Original subtitles

If you're watching this program today,

then you've probably seen the many episodes of Missing Links.

But what you haven't seen is all of the information

that I had to sift through in order

to reach the point where I created the episodes that

have become this series.

And that's what I want to talk to you about today,

because there are facets of this information that I think

are critical, they simply didn't make it into the mix

when we're putting the program together.

Education is one of those.

People all over the world, they're

asking me about education in one form or another,

and it means different things to different people.

Sometimes they're asking for themselves,

sometimes they're asking for their children.

I'm passionate about this topic.

And that's why I do want to address it today,

because ultimately education is the key to solving

every problem that I've mentioned in Missing Links,

and every problem we could ever have in our lives.

The theme of Missing Links, ultimately,

was the answer to a question that I asked earlier

in the program, who are we?

Who am I as an individual?

Who are we collectively?

Our answer to that question is the result of our education.

It's what we have been taught to believe and accept

about ourselves.

The teaching sometimes happens in schools,

but interestingly, a lot of it happens when we're nowhere

near an academic situation.

It comes from our families, from our friends,

from our neighbors, from our society,

from our churches, our synagogues, our religious

teachings.

And a lot of this education is subconscious.

It comes from the subtle cues that we pick up

from other people and the way they

respond to their life's challenges.

What happens when they're diagnosed with a disease,

how do they go about healing that?

What happens when the family begins to break down,

how do you go about healing that?

These subtle cues all come into play

when we answer this question, who am I and who are we?

So the reason I think this is so important

is because we have been steeped in a story.

You and I, we're part of a population,

we're part of a global family.

We've been steeped in this story for over 300 years,

a scientific story that we now know

is not true that tells us that we are based in separation

and that competition and conflict is

the fundamental rule of nature, and that that's

the way that we should live our lives,

and that's the way we should go about solving our problems.

I'm not saying we talk about this at the breakfast table

every morning, or that it's a common thing

to talk about at the drinking fountain in the office

during a break at work, but it is subconscious.

And if you think that this is not a part of your life,

some of my most spiritual friends,

people that say they're the most spiritual people on the planet,

I say, oh yeah?

Tell me about this.

When you are in the privacy of your own home

with those that know you the best, in the most

intimate moments of your life and somebody

pushes your button, how do you respond?

Do you respond in a loving, compassionate manner,

or when that button is pushed, do

you lash out with hurtful words and hurtful tactics

in primal survival?

Because that's how deeply these ideas of competition

and conflict have been programmed into us.

And when people are honest with me,

they say, my god, I never thought of it that way.

But they say, yes, when I'm up against the wall,

I go to the lowest common denominator,

and I say hurtful things I'm often sorry about afterwards.

Today it even happens when we're writing e-mails and texts.

We push that button when we're angry,

we say, oh man, I wish I hadn't have sent that.

So maybe these are silly examples,

they speak to the point of how deeply this conditioning runs.

So the reason I'm so passionate about this

is that we have an opportunity now to redefine

the way we think of ourselves.

And it's important for our young generation.

Any solution that we apply to any of the problems

that I've talked about in Missing Links

or that you're having in your life right

now, any solution is only a Band-Aid,

it can only be temporary until we shift

the fundamental thinking of how we see ourselves,

how we see life in general, and how we see

our relationship to the world.

So many people say, well, you know,

this is an interesting philosophical question.

I want to tell you, it goes way beyond philosophy.

It touches every moment of our lives.

For example, let me just talk about this.

Those of you have young people, you

have young people in school right now,

they are exposed to technology that you and I didn't have,

the internet, and texting, and emails.

They're exposed to bullying, a new phenomenon,

cyberbullying that's happening right now where

their peers will say things to them, or take pictures of them,

or make fun of them in ways that we used to do just verbally

in the hallway to one another.

Now you spread it across the internet,

and everyone is seeing it.

To a young person who has been steeped

in the current ideas of separation, competition,

conflict, and the idea that life itself has very little value,

that life is the result of this accident of evolution,

there's no intentionality involved.

To a young person like that, that criticism,

they take it to heart, and they believe what

they're told on the one hand.

On the other hand, the young person

who has been blessed to be in a family that has conditioned

them, taught them rock solid values about how precious

life is, about how powerful they are, about how connected they

are to themselves, to other people,

to nature, to their own bodies.

When they hear those criticisms, it rolls off of them,

because it doesn't have the same meaning.

The way that we think about life itself,

when we try to save a life, and when we try to take a life.

I mean, this comes down to war.

When does a nation march across the boundaries,

the borders of another nation with our armies?

When do we invade the homes of other people?

When does a corporation determine

how much is enough toxic waste to dump into the ocean,

or how much radiation do we pump into the atmosphere?

As different as they are from one another,

every one of these things that I'm talking about,

it all comes back to this fundamental question, who am I,

who are we?

Because when we truly embrace the deepest truths

of our existence, the ways that we have lived our lives

and treated one another in the past simply make no sense.

And they have no context for that new information

and the way that it is showing us

about our value and our relationship to life.

So we have this opportunity right now, this

is why I'm passionate about education.

Band-aids are good, and we need some band-aids

to address many of the problems we have in the world today.

Ultimately, we have this opportunity

in a time where the globe is moving toward war

and war's being glamorized and made

to look fun like a video game on television,

and young people are enticed by that.

We have this opportunity to raise

an entire generation of young people based on these new--

well, they're ancient, but they're

newly recognized-- deep truths, and instill within them

the value of life, their own personal self worth.

How precious life is, and the fact that although we

don't understand fully how it has come to pass,

life is no accident.

There is an intentionality underlying our existence,

and that we are given rare, precious abilities given

to no other form of life.

Empathy, intuition, access to the subconscious,

direct access to self-healing, the opportunity

to create resilience to life, and much, much more.

All of that belongs in no other form of life.

When we instill these values in a young person

and they say, my god, I'm a powerful being,

and I'm responsible with my power,

and I am part of the world that I see,

I'm not separate from it.

And I can make this a better world

through the way that I make myself.

When we begin to instill those kinds of values,

the world changes that's not a Band-Aid, that is a sea change.

That is a fundamental shift in thinking.

We've never seen this before, and this

is the opportunity we have now, the sweet spot of where we are.

The technologies available to spread the word,

now we have the opportunity to bring

honest, truthful, factual information,

rock solid science that tells us everything

I'm saying to you now, that tells us

how true these things are in our lives.

Be honest with our young people, share with them what

we've found to be true, and allow them--

they're very smart--

allow them to reflect on what that means in their own lives,

and to live their own truths.

That's where we see the world change.

Without a doubt, every event that I do in a live public

forum, every time I do an online broadcast, a webinar,

an interactive session with people anywhere in the world--

not just in the United States, not just in the Western world,

Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, everywhere--

people say, where do we get our information?

Where do we get our news?

What's a good source of news and information?

That's a good question, and the answer that I give

is often not the answer that people are expecting,

because they're expecting me to give them

an internet URL, a link, or a station to dial.

The truth is that the internet is a double edged sword.

I worked in the industry when it was

being developed at Cisco Systems,

and we talked about this a lot.

When we open up an avenue, a highway, a superhighway that

allows information to be shared, on the one

hand it means just that, information can be shared

from anyone, and you all know there's a lot of stuff

out there, we see it, it shows up in our inbox every day.

Some of it's true, some of it's partially true, some of it's

what my friends call half-baked truth, and some of it

is absolutely not true at all.

How do we discern that?

It takes a lot of work.

Due diligence is what I have to say.

You've got to seek out the information that you're

going to apply in your life, and that

makes your discoveries meaningful to you

and your life.

And that means going to multiple sources

and looking at what's called peer-reviewed science,

and I talked about this a little bit in Missing Links,

let me just mention that here.

Because anyone can publish anything

on the internet, that is the reason it becomes especially

important to look at the credibility,

where does that information come from?

It's tricky.

So we have to be really careful when we see where

this information comes from.

Peer reviewed science, on the other hand,

is science where an individual or group of individuals

will come together, they will write a paper

in a very specific format.

They'll have an abstract, they'll

have a theory, a hypothesis, they'll

have their methods of research, they'll have some conclusions,

they'll have references.

They will have circulated that within their peer group--

hence the term peer reviewed science--

and it can take years.

It can take six, seven, eight years for a paper

to move through that peer review process

where other scientists will look at it, and they'll say,

well, this is right on, and they'll say,

this is totally wrong, and they'll shoot holes in it.

So that the people that wrote the paper

can go back, and research, and amend what

it is that doesn't work, and then

they publish in the journal, like the journal Nature

that you can find in your airport bookstore,

or the journal Science.

Very accessible.

They're not technical, but they are peer

reviewed scientific papers.

When you see those, doesn't guarantee they're 100%,

but it says the odds are really good that what you're seeing

is what is known to be true in that moment in time.

It might change with the next research paper,

at that moment in time.

So I'm going to invite you, look at the source of where

your information comes from.

See if they are credible, see if they are peer reviewed,

and see if it's a circular reference or not.

Or maybe it's coming from a lot of different places.

So this is important.

Because we form our opinions, we solve our problems.

We teach our children.

We live our lives.

We elect the representatives that implement the laws

and the policies that govern our lives based

on the way we answer the question, who are we,

and way we think about ourselves.

So all of a sudden, where we get our information,

it's more than just an interesting topic

of conversation, it's vital for us and the way

we live our lives.

When we talk about education, the academic side

is very obvious, but I think what's

even more fundamental is parenting.

Because this is really where education begins

with our young people, before they are ever

exposed to a formal education with other children their age,

they begin to learn from us, we are their parents.

So I think this is fundamentally where

the educational process begins.

And the questions I'm asking are about what's

called conscious parenting.

And what I found is that the word conscious

means different things to different people.

So I'm going to invite you to take this and put it

in the language and interpret in a way that's meaningful to you.

For me, conscious parenting is all about awareness,

and sensitivity, and, again, honesty, and truth.

Being aware of your personal behavior

in the presence of your children,

the language that you're using, and this is a big one.

Because language is more than just words.

Language is a program to our subconscious.

And when we instill values within young people

at an early age that we live in a world of scarcity,

we live in a world of lack, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

This is something we've all heard.

That seemingly harmless comment that we're making our children

again and again, it instills with them values subconsciously

that show up as lack in their lives.

As adults, these are the ones that are asking,

why can't I find a good relationship?

Why can't I find abundance in my life, when

they have been programmed subconsciously

and unintentionally from the time

they're very young about what a tough world this is.

Be aware of the language that you're

using when you communicate with other people,

with your children, and what it says about yourself,

and the kinds of words that you're using,

because nature is very literal.

So when we say things like, I can't find a partner in life,

to us, we're making a comment.

But to the universe, that is a command.

So the universe has just heard an individual say,

I can't find a partner in life, and the universe says,

OK, I can honor that command.

And so you can't find, and you can't find, and you can't find.

Because there's no resolution to that,

all the universe has heard you say is, you can't find.

A more conscious way to say something like that

would be that I choose to find a partner in my life.

There is an amazing resource, a man,

a dear brother, a dear friend who I known and worked

with for years, his name is Robert Tennyson Stevens,

who talks and has written books about what

is called Conscious Languaging.

And if you have not checked out Robert Tennyson Stephen's work,

I invite you to do it, because I think

conscious languaging has to play a role in conscious parenting.

It has to.

And that's where I'm going with all of this.

What are we saying to our young people,

and what are we saying to ourselves?

Young people learn by observation.

So the question is, as you as a parent,

how do you solve your problems?

When you're confronted with something that's

hurtful or difficult, or someone says something to you that

can be hurtful or difficult, or you're

confronted with something that you've never

had to solve before, how do you go about solving it?

Do you say, this can't be done, or do you

say, there's always a way to do it?

And do you model--

not just speak the words, but model in life for your children

the possibilities that you would hope to instill within them,

to empower them in life?

And so this is where the conscious awareness

comes and of not only the language, but the actions

as well.

Conscious parenting begins with self awareness

of each individual parent.

This is where another question comes up often,

because often parents don't see eye to eye.

They don't think alike.

And so what happens when one parent has

one idea of the way their children or their child

should be raised, another one may not be on board with that?

I'm going to answer that by going to an even deeper level.

It's not just about parenting, it's

about growing together as a couple.

When two humans come together as a couple, two

mature, adult humans, it is rare that those two humans

will always track one another when

it comes to new directions, new interests, new explorations,

and growth and life.

We simply do not grow at the same rate.

The partnership.

When we talk about conscious parenting,

I believe it begins with conscious partnership.

When we choose our partnerships, when we invite another person

into our lives, one of the fundamental questions I think

we must ask ourselves is can I grow

with this person in my life?

Can I myself explore new possibilities

and allow them the freedom to explore theirs,

and we come together and share what we found,

and where there's overlap enjoy that together,

and where there's not, give one another the freedom to do that?

That's an important question.

When it comes to parenting, the same thing has to happen.

The agreements have to be made with the parents

before the principles are ever laid out before the children.

All of this comes into self-awareness,

and that's what I think conscious parenting is really

all about.

I was recently asked a question about bringing children

into the world.

How I'd feel about doing it now as opposed to other times

in history, maybe when the world seemed a little more stable.

That's a good question, let me tell you a story.

So I got on the plane one day, and there

was an Air Force cadet that was sitting next to me.

And he asked me the usual questions,

he said, so, business or pleasure?

I said, yes.

And he said, what do you do for a living?

And I said, well, how long do you have?

And he said, well, I've got three hours.

And I said, let me tell you what I do.

And at the end the conversation, he asked me a question.

He said, do you and your wife have any children?

And I said, I've never been blessed

with a child in my life.

I said, do you have any children?

He said, no.

He said my wife and I made a choice,

we would never bring a child into the world the way

it is today.

I said, really?

He said, the world is a mess, it's unsafe,

it's falling apart.

The terrorism, the crime, the drugs, he said,

we would never bring a child into the world the way

it is right now.

And I said, wow, that's interesting.

And I said, that's one way of thinking of it.

And he said, is there another way?

And I said, I believe there is.

I said, let me ask you a question, why would you

ever deny a child, a soul, the opportunity

to come into the world right now,

when everything is up for grabs?

The whole world is up for something new.

Everything is falling apart, the systems are breaking down.

Why would you deny a soul the opportunity

to come into the world now when one heart, one soul, one mind,

a new idea can be embraced to such a degree

that that idea could change the whole world in a way that

is rare and precious?

Why would you ever deny a child that opportunity?

Then our plane landed and he disappeared,

and I didn't see them.

And I went to baggage to get my luggage,

and he was dashing out the door.

And I wanted to say thank you for the conversation, I

said, you're in a big hurry, where are you going?

And he said, are you kidding?

He said, after that conversation I'm going home right

now to make a baby.

And I thought, great.

So I'm sharing this story for a reason.

It's all about perspective and how we see the world.

Is the world volatile?

Absolutely.

Is the world dangerous?

It can be.

It doesn't have to be, but it can be.

And it's also, everything I said to that Air Force cadet,

this is a time when the upheaval and the uncertainty

creates an opening that is actually very rare.

When everything is working and all the systems are buttoned

up, and they're locked down, and everything

is working like clockwork, there's no need for change.

And change is hard.

When things are falling apart, that's

when there's an opening for new ideas, new concepts,

new innovations, new inventions, new ways of governing,

new ways of thinking.

Energy, food, finances, economics, healing, everything.

That's where we are right now.

So when it comes to bringing a child into this world,

I can't think of a better time to do it.

The other side of this coin is that I believe strongly

coming from the family and the background that I've done this

it should only happen when two people are deeply

committed to making the time--

not just finding spare time when it's available--

but creating the time to intentionally and consciously

bring the child into the world, bring a new soul into this

world, and give them the tools early in their life--

consciously, subconsciously, visually, all the tools--

even before they're in school, before they're even

in kindergarten, that help them to realize that they're safe,

that they are part of the world rather than separate from it,

that they live in the world of connection

rather than separation, that nature

is based upon cooperation rather than competition.

And those fundamental tools will inform them

in every situation that will ever

come to their doorstep, that will ever cross their paths.

And if that agreement, if that commitment can be made,

I think it's a perfect time to bring

a new life into this world.

So a question that comes to me so frequently today

after the books were written about the Indigo Children

back in the '80s and '90s is, what do we do as parents?

If we have maybe not indigo in the sense of the way

the book was written, but children

that are especially sensitive in the way

that they process information, in their intuitive abilities,

in their psychic abilities, that are having a hard time,

but don't really fit into the world and educational system

as we see it today.

And I think is a good question.

And it's a good question because we're

seeing more and more of these kinds of young people.

Now, I don't think there's a pat answer,

I don't think there is any one answer,

because every young person is different.

So I cannot give one answer that's going to be one size

fits all for every young person, I can say in general.

My experience, and I have very close friends that

are in this situation, and I have

been in communities where I've seen

different approaches taken.

What I've found does not work is to isolate these very sensitive

young people and artificially make the world easy for them

because of their sensitivities.

It does not work, the parents will do that thinking they're

protecting the children.

And they are on one hand, they're

protecting them from the very culture and the skills

that they need to function in a meaningful way in the world

that they're going to find themselves in.

So I think it's about finding a balance of honoring

those sensitivities, because we all have them to some degree.

Deep intuition, access to the subconscious, empathy,

sympathy, compassion, we all have these to some degree.

Many of the young people that are

coming in now, these abilities have at birth

seemed to be developed to a very high degree.

So it's about honoring those and helping those young people find

where that fits into the world that they have arrived in.

This is where they will find their strength.

If they cannot function in the world,

the abilities become a curse.

But if they can function in the world

and apply the abilities throughout their lives,

then they become a gift.

It's a double edged sword.

So I think it is finding this middle ground of encouraging

these abilities, but maybe not touting them.

So what I mean by that is young people who are highly empathic,

for example.

So that means they're feeling what other people are

feeling all the time.

The key is to help those young people know what's them

and what's the other person.

Where are they picking up those, how

do they know when those feelings are their own, how

do they know when they're coming from someone else?

And to help them discern-- not to judge, but discern--

what that is.

So encouraging them to do that.

One of the ways, the specifics to go about doing this,

and this is why I shared what I did in Missing Links.

There are a couple of episodes of Missing Links where

I refer to this deep connection between the heart

and the brain.

Two separate organs, but they can

be harmonized into a single, functional, powerful, potent

system that gives us the ability for deep intuition

and triggering, the self-healing and the self-triggering

of a strong immune system and anti-aging hormones.

When we learn to do that intentionally,

a byproduct of harmonizing the heart

and the brain, which is actually a natural state

of being that we've been conditioned out of.

So when we can help our young people to be in this state,

it balances, it grounds them internally

with their special skills so that when

they go into the world they don't

feel like such an oddity on the one hand.

On the other hand, they don't have to tout,

they don't have to show off.

For example, a lot of people are taught

to display these skills among peers in school that

can't do the same thing.

And for young people who are going

through the building of identity,

this can be a very vulnerable time.

The Kogi indigenous people in South America, when

their young people are born, they're

born very sensitive as well.

They do something very different than we

do with our young people, and I'm not

suggesting that you do this per se,

but I'm using this to illustrate an example.

Our young people are born and conditioned

to see the world through their mind

and through their visual senses primarily.

The Kogi children are isolated and kept

in relative darkness for the first year or so

of their lives.

Now to us, that sounds like a cruel thing to do.

It's all about how it's done.

They are nurtured, they are loved,

they are taught to see the world not through their mind,

but through their heart.

Now we know why.

Because modern science is telling us,

and I shared it in Missing Links.

40,000 specialized cells in the human heart, sensory neurites.

They're like brain cells, but they're in the heart.

They think, they feel, they learn independently

of the brain in the head.

So what has been happening for millennia

is that the Kogi are teaching their young people

to interpret the world through their heart first,

and then to begin to balance that

through the visual input in the mental and the logic senses

later.

We teach our young people to interpret the world

through their visual senses and through their mind first,

and if they're lucky as adults, they maybe

get to explore their heart a little bit.

But it is this balance that helps young people

to feel grounded, because they're

honoring their gifts rather than trying to hide them,

or having them in a situation where they're not understood.

One of the ways that parents I'm seeing do this especially

in rural communities is they're home schooling longer.

So in the home schooling environment,

the parents can create this balance of academia

and emotional sensitivity, blend it,

harmonize it during the formative years

so that when the young people are finished with home

schooling and they go into the universities, they are equipped

and they typically will excel when they do this.

And I've seen this in intentional communities,

Damanhur in Italy, for example.

An intentional community has been there since 1970s.

It was founded in the 1970s.

They have about 600 people living together,

and they're a community, they have their own currency,

they have their own way of growing food,

they have their own way of educating their young people.

And their young people are very sensitive, and I've met them.

And when they leave the Damanhur community--

and I'm just using this as an example--

and they go into the public schools,

they are lightyears ahead of typically

where the public schools have led their peers.

They excel in everything because they

have had the benefit of blending and honoring

their intuitive gifts with the concrete knowledge

that they need to make it in the world.

So I think this is where education is going.

Because this is our true is nature,

we all have these gifts.

It's just that the young people coming in now, I think,

have a greater access to them sooner in life,

and we as adults are being forced now

to make place for that in the way

that we teach our young people.

So when I think about everything that we talk about

in this episode, and particularly

when it comes to education, conscious education, parenting,

conscious parenting, I had to sum it all up in one word.

For me, that were be the word honoring.

It's about honoring what is.

We are living in a time of extremes in our world.

And we are asked to be in the world

by embracing the deepest truths of our existence

rather than denying our sensitivity,

or denying the sensitivity of our young people.

Honor those and find a way to integrate those sensitivities

in a meaningful, and honest, and truthful way, concrete way

in our everyday lives.