There’s something I’ve been reluctant to talk about publicly.
Not because I don’t believe it. But because I’ve learned, over the years, that the moment you bring religion into a conversation, people start sorting you into a box. And I’ve never fit neatly into a box.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with my close friend Kash, the host of Relearn with Kash, one of the top 1% podcasts in the world.
We weren’t doing a formal interview. We were just… talking. The way you talk when you trust someone. When there’s no performance, no positioning, no careful management of how you’ll come across.
That’s the only reason this conversation exists the way it does.
Because here’s the truth: there are things I say to close friends that I’ve never said on a stage. Things I believe deeply but have kept private, not because I’m ashamed of them, but because I know how quickly people judge you the moment you bring religion into the room.
I grew up in a Hindu household. The rituals, the deities, the stories, they were the water I swam in as a child. And then, as an adult, I found myself drawn deeply into Christian faith. Not as a replacement. More like a second language for the same truth.
For a long time, I talked about spirituality through the safer lens of science. Consciousness research. Neuroplasticity. Peer-reviewed studies. All real. All true. But also — I’ll admit — a kind of armor.
With Kash, I took the armor off.
I talked about angels. About reincarnation. About a moment of prayer that I still don’t have language for. About the spiritual mentors, books, and conversations that have quietly shaped everything: how I lead, how I love, how I face loss. Things I’ve carried privately for years, partly out of fear of being judged.
The response has been unlike anything I expected.
“Vishen was the lighthouse I found when I was in deep darkness in 2002… I got the foundation for my spiritual pursuit from his voice.” — @NAZEEMAARACKAL
“I have never heard Vishen share his views on Angels like this, and I am comforted and happy about this because these are exactly my views.” — @giovannifurnari8668
“Over the years I’ve occasionally listened to Vishen, but never really resonated with the ideas. But this interview… the opposite! My mind popped! I’ve listened twice.” — @luckytiger521
“The loneliness part really hit me in the core. And the tears seen in his eyes just broke me.” — @VeraChote
I want to say one thing: this conversation holds a lot of parallel perspectives.
Some of it will land for you immediately. Some of it won’t, and that’s completely fine.
Take what works. Leave what doesn’t. What didn’t resonate for me might be exactly what you needed to hear, and vice versa.
That’s the nature of a real spiritual conversation. It’s not a system. It’s not a program. It’s just two people, close friends, being honest about the questions that don’t have clean answers.
This is probably the most personal podcast I’ve ever done.
👉 Listen to the full conversation here
With love,
If something in this conversation opened a door for you, I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment on the blog version of this newsletter and tell me what you want me to explore next — I read these, and they genuinely shape what I make. And I’ve got some extraordinary conversations coming on my new channel, @vishen. Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next.
P.S. One thread from this conversation I couldn’t stop thinking about: how much of our lives is quietly run by the subconscious. As I told Kash, your mind will only manifest what your subconscious feels is safe for you to have, which is why willpower and affirmations so often fail, and why the money block, the relationship pattern, the self-doubt keeps returning no matter what you consciously decide. It’s also, funnily enough, exactly how I first found my way in life: a meditation class that used hypnotherapy to quiet my mind and doubled my sales within a week. If that idea pulled at you, next Tuesday, Aug 18, my friend Paul McKenna, the world’s #1 hypnotherapist, is hosting a free live webinar on how hypnotherapy reprograms the subconscious at the root, and how you can learn to do it for yourself and others. Save your free seat here.
One Response
I have been thinking about this video all day, and I realised that while so much of the conversation resonated with me, there was one part that mattered to me far more than everything else.
Belonging. 🥹💕
For a long time, I have known that one of the things I care most deeply about is helping people feel seen, heard, accepted and that they belong.
I think partly because I spent so much of my younger life feeling as though I didn’t belong. Somewhere along the way, that changed. I stopped waiting for other people to decide whether I belonged and developed a deep sense that I belong wherever I am — not because everybody will accept me, agree with me or understand me, but simply because I belong in this world as much as anybody else does.
And strangely, my working life has given me so many different places to practise this.
I have worked in events, bringing very different people together to create something collectively. I worked in aged care, where so much of what I did became about connection, inclusion and helping people continue to feel part of their community. I worked for a chocolate company, where I learnt a great deal about people, leadership and creating a sense of value within a team. More recently, I have worked in pubs and schools, where again I somehow find myself doing what I always seem to do — getting to know people, noticing who needs a little more connection, and helping people feel that they have a place, a place in which they ferl safe to be completely themselves.
But it isn’t really something I only do through work.
In each of the communities I have lived in, I tend to weave myself into lots of little communities within the larger one — schools, sporting groups, religious groups, mothers’ groups, colleagues, local pool competitions, aquafit, the pub, even the little community that forms around a bus stop. 😂 People with different ages, cultures, beliefs, backgrounds and ways of seeing the world.
I think connection has quietly become one of the greatest passions of my life.
Not creating belonging by making everyone the same, but creating spaces where our differences are allowed to remain and we can still recognise that there is room for all of us.
So of everything discussed in this video, the vision of connecting people across the world was the part that stayed with me today.
There are many things I am passionate about, and perhaps that is why it has taken me so long to recognise the thread underneath them all.
I want people to know that they belong. 🥹💖🌏