 Hello, welcome to the Chi Channel. Today we have a special guest, my good friend and mentor Stephen Sypes He is the owner of Summer Hill Pyramid Winery, and he's won the award for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and also you just got honored for a new designation. Can you tell me more about that? Yes, it was the announcement came out yesterday that I'll be called up on October 7th For the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame, which is so nice. I'm very excited about that. Thank you, David. Thank you Yeah, it's uh, they're honoring me for being organic and serving 200 people at a time, organic, and having hundreds of weddings, or well over a hundred weddings, all organic, and also for bringing in food to be allowed in wineries. Before I went to Victoria and lobbied for it We weren't allowed to have food in a winery, and then I also brought in the ability to have beer and cocktails, which was also not allowed in a winery. So I made some great strides there, and they're recognizing me which I am very grateful for and I'm very honored. I feel great. BC Hall of Fame, Restaurant Hall of Fame. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Tell us, how did you get the idea of organic wines and organic food? Well, I came here with my four little sons from New York, and I bought the vineyard and we started to, I started to drive the tractor in the vineyard, you know, and the third day out, the vineyard manager said, okay, Steve, let's suit up. We're gonna spray chemicals today, and it was this horrific gramaxone chemical that killed the weeds for five years, and I said, well, wait a second, where does where do we get our drinking water? And we look out at the lake, and that's where the drinking water is, and this toxic stuff is gonna go into the ground here and seep right into the lake. I said, I don't want to do that. So he says, come on, we got to do that blah blah blah, so okay, I suited up and I reluctantly did it, and that was the first and only time I ever did it. And from then on, I decided, no, we got to throw all these chemicals away and go completely organic because this is a pristine valley, and and it's too magnificent to spoil with chemicals, and especially with young children and pets and and the drinking water and all that. I said, no, we can't do that. That's that's horrific. I later learned that we are the northernmost growing region, the agriculture region in the world that can grow grapes, and the grapes, chemicals used on grapes, is extremely toxic. So I thought, well, this is a wonderful way to get the organic movement going, and I want to be a leader in that, and I have been in that. I'm excited about that. So this is a book, All One Era. So tell us more about it. Yeah, it's a book I've just completed and just completed an audio book of it, which I'm very proud of because I thought about an audio book for a long time, and then and then it occurred to me, well, Steve, why don't you just read the book yourself in your own way? And I'm so glad I did because I ended up add living a lot and, you know, putting the words across emotionally from, you know, from the heart. So yeah, I'm proud of the audio book especially, and it should be coming out next week, I'm hoping. But there's a lot in here about my own experiences from birth, really. I was, how could you say, orphaned in the seventh grade, and I've been on my own since the seventh grade, which has been a gift in a way because I didn't have family, so the world became my family, and you know, we are all one. When we stop fighting with each other and start loving each other and start loving and appreciating what we have, that's when we'll cut through the chaos and we get rid of the fear and open up ourselves to be loved. The world will be a much nicer place. It's all around. So tell us more about the meditation you've been doing and how the pyramid enhances that? Well, the pyramid enhances meditation because it's a very wonderful setting for it. There are very few distractions. It's quiet. It's dark. You don't hear noises around you like you do normally. You are in a place of sacred geometry, and our bodies are responding to that because we are actually sacred geometry as well. We are a microcosm of the macrocosm, and these are all things that add up to an experience where, again, we become one with our bodies and one with life itself and the connectedness of the entire universe, and that vibration opens our receiving and there in lies the essence of meditation is receiving. Once we stop the chatter, we open up the heart. We are connected through our love, and that's where the sacred geometry enhances the ability to meditate. Most people, when they think about building something, they build a tool shed or a garden, but you build a pyramid, which is one-eighth the size of the pyramid in Egypt. So tell us, what made you do it, and what inspired you, and then the process of building it? Well, I've always been fascinated with sacred geometry. And I became more and more drawn to it through my dreams. I have very vivid dreams. They call them lucid dreaming. Yeah, and I had a lucid dream when I was visiting the sanctuaries and temples in Asia and all around Asia and Thailand. And one starry night, I was meditating all night, and I was proud of myself because the mosquitoes were after me, and I was able to not not be deterred by them. Well, Steve, you're doing it, you know. Anyway, that was the night. I got this amazing message that Steve, a pyramid, is fabulous. It reflects the sun, and it even means pyramid, fire in the middle. That's who we are. That's our fire. That's our love. That's our essence. And I wanted to delve into it, and I researched it, and I found a lot of wonderful things about it, and I talk about it in my book in detail, because when I had the passion to make sparkling wine, I visited the wineries in Europe, making the best sparkling wine, and realized that they have what they call a marriage period, where the original cuvet, which is sat in the bottle for seven or eight or ten years, is degorged, which means they take the dead yeast cells out of it, and topped up with a little bit of sweet reserve, and the melding, or the marriage, of the sweet reserve and the original cuvet takes place in sacred geometry throughout most of Europe, in the form of Roman arch-sellers. There are miles and miles of them. In Spain, Côte-de-Nu has over 35 miles of Roman arch-sellers, where they marry all the cuvet with the dosage. So I thought, oh, we're gonna build a Roman arch-seller, and then I realized my dream about the pyramid, and I started to see that a dome, a Roman arch-seller, and a pyramid are all forms of sacred geometry, and I also realized that perhaps the most precise would be the pyramid. It's oriented to the north. It has no ferrous metals in it. It can be built out of organic materials. So on, and I realized too that we have a lot of sandy soil, and it's not easy to build Roman arch-sellers. So I built the first pyramid in 1989 while we were making the base cuvets for the first sparkling wines, and we went to Europe and bought equipment, and gosh, launched the winery after that, and then we had a wonderful start by every visitor. We took them to the pyramid, show them, let them feel the essence of being in a sacred geometry chamber, which you can really feel it, especially if you're sensitive. Like I walk in there, I start tingling, and a lot of people do. And then we come back, and we taste the exact same wine, bottled on the same day, and served at the same temperature, one bottle having been in the pyramid and one not, and everybody would say, wow, that's amazing. That's like two different wines, and it was, and it still is. We still do that experiment at the four festivals every year here at Summerhill. Spring, summer, fall, and winter wine festival. We go up to the pyramid and bring down a barrel of red wine usually that's been sitting in the pyramid for a while in barrels, and then we compare it to a barrel that's here in the warehouse, of the same exact wine, bottled on the same day, not bottled, but harvested on the same day, so they're tank samples. And everybody says, wow, wow, are you sure? These are like two separate wines. Over 90% vote for the pyramid one. How long do you put it in the pyramid? You know, a lot of people ask that question, and we always say 30 days minimum, because that was the prerequisite of Europe for marrying the dosage with the cuvet. So we try to keep it 30 days, but ironically the sparkling wine, that one best sparkling wine in the world in France, had been in the pyramid for more than three years. So I don't know. And then alternatively, I did a live broadcast on CBC Radio with a picture of organic orange juice that I made the night before, and I poured two glasses and put one in the pyramid, and everybody taste-tested it live on the radio, and everybody said that the orange juice that was in the pyramid overnight tasted more like fresh squeezed, and they voted for that one. It was 10 out of 10. So yeah, one night or three years, I don't know. And I myself go there many times when I'm feeling the weight of the world. I mean, I just get relieved because it's, I don't know, it takes you out of the world, out of the 3D. It's a place where I don't know, you like to be, you want to be there, and everybody wants to be there. You can call in ancestors, anybody. It's a really beautiful little chamber that sacred geometry makes. Available to use. I'm surprised that we don't use it in, you know, to more of an extent. I mean, I can imagine nursing homes and hospitals and classrooms with sacred geometry versus all these boxes. Nature has no boxes in it. Why do we not use sacred geometry? You can even do it in a grid form and put it in the walls, in the floors, in the ceilings. You know, it's it's conducive to meditation, which is conducive to Tai Chi and exercises and yoga that invigorates the body to be a receiver. Again, the same wording that I use, but basically highlights the loving universal consciousness that surrounds us at all times, that we tend not to acknowledge or not to bring forth or not to let in. So yes, it's conducive to allowing in the loving universal consciousness that we have at all times. So Stephen, you're very in touch with nature. You're very in touch with spirituality and consciousness and meditation. So tell us what your view of is of Chi and of life force. Chi and life force are, to me, the important ingredients to the word knowing, which I would say is a capital K, because they invigorate the body to become a vessel of receiving. It opens our feminine receivership. Doing yoga and Tai Chi and doing all of the beautiful things that you do opens up our bodies to be how could you say? Vibrationally receiving the connectedness and the guidance that we all have at all times. We are all guided at all times. This is the most beautiful thing. I do a lot of things all day from them and all night to be in that space. I many times don't sleep at night. I meditate. And when I awake, I try to go barefoot even in all the weather, standing in the snow with my bare feet connected to the earth because that alone is a great experience to be with the electromagnetic energy of the earth. And of course the ingredients of the earth itself, the trace minerals, which is what plants grow on and we animals grow on. So yes, and that in sun gazing, to me are the two glorious things that I cherish every day. To be with, I call my son Ra, it's uniting ourselves with the universe. We look directly at Ra, half an hour from sunrise and within a half an hour of sunset and it does not hurt your eyes. I've been to my eye doctor many, many years and I've been doing it for over 20 years almost daily. So it does not hurt the retinas of your eyes and it's, if anything, it's healthy. My prescription's getting better. Yes, and while you're in that state of communication with Ra, the sun, you realize that this is our star. This is our star with all the planets revolving around him, her, with all the life that we have here and the life is not possible without the sun, right? And therefore we get thanks to Ra for giving us life. It is the gratefulness for life. You know, we all salute life, but where is the essence of it? It is the sun, and the moon reflects the sun, and so on, and the planet itself. We give reverence for all that we have and it is an incredible thing that we have, you know. Consciousness, I call it loving universal consciousness, L-U-C. That's the beautiful thing about sun gazing, is you actually have a dialogue, and again, that could sound crazy, right? It depends on how you take it, but if you take it in the sense that when you conjure something with, with respect and perspective, you can, you can have it come to you, right? Let's say as an example, you conjure yourself, getting aboard a magic carpet and floating. Well, that's ridiculous, right? But you know what? If you actually see yourself getting on the carpet and you sit on the carpet and you imagine yourself starting to float, and then you ease out over the lake and you look out over the mountains, and oh my goodness. Pretty soon, even though you know you're only conjuring, you're actually on the carpet, in some perspective, in some way, right? In your mind. In your mind, yes. And that is a, I would say, a tool that I have used many times because in conjuring and creating, in imagination, it's another thing that Albert said, imagination is greater than knowledge because blah, blah, blah. In that imagination, there are no limits. You are one with all the dimensions. You know, here we are locked into the 3D, three-dimensional, but there's 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and beyond that we can enjoy. There's no limit to our imagination and to our understanding and capital K knowing this of who we are, and we are very, very beautifully grand. All of us, all of us, and very equal. There are none, none stronger or better than any other. The business of bowing down and worshiping other people and other people as deities and all that stuff. Take it with a grain of salt because every one of us has the ability and well, take that back. Every one of us is divine. We are divine. Divined all one forever beings. Being a young entrepreneur myself, what's one piece of advice that you would give someone who is starting a business or just starting out or thinking about becoming an entrepreneur? Well, I think empowerment is a wonderful way to go. And it's based on being an entrepreneur, having visions that you really know, and then empowering others who get the vision to let it, you know, make it unfold and to make it manifest. Many of us who are leaders have the same pitfall. We think that, you know, we have to get in there and do it all ourselves. And that's been my, you know, problem. And everyone else's problem. We think we know how to do it better than anyone. But no, it's really good if we are lazy managers, so to speak. A great manager is a lazy manager. The one that lets other people rise to the occasion, as my dad would say, and see the vision and say, yeah, let's do that, right? Like, to get our insects back, we have to go organic. So we'll not stop at McDonald's. And we'll stop at the organic restaurant or the vegan restaurant or the little Asian restaurant down the street where you know mom and pop are growing their own vegetables in the backyard. Yeah, and they're not using any chemicals. Let's go there and let's make our own garden. You know, that's the way we got to eat now. That's the way we got to think now to save the planet, save the world. It's the same with education too. I mean, I love alternative education. I don't like cramming all our kids into one classroom and making them, you know, have to abide by all the rules and making a lot of kids very upset and they're turning to their screens. And this is a whole other tangent. I don't want to go into it, but there are a lot of wonderful things that are happening today. All I think we need now as entrepreneurs is to set out some wonderful visions, some enlightened, if you will, thoughts that will bring everyone up together to a great crescendo of manifesting and working with nature and working with our own selves and being holy unto ourselves. Yeah. If you were to start everything all over again, what would you do? I would make it a lot simpler on our behalf. We have a beautiful vineyard here overlooking the lake and all of the grapes that I have here, I personally planted on my hands and knees and I went to France and Germany to buy them. They're the highest end clones that make the best sparkling wines in France and Europe. Had I done it differently, I would have just made sparkling wines, not reds and whites and any other because I'm devoted to sparkling wine, and I would have just made them from the grapes that I have in this vineyard and kept it very small and very high end and not had 170 employees and huge things like we have now. It's a great thing we have it. I'm not upset about it, but if you ask me that question, my honest answer would be I would have kept it small, just kept it as a sparkling wine house only, which is my passion, and if I did introduce food, which I think totally goes with sparkling wine especially because sparkling wine goes with any food, I would have had gourmet, organic food, and again kept it small. Instead of 200 seats and 100 weddings a year, maybe 40 seats, 50, okay Steve? Not too much. Sometimes our visions tend to get bigger than we imagine. Well, yeah, and the bigger you get, the bigger you want to get again because now the next thing is to buy more grapes, make more wine. Hey Steve, you ran out of this wine, how come? We need that one. We've got to go out and buy more grapes and make more wine. So that's the way it is in mushrooms, it gets bigger and bigger. How can you balance the spirituality with business success? That's a good question. Sometimes you have to tame it down so you don't appear to be crazy and also you have to be, you know, people want to listen to somebody who's like themselves, that's a natural thing. So you don't, you sort of fit in and work the whole thing and I'm at home with everybody and everything. I can put on a business suit and a tie and black shoes and polish them up and, you know, be in a limousine for gosh sakes if I have to. If that's the way to get to the crowd that I need to show the vision to, that's the way I'm going to do it, right? Yeah, it's, I would say just being open and flowing with, going with the flow rather than trying to modify and control. Yeah, because those are fear-based ways to do things. There's, as again I say, there's only two emotions in the world, love and fear. So we'll always choose the high road, always choose the love road. Thank you David. Thank you for inviting me and I'm looking forward to seeing all that's going to happen because whatever you envision, it happens. So far so good. And I'm very excited to see that. Thank you so much. It's an honor to, to do this interview with you. Thank you and if I may make a plug for my book. Yep. Anyone who wants to read the book, Amazon.com. It's $12.21 US, which is 12.21 is the date of the end of the Mayan calendar, 2012. And it is the beginning of the All-One Era.