🇺🇸Andrew Love

Hosts: So, Andrew, what's your spiritual background? How were you raised?

Andrew: Raised apathetic. That's the main religion of our world, I think. We went to church kind of when I was a little kid, but nobody believed in anything. We lived in the city, in Toronto, and you'll notice the old world that used to exist had a church at the center of every community. So we would go there because that's where other people went. We went for the sandwiches — these triangular sandwiches afterwards, I remember. But no religion or anything whatsoever.

Andrew: As I grew up, the only relationship I had with religion was making fun of it, even though I didn't really know anything about it. It was just very secular. The only Christians I knew were the kind of crazy people outside the liquor store telling me I was going to hell unless I believed in Jesus. I was like, I don't want any part of that. When I lived in California, in Santa Monica, it's a real woo-woo kind of place. There was this really cool place in Malibu that was close by, an interfaith place, and it was free. It was a garden, created by this Yogananda — if I say his name I'll be insulting somebody, but I know it's really long and there are many syllables. I started going there and it felt nice. But that was it. I couldn't take religion seriously. It was just too weird and impractical. It wasn't part of the cool crowd. I didn't know anybody cool who was into religion, so why would I take it seriously? It was like my world, and then there's the religious world, and they were pretty distant.

Hosts: Can you talk about what your life trajectory was when you met the church? Where were you? What were your plans? What was going on in your life?

Andrew: Things were not panning out so well. I was really good at the art of comedy but I was really terrible at the business of it. And Hollywood just really creeped me out — I'm a sensitive person. I know what it looks like to sell your soul, because I saw it happen in front of my face. But I was also starting to go through the process of being willing to do whatever it took to become famous. Looking back, I did some really humiliating things. I screwed people over to get ahead, and it was really isolating, little by little. When I met the movement, I was in a place where nothing quite was making sense and everything I thought was my destiny — I kept getting to a certain point and then everything would fall apart. Time and time again, I'd meet the right person and they'd say, yes, I'm going to back you up, and then they would end up swindling me, or something would happen. Things weren't clicking.

Andrew: I was also in a relationship at the time that I thought was the one, and then that just dissolved right in front of my face. It happened to be with a friend that I'd known for a really long time, and it turned out I just saw this side of humanity I'd never seen. I was like, good Lord, if somebody I thought I knew so well could act like that, then what hope do I have? Honestly, my whole life I never cared, is there a God or not? When I met this movement, it was not about that. It was much more, could I ever get back the purity that I had when I was a kid? Because I was a really pure-hearted kid. I was extremely sensitive. If I saw a homeless person, I'd just cry, sometimes for days. My family never lets me forget — when we saw Fiddler on the Roof, I cried for like three days. But then life happened, my parents got divorced, and I just became a little bit embittered. The worse things got at home, the more I'd act out in school. I couldn't find belonging in my house, so I found belonging by acting out in school — being a joker, etcetera. That led me to this place where my value in this world was making people laugh, and I wanted to make a living off of it.

Hosts: How old were you when your parents got divorced?

Andrew: It was a long process. We were separated for a long time, but it officially happened when I was in high school. It was bad at home from middle school onwards. The trajectory was: trying to be the class clown, but also being extremely shy and introverted. So sixth and seventh grade were the ugly-duckling phase of making people laugh — it was more just humiliating myself, and everybody was confused, like, are you having an identity crisis, because you're the shy guy? I was trying to not be the shy guy. By eighth grade I had it really locked down. But it was rebellious — make the students laugh and make the teachers suffer. By the end of high school I had transitioned into bringing the teachers into the joke. I became a better student, started to get validation. Our valedictorian told me that I was wise, and I was like, what are you talking about? I started to realize you can be a good person and make people laugh; you can be a good student and be a class clown. It can be both, instead of one or the other. That put me on a much better path, because it wasn't me versus the world. I could include people in the joke, and humour could be something that bonds people rather than divides them.

Andrew: When I was graduating high school, I didn't know what to do. I was doing comedy, I'd started doing Second City stuff, but it was too big a leap. You're supposed to do something after high school. Then that very year, they formed the only school in the whole world that gives you a degree in comedy, and it started right close to my house. I actually felt weird, because I realised a lot of the comedy world is about self-deprecation or the deprecation of others. It wasn't win-win. Within the stand-up world, it's dog-eat-dog, because you're all alone. It's very competitive, and it's mostly mean-spirited. One of the saddest places I've ever found in this cosmos is the green room of a comedy club. I just felt so depressed talking to other comedians. Sketch comedy is a mixed bag — kind of competitive, but you're on a team. And improv I found became kind of a first love, because the only way you can survive is by working together as a team. I was doing a lot of that, leading up to meeting the church.

Hosts: Can you walk us through who you met, and how?

Andrew: Her name is Maiko. Everybody thinks she's an old lady — not because they see her, but because they're like, who could have brought this guy in? I thought nobody would want me in their church. She met me when I was just walking. I was in Santa Monica, I'd gone to the beach by myself, because nothing quite fit. I was like, maybe I can go to the beach and look at the sun, kind of like paganism — maybe the sun will tell me something. I was walking back with my bike, and this young lady just jumped out of a crowd of people. Hello. And I said, hey. She showed me a card and started asking me questions: do you believe world peace is possible? I kind of answered. Then she said, okay, come with me. I said, what, where? She said, to a lecture. I said, when does the lecture start? She said, when you get there. I was like, how is that possible? Is there somebody there? It was all very confusing.

Andrew: But she took me to a video centre. I went, saw the intro — it was really cheesy and made me feel uncomfortable. I said, it was really nice meeting you, but I don't think I want to do this. You seem cool, I'm sure this is great, but I don't have time. And she just said, okay, but when are you going to come back? I said, I don't know, I don't want to come back. And she said, okay, so Tuesday? And I said, yeah, fine, I'll come Tuesday. She was really certain that there was something there for me. I think that's a big part of the idea of conviction — she was more certain that I could get something out of the experience than I was certain that I wouldn't. I could see something in her eyes; she believed in something. And I follow that. She really believed in it.

Andrew: So I came back. It was that, on repeat — I wouldn't want to come back, and I would, because the videos were not so great. They were theological, and I didn't get the relevance. But there was also debate. I'd watch a video and then I'd debate with somebody. I didn't agree with a lot of the information. There were older Japanese men, and a younger American guy who was really good at debating. I needed that. I had a lot of concepts and I was throwing them at them, and they'd throw concepts at me, and I was in a place in my life where I could be made humble. I could say, oh, I don't have an answer for that, or, you're kind of right. I didn't want them to be right, but it seemed truer than what I was bringing to the table. It wasn't straightforward — I wasn't just accepting it. I was resistant, but not completely shut out. That process took a bunch of months, and I started to enjoy going to this video centre.

Andrew: I was telling my roommates at the time, and they were like, dude, I don't know. I was trying to explain what I was learning, and I was butchering it, I'm sure. They were like, that doesn't sound like you. And I was like, I don't know, maybe that's not a bad thing. I just started opening my mind more and more. Then there was distinctly a moment — it was the video about the last 400 years, which talks about the history of the last 400 years and how it parallels so many other times in history. That somehow struck a chord. I started to get really interested, and I dove deeper and deeper. My friends were getting weirded out, my family was getting weirded out, because people don't necessarily like it when you change. They're familiar with this iteration of you, and if you start changing to something incongruent, a lot of times that's a red flag for people — there's got to be something wrong. Sometimes it is. Sometimes somebody's doing something self-destructive, but also sometimes it means you're finally cleaning your life up. I was getting a real negative feedback loop from my environment, and at a certain point it started to feel like war. Everybody was attacking me, everybody was trying to tell me what to do.

Andrew: I honestly got to the point where I didn't know what to believe, but I felt, I want to test this out and see what the Divine Principle was, and does it fit me? So I pushed everybody and everything away. I gave away all my furniture, I stopped talking to a lot of people, because they were coming at me so hard, saying, you can't do this, this is wrong. I was like, what do you mean it's wrong? They had never acted like this in my life. I could have gotten into cocaine, I could have done anything, and they would have been like, yeah, it's not that bad, it's just a phase. But the second I started to believe — the second I got into God — people freaked out. It could have been literally anything except this; this just rubbed everybody the wrong way. I was in a point where it was so scary, but I pushed everybody away. It felt terrible, but liberating, to start from scratch.

Andrew: I basically joined the church as a missionary, not believing in God or Divine Principle or anything like that, but saying, I want to give it a shot. Let's go all in on this and see. So, let's start praying. I don't know how to pray. The first time I remember praying was with Maiko, who I call my spiritual mother — she introduced me to God. She was teaching me how to pray, and I was like, who am I talking to? I'm closing my eyes. What am I saying? Who do I picture? Do I say it with my mouth? I felt so awkward. It was just a language that I didn't speak. I became progressively more familiar with it. I really treated it like a boot camp. I needed a hard reset. It's actually quite trendy now — 75 Hard, this whole thing of recalibrating your body or some aspect of your life. I just did it with everything, which I don't advise for everybody all the time. But every once in a while, you do need a hard reset, to really do an inventory of your thoughts, your feelings, what's working, what's not. I did that intensively for ten months before I even got a real clear feeling like, oh yeah, this is the path I want to take for the rest of my life. I went all in first. That's something most people don't get the opportunity to do because of life circumstance. But I felt it was important: if I'm going to be wrong, I'm going to be really wrong. But if I'm right, then this could really be the gates that open up to any possibility. Turns out I was right. But it doesn't always feel that way. It's not always easy, but it definitely led to everything I have — my wife, my kids, everything.

Hosts: I'm going to backtrack a tiny bit. Can you touch on some of the concepts? You said it took you ten months to really start to get a sense of where this was all leading. What were some of those concepts that were thrown at you that you felt you needed to throw back, or humble yourself about?

Andrew: One really strong feeling I was getting was about identity. My identity was that I was an atheist or agnostic. To start using the word God was painful. It was honestly painful to say, and so awkward, and it felt like it wasn't me. I just had to let go of, what does that mean, me? Who is this identity that I've formed? It's just a consortium of assumptions that I have. Saying God, praying, meeting people in the streets and talking about God — not closing myself off, but hearing what they have to say, and praying with people randomly, or praying in a public place — that was the most excruciating thing I could have imagined doing, because it's like, oh, I'm now one of those guys. To become that, all I could think of was the vast majority of my friends and the people I knew growing up, who would be making fun of me. And some still do. I've been attacked by a lot of my old friends because they're like, dude, you're an idiot, look at you. And I'm just like, well, judge me by my life. I'm happy. I'm so happy with my wife and my kids. I couldn't sustain any of this without this. This allows me to have all that. So say what you will, but the critics were so loud in the beginning.

Andrew: In the beginning — it sounds crazy, but hear me out — I had to sleep on a bunk bed, on the top bunk. When I'd wake up in the morning, the first thought in my head was, you are an absolute idiot. You just threw away your life, you threw away all your connections, you threw away your career. That was the very first thought, the second I woke up. So I would start rolling out of bed on the top bunk, just so that by the time I hit the ground, I would just run and start praying, and start working on this negative self-talk. If I didn't have that adrenaline of, I'm falling off the bunk bed, then I'd just lie in bed and let those thoughts attack me. I wasn't running away from the thoughts, but running away from a place where they had the upper hand, and going to the prayer room and battling it out, like, okay, what makes sense today, and calibrating myself according to not my past, but what I'm understanding in my present.

Andrew: It was war. It was genuinely war, because to recreate yourself is like losing a layer of skin. It feels extremely — I don't know if you've ever had an exposed nerve in your mouth, but if anything touches that, it's so sensitive. Have you ever grinded your teeth? I see your reaction. I'm a tooth grinder, because I'm a warrior.

Hosts: I'm a tooth grinder too. In my sleep.

Andrew: There you go. If you do that enough, it makes you super sensitive. That's what my soul felt like. I remember constantly throughout the day, every day, I'd check my hands to see if they were shaking, because they felt like they were trembling. It was actually my spirit just waking up. That's how I piece this together. I felt like my knees were shaking, but I was steady. I was coming out of this comatose state of having no connection with any form of spirituality or higher self. To come out of that, I felt sick. I was nervous every single day. I felt like I was going to die. And in doing that, exactly what happens to you, it brings up all of these insecurities. It brings up a lot of your fears and your worries, and your self-doubt comes out.

Andrew: I think it's honestly somewhat similar to everything I know from the addiction world. Everything I know from 12 Steps is very similar, because your identity as an alcoholic, or as a smoker, or whatever — smokers have a really strong culture, because after a meal you go with your buddies and have a cigarette. You can't even have a meal normally for a long period of time until you recondition yourself to not need a cigarette after a meal. Same with certain thoughts and emotions. You get addicted to having them. I attribute it to circumstance, that I was in a really humble place. If things were different and my ego was more inflated and I had more bravado, I would have belittled the opportunity in front of me. But I was a little wounded from life at that time, and so I was a little more susceptible to new ideas.

Andrew: Everybody has their time, because again, with addiction, you can tell somebody, hey man, your life is spiralling. But unless they feel it in their bones, they're not going to do anything about it. It was circumstantial. Even if you're born in a religion, your faith and your identity are usually given to you. You haven't earned it. You haven't grappled with a lot of these concepts. So to reformulate your identity within your own faith is necessary. Some religions seem to have a rite-of-passage kind of thing. But it's just as hard for somebody born in a faith to have a genuine faith that wasn't just spoon-fed to them.

Hosts: I feel that so deeply. I would say apathy sometimes is just as hard to grapple with as addiction.

Andrew: Absolutely. It's a numbing agent. If you think about it, all of these are numbing agents. Anything you're addicted to — and apathy is definitely a numbing agent because you literally feel nothing. We're all given opportunities. It's just whether you're able to seize them when the time is right. I honestly feel extremely blessed that I could have that opportunity when my options were very limited, because I felt like I was running towards a cliff. Things were really getting increasingly frustrating by the day. And this was an escape from that. It was more like a giant mirror that allowed me to see myself. That was really hard — to look at myself and look at all the pain I had caused in other people and myself, and to see myself. It's really painful to see yourself spiritually naked, for all your good and bad attributes. But again, that happened circumstantially. That was about 14 years ago.

Andrew: Now I make a habit of doing this about once a year. I'll throw everything I believe under the fire and let the fat melt away, because that apathy sets in, or concepts set in. Especially in our faith, we're meant to be like the oil that lubricates this world. If you start finding yourself getting crusty, that crustiness comes in the form of judgment, choosing sides. The idea of head-wing ideology is really the hardest thing, because you're meant to be a parent that doesn't judge your children, that loves equally. That's probably the hardest thing to do. When you look at people, you want to choose sides. You want to be in a camp, because it's very lonely to not be in a camp. But that's what's required of us. It's made a lot easier if you allow yourself the opportunity to do the hard work once a year, like a kind of spiritual colonic — sorry about the metaphor, but it's a cleansing.

Hosts: A lot of us get into this place where you look at ten years in or something, after maybe you had this big realisation or something shifted, and you don't re-evaluate it honestly up front regularly. You talked about around ten months in, something shifted for you. What was it that shifted, and that kind of set this off?

Andrew: I'm extremely logical. Those ten months were me pushing myself harder than I've ever pushed myself in my life. I was always the first one up. I was hanging out with a group of people who were all going after it, and I was the first one up and the last one asleep. I made a point of doing that. I was the first one praying in the morning, the last one praying. Pushing myself all day, because I was seeking answers. I wanted to know. Because of that, what I was really doing was digging and digging, making space for stuff to happen. I had so many wild spiritual experiences that helped me, because if I'm just logical all the time, there's no way — I'm not the type of person, oh, you have a better ideology, great, yeah, let me adopt that. Especially nowadays, everybody has the answer. Everybody's a guru in something. Everybody on Instagram is a spiritual guru. So, yeah, let me follow you. It's not genuine, because I just hopped from one to the other.

Hosts: I've taken those classes. Nancy and I have done all the free seminars — oh, you want to take this free one-seminar to organise better? Oh my God, I am the ideal Instagram customer. I buy everything off the Instagram ad.

Andrew: You do one session, and you're like, okay, that's great for that one very specific thing in my life. But it doesn't challenge the core. It's putting a band-aid on a gaping wound, and you're not actually addressing the core issues that are making you try to seek these really quick solutions. A lot of people don't create that space for themselves to have a hard reset.

Hosts: We have this community that encourages a 40-day spiritual retreat. Forty days is a long period of time for a lot of people. I mean, ten months is a lot. But just 40 days — you must be religious if you do that, if you completely stop your life and go and reset your concepts or your faith.

Andrew: What's interesting is the era we're in. A lot of these things — I was doing cold showers, and that seemed like an uber-religious thing, but now you look at Wim Hof, and all these celebrities are doing cold plunges. So what seemed uber-religious is actually mainstream. I've never believed myself to be religious, which is kind of weird because I've actually been a pastor two times. But I'm not religious. I just see the practical application of our faith to help us become super at being human — superhumans.

Hosts: It's an ancient wisdom, right? The fact that these traditions and these practices have carried on for centuries. I was listening to a podcast with Dan Harris, the 10% Happier podcast, who was interviewing a scientist who was saying exactly your point — that they were looking at other spiritual practices of different religions to see what's the next big thing, because meditation has turned into this huge industry now. But the benefits of taking that time and really connecting within, and holding sacred space — the science is only just starting to scratch the surface of what the real benefits are.

Andrew: I want to speak to that point, because I've been watching — I don't know if you've been seeing — Shia LaBeouf is now a recently converted Catholic, and he's going all in. He's on some podcasts now. He was recently interviewed by this Catholic bishop and he goes deep about being addicted, and that was part of it. He was going to AA meetings inside a church and then he started to hang out at the church. I could never have joined a pre-existing religion. I couldn't have sincerely bought into Christianity as it is. I could not have become a Buddhist, or anything like that, just because it's not my native language, it's not part of my culture. It just seems like religious appropriation — yeah, no, I'm a Buddhist now, call me some new name. I needed something more contemporary. Honestly, our movement bridges the gap between left and right, up and down. Reverend Moon talks a lot about that — the idea of being at the nexus, at the axis between vertical and horizontal, and creating this spherical life.

Andrew: I needed that reverence for tradition, but with something contemporary. That's what I found. I don't want to change my clothing. I don't want to have to get a goofy haircut. I was in LA, so there were a ton of Hare Krishnas and people like that whose identity then becomes their religion. I didn't want to change my identity from a non-religious person to a religious person. I wanted to identify as a healthy, happy, spiritually bright person, and use my religion for that sake, instead of becoming a religious person and that's now my identity. That was a really important shift. There was no pre-existing movement or faith that could have provided me with that — connection to the past and to the present and to the future, all simultaneously. Because every other faith is basically a waiting faith. Like Christianity — you join and then you wait. What are you waiting for? You're waiting for Jesus, or you're waiting for something to happen. Our faith is much more, things are happening. These are the last days. What are we going to do about it? What are we going to build now? Even the premise of Cheon Il Guk, the idea of building a new world from the inside out, from our hearts out into this world — that's how it happens. It's the most empowering thing. But you realise, if that's really going to happen, I've got some cleaning to do.

Hosts: Can you just mention what Cheon Il Guk is, for our audience who may not be familiar with the terminology?

Andrew: Sure. Some people interpret it as the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, but the definition actually means "when two become one." My understanding is, when there are individuals whose ideals and reality become one, that's the beginning of it. And then when two people become one in heart, and then it spans outward like that. It's really a harmonious society. It's all about harmony — harmony within the individual, and then outward all the way to society. You hear words borrowed from Christianity, kingdom of heaven on earth, like you flip on a switch and then everybody's wearing white robes all of a sudden. I was always creeped out by that image of heaven. Wait, do we all have to play harps and wear white? That sounds super boring. You don't want to go there. I've been there — that's Santa Monica, for God's sake. This is more practical. The world will transform once we ourselves transform.

Andrew: There's a yearning for that. But just going back to Instagram and all that — it's all cheap. You know how there's cheap fashion, H&M and all that. I think cheap spirituality is all the stuff you get online that gives you the little shifts and helps you. It's not useless, but it's little teeny tiny microbes that are part of a much bigger puzzle. I believe our faith is giving you the whole thing, and giving you the instructions, but it's up to you to actually start building it. The hard part is, here's the instructions, here's the ideals, here's what it's going to generally look like — but you actually have to build it. I don't think a lot of people want to do that, to be honest. It's a lot of work, because it starts with you. If your reality is not a reflection of your ideals, then there's discord, and discord is the opposite of harmony. Coming back to that, it's hard to be honest and take a hard look at yourself. It's a vicious circle.

Andrew: Because I deal in the realm of addiction — a lot of people, addiction is all based on escapism. And you can use religion to escape, or you can use it to go deep and to really connect with yourself. It's not the fault of religion; it's the fault of how we use religion. Just like anything — money is not the root of all evil; it's how evil people use money.

Hosts: I had a crazy spiritual experience doing the Marie Kondo method and purging all my stuff. It was so weird, because I was like, I'm organising, but I had these epiphanies about myself and my decision-making. It's a much more honest perspective of looking at — religion is there to show you the way; it's not going to do the work for you.

Andrew: Absolutely. And that's really important, because there are two things in that. One is, we all need accountability. When you're part of a community — and our community is extremely special, because I've travelled extensively, specifically to places that are part of the movement, in our churches and the houses of families around our church. I've been invited into people's homes and treated like I came out of them, like I'm their son, after meeting them for 30 seconds, just because somebody vouched for me, and those people got Blessed together. Because of that connection, I'm now their son, the world over, any culture, doesn't even matter.

Andrew: That accountability means that, in a very practical way, my family is contributing to that or hindering that collective experience. We went away to Costa Rica in the summer for two months. My wife had just met another Mongolian who's living in Japan — she has a Japanese husband, three kids, and they really wanted to learn English. My wife was like, why don't you just come and live in our house and have our car? She was like, you can do that? We left our life. They lived our life. I saw pictures of them, and the dad was wearing my hat. I was not the least bit uncomfortable or awkward. I was genuinely happy. I'm glad — Colorado sun is pretty bright. We had never met them. We'd never physically met them at all. I'd never spoken to them, because I don't speak Mongolian or Japanese. We met them when they came to our house to receive our keys, and then we left that same day to leave the country, and we just entrusted it to them. That's because people have done that to me the world over.

Andrew: That's one part of it — to be part of the collective and to work out your ideals. Because if you drift too far, it becomes apparent that either you're disconnected from the community, because the community is not working, or because there's something about your life that's not working. That keeps you in line with your ideals. It's a lifesaver. Honestly speaking, my wife and I had gotten to the point where I could not love her anymore. I was just out of love. We were fighting for too prolonged a period about the same stuff, and I was out of juice. If it was up to us and us alone, I think I would have ended the marriage at that point, to be honest. That was about three and a half years ago. But it was the fact that my marriage isn't about me; it's about my kids, it's about my wife, it's about my wife's parents who raised her, it's about all the people we know who are relying on us. Because of that, when I had nothing left to give, I still had something that wasn't mine. It was from God. I felt I could pray and receive love that was not in my heart. I could get cosmic love.

Andrew: But I also had a very practical use of our community at that time. I needed to rise up, not out of guilt, not out of pretending that things were okay when they weren't, but out of the fact that we're one cell in this body. If we take care of ourselves, the body is healthier. That helped us get through some dark days. We've been so healthy ever since. It was honestly our affiliation with the collective whole. You can misconstrue that and say, oh, we're all pretending, or we're all together out of force. I'm sure there are people that do that. But what I'm saying is the opposite — it forces me, in a sense, to be my best, so that everybody else can be healthier and happier. I think that's our ideals fleshed out in a very practical way. It's saved our marriage, to be honest.

Hosts: That's amazing. I'm also curious — you talk a lot about your work with addiction, and that relates to your work right now with the non-profit High Noon, creating healthy relationships and building sexual integrity. I can see some parallels in what you've talked about. I'm a huge Brené Brown fan — sorry, guys, everyone listening, I will mention her name many, many times, because I love her. In understanding the self and self-awareness — how does your work in addiction behaviours inform your own spiritual journey and where you are right now, spiritually?

Andrew: Great question. That's what saves us in the end. Saving other people continually keeps us fresh. As a movement, we're very evangelical, because we're asked to apostolise, to witness, to spread the word and invite people to our events. More than anything, that's for us. Because you have to figure, why would somebody come to this event? If you're not sincere, nobody's going to want to come to your thing. They won't see it in your eyes. So you have to think, well, do I want to go? Do I still believe in this stuff? When you take care of people, a lot of times the wisdom that comes to you isn't your own. You can sense, oh, that was a great idea — and that was just passed through me. But the other half is, in taking care of people, you are also taking care of yourself, and keeping yourself fresh. Because when you offer that wisdom, you're saying it, and if you have the humility to hear yourself speak, you can say, oh, I should actually do that myself. You're being judged by your own words — judge has a lot of negative connotations now, but in the religious sense, you're measuring your own words against your own actions by giving other people advice for their own life. It's honestly saved my spiritual life many times over. I'm going to do something like this till I'm dead, because it keeps me alive and it keeps me fresh. When you give life, you gain life. That's a very biblical term.

Andrew: In a practical way, I've told High Noon I'm definitely not going to work for them forever. I see my time winding down a bit. But I will volunteer for High Noon for the rest of my life in some way, shape, or form. You see people — I don't know if anybody listening has ever met Dr Tyler Hendricks, but he's probably in his late 60s, and he's so young at heart. I shared a room with him one time at an event, and I saw him do his stretches. He's so physically limber and mentally limber, because he's always actively engaged in recreating himself daily. That keeps you fresh. Anything that's not growing is dying — your mind, your heart, your spirit, your body. It's all of the aforementioned. So I have to keep giving. When I isolate myself too much, I just get stuck in my head, and you start to — it's me versus them again, everybody's wrong, I'm so smart, or whatever. Whatever your poison is. My poison is arrogance and judgment.

Hosts: Oh, me too. Holler. We should hang around each other and judge each other sometimes.

Andrew: Totally. Agreed.

Hosts: Another thing that came up while you were talking — everybody's looking for a cure to anxiety, to loneliness, to disconnection. The common one is, oh, just get off your phone, go outside. Again, all focused on the self, you being alone. When a very simple answer is, be around people who give you life. I guess, what keeps you humble then? If your things are judging and arrogance, which I struggle with too — and I love Brené because she says when you start judging people, it's a red flag for, where are my unmet needs and where am I not drawing boundaries to honour myself? A lot of religion is about discovering the divinity within each of us, so that we can honour it in people. What do you do when you find yourself in that headspace? What's something you do to reset?

Andrew: There are two words, both in Korean, and I can translate my version. One is jeongsang, the other is shimjeong. That's everything to me in terms of our faith. One is the vertical — creating cosmic, radiant love in your heart by connecting with the divine, with God. And then using that — whatever you're getting, the inspiration, all that — to do the shimjeong part, which is to give love without limits. To plug in, and then to give. I remember Reverend Moon saying very clearly in an old talk that the place you want to be in life is right at the axis between vertical and horizontal, because that's where everything flows perfectly. That's when you're plugged in.

Andrew: So it's a combination. If I'm stressed out and I'm judging people, I'm probably not breathing enough. I'm probably not taking care of myself. I'm probably not praying enough. I'm probably not reading enough word. And I'm also probably not having enough conversations with a diverse group of people. Because we isolate ourselves. We have the same conversations with the same people. I should have sometimes a difficult conversation, or reach out to this person. When you start to open those doors, you go to the grocery store and you'll look at the cashier and you'll be a completely different person, because now you're open. When you're just judging everybody, you go and you're like, yeah, just give me my stuff and shut up. That's what you're thinking. You're giving out that vibe because you're closed. Your spirit is closed. Your heart is closed. You just walk around completely detached.

Andrew: That's my understanding of spirituality. When you're disconnected spiritually, then you're disconnected from everything. From nature — oh yeah, that's a tree. Oh yeah, that's a person. From everything. But when you connect to God and spiritually, then you genuinely feel empathy for people. You feel connected to the things that are alive in this world. It's not one thing, but it's usually a combination — first of all, ease my body through some sort of breath work, and then I need to pray or meditate, depending on the time of day or situation. And then I need to talk to people. That's the vertical. And sometimes you need an uncle figure or an aunt figure who's just like, you're being an idiot. You kind of need that.

Hosts: I can testify to that. I have an auntie in my life who's like, nope, you're wrong. That's you. That's your concept. You need to work on that. It's not the other person's fault. Sit with that for the week. We'll talk again.

Andrew: That's them punching your ego. You'll find your own cocktail of what you need. But it's usually a combination of something or some things vertically, and then something or some things horizontally. That really is the antidote. Because you're connected, or you're disconnected.

Hosts: I'm wondering what you have to say about bridging the realisations and experience you have had. How do you translate that to the people you love in your life who don't agree with you and who can't listen to it? How do you come back together in some way? What's your common base? What does that feel like for you?

Andrew: That's a good one. In my adult life, I've only ever had one best, best friend, where I was deeply in love with him and vice versa. He wasn't born out of circumstance. Most people, their best friends are from childhood, because they're a neighbour or a schoolmate. But as an adult, it's hard to find those kindred spirits. I found one when I moved to LA. We bonded first over pie, and then we just went from there. We ended up living together. He was my roommate, best friend. Loved him to death. But he hasn't spoken to me since I joined. That was part of the sacrifice I had to make. He's one of those who believed I was doing something very wrong with my life. It was either him, or follow that deep part of me that says, no, this is right. That's like putting your mind in a vice and squeezing it. You have to lose one or the other. I lost him. I've reached out to him since, and he just doesn't return my calls. I'd love to have him in my life. Maybe one day we can find a way to reconcile. But it was absolutely worth it.

Andrew: Whereas I had another best friend at that time, who was kind of like a father figure. He was a comedian, an old-school comedian. If you ever look him up on YouTube, you see some old clips. He was on the Late Show with Johnny Carson. He's an old-school comic. His name is Max Alexander. He physically saved my life when I moved to LA. The night I arrived, I had a pain in my stomach. I was like, oh my God, it was the Chinese food I had. Turned out it was appendicitis. He got me to the hospital just in time. The second they felt my appendix, they were like, get him to the operating table. They got it out just in time. I could have easily died. He's a great dude. He never judged me. After I pushed everybody away, he lived in New York, and when I moved to New York, he was like, hey, let's hang out. I was like, you're not angry? I was kind of surprised. He said, I'll never judge you. I love you.

Andrew: When you do something drastic, you see people's true colours. You actually see that some people you might hold near and dear, and think that they are something, might not actually be that. I have some family, definitely, who refused to talk to me and won't talk about this. If they see me — because they're Canadian, they'll be polite — but they won't tell me what's behind that forced smile. But also, as I'm sure, Nancy, you know, when you have kids, your parents won't fly to Mars to see your kids. They'll put aside any differences for those kids. It was a great filtration system. I didn't do it in the best way. I didn't know how to explain to people well what I was going through, because it was the first time I'd ever been through it. So I scared a lot of people. It was my fault, because the way I was describing it made no sense to them, and I couldn't make it make sense, because it barely made any sense to me. But I don't have any regrets at all.

Hosts: What does faith and spirituality look like for you now? What keeps you inspired? What do you read and consume to keep your faith fresh? Or who do you engage with? It can also be people.

Andrew: Like I said, giving is, to me — I think the most practical way is through some form of volunteering. I always give extra with High Noon. More than just a job, it feels like a mission. Sacrificing pay, because it's a non-profit.

Hosts: Nancy and I can relate. We work for a religious non-profit.

Andrew: Yeah, there you go. Since joining the faith, I've only ever worked in ministry as a non-profit priority. So volunteering, I would say. I have always maintained my faith. I feel pretty unwavering, because I etched it into my bones. I fought for every single belief that I had, and I questioned it a billion times over. There were no rounded corners when I was developing my faith. I really went deep, and I really asked tough questions. But I will still question what I remember to be my faith. So it's still fresh, annually.

Andrew: We were having our third son — we have three boys — and our last one just had his fourth birthday two days ago. So four and a half years ago, when he was coming into this world, it was too much, and I just wasn't ready for it. I was travelling for work, my wife had a lot of stuff going on, we had money stuff, we had all sorts of stuff, and I was just overwhelmed. That's when I started to implement meditation as a priority. I got really into a certain type of meditation, morning and night. Prior to that, I was waking up every single night at 3am with heart palpitations. I have multiple men in my family who died of heart-related issues — heart attacks and whatnot. Because I'm sensitive and because I'm a worrywart, I could feel, oh, this is my demise. If I don't fix this now, I'm dead. I can feel it. When you're stuck in that, how do you cope? You're super tired, so you start drinking more coffee, then it's harder to sleep, then you need more coffee, and it spirals quickly. All the quick fixes, the heart races, all of that. It's brutal. So I really needed to implement meditation. I looked around a lot, but I settled on one that I've been using for the past four-plus years. That's really calmed me down.

Andrew: I see it very separate from prayer. Prayer is much more of a conversation. There's one song where it talks about it connecting your heart to heaven. So that, for me, is heaven time. To be honest, reading the word lately has not been giving me anything. I'm looking at that. I'm in a place now where I don't judge myself, but I'm looking at it — why is that, and what can I do about it? Because I remember soaking in the word and having it feel like a bath for my soul. And now it's just kind of like words. I'm like, what's going on? Part of it is just because we're so used to getting everything from our phones. Looking at a physical book and words, it's like, what is this thing? It's not moving. Also, I have to choose the passage. It doesn't just come to me as a little quip.

Hosts: Where's my dopamine hit?

Andrew: Exactly. But, to be honest, I started doing intermittent fasting and that seems to help too. Just having conditions — that's what I'm going to end on. I love doing conditions. To me — I was doing 40-day conditions. A condition is a timeframe when you do certain things sequentially, or every single day, for a period of time, to get an answer or to change some aspect of your life. I was doing those for years and then I stopped. About a year ago, I started just loving 21-day conditions. To me, 21 days is this magical number where you can do so much in 21 days, but you can also see how weak you are in terms of your integrity. You're so fired up on day three, and then day nine, you're like, ah, this is dumb. So conditions are more — I see them as a litmus test for, how much do I really care about this thing that I'm chasing after? Do I really want an answer? What am I willing to sacrifice in order to get this thing?

Andrew: I've always been on conditions, and recently I set a year-long condition made up of 12 21-day conditions. If you want some really big things to happen in your life, it's kind of too much to stick with for most people, unless you're like the 0.01% of society who are just crazy. But for the rest of us, it's helpful to take chunks out of it. Take bites out of this big thing, and eventually you can get a lot further than you think. That's how I did it.

Hosts: That's super helpful. I think that's a healthy and refreshing way to look at what we call conditions, or a prolonged spiritual practice — it doesn't have to be spiritual. It's like a mini reset. But I like that point about it being a litmus test. How much do I really care about this? And even if you struggle with the condition that you set — let's say you bow a few times every day for 21 days, but the thing you're mulling over comes to you over and over again, it's like, no, that still matters to me. It's not necessarily that these bows are going to change where I'm at with it. But it's also a moment of reflection. We so rarely take that. Someone once told me, if you can't come up with a solution in your brain, move. Move your body. Just do something to change up the spirit.

Andrew: It's exciting too, because you realise most of our life is spent in this very blasé realm of expecting repetition — that tomorrow is going to be like yesterday. It's this continuum of being in the middle, and nothing good is there.

Hosts: Chasing comfort.

Andrew: Exactly. Sustaining existence. When you do a condition and you really admit to yourself what you actually genuinely want, and you put it out into words — it could be an answer to a question that you have, it could be a multitude of things — when you actually put it on the line and do it, let's say it doesn't work the first 21 days. If you try it again, the craziest stuff happens. You realise how exciting life can be and how small you've been playing it.

Andrew: The scariest thing is when you're touched really by the grandeur of God. It used to frighten the crap out of me to look up into the night sky, before I started to understand God more, because it just was so big and so intimidating. The open sky and the open sea were the scariest places for me, because it's such a lonely feeling. But when you allow yourself to go into that unknown and you put yourself out there, you're touched by how big God is and how small God is. It's simultaneously humbling — how big God is, how big this whole thing is, how fragile everything is in life. But also how comforting it is to know how special you are in and amidst that grandeur. That you actually are extremely loved and special. The dichotomy works well together, because yes, we're a part of something massive — the cosmos, the physical universe, is constantly expanding. I'm guessing spirit world is the same, because that's just the nature of God: continual expansion. Our minds can't fathom that. But yet at the same time, we're one very specific coordinate in this cosmos. And that both are beautiful — you can't fit that in your head. You can only fit it into an experience. That happens when you go after something important.

Andrew: I've had so many, I'm sure you have too, along your spiritual journey, where you're just brought to your knees by the beauty of it all. This whole thing that we're blind to because we're chasing after the stupidest stuff day to day. Checklists of nothing, useless crap. We never get around to those moments, because we don't make space for them. To me, conditions are just making space. You're digging and digging for something to eventually come in. It's never what you expect, or when you expect. But it's those things that spark your spirit, and you're like, that's what being alive feels like.

Hosts: I feel like the theme of everything you've been sharing about your spiritual journey has really just been, challenge yourself. Challenge yourself, and be open, and be willing to be humbled by the experience. Talking about the 21-day conditions — we all have this idea where we're like, I'm going to get up every morning at 5am and I'm going to pray, and it'll be amazing, because I'm going to live my best life and be my best self. And then day three hits and it's like, oh my God, my kid is sick and waking me up through the night. Do I really want to get up at 5? How bad do I really want this? It's not just the condition itself. It's also honouring that commitment to yourself. It's not so much doing the condition for somebody else — and there are people who do that, and that's beautiful as well — but the whole challenge itself is really the commitment to yourself, and honouring yourself, and going deep within.

Andrew: It's about getting beyond yourself so that you can reflect something truly divine, something godly. That's our best. As a public speaker, again, in the early days it was all about ego. If I did well, it's because I'm great, and if I did badly, I'd be so depressed because I'm a terrible person. But now when people really resonate with what I'm saying, all I can feel is, I'm just getting out of the way, and I'm letting God — not god, because that sounds really arrogant — but I'm letting inspiration flow. That's a completely different feeling. You're just refracting God's beauty. The condition is the same way — you're digging past all your limitations to get beyond yourself, because you're the only person limiting God's ability to work through you. When you get past those limitations, then God can have fun with you and do cool things through you, and speak to you finally. You can have a somewhat empty mind, so God can finally tell you what you've been asking for. But you're like, what's the answer, what's the answer, what's the answer, and you'll never shut up long enough to hear the answer.

Hosts: I feel that, really. That image of digging out space, leaving a little well for God to fill up. I came to this point on my spiritual journey where I literally said out loud, I don't feel like I can stretch anymore. I feel like I have completely given everything I can, and there's nothing more to give, and if I go any further I will break like an old rubber band that has no elasticity. What came to me eventually — it wasn't right away — was, oh, that's where God fills in. That's where God comes in and is able to stretch for you, because you don't have the capacity. I made space around myself a little bit. What do I have to humble, or question? Giving that space, and allowing space around you for God to work.

Andrew: The idea of surrender is a beautiful concept, and it's really hard.

Hosts: So hard. So challenging.

Andrew: So hard. But that's the space that's occupying your mind — the concepts — to surrender those concepts, to be able to really experience something new. To be honest, our movement's dealing with that a lot these days, because the idea of having the female half of a couple be in charge is a concept that most people don't have space for, because it's so new. But the people who were willing to go through that labour of giving birth to a new experience are reaping the rewards of seeing, this is kind of cool. It's new, and it doesn't make sense, and it's completely different from what was, but it's making room for this entirely new paradigm. Those people who do that work reap all the rewards. The other people, you can tell, just get angrier and angrier. Their world becomes smaller and smaller, because their concepts become harder and harder to hold on to. Their lives are smaller, their conversations are smaller, they become more embittered, and they're just more toxic. It becomes more obvious — who's still alive? My wife always talks about this. Spiritually alive. She talks about being awake and being alive. It's not hard to tell when you communicate with somebody — are you awake, or are you not? It doesn't take much.

Hosts: This has been such a great conversation, and I feel so honoured that you were willing to share your spiritual journey with us.

Andrew: It's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. That's something I learned — you also have to balance it with reality, but whenever somebody asks, you just say yes. If it's for a cause that you believe in, don't question it.