Paul and Craig talk about Craig’s newest project: his book Conscious Life Conscious Death!

Transcript Transcribed by AI (not 100% accurate)

[00:00:00 ] This is the two guys talking Fresno podcast, the podcast with two guys talking about Fresno. Your hosts are Craig sharp, a lifelong Fresno who loves his community, even though it drives him bonkers and Paul gin, a transplant Freston, who’s lived in Fresno for more years than he has it. And he wouldn’t live anywhere else.

It’s time for two guys to talk Fresno. Here’s Craig and Paul on the two guys talking Fresno podcast.

Paul: Here we are long time. No, see Craig. I know,

Craig: but I’m wearing the same shirt today. One of those pictures, I only have two shirts. So I guess the odds are that I’d be wearing the same shirt

Paul: I do too. I’m wearing my Fresno Grizzlies

Like this is an old school, Fresno baseball. T-shirt from way back when, and it’s perfectly comfortable. Oh, it’s the perfect, [00:01:00 ] t-shirt perfectly

Craig: new crying. You cry when you first feel that first hole or see that the seams are starting to go.

Paul: Yeah, I’ve got a couple that I still have the hole in, but I’m still keeping them anyway because it just feels so nice to wear.

So, but then with two guys talking Fresno, I can act like this is theme oriented rather than comfort, so right. Have

Craig: you planned

Paul: it ahead? Yes, exactly. So we haven’t done a lot of podcasts lately, but here we are back and we’re going to jump back into it.

Craig: That’s good. Yeah, we both needed a little break last year was, uh, not only COVID but politics and all that stuff.

And I think we were just worn out.

Paul: Yeah, I think, I think we needed that debrief time. Everybody needed that. And then it kind of ran its course. And I, I think we got through the election and that guy wasn’t reelected and we all kind of yeah,

Craig: yeah. [00:02:00 ] Until January.

Paul: Yeah. It’s not to say there wasn’t craziness in the midst there, but, uh, and still is, but the good news is we’re going to get back to talking a little bit more about Fresno.

We had to talk COVID we had to talk politics and now we can talk forever.

Craig: Yeah, well, we had to some of our, uh, great, uh, listeners or Watchers, you know, commenting saying more Fresno stuff, more Fresno stuff. So that was a good reminder for us. And we do listen to your comments or read your comments and, and take that to heart.

And that’s what we started for. So you just brought us back to where we meant. Yeah.

Paul: And if people have ideas, post them on our Facebook page or send us an email through the website to guys fresno.com and let us know what you’d like for us to talk about, because we are getting back to being two guys talking about Fresno.

And today, Craig, I’m really excited because we’re going to talk [00:03:00 ] to a great Fresno author. He’s fairly new to the, uh, the, the title of author, but it’s been coming for quite a while, but he’s very well known by presidents,

Craig: right? Well, we will see you’re turning the tables on me.

Paul: I wrote my book. I got to be a guest on the show and today our very, very special guest is author Craig Sharpton.

Welcome to the show, Craig.

Craig: Thanks Paul. It’s a, it’s an interesting process. That’s for sure.

Paul: Go ahead.

Craig: Well, I always, you know, I, every time someone becomes an author, I always say there’s, you know, 98% of the people are working on a book and there’s a few that, that actually get it to be a product. And I always admired that people.

So, uh, but I’ve got to say, it’s, it’s a weird feeling. When you say you’re one of them, you see your baby in [00:04:00 ] print. It’s very strange. Isn’t it? It

Paul: sure is. And the book is called conscious life conscious death. It’s a, that’s an intriguing title for sure. Do you have it with you? Can you hold it up?

Craig: I said, so lighthearted comedy, a little,

Paul: little tome conscious life, conscious death.

Show us the cover. That looks cool. No,

Craig: I’ve got the highlighter in there. I didn’t want to drop, probably have a little bit of glare. Yeah.

Paul: Hold it up just a little bit higher. So it’s, that’s a ladder with two

Craig: pencils. Yeah. So it’s an, uh, an idea for a new religion. So principles represent the idea and, uh, the latter represents something I’ll read about in a little bit.

If you

Paul: ask me to, I will, and I want to get to the idea that this is about a new religion. Is this a then a heretical book that you’re putting out? What is conscious life conscious death about?

Craig: [00:05:00 ] Well, let’s see. I, uh, so it is an idea that, um, there’s a whole bunch of people that have their own religion. No, right

Paul: off the bat.

You’re going to forget your elevator pitch down a little bit better.

Craig: Well, you’re my first, this is the first interview.

It’s all a little squishy for me, but yeah, there’s people that have their own religion. And then there are people that don’t like religion at all. And so this is something in between. It is not a. Uh, DST religion. It’s not a, uh, it doesn’t have a goddess component to it. It is for people that would like to treat, uh, raising their own consciousness as if it were a religious person and make it a religious pursuit.

So it’s really about my consciousness is here. I would like it to be here. I’m going to work on that and it’d be really cool to work on it with other people as well. And we could encourage each other [00:06:00 ] and support each other. And I could post a book that I read and you can tell me about a conversation that you had or a speech that you went to.

And, uh, and we could continue to inform each other on ways through science or philosophy or even religions to, uh, to have a more conscious life.

Paul: So there’s a lot of people that write books about religion. I’ve got a bunch of them on my shelves around this room, but you’re, you have literally written.

Creating a new

Craig: religion. Yeah. Well, and that’s, that’s the, that’s the weird part. That’s the part that feels a little bit like jumping off of a cliff. Um, because I know that’s an unusual thing, but I also, I, religion is such an interesting thing. The way that it affects our lives is, you know, having been a religious person, it is always on your mind.

It is in your activities. You know, you, you know what you can eat and can’t eat based on your religion. [00:07:00 ] When you’re supposed to wake up who you can marry, how many kids you can have or not have, like all of these things, you know, how you give thanks for your food. It’s all tied up in your religion. So there’s really nothing else, like a religion that affects every part of your life.

And so if you want to raise your consciousness, Treating it as if it were any other religion, um, taking that into everything that you do, you know, we’ll hopefully give you the focus and the continued reminder, and then Centive to keep, keep working on your consciousness.

Paul: So is, is it, uh, a religion with, with rules and is it, is it at, in multi with other religions?

Are you trying to take people out of their religion into something new?

Craig: Well, uh, not really. Um, you know, it really, uh, a lot of it, you know, is a little bit libertarian, I guess every person is [00:08:00 ] ultimately responsible, should they choose to, to increase their own consciousness. And, um, and there are as many ways to do that as there are people.

Um, you could certainly bring your thoughts about your existing religion into this. And in fact, most religions have kind of an esoteric, uh, wing to them. Uh, there are certainly esoteric Christian beliefs, CA you know, within Catholicism, within Judaism, uh, within Islam that are much more consciousness focused.

Um, this just as it, without the baggage of that, you don’t need to have that stuff. You can just simply say, I’m this level of consciousness. I would like to see how high I can get if I continue to work on my consciousness.

Paul: So is there, is there a deity in your religion? I think you mentioned that and R and R you it,

Craig: no, in fact, I am the flawed leader that [00:09:00 ] nobody should follow.

I am not making any claims to any special knowledge. Um, I’d say that the thing that I really bring to this as a person who has run nonprofits and businesses and, and worked in government and all these different things that I’ve done in my life is it’s really given me more of, I would say my. My participation in this is really understanding organizationally how it could work, um, rather than thinking about dogma or those kinds of things.

I really want to simplify it too much to say, if we’re not sure about something you go back to, I want to increase my level of consciousness. Number two is we want to increase our level of consciousness as a group. So how do we help each other out? And then the third part i