Robert Edward Grant & Adam Roa at AUREA: We Attract Everything We Judge

Robert Edward Grant told Jackson Strong the sentence that changed his life came out of a fight he nearly lost. In 2016, he said, venture investors tried to take control of his group of companies. He won, and raised $55 million in one day to do it. Afterward he noticed something he had missed: the crisis matched what he had been judging and pushing down in himself.

"We attract everything we judge until we no longer judge everything we attract."

Grant is a polymath, Egyptologist and historian. He joined Jackson and the poet Adam Roa for a long online conversation, recorded a year before AUREA released it, on a day so full of solar flares and dropped video that Robert froze mid-sentence and came back wearing glasses. What came through is a set of ideas about judgment, self-love and heartbreak that the two of them approach from opposite ends: Robert through mathematics, Adam through poetry.

How a poem in Egypt started a friendship

Adam and Robert met in October 2017 on a trip to Egypt. Adam had his own turning point in 2013, after what he called an absolute rock bottom in 2012 and two nights in an ayahuasca ceremony. In Egypt he recited a poem to the group, and Robert pulled him aside to talk by the pool under the stars before he left for the airport.

The poem, Robert said, was about how you are what you have been looking for. It hit him because of the life he had been living. He told Jackson he had been president of Allergan Medical, the company behind Botox, and then CEO of Bausch & Lomb Surgical, before starting his own group of companies in 2012. He had been chasing perfection: "realize your ideal," as in something you have to reach. Adam's poem turned it around. You are already ideal.

Why Robert says you are the creator

The 2016 crisis taught him to stop blaming the world and start asking a different question. "I'm the creator," he said. "There's no one else to blame but me, and instead of looking outside and blaming others, I started asking myself, why did I choose this?" He realized many of his career choices came from wanting to fit in, because he did not like parts of himself, and the more he rejected those parts, the more they showed up around him.

"What I had thought was the world happening to me was actually the world happening for me."

He described life as "a love and forgiveness simulation school through experiential learning." To learn unconditional love, in his view, you have to meet its opposite and stop judging it. To learn forgiveness, you have to be hurt. That turns every painful person into a teacher. He said that in the school of life, a friend from another dimension might have volunteered to be the one who hurts you, so you can learn to forgive. "We should all stand up and applause for them at the end," he said, "because the more real they are, the more powerful the learning."

Treat yourself like someone you love

Jackson asked both men about what he called a self-loathing epidemic. Robert framed it as narcissism in two forms, the loud kind everyone recognizes and a hidden kind that looks like the opposite. Adam took it further. Self-loathing, he said, is still self-absorbed: the belief that everyone is watching and judging you is its own kind of self-focus.

His answer is one line from the same poem: "Treat yourself like someone you love." And he pushed back on the idea that self-love is something you can buy at a retreat.

"I actually think that self-love is the byproduct of your relationship with yourself."

We love some people more than others, he said, because of the time we have put in and the experiences we have shared. The same is true inside. Self-love grows from how you show up for yourself over time, not from one psychedelic or one hire that flips a switch.

Love and heartbreak are the same two notes

Robert's most surprising argument came through music. A major third, played one way, sounds like romantic love. Play the same two notes in the other direction and you hear a minor sixth, which sounds like heartbreak. He claims both intervals are built into the proportions of the pyramids at Giza.

"In the experience of romantic love is embedded the seed of heartbreak. You cannot have one without the other."

Adam answered with a poem that says the same thing in words. The gift of being human, it goes, is to feel all of life, "from deep sorrow to deep bliss," and the twist is that they always coexist. Then he gave the practical version. When you lose someone, you can look at the loss, or "look at how deeply I loved." To him, "every tear that I shed is an indicator of just how profound that love was." He does not see feelings as a line from good to bad. He sees a circle, and the work is to make it bigger: "the ability to feel."

What Robert means by 5D

Jackson asked him what 5D is. "5D is love," Robert said. "5D is transcendence of duality and realizing that every experience that you have is divine, even the bad things that happen to you." Bad things still happen, he said. What changes is how you see them. A proverb that came up in the same exchange, called ancient Chinese, sums it up: the man who blames others has a long way to go, the man who blames himself is halfway there, and the man who blames no one has already arrived.

The conversation went on to Metatron and Enoch, Hermes, Giza, a new tuning system Robert designed and the idea that time loops. He offered those as his own research and beliefs. His closing advice was simpler than any of it.

"You're in the coolest game of your own making you could ever live in. Don't waste it. Fall in love with it."

Adam's closing was about creativity. Most of the math goes over his head, he admitted, but he took one idea from it: if everything comes from the same pattern, then your growth is written into the smallest rose petal. Robert went to geometry in his dark night of the soul. Adam dug himself out of a deep depression through poetry and music. His invitation was to treat creativity "as a modality in a pathway to expand your consciousness."

Watch the full conversation above.

Frequently asked questions

What does Robert Edward Grant mean by "we attract everything we judge"?

That the patterns which keep showing up in your life match what you judge and reject in yourself, and they repeat until you stop judging them. He learned it after a 2016 fight for control of his companies, when he saw that the crisis mirrored what he had been pushing down inside.

What does Adam Roa say self-love is?

The byproduct of your relationship with yourself. Just as we love some people more because of the time and experiences we share, self-love grows from how you show up for yourself over time. His one-line practice: treat yourself like someone you love.

Why do they say love and heartbreak cannot be separated?

Robert points to music: the same two notes sound like love as a major third and like heartbreak as a minor sixth when played in the other direction. Adam says the only path to heartbreak is deep love, so every tear shows how much you loved.

What is 5D, according to Robert Edward Grant?

Love, and the ability to see every experience, including the painful ones, as part of a divine plan for your growth while it is happening, without blaming anyone.