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- [00:01]
Dandapani
How do I build more energy? How do I get more money? That's not the first question.
- [00:06]
Cody Sanchez
If you've ever felt like your attention is scattered, like your energy is depleted, like you're reacting to your life instead of creating it intentionally, this episode is going to be a game changer for you and me. Today's guest is Dandapani, a Hindu priest, entrepreneur, and former monk who left a career in engineering to spend a decade in a monastery. Now he teaches global leaders and some of the biggest athletes in the world how to use your mind to change your life.
- [00:31]
Dandapani
Reason shouldn't end where spirituality begins.
- [00:34]
Cody Sanchez
If you want practical tools to make sure that the things you want in life you can create, then you should listen closely. What's the most powerful thing you've ever seen happen from someone who truly obsesses on focus? Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez. We are growing like crazy, you guys, and we realized over the past few weeks that most of you don't actually subscribe to the show show, which is crazy. So if you could do me a favor and double check that you're subscribed, that would mean so much to me. I've been obsessed with making this show something that makes your life better, and this helps us do exactly that. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. All right, let's jump in. What is the three stripes?
- [01:17]
Dandapani
It's monk wi fi. Good signal to God. Three lines, one line. Not so good.
- [01:24]
Cody Sanchez
Really?
- [01:25]
Dandapani
No.
- [01:25]
Cody Sanchez
Just kidding.
- [01:26]
Dandapani
So in Hinduism, there are four sects, and I belong to the oldest one. And we wear ash representing the three line. First line represents ego. So a lot of times in spirituality, they say you should not have an ego. In the philosophy we subscribe to, we believe everyone has an ego, and the goal is to cultivate a positive ego. So someone who's kind, who's compassionate, who has empathy, industrious, charitable. So that's the first one. It's not get rid of ego, but cultivate a positive ego. And the second one has to do with karma, which is the law of cause and effect, that every thought, word, and deed has a repercussion. So that's 50% of karma. And if you can control your thoughts, your words, your actions, you can control a lot of the outcomes. The second half of karma is your reactions. So if you came up to me and said, you know, Dandapani, your shawl is ugly, I could choose to pinch you or say, what a great opportunity to go shopping. And how I respond also determines my outcome. So by Controlling how we act and react. We determine so much of our outcomes in life. And then the third one is delusion, meaning that quite often in life we get distracted with the things and people that are unaligned with our priorities. So always bringing our focus back to who and what matters. Understanding that life is finite and, you know, it's easy to get distracted with things.
- [02:47]
Cody Sanchez
It is. Is it ever hard to be a spiritual person, especially with, like, such an external representation of it? The marks, the shawl, the beads. In a world where that's not quote, unquote normal. Do you ever get self conscious?
- [03:04]
Dandapani
No, because I don't wear this because it's cool. I wear this because I love my culture, I love my tradition, I love my faith. And this is a traditional outfit of a Hindu priest and also Hindu monastic. So it's very hard to tell the difference between monks and priests because they pretty much dress the same. But I'm very proud of my culture. So it's hard for people sometimes looking at me and they don't know how to respond.
- [03:33]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting.
- [03:34]
Dandapani
You know, and they see all this.
- [03:35]
Cody Sanchez
And they go like, oh, yeah, what does that mean?
- [03:38]
Dandapani
Yeah, what does that mean? And for some people, it makes them extremely uncomfortable, and others are very curious and want to know more.
- [03:45]
Cody Sanchez
You know, it's one of the things that I liked when I first started following your teachings and got on your app, which I love.
- [03:50]
Dandapani
Thank you.
- [03:51]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I really liked following you because you're of the world as well as of a spiritual practice. And I would aspire to meditate and to do all the things that I read in books from spiritual leaders. But then I'd go back and a company would be losing money and somebody would have stolen from me and fraud would have happened, and it just felt so far away from.
- [04:17]
Dandapani
Yeah.
- [04:18]
Cody Sanchez
A monastery and. And yet you have kind of chosen to come out and build businesses. Not normal for monks or will you. Do you even call yourself a monk?
- [04:28]
Dandapani
No. So I was an ordained Hindu monk, celibate Hindu monk in a cloistered monastery. And then when my vows expired after 10 years, I left the monastery. So now I'm a priest. And in Hinduism, priests are considered householders. So we can get married, have a family, work in McDonald's, or be an entrepreneur. And I chose to be an entrepreneur. So this is a traditional way of a Hindu priest. And you now? I run my own business and work with entrepreneurs and athletes and.
- [04:53]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, but I love that because you bring some of these ideas into everyday life and then you get to practice it too. You Know, you have, I'm sure, have many moments where an app costs a ton of money to build, and then all of a sudden, it's not working, and then your users hate you, but you're like, wait, I thought I was just, you know, one with God. Like, what happened? Right.
- [05:10]
Dandapani
All of those and a lot more. And I think, you know, Cody, people see the dress, and their first perception is that he lived as a monk. So he's got it all figured out. His focus, his whole day is Zen bs. I have the same chaos that every entrepreneur has and all the highs and lows and the same struggles that anyone that has a family has. Why would it be different? For me, I would say the only difference would be that I was given a set of tools in the monastery and taught how to use those tools and apply it in my life. But that doesn't mean that my life is free of chaos. I have the choice every day to choose whether I want to apply those tools or not. And if I don't apply those tools, then I reap the repercussions. If I apply the tools, then I handle my challenges better.
- [06:06]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You have an incredible analogy about awareness in the mind, where awareness is a glowing orb and the mind as vast as space. Can you explain that analogy a bit?
- [06:17]
Dandapani
I would say of all the things I learned from my guru, that was the most profound thing about the mind. He looked at the mind as a vast space with many different areas. So if you think one area of the mind is happy, joy, sad, food, sex, photography, money, you know, different areas of the mind and awareness as a glowing ball of light and orb, and you are pure awareness. You're traveling to different areas of the mind, and wherever awareness goes in the mind, it lights up that area, and you become conscious of it. So if awareness goes to the anger area of the mind, it lights up that area, and you all of a sudden go, oh, I'm angry. But what you should be saying is, I'm in a place in the mind called anger. I chose to be here as easily. I can remove myself from here and move to another area of the mind. And I give the analogy of a mansion. So imagine a mansion with a hundred rooms, and every room is a different state of mind or area of the mind. So one room is anger, One room's happiness, One room is jealousy. I walk in the mansion. I'm pure awareness. I climb up the stairs, walk down the hallway, I open the door, I go into the angry room, and I close the door behind me, and I am in Rage. I come out of the room, I walk down the hallway, I open another room, I enter that room. I'm in the room of happiness. And once you realize that you're not the mind, rather your awareness moving within the mind. Now you have a choice every day to either choose where you want to go or allow your environment, the people and things around you, to dictate where you want to go. So if you said to me, my shawl was ugly, I could let you take my ball of light to an angry area of the mind, and I go like, cody, how could you say that to me? Or I could go like, I should go shopping, you know, monkshalls.com see, what do they have?
- [07:55]
Cody Sanchez
I think your shell's lovely, for the record.
- [07:57]
Dandapani
Thank you. We're actually kind of ratchet.
- [07:59]
Cody Sanchez
Maybe I did that subconsciously.
- [08:01]
Dandapani
I like it. So that's the key, right? The key is to control awareness. And every time throughout the whole day, regardless of what's going on in your family, your business, your awareness is perpetually moving in your mind. And if you can control where it goes, you can control how you react and respond to a situation. For me, the way I practice is I look at my whole day as my gym, my mental gym. When I'm talking to an employee who's not doing something I told him to do or something's going on with the business or whatever it is, every moment, I have the choice to choose where my awareness goes. And if someone does something to take my awareness to different area of the mind, then I go, okay, my ball of light's going to an area of the mind. I don't want it to go. I'm going to grab it with my willpower and bring it back here. And I'm going to stay here and choose not to go there. You know, I flew here yesterday, and it's classic example. My flight got delayed. Everyone's in. The plane was sitting for an hour, and you could see people's awareness going to the frustrated area of the mind. You know, like, what's going on? Why are we still sitting here? And I saw my ball of light wanting to go there, and I had to just bring it back and go, like, I don't need to go there. I can choose to be someone else.
- [09:12]
Cody Sanchez
One of the other things you talk about that I love is willpower.
- [09:15]
Dandapani
Yeah.
- [09:16]
Cody Sanchez
And there's many examples from your work that I like. But can you talk about even the way you define willpower and how important it is? It's not something that I hear a lot of spiritual people talk about. And so can you talk a little bit about if somebody wants to increase their willpower, what do they do and how do you define it?
- [09:33]
Dandapani
So I would define a willpower as mental muscle. If I could draw biceps around my mind, that would be my willpower. You know, a very simplified definition of it. So every time my ball of light drifted away, I would use these biceps, grab that ball of light and drag it back and say, don't go there. Right? And you can go there. And it's not about avoiding that place. It's choosing when I want to engage with that situation. So, for example, if I had a fight with Joe about something, an argument with Joe, if I didn't control my ball of light, my awareness would perpetually be going to that every two minutes. Like, can't believe you said that. I keep typing and I'm like, oh, he's such an idiot. Keep typing in that. And those are called mental arguments. And people have mental arguments in their head all day long. But when you develop willpower, every time that ball of light drifts there, you just grab it and bring it back. And there are three ways to develop willpower. Finish what you begin, do a little bit more than you think you can, and do it a little bit better than you think you can. And for me, the easiest way to bring practices into our life. You know, a lot of spiritual people will tell you to wake up in the morning, do yoga, breathe, you know, do your cold plunge and this and that. It's hard when you have a family, when you have a business. But the way I look at it is if you look at your day and you ask yourself, what are the non negotiable reoccurring events in your day? Every day I sleep, it's non negotiable, and it reoccurs. So how can I take the practice and insert it into that event? So every night before I go to sleep, I floss, I brush my teeth, put my pajamas on, I go to bed when I wake up, I make the bed in the morning, I finish what I begin, I make the bed a little bit better than I think I can. I do a little bit more than I think I can. Maybe I double fall the comforters, like do the four seasons or, you know, fluff the pillows. And that is not about making the bed. It's about developing willpower so that I can control where my ball of light goes in my mind.
- [11:28]
Cody Sanchez
I loved when you talked about the dishes, because the dishes I hate to do. I hate to do the dishes. I hate them categorically. And I think when I first started listening to you a few years ago, you had told the same story about, if you're going to do the dishes, I want you to start it and finish it. We don't do it halfway. And then how could you do it a little bit better? Clean the crystal, put it away when you're done. And what's fascinating is, in our companies now, it sort of has imbued this idea of how you do anything is how you do everything.
- [11:57]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [11:57]
Cody Sanchez
And that we are the type of people here who start something and finish it well. And we're no better than the janitor. We clean up our own mess. And so now it's a big pet peeve, and everybody here knows it. Whenever I see dishes in the sink, it's like, we don't do that here. We're not that type of person. And that sort of like ripples.
- [12:17]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [12:17]
Cody Sanchez
And so I loved that, that teaching from you. So small. Everybody can do it. And yet kind of profound it is.
- [12:24]
Dandapani
And, you know, like my dog, we live in Costa Rica, and, you know, we don't wear our shoes in our house. So when we come back, we take our flip flops off, leave it outside. And my daughter used to just, you know, she's six and she kicks it aside. And, you know, I've taught her like, okay, let's finish the process of going out. When we take our flip flops off, let's just arrange it nicely before we go in. That's going to take an extra three seconds. But now it becomes part of a ritual. And the goal, really, at the end of the day, Cody, you know, it's like, how do we take the key tools that we have in our life that are aligned with what we want to create and make them, integrate them into the rituals that exist in our life? Because if I told you to wake up tomorrow morning and meditate and do yoga and breathe, you're gonna go, like, I don't have time for this. Right. But every day you have a cup of coffee, every day you sit in front of your computer, every day you talk to somebody. What if you brought those tools into your daily rituals, those mundane little things? Now your whole day becomes a practice. And by the time you go to bed, you've been practicing for 10 hours, developing willpower, practicing focus and all these other things, managing your energy. And that's a much better approach than to wake up in the morning, meditate for half an hour, and then spend the remaining 15 hours running around like a head cut chicken, you know, and thinking, okay, I did my morning meditation, I had my matcha, whatever you had to drink. And then the rest of the day you just go crazy. That doesn't help.
- [13:49]
Cody Sanchez
That was such a good point. I was at the. I was at the. This is a little judgy, which I shouldn't, but I was. I was sitting at a coffee shop the other day and I was watching these two people who had obviously come back from Burning man. And you know, and they were like, well drafted, you know, but still had their dusty boots on. And so I was kind of chuckling about that. And then I'm judgy. And so anyway, but what was so funny is they blessed their meal, which I thought was really nice, but it was like a prolonged blessing, you know, it was like, you know, and we're feeling it and we're feeling it. So I'm sitting there going, well, this is different. And then.
- [14:19]
Dandapani
Were you with them?
- [14:20]
Cody Sanchez
No, I was being a voyeur from another table.
- [14:23]
Dandapani
I like it.
- [14:23]
Cody Sanchez
And then. And you know, and they were talking really broadly about spirituality. Oh, you know, the universe and everything's connected and it's all love and we have to bless our food. And then the door swings open and the woman's chair is like a little close to the door. So the door hits her and she's like, watch what you're doing. What's going on? Like. And so I just had this whole thing happen here of watching this moment of you could bless the thing, you could meditate in the morning, but then you lose your practice. And so like, how could you bring it throughout the day, I think is really beautiful, not just when you're at a peak event like Burning man or even church on Sunday.
- [14:56]
Dandapani
I remember when I first moved to New York, I knew a yoga teacher there and she said, oh, you know, come to my class. I said, okay. She said, come to my apartment and then we'll walk over together. And I went to an apartment and she was running around finding her stuff. Where's my keys? I can't find my keys. Put her shoes on her dog. It was just chaos. And she's like going walking really fast down the sidewalk with me, getting to the yoga studio. She gets in there, she sits down, puts her mat, and then she sits in front, she's teaching the class. And all of a sudden she turned into this Zen person, you know, And I've been like, but all that minutes prior was chaos. So for me, it's not about the 10 minutes in the morning or the 20 minutes, it's. Do you bring this into your daily life?
- [15:39]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [15:39]
Dandapani
And, and, you know, people can. Can do the food blessing and can. Can look great in a yoga class for 10 minutes or, or an hour. What's the remainder? 23 hours. Huh. And. And the way I look at it, Cody, is an analogy. You probably heard of Usain Bolt. Yeah, right. I don't know anything about this man. I know he's from Jamaica. He won gold medals, fastest man on earth. You know, his 100 meters is what, 9.56 seconds or something? I would assume that he trains every day when he was running, does weights, eats properly, stretches. His whole day. Is Preparing him from 9.56 seconds, not 9.56 seconds, preparing him for the whole day. And most spiritual people will look at their life. If I meditate for 10 minutes in the morning, I journal, that's going to set me up for the day. The way my guru trained me was the complete opposite. Your whole day is the practice that prepares you for the morning meditation. Does that make sense?
- [16:33]
Cody Sanchez
Yes.
- [16:34]
Dandapani
So don't, don't look at the morning practice as the most important thing, but rather look at integrating the practice throughout the whole day.
- [16:41]
Cody Sanchez
Interesting.
- [16:42]
Dandapani
Yeah.
- [16:42]
Cody Sanchez
I also want to talk about focus, because you are, you know, very big on that as well. You know, what have you said? Maybe we start by defining it again, because I know you like to do that. And then I then think, that's smart. We do it in business. I never think about it in the spiritual practice.
- [16:56]
Dandapani
It just creates a shadow vocabulary and understanding. Right. Then when we say the word focus, everybody in the room knows what it means.
- [17:03]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's a good point. It's, you know, today we were talking about it in. In work in a different way. And I was saying, well, when somebody goes above and beyond and does extra work, we want to recognize them. And then I paused and was like, wait, I should define above and beyond?
- [17:17]
Dandapani
Yes, because different things to different people.
- [17:19]
Cody Sanchez
Right. And I don't just want somebody working from 6am to 9pm on stuff that doesn't matter, and then that's above and beyond. And so then we have to define it. Well, above and beyond in this instance, means something that drives meaningful revenue or views, let's say, on a video. And if it doesn't do those two things, it's actually not meaningful work. It could just be busy work. So I'd love you to define focus and then also tell me what's the most powerful thing you've ever seen happen from Someone who truly obsesses on focus.
- [17:49]
Dandapani
So I would define focus going back to awareness and the mind and the ball of light. Focus is my ability to keep my awareness on you without it wavering. So if I'm talking to you and my ball of light drifts away, I'm getting distracted. If I can keep my ball of light, my awareness on you, the entire time I'm in a state of focus. So most people are always physically present. We're physically present with each other, but mentally absent. Because how many times have you been in a conversation with someone, talking to them and they go, huh? And you know, they're completely checked out, their awareness is somewhere else, but they're looking at you going, right? And you just go like. And then people ask, where are you? The right answer is, I'm right in front of you. But the proper question is, where's your awareness? They go, oh, honey, it left the moment you started talking, you know, because that's what happens. And how do you know? My guru had this beautiful saying, where awareness goes, energy flows. So my awareness is on you, my energy is flowing towards you. You feel my energy now if you, I ask you a question and you respond and I start listening to the first few words and then my awareness drifts away and go like, I wonder what I should have for lunch today, you know, But I'm looking at you and nodding and my awareness goes somewhere else. That's where my energy is flowing. You no longer feel my energy and you go, where are you? So that's just to clarify what focus means. The greatest thing I would probably see coming out of focus, you know, is from my guru. He had an amazing control over his ball of light in his mind. If you look at the mind in a simplified way, Cody, you could look at it as a three story building. The bottom floor is the conscious mind, the external mind, where it's tied to our five senses and it's the world we live in. Phone calls and emails and everything. The second floor is the subconscious. It's the storehouse of memory, information, habit patterns. And then the third floor is what my guru would refer to as the superconscious mind. It's the source of intuition, creativity, higher spiritual minded things. Only through a focus state can you take your ball of light from the first floor through the second floor to the third floor. And once you go to the third floor, you need to have so much willpower to hold that ball of light there in order to experience that state of mind. So imagine if I picked up a thousand Page book, and I just flipped through the pages, I would read nothing, right? But if I took a thousand page book, I opened it up, and I held my gaze on one page and went through every sentence, I would be able to read it. So a lot of people may be able to go into the superconscious area of the mind, this deeply spiritual, intuitive area, so briefly, and it feels wonderful, and they come out of it. But the key is to be able to go in there, remain in a state of unwavering focus long enough that you can actually experience it in a profound way. Because if not, all you're doing is just fanning through the pages of a book and you never read anything. The only way I can get that experience is if I stay on the page and read every single word slowly. So I would say that would be the greatest experience of focus, is the ability to take awareness, go to that superconscious area of the mind, stay there for an extended period of time, and truly experience your highest state of mind.
- [21:11]
Cody Sanchez
What does it feel like when you go there? Is that when you get lost in something that you're. That you're doing that you love? How would somebody know if they've done that?
- [21:20]
Dandapani
It's not a binary experience. I will look at it as layers so I can go out and feel the sun's rays on me. But if I went a thousand miles closer towards the sun, I probably maybe feel a little warmer. I'm assuming I don't know anything about this. Or if you go 10,000 more miles, I'd feel more of the sun. The superconscious is that way as well. It's layered. If you enter the fringes of the superconscious area of the mind, the fringes of the third floor, you feel a sense of the first sign of the awakening of that superconscious is observation. People become more observant. When someone becomes more observant, you know they're starting to go into the superconscious area of the mind. That's the first sign of the awakening of the superconscious. Another sign is good timing. I knew when I lived in New York for 11 years, I could tell if my awareness was in the third floor or not by how long I waited for the subway. My wife would say to me, you have good timing. And she always get the subway with me. Because if I walked up the stairs, got on the platform, if I waited longer than 15 seconds, I was not in the superconscious area of the mind. And I would be at Home, in my apartment, working. And my intuition would say, leave now to get ready for your meeting. And I'll say, just one more email, then I'm out of sync. But if I was obedient to that, I would have good timing. So those are two things. Observation, good timing. And as you go deeper and deeper, Cody, you experience the very essence of who you are, which is a soul that is pure energy. And energy cannot be created or destroyed, has always existed. You start to tap into a part of you that you realize, okay, I am energy. Everything is made up of energy. Energy can never be created, which means I've always existed. Energy can be transformed from one thing to another. Law of thermodynamics. So I am transforming, involving. But in essence, I'm pure energy. And as you start to go into that, you feel a great sense of love and compassion and peace. But it's not a one time experience. Can you have one success in business and say you're a successful entrepreneur? No, you have to do it over and over again. So the key is to repeatedly have awareness, go into the superconscious mind every day till that permeates your entire being and that becomes your default of who you are. Same way you would see a seasoned entrepreneur who's gone through all the highs and lows and he or she at that point knows how to ride this out. You know, they can handle difficult times because they know what to do. You know, it's 30 years, 40 years of this, and the mystic is no different as well. He or she has gone into the superconscious so much that it's become a part of their being known.
- [24:16]
Cody Sanchez
Do you notice a difference about people who are very worldly successful? Do they carry themselves differently? Have they done this practice a different way? Is there anything that you've noticed from some of the most influential people you've ever worked with, spoken with?
- [24:31]
Dandapani
I would say two things. They have a lot of clarity of what they want and a tremendous amount of desire to get it. I had the good fortune of working with one of the top soccer players in the world for three years, for three seasons. And he knew crystal clear in his mind what he wanted to achieve and the desire he had for it was, I'm herald, I'd seen monks with it, you know, and he really, really wanted it. So the combination of knowing what you want and having that intense desire for it helps you to get there. So most people don't really know what they want and then don't really have a desire for it. They try and then they give up. But you have to want it more than life itself. You know, when, when I met my guru before I joined the monastery, I told him what I wanted in life, which was enlightenment. And he asked me, what are you willing to do for it? I was in college then. I said, I'm willing to give up my life. And, and I joined this monastery and, you know, in my early 20s, and I didn't speak to my family again. My friends had three meals a day and didn't talk to relatives then do all the things that everybody in the world does because I was willing to give up everything in my life to pursue this. And that's what I see in some of the most successful entrepreneurs and athletes. They want that and they're willing to do whatever it takes to get it.
- [26:02]
Cody Sanchez
How long did you give up everything for when you were in the monastery?
- [26:06]
Dandapani
10 years.
- [26:07]
Cody Sanchez
So you didn't speak to your family for 10 years?
- [26:09]
Dandapani
In the early years, you got to talk to them twice a year, like on a phone call. So no emails, no letters, get like a 30 minute call and call your mom and dad.
- [26:20]
Cody Sanchez
So at one point, you're in school, you have a defined career path too. Was it, were you going to be an engineer? What was.
- [26:27]
Dandapani
I was, yeah, I did electrical engineering.
- [26:29]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. So you're an electrical engineering college student. I mean, I remember what I was like in college. Not, not that that was not a direction I could have ever imagined.
- [26:37]
Dandapani
No. Yeah.
- [26:38]
Cody Sanchez
What was the moment that you were like, I'm gonna go dedicate 10 years of my life to enlightenment?
- [26:42]
Dandapani
I wanted to be amongst since I was 4 or 5 years old. And I was looking for a teacher that could teach me. And I met many wonderful monks and gurus along the way. But none of them, they all said inspiring things, but none of it I thought was practical and relevant to my life. They talked about big ideas and big concepts, and they talk about the mind and use words I couldn't wrap my head around. Wasn't until I met my guru that I found for the first time ever, a monk that could articulate the goal for me. The path to the goal, the spiritual goal, the philosophy to ensure you're actually making progress. What are your KPIs on the spiritual path. Right. Because if you don't have that, you know, I remember him saying to me one day, dhanapani, if you meditate every day and after six months, you're still legit, you're probably doing the wrong practice, you're not making progress. Right. So most people don't review their progress to see if there's any change. He made me monitor and measure my spiritual unfoldment, to know that I'm making traction down the path and share with me tools that you can integrate in my life rather than just high minded philosophies and concepts that sound so wonderful but in real life didn't really weren't relevant.
- [28:06]
Cody Sanchez
So you leave. How old are you?
- [28:08]
Dandapani
I was 23 and a half. 24.
- [28:10]
Cody Sanchez
Okay, so you leave and you go. Move where?
- [28:12]
Dandapani
To Kauai in Hawaii? Yeah.
- [28:15]
Cody Sanchez
And you live in a Monastery for 10 years.
- [28:18]
Dandapani
Traditional cloison monastery as a celibate monk on devastation.
- [28:21]
Cody Sanchez
What does cloistered mean?
- [28:23]
Dandapani
Means it's closed off, that guests could only come in to Visit like between 9 and 12 in the morning and then the gates closed and only monks and the vows live within it. So it wasn't. There's a lot of modern day play pretend monasteries nowadays where you can come and go whenever you want and go for the weekend and say, oh, I lived as a monk for a weekend like, okay, but this is like the real deal. You go and you take vows and you follow a traditional path. That's, you know, philosophy that's over thousands of years old.
- [28:52]
Cody Sanchez
And how, what would a day look like?
- [28:55]
Dandapani
We woke up early. I usually woke up around between 4 and 4:15 in the morning. And you know, we'd have meditation in the morning with 10 rituals, traditional Hindu rituals. We'd had to exercise half an hour a day. We only had three meals a day, some breakfast, lunch, dinner, no snacking in between. And the monastery was divided into three, five groups. So one group amongst took care of desktop publishing. We put all our content in books and online. So monks had to learn, you know, Adobe Indesign and Photoshop and edit movies and Final Cut Pro and all that kind of stuff. Another group of monks to have the endowments, they said they did all the financial stuff. My guru was, he had a beautiful relationship with money and I really love that about him because when I was growing up, people would say to me, if you want to be spiritual, then you shouldn't pursue money. Money's bad. Money is the root of all evil. Whereas he looked at money as a beautiful thing that we could spread around like fertilizer and make things grow is what he said. So the monks were divided into different groups and you know, and then our day ended at 9 o' clock at night when we went to bed. Wow. Yeah.
- [30:01]
Cody Sanchez
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- [31:27]
Dandapani
Yeah.
- [31:28]
Cody Sanchez
Can you talk about this?
- [31:29]
Dandapani
Yeah. Going back to the three states of mind, if you and I had an argument and we don't resolve it, we have it now in the conscious mind. And once we walk away, that problem gets registered in the subconscious, which is the second floor. We talked about the second floor. The more problems we have unresolved in the second floor, the more cluttered the second floor becomes. The superconscious intuition lives in the third floor. For intuition to go to the conscious mind on the first floor, where we can cognize it, it needs to go through the second floor. And if the second floor is cluttered, intuition can't come through. So most people don't like to resolve problems because it involves facing it, accepting it, owning it, having a conversation about it, resolving it, and it's painful and uncomfortable. So as monks, our goal is to live more intuitively rather than intellectually because our intuition never, ever guides us wrong. And the more cluttered the second floor is with unresolved things from our past. And it's harder for intuition to come through. A simple analogy would be this. Imagine the sun as the third floor, the superconscious mind, the sky as the subconscious, and the ground, the earth as the conscious mind. In order for the sun's rays to hit the ground, it needs to go through the sky. If the sky is really cloudy, filled with unresolved clouds, rays of light don't get through. If it's a clear sky, you get this beautiful sun rays. So the sky would be the subconscious mind when it's filled with clouds. And the rays of light coming from the superconscious mind never gets through. So the idea of resolving things as quickly as possible, especially before you go to bed at night with a spouse, it's a great. The monks had that practice. So monks had arguments, which my guru was totally fine with. Monks arguing with each other. The only rule in the monastery was that you had to go resolve it before you went to bed at night.
- [33:24]
Cody Sanchez
So do you think you should fight when you're angry with someone?
- [33:30]
Dandapani
You know, I think if it's with a partner, a spouse, even a business partner, relation, whatever it is, it's fine as long as you set up the. The guideline that let's, you know, we can have a heated argument, walk away, have a few hours by ourselves to calm down, but we will get together before the day ends and sit down and resolve this. So in the monastery, there was a big mango tree with some seats under it, and that's where we would go and resolve the problems. When you see two monks sitting under the mango tree, they're resolving a problem. So, you know, if you had that rule, it's normal to have misunderstandings, you know, even if you're a spiritual person. So as long as you plan to resolve it, then you're not taking it to bed with you.
- [34:12]
Cody Sanchez
How do you make the clouds move? How do you unclutter the second floor? You. You resolve things in the day, but what about all the historical stuff that. That's already up there? What is the practice? To see the sun again?
- [34:26]
Dandapani
You cannot see what's in the second floor if you cannot focus. Because if I can't sit down quietly in a chair, not meditating, in a state of self reflection, just looking inside of me. If I start to do this, and after five seconds I go, what should I have for lunch? Is my phone ringing? Should I answer that? Oh, I had a text come in. Maybe he's trying to reach me. He was trying to reach Me all day, I should really get back to him. And that's the conversation most people have. But if I can focus, I can hold my awareness on my second floor long enough to see everything in my mind. That's the first step. Focus. Focus allows you to see what's in there. The second step is having extreme levels of self empathy and compassion. Looking at yourself as a product of evolution. So the way I look at myself is I look at myself as a building under construction. If you've ever been to construction site, you see rebar and concrete and broke glass and you never complain because you go like, well, they're still building. There's shit lying everywhere, right? But if you go to Tiffany's and you see a broken glass, there'd be five people around it and say, oh, we're cleaning this up. Don't come here. There's broken glass. So when I look at myself and I see the mess in my second floor and the good parts, I go, this is me. I am a product of evolution. I am a building under construction. I'm not done yet. Was still work being done. And I can accept that. I can own that now. It gives. Takes all that pressure off me to be something that I'm not. I can accept myself for who I am and where I am. In my evolution now I identify what's the biggest thing in my subconscious that I want to resolve. Because that the biggest thing that basically is influencing in a me in a way that's underlining me from my purpose. So the willpower. Bring it into your daily life. Finish what you begin. The coffee cups, the shoes. Clean your desk before you go home at night. Put everything away. The focus. Every time you speak with someone, give them your undivided attention. Keep your ball of light on them. It drifts away. Bring it back. It drifts away. Bring it back. And if you just practice this all day long, you become good at it. Now you have willpower and you have focused on. You can start to reflect and identify what's inside of you that you need to adjust. And if we don't do the work on ourselves, we'll never be the person we need to be to achieve what we want to be. Because we don't have those skills to match the goals we have.
- [36:56]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I really like that.
- [36:58]
Dandapani
I am the biggest obstacle in my life.
- [37:00]
Cody Sanchez
Me too.
- [37:01]
Dandapani
To my business, my relationships, in everything I do. So I don't worry so much about fixing a lot of the external things I need to fix me. And the more I fix me, the better I Am at every part of my life.
- [37:15]
Cody Sanchez
Does that work for everybody? If they focus on willpower, energy and.
- [37:18]
Dandapani
Focus, Absolutely, yes, because they're a standard. It's like if the everybody in this room went to the gym and lifted weights, we'd all start to get muscle. It doesn't matter who the person is or what gender they are, that all start to get weights. I mean, start to build muscle. Right. So when you start to do these things, you'll start to see you become more observant. Well, the first thing you do is you start to see more of your stuff inside of you. And that's when people stop doing the work because it makes them so uncomfortable that they go, this is too ugly. And you know, one of the byproducts of actually meditating is seeing what's in your subconscious. Because if I stay still, I close my eyes, I don't move, I regulate my breath, my conscious mind starts to get shut down. The first floor, now my second floor becomes the dominant flaw. And now I see what's in my subconscious. I remember the first year in the monastery, we'd meditate together at the monks for an hour. And if I had a really good meditation, I knew the rest of my day is crappy because all the stuff in my second floor was being shown to me. I started to see. And then the rest of day, terrible. Human being, really bad monk, you know. Wow. So most people think when you meditate, it's bliss. But in order to get to the third floor, where the bliss is, you have to go through the second floor.
- [38:45]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, interesting.
- [38:47]
Dandapani
Yeah.
- [38:48]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I guess it does make sense. You go to the gym, you work out, you know you're going to be sore afterwards. If you did it right.
- [38:54]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [38:54]
Cody Sanchez
If you pushed yourself.
- [38:56]
Dandapani
Another example, just to make this clearer, if you ever been to a bar and seen someone who's drunk, when someone gets drunk, they're shutting down the conscious mind. The conscious mind gets dull. The first floor, the second floor becomes dominant. Now they start saying things that they were thinking, oh, your sweater looks ugly. I didn't mean to say that. Right, yeah. So that's a similar thing. So meditation and getting drunk are a little bit similar. And shutting down the first floor and then the second floor becomes dominant and you start to see what's in people's mind. And that's why when. When you're having drinks with people at a dinner party or something and someone's had three or four drinks, you start to tell very quickly what's on their mind because there's no filter. And they just start saying things and you go like, oh, I know what you're thinking.
- [39:43]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. One of my favorite mentors in business always said he won't do a deal with somebody until he's had a few cocktails with them.
- [39:48]
Dandapani
Exactly, yes. In traditional monasteries and certain monasteries, monks would drink. They would sit around a table on the ground that the guru would pull a little bit of like mead, honey mead for everyone. And they take a drink. And after two, three drinks, the monks are going like, ah, this place of food is terrible. Oh, that's good to know. Whereas they normally wouldn't say it having not had a couple of drinks. It's a great way to tell what's in someone's mind, you know, I want.
- [40:16]
Cody Sanchez
To talk a little bit about energy. You've talked about treat energy the same way you treat money. It's a finite resource that needs to be managed wisely and invested. Can you expand on how someone can manage their energy and invest it properly?
- [40:32]
Dandapani
So the simple way to manage energy, I would say take every principle, you know, on finance, on how you manage money. Money. And apply it to energy. Create a budget. Do we evaluate every. Do you have investments? Yeah. How often do you evaluate your investments?
- [40:49]
Cody Sanchez
Probably once a month.
- [40:50]
Dandapani
Once a month, Right. And after a few months or a couple of years, you find an investment is doing really badly and would you stay or you may pull out your money and put it somewhere else potentially. Sure, yeah. When was the last time we evaluated the people in our lives that we give energy to? We don't even do it once a year. Every year, around November, December. I. I have a list of all the people I'm actively involved with and I assign statuses to them and how much energy I'm giving. Because I have a finite amount of energy, then I reallocate energy. So if Steve has been so amazing to me this year, I want to give him more energy now. Energy cannot be created. I can't create more energy, but I can. Energy can be transferred from one thing to another. Law of thermodynamics. So I go like, I'm going to take money out of Julie and energy out of Julie and move it to Steve. So Julie gets less energy. What does that translate to in real life? Next year I'll spend less time with Julie, more time and energy with Steve. But if you don't have an evaluation process like you do for your investments, you probably have a set of practices on how you're evaluating. You know, whether it's doing well, not. Not checks and Balances you just all day, all month, all year long to spend your energy.
- [42:06]
Cody Sanchez
I've never thought about it that way.
- [42:07]
Dandapani
And you hemorrhage it, right?
- [42:09]
Cody Sanchez
And I, I think most of us are conditioned to think about the energy that we're giving people based on the amount of time we have available.
- [42:18]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [42:18]
Cody Sanchez
My calendar appears empty on Thursday, so I guess I have time to do this because that is the question that people ask, right? Do you have time to do every X this week? Can you do X as opposed to what you really should be thinking is, do I want to and should I based on how much energy I have? Yeah.
- [42:36]
Dandapani
And can I tell you the difference between time management and energy management? So if time management, I say very simplified, I sleep eight hours, I work eight hours, I'm spending one hour with my family having a meal. If I sat at the dinner table table with my family for one hour, I could check the time management box and say I did it. My question is, when you're at the table for one hour, you're physically present. Where's your awareness? So if your family's eating and you're there with them and your kid's telling you something about school or whatever, your wife or husband's telling you something, but your ball of light is somewhere else, that's where your energy is flowing. It's not flowing to them. So time management wise, you can check the box and say, yes, I sat with my family for 60 minutes. But energy management, you actually gave your family only a tiny bit of energy because the rest of the time you were distracted and your energy was going somewhere else instead of going to them. So for me, it's not about time management, it's about managing energy. I could spend five minutes with you, and if I'm completely focused, you get all my energy in that five minutes. Or I can spend half an hour with you and my ball of light's all over the place and that's where my energy is going. And in that half an hour, you only get a tiny piece of energy. Energy. That's why for me, focus is so important. Because when I focus, that's where my awareness is going and that's why my energy is flying. Where awareness goes, energy flows. And for me, it's all about giving energy to the people and things that truly matter to me.
- [44:08]
Cody Sanchez
How do you not. What is the right way to say this? It's not too rude, which is like.
- [44:15]
Dandapani
I'm more in New Yorker than anything.
- [44:17]
Cody Sanchez
Yes, that's really true. Like, how do you tell somebody that you don't want them in your energy field anymore. Or how do you stop getting around somebody that's an energy vampire?
- [44:29]
Dandapani
Start pulling back. Every time my awareness goes to you, Cody. My energy flows to you, and I'm building an energy connection. The fastest way to get rid of somebody in your life is to stop letting your ball of light go to them, because it might. Imagine if my ball of light's a watering can, and the water in the watering can is energy. Every time my ball of light goes to you, I'm watering my connection with you, and I'm building that energy connection with you. So if I want to get rid of somebody in my life, I just move my ball of light away from them. They no longer get energy, and it just starts to wither away and go away. And the first step, I would say, in managing energy, you know, a lot of the questions I get asked quite often is, how do I build more energy? Probably people ask you, how do I get more money? That's not the first question. The first question is, where are you hemorrhaging energy? So if I had a bucket and I wanted to fill the bucket with water, what's the first thing I do? I make sure the bucket's clean. And the second thing I do is make sure the bucket has no holes in it. If the bucket had a hole, why would I put water in it? You'd literally be insane to put water in a bucket that had a hole in it. First step, plug the holes. Then fill the bucket with water. So when you look at yourself and your physical body and your mind as a bucket that contains energy, rather than thinking, you know, should I journal, meditate, eat healthy, exercise, go for walks to get more energy. The first question you should be asking, how many energetic holes do I have in my life? Because your body is like a bucket, and you're putting more energy in through healthier ways of living. But if you had a hole, where would that energy be going? It'd just be hemorrhaging out all day. First step, plug the holes. Where are you hemorrhaging energy? Who's taking your energy away? What is taking your energy away? There are better ways to say, let's get rid of those. You know, plug the holes. Then start focusing on living a healthier life to get more energy. Does that make sense? Yeah, but we need to take a very structured, systematic approach. If we don't, you know, I could meditate all day, drink green juice, exercise, meditate, you know, do all these things to try to put more energy Inside of me, but it's perpetually flowing out of me because I just have all these energetic holes.
- [46:56]
Cody Sanchez
Do most people, when you explain this to them the first time, get, like, the feeling I just got, which is like, oh, no, I have so many whole, like, it's almost like a visceral reaction. Like, shoot, I'm a leaky bucket.
- [47:06]
Dandapani
They do. And if I ask people, how many of you have an energy vampire in your life? Most people don't. Like, do you have a name coming to your head right now?
- [47:15]
Cody Sanchez
Totally.
- [47:15]
Dandapani
Yeah, I know. You do.
- [47:17]
Cody Sanchez
I got one right away. Yeah.
- [47:19]
Dandapani
I can look at an audience of 2,000 people. I can just see names popping up in their heads right away. Oh, I know who that is. And sometimes it's difficult, right? Because sometimes it's a family member or a relative, a parent, a child, a sibling, you know, and those are much more complicated situations. Sometimes they're not complicated situations. It's a friend from college that you've keeping around like an old shoe, you know, 30 years later. And you think, like, why we're unaligned anymore.
- [47:46]
Cody Sanchez
How do you get people to break through? If all of us have those energy vampires, we never want to stab them in the heart with a stake.
- [47:52]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [47:52]
Cody Sanchez
Like, what do we do to change that?
- [47:54]
Dandapani
How we do.
- [47:54]
Cody Sanchez
How do we flip our mentality so we start actually, like, respecting ourselves more than we do this legacy relationship.
- [48:02]
Dandapani
For me, the. The greatest impetus is. Is death, you know, and realizing that my life is not short, that it's finite. Because I don't believe life is short. When I'm stuck in traffic or waiting for the plane to take off, stuck on the tarmac, I don't think that one hour is short. It feels like eternity. So I feel people always say life is short, and I disagree. It's finite. There's a clear, definitive end. So for me, what do I choose to do with the time that I have left? How do I want to live that life? And I realize that I need clarity around my purpose in life, my priorities in life. And once I have clarity around that, I need the ability to focus and the ability to channel substantial energy to those things to make it grow like a business that. Where they would do raise money, raise capital to invest in it. This is not my area of expertise. I just, you know, very little. You raise money to find, to channel into that. Right. Because you need capital to grow the business. So life is no different as well. Once you're clear of your purpose in life, your priorities in life, you think, okay, I need Capital now, energy capital to channel to that, to make those things grow. Now where am I hemorrhaging energy now you have an impetus, a reason to start plugging the holes. But if you don't have a reason to plug the holes, then you're going like, yeah, that's just part of life. Yeah, there needs to be a reason. We do things because there's a reason.
- [49:33]
Cody Sanchez
So. So if you're struggling with energy management, the first thing is, okay, now I need to understand my why. And that might be death, the greatest of all. And then it's sort of this audit. Let me just see where I feel the leaky buckets. Let me write it down, let me analyze it. And then it's take your awareness away.
- [49:50]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [49:50]
Cody Sanchez
From that connection.
- [49:52]
Dandapani
Because where awareness goes, energy flows.
- [49:54]
Cody Sanchez
So I'm just, I'm. I don't even have to tell them I'm not going to do coffee yet. I just am taking my awareness off them and then the next step is just spend less time with them.
- [50:02]
Dandapani
Yeah. And someone like you, where people come and ask you for advice or pick your brain or anybody that has, has an expertise in a certain area. One simple practice I tell people to do is place the burden of responsibility on them. So for ex, if you. So you know this. So just give them a task to do and see if they'll do it. And if they don't do it, don't move with them.
- [50:26]
Cody Sanchez
What's your go to task? Do you have one that you give to people?
- [50:29]
Dandapani
Yeah, sometimes I will ask them to read my book or, you know, sometimes like at events that I speak at that people come up to me during the break after the event, can I tell you about my relationship problem or this or that? And I said, you know, I don't have much time right this moment. And I see this as such an important topic for you. Can you send me an email? It'll give me time to read it at home, reflect on it and write you a response. And people don't email me.
- [50:53]
Cody Sanchez
I was going to say, what percentage of people?
- [50:55]
Dandapani
Nobody does.
- [50:56]
Cody Sanchez
Isn't it wild? It's actually the craziest thing.
- [50:59]
Dandapani
It's so crazy.
- [50:59]
Cody Sanchez
My go to is before I had a book, it was read somebody else else's book. Now that I have a book, it's read mine. But pick a book, any book, even if you haven't written one, and say, like, I'd love to give you advice on that. Let me start here. So we have like a shared basis of understanding.
- [51:11]
Dandapani
Exactly.
- [51:11]
Cody Sanchez
First you got to Read this. And what kills me is people will write you these emails or. Or have these questions and the feeling that I could, like, they're like, it's life or death that you answer, but it's not in front of you.
- [51:23]
Dandapani
Right?
- [51:24]
Cody Sanchez
Right.
- [51:24]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [51:24]
Cody Sanchez
But then the second that you go away, it doesn't. Which also gives me some. I think it makes me realize, you know, so many people say it's really hard to get ahead in life. It's hard to do. And I'm like, I'm not sure because so many people don't do the very simple thing. That would be the first step. And so if you're willing to read the book and like, did the thing you said you were going to do, which I guess is your first practice, if you say you're going to do it, do it and finish it.
- [51:49]
Dandapani
Yeah. And people just don't desire things badly enough, Cody. And that's why they never get it. You know, they want everything to be a quick fix, you know, and everything is a hack today. How can we hack this? You know, I've had someone come up to me and say, dani, do you have a quick way for me to slow down? That makes a lot of sense. Quick way for me to slow down. Okay, let me help you with this problem.
- [52:14]
Cody Sanchez
You know, you have said that actually you have this other line that I, I meditate on a lot, which is, is you have fear when you are not confident in your own personal powers of creation and you need to realize your will is stronger than your mind.
- [52:27]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [52:28]
Cody Sanchez
When I read that line, I think, man, am I not achieving the thing that I want to achieve because I don't believe that I could actually. And thus because I don't believe I could do it. My desire is not strong enough for almost feels like maybe my belief or desire is the thing that stands in the way most often.
- [52:47]
Dandapani
I think it's important to say that if anybody ever says they don't have any doubts about achieving something, they're definitely lying. Everybody thinks twice about everything. You know, even the best athletes I worked with have doubts before a game. You know, it's just a natural part of it. The difference is that they have this tremendous burning desire to achieve it and that's where they end up getting. So I think for me, at the end of the day, it's the clarity, the crystal clear clarity that you have and the specificity that comes out of it. And when the more clear you are, the more specific it is as to what it is you want. Once that's Defined, then it's about harnessing and channeling all that energy to it, you know, within unwavering focus. Then that builds the confidence inside of you. But it's hard to have confidence to do something if you're not clear what it is you want. I was very clear. I wanted to go to the monastery, not just to be a monk, but enlightenment was what I was seeking. And being a monk was the most efficient way to get there. So I was willing to do that. And when my guru asked me, what are you willing to do? I said, willing to give my whole life for it. I was in my early 20s. My friends were graduating, buying cars, having an apartment, traveling and dating and doing all these things. And I'm like, I'm gonna go live in a monastery, because that's what I want. So the clearer you are, the narrower your focus becomes. It's the more energy you can channel and funnel towards that. The more confidence you have, the less fear you you have that you won't achieve it, that you can get that.
- [54:35]
Cody Sanchez
Do you have you. How do you even ask, have you reached enlightenment? Have you touched that before? Are you still there? How does that work?
- [54:44]
Dandapani
I would say, and again, every philosophy is different, so I can only speak from the Hindu philosophy. And again, in the Hindu experience, it's not a binary experience. It's more like I talked about approaching the sun, right? As you get closer and closer, you feel more of the intensity of the sun. As your awareness goes deeper and deeper into the superconscious area of the mind, to the essence of who you are, you experience deeper and deeper states of yourself. So it's not a binary, like, turn on the light and turn off the light, which people think, oh, I close my eyes, I meditate, I experience enlightenment, and then I come out of it. It's. You get that, and then eventually you get to the sun and merge with the sun, and then you come back out again.
- [55:29]
Cody Sanchez
So, and have you felt that before? The latest super close to the sun. Is it like, let me tell you, in, like, a total normie sort of way, like when you do psychedelics. So, like, if I've done mushrooms, let's say, and I have an experience where I feel like I'm out of body or I might have talked to God. Is there an experience like that for you in Hinduism that's not obviously done by drugs and altercations?
- [56:00]
Dandapani
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yes. And a very profound experience. Yeah, I, I, I'm pausing because I don't talk about this publicly.
- [56:13]
Cody Sanchez
Ah, yeah, this.
- [56:15]
Dandapani
So this is very personal, Very personal, very sacred. And sometimes when you share the most sacred inner experience with somebody and people.
- [56:25]
Cody Sanchez
Are like, nah, because they can't understand.
- [56:28]
Dandapani
They can't understand.
- [56:28]
Cody Sanchez
There's no way to express it.
- [56:29]
Dandapani
And same with business. Right. You know, you, I work with clients that run multi billion dollar companies. They, they, they know when they share something with me, I, I, I hold it with sacredness and gentleness, you know, Whereas if they share it with someone else, someone may say a response that, that is jarring to their nervous system because they just have no way of understanding it. And then they can also put doubt in your mind. Not that I would have it because I've been doing this for so long, but just say, you know, someone who's new on the spiritual path, you, you go on a retreat or something and you have this profound spiritual experience, you come back and then you share it with a bunch of random people and they go like, you sure you had that. Maybe you were just, you know, this. And then you go like, like, oh yeah, you might be right. Yeah. And now all of a sudden that profound experience you had has been the energy and the essence and sacredness of it has just been pulled out of it.
- [57:25]
Cody Sanchez
Like diminished.
- [57:26]
Dandapani
Diminished, yes, diminished. And now you start to doubt it and question it.
- [57:30]
Cody Sanchez
That's actually beautiful. You're very good at, you know, holding boundaries, which makes sense for a lot of the things that you talked about. Such as, let me pause, then I'm going to tell you why I'm going to pause us, but not bowing to somebody else's frame, which in podcasting is quite hard to do. I mean, we do a lot of podcasts and I'm curious. So I'll ask a lot of questions that are, some of them are going to be ones people don't really want to answer.
- [57:54]
Dandapani
Oh, sure.
- [57:55]
Cody Sanchez
A lot of grace.
- [57:56]
Dandapani
Thank you.
- [57:57]
Cody Sanchez
Is that something you work on too?
- [57:59]
Dandapani
I knew because one of the things, you know, when I was growing up, I, I didn't really have a filter between my head and my mouth, you know. Yeah. So now I've installed the traffic light and.
- [58:10]
Cody Sanchez
But it protects some of your more sacred things or allows other people to not influence you fully.
- [58:15]
Dandapani
Yes. And also you have to understand the nature of the Internet. Right. When something goes on the Internet, you're sharing it with the entire spectrum of humanity, which is on one end a highly evolved, mature soul that is compassionate, that's enlightenment, that has empathy, and on the other end is a very unevolved animal.
- [58:38]
Cody Sanchez
Yes. Maybe more this than that.
- [58:40]
Dandapani
Yes. So you, when you put information out on the Internet, which most people put out without even thinking twice about it now you ex, you, you give permission for the entire spectrum of humanity to comment on it and you don't really need comments from the other end of the spectrum. And you know, people are so used to going, just typing their whole life story and my experience and this is what I ad and do like a download on, you know, on their feed and you just go like, why? And then some lower minded person comments. Something goes like this, look at this person. So hateful. They've really hurt me with their comments. It's like, well, what else were you expecting? You cannot expect a low minded person to have an expression, a high minded expression. They're incapable of it. Low minded people will have low minded expressions. High minded people will have high minded expressions. So if something is sacred to you, not only spiritually or business or whatever it is, know your audience. Know your audience every single time and who you're sharing what with because they can diminish the power of it and, and cause you to feel not so good about something so sacred. Not only spirituality, business, everything, relationship.
- [60:00]
Cody Sanchez
It's a great.
- [60:00]
Dandapani
So I'm very protective about who and what I share with and when I.
- [60:04]
Cody Sanchez
Share it, you have your story. I had this story in, in your app that just has stuck with me and I think it's when I originally reached out to you because I did a video saying that I learned from the story of the napkin.
- [60:17]
Dandapani
Oh yes. Yeah.
- [60:18]
Cody Sanchez
Will you tell the story and about how it helped me. This one story helped me completely become at peace with people disliking me or people having comments about me, even if they were my loved ones.
- [60:32]
Dandapani
Yes.
- [60:32]
Cody Sanchez
It changed my context completely.
- [60:34]
Dandapani
Yeah, yeah. I, in the first few months of going to the monastery, I felt very selfish that, you know, I have a loving family and I left them, especially my mom, whom I love very much. And, and I went up to my guru and I said, you know, am I selfish to be living here by myself? And you never talked to my mother again, you know, in my life. And he reached over to his box of Kleenex and he pulled out a tissue and laid it on the table and says, you're in the middle and your mom's in this corner, your dad's in this corner and your brother's in the other corner. And he grabbed the middle and he lifted it up and he says, as you uplift yourself, you uplift everyone that you're energetically connected to. So the work in Essence, what he was saying is that the work that you're doing on yourself, though you might think you're doing it in isolation and very selfishly, you're actually impacting so many people around you that you're energetically connected to. And it completely flipped the narrative in my mind. And then during the spending this time in the monastery doing work on myself, I realized was impacting people. And I could see the change of my life being a monastic and how it had on my family and different people around me and. And the same for business leaders, right? If you run a company and you're a leader and you work on you to uplift yourself, to get to a higher state of consciousness where you react and react in ways that have better outcomes, that's one way to measure if you're on a higher state of consciousness, that your actions and reactions result in a better outcome for everyone, right? Then a less outcome. Then you impact your whole team just by doing that work on yourself. Because your presence in the office, in the company, every time someone sees you, they interact with you, even if it's for 30 seconds, they walk away feeling good. When I went to see my guru in his office or whenever I saw him, I walked away. I always felt uplifted just from his presence. Sometimes just looking at him walking, I go like, huh. And I have a smile on my face. It was because of the work he did on himself. So I think that's, you know, one of the greatest gifts leaders and companies and businesses can do is to do the work, to uplift your consciousness and measure the change. Because if you don't measure, you don't know if you're growing.
- [63:06]
Cody Sanchez
I think that's one of the most profound things for me too, is that idea of measurement that probably triggers a lot of other spiritual people, triggers all the spiritual people.
- [63:15]
Dandapani
Because the new age spiritual people don't like structure. They don't want a path, they don't want rules, they don't want guidelines. All the successful people I've met with are so extremely disciplined. Their life is filled with guidelines and practices and rules and frameworks. Works the spiritual people, none of that. And they are committed to not being committed. And they're extremely devoted. They have so much devotion to not being committed. So when you talk to them about measuring your meditation, your spiritual unfoldment, what is this? Why should you measure it? What do you think? It's business like? Yeah, if you're meditating for two years and you're still a jerk, well, obviously it's not helping I want to try something else.
- [64:03]
Cody Sanchez
It's a great point.
- [64:04]
Dandapani
And this, I mean, seriously, right? I mean, why meditate after two years and you're still a jerk, right? Yeah, yeah.
- [64:10]
Cody Sanchez
I mean, in this idea of like, are you still a jerk and is your life changing in a way that is positive because of your actions? I mean, could you imagine doing a diet and working out and you're fatter and more unhealthy and you have more sickness and you go, I'm gonna keep doing this.
- [64:23]
Dandapani
You wouldn't.
- [64:24]
Cody Sanchez
You wouldn't.
- [64:24]
Dandapani
Yes, that. You know, Cody, it's really interesting. In real life, in. In the world. Shouldn't say not real life. In the world. People are very reasonable. Like you said, if you go to the gym and you're doing all these diets and everything, and after two years, nothing changes, you probably wouldn't do it. But when it comes to spirituality, all reason goes out the window and people become so extremely unreasonable, you know, and reason shouldn't end where spirituality begins. You know, it's. One of the monks in the monastery had this quote, reason shouldn't end where spirituality begins. But if you end reason, you have more control over people, because that's when spiritual leaders can be dodgy, can be shady, and create cults. Let's all wear Nike shoes, go in a barn and set ourselves on fire. That sounds like a brilliant idea. No reason.
- [65:20]
Cody Sanchez
No. Yeah. There's nothing quantitative.
- [65:22]
Dandapani
No. Now you become a cult and you do whatever you want to do. And that's where you had to be so careful in the spiritual path. And one good litmus test to see if that path or a spiritual teacher is valid and not dodgy is to see if he or she is reasonable or not. And if they're not saying something reasonable, best to move on and find somebody else.
- [65:48]
Cody Sanchez
It's a great, great point. And I love the interweaving of it into business and everything else and life, because it all does seem like part of the practice. And I always like that about your teaching, too, because I think one of my personal beliefs is that business is one of the great practices because you have to keep getting better. You have a daily, weekly, monthly scoreboard on if you're better or not. You will. Will always have massive, terrible challenges, no matter how big you get. In fact, maybe higher level, higher doubles in some ways. And so it's this game of, like, when things are always going wrong, you have to figure out, how could you be some sort of eye in the storm? And the things that really used to trigger me A year ago, not so triggering now. 10 years ago, irrelevant. But I'm still triggered all the time because I have new stimulus, you know, and so I love that idea. Where I want to end on is, when you look at Western culture today, what do you think we're getting most dangerously wrong about our spirituality or fulfillment?
- [66:48]
Dandapani
People don't want to be committed to any path. They like to eat off the spiritual buffet table. Say, I'll take a little bit of this, I'll take a little bit of that. I'll do a cold plunge, I'll do some ayahuasca, maybe some yoga and some kundalini. Put it all together in a bowl and it should work for me. You don't approach business that way, do you? No. You define what you want in business. What product are we selling, what service are we offering, who's our niche market? Who are the target audience? Then you find the people, the consultants, the team that can help you focus on this. If you build mobile applications, you don't. Don't hire someone who's an expert in lawnmowers because it's not aligned. But people don't take that reasonable, structured approach to spiritual life. You know, in the west, it's embrace everything. A little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of Judaism, pepper, some Christianity and some Hinduism in there. And then, you know, let's go to see the shaman in South America and he's got some leaves. I can smoke or chew or whatever, you know, and just throw it all together and think I'm making progress. Why are you so afraid to commit? All the most successful people in the world commit. The best tennis players commit to playing tennis. They don't try to be professional golfers. The best musicians do music. The entrepreneurs. The best entrepreneurs focus on their niche market. It comes to spirituality, you just feel like, you know, I can be this free soul. They mistake spirituality with this freedom of I can do whatever I want and not be bound within by anything. You know, the greatest progress you can make in spirituality is having structure and framework. And the more structure and more framework you have, the faster you unfold spiritually. Like in anything, going to the gym, business, whatever.
- [69:02]
Cody Sanchez
Donda Pondi, I love your book, the Power of Unwavering Focus. I love your app, which is your name?
- [69:08]
Dandapani
Dandapani. Yep.
- [69:10]
Cody Sanchez
That I use on a daily basis. And one of my friends, Stacy, is taking your energy course right now, which she said was amazing too. I haven't tried that one yet. So where do you want people to follow you? Obviously, I think they should try all the three above, but also Instagram.
- [69:24]
Dandapani
Instagram must be a great place. I have a link where I can for this podcast if you go to dandapani.org Cody Yay. Yeah. There's three things you can subscribe to my free weekly newsletter that I send out an email giving some insights and then I have a an audio piece in there that shares three things that people can implement in their life right away. Three practices, really simple ones, and also a couple other gifts that they can download for free.
- [69:50]
Cody Sanchez
That's beautiful. Thank you so much for being here today.
- [69:52]
Dandapani
Thank you Cody.
- [69:53]
Cody Sanchez
It was mostly for me. The audience is going to love it. But this is my podcast today.