149 Leon VanderPol: Transformational Coaching, Essence, Trust, & Becoming

[00:00:00] CK: My guest today is an internationally recognized spirit based teacher and the author of a shift in being the art and practices of de transformational coaching.

Please welcome Leah

[00:00:13] Leon: Bindal. Thanks for having me CK. Good to be here.

[00:00:18] CK: I am super excited to have you hear my friend. Um, let me start off by saying this many authors dream of writing books that change people's lives in meaningful ways. As I was looking through your Amazon review, 91% of them are giving five stars.

I couldn't find a one star or even two stars, so, and then most people read that book multiple times. So how was the writing process for you? in giving birth this beautiful gem called a shift in being,

[00:00:57] Leon: yeah, it was long [00:01:00] challenging, complex and took everything I had. You know, when you started the podcast, you said this is about people who've been burnt out and have turned their lives around live meaningfully and joy.

I've never right. Hit that wall of being completely burnt out. But at the end of that book process, I took a six month sabbatical because there was something in it. It was a four year process for me to write that book. And that doesn't mean I was writing every day. And it was a process that actually began with the creation of the course, the deep coaching intensive and the teaching of that for years, which finally led me to the point that said, maybe I can codify what I'm teaching in a classroom, into a book.

And my first attempt at it was I went to Bali in Indonesia for three Mon three weeks and just sat in a quiet place and wrote, and then I got back and that got put aside, the business of life [00:02:00] came in, all these other pressing competing requirements. And in 2018 that nudge like you've gotta finish this.

And through all the things that I was doing, I was finding a couple hours here, a couple hours there to craft and craft and craft. And for me the highest like I've been in, I don't know about UC K, but I've been an avid reader since I was a kid. And the books that were always the most meaningful for me were books that took me somewhere.

Didn't just tell me a story, but they transported me whether that was a fiction or nonfiction and the best spiritual books that I've ever read are the ones that I could pick up, read a P. be so utterly moved inside by something there. Just shifting that I could close it and put it aside like that one paragraph was enough.

So if ever I had, uh, a desire, it would be, wow. What would it be like to be able to write a book like that? So I didn't set out with that [00:03:00] intention because you cannot set out to write a book with the intention to be it like that. It, it can't, it it's no, that's too heavy creation, heavy, too heavy. Yeah. It's too heavy.

It's like saying I'm gonna write this deep book. You can't, you have to set out with simply the heart's desire to create something that is a bit like one's most truest art. And then it just is what it is. And one can hope it moves people in that way. Mm. And so it was a, a four year process of crafting and shaping and writing, you know, for months and years finding the time, the space.

And it finally came into fruition, but that was the main thing. It was not, it was me discovering my own writing process. That's part of it. How do I, as an author work? But most importantly it was, how do I actually write from that place in myself? That is the place that I want others to touch when they read it.

And that was perhaps the biggest journey for me to discover that [00:04:00] was.

[00:04:01] CK: so you don't, if you don't mind, let's actually go into what you just said there, cuz I think that's the crux of this theme that I want to touch upon because transformational work to me is about getting to the essence of who we are and then let go of anything.

That's not the essence of who we are, right? ALA the authenticity of who we are is the sole expression of who we are. Yes. And I think the book that you have created have achieved that at some level because, uh, and this is me not to, uh, kids who ask, but it really is my experience as a reader of this is not like a book that's just like cotton candy, like oh yeah.

It's nice. Nice, nice, nice, nice. Okay. Moving on finishing 30 minutes. This is one of those books that you know's is this, this is [00:05:00] nutritious is dense that I can't just skim it. And if I skim it, I would, you know, lose the, the gravitas, the, the essence, the, the gem that's within the thing. Right. So yes. Yes. I wanna say from a reader to you, you have accomplished what you said the intention to do.

Yeah. Um, thank you. Yeah. So in my mind, I dream of writing a book. not to, to your point earlier, is that you can't set an intention like that to write a book. I dream like, ah, yeah, let me write a book. That's like the do dream that will last for like thousands of years. That's my fantasy. I'm asking. I haven't taken the action yet, but that's my

[00:05:41] Leon: fantasy

Yeah, but,

[00:05:44] CK: but was it, so I dream of the process being like a universal download and that was that, you know, one draft. Yeah. Was it more of a, a crafting and chiseling and then like really thinking about [00:06:00] how to articulate a concept in as clear of a way as possible?

[00:06:04] Leon: Yes, it was the latter more than the formal I too, dream of the great download that requires me only to write one time with some minor superficial editing and I've done in a couple of weeks, but that one, it was not this book in any way, shape or form.

This was a real artistic crafting. It was like me trying to find the, the, you know, I've got the block of clay and how do I, how do I create a sculpture and reminding myself too, that no one was teaching me how to create that sculpture. Mm-hmm I had no teacher. So I was literally figuring it out on my own mm-hmm and that was a big part of the challenge, cuz you know, if you're doing only any art form and you have nobody to guide your art forming process, that can be really, really challenging.

But just to speak to something you mentioned, because this is, I think part of the journey for me, I had many false starts in my journey to becoming an. See, what, what the transformational journey does. This is [00:07:00] what excites me and everyone about it is that it stimulates that part of you that wants to step into the world fully expressed and to share one's most real and true messages with the world.

And many people on the path actually start to write sometimes as a, as a journalistic form, but other times they've got something that they want to teach or share the message that is really true for them in this moment in their life. But what I didn't realize at the time of those false starts and wondering why is this thing that I'm crafting and putting so much time and energy really not going anywhere was because I was in the midst of my transformation.

Let's put it that way. I was in the midst of it. And I was really just documenting my experience from being in it mm-hmm , which wasn't yet evolved enough to really comprehend the nature of it. It was almost like I was using writing as a tool for processing mm-hmm my [00:08:00] learnings, my deep learnings about myself and the world.

And the way reality is, and I thought, well, this would be a great book, but actually it wasn't. It was a great opportunity for me to process my, my journey, but I had to go through so much more before I was able to land in the space where the processing of it was complete for me as a, as on my own personal.

mm-hmm and I was in that place where I could actually turn all of that into something that was, if you could say teachable mm-hmm I can now teach this to others because I'm not in it anymore. I can be holding it or observing it. So that was, that was big for me, that I had to be patient really patient for a very long time to get to the point where I was really ready to write.

Well, you're speaking

[00:08:44] CK: to someone whose life lesson is patience

[00:08:49] Leon: so,

[00:08:50] CK: uh, what would you say to someone who's very impatient by nature and to, to have the patience to what are [00:09:00] ways, you know, life's work really, right. Cause what you produce is the life's work. So what would you say to someone who, uh, uh, could use a little bit more

[00:09:09] Leon: patience, you know, little bit more or be patient there's my advice yeah.

The darn path is to be more patient path. Yeah, the reality is is that I always encourage, like when I do coaching with people who have that same impulse, I always just say, just follow the impulse, if you're a move to write, because you're impatient and you cannot really contain that energy to want to write, then just go.

Right. Okay. But be aware that the great dreams and hopes that you have for that writing may not come to fruition because. It may not be that, which the world really needs and is ready for in that sense. And maybe you're not ready to really deliver it, but follow the passion. So I'm not one that always says, hold these reigns of patients tightly and pull yourself back from passion projects that may go absolutely nowhere, just because you're not really ready.

Mm-hmm patience is wonderful. And we have to temper our hopes and [00:10:00] expectations with the understanding that we have to grow into the possibility of these things within ourselves, but also allow yourself to pursue whatever you desire. And with my case, all that impatience usually means I ran into a wall somewhere.

There was a brick wall. I just went straight down that alley bang, hit that wall. Oh, that's what impatience brings. And it was a tough lesson. Very painful. Had to dust myself off, tend to my wounds, my ego, my pride, all of that had to be nurtured and then a breath. And okay. So why did I act that way? Why did I ignore my patience?

Why did I decide that I was gonna do it no matter what anyways. So I have to learn to become more friendly with patients. Like what is patients trying to show me? What is it allowing me to experience about myself, my projects, my passions, and if I can give into that and become a bit more friendly with it, I don't resist it.

Yeah. And then it can temper my impulses a [00:11:00] little bit better. one of the

[00:11:03] CK: subtle lessons that you share in your book. , uh, you didn't say this in explicit ways is essentially what are the lesson that you can extract from this moment? Allow whatever adversity or good fortunes that come your way. And at the same time, um, extract the lessons from it.

Again, this is not explicitly how you say it, but that's what I got from reading.

[00:11:25] Leon: Um, the book. Yeah. That's one of the big things of life. Isn't it? All things are lessons that we're here to learn. And sometimes we don't see that all things are lessons. Mm-hmm, , it's only a question of what is it trying to teach and are we cognizant of that lesson?

That's in there for us. And most of the times we think, well, the negative things are the lessons. There's a lesson in a negative experience, right. Cuz it's painful and it hurts mm-hmm mm-hmm and we don't sometimes see even the lessons that are in the most joyful. So you said earlier at the beginning, this podcast is about helping people live more joyfully mm-hmm well, joyful [00:12:00] people see the lessons in the joy as much as they see the lessons in, in the pain.

Yeah.

[00:12:06] CK: I just came back for, uh, Bernie man. And uh, have you ever been by the way?

[00:12:12] Leon: No, I haven't, but I've certainly seen images, photos, stories.

[00:12:17] CK: I, I, I suspect, I suspect that you may enjoy it even, you know, bring

[00:12:21] Leon: I suspect so too. Yeah. Bring

[00:12:23] CK: a family potentially there that's. Especially as a student and teacher of transformation and I'm actually being quite serious about that.

Yeah. Because to me. Uh, I'm a seeker, always. I'm a student for life. I'm a teacher sometimes. Right. And then burning man, to me, it's a wide open container of people who are very dedicated to doing transformation. They spend thousands of dollars track all their gears to establish a made up city in days and then tear it down in days.

Yeah. And then bring the most [00:13:00] beautiful, most creative, the best, the best versions of themselves as a key offer to everyone that shows up on their path. Right. It's a beautiful, uh, metaphor also to of life as well. Uh, one key lesson that I got from this year's burning man was similar to life. We spend the first part of our life trying to figure out, you know, you know who we are, the neighborhood, our neighbors, you know, where are the cool places to go?

And then middle part of our life, we find some flow, right? Find some, you know, key connections, friends and so forth. And then finally, just when we thought that we figure it out, live is over.

[00:13:41] Leon: Had to pack it up to go home. Yeah. Right. that is an excellent metaphor. Yeah. We'd pack it up to go home, pack it up, go

[00:13:50] CK: home.

And then, and guess what? We'd get to do it again next year or whenever this thing happens again. Yeah. Um, so let me bring back to your book. not [00:14:00] to diverse too much. Uh, one thing that I really appreciate about your book, your story is how you articulate the difference between transactional coaching to developmental coaching, to transformational coaching.

Right? So for the people that haven't read your book yet, do you mind just in, uh, succinct summaries of what the main difference are of the three yeah. Type of coaching

[00:14:26] Leon: experience. And for those people listening, who may not be coaches, or even thinking from the coaching perspective, it's just as easy to switch the words to transactional living developmental living and transformational living, because it's the same thing.

The way we coach the way we live, it's a mirror of itself. So transactional coaching or transactional living is very surface level living, right. And everyone knows for the most part, what it is to live at [00:15:00] the surface. It means we, we just go through our lives, engaging with situations, not necessarily extracting meaning, not necessarily learning and growing with a conscious intent.

Of course, we all learn and grow, but there's not much conscious effort behind it. We just learn and grow by nature of existence by bumping into things and going ouch, that hurt. And then we find a different path for ourselves. So the main thrust of transactional coaching or living is. For the most part, everything that we encounter as a challenge is just seen as a problem to be solved mm-hmm

And when we live, we're always looking for the most expedient direct path. Like I'm here today at a, and I want to go to B and we just lay out the steps step by step by step, make an action plan spreadsheeted out. And we then go from a to B and there's very little need to drop below the surface to really inquire as to why we experience what we experience.

What are the deeper motivations [00:16:00] for our actions? Like as a simple example, or people buy a brand new car and they may rationalize it to themselves as well. I need a new car, but then they buy the most fanciest flash largest vehicle they can find I was in Canada recently and the size of the vehicles, like I live in Asia, right?

So the size of the vehicles that dominate the streets just blew me away. The trucks, I mean, monstrous. So the first part of me is like, what is, what is the need for something of such grandeur? If everyone's got one, perhaps that's it, but I'm buying this because I say it to myself, well, I need a big truck.

I need it for this. I need it for that. But there are obviously gonna be deeper layers of motivation underneath that. So at a transactional level, we're not remotely interested in what those are. We're not remotely interested in the question. What is it that really motivates me to buy that truck or what really motivates me to wanna sell a million razor blades a year in my [00:17:00] job or whatever those deeper level things are.

Right? So then we move from that kind of surface level way of living, which is very external oriented, very materialistic. And we start to learn about ourselves. This is the developmental realm. We shift a little bit. We call that developmental coaching or developmental living here. We are learning about ourselves, and this is a really exciting place for people who want to grow.

And you may have taken things like you've heard of strength, finders mm-hmm or these other kind of online diagnostics. We learn about our personality types. We start to study the, the horoscope charts, well, Scorpios this and a TAUs is that we start to see ourselves in these different ways. Now it's not the deepest of the deep, but it's another level of knowing who we are.

I learn about my strengths, my talents, my gifts, and I start to express these in the world consciously and with intent. So I'm going a little bit deeper now, and I'm starting to understand that maybe when I buy [00:18:00] that big truck, that yes, there's a part of me that really just wants to look really good in that truck that really wants to fit in with all the people around me.

Okay. I recognize that's there. I may not have the ability to overcome that, or really not too concerned about that being there, but that's there. So this is another layer of self understanding called that developmental. And this is exciting for people, but the transformational realm, if we're gonna live in this very, very, more deep, meaningful way, this is where we start to really want to understand not only how we've been conditioned to live.

And this is a big piece of it is that we're conditioned by our society and our culture and our family to live, to value, to believe in certain ways. And most of us are completely unaware of the sheer scale of that indoctrination. Much of it is good. Much of it is not so good, not so healthy, but it's all there at a transactional level.

We are [00:19:00] not concerned with that. We live into our conditioning at a developmental level. We're starting to become scarcely aware of this, but more importantly, I want to grow, but it doesn't mean we're dealing with that. If it's still seen that our society says your success in this world matters more than anything and the amount of money that you make matters.

If you've been conditioned with that as a belief and most of us in north America have been, then I can still learn and grow. But what I'm now doing is learning and growing so that I can be a success. I'm gonna learn about myself, advance my career, take courses all to help me become more professional, more successful in the corporate ladder.

That's still learning and growing, but we're still living into our condition south. But when we get to that transactional end, transformational end, sorry. Now we're starting to recognize the scale. Of the conditioning and we're starting to question it, is this really true for me? Is this what I really value?

Is this what I really, really care about in life? And if not that, [00:20:00] then what, what do I truly utterly value at a core level? What is my soul self? What is my highest self? What does my most authentic self really want? And how often am I thwarting that to live into this conditioned idea about who I am? So we're moving from that surface level where we just engage in life through conditioning and not really concerned about those deeper questions of meaning and purpose and place to starting to peel away the layer upon layer upon layer of condition, self, to reveal more of this essence of who we are.

And when we do that, coming back to joy, that's when we start to connect with our real joy, not the things we thought would make us happy because someone told us that's, what's important and we've achieved that. Yay. And it's not just having a really nice dessert and a cup of coffee. It's joy that comes from the depth of knowing who we are at the core of our being.

And [00:21:00] that's the transformational world. I know that was a bit lengthy, but that's no it's completes the stages of it. Yeah. I, I expect that's kind of how we get there. I expect nothing left. That's perfect. But if that, any of that didn't make sense, feel free. to ask about that.

[00:21:15] CK: No, I mean, I actually really, really appreciate the articulate, the clarity of what you're speaking of and actually have a few coaches, uh, friends who are coach professional coaches, and they have some specific questions about that, but I'll leave that until later.

Sure. I wanted to double down double clicking on, um, the transformational aspect of it. Okay. Um, the way that you are articulating this, let's see, how do I say it? Hmm it's um, our, our, our desires, one of the big takeaways that I got from Bernie man this year is a life of quiet desperation comes from unclear desires, [00:22:00] unexpressed desires, and also unfulfilled desires.

And, and that may be more specific around the unfulfilling part is that one who's not taking action in taking in, in, in actualizing that, that desire. Right. So, so, but desires don't come in. Singular desire comes in like a ball of, you know, wires or, you know, like a network of desires. It's not a singular desire.

It's I want to be successful and I want to live a meaningful life and I want to contribute to humanity. And I want to have a meaningful relationship here at bull. Right. So, so in terms of transformation, let's see, how do I say. How do you peel away? Right? The, the, the, the desires that's coming from your soul versus the superficial desires.

I want ice cream tonight. Yeah. At this moment. Yes. You know what I mean? yes, because it comes not just a [00:23:00] singular, I want ice cream only is like, here's all of it. how do IEL away? Yeah. The true desire on the depth

[00:23:08] Leon: of your soul, right? Because you're up against desires that are just born of our human nature as well.

Mm-hmm right. When we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, the triangle of needs, right? And at the very bottom are food and shelter and security, which as he says, is a primal human need. And therefore can translate into a desire, right? A desire to eat and to have a safe place to be. And those are born of our absolute humanity, not necessarily of our soul and our highest self it's born of our, I need to survive in this world that pure animal primal need to survive in this world.

And we go up the pyramid, you know, social relationships. Eventually we get to the top where you have these spiritual aspirations, the, the act of self [00:24:00] actualizing, you know, knowing ourselves as who we are. So you're right. It's a question of, you know, where is that desire coming from? Is it of this primal aspect of me.

As you said, I just want ice cream tonight, but that's a bit of a fun example, but it's essentially the same as saying, I want, I want to eat, I need to eat. I've got to eat, but there's pleasurable eating and there's just basic survival eating. And then we move up the ladder. So how do we parse those two?

How do we know? What's what, and it's not always easy to discern, but what I have noticed for myself is that first I do need to take care of the primal ones at a core level. When I am fed, when I feel safe in the world, when I feel safe with myself and with other people, when I am able to sit and it doesn't matter that I have an opulent setting or the most basic, if I feel that safety, if I feel that I have a quality relationship because that's human too, just [00:25:00] to connect with another human being, to feel the love of family, to feel the love of my friends and associates, if that's in place, those kind of more basic human needs are in place.

I'm able to then sit quietly with myself in a more peaceful way because so much of the needs are met. And that is when I can begin to discern the very subtle, very gentle promptings of my higher nature, which never for me at least come through as a specific, like, I need to have ice cream or I need to have this thing external to myself.

It comes through in a much more subtle way. It comes through more like an energy form, an energy that moves me to a more expanded space of personal consciousness, which allows me to take in the world differently. I begin to perceive the world differently when I start to tap into that more expansive space of consciousness and the desires.

When I get there shift [00:26:00] from external to things like I want to feel love expansive. I want to feel, I want to see oneness. I want to see the world. It's not something that I chase. Like I, I hear that people say, we're all one it's like, yeah, I know that we're all one. Right. But I don't actually see that. I see separation you're over there and I'm over here and you are not me, but I know we're all one.

Okay. That's an intellectual understanding. But what happens when we tap into that higher soul self desire is that moves into a true desire to want to understand oneness and to perceive oneness in the world, to perceive the reality that all things are connected. So it's a subtle shift that happens. But I find, like I said, once those more human desires are cared for, then that nudging towards the inner reality happens.

And when that happens and we give it the time and [00:27:00] space, then we start to feel a more energetic form of expansion happen. As the nudgings of the higher consciousness. And it's always just about the internal, it's never a desire for anything outside ourselves. The outside just becomes the vehicle through which the internal then becomes actualized.

Whoa, whoa,

[00:27:17] CK: whoa. I mean, I understood what you just said a slow down one more time. for someone that was a lot of like meta terms, add on to a whole

[00:27:27] Leon: sentence, say the last thing. Okay. So that last part, that last part again. Okay. Uh, so everything then becomes, and this is the, the esoteric metaphysical aspect of soulful living is that it's really about my internal experience.

That matters that's in the end, all that matters. Everything else begins to fall away. And I begin to see my external experiences or even desires just as a way for me to have [00:28:00] that internal experience. So let's say I desire to have a loving relationship. And so I see that having a partner is the way to do that.

And I think it's about the partner. It's the partner, right? I mean, if it wa I want the partner, so that's an external wanting that when we have it, we feel, ah, but when we get to that higher level, we don't see the partner as anything we need to have. The partner simply becomes a way for. to feel the internal experience that really it's all about anyways, mm-hmm

And then we ultimately discover that the V that that partner just became a way for me to tap into an aspect of myself. That's always been there. Mm-hmm that I've never given perhaps permission to come free. Mm-hmm . And so in that moment, we see that the external just becomes, as I said, the vehicle for the internal experience [00:29:00] that really wants to happen.

[00:29:03] CK: Yeah. As beautifully said, it's the, the partner, the meal, the ice cream, the video game. These are mechanisms of which we can experience the subjective experience, ultimately, that we also have control of if you can fine tune and attune the skill of giving yourself this subjective experience. Yeah. So on that note, quick question there.

Okay. So few schools of thought, right? I, I can't give really reference to the school of thought. So one school of thought is forget about meditating and whatever the subjective experience may be as to ways to fine tune that as just as quickly as possible. In consensus reality, you want ice cream, you want to experience the satisfaction of ice cream, great.

Grab as much ice cream as you want. So you can experience all of that. And when you. Let's say [00:30:00] tons of girlfriends, great pursue tons of girlfriends, and then experience the, the subjective experience of having tons of girlfriends. As an example, versus another school of thought is let's just meditate and really chew on the nuances in the, in the, uh, the reality of your mind, right?

Odds,

[00:30:23] Leon: different approaches. I have, I have no preference for the approach. I am. Let's just say I'm of both schools. Mm. My question only always is for whatever path people take is, is this, are you learning and growing at a fundamental level because of these experiences that you're having, whether it's meditating, staring at a wall for nine hours, or whether you are betting many different people is something in you shifting because on a psychological level, we all know that something like sex addiction is a psychological issue.[00:31:00]

And if you were to sit with someone, you can go back into their past and start to look at, and you can also look at kind of that inner, deeper operating system began of what motivates their behavior. And you might find some things that say, well, this person isn't really living aligned to their deepest self or highest truth.

They're just chasing because of a need to feel good about who they are. And every sexual conquest is just a way to feel. The massive amounts of that lovely chemical that we produce. When we have sexual relationships, it's a way to feel good about myself. And we repeat that as the mechanism for feeling good about myself.

I may not grow at all from that, right. But there may be another person who each time is looking at those parts of themselves and saying, why am I doing this? This really is not coming from my highest self. This is coming from a deep need. I have to feel a certain way about who I am and they grow from that [00:32:00] experience.

So like I said, it doesn't matter if people are running around chasing pleasure. Only question, are you growing from it at a fundamental level, same with a guy staring at a wall, meditating nine hours a day. I mean, are you, are you just, are you growing from that? Are you just frustrated by it? Are you sitting there going, God, I hate this, but you know, my teacher told me I need to be doing this cuz he said, it's the way that Irvana mm-hmm and I'm not so sure that that's the way to Nirvana myself.

It's very individualized. And only the truth only comes out when I sit with a person and it really inquire into the nature of their experience and what's happening for them. It's not something you can see at a surface level. Right. But that's the fundamental question. Are you learning from

[00:32:43] CK: that? So the way so you let's see.

So as a person doing this, do you use journals as a way to track you ask yourself these questions or is it near. contemplation in your mind as a way to [00:33:00] track your own practice of, Hey, am I actually growing fundamentally?

[00:33:05] Leon: Yeah. Well that again, that journaling or not is a very personal decision. Mm-hmm and it's not something I would ever impose.

I can always recommend, but never impose because some people are writers and some people are not, but it is worthwhile always in any growth process just to make time for your own self, to contemplate your life, to sit down and just reflect on why do I do what I do? What really motivates this? And to be brutally honest with yourself, cuz it's only yourself you're dealing with.

There's no one else in the room it's you. And can you be brutally honest? And in that moment of honesty to really say here's at the core of why I do what I do. I'll give you an example. Mm-hmm about a year ago, I read an article by sir Elton John. I was an interview of sir Elton John. I mean we all know who he is.

I mean, what a career mm-hmm what a, what a [00:34:00] brilliant, brilliant artist mm-hmm and in the article, there was a line that just jumped out and he said this, he said, I still find myself even today trying to please my father. Mm. Now you understand that is revelation of core self understanding. yes, he's still a brilliant artist and he likely would've gone on to create beautiful music, even if that pleasing piece wasn't there, but for a man at his age, to admit that even today, after a lifetime of success, at the highest level that the globe can possibly convey to another human being, he's still chasing his father's approval.

Right. But that willingness to sit with himself and be totally honest as to what's going on is beautiful because that's the piece, most people will just skim right over and will not necessarily acknowledge. So in those quiet moments, whether we're journaling or contemplating, [00:35:00] it's that willingness to be so honest with ourselves as to why we do what we do.

And to start looking at some of those core beliefs that drive all of us, like I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable. I'm not safe. Those core beliefs are implanted deep and they motivate so much of what we do, but we don't even notice them. And so we do all kinds of things with no awareness of what really motivates.

So that's all it's about is that willingness to be honest and sit with yourself in any form at some point in your day or week to have these inner conversations. So

[00:35:41] CK: for me using the mind to check itself, it's kind of like a Chinese finger. because you're using the mind to check itself. Right. Right. And then the mind is slippery is sneaky so you can rationalize anything.

So to be honest with [00:36:00] oneself in my mind is one of the hardest thing I can only get to a certain depth. So the way I, I do it, there are a couple of practices that I use. One is having a discourse with someone who is a, you know, highly conscious. They pay a lot of attention to what I say. And they're like, wait, wait a minute.

The tone that the micro expression you just did as look at that a bit. Right. So I really appreciate having a discourse with yes. A, a highly conscious practitioner. And on the practice that I have is I Waka for me, that's a, a particular path. It's not for everyone, but, uh, but it allows me to see truth, both my truth and my illusions, because my default network, my, the, my neuro default network isn't as active, it's tuned down a lot.

So like, actually I can see myself as the actor, as the observer and also the playwright and see how I

[00:36:57] Leon: actually work in. Yes. [00:37:00] Yeah. It's so valuable in whatever form. It's why I do the deep coaching work. It's why you seek those people. There's something in that ability to sit with someone who can create a space in which that separation of self and observer can.

And who can perhaps point out blind spots who can put their finger on contradictions. As you said, mention a tone that sounds tight or constricted noticing where the resistance is, whatever those pieces are. That's why we do deep coaching for that very reason, because it allows that that observational process.

And then very often what happens is then people can make the choice to do what I call healing of those pieces of themselves that perhaps need that attention and to do it with grace and ease. Yeah.

[00:37:52] CK:So for you, what's the difference between transformational coach in a therapist? Oh,[00:38:00]

[00:38:03] Leon: I can give you so many stock answers from coaching. One of them is, and it's worth it, sharing them because I think they, they still matter. One of them is that therapists are very much focused on helping dysfunctional people become functional mm-hmm whereas a coach is focused on helping functional become people, become exceptional mm-hmm okay.

It gets a little bit confusing in the transformational realm though, because transformation, as a personal journey of awakening can feel really dysfunctional mm-hmm so people come thinking that their life is falling apart. Mm-hmm. Because they can look and say, my relationships are falling apart. My work, I have no passion for it anymore.

I hate it. Everything's falling apart. There must be something wrong with me. But when you sit with these people and you start to really inquire into [00:39:00] the experience that they're having, you'll start to notice that they're actually only exhibiting symptoms of transformation, which is that there is a kind of death process before there's a renewal and a reemergence process.

So we can normalize that for people. So one of the things that I am very much doing with my clients when they come in is listening for, are these people really experiencing a kind of dysfunction based on, let's say a mental breakdown, because there are real emotional and mental disorders in the world.

We know that right, is that what's happening with this person? Are they actually experiencing? And if that's the case, then therapy would be a better path than coaching, cuz it's a little more prescriptive, sometimes a lot more prescriptive in terms of how people approach and the people that work with them are often very well trained in a specific, um, [00:40:00] issue.

Let's say bipolar, right? You go to someone who's got experience with that. Okay. But in the listening for that, and I think now this person is. dysfunctional in the sense of there is a mental, emotional collapse happening that is contributing to a decline in their life. What they're experiencing is the normal breakdown of someone who's awakening and beginning to question everything that they once valued and told was true.

And what happens when everything you believed about yourself and thought, this is who I am. This is what's meaningful and true. Suddenly becomes not. Your world starts to quake and you start to become uncomfortable. So that's the dysfunction that I then can normalize and say that, but that's the signal of the path.

That's the signal of the path you are perfectly positioned because it is what I call in the book, the perfect functionality of dysfunction, the perfect, you know, it's perfect. It's exactly what [00:41:00] needs to be happening for you in the awakening process,

[00:41:04] CK: especially for those who are seekers who love the process of

[00:41:09] Leon: transformation.

Yes. Perfect. Yes. Perfect. Right. And they're all going to be seekers, as you know, will do many things in their seeking journey. They'll sell all their stuff. They'll go off on a, on a trip to India and sit at the feet of masters. You know, they will forsake the world at times in the process of trying to come to an understanding of themselves in the rate and the nature of life.

And again, there's nothing right or wrong about what a seeker does, but a seeker has to know that. Turmoil that angst, that dysfunction is a beautiful part of the process and they are on a transformational path and that is normal. And then when people can normalize it, they can usually lean into it more rather than resist it by saying, there's something wrong with me.

How about we reframe that and say, actually, everything's right with you. This is [00:42:00] perfect. Does it feel good? No comfortable. No. Would you like it to go away? Probably. Is it working? Absolutely. This is what you need to go through. It's the natural breakdown of an old order of self, that old system. It's the natural breakdown.

[00:42:17] CK: So quick question for you there on that note real quick. So one of the most recent mantra that I learned from Myka circles is only joy. So whenever there's like, um, you know, some circumstances that happen, it's pretty annoying. And I would just remind myself only joy. And I also remind my, some of my friends when they are going through some annoying things.

And then I just like, Hey, only joy giving that they're in my only joy group. And then the response naturally is only joy

[00:42:52] Leon: I was gonna say that's annoying CK. Yeah, exactly. Say that exactly.

[00:42:59] CK: Right. [00:43:00] So, so, so how do you do it in such a way that like, Hey, this is, this is great. You know, this is, this is happening to you.

Yeah. How do you, how do you say that in such a way that shows empathy, but also bring a little lightness

[00:43:12] Leon: to the situation? Yeah, definitely. I don't come in with the only joy because I've seen how that just generally bumps up against the, yeah, that's just annoying when you keep saying that intellectually.

I get it. Thanks for reminding me, but on a, on a level here, not getting it. Yeah. But much more. What I prefer to do is to let them sit, let people sit kind of into angst and really hold a really, really accepting allowing unconditionally loving space for all that angst. In other words, it doesn't need to be different than it is.

And that's the conditioned mind that we all grew up with is when something's uncomfortable, we gotta problem solve this thing. We gotta make it go away. And the sooner, the better, except [00:44:00] what happens is what, when the, when that dis function, that discomfort is perfect. Why do we need it to go away anytime soon?

What happens if we really just allow ourselves to sit in, it, held in it. This is again the role of another person, like a coach, a deep coach transformational coach, just to hold the space for that, where nothing needs to change. And what happens then is that things start to change. Ah, isn't that the paradox?

How is it? If nothing needs to change things, start to change because the natural evolution. that process that's inherent in transformation now has the space to do its thing. And what happens is so often we'll sit with that angst. We'll sit with that pain and somebody will start to laugh and you think, well, how, how can you be sitting there laughing at this pain?

And it's because in that moment of [00:45:00] allowing that separation, you're talking about happens, and we start to see that thing as just a quirk of our humanity, almost a kind of silliness that we've bought into for so long. And we start to chuckle and look at ourselves and go, oh my God, I can't believe that I've been believing this or that I've been holding onto this or that this has been meaningful.

This is so it's nothing. And that lightness naturally finds its way in. And I find that more helpful than the imposition of a lightness thought, like a only joy. I remember smiles everyone there be no frowns here. No frowny faces allowed. This is the joy club. Yeah, no, it doesn't, it doesn't work. It has to be a process that naturally arises organically when we are allowed to be with the discomfort and really allow it.

Yeah.

[00:45:52] CK: Yeah. Real quick story about that. So I was a burning man and uh, the first [00:46:00] few days the weather is a, was be. Just sunny and no cloud, just everything is great. Yeah. Then I get a lot of arrogance, like, ah, I don't need goggles or lights. Everything's gonna be fine. So I went out into, you know, um, the other side of town, basically about two miles away and to hang out with my friend.

And then as soon as I got there, the, uh, Rangers, you know, was driving, um, pretty Matley and just having a, a alarm going off saying like, Hey, a storm is coming, a thunderstorm is coming. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Oh, my stuff is out and open. I better go pack up. So, you know, stuff don't fly away. So I started riding my bike as quickly as possible in the middle.

Whereas the middle of the desert. I don't know if you've ever been in the desert before, or is this thing called

[00:46:54] Leon: sand? Nope. That one white app. Yeah. Sandy, Sandy deserts in, in Africa. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:59] CK: [00:47:00] Yeah. So the, I was trapped in the middle of sandstorm and I didn't have anything. So I heard thunders coming. Yeah.

Couldn't see anything because I didn't have my goggles. Uh, I didn't have the lights, so other people can see me and I can see them. And I'm just in panic mode, like, uh, in a moment. And then, and then after about two minutes of panic, I realized like, Hey, am I gonna be okay? You know, just there's nothing I could do about it.

Pretty safe, quote, unquote, hopefully nobody runs into me and then sort of just start laughing about the situation. So yeah, kissing point exactly what you

[00:47:40] Leon: said. Exactly. Just that moment of acceptance of what is rather than it needing to be different changes, everything and lightness comes in. Yeah. Yeah.

That is a practice though. It is, it's a practice of trust, a big practice around trust. Like, can I trust this? [00:48:00] Are there,

[00:48:01] CK: um, as you know, this is the noble warrior podcast. We do use the dojo practice, uh, dojo metaphors a lot. And are there practices that you use as a way to cultivate this muscle of trust, surrender

[00:48:20] Leon: and let go?

Yeah. Yeah. One of the big practices, at least for those on the transformational path and it's the first practice in the book is this practice of slow it all down and sink with the rhythm of life and spirit. So this again has to do with recognizing very natural rhythms of living in life versus conditioned rhythms of living in life.

And we're all, again, susceptible to endless conditioning of how fast we need to move, how productive we need to be, how much we have to accomplish with our life in this amount of time. So all of this. [00:49:00] is imprinted upon us from a young age, you know, the, the, the, the Chinese culture. And, you know, this has quite the end, quite the end.

Mm-hmm mm-hmm it just means go faster, go a little faster, go faster, little faster. Yeah, yeah. Or quite the end, just go, you know, whatever it might be. And from the li the youngest age, I hear parents snapping this at their kids constantly. So as a result, I live in a society where everything moves quite quickly.

Everything's very efficient, very fast, very productive, like a little beehive, right. Constantly moving. And I start to see that that need to just make things go fast and quickly contributes greatly to societal efficiency, given how many people are here, but it also is an imprinting of a way of operating.

That's got nothing to do with perhaps a person's really deep, natural rhythms and that feeling of connection. [00:50:00] Ah, what happens if I take breaths and just allow myself to be slower, to speak a bit slower, to eat a bit slower, to be more spacious, just spaciousness, right? That one single practice is incredibly hard for people.

CK, incredibly hard. I've had clients, you know, they come back from. Executives. And they've just been going all day. I had one client. I remember this. He so badly wanted to be able to relax when he got home. And we think, well, isn't that what home's for? You get home. You put your feet up. He couldn't relax when he got home.

So he said, I wanna just slow my life down. I want to, I'll start by working on it at home. When I come home from work, I'm gonna slow down. I'm gonna sit on the porch and do nothing for 30 minutes every night. I'm just gonna sit there. No phone, no distractions. I'm gonna [00:51:00] slow down. Oh my God, this was insanely hard for him to do.

After five minutes, he was just out of his chair off doing something. He couldn't hold it. So each week he got a little bit better, another minute, another two minutes. Right. But he had to recalibrate all of his energy systems just to slow down and to sort of sense in what is my optimal rhythm. So what happens it seems is when people live a much more optimal flowing, natural rhythm for themselves, that's when we start to make time more for contemplation.

That's when we start to notice, we can allow things more. That's when we start to notice how we resist things and maybe what needs to help release that resistance. All those things come in simply through the act of beginning to slow life. and what stops us from doing it? Like that's the main thing, when you are not able to do it, what gets in the [00:52:00] way a thought a belief, usually you can't do this.

You need to work faster. You can't do this. If you don't work faster, if you don't act faster, then this negative thing is gonna happen to you. So get going. So we have to deal with that just by trying to slow down. So that's one of the main practices and it's one of the most important ones for those on the transformational journey, because it makes the time in the space, on the inner level, again, for those higher level contemplative moments that we're talking about earlier.

[00:52:32] CK: So what I'm hearing you say is in order to find optimum rhythm for oneself, give it spaciousness, and then whatever it takes, uh, whether it's one minute to two minutes to three, to all the way up to 30, that's how, um, you recommend them finding their optimal rhythm. Is that an accurate reflection on what you said?

[00:52:53] Leon: Well, it's a little bit different for each person, how they connect with that optimal rhythm mm-hmm . But normally if you even just by [00:53:00] asking people, so when, in terms of the way that you move through your life and the daily doings, whether it's on vacation or at home, just describe that to me. And normally they describe something very useful.

Right? I get up, I go have a cup of coffee. I sit with the cats in the sun for a little while, and perhaps I grab a book. Do some reading, then I might make a phone call. You see, they just described this beautiful flowing day and it sounds so good. Almost like they're on vacation. Mm. So they're already beginning just in that descriptive act, tapping into what's true and right for them.

And then if you ask, well, do you live that rhythm? Which sounds so deep and so helpful and, uh, authentic. Do you live that every day? Oh, hell no. Oh no, no, no, no, no. I, I got three kids I've got, and then it just, you know, there is, there is not there, but it's already there, there is already that awareness. So then the question [00:54:00] becomes, well, how, how much do you want to live more like that?

How much do you want that rhythm to be your way of living? It's like, yeah, I would really like that. Well then let's start to look at, what's holding you back from that. Mm it's really, really challenging for people that one simple act, because it often requires, as I mentioned that reconfiguration of your life, in other words, some big changes sometimes need to happen for you to be able to do that.

People have left jobs. People I know have worked with have said I'm gonna reduce my clients by 50%. And that brings up all kinds of fear. Well, what about the income? What about the money? What about the, what about I'll be, how will I be safe? How will I, how will I, how will I? Okay. But when they actually start to do.

and they configure their life. Then they start to notice all that fear dissipates. There's nothing to be fearful of. We are reconfiguring our life for an optimal way of living where I can be more joyful, more spacious, more aware, [00:55:00] not burning myself out every day, chasing, chasing, chasing, but it has to go through that process of looking at all that I fear by doing it.

[00:55:11] CK: So imagine there's a perfect circle in front of us. There is an aspect that we know that we know, and there's an aspect that we know that we don't know. And there's a huge aspect that we don't know that we don't know. Right. So I'm curious to know, in terms of this idealized lifestyle, this ideal, uh, optimal rhythm, shall we say, uh, how do we, cuz if you ask them, they're giving you what they know and also what they don't know from that sliced.

Right. And that there's a huge aspect that they just simply don't know because they never experienced before as part of their blind spots. Right. So how do you help 'em explore [00:56:00] new terrains, new possibilities that they haven't even considered before

[00:56:06] Leon: for themselves? Yeah. I always start with the known. Mm.

In other words, I'm not fishing for the. mm. Again, the, the, or this organic process of transformation for me means that everything that needs to be known will be made known when the time is right now. That's a big trust. Isn't it? Everything that needs to be known will be made known when the time is right, but we have to create sometimes conditions in which greater knowing can more readily arise into the mind, even those things that we may never have seen or unknown.

Mm. So we start with the known, and then we hold that trust thought. And when you create a fairly expansive space of higher consciousness in that conversation where people can really mine the known and speak into what they know, [00:57:00] they're already beginning to make change at some fundamental level of their mind, the deeper unconscious level.

It's already beginning to shift there, simply because they're making change at the known level. And then one day quite miraculously, often people will say, I see it now. Mm. I see it now. I, I see something I didn't see before, and I haven't had to go fishing for it. I haven't had to say, well, have you looked at this?

Have you thought about this? What about that? You should consider this because in my experience that worked for me, therefore it will work for you. You do that by the way. No, I don't. Do you do that? No, never. Never, never. Mm, never. Because in the, in the transformational awakening, what I want you to do is tap into that resourceful potential that is alive in you.

And as you awaken, it's just vibrating away because if I just impose my truth, it's no different than the conditioning of your [00:58:00] past, where your parents and your society just impose their truths only minor. So called awaken truths. Therefore, I can impose them upon you. No, I want you to come into your own truths and to really learn, to trust yourself in the expression of those and in acting upon those, whether they're painful experiences or good experiences, the lessons are learned.

So very much I wanna work with what's known and create a space in which people can then become in this magical metamorph process, become aware of the unknown without needing to, to fish for it.

[00:58:36] CK: Well, that requires a lot of trust and faith yeah. In on the client's part, but also on your part as well.

That's on my part. Yeah. They will. They will, you know, arrive to their epiphany in time and in time. Huh? I'll know the, the duration I'll know the methods I'll know the day just yep. How do you cultivate that? [00:59:00]

[00:59:00] Leon: Yeah, that's it it's, that's why it's the ninth practice that we're working, which is cultivate trust in the mystery and magic of transformation, because there is a mystery and magic.

that we can't explain that gives rise to these moments of unexplained awareness of the blind zone. We can't know what day it's coming or year. So how do, how do we cultivate that? And that's why for myself, and I write this in the book as well, that for those of us who really wanna work in the field of transformation, we have to commit to this journey for ourselves.

First and foremost, we have to come into that magnificent space of unbridled trust in life and in ourselves through our own hard lessons. And when we get there, we can then hold this space of unbridled trust for someone else to go through their hard lessons, without us needing to self, correct them or say, well, if you choose that or go that way [01:00:00] from my own experience, you'll probably end up in this place and you're not gonna like it.

So don't choose that right. We can avoid all of that. I always say to my, my students, I say I'm quite happy with my clients running into a wall. Mm-hmm I have no issue with it. I have no needs to go. Oh no, there's a wall ahead. Turn left. Now. I like if they wanna hit that go bang and I am there to hold the space for the kind of debriefing of that experience.

That's it. So

[01:00:31] CK: you don't even tell like, Hey, you're about to hear a wall.

[01:00:34] Leon: No, No, if

[01:00:37] CK: that, but that is, but here's the thing. A lot of discipline,

[01:00:40] Leon: a lot of discipline, and here's the thing. They hit less walls when you create a space in which they can tap into their most authentic and truthful self. Because when they're tapped into that self

they're

[01:00:53] Leon: making decisions that come from a very high place within themselves, it naturally happens.[01:01:00]

So they start to make better decisions right away. So interesting. There's the paradox, right? By holding a space in which they can tap into their wisest, most authentic, true self, whatever that may be, they make better decisions and avoid the wall. So I don't need to tell them the wall is coming or to avoid it.

I need to create a space in which they can tap in and see that the wall is coming. That there's no need to go there. That's not, what's true. And real for me.

[01:01:28] CK: Do you, can you give us an choice? Can you give us an example of that? Because, uh, now we're describing something. Yeah,

[01:01:35] Leon: yeah, yeah. Let's give, let's give, let's give a very, very simple example.

Okay. So a client decides that he wants to get a job and I have this client and he thought I've gotta put out all these resumes into the world. I'm gonna put out all the resumes. I'm, I've got them printed out. I've got a hundred resumes here. Good to go. And I know the job I think I want, [01:02:00] but in, just in case I don't get that job that I really want.

I'm gonna apply for 40 or 50 jobs that are similar, but not what I really, really want, but there's this one that I really want. Okay. So if I'm saying to the person, well look, why don't you consider just applying for the job you want? Just that one job from my experience, when I apply just for the job I want, I, I get that job because I put everything into getting that job, and then you don't have to apply for these other a hundred jobs.

You just don't just apply for that one. That's my advice, because my experience that, that, that can really work for you. Okay. Well, the other option is let's just sit and explore why you feel you need to apply to a hundred places. I'm not judging it is right or wrong. Just let's talk what's underneath that desire.

You know, where you wanna work, you know that job's for you. Why are [01:03:00] you applying for a hundred others immediately? They'll say, well, what if I don't get it? Okay. What if you don't get it? Well, then I won't have, and then the list of fear, I won't have money. I won't be able to pay my rent and then, and the fear comes out so right there.

And then we're operating from fear mm-hmm and it's all on the table. so there's an opportunity now for us to really lean into the fear and what happens when we start to converse around it. And I don't even need to tell him anything, just let's sit with fear. Let's open up. All this fear is eventually they come to the realization that I'm operating from fear.

Mm I'm. Operating from fear. But there is now on this journey that I'm on. No part of me that wants to operate from fear. I only want to operate from my deepest knowing my highest truth. I only want to operate from let's say, love or power or whatever that may be. And anything that is of fear in me is [01:04:00] no longer to be my course of action.

Ah, so when you operate fearlessly, what is your choice? I will apply for that one job. Okay. And what if you don't get it? I will trust that the right job is there. I just need to wait for it or look for it or find it. Okay. So that's a completely different paradigm of operating, right? Mm-hmm when they've been able to free themselves and live fearlessly and make choices from fearless places.

I didn't have to say you don't need to go there. You don't need to do that. That's you're op you're operating from fear. They will get there on their own. When we sit in a space that allows them to, to, to say I fear. Mm. I fear at a core level. I fear and I'm operating from fear, but truthfully fear is no longer who I am.

[01:04:58] CK: I love that it [01:05:00] simplifies like all of the extra stuff just falls away. Yeah, yeah. Operating from the core being right. The core intention and then the, let everything else fall away, fall away. Yeah.

[01:05:13] Leon: Yeah. And how much we operate from fear. It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. And what happens when we start to really truly operate fearlessly and I don't mean fearlessly is in that no fear, ah, when gonna make it happen.

I have no fear, you know, that kind of hyper masculine egoic kind of fearlessness. I mean truly a space of expanded consciousness in which fear does not exist as part of your operational mean way just doesn't exist. That is powerful.

[01:05:45] CK: Yeah. So I have a question about, this is something I hear a lot from the skeptics of transformational coaching they say, or more of the [01:06:00] mindset, you know, must do first take action.

Versus the transformational philosophy is being first, right. B do have versus do have them B. Right, right. So, and I think it's actually both. You need you B and then. Take action. The optimal sense of action. And then when you can do both the world's you always so to speak. So how for you, how do you articulate, what is the optimal amount of action?

[01:06:36] Leon: um, you're gonna have to rephrase the question cuz I'm not sure. I quite understand the idea of optimal, optimal amounts of action.

[01:06:45] CK: Well, I mean, there's, let's see, there's too much action where, where you're doing it out of fear, as you mentioned earlier with the resume, that hundred, you know, things, a hundred different jobs.

That's not really what [01:07:00] that candidate desire, right? Yeah. And that's too much cuz that's operating from fear and there's uh, there's also not enough action. Let's say if he tells you, I'm just gonna apply to that one job because that's exactly what I want and you know, God would take care of me and that's it.

I mean maybe, maybe, maybe that one is sufficient. Maybe you need to apply for more. I don't know. Right, right. So there's one and there's a hundred and there's probably a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. That's

[01:07:36] Leon: optimal. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't actually measure it that way. That would be a little more of the transactional.

So the transactional looks for this idea. An amount that is sufficient for something. Okay. And we measure by amounts mm-hmm in the transformational world. It's a more, an active discernment discerning. And the question becomes, what is the right [01:08:00] action or what is right action for you in this moment? And in this moment, and in this moment, in this moment, there's always right.

Action. So what we want to help people do is just discern the, the right action for them. The one that comes from their most fearless self, the one that comes from their highest self, just in this moment of decision. Hmm. And then let the next moment inform form because now we've taken a step. I I've taken that action, whatever that singular action may be.

And now I'm in a new context, I'm in the context of myself at this action having taken place situation. Now, what is right. Action. Truly what is now in this moment? Right? Action. So you see, we're becoming very present moment noticing step by step as the context changes, because we took those actions. What now is right.

What now is right. What now is right. Action. So what happens is a [01:09:00] cumulative effect of many, many right action steps having been taken and you end up somewhere very often where you may never have predicted yourself ending up. And that is one of the great learnings of the transformational path is you have to let go of this idea.

Predicting or wanting a certain kind of outcome, looking a certain kind of a way. That's the transformational world, transactional world, the transformational world allows right. Outcome based on right. Action and the trust in that process to unfold. And that's very hard cuz once again, people say, well, I really don't know if I trust life enough to bring me what I exactly want.

I'm quite specific on what I want and life might not bring it just the way I want. So it's better that I just go for what I want clear step myself to that thing than I get what I want. And that is perfectly okay, this is not again right or wrong. Good or bad. Mm-hmm but that is a transactional way of living that says I'm here at a and I just work myself to B, [01:10:00] but if I'm in the transformational realm, I take right action moment by moment.

And there is this unorganic unfolding. That happens. That brings about a life that I may never have predicted may never have foreseen, but is the cumulative effect of every right decision that I made. Well, that would be something wouldn't it? What happens if you live through only that way? Mm right. what there's no more desiring.

Well, there's intention, maybe supplanting desire. I intend for this outcome, but I am open to the outcome. That is right for me based. Me making really good, right. Decisions moment by moment. Should I really drink this glass of whiskey? I've already had three. Should I really date this person? Is it really right for me?

Should I really pay for this object that I think I need? [01:11:00] What is really right? Where is this coming from? This process seems a bit lengthy at first. Cuz you gotta ask yourself a lot of questions like but over time that discerning ability like a muscle grows and you can discern that path much more readily.

I grew my whole business this way, CK, my whole, the center for transformation cl the entire thing was built on this very principle.

[01:11:23] CK: Okay. So why don't we use that as an example. Um, okay. You might illustrating that, that way of being that way of operating as a business owner as a, as a, as

[01:11:33] Leon: an entrepreneur.

Yeah. So traditional business does a lot of things like making a year plan or five year plan. It does budgeting. It does visioning work. It gets everybody aligned to the vision. You know, work plans, project teams, everything is segmented out. And at the end of the year, we look back and go, right, well, we completed this, this, this, and this.

And now we formulate the next plan for the next year or five years. So again, [01:12:00] very transactional, traditional, conventional way of building a business and we can justify and rationalize every decision we've made along the way. And we hopefully end up in the exact place that we planned. That would be great.

Cuz then we can say, look, we're really good at this. And we got right where we wanted to be profits, revenues, margins, right there, employee numbers, banks spot on. Awesome. Okay. Well what happens if you grow a business that is free of all of that, that operates on. I have an idea. I have a greater purpose, perhaps an evolutionary purpose that I would like to see fulfilled, but all we're really gonna do is with this group of people that's come together.

We're gonna see where our energy wants to go and we're gonna create from that space. So where does our energy want to go today? What do we wanna work on today? And we do that and then it takes us to a place. And then we sit in that [01:13:00] place and we say, okay, so now that we're here, we've just created this thing that we all wanted to create.

This is really wonderful. Now what, what do we wanna create together? And then that takes us over here. Oh, look at that. This is where we are now. It looks like we've grown as an organization. Well, we have wonderful. We've even got some profit and revenue. Wonderful. Now what do we wanna do together? Ah, create that.

Then we go over there. So it's a collective decision making process that evolves an organization towards no set outcome beyond, you know, keep holding the greater evolutionary purpose of the organization in mind, which for. Is to expand human consciousness. Mm right. And to encourage more spirit infused ways of living in our life and that's it.

And within that, we are free to create whatever we want. Mm. No goals, no planning, nothing. Just what is right. And true for [01:14:00] us right now. And it doesn't mean everything's easy. Doesn't mean everything works perfectly. We're human oh, my all the characteristics of our humanity come up. But when you come together in these kind of spaces where there's immense trust in this evolutionary process of life and that when we come together, as, you know, even as an individual, when I make truly right action for me, and we do that as a team, we end up in a really good place, whether our initial vision made it or not, we end up in a really good place that this is what we have just created.

And let's take away the idea of good, bad, right. Or wrong with that, which we created. We created it from that place within ourselves that wanted to make something happen. This is the outcome. Trust it. You see, it's a completely different paradigm of business. I mean, I love

[01:14:49] CK: it. This is awesome. How long have you been running?

Um, the business this way? 10 years. 10 years. So 10 years. Yeah. Knowing why, you know, [01:15:00] today, what would you say is the pros and the cons to you. The the, the Leon from 10 years ago,

[01:15:10] Leon: would you say the pros and the cons of Leon? Well, Leon has been no,

[01:15:13] CK: no, not Leon, but the way, the way you run this business,

[01:15:16] Leon: the business.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, certainly coming back to the trust piece, an immense amount of trust and patience, because there were times, many times when I questioned whether I was doing the right thing, I questioned whether this was the way to build a business. Of course doubt comes in on the individual path or on the business building path.

But time and time again, when I would sit with that question, is this right? For me? The answer would be yes. If I sit with one of the big questions I always ask myself is where does my energy want to go today? Right. And if I allowed that to happen, [01:16:00] I would end up in a place where at the end of the day, I felt like energetically speaking that day was well spent.

And if I do that every day, I end up with a lifetime of days that have just been energetically well spent. Now I can't imagine a more fulfilled life than what at the end, where I am feeling energetically fulfilled because every day was that. Hmm. So why live into plans? Why push and force things that ha we think have to happen that perhaps in the organic scheme of things really don't need to.

because somebody above us said, this is important and it just gets pushed down and we spend our life pushing other people's agendas and building business in very conventional ways, very transactional ways that leave people. And you know, it burnt out disillusioned fed up, ready to what's what's the new term, quiet, quitting mm-hmm right.

Quietly quitting. I mean, people are, are touting this today as, as a wonderful step in our kind of workplace evolution, but I'll be [01:17:00] honest. It's a terrible place inside to live, to show up at a place every day where, you know, you're holding yourself back from your fullest highest expression. That's gotta be rough sounds.

It's almost like they're just biting their time to find the job where they can be themselves fully expressed. Yeah. So I'd rather be in an organization where that core expression is nurtured and we create something together from each of us being in that place than any kind of idea that we impose things we've gotta have this happen.

We've gotta have this many courses run each year because well, I made that number up because it's a nice number. So we're gonna do that many and we're gonna reach that goal. Ready, everyone. All right. very different operational model. Really?

[01:17:46] CK: Do you feel so on this podcast? I love transformation. I don't know if you can tell.

I also am on the same mission as well of awakening, consciousness, expanding [01:18:00] consci consciousness or all. Yeah. So nothing jazzed me up more than, you know, people create organizations. That's all about that. So the question that comes up a lot is can transformation be scale, can this way of me, uh, you know, running business, be scale scaled yeah.

With other, you know, cuz we don't have, you know, Leons about the world. I mean actually, so what if there are other Leons about the world who can take on similar practices? How cool would that be? Right. So yeah, from your perspective, can similar models be adapted by other business leaders and scale

[01:18:40] Leon: that?

Yeah, that's a wonderful question that I cannot answer with any certainty. Cause I think in part what, what is happening here and there's a wonderful book out there called reinventing organizations, which I recommend for anybody who's looking to understand the next stage of evolutionary leadership and organizational design, [01:19:00] uh, written by a French gentleman, uh, Frederick Lalu and he starts, he, he paint this book.

Got me so excited when I first read it a couple years ago. And he's talking about an an E what he called an evolutionary organization. Teal. He puts each one as a color code mm-hmm mm. and he gives some examples of what he calls evolutionary organizations and discerns best practices of these organizations, which is in an attempt to help other organizations emulate and thus, in a sense, either model or scale mm-hmm , what's going on.

Now, there are some inherent issues with his work, because what he's trying to do is show a path of evolutionary organizational development that people who are not ready for that may be told to implement mm-hmm because the leaders might be there, but the, that the, the average manager might not be. So there's gonna be issues.

What happens when [01:20:00] the people who are not ready for that higher level way of organizing are told to act in that way. Okay. Gonna create all kinds of issues, but that's not really the point. The point is his is the first book that I read that began to outline organizations who live from a higher state of consciousness and what that looks like.

And to give some concrete examples of it. But we're still very much at the, at the, at the edge of this, it's not common practice even remotely, yet we could be hundreds of years away from this being common practice. Maybe even more so as you answer your question, is it scalable? I can't actually answer that question.

I am slowly scaling my organization through. but does that mean I could become 10 times larger with this model or only three times larger? I have no idea. I don't know what the limits of it are. And I may never find out the limits personally, [01:21:00] because I don't have a burning desire myself to grow this organization to some exponential amount, to be anything like a wall street ready organization.

That's never going to happen, but maybe that's also part of it is that maybe the future of organizational life at this level are smaller scale organizations that can operate through this way rather than scaling to meet wall Street's demands for profit. Right? So what happens? Those organizations cannot leave the transactional world.

They are stuck mm-hmm because they have to meet these demands of shareholders, right? Quarterly

[01:21:39] CK: rhythm,

[01:21:40] Leon: ah, it's painful. Mm-hmm to watch what goes on there for organizations and how they attempt to maintain their shareholder, their stock price, right. What they have to do to maintain. That's not the future of this kind of organization.

So maybe the future is much more small, small scale organizations, [01:22:00] scalable to a certain size, but maybe not infinitely scalable. I don't know. It's a great question.

[01:22:07] CK: Have you look to Dow decentralized autonomous organization? No. So. Let me just give you a little context of why I'm asking this question. So I used to be the chief culture guy for a 250 person company.

And one of my core responsibility was to think about structures, specifically incentive structures, you know, uh, that would reinforce our core values. And, uh, and then it's an interesting conversation, but that I will set it aside. Another time. One key lesson that I learned is if you set up the comp structure correctly, then it will reinforce the core values.

But if you don't right, then, you know, you can say we're all about [01:23:00] growth, but the, if the comp structure doesn't reflect that people are gonna lean on the comp structures rather than the core values per se. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. It would just be empty promises per se. So, so what's a to decentralized autonomous organizations.

What it promises is the incentive structure is built in and it's, it's a de it democratizes the governance structure. So rather than having a single person, so proprietor that dictates all the decisions that actually, um, operationalized, I. uh, what this book is trying to articulate, reinventing organizations, basically all of the, uh, stakeholders had skin in the game, uh, as well as, uh, voting rights to its specific way, how, how it's being designed.

So anyways point being, uh, I think it would be interesting in checking it [01:24:00] out. Decentralized autonomous organization, D AO,

[01:24:04] Leon: D O yes. Dow D O good Dow. Okay. Yeah. Decentralized autonomous organizations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounding a lot. Like what Lalu and his book would put as an or green organization. So in his levels, mm-hmm, green is just this level below organizational evolutionary organizations.

And it's really interesting to note that subtle difference between those two. What you're sound like you're describing is very much the values driven organization and how we support people to live into the values of the organization. And it surprised me too, to see that he was saying, but there's actually another level to that.

And what does that next level look like? Because I hadn't even considered it, but felt it was probably possible, but didn't know what it was looking like. And then he painted it out. And that's what I got excited about was like, wow, there's somebody who's actually able to see it, that next level beyond a value driven organization.

What's next.

[01:24:56] CK: What's cool about Dow by the way. Why, why I'm [01:25:00] excited about it, you know, with the idea of it, with the promise of it is. essentially, you can run a public company without it being wall street, public. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. So people can be shareholders of your company without necessarily, how do I say this operational being operationally involved.

Right. So like that opens up a whole new, all game up community driven organizations. Right? Because then you can, anyways, I'm not an expert, so I don't wanna no speak all

[01:25:35] Leon: these things. I don't understand. These are all potentials of organizations that are evolving beyond competition, winning, succeeding, that world of operation it's evolving beyond that.

It doesn't mean there's no competition. It doesn't mean we don't win, but it's evolving beyond those as kind of drivers for what motivates us to succeed. Right? Yeah. Profits, power, [01:26:00] winning, whatever that may be. It's that next evolution. Yeah.

[01:26:04] CK: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, well you mind if we get a little tactical, cuz I, a few of my friends give me questions that they really wanna

[01:26:14] Leon: know from your

[01:26:14] CK: perspective.

I wanna make sure that we get to their tactical questions.

[01:26:19] Leon: Uh, friends, wanna know

[01:26:21] CK: friends wanna know that's right. All right. So here is um, BU boom, give me a moment Ah-huh so here is the question explicit. because transformational coaching can oftentimes not have a clear cut outcome versus a transactional coaching.

What have you found to be most effective in building your business slash enrolling

[01:26:48] Leon: clients? Ah, okay. Good. One. The most effective way is to give them, uh, an experience of themself [01:27:00] at a higher state of personal consciousness with you in that moment. So I'll just to give you a bit of context for that.

Often these enrollment conversations are focused on the coach thinking, what do I need to do to, in a sense, sell and enroll. This person, the goal is to enroll this person. And when I was in my early coach training, I was often taught. You gotta do these, you know, six things, gotta do this, you gotta do this.

And this is a good follow. These steps. You'll get there. But there was always this point where it was like, you gotta convince them, you gotta tell them why coaching is good. What is valuable for get in there and convince. And I never found that worked in the transformational realm. What I felt was more than anything, people just wanted an, an, an experience with me that took them into that place that they sensed was possible within themselves.

But maybe we're having a very [01:28:00] difficult time connecting. . Mm. And sometimes that meant that they would just sit with me and not come to hear me talk about my coaching style and talk about my approach, but to be in my approach. So the first thing I do is just ask people to start to share their life with me.

And when you create a space in which people feel truly safe, right there in an enrollment conversation, never mind a coaching session in, in an enrollment conversation to open their life to you, where they feel that there is no part of their life in that moment that they can't share. And they do, they're sold.

They're sold because they've had that experience that at some level they are yearning for. So sell the experience, not the concept, that's the primary thing. And in the transformational world, it's all about experience. As I mentioned, the inner experience at the very [01:29:00] beginning, right? That is it. I don't have any external marker.

It's what is that experience? And are they having a profound moment of expanded consciousness with you in the enrollment session? And if you are evoking that most people will say, where do I sign? Mm,

[01:29:22] CK: beautiful. I love it. Yeah. Uh, second question. What did you wish you knew when first building your coaching?

[01:29:34] Leon: The biggest lesson I ever learned, not just with my coaching business, but with the center as well. A lot of false starts along the way. A lot of false starts. I had to become the person for whom my high dream was possible. Mm I'll say that again. I had to become the person for whom my high dream was possible.[01:30:00]

And the moment I became that person that I was that my high dream was possible. It was instantaneous and all through it. When I was struggling to make it happen, I thought I was the person for whom it was possible. I could not comprehend why my, my business wasn't taking off. Why don't I have more clients?

Aren't I doing everything? I have been taught. Aren't I showing up exactly. As my coach training told me to show up how come I'm not flooded with clients? How come I'm not booked solid? Okay. The simple answer in hindsight was I had not yet become the person for whom that was possible only that I was in the middle of it.

So I had no idea. I was deluding myself in a sense, believing I was the person for whom my high dream was possible. Cause. I want to serve. I want to coach, I love working with [01:31:00] people I'm out there. I'm giving it. Why, why, why that was why? Mm. Become the person for whom your H dream is possible. And your H dream becomes possible instantly.

[01:31:16] CK: who are your current mentors and role models and why?

[01:31:21] Leon: Hmm. That's a interesting question. I've moved away from that interestingly enough. Hmm. It's really, I mean, I can say that years ago on my path, there were some spiritual teachers, Eckhart totally made a difference in my life. Big one other writers that we probably all know whose books change things.

And I looked then at them as mentors, but that was years ago today. I am much more focused on tapping into [01:32:00] what I might call my own inner guru that sparked that force of light, that piece of God. However you want to call it that lives in me. And how do I connect with that? Because that piece is showing me constantly my highest.

it's not anymore that I look to other human beings, I honor, and admire a tremendous amount of people in this planet. There are people doing extraordinary work in so many fields, but I don't see them anymore as something to aspire to. It's interesting. Isn't it? What I aspire to only is to that version of me, that seems to be like a seed in me that is being revealed to me that I need to live into mm-hmm

And so that's where I'm always turning [01:33:00] in a sense that inner grew guru showing me myself and to live into that. If I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that's, it makes perfect sense. But

[01:33:13] CK: there, yeah, it, the way I articulate it for my own journey is going from being a seeker, you know, looking for things outside of me to being a finder, finding the truth within, and then ultimately being a creator, right.

Yeah. Op operating from a creative creator perspective.

[01:33:34] Leon: Right. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:33:37] CK: Um, since publishing a shift in being in 2019, what, if any, has changed in your philosophy and perspective?

[01:33:52] Leon: In my philosophy. I'm not sure anything has changed. It is perhaps [01:34:00] deepened in that sense that what I've noticed with the work, this is even from when I began writing to when I finished writing that, that whole time I continued to teach it and I continued to coach around it. I continued to practice it.

And what I was finding that those practices that are in the book just kept revealing new potentials. What I once thought was the potential that practice would then reveal another layer and another layer and another layer. It would take me deeper and deeper into something. So it wasn't that the philosophy itself was changing, but there was a deeper understanding, a greater richness, new meanings were being evoked as I worked with it more and more and more, but what it did in terms of a perspective change, like what I have noticed is my, my own personal perspective change is that I want to see the world in a much more benign way than I did before.

I want to see more the innocence of the world [01:35:00] as an evolutionary entity in itself, that everything on this planet, every human being, every tree, every, everything is a part of something that is just beyond comprehension. So vast, so magnificent. And to see that, to hold that as a. despite the blips along the way, despite the, the horrors that we see, despite the nastiness, despite all, just to continue holding that vast perspective of what this is all about.

And I think the more that I deepen through my practice and my philosophy, the more that becomes my lived reality, the more I can't take my eyes off the innocence and the beauty of this world. Yeah. Mm. So that, that's, that's the big piece. I love it.

[01:35:55] CK: Beautifully articulated. So as a, as a coach, then [01:36:00] I'm gonna ask my friends question.

I don't wanna contextualize it a little bit, cause he's asking this question of what are your thoughts as it pertains to marketing yourself as a coach, right? Yeah. Um, I want to contextualize that question a bit in the world of social media. It's very, very noisy out there. So, so even as someone who's a spirit based coach wants, um, how do you rise above the noise?

Yeah. Right. So the, so that way people can come find you as a clear stream of consciousness. Right. As a clear mirror to help 'em see the beauty, the truth within that. They may not see. Yeah, because of. uh, El illusions, that's all around them. So, right. So that's the context. That's a really big question. And how, how you can answer that question is how, what are your thoughts as it pertains to marketing yourself as a coach?

Yeah. [01:37:00] Transformational

[01:37:00] Leon: coach. Yeah. Wow. I think we could do a whole podcast just on, on this one question. It's huge. There's so many layers to it. I'll try to keep it concise and just come up with a couple of things that seem to matter to me. I wrote an article that can be found on the center's blog called standing naked in New York, which sheds a little bit of light on my own experience.

A great title, stand on. Yeah. Stand out there on that information highway with all that noise that you're describing. And there I was with my little cardboard sign saying, you know, I want to coach you kind of thing. And the fear around it and the uncertainty and just the feeling like how do I compete with all this noise?

How do I compete with all this noise? And my decision in the end was to not compete with the noise. So rather than step up marketing and [01:38:00] do this and do that and go here and go there and network and whatever, all of that was being recommended was I, I took a step back and I work with so many people who are doing the same.

I'm told I should be blogging, but I don't like to. I'm told I should be on social media, but I don't like social media. Okay. I'm told I should be out networking more, but I don't like networking I'm so I'm told I should have this signature elevator speech, but that doesn't feel right. Either all of this, I had to let it all go coming back to right decision.

What then was truly right for me. Well, what felt right at the time was just to continue to, to stay true to my path as whatever that was, where does my energy want to go? Hmm. And answering that in, in a marketing context is really interesting where it is my energy want to go if it's about marketing. Well, [01:39:00] what I discovered was that I wrote my best emails that I would put out into the world when I would just go to the beach.

I want to go to the beach anyway. So what if I just sit on the beach and I either take a notepad or today I could take my phone and just dictate something rough and I can completely relax. That's where my energy wants to go. That feels right when I do that. Okay. So I would do that. And nobody said in my training that for marketing, you can go sit on a beach to write, but that's what my energy wanted to.

That was true for me. And it made something that felt hard, so much more easy, but the biggest learning that I had to take, and this is kind of the point I wanna make. I think I wrote some blogs about this. is you have to be willing to let go of conventional wisdom about how to build your practice. There is so much conventional wisdom out there, and every coach is following that recipe, but it doesn't work for the [01:40:00] transformational coach.

It's not aligned or maybe some of it is, but most of it's not. And so what happens then again, when you're invited to let go of conventional coaching ideas, people fear, well, if I don't do that, then fill in the theory, that's gonna be bad that that happens. And we come back to the coaching context. So let's look at that fear.

What if you live fearlessly, what is it, what is it like to live fearlessly into marketing? What would you, what would you do? So that's one piece. Be courageous enough to let go of conventional wisdom, stay true to your absolute path, follow your own energy and trust the heck out of it. The other piece that I would add to this is that in that process, there's something about standing in your truth.

So one of the questions that I find is challenging for people to answer is what does your life stand for in [01:41:00] essence, the essence of it, and all, all coaches are trying to figure that out in some way, but for a very long time, new coaches it's often. Like, they're trying to find the right words and you visit their website one month and it looks this way and you go back six months later and they've rewritten it all because they're still trying to process what does my life in essence stand for.

Okay. But when you land on that and it's so real, and you start to configure your beingness and your actions and everything reflects that core lived truth, you become a vibrant space, a source that just begins to pull people to you. It's inevitable you it's gonna happen. And if it's not happening, it's probably because you're not actually yet standing in that essential truth.

It's, it's a, it's something you've created. It sounds lovely. It looks really nice. Some paper's [01:42:00] fantastic, but it might not be coming from that absolute core of knowing, because again, to become the person for the whom the high dream is possible. the filled transformational coaching practice manifests itself when you are the person for whom that is possible.

So those two pieces letting go of conventional and finding out what is only true and real and right for you in a marketing path, following your own energy, passion, and interest, and to starting to really land on what does my life stand for and how do I reflect that in everything that I do, even if I just go up for dinner, How am I reflecting that reality when I go out for dinner?

Not just on your blog, not just in your website, not just in your podcast, but in every moment of your life, because that's how you create the resonance. That is you.

[01:42:56] CK: Yeah. Right. Ultimately [01:43:00] our presence speak louder than our

[01:43:03] Leon: words. Absolutely. So if, and if there's, if there's any kind of duality there, in other words, like I'm this kind of person here and I'm that kind of person there, we haven't yet become integrated beings, then that reflects into the world too.

Mm-hmm right. Are you really who you say you are? Cause I'm sensing in your field that there's something not really aligned. Hmm. Do I really wanna work with you? I mean, I know you're trying to sound good and I can see it. Your website's beautiful, but is it, ah, I'm not sure. You know, people pull back.

[01:43:45] CK: How would you, how would you answer that question for yourself?

You know, what does your life stand for? You know?

[01:43:51] Leon: Yeah. I think if I could distill it down to the simple words, it is what it is to live a spirit [01:44:00] infused life, to truly allow spirit in any way you wanna define spirit. I don't wanna define spirit for people cuz everybody has their own kind of belief systems.

but I just Def define it as this, that evolutionary consciousness, that source life force that is alive in all of us. What happens when I allow that to infuse me and to lead me, that's it. Mm. And if I can encourage others to explore that wonderful, because for me, something in there says that the pinnacle of life experience comes through this understanding that there is a force greater than ourselves that is alive within us.

That seeks an avenue of expression through our very being, to animate our being. That's why I call it an infusion, cuz it's this [01:45:00] animation of our being and what happens when we partner with that, a true partnering. That is what my life stands for. The exploration of that very question.

[01:45:14] CK: Mm. Is there an origin story, by the way, how did, how did you come up

[01:45:20] Leon: that I don't think so.

It felt, I think it's just more of an organic, like yeah. That's what I am here to do. It's where my mind goes. When I, when I have time to think on things, it's immediately turning inward to. Almost kind of conversation I have with the inner guru, if you will. That, that part of me that is greater than, and like what wants to happen now?

What wants to be created now what's emerging in me now. There's just always, that's where my mind goes and I see it happening all the time. So it's kind of like a way of labeling my own experience. Right. But it, wasn't where I started. I remember once sitting down with a book, like, what is my life purpose?

And [01:46:00] they had a recipe for writing your life purpose. Like, you take that word from there and then you fill in that and it's that word from there. And by the time you've read my book, you've got a life purpose and I did all of it. And at the end it was like, yeah, that's really nice. That re that's really good.

That's, that's not me

but it was what I had at the time. So it sure wasn't where I started out. But it's where it evolved to. Yeah. Um,

[01:46:26] CK: so as you know, we talked about this, I was raising Taiwan from a Confucius teaching background and scientific everything is, you know, all about the data. Um, if it doesn't have data, then it doesn't exist for me.

Mm-hmm . And then somehow I ended up to where you just articulated how do I allow myself to be a conduit of this life, force this spirit, and then do the best work. And that's the process. How did that end up here? [01:47:00] It's you know, God's grace. I don't exactly know how cause in my. It's the total opposite direction, right?

Scientific data driven and all the way to this, you know, very spirit infused way of living. So

[01:47:15] Leon: yeah. Yeah. Well, they appear perhaps as contradictory, but one of the works that had a great influence on my understanding of it all. I don't know if you know, Dr. David Hawkins in his work in power versus force mm-hmm, , he's actually written many books on levels of consciousness mm-hmm and he maps out human consciousness from the lowest levels of shame, to the highest levels of enlightenment.

I think it's about 20 stages or something like that of levels. Mm-hmm each having a certain expansive power dynamic to it. And what got me was the stage of reason was a very high level of human consciousness. Reason. The stage after reason was love. Mm. Now I used to think, well, this science world, and this more esoteric [01:48:00] world are actually kind of at odds with each other, but what he's showing me is that they're not, but we need to evolve from a reason based life where reason guides our decisions, where everything's rationalized and justified into love, which has to mean you have to let go of reason.

It doesn't mean that love is unreasonable. It means that you have to let go of the need to reason in order to experience the expansive consciousness of that, which is more than. and to allow that to, to kind of infuse and he mentions in one of his books that some of the most incredible thinkers of our age, Einstein all get stuck at reason that they're not really able to move beyond it because they're so locked into that paradigm of seeing the world.

It's a very high level of consciousness, pure reason, like crystalline, like mathematics, right? It's just crystalline in its purity of logic, but it's not love and love is a [01:49:00] field of consciousness that requires us to like go. I thought, wow, wow. So they're not against each other, but to, to transcend from the one to the other requires a bit of work.

Yep. It definitely

[01:49:14] CK: that describe my journey from 2005, when I first embarked on this journey to where I am today. Right. Hundreds and hundreds of, um, uh, journeys and ceremonies and different, different, uh, transformational work. So

[01:49:30] Leon: yeah. Yeah. And you're in that very same space creating now from that infusion, where does my energy want to go?

What do I want to create in this world? What is the most authentic, authentic expression of me CK in this world? How do I wanna bring this to the world? Right. That's what you're doing now. That is the space that is when joy comes in, because we're partnering with life, the essence of life. We partnering with it.

How, how does [01:50:00] joy evolve when we choose to live in concert with this evolutionary force that is beyond our comprehension that will guide sustain, motivate, inspire. Yeah. And when I'm not joyful, it's usually I'm disconnected from that.

[01:50:17] CK: do you feel, uh, geographically, that makes a difference cuz you came from United States.

If I recall. No Canada I'm Canadian. So I came from Canada, Canada that's right. Yeah. North America. Yeah. And then I came from Taiwan. We basically swats spaces. Yeah. You know, for 20 something almost 30 years ago. So do you feel that this type of work is geographically preferred in Asia, north America or basically global?

[01:50:46] Leon: It's interesting. Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I may have mentioned this to you in past, but I don't actually do much work in Taiwan at all. Oh. And in actuality I have not yet noticed in, in Asia as a general continent, [01:51:00] a deep interest in this level of work. Remember at the beginning we talked transactional and developmental and then transformational as kind of stages of human progress.

Asia is still very much in the developmental stage. In other words, when I look at the coaching worlds and the self development world, it's all. Knowing about me by doing this or taking that and learning this and getting that and growing that, and my career is this. And so there's a lot of personal development happening, but it's in that developmental stage.

People have not yet moved on mass towards kind that next piece. So we get a lot more people, um, coming to this work from other continents. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that age is behind in any way. And it doesn't mean that nobody's doing the work here India, as an example, possibly, possibly because of its deep spiritual roots.

This work is really taking hold. They readily [01:52:00] identify with the spiritual nature of life. It's just Indian culture. It is living spirituality and yes, there's a high degree of religion there, but for the most part, people are able to accept and understand spiritual ideation and have conversations around it without any issue.

So that is a part of Asia where this work is being readily accepted and growing quite quickly. It fits with the culture, but other cultures like China, they're so focused right now on growing as a country, but also as individuals, you know, getting wealth and success and stability in a kind of middle class way, this work is it, it rocks the boat too much.

They've been, they're being taught that this is how good Chinese people live. And here comes this work that says, yeah, but we have to undo so much of this conditioning. They're not ready for that level of disruption yet. So there's some minor interest in it, but I can see that when I do the work there, how much there's [01:53:00] kind of a resistance to it because the readiness simply not yet there, I kind of on a mass level mm-hmm

[01:53:07] CK: right.

So India has the highest resonance with transformation at this

[01:53:11] Leon: point, at this point. Yeah. For transformational work, they absolutely have the highest resonance. And I suspect that is because of their deep spiritual roots and, and, and background and philosophies that they're all raised in, in different ways.

It just, just rests well with them, but it's going to come in other regions UN undoubtedly in time, it will come as countries evolve to and societies evolve to new levels of self understanding. As societies, people will be encouraged and free to pursue much more deep, meaningful ways of engaging the world less.

Will it be about attaining career status, position, um, and much more about who am I being in this world? What is my deepest core expression that I'm bringing to the world? What stops that, those kind of bigger questions.

[01:53:56] CK: Yeah. Beautiful. Are there technologies that you [01:54:00] stumble upon that you come across that shows great promise in, in terms of catalyzing consciousness, expansion?

I haven't anything like VR or. I case psychedelic Ika

[01:54:17] Leon: that's well, I was gonna ask you those, that still seems to be one of the better routes. And again, it's not for everyone, of course, but no, I haven't come across any technology yet, but if you hear of something, let me know. I'd love to check it out. I mean, there was, um, what's it called?

Um, math, uh, oh my goodness. Brain math now. What's that called again? That heart math big organization. Sorry, heart math, heart math. Thank you. Heart math that came fairly close. That came fairly close to the, the technology that helps people at least kind of use an external source of technology to get awareness of their internal state.

And it's quite an [01:55:00] incredible technology. There's no doubt about that. I'm not sure it takes people into like very exalted states of consciousness, such as iowaska, but it creates a feedback loop where people can get that inner awareness of what am I actually experiencing now on a bio arrhythmic level.

And it makes them aware of that and how to modulate that through the technology. So it was quite impressive when I saw that demonstrated some years ago. And so one of my

[01:55:25] CK: future guests, Nicole Bradford organizes a conference around transformational technologies called TransTech. Yeah. So look her up and she has, she was very articulate.

She, you know, studies all kinds of ancient technologies as well as new technologies and see how they kind of morph together as a way to elevate consciousness.

[01:55:47] Leon: So that may be so it's coming, it's coming it's

[01:55:50] CK: that's the intention. I mean, yeah, in my mind, the Western approach is very reductive, right? Hey, here is your, um, HRV [01:56:00] stands for heart rate variability as an indicator to dictate how well your brain and, and is coherent with, you know, but, but that's singular, uh, data that's in my mind, too reductive, so to speak.

Yes. Uh, and with consciousness, you can't just reduce it to a single data point and say, all right, this is the thing that dictates your level of consciousness or enlightenment. Like that's

[01:56:27] Leon: just not how it works. It's not gonna work. Cause what happens when you move from, again, the reasoning level, which science and data supplement our understanding to love.

Love just makes you want to get rid of the technology. love makes you wanna just sit with other human beings in that expensive state of great awareness and connection. And just soak that in and notice that there's nothing more that's needed. so it's funny. I'm not sure how it's gonna quite work, that when we get to those higher levels, we're not really gonna want the technology

[01:56:58] CK: Yep. Uh, I'm a as [01:57:00] a, as a former technologist myself, I am optimistic, but I'm also, uh, am embracing the, the human hu to human contact, the human to human transmission as well. So yeah. And those things are, you know, how do you measure love, you know, of your mother, you can't right. But you feel it when it's there, you feel it.

Yeah. Right. You feel it when two people are having a genuine connection with each other, you feel it. Yeah. But how do you measure it? You know, through transcripts, you can't right. So, oh

[01:57:31] Leon: no, that's just it. And when you've had those human to human connection experiences, whether through the use of IOSCO, or just through sitting in a circle where people are being real and raw, when you've had that, what, what else, what else is needed?

I mean, isn't that almost the pinnacle of our human experience to feel that degree of connection with each other and the world around us. [01:58:00] So I always figured that maybe that's simple technology of just being human and real with each other, which we've kind of forgotten mm-hmm yeah. We've gone, quite disconnected from nature mm-hmm and quite unaware of the rhythms of nature.

And we're not even really aware of all the ways that we are connect. that we can't perceive. So what if we just tap into some of those, ah, and all that other technology and all the gadgets just seems to then fall away. right.

[01:58:35] CK: Yeah. Yeah. Um, any last words you wanna say, Leon, you know, we cover a lot of ground.

We,

[01:58:42] Leon: we did, you know, more the topics, very evolved conversation. Yeah. Yeah. What would you say

[01:58:48] CK: if, if someone walks away with like one thing, what would you want them to

[01:58:52] Leon: walk away with? I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back with that, that, that piece around becoming the person for whom your [01:59:00] high dreams are possible.

Cuz everyone on this path is starting to sense that there is something that they're here for to do to experience. And others are so caught up in a challenge that perhaps they're not even seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. So that becoming process to become that person for whom all your high dreams are possible is the journey of transformation.

And it's not easy, but there are people like you, there are people like me and there are hundreds, thousands of others who are here to support it. So don't shy away from it. Don't be perturbed by its discomfort or the fact that you don't like it, but lean into it, allow it become human, become vulnerable, become open, become raw.

And in that way become stronger than you've ever known. And become that person for whom your high dreams are possible because when the world receives you and your high dreams, we all benefit everyone.

[01:59:57] CK: Hmm. Thank you so much, Leon, let me ask, just take a [02:00:00] moment to really acknowledge you a few big takeaways from this conversation.

You know, really ask yourself honest questions. Why do I do what I do? And what's the right action based on my most fearless self in this moment here and now. Yeah. And then really trust that whatever comes, especially if found this spirit infused path, um, let's see. And, and ask yourself this question. What does your life stand for at the highest resonance level?

If you can answer these questions and trust the process and continuously, um, yeah, just take that action. Like with termin out. Fantastic action.

[02:00:56] Leon: Yeah. Yes. You'll look back and go. How did I ever get here? [02:01:00] Damn, this is good.

[02:01:03] CK: that's all I feel. I feel very blessed. I feel very lucky.

[02:01:05] Leon: Yeah. I have a chance to, I love to talk with you.

Yeah. Just this connection right here to meet us a fellow Sojourner. Sojo. Is that a word? I don't know. You know what I mean? Someone who's on the path with me and who's seeking to bring this knowledge to the world, which, you know, they don't teach this stuff in school, so they have to kind of find their way to people like you to get it.

So you're doing the work and I love it. I love it all my energy and support for you

[02:01:36] CK: like Wes, Leon. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your, your wisdom, your story to go on this meandering path of a conversation.

I thinks way arrived to the proper place.

[02:01:51] Leon: It's all perfect. I think so. It is all good. It is all good.

[02:01:55] CK: All right, my friend, have a good one.