Know Thyself - E64 - Aubrey Marcus: Navigating Purpose, Prosperity & Plant Medicine Pitfalls

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Today we are joined by the warrior poet himself, Aubrey Marcus, for a deep dive into the journey of awakening and integration. Aubrey shares what it means to be a warrior poet, stepping into the role of divine masculinity, and discovering his worth beyond his accomplishments.  Aubrey also opens up about the recent death of his father, and how he healed from grief and loss. He shares his path with plant medicine. Beginning at the age of 18, he has used psychedelics as a tool for growth and expansion, explaining that he doesn't know who he'd be without them. He shares how to avoid common pitfalls on the plant medicine path, and why integration is simpler than most think.  Aubrey also dives into his journey with building and selling a multi-million dollar company, what success feels like, and why money won't solve everything. ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 2:06 Embodying the Warrior Poet Within 4:08 Asking the Question: Who am I?  11:35 Discovering Your Inherent Worthiness & Finding the middle way  19:15 The Death of My Father 23:48 Healing Unconscious Relationship Patterns  29:54 I Can’t Imagine My Life Without Plant Medicine 33:07 Pitfalls of the Plant Medicine Path  37:46 The Secret to Integration  43:00 Overcoming the Hungry Ghost of Desire 49:15 Success, Selling Onnit, and What Comes After Wealth 59:02 Projections, Polyamory & Transcending Jealousy  1:09:09 Embodying the Divine Masculine  1:12:13 Rebalancing Masculine & Feminine Energies 1:17:55 The Power of Community  1:26:43 Conclusion ___________ Aubrey Marcus is the founder of Onnit, a globally disruptive brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. Onnit remains an industry leader with products optimizing millions of lives, including many top professional athletes around the world. Aubrey currently hosts the Aubrey Marcus Podcast, a motivational destination for conversations with the brightest minds in athletics, business, mindset, and spirituality with over 100 million listens. He is the author of the NYT Bestselling book Own The Day, Own Your Life and has been featured on the cover of Men’s Health and other publications. He has also produced several documentaries including Awake In The Darkness, Dragon of the Jungle, Ayahuasca, and Huachuma. He is currently the visionary behind the donation based coaching platform Fit For Service which recently hosted the transformational music festival, Arkadia. If you ask Aubrey what he is most passionate about, it is raising awareness for psychedelic medicine, including dedicated philanthropic support to MAPS.org and Heffter Institute. He is a 27 year native of Austin, Texas where he currently resides with his wife Vylana. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aubreymarcus/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AubreyMarcusPod Fit for Service: https://fitforservice.com Website: https://www.aubreymarcus.com ___________ Download André's FREE Book Recommendation List: https://www.knowthyself.one/books Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927 André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/

If your desire is linked to this idea that getting what you desire is actually going to be satiating, you're on a slippery slope. I remember I sold my company on it, life-changing payoff. I go to that moment, log into my bank, and I see just an absurd number. And it's like, what the fuck am I going to do with this amount of money? There's an ever-present invitation to show up in greater and greater service. I see always what's possible for me, and it's always. a little bit ahead of where I am. These plant medicine experiences have shaped and formed who I am to

such a great degree. It's almost hard to imagine Aubrey Marcus without it. There's lots of traps on the plant medicine path. You have to be able to find the ecstatic and find the rapture all over the place. If you really love the process of evolution itself and you fall in love with the desire to evolve, you're going to really be satisfied. I mean, it's one of the secrets to happiness. Hello, beautiful beings. Welcome back to the Know They Self podcast where every single week we get the honor and privilege to sit down with a brilliant mind, a deep heart to learn more about ourselves and the nature of the world at deeper and deeper levels. My guest today is the warrior poet. He radically lives his life to the fullest. I know him as somebody that loves to explore the boundaries and edges of his own consciousness. And he shares the diamonds that he finds with millions of people. He's the founder of On It Fit for Service, Arcadia Festival. He's a is a best-selling author, a podcaster, a philosopher, an ally, a brother, dear friend of mine. And he's somebody that deeply respect and I'm inspired by his capacity to play big in the material world, show up with a heart of service and stay devoted in the spiritual and melt and blur the lines

between all of them. Aubrey Marcus, thanks for being here. That's a hell of an intro, man. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that. Of course, man. The warrior poet is in the house. here I am yeah what does that mean to you the idea is the juxtaposition of two things that

oftentimes we imagine are separate and are distinct the warrior you know someone who just puts on their armor sucks it up moves forward no matter what you know and there's different levels of the warrior but I think the highest aspect of the war is a warrior of the heart the one who's willing to stand for what is true what is just what is beautiful for what is right no matter the cost. And so that's the expression of the warrior. But the warrior often doesn't deal with their emotions, doesn't actually go into the internal psychological processes. They just kind of say, look, we have a job to do and we need to go through the fray. And no matter what happens, we keep going. It's that Spartan ethos. It's the Bouchito code. But there is always,

even in the old philosophies, an understanding of the balance on the other side, which is the poet, the one who's willing to feel all of the feelings, to share all of the scars, to cry all of the tears, to love radically, to scream in the agony of ecstasy of life itself. And to me, I only wanted to live a life that brought both of those things together. So the warrior poet symbolizes this kind of combination of two qualities that I wanted to express in my life. I personally resonate and magnetize towards individuals that are that walking paradox. They don't fit into any one thing. They can, like I spoke to in the intro, kind of like, you know, playfully in the material and realize that the spiritual carries, you know, with you everywhere.

You can stay devoted on that path too, that you can not just be one thing. you can be many things. You can be a warrior and you can be a poet. As somebody that's spent so much of your life, you know, exploring your own consciousness, also being in deep conversation with so many incredible teachers and philosophers and leaders, what do you make of this question? Who am I? Who are you, Aubrey? Well, that's a very good question. And it's one of the most important questions. And I think your podcast is aptly named because if you know thyself, you know the universe. as Rumi said, we are not a drop in the ocean, we're the ocean in a drop. So the self extends pretty much as deep as you want to take it.

You know, you can keep looking within, within, within, until you find the source field of unicity all the way. And then you can see all of the strata in between. So for me, I think of myself as a multidimensional being that has almost like a toothpick that crosses through all of the strata. the nine dimensional layers, which is the model that I both learned in my ayahuasca journeys and then also had clarified by our shared brother, Matthias de Stefano, who kind of, we got to go back and forth and talk about those things that I'd felt and experienced and match that with his memories and his understanding of the cosmos. So myself is, you know, it's complex. and there's a multiplicity of selves even within the same dimensional reality

that aren't even talking about the other extra-dimensional realities. There's a different self that'll show up one day versus another day. And I think it's a fallacy to think of the stativeness of self, while there's certain things that are going to be similar, like your body is going to be mostly the same, yet at the same time your cells are turning over based upon a pattern, but your DNA is roughly the same. So we're going to kind of evolve through a process.

So some things are pretty stable. And this is the most stable part of the self, which is the body. But it can change at any moment. You know, and we have to adapt to how the body might change through an accident or through some process and still understand that it's still us. So I guess for me, my own personal model, right? There's kind of three levels that I would take it in. One, there's the Aubrey personality structure. And you could call that the separate self-structure, but that's the one that defines Aubrey as different than André, as different than anybody else. It's just, this is the Aubrey. And if you touch the Aubrey, Aubrey knows that Aubrey is being touched. I'm very aware, like, all right, here I am. You know, this is, this is me. I have a particular voice. I have a particular vocabulary. I have a particular proclivity for certain things and tastes. And those tastes evolve. And my personality evolves and my identity evolves. So I am the

evolving Aubrey. And then for me, there's kind of the highest expression of what Aubrey can be and how I can express in this life. And you got to meet that Aubrey at Burning Man. That Aubrey took the plion name Dragonheart. And Dragonheart is the most full of love. It's the most full of passion for life. It's the most full of joy and laughter. And it's kind of the highest expression of Aubrey. And it starts to understand myself in relation to the the field even more. So there's the separate self, the identity structure. Then you start to move into a greater true self-understanding, which is your connection to the field, is what I'd like to call it, which is how you are distinct and unique, but also separate from, you know, separate and connected,

both separate and connected to everyone and everything around you. And it starts to have that understanding and you start to bring that in. Now, of course, there's the radical, true self understanding of Aubrey, which is just merger with the field, understanding, as Ram Dass was saying later in his life, becoming nobody. You know, it's actually where you're either nobody, neti, neti, I am not that, or Tatvaamasi, I am that. So you're either all of it or none of it. And but I don't think it stops there.

And really my study with Rabbi Mark Gaffney has really expanded upon that where the identity structure, the obri then meets the true self. So includes the obri and meets the true self, understands that plane, and then includes both of those to express as what you would call the unique self. And the unique self is a combination of your identity structure with your understanding of the true self that moves into a celebration of your own uniqueness. So you become your own unique face of the divine that lives in you as you and through you and as such you participate in the evolution of the source field itself because as you evolve yourself you end up evolving the source field so a really radical statement that is heretical to most traditional religions but comes from the Hebrew wisdom tradition is the idea

and you know and Dr. Gaffney there's more God to come and what he means by that is there's more of the uniqueness of your own life and as you express with the divine moving through you that's expanding all of the complex possibility of how the divine is manifest in this life so the unique self then becomes you know the way in which you can express in the in the highest level so in one aspect you could call that a part of what dragon heart is and then there's also another aspect which really even transcends the uniqueness of this own life, but the uniqueness of your soul. So the uniqueness of the life that extends beyond this life and reincarnates over and over again. And there's a uniqueness to that characteristic through my own journeys that I've started to understand like, oh, wow, there's the unique self of Aubrey, but then there's also the unique self of my soul itself that has known many lives and lived many, you.

you know, in many different planes of existence. And so it gets to be a complicated, complex, but also very clear understanding of, you know, who I am. And then on either side of that is the monad, is the Atman. And of course, Atman being Brahman, the place that we hold the divine in our heart, the oneness that we hold. We also participate in that. So it's like a toothpick going through an onion.

And it just depends on which spot you identify. identify yourself at, and that's who you are at any given moment. And usually, you know, you're some blend, because even if you're identified at one part in the toothpick, you're still the whole toothpick that crosses all the nine dimensions. Damn, drop that mic. So good. Man, there's, as we go on the journey of self-realization, you know, how we relate to our own identity and the many different identities that we hold in life becomes the source of so much joy or potential suffering. And so that question of who am I, as you start to go Mnward starts to become, what am I? What is it? There's this essence within ourselves that feels

like the more true version of ourselves, yet not neglecting the very real physical separate self. And as we come into proper relation, not labeling different identities as good as bad, but as limited or expanded identities, perhaps. And you could say that the totality of that whole onion with the full toothpick going through all of it is our true full self, I think we get taste of throughout different parts of our life. And I think you're somebody that has experienced many different identities in your life. You've been a very successful businessman. There's many different roles in leadership and in partnership that you've carried. And I'm curious, I know a pattern or an identity that you did have was that you used to place a lot of. And as many people do,

especially men, place their identity and their worth and their performance. And so I'm curious for you as an individual, what's been your journey of realizing that your worth is an inherent in your output? Yeah. I think it's a constant journey. I mean, I think there's an ever-present invitation to show up in greater and greater service. That includes service to myself, but also includes service to the whole. And so I see always what's possible for me, and it's always a little bit ahead of where I am.

my potential is always just a little bit ahead. And every once in a while, I'll finish something, I'll do something. I'll go like, wow, that was the best I could do. And there's like a deep satisfaction in reaching those moments. But after that moment, there's always that idea of my potential being just a little bit further. And that's something that I actually don't want to discard because it drives me forward. It drives me to become an even better version of myself. And the more I love the world, passionate I become about contributing to the world and the more I understand myself, the more I understand my potential can evolve even further. So that's like the healthy version of that. And I'm more often than not in the healthier version of that. I think earlier in my life,

you know, there were ways in which I felt really just kind of absolutely shattered, disappointed, I was pretty sure that by at 30 years old, you know, I really deeply felt I had a major contribution to give to the world, but I wasn't doing it. You know, I was carving out salary. I had some different clients from my marketing company and I was doing all right, but I wasn't really contributing anything of meaning in my own, in my own way to the world other than to like a very small group of people. And I think, you know, Charles Eisenstein actually talks about this very well. he talks about the myth of scale and he talks about how one of the traps that we can fall in is measuring our worth and value by the size of the impact that we have. So if we're just impacting the people

in our family or Ohana, that's not enough. We've got to have a big podcast or big thing. And it's easy to fall into that trap. And if you use kind of the Rosicrucian cosmology, they have a name for that type of thinking and it's aramanic which comes from the being araman which is part of their kind of trinity of their own cosmology and aramon wants to weigh and measure everything and everything is weighed and measured including your own performance your function so it reduces you to your output and to your function and i think our society has been dominated by aramonic thinking whether it's materialist reductionist science that negates and denies the multi-generational thousands of year old wisdom of chi and prana or mana or the energetic elements that we can't quite adequately measure

with machines although companies like heart math are starting to figure out how to measure things that we formerly weren't able to measure and so science is converging with this deep wisdom but the aramonic tendency is inherently somewhat sociopathic where you reduce yourself to a function and then measure your value based upon that function and I've certainly fallen victim to that trap and this can also occur in spirituality of course you can start to value yourself based upon your quote level of consciousness and you'll see this show up when someone's you know trying to say like oh I'm an old soul and you know these young souls over here like what do you fucking measuring your soul. You know, like there's no, there's no hierarchy actually when you really

understand the depth of it. And, you know, sure, you can weigh and measure things. There is a purpose for that. There is an understanding of how many people you're reaching and what you're doing. And that's all fine. But as soon as you put a value proposition to that, I think you run into really, really dangerous territory because there'll never be enough value that you can get by measuring your value, right? Like you'll always need more. You'll need more money. You'll need more followers.

You'll need more. And I think, again, that's part of, that could be part of the healthy aspect of feeling like you have more potential and the ambition to live this fuller, bigger life. But when you apply a value proposition to the weighing and measuring of everything you do, you'll run into deep, deep problems. And that's a trap that I definitely fell in and can even say. still find myself in from time to time and I just need to bring my awareness to go like, okay, this is not what's most important. It's beautiful that on that path of really realizing who you are

as a series of realizing who you're not on many different levels. And as you start to actually awaken and have those deaths and rebirth of who you're not, you can step into this space of feeling more of who your true essence is. And it can get a little complex when there's part of you that really wants to show up and serve to the planet in the biggest scale possible. And still there's the separate self that has this identity of because it'll make me worthy and I'll be good enough. Yeah. And it can show up in everything. You know, it can show up in lovemaking. You know, you can make love. And there's two, you know, one of the ways to think of making love is there's circle sexing and then there's line sexing. And circle sexing is just to be in the eros of the experience.

So whether you're just kissing and holding each other and experiencing pleasure, you know, everything is beautiful. There's no goal. Line means that there's a goal. There's an objective. So you could start measuring orgasms or you could start measuring, trying to quantify, arimonically quantify the amount of pleasure that you've given and then reflect that back upon yourself at how good a lover you are. And then how good a lover you are is how much of a man you are. And you can run into that, trap even in making love, which is something that is, you know, really wildly sacred if you allow it to be, but we can actually reduce it to this almost materialism of sexing, which you can run into these traps everywhere you look, you know, you can run into it with food. And it's not that it doesn't have a place with food. You can count your micronutrients and count your macronutrients. You know, like, I got a brother, I got a brother who really is, for you. focused on his food from purely a state of function. He's like, I find this has value. I find this does not have value. I'm like, but is it delicious though? Like, do you like it? There's a, there's an

enjoyment. There's an eros to the experience of eating that also needs to be counterbalanced with an understanding of like, all right, what are the antinutrients? What are the micronutrients? What are the macronutrients? How is this going to support my body? And so I think it's a constant game of finding balance and finding the middle way. I fully agree with that. And just finding that integration between the two. I'm curious for you, because there's so much that I want to dive into in this podcast, I just want to touch on your father passing away. Yeah. And how is that an initiation really for you with old stories, identities you're holding maybe in that lineage that we're falling apart and then also the grieving process and all that. I'm just curious for you to share a little bit more

about that. Well, my father, you know, I'd like to mythologize, not pathological. apologize, you know, but if you were going to go and give him a pathology, he was, you know, he developed a pretty severe paranoid schizophrenia when I was about 30 years old. And we had a beautiful relationship before that. You know, he was one of my best friends. And we'd play chess and play golf and play tennis. And so much of the way that my mind works, especially from a rational side, was because of my father. He also, you know, invited me to go on my first psychedelic Vision Quest when I was 18 just graduating high school. So he set me on my path and I owe so much to my father. But then at 30, you know, he was gone and I could no longer reach him. He wasn't able to

identify me as who I was. Actually, when he saw me at those points, he saw me as an imposter because he had an idea in his mind of who his son was and I wasn't that, even when I was showing up in the flesh. So I really lost my father at 30. And then, We tried to reach out to him, tried to connect with him. He spent several stretches in mental institutions, but always found his way out and then basically barricaded himself in his home until, you know, earlier this year, you know, we, I came back from a trip and he had passed away in his house. And it's a really remarkable story of all of the things that transpired.

But ultimately, it was a very, it was a very potent problem. of using all of the technologies that were available from the Hebrew wisdom technologies of sitting Shiva, which was telling stories with all of his friends and families and really, you know, bringing him back to life through the stories that we told and not whitewashing and not just being polyanish and telling all the good stories, telling all the stories, you know, telling how he'd fly into fits of rage if you woke him up from a nap sometimes, you know, he's like waking up a bear too early. I guess bears are kind of sluggish when you wake him up but i don't know you woke my dad up from a nap he was hot you know and so

there's stories like that to the to the amazing stories of abundance and possibility and all of the things that he transmitted um to the these kind of psychospiritual practices where we would go into a medicine journey together and i'd find him in the in in a place where i could see the fractured part of his mind and then i could see his soul and work to kind of bring those two pieces together So in some ways during those kind of two weeks of morning, which I just paused everything else in my life. And the entire thing was just focused on my father and also living and celebrating all of the things that he loved. So when I would play three on three basketball like my dad used to do on the tennis court, you know, we'd play as hard as we could. And then I'd huddle the guys around.

And I'd say like, you know, this is for you, MPM, this is for you, dad. You know, like, I know how much you love this. And I just want to thank my brothers for being here. and doing something that my dad showed me how much joy and how much love was there and that and through that process you know i felt and i still feel like closer to my father than i had during that whole 12 year stretch because it was a strange limbo where he was alive technically but he was dead also but there was no ritual to let him go so we did we did so much to grieve him, you know, in so many tears and so much laughter and so much, so much that we brought

into that, that I really feel deeply at peace and I feel like he's there with me, you know, always currently. And if I reach to him in a deep meditation, you know, like I can find him and I can hear his voice and I know he's there supporting me. So, you know, that process has been really beautiful and with my actual biological father. And I, think one of the things it's you know and i and definitely you know open to expand on any of that because i just shared a lot but i also want to open up another um another bracket which is that when i lost my father i placed father on other people you know and i think i'd already father to me went met something to do with the powerful masculine you know a masculine that had the power to to change my

world. You know, my father was a very, very powerful man. He, you know, built himself up from nothing as a commodity strater and had radical abundance. And my father was, he was a force, you know, and, uh, and I think so when I, when my father left, I kind of placed father on other people. And that was also not a very healthy process because the only, the only safe place to place father, other than you know you can have your father participate in the father but you got to place it on the capital f father like the father the archetype of the father and i had to learn that i had to learn that lesson because i got burned you know in different ways placing father onto people and i think we can do that with our own biological father as well because everybody will fail to meet the archetype of

capital f r father or capital m mother i'm very very lucky that my mother participates, my actual biological mother, participates in capital M mother to such an extreme extent that there wasn't a lot of turbulence on the feminine side. But with my father, there was. There was the shadow elements. And then there was the beautiful elements. What was an example of you projecting father onto somebody else? Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to give specifics of the people who I did that with, but it was basically looking to them for approval. did I do a good job dad am I doing good you know are you proud of me then and I would never say that but that was my attitude towards it so I was always looking for approval you know the blessing of the

father like am I getting the blessing am I getting the blessing am I doing a good job dad and it really took the breakdown of some of those relationships for me to claim like all right enough you know I'm not looking to any human to give me the blessing to say, I'm proud of you, son, other than God's source, the father, which is my own connection to spirit. And to really say, like, I'm proud of you, son, to myself participating in the spirit of the father. And that's been the only safe ground. And I think it is the only safe ground to go is your deep relationship with source. It's beautiful.

Yeah, I'm just reflecting on my own path. I feel like I really resonate with that as well, not having a certain masculine or father kind of archetype during certain parts of upbringing and how I maybe have outsourced that or made my connection through meditation kind of that, that fathering process to myself in many ways. I think it's a beautiful way to be able to source that, which you need fully within yourself, but then also be in communication and those partnerships. Ohana that you have to work through those things and have those mirrors and reflections back to you of who you're being for yourself really in the eyes of another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's big. And every type of relationship structure, there's patterns that you got to work through, you know, and there's issues that can be set. You know, I think I'm, I was so blessed with my early connections with, you know, mother and grandmother. I mean, I have a tattoo here. I don't know if the

cameras can see it, but it's my grandmother, you know, and both of them were just unbelievable. So I always had this deeply loving and positive relationship with, you know, the feminine. Now, of course, when I started to get into relationships, things get a little complicated, you know, and so my relationship to feminine as lover, you know, although it was very healthy as feminine to mother, feminine to lover had its rocky spots. So, you know, I've had to work through those. And then man to brother or the masculine, that's been another place where there's been a lot of work. You know, I've experienced a lot of, you know, periods of abandonment from the masculine for my brothers. And so there's a lot of wounds and patterns that I still will, they'll still come up every now and then.

I'll be like, I'll see something happen and I'll be like, oh, I know where this goes. You know, like, I know where this goes. you're going to you're going to fucking bounce you know you're not going to be there for me when i really need you you know and so these early trauma patterns can repeat themselves and repeat themselves until you can actually work through and i think the universe peter crone says this the universe will continue to present you with opportunities until you until you learn to become free you know until you become free and and i found that i found that like until live really and still still have some like small issues that I'm dealing with because of the multiple

times that this pattern has existed of like you know brother where art thou basically you know like yo what's up like where are you and I've had so many experiences of my brothers really be in there for me too I've had both but but yeah these early imprints are something that when you bring awareness to them it's important so that you can start to soften and work through them. It's like that spiral staircase that you are kind of in a way going in a circular pattern but hopefully cultivating more awareness and skills along the journey. So when you revisit those core vulnerabilities, you're a little bit more apt to deal with them. You have a little bit more awareness, more experience. And a big gift that your father gave you was kind of in some ways opening that path, the psychedelics, which has been

such a big part of your spiritual path. And so when you zoom out and look at, you look at, you know, at Aubrey Marcus' life in your use with plant medicine to facilitate depth of connection with self and other. How do you see your journey with psychedelics and how it's an incredible tool medicine and ally on your own path of awakening? It's almost hard to imagine Aubrey Marcus without it. It's like these plant medicine experiences have shaped and formed who I am to such a great degree. like it's difficult to even imagine what the other path would look like because it's been 24 years now you know and so yeah i remember myself as a as a teenager and i remember myself but i really just remember playing basketball and thinking about girls and but i also remember a kind of constant anxiousness

anxiety neurosis that was present i remember i met a i met another jewish brother and we spent i didn't know he was jewish until it was friday it was friday evening and he goes shabbat shalom i'm like oh all right you know i was like yeah you know i said shabat shalom back and and then we expressed like i'm 87 percent ashkenazi jew and he looks at me and he goes you're not nearly as neurotic as a pure blood should be you know and i was like that's an interesting way to call a couple of me i was like that's an interesting way to put it um but uh but I think that all of this work, you know, going into the fire over and over again and having all of these feelings come and project forward onto a big movie screen that I'm actually watching and a part of

and working through them in the most exaggerated form because that's what a lot of these medicines do. They bring everything that's from the inside and allow you to see them and deal with them and feel them. You know, a lot of people even say like, oh, cannabis makes me anxious. No, it doesn't. Cannabis reveals the anxiousness that you have inside. And I'm not saying that everybody should do cannabis. I'm not saying that's the only path. There's many, many paths, but I fundamentally believe that these psychedelics aren't doing anything to you other than showing you aspects of yourself that allow you the opportunity to deal with them. So who I am is really inextricable from the plant medicine path. And that's just been my path. There's many stories that many

people have with breathwork or meditation. I know how deeply meditation has impacted your life. We just spent a beautiful dinner with Lucas Mac and Hello Wesson and breathwork has been their path, you know, for the most part. And so there's many, many, many, many different paths. There's some people who've found it in nature who just spend their time, you know, on walking in nature and camping by themselves and communing with spirit that way. So I don't want to say that my path. is the path for everybody, but it's been the path for me. And I don't know who I would be without it. Just an impossible amount of gratitude, not only to the plant medicines themselves and the psychedelics themselves, but the great teachers that I've got a chance to work with over

the years. There's this Ellen Watts quote that I want to read and riff on a little bit. I said that psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments like microscopes, telescopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with the eye permanently glued to the microscope.

He goes away and works on what he has seen. So my question is, do you feel that a lot of individuals in the plant medicine circles can masquerade hedonism as spirituality? I think that's certainly possible. I mean, there's lots of traps on the plant medicine path, right? There's lots of traps. But the proof is in the pudding, right? Like, the proof is in how do you live? Like, how do people feel when they're around you? You know, what's the energy that comes across? When you enter into a room, is there more love? Is there more laughter? Is there a field of peace of shalom, if you will, that accompanies you? And, that to me is the determinant of what's going on now when you find somebody no matter how much medicine they've done that's dysregulated you'll see signs of potentially paranoia or signs of inflation where they you can tell that they somehow think they're better than everybody else

or you can see signs of escapism or see signs where they're retracted you know because they're kind of constantly in their own world and so there are plenty of traps that people can fall in that quote i think has some merit but it's also doesn't entirely encapsulate it because let's say you're on the phone with god and let's say you got god's number and you talk to god once and you and you say oh god thank you and you hang up the phone and you never dial it again would you do that like no you got god's phone number you're going to call him up he's your buddy you know and i'm not saying that i'm talking to god every time i'm going there and whatever that means but your access to spirit is like a connection that you can make that

you can call and like hey yeah like i'm going to get on the phone i'm going to talk to spirit i'm going to see what spirit has to say the situation and the landscape is changing like let me see what spirit has to say so that's the issue that i have with that quote which is used all of the time as a psychonaut i hear that quote all the time because we're like oh you're doing too many plant medicine journeys. I'm like, all right, fair enough. Do you realize how much I love my fucking life? Like, I don't know what grounds you're saying that I should be doing something different, but if it's radical happiness, love, joy, performance, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, like, I don't know what you're, I don't know what you're criticizing me for.

However, this is working for me. And I think it's because there's both a humility and also a genuine connection that I'm making that's allowing me to converse with potentially just the higher aspects of myself, potentially just my own soul, potentially something that includes and transcends my soul. And so while I feel like there is some merit to that, you have to bring it into your physical form. You can't use this as a form of escapism. You can't use it as the only thing you're looking forward to in your day. Like you have to be able to find the ecstatic and find the rapture and find those feelings all over the place. You know, your tears need to be close. Your laughter needs to be close. You know, that joy of being with, you know, your friends and sharing, sharing life. It all

needs to be close to the surface. And if the plant medicine path isn't taking you closer and ever closer to that, then you really need to adjust, slow down, find a different path. So I think it really just depends. It depends on the individual. And that quote isn't a universal, but it also tells a caveat of like, hey, there are traps here. There are pitfalls and there are issues. But it's just different for every person. It's that, I mean, yeah, the proof is in the pudding when you look at individuals and see how they live their life and how much joy decay within themselves and how much compassion they hold in their heart and the creativity that pours through them. And you're somebody that just like is a walking paint canvas with just so many different things and you know you're I feel like how you live your life is an extension of a

psychedelic journey in many ways it really is it starts to actually blend where the journeys don't become that different than your life like that's actually what I've found to happen more is that my journeys and my life are starting to blur and it's just yes there's qualitative differences to the experiences but I'll enter a journey with a with an expanded heart heart and that's been expanded and I'll leave the journey with a more expanded heart and it's starting to blur and then my ability to connect and have and feel my intuition and experience magical things that happen I mean I told a story and I'll save the story in its entirety for when I do a podcast with Jake Paul but like magical things that would normally be relegated to the

vision space of an ayahuasca journey or something like that are happening in real life you know the story involves a particular type of butterfly landing on my hand at 1 a.m. indoors, you know, and crazy shit like that's happening. But that's starting to become like, oh yeah, that happened. That happened because I'm used to a magical thing's happening. So the magical and the real are starting to blend in ways that are kind of opening the possibility for a whole different worldview of really radical support and communion. with spirit.

Francis of Assisi has that quote. It's like preach everywhere you go and when necessary use words. That's it. That path of integration of actually embodying the awareness that you have and then the integration. It's that dance is the play between awareness and integration

for that whole life. And so I suppose that quote that I mentioned earlier really refers to the individuals that are so their awareness junkies and love getting the expanded states of consciousness and what you can see when you use the telescope of, you know, inside your own consciousness and what you see. But if there is that lack of integration of what, you know, many tools like breathwork and meditation can actually

serve as integration tools and play is a big one to actually have it be a part of you and not just like an intellectualized, philosophize, idea. Yeah. When you silo it, it becomes, you know, it becomes an issue. Here's my journey life. Here's my regular life. And what I'm saying is for me, that's collapsing more and more. And the journey life and regular life are becoming more seamless, you know, like the edges are being rounded. And people make integration really complicated. And to me, integration is just don't forget. Like, don't forget. Don't forget what you experience. And keep that memory like somatically, cellularly, mentally, spiritually. Keep the memory with you, the whole, you know, the whole way. And that's, that's really integration is just not to

forget. And so, yeah, you can do a lot of things. You can journal. You can think. think about it, you can go back to it. But the crux of it is just don't forget what you experienced. And be mindful because you may want to forget some of the things that you experience. There's a concept also, you know, a Rosicrucian concept and in terminology is called Luciferian inflation. And there's times where you can do medicine and you could be connected to the wrong channel, basically, or have something internal that is reaching for.

something that isn't fully true. And so the Luciferian inflation would be saying instead of, I can feel the Christic impulse awakening within my heart. My heart is starting to flower. You know, you see many old paintings and depictions of Yeshua, and you'll see his heart. It's like literally on fire. So, and that was a part of his deeper mystical teachings is this is what's possible. But then you'll, you'll see some people start to get that, and I am Jesus. Like as soon as I get, as soon as you start to get down the I Am Jesus path, like, watch out, bro. It's got to start before that. Like, like, watch out.

But there's lots of different ways. You know, I've heard people say, like, I am the ambassador to water. I'm like, to all water? To all water. Really? You know, it's like, not like I am an ambassador for water. Sure. Great.

You know, hopefully there's plenty of them. Water needs plenty of ambassadors. But when you start to think that you're special and different. then that's where there's also big, you know, big challenges that can come where the medicines can exacerbate these, you know, these psychological, in a way, pathologies. But again, mythologizing Lucifer and inflation, Lucifer bringing you the false light, that thing that's going to give you what your separate self wants, which is really just to be fucking better than everybody else. And Lucifer's like, you want to be better than everybody else? Here, you are better than everybody else.

You're like, I knew I was better than everybody else. And then you're in a fucking problem. The ego is a slippery bugger. It is. Yeah. And that's the deal with the devil. Yeah. You know, you talk about that deal with the devil.

The devil is, I will tell you that you're better than everybody else. If you believe me, you just have to sacrifice your soul, which is your identity with your soul. And you'll have to identify solely with your ego at that point because the soul is in the field of truth. And Buddhism, there is that. the story of the hungry ghost where there is this insatiable desire that can never be fully fulfilled. They're often depicted as having these huge bellies and super small mouths. And so, you know, there comes a point where like the continual desire for more sense pleasures is never going to fully get you there.

It almost works, right? You're never going to actually fully arrive in fulfillment and feeling satiated. But we get tricked in that slippery ego where we think that, you know, if I can, just become a little bit more successful. If I can just have a little bit more, you know, and somebody like yourself that has access to pretty much any sensory pleasurable experience that you could desire, right, with the amount of connections, resources, access money. I'm excited to dive into a few of those different things. I'm just curious what, how is your relation to the desire for more? Well, if your desire is linked to this idea

that getting what you desire is actually going to be satiating, you're on a slippery slope. And that's where there is some wisdom to the idea that desire is kind of the root of all suffering. And then there's lots of spiritual teachings that are like, all right, let's eliminate the field of desire. Well, that doesn't sound very fun to me. Impossible also.

Yeah, also impossible. The move that I consciously have learned to try to make is to desire, desire itself. And if you desire, desire itself, not the satiation of the desire, but you desire the hunger. Not necessarily the food, but you're like, oh, I'm fucking hungry.

And you desire the desire. And there will be eating that happens. There will be success that happen. There will be sensory pleasures that happen, but you actually desire the desire. And that's the place where I think it's the safest place to place desire. And it's just,

it's an act of intention and will. to desire the desire. So it's almost like staying in the state, like if you can stay in that delicious state of the foreplay before sex, as long as you can. And it's just like, let's stay in this state of heightened desire.

And I want a desire to be in this state. And I'm going to extend this through the process, but also like what I crave is the desire itself. And to me, that's kind of a trick that I use to stay in the field of desire. but not link, you know, not get in the hungry ghost mentality where I think that the next business deal or the next thing is going to actually bring me any satisfaction, right? Like I remember I sold my company on it, huge payout, like life changing payout. You know, I started that,

and we don't need to talk about this very much, but I started that company with $110,000. I got 50,000 from one, you know, one friend and 60,000 from my buddy, Bote Miller. And, and, you know, we grew a big nine figure business and sold it you know over 12 years and I got a fucking massive payout and again my dad you know my dad like people think oh you know family might no there was none of that my dad went lost his mind and lost all of his money in the process of losing his mind and had the wisdom also not to set me up with some kind of trust or anything like that because he wanted me hungry he actually believed in the desire in like the necessity for hunger so I was hungry through that whole process. But you would think that at the moment where I achieved the ultimate

success, like I had this huge ecstatic, orgasmic experience, I was just like, wow, all right. That was it. You know, there was no like, that was it. Same when, same when like my book owned the day became a New York Times bestseller. And I'd worked on it so fucking hard and like given everything to it. You'd think it would be like this ecstatic moment. It was. like, all right. All right. And then, you know, do you take a moment? But I don't know. It's, it's very difficult for me to celebrate those type of things in any way that makes any sense to be satisfactory. It's like in a way for it to actually even happen. You kind of had to have expected it. Yeah, for real. It's like, when people always ask that like, could you ever imagine

that on it would be like this? I'm like, of course I fucking imagined it. What do you think is a surprise? Like that's not how this, not, it's not how this game works. This game works is you've already live in the reality where this is going to occur. So this idea of you're going to get to this place and everything's going to be like magical all the way from there. It's not a reality. It's,

it's constant little steps and it's enjoying every step of the process, including the desiring of it, like the hunger to be on the grind and to grow your, to grow where you are. Even, you know, Joe Rogan has these great rants about this, you know, about just, what a cool position it is to be in if you're 100 pounds overweight because you've got so much

progress that you can make and the excitement every day as you drop a pound a week over the next two years and you get a little stronger and you got a little more energy and you get a little better like there's great joy in that experience or working your way up from nothing to something like that's where there's so much joy you know so for me in my physical performance i've always been an athlete I'm always in there's not a lot that I got it's not a lot of juice that I can get I I love working out and it's great but like I'm not going to get the satisfaction of working towards something I mean I could make some artificial goal like I want to put on five pounds of muscle or I want to sprint a little faster I want to be a little better on the pickleball court whatever but

it's not like the same as like if you really have if you have room to go and if you really if you really love the process of evolution itself and you fall in love with the desire to to evolve, then you're going to really be satisfied. I mean, it's one of the secrets to happiness. Well, you spoke to you about the desire for desire. It feels like also just the appreciation for what currently is, if you hold that within yourself and that's real within your experience, it's impossible to feel that never-ending hungry ghost mentality of what's next, what's next. And so if you take us into like that real-time moment when the wire hit for the sale of on it, What did you really feel in that moment when you saw that?

It's funny, man. It's like I go to that moment and, you know, log into my, log into my bank. And I look and I see just an absurd number. And it's like, whoa. And then pretty much there's this like feeling of like just kind of taking a moment. It was like a private moment where I just took some time. And I looked at it again and I looked down and looked at it again. I was like, this is real.

It's real, right? It's real. Okay. Now, what the fuck am I going to do with this amount of money? Like, I don't know what to do with this money. I've always spent, reinvested everything I've ever had into something else. And so actually the following three to six months were actually highly stressful because it like, well, I feel like I'm a dummy if I leave it all in cash. And, you know, I don't really,

I'm not a great investor. I know how to build a business, but I'm not ready to build another business now. So I guess I'll put some here and I'll put some here. And I made some good choices. I made some shit choices. I'm still looking back now. Like, come on, bro. What did you do? But, you know, it was, it was interesting. It actually, it had its own new set of challenges. And it's new set of joys. Like I was able to, you know, rent a yacht and just celebrate with my best friends out in a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean, which is something I never would have been able to do. It was like go on a boat like that and experience something like that. So mad gratitude for the possibilities that it opened up, you know, and the things that I never would have done that I was able to do.

But it fundamentally didn't shift very much, to be honest. You know, it just, it changed the nature of a few things. It increased the complexity of, you know, of all of the decisions I had to make. And also it increased the pressure I felt to now, well, now you got a lot of firepower. Now you got a lot of, you got a lot of dry powder, you've got a lot of resources. you have every opportunity to make an even bigger impact on the world. So there's just more responsibility. And so it was an interesting balance of what actually happened.

But I'll tell you, the times that I've been the most ecstatic and excited is watching my friends succeed and achieve. For some reason, I'm able to tap into that and be like even more pumped than they are. you know like when i watch especially i have a lot of athlete friends and when i've watched them win championships or win big games you know like i'm able to like step into this radical ecstasy of that experience for them sometimes even more easily than myself and i think that's partly because you know as you said i've lived in the reality where that moment was going to happen i visualized it in my mind a thousand times i looked i recall looking at my bank account screen and seeing those numbers appear they weren't exactly the same but very close to what they actually appeared i've i saw everything happening so

many times i practiced it same with my athlete friends they rehearsed those moments so many times that for me i hadn't rehearsed those moments for them you know sometimes i'll help them visualize you know but when i get to see them do it like the joy of that experience because it's not novel to me and because I'm able to tap into that, that's where I've experienced the most kind of radical joy and celebration has been in those people who I'm really close with, their success. I think it's really important for you to share this because there's so many of us that continually delay our happiness into one day when. And we even hearing stories like this, and so many people share the same thing. When the thing happens, the big win or the gold medal

or the millions and millions of dollars hit your bank account. It's like, and you're still you, and you still have your basic compulsions. And, you know, the persistence of that delusion is always baffling to me. Yeah. No, it's true, right? And it's, and people listening right now, I mean, the funny part is like, I'll post something inspirational, right? Just purely like, you know, wisdom for my own life or just something general, philosophical. and everybody would be like easy for you to say bro must be easy with all that cash and I'll be like

the fuck does this have to do with cash like like and also you know like everybody assumes that oh if I just had money all my problems and go away you know it doesn't matter how many times they you know listen to fucking method man or whoever said you know more money more problems or whoever that was he said it like it's it's a truism if you've been there but unless you've been there you don't realize that yeah there's great beauty and great gratitude for that but also great responsibility and it fundamentally doesn't change who you are you still have to wake up and deal with yourself and until you become until you know thyself and get to a deeper peace with yourself so that you could find joy in yourself without the money or with the money and and still you know be the same you know

be the same person fundamentally. And you're not going to, you're not going to find any great joy from that financial windfall. It's exciting to be on the never-ending journey of actualizing more and more of your limitless potential, really. And of course, having money solves a lot of problems, but it definitely doesn't solve them all. Yeah. And I also want to say, like, look, there's poverty. You know, there's poverty where there's deep stress, you know, and I think, there's you know pretty good studies that show like median income being above poverty actually makes a significant difference in happiness so i'm not talking about that i'm talking like there are some really hard places that people are in because they just don't have money to put food on the table for

themselves their family and that's like a deeply deeply tragic you know place to be in and so what we're talking about is not that of course you know and but it's good it's important to acknowledge that, like, there is, there is something about taking care of these basic needs. But I remember, man, I remember, you know, my family on my mother's side, you know, my stepfather, he wasn't wealthy for, you know, most of my childhood. You know, he got wealthy later, later on. But I remember we got, you know, I have three younger sisters and we moved out to Dripping Springs from Austin and we moved out to like a you know a hundred acre parcel which then was pretty cheap because dripping springs wasn't developed if anybody knows the austin local area now dripping springs

is a lot more expensive because it's been built out a bit but it had a little farmhouse on it and I was a you know a senior in high school and there was two bedrooms in this little farmhouse and a tiny little kitchen and I had a bedroom but the bedroom was basically just a bed you know I had to like walk over the bed to get to the shelf and like the closet was like at the foot of the bed. There was like only room for a bed. And I did have a really cool tiger bed spread though that I still miss some days. But probably because it's associated with the first sex I ever had. That's probably why I like the tiger bed spread. But and then my whole, the whole rest of my family, my stepdad, my mom and my three sisters were in the same master bedroom. And it was the happiest

time for my whole family. Right? We weren't, we weren't poor. So I'm not saying this is the same as poverty, right? So again, I'm not trying to say that. But it was the smallest house that we'd ever lived in. And now that we have a sprawling mansion, you know. And but that was the most joy our family has ever experienced because we were right there living together, you know, just with each other all of the time.

And it was like we would sing songs and we would dance and nobody would escape to their room because the rooms were too small and they were shared rooms. And we were all in the common areas and we were all just, we were like a family and traveling to so many different, you know, countries, whether it's Peru or whether it's been Africa. And seeing people who are in very poor, you know, villages and conditions, I've seen joy there that I haven't seen in the Hamptons, that I haven't seen. that I haven't seen in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, that I haven't seen in Beverly Hills. There's a joy to the communion of being with your family and like being living close, even when resources are limited.

You know, like, so I've seen enough of the world to realize that there's a lot more to living a fully fulfilled life than financial prosperity. Absolutely. Of course. There's a study, right? of like, what is it, after a median of like 80,000 a year, like the difference that that has actually on happiness translation is just diminishing very quickly.

Man, there is, so you're somebody that is such a pioneer in a lot of what people would consider as taboo topics from certain psychedelic experiences to darkness retreats to the many different things. And with being a pioneer or, you know, an early adopter in a lot of these different fields or experiences, there comes a lot of projection. And ultimately, I don't think you can understand something and judge it at the same time. Right. So there's going to be a lot of people that throw judgments and projections as who you are, what you're like, or whatever it is. I'm curious, does that, has that affected you, does it anymore? And as you've kind of seen, you know,

over the past 15 plus years of your own medicine journeys, for example, medicine journeys, for example, you see how it's played out in your own life and how the kind of world catches up in many different ways with certain things. So yeah, how do you deal with projection and judgment? Yeah, I mean, there's certain areas that it feels really comfortable because I'm like willing to make a stand. And when I did ayahuasca for the first time and shared my experience on Joe Rogan experience, I think it was podcast 127 and it wasn't the Joe Rogan. experience of now but it was still a big show back then and i shared that experience and then my instagram started to get followers and um no matter what i would post i'd get 10 15% of the comments like

go back to the jungle you fucking druggie you know like why don't you have why don't you have some more drugs you hippie like it was wild and but i actually knew that what the experience i had was and there was no part of me that agreed with what they said. There was no part of me that actually was in agreement to their field of projection. And so it was pretty easy to let that kind of slough off. You know, I was like, all right. You know, like, we'll see. We'll see how this turns. And it's totally turned. Now, like, I'll get one of those comments. Now, you know, I'll still get some comments, you know, that'll be there, but it's different. The whole field has evolved over the last, you know, 13 years. And so it's different. But that one, those never really bothered me that much, you know,

and some people will still make comments about psychedelic medicine, but it doesn't really have a lot of weight. There's been so much clinical research that's happened, so many experiential stories, so many transformational experiences of people have shared. Polyamory was another one. You know, came out very publicly as a polyamorous and people got fucking mad. I lost like a lot of friends actually over that where, you know, their girlfriends were like, do not hang with Aubrey. Marcus,

his polyamory is contagious. I know it. You'll become infected with the idea. And, and they'd be like, they just like stop wanting to hang out. I was like, what's up?

And that hurt. You know, that hurt to like lose friendships over that. It's not like I was, you know, proselytizing this is the way. I was openly sharing the gaping wounds and the trauma of my experience. In fact, a lot of people were like, bro, stop telling us how much this hurts. You know, like, and I was like, I can't. I can only tell the truth.

But there was a whole host of people who would just project on me that, and to them, it was a slur that I was, what they called. call a cuck right and a cuck is someone who is aroused by the idea of watching another man have sex with their sweetheart right and so they were just like yeah you fucking cuck like one guy was real funny he was like oh cuck norris over here you got appreciate i was like i gave him a little clap i was like cucknors that's for cuckleberry finn all right like that's pretty that's pretty funny um so i would have a good laugh for that. But, you know, like, that was like a mildly annoying because it was not my experience. And I have no issue. If that's your, if that's your kind of fetish, if that gets you off,

like, fucking go for it. It's your sex life. You know, if you want to be, if you want to be gay, if you want to be bi, if you want to be poly, if you get off on any variety of different things, as long as it's consensual and as long as you're in a field where you're being honest and not not manipulative and not predatory, like go live your life. live your erotic life according to your own erotic blueprint like experience it that was annoying just because it was like come on y'all i keep telling you how hard this is you know like it's the opposite i wish i was i wish i had that kink you know i'd make things a lot easier right you know but um you know you're just suffering yeah exactly i'm like just like don't think about it don't think about

that oh i can't stop thinking about it um sounds horrible man it was difficult but it was but it was also beautiful in opening yeah it The thing is, is like, once having gone through that fire, the idea that I would be jealous now is just preposterous. You know, like if Vailana expressed a desire to like sleep with somebody, I'd be like, oh, you know, maybe it'd be like a little bit of a brisk wind, but I'd be like, all right, babe. Brisk wind. A brisk wind.

Yeah, I'd be like a brisk wind of like, oh, wow, okay. But I've been through way worse. Like you have no idea what I've been through. So like this is not a big deal. You know, it's like imagining, you know, imagining someone like Tim Kennedy, who's top 10 middleweight, you know, middleweight UFC fighter and been in, you know, countless war situations with fire fights and, you know, Delta Force and the whole deal, you know. And imagine his nervous system at the prospect of like a bar fight with somebody who wanted to, like,

pick a fight with him. he'd be like, all right, bro. Like, really, if you're really like, like the nervous system is regulated to a different level. And he trusts himself as a warrior. And I trust myself as a lover and as someone who can transcend jealousy at this point. And so it was really valuable, painful process, but also valuable, but also beautiful. And I don't want to, don't want to, you know, gloss over the beauty of that experience of being able to love the goddess with many faces, you know, through the many lovers that I had and just deep admiration and respect for all for everybody who

is a part of that journey with me. I still have so much love for everybody in that. But that was another field that was like I was really, you know, attacked. And the really painful part was not the attacks online necessarily, but it was, you know, the friends that like had to move away for me because, you know, either they, they didn't like the idea that this was possible because they really secretly wanted it themselves or their partner didn't like the idea of them hanging out with me. So that was painful. It was painful for losing, you know, certain relationships.

The hermetic principle of gender, that kind of refers to how magnetism works within the feminine and masculine dynamic. It's just really interesting to me how I'm sure you come. to that place now where if like violana came to you with something like that, your willingness to be accepting of it and not feel like it's a bulldozer, but a, what is that, brisk wind? Yeah. Then all of a sudden it's almost like, I find that the desire on the counterpart kind of diffuses a little bit.

When there's so much freedom given from partner, then it's like, actually, I want to stay devoted in this way. Yeah. It's like, that push and pull is really interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's, everybody has their own, you know, desires and their field of desires. and when you actually lose all of these kind of indoctrinated and patterned emotional charges, I think a lot of our jealous impulse, if you read the work of Chris Ryan at Sex at Dawn,

and you read Tammy Nelson's, and not Tammy Nelson, Dr. Wednesday Martin's book, Untrue, you start to see that many, many different cultures had different relationships to sexuality. And I think there is an evolution in the pattern of sexuality that's available that, you know, I think Violana and I are interested in exploring and actually illuminating. And we're not, you know, we're still in the exploration and the discovery of it. But there's a lot of possibility when you start to move beyond the initial trigger response. You know, and you actually start to listen, listen to yourself deeply, listen to where your desires are, where they're coming from, and not have those snap judgments and those snap feelings and then explore the possibility of possibility. you know, and just be open to exploring all of those different possibilities and really feeling

what's true. You know, like, what is true? You know, like even getting to the place, I think for men, you know, let's say you have a bisexual impulse, right? But you grew up. And if you're my generation, you know, I'm 42. So homosexual slurs were like the worst. The commonplace, right? Like, that was the thing. Like, everybody was so afraid of that. that. And so I think, you know, if you had those, and I think that's a, that was a big part of the impulse to the whole pride movement also was like, no, let's be, let's be proud of what we, what we really feel and what we are. And I think that's really healthy. Now I think it can get to kind of exaggerated places where only that is celebrated. And if you're that, that means you're

better than if you're just like, no, I'm just kind of like a normal. You know, like that's beautiful, too. You know, it's all beautiful, but, but really allowing a field of permission that'll allows possibility to expand and allows yourself to understand how to regulate your own emotions and approach a subject with curiosity rather than predetermined ideas about what something is or should be. When you hear the word divine masculine, what are the textures and qualities of that and how it shows up within a man, within a leader? Stability is like stability and honesty, I think are two really key components. know, I think, and stability comes from really knowing yourself deeply and actually understanding who

you are, the symbol of, you know, being a mountain, you know, like you're just stable and steady and true and honest. And all of those jagged pieces that you may have where could be rage or could be, you know, some kind of jealousies or these other things that are kind of painful or cutting or controlling or all of these like you've kind of worked through those and you're just a stable place so that both your own feminine you know when you get into your own wild chaotic feminine that you can have a place to ground back into and a practice that helps you ground back into it and then if your partners you know whichever whichever sex or gender they are doesn't matter if your partners are in their feminine like your divine masculine can just hold that space

and be a steady place for that. I think of the symbol, you know, the paintings that they have of Shiva and Kali. And Kali's there with her tongue out and her necklace full of severed heads and arms and just blood dripping and weapons on her hand. She's standing on Shiva's stomach and chest. And Shiva representing the divine masculine is looking up at her arms behind his head like, oh, wow, isn't she beautiful? you know it's just like absolute stability an absolute like absolute kind loving honest expression

of of what you're feeling who you are not bypassing you know the aspects of your of what you're feeling i made that mistake a lot in polyamory i would bypass what i was actually capable of i wasn't capable of it then the brisk wind was not a brisk wind it was a fucking avalanche and i'd find myself suffocating and then freaking out. And, you know, I've had to spend many, many letters and many moments apologizing to my former partner, Whitney, like, hey, look, you know, I'd look back now and I'm just so sorry, even when I was in the relationship and even after, like, man, I'm so sorry. You know, I promised I could be that divine masculine and hold that space, but I just, I couldn't. I was bypassing the place that I actually was. So you have to be really honest with where you're at,

but it goes to honesty and stability and consistency so that, you know, you really, people around you know who you are as a leader, as a lover, you know, as a warrior, they know that you're going to be there. They know if shit gets intense, like, you're not going to run away. You know, there's a, there's a certain stability to that and it shows up in every aspect of your expression when you find it. How do you see in the active realization of the more beautiful world that our heart know as possible. The energies of our masculine and feminine dynamics and how they show up and how like you spoke to the masculine and its divine form can be very stable and protective and be the container for the allowance of the feminine to do its healing and to do what's necessary on that

front. When you feel into, because I know you often think about and feel into what's to come in the next coming decades and the interesting time that we live in, what does your vision for a more beautiful world feel like and how the masculine and feminine weep within that. I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the problem is there's too much masculine and not enough feminine. Right. So they make these kind of very simplistic ideas of what we need in the world. Oh, the future is feminine. If we had women, if we had women running the show, it would never have been like this. No, not necessarily. You know, what we're taught, what we need is a mature, balanced representation of both. And we need, instead of the kind of hostile, juvenile masculine,

that's always bellicose, always looking for the forever wars, always stuck in the separate self, looking to prove themselves as better than someone else, which can apply to both different genders. It's not just men that fall into that trap, right? Yeah, we're more familiar with the shadow tyrannical king kind of archetypes. We are. Yeah, we're more familiar because that's been our historical pattern but the shadow queen is also you know there's also a pattern that can exist it's not like that doesn't exist and so when i look at the more beautiful world i see you know people who represent a balance of both of those and if you are more you know inclined to your masculine then surround yourself with those who you trust who can access the feminine feeling state the compassion

the receiving you know but also you got to find that within yourself i think really this is an invitation for all of us to really, you know, develop our own divine masculine and divine feminine, regardless of how we express. Like, I don't think my masculine would show up a fraction to its capacity if I hadn't also developed my feminine. And how did I develop my feminine? Well, really, the plant medicine journeys have done an amazing job of that

because when you're, you know, drinking ayahuasca and the candle goes out and it's in the black of the jungle and you're waiting for the first Ikaro and then it hits and then you're there you have to learn how to really surrender and you have to learn how to let go and allow spirit and the mystery to really like fuck you open into some you know into some state and the more you resist it the harder it's going to be so you learn to be able to receive and you learn to be able to like deeply listen and respond and so I think the the more beautiful world needs of incredibly strong, honest, stable, true, masculine. And I see that in Robert F. Kennedy. And I also see his acutely developed feminine, his love and his care and his

listening and his compassion. And I see both. And so when I think of the return, you know, to me, it feels very much like, you know, this Lord of the Rings moment. This is the return of the king. it happens to be that the king is a man in this case you know doesn't necessarily need to be but it is that's who i see is actually representing that and i see him as a leader who can help you know lead and anchor this and also surround himself with people who can really support him in in the feminine way and helping to actually navigate the kingdom and help him to regulate any places where he might be out of balance, you know. So that's a key element of the feminine, you know, like what Vailana will do for me is if I'm in a hurry and I'm like rushing, I'm making decisions and my executive

function, like, okay, this way, this way, this way, this way. And I'll be doing something. She'll be like, wait, did you ask? Did you check in? And, you know, that's, it's really important to have that kind of guidance and also the nurturing and also the love, but also to express it, not just count on it from the external, but also be able to apply it to myself, you know, and be the feminine for myself. One of the things, one of the tools that I learned in particularly challenging ayahuasca journeys was how to talk to myself, like the divine feminine, because you're on your own mat. You know, the way that I've done ayahuasca so far is you're on your own mat.

And it's just you dealing with oftentimes incredibly uncomfortable situations. and it got so uncomfortable in certain places that the only way I was able to make it through was to start talking to myself like a divine feminine lover. Like, it's all right, sweetheart. I know it's hard. It wasn't the masculine like suck it up, you know,

one step at a time. You fucking got this. Don't, you know, don't be a wuss. You know, like that was not the voice that I needed. What I needed was like, it's okay, sweetie. I know it's hard. I know it's hard.

I know it hurts. it's all right baby i got you and i would literally start talking to myself like that and then that's what allowed me to come through so cultivating that internally as well as having that externally surrounding me you know that's i think the the place that we're moving towards that place that we're moving towards i see you in so many ways activating groups and communities through your festivals for service through cultivating your own family and community it feels like on the journey of realizing that more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible,

the gifts that we have, the unique individuation of how God expresses itself through us becomes the vessel in which that more beautiful world is realized. It's like the gifts are these keys that we have around our neck and they open doors for everyone else around us, not ourselves, you know? And then we can open those doorways in each other. And so I just,

you know, as we start to wrap up here, I just love for you to share a little bit more about the power of Sangha and how, our collective gifts can actually make that more beautiful world a real possibility. It's interesting, you know, one of the most common reflections and compliments I'll get, oftentimes from men, and different from men and women, but I'll just share some of that. So in fit for service, we have, you know, initiatic transformational containers.

We bring communities together. We don't do any psychedelic medicine, but we do intense breathwork. We'll do ecstatic dance. We'll do soul wanders out in the land. We'll go through different coaching programs and experiences. But all think communication processes like circling will use all of the technologies to really bring the group together. But we're there with them. I'm crying with them on the mats when we're doing breathwork.

I'm sweating with them in the dances when we're sweating. And when we're in sacred competition, I'm there. You know, they're competing and sweating and like feeling. what they're feeling if we're in a sweat lodge together i'm in there you know right in front of the coals with the antlers if i'm you know blessed with that opportunity to help share with the fire i'm there you know serving alongside them and and they see me as not someone separate than them but just one of their you know one of their brothers and one of the big reflections that i get is the men deeply appreciating how vulnerable i am how willing i am

to cry and to share my emotions. And from, you know, many of the women, like, they deeply reflect, like, how much I can show up in my divine masculine and just be stable and loving and not have any of those predatory tendencies or any of those weird things that they've seen and kind of model something. Create that safety. And create that, yeah, create that experience. And so the fit for service container is a place where. the essence of who I am gets to be transmitted.

And yes, there's lots of awesome programs and coaching and speakers and stuff that we do. But it's also just sharing the essence myself and my fellow coaches of sharing our essence and allowing that to be to be really felt. And, you know, when we're, we have a festival Arcadia coming up, which is our, we call it a festival in a more beautiful world because we're trying to create an ethos of, all right, what is it like for a group of people to come together in radical play, understanding that if we love the world to the fullest extent, that's what's going to drive our desire to serve the world. Like our love for the world is actually equivalent to our desire to serve it. If we don't love

our lives and if we aren't able to experience the ecstasy of dancing and listening to music and meeting new people and hearing, inspiring people talk and finding, you know, this deeper, more beautiful aspect within ourselves, if we can't see the more beautiful world through our own hearts and through our own eyes and see it reflected in other people, we're not going to be able to bring it into existence. Just like how we talked about earlier, like I was able to create what I was able to create with on it and with everything else that I've accomplished because I saw that happening and I lived in that reality. Like when I first, you know, design the book cover for Own the Day, Own Your Life, like the first design of the book cover had New York Times bestseller on the

top of the on the top of the thing. Now, of course, we had to remove it for the first sale of the books, but it was always there from the start. Like, I knew like that's where this is headed and I lived in that reality. The same thing is for the more beautiful world. So when you get a bunch of people together, whether it's one of our fit for service core programs, which will be opening up for 2024, or whether it's Arcadia, which is November 2 through 5 at the Meow Wolf Area 15 complex in Nevada. Either way, like, it's about finding the ability to live within that future reality even before it's happened. And that's what actually calls it in the being. So it's essential to do that and to find other mirrors that can show you like, oh shit, that's possible. I didn't know that

was possible. And it opens up a permission field and also a belief field that draws that reality to existence. It's just like that more beautiful world cannot be created. from the same level of consciousness that created it. So coming into joy and remembering our true essence and it's like remembering the future that we want to see and getting to see that in other people's gaze and their smile and their play, that is one of the biggest catalysts for us

to really feel and know that it's possible to expect it. And then you go on the journey of all the ups and downs of all the ugliness and the suffering and the beauty and the bliss and the chaos. But those moments where we sit around the campfire, those moments where we dance together, that to me creates such a strong, like, a bundle of sticks that's not breakable. It's like together we are so much stronger than the individual stick that can snap on its own. And so I see you as a leader, a continual pioneer in the space of bringing people

together for that reminder and how you show up with vulnerability, how you show up as the most open book I've probably ever seen in a man. And with that comes a permission slip, man, that I think is just so needed on this planet. I try my best to model that within my own life. And I have, room to grow there. But man, you are such a powerful model for men in the world. Yeah, I appreciate that, man. And it's, you know, I'm not going to stop, not ever. You know, and if anything, my purpose and my passion for this world has just grown ever more, you know, as I surround myself with more beautiful people in my life, then it makes me love the world more. And as I love the world more, I become more passionate about serving the world more.

You know, people like Alana who's over here watching this podcast right now, it's like, you know, our deep, deep connection is then inspires me like, man, if there's Alana's in the world, I want to fight for the world even more than I've ever fought for the world, you know. And as I have a new brother come into my life, like, oh, shit. Like there's you, there's got to be more of you. And so there's ways that you can learn to love the whole by loving the personal. and you can make that leap and that's really important.

So I feel like I'm just getting started, you know, and whether that's my next book, Psychonaut, which is coming out, which, you know, that'll come out in a few months for pre-orders and whatever. But if you're interested to hear about my whole journey through psychonautics, this tells the whole story. It's pretty wild and super vulnerable. And, you know, if you're interested in joining in one of these experiences, It's just fit for service.com.

You can check out the festivals and the programs. But that's just a fraction of what is going to come. So I can look back at my life and be proud and understand the places where I made mistakes, places where I fell from grace, but also have deep compassion and forgiveness because I did the best I could. And at that time, whatever my best was, it yielded a lot of beauty. But I just feel, again, like I'm just getting started. and my potential is still, you know, a few steps out in front of me.

I think Matthew McConaughey had that, you know, he was talking about when he was asked, like, who inspires him? And he says, Matthew McConaughey from five years from now inspires me. And who inspires that? Matthew McConaughey is the Matthew McConaughey from 15 years from now and from 25 years from now. It's like you're always, you know, you're always still reaching and still radically grateful for what is. you know like absolute gratitude for what is and that driving impulse that I'm just getting started that saving and savoring that's it man that's it you got to be in both and it's seemingly a paradox but

it's not yeah you know seemingly a contradiction but it's just a paradox you can be in full gratitude and also full you know full desire you know to just reach another level amazing well everybody that's tuning in. We'll link down below for Arcadia Festival, things that you got going on, they can check out and be connected with you and what you got going on. And I'm just going to leave it open floor before we head out. Is there anything else that you want to share that's on your heart, a poem, a thought, an idea before we start to wrap up? Well, I have been pretty poetic as of late, but by the time this podcast comes out, most of my poems will be already produced. So check my YouTube.

go to my YouTube and I have a poetry tab. And in my poetry, I get to say things that I wouldn't even normally say because it's poetry. And it's just my art. And part of the process we open with this being a warrior poet, part of the process of being a poet is you feel something and you express that thing through your words. And you don't even have to. It's not like, and I stand by this argument based on these principles and points. No, this is what I feel. And so it allows me to express a feeling in a way that is just my art.

And it's been really beautiful. I'm really grateful that I have that tool and that ability, you know, to express my feelings in poetry and in art. So, yeah, if you, you know, check out my YouTube page, I think it's slash Aubrey Marcus pod because I couldn't get Aubrey Marcus because I didn't know you back then. And I couldn't figure out how to make moves like a real genius like you are, my friend. People don't know. Andre's a fucking wizard genius at so many things, digital marketing, and has helped me out a ton. So just absolute gratitude for you. And also of the whole thing that you said in the bio, like, you know, the part that was the most special to me was when you just talked about our friendship and our brotherhood. And, you know, that to me means more than anything.

It's just, you know, to know that I have brothers and to know that I'm not alone. And that's, as long as I'm not alone. I know that we're going to be victorious in whatever way that is. We're going to create a more beautiful world because we can do it together. Thank you, bro. I echo what I said earlier and just appreciate the example you set for me as a man in the world. And just so grateful for the continual readings of our life and for your upcoming books and the adventures and travels and experiences and laughter, all of it. Yeah, let's go, man. Let's go. Let's have the best. time. Thank you, man. So good having you on, bro. Yeah, and love you guys. Thanks for tuning in.

Appreciate you. We'll run it back for sure. Yeah. Everybody that's been tuning into this episode of the Know-Lyself podcast, thank you for coming on this journey. I absolutely love what I get to do and that we get to come on this journey together, learn more about ourselves and the world around us. And if there's something in particular that really landed with you that was transformative, I would love to know, leave it in the comments section below on Spotify and YouTube. Hit the subscribe button to join this family. And until next time, be well. Thank you.