Panache Desai, author of
Discovering Your Soul Signature, is a transformation catalyst and inspirational thought leader who guides people to their authentic, essential nature. He's
appeared with Oprah Winfrey on the Emmy Award-winning series
Super Soul Sunday, and was a featured speaker for the United Nations Enlightenment Society. He has collaborated with many renowned spiritual teachers, including Deepak Chopra, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Elizabeth Lesser, and Ram Dass.
1440: The world is changing rapidly, and sometimes it feels like it's not headed in the right direction. How do you think we got here?
Panache Desai: Every human being was created with absolute love and perfection and precision. The problem is then we're trained to conform in a way that's limited.
We've become units of production and we derive our value from what we have the capacity to produce instead of recognizing our value comes from the fact we exist.
The majority of people in the Western world, the so-called advanced world, have forgotten the simplicity of being, forgotten the simplicity of living in harmony and connection. And so we have rampant growth, expansion, and accumulation—all by-products of fear—instead of sustainable approaches that emerged out of love.
1440: Is there a way out?
Panache Desai: As consciousness expands—as individuals become empowered to express what I call their Soul Signature, which is rooted in love—things are changing. Individual empowerment, or enlightenment, means being the most loving version of yourself. And sometimes being the most loving version of yourself isn't just rolling over.
Sometimes being the most loving version of yourself is standing in the truth of the fire that's within you.
Every structure and system is being challenged right now—inside and out. It's happening in financial systems, political systems, and even religion. Religion itself became distorted through the centralization of power and authority. As individuals become empowered, decentralization is happening everywhere. That's our future. That's where we're going. Many of the previous roles will become extinct. I'd love to make the role of teaching extinct—it's really just a shop front that God uses to bring people back to love.
1440: How do we balance our individual transformation with our work in the world as these big shifts happen?
Panache Desai: As people shift in themselves, they naturally shift in the way that they participate in the world. I don't believe that it's a superficial change. I really believe it's happening from a very deep place within people's hearts.
We're at a point of divergence. People have exhausted the possibilities of fame and money and achievement. All of those things that we hold up as banners that signal success, people are realizing they're empty and meaningless, that there's no fulfillment to be found in any of it. That leads to disillusionment, which leads to an individual coming back to themselves, to what's real and true for them.
That's when people become empowered in who they are: when they realize that they can't get what they're looking for from outside of themselves.
From politics to finance to religion, people are experiencing heightened levels of disillusionment. But in the midst of that disillusionment, there's innovation. From cryptocurrencies to political and social activism, we're living in a time where pockets and movements are emerging. Of course the status quo will try and subdue them. But they won't be able to because now too many people are awake and aware.
The old game is over. The age of collective amnesia is ending, and the age of the awakened individual is beginning and emerging.
1440: How do we deal with all the anger and rage that the current changes are bringing up?
Panache Desai: That reaction is no different than a two-year-old in a toy store who wants a toy but can't have it. In that moment the two-year-old believes that the toy is everything. We thought these people and systems and structures were advocating on our behalf. We believed they actually represented us. Now we're seeing that they don't, so naturally that leads to frustration and anger.
But frustration and anger eventually leads to personal empowerment, which leads to innovation and creativity. This is why it's such an amazing time to be alive.
Panache Desai will be teaching
You Are Enough: Discovering a Life Without Limits from April 17 – 19, 2020 at 1440 Multiversity.
