#30 Breaking: How a Finance Broker Found Inner Peace Through Meditation! @tomcronin

Taniastanly (00:10.466)
Okay.

Hey, everyone. Today we have Tom Cronin, renowned meditation teacher, author of six books, including the film book project, The Portal, founder of the Stillness Project, speaker, and he's also a transformation coach hosting retreats all over the planet. I'm so excited to welcome Tom Cronin to the Celeste of All podcast. How are you doing, Tom?

Tom Cronin (00:34.198)
I'm very well, thanks. Great to be here. Looking forward to our chat today.

Taniastanly (00:40.092)
Tom, are, you were a finance broker for 26 years, right? And then you speak about something called a Rashi that occurred in your life, which made you deviate from your path and then to dive into whatever the meditation and all of the projects that you're undertaking right now. Can you tell us what exactly happened and what is a Rashi?

Tom Cronin (01:01.314)
Hmm. So, Arashi, we'll start with that. Arashi is a force of evolutionary change that happens where change becomes unconditional. You can't ignore it. So, we can ignore change and pain just gets greater and greater. But Arashi is where it's either break down or break through. And so, Arashi is that definitive moment where the road continues on to a point where there's now a fork and you can't continue on the current trajectory. It must pivot.

deviate either one way or the other way. It's either up or down. And so for me, I meet, I went into a rashy where I'd been getting cues from the universe to change what I was doing. So I was in finance, I was a broker, I was doing lots of drugs and drinking and partying and really ignoring all the symptoms. The symptoms was I was getting anxiety, I was getting panic attacks, I was getting depression, I was getting insomnia. And this continued to morph eventually into a full blown nervous breakdown and

that's when the Rashi came. So all along the way for many years, the universe was saying, don't do this. No, don't do this. And that's what the symptoms were, which was the Q and all pain and suffering and chaos and discord or disorder is really a universal intelligence that's trying to guide us into a greater life of harmony, health and happiness. But if we ignore it, then we get symptoms, which is symptoms of the life that we're living. And I ignored and ignored and then

eventually the Rashi came and that's where it became really a crisis point where it was break down or break through. And I was really at that point where I was questioning whether I wanted to go on with life. I was, you know, so dark and so challenged and so miserable in who I'd become and the life that I was living that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to keep going. And that's when I found meditation and that was one of those kind of

very significant moments in our life and many of us will go through them, whether it's in our relationship, which breaks down or breaks through in our career, which is break down or break through our business. And we even see it in civilizations as well. And I think as a civilization, we're moving closer towards a rash as well, which is another conversation, which maybe we'll touch on today.

Taniastanly (03:12.356)
What exactly was that moment where, when you say a breakdown, right, like, I think a lot of us go through these moments, but then none of us think about meditation. What exactly happened? Like, what was that moment when, you you felt like, okay, something has to change right now? And then how did you embark on meditation? How did you come across meditation? Because not a lot of many people get into it, right?

Tom Cronin (03:36.044)
Yeah, absolutely. And particularly where I was, you know, I was on a massive trading room floor with 160 guys yelling and screaming. I went to an all boys Catholic school. grew up on a farm. So I've never really come across meditation. It was one of those things. And I've learned more and more these days to just trust the universe and the information that the universe delivers to us. And it's always there kind of, there's a great book by Gabby Bernstein, a friend of mine, she says the universe has your back. And so at that time,

Even though I was in a very dark place, I was seeing doctors, I was seeing psychiatrists, was seeing psychologists, I was put on medication, but I kind of didn't feel like I was healing. I didn't feel like I was improving. I just got even to some respects more miserable. But then I was watching a documentary about a property developer. I was having mental health leave from work. I was sitting at home, unable to really go to work and even leave the house sometimes because I was in a pretty bad way. And this documentary was about

this property developer who was very successful, which is why I was watching it. But there was a tiny segment in that story where he talked about how we use meditation as a tool for his success. And that was one of those epiphany moments where they actually showed him sitting in a chair and he was wearing a suit and he was sitting in a chair and he was meditating and he was a businessman with a suit, a tie, sitting in a chair meditating. And I'd always thought, you know, meditation was something that monks did in Tibet, but here was this businessman, lived in Melbourne and Australia.

Taniastanly (04:59.545)
Yeah.

Tom Cronin (05:01.484)
And so that was like a real, okay, this is something that I need in my life. was like, that was the light bulb moment.

Taniastanly (05:09.564)
And then from there, where did you go to learn meditation? you know, I don't know if there's enough right now, there's way too much information about meditation. So there could be an information overload happening right now. But for you from there, where did you go? Which teacher did you seek? Did you like go to India or did you travel? How is it from there?

Tom Cronin (05:17.102)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (05:30.328)
Yeah, really interesting. This is for a lot of the young people listening. might be bit bewildered by this, but I didn't have Google. I didn't have an iPhone, didn't have an app, iPad. there was no internet. So what happened was I picked up the yellow pages and I looked up for meditation. And that's when I started ringing a lot of centers that provide a meditation within Sydney. And I remember actually opening up the yellow page. I still remember it to this day. And when you open up the other pages, some businesses could highlight their business by putting their name in red.

Taniastanly (05:38.287)
You

Tom Cronin (05:59.756)
And I remember looking up meditation and then going down the page and there was in bright red, said transcendental meditation. And that was something that really grabbed my attention, not because it was in red, but because of the word transcendental. And I really thought of transcending as something like getting out of it or getting away from something. And that's what I've been doing for 10 years of my life with the drugs and the drinking. And so it was weird that I had this idea of transcending, but with meditation rather than drugs. So that really caught my eye. I

Taniastanly (06:08.239)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (06:27.628)
rang up all the different centers and tried lots of different techniques. But this one, Transcendental Meditation, there was a teacher in Sydney, was an American, of all things. And he was based in Sydney and he'd been studying and working with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi back in India and now has had based himself in Sydney and set up a center there. So I learned Transcendental Meditation, otherwise also known as Vedic Meditation. And that was when things really changed for me very, very quickly within the first week or two, I noticed significant changes.

in my health and in my state of mind, in my well-being. And surprisingly, I went back to work for 16 more years as a broker, but just all the drinking and the drugs went away and I just was meditating every day.

Taniastanly (07:11.567)
So what is your spirituality routine like right now?

Tom Cronin (07:16.374)
Well, I would say for me now at this point in time after being on this path for 28 years and having first been initiated into the process of transcending these days, it's more of a 24 seven experience, realizing that everything is spiritual, the entire existence, whether we want to look into quantum physics, or whether we want to look into spirituality is that there's form and phenomenon, and then there's formlessness, the unmanifest and eternality, and the two interweave together as one unified experience.

Taniastanly (07:29.615)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Tom Cronin (07:45.132)
So spirituality is something that happens when I'm doing my sadhana, which is my daily practice, where I transcend the world of form and phenomenon and access that field. That's formlessness, it's celestial, it's ethereal, it's untangible, but it's also tangible in that you start to experience it as a unified experience in what we call presence or being. But it's something over time through the consistency of your practice that you start to integrate that in everything.

the food that you're eating and the sun that's shining on your skin and the wind that's blowing through your hair and the raindrops on the tarmac that smell on a summer's day and everything becomes a spiritual experience. But I think in the early days, it's important we have certain practices that are going to enhance the awareness and the realization of this reality that's beyond physicality. And so whether it's breath work or plant medicine or yoga or qigong or

meditation, I think it's important we have some form of practice on a daily basis that we compartmentalize that gives us a break from our phones and our work and our money and our partners and our kids in our houses to realize that there's something deeper and subtler than the world of form and phenomenon.

Taniastanly (08:55.951)
It's beautiful. You spoke about how you were into drugs and all of that during that time, right, when you were stressed out. You know, in UAE, where we are from, there's so many people who are into smoking. There's no drugs that you get here, or maybe you do, I don't know. But a lot of them are into smoking. Why do you think this is happening? Do you find out, why is this happening? And how can meditation change it? Like, what does meditation do to someone who's addicted to all of these things?

Tom Cronin (09:24.699)
I think what we're all addicted to is really what we're trying to find is ourselves. And when I say that, it sounds really cliched and a cheap meme, but really what we're trying to find is our divine nature. And our divine nature is incredibly blissful. It's incredibly loving. It's just that what we tend to do is go to the shortest route possible. So we're all looking for fulfillment. We're all looking for the ultimate source of bliss. It's just that we've become very good at creating the accessibility to that through other things like ice cream, smoking,

drinking, whatever it is. And it's natural for all animals to find the shortest route to pleasure. If you take cows, for instance, and put them in a paddock, they'll eat grass all day long. But if you put a sugar block on a table, they'll lick that sugar block all day long. And that will get really unhealthy for them, even though it's unhealthy. And even though they might even know that it's unhealthy, they'll still do that. And that's partly the nature of all animals and the humans are being just a sophisticated animal where we've just developed the

Taniastanly (10:09.219)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (10:20.916)
ability to access pleasure very, very quickly. Now, it's just that we pay a price for that because it's an unsustainable short term dopamine hit of pleasure, rather than a really deep lasting, sustainable blissful pleasure that arises from deep within. And that's something that meditation helps us to access and stabilize over time by not looking for the shortest and the quickest and the easiest route to pleasure, but certainly the one that is the most lasting.

Taniastanly (10:49.772)
You said that you've worked in companies like Amazon, Oracle, Coca-Cola, et cetera, right? These are companies where they're probably very cutthroat and you have to stick to deadlines and very logical kind of companies. How do you introduce this idea of meditation to them? mean, do they contact you or you contact them? How do you convince them to take up meditation as part of their routine?

Tom Cronin (11:15.618)
Yeah, it's, the good thing with meditation now is that we've learned to find there are numerous benefits to it. Initially, it was a very spiritual practice that people used to get to enlightenment. But what we've discovered in the Western world that it also has many benefits in that it increases brain functionality, reduces absenteeism from work. It increases, productivity and efficiency and improve sleep and improves creativity and adaptive capacity. So when we take some of the components of the benefits of meditation,

pitch that to a large organization where we say, hey, this is actually going to improve your bottom line, which is their primary objective. Then they're like, well, that just makes sense. And there was a study done by PwC, which interestingly, I posted this today on LinkedIn, that the study found that for every $1 a company spends on improving the mental health of their staff, they return on average $2.30 back as an improvement in that investment.

Taniastanly (11:53.455)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (12:10.286)
But for small businesses in the mining sector, it's up to $14 return on that investment because of things like increased productivity, brain efficiency, better, you know, coworking environment and also, yeah, reduced absenteeism. So what we're finding now is that these many benefits of meditation, it's, worth companies investing in tools that are going to improve the mental health of their staff. And meditation just happens to be what I believe one of the most effective tools.

to reduce things like anxiety, depression, insomnia and panic attacks.

Taniastanly (12:46.329)
So once you go and do your retreat, et cetera, these companies, how do they change the way they work? Do they have these meditation time in the morning, or how do they try to incorporate that into their regular work routine?

Tom Cronin (13:02.54)
Yeah, we're not quite yet there with a lot of companies where it becomes an integrated part of their day. Oprah Winfrey, she has within her entire company, everyone meditates and they meditate in the company at nine in the morning. So everyone stops work at nine in the morning and they all meditate and at 4pm in the afternoon, everyone stops work and they all meditate together. And she said it's completely changed her company and the relationships within the company. Most companies aren't quite yet there to enforce such a sort of practice.

Taniastanly (13:06.531)
Mm.

Taniastanly (13:23.407)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (13:32.014)
So I'll go into those companies, I'll teach the staff how to meditate. They'll make it their own decision as to whether they're going to integrate that on their day. still find that 20, 30, 40 % of the staff will pick that up and continue with it. But it's just something that you can't force everyone to do until they're really ready for it. And not everyone's quite ready for it just yet. So we tend to find that lot of companies bring in the practice, give people the tools and techniques. Some people will embrace those tools on a regular basis.

and we see their lives improve quite dramatically as a result of that.

Taniastanly (14:06.819)
You know what intrigues me is the fact that you are doing it, right? Because I have tried, I can't say I'm that good at meditation or whatever that is, but when I try to convince someone else to do it, especially if it's a man, there's no chance that they would get convinced by it. There's no way they're really just sitting. They find it like a waste of time. So the fact that you are doing it would actually inspire a lot of men to do it.

So that's why I keep asking you, but how you convince them? Because if I go and tell my company, I work for a company over here as well, where if I tell them that we've got to meditate, they would probably think that it's a waste of time. And we just keep asking you, how do you do it? What do they do? How are you convincing them? I understand that women would probably be a lot more ready to receive this information. How are the men reacting to it? And from how things were in the past, like let's say 20 years back to now,

Do you see a change in the way men are more receptive to this idea of meditation? Is there a change?

Tom Cronin (15:09.646)
Yeah, absolutely. We've seen changes, big, big changes in the world, particularly with men being open to embracing new forms of health and wellness, physical and mental. We've got to remember that when you look at advertising now, particularly something like say Coca-Cola or Nike or Apple, particularly on the Instagram, you actually rarely see their products and they're not selling their product. What they're selling is a lifestyle. If you look at

Taniastanly (15:26.415)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (15:37.454)
let's say Corona beer ads, you know, won't really see much except for someone surfing at sunset and then a group of people hanging around laughing and smiling and having a really beautiful time at golden hour. And then there might be one person you see or a few people drinking this beer. So what would they're not really selling the beer or the product. What they're selling is a lifestyle that comes if you have their product. Toyota is a classic example in Australia. Their slogan is, what a feeling Toyota.

And what they're selling is the feelings that you get if you drive this car, they're not selling the car at all. They're selling a feeling. So firstly, my pitch to people when I'm sharing reasons why they should come on my retreat or do my meditation courses, because the feeling, the lifestyle, the benefits is going to be quite immense. And when we take men, for example, the problem we have with men, which has been something for a long, long time, you know, we see six to one numbers of suicide in men.

Taniastanly (16:04.493)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Cronin (16:32.568)
versus suicide in women. And that's that deep resistance to sharing, admitting that life's difficult, that admitting that we're struggling because there's this sort of stoic masculinity that says, hey, I've got this, I can handle this. But in actual fact, life is difficult, life is very challenging. And we need to, and we're seeing a lot more of those walls of resistance breaking down when men are starting to open up, they are starting to communicate more, they are starting to be more vulnerable.

Taniastanly (16:33.742)
Yeah.

Tom Cronin (16:59.252)
And because of that, they're being a lot more adaptive and a lot more capable of receiving some of these things. I just did a retreat in Bali and you know, we had some very senior CEOs and business owners that were men. had about probably 40 to 60 men to women, but you know, the men were, you know, quite senior players in the business world and they were very open to exploring these practices and it was really so beneficial for them.

Taniastanly (17:07.609)
Mm.

Taniastanly (17:28.493)
you know, whenever I read your newsletter, it's, there's this, your background in finance and your background of the corporate world comes in the newsletter. So I think you recently sent out a newsletter where you're like, there was a 200 % improvement in the bottom line, right? So I guess that's the good part about having men talk about meditation, because if it's like a woman and if I tell my dad, know, you've got to meditate, my dad was like, it's a waste of time, then I'm like, you don't know anything. And then we would just.

Tom Cronin (17:44.492)
I think that's the good part.

Taniastanly (17:56.467)
cut the conversation, right? But you are able to put in the logical part into it. So I think that's amazing. So someone who attends your retreats, right? Once they attend the retreat, what is the kind of transformation that they talk about? Any, like, is there anything that stands out in your head?

Tom Cronin (18:14.178)
Yeah, definitely a number of transformational components come out of the retreat. They certainly feel lighter. One thing we clear from the body, particularly in our retreats is these lower vibrational frequencies. People can call them traumas, but what gets trapped in the body energetically are things like sadness, guilt, shame, fear, anger. And these are deep, low vibrational energies that get stored in the body. So a big thing that clears out during the retreat, a lot of those energies. so

Taniastanly (18:26.415)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (18:42.594)
That's quite physiological. So it's very hard to clear them out just by talking to someone. And there's nothing wrong with therapy or psychology. It's just that some of these things are very somatic, very physiological, and we need to really address the body and how it stores like a warehouse, lot of these lower frequencies. So putting the body through these practices that we do on our retreat helps that clearing. So it's quite messy at times on the retreat. So I'm not going to sugar coat it. There will be some tears and it's part of the physiological clearing that has to happen.

And meditation really helps that process. A lot of people think of meditation as a spiritual practice. And it can be that for sure. But what actually happens in the deeper transcending meditations that I teach, this is not the meditations where you're listening to Matthew McConaughey, read you a bedtime story on the car map, we're talking about going into deep, deep states of what we call transcendence, where the mind is still and not thinking. And when we get our mind into that deep state, the body goes into a profoundly deep state of physiological rest.

Taniastanly (19:18.895)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (19:41.612)
And that allows the body to then start taking over and to reorganize and remove those stresses that have been trapped in the body. We accelerate this process on retreat by getting some deeper stresses out by incorporating things like breath work and yoga. But the meditation course alone will get those deeper stresses out. So they feel a lot lighter after the retreat. They get a lot clearer in their mind and much more expansive in their mind. thinking about the mind.

And the mind has what we call vasanas, which are tendencies to think in a particular way. And the mind is very repetitive, which means that we have thoughts that recur and recur and recur day after day after day. And they become so deeply ingrained into the landscape of the mind, like the water in the Grand Canyon. And when we have these recurring thoughts, we get these habitual patterns of behavior. And that keeps us in a sort of a trap or a loop that we can't break out of quite often.

Taniastanly (20:28.207)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Cronin (20:38.926)
So when we meditate and transcend the thinking mind and access the field of mind, which is the expansive mind, which has all the possibility, all of creativity, we start to think beyond the very tight perimeter of the life that we've been living within and start realize the immense possibility of a life that we can create. So we play a lot with the quantum field and how you can actually expand your mind and start to create something quite magnificent and start to architect that mind out. So people get very expansive in their way of thinking.

really changed the way they live their life quite big, quite a big way.

Taniastanly (21:14.179)
You spoke about how in the first few sessions of the retreat, you do the low vibrational. You try to remove the low vibrational things. I heard about this in someone else's Not a podcast, their YouTube channel as well. I think it's Vikrant. Where someone asked him, when I sit down to meditate, I get all of these different thoughts coming up. And I'm not able to stop those thoughts. So the response that he gave was that you need to first clear out those thoughts.

and instead of shutting it down and suppressing it, because I think in some of the meditation techniques, they talk about how, know, or rather, it's not even a meditation technique, where we think that when we're sitting down to, you know, have a very nice still meditation session, and then you've got the thing that your boss said, or what your friend said, those things keep popping up. And then we think that we're supposed to suppress it, and then we judge ourselves, and we think that let's just move on, stop thinking it, I need positive thoughts, good thoughts. But what you are saying is that

We need to let those come out. Did I understand that right? And if that's the case, how do we let it come out? And usually how long does this take for the whole thing, all of these low vibrational thoughts and trauma to release from our body?

Tom Cronin (22:29.762)
Yeah, meditation is a very dynamic process. A lot of people think about as something that they should be sitting in complete stillness the entire time with no thoughts. And that if they're not doing that, then either they're no good at it or the meditation is no good and this is a waste of time, but it's actually not that at all. Firstly, there are different styles of meditation. So you can try and empty the mind or try and have no thoughts. It's going to be very difficult. And I'd suggest that you might really struggle with that practice. It's going to cause friction because the mind wants to think and you're going to try and tell the mind not to think.

And now we've got a tug of war going on and it gets stressful. So we use a mantra which takes the mind with this beautiful luring quality to it. The repetition of that primordial vibration has this beautiful resonance that lures the mind away from the outside world and stimulation into deeper and deeper, quieter states. But we also understand the nature of the mind and body and how they interact. So as the mind goes deeper, it starts to unlock stresses. And as the body unlocks stresses,

then that activates the mind back into thinking. And that's when we have the thoughts about what am I having for lunch today? And so we don't get disturbed or affected by the fact that we've dropped into quietness and now we've got thoughts dropped into quietness. And then we have thoughts we understand as a mechanical process here, that is part of the process of meditating and the body releasing stresses at the same time. And so

For more advanced meditators where their body is a lot clearer of some of those stresses, then they can drop into what we call Samadhi, which is a deep transcendent experience and they can stay there for long periods of time. So it could be many hours if they choose to, and they're not getting bumped out because the body is finally quite purified of those stresses and they can drop in and stay in there for quite a long time. But for someone that's just starting, they're going to get bumped out throughout their meditation consistently as the body's releasing stresses and releasing stresses and releasing stresses.

Sometimes it might be uncomfortable, like some emotions coming up. Sometimes it might just be lots of thoughts in the mind. So we just take it as it comes and acknowledge there's a process and that this process is part of what the mechanics of meditation is all about. So we don't get too attached to it all.

Taniastanly (24:41.293)
Hmm, that's interesting. So if for for someone who's just starting out, right? For me, when I started out, I was trying to do all of these guided meditations that seemed a little bit easier for me. But for someone else, how can you what advice would you give them to just start? How long can they how long should they do it for? Is there anything else that can make meditation seem a little bit more fun? I don't know if it's going to be possible to make it.

Tom Cronin (25:08.351)
Well, probably less fun. Fun is what we're doing on a roller coaster ride. But more pleasurable, more blissful is probably what we're looking for. And look, I think the best thing is to do their research into different techniques. For me personally, I chose to practice a particular style and teach a particular style that I found very, very accessible because of the mantra. And that's a sound that you get from the teacher who's qualified to teach. I would generally firstly recommend

learning from a qualified teacher that is providing ongoing support and community. Two things you want when you learn meditation is to learn from someone that's qualified, not just some flimsy app that's going to give you a technique that you can use, but learn the mechanics from a proper qualified teacher. It's an important area that you're to get ongoing support from that teacher, because if you're going to start meditating, your life's going to start changing and it's going to bring a lot of questions along the way.

Taniastanly (25:50.627)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (26:05.774)
for you that might be a little bit confusing at times and you're going to need someone in your corner to support you through that practice. So the teacher should provide ongoing weekly support and that's what I provide with my students from all around the world. And thirdly, you want to practice that you're going to enjoy. And as you say, it's maybe not necessarily fun, but certainly blissful because if it's not charming, if it's not enjoyable, if you don't get some sensation that's actually, wow, this is really nice. I actually really found

and noticed a very distinct difference and enjoyed the experience when I was meditating. And that's what I loved about this technique is it's very easy, but also very enjoyable. Then because we've got so much pleasure in our life, like we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, how accessible pleasure is in our world. Now we've got Uber eats and we've got Instagram. It's so cool. but, if it's not pleasurable, then there's a high probability we weren't integrated into our day because there's too many other pleasurable things. They're going to supersede it.

Taniastanly (26:52.857)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (27:04.022)
And that's why we want to find a practice that isn't uncomfortable and challenging and difficult and unenjoyable. One that's going to actually go, wow, I actually really, that was beautiful. That was really blissful and deep and enjoyable. So I found that for me, Vedic meditation or transcendental meditation was a technique that really worked for me on that basis.

Taniastanly (27:25.637)
What are the different kinds of meditation? Can you give us like a small idea or like a brief introduction of what all of those different types of meditation are?

Tom Cronin (27:33.614)
Yeah, I put them into four categories. So the first category that is one that you'll probably find on a lot of the apps, which is what's called concentration, where you'll be focusing on one thing and one thing alone. So you're trying to stop the mind from jumping around from 50,000 different thoughts every day to just one thing, which will be the air moving through your nostrils or might be your third eye, might be a candle, might be your heart chakra. So just the mind forced, forced, forced to stay still on one point.

And that's a very difficult meditation. That's one that they generally do in monasteries where there's no other distractions in life. And it's a little bit more accessible for someone that doesn't have emails and Instagram and Tik Tok. It's a difficult one for people to integrate on a daily basis here, because we're trying to force the mind to do something that it won't do any other time during the day, which is stay still. So it's still a good meditation. I actually did this one just before bed. And that's just where I bring the mind to one single point. And I keep it there for as long as I can.

Taniastanly (28:21.551)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (28:28.546)
And that really centers the mind and helps it go to sleep. The second one is guided meditation, which was hugely popular now where people will listen to someone guiding them, you know, walking through a meadow or guiding them through their chakras or guiding them through a visualization or guiding them through gratitude where you're listening to someone and you're still engaged in thinking because you're listening to someone and you're still thinking because you're visualizing or being guided through this meditation. And

It's just that there's still thoughts, it's just that you're being proactive with what type of thoughts you're having. And that's a very popular meditation. And I still do this one as well, where I'll visualize the future scenario in my life, or I might have gratitude for something, or I might do some chakra balancing. And so that's where I'm engaged intellectually with my mind, and choosing particular thoughts to bring about a particular outcome. Then we have chanting meditations, which is a really beautiful one. And it might be Om Nama Shaivar or Om Mani Padme Hum.

Nam-Yon-Ren-Gok-Yo, there's a number of different chanting meditations that you can do to bring about and activate certain changes in your life. And they're quite good. I do them as well sometimes. And then we've got those deeper transcending ones where we actually go beyond thought, beyond feeling and beyond physicality. And these are what I call transcending meditations. And that would be Vedic meditation, transcendental meditation or primordial sound technique.

Taniastanly (29:53.933)
I love it when you speak, when you say use these Sanskrit words. It sounds so good when you say the chanting and all. Can you, which is your favorite mantra?

Tom Cronin (29:59.47)
You

Tom Cronin (30:04.628)
so with Vedic meditation or transcendental meditation, we get our personal mantra based upon when we're born. And that's something that we keep very private to ourselves because the nature of the sound is that it's what we call beige mantras. And these are mantras for transcending where you don't repeat the mantra to hold onto the mantra. You repeat the mantra to transcend the mantra. It's a very strange phenomenon where you start saying something at the forefront of your mind to eventually inspire the mind.

Taniastanly (30:12.654)
Tom Cronin (30:34.616)
to let that go when the mind finds something even more blissful, which is we call samadhi or transcendence. And so these mantras we keep quite private to ourselves. But yeah, there's some other beautiful mantras out there that people can find as thousands of different mantras, depending on whether you want to cook better or want to, you know, be more creative or make more money. But there's a beautiful mantra, I've got a bit of a blank on it right now, but I used to say it a lot and it's numb numb.

Rengei... I can't remember the full match now, I gotta blank on it. It's nam-rengai-kyo, something like that. Nam-myoho-rengai-kyo. Nam-myoho-rengai-kyo. Nam-myoho-rengai-kyo.

Taniastanly (31:11.56)
no.

Taniastanly (31:17.037)
Wow. Have you done any past life regressions? Were you in India before, like a monk, in your past life?

Tom Cronin (31:24.994)
I believe so. I have done some readings with people and it was appeared that I was spending some time in a previous lifetime where there was the last one of the one before in a very monkish type of existence. And I can feel that in this lifetime I felt from a very young age, a deep sense of spirituality, a deep sense of solitude and union with God. And

Taniastanly (31:27.523)
Yeah.

Tom Cronin (31:47.67)
Interestingly, there's a couple of countries that I've been in where I felt very definitively that I'd lived in that country in some sort of spiritual sense, in some sort of monastic type of existence. It's quite strange, yeah.

Taniastanly (32:02.626)
Wow, that's beautiful. So do you think you are an enlightened being now?

Tom Cronin (32:07.736)
We're all actually enlightened right now. So if we take a lamp and we cover that lamp with a towel and then a blanket and then a doona, another towel and a blanket and the doona, one would say that the room is dark and there's no light in here. But in actual fact, the light is there. It's just that it's covered in layers. And what happens is over time is depending on the level of commitment we've got to shedding those layers, these false identities that we perceive ourself to be, then

what happens is over time as we clear and clear and clear those layers, the light starts to illuminate more and more and more into the room. And so the light is actually within all of us. And this is something that I've learned over time is that I haven't gained anything through all these years of meditating and doing yoga and breath work and all the things that I've done. All I've done is shed layer upon layer upon layer and still shedding. So the light is becoming more obvious to me that it is within.

the and within that light, there also lies love and knowledge. So the knowledge is, is almost in the light and the light is in the knowledge. And the love is in the knowledge and the love is in the light. And so love, knowledge and light is the essence of all beings. And it's not something we get, it's something we reveal within ourselves. So as they say, spirituality, you become self realized, which is there's a realization of the true nature of the self. And so

This is just something that over the many years of the work that I've been doing is becoming more apparent that that's where it is inside me. And it's also inside everyone else as well. And big part of my work these days is to help people realize what they're looking for isn't in a bowl of ice cream or a TikTok reel. It's actually at the core of their being. And that core of their being is bliss, and knowledge.

Taniastanly (33:56.355)
You know, every time, even from a young age, I've been into yoga. It's like how you said that, you you feel some sort of a connection. I don't know anything about yoga, but I saw a picture of mine where I'm trying to do a yoga pose. And then at around my high school, I got I heard the word Nirvana and I just loved it. I'm like, I want to name my child Nirvana. I don't know what it means. Yeah. And then now I'm getting into all of these things like channeling and meditation, all of that. And then

When you said that you were in a past life leading a monk style life, I was thinking, if someone who lived monk style lives, why would they come back again? What would their purpose be? Maybe they've already attained what they wanted. So why do you think you came back? What do you think is the purpose of your incarnation this time? Do you know? Have you thought about it?

Tom Cronin (34:45.902)
Hmm. I think it's twofold for me personally. Anyway. I read once that I think it was Deepak Chopra or someone like that said that maybe it was even my teacher, Tom Knowles. think that we, we reincarnate because we have unfulfilled desires. And the reason why anyone is manifest here in a physical form as a body is because they have a desire.

Taniastanly (35:04.825)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (35:12.268)
that is unfulfilled that needs to be fulfilled through a human existence. So it might be to have a bigger house or to have children or to have a partner or to have a better job. But every one of those desires requires you to have a physical body to experience the benefit of that desire. And so I believe I had a very spiritual experience most likely in the last life. And it seems that there were some unfulfilled desires that I hadn't completed. And what I feel was missing possibly was that I

Taniastanly (35:28.399)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (35:39.986)
believe I reached a certain level of awareness in the last life. But I think this life was about how do I integrate that as a family man? And, and also how do I bring that knowledge to the world in a way that in the past life, I might've experienced certain things, but I certainly didn't play any role in bringing that to the masses because I was living as a monk. So no one could contact me and I couldn't share that knowledge to the world. So I kind of retained it, but didn't share it. And I feel that this life is

Taniastanly (36:04.079)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (36:10.2)
Definitely about, certainly I noticed that there was some desires that I hadn't fulfilled in the last life as a monk. And that's definitely things like, hey, maybe you want a nice car, something silly like that. And so this life is about enjoying the relative world. But also how do I share this knowledge to the masses in a way that can make my existence a little bit more relevant.

Taniastanly (36:23.437)
Hehehehehe

Taniastanly (36:39.257)
Hmm, makes sense. So if I were to give you, say, three different scenarios right now, okay, that is happening in the daily life of people, can you tell us maybe like a quick tip on how they could deal with it? Okay, so the first one is, let's say someone's going through this anxiety attack. They have these legal problems, they have financial problems, and they have their child crying all day long, and they have an abusive husband there, and they're just breaking down, and they're crying, and they're going through this

panic attack. At that moment, what could they be doing right then and there? Is there like a tip or something?

Tom Cronin (37:15.31)
Certainly, so firstly, when we're in the midst of a panic attack, the other situation that we're talking about is more macro and we'll get to that in a moment as far as how do we deal with the more challenging situations in life. The first thing is when we're in the middle of a panic attack, we want to try and bring some calmness into the situation and clear the cortisol that's built up in the body and moving through the body. So firstly, we want to really claim

the breath back because we tend to lose autonomy from the breath. lose sovereignty and the breath takes over and then that the mind takes over and the next thing we're in this sort of spiral. So slowing everything down by bringing in and quite often you can do a four, seven, eight breath, which is very powerful for reducing anxiety, which is breathing in for four, holding for seven. Now this is going to be very hard when you're in the middle of a panic attack, but holding that breath as long as you can, but ideally up to seven seconds, breathing in for four.

Holding for seven.

Tom Cronin (38:19.532)
and then releasing for eight.

Tom Cronin (38:26.69)
Reading in for four.

Tom Cronin (38:30.552)
Hiding for seven.

Tom Cronin (38:35.458)
Breathing out for right.

Tom Cronin (38:42.572)
And this will really calm the nervous system down because there's a distortion happening. The reality is you're not dangerous. You're not going to die. and if you are going to die, then we need to call the police and ambulances and whatever else. But ultimately most situations where there's a panic attack, we're actually not in a dangerous situation and the mind has distorted the reality. So that's the first thing is claim back the, autonomy of the breath and really start to work really hard at centering the mind.

You can do some what I call shaking. So that's standing up and just shaking the body. So shaking out excess energy and cortisol is a really powerful thing. So shaking for one to two minutes is really powerful. But when it comes to the more macro perspective of things, when life is difficult or when experiencing some degree of suffering and pain, we only have two options. The first option is we change the outside world. The second option is we change the inside world. So what that looks like is if you're in an abusive relationship,

and that's causing you extreme discomfort, then there are two options are you change the outside world, which is you get out of there. You remove yourself from the situation. If it's a job you don't like because the boss is abusing you, you leave that situation. If it's a city that you can't stand living in, you leave that city. If it's a relationship that's no good for you, you leave that relationship. We need to adapt with the external world. If the external world isn't really suitable for our particular situation that we're in. If

By chance, we can't leave that situation. So I had this situation with my work. I was in a situation where I didn't enjoy my work as a broker. I really wanted to leave it, but I had a family to feed. had a big mortgage. And at that particular point in time, there was just no way I could walk away from things. was way too difficult and would have caused even more stress if I left it straight away. So I needed to firstly start planning an exit strategy over the long run and think about what alternatives can I take to make my life better? But

change the inner world. had to change my relationship to it and have to say, okay, this is going to be difficult. It's going to be uncomfortable. But at the same time, it's providing me with a lot of value. It's providing with income that I can start building my business. It's providing with stability. It's providing me with certainty. So I changed my relationship to work, not as a source of pain and suffering, but a source of pleasure and support. That was actually something that I could actually feel gratitude towards, even though it wasn't my ideal, but it was leading me to my ideal, which was coming around the corner.

Tom Cronin (41:07.554)
So those are the two situations, change the inner or outer world when we're in a difficult situation.

Taniastanly (41:14.699)
I love that. I really love that. think definitely when we are going through difficult situations, the only thing you can control is our breath. I think you were the one who spoke about it. You mentioned this on Next Level Soul podcast, I think, and that was very true. The only thing we can control all the time is our breath. I love that. The second scenario is, let's say you are at crossroads. You do not know what decision to make, right?

Maybe your logical mind is telling you to stick to the job, but your heart is telling you, no, I don't like the job, I don't enjoy it, I wanna try and quit, try something else. Or maybe you're in a relationship where you think that you're not happy, but you wanna stay. So at that point of time, how can we use the breath to make the right choice?

Tom Cronin (42:04.494)
wouldn't say we're going to let the breath make the choice. But what we can definitely do is de-excite. can and I think that's what you're leading to is this idea that we use some form of meditation to de-excite. So what we want to do is we've got two things that are constantly making decisions in our life, the mind and the heart. And we can even say the heart and the gut work together in what we call the fine level of feeling. And so the mind will more often than not, because we're very cerebral society, we give so much power and authority to the mind. And we

because of that compromise ability to feel intuitively which way to go in life. And I've made a lot of really bad decisions in life because I made the decision from a mind and I didn't make a decision from the fine level of feeling, which is in the body. And when we meditate, what happens is we quiet the noise of the mind because the mind says, well, that just doesn't make sense. That's irrational. You shouldn't do that. Don't do that. This makes a lot more sense. And so when we quiet the mind, that noise of

that dictator that is constantly dictating your life gets quietened. And then the intuition in the heart and the body says, now this doesn't really make sense, but I think you should do this. And what we tend to find is we live a lot more joyful, a lot more fluid lives. If we're listening to the fine level of feeling, it's so much better at making decisions for us than the intellect, because the intellect will weigh up all the pros and all the cons. And you're going to find

polarity in everything in every decision. Yes, there's a reason why it's a good idea. And there's a reason why it's a bad idea. But the fine level of feeling will just say yes or no. And what I love about fine level of feeling, if we take a baby, if you put some, let's just say mashed up pumpkin in front of the baby, the baby has one of two options. It just goes, or it says, uh-huh. So, uh-huh and uh-huh are very similar to each other.

Taniastanly (43:44.366)
Hmm.

Taniastanly (43:56.079)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Cronin (43:59.5)
that the baby doesn't think about it because it hasn't developed its brain and it just has this fine level of feeling that says, no, not going to happen. Or it says, yeah, that sounds good. I really like the sound of that. And so that level of feeling and responsiveness to life is a really beautiful way to just like in a keto move, flow and ebb with the guidance in our body to the nuances of the day.

Taniastanly (44:09.199)
Hmm.

Taniastanly (44:25.933)
Hmm. I had a channeler who had come on my podcast once and she was told, she was telling about how your heart knows what's the right thing to do. So I think it was summer bacon and she says that what she does is she would do this. She's like heart teach my mind, heart teach my mind. So she talks about how you try to encourage your heart to make the choices rather than your brain. I really love that. By the way, what do you think about channeling?

Tom Cronin (44:50.764)
Yeah, beautiful.

Taniastanly (44:54.669)
I mean, I'm trying to see maybe you have a more logical explanation of channeling.

Tom Cronin (44:59.96)
Yeah, I've listened and subscribed to a lot of different ascended beings that have got wonderful information to provide us humans. So what happens is in my mind anyway, what I'm what I believe to be the case, and this is all subjective. someone is challenged by this information, then it's an okay conversation for us to have. But I believe that as we complete our desires here in the physical dense world where we need a physical mass to complete that desire, let's say smelling roses, I need a nose to smell a rose or eat ice cream, I need a tongue to taste the ice cream.

then I need a physical body to explore that desire. But once those desires are fulfilled as a human and we have a more celestial, ethereal, spiritual desire to be more with God or in the ethereal level, then we no longer reincarnate back into physical form. But the soul itself continues on in a subtle level. And a lot of souls will continue to hang around to support humans. So it's almost like a university lecturer who's finished university.

don't need to come back to university but they come back because they want to teach the other students how to get through university and some people will reincarnate purely for that purpose to teach humans how to exist as humans but many spiritual masters don't want to come back in the physical body but they still want to support the humans and so they need to channel through another human because humans can generally only hear from other humans because we have an ear that can only hear sound but there are some very select humans that get chosen to channel

people like Abraham, so Esther Hicks was chosen by Abraham to be the channel for Abraham. We have Pat Rodgass was chosen by Emmanuel to channel information by Emmanuel. Emmanuel didn't want to come back as a human, but he managed to choose Pat Rodgass to convey that information. I believe that Neil Donnell Walsh was channeling potentially, but maybe it was not an individual soul, maybe it straight from source. So I think we all have that capacity to channel either knowledge or information from an ascended master.

It's getting very esoteric now, so this might freak some people out by talking about all this stuff, but that's what I believe channeling to be, and I subscribe to. There's a great book by Pat Rogast, who's channeling a manual called a manuals book, which I think is one of the most important books for humanity to read. And of course, there's a lot of information from Esther Hicks is channeling Abraham, which is profound information as well.

Taniastanly (47:19.371)
Yes.

Tom Cronin (47:19.628)
Babaji and Saint-Germain are spending a lot of time with humans at the moment as well. Saint-Germain's been sharing his wisdom through a number of different humans for many decades and Babaji is playing quite an integral role at the moment, channeling through some people.

Taniastanly (47:35.71)
Have you tried pursuing channeling yourself?

Tom Cronin (47:38.476)
Nah, I haven't actually.

I think I just become a conduit. I guess if you want to go a little bit deeper than that, not so much channeling from someone, but what I tend to find and what I do, particularly before a podcast or before a retreat is I just almost make a commitment to not be in the way and to allow whatever needs to come through, come through. I guess I want to act as a channel for source.

Taniastanly (47:41.839)
Mm-hmm.

Taniastanly (47:57.593)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Cronin (48:09.43)
and just give myself over to love, to source, wisdom.

Taniastanly (48:10.351)
Hmm.

Taniastanly (48:15.167)
I love that. You spoke about all of the channeling and everything in such a calm tone, you know, without getting like freaked out by it. So that was good. I thought you would get freaked out if I asked about these kind of things. Okay, that's beautiful. So you know, the third scenario is let's say someone's going through extreme pain, someone with arthritis probably, that pain wouldn't go away.

Tom Cronin (48:23.404)
It's

Taniastanly (48:39.449)
would we be able to reduce the pain through meditation? Because I think Jesus was saying, I mean, this is through a channel thing, where he was saying that he was able to, even when he was being nailed on the cross, he knew these meditation techniques that he learned from the yogis, where he was able to reduce the pain. So is there a technique that you're aware of?

Tom Cronin (48:59.042)
Yeah, I believe we can transcend pain, transcend the physical form and almost observe the physical form as an apparatus. That's like a spacesuit that's not mine, but it's something that kind of picked up and I'm going to use it while I'm here as my soul, my spirit needs that spacesuit to actually coexist on this planet. It's very advanced to be able to transcend pain. I think you'd need to have a very developed practice to be able to do that. You know, we know Paramahansa Yogananda was able to...

Taniastanly (49:08.975)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (49:28.686)
transmute and transform toxic poisons that were given to him by students that were testing him. And we know even people like Wim Hof has been able to consume, you know, things that would generally make someone very sick, but he was able to show through studies that he could transmute that. And I've done this in a mild way. I was going on a holiday to Fiji with my family and I was very into raw vegan, this, that, know, everything's got to be pure and organic.

Taniastanly (49:57.731)
Mm-mm.

Tom Cronin (49:58.452)
And, I knew that we were going to be in a hotel that only had a buffet all day, every day. And that buffet was definitely not going to be gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free or organic and whatnot. But I was perplexed as how was I going to cope with this? You know, I was going to be putting all these toxins in my body and it's going to be bad for me. And what am going to do? I'm not going to get my Bondi whole foods, healthy foods. And, I realized that the food is actually vibrational.

Taniastanly (50:20.207)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Cronin (50:25.004)
The food is energy and I'm also energy. We know at a quantum level that we're quarks and lepto quarks. And so at a subtle level of existence, nothing's actually solid, which means the food's not solid. I'm not solid. And I explored the idea of transmuting the food to my vibration rather than my vibration being transmuted to the food vibration. And in the end, I found that, yeah, I get delight in eating any of it. And it wasn't really at that point having.

negative impact. And I wouldn't want to be doing that all day, every day. But for the purposes of that week, it was fun just eating whatever I could eat and being in a vibration that was able to sustain the frequency that would transmute the food as it went into my body. And I think that as humans, we have that capacity. I think we're only just starting to scratch the surface of what's possible for humans to really understand the power of physics, the power of quantum mechanics, the power of

Taniastanly (51:12.559)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (51:18.612)
laws of attraction, the power of transmuting and changing, healing the physical form. And we, you know, don't think anything unusual about the fact that the entire calendar or the Christian calendar is built around the idea that a person could do that with other people 2000 years ago. And I think it's time for us humans to start exploring the idea that maybe we all have some form of capacity to heal, to transform, to transmute. And yeah, maybe

remove pain as well without the need for medication.

Taniastanly (51:52.904)
In your documentary, the portal, by the way, that documentary is so good. It's Hollywood level. It's so good. Amazing. I loved it. I loved it. So in the documentary, there is the US. yeah, I was about to ask that. Could you get that? Could you get it at Netflix? Deal with that.

Tom Cronin (51:59.128)
thank you. Thank you.

Tom Cronin (52:04.492)
We're hoping we can get a Netflix deal. So if Netflix is... Sorry.

Tom Cronin (52:13.824)
We would like to but we haven't heard from them so we're open to offers.

Taniastanly (52:18.203)
man. Okay guys, everyone who is watching this interview right now just said an intention that the portal gets acquired or like Netflix buys the portal and everyone gets to watch it. I mean, because it's a really, really good documentary. I really loved it. Like it was shot so well. So, you know, in one of the people that you interviewed in the documentary, the US military professional, you talk about how he had to deal with PTSD, right?

That got me thinking, there are so many people on the planet going through ADHD. Do you think ADHD is also because they're probably not spending time meditating? Has it got anything to do with them not, anything to do with this part? Because it seems like they're saying that this is like the kids get it and the only treatment to that is just giving them these pills.

Tom Cronin (53:07.64)
Yeah, I think it's a, it's a prickly subject because people with ADHD generally are being diagnosed by professionals to say that it's a genetic disposition or it's a disease or it's something you've got for life. And, know, you, you were born this way and I'm not going to discredit professionals for what they've been diagnosed or what they say. However, I would like people with ADHD to do everything they can.

as far as laborious exercises to improve their attention because attention ADHD is an attention deficit disorder, which means that they have at this point in time, whether it's developed or whether it was inherited a disposition to poor focus. That's really ultimately what it is. It's a disposition to poor focus and the inability to focus and stay with our attention on one thing. And

I don't think it's an accident that we're seeing an explosion of people being diagnosed with ADHD because we have phones that we've been putting in front of our mind for 20 hours a day. And then we've got YouTube and emails and all the types of information that we never had before. So I think there's a correlation with the explosion of ADHD, kids being on phones from the age of six and this lack of focus. But I think to offset the conditioning that's happening with things like our phones and probably

Taniastanly (54:12.772)
Yeah.

Taniastanly (54:23.567)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (54:32.63)
all sorts of toxic foods as well. I think there are practices that we can do to improve focus. So I one of the things that I do in between my workout at the gym, most people will be scrolling on their phones. So we're doing a workout, we'll take a set, a break from our reps and then we'll start scrolling through Instagram. So we're continuously feeding our mind with this information flow. But I find that if I just stand and stare at a wall on one single point for two minutes in between doing my reps,

Taniastanly (54:49.443)
Mm.

Tom Cronin (55:01.464)
What happens is that I'm training my mind to be very vigilant and diligent and focused. And it's so powerful. What we want to do is be open to not giving our mind dopamine hits all day long. That's what's leading to a lot of people, I believe struggling with ADHD. I think before we go to medication as a last resort, have you done

many, many minutes, if not hours of dedicated muscle testing of your brain to do practices that are going to develop your focus, your ability to stay tuned on one thing. And I believe with the right practices and the right commitment, I believe we can definitely improve our focus. I'm not going to say we can heal ADHD because I just don't have that ability to qualify and say that, but I definitely think we can improve our attention and improve our focus with certain practices.

Taniastanly (55:59.979)
No, you said is true. I mean, it's like even if there's nothing on my phone, it's like a habit. I just have to take it and scroll through it. There's nothing on my phone, but I just want to keep doing it. And even at the gym, I keep checking it. So it makes sense. Talking about ADHD and talking about kids, in your book, you mentioned about how when we are born itself, we are downloaded with the cord, which is the human operating system that then influences the human operating system, right?

How can we as a parent try to ensure that we don't instill too much of our code into our kids and then also get them to start with meditation? How can I try to do that for my child so that the future leaders would not take rash decisions?

Tom Cronin (56:49.67)
Yeah. we, we, get the code partly ancestrally and genetically. So that's something that we come into this world with. So we didn't just inherit the color of our eyes, the shape of our nose, shape of our lips, the color of our hair from our parents. That's the hardware code that we inherited, but we also got a software code. So that's why you have a tendency to think in a particular way based upon the code that was genetically passed onto you when the egg and the sperm came together to create the embryo.

Taniastanly (57:06.031)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Cronin (57:18.418)
And so you didn't have a choice when you came out of the womb, what your software code was that you inherited. And then in the first seven years of your life, again, you didn't have a choice because you were brought up in a family in a particular city, in a particular demographic, in a particular political and wealth and social sort of upbringing that is all creating an influence in your mind. And there's nothing that you can do about it either. That's just going to happen no matter what. There's very little your parents can do.

to some respects about that, you know, if you grew up in Sydney, then you're going to eat certain foods, you're going to hang out at certain places, you're going to be subscribing to certain sort of education systems. And that's just going to be the nature of the upbringing of that child, no matter what. As time goes on, obviously there's things we could become more proactive on. Like for me, I'm teaching my kids now that they're 22, certain aspects of life, certain aspects of viewing the world. And that's something that sitting down at dinner every night and having these conversations and talking about our perspective of things and the way we behave.

is all part of what they're inheriting and picking up. But in general, the biggest thing that I think we can bestow our children, not when they're too young, but certainly as they get older in particular teenagers is to start really understanding firstly, the law of mechanics and the law of karma, the law of cause and effect. So that's one thing I teach my kids is like, you don't have to do your homework. You can do whatever you want. But just remember that every action has a corresponding reaction. So if you don't do homework,

Taniastanly (58:39.929)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (58:44.162)
and you get to school and you get in trouble, just remember that this here leads to this here. Now, if you go and help that old lady cross the road by carrying her bags with her, you're gonna most likely get from this action, a really nice reaction. Now, if you go and steal that granny's handbag, then you're gonna get put in prison by the police and this action leads to this action. So I just teach them that they're sovereign, they're empowered in making choices in life. And we should be doing this at a very young age that each action has a corresponding reaction.

Taniastanly (59:05.935)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (59:14.312)
And that gives them greater decision-making capabilities. know, go and get completely wasted. in Australia, a lot of young kids will go out and get really drunk. It's really quite common how young people are when they're starting to drink and do crazy things, but teaching them that there's a big price to pay for that. And you're going to have to learn the hard way or the easy way. It's up to you.

Taniastanly (59:38.477)
Hmm, I love that. If we were to teach our kids meditation, what would be like an ideal time to teach them? I mean, I don't even know if it's possible to teach kids, but is it possible? Do you know any resources where parents can access for their children to learn meditation? In India, they have that. They have, in the morning, they would be chanting and they have these meditation practices in Indian schools, but not in these countries like where I'm staying.

Tom Cronin (01:00:04.354)
Yeah, unfortunately the world's very slow to pick up on the importance of meditation in schools. Children up to the age of six, we wouldn't normally teach them meditation, but certainly from six to seven onwards, then children have the capacity to learn and meditate. And there's the schools in India, there's a school in America where the school curriculum every morning, it starts with a meditation. And before they go home in the afternoon, they finish with a meditation. Now that school is ranked in the top 1 % in every category.

in the country and that's from maths and English and geography and that's because there's less stress, there's less, there's better self-esteem, there's better brain potential, there's just so many benefits that come from those kids meditating every day and it's phenomenal because the teacher, the principal of that school, I saw him talk here in Australia and he spoke to a lot of principals, he spoke to a lot of schools, I've spoken to a of principals, I've spoken to a lot of schools.

Taniastanly (01:00:34.415)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (01:01:00.75)
There's still not one school in Australia, I believe, that starts each day with a meditation for the entire school and finishes each day with a meditation for the entire school. And yet the statistics prove that if they allocate a little bit of time to that, the school is going to perform so much better. The students are going to be so much happier. And yet still we're not finding schools ready to embrace this yet. And yeah, I've reached out to a lot of schools to suggest this. I actually have a program called Still Time for Schools, and it's just almost impossible to get schools to...

Taniastanly (01:01:06.895)
Hmm.

Tom Cronin (01:01:29.472)
Surrender some of their curriculum because they're so obsessed about trying to put more information into their brains Rather than giving their brains a bit of time to open up so they can receive more information and I love what's happening in India I know sad guru is doing some great work with school kids where They're meditating for like six hours before they even go to school and those kids are doing yoga and breath work and meditating and it's just phenomenal how Powerful it's having an effect on those kids

Taniastanly (01:01:35.537)
Mm.

Taniastanly (01:01:58.881)
I wish all the schools incorporated that. know they want to just try to put in as much information as possible into the kids and they don't even remember it. So I wish I was just about to say that I maybe you could come and speak to the schools over here and ask them to do it. But seems like you've already tried it in Australia. And in Australia, there are so many like a lot of my podcast guests are coming from Australia. They seem to be in a lot more spiritually evolved situation right now. So.

and the fact that they are still not open to it. Yeah, I hope the schools are incorporated. It would be so beneficial for the children. Now, there is something called the Cosmic Close, which is a segment that I have in my podcast where I ask two questions, which is inspired by Rupert Spira. And the first question is, how may we be free of suffering and enjoy eternal happiness?

Tom Cronin (01:02:51.406)
It's a great question. And I love Rupert Spira is a beautiful man and a very enlightened human being that has a lot to share and teach the world. The only way to be truly free of suffering is to truly realize our essential nature, divine quality, to be fully stabilized in presence, which is conscious awareness. There is no suffering in conscious awareness. There is no suffering in the divine. There is no suffering in source and

That is the very essence of who we are. So it's to be realized in that, to be awakened to our true nature is the freedom, the liberation from suffering. And that just comes with due diligence. There's a beautiful quote, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, to be vigilant to the true nature of self, to liberate ourself from the trappings of the thoughts and the feelings. These are the two things that we get so deeply attached to, thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings.

as a source of identity, but it's actually not our true identity. We have thoughts and we have feelings, but we have conscious awareness behind the thoughts and feelings. It's like the blue sky is the true nature of the sky. It's not the clouds that are in the sky. And so that's ultimately the work that needs to be done is to realize that true nature.

Taniastanly (01:04:08.259)
beautiful I love that. The second question is what do you think is the nature of our reality?

Tom Cronin (01:04:15.226)
That's such an esoteric question. In the Vedic tradition, it recognizes that all reality is form and formlessness. The two of them come together, the manifest and the unmanifest. We call this Brahman, the totality. Brahman, the totality recognizes that yes, there is form. That's true. It's not an illusion. There is form. There's a computer here. There's a wall behind me. There's a physical body here. There is form. But also there's formlessness, which is the

Taniastanly (01:04:17.199)
Thank

Tom Cronin (01:04:45.587)
unquantifiable reality that pervades and permeates all of form and phenomenon. So we have manifest and unmanifest simultaneously happening as one. And in the Vedic tradition, we recognize this as the totality, the fundamental aspect of all life. Unfortunately, for most of us, we only identify with form, which means that we're ignoring a large portion of what reality is. And that's the source of suffering. But when we can play with form and formlessness simultaneously,

and bring this into the joy of what it is to be human, to have the form and the formlessness simultaneously being realized and experienced is what I believe that the beauty and the richness of what we're actually here to do is to realize that the Brahman, the totality.

Taniastanly (01:05:28.483)
I think that is what all of us are here to try to merge both the physical and the non-physical together, bring heaven on earth. Love that answer. So you've been looking into having more retreats in the world, different parts of the world, and I also saw you talking about holding a retreat in Dubai as well. How's that coming along?

Tom Cronin (01:05:47.47)
It's coming along. I'm really excited. I went to a retreat expo last week in Bali and I met with a number of people who are from Dubai and we're talking about venues. We're looking at dates and so it's looking most likely now to be in Dubai in November and 2025. So we're just locking in the venue. We'll be locking in dates soon and we'll start selling tickets to that. It's going to be a four-day retreat in a large resort near the Palm.

if we get the venue and it's right on the edge of the ocean and it's going to be a beautiful venue and yeah we're going to have a really special time and we'll be selling tickets to that very soon. We're going to make it very affordable so hopefully we'll see a lot of people there for it.

Taniastanly (01:06:22.903)
Hmm.

Taniastanly (01:06:31.855)
I'm super excited that you're coming to Dubai. We needed it so much. All of you guys watching this, let us know if you're going to attend this retreat that's going to come up. Tom is going to come and teach you about meditation techniques, how to get over stress, anxiety and lead a more blissful life. So this is definitely something you guys have to attend. Let us know about, you know, when you're going to make it. Even if you're not in Dubai, if you're around in the other Gulf countries too, I highly recommend you guys come and then join Tom there as well.

Tom Cronin (01:06:35.694)
Me too.

Taniastanly (01:07:00.643)
Tom, do you have any final message for us?

Tom Cronin (01:07:04.536)
think the parting words will be that we're potentially going to see some difficult times going forward for humanity. We haven't quite learned the lessons we need to learn yet. So the lessons will come thick and fast. And it could be weather challenges, could be financial challenges, it could be political and war challenges globally. But one thing we want to learn from all of this is that there is peace within us. It's everything that we're looking for.

It sounds very cliched, but we've got to close our eyes and go in. We are so obsessed about the external world as a source of identity and a source of fulfillment. But the lessons for us to learn is that we must close our eyes, we must go within, and we must go into the silence and the stillness and find a sanctuary of peace that lies there. And that's where we're going to get the freedom, that's where we're going to get the liberation, that's where we're going to find the bliss.

Taniastanly (01:07:37.071)
Mm.

Taniastanly (01:07:59.469)
I love that. Tom, where can we find you?

Tom Cronin (01:08:02.594)
Come to Instagram, Tom Cronin. I like to hear from people. by all means, feel free to send me a message. I respond to all my messages and love to connect with my community. I'm quite hands on there and my website, Tom Cronin as well, tomcronin.com.

Taniastanly (01:08:17.667)
Tom is very responsive. I didn't expect Tom to respond to me, but he did respond. he does. that's, yeah, that's why we're here. All of the links mentioned today, guys, would be, you could go and check it out at celestivolve.com forward slash episode forward slash 30. We also have something exciting, which is our own chat bot. So if you want quick references to any of the episodes or podcasts that we have done.

Tom Cronin (01:08:23.562)
And that's why we're here. That's why I respond.

Taniastanly (01:08:43.907)
you could go to celestivolve.com forward slash AI. So ask your questions and it would give you answers, references if you want to revisit any of the key points that we have discussed and also references to whichever videos it is coming from. Tom, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for taking up this huge challenge of trying to inspire 1 billion people to meditate daily. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Tom Cronin (01:09:12.61)
Thanks for inviting me. It's been great sharing space with you and thanks for listening in everyone.