1117: The Power of Forgiveness: Free Yourself From Anger and Grief with Author and Peace Activist Azim Khamisa

Robert Plank 0:04 We're back here on the podcast with Azim Cammisa and Azim has authored five books. They're called murder to forgiveness, from forgiveness to fulfillment, from fulfillment to peace and the secrets of the bulletproof spirit how to bounce back from life's hardest hits and leadership for the greater good. And we're going to have kind of a maybe a moving conversation and a zoom story. It's very uncomfortable and it's a little bit scary. Zoom's son was murdered in 1995. And he founded the Tarik camisa foundation and started a forgiveness movement that has reached millions globally. And Azim is leading the effort to inspire world peace through the practice of forgiveness. And so we're going to find out about Azim story, what he believes what his message is, and most importantly, what we should learn from his team's experience and how we can change our own actions and motivation. So I'm glad to be speaking with you.

Azim Khamisa 1:05 Thank you, Robert. Nice to see you again.

Robert Plank 1:08 Nice to see you as well. And so I narrated your audiobook and when I think about all of the books I've like, narrated and read yours, like really, it hit me really hard. It's really a deep story. So can you tell us just what you are all about and what your book is? Sure.

Azim Khamisa 1:26 As you pointed out, the genesis of my story is very tragic. 29 years ago, my only son who was a student at San Diego State University, a good kid, great sense of humor, gifted writer and a talented photographer. studying journalism and aspired someday to work for National Geographic is zero was gone the man of peace and he worked as a pizza delivery man on Fridays and Saturdays to make some extra money while he was in school, and he was lured to a bogus address by a youth gang. In a middle class area, I live in San Diego area. And he worked for a family restaurant, which regularly delivered in that area so they didn't think of any reason not to send him so the gang they lured in there gave the right apartment building address but the wrong apartment number. So Tarik, my son knocked on many doors was nobody had ordered the pizza came back to his car. But the pizzas in the trunk of his car climbed into the driver's side seat. As he was about to leave the scene of the crime he was accosted by four youth gang members. Three of them were 14, the leader of the gang was an 18 year old, who in a gang initiation handed a nine millimeter handgun to a 14 year old and gave him the order bust him bounce. Most gang members have nicknames. And if I had one round, which came to the driver side window, it entered my son's body under the left shoulder blade, he traveled across the upper part of his chest. And the bullet actually exited from his right armpit. But it was fatal. And as the coroner explained to me afterwards, he said the bullet followed a perfect pass. And I thought a perfect path. I thought that was an interesting choice of words. And he was very quick to tell me that Mr. Cammisa I'm not trying to be insensitive. We do not see a path like this very often and what it means in my lingo that destroyed all the vital organs in your son's body. And Tarik died a couple of minutes later. Drowning in his own board over a lousy pizza at the age of 20. So, you know the sudden senseless death of an unarmed innocent human being the overwhelming grief of a family. The total confusion is you try to absorb a new EDIUS reality and even though it was 29 years ago, it never goes away. Your father Robert There's nothing more complex for error than to lose a child. And I went through all the emotions, you would expect a parent to go through you know? The pain was unbearable, and I had to make some really difficult calls. I live by myself and this mother lived in the Seattle, Washington area. And how do you tell her mother, she's never gonna see her somebody. He had a very special relationship with his mom, I have also a special relationship with my mom, I lost her in 2017. So I remember when I did tell her, she let out this loud piercing shriek as she hit the floor. And I've finished a very broken conversation with one of our brothers, thank God, she wasn't by herself. But sometimes in deep trauma, that is a spark of clarity. Every scientist suffer the dark night of the soul. And that was the dark night of my soul. I remember. I was suicidal at a point, I really did not know how to go forward. Without him, and he was an important part of my family as children are. In this fog of clarity is that I met I practice as a Sufi Muslim, I started to meditate when I was 20. My mom was very spiritual. My dad was a businessman. So I grew up with equal emphasis on my spiritual foundation. In my career, so I'm reading a business book. I've worked in an international finance and my undergrad degrees and mathematics. And but if I'm, if I'm reading a business book, I'm also reading a spiritual book. And I've continued that practice from a very young age. And thank god to that, because without the spiritual foundation, I wouldn't have reacted to this tragedy as I am. So I lost my son, my early 40s. And what I downloaded, and I used to meditate an hour a day now I do two hours, but when I downloaded is that they were victims at both ends of the gun, came to kill my son was 14, is easy to see, my son was a victim of the 14 Euro, I take it takes heart of empathy and compassion to see that he was a victim of society, of American society. And so somehow, I had compassion for him. And it didn't come from my intellect or my loving heart. I don't think that's more Kosaki for the Lord, but rather, it was a download from my higher power. And I did not know much about the youth gangs, because I primarily traveled the world and didn't even know there are such things as youth gangs. Of course, every community in our country is plagued by youth violence. We lose a young person like my son every hour in the United States, in the richest nation in the world, and when we hit 400 school shootings since Columbine. And we have more than one a day, even today. This doesn't happen in other countries or other first world countries is very much an American phenomenon. So the question I asked is how did we build a country with children culture? Society is not happenstance. I think every one of us who is an American and I'm a first generation American, I was born in Kenya and educated in England and I left Kenya when I was 25. And moved to the United States because we were a minority in Kenya and were targeted. So I thought my children would be safer in America than they were in Kenya. So it was in a more difficult thing to swallow the thinking my children will be safer here. My son was actually killed on a street of the country I picked for him. He was actually born here. So seeing that there was such an issue with youth violence. Nine months after Tarik passed away, and to honor him, I decided to do something because I didn't feel that as a country, we're doing enough to save lives of children. And I founded the Tory Cammisa foundation. It is a nonprofit, his name is on the marquee. With the initial mission of stopping kids from killing kids by breaking the cycle of youth violence, and essentially had three mandates first was to save lives of children. Important to do, as I mentioned, we lose so many on a daily basis. Our second mandate was to empower them with the right choices so they don't fall to the crack and get involved with crime and gangs and drugs and alcohol and weapons. And our third mandate was to teach the principles of non violence, of accountability of empathy, compassion, forgiveness, of peacemaking and peacebuilding. And I started with a very simple premise that violence is a learned behavior, no child is born violent. Tony will kill my son wasn't born Bible. But if you accept is a truism that violence is a learned behavior. That non violence can also be a learned behavior. But you have to teach it. Where do our kids learn online acts? I mean, it really shocked me in may shock you to, and whoever your viewers and listeners are they by the time our our kids gets to grade one, six years old, they've seen over 100,000 images of violence. Everywhere you look, if it bleeds, it leads, TV, movies, video games, we have very much an iPhone, our organization. This one office had in the foundation, I reached out in forgiveness to the grandfather and guardian of my off Tony's grandfather and guardian. His name is plus Felix with attitude. I'm not here screaming retribution or revenge because your grandson killed my son. Now that I see both lost his son, because Tony live with his grandfather and pausing daddy. There's nothing I can do to bring my son back from the dead. He's gone on forever. And Tony is now in the hands of criminal justice system. He was the first 14 year old in the state of California to be tried as an adult. Nothing you can do to get Tony out of the criminal justice system. But the one thing we can do is to make sure no other young person ends up dead like my son, or ends up in prison for life like Tony, and it'd be who behooves us to work together because it was your grandson that took the life of my son and I've started this foundation with a very lofty mission of stopping kids from killing kids. I can't do this by myself. The reason I'm here is to ask for your help. Now he's that he's from the south. He is a but he's the same age as I am. And he was very quick to take my handle forgiveness. And the first thing from his mouth is that ever since I knew that my grandson, murdered your son I've been I went into the prayer closet. So thank you for reaching out to me because I wanted to meet you and extend my condolences to you and your family for your loss. And of course I'll help you will fast forward. Foundation is also in his 29th year. I started the foundation the same year Tarik died he died in January I started the foundation in October and 95. Foundation has reached 2 million kids we have a safe school model is for programs for years, where we were invited by UC Berkeley to create a program for parents. Based on the work we've done with the students under the umbrella of restorative justice. And during COVID We created a program for teachers because they are less traumatizes the kids. So the six the safe school model now is a solution we've created to one of the biggest malaise in our country, not only it's been tested by all of our universities and colleges and inside San Diego County. We've been acknowledged I think I want about at some awards. We have a long list of schools where I think we have a second site in Philadelphia, we started with one school district, we are now in 10. And when we are in San Diego County, we provide direct services. When we go out of San Diego County, we become a training institute. So our challenge is enough resources to go to all the schools that need us, within a nonprofit, you'll never have enough money to go where you want to go. But my hope is that someday, the work we are doing in school is as important as STEM. You know, what is important to read, write and do arithmetic, and understand science. Only 35% have an undergrad degree and only 14% ever grad graduate degree and about 4% have a PhD. But all kids eventually become parents. So I feel the work we're doing in school is as important as Stan and hopefully someday, I can get the Department of Education that at the state or the federal level to fund us, then we can go to every school that needs us, because we do have a solution because we're not there yet. But I'm working towards it. Five years after the tragedy, I went to meet the young man who killed my son. So he was 19. I figured for me to complete my journey of forgiveness. I had to come eyeball to eyeball with them. And that was a very transformative experience for both of us. I had the grandfather go with me because he was the first time I met Tony. And I told the grandfather, I need to have a one on one with Tony, because I have some tough questions. He was the last person to see my son. And if you're there, you'll be defensive. And so my father was very gracious. And he left us alone for a couple of hours. And I asked him the questions that I had no answers for. But the seminal moment was, when we looked eyeballs, I'm looking in his eyes trying to find the murderer. And I didn't, I was able to climb through his eye and touch his humanity, I got the spark and M was no different than the spark in me, or you, or anybody else who is listening to this podcast. I wasn't expecting that. He was remorseful. He was articulate. He was well mannered. And he did not portray any of the typical attitudes of a 19 year old in American society. I'm trying to say he was a lack of a kid. And I could tell that my hand or forgiveness course he knew about it, that I forgiven him because he stayed in touch with his grandfather, who was always wisdom during the time he was incarcerated. And I see, I could see that my hand of forgiveness had shifted him. So at that point, I told him, You know, I have forgiven you because I've been working with the grandfather for good four years. But I want you to know that when you come out of prison, you can come join your grandfather and me and working on the foundation. And I remember leaving the prison. And I still remember because that was 23 years ago. I still remember that, that when I was leaving the prison. The cadence of my steps going away from the prison was a lot more bouncier than the one I walked in. And forgiveness can be very freeing. And I knew at that point, I completed my journey in forgiveness. And the preeminent thought in my mind was Why did I wait so long? The next day, the grandfather called me said that meeting you had with Tony, yesterday has totally transformed him because prior to meeting him, he will say Danny, I'm not gonna make it in prison. I'm going to die is a good looking kid in an adult prison. And you know what our prisons are like human zoos. It's a talk. I stayed with him from nine till 239 for 20 years and advocated for his release, finally at 39, which was in 2019. He went to the event in front of the parole board. And I was there advocating for his release. And even the commissioner was in tears. He says, I've been doing this work for 25 years. I've never had the victim's father, advocate for the offenders release. I said you know he has work to do not behind bars, but with the foundation because as you can tell, he's not the same person as he was when he took the life of my son and he can save many Are the kids from not following in his former footsteps, so we listen. And I'll guarantee his behavior. And we'll hire him. And he won parole, which never happens when you go in the parole board for the first time, sometimes you'll never get up, because he was given sentence of 25 years to life. So then he had to another governor has to sign off on it. And all the other Commissioners, he finally got out in 2020, April. And he's been out now for a good five years, and he's now volunteering for the foundation is his grandfather has his grandfather and I have for the last 29 years. And we are often on stage and we spoke at schools, I do 3040 presentations at school every year, speaking a lot of conferences, in fact, they're speaking together this Saturday. And he's also on the board of the target Cammisa Foundation. And he's very passionate about making sure other young people don't make the mistakes, following his former footsteps. So it's a powerful story of forgiveness and redemption. And I'm glad I went the way I did I could have gone the other way many people do. What good would that have done? So it was the right choice. And I hope that when your listeners and viewers watch this podcast, nowadays, angst in every family, then all these issues with father, son, mother, daughter, ex wives, ex, ex husbands, I do this work in corporations as well, there's always a lot of dissension and management teams, that hopefully they can take away the benefits of forgiveness. Because yeah, it's really helped me.

Robert Plank 21:54 And it's helped you and it's helped others. And that's this, it's very moving and motivating to hear about this because like you say, you're in a support group environment, right, and you hear about everyone else's problems. And either, and most people have worse problems. And you right, like, you get quite a bit of perspective by saying, Man, you know, I thought I was stressed about my own situation, and this other person had all these things that are going through with them, because of the contrast, you get these lessons back that you then apply. And I mean, I had so many different thoughts going through my head as you were explaining every step of this, but you know, at the beginning, you mentioned about reading, or like downloading the like a business book, like getting the logic, the information, and then reading a spiritual book and getting kind of your more emotional guidance. And just hearing your story just makes me think about the need to get the logic and the emotion just continuously getting it in. It's kind of like if you stop learning, right, if you stop reading a book, if you stop being curious, then your mind kind of gets sluggish. But many times, it's easy to forget about the other side of the coin, right about the spiritual and the self help and have a personal development. And that's, so this is very much needed. And it's very much the thing about and we're kind of in the last few minutes of our conversation. But I think one thing that really hit me really hard about your book was you kept revisiting this concept of forgiveness, and especially that forgiveness is about you, not the other person. And you mentioned a moment ago that, like what's happened has happened, right? And it's easy to, to wish that you could go back in time and change things. But that's what's done. And many times when we're trying to decide what to do next. And in any situation, there's, well, I can't undo what's been done. So now I only have the set of choices in front of me. And so as far as this concept of forgiveness, can you maybe unpack that slightly and tell us just what you're all about as far as this forgiveness message?

Azim Khamisa 23:53 The biggest piece, as you already mentioned, is to separate yourself from the offender. Even the Scriptures tell us when Justice mind, Tony had his own life. I have my own life. I didn't want to go through life in anger and hatred, because if I stay in anger and hatred, who am I? Mandela didn't write this quote, but he made it famous. He says unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die. anger and hatred will kill you and not your authentic and I didn't want to go through life as a victim. I had a full life. I worked in international finance, travel the world stayed at nice places and a good social life. And then I had no life. I wanted that life back and I knew that I didn't want to go through life on crutches I lost my one and only some people do feel sorry for me, but there's no quality of life being a victim. And unless you forgive you remain a victim. I have a full life today. It's different, but I like it better because this is about saving lives of kids. Finance was about money. This is far more important, far more fulfilling. And as you pointed out, in my introduction, I've written five books and continue to promote. So the important thing to learn first is to leave the offender to the higher power. Karma always balances. And to understand that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. That's where peace, love, happiness and health. I don't take any pills. I'm 75 years old, I walk seven miles a day. So, you know, forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself, you stay in all of these debilitating emotions, and only forgiving people that have harmed you forgiving yourselves because at some level, we've all huh. So you want to stay in, in anger or resentment or hatred or guilt, or shame. You know, because these are very debilitating emotions and forgiveness can you know, there are different steps I do a two day workshop on. And I teach three milestone steps how you forgive people that have harmed you, and three months, some steps of how you forgive yourselves, is going to be an online program on my on my website, we also now have started March 6, which was my son's 50th birthday that I delivered either 20 A couple of months ago, peace to forgiveness. I've been working on studying this for two and a half years, with six graduate university teams, as well as six volunteers and four interns, that the science tells us that if we can get to three and a half percent of the world's population, then it organically grows. This has been evidenced by the Gandhi movement, MLK movement, meter movement, Black Lives Matter movement, all of the nonviolent movements, the goal is to get to 10%, or three and a half percent of a billion people is 300 million people achievable with internet. Because if enough people let's say 300 million people can can espouse forgiveness for themselves, their families, their communities. And the default action will be well, please. So we found 240 organizations around the world that are working on world peace, United Nations being one of them, actually, this book to the General Assembly there, there is a high level culture on the there's a high level forum on the culture of peace that meets once a year. They started about six years ago, and I spoke with the second second year of that particular efforts. So so we're moving very quickly to garnering all of these partners. And it's my hope that before I move on to the next world, that we can get to this magic number of 300 million people. So the website for that is piece two forgiveness.org the website for the foundation is T k f.org. Tarik Cammisa Foundation, TK app.org. And my personal website is My name is Jim cammisa.com. So those are the website, hopefully you can put that in the podcast, where people hopefully can check it out. I did a TED talk with a grandfather there's over a million views. So if you go to ted.com, and put my name in, it will show

Robert Plank 28:20 very nice. But there's so much to think about here. And I just really liked how you as you said, You've channeled it into something good, right? The the easy, or perhaps the default, unenlightened path would be the feeling sorry for yourself Self harm, revenge and all that. But you've turned it into something good. And I am amazed when I first met you, I looked at your bio. And I think you said you gave like 100, keynotes and even some of what you mentioned here about speaking to the United Nations, and just like this constant activity, right, just always moving to get the word out to get to that three and a half percent. That's very inspiring. And it gives us a lot to think about just as far as choosing a better path. And awareness is a big part of just that first step right of people knowing that this sort of education exists, and we all have some kind of resentment where we don't want to let go of right to be able to take some steps toward forgiveness. We all have baggage we all think about oh, that that person was mean to me when I was a little kid and it's I've carried it all this time, and I wish I could get rid of it. And so it's great to know that these resources exist such as peace through forgiveness.org TK f.org and Azim Cammisa did you say that was.com or.org.com.com And then you said go to ted.com and search your name which we spell it AZ I m last name KHAMI S A and so this has just been a heavy conversation. I feel like it was like three podcasts in one and there's there's so many just I think any I He didn't take a seven mile walk. And I need to do a two hour meditation after this just to kind of get myself back on a path. I'm glad that it's later in the day, just because if we did this first in the morning, I would just be maybe, maybe knocked over a little bit all day long. And so but this is important, right? And this is some deep psychological subject matter we're speaking about. And so as people are checking out these resources, such as peace through forgiveness, or do you have any final parting words of advice, I like to ask my guests about your lessons, what do you have? So

Azim Khamisa 30:32 I, you know, my you mentioned my book, my trilogy was more than to forgiveness, forgiveness to fulfillment, because the work I have done in the last 29 years has been very fulfilling. And my trilogy was fulfillment to peace. And Tony actually wrote the foreword to it. And all of those books are available on my website, Amazon and wherever you buy books. But what inspired my last book, because I think we all want peace, from folklore nine to peace, was after 911. I went into a very deep into a very deep into internal reflection, because the people that were perpetrated this atrocity that killed 3000 people work from my faith, Simon was practicing Muslim. So I know it's heavy on everybody's heart a little heavier on my heart, and I couldn't quite get that the same fate helped me to get to forgiveness. How did this knucklehead create this atrocity. And I stayed in this introspective space for a good eight months. And what came out in my meditation was this quote, which then was the basis of my last book from fulfillment to peace. I'll finish with this quote, that says it. Sustained goodwill create friendship, because you don't make friends by bombing them. You make friends by by sustaining goodwill over many, many, many years, you know, most of us have enough good friends that we can count on one. And as exemplified by my relationship with a grandfather, we've been together for 29 years and we'll be together forever. I just had lunch with him a couple of days ago, we meet all the time. So sustain goodwill creates friendships, sustained. Friendship creates trust, sustained trust creates respect, sustained respects, creates empathy. Sustained equity creates compassion. Sustained compassion makes forgiveness possible, which helps create peace, Accords, my peace, formula, goodwill, friendship, trust, respect, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, peace. So I think that this is something that has been my journey. And that I started with a goodwill when I reached out to the grandfather and then eventually to Tony, understood that the steps I've taken has got me to a level of peace today that I never had before. Not that I wouldn't want Tarik back rubbish. And it's not possible. But I am at peace. And I hope that your listeners will take this podcast. And you know, as I said, there are many resources. And when I have an online course, we already have one online course on peaceful forgiveness. But I'm doing a much more detailed one which is almost 90% Ready, on the peace to forgiveness website where they can go and hopefully, learn how to forgive people that have harmed them forgive themselves, and go on this journey to find peace, like I am.

Robert Plank 33:38 very nice and very much needed. They don't teach self help in schools, they teach STEM, but some of these more spiritual aspects really need more of attention given to it and so gkf.org fees through forgiveness.org and Azim camisa it's been wonderful speaking with you, I appreciate your message very much. And thank you very much for being here.

Azim Khamisa 34:01 Thank you for having me, Robert. Good to see you and God bless.

Robert Plank 34:08 And really appreciate you being a listener of the marketer of the date Podcast the place to go right now. If you want to know more about running your own podcast is dF y podcast.com/free. Go there right now claim your free gift. DFI podcast.com/free Transcribed by https://otter.ai