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Spiritual Materialism w/ Yogi Zorananda
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Zorananda is a musician, yogi and meditation teacher who has traveled the world to learn from renowned yoga teachers like Yogrishi Vishvketu and Ryan Leier. He has spent time in Koh Phangan, Thailand, studying yoga, and Rishikesh, India, completing several teacher trainings and programs.
His primary style of teaching is Akhanda Yoga created by Yogrishi Vishvketu. Zorananda has completed the 200 hour and 300 hour teacher trainings, and also completed a complimentary 200 hour Apprenticeship Program.
Zorananda has completed over 1000 hours of trainings over the course of 10 years that have formed the foundation of Future Life Progression: Meeting Your Future Self. Through dedicated yoga and meditation practice and following phenomenal life synchronicities, Zorananda created a meditation and healing modality that redefines what it means to incorporate meditation into daily life.
Connect with Zorananda:
Website: https://zorananda.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yogizorananda/
Music: https://zorananda.com/music
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Transcript
Introduction to Yogi Zorananda
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the show folks. Christian Jordonov here. Today's guest is Yogi Zorananda. He's a musician, yogi and meditation teacher. He is host of the Yoga Connection podcast, which I was on recently and now we're having him on
00:00:20
Speaker
to talk about, we're gonna talk about a few different things.
Fasting: Spiritual vs Modern Perspectives
00:00:25
Speaker
But the first thing I think, bro, first of all, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me on.
00:00:33
Speaker
Yeah, you have to forgive me. I'm a little bit, um, this is my second interview of the day. I'm already pretty exhausted. So I'm a little bit slow, but, um, we, I was on your show. We were talking about fasting near the end and.
00:00:52
Speaker
We kind of, I think we agree that fasting can be a great tool for spiritual development. And perhaps it's a little bit misused by us as a society today. It's more for like fat loss at the end of the day, you know, weight loss really. So what's your, I know you've thought about this and, you know, understand that at a deeper level, what's your thought about
00:01:21
Speaker
fasting as a, as a spiritual exercise. So when it comes to the world of yoga, a important element to any part of the practice is ritual. And so
00:01:45
Speaker
fasting is one part of ritual, right? And so the fasting portion of say like you're venerating a particular deity. And so
00:02:14
Speaker
The mantras that are used, so the chanting that's done, the herbs and say if there's like, if it's a part of a fire Puja as well. So it's like a fire ceremony. So the herbs that are used, the oils that are used.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's all a package in that moment for a particular thing. And so in our like modern worlds, when we look at fasting, we're removing it from ritual and we're removing it from the whole package of what the fasting was actually being used for. And then we're isolating it for our own like kind of personal
Yoga Cleansing Rituals
00:02:55
Speaker
use. So then we're looking at fasting and we're going,
00:02:58
Speaker
oh, I want to do this thing because it's going to help me with losing weight, right? While in the yoga world, fasting has nothing to do with losing weight. It has nothing to do with your health. It's a part of a package of a ritual. And so
00:03:20
Speaker
It's typically a part of cleansing before you're going into the depths of what your meditation ritual is. And so it's really just a preparation that is to amplify what the effect of that ritual is going to be. And so
00:03:46
Speaker
Aside from that, a fasting will be found in like cleansing. So in like the cleansing part of yoga, you have the satkarmas. And so it's basically it's the six actions, right? So sat just means six, karma means actions.
00:04:10
Speaker
And there's one cleansing kind of like action called Shankaprakshalana. So Shankaprakshalana is where you drink salt water. You drink liters and liters and liters of salt water and you do these movements and it comes out your other end. So it's this um
00:04:34
Speaker
like intestinal cleanse then you do a type of fast and it's not and it's because you just cleaned out your intestines you cleaned out your digestive system.
00:04:51
Speaker
That's your body and your intestines need to like rebuild mucus and it needs to rebuild its lining. And so there's only a particular food that you can eat for seven days. And it's essentially Kichri and Ghee. Kichri is just like a mush of vegetables like carrots and
00:05:18
Speaker
and so forth. And then ghee is like clarified butter. And so you can only eat that for seven days, right? So that's like considered a fast.
Tapas: Commitment in Practice
00:05:30
Speaker
And it's then at that point afterwards, you know, you're using the shaka parakshalana to prepare for the type of practice that
00:05:45
Speaker
is a part of like your ritual, right?
00:05:53
Speaker
Aside from that, there will be like strict, no eating, no drinking, anything fast, but it's a part of a tapas. So tapas means the burning of karma or it's like commitment, right? So yogis will say, okay, to show the intensity of my commitment
00:06:17
Speaker
I'm not going to eat or drink anything for 10 days. And so there's really no part of them that's thinking like, oh, I need to intermittent fast because I want to do some weight. They're doing these things for very strong mental fortitude and devotion to their divinity.
00:06:40
Speaker
So their act of fasting is like a communication to the connection to their divine because they're saying, look, I want to be the closest I can be to the divine. I want to be the closest I can be to God.
00:06:56
Speaker
And this is the way that I'm going to do it. And the thing is, is like, you can't really tell people that that doesn't work. Right. Because you're not doing it. So that's really one of the crucial things with yoga and.
00:07:16
Speaker
kind of discovering or uncovering the power behind it is that it's up to you as the individual to find that power within it. And so these yogis from India and from the ancient past, they knew this stuff. They knew that the human body was already well equipped to be very powerful and to connect with the divine.
00:07:40
Speaker
And that there are these tools and these methods to do it. And so in their mind, one of the ways is through Tapas and doing really extreme things. And so as like a normal Westerner, right, where we didn't grow up with that kind of
00:08:03
Speaker
knowledge or that kind of traditional practice. Me living here in Edmonton, Alberta in the education system, we were never taught that. I'm sure you taught that.
00:08:22
Speaker
When you decide as an individual, okay, I want to challenge myself and I want to do this. The result of it and how it comes about is, is up to you. And then there's really no one outside of you that can tell you that it's not going to work. Right. So.
00:08:44
Speaker
I think that that's really what's missing in the, in the conversation about fasting is, um, it's too self-centered. It's too selfish. Right. And, but to me, that's okay because, you know, if, if, if you don't want to.
00:09:09
Speaker
If you don't want to look at that kind of practice and that kind of experience as something that's, you know, potentially spiritual, you know, there's nothing that you can do about that, really. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Like I was saying to you last time we spoke coming up to the eclipse there in April, which was my, cause I'm born in 1986. So that's two.
00:09:37
Speaker
There's an eclipse every 19 years, so that was two eclipses. I just felt really weird coming up to it and I was doing a lot more intermittent fasting and near my birthday because my wife and my daughter, they were away for the few days before my birthday. So coming up to my birthday,
00:09:56
Speaker
I was just really eating very little and not eating for a lot of hours during the day and it felt right at that time. So I think definitely if you feel a calling, if there's some kind of intention, some kind of deeper practice and it's part of the ritual, absolutely, I think it's great.
00:10:18
Speaker
It's also interesting that this Shankaprakshalama, or the cleansing of the bowel prior to the cleanse with the salt water, I've actually heard that a fast, just for a regular, quote unquote, health fast, or fat loss fast, would be better if you cleanse the bowel before you do it so you can drink some Epsom salt and whatever else.
00:10:40
Speaker
that will clear the buff for whatever reason, that's actually you're going to have a better fast that way. So it's interesting how there's a correlation there. So you clearly know what the hell you're talking about when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Beginning the Yoga Journey
00:10:54
Speaker
How did you get into studying yoga? How long ago was that?
00:11:03
Speaker
I first got into practicing yoga, I think in 2009. And I was already getting into like esoteric spiritual stuff. I was already getting into like finding different kinds of meditations and kind of diving into the new new age kind of spiritual world.
00:11:31
Speaker
But I noticed that something was missing because I was doing a lot of meditations and it was a lot of like heady mind stuff, you know, when you start getting into a lot of different authors and a lot of, especially older occult like Madame Blavatsky and AC Bailey and
00:11:52
Speaker
So I just felt that I wanted to do something with my body and I felt like there was a missing piece and that's where yoga came in and then to start to introduce seeing movement and start to introduce breath work. So that was around 2009 and I just fell in love with it. And by 2012, I did my first teacher training.
00:12:15
Speaker
And then just immediately dived into the yoga world of. Yeah, just like several studios in the city and getting into teaching. And it's one of those things where I just had a knack for it.
00:12:32
Speaker
just the whole package of because I was already athletic and getting into the practice and becoming flexible came somewhat natural to me. And then the like philosophical side and the historical side of all the different texts, I was just absolutely fascinated by it. And so with having a kind of knack for it,
00:13:01
Speaker
It was actually pretty easy for me to grasp a lot of the concepts and grasp a lot of the philosophy and the history. And I just went really deep into everything about it.
00:13:16
Speaker
And I kind of made it my mission, you know, I didn't want to just focus on one thing. I wanted to broaden my view of like really what yoga is and, and try to get a good, clear understanding of the
00:13:33
Speaker
of the different practices and how they can be useful. So that's actually a good question to see how you'd answer. What is yoga aside from a way to show off your sweet yoga pants? Yeah, essentially, yoga is a kind of technology. It's a way of understanding your body
00:14:03
Speaker
where conventionally we don't see it that way, right? So when we wake up in the morning and we start off on our day, the gears of motion towards the things that we want to
00:14:23
Speaker
be successful at are already going, right? So like we wake up, we're like, okay, gotta go to work. And then just the driving force to our habits are already there. So it's like, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, take a shower, eat breakfast, hop in a car, go on the train, go on the bus, go to work, go to school.
00:14:47
Speaker
And so yoga is a way to remove us from those patterns for a particular period of time. If it's like 30 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, whatever.
00:15:05
Speaker
It's that we are removing ourselves from the conditions and the, um, and the patterns of our life for a whole other experience where it's just you and you are doing this movement. You're doing the Asana practice, you're doing the breathing techniques, and then you're doing the meditation or you're doing mantras.
00:15:32
Speaker
And it's to build to a point where you can have a total experience of yourself that has nothing to do with the outside world. And you get to use your body as a technology that we're typically not taught how to use because typically what we're taught how to use is.
00:15:56
Speaker
to kind of take advantage of the world that we're in, right? Of just very, it's like the obsession of the sensorial world, right? It's like, what am I going to eat? What am I going to drink? What am I going to watch? You know, like what friends am I going to hang out with? What book am I going to read? What do's? What is this? What is this? It's like, there's always a reaching out with ourselves and what we want to do. And there's an obsession to it.
00:16:27
Speaker
where then, um, the yoga practice saying, let go of all that, go inwards and have an experience that only you can have for yourself. No one outside of you can actually bring this experience. And what is that experience? It's a newer and grander
00:16:58
Speaker
experience of like what your consciousness is. And it's, as soon as I try to explain this more and more, it kind of gets muddier and muddier, right? Because there's, there's a mystery to consciousness and there's a mystery to who we are as energetic beings, right? And it's, it's done on purpose almost. It's a part of our human condition where
00:17:29
Speaker
Getting out of the kind of grip of our human condition is very hard, right? We're.
00:17:41
Speaker
When we look at ourselves and all we see is our body and all we see is this physical world, to tell someone that you can shift that into its almost antithesis of going from completely physical to completely non-physical, there's no frame of reference. It's impossible. And so yoga essentially is the response to that.
Commercialization of Yoga
00:18:06
Speaker
that you can use this body instead of in its kind of like default automatic. I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do this to sit down, make your body completely still become suspended in its animation and internally explore a whole other world. And
00:18:35
Speaker
essentially the yoga practice is preparing the body for that and so like the different cleansing practices are part of it the all the asanas and the breathing and even like the yamas and the niyamas like the morals of what you want to do is all a part of it
00:18:51
Speaker
And it's going to get more and more complicated and more and more convoluted because of how much information there is, right? Because the yoga world is actually so vast and there's so many different things that you can do. And I think that's why in the West there's this obsession with the yoga studio and the physical practice
00:19:16
Speaker
is because of how convoluted things can get. And because we're pretty simple minded, you know, in just being a human, we want to just take the bits that are going to serve us and just leave the rest. And we go, ah, no, no, no, no. I don't care about mantras and Krishna and deities. And, you know, I don't, I don't care about Ayurveda. I don't care about all this stuff.
00:19:44
Speaker
I just wanna show up to the studio at seven o'clock and do my practice and go on my life, right? Yeah. I wanna be able to put my foot behind my head. Yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, it's another industry. It's another business to take advantage of, right? That's usually where people's minds are going to go. They're going to go and do this training. You know, they're going to have some great transformational experience and then they're going to come out of it thinking, how much money am I going to make out of this?
00:20:18
Speaker
you know, I want to rent a space, you know, I want to start teaching yoga. And immediately, the mind goes to how am I going to turn this into a business. And and that's essentially the trap, I think. And it's almost initiatory, I think. And
00:20:41
Speaker
kind of flies under the radar is when you decide to become a yoga teacher or a yogi, there's the first initiation you're being initiated into that world. And then from there, there's levels to it. And it's either you stay in that first kind of realm where
00:21:02
Speaker
You know, maybe you had a car accident and your physiotherapist goes, Oh, you should start going to hot yoga. You know, it's, it'll help loosen up your muscles and it'll start, you know, getting you to be more open and flexible. Great. So they start going to hot yoga. It starts working. They go back to their physiotherapist. They're like, Oh my God, my back pain is better. And that's it.
00:21:25
Speaker
That's the extent of their experience. Then the next level is you go to a particular studio and they're doing chanting. So they start the class with an om. They're doing little breathing techniques here and there. And then,
00:21:46
Speaker
you start asking questions of like, what are these sounds that we're doing? What are these chants that we're doing? And it starts to take you out of that first level of, oh, this helped fix my back. Now it's, oh, these chants mean something. What do these chants mean? You know, like yoga chitta vritti nirota. Oh, the flux, unifying the fluctuations of the mind with the original state of consciousness. You know, what the hell is that?
00:22:13
Speaker
So then it starts to open you up into these new levels and new levels to the point where you're in ashram in India and you're having some of the most profound meditations you've ever had. Right. Yeah. So you were in India and Thailand studying this stuff.
Authenticity in Spiritual Teachings
00:22:36
Speaker
Yes. And you spent quite a long time studying it. So what was your experience there? I suppose it can never be as bad as in the West, but is it also a little bit more
00:22:50
Speaker
superficial and the sort of spiritual materialism that can kind of, like you said, anything that can become an industry can sort of start creeping in there where you're like, yeah, collecting crystals and types of incense, as opposed to actually practicing something that will, you know, be of benefit to you. Yeah, I think.
00:23:18
Speaker
I think inevitably you're gonna run into, I don't wanna say corruption, but you're gonna run into folks who appear authentic, but then they're using the appearance to draw people in, right? And so they're wearing the robes, they're walking around with a kind of air about them.
00:23:43
Speaker
Because they're signaling and they want to signal to a type of vulnerability. So they want to signal to the people who are lost and who are looking for that spiritual connection. And so there's a competition on who can do that the best, right?
00:24:05
Speaker
That's kind of natural in our world. It's happening in every industry, you know? And so when I was in Thailand, the creator of Agama Yoga there, the school that I went to,
00:24:21
Speaker
would say fake it till you make it. Right. So like it was already there, you know, he's like, and this was a guy that kind of like, he, he started from the bottom, you know, he, he moved to Thailand. He was teaching out of a little hut and he only had a couple of students. And after 10 years, he had this whole compound and like, you know, massive place with a restaurant and like several halls and.
00:24:51
Speaker
But that school degraded over time. So I went in, I went twice. So I went in 2012 and then 2016 and in the 2012 was like the golden era of this school. And, um, when I went in 2016, it degraded considerably and it was really a difference of the,
00:25:21
Speaker
the creator of the program losing touch with this practice. So someone who had a very strong practice in meditation to then, you know,
00:25:33
Speaker
Kind of giving it up because it was a Tantra school, right? So all the top teachers, they were all in a relationship with each other. And so I think what ended up tainting it is you have this, these people who are going from doing very strong yoga practices and very strong meditations and rituals.
00:25:52
Speaker
to then kind of letting that fall to the side. And then their emphasis is now on sexual practices. Their emphasis is on having orgies together. And so like the creator of his name is Swami Vivekananda Saraswati.
00:26:13
Speaker
would just have sex with women every day. That became his practice, right? And so there's a corruption that takes place where you start to tell yourself, oh, I don't need to do these original practices. I don't need to do the breath work. I don't need to do this stuff anymore.
00:26:31
Speaker
you know, I just am going to sustain myself on this like tantra practice. And, but then, you know, you're cour, coercing all these women to, you know, be sexual with you when you're like a 56 or 60 year old man, you know, and it becomes evident that when you start to abandon your practice and you start to take on something,
00:26:59
Speaker
That's like taboo in a sense that it's you're playing a game then. Right. And, you know, the game is how long is this going to last? And in their world, not very long. And the organization pretty much crumbled because of sexual assault allegations. Right. Bro, like certain to put in, but, you know, I'm pretty sure we can say with ninety nine point nine, nine percent certainty
00:27:27
Speaker
If you're having orgies, every day you're going to run your business into the ground sooner or later, especially if the people you're having orgies are your staff, right? Jesus Christ.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And so I was presented with an opportunity to basically learn from two teachers. Right. And so, um, in 2012, I went to Thailand to learn from like the Sagama school and from Swami Vivekananda. And then.
00:28:01
Speaker
There's my actual teacher Yogarishi Vishaketu from Akhanda Yoga that I did my 200-hour training with and my 300-hour training. So I was basically faced with a choice, you know, who do I follow? And I looked at how they lived and looking at Swami Vivekananda and being like, okay, well,
00:28:23
Speaker
He's basically signaling, you know, like he presented himself as at first in that signaling of like, he's this big, he was like a big Romanian guy. He'd wear like the ochre robes and he, he just had a presence and a power to him. Right. And then that dwindled over time to him, like looking more and more frail and older and stressed. And, uh, and so when I look, compare that to my teacher, Vishuji, who's this.
00:28:53
Speaker
Indian man born in the foothills of the Himalayas. He grew up as a yogi. He started when he was eight years old. His uncle has a gudakal, which is like a yoga school in the mountains. And he lived this like authentic, traditional yogi life. And so he, when he present himself in his authenticity,
00:29:21
Speaker
he wasn't doing that like signaling as if he's this, you know, big powerful yogi. He was very humble and very sincere. And so that shined out as like a beacon of light to me. Um, and so it became very easy to make that choice. Like, Hey, I'm not going to go and participate in this Agama yoga stuff anymore. It's just, it's too chaotic. It's falling apart. And you got sick of the orgies.
00:29:49
Speaker
I didn't even go to them. No, I stayed away from that shit. I was like, no way. And yeah. And so now my, my main practice and my main teaching is, is Akhanda yoga.
Significance of Spiritual Names
00:30:06
Speaker
Cause I, Akhanda.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah. So from doing the teaching or teacher training in 2012, I went back to, or I went to India for the first time in 2016 to do my 300 hour. And then the following year I went back again to assist in the 200 hour. And those experiences just proved to me.
00:30:30
Speaker
how much more powerful Vishaji and his school is and in a way where it's uplifting, you know, and it's, you know, when I compare
00:30:47
Speaker
like ethically and morally between the two and even some others. Um, he has like, he has no allegations against him. Everybody loves him. He has a family, you know, his children and, and so it's, it's relieving to me to be able to see that and be able to like, no, there's no way I want to, I want to follow this like Swami Vivekananda dude and
00:31:18
Speaker
and find any real inspiration to be a good yogi. So just out of my curious curiosity, what is the Ananda part of the names mean?
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah. Ananda means bliss. Right. And so with my name, Zorananda, my original name is Zoran. It's Serbian, right? And it means sunrise. And so when you add Zoran and Ananda, it just simply means the bliss of the sunrise. So I'll tell you a little story about how I,
00:32:05
Speaker
put or why I put an under to my name. And it's something that I thought of years ago. So back in 2013, so this is already like 10 years ago, when I was like first getting into yoga, I thought about it. I thought, well, I could add an under to my name, but I didn't feel right about it because I felt like I was doing it
00:32:29
Speaker
Just to do it, you know, I'm like, Oh, I'm this new yoga teacher. I can add it none to my name. And I was like, no, I don't, I don't really want to do that. Right. But a year later, uh, it was right at the beginning of January. I came back from this winter festival and I was feeling really good. I was subletting a room in my friend's apartment. He lived in this like Penthouse suite downtown.
00:32:56
Speaker
So I sat down to do my meditation. I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling really connected to myself after this like weekend of amazing festival. And I feel this presence from behind me come in and this voice starts speaking to me.
00:33:14
Speaker
And this voice starts explaining to me why I should add an under to my name. And at first I was resistant. I was like, uh, I don't know if I want to do that, but then this voice was like very adamant. Like, no, you don't understand. This is what your name means. And I, and I never thought of my name this way before. So.
00:33:38
Speaker
Zoran is the masculine form of Zora. So, and that's my mom's name as well. So Zora is like the feminine version and they both mean sunrise, but my name Zoran has Zora in it. So my name is both masculine and feminine. And, and so this voice is explaining this to me and saying, when you add Anunda, your name transforms into a mantra and it,
00:34:08
Speaker
fully means the rise of masculine and feminine into bliss. He's like, so when people say your name, they're not just saying a name, they're literally chanting a mantra. And what they're saying is the rise of masculine and feminine into bliss every time they say your name.
00:34:27
Speaker
treated as a mantra rather than owning it. They're like, like this voice is like, don't, it's not yours to own. This is, this is now just something that can help kind of like rise the energies around. And he's like, people don't even have to know they can be saying your name and saying literally the rise of masculine and feminine to bliss. And, uh, there's magic magic to it. Yeah.
00:34:53
Speaker
And so that appealed to me so much more than the year before of like just me going, oh yeah, I want to do this, right? Yeah. Well, it's good that you also were thinking at that level because I think we can often let our ego take sort of the helm when we're kind of still naive to these things, like you already mentioned at the start.
00:35:20
Speaker
that can be a dangerous sort of path, for sure. Yeah, because we can't help but form an identity around things, right? And so what I found, find with in the spiritual community, when people adopt a spiritual name,
00:35:40
Speaker
It has a lot to do with like abandoning who they were right and it's and it's largely due to like some like trauma or some something that they like they have anxiety around right so.
00:35:57
Speaker
Feel so good to them to adopt this new identity in this new name and to the drop who they were before and To me that never really felt that never really sat right because I have nothing to be ashamed of of my life so you like
00:36:19
Speaker
Even when I went to India to do my 300 hour, my teacher, he, we have like an option to receive a spiritual name. So, and there's a lot of people in, in the Akhanda community that completely adopt their, their name and they let go. And that's fine. Right. And there's, there's some people that have a, have a reason for it because
00:36:43
Speaker
They are setting out this new path and this new way of being. And they think that, you know, the name before them or who they were before is going to impede on that transformation. Right. But the funny thing with my name that my teacher gave me.
00:36:59
Speaker
Like I was explaining how my name is Bliss of the Sunrise. So we have this whole naming ceremony, right? Where we come up to him, he's giving us a blessing, he gives us a little card with, you know, my little postcard had Radha and Krishna on it. And then on the back of it has the name and the description of the name. So I flip it over and it says, Devakara Nand, right? So there's the Nand again.
00:37:27
Speaker
Ananda, like Devakar Anand. And I'm reading it and it says, bliss of the sun. And I look at my teacher and I just start laughing. And I'm like, do you know what my name actually means? And he just looks at me. He's like, no. I'm like, Zorananda means bliss of the sunrise. Zoran means sunrise. And we just start burst out laughing. And I'm like, did you have any idea that that was my name? My teacher's like, no, of course not. And so there's cool moments like that where.
00:37:57
Speaker
Like that I find personally in my life that these synchronicities happen and there's these like bridges made. And so for me, Devakar Anand is something that I'm striving towards. Like I don't, I don't tell people that's my name. I don't use it. It's, it's something inside of me that I feel internally that I'm, I'm striving towards. And you know, whether I adopt that as my name later, like, you know, that's.
00:38:23
Speaker
I'm not gonna put any stress on it, right? But for now, I feel good about Zorananda because I can keep my name and...
00:38:33
Speaker
And I don't have to fall into that sense of like, Oh, I, I, I need to let go of, of this identity. Right. Yeah. Cause I think the trap is in, especially in the new age communities, like people will take on this whole new persona and they kind of lose touch of themselves. Right. And, and suddenly you'll start seeing people have like,
00:38:59
Speaker
like existential crises because they just, they, they're, they don't know who they are anymore. And they're so like entrenched with this new identity, you know, and like, I think.
00:39:13
Speaker
One community that does that now more than ever is like the vegan community, right? Like these like diehard vegans that will spend like a decade and suddenly they make an announcement that they're not vegan anymore and they're eating meat because like the facade crumbles because of like how it deteriorates their health, right? And then suddenly they're like,
00:39:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I, you know, I was advised by my doctor to stop this and, you know, to change my diet and how much better their life is. Right. So on that note, the other day, some lady comment, I have a.
00:39:56
Speaker
a real on Instagram, just a quick one, you know, stop fasting. It's doing more harm than good. You know, it's kind of, cause you know, I'm, I'm using Instagram for business to attract clients and stuff like that. So I'm putting out the stuff that I think women will get value from. So I said, stop fasting. You know, I talk about it in my book. I throw the book up on the screen. It's a 90 second real. So a lady comments,
00:40:24
Speaker
I am sorry, but I have to disagree with you. Do try and fast for a couple of days and you'll see a huge difference. You can drink only some fresh juices and it will still have a tremendous effect on your brain. What to say about the spirit? Hey, you're probably not interested in that matter. So just to translate, because obviously her English wasn't her first.
00:40:48
Speaker
language but for me it was hilarious to talk about spirit and then to use the word matter when in that but of course because English is not her first language we can forgive that but then I just clicked on her her profile and then I'm like I saw in one of her you know the description your bio what you I guess identify as was the second thing in line was veggie cooking so you know
00:41:17
Speaker
veggie cooking, healthy baking. So the first thing I'm thinking as a practitioner, so if you fast and your brain feels better and you feel amazing after a two-day fast is you're probably eating a lot of vegetables that are not agreeing with you, feeding a lot of those endotoxin-producing bacteria we talked about, and all the baking. Baking is done with a lot of grains usually. That's probably ruining your gut. So of course you're going to feel good
00:41:46
Speaker
fasting for a couple of days. Right. So, but I never responded cause I didn't want to like, you know, start shit on my Instagram freaking posts. But, um, it's kind of interesting this identity that we trap ourselves into. And then we, it's almost like we paint ourselves into a corner and you know, like I was following cause I was plant based for, for a year and a half at one point. And then half a year before that I saw cause I was, I was following some YouTubers at the time.
00:42:16
Speaker
I saw the outrage when people were doing those why I'm no longer vegan videos and you could see the sort of high stress state a lot of these followers, plant-based followers were in because they were threatening the people like I'm gonna come to your house and slaughter you and like really horrible things I hope you die and animal killer and these people like a week or two ago would have been saying the nicest things
00:42:44
Speaker
So this is what happens when you get trapped into an identity that you almost feel like you have to run towards and grab and affix yourself. And what's your perspective? Why do we do
Dietary Identities and Social Effects
00:43:00
Speaker
that so much? Is it because we're just so easily manipulatable or is there a deeper human condition at the root of it that is some kind of trauma-based thing that we still don't fully understand?
00:43:15
Speaker
I don't know if it's, if it's based on a, on a trauma thing, I think, um, I think for the most part we're opportunistic and we can't help but take ownership of our ideas. So because our thoughts are so isolated from each other,
00:43:45
Speaker
that when you have an idea about how to optimize your life, that we can't help but cling to it and think that it's like the best thing we've ever thought of. And so when we make a pretty significant lifestyle change, which I think like veganism is because
00:44:12
Speaker
you're having to say no to things that mostly everybody says yes to, right? If it's like, you know, going to get fast food or whatever, right? You're at a family dinner and you're just kind of at the whim of the tradition of your family. And so
00:44:29
Speaker
there's a kind of empowerment that happens or like an empowering feeling that is there in the beginning of it because you feel like you've taken control of decision making. You're no longer just at the whim of like, oh yeah, I'll eat some Oreos or yeah, I'll eat this grilled cheese and like whatever, right? Like whatever pops into your head, you'll just say yes to you. And so,
00:44:58
Speaker
Um, I think at the beginning there is this, um, like discipline in veganism of saying no to these things, but because it's co-opted as like a political almost movement as well too, and that there's this activism involved and then there's organizations that are.
00:45:23
Speaker
promoting the activism and promoting the politicization of it, that it starts to taint that original like sense of control over yourself in the sense of controlling temptation and controlling urges, right? And so
00:45:51
Speaker
That to me is unappealing and for the most part to everybody, right? Like, but the small percentage of people who are vegans and who get caught up into the, like the drama of it.
00:46:07
Speaker
they I like I wonder and this is just like off the top of my head right now but I wonder if there would be like a small correlation between the obsessiveness that starts to build right because you have to think about
00:46:23
Speaker
how much in control you have to be of everything that goes into your body. You have to be obsessed. You have to go, whenever you go to a restaurant, you have to like scrutinize everything. Be like, okay, was this cooked with butter? Was this this and this? Did you touch this with this? You know what I mean? Like there's almost like this mental illness that's being developed through the obsessiveness. And I think that
00:46:49
Speaker
that becomes really heart shake, right? So if, if you've spent 10 years being like that, then it starts to make sense why you would just slowly turn into kind of a hateful person, you know, and, and have very little compassion for people who don't want to be like that.
00:47:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's what became, but that's what becomes problematic. And I saw it within myself. Like I was a vegetarian for six years. I tried like little vegan like things, but it.
00:47:27
Speaker
For my body type, it was just not healthy to do that. And I even had to be honest with myself. Genetics from Eastern Europe, so similar to mine, we, our ancestors, there was a winter always. So what vegetables other than your ferment, what vegetables and fruits were you going to eat? You know? Yeah. And when I talk to my parents, because they are
00:47:52
Speaker
from Serbia, right? So they immigrated here and they said the only time that they really ate meat was in the winter. They're like, throughout the spring and the summer, we had all of our own milk and eggs and they had their own orchards and gardens and they had everything they needed and they didn't need to eat so much meat during the summer.
00:48:19
Speaker
because a lot of their, like their staple meat is pork, right? And pigs. So you tend to slaughter in the fall, right? So like you're raising the animal and it takes them that long to actually raise. So like,
00:48:33
Speaker
you're not slaughtering your pigs at the beginning of the spring and then have meat throughout the summer. You have to wait. And so there was this respect to the natural cycle of life, right? Yeah. Where it's not like here where you can go down to Popeyes or you can go to McDonald's or A&W or wherever, and you can have whatever you want whenever, right?
00:48:53
Speaker
And so that's why like initially veganism, there's an appeal because you have that kind of sense of self control. You have that like, no, I'm eliminating things. And that's like what you were saying earlier when that woman was commenting like, Oh, when I go on this fast, it feels great. And it's like, well, yeah, because you're not putting gross foods in your body, you know, so your body is like getting relief from, yes.
00:49:20
Speaker
All the shitty foods that are coming in. So then of course you're going to feel great. So then even with veganism, it's like people are associating and attributing the vegetables for doing that. But it's like, well, no, you've just eliminated this whole subset of over-processed foods and all these gross foods. Of course you're going to feel way better, right?
00:49:45
Speaker
And I think it's hard for them to grasp because of then the ideological part of it of like saving animals, you know, like protecting animals and. And so. Yeah, I think
00:50:08
Speaker
I think we just, in that, like to end this kind of rant, we just like, we can't help ourselves. Right. And, and I think that's personally and individually, that's a lesson for each one of us is that it's not necessarily about the ideological diet. It's about what you're eliminating. Like that's all you have to focus on, you know, and.
00:50:34
Speaker
between like soy and a steak, you do actually have way better nutrients and way better proteins that are going to actually be synthesized by your body so much more cleanly and so much more, and with more efficacy than hyper-processed soy products and pea proteins, right?
00:51:01
Speaker
that may have been GMO and glyphosate laden. And yeah, we know soy has phytoestrogens and stuff like that. Absolutely bro. So, but that, this is something I've been grappling with for a long time because kind of got into Buddhism around 2005 when I was like 19.
Diet and Spiritual Growth
00:51:25
Speaker
So,
00:51:27
Speaker
What's your take on eating flesh of dead things that we may also have killed ourselves? Do you think that can hinder our spiritual development or what's your take on that? I know it's a very sort of deep, big question, but what's your take on it? Yeah, it is a tricky one because
00:51:57
Speaker
Five years ago, when I was vegetarian, I would have told you that eating meat does have a negative effect on spiritual growth. And that's, that has to do with an alignment with Ahimsa with non-harm. But I think there's a bias in there and I think it has to do with
00:52:29
Speaker
a kind of psychological control on the yoga side and like the teachings of yoga coming from
00:52:44
Speaker
like texts and coming from these teachers that are pertaining to their group of people, right? And so when you look at India and you look at the way that India operates and you're looking at the temperament of the people, you're looking at
00:53:06
Speaker
culturally, how they act. It starts to make sense why these like philosophers would come in and start to say, Hey, we need to change the diet and we need to start to implement these like philosophical contexts to what the foods are doing. So saying like in a, in a yogic sense, they would say,
00:53:35
Speaker
the foods that we're eating are too tamasic. So tamas means like lethargy and heaviness, right? And rajas means like fiery and movement. And then sattvic is like light and divine. And so
00:53:52
Speaker
In yoga, the whole drive is into divinity. The whole purpose is like, I don't want to be in this world anymore. I've fulfilled my cycles of my karma and I want to integrate into a divine realm. One of the ways of doing that is looking at how these gunas are called the universal, three universal principles of existence.
00:54:23
Speaker
Thomas, Rajas and Satvik that you're always striving towards Satvik. And so in yoga, eating meat would be more Thomas and more like causing lethargy and slowing down. And that makes sense, right? So if you were to eat a salad and then
00:54:43
Speaker
You know, your, how fast your body is going to digest it. You're, you're going to feel lighter, right? Then as opposed to if you eat like a 12 ounce steak, you're, you're going to feel heavy and you're going to feel like you're going to want to fall asleep. Right. So those are just like natural phenomenon. And so now, because I went back to eating meat.
00:55:12
Speaker
I looked at it through a particular purpose, right? And looking at my body type, I'm six two, so I'm fairly tall and I was 150 pounds. I was like skin and bones, right? So when I was looking at my body type and I was actually looking at just like the health and the strength of my, of my person that being a vegetarian was unsustainable for me personally.
00:55:41
Speaker
What do you now roughly? I'm one 85. Okay. Yeah. And, and I started doing CrossFit. So then I was like, well, if I want to increase my muscle mass and I want to increase my weight, being on a vegetarian diet doesn't work because I'm, I'm undernourished. I was, it was obvious that I was undernourished and, and underweight and not getting enough protein and
00:56:12
Speaker
And so personally, I made that shift to myself and not falling into the guilt that I'm doing something wrong. And I think that's what people get caught up on is they learn all these things from the yoga world of like what to do and what not to do, what foods to eat, what foods not to eat. And they become obsessed. We just like, we can't help it. Like I was saying before, they become obsessed. They're watching everything.
00:56:40
Speaker
Right they're like all is you know my putting too much oil and is that too much is that too tamasic and my putting too much spice and is that can be too like fiery and like you know cuz they're always like they want to strive towards the sattvic as like as much as they can.
00:56:56
Speaker
And they don't realize that what makes things soft is you. So you can have a whole plate of food that has a whole variety of stuff on it and you are the one blessing it. You are the one that's putting it in and it's transforming into you.
00:57:14
Speaker
So you can flip your perspective and look at it and be like, no, it's not the foods themselves that have this innate quality. It's me that are attributing it to it. And so it takes a certain level of wisdom to start then looking at the world in that way, that you can eat anything and you can fully enjoy it. And it can be the greatest thing you've ever tasted, whether it's vegan or not.
00:57:43
Speaker
whether it's an ice cream cone from McDonald's, whether it's, you know, a raw food, you know, like a raw chocolate bar from this place that now you are the administrator of this sattvic quality in what is divine. And, you know, whether it's going to have a negative effect on you or not,
00:58:08
Speaker
is gonna be dependent on what you're doing, right? Because I'm doing a lot of CrossFit and I'm working out, the conversion rate is really, is much higher for me.
00:58:20
Speaker
So my body can convert things that a sedentary person can't. So if you were to compare the health of my body and the state of my body to someone who is 400 pounds and just sits and eats and we have the same diet, it's going to have so much more of a negative effect on that person than me. And that's just because of what I'm doing to convert the nutrients.
00:58:51
Speaker
Yeah, I like the way Paul Chek put it. You know Paul Chek, right? Yeah, Paul Chek is great. Yeah, he talks about like, he has a wider, I suppose, view of things. And we label something as good or bad. And it could be a cop-out, of course, all of these things can be cop-outs. But he says, when you eat the steak or the beef or the cow, whatever, that animal has a chance to
00:59:20
Speaker
integrate into your body and become part of something higher, bigger, and, you know, at least, I mean, it kind of does make sense in many ways, but it could also be a cop-out, like you could easily sort of tell someone giving it that sort of angle that you just, you're just using it as a cop-out. But when I look at it from a
00:59:45
Speaker
perspective of morality. I know we can't really, something is either immoral or not. There's no real sort of spectrum of morality. But the way I see it is if something, if I don't give my child like milk and cheese and animal foods like butter and meat, I know she won't thrive as much as she could. And I know she
01:00:10
Speaker
likely may develop health issues because I've seen, I've seen a lot of evidence for that, you know. And so for me, it would be immoral to not give her animal foods. And if push came to shove, if we're like back in the day,
01:00:27
Speaker
if I have my own chickens and things, I would have to kill that chicken or the pig or whatever with my hands, take that karmic hit, whatever that is, in order to feed my family. Because if something is good for my child, a human, I don't think at some point in your development as a human, or let's say you stopped growing and developing at 18 or 25 or whatever, if something was good for you then,
01:00:58
Speaker
I doubt that it suddenly will become bad for you or something like that. So the point being is if meat and animal products are necessary for children to grow, thrive and develop, they must be necessary for humans to grow, thrive and develop. So that I suppose that's my take on it. And then I guess it could be something like I was talking to Al from Forum Borealis. I had him on the show and he talks about like,
01:01:26
Speaker
I suppose in a different sense, and it seems like in order to be very physically healthy, you can achieve that, but you may have to make trade-offs in terms of your, let's say, intellectual or spiritual or other development. So maybe in order to grow spiritually,
01:01:49
Speaker
very quickly or very far or deeply or whatever, you have to make some trade-offs in terms of your other health, but I don't really think that is it. I'm curious what your kind of take is. I think
Traditional Life Stages and Spirituality
01:02:13
Speaker
Generally, we all want to do the best that we can. So we can really only make the best decisions based on how well informed we are. And because there's so much information on just like really any topic,
01:02:32
Speaker
that there's going to be a limitation on really how well-informed we are. And I think as long as generally we know that in our day-to-day interactions that we aren't causing harm to the people around us, say if it's like on the street to strangers, to our friends and family, our loved ones,
01:02:58
Speaker
that there's going to be like a kind of balance in what's happening to us karmically, right? Because there are some very evil people in this world who are still living and they're doing very terrible things to people. And there's some people that live into their 90s and they were absolutely terrible people.
01:03:23
Speaker
And yet they lived a full life, you know, like there wasn't anything karmically that like is happening to them, you know? And I think it's unfair to then just say like, that if, if you're eating meat and you're contributing to that, that you're this terrible person.
01:03:48
Speaker
Cause I think there is a natural balance in order to these things just in, just as a blueprint to this planet, right? Um, that you can kind of get away with things. And, and so I think it's important to, to understand that you don't have to be so rigid and so hard in your beliefs about
01:04:21
Speaker
you know, the sanctity of animal life. And that's just because of how brutal this planet is, right? And I've heard plenty of like kind of justifications like, okay, well, you wanna set those cows free, how do you think they're gonna die?
01:04:41
Speaker
Right? It's like, it's either they're, they're taken by a human hand and they're brought into his facility and there's a bolt in their head and then they, they die immediately. And then their carcasses used to feed like hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, or you let them out into nature and they're brutally killed by wolves, you know? And it's like,
01:05:05
Speaker
And, and there's like, there's this, there's these blinders that people want to put on and they don't want to see the, the difference. Right. And so that's why it's easy for me to just let go of all that stuff and, and to see that.
01:05:24
Speaker
with the choices that I make as a human and the choices that allow me to have like a fulfilling experience that if I'm wanting to go and compete in CrossFit, which is my plan for next year and to like grow in that world and to compete more and more, I want to be as optimal as I possibly can. And so in my idea of
01:05:50
Speaker
optimizing strength and optimizing my physical fitness. I'm going to have to take in, in a level of protein. And so then eating me to me is no problem. And so in the yoga world, in the beginning stages of your life, there's an emphasis on development.
01:06:14
Speaker
where your diet has to include certain things. So that's why like,
01:06:23
Speaker
Most like majority of people in India eat meat, they eat cows, they eat everything, right? There's only a small percentage of people who are vegetarian. Really? And that has to do with like this certain like sect of their religion, right? That says like, so like the veneration of cows is only a small portion of like of the population in India. And so the change in diet is actually based on your
01:06:56
Speaker
the stages of your life. So the people who are typically become vegetarians is way, way later because they understand the digestive system and they know that when you get older, if there are things that get harder and harder to digest. And so in the yoga world,
01:07:14
Speaker
You don't actually start a yoga sadhana until you're well into your sixties and seventies. So it's actually like the opposite in the Western world. People are getting into yoga. So sadhana is like your spiritual practice. Oh, so you started only at that age. Wow. And traditionally in India, there's four
01:07:39
Speaker
There's like four responsibilities. So you start as being a student. So you go to school, right? Then the next.
01:07:49
Speaker
stage of life is your business. So then you go to work and it's like, you know, a couple of decades of your life, then it's you're a homekeeper. And so you then are like taking care of the house and taking care of kids and taking care of family. Then the last one is you become an ascetic.
01:08:11
Speaker
So once you've done everything, then it's time to focus on spirituality. And then it's time to focus on having a sadhana. And those are the elders.
01:08:25
Speaker
Uh, their tradition is like you leave and it's accepted. You go into the caves, you go into the jungle and you say goodbye to your family because you're kind of like useless at that point for the family. You're, you know, like you're well into your sixties and seventies and they go, okay. Just another month to feed now. Yeah. And I'm off and then they go and they start their sudden and that's where the dietary changes are. But like.
01:08:50
Speaker
In the first stages in India, they know that's why their food is so rich. That's why their food is so colorful and so celebratory. It's meant to be enjoyed. It's meant to be venerated. They have a whole variety of animals that they eat. That's nice.
01:09:13
Speaker
and they're still venerating all their deities and you know they don't think to themselves like all this is some negative karma it's like no you're in the beginning stages of your development you need to take in as much as you can and that's why like even then
01:09:29
Speaker
being overweight like is not a problem to them, right? Because they know by the end of their life, it's like they're going to go into a sadhana. They're going to lose all that weight because they're going to do a lot of fasting. They're going to do a lot of cleanses and stuff like that. And like for us, because we're just so hyper obsessed with fads and trends, it's like, we'll pick that one thing from yoga and be like, oh, fasting, they do fasting. So I got to do fasting. It's like, no, that's like, it's totally out of context. You don't even know.
01:09:58
Speaker
like why they're doing that or when, right? And I suppose then this sort of new age injection into society since the 60s, maybe like you say, maybe when we are in our 20s,
Integrating Spirituality into Daily Life
01:10:16
Speaker
Many of us are not ready to begin the sort of more deeper spiritual practices because we're still kind of children. We're still developing. So could that be another way sort of to slow down our progress if you're doing the wrong, the right thing, but at the wrong time, you're still doing the wrong sort of thing overall.
01:10:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that there's a detriment to society through that. Cause look at how many people suddenly they don't want to work. They don't want to build any work ethic or any experience. They don't want to go into an industry and start learning something new. They, they see all these like amazing people on the internet traveling the world and going to all these fantastic tropical destinations and doing these workshops and all these things.
01:11:01
Speaker
And then they think to themselves, you know, like, you know, fuck it. I don't want to be a plumber. I don't want to be an electrician. I don't want to like do like, I don't want to gain any normal life experience and work experience. I want to go live in Bali, you know, and then suddenly you have this flood of, you know, 20 to 30 year old.
01:11:19
Speaker
People in Bali taking over and you're seeing that everywhere and it's like Okay, I it's great that we have come to a point in our society where we we can do that, right? You can hop on a plane spend 1200 bucks. Boom in 12 hours. You're in paradise, right? unprecedented and never happened a hundred years ago, right you have to take a fucking boat and I think takes weeks, you know, like good luck like you're not going back and
01:11:47
Speaker
You know, if that's the thing, if you're, if you're hopping on a boat to Bali like 200 years ago, it's like, it's one way, you know? And, um, yeah. And so.
01:12:00
Speaker
And the thing is, is like, it's so funny cause in India, like their understanding of karma and Dharma is that whatever you're born into you do. And, and you get really good at that and you strive like to really fulfill that. And it's through its fulfillment is where things open because then on the side, of course, you know, like.
01:12:25
Speaker
You have an interest in music or art or calligraphy or engineering or whatever, right? But there's still this Fulfillment that needs to take place where the like the energy of the karma is like you have to be a bricklayer for 15 years and just do it right get to know it get to know it very well and
01:12:53
Speaker
Fulfill that and then from that point you've learned a value of something that if you abandoned that karma if you've been in that army said no i don't want to do your resisting and you're fighting this way to go do this thing.
01:13:08
Speaker
You just don't know that what you would have developed as a person and what kind of skills you would have developed could have transferred over. Right. And I had that same crisis in my life where, um, before working as a company that I'm at now, I didn't want to be in the home building industry anymore. I didn't want to do rental or anything. And I was like, childishly trying to fight it and thinking to myself, like, no, I just want to teach yoga and music and, and blah, blah, blah.
01:13:39
Speaker
And then it dawned on me just recently over the last few years, the type of skills that I developed in this business, how to deal with clients, how to deal with scheduling and how to deal with a team, how to make sure that
01:13:59
Speaker
You know, we're all congruent in, in, in our operation and smooth so that now when I actually want to relaunch my business, I'm so much more equipped. I can look at what I just learned in, in this like stair railing company and go, Oh, here are the things that can transfer over. And if I didn't.
01:14:20
Speaker
go into that, I wouldn't have learned those things and, you know, potentially could utterly fail my business. You know, so I think that's, that's the importance of realizing like, you know, if you, if you have a purpose in like a passion, whatever is in your mundane world of, of your job or whatever, you can transfer that over and
01:14:50
Speaker
You'll be much happier in the end, I think. Yeah, it's like they say in business, it's a marathon with no finish line. I think that's, it's like, it's the same thing about life. It's not a sprint. And this is something I had to learn the hard way many, many times.
01:15:08
Speaker
When you have lofty goals, you cannot achieve them in a month or a year, or even five years. So we just have to learn to fall in love with the journey and the process and things get easier overall.
01:15:32
Speaker
I think people, when they look at a spiritual practice and their spirituality, they want it to take them out of their life. So they look at their life without all the spiritual stuff and they go, oh, I'm like depressed. I hate my job. I hate my family. I hate where I live.
01:15:57
Speaker
Nothing seems to work out for me. Shitty things always happen. They just, they just have this narrative, right? They just, they, they, they feel like a prisoner. They feel like they were put into this life and into this body and they didn't want it. They didn't want their parents like they didn't want in the neighborhood that they, and so they look at.
01:16:17
Speaker
this like spiritual community as this beacon of light. And then they go, Oh, this will help me take me out of, but that's where things go wrong. Right. And so I looked at the spiritual practice and the yoga and stuff as an addition to my life, that I bring it into my life and I watch it organize and correct things in my life. And
01:16:47
Speaker
And so what will happen is that things start to drop away, right? So then you'll start not wanting to hang out with certain people anymore. Cause you're like, you know what? I don't like drinking that much anymore. So I just, I'm just going to say no to that. And, and the spiritual practice is going to help you say no to it. It's not going to take you out of it. It's just, it's going to empower you to help you say no to the things. And so,
01:17:14
Speaker
You're going to say no to the aggravating conversations with your family. You're going to say no to the drinking. You're going to say no to the shitty foods and you're going to start to say yes to the things that are in the spiritual community.
01:17:30
Speaker
because of how it's adding things into your life. And so I think that's a big difference to kind of look at it. So instead of looking at your world and being like, you know, fuck my job. I'm going to quit tomorrow. You know, been there. Yeah. Right. And then, and then you do it. And then you're like,
01:17:47
Speaker
Fuck, I don't have cash to pay my rent. Yeah, right. And you're like, oh shit, what now? Right. So like the spiritual practice is going to come in and be like, don't, don't quit your job yet. You know, like you need money. It's going to get, it's going to help with insights cause it's going to introduce meditation. It's going to introduce breathing. So you're going to like stop and breathe for a second and be like, okay, I know I don't want to work here anymore, but I have to be smart about it.
01:18:14
Speaker
Right and that moment of meditation to shift you out of it was gonna be the helpful tool to. Encourage you to take a step back and look at things for a second and so then you can look at your job like hey i hate it.
01:18:30
Speaker
but I need to save money. You know, I need to make sure that when I quit that I can pay my rent. I have a couple of weeks of like kind of like buffer. I can look for new jobs. I could prepare myself and so the spiritual practice is going to help you slow down internally. And so you're not making these like quick rational decisions and
01:19:01
Speaker
Then what can happen is you're introducing the spiritual practice into your life and you're going to your job and you're starting to feel better and you're starting to look around and you're like, wait, why did I hate this job? Why am I so quick to make a snap decision to leave? Who's influencing me? What am I reading on the internet? Why am I talking to this person? What's happening?
01:19:24
Speaker
that addition of the spiritual upbringing and that spiritual inclination is getting you to start to think differently. So then you start to think, well, maybe I'm in this job for a reason. Maybe I add something that is kind of missing that if someone else was doing this position,
01:19:45
Speaker
it would be different so how can i take this like spiritual energy or whatever that i'm interested in my life how do i introduce it into the workplace.
01:19:58
Speaker
To me it's just through presence, right? Like people don't even have to know, like your coworkers don't even have to know that you're starting a yoga practice or a breathing practice or whatever, that you just add that presence into your workplace and suddenly everything starts to actually start turning better. It's like your coworkers are nicer to you, you know, you're not on edge with things, you can handle the workload and suddenly this job that you hated, you're like, well actually I kind of like it, you know?
01:20:27
Speaker
And that's what I think the power of, of having a spiritual practice is, is that it changes who you are internally, fundamentally. And then it starts to change the environment around you and it changes it in just presence and feel. And so you don't have to suddenly quit your job because you're like, well, I need to, I need a new place to be. And I, you know, I hate these coworkers and chances are with that attitude, you're going to get hired into.
01:20:54
Speaker
The same environment, right? So then, yeah.
01:21:02
Speaker
And that's what's helped me personally. Cause like when I went from being a contractor and kind of like being in control of my schedule to then working in a, in an office, you know, and are like, you know, working in a new company and being like, fuck, you know, like I don't want to do this, but then reminding myself like, no, I have this, I have these tools I have, you know, I, I can switch my perspective. I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm here for a reason because I add something and I,
01:21:33
Speaker
I just have this innate ability to promote people around me to be more successful in what we're doing, right? Absolutely. It's like the, I just pulled it up the saying the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Yeah, exactly.
01:22:02
Speaker
Well, this was a very interesting discussion.
Zorananda's Projects and Contact Info
01:22:05
Speaker
You're a wise man for such a young man. Thank you. Appreciate you. Appreciate your insights. And as we wrap up, can you please let the listeners know about the various projects you do and how they can find them and connect with you?
01:22:22
Speaker
Yeah. So my website is just simply ZoraNunda.com where you can find my music, my meditations, and my book, Future Life Progression, Meaning Your Future Self. I'm mainly active on
01:22:36
Speaker
Instagram, my handle is Yogi Zorananda. I'm in a process of, of moving and revamping and reorganizing things. So it'll take me a couple months before I'm really back into the flow of things, but feel free to message me on Instagram or to email me through my website.
01:23:00
Speaker
And yeah, I really enjoy helping people and I really enjoy.
01:23:08
Speaker
having conversations. So I, even on my podcast to tell people to feel free to message me any questions. And yeah, you can find my music on Spotify on iTunes. Again, my artist name is Zorananda. So you can find it, uh, just searching that. And finally, yeah, my podcast is yoga connection. I'll have our episode that we did uploaded today.
01:23:37
Speaker
And so when this one comes out, they'll have access to both of them. Awesome. Zorananda, thank you so much for joining us again, bro. Yeah, you're so welcome. Thanks for having me on, man.