Talks

I'm in the desert, scantily clad and a beautiful piece of cloth wrapped around me, adorned in jewels and bindis. Now, mind you, this isn't my usual attire. You'd usually find me in a business suit, walking into offices of CEOs as a management consultant, giving them advice on what to do. But this isn't any desert. It's Burning Man. And it's the first night of my first burn, and I've lost my friends. And I'm in this world of strangers and lights who are practicing these rules of radical self-expressionism and radical acceptance.And in that place, I'm just lost with how at home I feel. And I feel this urge, both a physical urge and an emotional urge, to push the edge. You see, I had to pee, but I don't wanna go and find a bathroom and leave this behind. I'm almost wondering if this is a place for radical self-acceptance. "I should just pee right here." And I begin to think, What if someone points at me or tackles me, or the cops come out, or a helicopter comes out with a spotlight on me. And I begin to think, I wanna know how much me can I be here, and still be accepted. So I pull over a little piece of this loin cloth that I'm wearing, raise my hands up to the air, yell out a loud scream and just begin to pee right there in the middle of the playa.And courage was born inside me again. You see, I lost my courage very early in life. You can say it was yelled and beaten out of me by my parents. You can say it was strangled out of me by cultural expectations, religion, and society. You can say it was washed from me slowly from eighteen years of school. And I found myself as an adult without much courage, living a very mediocre life. Of course, it didn't look that way to others. I had a beautiful high-paying six-figure job and a condo in downtown that was part of the Parade of Homes and my dream car. And everyone said, "You're doing it," but I knew it was mediocre. I had also succumbed so much to being the good boy, to doing all of the things that lacked courage, that I had actually taken a vow of celibacy blocking out those things which today I use so much—love, connection, pleasure, bliss—all so I could be the perfect virgin husband for my perfect virgin wife that my family would arrange a perfect marriage for me to be in.But it didn't turn out that way. I'm in bed in a room in the dark with a naked man beside me. And in this moment, I'm feeling more free than I've ever felt before. And I feel so much energy moving through me, through the room, through us, and something comes over me. You see, I met Corey in Cleveland, Ohio. He's a twenty-two-year-old white boy from Texas that I met on a night out with my coworkers at work who wanted to go out to the gay bars. And I said, "Sure, let's do it." And at first, I didn't think much of him, but as the night went on, something happened that I felt this deep desire to take care of this man. Maybe be taken care of by him as well, but to love him and to just be there for him.And inextricably, not knowing what was pulling me, I found myself knocking on his door to borrow a drill just so I can hang out with him. And over time, our connection got deeper and deeper. We began spending so much of our time together. We even began traveling together, and it was in Peru where everything came to a head, and he said to me, "Jaymin, I want you to be my boyfriend."I could just feel the looming dooming feeling of judgment and finger-pointing and all of this. I don't know. Ugh. It's too much to think about. But another part of me felt really brave, and some courage lit up, and I felt more alive in me than ever before. And without worrying about what this meant about me and who I was or what all this is, I just said yes to him. And so we're here in bed in the dark, laying together. And before I can even think fully, some of the most truest words I've ever said just fall outta my mouth into this dark void. And I say to him, "I love you, man." And in this timelessness, I heard a voice come back from the other side of the universe, and from within me, and from his mouth all simultaneously saying, "I love you too, dude."And I felt more free and alive in that moment. You could feel the courage break apart all the walls around my heart that held me back to all the things I wanted most. And in this brave moment, I let it all in, and it changed my life. I've had many choice points throughout my beautiful life that I'm so grateful for, which have asked me to be courageous. I left my corporate job and started to become an entrepreneur that led me to incredible success beyond anything that I could imagine for myself. I had the courage to marry the woman of my dreams, even though it meant my mom not talking to me for five years and never meeting her grandchildren. It gave me the courage to show up when my second son was being born in an emergency situation where no one could get to us, and we couldn't get to anyone. And I had to look at my wife and just say, "Baby, push," and catch this baby as it came into this world. It gave me the courage to leave behind everything that was keeping me in mediocre shackles and come here to Bali, halfway around the world, where I live with my wife and my kids and our dog. And we live courageously every day.I can't imagine a life without courage because of these moments that have cultivated the courage inside me even though it was my normal for so long. I can't imagine a life that I'm living that other people think is great, but I know is mediocre. After cultivating this courage inside and committing to living it every day, I can only live a life that is fully lived. A life where I allow miracles to happen every day, and I have the courage and the audacity to believe that everything is possible.Thank you.

I love this Janet Jackson mic.So I gotta be honest with you all. I'm not the best storyteller. It's probably funny to be telling this in a storytelling event, but that's the truth. I'm Ray, and I'm a writer/poet. And the pandemic really made me think about a lot of things. It questioned why I do what I do, and whether or not I'm any good at it, you know? Also, the pandemic really put things in perspective as it's pretty funny for me to be acting like Carrie Bradshaw with my little MacBook at home while there's so much adversity and challenges in the world. So yeah, I'm just writing about heartbreaks or being queer or being queer in a third-world country. And honestly, I don't even queer that much. I don't wear heavy makeup. I mean, I don't wear dresses. Well, this is pretty dressy. I put a special one on tonight.But yeah. I don't challenge society in any in-your-face kind of way. But I know I'm sad a lot. I sad more than I queer. But nobody ever introduced me as that sad writer. 'Cause to be fair, that'd be generalizing. A lot of writers are pretty sad. My friends anyway. But I think it's healthy to reassess things cos I had my Saturn return last year, and the pandemic happens. Yeah, it's nice to be able to pause, and take a little bit of a breather, and sit. Like what have I been doing all this time? What have I been even writing about? And I've realized I've made my literary career out of my own pain, as a lot of people do.And my friend told me really great advice—that as a writer, you should really look for clarity. And that's what I try to do. I try to be honest every time in service of the work, and hopefully, in turn, the work will then pinpoint things in my life about what I need to focus on or what I need to highlight or underline or fix.My first book was about me entering my core life crisis. It was kind of anxiety written. I was writing about this collective experience that me and my peers had. So I wrote about marriage, getting a job, moving out of apartments, getting your heart broken, making a CV, and stuff like that. And as time moves on, my anxiety for adulthood becomes less and less apparent because I was participating in life. I was doing the brunches. I was getting a job. I was partying up a little bit—too hard sometimes. It took me about one and a half years after that to figure out what would be my sophomore book. I thought I was gonna do a book of essays, but I think I'm so glad I didn't do that one 'cause I need to clock in more decades to share my life wisdom, I guess. And then I discovered that "Oh, my second book would be a poetry book."And when I discovered that "Oh, my second book is gonna be a poetry book," the words would just start flowing, and the book would magically (it's not magic) finish itself. And it was done about the first week when coronavirus hit Indonesia. So I scrapped my plans to release it last year and kind of just sat with it, chilled with it a little bit, edited it, and perfected it. And what I realized during the months I was editing the book, I was so sad. I was so sad writing that book, and it didn't make sense to me cos I was so happy writing it. You know like, "Oh this ranks with this—cool. Okay. Put that in." But it doesn't make sense to me how incongruent everything was because how was I experiencing so much joy but so much pain as I was reading it back to me? It doesn't make sense.And that's when I start to feel like I betrayed myself. This is why I don't think I'm a particularly good storyteller because my own first and only audience was me, and I didn't get it. That's kind of weird. And I began writing poetry when I was sixteen, and the truth is anything is anything. You can make up your own form. You have a story, a context, and imagery, and you can pair it up with a beautiful stanza, put a rhyme here and there. There's a structure to it. A no-structure structure, at least. But then an actual story would have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that's when I realized I've been telling my pain in a janky, rickety, abstract, metaphorical, with dragons and didn't have any closure in it.But you know, I love poetry because I think it served me at times because it's a way for me to express myself, but also to hide on any given day. You wouldn't know how boring that thing I was writing about because I filled it with many colors inside. And whether it happens or not, that's kind of beside the point. At least it's out of me. I like being able to tell people that I used to cut when I was younger, whenever I feel lonely. Or my first sexual experience was I was drugged and abused or how two other times, two other different people tried to beat me up for me saying no to them.And when people tell me I should disappear, I like to be able to express that sometimes I would like to follow suit. In the midst of all that, I kind of lost myself and let things kind of just happen to me. I mean, I don't really matter. So who gives a shit, you know? And what I realized is I made a book for my pain to heal from my trauma and to change from my past. But it was this beautiful, but seemingly useless effort on my part because you can't ever change the past that way, no matter how many books I've written, poetry I've read, or stages I take. It was an epic disappointment at my heart that sends me chain-smoking all day, thinking I should probably cut again because I cannot ever change the past that way.And potentially, I did all those self-sabotaging things because I grew up feeling like I shouldn't exist. I made a book about trying to fix myself in my past and in the middle of it, I realized I couldn't do it, and I kind of gave up.I'm not telling you so you think I'm a sad person. Honestly, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I know my story has value. And I have friends that tell me my story has value, but I just can't hold it alone any longer. I mean, I made those books, right? And then I hear stories from other people. And I just realize how many people are trying to fix the one they love or move on from their past or are trying to fix themselves. And I have to detach and unlearn the way I would self-sabotage in order to feel better and be better. My friends would remind me of glimpses of myself. And I just felt for the last ten years I was so angry and asleep, and my friends would have to slap me silly and remind me, "Look at how many good things that you did? Look what you have," you know?That's the thing that kind of brought me back, I guess. I learned to lean into my strengths and just get on with it and push through. With this second book that I did recently, I didn't get what I expected, but I got something else instead. I was trying to reclaim my narrative and changing the past. And I love the way that I did it—that I did poetry, and that's pretty dope. And now icing that thing, trying to change things about myself is still with me, but I'm celebrating them instead of trying to shove it, and change it, and celebrate them. And I realize that my story is not gonna be only defined by pain.I now feel blessed that I have so much more and realize that I have so much more. With my books, now I realize I can't be taking care of my own story alone, and I need to share it with people. And then, hopefully, they can see not only through my journey and my pain, but validate their own. And that's maybe how we all can be better storytellers.Thank you.

Faced with the probability of my own death. Your face did not graze the stew of memories I needed to recollect in search of something greater than myself. No words or feelings or last goodbyes to be turned into lines of a memoir.Sunday 9th of August 2020. I'm frantically riding my Honda C70 toward my last hope—the one person that can tell me if I'm going to die soon or not. Twenty-four hours prior, my friend said to me, "There's a tsunami coming in the next week. It's heading towards Canggu. I'm packing my bags now. I'm going to Ubud. We have to go.”My mind is trying to wrap itself around the news that I'm now hearing through the mouth of my best friend. Where I come from, I do not take these things lightly. I come from a half-Japanese family, and I grew up with old magic. So unexplainable occurrences like this does not come as a surprise anymore. Growing up with old magic means when I was a kid, I wouldn't go to the doctor's. My dad would just get an energy scan on my back and tell me what's up. He'd put his hand on my shoulder and heal me.For a dinnertime topic, the one thing I've always asked my dad to repeat over and over again is his old ghost-busting stories from when he was still in university. When other kids would go up to their parents and tell them about the ghost under their bed, they would normally get "Ghosts aren't real, kid." But when I do that, I get, "Oh yeah, yeah. There's a couple in your room." Please don't ever say that. It's terrifying.And history lessons weren't as fun because on family vacations, my dad would like to take us to these old historical sites around Indonesia, and there are many. He would touch the broken stone temples and tell us of the visions he sees from days long past. Now that is a history lesson. So anyways, warning calls —they're just naturally part of my life.So my friend continued. "Daniel saw it happen." Daniel is our newly gifted friend. "He saw a giant wave crash over Canggu. It destroyed everything. And it's not just him. A couple of other Balinese girls saw it as well. They're packing their bags as we speak. Aziza, I don't think this is a drill." The next twenty-four hours was filled with turmoil. Am I gonna die? Am I gonna die? Am I gonna die? The question kept repeating itself in my head.Fate does not need to make sense for it to happen through the cracks. Even if their words mean nothing to your ears, prophecies aren't made to be easy.That evening I typed up the most ridiculous message in my family group chat. It went, "Hey guys, I might be dead in a couple of days. Something about a tsunami—11th, 15th. Okay, I need answers. Dad, do you see anything?" A couple of minutes later, my dad replies, "Nope." All Dad can see was a fire on the 11th. No tsunami, no earthquake. I'm not satisfied.So I tracked down all the other seers I knew in my life, which were actually plenty. That's when I realized that I'm a pretty odd child. That's a lie—I've known that forever. And I tried to gather up as much information as I can. So after hours and hours of frantic searching, the conclusion was inconclusive!So again, I'm on my Honda driving to my gifted friend, the woman that I'm pretty sure has the answers that I'm looking for, which is, "Am I gonna die? Is everyone I know around gonna die? What's gonna happen?"And in the midst of this frantic driving—not safe, by the way, don't do that. In the midst of this frantic driving, in the midst of my fear of my anxiety, and let's be honest, my mortality crisis, I started asking myself a couple of questions that I feel like everyone sort of does when the idea of death pops into your mind. And so I thought in the face of my death, what affairs do I need to get in order? Who do I need to call? What do I need to confess, and to whom?And when the answers arose, the sense of, I guess, calm washed over me. 'Cause I realized the answer to those three questions were nothing, no one, and nothing again.And it wasn't always this way. Backstory. As a child, I developed a problem with lying, as I think all kids do, but in my teens, it developed into something bigger cos at one point, I realized I was a full-blown compulsive liar. I think it was, in some sense, my own way of surviving my parents.Aside from them being magic, they're also Asian. So growing up with Asian parents, being somewhat culturally rebellious, you could say, yeah, a rebellious kid requires a lot of fiction at play, and it would start with just the basic things like where I've been, who I was with. And then it slowly just progressed into more frequent unnecessary lies, like what I had for lunch. I don't know why I felt the need to lie about that. "I had a steak." With what money?So I have a lot of anxiety, right? And as a person that has a lot of anxiety, trying to keep track and trying to constantly be accountable for these lies becomes just completely unbearable. I noticed a lot of my crippling anxiety stemmed from the web of lies that I've curated for absolutely no reason. And at one point, I just thought like it's enough. "I don't wanna do this anymore."And by university, it was hindering my life. I'm eighteen at university. In a new city, living my own life. I'm a teenager. I'm trying to find out who I am as a person, but anxiety kept holding me down, and it would be honestly the absolutely stupidest things. I would tell different stories to different people. I would give different details to certain events and situations. I would retell the same events in a multitude of versions. And it would be the stupidest details ever. Like, "Oh yeah, I went to a party in a pink dress." The next day it's "Oh no, that party, I was in white." It just made no sense to me. In Indo, we call it boom boo. It's just little spices just to add to my stories. But at one point, I was like, "I don't know what the fuck I'm saying anymore." And nobody does either.So anyways, all that was just completely hindering me. And I started working towards making small changes to fix it. I realized anxiety is the biggest thing right now. I need to like tone that down. What's the biggest thing? Lying. Okay. Lying was the first thing that had to go. And what that did was it took a while. But eventually, I stopped telling people what they wanted to hear. And even when it was uncomfortable, especially when it was uncomfortable. Like when my mom would call me up and ask me, "Why aren't you praying anymore? Why haven't you prayed for a while?" I would tell her what I think about Islam. When my friend calls me why I'm thirty minutes late to this meeting, instead of blaming the traffic, I tell her that I got lost on Instagram, which happens to the best of us.The point of it is I stopped being a people pleaser. And I started expressing my desires, even though I know it may hurt others, and a lot of the time it does. But on the other hand, when I find someone attractive, I will go up and tell them even if it's across the street, across the bar, my neighbor. I'm gonna go up to them and tell them, "You're attractive. You're beautiful." Sometimes it would get me numbers. So that's great. That's a good tip. But other times, it just gets a smile, and that's all good too. And when I love someone, I would always make sure that they know it and they feel it, which I think is super important.I guess I took the more tender textured road with honesty than the more comfortable one with lying. I realized I started becoming the woman I've always wanted to be. And it feels amazing. I've expressed everything I need to, to the people in my life. Like every conversation has been had. Every word has been said. Everyone I love knows that I love them. And in turn, everyone in my life knows me. Like the real me, not just some made-up version. I've been living my truth mostly—cos we all have our setbacks—for the past five years, and I have nothing to hide anymore.It's like this total weightless, unapologetic freedom. So let's go back to our story. I went to see this woman. I went to see my gifted friend, and the meeting went well. What does that even mean?! But yeah, the meeting went well. She explained to me what the prophecy meant with the tsunami that all these other people were seeing and the symbolisms behind it. And she told me that we are physically safe for now. There's more to it, but I don't have time to get into that whole story.But what I realized at that point, after she said that, after that drive, I was, "You know what? It doesn't matter anymore because come what may I know who I am. I am proud of how I've lived my life, and I'm ready when the day comes.”

Suma: Hello all.Devi: Hello.Suma: My name is Suma. I come from Ubud, but I grew up in Denpasar.Devi: Hi, all. My name is Devi. I'm from Denpasar, but I really love the atmosphere here in Ubud.Suma: I'm a man and Devi?Devi: I'm a woman.Suma: I'm sorry because I just speak a little English.Devi: No need to worry about me. In my daily life, I'm an English teacher. I teach from home to primary school. I teach from one private lesson to another private lesson house-to-house from one private course to another private course. So for me in my journey as a teacher, the street played a very important role to express myself and my English.Suma: I had learned English at school. However, I can only remember a bit. I learned English from my uncle, whose job was a tour guide. He picked up words from one street to the other street. Then he composed them into his own sentences at his will. Like I do now. The streets united my uncle and me with various languages to find words and use them as street English.Devi: Every time I wanted to go out to the street, my mom would be very angry. She would say a girl shouldn't be on the street. A girl should be playing at home with a doll, cooking, playing anything that won't hurt because the street is a line that can draw scars to your body as a girl.Suma: As a man, scars are fun. Line by line made of scars is a symbol of adventure. The streets serve us with so many scratches of adventure. Running to each other on the open street, playing hide and seek in the alleys and word games on the roadside. We could do everything on the street.Devi: At the time, the street became a very strange thing to me. How could it not when I was never given a chance to sense the street with my own body? Whenever I went outside to the street, my mom would hold my hand tightly. She led my way as if her daughter would be gone somewhere unknown.Suma: The streets I had been walking through were increasing in number as I grew older. The streets were getting longer and further. From southern Bali, I moved to northern Bali to study at university in Singaraja. And then the street flung out my future, as well as my vision, my ambition, and my hope.Devi: On the street I found many encounters. Many farewells but, between the farewells and the encounters, the street always led me back home. Back home to my parents—to my mom and dad, to my beloved love, home to his mom and dad, where I was introduced. And I would call his house my home as well. And then, for women, the street would always be a way and a reason to go back home.Suma: For a man, roads are the reason to leave.Devi: A way back home.Suma: A way to go.Devi: To be brought home.Suma: To live away.Devi: Go back home, my dear daughter, because going out at night for a girl is a very bad idea.Suma: Go, go away, my son. Bring home as many stories from wherever—everywhere.Devi: A way back home.Suma: A way to go.Devi: Hmm, a man's road.Suma: A woman's road.Devi: Men and women on the road.Suma: What's the difference?Devi: What's the difference?Suma: Can't the street be a place for everyone?Devi: Can't the street be a place for everyone?Suma: We feel the streets as an alliance.Devi: That over secrets, miracles, and unpredictability?Suma: Without taking into account which men and which women along the way.Devi: Without taking into account which men and which women along the way.Thank you.Suma: Thank you.

In a modest office with no air conditioning, I sat behind the desk, and there he was walking into the room. He made no eye contact as I ushered him to a seat, but I noticed something on the other side of the desk, something familiar. It was pain, but with a mix of shame. "My name is Georges. I'm here to help and to talk about what happened." Like a punch in the gut. He couldn't breathe, and he grimaced out of an excruciating pain. He turned, and no words could come out. I took a deep breath just to give him time to recollect.Well, he was twenty-five years old, and he had been sexually abused since he was seven years old for a period of ten years by a male missionary who was supposed to be his savior. He was not alone. There were another hundred children, male victims, who were hurt by the same man.You see, their story changed me, and it all began in Miami, Florida, where I worked for a great company as a psychotherapist. I worked in my downtown office in Miami with air conditioning, a beautiful desk. And I walked down the hall to meet her for the first time. She was fourteen years old, a beautiful young girl. Best practice recommends that I introduce myself. And this same uncomfortable question resurfaced. "Tell me what happened." But this time, there was a glacial silence in the room. I took time and asked the same question again, but no words would come out.And that continued for three months until I decided to change the strategies and apply some of the techniques that I'd learned in my multiple trainings. I left the room. I took her to a more child-friendly environment. And at that time, I did not sit in front of her behind a desk. I sat next to her. I faced the wall, and I started to talk. "You don't need to say anything today. You don't need to speak at all. I just want you to know that I understand it's not your fault. You did not do anything wrong. I know that many people don't believe you, even your own mother, but I want you to know that I believe you. You are a brave and strong young girl, and I respect your strength."While I was talking, I glanced at her from the corner of my eyes, and I noticed a tear running down her cheek. And she turned and said, "Can you help me?" In turn, I said, "Yes, if you let me." That was one of my most joyful moments as a professional. After this great breakthrough, intervention, I ran down the hall, and I started screaming. "She speaks, she speaks, she speaks" like I was crazy.And at that moment, I knew her life had changed for the better, but I had no idea that mine was going to change forever. Well, she was not alone. My journey continued as they referred more and more children who had been sexually abused to me. Many of them have been hurt by people they've trusted. People they knew—a father, an uncle, a cousin, clergy, a friend of the family, et cetera. But there's one who stood alone. She was about to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. As she worked in the therapeutic room, I noticed that she might have something unusual to share with me today.But the truth is I had something that I wanted to share with her, but before she started to talk. And I said, "I need to share something with you. See, today is one of our last sessions because I have to leave this agency. She looked at me. She was like, "Is that because of a Word and Action thing?” (Word and Action is the name of my organization). And I said, "Yes," perplexed. I said, "How do you know about that?" She said, "Well, I went on the internet, and I searched you. And I saw your picture and what you are doing for children in the community. When I grow up, I want to be just like you.""Really? You want to study psychology and become a psychotherapist just like me?""Yes, but I want to give life to children."That time I took another deep breath, but to hold my tears because you don't wanna cry in front of your clients, especially a young kid. "Well," I said, "thank you. I am honored to have been able to work with you, and you and the other children have inspired me. You guys are my heroes. Thank you."She said, "Well, in that case, you could leave." There she gave me permission to speak on behalf of the children who were hurt, on behalf of those voiceless, those innocent, gentle souls. See, the gift that we shared is what fuels me to do what I do every day. That gift is what would take me back home to Haiti to evaluate those twenty-four young men. After ten years of being sexually abused, for the first time, they'll talk to a professional who validated their feelings. For the first time, they've learned that they were not at fault. For the first time, they know they are not alone. For the first time, they could share their story without fear. For the first time, they receive a hug, not out of deceit, but out of compassion and empathy.Their stories is what moved me. After I've seen every single one of them for one hour, for a one-year period, the very last day of my intervention, I closed my door, sat on my desk, and cried like a baby. For the first time, I intervened and evaluated children in my own language. Those young men, they were all born close to the town that I was born in. I looked at them, I saw myself. I said, "God, that could have been me." I was inducted in the cases. I was emotionally and psychologically drained. And I've experienced all sorts of emotions—anger, pain, frustration. But at the same time, I felt relieved. I felt empowered. I felt grateful for being entrusted with such a truth.Well, their stories have become mine. You see, I've never been sexually abused before, but all I have is the story of those children, and their story made me the person that I am in the quest of fighting against this disease. I hope, just like me, their stories have become yours because this is the story of millions of people out there. This is the story of your friend, your neighbor, your family member, your spouse, even yourself. You see, that story is not my story. It is a shared story.And I hope this story has become yours as well because if that is true, now we have a shared story. The children are now feeling empowered. They know that they are not alone. They know that they don't have to go through this by themselves. If that's true, if that story has become yours, child sexual abuse has been defeated by the mere fact that you are listening to this tonight. If that's true, we are becoming victorious because you and I are saving lives, and all of the other victims out there are grateful for it.Thank you.

I wanna share a little story about my growth with the connection to the spirit of nature. Actually, I grew up just a few kilometers away from here in the village of Nyuh Kuning, and my beautiful, amazing late mother, Linda Garland, the queen of bamboo (We love you, Boo.) taught me that to embrace the world, to embrace the spirit of everyone around us, we must surrender. We must surrender to the universe. We must surrender to everything and just let the universal energy come in. And from there we get power.And growing up in Nyuh Kuning, in beautiful valleys like here, I would run around like a little Mowgli boy and climb coconut trees, fall off coconut trees, jump into rivers, fall over rocks, and learn how the spirit of nature worked, how the ecosystems and the people of Bali respected nature. And I wanna bring you to a time in 1988, when a holy man named Daaji, Gus Daaji, some of you may know, came to my home in Sangingan, the home of my father, and he blessed us on the full moon.And Daaji was an amazing, powerful balian, as they call it. And, you know, in the middle of his mantras with the offerings five meters away, he would throw up a flower, and it would land right in the glass of the holy water. I mean, Michael Jordan had nothing on Daaji. I tell you, it's amazing. And this power and this connection with nature and the spirit of nature was so strong in Daaji.I grew up alone a lot when I was young because my parents were overseas building houses for the rich and famous. So a lot of the time, I was with amazing people like Daaji, and we would go around Bali and pray in the different phases of the moon, no moon, full moon, and basically find every excuse to go and dress up in pakaian nadat and hang out in the temples and eat lots of yummy food and and watch the wayang kulit. It was an amazing childhood.But then, ten and a half years of age, I found myself extracted from Bali and plopped into a British boarding school in Singapore. No idea what to do. My brother had gone there, so of course, I had to follow suit. I remember a few weeks after arriving at the boarding school, I was in the cafeteria, big smile, like, Hey, how you? You know, full Bali style. And this guy, this Singaporean guy, I remember he came up to me. He's like, "Dude, why are you so happy?" and I was confused. And then I was like, "Oh no, no, no, I'm-I'm not happy." And I stopped smiling, and I got more and more of these weird kind of interactions. And, unfortunately, I slowly learned to kind of like fit in to this energy that was in this urban environment of a very strict regimented boardinghouse.And I learned to lie to fit in. I learned to be part of the pack, Lord of the Flies kind of stuff, and luckily I had some good friends, good people around me, friends and family who challenged me slowly. They kind of whispered it at first cos I was trying so hard to fit in. "Why are you trying to be someone you are not?" I had completely disconnected with who I was with this amazing spirit and really a core compassion that was free to express in Bali, and there it was all protected.And I got horrible grades in school, and it was just very hard to connect with people, and slowly I adapted, and I learned how to listen to people and just kind of go from their high frequency to help them calm down. And I would just be a listener and a few very good friends actually helped me to do this and stay calm because I would be very kind of nervous about the condition of everybody around me. So I was always checking is everyone okay? Does everyone like me? And it was really this seeking of a kind of love that my self-love was conditioned on whether those around me were loving me. And slowly, I learned that love comes from the inside. I had to be like my mother—surrender, just let the energy flow. If the energy is a high energy, slowly it will calm down. This too will pass.And I was bullied a lot, beaten to buggery. Even though I went to a boarding school, they fought the small kids, and they even bet on us. It was pretty hardcore. I got smashed in sports, bashed my knee, broke a patellar tendon, da da da. When I was in medical care, they burnt my guitar. So kids in boarding school . . .!But I slowly learned that if we do not connect with the spirit in ourselves, with the spirit around us, and the spirit in those around us, we can never be happy. And Daaji would always talk about Tri Hita Karana—this amazing philosophy here in Bali, and the way he said it to me as a child was very simple. He said, "It's three definitions of happiness, human to human—happy, human to environment—happy, human to God, to the divine—happy, and you must have all three happiness to truly be happy. And growing up in Bali, it was like by osmosis, you kind of followed this way.But to then be extracted out of it and actually to try to kind of intellectually comprehend it and then go past the intellectual orgasms and whatever of it and actually go back to a place of the authentic real feeling of it was a slow long hard process for me. And I guess, in the end, I had my mother, who was this amazing beam of light compassion for the planet and for the people around her, and my father, who was this kind of eclectic traditionalist. He was very into Hindu rituals and animistic rituals, and antiques, and the plural lineage of Indonesia's amazing religious past and giving me all the routines. I then put this together to understand for the first time how I could connect with the spirit of nature around me.And it took me about, I think, twenty-two years to figure it out and really be in a place of resolve and be okay with what Daaji had told me when I was seven, eight years old. This energy when I'm working, when I'm in a city, I can now go and escape and just try to connect with either a tree or maybe just some bushes, or maybe it's just some grass and soil. And I can put my hand to the ground and give my connection, my frequency. And I can try to release all the crap in my head and all the emotion, everything, and just reconnect. And this is something that I've been learning to do, and it's still a long journey, of course.I guess if I had one thing to share, it's that a lifelong learning of connecting with the spirit of nature is something that we all need to invest in every single day of our lives. And especially for the future generations, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, Gen whatever. If they do not have this connection with nature, they will not have the spiritual and heart tools to create this sustainable future that we all are praying will come to be. So may we all learn together every day to connect with the spirit of nature and help to spread that to everyone around us.Thank you.

February 20th, 2016. I'll never forget this date. I'm at the Vancouver International Airport, and I just got my ticket stamped. I'm feeling hopeful. I'm about to start my life over. I'm getting out. I'm leaving Vancouver. I'm moving to Bali. I'm starting over, starting fresh. It's my full reset.See, for the last eight years, I had been getting sucked deeper and deeper into organized crime. I grew up in the area. It was normal, but I wasn't that type of guy. I was fucking my life up. And if I didn't get out then, I wasn't gonna make it out. I could feel it coming. I was with my girlfriend, Leah, at the time. We were making it out.I got onto that passenger bridge, you know, that little weird walkway to get to the plane. And what I saw floored me. It was six border security agents and a police dog. What they saw? An inked out brown boy with a Louis Vuitton T-shirt, diamond earrings, and a Ferragamo man purse with a hot bombshell girlfriend. They looked right at me into my soul and said, "You. Come over here. We've got some questions for you." And I was like, Oh shit. You see, I was way too high to handle this situation.My best friend gave me a bottle of THC weed oil to have a pleasant trip. And I took way too much by accident. He said, "Where are you going?" And I was like, "Ahhh, Bali?” I could barely speak English. He goes, "Okay. How long are you going for?" Meanwhile, while he was asking me questions, I was surrounded by the agents. And one of the agents was poking my pockets so the dog could sniff them. So I was trying to answer questions head-on with this dog sniffing in my pockets behind me. And I looked and was high as fuck.So he goes, "How long are you going for?" And I'm like, "Uhh, two, three months." He goes, "How do you not know how long you're leaving for?" I was like, "Well . . ." He's like, "Are you running away from something?" I was, yeah, absolutely. See, for the last three months, I thought I was under investigation. Things were hot for me. I needed to leave. I was paranoid. I was freaking out, and I thought he could see right through me. I was bombing the situation, and he could smell fear. And I don't know what that dog could smell, but I had drugs on me. See, I was a drug-addicted drug dealer. This was the lowest moment of my life. I was addicted to opiates. I had eight oxycotton in my man purse right there. I had a bottle of methadone in my carry-on luggage.I was going to Bali. I was getting clean. I was done, but I needed enough to get me to that detox center. I'd be sick on the plane if I didn't have it. I was, Can that dog smell this stuff? I don't know. But this guy said, "You're acting suspicious. Let's go to secondary questioning." We're going away from the plane now, off that little passenger plane, back into the terminal. And I'm like, Fuck, this is it. They're not gonna let you leave. This is a sting. This is where your worst fear is. You're done, buddy. You're going to jail. You're not passing Go.So I get to that airport terminal, and that East Van punk kid in me, he was like, Take it like a man, bro. Don't look like a bitch in front of your girlfriend. So I go to that security agent and I go, "Look, man, if this is just for me, let's get this over with," as tough as I could. He looked back at me, and he is like, "Why would you say that? This is a routine check." They pulled over somebody else right beside me. I was like Fuck! Leah's like, "Shut the fuck up. You're ruining the situation." And I was. This other guy was some forty-year-old Vietnamese-looking dude, kind of sketchy looking. So he goes, "If I was to pull your suitcase, what would I find?" And I'm like, "Uhh, clothes." What he would find was more oxycotton and a set of fake identification that I used to rent work spots with. Add fraud to the charges, I would cop right then and there.He reaches out for his walkie-talkie. He's gonna pull my suitcase off. Fuck! I see him reaching for it. If that suitcase comes off that plane, I'm fucked. I'm going to jail. I'm done. I'm not making that flight. No Eat, Prey, Love for me. Just as he is about to punch the numbers, I hear, "Fuck you! You're taking my liberty." The Vietnamese guy's freaking out. The entire airport stops and looks—international departures lounge of Vancouver airport. What the fuck? It's me—sketchy-looking brown guy. Sketchy-looking Vietnamese guy. Hot bombshell girlfriend, six border security agents, dog barking. "Sir, are you threatening me?" says the agent. The Vietnamese guy goes, "Fuuuck yooou!" I'm Damn!The agent that's dealing with us is looking at the situation. This guy gets pounced on by the other cops. The other one's pulling back the dog. He's resisting arrest. The agent dealing with me is trying to figure out what to do. It is a scene. I'm there. "Hey man, we're just trying to go to Bali. Can you let us go?" The agent looks at me, looks at the scuffle in the corner. Looks at me. He goes, "Okay, go."I get back on that passenger bridge. I look at Leah. She's like, "Shut the fuck up and get on that plane." I'm like, "Yes, ma'am." I'm walking back to that plane. The entire stewardess crew is waiting for us at the door. We are the last ones on the flight. Everyone on the plane is seated, ready to go. And what they heard outside was, "Fuck you. You're taking my liberty. Are you threatening me? Fuck you." A dog barking. I walk in.The stewardess takes my ticket. My hand's trembling as I come in. She's like, "Yeah, 84 F all the way to the back in the middle." Fuck. I have to go past everyone looking at me. Holy shit, what the fuck just happened? I have to ask a little old lady to get outta my way cos I'm in the middle. I sit down. She looks at me. "What happened?" I'm like, "No, no, don't, not right now."Waiting for that flight to take off was an eternity. Finally, we lift off. I'm sitting there having a panic attack in that seat. As soon as I hear ding from the seatbelt sign, I rushed to that bathroom. Locked the door behind me. And that's when I had a come to God moment. I almost didn't make it. I almost didn't get here. I was laughing and crying at the same time in a little airplane toilet. I couldn't process the emotions. I almost didn't get this life. I almost didn't get that second chance. I remember I made a promise right then and there on that toilet seat. It was a serious moment!Fighting back tears and laughing, I went to thank the universe. This was divine intervention. This was guardian angels. This was something special that just came down and was like, "You're almost not gonna get it. Here you go." And I had to honor that. I had to thank that moment. "Okay. I get it. I promise I'm gonna be good. I promise I'll make a difference. I promise I'll help others. I promise." Right then and there, I'm gonna make a difference. Just I didn't really know how. I grew up in East Van around thugs. I didn't know what to do. How do I be a good guy?So I spent the next ten months using that addictive personality I had to personal development, spiritual journeying. I did everything possible I could think of to try to get spiritual. I did the yoga teacher trainings. I did the tantra trainings. I did the meditation retreats. I danced ecstatically, really awkwardly. I did the cacao ceremonies, the plant medicines, the mushrooms. I did all sorts of weird spiritual things the guys in my hood would've kicked my ass for.I traveled. I went through all over Southeast Asia, and I found myself in this random Bhutanese Himalayan Vajrayana Buddhism Conference, surrounded by monks. And I still had my Louis Vuitton T-shirt on and the same diamond earrings. I lost them now, thankfully.I was at this conference, and I was still outta place. I locked eyes with a guy across the room. He wasn't really a guy. He was someone special. He had long salt and pepper hair. He wore a white robe. He had big Rudraksha beads. He looked like he could fly. I walked over to him. I sat in his presence, and it was different. He was radiating love. I felt so comfortable around him. He was an Indian guru known as Guruji. And when I connected with him, things shifted. He invited me back to his ashram in India and, when a guru invites you to his ashram, you go.So I rock up at this ashram a few months later. It was a powerful time for me—around a bunch of other yogis. And one of the days, the staff had the day off, and Guruji asked us who could come with him to go buy vegetables. I was like, "Yo, me." I push all the yogis outta my way. “I'm going with Guruji. He picked me.” I was like, "Fuck yeah. Just, yeah. I mean, Namaste." Chill. So we get outside. Guruji has a car. I'm like, Guruji has a car? What did I expect? A carpet or something? I don't know. So we get into his car, and I'm in a fucking white compact car with a guru driving through the streets of India, watching him drive like, Yo Guruji just shifted gears. Guruji just used the turn signal. Guruji just merged into traffic. I was watching a spiritual dude do normal people things. That was cool.We get to this Indian market, and it was hectic. Like ten thousand people, ducks, dogs, chickens, pigs, cows. It was a lot. When I got there, I saw how he acted and how I acted. See, in between dodging piles of cow shit and trying not to lose Guruji in this crowd, I had the most spiritual moment I ever had. See, the way that he rolled and the way that I rolled were different. His presence was that of love and compassion. It was radiating on everyone around him. And I had presence. I had intuition, but it was from the dope game. I was constantly surveying the area around me. Where are the exits? Who's behind me? I'd never have my back towards an entrance. I'd constantly be sizing everybody up. You a threat? You trying to rob me? What are you? A cop?And it was tough. I was filled with anxiety. I was never safe. I didn't trust anybody. He was love. It was as if he floated through the crowd. He was buying cucumbers with love. He was buying eggplants with love. He bought oranges with love. Seeing him do normal people things with this presence, that was spirituality to me. That was the shift. Okay. That's what I want. Yeah. I want to be bringing that energy to people. See, I still had the paranoia in me. I still had the fear in me. I had left the dope game, but the dope game didn't leave me.And it was from that moment I started to shift, and I asked him in his little white car on the way back to the ashram, "How are you so peaceful? How do you manage that? How do you have that presence? And he said, "Love." Okay. Okay. I thought about that for a while. Okay. What does that mean? I was still wrestling with so much from back in the past. And I realized, from then on, I had to bring that love to it. I was fighting demons within me that whole time. And when I brought that love within myself, into my own demons, into the shadows, things shifted. I was able to start creating again. I was able to start doing but from a place of love—loving my shadows, loving the parts of me I hated. From then on, I was able to create four businesses in four years. Start giving. It was a big part of me that just wanted to give. It was cos I found love and peace with myself. 'Cause behind all that fear, that paranoia, that wanting to take, when you send love to it, you end up just wanting to give.So now I was coaching people how to integrate these shadows, but I'm still a hustler. I'm creating hustlers. But now we hustle with heart. See, loving my own demons and doing that work—that's what shifted for me. Our greatest faults, our deepest shadows, our darkest demons can become our greatest allies. The worst things that ever happen to us can be our greatest gifts. I'd be so embarrassed and ashamed to tell all of you that I was an addict until I integrated that. And it became one of my superpowers. If I didn't do that, if I didn't have an airplane toilet breakdown, I wouldn't be here on this stage with this presence, bringing you my love.Thank you.