HealthyGamerGG - How to Deal with Burden of Potential

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

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So what are we calling you today, buddy? How am I going to? Milo is my name. Okay. So Milo, tell me a little bit about what we're talking about today. Well, I am a huge fan of yours, and I just wanted to bounce kind of my ego off of you and see if you have anything to say. pretty much as soon as I started, like as soon as you popped up in my recommended videos on YouTube, you just, everything you were saying was really resonating with me.

And it's really surreal that, like, it's coming to the point where I'm actually talking with you. So I guess we can talk about cannabis addiction and how I'm dealing with that. That goes a lot in, that's kind of wrapped up with a lot of my other vices and kind of issues with depression and mental illness and such. Sure. It's all kind of a big. It's a big fucking tangled ball of. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a big shit stew. Yeah, it really is, man. I'm so sorry that, you know, you're struggling with a lot of stuff. That's the way I see it. I mean, I think, you know, if I can just monologue or soapbox for a second. Like, this is what I see, right? So I think this is where psychiatry actually falls a little bit short because what psychiatry does is it takes a person like you and we give you like half a dozen diagnoses. Right?

We'll say that you've got like ADD and you've got anxiety and depression and cannabis use disorder and stuff like that. But I think that, you know, the more I work with people, like I just don't think that they've got like four separate. disease processes, right? It's like one, it's like one tangled ball of something. And then it kind of like, like, like, I almost think that our psychiatric diagnoses are symptoms. They're not actually like diseases. I mean, not true of all things, but some of them really are disease processes. But yeah, so I kind of echo what you're saying about it sort of being tangled together. So let's try to untangle it. The other thing is, you said you wanted to bounce your ego off of me. Yeah.

What does that mean? Oh, you cut out a little bit. Can you hear me? Yeah. Um, I mean, I just want to, like, hear somebody else's, uh, especially professionals take on, um, hello. Hello? Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me?

Yeah. Did the video cut out for you? Nope. I'm fine. Oh, okay. I don't know. I mean, like, you know, who I am and who I think I am is like just a persona. Okay.

And it would be interesting to hear somebody else's kind of professional opinion on what I've got going on. And I've heard you call a lot of other people out on kind of kind of. bullshit and like, um, devices like ego. I see. Devices of sort. So do you think, actually, can you hold on a second? I'm just going to shut a door. I'll be right back.

Sure. It's like night and day when kids are back from the playground. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, so, so, okay, so I see. So it sounds like you maybe suspect that your ego is pretty active. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. So I'm going to give Twitch chat an assignment.

Okay. So one of the things that I want to think, I want to try to teach you guys is to be like present and pay attention to what you see in other people and what you see in yourselves. So I'm going to point some of this stuff out to you, Milo, but just so that can kind of follow along. I want you guys to kind of pay attention to when you think Milo's ego is speaking and when his ego is not speaking. So a quick rundown. So, Milo, since you use the word ego, it sounds like you've been watching our stuff. So what's your understanding of what ego is? Let's start there.

It's the thing that isn't your true self, and it's your kind of biologically and socially cultivated organism that uses survival techniques to stay alive. Okay. So I'm going to give you guys a couple of clues to notice when the ego is running Milo's mind. And the first thing that we're going to look for is comparisons. So when we, anytime our mind compares us to someone else, that's usually a sign of ego. I mean, I say usually. So, you know, if Milo says something like, oh, other people are able to do this, but I'm not able to do this, that's like a comparison.

So keep an eye out for ego. Anytime, the other thing that the ego tends to do is pump ourselves up and put other people down. So I'm not really expecting this from you, but if you start to, you know, talk about how other people are stupid or things like that, that's likely to be ego. Does that make sense? Okay. So let's just kind of keep track. And if you guys notice the ego is going on, you know, just mention it in chat. Myelo, I'd say, you know, steer clear of chat if you can during the duration of our talk.

Yeah, I'm not watching it anymore. Okay, awesome. So let's kind of dive right in. So tell me a little bit, I mean, do you want to start with cannabis or you mentioned other vices or like where, how do we start to untangle this ball of, of the shit stew? Well, it started with video games, definitely. Tell me about that. Yeah. So like a lot of people you talk to, I was a user of video games from a really, really young age.

age. How young? And probably like seven. Okay. And what did you play? The first game that I ever really, really got into was a game called Dungeon Siege, which was like kind of a Diablo-esque, top-down, like, action RPG thing. and yeah just kind of evolved there i played a lot of warcraft three throughout the years i still

play that one what do you think about remastered it's pretty upsetting yeah pretty sad okay yeah what's upsetting about it um well to be honest like i'm really not super uh concern with blizzard at all anymore just because of how they treated the uh the whole protests in china thing um so it's shitty but i could be happy like never purchasing a blizzard product again yeah yeah but i didn't get reforged because i honestly don't even think my computer could handle it is another thing that's i have a really shitty computer. But I just heard that the servers were

crashing all the time and it had just a myriad of other issues. Yeah. Yeah. Do you still game now? Yeah. What do you play? Warcraft 3. Does it still work? I thought they shut it down.

The old one? No, it's like Yeah. Yeah, it still works basically. Interesting. Okay. What race do you play? It's just like a limited... It's the same game,

Reforged and the classic one. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What race or races do you play? Like, you play like regular games, or you play custom maps? Mostly custom maps, but when I am playing regular games,

I usually pick Ork and go Blade Master. Or T.C. Awesome, man. I was a big undead player. Undead is. sick as fuck. Yeah, man. I used to love going glitch first, but it wasn't very good.

I just wish I could pull it off. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, and I played a lot of Dota, like, back in the day, like when Dota was in War III. The OG Dota. Yeah, the original. So, cool. So, and what are you, how are you spending most of your time nowadays?

Well, one thing that's always been a huge passion for me has been, music and this kind of so I've been kind of getting my shit together lately in a positive way cool um like as of maybe like December or January 2020 um and one thing that's come with that is a huge increase in um my time spent playing guitar and practicing music which has which has always been like kind of sidelined by video game addiction and cannabis usage as well. Sure. Which I... Help me understand what changed in December or January.

Why are you getting your shit together now? I read this book called Atomic Habits. I don't remember who it's by, but... Do I have it right here? No, no. And it just kind of talked. about how willpower is overrated and the real way to, like, it talked, it broke down the science of, um, of building good habits and breaking bad habits and why we naturally build bad

habits and don't stick with good habits. Yeah, and I just kind of, took the principles from that book and was able to establish a pretty consistent. So I've been doing push-ups every day. I've been meditating every day. Wow. Just about this year. Yeah.

And like I also, I'm no long, like, I'm not a, smoker anymore, but that was something that I stopped in about September. And I had like wanted to to no longer be a cannabis smoker for a long time at that point. I felt that it was being really destructive on my life. How so? But I felt like it was just kind of really messing with my mental. faculties. In what way?

Like, have you heard the term the brain fog? Yeah. I felt just, I felt just incredibly mentally slow and, like, dumber than I am. And I try to not, like, identify with this anymore. but my intelligence has always been like a really important part of my life you know and I value being smart or whatever which I think is a silly arbitrary thing at this point but but it was one of the few things that I thought I really had going for me and cannabis was just uh just uh Seriously messing you up

So Milo you're making my My job hard man You know why So like I've noticed this trend recently Like I don't know if other people have noticed this But like people are like doing better And when we started streaming We were getting absolute train wrecks

And you talk about the shit stew But here I'm talking about like So I thought we were talking about cannabis addiction Sounds like you stopped smoking pot like six months ago Yeah And we're talking about, you're talking about atomic habits, you're talking about pushups every day, you're talking about playing guitar, which is awesome. And I love to continue supporting you. It's just, I'm noticing like a trend, and I'm not just sure if it's like a selection bias or what, but it sounds like people are actually starting to make changes in their life.

And it sounds like- You mean people in your sphere, like people that you're talking to and people on stream and stuff? Yeah. What do you think about that? I think maybe you should take that as a sign that you are making a huge impact in people's lives. I would love to take that as a sign, but it also sounds like your journey started before I ever showed up, right? Yeah. Certainly. So I'd love to take credit for transforming your life, but I think actually at case in point, for everyone who's watching, I don't transform lives, right?

So Milo's been working at it for a while. and maybe we can talk a little bit more and understand a little bit more but I'm beginning to notice a slight shift in terms of I'd certainly like to help you I'm happy to but I think I'm noticing that actually Milo

you may be able to so it used to be that like you were the person getting healed and I was the healer but I think you've leveled up like you've skilled up some healing skills yourself right like because you're already and you can actually help people by telling us and sharing with us,

like what was different one year ago and like what's different today. I agree with that, and I would love to do that. So let's just kind of keep that in mind. I think let's just go back, though, and try to understand a little bit about more about cannabis.

But I just wanted to kind of point out that I think things are changing here. You know, like it's good. Yeah. Yeah, I'm working on it. Yeah, good for you, dude. So tell me a little bit about when you started using pot. I think the first time was either the summer of my freshman year of high school or the summer before that I can't remember.

Okay. And it was like a lot of people say they don't get high the first time. Because if your cannabinoid receptors aren't totally awake or something. but that was not the case for me and it was a super excellent experience I enjoyed it a lot and as I kind of slowly started to get more into it I would do it maybe like once a month my first couple years of high school and then I increased a little bit after high school and then after I mean in my junior and senior year and then after high school I really started ramping it up. But during high school, I really saw it as a tool to kind of discover myself.

Because at the time, I was really, really, excuse me, I was really wrapped up in kind of the popularity, hierarchy. and I just wanted to like hang out with the cool kids and I was so upset that you know I wasn't like what did these kids have that I don't that that makes them you know cool and popular and liked and me not and smoking cannabis kind of helped me like me like I understand that like I'm okay with myself and it's okay to to be to be me and I don't need other people's approval basically and that that helped me kind of in like my senior year really um really how does can just enjoy myself by not worrying about that kind of thing how does cannabis help like free you from those worries do you remember that um I think it just it made me super introspective um and that introspection brought a lot of insight um and i had always until it started like really fucking up my life i had always really thought that cannabis was a very useful tool in that way and i still do think like i think for people who don't have um

like addictive tendencies, I think it can be a very, very, it can be a tool, definitely. How do you know if you have addictive tendencies? If what does that mean? If your consumption in something is, becomes problematic and difficult to stop, I would say. Sure. So would you say that you had addictive tendencies in high school? Not at all. No. I used it quite infrequently, and it was always nothing but positive during that time. Yeah.

Okay. I'm just going to try to organize things for a second. So, Mylon, once again, I'm kind of recalibrating a little bit about what this discussion is. So a lot of times when people come here, my primary goal is to help them. And if we're talking about cannabis addiction and you haven't really smoked for six months, I'm sort of changing a little bit about what we're talking about, right? So I'm wondering if what would be better is actually for, so I still want to help you. We can kind of talk more if there's something.

I mean, is there some kind of challenge or some issue that you have that I can help with? Well, the cannabis addiction, I don't know if I said this earlier, It completely intertwines with my video game addiction and just internet addiction and so on. Yeah, and that's like quitting six months ago. And like still having a lot of the problems that I thought that I, like attributed to cannabis consumption. I realized that the bigger problem was video game addiction, which was something that was a problem long before I ever smoked for the first time. Okay. All right.

So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the rest of the ingredients of the shit stew. And then what I'd like to do maybe a little bit more towards, like, let's say, the end is, Milo, since you kind of come a long way, what I think could be useful is for us. to use some of your experiences as kind of examples for broader principles that are more applicable, like more broadly applicable. So how can we understand general things about identity and ego and like how cannabis interacts with those? For example, you say that cannabis made you more introspective and through that introspective you gained insights and through those insights, you became less concerned about popularity.

The other interesting thing is, I don't know if people caught this or not, but when you were describing your high school experience, that's an ego experience because you asked yourself the question, why are those kids popular? And I am not. So that's an ego point. Now, the interesting thing is that you attribute your growth in that way through the insight you gained from cannabis. I don't think it was actually an insight that you gained from cannabis, because

because I don't know if you guys have figured this out or not. You have a lot of insights when you're on cannabis, but rarely does your life change from them, right? Anyway, you're, what do you think? Well, I mean, if I had an insight due to the fact that I was on cannabis and it changed my life, which it did, by making me give less of a shit about the popularity complex, wouldn't that mean that it was directly related to,

It would suggest so, but I think actually the important thing is not the insight you had. I think the important thing, this is exactly what I'm talking about, so I think the important thing is that instead of your mind focusing on the external, your mind began focusing on the internal. I don't think it was the insight that you had. I think it was the introspection. The act of introspecting shifts what your mind is focusing on. So I want you to think about your mind like a spotlight.

And when you're in high school and you're comparing yourself to other people, you're putting the spotlight on them and how you're not like them. And when you introspect, you're putting the spotlight on yourself. And the more that you put the spotlight on yourself, the less comparison naturally happens. Does that make sense? Like if I'm on an island and there's nothing for me to compare myself to, it's very difficult for my ego to exist because my mind cannot externalize and. make comparisons. So this is exactly my point is that I think a lot of people believe that it's the insight from the introspection. But what I'm really curious about and what I would encourage you to explore is whether it is the insight from introspection or it is the act of introspection in and

of itself that reduces ego. Because if we look at something like atomic habits, I think the reason that you're able to change is not because you gain some information. But once again, the Atomic Habits book was a trigger for you to introspect. And you may have gained some things through that introspection, but I think the key thing here, if we look at the common element between how you've changed from atomic habits and how you've changed from cannabis, you're gaining different insights, fine, but the key element here is that your focus is on reflection and introspection. And that's where the money is.

That's my hypothesis that I'm putting forward. You're entitled to agree or disagree? but I I partially agree I think that the external factor of a book or a drug or whatever can be something to direct that spotlight and I definitely think that there is the potential to to just look inwardly and change I think that's kind of what like meditation leads to. But I'm not sure if it's, I think it's like like a

sprinkler versus a pressure washer. Which one is which? Directing your focus with like a book or something or some kind of frame of thought is more concentrated in a pressure washer as opposed to just sitting

with yourself and being introspective and like allowing whatever thoughts to arise. I completely agree with you. So I completely agree that you're saying that an external tool can really focus your introspection and allow you to gain greater insights

through that focused introspection. That's what you're saying, right? Yeah. And if you just sit there and you just kind of like listen to your thoughts, that's like a sprinkler. And you're not going to get anything back. I completely agree with you. The question still remains just because it allows you to focus your spotlight, is it the drug itself or is it the act of focusing internally? Which one is responsible?

So I agree that the drug allows you to focus internally more easily. But then the question becomes if it's the focusing internally that's actually important, can you train yourself, can you take a sprinkler and turn it into a garden hose? And then furthermore, can you cover part of the garden hose so you have a high pressure amount of water, right? Can you actually train yourself to do what the drug does for you? I think with immense, immense concentration, dedication. I completely agree with you there as well. Like, um, the thing that comes to mind is, uh, I think it was with destiny. you were talking about the analogy with psychedelics of like taking a helicopter to the top of a mountain versus, you know, just trekking up the whole mountain.

But it's the same thing either way. So I feel like the same analogy applies here in terms of kind of one is without external stimulus and there's a much more. long-term, slow-moving, laborious process. Absolutely. Agree with you, 100% man. So just kind of going back to your narrative or your story, so it sounds like marijuana was actually quite helpful for you in a lot of ways. It was a overwhelmingly positive experience. You actually used it to free yourself a little bit from your ego.

It made high school to be like a little bit more comfortable because you were less bogged down and like popularity and stuff. When did it start to become a problem? I really started ramping up after senior year of high school started smoking on a

weekly basis where before I was smoking maybe on a monthly or even like a bimonthly basis. And I also started taking dabs which what does that mean?

It's the so beer is to liquor as like flour bud cannabis is to dabs so it's a concentrated THC oil

that is incredibly like it will just fuck your shit up it's super powerful in what way does it fuck your shit up so bud is like maybe 15 to 25 or 30%

THC in like just throughout the Nug, that's the chemical percentage. Dabs can get up to like 80%, 90%, 95, even like 99 or 100% THC. So it's like super, super potent. and you're also not getting any of the kind of natural, even though a lot of this has been kind of bred out in the cannabis industry, you're not getting a lot of the kind of CBD or some of the other chemicals that maybe kind of balance out the high a little bit. So I don't know if this is what direct,

directly led to it, but I had a mental breakdown what was diagnosed as a manic episode in college. And before that was happening, I was basically staying up all night playing video games and just dabbing all day and doing not much else, not going to class at all. Did the people who diagnosed you with the manic episode know what was happening before that? Did you tell, like, did they know that you were using dabs very heavily? I don't know. Okay. I don't know about that. Yeah, it could have totally be some cannabis-induced psychosis, which is part of the reason that I sometimes doubt my diagnosis.

Yeah, so, Milo, I'm going to be very careful with what I say, okay? So the purpose of this conversation is to provide general education and not diagnosed or treat you with any medical conditions. So I'm going to make some general statements about diagnostics in some of my experiences with misdiagnosis. So if we see a manic episode, like let's say someone gets hospitalized with a manic episode, we give them a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Oftentimes, there are evidence-based treatments for bipolar disorder that include medications, and sometimes those medications can have anywhere from no-to-heavy side effects. Sometimes we oftentimes believe as providers that the side effects of the medications are worth the benefit of preventing another manic episode.

The really, really important thing is that sometimes manic episodes are not caused by bipolar disorder. So bipolar disorder is an episodic illness, which involves periods of depression in periods of mania or hypomania. So the periods of depression are characterized by weeks to months of feeling super down, having low energy, having trouble getting out of bed, things like that. The periods of hypomania or mania, so let's start with hypomania, are characterized by periods of time of high mental activity, oftentimes higher energy, oftentimes reduced needs for sleep despite maintaining some relatively high function. Interesting side point. The prevalence, which means how common type 2 bipolar disorder is, and type 2 bipolar disorder means hypomania. So the amount of kids who have hypomania at Harvard University is three times the national average. What do you think about that? I think hypomania can be like very useful if you are living in a productive world.

My uncle is BP2 and he uses his hypomania in his work and like in his kind of hobbies. and one of his hobbies is to create unmanned electric, like, RC planes. And he has like seven world records for the fastest and the best planes in the world. Because he gets into his hypomania and he'll just grind. Yep. So hypomania can feel wonderful. Unfortunately, it usually comes at a cost of depression afterward. And so the reason I'm not giving you medical.

advice, but what I would encourage you to do, I haven't asked you if you're on medications or if you're in treatment or anything. I actually am not interested in learning that stuff because that becomes more of a medical relationship. But what I will tell you is that if you are on medication or if you are in treatment, it is very important for your providers, and this is true of everyone, is very important for your providers to know whether you are on substances or not. And to what extent you were using substances, because that can muddy the diagnosis. So anytime I have a page, who has any kind of substance use and depression, I don't truly know if they have depression or that's the substance that's making them depressed. You can't really make a true, clean diagnosis of depression or bipolar disorder until you get a clean brain. So I would encourage you to, if you were still in treatment, to share with your providers that detail because I think it's quite important. And the reason for that is because I would hate for people to be on medications that they don't need to be on. Yeah.

Well, I, they definitely knew I had THC in my system, like, when I went to the hospital. So I'm not sure how, and like, I went to, like, three different hospitals over the course of 10 days and did outpatient treatment and shit, or inpatient treatment and a little bit of outpatient treatment. I'm not sure how, like, all of the information permeated throughout the entire process and throughout the entire medical community. So I guess I would assume that there was some awareness. Yeah. So what I'm telling you, what I'm telling you is that medical information getting passed between different institutions is fucking, like, it's bad.

Right? So, like, it's bad. So if you are very lucky and you have a very thoughtful clinician who is also not like overworked, then they maybe had the time to look through things. But what I'm saying is that this is a danger of our medical system. So once something gets slapped into your chart, like it takes a lot of effort for someone to like take you from scratch and not be influenced and like not do like a thorough workup from the get go. So they just assume that providers in the past. made good judgments, which may not be like, and it's not a bad assumption, but you kind of get like

what happens to a lot of people, especially with mental health diagnoses, because we can't test for it, right? It's not like we can do an x-ray and see if you're bipolar or not. Yeah. And the other reason that mental health providers do that, it's not necessarily our fault because, you know, we didn't see you when you were manic, so we just have to trust the person before that they're not a dumbass and that they made a right diagnosis. And I don't even think that they were necessarily a dumbass. I think it can be like presumpt MAPTA, and they could have had a question mark.

The problem is that when they send a bill to your insurance company because they want to get paid, they can't leave a question mark because an insurance company is not going to pay for anything if they have a question mark. So they have to label you with something in order to get compensated. And that label sometimes carries forward and can actually negatively impact your care. Yeah. So I would just encourage you if you are still in treatment or enter treatment in the future, to, you know, share this information, share the extent of your substance use so that you give your

clinician an opportunity to really, like, get to know the full picture and give you, like, a diagnosis from scratch. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Sorry for that tangent. It's just, I think that's a really, really important thing. No, that was helpful.

For people to know. Because I think it's unfortunate. We just have a lot of, you know, it's a mix of bad systems. it's a mix of like insurance and like the medical documentation is not actually geared towards providing clinical care. Like I don't know if you guys have ever seen your chart, but it's just like this pile of autopopulated copy pasted shit. It's not about like thinking or clinical care.

It's all about justifying because insurance companies in order to get paid, you have to like include all kinds of information that they want you to include. So that's what you include. and then while you're spending time including all that crap, like you don't have time to, you know, write a page about what you actually think is going on. You have to be put into a box. Yep. And shake it's overlooked.

Yep. Exactly. So I think as a patient, it is very important for you to take responsibility and not assume that, you know, your providers have gone through your chart and things like that. Like, and you can be respectful about it. You shouldn't assume that they haven't. you can just ask. And these are things, unfortunately, that we don't teach kids, right? So a lot of times people get hospitalized in their late teens or early 20s,

and no one has taught you how to talk to a provider because you don't have any idea what the fuck is going on. You get taken to a hospital. People come in, people come out. They're the experts. You're like, I don't know what to do. It's very hard to advocate for yourself because you don't even know what you're supposed to be advocating for.

No one teaches you this stuff. Anyway, I'm going to get off my soapbox. but you know take care of yourself and all of you guys should talk to your providers and if you have concerns about your diagnosis like it's our job and we have ethical responsibilities we have ethical duties to like not misdiagnose you and like conceptualize you from scratch we owe that to you so you should ask for it if you think that you've been labeled with something that isn't fair or you've been labeled with half a dozen things by half a dozen people chances are some of that shit is wrong mm-hmm One thing, though, this is so bad. But like, I get to be on my own soapbox and complain about the stigma of mental illness now and also, like, use it hypocritically at the same time as, like, a crutch and as, like, an excuse for certain things. Let's talk about that. Okay.

How do you use mental illness as a crutch? well it's easy to explain like it's easy to say oh I'm not an asshole I'm just bipolar I have a mental illness what does that allow you to do Milo it allows me to make excuses for and not

do that crucial introspection absolutely how does that affect your life I would assume it slows down the emotional and mental maturity maturation. What do you think it does for you professionally, academically? Well, professionally and academically, I'm in a bit of a rut or a pit right now, so it's not doing much. I don't think it's directly related to where I'm currently at.

I think that has a lot to do with just my cannabis addiction and my video game addiction and making poor decisions in college. So what I'm hearing from that statement is that you accept responsibility for where you are professionally and academically based on your addictive behaviors instead of using bipolar as an excuse. Yeah. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So. Yeah, I'm not like, oh, I can't get a job because of this diagnosis. It's not like that.

What have you used the diagnosis as a crutch for? Can you give us an example? Let's see. Like the main thing that comes, I, I wouldn't use it for anything like seriously, I don't know, drastic or dramatic. Like I said, I just, it's mostly the only thing. times I've like kind of like cheesed it was beautiful beautiful word usage cheesed it thank you I I've only cheezed it in like social situations basically to like maybe like shut somebody up who's like using bipolar in a derogatory manner which it is sometimes used like people see like oh I'm so bipolar. I was happy yesterday and I'm sad today. It's like a really good way to shut somebody up like that.

I think the most I use it is as an excuse towards myself and for myself. Like having this label, you know, defines me and it. And it limits me. all these things. And when you use it as an excuse for yourself, what do you let yourself get away with? Not doing shit. Like what? For the most part. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe just not mentally pushing myself or trying in certain circumstances. It really, so like the only experience I've ever had that would lead me to kind of that would seem to substantiate the diagnosis was this one episode which was super bad super traumatic and a fuck ton of depression for the last like you know maybe eight or nine years okay pretty constant over those eight or nine

years or would fluctuate Um, it would, it fluctuated in like an upward trend, upward being more. More depression. More depression. So it kind of progressively got worse over eight or nine years. Yeah. Kind of as I started having more responsibility in life, started doing generally worse in school, um, started to feel lonelier and have less friends.

Yeah And at a certain point along there Like When were you diagnosed with bipolar in that eight or nine year stretch When? Freshman year of college And the eight or nine year stretch that you're describing is from when to when? I'm 23 now

So like 14 or 15 Okay To now And like three years ago Almost three years ago I think was the Okay What was the episode? What was I saying?

You were just talking about how the depression was getting worse and worse gradually. Yeah, and at some point in that upward trend, the cannabis smoking stopped becoming like this cool, fun spiritual tool and started becoming like a numbing agent. Analgesic, is that the word? That is the word. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

By the way, before we let you go, remind me to talk to you about intelligence. About what? Intelligence. Intelligence. Okay. What were you numbing? What were you using to, what was it numbing? What was it numbing?

I think kind of anxiety towards the future and anxiety about responsibilities towards the future. I had and have a very fortunate upbringing and tons of opportunity to be a successful person. And I feel that I've squandered a lot of that. And that just feels bad, man. So I don't like... being on that. What does that mean? Right?

So I understand that everyone who's watching understands that it feels bad and they know exactly what you're talking about. But let's put words to it. Okay. I feel, so I'm a really kind of philosophical person and I like thinking really big and really deep. And a lot of the times I feel like, like, every decision made by all of my thousands of ancestors and your thousands of ancestors, you know, and all the decisions, all the wars and everything fought has led to like this moment. We are the latest edition. We are like the, you know, the newest model of human.

And with that, I feel, comes a lot of responsibility, especially, like I said, coming from, you know, a very financially stable background where I never had to worry about, you know, where the next meal would come from or anything like that. and yeah it just feels like um squandering that is like the opportunities that have been cultivated and do you think your opportunity the opportunities that you've been given in life make your life easier or harder you cut out there make me wet do you feel like the opportunities you've been given in life make it easier or harder um That's an interesting question. Like somebody who has to struggle to survive every day is obviously going to have a lot of difficulty, but they're going to have like a mental fortitude that someone like myself is probably not going to really have.

And I think that's a very useful trait. like there is there is kind of a downside to security because it makes you not really deeply subconsciously concerned about a lot of like survival aspects that a lot of other people are. So we're going to just dig into this a little bit more. Okay. So it sounds like you view opportunities as advantages that you've squandered. You don't view them as handicaps. What do you mean? Right? So like it sounds like you feel somewhat ashamed or maybe guilty or something like that, that you have all of this privilege and that you haven't done something with it. Yep. So it sounds

like you view an opportunity as an advantage. Because we don't talk about it. Yeah, I suppose so. Right? So until we had this discussion, so if I say I've squandered an opportunity, like that's clearly an advantage. It's like, you know, we're about to do some Game of Thrones spoilers here. So if you guys want to mute yourselves, go for it. But one of the best things that I saw at the end of, have you seen Game of Thrones? Yeah. Okay. So if you, one of the best, the funniest comments I heard was, you know, at the end of season seven, when DeNaris has three dragons, we're about to see like how DeNaris squanders a three dragon lead in a war. Right? She's going to throw really, really hard. Yeah. So we don't, when we, the word squanders,

implies advantage. Yeah. So when you like beat yourself up for squandering your opportunities, you're like, oh, I'm such a fuck up because all these people like they don't even have like the opportunities that I have, whether they be financial, whether they be an uncle who's like actually motivated to like build cool stuff and like win contests. It sounds like you have people in your life. It's not just financial capital.

It may be some amount of like family support or role models or things like that. So you have a lot of opportunities. And then you blame yourself for not taking advantage of them, right? So therefore, opportunities are advantages. Yeah. Duh. Now, the interesting thing is that when I asked you are opportunities advantages, you kind of changed your tune a little bit.

So what do you have to think about it? Yes, that's the point. Right? So I want, so like, let's just look at that for a second. And when you say that struggles lead to mental fortitude, I think that that's true. But I think that it's not necessarily that they lead to mental fortitude. I think struggles,

so when you have a kind of like advantages in life, I think what they really lead to is complacency. Yes. And so I think the interesting thing about our people, Milo, which is like Twitter chat and gamers, Gen Z, is that our people struggle with motivation. But if you have struggles in life, motivation, you don't need motivation because the world is going to demand that you do something. So if we think about procrastination, like, you know, if you look at it, like if I have 10 days to

work on an assignment or I have one day to work on an assignment, we view 10 days to work on an assignment as an advantage, as an opportunity. You have so much time. You can make such a good, like, you can make such a good in-depth assignment. You can do a wonderful job. But if we actually look at it, the struggle situation, the person on the struggle boss with just one day, in some ways, that person's life is easier. Now, I'm not saying that it's easier from an absolute sense.

What I'm saying is that if we actually judge and look within ourselves, we're going to discover some paradoxical stuff. And that external motivator, external pressures are generally speaking what we need to succeed. And in a bizarre way, if you're given opportunities and you have advantages, in a weird way, like that's actually like more difficult because you have to rely more on internal motivation as opposed to external motivation. And external motivation is harder for, or easier. is easier for our generation than internal motivation.

Mm-hmm. What is that, if we, what do you think about all that? Yeah, that resonates with me. That seems accurate. I think resonate, um, motivation maybe shouldn't be the, the goal or the, like, operating factor. Um, because motivation is something that, is like fleeting. I feel like internal motivation is discipline.

Okay. So we can... More valuable. Yeah, so... Okay, I'm going to do a video about what's motivation, what's discipline, and what's willpower. Okay, and how do those things affect our behavior? But so what does this mean for yourself judgment? In terms of the...

Like, do you feel like you've... Like, so you view yourself as, like having squandered opportunities, right? Yeah. Opportunities are actually like, they may not actually, or having advantages. You know, so I just encourage you to rethink that. And for people who are watching,

also really rethink because other people look at your life and they see, oh, he's so lucky. Mm-hmm. Right? And they kind of... That's part of it. That's a big part of it. Tell me about that.

Like, That just adds to the kind of pressure, you know, of feeling responsible, I guess, you know? Like if you're going to, if you're going to have all this life in these opportunities, then you should make something out of it. So let me ask you something. Milo So I want to talk to you a little bit about potential Because what I'm hearing from here is potential

Does that make sense to you? Yes Like Milo you've got so much potential man You're a smart kid You've got financial resources You have you know it sounds like family that's supportive You've got so much potential By the way don't forget you wanted to talk about

Intelligence Yep So that goes into this Right because you're so smart, Milo. You have so much potential. Have people told you that? Yeah.

How does that feel? I think it used to feel a lot different than it does now. How did it used to feel? Because I heard that when I was little. And maybe that's part of what led to like, kind of coasting by and not putting in the effort because it's like, oh, I have this advantage. I don't need to try as hard because I'll just, you know, be smart.

So one of the first YouTube videos that I uploaded was about how intelligence leads to avoidance. Have you watched that? Yes. Okay. Yeah. If you guys haven't, I think that's probably the first video that really resonated with a lot of people and changed the way that they kind of looked at themselves. So I'd encourage you guys to check that out.

But let's kind of come back to you. So you say that potential used to feel different. So how did it generally feel to you when people told you have so much potential? Felt like I was special. Special in what way? In that I had good things coming for me. Potential felt like an advantage or a promise of the future or what? I guess I kind of looked at it like a promise and something that was just saying.

set in stone, you know, and I wouldn't have to do shit about it would just fall into my lap. Yep. And looking at it that way is probably what now makes, you know, after I've become disillusioned, looking at it now is what makes me kind of almost like reject that term and feel kind of weird and uncomfortable when I hear it. So let's talk about that. What do you mean by weird and uncomfortable? When people talk about your potential now, what do you feel?

A juxtaposition. What does that mean? Between like what could have been and what is. How does that make you feel? I'm pretty disappointed, sometimes kind of hopeless. Okay. Are you lagging? Am I lagging? Is it me? Hello? Did stream cut out? Folks? Oh, no's. Okay. Let's see if he comes back. All right. Are you guys, is this useful? Can we just check in with y'all? Wait, am I lagging? Or is it him lagging? Wait, who? Who is lagging? Yes to both. We're all lagging. Okay.

Fuck. Oh, we're back. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can see you, but that's okay. All right. Okay, so. Oh, now I can see you. All right. So I was asking you, because I'm, so have you seen the video on Alexa Thymia? We may not actually have one now that I think about it, maybe in my head. I know I've talked about it. I don't think so.

Okay. Maybe I just need to make it. Oh, no, no, it's in a set of content that we haven't uploaded yet. So the other thing is I'm digging for your feelings because you're giving me lots of cognitive answers. But how does potential feel to you now? What's the feeling? You said a little bit disappointed and a little bit hopeless. What are you disappointed in? My track record, I guess.

Yeah. And this is going to sound kind of weird. So I'm going to try to make a couple points, Miley. you got to let me know if I'm being clear or not, okay? I'm going to rely on you. So the first thing is that you said that you used to have expectations that you could coast and now you are disillusioned. First thing to understand is let's look at the word disillusioned. So in order to be disillusioned, at some point you must have been illusioned.

Does that make sense? Yeah. The illusion that I could coast. Yeah, so like disillusion is like the loss of an expectation. And it's kind of like, I mean, it's kind of an interesting word because illusion implies that it's something false to begin with, right? And if we look at sort of your situation, I think that disillusioned is a great word because I think you had, fuck, are we losing you? Okay, there we go. I think you had a false expectation about what your life was going to be like because it was fed.

Oh, shit. Okay. Your video is like strobing. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, so I think you had kind of this illusion of what your life was going to be like that was based on false expectation. And so that's only going to lead to disappointment. You guys got to understand it.

I mean, I've talked about this a thousand times, right? Like if everyone tells you that a movie is going to be super awesome and then you go and you watch it, what's going to happen? Like, how are you going to enjoy the movie? Like, what do you think? Your experience is going to be diminished. Absolutely. Right.

has to live up to those expectations. So when you describe eight to nine years of depression, I don't know that you actually have a biological depression because that tends to be episodic in nature. What I hear from that is actually like a further and further disillusionment about your life. That's what I think has been going on. That you started to have expectations about what your life was going to look like and it was kind of vague.

You just know it was going to be good. And because, Milo, you're such a. a smart boy. Oh, he's such a smart boy. You know, he's so clever. And then life started to like get hard for you and you kind of didn't know how to handle that. You didn't have the mental fortitude because things were easy for you early on. You became more and more disillusioned and life became harder and harder. And once again, you were given all these promises about how you're so smart and you have so much potential. So now we get to the next point, which is if I had, if I gave you a blueprint for a shack and I gave you a blueprint for a mansion,

which one has more potential? I mean, the seemingly obvious answer is the mansion. I don't ask trick questions, man. I'm not trying to trick anyone. Okay. It's the mansion. Now, here's the next important question. Which one is harder to build? The mansion. Absolutely. So this is the biggest mistake that people make. about potential. They think that potential, because potential is a mansion, right? That's what potential is. Like the very definition is a blueprint of what you could be in life. The biggest mistake that people make is that they think that potential makes their life easy when in fact it makes your life hard.

Potential is a burden. It is a burden for greatness and it is a burden of success. but it requires so much more effort than having low potential. So if I take someone who has cerebral palsy or Down syndrome or has had like a neurological injury, if they had like hypoxia during childbirth, which means that they didn't get enough air to the brain or something like that, how much potential do they have? In the traditional sense of the word, probably not very much.

Exactly, right? So it's very good that you said in the traditional sense. So if we think about what they're cognitively capable of, they can still accomplish great things because it's not just about your raw IQ. But generally speaking, when we think about what someone is capable of and we think about IQ is like the bar by which we measure, and there are lots of other bars to measure things by, we think of them as quote unquote low potential. And we think about smart kids as quote unquote high potential. But I want you and everyone else. to understand this, the higher your potential is, the harder your road is. Or not maybe harder isn't the right word, maybe longer your road is. The more you're going to have to invest in realizing that potential, right? If I take one acre of land and I say, I'm going to build a farm, and I take 100 acres of land, and I say, I'm going to build a farm, one has way more potential, but the more potential you have, this is the mistake you made. You thought that that means potential equals less work. Intelligence equals less work.

If you really study it, it means the exact opposite. You have a great, great burden on your shoulders, Milo, because I believe you are capable of greatness. I really do. Yeah. But I think that that thought should not make your life easy. I think that thought should fucking terrify you. Because the process. of failure is like catastrophic.

That if you have a hundred acres of land and that you're supposed to build a farm with that, that if you fuck up, there are going to be a hundred times as many people who go hungry than if you had low potential. That capability and responsibility are one and the same. This is the law of karma, right? To whom much is given, much is expected, because that's the only way works. It is silly to expect someone, if you have 10 loaves of bread, you can feed 10 people. If you have one loaf of bread, unless you're Jesus, you can only feed one person. And so, Milo, if I had

one kind of bit of advice for you, it's to re-examine how you view yourself, re-examine what your opportunities are, and re-examine your sense of disillusionment or disappointment. I think you've got to completely reformulate this and think a little bit about potential as a burden. Think a little bit about, you know, the reason that you failed is not because, and this also is kind of where ego comes in and what like you compare yourself to other people and people tell you that you're intelligent and all that kind of stuff, is that in order for you to achieve, you're looking at 100 acres of land and what you're doing is you're saying, I was unable to cultivate these 100 acres. And you're sometimes kind of saying that it should be just as easy as someone who has one acre of land.

In some weird way, I don't know how else to explain that, but I think your mind is actually making an unfair comparison. I think that you should cut yourself some slack because if you are smart and if you do have resources, you know, that's actually going to require a lot more work for you to like bring that to fruition. And I think maybe the comparison that you're making is you're saying that, okay, like, cultivating one acre of land should be easy if I have 100 acres. And so maybe you're making, you're making some weird comparison, which I think at the end of the day is unfair. And I think what you should do is really understand that, like, you're trying to build a mansion. And if you have more resources, that mansion is even bigger.

And let that sort of, you know, let that be a struggle instead of an opportunity. And the odd thing is that if it becomes a struggle, I think that that's, going to lead to the mental fortitude that you're talking about. That's going to lead to realistic expectations of what you're capable of and realistic expectations of how far you need to go. And hopefully it'll start to address your disillusionment. Because the disillusionment comes from the idea that 100 acres of land is like easier to cultivate than one acre of land. Thoughts, questions? Yeah, that makes sense. I think to a certain extent

I don't know like I Oh you just cut out Sorry can you hear me Yeah yeah I totally understand what you're saying about Like just needing a shift In the way

I view myself Sometimes I imagine If like Like Terry Cruz or somebody just like possessed me and entered my body like obviously my life would be a lot different than it is now if they were to just start being me in my body so it's clearly just a matter of like mental expectation at a certain level where does that train of thought leave you how do you feel about

yourself when you think about that? Like, I mean, this is something that I kind of intellectually understand, but maybe something having really embodied, including a lot of what you've been saying, which is just that, you know, a shift in perspective will can lead to a lot of growth. Hold on. Don't get away from my question. How does it make you feel about yourself when you think of it? about the Terry Cruz and inhabiting your body.

Oh, bad. Like, I'm not, the same thing with like kind of squandering what I have, you know, that same real house of like, you know,

not utilizing what I have and what I've been given. Yep. So the hardest battles that we fight are the ones that we fight against ourselves. And the reason is because, like, we're always the winner and we're always the loser. Yeah.

And I think you really need to recalibrate how hard a mental shift is. Fixing something in the external world is way easier than fixing something in the internal world. And I don't think that most people and are most of us, right? and I'm talking about Twitch, chat, and Gen Z or whatever, we don't really understand that or accept that. We don't accept, we don't, we do not acknowledge for ourselves that changing yourself is actually like really hard.

We think that a mental shift, because it sounds easy and it looks easy, should be easy. Because we look at someone like Terry Cruz and he makes it look so easy. Yeah. And we look at ourselves and we say, say we are not like him, man, it's so easy. He just gets up every day. Like, all you got to do is just do it.

I just need to get up every day. Right? But it's hard. And we don't forgive ourselves, and we don't practice any amount of self-compassion for failing to do what is difficult. We have a perception that it's easy, but I'm telling you guys.

So just to give you an example, when I tried to become a monk at the age of 21, my teachers told me that I had to finish school. So they said, we'd love to have you, but come back when you're 30. And I was a little bit disappointed. And they said, you have to finish school, and then you have to go get a doctoral degree. And then I was kind of confused. I was like, why do I have to become like a doctor of some kind?

So I had like two or three mentors. One of them was a neuroscientist, trained at Caltech. The other one was a quantum physicist. And these were my two spiritual teachers. And I was like, why do I need to get like, They're like, you need to go get a Ph.D. or MD or J.D. or something and then come back when you're 30. And I was like, why? And they said that anything that you do in the, in the material world is going to be one-tenth as difficult is what you do in the spiritual world. Any external accomplishment that you set your mind to is going to be infinitely easier than any internal accomplishment that you set your mind to. Internal growth is actually the most difficult thing. That's why self-actual. is at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's the hardest to achieve.

It's not actually the easiest, and we don't understand that. So I set a goal to myself that I was going to become the best physician I possibly could. And I set that goal not because I wanted to become the best possible physician. I mean, I didn't care about being a good physician. I just realized, unless I can become a really, really good physician, I'm going to fail at what my real goal is. Becoming a physician is about, is training for me. It's not the end. And I decided I wanted to become a monk.

And sure enough, I did a good job, so, you know, ended up as a Harvard Andy. And I will still tell you guys, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but I think accomplishing what I did in the material world is still a fraction of the difficulty is like the internal change that I had to accomplish. Right? So when we look at someone who's materialistically successful,

we look at that as whole. hard, but I want you guys to just think about this for a second. For Milo, for you to become a Harvard-trained physician, is that going to be, what do you have to change? Something on the outside world or something on the inside world? Both. Absolutely. Which one do you think is going to be harder?

Internal. Absolutely. For sure. But do you treat yourself that way? Maybe. I mean, because it's the, it's the, internal kind of personality that I have that gets the most shit from like my ego and stuff. That's the one who's saying like, oh, you've squandered these opportunities.

Yep. You know, you're, you know. Yeah. So you probably also have a somscar there, which if we, if we have a chance to talk again, I think it's worth exploring where the origin of your, your kind of complex. around squandering opportunity comes from. Does that make sense? Yeah. I don't think that's not really you.

That's like an emotional trauma that you have that says, Milo's a fuck up who squanders opportunities. Do you think that's potentially from a past life? Past life, I have no idea. That's why I'm saying it requires a conversation for us to dig into. Yeah. Right? but I'm sensing within you

like almost like in the round table of your mind one of the nights at the table is this complex of squandering opportunity Yes, that is a funny image Yeah So you've got like a bunch of Milos who are trying to get shit done And then there's just one guy who's just like

Fuck you guys, you squandered all your opportunities And then sometimes he just dominates the table He's played by Danes. Danny DeVito. Absolutely, man. So good. He's so physically small, but fills up the room so so profoundly. Yeah.

Ooh, that's a good one. Very deep. Yeah. That's five head kind of stuff. Anyway, thoughts, questions? Um, are you talking like wrap up questions or questions of what we just discussed? All of the above.

Okay. Let me first ask you, where do you think we are in terms of the, you know, the conversation? So like where, like, do you feel like you want to go for a while or do you feel like we've kind of covered some good stuff? Like, where do you feel like where are we between zero and 100%? This has all been very useful and nourishing for me mentally. I could totally stop here. I do have a couple things that I would like to address, and those could, like, potentially keep us going for a while. Sure.

Because they're kind of pretty tangential to what we've been talking about. So the first is about you. You went to, like, an ashram. and your Dharma right now is to just be an incredible physician and to do AEO healing for as many people as possible, correct? Not really, but sure. So I don't think that my Dharma is to be an incredible physician, right? So your Dharma is not being about an incredible anything.

so first of all, right? So Incredible has to do with outcome. It's not about action, right? So like, let's just think about that for a second. So my Dharma is simply to try to help, I think, you guys, more so than even be a physician. I think my physician training has been training for the final boss of my Dharma,

which is to help you all. My Dharma simply is to help you. Okay, is there, Like, is there something that that is building up to? Like, do you think you're going to go at any point and go back to the ashram and re-devote yourself? Yeah. Like, is there kind of more of an end game that you have? Yes.

So I think when my Dharmah is complete, then I will go back to the Asher. So my Dharmah being complete is going to happen in a couple of ways. One is that if something catastrophic happens and I lose my wife and my two kids, I'm going to become a monk. If I feel like you guys are doing okay or people arise who can do the work that I am doing so that I don't have to worry about doing it myself, then I could go in that direction. I have multiple dama's, right? So I have kids. So I can't disappear because I'm responsible for their upbringing and financial security and things like that. I would love it if

so in my heart of hearts I would love to go back to studying and learning myself but I feel like I don't have the time for that so the other thing to understand is that when we think about Dharma we think about finding your Dharma as if it's like one Dharma so Dharma evolves over time

so this is only my Dharma for now and for people who are looking for their Dharma it's not like you have to find the one thing that is your Dharma it's what is your Dharma today what is your Dharma now so I think like you're, and I think the majority of you guys are in something called Brahmacharya Ashram, so I got to make a video about these, which is that you guys are in

the training phase. You guys are in the learning phase because you're not prepared to do shit. Like, you guys have to understand that in order for me to do this Dharma, I had to train for 15 years. And during those 15 years, like, I thought I was going to be a lot of things that I was not. Originally it was a monk, then it was a doctor. And then before it was a doctor, it was originally, I was going to be an oncologist and, you know, save lives. And then I had to go through the struggle of, quote, unquote, not being a real doctor by being a psychiatrist. Because psychiatrists aren't real doctors. And I might even have to deal with that.

And things like that. And then I was going to be a psychiatrist. And now I realized actually like psychiatrist is not, I mean, that's just my background. But what I want to do is this. Yeah. Well, you're very good at it. Thank you. Does that answer your...

question? Yes, it does. Question two. I read this book about Crea yoga. Okay. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on specifically Crea yoga. What is your understanding? Why don't we, why don't we start by explaining what Crea yoga is? So that's part of what I am confuzzled about. Like, a Kria is like a repetition. Okay. Is that right? Sure. So Kria has one root in the word action.

Yes. And the, like, it's kind of separate from Hatha yoga, which is like the kind of westernized version of yoga. Sure. Or the one that the West is kind of adopted, rather. Very good. Good question. And, like, it seems to be primarily about, like, it's very chakra focused and very breath focused.

Mm-hmm. And it's been a difficult book to kind of digest. There's a ton of, like, there's a glossary in the back of all the, like sanskrit words and like half of the actual words in the book are in the glossary like half of the like weird ass words so um but i there's a there's a youtube channel that i watch for spirituality a actualized org and he talked about um kria yoga as being kind of the like basically the most direct no bullshit kind of enlightenment path for yoga and that's something I'm very much attracted to is the concept of spiritual enlightenment.

Okay. So let's, okay. So I don't know exactly what your question is, but my guess is that you just want general elucidation about all of that. Yes. Right? Okay. So this is good.

Okay. So I'm making a list of videos I need to make. So let me try to answer your question. Let's start with basics. Okay. So, Kria, I think has its Sanskrit root in the word action.

And Kria yoga is the systematic process of refining and improving your consciousness. So we have this thing called consciousness. And what is consciousness? So I don't know how to put this, but, you know, there are times in your experience where you're able to wrap your head around an understanding. Right? Like you're like, it's like the light bulb going off or you fully understand something or you have this brilliant idea or you connect a couple of things. And there are other times where you sort of like remember sort of what you understood, but you don't quite understand it now. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. And so even today, like you've said that intellectually,

you're beginning to understand how maybe, like, potential is a burden instead of an advantage and maybe you haven't really squandered things and it's been hard for you. But your consciousness has not wrapped its head around that concept. You can understand it intellectually, but you don't sort of understand it, like, use the word embodied.

I'm not being here. Yeah. Use the word embodied. So you haven't embodied that concept, but you understand it intellectually. So the first thing to understand is that consciousness is not the intellect. Consciousness is that thing which allows you to embody that knowledge. A higher state of consciousness allows you to, quote, unquote, get it. And if you think about how people change, people who get it start to change their behavior

and people who don't get it start to not change their behavior or don't change their behavior, right? When you think about Terry Cruz embodying you and taking control of you, what you're essentially saying is that someone who gets it is going to start taking control of me

and I don't get it so it's hard for me to change. So the hard thing about this whole process is that I can share with you guys information but I can't make you get it. You can lead a horse to water. Yeah. You can't make them drink. So part of what I try to do is like help people get it because that's where change comes from.

And sometimes what I basically try to do is cultivate like a certain kind of consciousness. And those are the quote unquote breakthroughs that you guys see on stream. Right. And everyone like longs for that because when they look at that, they see like, okay, this something has changed in this person. You guys can look at someone and you can say like something has changed in this person. Is that happened to you yet on stream today? I mean, I haven't had like a mystical experience like that guy who was the in sale quote unquote. Yeah, that was fucking wild.

Broke down and he was like sobbing and laughing at the same time. That was like a very, very beautiful. Yeah. So hasn't happened for you, right? I think we'd all be able to. I suppose not. I've had this kind of like building energy this whole time. like it almost feels like the sensation of like nervousness or or excitement um it's like a it's like a

dispersed diffused version of that i think of the of the so you are in the process of coalescing right as it builds your coalescing and concentrating we're not there yet i don't think we're going to get there today which is fine um so let's just first understand that that this is what consciousness is. So, Cria Yoga is, in a sense, it's a direct path because the focus is not on something else. The focus is on what are the practices that refine our consciousness? What are the practices that enhance our consciousness? That's what Cria yoga is about. So in some ways, it is a very direct path, but I want you guys to understand that, you know, saying one path of yoga is more direct than another path of yoga isn't of itself a comparison and

therefore false. There is no better. better path of yoga than they're just different kinds of yoga, just like there are different kinds of people. It's kind of like saying which job is the best. It's like there isn't a best job. It depends on the person. So, career yoga is just kind of a systematic process of refining one's consciousness. And I think it is a relatively speaking, a direct path. It is also relatively speaking very difficult. Yeah. Because you're directly engaging with the stuff. It's kind of like, you know, there's a certain purity of it

which makes it more potent but that purity also makes it more difficult. Like you can't, it's kind of like saying, you know, rock climbing is a more direct workout than climbing stairs. Like you're gonna, like, you're gonna get more in shape

by rock climbing than you will by climbing stairs. Yeah. But it's also way fucking harder to do and it doesn't mean that it's actually the best path because climbing stairs is like pretty doable and we can start low and go slow and you can kind of get there in the end. Yeah. So is rock climbing better or is using a stair stepper like better? That's just two different.

Exactly. So is one more direct? Yes, but it also means that it's more difficult. Yeah. So let's talk for a second about hatha yoga. So hath or hutt is translated the Sanskrit word for adamantite. Right? Oh shit.

Yeah. right so hut is is about severity hut is about directness it's about steadiness and it's kind of like physical so hata yoga is also pretty badass hat to yoga is the idea that you can just use your fucking body to get enlightened

all this fucking consciousness bullshit and this thinking and contemplation and enlightenment and coalescing of energies and chakras and Oprah and be in touch with yourself in essential oil Hata yoga's like, fuck that. We're going to train your body until you become enlightened. And that's enough.

Just body, body, body, body, body. The reason that it's expanded so easily in the West is because kria yoga is hard to do. And we are so spiritually starved as a population that Hata yoga gives us, like, it's a very easy sequence of things that you can start doing that helps people, like, feel better in weird ways that they don't even understand.

So Hatu Yoga is very accessible. I don't think of it as inferior. I used to, but I've come to realize that that's just fucking arrogance and ego. And that there is a 26-year-old woman named Stephanie, who is just as likely at becoming enlightened by going to a yoga studio five days a week as I am, despite all of my extensive, hardcore going to India shit. Right? She can just do yoga and not understand what the fuck she's doing.

She can still get enlightened. Not any better or worse than I am. So Hati yoga is good because it's accessible. It's easy. You don't have to, you know, and you can still go hardcore because like that's where all the human pretzel stuff comes in. Right. So to do tapasia for an hour, I'll show you guys a particular posture like towards the end of stream, right? Which you guys can try.

That's going to be our meditative practice for the day. So you guys can try to do the traditional tapasia, which means penance posture, which is a yoga posture or meditative posture, which has to do with the accumulation of spiritual energy. teach you a relatively direct version of that, okay? So that's what Hatha Yoga. So you understand what Kreea Yoga is and what Hatha Yoga is? Yeah. Any questions about that so far?

I don't, I think it was you who said this in a previous video or stream, but you said that yoga is like preparation for meditation. Does that sound familiar? Yep. So what that, so yoga does not actually mean, Yeah, so yoga is not what is not hata yoga, right? So asan, which is postures, physical postures. So when you go to a yoga studio, you're not doing yoga.

What you're doing is as asan or asana. We just translate that as yoga. But that's not really what yoga is. The root word of yoga is, what is yoga? The root word of yoga is huge, which means union or yoke. So this is kind of what I love about. Sanskrit is like, you know, a lot of the stuff, a lot of realizations are kind of paradoxical. Like when you really understand something, it's sort of paradoxical.

Yeah. Like potential is not really an advantage. It's a burden, which is kind of paradoxical. And I think the closer that you get to truly understanding something, the more paradoxical it kind of becomes, even though you understand it. So what is yoga? So yoga is, it comes from the Sanskrit word huge, which means union or yoke. And that's kind of weird because yoke is not y-o-l-k, it's y-o-k-e. Do you know what a yoke is?

Like a yoke that pulls a wagon or a big yoke-y-o? Exactly. So it's y-o-K-E. So a yoke is something that binds the wagon to like the cow or the buffalo or the bull or the horse. Right? It's yoked. It's bound. So yoga is, and it also means union, which is sort of bound or unbursed.

Anyway, what that means is that yoga is the process of becoming one with the infinite. So there is this idea in yoga that we have an individual soul and that the individual soul is a piece of something called Baram Atman, which is the universal soul. So that the basic unit of existence is consciousness and that we sort of separate from the cosmic consciousness to become an individual unit of consciousness, which is like a self. and the goal of yoga is to rejoin with like a droplet that gets pulled out of the ocean to like rejoin with the ocean. And if we kind of think about it, like when a droplet separates, so are there droplets in the ocean? Yeah. Really? I mean, I guess a droplet is defined by its distinction, its barrier.

Excellent. Right? Yeah. So that is a moment of consciousness, right? So you repeated, and then you stopped and you thought and you learned something. So the droplet only exists outside of the ocean. And when a droplet goes back into the ocean, what happens to the droplet? Non-duality.

What does that mean? Speak plainly. It is reabsorbed into itself, which is its natural form, one could argue. Yeah. So if I pull a droplet out of the ocean again, is it the same as the droplet before? No. Is it different from the droplet before? The individual molecules possibly are.

Possibly, right? So the short answer is possibly. So what is the relation between two droplets? Maybe there's something the same. Maybe there's something different. So this is what they mean by Atman and Baramatman. So you are an individual person. And you've kind of separated from something.

And yoga is the process of rejoining that thing. That's the true self. Okay? And that's why like, anyway, hard to understand this stuff. You really have to experience it. So yoga is the process of rejoining that thing. That's what it means by union. And at the same time, it is also the process of unyoking yourself.

So it's the process of becoming unbound to this person that you are in this life. So when we think about the identity and the ego, generally speaking, we become happier as we become unbound from ourselves. When you get caught up in being popular in high school, you're very bound to your identity. You're trapped by it and it fucking sucks. As you become unbound from your identity or your ego, you start to chill out and you start to enjoy things more. So yoga is the process of becoming unbound and at the same time becoming joined with. something else. So it's kind of like binding and unbinding at the same time. Okay? So there are many paths to get to yoga. Kria yoga is one. Hata yoga is another.

And you just have to figure out what's kind of right for you. Now, chakras involve more kundalini yoga. So kundalini yoga is sort of the path of, so you can think about it this way. There are a thousand, like how many ways are there for a droplet to get back in the ocean? Basically infinite. Right? So you can become rain, you can become river, you can become mist, you know, there are all kinds of ways. You can be carried. People can dump you in the ocean. There are a lot of different ways to rejoin. And that's what the different paths of yoga are. Is rain better than the river? No. This is a dumb question?

It's different. Yeah. It's like just it doesn't even compute, right? So is Korea yoga better than Hata yoga? Not necessarily. It's just you have to figure out what it is. It sounds to me like you're not ready for Kriya. yoga yet. So, Korea yoga is an advanced practice, and I would say that people should start with basic practices, even if you guys want to get to the hardcore shit, which I'm with you 100% because I love the hardcore shit. I have in, like, I mean, now less so, but for a long time, I had kind of this ego thing where I want to do, like, hardcore spirituality and go to an

ashram instead of go to a yoga studio where, like, Stephanie and Michelle are doing their awesome and then getting, like, their bleach blonde hair dye. Right? Yeah, that's part of the paradox, isn't it? All of it is, the entire pursuit is egoic, even the pursuit of like, you know, removing your ego and returning to. Yes. So I would say that for you, Milo, your biggest step is actually probably going to a humdrum yoga class. Going to a what? You cut up there.

Hum drum yoga class. Okay. Right? So I think you need to go there. to do those practices. Not only will it help you, but you'll have to grapple with your ego. And you'll have to admit

that you have to go the slow route just the same as everyone else instead of ordering that secret power book and finding the secret power that will accelerate. Fucking, no, man. I'm all for forbidden knowledge and all that good stuff. I love that kind of stuff. But, you know, just start low and go slow.

And I'll teach you a practice today if you want to go hardcore. Okay. Does that answer your questions? Yeah, 100%. Okay. All right, so shall we transition to practice? Sure.

Okay. So I'm going to teach you guys the busia, okay? So this is going to be hard to explain, and I can't hear you now, okay? So this is the posture. Can you do it? So you're, you're, can you hear me? Not, or you have headphones, okay. So your heel and leg should be above your knee on your inner thigh.

right so practice that and then you can go to the other side so you guys should try this at home give it a shot so breathe Milo breathe it'll make it easier deep breath in and deep breath out there you go just make sure you keep breathing stability comes from breath look at that all you have to do is breathe

fucking weird but just keep doing it you guys see that let go of the tension focus on your breath and see what your body is capable of Beautiful. If you're having difficulty, just focus on your breath, hold the position. Go ahead and switch over to the other side.

Right? So no preparatory practice for us today. No basic asana. And breathe. If you want to make it easier on yourself, you can open your eyes because your brain has three different circuits that regulate balance. Eyes will help. Eyes open will help you balance.

Continue breathing. And now relax. Close your eyes. Let your arms come down, leg come down, and just feel your body. Just sit in the space of your mind. Notice what your breath is doing. And then go ahead and come back. Hardcore enough for you? Yeah. That'll do. How was it? The hardcore part is like doing that every fucking day.

Doing anything every fucking day, I think is the really tricky aspect. So tapasya is good because it is hard. So I think this is a very good practice to train yourself to do something every day. I don't know how else. I feel like the basya makes it the amount of focus that you gain from doing that the basya practice, what you really are doing is it requires like a full force concentration of the mind and that kind of XP gain like levels up your ability to like stick with something does that make sense it's like a psychosomatic spiritual practice that I think like literally

boosts your like willpower so it's like it's a powerful technique that is designed to accumulate energy like spiritual energy and then the more spiritual spiritual energy you accumulate, the easier it is to manifest things in the real world. And if we think about doing something every day, like those things that are manifest when something, when your intentions become a reality, that requires, why are you smiling? Nothing. What? Don't worry about it.

Okay. When you think about manifesting a reality, it requires like focus every day. So tapasias sort of directly allows you. to like gets you closer to manifestation. Okay. Questions before we wrap up for the day? All right. One more.

So I meditate every day. I meditated before stream. And I am like all I do is just sit and try and focus on my breath to the point where like I have no thoughts. I used to like I used to kind of be in that space

be able to kind of be in like a mindful I think mindless is a better word than mindful but a mindless a mindless state for like like three to five seconds at a time maybe when I really had my routine going in college and lately I'm not sure if it has anything to do with like the medication I'm taking or anything but it's almost impossible to I've been I've been meditating every day for like three months

and it's almost impossible to kind of return to that space yeah so what was your experience what was your mind doing what was happening within you during the tapasia practice during what we just did. I don't know. So have... Yeah, so think about that for a second, right? When are you not aware of what your... When can you not remember what your mind is doing?

When can you not remember what your mind is doing? Yeah, when can you not remember what your mind was doing? Let's put it that way, to be more precise. When you weren't conscious at the time? Right? So when your mind was not active or was not awake. So I think that the focusing on the breath practice is too simple for you. Like you can continue doing it if you want,

but if you're interested in Kria Yoga, you need more intensive meditation practices that force the focus of the concentration of your mind. And I think you were concentrating very, very heavy. with very little mental activity during that the bus your practice, which is why you don't really, like, it's not like you were thinking about stuff, right? You weren't like thinking about the weather or whatever your sly smile a few seconds ago. Like those are all thoughts. You weren't doing that.

It was just a struggle. And like your mind was, the position of your body was demanding the focus of your mind. It's like we don't have time to think about anything. We're trying to just keep it together. And then you may have sent like a direction. to your mind, you can say, okay, breathe. And then as you breathe, things calm down. But, like, that's exactly what you need.

You need a meditative practice that demands the attention of your consciousness and your focus. And it's not, you shouldn't have to struggle to do it. Like, it's not a struggle because you just can't fucking, if I were to tell you, so get, get up again. Do the tapasia practice. Okay, so like your mind is pretty active right now. So close your, do whatever you need to to hold it. Focus on breathing. And now tell me about the last match of War III you played.

Went, Torin-Chiefen with headhunters. What's happening to you? I'm failing to balance. Good, so let your balance return. Closing my eyes for like 0.1 seconds. Okay, whatever you need to. Good. What was the enemy hero in that match?

How did the match go? I lost Tell me about Over the history of War III Have you had a favorite patch? No, I'm not that Most of the time I just play custom games So I don't really give a fuck

Okay So what is your mind What do you notice within yourself As I'm asking you these questions A lot of tension in my body Okay So I would imagine That there are periods of intense focus

that it's almost like what you're doing is throwing a ball up in the air and trying to do something like when I ask you a question it's like you're throwing a ball up in the air and you're trying to answer it before your attention returns to the body. Does that make sense? Yeah.

I'm kind of re-centering myself by staring at the wall. Yep. So come back down. So it's interesting, right? Like that try as you might to activate your mind. your answers were fucking slow. Like you were saying like one or two words.

And if I ask you about like your experiences in War III now, I'm sure you would be fluent in it. But your mind is like, you're trying to like jumpstart your mind. But the practice is like, no, fuck, we don't have time for your mind right now. So that's what a meditative practice should be. The purpose of Asan, and this is why asan is so good, is because it automatically, you don't have a choice. It makes it easy for you to concentrate.

And then like the second your mind starts thinking, it's like you start wobbling. And you were getting better at it because you were getting better at almost throwing it up. Okay, I'm going to have a thought and then back to focus. I'm going to have a thought and back to focus. And if you think about a mindfulness practice, it's the opposite. It's lots and lots and lots of thoughts, a little bit of focus. Lots and lots and lots and lots of thoughts, a little bit of focus. Yeah.

And so meditation is not supposed to be hard. Like, if you understand meditation, so I think the biggest problem with meditation is that people learned a certain kind of meditation and were taught by gurus who understood meditation. And then they became certified teachers and started teaching the protocol. And they lost the knowledge of how to teach meditation because we care about certifications. And if you take this eight-week course, then you are a meditation teacher and you can go and teach others. And they all teach the same technique, the same techniques, same technique, same technique, same technique. same technique because and that's what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is like one of the thousand different techniques of meditation.

And if you learn the right technique of meditation, you can fucking try to start your mind and it's not going to work. It's like your battery is dead. So do tapasya. All right. Okay. Questions, thoughts? I love you.

Love you too, man. Good luck. Thank you for everything you do. I will. You're most welcome. We're rooting for you. Come back and be a success story for us. Keep going, okay?

Sounds good. Also, last thing, I was supposed to talk to you about intelligence. I think you are intelligent. I think you just need to understand that it doesn't have to do with ego. I think you're very smart. But that's separate. It's just a tool. It's like one of the stats on your character sheet.

You know, you don't have to get egotistical about it. But you also don't need to think of yourself as not intelligent. Because that too is egotistical. Yeah. Right? So like your intelligence is, what it is in the same way that your height is what it is and that your you know your eyes are the color that they are it is just one attribute of you it is just a fact it does not need to be

exciting nor does it need to be disappointing neither of those things yeah i just wish it wasn't such a warship quality beautifully put what do you mean by that can you explain that um it's just like a dick swinging contest basically sometimes just trying to seem smarter than someone else and it's a waste of energy. I think the reason that it's worshipped is actually a little bit of a mistake because I think we use intelligence as an umbrella term for all kinds of capabilities that different people have. But really what we're saying is capable and we just call it intelligent. But it's all kinds of things. It's hard work. It's willpower. It's humility. It's practice. It's intelligence.

but we just call him, oh, he's so smart. What that really means is he's good at something. But anyway, you know, when you look at someone who's fluent in a language, you say, oh, that person is so smart, you don't see the thousands of hours that they put in. It's not that they're smart. Yeah. One quote from this Korea book was, let me see if I can find it. It was something like the dedicated person of average,

intelligence is capable of much more than the lazy or erratic genius. Absolutely, right? And Twitch chat could have told you that, because we're all erratic geniuses and none of us are getting fucking anywhere. For real. Yeah. So we'll stop on that sentiment. Thanks for coming on, Milo. Yes. And keep doing what you're doing. I think you're on a good path. Just keep trucking. All right? Thank you so much, doctor. Take care.