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Alan Davidson: Well I’ve certainly traveled the road of excess, and I certainly have found a certain level of wisdom. I would say that the caveat in Blake’s quote is the wanting to learn or the needing to learn, and you see many people making the same habitual choices year after year, relationship after relationship. So, yeah, but you have to want to learn and grow and evolve for that to be true.

Well I’ve known some wise people who’ve practiced excesses. And there are different excesses in different ways. Whether it’s emotional co-dependence or whether it is some of the addictions or compulsions. You know there are people who can be wise in certain areas of their lives. There are a lot of spiritual teachers who have amazing spiritual presence and the ability to teach and inspire and lead, and they have not mastered their darker shadow emotions or their own addictions or compulsions. So yes.

Right, right.

That’s the question for the ages. What we do know from the statistics on happiness now is that once you have enough money to provide security, safety, food, basic, you know, sort of health, that money above that does not make you statistically happier. It’s like when you have the basic necessities met and you can afford that, it provides you a certain level of happiness, but when you start having hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions on top of that, then it really has a very small impact on how happy you really are. Much more about your temperament. Now you also said something about people have goals of [I’ve] achieved my first million and now I’m in crisis. So what I’m hearing is somebody, one of their purposes in life was to achieve a million; they achieved it and it’s like okay, what’s my new purpose? So the question is, what is a higher purpose for your life? Now it could be making money; it could be making money to be of service to people or to be of service to society. So, you know, when we look at what is important for happiness in our world, in our modern, 21st-century world, purpose and meaning is definitely one of the top five elements you’ve got to have. So I think what you’re pointing to is, we go into a crisis, a personality crisis or a spiritual crisis because we put our meaning and purpose on something that is very transient and often insignificant. And so how do we replace that with something that is genuinely meaningful for our soul?

Well, there are people who make money for different reasons. And there are people who amass large amounts of money because it’s a psychological defense or it’s a psychological mechanism for managing fear and insecurity and anxiety. Now we all have that, and we all have the schtick in how we manage that anxiety. For some people, it’s power and money and amassing lots of it because then they won’t have to be vulnerable. So for someone of that perspective, no amount of money is ever enough because they’re trying to use something external to satisfy and heal something that’s internal. So you look at someone like Sean Penn who is taking his wealth and he’s investing it in a project that’s meaningful to him and he feels makes a difference in the world. So that’s the gift. The Dalai Lama said once that when we practice compassion and we’re expressing in our meditations and our compassionate visualizations and prayers, that at least fifty percent of that practice is for me. I am praying in honor of somebody else that might need compassion, but I am the immediate beneficiary of it.

Look at Warren Buffet.

You know, certainly in America we’re fixated between this relationship between money and happiness or peace of mind. And it really is a fallacy for people like Ted Turner or Warren Buffet. You know, I mean, money is just energy, and the ability to manifest it or attract it or spend it or use it or invest, or whatever. It’s just how you use your energy. And so that’s a whole conversation we could spend a day on. But the important thing to know is that millions and millions of dollars in the bank is not going to make you happier than somebody in Haiti who’s living, working along the river, picking tropical fruit. There’s no guarantee. As the Beatles so wonderfully said, money can’t buy love. It also can’t buy happiness.

Right. Yeah. Most people in America don’t have to worry about that.

Why happiness instead of wealthy?

Well, I mean I’m a proponent of wealth, but I’m a proponent of conscious wealth. In America we measure our gross domestic product and that measures the health of the country, and what some scientists and philosophers and psychologists, sociologists are starting to say is, Let’s measure the happiness of people and make that the priority. And that’s the above all, end all of everything we do is to make sure we have a happy people. And there are some countries that already do that. Bhutan has the largest, happiest population in the world, compared to Americans which are very far down on the scale of global happiness, although we are the wealthiest according to financial data. So wealthy does not mean happy. And I think if people were genuinely happy, they would make more conscious choices about the things that are meaningful to them.

Well there are a number of ways to define freedom. I think what you’re pointing to is that what contributes to people’s happiness is to know that they have some self direction, so that I can choose, that I don’t feel trapped by life, that I have some independence in my life, that when I go to work I can choose what I do and how I do it and who I do it with, and that I’m contributing in some way. So that’s the important thing. It’s not that freedom is an important quality of happiness, but that I have some self direction that gives my life meaning. I can exercise my own conscious choices. They’ve done a lot of work in the corporate world, and the bosses that actually do well on productivity are the bosses who allow people to make independent choices about how they do the work and who they do it with and the deadline, so long as they’re met.

Well again, it goes back to purpose. So, you know, the five elements of human flourishing are positive emotion, engagement, loving relationship, meaning, and achievement mastery. So usefulness implies that I’m doing something, I’m taking some action and there’s a benefit to it. It’s useful in some way, utilitarian in some way. So it is vital to human flourishing and happiness that we feel like our efforts make a difference in our own lives and other people’s lives.

We’re coming back to that point on freedom: self direction. And I see that we have a tendency to coddle our older generation, and we think we’re serving them, but actually we’re undermining their sense of independence and functioning. So I think usefulness is very important, and the people who live the longest and are the happiest are the ones who do feel useful.

I don’t know about working, but they do things that they’re passionate about, they are engaged with, that they love and gives them a sense of meaning and purpose.

Well I’m a firm believer in, you know, starting with myself first and having an impact. So, you know, make sure that I’m doing work that is useful to me and meaningful to me and viable and important and fun. And one is to be an ambassador for that, that, you know, you are the captain of your own ship, that you really choose your own reality and that there might be areas of your life that feel stagnant to you, but you have choices and you have other areas of your life where you could do tremendously meaningful and useful work, and that choice is yours. But you have to step out of the mediocrity of the everyday American life and choose to do something extraordinary.

You hear about the Karmic Records or the Akashic Records, well the body is your record of this life, because your bones and your muscles keep a record from the habitual ways that you use them—the way you hold a shoulder, or cock a knee, or tilt a head. You know the things that you do over and over and over, the habits of your life, the injuries of your life, the way you respond when you’re in pain in your life, the way you respond when you have joy in your life. Your body is a record of all that. And it’s imprinted with your physical experiences, your emotions, your thoughts, the currents of energy that flow through your spirit. And it holds all of that.

Absolutely. One of my mentors said that so many of the ailments affecting people, we try to heal them and change them from the outside, and we really have got to effect an energetic or spiritual change so that the alignment of the healing is in alignment with the soul of the person and you gotta do that.

Oh totally. I think that the light at the center of everybody is the soul and that some that have really polished that window, that mirror much more clearly, so that it really radiates the beauty of the soul.

Totally agree.

Well I don’t quite understand what the cycles of life and meaning for the human race and the earth mean. I can tell you that I have incredible hope and faith in the human ability to grow and evolve and to learn and to love, and that it seems like a Sisaphaen challenge every day sometimes, but that I do believe that. You know, you think about human beings, we’re really in our terrible teens as far as an evolution of consciousness, and that we’re far from being wise as a species, and so we’re still really acting out very poorly to each other and to the world we live in. And I just have faith that we are going to grow up at some point. We’ll have other challenges to face then, but at least we won’t be self-destructive to each other.

Well, I mean, the metaphor that I use is that there were souls who really flowered beautifully and way ahead of their time. And that Lord Krishna and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Jesus—you know, the wonderful souls of teachers that showed us what’s possible as a human being to achieve. And they were the early adepts. So that in the last century, there’s the Dalai Lama and Gandhi and Mother Theresa and many, many great workers of compassion and light and love. And so they’re also pointing the way to what’s possible for every human being, if we choose to point our intention and direction in that way.

Totally. Totally. You know, I was talking about spiritual teachers—well Desmond Tutu who obviously is an archbishop—but there are some politicians. You know Bill Clinton’s done wonderful work in the world, as has Bush Senior. You know there are a lot of great philanthropists. Bill Gates has done wonderful things. One of the interesting questions that’s being asked right now is “Can you be an atheist and still be a moral person?” And I think absolutely true. Now you know I don’t know what Bill Clinton’s story is or Bill Gates’ story is, but they don’t necessarily do these things from a spiritual perspective, their great work in the world, but they do them because it’s the right thing. And so it’s important.

Right. Well most of the founding fathers were nontheists, or at least the ones that are at the core and that we celebrate so often. So it’s really fascinating to me that the gift of the nontheists is something that has sustained itself for over two hundred years and is still holding out hope and possibility for us as a nation to grow into.

Follow your dream with great passion and devotion. It’s a wonderful, noble end.

Well there’s a lot of that going around, and there’s a lot of “I don’t know what makes me happy.” Again, we’re so bombarded by external messages that we’ve forgotten how to listen to that small still voice within us that guides us as to ”Oh, this feels good, this feels bad.” It’s that simple really. Good feels good, bad feels bad, and the more that I do the things that feel good to me the more time I spend with people who feel good to me, the more time that I invest in purposeful endeavors that feel good to me, then the more I am investing in that voice within my own heart of heart of hearts and the things that bring me joy. And it’s just that simple.

Well it’s called consequence or karma. And that’s where wisdom or discernment is important, because we realize that, okay, they feel good in the moment but what’s the price that I pay for this. It’s not just that impulse and the hedonistic pleasure and satisfaction of doing something but it’s also the knowing from a wider perspective that this feels good at multiple levels of consciousness and being, and that it’s going to help me feel good for a very long time instead of just a quick fix.

Here’s the irony. Run or stand still. So happiness is like freedom or love. It’s not something that you can grasp and hold onto. It’s really a state of being, and we as a people, as individuals and as a culture, again we are taught that these are outside of ourselves and that we’ve got to keep up with the Joneses or the Smiths, and material positions will make us happy. And then ultimately when we make happiness our goal in life we begin to realize that, Oh, the big house on River Oaks Boulevard doesn’t genuinely make me happy, or a million or two million or four million dollars in the bank doesn’t make me happy. And so we begin to focus on those things in our life that do make us happy. Maybe it’s being in nature or being with people we love or with family or being of service in some specific way, like your friend in the nursing home. Happiness comes to us in those surprise moments like that, with a sense of real well-being. And it’s illusive. Now the challenge is how do we take those spontaneous moments of well-being or flourishing or happiness and make them a permanent state of being. And that’s what spiritual practice is really about, is: How do I evolve and grow myself in such a way so that my state of being is always one of happiness and joy and ecstasy with the life that we’re given?

Well, here’s the irony. If you look at the Dalai Lama, who is reported to be a genuinely joyful person, is totally connected to the suffering in the world, and particularly the suffering of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation— and I do make a distinction between happiness as, you know, a fleeting experience and of a state of joy, a state of love, a state of ecstasy, a state of bliss. That it does not exclude the suffering of the world. It’s because I can feel your suffering or the suffering of people across the globe who’ve experienced an earthquake, or a tsunami or war that I can connect with compassion and then reach out into the world to make some contribution.

Well I would agree with that. And I think there’s sort of confusion about the Buddhist teaching about that. What Buddha actually said was “Have desires. Make them big ones.” So the desires for liberation or freedom are still desires. The question is: Are you desiring the selfish, greedy impulses of the lower self, or are you desiring something of a much higher purpose?

Well I believe it’s an energetic law. I believe in Law of Attraction, the Law of Manifestation. But here’s the caveat. To be good at it, you have to evolve as a human being. You know the people who are at a lower stage of development who are sitting on their cushions manifesting a red Corvette are not going to be doing such a good job of manifesting a Corvette. There’s too many shadows in the psyche and the personality to keep them from focusing the type of attention and energy to take the inspired action that they need to achieve a red Corvette or whatever it is that they’re choosing to attract. But as a person evolves as a human being, matures as a human being, sets as levels of wisdom as a human being, what they want to attract radically changes. It’s less and less about physical satisfaction and pleasure. It’s much more about something to do with your own soul’s purpose and meaning in your own life.

Well there are a lot of challenges in the gay community. I’m 53, so I don’t know what’s happening particularly with gay teenagers, gay young adults right now. It seems that they’re still going through a lot of the growing pains that I had to go through. Even though there’s tremendous progress politically and even legally for gays, there is still a harsh, cruel judgment by some people in our culture and society today about homosexuals. So there’s still that thought of being an outcast, which only feeds that inner level of anxiety and fear and even panic that we all have. We’re hard-wired to connect as a species, you know, as people. I talked about the five elements of human flourishing and happiness. One is loving relationships. And so a lot of us who are gay have this belief that I’m not loveable, that I’m evil or that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m not worthy, and that feeds that anxiety at that existential level of being. So I see that’s why so many gay people are out at the clubs, partying, dancing, doing drugs, you know, and using compulsive behaviors to anesthetize that insecurity and doubt that they have inside them. So we have some challenges in the gay community to find real genuine happiness. Now I will say that kind of deep wounding from our society is what has led many gays and lesbians into the pursuit of spiritual practice and awareness of healing. So it’s that wounding that’s actually opened the door to a greater awareness and understanding and healing. So for us as queers, again we have to quit looking outside of ourselves for our own sense of self-worth and well-being. We have to develop that sense of my own happiness, my own self-respect, my own sense of personal contribution all comes from the light in my heart of hearts, and that if I nourish that and feed that, that I will find a place in the world where I am safe and that I can express myself with real joy. And the world is not always receptive to that right now. But we have to do it anyway.

Well I believe I’m a hundred percent on purpose. And you know, living a life that’s meaningful to me through my own teaching and the work that I do supporting other world teachers in getting their message out of hope and transformation. I think we’ve been through five thousand years of transcending the body and fear of the body and that we’re finally coming back to a place . . .

Right. Well I think that the gay community, because of the wounding we’ve had from our families and our society, is that it primes us to look externally for happiness and satisfaction. And so one thing we have to do as gays and lesbians is to realize the fallacy of that, the trance of looking out, and that we have to develop a relationship with that small voice of consciousness inside of us. Now when you take those first steps, those are often painful because you’re coming with all those unresolved emotions and memories and choices that’s left in our psyche. So it can be frightening and it can be painful. But it’s a step that has to be made to finally work through all the muck that’s accumulated in a lifetime to reconnect with the heart of hearts.

Well I would say that what we know as the gay sexual revolution happened in the sixties as well, seventies particularly. Until then— I mean, there was the impulse to love the same sex, and there was a tremendous pain in not being able to do that. At the same time I know many, many gay men who were married, who loved their wives and certainly loved their children, and that’s very important to them. So that instinct to be paternal or to have a family, or to be in a solid social structure that supports the having of children and the raising of children is important to many gay men and has been. So what I see happening, there was the sexual revolution in the seventies and there was that “none of that for me,” and then now we see gay couples adopting children as fast as they can. So who knows what the evolution of that will be. I would say that a lot of sex that I participated in and certainly witnessed in my years was driven by that deep wounding of pain of not good enough, of not worthy, of some fear at the core of the psyche. And as political as you might want to be about it or libertarian about it, when you’re trying to satisfy an inner wounding like that with an external behavior, it’s never going to solve the problem until you bring that laser-like quality of your own consciousness and say, oh the last time I did this it did not end so well, maybe I should choose something a little different this time. And so until we choose to grow from our choices, then we’re condemned to repeat the problems that caused us so much pain in the first place.

Of course, of course. Well for me it’s really connect with that light in your heart of hearts and nourish it and follow it and let it guide you. It’s really quite surprising the guidance that I get from my own heart of hearts.

Well actually I’ve always heard it since I was a kid. But when I was really hitting the drugs hard, it was harder to hear and I was numb. By the time I got sober and got into massage school, I was really very, very deadened to the world and to myself. But once I started waking it back up, it came back really quickly.

I had been sober for, well about six months by the time I got to massage school.

It’s over twenty-one years. I use the principal of the program but I don’t really go to the support of the program any more.

Well the AA program is a path of spiritual healing, and so I have a very vigorous spiritual path that I follow.

Yeah. And whether you believe in God or not, it doesn’t matter. Either you have something inside of you that connects with the perfection of the universe and life, you can connect with that. You don’t have to call it a soul or a spirit. It’s just that impulse within you to create and express to be the best that you can be.