Recorded live: June 23, 2010
Ryan Ray: Good morning everybody, today is Wednesday, June 23rd, you are joining us live behind the lights and cameras of the TV show WakeUp! Explore Your Passion to hear the personal successes and real challenges in the pursuit of a dream here in Hollywood. This is Wake Up Radio.
I'm your host Ryan Ray and joining me live today in the studio is my cohost Mr. Fuz Edwards. How are you today Fuz?
Fuz Edwards: I'm great Ryan. It's good to be here for another episode of this. We want to remind the callers that we are going to be taking your live calls throughout the show, please give us a call if you have a question or a comment about something that you hear. The number is (646) 727-3841.
Ryan Ray: That's right (646) 727-3841. We'd love to hear from all of you and thank you so much for those of you who are logged in the chat-room; Jesse JustBlaze, Momma Fuz and several hundred more that are just getting there.
Fuz Edwards: Hi Mom!
Ryan Ray: Hi Mom! We love having you online live with us today. Live in the studio is our special guest today, Robert Burgener, Spiritual Life-Coach, Intuitive Life-Coach. Robert it's a pleasure to have you here live today.
Robert Burgener: Well thank you for inviting me!
Ryan Ray: It's a real pleasure. Robert lets start by getting right into your story because you have a lot of information to share and I want all the viewers at home to hear your story. How did you get started doing what you do?
Robert Burgener: Oh, I was born.
Fuz Edwards: That's a good start.
Ryan Ray: Good answer.
Robert Burgener: Actually, no actually a lot it just started off with me being what I came into this world as. When I was a kid I used to know things I wasn't supposed to know, got me into trouble. But, I also had an interest in Comparative Religion and Philosophy, I used to sit in church and just sweat profusely listening to the sermons and to this day I couldn't tell you why, you know.
Fuz Edwards: Me too, but for other reasons.
Robert Burgener: Well actually I did go to a hellfire and brimstone church but that wasn't the reason.
Ryan Ray: Now where are you from, tell everyone where you were born.
Robert Burgener: I'm actually from the northern edge of the Bible-Belt, St. Louis, Missouri, brought up a Southern-Baptist.
Ryan Ray: OK.
Robert Burgener: Haven't been one for a very very long time. Basically, as time went along I just had some issues, a parent died, ended up in a children's home because I made the mistake of listening to a therapist who told me it was ok to tell my parents I was gay and they didn't take it to well.
But I would say the real adventure started in 1981, March 30th, the day Ronald Reagan was shot about two-hours beforehand I signed myself out of class, started walking and by 6:00AM on Friday morning I was in Los Angeles where I started the adventure of a life-time for me.
Ryan Ray: Now, hold on just a minute, because I think what everyone is probably wondering is number one; why would you do that and number two; how did you get to Los Angeles on foot in just a few days?
Robert Burgener: Why, to be honest with you, thirty years later I don't have a clue, I just did it. I wasn't having a good time, my parents had put me into a children's home because I think they were afraid I was going to do something to my step-brothers, you know, a gay man can't possibly control himself even if he doesn't find his stepbrothers interesting. But, that was their issue.
I was having some problems there, thing weren't working out particularly great and I guess I just got frustrated with it and the funny thing is if you had asked me to make a decision I would probably would have gone to Florida, I liked Florida. Somehow, I went west.
Ryan Ray: How did you get west? How did that, how did that happen?
Robert Burgener: Well lets see, Friday I, that was a Monday, so Monday about 9:00 I signed myself out of class saying I was going to see my Therapist, I didn't tell them it was two-thousand miles away.
I started walking and about 3:00 that afternoon stopped at a house and asked a lady for a glass of water and, that was when I found out about Ronald Reagan having been shot, and then ended up at a truck-stop later that day, got a ride there and just rode trucks. I got a ride from outside St. Louis County to Flagstaff, Arizona, had a few very chilly couple of hours waiting for a ride in Flagstaff, picked up a ride that was going to drop me in Kingman but we could see a storm coming over the mountains so I went to Las Vegas; had my first experience in Vegas.
Ryan Ray: At age?
Robert Burgener: 15. (laughter) Then a couple of hours, you know, had some interesting experiences in the Saharan which is sadly no longer there, but ended up going to, out to the freeway later that evening, caught a ride to Mojave, and then a trucker from Mojave who doesn't give hitchhikers rides.
The ride said, "Go into that diner, there are a lot of truckers there." I went in. Who walks in and asks the waitress, "Do you have a trucker header to Los Angeles?" you know, but I did and she said, "My truckers don't give people rides, sit over there." Five minutes later she's, "Come here, his boss is at another table so be very quiet", and so he's like, he introduced himself, we chatted for a second, he told me which truck, I went out, sat in, hid in till he left and he gave me a ride to somewhere here in LA County, I'm not sure where, I'm thinking somewhere around the Glendale area based on what it took to get from there to Hollywood, and by that evening I was in Hollywood where I spent the summer of a lifetime, living on the streets of Hollywood, and following and inspiration that introduced me to the Hari Krishnas, the Bahá'ís, the Buddhists, um Tibetan Buddhism, meditation, astral projection, the Theosophical Research Society; I mean, this was supposed to be a vacation and I worked.
Ryan Ray: I can only imagine as a 15 year old boy from the midwest and having grown up in a very conservative Christian Southern Baptist home, having come through this amazing journey and then being exposed to all these different things, I mean, talk about some real life experiences under your belt, I mean those are things that people don't experience in a lifetime and you had experienced them by the age of 15.
Robert Burgener: Oh definitely. It's... But you know I find there are two things about that adventure that I really got out of it. One was, it was my first introduction to what people call the Law of Attraction, I didn't know it at the time, in fact when I first realized what it was I thought that I had discovered something, and then I found out about all these books.
Ryan Ray: This was in the 80's.
Robert Burgener: This is like, this is 1981 actually.
Ryan Ray: I mean people think the Law of Attraction started working two years ago when "The Secret" came out.
Robert Burgener: Exactly. I had people come up to me and go, "Have you heard of 'The Secret'? Are you familiar with 'The Secret'?" and I'm like yeah, I discovered the Secret back in the '80's and then found out that I didn't discover it.
Ryan Ray: Yeah, yeah.
Robert Burgener: But, the two things I got out of it was one, if I will put my trust in my inspiration and instinct, it will always take care of me if I stay out of my way. That's one of the things I teach my clients.
The other thing was that if I could've known to do that I could have enjoyed it, I spent a lot of that time being all stressed out; where am I going to sleep, what am I going to eat, how am I going to take care of myself? But is always took care of itself. I look back on it now and it's like "Darn, I wish I could have just relaxed," it would have been much more of an entertaining time, but I still had a lot of fun.
Fuz Edwards: Well I, not to invalidate or demean any of those experiences that you went through but I a lot of people, a lot of our listeners sitting at home who are/have gone to school and have/who've gotten married and gotten jobs, and etc, think the same thing. I mean don't we all do that, if I knew then what I know now we kinda feel like we would put a different spin on things, we would have put a different play on things, but, do you think we really would?
Robert Burgener: I, well, I think part of it, what I was actually referring to was the fact that I really wish that I had; what I know now is that if I'm truly going to live my life that way, just live it and enjoy it, and enjoy the experience. One of the ways I teach it is "This world is an educational virtual reality simulator for the soul."
Fuz Edwards: OK.
Robert Burgener: And it's meant to be an entertainment, even the bad parts are meant to be an entertainment. There's something to learn out of it, but it's not going to kill you. I mean it may kill the body but you are not the body and that's the one thing every religion agrees on. You are an eternal spiritual entity temporarily inhabiting a physical body. Everything else is up for debate. So what I do, the way I live my life and what I teach my clients is to live your life from that perspective. Now that doesn't mean to go out and do things that are ridiculous and stupid...
Ryan Ray: Or that are going to harm you.
Robert Burgener: or that are going to harm you, exactly, but be willing to take the chance and live it from the perspective of I am experiencing this, I am not this. It's like going to a movie, some people like slasher movies, you know they like that adrenaline rush, ok, well this is just the next step up.
Ryan Ray: Well for a lot of people this experience is kinda like a slasher movie.
Robert Burgener: True.
(laughter)
Ryan Ray: That, well Robert, that is one of the reasons I thought you would be a fantastic guest for the show is because with these kinds of experiences, i mean you really do learn a lot about, especially about things like the Law of Attraction and creating; how did you survive as a 15 year-old child on the streets of Hollywood? How did you, how were you able to, you know, make ends meet and actually?
Robert Burgener: Well obviously it wasn't a palatial existence, I didn't like like a prince or anything, but a couple of things; one was, at that time fortunately, and I found out later that it was about the last year that that was the situation, Hollywood was a different place then than it is now.
Ryan Ray: Ok.
Robert Burgener: The street community really was a community, people took care of each other; if you needed a place to stay somebody would let you stay in the hotel room that they got, and then when you, some night if you had a hotel room and they needed a place to stay you let them crash on the floor in your hotel room. You know, it was just a much more community based environment back then. I mean let's be honest, the drugs of choice back then for the street people where poppers and marijuana. I mean cocaine was still God's way of telling you that you were making too much money (laughter) this was pre-Delorean.
Fuz Edwards: Right, right.
Robert Burgener: So the was a little, Hollywood was a different place than it is now, I would never have survived if I had come to the Hollywood that was even five-years later, about the time I moved back out here and started spending time back up in Hollywood, when I moved back up here permanently in '84.
(note: Moved back to SoCal in February 1984 and started spending substantial time back in Hollywood approximately 1986 or so)
But the other thing was, you know, and it's really, like I said it really was my first experience with the Law of Attraction because what I needed always showed up. If I needed a place to stay, it would show up, even if it was from someone I didn't even know. If I needed money for food, somebody would hand me a couple of bucks. If I needed some work or something; you know, I come from the midwest, I have that midwestern work ethic, you know, I like to earn what I take, I don't take anything from anyone unless I earn it, that's just the way I was brought up.
So, If I was looking for work, something would show up, like I would go down the Gay/Lesbian Center (www.laglc.org) and make myself available for day-work. "Oh, we don't have anything that we can give a 15 year-old kid," but something would show up, you know.
Ryan Ray: But, this is interesting because "The Secret" and the Law of Attraction, I think what most people are trying to do with this, there not trying to meet their needs, you know, as Americans I would say that most of us, and I feel like I'm stepping onto a ledge to say this, but I would say that most of us have our basic needs met. People are trying to create, you know, empires and fulfill some really big desires; how can we, from what you've learned about having your needs met, how can we use those same principals to actually go beyond just meeting our basic needs?
Robert Burgener: Well I would say with my particular issue at that time was, and still is, it's one of the areas that I still work on myself with, teacher heal thyself. And that is, first of all you have to be willing to ask for it, ok?
Ryan Ray: Yeah.
Robert Burgener: I tend, coming from my background and my mentality, my work ethic and all, I tend to ask for what I need. You know? I ask for enough money to keep the rent paid, I ask for enough money to pay my bills. I don't ask for the money, I don't ask for an extra five-grand to throw around on a vacation or time off and I should.
Ryan Ray: Yeah.
Robert Burgener: I really should. And that's one of the things I'm working on myself with.
Ryan Ray: Sure.
Robert Burgener: But also for me it's been an issue of, and I find with a lot of my clients a lot of the time, an issue of "What am I worth?" Well I'm worth taking care of and for a long time I didn't believe I was worth living extravagantly or living the LA dream. I mean now I live not to far from the beach, I have a lovely apartment, I'm in a neighborhood I adore, I have friends who, well I just can't say enough good things about my friends, you know.
Ryan Ray: What do you have to say Robert about feeling deserving?
Robert Burgener: Most the time, for me, my personal experience with myself and my clients has always been been that deserving really comes down to one, what is your self worth, are you worth it? And if you don't feel you re worth it, find what it is that you feeling guilty about and then forgive yourself because guilt is the place where that seems to live.
You know, if we are feeling good about everything that we have done then we don't have a problem asking for more, the big pie, the big picture. But if we are feeling guilty, like we have some reason that we don't, and for me guilt, I felt guilty about a lot of things; I had some issues with my mother before she passed away, you know, I had, there's a long story behind it so there are some other issues that I now understand as an adult, but growing up, until I became aware of these issues, you know, I just thought I made this poor woman's life miserable periodically.
Ryan Ray: So a lot of the reason...
Robert Burgener: And I felt guilty about leaving home, I felt guilty, I grew up in a Southern Baptist home, I felt guilty about being gay, not being a Southern Baptist, you know, all sorts of things and then I finally realized you know, why am I feeling guilty? Every time I put the Universe to the test to say is this right thing? It says "Yes!"
Ryan Ray: For everything?
Robert Burgener: Everything!
Ryan Ray: Because everything is always yes?
Robert Burgener: Everything is always Yes! The Universe wants you to be happy and your natural state is to be happy. Buddha really put it in a nutshell, he said; "Life is suffering, and it is suffering because we attach ourselves to things. Now that suffering can be broken," and then he gives his eight-fold path of how to break that suffering and it's all about learning to find that Spirit within and make THAT your focus and living for the Spirit and not for these temporary things around you that you think are going to give you happiness.
Fuz Edwards: Well we've talked about that quite a bit on the show and so I'm glad to hear you bring that up because again a lot of people, they don't know what they want. They think this is what they want; "Oh, if I had this new car. Oh if I had a bigger house. Oh if this person will love me," so it's all external and it becomes this list of "getting things," I'm going to get this, I'm going to get that and I think with the Law of Attraction some people are excited about that because they foresee that, "OK this is promised me that if I want that thing bad enough it will come to me."
Ryan Ray: And that will give me my happiness that I am seeking so desperately.
Fuz Edwards: Exactly, but so we put the cart before the horse and they don't realize that now it really has to start within first, you have to be ok with, like you said, settling some of those issues, some of that forgiveness, realizing that there aren't "bad things", you and I talk about that quite a bit.
Ryan Ray: But that's, that's, I mean I have to say it's such a challenge, it's such a daily challenge and I'll give it a simple example; I, after having learned about "The Secret" and the Law of Attraction, I had some really amazing things that happened, a lot of really amazing things I was able to create, some big things actually if we want to use the word "big," um, but, after having learned that I can have anything I want and the Universe is conspiring for my happiness and trying to put everything into alignment with what I am desiring, today I feel like when I don't get the things I desire, I'm angry at the Universe, you know? What the heck? You know? You're supposed to be conspiring for my happiness and I'm not happy, so what's going on?
Robert Burgener: Well...
Ryan Ray: It's actually made me more frustrated than happy!
Robert Burgener: Oh, I run into this all the time, you would be surprised, I mean this is why Life, being a Life Coach, it's one of the things I love about being a Life Coach cause I deal with that issue all the time.
Ryan Ray: Specifically, the people who understand the Law of Attraction are now frustrated because their not getting what they want.
Robert Burgener: It's not manifesting. Well part of it's because we have, as human beings we have a natural tendency, once something works we think we know it.
Ryan Ray: Uh hmmm.
Robert Burgener: You know, but then we kinda start skipping steps along the way and then wonder why it doesn't work anymore?
Ryan Ray: Uh hmmm.
Robert Burgener: It's one thing to know the Universe is going, is conspiring to your behalf, it's another thing to put it in the right frame of mind, don't want things! The Universe for all its immense power and vast space is a little dense.
Ryan Ray: Uh hmmm hmmm.
Robert Burgener: The Universe understands if you put energy into it, that's what you are going to manifest, the problem is that most of us put energy into what we don't want.
One of the things I do with my clients on their very first visit is say, "Tell me ten things you want," and almost every time, six to eight of them will be things they don't want. "I don't want my job. I don't want my problems."
Ryan Ray: Really?!? Is that right?
Fuz Edwards: Wow!
Robert Burgener: "I don't want my fighting with my spouse." We define our lives by the negatives in it. The problem is that the Universe doesn't understand the word "No" in fact there have been studies that say the human sub-conscience doesn't understand the word no.
Ryan Ray: Hmmm... Hmmm.
Robert Burgener: Which, you know, so when you put your energy into what you don't want, you end up creating what you don't want because the Universe doesn't understand, "you're NOT wanting this." It says, if you're thinking you know like, Mother Teresa used to say, "I will not go to an anti-war rally, a peace rally, I'm there."
Ryan Ray & Fuz Edwards: Uh hmmm.
Robert Burgener: Because, even though it's "anti-war" the focus and where the energy is is "war." So what are you going to create? War.
Ryan Ray: Hmmm... Hmmm.
Robert Burgener: Now it's not me making this up, it's just the way the Universe works. I'll tell you this, any teacher in the Law of Attraction is going to talk to you at some point about "Negative Attachments." And those Negative Attachments are where we start creating what we don't want. The problem with people like you who have had such good success with the Law of Attraction is; you sometimes forget that step and you start focussing on those things you don't want, you fall back into that old habit.
Ryan Ray: How do we recondition ourselves? How do we get back it (hand gesture for back on track)?
Robert Burgener: You become aware. The first thing...
Ryan Ray: I'm aware... (laughter)
Fuz Edwards: He's aware he's not getting it.
Laughter
Robert Burgener: OK, you're aware you're not getting it, but are you aware of what it is you're thinking and what it is, are you aware of what you're putting on that order slip that you're sending out to the Universe?
Ryan Ray: I am aware and I think that makes me even more frustrated.
Robert Burgener: Well, I would say the next step after that then would be let's sit down and talk and, you know, what I would do with you as a client is we would sit down and we would go through what it is you've been programming and there's a couple of really easy exercises that we could go through and I'll lay you odds, I'ld almost make you a cash bet we'll find a Negative Attachment in there or at least one if not more than one.
Ryan Ray: I'll save you the trouble, I'll just give it up because we all have them.
Robert Burgener: Of course we do, you know. When you know the laws of the Universe and you know how they work, you know it's like my great-grandfather used to say, "Never take a bar bet. If a a man tells you that he's going to take an unopened deck of cards and the Queen of Spades is going to pop-up and spit cider in your eye, you'd better be prepared to have cider in your eye."
Ryan Ray: (Laughing) Nice, I've never heard that before.
Fuz Edwards: I've heard something similar to that, yeah, they're sure of it, that the reason they're making the bet.
Robert Burgener: Yeah, you don't make a bar bet unless you "know" you are going to win, it's a sucker's bet.
Ryan Ray: Well Robert, I want to talk a little about your upcoming, you're doing a seminar series right now in Culver City, the "10 Secrets to the Secret."
Robert Burgener: "10 Secrets to the Secret," it's the title of the book I'm getting ready to finishing, I'm finishing up and hoping to release, ideally by the end of the summer but I may be moving it up earlier, I'm involved with an event with a previous guest of yours and I'm going to see if I can get everything done, edited, published and ready for that event around the end of July.
Ryan Ray: OK, so "10 Secrets to the Secret." It's a catchy title, it's something that really evokes a lot of questions in my mind and I definitely want to open up to all the listeners and viewers online, if you have any questions that you would like to ask Robert about "The Secret", specific things because Robert is a wealth of knowledge and information here, we're definitely going to take those in a moment.
First though I wanted to just touch on something you had told me when we spoke before on the phone, um, you had said that "You are here to be of service and it's not always what people want but what they need, that you're here to touch on." Let's talk a little bit about that philosophy.
Robert Burgener: Yeah, that's where I get into trouble with people a lot. I have, like I said earlier, I've had a tendency of knowing things I have no business knowing. I don't call myself a psychic. To me a psychic is someone who either has it turned on all the time and can't turn it off or can control when and what they do. Now, that, nothing against psychics, I have some friends who are amazing psychics and I've heard enough from them that I firmly believe in the phenomenon. I'm just not one of them.
I call myself an Empath and I call myself an Intuitive, I pick up on strong emotions and I pick up on periodic pieces of information and I share those with my clients. When I was a kid I would share them sometimes at bad times and get myself into a lot of trouble which is why I took a step back from doing that for a long time. You know it's not someplace a small child wants to be to find out that he's making enemies and he has no idea because he's just saying something that just comes out of the ether to him and oops! You know, such-n-such doesn't really appreciate the fact that you just named his mistress, oops!
Ryan Ray: Laughs
Fuz Edwards: Wow.
Robert Burgener: Things like that you know and if you would ask me to describe it, I can't describe it, it just, it comes from someplace I don't understand and I used to think it was my imagination, I was making stuff up, but the people I would say these things to would come back later and tell me that I was right on the mark.
Ryan Ray: So you can, you use this skill of yours to, in your work, uh, with what you do with your clients.
Robert Burgener: Exactly, that's why I call myself an Intuitive Life Coach. I don't practice a specific school of Life Coaching, I just do what I do naturally and the title of Life Coach as described by the schools I've talked to and the people who I dealt with, I'm just a natural Life Coach and so I recently started using the term. I've only been using the term for about a year or two, though I've actually been doing it for friends and family and associates all my life.
Ryan Ray: Well I know that's something I find really fascinating and always very helpful, anytime you can get some insight about yourself or about the projects and issues that you are dealing with and people don't always want to hear about those, right? They don't always want to know.
Robert Burgener: Oh, it's amazing how much people don't want to hear.
Ryan Ray: They say they do.
Robert Burgener: I have clients who will spend three-months with me and then hate me because the place they are really stuck, we finally get to it and I tell them about it and they don't come back for 6 months. Then I get a phone call going, "OK, I got it."
Ryan Ray: Yeah.
Robert Burgener: I got it, you're right we'll start to deal with that subject and once we deal with that subject... You know the funny thing is is that I find the things that people respond the worst to actually, once we get through it, they're relieved.
Ryan Ray: Well it's a breakthrough.
Robert Burgener: It's a breakthrough but it's also, it takes a load off their back.
Ryan Ray & Fuz Edwards: Yeah.
Robert Burgener: You're not carrying that around.
Fuz Edwards: Right.
Ryan Ray: well Robert, it's been really fascinating learning about your backstory and hearing all about the things you've been dealing with since a very young age and again I'ld like to open up to the chat-room and I'ld like to open up also to the phone lines if anyone would like to give us a call, (646) 727-3841, and again we are live at http://RyanRay.com/radio. Please log on and send us all your questions.
Robert, we're going to have you back for our second half hour today.
Fuz Edwards: Ok good.
Ryan Ray: And, um.
Fuz Edwards: Cause I've, I've been sitting over here the entire time judging you.
Ryan Ray: Laughter
Robert Burgener: OK.
Fuz Edwards: So I'm, I'm ready to undo.
Ryan Ray: Wow, that's a breakthrough itself, thanks for sharing that on live TV.
Fuz Edwards: (Laughs) No you brought up so many interesting points so it's, I've got a lot of questions for you when you come back for the second half so I'm excited you're going to be back.
Ryan Ray: Good.
Robert Burgener: I'm perfectly happy to stay.
Laughter.
Ryan Ray: So we will be back here in just a moment after this break and here on WakeUp Radio, don't go away.
2 PSA's [27:05 - 29:05]
Ryan Ray: And we are back here live with Robert Burgener in the studio, my cohost Fuz, here for Wake Up Radio. It's been an interesting first half hour, we've been talking a little bit about your life story, your background, you're an Intuitive Life Coach, you touch on a lot of spiritual topics and you're preparing your next book "10 Secrets to the Secret" and we're excited to talk about this because I know so many people have been excited by "The Secret", they've used "The Secret" to change their lives and create a lot of things that they thought they never could, but there have been a lot of people who haven't been able to have the same success with that consistently. So, top secret, what's the top secret that you can start us off with here?
Robert Burgener: Oh...
Ryan Ray: What is one of the biggest secret to "The Secret" that we should know about?
Robert Burgener: I would have to...
Ryan Ray: I don't want you to have to give away all the content of your book. (laughter) Let's just do all ten right here, I'll save you the trouble, no need to write anything.
Robert Burgener: OK, well, there goes the book and the seminar series I was thinking about giving for the twenty-five years. I'll just give it all away right now...
Ryan Ray: In thirty minute, ready go!
Robert Burgener: The biggest secret, hmmm, I would say the one I run into the most often with the largest number of clients would be, uh... I'm suddenly drawing a complete blank. I would say, ok, the first one would be that we are truly the children of God and this is both a positive and a negative as all hinges are in our reality. It's a positive because it means we are part and parcel of the creative force brought this Universe, call it the God, the Goddess, the Is.
Ryan Ray: The Universe.
Robert Burgener: Whatever you want to call it, that's one of the things I like about twenty years of Comparative Religion, I have lots of vocabulary so I can talk, and I do this with my clients, especially when we start dealing with the Spiritual aspects of things, for those that want it, I can talk to them in the vocabulary they already speak.
Ryan Ray: And I think that is really important because Fuz and I, we've had this talk many times about semantics. People get immediately turned off if they here the "G" word.
Robert Burgener: Oh year. The big "G" word.
Ryan Ray: It's scary, don't even mention the "J" word.
Fuz Edwards: Or they get extremely turned on, like, you know, every single thing has to do with God, this one entity, this, I think this one term that is used is this Charlton Heston like, white haired figure, that...
Robert Burgener: I hate that image of God I really do...
Fuz Edwards: You know, again it depends on where you are in your development, Ryan and I were having this conversation just his morning, that yeah, there's so much attached to that word, you are either brought up and you focus is on that, or, you do like I did a couple of years ago where there's that backlash where you won't have anything to do with it because it seems to be the cause of so many problems, then you come back around and you start trying to reconcile that and we were cracking up, you know you were talking about this vocabulary and us talking about semantics about where I'm pretty much OK talking about anything spiritual, talking about miracles, talking about whatever, but the moment someone says "God", OK well I gotta go, because, again I start thinking back to all of the negative things and all the harm that I've seen...
Ryan Ray: The guilt, the judgement and all that...
Fuz Edwards: Exactly and I'm a very spiritual person and I come from a family that was raised in church etc, but yeah, you put that word on it and I shutdown.
Robert Burgener: I understand, I run into that a lot.
Fuz Edwards: So don't use that word again. (laughter)
Robert Burgener: Do you have a particular name you prefer?
Ryan Ray: How about Sal? (laughter) Can we call it Sal?
Robert Burgener: I usually use Bob but Sal will work.
Ryan Ray: a little latin flair today.
Robert Burgener: So we're talking about Sal, well one of the things about Sal that I disagree with my upbringing, my Southern Baptist, I don't believe, I understand, Hinduism talks about all about these different ways of relating to God, there's God the father which is the one in the western world we spend so much time with. Then, but in Hinduism and I just absolutely adore it, relating to Sal as a friend, as a lover, as a mother, as a compassionate entity, I think there is a list of like seven different relationships to that entity. And, I had father issues, my father an I, until recently, just did not get along, we were oil and vinegar and so that's probably why I always had such a hard time with the "Father" figure for God.
Ryan Ray: Tha's a good point, that's an interesting point.
Fuz Edwards: yeah.
Robert Burgener: To me God, I've always related to God as a friend, you know, Sal is my best friend. You know, when I have a good day I make a point of thanking Sal, maybe he didn't do anything to do it, but it's developing that "Attitude of Gratitude" that you hear people talk about, get into the habit of saying what you're happy for, you know. Like we talked about earlier, we so often talk about what we don't want, what we're not happy with and we define our world that way so start getting into the habit of defining your world by what it is you do have, what you are glad for, what you find to be a blessing in your life. If you spend your time in that perspective, even if you do nothing else with the Law of Attraction, I can guarantee the happiness factor in your life is not going to go up by a point or two, it's going to skyrocket.
Ryan Ray: You know that's easy to do when you're feeling good and you're having a good day, but you know when there is traffic and you're late for work and the lady cuts you off, you just want to shoot somebody sometimes.
Fuz Edwards: Yikes...
Laughter
Robert Burgener: I used to be a limo driver in LA, OK.
Ryan Ray: That's right, you have the temptation...
Robert Burgener: I know the LA freeway systems and the way people drive in this city. You know, one of the things you gotta do is yeah, you have that initial flare-up, but part of that is habit.
Ryan Ray: Right.
Robert Burgener: You have developed a habit, you have developed a set of pathways in the neurons in your brain that say if this action happens, this is my reaction, my response. OK? Now for all the grief my friends give the Scientologists, one of my favorite things about the Church of Scientology is what they call "Clearing". What "Clearing" is is you sit down and you talk about something that happened and what your reaction was and you start working your way back to find out where that reaction got programmed. You can work yourself to the point where you are clear of it so you stop living as what they call a "Reactive Individual" and you start living as a "Responding Individual".
Ryan Ray: Right.
Robert Burgener: Something happens, I have this initial response, but wait a minute, is this really what I want to do and you can step into that space and make the decision as to if this how I really want to act. Which is really great when you are someone like me, cause every once in a while my temper can come out and when I was a kid it used to get me into a lot of trouble.
rr &Fuz Edwards: Right, right.
Robert Burgener: I was vary frustrated, (laughing) in a lot of ways, but now as an adult I can take a step back when somebody hits one of my buttons, I can start to respond but then I can say "Wait a minute, slow down" and I can insert myself into that space because I have developed that habit, I have broken that neuro-pathway in my brain.
Ryan Ray & Fuz Edwards: Right, right.
Fuz Edwards: I think the interesting thing, and you touched on it in the first half of the show is that when we start thinking about what we want, in doing that we are still focussing on what we don't want, I think that goes with changing habits as well. We could be going to a family gathering, I'm just using this as an example because we all have family issues, but we can be going to a family gathering and there may be a particular family member that we are having conflict with or that we just don't have that relationship with that we want and so we tell ourselves, "OK, I'm not going to let that person get to me, I'm not going to let that person get to me, I'm not going to let them get to me" and like you said what we're concentrating on is what we don't want, it's still coming from a negative place and we're still churning a little bit of that, expecting it to happen rather than just saying, "Hey you know what? I'm going to go to this family gathering and have a freaking awesome good time."
Ryan Ray: Good point.
Fuz Edwards: "I'm going to love everyone there."
Ryan Ray: Great point!
Robert Burgener: So what's going to happen with Uncle Ed?
Fuz Edwards: He's going to get to you.
Robert Burgener: He's gonna get you because you have created, you have put out to the Universe, you know, even though you have said "I don't want to have this problem", you are focussing on the problem.
Fuz Edwards: You're anticipating it.
Robert Burgener: You're anticipating it. You're creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Ryan Ray: Yes.
Robert Burgener: So, yeah exactly, I going to go have a really good time and if you have a problem with Uncle Ed, for example pulling a name out of the hat.
Ryan Ray: Sure.
Robert Burgener: Fine, you sit down and you put in your mind something you can appreciate about Uncle Ed, anything, maybe he has a funny way of talking, maybe he has... Maybe he wears clothes that Ru-Paul on her worst day wouldn't wear, you know, whatever, find something you can appreciate, find something you can find enjoyable about that person, that's your first step, because first you have to break the habit of "I want to resist this" because what's that old expression, "What you resist, persists."
Ryan Ray: Well Robert, we have some questions in the chartroom and I would like to touch on these; the first one that pops up on here is, "What's the best way to identity what obstacles we have in our life that we must overcome?"
Robert Burgener: OK...
Ryan Ray: Because I think sometimes we find ourselves blocked and unable to, we're not reaching our goals, we're not reaching our goals, but we don't really know why and I would have to say that I think that's coming from some kind of a block, some kind of an obstacle, how do you really hone in on that?
Robert Burgener: Well the first thing I would say is, well there's a little exercise I teach my clients I do it, it's part of my daily practice, I do it all the time, especially when I catch myself responding to things or when I catch myself in a dark place. Sit down and think about it, start thinking about it and start figuring our where the darkness is. When you get a moment, sit down and you know, you're having a situation with someone at work and for whatever reason you can't take a step out of it, sit down and think about "what is it that I'm actually having a problem with? What am I responding to?", because, really, the first step in ALL of this is becoming aware because you're not going to find the answer out there, the answer is NEVER out there, the answer is always within. So if you look within and see what it is you are, where you are giving them the energy to affect you, people can only effect you as far as you give them the energy to. If you can look inside an see what that response is, what you are responding to, then you can start working on changing HOW you respond to it, the first step really is awareness of it.
We were talking about "Negative Attachments", people programming things and not getting things, the same exercise works there with that. Take the idea of what you're programming, I have a client of mine who wanted a new job and it just wasn't happening, so I told him, take the idea of "I want a new job", that's how he phrased it, I said hold it for a minute, don't think about anything else, just keep thinking "I want a new job, I want a new job, I want a new job." Let him do that for about a minute or two, what's your emotional state? Because you emotions really are your guidance to how you relate to things. If the emotional state, as on of my teachers used to say, "Is anything short of warm and fuzzy, there is a Negative Attachment in there. And his case, he was thinking and saying "I want a new job", but what he was really thinking and what he was actually focussing on was "I want away from my current job that I hate."
Ryan Ray: Wow, I think that's really powerful, I just want to just reemphasize this because we don't even realize that we are doing that.
Robert Burgener: Right.
Fuz Edwards: We think that we're saying, that we're putting out there, so we think we're doing the next step but what we're still feeling is all of that attachment the don't part of it.
Robert Burgener: That's one of the really big problems with language. The problem is, I'm sure you've played Post Office when you were a kid.
Ryan Ray: It's not true.
Robert Burgener: Language is a way of communicating, unfortunately it suffers from certain problems. One of its big problems is how I associate a word may be different from how you (Ryan) associate it, which may be different from how you (Fuz) associate it, so it's like playing Post Office, I whisper in your ear "Sally's pretty" and by the time it makes it around the room, somehow, "Betty has turned into an iguana."
(Laughter)
Fuz Edwards: Right!
Robert Burgener: and it's just because I say this, you interpret it one way and pass it on, they interpret it another way before they pass it on and so on, sooner or later it comes all the way around the original intent is nowhere in the sentence.
Fuz Edwards: It brings to minds, I mean we've already touched upon the "G" word, you know, for some people that, when you talk God there's a certain way and certain things you have to say and for some, there are people that react to it negatively because of it because of the conditioning, it made me think of prayer. I read something somewhere the other day where it talked about how people, generally people go to prayer in a moment of crisis, like they go right to it, but you use the word meditation all of a sudden it's "oh well that's, that's like voodoo. that's weird, that's something no no no, I can't do that." Call it prayer and they're fine, can it meditation and no, that has something to do with something entirely different. Whereas, again, if we were kind of meditating or if we were praying if that's the word you want to use during the good moments as well, maybe we would see more of that instead of saving it as that crisis point.
Robert Burgener: See I'm just the opposite, I don't care for the word prayer, but the reason I don't care for the word prayer is not because I think it's a bad thing, to me, prayer and meditation are basically the same thing, but because of the way I was brought up; prayer to me is when I negotiate with God, that's when I try to, I go "God, if you'll give me X, I'll do Y, Z1, Z2 and Z3.
Fuz Edwards: Knowing good and well that you're not going to do X, Y and Z as soon as soon as you get it, I mean...
Robert Burgener: Exactly. But to me personally, meditating...
Ryan Ray: Just kidding God, did I say that I would, feed the homeless? Just joking!
Robert Burgener: I love that line, I don't know if you remember that show "Joan of Arcadia" but I always loved that scene in the first episode when God says to Joan, "Well if you do this I'll forget that promise you made and never kept." Joan: "What's that?" God: "That if your brother survived you would go to church, do your homework and be nice to your mother." The way I look at it, and it's just personal, deal with it, associate it however you want to, but to me prayer has become, over the years, my negotiating with God or my attempts at dealing with God. For me, meditation is when I shut up and listen for a response.
Ryan Ray: That sounds like it so powerful.
Fuz Edwards: Yeah, yeah!
Robert Burgener: That's just the way I associate it.
Ryan Ray: Because we're too busy.
Fuz Edwards: I love that. I have a dear friend who that's kind of, because of when I was first learning about all this or learn to meditate and whatever, he explained it to me as prayer is when you ask for something, meditation is when you listen for the answer and how many times have we done that where we are like, "Oh God, why me, why don't you, why yadda yadda yadda" but then are completely oblivious to the answer that's being because we're still focussed on the drama.
Ryan Ray: OK well the "G" word has come up a lot today and I want to actually touch on one other question that I think is really important here from the chartroom is is; How important is our recognition of a Universal Power in our lives in order to achieve what we want? What if someone's an atheist? What does that do?
Robert Burgener: I abide by something from the Indian Upanishads which says that there are 8.4 million forms of life, 400,00 of them are human beings at different levels of spiritual evolution. I personally believe in an ultimate creator beyond this that is singular and is the source of all of it, that's what I believe. You don't have to believe that, you don't have to believe in a God, what you have to believe in though is yourself, that you're worthy and give yourself permission to try it. I love skeptics, I love it when I get a client, I've had clients that are complete atheists, they believe in NO god no higher power of any kind, they are what they see, they don't believe the Law of Attraction is anything but a really nice idea tight by people who want to make a buck. Fine! If they can be a true honest sceptic about it which means "I don't necessarily believe it but I'm going to give it a good faith try" and if they're willing to learn about it, pursue it and truly give it an honest try, they consistently come around.
Ryan Ray: Well I think that in Quantum Physics and you know, science, actually lends itself to answer a lot of our questions, I mean if you think about energy, the energy that Quantum Physics says that we are all made up of, my personal belief has always been that this "G" word, God, is somehow part of all of this energy or is the empty space between all the different molecules or atoms that make up our universe, that unifying force that is omnipresent and is not subject to time or physical laws, what is that? I don't know, it's a vacuum. You can think of God however you want.
Robert Burgener: I think one of my favorite expressions of God in creation is, well there are two of them for different aspects. One is that the Universe is a movie being projected upon a screen.
Ryan Ray: Oh, this is cool.
Robert Burgener: God is the screen upon which it is projected. When you go to a movie theater, you never think about the screen you are watching, you just think about the pictures that are being shown on that screen.
Ryan Ray: Yeah.
Robert Burgener: I like that way of, it's not obvious, it's still there. The other one really goes more with why creation, what's the point is, I really like the idea you get from Donald Walsch' "Conversations with God" series; he says that God knew himself to be the totality of everything that is, was or ever would be, but knowing something and experiencing it are two totally different things. Creation is God having that experience and we are all part of that.
Fuz Edwards: hmm... (nodding head)
Robert Burgener: The other aspect that I add to that is that because God is a perfect being, he cannot create anything but perfection, so that's one of the reasons why I don't believe in guilt and that's why I do believe in forgiving myself when I screw up and believe me, there have been some times in my life where I've REALLY screwed up.
Ryan Ray: Noooooo....
Fuz Edwards: Well I need to take that queue because earlier, at the end of the first half-hour I made the joke that I was sitting here judging you and what I was really doing is, as you were telling my story, my head was spinning I was thinking "Wow, what an incredible story, OK wait a minute, I'm, our viewers, our listeners, I'm expecting them to listen to this guy who just walked out of school and started walking across the country and then lived on the streets in LA and blah blah blah and that doesn't seem like a very credible person," but then I'm like "wait a minute, how many biographies, how many people have we read about and we kind of revere who have gone through some huge crisis experience and we do appreciate them for having that experience FOR us." I think a lot of times in our narrow-minded, in our small view we kind of, we start judging people because we're like "I don't want to do that! I shouldn't have to go through that, I'm not going to have anything to do with that!" Well guess what, you don't have to because this gentleman right here DID and through that you gained your experience and you gained your learning and all of that. I was sitting here and I'm rambling here for a moment because again so much of this was coming up for me in the first half-hour that I was thinking, "Man at 15 you did all this stuff? That's crazy! Why would anyone just walk/sign themselves out of school and just start walking across America? That's stupid and I'm not listening to this guy, he's a nutmeg!" And then, well, and again...
Robert Burgener: Yup!
Fuz Edwards: And again, I'm playing with this a little bit because I didn't sincerely have those thoughts. Again I was trying to think of myself as I would have been, that would have been a very narrow view that I would have taken just several years ago. But then I think back to "what about all those high-schoolers that lied about their age and enlisted in World-War II," and now we think they're heroes, they wanted to go shoot people, they wanted to go be in a war, they wanted ARRR you know? Yet we revere them, they're heroes and you wouldn't dare say anything blasphemous or negative about any of those people and yet that's just as crazy because I think that's part of their experience, so I just wanted to take a moment to explain where that came from at the end of the last half-hour because, again, what you were saying to me, I was so many contradictions between what I know now and how I would have viewed you or how someone who's just coming across our show right now or just finding us on the internet might be viewing you and I was trying to reconcile those things within the last five-minutes of our show.
Laughter all around
Ryan Ray: And I appreciate that and I apologize that I didn't give you the opportunity...
Fuz Edwards: No, no, no. I don't think I would have been able to vocalize it because again the wheels were still turning and I was still listening.
Robert Burgener: Well, I, to just address that real quickly. There are those of us who live what I call "Reasonable Lives", we live within the paradigm that we're brought up in. Let's be honest, the educational system isn't about creating "Masters of the Universe", it's about creating cogs for this machine that we call society and there is nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong. I could not and have not been able to live within that machine and it has given me an experience of the Universe that has taken me to places and introduced me to things that sitting at home on the outskirts of St. Louis I never would have had happen.
Fuz Edwards: Right, absolutely.
Robert Burgener: Now I'm not going to claim that every I've done I'm thrilled to death about but I'm not ashamed of anything because every single action was a learning experience which makes it of value.
Fuz Edwards: Absolutely!
Robert Burgener: And I teach that to my clients; whatever happens, no matter how, that's how I teach people to forgive themselves, learn whatever it is that you need to learn from that experience, if you can learn it you have taken value, and no matter how bad it seemed it now becomes a positive, you've gotten something [ of value] out of it.
Fuz Edwards: Absolutely!
Robert Burgener: And that is what those experiences are about, getting something out of it, learning whatever it is there because NOTHING happens in your life by accident, everything has cause.
Fuz Edwards: Yes. I totally agreed with that and I think to go back to something that Ryan brought up a little bit ago where we get frustrated when we don't see the Law of Attraction or our prayers being answered or whatever we're focussing immediately, I also feel that sometimes we're living in the residual, we want it instantaneously and we kind of forget "well there were those times when we weren't really in the zone, we weren't really aligned with who we're supposed to be and all of that. I think that sometimes there's that little bit of residual, but still you gotta have faith, you gotta plug along until you're reaping all that stuff.
Robert Burgener: Most of us want to go on the Monopoly board from Go to Boardwalk with out passing Jail and Indiana Place and the Electric Company.
Fuz Edwards: Absolutely!
Robert Burgener: But sometimes to get to that place, I know for me with my teaching and I'm entering into a new phase of my life, I have tried to do what I do and live the "Reasonable Life" for a long time. Now there's been a certain amount of success in that, but I've realized that I just can't do it anymore. My last job, I loved the people I worked with, they were just great and I would invite any of them over at any time. Would I ever go back to the job? Not if you paid me the Irish Lottery, just because I can't do that anymore so now I'm spending my life doing things like we're talking about here.
Ryan Ray: I think so many people would identify with what you've said about being cogs in a machine and not being able to live that life of, it's almost a lie actually to some degree.
Robert Burgener: Living in Expectation.
Ryan Ray: and I want to, we're wrapping up here, we're just ending our show and I want to bring up one thing that you mentioned to me before, you said; "A small child gets up as early as possible and doesn't want to go to bed at the end of the day" and I think that if we could all just remember that feeling of when you were a kid.
Robert Burgener: When it was new when it was, when life was a wonder. Those of us who have kids, and I'm not one of them, the u/niverse has been spared me spawning, so far, but when we were kids we got up at the crack of dawn, our parents had to fight to get us to bed.
Ryan Ray: Well Robert listen, we're out of time, make sure to check out Spiritgeek.com or spiritgeek.blogspot.cpm. You're doing your seminars where?
Robert Burgener: It's a coffee house called "The Spot" on Mondays from 3 to 4 o'clock.
Ryan Ray: in Culver City.
Robert Burgener: in Culver City.
Ryan Ray: Robert thank you so much for being here and we look forward to having you back.
Fuz Edwards: Absolutely, it was a pleasure.
Ryan Ray: We're here every Wednesday at 11 AM Pacific time for blog talk, er, Ryan, what the heck is this placed called, Wake Up Radio with Ryan Ray and my co-host Fuz.
Fuz Edwards: Have a good week everyone!
Ryan Ray: Bye bye guys!
