The Cliff Edge Moment

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Dear listeners, imagine that you are standing on a eclipse edge. Your backpack is heavy, there is no way forward. And you cannot bring yourself to turn back. You are frozen, you caught between a direction that has run out and a past you don't want to return to. That is not a metaphor, that is the moment I say. That is the moment Arya Green actually lived on a mountain in Israel, alone, weeks into an 800-mile hike he had undertaken after his marriage fell apart. And what he found in that frozen moment is three deep breaths, a lightened pack, a changed attitude became the seed of everything he has built since. So today we talk about what happens when you walk your way towards peace. So hey

Meet Arya Green And His Work

SPEAKER_01 1:12

day listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Healthy Mind Healthy Live where we explore the real honest paths toward feeling well and living with purpose. I'm your host, Eweg, and I'm really, really glad that all of you are here today. And my guest today is an author, speaker, business executive, and life coach based in Israel. And he is a former senior advisor to Netan Bransky in the Israel Prime Minister's office. The chief strategy officer at GigaWorld Global promoting renewable energy across Africa, the founder of Media Central in Jerusalem, and the author of two deeply personal and widely acclaimed books, My Israel Trail, Finding Peace in the Promised Land. And his newest Finding Peace in the Promised Land, a new approach. Well, nothing much of a time, let's get started. And please welcome our guest, Arya Green. So welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Thank you very much, Lavi. Very, very happy to be on the show, and thank you for taking the time. Looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Amazing. Amazing, Aria. And Arya, like uh before we get into the five principles and everything that you have uh distilled from your journey, I want to go back to the beginning.

Why He Chose An 800 Mile Hike

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Like um uh you were over 50 years old, your marriage had just ended in a way uh you hadn't chosen, um, and you decided to hike 800 miles alone across Israel. So, what was the actual reasoning in that moment? Uh what did you think you were going towards?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

In the moment when I decided to do the hike, you're asking? Uh yes. Well, uh I would say the um the the real uh the real answer, if I want to keep it brief, is that for many years I've had friends, children of friends, and friends of children who have hiked the Israel Trail. It's kind of a rite of passage for many Israeli youth uh to uh spend a few months uh with a backpack hiking the length and breadth of the land. It's kind of akin to, for an American audience, in any case, the the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail. Um, for a European audience, I guess the the pilgrims trail in Spain and Portugal. I'm sure that India has similar um trekking uh trails, obviously aside from from from climbing Mount Ephrist or the Himalayas or Nepal, but um it's kind of uh something that that many uh Israeli youth do after the army to kind of clear their heads and decide what they want to do with their lives. But uh, of course, many Israelis come to India for the same purpose.

Listening Notes And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Hey dear listeners, before we begin, a quick note from Hildiman Beyavek. This episode is created for educational and informational purposes only. The views shared by our guests are their own and may not reflect those of the host or network. Nothing in this conversation should be taken as medical, legal, financial, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making important decisions. We encourage you to listen with curiosity, think independently, and use this content as a starting point for reflection, not a substitute for professional guidance. Now, settle in and enjoy the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Um,

Divorce Pain And The Yosemite Trigger

SPEAKER_00 4:35

so I I had wanted to do it for many years because I've I grew up in California and I've lived in Israel for 40 years and uh enjoyed both the desert in the south and the forests in the north and the the beaches to the west and and and always uh always been kind of an outdoorsy type. And so uh what happened was as I was going through the two plus years of of real anguish in this divorce that I hadn't looked for, um, I spent a lot of time on different meditative uh retreats in the desert uh and long walks and forests and what have you. And I ended up uh just as the divorce was being finalized, as my daughter, my youngest daughter, uh finished her two years of military service. We went out to California and we were hiking in Yosemite and we hiked up to the top of Half Dome, which you and your listeners may be familiar with, is a granite slab uh above Yosemite Valley, a uh a grueling hike up the the back face of what's basically a vertical wall. Uh and we just decided to do it. And uh, long story short, we got to the top, and it was grueling. I mean, psychologically and emotionally, not just physically. Uh and we were swept off literally the sides of the the uh of the mountain of the rock. And uh I said to my daughter at that point, you know what? I'm gonna hike the Israel Trail. Uh this has really given me the the motivation to do that. And so three months later, and literally just a few weeks after the divorce is finalized, I was out and and and hiking. As as somebody said to me three, four weeks into the hike, a forest ranger who uh offered me a ride um for the last kilometer of my journey, said uh when I explained to him what I was doing. He said, Oh, yeah, sure. He summed up basically eight weeks of grueling 20, 30 kilometers a day with a uh with non-stop, no brakes, all alone with a 20, 25 kilo pack on my back. He summed up in three words. Oh, right. Clearing your head, he said. So, yep, that's that's what that was all about.

Why Walking Heals Differently

SPEAKER_01 6:38

And I want to ask you about healing, right? So you wrote that on the trail you meditated on mountaintops and uh cried in right creek beds, um wrote like anguish journal entries and composed songs to lift your spirits. So, yeah, what did the uh physical act of walking a day after day, mile after mile, do for the psychological process that sitting still couldn't have done?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Um well, I appreciate the question because it's something I do deal a lot with in my first book, My Israel Trail. The the minutes and hours and and and days that went by walking through the desert and then later walking through the forests, uh, as I said, all on my own, um, was obviously an incredibly um deep uh time of contemplation. Uh and that's what led me to some of the some of the basic uh elements, or I'll call them um, well, if they weren't epiphanies, they were rediscovery of certain truths that that we all may be aware of already. Um the importance of humility, trudging through the desert day after day and recognizing our place in the universe is relatively insignificant, the importance of acceptance that here I am on the side of a mountain and I've got to figure out where to go. I can't, I you know, I was not not only once, but in a particular situation I describe in the book, couldn't figure out whether I should go back or forward. And now I wanted to call the search and rescue services and said, no, uh, you know, just accept it. This is your reality. You've got to deal with that reality. And that was true for uh being divorced as well. And that's true for the other elements that came to me in the hours and days of walking. And of course, that that's what led me to write this new book because those thoughts were in my mind even in the first book. I I mentioned it very, very obliquely at one point hiking on the border between Israel and Lebanon, that some of the issues that I was dealing with that were that were helping me heal from my divorce and in the end were extremely helpful to others for meeting their own personal challenges. Um, at that particular point, thinking about how close I was to Lebanon and different wars that we fought, I said to myself, you know, a lot of these elements are applicable also to the Arab Israel conflict, to the conflict between Muslims and Jews and Christians in this region, uh, and particularly the idea of forgiveness, which is another of the five elements. Um, and so that's kind of the that that idea was percolating already 10 years ago, eight years ago when I wrote the book. My publisher insisted I take out almost all the references to to the Middle Eastern conflict because it was just too much to put it into one book. It was already two books. It was a book about the hike itself and the journey and the history and the geography of the land of Israel. And then the the second element, which is the personal growth side, the healing from my divorce, um, and meeting personal challenges. So that in the end, eight years later, has become my my second book, which is the application of the five elements to not just uh our personal challenges that we face, but intercommunal and and international uh challenges, particularly the the Arab Israel conflict.

Three Deep Breaths And A Lighter Pack

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Definitely, like the moment of the uh cliff edge, like frozen, unable to go forward or back, you put down the backpack, it took three breaths, and something shifted. As you wrote, like the pack had not changed, you had changed. So, what was the actual internal ship? Like, um, what did you understand in that moment that uh you hadn't understood before?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Well, uh, thank you for for for so carefully uh reading um my writing because it's kind of fun to to have the the incident, the my words um kind of read back to me and also uh remembering the incident. Um I have to give credit to Thomas Crumb and his book uh Three Deep Breaths, because that's what got me through that particular situation. And yeah, that was one of the one of the situations I was just referring to on the side of a cliff where I didn't know whether to go forward or back, and I started to panic. And I took those three deep breaths, and having put down my bags, uh picking them up, I realized that that that they hadn't changed. They seemed lighter, but they hadn't changed. Something in me had changed. And what in me had changed was uh I had discovered the path, which I don't mean as a as a metaphor. I mean I I suddenly realized where I had missed the trail sign, which showed me with some hand holds actually drilled into the wall, where to h where to climb up uh this cliff. And I had just I had missed them. And so what what I recognized was that that was a metaphor for whether it was me and my divorce or whether it was others facing personal challenges. And it's certainly true for what we're looking at with the any international conflict. It doesn't matter whether it's Indian Pakistan or or or historically France and Germany, or whether it's what's going on today between Muslims and Jews or Arabs and Israelis here in our region. Sometimes you have to put down your pack. You have to put down that baggage. You have to you have to re-release our our connection and our our uh um uh I guess angst, I would say, um, over historical injustices, whether they're they're real or perceived. Um, we have to put down the baggage of the propaganda that's been spouted in terms of the, especially on forgive me, the Arab and Muslim side, the the the uh culture of hatred and the and and the anti-Israel rhetoric, which has just been growing over the last decades, but it's been actually around for a hundred years. Um, and sometimes we all, Arabs and Jews and others of course as well, have to put down that baggage of uh of everything that we bring to this relationship just as we would as individuals, and uh and look for the path, decide on a path, recognize with some gratitude, which is another element that I had to mention of the five elements, recognize that we have a mutual interest, having forgiven ourselves, to work towards peace, um, and let the baggage kind of settle. And when we then pick it up again, because I'm not saying we don't ignore either perceived or actual pain and suffering, um, but but having put that baggage down, once we go to pick it up again, when we know the path, when we know our objective and our goal is real peace and coexistence based on our own traditional sources, so uh the baggage is simply less heavy. It's lighter, it's easier to deal with, it's easier to shoulder that pain and suffering, it's easier to reach forgiveness based on a certain acceptance, uh, going back to the five elements. So that that kind of ties the pieces together. When you ask about the intention of that particular situation and what it taught me, um, it taught me how important it is, whether it's in a relationship and getting over a divorce, whether it's trying to deal with grief or being fired from a job, or certainly in our relations as communities, as societies, um, or or in our international relations, that uh sometimes you just gotta put the the baggage down and put it aside in order to enable you to figure out what your what your next steps are.

Five Elements From Hatred To Humanity

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Very true, very, very true, yeah. And also here, I would love to ask, like for someone who cannot hike 800 miles, but uh who is getting their own version of what you were carrying uh when you uh set out, uh a loss on the trail of frozen place where uh forward and backward both feel impossible. Um what would you say to them about the principle behind what the work gave you?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

I think uh really it's difficult to sum it up. The the five elements, I'll I'll give them to you in order so that you and our listeners can can kind of follow along. Um humility was the first, acceptance the second, both achieved or or learned in the desert. Um gratitude was the third, and forgiveness the fourth, and forgiveness specifically on the border with with uh Lebanon, uh, and towards kind of the middle, towards the end of my journey was was an important element that I recognized was central to our conflict, the Arab-Israel conflict. Um, and the fifth is the sense of purpose, and that really I would say is the is the best answer to your question, that all the others combined together uh within the context of my hike on that last week of the hike, recognizing that, you know, I'm I'm gonna get home in a week, in a walk, you know, at the end of this hike back to my home, and I'm still gonna be divorced. In other words, I've accepted that reality. I've forgiven my wife and God and myself and uh anybody else who needed to be forgiven. I've I I'm full of gratitude for the blessings of my life. Um, and I have a great sense of uh of of humility in all of it, but I'm gonna arrive home, I'm still gonna be divorced. Nothing's changed. I've had this terrific uh thousand kilometer hike and and and nothing's really changed. And yet my sense of purpose to give meaning to my life, as Victor Franco uh is is very well known for um connecting the the dots in terms of having a having the sense of purpose, a real goal in life, which gives gives your life meaning. Um that became for me a very important uh kind of driving point to get home with and feel like, okay, on the personal level, the professional level, um I have a sense of purpose. I have re-established or or or prioritized in a different way my different goals. Um, and also for myself personally, I was ready for love. Again, I knew that. I knew that that that was something I was ready to to explore um in terms of, and thank God I did, I have to say. Found the new love of my life. That was 11, 12 years ago. Um, two years after the hike, I was married a year and a half after the hike, was married to my my wife, still my wife now, Miriam. Um, and so that sense of purpose, the set of goals and objectives was was an integral kind of concluding element. And it's certainly true, and I focus on that a great deal in my new book. Um, you know, the subtitle for the new book is is From Hatred to Humanity. And the conceptual framework is that we all, Arabs and Jews, Muslims, uh, Christians, Israelis, uh, and what have you, have to have within ourselves a sense of purpose, a goal and objective, which includes or even sets as the primary goal and objective, um, the reaching of peace, of real coexistence and harmony between our peoples. And and from that, everything else can flow in terms of the practical steps that we take to achieve that. In order to reach that sense of uh of shared goals, we need to go through the process of a bit of humility, accepting the reality we're in, forgiving the other for real or perceived injustice and and suffering, as I said, um, having gratitude for all our blessings. But but to have it a shared sense of purpose is, I would say, in answer to your question, the the most intricate, the most most important element um of both both aspects of our personal growth and meeting personal challenges and meeting this this incredible historical centuries-old challenge of of uh uh resolving the the Middle East conflict.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

That's

Daily Practice Humility Acceptance Gratitude

SPEAKER_01 18:18

really great. And um also if you have to at share one advice to the listeners today, what that will be in short.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Oh, my advice for listeners is to to I I it's a bit trite to say, um, but uh just off uh off the cuff, I think um not to plug my book over much, my first book, but this combination of humility and acceptance and gratitude uh and forgiveness and a sense of purpose uh has changed my life. I mean, it's been transformative. And and those five elements for me uh have become a way of life, constantly reminding myself how grateful and lucky I am for all the blessings in my life. Every morning we say that in the Jewish tradition, we say a prayer saying, Thank you, God, for uh for returning my soul to me. Uh and and go on with blessings that continue praising God for the blessings in our life. The the issue of humility and acceptance to me. I I have a meditator practice in the morning of repeating one of the names of God the first time God defines himself with a name, um, is in the book of uh of Genesis in the uh Bible, sorry, in the book of Exodus in the Bible, when Moses finds the burning bush. Uh and the Jewish and Christian and Islamic traditions, this part of the Hebrew Bible is an integral statement of who God is and and our relationship to him. Um, because Moses asks God, what is your name? And God says, basically, an untranslatable Hebrew phrase, ehiyeh, asher ehiyy. The first time he describes himself, God says, I am what I am, or I am who I am, or I am that will, I will be what I will be. It's a it's almost untranslatable, but we can understand basically it's saying, I I can't explain it to you. You cannot understand me. You cannot understand who I am, what I am, what I can be, what I can do, how how how the world works. And that that name of God, Aye Asher Ae, became for me a uh meditative phrase or mantra, if you will, which every morning reminds me that I'm not in control of the world, that that uh we have to have a certain sense of humility and acceptance, that uh it's basically a recognition that God controls the world. And if you don't believe in God uh as a listener, then that's okay too. Fate, however, you want to to look at our spiritual universe, that we're not in control of many of the things in in our life, and that that gives us perspective.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Amazing, lovely. So so uh, I mean it's really, really

Closing Reflections And Share Request

SPEAKER_01 21:00

great. And that's the wrap for today's episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, Teresa. And uh, if this conversation gave you something to sit with, a principle you needed to hear, a moment of recognition, uh, quite sense that the walkthrough your uh own difficulty might be taking you somewhere worth going, then please run out of that. And uh, what I'll do is I'll put uh Arya's books and details into the show notes. And if someone in your life is carrying something heavy right now and needs to hear that piece is possible on the other side of it, please share this episode with them. With this hope, this is all Savagan, this is Healthy Man Healthy Life. Um, I'd say take care of yourselves and see you next time. Thank you so much.