Give Meaning to Life with John Graham

You can plan for danger and still be stunned by what saves you. I’m joined by John Graham, a Vietnam veteran and former US Foreign Service officer, to talk about the moments that cracked his worldview open: repeated near-death escapes, PTSD, and an uneasy question that wouldn’t let go. John takes us from war zones and revolutions to trance meditation, out-of-body experiences, and a vivid encounter with a white light that reframed what “reality” even means. 

We get specific about the practices and the pressure points: a skeptical first step into the Inner Peace Movement, strange nighttime “smoke” visions, learning meditation, and then the terrifying sensation of letting go into a deeper trance. John shares the experience that forced him to decide whether he was losing his mind or discovering a larger field of consciousness. He also tells the story of a sudden healing that became his personal proof that something was listening, and how those experiences reshaped his morality, his ethics, and his capacity for compassion. 

Then we bring it back to the real world. John explains how he lived a double life while working at the United Nations and later planning nuclear war for NATO, why he eventually quit, and how a cruise ship fire off Alaska became a life-or-death reckoning with purpose. From there, we talk about service as a grounded spiritual path through the Giraffe Heroes Project, his short-form series Badass Grandad, and his practical framework for finding meaning: strategy first, tactics second. We also mention his memoir, Quest: Risk, Adventure and the Search for Meaning. 

If you care about spirituality, life purpose, mysticism, ethical leadership, and how to turn courage into action, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s searching, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway: what gives your life meaning right now?

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🎼Music Credit 🎶 - 

Intro: Light of the North by Kalya Scintilla

Outro: John by Chakuna Machi Asa

Transcript

Welcome To Rainbows Rising

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Rainbows Rising, where we ascend together. I'm Rainbow Raja, and today I have John Graham on the show, and he is gonna help us explore the different planes of reality that we all um only get little snippets of here and there. This entire season is all about the different realms of reality. And luckily, John has an extensive background all the way back into the 70s about the different realms, and I would love to dive in and understand how he has gotten himself involved and how it shaped his journey. Welcome, John.

Surviving Violence And Asking Why

SPEAKER_03 1:07

I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Thank you so much for coming. So tell me, John, how long have you considered yourself like spiritually attuned?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

It all started for me in the mid-70s, um, but there were plenty of signs before that. My whole first half of my life, I'm now 83, so getting old as dirt, but uh the whole first half of my life was one violent adventure after the other. And I kept walking away from them all. And after a time, I began to ask that classic question: why me? Why do I keep walking away from stuff that should have killed me and did in fact kill a lot of other people? I mean, we're talking about wars and revolutions and stuff. I was a real adrenaline junkie. We could talk about some of those stories if you'd like, because they shaped a whole part of my life. But I think that the first inkling, and believe me, that's all it was, was just a questioning. I mean, I I'd have a close call. I'd be lying there on the ground with a bullet having just missed, or a rockfall having just missed, or a drowning not quite happening. And I think, well, why am I alive? I mean, why am I alive? And I kept wondering about that until finally I didn't I I I uh after after a time in the war in Vietnam and I came back messed up with a lot of what we now call PTSD, I began to uh look at a lot of alternative stuff in my life. Uh and one of them was uh transmeditation. And from there, from transmeditation, I I spent a lot of time uh um in uh for want of a better word. I use the word mystical pursuits because people sort of understand what that means. And I I did that, and it was really important. It was important to me, and it was important in shaping my life because out of body I could see that I really was part of a one in this. I use maybe you do too, I use a lot of metaphors, none of them are accurate than that. And that's when I came back, I could see that that had to shape my morality, my ethics. If in fact I was part of everything, uh then when I faced an enemy, for example, which I did a lot of, I had to look at that enemy or that that trial or whatever in a whole new light. Um, but in the beginning, again it's a long answer to your question. In the beginning, it was it was way off in left field. It was just this vague, annoying, vague, annoying question that went on for ten years as to why I was alive, why I was being spared. I was being spared for something, which meant that there was a higher power. I mean, logically, I mean I have degrees from Harvard and Stanford. A lot of uh I'm very much in my head. Uh so I I kept wondering why. Because if I'm being spared for something and a higher power is doing that, then I better know what that higher power is. Otherwise, I'm living an incomplete life. I'm gonna shut up now, but that's that's the beginning of my answer to your question.

Vietnam Aftermath And First Seeking

SPEAKER_01 4:07

No, I love that because I I mean, I'm sure a lot of the the listeners can relate. I know I sure do, because I've been through so many things in my life where I'm like, I definitely should have died. Just a couple years ago, a 150-foot cedar tree fell on my bedroom while I was laying in my bed, and the firefighters had no idea how I survived. I'm so grateful to have survived that. But that's just like literally like one out of hundreds of situations where I have been placed somewhere where something happened. I should not be here. And I think that the fact that you have recognized so early, like it was back in the 70s so early, that there was something, something driving the trajectory of your life, that there was something greater than yourself, and that you were able to tap into that vast, infinite pool of consciousness where you are feeling so minuscule in the sea of all that is. What practices brought you to that that realization, that that connection point?

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Yeah, it was crazy. I uh, like I said, I come back from Vietnam and uh my next poaching, I ended up a few years later as a U.S. Foreign Service officer working at the United Nations. It was a great job, and uh, and it was a one that allowed me to start doing a lot of good in the world instead of a lot of bad. I used the same skills that made me so good at handling wars and revolutions, and I was able to use those skills uh to help uh generate progress on a lot of peace and justice issues on global issues at the United Nations. Anyway, I I so I thank you for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Thank you. Thank you for applying your gifts in a good way.

A Guru In A Bowling Shirt

Smoke Visions And Meditation Training

Out Of Body Into White Light

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Well, I did. I'm very I'm proud of the fact that that uh because of what I did, I I I was able to do a lot of good. In fact, I'm uh uh I I did a lot uh that contributed to the end of apartheid in South Africa, and I took great risks to do that. Uh and I can we can talk about that later if you wish, but I I took I took all kinds of risks, mostly risks in my career, but sometimes risk of being jailed to work on peace and justice issues in ways that my own masters in the State Department didn't want me to do. Anyway, I mean to answer your question, what prompted it? I'm sitting there again with all this discomfort about what the hell's happening with my life. These things keep happening with my life. My life is now this is now mid-70s. Well yeah, about mid-70s. Uh and uh what am I why is all this happening to me? And my my then wife, my first wife, heard a radio announcement. So we were then living in uh Northern Virginia, okay? She heard a radio announcement from a group called the Inner Peace Movement, um, and uh it had a guru guru named Francisca, and I thought, oh, you've got to be kidding. That's ridiculous. Nonetheless, um I I was at my wit's end, so I I go with my first wife to this lecture at a holiday inn in Arlington, Virginia. And there's this guy, he's a fat Puerto Rican guy in a bowling shirt. I mean, he looks as much unlike a guru as you could possibly imagine. So he goes on to talking about the fact that you really don't need any intermediaries, you don't need priests or rabbis or or imams or anything like that, that you can have a direct, a direct connection to what you might call God, a direct connection to the all that is, whatever. And it will change your life almost like sticking your fingers in a light socket. Uh, you can have a direct connection. And I said, I was full of doubts, of course. So he does a demonstration. He has one of his team sit in a chair, and she goes into uh deep meditation, and then she goes into what seems to be some kind of trance, and she's a you know a hundred and thirty-pound woman. All of a sudden she begins to shift in your her chair as if she was a 200-pound man, and a deep guttural voice comes out of her, and Francisco says that she's channeling. And so he asks her some questions, asks this entity that was in her body some questions, and in a deep guttural voice she answers, and he asks her some questions about existence and uh uh uh uh physical, uh spiritual type questions that she answers, and then he claps his hands and she uh apparently pops out of this trance, if in fact that's what was happening, because any good actress could have done what this woman did, right? Uh so uh uh uh my wife and I go home that evening and we're both thinking, oh, it was all a charade. What a waste of time. Uh it was an actress. But then we say he didn't ask for any money. That's interesting. If it was a sham, he should have passed the hat or something if he was trying to bilk us out of money. So I says, Oh, that's that's it's kind of interesting what happened. Also, the answers from this entity that was in this body of this woman were not profound. I mean, they were stuff that, you know, Jesus taught. They were stuff that this basic your basic how to live your life properly type stuff, you know? And so I thought, okay, I mean, anybody could have done anybody could have done that. There was nothing profound there. I knew all that stuff. So we go to bed, and in the middle of the night, I'm woken up, I wake myself up, and so it appears the room is full of smoke. Oh my god. So I I wake her up, my wife, I wake up our two kids, and I say the house's on fire, the house on fire is full of smoke. And they look at me as if I'm nuts because there isn't any smoke in the house. I shake my head a few times and realize that, yeah, I guess there isn't any smoke back in the house. And then I go back to sleep. Same thing happens the second night, then a third night. So now it's like, this is really weird. I don't know what's happening. So I I call up one of the Puerto Rican gurus lieutenants, a woman named Sarah Bassett. I don't know how I remember all this stuff from Sarah Bassett. Her name was Sarah Bassett, and she said, Well, that happens all the time. I says, What? She says, Yeah. People who have natural psychic proclivities, who are naturally psychic, can easily slip into the states. They have no idea what the states is. They're skeptical, so they don't know how to defend themselves, and they fall into these states, and it it's really weird, but it's also dangerous. Because you're out there teetering on the edge. You're out there teetering on the edge of moving into realms that you have no idea how to deal with. And I say, okay, what do I do? She said, Why don't you come to uh a session? I'm dealing I have a half a dozen other people who are dealing with similar things. Come to a session, and we'll talk about it and we'll demonstrate some stuff. Because I also had questions about this woman that went into a so-called trance, and it seemed like it was probably a scam. And so we got this woman's house, and the first thing she does is says, Well, we're gonna have to first start by learning how to meditate if you haven't meditated. Well, I hadn't meditated. So the first couple sessions at Sarah's house were basic training in meditation. Seemed really stupid to me to turn your mind off, huh? But I I did, I went along. Um, and the minute that this these sessions at Sarah's house started, the nightmares, if that's what they were, the smoke-filled room stopped. So I said, hmm, interesting. So anyway, about the third or the fourth time, I'm in a trance, and Sarah says, Look, I'm just gonna let you I want you this time not to try to come back from a trance. I I want you to drift as as deep as you possibly can into what we'll call a trance state. And don't worry, I'll c if I clap my hands, it'll bring you back instantly, so no harm done. So I do that. I go into a trance, and um uh and it and it's a it's a difficult, it's a it's a it's a new feeling. I feel like I'm losing control. So she claps her hands, I come back. The next week I go there, and this time she says, you know, I'm gonna let's let it go even further. So I go into this trance, and all of a sudden I'm in this trance and I'm falling. And I'm like falling over a cliff, and there's a bottomless cliff, and I'm gaining speed and momentum, falling off this cliff, and I want to scream, but I can't scream. There's nothing come out of my throat. And then just before I hit the bottom of the cliff, I stop and turn back up. And when I come back up, I'm not in the chair anymore, but rather I'm floating in the room up near the ceiling. And I found that I can will myself to move out into the then summer night, you know, in out into this was in Rockville, Maryland. I can move out into the night and then move around and I can look back and I can see my body in this chair. And it all seems like totally weird. So I keep doing this with with Sarah. It gets weirder and weirder. And she then says, Okay, now we're gonna do something with this. When you're out there, I want you to look for a white light. You know, the classic white light. It happens to lots to other people, I guess. And follow that white light. So sure enough, I I take this fall off the cliff, only now I'm confident I'm not gonna get myself killed. I follow this white light, um, and and uh and and when I hesitate, it stops. And then when I start going again, it starts again. It just stays five, ten feet in front of me. And finally we come into this area. I don't see any physical bodies. It's kind of like being in a park in a heavy fog. I can sort of see the outlines of trees, but it's a really dense fog. And I hear other entities, or I sense other entities, and they're greeting me. And then I sense sense, I just pick up stuff about metaphysics, but about metaphysical life, about the nature of the universe, about the allness of creation, that I never would have picked up in a book. And again, because I'm so much in my head, I never would have believed it had I read it in a book. But here I'm experiencing it, and I keep getting these messages about what's really happening. This whole bit about being a drop in the middle of an ocean, that happened to me in these first episodes into this place of total peace and white light. And that's where my life really began to change. Well, anyway, I come back from that and and again, being in Harvard and Stanford trained, I come to a conclusion that one of two things must be happening. That either, with Sarah's help, I have gone into realms that I never knew existed, that seemed completely foreign to me. Either that's true, in which case, boy, my I uh my knowledge of what is real has changed better change quick. The other thing was was that I was going crazy. That I literally was going crazy. One of those two things had to be true. So there you are. I'm here I'm still working as a foreign service officer, right? And I'm still doing very responsible stuff. In fact, at that time, I uh this is even actually, yeah. At that time I was doing a lot of this difficult work and it required a lot of brain power, and here I was half a a good part of my life. I wasn't even on a planet. I mean, it's like it's weird. Hey, okay, all right, all right. I gotta know. Either I'm crazy or this new reality is real. One or the other, I need a sign. I'm sorry. I don't have enough faith to accept it. I need a sign. I said that to nobody in particular. I just said it. Well, a week after that, my first wife and I are on a farm in Southern Virginia, owned by some Foreign Service friends of ours. It's a lovely place. It's a nice farm in Charlottesville. And uh we spent a weekend there as a way of getting away from the pressures of the job. And so my first wife and I, and another couple and that couple's parents are sitting on the farmhouse porch having a drink, and all of a sudden there's this great hue and cry coming from the fields. There's a bunch of kids, our kids, their kids, and the kids are all running toward us screaming, but not happily. And it turns out that one of the kids, a little boy, maybe six, seven years old, had put his hand on a red-hot tractor tailpipe, burnt it badly. Okay?

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah.

A Healing That Becomes Proof

SPEAKER_03 16:55

So he was screaming back toward the house and his mother. And the other kids, of course, had in had wept up in his panic and they were screaming. So it was a real mess. So the doctor the the older man, the the the the the father of my foreign service friend, he goes in to call uh 911 or get the first aid kit or something, and I look at this little boy, his mu his m her his mother has grabbed him, she doesn't have a clue what to do. She's crying and screaming. And I quietly ask her if I can hold the child. And she is surprised, but she's totally discomforted, she doesn't know what to do. So she gives this kid with the burned hand to me. And I try to put myself back in that space, in that field, with that heavy fog, back in the place that that has no name, where I had gone following the white light. I do. I fall into a trance, still holding that boy's hand, and this goes on for twenty seconds, thirty seconds. I pull my hands away from the little boy's hand, and there isn't the slightest sign of a burn on the little boy's hand. Ah, I'm not kidding.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

I love that. No, I I believe it. As a healer myself, I've seen miracles, so I I believe it for sure.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

Well, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, but you can imagine that's a powerful connection that you you have.

Seances Beside State Department Power

SPEAKER_03 18:21

I mean, not only did it answer my question, it also demonstrated that somebody out there was listening. Some entity was listening and heard me and gave me the sign I needed. So from then on, man, it was nonstop. I I I would take a day uh off work and go to occult book bookstores in Georgetown, and uh I'd sit in the back so none of my friends would see me because it was like really weird. And I would start reading and reading and reading, you know, St. Teresa, Avala, St. John of the Cross, Hindu mystics. And I found out that what was happening to me, it happened to hundreds, thousands of other people throughout history, and then I was experiencing very much the same things. The field, the fog, the white light, the healing. These all happened before to other people over millennia. And so I was simply doing what it happened to other people, and people called it mysticism. I didn't know I could accept that term, but it really uh helped me understand that uh that's what was happening to me. I had no idea why, because after all, again, the first part of my life was a bunch of violent adventures. I wasn't a particularly lovely person to emulate in those years. I'm ashamed of some of the stuff that I got into. But nonetheless, this happened to me, and it was certainly the reason why I kept surviving all these violent adventures. The only logical reason for it was that I was being saved for something. There was something I needed to do, and a good part of that was understanding who I was, and if that took a mystical connection, then it took a mystical connection. So I got deeply into it. In fact, I became the director of the inner peace movement for Northern Virginia at that point, back down in the State Department. And at that point, I I was deeply involved. I mean, I would do stuff like healings, exorcisms, leading seances. I would do a lot of what I'd seen this woman do three years before, whatever, at that first meeting with the guru in the bowling shirt. I would start I would go into a trance, I would leave my body, and another entity would come into it and start talking. And sometimes that other entity would provide a healing, sometimes it would provide an exorcism. Often often I was able to connect people with with difficult and dangerous people in their past, people who had passed on. And and and and and that that's what I did. And it all made a certain amount of sense because now I understood what was happening.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah. Wow. So you were working for the State Department all while also doing all of these kind of esoteric spiritual kind of occulty activities on your free time, correct?

SPEAKER_03 21:08

That's right. I was. I was.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

So how involved in the State Department were you, sir?

SPEAKER_03 21:15

I was very much involved. I was very much involved. In fact, at a certain point, at a certain point, I wasn't just the United Nations, I was in NATO, and I was planning nuclear war for NATO. I was literally planning how to incintegrate Levin Leningrad.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

I mean, I would be I would spend most of the week in Brussels or Bonn or someplace in the NATO alliance helping draw up plans to fight a nuclear war in Europe, which of course is idiocy, but it's what I did. Uh and it took uh a lot of tough minded thinking to do that. And then I'd come back, and mostly on the weekends, I would do all this trance stuff. And a few people in the office who were more open minded than others knew what I was doing, and they just laughed. And I said, Well, you're gonna come in next Monday in a white robe with uh with uh with lightning flashing out of your ears or something. And we just laugh about it. But I was doing both those things at the same time. Don't ask me how, but I did.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

I don't need to ask how I was actually gonna ask if you had ever crossed crossed those two paths where working for the State Department, you were also engaging in that spiritual psychic warfare that when you get to higher levels of actual like warfare where you're you're kind of interacting with the other entities on the other side, or were you just kind of this is my job, I'm going to make this very mundane. This is just a very physical, like I this is what I'm paid to do. I'm gonna do this, and then over here, this is where I'm gonna be my eccentric, like free self. This is my sovereign self over here, and then over here, this is my work, you know, gotta pay the bills job. Or did you actually like go into this job? You're like, okay, well, I believe in this cause. I'm gonna go check on the the enemy. I'm gonna Russell target myself all the way over there. Give me a second.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

No, it was uh what it was the former, it was like I was Jekyll and Hyde. I mean, first of all, I wouldn't have got anywhere if I'd gone to one of these nuclear planning meetings and says we have to stop doing this, killing 10 million people is just not the thing we should be doing. I didn't do that. I got so swept up in the power thing. Because being a nuclear war planner for NATO was an extremely prestigious job. I was promoted rapidly and uh become quite a senior in the Foreign Service. I was really good at my job. I was known as a real tough guy. I didn't dare say, excuse me, but no, no, we can't keep doing this. I didn't call it a lack of guts, that would be appropriate. I didn't have the courage to quit. It was too enticing to do what I was doing. So I kept planning nuclear war and uh at the same time leading seances and holiday ins. And it was a remarkable straddle. That's all I can say. It was a remarkable straddle, and I did both things at the same time, and the twain really didn't mix. Weird, but that's the way it was.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

I mean, you had all that power in your hands.

Quitting Government And Hitting Bottom

SPEAKER_03 24:22

When I started working full-time at the United Nations, it did change because I had a lot more power. Um, I was in an area where I was put in charge of Africa and uh a large part of Asia, uh basically the so-called Third World, uh, because uh the United States didn't much care about the so-called Third World. We were only interested in the Cold War stuff of the Soviet Union, Western Europe. So I had a lot of freedom. And then I was I found the courage, I and I did a lot of uh stuff, like I think I said ten minutes ago, that I took a lot of risks, including the risks of getting fired. I even passed some secret secrets to some of the other diplomats on the Security Council that they could use to embarrass my own government and force us acknowledging our hypocrisy. We are at a time in American policy where we kept saying the right thing but doing something different. We really didn't give a damn about the poor brown and the brown and black peoples of the world, but we said we did. Well, I did give a damn, and I moved a lot of stuff, uh and including helping end apartheid, which really pissed people off because there were a lot of rich guys in America that were making a lot of money off shipping guns and other commercial relationships with the white South African government, and by blowing the whistle on what was going on with these alliances, the way we were supporting apartheid when saying we weren't, could easily have got me fired, if not worse. So I did take these risks, and I did I took those risks because I realized what was at stake. It wasn't just me doing the good thing. A lot of people do the good thing without being mystics. It was me realizing that I was on a planet part of everything else, and I had no choice as part of everything else. Use whatever I could to try to make life better for uh for people that were fighting a lot of peace and justice issues. It all made sense to me now, and the fact that I no longer saw myself as a singular entity, but as part of the all that is, made it much easier for me to do some of the tough stuff I had to do. Dealing with difficult people, for example, understanding that that at some distant level that distant person that person w was me and I was him or her. Well, you know, I'm not talking to the choir here, talking to you, but maybe for some of your viewers. That kind of understanding really does change your ability to be compassionate, to try to develop trust. Other half, having spent the first half of my life as John Wayne, if you will, tough guy, also you didn't mess with me. So I was able to combine that understanding and use it in a way that others did not perceive as naive at all, but as part of powerful moves that worked in a bureaucracy. So I was perfectly situated.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

And I think that really made me real that made me you were extremely strategic in in how you developed yourself and like y you had this uh strategy on how you went into not just your job, but also in in the spiritual community, it seems like you positioned yourself to be able to have like pretty decent effect in government without anybody really questioning you.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

That's true, but you're giving me too much credit. You're making it sound like these are all well thought out moves and they weren't. Most of it just happened because I understood where I had to go. I understand which door which doors I understand which doors were open and which doors were closed, and and so I I just moved forward. And then it all stopped. It all stopped. It's interesting. I toward the end of my career at the United Nations, I got a set of clear guidance in trance state that all of these connections that I had been making were gonna stop, or at least a lot of them would stop. Why? Because I was never meant to be a disconnected mystic. I was always meant to be a part of the real, real world because I was so damn good at managing myself in that world. And I didn't need the instructions any I didn't need the instruction book anymore, you know? I knew by that point I knew. I knew I'd like I like Francisco the Guru said, I put my hand into the light socket, I'd felt it, and once I felt it, I never lost it.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

I had a grasp of the way the entity uh that existence worked. I had developed a real sense of compassion and connection using that, and the voices finally said, Okay, now you're on your own. You don't need us anymore. You just keep doing what you're doing. And I did. I mean, I I can still, you know, I can still re-or stuff like that, but it the whole idea of being a full-blown mystic just stopped. And I had to accept that. It was a loss. I I I I missed it, if you will. Uh, but uh the idea was that I was never meant to be out of this world. I was always meant um to be right in the middle of all the dirt and grime and bad stuff happening because I was so darn I was getting so darn good at dealing with that.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah, you were a transmuter, you were there to transmute other people's chaos. You were put right in the front lines of all the war stuff, you were in there just sucking up everybody's junk, you were transmuting it, you were alchemizing it, you were turning it in into this powerhouse of of your life, and you know, you're trying to redirect certain things. That's very you have such an interesting life. Like, I think it's very intriguing how Spirit had guided you through that journey where they gave you a taste of the beyond, right? They gave you a taste of these other realms. They were like, hey, we're going to let you interact with these realms, but because you were just such a master of the physical plane, you were such a master of alchemizing trouble and chaos and you know, catastrophe in in in the I guess in your own life. Like as you were going, and maybe you took those bad luck things off of other people, you alchemized it or however it was. That's that's usually how why people have so many strings of bad luck is you're alchemizing for the collective, you're alchemizing for the rest of humanity, and you were put in a lot of different positions, you know. You were hiking, you're not even hiking, climbing mountains. You're sitting there like with the ancients, because the mountains are the most ancient souls on our planet, and you're sitting, you know, you're climbing up them, you're communing with them. They're helping you to ground and anchor yourself in reality. And then here you are on the front lines in in government work, you know, alchemizing all of this war, war talk, war energy, and then you're going to the hotel down the road to do seances. It's like the life that you you had was just such oh goodness, it must have been so much fun.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Well, it was also a fun journey. It was, uh, except that I soon realized that I couldn't keep up this this this tr this this dance forever. Uh uh, and then sooner or later, as I got more and more senior, the State Department was going to recognize what I was doing. And when Ronald Reagan became president about that time, I I realized that I had to quit. I couldn't stay in the Foreign Service anymore because people were noticing what I was doing and they were about to clamp down on me. So I I quit. At the top of my career in the Foreign Service, that is, I quit. But then I was just so totally hooked on this stuff. So many other people.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

How many other people in would you say like the State Department or in government agencies were kind of involved? Because it sounded like you at least had communities that you could like talk with. And it sounded like there were other people at your job that either were tolerant of what you were doing or didn't, you know, or were also kind of involved in some way. How many people in the State Department were doing kind of woo-woo things?

SPEAKER_03 32:52

I knew of one. That was a guy that I said laughed at me and said he expected me to come to work in a white robe. But I never got out there. I never got out there with a sandwich board and said, I'm a mystic, sign up. Are you one too? I mean, I couldn't do that. So yeah, I I was probably there were probably others and in a pro in super private conversations. If you, you know, if you in those years, you couldn't be weird uh uh and stay in the foreign service. I mean, you couldn't even be like uh homosexual or transsexual or something. You had to be straight and narrow.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

You had to you had you had to be, you know, um Christian, you had to have the traditional family, you had to have all of that. You had to be completely clean, maybe smoke cigars every so often.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah, so I didn't I didn't look I didn't look for any sustenance within the State Department. Once I left, of course, I fell in with others, mostly from my associations with the inner peace movement. And of course, sitting down with them, I could have a conversation like the one I'm having with you now, talking about all these things, and that was a great source of support. But you know, it was that I so I left the United Nations, and by then, like I was saying, I was so imbued with this energy and so directed uh that I ignored a lot of practical things like how to make money, to keep myself and my family alive. And by the way, at that point, my marriage, first marriage, was falling apart. It just became too weird or weird.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

I won't go into details, but it's anyway. So I uh but I I left the Foreign Service without giving any thought to making a living. I just thought that, you know, it's kind of like a good Christian says God will provide. Well, that's how I felt, not in a Christian sense, but that's how I felt. I'll just do all this stuff. I'll I'll go out there. This was in the middle of the Cold War, so I thought, okay, what I'll do is start giving anti-war speeches. I'll start running around the country giving anti-war speeches because I always had a good gift of Gab and I know a lot about war, and so that's what I'll do. And so I started doing that, and I even I even developed a whole series of workshops. I called them Change the World with an exclamation point. That's that pretty much says who I was at the time. That that someone 40 years old would start a nonprofit called Change the World Exclamation Point. You might do that when you're 19, but not when you're 40.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

So I hey. I mean, if you think about it, be the change was a presidential thing. So you weren't that far off. You had a good slogan.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

I guess that's right. Anyway, so I started doing these workshops and uh I didn't have any money, so I did them in a base base in hotel basements with um, you know, uh uh uh steam pipes running through the top of the room. And six people may come, or maybe sixteen if I was lucky. Uh I charge a few bucks. I never made any money at it. Um and people left these workshops sort of shaking their head. A few of them really caught it, but not many. And and I was getting discouraged and also completely running out of money, which brings us to the next big shift, if you're willing, if we have time, it'll take five minutes or so for me to tell the story. Absolutely. Okay. So uh I'm I'm doing these workshops, very few people are coming, and I finally realized that hey, this is this no money thing is getting serious. So I've quit the Foreign Service. Uh I do something really stupid. I think, okay, I'll go, I'll work for a bank or something. So I interviewed with banks, but by then I was so steeped in what I was doing, so steeped in a vision of positive change and doing good in the world, that I'd no sooner walk into a bank boardroom to be interviewed by the president or something than I would be shown the door because I kept saying things that made me completely useless in terms of being a banker. I mean, for example, I would say, okay, take your money and invest it in the low-income housing or or or stop uh stop funding loans to South Africa or whatever. And they would look at me and say, No, no, not you. No. So I got we got less money. I didn't fit in.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

You went in there and you were like, I know exactly where the weak points are. Here we go. Low income housing. Let's take out all the these loans that are gonna end up being little pyramid schemes. I love it.

Cruise Ship Fire And Live Or Die

SPEAKER_03 37:37

So I got thrown out, and it was clear I I I didn't have a career in business because I kept saying the wrong thing, and I couldn't I didn't give a damn if uh a company uh sold more motor cars or chairs or whatever. All I cared about was that company doing good in the world. And I would lecture them on doing good in the world, and people didn't like to be lectured. I mean, I was so stupid. I just I didn't I set up in a lot of wrong areas, but in retrospect, it was totally right that I went on the wrong direction because it very quickly disabused me of of working in that world any longer. So money, where does money come from to support all this? Oh, wild ass work. Oh well, a friend comes up to me and says, you know, you can lecture on cruise ships. Really? They pay you to s give speeches on cruise ships? He says, Yeah, they pay you a lot. Sure enough, I applied for to be the guest lecturer on a cruise ship. Now, in those years, we're talking 1980, cruise ships had 550 people, 600, not 5,000. They were much, much smaller than today. And anyway, I got a job on this cruise ship sailing from Vancouver, British Columbia. It was going to spend the summer in the Far East where people would, you know, do all the things in Japan and the Philippines and whatever, Hong Kong. And all I had to do was give two lectures on this trip, and and I was paid absurdly well for them, and I got to take by then 13-year-old daughter Mallory with me. So at least I found a way to deal with the immediate crisis of not having any money. And so I started off from this cruise ship. And three days off the coast of Vancouver, I think the day or two days before I was to give my first lecture, in the middle of the night, this cruise ship catches fire and starts to sink. Uh and we're 140 miles off the coast, off the Alaskan coast, heading off into the North Pacific. And the ship has come to a standstill because this is there's a fire burning. And the the ship's uh the the uh the ship uh captain uh puts out a disarming message that it's a mild fire and they put it out and and they'll blow the the smoke out of the hallways and would be all please come up to the ship's lounge and they'll be serving free liquor uh and all will be safe and the next morning we'll laugh about it, etc. etc. So we do that. All these people go up to the ship's lounge and disarmed by this message, we don't take warm clothes or anything like that. You can't stay in the ship's lounge because it too is full of smoke. And any fool can see that the smoke coming up the stairwells that we just come up from our state rooms was getting blacker and thicker, so the captain had lied to us. The fire was obviously not out, and people were getting worried, and so and it was cold. I was this is October in the Gulf of Alaska. And they were uh were ripping down curtains and using tablecloths to try to stay warm. It was one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock, smoke getting thicker and thicker, people getting worried. We're all moved to the ship's stern, the fan tale, and they serve more drinks, and then they bring out the ship's orchestra.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

The Titanic.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

I know what it sounds like. They weren't playing Near My God to thee. They were playing Go To Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Uh and everybody's drunk, everybody's listening to music.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

Everybody's house.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

At least they're not freezing to death.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

No. It was like, I mean, I took uh decades later, Mallory and I, my daughter and I, uh go to see the movie Titanic in the local theater, and we just hold each other because the parallels were so exact. Oh my god, this is crazy. And you can imagine, and I tell that story, and a lot of people just don't believe it because it's just so fantastic, but I swear it's the truth. So we get the captain finally says, Oh, well, uh, we we want you all to go to your lifeboats now. And so Mallory and I crawl up to the uh a port bow on the left, and we have uh uh lifeboat number two is our lifeboat, and it's uh it says on the side of it is said it on the side of it that it's made for 45 people, and Mallory counts almost 90 people waiting there because this was a brand new cruise ship. They never expected anything like this to happen. So the rescue operations and while lifeboat operations were very poorly rehearsed, the crew didn't know what they were doing. So we're sitting up there at lifeboat number two, and only not there for long, two o'clock in the morning now, two thirty. When the fire, which had never been put out, burns through the last of the retaining walls and blows out the windows in the ship's dining room. So the fire takes a huge gulp of oxygen in the night air, and flames start shooting 30 feet into the air, and everybody is now totally freaking out. But you can't fall into the water or you die in five minutes. It's hype of hypothermia. Gulf of Alaska, right? So we're looking at this, and I see the fire reflected off my daughter's eyes. And we're ordered to get into a lifeboat, and we do, and I'm off on the on the edge of the lifeboat, so I have to keep pushing against the steel hull of the ship to keep from the lifeboat keep from bashing itself to pieces. And I can feel the heat of the fire on my fingers, and but by some miracle, I think it's six, yeah, six or seven lifeboats are lowered. Miracle, there's no loss of life, nobody falls out, and these lifeboats are now set adrift. And for a time it's fine because the the the sea is relatively calm and everybody's packed in the lifeboat, and it's a way of staying warm. So we're now waiting for rescue. Difficult rescue, 145 miles from the coast. And the only the rescue helicopters have to fly 145 miles, hover over a lifeboat, take people up one at a time at the end of a chain in a chair, kind of like uh at a state fair where your kids whirl around at and chairs at the end of chains. I don't know how how many viewers.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Anyway, so I I see map It's the uh the carnival ride where where you're in a swing and they Yeah, yeah, you're in a swing.

SPEAKER_03 43:50

Just like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like that.

SPEAKER_03 43:52

The helicopters are big enough to take seven or eight people up at a time. So uh then they work as fast as they can, three o'clock, four o'clock, and all The middle of the night. I finally see Mallory rescued uh uh early morning. Uh and uh now it's light and the helicopters can move faster because now we can see things. Um and uh uh and and the helicopters take uh a helicopter load, seven, eight people, to a tanker that had answered the SOS and drop the seven or eight people on the deck of the tanker and come back and collect another seven or eight people. But it's very slow, very slow work. So now it's uh it's getting mid-morning set. Uh the worst thing is that this typhoon is bearing down on us. So what was calm seas is now getting rougher and rougher. People are getting deathly seasick. In fact, everybody is getting deathly seasick. Helicopters keep going and going and going until finally, uh finally early in the afternoon, uh, just about everybody has been rescued. There's eight of us left, eight, in lifeboat number two. And I'm one of those eight. Eight guys. Again, some of the crazy things. Uh who goes first in the lifeboats? We don't know. All we've uh it's just the movies we've seen is women and children first. So all the women and children, there aren't any children because it's a bunch of old folks. All the women go first. There's eight guys left in lifeboat number two. And uh the helicopters uh signals that they can't come back because now the typhoon has hit. And the typhoon brings on 30 foot C. Now, uh 30 foot C is something. Uh because that means you're going up and down 60 feet, right? Up, down, up, down, at least.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:34

It's uh it's really cold. We're all dying of hypothermia because, like I said, there's no warm clothes.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Uh and you're all soaking wet from the rain.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

Of course, we're and we're trying to bail, but we can't bail. We're totally seasick, and so we're just waiting there. And the only our only hope of rescue is with a Coast Guard cutter, small ship that is frantically searching the wide this wild ocean, visibility now down to maybe a hundred meters uh to try to find us because the helicopters can't fly anymore. Um so we're looking at this, and the storm is getting worse and worse. The key thing though is now we're like in at 4 o'clock, 4 30, 5 p.m. It's close to winter. It is winter, and so the sun is gonna it's gonna get dark pretty soon. It's a miracle if this Coast Guard cutter can find us even with daylight, because we have no no flares, the radio doesn't work, uh, there's there's no signal device of any kind, uh nothing. Uh we're completely at the mercy of the storm. Like I say, a miracle in the daytime. But once it's night, the Coast Guard cutter has no way of finding us because we have no lights and no reflectors. Uh so uh we'll be dead. And I reckon from my mountaineering experiences that we'll be dead in four or five hours before we're dead from hypothermia. So really, it's gonna be dark in one hour. So we have like I get an hour to live. And once it's dark, we're dead. So I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about everything that's gone before in my life. I'm thinking about the inner peace movement, I'm thinking about the all that is, I'm thinking about that meadow, I'm thinking about all the good things I've been doing with my life, and now I'm being wiped out. And it looks like with all the adventuring I've done at this time I'm not gonna survive. Unlike the early part of my life, I'm not gonna walk away from this. This is the end of it. So I get to a point where I look up into the sky at the all that is, call it God, call it whatever you want to call it. And I all I can feel is anger. I don't know. This may seem strange to you. All I feel is anger that I've been cheated. Like, hey, I made this huge U-turn in my life. I helped end apartheid. Now I'm doing good in the world. I have another maybe 40, 50 years to live, doing good in the world. And I'm being wiped out. That doesn't make any sense at all. Because I went, you know, I went to a Jesuit high school, and I learned the purpose of existence is order, you know, like crystals, snowflakes or sugar crystals or something. The universe orderly. And so there has to be a reason for all this. And I demanded to know why I was being wiped out since it made no sense at all to wipe me out. Here I'm an engine of good in the world, a great engine of good in the world, and I'm being wiped out just as I'm getting started. And I scream, scream into the storm. Why? And I hear something back. It's like I hear it loud and clear. The other seven people, of course, don't hear a damn thing. I hear this voice and it says in so many words, stop kidding yourself, stop, stop trying to kid me. You changed your life, did some good things, helped end the project, great. And now you're panicked. You're panicked because of money. And if you get out of this one, you're gonna go on another cruise ship because it's a pretty copacetic existence, isn't it? You're gonna forget the ideals and the visions and that meadow and everything, and you're just gonna start lecturing on cruise ships because you haven't got the guts to continue. You haven't got the courage to take the risks you have to take to live a life of service for which you're now well trained. You have a choice to make. Either you can fully accept that mission, or you can die out here, because the next 50 years won't be worth living. It's your choice, John. It's your choice. Live or die. That's what I heard. Well, I didn't want to die, and I just remember looking up into the storm, talking to whatever it is, all that is, and saying, I thought it was a whisper, but maybe I shouted it. Yes, okay. All right, I got it. And in that instant, an instant of total submission, this Coast Guard Cutter, the bout well, comes crashing through this wild storm. It would have cut us in two had the lookout not seen us. It was that bang on out of this wild storm. So I obviously am rescued. And I never looked back after that. I went back to New York, and there the second part of my life starts, and we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

But did you do what you promised you were gonna do? Did you go back to doing humanitarian efforts?

SPEAKER_03 50:12

Oh, absolutely. Oh, I actually I kept my promise.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:15

And I've kept it to this day, since 1980. What is that? 1980, what 46 years? I've kept look at that.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

The the force, the force kept you living well, it seems like.

Giraffe Heroes And Stories That Spark Action

SPEAKER_03 50:27

Well, uh the the living well part the living well part of it is uh is the next chapter of the story. Uh I come back um uh totally determined that I'm gonna keep my promise, and it so happened, and almost exactly at that moment I met a remarkable woman named Anne Medlock, who had started a national international movement called the Giraffe Heroes Project. Giraffe Heroes Project is not about animals, it's about sticking your neck out, hence the metaphor does the giraffe has a long neck. And Anne had started it as a way of telling the stories of heroes, because she was fed up in the media, looking at the media. It was all gloom and doom and violence and wars and rapes and pillage. And she knew there were good people doing good things. Nobody was telling their stories, so she would tell their stories. In much the same way the troubadours in the Middle Ages told the stories of heroes, Lancelot, etc., and as a way of inspiring other people to become heroic themselves. Well, Anne Medlock was determined, uh, she didn't language it this way, but I do. She was determined to become the troubadour of our age. And so she started finding people, uh, it wasn't hard because there were quite a few of them, uh, doing good things in the world but taking risks to do them. They were, of course, male and female, every color in the rainbow, every walk of life. Uh I think the youngest was maybe thirteen, the oldest was a hundred, I think, an environmentalist in Florida. People doing important work but taking risks to do it. They became what she called giraffe heroes. And she would then tell their stories. Now, back in 1982, when she really got going, the the the storytelling was not social media. It began with uh with writing up these stories as press releases, stuffing them in envelopes, and sending them to broadcast stations. And then she started recording them on on vinyl discs. I'm laughing now because I'm betting that half of your audience doesn't even know what a vinyl disc is. Otherwise call it records. They go round and around in a turntable.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

I mean, I have a record player.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

All right, okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

I know what my both my parents were born in 51, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I've got records for days.

Badass Grandad And Speaking Up

SPEAKER_03 52:40

All right, all right. So I got uh and she would then get uh a movie star or stage star, after all, this was New York City, um, and to do a voiceover, and she would create these four or five minute uh uh r radio spots and send them off as PSAs, public service announcements to radio stations. At first, it was just small stations that would play them, but they quickly caught on, just as people had learned with the troubadours, or maybe a thousand, two thousand, five thousand years before that, with Neanderthals dancing around their campfire, telling the stories of heroes to inspire their people. These records were doing that, and it really caught on. People were listening to these stories and saying, What the hell? Why am I sitting on my couch complaining about this problem, this local problem in my town, or this big problem uh out in the world, or whatever, and blaming other people. Here's a woman, here's a man who's actually doing something. That woman or man is no smarter or tougher than me. Why am I not doing anything? This broadcast has inspired me to do something. So we were right away we began to see the impact of that. That Anne really was becoming, again, in my words, the troubadour of our time. These stories were really guiding people, coaching them, inspiring. So I caught on. I finally got it. My lectures on on uh uh ending global war were going nowhere, but I saw that what was happening with Anne was succeeding rapidly. I mean, within a year or two, there was a nice article in the New York Times on what Anne was doing uh because people were beginning to realize here was the storyteller of our age, is something called the Giraffe Heroes Project. So I I met Anne at that time. I drew closer to her because I fell madly in love with her, and uh we were get we got married and we've been together as husband and wife as well as partners and running the giraffe heroes project now for 44 years. Um and and uh during that time, now we've honored and found something like 2,000 of these giraffe heroes, told their stories. Now, of course, it's not vinyl records, it's it's the latest in social media, and we're getting pretty good. We're pretty social media adept uh using the latest forms we can find. Uh and we have a staff of uh of people, including some technical experts, who help us find better ways of telling the stories. We've created programs for schools, for example, as part of this uh uh curricula that helped guide young people to build lives as courageous and and compassionate citizens. Uh, we've written between us four or five books all about making a difference in the world and and and practical stuff too, like how to stick your neck out without getting your head chopped off. So, again, once again, it's like kind of like uh years before. You mentioned that I'd been able to collapse these two worlds. Well, I'm doing it again with the giraffe project. I'm operating on that same vision, but at the same time, I'm using all my street smarts to help people, like I say, stick their necks out without getting their heads cut off. Practical stuff, like dealing with conflict, dealing with court fights, organizing street demonstrations, whatever. And we combine all this in the giraffe heroes project. We've been doing it successfully for 44 years, and so I mean that's where I'm at now. Uh the latest thing I'm doing is called, and I urge you, if you haven't already, to look at short form a short form video series, which I call badass grandad. Badass, all one word.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Yeah, you told me about it.

SPEAKER_03 56:11

Grandad has two D's in the middle, and you can find them all now on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I've done, I just sent off the last the latest one, the 69th one. I've been doing this for a year, and it's been remarkably successful. I didn't, I I did it just because I was guided to do it, um, and pushed by uh a grandson who's a professional journalist, and he'd written uh uh a nice story about me and my mountain climbing exploits. And in the last paragraph, he says in the article, I found out that my granddad's a real badass. So I said, That's it. That's it, that's the meme, that's what I want. So badass granddad came out of that. And each each story is a story of one of my adventures, but then it's tied to some kind of life lesson that might help people overcome some uh some some strife, some challenge that they need help with. So I've been doing that, and uh like I say, it's been remarkably successful. I have, as of last night, 120,000 followers and two and a half million viewers.

SPEAKER_01 57:16

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Really?

SPEAKER_01 57:18

That's that's phenomenal, dude. Good job. You're you are a badass granddad.

SPEAKER_03 57:25

I it's funny because I don't understand, you know, uh what all this is. Uh and someone I I know getting calls from social media producers or whatever you call they call themselves wanting to put ads on my shows and willing to pay me absurd amounts of money to do that. Of course I refuse, but I know they say, look, you're not only an influencer, you're a senior influencer or a big time. There's a word for it. I I'm so out of it, I don't know if the word is. But when you pass a hundred thousand followers, you're going into this this this great realm of super influencers. So I'm now I I always thought being an influencer was like, you know, a young ladies showing you how to paint your nails, you know?

unknown 58:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

So now they're they they're in there.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

Yeah, right. So that's great fun. I mean, you talk about you mentioned a long time ago this must be fun. Badass granddad is a lot of fun. And occasionally it's political. For example, now I've done a couple of episodes on the war in Iran, which I fiercely oppose.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

I am so glad you brought that up because I was really curious earlier when you were talking about your your job with the State Department. I was like, I wonder how he feels about this war. And I mean, there's such a psychological, spiritual battle going on with Israel and Iran, and you know, I don't want to get flagged or anything, but man, it would be so great. Yes, flag me! Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 58:53

Well, absolutely. You know, the business of I mentioned earlier, that was in the early part of this. I hadn't quite developed the courage I have now. And if you listen to number 69, I urge everyone listening to his podcast to dial in on one of those three channels. And you'll see that uh that I tell everyone without any problem at all that Donald Trump is a damn dangerous fool. And my foreign service life as a war planner has taught me that just about everything he's trying to do with Iran is wrong and unworkable, that we're heading into another Afghanistan, we're heading into another Vietnam, et cetera, et cetera. And I fully expect to get another call from the Department of Homeland Security. I've gotten one already in an effort to shut me down, but no way I'm gonna no way I'm getting they're gonna shut me down. They're gonna I would I would I would relish Emily, I would relish a court fight.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

I would love it if they would drag me so I could tell you I'll I I'll cheer you on. I mean, seriously, that there are so many people who are trying to speak up for protecting the main people. I don't agree with what is going on. And as someone who has seen enough media and understands psychological warfare, I see a lot of manipulation going into some of these war tactics. And it seems as if it's like a multi-layer chessboard going on with how we're navigating certain assets around, and we are distraction over here from this over here. I think it is very, very interesting, and also how the market is actually not really even following what's actually happening. It's there's a lot of manipulation in a lot of different areas, and I am very concerned.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:48

I just yesterday I did a podcast that went on for a full hour on nothing but Iran. So I was able to talk about everything I know about cruise missiles and drones and mines and warships, and of course I spent that year and a half in Vietnam, and I totally understand that that you can't deal with these wars with military power alone. There's so many other factors, including the resiliency of your enemy. And the Iranians are showing themselves to be very resilient people with a deep net strength. You could blow up nine-tenths of what they've got, and they've got one-tenth left to hit you back with.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

Yeah, they don't even what's so interesting is our leader is kind of throwing out these false flags where he's like, Yeah, no, we talked it over. We're not actually going to war. And Iran's like, we never talked. And in fact, I'm going to blow up all your stuff that you you really need. I don't need to blow up your country. I don't need to do anything. I'm just going to make sure you don't get the resources you need to have a stable, I don't know, economy. And then and then Trump's like, oh, what am I going to do about this? I'm just going to play more mind games. Because that's a great idea. Let's play some mind games. I don't I don't know what he's thinking. Does he really think he can play mind games with a bunch of warlords? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:09

No, like I say, I I I don't it does not get into that because it's a huge, complicated conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

It is such a huge topic. So we'll get off of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:19

I leave it with Donald Trump who's an ignorant, dangerous fool, and let's just leave it for that. Leave it at that for a long moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

It's okay. He he's playing a role right now. He's playing a role. He's getting he's getting everything set up for everything to fall apart so that we can rebuild. And that's fine. We'll we'll we're just we're just gonna let it play out.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:38

Uh your mouth to my ear or God's ear, whatever that phrase is. Yeah, maybe. Well, I mean that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

Let's let the moron play it out. Because I mean, if you think about it, every court needs a good gesture.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

Yeah. Well, I don't know about apply that to Donald Trump. I I think he's a truly evil person and an evil force and needs to be viewed that way, especially by people like you and me, who are well aware of the huge nature of uh good and evil in the world and and the massive forces uh that help guide us in right or wrong directions.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

I I think if we don't give him too much power, because really I mean, in our conversation, a lot of these situations you've been through in your life, yeah, you never gave up. Even when you felt like you were gonna die, you still were pleading your case to the universe. You were in conscious connection with the conscious universe. You've always been in conscious communication with source. You've always told source what you wanted, source gave you a method to get there, you took risk, you set your intention, and you made it happen for yourself because you committed to it and you didn't let any distraction get in your way. And I feel that because you have been so diligent with your path, like even though you're able to see bad people, right? Like I've I feel like I've walked a very similar path. If you see bad people, you don't always need to necessarily do anything about it. They'll take themselves out. The worst people always kind of they they get they they take themselves out. You don't you have to touch them.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:29

Well, I'm not sure I totally agree with that. Some pretty bad dudes out there. Uh and they will disappear maybe sooner or later, but they can do an awful lot of damage. And also I want to say one more thing, and that is that you keep complimenting me on my courage. And I'm telling you that I've had this bipartite life, right? And the whole first half of it was an adventure, but it wasn't for nothing. There's a reason for that adventure, and that I learned to be tough. You have to be tough to survive in the mountains. You have to be tough to survive wars and revolutions. So I learned to be tough, and that toughness has served me in good stead and far more spiritual pursuits than wars and revolutions. So it's all come together. And now at 83, man, does it all make sense? Yeah, I totally get. Even some of the things that I did early on in my 20s, early 30s, uh that I, like I said, I'm I still cringe that I did them, but I maybe I needed to do them. I don't know. But I turned I learned to be tough, and then finally I learned that the toughness is necessary, but it's it can be applied to doing good in the world. So now I'm a tough do-gooder, and that's a pretty damn good combination.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

It is. It is. Would you consider your your mental fortitude more important than a physical strength in regards to like your dreams, navigating life?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:53

No, I I I I don't not sure that's the right question to ask. I don't uh uh uh the two are together, the two the two. Work together. I mean, physicality, I mean, I'm 83. I have to hesitate going up steep stairs now. I can't, there's no way I could climb a mountain anymore. Um, so I hate that that I'm losing the physicality, uh, but that's inevitable. Like I like I say, I'm 83, uh arthritis and stuff like that. Uh, you know, so okay. So now um so now I uh my adventuring is now uh uh totally uh uh using my computer for the most part and talking to people, using the insights that I've gained beginning with that foggy field many years before, many decades before. And I use it now to great impact. I don't need to be physical anymore. But the physicality was important. The other reason physicality is important is that I talked to lots of difficult audiences. I don't preach to the converted. There's no point in that. Uh other people can preach to the converted, and God bless them. But I I like to preach to to uncommitted or or even antithetical audiences. And I start, if I'm given back before COVID, I was running around the planet doing a lot of platform speaking. If I was given 45 minutes, I'd spend 35 or 40 minutes telling my war stories until all these suspicious, cynical CEOs and stuff would put down what they were doing and lean forward and listen. Because they begin to realize that I'd done more tough guy stuff and the whole room for them put together. And then I would segue, I would pivot, and I'd say, look, I what I learned about was that the real courage of my life has come not from dodging bullets, it's come from it's come from taking what I'll call spiritual risk, changing my life, which means challenging a lot of other people and a lot of things that are going on in the world, and taking entirely different risks. Um, and and it has shaped my life because I've learned that nothing is more important than finding meaning. It's true for you too. Most important thing in your life is finding meaning. I thought I'd found meaning in physical adventure. I really did. That adrenaline rush was the most important thing in my life. But then I finally discovered that the real source of meaning in life is some kind of giving back, some kind of service. And I end my speech by saying, I think the same thing's going to be true for you. I'm not saying you have to quit your job or quit being an entrepreneur or whatever or a political leader. All I'm saying is that you can do everything. If you're a a businessman making a good product, selling it for a fair price, being fair and honest with your employees, mindful of environmental constraints, a good neighbor in your communities where your plant's situated, that's a service. I'm not saying become Mother Teresa or sack cloth and ashes. You can be of service in lots of different ways. And at a certain point you're gonna understand that, I guarantee it.

Strategy And Tactics For Meaning

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

So what traits or what steps would you say are the most important for finding your soul purpose or your life purpose? Because it seems like you once you found your life purpose, things really aligned for you, right? But there was so many, there were certain things that I'm sure locked that into place a little better. It seemed like there were certain um certain connections you had with source, there were certain commitments that you made to yourself. You had told this story of being in the boat, right? Like you were being asked to be selfless instead of just considering your own abundance or your own sense of security as a as a means or purpose.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:34

I recommended this for the last 40 years. I think, you know, uh going back to, I guess, my my my military security background, there's two things to think about. One is strategy and the other is tactics. Strategy is the most important, tactics follow the strategy. And what I discovered as a as a as the global strat the strategy for every human being, as I said a few minutes ago, is finding the meaning of your life. That's really important. And I urge everyone not to stop until they find a meaning that you feel is in sync with your deepest ideals and passions. And and and one way to start looking for that meaning is to look at who you are, what your skill set is. I mean, if you're really good at math, then then maybe you're you're you're s you're you're finding you should find a meaning in your your life for something that's in science or engineering or whatever. If you're really good at music, then perhaps it's it's it's enriching people's life through music, whatever. But there's a way to find that meaning. And I even I remember this stuff from workshops. I'm sorry to repeat workshoppy stuff, but I have uh I used to No, please do.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

This is an educational podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:42

I would say, I would say uh one of the things I said often was the was the red light, Cambodia, and that is you come up to a traffic light and you just miss the green. It's a long traffic light, and you know that. So you're gonna be there for 60, 70 seconds, maybe 90 seconds. Normally, because you have you're late for a business meeting, you're drumming your hand on the steering wheel, and maybe you're cussing out the fact you missed the reason. You're wasting your time getting angry because of that red light. Well, if you're stuck for some place and can't do a damn thing about it, then maybe you can just shut off your mind for that 90 seconds and just get quiet and see if you hear something different than just getting pissed off at the red light. Maybe you might, when you get the green, you might drive another mile and a half and see a billboard advertising a loaf of bread or a car. But on that billboard are two or three words strung together in some pattern that all of a sudden means something to you, perhaps because during that red light you were knocked off your pivot a little bit, you're open to stuff. So I'm saying that finding meaning in your life often comes from small things. It also comes from being alone, it comes from a quiet walk in the woods, it comes from looking up at a starry sky, it comes from perhaps talking to a dear loved one who's going to be totally honest with you. And again, it comes from taking stock of your own skills and resources. What is it that you're good at? Because that points you toward an area where you might really end up doing some real good. Uh and and and and I offer these as a way of pinpointing what the strategy is. Once the strategy is set, you feel good about it, and by good I mean, well, you know what I mean. It's like, man, I look at the at the myself coming back at me in the mirror in the morning, and I feel good about that image. I feel good about that image. I realize I'm on the planet for a reason. And the reason is not making money or being powerful. The reason is something bigger than that. And you look at that and you say, okay, that's that's it. That's that's the purpose of my life. So now I need to exercise it in the most effective possible way. Now we're talking tactics. You find a way that you can exercise that sense of meaning by by uh by doing something that directly translates it into real actions in the world, which is what the giraffe project, giraffe heroes project, is looking for. For example, my badass granddad, that's a tactic. My strategy finding meaning in my life has been set for 45 years. It won't change. It's service. I know that. And I have absolutely no doubts about it. So my life is all about finding new and better ways to give back, new and better ways to deal with tough audiences, because I am a pretty tough guy, so I can deal with tough audiences. Someone responds to me with from a blog or a podcast or something with some snark, some 23-year-old, uh, who is this old fart telling me what to do? Whatever, yada yada yada. Okay, my tactic is to learn how that to to look back at that person, summon up the compassion I have, and try to find some way to establish a little bit of trust so that I can get a little deeper into that person's psyche, heart, whatever. So uh strategy and tactics, that's the way to look at it. And the strategy is always about finding meaning and not to be satisfied until you find it. I'm telling everybody that if you find that strategy, that sense of meaning, and you're facing a really difficult challenge, a challenge that's right in front of you, like a mountain face that seems like you can't possibly climb over it. But then you realize that that challenge is made up of other challenges, and together you have the skills to surmount it. And so you set to work to surmount it. And then you realize all the work you're doing, the risks you're taking to get over that mountain in front of you, they're all uh the the they're all stuff that's that's part of your your life purpose. This is what you're supposed to be doing. And all of a sudden that mountain in front of you turns into a speed bump. I know this sounds silly, you know, and people say, oh wow, that's Nambi, that's that's naive. It isn't. When you are doing things that are meaningful, maybe it's dealing with the out-of-control teenager, and it looks like isn't he's never she's never gonna change, whatever. But then you realize that loving that teenager and that sense of compassion that it takes to be a good parent, that's a core part of what makes your life meaningful, makes you of service to develop yet another life in the world. Then the mountain that the out-of-control teenager has been facing becomes more of a speed bump and you're much more adept to come up with the tactics what to say, what to do with that out of control teenager. Whereas if all you see is the mountain, you're gonna make mistakes and the kid will feel it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:34

I relate to that, yeah. I think your perspective of kind of reassessing how you perceive your struggles and reassessing how you perceive your trajectory. Like once you have the feeling behind what you want in life and you're passionate about what you're doing, that seems to be kind of almost like striking flint. Like that's that's the spark that ignites the trajectory and the momentum for kind of having life fall into place. Is that is that about right?

Links Memoir And Closing

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

Yeah. That's close, yeah. Everybody's different, you know. Uh and your path is obviously different than mine, although I I think I see a lot of parallels. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:18

I I'm so grateful for you joining us today. And um I encourage everybody to go and take a look at John's projects. I'm going to leave the link for the Giraffe Hero Project. I'm going to leave a link for badass grandad. And I'll also leave any of his contact information in the description. I'm just really grateful that you were able to join us today and to help um kind of give this perspective on how to quantify your passion, your drive, your sense of purpose from the physical plane and how to actually like utilize that energy to create the life that everybody, you know, everybody wants the dream life. We all want to accomplish our dreams. And it's very challenging to actually make that happen without the risk, without being in connection with the divine source, without having that gumption, that determination to complete, you know, what you need to do. And you have been such a daredevil in your pursuits. And I think that having such a healthy way of looking at challenges where you didn't see it as like, you know, woe is me, I'm a victim, uh blah blah. Like you really were like, hey, this is a challenge, I'm gonna take it on head first. Those are some really powerful mental paradigms that people can maybe start to alchemize in their own lives so that they can start to harness that power, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:00

Well, Emily, you've you've been so positive about your descriptions of my life. I remember now that I needed to say something. I'm not very good at commercializations. I forgot to mention that I have a memoir that really sets in context a lot of the good stuff that you're talking about. It's called Quest, Q-U-E-S-T-Risk Adventure and the Search for Meaning. And it thoroughly explores, I think, in a very honest way, my descent into hell, my the first part of my life, my my my my my shallowness of a lot of my adventuring, and then the terrible struggle for two or three, four years to crawl out of that hole after coming back from Vietnam. So, anyway, Quest, it's it's an audio book as well, and it fleshes out some of the stuff we've talked about, but it's a book, so you can spend as much time or as little as you want in reading about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:51

I'll be leaving that in the description as well, you guys. Please go check out John's website, his book, his organization. Thank you again, John, so much for joining us. And I hope that everybody has a wonderful rest of their week as we ascend together.