COMPASSION IS IN FASHION With Ali Horriyat

Hello, it's Howard brown. It's the shining,

brightly show. Oh my god, we have a great one today. It's

titled compassion is in fashion. And you are going to meet one

extraordinary human. And I just met him, Ali, how are you?

I'm doing well, thank you for having me here.

I'm thrilled to have you, I just have to tell

you that in learning more about you, and spending time with you,

you have had such a great life, which we're going to talk about,

but you are a purpose driven human. And I absolutely love

that because your whole purpose is lifting up others and lifting

people up, and you call it in love. And we're going to talk

more about that. But I just I'm so glad to have you here. We got

a very high energy show. And we're going to share a lot about

your what your passion project is and what your life is about,

as well. So let me let me share people about you a little bit

here and stuff. From your bio. So compassionate, he's the

founder, Ali Hurriyat left the lucrative profit driven world of

finance in 2016, to devote himself to his vision of society

where compassion, empathy, social impact are at the heart

of his actions. In 2020, right, probably before the pandemic, he

launched compassion visa, to spread his vision. He was born

in Dubai, he had defended, attended schools in the UAE, and

in France and in Switzerland. So he's a world traveller. He also

actually did higher education in Canada. So he has an

undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics, political

science, philosophy, business, international relations, and

conflict resolution plus religion. Wow. This is amazing.

Ali, you are the author of 14 books and two more on the way,

including a collection of essays and poetry. And the themes range

from racism to capitalism, spirituality, loving compassion.

And here's the bottom line you believe that humans must love

always and always love, love that quote, Wow, impressive. But

here's the question, how do you shine brightly every day?

I think I tell myself every day that I have to

do something that is purposeful, that is a part of a legacy work.

And to me legacy is not about I need to do something to be

remembered in history or anything like that legacy to me

is, when you look back at your life, how proud are you? Are you

have every moment that you can remember? And how much does

every one of these moments, reflect on your surroundings? So

that is a measure I take with me every day, you know, and I'm a

social person, so I could be out. And I could speak to

strangers, you know, friends, whatever it may be myself

thinking loudly about how can I make an impact where I am, you

know, whether I'm in Dubai, whether I'm in London, whether

I'm in Canada, wherever I may be in the world, wherever I'm based

in a community at that moment, I need to always make an impact

because and I thought about this in this way, I thought, I asked

people generally, you know, who was the wealthiest person in

1994, not a lot of people will remember, you know, the Forbes

list of 1994 or 2004, or 1974. But you go back into what do you

remember of people who touched you who moved to you, and some

examples come up. And you notice those examples, were not about,

you know, the best musician or the best song of the year or the

richest person or the or any of that stuff, it's always about

how you felt connected through that person, how the

relationship built through that person and how that person was a

value added in the world. Those are the people will really

remember the Super Value Added people in the world. So every

day, I tell myself, Ally, today you got to shine today, you got

to be a Super Value Added person. And then I go through

the data say I could have done better and then the next day

starts over

and you get to do it all over again. Well, that's

the soul of shining brightly is to lift up others okay and make

the world a better place. So, you and I are extremely aligned

and and passionate and devoted to that. So alright, the name

what is what is compassionate visa.

So capacities, that name came to me when I left

when I left my work, so to speak in 2016. As he said, I took

about, you know, a few years of just travelling and finding

myself and trying to think of what is my purpose, what can be

my purpose. And during that time I realised, you know, compassion

is the driving force in the world, you know, and passion as

part of compassion is the driving force. And then I

thought to myself, Okay, I could be very compassionate. I could

see homeless people on the road and cry. As I'm passing by in a

bus or a car or walking or whatever, I could be very

compassionate towards animals and feel really bad that they,

you know, they're getting slaughtered. But I'm not doing

anything about it. So what's the point of that compassion,

whether I am compassionate or not without the action, that

makes no difference I need to perform so that my compassion

manifests. And so I realised, that is what activism is

activism isn't necessarily, you know, placards and standing in

front of embassies and yelling, because that just creates a lot

of tension and violence and misunderstanding and

miscommunication. You know, there's a time in place for

peaceful protest, but it's not everyday and it's not all the

time. And it's not when it turns violent. And it's not when

you're obstructing others freedoms. So I thought there

must be a better way to be an activist. And then to me

activism became your personal actions that can reflect those

values that you see and compassion in your own

compassion. And to use that activism, use your actions, so

to speak, to play out loudly, what you're thinking and what

you're going through emotionally. And I said,

perfect. I know of some very historical people like that, you

know, Moses, Jesus, mom, these are names that come up, you

know, when you think about Gandhi, Mandela, you know,

Martin Luther King, mother, Teresa, Teresa. Yeah, you know,

the list goes on, but it's not. We don't have an act. Thinking

about and I say, what do you call these people, because some

people call them activists, some people, you know, there's so

many names, but just and it's just one name that all of them

started out out of compassion. I mean, when we talk Gandhi, the

guy was in London, had his law firm was doing okay, but he's

looking back at his country saying, This isn't good I feel

for my country, and it drove him back home, to perform his

action, so to speak. So that's when I put the words compassion

and activist together, and it said, Come pacifist. And that

was the beginning of the work. Then I kept looking at the word

and I said, this words not complete for me, come pacifist.

And then I'm multilingual. And I'm very, very, very grateful to

all the people in my life who caused that because in English,

we don't have a gender in our language differentiation, like a

book is a book, it's not a sheet. It's not a he, you know,

we say our book, we don't say he book. But for example, in

French, you know, a car, what you have is law, it's a sheet,

she car, she vehicle, so to speak, it's not, you know, the,

and so I started thinking about compassion. And I thought,

compassion comes from that universal, nurturing, feeling,

you know, what we call mother nature, and what every mother

is, you know, it comes from that feminine power within

everybody's ability. And I think it's embedded in our DNA. And we

have compassion within us. And I think two examples, like, you

know, the easiest meal one can have is a new newborn, because,

you know, the newborn is, you know, comes out, and boom, you

can eat it. But we don't do that. And most animals don't do

that. And the reason is, we have compassion, to nurture, to raise

to support to help, you know, to expand this horizon of love that

we have communally. And so I thought to myself, That's

exactly it. Compassion is when I'm at my most feminine power.

And that gave me this concept of thinking, you know, what, I see

the physical sexes, you know, there are differences in the

bodies, you know, one can be impregnated and have a child and

the other one cannot I see those differences. But in gender, I'm

also starting to realise why we have all these, you know,

hundreds of different genders now, because every time we move

each day from one place to another, in that emotion, we

want to label it. So today, I may feel my feminine powers

coming on. So I want to label myself in some way and that

gender tomorrow may be very masculine, what I'm doing, I

want to label myself and their gender. But if I don't label at

all and I say I can be the entire spectrum as required,

then where does capacity sit in it, and it requires an E at the

end because that e is the feminine II of the Latin based

languages, for example, and you also get that in Arabic and the

Aramaic languages because all of them have the feminine and

masculine as well, you know, Hebrew, Arabic all of those

languages. So, the E was added in to the capacities which

starts with a T and then it became pacifist, in that way of

pronunciation. And it became complete for me because it is

compassion with action that is based In that motherly nurturer

of the universe, the way it's created, the way its functions,

the way it takes care of us, our environment, the sun, all all of

those things that, you know, we take for granted in the world,

they are all part of the nurturing of how we survive. I

mean, yeah, the sun right behind you shining brightly. That's

right, you know, that's what it is, it starts from there without

the sun's energy without the sun's nurture the sun's mother

leanness without the sun's love, there is no earth the way we

know it. I

want to tell you that so when I when I met you,

and not now thank you for that definition, because it's, you

know, basically you put the words together, and it has deep,

deep meaning. But just like in chapter one of my book, my 101

year old, Orthodox Jewish grandmother said, to choose

kindness, and then to choose gratitude and choose healing and

choose giving and choose not to hate, and they all have to have

actions. Okay? Positivity is nice, but plus tau is activity

with action is more powerful compassion with action. So thank

you for that. Now, in my research, I looked up and you

actually designed capacities as an octopus. Why? Why an octopus?

That's just, it's interesting.

Okay, so when I started capacities, you know,

the idea was that social movement to bring people

together and assign some actions to this compassion so that it

can, you know, move somewhere, so they can be purposeful to

something to have some yields, in a sense, and manifestation.

And then I thought, okay, how do you do this, you know, I can't

just stand up in the middle of a park and say, hey, people come

join me in you know, capacities is going to make changes in the

world, I need to provide people with certain programmes, certain

things to be involved in so that this can happen certain avenues.

And, you know, I had personal experiences that guided me

towards these arms that you know, the tentacles, so to speak

of the octopus, but essentially, I thought, the octopus fits

really well, because the octopus has this large brain and its

head. And each tentacle has a little brain. And each one of

those tentacles works through the little brain to perform the

action that maximises the benefit of the entire organism,

which is the entire octopus. And now, from my philosophical

education, I, you know, fell on to spinosus philosophy. And he,

back in a long time ago, you know, he got excommunicated for

this idea. But he basically from the Jewish community in the

Netherlands, then he basically turned around and said, you

know, everything's got, everything's one, everything's

connected, you know, everything's literally one. And

so I thought, imagine the entire planet, all the life in the

entire plant, all those brains, all that consciousness being

one, that is the octopus, and each of us is a tentacle is an

extension. And these programmes, they become the attributes where

these extensions connect to. So, for example, say you are a

writer, and you have a book, and you say, You know what, instead

of going to x and y publisher, or to sell my rights away to

some other publisher, or publishing, you know, self

publishing, and going through all the loops of trying to get

my book out there and my message out there, I'm going to join

capacities publishing, as one of those people who's bringing

energy to that one tentacle, we're going to put the book out

from there, the proceeds are going to help the entire

organism and it will develop the world into the better place that

we want it to give in those platforms, to people. So that's

just one example out of you know,

I love the octopus, because I think of my

Hindu brothers and sisters that talk about many gods but one

supreme being all contributing to the greater greater good.

Now, you listen, you are a very successful hedge fund manager.

And now you've decided to kind of just help the world. And so

what is the future that you aspire to what's Where's where's

the the little gains and the large end games here.

I was always a visionary. When I when I started

in the finance game. I never was satisfied with working as you

know, high ranking executive in any of the firm's or any of the

banks or anything like that. I was always shooting for the sky

because I thought, hey, you know, so and so did it. They

started right around where I was like, why am I going to go and

work somewhere for $80,000 a year when, you know, this could

be me. And I was always ambitious, and I was financially

driven that you know, that was really that was the main

motivator. So I went after it. I got to, you know, places that

finance I didn't, I didn't even expect to get to those places.

And I did. And now when I turned back, I say to myself, once a

winner, you know, you can always win because you know that you

won once, it doesn't matter what it was at what game it was at

what practice it was at what finals it was, you know, you

want once and you know, you have a need to win again, this time,

I want to dedicate the win to making the world a better place.

So where does capacities kind of sit back and say we

accomplished? I think never, because what I want is that

visionary space of a world without suffering a world with

minimal suffering a world that is not suffering, because of us

making the suffering, in a sense. So that would be ideal.

Now, what is realistic, what is, you know, the places that I say,

okay, for example, this is what pays the rent, we need to hit

that milestone, at least, those realistic arms is seeing

progress in the world. So if our programmes are actually bringing

benefit to the people we're trying to help to the globe,

we're trying to help to the aspects that we're trying to re

envision in a sense, then I start beginning to feel

satisfied in a sense and content that we're moving in the right

direction.

It's such a noble goal. And again, it aligns with

the shining brightly movement, right, is to make the world a

better place. And you have actually emphasised the arts.

Why is that?

So the arts for me, are the reflection of you

know, the arts is the reflection of society. So, in a sense, you

go back to Leonardo da Vinci, and you know, he had a sketch of

a helicopter. You know, and you think about that, like, how,

how, how do you come up with that? Right? And you think it's

the arts, it's the imagination is the expression of the

imagination, he put his imagination on paper? And then

he thought, How do I get this done? Well, that took a few 100

years. But you know, we kept growing towards our imagination

to realise our imagination. You know, some people watch Star

Trek, decades ago, there was no concept of space travel, then it

was an imaginary thing. I think 50 years from now, will be very

normal for some people to have space travel. So, you know, the

arts always precedes what really manifests and what happens in

every creation, invention, you think about any invention, any

creation, any step forward, and you realise it was through the

expression of some form of the arts, one medium of art that

began that movement, and then it went into its sciences it went

into its, you know, mathematics and all these other things to

become realised even Einstein was imagining theories imagining

concepts before he tried to get it out into its physics

components and understand them, which is how he saw the

universe.

I know it's incredible that imagination is

you know, becomes an again a helicopter, you know, many many

years later, but we're talking right now over video

communications, that you know, when I grew up as a young boy,

you grew up in it that didn't exist. So you know, things are

advancing now. What is what is the game plan to roll this out?

Because you advocating for children and animal and

environmental and complete social harmony? What's, what's

the game? What's the immediate game plan moving forward from

today. So

the game plan moving forward from today is

simple. We have capacities up now people can join people can

become a part of it, people can bring their value to capacities,

essentially, whether they're coming in in any of the arms of

capacities, whether they're coming in at the foundation

level, they want to donate, they want to participate. They want

to say, Hey, I'm a writer, I have a book, I have a story to

tell, I need a platform ally, how do we work this? You know,

how do we get involved in this space or music and all the other

arts that we have on our website. The point is to get

this out there now. We have something special up our

sleeves, which we're launching next year, it's going to be

real, the you know, the real show, essentially, when that

comes out, it will open the floodgates for people to really

be engaged with capacities then we have some programmes, you

know, from our TV programme and other things, our carbon

labelling programme, all of those that are starting out this

year. And we're really putting all of our might sort of speak

into our events. And that event is going to be the catalyst for

change in the world on a global scale. It's a very, you know,

ambitious project. It's a large project, but I think that's

what's needed in the world today. There are a lot of

movements, a lot of people who are trying to do a little bit on

their own and I think this is where that octopus comes

together. This is where, you know, the big brain sits and

says, Okay, we're home, the organisms healthy. And now we

can really grow. And that's really what we're pushing for.

So the more people join, the more people become a part of

this, the more, we start spreading what we're doing over

the next few months, and, you know, telling people what we're

going to do over the next year, there'll be a lot of excitement

moving forward.

This, this is an incredible movement, I am so

glad that that we are collaborating and connecting and

communicating and working together. Because we this is a

lot of work to do. And you're putting the infrastructure for

it to do that on such a big scale. And I'm just proud to

proud to know you. So I'd like you to put on some sunglasses

for a second, we're going to actually do the shining,

brightly spotlight, because this is the short show. And let's put

on glasses. Oh, you're yet we are shining the spotlight on

you. Please tell people how they should get in touch with you. I

know that you have books coming out and two new ones, but

they'll find you on where to find you on your books, but then

share some inspiration with us. And then I'll kick it over to me

to close out the show.

So you can find us capacities is a unique word. So

add capacities is where you'll find us on all our socials and

capacities.com is the grand website inside of which you will

find tabs to the publishing house, the foundation, the other

programmes that we have there. And that's the easiest way to

get to know capacities. And I think the one thing I want to

tell people and leave people with is love always always love

which means every and this I learned from Buddhism, you know

your modular mind every time you want to make a decision, keep

the compassion module in, don't trade it for the capitalist

module. Don't trade it for the aggression module. Don't trade

it for the fear, fight module. None of those things always keep

your compassion module on and remember to always love until

actions based in love. Thank you for having me. Amazing.

Oh, it's absolutely what a great movement

people we're going to spread the word. People need to learn about

it and and step in and help us move move mountains together.

It's incredible. So this has been the shining brightly show,

you can obviously reach me Howard Brown, you're Mr. shining

brightly at shining brightly.com And the book and my speaking

gigs and also the podcasts are there. But most importantly, my

advocacy, what I care about and you know all I care about

mentorship and entrepreneurship leadership, and I care about

making the world a better place and of course, the cancer world

as well. Let me thank a few folks that got me here. The

publishing house financial publishing, read the spirit.com

where I blog twice a month, and my podcasts finishing houses

amplify you they're amazing. They make me look good every

week. And a shout out to the folks that Colin town as well.

So just remember, as we've discussed here today, okay. If

you choose to shine brightly each day by taking action, we

learned that today, right for yourself, and then go lift up

others in your neighbourhoods in your communities, the world will

absolutely be a better place. Oh, you are yet. You are just an

amazing, purpose driven human. And I'm so glad that we have met

and you came on the show today. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for everyone who's

listening and watching