TRANSCRIPT
Here I am outside in upstate New York. There’s a bird or a chipmunk screaming in the background. All this beautiful sound around me, wind a little bit, and the sun has just come up over the trees behind the camera. It’s shining in my face, and it’s a reminder that I’m alive. It’s a reminder that we’re all alive. It’s a reminder that life, no matter how screwed up it seems—know how screwed up I feel sometimes—and the world might seem, and how screwed up everything is, and destruction, and environmental catastrophe, and economic collapse, and pandemic—that the world is still beautiful. The sun is still shining, and at night the moon still comes up every night. And here we are on this planet, alive, with this wonderful opportunity. I remember as a child looking up at the sky and having the sun in my face like it’s in my face right now, and thinking that sun is going to be here longer than I’m alive. The moon will come up long after I’m gone. If I ever have children, it’ll be here long after they’re gone. The sun will come up long after they’re gone, and their children, and their children’s children are gone. In part, it was a little scary to think I’m just here for a time-limited existence—that actually all of humanity is just here for a short while in the greater scheme of things. A couple million years on Earth, anything resembling humanity, maybe a few thousand more if we’re lucky, considering the way we’re going. And I think at some level everybody knows this. Everybody knows that we’re just here for time-limited ways. I think people come up with fantasies sometimes that there’s this fantastic afterlife and that our self and our consciousness lives forever. I don’t think I really believe that. I think that some way our soul is connected to the energy of all things, and that does live forever. But our consciousness, our bodies, it goes away. Our consciousness can live on in our legacy through the people we’ve touched, through the people we’ve shared with, through the inspiration we’ve created in others, through the maturity we’ve gained, through the kindnesses and generosities that we’ve shared with the world. Sadly, through the traumas that we’ve committed on others, that’s part of the legacy of so many people—the traumas they’ve committed on their children. Harmed them, their children become stunted. That becomes the legacy, I think, in many ways of the average person—more just the traumas they’ve committed on others, the traumas we’ve committed on the planet, the screwed-up things that we’ve done. But in a way, it’s all just time-limited. Humanity’s only here for a thousand years more, a million years more, but this sun’s going to be coming up for a billion years more, long after we’re gone, perhaps after all life is gone. We don’t know. And I remember as a kid thinking all these—these are not the most complex thoughts. I think this is a basic understanding of reality that even a child can get. And then there was a part of me that just felt so sad about that. So sad that I’m not going to live forever, that humanity’s not going to live forever, that the trees won’t live forever. Yes, they’ll evolve into something else. Hopefully, humanity will evolve into something better. But that sad feeling of loss—that it’s not here forever despite the beauty of it. But then there was another part of me that felt something different, and later came to also analyze the part of me that felt so sad. There was a part of me that felt hope because what it was, was it was a reminder to me, both when there was the sun in my face and the moon shining its reflected light on me, that this is my chance to live. This is my only chance to live. This is my chance to grow and develop and become free and become honest. And I loved that it gave me hope. Yeah, it was a little scary to think this is my one chance, but it was also like this is my one chance, so I wish to make the most of it. And that’s what I’ve been doing with my life. That induces me to take more risk, to take smarter risks, healthy risks, to go for it, to confront my parents, to get away from them when I realize they’re hurting me. And that is also why I felt so sad when I realized I’m not going to live forever because there was a part of me that thought how unfair this world is—that I’m a child being traumatized in my family, that I can’t live up to my full potential because my parents aren’t allowing me to do that. My school isn’t allowing me to do that. My society isn’t allowing me to do that. I should be happy and thriving and free, and in so many ways I’m not. And it broke my heart to realize that. And also to realize that I couldn’t buy into what so many people who were religious around me told me—don’t worry, accept this miserable reality that you live in. Accept your parents and forgive them because if you’re a good boy, Daniel, God will know that you will be forgiven. You will live in heaven forever, in eternity. But if you don’t do this, you will live in hell for eternity. Well, I didn’t buy it. I didn’t buy that you go to hell forever or you go to heaven forever. What I felt, even deep down as a child, was hell was the existence of being traumatized, of living around traumatizing people who couldn’t let you be free. Hell was being dissociated and not having your feelings, not being allowed to tell the truth, live the truth, be the truth, be inspired, be free, and be passionate. And heaven was being untraumatized, being honest, being true, being real, being creative, living in the real present. But people told me, “Oh Daniel, live in the present tense, don’t talk about the past.” I’m like, those people weren’t living in the present tense. They were just faking it. They were dissociated. They were saying, “I live in the present tense, I’m here and I’m in the now.” They weren’t in the now. They were in the nowhere. I didn’t want that. Those people were living for something that was a fantasy that would never come true. Well, for me now, with the sun on my face giving me a little bit of a burn on these white spots that I’ve developed on my face, well, seeing myself getting older all these decades later, it’s the same sun and it’s the same me, but an older body. That much more experienced, a little bit bigger, a little bit fatter, a little bit more weather-worn, a little bit more broken down. But I think a lot smarter, a lot more real, a lot more healthy, a lot more loving. It’s the same me, and I’m happier now because I’m more true. I’m more manifested. I think I’m preparing myself to give more of a real legacy to humanity, to existence. I love myself more now. I fight for myself more now. I fight for the truth in others more. I fight for truth with a capital T more now. I believe in objective reality more now than ever. When I was younger, I was still susceptible to the manipulations of very, very screwed-up people around me. I wanted to believe their fantasies. I wanted to dissociate because I had so much pain. I had so much pain ahead of me also if I was ever to heal. Well, I’ve been through so much pain. To a large degree, I’ve come out the other side. And what is the other side? To be self-actualized, to be more really confident, to be more honest, to have more of a voice. And so as I sit here out in the countryside at the edge of a forest with the sun over the trees in my face burning me a little bit, reminding me, okay, I better cut this shorter, I’m going to get all red-faced. And if I come to record again tomorrow, I’ll be all burned up. What I think ultimately is that I’m grateful to be connected with reality. I’m grateful to know what the sun is, to know that we’re spinning around it and that it’s not spinning around us, that I’m not the center of the universe, but that I love myself anyways. That yes, I am in many ways the center of my own life. My true self is the center of my existence, but that true self is connected to…
Everything, the energy for my true self, ultimately comes from that star that’s shining its light in my face. That the molten core at the center of this planet, known as Earth, this molten core of melted iron, comes from the heat of that star out there. All these plants are all growing from the energy of this sun that my body, which is 98 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever it is in Celsius, 37 degrees Celsius, it’s ultimately heated by that star there.
And that I’m connected to everything, and that everything is connected to me. And that if I grow and change and heal and work out my traumas and become a more self-actualized, real, and honest person, that I contribute to everything because everything is connected with me. And that’s not woo and spiritual, that’s just reality. We’re all connected.
And when I reach someone through this video, when someone realizes something new about themself, when someone looks in themselves and realizes that they also, like me and like everyone, has a molten core, and that the crust of trauma over the planet of ourselves can be peeled away when we can connect with the truth that’s bubbling up within us, like a beautiful hot spring. Which is why I love hot springs all around the world, heated by the molten core of the earth. They’re like the true expressions of reality that come out of me. Those are like the hot springs of my soul.
And that I realize and that I want to share, and that I hope that people can hear that everybody has that. Everybody is perfect on the inside. We all get screwed up and perverted and messed up by traumas to the degree that we get traumatized, often, right in our family of origin. But that we can all connect with the molten core of truth within us. We can all manifest beauty. We can all be inspired human beings who have the capacity to know truth, to live truth, to share truth with others, to inspire others, and to live with purpose in our short little existences on earth.