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Highlights:
00:33 About Marvin
2:40 1st and 2nd Order Change
12:00 Too Perfect Theory
16:58 That’s real magic
29:58 Emergent Property
35:20 Forgiveness and compassion
40:03 What is compassion
51:13 Physical change
1:0702 Why am I here?
Transcript:
Marvin 0:00
And so as a result, it seems to me that innate within everyone will be deep down somewhere in our psychology, this ongoing question of who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? What am I here to do? You know what? What’s it all about?
Phil 0:29
Today I’m with Marvin Oka
About Marvin
Phil 0:33
Second series of interviews on transformation. Marvin is a highly sought after international consultant speaker specializing in business and management applications of leading edge behavioral change technologies and research.
Phil 0:46
Ivan was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and has been living in Australia since 1987. Ivan’s professional qualifications include certified master behavioral modeler, certified neuro linguistic programming NLP Master Trainer.
Phil 1:02
Marvin is recognized as a world leader and an authority in this field, Marvin has built an impressive track record over the last 32 years helping organizations with strategic systemic and cultural change within dynamically complex business environments.
Phil 1:18
Marvin’s clients range from private enterprises to government agencies throughout Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East. Marvin’s professional background is in an innovative and groundbreaking field known as behavioral modeling,
Phil 1:56
Finally, Marvin is an author. He and co author Grant Soosalu released their book Mbraining in April 2012 Marvin’s businesses on the web at www.behavioralmodeling.com. Marvin, thanks for joining me today. As you know, the topic for today’s dialogue is transformation.
Phil 2:20
You have a clear focus in your work of helping people to work with second order change. Can you help us understand what this is?
Marvin 2:28
Yeah, thanks, Phil. It’s a very important distinction, especially on this topic of transformation. You know, the word transformation is an interesting word. It’s often used these days just as a substitute for the word change.
1st and 2nd Order Change
Marvin 2:40
But the word transformation itself has a slight nuance than just change. And perhaps it’s best misunderstood by understanding the distinctions between what’s known as first versus second order change. So if you were to think of any system or I should say, an attitude, culture, a paradigm, whatever you might want to say Is the target for change.
Marvin 3:02
A first order change is any change inside that system, or that culture or that way of thinking or that attitude or that mindset. And so at best, a first order change will be improvement, the system will improve or you have a better way of thinking or a better way of doing yourself or in an organization, things will improve and things will get better. But pretty much the culture is the same. It’s just better. It’s just improved.
Marvin 3:26
Another form of first order change is much ado about nothing. It’s the it’s the old cliched moving around moving the deck chairs around the Titanic. It’s basically you know, after all is said and done, status quo prevails.
Marvin 3:40
So it’s still great, lots of change a lot of activity, but nothing really changed. And then at worst, what you have is a change that makes any real change even harder. It’s just you get rewarded for, for perpetuating the current system or the current way of thinking.
Marvin 3:57
And so in in that case, not not only does nothing change, but it’s even harder to make real change. Whereas the second order change is real transformational work. second order change is a change to the system, where the culture if it’s an organization, the culture itself changes the way we do our work in the way we relate to each other changes.
Marvin 4:16
If it’s in a relationship, it’s the way we’re relating to each other. We we’ve even defined, why we’re together and what we mean to each other and how we intend to relate to each other. All that upgrades and it goes to a whole new level.
Marvin 4:28
In terms of personal development. It’s where you’re very way of orienting yourself in the world, your psychology, your way of being actually changed it transformed and matures, it goes to different order of consciousness.
Marvin 4:40
This is second order change or real transformation. So these are important distinctions that changes not just change, that when you’re talking about transformation, the way I’ll interpret it is that you’re actually talking about second order, whole system change where we emerge, we evolve to a new level of consciousness.
Phil 4:59
Thank you Marvin, I’m glad you said that. Because that’s what I was thinking it was do. I can have such great clear ideas about it. And a lot of people associate personal transformation work with being able to do second order change or transformation.
Phil 5:22
Is it necessary for executives or members of public communities or families to have personally gone through a personal transformation in order for them to work in this area of secondary change?
Marvin 5:34
Okay, this is I love this. This is a brilliant question. Because if you’re talking about the practicalities of leadership in many ways.
Marvin 5:42
Look, there’s a short answer and a long answer was things in the work that I do. The short answer is No, they don’t. The longer answer is ideally, yes. It would be great if they did. And the reason why you can have both answers, is because when you’re actually facilitating.
Marvin 6:00
Particularly say organizations when you’re leading or facilitating whole system change, there’s several ways that second order change to come about. One is that people can actually go to second order or go to a second order way of being way of thinking simply out of circumstances.
Marvin 6:18
Things change, your conditions have changed, and you just sort of not quite by luck. But you sort of, because your conditions have changed. You have to transform or you’re going to go extinct. You’re going to suffer a lot of a lot of times that occurs, it is sort of purely ad hoc and circumstantial, that things actually evolve.
Marvin 6:38
If I wanted to be more polite, I’d say it was organic change. At other times it can be because of crisis that things have occurred. You’ve now tried everything. Nothing seems to be working. You’re at the bottom of the pit. You’ve tried all your options. you’ve run out of options, and the only path now is to actually go to a whole new paradigm.
Marvin 7:00
Again, you go extinct. Another way to go about it is visionary leadership where someone has done has gone through some real secondary change themselves, and they know what’s possible. And they bring that possibility to the group or to the relationship, or to the organization, or even back to themselves where they’ve done it before in their life.
Marvin 7:21
And they know they’ve got a higher order of consciousness where they can reflect on their current situation, and know that they’ve come through things like this before, know that they’ve emerged and evolved to a new way of being before and they could do it again.
Marvin 7:34
And so they facilitate themselves again. Now, having said that, there are times when you could come at something special when you’re looking at large systems, large organizations, or if you’re a counselor working with a couple, or if you are a team leader, trying to work with your team and trying to get your team to actually merge to a new level. There are some times when you don’t have a vision of what’s possible. You don’t know where it can go
Marvin 8:00
All you know is that it can, all you know is there’s, there’s a possibility of possibility if I can put it that way. And so what you will do is facilitate processes, you’ll facilitate conditions, you’ll facilitate the relationships to emerge a new way of being, even though you don’t exactly know where that is or how that’s going to work.
Marvin 8:20
You just have a belief that that you can if you create orchestrate the right conditions. And in those kind of cases, you may or may not have experienced the second order change yourself, you may have seen it in other people and believe will hope you will, it’s possible you may have seen another team do it or another organization do it.
Marvin 8:36
And so you believe it’s possible and so you engage in the process yourself. Ideally that said this, why i say you know, the short answer is no, you don’t have to, you could pull it off. But in terms of real leadership, intentional leadership, it definitely helps if you have been through second order, change yourself.
Marvin 8:55
So you know it’s possible and you also have the compassion to know what people will go through in second order change, because second order change can be anywhere from the dramatic traumatic, all the way to the wildly exciting and you know, people enthusiastically embrace it and you’ve got the two ends of the continuum.
Phil 9:12
Yeah, that’s fantastic Marvin. That’s good to know that we can make these changes, even if we haven’t necessarily personally gone through them ourselves, as you say, it makes it more effective if we have, but if, we haven’t, we can still do this work.
Phil 9:33
Marvin I wonder if you’d mind if I asked you do you consider that you have gone through a personal transformation in your life if so would you share your experience of that with us today?
Marvin 9:45
Yeah, I’ve gone through many and infact i’ll mention a couple of them here and there. It’s very much related to what I was just saying around your belief in yourself if you’re going through your own personal changes, knowing that you can come through them actually makes real transformational change within yourself.
Marvin 10:00
Increasingly less traumatic, I should say probably not less dramatic, but less traumatic. You know, many years ago before I actually did this, as you mentioned in the intro that I was born and raised in Hawaii, and even before what I was doing now, I was actually in entertainment and show business.
Marvin 10:21
And I was somewhat a long story. So I’ll try to cut to the chase out of this. And I actually, in the world of entertainment and show business, I was actually a professional magician for 10 years, had won the sleight of hand competition and an international magicians convention in Tokyo in 1976.
Marvin 10:40
Became a professional magician that year as well. Did opening acts for Tom Jones whenever he was in Hawaii and I had just signed a contract to host sort of like a travel show. It’s one of the hosts using magic etc. On on cable TV as it was back then. And before I actually moved to Australia in 1987.
Marvin 11:02
So this was an 86 that actually had signed this contract. And I turned it all down to actually go into this field that I’m in now. And what had happened was probably somewhere around the early 80s. Just kind of thinking back because I started out like, a lot of my personal development work, probably in about 80 to 83. So a little bit about them.
Marvin 11:25
And one of the things we do, as any professional magician would be doing at some point is really exploring, is there such a thing as real magic. And it got to the point where, you know, I came across this thing in magic literature in with magicians, we’ve got increasing levels, what’s called the inner circle.
Marvin 11:45
And and when you get down to the inner circle groups, you get magicians that we call the ones that do the real work, and most people would never have heard of them. They they’re not that popular out there in the world, but they’re pure artisans. They’re the masters of their craft.
Too Perfect Theory
Marvin 11:59
What they do looks like real magic. If you could do real magic, it looks just like what they do. And there’s this piece of literature that was going on handed to these people, you know, kind of underground. And it was called the Too Perfect theory.
Marvin 12:13
And the Too Perfect theories simply stated that the 20th century adult no longer recognizes magic is a valid explanation for things, and that they will find an answer no matter how irrational. So if you did something that was absolutely look like pure magic.
Marvin 12:32
They will still not say that was magical. They’ll say that in effect, but they’ll come up with some answer. And the answer might be totally implausible. Like they’ll just say, Wow, you’re really good, as if there was an answer. But that’s the only way they can rationalize the dissonance in their minds.
Marvin 12:51
And I was taught as a magician, as an artisan and in that particular field, that the goal was not to have people ever say that was the best trick they ever saw. Because if they ever said that you failed. The best response you can get was not a standing ovation.
Marvin 13:09
The best response you could ever get was stunned silence. Because it meant in that moment you have created disbelief of you have altered their reality to the point where real magic was possible in that moment.
Marvin 13:27
And when I came across the Too Perfect theory and I realized how valid it was, and again, there’s other stories to go with it, but it’ll be a while if I go into those stories. I realized well, wait a minute. Yeah, if it’s not possible to even do this at an artistic skill, then what am I actually doing?
Marvin 13:43
Is there any purpose to what I’m actually doing? And I ran across another, thing from a completely different field. And it was called the Great Ice ball theory. Great ice ball theory says that, you know, however many millions of billions of years from now apparently the sun’s going to blow up.
Marvin 14:00
The earth will turn into a great big ice ball. And at that point, there’s nothing you are I, what we’re concerned about right in this moment will make any damn bitter difference whatsoever.
Marvin 14:11
Now, this bothered me for a while, because I thought, well then wait a minute. So it means if I became the world’s greatest magician, and I was wildly successful, and I was about bigger than Houdini, does that matter?
Marvin 14:26
Well, after all is said and done, and all of eternity will no it is kind of a pointless thing, isn’t it? Well, then so if I died as an abject failure, and I died at an unknown in the gutter, all up is that going to matter? Well no apparently not.
Marvin 14:44
And so this sent me on a two year depression cycle. I was massively depressed, got into drugs. I got addicted to crystal meth. I didn’t realize it until one day I put my foot through a glass door when the feds in Hawaii had crack down on crystal meth. I couldn’t get anymore. I was going through withdrawals. I didn’t realize it, put my foot through a glass door was in emergency.
Marvin 15:04
And I kind of woke up I realized I wasn’t in trouble. And it was a long wrong recovery. And it was at that time I started getting into more personal development. I was so bored when I couldn’t move because my, my feet was completely stitched up.
Marvin 15:19
As soon as I could get up on crutches. Oddly enough, first one of the first things I did was I headed down to a secondhand bookstore. And I just started looking around and I came across a whole shelf self help books. And I started reading like crazy and it just became a whole new world.
Marvin 15:36
And when my foot was better, and one of the things I like to do in Hawaii was obviously to go body surfing and there’s beautiful place out in Hawaii called Mōkapu Beach for those of you that have ever been to Hawaii on Oahu. And it’s beautiful and driving up to Mōkapu Beach is was to me was always magical.
Marvin 15:54
You’re coming up to you, you’re going up the road and on one side are these black lava cliffs I think they’re brown now back then when you know when I was young it was it was still somewhat black and lava.
Marvin 16:06
And then all of a sudden you you turn the bend and the blue ocean just suddenly appears and it looms up and there’s a beautiful island just off the coast called Rabbit Island it suddenly comes into view and you look down the cliffs and this is beautiful beach called Mōkapu beach beautiful for body surfing. It’s just a wonderful contrast from the black lava rocks to the Blue Ocean to the Rabbit Island looming up white sands. Gorgeous waves.
Marvin 16:31
And remember driving there one day and as I turned the corner and all that happened, beach came up, the water came up this the island came up. And I remember I was in my car and I said out loud to myself. I remember hearing myself say it out loud. I just went, Wow, that’s magic. And I went, What? I actually pulled over the Mōkapu look out before I got to the beach and I said wow, wait a minute.
That’s real magic
Marvin 16:58
That’s magic. That is real magic. And suddenly I realized it was an epiphany, I realized there actually is such a thing as real magic. And it happens between the ears. It was in a second, I went from being depressed and, you know, my foots been through the door, you know, the glass door, you know, I’m just as drug addict and, in an instant, I saw the beauty of the islands and I felt this wonder.
Marvin 17:28
Now it’s between the ears, the magic is between the ears and if you change between the ears, all reality changes. The world is different. It’s magic. It’s like I said, abracadabra to myself, and everything was different.
Marvin 17:42
And I started really getting into more and more of the personal development to the point where I started building in into my magic shows this whole theme because I was very bothered knowing that I could be, you know, wonderful entertainer for a couple of hours. I had my own show at the Sheraton Waikiki ballroom.
Marvin 17:59
I had actually studied, I went to Las Vegas and studied how they orchestrated standing ovations. So I knew I could get a standing ovation. And I also knew was relatively meaningless. But you know, once you can orchestrate it, and that was bothering me, I knew that for you know, two hours at the Sheraton Waikiki Grand Ballroom, I’ll produce a standing ovation.
Marvin 18:18
And tomorrow all these tourists will go home, or you know, whatever they’re going to be doing. And at best, I was a mild distraction. And it was much ado about nothing. And I wanted it to be more so I started building in what what does it actually mean to have real magic in your life? What does it actually mean? When if you could take the magic of the islands back home with you?
Marvin 18:40
And you could actually see that the real aloha spirit wherever you went, I start building these messages in. And at that time, I also got asked by some people to do some work with teenagers in white and I started working with them with some in an accelerated learning program camp for teenagers.
Marvin 18:56
Some people saw it and said, Can you do it in Australia and so we started myself in a team, certainly Coming over in 8586. And then it started blossoming from there. And by the time it got to 1987, someone said, Look, you’re coming over here more and more and, you know, you expecting the wire getting less and less.
Marvin 19:13
Why don’t you just move here? And I thought do I give up a 10 year career that I’ve been building and I’ve just signed this TV contract and I’m, you know, it’s just about really take off. But I was getting increasingly more and more unhappy with the show business world being more and more shallow.
Marvin 19:30
And I was trying to find something more meaningful, much deeper work my messages were getting more and more about real transformational change. I found my every time I came to Australia working with the teenagers or working with their parents or working with their companies, I found that far more fulfilling. And finally I just said early 87. Yes. All right. I will close up shop. I will cancel all my contracts. I told my agent I’m leaving goodbye.
Marvin 19:56
Sold on my props, stopped a 10 year career and moved to Australia. And you know, since then never looked back. And since then I’ve had numerous, it’s ongoing, the life changes, existential crisis, so to speak.
Marvin 20:14
They occur more frequently. Believe it or not, you know, I don’t have to wait 10 years before I’m not questioning Who am I? And why do I exist anymore? Probably happening about every six months, it’s really.
Marvin 20:25
But it’s because I’m more sensitive to it, I can see the signs more I can notice my own internal questioning more. But because they’re also more frequent, and because I am building more and more experiences of what it takes to facilitate myself through these is far less traumatic infact it’s not traumatic at all.
Marvin 20:47
Now I recognize and I go. Oh I’m in for another one. There’ll be another upgrade coming about my life And who am I and etc, and it’s all good. And I start reaching for deeper questions. I start looking for things like you know.
Marvin 21:00
Start exploring more of my psychological archetypes, I started looking at things around you know, it’s what impedes my spiritual development. I start looking at things around what is it that’s maintaining my consciousness from evolving? I start looking at I started learning different things, seeking out different mentors start reading different things.
Marvin 21:18
Because everything I’m now afters, tried to move me towards what’s known as vertical change, real second order transformation. What do I need to be able to let go of an older identity and an older consciousness and transition into a more (inaudible) a more complex one that can deal with the next lot of existential questions.
Marvin 21:39
I’m not asking myself but not recognize it. That’s what it is I don’t fight it. And I’m not scared of it any more negative, excited and life just becomes a continual process of ongoing transformations.
Phil 21:51
Fantastic Marvin, and I would hypothesize that your first experience which you really identified as being (inaudible) reasonably traumatic. And that it was really characterized in some way as a fundamental search for meaning in what you were doing with yourself in relation to the world.
Phil 22:21
And this notion of meaning comes up a lot, doesn’t it when we talk about transformation, and it seems to be part of the human condition. The idea of enough, you sort of partially answered this, but it’s often the case that people associate some sort of crisis.
Phil 22:45
Being associated with personal transformational journey. But it’s clear that from what you’ve just said that actually it’s no longer that case. It may be the case initially, but not later on. How would you react to that idea?
Marvin 23:02
Yeah, look, this is important one, maybe because it goes back to what we’re saying earlier, which is changes, not all change it is the same changes, not just change. And when you’re talking about transformational change, there’s different different language, different lenses, different filters, you need to use to understand how that actually works.
Marvin 23:22
And why sometimes it can be traumatic and dramatic. And other times it can just be wildly exciting. It depends on how the narrative you’re putting on things, and and the level of consciousness at which you’re approaching it.
Marvin 23:35
So you’re right, in that the several themes that’s always in play as to why real second order, especially at a personal level, why real second order change is going to involve things like meaning and purpose, and you know, or meaningfulness and the core questions of Who am I and why am I here?
Marvin 23:54
You know, and what am I on about are all going to be central and because their niche to the human psyche, and that’s, that’s what’s causing this form of the next. And, you know, it’s a person whose work that you and I both familiar with work with Professor Clare Graves, who nowadays, you know, some of his work has been translated into what’s called spiral dynamics these days.
Marvin 24:15
He’ll often talk about how, at any point in time, you’re trying to deal with some existential issues, life conditions that you’re trying to deal with. And when you solve those problems, when you when you psychologically address those issues in your life, the next lot of issues will arise.
Marvin 24:36
Because it’s ongoing. you’re now at a level of consciousness, where the next lot of existential issues will emerge in moving towards deeper levels of depth of meaning and purpose. And so what will happen for a lot of people is if you’re not aware that this is what’s going to happen the first couple of times, and for some people, if they stay unaware will be for several times of real transformational personal evolution.
Marvin 25:04
Personal change that occurs, it can be traumatic and dramatic. Because you don’t know what’s going on. You’re not questioning well, who am I? And am I worth anything? And is there anything to life? And, and, and these are the good questions to be asking. But if you don’t understand that this is a natural process of self evolution, you see it as despair.
Marvin 25:25
You see it as what’s wrong with me, I should know the answer. Or why can’t I find the answer readily? And the short answer to that is you can’t find it in the existing level of consciousness you’re at. In fact, every level of consciousness you’re at, you’re going to still be asking that question.
Marvin 25:42
You’re just going to get the next level of clarity as you go as you mature, as in your consciousness as to who you are. So you evolve in your consciousness. So you’re always going to be asking that question. You’ll just be getting clearer as you go.
Marvin 25:55
Now what can happen is when people fight It when they resist it when when they get hooked into their narrative and their content and their interpretations, with their current way of being. And then they start to say I should know and why don’t I know it? And you try to find an answer with the language of your current worldview.
Marvin 26:16
But there will be a higher order of questioning that you can engage in. And so when you start doing that, and over time when you start recognizing that this is an ongoing process, you know, as humans, we kind of never, it would be a fallacy to kind of say, Yes, I’ve done my personal development work. I’m good now.
Marvin 27:35
Yeah, I found the answer. Life’s good. I’m done. Right? It, you’re always going to be at that next level. And when you start engaging in that next level of Wait a minute, you know, I’m asking the questions again, who am I again? Why am I here? And what’s my purpose again?
Marvin 27:51
You know, how do I find more meaning in my life again, just recognize all great but what I’ve discovered so far, what’s the new level of ways I want to approach this questioning of myself in a new way and in a more evolved way than ever have been before who’d have to become to ask this in a different way of myself, and you’ll start facilitating yourself.
Marvin 28:12
Based on the natural process you’re already doing, which is the ongoing continual process of human evolution in consciousness, you are growing in spirit in your spirituality is constantly unfolding. And now you’re getting with your own program, so to speak.
Phil 28:29
Today I’m speaking with Marvin Oka. Marvin is a highly sought after international consultant and speaker specializing in business and management applications of leading edge behavioral change technologies and research. marvins professional background is in an innovative and groundbreaking field known as behavioral modeling. And today we’re talking about transformations.
Phil 28:50
In the context of I sort of summarize, transformation is a change in the relationship that we have with that we have with ourselves, maybe our family, maybe our friends, customers, business partners, so that we now start relating to ourselves and those others in a new way.
Phil 29:09
How do you see these relationships changing during a personal transformation? And is there anything that we need to worry about in that context?
Marvin 29:16
Okay, great question because it comes down to some of the, the structural elements around how transformation actually works. But you’re also asking about the implications of all that as well. So this is a brilliant question.
Marvin 29:29
Alright, so first, let’s talk about how systems work. And then we can take a look at therefore, what the how that maps across into the idea of transformation itself. So you’re absolutely right in that the a system is a whole, that is made up of parts and the system has certain qualities to it, which is based on the relationship between the parts.
Emergent Property
Marvin 29:58
So these are known as emergent property. So if we, if we say a culture in an organization is, you know, they’re productive, they’re high performing there, they’re enthusiastic, high morale, these are all qualities, that will emerge culturally, these are cultural properties that emerged because of the way people are relating to each other relating to their work etc.
Marvin 30:21
And these emergent properties are second order properties. The first order is what the system is doing, and the second order properties are the emergent properties. So real second order change means the emergent properties have changed. And the reason why the emergent properties have changed is because relationships have changed.
Marvin 30:39
Now, having said that, you can change relationships without changing emergent properties. This is the rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic syndrome. Great we can restructure an organization, you know, with with a stroke of a pen change, who’s reporting to who, but if the way that we actually relate to each other, the way we do our work, the way we interpret things, etc, doesn’t change.
Marvin 31:00
Great, we’ve, you know, we’ve technically restructured but nothing’s really changed around the place. But if we change our value sets, what our goals are, if we change our beliefs about how we’re supposed to work together, etc, then culturally, everything can actually really change.
Marvin 31:15
Same as in any in couple relationship. But in terms of with yourself. Now, this is what I call generative learning, and why at generative learning or what sometimes called Learning level three, and I won’t go into all the details at this point in time, but what it basically means is, yes, all the raw aspects of your psychology rearrange.
Marvin 31:35
They reorganize themselves into a new configuration. And when when that happens, you emerge to a higher order. Now, let me kind of go abstract for a little bit. Let me go lateral, and give you an example. And then I’ll come back and map it across to answer your question.
Marvin 31:50
So the late great Buckminster Fuller had a great way of talking about synergy about how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and he would often propose how you If you thought about things differently that one plus one can equal four, not two.
Marvin 32:05
And the first thing you have to do is change the rules of the game. One is don’t look at it in terms of quantity. So if we took instead, for instance, you would often use non Euclidean geometry. So three dimensional geometry take a triangle, take two triangles, one and one and one triangle plus one triangle equals two triangles.
Marvin 32:24
But if we were in three dimensional space, and he took one triangle and laid it down on flat on the surface as a base, and he took the other triangle, and he took it apart, so you get three sticks. Then you put the sticks on all the three points on the base and brought them together at the top. He’d have in three dimensional space, a pyramid.
Marvin 32:46
And what he’d have there is now instead of two surface planes, one triangle, one triangle, he would have four surface planes, the three on the sides and the one on the bottom, and he’d have more surface area with no increase in mass.
Marvin 32:59
This is how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts 1+1 can equal 4 surface planes, the rearranging of the elements and their relationships produces an entirely new emergent property. The reorganization can be done in a way that’s transformative, it’s now a different pyramid is a totally different system than two triangles.
Marvin 33:21
So very similarly, I could take my belief systems, my sense of identity, my memories and the way that I’m doing things within myself. And if I keep processing or or relating to my my personal history, my memories of my past, my belief systems, my sense of identity, my internal dialogue or narrative, and I do it the same way all the time.
Marvin 33:41
I’m not going to change I’m still going to be with my current belief systems, my current identities, etc. But if I go back and I relook at my personal history, and I start to find instead of all the bad memories, instead of it being quoted as bad, I start to find will actually there’s lessons in there, that if I actually look at I bring another resource called I know how to learn from experience.
Marvin 34:03
Let me apply it back to some of those memories. I hadn’t done that to yet. Now let me explore where the lesson was and how every negative memory that I would have had in the past nicely serves me with new lessons into the future. Suddenly, the way I understand myself in the now is far more resource far more empowered.
Marvin 34:22
Having rearranged my internal resources, into a new set of relationships, where now my psychology in the moment is, my past serves me, rather than limits me, because I’ve done different things in my psychology. And when that happens, you can go very generative in terms of who you are, why you exist, why you’re here.
Marvin 34:41
This is a very generative form of learning a very general form of self reflection and self inquiry. And that’s a major skill. And that’s often what I’ll work with when I’m coaching with executives, or when I’m coaching people working through major life transitions are obviously when I’m working with myself going through my own life transitions.
Phil 34:58
That’s a very affirming approach, the generative approach. I find that it also helps us to we have a different perspective on how we value others. I feel like there’s a couple of words in the that as we’re going through these changes.
Forgiveness and compassion
Phil 35:20
And looking at our stories of who we are, what we’ve done, what we haven’t done. A bit of forgiveness and compassion goes a long way. How does that play out for you? How do you see those two ideas of forgiveness and compassion coming into play here.
Marvin 35:35
Yeah, they’re very essential. These very big words and very deep and so again, I love talking about things like this. Let’s start with forgiveness isn’t as a major thing. And again, a several years back, a colleague of mine and I, we did some research, some behavioral modeling research, taking a look at things like forgiveness.
Marvin 35:54
And we found some amazing, fascinating things that are backed up by neuroscience, even if to how forgiveness actually works. And it’s there’s several myths that that most people have about forgiveness. And one of those things is they think that forgiveness is something that comes from the heart.
Marvin 36:13
They think it’s an emotional thing where, somebody is willing to forgive out of that compassion or they’re willing to forgive, you know, for the good of the other person. And it comes from this deep set of an emotional desire and a value set.
Marvin 36:31
Yes, all that’s there. But when we’ve actually looked at people that have done some serious levels of forgiveness, we’ve met some people that were, you know, frankly, between my colleague and I will, we’re doing the behavioral modeling process and we went, well, I’m not sure I’d be able to do that.
Marvin 36:50
We’ve met someone, for instance, who’s imagined this scenario the husband and wife. They’re celebrating their anniversary. They’ve got three teenage daughters. And they, go and celebrate their anniversary dinner.
Marvin 37:09
And when they come home, they discover all three of their daughters have been murdered. The oldest daughter’s boyfriend was she had just broken up with him and he came over and shot them all. Now, the, the gentleman that we interviewed, was able to completely forgive.
Marvin 37:30
Not only completely forgive the perpetrator, but also get to a place where he had no animosity in his heart. He was seeing a lot of positive sides in his life and etc. And this was some major, major levels of forgiveness.
Marvin 37:49
He mentored another gentleman we also interviewed where his son got murdered in a botched robbery and a son was working at a pizza place, and a robbery occurred. The robbery something went wrong and his son as an employee at the pizza place, got shot and died.
Marvin 38:06
To the point where this gentleman was so angry that he even admits that he actually went and talked to some nefarious people in the community and took out a contract on this guy that shot his son. After a while he as he got mentored by this other gentleman who was 3 daughters had been shot.
Marvin 38:26
He realized the error of his ways he realized that he all he was doing was bringing more hatred into the world. And so he cancelled the contract. And he set up a not for profit organization, around reducing violence in society. And he actually mentored the guy who shot his son, and he mentored him in prison.
Marvin 38:45
Now the guy when that guy’s prison term was up, he had no family. And it was this gentleman that went and picked up this guy from prison, the one who shot his son and offered him a job at is not for profit organization to reduce violence in society. These guys were amazing levels of forgiveness.
Marvin 39:08
And what is common to a lot of these be not just those two, but to to everyone else that we interviewed and we started noticing these patterns. What is common is forgiveness actually started with first a sense of self, they realized that as long as they didn’t forgive, the person that they were hurting, was themselves that they could not move on in life.
Marvin 39:29
They were stuck in the past, rehashing things over and over. And what forgiveness was, was a process before it was a process of compassion. It was a process of letting go. It was a process that was a gut based reaction.
Marvin 39:45
It was one about letting go and letting just letting putting things into the past, freeing them up so they could become present in the future. And then this sorry, becoming the present and then choosing what they want to now do in the future. Until they could forgive, they could not do that.
Compassion and its true meaning
Marvin 40:03
Now compassion comes into play on a different scale. And so compassion we’re starting to find is against my calling. And I did love modeling around taking a look at the notion of what is the virtue of compassion, and it’s more than a feeling.
Marvin 40:18
So most people will mistake compassion with sympathy and empathy. They actually think it’s just feeling for the other person. Well, you can feel for the person but not really have any real compassion that might just be sympathy or empathy depending.
Marvin 40:34
So first of all, we start looking at wool from a behavioral model standpoint, how can someone recognize when compassion is actually compassion? Well, it was became pretty obvious after once we realize it, you recognize something, someone is, is, is being compassionate, because they engage in compassionate acts.
Marvin 40:56
You actually see compassionate acts of service that unless Compassion translates into behavior, what you just got a sympathy and empathy, you could just got a feeling state, not real compassion, real compassion serve to reduce the suffering of others, or enhance, their join in some kind of a way.
Marvin 41:14
But because you feel for the person enough that you that you actually take some act to actually reduce that suffering in someone else. Alright, so question, why would someone ever do that? Why would you bother? Well, number one, they’re feeling it in themselves.
Marvin 41:29
So they’re trying to resolve their tension in themselves. Okay, that’s one level. But still, so if they’re feeling that tension in themselves, why don’t they just go have some chocolate cake and be better? Right? Why would they go out of their way to go into service of someone else or a group or community or whatever it might be?
Marvin 41:48
And here’s where we start to find something very fascinating, deep within people’s psychology when they’re feeling real compassion. It’s because it’s coming out of a level of consciousness at some level. In their consciousness, there is a sense of connection and oneness.
Marvin 42:05
At some level, the other person suffering is their suffering, and they merge, they become one. And they realize that if they do not alleviate the suffering or serve to help the other person, they are actually running from themselves at some level. And they can’t do that.
Marvin 42:23
They realized, and it comes back now to some form of a higher purpose or meaningfulness now comes into play. Now this again, I can go on forever in a day, but I won’t, but I’ll link these two things up now, which is, here’s the thing Some people think I need to have compassion and therefore I will forgive.
Marvin 42:41
In our behavior modeling we find well that can happen more often than not, it actually works the other way. First, you have to forgive you have to let go of the past so you can become president. Once you let go of your own resentment and your own hurt because you really when you forgive your forgiving yourself for holding on All this stuff.
Phil 43:00
Thank you for saying that. To me, you know, the forgiveness starts with forgiving yourself. And, you know, I’m guessing that those people who came home, three daughters were dead. One of the feelings that they must have had was hiding themselves for not being there.
Marvin 43:17
Absolutely the level of guilt. And it’s right.
Phil 43:22
There’s a new level of forgiveness there. And there’s a level of compassion for the fact that you’re just human being.
Marvin 43:27
That’s right now and you can imagine how it would be immensely difficult for anyone that’s for us mere mortals, to engage in any form of compassion and oneness. If we haven’t forgiven if we’re still holding on to a perceived violation, or resentment or things of that nature, forget trying to ever get to compassion.
Marvin 43:47
And so these two things go hand in hand first is recognized as a level of self awareness where you recognize the major one you’re hurting by not forgiving is yourself. Let it go. So that You’re free to evolve who you are, when you evolve who you are, you can get back to a level of consciousness of oneness.
Marvin 44:06
Where that compassion and that desire to serve and alleviate the suffering of others will now come into play and it comes back to once again the links back to what you said earlier around meaning and purpose and, this is where the real second order generative consciousness comes into play.
Phil 44:22
I liked a phrase that Auto Show uses a lot of pieces to lean into something and I do and for me, I’ve used that around self talk that so that I can be generative in the face of some painful experience. lean into it rather than shouting away or hiding from it.
Phil 44:39
And that can help us to look into those areas of forgiveness and compassion and Marvin I as a different type of transformation, which I think most psychology talks about is the growing up from teenage years to young adult and then maybe to You know, it’s your life when we might get married or whatever, are these transformations as well? And if they are, how are they different to the ones that we’ve been talking?
Marvin 45:10
Okay, great question. I love this because it’s very much in alignment with the lot of the work I do on generative, you know, work coaching, particularly around transition coaching and left transitions. So, again, we have the short answer, the answer, and the short answer is not necessarily these may or may not necessarily be transformations.
Marvin 45:31
The longer answers ideally, they they could be and perhaps one might even argue should be. But let me unpack this a bit further. So first, there is a difference between a transformation and a transition. And so as someone is growing up, ideally, they would be transitioning in their psychology as their psychology is maturing, along with their age, so to speak.
Marvin 46:00
Now the challenge with transitions for so let’s just talk about transitions separate from transformations. So a transition means we move from one thing to another thing and ideally as you’re growing up the psychology that we’re any what any one of us is embodying is maturing as we go.
Marvin 46:23
But I’m sure all of us have met adults that are not very mature in terms of their psychology or emotions or whatever it might be something didn’t mature. And it could be that something didn’t transition.
Marvin 46:37
I don’t know if anyone’s I’m sure many of our listeners will be able to find it examples in their in their own personal life where they’ve met people where, especially under stress, the other person starts acting very immaturely, their emotionally mature under stress or particularly in relationships or whatever it might be.
Marvin 47:00
You start to wonder well, how can that be Gee 40 years old, they’re acting like they’re 15 wondering what’s going on. Now part of it is this notion of continual upgrading to the next level. And this is something that in my particular field is what’s known as contextual markers, where something has to happen in life where there’s a marking that we have actually made a transition or are going through a transition in life.
Marvin 47:26
And there’s a lot of studies are in both sociology and psychology, showing how in the Western world today, we have de ritualized a lot of modern society, we don’t have a lot of rituals in our modern day society. And as a result, we don’t get as many chances to psychologically upgrade.
Marvin 47:47
So for instance, you know, we might know that when a young girl becomes a woman, what is the marker, the marker that says the context is not changed, she’s no longer a girl. She’s now a woman. And in many societies in my variable, it’s pretty obvious when she starts.
Marvin 48:06
Sudden when she starts menstruating, she’s now become a woman. Well, for a lot of boys, when do they become men, and that’s not so clear, you know, way back when generations ago, it might have been where you have to go out and, you know, do a first hunt.
Marvin 48:20
Or it might be that you have to go and spend the couple of nights out in the desert or in the forest by yourself and come on back or whatever it might be. Some traditions have rituals for that, whether they’re bar mitzvahs, or whatever it might be, but for many others, there’s no real ritual to let you know, it’s, it’s time to transition.
Marvin 48:39
You don’t behave like a boy and I don’t I’m not going to treat you like a boy. For some people, they they’ll find their own, they’ll kind of go Okay, I’m 18 now I’m no man. Okay, for others, it’s like 18 19 20 I was never ever told I was a man. So they’re still behaving at 25 like they’re 17.
Marvin 48:58
So you have to have these, these Transition these points where you actually know that the transition is occur Oh, by the way, because many times in modern society we are so unaccustomed to the idea of rituals that we don’t sometimes we don’t even recognize it when they happen.
Marvin 49:14
And you’ll see it for instance, when people get married. And for them, it’s just going through formalities. And they don’t realize this is actually a ritual. It’s a ritual on many sides, where you should be upgrading between your ears saying, okay, after this point, after this marriage ceremony, you’re not single anymore.
Marvin 49:32
So don’t even think and behave like, that you’re a couple now and you’re one and the rest of society will not treat you like your individuals, you’re going to treat you as a couple. It’s not a mere formality. It’s a transition ritual upgrade between the ears right.
Marvin 49:49
And so as people grow up in life, we need to have transition points where we are going from child to young adult or young adult to adult Adult, mature adult, etc. We need to have these now, whether these are transformative or not depends what you mean.
Marvin 50:09
Is it transformative in respect to how you behaved earlier in your life, you could say yes. But I also know if people that they could be 25 35 45, they could be 55 65. And their levels of consciousness haven’t really evolved a whole lot over the decades.
Marvin 50:31
You know, they mature in terms of their psychology in terms of age, and in terms of their life experiences. But the level of consciousness only got to a point and kind of stayed there for quite a few decades. And that’s a different use of the term transformation at that point.
Marvin 50:46
So again, coming back now to the crux of your question. Are they the same thing? Yes or no. I would put our class with the way you described it as more life transitions.
Phil 50:58
Yeah It’s a great differentiation. I’m speaking with Marvin Oka today. Marvin is a highly sought out for international consultant and speaker specializing in business and management applications of leading edge behavioral change technologies and research.
Physical change
Phil 51:13
Marvins professional background is in an innovative and groundbreaking field known as behavioral modeling. Today we’re talking about transformations. There are a lot about a lot of materials about the psychological changes. Are there also physical changes, other other types of changes that occur for us when we go through these types of transformations?
Marvin 51:40
Oh, yes, absolutely. I love this question because it’s it’s one of the more obscure questions and let that lot of people never even think about then it’s often not even on their radar. Let’s start with some obvious things.
Marvin 51:56
So number one, so my daughter, my youngest daughter, The moment growing up, as most children do, she really did not like mushrooms, eating mushrooms. She just thought they were absolutely disgusting. And didn’t like the texture and then like the taste and etc. And she’s now 18.
Marvin 52:16
And she came home the other day, and she works in a cafe and she came back and she said she had some mushrooms the other day. Excellent. And then I put it out to her while she was still getting used to the textures. She didn’t mind them and i said yeah, that’s really interesting.
Marvin 52:31
And it’s like, it’s not just suddenly her culinary palate has just expanded all of a sudden, literally, her taste buds are changing. Literally, you know, the way her body’s responding to something now is actually different and then on anyone listening will have experience that there were lots of things you might not have liked it when you were younger that you’re fine with now and vice versa, perhaps sense of smell definitely changes as you get older as well.
Marvin 53:00
So you do physiologically changes as one was one grows up as one physically matures. But in terms of now, consciousness, what actually happens? Oh, there are absolutely physical changes. First let me go to something extreme then and then I’ll talk about some some things related to it.
Marvin 53:17
So as we spoke about before, the late great professor Clare Graves, when he talked about his what he called his psychological map and how people’s worldviews evolve and change over time, how they actually are, they emerged a higher orders of sophistication in terms of understanding complex cause effect relationships in the world.
Marvin 53:38
He pointed out that for people’s worldviews to actually evolve to the next or the next level, that is based on the previous world, this is a two things have to occur. So number one is they have to have solved their issues of their life condition.
Marvin 53:52
So their life conditions would have to have been resolved and therefore and then it starts changing, but the others he also said their actual physical brain structuring has to change. Now keep in mind when he was puzzling a lot of this in the 60s, and in the 60s and early 70s, we didn’t have the level of sophisticated brain scanning stuff that we have now.
Marvin 54:15
And now we absolutely know that that is absolutely the case, there has to actually be the the basic neural patterning that has to be there from new ways of processing to occur, there has to be the raw goods. And so we know that the brain actually has to reconfigure to new orders of complexity, for things to actually now new levels of ways of relating and perceiving the world can can actually start to emerge.
Marvin 54:41
And it got to the point where, as grace pointed out, he said, you know, at one of the levels, what he called the CPI, egocentric worldview, and for those of you that know about spiral dynamics, this would be the read worldview.
Marvin 54:53
He said, there’s no question when you are in that worldview, there is a lot of evidence to show that you actually. It’s a power based world’s a doggy dog world survival the fittest and when someone is in that psychology there’s evidence to suggest they actually can withstand higher degrees of pain they can actually endure more physical stress.
Marvin 55:14
Now, at any for those of you that also know Grace’s work and or if you know spiral dynamics you also know that you might be at a at a particular worldview that is that comes after that CP red you might be in in you know, ER materialist orange, or you might be in FS green personalistic green or you might be in GT h yellow, H gt yellow, existential yellow, but you could Dutch if you could actually under stress situations revert back to something like CP red when you’re under high stress situations or being under attack or whatever it might be.
Marvin 55:50
And when that happens, there is no question you will be able to withstand more things of pain under stress situations, you know, things going happened, you could get shot in the leg and still keep going. And so there will be actual physiological changes.
Marvin 56:06
But it also suggests the reverse, which is going the other way, you actually become more sensitive. And you can actually find that people that are higher, you know, that that have now at our levels of consciousness where they’re paying attention to very minimal cues as to what’s going on in the world. They’re higher, they’ve got higher levels of sensitivity to what’s going on.
Marvin 56:26
And, and there, they now can’t handle things like loud noises, or hanging out in the in the nightclub for too long, or things of that nature, they can pick up on very sensitive moods and things of other people. And so yeah, there’s no question that yes, there are physiological changes.
Marvin 56:44
Now, related to that we also know neuroscience that under certain kinds of situations, certain orders of consciousness, for instance, will require it to be in a state of autonomic balanced autonomic nervous system has to be in a state of coherence where for those of you that are familiar hatred, heart rate variability, your sympathetic parasympathetic nervous systems are in coherent balance.
Marvin 57:07
And when that occurs you have less stress you got easier digestion, you got easier rejuvenation processes etc under stress which by definition you’re going to if you’re not managing your your processes very well under stress can cause people to actually lower their levels of consciousness very quickly go into defense mode if you know polyvagal theory they’ll start going into more feeling threatened and when that starts to occur yeah your neurology start shifting your digestion starts getting impaired, your immune system gets gets sub optimized.
Marvin 57:41
All sorts of things start to occur, you start to get your pupil start dilating you both capillaries start restricting you. All sorts of things start to occur. So yeah, there’s no question that orders of transformation do require physiologic physiological changes.
Marvin 57:56
Now what specifically you can’t exactly say this physiological, pattern equals this you can’t say that because there’s so many different conditions under which, you know, psychological transformation can occur. Some of it can be under stress situations come up.
Marvin 58:08
Some of it actually can be under highly relaxed situations. And these are all different forms. But it comes back to the thing what we’re saying rather start changing isn’t one thing. Making movement that says
Phil 58:19
It’s a very extensive look at this issue of transformation. My second last question for you really is around, I know that you’ve done extensive amount of training with Aikido. Your black belt now I’m not sure do you ever Dan, 2nd Dan and I’ve managed to complete the the introductory training program.
Phil 58:48
Which I did actually find very useful, and I’ll still be doing it if it weren’t for other matters. But I was just wondering whether you found the experience of Aikido and learning Aikido something which has facilitated your personal transformations?
Marvin 59:08
Yeah, it’s a short answer is absolutely. In fact, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of which I spend my whole focus of doing personal transformation work ever since, you know, I left being a magician, in fact, it overlapped with it.
Marvin 59:23
And despite all the things I’ve done, my wife will tell you that Aikido was probably, in her view, what she’s seen in my behaviors, perhaps the single most transformative activity of I’ve done in all these years. Its first is an anomaly, which took me a little bit to resolve and it is constructed trying to explain why I think it’s so transformational.
Marvin 59:47
Here For those of you not familiar with it, it can be often be translated as to the way of harmony or the way of peace. And but it is a martial art. So you think how do those two things go together? How does a martial art become the way of harmony in the way of peace?
Marvin 1:00:03
And when you look at some of the sayings of the founder Morihei Ueshiba, or sometimes we call him Sensei, the great teacher. Some of the philosophy that he has passed on as to what Aikido was about what he what he tried to create, they are absolutely stunning.
Marvin 1:00:21
They come from states of oneness and and a universal consciousness. For instance, one of the things one of the many quotes that he had on one of the many sayings is he said, I can never be defeated because there is no enemy. Now, or sometimes it can be translated to because there is no attacker.
Marvin 1:00:47
Now when you actually if you just read that on the surface, you kind of think okay, that’s pretty quaint. But when you realize when you actually practice Aikido and you realize what you’re actually practicing that you’re not practicing a martial art for defense per se.
Marvin 1:01:02
But if you’re practicing it as a “do” as as an “do'” means path or way, in Japanese and Aiki is harmony. And if you’re actually practicing the path of the way of harmony, you start to realize that if someone is now about attack you as a martial art that you know practicing on the mat, they’re about to strike you or grab you or lunge at you or whatever it might be.
Marvin 1:01:28
If you see them as an attacker that you have to defend, then you’ve lost you’ve missed the point. At that point, there is a you and them and you’ve missed what the training was about. The training wasn’t about you defending yourself against them. It was about harmonizing about becoming one with them. And this is why you can never be defeated.
Marvin 1:01:52
You can only be defeated if someone’s attacking you but that’s a level of consciousness that starts from separation. And if you start from a consciousness, that’s We’re not separate, we’re actually one, then there is no attacker. And therefore there’s the whole idea of winning and being defeating is and being defeated is irrelevant is that narrative never comes into play.
Marvin 1:02:11
All there is harmony and movement. In this case, things are in balance are out of balance and you rebalance the energies that are actually in play. And so he also said, you know, the purpose of training is to train and he said, so your turn you’re not training in Aikido to one day defend yourself, that the purpose is here and now it’s in the moment when you’re on the mats and someone strikes you and you go, Whoa, wait a minute. You’ve missed it.
Marvin 1:02:41
The point you lost consciousness right there, come back in here and hold that consciousness and that’s why you train and because that consciousness carries on after you leave the mat as well. And so one of the ultimate phrases that we have in Aikido is “Masakatsu Agatsu Katsu Hayabi” which translates to To true victory is self victory right here right now.
Marvin 1:03:05
And this is what the training is all about it’s about you’re not here to beat anyone defeat anyone it’s all about self perfection developing yourself and your character and anytime you think oh they’re attacking I have to defend or didn’t I do this well or gee I must look good and and the ego takes over you’ve lost this is not true victory.
Marvin 1:03:25
This is not self victory right? Get back on the mat do it again until that doesn’t happen until all that’s left is a oneness consciousness and you’re in flow again. And this is why you train and in many ways you know, it being a martial art is the perfect vehicle for learning this because nothing will drop you out of one is consciousness quicker than someone attacking you.
Marvin 1:03:49
It’s quite tremendous. Every time you train, every time you get on the mat every time you you do something it can be incredibly transformative if you are conscious When you’re training it and you know what you’re doing, you know, it’s not about being wonderful at Aikido. It’s about self reflection through the medium that happens to be Aikido.
Phil 1:04:14
Fantastic last question Marvin, what’s the point? Why on earth do humans go through all this? Why can’t I just get on and live our lives without all those angst?
Marvin 1:04:27
Well, short answer is you can but I’m, going to make one big assumption here, which is, with everyone listening, you’re listening to this podcast and entire podcast series for a reason. You don’t hook into something themed transformations, simply because you just sort of want to get on with things.
Marvin 1:04:44
And very similar Phil you’re asking this question probably for a very similar reason is because inside of us, we’ve got this this question is innate question around meaning and purpose. And where’s it going? Because there’s something that’s compelling us to do this and now you have To reach for your own kind of narrative and philosophical framework.
Marvin 1:05:05
As to how to go about answering this. Now I reach for a lot of different things, I go to different forms of wisdom traditions, different types of philosophical studies. And one of the people that I studied with is a rabbi here in Melbourne.
Marvin 1:05:21
And he often talks to me about capitalistic principles and he pointed out something that I it just resonated so deeply with me that I thought, wow, you know, the Kabbalah or aside or not this is this is, I think, a profound lesson that he that he was conveying to me.
Marvin 1:05:38
And he was saying that innate within us as part of a fluid for lack of better terms, if we consider ourselves more of a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual essence, rather than just being a material. We happen to be here in our physical form and we get on with life and then we die and that’s it.
Marvin 1:05:58
If we consider that There’s a level of a higher consciousness that we belong to, and where we come from, of and of which we are a part of, and a reflection of. Part of that is a continual manifesting of the next level of, of experiencing ourselves knowing what it means to be who we are, at an essence level, and, and expressing that materially into the world physically.
Marvin 1:06:26
Otherwise, if we just conceptualized it, the term is heaven doesn’t reach Earth, nothing happens. And so, he pointed out, this Rabbi pointed out to me that this idea that there is intrinsic within us, this desire to continually want to connect, to become one and to manifest what is our essential truth into the physical world is an inherent part of who we are of our very essential makeup.
Why am I here?
Marvin 1:07:02
And so as a result, it seems to me that innate within everyone will be deep down somewhere in our psychology, this ongoing question of who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? What am I here to do? You know, what? What’s it all about? And it’s this ongoing question that is not so much meant to be.
Marvin 1:07:27
How do I find the answer? It’s more about how do I live in to that inquiry? How do I make that inquiry, a living inquiry to guide the choices I’m going to make from here in this continual finding out this continual expression of some deeper essence that connects us all. And I think it’s that ongoing pursuit that gives life meaning and purpose.
Marvin 1:07:54
And as you say, Would you don’t have to do it that way? But I suspect If you’re listening to this podcast, there’s a party that already recognizes. If you’re at you’re already asking that question, and you’re already trying to find out what does it actually mean to live in to that inquiry?
Phil 1:08:13
Thank you very much, Marvin. It’s an awesome overview of transformations. So today, I’m Phil Volkofsky Brakten consulting. I’ve been talking to Marvin Oka A leader and globally recognized authority in his field. It’s been a great pleasure to talk to you Marvin . Thank you so much for your time today.
Marvin 1:08:32
Thanks, Phil.
