Mark [0:00] Hello Daniel, welcome to the Heart of Connection podcast. I’m your host, Mark Randall and it’s lovely to be talking to you all the way from Australia to San Diego. How is it over there on this lovely Saturday morning day morning here, Friday afternoon your time.
Daniel [0:16] Yes, San Diego is going through like a revolution. We used to be 70 degrees all the time. Now to this morning, we woke up with 39 degrees. That is cold for us. Normally, when it’s 69 we put on our parkers and think, there’s global warming effecting us. (Laughter)…..We’re supposed to have this level weather but it’s gone bonkers disasters but it’s beautiful. The sun is out, ocean few blocks away, just having you know, we just need something to mess ourselves up with, right?
Mark [0:49] Are you well connected to San Diego?
A Hermit By Nature
Daniel [0:54] I am a hermit by nature. So I’m connected but I also am very secluded. If you think about a person who should write a book called, The Mosaic on connection, I would be the least likely person to write that book. Had I had my druthers, I would be sitting in a cave in the Himalayas. I would just be spending the rest of my time meditating and enjoying the rest of my life with a vertical relationship to God. For some reason, God decided to play a big joke on me.
Mark [1:37] So if you’re not connected to, if you’re more of a hermit, would that then suggest you’ve got a more of an introverted connection to yourself, or a connection to self, rather than others?
Daniel [1:51] I think I have a great connection to people when I go out there and do it. It’s just like the other day we went and did a book club. They invited us to come, my wife and I to the book club and present on The Mosaic. We had a fabulous time. We were there a few hours we had a great time people were moved, everything was great. Given my own druthers, my space would be internal rather than external.
Mark [2:21] How do you connect yourself internally, what’s your process?
Connecting to Self Through Meditation
Daniel [2:26] My process has been meditation. I’ve been a monk. I was a monk for 20 years. In that process, I just love that lifestyle. I woke up at three o’clock in the morning, I met with my brothers from the monastery, and we sat and meditation from about 3.30 or 4:00 am till about 8:00 am or 8:30 am every day. I did that for about eight or nine years. Then we would come together at about five o’clock in the evening and meditate until eight again at night. So there’s something so explicit when we shut down the noise from outside, and we just listen to the silence of inside.
One of my brothers in the monastery always used to say to me, ‘a man screams, God whispers’. In order to hear the voice of the infinite, you just need to create a quiet place so that you can hear his whisper or her whisper.
Mark [3:35] Is that connecting to the God within?
Connecting To My God Within
Daniel [3:38] Yes, yeah. I mean, we, it’s even amazing for me, because I know God’s inside of all of us. Yet still, some of the mythologies of the way I talk about him or her. It is as if he’s somewhere out there, somewhere far away, like he’s watching over me, or he has me in the palm of his hand. It’s just such a human relationship in one way. It’s the relationship of an individual to their divine lover. It makes it personal, to make it seem like it’s somebody outside, but it’s not outside at all.
Mark [4:15] It’s within?
Daniel [4:16] Its within.
Mark [4:17] It’s like connecting to the Buddha nature within ourselves?
We Need to Spend Time to Get To Know Ourselves
Daniel [4:20] Yeah, and they’re very few people. I mean, when you know, that place inside yourself, you know, yourself. I find there are very few people in the world today to know that place. There are very few people that have spent the time to get to know themselves. We live, if our life was a wheel, we live on the rim of the wheel, not at the core, not at the hub of the wheel. Some people will define themselves by the spokes, by the things that they do, or the places that or the places where they have an effect. Those are just the spokes of taking the hub from who you are out to the world of the rim around you. We’re neither the rim nor the spokes we’re the hub, where the centre of the wheel.
Mark [5:01] So what do you think, is preventing us from connecting to the hub instead of the spokes?
Self-Loathing Prevents Our Self Connection
Daniel [5:17] If I were to say it really simply, self-loathing. We put ourselves down, even in this little thing, you know, where we were both just sitting here trying to get on video, right? You know, and no judgment in it because I would do the same thing. Oh, God, we can’t get this. How stupid and you were just beautifully laughing and enjoyed it, right. There’s like, there’s no value in that. There’s a sense of – I was just writing something, because, The Mosaic talks about connection. It talks about it in the spaces between the words. In the words of it-it’s just a beautiful story. It’s just a boy. It’s about a boy who loses his parents two years apart on the same day. He asks the adults where his parents are, and they tell them, they’re in heaven. He sets out in search of the place called heaven. The people that he meets along the way, are just ordinary, regular people. When he sits to listen to them, tell their story, he realizes there’s nothing ordinary about them. So that’s the story of The Mosaic.
The Story of the Mosaic – The four Connections
In the space between the words of the story, it’s a story about the four practices and the four types of connections that make for a real connection. Those are beautiful, and those are simple. When I say the connection to you, let’s do it. Let’s take a second example. When I say the connection to you, tell me what immediately comes to your mind.
Mark [6:49] Heart.
Daniel [6:49] Heart. Hard or Heart?
Mark [6:56] Heart, as in my heart deep down in my heart?
Daniel [6:59] Okay. So when you say, Heart comes to mind, when you talk about connection. What does that mean to you?
Mark [7:07] Soul.
Daniel [7:09] Okay, but what? So those are just other words, what does what does it mean when you say, heart and soul?
Mark [7:13] It’s a felt sense. It’s like, I’m connecting energetically. I’m connecting to, the “All that Is” for me. It’s a felt experience. It’s the gift of…
Daniel [7:29] It’s felt. So when you’re connecting, what are you connecting to, through your heart, or through your Soul?
The Mosaic has shown me a series of steps
Mark [7:36] I’m connecting to myself and all sentient beings. I’m connecting to the universe. Sometimes I can transcend myself. In meditation, I sit in my car in the garage in the darkness. The sense of self dissolves and there it all is. It’s a beautiful place to be. I’m that, I’m eliminating all the spokes that are coming up. I’m eliminating the narrative that goes with those spokes and trying to stay with the core. Or staying with that “hub” as you talk about.
Daniel [8:14] You’re a beautiful person. Most people when I say connection to them, and I say, what does that mean to you, they say, connection to other people. It’s a natural thought for them, to think, well, what connection is, is when I connect with you, I feel connected. What ‘The Mosaic’ has shown me very similar to what you’re saying? What ‘The Mosaic’ has shown me is that connections, the fourth connection, in a series of steps that need to build – 1, 2, 3 to four. The first one’s connection to self. The second one’s connection to the source. The third ones are a connection to purpose. The fourth one is a connection to others.
Stop Our Internal Self Punishment
What just happened for me is, even this morning as I was just writing a blog on my website that people can go see. It’s ‘The Mosaic’ online. com. The latest blog I wrote about was just this sense of, why is that progression so important? If I don’t love myself, basically, what I have is – I’m constantly beating myself up. People can’t see it now, because we’re not on video. Imagine taking your right hand and trying to hit yourself in the face and using your left hand to protect it. So, my left hand is about three inches from my face, which means that I’ve built a wall, at three inches from me to protect myself from my own abuse. I don’t know when I’m going to hit myself, or how often I’m going to hit myself during the course of the day. So I have to maintain that wall from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet because I don’t even know what I’m going to hit myself. So if I’m surrounding myself with a wall three inches away from me, how much connecting am I having? I’m not connecting to anything.
Mark [10:10] Where has more of our disconnection derived from?
Daniel [10:18] I’m sorry, say that again?
Mark [10:19] Where has our disconnection to self -derived from in your point of view?
Daniel [10:25] So, great questions by the way. I think the world that we live in, doesn’t honor the connection to self. I just remember when I was growing up, people were all into getting into businesses and doing business. Living in business and making a lot of money and making their life work. I walked away from a number of opportunities that could have been extremely financially rich. I would always say to people, they would say, why would you do that? I said, I just want to find something. I want to find myself. I want to find who I am. They would laugh with scorn. When are you going to stop trying to find yourself and just do what’s in front of you? Why are you going to just take these opportunities that are coming? People would kill for these opportunities. What’s so important about finding yourself that you have to give this up? Can’t you find yourself while you’re doing this?
Our World Pulls Us Away From Ourselves
In a world that pulls you outside of yourself, it’s very hard to turn around and pull back into yourself. Because the momentum of that world pulls us to something else. Which is not who we are, what we want or what makes us happier, how do we feel? It teaches us how to think and how to make money and how to live in a world where we can make people think we’re better than we are.
Mark [11:54] I wonder whether – I’m going get bit philosophical here. I’m wondering whether that is – whether we reincarnate here. How do we take that hub, through to the spokes and connect to the wider society and the businesses, etc, etc? Keeping the essence, the spirit essence of our hub in that process of connecting to the broader world?
Daniel [12:32] I wouldn’t worry about that question. I would, first ask the question, or this just my personal opinion, you do whatever you feel. Everybody that I’ve seen, everybody that I’ve met along the way, and it’s only been a few people, honestly, who has really known themselves. They have no trouble manifesting that themselves, into the world around them, and making money and creating purpose in the world and doing the things they need to do. They get a sense like once I fall in love with myself and it really is, just that simple. Once I fall in love with myself and stop hitting myself, then those walls come down. When I fall in love with myself, suddenly I realize, hold it, this feeling of love is so unbelievable. This can’t just start and end with me. There must be something bigger in the world that I can tune into that where that love exists at all the all the time.
Second Connection is a Connection To Source
So we’re that love, where that love connects us in the in that feeling of love. Like if I can connect to myself suddenly with love, how do I then connect to you with love? The second connection is a connection to the source. A connection to something bigger than me. When I realized that there’s something that has brought us together for a reason, then I start to say, “wow.” I could connect to a love that’s bigger than me, that’s grander than me, that I’m just a drop of. God is in me, but I’m not God. I’m a piece of God, right? I’m a piece and the mosaic is God and I am a piece of it. How do I connect to every piece of the mosaic? How do I how do I start to allow myself to feel the love, that’s an all love? When I connect to that source, it becomes amazingly, beautiful.
Mark [14:23] Okay, you mentioned before that the walls drop down. And as you shared that with me, my heart and my mind went immediately to, when the walls drop down, are you more open-hearted?
Daniel [14:39] Yeah, yeah.
Mark [14:40] And when the more open-hearted, does that then, increase or facilitate, they may not even be the right words, a deeper connection to self, others and ‘All That Is’?
Daniel [14:55] Yeah, well, so when my walls are up, there’s no connection. I’m just protected, right? I’m scared of getting hurt. I’ve been hurt so much. I’m scared of getting hurt. When I dropped my walls, I say you know what, I don’t believe that I want to live in walls of pain to protect me, from walls and from pain. So, I’m going to drop those walls and open up. Sure someone might hurt me. At that point, I also am vulnerable enough and open enough to say hey, you know something? That actually really hurt and I’m so sorry that hurt. I just want to let you know I fell down, would you help me get back up again? I’m not trying to maintain some persona of myself have been bigger than I am. I feel what I feel, and when I’m hurt I cry and when I’m strong I laugh.
Not Living in Walls of Pain to Protect Me from Pain
Mark [15:44] How do you connect to that hurt that inside yourself? What’s your process to connect to that hurt?
Daniel [15:52] We were, I love you but what a great question, okay. Yet, it’s such a mental question. When my heart hurts, I feel it. What is happening in the world today, because we’re so protected. We stop feeling. We don’t feel anymore because we’re scared to feel, because we’re scared to feel hurt. When we don’t have those walls around us, we feel hurt. I mean, we don’t have to connect to it. We don’t have to understand it, we say, ‘wow.’
Mark [16:26] We are connected to it.
Daniel [16:29] We hurt. When a baby comes into the world and something happens to it, it screams. It doesn’t think, how do I connect to this feeling of hurt. When the baby is pacified he/she connects to the peace.
Mark [16:38] So when you sit and be present to the felt hurt, is the presence bringing healing to that hurt? Is your presence bringing healing to that hurt?
Daniel [16:52] Beautiful. Here’s what I believe. Here’s what it’s been for me. I’m not trying to say what it’s been for me, is what it is for anybody else. Okay? When I start to love myself when I start to feel the love of the universe, the love of all creation. When I connect with that, that love literally abolishes pain.
Through Love of Self, we can feel the love of the Universe and Love of Creation
Just like when you have darkness in a room and you turn on the light. There’s not a process to how does the darkness leave, you turn on the light and darkness vanishes. It can’t coexist at the same time with light. As when the lights on the darkness goes. When we allow ourselves to feel and we allow ourselves to feel love and we go to that place of love, yes will feel some pain. Sometimes we’ll get hurt. We then just continue to love. We just continue to love the person that hurts us. We continue to love ourselves, who hurts ourselves. We just continue to open up into that love and that love will take away our pain.
Mark [18:02] And when you’re in that love, how much does that then radiate out of your being to others? Can
Daniel [18:11] You tell me (laughter)
It’s impossible, even when there’s just self-love. Even when I haven’t connected to the universal love. When their self-love, people notice it. People think wow, there’s something about that guy. When there’s universal love, you walk into a room and the room no longer affects you. You affect the room.
Mark [18:38] Energetically?
Love Can be a Radiating Essence of Presence
Daniel [18:40] Energetically, vibrationally, physically. We did an experiment years ago when I was in the monastery. We went to a noisy, crowded restaurant. Just a couple of monks, me and a couple of monks. We sat down in the back corner of the restaurant. We said, let’s just find our peace. Don’t close our eyes and go “Aum” you know, don’t do any of that. Just sit here, quiet with our eyes open, nobody knows we’re doing anything and let’s bring the presence of our peace into the restaurant. Do you know, within about 30 seconds, the restaurant went from as loud as you could possibly be? To you could hear a pin drop. 30 seconds, it didn’t take long.
Mark [19:28] As monks. Were you in your robes?
Daniel [19:31] No.
Mark [19:33] Okay.
Daniel [19:35] Unless, I was in my pajamas and my robe (laughter)
Mark [19:40] When you were talking before about self-love and the light. When we’re in that space, the light darkness becomes invisible. I’m wondering whether the felt pain, dissolves in that essence of self-love?
Daniel [20:04] So what is the pain? What would you define pain as for me?
Mark [20:08] Oh, when I experienced emotional hurt, I physically feel it in my heart. I might be sad, yeah I will be sad. It would trigger for me all patterns, old re-triggering of our traumas. It sets off old our narratives and I try and just centre and breathe, and have space. Just go beyond the pain and feel back into that hub and been dissolve it in my Soul. Just let it go, I am more than this.
The Pain of Our Emotional Hurt
That might take a couple of days. Or it might take an hour. The more I practice it, the better I (laughter), I hope I’m getting better at it (laughter) maybe I’m not. It’s a process. From a neuroscience perspective, emotional pain is registered in our brain as the same place as physical pain is. I think it’s really important not to diminish the felt experience at that pain. The cliches, “kicked in the guts,” “broken-hearted.” They are metaphors is that have been used the eons, that symbolize the depth of that felt hurt
Daniel [21:34] I, believe me, I have known it. I still know it.
Mark [21:41] What just happened in your body just then as you shared that with me. did you touch it, just then, as you said, “I still know it.”
Daniel [21:47] Yeah, of course.
Bringing a Presence to Meet Our Emotional Pain
Mark [21:50] Like, just being present now, you and I, just being present we are millions of miles away from each other, but we are present to it. Connected.
Daniel[ 21:58] Connected
So here’s the beauty for me of the practice that I’m involved in now. My definition of pain is wanting something to be other than it is.
That’s when I’m in pain. If I have a pain in my shoulder, I want my shoulder to be not in pain. If someone hurts me, I want them to love me, not to hurt me. If I get if I get rejected by something, I wish they hadn’t rejected me. Whatever it is, that I feel I feel that it should be other. Whatever it is, I feel, I feel it should be other than it is. When I understand, when I love myself and when I’m connected to universal love. I start to understand that there’s nothing that happens that isn’t just loving.
Through Love, We Connect to Universal Love
So why would I want love to be other than love and I start to absorb into this bigger feeling? This wider sensation, this immaculate presence that all of this is just a kiss on my on my cheek. That all of it is just for me to understand how much I’m loved and how much love is coming and no matter what happens outside of me I am feeling this incredible love. It’s not denying the love, it is walking right into the love and expanding it out. So that, the space that it holds in my consciousness of it shouldn’t be there now becomes absolutely it should be there. When you have a glass of water and you take a dropper full of purple dye and you put that purple dye into the glass of water what happens?
Mark [23:52] The water will become a color of the purple.
Daniel [23:56] Totally. When you take that same dropper full of purple dye and you put that into the ocean what happens?
Mark [24:04] It’s dispersed it won’t – the ocean’s bigger than the piece of purple.
Daniel [24:09] It’ll have no effect on the ocean.
Mark [24:10] Can I then introduce into that love, what happens if you take the experience of hate, into that space of love?
The Opposite of Love, our experience to Choose Hate
Daniel [24:21] The experience of hate?
Mark [24:24] Hate, the know the……opposite
Daniel [24:26] In other words if you elevate above it?
Mark [24:27] No, the opposite to love, hate?
Daniel [24:31] Hate – we have a choice anytime we want.
Mark [24:35] We do.
Daniel [24:36] That’s the beautiful thing we can choose within us. You know the story of the grandfather who told us a little boy. Within us are always two foxes.
Mark [24:47] Two wolves were fighting, which one do we feed?
Daniel [24:50] Which one do feed, right? Yeah. So we can feed whichever one we want. If feeding hate brings us happiness, then we’ll continue to feed hate. A certain place, stay with me for one point. When someone feeds darkness and someone feeds light and I’m not saying hate is darkness or love is light. I’m just saying when someone feeds darkness and someone feeds light, there’s no room for darkness anymore.
The Third Connection of ‘The Mosaic’
In a room where people – in a person, who is so in love, in a person who is so connected to this universal love. The third connection happens. Let me just stay with me a minute, as soon as I realized that my purpose here on this earth once I realized that love my purpose here is only one thing. My purpose here is to bring that love into the world so that everybody can feel it. I’m not here to make a lot of money, it’s not going to come with me. I’m not here for people to think I’m fabulous, it’s like who cares? When I die, it’s gone. I’m not here to have the best health in the world, who cares? I’m not here to become some sort of, you know, a superhero with a cape. All I’m really I’m here now, when we connect to that love, of loving ourselves and that’s universal love, that’s all around this. The only thing we want is to be able to be a vehicle for that love – to give that love to everything in the world.
Mark [26:23] When we give that – one of the questions that have been asking everybody, every guest in the podcast. Is when we have that love, that healing love of self, we’re loving and we’re trans…Pushing it out into the universe. If we’re healing ourselves with that love, are we healing Mother Earth?
The Fourth Connection we are Part of this Mosaic
Daniel [26:43] Yes. Then we realize we’re part of this mosaic, which is the fourth connection. What we are is, we’re just one piece. The more we now emanate that love and spread that love and walk with that love and carry that love and share that love and give that love every piece surround this starts to emanate with that love. The earth then emanates with it. The heavens emanate with it. The inanimate objects resonate with it. Human beings resonate with it. So the way to feel and to uplift this world is really simple. It’s not in changing political leaders. It’s not changing the ways of the society it’s in changing ourselves. When we change ourselves, Gandhi said it, “we are the change, and we’re looking for.” You’re the change you’ve been looking for. When we change that, when we breathe that love when it’s not just talking, but you can feel it. When your people, when we have this podcast if people feel that in the vibration of what we’re sharing right now. Then we’ve done our job. If they just hear us going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, saying pretty things but don’t have the feeling behind it that it has to have, okay another great podcast. Inspirational come and go and lasts a moment. If people can feel the presence of that love.
Mark [28:11] We have, we have to go beyond words, to feel that presence. It’s – my sense, it’s at an energetic level. When we when I first met on messenger video, we connected. It was there. I could feel it.
Daniel [28:27] It was even before we met otherwise we – right (laughter).
A World Heart of Connection Day
Mark [28:31] Exactly. You know, I’d like to create have a World Heart of Connection Day, where we all just that whole day, we just put out a process – think, feel and experience from all levels of the physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – World Heart of Connection Day. It’s like how do we because the more we generate that loving energy, that’s going to manifest to the universe. It’s going to manifest a Mother Earth and manifests, it’s reciprocal it comes back.
Daniel [29:09] So there’s such a simple formula. I want to give this to your people. It was given to me and I’m still learning it, okay. It’s so simple. It’s the beauty of being a writer and writing a book. What happens is, our thoughts become our words, our words we use to tell our stories. Our stories create the life that we live in. So if we’re not happy in the life that we’re living, all we have to do is change one of those equations. One of those things. If we change our thoughts, our words change. If our words change, our stories change and if our story’s changed, our life suddenly looks different.
If we change our words, our thoughts have to change and our stories will change and our life will change. If we change our stories, our words can’t remain the same. I remember writing a book to the brand, the hotel in Hawaii. It was the most anticipated hotel opening in of the year. They said we want you to write a book to tell our story. I said it’s great, “what’s your story? They said, “no, we don’t have one, you have to make it up.” So I used their core values to create a love story and to create characters in that would emanate their core values. That would be around the love story. The main character that I created was this guy who was every guy’s guy. He was the best hunter, the best spirit, he was the most spiritual, and he won every competition. He was beautiful and handsome and all the women loved him. He could have been like, the king of the land. I ended it and sent it to them with the thought of every night he went home to a different woman because every woman wanted to be with them. They said, Danny, we’re a hotel, we’re going to have families here, we can have that story be the story of our hotel. You got to change that. So I changed 10 words and I said, instead of going home every night with another woman who wanted to be with him, he went home to the one woman who made him whole and who he wanted to be with. And that’s simple change-change the whole context and story. The way I changed that simple two lines in that story are the way we change our lives. If we’re not happy being in hate, we changed the story, we erase those words and put in words of love.
Are We Experiencing Glimpses of Enlightenment
Mark [31:44] One of the most powerful things that I’ve found, is not only doing this, and establishing this podcast, but when we come into that hub that you’ve talked about the start, there are no words. It is just a pure connection. People have talked about as they experienced that, the more they experienced that the more that connected the ‘All That Is.’ Is that a moment, a glimpse of enlightenment, a sense of enlightenment?
Daniel [32:19] If you know what enlightenment is, you will know what enlightenment is. What I believe that is, is when we know our piece of ‘The Mosaic,’ we will know peace. That doesn’t mean will know the whole mosaic. There is a moment when the mortar between our pieces dissolves. I have I know that moment. I’ve experienced that moment, you probably have to.
Mark [32:59] You there now?
Daniel [33:01] Um, inches away.
Mark [33:04] I just checking in as I was sensing, energetically sensing, I want to ask you for sharing that story where you’re beginning to touch the experiences, those felt experiences, of that experience?
Daniel [33:17] Yeah. I was in a podcast in LA where it was wild. We were, they were, they had a bud-master at a bartender. I haven’t done drugs in 40 years. So they said, well, would you like to do some? I said, if you guys are going to do some, I’m going to be here with you, right? So we smoked some grass, and they gave me flasks of tequila. There was a moment there where I, I just, I was no longer me. I was so not in my place here and I was completely aware of where I was. I was completely connected and they said, Is there something you want to end with? I said, yeah, I want to talk about how beautiful you are. I want to talk how if you knew how beautiful you are if you are able to experience that experience, you would know that experience, is the experience. They went, whoa, whoa, what’s that? I had no idea. It was the experience, of the experience, is the experience. That’s all it is, it’s just it’s so simple, right?
Mark [34:43] Laughter – it is! (Laughter)
Daniel [34:47] We make it so we make it so complicated. People say, well, how do I find myself. I said if you can’t who in the hell will.
What We Are Looking for is Who Is Looking
Mark [34:56] Saint Francis of Assisi said, ‘what we’re looking, for is who is looking”?
Daniel [35:03] Yeah, I love that.
Mark [35:05] Daniel, I’m just mindful of time as I want to keep the podcast about 30 minutes. Any advice for or a couple of words to conclude today’s conversation? I took the mickey out of myself on Facebook Live. I really want to master that. I’d like us to have more conversations on Facebook Live about this conversation. I think getting this stuff out is part of that process.
Be Kind to Ourselves
Daniel [35:34] I’d be happy to. I love speaking with you. We’ll figure out how to do it. This sounds so pedantic. It sounds like, when it came to me the first time, I thought, oh, come on, that can’t be the message you’re trying to say. Every single person and their mother has said that message for 1000 years. This has to be unique and fresh and whole and alive. I don’t want to just say what everybody else’s but I say what everybody else has said. The message is so simple. We just have to start to be kind to ourselves.
Mark [36:14] Namaste brother.
Daniel [36:16] Namaste. You’ll put some link to the book on Amazon or something like that.
Mark [36:21] Oh, yeah, definitely. For sure. Let’s come back to it again, soon.
Daniel [36:26] Okay. I would love that. I would love that.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai