Episode 93: Beyond Wellness

Guest: Hitendra Wadhwa

Hosts: Brandon Nappi 

Theme Song: Something Beautiful, Alsever Lake

Production: Evan Goodchild, Producer (Goodchild Media); Delight Bucko ’27 MDiv, Associate Producer ; Ryan McEvoy, Assistant Producer

Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast 

berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast 

[00:00:00:05 - 00:00:17:01]
Welcome to the Leaders Way podcast. I am Brandon Nappe. I’m thrilled to welcome you to a new season of the podcast. We have so much excitement for the upcoming season. There’s just a general sense of

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energy in the air. It is autumn in New England and the leaves are almost beginning to change. It’s been a season of ample rain, so I think we’re going to get these amazing colors this year. So stay focused on the socials and we’ll do our best to keep you abreast of the incredible color that New England is so known for here in the landscape around Yale. There’s of course this energy of newness as the semester begins. I love the rhythm of university life when students come back and they’re excited to be back and they’re not quite yet completely buried by assignments and reading and papers and they don’t have yet, you know, 500 pages of assigned reading due tomorrow. So there’s a kind of buoyancy in the air and a curiosity and an eagerness to sit with big, big questions and with it also the kind of humility of just not knowing there’s just so much that we don’t know, right? To be a student is to be continually perplexed by

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the vast amount there is to know and just how little of it we understand. So all of that sort of soup of excitement and curiosity and buoyancy is what I’m feeling right now. But also, I’ll also admit to the paradox of the grief that comes with fall as well. The shorter days, it’s darker, it’s harder to squeeze in my evening stroll or my morning run. And there is a kind of letting go and sort of natural grieving that comes with anticipating the trees losing their leaves and the cold and the dark and the kind of armoring and protecting that colder weather invites of us as humans. So we are plunged into the paradox fully here at Yale and here in New England and I am just so

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excited to welcome you to a new season, season six of the Leaders Way podcast. We have upcoming this season theologians and our new Dean at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale who is brilliant and wise. And with Reverend Dr. Gabrielle Thomas, we have other Yale faculty members, psychologists, activists, cult survivors, business school professors.

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It’s the usual potpourri that I hope is as exciting to you as it is to me. We’ll even have our hundredth episode during this season and if the stars align, then we have a very, very special guest to commemorate our hundredth episode. I’m too excited to even say it out loud and they are in such demand that their schedule might not allow the very hundredth episode but it will be sort of in the neighborhood of the hundredth episode. Stay tuned, send us who you think it might be, send us who you would like it to be. But I hope you’re feeling great suspense at the moment. I also want to say, you know, the podcast continues to grow. Thank you, thank you for listening. Thank you for this community of learning and exploring, of theological reflection, of spiritual reflection, conversations around healing this aching and divided world are so dear to my heart. So I invite you to, you know, comment on the podcast on social media, you know, Facebook and on Instagram. You can find us in those spaces. Leave us a review that’s always so helpful. Tell us what you really cherish. Provide us with feedback. We love hearing from you. Give us episode recommendations. We want all the things. And just know how important this community of reflection has become. So I look forward to seeing you on socials if you’re there and learning from you and what you’re longing for, where your curiosities are. So thank you for listening and I’m thrilled to introduce this new guest to kick off the season, Hetendra Wadwa.

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Hetendra has an MBA and PhD from MIT Sloan School of Management. And what makes Hetendra so interesting is he’s teaching a course in spirituality and leadership and business at Columbia Business School. He began his academic career studying mathematics. He’s worked as a consultant for McKinsey and now he in many ways is a spiritual teacher both within Columbia Business School but beyond at his mentor institute. His book, “Inner Mastery, Outer Impact, How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success” is from Hatchet Book Group, came out a couple of years ago. He’s the founder of Mentor Institute. He’s coached dozens of Fortune 100 C-suite executives.

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His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fortune Forbes, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and more. He’s got a beautiful podcast called “Intersections” where he invites thought leaders and practitioners to reflect on the role of spirit and leadership. He’s also become a kind of soul friend to me and he has a wonderful way of helping folks to discover the presence of soul and spirit, the presence of God deep within them and then to use that

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as a way of living a life of meaning, purpose and integrity. Helping them to really find their deepest calling in life and I am thrilled that he exists in the world and I’m thrilled that he’s come on this within edition of “Leaders Way”. Within is our way of describing episodes that have a special focus on contemplative practice, spirituality and healing in the world. In this inaugural episode of the season, this within episode of the season, I hope you’ll enjoy what I think is just a beautiful conversation with a beautiful soul.

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Welcome to Within, a contemplative segment within the “Leaders Way” podcast that explores the convergence of mental health, art and spirituality through authentic conversations across wisdom traditions about personal and collective transformation. We welcome artists, musicians, spiritual teachers and healers to reflect on the sacred wisdom needed to heal the world’s deepest wounds. Within examines the inner path to wholeness, not through quick fixes or spiritual bypassing, but through courageous engagement with life’s profound challenges.

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The Ten for Wadhwa, welcome to the “Leaders Way” podcast. It’s so great to have you here. It is wonderful to be here with you, Brandon. What a joy. To be in your presence feels like to be in the presence of an old friend. We’ve known each other for about a year, but somehow I feel like our connection transcends that small amount of time. I came to know you through your beautiful book, “Intermastery, Outer Impact”. We’ll certainly talk about that.

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We’ll talk about your incredible course at Columbia Business School.

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I’d love to hear you tell your story, specifically the story of your spiritual evolution and unfolding. How did you come to your own spiritual life? How did you develop the courage to weave this into your professional life so explicitly?

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I love the premise of that question that we are meant to ultimately bring these two worlds together, but it requires courage.

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From a very early age, I have been very drawn to the metaphysics of life. What lies behind and beyond the portal of death? Where did I truly come from before I landed in my mother’s womb?

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I would go out at night and look at the stars. I would just feel a certain almost communion that was happening between me and the skies and each star out there. It just seemed like we were more united and connected than what just the pure physical sense of separatedness of identity suggested was true.

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Sometimes I would wonder, I’d look at people and look at their eyes and I would just…

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There is something flowing here between them and me. Why are some people in my family and other people supposedly not my family? Anyway, these questions were haunting me.

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Fortunately, growing up in India and having a father who was very curious as well about mysticism and the deeper questioning of life’s true essence and purpose, I found some beautiful books on his bookshelf, very illuminating across from different faiths, these kinds of questions being pursued by the masters.

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When I was about 10, my parents turned their lives, both my mom and dad, very devotionally onto a deeper pursuit of truth and self-realization and all the teachings of a modern, de-mystic, Yogananda.

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That was very soul-affirming and revelatory for me because I started to suddenly be invested in these communities of truth seekers, others who were on that path from around the world, who had converged to India on certain festivals and special events and occasions. My parents would host these people at home and suddenly I saw the whole world as family.

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Then my mother started to learn the harmonium, which is this very accordion-like, very beautiful instrument through which one can just activate more of a devotional heart state through chance and chanting. That became a pathway into divine communion for me as well, the teachings of Yogananda in modern-day English, which is kind of like the only language I have any kind of working knowledge of.

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Rather than have to go to master and learn Sanskrit to understand the Indian scriptures from a more authentic source, I felt that Yogananda was a modern-day authentic source. That became very helpful being in the company of monks and nuns, people who had completely devoted their life to the serious search for divine connection and communion. Any or all of that just swept me off my feet. I was just in my teens that time. But on the outside, I was still very drawn to the modern-day ambition and hunger for success. Early on, it was in the field of mathematics. I was very drawn to, again, the search for beauty and patterns and relationships and certainty and timeless truths, which is in a sense what mathematics is about.

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And then from there, came to the United States and started business and went into strategic consulting and doing startup life and work here in the US. To your point, at that time, my professional life was somewhat removed from my deeper spiritual hungers. I had almost assumed that they had to be that way, that my spiritual life would be acquired, and if you want to call it somewhat private, in our world that I would operate with. And then from the outside, I’d be conforming with the fashions of the day and the expectations of how what is meant to be and live and compete and all of that. And then these adventures in the world just started to become more and more flat for me. They were not really landing with my soul. And a decade would go by, and then a few more years, and now my 20s had gone by, and I was in my mid-30s, and I realized, like, “Hetanra, you’re still searching for what you want to be when you grow up.” Because every profession you looked at, academia, consulting, startup, work, has fulfilled you at some level, but not at a complete enough level. So you, after a while, felt that there has to be more. There has to be more in the adventure that we take on in life. So that’s the time that I came to New York and started to teach at Columbia.

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And it was also coincidental with a deepening of my spiritual life, my commitment to take on the daily practice of technique, of meditation, that Yogananda had taught, and was the very centerpiece of that. And I was able to show of his path, you know, as a mystical practice to help deepen our connection with our soul and the divine. And I had not really put that discipline together over the course of my teens and 20s. And so here I was finally saying, like, “Ah, my soul is hungry here.” I know that this path is meant to give that to me, and I just haven’t put into it what I was committed to, but was keeping on deferring into the future. And as I started to do that inner tilling of the soil, something started to shift, you know, from the outside. Columbia Business School became a very sweet, receptive, open kind of home for me, and I transitioned my teaching there from conventional business, like marketing and strategy in these kinds of classes, which were very helpful for me to just horn the craft of teaching, build a rapport and connection with the students, and some, you know, strong trust with the administration, the institution, my faculty colleagues. And then I could take my flights of fancy, and then I could go back to them and say, you know, “What if I taught this class? What if I put in these ideas?” And they would look at me and say, “But, Heteno, where’s the science? Where is the group points?” And then I would go around the world and I would research what is the latest that psychologists and psychotherapists and neuroscientists and others have discovered and found about the human condition and human potential and the spiritual nurturing of the soul and all of that. And therefore, about 20 years ago, in the course of about four or five years, I was able to put together a curriculum that passed muster with my very discerning faculty colleagues, and I was permitted to put it out there in the classroom. And the students’ response itself was so heartwarming, so affirming to how we’re living at a point in human history where these hungers are growing and they’re deepening and more and more becoming normalized in society. And so the students really helped me be able to make a stronger case to the institution and ultimately to my own self, that this is where my ultimate calling lay, gradually from there it has developed into an institute through which I’ve been able to put more of the work out into the world. And it’s brought me in the presence and in the company of wonderful souls like you, Brandon, through which I just look back now and smile and just think, “Oh, so, so grateful.” And one of the core thesis in this last few years for me, therefore, as a point of self-discovery, really, through the steps that have been taken, is again the ultimate premise of your question, which is this notion of integration, that the inner and outer are not meant to be separate at all. And the mystical and the material, they’re meant to ultimately be one. And what would it take and what can each of us do in our lives to deepen the inner and then more and more harmonize and express and connect it with the outer? Oh, thank you. You know, I’m reminded of this seemingly unimportant detail in the Gospel where, just before Jesus is crucified, his captors take off his garment. And the Gospel writer is very clear to say that this is a very special garment because it’s woven from the top to the bottom. It’s all one piece.

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And I can remember, distinctively, a professor of mine in my undergraduate theology class saying that for him, this was one of his most beloved Scripture passages because it talked about the integration, metaphorically, of the spiritual life. That the life we’re trying to live is not many, many pieces grafted together, that kind of incoherence that is, in some ways, modern life, but that we wear this one single garment, that we’ve integrated all the pieces, right? We’re not trying to balance competing forces. We’re trying to integrate them all like a garment woven from one piece. And I hear that integration. And what I hear in your story that actually led to it is a kind of restlessness. And this is so important from my own Christian tradition. It comes from Augustine and others, that the heart is fundamentally restless until it finds its home and God. And I wondered, do you detect some of this restlessness in your students? I mean, I was amazed to gather with you. You were so kind to invite me to that class at Columbia, which I hope you’ll talk about now. Over 50 students in rapt attention, do you sense in them a kind of restlessness and hunger that’s being realized in their taking this beautiful class of yours?

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It is absolutely there. And I think it’s there in all of us, if only we were paying attention. I like to talk about and think about ways of knowing.

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And one way to think about it is that there is a scientific mind, the rational, analytical, evidence-based. There is the more faith-based way of just saying like, this is what I learned from my culture or from my scripture or from my pastor. So there’s the faith-based way of knowing. And then there’s life itself. It teaches us lots of things, these experiences. But these are all three, whether it’s experience of faith or science. These are outer ways of knowing through our senses. But then there are inner ways of knowing. What are the inner experiences we are having? What is the inner science of running experiments and discovering whether when we change our behavior this way or change our attitude that way or add this practice to our daily life, whether that makes us any healthier or happier or more harmonized. And then there’s also not just inner experience and inner science, but also in some ways, you know, faith, you know, the capacity to tune in and just kind of listen to the voice within. And I remember this moment where I was in Botswana and my family and I had gone out there on the traditional, adventuresome African safari. And it was beautiful and it was remarkable. The incredible just grandeur of nature and all its forms, both in the animal and the plant world. And yet there was something that was just irking me because every now and then we would pass it by and it didn’t look that impressive, but it was there. So I paused my travel guide a little bit and asked him, I was like, what are these mounds, these big lofty mounds that I see? And he says, I was wondering if you’d ever ask, like, those are termite hills. And so I said, oh, really? These tall? These are termite hills? And he said, yes. And he said, would you like to know a few things about them? And I said, sure, sure. So then he started to talk to us. He paused at one of them and we looked at it with more attention. And so it turns out that these termite hills are the tallest non manmade constructions in nature.

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What an irony that the tallest are not made by giraffes and elephants. They’re like termite.

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Towering, towering structures. And these termite hills house millions of termites, any one of these hills, millions of termites. And they have, you know, which I discovered later through some study, an article in Scientific American about these termite hills, etc. They have intricate tunneling inside them in order to provide almost like air conditioning and things. And then some of these termites are soldier termites and they protect the termite hill from risks and dangers on the outside. And some of them are construction worker termites, you know, and what have you. And I’m thinking, my God, do they have like colleges and universities, disciplines? I mean, how do millions of termites coordinate with themselves to produce this thing? And then I discovered that their average lifespan is about 10 months to 12 months and that it takes about 60, 60 years to actually fully develop this termite hill. So can you imagine working selflessly generation upon generation with this dream of constructing something which will take 60 generations to fully manifest? And where does that intelligence come from?

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Where is that capacity to collaborate and coordinate and know what role you’re meant to play and how you respond to sudden shifts in the environment and risks and threats that come up? And it got me to wonder as to whether behind life and the universe lies this infinite intelligence, you know, call it God, you know, the divine, the force, you know, a heavenly father, a divine mother, what have you.

[00:24:05:16 - 00:26:53:00]
And that infinite intelligence has not only vested intelligence and capacity in those of us who’ve gone to esteemed institutions and have the privilege of great education, but in whatever situation life has put you in and me in, we are fully vested from within with the guidance we need and clarity we need to play that role well in that moment or for that chapter of our life. If only we knew if only we knew where to turn and attune ourselves from. And so, you know, even that word, you know, education has these Latin roots, which is either education or education, right? As perhaps you’re aware, education means, you know, filling in something from the outside and education means awakening something from from the inside. And I think that is a central question that every university should be asking itself today. Every education, educational teacher, leader, etc, should be asking, you know, which is the form of education we need to give our students? And so this class that you mentioned, which you were so kind enough to join me in and participate in and bring your beautiful presence into is a class that is helping to turn our students from the outer acquisition. Of knowledge into the inner awakening that was always there as a latent hunger that hadn’t perhaps been fully honored. But when you do, it naturally leads you to so many realizations and answers that then prepares you, I suppose, to be better receptacles for all the outer knowledge that you can gain. You use this term “inner core” in the book, which is so beautiful and powerful. And, you know, you return to it so many times in the days that I spent with you in the course. And I wonder if you can speak to this because what I watched as I saw the light bulb going off over many, many heads, and I saw it as faces changed. I saw it as I sensed this opening of the heart and small group conversations, you know, that I shared with students is this surprise, this discovery, this excitement that my little life is connected to the great life of God. And that I have a kind of trail of breadcrumbs that can help me return to my source built into me somehow. This was a beautiful revelation that I watched student after student come to. And you call this the inner core. I’m wondering if you could use your own language. I tried with my language. But how do you like to talk about this in your own life and with students?

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You know, the funny thing is when I started my class about 20 years ago, I was being quite careful to not lean into ideas and topics that might disenfranchise a significant percentage of the student body today. So I was I was talking about what ultimately became the five energies of purpose and wisdom and growth and and love and self realization sort of like mind, heart, body, spirit, the growth thrown in as a as a fifth element.

[00:27:32:00 - 00:30:20:09]
And I was leaving it there. And then over the course of the first few years, some students would come to me and they would say, Professor, you’ve really connected me with my core. You know, I think you really helped me understand sort of how to operate for my core. You know, I want anyway. And I started to discover through their own language to me how there was a single unifying idea that I should ground these five energies in. And as I started to organize my thinking about that, I realized, well, this is, after all, what every great mystical spiritual tradition has been about, which is that it’s ultimately about the same one thing, which is call it what you may. So the awakening, so connection, you know, God communion, you know, that God space within each of us, that unique divine spark within each of us. And it’s one, you know, and then from that one manifest many, you know, the we can call it the five energies, we can call it all the behaviors, actions, motivations, feelings, thoughts, you know, ideas, roles that we play in life. You know, that’s fine. We can get, we can get there. But starting from that one, and in order to make it accessible to the broad audience in the class, I describe it in the following kinds of ways that within you and within me, there is the space of highest possibility in us. From where our true self arises, our best self. And when you are there, when I’m there, then we have beyond ego, we have beyond attachments, we have beyond insecurities. And there are even times when we could see when we operate from that place that we are beyond personality, we are beyond the grip of our addictions and habits, because something just allows us to transcend and operate from the truest place within. And now some people might say that that’s, it’s in a much truest place is my personality. You know, that’s who I am, you know, I’m this kind of person and I, I challenge them then and say, okay, you know, let’s just do a thought experiment. Let’s assume that you were walking, you know, a bit a loved one, let’s say a son or daughter or a nephew or niece or someone, you know, young, who’s gripping your hand eight, nine years old, seven years old, and they broke away from your grip and they were running across the street in Manhattan, like on Broadway. Now, let’s say you’re an introvert. Would you feel more true to yourself just being a little bit shy and reserved and not attracting attention even while Joey is running across the street in a mad dash with traffic all around them? Or would you feel more true to yourself just shouting out at the top of your voice being as gregarious as you can in that moment, attracting all the attention you can, which is, hey, please stop Joey, Joey, come back.

[00:30:21:09 - 00:31:38:20]
And just a moment’s reflection helps us understand that, in fact, the association of my true self with my personality is actually a little bit limiting in moments where I have to act differently from my personality in order to be my best self, and I really deeply, deeply care about some cause. So that notion of honoring that space within everybody and inviting them to discover and honor that and then build pathways through which to both center in that and then express that has become a very unifying treatment to these ideas of, you know, God-connection, soul-connection. Because it’s really nice that from across the secular to religious kind of spectrums and all of the fates in the world, I haven’t had thus far even a single person come to me and say, but professor, I don’t agree with you. I don’t have a core. I don’t know. Nobody says that. So there’s something there, I think, to create a more unified foundation, perhaps, you know, for communities and societies around honoring the call of the soul, call of the core, call of the divine spark.

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Well, this is a moment of profound political division.

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So many Americans right now are reporting unprecedented levels of stress and worry, trust in nearly every conceivable institution from politics to government and business, our religion at all time low universities. And I wonder in the midst of this moment of eroded trust, how do you think this awakening to our inner core might provide a path forward where there doesn’t at the moment seem to be a path? And many have found one in Christian fundamentalism, extreme political expressions on both sides. Can this return to the inner core provide some way of wisdom through this moment of forgetfulness?

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That’s painful aspect of our world today and you have put it so heart-feltly and thoughtfully. I appreciate that very much. Yeah, I appreciate that very much. I think there’s a certain humbling that is coming to us in these moments where you start to realize how with whatever deep capacities we have built in the expansive leaps science has taken, technology has taken and beyond, that ultimately we still feel a little bit helpless with regard to some of these forces that are being unleashed and our capacity. Wherever we might be on that spectrum of very little power to a lot of power, very little wealth to a lot of wealth, very little intellect to a lot of intellect, whatever it is, the dimension that you pick, you know, people are feeling, I think somewhat humbled and helpless at their individual capacity to affect the kind of change that they dream of and want and seek from the world. And it takes me back to that moment in human history where we were facing another very significant rupture and that was in the 1800s with the Civil War here in the United States. And rising in that moment was the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

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And in the midst of that time of tremendous peril where it wasn’t even clear that the Union forces of the North were going to emerge victorious, they were not doing that well, a friend of his visited him in the White House and wanted to just reassure him and have said something to him like, “Mr. President, do not worry because God is on our side.”

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And Lincoln responded, he said, “I’m not at all worried if God is on my side. What I worry is, am I on God’s side?”

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There’s something very profound there around the idea that, you know, as Martin Luther King would have said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends to a justice, it bends to a justice. What if we just take it on faith that it bends to a justice? What if there is, in fact, a master puppeteer out there, you know, just broadcasting all kinds of goodwill and ideas and inspiration and guidance, collectively to humanity and to those of us who can be in tune? And what if, therefore, our ambition should not be as much to chart the path forward, to actually create these kinds of ambitions and goals for a more reformed society, to fight the fight, you know, for doing what is our right, but instead to just strive to do what is right?

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And to get to do what is right, we surrender, we open up, we attune ourselves and then we follow, we follow. Sometimes I like to say, you know, the great leaders were great followers, great followers of that inner light, you know, that resides within each of us that are poor. There was an American journalist who went to Gandhi and said, Mr. Gandhi, so much of your work has been fueled by your conscience. You keep referring to that, your inner voice. But tell me one thing. There are also people who have done demonic and evil things, who claim to have listened to a voice and followed a certain something that spoke to them from within.

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So isn’t that also potentially a dangerous path to preach in the world? And don’t you first have to make 100% sure that this is the right voice and only then should you surrender to it?

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And Gandhi said, looked at me and he was almost like rolling his eyes as if like, what are you saying? And he said, so Gandhi said, it’s the exact opposite. You first have to surrender and then you will know that you’re listening to your inner voice.

[00:37:02:05 - 00:37:40:21]
What a beautiful idea that A, we all have this capacity within us. B, like Abraham Lincoln, we should be striving not to unleash our ambitions and vision on the world, but to seek to be on God’s side because God already has ambitions and vision for the world. A pure, perfect, beautiful, integrated vision. And then C, like Gandhi, the way to do that is by starting from a place of just deep surrender, putting our own passions, judgments, you know, hungers, egos, you know, etc.

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And from the place of just like, as Mother trees, I would say, just be a pure drop of water in which God’s light can shine. How do we be that pure drop of water in which God’s light can shine? And it’s not just a on demand kind of thing, perhaps in the early stages of our spiritual evolution. It might take a lot of daily telling of the soil practices to be developed, disciplines to be developed that over a period of time start to reveal to us the riches within because we’ve kind of earned our way into it.

[00:38:11:21 - 00:39:35:26]
Oh, I love that you’re leaving us with this image from Mother Teresa. And I want folks to know how to engage more deeply with your work. Of course, we’ve, you can apply to Columbia Business School and come and take your class. My friends at the Yale School of Management are, will be upset with me to encourage them to do that. They can read your beautiful book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. I wonder, do you want to share also a little bit about what’s happening in Mentora, your podcast, and what’s going on? And you’ve been so generous with providing so many avenues to learn with you. So I wonder, you know, how can folks get to know you a little more, partner with you? And what do you have on the front burner that you’re cooking up that we haven’t yet talked about? Yeah, no, thank you for asking. Well, first, I just want to thank you and just greet your listeners and help them know that just by spending more time with Brandon, you’re already getting, you know, the best of anything that I could teach because you exemplify it, you live it. It is so vivid and palpable just in the flow of spirit, you know, that you exude in the thoughts and ideas that you put out there, the heartfelt ways in which you connect. And I am sure therefore that just through the platform of your podcast and work in the world, you know, you’re already feeding their souls with the best.

[00:39:37:13 - 00:40:36:06]
Yeah, in my work, well, I have I have an announcement to make it some, you know, in some ways, which is after 20 years of teaching my class at Columbia, I am retiring that class this year. And dedicating my immediate energies to the further development and manifestation of this work through the Mentor Institute. We are re-Christianing it, the Mentor Institute for Soul Awakening, so that I can even further double down on that connection between the spiritual and the material even more freely and openly. And it is quite possible that in the year and years ahead that I reemerge with a university class at Columbia and beyond that will in that case have taken that one leap forward from my personal leadership and success class that led to the emergence of my book and publishing of that work in a mastery outer impact into this sort of pursuit of soul awakening.

[00:40:37:14 - 00:41:36:25]
I’ve been working on an instrument called the Charter for the Soul that will become quite central to the next steps I take in this arena. The simple easy ways for anyone to access more is through, as you mentioned, my newsletter, which you can sign up for on hetendra.com, just my first name dot com, and also my podcast, which I also have offered, you know, through various podcast channels, but also on my podcast. On my hetendra.com newsletter. And there are certain other platforms that step by step we are building to be able to put this work out there in the world and make it accessible to as many as who are drawn to it. There is a coaching from the mystic core for those who are invested in wanting to learn to coach, not from the mind and the body only, but also from the soul. There is a leading from the mystic core, which is an invitation based, you know, convening of of influencers and leaders in the world.

[00:41:37:26 - 00:41:57:13]
There is work we’re doing in the public education arena with partners in the prison system as well in California, step by step, step by step. We’re working towards putting this foundation together so that in the years ahead, those who feel drawn to it can can come and drink from this little fountain in the making.

[00:41:58:25 - 00:42:17:05]
Thank you for shining such a bright light in our world hetendra. It’s our custom to close with a rapid fire segment that we call Holy Cow, as our listeners are astounded to learn things about you that they maybe are hearing for the very first time.

[00:42:19:05 - 00:42:37:26]
And we named this segment after our mascot here at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, Luke, the wing to Ox, which for folks watching the podcast, you’ll see over my shoulder. So the first question is, what do people most misunderstand about you or about the work that you do?

[00:42:38:29 - 00:43:21:20]
There is at times a view that I am seeking to claim a certain ground or opposition on something. And I do get very passionate about ideas and practices and experiences. And yet, at the very core of my being, I see myself as a seeker, as one that has so far only purged into divine, a small little fraction, an infinitesimally small fraction of truth, which I consider in all its grandeur to be so vast and so beautiful and so much still in the process of unfolding and discovery.

[00:43:22:22 - 00:43:24:15]
What’s your go-to comfort food?

[00:43:26:24 - 00:44:01:21]
Well, it is interesting because I’ve changed my palette and its tastes over the years, partly because I had a health crisis that opened my eyes up to the value of being more of an owner and a steward, of what I put into my body, and it really helped me refine reform along those ways. And so we’re talking about comfort foods, so this might surprise us. But more and more, I’m really enjoying salads and soups and frankly, just almonds.

[00:44:03:06 - 00:44:28:06]
Marty Almond is this soy-coated almonds thing that I get. I snack on and I sometimes use it to do intermittent fasting just with those almonds. But yeah, soup, salads, almonds. I love it. I knew we had things in common. Those are my super food groups. I carry almonds in the car at all times. My wife teases me about my car almonds.

[00:44:56:03 - 00:44:39:19]
What life lesson are you still learning? Ah, so many, so many. But if I had to point to one, I would say how we can learn from our children.

[00:44:41:08 - 00:46:27:05]
We are blessed to have one, you know, a daughter. She’s 24 now. And in so many ways, unexpectedly, there are so many lessons I’ve learned over the course of the years from her. And even just watching the dynamics between her and, you know, her mother, my wife, between her and my mother, you know, her grandmother, between her and the world. And then using those to figure out sort of how to really understand my own role, less as a soul shaper and more as just a gardener, you know, who’s been given a seed and that seed is going to manifest into who knows, you know, you might assume it’s a daffodil because you’re a daffodil. But maybe it’ll be a rose, you know, maybe it’ll be a whole different flower of different petal of different color. And so just allowing yourself both the, you know, sense of surrender and openness to magically let that unfold. And yet at the same time, you know, take on the responsibility of the gardener to make sure you water and nurture and offer what you can. So I think she’s been in some ways my greatest teacher in the last few years. And finally, what keeps you going when your inner critic might want you to stop to cease and desist? I have found it very helpful to befriend the institution of death, knowing material death, physical death, knowing that it is the one guaranteed moment and experience that we’re going to have in the future. Anything and everything else, like, who knows? I was at an airport once and we were just picking up a baggage and suddenly there was an announcement about a, you know, bomb threat.

[00:46:28:06 - 00:46:39:12]
And people just dropped their bags wherever they were and just raced out the door, raced out the door. If you had asked that same individual when they had just picked up the bag from the luggage belt,

[00:46:40:22 - 00:46:51:02]
three seconds later, where would you be? They would say, of course I can predict it, but the 100% guarantee that with my bag, I would be at the gate of this terminal.

[00:46:52:17 - 00:47:47:05]
You know, that’s what they were predicted. And yet three seconds later, they were already vastly out of the gate because they had run, but the bag was inside, you know. So I use it as an example to show people like how little we know about the future, except the one thing that we want to be dead at some point physically. So if you start with that recognition, then you start to realize, my heavens, you know, how precious the moments of life are, how precious the moments of life are, and how fleeting this whole sort of adventure is. And so what would it take for us to play our role well? What would it take for us to see life as a theater? You know, where each of us has to kind of do our part, as Shakespeare would say, and then depart, you know, depart gracefully. And so that creates a sense of, you know, spacious urgency for me that on the one hand, like, you know, I’m just one part of a larger whole, and each of us is going to play our role, and then the whole, you know, the whole drama will come together beautifully. But in doing that, I better play it well.

[00:47:48:14 - 00:47:51:20]
Both things are true. Well, thank you for

[00:47:53:24 - 00:47:59:15]
concluding on a paradox and an invitation to Memento Mori.

[00:48:01:05 - 00:48:18:00]
Tindra Wadwath, thank you. It’s been a beautiful conversation. Thank you for all the work that you do in the world and blessings on the next Unfolding. Yeah, thank you to you too, Brandon. You are such a light in the world, and I am just so grateful to have been in this conversation with you and for our friendship.

[00:48:19:24 - 00:48:35:06]
Thank you for listening to Within, the contemplative segment of the Leaders Way podcast. We trust this conversation has provided nourishment for your own growing and healing. Until next time, may you find deep peace and courage in all you do.