Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.
Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
Join us for a captivating journey on this episode of Creative Status as we explore the profound connections between yoga, storytelling, and the pursuit of union and harmony.
Darius Wallace, is a multi-talented, very REAL human being whose life’s story is a testament to transformation and the boundless possibilities of the human spirit revealed through storytelling. He’s an actor, public speaker, and coach who helps people to find their real voice and stay grounded in the stories that can serve them instead of holding them back.
With a rich background in Hollywood movies, a founding company membership with Tennessee Shakespeare Company, and a unique ability to bring history to life as Frederick Douglass with his successful one-man show, Darius is a man who walks the walk.
Born in Flint, Michigan, during a challenging period of economic upheaval, he experienced the tough streets of Flint as a teenager, becoming involved in a street gang. However, a miraculous intervention, offered by his high school’s Vice Principal, presented him with a choice – the destiny of jail or the destiny of his dream.
Darius chose the latter, embarking on a transformative path when introduced to his high school theater teacher, who revealed the transformative power of storytelling and communication through acting.
In this episode, we delve deep into Darius’s philosophy exploring the powerful threads of yoga and storytelling that have woven their way through his personal journey.
Discover how these two seemingly distinct disciplines are, in reality, about union and the realization of oneness and harmony, ultimately illuminating the beauty of transformation and the human spirit’s capacity to overcome adversity.
Tune in to this episode Creative Status for a profound conversation with Darius Wallace, where stories, yoga, and the pursuit of harmony come together to inspire and enlighten you to be more REAL in your own life.
This is a thought-provoking exploration of life’s incredible possibilities that will leave you energised, hyped up, and ready to go!
Listen using the player above,on the YT video below, or go to any podcast player!
Thanks a bunch,
Oli
(Scroll down for full show transcript)
Leave a voice message to share your thoughts and to be (maybe) featured on future episodes of the podcast: anchor.fm/creativestatus
Episode Links:
Darius’ Website: https://dariuswallace.com/
The Yoga Of Storytelling TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6fEaFC65sg
Creative Status Links:
The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance
Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/olijanderson
My YouTube channel: youtube.com/olianderson
Get my books on Amazon: amazon.com/author/oli
7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: olianderson.co.uk/systemshock
Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level: olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop
Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: olianderson.co.uk/journal
The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction
Transcript: The Yoga of Storytelling
Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh hi there, Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status. This is the first time you found the podcast welcome. This is a place where we talk about how the creative process is actually the process of growing more real or more authentic and basically transcending our ideas about ourselves so we can integrate some of the parts we may have been hiding and then start building a life that we truly want to live and that we can truly thrive on because it’s lined with our true values and intentions.
If you don’t know me, my name is Oli Anderson. Like I said, I’m a creative performance coach. I help people to bring realness into their lives and businesses. That’s based on a book I wrote, Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness and all the stuff I’ve done with my clients and blah blah blah.
Anyway, today’s episode of Creative Status is an interview with Darius Wallace. Darius is a guy who has so many amazing things to say about some of my favorite topics in the world, mainly yoga and storytelling which is what this conversation you’re about to listen to focuses on.
Darius himself is an actor. He’s a coach who helps people with public speaking. He’s a public speaker himself and he takes all of his learning from these different areas to help us really dive deep into what storytelling actually is, how it can impact our lives, how it’s linked to some of the lessons he’s learned personally with yoga and all that kind of stuff. He’s got a really great TEDx talk online about the yoga of storytelling as well so check that out if you get a chance.
Anyway, here’s the conversation coming up. Darius, thank you so much for your time and your energy. Everybody else, thanks for listening. If this adds any value to your life then please consider leaving a review somewhere so other people can get value as well when they find a podcast. Other than that, here we go. Thanks a bunch. Boom.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh hi there, Darius. Thank you for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status. You’re interested in two of my favorite topics of all time which are yoga and storytelling and you’ve done a lot of work looking at the connections between the two and how we can use the power of both, I guess, but storytelling in particular to heal ourselves and our lives.
So before I ask you millions of different questions, do you feel like introducing yourself, letting people know how you ended up doing what you do and also sharing what you want to get out of this conversation that we’re about to embark upon?
Darius Wallace: Sure, sure. Well again, I’m Darius Wallace. I’m an actor, speaker and speaking coach and really, you know, the way that I got into acting was my childhood hero, Bruce Lee.
Yeah, my father took me to see a Bruce Lee movie and I wanted to be just like Bruce Lee and I had trouble with reading actually when I was a kid and my father was very concerned about it because I also had no interest but he put the biography of Bruce Lee’s life written by his wife Linda Lee on my desk and that started me on the journey of loving the written and spoken word because I began to read and what I learned was that he was an actor, a childhood actor in Hong Kong and from that moment on, I wanted to be and at the time I wanted to be a martial arts star too but it got me into acting and I was so shy though that every time I stood in front of people, I would forget my lines.
I also had trouble communicating which made me an angry child and I’ve been 5’11”, 170, 80 pounds since I was 13 years old and so I became martial arts and being 5’11 at 13, I was prime target for gang life and I got involved but fortunately, my middle school vice-principal gave me an ultimatum.
I could either continue in that life and end up in juvenile home or I can do what I love to do and I chose what I love to do which was acting and I had to get over my shyness though and I had a high school theater teacher that taught me how to do that, gave me techniques and in the end, started me as a teenager on the journey of a life of storytelling and so as an adult after, you know, having been in film television, doing classical theater, Shakespeare and theater around the country, I did one person’s show on Frederick Douglass.
One day, I was approached by a commercial realtor who wanted his brokers to be better presenters and at the time, I didn’t know what I was doing so I just taught him acting techniques but they loved it. Wow, wow and it worked. Yeah and it worked and so that started me on the journey of coaching speakers and I’ve been the TEDx speaking coach for Memphis for the past seven years and also do speaking and have done some TEDx speaking so in a nutshell, that pretty much gets you to where I am right now.
Oli Anderson: That’s actually an amazing story to start the show with. Ultimately, you went from being very shy to using storytelling, I’m assuming, to kind of break through the shyness and then be able to help other people in their lives to do the same thing so I’m gonna dive right into it with the questions. How would you say the storytelling techniques helped you to overcome your shyness? Are there some lessons we can all get from that, I guess?
Darius Wallace: Yeah, well, you know, a lot of our, one, some of us are natural introverts, which I am and also, two, you know, those of us that may not be such introverts, a lot of our fear and anxiety has a lot to do with self-consciousness and also, you know, with that being conscious of ourselves in such a way that’s not healthy.
In other words, we have a low self-image, low self-esteem, low self-worth and I find that a lot with my people that I coach who are leaders and entrepreneurs and influencers, believe it or not, can be terrified of speaking because there is, you know, some childhood trauma that’s caused them to have low self-esteem, low self-image, low self-worth. So, and so a lot of that also has to do with being so self-conscious of yourself that you’re, when you’re in front of people, you know, you feel like everybody else is just as conscious as you are.
Yeah, which is actually not true. Actually, when people are out there, they’re rooting for you. It takes a very sick person to want you to fail when you’re on stage. But, so one of the main things that happens, you have to release that self-consciousness and become more involved with the story itself. But ultimately, more involved with the people that you’re talking to. It must become about the people and less about yourself, which is one of the things that helps you overcome. And so, when I was a kid, my high school theater teacher, seeing that every time I stood in front of people, I’d be really quiet. I’d forget my lines. I couldn’t, I had a pretty thick, Midwestern, American, urban accent. So people really couldn’t understand me either.
You know, when I stood in front of people. So my high school theater teacher taught me an art form called mime or pantomime, where I didn’t have to use words. Wow. I just used my body. And about 85% of our communication is nonverbal anyway. And so, I noticed that as I began to do mime, the audience, they were engaged. And then I noticed when I did something funny, they laughed. And it was that first break of hearing audience laughter. That broke through my shyness. Yeah. Because of course, you know, we actors, we naturally want to be loved.
Oli: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually, it sounds like that laughter, that was confirmation that the story you were originally telling yourself that was making you self-conscious, the laughter basically showed that that story was an illusion.
And it put you in this place you were talking about, where you realize, actually, the audience is rooting for you. And I think a lot of the time, when people are self-conscious, and they’re seeing the world around them as judging them as been an imposter or been no good or whatever it is, what’s actually going on is they’re projecting their own unreal story that they have in their relationship with themselves out into the world.
But if you can, I guess, push through it in the way that you did, by just getting up and doing it, you get that validation that, okay, the only thing holding you back, actually, is the story. Because the stories we tell ourselves kind of dictate our lives, something like that.
Darius: It’s very, very true. The stories we tell ourselves, most times we tell ourselves very negative stories. But you know, it’s not all our fault. It’s in the atmosphere. You know, it’s online. It’s in advertisement. It’s on the news. It’s through the lens of what the box that people have kind of put us in, that we begin to believe this very predominantly negative story of ourselves.
The transformation of that makes all the difference in the world. And that was the beginning of a transformation for me of who I was and what I represented to the world. And that right away led me to releasing my voice and releasing my body. And before I knew it, I was getting leading roles and plays at the school as a freshman, you know, which at that time, kind of like athletics, you know, you normally don’t get to be in first string until you’re a junior or senior.
Well, there, you normally don’t get leading roles until you’re a junior or senior. But I was a freshman in high school getting leading roles because of this breakthrough. But interestingly enough, though, the breakthrough happened on stage, right? Where I began to tell myself a different story. I knew I had a gift. But in life, I was still telling myself negative stories.
Oli: Yeah. Why do you think that is? Like a lot of actors and performers, I guess, seem to have that issue where on stage, they can be totally real. They can be totally authentic and who they are present in the moment and all that kind of stuff. But then when they get off the stage and they go back to the, you know, the workaday regular world, those old stories creep back in.
So I guess the question is, what’s stopping, you know, actors and performers and creative people who’ve had that experience, have been in the flow and been real. What’s stopping them staying in that state, I guess? Because that’s where we all want to be.
Darius: Yeah. Well, I think that this is where the subject comes into play, where storytelling is a yoga of the soul. And acting is a part of that yoga of the soul. That, you know, the art of lying is the art of the con artist. The art of the actor is the art of telling the truth. And so there is healing modalities in the world of acting technique. And I think we as actors only see these techniques of storytelling really is what it is as related to our performance on stage or on film.
Right. But in fact, those techniques are ways to help us navigate in life. And so the issue is that we as actors, we think is only for the audience. And of course, it becomes a safe space over time. The stage becomes a safe space because we are able to get away from the negativity that we tell ourselves. We’re able to become something else. We’re able to be in a world that’s not like, if it’s a negative world, we know it’s not our world. And if it’s a positive world, it might be a world that we actually want to live in that we’re not. And so, you know, that space really becomes a playground for us of safety where we can be somebody else. You know what I mean?
But then when we return to our lives, because we’re not really doing any work on ourselves, we are reminded of our past. And so therefore we begin living once again in our past. And our past normally is laden with traumatic events that we haven’t been able to let go. I think in general, humanity is dealing with that just in general. But definitely the actor, a lot of us, when we go back to our normal lives, it’s so unlike the imaginative world that we live in that we, you know, we haven’t developed the coping skills to deal with everyday, you know, real life, if you want to call it real.
Oli: Yeah. Yeah. Like actually that’s kind of the point I’m drilling home. I think like the thing that we call the world day-to-day life, it’s not really real. Like it’s a bunch of concepts and ideas that we picked up, a bunch of scripts that somebody else wrote that we’re following. And ultimately what you just said about, you know, acting is telling the truth. I think that is why it can offer healing to people because the only thing I believe that can heal people is a relationship with the truth.
And I don’t necessarily mean that in a spiritual way, like just being aligned with something true rather than untrue means that you’re going to make authentic decisions. You’re going to be aligned with your true values and your true intentions. And you’re not going to be bringing friction to your life because you’re hiding from who you really are. And so when you were just sharing what you’re sharing, it reminded me of the Shakespeare quote, you know, all of the world’s a stage. Everyone’s an actor. We’re all players, blah, blah, blah. And most people are acting in the sense that you used as a kind of a contrast to the idea of acting being about telling the truth.
Most people are acting in the sense that they’re following these unreal scripts and stories that are kind of an illusion or a lie, if you want to use that word. And the reason it’s an illusion or a lie is because it’s prompted by a lack of awareness, a lack of consciousness. And so when actors get on the stage and they’re telling these stories with awareness that are sharing universal themes about the human experience and other things that are true, while they’re moving into that, the world that is actually real, even if it’s just for a few moments or for the duration of the performance, it might not, it might not be dressed in the language of truth, if that makes sense, but the underlying themes and messages are linked with the truth.
And so in those moments, they get to feel more real, but then they return to the world and the awareness goes away again. And they end up acting without knowing that they’re acting because they’re following the script, which is just the world’s kind of imbued inside them or injected inside them because of social conditioning and past traumas and all this kind of stuff. Does that make sense?
Darius: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There’s, if we can come to understand that the world of allegory is more real. But then, you know, vibrating in a materialistic level, what we see every day is allegory. Everything that we’re looking at has a deeper meaning. And when we understand that, now we know how to be a little more in control of our imagination. And when we’re in control of our imagination, we become the magi, as it were. If you notice, magi is in the word imagination. We’re able to create the life that we want, manifesting the life that we desire to have, because we’re realizing that everything that’s happening in our life physically is allegory. And then also in our imagination is allegory.
In religions around the world, they’re allegories. Myths are allegories. And we can go on and on with that, that there’s this underlining truth, these underlining meanings that we’re dealing with every day that, like you said, is the truth or the true realness, as it were. Whereas what interrupts that is this other narrative that we’re dealing with a lot today around the world. And of course, in the Middle East, it’s really gotten to the extreme in the most tragic and horrific way. But see, that potential is everywhere. All of that can happen anywhere around the world because of the negative use of the things that we’re talking about.
Oli: Yeah. This is a bit of a curveball question. I remember, before we recorded the podcast, we had a conversation a few weeks ago, whenever it was. We were saying that acting can be healing for the actor because it allows them to choose roles that are going to give them the opportunity to confront parts of themselves that they may have disowned or hidden from themselves because of the conditioning of the world.
So basically, they can use the acting process to integrate their shadow self and become more whole and transcend their current version of themselves with limited stories and all that kind of stuff through the acting process. It’s a kind of catharsis that makes them more real.
But ultimately, if it’s true what Shakespeare said, you know, that all the world’s a stage and we’re all players, everybody is acting out scripts anyway, but they’re not aware of it. And so you do get these situations on a global scale, like what’s going on in the Middle East or, you know, all around the world, really, to different degrees, where scripts and stories are being played out so that to some extent, people are forced to face the shadow that they’ve been hiding from themselves.
And it seems destructive on the surface. And of course it is, like there’s a lot of awful things that are going on. But through the process of that destruction, there is a kind of movement towards more truth or more realness as, you know, the process of destruction and creation is kind of played out. I don’t know if I’m making it too complicated, but do you think there is something there?
So we’re all acting, we’re all following scripts, but sometimes we’re doing this because we need to integrate parts of ourselves that we’re not even aware of. And so for some reason from the unconscious, we’re basically prompted to do things that, you know, seem destructive, but they might not be.
Darius: Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a saying or a term or, you know, or what have you called the hero’s journey. And within the hero’s journey is story structure. But story structure is also the structure of life. So we’re in any given time, we’re going through it in our own individual lives. And in any given time, we’re going through it as a community, we’re going through it as a nation, we’re going through it globally. Nature goes through it on a regular basis. It’s cyclical, basis is cyclical. And it’s something that we cannot escape, because it’s just the universe that we’re living in.
And so beyond the shadow of a doubt, if there is an earthquake right now in Memphis, Tennessee, destruction happens, and we’re facing that reality, and we’re going through the tragedy of that reality indeed. But it also is true that there is something beneath this horrific reality that we’re going through, that we can assign to ourselves new meaning, so that when we come out of it, it then holds value for our future selves.
You know, it’s hard to, when people are going through it, it’s hard to name these kinds of things, because then, for them, there’s a sense of insensitivity to the tragedy or the horror that’s going on. So, you know, some things we just have to take and face value for the urgency of the horror that’s going on. But in the grand scope of things, you know, there is always a reason and a purpose when things happen that, for the future, has the potential to create transformation. You know, not to be religious, but Jesus said, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, emphasis on the word die, it abides by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
And these tragedies and horrors that’s happening in the world are happening to remind us of what is actually going on in ourselves, in our imagination as global consciousness. The only way that we can have the leaders that we have, and we can have these horrors, is because as a collective consciousness, we are telling ourselves that story.
We’re violent in ourselves. So, we’re violent in ourselves, and we’re violent in our thoughts, and we’re violent in our language, and we are allowing for it. Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And if we’re dealing with justice where we are, true justice, then it’s a threat to justice everywhere. And we’re bound to see the reflection of that in and over time. And like I said, what’s happening there can happen here.
What’s happening there can happen in Europe. What’s happening there can happen in Asia, and has happened. It has happened in these different parts of the world because we allow for it to happen. We say that Black lives matter, but then there’s hatred against people that are homosexual, but happy. We say that we stand up for gay rights, but then we have hatred for Hispanics or Asians.
You see what I’m saying? When those dynamics are there, we’re basically, as a human family, are setting ourselves up to allow for things to get to a place where we begin to see that kind of hatred unfold in and over time. We allowed it in this world, so it’s going to show up.
Oli: Yeah. So many important things in what you just said. But I think if I was going to summarize it all, it’s ultimately about what goes on inside us as individuals and our relationship with what’s real and how able we are to face the truth within ourselves affects the world outside of us. Really, the individual world and the collective world are the same thing. They’re an extension of each other. And if we’re telling ourselves unreal stories about who we are because of social conditioning and shame and guilt and trauma and all the stuff in the past that causes us to doubt ourselves, if we tell ourselves unreal stories, then collectively we build an unreal world. That’s how I see it, right?
And there’s another relevant quote by Jesus. Jesus said, a corrupt tree brings forth bad fruit. That’s right. Yeah. And the world ultimately is the collective fruit of our relationship with ourselves as individuals. That’s right. Yeah. And it all comes down to the stories that we tell ourselves. And it does go through cycles. You’re right. I think everything is a journey in the human experience from fragmentation to wholeness. We become fragmented because of these emotions I keep talking about. Shame and guilt and trauma, they cause us to disown parts of who we are.
The day that happens, we end up wearing a mask, become fragmented, and then we go out into the world telling ourselves all kinds of unreal stories to keep the mask in place because we’re scared to let it slip and bring the truth back into our lives because then we have to face these emotions in the short term that have caused us to hide in the first place. Most people are running around telling themselves these unreal stories. Collectively, that has the emergent effect of the allegories and metaphors that we see in the world around us being a reflection of that.
And there is something I think about the yoga thing that can help us to understand this and rewrite the stories individually and then collectively. And I think the only way we can change the collective story is to just work on ourselves. I don’t think we necessarily need a big movement or anything like that. We just need to reconnect to the truth in our own lives, allow the unreal stories to dissolve, and then put ourselves back on a path where a real story has been written in the sense of us moving towards wholeness, which is going to bring more wholeness into the world, or to quote Jesus again, to bring good fruit into the world instead of bad fruit.
So when I do yoga like every day, and there’s two things I love about yoga. One, that it finishes in shavasana, corpse pose. I think that’s a great metaphor for these cycles that you’re talking about, because at the start of the pose, you’re born, I guess, at the start of the session, sorry, at the end of it, you die. You’re in this state of relaxation and dissolution. And then you get up and you go out into the world, you take the yoga off your mat, and you can be more real.
So the first thing I love is just being in shavasana, that’s what it’s all about. The second thing though, is that feeling of dissolution. So when I have a really good yoga session, by the time I’m done, the unreal stories that I’ve been telling myself, the illusions that I may have identified with and attached to, it all dissolves. Like, dissolution is the perfect word for it, because in those moments, my identity is gone, even if just for like five minutes, whatever it is, my body is one with my surroundings, and I can just kind of dissolve into everything else. And it sounds, you know, kind of crazy if people haven’t experienced it, but that’s what happens.
And I believe in those moments where I’ve dissolved and, you know, I’ve become one with my breath and everything else, that is my true identity. That is the true, real story right there. And if I can go out into life after the yoga session and remember that that’s who I am, not all this chatter in my head, but the language without words that you alluded to or talked about earlier, then I am putting something more real into my relationship with life. And by extension, that is going to allow me to be putting good fruit into my life, basically.
And so there’s two things there that I guess are questions for you, is one, is this feeling of dissolution relevant to all the things you talk about when it comes to yoga and storytelling? And then two, if we can get to that place where we have kind of dissolved, even if it’s just temporarily, and we experience that realness, does that affect what you were saying about the fruit that we bring into our lives, I guess, like the way that we can manifest the life that we want and all that kind of stuff?
It comes from dissolving those old stories through yoga or some yogic thing, which can be anything. That is the creative process, I believe. And then we can basically take that out into our lives and live better lives. So that was a very long ramble. But what do you think?
Darius: Yeah, it’s okay. Absolutely. What does that is that we believe that we’re fragmented. And when you feel that you’re fragmented and that you’re separate or distant, it creates this idea of limitation and lack. And it’s quite natural when you feel like there’s limitation and lack for you to get the anxiety and fear and get into survival mode to the point where you do things to harm other people because you believe that something is happening, something is running out, time is running out, resources are running out, I’m separate from this or that. And so we start to make decisions that way. And we become depressed and we get anxiety because we think everything is fragmented. And we’re losing time, we’re losing money, we’re losing relationships. It just goes on and on because we think that we’re fragmented. And what yoga does and storytelling, where the connection is yoga is about union.
It’s about the realization of oneness and harmony and universality. And storytelling also is about union and about oneness and about universality that we all are experiencing this together. So that when we tell stories, there’s that moment where time stops and there’s a sense of silence. Even though you’re telling the story, just imagine the audience, there’s a silence there.
Every now and then a burst of laughter, every now and then some tears, but ultimately watching a movie, going to a concert, I consider music to sometimes be in that same space, watching dance. There’s this silence that’s there because we all are experiencing something that brings us to a space of oneness. But the person telling the story also is experiencing this oneness, this beginning, middle, and end. And so yoga is the same way.
There’s a sense of storytelling within yoga going through the postures, how you start and how you finish, and the conflict in the middle, which is when things can get a little straining and tough, but you make it through. Notice too, that in union and oneness, your breathing transforms. Your breathing slows down. And a lot of the things that we experience, the trauma that we experience, because we’re not breathing, we’re holding our breath and we’re not getting enough oxygen. And what storytelling does, ironically enough, for the person telling the story, causes you to harmonize with your body and your mind so that your breathing now is in tune, is in harmony.
And so it produces the effects, it lowers your blood pressure, it takes away fear and anxiety, it takes away depression, and it gives you a sense of self-worth. And it does that for the audience in that moment, because of the uniting of ideas and concepts and experiences that we are all having in that moment of storytelling, where there’s one person telling the story, or whether it’s a group of people telling the story, whether it’s in a movie theater or on stage or at a TED Talk, or individual, when you’re talking to one person, you’re telling the story.
Really, what I’m doing right now is causing people to breathe a certain way. There’s a silence that accompanies what’s happening here. And in that silence, there’s the ability to heal. I’ll explain that in a minute. Well, in yoga or tai chi, it’s the same thing. There’s a sense of silence. There’s this breathing that’s happening, rhythmic breathing. And your anxiety and your fear and your depression is slowly dissolving. Your self-worth is increasing. Your brain and your mind is opening up. You’re releasing all these toxins. Your internal organs are massaging.
It happens also when we’re acting or when we’re telling stories. The massaging of the internal organs are happening. It’s better blood flow, a better flow of water. And your whole body and mind and spirit and soul is involved when you’re doing yoga and tai chi. And your whole mind, body, spirit, and soul is also flowing when you’re telling stories. So what is this? Silence. Well, you know, we are not our bodies. We live in our bodies so that we can live on this planet, but we’re not our bodies. And when we close our eyes, we see the beginning of who we are. And it’s black. It’s darkness.
But within that darkness is where ideas are born. Ideas are born from that darkness. And you go deeper into that darkness, and there’s this phenomenal light. I see it almost every morning when I meditate, this amazing, massive, powerful, bright light. Well, it’s the same darkness that you see when you close your eyes, not when we close our eyes, at night. And you see the dark sky. The same darkness that’s in you is there. That’s in you is there. And that darkness produces stars or suns. It’s the same darkness that’s in your mother’s womb.
And what does that darkness produce? It produces you. And so there’s this, within the silence, there’s this breath. And if you can imagine it from that darkness, once again, in the earth comes plants, trees, grass. So this darkness naturally produces this silence. Silence now naturally produces a human being. It produces stars. It produces nature. It produces your ideas. And everybody listening out there, take a look around your home or wherever you are. You’re only looking at ideas. They’re all ideas that are manifested. So if then this silence, this darkness can produce a universe or universes, you being one of them, then can’t the same silence produce healing, yeah, decrease our anxiety and depression, manifest the things that we desire to have, to be, do and have? And my answer is a 100%. Yes.
Oli: Yeah. That silence that leads to truth, ultimately, is connection. It’s a connection to wholeness. And in relation to everything that we’ve been talking about, which has been amazing, really, in such a short time, the main problem in our lives as human beings is the stories we tell ourselves that make us believe in the disconnection that you’re talking about. I think that illusion of disconnection and separation is the only problem in the world. But the only reason we have that problem is because we’re telling ourselves stories, for whatever reason, that the disconnection is real. When it isn’t, it’s unreal. It’s the opposite of truth and silence and darkness and all the things you just talked about.
And if we’re stuck in a fragmented story, like we can use your story that you shared at the beginning as an example, right? So if you were shy and self-conscious, there is something going on inside you that’s made you believe that you are disconnected from the audience that you’re performing to, for example. Once you heard that laughter, it rewrote the script, it flipped the script, and it showed you, oh, okay, even though I may have originally thought I’m standing here on the stage alone, separate, disconnected, I am connected to all of these people in the audience.
And the moment that happened, it started to put you on this path that you now found yourself on, where the stories you were telling yourself were real. And they were real because they were about connection, they were about wholeness, they were about your inherent ability to connect at any time to that light in the darkness and all the things you just talked about, because you realized what was true. And I think ultimately that’s, that’s what this is all about.
Like this whole podcast that I’ve got is basically about that, learning to live in a way where you’re telling yourself stories that make you more real, instead of believing in the bullshit stories you picked up from wherever that make you treat the unreal as real. And the moment that you can start riding the reality waves and going in the direction that those true stories want to take you in, that is when life becomes just amazing, an amazing gift. And it goes through cycles, like we were saying, like bad things happen. Then we, you know, we hit rock bottom or whatever it is, and then we find reality again, and we can rebuild and put ourselves back on the real path. And I think ultimately this, there’s something maybe about how, okay, when we’re writing unreal stories, we think that we’re the only one writing it.
So, you know, yeah. So we think it’s all up to us. We think that in our separation, we can just basically write whatever we want, but that’s never going to work. When we get to this place you’re talking about and sharing this insight around, we’re writing a real story because we realize it’s not, we’re not alone in the writing of it. We’re writing it in our experiences with other people, with, you know, God’s truth, the universe, whatever people want to call it. It becomes about interdependence instead of just illusory independence and separation, something like that.
So how would you, I guess, sum all this up? Like we’ve basically reached the end of the show. Like we’ve just, we’ve been on a, we’ve written a bit of a story in this episode, really. We’ve been on a bit of a hero’s journey, but if you’re going to sum all this up and maybe comment on what I just said, actually, about, you know, we don’t write the real stories by ourselves, if that makes sense. How, what are your final words of wisdom, basically? And can you let people know where they can find you as well, please, sir?
Darius: Yeah, I would say that one thing is for certain is, it’s not, we’re not alone in, in the writing of the unreal stories, as it were. We’re encouraged. We’re encouraged by governments. We’re encouraged by media. We’re encouraged by a variety of different versions of tyrants that desire to control the mass. Yeah. And so we do have that challenge that’s in front of us. But we do have the power within ourselves to, to tell ourselves different stories. And right, we, we don’t do it alone. We definitely do it together. And it’s summed up in one word. And that word is action. Which is what acting is.
Acting is taking action. As actors, we, you know, what makes great actors is the action itself, not just the words of the, or the, what’s said is what’s done. And the, the act of telling a story has power within it, the act of taking action, whether you’re doing it on stage film or in life, getting involved with the things that you want to do, be, and have. Taking action is where the healing begins. So the way that you write your, your story or rewrite your story is, is another word, intention. It’s your, the realization that your intention is what’s going to drive you and push you.
And if you can come to the space deep within yourself, this is what I believe, that your intention ultimately is to do well. And that your intention ultimately is to do well so that you can help other people do well. And getting more in touch with your intention, that’s going to lead you to the actions that’s going to enable you to transform your life, is what I want to leave people with. Intention and taking action can lead to transformation in your life. And then of course, you will influence others to transformation also.
And as far as getting in touch with me, you can find me on, in Facebook, Darius Wallace, whether you go to Darius Wallace or Phil Darius Wallace for Facebook, LinkedIn, as well as Instagram. And then one of the key ways, if you’re interested in, in engaging more with me, you can go to my website at DariusWallace.com or email me, Darius, actor at gmail.com, D-A-R-I-U-S, actor at gmail.com or DariusWallace.com, D-A-R-I-U-S Wallace, W-A-L-L-A-C-E.com.
Oli: So basically take action on one of those things and they can engage with you. I will share all that stuff in the show notes. I’m really happy that you basically boiled all this down to taking action because ultimately that is the only thing that can change anything in our lives. But if we don’t go through this process of understanding what the stories are telling us to do and how they impact our lives, then the actions we take are going to be unreal.
And so if we understand that, then it comes back to the whole Jesus thing and the corrupt tree bringing forth corrupt fruit, bad fruit. If you don’t understand that the stories have been implanted in you, then your life will bring forth bad fruit for you individually and then others. If you act on the real stuff, then exactly like you said, your intentions are going to be pure because they’re not being distorted by unreal stories and the good fruit is going to come.
So Darius, thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been super edifying. I’ll share all your links in the show notes. Like I said, I really appreciate your time and your energy. So thanks a bunch.
Darius: Yeah, thank you. I really, really appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed being here and blessings to all who are listening.
Oli: Thank you so much.
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