Why Everything You Judge Is Secretly Running Your Life! With Dr. John Demartini

Dr John Demartini 0:00

Imagine if I was to go on a date with somebody, and I said to him, "Okay, here's my expectation: you have to be nice, never mean; kind, never cruel; positive, never negative; peaceful, never wrathful; considerate, never inconsiderate; generous, never stingy. How long would that relationship last if that was my expectation? It's not going to last because I have a delusion about somebody getting to be one-sided. They have both sides, and they need both sides in the world to make sure that they grow. If people support somebody too much, they become juvenilely dependent. If they get challenged, they become precociously independent. If they get a balance of both, they grow just right. They must have that for adaptability, resilience, and for achievement, both positives and negatives. You're kind and cruel. You're nice and mean, and embrace all parts of you. That way, you can embrace all parts of a goal. You can embrace all parts of the person you love, your partner, and you can embrace all parts of life. Otherwise, you're not. You're constantly trying to fix life and banging your head against the wall, wondering why it's not fixing because you're trying to get a one-sided world.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:09

Do you want to cultivate a deeper sense of self-love? Then I have a self-love toolkit for you, where I help you boost your self-love. Head over to wisdomfromnorth.com/selflovetips. Dr. John Demartini . Welcome back on the Wisdom F rom North show.

Dr John Demartini 1:27

Well, thank you for having me again.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:30

I can't believe it has been 11 years since I interviewed you last time, and we're still doing this. You've been doing this for decades. I was in my old, old, old apartment, and I was recording on Skype. And I'm really honored to have have you here today because you have been on a mission for more than 50 years, and I'd love to hear that story for everyone new, also to your work. And you are considered as one of the leading authorities on human behavior and personal development and values, and you've been writing more than 40 books, traveling the world, and you're living on a boat, and I guess you're living your dream life, helping people around the globe. Like I said, doing that for more than 50 years, and my question is, how have you kept that motivation to do so, and how did it all start?

Dr John Demartini 2:27

Well, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing than what I do. You know, I've I've delegated everything off my plate to specialists, so I can teach, research, write, and travel. That's it. I haven't cooked since I was 24. I haven't driven a car in 36 years. I have specialists to do everything for me, and I just stick to what I do. My core competence, which is researching, writing, traveling, and teaching. So it's really simple. And when you're doing what you love every day, you don't have any reason not to do it. If you're doing the highest priority thing every day, why would you want to go do something second? That's what I love doing. So I filled my day with what I love doing. I got inspired to do this when I was 17, and I'm going to be 72 or shortly, so I'm. I've been doing a while, and I had a dream to travel the world, and learn, and share insights with what I learned. Because a gentleman inspired me when I was 17, who was doing that, and he inspired me to do that. He was. I had a health problem at the time, and he was a longevitist and a health and fitness specialist. And he inspired me to make me believe that someday I could be intelligent and I could speak clearly and I could do it. So I started to work on that objective since I was 17, and I've never put it down. I, I can't think of anything anything else I'd rather be doing. I don't have any desire to do anything else except those things. So, I today I have four presentations in different parts of the world. So that's and then podcasts. So I just so that's what I do every day, and I research every every week, every hour I have in between my speaking, I'm just researching and writing, and that's what I love doing. So, it's really simple. It's not really, you know, when you're doing something low in priority, you get distracted by what is higher in priority. But when you're doing something that's higher in priority, there's not a distraction, and there's no resistance, and you're fueled by what you love doing. When you can't wait to get up in the morning and do what you love to do, there's nothing that you don't you don't have the obstacles, I guess. So I've I've organized my life and prioritized my life and delegated everything to specialists who love doing it, so I don't have to micromanage them, and I just I hire. Females to tell me what to do. I learned a long time ago that men have a fate of being told what to do by a woman, so I just hire women to tell me what to do to to organize and schedule all the all the PR and all the you know all the schedules. That was a tease. That was a joke.

Jannecke Øinæs 5:20

Well, your life and story is so inspiring, and it's also very inspiring to hear that one person motivated you to find your life calling, and you're still doing it. And I get curious, though, as a human expert, behavior expert, do you think that it's easier to change where you're when you're younger than when we become older, I am 40-six now. Do we get more set in our ways, and it's more difficult to change behaviors, thought patterns, beliefs, etc.

Dr John Demartini 5:56

I think there's when you're living more congruently according to what you value most, you're more resilient and adaptable to an ever-changing environment. Stress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment, and stress is due to the fear of loss of something you seek and the fear of gain of something you avoid. So, if you're not highly polarized in your perceptions with your amygdala response, seeking and avoiding, labeling things positive or negative, pleasure or pain, prey or predator, if you're not highly polarized in your perception, you're very resiliently adaptable to change, and you adjust micro amounts regularly. If you're very rigid about your belief systems, this is good, this is bad, right, wrong, positive, negative. The more rigid you are, the more black and white you become, the more difficult it is to make change, and cataclysmic events have to occur to get you to change, so when people are resistant to adapt to evolving, usually it's because they've got attached to a belief system that's this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad, and many people, because of the associations they make and the wounds that they undergo, can become that way, and if so, then it becomes difficult as they get older. But it doesn't mean that age is really the factor. It's the associations and perceptions they've accumulated through their life. If you train yourself on how to bring those back into balance and liberate yourself from that, I've trained people, 1000s, 1000s of people on that. Then they're adaptable again. So I wouldn't say it's age. I would say it's the way you managed your life through the aging process. But if you're more adaptable, you can change at any time. I've seen people 94 years old start a company.

Jannecke Øinæs 7:56

That is inspiring.

Dr John Demartini 7:57

A woman 94 years old that got upset and angry with the way things were going when how men and women when they were having their loved ones die and they were stressed and then they were dying with them instead of having a purpose and meaning to live even though your spouse has died so she created a system and a book at 94 on how to die gracefully into the hundreds, and that was her her objective. So I thought that was pretty cool. 94 years old and and deciding I'm this is what I'm doing. I'm now got a mission and a purpose, and I'm going to try to educate people these these people that are getting stuck in their 80s and 90s, and let's get them going again.

Jannecke Øinæs 8:44

It's never too late, is it? I love that. I know you speak a lot about

Dr John Demartini 8:49

the 70s and the new 30s,

Jannecke Øinæs 8:52

right? Yeah, it seems like that. That is also the good news. Now, I am passionate about life purpose because I feel like I've found my purpose. Do you think we all have a purpose, and what is sort of the consequences of not following your purpose in your everyday life and in your life in general?

Dr John Demartini 9:12

Any organism that's not fulfilling their telos, as Aristotle called it, self-destructs. But this purpose, this teleological purpose, is an expression of what they value most, and what they value most is the most efficient and effective pathway to fulfill the greatest amount of voids with the greatest amount of value, and the voids are all of the judgments we've made in our life. So let's say we meet somebody that we put on a pedestal, and we infatuate with them, and we put them up on a pedestal, and we kind of minimize ourselves to them. We've all been in one of those little enamored infatuation periods, and we're too humble to admit what we see in them inside ourselves, and we think they're going to give us something. We don't have, and therefore we deflective in our awareness, minimizing ourselves, and we feel empty because we've got a disowned part. They represent a disowned part. We think, oh, they're going to make us whole. And if we resent somebody and put them down, and are conscious of the downsides and unconscious the upsides, we can become arrogant and proud, and think we're superior, and too proud to admit what we see in them inside us. So any time we're too humble or too proud to admit what we see in others inside us, and we judge them and put them in pits or pedestals and minimize or exaggerate ourselves in turn, we feel empty. Any time we judge somebody, we feel empty. This feeling of emptiness creates voids in our life that we want fulfilled, because there are parts of us that we've disowned, and we want to be whole. We want to be loved for all of us. So our voids from our judgments determine our values, and the highest of our values is the one that's most objective and neutral and most stable and steady, where we actually fill full that which is empty, because we're not judging. So when we're doing what we really love to do in life, we don't judge. We're more resilient, more adaptable, more objective, more neutral, and we give ourselves permission to have a bigger time horizon, space horizon, and give ourselves permission to do something philanthropic instead of survival-oriented, more self-actualized, and therefore we feel we feel meaning in life, and this eudaimonic meaning that we have is what makes us distinct, and so we do have a unique set of voids, a unique set of values that make up our unique purpose, and that's evolving based on the judgments we've had in our life and the experiences we have. When I was a young boy, baseball was everything to me. My mission was playing baseball till I was about 13, 13 to 18. Surfing big waves was biggest. From 18 till now, it's it's education. I mean, I love I love researching, writing, and teaching, and I'll probably do that to the rest of my life. I I don't know what would be you know the next 30 years other than that because I just that's what I love doing. I joke I had a goal to be an international sex symbol, but I never got any evidence of that ever coming true. But but teaching I can do pretty good. The rest of it I'm not too good at. I'm really kind of a dunce when it comes to everything but research, write, travel, and teach. I'm I'm useless. My my girlfriend says that I'm pretty useless except for those areas. But I'm pretty good there. She said she said the other day. She said I don't even know how you functioned without me.

Jannecke Øinæs 12:44

Well, sometimes I feel also that this is only the the only thing I can do. But it's just because I do this so much, and I I feel sort of the same. And I just started playing tennis, and I thought that that's great doing something else and just wisdom from north. I think it's good sometimes.

Dr John Demartini 12:58

Well, I still surf a bit, and I and I do some, you know, I work out and stuff like. But I, if I look at my day, my day is filled with teaching, researching, writing, and traveling. I travel full time, sailing around the world or flying sometimes.

Jannecke Øinæs 13:15

So since this is a spiritual show, do you feel like this is your soul mission that you planned your life mission before you incarnated.

Dr John Demartini 13:25

Well, I can't prove or disprove that, but I can say this: that when you infatuate with somebody and you minimize yourself, you tend to inject their values into your life and try to live in their values. Think about the first time you met your husband, and you were a little enamored with him. You probably did weird stuff that you don't normally do the first few weeks for fear of loss of him to fit in and to try to make sure that he was pleased. And so, anytime you put somebody on a pedestal, you'll tend to inject some of their values and try to do something, and try to be somebody you're not temporarily. Eventually, you resent not being yourself, and you kind of build up resentment to balance out the infatuation. You say, "I want my life back. I want to be me. I want to be loved for who I am. And you think, "Well, I I sacrificed this for being with you. But the reality is that everybody wants to be loved for who they are, and so when you sacrifice like that and put them on a pedestal, you'll inject their values and you'll try to live in their values. And this is futile; it's non-sustainable futility. You can't live in other people's values. If you resent somebody and put them down and exaggerate yourself, you'll tend to project your values onto them and try to get them to live in your values, and you've probably done that with your marriage. Most people go through their first years of marriage as going, "I'm going to get this guy and fix him up, train this one, you know, get the dog biscuits out and train this guy. So anytime you try to get them to live in your values, it's non-sustainable futility. So eventually, the narcissistic. Expectation of them to live in your values, or the altruistic expectation for you to live in their values, eventually is non-sustainable. It leads to futility. You frustrate and you realize that doesn't work. The thing that works is loving people for who they are and being you in the process. So, when you do, there's no desire to change you relative to them or them relative to you. In that moment, when there's nothing to change, your will, your human will, matches what has been called divine will, what is as it is. In that moment, you have a holy communion with the universe because there's nothing to fix. You see the perfection, the divine order, the divine perfection. In that moment, you're inspired. You have equanimity because you're not inequity. You're in equanimity. You're poised and present, and inspired and grateful. You have a gamma synchronicity in the brain, and you have an aha moment with tears in your eyes. And then that's a confirmation of authenticity, which is our spiritual path. So we all have a spiritual path, and when we live by our highest value, our telos, and fulfill our purpose, we're most objective and neutral, and have the most neutrality, objectivity, and equanimity. So our highest value is the path of our purpose and our spiritual mission. They're one and the same thing. They're not separate. So that's why I help people on on drdmartine.com, the website. I have a complementary value determination process on there to help people identify what is really priority, not what it ought to be, not what it's supposed to be, not what it should be according to outside authorities, but what is it intrinsically inside you that you feel that you're inspired and called to do on the planet? And if you live by priority and stop comparing yourself to others, but compare your daily actions to your own highest value, you liberate the increasing probability of this authentic state, which is inspiring, which is our spiritual path. Our spiritual path may or may not have anything to do with religions of the world; those are human inventions. But our spiritual path is our own pathway of authenticity that inspires us, that is contributive, that's in a state of equanimity where we're serving people philanthropically, doing what we love, helping people do what they love. That's our spiritual path. That's where we have fulfillment.

Jannecke Øinæs 17:21

That was incredibly profound, and there's so much there, and so many things I want to talk about when it comes to that. Because I was curious about relationship, the the biggest reason why people break up, and I assume that it is that we're trying to project our values onto them, and then we might not know what our values are, so I guess it starts with becoming aware what's going on here. So, could you give us some tip about how how do I become aware of my highest values?

Dr John Demartini 17:54

Yes, I've been doing that 48 years. 48 years ago, I I asked myself, why do some people walk to talk, other people live their life? Why do some people do what they say, others don't? Why do some people flourish, some people, you know, flounder? And I found it was based on their individual, unique hierarchy of values. An intrinsic value is at the top; extrinsic values are at the bottom. We spontaneously are inspired to act on our highest value, but we need motivation to do what's lowest. I spontaneously teach research, ride, and travel, but to get me to cook or drive, you'd have to motivate me. Not going to do it. So that you always are more effective and efficient, and more inspired, and more fluent, and in the zone, and more congruent if you live by highest values, but how do you determine what is your highest values and not what it people think it ought to be? There's is versus ought, what they are versus what people think they ought to be, and most people conform and subordinate and cloud the clarity of what's truly important to them. So I look at how do you fill your space, your most intimate space? In the study of proxemics, you have what is called proximal and distal space. Proximal space, the intimate space, is about a foot and a half around you. You only let something important to get in there. Only very, very important people that you really care about and love get in that space. The next space is your individual space. These are where you get your friends in there. That's about up to four feet. Then you got your social space, which is up to about 12 feet. Then you got your public space, which you'd like to keep your space and not let somebody in. So people that you don't have, you don't have a appreciation of. They're public people you really deeply love and appreciate. You let in. So the first thing is to look at what are you filling your space with. Now, in my case, if I look at what stays in my 18-inch space most of the time, my computer. If I look at what the dominant use of my computer is, teaching. The second use, researching and writing. If I look at the second thing, it's my phone. If I look at what I use it for, research. I'm constantly looking stuff up on my phone throughout the day. So if I look at what are the items that I keep in my most intimate space, within 18 inches of me, that I'm engaged in with my motor actions and my sensory awareness, more engaged, the most close intimate space, it tells me what I value. Now, if I had my children and they were in my space all day long, I'd have a high value on children. In my case, I have a value on teaching and research. So your space reveals what you value. The second determinant is time. You find time, make time, and spend time on things that are valuable to you. So how do you spend your time? Well, I'm doing four presentations and a podcast today. What am I doing? I'm teaching. In between that, I'm researching and writing. So if I look at how I spend my time, where is it most spent, second most, and third most? If you get the top three, it tells you what's really priority to you because you spontaneously do that. The third one is energy. When you're doing what's highest on your value, your energy goes up when you're doing something that's not. It's drained. Your mitochondria literally grow in the medial prefrontal cortex when you're doing what you love doing, and so your energy levels go up. You have more energy into the day when you're doing what you love than when you start. When you do a podcast and it's on fire, you got more energy than when you finished it than when you started. So when so you when you're doing stuff that's really really engaging and invigorating, it tells you you this is valuable to you. This is important to you. Otherwise, you're drained. You don't want to do it. The fourth one is money. You find money, make money, spend money on things that are important. You run out of money for things that aren't.

Dr John Demartini 21:37

So if you look at where your money is going, it's going in a direction, and and in my case, it goes back into my teaching business. It goes to investments and goes to travel. If and it used to be books because I used to you know buy books all day. So now it's online, so I don't have to spend the money on the books. The next one is what is it you're most ordered and organized in? Where do you have the greatest degree of order and organization? Because you filter your perceptions and anything that's really important to you, you filter the most information about it. You have the most order. Missing information is considered disorder. So wherever you have the most order and organization tells you what you value. Well, all of my my presentations are organized. My my research is organized. My writings are organized. My travel schedules organized. My investments are organized. The things that I value are organized. But I can't I can't tell you I'm very organized when it comes to social parties or my workout routine. I do it about once a week. So I look very carefully at what I what I'm organizing, it tells you what I value. The next one is where are you most disciplined and reliable? See, anytime you expect your spouse or any other human being to live outside their highest values, you're going to feel betrayed. It's not because they betrayed you; it's because you had an unrealistic expectation on them to live in your values or somebody else's values, and not their own, or how they ought to be by society's expectation. They live according to their values. You live according to yours. So to ever expect another human being to not do that is going to be self-defeating. So what is it you're disciplined, reliable, and focused? Anybody that knows me knows I'm doing a seminar. They don't ask me what am I up to. They ask where are you speaking today, what presentation doing, what are you researching. They know me. So after that, the next one is what do you think about, what do you visualize, and what do you internally dialog to yourself about about how you would love your life to be that is showing evidence of coming true, not fantasies that aren't showing evidence, and not things that are evidence that you don't want come true, but what is it you think about, visualize, and affirm about how you would love your life that is coming true? I've had a dream to travel the world since I was 17. It's come true. It's important to me. Things that are really important to you, you make come true. If it's not coming true, it's not as important as you like to imagine. Otherwise, you'd make sure you'd get it figured out and you get to it. The next one is, what do you converse with other people about most? You want to you want to bring the conversation to what's important to you. If somebody comes up to you and says, "How's your golf game? Golf's important. How's your business? Business important. How's your kids? So you bring conversations to where the highest values are in your life, and if you listen to what you're wanting to bring conversation to, and what again, engaging conversation, it tells you what you value. The next one is what inspires you and brings tiers of inspiration to you. Everybody is known. I mean, if you ask anybody, go to a moment when you've had tears of inspiration, awe, and a gratitude tear, and they'll go, "Yeah, what was going on in your mind at the time? Well, I was inspired by America's Got Talent or Europe's Got Talent or something, and I got inspired by this young person that achieved. So watching people do extraordinary achievements inspired you? Yes. Okay. Isn't that what you want to do? Do something extraordinary and achieve something? Yes. Because any time you're doing something that's congruent with what you value, you get a tear of inspiration as a confirmation of authenticity. And when you see people doing it, they reflect what you dream about doing-they're reminding you of what you're up to, so that's an indicator. The next two are: What is it that you've had that's most consistent, persistent goals that you have not stopped and you have made come true?

Dr John Demartini 25:33

The most consistent, persistent goals that you're making come true in your life. And the last one is: What do you spontaneously want to read, study, learn, and watch on YouTube. What information do you keep going to? They used to have bookstores. We used to go to. People used to go to the business section, or the self-help section, or the spiritual section, or the financial section, or the philosophy section, or whatever it was. Whatever they want to feed their mind is valuable to them. They spontaneously want to learn what's important to them. If you answer three answers for each of those 13 questions, you'll see a reiterated pattern. I've been doing this to millions of people for 48 years. If you look, there's a pattern, and it tells you what your life demonstrates is important, not what you think it ought to be, but what it actually is-that's the place to start when you're trying to structure your life and prioritize your actions, and fulfill your life and create a self-actualized outcome.

Jannecke Øinæs 26:32

Brilliant, and that's also the place to start when how to find your purpose because values is

Dr John Demartini 26:38

the highest value is your purpose, your purpose, your ontological identity revolves around your highest value. If your highest value is raising three beautiful children, you're 35 years old and you got three kids under the age of five, and somebody asks you, "Who are you? You'll say, "I'm a mother. Now, the husband of that mother who has the same three kids, if he is focused on business and you ask him, "Who are you? He'll say, "I'm a businessman, and secondarily a father. But you ask her, she'll say, "I'm a I'm a mother, and nobody's right or wrong for their values. They're just their uniqueness. That's what makes you unique. And to the degree that you're unique and congruent with what you value is what you make the biggest difference in. Anytime you try to live in other people's values, you dilute the power to make a difference. You conform and fit in instead of stand out,

Jannecke Øinæs 27:27

and that is also being authentic.

Dr John Demartini 27:30

That's what authenticity is. Your authenticity is also being the author of your own life, instead of subordinating to outside authorities and living by Freud's super ego and moralization of other people and their values, because those are all the internal conflicts you create and the the limiting beliefs that you get. Because you're now trying to live in their values and having futility and non-sustainability. So when you live congruently, you've got no friction, you've got fuel, and your energies go up. There's no lack of energy to somebody who's congruent.

Jannecke Øinæs 28:04

You who have studied so much, what are thoughts to you? Where do they come from? Are there ours to begin with?

Dr John Demartini 28:16

Well, that's a good question. This has been a a very interesting conversation because there's you have monism and dualism. Monism is that there's nothing but matter, and there's an emergent function out of matter in the brain, and there's electronic and fields that give rise to thoughts based on sensory stimulus, and then there's a dualism that there's a mind and body and they're separate, and that it can transcend the body. You know, there's all kind of theories have been going on for centuries. I've been exploring consciousness and the brain. I've lectured on the brain and neurology for years. I I don't know if anybody can answer that with absolute certainty. The closest model I've seen right now is the pools of glutamate sitting in the columns, the micro columns of the cortex, and its relationship to the quantum field. And this is where we can now unite those two monisms and dualisms together. That's the closest thing we got with virtual particles. There's theories about how that might work and how conscious may translate into sensory information, into conscious thoughts, into actions, and be part of a collective field, a unified field. I have theories about it. I can't prove or disprove at this stage. I can go into way deeper into you know discussions on it, but I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that the content is now been debated about: is it inductive or deductive? Is it things that we've experienced through our senses that are compositely integrated to give rise to ideas? You might say receptions to perceptions to conceptions to. Perceptions, as Leibniz and William James says, or is there some sort of a deductive a priory knowledge, as Immanuel described, within us that we're waking up to and becoming aware of? There's evidence for both, so I don't, I don't know if I, I can't say with certainty that one precedes the other or one succeeds the other, but I do believe we have both because I have a boy who is eight years old. Well, when he was when he was born, while he was in the womb at four months, his mother had to have a surgery, and the boy, when he was born and eight months old, was pointing to things, and the mother kept noticing where he's pointing, and he was pointing to letters. He was trying to spell it eight months, so the mother made a little laminated sheet with letters and numbers on it, so he could start going directly through it, and very rapidly was starting to spell words out. And by the time he was two years old, he was amazingly spelling and all kind of stuff. By the time he was two, so he asked if he could meet the doctor that did the surgery and describe what it was like from the inside to the doctor in the surgery through this little device with his finger at two. So you wonder where in the hell does that come from? Today he's a savant. He's like an autistic savant. He's read about 16,000 books. He's 20-three years old, maybe 20-four. I think maybe now, and he does consulting, high-end consulting for leaders. So, when you see those stories, you go, "Whoa, where does that come from? Now, the parents did read to the child when he was in the womb, but you know I I I can't prove or disprove where that came from. All I know is that you've got cases that make you pause for thought that maybe we have access to information. In my breakthrough experience program, which is something I've done 1,266 times, there's a process I take people through where they get really present, and then they all of a sudden access information that none of them were conscious of, and they don't know how it was. And then we try to deconstruct where that may have originated. Does that originate from sensory experiences through some sort of a composite integration, or is that something that you picked up, and we we don't always know. So I I've been puzzling with this question. I don't know if I have an answer for it. And anybody that claims they have an answer, maybe just coming up with a belief. I don't know.

Jannecke Øinæs 32:33

And what is your relationship to your own thoughts? Because for me, I can have negative thoughts, happy thoughts, and a lot of the same thoughts. And I've heard in the personal development community that we can have 70,000 to 90,000 The number varies a bit, and most of them are negative, and most of them are my thoughts that I had yesterday. So, how would you say that we can? What kind of relationship, or can we cultivate with our thoughts or not? Like, are we supposed to steer them, control them, or just observe them, disagree with them, let them go? How do you work with thoughts?

Dr John Demartini 33:17

You've heard all those things, haven't you? You know, there's meditators that say just let them come in and just observe them and not react to them. There's others that take command and only say these positive things. You know, we have what is called a moral licensing effect. The second we have thoughts of pride, we give ourselves permission to do something we're ashamed of, and the second we do something we're ashamed of, we give ourselves permission to do something we're proud of. So if we go out and work out and get our abs looking good and get all tightened up and firm and stuff, then we go out and eat more, drink more, and and eat more chocolate or something. We give ourselves permission to get a to do something that's not necessarily fitness oriented, and if we do that, then we feel guilty. So we go work out again, and this yo-yoing cycle of this moral licensing effect allows us to have both sides, positive and negative, and if we strive for pure positive without negative, we'll be striving for that which is unobtainable and trying to avoid that which is unavoidable, and then that creates negative thoughts because we're pursuing something we can't obtain. So nature automatically has a balance of positive, negative thoughts. Nobody's going to escape that, but you may only be conscious of one at a time. When you're depressed, it's because you're comparing your current reality to a fantasy where there's positives in your mind about how life's supposed to be. So the negative is there in the conscious level, but the unconscious is filled with the positive fantasies about how life should have been and ought to be by now. So they're both balanced because they're like pairs of opposites, and the unity of opposites that Heraclitus described outlined this 2,600 years ago, and it hasn't really been improved upon. Our brain has what they call excitation inhibition ratios, so if you have something that challenges you, your brain will set up things that will support you to counterbalance it to keep the brain balanced. So it's going to balance, regardless of what anybody tries to do. They're going to have a pain and pleasure and positive and negative and everything else. And you must have both. You need them for balance because maximum growth and development occurs at the border of support and challenge, positive and negative, kind and cruel, nice and mean, all the pairs of opposites in nature. And to try to get rid of half of yourself and try to be only one-sided is going to be futile. I've asked people write down everything you thought you wanted to get rid of in your life. Good, write it down. And then how many of you still do it? And they all go, "I still do it. So I tell them, "You're not here to get rid of anything. You're not here to gain something because it's not missing. It's in a form you're not honoring. It's here to wake up and become fully conscious that you are both. You're both positives and negatives. You're kind and cruel. You're nice and mean, and embrace all parts of you. That way, you can embrace all parts of a goal. You can embrace all parts of a person you love, your your partner, and you can embrace all parts of life. Otherwise, you're not. You're constantly trying to fix life and banging your head against the wall, wondering why it's not fixing. Because you're trying to get a one-sided world. That's like trying to get a one-sided magnet. Imagine if I was to go out on a date with somebody, and I said to him, "Okay, here's my expectation: you have to be nice, never mean; kind, never cruel; positive, never negative; peaceful, never wrathful, considerate, never inconsiderate, generous, never stingy. How long would that relationship last if that was my expectation? It's not going to last because I have a delusion about somebody going to be one-sided. If I support their values, they'll be nice as a pussy cat. If I challenge their values, they can be mean as a tiger. They have both sides, and they need both sides in the world to make sure that they grow. If people support somebody too much, they become juvenilely dependent. If they get challenged, they become precociously independent.

Dr John Demartini 36:50

If they get a balance of both, they grow just right. They must have that for adaptability, resilience, and for achievement. That's why when you're going after your goals in life, objectivity and a balanced, neutral state is far greater than a fantasy state, and pursuing fantasies that lead to distress when the nightmares hit them. So I don't try to go to one-sidedness. I find that the self-help is misleading people in the open. It's selling opium in that respect. The real truth is that I'm both-sided. I went through the Oxford English Dictionary many years ago, and I went through and underlined every known behavioral trait a human being could do. Yes, I'm neurotic enough to do it. 4,628 traits I found in the Oxford Dictionary. It's the biggest dictionary I could find. I underlined every one of those traits. Then I went out on the margin and I I wrote down the name of people who displayed that trait to the most that I'd known. So if it was stingy, who's the most stingy person I think of? Okay, boom. If they were very cruel and inconsiderate in language, who is it? Boom. And I wrote them all out, and then one by one I went in there and I asked, where and when do I display and demonstrate that trait? Who do I do it to, and who perceives me that way until I found where I had it the same degree I saw in these most extreme examples, and I went through all of them, and I had every trait. Now please get this: any trait you disown is your emptiness in life. That's going to be the voids that are going to determine your values to find a way of owning it. When you own all your traits, you have fulfillment, and you can honor all of you. When you keep disowning traits, you're going to keep judging other people that are reflections of parts of you you keep disowning. So when you're resentful to somebody, it's because they're reminding you of something you feel ashamed of that you're trying to get rid of, and you're trying to cover it up with the dissociation and pride, and projecting your pride onto them, and thinking they're the villain, but actually they're reminding you as a teacher what you're not loving in you. So when you own all the traits, you get to be poised and present and purposeful, and you get to realize that I'm all the above. Who am I to judge them?

Jannecke Øinæs 38:57

It's a fantastic story. Can't believe you went there. That's amazing.

Dr John Demartini 39:03

I'm a neurotic researcher. I research human behavior.

Jannecke Øinæs 39:06

But we need that. You know, you're living your purpose. I love that. So, okay, how do we own these parts? Is it enough to become aware of them, like you? I became aware of it. I notice it. I acknowledge that. Okay, I see that. That's also inside of me, but then what?

Dr John Demartini 39:26

Appreciate it, because you're not going to get rid of it.

Jannecke Øinæs 39:32

Okay, so you're going to

Dr John Demartini 39:34

you thought you got rid of. Name a trait you thought you got rid of. Criticism, anger.

Jannecke Øinæs 39:39

Well, no. What I'm struggling with the most is my control issue, and I don't like that in myself. And the

Dr John Demartini 39:47

reason why we do that is because of moral hypocrisies. A moral hypocrisy is an attempt to be one-sided as a mechanism to create guilt in people who are striving to be one-sided. They can't be. It's a guilt control business. So anytime somebody says, "Now be nice and don't be mean, be kind, don't be cruel, they're setting you up for automatically the pursuit of trying to divide yourself in half and trying to get rid of half of you and trying to be only one-sided. Nobody can do it. It's not real. It's a fantasy. It's an opium. So if you're now angry at yourself because you are now one-sided and you're trying to get rid of that and you only want to be this side, you'll be striving for that which is unobtainable and trying to avoid that which is unavoidable and live in the Buddhist form of suffering because you can't do it. That's why I quit doing that. I embrace both of them. There's a time for everything in Ecclesiastes and the New Old Testament it says there's a time for everything under the sun a time to sow a time to reap a time for peace a time for war a time for kind a time for cruel there's a time for everything under the sun when we finally embrace that and transcend the moral hypocrisies that we strive inside that causes all our turmoil we can finally love ourselves because we can't love ourselves trying to get rid of half of who we are or half of who we're. I mean, most marriages, the first weeks or months or years, they're trying to polish that other person into the fantasy that they're holding in their mind, thinking that they want more support than challenge. It's an immature approach of the amygdala trying to learn how to love. When you finally realize that doesn't work, you're not fixing them. You might get a few training how to open up a door or maybe some things, but the reality is they have a set of values and they're going to live by their values. And if you try to fix that and change that, you're going to get resistance. So learning how to communicate what you value in terms of what they value works. That means you're honoring yourself and you're honoring them, and it's unique. And there's no way two people the same. There's you know if any two people were exactly the same, one wouldn't be necessary. So you're there to learn to grow and own the parts you're afraid to own, and they're forcing you to own parts you haven't been owning, and when you own them, you realize, oh, I do that too. It says in Romans two one, beware of judging others for what you see in them. You do the same thing. So when you realize you do the same thing, you're less judging of them, and then you realize that what they did when you did it, it served you. When they do it. It serves them, and you win too. So if you can find out how, no matter what happens to you, serves you. When I win the dictionary, if I thought the trait was negative, I asked, "Well, it's there. It's not gone extinct. Must serve a purpose. How has it served me? I found out it served. I found that the person that criticized me made me more conscious of communicating in their values. Made me come from my arrogant pride back down. It made me realize that that I was addicted to praise, and the more addicted to praise I was, the more I was frightened of criticism. Anytime you're addicted to one pole, the other pole slaps you and hurts. And if you're trying to get rid of it, and you only want one side, it hurts even more. When you embrace both sides of life, you don't have to run and seek and avoid all the time.

Jannecke Øinæs 43:09

And that is a mystical teaching. I am that. I am, and then all that. I am that.

Dr John Demartini 43:15

All that. How how are you going to be fulfilled if you're trying to get half full.

Jannecke Øinæs 43:22

That's true. So in life,

Dr John Demartini 43:26

how many people want to get rid of half of their life and and judge themselves and have all these regrets? There's no reason to any of that. Regrets are basically based on moral hypocrisies about how I should have done this and how I'm supposed to have done that. No, if you can love yourself the way you are, there's way more empowerment there. So I I stopped 42 years ago trying to get rid of any part of myself, and I found out that whatever I thought was missing my life, it wasn't. It was in a form that I wasn't honoring because I was comparing myself to other people's forms. Whenever we compare ourselves to others, we can't we can't love ourselves. We're not here to put people on pedestals of pits. We're here to have reflective awareness and put them in a heart and own what we see in them inside ourselves and let them be our teachers to help us see the disowned parts and own them. Because when we own all our parts, we have fulfillment. We're not not having to seek or avoid anything.

Jannecke Øinæs 44:19

It seems like life is a mirror for sure.

Dr John Demartini 44:23

It is self-reflective universe.

Jannecke Øinæs 44:27

Yeah, I get curious when you you have been studying for so long, doing so much research. Have you felt that your teaching has evolved, and that some things you believed before you're not believing anymore, and that you have new ideas that you're now teaching, or do you feel that no truth is truth?

Dr John Demartini 44:49

Well, there's been some things that have evolved. When I'll just share that story. When I was 18, I came home from Hawaii. Moved back to Texas to see my parents because I'd been gone for quite a while, and I started to go to school, and my parents got me Norman Vincent Peale's *The Power of Positive Thinking* a three-set volume set, and I started reading self-help books, and I was trying to be positive, and no matter what I did, I kept having negative thoughts either to others or myself, and I just kept thinking, "What's wrong with me? Why am I not getting positive? And then for two years, I really was reading every book on self-help I was getting my hands on, thinking, "What's what's what am I missing? I'm still have negative thoughts to myself and other people. I'm trying to get rid of half of me. And then I said, "Well, maybe I if I went live to the actual speakers and went to education classes by the people writing the books. Maybe it would have a better effect. So I went to a Norman Minson Peale presentation, and he admitted in front of about 1000 people that he had negative thoughts, and and so I was like applauding when everybody else was shocked, and I thought, wow, that's honest. And then I I went to I saw Zig Ziglar and I watched him go berserk and angry because the air conditioning was off and the mic didn't work and I saw him lose it I saw Earl Nightingale and his brother and I saw W Clement Stone and I saw Tremendous Jones Charlie Tremendous Jones and Jim Rohn I met I met all the guys out there and girls out there, because we're females also, that were doing amazing self-help programs. And when I got to know them and hang out with them, they weren't positive all the time. They had frustrations, angers. They were like any other human being. And I'm thinking, why is it we're teaching? I even asked some of them, why do you teach positive thinking when you're not able to do it, he says, "because that's what sells. That's the opium of the mass. That's what sells.

Jannecke Øinæs 46:47

That's what sells.

Dr John Demartini 46:50

Yeah, there's there's a difference between that which sells versus that which serves.

Jannecke Øinæs 46:54

Right.

Dr John Demartini 46:56

There's a difference, and some things that sell to the mass, as you might say, the opium, is the fantasy. The more fantasia it is, the more easy it sells, and more impulsive it becomes because it grabs the attention of the amygdala and it represents prey, avoid predator, and they show you pains if you do this and pleasure if you do this, and they manipulate you into this one-sided world. But that's the gullible individual. Imagine Warren Buffett going to a seminar, and the guy's up there and said, "Here in the back of the room is a 20-nine-dollar package, how to be a billionaire in 20 days. Well, the masses would run over the chairs and go buy that thing. Man, I want to be a billionaire in 20 days. They'd be the gullible in it and you know crazy about it. Warren would look at that, and just walk out because he's too reasonable. He knows too much. So the very intelligent people that use their executive center and have reason would know not to be gullible to that. But that which sells to the masses, the opium of the masses, is the fantasy that keeps people going. That's why politicians tell you what you want to hear to get votes, and sometimes religions will tell you what you want to hear to get engagement and get adherence, but the reality is that life has a pair of opposites. The conservation laws of physics and and valencies things don't allow one-sidedness, but what sells is the one side because we want to avoid predator and seek prey. We want to avoid negative and seek positive, so it sells. Doesn't serve, it sells. It misleads. So I finally got to a point when I turned about 20-810, years into it. I met most all the gurus in hell's self-help field, spiritual leaders, all kind of people by then, and I found out that what was behind the scenes wasn't what was up up front, and so I was very distraught by it. So I decided to do a research project, and you're going to laugh at this one. Another two-year research project. I went through every positive self-help book I was getting, 300 of them. You know, the magic of thinking big, psychocybernetics. You know, when tough times come, tough people get going. All the basic books, Robert Shooter. I had them all, and I went through and I underlined every positive word in those books, every positive word in the books, just like I did in the in like the dictionary, every positive word. And then what I did is I extracted and put them on three by five index cards, stuck them in a box as I was doing them alphabetically, I went through 300 books, and by the time I did it, I had 2,000 of the most positive words in the English language. I probably could have gone in the dictionary and just found them, but I got them out of the books. Every positive word I found in the book, I took. The first book I had hundreds of them. The last book I had two, so I stopped. I had the 2,000 most positive words in the English language. I put them alphabetically in an index card. Then I took each index card, and I closed my eyes, got into a meditative state, and I thought of the most positive statement, quote, or affirmation. That I could say to myself, including the that word, made out of only the positive words that I accumulated. So I had to make a statement with using only the positive words plus articles and ands and these and conjunctions. When I got through, I had 2000 quotations, 2000 affirmations or statements. I combined them and divided them up into 365 days. That's five to six quotes a day. I then typed them all out into a book. If you go online, you can find this book. It's called 2,000 Quotes to the Wise: A Day-By-Day Guide to Inspirational Living by Dr. Demartini. I published it in 1983. I was 28 years old, and I published it in '83, '84, and '86, and it was the most positive statements that a human being could could say.

Dr John Demartini 50:47

Five to six quotes per day, four days per page, 83 pages, 160 or 70 pages in both sides, and that way I could affirm those on a day-to-day basis, then I create a form, a cycle forecasting form, day-by-day cycle forecasting form, and I took spiritual, mental, career, financial, family, social, and physical areas of life, and I put a plus three to minus three and a zero in the middle, and I charted day by day, four times a day, 711, three, and seven how I felt in each of the seven areas of life as I was affirming those affirmation statements 108 times cycle today so I did 108 repetitions of five to six quotes that's 540 to 648 quotations a day and the truth is I finished that by two or three and I kept going. So I did 600 to 1000 affirmations a day, all day long. I'm saying nothing but positive words, and I'm monitoring how I'm doing in each of the seven areas of life. Spiritually, am I inspired or despired? Mentally, am I feeling sharp or dull? Business, I feeling successful or failure. In in my finances, I feel abundant or lacking, and I monitored it four times a day with a little beeper, and I marked it and took 10 seconds every four hours to quickly dot seven dots, and I mapped out for 24 months, two years, how those affirmations and what impact it had on the volatilities of my day in each of the seven areas of life. At the end of two years, I got a Texas Instrument calculator out, and I went to each of the numbers, pluses and minuses, and I added them all up and divided by the number of entries, and then I got that final number, and the number was point 001 9.001, 7.0009, In other words, I accomplished nothing, zero, the ups and downs, and I learned that there's a thing called hedonic adaptation. The second you get up and above and get a mood elevation, nature brings it back down. When you go below, it brings it back up, and we have a set point in our mood for homeostasis to stabilize our brain. Otherwise, we get overexcited in our brain and causes brain problems. So we have a neutralizer in our brain to make sure we get both sides to grow most because that's where we maximally grow. When I got that, I realized I was wasting my time trying to be one-sided. That was the end of it 42 years ago. Never went back to it. And then I realized that the self-help industry has stages of awareness. The first stage is very amygdala-based people who have no governance over themselves-they're not very objective. They live in fantasies. They constantly have stress, and they're kind of avoiding things and seeking things. But as you grow, you eventually come to know yourself, your telos, your highest value. You eventually become more objective. You embrace the pain and pleasure in the pursuit of something which is causing innovation and creativity and genius and authenticity, and you're really measuring an individual by their distant ends and by how many challenges they can tackle in the world. The bigger the challenge, the bigger your life. And when you're able to do that, you're not running from things and creating distress. You're seeking challenges that inspire you in creating eustress, hormesis, and so I I gave up the the fantasy of one-sidedness 42 years ago, almost. And then I get,

Jannecke Øinæs 54:29

and then I get very curious. What do you think about the raising your vibration?

Dr John Demartini 54:36

That is the vibration. The speed of the vibration is based on how fast you can see both sides of things. When you're infatuated with somebody, and you got them on a pedestal, and you're unconscious of the downsides, your intuition is whispering as a woman. It's saying, "Don't be gullible. Take your time. Don't rush into this. Don't make love with them for 15 minutes. Right. Take your time. So, so your intuition is trying to wake you up to what you're unconscious of, to make you fully conscious, to make you inspired. But when you're infatuated and impulsive, you're blind to the downside. When you're resentful and instinctual to avoid them, you're blind to the upsides. The speed in which you see both sides tells you how aware you are, so if you're able to see both sides simultaneously and not be fooled by a facade, and see both sides and love somebody, you have a very high frequency vibration. But if you're seeing only the pauses and blind to the negative, you're dense. You're blind. That's why the people that are in their amygdala that are very blind and they're very biased, in-group out-group biases and confirmation disconfirmation biases and false positives and false negatives and distortions, which is a survival response, are the most bigoted, hypocritical, biased, righteous, I'm good, you're bad, you're good, I'm bad, hero villain worshiping and avoiding people because they're in their amygdala. They're not. They have no executive function, no self-governance, no self-actualizing state. They can't see both sides simultaneously. As Wilhelm once said in 1897 in his book on the principles of psychology, if you can see both sides simultaneously, you're untouched by the outer world, and you're governed from within.

Jannecke Øinæs 56:25

That does make so much sense, and I know you're about to teach very soon. I would love to hear your perspective on what's going on in the world. You talk about master your perceptions, master your life. So I'm sure you have a high vibrational way perception of seeing what's going on in the world right now. Some are saying we're in a shift of consciousness, polarity.

Dr John Demartini 56:50

Well, whenever there is a lot of polarity going on politically, that's a sign of amygdala, and you have these are good people in group bias, out group bias, and so there's a lot of polarities going on right now in the world, and the question is: Is do you have a broad enough mind and have an overview effect and look back and see the non-local relationship between pairs of opposites? Heraclitus, the great philosopher, 2,600 years ago, most said that there's a logos, a unity of opposites, an internal, higher-ordered reason behind all things. Few people ever have the wisdom to see it. Leibniz was one who saw it in his discourse on metaphysics, but most people don't, and they get swayed by the gloom and dooms and the boom and zooms, the illusions of the ideologies of one-sidedness. No, whatever I see in the world, I look for its opposite. When I find it non-locally, I'm stable, and I don't let outside circumstance run me. I keep focused on my contribution. Otherwise, you're distracted by things you don't control, because the things that you judge controls you. The things that you love, you get to govern. You have control over perceptions, decisions, and actions-nothing more. So, govern your perceptions, govern your decisions, and govern your actions, and stick to priority and do your contribution. The things you can't do anything about, let go. Go focus on what you can do something about. I can educate people by the millions every week, so I do that. I focus on what I can do instead of distract myself by what things I'm not able to do. So the outside world has got pairs of opposites. If I look for something and I see something in the news which is sensationalism, which is usually one-sided thing to grab amygdala attention to nor to sell commercial airtime, I look for its opposite, and I assure you, it's there. If you find it and you see there are pairs of opposites, you don't react to either one. You realize that the world is nothing but a balance of opposites. There's a law of aristic escalation says that whenever an ideology promotes something that it labels good and tries to get other people to follow it, somebody with an equal and opposite ideology will emerge to label it bad and try to counterbalance it to make sure that the people that follow this are at peace and then they're at war with the people the opposite to bang their head against the wall to realize that they have futility trying to get one-sidedness, but eventually the wiseman sees these as pairs of opposites teaching the amygdala-based people how to think more objectively and see the order that's sitting there, the divine order, the real love is the balance of opposites, the unity of opposites. So if you can see that, you can see the love that's present in the world. If not, you see the polarities all over, and you get distracted by the polarities.

Jannecke Øinæs 59:38

You know, I love this because for me it is a red thread. I've heard this before, just with other words, and I hear it again and again. And it feels like we used to talk more about the positive thinking, and that has evolved within personal development amongst a lot of teachers. I mean, you've been speaking about the. For a long time, but it's like, yeah, people are catching up on this and speaking more about the non-judgment and the I am that I am and that life is a mirror and we need darkness, we need light. Like they go together. And Buddha said it, you know, 1000s of years ago.

Dr John Demartini 1:00:17

There's not even a light and dark. That's the illusion. That's what's so crazy, the idea of what you know. When something supports your values, you call it the light, and when something challenges values, you call it the dark. I had an Indian woman that came to my program recently, and she says, "Doctor DiMartini, she she moved her head like this, and she says, "What about the people who have bad karma? And I said, "Really? You have somebody that you think's got bad karma? Yeah. I said, let's pull out that person. Give me the name. She writes the name down. What specific trait, action, or inaction do you perceive this person did that you label bad karma? Well, she did this, and they did that, and she judged it. I said, great. Write that down. Now, go to a moment where and when you perceive yourself displaying or demonstrating that same exact behavior. And first, she said, "Well, I pride myself in not being that. I said, "I didn't ask if you're proud at the doctor. I asked where did you do it, and then I listed where I've done that. I just started listing where I've done that many times, and then she goes, 'Okay, and we we found 17, 1819, examples of where she had done the same thing until she got a tear in the eye, and then she realized that she was judging herself, and this guy was reminding her of that, and she was calling it bad karma because she had injected a value into her life, a moral hypocrisy that I'm not supposed to be this way, I'm supposed to be only this way, and couldn't sustain it. And every time somebody reminded her of that, she'd be angry at them and label them bad karma. So I said, "Now can you see that you've done the same thing quantitatively and qualitatively? She goes, "Yes, great. Now go back to the moment this person did it, and she did. In that moment, how did it help you? How is that a benefit to you? And she said, "Well, it made me stop, and it actually put me on a quest to know why do people do what they do, which is my personal development quest. I said, "And is that what you do for a living today? She says, "Yeah, I'm a coach. I said, "Did that catalyze your coaching career? She said, "It is definitely a part of it. I said, "Did you thank him? You have a career. You've served 1000s of people's lives with your career. Did you ever give him a cut out of the income you made from that? No, because he was he coached you, didn't he? Got you to do a mission in life. I said, "What's another benefit? I made her go through, and we-I think we did about 17 benefits. I didn't let her get away with just one. I went and made her do it until she got a tear, a tear of authenticity. And when she saw the hidden benefits that she was unconscious of, because she was projecting a moral hypocrisy onto him, she cried, and then she said, "I'm not angry at him. I said, "No. I said, "Now go to the moment you did this, and to who you did it to. How did it benefit them? And I cleared the shame she had about being that way that this person was reminding her of by finding the benefits of them because she she never looked at that she just assumed it was a bad and good thing and therefore she was bad and therefore she's punishing herself and trying to be of opposite which is futile and I said how did benefit them she did it then I asked go to a moment where this individual displays exactly the opposite behavior and she buried that with a disconfirmation bias, and we found it until they were equal. I then I went in there and said, at the moment when they did this behavior, who is doing the opposite to you? And I made her look at where she was, because if you're addicted to a behavior of the opposite nature, you draw on this side to break your addiction, because you don't grow being addicted to things that support your values, you become a juvenile dependent on that. You don't grow.

Dr John Demartini 1:04:04

You need the challenge to grow. When she saw that, she goes, "Wow, this person's actually setting me free from being dependent, and this is what made you the entrepreneur to become the coach, and believe in yourself, and become independent to think on your own, and she was in tears again. I said, "Now, if he had never done that, what would have been the drawback to you? And she said, "Well, I don't, I don't know what I would have done, but I can see right now that I wouldn't change a thing. And she was in tears, and I said, "What happened to the karma? And she goes, "Oh, you labeled it a bad karma because you chose to be unconscious of the benefits. There's a dharma. There's an order in the universe. It's all working on the way, not in the way. And. It's and it's when we finally realize that nothing's out of the order, except our awareness is and all the misinformation we've we've we've bought into about how it's supposed to be, and should be. But the way it actually is is what's helping us accomplish what we're here for. And anyway, she came to me and she says, "You just took an entire tradition that I believed and never questioned, and parroted because I've been taught by authorities that I subordinated to, and put on pedestals, and I minimized myself to them, and I lived by the shoulds and ought tos I injected from them, and I never questioned authority, and never even questioned whether that was true or not, and you just did in an hour, transform that whole perception, and now I'm going to go back and take all the people that I've been judging, I thought had bad karma, or all the people I judged and I thought had good karma, and balance out the equation, because the people I thought had good karma, I was minimizing myself to, and injecting values, and trying to live like them, and trying to be somebody I'm not, and being them, and imitating them and being second at being somebody else, the people I'm doing that I'm trying to change and avoid and and keep people from being like that, and I'm trying to get my kids not to be like that, and I'm not getting anywhere because they're expressing what I'm trying to get them to not be, to teach me that lesson, and I'm just putting all this energy on all that drama instead of just being and loving, she said, "You just shifted my whole thinking process.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:06:27

That is powerful. Thank you, John. It has been a joy having you on the show. I have a few questions to ask everyone, and my first one is: What is self-love to you?

Dr John Demartini 1:06:39

What is self-love when you stop comparing yourself to other people, and stop putting moral hypocrisies onto yourself for a moment, and get to realize that there's a hidden order in your own life, if you do those same questions I just asked to you about what you've done, and realize there's nothing to fix, you finally get to know that no matter what you've done or not done, you're still worthy of love. And to me, that's every all of my programs that I do have that objective to help people realize nothing's out of order in the first place. The self-love is already there, waiting for you to to wake up to it. It's not you're it's not forsaking you. The love inside you is not forsaking you. You're forsaking it by the misinformation traps you've been bought into. And we're Dirac, the Nobel Prize winner, said it really well in his Principles of Quantum Mechanics in 47, 1947. He said, "It's not that we don't know so much; it's we know so much that in so we've been indoctrinated by traditions, conventions, and morees that are not fully awakened, and so, do you have the courage to be yourself authentically in a world that doesn't want you to be? That's what Jung was trying to say. And do you have the courage to see both sides and honor both sides? See, I learned from Castiglioni and Nietzsche and Machiavelli, I'm the hero and the villain. I'm all the above. I have nothing to get rid of, nothing to seek, nothing to avoid. All the above. That's a that's a liberty man. That's a liberty woman. When a man and woman can get to a point where they love all of it, they're free. Because in what everybody says about you, it's true. When somebody criticizes you and say, "Well, you're, I had a woman say, "You know, you're a terrible father, and I said, "How come? Well, you don't see your kids every day. Why would you want a terrible father seeing his kids every day? Are you sick? I joked with her, and I and I I realize that no matter what anybody says about you, it's true in some context. It may not be in the context they're projecting, but in some context, I've got all those behaviors. So it doesn't only the part you disown can people push your buttons on. They can make you vulnerable to like or dislike because you disown the parts. If you own all the parts, they can't touch you. You you run your own life.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:08:59

Very interesting. That's self-life. And my last question, maybe it's linked. What is the deepest meaning of life from your perspective?

Dr John Demartini 1:09:10

You have two types of meaning: the meaning you've been indoctrinated by. That's bad. That's good. That's right. That's wrong. That should and shouldn't be. And the true golden mean that Aristotle said, which is the balance between excess and deficiencies, the balance between positives and negatives, and all pairs of opposites, the unity of opposites, a transcendent dialectic that Hegel said and Zeno described, and and Heraclitus under under knew he basically understood that there was a unity of opposites. The true meaning, the mean, the golden mean between all pairs of opposites, is the true meaning of life, and that's love. There's nothing but love. All else was illusion, and I take I take people in my breakthrough experience program. I take people to have a perception they think was traumatic, turmoil. Torture, terrible, you know, trauma. I go to that moment and I break down the components of what they think is trauma, and then I find the equal and opposite, and I have them become present with each perception. And in that moment, I show them how their intuition brought out an anti-memory at the same moment of the equal and opposite, in order to balance out the chemistry in the brain, and the moment I show them the pair of opposites, they brought to tears a moment of authenticity. Realized there was no torture or trauma, there was ecstasy and trauma. But I was unconscious of one and conscious the other. Now I'm fully conscious. I see the unity of opposites. I'm untouched by the labels that I projected onto my events. When you do, then you realize that it's never out there. It's your perception, what's out there, that matters, and you have control over perception, decisions, and actions. Nothing else.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:10:51

Wow, John, I've loved having you on the show. Thank you so much for coming back. And please tell us where can people find you if they want to learn more.

Dr John Demartini 1:10:59

They just go to drdemartini.com. The value determination process is free on there. Take 30 minutes of their time. It's private. Have them go there, or just browse the the drdemartini.com. There's enough education on there to keep them busy for at least one life.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:11:15

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your work and your service.

Dr John Demartini 1:11:20

Thank you. Thank you for another opportunity to be on your show.