Becoming still with Tom Cronin

0:02 A listener production. Hey guys, you're listening to Crappy to Happy. I'm cast done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this series, we look at all of the factors that might be making you feel crappy and give you the tools and the techniques that will help you to overcome them. In each episode, I introduce you to interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field, and my hope is that they will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Today I'm speaking with Tom Cronin, who is a meditation teacher and founder of the Stillness Project. Tom was working in high finance when he found himself experiencing anxiety, panic, and even agrophobia. He discovered meditation and it changed his life.

0:51 And now Tom is on a mission to spread the power of stillness throughout the world and get one billion people to meditate. Tom's just completed a documentary and a book called The Portal, which is a deep dive into stillness and the profound effects meditation can have on everyone. I wanted to speak to Tom because at a time when things are seriously dire. The planet is clearly in trouble. It seems like there is no better time for us to be looking internally and asking ourselves how can we improve the world, and also how can we improve ourselves. Here's Tom. I'll start back when it all began in the finance industry.

1:33 I was a broker trading swaps and bonds on global markets, and the first stages of that career I was experiencing some strong sort of stress responses in the body. I kind of got swept up in the late eighties early nineties of the Wolf of Wall Street style life in the finance market, so lots of drugs, lots of partying, lots of working hard. It was pretty frenetic and fast paced, and in my body was showing symptoms of response. You know. I was getting anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and it kind of exacerbated into quite an extreme state where eventually I was seeing psychiatrists and put on pharmaceutical drugs. But I just kind of felt that there must have been another alternative.

2:14 So that's when I discovered meditation, and it really was quite a pivotal turning point in my life where I kind of defined my life as pre meditation and post meditation, because it really was quite a big shift that started to happen and put me on a new trajectory. And you know, over the years, I continued on in finance, but meditation became a bigger and bigger part of my life. And I started to see the bigger and bigger impact that meditation was having not just in my life, but in other people's lives. So I then got very moved and inspired to really bring mainstream even meditation into the mainstream you allow it to be accessed by people around the world. I was just incredibly inspired to enable people around the world to be able to access it. So I created the Stillness Project, which was a global movement twins by a billion people to meditate daily. Part of that was to create this film called The Portal and a book called The Portal, and that's just on the cusp of being released out into the world.

3:10 Now, Wow, that's a fascinating story, and I want to just go all the way back to. Then I discovered meditation. So can I just ask so out of that, you know, fast paced, high stress lifestyle, drugs. You know, mental health issues going on. How did you come. Across meditation as a solution. Actually developed agrophobia, and what that is is the inability to leave the house. So i'd I guess found that walking out the front door, getting on a bus, you know, buying a train ticket, going into the city, just being in my job was too overwhelming for my nervous system. This is what we call him pruga in Sanskrit, prug your parade. And that's the mistake of the intellect, where the intellect is seeing things in a particular light that aren't necessarily true. That's too overwhelming in a situation. So I'm at home with agrophobia in nineteen ninety six, and it's not the nicest experience to have agrophobia full stop, but to have it in ninety ninety six, pre internet, pre YouTube, pre Foxtella, Netflix, it's kind of really boring.

4:15 So I'm at home watching a lot of free to wear TV. And they had a documentary about a property developer called Bruno Grollo. It was a big property developer in the late eighties early nineties, and they were doing a profile on him in his success, and there was a tiny slither of that story where he was talking about how we used meditation to help him become successful, and they showed him actually sitting in a chair in a suit, meditating, and I was like, it completely rewrote the script inside my head of what I thought meditation was, you know, lotus position in monks and shaved heads. I'd never really come across meditation in my life at that point. But to see this man in a suit, a businessman, a very successful man, meditating, sitting in a chair, it just was like this epiphany went on, and then I had this incredible excitement in my body about what was possible.

5:05 And at that point, of course, it's ninety ninety six, so there's no Google and no Internet. So I picked up the Yellow Pages and started to look through meditation and I distinctly recall seeing all the different meditation centers under m and ringing them up and asking them about workshops and introductory classes and talks and things like that. And that's when I started my journey into exploring meditation. And what did you So you took yourself along to a class, And I'm really curious to hear about like what your immediate experience was, you know, how you what were the immediate benefits? I guess because you obviously did notice immediate benefits for you to continue on the path that you have?

5:49 How did it change you? Yeah? First and foremost, you know, I did research a lot of different styles and techniques. You know, there was chakra clearing and Tibetan bowls and all sorts of different techniques ualization. But it wasn't until I came across as actually an introductory talk I actually wanted to sign up. There was one called transcendental Meditation, and it was in big red in the yellow pages. So I rang them up and they said, no, you can't sign up, you have to come to an introductory talk. So I went to the intro talk and the teacher was a neuroscientist. He was a doctor, and he was also talking about things like that certain insurance companies in America were giving premiums on their policy or something around the fact that if you meditated they could see the benefits and so it would it be cheaper. And there was schools and research and studies and it was just so science based.

6:37 And so he was talking about outcome oarented fulfillment versus internal fulfillment, and it was like everything that he was saying was just ticking all the boxes for me, and so I learned that technique of meditation. I think these days it's got a number of different names, from vedic meditation and transcendental meditation, and even I think primordial sound technique is very similar. And very quickly, what I noticed was a lot of the symptoms that I was experiencing in my body started to drop away literally in the first week, particularly insomnia, and I was going out of sympathetic nervous system state and into the parasympathetic nervous system states. So my biochemistry started to change very very quickly, and a lot of those anomalies that were showing up as a result of extreme sympathetic nervous system state for long periods of time simply got dissolved, and my body started to correct itself by getting the deep rest in the meditation.

7:31 I'm so glad that you're talking about this, because I do think there are still a lot of people even now who still consider that meditation is lotus position, shaved head monks who can't I don't know who, somehow don't connect these very practical, real life, day to day benefits like in our busy modern world. I'm reminded as you're talking actually of Dan Harris, who you no doubt have heard of as well. He was the anchor of Good Morning America. I think it was in the United States. I had a panic attack on live TV. And he had a similar story where he pursued studying meditation, and obviously his whole carnish dick as well is like that, you can be a meditator and it doesn't mean you lose your edge. In fact, oftentimes it's how you gain your edge.

8:19 Yeah. I love the quote that Oprah Winfrey has and she uses these deeper styles of meditation, the transcending style meditations, and she says it's only from that space can you create your best work and your best life. And what she's referring to her as that state of being, that state of infinite adaptability, of creativity, of a deep calmness that prevails through you through daily experiences that enables you to be much more functional, much more creative, much more adaptable, and just much more effective, reaching more full of potential. And just while we're talking, you said transcendental meditation was the style that you immediately began to practice, Tom, Is that what you Is that correct?

9:02 Yeah? I mean I tried lots of different techniques, but I found that that was the most effective. That was the one that really gave me a very deep experience very quickly. And it really doesn't matter from where that person's coming from, where they're at, what state they're in. It's interesting, and I've been teaching this for many years now, and I chose to teach it only because it's the most of what I've found anyway, and it's very subjective. So I don't want to dismiss anyone's meditation practices right now. They're all beautiful practices. Just for me personally, it was the deepest one I could find and the quickest one to access that space. So yeah, when I teach it, I find regardless of where that person's at, they're able to access these deep states of transcendence.

9:45 And just for people listening who might not know what that is. So my understanding of TM as it's known is that you are given a like a mantra, right, A teacher gives you a mantra and that's in individually assigned to you, and then for twenty minutes a day, twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening, is the traditional TM sort of practice you meditate specifically on your mantra? Is that have I got that. Correct very close? Or are good? And look, you know they're the recommendations, but I'm a lot more flexible than that. When teaching, I sort of suggesting that these are what we would recommend optimal guidelines to get the most out of you practice. But let's just be real about this.

10:28 We live in a world. We're not in ashrams, notdning monasteries, and that is just do your best to get those meditations in if you can, but make it your own personal experience and research. You know you'll find that if you do to a day, then you'll notice significant benefits. But some days you won't get to. But yes, we use a mantra and the student will get a specific mantra. And the mantra is that it's literally just a device to lure the mind's attention, like your phone is a device to lure the mind's attention. They're both exactly the same. One lures the mind's attention inwood and the other lose the mind's attention outward. And the difference with the mantra is that it has a quality about it to direct the mind inward to a de excited state, as opposed to something like a phone or your thoughts directing outward to an excited state.

11:15 I've always been really fascinated by this, and I've always felt like it's like this secret club, and I've always wanted to know how do I get this? How do I get a mantra? How do I find a teacher? It's like, do you so you have I'm just asking out of my own curiosity now, but so you have to find a teacher and show up to a class to be assigned, Like, you can't just pick somebody else's or make up your own. How does that whole thing work? Can you? Absolutely? Yeah? Absolutely, there's there's no rules. You know that the universe wasn't designed with rules other than a underlying natural law which has a cause and effect. And you know, no doubt there's been many people who have received amantra, given it to their friends, and their friends have meditated.

11:55 Meditation is a lot more than meditation, And this is the important thing I think we need to take into account is that meditation does change your life. Otherwise why would you do it? And if meditation is going to change your life. You need to understand how it's going to change your life, why it's going to change your life, what are the challenges with it changing your life, what are the challenges with the technique, And there's a fair bit of supporting knowledge. You know, I just taught some students on the weekend, and you know, there's about six to eight hours of knowledge that needs to be passed on to that student to really give them a short term and long term understanding of the mechanics of the process and what's going to happen as the results of them doing that. And what we tend to see is a lot of people just getting into meditation through apps or through you know, my friend said just do this, and I started doing it. And there's going to be things that are going to come up in their physiology, Things are going to come up in their life, things are going to come up in their psychology, things are going to come up in their spirituality. That without a deeper understanding about that. You know, we're talking about one of the most important areas of your life, which is your mind, your biochemistry, and your spiritual exploration. And I think to not have some supporting information that goes with that particularly through someone that's qualified and trained, can get a little bit complex. And you know, certainly by all means, you know, if you're just using meditation just to sleep, better start doing that, but understand that there are processes that are unraveling inside you that it probably works better to understand what's going on there.

13:24 So can you tell me now a little bit more about the stillness project that you mentioned before. Yeah, So going back to the technique, you know, one of the things that I was faced with personally was this dilemma. When I learned the technique of meditation, I was just absolutely transformed. It was quite phenomenal how quickly it changed my life, and I was absolutely blown away by the power of it. And that was pre internet, and then the Internet arrived and I started sharing this transformation that I went through. You know, I couldn't believe that anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, depression, agrophobia simply melted away when I got out of sympathetic nervous system state and into parasympathetic nervous system state. The simple repetition of this strange primordial vibration was the thing that was able to do that. So I started talking about this and blogs YouTube, you know Internet. It started to appear and people around the world started inquiring with me as to how I could teach them, and I was restricted because there was a confinement around how I could teach them, which was how you need to come to Bondai in Sydney and have a certain amount of money because that's what I do full time, and we need to talk about that exchange that needs to be made. And so that was very confronting because people just simply couldn't do it. I had people in Finland and Iceland and Mexico and housing estates of Sheffield, England that I really felt I didn't want to deprive them from the ability to actually be able to experience this, and so I disrupted the model and credit an online twenty one day meditation program that was hosted in a WordPress site through Vimeo, and it

14:56 was a very intimate way of teaching people. I guess it's a modified version of that technique, and we weren't sure how it was going to translate or work, but it was quite phenomenal that it really did have a major impact on people's lives. We had thousands and thousands of testimonials from people that use that program and noticed that their life was changing quite substantially for the better. And we started to realize that the process was transcending the current limitations of time and locality, and so that was quite exciting. And the Stillness Project was borne out of the intention to inspire a billion people to start meditating daily because we realized that I personally realized that we can't. It's very difficult to change things with the state of mind that caused the problem in the first place, and so we need to change the state of mind first.

15:46 We need to change the physiology, to change the biochemistry, and that really starts to happen when we get the deep states that happened in meditation. What I'm really curious about, Tom, is you were inspired. You were set yourself a challenge to inspire one billion people to meditate, and I'm really curious to know why. So what is your objective? What do you think can be achieved in the world if a billion more people are meditating every day. What I started to notice as a result of meditation was that I could start to see more. I could start to see through conditioning, see through my own conditioning, see through my own I guess fallibilities and programmed fallibilities, and I could start to see systems that were set in place in our cultures, in our societies, that were causing so many of the world's problems a deep indoctrination.

16:44 And what meditation enabled me to do was start to transcend that indoctrination, that dogma, and start to come from a little bit more and slowly evolving more levels of consciousness and awareness that could then start to trans and or be liberated from the conditioning of that system. And I started to realize that this was playing out across the world individually and collectively, and if I really wanted to see change on the planet, then we needed to start transcending the systems that we were all part of, and that would only come when individuals started to transcend their own individual dogma and conditioning that were all part of this sort of large scale system. And so to do that, we needed really en mass large amounts of people to start waking up and start to realize that they're part of a big indoctrination of a large system, and that the only way we can rewrite and establish new systems that are much more effective, much more evolutionary, and much more harmonious and unifying for the planet was to actually have that experience within ourself, and that's just a function of individual influencing the collective.

17:53 To break that down kind of into how I would translate that or into kind of lay person's terms, is almost like disconnecting from our ego and reconnecting more with our kind of our spiritual or our soul self, like they're this higher version of ourselves that is less attached I guess to all of the material, superficial, the money. Is this what we're talking about when you talk about the systems and the doctrination that's this sort of capitalist, individualist, kind of greedy society that we live in. It's partly that, I mean, that's a function of individuals being caught in what we call ego or the first first state. The first state is thinking state, which revolves around an individualization and a persona and an identity and exactly what you're talking about there. And I'm actually creating a masterclass that comes out with the film in the book called The Portal master Class, and it's introducing the fourth state, that fourth state being in Sanskrit called turia.

18:57 Turia means fourth and we have physical men and emotional states, which are all the things we identify with most about who we are, which is our temporary nature and our individualization. But the fourth state is completely not attached. You use the word attached. The fourth state is being or spirit or presence, and it's a state of just simple awareness and it has infinite wisdom, infinite creativity, and we all have access that. It's like our individualized wave states starting to now realize as a wave we are actually also whilst we have physical, mental, and emotional states, we also have this oceanic experience that we just have been ignoring.

19:38 And that's something that we need on mass to start waking up for humanity and realizing. We call it self realization, realization of self, which is the unboundedness of being. You know, I think the reason that I'm so fascinated by this is because we are at a crisis point, you know, in the world at the moment, there are just we look around and we see so many problems. We've got the Amazon is burning right now, you know, We've got the climate crisis going on. Oh you know, we could go on and on about the problems in the world, and there's a lot of anxiety, and there's you know, there's anger. There's a lot of strong emotions, but there's also a lot of almost helplessness. I see like people don't know what to do. And I guess, for anybody listening who is in that state, how do you explain to people that meditation can possibly help? Because I think a lot of people see, well, you know, if I can sit and I can chant for twenty minutes a day and access my higher consciousness, but how is that going to help?

20:43 It's a really good question. And yes, it can be perceived that doing less is achieving less, but a natural fact, we have an external mantra that doing less achieves more. And what we're actually referring to here is that, firstly and foremostly there's only and always evolution. So what might seem like turbulence and tragedy is actually part of an evolutionary process that needs to unravel and unfold because of the laws of cause and effect and humanity's persistence and resistance to evolution. I should say, persistence to the status quo and resistance to evolution will determine the outcome. That there needs to be some catalyst for change, and that might need to be quite tumultuous for us to wake up.

21:32 In Sanskrit, it's called a rashi, and a rash is a sort of a crisis point of fork in the road where you no longer have a choice. Well, you only have one of two choices, I should say, you can't continue to persist on that current path, and that is you either break through to when your level or you break down, and you'll see relationships and companies go bankrupt, civilizations go into almost annihilation or self termination, and that's what we're facing for humanity as a whole. But the next thing, referring to your question, so just going back to that, there's only evolution. So even though things look bad, they're actually bad for a very good reason because of evolution. And the next part to the question is how does meditation help all solutions exist to all problems. And what we need to do is we need to access a more creative field rather than function from a current mindset that's causing the problem in the first place. So, yes, we still need action. There's a beautiful saying chopwood, meditate chopwood.

22:34 So we don't withdraw ourselves completely from action, but we function in action from a place of creativity and adaptability. The problem is lack of adaptability. There's a wonderful quote suffering is proportional to our resistance to change. And you can look anywhere where they're suffering, it will clearly identify some way, shape, or form some resistance to change. And the change can come of two ways, that's physical change or in a change. And so what meditation helps us is become more adaptable, more creative, and start to find within the field of infinite possibility the solutions to our problems.

23:16 I hope you're enjoying season four of the show, and hey, I would love for you to check out my brand new YouTube channel where I'm sharing even more tips on how you can feel less crappy and more happy. It's YouTube dot com Forward slash cast Done, so come over check it out. I'd love for you to subscribe, And if you haven't already taken my free seven day happiness challenge, you can sign up for that at Castdone, dot com Forward slash Happiness. So Tom, I guess also, what I see in the world today is we seem to be so consumed with ourselves, especially in this smartphone era where we're all on our social media and obsessed with how we here to the world, and we're all pulled into these you know, these small screens. We're not present even on a day to day basis. We're not present to our own lives, to the people around us, to a whole lot of things. We are completely disconnected and quite you know, just hooked up in this very superficial, busy, frenetic, detached, disconnected, mindless, mindless world. How do we get out of that and move to, as you said, to this different way.

24:34 Of being in the world. Yeah, it's true what you're saying. I mean, we're seeing a proliferation of narcissism and we're all swept up by myself included. You know, of course, we love to see likes on our Instagram. I'm sure the Dela a Lama enjoys the fact that he's got over a million people following him on Instagram. And it's interesting how what social media and the ability to take selfies has done is really put fertilizer on an e go presence and he go identity and going back to that sort of concept of evolution, sometimes things need to get worse before they get better, and that's certainly what happened in my life. My resistance, my inability to see this cause and effect and see what was causing the problems for years led to simply evolution saying you're just not getting it. We need to turn up the volume. We need to make things worse for you. Okay, let's keep making it worse for a mental. Eventually he gets to a crisis point, and I think we may need to get to a more significant crisis point before we start to see changes happen.

25:35 But that doesn't necessarily have to be the way we can as a beautiful saying, a rishi takes a hint. Now, a rishi is someone that can see someone that's awake, someone that's wise, and they are almost ahead of the cause and effect process where they can start to tune into all of this is not really serving me. This is I can see if I continue on this path, that's not really going to be the best route for me to take, and they will deviate and make that navigational change before they actually get to the crisis point. And we collectively as a species can do that as well. And we're starting to see the rumblings of it. The myth fact alone that we're having this conversation today is indicative that this process is already in motion. The mere fact alone that we've got a feature documentary about to go into cinemas that is very much about crisis and how to move through crisis or even prevent crisis using stillness and meditation. So discomfort is really just a catalyst.

26:29 It's a queue for change. And if you're feeling some level of anxiety, some level of depression, some level of overwhelm, then that's your catalyst, and that's your cue. It's a beautiful device the universe designed to support the process of evolution, and discomfort is the queue for evolution. It's the indicator for something changing. And so look into yourself and ask, what is it that I can do that I can do differently that is going to make my life better. And we've all heard of meditation, we've all heard of enlightenment, and there's not a lot of bad negative press that comes with either of those two things. So that could always be a really good starting point. And that's what was my intention for you know, our projects with the Portal and Stillness project was to inspire people to start looking within and realize the riches that lie there as opposed to in an Instagram screen.

27:18 And Tom just going all the way back to the Stillness Project obviously, you know that's had a huge positive response. Can you tell me just more about where that has taken you, the kinds of people that you have connected with with the Stillness Project and what the response is to that. Yeah, it's been exciting journey. You know. We've been invited to speak on stages in Mexico and Dominican Public, Kuala Lumpa, Indonesia, crossing the USA and met some amazing people along the way. But what really, I guess moves me and most passionate about is seeing individual transformation and that's being in our retreats. You know, I do retreats in Bali in Australia. We've got one very soon. We're looking to create in Greece and taking people in a deeper immersion, a deeper transformational space.

28:04 We can workshops speaking as well, any opportunity. Really, I enjoy being able to, I guess, bring something new to people's lives and give them a greater sense of hope and also a greater sense of calm and serenity and ultimately through that more fulfillment you. Just reminded me that I was speaking last week. In fact, I was reading a book last week called The Soul of Money. Have you heard of that book? I have? Actually, yeah, yeah, Lin Twist wrote this book and the Soul of Money book, Yeah, so have I and I don't get enough time to read, so I was listening to it on audiobook last week, so I got through about three hours worth of audiobook. And you know, she talks about how the way that we use money in the world, and you know that money doesn't equal you know, you can have a lot of money and still be kind of soulless, or you can have not very much money at all but feel like you have enough. And it just really got me to think about how every day, when we spend money, just as simple as as simple a thing as how you spend your money, where you choose to spend your money every day can be a part of the solution, or you can continue to contribute to the problem. And I think that taking what you're talking about about this higher level of consciousness and about you know, the decisions that we make and the way we live our life every day, that we can either make a difference or not. There are these small choices that we can make every day that we can either be working towards a solution or the problem. But we

29:34 have to be present and mindful enough to be conscious of those choices. So rather than trying to be conscious, we spontaneously will be more conscious when we transcend thinking and access consciousness itself, pure consciousness. So pure consciousness is awareness without thinking. And why it's pure because thinking has this polluted effect. All thinking has a polluting effect because thinking literally is influenced through our past, futuarries right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, a lot of programming. Whereas pure consciousness is just awareness without thinking. Now, when we access pure consciousness, awareness without thinking, we start to integrate and assimilate that level of wisdom, that level of knowingness, that level of creativity into our thinking. So there will be some still polluting effects that's going on as our mind. You know, my mind after twenty five years of thinking and meditating, it still has some influence on pure consciousness itself. So there's still Tom Cronen. Then the identity still playing out, and obviously there's levels of fallibility within that, but there becomes more and more access to that field of wisdom and knowingness. So when we talk about money in the way we spend money, you naturally, as you start to experience yourself more as the field and more of that collectiveness and more of that oneness, you start to change your actions. It doesn't mean you become perfect by all means,

31:06 but it certainly means your actions become more geared towards supporting the whole because you experience yourself more as the whole, rather than trying to satiate something that's completely insatiable. And that's the ego. The ego's actually designed for holes, and it will always have holes. It will always have a sense of lack. It will never ever be fulfilled no matter how hard you try. And that's partly the problem, is that we're trying to satisfy something that's unsatisfiable. Given the benefits that you speak of, Tom and that are proven. Now, there's a whole lot of science that supports the benefits of meditation and slowing down and being still, what do you think it is that that stops people from doing it? What's the aversion to it?

31:50 Well, if you think of the benefits of meditation, primarily we get stillness and silence. And if you think of what stillness and silence is, it's the absence of motion and the absence of noise. And where we are nactually designed and programmed to go is towards noise and towards motion. That is excitement stimulation. And it's not an inclination of the ego to be less stimulated. It's the one of the motivating factors for all action is to get fulfillment, some level of stimulation or excitement, excitation and meditations. The antithesis of that, although it does have immense benefits, it's not a high priority for us to wake up and go I really want to be still and silent. What we're motivated to do is to wake up and go I really want to have noise, and that's music or podcasts or TV or something that's going to create a level of charm and stimulation inside me. And I'm interested in having action as well because that's going to give me some level of charm and stimulation. So it is the antithis and we're talking about a slow burn here.

32:51 We're talking about a slow, long term benefit that comes from these things, and why we're seeing more people go into meditation because of that hyper stimulation is now starting to lead to extreme ramifications of depression, anxiety, overwhelm, and people just don't realize. It's by creep. It's creeping into our lives, and people don't realize that this is all starting to happen to them. So, Tom, you mentioned the Portal a film coming out in cinemas. Can you please tell me all about that. You were very excited to be bringing this out to the world to film in a book, and it started with the film and the film we explored a number of different stories and the three qualifying factors for these stories that we filmed were that they needed to have a crisis, they needed to use meditation to move through that crisis, and they needed to have quite a global sort of theme so that everyone in the world could relate to it. And so we've got six stories that have got remarkable, moving, powerful journeys with crisis in them that we all come together in those stories in a moment of stillness and meditation, and you in the audience will actually join them in a meditation experience in the cinema, which is the world's first. And there's even some binoral beats in there to support that process. It's a beautiful scene and you know, it's quite a different film. It's quite unique. It will challenge some people because it doesn't follow normal tempos and doesn't follow normal traditional sort of processes for making documentaries. And we wanted a unique film that move people out of their heads and into their hearts.

34:22 So it's a rich journey that allows you and inspires you to surrender. And we've got three futurists that also share their vision about humanity as a macro perspective. So yeah, it's a powerful film that is coming out into cinemas in Australia in October and New Zealand in November, and we'll be coming out in the US shortly as well. We'll be announcing that and into Europe. And we've got the ability for anyone anywhere in the world who wants to host a film if they don't have it accessible in their cinema, then we can support them with that. And all they need to do is go to the website and enter the portal dot com and there's the ability for them to host a screening in their town. Fantastic And you said six stories and three futurists but I've watched the trailer and there's also a robot.

35:06 Right, Yeah, we have Sophia the robot, who is programmed as an AI robot to be unconditionally loving, and she plays a significant role in the film because we set up a premise that humans are programmed and most of the way we're operating is from an indoctrination, a program that was passed down to us from generations. And we've proven that that firstly that we're programmed, and secondly that we're programmed by a state of mind of the programmer. And if we can program humanoid robots to be unconditionally loving, then that gives us hope that there's the potential that we can also program humans to be unconditionally loving. And isn't that exciting? I can't wait to see it. So, Tom, people who are listening to this, who are on board, Yes, I need to find some stillness in my life, and most of us do.

35:59 Where do you suggest that they start. There's a number of ways that can go about this, and you know, probably the most efficient and effective way, not efficient, The most effective way, I should say, is to sit in the presence of a teacher that is qualified and has many many years experience, and they will take you through a process, whether it's Buddhist meditation or Chuck reclearing meditation or transcending meditation. I'm not going to promote one over the other. They're all beautiful. Find one that works for you, find one that resonates with you, Find a teacher that resonates you with you, because within each of those different practices, there's going to be teachers that you'll resonate with and teachers that you won't resonate with.

36:40 Because we're all different, We're all have different ilk, so it's very diverse, and it's about doing your own research and your own exploration. Now, if you can't access a teacher, if you can't afford it, because obviously you will have to probably make an exchange, no doubt of some sort. And if you can't afford that, then simply go to YouTube and find some apps, or sorry, how do YouTube and find some meditations? Or go on your phone and find some apps. There's so many ways that we can now access meditation, so many different styles, and it's about just starting with your own research and exploration and commitment and intention to put into your day just a little bit of the excitation so that you can start to connect with yourself and start to find and inner quietness that is always there and it's just going to support you through any sort of fluctuating challenges you're going to face on a daily basis.

37:31 And I completely agree about finding a teacher in whatever way you can. I obviously teach mindfulness meditation as well, and in the online communities that I work in, you know, just people on Facebook asking about how do I get started with meditation? Often they will find an app and that almost leaves some more confused than when they start, because there is so much out there and you know, how long should I meditate for? And what should I do? And you know when should I do it? There's so much, so many questions, and there's not really as you said right at the beginning of this conversation, you know, there's often not an understanding of the how and the what and the why and all.

38:11 Of that sort of stuff as well. So I also really encourage people to go out do some research and find a teacher who can help to support them through that process. So, Tom, you know, we are kind of at crisis point in the world at the moment. What's your view, Do you think we're going to come out the other side? Okay? Do you have some hope for humanity? I think whenever we're in any state of crisis, what we want to always do is look at this and go even though as incredibly challenging as some crises are, is to know deeply that this is just evolution, and beyond this there will be something that provails. It's even better.

38:52 And if it means that humans aren't on the planet, there's a lot of species out there, plant and animal that will be rejoiced and that will be highly evolutionary for the planet. If we continue on this path. Now, the possibility for things to be incredibly better on the planet with humans is amazing and highly probable and highly possible as well. So I'd like to live on a positive note and say we are an incredibly conscious species. Yes, we are a little bit resistant to change, but we also have an incredible state of consciousness. We have a great sense of lovingness, and whenever we go through crisis, you tend to see collectively people come together and the prevailing nature of humanity come up to the fore, which is love and tenderness and kindness and care and I think that if we go through a major crisis in the not too distant future, that those qualities will come out which are always within us, and that's going to be wonderful to see anyway, And hopefully it doesn't have to get to that. Hopefully we can bring those qualities out pre crisis and we can just start to be a much more loving, kinder, and integrated planet as a whole.

40:01 Tom, thank you so much. This has been a really, really fascinating conversation for me, and I have to admit that you have left me feeling slightly more hopeful for the future. Thank you so much, pleasure, it's been great to be and thanks for the wonderful questions. We're inspiring. You guys. This is the very last episode for this season, and what a fantastic conversation it was. Tom's vision for the future and his belief in the power of stillness, in self reflection and in really changing the current paradigm of the world is so inspiring to me. It really does feel like now is the time that we have to wake up if we had to create a better future for ourselves and the future generations. If you'd like to find out more about Tom's work. You can find him at his website, Tom Cronan dot com and that's why you'll also find links to his Stillness project and his brand new documentary, The Portal, which sounds incredible and I'm really excited to see. Thank you for joining me for season four of Crappy to Happy. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. I'm kastan clinical and coaching psychologist, mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. If you like this show, please do go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review, and of.

41:20 Course I always love to hear your feedback directly. You can email me at hello atkastone dot com. I read all of the emails. I cannot wait to be back with another season. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cast Dunn, produced by Davis Vilenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener