Love Creates Miracles with guest Dr. Bernie Siegel and Charlie Siegel

You are now tuning in to discover your potential, so listen, participate. Be inspired. Know that you can discover your potential. Welcome to Discover Your Potential. I'm your host, Dan Gilman. I am so excited about two special guests we have today. One, we have Dr. Bernie Siegel. He is an American writer, retired pediatric surgeon, who writes on the relationship between the patient and the healing process. He is known for bestselling book, Love Medicine Miracles, as well as Peace, Love and Healing. Most recently, he co-authored a book called When You Realize How Perfect Everything Is, with his grandson Charlie Siegel. But first, I want you to listen to a clip from one of her previous shows with Dr. Bernie Siegel. Take a listen. You know, it's interesting, the life lessons that we learned. There are some very significant points, I think, that each of us learned from different sources in our lives. Some people seek their wisdom from gurus and books on philosophy. But my greatest lessons were learned through my paternal grandparents, and as I lovingly call them my Bubby and my Zadie. I learned the feeling of Peace while sitting next to my grandfather in the synagogue with his prayer shawl wrapped around. My shoulder, and what it felt like to feel Peace from a Peace-loving man. And I learned about Love, unconditional love from my grandmother. And every time, as a new leaf was born on a plant, she would lovingly take a plain, clean piece of cheesecloth wrapped in water, and place it over the leaf, and tell me how it was like a new birth, and how lovingly we had to nurture each new leaf like a child being born. And when I went through my own healing process, when they told me I would never be able to bear a child, and I had to seek out other means, I learned about healing. And then in the 1980s, I came across a book, a book that had a very significant impact on my life. And I've bought several copies of that book and given it to many different people. And finally, a few years ago, my son, who was now a teenager, bought me another copy of that book and signed it, and said, I know you won't give this one away because it's from me. That book is Love, Medicine, and Miracles. It was written by Dr. Bernie Siegel. Dr. Bernie Siegel has written several books on peace, love, and healing, how to live between office visits. He's a retired physician, but he goes around the world and around the country, impacting people's lives. And it's my pleasure to have this conversation with him today. So Dr. Siegel, welcome. I've waited a number of years to say that. I want to welcome both of these amazing people on our show. Oh, pleasure. Together, you have written a book. I don't, I just have a digital copy right now. But when you realize how perfect everything is, the conversation about life between grandfather and grandson, and that's pretty amazing. It must have been a thrilling experience to work with your grandfather. It is. It's amazing how it turned out. Like he's started his career in writing and stuff before I was born. So this is his 19th book in my second. But it's been neat that my mom owns wisdom of the ages. It's a spiritual store and class center and some is very Connecticut. And we used to host my grandfather for lectures and things that he would do in support groups. So like as a little kid, I used to see him lecturing to these crowds and, and the connection that that is work had with people, the inspiration that he gave them. And I kind of went my own route in terms of writing and different things that I took from, from my own life and how they, how they came out. I like to write spiritual fiction that has lessons and teachings and stuff in it and, and poems, which is our book is all poetry here. But to see that it's cool, I came back together in a sense of our work connecting because like watching him inspire all these people. It definitely was an inspiration for me that I want to have my writing reach and help people in a similar way. So a book with both of our names on it is touching for both of us. And this really happened out of my being impressed by Charlie, you know, because I don't remember our initial conversations, you know, through emails and things and talking. But when I realized he had written poetry, because I had shared some of mine with him, because he's such a spiritual, you know, he's like an old man in a young body. So I sent him things, he sends me things and we're writing the same thing. And literally some have the same titles, others, the same subjects. And the thing that impressed me about him too was at his age, versus how long it took me to deal with what was internal and begin to write and, you know, bring it forth from within me. And that impressed me again, not because he's a grandchild, but because what he's done and the things he has to say. And so it became enjoyable as well to see that we were both feeling the same way about life. And, you know, to just be honored by the kind of person he was and really respecting him and sharing with him. That's wonderful. Would you, would you care to share some of the pieces in the book? Yeah, definitely. Charlie page 36, I don't have any. And, and let me say before he reads this, when I started writing, I kept my journal hidden, because it had nothing to do with happiness. And, because all the things that were really painful for me and I had to get it out of my system. And one night, I forgot to hide it. So the next thing my wife said, I saw your journal is nothing funny in it. I said, my life isn't funny. You know, as a surgeon, it's painful. Doctors commit suicide above average, the, you know, the general population. You don't know what to do with your pain. You can't cure everybody. That's what really changed my life for patients saying I need to know how to live between office visits. And I changed my life to helping patients live, but I was writing my pain down. And she said, nothing funny in it. I said, my life isn't funny. What are you talking about? And then she told me funny stories that I told the family when I came home to the hospital, you know, what had happened. But I never wrote a poem about them. Think about that. You know, what's stored in you. And what you're trying to get out. But anyway, Charlie, page 36. So that's why when I opened the happiness, it really says to me, we should all be writing poetry. You know, to bring forth what's within us. And why he impressed me so much. You know, he didn't wait till he's had 500 disasters in his life to start writing poems. Go ahead, Charlie. And I feel like a lot of that is the like my background and the way I was brought up that. My parents raised me with meditating and talking about your feelings kind of thing and resolving them and the spiritual kind of sense. And I see my grandfather's work focuses a lot on the mind body connection in a way that meditation visualization and everything can affect you physically. And then classes that my mom teaches and everything I get connected with. Like how do you live from a soul perspective and using like the power of your soul and your life. And so then you get body, mind and spirit tied together in this interesting kind of way. So I think that's part of the like the kinship of our work that we didn't discuss writing any of these we just wrote them. And a lot of our outlooks on things that we end up talking about on the shows and stuff. There's a connection there that comes from like a similar view on the world. And when a lot of things that I write, like I mentioned, kind of like spiritual fiction, some of the short pieces are like a conversation between two characters that I sort of like. In vision them in a way and there they are talking and I got to tell their story. So this is an excerpt from one of those conversations between characters discussing happiness. What did you find the old man asked, where is happiness for you? The young boy stood up atop the bench and held his arms spread wide. It is here, grandfather, happiness isn't everything. And it isn't here. He put his hands to his heart. Happiness cannot be held in the hand, but what you can hold is the hand of another. Since you can't hold it in your hand, you can't lose it when you give some of it away. See grandpa, it's magic. It always gets stronger the more of it you share. And just before it, you know, I keep talking about poems. I wrote this and it's just called a poem. I didn't have time for a poem this morning. My soul dry up like the fall leaves. I must water my soul and nourish my spirit. Without nourishment, I cannot survive. Give me a poem. They've me in the divine. I want to live. Feed my soul. Read life into my spirit. Give me a poem. You know what? When you think about it, if we all wrote poetry and gave it to the other people in our life to read, they'd know us. You know, we would know each other. Bring in fourth all this stuff from within instead of bearing it and hiding it and hurting yourself. What was it like to be brought up in your home and what was your upbringing? Because it sounds really interesting and you've got an amazing grandfather. I was homeschooled with which was really neat that my mom started me off with doing that like when I was a little kid. But then every year would ask if I wanted to continue with that or if I wanted to go off into the public school every year, I was like, I want to continue with the home schooling program. I did it through open mental school that that's an accredited program that would send you that the work to do and everything and you'd kind of submit it back in. So my mom taught me a lot through the younger earlier grades and then you kind of work with teachers online and stuff. But I often did my work right in the back of her store. So I would be working and listening to her, help and customers and working with people and on my breaks. I would like go up and like hold a crystal and talk to people and stuff and like from a very young age, I was starting to help out with things around the store and with people and everything. Seeing the type of things that a lot of people came in needing help with in their own life. My first work that I wrote is called conversations with an angel story of healing through the passageways of grief. And it's that I saw a lot of people coming for help and spiritual guidance and everything we're dealing with grief or loss in their life. And it was more more powerful in a challenging way, things that you go through. And to see that like the way that people kind of have to work through it on their own in a way, but they can be given tools and given help and given a hug in a way to work through it. That my first book focuses on that topic because all of my writing I want to be something that's that's going to help people. I also own my own small business as a nature and wildlife photographer. So my photography illustrates our new book when you realize how perfect everything is. And then I offer prints and creating cards and stuff online and everything for my photography. But the focus with all that is to show the beauty of the world around us and how we're all a part of it. I want my pictures to be like a window that people can look through and see. There's all this great stuff out there that that we're born into and we're a piece of. And then there's a one that's between all of us by seeing that. I think that's one of the things that I want to do is to come from like we have a lot of Native American friends through my mom's parents, my grandparents on that side. And then I've been around them a lot too. And this kind of interconnected view that comes with those teachings is a lot of the stuff that is like the background to my photography. And I think that's one of the things that comes with the background of my photography is that I want to do. And I think that's one of the things that comes with the background of my photography is that I want to do. I want to do some of the things that come with the background of my photography is that I want to do. And then I want to do some of the things that come with the background of my photography is that I want to do. So nature. And then you see if you open the book to page 68 Charlie says nature heals. And across from him, I have written something called silence, which let me read it first and then Charlie read his all right. Back's phone mail life whose home is this what do they all want what where is the silence I remember hearing nothing surrounded by sand dunes and nature. God, how beautiful and deafening is silence it rounds out the facts phones and mail silence is so loud nothing can or need be heard and need to be silent inside until I can return to the silence outside. The hear it all this podcast is sponsored and brought to you by square space when we decided to feature our guests best moments from discover your potential. We wanted a simple way to build a landing page that looked professional and inspiring. That's when we turned to square space. We built our legendary guest page using square spaces Brian template. It let us showcase each guest's photo a short bio and a direct link to their episode with built in video blocks and scheduling links. Fans can instantly book time with their favorite experts or rewatch their interviews. Everything just works and it looks beautiful on every screen. If you're ready to showcase your own story, your brand or your podcast do it with square space. Check out square space dot com slash DYP for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code DYP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Square space where your next chapter begins. That is nice. That was wonderful. One of my favorites of years. 1968 nature heals. When the days are tough and the nights grow cold and fierce I turn to the blessed spirit of nature that I would not fight the grief but I would pat it on the head and say take a breath my sweet. It's no reason to grow upset let the wind carry away the sharpness of the pain and so they're aching bones let the trees sing you their songs of peace and let the sun warm your face here together with the love of nature we can be at peace. I mean, almost every that. a word called his bodetus, H-I-S-B-O-D-E-D-U-S. I forgot what spiritual background it came from, but it was to go for a walk in nature every day and then converse with God because you feel surrounded by God when you're out there in nature. And I have to say, as sort of a doctor, you know, always thinking who did this, how did this get created. I mean, you cut yourselves. How does your body know how to heal? You know, people don't know what to be grateful for, but one of my questions was, why is the sky blue? Why are leaves green? You know, how did that happen? I mean, because if you think it's some other colors, you wouldn't want to go out during the day and look at that, you know, with the presse, but you walk out in nature now and it's a gift or a flower. Oh, that, I don't know if you've written a poem about a flower, Charlie, but when you look into a flower, especially in the spring now, the design, the colors, it's incredible. You know, it's really like painting by some famous artist. And that's what always makes me question creation. How did it happen? And the wisdom, the intelligence, the love, it's got to be there. Or you couldn't have created life the way it is. When you created the book together, did you just combine your writing or did you actually have, this is what our premise is, this is who we want to touch. Was there kind of a vision for that when you were writing your book? I mean, my reaction is no, it's an accident that we were communicating with each other and starting to send poems. And as you said, I mean, Charlie is pretty damn impressive as a human being. You too. You both are. Well, it took me twice as long. Let's put it that way. More normal timing. But it was when we started to share them that it really hit me. And I don't know how it happened. I think we sent it to people, you know, the spirituals inside and boom, they put it together. Yeah, the publisher is called Sacred Stories. So it just seemed perfect. All the people we met and to present it to them and put it together. It's beautiful. Match poems and the photography. It just touches your heart. Yeah, they picked out the title and suggested it to Grandpa Bernie into the publisher. And it's what we ended up picking. And when you first opened the book, it says, when you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky. That's an anonymous quote that I had actually seen on a greeting card in my mom's store when I was a little kid. And then I was like, wow, that's a powerful quote. The idea of it is like the challenges in life and everything, the stuff that when you're in it, you'd think, you know, that this isn't very perfect here. It's more like that's later on that that's going through those experiences, how you deal with them, how you respond, react and overcome. Those kind of the things are what create the type of human being that you are. And so it's how you address the situation, the situations themselves that that really matter. But these situations give you a kind of feedback in life and a kind of stimulus in a way or reason to work on yourself and different things that make you that that person. So when you go on the cover of our book, we have a picture. I took a red-tailed hawk that he's soaring over these mountain ranges that I took this picture on the peak, the summit of Mount Manadnaq in New Hampshire. There's 360 views all across New England up there. And I was actually on the top of the mountain, that sunset. So you get these sort of orange and yellow colors. The hawk was just surveying all these mountains and seeing when you sort of look from above and everything, these mountains that you climb that it all comes together that everything is perfect because it creates who you are. So that there's many different topics. We have seven options going through the book, discussing life and spirituality. But kind of the over-the-top summarizing message is all that comes together to be something perfect because it creates you and it creates your life and your relationships. That's kind of the summarizing message of a lot of the way our work connects is what we found. My first reaction was when you realize how perfectly imperfect everything is. Yeah. You know, it was not comfortable with the title, but I think that's really what we're saying. It's perfectly imperfect. You know, what gets you to write a poem, what teaches you. Because and I can say this is a physician. There are people who say their disease is a gift. It's been a wake-up call, a new beginning. We're talking about life-threatening illnesses. And others say it's a disaster. It's draining me. It's pressure. Yeah. But who again is more likely to survive the person who sees it as a teacher, you know, and they're rebirthing and starting a new life and then their body gets the message. You like living? I'll do the best I can. Well, words can be very powerful, especially in your book. Words are extremely powerful. And I know you were at an event the other night and you brought that up and I found that really interesting. The words and swords, my辭? Yes. The words and swords. Yeah. I mean, you can kill a cure with words or sword. And so and our son Steven, he did an art work when he was just a kid in school blew my mind when he came home with it because he filled the whole canvas with the word words, you know, with no space between them. It just words, words, words, words. And you realize if you look at it, it says sword, sword, sword, sword, swords. And that's when it really blew my mind that this little kid comes home and even his teacher didn't understand where that come from. But I think it comes from God knows where. You know, it comes from within us. There's more within us consciousness and past life experiences and all those the things. And so that said a lot to me that what I say to people and do the same thing as a scalpel in my hand, but in the past life, was a knight and killed with a sword. And that was an experience I had because somebody said to me over the phone because I was busy. And she said, why are you living this life? And I went into a trance and visualized myself in the past life. It wasn't, you know, something I believed in searching for anything else, but it has had a profound effect on my life. And I think it's a part of all our lives. So I'm always saying to people, what's going on in your life? Why do you think you got sick now? Just this Monday morning, we have a lot of throat suicides and illnesses. It's not a coincidence. It's how people feel on Monday. And so when you're loving your life, and that's the other thing I began to see, people learn they have a short time left to live. So they really start living. You know, move, get a new house, get a dog, quit their job and start doing what they love. And, you know, then they show up and you say, hey, what happened? Because I wondered how come you're not dead, you know what I mean? I mean, the funniest one, a landscaper. He had cancer, the stomach, I operate out of my toe, we needed more treatment. And he said, if I got something, I said, what did I forget? It's springtime. I got in a home, make the world beautiful. So when I die, I'll leave a beautiful world. Six years later, the nurse handed me his chart. I said, he's dead. She said, open the door. So I opened the door to the examining room. And there's that John. I have a hernia from lifting boulders in my landscape business. Oh wow. And he became my therapist. I mean, that literally about life, you know, like Charlie talked about nature. John was like an old time Charlie. He just showed me so many beautiful things that I would have called junk or weeds or but a little flower, a color. I mean, the world became so damn interesting. When I go out jogging or riding my bike, I keep stopping and pulling up plants and stick them in our front yard because they looked so pretty. And people would say, what do you got all that stuff growing in your arm? Well, it wasn't stuff anymore. You know, it was beautiful. And I will finish with John lift the 91 after his wife died. He, you know, turned off his switch because he wanted to be with her. Well, that's an incredible story. Well, you did such significant work with children, with cancer. If there's one bit of advice you could give to parents, to children, what would that be? Well, to love your children. And let me say it in several ways because a study of Harvard students that were asked, did your parents love you? They said, no, by middle age, 98% had suffered a major illness. If they said, yes, 24% had. So what a difference about how you care for yourself and feel about yourself if your parents love you. And so that's the part I really saw. And I have to say also, I walked into a room, one of my patients who was dying. The parents were in the crib with this little kid. Oh, wow. And the love was incredible. And they were all sleeping. So I wrote a note and said, your child is so lucky. And then I'm walking down the hall thinking, hey, stupid. That kid has a short time left to live. How could you leave that note for his parents? That what are they going to think of you? So I ran back to get it and they had awakened by then. I said, I'm sorry. That note, I didn't mean it. They said, we know what you meant. We agree with you. They love their child. And what a difference it made. And I can say a lot of kids don't die when they're given to their parents because they're so sick. There's no sense excluding them in the intensive care unit anymore. And mama grabs the baby and puts it against her bare breasts and the kid wakes up. I mean, I don't make up these stories. You know, it's that kind of touch and love that really make a difference in our lives. So when, well, let me give you this, because this impressed me. We can repair it, people. I got a phone call, the one that was most dramatic, about 30 or more years ago. I don't know when Kaborki and Witt's popular. And the young lady said, do you have Jacob work install number? I can't find it. I said, no, I don't. But why do you want that? Oh, I want to be dead. And she went into a little bit of her life. I said, look, I love you. Your child, the God, I'll be your chosen dead. And she didn't commit suicide. And I have cards in front of me as I turn my head to look at them. Happy Father's Day to my bonus dead. So I became a CD and then a BD. And it came from a suicidal teenager in my office one day that the CD, because she said to me, you're my CD. I said, what the hell are you talking about on the CD? You might chosen dead. And it's just incredible. See, when you help the kids see their beauty, another one, holy stories keep coming back into my head. That's why I never stopped talking. She fell in the fireplace on Christmas Day. And the parents called me because I had operated on her system. She had appendicitis. Midditor to the hospital with burns over her chest and arms and neck. And she used to yell at me, I hate you because it wasn't fun to work on the burns on a young child in the pain of cause. And the mother said to me, you know, one day you said, well, maybe some day you'll love me. I said, I don't remember saying that, but if you say I did okay, what happens? Many years later, she shows up in the office for a checkup, 90 degrees outside. She's wearing a turtle neck and long sleeve sweater. I said, Madeline, what the hell is wrong with you? It's 90 degrees. I'm ugly. I know I'm people to see how ugly I am. Then she said to me, I need to get a job this summer. Could you help me? I said, yes, I'll help you. And I got her a job at a nursing home where you had to wear a uniform that reveals your upper chest neck and arms because she didn't know that, but I knew it. She went and took the job because she needed it. And then after working there for, I don't know, a month or so, she came into my office and I said, well, how's it going? Nobody noticed my scars. When you're giving love, Madeline, you're beautiful. The greatest gift, another decade or more goes by, I get a phone call, Dr. Siegel, what is it, Madeline? My father died a couple of years ago and I'm getting married. Would you be my father at my wedding? And what song do you think they played? Through the years, you never let me down. You turned my life around. I forgot who sang that, the country was them. So long. I didn't know that was going to happen, but she said, we'll get up and dance now. I don't know if that was Kenny Rogers or not. Kenny Rogers, yeah. Through the years. That's the gift that likes to give you when you help somebody else. Absolutely. What a gift. What a gift you are. Absolutely. You're both gifts. Gifts of the world. Absolutely. As an artist myself, I love your work connecting art and feelings for sick children. What inspired you to do that? And have you utilized art and healing through the process? Well, I never expected to write a book. I got to see in writing in college and I literally never expected to write a book. And when somebody said, why don't you write a book instead of having to go out and talk all the time? I said, I can't write, I don't know how to write a book. And because of him, he got people together to help me write a book. And what I did was talk, like I'm talking to you for hours and hours and then somebody edited it into a book. Now I know how to use my mind in a way where it's okay to write that I don't have to think I can feel like the poetry. I was an artist, a visual person. Our house is filled with portraits. What changed me was Elizabeth Kool-A-Ross because I went to her workshop that deal with my pain. She had me draw a picture for her. And then she started asking me questions about my life. Why is 11 important? I said, I've been doing this work for 11 months. Why do you ask me that? You know, 11 trees in the picture. What are you covering up? What are you talking about? He used a white crayon on a white piece of paper. He added a layer. What are you covering up? It was all by emotions. But by the time she was done with this drawing from my imagination, she knew so much about my life that I went back to the hospital of the box of crayons and would get people to draw pictures. And I thought I was discovering things. But then I learned Carl Jung, see, as a physician who knew an enemy through. One of his comments was that what you're seeing in the drawing are somatic aspects. People would draw what their problem was without knowing what was going on in their body. But I could see the anatomy. So it's coming out of their consciousness. And I'd say the same place these poems come out of. You know, they come in words, but the things can come in drawings too. So that became a part of my life. And even another book called The Art of Healing. I'm not the only one who's written books about it. What's sickening is that you don't put it in medical school. The other side is when you ask doctors, draw yourself working as a doctor, they don't put patients in the picture. They put their diploma in and a desk. I mean, that literally it's rare that a student shows himself with a person and helping them. So, and again, Jung statement was it diagnosed itself as a doctor, but it doesn't help the patient. So the doctors don't learn the patient's story. And that's again what we're writing about. I would say to people, what are you going through? And the words they use would be about their life. So then I could say, what's going on? Well, how does that fit your life? And then they'd be more enlightened about how to heal their life? How many of Charlie? How many got so smart, so young? I think a lot of it was growing up in my mom's store and with her teachings. As she grew up, my grandparents on her side were very spiritual and taught a lot of classes and meditation would go around speaking and helping people. So she grew up around all that and then created the store off a similar kind of premise and different teachings that she had worked with. So the kind of the slogan in a way for our stores were here to help. So I grew up with that kind of mentality of helping others and working with, but like, what's your own personal way that you're inspired to help others? So like, we're all a piece of the pie and you can't just kind of do this sort of general help. It's got to be like from your heart, from your soul kind of thing. Just kind of the fact of seeing like her and my dad too is a massage therapist and a home health aide and he's doing what he loves too. So like you get to do what you love and I watch, you hear about the way that Grandpa Bernie retired from surgery and went into like the way that fell right for him to help people. So I see all these figures in my life that like look they're doing what they want to do that's that's also giving to people. So when it I'm like finishing high school kind of time and looking at what do I want to do. I was in Boy Scouts for a long time and I've actually been in martial arts since I was four years old. So I lead classes and then I'm training all the time too. Traditional martial arts that it's more like an internal spiritual kind of thing. I agree like you did too. So as I see these different facets of like this is what I like to do and look at what's helping people. I wanted to make careers of that like that quote that do what you love. You'll never work a day in your life. So I started finding ways that I could get my writing out to people more started the photography business and and doing my martial arts and then I work in the store with my mom. So all these different things come together as kind of expressions of these different parts of me. So I'm getting to do what I love but I'm like the goal of it is to make a difference and help people how it can. So this new book has been really interesting for me and seeing that when I put my work out there, look it's sort of like the sibling to some of my grandfather's work and his poetry and it's great to see when I've had a lot of people come back and say that they keep this book on their nice stand and they open it in the morning and start every day with what page did I open to and how does it help you that day. And I've emailed Grandpa Verne a lot of the stories that people have shared like that that it's out there making a difference means a lot to us. Let me again, you know, no coincidences, two poems, one by me called Farms and Cities, the other vitrally of walking on the earth and sky. And in a sense again, this is why this book happened, you know, when he's sending me a poem, I'm sending him a poem and we're both feeling the same thing. Let me I'll remind it because this really happened why I was flying across country. Why over the farmland and abstract artists painted them, beautiful lines, curves, greens, browns, the beauty of creation lies beneath me. The homes fit between the lines lost in the beauty of the earth. I fly over the city, straight lines, square boxes lined up like soldiers. It hurts my eyes to see what we have done. Nature has no room. Please scatter the houses, make room for the earth to blossom. And then, Charlie, I think there's 64. Okay, yeah, I'll read that one. Okay. This is an example of one of my pieces when I kind of have like a feeling in me and then I just start typing and see what comes out and this is what came out in the case of this one of walking on the earth and sky. He walks along and comes to see the clouds reflecting along the surface of the water. And he comes to wonder, is he really walking on the earth or in the sky? The earth breathes him and he walks on. The sky carries him and his eyes grow bright. What does it matter whether he is on the earth or in the sky when all at one or one and the same? The water rushes past his feet and he is reminded of his place upon the earth. The breeze whips past his ears and he's reminded of his johns across the sky. His hand presses to his heart and his memories of his place among the stars fill the skies within his mind. He walks on and comes to find himself ever present or ever he walks ever with the place among the earth and when he accepts the world around him as an extension of the world inside of him, he comes to realize that there was never actually any difference at all. He breathes in the land and he comes to know peace. So when you realize how perfect everything is, it's it's available online like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all that kind of stuff. But if you'd like to get autograph copies or you'd like to talk with me or anything, you can do it through my mom's store, wisdom of the ages. So the website is wisdomoftheages.biz, viz. And there's a page on there that's like Charlie Siegel father and photography by SC is my photography company. There's a page all about that kind of stuff on there with links and things about the book too. And my grandfather has Bernie Siegel MD. Where you can email him through the contact page. Where you can email me through the contact page on wisdomoftheages. So if you want to talk to either one of us and there's all kinds of articles and cool stuff on his website too with different things that he's done. Yeah, and I'm laughing because it's not always fun but Charlie sends me lots of books and said, Grandpa, you got to autograph these people telling they want my autograph, you know, also. And so I get a package and then go back to the post office and send them all. I do have another question. So my uncle recalls, you recalls that he attended many of your speaking engagements and finally remembers that at the end of each presentation, your wife would come in and tell us string of jokes because you mentioned earlier, there was jokes. And then and we know she passed, I'm sorry for your loss in 2018. But does her humor still live within you and help sustain you? Oh, yes. I mean, she I have her portraits up, you know, around the house of pictures. There's some of the mistletoe things that happened to us too. I mean, to make a long story short, we went to a Hawaiian island who were patient of mine died. A butterfly was in the store we were in and we went to rescue it. My wife put her hand up but landed on her hand and went out of the store with us. And instead of flying away, jumped on my wife's shoulder, went to our hotel with us. And the stories on my website, you can't sleep with the butterfly because I said that to my wife. I said, we need to go to bed. You can't sleep with the butterfly. So get rid of it. She went out on the porch, said, okay, brush it off. I said, look at your other shoulder. It came back in. At that point, I said, this is the gotta be the spirit of my dead patient. I mean, there is no way to explain how a butterfly would behave that way. So I started talking to it like I would do a person and told it, we're going to have a workshop tomorrow. We want you to participate. You know, I'm going to ask you to jump into a paper bag and I'll bring you there and then open the bag and you'll fly out and we'll talk about the symbols of the butterfly of transformation blah blah. Sure enough, I hold up the bag the next morning, butterfly jumps in. We drive there, open the bag at the podium, it flies out. And this is again the part that blew my mind. It didn't fly away. It stayed over the workshop for nine in the morning to five at night. It just kept circling. And when I said, all right, we're finished now, then it flew up and away. And the butterfly is, it's a symbol of transformation. But oh, and then a couple of years after my wife died, I hear banging in the area near the living room. But I mean, something like, and I don't wonder what the hell's that? So I go out and there's a butterfly in the house, banging on the window to get my attention, same butterfly that was in Hawaii. And so I did what my wife did. I knew she sent it to say hello. I put my hand up like she did. It flew right over onto my hand. And so I then walked outside, held my hand up and it flew off. But again, there's no explaining how the hell it got in the house. You know, people say, oh, well, could these are not coincidences or accidents. I mean, it's a mystical aspect. But the humor to go back to that, more people would thank her at the end of our evening for, you know, 15, 20 minutes of laughter, then an hour and a half of serious stuff about life and healing. And all that. She had something called, oh, yeah, the warning signs. You know, the cancer side is 10 warning signs. So my wife had 10 signs. I hope I can remember them now. I haven't said them in a long time. Your husband calls and says he'd like that dinner out tonight. So you'll leave a sandwich on the front porch. You get your hair done and come home and the dog rouse won't let you in the house. Oh, you put your bra on backwards and it fits better. You call your answering service. Nobody answers. You call the missing person's bureau. They tell you to get lost. You call suicide prevention. They put you on hold. You go to see a fortune teller. She offers you a refund. The bird sitting outside your window is a vulture. You know, I mean, it's just cold. Yeah, because people would bust out laughing, you know, hearing her. And that's when you realize, again, how humor did so much to people. Nobody is ever upset with you if you make them laugh. And I do that a lot, acting silly in various places I go to. People know, don't ask him, how are you? Because my answer is I'm suicidal. And I've run out of my anti-depressions. My doctor's away on vacation. And people offer me their anti-depressions. So what would you like to leave with our audience today for them to? Is there a message that you would like to leave them? Yeah, I'm going to read a poem by Charlie called Happiness. What did you find the old man asked? Where is happiness for you? The young boy stood up at the top of the bench and held his arms spread wide. It is he a grandfather. Happiness is in everything. And it is in here. And he put his hands to his heart. Happiness cannot be held in the hand. But what you can hold is the hand of another. Since you can't hold it in your hand, you can't lose it when you give some of it away. See, grandpa, it's magic. That always gets strong with the more of it you share. That's Charlie C. Ellen Patel Happiness. And I think that's the part. He realized it. I've come to realize it because of patients that they need to live, you know, how to live between all those visits. And when you start helping people live, they don't die when they're supposed to and you get a big gift and a lesson out of it too. That's incredible. And that's why I keep saying I'm more impressed with him than I am with myself. Because it took me a lot more suffering and pain to change. And I would love to know what Charlie's past life was because there has to be some angel in there that helped him become who he is today. Thanks. That's always great work in with you. And seeing like our relationship with the relationship between our work is like a world of its own. It still amazes me how so many of these pair up just so totally connected. It's nice to be able to, like, that kind of 50-50 work together kind of thing. That's very cool. Yeah, pain in terms of parenting. See, I mean, Charlie's parents could have said, we don't want you writing a poem or taking photographs. You got to get a job. We would be proud if you were a lawyer or a doctor. And that's how parents ruin people's lives. And I know from people when they learned they had cancer, closing the law office and playing a violin, moving, getting different jobs and not dying when they started to live what they love. And I think that, you know, is a gift to him. He was given that freedom to do that. I don't mean my parents didn't want me to be a doctor. Don't get me wrong. I mean, it's just the pain of being a doctor is what locked up all the trouble inside of me. The pain things helped. I could have written poetry too, but I didn't realize it till later when I started doing that. But when I'd come home in the hospital, I'd paint a portrait of a pet, of a child, my wife, myself, finally, when everybody got so tired of posing for me, they ran out of the house one day when I came home in the hospital. And I thought, what the hell's wrong? And then I realized they don't want to have to sit still while you paint them. So I painted myself. And again, when I said, what are you covering up from those of you who are us, I painted myself as a surgeon in the operating room with a cap, a mask, and the gown on. You don't know it's me. And that's my portrait, you know, covered up. Boy, that, so all those, the images, the poems, that's what wakes you up and you find yourself. Yeah. That's incredible. Well, you are both gifts to each other too. In gifts to the world. So you give, you give so much. And and it is quite a pleasure to have you on. One more quote, please. I think it is. It's about immortality. Love is immortal and makes all things immortal. That's in a book called The Human Comedy by William Shoroyan. And that's something I woke up to also. You want to live forever. Love somebody. Yeah. That's amazing. One of my last things I want to believe with people too. It's like we were talking about choice of what you want to be. I think I kind of got myself off topic a little bit before when I mentioned that was in Boy Scouts. Was that like I learned a lot of great stuff from it, but it was like a lot of teenagers and you look at what you want to go to school for and everything. And a lot of the adults were like, they were engineers and stuff and they were like, that's a great path. You go get yourself a good job. And they were kind of like trying to aim some of us towards careers like that. And it never spoke to me. And I would go home and be like, that they're kind of aiming us at this and talking to us about different things we could class as we could take and stuff. And my mom would always be like, you know, to do like what speaks to you and is that like who you want to be. And again, that's not like telling me what to do at all. It's like telling me to ask myself. And also like the point too that it's often more difficult to do what you want to do. Like it can be easier to go get a good paying job and kind of, I like there's a lot of good meaningful jobs that are helping like that. But some people kind of like flowed along in a way doing the like the job that makes life easier. I worked as a waiter for like three and a half years or so. Like as a pizza place and then at a breakfast place so that I would be my photography and my writing. And you got to pay the bills somehow kind of thing. Like you see that you got to put the work into it sometimes. But if it means something to you, then that's more important to do what speaks to you. I'll read one more of my pieces from my book here. It's in the emotion chapter. This is one of the things I actually got up one morning and I heard this poem in my head. And I thought, I'm going to go get dressed and get ready and stuff. I'll write it when I have time. And then I thought, no, I got to write it now so that I still have it. Like I might lose it when I go get off into life and everything for the day. When peace becomes you is the title of it. So this is part of that message for me like we're all a piece of the peace in the world. You can find your own asset to how you want to be and what you want to do in being part of that. And it is when the peace overwhelms you and you step into the peace and you become one with the peace that you realize the peace is a part of your soul, a part of your intellect that then you can become a conveyor of the peace and you can allow it to spread free upon the land for all to be a peace and all is all right. Let me add for my parents that bothered me when I was a kid. I was looking for help not models to live by. And when I would say, I don't know what to do. I have to make a decision. My mother would say, do what makes you happy. And I'd say, my, you know, help. But it was what Charlie was here and see, following a heart, do what makes you happy. And then I had a horrible day of school. Everything went wrong. God is redirecting you. Something good will come at this. Ma, did you hear what I said? God is redirecting you. Something good will come at this. And what I learned ultimately, more well-known famous spiritual people had a mother like that. You know, I mean, I remember Norma then to feel saying his mother said, Norman, when God slams one, do I further down the car or another will be open? Boom. And my father's father died of tuberculosis leaving six children and a wife with nothing. And my father said, it's one of the best things ever happened to me. I said, what are you talking about? You went through hell because he was talking with a group of people and he said that. He said, yeah, I know, but it taught me what was important about life. And boy, you grow up with parents giving you those models to live by, see, not die by. Because I realized what changed so many people was what they were told. You know, we can't be proud of you. I'm laughing because three mothers are talking. My son bought me this beautiful Cadillac. You know, my son helped us buy a beautiful mansion to live in. And the third one said, oh, my son sees the psychiatrist every week and he talks about me for an hour. You know. And that was the kind of things my wife would say, you know, the people, all her jokes. But it's really what a parents gave us, you know. And that's your life is created then. And I've had enormous number of spiritual experiences from an angel I have. You know, Elizabeth Google also got me started on. Past life. You know, the drawings of pictures, all those things that really have altered my beliefs and my life and past it on to others. Yeah, I'd love to have you on again if I certainly love your stories and you're both amazing people. So that's why I was amazed at how amazing this young man is. Absolutely. Thanks. I'm honored to be on your show too. It's such a nice message to be carrying on your mom's work and everything that's I'm glad to be a part of that. Thank you. Well, it's wonderful to have you. And you carry on your grandfather's legacy, which is amazing. Yeah, that's nice. So thank you again for being on the show and we look for it to have in you next time. This is Cindy Gilman and you're listening to discover your potential. So until next time do something nice for yourself. But do something nice for someone else. cheering