[00:00:00] Ali: In modern society, a lot of people identify themselves with their thoughts.
They think that they are their thoughts. And if you go in a little bit, you'll realize that you're not your thoughts. You're the thing watching your thoughts. We're the silent observer. And that small identification, that small distance between thoughts and self that observes the thoughts, the more we can create distance, the more miraculous life becomes.
[00:00:26] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live The Width Of Your Life podcast. My guest this week is Ali Kaden, and he's an author who brings a unique blend of cultures and experiences to a storytelling growing up between the United States and Egypt. He considers both countries, his home and fosters a global perspective that fuels his creativity.
Ali's mission as an author is to breathe lives into stories that resonate deeply with his readers. And he believes that literature has the power to provide solace and inspiration, even in the darkest of times. When he is not writing books, he co-manages a real estate business in Boston and enjoys spending time with his wife, his daughter, and their loyal terrier Joyous.
He's also a boxing enthusiast and often finds a local gym where he channels his inner rocky to the iconic soundtrack. I've had an amazing conversation with Ali. I just felt sometimes that we have been on similar spiritual journeys and paths. So we get to talk a lot about that. Also how to carve out time to write while you are running a full-time job, just a lot about his childhood and experiences. It was such a great conversation. I enjoyed it. And I think you will as well. Take a listen.
Ali, thank you for joining me. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.
[00:02:13] Ali: Thank you so much, Aneta. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:02:15] Aneta: And you are another wonderful connection from our mutual editor, George. I have met the coolest people through George. I think that everybody that's writing a book in the spiritual world, some tied to spirituality or transformation must be working with George right now.
[00:02:31] Ali: It's funny. I met George online. I think he's the most incredible person and editor. I didn't start with him with any kind of spiritual work going on. He edited my paranormal thriller. And then two years later, a year and a half later, I decided to pivot a little bit in my fiction. And I said I'm going to do metaphysical esoteric spiritual themes.
And it just turns out that he's really into that. And when we started talking about it, it turned out that we were reading the same books and watching the same documentaries. And yeah, we were both getting Reiki certified at the same time. And I was like, wow that's serendipitous the way this worked out.
[00:03:12] Aneta: Isn't it interesting? I think there's an energetic pull that connects us to people. And then it's wonderful to be able to meet others through these connections as well. For those that aren't as familiar with you and your background, tell me a little bit about your background, because I think you have an interesting story.
You and I are both immigrants, but yours is a little bit different because you actually grew up in the U. S. but then went back to Egypt.
[00:03:37] Ali: Yeah, I'm Egyptian American and I was born in New York City and my father was working there. In the 90’s, he wanted to move back to Egypt and start a business. And he also wanted me to know the culture. So I moved back when I was 12 and finished most of high school over there. I came back to study abroad, but my whole life has been defined by back and forth between the U. S. and Egypt.
I identify strongly with a term that a sociologist coined called third culture kid, which is where you are both and neither. I'm Middle Eastern and I'm also American and I'm not fully either one. I feel like I'm a hybrid and that has allowed me to think outside the box maybe a little bit more easily than most because you go to one place and they think and worship and behave in a certain way and you go to another place and it's different.
And both places believe that this is the right way to be. And so I had to take a step back in my life and say, what is the right way to be? Maybe it's not what everybody's doing here or here.
[00:04:47] Aneta: I strongly identify with that as well. And I know what it's like to have one foot in one culture and one in the other. And for me growing up I felt like I just wanted to fit in into both because I wasn't quite enough. And did you also have that desire to just fit in when you were in America to fit in when you were in Egypt to fit in?
[00:05:07] Ali: Absolutely. I struggled with that quite a bit. I was an only child. And so all my experiences as a kid, as an adolescent, were self-contained I didn't have a sounding board for a lot of my experiences and I was an insecure kid. And so in the U. S. and, in the 80s and 90s, I think the U. S. was a little less diverse or a little less accepting of other cultures.
And a weird-sounding foreign name or weird ethnic food could get made fun of, or at least noticed. And it hurt, I was sensitive when people made comments like that, it hurt. And then similarly, when I went to Egypt, I was an Americanized Egyptian. I spoke Arabic with a little bit of a funny accent and my way of going about things was different I didn't get all the popular culture references And got teased a little bit for that so very much wanted to fit in and had a hard time fitting in and that contributed to developing my personality the way it came out.
[00:06:11] Aneta: Yeah, it's so interesting. I think Brené Brown talked about how when we want to fit in, we erase the parts of us that are different, the parts of us that are unique versus a sense of belonging, which is bringing your whole self and feeling like you belong. What was that transition like for you?
Because I always think about it, I wonder when I was a little bit more, accepting of who I was without trying to shift or change or assimilate or erase. Do you remember like when you started transitioning into embracing maybe more of who you are, or are you still on that path? I feel like I'm still on that path many times.
[00:06:46] Ali: I would say two years ago is sad, I'm 42 years old, and around turning 40 is when that shift happened and they say in your 40s you start to not care. And that was my experience. I started to ask myself, what do I want? And I started realizing that a lot of my beliefs and a lot of my ideals were not mine. They were inherited.
They were somebody else's ideal that I was holding on to for approval because of some past trauma or past insecurity. Very recently, I stepped into my own and it's funny, like stepping into my own, I don't think I'm that weird now, but for the past, however many years, 30 years, I was afraid to be myself.
I think because of these experiences, I don't want to be too out there for these people. And I don't want to be too conservative for these people. And it just played out a million different ways.
[00:07:41] Aneta: I know, isn't it so hard? The amount of energy that we spend on trying to figure all that out. And it's interesting because so many immigrant kids, especially around the same time, if we grew up here in the 70s or 80s or it was a different time than you said, like today. And did anyone try to change your name?
[00:07:59] Ali: Ali Kaden that I'm using here is my pen name. My real name is Ali Shukri and it's spelled, it's a Turkish origin name that is spelled in French because my family went to French schools when they were kids. So people struggle with it majorly in the U. S. In Europe, people have no problem saying it, but in the U. S. Shukri turns into chukuki and chukusri and, there are people adding letters and taking out letters. And so that was annoying and it still is when I get telemarketing calls, yeah.
[00:08:34] Aneta: Yeah. That's so interesting. One of the other things that I think is so interesting about your story that you and I had a chance to talk about before is just your spiritual evolution because you've had a wide range of experiences in many cultures and with experiences. So tell me a little bit more about when you started exploring spirituality or diverse religions or faiths, because I know that's something that you bring into your writings, but also something that is a part of who you are.
[00:09:03] Ali: Absolutely. I've always gravitated towards spirituality. I remember as a kid, my family got me a religion teacher and this part is in the book a little bit. I mentioned it. He would teach me scripture and memorization and I learned a very dogmatic binary religion that I think a lot of people, regardless of which religion they learn, which is there's God and there's Satan and there's good and there's bad and there's heaven and there's hell and you're trying to get good points so you can go to heaven.
And that just didn't make any sense to me. I just couldn't internalize it. I wanted to be good and I'm afraid of the devil, but I don't have any experience of any of this stuff. It's all just, that I'm being asked to believe things that I can't experience.
And in one of our lessons with the Arabic and religion teacher. I asked him a question and a lot of religions I think will say that they are the one true path and in Islam that's said very often, I think because there's a statement about Islam that it is like the stamp on religion and the way they mean it I guess in Islam is that it's the final iteration of the message that started with Moses and was perpetuated by Jesus and now it's culminating here.
And with a little bit of arrogance, I think Muslims have said, so this is the right one. And that never made sense to me, and so I asked my religion teacher, what if you're not Muslim? What if you're, born Jewish or Christian? Or what if you're born on a desert island, and you've never heard of God or religion?
My Arabic teacher didn't have a good answer. I won't say that he said, everybody goes to hell if they're not this or that, but almost, he said that. And that disturbed me, and I was a child, so I couldn't intellectualize any of this stuff. Still, just in my heart, I knew there was no way that this God, who I, instinctually just want to believe is all accepting and all loving and all-pervasive in every culture and every tradition and every person.
That God is not a trickster God and he doesn't send people to hell because they were born in the wrong place or because they affiliated with the wrong ideology. And so I did not reject it but stepped away. I wasn't very interested in religion. And then my aunt, when I was 15, and my aunt is the woman who raised me, my mom was sick from a young age, she was sick.
She struggled with different things. And so my aunt goes to India and comes and she goes and stays in the ashram of a known guru, Sai Baba in the South of India, and comes back with all this wisdom. Meditation and mysticism and finding the power within and inclusivity of all faiths lead to the same place.
And we're all worshiping the same thing. And that just hit home in a major way with me. And it was weird because, in a conservative Muslim country, you don't get a lot of people going to India and finding God. That's blasphemous. So she was very brave and I wanted to go with her.
And then everything that I learned there felt like home. And I identified with something that you said when we first talked. It brought me back to my faith. So it wasn't, I went there and I was like, oh, this is true, but the other stuff is false. It just gave me a different perspective.
I was able to look at Islam from a completely different perspective and that has always been my perspective since I like to say the word Muslim does not mean one who is an adherent of the faith, it means one who has surrendered, the word itself means surrender. And a Muslim can be a Buddhist who has surrendered.
And that meaning, and it's a process, it's something that we can tap into I think, a state of being of surrender. And I've always looked at spirituality as more about that than following rules.
[00:12:56] Aneta: Yeah. I did not know that's what a Muslim means to surrender. And I think surrender is well, the actual act of surrendering. I find people find it difficult because we tend to want to control so much. And so what does it look like for you or what did it look like when you found yourself surrendering and allowing that to be your return back to faith?
[00:13:21] Ali: I'm always surrendering. So it's hard for me to pick a point and say that I surrendered. I'm always, learning through mistakes. And, the darkness helps me see the light. And so there are many things that I perpetually have to surrender. And I like to talk about this with my meditation teacher.
He uses the word slippery to talk about this concept because surrender can be paradoxical. It's letting go, but simultaneously embracing all that is. It doesn't make sense in a human mind. It's odd and there are many forms of surrender, so maybe I realize that I'm entertaining some prejudice or some fantasy or just some thoughts in my mind that do not serve the highest good, neither for me nor for others, and I have to let that part of myself die.
I have to see it for what it is and then let it go. And there's this paradoxical nature or quality to it where only by seeing fully what's happening can I fully let it go. And so that's what surrender means to me. And in the last two years since I've had. a pretty profound change spiritually.
I'd say that I've surrendered to following my passions without thinking about what are people going to think about me or say about me and whether I succeed or not. But then also there's a surrender within my mind where I want to live more meditative, more present in the moment. And my mind, like everybody's mind takes them away.
It's a fit of fear and fancy. And I've learned through meditation and chanting to be here more. That everything miraculous happens here, not when my mind is off in some fantastical place.
[00:15:11] Aneta: Yeah. No time traveling. I always say when I invite people to come back to the present. What is your meditation practice like, or maybe additional practices that you do daily?
[00:15:24] Ali: I would say chanting is the Sanskrit chanting is the bulk of it. And it didn't start that way. I would sit and do light meditations the visualization of light was my preferred type of meditation. And I've augmented that with chanting because of my meditation teacher. And then that has taken center stage in my spiritual practices. So the first thing I do when I wake up cup of coffee stretch a little bit and then sit down.
My mantras change every once in a while, depending on what I'm looking for or what my teacher sees in me, but roughly three or four mantras take 20, to 30 minutes in the morning. Eyes closed repeating these sounds. And then another session in the evening around sundown. That's a longer, it's what my meditation teacher calls a freight train mantra. It's just a very long one. So that one takes a long time.
And sometimes I'm in the zone and I'm feeling it. And sometimes. I'm grinding it out and I'm like, I don't want to sit here and make these weird sounds. And what I've discovered is that both experiences are good for me. Sometimes the ones where I'm not connected are beneficial because I'm working a whole lot of nonsense out of my psychology.
[00:16:40] Aneta: Yeah, it's like a mirror it also shows you what's going on when you have to be there and pay attention and chant. And that's interesting. I love chanting. I don't do it often enough, but I remember when I went through yoga teacher training, we would chant all the time. And it just felt like a spiritual cleanse.
It just felt so good. And when you could get into it and then to the flow, just the vibration of the sounds is so amazing. It just is so activating and cleansing to your chakras. And so you said you have several different ones that you go through. Are these long songs? Like you're chanting the same one over and over again, or, what does that look like more specifically?
[00:17:21] Ali: Most mantras I'll do 108 times on a mala.
[00:17:25] Aneta: On the Mala? Yeah.
[00:17:26] Ali: And Yeah, it's a mirror. It's a mantra that means mind tool. And because our minds are so active, the way I think of it is it helps to wrap the mind around something so that it's out of the way so that something greater can work in us and the mind does not like the idea of chanting. If you go tell just some random person in modern society, sit down with your back straight and your eyes closed and repeat the same word 108 times no, like that's a complete waste of time. But something amazing happened when I started, I was annoyed, I was impatient and I felt weird and self-conscious like any, I think a lot of people would.
I was given the Ganesh mantra to start the removal of obstacles. I was told to do that 108 times twice a day for 40 days. I think a lot of chanting practices start with the Ganesh mantra of 40 days. I was amazed. I started loving it and a lot of obstacles in my life were removed. At the end of those 40 days, I was amazed at the changes that had taken place in my life, changes that I had wanted to happen in my life for a long time that just wouldn't.
And then all I did was sit down with my eyes closed and back straight and repeat these sounds, and things changed. And then the evolution of the mantras after that, it stopped becoming sounds that I'm making, and it started becoming just like you said, vibrations that are occurring, that are already there, that I'm tuning into, versus I am the maker of these sounds.
[00:19:02] Aneta: Yeah. It's an alignment. So beautiful. So one of the things you said is that a couple of years ago you stopped caring necessarily what others thought and you started pursuing maybe some other passions. So one of the things that is interesting, speaking of duality is you run a successful real estate company and you also are an author. So when did you first decide that you wanted to write books?
[00:19:29] Ali: First aside from that I wanted to write books when I was a child. I remember being in my bedroom in New York with my aunt, and I want to say that we were reading Aesop's Fables. That's what I remember, and I don't remember which fable, or what the lesson was. I just remember we finished it, And I had this overwhelming sense of, I got it. I got the message of the story of the fable.
A lot of Aesop's fables have a moral lesson and I got it. And I was amazed that somebody who lived thousands of years ago could write something that could indirectly give me such strong meaning. It was a story about something, but that story. gave me an understanding of a certain concept and I thought that was magic.
Can I do that? Can I write something that makes you feel? So that was the first time. I studied literature in college and like a good son of an Eastern family that tells them to be a banker, be a lawyer, be a doctor. I let it go. It became a background thing that I might get around to one day. And I didn't write seriously until COVID-19. And I've seen a lot of authors say that COVID gave birth to a lot of authors.
And that was my experience, but. I did it in a cowardly way, where I started by writing a real estate book, nonfiction, putting as little of myself out there as possible. I published that one, and then I wrote another one that was also nonfiction, a fitness book, and that's when I met George, and that's when I realized, hey, I'm just playing here, pretending, but what I want to do is write fiction. And then after that, the first fiction book started working.
[00:21:12] Aneta: I love that. How did you find the time to write? Like when you said, okay, I'm going to get serious and it's COVID. Did you decide that you were going to write every day at a certain time? I'm always curious to hear what writers, what the discipline was that they used to finish their first book.
[00:21:29] Ali: I write at night, usually after work, after everything's done. I would say after dinner and before a little bit of TV time before bed. And I didn't try very hard to be disciplined. It was there. When I sat down, it was there. And what helped is I read Stephen King's book on writing. It's a nonfiction book that he talks about his process and he's known as extremely prolific.
He's written so many books and writes so fast, but he's talking in his book. He says I write a thousand words a day, 2000 words a day, and if you do that for three months, you have a full...
[00:22:03] Aneta: You have the book.
[00:22:04] Ali: Yeah. I was like, yeah that's true. So I stuck to that for the most part. And I had a book, I think it took six months. So it took longer than what he said. But yeah.
[00:22:15] Aneta: It's so interesting too, because I did something similar. I just said, yeah, I'm going to write a thousand words a day. And then I just created my project plan and I was like, I'm just going to stick to it. So I have an inner discipline, so it wasn't like, I'm not going to skip today because I enjoy the process of writing, but I like doing it first thing in the morning when it's dark out and before anyone else is awake and I have my candle.
I love rituals, probably growing up Eastern Orthodox. And so I love rituals. And so there's something super sacred about the quiet time and it's dark and the house is quiet. But the whole point I think is like you just show up. If you've got the desire to show up what would you say to writers that maybe only want to write if they're inspired? Did you find yourself writing even when you weren't inspired?
[00:22:59] Ali: My specific experience, I think might be a little bit different because and I told you this in the previous conversation that, I had struggled with addiction for several years from adolescence to young men. And one way of looking at addiction is that you're not comfortable in your skin.
I was not comfortable in my skin. So sitting down for four hours with only me and doing something sounded like torture, but then after getting sober, that changed, I was able to address a lot of the things that made me uncomfortable and they were removed. They were removed from me.
And so when I sat down to work for four hours straight I was overwhelmed with gratitude that I could because it was so new for me to not force myself to sit here and look at the clock and, tap my foot under the desk and twiddle my thumbs and just wish I could escape myself. When I didn't need to escape myself, I could sit there and it's still like that.
I'm just grateful because when I sit, I'm not trying to squirrel my way out.
[00:24:08] Aneta: Yeah. And that's why a lot of people say they can't meditate because they're uncomfortable sitting with themselves and hearing whatever the voices say, whatever those thoughts are, right? It's such a practice of getting comfortable and just returning to ourselves. What have been some of the biggest benefits that you've had with your meditation practice and some of your other spiritual practices that you've noticed?
[00:24:34] Ali: My eating habits had gotten weird at one point. I was binging and not making the best food choices and also food quality choices. That straightened itself out for me. It felt like when I started meditating, I just naturally gravitated towards fruits and vegetables more and processed less. I became a lot more mindful of how I sleep and what it feels like to have a full stomach versus an empty stomach.
And I found that this empty feeling was conducive to thinking, to meditating, to sleeping. So I just became more aware of myself. I have a friend of mine who has a line, and presence heals just simply being present to what's happening right now has a healing effect if only we can stay present and so my writing improved, my eating improved, and my relationships improved. The thing that I would say improved the most is I enjoy this now.
I enjoy looking at another human being and I'm not afraid of what you're thinking of me, and I'm not thinking anything about you. I'm just, let me just melt into this experience and see what happens. And that is so nice for somebody who's I don't know what to do with my hands. Am I looking in their eyes too long and I feel awkward? It just gave a peace. I could just be here and it's fine, whatever I'm doing is fine.
[00:26:01] Aneta: Yeah. I don't think that I would have been able to do a podcast before I started meditating for the same reason. It's, we're not used to just talking to someone like this and just being so fully present without worrying and having the mind think about, all other what-if scenarios, and often people will say, you're just so present.
So you're like one of the most present people. I'm like yeah, because we're having a conversation. I think this is the way it's supposed to be, but we're not used to it. I love that you brought that up. And speaking of podcasts to you and your meditation teacher you've mentioned that, just launched a podcast that you just shared.
So tell me a little bit about What it's called, why you guys decided to do it. And it may be where people can find it if they're interested in listening.
[00:26:50] Ali: Sure. It's on YouTube and it's on the podcast app. It's a very impromptu thing. We have a lot of conversations when I go to him for official sessions, but we're also friends. So we have a lot of conversations off the clock, so to speak. And a lot of our conversations are really interesting. And there are many times when we're talking or when we're both thinking.
If that was recorded or if somebody was here, they would be astounded at the amount of stuff that we cover, but in a very coherent way. So it was an experiment and we talked to, hey what would be a good name? And we picked the name Shaman And The Scribe.
[00:27:31] Aneta: I love that.
[00:27:33] Ali: Yeah. And so we just have one episode, but we're filming another one tomorrow. And as I shift into metaphysical, esoteric fiction, I want to put myself out there more talking about spirituality. I'm interested in cultivating a community of like-minded people who understand the things that we understand.
And, I think religious people often have a place to go. Christians have a church, and Muslims have a mosque. Whatever it is this type of spirituality doesn't necessarily have a single place of worship. And I sometimes wish that it did. I wish I could go to a building filled with people who talk about meditation and oneness and all that kind of stuff. So this is an effort to create the community that I desire.
[00:28:24] Aneta: I can't wait to listen to it. I think it sounds fantastic. And speaking of that, you wrote a book that I loved. I read it because I wasn't sure which of your books to start with, because how many books have you written total?
[00:28:38] Ali: There's the real estate one, the fitness one, there are the three books in the Paranormal Thriller, and then a standalone Cali on the Ropes, a short story, and now I'm working on two more books, and a new series.
[00:28:52] Aneta: Okay. And so I read the Eccentric Father's Guide to Everything, which I loved. First of all, you wrote it for your daughter and your daughter is how old now?
[00:29:04] Ali: She is five.
[00:29:05] Aneta: Okay, so I love that you were able to create something for her because so often I just wonder how many children know their parents, like know them really who they are, what they believe their stories, all those things, not just as, in the role of parent and what you've done here, which is so beautiful. And it's not just for your daughter, obviously it's for anybody. You wrote a book about, seeing things as they are, the physical dimension, religion, and ideology, integrating body, mind, and soul, ancient wisdom, modern insights, the fabric of reality, and who am I.
So I love that in a short, small book, you packed so much in here in terms of what you believe, why you believe it, and what your experiences were. And you just brought in so much of the learnings. I think I could see so much of the person is curious and that she likes studying different things.
Why did you write this for your daughter and what are your hopes maybe for anybody that gets their hands on this book?
[00:30:08] Ali: Thank you so much for reading it and for liking it. That means the world to me. Thank you.
[00:30:13] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:30:14] Ali: Why did I write it? I wrote it because I realized that what I had learned recently with spirituality, with meditation, I use this line a lot. I became a man two years ago. I was a boy before that. And what that means is that I just didn't know. who I was or what I was doing. If I were to pass on some cultural ideals or some religious ideals to my daughter, I would have been passing them on because that's what's expected of me.
Because people from where you're from enforce this idea. And when I thought about that, I would be enforcing something that I'm only doing to fit in. It's a selfish motivation. I want her to belong to some kind of group so that people in the original group don't think that I've strayed from the group. And that's not, that's just way to be.
There were so many things that I learned as a result of this spiritual path that I wish I had known when I was much younger. And they're basic things, like an example is, the vibratory nature of reality. That sound, there's a connection between sound and what we are. I wanted my daughter to know that, to know the meaning of why are people praying. Why are people repeating these words? What repeating these words can do for you? I wanted her to know who she is in terms of within the mind. In modern society, a lot of people identify themselves with their thoughts.
They think that they are their thoughts. And if you go in a little bit, you'll realize that you're not your thoughts. You're the thing watching your thoughts. We're the silent observer. And that small identification, that small distance between thoughts and self that observes the thoughts, the more we can create distance, the more miraculous life becomes.
And I didn't want her indoctrinated with nonsense. I didn't want her to waste her time. I wanted her to find freedom as early as possible. And my wife is Christian and I'm Muslim. I have a Buddhist tattoo and I do Sanskrit chanting. So I can imagine for a young mind, that's extremely confusing.
What do I pick? Are you people different? So I wanted to explain that to her gently, but also point out that it's not affiliation. Your job with spirituality is not affiliation. It's not fitting into this bucket or this bucket. It's an experience.
Sound, meditation, awareness, and all these practices will connect you to an inner process. And When you connect to that inner process I believe you see everything from a completely different perspective. Everything is a manifestation of one. Everything is a reflection of just one thing.
And in that oneness, there's unity, there's compassion because if I experience you as myself, there's no way that I could harm you. And if I experience the world as myself, everything is a blessing. Everything is an opportunity to grow. Yeah, my wife and I disagreed over the weekend, and I saw where I was wrong.
I was a little bit irritable, and a little bit unjust with the way that I spoke. But I also perceived injustice at the same time. And I realized, in that moment, hey, I only control how I behave, how I speak, how I think. And She is a reflection of me all are, any conflict or love, it's all a reflection of my state of being, and that has mattered so much to me.
And I want my daughter to have that awareness and being Egyptian also. And I love ancient civilizations. I love ancient human history. I think that people have known these truths all along. And they're hidden in every culture. And even things that go as far back as ancient Egypt.
By looking for that and knowing that we can begin to look at all of humanity's past and present as reflections of one, these are different expressions of the same thing. And it takes us out of judgment. It takes us out of, I'm right, but you're a pagan and this is the one true path, but you're lost.
And because that mental activity keeps us separate from each other and god. I love the Indian mystic Sadguru and he says if somebody was compulsively punching themselves in the face we would consider that person very sick, that's not healthy but we do that mentally to ourselves all day long
[00:34:57] Aneta: Yeah, third thoughts.
[00:34:58] Ali: Yeah, I'm not good enough, they're not good enough, oh I hate this, oh I hate, I mean we're just beating ourselves up with our thoughts and most of us think that's the way to be, that is the human condition.
It's not. Our Innate biological condition, maybe, but we're not simply biological beings, there's a spiritual reality. And there's enough knowledge now, whether in spirituality and esoteric circles or science and quantum physics, that very clearly points to the fact that there is a spiritual reality and things are not what they seem.
So I don't want my daughter to be 40 before she can sit comfortably in her skin and figure out some of this stuff. I hope that I can give you a head start with that book.
[00:35:42] Aneta: Yeah. I love it. It's like a roadmap. And in the end, of course, everyone's got their journey. So I love that you've created it and it's just such a wonderful book for anybody. Like I said before, it's just it's amazing for anyone to read it and to learn so much. And it was a wonderful reminder of many truths for me as I read it.
So I ask everybody on the podcast the final question it's tied to the title of the podcast, live the width of your life. What does that mean to you?
[00:36:12] Ali: I love that title. I think you nailed it with that title. It means a lot of things. I think society has set us up to think linearly. We experience time linearly. We experience success linearly. We think of getting from here to there and doing stuff to get from here to there. But, that does not necessarily include living who we are.
Stepping into our authentic self, our higher self, our soul. I think it could be said in a lot of different ways. We have innate desires. We're all different. Even identical twins have differences in their looks, in personalities, and certainly, everybody on earth, is all different and created to be different, and we should step into that more instead of trying to fall into line with some kind of archetype that somebody set forth for us that we don't even really understand or agree with.
So in my own life, being artistic writing and putting that out there and chasing that passion without thinking how far am I going to get, or how much money am I going to make, or are people going to like it or not like it, but just at this moment, this is what I want to do, and it doesn't harm me or anybody else. I can do that. I can live the expansiveness of my being, not just walk down the road that somebody set forth for me.
[00:37:37] Aneta: That's beautiful. Ali. If folks are interested in buying your books, where can they find your books?
[00:37:44] Ali: I'm on Amazon. That's the main place that they could find me, Ali Kaden. I have a website, alikadenbooks.com. My books are also on the hard, the paperbacks are also on Barnes and Noble and Kobo and Google Play. Yeah, and I'd love to hear from anybody. The people are always welcome to shoot me an email. You can find the address on the website.
[00:38:05] Aneta: Wonderful. We'll include all those in the show notes and check out the podcast as well. The Shaman And The Scribe. I'm excited to listen to your first episode. Ali, it's just always such a pleasure talking to you. And I always learn something new every time we have a conversation. So wish you continued success.
[00:38:22] Ali: Aneta thank you so much for having me on. It's great talking to you.
[00:38:26] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.