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We are back with James Arthur Ray, New York Times bestselling author, consultant, coach, personal development guru, Bears of Array, born in Iran during the Iran Iraq War, and the book is God, Money, and Sex, Understanding and Mastering the Three Human Dilemmas. We're obviously talking about three of the most divisive and complex issues in human life. Before the break, we were talking about sex. I think the acronym that you said was sacred energy exchange. So obviously I believe
sex is something that is absolutely sacred. But we have now we have pornography, which is an epidemic around the world. We have sex trafficking, which is just an unimaginable horror. It almost sounds because you were I think you were suggesting that this was deliberate. It sounds like we're talking about spiritual warfare here. Is that the idea?
You couldn't have said it any better. You know, one of my favorite scriptures to quote these days, and it seems so appropriate it could have been written for today. It was the apostle Paul, writing in Corinthian six TLVE. He said, we wrestle.
Not against flesh and blood.
We wrestle against principalities and powers, against the forces of evil in the world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. And I don't think it can be said any better than that, Richard. That's really what we're dealing with here where Yes, we're on the brink of World War three. We were listening to a documentary just two days ago, and the nuclear clock, which is a measurement of how close we are to nuclear war, was that what was it thirty seconds or ninety seconds away, which is as
close as it's ever been. And yet what I would submit to you is that it's not physical war that is most powerful and what's going on, it's.
A spiritual war.
It's the war that the forces of evil, as Paul said, are attempting to overcome and to continue to control the forces of goodness. And this is not a new concept. If you look, you know, the Bible talks about this. Gnosticism talks about this, a Manicheism talks about this, the ancient Persian traditions, the Book of Enoch, which was taken out of the Old Testament for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is it against Jewish orthodoxy. All talk about things.
That use different terms.
In the Bible, they're called an ephylene in the Book of Enoch, they're called the watchers. In narcissism, they're called the well the term just slipped me.
Archons.
And these are literal evil forces, if you'll, if we can digress for a moment, back to where we talked about earlier, ninety percent of what we do is unconscious of this universe, is beyond our physical acuity, our sensory acuity to be able to perceive. These are forces that exist in this world. And that's where the war is being held right now. And if you don't feel it, then you're either asleep, or you're in denial, or you're
too afraid to embrace it. And so consequently, these issues of God, money, and sex is what the forces of evil have been taking over and have been driving all the way back to the seventeenth century, probably earlier than that.
And I talk a lot about all these particular issues in God, money and sex, but going back to the seventeenth century, if I may, if I might get into the first dilemma, which is God, and I'll pause here because I don't want to I'll get on a roll, Richard, and I don't want to go on too long.
Well, are we talking about the Enlightenment. We're talking about the Enlightenment period here then right.
I would say it's the de Enlightenment period.
But yeah, it's.
Called the Enlightenment period where we moved from our intuition and our imagination and our connectivity with a higher power into rationalism. And that's where we started to many many philosophers, and I'm a great student of philosophy, many many philosophers started to imply, if not overtly communicate, that it was it was illiterate, or it was ignorant to believe in a higher power, and let's just call that God. Here's the thing, Richard, And that's the first human dilemma, the
human species. In fact, every species needs a hierarchy. It all seeks a hierarchy. Now, even a wolf pack has a hierarchy. And so we had a hierarchy. Back let's start with the seventeenth century. It probably started earlier, but we had a hierarchy. And that hierarchy was at the top of it, the creative power God, and that was pretty much accepted all the way around. That's where we learned our truth, our morality, our virtues, our values. And so what I talk about in God, money and sex
is two principles. And these are metaphoric. There's a vertical principle which is metaphoric because God is not in the heavens. The Christ taught us the kingdom of heaven is within. It's not in the clouds, it's within. And yet if we can use this metaphor of this vertical principle, at the top of the hierarchy is God. And this is where the ten promises, also known as the Ten Commandments, but there are really ten promises.
Do these things and you will.
Live a righteous life. Here's how to live a righteous life. And we believed in that, and we bought that, and we built our family structure on that, and we built our religious institutions on that, and we built our political institutions on that. You know, the fact is the Constitute. This is a if I may talk about the US, and I know we have worldwide here, please please just humor me that the US Constitution is a Christian document.
That's a fact.
You know. The first thirteen states. Everyone who was admitted into the Constitution had to make a statement of faith. There was no separation of church and state originally, because you can't get morality from nowhere, it has to come from somewhere. Well, we started to incrementally start to degenerate this hierarchy of God and bring it down to man. And so we have this vertical principle. In the book God, Money, Sex, I talk about which is God? And then we have a horizontal.
Principle, which again as a metaphor.
Of the secular world, and we got into secularism. And so when we disconnect the vertical principle, where do we go to find out what is.
Right and true and moral and virtuous.
Well, we look around us, and I mentioned earlier, we look around this now and we see people perjuring themselves under oath, and our younger generations go, well, it's not that bad to lie. And in fact, some people who tell the truth are persecuted, and some of them are prosecuted, and so maybe the truth isn't a good thing. And
so we've degenerated. And there's a whole line of things that have happened, the degeneration of the church, the degeneration of the religious systems, the degeneration of the family unit. We go back to the women's liberation movement.
And here's the thing.
We started to be conditioned that and can talk to this probably better than I, that women needed to compete with men. It wasn't as valuable, it wasn't as highly highly held to be a mother or to be a wife. We had to get a job, We had to make a salary, we had to move into the business world.
Well what happened, Well, the family started to degenerate. You know, I grew up as a baby boomer on the very tail end of the baby boom, and Barzba was a millennial and very very different family structures, very very different family values. When I came home from school, my mom was home from school when I got there. Every single day, I was your day, honey, tell me about your day. Let's sit down and let's talk. We had every single breakfast together as a family. We had every dinner together
as a family. We didn't have phones, that didn't exist smartphones, we didn't have our television on. We had discussion, we had connection, and we were taught.
My father was a Protestant minister.
We were taught about morality and virtue, and work ethics and manhood and all these kinds of things. Well, Varsuba has a very different experience because of what started. As we said, if we're going to use the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment, the the Enlightenment period, how this structure started to degenerate. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what your structure was doing.
Well.
I think mine, compared perhaps to the average individual, is not that normal. So I'll just talk about us. When we lived in the States, is you know, both parents are working, and the television pretty much raised the kids, and the siblings kind of looked after each other, so we were home. Parents were never home. We were programmed by TV and school teachers mostly, and there was no eating together. Everyone kind of just grabbed their own thing
and went and did their own thing. And I you know, bought into the saying that a woman, yeah, she needs to have a career and she needs to be strong, and she needs to you know, there was no appreciation of what of motherhood or having having a family and raising your own kids. I didn't grow up with that concept, even though I grew up in a Persian family. You would think some of that would be there, and yet in the surroundings and the environment. That was not the case.
That's not what I was conditioned into believing.
And you didn't. You know, I went to church, of course, my father was a minister. I went to church three times a week.
I didn't like it all the time as a.
Young kid, but Sunday morning and Sunday night Wednesday night we had church service. I was trained about God. I was trained about about a righteous life. I was trained about how to be virtuous, how to be a good person. You know, Socrates said the way to live a successful life is to pursue virtue and principles, not material wealth. Sure, and if you look at all the great philosophers, which are heroic, they all taught.
Us to be good people.
And they were the role models.
They were the role model.
And look at who the role models are now. Now you've got actors and singers and just it makes absolutely no sense.
He did it well.
I mean, I believe, I believe that we're hardwired. I mean, it's part of human nature to need to worship, and if you remove God, we have to fill that with something. So we end up worshiping celebrity, We end up worshiping sex, money, I mean it does make sense in a way, doesn't it.
Yeah, it makes total sense. And look at where it's gotten us.
I mean twenty three twenty three shell accounts our current president has that has been funded by illicit funds from foreign countries.
And he's never had a job. What is he selling? Well, it's pretty obvious, you know. And so consequently, this is where we've become. And here it goes back Richard to the idea we teach how do we turn this around? The first step, and I mentioned it earlier, is you have to take absolute responsibility. You know, people say, I asked people, do you like the way the world is right now?
No?
Not really?
It's pretty chaotic.
Well how did you contribute to it? Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Wait a minute, I'm not in government. I don't have any power. Oh no, no, it doesn't matter. How did you contribute to it? How long have you been complacent? How long you've been compliant? How long have you been going along with the flow? How long have you been asleep at the wheel, not caring about anything other than making your rent. You are responsible for it, we all are.
And so consequently that's the first step that we have to take is to take responsibility for where our world is right now, every single one of us, and to become strong God's people. And you're right, we are hardwired to worship. Go back, go back in ancient history. All of our ancestors look to the heavens for something bigger, something beyond them. That's part of our nature. And when we don't have that, then what do we do. We kneel at the altar, And this kind of gets into
dilemma number two, which is money. We kneel at the altar of money and materialism. And who becomes our heroes? Well, Aversovo mentioned some of those people, you know, the sports figures, because they can put a round ball through a net. Really, that's that's heroic. When you think about it. You go back, you go back to Socrates, go back to Seneca, you go back to all these Aristotles and all these real heroes. They gave their.
Lives the Christ.
Of course, they gave their lives for something that they felt strongly about and believed in. And we're just not in that place anymore. We're given our lives for shadow things.
No, and that's been then on purpose as well. Here worship these celebrities instead of two heroic people, because if people actually looked up and chose people like you mentioned Socrates or the Christ as their heroes, as someone they looked up to admire or worship, then that would be a generation of people in power, and they don't want that.
Let's start the conversation about mastery over these issues, and whether you suggest it's possible, let's start it now and we'll continue after the break, which is coming up in a couple of minutes here.
But I mean, how do.
How do we master or gain mastery over God's money and sex.
Well, it's an aggressive term, and I knew that when I put it in the title. I'm not here to suggest that I have mastered all three of these things, not even close. But I believe how do we do that? And answered your question, we do it first and foremost by taking five primary steps that we can talk about when we get back from break. And we've already talked about one of them. Taking absolute responsibility. It's not the government, it's not the economic system, it's not the political system,
it's nothing. It's me. I have to take responsibility for the actions that I have taken. And maybe more importantly, that I haven't taken and the strength that I've shown or the weakness that I've shown. And when we do that, then we can start to wake up again, the wake up process.
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