The primary focus of our discussion centers on the transformative power of meditation, particularly as elucidated in Stuart Perrin's latest work, *Rudra Meditation*. Stuart, a seasoned Kundalini yogi, articulates the profound impact of meditation on personal development and inner peace. Through his extensive experience, he emphasizes that the journey of self-mastery is paramount, as individuals grapple with their internal chaos and external challenges. The dialogue explores practical methods to cultivate a balanced foundation within oneself, utilizing the breath and mindfulness to strengthen the essential energy centers, or chakras, of the body. Ultimately, we delve into the significance of fostering a heart-centered approach to life, underscoring that true spiritual growth arises from genuine love, gratitude, and compassion. Stuart Perrin, a practitioner well-versed in the discipline of Kundalini yoga, articulates his profound insights into the transformative power of meditation in our latest discourse. Throughout the episode, he poignantly shares his journey, which began in the tumultuous environment of New York City and later expanded into a lifelong quest for spiritual enlightenment. He elucidates the essence of his newly released book, 'Rudra Meditation,' wherein he endeavors to distill complex spiritual concepts into language that is accessible to the everyday individual. This endeavor is underscored by his belief that true mastery of meditation can profoundly alter one’s existence, providing tools to navigate the chaos of modern life with grace and strength. Central to Perrin's teachings is the notion that individuals must confront their own inner turmoil to achieve peace. He emphasizes that meditation is an inward journey, one requiring individuals to cultivate their inner strength and maintain their composure amidst external chaos. This message resonates throughout the discussion, as he illustrates the importance of establishing a solid foundation within oneself, which is essential for engaging with the myriad challenges life presents. He elaborates on the chakra system, particularly the significance of the energy center below the navel, referred to as the Hara, as a cornerstone for grounding and stability. By mastering this energy center, individuals can develop resilience against life's vicissitudes, allowing them to respond with equanimity rather than reactive emotion. Perrin's narrative is enriched by personal anecdotes that illuminate his spiritual awakening, notably a pivotal moment during his father's passing, which catalyzed his search for inner peace. This transformative experience, coupled with his encounters with various spiritual teachers, has shaped his understanding of meditation as a practice not merely for tranquility but as a means to embody the values of love, compassion, and wisdom that he advocates. The episode culminates in a compelling reminder that the path of self-mastery is fraught with challenges, yet it is through this journey that one can unlock the true potential of human existence, ultimately transforming tension into joy and love.

Takeaways:

• The essence of meditation is to master oneself amidst the chaos of life, as true strength lies in inner tranquility.
• Stuart Perrin emphasizes the significance of developing the chakra system to effectively navigate life's challenges and karma.
• Gratitude is posited as a transformative practice that opens the heart and fosters a profound connection with life.
• The journey of self-discovery involves recognizing one's own internal chaos, which must be managed for true peace to be attained.
• Inner strength is pivotal in maintaining balance during both positive and negative experiences, allowing individuals to remain grounded.
• The teachings suggest that humility and compassion are foundational elements in achieving a fulfilling spiritual life.

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright, and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome back.

And we are here with our guest, Stuart Perrin, who is a Kundalini yogi.

Welcome, Stuart.

Thank you for having me.

And I'm not often called a Kundalini yogi, but it's.

It's kind of cute.

Well, you're from New York City and you currently live in Connecticut, but tell us about.

You've come out with a new book called Rudra Meditation, and you've taught meditation and Kundalini yoga for a long time.

Talk to us about that.

Well, I wrote this.

And one day I started reading all these things and I said, you know, Stuart, you can make a book out of this, an important book.

And I really dived into it and worked very hard on this book.

And I tried to write it in a way where it wasn't, you know, full of all kinds of Sanskrit terminology and things that most people don't even understand.

You got to go to your dictionary to find out, you know, what you're really reading about and try to bring it down to a language that was really a language of ordinary people, the way we live.

I have always been like that in my life, and I wrote the book that way.

I've written a lot of books.

I've written probably a dozen books and some novels, some short stories, and also, you know, wisdom books, a book of aphorisms I wrote.

And all of them I tried to keep in basic, simple language, language that's understandable by everyday people.

The book was written that way.

I think it's an important book because it goes really deeply into what meditation is all about, how it can transform a person's life if they learn how to master it, the time it takes to learn to master it.

And the big point I make throughout the book is there's only one person.

A human being is up against themselves.

You know, we can complain about the politics of the world and all the madness that goes on and all it doesn't stop.

It goes on.

I can't.

I always tell people I was born at the beginning of World War II.

It was insane.

And I can't remember a day in my life where the world hasn't been crazy.

And that was a constant reminder to me, Stuart, you got to get strong enough to be able to deal with all this stuff.

How do you get strong enough to deal with all this stuff?

You've got to Build a system inside yourself.

First of all, the development of foundation in a human being.

Building the very core of your being from the core of your being.

You learn how to keep the heart open.

You have the strength to do it.

You learn how to keep the mind quiet, because you've learned how to use the mind literally as a surgical instrument that can open the very core of your being.

And in the process of using the mind that way, the mind gets quiet.

It is no longer driving people crazy.

You know, I mean, look.

I mean, it's always like a bird cage full of canaries.

The mind, and it has all the answers, and none of them lead anywhere.

You know, they just drive people crazy.

So we have to learn how to fix ourselves.

We, you know, and, you know, people talk spiritual life, spiritual life.

You know, when people die, they tell you to rest in peace.

I have a better idea.

People should lip live in peace, because if you live in peace, you're going to rest in peace.

If you don't live in peace, you're gonna have to come back to figure out how to do it again, you know, and learn how to live at peace with yourself.

So I. I had a very great master who taught me all of this.

When I was a young man, I was adrift in the world.

I could never find a purpose for my life, especially between the age of 16 and about 25.

And I went through some traumatic experiences, which I talk about at the beginning of my book, where my father died.

And, you know, and one of the, you know, my father became my first great teacher.

And it happened literally two hours before he left the world.

And how he became a teacher, it's not that he started spouting great wisdom to me.

I mean, he contracted a very serious illness.

And my mother, my sister and I, we were in Florida and we were taking a vacation, and we get a phone call that, your father is very sick in the hospital.

We have to come back to New York.

Came back, went to the room where he was, and he had about 106 fever, and he was lying in bed shaking, and he didn't know my mother, myself, my sister.

And this went on for about a week.

And after about a week of all of this, and it pretty shook me up.

It was very traumatic.

After about a week of this, I walked into his hospital room.

He was lying there in a state of total peace.

I looked into his eyes.

I could see a thousand miles, even.

The room was, like, full of an energy I had never felt before.

It was like light and kind of a spiritual Energy.

Although I was 16, I didn't know anything about spirituality.

And I said to him, do you know me?

And he just shook his head yes.

And I remember I went out to the corridor of the hospital.

I had to go to the bathroom or something, and I bumped into his nurse.

And this woman, God bless her, if I met her on the street, I wouldn't know who she is today.

But she changed my life.

She said something to me that was so profound.

She said, just before people die, they go into the state of profound inner peace.

They have let go of any.

Anything of everything, and they have entered the state of inner peace.

And my first thought was, why did my father have to wait 49 years to enter the state?

I never saw him in a state of inner peace.

He was always tense and, you know.

You know, like everybody, you know, tense and full of himself and his insecurities and fears and.

And I said, stuart said, I don't want to wait in my life until I'm two hours before I'm going to die.

To attain this kind of inner peace.

I have to find.

I knew that I was too insecure.

I was too rattled and unhappy.

Kid, you know, I was a very kind of introspective and kid.

I.

You know, and I. I knew I was too insecure to do this for myself.

I had to find somebody in the world who could teach me how to do this, you know, and took nine years traveling after around the world, looking for this person.

When I finally, of course, you know, it's like any book on spiritual development.

You've.

It's always a paradox.

You come back to your hometown after nine years and find them.

You know, you're looking all over the world and you find them in your hometown.

But I found a person.

And it was.

It seemingly was by accident.

But then you learn another important factor.

There are no accidents in the world, right?

You know, either you learn from what happens and you use them to grow in your life.

And when I met this person, I was standing.

He had an Oriental art gallery in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

And I was standing in front of the window with a friend of mine.

And this, you know, at that time, I was living on the floor of this friend's apartment.

I was broke.

I just got back from Europe, and my friend said to me, why don't we go in?

You love this stuff.

And I did.

I really used to love Oriental art, especially Buddhist and Hindu art.

And I said to myself, what am I going to do there?

This stuff cost a fortune.

I'm broke.

My friend said to me, it doesn't cost to look.

I walked in.

Standing in the middle of this gallery was this man.

And the energy coming out of him was the same energy I felt in the hospital room my father died.

There was light coming out of him.

There was a power coming out of.

There was a strength and a foundation.

I mean, it was extraordinary what I saw.

And I was like a magnet.

Just walked up to him and he started talking to me about his teacher and showed me pictures of himself studying in India.

And he said to me, if you want to study with me, come back here tomorrow night at five o'.

Clock.

Oh, my goodness.

I went back, you know, anyway, as I walked out of the gallery, I looked back and I saw him.

And again I.

It was that same energy of that rest in peace, live in peace kind of energy coming out of somebody who had mastered it.

And I didn't know what he had mastered because I was a crazy young man, you know, gypsy, and a crazy young hippie and, you know, whatever.

And at any rate, I wound up studying with this person.

And the first time I sat with him, he showed me a meditation exercise, which was exactly what I was looking for.

Wow.

And this was Rudy.

Rudy, yes.

That you speak about on your.

On your website.

And I just want to speak about the.

Your.

Your book is called Rudra Meditation, but the subtitle is Transforming the Transforming Life's Tension into Joy and Love.

Yes.

And that's why do we need that?

Yes.

So we are coming up on a break.

Adam, do you have anything before we take our break?

Yeah, I'm just really happy to have you on, Stuart, because this is a common theme on the living conversation where people have, you know, a breakthrough or some sense, some moment of tension, and they feel the need to seek for something that we could say higher or deeper.

And I'm always very curious to hear about people's spiritual path.

They're.

And I think, you know, in some ways Carl Jung calls it that we all have our hero's journey to experience our soul and to integrate it into our lives.

Lives.

So I think it's really lovely the way you described your.

Your journey.

I also.

There's so many different things I want to talk about, but I do also want to say that so many of our guests, and Anthony and myself, meditation is so important.

Meditation has been so powerful in, In.

In all of our lives, and we don't often hone in on it and zero in on it.

Like.

Like we should.

I feel like maybe we should because it's been so powerful for almost every single one of our guests and, and for ourselves as well.

Could you say a little more before we go about how meditation?

Because, you know, in, in our background, we have a Chinese background, so in Zen Buddhism, they call your, your ordinary mind, your, your original mind.

So could you say something about how meditation helps allow our ordinary life and our practical life to become more enlivened, to become transformed.

Can you say something more about that before we.

We've got about a minute, so.

Okay.

Before the break.

Well, it's going to take more than a minute to talk about this, so.

But anyway, the first thing is we're born with the tools to.

Most people don't even know they have the tools to make it happen.

Second thing is called a chakra system.

Oh, right.

A system of energy centers in a human being that is directly connected to the higher force of energy in the universe.

My teacher told me that chakras are psychic muscles.

If you don't work them and develop them, they atrophy, just as physical muscles will atrophy if you don't go to the gym and work out and eat proper food.

And, you know, they life atrophies.

Life has a way of being born and then atrophying, you know.

And so meditation, you know, this is a minute's worth, you know, meditation is learning how to use the tools you're born with, the mind and the breath to develop a system inside yourself that is strong enough to do three things.

I'll talk about the three things when we come back from the break.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm here with my co host, Adam Dietz.

Thanks for joining.

We are talking with our guest Stuart Perrin, who is a Kundalini yogi.

And you have written a book called Mudra Rudra Meditation.

And how can people contact you?

Well, My website is stuartperin.com S T U A R T P E-R-R-I-N.com People can email me Stuart D as in David Perrin gmail.com if they'd like.

Right.

So, you know, I'm readily available.

I also teach, I have seven meditation classes a week on, on Zoom.

I teach five of them and then two students of mine teach one apiece.

I'm training them to learn how to master this.

And so it's available.

I Mean, the best part about this, I have no fee for this.

I tell, you know, look, I have to live, and you need money to live.

So I tell people, donate whatever you can afford.

If you can't afford anything, you're still welcome.

You'll grow up and learn how to master money also so that you can contribute something so it's readily available.

And there's probably 60, 70 people that come to my classes every week.

Well, that's great.

All right, we'll take a.

We'll have to take a short break and be right back.

So stay tuned.

I'm Anthony Wright.

I am your host, your co host today with Adam Dietz on the Living Conversation.

And our guest is Stuart Perrin.

And before the break, Stuart, you were beginning to unfold the depth and breadth of meditation that you teach every.

Every weeknight, Is that right?

I teach it every day.

Every day?

No, no.

There are two days a week.

It's taught twice a day.

Okay.

And then five days, and then there's, I don't know.

Then the rest of it is taught I have two days off.

So.

So, Adam, if you'd recapitulate your question.

Yeah, we were just getting into.

You mentioned really early on discussing your book about how you had aspects about talking about how meditation can help our ordinary life, our practical life.

And I would like to hear more about that because I think many of us have experienced that, but, you know, I think all of us could use that.

Right.

A little more peace in our daily life.

All right.

What I teach people or is a very simple thing.

There are three elements to what I teach.

The first one is you have to learn.

We're born here for a reason.

We all have certain commas to work out.

Everybody's calm is unique.

Everybody lives a unique life, but we all have karma to work out.

Life itself is such a powerful energy that it keeps people living at the edge of their seat.

You know, it's just, you know, it's, you know, the wars, the economics, the money, the tension, the endless problems that people have to undergo in order to get through a day.

People need to be very strong inside themselves in order to deal with their karma.

And the first step in the meditation I teach people is to bring the focal point of their mind.

The mind is the strongest instrument we have to.

The chakra that's directly below the navel, the energy center.

So let me back up a little bit.

There are seven basic energy centers, chakras in a human being.

There's one here in the forehead, often known as the third Eye, there's one in the throat, one in the heart, one in the right below the navel.

The Japanese call it the Hara, Chinese call it the da dien.

There's one in the sex, one on the base of the spine, and another one in the crown of the head.

The development.

Meditation is the development of a holistic person.

We have to develop the entire aspect.

The first step is to build the foundation.

The chakra below the navel is the foundation in a human being.

It's the power, it's the strength.

I mean, I always talk about great singers sing from that area.

Their power of song comes from that, the core of their being.

Dancers, if you watch the best dances, they're always focused right below the navel at the core of their being, you know, and life itself is the greatest work of art.

And the reason why it's so chaotic for everybody is people have not developed the Hara, the Tatian, in themselves.

The power in themselves to be able to deal with their karma and not get rattled every time something negative happens or completely elated when something positive happens.

But to be able to deal with everything with a calm and a balance, and to understand that everything in life is transitory.

It comes and it goes.

We're born, we live, we die.

We are transitory.

Everything is transitory.

We have to learn how to be strong enough to deal with that transitory energy and to recognize we are given this extraordinary thing, this gift called life.

It's.

It's sacred life, and yet everybody messes it up.

So when you have.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Because of the chaos that exists inside them, the lack of grounding, the lack of foundation, they're not being rooted inside themselves.

That all takes place in the chakra below the navel.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

So when you have inner strength, then.

Then you're able to deal with the different challenges of life with a.

With a broader type of mind, with more energy inside of you.

Is that.

Is that part of how it helps us to deal with the challenges of life?

Because you're saying an inner strength.

And then I also want to ask you, in our background, there's a aspect of letting go.

And you mentioned earlier letting go.

And, you know, almost we.

We would say in Taoist tradition, Taoist philosophy like Lao Tzu, that there's.

The strength is through weakness.

So when we let go of our.

Maybe our ego or let go of some of the things that were blocking us, then we can maybe access some of the internal energy.

Would you say that's accurate?

And Would you say that's part of what helps us deal with.

I'd say that it's right on.

Okay.

And so that I even had T shirts made up.

Just let go.

Just let go.

So.

So when we're talking about strength, it's.

It's strength through weakness then in some ways, right?

Well, it's strength through humility.

Humility requires incredible amount of strength.

Humble people, innocent people, get ripped apart in life if they don't have the strength to sustain it inside themselves.

Yeah.

I'll give you an example.

You know, look, I was, I was studying.

I've talked about this before, but it's such an interesting story.

Okay.

I was studying with my teacher for about three, four years.

He made me a teacher of this meditation practice.

And, and he sent me to Texas because he had a group of people in Texas that wanted to start a meditation center there or an ashram there.

And he asked me to go down there and teach.

Told me, I want you to go there for three weeks.

So six months later, he came down there and I said to him, I mean, this is the last place in the world I wanted to live.

I lived in Paris.

I lived in Rome.

I lived in North Africa.

I lived.

And here I am in a little town in Texas.

I said, it's been a hell of a three weeks, Rudy.

You're on your fourth day.

I realized how essential it is that you only can leave when the cycle is finished.

You have done the work anyway.

We were standing on the porch of the meditation center's house and, and I'd been working.

I, I set up ashrans for him all over Texas.

I was teaching in prisons.

I had an accredited course in kundalini yoga at a college.

I was teaching Dallas.

I was working 18 running the ashram and, and, and, and running a business because I had to support myself.

I was doing all of this standing on the porch.

And he, Rudy said to me, you're not working hard enough, Stuart.

So I looked, I started to laugh too.

I said, rudy, what, what do you.

He said, buy that building.

And I said to him, that building was a shopping, a strip mall, a shopping center.

And I said to him, rudy, I have $600 in the bank.

How am I going to do this?

He said, anyone could do it with money.

And he was right.

And, you know, he knew the fear I had of financial success, the fear I had of opening to that level of life and at the same time maintaining a spiritual life.

And he knew that.

And he asked me to buy that building.

Taught Me, how to get over that.

And I began to realize the only place I could get that energy to get over that was from a higher source of energy.

It forced me to work so deep inside myself that it transformed me as a human being.

And a month later, I bought the building.

Oh, my goodness.

This is a true story.

Well, this is what I want to get at because this is.

So there's.

There's nothing more practical on people's minds than money.

Right.

And, and you are describing a very rich life of travel, of dealing with financial.

So could you say more about two things.

One, how travel influenced you, but two, how it seems like it made you realize that the true transformation has to become inner no matter how much you travel.

And, and three, how the heck did you buy that building?

You know, the only way I can describe it is that I kept going deeper and deeper in myself and I got answers.

Borrow money from this one, get.

And you know, and I wound up borrowing from this.

And until I raised the deposit for the building about three weeks to do that, called the real estate agent.

We went and we signed a deal.

But it all came through this inner work, showing me there are creative areas in myself I haven't even begun to tap.

And then I'll tell you another, you know, another story, if you want.

My teacher, Rudy, died in an airplane crash.

Oh, sorry.

And it's also in my book.

At the beginning of the book, I was in the airplane with him.

My goodness.

Yeah.

And, and when I realized that he had taken his samadhi in that airplane crash, I.

The first thought I had is, Stuart, now you'll find out what the last six years are really about.

Did you get the teachings?

Did you learn what this extraordinary man had to teach you?

You know, and then I'll never forget, you know, like he, he had one of the most, I would say one of the biggest Asian art stores, galleries in New York.

Rudy, it was hugely successful in his business.

And after he died about a year later, his mother called me up and she said to me, stuart, how would you like to buy two truckloads of art for me?

I'm not talking about ten dollar items, we're talking expensive stuff.

And I said, Ray, two things.

Ray, I have about maybe $1,000 to my name.

I said, and do you know where I live?

I live in the heart of, you know, conservative Christian America.

They'll probably crucify me here if I start selling Buddhas and Shivas and, you know, all these kind of.

And she said, think about it.

I thought about it for about 10 minutes.

And I said to myself, stuart, when is an offer like this ever going to come in your life, in your life?

This is something God is sending to you.

Do it.

Hold her back.

And I said to her, ray, I'll do it.

I'll come up to New York and we'll work all this out.

So I put myself in debt for like maybe $175,000.

Wow.

Today's money is probably $2 million.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I just, you know, and I, and I said, stuart, there's only one way you're going to get over this.

And that is you have to go to a place deep in yourself that can get the energy to enable you to succeed at this thing.

But the funny part of the story is I went up to New York to deal with Rudy's mother and the first day was impossible.

All the prices were too high and she was complaining about everything and it was all blah, blah, blah.

I finally, I left.

I said, well, there's no reason to go back here anymore.

You know this.

Anyway, I was teaching a meditation class that night at a friend of mine's apartment in Manhattan.

And in the apartment, Rudy came to me and he said to me, you're not going to believe this.

Buy my mother a bottle of Scotch.

And I, I, the next morning I went down to a liquor store.

I knew she liked Shivers Regal, his mother.

I bought her a bottle of scotch.

I went down to the gallery and walked in.

I, ray, I have a present for you.

And I gave her this bottle of Scott.

All the prices were half.

I got into the Asian art business because of a bottle of scotch, which became, for me, when I moved back to New York, a hugely successful business.

Yeah, we have to take a short break, I'm sorry to say, and like you to finish your story after the break.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

And our guest today is Stuart Perrin.

And how could people contact you, Stuart?

Well, stuartperron.com stewardd perrin gmail.com they can go to Facebook.

I also teach an in person class in my apartment in Connecticut and people are invited to come to that.

Great.

All right, we'll take a short Break and be right back.

So stay tuned.

I'm Anthony Wright, and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome back.

And our guest is Stuart Perrin.

And you are a meditation teacher.

And you were just talking to us about how you got into the Asian art business through a bottle of scotch in Manhattan.

So please continue with the story.

Well, that's.

That's how I got in the business.

And then eventually I. I moved back to New York from Texas.

I had an experience that was amazing.

I went to India, and I was in Darjeeling in India, and I was with a student of mine, and I met it.

I went, I asked.

I met two Tibetan llamas there.

One of them was a very, very good Tibetan Tonka painter.

And I asked them, but I eventually brought him to America, this man, you know.

And I asked them to take us to every Rinpoche in town.

We want to learn.

I was there to learn from every Rinpoche.

We went from Rinpoche to Rinpoche monastery to monastery.

Darjeeling was a big center of Tibetan refugees, and they had, you know, a lot of.

A lot of monasteries there.

And I just couldn't connect with any of the teachers I met.

And finally he said, let's go to a place called Sanada.

It was about 14 km from Darjeeling.

So we went there.

We went up into the courtyard of the Lamasarian, and there were, oh, maybe, I don't know, 100, 200 monks sitting there with their yapa beads and prayer wheels and Omani padmium and the whole thing.

And one of them came up to us and said, can I help you?

I said, yes, we would like to see Rinpoche.

And we, you know, is it possible that we have questions?

We would like to sit with the Rinpoche.

Rinpoche is very sick.

He's not seeing anybody.

I said to the guy, look, we've come 9,000 miles.

Maybe Rinpoche will see us.

He went in to talk to the.

Came back with a surprise look on his face.

Rinpoche will see you.

So we went into the room.

We had the silk scarves and we gave him.

You always have to give them as a greeting, the silk scarf.

And we sat down at his foot.

He was lying in bed with a.

Literally a blanket up to his neck.

He looked very sick.

And I said, rinpoche, we don't want to bother you, but can you talk for a few minutes just about Tibetan Buddhism?

He talked for about an hour about Tibetan Buddhism and the teachings.

Anyway, he was finished.

I said to him, rinpoche, Rinpoche, can we come back tomorrow?

He said, please.

Came back the next day, brought the silk scarves, put it, you know, gave them to him.

He was sitting on a teaching chair in his robes.

And I said to him, rinpoche, can you talk to us about Tibetan Buddhism?

He went on again for about an hour, and when he was finished, I asked him again, can we come back again tomorrow?

And he said, yes, please.

You must come back tomorrow.

And we came back the next day.

Rinpoche was sitting in full teaching regalia on a throne chair.

It was extraordinary.

And the guy was, like, dying two days before.

And he talked for three hours about Tibetan Buddhism and talked about the most esoteric.

This student of mine had read a book about Naropa and the six disciplines of Naropa.

And he told me, there's a discipline called Tummo, which I didn't even know about.

That's very similar to the meditation practice Vase.

Breathing is breathing into the core of your being.

That's very similar to the meditation that I teach.

I still teach.

And I said, rinpoche, can you talk about the six disciplines of Naropa, especially the discipline of Tummo?

He went on for three hours.

The translator looked at me and said, In 13 years of living this, I've never heard these teachings before.

This is what the translator said to me.

And at the end, he said something I'll never forget.

He said when he was a young Tulku.

And you'll know this guy.

He's very famous.

When he was a young Tulku, and he wanted to.

To had a question to ask to his Rinpoche.

There were lines of people waiting to sit with the Rinpoche.

He said, today I can't find anyone to teach.

There were 200 people sitting in the yard.

And this.

At any rate, my teacher used to say the same thing.

Rudy would say in his language.

Teacher's a cow.

And if you don't milk a cow, it's going to scream into the night.

It'll die.

You gotta milk a cow, you know.

And this Rinpoche needed to be milked.

And.

And at any rate, he.

I asked him, I said, rinpoche, do you think I should return to New York?

I was living in Texas at the time.

And he said to me, yes, he said to me, if you return to New York, your teachings will be known all over the world.

That's what he told me.

And he didn't even know what I taught.

This is amazing.

You Know, and the.

Tap it to this story.

Okay.

All right.

I was in San Francisco and I was invited to give a talk at a yoga society out there.

And I went to the place where the society was, and one of my students came up to me and he said to me, stuart, you're not going to believe this.

He said, come and talk to this guy over here.

And I went over, and this guy told me this story.

He said, kala Rinpoche.

I'm sure you've heard of Kala Rinpoche.

He was like, on the level of the Kalamapa and the Dalai La.

Very high level of a teacher was.

Was in his monastery in Sanada, dying.

These two seekers came from the West.

These two seekers came, and their need for a spiritual life was so strong, it had brought Kala Rinpoche back to life.

This became like a legend in their monastery.

The story.

Wow, that's really impressive.

Do we have time for a question?

Yeah, we do.

But I wanted to reflect to you, Stuart, that both Adam and I have previously been teachers of critical thinking at our university, and we have been laid off because of budgetary concerns.

So it's really difficult.

I really miss teaching, incredibly so.

I appreciate your.

Your speaking about that.

So go ahead, Adam.

I'm wondering, with 200 people in the yard, I think I may have an idea.

With 200 people in the yard who seem very devout, why would the Rinpoche say that he couldn't find anyone to.

Teach because nobody went to him?

Ah,.

Too reverential.

There was too much of a barrier.

Or, you know, people, they get.

They get familiarized with what they do, and they begin to take it for granted.

And they have their yappa bees, they have their prayer wheels.

You know, it's like most religious people, they take church going for granted.

They don't really tune into the depth of what a teacher has to teach.

They use the outer.

The outer methods without seeking the inner method and the interconnection.

And this man was lying there having.

He was just, you know, anyway, it was.

It was an extraordinary experience.

I never forget.

And he became a great teacher for me.

Kala Rinpoche.

I went back again to Darjeeling.

Oh, I was maybe 10 years later, maybe more, and I was.

They would say, here's where his ashes are.

You know, he is buried.

I was saying.

He said, you've come back.

I've been waiting for you.

He told me this, said, I want to teach you now about wisdom and compassion.

Yeah.

And he went on for like a half hour for his.

His soul force was Teaching me.

There I was sitting there in a state of meditation about wisdom and compassion.

And it's at the essence of what I teach and the essence of what anybody who teaches any kind of spiritual practice should teach.

That's eating wisdom.

Why?

To live a compassionate life.

To be kind, full of love, full of.

That's what my book is all about.

The book, this book I wrote, that's what it's all about.

Yeah.

Wisdom and compassion and transforming tension, which is the thing that creates the barrier between us and working out our karma.

Well, I have a follow up question on that then.

With the sense of wanting to have this tremendous compassion.

Right.

And I feel like, like, you know, when people reach a spiritual, they access a spiritual part of themselves.

It's like a well of compassion.

Right, but could you tell it say something about not inviting the wolf into the nursery.

Not inviting the wolf into the nursery.

So if we have compassion for everyone, they say, oh, I have compassion for this wolf.

Oh, come on into the nursery, wolf.

I feel so compassionate toward you.

You know what?

I knew a guy, I knew a guy who was like a five black belt martial on the top of the pier of the martial arts.

And I was walking on the street with him one day and I said to him, I bet the greatest martial art teachers never get into an argument, never get into a fight.

And he said to me, you're right, their chi is so powerful that it breaks people down before they have a chance to even argue with them.

So powerful.

And it resonates at a certain level and it attracts certain, it attracts certain.

Like, attracts like.

Right.

And that's what it's exists in every human being.

But people need training.

They need to learn how to develop it and build it in themselves.

I always say to me, look, what I teach is also like a martial art.

But I'm not up against somebody in a ring.

It's karma, life.

That's the wolf.

Yeah, okay, right.

That's the wolf that's doing full of.

When you have this energy and you built up this practice, then, then the wolf stays a million miles away.

Right.

Maybe the wolf will come and lick your feet.

Very good, very good.

But we do have to get quiet in order to begin the process.

Yes.

And really, I guess I would have to say to attend at depths that many of us may not have understood that we actually have available to us.

Well, you're right, is that.

And, and in that quietness then comes a lot of inspiration from what I'm hearing you say.

But we have to get quiet and It's, I would understand.

Also it's developing a regular practice of being quiet and again that comes with strengthening the chakras.

And we're coming up on a break, so I'd like you to talk about that after the break.

How do we strengthen our chakras?

So happy to do it.

All right, we'll take a quick break.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Thanks for joining us.

And our guest today is Stuart Perrin who is a meditation teacher.

And you have daily classes online and how can people contact you, Stuart?

Www.stuartperron.com I have a very in depth website on, in fact I even have a whole book on tantra on that website as well as a lot of other things.

Oh my goodness.

I, you know, and it's, I'm readily available.

Okay, all right, we'll take a short break.

I don't know how available I am.

Okay, we'll take a short break and be right back.

So stay tuned.

Foreign I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your host today with my co host Adam Dietz.

Welcome back.

And our guest today is Stuart Perrin.

And before the break, Stuart, we were talking about getting quiet in a meditative state and I was gonna, I asked you that how do we build the chakra system to deal with our karma?

That's really what it is, you teach, is that right?

Yes, Anthony.

You know, look, as I said earlier in our talk, we're born with the tools.

We don't have to go to Home Depot to find them.

You know, we have them.

One of the tools, the tools are the mind, which is the most powerful instrument in a human being, the breath.

Breath is life.

Every time you inhale, you take in all of life.

Every time you exhale, you let go of a part of yourself, surrender a part of yourself.

So we're born with these tools.

We just have to learn how to master them, to use them, to develop the chakra system.

Now the chakra below the navel is the foundation.

In fact, you know, you to mention that you're really involved in Taoism.

And my teacher Rudy once told me that the closest practice to what we do that he ever found is daoism.

And I agree with them on that because I've known a lot of Taoist teachers and they work with meridians, with chakras, with energy and it's exactly what we were, I work with and what I teach.

Chakra below the navel is the root, the foundation, the hara, the balance.

You know, when that chakra is developed inside by the proper use of focusing of the mind, the next step is the heart.

You know, God is love, you know, higher energy, spirit is love.

We have to learn how to open our hearts.

The best way I have discovered to open the heart simply gratitude.

One has gratitude for their life, gratitude for their breath, the food they eat, the people in their lives.

They have gratitude for the people they don't even like, because those people will sometimes be the most powerful forces in making us to grow the people we don't like.

We have to have gratitude for every aspect of life.

Gratitude opens the heart.

Then you take a breath through the nostrils into the center of your chest.

Breath will not open the heart chakra, but it will strengthen the heart chakra.

What we do is we take in all of life with the breath into the center of our chest.

And one holds that breath for about 10 seconds.

And you swallow a little saliva to relax the throat.

And then after about 10 seconds, you exhale a little bit of the air.

You stop, wait a few seconds, continue to exhale until you're comfortable.

Then you immediately take another deep breath.

This time you bring all the air down to the chakra into the hara.

The chakra below the navel.

Mind is there, the breath is there.

The chakra below the navel, it becomes like a lotus base.

If you notice, any statue of a Buddha is always seated on a lotus base.

That is the lotus.

It's the foundation of one's life.

You hold the breath for about 10 seconds, and then you exhale until you're comfortable.

Then.

Then you breathe naturally.

But you got throughout the exercise, the training is learning how to keep the focal point of our attention below the navel.

And not only in the class, but you build that chakra to where it's like that all day.

You are centered.

You are balanced inside.

You have developed through the training and ability to stay quiet inside.

And I always tell people, meditation is not about a spiritual life.

Meditation is learning how to become human, learning how to live with our hearts open, learning how to live with love, kindness, compassion.

Once a person develops those qualities, spiritual life is a snap.

I want to reflect just for a moment.

There's somebody who I think is actually a young person who is quite heroic in becoming nationally and internationally prominent, and it's Elissa Liu, the figure skater.

She skates with such joy.

And she.

She's not Attached.

It's just about expressing her humanness.

And she.

I'm sure you see her working from the Hara.

She couldn't do what she did without being very present there.

And maybe she hasn't had the same sort of very detailed training that you're offering us.

And I really appreciate the exercises that you're suggesting, but I just.

I. I just love what she's offered the world, Anthony.

What I do can't be the only way to do this.

Yeah, there got to be other ways, you know, and she obviously has found a way.

I mean, most ice skaters, if you look at where they are, they're not thinking.

It's down here in the core.

That's where they operate from.

Yeah.

You know, and this is when I met Rudy.

He was the first person who ever told me this.

You got to build the foundation inside you.

And that's what I've been looking for.

I was told by people love peace and eat vegetables.

And I would say to them, well, what about this crazy mind of mine?

How do I get it to shut up about my emotions that are like quicksand?

What about the sexual energy that is driving me crazy?

You know, And I never got an answer until Rudy said, build the core that will enable you to get strong enough to quiet the emotions, quiet the mind, quiet your sex.

Then you learn how to use sexual energy as tantra.

And, you know, it's like.

It's like the sexual energy is the union of the male, female principle in a human being.

That marriage gives birth to Kundalini.

It's like the.

It's like the.

You know, you see those Tibetan statues with the.

The yab yom, the male, female.

Well, basically, this is what they were saying.

It's that marriage of energy in the sexual area that gives birth.

But in order to get that marriage to work, one has to have a quiet mind, an open heart.

You gotta be grounded.

You got.

The whole system has to be working inside a human being in order for that marriage to take place.

And then it's not gizmo versus feminism.

It's just a oneness.

Yeah, it's yin and yang.

It's male, female.

A oneness of all consciousness activates.

Kundalini is the rocket ship to enlightenment.

You know, we have to learn how to activate it.

Yes, yes.

And there's two points I'd like to make before we finish.

Okay?

I talked about karma.

Now, there's another element to this, and that's spiritual energy.

You know, everybody seems to think spiritual energy is kind of like an hors d'.

Oeuvre.

It's not an order, you know, it's not, oh, I'm okay.

You're okay.

You know, it's like in the Bhagavad Gita when Krishna reveals himself to all of you, except the light of a thousand suns suddenly appeared.

And it's all of life, it's all of death, it's all of time, it's all of creation.

Manifesting, you know, now is not going to be able to absorb that kind of.

You've got to be grounded inside.

You have to be very strong inside to be able to receive that kind of creative energy, you know.

So again, one has to build the foundation that is the core to working out karma, a spiritual life.

And also the activation of Kundalini.

And Kundalini is also a powerful energy, you know, and if we don't aren't grounded inside, that energy can burn us up.

So I tell people, you know, I have only one rule in what I teach, and it's chased a lot of people away.

No drugs, no hallucinogenic drugs.

And I have that rule.

And you know why?

They work in the same area that meditate that, that the meditation I teach works in.

But they don't build grounding.

They give you these Kundalini experiences and after you're wasted, it takes you three days to recover from an LSD experience.

You know, it takes you, you know, you know, and, and I'm not talking from not having done it when I was 20 years old.

I did plenty of that stuff, you know, but I also realized there's got to be another way of getting a spiritual life.

So all of this works together.

Yeah.

Well, I'm sorry to say we're just about out of time.

So if there was one thing that you'd want our listeners to know at the end of our interview here, what would that be?

That would be, honestly, the only person a human being is up against is himself or herself.

If you can master yourself and master the chaos, the internal, you know, energy that all that conflict, you understand, that's right there.

It's 80% of the battle.

Learning how to develop the highest levels of our humanity.

Great.

Well, I'm Anthony Wright and I've been your co host today with Adam Deeds.

Thanks for joining us.

And our guest is Stuart Perrin.

And how can people contact you?

Stuart?

Www.stuartperin.com.

You know, Stuart D as in davidparin gmail.com.

They can go to Barnes and Noble or, you know, Amazon or, you know, any bookstore that deals with Ingram.

Ingram Spark, the distributor.

They can get this book.

The bookstore will have it, or they can order it.

This book goes into everything I teach, right?

Everything I talked about in the last half.

And that's Rudra Meditation.

Transforming life's tensions into joy and love.

Well, thank you so much for being with us, Stuart and Adam, and thanks for listening, and we will see you next time.