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EP38: Norie Huddle - The Butterfly Effect
50 Plays16 days ago
“We won actually the first lawsuit, successful lawsuit in Ecuador and in the world defending the rights of nature.”
Regeneration begins when humanity stops positioning itself above nature and instead recognizes itself as part of a living system. True regenerative design restores balance by aligning law, economics, and human values with the intelligence of the natural world. When nature is granted agency, ecosystems are no longer resources to be managed, but partners to be respected.
Norie Huddle, author, lifelong activist, and pioneer of the global Rights of Nature movement, shares how rivers, forests, and land can hold legal standing—and how indigenous wisdom informed one of the world’s first successful court cases defending the rights of nature. The conversation weaves together regeneration, law, and activism, framing humanity’s current moment as a necessary transformation rather than collapse. The butterfly metaphor becomes a lens for understanding how small, aligned groups can catalyze systemic change.
Norie has worked in environmental and peace movements since the 1960s and played a central role in the landmark Ecuadorian court case that legally recognized a river as a rights-bearing entity. Her work bridges spirituality, legal innovation, and regenerative systems thinking, offering a long-view perspective on how humanity can realign with the living world.
Learn more & connect:
Website: https://noriehuddle.earth/
Book: Butterfly
Book: How to Live a Life You Love
Organization: Pachamama Alliance
TEDx Talk: Search Nori Huddle TEDx – The Best Game on Earth
Explore these valuable resources to further your journey in regenerative design:
Discover more about Regenerative design at Paulownia Landscape Architects. https://www.paulownia-la.com/.
Dive into the Twelve Laws of Nature and unlock the secrets of harmonizing with our planet at https://www.12lawsofnature.com/.
Fulfill your garden aspirations with expert guidance from the Garden of Your Dreams masterclass at https://www.gardenofyourdreams.com/.
Ready to take actionable steps towards your dream garden? Book a complimentary 30-minute training session with Matthieu for immediate results: https://calendly.com/garden-of-your-dreams.
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Transcript
Envisioning a Life of Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
Imagine that you're standing at the end of your life. You feel profoundly at peace. You did it. You became the person you always wanted to become, and you did what you came here to this earth to do.
00:00:15
Speaker
What does it look like? Life is so amazing when you start on that path and you realize, I'm only doing a tiny part of what I'm going to be doing a year from now or two years from now.
Introducing the Regenerative Design Podcast
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Regenerative Design Podcast. I'm your host, Mathieu Mehuys. In this show, I interview the leading authorities in the world of regenerative practices, people who do good and do well. Are you a person that cares about your environment and that wants to leave the planet to our children to be something that we can be truly proud of, to enjoy for many generations to come? But are you also a person that believes we can do all of this and do good in business? I have really good news for you. You're here listening to the podcast all about making our planet a better place and making your business more successful. Enjoy the show.
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Regenerative Design Podcast with your host Mathieu. And today we have an incredible guest. Guys, this is one of the best episodes I've ever recorded.
00:01:22
Speaker
and I'm at the beginning of the interview, but I know it's going to be amazing.
Nori Huddle's Environmental Activism
00:01:26
Speaker
And today we have the guest Nori Huddle in our show. And I'll tell you, I'll give you a little bit of the short version of the backstory. Nori has been in regeneration for our planet and... giving our planet a voice, Mother Nature a voice for many, many years. Since the 70s, she's been an activist.
00:01:46
Speaker
She's written numerous books that all relate about how we can save humanity, save the planet. um And probably we'll talk more about it, that our planet doesn't need saving.
00:01:57
Speaker
um Actually, we need our planet more than than the planet needs us. But the the most incredible thing that Nori has achieved in her lifetime is that she lives
Legal Victory for Nature's Rights
00:02:10
Speaker
in Ecuador. And in Ecuador, we'll talk more about it, um natural elements such as mountains, rivers, creeks can have legal conditions.
00:02:20
Speaker
um identities and so Nori was able to ah protect a river and she actually gave the river the river a legal identity and was able to bring that river to a court case and the court and and the river won the court case and that's a historical moment that nobody had ever done that before. So just the mere fact that I can talk to someone who's done such an incredible work not just by talking about it and doing things, but actually changing the legal um framework that is also very important. So yeah, Nori, I'm super, super excited to have you on the show and and welcome.
00:02:59
Speaker
And it's my greatest honor to to have you here. Well, it's a great honor and pleasure to be here with you, Mathieu, and i hope I'm saying your name right. Yes, it's perfect. Yeah, and you know you can already call me Mathieu. We've been talking about it before. okay. That'll probably morph in that direction. Yes, we we won actually the first lawsuit, in a successful lawsuit in Ecuador and in the world defending the rights of nature, and it was a new clause that had just been introduced into the 2008 new constitution,
00:03:29
Speaker
that was largely based on um these new clauses that protect the rights of nature were largely inspired by indigenous input. And so the indigenous people, if you look, I've been doing some searches recently that are just kind of mind-blowing, How how we're doing in terms of actually regenerating our Earth successfully, where in the world is this happening? And also, where are is the worst destruction still going on? I'll send you that list. It's ah it's quite an amazing list. i was going to get i did this with ChatGPT, and I'm going to um flesh it out more, build each of the points that it raised in in this list that it gave me because I really want to know where are the most important leverage points for transforming
Youth and Environmental Awareness
00:04:19
Speaker
things. Because there's so many of us now, and there's so many people waking up and young people who are realizing that we really need to turn things around because they're the ones who are going to be inheriting, you know, what's left of the earth. And so yeah there's a real motivation for ah regeneration. And I recently did another search where I was looking for young ah groups of young people who are working on regeneration and and I collected an amazing list of people.
00:04:48
Speaker
And that that kind of leads to another point that is related to our rights of nature lawsuit. um We won in 2011, okay? March 30th, 2011 was when the court announced its decision.
Nori's Near-Death Experience and Renewed Purpose
00:05:02
Speaker
And I got sick Shortly after that, I nearly died. and ah so But it was ah actually ended up being an amazing experience to nearly die because I got to i had to go back to basics of who am I as a human being and why am i here on this earth at this time. So I got to really renew, you might say, my covenant with God. for my
Global Training Center for Nature's Rights
00:05:28
Speaker
life. And um one of the things that recently has been coming to me is that lot four, which is one of the lots in our garden of paradise here in Ecuador, we have 350 acres, which would be 140 hectares um of land that we are wanting to put into some kind of ah a protected status so it'll never be more developed than just a small number of lots, which we've we've created. At least one lot that we created, which is ah a lot four, is where we took our stand. And the way that happened was um we heard one morning, Richard and I were having breakfast, my husband and I were having breakfast, and we heard dynamite. And I looked at him and I said, they're starting to destroy the river again.
00:06:17
Speaker
And we went running upstream. it was about half a mile to the place where I knew right where they were doing it. okay And we ran with our camera with our video camera and with still camera and caught them in what we say in in American English. We caught them in a Kodak moment. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:38
Speaker
And it was ah where they were pushing a giant boulder down the down the embankment into the river with all kinds of other rocks and, you know, gravel and so forth, stones. well And we then went running back when we had all this, collected all this photographic and video evidence. We went running back, and that's when we we quickly um went to Loja, which is about an hour and a half away, little more than that. And ah first we took the the video and these the photos and we put them on a CD and then we went to our lawyer.
00:07:17
Speaker
And we said, we really want to sue them. And he said, well, how do you want to sue them? And I had been up Loja, I mean in ah Quito fairly recently, and I had been with the Pachamama Alliance. And they were describing the whole new set of laws in the new constitution.
00:07:38
Speaker
And I said, I want to use that new set of laws in the 2008 constitution, defending the rights of nature. And our lawyer said, well, you won't get any money to repair the damage. And I said, I want to set a precedent. And I said to Richard, is this okay? Because this was in Spanish and Richard doesn't understand very much Spanish. And Richard said, I'm and i'm i'm in.
00:08:00
Speaker
So that was how it happened. So what we want to do now is take lot four where we took our stand and made the decision we were going to sue the government for damaging the river.
00:08:12
Speaker
I wanna create there the Global Training Center for the Rights of Nature, where we can train on-site activists who both, it won't be just environmental activists, but also peace activists,
00:08:28
Speaker
Because I have over, I've got about 55, 60 years now of experience doing activism. you know I mean, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1966 for two years, and you do a lot of training, and amazing training and that I got there.
00:08:47
Speaker
And even before then, I was, I think, a very young activist, but in little ways. But since I was the first person hired in 1977 to kick off the anti-nuclear movement nationwide in the United States, and before that, the four years that I spent in Japan writing my first book, which um we can maybe include a link to that for people,
00:09:13
Speaker
oh yeah Yeah, that that so oh it's a holistic study of the environmental movement there. And and it gives a lot of stories about what the activists did there that was successful. That is, I learned a lot from my Japanese friends and colleagues. They did some very clever things.
00:09:32
Speaker
So anyway, we want to turn lot four into an on-site training center, but also have it be a global um a global training for that we can offer around the world to activists because we really, really need to move now.
00:09:49
Speaker
So I'm working with one of the women who was very, one of the leaders of the Pachamama Alliance and was probably the most, the strongest force in setting up the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. And she totally is supporting this idea of creating this Rights of Nature, this um ah training center.
00:10:09
Speaker
So that's very exciting to me. Wow, yeah, that's that's incredible. And thank you. It would be one of my questions, but you already answered
Nori's Early Awareness and Existential Questions
00:10:17
Speaker
it. Like, how did you do it? And so amazing, such a historical moment. And and it's um very inspiring and and sounds like the perfect thing to do to make that very location into into everything about rights of nature. And and so, yeah, incredible work.
00:10:35
Speaker
so um People can, on the site, they can look up and they can see the cliff that they were dynamiting. and then throwing all the, but so you really can feel what what happened there. We've had people come from all over the world and want to come, go with me to see where it happened. So yeah it's it's quite a ah special place. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible.
00:11:00
Speaker
And so, yeah, I'd love to, um like we're already like a little bit, a few years back, but I'd really love to understand yeah like your whole backstory, even like,
00:11:11
Speaker
where you When you were a child, were you already caring about the planet? where you like Were your parents occupied with works like this? Or or how did you roll into this whole life of being an activist and book writer and having a business?
00:11:26
Speaker
Well, actually, it's very interesting. My father's motto was, leave the trail better than you found it. So I think right there. And when I was two and a half, I remember back actually to the day I was born.
00:11:40
Speaker
And I know that I i knew at that time i was here to do something very important. It was very important i that I do it. And then when I was three days old, i had casts put on my feet because I was born pigeon-toed. And they were so heavy, i couldn't stay present in the moment. i was so it was It was so heavy and so painful. I know that my mother wrote letters to my grandmother and I cried a lot and I slept a lot. And I felt at the end of the three weeks that the casts were on that I had failed my mission.
00:12:13
Speaker
But then later, its sort of ah one day had this experience, which i I'm writing my memoirs now because it's pretty interesting story. at When I was two and a half, i I'd been studying my parents for about a month, figuring out which one to have the conversation with. And I picked my father because he was very present.
00:12:33
Speaker
he he see His mind didn't go wandering off. you know his My mother's mind would go wandering off. So I picked him to ask these people Two burning questions that I had. And so it was like, i and I think it was on a Sunday, because as I recall, he was reading the Sunday newspaper on the couch.
00:12:51
Speaker
And I came into the room and I tried to be very casual. And I said, Papa, where does it end? and My father looked at me, about the way you looked at me, Jose, and he said, what do you mean, honey?
00:13:07
Speaker
And I started pointing in all directions, up, down, you know, to the right, left. And I said, repeat it, where does it end? where' And my father looked at me, you know, I'm two and a half years old, right? Two and a half years is like your first words, almost. Yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. I was talking by the time was one, but not a lot. I mean, i yeah. But I said, ah said, where does it end? And he he said, that's a very good question, honey. Nobody knows.
00:13:36
Speaker
Maybe it doesn't. And I said, I thought so. then know Then why am I here? Because in my mind, if it's infinite, I could be anywhere.
00:13:48
Speaker
So there must be some reason that I'm here. me and he looked at me again, and you could see him kind of calibrate on his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, at recalibrate. And he said, that's also a very good question, honey.
00:14:03
Speaker
I don't know the answer to that. You're going to have to figure that one out yourself. And your mother and i And a lot of other people can help you, but you're going to have to figure that out yourself.
00:14:15
Speaker
And it may take you most of your life to do so. And I said, oh, okay. Thank you. I didn't even say thank you. You know, I wish I had, but I didn't. I felt so happy because I felt understood.
00:14:33
Speaker
Wow. And it opened a door to a conversation with my father that made a huge difference in my life, talking about all kinds of things, um well including the environment. and But ah more more with Papa later, it was um the arms race because he got very involved in that. In the arms race? What is that? I and don't know. The arms race the the um arms race, the Cold War with the the Soviet Union. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Who has the biggest or the most effective weapons? Well, because when I was, well, let me tell this other story first, because this was when I really woke up to the environment, okay? I was five, and we had just moved to a new place ah in the woods, and we and we were in the in the middle of about 100, no, 1,500 acres of woods and fields. And this is in
00:15:27
Speaker
inside the beltway that goes around Washington, D.C. This is 1949. I was born in 44. So this is 1949. And I was out in the woods one day with my dog and exploring because I really loved the woods. I felt like little wild animal and I'd run around and explore all over the place. And always sort of paid attention so I could find my way back home. It was interesting. I got a good sense of direction doing that. And one day I heard a noise.
00:16:00
Speaker
It was in the distance, so maybe half a mile away. And I went to find out what that noise was. And as I got close, Matt, there was this giant yellow machine, which I now know was a backhoe.
00:16:13
Speaker
Right at that moment I came into into this clearing, it was toppling a giant tree. And I was terrified. ah And I went running home.
00:16:26
Speaker
i just and then I got to thinking, you know, I went back later in and the the area that had been cleared was much bigger. And then I started noticing when we go riding in the car that that there would be like trees one week in this one area. And then the next week they'd be cut down. The next week it would have been pulled hauled away. and then there would be a pile of cinder blocks and then a house would be built.
00:16:53
Speaker
And i realized that my younger brothers and sisters had a different baseline than I did. They would never know all the turtles that used to be in the right there where we were living. They would never know the trees the way I had known them, because there would be more and more cut down. And I thought to myself when I was five, if this is happening everywhere, we're in trouble.
00:17:21
Speaker
well And as an adult, I can say that we are in trouble. And, you know, did you know that we have cut down 46% of all the trees on Earth over the last 5,000 years?
00:17:35
Speaker
So if there's going to be an impact on climate, I would say more trees, please. oh yeah. We want to have more trees. And, I mean, I think that we need all kinds of trees. You you and I both happen to love the Polonia tree. Yeah.
00:17:53
Speaker
And that's and just, ah they call it here in Ecuador, well in South America, the tree that will save the world. Wow. Can you say that Spanish? El árbol que va a salvar al mundo.
00:18:04
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass. Are you struggling with finding the right tools and tricks for your garden? Are you lacking the confidence to be a self-sufficient gardener? Do you sometimes get overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge and time you have to actually do gardening?
00:18:20
Speaker
Then the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass is for you. Yeah, I love that you already had that early experience, like at two and a half years old, starting to... ask the vi to two most important existential questions there are ah two and a half years old. like um I had actually something similar while similar. I was just with my my dad's a farmer. So we were in summer, we would um you in summary you only have like weeks to bring in the harvest because you have the summer and there's summer rain so you have to like when the moment is there you have to harvest the grains and so you work almost night and day to get the grains in and I would drive with him with the tractor to get the grains from the field to the barn or
00:19:06
Speaker
um and And in between the the driving the grains around, we had time because the combiner was harvesting. And so we would just lay down on the fresh cut grass and I must have been around. or The fresh cut um wheat actually.
00:19:22
Speaker
And so we're laying on the straw and I still smell the fresh cut straw. Yeah. And then we look up into the sky, it's like a beautiful night. because it's good weather when you harvest and you see all the stars. And I'm like, what the hell is all this?
00:19:36
Speaker
ah Yeah, and I asked something to my dad and he's like, yeah, I don't know if you know ah what's what's out there. And that was the first time I had a similar um yeah understanding of like what what what the what is out there. We don't know.
00:19:50
Speaker
It's big. yeah And so you said that that your parents said you'll have to figure it out yourself and and it might take your whole life. So what have you figured out so
Transformation Metaphor: Caterpillar to Butterfly
00:20:01
Speaker
far?
00:20:01
Speaker
Well, I certainly have figured out that, well, I wrote a book called Butterfly, which tells a story of global, um of the transformation of humanity, the metamorphosis. I'll just show you that because I'm just, my sister made a painting.
00:20:17
Speaker
I guess what's on it? Oh, interesting. Yeah. It's just standing right here. I don't have a copy here, but I can send you, and i can send you, I think I sent you a digital copy of it, didn't I? Oh, yeah, you did, yeah. It's kind of an interesting story of how I came to write it, but ah it's basically...
00:20:36
Speaker
what i What it says is that there when the caterpillar, there's a phrase in English, what the caterpillar calls the end of the world for the butterfly is the beginning. What I think is going on right now is that we're going through a transformation of humanity that is as great as the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. And there's a whole process that it goes through that I stumbled upon and you know ended up in an amazing way learning about over a three-year period. And ah it basically is that it it's like the world right now, the gobbling up all the resources, gobbling up leaves and grass and plants and everything, more and more and more and more and more. okay And we're doing that all over the world, you know digging deeper, ah polluting higher, polluting more, just grabbing, eating and eating and eating.
00:21:36
Speaker
And at some point in my story it says, but one day eating isn't enough anymore. There's got to be more to life than just crawling around and eating and eating and eating.
00:21:49
Speaker
At this point, the caterpillar creates the chrysalis, the the thing that surrounds it, and it begins to dissolve, to melt down inside this chrysalis that it has created.
00:22:03
Speaker
and ah ah inside And that's the chaos stage. And that's what I think people are experiencing now is that they see this incredible chaos all over the world and nobody quite knows what's but what's going on, you know? no And um all the social systems are breaking down, economic systems are breaking down. There's no faith in government. there's you know People are losing faith in just the things that they've had faith in.
00:22:34
Speaker
And people are looking around and going, what the hell is going on? And so at this point, inside the chrysalis, where this chaos is taking place in the case of the caterpillar butterfly,
00:22:46
Speaker
new cells start to appear that ah they've actually been in there in ah in a somewhat earlier form, but these new cells are called imaginal cells. And these are the ones that are going to form the body of the butterfly.
00:23:03
Speaker
And early ones are killed off by the immune system of the caterpillar, which is still actively ah working. what it won It thinks that these imaginal cells are enemies, foreign bodies, and it you know kills them, like we killed Christ, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, I think we could say John Lennon, maybe.
00:23:26
Speaker
and um But over time, more and more of these imaginal cells start to appear there inside the dying body of the caterpillar inside the chrysalis.
00:23:40
Speaker
Wow. And then they enter a new phase, which is really important, where the little tiny individual imaginal cells start to clump together oh into friendly little groups. And they're all resonating at the same frequency. And they're all passing information from one to the other, like we're doing right now. Wow.
00:24:03
Speaker
little imaginal cell over there. Thank you. a while, these clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together. No way. And pretty soon, you have a long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells. They're inside the dying body of the caterpillar.
00:24:22
Speaker
They're inside the chrysalis. And after a while, it enters a new phase where where all of a sudden, there's this sort of knowing that occurs. Hey, we're something different from the caterpillar.
00:24:41
Speaker
We're something new, something different, something wonderful. And in that realization, in my book it says, is a shout of birth of the butterfly. It still doesn't look like a butterfly, but now at least it it's has the imagination and the the idea that it's something different and something new. so now is new each cell And this is this is the mandate, right, for all of us.
00:25:10
Speaker
Each cell begins to do just that very thing it's most drawn to do. And every other cell encourages it to do just that.
00:25:22
Speaker
And then in my book it says, a great way to organize a butterfly. hu you So, more very recently that led me to write a new book, ah which I would love your help in getting the word out to your audience and to others, um which is called How to Live a Life You Love. How to Live a Life You Love. Wow.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, because I think when you find your true purpose for why you are here on this earth, in this human body, in this lifetime, you're here to do something amazing, each one of us. And everyone who wakes up and realizes it, so my book is basically, it's a how-to manual for how to find and fulfill that purpose and how to live a life you love.
00:26:08
Speaker
And I start out by pointing out to people We are the ones with our thoughts and our emotions, our beliefs. We are the ones who are creating our life. We're not victims of circumstances. We are the active authors of our own lives. So this is the idea that I'm now introducing in my book, which I'm now in the process of figuring out how to get it up on Amazon. Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
how to market it and get reviews and all of that stuff because this is a new a new game for me. Wow, that's incredible. I have to say this butterfly story, and I never heard it. i've I mean, I've heard of the metaphor of a butterfly and and so this makes me understand something in a whole other level. So yeah thank you for that.
00:26:58
Speaker
Sure. I've had people write me and say that they felt very depressed about the state of the world until they read my book. And my book is only, it's under 600 words. Wow.
00:27:09
Speaker
So it's a really quick, simple, simple read. But there are quite a few people who've, have picked up the story and they started you know telling it different ones in their their ways. you know um So it's it's already out around the world quite a bit.
00:27:25
Speaker
What I want to do now is give people the, what we say in English, boots on the ground, how to do it. Yeah. there's There's a really, the story of how I came to discover the metaphor is pretty amazing, actually. It's a series of miracles.
Children's Book and Serendipity
00:27:42
Speaker
I really think all of us, when we when we move into doing our life's work, our finding and fulfilling our life's purpose, the universe has our back. that I love that. And all of a sudden things show up you could never have dreamed of. That was important. I'm sure you've found this too. Over and over again. Like synchronicities.
00:28:08
Speaker
It's as hard that to win the lottery and then you have one after the other. Exactly, that kind of thing. Well, what happened ah in this particular period was that and around 1981, I ah got a visit ah from a a retired ambassador, and ah a man named Ambassador McDonald. He was retired, and he came to he said he had come to visit me because he had heard me giving talks about the the anti-nuclear position and about peace and how to make a better world. And that he was very impressed with how I you know described i talked about these things. It was very inspiring. And he said, I had six flags made. They're very special flags.
00:29:01
Speaker
I gave one of them to the Pope in Rome. I gave one of them to the Dalai Lama and I have one for you here. And he opened up his his briefcase and he handed me this flag. So we opened it out together because it's pretty big. I have it here in Ecuador. um And he he it was a white background.
00:29:25
Speaker
and maybe five feet wide and maybe three two and a half, three three feet ah wide, you know like a flag. And it had almost 6,000 black dots on it that were organized in rectangles on the flag. And then right in the middle, there was a blank area where a rectangle would have fit and just one black dot in the middle.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I looked at it and I said, how interesting. I said, what's what's the story with the one dot in the middle? He said, that dot represents all of the firepower used in World War i including the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
00:30:11
Speaker
And he said, and all the other dots on the flag, almost 6,000 of them, represent all of the firepower we have today 1981.
00:30:23
Speaker
that on the earth. And it was like, oh my God, i had I had studied this issue, but I had no idea we had that much firepower. Now it's even more.
00:30:33
Speaker
so that you know I looked at that and and I was stunned. I was just, i was and shortly after that, he left and I took the flag into my bedroom and I laid it out on the carpet and I spent the next three days walking around, just looking at that flag and just in a state of shock.
00:30:57
Speaker
And the kind of the core thinking was humanity has created all these weapons because we are so terrified of something and of each other, maybe we've had traumas. You know, I don't know what all these are, but what we must- In the past, we were also scared of nature. Like 100, 200 years ago, nature was- kind of hostile environment for many people. That's a good point too. um i I don't think I thought about nature because I was felt so comfortable. Yeah, me too, but not everyone. yeah But I think you're right, you know. ah
00:31:37
Speaker
So I looked at the flag, I kept looking, at and I said, what humanity must do is we must find a way where we can bring in the power of love so that it's stronger than the power of fear and reorganize ourselves based on the power of love rather than fear.
00:32:01
Speaker
And sometime on the third day in the afternoon, i I just had to take a break from looking at the flag. And and ah and ah and I took a walk.
00:32:12
Speaker
um And there was near where I was living, there was a a a piece of an area of woods that had been left and ah a creek. So I walked down this path through the woods along the creek. Maybe it was about a mile, mile and a half. And then when I turned around and I was coming back,
00:32:31
Speaker
I noticed that on the ground, not far from the creek, there was a ah damp patch and hovering over the damp patch and i actually alighting on it were a number of little tiny butterflies. Maybe they looked a little bit like monarch butterflies, but in miniature, maybe an inch across.
00:32:53
Speaker
one And i knelt down and I looked at them and they look so beautiful and so peaceful. And I had the thought, humanity has to transform every bit as much as when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
00:33:09
Speaker
So I was giving speeches at the time and I started incorporating that into the speech and I would show people the flag you know, and tell the story. One day i was giving a talk to about 2,000 people and I was up on the stage and ah while I'm saying humanity has to transform every bit as much as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, suddenly I had this thought come into my head really strong.
00:33:35
Speaker
Hey, I wonder how the caterpillar butterfly does it. I bet we can learn from that. I almost said, hey, I've got to go now. I've got to go. I've got something I've got to do.
00:33:48
Speaker
But I kept my cool, took a deep breath, finished my talk, and then I started off the stage. And as I'm coming down off the stage, that maybe a dozen people had come up to talk to me.
00:34:01
Speaker
And I blurted out, because I'm kind of a big kid, and I blurted out, hey, i wonder how the caterpillar butterfly does it. I bet we can learn from that. And one people who had come up said, well, that's exactly why I came up to talk to you, Nori, because i thought you would want to know. that there's a, when the, I don't know all the steps, but that that I, what I do know is that when the caterpillar goes into chrysalis, there start to appear cells that have never been there before that are called imaginal cells.
00:34:33
Speaker
And I said, oh my God, that's amazing. And he says, I don't know the rest of it, but that's, that's the start of it. And I said, thank you. I really wish I knew who that was because I'd love to thank you from the heart again. So over the next three years,
00:34:50
Speaker
um I was, you know, i I ran into more entomologists, people who are experts in insects, than I had ever met in my life. And each one of them carried the next piece of the story.
00:35:05
Speaker
Those were my serendipitous meetings that gave me the story. And then after I'd gotten it all pieced together, i met a lepidopterist who is an expert in butterflies. And i remember that was in St. Augustine. And ah I was going to be giving a workshop there. And I said, oh, well maybe you can tell me, is this correct? Yeah.
00:35:28
Speaker
said, yeah, that's pretty much it. And ah somewhere around that time, I also went to Japan and I met a physicist there and he had one of the very first hybrid cars. And and he I remember he looked it up in the encyclopedia and he found in the Japanese ah japanese encyclopedia, it it talked he said that that seemed to be ah about the process that they understood so far.
00:35:51
Speaker
Now, so then, there's more that's been discovered. And I know that... um you know But my my book is really sort of a poetic description of this. it's um it's really and and I wrote it. Actually, what happened was I was also in St. Augustine visiting with a couple who were very close friends who were imaginal cells. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:36:16
Speaker
ah One morning I came out from where I was in sleeping in the the bedroom where I was, and I came out and my friend Gail was sorting through her mail, and she looked up at me and she said, I've been thinking, Nori, that story you tell about the caterpillar butterfly, that would make a great children's book.
00:36:35
Speaker
And I went, oh, you're right. I'll do it. Yeah. turned around and I walked back into the bedroom and I have a writing prayer i do before I write. I got started doing that when ah I was working on my second book about the bicycle trip across the United States. And and so anyway, I said, ah the prayer goes like this. and And I really recommend this. If you're doing any writing or any producing of anything, it's a great prayer. You can modify it.
00:37:07
Speaker
God's wisdom writes this book through me. My intellect is illuminated. I write a book that blesses, inspires, and helps all beings in the infinite universe.
00:37:20
Speaker
And then I say thank you, and I just feel gratitude fully. And when you feel gratitude and say thank you, it's like plugging into the cosmic socket.
00:37:31
Speaker
I love that. And the book wrote itself in the next 45 minutes, and I barely had to edit anything. And I'd never told the story like that before. And then I came out and I said to my friend Gail, well, she's written.
00:37:47
Speaker
And then I walked over to a painting that my Gail had on the wall, and i as I walked over, I said, she's written, but she wants to be illustrated. Yeah. Gail looked up at me and saw that I was looking at this painting. It was a watercolor. And she said, she's a local artist, you know. And I said, well, if she wants it, she's got the job.
00:38:09
Speaker
and i was meeting the next day. So we called her up and went over to see her that afternoon. And Charlene, the the artist, took one we we took one look at each other and we both started laughing and gave each other a big hug. no words needed.
00:38:25
Speaker
No words needed. And then she said, well, tell me what you envision for the pictures. And so I told her for nine months, she couldn't do any butterfly pictures. She could only do caterpillar.
00:38:36
Speaker
And then ah some things happened. She had a major breakthrough in her life, a big, big, big breakthrough. And she finished the pictures and of butterflies in 10 days. Oh, wow.
00:38:50
Speaker
Nice. And that's now the cover of the book, right? Well, the book has 18 color plates. Oh, wow. And there's the cover and the color. But I'll send you a digital copy of it. Oh, I can order it. So it's a kid's book or it's as much a kid's book as an adult's book? Children of all ages. Oh, wow. I love that. That counts me in.
00:39:11
Speaker
No, it's for the child in each of us. And and it... um It basically says a butterfly is the myth for our times, using the idea of the myth being the overarching story that humanity tells about itself. Hmm.
00:39:27
Speaker
So... That's beautiful. And yeah, there's so much I want to unpack a few things that I want to dive in deeper with the limited time that we have. So i have to pick one.
00:39:38
Speaker
But um so let's, there's two things and we we might have the analogy and and responded in the same way. But so I want to talk more about the imaginal cells in the world today. And and I also know and understand when when change happens, you actually only need 10%. of the population to to start doing something or adapting something and then boom, it it goes very fast to... And I have a feeling that it's the same with the imaginal cells when 10% of them are or some clusters have formed them very fast, the the next step or the next, or the butterfly actually gets started.
00:40:15
Speaker
I've heard actually that when you're introduce when I was in the Peace Corps, that we were told that when you introduce 5% change into a community, a small community, then the change becomes much, much, much easier because you've loosened up the fixed thinking that people have.
00:40:36
Speaker
This is the way things are. And so people are more open-minded. so um And you know interestingly, um I've been ah having conversations and participating in various things with my Japanese friends because I lived there four years. And last spring equinox,
00:40:56
Speaker
they um last spring equinox for it would be it would be the fall equinox here in Ecuador. um They had me do a meditation. I suggested to them that we meditate together and that we focus love and blessings and opening of the mind and transformation to the super, super wealthy, powerful people on the planet. Because we really need to reach those people so that they can understand there's a much better way
00:41:30
Speaker
to live, and they don't have to be like the caterpillar gobbling up all the resources and paying other people to gobble up the resources and then taking as much of it ah much of the money and resources as they can, because it's destroying the earth.
00:41:47
Speaker
And that it's that now they can play a much more fun, much more interesting role by becoming imaginal cells and doing what they're able to do and with all the resources they have.
00:42:01
Speaker
and they'll be able to make an incredibly beautiful contribution. So I've been asking ChatGPT what are the best ways to invite them to do this, and we did this meditation. I have a a book I want to write that's called The Billionaire's Club, where I've got this whole story I've been developing for a long time about that. Wow.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, you know, there's… We'll write it together. I'm happy to contribute. Because I think it's a very, very important topic to bring up. And and so, in the world we're living today, it's very easy to to start blaming people. If you watch the news, the rich people, this, and politics, that, and money is the root of all evil.
00:42:42
Speaker
And actually, i learned um recently also in in a meditation retreat that somebody told me that ah that's so that um money is the root of all evil. That's not actually true. or it's It refers to a phrase from the Bible, but it's not actually correct. Love of money. Yeah, it's the love of It's the love of money that may result in some...
00:43:05
Speaker
um evil or something. So it's true, yes, the attachment of like, oh, I want more money and and that is probably dangerous, but money is just a vehicle, it's a tool, it's an energy, it's it can transform things. it's like Like I was having a discussion with someone who and and I'd love to hear your opinion, like some people, in and I have nothing against permaculture what whatever, but people some people are are stuck in a certain paradigm like when you're doing good for the planet, when you're doing good for um humanity, it should be for free or it should be like NGO work or we shouldn't be making money off it. um
00:43:44
Speaker
And that I just completely disagreed with that because you're blocking yourself to actually move forward and and have impact if you're not working with the people that have money, which is also like that's where we can transform and I was trying to tell this person, like, hey, just imagine if the the people that have good intentions for the planet, if they would be billionaires, how fast would our world change?
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah. And, yeah, it's kind of starstruckers. You couldn't really handle it, and it's fine. um But I love your vision. Like, we need to reach those those very wealthy people that are ready to to to to have an impact, a positive impact in the world. Yeah.
00:44:27
Speaker
ah Well, I believe, you know, um here's another piece that has to do with money that that was a big surprise for me.
Divine Inspiration and a Transformative Lottery
00:44:35
Speaker
um This was in the late 80s. I was up in New York City and a friend of mine who was a handled publishing for ah a well-known ah person invited me to go with him to meet the president of, let's see, it was, I can't remember the name of the publishing house at the moment, but...
00:44:55
Speaker
he Anyway, so I went with him, and had we had a really nice meeting with the president of the publishing house. And about three weeks two weeks later, he sent me the the president of the publishing house sent me a book, The Pathology of Power, Norman Cousins, right?
00:45:11
Speaker
I read the book, and as I'm coming down the homestretch, final page of it, I noticed that I was feeling really frustrated. Mm-hmm. Because it was beautifully written, but it was all about the problem and there was no solution.
00:45:25
Speaker
At that point, i you know I believe so, I have such a strong connection relationship with the infinite because I've been doing doing this connecting since I was a baby. I got down on my knees in my my bedroom where I was reading And i gently tossed the book to one side. I got down on my knees and I went infinite and I said, okay, God.
00:45:52
Speaker
You and I need a conversation. I'm really sick and tired of beautifully written books that only describe the problem. And at that point, I had this sense of this cosmic shrug, kind of like, well, so what?
00:46:08
Speaker
And then I went, oh, okay, I'll play. and I said, and you have to be really specific and clear when you ask for something, okay? So I said, okay, I'll play.
00:46:21
Speaker
Please give me one really good idea that can help humanity realize we've forever turned our back on war, that we're now all working together to keep create ah a planet that is peaceful, healthy, and prosperous, where things are working beautifully, nature's protected.
00:46:44
Speaker
Please make it be an idea that attracts wonderful people to work with, all the resources we need, and please make it be a lot of fun. susan And I had a voice in my head say, the billion-dollar lottery for world peace.
00:47:02
Speaker
And I went, ooh, what's that? And I have to say here, Matt, that I was a perfect messenger because I don't like lotteries. I i think they're regressive, you know? And people who win lotteries so often lose everything again because they don't have the right consciousness. So I said, ooh, what's that? And over the next half hour, i got this absolutely amazing download from for the lottery and how it would work. And it's totally different from any other lottery. We can talk about this another time. Maybe we can collaborate. So it will be an actual lottery and then the profits? a i've what I've gotten since then, it can be done as a lottery and it can also be done as a marketplace.
00:47:44
Speaker
Oh. but ah And maybe the marketplace comes first, and then that leads to the lottery. But there are certain rules for lotteries, and I don't know really much about that. Okay, but let me tell you what happened. So I get this half-hour download, and then I went, God, this is amazing. This is incredible. I would never have thought of anything like this. This is just such an incredible idea. Is there anything else I need to know?
00:48:10
Speaker
And then I had the voice again say, the movie. And the movie is a story of how we created Peace on Earth. And I got the opening sequences up to where the credits are rolled in the movie just as a download.
00:48:23
Speaker
And after that, it needs to be created with other people. Oh, my God. I love that. It's kind of like a science fiction movie. where it probably goes a little bit better, like worse than we are today, but then we find a way to to solve everything.
00:48:38
Speaker
It starts in the future. Because that doesn't exist. It starts in the future. It starts in the future. We've done it. We've created peace on Earth and we've done it in like seven years. well And it's like a group of us are walking across now because, well, I don't want to go into that now because it's too much detail, but I'll tell you, I can tell you later.
00:48:59
Speaker
Here's the next piece that was so amazing. 30 seconds after I got the whole download, the phone rang and it was for me. And it's a friend of it was a friend of mine who's now passed on. He's now working on the other side.
00:49:14
Speaker
and ah And he goes, no but he he was an amazing guy who had literally the Midas touch for money. Everything he touched turned to gold. It was just amazing.
00:49:27
Speaker
At one point, he when i needed I needed to raise money in two weeks to go to the Soviet Union to do citizen diplomacy there, he was standing in front of me going, I've been wanting to help you and haven't known how. Maybe this will help something. And he counted out $2,400 bills paid for my trip.
00:49:47
Speaker
And he didn't even know I was going, you know. But he he was just amazing. I mean, I could tell you stories about him ah that are just mind-blowing. It's John calling me.
00:49:59
Speaker
And he says, Nori, what have you been up to the last half hour? You've been really on my mind. And, ah ah well, I'd like to hear other people talk first so I can get a bandwidth of whether they're going to understand what I'm going to say. And i so ah he so he's saying, what have you been up to the last half hour? you know, you've been really on my mind. And I said, oh, you know me, John, the usual. What have you been up to?
00:50:26
Speaker
So he goes, well, I've decided to sell my business in Canada. And ah his business in Canada was, he was the sole provider for the U.S. and Canada of the machines you find in post offices. And back then, these were not so common, but his was the only company. He was the sole provider. The ones where you put money in and get postage stamps out. Mm-hmm.
00:50:51
Speaker
And I said, well, why are you selling that? I thought it was a good business because it was so he was the only one doing this for the U.S. and Canada. whoa And he said, well, yeah, it's pretty good. It's about $6 million a year profit.
00:51:03
Speaker
And I said, well, why? oh what do you What are you planning to do? And he says, I've gotten my engineer to upgrade the machines to dispense lottery tickets.
00:51:15
Speaker
Exactly. way. And I go, that's really interesting, John. Tell me more. Inside your... new like and I mean, exclamation point, exclamation point above my head, right?
00:51:29
Speaker
And John says, yes, tomorrow afternoon I have a meeting over in Potomac, Maryland with a man who's referred to as Mr. World Lottery. I said, John, that's really interesting. Now let me tell you what I was doing the last half hour before you called.
00:51:46
Speaker
And I told him, he was off the Richter scale. That's an amazing idea. and ah But you need to get your team together because if you don't get your team together, and I introduce you to this guy, he'll take your idea and run with it, but he won't do it at all you the way you want.
00:52:06
Speaker
So ah um I got that I was to put this on hold and then a couple of times when I i just got that I should mention it, as I'm doing here, it has been the the person has had ah you know some really good ideas. i think this is all part of the some of the leverage points where we can transform things pretty rapidly once we have lots and lots of money.
00:52:31
Speaker
that can go into regenerating Earth. I mean, imagine that if you are, you know, you're doing this project in Costa Rica with um maybe 80, 90 hectares.
00:52:42
Speaker
eighty ninety hectares And we have 120 hectares here where we're doing 140 hectares, excuse me, here in Ecuador where we're doing things. But imagine if there were money for doing transformative projects all over the world in areas that are in the deepest trouble right now, how quickly we could change things. And if the money were aligned with supporting those projects,
00:53:11
Speaker
rather than the money aligned with tearing up the earth and digging deeper under the ocean, into the ocean floor yeah and and just the destruction that we're doing now.
00:53:23
Speaker
I think we could we we are at that place now where the imaginal cells can now begin to form the new systems that are the butterfly systems.
00:53:35
Speaker
So that we have, you know, all the new butterfly, because that's the point where the butterfly then now can come out of the out of the chrysalis. Wow, this is incredible. And it's quite crazy. It's as if you can read my mind, because as we have been talking, i I wrote down a few questions that I wanted to ask you, but you've been answering them before I even get the chance to to ask them. So I... i um I wanted to ask you, like and you've pretty much already answered it, but still i want to point it out, is like for all the listeners that are here, for people like me, for people like you, we all want to have ah an impact in the world. We want to do do something good. So my question is, like how did you leverage your impact in your life? And you've already said it, but I still want to...
00:54:24
Speaker
make sure to really understand the depth of it, like how how did you do it? And how can someone who's maybe at the beginning of his journey, ah just like me, figure that out or or really scale it?
00:54:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think that my book, this new book that I want to publish ah as soon as possible, ah How to Live a Life You Love, really is giving all the steps for this. It's the book that I wish I had had. yeah You know, because what I found is that each time I do a project,
00:54:56
Speaker
and then I get the inspiration for the next project, i um I need to go deeper into myself and clean out any garbage, okay? Because the more I go out into the world, the more the more clarity and alignment with the infinite, with God, i need. And so that's a major piece. And then what you keep doing is asking for guidance within.
00:55:23
Speaker
and And then getting inspired actions. And if your energy goes up, go for it. If it doesn't go up, put a pause button on, you know?
00:55:34
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. i yeah say very I feel now as if I'm at the stage really where... I'm about to take another great leap forward working with people like you, I hope, and with others um like Natalia Green and like my friend Yumi Kikuchi in Japan. She's actually in Hawaii now. But to carry out projects that are going to be much bigger.
00:55:59
Speaker
Yeah. Because we we don't have a lot of time.
Business Models for Regeneration
00:56:02
Speaker
we The earth is calling to us. No, yeah, i agree. um That's very clear. And so from your vision, and from your expertise, other than okay, we need to have bigger projects and and do that work and with more people coming together in these clumps and clusters. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's what I wanted to say. Like we're, I also see that probably a lot of people are like thinking like, oh, if I want to work into doing good for the planet, it's just going to be like costing me a lot of money or it's just charity or chaos or some ah and um like philanthropic work, I'll send some money and that's fine.
00:56:43
Speaker
But one what I would love to know more from you is that there there's there's actual business models that can be made in regeneration. And I'd love to hear from you what your perspective is on that. Because we have the charity model, which is money comes in.
00:56:59
Speaker
We spend it on something that does have a good impact, but then it stops right there. And it's also a very fragile system because, in my opinion, and I love NGO work, I love activism, I i deeply admire people that are doing that.
00:57:12
Speaker
but But like I said, I feel that it's a fragile system because it's it's always dependent on on money coming in and more resources coming in. Whereas I feel that if we can apply it in in a regenerative model where you still need money for the initial investment, the initial capital to set it up, but then it becomes a self-generating system, both ecologically, financially, and whatever your goals are. So i I'd love to hear from you. What what is your grand regenerative vision for our planet and how how would it look? Well, I think that this lottery concept, the billion-dollar lottery for world peace, is one piece of it. It really is. It's so creative and amazing.
00:57:57
Speaker
Well, i I give all credit to God because that was a, that was a i did the I did my job. I asked the question. yeah but there But also by creating a marketplace where we create ah a customer loyalty program for products and services that are serving the earth and humanity. i think that's that's the other piece of it. And I drew at one point under very,
00:58:23
Speaker
challenging circumstances, I drew 1,001 butterflies, original butterflies, one every day for 1,001 days, okay? and there's ah There's a whole story behind that too, but um those butterflies now, with with ah numbers added to them, could be ah sources of, I think, a lot of money. We have 20 notebooks filled with my butterflies. You know, there are 50 19 of them, and the 20th has 51. And so interesting, too, Matt, is that when I completed them, the last butterfly was drawn on the Pentecost. And at the time, i was brought up ah what my parents called lapsed Unitarian. And we didn't, you know... um
00:59:12
Speaker
it it was I didn't even know what the Pentecost was. I had to look it up online. But it was the second holiest day in Christendom, in in Christianity. And it's the day when the when the apostles were big and their friends were beginning to lose faith because they hadn't gotten any kind of indication from Jesus who had died 50 days earlier. i guess that was when they he had appeared to people at the the tomb.
00:59:42
Speaker
as an apparition. and um And so this day they all gathered together and they were praying 50 days after the yeah the the resurrection. And they ah had the Holy Spirit come down and they you know restored their faith. And so my butterflies finished, the last one was drawn on the Pentecost, and I had no idea when I started drawing them that that would be the case. Someone pointed it out to me.
01:00:12
Speaker
So I think the butterflies, can they have a job to do. They have ah a role that they're going to play. um There are so many things that we can all do, but I think we right now we need to be looking at leverage points for transformation. And this is the thing I'll send you. i mean, one of them is the Amazon rainforest.
01:00:33
Speaker
yeah which, you know, we're we've been destroying. And that's going to cause major problems, not only in in the Amazon basin, but in many other places, because it's going to reduce the amount of moisture that is causing rain. So other areas are going to, you know, suffer great drought, unless we clean that one up quickly. And I think Polonia, the Polonia tree has a role to play in the reforestation process, along with native trees. Mm-hmm.
01:01:02
Speaker
Also where mining is going on, and that's one of the big reasons, and cat cattle production, introducing polonia trees would help ah absorb the excess CO2 and provide leaf cover, reduce um and more transpiration, which is the moisture coming out of the leaves up into the air. So there's a lot there's a whole lot that needs to happen. That's just one one of the ah points that is under serious, serious attack, and we don't have a long time to to correct that one. So these are all projects that when we the more money we have coming in to solving those problems,
01:01:44
Speaker
the faster that money comes in, the more chance we have to begin to massively regenerate our beautiful Earth, which is, ah as far as we know, it's a unique planet in certainly in our solar system.
01:02:00
Speaker
possibly in our galaxy and possibly in the infinite oneness, you know, because we and we human beings are an amazing species. You know, we're able to communicate like this and we are now reached the point where we can talk around the world and we can organize ourselves in in new ways to do new things together and to redesign systems. I mean, I've been going on chat GPT and asking ChatGPT, you know, how to design a cryptocurrency that's backed by Polonia, Biochar, and eco villages and eco retreats, um and got um amazing answers back saying, Nori, that's a brilliant idea.
01:02:46
Speaker
And here's how to do it. And then right after that, I i was introduced to a guy who is creating a whole new platform for creating cryptocurrencies. Okay. And so I'm, ah so I think that also the billion dollar lottery for world peace could be done partly with a crypto and partly with money, you know, and so there, there are so many ideas and I'm just one person, you know, what We need a lot of us to now start having more interesting, in-depth conversations that lead to action.
01:03:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. And that's that's really good advice. And so even on a deeper level, like knowing that to have real lasting impact, I believe that there has to be a financial model behind it.
01:03:40
Speaker
What do you think will be like the best ways to regenerate the planet and at the same time, make a business model out of it so it it almost becomes like a no brainer for people to do such things?
01:03:53
Speaker
um Well, there there are several things that are already sort of out there some. One of them is the carbon credits. Unfortunately, there's a lot of scamming going on in that where native ah indigenous peoples are being ripped off because there is a lot of money now in the carbon credit market. But I think that the core idea is pretty good, is that you pay for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, people who are putting... But I think we what we need to do is raise consciousness. That's big.
01:04:26
Speaker
yeah And then there's something called ecosystem benefits. you know We have all these different roles that are played. For example, the honeybees that pollinate things. so that you know The rivers and the water, fresh water and...
01:04:42
Speaker
Yeah. We have so many ecosystem services that if we destroy things, yeah we're going to have to do those or they don't get done. No, and it's very expensive.
01:04:53
Speaker
and it And it'll be very, very expensive. So I think the more that we can begin to so install these um these practices where you're paid for doing the right thing. Yeah. Yeah.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. and And I think there is a momentum for that happening. I just want to see it happen a whole lot faster. yeah And I do think that the lottery can help play a major role. Because the do you know the term a ramjet?
01:05:24
Speaker
ramjet, no. A ramjet is like ah ah a jet propelled engine or vehicle where the, it starts out slow and it sucks in oxygen into the back, into the back of it. And the more oxygen it sucks in, the faster it can go, the faster it, and then the faster it goes, the more oxygen it can suck in, the faster it goes. And so it becomes a um it just duplicates itself. it it It gets faster and faster and it does more and more.
01:05:57
Speaker
a lot The lottery is ah is a ramjet for transforming life on Earth. say God does good work. I can't take any credit for the idea. No, but that's that's an incredible practice that I'd love for you to Well, it's not a practice, it's it's a way of living almost, but just enlighten us and my listeners a bit more about how you do that. Like, is there specific things you do? You've been having that since you were a child, um that you have that connection with the cosmic, with God, with infinite source, whatever you want to call it. um
01:06:33
Speaker
Like, how do you how do you cultivate that? Well, you know, i yeah actually it's very simple. You know, if you think about it, My question when I was two and a half was because, well, when I imagined an end, my mind could go past that. So it seemed to me logical that it went on forever because I couldn't find an end. And ah so today that's still the case, you know? And so if it doesn't end, we're one with it and we are of it and it is conscious as we are conscious.
01:07:09
Speaker
And what i found was, and i I've been doing this since I was three days old, okay, because I remember the first time I did it, when I had the casts put on my feet, as I mentioned, and and my lower legs,
01:07:25
Speaker
and They were so heavy, i knew that I couldn't stay awake the way I had the first three two and a half days into the third day because it was so heavy, it was it was and it and it didn't feel good. i just So I went infinite for the first time, day three.
01:07:42
Speaker
After they put the first cast on my right leg, I went infinite, and I said, what is this going to do to me? And what I got was... It's going to cause you a lot of problems, but someday it will get corrected.
01:07:57
Speaker
So I was three days old. And at that point, it was like, oh, okay. At least I knew that someday it would get corrected, okay, and that it would cause me problems. And it did. And it's really true because it all played out. And I, you know, as I say, I'm writing my memoirs because I think I have kind of an interesting story to tell. Oh, yeah. Well, what this is this going infinite is something I tell how to do it. It's very, very simple. You just take ah take a couple of deep breaths and breathe into your heart and then just let it all go. Breathe in again and let your mind just expand outwards in all directions and
01:08:39
Speaker
out and out and take another deep breath. Feel your body sitting on the chair. Take a deep breath and let it all go and expand outward some more with your mind.
01:08:50
Speaker
And there comes a point when you feel the connection and you just feel really good and really peaceful. And in that moment, you can ask. Now, I've gotten so I can do this in a second.
01:09:03
Speaker
That's incredible. So yeah, I actually came out of a meditation retreat, so I can still do it quite easily. Yeah. So you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:15
Speaker
So I just described this in my book, okay, so that anyone can do it. But it does take the discipline of actually taking the doing the deep breathing and and expanding, okay, your mind.
01:09:27
Speaker
But if you do that... it's really, really worth it. Because then you can, i mean, i at one point, when I was 10 years old, I was walking down ah the country road where out where we lived to see a friend who lived about a mile away.
01:09:45
Speaker
and i a pickup truck came barreling down the road toward me just as my dog, who was a boxer, went running off into the woods after a squirrel. So I'm by myself, I'm wearing shorts and a halter top. This pickup truck comes barreling down the road and screeches to a stop across from me.
01:10:05
Speaker
And there were two guys in it, you know, who looked pretty rough. And they jumped out, and one of them was saying something about a blanket in the back of the truck, and I had a really bad feeling in my stomach.
01:10:17
Speaker
And I went infinite. I did my go infinite and ask for help. I screamed for help in my mind. and I knew just what to do. My dog's name was Blitz, okay? And she was a super friendly, wonderful boxer dog, but she looked vicious. And what I did was, ah what I got to do was I called to her, but instead of saying, here Blitz, here Blitz, I said, here Fang, here Fang. Fang are the teeth, you know, like the big teeth that a tiger has or you know, um a um
01:10:56
Speaker
Anyway, and Fang comes running out of the bushes. These two guys look at Fang, looking very vicious to them because of the name, right?
01:11:07
Speaker
They jump back in the pickup truck and take off, you know, and I was okay. I went home. I decided not to continue my my walk, and i called I went home with my dog, And I told my mother, and she started laughing and laughing, and she said, well, Nori, I guess I don't really have to worry about you, do I?
01:11:27
Speaker
Wow. That's an incredible story. I never would have thought of doing that myself. So ah I always give credit to God for everything that I think of, everything that works. That's God. If it doesn't work, that's because I've gotten in the way. yeah that's incredible. Yeah, if you really lean into that and you surrender to that and you trust the process and you just, yeah, it all comes out even yeah way better than you can imagine.
01:11:58
Speaker
young Even in some tougher times, I agree. Nice. And so um i also would love to understand from your career, like how were you able to make a financial living, a model out
Living Modestly as an Activist
01:12:13
Speaker
of it? Like throughout those all years, you you were in activism, book writing, like how how did you go about to to while survive but also thrive in life?
01:12:23
Speaker
and and Because that's what our listeners would love to hear. I think, and me personally, is like, okay, we want to restore and regenerate the planet, but we also want to make an amazing life and have an amazing lifestyle. And I truly believe you can have both, which is a thriving business and doing great for the planet. So over the years, what how have you done it?
01:12:46
Speaker
Well, my my um story is probably different from what you might imagine. I was working in a very good job that was paying me very well in 1970, 71. And late, it was sometime in the fall because the leaves were down. It was probably November late November, I was walking home from work. It was ah about a 10 block walk. And this was, you know, I'd been in Peace Corps 1966 68. So, and we earned only a month.
01:13:21
Speaker
And ah so i was I had just bought my first big purchase, which was a stereo. And it was not even an expensive one, but it was nice for me. And I was thinking of other things to buy. And this particular afternoon, I'm walking home after work, and I felt really antsy, uncomfortable. Like, you know how you feel if you hear someone scratching their fingernails down a blackboard? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:13:49
Speaker
All the way home, but it was like that. And I'm going, what's going on? So I get to my apartment, which is a third floor walk up. And I threw myself into a big overstuffed chair in the living room. And I went infinite. And i again, I said, okay, God, you and I need a conversation.
01:14:06
Speaker
I don't like feeling like this. And i know that you know why I'm feeling like this. And I want you to know I'm sitting here in this chair until you tell me.
01:14:18
Speaker
I love your your attitude towards meditation. and Well, it's more it's more like god is God has got a great sense of humor. I mean, oh, my God. It's it's it's an amazing. you need We really can begin to talk with God ah as our best friend because God is our best friend, really. Yeah.
01:14:37
Speaker
And so anyway, it took about 15 minutes this time because i was ah it was a really, really big change that I was going to be called to do. And a all of a sudden, boom! It was like a ton of bricks landing on the top of my head from the 23rd story, you know, i was that I was getting addicted to the steady paycheck.
01:15:01
Speaker
And if I got addicted to the steady paycheck, I might forget who I am and what I came here to this earth to do. Mm-hmm. And then the next thought was, oh, my God, I've got to quit my job. No, I've got to retire and only do what makes absolute sense to me for the rest of my life.
01:15:23
Speaker
So then at that point, predictably, the voice of fear goes, but you'll starve. Yeah. the more rational voice was, no, you won't starve. you You have all kinds of skills you can get paid for. You know, you can type fast, you can walk dogs, you're a really good babysitter. There are all these things you know how to do while you figure out what it is that you're here to do on this earth. And, um and you can, you, you will, um you won't starve. You'll do okay.
01:15:56
Speaker
Well, The next day I walked in and I told my boss, and I was 25, and I looked about 15, and i said, um i'm I'm retiring. And he looked like, what?
01:16:11
Speaker
And I explained, and he nearly cried. And I realized he had gotten addicted, and he had never cut free, never found who he really was and what he was here on earth to do, and how sad.
01:16:26
Speaker
I probably quit my job too around that age. Really? No, it was a bit later, like 27 maybe. Well, by 27, I had been given a scholarship to go to Japan.
01:16:41
Speaker
And i ah I actually, at the time, I'd been studying Chinese and I wanted to go to China and see what Mao Zedong was doing, because he was in power at that time. and when i But when I was in Japan, I was so shocked by the pollution.
01:16:57
Speaker
Again, this is my this is my first cosmic assignment, really, after retiring. I remember standing there and thinking, I'm a relatively well-educated person. I mean, I went to an Ivy League school and I've, you know, I know a lot of, have a lot of information, but I have known nothing about Japan except, you know, that it beautiful gardens and amazing food displays and geisha girls and blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm.
01:17:26
Speaker
and and someone needs to write a book about this to tell the world about this horrible, horrible pollution problem. And I had the feeling of the finger of God going like this, pointing at my nose, and I immediately went into excuses. But I don't speak Japanese. I really don't know much about the pollution issue, and i i certainly don't know anything about it in Japan, and I've never written a book before And then i got had the voice, yes, but you've got child's eyes and you will get the job done.
01:18:05
Speaker
And I said, oh, okay. So that's the book that is now coming out. has come out. We've just republished it, my co-author and I, and it is ah the 50th anniversary edition of of our book that is more relevant today really than it was back then because it shows what happened in Spaceship Japan and now we have to handle Spaceship Earth.
01:18:36
Speaker
So I feel sort of as if my life has this sort of interesting trajectory where I started that, I started, you know, learned about pollution when I was five with the trees getting cut down and then going to Japan and getting this ah cosmic assignment to write this book.
01:18:55
Speaker
And now it's coming out 50 years later, and in the meantime we won the first lawsuit in Ecuador and in the world defending the rights of nature. But, you know, really it's got to be transforming the monetary system, as you said, totally, human consciousness, and coming together to redesign human systems so that we regenerate the earth and we heal humanity.
01:19:21
Speaker
So that we can, I like to think of it as humanity, we want to create, ah have humanity be firing on all cylinders. In other words, ah like've I've defined it as super health.
01:19:36
Speaker
yeah If you can, and where super health is the full development, alignment and integration of the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical aspects of self. And that if we declare that as a vision, a goal for humanity, like put a man on the moon and bring him back safely within the decade, super health in one generation, we can turn things around very quickly. Wow, that's very, very, very powerful.
01:20:05
Speaker
Yeah. And it all comes together in that holistic approach is like, oh, let's just stop the pollution and then then we'll start regenerating and then we'll, no, it's all together in one big thing. And yeah I understand this well when you when you work harder on yourself than on your business or what you want to achieve,
01:20:27
Speaker
you actually achieve more. like There's this saying, work more on yourself than on your business. I could say like you should work more on yourself than on the planet or the climate because when you work on yourself, what you've been doing naturally since you were born is they're connecting with with spirit guidance or guidance from God.
01:20:49
Speaker
then all these beautiful things come into your path and and and then you get all the gifts and and probably taking yeah taking action. What I've understood from your story is like, okay, you were unhappy, you quit your job, that's an action. And then you decide to move to Japan at very young age. There's all these action steps. is like Because God will only grant the the success or grant the Whatever you're here to do, that could be success. It doesn't have to be monetary or business or whatever. You define as your personal success.
01:21:24
Speaker
God will only give that to you if you if you prove yourself to be worthy. Do your inner work. You've got to do your do your inner homework. What I realized was the more I go out into the world...
01:21:37
Speaker
as a public figure, the the more I have to go into myself to clean out the garbage. yeah well well I should add here though, one thing is that for about 40 years or so, I lived on $1,000 a year because i made a covenant with God back when I was 13 years old, that I only wanted a lot of money when I could find a way, when I had clean consciousness, and when I could find a way that everyone
01:22:09
Speaker
could have clean consciousness and a lot of money too. So I tied my my situation, my life to everyone, okay? And it was only a few years ago that I wrote a new covenant with God. I'm ready.
01:22:25
Speaker
I see the way now that we can do this. and I'm ready to be to have a lot of money coming in. And everything started changing when I did that, okay? And I should say also that when I was in Japan, I got really, really famous.
01:22:41
Speaker
But it was because of my simple living and because I you know i was making good money um And actually, when I got famous, I was making really good money, but that helped to pay for the bicycle trip across the United States and did you know other things.
01:22:57
Speaker
And um yeah then after that, I always had enough to do what I needed to do. i mean, i made the money for... ah The Butterfly Book, which I self-published in a beautiful edition um by helping to introduce Xerox machines, playing a pivotal role introducing Xerox machines into the former Soviet Union in 1989.
01:23:19
Speaker
And that ah it was kind of a butterfly action, I thought. Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. yeah Well, Nori, I have the feeling that we could keep talking for hours and hours.
01:23:31
Speaker
um I do want to start wrapping it up. yeah and And I have to say you've been the most amazing guest for me as a host. It's very easy to interview you because you seem to answer my questions before I have the chance to ask you the question. It's very, very cool experience. So um thank you for that. It's as if you can already read my mind. I think we do read each other's minds. We really we are connected. ah We're part of an infinite oneness, and that is a natural state to be mentally, psychically connected.
01:24:07
Speaker
It's only when the that it gets jammed with too much noise that we can't do that. No, I agree. And so my final question to you is like, what is your final piece of advice for people that are maybe hesitating, maybe that already have started to work in regeneration or feel the calling to do it, but they have their fear, their doubts, just like the the apostles didn't believe in Jesus anymore. Like what, what did, what is your best piece of advice for people in, in that sort of a situation?
01:24:39
Speaker
Well, I think that but one of the questions that I ask people, and I started asking myself this um really but when I retired 25, I started imagining, so i but i what I say to people is imagine that you're standing at the end of your life and you're about to go on to the next great adventure that is after death.
Envisioning Legacy and Achievements
01:25:03
Speaker
And you know that you're here forever in some form in this infinite eternal oneness. Because it's all one. So, and you're, as you stand in this final moment, these final moments where you're about to go on to the next adventure, you feel profoundly at peace, deeply satisfied.
01:25:26
Speaker
You did it You became the person you always wanted to become, and you did what you came here to this earth to do.
01:25:36
Speaker
What does it look like? Wow. yeah because and keep Yeah, and ask it regularly. Because one of the things that happens, and I know that you've discovered this too, Matt, is that the more you do, the more you're empowering yourself to go even further and do even more.
01:25:54
Speaker
And life is so amazing. When you start on that path and you realize that who what I am right now, I'm only doing a tiny part of what I'm going to be doing a year from now or two years from now. And to make it really fun, find the things you love to do, what lights up your energy.
01:26:17
Speaker
What do people come and ask you advice about? you know and And look for what gives you joy. you know I've designed this thing, we didn't get into this at all today, but it's called the best game on earth. And I have a TEDx talk that I think you saw. oh yeah, definitely. It introduces the best game on earth and talks a little bit about the butterfly book.
01:26:37
Speaker
But um the the best game on earth is a game that I started designing for myself and just to introduce.
Game Introduction and TEDx Talk
01:26:44
Speaker
It's been introduced on four continents. And it's's ah we can maybe post on your podcast the the goal and the rules of the game. Mm-hmm.
01:26:55
Speaker
I'd say go to the TEDxTalk. You can just put my name, Nori Huddle. Well, the TED Talk is amazing, and I highly recommend to for the listeners to go and check that out.
Pursuing Dreams and Resources
01:27:05
Speaker
and And so, yeah, you've given so much great advice. Anything else you would like to say before we start wrapping it up?
01:27:12
Speaker
Whatever you can do or dream you can, do it. Oh, I love that. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. And do it now. And that's a quote from Goethe. If people want to get in touch with you, they they want to know more about your work, what are the best links, and where can people find you? You can find some of some stuff, some of my coaching ah it and there was some basic information at norihuddle.earth.
01:27:41
Speaker
earth Perfect. Yeah. So then we'll add that in the show notes. And then, yeah, if you just Google Nori's name, you'll find a bunch of resources and books. Definitely worth diving into deeper.
01:27:52
Speaker
Well, Nori, I'm thanking you from the bottom of my heart to for you to come onto the show. It's been a huge honor to have someone as powerful as you to come on here and spread your knowledge. is It really means a lot to me. So, yeah thank you very much for coming.
01:28:10
Speaker
I look forward to playing together. Yeah, let's do it. Love it. Let's have let's have fun and let's help heal the earth and humanity rapidly, as yeah quickly as we can, so we can get on to other things. Exactly.