Destiny: Blake D. Bauer, You Were Not Born to Suffer

Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. You know, we talk a lot about relationships and issues around couples and self esteem and things like that here on Destiny, but you know a lot of us And I'm raising my hands on this one big time because when I was I had a miserable childhood. My parents tried the best they could. They were not well matched. They had five boys. I was the oldest, and they just didn't know how to raise kids. They were unhappy with their with each other

as spouses, as partners, and they were terrible parents. And so I had a lot of problems from a very young age. And I was highly sensitive, but I withdrew because I wasn't being mentored by my father. My mother wasn't there to help. He was a teacher and a college professor and she was a homemaker, but she was not She had no aptitude for raising children, and so we were left to our own devices. And I've said this many times. If it wasn't for my grandfather, I don't know if

I'd still be on the planet. I don't know if I would have survived. I don't know. I mean, his influence was big enough that He left this huge impression on me. He was what you can consider a cosmopolitan kind of a He had a worldly view of everything and really enjoyed knowing about other cultures. And he had come from Germany during the war to kind of get out of being drafted by the Germans. He was from Germany, Dusseldwarf. But I really praised and I appreciated his mentorship, his advice, his

counsel on a lot of different aspects of my life. And I couldn't talk to my father, I couldn't talk to my mother, and so I had to raise myself. And it was and it continues to be an issue because when you raise yourself, it's a very limited perspective. So you have friends. I have, you know, plenty of friends, but I was challenged. I got married very very young. I was twenty two and I first got married. I've had a number of relationships and she, you know,

had no busines being in a relationship or being marriage. She was immature. So it was the blind leading the blind. And so the point is you develop a lot of insecurities, a lot of fears. I had depression, I had a low self esteem, and if it wasn't for some of the early discoveries of Eastern philosophy meditation. I discovered meditation well just before I turned twenty one, and it saved me. It saved me because it allowed me to quiet my mind, quiet my fears, quiet my depression and what if

kind of attitude into more stability. So without parents and guidance, I had to seek my own solutions. And I used to be really jealous of my friends who had what seemed to be stable family life, you know, parents who cared about their kids. You know, I'm not saying that my parents didn't care about me. They did, but they just weren't well adjusted themselves, you know. And I had went through some therapy right out of college

and it was tough. And so I think I'm letting you know a little bit a little bit about me because a lot of us are walking around and were wounded. We were either wounded by abusive parents, and my parents weren't abusive, they just ignored me. In some cases, that's also a form of abuse. But I learned, and I continue to learn, that it's up to you. It's up to us individually to seek the wisdom, the

mentorship. It can be through teachers, it could be through other adults, other authors, books that we like, and to find healing and find resolution to problems. And you've heard it here many times. We come and incarnate to learn. Earth is a university or a high level college where you pick and choose your partners. You discover your healing modalities. And the key is to be as fulfilled and as happy and as prosperous as possible without too much

blood letting. And I was lucky enough because I had some friends in high school that committed suicide and they just couldn't stand it anymore, had friends who were physically harmed and mentally harmed. I was. I grew up during the period where there was psychedelics, but in those days it wasn't ayahuasca, wasn't d MT. It was LSD and it was payote mushrooms. And I didn't do LSD because I was always worried that I was going to lose my mind.

I was always felt that I was always on the edge. As an artist, you're kind of crossing over and looking for the muse, looking for the inspiration to paint. And I was an artist. I was a terrible student in high school, but I had a gift for artistic expression, which allowed me to get scholarships to school. So that's how I got into college. Was I had a killer portfolio and boy and even college which was an escape for me. I went to Los Angeles down in Long Beach to go

to college. I started by getting a scholarship to the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, but I wanted to get away from my parents, so I went to and I transferred to Long Beach, where I entered the illustration department, and that was somewhat of a saving graces as it is by itself. And my girlfriend, who would eventually become my wife, was working. She worked down in Macy's. She was a buyer men's clothing buyer. So and that's another story. But you know, we put up the facade of

normalcy, like, hey, we're doing fine. But I was a kid. I should have never ever gotten married. In fact, they should, they should post make it a law you don't get married until you're in your thirties, because when you're in your twenties, you're still a kid, you're still really trying to figure out what the hell was going on. So of course our relationship didn't last more than seven years, and it was growing.

We were both trying to figure out what was going on, and we're growing together, and it was a challenge and it was depressing, and she became my wife, began drinking because I couldn't. I couldn't fulfill her needs because I was a child. I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. So these are my personal challenges. But a lot of people have self esteem problems. They are deep depression, and it's just really tough for a lot of people, even you know, as they grow older.

So today I have a new guest who is releasing a book called You Were Not Born to Suffer, Overcome Fear insecurity and depression and Love Yourself Back to happiness, confidence and peace. And the author is Blake Bauer, and I'm just I just finished this interview and this is a wonderful look at how to find solutions to your emotional spiritual problems. And you know, the relationships we have our parents, God help us. Luckily, my parents weren't physically abusive

or emotionally abusive. I had friends that had emotionally abusive parents. And we're gonna learn about this today in this interview. So I hope you enjoy it and I hope you can get something out of it. We're introducing a new author this week on Destiny. His name is Blake Bauer. He has written a new book that I just had a chance to look at, called You Were Not Born to Suffer, Overcome fear insecurity and depression, and love yourself

back to happiness, confidence and peace. I like it because it kind of chronicles his young years in high school, talks about his upcoming and uh kind of it's kind of the phoenix story where he kind of blossoms. But I got to say this about the book. It has great tools, got a lot of affirmations and other work book types of processes which are really critical and uncovering your own issues as well as kind of finding a path for success.

So, Blake, welcome to Destiny. Great to have you on the program. Well, thank you so much. Cliff. Hey, I want to ask you why number one, Why did you write this book and was it cathartic for you? In other words, was it a kind of a healing to write these chapters and then follow it up with your learning of personal growth techniques and other helpful studies. Yes, absolutely, the book was definitely a part of my healing process and very cathartic, but that came after the book

came after many years of deep healing and spiritual practice and study. And so why did I write the book, Well, the main reason was to help as many people as I could with the lessons and the healing that I felt very lucky to come to understand because I was desperate and tortured mentally and emotionally

and suffering very deeply just in myself. And then, like the topic of your podcast, Destiny, I felt like I couldn't find freedom from suffering as a young man without understanding the purpose of life and the purpose of my life. And so the book came to symbolize a very big part of my understanding

of the purpose of life. And so, you know, as we were talking about before the show, you know, I struggled with drug and alcohol addiction at a very young age, you know, starting in my early teenage years, and I was really self destructive and out of control, and that led me to get arrested a number of times as a young man and eventually

hit rock bottom. Very young, I was a captain of my varsity football team in high school with two of my close friends, and we all had offers to play college football, and I got a very bad d y One night, I fell asleep in front of train tracks on a bunch of pharmaceutical pills and alcohol and cannabis, and then woke up to police knocking on the window, was arrested, kicked off the team, lost my offers to play

in college, and then I fell into a suicidal depression at eighteen. And this was the beginning of my dark night of the soul, my death of self, and then me searching for these answers, you know, how do I find freedom from suffering? And what am I doing on the planet? And as I healed and studied, and you know, it became the focus of all my time and energy as a young man. Eventually I found tools that really helped me find relief from my deep psychological, emotional, physical,

and existential pain. And the more I got clear, the more the only thing that drove me in life was sharing those answers with other people. Was that a healing process? When you were sharing your problems, it's always I think we're always healing. I think it doesn't matter how much you grow or how much you heal. Like every day we're faced with things that we need

to process. We store things on our body from our childhood, from relationships that have been challenging, from traumatic experiences, and so you know a lot of my work is around learning how to love yourself practically and take really good care of yourself or have the healthiest and most optimal relationship to yourself possible, which we need to have in general, and I think today more than ever we need because we've created a world that's really toxic, you know, with

the toxins in terms of like physical toxins. You know, with technology, there's a lot of toxicity out there that just gets spread and misinformation. And then there's you know, we we have processed foods and genetically modify foods and chemicals in our foods, and so you need to really up your self care game just to serve for your immune system to be able to function and survive in today's climate. Talk a little bit about growing up because a lot of

people play the blame game. My folks weren't there, I didn't have any parental supervision or my parents loved me too much, gave me everything I wanted, and I just went south. I think you bring this up in the book. We'll talk about it a little bit more later. This is just the process of incarnation, right, talk about the teenage years, which are really the formative years for social interaction and how that's a good thing or a

bad thing. Well, Cliff, I'd say the first big theme that I think is important that I obviously had to learn and I think we all have to master, is that what you were born into and the trauma you experienced and the challenges you experienced are not your fault. But once you become aware of them, and as you mature and grow, it is your responsibility to heal it. So it's not your fault, but it is one hundred percent

of your responsibility. And as we grow and mature, every thought and word that we use to blame someone else is very much a waste of time and

energy and is going to keep you trapped in your suffering. And so we have to really pay attention to where we blame, because blaming is like a prayer for suffering basically, so, because we got to get really good at using our thoughts, our emotions, our habits on a moment by moment daily basis to heal ourselves, to liberate ourselves, to create what we want. And when you're blaming, you cannot create what you want. Yeah, yeah,

so I think, you know. In my work, you know, I go back to the origins of suffering for a lot of us, and I have found that a lot of that comes from a place where a lot of people feel deep guilt and unworthiness and that arises for a lot of reasons.

But one of the biggest reasons is that and this is where we give we don't give enough credit to our parents or maybe have enough compassion for them, which is that our parents never learned how to love themselves either, you know, and your grandparents their parents, they don't know how to love themselves either or have a healthy relationship to themselves, and then pass that down to you know, your parents, and for your parents to pass it down to

you. And what I've found is our teachers really don't get it, our doctors don't get it, our psychiatrists don't get it. Even our religious leaders don't get it, you know. So that's really why I focus so much on this lesson and this theme around how do I actually love myself? How do I have the healthiest, optimal, kind, caring, loving relationship to myself mentally, emotionally, and physically, because I see that as really the

process of evolution playing out. And I think that's why there's so much destruction and illness in the world is because this self destructive relationship to ourselves is being passed down from generation to generation. So when you look at your parents, you know what I'm teaching. I often say to people, think about go back to the time when you were conceived, you know, so like,

think about what was going on for your parents on that night. You know that they conceived you, right, And then I say, so, do you think that they did they love themselves at that point? You know, did they have their shit together? Had they had they heared themselves, Did they know how to take care of a relationship, were they financially secure? Had they dealt with their own you know, family trauma? You know.

And when people start to think about it, they start to see their people not as these gods or idols that are imperfect, but they see that, oh, they're actually just messy human beings that you know, are doing their

best. And they may have intentionally got pregnant or maybe it was an accident, or one of them wanted it and the other one did it, And there's all these different reasons why we come to be And so the more we can start to understand this stuff, which is that our parents were suffering and doing the best with what they knew, even if their best was horrible and

painful. And really that's where we need to get in our mindset. Now, that doesn't minimize a lot of the suffering that we go through in childhood, but eventually we have to start to have a perspective that sets us free, because how we look at a situation, so how you know, us as people, us as your listeners, how we look at our child but

either keeps us trapped or sets us free. And that's one of the most important parts of healing is understanding how powerful your mindset and your perspective is on the quality of your experience today in the present. Yeah, I want you to talk a little bit about our culture and the problems with Western civilization. I mean in the United States, where it's a marketing company, it's like who has the best of these items, who has the most money, who

has who looks the best? You know, it's like such in Nane desires are just all over the place. Talk a little bit about how that affects a young person and how we have to break free of that absolutely well,

So I think this we all have this core wound. Most of us have this core wound of unworthiness, and then that becomes I'm not enough, right, And if you have this deep core belief and feeling that you're not worthy of love or worthy of good things or worthy of kindness, that becomes, you know, I'm not enough to be lovable, which then turns into this habit of I always need to be more, do more, have more, be different, to be accepted, to be loved, to survive, to

be approved of. And so I think that's where, you know, this becomes a really unhealthy and destructive game that we play in this consumer economy, right, because if we if you've never learned to understand that you have value in and of itself just because you exist, right, and that you are a miracle actually in human form, then it's really easy to get caught up in the trap that you always need to be skinnier or have a part of your body bigger, or you need to have nicer clothes, because if you're

if you don't have that label, then you're not enough, right, or you're not lovable, or if your friends have it and you don't have it, then you're not worthy of love and you're not enough. And I think one of the big struggles is we have parents who are suffering, and then the cost of the cost of living is so high, for example, people

are so busy. So if you're if you're growing up in a home and you're not getting the love and attention and support that you need, and nobody teaches you how to give it to yourself, then you start seeking externally. And so many of our problems come from looking for love outside of ourselves, looking for value and worth and validation and approval from friends, from a girl

you like, from a boy you like. Then you know, you grow from your teachers, then from your boss right, and it can become a very unhealthy loop where you know, I talk a lot about this concept of betraying yourself and compromising yourself and abandoning yourself, and so I see this as a pattern that starts very young and then continues often through our entire adult life, where we are abandoning our true self, abandoning our needs, our feelings,

our destiny. Yeah, in exchange for toxic forms of love, toxic fling forms of support, toxic forms of companionship. And we don't realize that over time this dynamic actually makes us sick. So I think, you know, in our time, we've made physical money and material wealth and things are god right, Like if you think about America, we often talk about, like, what are the biggest buildings in a society? Right, So our

biggest buildings, our skyscrapers, are our financial institutions. Right, Our big cities are you know, financial institution buildings, and that has become our God. And I think the bigger picture is that in the developed world we have lost are rarely a little bit, We've lost our soul a little bit. And I know you love to talk about ancient traditions, which I resonate with so deeply, and I think that collectively, especially in the developed world,

we have lost the connection to our soul that everybody is craving. And in

Buddhism, there's this state of consciousness called the hungry ghost. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but the hungry ghost is like a state of being where you're not really there and nothing is ever enough to fill the whole inside of you, because like the next car, the next ring, the next clothing, the next paycheck is never going to be enough to fill the hole in your heart that's looking for true love and deep spiritual connection and

a deep understanding of your purpose and your destiny in the world, and how your own purpose and destiny is aligned with the larger collective purpose and destiny. And so for me, coming back to my story, I did drugs and got arrested and hurt myself as an unconscious way of initiating myself into adulthood,

into being a man. Because, for example, our culture, we don't have any healthy forms of initiation, Like Cliff, you and I don't go out in the desert for forty days and learn to hunt and do vision quests and meet for sul or meet your maker. Right we now are you know, shopping and doing drugs and you know, maybe working and going through drug and alcohol addiction and you know, opiate addiction. I mean, that's a really good point. We don't have a coming of age tradition in a Western

culture. Some some parents may welcome like in the Hispanic community, you're welcomed as a young girl into maturity. But it's not like that with the men. We're kind of left to our own devices. I want you to talk a little bit about why uncon just parents aren't necessarily to blame. I was raised by unconscious, unaware of parents who just let me kind of do my own thing. And the sad thing about that is, as a young person, I had to raise myself. I was lucky to have a very insightful

grand grandparent, my grandfather, who was a huge influence on me. But a lot of people do not have a parental oversight and they are left to their own devices. And this is where I can see someone like you, like I feel hollow, i feel depressed. I'm gonna take drugs, I'm gonna be I'm gonna drink alcohol, I'm gonna go crazy and tell something interrupts that, like you know, DUI or whatever, and then you feel like your life's over. But it's just on one level to many. So talk

a little bit about parental oversight. Well, I think, like I said, you know, our parents are typically struggling and doing their best with what they learn from their parents and from society, and then wherever they're apt, you know, in their development when they bring us into the world and then and their parenting. And obviously this doesn't excuse like abuse, for example,

because I know a lot of people. You know, I experience verbal and physical abuse, A lot of people experience physical, verbal, sexual abuse, and so none of this actually justifies it. But again, like I said

before, none of this is our fault. But at some point, when you start to wake up and you realize maybe you're not as happy or healthy as you want to be, or your life doesn't look the way that you want it to be, you have to get to a place where you say, Okay, this stuff is not my fault, and what can I do today to take one hundred percent responsibility for my health, for my happiness,

for creating the life that I want. And so I think the bigger theme, Cliff, that I like to help with people is that this journey, the lesson, is really learning how to love yourself, value yourself, take care of yourself, and basically give yourself the love you never got, give yourself the support you never got. So another way of talking about this is that we really have to learn how to mother and father our own soul.

And that's the real theme, because you know, it's the idea that no one's coming to save you, no one's coming to rescue you, you know, and really, at the end of the day, and you know, our parents, even if they're great parents, can only do so much for us because we still have to learn these crucial life lessons like how do I take care of myself? How do I earn a living? You know, how do I navigate the world in the time and place that we live in.

And even the best of parents can't prepare you for all that you know, these are these are parts of our journey that you know, when you're going to bed by yourself every day and you're waking up, you know, and you're looking in the mirror and you have this relationship to yourself, to life, to the universe. You have to find this clarity for yourself, whether you've come from trauma and suffering or you had a bit of a you know, privileged and and you know, easier childhood. You know, I

find that suffering hits everybody eventually. You know a lot of people say like, oh, you know, I had such a tough upbringing. These people have easier, had better upbringing. But the truth is is that suffering is the baseline of the human condition, and so you may have had an easier childhood, but you're gonna You're going to get it unfortunately somehow in adulthood,

through your own children, your marriage, your finances, your health. Because there are lessons as a human that are unavoidable and we all have to learn

them. And so I think, again, coming back to this theme, cliff for me is and you know, I work with all kinds of people, people who come from the worst type of abuse and trauma, and people who come from the most idyllic privilege that you can imagine, and people who are very successful, and people who are struggling, and at the core of everybody suffering in the present is still this same lesson of learning how to love and value yourself every day from the moment you wake up till the moment you

go to bed, which another way of saying is is parenting your own soul, giving yourself the unconditional love that you idealize as the perfect mother and perfect father would have given you and taught you how to do for yourself, which most people ninety nine point nine nine percent of the people will never ever get and have to figure out how to do for themselves. Yeah, talk a little bit about your path, Blake, because the books filled with remedies and

tools and transformational therapeutic types of applications. How did you discover your path? Did you discover it just by continually falling down and then picking yourself up with a new tool, or did you begin reading from a certain Indian master? I mean, for me, when I turned eighteen, my saving grace was as I learned transcendental meditation a little bit older than you, and I did

that, I felt immediate relief. And I also knew this was a tool I could go within twice a day for twenty minutes and just say screw the world. I am realized. I call it resetting my brain. I do this twice a day, and it didn't make me super successful, but when I was able to calm myself, it was a major step in the right direction for me. Talk about you absolutely, I love that and I resonate very deeply with that. So when I was eighteen, I moved away from

home and I was tortured mentally and emotion at that time. And that was just after my dy and all those challenging things that I shared before I had blown up my ego and blown up my identity. So I had no idea who I was anymore, and I was waking up every day very confused, and my mind was a mess, and I didn't know why I was on the planet. And I had the awareness and the strength inside of me to stop drinking and stop getting high because I knew that that was the big thing

that had I had sat how I had sabotaged myself. And then I came from a family with a lot of drug addiction and self destructive tendency. So looking at my family and realizing I don't want to end up like that, and then the pain of what I had already created for myself was enough for me to stop drinking and stop getting high. But I was a mess inside, and so I did all the things that you asked me. You know, Did I fall down and get back up? Oh yeah, all the

time. Do I study texts and the masters? Oh yes, every day, every text and every master and every philosophy I can find, And like you share, one of my major saving graces was wandering into a Buddhist meditation center when I was eight, and I sat down and I learned to train

my mind and it saved my life one hundred percent. And ironically today I teach with the organization that I walked into to learn meditation over twenty years ago and now teach with them all the time every year and help thousands of people through that love and that relationship we have. So you got involved a Zin center somewhere. It was actually just Buddhism, but I studied as well, and I'm not a Buddhist. I don't identify with any religion, and so

that was a really big part of my healing. And so I basically if I did everything and anything I could to feel better. So that included eating healthy, taking lots of supplements and vitamins, eating everything I could, learning practices like meditation, like yoga, like tai chi, like chigong, learning to get good sleep, you know, going to experience different types of healers, you know, home me up. I have to ask you, Blake, it must have been traumatic for your family to say at eighteen, because

eighteen you're like you're a senior, yeah, and it's like I'm leaving. They must have lost it, they must have flipped out completely. Where did you go? Did you go to another relatives home or what did you do well. So this was just after high school. High school, but you're still young. That's very young for guys. Yeah, I moved to Colorado and you know, under the guise of going to college, so okay, and you know, and I wasn't able to focus, you know, I

couldn't even I couldn't even think straight. I was such a mess inside. And so being away from my family, being away from those social, you know, relationships that I had developed a lot of destructive habits within, was really healing for me. It was kind of like, it's funny, I'm doing another podcast in a day on a show called starting Over, you know, and had this opportunity to start over at a young age because who break was died, you know, this captain of the football team, big ego,

arrogant, doing drugs, drinking, being reckless and self destructive. Like that person had to die or else I was physically going to die. So that identity, that that facade that I had built up to survive had to die. But then I didn't know who I was when that was gone, and all there was was suffering and shame and paranoia and anxiety. There was something that was happening with you, you had your soul or some part of

you was guiding you. You can talk about that a little bit later, but this is a message I think comes through in your book is that there is a source, there's a soul, there is some form of awareness within each of us that we need to tap. Absolutely, talk about that, absolutely. Yeah. I think, like I was saying this theme is I was listening to my instinct and intuition, you know, intuitively, but I

didn't understand it from a big, big, the bigger picture. But I was trusting it because if I couldn't trust that, who could I trust? Right? And I didn't really feel like I had anybody else. So I had to start to listen to that inner voice and not numb it and you know, cover it up and run from it. And you know, I was also on this journey of seeking outside. You know, I was looking outside of myself for answers. I was looking outside of myself for healing.

I was looking outside of myself for love. I was looking outside of myself for my destiny. I was looking outside of myself for my purpose and eventually looking outside of myself so much and spending so much time, energy, money doing that and hurting myself. Really looking outside of myself, I realized that the love I was looking for was in me all along, and it actually was my true nature, and the purpose I was looking for outside of myself

was actually inside of me. It was me, It was my true nature, but nobody ever told me that or taught me how to take care of it. And so over time, I think through learning to have a healthier and more loving relationship to myself, Cliff, and also through training my mind

meditation is a big part of this. I learned to trust myself because if you don't train your mind, you'll never be able to trust yourself because your mind will be all over the place and you're always going to question your thinking right. And if you don't listen to the voice inside of yourself, that

means you're always traying yourself, which means you'll never trust yourself. So I started listening to that voice, and I didn't realize that subconsciously and instinctly, I was building up this trust and this faith that over time was going to help me make big decision, you know, take take leaps of faith, you know, write a book. At a very young age, when people thought I was crazy and you're talking about get a real job, you know.

So I think, you know, over time, the meditation, you know, healthy habits all help this awareness inside me grow and then help me trust it. And then my meditation practice helped me realize and grasp that I wasn't my thoughts, I wasn't the voices in my head, but that I was the presence, the awareness, the consciousness, the light behind the thoughts.

So the more I meditated, the more I can to my true self, that presence, that awareness, that consciousness inside, and I began to trust that because that felt much more stable, much more wise right, much more reliable and clear. And so this snow beld over time to where, you know, I started to understand how I had found in retrospect the source of healing, the source of love, the source of peace inside of myself through learning how to love myself. And that's what really drove me to write

the book. I wrote to help all the people I've helped this because I knew the desperation and the pain and the torture of constantly looking outside of myself. You know, like, maybe the answer is in this book. Maybe it's in this guru, Maybe it's in this training, and the truth is is that nobody has ever taught us exactly how to love ourselves, how to

relate to ourselves and the healthiest, kindest, most compassionate way. And as you learn to do that, you realize that the source of what you're looking for is inside and has always been there. But these typically are very esoteric or beautiful ideas that are like nice philosophies, which I'm gonna use are really a term that is not the most tasteful, but it gets the point across.

I call it mental masturbation. It's like, we like to have all these beautiful thoughts, but if we don't know how to walk that talk and embody it and make it practical, then all it is is maybe good conversation or kind of delusional, fantastical thinking. Because we need to be able to integrate this so that we can be in our body right now and in this life and enjoy being here and not be suffering and not be hurting ourselves looking

outside of ourselves for love, for purpose, for healing. We're going to take a short commer. She'll break and allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guest today Blake Bauer talking about his newest book, You Were Not Born to Suffer. We'll be right back. You one on the run, But do we even know about you? Run from you, you shy from the vain hope it will never come back again. Try and try your new because love is always knocking new. My guest today

is Blake Bauer. He is a internationally recognized teacher who has tensive experience working with people in relationships in group settings. To discuss personal growth in spiritual development, you distill your experience down to these chapters, and I want to go through a few chapters in our time today talk about healthy selfishness as kind of an opening because we think of selfishness as a behavior that is abhorrent to you

know, good communication, good socialization. When you think of a selfish person, you think of somebody who's somebody you want to do, not want to be around. But what are you referring to? Absolutely so, Cliff, you probably couldn't have picked a better or more loaded chapter to dive into.

But I think on a high level, we all know that if we are not taking good care of ourselves and we are stressed and bread thin, right, So let's say, I'm trying to be the most selfless person, and I'm taking care of everybody, and I'm not taking care of my health, and I'm not sleeping well, and I'm just looking after everybody and working hard and picking up after everybody. Then what typically comes of that, some of

them gets burnt out. They get resentful, they get short, they get snappy, and so at a high level, we all know and we realize at some point that we have to learn how to keep our cup full because eventually we're just going to burn out, right, And so that's where you start to think, well, okay, so some self care and self love is necessary because that's the only way to keep my cup full, right, And then you know, but then you know, I think, because we

never learned how to love ourselves, and we're in a little bit of denial, which I'm going to explain, we make self love and self care wrong and call it selfish. And I think it's a really big part of our problem. And Cliff, let's say you and I are in a relationship, you know, and so then we start to use it to manipulate, right. So I might say, Cliff, you are so selfish because you're not doing what I want you to do, Like, you see what's wrong with

that? Yeah, it's reversed. They're so selfish because you're not behaving in a way that I want you to write. So I am using this idea of selfishness basically to manipulate. Okay, but now I'm going to take us one step deeper down to the rabbit hole. And because this is one of the most important things that I think I can share with the community that's listening. So do you remember when I asked, I brought the idea of when

we were conceived earlier in the in our chat. So if you think back to the night you were conceived, Cliff, and for the listeners, think back to the night you were conceived, your parents conceived you. And then this is what I do in my retreats, and I say, now, ask yourself, why were you conceived? Like what was the driving factor? Right? And so when we think about all the answers to that question, there's a lot of different ones. Right, there's pleasure, Right, we

were just having sex. We were having fun, you know, there was I was an accident. My mom didn't want it, but he did. Terrible to say that though, right, But it's a very common it's very very common, and that's at the roots of a lot of people suffering because deep down, they don't even feel worthy of existing. And that's where I'm going with this, because if you feel like you were an accident, then

you don't even feel worthy of being here. And if you don't feel worthy of being here, you don't feel worthy of love, You don't feel worthy of happiness, You don't feel worthy of even your emotions, or your needs, or your destiny and your purpose. If at your base, at the very root of your existence, you feel like you are a mistake or an accent or there are a lot of kids who grow up with parents who say I wish I never had children, And when you hear that message, it

affects people very deeply. That leads to all kinds of depression and physical illness. And so I bring this up because then I ask, Okay, so you think about why you were conceived, And then I ask people, so was that motive selfish or selfless? So when your parents were making love or having sex for whatever reason, was it selfish or selfless? Right? So you know, do you think your parents were being intimate and they said to

each other. Let's make love, and we're going to create life, and then we're going to sacrifice our needs and our peace for the next twenty years, just to be blamed for doing everything wrong later. Right, do you think that's what they agreed to? Know they were? And I break this down and we have these heated conversations, but eventually what you get to is

that it's always selfish, but there's actually nothing wrong with that. And what you start to see is that nature is intrinsically designed to be selfish, to self preserve and to build itself, and then that is the way that it becomes of benefit to everything around it. So I like to talk about the apple tree. If you think about an apple tree, the apple tree selfishly

takes what it needs right from the earth. It takes the nutrients the water, It takes what it needs from the atmosphere, and it takes the light from the sun. And by selfishly taking what it needs, it grows into this abundant tree that produces fruit and oxygen and shelter, becomes a home for animals and bugs, but then produces oxygen for decades and produces food for decades.

Right. But it's only when it gets what it needs, and we are like that apple tree, right, and we need to learn how to give ourselves what we need on a regular basis so we can sustain our giving and keep our cup full. And so one of the biggest blocks that we have to overcome to do that on a daily basis is this confusion around the theme of selfishness, because what it brings up is our guilt. Right, I feel guilty for taking care of me instead of focusing on everybody else.

And what I have found, Cliff now, from working with hundreds of thousands of people over the last two decades, is that everybody has this guilt and it goes back to the beginning of our life because we were born to selfish people. And it's not that they're bad people or wrong, it's just human nature. They were selfish. They were figuring out their own stuff, which, like you've alluded to, left us to try and figure out a lot

of stuff on our own. And so a lot of us have this guilt where we feel guilty for being here, We feel guilty for having feelings, we feel guilty for having needs, and we have guilty. We feel guilty for having a calling, which is directly connected to the theme of your destiny and your purpose. But if you don't know how to honor your needs, if you don't know how to honor your feelings, if you don't know how to honor your desires, you can never walk the practical path every day to

your destiny and to the fulfillment of your purpose. You have to learn to say I matter, my feelings matter, my needs matter, this voice, this calling matters. And when you learn to say I matter, this matters, every day you walk towards your destiny, towards your purpose. Yeah. I like that a lot. That leads me to my next topic, which is self esteem. Yeah, and you have a chapter called Healing Guilt, Shame, and Insecurity, which leads to self esteem. And i'd like you

to talk a little bit about how we nurture our self esteem. And of course your book provides excellent affirmations and tools for nurturing self esteem, but i'd like for you to talk to the listeners about some of the technique perhaps that you've found are the best and most beneficial. Yeah, absolutely so, thanks

clip So that's the perfect segue from what I just said before. So to me, the most important insight when it comes to self esteem and confidence is understanding this idea of trusting yourself and valuing yourself and how do I do that

practically? And so if someone's listening and they feel like they struggle with their sense of self esteem and self worth, the most important thing to understand is that we got here because early on we never learned to feel and believe that we were work and that we mattered, okay, And practically, how that shows up is that because basically we repeat our habits every day and that's how

we get to where we are. And so the habit that leads to bad self esteem and poor self worth is saying to yourself, I don't matter or I'm not worthy. And how that plays out is when you say, my feelings don't matter, my needs don't matter, my preferences, or my calling

doesn't matter. And so a lot of times in relationships and throughout our life, a lot of us are living on a day to day basis where we internalize, repress, reject our feelings, we internalize, repress, reject our needs, we internalize, repress reject our calling or our desires either because we're just not aware of them. Right, We're on an autopilot, or we're afraid to talk about them, or we haven't we have never learned the tools to talk about them effectively, and we don't want to make a mess.

You know, we're self conscious about even beginning the conversation. And so when you feel something and you don't express it, you're betraying yourself. When you need something and you don't express it, you're betraying yourself. When you feel called or passionate about something, but you're always stopping yourself out of fear,

you're betraying yourself, which means you're hurting yourself with all these habits. Okay, And then the other thing that comes in the same theme is that when you don't train your mind and your mind is running all over the place every day, you're betraying yourself. You are hurting yourself because you're allowing your mind and your thoughts to just do whatever, and you're the victim of those unhealthy

thoughts. So, you know, Cliff, if I was your brother and I betrayed you and hurt you on a daily basis, would you trust me? No? Would you like me? It depends because there's friends that you like so to a certain level, and then you have people that you love which you think, oh love one, So it'd be tough. So if I don't train God, i'd be It'd be tough if I was abusive to you but betraying you on a daily basis, right, it'd be hard to like me right and hard to trust me right. So I'm drawing this out

because this is actually the relationship that most of us have with ourselves. We abuse ourselves, We allow ourselves to be mistreated, We reject and betray our true feelings and our true needs and our true calling too much on a daily basis, and so that the result of that is me feeling like I don't have a lot of value. But also I don't trust myself. And a lot of self esteem has to do with trusting yourself and valuing yourself. So then the question is, Okay, well, I see I don't value myself

because I keep letting myself be mistreated. I'm abusing myself, I'm rejecting my true self. So how do I change this? While the key is to learn how to start being your own best friend, being good to yourself, being loving to yourself in the present as a practice, just like transcendental meditation. Right, it's like twenty minutes a day, twice a day. It's

a practice. Learning to love yourself and have a healthy relationship to yourself is a practice that you have to practice throughout the day every day, from the

moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. And every time you express what you're really feeling, every time you express what you need, every time you act in integrity with your inner calling, your instinct, your intuition, what's really going on inside of you, you start to trust yourself again, and you're telling yourself just a little bit more that day that you are worthy, you matter, you're valuable, and over time you rebuild old

trust in yourself. It's just like, let's say you've been married to someone for twenty years and you have kids, and you have this life together, and one of you really fucks up and betrays the other one, Right, there are a lot of certain situations where in that marriage they will work to come back together and try and trust each other again because they have built so

much together that they don't want to lose it all. Right, Yeah, And that's kind of like our relationship to ourself is like you've been with yourself for decades and you can't get rid of yourself. You can't reverse yourself, even if you would like to write. Then the question is how do I

rebuild trust? I have to heal this and so to rebuild self esteem, to rebuild confidence, to rebuild trust in yourself, you have to learn to be good to yourself, to be your own best friend, practically from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, and so I and a lot of my work, that's what I focus on helping people understand

is what I learned the hot way, how you actually do that? And so, for example, taking care of your mind is one of those secrets, because if you don't take care of your mind and train it, you'll never trust yourself fully. How can you have full self esteem and self confidence? If your mind is all over a place and you don't trust your thinking, and you don't trust your reactions, and you don't trust your perception on

reality, you can't have strong self esteem. Right. So that's the key is to learn how to to take really good care of yourself in the present, and then you're rebuilding trust on a daily basis. Let's bring in a tool because each chapter ends with a series of tools. Why don't you give us a suggestion for an affirmation for self esteem? Okay, beautiful, I think it'd be great. Give us you know how we proceed, how we

would use an affirmation to begin building self esteem. Absolutely so. I'm sure most people who risksen are familiar with affirmations and affirmation to refresh our memory. Just for for those who don't use affirmations, yeah, absolutely so. Affirmations tend to be a positive or healthy thought or phrase that are typically a higher vibration than a lot of the other limiting beliefs and thoughts that we think on

a daily basis. So like a lot of people might might think a thought and they're not even aware of it, like I'm not worthy of love, right, or I'm not good enough right, which then drives I need to go shopping so I can be good enough, right. Negative affirmation exactly, And we're very good at that, right. And then the other thing we do a lot is we have a lot of fear, So we also worry a lot, right, And we all realize that worry plays out our thoughts.

And there's a saying, I'm sure you've heard that I love which is that you know, worrying is like praying for what you don't want, right, So affirmations help you pray for what you want. Affirmations help you pray for how you want to feel right and how you want to be. And then the other thing is is that when you wake up in the morning, your brain starts to fire off thoughts, right, and those thoughts are typically based on your conditioning, And we wake up and a lot of us start

thinking like, oh man, what I got to do today? I'm so stressed, I'm so anxious. I got a zillion things to do, And so that's causing parts of your brain to fire that are tied to fear and to stress. And when that happens, your body starts producing unhealthy chemicals like thoasol. Right, So when you start using affirmations, which means intentionally and consciously choosing positive thoughts, healthier thoughts, you're also starting to activate parts of

your brain that have atrophied or that are not fully switched on. And so when you start to ding in affirmation like I am worthy of healthy love, where I am worthy of kindness and respect is a really good one. I am worthy of kindness and respect. Just saying that thought to yourself turns on a part of your brain that has been off, and that part of your

brain starts to release serotonin and dopamine. So instead of releasing quota is al, you're releasing the chemicals that actually make you healthier and make you happier. I really like that the fact that you're bringing that up, which is something rarely discussed, which is the fact that when you're actually using these I'm going to call them software applications, which are affirmations, you actually turn things on, like hormones being released in the brain. That's fascinating. I that's first

time I've actually heard that perspective. And those are important because those are helping heal, right, as opposed to make you sick. And that's why this is so important, because when you're in a stress response, you know, most of the day, and your body's pumping cortisol into your body, it's making you sick, right. And this is like this whole theme of like

not blaming our parents and taking full responsibility. You have to take full responsibility for your thoughts and your mind if you want to heal completely, so that you can start pumping these good chemicals through your body. Instead of thinking you need a pill or a surgeon to do it for you, you can learn to use your energy, your consciousness, your attention, your thinking to generate good chemistry, good biochemistry in your body, good energy. I don't know,

are you familiar with people like doctor Bruce Lipton? Yeah, and epigenetics. Right. So when I think I am worthy of healthy love, I am worthy of kindness and respect, I am creating a healthier environment in my body in which my cells are living. And then that actually creates It's proven

scientifically that creates the environment that determines genetic expression. So when we talk about turning on and off, if I wake up and I think I hate my fucking life and nobody loves me and I'll never be good enough, you're creating this environment and the energy and the water of your body where your cells are living. That's gonna turn on disease genetically and turn off the healing process because you're telling your body basically, I don't really like being alive. I don't

really like being here. But when you say, you know what, I am worthy of a good life, I'm worthy of healthy love, I'm worthy of kindness and respect. You're telling your body it's safe, it's okay to turn on these healing mechanisms or off the disease response, that you want to be here, that you can make your time here better, you know,

from your own consciousness, from choosing to make it so. And then, like your analogy, you're turning on healing, you're turning on more positivity, and you're turning on more possibilities for success, for healing, for great love

and relationships. I love that absolutely. I mean because again, like if I feel, let's say, Cliff, if I have this affirmation running this thought loop, running this belief that I'm not worthy or I'm not good enough, then I meet this beautiful woman who likes me, but I'll sabotage it because I have this program running in my head. Whereas if I am aware of I have that program, and I meet this beautiful, amazing, switched on person that maybe is the right person for me, and I notice,

oh man, why am I thinking this negative thought. I don't have to keep feeding that story and you don't have to switch. This is not about being delusional on switching to the other extreme, like I'm the best thing that's ever happened you know I'm perfect. It's not about that, but just pausing and being like, well, you know what, maybe I and worthy of

healthy love. Maybe I've always deserved to be appreciated, you know, and just start being open, like you said, to the possibility that there's a new way to relate to yourself, a new way to relate to life, a new way to experience love. If you've experienced toxic love in the past, you know, maybe you've been sick for a while. You got to You can't hear unless in your mind you can imagine the possibility of healing.

Right. You can't leave the job you hate and pursue your purpose and your destiny if you can't imagine a reality where you're making a living doing what you love. Exactly. Yeah, the books called you were Not Born to Suffer. My guest has been Blake Bauer. Blake. As we conclude, I want you to talk a little bit about a chapter that is called what covers simply living in survival mode. And I think a lot of us live in this situation. We're just surviving. Every day. I'm going to get through

another day. I'm not happy. I don't like my relationship, I don't like my life. I'm overweight, I'm eating crap, but this is all I have living in a survival mode. Why is that a problem? And how do we get out of it? That's a big bite. I gave you a lot to cover. It is a big bite. And one thing I was going to say is maybe when we get off in the show notes, I can send you this little meditation I have that I give to my clients. I do send up show notes, So if you want to send

that, that'd be great. Yeah, I would love to. So I would say the most practical thing to do in that situation is a meditation like I'm going to give to you to share with the listeners, which is I like to talk a lot about how when you wake up in the morning, your thoughts and your energy are literally creating and shaping your day, right, And we often don't realize how powerful our morning routine is, but it sets

the tone for the day. And so with all my clients and people who come to my retreats, one of my big homework assignments is minimum of ten minutes of meditation in the morning. And that really is the most important, practical, effective thing you can do to shift the dynamic that you just describe

because it starts when you wake up. You're in survival mode. You're scared, you're anxious, your stress, you're spread thin, and then you create your whole day from that energy because you get up and that's how you make your You typically don't even make breakfast, right You maybe have coffee and you

skip breakfast, and you get dressed, but you get dressed quick. You don't take time to take care of your body, and you don't feel great maybe looking in the mirror because you're rushing and you're so scared to take the time. And maybe you don't go take a walk or exercise because you don't have the time and you feel scared. Right, So, first thing in the morning, focusing on your breathing and your body and not chasing your conditioned

thoughts and not chasing your fear based stress thoughts. First thing in the morning,

help you to regulate your nervous system upon waking. And if you can regulate your nervous system when you wake up and train your mind and train your awareness to be present and not lost in the fear based, survival based thinking, then after ten minutes you can get up and go about your day much more present, much more with deeper breathing, a regulated nervous system, so you're actually overriding the fight or flight response that you're used to waking up to.

And so that is this meditation that I share with people to do first thing in the morning. So before you do anything, you can get up and use the restroom and have a little bit of water, But before you go on your phone, right before you look at the news, which only triggers more survival based thinking, before you look at emails which stress you out, before you start making breakfast or coffee, you sit and you focus on your breathing and your body, and you don't chase every wild horse which is

your thoughts, you don't chase every fear based thought. You just sit there and you give yourself permission to focus on your breathing, your body, your health for ten minutes. It shifts everything, and it shifts everything more effectively than probably anything you can do. And that's very simplistic. Is this part of the first part of the book, because I didn't see it in the book or is it on the website. It's integrated throughout the entire book.

Okay, And then after I have my clients or people I work with do this ten minutes of just simple breathing. I take them through three steps which actually ties together everything we've been talking about, which is the three steps are to just take a moment to think about three specific things. And when I guide people to do these three specific things, Cliff, it's doing what we

just talked about. It's turning on the part of the brain that's healthy for you, that's going to help you achieve your goals, take care of your health, and turning off that survival, fight or flight part of your brain. So the three thoughts I have you think, which are just take maybe thirty seconds each, not much, is to think about a few things you're grateful for to think about now, I have you intentionally think about what you

want. So instead of thinking, oh, I dread my life, I dread my day, why don't you think about a couple of things you want, Like I want to have a good day. I want to achieve this today. I want to not lose my peace today. I want to have a walk to right. I want to carry myself with more grace today.

Whatever your goal is, you say that to yourself. And then the third thought I have you choose, So you're practicing choosing, intentionally choosing your thoughts, which turns on that part of the brain which gets the good energy and the good biochemistry. Rolling is to think about the people you love and care about most and say prayers for their wellbeing. So first thing in the morning, what am I grateful or what do I want? And then say some

prayers for the people you love and care about most. So you're giving out good, positive energy to people instead of just focusing on yourself and being scared. And it sets in motionless shift in your energy that you get to start your day with. And so going back to you know your question, if you're waking up in that much negativity, you have to train your mind because otherwise you'll never get out of it. And then you have to start to look. And it can be so simple. Just be grateful for your bed.

Just be grateful and serious, like I'm grateful for my bed, I'm grateful I have a roof over my head, I'm grateful for my shower, I'm grateful for my cup of coffee or my cup of tea. And just saying those thoughts to yourself, just saying those things to yourself will start to shift, because if you're addicted to looking for things that are wrong, you're always going to be miserable, whether you're in a tent or a mansion.

Right, So, if you're mind is addicted to being negative, it doesn't matter if who's around you or what's around you, You're still going to be addicted to being negative, which is going to make you sick. So you have to wake up and train your mind to look for the good things. So, if you're in a tent, I'm grateful for the fresh air. I'm grateful for my tent. If you're in a mid sized house, right, I'm grateful for my bad I'm grateful for my roof. If you're in

a mansion, I'm grateful for my huge arm. I'm grateful for you know that I can afford to pay my bills. I'm grateful for my shower. And just those real thoughts in the morning are going to help shift you out of a hole that you're stuck in. Yeah, I love those suggestions. And for those of you listening, I'm always pushing meditation. If you don't do TM, find another form of meditation, because it's really a healing aspect

of our daily lives Blake. As we conclude, give us your web address, tell us where we can get a hold of you on social media, and the bottom line is, you know, give us information about your seminars. Thank you, Cliff. So my website is Unconditional dash self love dot com. And on social media on Instagram, my handle is at Blake D. Bauer which is b a u er And then on Facebook I have two pages Blake Debauer and the title of my book you Were Not Born to Suffer.

And on all of those outlets you can find the retreats that I host, which I do every two months in Colorado at a beautiful six hundred and fifty acre retreat center in the Mountain. So I want people to come out. You don't do zoom or any kind of video. You want them there physically. I do retreats in person every two months. I have a couple of things coming up online which they can find on my website. I have one free event coming up on the I think it's the twenty seventh. That's

a free online event. If people want to come, it's totally free, so please come. And then I do I do private counseling, coaching, mentoring on zoom. Good. So you have clients I do, yes and all that informations on my website. Okay, you are not born to suffer, Blake. We could talk for error on this. This is a fun book for those of you listening. It's very easy to read. But really what makes it solid is his suggestions for self therapy. These are things like

meditation affirmations. We didn't go through all of them because there's just so many of them. So and this is what I would call a tone to Blake's his life work here and so this is really heartfelt material. And congratulations on this book. I know it's been out for a while, but it looks like a really impactful collection of material from your life. Thank you, Cliff,

I appreciate that very much. All Right, man, hey, congratulations and let's have you back him up to and thank you so much for having me. I thought that interview with Blake was fluid. He had a lot to say. You know, we get a lot of people that have written books that are working on one to one kinds of situations with a client or if it's a psychologist, it's a patient. But Blake works with large groups and you can tell that he wants to get across a lot of different sections

of a thought. In other words, he's describing them and then dissecting them, so everybody in the audience understands what he's coming across with. And I really like that approach and his books. Like I said, his book's very easy to read and it's got a lot of really good material in it. You Were Not Born to Suffer. His last name is bau Er Blake Bauer. Yeah, I'm glad we could. We could, We could talk with him. Go to his website also, and he also has some social media

that you can check out as well. Hey, we're into the vacation season and that means you should be thinking about getting away. We have a Mexico tour coming up, Sacred Temples of Mexico. It's November eighth through the seventeenth of this year. It's one week. It's really short. But I was just talking to Memo. We're gonna have Memo on the program. Memo Gonzalez has been the Yucatan tour expert forever. He is going to provide us special

access to parts unknown of Chichenisa, which is a huge archaeological park. We'll see Ushmo ekboalam Maapan, and a bunch of other things. We're fine tuning this tour as we speak. And the real beauty of it is we get to climb pyramids, and this is off limits kind of thing that most people are not allowed to do when they go to Mexico simply because they're not sanctioned

by the local authorities. But we will climb pyramids on this tour. For more information for details, go to earth Ancients dot com forward Slash Tours check it all out. If you have questions about any of our tours that you have heard about, go to Earth Ancients the number four of the letter you at gmail dot com and I promise to get right back to you. Now I want to mention this. I do this sparingly. But we're gonna be in Easter Island in March of twenty twenty five. We're almost full. If

you want more information on that tour, it'll come out next week. That's with doctor Edward Barnhardt. That's really for me. Once in a lifetime, I'll probably I'll never go again. So if you want to join us, send me an email at earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com and I'll get you the information. Like I said, we're I think we're at twenty. We're gonna take maybe thirty. I don't want to do more than thirty because we want to move around in a single bus and we want to have

a doctor ed talk to the group on a multiple occasions. So look for that a itinerary in the next couple of weeks. If you want to come, email me let me know what's going on. All right, that's it for this program. I want to think my guest today, Blake Bauer, you were not born to suffer. As always the team of Guil Tour, Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys rock all right, take care of me well and we will talk to you next time.

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