Victoria Rader [00:00:02] In the world of many internal and external voices, the voice you listen to is the voice that dictates your life, would you like to discover a clear path to a life of freedom and fulfillment? Then welcome to All About the Voice podcast, where we focus on awareness, alignment and action in order to live a life of abundance. I am your host, Victoria Rader.

From walking away from an opportunity to run a billion dollar business to almost becoming a Rabbi, to living as a monk to growing Hey House from three to $100 million of revenue a year to writing and living the Mosaic, a great storyteller Daniel Levin has given himself a permission to be himself. Here is Daniel Levin, a voice for the mosaic. All right, and here with me is the Mr Mosaic himself Danielle Levin. Danielle, welcome welcome. Welcome to All About the Voice podcast.

Daniel Levin [00:01:08] Thank you so much. I think we should end right now because I don’t think it’s going to get any better than the Mr Mosaic himself.

Victoria Rader [00:01:16] Oh, well, you know, I call them as I see them.

Daniel Levin [00:01:20] You see something I don’t see which I love, which is part of the mosaic.

Victoria Rader [00:01:25] Now, Daniel, tell me a little bit about your life. I find it so fascinating. I would like for you to start where you feel prompted to start. Where did the story begin?

Daniel Levin [00:01:36] When I look back at my life, probably the most influential moment in my life was the moment my dad passed away. I was 13 years old and my dad was in good health. Nobody expected him to go. I was away at summer camp and I got a call saying I had to come home.

Victoria Rader [00:01:53] And where did you live at a time?

Daniel Levin [00:01:54] We were living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and our camp was in the mountains for a few hours away. When I came home and saw him, not there, everything in my life crumbled. He was my hero. People looked at us and they thought that I was a mini version of him. He was a six foot version of a three foot version of four foot version, five foot version. And as I grew up, we walked the same. We wanted the same. Our faces were the same. Our gestures were the same, our temperament was the same. And so most of my life, I thought I was the same as my dad. There was just about six months ago in a healing with someone who just happened to call and say, I want to heal you. She said, You’re not your dad. You have a lot of beautiful qualities that he has, but you also have a lot of beautiful qualities that he didn’t have. And the thought that your dad has kept you from actually receiving all this beautiful things that are yours to receive because my dad died with a mountain full of debt on one black suit. But his love affair with my mom was so strong. He actually died making love to my mom. Wow. A great way for a man to die, a lousy way for the woman he loves to help him die. And so my mom died two years later on the same day, exactly the same time because she couldn’t bear the separation as much as she loved us what she did. Theirs was a love affair. That spark did spend time and horizons. And that was really the essence of the book The Mosaic. And when I realized of all the things that I could have written about, the fact that I would write about that story, that was the story that catapulted me into the life I saw the meaning of life. What’s the purpose? Why does a young boy lose his idol, the one that he looks up to the most? And his mom had such an early age? What’s the purpose of life? In the book I put it, he was searching for heaven, but that heaven is just happiness and peace

Victoria Rader [00:03:57] And wanted to see through that 13 year old losing his dad and a big piece of self-identity or perceived all of you having died at that moment. And then two years later, losing your mom. And yet, how did you find yourself coming back together and having a remarkable a life that is standing out to me in its variety? Take me on that journey.

Daniel Levin [00:04:25] Victoria I think what happens is for every door that closes in life, another door opens. Every moment of challenge, brings with it a moment of solution. What I found in my life is all too often I shut the door on the solution because I got lost in the challenge.

Victoria Rader [00:04:44] Yeah, I remember I loved that analogy that you used in your book about the road and the potholes.

Daniel Levin [00:04:50] Yes.

Victoria Rader [00:04:51] Right? That you can focus on the potholes or on the road, pretty much. And so the solution of the problem. I said the Shakespearean to be or not to be which one you’re focusing on. That’s yeah, that’s powerful.

Daniel Levin [00:05:04] And I found myself in potholes all my life if I can give anything to anybody. Now, it’s not because I’m some exalted human being. It’s because I’ve been in almost every single pothole. They’ve gone it. They’re about to go into and they’re welcome to walk into it. I say to them, Boy, if you want to walk into them, they’re there. They hold great gain for you if you want. But if you step a little bit to the left, you don’t have to go in.

Victoria Rader [00:05:29] And what about this opportunity that I hear you talk about walking away from a billion dollar business to pursue something rather different? What happened there?

Daniel Levin [00:05:40] So right behind the door of the tragedy of losing my parents, my mom sister ended up marrying a man who was a household name around the world. Me, my dad was a tough don’t tell me what to do sort of guy. And so when my uncle tried to come to help my dad resolve his finances, my dad was insecure, jealous, I’m sure, and said, Get the hell out of my house. So we didn’t know them. But when my parents passed away, they ended up coming to take my brother and I with them to a different part of the United States. He looked at me and said, I’m going to watch you for a little while. But what happened? The tragedy that happened could be a fabulous thing for both of us. Let’s just see what it looks like. A month and a half later, he invited me to go out to lunch and he said, today at lunch, I’m going to change your life. I said, OK, great. It’s going to be a good lunch. We sat together at lunch and he said it was in the day. Thank God, we’ve broken the ceiling. But he had three intelligent daughters more intelligent than I could ever be. But it was in a day when a businessman, a billionaire, did not give his company over to women, to his daughters. It just was not done. And so even when this stumbling fool comes in, who happens to be a man who is not nearly as capable, what happens is, he says, I see something in you that’s possible. You can one day sit in my seat. Every time I’ll start you at the bottom will work your way up and every time you stumble and fall or say, get up. If you get up in your lifestyle, I’ll mentor you to get to where to go to the next time you stumble and fall will do the same thing until you’re sitting in my seat. How’s that sound? I said, It sounds fabulous. Who wouldn’t want that? But it took you a month and a half. You’re a wise, beautifully intelligent man who knows people and character. I’m a 15 year old kid. I like to take a year and see if who you are, is who. I want to be sure I want a billion dollars. Who doesn’t? But what is it done to you? What price did you have to pay for that? And so I said, OK, you know what? Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the people would have said, Why wait till tomorrow? Let’s start today. Where’s the broom? I said, just my run luck that. I’m .0000001 And he said, That’s the truth. The matter is that’s what makes you intriguing to me. So let’s see what happens a year later, we sat together and it just wasn’t mine to do. And so I said, as much as I appreciate all that you’ve given me, I’m going to walk away from it. And he said, You know, I think you’re making the wrong decision. I said, Of course you did. And you might be right. You’re probably right. I’ll probably live to regret this thing. But I don’t see a place for me and in who you are.

Victoria Rader [00:08:28] Well, what were you walking away from?

Daniel Levin [00:08:30] The offer to run a multi-billion dollar company.

Victoria Rader [00:08:33] Correct. But in the person, what were you walking away from in a person?

Daniel Levin [00:08:37] Beautiful. I was trying to bounce around that, so I didn’t have to get complicated in this story. I said to him when we sat at lunch, he said, Do you have an answer to my question? I said, I absolutely do, but it’s going to come in the form of three questions. And I think when we answer those questions, we’ll get a sense of what to do. And he said, OK, what are the questions? And I said, Remember, I’m coming from a place where I’m looking for the love of my mom and dad. That unconditional love is what I’m searching for. Like, the money is great and I miss the unconditional love of my mom and dad. That’s all I want from the world. I don’t care if I’m rich or poor, I just want to find that love. I said, I remember you had a birthday party that came running up to you, and I said, it must feel amazing to be you. There’s 400 people in your backyard having the time of their life, and they are coming here to celebrate you, 400 friends who has 400 friends in the world that would come to celebrate their birthday with them. I said, Do you remember what you said to me? You said, I sure do. I said, Let me see if I have it correctly. Correct me if I’m wrong. You told me “Danny, none of these people would be my friends if I didn’t have money. They’re here for one reason. They want my money. Well, you said, that’s correct, Danny. You have to always know in this position that’s what people want.” I said, Why would you want to give me that gift? Why would you want me to think that nobody that I’m friends with cares about me? They just care about what they can get from me? That’s the exact opposite of what I’m looking for right now. Powerful. He said. What’s your second question? I said, Let’s assume that I’m a more humble man than you. I doubt. I think you’re a pretty good man. Let’s assume that I could figure out who my friends were, who they weren’t. I remember sitting around the dinner table with you and your daughters and your daughters are beautiful people, but they were starting to date men and you told them sweethearts. Nobody’s interested in you. You’re not thought attractive. You’re not that smart. They’re interested in you because of your last name. I said, So you said, Danny, that’s true. You have to know that your children will be affected by this as well. They have to know when people see this much money, they’re drawn to it for all sorts of reasons. I said, it’s funny. I’m not drawn to it at all. But why would you want to give that gift to my children? You said this isn’t going well. What’s the last question? I said, the last question is the thing that I love most about your offer. I love this. Is it? You’re going to start me pushing a broom and I’m going to work my way up to where my level of competencies. And when I fail, you’ll see if you can get me the next level. If you can’t, then I’m going to stay at that level of competency. I love you not just giving it to me because I don’t deserve it. I loved it. I want to work my way out. Here’s my guarantee to you along the way, along the climb along the ascent, I will talk to every single person in the company and I will sit with them and say, What would make this a better company? What could be done more for you? How would you enjoy your job or how could we create a better culture? What would we be able to do? What do you feel we don’t give you that you really need? If I were able to get feedback from them and bring that to you, would I be able to initiate those changes? I said, You remember what you said to me? You said, I sure do. Tell me what you think? I said. You told me, If it ain’t broke Danny, why fix it? He said, That’s exactly right. So I said, Do you think we have the answers to our question? He said, Yes, I do. You know, I’m going to have to communicate, you know? I said I didn’t quite know that, but I sort of assumed that because money is what works for you and what you can’t control people with money you don’t know anymore what to do. But I appreciate every moment you’ve shown me, you’ve opened up my eyes to a whole other world. I came from a lower middle class family to an upper elite family. And it changed my whole perspective on life. It changed everything about the way I do life. But it wasn’t mine.

Victoria Rader [00:12:20] You know, I am listening to you tell that part of kind of an untold story and paralleling it with couple notes I took from the book, you know, and it’s interesting that every quote that came to me as a life lesson there was there for me in the book resonated in the story. You know, the one there when you feel you can’t trust yourself, trust yourself anyway, I’m just thinking of that 16 year old boy. I know you knew you couldn’t trust yourself, but you trusted yourself anyway. You know, that struck me so much as when you meet those who can guide, you follow them. And he just wasn’t somebody who could guide you.

Daniel Levin [00:13:03] Yeah. First of all, I love how you’re making the book so real to my story, I don’t know that I would have thought those things through like that. And I appreciate you doing that. He did guide me. Sometimes the places people guide you to are to show you what’s not yours, as well as to what is yours. Mm hmm. And the way he guided me, they were kind people to me. I mean, we had nothing and they came in and rescued us from despair. And I hate this saying because I don’t think I really believe it. You can’t give people something you don’t have because I believe somehow a force comes through me to give people lots of stuff that I don’t have. If I just get out of the way, the one who comes through me can give them anything. But in most cases, I understand that statement right now,

Victoria Rader [00:13:52] Maybe with awareness. You can’t give to someone something you don’t have while being aware of it. It just goes through you past your awareness directly to them.

Daniel Levin [00:14:01] That sounds better. But I see in him that he really like what he was giving me was the greatest love he could possibly give me from the place that he was, because that’s what love meant to him. Love meant to him, setting me up and making me financially rich, and then into taking care of my life and never having to worry about anything in my life again. And what a gorgeous gift that is. I just was in such a peculiar place that ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent of the time, it would have been exactly the right thing for everybody, but it just wasn’t the right thing for me. That offer made today, I would give a different answer because I know who I am now, and I found that piece that I was looking for. I could go back into that company now, perhaps and not play the same way.

Victoria Rader [00:14:54] So how did you find yourself or guided yourself to studying to be a rabbi? And then while I don’t want to spoil the story, not quite making it day short and go to be a monk. So what were the transformations there?

Daniel Levin [00:15:11] So I always thought those were shortcomings in mind because all my friends and family said you were one day away from becoming a rabbi, why wouldn’t you just have taken the ordination and put it on your resume? It shows up pretty good to be ordained as a rabbi. That would be a nice thing to have on your resume. Why spend five years doing all that work and walk away with nothing? I said because I didn’t walk away with nothing. I walked away with the beautiful gift of knowing when something is no longer yours. You got to go. And so all through my life, what’s happened is I’ve been able to have the courage, not because I had it, just because I didn’t know what to do other than that. To say when this is no longer mine, it’s like stealing off people’s time and energy if you’re someplace where you’re not supposed to be. If it’s time go you got to go. It doesn’t matter how much you’re invested in it. And so I look at the world today and we’re stuck in so many patterns. I’ve been doing this all my life. What else would I do? I go to work that I don’t enjoy to work, to get more money, to do more of that work that I don’t enjoy, to get more money, to live a life that I don’t really enjoy because it’s just a habit pattern at every place along the road. It takes tremendous courage and tremendous energy to do it. Did I have that courage? I don’t believe so. I believe I was given a grace.

Victoria Rader [00:16:34] How do you find grace?

Daniel Levin [00:16:35] Something that I don’t deserve?

Victoria Rader [00:16:38] Just like love? Yes, always given.

Daniel Levin [00:16:42] Yes, it’s just I didn’t do anything to deserve it. I didn’t do anything to warrant it. It just came to me and lifted me up. And I just believe somehow along the way, for all of the adversity that I’ve had, there’s also been some part of that adversity that no matter how low my low got, I realized I was still in the palm of God. He was just bending down to tie his shoes. And I thought I was in the lowest possible place that can ever be. But then he lifted it back up again because he doesn’t tie shoes all day long. He lifted his arms up to celebrate. And there’s Hallelujah. I’m all the way up here now. What am I doing up there?

Victoria Rader [00:17:22] Danielle, what would you say? I understand that what I’ve heard there and that five years story is that one of the takeaways for me personally was when it’s no longer yours, you know, just move on. What would you say in the time of being a monk? Where were you a monk and what would be a take away from that time?

Daniel Levin [00:17:42] I loved the monastery. I was a monk for 10 years in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. It was a yoga community that I was a part of. And I just loved this, a monastic there. I had this small little trailer that most people would think should be condemned in the middle of the forest. And I sat with my brothers and we just prayed. And having been in the seminary for all that time where every prayer was spoken and every prayer was read, every prayer was calculated and there was very little time to just look to my beloved and say, I love you more than you can ever imagine, because all my time was spent saying, You’re magnificent, you’re omnipresent, you’re on the podium, you’re on the perfect, you’re on, you know, things that were nice things to say, but they weren’t my words. They were words of another. For me to have the quiet to serve and to just say my beloved, I love you. Let me hear what it is you want me to do. And then be silent and listen. Often in America, in the West, we pray with our mouths, not with our ears. With the monastery taught me was real. Prayer is when you can hear your beloved speak to you, not when you speak to your beloved. It’s easy to tell my beloved how much, how beautiful she is.

Victoria Rader [00:19:06] You know, I love serendipity. I love the universal serendipity. I literally just before you interviewed Bob Beaudine, who wrote two chairs and the whole concept of there is have a chat with God and jot down your, you know, marching orders for the day through Great Love and Grace. And I guess, you know, I believe, well, I don’t believe I know this full podcast to be guided as a way for people to learn, to hear and follow that divine, prompting whatever path they’re currently following spiritually, because there is that one great voice that finds each one of us. And I’m wondering, how did it guide you out of the monastery? How did you end up becoming a director of business development for Hay House with these stunning numbers of growing their business, I believe I have it written down somewhere from three million a year sales to 100 million a year in revenue. I am kind of lost in the gap there. What did the voice have to tell you to get you from there to there?

Daniel Levin [00:20:15] What a great question. The easiest answer is my time in the monastery made me understand that it’s OK to be me.

Victoria Rader [00:20:24] Oh, love it. Wait, wait, drop the mic. Say it again, just please.

Daniel Levin [00:20:30] My time in the monastery made me realize it’s OK to be me. All my life I had seen the world differently than other people, and as romantic as it sounds, I felt alienated and aloof from the world. I felt like I don’t understand that. They don’t understand me. What happened when I left the monastery and I entered into this world that I felt a stranger in a strange land? I started to realize that the beauty in the position that I had not in the way that I could help people but in the way that if I were able to see the world the way they saw the world, my perspective of the world would grow. Because I was only seeing the world the way I saw the world and by me being able to invite their perspective into me, they naturally started to ask “is that the world you see? Is that the way you see it?” Then I would say, interestingly enough, I love your perspective. I love that you’re able to look at the same exact thing that I look at and see it totally different from me, but I don’t see it that way at all. And soon companies started to ask me to come and help them innovate, because what’s innovation? It’s learning to see what we see in a different way and seen what that different way might give us. And so everything that happened for me at Hay House was they gave me the permission. They were beautifully, beautifully receptive, and we just had this beautiful family of people. None of us were any really brilliant, but we were all very ordinary people who came together. An extra ordinary people do extraordinary things with their extraordinary, extraordinary things happen, and we were just a group of ordinary people that were open to each other and they let me play in the playground that kept exploding and expensive. And we just saw things. I saw things. And I said, whereas other people look at this and think there’s no way possible this can happen. Let’s find a way to make it possible. And we made it possible because together we were able to join the ways we saw the world to see a bigger world.

Victoria Rader [00:22:43] Now I have to intercede here because, you know, you just must have looked into my notes of my five quotes that touched me on the possibility coach. You know, I kind of build my business around limitless possibilities. And so when I read in your book, “When the Impossible Becomes Possible, the Destiny Changes” and having you say, no, that’s pretty much that inaction. And I think that was also very profound.

Daniel Levin [00:23:11] Yep. And there’s really nothing impossible when you think about it. There’s nothing if we can perceive it, it’s possible. We just don’t see a way to make it possible. And the longer we stay in our silos of like minded thinking people, we might never see it possible because everybody thinks like, we think I want to break down those silos of like mindedness. I know how beautiful they are. I loved when I found my years and years and years ago. But now those same silos that brought me refuge are now bringing me anxiety. Yeah, because you know ourselves from each other.

Victoria Rader [00:23:48] Yeah, I think, you know back to when you talk about separation and saying that once again, I love quoting you to you because the words are beautiful, simple, profound and concisely conveying what I’m trying to to convey is when you feel disconnected, you suffer. And yet, a couple chapters later, when you’re connected, you become a part of the mosaic. Beautiful juxtaposition. And I think really a description of life as such. But I think in addition, what I see in the world and I agree with you is that we are confusing oneness with sameness, right? We’re confusing oneness and sameness. And I think once we allow everybody to be unique, truly unique, we can truly fit as that mosaic and become one. Question I have for you and I know that the episode is almost done and I’m not at all done. I still have a few questions. I’ll go to my three quick questions before I do one thing that I really wanted to ask you is your main character, Mo, which I felt and you have confirmed was written after your own heart, you know, and that’s story of maturing, there are two voices in that boy’s head, which I believe there are at least two voices in each one of our heads. And there is the voice of the Divine, the voice. And then there is the beast.

Daniel Levin [00:25:08] Yes.

Victoria Rader [00:25:09] Tell us how he reconciles that in the book and how you reconciled it in your life.

Victoria Rader [00:25:15] Most of my life, I have locked the beast up because the beast embarrassed me. The beast was my passion. The beast was my glory. The beast was my uniqueness. The beast was my power. And when the beast would run, people would get scared and people would look at me like, What are you doing? And so in the book, I literally depicted him as this big, big thing that ran around in a world of small things. And crazy enough, it was only an innocent little shoemaker. In the book with a belief system is of who I was always told as a kid, you don’t know another man until you walk in the shoes of that person. And so before you judge somebody, walk in their shoes. So I thought if shoes could have that much power that I could get to know a person by wearing their shoes, could shoes make me something other than I was as well? And what her shoes, shoes and the way we walk, the thing we walk in to get to where we’re going? And so the beast met the shoemaker who tried to tame him and put him in the shoes of the normal world. And the beast hated them, and he broke off out of the shoes because he wanted that one last. But then somehow most found them and brought his bodyguard who protected him all his life as big and strong as the beast because he had protected him from the beast. And he asked his bodyguard to put the shoes back on the beast. And the moment the bodyguard put his shoes back on the beast, the bodyguard disappeared because he was no longer needed because he didn’t need to protect himself from anything anymore. And in the moment, the bodyguard disappeared. The beast had nothing to be upset about. The bodyguard had been a slayer, and I’m really just understanding this now as we’re speaking. So I so appreciate it. That, which slays us and binds us as our own mind. As soon as that slayer is gone, we’re free. We don’t have to ramp and rage.

Victoria Rader [00:27:27] You know, and I kind of look at that as until we love our every scared self our sacred self is hidden only through a loving little scared selves and fear selves and screwed up selves and selfish selves then the sacred self shines.

Daniel Levin [00:27:46] Yeah, I love that you just said that. And one of the practices for me that I’ve practiced now for a little while is having the courage to sit in that which I don’t like the not to build the house there, not to stay there not this could allow it to become my new home where I lament and cry and feel self pity on myself. But they’re literally ask my pained what is it you want to say to me? If we weren’t close to the end, I would tell you a story, but I don’t want to overstay my take.

Victoria Rader [00:28:24] I think I just have to bring you back, is what I hear, you know? So hold that story.

Daniel Levin [00:28:30] I would love that.

Victoria Rader [00:28:31] But I always ask three last questions of every guest that comes. That’s kind of our loving way to part, and the first one is assuming you have the power to do so. And I always say, and you do, if you were to now talk to that 13 year old boy who just lost his dad, what would you tell him?

Daniel Levin [00:28:54] Beautiful question. I would tell him to learn to listen. Everything in the world just speaking and what we think is saying one story. If we were to really listen, there’s another story there too. And don’t just listen to the words that you hear. So what I would say to somebody reading the mosaic, you can read the book and read the words. But listen also to the space between the words It’s this present the words. But nobody looks at the space, or virtually nobody does. We all read the words and think, that’s the story.

Victoria Rader [00:29:31] Oh find god in silence. I love that. Yes. And going forward in time, 20 years from now that Daniel comes back, sits down right there by you. What does he tell you?

Daniel Levin [00:29:46] Close it up by having more fun.

Victoria Rader [00:29:51] I love that.

Daniel Levin [00:29:54] It’s it’s I’ve taken life so seriously. It’s just that. Enjoy it and have a good time and celebrate and just be happy. In the monastery we used to say a sad saint is is a sad saint teach.

Victoria Rader [00:30:11] Oh, you know, Daniel, I very rarely intercede here. Almost never. But this morning, in my chat with God as I was walking, I’m on my beach house. I was walking and just having conversation. They said, OK, so what’s you know, looking at my schedule for today? What am I to do to be today? And the answer came, it’s in my journal. Take time for living and love, and then you’re telling me that I like it by the mouth of two witnesses. I love that. I heard Daniel from 20 years from now.

Daniel Levin [00:30:46] They think of me too.

Victoria Rader [00:30:47] We heard. We heard you, Daniel.

Daniel Levin [00:30:49] That’s just the joy of that.

Victoria Rader [00:30:52] And the last question, if the family here at all that the voice were to remember you by one teaching or one message, what would that be?

Daniel Levin [00:31:02] Love only knows how to love and doesn’t know anything else. When I look out into the world that I see, I see a lot of people that want to separate. Love unites. Love doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor or doesn’t care what country you’re from, what color your skin, how educated you are, what religion you practice, whether you have your parents or lost your parents, whether you’re with somebody or not with somebody, whether you are happy or sad. Love loves you.

Victoria Rader [00:31:30] Love loves you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,.

Daniel Levin [00:31:35] My honor.

Victoria Rader [00:31:37] This was Daniel Levine reminding us that love only knows love to meet yourself through Daniel’s perspective of the mosaic visit his site https://danielbrucelevin.com/
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