James Guzzetta – Deep Listening and Conscious Awakening

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are speaking with James Gazzetta. James helps people navigate their paths to consciousness. That sounds exciting, doesn't it? So welcome, James. I'm really excited to learn how you got started on this journey, what it is and how you help people. And I've got some questions.

For you about some of the things that you've been posting over on Facebook.

So welcome to the show. Tell us about you.

Well, great, Jill, thank you very much. And this is a real pleasure and honor to be here on this podcast with you.

Let's see where to start. I mean basically I've been involved with music all my life since the age of 4. Studied classical music. I moved up to the Bay Area from San Diego and from there I got involved with I had some experiences when I was young, 13.

Even when I was 4. But you know, these kind of instilled a curiosity in me that when I came up to the Bay Area to do graduate work and kind of explore that, I really got into various things from self hypnosis to various spiritual practices.

I always had an interest in religion and spiritual.

People understand trying to understand why do we have so many religions? I mean, you know, does that make sense? And those religions go to war with each other over their ideologies. Something's not quite right.

With that picture.

So as I kind of got into my practices, I also got into corporate America and I spent 25 years there.

Followed by two medical device startups, which I led during the next several years, and once the end of that, my business partner of 20 years and friend had just unexpectedly.

Passed away. And with that, I was challenged with not only dealing with the loss of him, but also what do I do with the startup company I had and it the short cut to that story is that I ended up having to close it down.

And then I was left with the question. Well, what do I do with the rest of my life? And right at that point, it was almost like this surge of information coming back from four years old all the way through my life.

Talk about you love to work with people. You want to help others and how is it that I can use my experience and my insights and?

Tapping into who I am be able to share that in a way with others that can merely make a difference in their lives, I see myself.

We call ourselves healers, but I really see myself as a guide. I don't heal. I facilitate people healing themselves and waking others up to that fact that they are the healer in their life that I can with my experience, help you.

Get to the point where you can actually achieve that, and so this is where my work has really centered. It's been about.

Developing workshops as tools and as methods that can help people move from where they are. Right now, at least a step or two, or maybe even to the point where they become fully able to heal themselves in and also help others. So.

I love that kind of work. I mean, it's just.

There's nothing else I can think of that I'd ever want to do, so this is where I am now.

So as a result, I mean I and I listen to so many people. I love new information. I love new insights. I love.

The kind of opening that.

A new realization in in our science, in our ancient wisdom, opening to our ancient wisdom, opening to the lineages that we all are. But we've kind of forgotten.

You know, we kind of operate like where this module in a in a society and we do all the things that we feel are leading to our success in that society. But what we're always what I believe we always feel with that is that there's something lacking when we just take that approach and so.

Connecting with the lineage that you are think of.

It you know, there's probably over a billion people.

That have contributed to who you are right now in this moment and that is not something we keep.

As part of.

Ourselves. So it's kind of like reminding us in the in the work that I've shaped here and bringing to that picture ways that you can.

Now, practically and pragmatically, move from that point of lesser awareness to greater awareness. And then from there moving into realizing or remembering who we are and the fact that we can heal ourselves.

Yeah, that's pretty profound and.

I relate to what?

You're saying in terms of?

Reaching a point in your life.

Where you just want.

To help people.

Because you've figured out that this is, this is the place that you're supposed to be, and you're just moving into it. And the things that you have to share really can help reshape how people.

Experience the life that they're living right now.

Through connecting with their actual consciousness, we're conscious in that we create a reality and we have ways of walking through life that we view it that we also have this other part of ourselves, which.

I feel that we're born.

It's not awake when we're born.

We have to.

Actually learn how to activate it, which takes me to that post that you put on Facebook the other day.

About whales and dolphins and that dolphins have to teach their young how to breathe and I.

Think whales do too.

They're just not.

Innately born with the idea that they have to surface in order to stay alive even though they live in a medium that requires them.

To have this practice and that they could put half their brain.

But the part of the brain that requires them to remember to surface, it's not automatic in them like it is in humans. Humans are born, they take their first breath and they keep taking that breath until they die. They don't have to think about it, but aquatic mammals do have to think about it.

That's right.

So I was when I.

Read that post, it hit me that humans are kind of like that and that we're born with half of our brain already asleep. That part that's connected to the greater consciousness that we are all apart.

Heard of and and in the search to try to make sense of our world, we create paradigms.

Without necessarily having to wake that part up, and once you do wake it up, the power that you have to heal yourself to create a life that you want to live to, to make a impact on the world around, you suddenly wakes up.

Two, but it it's not. It's not an innate thing. You're not born with, just like you know what you're doing.

What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, a couple little things. One, it's true that as human infants, you know we well, typically we get spanked when we when we're born and that kind of shocks our system into taking a breath. Our first breath and then.

Are biology, are the evolution of our biology has actually created the ability to autonomically continue to breathe after that, just as our heart continues to beat and other elements within our body?

They kick in autonomically and they continue that.

Way that's not the case with whales and dolphins, although they're also mammals, right? So they need to breathe, but they live in water. And like you say, the parent really needs to nudge and encourage, you know, actually help physically the.

Infant whale or dolphin towards the surface could be able to take its first breath.

Otherwise they will drown.

So they don't have anything innate within them or autonomically evolved as part of their biology to do that. So what they've done amazingly is to develop two-part kind of split their brain in such a way that half of it can sleep.

Go dormant. The other stays conscious and it keeps a sense of timing so that it can go to the surface, get a breath or two or whatever, and then come back down and they can hold their breath for amazingly long periods of time. Well, the thing about that is that it takes a conscious effort on the parent.

And the infants side on in the whales and dolphins to be able to learn that new habit of surfacing and breathing.

I think and this is where the story went, that the correlation to humans is that we, we may have innately within us the ability to.

Be aware of our quest for.

I'll call it a spiritual connection or something that is larger than us, where we open up almost like taking that breath.

And but in some cases it in most cases I'd actually say that we need a conscious effort to do that, to learn how to do that, to learn that it's even possible to do that. And so when you look at human beings.

That is the correlation I see with whales and dolphins that we can achieve that.

Awareness and experience of a spiritual connection and through practice we can make that just as turning off half the brain at a time and and staying conscious of breathing as the dolphins do to be able to continue practicing that connection.

For me, I was really fortunate in that since the time I was four years old, my connection to music was my spirit line. And so, you know, I was, I was able to really evolve.

UM.

A kind of relationship with that, that it wasn't at first. I thought it might been escaped from the surroundings that I had in my life at the time which were.

For a little kid, we're pretty horrendous. But what I was able to do was realize that no, it's not just an escape. This is something that is real. And when I and in that place of fully realizing and resonating to spiritual or.

Energy. Let's call it.

That there's amazing things that can be done because it opens up awakens within the body, the knowledge and the wisdom that we're already gifted with and that can rise to our consciousness and be able to be practiced as well.

So thank you for that reference to the story because that that's one of my favorite.

I yeah, I.

Love it? It's and it's so true that we're.

We're surrounded with energy. We are part of the energy field that is consciousness. God, whatever you want to call it, the great spirit.

And and the connection is there, it's always there, but we're so programmed as we're raised to have to fit in these boxes and and to ignore that, that calling or to have that calling channeled a certain way depending on what your parents.

Have been programmed to believe.

And once you once.

You break free of that paradigm.

Just the.

The freedom and and being able to accept the connection and and to experience it, and it is it is the connection, is an experience. It's not just like.

Something that's there, much like breathing, is an experience we do it automatically, but when we consciously do it, it has profound impacts on our body.

You can.

You can change.

The mechanisms of how your chemistry is working through breath works.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's just, it's interesting to me to explore those interweavings of.

How they work?

So you're going to do workshops or you have workshops coming up. Let's talk about that a little bit. What do you explore in those workshops? How do they work? When are?

You having them?

Yeah. So just a quick synopsis of them. I usually start with telling your story. It's a group based.

Exploration into the experiences that we've had both as we call them negative, positive and learning what both of those really mean to us. You know, we normally ascribe negative experiences to things like traumas or accidents or things that really impact us physically, mentally, emotionally.

But one thing I found is that as we're able to talk about those experiences, we can now start exploring them in a way that turns negatives into the learning process that I truly I truly believe they represent, to become more of a positive.

And even the positive experiences can be seen as things that are.

Anywhere from heralding to just a kind of an awakening, you know, like a nudge to awaken that that aspect of yourself so many times we have, we live with the self critic, you know who, which is always looking at.

On one hand, how we failed, how we made a mistake, how we did these things that didn't turn out well, but really what I see them to be is learning experiences, kind of like how a.

What is the term for someone who's doing something that feels like they're doing it as a falsehood or fake? Yeah, thank you. The imposter syndrome. That's a part of the learning process. I mean, when you start off on something, you don't know much about what it is you're studying. But.

Excuse me.

But when you get to somewhere close to a midpoint, there's you haven't yet mastered, but you're still a student, and you? Where are you in that? You know, there's an identity dissonance. And so The thing is to realize that that is part of the.

Learning process, we can continue moving through that without putting a lot of attention on it because it it's an assessment, you know, this is our self critic going in again. So we can let that go and continue moving through our learning process and achieve what we want to achieve.

That led to an insight where some people in the group had difficulty either remain remembering what someone else just said because part of the process of telling your story is that you've got a group of listeners and a speaker, and that speaker, after they finish, will.

The listeners would then feedback what they understood.

Not just heard with their ears spoken word, but saw and felt and the full connection. Right. And so the more that we exercise that, the better we actually can listen. And so it led to me, led me to form another workshop which was called Deep list.

Thing and that gets into the real root of where I I'm starting to see now many of our health problems, many of our social problems. And when it comes to the use of our inventions like technology and civilization, education, et cetera, a lot of those problems.

Have to do with how we listen.

The scope of our listening, meaning, do we when we're formulating something, do we think 7 like many American Indian cultures do think out seven generations to the future. Also look at 7 generations to the past. How is what we're doing?

Deviating from our lineage or what does it mean to our lineage and how is it going to impact our future?

Core values is another part of that and that is where what are the values that we actually hold within us like our awareness of spiritual being that can lend itself towards manifestation of new inventions new.

Innovations, etc. That are helpful to others rather than things that have a very small, narrow kind of benefit. But you look at the impact of the.

Side effects and it's.

Like whoa, it's very devastating or it can be so.

This deep listening is the next thing which I'm actually offering a free webinar for people who are interested in learning more about it this Saturday at 9:00 AM and well unfortunately like this, this podcast is not going to be coming out until November, so it's OK. But you know, I'm going to be continue.

Offering these so.

I'll share my website later, so The thing is that that led to other. So it was kind of an organic outgrowth from one workshop to the next and next, and it ends up where I have evolved the telling your story into 3 categories it starts with.

Looking at our past, looking at where we want to go and looking at manifesting that.

Desire or set of core values that we want to manifest in our lives.

That could be a career. It could be like a relationship. It could be many things. It's you. It's all in how you want to apply it. So The thing is.

How do we?

Get from where we are now to that point.

So that we can actually start manifesting.

And that leads into rites of passage, which is another workshop that I do ideally, if someone was interested in this journey and and the name of my company is called Journey in two, it's looking at each one of these as a journey in itself, but they're all interconnected.

So they almost fall into. It's somewhat a sequence of workshops or courses.

So let's see, I think.

Those are the majors I. There's a couple of other workshops. I'm evolving right now. One is called awakening. The sage within. I've done a lot of shamanic practice working with various either shamans or others who are practicing shamanism, and what I love about shamanism.

Is that it's rooted in.

The planet we're living on.

It's rooted in the universe we're living on in a physical and emotional and mental way. And what that calls forth, at least in me, and I see this in others as well, is a kind of full resonance of being here. Now it's like we can.

Be as present as possible and to continue evolving our sense of presence so that we can actually start working together from that basis of presence with core values.

You know and and the other things that I've been mentioning here. So yeah, the idea is that you know these things I think could be very helpful for a lot of people. And that's what I offer.

They sound to me as though you're doing.

The exact thing that I.

And I had this podcast all about, and that's moving the world to being a kinder, gentler, more sustainable place as people connect with source or the energy, or they're able, as you are talking. This came to me that being present isn't just being.

In the moment.

It's accepting. What's in the past.

And what's in the future?

As they meet.

In the moment.

For the moment, always is shifting. You're never in the moment, you're always moving.

It's a flow.

Life is a flow. Energy is always moving. It's always vibrating. Nothing is static.

In in the world as we perceive it.

Even and nothing is solid.

Just slower. Yes. Yeah, exactly. You know? And if I could share another story on one of the traumatic journeys that I took, this is looking for your power animal.

And this one of the standard journeys is you're walking through a Meadow. You see this incredible huge tree in the distance. You're walking in your light body towards it. OK, so.

This is the little bit of a.

Slight disconnection, because when you're talking about grounding, your feet are typically on the ground, right? But in your light body, you're able to move without your feet touching, yet you're still grounded. Well, it presupposes that you already have the experience of grounding, and you're still maintaining that right. And this is like.

The now includes.

Includes the past includes the present and the future, and so Akashic Records is where we and and this is equated with the 8th chakra. The Akashic records are the record of everything that has happened from.

The beginning of time, which never really started, you know, I think everything has just been on this continuum and continues on this continuum and energy is flowing through and and creating and destroying everything. And as part of its process, right. This is why we have change. And so my experience.

This was going through the tree into the earth.

And then following this stream down through to a cavern deep in the Earth and.

This is where you meet your animal, your power animal, right?

And I'm looking around in this cavern. It's beautiful, but.

I don't see anything and then I start hearing this.

And it's I turn over and there's this gigantic Hummingbird.

Right, just hovering in air next to me.

Well, I come out of that journey.

The next day I'm sitting in my on my deck in the backyard here and I happened to. I didn't know. I didn't have a Hummingbird bird feeder at the time, so this one Hummingbird comes by and it just hovers there, and then another and another. And pretty soon I've got four or five hummingbirds just kind of hovering.

Right around me for.

Almost 3 minutes actually. And it just struck me on one hand I did this as a visual exercise. The journey.

But here are the hummingbirds floating right in front of me and right in in the space in front of me. So what does that mean to me? Do I just? Ohh, that's cool. You know, that's a nice experience and chalk it off or what I did instead was kind of took it in and said, well, what is Hummingbird?

And I later learned that Hummingbird is the representation of the Akashic record.

It's also connected with the 6th chakra, so The thing is.

We have the ability to now visualize and be able to realize our connection with our.

Entire lineage, right, everyone. Everything that has been part of our lineage up to this exact.

And then here we are, you and I, and others who are listening to this. Well, of course they're going to be listening to it on a post on a.

Little delay but that.

Is not so much important. It's like the fact that we're here right now, whatever that relative time is, is, to me, the miracle of it.

And now, what are we doing? That's where the question comes up. What are we doing here? What is our purpose? What is our? What is the meaning that we create in our life? Is the meaning created by something out there? Or is it us? And I think that every time I do a workshop or I have an interaction with.

Someone in the workshop or a friend?

It continues.

To evoke this sense that, you know, we're here to do.

If we can listen to ourselves and this is where deep listening comes in, it's not just listening to others. It's listening to ourselves.

While someone else is speaking, or even when we're just by ourself the ability to like, go inside and listen to but not get carried away with each one of the thoughts and feelings, but to see what they're saying to you. And when you understand that, you realize what your purpose is. I mean it comes.

Out of that.

For me it had and so this is my conjecture and this is, it seems to be.

True, so far at least. You know in my work.

With others.

I couldn't agree with you more it opens the door, it's.

I just have so many thoughts about this. I've been on the Kaushik journeys and and I went on a journey to the Kaushik records place. I had somebody guide me there instead of going for me and this place that I visit.

Is underground, but it's.

Not underground. It's like you can see the sky, but there's also a river, and the Kaushik records is past this place that I go. But it's along this path that's by the river and you cross over the river to get to it, which when you were talking about the river and the tree and the going underground it.

Was just like.

This is a common thread in there.

It just kind of validated something for me, so thank you.

Oh, absolutely. Thank you. You know, The thing is that we have.

When I think we're in a when we're in a place that is.

Our true self, that that we reflect each other in a in a much clearer manner and and and my question that comes out of that and this is the thing. It's like everything I do ends up with.

Something. But then there's something leads to another question, right? And so you're always asking yourself, because it's always a learning process. Things are always changing, learning.

So now that we understand each other on a clear plane.

What is it that we do together?

As a potential, you know, as a way of interacting in a more meaningful manner with each other such that we can.

You know, create the. I think there's certain visions that we have when we're in those places and those visions are meant to be realized, I believe.

When you're in that place, when you're centered in that place, there's a fantasy that it comes sometimes when you're outside of that or not directly connected to it. But I believe that those visions are meant to be manifested, and then so The thing is, how is it we can do that in a mutually beneficial, cooperative way?

And if you don't mind, I'd like to touch on one thing that I think is really important to.

Moving from typically where and like a lot of psychologists and scientists say, over 50% of the population, lizard life with about 5% consciousness.

OK. And so when you're awakened to the fact that your consciousness is something that you can actually practice and put into place on, on anything in your life?

What is it that you do?

Well, we're kind of weaned by our schooling and by jobs into a competitive environment. The competition is based on a on a couple core values, which is I need to make sure that I'm going to be the one who gets the carrot who gets the brass.

Ring who gets the?

Acknowledgement for what I know to do or what I can do right.

And it produces some really amazing stuff. I mean, our technologies are a way of interacting with other cultures. I mean, all of this has been part of the evolve from competitive environment.

Well, what about moving from competition to cooperation?

What is it that is?

Call that coopetition.

Cooperation. Yeah, exactly. Because what you're doing is not sacrificing competition. You're not letting it go. You're just raising it to a higher level of wisdom, which says, hey, if I'm competing individually against another person or others.

You know, my energy is going out in the into the competing component of it, not the creating component of it. What is it that I can do if I shifted to cooperation that involves competition, but the positive elements of competition and there's, like, it started falling into these steps?

And so it's a becomes a method by which you can move from a pure competition into a.

How did you call it come?

Cooperation, cooperation.

Cooperation. Yeah, yeah.

It's based on abundance and everybody wins. It's putting everybody up and you're moving up with them. It doesn't matter who's in the lead because the lead will change depending on, you know.

What needs to happen next and but the end goal is that everybody succeeds or everybody.

Realizes what they're hoping to realize out of out of the event, because in competition one person wins.

It doesn't it.

Doesn't have to be that way because.

Winning is personally defined always. You know there might be a prize, but.

Not everybody views the prize the same way it's allowing everybody to reach the realization of the thing that they're striving for.

With each of us helping each other.

Does that make sense?

Oh, it does. Yeah. And and so, you know, I mean for example like how is, how is it that we can change our education to incorporate the idea of cooperation and not necessarily ignore competition because that.

The competition helps you with if you apply it correctly. Can help you with honing your own skills because you need to have that in order to compete. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's beneficial if it can be used in a more cooperative manner. So in my background.

I was both soloist and and of music, and I was both a soloist and I was also involved in an ensemble.

There are two different kinds of listening. They're very different in terms of.

Honing skills. OK, I was going to say competition, but it's not competition.

You can enter competitions and I did in my early life and you know those were.

Satisfying for a brief moment, you know that you achieved something that your family, your friends, your loved ones, are proud of you for the effort that you've put into it and achieved. But then it fades very quickly. This is what I found.

And I even was granted and and honored with the being a guest solo with the San Diego Symphony, so even that faded away fairly quickly as the as the positive experience feedback from it.

And that's always kind of sat with me, like, well, OK, then why are we continuing to?

And educate ourselves in in the competitive manners we have answers to questions that are being asked, but there's answers. And so there's a right answer and there's a wrong answer and that becomes.

One of the little.

Tools for looking at how we edge on competition the more right.

The answers we know in our lexicon the better off we can compete, the more capabilities we have in that in the area that we're involved, the better we can compete.

But it doesn't satisfy another thirst inside, and that's kind of like.

The need to breathe.

You know, just like the whales and dolphins, and for us, the spiritual connection. So how does it that we can now use competition cooperation as a method for looking at how we?

Can open up.

That portal within us to a spiritual, you know, longer, much longer and broader experience of who we are.

And that way, with being with each other.

How that?

And how that impacts each other. So you were talking about being a soloist, but also part of an ensemble when you're a soloist, do you hone your personal skill, which is very much integral in an ensemble?

Which has a much richer.

Broader impact, but each one of those is an individual who's come together.

And they each are experts in their area, but individually, they're.

That's right.

They can compete with each other, but together that power that comes from the combination of their expertise, it's just like.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

It's. It's what?

Motive pushes like.

The envelope of possibilities and and you know it happens in technology, it happens and it happens in consciousness as more and more people realize their potential and practice that the more impact that they have on their communities around them, their families.

Their countries.

And then the whole world and.

That's my mission.

That's great. No, that's wonderful because.

Just so.

Like make people aware that the change is happening and they can be.

Part of it.

Yes, and where the competition really makes sense is when you can apply it to yourself, continue to improve and look at every area in your life where you want to make a change and where you want to make a difference in your.

Community. Those are the areas where you apply the competitiveness when you're looking at social ensemble community. This is where you where you really need to apply. It's a it's a different set of skills. You know, the listening is different. I'm listening internally, not when and as a soloist to the things that are going on inside me.

You know, and if I if my brain neurological connection to my fingers is not such that I can do a certain kind of let's call it in Baroque music. They're called wardens. They're little ornamentations. If you cannot do that in this style properly of that music, you're really taking away from the reinterpretation of that.

Music. So The thing is really apply yourself to learning how to do those things, and there's guides out there to help you with that too.

A trill a second, third finger, third, fourth finger, 4th, 5th finger. Those things, the 4th and 5th are the hardest one to master because we.

We have more facility just as a human being with our first 3 digits and and to be able to master that is, is it? It ends up in a kind of a mini breakthrough because now that neurological connection is established when you finally get that capability and you're thinking.

Your feeling about it is completely shifted.

So small things can make big changes and that's another workshop I forgot to mention that I call it small things. Big changes or small steps. Big changes, which is a focus on mindfulness, but it's also incorporating some of these elements of competition and cooperation deep listening.

So they're all kind of variations on a theme of each other as a set of workshops and courses. And I think that that it provides a kind of continuum. So that same energy is flowing through all of them, just as it does through our.

Universe, multiverse. Yes, it does

So how do people get

In touch with you, James.

Ah, so let's see, I have a website link that you can go to. I'll I can give you that link I guess and we can post it and then.

That's probably the best way to do it. You can also reach me in my e-mail and that is simply James at journey into spelled IN and the number 2 dot com so I can send you both of those for posting and.

Those are the best ways to reach me.

And what's the one thing you want to leave the audience

With today, there's been so much.

Good luck picking the one thing.

Wow, yeah.

Yeah, the one thing.

That reminds me of the Jack Valance movie. You know, it's just one thing you.

Know what is that one thing? Well, OK.

And what he meant, at least, was it's focus of your entire life force on one thing. Well, what is that one thing that you want to focus on?

You know, to me it's like.

We are divine beings.

But we forget that we are and we start behaving and thinking and feeling like something that is not divine and it's that movement from that place to awakening to your potential, and then finding if whether it's me or.

Other people who can help you help guide you to be able to follow your path from there.

And your passions can be a guide for yourself. You know your navigational guide, but you can follow that to a place where you can create your own rite of passage into a essentially new you.

And that new you will find other new others out there and that's this is where this I believe this a new community that's starting to form on a global level and we're seeing a lot of evidence through amazing people and you know I'm just.

Doing my part that I feel important in this, you know, just as all of us.

So with that, I thank you for this opportunity.

Well, I thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fascinating.