if you and I went to Japan and we didn't speak Japanese, raising our voice, talking louder, is not going to get us to be understood better. We've got to figure out, all right, what are some Japanese words that we can use to try to get someone to even understand what we're talking about. And I think the same thing applies to all of us Eight billion people on the planet.

Speaker 1 30:53

Everyone's got a different reason for showing up for this thing. Some people, they're just anxious. Some people, they've got a lot of stress. Some people, they want to lower their blood pressure. Some people, they're just angry and they wish they could stop barking at everyone around them or scorching the village. Some people, they want to connect to the divine. Other people, they want to merge with the cosmic flow. I mean we can go on and on with what that is.

Speaker 1 31:18

So I think, really finding out first, asking someone, you know, finding out a little bit about them, what do you hope to achieve? Because before every class that I teach and sometimes there could be 200 people in the room and every five people has their own lane I'll say, why are you here, what are you hoping to achieve? And someone will say, be more patient. Someone else will say I want to shut my husband's voice out of my head or my ex's voice out of my head. I'm like, okay, we could probably accomplish that. Then someone always says I'm here for enlightenment and I'm like probably not going to happen today. That's a more advanced, you know, show up every single day for a while and then perhaps then you can, you know, get to those levels.

Speaker 1 32:06

So I think that if you just meditate you'll receive sort of like the basic benefits from it. You'll become a little calmer, your pulse and blood pressure will get a little more normalized. Maybe you'll be, you know, a little more patient, and that's probably about it. Maybe you'll be a little less angry, but you won't necessarily be more compassionate unless there's some also conversation about where someone even says to you and what's your code? What code do you live by? What's important to you? What are you hoping to achieve in this life?

Speaker 1 32:51

And I think the beauty of the ancient teachings is that they're timeless and they're tested and they've gone through thousands of years of iteration and application. And so I think meditation great on its own, but I know a whole bunch of meditators who are jerks or who act jerky, and the teachings are great but if you're not actually doing some kind of embodiment technique, then it's just a lot of theory that you've learned. And that's very, very interesting when you can combine those two worlds and say well, whether it's the Four Noble Truths or the Noble eightfold path or the five remembrances or the brahma viharas, you know we can go on and on with all these various teachings, and there is applicable now and in this year and in our current modern culture and society, as they were thousands of years ago. So that's why the emphasis on my teachings is like okay, here's an important practice, but let's also combine it with the gratitude practice. A short one, maybe we spend a minute asking what am I grateful for? What am I grateful for? Let's also combine that with a forgiveness practice. Maybe you could cultivate a little empathy along this journey of stillness and silence.

Speaker 1 34:16

So I believe that just allowing someone to ask deeper, reflective questions I call them sacred questions as the setup to the meditation. You know, maybe during the settling in process I often ask a bunch of questions who am I when I'm my best expression, what am I grateful for, who am I grateful for and what does my heart truly long for? You ask those three questions on a daily basis and then go into stillness and silence or whatever the meditation technique is that you're using. It doesn't matter whether it's body scan or mantra or mindfulness or Vipassana or whatever the meditation technique is that you're using. It doesn't matter whether it's body scan or mantra or mindfulness or Vipassana or whatever. And then when you come out of that, you sort of like have embedded the answers to those questions from a higher point. So a lot of people don't believe in God, but they certainly believe in their best expression.

Speaker 1 35:12

Some people, their highest power is you know their 12, their best expression. Some people, their highest power is you know their 12-step room. Some people, their highest power is themselves. Some people, it's the organization that they work for or live for. Some people, it's their family. You know, everybody gets to choose. You know what is that?

Speaker 1 35:31

But when you ask, who am I when I'm at my best, what am I grateful for and what does my heart truly long for? That pretty much encapsulates all the essence of who we are and how we show up and why we show up. And then I also like to ask and I believe this is the key to meditating Invite into your awareness as your intention let's set an intention Invite into your awareness a state of mind, a state of being, a trait, a quality or a characteristic that you'd like to level up or amplify or embrace at a higher level. And then invite that in, plant that inside of you and let it go, and then go into that stillness and silence and suddenly you've got the whole package going on inside there. And so then your meditation practice is also a personal development practice.

Speaker 1 36:32

Then your meditation practice is also a cultivation of compassion, of empathy, of deeper understanding, and I think that's how we suffer less and that's how we start to elevate towards these higher states of consciousness. And it's not that the higher states of consciousness we're not trying to accomplish those when our eyes are closed during the meditation. We're cultivating that. So when we open our eyes back up, we are a little more awake, we are a little more aware, and that's where the magic of meditation happens when your eyes are open, when you're back here with the rest of us, when you're sitting in the corner in the dark with your eyes closed, whatever, that's your training no-transcript.

Speaker 2 37:20

Thank you Really appreciate that Inspiration around the practice of the mat right, the performing action that you referenced right there at the beginning, of bringing this into embodiment, into practice. You spoke there of some of the sort of timeless wisdom pieces. Your book Sacred Powers is organized around these five divine principles. I think you touched base on a couple there. We have the principle of one awareness, rebirth, infinite flow and inner fire, and I wonder if you'd comment just in brief on these timeless wisdom pieces.

Speaker 1 37:53

Yeah, well, you know, I spent about five years researching ancient cultures. And when I say ancient, you know starting 10,000 years ago, and some people claim, oh, that's too new, too recent. Everything started, you know, over 70,000 years ago. And some people claim, oh, that's too new, too recent. Everything started, you know, over 70,000 years ago, like okay, but it was pretty tribal back then. But really, when things started to crystallize where there were common threads in those societies and those civilizations in India, in China, in North and South America, in the Fertile Crescent, in North and South America, in the Fertile Crescent, you know, ancient Babylonia and ancient Egypt, ancient China there's all these overlaps. And that's really what started coming to me and that's why I said these are divine principles. These are not people who spoke to each other. They may have lived thousands and thousands of miles away from each other thousands and thousands of years ago, and yet the same things were important to them. They all believe in this concept of one. So, whether that's we're one with the cosmos or whether we're one with each other, or whether it's my soul and your soul are the same soul other, or whether it's my soul and your soul are the same soul. And so, as I kept researching and exploring, it was like, oh, they all have these teachings of awareness too, and they all have rebirth. Pick your religion, pick your society, your civilization. There's tons of rebirth practices, from rising from the ashes to people having their confirmation, or having some kind of initiation, or bar mitzvah, or you know, we can go on and on. It exists in every single culture of like you're stepping in.

Speaker 1 39:42

Joseph Campbell talked about this, you know, he's a person who really popularized this concept of the hero's journey, and we can go back to the most ancient hero's journeys and they all have three phases the departure the hero sets off on the whatever journey. Then the middle part of that is called the initiation and then the third part is called the return. So we could go the odyssey, uh, which is, you know, quite old. We could say the bhagavad, which is quite old. We could say, um, black panther, the movie we, you know, pick your marvel superhero. They're all doing that, you know. They're all sort of like heading off on their departure. Then they have the initiation and then they return back. Even you know the Holy Grail, even Monty Python's the Holy Grail, you know, whatever it is, there's always that departure, the initiation and then the return.

Speaker 1 40:42

The funny thing about it for all of us is that in every single one of these the initiation and then the return the funny thing about it for all of us is that in every single one of these the departure the hero always resists the calling, no matter what it is. We've all been called, we've all been summoned, and the first thing we think is like is that my voice, or is that my ego? Or is that God? Or who's actually talking to me here? Am I just having a thought, or is this truly something special that's whispering into my ears, you know, calling to me or inviting me to do something? And so in every single hero's journey, in that first departure stage, there's always the resistance to the call. We've all done it. Someone says you know, you should become a meditation teacher. I experience it all the time. And they say, ooh, who am I? Who am I? I don't even my meditation practice is sketchy. Who am I to teach anyone else how to connect to the stillness and silence that rests within? No matter what that invitation is, there's often that resistance. And then, ultimately, there's maybe a higher level of crystallization where we're like yeah, I'm going to be on that journey and then that initiation that could last for a decade or more.

Speaker 1 41:51

In the Odyssey Ulysses, the hero goes off and fights a 10-year war and then he figures, all right, I'll head back home now It'll take me a month or two. It takes him 10 years to actually ultimately get back home. The 10 years of trials and tribulations and going into the abyss and finding the elixir and meeting the special spirit guide and then being tricked and having the battle and all that stuff. But ultimately he has all these initiations. He gets back home. And what happens to every hero upon their return? Whoever they're returning to isn't often as impressed or excited about their thing that they're bringing back to them. You know, the hero always returns and says I have the answer.

Speaker 4 42:42

Here it is it's this special orb or this special, you know, elixir or the Holy Grail, or the answer.

Speaker 1 42:46

Here it is it's this special orb or this special elixir or the Holy Grail or the whatever, and everyone's so skeptical and they're like whatever, they're just mocking that person. So even we on a spiritual journey, even when we come back and say oh my God, that was it?

Speaker 4 43:00

I had my aha moment. I connected to the stillness and silence that rests within, and I experienced the oneness of all existence. I'm floating on a bliss cloud. Ananda is here.

Speaker 1 43:11

For me, everyone else is like whatever dude, okay, we're going to keep living our life. You do that. So initiation is very, very. I went down that rabbit hole of rebirth. Appreciation is very, very. I went down that rabbit hole of rebirth, but I believe in personal and professional brand rebirth in every moment.

Speaker 1 43:33

I believe that, personally, we're rebranding ourselves because, you know, here's what I used to believe, and now I've opened my heart, or expanded a little bit more. I understand something even bigger than me, larger than me heart, or expand it a little bit more. I understand something even bigger than me, larger than me. Oh well, that allows me to have even greater, deeper understandings of who I am and where I could go in that process, and I think, professionally, wherever we are, whether you're working for the man, or whether you're working for yourself or whatever you're doing, we have an opportunity to say, well, that was great, maybe I could even expand it a little bit more, maybe I could even level that up, maybe there are aspects of this thing that I'm doing that I haven't even yet explored or thought about or even given myself permission to even see on the horizon.

Speaker 1 44:19

So rebirth exists in every single culture, going back 20,000 years. And you know, here in our society, you know, some people are like, well, that's a little weird. Well, not really. It exists almost in every someone's baptizing their baby. And they're saying, oh, rebirth is weird. It's like, well then, why are you baptizing your baby, don't you? That's the rebirth, that's the symbolic initiation that you're doing there. So I believe we can all re-baptize ourselves and cleanse ourselves using sacred fire ceremonies and sacred water ceremonies, which has been done for thousands of years. But why not bring them into our lives, even if it's just writing something on a piece of paper and burning it, you know, in a fire in your fireplace? That allows us to dissipate that energy.

Speaker 1 45:16

Everything is energy, everything is energy. And I didn't say it, einstein said it, but I'm certainly I'm in on it. And Einstein said energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another. And I would like to not that I want to throw shade on Einstein, but I would prefer to use the word energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. I mean, we have the exact amount of energy right now here on the planet as there was the day this planet was formed. Now imagine that. That's just a mind blower. Not one micron of energy more or less has come to this planet, it's just being transmuted. So we're living these lives of alchemy, where trees shed leaves which turn into soil, which turn into more trees or you know whatever that looks like.

Speaker 1 46:14

But we are in this constant transformational state and rebirth is one of those things and I think we should embrace it. We should see every single day as a brand new day and we can go back to the teachings of the Buddha. You know the concept of beginner's mind. Can we start each day as a beginner and allow all the conditioning of our past to be just suspended, at least through our meditation practice, where we can be born again? And this speaks to the divine principle of infinite flow, where everything is just flowing into one. The words that I'm speaking now are being received by you.

Speaker 1 46:56

You will take that energy in some form and either go well, I don't even know what he was talking about or like, oh, let me transmute that inside me and I'll share it. And here's like a really powerful thing to do. I know we can just hear us, but I would say if you could pick up your device unless you're listening to this podcast on your device. Don't do it. Do it when we finish. But if you could, just if you are listening to it and you have access to your texts or your DMs, just pick up your phone, someone in your scroll or someone you've been thinking about and just simply send them a text thinking of you and sending love, or send them a DM thinking of you and sending love. Don't do this with an employee. You could get like a $10 million lawsuit, but probably any other person that you share this with on the planet. It will be really powerful, and then that's the power of your ripple, that's the sacred power of your ripple, which is folded into this concept of infinite flow. You wanna move energy across the galaxy. This is how we do it, effortlessly, and I bet you get a response. Well, you can get one of three responses. Either the person will respond who is this, and that means they probably deleted you a while back. Or they could say thank you so much, that's amazing. Or they might say are you okay Because it's so unexpected. But the bottom line is no one's expecting a little text or a message that doesn't have strings attached. This is just thinking of you and sending love, and that's the power of your ripple you can keep passing that energy along, so amazing.

Speaker 1 48:41

And lastly, the divine principle of inner fire. We are these passionate beings and many times our superpower. Our native energy has been dormant for a while. Maybe there's someone you love died, maybe someone broke up with you. Everybody here has had their heart broken. Everybody has had their heart broken, heartbroken, and so we have a chance to rekindle that and to awaken that fire that's resting in. That will spark passion and purpose and allow us to live lives of greater intentionality. So imagine these five divine principles have been practiced for tens of thousands of years in every single ancient culture that exists out there. They live their lives according to them. So I figured I would take those five overlaps and really dive deeper. And it's the pathway to how we can live our lives. It's practical application in our real world right now. How do we weave this stuff into our thoughts, our words and our actions? And so that's why I wrote that book.

Speaker 3 49:56

You clearly are grounded in a lot of these concepts in terms of the way that you're able to articulate them and want to speak to the audience that you are speaking to. Many times in this conversation referenced evidence-based scientific language, scientific research, et cetera. We've also talked about energy that seminal experience in the subway, or passing on energy, the oneness of the universe, being able to realize that. What are your thoughts on this seeming divide or contradiction between the wisdom traditions regarding consciousness and spirituality versus our modern approach to truth finding or seeking through the scientific lens?

Speaker 1 50:40

Well, I think you know we live in the age of opinion. If you haven't figured that one out, so everyone's got an opinion, and everyone you haven't figured that one out, so everyone's got an opinion, and everyone's pretty righteous about their opinions too. And they're just opinions, they're just thoughts that popped into our head and that we got attached to. And so, you know, probably my one of my greatest watch words is you know, going through my mind. Is you know, going through my mind? Maybe, maybe not, or I'm pretty sure I have no idea. So, but I've got opinions on lots of stuff and you know I find it. You know, certainly within the scientific community. You know, if you can provide the science community, you know if you can provide the science. If someone doesn't want to listen to it, like wait, you wanted evidence, and now I've just given you evidence, I'm like, well, I need more, like all right, that's just them. So I believe that we should put things to the test.

Speaker 1 51:42

There's a whole bunch of studies out there that I believe to be true, but I don't talk about them and I don't share them, because they were actually researched by people or organizations that have an agenda. So, as much as I believe pretty much every single TM study, the Transcendental Meditation study that I've read. They have an agenda, they sell meditation. So it's like the pharmaceutical companies if they did the research and then approved themselves and then gave you the drugs. So it's not that I don't agree with them. Like I said, I think some of those studies are amazing, but I prefer to go with academic institutions and medical centers that don't necessarily have an agenda. So when they come up with the results of their study they don't have any skin in the game. If you, if you know, they're not not also saying and click this button and buy our meditation. They're just saying here's another cool thing that we found out about meditation um, so, uh, like I said, if there's a meditation study out there, you know I'll explore it, I'll study it, and if I think that I can share it cogently or translate it or distill it down and it has those evidence-based prongs, I'll share it.

Speaker 1 53:13

Here's the beauty. There's enough amazing studies by researchers that are unquestioned, at least right now. Who knows, even the ones who used to be mocked at now are considered. Oh, of course, 50 years ago, when people were saying yes, meditation can connect you to the stillness and silence that rests within so you can make better choices. People would roll their eyes. And now it's actually been proven. Oh, I can actually impact my physiology and my neurology through this practice. So I like to take as much of the science as possible, and that has broadened out.

Speaker 1 53:58

So, whereas Sarah Lazar at University of Massachusetts, harvard Medical Center her lane is really using these mindfulness practices of Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn or Dr Herbert Benson, and then you have Richard J Davidson at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. All his research is consciousness-based and he's done studies. He's close personal friends with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has supplied him with super meditators. That's my term, not his. They might find it disparaging, but these are people who have meditated for at least eight hours a day, every single day, for at least three years. Those are, they're pretty heavily meditated, you know, can you imagine how large their hippocampus is, you know, with that amount of meditation? And so there was a study that he did where he took 50 super meditators again my word, not his and 50 non-meditators, and they did this very, very simple thing they took a metal object and heated it up, a metal object and heated it up, and they took the 50 meditators, the 50 super meditators, and applied the heated metal object to their flesh and they wired up their pain centers in their brain. And as they applied the heated metal object to their flesh this is like scientific terms for burning someone their pain center fired 50 out of 50. And then they did the exact same thing to the non-meditators. They took the heated metal object, applied it to the flesh 50 out of 50, the pain center's fired. So here's what they proved Burning hurts. Okay, then that was there. That was the big thing. Then they changed it up just a little bit. They changed the wording, they introduced language to this In 10 seconds I will apply the heated metal object. So when they said that to the 50 non-meditators, upon saying the words in 10 seconds, I will apply the heated metal object their pain centers fired. They didn't even have to burn them. When they did that to the 50 super meditators, nothing happened until their flesh burned again.

Speaker 1 56:24

So it really speaks to this concept that the non-meditative mind, or how we're normally wired, is to reach into the future pain that might occur in the future and bring it into the present moment and experience it. And the meditative mind, this is all consciousness, this is awareness. The meditative mind actually is much more present-based and these guys are firing gamma waves out of their brains, who knows what planet they're on, eight hours a day. For three years consecutive, that's like 150,000 hours of consecutive meditation. It's like you and I meditating, for you know, do the math on that one for a hundred years, every single day. And so we know that there are these higher levels of consciousness when our brains are in gamma state or when our brains are clearly in a higher, more expanded level of consciousness. So there are studies about that.

Speaker 1 57:33

And so at a certain point, if someone's like, no, I don't believe that one either, it's like okay, I have a certain philosophy, I can't care more. You know, I don't try to Jedi people. Jedi means justify, explain, defend or insist. I don't. You know, here's I present the studies, and when I teach I'll say well, according to the teachings of Patanjali, according to the Buddha's teaching, according to the scientific study, I don't need to carry a flag for meditation. It's been doing fine for thousands and thousands of years without me. So you know, my feeling is here's the evidence, here's the scientific research. It's enough to convince me. And plus, I'm living it. So, anecdotally, I can say. I know it works and I've trained thousands of people around the world and their feedback is their lives have gotten better, more fulfilling, more expanded. Their hearts have gotten lighter, they're making more conscious choices, they feel more joy in their day to day.

Speaker 1 58:39

And for the person who doesn't want that, I say it probably won't work for you if you're against it. You know, if you don't think this stuff is going to work, it probably won't. And I think you can apply that to every single aspect of life. You want to show up with bells, on which I believe? Then guess what? You'll find the magic in life. You want to show up as a resistor. How you do one thing is how you do most things. You're probably resisting a whole bunch of stuff in your life as well, and my mission is not to convince anyone who doesn't want to explore with me, and that's what I do. I invite people to explore with me and find cool stuff, and if you don't want to come along for the ride, you could, you know, just stay back in your constricted bubble and we'll send you love.

Speaker 2 59:33

Speaking of that invitation, we'd love to hear a little bit more for our listeners about how they can connect with you if they're interested in your work or experiencing meditations with you directly interested in your work or experiencing meditations with you directly.

Speaker 1 59:51

Well, thank you. I've recorded probably a little over 2000 guided meditations on every topic, from grief to empowerment, to the chakras, to energy, to transformation, rebirth a whole bunch of different kind of things. They're on pretty much every platform that's out there, from Apple Music to Spotify to Amazon, to Insight Timer to the Unplugged Meditation app, and you can probably find all of that information at davidjicom. You can find out about the courses and the programs, and there's tons, tons of free content that I've shared over the years. So you can pretty much just sit there and meditate with me wherever you are, under any circumstance, and I encourage people to take that step. And if you don't like it maybe I'm not the person, or maybe the technique is not the one keep exploring, because meditation can be such a beautiful companion for you to live your life, and you can find that space between in music, you can find that space between in art, you can find that space between in science, and your doorway to that can be a daily meditation practice.

Speaker 3 1:01:17

Really appreciate you spending time with us today, sharing your wisdom. A lot of inspirational stuff, thought provoking. Yeah, thank you for your time time and we'll make sure to put that in the show links and definitely encourage people to check out your work it's been a pleasure to explore the space in between with you today.

Speaker 1 1:01:34

Thank you so much thank you, thanks so much for inviting me, thanks for giving me an opportunity to share with you thanks for listening to the episode.

Speaker 3 1:01:45

what really supports the podcast is providing a rating and review of the show on your preferred listening platform. This helps us get the message out to a wider audience. If the topics we discussed today appeal to you, do take a moment to subscribe. Lastly, we invite you to check out our website, fielddynamicshealingcom to learn about our training programs, private session work and to see how we're setting the standard in contemporary energy healing. Many thanks and see you next time.