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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, I’m Jonathan Cleary. I want to tell you about a podcast I created called All We Need to Know — Your Travel Guide for the Bumpy Road of Life. It’s a mission-driven work — a podcast with a purpose: That purpose is to change how we live, by changing how we educate.

I’m nobody special – just an ordinary guy — though I am leading an extraordinary life. I see it as a choice — a choice most people never make because, well, they never realized they had a choice.

The All We Need to Know podcast makes ordinary listeners aware of that choice — of an alternative to struggling and striving only to find life to be much more difficult and far less fulfilling than they hoped.

Through my nonprofit, Teach Our Children Well, I’m working to change that. And this podcast is how we start — by first empowering adults. Notably, All We Need to Know is an educational undertaking — not “self-help.” It leverages what listeners already possess rather than telling them what they lack or need to fix.

Our message — our offering — is awareness versus change. Change takes care of itself. Awareness is what occasions change — it gives rise to what I call AdeptAbility.

I’ve spent the last seventy years travelling the road of life. And I’ve learned a few things — actually lots of things, including the essentials that liberate us from the scripted, performance and comparison-driven life we’re programmed to live and invite us, to instead, have a life of greater ease, meaning, and enjoyment.

What follows are three excerpts from various episodes intended to give you the tenor of the content and my ability to deliver it. You’ll note that the recordings are raw, unedited, evidence of my need for a partner to give a professional, full-throated voice to my message and my mission.

I begin with the 1^st Beat of Episode Zero which is titled Of Rainbows and Ruby Slippers:

I wish to speak to you today of Rainbows and Ruby Slippers and the paradoxical pursuit of what is innately ours, of our journey outward to find what lives within us but which we’ve been conditioned to overlook — even deny.

I’m making metaphoric reference, of course, to Ms. Dorothy Gale of Kansas who, together with her little dog, Toto, got blown away by the notion that what she wanted — what was important, what mattered — was somewhere out there, over an illusory rainbow, when, in truth, what she really wanted was to be securely at home, in that place where she was loved, heard, seen, accepted, and valued for exactly who she was, for her genuine self, and for nothing else — nothing more.

That very place to which she was always able to go simply by knowing a secret that she unknowingly possessed.

The great paradox of our lives is that we’ve all been spilled out upon the Yellow Brick Road of life alone and unaware, finding ourselves arm in arm with kindred travelers, also seeking to fill the perceived voids in their sense of self, ever in search of wisdom and love, and the strength to face and measure up to life’s challenges — ever in search of what we’ve been led to believe is missing, what we’ve been told we need, and who we need to be in order to be accepted and loved. To be enough.

Have you ever felt like you’re Dorothy, desperately trying to get home… to that place where you feel everything’s okay — where you’re okay? Where you get to be yourself, and that’s enough — no play acting, no gaps or voids, where you’re complete? And, it’s not happening?

Ever felt like you’re doing everything you’ve been told to do, playing by the rules, following the script, working harder than ever, but it somehow lacks meaning and purpose?

If you have, if you do, there’s a reason. You’ve been set up. Not intentionally, well, somewhat intentionally. But we’ll get to all of that later. The truth is, you’re not failing at life. You’re quixotically pursuing an Impossible Dream.

The Rainbow Chase

We’re all chasing rainbows. Think about it – when was the last time you said ‘I’ll be happy when… When I get the promotion. When I find the right person. When the kids are older. When I lose that weight. When I have enough money.

But here’s the thing about rainbows – there’s no pot of gold at the end. In fact, there IS no end. Rainbows are an optical illusion. The pot, the gold, the rainbow, the rainbow’s end. None of it is real. Pure figment. And, like floating goalposts, the closer you get, the farther away they appear.

The Cultural Programming

You see, our culture — our entire economy — is built around and depends on rainbow-chasing. Every advertisement, every motivational poster, every “live your best life” message is telling you that what you want is just over there, just beyond where you are now.

Work harder. Achieve more. Earn more. Buy more. Be better — change. The supposed happiness you seek — is always one more step away. Somewhere over the next rainbow — where bluebirds fly.

The thing is, you just can’t get there from here, because you’re already there. There is here. We just don’t see it. We’ve been programmed not to see it. [4:00]

From EPISODE 5: Who’s in Charge Around Here?    

The matter of man’s relationship with the Physical World — the natural order — who’s in charge, who’s calling the shots, is really the greatest mystery of human life. It is the basis of all religions and spiritual pursuits, the fervent focus of philosophers, scientists, and mystics — of kings, shepherds, and waifs, of the exalted and the abandoned.

And, yet, it remains a mystery. People can say and write and teach what they will, but in the matter of who’s running the show, it all comes down to perceptions and beliefs.

Even so, the question must be answered.

Why? Because the answer determines how you live your life.

• You make all of your decisions — thousands and thousands of them — both the conscious and the unconscious ones — based on the answer to that question — and that answer informs other questions, like:
  • What do I control and what don’t I control?
  • What can I influence and to what degree?
  • Should I try to direct or shape the flow of events or just let them take their natural course?

And those decisions that you make determine what you do and how you do it every day of your life. Or, as I like to say — they determine the arc and quality of your life experience.

As I just alluded to, in the absence of certainty, we rely on perceptions and beliefs.

So, let’s take a moment to consider where they come from?

• First, they’re the product of how we were parented, socialized, educated, of the culture we live in, of how we see ourself, our purpose in life, and our ability to navigate what life throws at us — in other words, how we’re “programmed”
• Subsequently, our perceptions and beliefs are shaped by our actual lived experiences — by what happens and how we respond to it. But, of course, our perceptions and responses were shaped by the very same programming — and tend to reinforce that programming.

So, we’re stuck in the spin cycle of living our lives based on our programming — what we’ve been told and taught — UNLESS — unless we consciously, purposefully evaluate the truth of what underlies that programming and assess how well it’s serving us.

If you aren’t conscious of your programming — of the perceptions and beliefs that influence your daily decisions — if you don’t question it, then, ultimately, your life’s decisions are being made by default based on perceptions and beliefs that you haven’t vetted — that you haven’t personally signed off on.

Said differently, fundamentally, the decisions you are making that write the story of your life are being made unconsciously, by default — by others — not by you.

• Can you identify the beliefs and perceptions in which your life’s decisions are rooted?
• Do you know their origins?
• Do you know why you believe them to be real and true?

My objective in this Episode is to raise your awareness of your perceptions and beliefs around the whole Who’s in Charge question – to cause you to ask and answer it — to make sure you realize there’s a question to be answered, and why it’s so important that you do —

WHY? primarily

• So that you can let yourself off the hook for struggling to live the Impossible Dream,
• So that you are open to an alternative approach to life that not only accepts the reality of who’s in charge, but also aligns with that understanding,
• So that you can use that knowledge — that awareness — to your advantage to make your life and that of others less difficult, less stressful, and also more complete, more fulfilling — truly better on a number of levels.

As I said before, the matter of who’s in charge, who’s calling the shots, is really the greatest mystery of human life.

But this is your life. So, the question of who’s in charge must be answered by you – because if it isn’t, it’ll be answered for you. Let’s dig in!

And, finally I tell a story from my travels that underlies my passion for this project

During my foreign travels I have many times been invited into people’s homes, shared meals with them, figured out how to overcome our mismatched languages, and gained access to a view of what their lives were like.

As well, I’ve witnessed extreme poverty, great hardship, desperation, privation. I’ve encountered dead bodies in India, Ethiopia, China, and Nepal. I’ve had the gut-wrenching experience of saying no to or ignoring beggars, often little children. I have the indelible memory of a little girl in Delhi, pleading with me for money, tears streaming down her dirty face, a little girl who, as I was informed by the India-savvy Buddhist monk with whom I was travelling at the time, would be beaten by her handler upon returning without rupees or dollars. Her handler was basically a pimp who used little children to beg for money — for him. That was his business. There were thousands of such children on the streets of Delhi. “Don’t give her any money,” said my teacher as he sat across from me wrapped in the robes of compassion. “It won’t do any good; you’re just feeding the monster.” I didn’t give the little girl any money. That was more than twenty-five years ago and my decision still haunts me.

That said, and I could tell you a number of similar stories from my travels, the most vivid, most resonant vestiges of my world-around brushes with poverty aren’t the sadness, the anguish, the frustration or the anger that those experiences have evoked in me, but, rather, something quite different, something unexpected and uplifting: joy.

My memories are festively decorated by big, exuberant smiles sporting decaying and missing teeth, by shrieks of laughter, and big bright eyes that shone like stars against the dark background of poverty and hopelessness.

One such memory is of a middle-aged, near-toothless man in the Peruvian Andes who made a lasting impression on my view of life. With the help of a fellow traveler whose Spanish was far better than mine, I came to understand that Luis worked nearly twelve hours a day planting and digging up potatoes in exchange for a pittance that barely let his family of four survive.

Luis worked every day, with no expectation that, tomorrow, or ever, things would be different, better. He accepted that this was his life. He paid no heed to what might happen, to what might possibly be in the future. As sad as this may sound, Luis had no hope; hope was a foreign concept. For Luis, there was no future, there was only the moment, that’s all he knew. He was free from wanting.

Each day, he found beauty in the Andean vistas, the warm sun, the love of his wife and children, even the soil which was the source of his subsistence. He knew of no god; there was no one for him to either thank for or bemoan his existence. He lived in peace, fully aware, and without a scintilla of resentment or sadness. While he lived in material poverty, he endured no poverty of heart or spirit. Luis was joyful; he smiled a lot.

I carry these memories with me each day. They infuse my deep feelings of gratitude, my awareness of being truly blessed. They nourish my compassion, and weigh heavily on any sense of deservedness I may have.

They motivate me to help people cut through the overhead of their endless desires that steal their energy and attention and eclipse the organic beauty that is there to be experienced in the moments of their daily lives.

In the midst of our rich, advantaged culture in which so many people struggle to merely be happy, to be content, to just be okay, I am both inspired and humbled by those who have found the wisdom to accept what is, to find the beauty in the moment, simply for what it is, and to be truly present in that moment.

We who have can learn so much from those who have not.

Thanks for listening.

If what you’ve heard and, hopefully, read about the All We Need to Know podcast resonates with you, if you embrace the intentions of my non-profit, Teach Our Children Well, and, if having read about me, on the allweneedtoknow.com website, you feel you could work with such an unsavory character, I’d love to explore what we might create together.

I am on a mission. This podcast is mission-critical. It deserves a capable, committed, multi-faceted producer.

Perhaps that’s you?