 So, about five years ago, I was kind of burned out, was burned out of doing the tech startup thing. I needed a break, and I went to the library looking for kind of a fluff book, like I just needed to really zone out. And I saw one that caught my eye, I think they had like set it up on the corner of the bookshelf or something, and it was the brother's Karamazov. And I took it, and it shows how much I knew about literature at the time, I'm like this, you know. It was not a fluff book. And early on in the book, there's this scene where a woman goes to the elder monk Zosima, this woman is really distraught. She lives in a very religious time, there's not really much separation of church and state going on there, and she is so guilty, feels so guilty because she doesn't believe in God or believe in heaven, and she's just an anguish over this because it's unacceptable to not believe these things at the time. And so she goes to the monk Zosima to ask what to do, and Zosima tells her, he says, well, there's no way to prove it, but it's enough to be convinced. And if you want to be convinced, then love actively and tirelessly. Love your neighbor, love your friends, love your enemies actively and tirelessly, and to the extent that you succeed, you will encounter the timelessness of your soul and of the human spirit. And this really blew me away because it was the first time I'd ever been exposed to the idea that if you have a question surrounding spirituality or religion, you didn't need to just defer to a holy book or something that told you what you had to believe. You could go do an experiment. It really opened the door for me right there. You could go do an experiment to deepen your spiritual convictions. I was so floored by this that I wondered, has anybody done it? Like, is anybody out there just loving actively and tirelessly? And I think I, when I say I went searching for them, I think I like brought up Google and typed in, like, active love or something. Like, who's doing this, you know? And one of the first things that came up was a man named Jean Vanier. And Jean Vanier was a French-Canadian philosopher. He, in his mid-20s, I believe, decided he, too, would do an experiment. And he went down to the local insane asylum. And I think that's a picture of him and Mother Teresa, by the way. They were good friends. He went down to the insane asylum in his town. And he observed what was going on there. And what he saw were people drugged up, milling about in circles. And 50, 60 years ago, we actually didn't distinguish at all between mental illness and handicaps or disabilities. They were quite simply just 50 years ago people in insane insilence because they had Down syndrome and so on and so forth. We don't like to think we were so primitive such a short time ago, but it's a good reminder, it's a good humbling fact. And so he checked out a couple of these guys. And he said, they're going to come live with me. And they just had dinner together and they had friendship. And they, eventually these guys were doing the dishes and sitting on the front porch smiling and waving at people and mowing the lawn. And so he realized these people weren't crazy. They just didn't have friendship. And you could take any of us and shave our head and give us some pills and deprive us of all friendship and other human needs. And we would be mistaken for crazy before too long. So I was so just floored by this man. He had all these insights like no matter how disabled a person is, they can tell whether you're there because you're forced to be there with them, whether you're paid to be there with them or whether you want to be there with them. And so he created communities, there's now over 150 of them in the world. One of them being one hour from our very location here in New Zealand. I just found that out today. Of people who would choose to be with the lowest, the non-upward mobile of our society, they were going to choose to be with them out of love. So I went around telling everybody about this man. I was just so inspired. And nobody had ever mentioned him to, had ever heard of them. I'm just going on and on, active love and this and that and he's doing it. He's actually doing it. And one friend I told said, yeah, and he'll be here next week. And I said, you know, you got the wrong guy. This guy is like 80, he lives in a little village in France. And he says, no, I know the guy. He's being brought into the local university by the Divinity School there. He'll be here next week. So you can bet I was there next week. And there were a lot of interesting people there. There were a lot of people. People brought all the disabled out, all the handicapped who are actually all around us, but they're just sitting inside watching TV right now. Probably just a few doors down somewhere. And so just be around people who are just a little different than normal. I was standing in line at the cafe for lunch and I heard somebody mumble, they have a copy of the Pentatook in the bookstore in Hebrew. And I look around, like, who is talking to me? And I turn around, there's a little girl. She's probably nine or 10. And she wasn't talking to me necessarily. I don't know who she was talking to, but I'd noticed her. She had walked around the entire time over this two-day conference, staring at the floor and shuffling her feet. I don't even know what you call that special need. I used to know it. Severely autistic, maybe, something like that. And anyways, during the intermission, during the time that we were giving this poor 80-year-old Jean-Vonier a break from delivering all this wisdom to us, he's just sitting there and we all, people kind of line up because they want to meet this man, they want to talk to this man. And I'm there in line, I'm about five people back from getting my chance to talk to Jean. And I can see him, I'm watching him so intently because I'm trying to, like, plan, like what, you know, I'm going to explode with all the things I want to ask this man and talk to this man about, and I have probably 30 seconds. And I can see him making eye contact with the people right in front of him, whoever he's talking to. They're saying, oh, Mr. Vonier, it's so nice you're here and I've loved your work and he's nodding and smiling. And without breaking eye contact, I swear, he reaches his handout just out into nothing as he's without breaking eye contact with these people. And that little shuffling girl comes out of nowhere, comes up, takes his hand. And while he's having this conversation with whatever adult is heaping all this adulation on him, his arm is pulsing every now and then. It's shaking. And the girl never looks up. She never looks up. And then after a while, after a minute or so, he lets go when she doesn't about face and shuffles off. And I'm thinking, they just had a conversation. They just spoke to each other. So I get up there and it's finally my turn. And Jean Vonier looks at me and his face just lifts and he takes both hands and he says, it's so nice to meet you. And he starts listening. And in that moment, I feel better than maybe I've ever felt before in my whole life. And in this moment of feeling this way, actually, a photographer from the local newspaper snaps a picture and it's on the front page the next day. Imagine finding me three weeks earlier and saying, yes, you found somebody. He'll be here a couple of weeks and you're going to be on the front page with them in the paper, but it's just you can't make this stuff up. So I walk away from that conversation and several friends and I had gone together and we're all just bawling in the back just from saying hello to this man and hugging each other and crying. And I started asking myself, where did he get this power? What was that power? And he had mentioned it a little in his talk that all he wants to convey to these people that he works with is that they're loved, that they're safe and that they're someone. And so the way he's gotten this power is not by just sitting on top of a mountain meditating or going to a guru or something. This man has spent 40 years, at least, of his life changing the diapers on adults, trying to convince somebody who can't see or speak or hear. There's a human spirit stuck in a lump of flesh. He's going to convince them it's time to get in the bath. You're going to take your clothes off. You're safe. You're someone. You're loved. 40, 50 years of conveying that to people who can't see you, who don't understand the words you're using. That's how he developed that power. So it was with some dismay, as an aspiring wizard, that I said, OK, that's what you've got to do. You've got to go work with these people, apparently. So I found one of these communities and I began to volunteer. And the first thing you notice when you get to these communities is you immediately start categorizing who's normal and who's handicap. Because it's going to affect what you do, how you talk to them, whether you talk to them, and so on and so forth, right? And so you're constantly putting people in that category. Are you one of us? Are you normal or are you one of them? And if you're one of them, I might go up to you and say, well, hello there. How are you today? My name's Josh, right? And I did that once. I saw a guy who went up and he said, I'm my name's Josh. And he looks at me and he says, well, that's cool. Like, I'm Bob. Glad to have you here. I'm one of the staff members. He was just having a bad hair day. His hair was sticking up back here. And so I just assumed he was disabled, right? And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, cool, man. Yeah, first day here. So eventually, though, you stop doing that. It's the strangest thing, but you stop doing that. Because they teach you that everyone is disabled. I didn't know exactly what they meant by that. But as I worked with them, I would just, when I say worked with them, I mean just endured them, really. I just sat there and tried to make small talk with them or something. And what I mean by all of us are disabled is that as I sat there, when these people were happy, they were happy. You knew it. If they were happy, they might be clapping and smiling and they're happy. And if they were angry, there was no pass of aggressiveness. They threw the slice of pizza at you. And at first, you're just like, what? And then later on, you're thinking, I'm not that free. I should be happy right now. Like, why am I not clapping? Is it OK to clap? All right. But Pierre over here isn't waiting for permission. The clap, he's happy. And Margaret over there, she's mad. I'm mad too, but you can't tell, because I've buried it. I've got all this surplus intelligence that I used to create this artifice over my whole being. And that was my disability. I wasn't as free as these people were. The other thing that happens is that you start to wonder if maybe you're OK. Because this is a very humiliating road to or humbling road to enlightenment here or self-acceptance. But the thought process is really this. Pierre over there is drooling on himself right now. And I think he just farted. And he moans when you're not supposed to moan, like when we're supposed to be listening to something or paying attention. And people are really treating him well anyway. It seems that they love him anyway right now. And this one over here, I think, just peed on themselves. And the diaper is not doing all that it can do. And it's not kicked out. Like he's not humiliated. And so if they're still lovable, and they're drooling on themselves and doing all these unacceptable things, I've got to be OK because I've got it together. You know, like I've got it. And that's the humble road to self-acceptance when you're there is maybe I'm OK because that guy, I wasn't sure if he was OK. And he seems like he's OK. People love him anyway. Maybe I'm lovable too. And eventually you say, of course, I've got to be lovable if they are. And so you go, and they tell you, you're going to go to these communities. And you always go thinking you're going to help them. And of course, if you're just there for a week or a couple of days, you're just going to get in the way. They know that. They'll give you little things. Well, can you wheel so and so down the hall for us OK? And you walk out of there and you realize that you were the one who was helped. They helped you. So I was years later feeling the travel itch, wondering where to go, looking at the map kind of aimlessly. A lot of places I've never been. How do you decide? And a friend says to me, why don't you go see Jean-Vanier? And my heart just lifted. And it's like, can I just do that? Can I go see him? And so I flew to France. And I flew to this, I took a train to this little town that I still can't pronounce outside of France, outside of Paris, rather. And I spent time there in the original community. And there were other people there, people my age, people younger, people older. And I started asking them, why are you here? Like, why are you doing this with your time? You're a good looking guy. You could be out there with normal people doing stuff. And he's here. And this one guy said to me, I'll never forget. He says, well, I'm sure there's a power here that can change the world. There are 150 of these communities today all around the world that are changing the world with that power. And like I said, there's one here in New Zealand an hour away. And I want you to think now here about the Aroha Valley. And why is everyone here so amazing? Why is every conversation you have here one of the best conversations you've had? Why are you more amazing than you were back home? And I think it's the same power that L'Arche has. The name of these communities that Jean-Van really started to call L'Arche means the Ark in French. And first and foremost, I think what L'Arche is, and in my opinion what this place is, which I never counted on, is that it's a safe place. To be yourself, to be your fullest self, to be a self you've never even dreamed of being. And I'm just really grateful that the founding team here, first and foremost, got that right. Thank you. Thank you. You answered my question. And just, yeah, I lost my dad to cancer. I just know that that's how I am with people. I know this. Actually, that's the only thing that can really change the world. Thank you so much, Josh. That was really fantastic. And it really speaks to my heart and I think the work that I have in the world, too. And it reminded me of, did any of you all see that there was an article on Huffington Post recently about addiction and the causes of addiction? Ryan, so a bunch of you know this and that. So the original study that was done was by the partnership for Drug Free America, which probably most of us know is more about politics than it is about helping people, said, oh, if we put a rat in a cage and there's water bottle with normal water and there's a water bottle with cocaine water, that rat is gonna go to the cocaine water until it kills himself. And so that was the propaganda that was used to convince many children and humans that drugs are bad and you should never do them ever because you will die. And so then in the 1970s, a professor from Vancouver was like, well, I mean, if I was in a cage by myself, like I probably might kill myself, too. So he made this rat palace. He had this cage with all these rats together and they had toys and activities and they lived in community. And then again, he put the water bottle with normal water, cocaine water in the rat palace. And guess what? None of the rats killed themselves. Some of them went to the cocaine water every once in a while. I think it was like 10%. But none of them died and they didn't, the ones that went to the cocaine water did not do it like habitually in a way that was detrimental to their health at all. And not only that, he then took rats who had been isolated in a cage, who had been addicted to the cocaine water. They hadn't killed themselves, but they were in the space of going back over and over and over again and put them in the rat palace. They stopped drinking the cocaine water. So I think we have this idea sometimes that we're not all the same. We don't have disabilities. We were like, you're saying, we classify, oh, this person is this way, this person is this other way. And yeah, I guess I don't really have anything else to say or share that story because it's so reminiscent and yeah. It's really, it's really powerful. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. I've worked with a lot of disabled children in my teaching career and I've often thought, yes, they do teach you more than you are teaching them. And almost at some level, they're doing it too. They're getting their needs, I don't know, it's kind of like different things happen to ensure that they get love. But I loved your thing about people being able to sense whether they're getting paid or whether they care because people need to be reminded of that in many settings too with healthcare. A lot of people in hospitals and nursing homes that are being cared for by strangers and that's equally sad. Yeah. It's back, back the same sort of spin-off on the same theme that I'm recycling. It's the basis of humanity, right? That we're really mammals, we're chimpanzees, bonobos and the way they deal with stress is that they come and they touch each other and they hold each other. And if one chimp was almost killed by some tiger out there, it comes back and it's being held by the tribe. So the nervous system or the whole tribe is regulating this one individual who has been completely dysregulated, right? Which is normal. We all get dysregulated. What this Jean was doing was regulating you to a whole new way of tuning. He was tuning your instrument to a different octave of love. And these guys were showing you where you defense structures were. And when you see these defense structures, they just fall away. They really do, if you're held, if you're held and supported and you're not in fear and you're not in hunger, you're not in survival. And the reason that this is working is because we are all kind of thriving individuals. We have a certain age limit, age group or financial status which is thank God so we can be actually creative and innovative. And that's how all the cultures have done it. So it's when it's been peace. And so how do we regulate these other people who are at war who are still running the defense structures? We hold them. It's that safety, it's that love. And so it's through nervous system regulation. It's actually much simpler and we're using psychology. So Maya has mentioned Rat Palace three times in the past week. It keeps coming up and I was gonna joke and just started saying it's all about Rat Palace, you know? One of the reasons it came up is because I was talking to some people and we found that we weren't spending very much time on our computers and it was weird because we had them and we've got wifi everywhere. And I can't spend more than 15 minutes on my computer here and I'm just like there's nothing for me here. And I want to go out and have a conversation with somebody or I go look at some artwork or whatever and it's like Rat Palace and what does it say about our usual homes, you know? Well we can go five hours, eight hours, 10 hours on the computer in a day and still keep going back. I haven't had enough. There's gotta be more for me in here, right? It's challenging, so. There's definitely a core intention, you know, when we talk about different people bringing their unique gifts, you know, that's been a set of vocabulary that we've been kind of coming back to a lot. And, you know, in our current society it's so regimented. You know, they have sort of California culture. It's like, you know, Josh was talking about there's all these people who live amongst us and community and who we never see and they're just totally alienated and disenfranchised. So definitely, yes, an intention to integrate all forms and all populations. You know, this sort of developmentally impaired or physically impaired has probably been one that hasn't had a lot of conversation. You know, we've thought a lot about sort of the indigenous community of New Zealand. We've thought a lot about different age of accurate and how that sort of fits in but I can't recall any explicit conversations and yet immediately when you say that I recognize that this space would be really good for that. Being out in nature and holding that space, you know, is really cool. So maybe that's something that we could even explore because I know you have some background in wilderness therapy and the like and maybe you could even help point us in the right direction on some of this. Cool. It's tangentially related but I wanted to share an intention that has emerged explicitly around how we share out some of the learnings and models especially as it relates to sustainability, technology and practices around food and shelter and so forth which is to really focus on the least socially upward mobile, so to speak. And since we're talking a lot about kind of the notion of climate change, it's often displaced populations who are adversely affected by climate who may not have access to many resources. So a lot of the thought that, for instance, Brian's done around the materials resource are things like what can we find that's in dramatic abundance that's not being recognized as valuable shipping pallets? There's like what, two billion of them or a billion of them on the planet and most of them are being unused or used only for one purpose, one time use. So we're cutting down trees to ship our stuff and then we're wasting it or recycled billboards. So you see like the yurts and a lot of the beds and different things like this, they're made from these types of materials with the notion that if we can then also add the video and document level that we can hopefully help distribute patterns, specifications, how to types of content out there specifically to enable and empower with these types of tools, the things that we're learning here and also just kind of continue to reground our experience of this because we're trying to keep that fine balance between kind of luxury and nature so that we can have an experience where we feel healed, we feel held, we feel taken care of and can really expand and give our greatest gifts and talents but at the same time not lose that deep groundedness of what are we doing it for and where we really need to stay grounded in order to be of service to the world. And so I think as part of that it's a natural conversation to really think about how we integrate more around mentally handicapped or disabled individuals. I'm really glad you're calling that in. Josh, for the way that you showed up here today and have showed up every day that you've been here. It's been really rad, so just leave it at that. My closing thought is that just I'm always so, I'm always so happy when in these environments someone just comes and delivers the message of love in just such a relatable, just a beautiful relatable drop in way. And I feel like that's like every single person here gets to have their life a little bit changed and enhanced when we share from that place. So thank you for just dropping into something that you care so deeply about that truly on some level or another affects each one of us.