Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 413: Ethan Sisser

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

Ethan Sisser, psychedelic student afflicted with a stage-4 brain tumor, joins the DTFH! You can follow Ethan's journey to recovery on his website, EthansAngels.org, or follow him on Facebook and YouTube. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: FightCamp - Visit joinfightcamp.com/duncan to try Fight Camp FREE for 30 days! ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. That's making love in a hot air balloon by the French artist Garage, who is now, as many of you know, living in Brazil. I love that song because from time to time, I kind of feel like I'm a hyper-dimensional whale

that's managed to beach itself on the shores of the material universe. You know what I mean, those moments when you look back at huge parts of your life, it chapters in your incarnation and realize that what at the time you thought was some kind of autonomous display of your brilliance was, in fact, no different than the sad dance you see in cowboy movies when a bandit starts blasting bullets at the cowboy boot clad feet of a cowboy. You know that thing where you dance, dance, and you shoot at them and they dance? That horrible thing?

Only in this case, it wasn't a bandit that was shooting at your feet. It was your fear, some imaginary, phantasmal idea that you'd gotten in your head about what was dangerous in the world. But instead of looking that fear right in the eyes, you did what I did, which is you figured out the most ridiculous way to transform your cowardice into virtue. You imagine that because you were so terrified of the world that there was something wrong with the world. In other words, you were completely nuts.

And in my life, I've sought out many antidotes for these fear moments. I've tried to be selfish. That doesn't work. I've tried to masturbate while on MDMA. I've received blowjobs on ketamine while playing God of War and gone to a variety of music festivals. And in fact, I have been banged down in hot air balloons over the beautiful French countryside

in the South of France, over wine country. I've felt what it's like to have a French balloon pilot playing me and whispering verses from the course and miracles in my ear. But nothing really helped. I always felt like I just didn't quite fit in here until I was lucky enough to spawn. I had a beautiful child. And now in my old age, I've come to the rather embarrassing, obvious

and most certainly boring in italics and impact font realization that the pathway to true psychedelic happiness is not from getting banged down by a beautiful French balloon pilot. It's not from hedonism. It's not from attempting to dissolve into a never-ending k-hole, but rather something as simple as cooking pancakes for my toddler. Something as simple as that somehow transcends all the psychedelic moments I've ever had in my life. I don't know what that is.

It gives me the feeling that when Ram Dass and all the teachers refer to the dimension that we're in as some kind of school, then we're in elementary school. We're learning just the basics of how to navigate the eternal infinite multiverse. And I feel lucky that I have been exposed to some of those ideas, which can get rather complex, but I think if you look at the nucleus of the damn thing, it's just help people. Basic. You know, basic. That's where we're at right now. Basic, but basic is beautiful and perfect.

It's some kind of elemental truth. And so I find myself really inspired by the conversation I had today with today's guest, Ethan, because here you are going to encounter an actual servant. Somebody who in potentially their last few months of human existence wants to help, wants to serve, but someone who didn't just have some epiphany towards the potential end of their lives, someone who's been doing it for a long time. I met him at a Ram Dass retreat. And I guess a couple of months ago, he reached out to me and said he would love to appear on the podcast,

because if the Western doctors are correct and quite often they're not, he might not be in the material universe that much longer. And he wanted to use the DTFH as a medium through which to communicate some aspects of his philosophy, which I find to be quite beautiful. Today's guest is Ethan Siscer. We're going to jump right into that. But first this. Thank you Fight Camp for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH.

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For an infinite number of incarnations, if you want to join us for a weekly meditation, a book club, or a Friday family gathering, if you want to hang out in our beautiful discord server with some of the top intellectuals, eroticists, and philosophers of the modern age, then go no further than patreon.com slash DTFH and subscribe. You'll get commercial free episodes of the DTFH along with instant access to a myriad of video content. We've been doing a weekly group meditation now for months called Journey into Boredom. We've gone through. We're in our third book on the book club and every Friday we have an awesome get together digitally.

So I would love for you to sign up. Just head over to patreon.com forward slash DTF. And now everybody without further ado, please welcome to the DTFH, the brilliant Ethan Siscer. Ethan, welcome to the DTFH. It's really, really nice that we finally made this happen. We've been texting back and forth a little bit and you've got a very busy schedule for it. Yeah, pretty busy. It's a interesting thing, what you're going through.

And I wonder if we could just start off by you sharing what that is. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it changes each day. But the best way I could describe it, it feels like a death rebirth portal. I mean, I have stage four brain cancer, but it's not just the brain cancer. It feels like everything is changing. And then it's almost like my soul chose to have this crazy time to experience this because I feel like the world is going through something similar to what I'm going through. But just everyone is going through it in their own way.

So yeah, that's it. As you're watching all of society go through a myriad of upheavals, it must seem almost like a dream to you. I mean, it does to me. Many days I just think to myself, oh, we're all sharing a dream here and the dream is about to shift into something else just like dreams do. Exactly. Yeah, that's definitely what it feels like. I mean, I was living in Hawaii, living with my shaman and the shamanic community and my intuition told me to fly back to New York, live with family and do some healing work in the city and save up money. And then go back to Hawaii.

And then on the plane ride, I had a minor stroke and left side of the body was almost paralyzed and then went to the emergency room and discovered a massive tumor that apparently had been growing for like seven or eight or more years and I had no idea. Never got a headache, hardly ever got sick. So yeah, I ended up staying with family and it was like this deep shamanic experience where I quite literally went back to live with my mother and her husband and then my father and his wife and it was like deep soul lineage or family lineage clearing. I guess they say if you think you're enlightened, go live with your parents. If you want to be really enlightened, go have brain surgery and seizures and pain and then live with your parents in the middle of the middle of COVID and all this. So that's kind of what I've been experiencing. So many people and I always say that when I'm talking about myself. My selfish ass is, you know, like inconvenienced.

You know what I mean? I think this is what they call COVID fatigue or whatever. So many of us are maybe losing track of those of us who are at the moment healthy are losing track of what people right now are going through who maybe don't have COVID. But who are dealing with, you know, things like cancer, it was already hard enough before this. I mean, I remember when I was getting radiation therapy, driving to get radiation therapy and just how through LA traffic that by itself made me think, my God, what is this thing that I'm in right now? I'm having to like cut weave through traffic just to get like, you know, radiation shot into my lymph nodes. But you are dealing with multiple levels of danger every time you go out, right? Are you immunocompromised?

Are you dealing with like, like if you were to contract COVID, it would not, it's worse than if I got it. I don't know. I mean, it's strange. I was in the hospital, literally with a head infection plus and blood coming out of my head and in the hospital with other people with COVID. And for the past 14 months, I never had one sniffle, not one cough or sneeze or anything. So it's very interesting. I feel like the healthiest person with glioblastoma in the world. So to answer your question, I mean, I feel healthy, but I feel like all the past karma and addictions and escape patterns, they all kind of manifested in the tumor.

But the rest of my body is like, it's pretty healthy except the stress of going through four head surgeries and radiation and chemo. But yeah, so it's very interesting for me as far as the health stuff. But at the same time, even sitting up to talk to you, I have to be very mindful because of the pain and the pre-seizure auras and all that stuff. So yeah, it's a lot for me too. Yeah. Well, I really am grateful to you for giving me any amount of time right now. And I think what's really for me inspiring, having had some communication with you prior to this podcast and talking to you now is that you really are demonstrating this possibility that gets brought up a lot in various lineages, which is that you can go through a thing like this consciously because your prognosis is terminal.

Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, the brain surgeon, he literally said there's nothing we can do. It's incurable because there's a new tumor that grew. I literally have a hole in my head. There's abdominal tissue covering the hole. So they can't do radiation. They can't do chemo right now.

Or they can do chemo, but they can't do radiation and surgery. But I'm working with a functional medicine doctor and I'm doing lots of frequency healing. So yeah, the Western doctor said there's no hope. The other practitioners are hopeful. But yeah, on a certain level, it is very critical. I'm not trying to be delusional about it. It's already in my brain, the glioblastoma. So yeah, that's, I guess, the prognosis.

Yeah. But again, that's just a prognosis. There's many, many examples in the world of people who have a similar diagnosis who spontaneously heal. It's not out of the question, but still anytime we go through a thing like what you're going through, it is a form of death already. You have to say goodbye to, I don't know if you were as dumb as I was when I got cancer. I certainly was not as peaceful as you are right now. But I had been entertaining the idea that somehow I was going to live forever. I really did.

I allowed myself to believe that just out of laziness or something. And when I was reminded by my body that this is not the case, that I had to say goodbye to a delusion that I was very attached to. But I wonder if you could talk about what it's like to approach this kind of karma consciously. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a practice. And I'm grateful that I've met many beautiful teachers. I don't know if I mentioned to you, I was two inches away from living with Ram Dassan Maui. I did an interview with him for a caretaker position. But he looked at my resume.

I gave him like 10 pages of testimonials from massage clients. He was like, you know, you would just be gardening here and you should be helping people. So get out of here. Pretty much that's what he said. So my point, what was your question again? I'm sorry. Well, the question, no, my question is, I don't even know if it's a question, but just you're approaching the situation through the lens of mindfulness, through the lens of somebody who has had a real practice and has been a healer for a long time.

So I just wanted to hear what that's like, how you're using all these tools that you've been given by various teachers to somehow stay present through all this. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. Because yeah, I feel very lucky. I mean, I've had so many people praying for me. I don't think I'd be alive if I didn't have the support and prayers, especially in times where I've been weak. And then also I feel like my soul, it might sound strange, but as soon as I was diagnosed, it made perfect sense.

And it wasn't a surprise. It wasn't like it felt perfect. Like I'm supposed to have brain cancer. And it's almost like God and my soul prepared me by putting through me through all these trainings and like copious amounts of ayahuasca and with the shaman and Hawaii and all of these different like I met Ramdas. That's a huge blessing just to sit in the same room with him. So I feel lucky. Not everyone is as lucky as me. And for example, I've been trying to just share my journey in real time on Facebook or any platform I can.

And I've had people reach out to me because either they've been inspired or they've reached out for support. So last night, literally two in the morning, I'm talking to this woman in Oregon and she's like suicidal. She's in an abusive relationship. And I just feel like God is aligning beautiful things. Like I was able to be present with her and that just felt right in my heart. So it's kind of like death and then blessings, like even the fact that we're talking, it's a blessing for me. So thank you. Me too.

So yeah, basically it's like all these, sometimes I would get fanatical about yoga and stretching and cleansing and like, I don't know, it just felt like my soul was preparing for this. And still every moment I don't feel ready. Like I think I am, but at those moments of death, I'm like, oh, well, I don't know. This is hard. There have been many moments where I have to decide, am I going to choose to call upon all of my angel guides and pray and fight for life? Or am I going to, is it my time? And maybe it's ego to try to stay alive. And honestly, in those moments, I just try to be present and see what comes next.

But I could very well leave my body in a few weeks or a month or two. I still need my fifth head surgery, which I'm trying to prepare for mentally. So yeah, all of these practices, I feel lucky because if I had to change everything instantly when I was diagnosed, I don't think I could do it. So that's why I want to use my situation to help people how I can. Do you, when you, when you say help people, what do you mean? Like in the sense that you want to comfort people or because, you know, a lot of people when they, when they're, I imagine some people listening to this might feel anxious or many people are thinking, oh my God, what if I am have something that I'm not aware of? Or, oh my God, I don't want to, I don't even want to think about the possibility of illness or sickness. So do you have some sense that there's a way that you can help ease people's fear of death?

Yeah, I mean, one thing that I'm trying to do when able, when I'm not in too much pain, like I'm trying to just document my journey in real time. So for example, some nights I'm literally crying in pain. So the lighting sucks, you know, the sound quality, maybe not the best, but I'm just recording it and documenting in real time. And then there are moments where I could teach a free 10 minute yoga class on Facebook live. So that's what I'm doing. And then what I really want, like it's very humbling because I have these dreams in my heart and all of this, like these things I want to create. But there were months where I couldn't even speak to you like this without aggravating a seizure or pre-seizure auras. So it's like, I'm trying to do both at once, like show people the journey and maybe that's helpful.

But then also actually create something to help people. I mean, also, like, I can't really help anyone. I'm trying to trust that spirit is guiding everything, but when opportunities come up, I'm trying to just show up as best as I can. So last night, this woman, I'm probably the only person who's holding space for her. And it's just, it happened and, you know, I'm praying for her and she's in Oregon. I'm in North Carolina and I don't know, just these kinds of things are happening. It's like out of my control. But you're, Ethan, you sound like a servant to people.

Oh yeah, I want to. That maybe you could talk about what you think being a servant means. And was there a time when you weren't, was there something that shifted in your life? Because this didn't just start with your diagnosis. You have been like this for a while. But was there a time when maybe you were really compressed into selfishness and then started helping people? Or have you been like this mostly? Yeah, I mean, I've always loved to help people.

But often I would run away from, I guess you could say responsibilities. I'd be very self critical and just like hibernate and zone out and watch movies and eat crappy food. And so it's like, yeah, I've always loved to help people, but I've often run away from it. Like literally clients would schedule with me and I would often lie to them and tell them I don't feel good and cancel because I felt so inadequate. And this went on for years and that's probably what led to the cancer in some ways. But now I feel, I guess the cancer has helped me just accept death and accept my humanity. And I feel more confident now, if that makes sense, just being myself. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

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Now back to the podcast. But you also mentioned that there are things you wanted to create, dreams. What are those things? What are the things that you want to create regardless of what your next few months are like? What are they? What are they talking about? Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it.

I thought about this a lot because there are these dreams that have nothing to do with the cancer, the COVID or anything else. And that's what I want to help other people do too. So yeah, the dream of in an ayahuasca ceremony, I had a vision of belly dancing, which I thought was insane after not doing my whole life. So I went to India and studied with my teacher, Payal Gupta for like 10 months. But I haven't been able to dance since then besides like 30 seconds here or there. So I want to dance. I want to get back into music. I've lost function in my left hand for the most part.

I want to study with my shaman again in Hawaii because I miss him. I want to write a lot. I love to write, but it's been hard to type with my left hand, create art. And I want to share my art with people. I want to help people connect with their forms of creativity. So yeah, those are some ways. And I feel like my situation now, this is like an amazing opportunity to help people. It's almost like a cool, like if I was perfectly healthy and I had like a successful business per se and everything, like it wouldn't be as cool as having stage 4 brain cancer, transforming it and then creating beauty, I think.

So those are some of the ways I want to help people. I want to just be present with people if I can and sometimes that's helpful. I'm trying to basically use what I can. I told my shaman a few months ago, his name is Olm. I said Olm, I can't dance anymore. I can't create music and guitar. I can't do yoga like I used to every day. I can't exercise.

I can't give massage and all these things I couldn't do. He said, Ethan, you know, sometimes I said, I can't even sit up to meditate sometimes. And he said, well, sometimes when certain senses are not working, other ones are heightened. So I've been trying to follow that and basically use what I can to help. Wow. Yeah. I don't think some people just aren't aware of the fact that cancer has this teacher quality to it. And this, you know, when I was going through it, I remember like feeling like I couldn't,

it was hard to talk about that quality of it. Or I felt almost crazy when I began to like in those moments where there was, in those moments where there wasn't a certainty about how far it had spread through my body. In those moments where I was unsure of like what was going to happen to me. Everything became very vivid and beautiful and poignant. And it's such a paradox, isn't it? That it's these things that remind us of the temporary nature of human incarnation, at least in the physical form that allow our incarnations to really sort of blossom.

And but the funny thing to me is that in retrospect, as I'm looking back, everybody really does have a similar diagnosis, you know, a prognosis. We all have a similar prognosis. You know, and when I look at the flow of time, for example, and realize how a year can go by in the blink of an eye, how lifetime can go by in a blink of an eye, then it makes me think what's the difference between having a few months left or statistically, you know, 30 years or something.

Well, I mean, for you it's infinity. Remember? Yeah, yeah. Infinity. Yeah, right. Well, but then sometimes when I look back on that, I think, well, I think what was happening there is I was getting my soul confused with my body. Right.

Because I still think that. It's just I don't think my body's going to stick around for infinity. Thank God. We don't want this thing floating through time forever. The sun's going to supernova. What about that? Can you what are what is your feeling now regarding your soul? And, you know, Ram Dass talks about the soul so much.

And I would love to hear your thoughts on that, like the distinction between the soul and the body vehicle. Yeah, I mean, my heart and my mind feel pretty good. And I'm very grateful for that. So yeah, and the soul too. Yeah, I don't know. I told my Thai yoga teacher about my experience when I was in the hospital. And he's like, you know, Ethan, I've died.

I've medically died several times. And when I crossed over to the other side a few times, I didn't even know that I was dead. So one of the angels had to like wake me up and said, hey, you've left your body. And now I'm going to guide you to the next step or whatever. So that was interesting to think about that. Maybe like it's all good, you could say that like the pain or the karma. It's kind of like in this realm and maybe, I don't know, maybe they're like intermediary realms, but deep down inside, it feels okay.

When that moment comes, I'll probably freak out. But I don't know. I just, I feel like Ram Dass says we're walking each other home and like, you know, even in Christianity, they talk about heaven and I don't know. I only think the karma and the sin and all that stuff. It's in this realm. Like, but when we're moving the higher realms, that's where the oneness is. And that's where the unity is.

Yeah, this, I agree with you there. I feel like that's one of the big secrets. And it's a pretty open secret in the sense that it's, anyone has access to people who've had NDE's. And the stories they tell are similar in that most people have a real like, they don't want to come back here. Right. Yeah. They have the same reaction to coming back to their human incarnation as like my toddler has about going to preschool. I mean, they don't want to go.

They want to cuddle. They want to stay in that. And, but then there's this sense of like, no, you're, you have to, you're not done friend. You're going back in. So do you feel done? Do you feel, because to me it sounds like you don't sounds to me like you feel like there's a lot more to do here for you. Yeah, I feel like I would tell healers and coaches for years. I said, I just don't feel fully alive.

I feel like I want a new life. And so yeah, this cancer has been an opportunity to kind of like create a new life. So yeah, I don't feel done at all. So I'm trying to like have both be content with death if it comes soon, but also just follow my dreams. And I think it was a Ramdas who said we're, no, I think a manual. This woman, Pat Rodegas, she used to travel with Ramdas and she channeled the manual. And I think a manual said, we're not going to leave our bodies a moment too soon or too late. Do you buy that?

I do, yeah. Yeah, I do too. Do you know the story that Ramdas tells about Maharaji and one of his students out in the boat? You know about this story? So it's a, it's a similar story, but apparently Neem Karly Baba is out on a boat and I'm not sure where this was. In the middle of a lake, nanotall or something. I'm not sure. And I don't know if it was KK or it was one of his closest associates who can't swim is sitting in the boat and Maharaji says to him,

jump into the lake and he's like, I can't swim. You know, I can't swim. And Maharaji says, just jump. And, you know, this is your guru telling you to do something. And an awakened being, I think in that effulgence, you just don't, you feel like everything you feel has a kind of bliss quality to it, even if it's fear. And so he jumps out of the boat and the water only goes up to his waist and Neem Karly Baba is laughing and he points to this bridge, a very high bridge. And he says, even if you jumped off of that, you wouldn't die if it wasn't your time to go. That's really a cool idea.

It, to me, it has within it this sense that there's a bigger plan going on here that we did sign up for this, that when you say you felt like you, this was somehow in your plan or destiny. It's that's real. Like you, you signed up for this. And I think it's comforting to hear you say that because sometimes when I hear Ram Dass talk about that, I feel like, is that just a way to work out the problem of evil in the world or the problem of catastrophic things, seemingly catastrophic things happening to people? You know, is that like just a lazy way of making sense of the suffering in the world? So to hear you say that you felt like this was exactly where you were supposed to be, I think is really a beautiful thing for me and probably for a lot of people who are quite scared of the impermanent nature of things. Yeah. I mean, for me, it definitely does not make it easier or the pain go down.

But, you know, it's, um, for my mind, it's definitely helpful. I'm sorry you're in pain. Yeah. I mean, some of the pain is good pain, like the nerves reawakening after my skull has been cut into. So that's kind of like good pain and then there's bad pain. And then even if LeBron James didn't exercise for 14 months and he had to like rehab, he had some pain. So there's that kind of pain could be worse. So yeah, just trying to be present with it.

But yeah, thank you. What are you in your experience like dealing with chatting with people who are reacting to what you're going through? Could you give some notes to us out here about the like, whenever I hear that somebody has suddenly discovered an illness or that someone has had an accident or something, I have no idea what to say. I'm usually completely like, do I go, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Or do I go, what do we, you know what I mean? I think a lot of us are really uncertain how we're supposed to talk with people who are going through what you're going through. Could you give us some pointers in that regard? Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, the thing that helps me the most is just people being present with me. I haven't interacted with too many people in person because of being in hospitals and all the pain being at home. And it's been mostly with my mom or my dad. So with them, it's almost like part of my training, holding space for other people. As I'm in this situation, I've had to do that a lot. So my mom, at the time she's freaked out, understandably, she loves me so much, she's helped immensely. So I'm trying to have compassion for their perspective, same thing with my dad and other friends. But then the online world is kind of a different world too.

A lot of people want to help. I'm just trying to think of how to answer the question. I think the biggest thing is just to be present because some people don't want help from certain people. Yeah. I don't know. And then if some people, it's just their time to go. Some people have to go through what they're going through. Right.

Yeah. And then it forces other people to face their own pain and death and then it brings up stuff for them. That's where I felt guilty because when my neurosis gets triggered around somebody, even now when I'm chatting with you, I'm like, God, I don't want to say something that offends them. I don't want to, like, you know what I mean? Like, I think we've always have felt like a nervous quality around people who are going through. Because that's the last thing you, anytime that I've realized that a person who is like when my father was passing or when my mother was passing or anytime I've realized that they actually are beginning to tend to me healthy, you know, physically okay.

That's always made me feel embarrassed and guilty. It's, you know, like we, it's, it's, it's, I guess the best way to put it is like, even in this interaction, I feel hyper sensitive to over talking, you know, like I want to hear what you have to say. But I don't know, I'm afraid to have to be here with you. Yeah. Well, I'm, I think I'm different than a lot of people with my condition. So I think it's helpful to just see who each person is and then connect with them if possible. Yeah. What if you had to like, you know, if you are leaving this dream.

But you wanted to leave some wisdom in the dream for those of us who are still deciding to hang out here. What would that be? I guess probably the first thing would be, I had to think about this. I literally created a living will and that's a good practice right there and power of attorney and dealing with. I mean, to be honest, I don't want to talk about family numbers, but there's family conflict. And the night before the surgery, I'm in extreme pain and trying to figure out who's going to be the primary power of attorney. They're not getting along. Should I pick one and then they'll inform the other.

So it was comical at times, you know. So I've thought about this. So I actually emailed myself the, it's called the 11 foundational principles. I saw it in one of my ceremonies with my shaman and I wrote about it for many years while I was in India. But I would always be self critical and delete the writings and so I would share the 11 foundational principles with people. And also I would share all of my art. I would just give it away all the art I've created the past 18 years. It's all digital, but it wasn't, it wasn't scanned in super high quality.

So I was always afraid of printing it because it kind of looks crappy. But now that people are using cell phones and digital everything, I've been thinking I want to share my art with people. So those are probably the two things, sharing my art and just writing down the 11 foundational principles and sharing them with people. And then I guess my, sorry, I'm sorry. And then just my YouTube videos that I've been documenting the past few months. What are some of the principles? Well, they're all saying the same thing basically. And there are ways to connect with ourselves and clear away energy and express ourselves.

Can I just go through a few of them? I'd love it. Awesome. So there could be a whole book on each one, so I'll just explain each one or say each one. So number one is called my unique vibration. Number two is my unique flow state. And number three is my unique life purpose. And we all have these.

Number four is awareness of the three different minds that are present in every moment. So there's the passive machine mind. You could call that the ego. There's the active machine mind. Like when we consciously think what's three plus 10, we're putting that thought into our consciousness. But then there's also this thing called, that I call the living mind. Like when we are feeling our unique vibration, when we're in our unique flow state, we're also feeling the living mind, like where creativity and intuition and great spirit comes through.

So that's foundational principle number four, awareness of those three minds. And foundational principle number five is starting now or success now or feeling one's unique vibration now. Number six is the my truths declaration. So like, and there are many parts of that. My dreams have been in my heart for my whole life. That could be part of your truth or something simple. Like what foods make my stomach hurt like crap. That could be part of the my truths declaration.

It could also be looking in the future. Like what's true for me? What dreams are still here that want to be created? So that's part of foundational principle number six. Number seven is what do I have control over asking oneself that. And then also kind of related is doing our best to only allow in energies that support our unique vibration. Number eight is asking ourselves what activates my flow state and what blocks it. I feel especially for children, that would be really something special to help them see.

Like, hey, remember when you feel awesome, you feel happy and you feel good? How did you, how did you activate that? And I think if we could help children keep that, that'd be super cool because I know I got disconnected from it. Number nine is called focus jumping. So it's something that we do all the time. We focus on one thing and then another. And if we do it unconsciously, it can kind of lets the fear fill up the space sometimes or the passive machine mind. But if we consciously focus jump, then it can weaken our flow state.

Number 10 is the five energies. So these energies are here in every moment available to everyone unless they have like some medical condition. So the five energies of the body, the breath, one of the three minds that I talked about. The fourth energy is the stillness or receptivity or listening energy. And then the fifth energy, I call it the mystery or the unknown. So these five energies, we could fill up the space with them or we can move our awareness through them. Like we could do body practices or breathing. You know how like when we're vacuuming, I know when I vacuum, it's kind of hard to think.

But then as soon as I turn off the vacuum, it's a little easier. So it's almost like that energy was filling up the space. Yes. And then the 11th foundational principle, I call the five minutes of surrender. It could be five seconds or 20 minutes. Like however long it takes us to activate our flow state. So these are the 11 foundational principles. They're kind of redundant.

But yeah, this is something I would share with people. That's amazing. What do you mean redundant? Well, I mean, they're all like, for example, they're a fractal. They're one there. All the principles are in every principle. Exactly. Yeah.

And to understand one, you can understand the other and they all support each other. Yeah. Wow, that's cool. I want to, there are a few of them. Maybe we could like jump through a few, a few of them, specifically the five energies. Yeah. And I love that one of the energies is listening because I think when people think about listening, they don't realize that you're, that is an energy that you're putting out there.

Also not to brag. I've got a Roomba. So I've got a Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner, but I know what you mean. When the damn thing is going, it's like all you, all that's, it's the, it takes up all, it's like, all you hear. But, but I may help me understand this. Because sometimes I wonder if this is just a, like a dream that isn't possible. The silence that you're talking about, I love that.

I love the energy of emptiness or the energy of quiet or the energy of solitude. But also I love being a dad and I have a family. So it's not just the Roomba that's going to be taking up the energy. It's like all the things that go along with having a family, like, like my wonderful son is like his, he is like perfected this incredible shriek that is the, I love it. I'm not complaining at all. I mean it too. Like it is amazing.

I'm a dad. So I'm proud of just about everything he does. So this, this is such a perfect like thing. Or we've got three dogs or a pregnant wife, just the din, the sound of a family. Is it, do you think it's possible to live in both worlds? Like to find a way to be in the silence and the solitude that's underneath all that noise? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what I'm trying to do.

And the 11 foundational principles, I've mastered running away from them. I think that's why spirit showed me them. So then I could try to become expert at following them. But yeah, we can, what I try to do, for example, I got out of the hospital and the doctors didn't tell me how dangerous the inflammation was in my head. And so I couldn't take cold baths. I couldn't even stand up at certain points. And so when I got out of the hospital, I started taking cold showers, which I'm grateful for. So last night when I was taking a cold shower, I was thinking about that woman in Oregon is going through a tough time.

So I was experiencing the freezing cold. And in my mind, I was saying, God, please bring her prayers. So instead of letting the cold dominate everything in my mind for a few seconds, I was trying to relax the mind while the body was in that stress. So I think if we can each find our own way to, you could call focus layering. So instead of only feeling one thing, the body's feeling, or maybe your ears are hearing one thing, but your mind or your breath is doing something else. It takes practice, but that's what I'm trying to do. And that's one way we could deal with all this. So you could actually add silence.

Don't try to make the sound go away, but you actually insert it. Kind of like you said, the silence is an actual energy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think so many people feel completely controlled by the phenomena surrounding them. You know, like, like it's such an easy thing to think because, you know, there's a lot of loud noise happening. Dogs are barking outside or helicopters are flying over.

Your phone keeps going off or whatever it is that there's no way to achieve a flow state because of external phenomena. And I love anything, any idea that creates the possibility that that's not the case at all. That, you know, that's an empowering thing to imagine that we can actually add silence to a situation. Exactly. Yeah. Do you... In this state, there's just no way that you can reengage with the psychedelic world or have you contemplated trying to like take medicine again? Yeah.

I mean, especially with the ayahuasca, I don't think my body, it would have to be like micro dose. I prefer to only experience that with the shaman I've been studying with just because I have trust with him. And I don't know, that's my preference. So I've been using THC for the pain and that's definitely been a form of psychedelic experience. So the THC is helping immensely with the pain. And also, I have a friend in Asheville. He has some medicinal mushroom or magic mushrooms that he grows. So I'm going to get some and just start in very, very small doses.

And because I think that will help with the brain healing and the nerves and energetically. Yes. So, yeah, I feel like the plants are here to help us. It's like we've screwed them over, you could say, but I feel like they want to help humanity right now. Yeah, there is something that it doesn't feel like just the plants, it feels like everything. To me, that's the, when I was a younger, way more cynical person and people would like say shit like Mother Earth, I would just be like, give me a break. Mother Earth.

Get the fuck out of here, your Mother Earth shit. But to me, that is now having been around and the mother of my child and seeing what that kind of love looks like, that unconditional love looks like and just realizing that's exactly what the planet appears to be doing with us. You know, it's giving us so many chances. And the plant, it's not like the, thank God, like, can you imagine if suddenly the plant kingdom decided to get revenge? Yeah. There would be like 30 minutes of human life on the planet and that's it. And all the little critters and animals are like, we're getting you back guys.

It's over. It would be, you know, the birds, but the squirrels and it's like everything attacking us. But yeah, to me, that's the wild thing when you start realizing how it seems like the entire energy of the world. I'm not talking about predators eating things. I mean, or like, you know, consuming calories. But I mean, it does feel like the energy of just about everything when it comes to humans is a very parental loving thing, hoping that we can get through this phase that we're in, like, and without destroying our parents. Do you have some hope for us?

Do you feel like we're going to make it through this? I do. I mean, I feel like ancient medicines and even like, you could say ancient technologies, let alone maybe the alien technologies are coming in. So I, yeah, I have to face fear and pain every day. But I do feel like miracles can happen and there's so many, so many beautiful people in the world like you and so many others that good things can happen. It's hard now, but yeah, I have hope. Yeah, I, to me, that's one of the more crazy making aspects of having this intuition that a lot of us have. Which is that things are going to get better.

But in it, but you know, you look at the maybe and maybe this is just the problem of technology is that technology just is an amplification of fear for a lot of people. And so we start believing the phones or we start believing the news or we start believing the TV or whatever it is. And that invites people to sort of abandon the sense that why do I feel like things are going to get better? So many animals are going extinct right now. Amazon on fire, you know, and yet there's this sense of like, I think we're going to get through this somehow. And I go back and forth. I go back and forth thinking, well, you have that sense because you're just trying to create, you know, a naive reality because you don't want to deal with what's actually happening. And then another part of me thinks, who the fuck are you, Satan?

Why are you telling me that? I really believe it. But how do you know? How do you have this sense? And also, you can't just mention alien technology and just leave it at that. Yeah, I mean, well, when I say alien technology, I've always been curious when like Tesla or other beautiful people have come up with ideas. Where did that come from? I feel like it comes from some other dimension and they whisper in people's ears and then and then they create the technology.

So I know people who are channeling different beings and doing that kind of alien stuff. And I feel like it's happening with doctors on all realms that they're trying to communicate with us because we could, I don't know. I guess they say we could affect other realms if we blow up the planet. So that's the one time that they'll actually interfere if we're going to mess with other dimensions, otherwise they leave us to our own free will. So there's that. And yeah, I have to face the same thing. Like am I being delusional and just not facing this reality? But I felt this love since I was a child and these dreams in my heart and they're real for me.

So I'd rather be delusional and be myself than, I don't know, something else. Yeah, we're not supposed to talk about the other realms. Like that's such a funny thing about it is like so many of us have definitely been contacted, have, you know what I mean? Have experienced it. To me, it's like with psilocybin getting like at least decriminalized and, you know, ultimately prescribed as a medication and knowing that all these scientists are studying psilocybin and knowing that there's no way they're just like looking at graphs and shit. You know what I mean? Like they're not like in their like lab coats, like looking at, through a microscope, they're tripping.

And you know what I mean? And then knowing that they can't talk about the fact that when they're tripping, they're being like chatted with, they're having conversations with extra dimensional scientists. You know, I had to bring you here just because, you know, we wanted to like share some other stuff with you. And then they've got to go back and write a paper. What I mean with like stats. They can't even mention like, and also a drama and drama to 978L came to me and explained a mechanism that we might be able to use to at the very least shift the flow of time. But, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's interesting, isn't it? That there seems to be a kind of cultural prohibition on having any serious conversations about channeling.

Yeah. I mean, that's something that gives me a little hope. Like the plant energy, I've talked to different shamans. They say that the plant medicines used to be a little bit more like harder to access and it was kind of more secretive. There's some shift that happened where the plants actually want to help humanity and they're trying to reach out. So can the government, can the president stop that energy? And like, you know, so that, I don't know, that kind of gives me hope while I'm going through this pain, this death experience. Realizing that there are powerful energies that are working that let along the whole Jesus energy or whatever that is, that's coming up.

Maybe it's no coincidence that Christmas is coming up. I don't know. It's like death and pain for me and then blessings and then more death and pain and blessings. So I'm just trying to, the shaman and one of the most recent ceremonies I was laying down in a cocoon in the back of the space. And I was like, where is everyone? Why isn't anyone helping me? And he looked at me and telepathically said, he's like, well, you asked for it and he kind of just smiled and he said it in a loving way. And then I heard the message like getting comfortable in the discomfort.

I was like, oh, great. And that was last year. He kind of like foreshadowed my own life and maybe the whole world. But then after that, there was like a turn into a butterfly, something like that. So, yeah. Well, I mean, when my mom dropped her body, I really did get the feeling that she, it was like just, she, like everyone, people use this term, but I got the, it was a graduation. Like that was the feeling I got was that it was like time for her to like do work elsewhere and in a good way. And some of those channeled beings, you know, at some point they probably had to go through human incarnation.

You know, they had to go through this and then they went through it enough and learned what they needed to learn. And then they went wherever that is, which is, I mean, you know, that's the other problem. Whenever you try to use geospatial language to describe alternate dimensions, things get really weird. But you know what I'm saying? There is a sense that like some people, and maybe you're one of them, maybe not. But some people, they leave a little early because there's work to do. They get invited to some special like laboratory or I don't know what the right word for it. Do you know what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah, I've thought about this because I've had to face death so many times and the dreams in my heart. But where I'm at now, it was like, it doesn't matter if I'm in this body or the next, I'm going to follow my dreams and the energy will continue whatever form it takes. Yeah, yeah, that's simple to me. That's the essence of it all. That's the intention that, you know, everyone always talks about intention, intention and the importance of intention. And once you really find that intention, to me, that is where this thing that isn't broken by the, by the, by what we're calling death right now. Appears, which is like, yeah, this, I'm just going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep podcasting.

If it's possible, as soon as like I go through the white light and as soon as I, you know, reacquaint myself with my ancestors or whatever happens, like, I'm going to try to find some kind of equipment to start interviewing people for sure. On a higher level, maybe, or something. I don't know. It's like, I have no idea. We don't, we don't have any idea right now because that seems to be part of the game. That seems to be part of what this is all about is, yeah, we're going to like put a kind of blindfold over you so that you can, you're hanging out. And, you know, I think this is called the bardo of change that we're in right now, or the, you know, we're, we're like in a, we're droplets in a fountain right now. So, and that's a, it feels like there's a reason for that, which is that in this state, we are learning a lot.

But what are we learning? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm in America. So it's like we push, we throw all the old people into nursing homes and we're afraid of death and psychedelics and everything. So I know I'm definitely learning how to face all these things. And maybe that's what this culture is learning how to face all these things that we've run away from. I don't know. Ah, Ethan, thank you so much for giving me your time today. I really appreciate it.

And how about we do another of these? Yeah, that would be awesome because for me, it's a big mystery. It's like, okay, I made it through four head surgeries. I'm good to go. I'm going to create a good life. Oh crap, there's one more coming up. You know, I don't know. They can't do it safely now.

It could be two months. It could be longer. I have to heal the tumor regrowth first before they can even do the fifth head surgery. So I don't know. Well, I want you to keep us posted on what's going on with you. And also, can you let folks you want to connect with you? Where can folks find you? Sure.

On Facebook, Ethan Ciccer, S-I-S-S-E-R is my last name. And then I have a website called ethansangels.org. And if the body allows, I'm trying to make regular updates on YouTube and Facebook and all that stuff. So yeah, I love to connect with people and if people have questions, or maybe somebody who is listening has a family member with glioblastoma. So if they have any questions, I would love to help in any way that I can. Wonderful. So you are a great person.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. I know you have a family and you're busy, so thank you. Thanks for being on my podcast. This is, thank you. This has been a wonderful conversation and I really, really am going to be thinking about you. And just, yeah, let's definitely stay in touch.

Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate it. I'll be in touch. Thanks, Ethan. That was Ethan Ciccer, everybody. All the links you need to find him are going to be at dougatrustle.com. A big thank you to ExpressVPN and Fight Camp for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH and a big thank you to you for listening.

We will be back, not next week, but this week. We're doing two episodes this week. Until then, Hare Krishna. New album and tour date coming this summer. JCP.com. All dressed up, everywhere to go. JCPenney.