What Follows Is the Transcript of an interview Between Tami Simon and Lynne Twist Syndicate From SoundsTrue. You Can Listen to the Audio Recording of the Interview h

think when I had that experience with Manari in the forest and I had this experience of the oneness of all living beings, that was the beginning for me of my evolutionary leap. Now, when I look for wisdom, I do go to your podcast, but I also go outside to the trees. I really have a relationship with them. It’s not, you know, middle-age humor, weird. I get real, solid, powerful information.

TS: Can you give me an example of that?

LT: Well, I’m working with Suzanne Simard who I recommend—

TS: Oh, wow. Wonderful.

LT: —invite on your podcast. She’s just awesome.

TS: For our audience, she’s the author of a book, Finding the Mother Tree, and a BC researcher, British Columbia researcher. 

LT: Yes, she’s a forest ecologist and she wrote Finding the Mother Tree and her Mother Tree TED Talk has millions and millions of views. She now, and I are very, very close colleagues in a project we’re doing. She’s educated me about how the mother trees download all kinds of wisdom through the mycorrhiza and funky network to the trees in the forest that they know are in some ways their children or nieces or nephews or cousins. There’s a whole society. There’s a whole communication system constantly going on.

Now, once I’ve read her book and become an advocate, a colleague, an ally of Suzanne’s, Professor Simard’s, I know that when I’m confused or upset or lost or in a quandary, there’s a tree that I’ve chosen in the Presidio. I live next to the Presidio, it’s like a three-minute walk from my house. If I go to that tree and put my hands on the trunk, it’s a very large tree, and my heart next to the trunk in a certain place where I like to be with her, I come, I center, I feel, I somehow know. I don’t get a specific answer to a question, I get in touch with the fact or the, let’s say, energy of natural knowing. I come back to my house in my office and something shows up. That’s a specific example.

TS: Yes. Interesting hearing you talk about our evolutionary leap and being part of it. What happened inside me was I thought this is a time for each of us to be bold in whatever way in our own life. To be people who can take an individual leap as part of the leap for our species. I wonder what you think about that.

LT: I think that’s absolutely true. In fact, I advocate, wherever I can, for us to dream big now. Big, big, big. Another person I love is Dan Pallotta. You should have him on your thing if you haven’t had him. He’s awesome. Dan Pallotta has 10 million views in his TED Talk. He’s a great friend of mine. He talks about how we’re in this mess because we don’t think big enough to tackle the problems that we have in a way that gives us the vision we need to tackle them.

I’ll say what everybody knows the quote from Lao Tzu: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” We need vision now, big vision, big vision. That’s one of the things that I love to listen for and create wherever I can. That’s why the Pachamama Alliance’s mission is to bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spirituallt fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet. I think that’s how Paul Hawken has written Regeneration, we can end the climate crisis in one generation if we are committed to regeneration.

Regeneration, to me, includes regenerating what it means to be human. I think the pandemic is morning sickness for a pregnant species. When you’re pregnant and you don’t know you’re pregnant and you have morning sickness, you think you’re sick. But when you find out you’re pregnant, you can tolerate the illness that comes with pregnancy. You love throwing up in the morning, because you’re going to have a baby. I think we’re entering a burst canal and it might be a painful one, and the burst might be painful, but we’re giving birth to a new kind of human being.

If we’re willing to allow that to come through us and to think really big about what kind of a world is the world, we really know we can co-create with evolution and keep that vision as powerful as the challenges and obstacles that we see between us and that vision. We’ll get through these obstacles, we’ll transform them. They will give us the strength to leap into that new vision and become the species we need to be to not only prevail, but flourish on this planet.

TS: Can you describe the new human being to me? What’s the new human being like, perhaps in ways that are different? What are our new capacity or ways of being?

LT: The new human being has access to all the capacities that we now consider to be “lesser than” or perhaps suspect—like intuition, like instinct, like spiritual power, like capacity to manifest, like understanding we have a divine appointment, like accessing the divine feminine, both for men and women. That all of those capacities, those extraordinary, we call them, because we think they’re not available to everyone, except they are, those capacities have as much credibility and clout as strategic planning, as being good at numbers, as being a great athlete, as what we’ve defined, in the patriarchy, as the high bars that are what we call success.

That these other qualities—that are often demoted to “lesser than,” or we’re not so sure about them, or they’re too woo-woo—that they get the same clout, reputation, respect by all of us, including myself, and we access them the way you access the talent of a good masseuse or an extraordinary accountant, someone who’s excellent with numbers. That we realize these are talents and treasures and that everybody has them. Some people have a little bit more of this and a little bit less of that, but we all have them and we need all of that. 

They all become available, accessible, and they have respect. They have our respect and there’s room for them to be fully self-expressed and not doubted, and that we use them. Our relationship with astrology, our relationship with the enneagram, things that are sidelined. I think all of that is part of the divine feminine expression. It has enormous power that’s so untapped in today’s world. When we unleash it, that’s a whole nother human being. That’s a whole nother human being.

TS: Now, Lynne, I want to track back for a moment. You mentioned this speech you heard from Buckminster Fuller about how we can create a world where there’s enough for everyone. In your book, The Soul of Money, there’s a great deal, a very intelligent attention that you put on this whole notion of living from a sense of sufficiency, there’s enough versus a sense of scarcity. Here is the question I have for you. I’m going to be a vulnerable here, which is, I think a lot people, myself included, we feel that sense of sufficiency at certain times.

Walking through a forest, being with the tree, at certain moments where we feel peaceful. But there are other times when that feeling of scarcity comes up. It’s different for different people, for different reasons. For some on people, it has to do with financial pressures that they feel on their life, or some lack of love. Someone might feel, in their relationships, something like that. My question to you is, when we notice that feeling of scarcity come up, like we’re committed to this other way of being, and we know it, but there are still these moments where that’s not our actual experience. What do you recommend?

LT: Well, the sufficiency principle I’ll say that I, and it’s in a framework called The Soul of Money, that the capitalist system, the commercialization of everything, the commoditization of everything, the consumer society has so overtaken everything—I’m going to say this is a preamble to answering your question—that we think we live in an economic system that’s taken over the ecological system rather than the economy is a subset of the ecology. Eco-eco.

We’ve made our home the economy rather than the ecology. Eco means home. We need to reclaim our home in the ecological world, and then we can have an economic system, but it needs to be consistent with the laws, the natural laws of the ecological systems. But we have done something very different. We’re living in the economic system, which is based on scarcity. The whole book is really pointing to that our psychology, our philosophy, our education, our religion, everything is based on the economic scarcity model. That’s false, because we do have enough for everyone everywhere to have a healthy, productive life.

But we behave as if we don’t. We hoard so much that we leave out millions and millions of people. We generate the world of scarcity when it isn’t a world of scarcity. OK. Now, back up about personally. We personally have bought in, I think, all of us in an unconscious, unexamined way, the belief that there’s not enough time, there’s not enough love, there’s not enough sex, there’s not enough money, there’s not enough square feet in my house, there’s not enough this, there’s not enough that. But it’s almost like a siren song of a consumer culture, there’s not enough and I’ve got to have more.

That’s what I want to free people of, because there are those moments, as you described, when you know you are enough, there is enough, but then in a minute it’s gone because of advertising and marketing. This economic system has taken over everything. For me, the principle of sufficiency, and then I’ll see if I can be more personal in answering your question, is to let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need. It’s hard to distinguish that in a world that wants you to get more of everything. If you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up all the energy that’s tied up in the mythology of that chase, that franticness, to turn and pay attention to what you have.

When you pay attention to what you have, it expands. Just like when you stop trying to scramble and get more time and pay attention to this moment, this moment, and be totally present, it expands before your very eyes. That principle, the principle of sufficiency, is really about presence. It’s really about being with what you already have and knowing that it’s yours to be with, and then to share. To share. When we share what we already have, our experience of what we have expands. Even though it may seem like, well, you have less of that. No.

When you share what you already have, it expands before your very eyes, it expands in your experience. If you have financial problems, and I work with people who do, of course, ni the Soul of Money Institute. If you start to really look and see what you have and make a real difference with what you have, and begin to share it in a way that’s consistent with your own integrity, it starts to grow in the nourishment of that intention. In reality, I’m not really talking about an amount, but actually amounts actually do grow as well. This wonderful phrase that you’ve heard me say a million times, but I’ll say it again: what we appreciate truly does appreciate.

It really does work that way. Even in time, sex, money, possessions, it really does work that way, if we can free ourselves from the mania of the scarcity mindset. Now, I want to just acknowledge there are people who need more money, more water, more access to food, more jobs, more housing. I’m not talking about those situations, I’m talking about the unexamined mindset that haunts all of us, especially those of us who do have what we need, and has us clamoring for more all the time, which generates a world where those who really truly do not have enough can’t get access to anything, because those of us who do have enough are always trying to get more.

As Gandhi said, “There’s enough for our need, but not for our greed.” If we can shift from our wants, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t want stuff. I want things. I would love to have a Tesla, etcetera, but I don’t need one. But I’d love to have one. That’s OK. I’m talking about something else and I know you do get it, but I’m just trying to be articulate enough to let people know you can free yourself from that mania by just stepping out of the consumer culture for a moment. Paying attention to what you already have, seeing how you can share it, whether it’s time or money or possessions, more generously. That actually is the source of recognizing and living and dwelling in the truth, what I call the radical pricing, surprising truth of the space of sufficiency.

TS: The very first move you made, it was so powerful that I want to highlight it, how to separate our ecological embeddedness from a kind of economic trance. I wonder if you can say more how to view money and economics when you’re no longer caught in the consumer brainwashing around it. But instead you’re like, “Oh, I’m an expression and part of the earth, and this is a financial system that’s over there.” How that shifts things.

LT: We are living in a world where marketing, advertising, and even for this podcast, will probably be little interruptions of, I don’t know if there will be advertising, but you can hardly listen to anything without it getting interrupted with some blaring advertisement about something. It’s very, very hard to do what I’m about to say. But I’ll just say that the experience of really being connected to our home, eco, the ecological miracle that we are an expression of—we don’t live on the earth, we are of the earth. That’s where we came from. That we are part of all of that, gets blocked and truncated and disrupted by this huge monster, the economy.

All economy is not bad, but the economic system is so rooted in scarcity and there’s not enough, and more is better, that we get caught in that in every aspect of our lives. To free ourselves from that is pretty hard. But I was going to just tell a little baby story. I was asked to do a TED Talk on Wall Street. I thought Wall Street? I’m not an investment manager. I didn’t go to business school. I’m not a billionaire, I wrote a book called The Soul of Money, but it’s not really a Wall Street kind of book.

But some guy, who was doing a TED thing on Wall Street, said, “We should have her. She’d be an interesting change.” I remember I got up there and there was an audience. It was an early TED Talk before there were a lot of controls over how you do a TED Talk. I just got up there and started talking. I looked out on it, all 500 people. It was in the board of trade. It was in where people trade. What’s it called? That place where you can ring the bell. It was there.

TS: Yeah. On the floor of the trading. The trading floor. Yeah. OK.

LT: They have a little auditorium there. It was there where all those people yell and scream at each other. It was in the auditorium and they were almost all men. I stood in front of them, and I said, “I only have so many minutes here, but I want to leave you with a thought. Perhaps the economic system is a subset of the ecological system in which we live. Just imagine that. That it’s merely a subset of the ecological system in which we live. Rather than the economy is about taking the ecology and turning it into money. Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe, and I want to suggest you think about this, that the fact that we even have an economy is given to us by the extraordinary generosity, the infinite bounty of the ecology. The economy is an opportunity to be economical with how we use the gifts of that extraordinary ecological system.”

I remember it was like … People were like [LAUGHTER]. But at the same time, I got unbelievable response from that talk. I’ll just say that there’s a way of living where we realize that everything, the computer on which I am speaking to you, the microphone that makes this technology possible, is from the earth.

These are medals from the earth. We have so mined and extracted the things that we love so much from the earth that we now have this enormous power to now really, really give back to her, in not only equal measure, but in enormous bounty. How can one live in a way that’s what you’re in touch with. The enormous bounty that we have the opportunity to return to her. That’s different than living in scarcity and trying to figure out how many more square feet of your house can you put on in the next year and who are you going to get as a contractor and how much do you need to pay them? All of that is practical.

Yes, we need to do that. But can we do that in a way we are regenerating life. Paul Hawken, at the end of his book and also on his website, and I know you know this probably as well as I do, says, “There’s questions to ask yourself before you take any action. Is this going to regenerate life or degenerate life? Is this going to steal from future generations or heal that which we want to give to future generations?” There’s a whole list of questions that you ask yourself before you make any large expenditure or any large choice. It really is … It’s beautiful. It makes you sing when you get to the bottom of a list and you make a choice, you feel so good about who you are. I think that’s the way we can live now and it will make us happier people.

TS: OK. Lynne, just a couple final questions. You’re clearly someone who’s super on purpose. You said it yourself. You’re on purpose. Your life has been filled. You and your husband, together, your life has been filled with a bigger sense of purpose and it’s energized you so much throughout your lifetime and now in your grandmother years, and it’s just gorgeous. What would you say though to that person who says, “I wish I had more of that purpose in my life, but it doesn’t seem to be appearing. I wish it were. I wish it was the case?”

LT: That’s a great question because that’s … I’m just finishing my book and I want to do a different ending, and I think you’re helping me with that. I think everybody who’s been born during this time has a role to play. It’s not a big role or a small role. There are no big roles or small roles. There’s just your role. If you play it, you’ll have the kind of life you dream of. How, what that role is, is by feeling. Feeling, not thinking. Feeling has gotten a second place to thinking. Thinking is wonderful, but feeling your body, your heart, your feeling energy is such an incredible compass.

If you feel good, feel really deeply good, not just a little bit of a high, deeply good about your choices you’re making, those are the right choices. If you do that, choosing what’s yours to do will show up for you. You’ll see a through line through your whole life. What did you care about on the playground when you were five, six, seven? Were you the kind of kid who was a bully or were you the kind of kid who picked the bright kid first, or did you take care of the kids that were left out? Where were your strengths? Where were your weaknesses? Where is your heart and soul?

When you look back and see, what is the through line of goodness of heart, of truth, of moral integrity in my life? How can I take that forward in a way that creates my evolutionary leap? We do workshops that help people with that, and your podcasts help people with that. What I say to people, if you are willing to know that there is, you have a divine appointment, or you wouldn’t be here. I just know that’s true. I found mine. I was so lucky.

Maybe I was just lucky, maybe I was just awake, but Buckminster Fuller helped me. Werner Earhart, his training helped me, podcasts like this helped me and I stay in the zone of the messaging that’s coming through. That’s helping us find our rightful role in relationship with a long-term future of life. We all have one. Stay in this stream, Tami’s stream. Stay in the stream of awakening. Stay in the stream of wisdom. Stay in the stream of people who love, who care, and your dharma will find you. You don’t need to find it, it will find you.

TS: It does seem though that you might need to be willing to take a risk of some kind. There might be some bravery required. Do you think so?

LT: I think there’s a lot of that involved. Bravery is one way of talking about it and another way is surrender, or you might say, not succumb, but surrender. There’s this thing that I want to just say, you didn’t really ask it, but modesty is the same as arrogance. It’s just the flip side of arrogance. It’s trying not to be arrogant. It’s another form of arrogance. But if you tell the truth about who you are, really claim it, take a risk and jump on out there, what happens is humility, your humbled by the power of your own choice. You’re humbled by the power of your own risk. You’re humbled by the power of your own courage. Don’t be modest, just go for it. Just go for it, and you will find your groove and you’ll be humbled by your own power.

TS: Lynne Twist, I love your grandmother energy and the love and light that pours through you. Thank you so much. So, so much.

LT: I love you, Tami Simon, and the love and light that pour through you and all that you do. Thank you for being with me.

TS: I’ve been speaking with Lynne Twist. With Sounds True, she has released an audio program called Unleashing the Soul of Money, and there’s also an excerpt from that program that’s available called “Meditations on Money.” Lynne, as well, was the commencement speaker at our very first graduating class of the Inner MBA program. It’s a-nine-month virtual training program for people in business who want to lead with their soul—I’ll just say it—all lit up and on fire to make a difference in the world. You can find out more at InnerMBAprogram.com.

Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. And if you’re interested, hit the Subscribe button in your podcast app. And also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.