Vishen Lakhiani: The Buddha and the Badass
Vishen Lakhiani: Yes, but the law of attraction itself is a fairly simplistic concept on a more powerful idea. The Law of Attraction is highly incomplete. It is kindergarten personal growth… if you have someone who doesn’t believe in personal growth and want them to start focusing on positive thoughts, make them watch The Secret. But more than half of the teachers who were in The Secret are now on Mindvalley—Lisa Nichols, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Marie Diamond, to name a few. I have conversations with these teachers, and they are all wonderful friends of mine, and they have explained to me that it’s far more complicated than what The Secret makes it out to be. For example, Michael Beckwith said the Law of Attraction is incomplete. What we need to teach people is The Law of Resonance. The Universe doesn’t give you what you want. That is the big mistake people make. Instead, the Universe will reflect who you are. When you change your identity of who you are, the Universe will bend in your favor. This is the Law of Resonance; this is the next level of understanding. That kindergarten idea is the Law of Attraction. When we learn reading, we start by identifying the letters, and then we recognize words, then sentences, and complex sentences. The Law of Attraction is like learning the ABCs. The Law of Resonance takes it to the next level.
OMTimes: What is your secret of being authentic and rising above the fray? How to thrive and excel in life without settling for survival mode?
Vishen Lakhiani: The first thing is understanding the World that we live in; in the words of Steve Jobs, “The world that we live in was made up of people no smarter than you, and you can change things, you can question things, and when you start doing this you will never be the same again.” What Jobs was referring to, in my book The Buddha and the Badass, I call questioning the “Brules.” What is Brule? It is a bullshit rule. It is an idea passed on from generation to generation that isn’t necessarily true. Still, we believe it to be true, so we act according to it. When you start understanding that the World around you is made up of people no smarter than you, you gain the ability to question. Do we really need a 9 to 5 job? Do we really need to work in the office? Do we need to own a car? Do we need to get married? When you start questioning the Brules, you gain the ability to start living life on your own terms. That’s the first step.
The second thing is a concept I call “Unfuckwithablity.” To be Unfuckwithable means to live life in honest congruency with your soul, with your values, to not discard these values to try to fit into a culture, a religion, or belief system. But it also means to be so solid in your appreciation for yourself that you do not need other people’s praise for you to feel good about yourself; and, at the same time, when other people do criticize you, and they will if you are a Brule breaker, people will criticize you, you’re okay with that. You know that often when people try to make you feel guilty for leading life your way, it’s simply their own cry. When you adopt questioning the Brules, and when you embrace the second ingredient of Unfuckwithablity, that’s when you truly start to live life like an original. There’s a term for that. We call such a person a visionary.
OMTimes: How can one go about discovering their Soulprint? Are there any practices that may facilitate that?
Vishen Lakhiani: I believe each of us has a unique fingerprint. We are souls living a human experience. Every soul comes into this life choosing its body, choosing the parents to whom it will be born to and choosing to embody certain values and bring those values to the World. The problem is so many of us give up those values to try and fit in. It’s interesting; we give up those values because we want to be part of a broader community, so people take on the rational beliefs of their tribe to try to fit in. Still, when you learn that you can be part of your tribe, you can also choose to find new tribes and be congruent with your values; that is the act of discovering your soulprint. Discovering what makes you tick, what makes you true.
When you find your soulprint, the idea is to infuse it in everything you do. Your soulprint is a set of values, an interchange in values that sort of dance and play with each other. Your soulprint is discovered through the trials and tribulations you go through, often suffering provides the breadcrumbs to you finding your values, so you often look at your suffering. Still, you also look at your peak moments, the happiest, most exciting moments in your life. They often give you a clue to your soulprint. When I think about my soulprint, it was my suffering in experiencing racism, being so different from other people in the country I grew up with, that I was always seen as an outcast. That infused in me a tremendous value of unity. That unity is part of my soulprint. Everything I do, I’m standing up for unity.
When Donald Trump won the election and launched the Muslim ban, Mindvalley released videos saying if you’re Muslim and can’t find a job in the U.S., We, as an American company, would hire you in our Kuala Lumpur office. People hated us for that saying, how dare you question the President of the United States? But you know what? More people loved us because we were united with our values. Our sales shot up that month beyond anything we have ever seen because we acted following my soulprint, which is unity. Today, Mindvalley employs people from 60 different countries. Look through our office, pre-pandemic, of course. When the office was still open, you could identify 60 different nationalities in the office, 60 different types of passports. We believe in unity, we believe in birth identity, and this makes us different. It doesn’t always appeal to everyone, but it makes us stand out to the people who share those values. You see, the great trick is if you’re building a great product or a brand, you want people to either hate you or love you. What you don’t want is apathy. By standing so firmly for unity, by standing against Trumpism, by standing against a border wall, people hate us; many people do. But more people move to Mindvalley because we’re a company that takes a stand and gives a damn.
“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathy to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him.”~ Charles Darwin
OMTimes: You have had so many different and eclectic experiences in your professional life. You have changed many lives, influence cultures, and build countless bridges across different schools of spirituality. Do you consider yourself to be a fearless person?
Vishen Lakhiani: There are definitely things I fear. I’m a parent. Ask any parent; we are never fearless when it comes to children. There are fears which I have overcome. I’ve overcome my fear of failure, I’ve overcome my fear of death, I’ve overcome my fear of old age, and, most importantly, my fear of criticism. Recently, in Tallinn, Estonia, where I live, there was a big article about me in the local media, and they asked me about what I liked and disliked about Estonia. I love many things about Estonia because I’m here permanently, but I dislike one thing. Estonia has its own version of Trump. A man, the Minister of the Interior, has gone on record to say that women belong at home and in the kitchen and not in politics. He has gone on record to say, if you’re black, go back. This is a country for white people. And I told this man won the election based on hate.
There is no vision for Estonia and Estonians have to wise up and vote for people with solid ideas and reject anyone who uses hate to win votes. Otherwise, we end up with our miniature version of Trumpism. Many people loved that article. Entrepreneurs loved that piece, but because it was on a media portal that allows anonymous comments, I was torn apart by white supremacists. I was told that my children who have an Estonian mother are not Estonian. I was told to leave the country. I read the most disgusting things about my race, my ethnicity, my brown skin. I read and was like this is fascinating, but it didn’t stop me. The next day, another article went up and again a hundred racist comments. I don’t care. I’m now mobilizing all entrepreneurs in Estonia to speak out against racism. What I’m doing is for every racist comment I get; I’m donating 100 euros to support the next election for whoever is running against this racist clown.
Wherever I go, if I see something in the World that I don’t like, I don’t bitch or whine about it. I change it. I’m in Estonia now, and this is my country. I’m not white. I am brown. My kids are half white, half Indian, so when they walk the streets here, they look Middle Eastern, and if my daughter, who is seven years old right now, grows up and wants to be the fricken Prime Minister of this country, so be it. I will remove every obstacle in the way. This means that I am dedicating a part of my wealth, power, and influence here in Estonia to help wipe out racism from this country.
OMTimes: Would you define yourself as a Soul Activist or more of a Social Zen Warrior (or both)?
Vishen Lakhiani: A Soul Activist or a Social Zen Warrior both sound like catchy phrases you’d see on a T-shirt. They mean nothing to me, but there is wisdom in how those words are joined together. Every author that I bring onto Mindvalley, obviously, I look at their fanbase, look into whether they are great teachers, but there’s another thing I look for: do they have a stand? Are they an activist? I remember meeting Anodea Judith; she’s an author for our Chakra Healing program. I met Anodea at a little cafe in Marin county, and I sat down with her. I wasn’t sure if we would be working together, and she handed me her business card, and that card turned it from a maybe to hell, yes! Anodea Judith’s business card said Eco-Warrior, and I knew that I would work with this person because the World needs more people who are willing to have a stand. I don’t care if your stand is for the environment or if your stand is for unity or a flag. All I care about is that people are doing it for more than just the bucks. They’re doing it to forge greater humanity, a healthier and more just planet Earth for future generations. So yes, that is where Zen Warrior comes in. It cannot be about sitting on a yoga mat and going into endless introspection. You have to get off that mat and go forth into the World and shape the World and make it better for everyone. Ken Wilber summarized this idea in a famous essay called Egolessness. He said the great spiritual saints in the World from Moses to Jesus to Padmasambhava were not feeble-minded milquetoasts. They were movers and shakers who rattled the World with the force of their ego and, in the process, created revolutions that shaped humanity for generations. This is worth remembering. This is why my book is called The Buddha and the Badass. The World needs people who can go within, tap into higher levels of consciousness, and then create new products, new shifts, new politics, new innovations, and new ideas that bring this higher level of consciousness to all of humanity.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Vishen Lakhiani
