Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight. From Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: We are back with James Arthur Ray, New York Times
Speaker 2: bestselling author, consultant, coach, personal development guru, Bears of Array,
Speaker 2: born in Iran during the Iran Iraq War, and the
Speaker 2: book is God, Money, and Sex, Understanding and Mastering the
Speaker 2: Three Human Dilemmas. We're obviously talking about three of the
Speaker 2: most divisive and complex issues in human life. Before the break,
Speaker 2: we were talking about sex. I think the acronym that
Speaker 2: you said was sacred energy exchange. So obviously I believe
Speaker 2: sex is something that is absolutely sacred. But we have
Speaker 2: now we have pornography, which is an epidemic around the world.
Speaker 2: We have sex trafficking, which is just an unimaginable horror.
Speaker 2: It almost sounds because you were I think you were
Speaker 2: suggesting that this was deliberate. It sounds like we're talking
Speaker 2: about spiritual warfare here. Is that the idea?
Speaker 3: You couldn't have said it any better. You know, one
Speaker 3: of my favorite scriptures to quote these days, and it
Speaker 3: seems so appropriate it could have been written for today.
Speaker 3: It was the apostle Paul, writing in Corinthian six TLVE.
Speaker 3: He said, we wrestle.
Speaker 4: Not against flesh and blood.
Speaker 3: We wrestle against principalities and powers, against the forces of
Speaker 3: evil in the world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Speaker 3: And I don't think it can be said any better
Speaker 3: than that, Richard. That's really what we're dealing with here
Speaker 3: where Yes, we're on the brink of World War three.
Speaker 3: We were listening to a documentary just two days ago,
Speaker 3: and the nuclear clock, which is a measurement of how
Speaker 3: close we are to nuclear war, was that what was
Speaker 3: it thirty seconds or ninety seconds away, which is as
Speaker 3: close as it's ever been. And yet what I would
Speaker 3: submit to you is that it's not physical war that
Speaker 3: is most powerful and what's going on, it's.
Speaker 4: A spiritual war.
Speaker 3: It's the war that the forces of evil, as Paul said,
Speaker 3: are attempting to overcome and to continue to control the
Speaker 3: forces of goodness. And this is not a new concept.
Speaker 3: If you look, you know, the Bible talks about this.
Speaker 3: Gnosticism talks about this, a Manicheism talks about this, the
Speaker 3: ancient Persian traditions, the Book of Enoch, which was taken
Speaker 3: out of the Old Testament for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3: Not the least of which is it against Jewish orthodoxy.
Speaker 3: All talk about things.
Speaker 4: That use different terms.
Speaker 3: In the Bible, they're called an ephylene in the Book
Speaker 3: of Enoch, they're called the watchers. In narcissism, they're called
Speaker 3: the well the term just slipped me.
Speaker 4: Archons.
Speaker 3: And these are literal evil forces, if you'll, if we
Speaker 3: can digress for a moment, back to where we talked
Speaker 3: about earlier, ninety percent of what we do is unconscious
Speaker 3: of this universe, is beyond our physical acuity, our sensory
Speaker 3: acuity to be able to perceive. These are forces that
Speaker 3: exist in this world. And that's where the war is
Speaker 3: being held right now. And if you don't feel it,
Speaker 3: then you're either asleep, or you're in denial, or you're
Speaker 3: too afraid to embrace it. And so consequently, these issues
Speaker 3: of God, money, and sex is what the forces of
Speaker 3: evil have been taking over and have been driving all
Speaker 3: the way back to the seventeenth century, probably earlier than that.
Speaker 3: And I talk a lot about all these particular issues
Speaker 3: in God, money and sex, but going back to the
Speaker 3: seventeenth century, if I may, if I might get into
Speaker 3: the first dilemma, which is God, and I'll pause here
Speaker 3: because I don't want to I'll get on a roll, Richard,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to go on too long.
Speaker 2: Well, are we talking about the Enlightenment. We're talking about
Speaker 2: the Enlightenment period here then right.
Speaker 3: I would say it's the de Enlightenment period.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Called the Enlightenment period where we moved from our intuition
Speaker 3: and our imagination and our connectivity with a higher power
Speaker 3: into rationalism. And that's where we started to many many philosophers,
Speaker 3: and I'm a great student of philosophy, many many philosophers
Speaker 3: started to imply, if not overtly communicate, that it was
Speaker 3: it was illiterate, or it was ignorant to believe in
Speaker 3: a higher power, and let's just call that God. Here's
Speaker 3: the thing, Richard, And that's the first human dilemma, the
Speaker 3: human species. In fact, every species needs a hierarchy. It
Speaker 3: all seeks a hierarchy. Now, even a wolf pack has
Speaker 3: a hierarchy. And so we had a hierarchy. Back let's
Speaker 3: start with the seventeenth century. It probably started earlier, but
Speaker 3: we had a hierarchy. And that hierarchy was at the
Speaker 3: top of it, the creative power God, and that was
Speaker 3: pretty much accepted all the way around. That's where we
Speaker 3: learned our truth, our morality, our virtues, our values. And
Speaker 3: so what I talk about in God, money and sex
Speaker 3: is two principles. And these are metaphoric. There's a vertical
Speaker 3: principle which is metaphoric because God is not in the heavens.
Speaker 3: The Christ taught us the kingdom of heaven is within.
Speaker 3: It's not in the clouds, it's within. And yet if
Speaker 3: we can use this metaphor of this vertical principle, at
Speaker 3: the top of the hierarchy is God. And this is
Speaker 3: where the ten promises, also known as the Ten Commandments,
Speaker 3: but there are really ten promises.
Speaker 4: Do these things and you will.
Speaker 3: Live a righteous life. Here's how to live a righteous life.
Speaker 3: And we believed in that, and we bought that, and
Speaker 3: we built our family structure on that, and we built
Speaker 3: our religious institutions on that, and we built our political
Speaker 3: institutions on that. You know, the fact is the Constitute.
Speaker 3: This is a if I may talk about the US,
Speaker 3: and I know we have worldwide here, please please just
Speaker 3: humor me that the US Constitution is a Christian document.
Speaker 4: That's a fact.
Speaker 3: You know. The first thirteen states. Everyone who was admitted
Speaker 3: into the Constitution had to make a statement of faith.
Speaker 3: There was no separation of church and state originally, because
Speaker 3: you can't get morality from nowhere, it has to come
Speaker 3: from somewhere. Well, we started to incrementally start to degenerate
Speaker 3: this hierarchy of God and bring it down to man.
Speaker 3: And so we have this vertical principle. In the book God, Money, Sex,
Speaker 3: I talk about which is God? And then we have
Speaker 3: a horizontal.
Speaker 4: Principle, which again as a metaphor.
Speaker 3: Of the secular world, and we got into secularism. And
Speaker 3: so when we disconnect the vertical principle, where do we
Speaker 3: go to find out what is.
Speaker 4: Right and true and moral and virtuous.
Speaker 3: Well, we look around us, and I mentioned earlier, we
Speaker 3: look around this now and we see people perjuring themselves
Speaker 3: under oath, and our younger generations go, well, it's not
Speaker 3: that bad to lie. And in fact, some people who
Speaker 3: tell the truth are persecuted, and some of them are prosecuted,
Speaker 3: and so maybe the truth isn't a good thing. And
Speaker 3: so we've degenerated. And there's a whole line of things
Speaker 3: that have happened, the degeneration of the church, the degeneration
Speaker 3: of the religious systems, the degeneration of the family unit.
Speaker 3: We go back to the women's liberation movement.
Speaker 4: And here's the thing.
Speaker 3: We started to be conditioned that and can talk to
Speaker 3: this probably better than I, that women needed to compete
Speaker 3: with men. It wasn't as valuable, it wasn't as highly
Speaker 3: highly held to be a mother or to be a wife.
Speaker 3: We had to get a job, We had to make
Speaker 3: a salary, we had to move into the business world.
Speaker 3: Well what happened, Well, the family started to degenerate. You know,
Speaker 3: I grew up as a baby boomer on the very
Speaker 3: tail end of the baby boom, and Barzba was a
Speaker 3: millennial and very very different family structures, very very different
Speaker 3: family values. When I came home from school, my mom
Speaker 3: was home from school when I got there. Every single day,
Speaker 3: I was your day, honey, tell me about your day.
Speaker 3: Let's sit down and let's talk. We had every single
Speaker 3: breakfast together as a family. We had every dinner together
Speaker 3: as a family. We didn't have phones, that didn't exist smartphones,
Speaker 3: we didn't have our television on. We had discussion, we
Speaker 3: had connection, and we were taught.
Speaker 4: My father was a Protestant minister.
Speaker 3: We were taught about morality and virtue, and work ethics
Speaker 3: and manhood and all these kinds of things. Well, Varsuba
Speaker 3: has a very different experience because of what started. As
Speaker 3: we said, if we're going to use the seventeenth century,
Speaker 3: the Enlightenment, the the Enlightenment period, how this structure started
Speaker 3: to degenerate. Maybe you can talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: what your structure was doing.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: I think mine, compared perhaps to the average individual, is
Speaker 5: not that normal. So I'll just talk about us. When
Speaker 5: we lived in the States, is you know, both parents
Speaker 5: are working, and the television pretty much raised the kids,
Speaker 5: and the siblings kind of looked after each other, so
Speaker 5: we were home. Parents were never home. We were programmed
Speaker 5: by TV and school teachers mostly, and there was no
Speaker 5: eating together. Everyone kind of just grabbed their own thing
Speaker 5: and went and did their own thing. And I you know,
Speaker 5: bought into the saying that a woman, yeah, she needs
Speaker 5: to have a career and she needs to be strong,
Speaker 5: and she needs to you know, there was no appreciation
Speaker 5: of what of motherhood or having having a family and
Speaker 5: raising your own kids. I didn't grow up with that concept,
Speaker 5: even though I grew up in a Persian family. You
Speaker 5: would think some of that would be there, and yet
Speaker 5: in the surroundings and the environment. That was not the case.
Speaker 5: That's not what I was conditioned into believing.
Speaker 3: And you didn't. You know, I went to church, of course,
Speaker 3: my father was a minister. I went to church three
Speaker 3: times a week.
Speaker 4: I didn't like it all the time as a.
Speaker 3: Young kid, but Sunday morning and Sunday night Wednesday night
Speaker 3: we had church service. I was trained about God. I
Speaker 3: was trained about about a righteous life. I was trained
Speaker 3: about how to be virtuous, how to be a good person.
Speaker 3: You know, Socrates said the way to live a successful
Speaker 3: life is to pursue virtue and principles, not material wealth. Sure,
Speaker 3: and if you look at all the great philosophers, which
Speaker 3: are heroic, they all taught.
Speaker 4: Us to be good people.
Speaker 5: And they were the role models.
Speaker 4: They were the role model.
Speaker 5: And look at who the role models are now. Now
Speaker 5: you've got actors and singers and just it makes absolutely
Speaker 5: no sense.
Speaker 4: He did it well.
Speaker 2: I mean, I believe, I believe that we're hardwired. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's part of human nature to need to worship, and
Speaker 2: if you remove God, we have to fill that with something.
Speaker 2: So we end up worshiping celebrity, We end up worshiping sex, money,
Speaker 2: I mean it does make sense in a way, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes total sense. And look at where it's
Speaker 4: gotten us.
Speaker 6: I mean twenty three twenty three shell accounts our current
Speaker 6: president has that has been funded by illicit funds from
Speaker 6: foreign countries.
Speaker 3: And he's never had a job. What is he selling? Well,
Speaker 3: it's pretty obvious, you know. And so consequently, this is
Speaker 3: where we've become. And here it goes back Richard to
Speaker 3: the idea we teach how do we turn this around?
Speaker 3: The first step, and I mentioned it earlier, is you
Speaker 3: have to take absolute responsibility. You know, people say, I
Speaker 3: asked people, do you like the way the world is
Speaker 3: right now?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Not really?
Speaker 3: It's pretty chaotic.
Speaker 4: Well how did you contribute to it? Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, I'm not in government. I don't have
Speaker 3: any power. Oh no, no, it doesn't matter. How did
Speaker 3: you contribute to it? How long have you been complacent?
Speaker 3: How long you've been compliant? How long have you been
Speaker 3: going along with the flow? How long have you been
Speaker 3: asleep at the wheel, not caring about anything other than
Speaker 3: making your rent. You are responsible for it, we all are.
Speaker 3: And so consequently that's the first step that we have
Speaker 3: to take is to take responsibility for where our world
Speaker 3: is right now, every single one of us, and to
Speaker 3: become strong God's people. And you're right, we are hardwired
Speaker 3: to worship. Go back, go back in ancient history. All
Speaker 3: of our ancestors look to the heavens for something bigger,
Speaker 3: something beyond them. That's part of our nature. And when
Speaker 3: we don't have that, then what do we do. We
Speaker 3: kneel at the altar, And this kind of gets into
Speaker 3: dilemma number two, which is money. We kneel at the
Speaker 3: altar of money and materialism. And who becomes our heroes? Well,
Speaker 3: Aversovo mentioned some of those people, you know, the sports figures,
Speaker 3: because they can put a round ball through a net. Really,
Speaker 3: that's that's heroic. When you think about it. You go back,
Speaker 3: you go back to Socrates, go back to Seneca, you
Speaker 3: go back to all these Aristotles and all these real heroes.
Speaker 3: They gave their.
Speaker 4: Lives the Christ.
Speaker 3: Of course, they gave their lives for something that they
Speaker 3: felt strongly about and believed in. And we're just not
Speaker 3: in that place anymore. We're given our lives for shadow things.
Speaker 5: No, and that's been then on purpose as well. Here
Speaker 5: worship these celebrities instead of two heroic people, because if
Speaker 5: people actually looked up and chose people like you mentioned
Speaker 5: Socrates or the Christ as their heroes, as someone they
Speaker 5: looked up to admire or worship, then that would be
Speaker 5: a generation of people in power, and they don't want that.
Speaker 2: Let's start the conversation about mastery over these issues, and
Speaker 2: whether you suggest it's possible, let's start it now and
Speaker 2: we'll continue after the break, which is coming up in
Speaker 2: a couple of minutes here.
Speaker 5: But I mean, how do.
Speaker 2: How do we master or gain mastery over God's money
Speaker 2: and sex.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an aggressive term, and I knew that when
Speaker 3: I put it in the title. I'm not here to
Speaker 3: suggest that I have mastered all three of these things,
Speaker 3: not even close. But I believe how do we do that?
Speaker 3: And answered your question, we do it first and foremost
Speaker 3: by taking five primary steps that we can talk about
Speaker 3: when we get back from break. And we've already talked
Speaker 3: about one of them. Taking absolute responsibility. It's not the government,
Speaker 3: it's not the economic system, it's not the political system,
Speaker 3: it's nothing. It's me. I have to take responsibility for
Speaker 3: the actions that I have taken. And maybe more importantly,
Speaker 3: that I haven't taken and the strength that I've shown
Speaker 3: or the weakness that I've shown. And when we do that,
Speaker 3: then we can start to wake up again, the wake
Speaker 3: up process.
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