Joey Hubbard has dedicated the last 25 years to facilitating motivational, life and work seminars, as well as strategic planning and productivity to thousands of people and firms all over the world. Raised on the inner city streets of Los Angeles, Joey rose above the pervasive challenges to attend both UCLA and UCSD, and then began his career as a motivational speaker and performance enhancement coach. In addition to serving as volunteer CEO of Insight, he also serves on the Board of Directors and facilitates Insight Seminars throughout the world.
Joey Hubbard approaches this interview the way that he approaches his life, with humor, honesty, and integrity. Be inspired as Joey shares about meeting John-Roger at thirteen, a doomed ham sandwich, becoming an Insight Facilitator, and more.
This interview was first published in the New Day Herald in September of 2016.
NDH: What is it like working with J-R?
Joey: Whatās funny is that I never considered it work. Itās interesting because there were times when youād go four or five days in a row with very little to no sleep, whether it was with NOW Productions or something going on at J-Rās home. Whatever it was, I never once thought, āOh, Iām tired. Oh, Iām working hard. Ohā¦ā There was just this incredible energy with him. It was like he was this boat that was making its way through the waves and we were riding the slipstream behind him, following in his wake energetically. You didnāt get tired. Thereās also the other element of doing something that you love. I experience that now with Insight. In the early days of Insight, when you were assisting you were there till as late as it took. People were having phenomenal experiences when the Spirit would come in, and it didnāt matter. It wasnāt work. So the way I would phrase it, instead of āwork,ā would be, ābeing lucky enough to be around J-R.ā Thatās the experience I would have. There are so many things that Iāve learned from him about that sustainable energy. There were a couple of times when I was at his home in Mandeville with him and it was late and I said, āHey, J-R, Iām just going to crash here.ā One time he said, āJust sleep in my bed.ā I said, āI canāt take your bed.ā He said, āNo, Iām not going to sleep tonight.ā āWhat do you mean youāre not going to sleep?ā He said, āIām on duty. Iām responsible for the universe tonight. Iām on watch.ā
Obviously, at 19 years old I didnāt fully comprehend what it meant. But I knew that I couldnāt imagine myself, as tired as I was at that moment, saying Iām going to go another 12 hours or more without sleep, to be on watch, on duty. I didnāt understand that. I didnāt have that kind of capacity. It would put me in awe. And it was both good news and bad news for me because at some point I was comparing myself with J-R, thinking, āIām never going to be as good as J-R.ā But it was also aspirational. I wanted to be like this man. In my wildest dreams that was what I wanted.
NDH: What were some of the main things you learned from him?
Joey: I think in terms of what had the greatest impact on me. When I was 19, we were doing an Insight 1, one of those big ones with 350 people or so. The training was over and we were all standing in a circle. I got this huge sharp pain in my stomach and it literally took me from standing to being on the floor. J-R came right over. He started checking it and he said Iād created tumor there. I went to visit him soon after that for an aura balance and, to make a long story short, all that went away through some stuff that he did. I asked, āHow did I create this?ā He said, āYouāve been so self-judgmental because youāve been comparing yourself to me or to other guys on my staff that you thought you āshould be like.āā At 19 years old, I was a kid. But I still wanted that. And every time I didnāt do something perfectly, Iād beat myself up so much that my body said, āOkay, if you feel that unworthy, we can leave.ā
At that moment I shifted dramatically and Iāve been extremely accepting and easygoing with myself and others, knowing that itāll all be just fine. Everybody who spends time with me in my life knows that my attitude is, āyou do what you do.ā Youāre not going to get judged by me. I have to watch, making sure I donāt do that to myself. But Iāve gone almost to the opposite end where I just goā¦ āokay, yeah, I screwed up, next.ā I probably could take more time to figure out how to not screw up again, but I move so fast off of it. That was really a gift from J-Rāthe attitude that everybody is doing their best, thereās no value in judgment, the power of forgiveness, acceptance (which is the first law of spirit). Iād say that would be at the top of the list of what Iāve learned. There are other things that I work towards like unconditional loving. J-R could hold in a way that communicated, āno, thatās not okayā and you got his love. I think many of us have experienced him putting his foot up our butt and saying, āYouāre off course, dude,ā and still feeling that it was an extremely loving communication. That to me is also something Iāve learned in terms of working with Insight: sharing with people my perception of the truth so I donāt sugarcoat it. But they still get that I love themāand I learned that from J-R.
NDH: Did you see him change over the years?
Joey: J-R would change every five minutes. [Laughter.] You could be sitting with J-R and heād be one way, and someone else would come over and heād completely flip because there was a different lesson for that person to learn. Youād be in that scenario where somebody was really getting it, and youād quietly lean back in your chair and be glad you werenāt in the crossfire. The thing I enjoyed was the many complexities of that consciousness. Sometimes it was J-R the guy and sometimes it was the Traveler that was showing up there. I loved all of it. It was a great reference point for me also because I think at some point in my life I saw that thing called the Traveler as if itās supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to do everything perfectly and accurately, to know everything. But J-R was just human. A human who was bringing that consciousness forward. It was also great for me to see when J-R made a mistake or didnāt know something. It grounded me in the awareness that weāre here on the planet and thatās just how life is.
I think that over time as he aged, he obviously changed in terms of his outward appearance. I actually saw him not long before he passed. He was in a hotel room. I wanted to check something with him and Jsu (his personal assistant) said, āCome on up.ā He was just in the room with a nurse and he was sitting back with his eyes closed. But when he would open his eyes he was right there and weād connect. I think in many respects I feel even closer to him now than I did over the last few years. I feel his presence very clearly directing Insight. Insight is growing and expanding. I see that happening mainly because I think his energy is back in it, and from where he is, itās probably easier to do that.
Iām here at Insight because of J-R. When I did my Insight 2 it was on a payment plan and I missed a payment. I thought, āIām going to get paid in two weeks. Iāll do it then.ā I was at the Insight building and J-R came out of his office. He called me over and he said, āYou missed your payment.ā I said, āYes. Iām going to do it in two weeks.ā He said, āOkay. Youāre banned from the building and any of the trainings you were going to be in until you make that payment.ā Now, my whole life was going over to Insight. So I was going to miss a couple of trainings, and I couldnāt even come over to the building.
We had made an agreement, but the way I approached it, if you couldnāt keep it, you didnāt renegotiate it, you just assumed it was going to be okay until the next thing came along. And hereās J-R saying itās not okay. He was like my dad. There was nobody in my life who was doing that. That was a wonderful lesson. Obviously I was devastated, but I donāt know if there couldāve been any better scenario for me at the time. I remember asking my boss, āHey, can I work more hours?ā It was like, no, everything was full. It was painful to not be around Insight. When I came in and made the payment and was getting ready to walk back down the stairs, he came back out of his office and he said, āCome here.ā We went back up in his office and he said, āYou have a responsibility to Insight. Every time you walk in this building, bring the Light. Every time you engage with the trainings, you bring the Light. You hold a certain consciousness here that is responsible for what you do in this building.ā
I didnāt see what all that meant then, other than that at every training I was holding the light as best I could. But later I realized that was probably more about this time now, as a fulfillment of my ministry of keeping this work going as best I can. And not just keeping it alive, but moving from surviving to thriving, and then taking it into a really expansive state. There are very few things out there as powerful as the work of Insight, especially in the places in the world where they donāt have anywhere near the access to all the stuff we have here. Itās important that people really learn the true value of connecting to themselves, and what loving themselves means. Thatās what this work is all about.
NDH: So J-R was kind of like a dad for you.
Joey: Yeah, for my brothers David, Michael, and me. David and I, we both were wanting to be on J-Rās staff. David told me that J-R told him his karma wasnāt to be on his personal staff, but mine was. And J-R told me that my karma wasnāt to be on his personal staff. [Laughter] I think it was like we had other stuff to do. In many respects, my dad was a great guy, but he was gone from the time I was 5 until 22. We werenāt bad kids or any of that. Mom did a very good job as a parent. We all woke up every day wanting to do good and do our best. But thereās a certain level of a discipline, of what it means to be a man, in terms of maturity and responsibility, and just being able to have somebody who says, āThatās off course. Thereās consequences.ā
My mom, when she would say, āHey, thatās off course,ā weād feel bad. But there was never the kind of consequence that seemed to hurt to the core, or something on that level. When you really want something, like you want to be around J-R or Insight and heād say you canāt because you did this or that, it gives you a certain awareness, that this action causes this consequence. So being around J-R was a quick maturing process. It was constant. I mean it wasnāt like you learned and then you stopped learning with J-R. Being on his staff or being around his staff was constant vigilance. Youād have to keep your Light going, youād have to do your S.E.ās, youād have to be responsible. If you started bullshitting a little bit, J-R picked it up. He sniffed it out very fast.
Often when people would leave staff, I would see it coming. I saw it a long time before it happened. You could just see it. I was a silent observer. But it was clear.
NDH: You were really young when you started.
Joey: I met J-R at 13. What was funny about that is, my mom came home one night and said, āHey, I met this guy,ā and when I was seven, we used to pick up the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he would fly into L.A., when Transcendental Meditation was hot in L.A. We had big afros, and weād have flowers in our hair, and weād give them to him. At seven years old, I was the youngest person heād ever initiated.
So I knew Mom would be looking for those kinds of guys. I wasnāt skeptical, it was just, āOkay, hereās another guy.ā But then I immediately started dreaming at night of flying with a guy. I didnāt know who it was at that time, but Iād be flying around like superman, flying around next to him and he was showing me things. I had several dreams like that. I didnāt make anything of it and then she said, āI want to take you to this place called Prana and introduce you to J-R.ā
When we walked in to Prana, he came out of a room where he used to do his Light studies, and I looked at this guy and thought, āThatās the guy Iāve been flying around with.ā He comes right over to us and hugs us and looks in our eyes and he says, āYeah, you guys are welcome.ā It was like he knew us, we knew him, and thatās the start of the love affair where mom was taking us up to his house and all of that. From that point on, there was never a moment of hesitation.
NDH: That wouldāve been what year?
Joey: 1974.
NDH: So you were around for a while before Insight.
Joey: Yeah. When Insight came, everybody was all excited that they were going to do this training. My brother David and I were going up to J-Rās house a lot. David and I asked if we could go and he said, āNo, not yet.ā I think he wanted to see what the training was going to be like. Then after the training, he asked again. J-R said, āYou guys could take the next one.ā We were in the second one. It was great. After that training is when we said, āWe want all of our friends to take it.ā When I talked to Russell Bishop (Insightās co-creator, along with J-R) about it, he said, āWell, if you get 60 teens, weāll do a teen training.ā David and I went out and about a month later, we had 60. Russell was like, āOh man, I didnāt expect you guys to do it.ā [Laughter]
That was when J-R said, āYou guys are going to have to learn how to do this because weāre going to start doing this work with teenagers. We want younger people to facilitate.ā That kind of started Dave and I on that track of facilitation back then.
NDH: You were facilitating Teen Insight and you were still a teenager?
Joey: Yeah. Dave and I were, yeah.
NDH: What was that like?
Joey: It was interesting. I was facilitating but then Iād get pulled into teenage stuff, like, āWhat are the assistants doing or what are the participants doingā¦theyāre all going out tonightā¦okay, letās go out!ā And it was like, āNo, no, youāre the facilitator; you canāt go out with the participants.ā That was kind of funny. But we had a group of us who got really involved. We were all teenagers.
NDH: Kids of MSIA people?
Joey: Yeah, we were all kids of MSIA people. For a long time, the way we connected before Insight was that J-R would let us use the downstairs at his house to do teen MSIA seminars, which were Pauli Sanderson and Rick Edelstein taking us through a discourse or a meditation, or conversations about life. We would do it there, or weād do it at Leigh Taylor-Youngās house, or Rickās house. Thatās how we were all connected. It created this bond, a spiritual bond. Then when Insight came, it gave us a vehicle to take our group and create something.
NDH: And youāve been facilitating ever since.
Joey: Yeah.
NDH: You moved to adult trainings later on?
Joey: Yes, I think I was maybe 21. They needed a trainer in Chicago for an adult Insight, and nobody else was available. They said, āWould you go do it?ā I said, āSure.ā I get there and Iām 21 years old and people are at least twice my age in the training. It was awkward at the beginning. I was really nervous. But by the time we got into it, it became the same as any other. J-R said, āGo for it. You can do it.ā
NDH: How do you stay tuned into Spirit when youāre facilitating?
Joey: Morning, noon and night, I ask for J-R and Spirit to be with me, and for me to get out of the way. One of the biggest things J-R had taught us around Insight over the years, was that ego is not doing it, the Spirit does. You can put a candle on the stage and people would have the same experience. So you donāt get caught up in the illusion that youāre doing it. Thatās been huge to me because there is stuff that I say or that happens in that room that I donāt know mentally. I donāt know how I knew that. It wasnāt conscious. The more I do this work, the more I realize I just keep getting out of the way. I can feel it if I get in the way. Itās almost likeā¦youāre interrupting the flow here. Get out of the way; youāre a boulder in the dam. The ego will do that every once in a while.
So I think itās just continually asking for Spirit, continuing to ask for J-R and the Light. I donāt pretend that I know anything because I donātā¦ especially whatās true for anybody in the room. The other thing that I learned from J-R that is just part of my process is humor. When I do that work, I like to do it with humor. I donāt enjoy things that donāt have some lightness, some levity and joy in them.
NDH: Do you experience a difference between the work of MSIA and the work of Insight?
Joey: The work that MSIA does isnāt about the ā10% level,ā which is how J-R describes the physical level and its order of importance in the whole scheme of things. Science has discovered the impact of meditating, and it definitely impacts your well-being on a physical level. So yeah, it does impact the 10%. But itās not about the same kinds of things Insight is about, which more like, āThat behavior you have doesnāt work. What are you going to do about shifting that behavior?ā You could come to the same realization through a spiritual focus very easily, but thatās done more passively. In Insight weāll tell you. If you ask, āWhy isnāt this working?ā MSIA is going to say, āWe love you. Here are some tools, figure it out for yourself.ā
NDH: It seems like in those early trainings there were a lot more phenomena in them, and people having very intense spiritual experiences, not just 10%-level insights.
Joey: Yeah. Well, J-R was there. And it was a base of people that were very open to that. If you go to the lowest common denominator in that room, they were wide open, like, āSpirit, take me.ā I think they gave the Spirit permission to come in and rock the house. In Insight these days, since you canāt inflict on any consciousness there, it doesnāt always happen like that. There are still moments when some pretty amazing stuff happens. Itās because of the collective consciousness thatās in the room. Some people donāt believe in God or Spirit or any of that. They just want to experience heart stuff, and thatās all fine. We have room for all of that. People were moving their consciousness in huge leaps in five daysā and still do, by the way. Thereās no place on the planet where that happens. When you see people on day one of the Insight 2 and you look at where they are at day five, I doubt that youād find anywhere else where that happens. Itās happening in Insight 2ās and thatās where a huge shift takes place. Miracles happen.
NDH: Have things been different for you since J-R died?
Joey: I donāt think so other than I miss him. There was always a part of me that wondered what was J-R doing, or I want to catch up with J-R. I had moments that were on my calendar when I knew I would see him. Whatās different is that I donāt have that part running. There wouldnāt be a lot of conversation or anything, but it was just being in the space with him. I think in some respects I miss that. But itās like missing someone you love. On the other side, he is always forcing us to work on the inner relationship. I worked on it. So I feel like in some respects Iāve got him in here in a really big way, and I feel thatās even bigger since heās gone. Thereās more of him. The energy is bigger.
NDH: Iāve found that inside itās great, but being in the world thereās more negativity. Itās harder to stay clear sometimes.
Joey: I definitely wonder sometimes. You see this in whatās occurring with world events. I remember when I was in Vegas, and J-R was visiting during one of the presidential elections. Some of us were talking about it with some upset, and J-R said, āThe Spirit has this. This country was founded with Spirit. The Spirit is very active in whatās happening here. Donāt you guys worry about it.ā The attitude was something like, āItās bigger than us.ā I remember stepping back and thinking, āYeah.ā Sometimes now when I see things that are going on in the world, I wonder if thereās a reason for it. But Iām going to trust that there is. Whatever that is, itās stirring things up and we have to be vigilant. The negativity is going to do what it wants to do. It doesnāt care about anything else. But Iām trusting that the Spirit has it.
NDH: Have there been any changes in Insight since J-Rās passing?
Joey: Oh yeah. When J-R died we were right in that space of figuring out what we were going to do. He died in October of 2014 and in February, 2015 we did our first Founders Insight 1 which was in honor of J-R. We used video clips and we only charged $50. The whole purpose was to honor J-R. We had 350 people sign up for that training in about ten days. We had to do a second one because we had so many wanting to take it. I said, āLetās just do another one,ā and we had another 250 for that one. It flooded our system so much that we had to add more Insight 2 and Insight 3 seminars. We ended up tripling the number of seminars that we did in L.A. compared to the year before. And that growth arc has continued.
J-Rās energy came in, in a big way. And Insight has grown pretty significantly and will continue to grow. Weāre on the right trajectory. I even had a meeting yesterday with someone who asked, āHow do I fund Insight?ā He said, āIāve done everything, Iāve been a professor, a doctor, Iāve served on boards for 40 years. And this is the best work Iāve seen. Why is it not everywhere?ā I said, āHelp me figure that out.ā He said, āI will.ā Those kinds of things are showing up now.
NDH: Whatās on the horizon for Insight now? Any plans you can share with us?
Joey: My goal with Insight is to do things like a subscription site. So everybody who takes a training will get access to some of the content of the training. I want to grow our ability to reach out. Iām talking to some people about how to do a better job from the marketing perspective. The MSIA Presidency has been very, very supportive. From a profit perspective, weāre making money and paying off debt. We only have one debt thatās still there. Itās not about if Insight is doing well or not doing well. Weāre running a very solid, successful organization. All our trainings run at a profit. Weāre going to stay small in terms of staff. Rachael Jayne does an amazing job of keeping Insight operations and the small staff on track. I donāt see us taking on a heavy staff load. I like the volunteer energy, and Iāll never take a salary for doing this job from Insight.
To me, if we do this right we could be in another ten U.S. cities in five years. Weāre looking at doing trainings in Switzerland and Romania. It will grow through Europe and weāll re-energize Australia, and weāll put some money into helping those countries in South America where they have challenges. They want to do the work. They had 100 trainings last year. But sometimes there are 25 people in the room. Theyāre not making a lot of profit. Itās tough with the economies of Venezuela and Brazil. But those will flip around. I just want to touch many, many more hearts.
NDH: How do you market something like Insight? Is that possible?
Joey: The question really hasnāt been answered. Even when you look at similar workshops, they do heavy recruitment through word of mouth. Itās about me getting you to feel obligated to go bring two or three of your friends. Insight is never going to take that approach. Weāve got to find other ways. I had a funny idea in one of the Insight trainings, I said, āLetās have insightonly.com, a dating service like farmersonly.com,ā where people of consciousness could find people like themselves. There are some sites like that. But we may need to create some businesses around it so that through business references people come to Insight. How we market Insight is something Iām looking at very closely.
NDH: Have you that found the types of people who are attracted to Insight changes over the years? Is there any way to predict whoās going to like it, and whoās not? Is there Insight ātypeā that has changed over the years?
Joey: Whatās funny is Insight is one of those things where very few people donāt like it. Usually, there are two kinds of people who donāt like it. One is theyāre not ready for it. Theyād prefer not to look at some of the stuff that shows up in the room. They were comfortable being uncomfortable in the other space and now we asked them to start looking at, for example, whether their relationship is working well. Itās like, no, I donāt want to do that. Theyāll leave. The second person is the person who thinks everything is perfect and that theyāve done it all. Early on in a training theyāll get a little niggle on that. Maybe itās not as perfect as they think, and theyāll come up to me and say, āIāve done all this before. Iāve got a lot going on. Iām going to leave. I donāt see anything new for me here.ā That person is actually more challenged than the first one because theyāre avoiding it, but they think that theyāre not avoiding it.
But beyond that, we have a lot of people from USM recently, that love USM and had a great experience there, and they get something different from Insight. We also have a lot of Insight grads go on to USM or MSIA, and they get value from it all.
NDH: Has the content of the Insight seminars changed over the years, or is it pretty much what J-R created?
Joey: Pretty much what J-R created with Russell. Iām not willing to take away the J-R stuff. People who did the training yesterday tell me that itās the best thing theyāve ever seen. People who did it almost 40 years ago say itās the best thing theyāve ever seen. Why mess with it? People say, āHow do we tweak this or that?ā Iām always open to little tweaks that are more functional. Weāve progressed a little since the 1978 days in terms of some of the logistics. But as far as the content, itās the same work.
NDH: Do you think people are coming in on a different level?
Joey: Oh yeah. In 1978 when we talked about win-win (where both sides of an issue can win without a fight), people would say, āWhat are you talking about? Thatās impossible. Now, everybody is thinking about win-win right away. They may not get it right away, in its totality, but itās so much more part of the conversations theyāre having.
NDH: Do you have a favorite J-R story?
Joey: There are lots of them. My favorite J-R story is hard to talk about. But itās when he initiated meābecause I didnāt know anything about what the initiation was. I kind of screwed up because J-R said, āRead your discourses.ā In 1976 I knew my sixteenth birthday was coming and I hadnāt read them. I was taking the bus back and forth every day for work. I took a discourse every day, and read it going up and back. I read 24 discourses over the summer. I called J-R and I said, āJ-R, I can get initiated.ā He said, āYou read all your discourses in a couple of weeks.ā I said, āYeah.ā He said, āThe reason why I said to read them over the two years is because Iāve been dealing with the karma of your reading the discourses every day for the last two weeks.ā I was like, āWhat?ā I didnāt know. Thatās when they put the rule out that you can only read one discourse a month.
I just wanted to get to my initiation. But then when he initiated me, he told me all this stuff about my lifetimes with himā¦ that was a very cool and special moment in terms of just that time with him.
My funny J-R story is: I was working up at J-Rās house in Mandeville. They had a flood up there and we were up all night cleaning the mud, and he asked me if I wanted to come and help. I brought my lunch and I put it in the refrigerator. Twenty minutes later, he says, āWhoās got pork at the house?ā I said, āI donāt know.ā He was walking around saying, āDoes somebody have pork? Thereās pork here in the house somewhere.ā And heās tracking. āItās in the refrigerator. Who has pork in the refrigerator?ā I said, āI just have a ham sandwich.ā He said, āJoey, a ham sandwich is pork.ā I said, āOh, is it? I didnāt know.ā [Laughter] He throws it in the trash can and says, āDonāt ever bring hamā¦ā He picked up on the energy of it back in his bedroom.
NDH: What would you like Insight to be? Whatās your long-range vision for it?
Joey: Global service organization thatās providing the trainings in all the major countries. I think Iād like to be a little more expansive. Iād love for us to fund trainings. For instance, right now, in Venezuela, to take a training is a yearās salary. Iād love to give a free training, pay for the room, charge them $5 (which still gets their attention but everybody can do it) and put 300 people in the room. I love to do ten of those every year somewhere in the world where everybody wants to be there and we send those 300 people out and they go get another 600 people.
I think thatās the way that really grows Insight, but we need the funding to do that. Thatās significant. We need the people who say Iām going to put myself on the line to make it happen. We have a lot of those people already but we just need to keep identifying them. Iād love Insight to be doing trainings in Africa or Indiaāplaces that just donāt get access to resources like this. I would love to have the ability to pick a location, support somebody in making the training happen where money wasnāt the issue, and then put in place a structure to make sure that itās foundational.
In Bulgaria itās like it was in the U.S. in 1980, when Insight was growing exponentially. You canāt get enough of it. Seventy-five people taking the Insight 4. I see where thereās still such a need and I see the value that it has. I think the biggest thing for me with Insight is to find ways to attract millennials, and people that have consciousness and see something of value in what we offer. I think we have to build an online presence that allows us to capture some of that, and we have to keep finding new places. The way Bulgaria is respondingā¦why not Estonia, why not Serbia?
I want to start looking at where thereās a real calling and expand into some of those areas. Iām training new people. I started facilitating almost 40 years ago and I was a baby at that time, and there are not very many people who have come in at a younger age than I was since then. We need to get a new young crew of facilitators. I think that will also bring a new younger energy into the room. Weāve opened up the facilitator candidacy program, weāre pulling from people of all ages. They donāt have to be young. But we want new energy, new blood in the facilitator crew.
J-R did such a wonderful job of training us that I realize weād better pass this on. If we donāt pass it on, it goes away. We developed this course called the Masters Class where weāve taken all of J-Rās wisdom and teachings in the Insight world and put them into a class around achieving mastery. Weāve now got a new high-end product thatās attracting a lot of people who have been around for a long time and done a lot of work and theyāre finding it valuable.
NDH: Can you tell me more about the Masters Class and how it works?
Joey:Ā We do three trainings that are four days eachā Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sundayāfor three consecutive months. So for three months youāre in the course, and you look for either an internal or external goal that you want achieve. We go into some very deep work that I started with J-R years ago around what I call paradigms. Whatās the deep inner belief that is taking you away from being on course with your path, with your direction, with what you want for yourself? Everybodyās got them. Sometimes theyāre strong enough to really divert us, and sometimes they arenāt. They just pull us, but weāre still steering our own ship. We go very deep into what that is, both the limiting version and the opposite, the positive version.
We start supporting people through creating what we call a field of loving in the room and then some āmastermind groupsā to support you outside of the room. For the course of that training, you are working towards mastery in your lifeāinner mastery, external mastery. And we bring in the latest science. Thereās so much science now that proves what J-R was saying years ago about the power of the heart and how our thoughts impact our brain.
Mary Ann Somerville worked hard on the design. As we would talk it through it became clear it was coming from spirit, and in my experience J-R. We do a lot of deep work with individuals. We keep the training small (40 is the maximum) helping them get to that place where they can create what they want from a place of mastery. Itās based on that old principle of the masterās class in the arts, where youāre a great artist, but you would go to a class of other great artists and maybe learn one technique or one small thing that moves the dial for you. People taking this training have done quite a bit in their lives and are very successful. But thereās one small thing, maybe itās an inner thing or external thing that they wantā¦ that pushes them over to that 110% thing. Thatās what the Master Class is about.
Then weāre reaching out to younger spaces, foster care kids and underserved kids. Weāre branching out into new and different ways to touch into specific targeted groups.
I think we have to keep pushing through the old norms. I shared with our board recently that we need to get new people on the board and we need to start fundraising as a board. Iām meeting a lot of people who are telling me weāve got to be in that game. If we really want to be a powerful organization these days, thatās what everyone is doing.
I think the challenge also is expanding without a large budget. Thatās one of the reasons why fundraising is important to me. The thing that people will never have to worry about at Insight is that the money is going to a single person. The staff salary is minimal. I donāt take a salary. Our facilitators donāt get paid very much in comparison to what they should get paid. All our money goes directly into the program. I think itās important for us to get that message out in our fundraising.
Weāve got Kalamazoo, Michigan and South Bend Indiana wanting to do trainings. Weāve got Boston, weāve got L.A. People are starting to talk about it in Dallas and Austin. Theyāre doing trainings in Miami. Iād love to do Spanish trainings there. Thereās a huge need. We have one coming up in L.A., and New Jersey. If we could have ten cities with regular trainings, I think we would be on course to be building the organization in the U.S., and then continually grow in the right strategic places internationally.
NDH: It occurs to me listening to you that you are about as enthusiastic now about Insight as you were when you were 19.
Joey: I am. Nothingās changed. Itās good work, man. Itās the work that I think J-R and Russell Bishop brought forward for us, for this family, figuring we needed it. But it applies worldwide. Everybody can use an Insight training. They donāt need it. But they could use it.
Thanks for sharing Joey’s story and JR experiences…I loved all of it!
Awesome! Thanks Joey for sharing and David for doing the interview. Very helpful for me to envision Insight dynamically expanding with joy and being received around the world with gratitude. See you at October Masters Class. Corinne
Great stuff Joey, and a lot of food for thought.
Thank you, Joey! What beautiful sharing. Iām doing Insight III in just a few days and your words are just what I need to prepare inside. I love you Leanna
Thanks for sharing Joey! Always enjoy hearing about your experiences with JR and Insight. Needless to say I also have a deep appreciation for both, and would still very much like to be a part the latter’s expansion – but at this point I’m just surrendering to where Spirit takes me in this regard, particularly with having my ego “get out of the way”… Thanks again for all your support and love over the years, and lots of love going right back to you!