Lorraine Nilon's Insight and Awareness - Spiritual Explorer Podcast
Conversation with Freeman
Join Lorraine Nilon - Soul Intuitive®, Emotional and Spiritual Mentor and Award-Winning Author, as she engages with people from all walks of life to ask the question - What do we need to acknowledge to live a more authentic life? What does humanity need to acknowledge and understand for evolution to occur?
Listen to the full episode here:
VIDEO: FLIP THE BOOK INTUITIVE EXERCISE
This is how we end the podcast conversation. Lorraine randomly use one of her book - I intuitively pick a page and paragraph. Then we see if it resonates with them or represents what we have been talking about!
Interestingly, that led us diving deep into religion and spiritulaity through the lens of travel, explained by the analogy of an iPhone. What’s that about? Give this a watch!
More About Lorraine:
https://lorrainenilon.com.au/
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Lorraine Nilon
Welcome Explorers to the Insight and Awareness Spiritual Explorers podcast. I'm your host, Lorraine Nilon, and thank you for listening. I have the absolute pleasure of having Freeman Fung here today, who's an international speaker. Bestselling author of “Travel to Transform”, so we're going to talk to him about what that actually means. He's also a certified life coach and he's been on TED Talks and Mindvalley. And he's an advocate for new global citizenship. So, we're going to ask him what that is.
So, thank you for being a guest. I appreciate you spending some time with me.
Freeman: Thank you, Lorraine. Thank you for having me here. I'm so excited to speak to you and your audience and it has been such a pleasure to connect with you. And we are both based in Australia doing very similar work to raise global consciousness of this planet in different ways. And you’re right, my way of doing this is through Travel to Transform. To quickly share what that means, I truly believe there is this beautiful outside world where we can explore. We can go on adventures and see different countries and experience different cultures, but at the same time, there's also this beautiful inner world where we can dive deep into our mind, body, and spirit. And when these two collide together, when they overlap, this is where Travel to Transform comes through. Because I believe that is the ultimate path for personal growth and how we can all become a better version of ourselves.
Lorraine Nilon: I love that. I'm the typical Aussie backpacker, you know, backpacking in your early twenties and, and I just threw on a backpack and off. We went into different countries and I reckon that shaped my awareness of how diverse the world is and how exciting the uniqueness of it is. You know, talking about uniqueness, I love the idea of travel to transform. And I'm impressed, you know, like you're originally from Hong Kong and then at 19 you went and lived in Romania, which is just, you know, like for me, I was like, that's a, that's a quantum leap.
How did that come about and why was Romania your first place?
Freeman: Yeah, great question. So that's an interesting one, because when people saw me traveling all around the world now and having amazing travel logs and travel photos, people always thought that it's something that is not compatible with their daily life. But the truth is, cultivating an international life is not an overnight occurrence. It's something that always starts with a tipping point. And for me, my tipping point was Romania. So, even when people saw, you know, I have a very successful resume now and travel around and live around the world as I wish. But actually, I was never born in this way.
And in fact, the reason I went to Romania was, I grew up like you said, born and raised, uh, in, in Hong Kong, and I was actually suffocating by living in this concrete jungle. You know, it's a 24-7 vibrant city, but at the same time, it's so competitive. It's a finance driven society. Um, and even when I went to school, everything was about competition and I couldn't win. I wasn't the smartest kid in class. And in fact, I was not the smartest Asian kid in class plus I was the shortest kid in class. So, that doesn't give me any advantage in that game we call the rat race. So, I had been really feeling lost throughout my 19 years of life, living in Hong Kong and that really, really you know, shook me to think, okay, why am I even here. To ask the biggest question, right? What is the purpose of life?
Lorraine Nilon: Yeah.
Freeman: I think of all those little moments, and you know what? Society keeps telling me what my friends and family keep telling me. I finally came to a point where, you know what? I actually have to find this purpose for myself as well.
Lorraine Nilon: And that's really impressive at 19, you know what I mean? Like at 19 to know. What you are feeling is a sense of unfulfillment and that you have a choice of working out. What's your purpose? Why am I here? That's a very big question for a 19 year old.
Freeman: It is. I think it comes to a point because of my pain, right? I think a lot of the audience could probably resonate because we grew up in a world where we are taught to use linear solutions to solve global problems. And what that means is because I truly believe, now, looking back, right, you know, I truly believe our world is so globalized, but what our societies and education system or people around us keep teaching us is to climb that ladder. Right is to follow the same formula which our last generation have been, uh, following and use the same model to apply that into our life. But the truth is we live in such a globalized world. There are things that have shifted, right? Um, within the cultures, within the economy, within how we can live our day-to-day life. So, I think that's where the point was, when I was 19, I saw this disjoint and don't get me wrong, you know, that was the starting point for myself. But at the same time, you know, I wasn't having this awakening back then already, or knew exactly, oh, this is my Dharma, this is my life purpose and you know, go on as a new global citizen, no. It actually took me 10 years to learn that.
Lorraine Nilon: So, do you think when you look back at that 19-year-old young man, do you think he was just, he's looking for adventure? And he decides Romania is where I'm going to find it?
Freeman: Absolutely. I think that was me, that I really had no choice anymore because I hated Hong Kong, I hated my family back then. I hated the lifestyle I had and I couldn't see myself climbing the same ladder for the rest of my life, which gave me no joy. So I think at that point, you know, this opportunity came up and to do an internship as a volunteer in Romania. Back then, I didn't even know where Romania was. I thought Europe was Europe. I was naive enough, so I just went on this adventure, um, living in a place that was some miles from my home. But it turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences I had because I got to live with 40 internationals from 16 different countries. And it was just absolutely amazing because I found a lot of realization in what I'd been trying to do. For my whole life up to that point is to fit in, to be that person everyone wants me to be. But in fact, when I've met all these amazing international people, they have different skin colors, different eye colors, they have different models of life. They have a different system of living, and they have different beliefs as well. And when I saw that I was like, wow, this is so diverse, and I experienced that power of diversity for the first time. I finally start to understand that maybe I'm not here to fit in, but I'm here to create something different. And I think that was the fault of having this understanding of me. I'm Freeman, but I'm also a Hong Kongese. But I'm also a global citizen, and I think it was this new perspective, this new shift. It gave me that new lens to see the world and that's why I decided to travel around the world. 10 years after that experience, and you know, I was still young at that time, I didn't know about life, but at least that adventure transformed my mindset and it gave me a really, really good starting point to see more of the world rather than living in my Hong Kong bubble for the rest of my life, or, you know, climbing the same ladder for the rest of my life. So that transformation, um, really accelerated my growth, which is what I have written in my book, Travel to Transform, that travel is indeed the ultimate self-development tool in this modernized world. And it hasn't been taught enough by our schools or our parents or society in general because we always treat traveling as an escape, as a holiday break, as something that we do, you know, from time to time during the year because we've just felt like it. But in fact, for me, after traveling for a decade here and living life as a global citizen with this new global mindset, I do realize there's a need to rethink travel as a global collective because there is so much more, living outside our of comfort zone, living outside our of own local country, could offer us, it transforms us to a better person. It gives us a different perspective to understand our mind, body, and spirit. In a completely different way that has been possibly conditioned by our past experience, right? So that's where, this beautiful connection comes in, um, that I now see myself as a global citizen, and I live this with a day-to-day mindset rather than thinking, because, you know, in the past, right, when we talk about global citizenship, it sounds so utopian, right? It sounds so idealistic. It sounds like something so far or you know, people who are just fighting for global justice out there, people who are fighting for poverty, and we call them global citizens. And that is so untrue because you and I are citizens of the world already by being born in this globalized world. If we are able to embrace that day-to-day mindset, it does mean we’re open to our respectful differences. Exactly what makes us global citizens. And I think that Global Mindset has such a beautiful effect, that it transformed my life in every aspect. Right? And it makes me a better person holistically. And that's why I'm so enthusiastic sharing this message, because, you know, it doesn't take the audience 10 years. Haha. It doesn't really need to take 10 years. It took me 10 years because I had trial and error and then I stumbled across, you know, racism. I have experienced all this. A painful part of the journey that makes me who I am today, but I'm now sharing this from the hindsight that, you know, if you are able to embody this openness, this global mindset, this new global citizen mindset, as I say, then it will accelerate your own personal growth and open way more opportunities into your lives.
Lorraine: Yeah, that's it, I like that. And so, when you were traveling for 10 years, are you, sorry, I've got like a little backpack vision, but that's coming off my history. So, how have you been traveling for 10 years? Are you working in different places? Are you backpacking? How did you spend these 10 years because you went to about 35 countries, didn't you?
Freeman: Yeah. 35 countries so far and still counting. Yeah and I love that question. I love that question because that's such a critical way to reflect for me, right? I always say we have our own personal journey and how traveling can be incorporated into our life is different for every single individual in this world. So for me, after that Romania experience, I went backpacking a bit in Switzerland and France and you know, just going to the mountains by myself. And I was broke at that time, by the way. So, you know, don't picture me living in a luxury hotel, like a travel influencer quote unquote. I was literally drinking tap water the whole time in Switzerland. And then I was just grabbing all the free bread in the hostel and bringing it to my mountain with me so I could have food for the whole day. So that was kind of my happy experience. But, you know, being in the mountain, I realized, oh wow, I have never seen this kind of nature before when I was back in Hong Kong, even though I love hiking and you know, that also gave me the next station I know I have to go back to Europe. So, I applied for an academic exchange and I studied in Oxford, in the UK for my first term (formerly time), for half a year. And then I craved for more. So, after I went back to Hong Kong to finish my dissertation (formerly destination), which is about international tourism and world peace. And then I knew I'd have to go back to the UK and I loved London at that time. I just fell in love in London at that time. So I went back to London and studied my masters' for one year, and then I knew, you know what, I want to get paid to travel around the world. That's that. Right? So I was fortunate enough to, because you know, I talk much deeper in that concept called the travel-spiration (formerly travel inspiration), which means the inspiration to travel, for lack of a better word. I created that word, but I think it's such an important concept because of how we align ourselves with traveling, which can then be an essential part of incorporating our lifestyle with such a difference that we just treat traveling as something. We go on a trip and then have a deadline, and then we come back to our daily life again. So that also gave me, you know, studying my masters in the UK it accelerated my cultural growth. And then I obviously, you know, I spent a lot of time getting budget airlines and cheap flights to see more around Europe at that time. And at the same time after that, I knew I wanted to get paid to travel around the world. So, I looked for multinational companies that could fulfill that desire. So I work for this multinational company which is in the tourism and the attraction management industry, which I'm currently still working with, in Sydney, Australia. But across that, almost seven years, I have been fortunate enough to relocate and also get new opportunities to move to new countries. So, I moved back to Hong Kong and then I moved to Singapore and then moved back to the UK and then I moved back to Singapore again. And then, actually before that, I was in the UK and then I actually got kicked out of the country because I couldn't extend my work visa and it was broken by that time, which is a very funny story. But at the same time, I think it gave me the lesson to learn, uh, because I ruined my book as well. I had an emotional meltdown because I felt I had my perfect life in London. But then, you know, the universe or God or your higher self or whatever belief system you allow, it gave me the lesson to see, you know what, if you love traveling then keep doing what you do and follow your passion. Because back then it wasn't the time for me to settle. So that gave me another dream job when I relocated back to Hong Kong. I was on a road where I was traveling for 14 months straight, spending 20 days living in a hotel and I was getting paid to travel across the world with my company, which, again, accelerated my cultural growth. And then after that, I relocated back to Singapore and then I got a new opportunity to move to Sydney, Australia and now I’ve been here three years, experienced the Australian bushfire and also Covid 19 lockdowns as well, and have learned so many lessons from that. And the reason I'm sharing this journey again is, I'm not asking the audience to, to copy or to follow this journey. But I am asking you, and I am encouraging you to find what works for you, that suits your lifestyle, that suits your friends and family circumstances, that suits your skill sets and suits your life purpose and why you would love to do this, and why you would like to travel around the world as well. So let me be a little bit more concrete to give you some examples. Let’s say you aspire to be an entrepreneur, to maybe use technology to change the world and raise our global consciousness, maybe consider working in the Silicon Valley or finding an internship there. It's going to help you to find your next breakthrough. Right? Uh, and let's say you are a big fan of Italian cuisine. You love pasta, and you want to be the best Italian chef in your own city, so maybe a working holiday in Italy to learn from the local chefs there could be your opportunity, right?
Lorraine Nilon: Do you find that Australians are very interested in traveling? When I was over in London, you know, they'd go, oh, another Aussie backpacker. You know, like, so do you, because a lot of us when we are younger, do that rite of passage in a way of, you know, because of our distance, we'll jump on a plane and we might disappear for six months or 12 months. So do you, do you find a difference in our culture to other places that you've been to?
Freeman: Yeah, actually, it's funny you, you raised that because I think in the Aussie sense, yeah, like the Aussie backpackers, are a very common way to go travel, right? Like a lot of university students, they take a gap year and then they travel around the world and then they come back after finishing a year. Where I grew up in Hong Kong it’s actually very different because taking a gap year means we are one year delayed from graduating and one year delayed to get that new job, that new money, that new promotion.
Lorraine Nilon: You’re behind.
Freeman: Yeah, exactly. It's funny looking at it in that way because, I think what that means is it shows us how society shapes us as well. And I think, you know, there's no good or bad and there's no right or wrong. And I think what that means is how, whether we are taking a gap year to go travel or not, it has to suit our personal needs. Because again, right, if we think we just want to escape, if we just want to go outside our own country because we hate something then that's only as far as we could go. And I've been there, right? I’ve shared my journey. I've been there. There’s only so far you can grow from that experience because traveling has never been a magical fix for any unsatisfying life, right? Although travel does give us a new perspective to understanding life, so backpacking and having that gap year, I think, you know, it is definitely beneficial for those who are thinking to embrace these new adventures into your life. I personally do think it always has a benefit behind it, but do it by understanding why. Yeah, because the why behind, you know, carrying this backpack or just going on a cultural exchange, or maybe not backpack, just, you know, a short trip.
Lorraine Nilon: Well, if we put it in a way, if I go on a trip now I'm trying to go four to five stars all the way and there's no backpack at all. You know what I mean? As you get older, you change your thing, but you learn, you learn a lot about people. It's interesting because I'm going back, oh geez, I'm going back nearly 20 years ago, but where I used to work, there was a backpacker’s hostel. And some of the backpackers that were coming back to Australia, so they were Australians, they'd gone out and then they'd come back. They used to come and have sessions with me because they found it really hard to readjust back into normal life, and they couldn't understand why. And I said, 'cause when you are traveling, you wake up in the morning, you never really know what's going to happen. And it doesn't bother you. You are willing to go with the flow. You are out there having an adventure, you're exploring, you're not on a deadline, you're not having to be anywhere generally. So, when you come back, all of a sudden, you're backing your control energy. And your plans have changed before. You're only worried about the next hour or the next two hours or as long as I've got it somewhere to lay my head over nighttime, I'll be alright. So the mindset was really different and it was fascinating. I've got a lot of clients from this particular place because they'd come back and then they'd have this you know, it took a long time for them to adjust back into normal life.
Lorraine Nilon: They loved the excitement of it. And that's what you are saying is if you travel, you get that, I call it self-inspired. You become self-inspired by your own life instead of looking outside for someone else to inspire you. Your own experiences and adventures and people that you meet become the inspiration that you have within.
Freeman: Yeah.
Lorraine Nilon: Which is what you are advocating for, I presume.
Freeman: What you just shared, that is exactly the part of integration because, you know, I don't need to tell people that travel is amazing. You know, like people from time to time in this globalized world, they experience that. But that's why I go deep with my book as well, because now after traveling for the first time, after you have this first taste of understanding the world and you come back feeling this cultural shock or I should say the reverse cultural shock.
Lorraine Nilon: Yeah.
Freeman: Because our mind, body and spirit shapes in a different way now and we are experiencing life in ways with a new self, right, with a new perspective. So, our old self doesn't serve us anymore, but when we go back to our home country or when we are back from a trip, then all the conditioning and the environment and everything around us trigger us to have that old self to emerge again. And that's why, like I said, you know, even for my clients too, when I'm doing life coaching with other global citizens, and that's such a beautiful realization because when we get shaken outside our comfort zone when we are traveling and then when we come back, we then have this new identity. We have this identity shift of understanding. I'm not my own self anymore, and how can I put this beautiful travel experience into my day-to-day again before my next trip? Right. Or even not having a next trip. But how can I become a globalized individual right here, right now in this life, in this same environment, in this same, uh, in my same social circles, in my same job? How can I use this new self to live a new life?
Lorraine Nilon: And I think it's important to reflect upon. How you reacted and responded to different things when you are in a different culture. I can remember it being in Greece and my partner and I got off at the wrong train station and the train left and it was, we were in the middle of nowhere basically and we couldn't read a sign. Like, you know we had nothing. We weren't sure where we were. I remember turning to him and saying, this must be what it's like for people that can't read and write. You know what I mean? Like this inability to process the world around you and those things you know, your reactions and that can, it can broaden out your understanding and your compassion and empathy for what other people are experiencing. And it might come from, you know, bizarre little experiences that you can take to lots of different places.
Freeman: That is so true.
Lorraine: Yeah. So, what kind of things did you learn personally about yourself?
Freeman: Yeah, I think compassion definitely is the first thing that comes up that really, you know, following what you just shared because what we are not doing and doing in our daily life, right. You know, I know we all have a nine to five. We have a relationship to patch. We have our bills to pay. You know, we have this mundane life where, you know we live right when we are not traveling, then we finally go outside this box per say. And then we start to understand the place. We start to appreciate places with different languages, people who have different perspectives, you know, people who read different kinds of news or even not reading any news at all. And that actually gives us a really compassionate sense to understand, oh wow, this person has a different skin color, who is, who looks so different from me, but at the same time, I can actually be compassionate to understand this person through the perspective of the lens of a global citizen. And I think that is one of the biggest lessons I have picked up, um, through these years of traveling because I finally understand there's no technology, no matter how exponential we are talking about now, from going to Mars with Elon Musk and to having this supercomputer cell phone in our pocket to, we're talking about AI now, you know Chat-GPT and everything, you know, by the time we're recording this podcast together, you know, it's all about AI. But the fact is, none of those technologies is going to make humanity a better place unless our global humanity consciousness, our global, collective consciousness is going to catch up with this exponential growth of technology. Right?
Freeman: Because what we are seeing now in the gap, why religious conflict is still happening in every continent in this world, and why politicians or quote unquote, well leaders are still building wars against each other, right? All those examples are actually set by human emotions and those human emotions are set forth by human behavior. And what determines human behavior behind that is human understanding.
Freeman: The human mindset of each other. And what that means is if we take a step back, even looking at this bigger picture together, what that means is technology already connects all the people in a pace that is so fast that our human understanding hasn’t caught up with that speed yet. And that's why cultural gaps emerge, right? And that's why cultural conflicts emerge, right? Because we haven't even spent this time to really shift our mindset into this global citizen mindset to understand one and other cultures to embrace each other with compassion. And instead, we go to war. Instead, we argue and create all this conflict, and it has nothing to do with technology itself, it has nothing to do with even the economy, even money itself because all these tools are neutral tools. The human consciousness is where it's going to determine how compassionate we can be with one another. And in fact, isn't that exactly the same lesson? Uh, Jesus Buddha, Muhammad, all the great things of all time in this world and all the ancient civilization have been teaching us, right? We just forgot about it. In this modern world,
Lorraine Nilon: We're slow learners. We're slow learners. You know we really are slow learners because the more connected we are without actually understanding each other, the more it doesn't serve. You know what I mean? Like, if there's a difference between actually engaging with one another and operating together.
Freeman: Yeah.
Lorraine Nilon: You know what I mean? Like, so you can have, you can have a conversation where it's just an operation. It's just, you're just going through the social graces that we believe at the time are going to work for whatever purpose we're in. Whereas when you, which I do think you experience a lot when you're traveling because you know, inevitably something is going to go wrong and it will be some stranger that will help you or might give you directions but it's that engaging and getting to understand that we're more alike than different.
We all feel very deeply and if we can't respect that humanness and even the soul that, you know, regardless of what experience we're having this lifetime, whether, you know, we are Asian or Australian or First Nation, there's a soul in a physical body. And I always say, you know, I read about my past life. So sometimes I think, well, you know, you might be doing that this lifetime, but it'll be interesting to see who you are next lifetime and how does that work where, whereas if you understand a bigger picture idea of it when you're traveling, it's really fascinating. Sometimes you'll walk into a place you've never been before, but you know it, there's something very familiar to you.
Freeman: It is, it is, yes.
Lorraine Nilon: It's fascinating. When it happens, you can't quite describe it, but when you feel it, you go, yeah, there's something to this, you know?
Freeman: Exactly. It's a connection, right? That is we always thought we live in a separate world, right? Which is the fallacy of separation. Which is also, again, you know what, causes all the human crisis today, right? Because we all think we are separated. I am only me with my ego and live in my own life. But the fact is, in this world, we are connected with one another. What happened with Covid 19 on one side of the world would affect the other. And we finally come to realize this beautiful lesson. And I also wanted to remind the audience that, you know, when we are sitting here and talking about compassion and understanding, the other cultures and raising global consciousness. And, you know, for me, I didn't come through this way. When I was born too, you know, I was actually angry. I was a mean, miserable young Asian kid. When I first went to Romania, I made a mistake. You know, I said things like an idiot. You know, I experienced stereotypes all through my journey as well. You know, people without fal, you know, I'm Chinese or you know, I always say, oh, I'm a Hong Kongese. You know, that's a bit of a cultural difference. Even though we are politically part of China and you know, people would think, oh, you must know Jackie Chan and, you know, Kung Fu by simply being from Hong Kong and which people would tend to know us, by those celebrities. And you know, people would call me, oh, you must have Covid 19 even, you know, when I was living in Sydney, Australia, when I experienced Covid, because people wanted to stay away from me because they thought all Asians have covid, you know, all these little things. Right? And I think if I were older, the younger me would react in a way with hatred, with ways that this guy doesn’t know better. And the funny thing is by traveling even more, and like you said, really go deep into our inner journey to travel inwards as well, by making the shift from inside out, then I finally realized, you know, when I was being angry or reacted in a way that I thought people just don't know better. When they are being racist, how I respond is actually going to change the world. I wrote this in my book as well. There's a framework, there's a model on how we can make this shift in the shortest time possible. You know, I also share the stories, how we can actually all understand the reason I'm angry, the reason I could get triggered. It's not because of what people are saying to us, but because there are things deep inside us that get triggered by those words. I still remember that one of the biggest stereotypes is that people will always say Asian males have small genitals, right?
Freeman: That's like a common stereotype as well that I have experienced. And I also share how when I first experienced that I was frozen, and then I have an experience where I just responded with anger, almost got into a fist fight. I actually befriended the guy who said the exact same thing to me because I just understand now that with this compassionate lens that he or she, he mostly, he for some reason, that he is actually in pain in themselves, that they want to express masculinity in a way by measuring the length of the genitals. They're dramatized, right? By being bigger than yours, by expressing them, he would feel secure. And when I had that realization.
Lorraine Nilon: For about 10 seconds. Yeah, that's how long it lasts, about 10 seconds and then they're back into the insecurity.
Freeman: Exactly. Right.
Lorraine Nilon: Yeah. So, it doesn't work, but we keep doing those kinds of things.
Freeman: And this is human conditioning that we are taught. And when I have this compassion in my lens to understand, without even him knowing it, then why should I hate him at all? Why can't I help him to become a better global citizen? Right?
Freeman: Why can't I help him to actually see through this globalized lens that you and I are no different and the beliefs we have been infused with are from our society, from a patriarchal society in the Western world, I should say, right? And we don't even see this in this example, you know, in the workplace about gender equality as well, right? Why do women get paid less by just doing the same job in a corporate world, or even playing tennis in the UK? We always say this, right? It's a big one there. And it gives us a reflection on looking at all these things where we have been stereotyping and thinking it's normal and normalizing something that doesn't serve us. Right? And how we can shift our world into a better paradigm, into this new paradigm with equality, with universal human rights, where the masculine and feminine energy can work harmoniously together, right? To find that balance.
Lorraine Nilon: Yeah. Oh, it's important. If we are going to evolve, and I'm going to ask you the question. What do you think humanity needs to acknowledge and understand to evolve? If we are going to evolve, these are the kind of things that we need to address.
Freeman: Yeah.
Lorraine Nilon: We need to acknowledge the significance. I always say the significance of all souls, but you can say of every person on the planet and every culture too, there's something wonderful about retaining. We don't want to become just a gray landscape. We want diversity and different cultures and we can learn a lot from especially the cultures that have retained a lot of ancient knowledge. We can learn a lot from them. So, how would you answer the question of what does humanity need to acknowledge and understand for us all to evolve?
Freeman: That's a beautiful question. I think the biggest, biggest understanding is that global unity is living within us and we have to acknowledge that. And the reason I say that is it’s funny when we watch superhero movies and you may be a Marvel fan or maybe you'll be a DC fan, you know, whatever superhero label you like, right? If the audience likes Ironman or, you know Antman. But I always find it fascinating when we watch their movies because when there are aliens invading the planet then no matter what we are arguing about, we drop it and then we unite to fight against all these aliens trying to take over earth. Right? And you know, I'm not discussing how we are fighting or how we should respond, but I do want to bring awareness to that unity. Because we actually don't need to wait for an alien invasion to acknowledge this global unity because today we are already facing global diseases. Pandemic, poverty, inequality.
These are all the silent enemies that humanity is facing. And in order to really raise our consciousness, we have to acknowledge this global unity already exists. And it doesn't matter what country flag we are carrying, it doesn't matter what skin colors we are. It doesn't matter what educational background we have. It doesn't matter which continent we are living on at the moment. It doesn't matter because this global unity exists whether we want it or not. We are all connected with one another. We don't live in separation. Think about it in this way. When we have our spaceship to the moon, right? When we look back at the earth, it's a giant, beautiful thing floating in space. It's a round planet. There's no size to take, right? And it's just one global planet. And if we can acknowledge this planet and global unity as one human species as one, I truly believe this is what is going to make the shift for our species and how we can make this world a better place than the one we are in now with wars and destroying the planet with climate change and all the industrialization. Because by only acknowledging that global unity, what I am doing as a person, as the actions from an individual, it's going to affect another person in this world.
Lorraine Nilon: There's a ripple effect. Yeah. And it's really, it's really funny and this, this always stayed with me, but it's about the ripple effect. I can remember 20 years ago and it was actually a local here, who died in a motorbike accident. And my girls were little, I had twins, so I had the twin pram and I stayed outside the church, just, you know, so I didn't take up too much room. And I looked at the people that came to this young bloke's funeral, and it was a cross section of our town. So, there were business people, there were bikers, there were alcoholics, there were drug addicts, there were workers, you know, blue collar workers, there were pensioners, there was every walk of life, it was like a big cross section of the community. And I remember thinking, I won't say his name, but he would never have imagined that he had touched so many people in his life. He was just fun. This guy was just fun as everybody loved sharing time with him, being around him. And that was the ripple effect of him being him. And he would never have imagined how he'd touched people. And I think that's what we often do is we go through living life and we don't realize the significance of our presence and how we are who we are. And our authenticity gives permission for other people to do it as well. But a kind word, a smile, all those little things are a laugh, you know, laughing together and sharing time together. They're the ripples that help humanity bond and really respect one another.
Freeman: Such a significant point that you raise. Because even in my book Travel to Transform, you know, we have this big discussion together in the last hour saying how traveling can transform us. But in fact, an equally important message through my book, is that actually, even if we are not traveling frequently, we are still global citizens because look around us, we are already living in such a diverse place, like you said, doesn't matter where, whether you're coming from corporate background or blue collar, or you are a spiritual teacher or you're an engineer, mom staying home taking care of your family. Doesn't matter what sort of background you are. Right? Doesn't matter how much you have traveled or you are planning to travel, none of that matters because we are already connected with one another. Where this ripple event, where the smile we carry on our face and this openness of me being able to respect each other differs, we already experience it day to day, right? When we look around us, what that means is we don't have to travel every single day and learn, like there's a status that there's a number that we have to, uh, earn in order to become a global citizen. No, it never exists. What exists is actually here in our mindset, in our head, because that mindset is going to shift us on how we are reacting daily to people who are different from us.
Lorraine Nilon: Yeah.
Freeman: And how we are reacting has such a big transformational ripple effect that is going to help another person to realize their own action. We have the same effect as well, and being our authentic self, being able to live life as a thriving global citizen, as someone who is joyful, right? That is going to transform others as well. And I truly believe this is the formula, this is the biggest insight humanity can awaken into is that when we transform ourselves and we transform others, we transform the world.
Freeman: There's no one magic bullet or one magical invention that is going to pop up by Elon Musk and then it's going to fix the world. Right? Not one.
Lorraine Nilon: Even for parenting, you know, mothers and fathers that deal with their own emotions and start working on cleaning up their own emotional baggage, their ripple effect is the children they're raising become the future adult. The importance of being your authentic self has that ripple effect for generations. So, it's a beautiful thing. So, what would you say? Has this cultivated a deep sense of self-awareness within you? Is that why you have been exposed to such diversity or what do you think really, because you've got a deep sense of self-awareness, how do you think that really got cultivated for you? Do you think it was the people you met or what's your story on this?
Freeman:Yeah. Beautiful question again. You know, that deep sense of self-awareness, right, is essentially the key of how we cultivate this global unity because it is about awareness itself, right? At the end, what we are doing here as the work is that we are bringing awareness into the unaware right? And how I create, how I cultivated this for myself. I think they are really manifold. Because I think in, especially in the spiritual community, I think there are a lot of discussions about, you know, Spiritual awakening itself. And we almost thought this is like a single event that happened to a person at a single point in time, at a place on mountains. So maybe if the audience was picturing me, maybe I had a trip to the shrine in Japan, or maybe to the mosque in Turkey. Or, you know, just meditating on the mountain here and suddenly you have this enlightened moment. No, it didn't happen that way, and I assure you, although it could happen to many gurus, you know, that is not what I believe as an awakening integration looks like, because embodying and awakening is actually a continuous effort of bringing this awareness into the unawareness and for me, right? When I travel, when I'm going across all these different countries, when I am eating, trying different kinds of world cuisines, when I'm connecting with people with all sorts of backgrounds, when we are able to bring conscious awareness into every single exchange, every single connection, and even eating consciously. That I still remember when I was in India, I actually had like diarrhea when I first went there, we are eating with our hands on the banana leaves and, you know, using oil that probably my stomach couldn't get on well with, but sometimes by bringing consciousness, by bringing the awareness of understanding their food, why the people are eating in that culture, why this is the food that they're eating. Why this becomes the type of food that they will bring to the table in the restaurant. All this leads to an awareness that builds up into your mind, body and spirit in the sense that it becomes an awareness that we can expand our world in a way that was never possible before and after all that is the self-awareness, right?
When I was back in Hong Kong, I’d spend 10 to 15 minutes eating lunch most of the time, and I don't usually sit still to eat lunch, I walk and eat because that's just how they are, that fast-paced, finance driven environment is like, you know, time is money. So, you know, we don't really spend time eating lunch properly in a restaurant. We just grab and go. And from that mindset moving into living in all sorts of different countries, trying different restaurants where we could spend two hours eating lunch together or maybe we would eat lunch in a community setting. However, all this brings awareness to my true self. My authentic self in the sense that now I remember that what I have been, conditioned to, as simple as eating when I was back in Hong Kong, is not necessarily the only way for me to live for the rest of my life. And the more we expand this awareness, the deeper sense of self-awareness we can cultivate.
And that's, I think, the ultimate game of consciousness itself, right? Because we are all here to experience this beautiful life in our own unique way. And yes, the connection with other people with more souls or more global citizens or more human beings, right? The connections are important, but at the same time, when we look inward, when we travel inwards, that is where that awareness truly comes in.
Lorraine Nilon: I couldn't agree more. I love traveling, and I do think it's a way of understanding yourself when you are put in an environment that you don't understand. Does that make sense? It's a beautiful thing. Well, I think it's time to play flip the book, so I'm happy that you are going to come along and play this game with me. So it's an intuitive exercise. I have three books. So, would you like book one, two, or three?
Freeman: I would love to have book two.
Lorraine Nilon: Book two?
Freeman: She has a good energy with it.
Lorraine Nilon: So that's the “Spirituality, Evolution and Awaken Consciousness”. So, you have the choice of one to 188 pages. Which page would you like?
Freeman: I would go with 22.
Lorraine Nilon: 22? Well, this will be interesting. So, there's 10 points on this page. So which point would you like?
Freeman: I'll go with number two again.
Lorraine Nilon: Number two, okay! So, it's interesting, there's a bit in this book about what are religions and what is spirituality? And it just goes through a few points of each and it says, oh, I wrote, it sounded like I didn't write it. Religions are organizations that offer a connection to their deity through the avenue they choose. There is a hierarchical system in place that clings to history and is generally reluctant to change unless the change increases their power over people. So, it's interesting that you've got that and just say, the listeners know it's not anti-religion or a pro spirituality, there's points in here to get people thinking about it. So, you've traveled all over the world. What did you learn about religion and organized religion and those kinds of things that stayed with you? And did that have a big impact? Is there a reason why? That is the paragraph that you got.
Freeman: I absolutely love how intuitively; we pick up this beautiful topic. Religion is such an interesting discipline, or framework to help us understand spirituality. But at the same time, right, spirituality is more than a framework because it's an experience and connection by itself. And traveling definitely helped me to finally understand there are things that are bigger than this framework. I grew up as a Christian, I went to church even before I was born. So, my whole family were traditional Christians. I actually share in my book as well, like, you know, one of the reasons I tried to look for my life answer is through those churches on Sundays. But the answer never satisfied me because I was one of those rebellious kids, who asked questions like, okay, if God is all almighty, can he create a rock that he couldn't live on? Right? And then I’d always ask, if everyone goes to heaven after they die, then wouldn't heaven be overcrowded? Like, how does that work? And you know, I genuinely wanted to know because I was just an analytical kid back then and I want to have the answer. But I never got to get the intellectual answers or even experience the answer. I should say by being in a very conventional way of understanding religion because it's all about, you know, I'm not saying all religions in all churches are like this, but what I experienced when I was younger, it's more like; do good, be a good person. If you do something bad, go to hell. Right? And I never resonated with that. So, when I start traveling by myself, when I, you know, talk about, I was hiking in Switzerland on the Alps, on the beautiful mountains in the glacier watching nature itself, then I start to experience more. There's a higher intelligence behind that. There's no one telling me how it is, but I'm just experiencing it through nature. By simply looking at that beautiful glacier, the waterfall comes in. And I just realized, oh wow, that's something more than I had ever connected to. And I wouldn't even call it spirituality back then because I didn't have the vocabulary. I didn't have any teaching other than reading the Bible itself. And then I think across the year, you know, I started getting to experience going to other churches, when I realized I'm freeman and I'm also Hong Kongese, and I'm also a global citizen. It's the same with the religious framework itself, because I can be a Christian, but I can also be more than a Christian who understands Buddhism, who understands Hinduism. Because when we are bringing the truth from one set of religious frameworks, we don't have to reject the other set of truths of the other religions. And this is where the dangerous part comes in today because when we are talking about cultural wars, we are trying to say, my God is true and yours are false. And we try to use my cause is better than your cause argument to try to win over each other. I use this analogy in my book, which I think is the easiest way to understand. It's like, think about the super computer in our pocket, which is our mobile phone. So, the software, the app itself are the beliefs. And when we have more apps in the folder, that folder becomes our worldview. And no matter whether you're using an iPhone or Android or whatever phone it is, there's always an underlying operating system. And that operating system is our level of consciousness. So, in this device, what happened is in the religions folder, which I have renamed spirituality, but you know, it doesn't matter. What it resonates with the audience. So, in this folder, let's say I was brought up as a Christian, so I always have Christian installed in this folder, even before I was born. And most people would then spend their life using the same app. Right? And believing this is true and living the life as the only way that I've been taught. But as I went traveling, I interacted with more people, including Christians. When I was in Romania, I actually first met Mormons for the first time. And I had no clue what Mormons were, by then, and people told me, oh, they are actually Christian. Be careful, they'll brainwash you, all this and that. And I don't share that opinion (formerly blank), to say whether they're valid or invalid because when I start traveling more and I have more Mormons’ friends as well, I realize I can also install a Mormon app in my folder. I don't necessarily need to use this app as my personal practice. But I can open this app to understand and put on a new lens to see religion as a topic. And when we are able to do that, we can then install Buddhism. We can then install any kind of religious app in the folder and expand your folder, expand your worldview to an extent. I'm still comfortable calling myself a Christian, but I'm also comfortable to be with friends and even have Buddhist practices as well. And by doing that now we are expanding that folder to an extent. We are raising the possibility of our life because we are not fighting against each other. But we are actually upgrading ourselves to the next version. Of our form, of our consciousness. So, I think it's beautiful how we intuitively brought that up.
Lorraine Nilon: Actually, it's interesting and you've thought a lot about it. I can tell it by the way you're talking about it. And whether it's religion or spirituality or belief systems or even ethics, our different types of ethics that we run. When you come at it with an open mind and an open heart, you'll find what resonates with you. And that's the uniqueness of you building your own understanding. I like to move away from beliefs. Beliefs to me are things that we can be indoctrinated to and we can adopt, that we can cling to and not really understand. Whereas when you have an understanding which is forever changing, as you know, you know, it's, it's forever changing that if we work on broadening our understanding and our awareness, we become more rounded and more grounded as well. I must admit, it's the first time I've ever had a conversation where spirituality's been explained with apps and iPhones. It's the modern era.
Freeman Fung: Here we go. I love that because there's an integration, right? I think there's a point in time when we talk about spirituality and Asian practices. We always dial back and clock in thousands of years, right? This is a great way to understand the practice, but we do live in this modernized world, right? So how can we integrate both? How can we integrate that Asian philosophy into our day-to-day lives? What we are now, right? When they have planes in the sky, we can use any kind of app to have SS of global knowledge through any search engine, right? How can we integrate both?
And I think that's why I'm so passionate about the work that I'm doing, you know, with the topics that I've discussed and the life coaching that I'm doing with Global Citizens as well. For this reason, I think integration is the essential step to really making change because, intellectually, understanding spirituality doesn't help us, right? Like both of us, you know, if the audience meditates as a part of their practice or prays, you are being in tune with yourself, right? People don't care how many or how few faults we have when we are closing our eyes and crossing our legs on the chair on the cushion, right? But everyone cares. How compassionate we can be, how impactful we can be, and how loving we can be as a person when we are making an impact in this world.
And I think that's why using an iPhone to look at anyone in this modern world, to understand there is a simple upgrade button to click to help humanity forward because instead of fighting with each other and saying, my app is better than your app, my worldview is better than yours. We just, essentially, need to click that upgrade button. And when we level up our level of consciousness, when we level up our operating system, we are then able to expand ourselves to see through the spirituality of mind, body, and spirit in a way that makes you say, wow, that's an expanded awareness that I never thought about before, right?
Lorraine Nilon: Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you Freeman very much for talking to me. I enjoyed our conversation.
Freeman Fung: I enjoyed it so much as well. Lorraine, thanks for having me.