David Avocado Wolfe at AUREA: The Magic Is Right Outside Your Door

David Avocado Wolfe joined AUREA I live from his farm in Texas, on a big screen in front of a Sunday morning room in Miami. His first line was an apology for the hour. "I'm David Avocado Wolfe and usually I don't work at these hours. I've been giving talks at 6pm four nights a week for 25 years."

By the end he had a name for what the room had just sat through. "That's your morning preacher talk."

In between, he gave the room two ideas to carry home. The first he calls the magical reality. The second is endurance, and the energy it takes to enjoy all of it.

What he means by the magical reality

He started with a claim about where abundance lives. Not in a store, not in a system. Right outside.

"Colossal amounts of abundance are always found in nature. ... It's an awareness that creates a resource."

His complaint about modern life is not that the magic is gone. It is that we are pulled away from it all day. He described "crazy levels of hypnosis to pull us away from the magical reality that's just right out the door," and listed what we miss: the magic of a tree, of "the ecosystem under a leaf," of the land in your own region.

He set this against what he calls scientism, the habit of explaining everything away until "the magic gets washed off." His own experience points the other way. Any honest investigation, he said, "eventually leads you to a paradox."

Success is a refined study of the obvious

The line that holds the whole talk together came from one of his teachers, Jim Rohn.

"Success is a refined study of the obvious."

Wolfe said he "went deep in my life on that phrase," and his examples were almost comically plain. Walking barefoot. Drinking from a spring. Noticing which oak tree the squirrels choose.

That last one is his favorite kind of story. Of all the oaks on his hill, the one with the sweetest acorns turned out to be the one directly in front of his door. A reishi mushroom grew on a dead tree right next to the house. His point: "Everything we need is always right around us. It's never been different than that."

Why awareness is the real resource

He borrowed an idea from the economist Paul Zane Pilzer: awareness creates the technology, and the technology creates the resource. Then he made it concrete.

There are, he said, huge stands of wild goji berry bushes in the desert east of Phoenix that nobody picks. They are not a resource to anyone until someone knows what they look like and drives out to get them. Spring water works the same way. He has visited springs on five continents, and the thing that still gets him is that it is free and never turns off.

"If you suddenly value that and nobody else does, you've just become rich."

He was clear that his field is food, and that yours probably is not. The practice transfers anyway: "You've got to look at your own field and see where those insights come for you."

Jing: the energy of endurance

The second half of the talk is about lasting. Wolfe borrowed a concept from Taoist tradition called Jing, which he described as the deep, stored energy behind your stamina. He set it apart from Chi, the energy you spend moment to moment, and said Westerners are good at Chi and short on Jing.

"It's a tough assignment being on Earth. Tough assignment for sure."

His ways to build it are all additions, not restrictions: cold plunges, bare feet on the ground, time near mountains and water, and what he calls black foods. "Taking things away is terrible," he said. "Adding things in works."

Two extra hours a day

Then he did the math that makes endurance practical. "If you can get two more hours out of every day, you'll surpass everybody around you." Two hours a day adds up to about a month a year, and an extra year every thirteen.

He tied it straight to purpose. The extra hours only matter if they go to the thing you love. His test for finding it: "What do I like to do when nobody's looking? What eats up time for me? Suddenly an hour passes by in two seconds."

And he connected it to leadership. In his view, this kind of stamina "is what's going to be needed to create the leadership class of the future," because "we're responsible to improve it, to make it better for future generations."

The end is not near

The most quoted moment of the talk was his answer to the doomsday mood of the time.

"That old sign says, the end is near. No, it's not. The beginning is here."

He described the moment as "the great reveal," the breakdown of old systems that makes room to rebuild them, and said he expects "new George Washingtons, new Abraham Lincolns, new Susan B. Anthonys" to rise up in it.

His closing instruction was simple. There may be speed bumps. So build the endurance to get through them, and remember that "the magical reality is always there to support you, nourish you, inspire you, and give you all the tools that you need to make it through every hurdle."

The views in this talk are David's own and are not medical advice.

Frequently asked questions

Who is David Avocado Wolfe?

David Wolfe is an author and longtime teacher on raw food, superfoods and herbs. He has grown avocados since 1978, which is where his nickname comes from, and he now farms in Texas. He joined AUREA I by live video in September 2022.

What does David Wolfe mean by "the magical reality"?

He means the abundance and meaning already present in nature and in your daily life, the things that are so obvious they get overlooked. His claim is that modern life pulls your attention away from them, and that noticing them again is where real resources come from.

What is Jing?

Jing is a concept from Taoist tradition. Wolfe describes it as the deep, stored energy behind endurance, different from Chi, which is the energy you use moment to moment. He says it is built through things like cold water, bare feet on the earth, time in nature, and black foods.

What does "success is a refined study of the obvious" mean?

It is a line from Jim Rohn that Wolfe says shaped his life. The idea is that the biggest breakthroughs are usually hiding in plain sight, and that paying close attention to what is already in front of you beats chasing something far away.

What was his message about the future?

That the future has "never looked brighter." He sees the breakdown of old systems as a great reveal and a chance to rebuild them, and he asked the room to build the endurance to get through the hard parts.