Scott Schimmel (00:00)
Welcome to the Making the Impossible Inevitable Podcast. This show is for those who see progress as a calling, not just a choice hosted by former Navy SEAL and transformational guide Curt Cronin. Each episode explores the mindset strategies and stories of extraordinary leaders who've turned the impossible into reality. These episodes are more than just conversations. They're a challenge to you to expand your capacity, shatter inner limitations and lead with unshakable purpose. Together,
let's make the impossible inevitable.
Curt Cronin (00:35)
What if the very thing we label impossible is simply the part of us we haven't remembered yet? In this episode, I sit down with someone who's helped me to remember again and again. Stefan Beiten has been one of my closest friends and trusted mirrors for over 15 years. We met on a shared quest for more, more meaning, more depth, more presence, and over the years, he's become one of the very few people I turn to when the stakes are high and the path is unclear.
I've watched him transmute grief into growth, complexity into clarity, and fear into profound flow. This man lives what most of us only dare to theorize. In this conversation, we get real. Stefan opens up about the deep personal losses that cracked his model of success and how those cracks became the space for something far more powerful, play. Not the superficial kind, but the state of childlike presence where magic actually happens, the place where ideas land, teams unite, and the impossible becomes inevitable.
We talk about what it means to lead from coherence, about the twin energies we all carry, the playful creative and the fearful entitled shadow, and how the space between impulse and response, that 0.4 seconds, can be the difference between growth and self-destruction, between authoring your life or running someone else's script. He also shares the untold story behind the creation of planet Earth, how a small team from Germany said yes to an impossible invitation from the BBC and ended up creating a global phenomenon that reminded people what it feels like to come home to themselves.
But this isn't just about Stefan's story. It's about yours and ours and about the operating system for humanity that he and we are working to rewrite. If you've ever felt like you've lost your play, your presence or your power, this conversation will call it back. Welcome to making the impossible inevitable.
Curt Cronin (02:18)
Good morning and early morning from Maui for today's podcast episode with Stefan Beiten. Stefan's been a dear friend of mine for 15 years now. think Stefan, 16 years if I think about that. In 2009 when we were both on a seeking quest and we met through the Platinum Partnership, he's become a key part of my mastermind group that I probably wouldn't have made four or five impossible to inevitable transitions without and has some unparalleled stories that I can't wait for him to unpack with you today. So Stefan.
Stefan (02:23)
you
you
Curt Cronin (02:47)
Please let us know, tell me something that's been impossible for you that you converted to inevitable and what was that process like?
Stefan (02:59)
I've been looking forward to having this podcast with you and at the same time, shitting my pants. Because being in a deep conversation with you is always opening doors to spaces.
not only to the space but spaces that are far from the ordinary. Hence the title of your podcast and hence your question.
I'm still processing. Actually, what I just heard when I today listened to your previous podcast with Jordan Hall.
at its core, the ability to love and be loved.
And doesn't matter to me how you approach that to a, how you open the door to that's that that deepest space, the door to the religious door, the psychological personal way doesn't matter how or a profound moment in life or
the famous scene by the described Victor Franco when he found the meaning of life in Auschwitz. So that is that for me was.
the impossible in a way that I couldn't even describe it because it was like a blind trying to describe colors.
Is that a starting point? And yeah, we begin again, exactly.
Curt Cronin (05:00)
And yet we begin again.
You have so many personal stories you shared with me of things that were seemingly impossible to me and I watched you convert them into inevitability with clarity and simplicity. Is there one specific that you think would be useful for the audience to see here and understand?
Stefan (05:24)
One thing I've never heard about myself is that I could express anything with simplicity. Actually, that is something that I'm probably going to be working for the rest of my life.
Curt Cronin (05:42)
the execution was in simplicity. Yes, the models you create are often sophisticated and complex.
Stefan (05:46)
you
Yes.
Curt Cronin (05:51)
but
the deafness that you move through the space and end.
extraordinary and powerful.
Stefan (06:02)
Well, looking back, and I'm, I keep on making a simple observation of myself, of both where my greatest successes were coming from and what state I was in, what level of awareness I had, and at the same time, what level of awareness I did not have.
So both what was the light and the dark side of that state. And interesting for me, was my biggest...
power, the superpower, as the playful me to be in that state of the playful five or 10 year old that wouldn't care less about all the things that all of a sudden a few years later, we deem to be the most important stuff, stuff, basically, being in the moment being with others being in a field of coherence and flow.
and just not caring about tomorrow or the past or whatever just the moment being full presence whenever I was able to translate that
That state, that approach to people with that kind of communication, both in words, but more so energetically. Boy, magical. Magic happens.
And at the same time...
That's also exactly the space of or let me put it this way, that state comes with an ugly twin brother, at least to me. It's the one of the fearful being not enough thereby
almost rageful me. That is then the equivalent of the entitled kid that throws a tantrum on the supermarket floor and says, where's my ice cream? And not being able to observe.
Curt Cronin (08:31)
So would that twin be the embodiment
of?
clearly from the statement of from the
petulant rage induced child, things would be impossible. And when you switch into your playful, natural flow state, that's when things become inevitable that the the two states the twins as you would
Stefan (09:00)
Absolutely. And the more I look back, it's the ability to observe yourself, the quality of your the awareness.
observe oneself in either that state or the other has been key to just for me to to finally start growing up. I would never call myself grown up but at least on a continuous journey of growing up and that is key. It goes as far as I'm not even sure if we can truly change if that is really possible.
But taking the this old yoga wisdom that basically says, I'm sure I'm doing the Upanishads here, a huge favor in my Western understanding of that, that life happens in the space between that space between impulse and reaction. And you as a former Navy SEAL know that very well, it's a 0.4 seconds. And you know, when you were even
you and your whole team work in unison. 0.4 seconds is more than the difference between life and death. And that goes for every single moment. So the ability to observe myself in that moment I have an impulse, an emotion, an energy motion, wherever it comes from. Does it come from a narrative? Does it come from epigenetics, from DNA, from unconditional, just a projection? It doesn't matter.
something builds up in my body. And then something in me decides to go either into the positive, the playful, or the opposite.
Can I have enough, develop enough awareness to make that decision, to observe myself that this is happening and just through observation be able to make a decision to go left or right? That is the difference between a fulfilled and an unfulfilled life. Either I'm constantly under remote control or I'm a true author.
Curt Cronin (11:23)
I love you just shattered my model where I thought in general things are impossible for us and we evolve into a state that allows it to happen. I think you've just revolutionized the perspective of we start in a natural flow state of play. We can get distracted and go into fear and then we can get back to that natural place. And you and I share a passion for entertainment because to me play is our ultimate state of learning.
because it's the only state that, hey, if something goes wrong in play, you don't die, right? So it's the ultimate path for unconstrained learning without consequence. And so I'd love for you to share a little bit, because to me, this seemed completely impossible at the time. How you revolutionized really helped to lead the movement with both social media and conservation through film, one of my favorites.
Stefan (12:23)
Yeah.
Curt Cronin (12:23)
planet Earth.
Stefan (12:26)
Well, that state of play to start with, with Planet Earth, when we started the project and started that, we were invited to join a membership with the BBC, which we were a small German media company, they invited us to co-create their crown jewels with them, which was unheard of. Until today, actually, I just want to say I...
Curt Cronin (12:51)
How'd you get in the room or how did you get interested in this project? How did it come to be?
Stefan (12:55)
Until today, I cannot tell you what on earth made them do that. I do believe it was exactly that state of playfulness. They were stuck. They were stuck in the gigantic machinery of them. the machine bites the machine constantly. And in come we would say, it's all easy. Somehow we make this possible. And we have an idea. And they went like, And then luckily, they had a new.
CEO was the BBC worldwide and they had a new CEO that came from my former world, the investment banking world and he simply said, okay, make it a suggestion. You take 100 % of the risk and we share 50-50. You make that possible, you're in.
working as I having no bloody idea how on earth I would ever make this possible because they had a budget that was 50 times over the average budget in that field of the industry at that time. So of course, everybody that heard of the deal went like, yeah, you guys, you're in the death row, and you don't even know it. So that's that's that's originally
It happened and it did happen from that state of absolute playfulness, which created absolute confidence.
And, and interestingly throughout that project, we never stopped to do that from that stage. Somehow something that was also something about that project that allowed, that created that, that space continuously, despite all the problems having 60 teams worldwide, years long production. And, and then you create 10,000 hours of footage and you have to boil it down to 11 hours. And then finally to 90 minutes of the movie.
and you need security guards before the cutting rooms door because how are you going to, you have 60 of the best teams in the world and you're going to cut their footage? Better run it. Cause those guys are the guys that also wrestle with polar bears. So, but it all worked out. It's absolutely fascinating. And until today, somehow something that was embedded, that was created and was not just.
the fact that with that money we could take shots that no one else has ever taken. It was more the narrative and a certain story creation and a statement within that for which the time has come. So everyone who's ever seen it, that I ever met, I've met thousands of people worldwide and from all cultures and they all describe the same thing that...
They could describe to me the moment and what they felt when they first saw it.
And it took us years to kind of re-engineer what actually happened because we didn't know. We just did.
Curt Cronin (15:58)
end.
Well, that's what we're here for. Tell us what was that calling? What was the tug that continued to pull you forth? What was that allowed you to run distributed teams across 60 different remote locations? If you're looking back on it now, it's usually only with the clarity of reflection that we can say, here was the magic, right? Here is what was that?
hoods, but what was what was the magical element allowed this team to come together? I've experienced it in the seals where they came together and team together when achieves more right where now the individual subordinates themselves and all of a sudden, the collective now you're more individual than ever because the superpowers of the individual become the superpower of the collective. And so to me, what you're what you're expressing is exactly that. And it's sometimes possible on a common operation for 15 minutes for 30 minutes, you for maybe
four to 12 hours to have that sustained state for, I'm guessing, a period of years as you went through that process. And with remote teams that didn't actually get into the coherent field with the creative team, now they're creating their own. talking about distributed flow and what the mission statement was, what the calling was, what allowed, or was it nature itself? You've talked about some of your key characters, the polar bear, that
their actions and their observation of life became a crucial aspect.
Stefan (17:39)
You just described beautifully. that's exactly it. The
First of all, if you just look at the story structure, especially of the movie, he basically had three heroes journeys woven within one gigantic hero's journey. And that was a representative of the greatest myths of mankind and the myth of every single human being on this planet. That we're all here.
to
start the work at the center we'll never finish it. We're all here to get on a journey but that doesn't mean we'll ever finish it. It is about continuing forward and not being alone on it.
Because as a collective, we are more as an individual than to some of the collective.
And the, I never forget the, was in the undies 3000 meter high, um, at a bar and there were Indians watching, looking at a television screen. wondered, so no one was talking. And lo and behold, planet earth was on. And then I talked to them and said, I want to know. So Indians, they've never been anywhere else.
What described back to me, what did you just see, did you feel?
And one of them said, this to me as a in your but Catholic, Spanish educated. so, Indian in your, Christian religion mix. And he said, that to me is religion. I found that profound. What do you mean by religion? And the way he described it, it came to me.
That is the original word, the Latin meaning of the word religion. It is basically coming home. It is that feeling I can now reconnect with what is true.
And that's what we've seen all over the world. And with events, the most beautiful ones, I remember were the open air premieres in European and old European cities in Italy and Spain, where you have basically the square of ancient European city, 4,000 people there. And after the movie finished,
there was a quietness. Not unlike any action movies where then there's turmoil and blah blah, there's this kind of like carnival or there's something happening as a party. Every time the movie was over, it was quietness. And that was a this what the Indian described as his religious moment. It was like coming home to oneself a complete reconnection with
himself. And that's what we saw with all the participants or all the the the people that watched it. Something happened. And I can only describe it with with a quote of Viktor Frankl is it's that feeling of aliveness that feeling. I found my why this is this is how it feels how simply life feels and being in it.
and not being somewhere on the run finding, trying to find something in utopia and tomorrow, but in the here and now and being fully connected with what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, what it means to be a father, son, brother, a friend.
Curt Cronin (21:55)
So tell me about that moment that, well, you've shared with me, but tell everyone else about the first premiere. You've been working on this thing for years, making all the hard decisions to cut it.
Stefan (22:14)
Well, luckily we had, let me put it this way, had we as a small team been responsible for the whole production, we would have screwed up royally. It was lucky to have the most experienced partner when it came to production logistics on the planet for this, the BBC, they knew what they were doing and they had it all worked out. Our job was to
be the kind of this the quick, the fast cruiser that can cruise around a airship carrier and poach them to hey, what about this? What about that? What about this? And you can get that fast enough. Let me cruise around. Let me go to the island and come back with the with whatever you need. And so kind of put the icing on the cake.
apart from doing all the financing and the worldwide distribution and all of that stuff. But logistically, that is when you know, there's nothing coming magically together, unless you also know how to put it together with very profound professional craftsmanship, organization and processes. So that is where
Those two realms really have to meet all the time.
Curt Cronin (23:38)
So in my words, from the dynamics of ordination, you became the creative spark. You were in charge until the helicopter pilots were. As you flew toward target, then as you land, the reconnaissance team takes over. And then as you get within 100 meters, the preachers take over, and then the assaulters. And so each person did what's theirs to do in that moment and surrendered the ring the moment it wasn't theirs to do. It allowed the collective to now thrive.
Stefan (24:04)
exactly it. And it was like you having the Navy behind you, but all they can do is just wait outside and see, well, let's see what those guys are doing on the ground. But the combination of both the huge apparatus and the incredible force of creative, coherent, fully trusting band of brothers that makes the
impossible, inevitable.
Curt Cronin (24:36)
When you've shared with me in your youth, that was easy, right? You didn't know things could be hard. And so you stayed in that playful state.
Can you tell me what it was like to lose that state? Because then you've expressed to me, then it got to the point where, OK, now I'm didn't realize I'm now in a state of control. If you look back, what happened that you lost that state of youthful play and aliveness? And can you talk through what happened then?
Stefan (25:03)
Mm.
Yeah, that is actually there were two events in my life, but one was the death of my sister. That's an interesting way the way I
compensated or worked through that was.
basically going into cognitive dissonance, not feeling. And interestingly, although I told you that my natural state is the playful state, and that's my field of, that's my field of biggest strength, but I'm also a, where I came from was a high achiever, high expert world. So basically my belief system was achieve, don't ask questions, don't feel.
go forward, everything else will fall into place. So basically the script.
Curt Cronin (26:05)
And high achievement. High achievement,
as I understand, your father was one of the most pre-eminent lawyers at pre-eminent law firms in Germany. So you'd followed in that path where a lawyer and so rules, order. Stefan and I have a great running conversation about how does a German build something versus an American. I build it, I crash it. I build it, I crash it. Stefan, think, think, think, think, think, plan, plan, execute. So just to.
Stefan (26:14)
Yes.
You
Yeah
You
Curt Cronin (26:31)
frame when
he says super achiever. Yes, I mean, logic based achiever. Yes.
Stefan (26:37)
Very
logic. And of course, everything outside what's measurable and logically thinkable doesn't exist. That's the that that'd the space for religion, esoteric or therapy. That's the world I grew up in. Highly rational, homo economicus, the Cartesian thinking model of the world.
What I did not notice that although I come on the outside from a very liberal cosmopolitan, art loving, good food loving, traveling European family of the seventies and eighties, I did not notice how little love there was and how incapable the whole family was of accessing higher states of consciousness, connecting with the infinite wisdom of the universe.
connecting with the divine independent of what religious affiliation someone was in. It was completely cut off. And while I was basically just mirroring both my parents in their childhood, they went through the atrocities of the Second World War, going through terrible things. So they had to shut off.
their ability to feel and that was translated to the next generation. Who could not deal with that or cope with it was my sister who was the sensitive one who chose to walk away from this construct that was called family. And of course, I couldn't understand it. My parents have no way of coping with that or understanding it or
is especially not feeling it. And years later, over that lack of love, that feeling of abandonment, I'm sorry, I'm a little cold. My sister actually was almost gone for 10 years, she came back and was in chronical depression, that then developed into
former schizophrenia and ended in suicide.
ended the family as I knew it. It also ended my belief system without me consciously knowing that just following the narrative that I was born into is enough.
So that was the answer to your question. When was the first time that my belief system of ever achieving is the one? When did that change?
Curt Cronin (29:48)
And so we live, you and I love models. to me, what you described in the unbelievable run up into Deep Blue was the model of the pre-tragic, right? The achievement model where everything works. You just do the work and it works out and you are in a state of play and it always works out. And then there's the tragic, the moment something occurs that you never could have expected.
which is what often leads us into an impossible space. It doesn't fit the models that we were born into. It doesn't fit the models that we, what we expected life to be, the environment to be, the situation to be.
Stefan (30:17)
Mm-hmm.
Curt Cronin (30:25)
And so I know from our personal conversations, that was one of the deepest.
challenges in if you said aliveness is your peak state, know, the sense of death, right, that like, complete lack of aliveness, complete lack of creation and now
know, an irrevocable act that she's committed. so...
How did you traverse that? I know I've had my deepest state of loss, it not for my wife and my mentor. I wouldn't have come back from that. And that's, me, I love this community because of the Seals, and I love the community because of the awareness of others that allowed me to.
or that pulled me up and out of a state that I don't know I would have made it out in any other way when the extortion, 17 helicopter crash occurred. I didn't even know how lost I was until they pulled me out. And so how did you go through that process and how did you?
You don't know at the time, but looking back, what were the key inflection points of someone's in a state where they've just hit the tragic? Because the hardest thing in life is none of the tools we need to get out of the tragic state are relevant until the moment we're there. And then in the moment we're there, if you don't have them, then you have to hope that there are humans to help you. And so that's part of the mission today is can we convey that other humans have been in those situations that allows us to then.
Stefan (32:05)
Boom.
Curt Cronin (32:12)
move through them even when it feels impossible. So what were those keys as you reflect back that allowed you to come back from the brink?
Stefan (32:22)
Well, interestingly, did. Now I would say I still didn't read the memo. It didn't read it and get it. So I said, all right. This is I actually went into a judgmental mode saying, this is this was done to me and to my family. And so I was even in.
in blaming mode.
And something shifted. I went even further into Achiever, doing what I knew I was good in.
Curt Cronin (33:09)
So I'm in pain. I'm going to double, triple, quadruple down on everything that I have done because the model will work. I just have not worked the model enough. The pre-tragic and that's the attachment, that attachment to the pre-tragic. Okay. Yeah. Navy SEALs is, when in doubt overload, one pound in charge works, five pounds will work even better. so that model in life or continue the exact same, even though it's clear.
Stefan (33:13)
I double tripled exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah
you
Curt Cronin (33:38)
that it didn't work for your sister. It's clear that it's not working for you. But without the ability to ponder something new.
Just keep writing the pattern.
Stefan (33:49)
Exactly. And the fascinating thing was I was so well situated to play that game within the box of let's call it the society that we're in. I knew how to play that game. was highly trained in it. I knew I was good at it. And I just played it and it became financially, materially more and more more successful up to the point
about June 2008, I crossed the billion dollar mark in net worth on paper. At least that was the so I thought, wow, this is this is the threshold that I was looking for until Lehman crashed. come November, I was minus 50 million.
That is when the world really started crashing on me. Because all of a sudden now, I was faced with, my achievement model doesn't seem to work anymore.
And then I noticed my friendships, my all my relationships seem to have been built on the wrong model as well. Because they were fading faster than ice cream in the sun. Once the shining hero is not so shiny anymore. And then the memo of the Death My Sister came back.
very loud and very hard.
Basically ask me the one question so far. Can you actually feel?
You know what you can actually feel yourself. Can you feel life? Do you actually know what love is? Do know actually how to love? Starting with yourself? Do you actually love what you do? Do you actually know why you do what you think you have to do?
Do you actually know? And then of course, famous dinner with Tony Robbins that I had, I couldn't answer the simple question. His classic question of all classic questions. So you're successful. Do you know the difference between success and fulfillment? Are you fulfilled? I'm trying to imitate his voice failing terribly. and I said, huh, isn't that the same? And then he tore me another asshole in front of everyone as he does.
And I said, dude, I don't really know what you do, but sign me up for it. So that was my start of the journey with Tony Robbins while all that was going down. Um, and that's where I met you. Join the group that we're still in. And while I was noticing that nothing really works in my life anymore, because all I did was reliving the narrative that I was born in. That's
which was the narrative of my parents, and never created truly my own. So while, from a material point of view, I could have kept on playing the game and probably...
also be continue regrow success, but I knew one thing and that that's what hit me hard. I will never be fulfilled. I'll never know how to love. And then I never know how to be a husband, a father and yeah.
could not live to anything that I thought I held, live up to anything that I thought I held, I think I held precious and true.
Curt Cronin (37:55)
So you had the courage to begin again.
And what did that, how could you express that? So it sounds like there are the depths of despair, there was the pain that was the call to journey, our favorite model, the hero's journey. And then what magical helper showed up along the way? How did you begin the process of beginning anew?
Stefan (38:22)
You're just pointing out one of the most important things and who showed up. So interestingly being in the film business, you know that it's a good script, that any good script follows the one narrative that connects all of mankind, all myths, all religions, all philosophies and every single good movie from every Disney movie to The Matrix to a lot of rings.
that was, which is the hero's journey. And for the first time I understood, that's also my journey. That's also my script. I've just always ignored the calling. I've always ignored the mentors that showed up. I basically sent them home. And I didn't understand that I was just wasn't ready.
So life kept coming back at me and presenting me the memo of the universe. said, dude, you're finally ready to read this? I said, OK, got it.
Curt Cronin (39:30)
You know, my coach Mimi Peak who revolutionized my life in many ways and she always said, your guardian angel keeps knocking more loudly until you get the lesson, until you get the Brooklyn guardian angel. Like, why'd you hit me the two by four? Like, you didn't listen the first time.
Stefan (39:34)
No.
Yes!
precisely. So I had I knew I had to make some some, now some tough decisions. One of which was that I saw, my god, my, the marriage I was in was another reflection of falling in a narrative that actually wasn't mine. And we both saw that she was well, I married kind of my mother, she married her father and
we saw, my god, this is a real codependent relationship and hence we both, if we want to be good parents, something has to change. So we tried for a few years after that, didn't work out. So I knew, also that I have to rebuild. I made the decision and interestingly, one of the many
smaller mentors that showed up apart from you and our badges group. I all of a sudden noticed how many mentors actually continuously show up and that you could not understand the message, the language that they're speaking. Cause I wasn't listening with my heart. So the first, for the first time, the outside events forced me to listen to with an open heart, not just with a mind.
And that of course from the world I was coming from, being a German lawyer, son of a German lawyer and coming from the super rationalistic view on the world. That was a completely, that was more than a aha moment. That was a continuum of aha moments.
Curt Cronin (41:30)
Let's play there for a minute because I think the outside of events.
If I changed the words a little bit, gave you enough pain that forced you to break down the ego shield and lean in from your heart. You had to make the choice with your sister before today, I still held the shield and I didn't allow it to enter. you made a decision that this model is not going to work and had the courage to say, I'm going to try something new.
Stefan (41:51)
Precisely.
Precisely, idiot.
And, but I wouldn't say that I could switch off a shadow of the ego. I could see that, the ego holds me back. It's still there. There's got to be something where I can not be ruled by that identity, but now create my own.
And that was then my start of the heroes of my own heroes or actually it's an Eros journey Eros in the old Greek word of the the enthusiasm the passion for life. And following that meant one of the mentors was so do you do you actually know? Do you actually see that you do?
No, that was a question I thought I always had many friends that would help me. said, so on, seriously, define friendship to me.
I said, I'm going to describe the various people. I said, yeah, those are friends on, you call it in the first dimension of human existence and the second one, I what do mean by that? I said, well, first dimension are friends for fun. Or you have a second dimension, you friends forward to reach a goal together, which usually is business.
And those are always short term because once the fun is over or the goals reached, those so-called friends are also gone.
So do you have, describe to me friends in the third dimension, in the dimension of the soul, that truly connect with your heart. Friends in value.
And I literally went through my whole Roller Decks at the time. And what came out was two people.
And both of them.
were on the brink of breaking up with me.
So the conversations that thanks to
that
conversation with one of those mentors, that mentor that described to me the differences in levels of friendship led to me not only finding and reconnecting with those two, but also reconnecting with true friends in the fourth dimension that I thought that I had long lost or I never connected with. That's the friends in spirit. That is the friends that
You can even have not even have matching values, but there is something.
Universal, something divine that truly connects you.
at a space beyond your soul and your heart, where you enter into a coherent field. And you just know
And that is what helped me to completely rebuild my relationship with myself. Because that friendship, that is also what allowed me to define my empathy with myself.
And I could.
When I have that, I'm creating a coherent field with someone else. When that is a match, say, my god, this is the person I can go into today we call the flow state.
We can call it open the portal. We call it connect with the divine.
So ever since I...
And the older it gets, the more important it becomes is to understand who are your friends in spirit, who are your friends in...
in soul in virtue, values, who and who are just friends that is also great to have fun with and to reach a goal with. But you know exactly what what your expectations can be should be and should not be
restarted from there including my intimate relationships and that that's another thing I finally learned what it means to be intimate.
Curt Cronin (46:58)
And so from that incredible journey.
What's impossible for you now? What's the question on now? What can anyone listen to this say, I know someone that can help with that, or I can help with that. That's part of my quest. What would help you make your current impossible task inevitable?
Stefan (47:20)
Ugh.
It is the question of the all of our individual experiences.
years, incredible story, Curt. The incredible individual stories that we know from our closest friends. Most of them life and death situations.
And as much as they're all highly individual.
including the wisdom that Jordan Hall shared in your last podcast. While it's highly individual, and we all come from different cultures, settings, different backgrounds, different ages, different socioeconomic and different belief systems, be it societal, be it religious, be it whatever. But they all share in a certain pattern, in overlapping patterns in the
I actually even want to call it, although it's not a technical term, but I would call it an operating system of how true humanists shows up and interacts with one another. How true human connection happens, how meaning of life is being created, how feeling fully alive, both individually and in a collective.
can be created and recreated. And also how can be the opposite, how it can be destroyed.
And when you look at those overlapping patterns, are universal constants. And they are at the core of every myth that I've been looking into over the last years, every religion, every philosophy, every mystery school. At the end of the day, they just use different myths, different languages, different patterns, visuals. But at its core, they're all talking about the same.
big questions. Can we extract that and make it what's known anyway, but bring it back alive in a way that that becomes the starting point. That's the finishing point after we destroyed pretty much everything else and you go shit, here we went again like, like in the last world war. So in the 17th centuries and the religious wars where we wiped out 50 % of the European population to finally come to a moment say, maybe that's not so good.
And, and as we all feel there is something we're on the brink of a major crisis happening and we know in the nuclear, in nuclear times, we might not fool around anymore. It might be a bad idea. So do we really need that gigantic crisis? Or have we learned enough? You know, in the shared wisdom of humanity that we now are capable of extracting.
What we all know to be true and bring it back to the world without falling into the traps of ideology of dogma of my God beats your God and righteousness and basically all the sins. They were also all know to be true. so my true quest is, and that is what started with planet earth. was a absolute universal constant built into this.
that allowed over a people all over the world to connect, to feel, to be aligned, to be in a coherent field with one another and themselves. What can we do to bring that to the world?
and allow everyone to access these truths and make it available and execute upon it at their decision at their fingertips literally.
I believe time has come for such a paradigm shift. I believe we are ready.
Is that going to be easy to do? Holy crap. Am I ever going to be mature enough grown up enough to be able to kick something like this off? I have no idea. Personally, if I look in the mirror, definitely not. But will I? What is the Talmud saying? I will not finish the work nor am I exempt from it.
Curt Cronin (52:24)
And I love your quest for the operating system. It mirrors my own for, can we learn of and tell stories that point to the same ineffable truths that all come from a shadow of each person's unique and different experience, right, from all of us that have gone through those journeys and how do we now?
pull all the pieces because like that's to me why I love teams like all the unique truths that we recall that allow us all to them collectively say, okay, this is the direction we're going right into the coherent field, whether it's a Broadway show where, where you now have, you know, 1100 of your closest friends, you know, mine once in that field never resumes its original dimensions, whether it's planet Earth, whether it's deep drop in him, I have to bring up because we were we were just a week ago in
in the pyramids of Egypt and the first moment you, my first trip, but the first moment you gaze up at those pyramids, you're like, wow, just a sense of awe and the sense of what did it take for somebody to build this impossible thing, right? And what did it take for it? What knowledge was lost? What that allowed them to do the things?
Stefan (53:36)
you
Curt Cronin (53:44)
hundreds and thousands of years ago that are, would be difficult to do now, right? And so those totems we find along the way of other collectives in human, of humanity that have been fully alive and accomplished and manifested extraordinary.
Because as you pointed out earlier, the outcome wasn't the pyramid, the outcome wasn't planet Earth, the outcome wasn't any of the journeys, it was the journey itself.
Stefan (54:22)
And that experience that we both had in the great chamber of the pyramid with just a few people being exclusively in one of the most, probably the most perfect room on the planet.
with so many physical and mathematical constants being built into it that I can't even count.
And something... And that's fascinating, right? So you have a space that allows access to high levels of calling consciousness, access to the divine. It allows you to... That's what we all felt, allows us to get into that...
highest level of resonance.
And it does take an environment and a construct of absolute perfection.
to be completely imperfect individually, but in coherence with the imperfectness of everyone else.
and that in understanding this is what life is about.
Curt Cronin (55:43)
in the entire journey. Couldn't they have built the tunnel a little bit bigger? Like all of the all of the aspects of the journey required.
Stefan (55:58)
Yeah, my knees definitely told me so on. This is not what we're made for. At the same time, right? The the the wet. An amazing aha moment when one of our guys all of a sudden turned out to be a Sufi master.
someone who has deep understanding of the mysteries of Sufism. And what he described with his myth was precisely again, the parts of the hero's journey and how those are embedded in the Great Pyramid. Going through the subterranean chamber, basically you enter from the ordinary world.
You hear the calling, you go in and then you go into the subterranean chamber because of the wound to start a reborn, a re-birthing process. And it's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be difficult. There is no elevator ride whatsoever.
to enlightenment or beyond even enlightenment just to overcome your current state of ego and change it with another one it's supposed to be hard and that's a good representation and that's what the myth that he was describing and while going back from the subterranean chamber we entered the middle
the middle chamber, the so-called Queen's Chamber, and had a completely different experience there, which is literally the second or third quadrant of the hero's journey when you're being initiated and then the transformation starts.
until the moment that is and that is where you in the Matrix movie would be Neo meeting Morphoys and being asked so you want to take the red pill or the blue pill and then we see how deep down the rabbit hole goes and we all of course all chose the red pill and then we made it up through the Grand Gallery up to the to the King's Chamber.
And boy, the one thing that has had no role to play whatsoever was our ego.
nothing mattered but we thought what we usually in the ordinary world hold so precious. It was all about experiencing ourselves with one another in deepest resonance.
And that is where in the myths, it's basically say, this is where you get the elixir. And now your job is to bring it back to the world and allow others to be invited to go on their individual journey. Observe themselves what works, what doesn't work.
Go through it. Alter, shatter the eagle, let it die on the cross. Be resurrected.
have that experience and also bring back the Alex here.
But definitely read the memo.
Curt Cronin (59:48)
And so the quest now is write the memo into an operating model.
Stefan (59:55)
yeah. Not only operating model, it's also every operating system has at its core source code. And this is where we all feel the source code of the operating model of how we run our societies.
It either has a flaw or it has come... It's a bit like we're now using apps that need an operating system 16 on an iPhone 16. But we have an iPhone 16, apps 16, and are using an operating system 1.0 and wonder why everything is crashing.
We wouldn't wonder if we did the same with our computers or phones, but somehow we have a belief system that when it comes to humans, no, no, that's always different because we can talk, right? can know whatever we, the conversation we have, the interpretation of the words we exchange, the hallucinations we create in our own minds of the words we hear are always dependent on
and in reflection of correlating with a causal to whatever our operating system and the source code of that allows it to be. So if our source code is 1.0, the operating system is 5.0, but the complexity is at the app 16 level, nothing's going to work. It's all going to crash.
Hence, the big question is, can we just adjust the operating system or do we even have to go back to the source code? That requires literally a mindset shift with which we see, interpret and thereby create our worlds together. That I think is the ultimate question. the, not only from Egypt, but through my personal experience,
Starting with the death of my sister, ultimate answer is love.
It's just love, it's love for life, love for oneself, love for the divine, the...
belief in infinite wisdom that life is happening for me and through which life can also happen as me.
And definitely that my job is to get out of this default level of consciousness that is just giving me a problem solution mindset. It puts me in just a linear understanding of the Now, if I'm in an Omega.
to be comfortable with the nonlinear, to be totally comfortable with absurdities, to be able to laugh instead of reduce myself to anger, rage.
and understand that all of that is the love for life, the feeling of being alive, that aliveness and spread that. Because that is where the true invitation comes from. And that is basically what goes full circles. When we were kids and just wanted to play and with a smile on our faces and invite others to play and we all played, that was truth, aliveness and that was true love.
So we have it all in us. can go back to that space and it doesn't mean that we cannot be grownups at the same time.
doesn't mean that we have to be separated.
And maybe it's really time to not to believe that just because we can fly to the moon and have iPhones and the technology and AI now that we're in any way smarter than the ancients.
There is no new truth that we can discover. It's all been discovered before us. It has to be rediscovered. So what I truly believe in, we're just like the Renaissance in the 15th century.
allowed people to
come back from thousand years of superstition and the dark times to rediscover what was known thousands of years before. We're now in the face of a re-Renaissance.
So for the last few hundred years, we were allowed to think, therefore, we are, to quote Descartes.
to develop an incredible mechanistic and technological understanding of how to basically solve any problem technologically.
And now we can, I believe, have both the curiosity and the courage to believe that we can go the ultimate way to...
based on our understanding that we can get shit done, we can really build anything, but be truly human with one another.
come from a space of love first, space of playfulness. And understand why, just as an example, both Apollo with the Greeks and Krishna in Hinduism, they were always depicted with a flute resembling.
that playfulness, that music, that state also that puts that we all know we can be in, especially around music and playfulness.
and how it makes us feel. In that state, no one hates. In that state, no one wants to bash someone or kill someone. In that state, we're just, we just are. We're truly human beings.
So the calling, I believe, in my next hero's journey is to invite or create an invitation that can be understood by enough people and definitely people much more talented.
than I am in embracing life to refine that essence, that source code and make it work for our modern world.
Curt Cronin (1:07:38)
Mission accepted.
Thank you. Thank you for your incredible.
your friendship, your aliveness.
Stefan (1:07:49)
Thank you Curt. I couldn't do it without a friend like you.
Curt Cronin (1:07:53)
to the journey.
Stefan (1:07:54)
to the journey.
Scott Schimmel (1:07:58)
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