Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #140 East Forest

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

East Forest is an American Ambient/Electronic/Contemporary Classical/Indie Pop artist from Portland, Oregon, United States. He is an remarkable human being as well and in this episode we sit down and get his take on everything from mushroom ceremonies and his music.    Connect with East Forest: Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/eastforest Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/EastForestMusic/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/eastforestmusic YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/eastforestmusic Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/0okmfBroVgFuvvljnUbqPW   Check Out:  Kyle's Inner Circle Course (Private 1 on 1 Coaching) https://www.kingsbu.com/inner-circle   Natasha Kingsbury's E book (30 recipes)   Purchase for $5 at https://www.kingsbu.com   Show Sponsors:    OneFarm Formally (Waayb CBD) www.onefarm.com (Get 15% off using code word Kyle at checkout)   Sated Keto Shakes  https://sated.com/kyle  use codeword Kyle for 20% off Storewide      Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Website | https://www.kingsbu.com/ ( Supplement List & Newsletter) Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/   Subscribe to Kyle Kingsbury Podcast iTunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY  

All right, y'all, we got a very, very interesting and beautiful human on today's show, Mr. East Forest. He goes by Krishna, but his musical name is East Forest. And he's honestly one of the coolest people, one of the most wise, kind, and gentle souls that I've ever met. I've gained so much from his music. It's kind of hard to overstate. He developed a five-hour album specifically to guide you through mushroom ceremony. And in my humble opinion, I think it's better than 90% of the shaman and medicine people that I've worked with live. He has a wealth of knowledge.

We go through his story, getting into music, why he created the album, how long it took him to create it. He's been a guest on the Aubrey Marcus podcast as well and did a fantastic album with Ram Das before he passed away last year. All of it's available on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, and just an incredible person. I had an absolute blast getting to hang with him. We did a one-hour sound healing. I don't even know what you'd call it. I guess a ceremony playlist at Fit for Service last year.

And he's just one of those people where I want to spend every minute I can with him. Just a phenomenal guy. But we recorded this out in Malibu. And I know you guys are going to dig it. So check it out. Let us know what you think. Hit us up online. You got any questions from it at Kingsboo always.

Remember, check out my website, kingsboo.com. You got any questions from it at Kingsboo always. Remember, check out my website, kingsboo.com. You can email me from there. And check out my wife's $5 ebook, Eating with the Kingsburys. And as always, support this show by clicking subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways the show's helped you out in life. And check out our sponsors. Today's show is brought to you by Sated. Sated Keto Meal Shakes make it easy to stay keto when you're busy or don't have time to cook. They're delicious and convenient on the go. They come in two ready-to-drink flavors, chocolate and vanilla, with less than two grams of net carbs per meal and no added sugar. It's got MCT oil, omega-3s, prebiotic fiber, 27 vitamins and minerals to give you everything you need throughout your

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So visit www.sated, that's S-A-T-E-D.com slash Kyle or use code Kyle at checkout for 10% off storewide. Also, today's show is brought to you by One Farm Organic Hemp Farm out in Colorado. They are 100% USDA certified organic. They make the best CBD products on the planet. I really have searched high and low. I've been using CBD since 2008. It helped me come off of eight ibuprofen a day while I was fighting and dealing with old injuries from football.

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from a 100% USDA certified organic farm. And if you use code word Kyle at checkout, you're going to get 15% off. So head over to onefarm.com slash Kyle or use code word Kyle at checkout for 15% off everything storewide. Thank you guys for tuning in to today's show with East Forest. Give it a listen. Let me know what you think at Kingsboo on Twitter, Instagram at kingsboo.com. Howdy. We got my man, Krishna. Is that all it is? East Forest. East Forest. All right.

Krishna. There's a lot of Krishnas out there in the world. They'd never find my work. That is true. They're not going to search Spotify for Krishna. Yeah. I guess you could, but they wouldn't find you. They'd find a blue guy. Yeah. That's true. So you were on the Aubrey Marcus podcast, and I had been introduced to your music before that, but I think this was right around the time

Music for Mushrooms had released. Is that correct? That was in May, Music for Mushrooms. It was released in 2019. Music for Mushrooms, a soundtrack for the psychedelic practitioner. Full title of that album. It's like a book.

You got to have the subtitle in as well. Well, let me speak to that actually because I was thinking that if I just called I intentionally put the word mushroom in the title I thought I wanted it to be bold in that sense but also quite accurate but when you say something like that

it's a bit of a splashy way of saying it catches your ear and that's why there is that semicolon and then more of a very detailed description, a soundtrack for the psychedelic practitioner. Because then it really spells out, but it's not a joke.

It literally is for a psychedelic practitioner, which could be an individual taking their own trip. Or I made it initially, it was inspired by these research institutions and what I found lacking in their playlists. And so I wanted to provide a solution. So you're speaking to like research institutions like Johns Hopkins when they're doing...

Yeah, NYU, Imperial College. They've all released public playlists of the musics they were using in their studies. Oh, wow. And I found them pretty bad. Imperial College might have been the best, but the John Hopkins one, it gets a lot of the press, and I was just shocked at what they're using.

And what's amazing is they're having incredible results, right? We all remember the data, like 77%, one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives that maintained several years later, yada, yada, yada. And I'm thinking, like, well, imagine if you're using even better music and not just better music, but like I had been developing music for this space for 10 years by doing it. And there's literally our own lab of saying what works, what doesn't work. And we had something, but I had never shared it because it's scary to kind of put yourself out there. So I'd shared it without saying what it was,

or just shared pieces of it. And that's what some of my older albums are, as we talked about at dinner. But I'd never said, well, here's the whole thing, start to finish. This is what it's for. And it's sort of almost like a digital shaman. And when I released it, 10 years after I started developing it, two days after I released it, the Oakland or Denver, which one was first? Oakland Initiative of Decriminalization happened,

whichever was first. And then the first two weeks later, two days later. Wow. It's everyone said everyone said oh you released this to you know i'm like dude i i planned this a year ago and it's been in the works for 10 years like i had no idea that this would all of course the wave happens when the wave happens yeah and for and you've that perfect timing divine timing no question you you mentioned on aubrey's podcast for those who haven't heard it, that this was

something that you had developed in large part already and that you had tuned in with Mushrooms in the editing process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, as I was saying, I mean, to back up, the entire project started by me guiding psilocybin ceremonies because a friend asked me to and i had my very first record it's called the education of the individual soul he was got really really into this record this is in 2008 and 9 and so he he just he just organized a circle and said you're going to do this and i'm like oh okay um i mean i'm excited but i don't know going to do this. And I'm like, oh, okay. I mean, I'm excited, but I don't know what to do. So really, we were just going to listen to that record, which is only 45 minutes.

But I knew I needed to have more. So we're going to build out from that. Maybe I'll play live a little bit so we can make it longer. Well, how do I do that? I guess I could get some looping pedals. And I'd been going to other ceremonies to learn, like ayahuasca, Lakota sweat lodges, San Pedro, and just studying what are the old traditions of ceremony and then getting into what's,

what do we know now of modern sound healing and how can I bring those elements in? Like, how do we drain the brain and blah, blah, blah, put it all together in this soup and try to create something that I was just trying to think what will take someone through this mushroom journey in a way that's positive and safe. And we just would try things. And then I would, next time he'd do another one and then I'd try something different. He would always push me. He's like, what are you going to do different this time? Or he says, now I think it's time to get rid of the album.

I remember we said that one year and I was like, get rid of it? He's like, you don't need it. I was like, okay, so we just play the whole time and I play the whole time four or five,

six hours. Yeah, and then it just kept growing and growing and you just learn. it created a musical language out of this and for four or five years,

I was only doing that. I was not performing live. I wasn't even really selling my music. My album was free. It still is, by the way. That album's still free on my website. I should say a gift. Some people choose to pay. I even logged it in with the internet archive, which is, so it's in like the library of Congress as a free work for all time. That's incredible. Yeah, I was really dedicated, Creative Commons license, the whole thing. I still have the copyright,

but it's a Creative Commons license, you know, so you can't commercialize it without permission, but otherwise you're free to reproduce it. And anyway, so you fast forward all these years and it just kept developing. And we started to have a protocol that we created out of real life work with people with psilocybin. And I was just seeing the profound results.

I think they're echoed in these research studies that they're also finding in their own way. And mine were less scientific. They're more anecdotal, but nonetheless, hundreds of people. And out of this came a very specific musical language that is East Forest and it included the field recordings. And I wrote a little op-ed that's in Flood Magazine about what's different in the Music for Mushrooms album and why I did it, but how I did it and why I think it's different than the other things out there, whether it's the extended length or the sound healing elements or the tension and release, or there's lots of things we could get into musically.

But the point is, it was time to share it. And I felt this message that it was time. And so we did a ceremony probably in 2018. And it was two days. So two different ceremonies. And I took, I just recorded it. And the ceremonies are improvised. I don't think of them as performances because I'm not there to entertain. I'm there to hopefully be a go-between

between something, the mushroom, coming to them through music. And I tried to just forget about, I wasn't saying this is going to be this new record, I was like, I record all of them. Some of them I forget about, I don't think they're that interesting, but they were effective.

But as long as it comes from the heart, it's effective. But this one, I was listening to it, it i was like this i think this is interesting and i ended up just taking most of it from both nights to get five hours because there's lots of things i don't record in the ceremony i'm out in the room like doing bowls and stuff so it didn't i needed all the sort of keyboard looping time and i i kept almost all of it to make this album and instead of editing the songs down, like I used to in the past, I didn't touch,

I barely touched them. I mostly like mastered them. You know, EQ made it sound really good. Ran it through analog equipment, had it mastered by an engineer. And there it was, five hours,

start to finish. And now you can even, I wasn't even sure you could release on Spotify, an album of five hours. And I tried to find the answer and I couldn't really find the answer. I was like, I guess I'll just try. And it worked.

This is awesome. And that's like a symptom of the digital age that we can even do these things now. I didn't need a label. I didn't do any of this stuff. And I could physically distribute it to the world for very little money. And when you put the name in a title,

people will key in that, oh, I'm thinking about doing something like that, and then maybe figure out this could be a tool for them. And that's what happened for you. No doubt. I certainly want to unpack that. That particular album has been a part of three pretty massive journeys of mine. And I definitely want to take a deep dive with you into those. I haven't spoken about it yet on this podcast. I think you should. But I certainly will. We will today.

I just want to get more on your background. We were talking last night about music. You said you had played band in class. Talk about your musical history getting into this. Did it happen with medicine? And when did your medicine start? It did. Absolutely. Yeah. What propelled it in the first place was that I had had some experiences on mushrooms with music that were just, you know, blew my mind and I didn't understand them. Excuse me. And that's, that was the fuel for trying to figure out,

reverse engineer something. I mean, the very first one was when I was 20, no, 19 was my first journey, period. And it was on mushrooms and I had a lot and thankfully it was really positive. But I mean, all the way, I didn't know what time was in myself. And I grew up in the suburbs, white kid, pretty insulated. I had no elders or anyone telling me that there was anything more besides what you hear from basic religion. So having a felt experience of that really blew my mind and my heart open. But I didn't know what to do. I had no one to talk to about it.

So I kind of was just stumbling through life, always reaching for that moment again and trying to find it through mushrooms, which I didn't do too often because I realized the power of them as well. And through that stumbling in my 20s, I had had some experiences with music that I hit these ineffable infinite moments, I think that many people have had on

psychedelics, where it locked in with the music and the music itself became the world I was in, in a sense, the actual room, the architecture of my experience. And I wanted to create music for me to use as a tool that maybe I could be there longer or more reliably. I was just fascinated by that. And so that's why I started even trying. It was for me to use as a tool. And that first record, The Education of the Individual Soul, you know, of course, the way the universe would have it, lots of things were falling apart in my life. I think I was in my late 20s. I was in New York City. I was trying to do all the things people do.

I was trying to make it, be famous, all those things. I had a band. It was like a pop band, indie pop, piano thing. Which I was just pushing, pushing, pushing for many years. And it wasn't really ever happening. And all this was falling apart. The recession of 2008 with Bear Stearns, all that. Everything was falling apart. So recession of 2008 with Bear Stearns, all that. Everything was falling apart.

So there was openings for change. And I remember, and this is, of course, when the ayahuasca came into my life and I was starting to explore all these other things and meditation and really starting to wake up. And I started making music that was just for me. I was like, I'm never going to sell this. There's no other reason than it's just for me for this little tool. And the very first song that came out was Ten Laws,

which is my most popular song today, 10 years later. That was the first song. And I'd also been doing little field recordings for fun because I also got into backpacking at the time. I was getting re-obsessed with wilderness. I was in New York City. I went all the way up to the Adirondacks and I was just getting so turned on by nature.

And I was recording the sounds of crickets and water and all these, because if I brought that back and listened to the sound, it actually contained something about the memory of that moment. Almost like the soul of, it was a power, it was like, wow,

it's not just like a photograph of a mountain. I was like, I feel like I'm there. Listening to the wind at that, you know, these spots of wilderness. And so of course I started just playing around. I was like, what if I toss this into these songs, you know? And I remember dropping in, cause I record people too. So I had my friend talking about his 10 laws. He talked, he talked for four hours about all sorts of things. And he's a whole interesting character in himself, VC johnson but he had this little 10 loss thing i remember i dropped it in the song and the frogs from outside his house and it was just like a revelation of like this is cool like this is like really cool and this is clicking you know and and i and i just

started doing more and i worked on it for like a year in my spare time and I was getting into it. And I had no rules other than I was chasing a feeling. The only glue was a particular feeling in the music. Anyway, fast forward a year and I got to the end and I said, okay, I kind of have like a little record here. I'm going to listen to it, but with mushrooms as a way of honoring the inspiration. I didn't have any, I mean, that was just, that was my thought. It was September 16th of 2008. And I took the mushrooms. I still didn't have much information about ceremony or anything. I think I took about probably two and a half, three grams or something like that. I don't remember.

I remember I went on a walk through Brooklyn Heights until I felt like it was kicking in. Felt it kicking in, came back, went in my room, had the computer there with the headphones in my bed, pressed play, put the headphones on, lay down. It's only a 45-minute record. I was now journeying and my life changed like completely. And what happened was, which it was the most beautiful moment I've ever had in my life because the mushrooms allowed me to forget.

And literally like my brain couldn't understand how I made it anymore. Even though I was so familiar with this, I'd been mixing it, right. And now I was like, I don't, what is this? I don't remember that now.

So that part turned off. And now it was just an experience, a journey. And it was like, I was hearing all the field recordings of everywhere I'd been that last year. All the places I went, my parents were in there, all the little children, these little girls I recorded that were in this labyrinth and I went on a gig.

It was just my last year of me searching for this new thing. And it's in the music. And then the music was this connected thing that was taking me through this realm of synchronicity and emotion. And it was so beautiful because it was like my soul had tricked my ego into making this tool to use just in this moment so that I could transcend into a new sense of self. And I remember when it ended, I took off the headphones and I stood up and the whole room was like the matrix where it just like starts flexing. And I said like, wow, or something. And it would be echo. Wow. Wow. Wow. And I remember just feeling like it was like i was like a new being walked into me it's like there's before that and there was after that and i didn't care after that if

anything that was that was it i was done that was obviously the purpose of this whole year and it was the most beautiful thing i'd ever experienced i was good and that's why i was just like this is free anyone can have it I don't care do what you want because how could I ever try to commercialize this thing that was so sacred and beautiful

so I started giving it to friends and stuff and I did a journey with my girlfriend at the time thinking like well I think this record is specific to me because it has my mom and all that stuff but maybe you know let's give it a try.

A little ceremony, a little candle. She lies on the couch, puts the headphones on, and she does it. And she takes off the headphones. She's like, oh my God, I saw my dead father. And like, we worked through this trauma of, you know, all this stuff. And it was like super healing.

I'm like, wow. Okay, that's interesting. And then a few days later, my roommate, try it with him him couch the whole thing but they had fun it's like sasha shulgin with the inner circle experiments on himself gives it to his wife and then the close friend none of us though were in those circles yeah you know we were curious but we were just we were not for psychedelic people at that point or anything and anyway he had a profound experience and then fast forward to when i went to my first

ayahuasca ceremony and I met this guy who became a very close friend of mine. I gave him the album. He got obsessed with the album and he was the one who started organizing the circles. I wouldn't have done it without him. And he became a big, big proponent and helped me kind of take off.

And so that's, that's where it all started and that's why it started. And it was definitely guided and it was definitely for very small, humble reasons in the beginning. And I think about five years ago, I felt a message to take it out of those private shadows and more into the public light. And that's when I started performing publicly more. And I had to figure out how to do that because you can't just drop into a bar, which I was playing at fucking bars, okay?

Like, I mean, it was tough. Piano bar in New York City. One of the worst gigs I had was in LA and I remember I was by myself in this shitty bar and a guy was so drunk and he was standing right in front of me with his back to me, like talking to his friend about,

like not even listening. While you're playing. And there's only like seven people there. Yeah, it was super disrespectful. And I'm playing East Forest music, but trying to like be a little of this and a little of that, not knowing what to do yet. And still always working with that,

but feeling more in my lane now, like, look, just do this and people will do what they need to do. But really had to struggle to find um a voice and a way to bring it into the world and navigate this this sort of capitalistic alcohol-fueled public mostly public that's how a lot of gigs are yeah and it's it's been an amazing ride it still is but as more people like aubrey you know tuned into it, you start to get invited to do things that are going to be a little more

set up for success people are maybe on the same frequency that frequency is not alcohol they're there for a better reason and it's a little more conscious and it's like well now we can go deeper and of course as we said times are changing so now there's this huge public wave

of consciousness around intentional therapeutic psychedelic use. these things were incorporated in because one of the things I noticed in the, at a certain point in the music for mushrooms album was you played native American flute so beautifully that I thought I've immediately thought of Ferengi. And I was like, well, it's an easy instrument to play. It's yeah. It's hard to play a wrong note. But thank you for that. I, a lot of the one thing that ties all indigenous ceremony together that I've found is music so that is a core element so that alone is interesting

and then within that you'll often find elements of rhythm as being sort of a core element whether it's drumming or a rattle and then sometimes there's melody and song and there's other formats of that as well. And so this is interesting that you notice this. And for some of them with the Icaros, it's believed that that is actually the mechanism of the ceremony.

This is what's calling forth the spirits, and it's absolutely critical to doing the ceremony. You can't do it without it, at least from that Peruvian tradition. So I noticed this and I was, so some of it was just picking up what they're doing musically and some of it was just some basic research. And I just, and because like, for instance,

with Lakota Sweat Lodge, it's, they've intentionally been very strict about, you don't change anything. So I know that's how they did it a thousand years ago. And they probably thought this shit through. So it's like, okay, so why are they doing this? And what are they not doing? And also the elements of ritual and ceremony.

This is also something I wanted to pay attention to. How are they doing this? Because we know from modern science that the set and the setting is gonna have a profound effect on your experience. So some of this is placebo and psychological, and some of this is alchemy and spirit, things that we can't quantify.

And some of this has to do with the way music has the ability to transcend dimension, to transcend language, to engender emotion and feeling. It's this interesting math that exists in the whole universe, but the way we interpret tone and ratios, like a fifth is a fifth is a fifth across the universe. That's interesting.

Music is something that's so ubiquitous in our lives. It's like asking a fish what water is. And I don't even think we fully, I'm doing it right now with my voice. I'm using tones and sound and rhythm and pitch to communicate ideas that are just that. They're ideas representing other feelings and things and then we can agree to it with my mouth noises and gestures.

But it's a form of sound. I mean, really, that's what it is, sound. And the way sound, it's encoded into our ancient histories like God spoke or the Big Bang, sound, and then it's creation. It's almost telling us that in this ability to create sound and music and our words our thoughts in a sense we are creating and the power of that we hear this a lot these days from modern teachers and you hear it and from old teachers and music i feel is sort of the next iteration of that where it's beyond even words

and we're just speaking and feeling, which is like so awesome. And any of us, no matter, you could have a PhD in musicology or you could be sitting next to the person who actually is a little mentally challenged and knows nothing about music, but you're both going to emotionally respond

to a certain chord change in an equally familiar intensity. it's it's it just does that why why is it and it's so right now on this planet there's more music than has ever been ever and it's only growing with spotify and apple and the way it's playing everywhere and then we like to play it and like everyone likes all these different kinds. We've got death metal to ambient music to country music. I mean, the diversity of how the source expresses itself through creative form, I think music is undervalued even though it's overvalued.

We don't appreciate fully what it can do. So in a ceremony, mushrooms don't have the same tradition like say ayahuasca has. Ayahuasca exists amazingly inside the container of a ceremony almost exclusively. It's not used recreationally for all intents and purpose. and inside that you've got the caros or maybe you've got udv or whatever it's still music and song it's still a very tight container the opposite is true with mushrooms it's almost exclusively been used recreationally many people have stumbled into deep spirituality with it but 95 percent of people that i talked to before ceremony have you used mushrooms before either we know or yes i was with my friends in the woods or I was at a party or at a concert or those things. It might be positive, it might be

negative. Almost never did I hear from someone, yep, and I've sat in ceremony with it. Meaning, I basically gave it stillness and space to do its thing. And most people didn't realize the full potential of what can come from the teachings of psilocybin. And then once they do give it that space and silence, they're like, I was on ayahuasca or this or that. They're shocked at how deep it can go. Yeah, it blows people away. Terrence McKenna, I was listening to, you're familiar with the podcast, The Psychedelic Salon with Lorenzo Haggerty? Yeah, Lorenzo.

Yeah, Lorenzo is great. He had one of his many, many McKenna lectures. Terrence gives the lecture and then at the end they do a Q&A and somebody asks him, is there a wrong way to do psychedelics? And he says, yes, if you don't take enough. Yeah, but where are the underdose? Yeah. And everybody started laughing. He goes, I'm serious. In the psychedelic sixties, everybody had one mushroom cap, a couple hits of a joint, a little bit of wine, and there's 30,000 people at Golden Gate Park. And that's one way to experience it. But you never know the true medicine that lies within it without creating space for it in the way you would ritualistically like you do with ayahuasca. Well, I'm a big fan of Terence McKenna, but I actually disagree with his five gram thing. And

that's a meme I hear repeated back all the time when I'm out there in the world. I feel it's a little bit dangerous personally, because I think the key there is the space and the silence that you can cultivate. In stillness is when spirit speaks to us. In stillness, or even silence, and I'll speak about this tonight in the concert, that silence, Gordon Hempton is a field recording artist, described it not as the absence of sound, but the absence of noise. And I like that description, because it's not that it's literally, there's no sound. It's just that the noise is, so when we move noise out of our lives, and that can be more than just white noise that we audibly hear. It's the noise of our brains,

the noise of our activity, the noise of our thoughts. Clearing away the noise, now clearing away the fog, you can hear what's already there. We're not placing an idea into you. We're peeling back the onion so you can hear. And I love that idea because it's just about giving space. So some people, I've seen it, one gram is another person's five grams. No doubt. Yeah, same. Or for you, five grams is yours is 25. But the point is that I think it's not appropriate to say this is the threshold of like, now you're really doing the work. And everyone has different ways of doing it. I know what Terrence is saying, and he's right, that if you're kind of dawdling around, you can actually kind of strengthen the ego.

But you can't attach a number to that and say, this is where you cross the threshold. Which is true. And if you do take smaller amounts and you give it the proper space, you're still going to hear stuff and yourself in a sense of source and your truth. So there, and there's no, there's no limit. You found like, it just goes this way and goes the other way. It's like, it just, there's no right or wrong. It's like, there's just more and less. Yeah. sometimes people take it nothing happens yeah i don't know why i think

the only people that i've known um that have had non-reactive experiences to psilocybin were people on ssris yes and there is a genetic component i've read about that it is possible you're just not that susceptible to that chemical but um the average person it's pretty amazing compound as far as effectiveness yeah and it's i mean it's obviously there's you know a graham hancock talks about that seat at the table idea and i think of all my favorite teachers that all have a seat at the table and it's hard to it's it would be egoic for me to quantify and say which one's best or which one is sitting at the head of the table. It's the circular table, right?

But the beautiful thing, one of the beautiful things about psilocybin is that it might be the most scalable from a micro level to a macro level. And all that play in between can offer so many lessons, so much teaching. Yeah, it's deep. I mean, I think Terence was the one,

he put it right behind DMT and LSD after it as far as potency. Yeah, it's deep. I mean, I think Terrence was the one who put it right behind DMT and LSD after it, as far as potency or power. Yeah, absolutely incredible. You've discussed a critical piece here, and this is definitely something I wanted to get in with you today, was how silence and stillness matter so much in preparation and in the space itself. What are some of the other protocols? You mentioned protocol when you're talking about learning from these other great teachers and the other plants. What were some of the protocols that you guys implemented as you were designing the music and over the years? Well, I think stillness, spaciousness, silence is the kryptonite in a sense to our modern life

and in some ways it is the answer we're looking for it's not about us an additive approach of more it's less and in that we're returning to that which already is so i think with people's preparation for any journey i was learning from what works. There's a very strong dieta or preparation for ayahuasca typically, and that's probably the strongest one I know. And that was a pretty good model because a lot of it, even though there weren't the same physical constraints, they're still pretty good to follow. And so we often tell people three to seven days. I mean, it really starts from the moment you decide to follow. And so we often tell people three to seven days. I mean, it really starts from the moment you decide to go. I would find that there was like a, you've lit a fuse of sorts and it's

always in my mind. Oh yeah, in two months, like that thing's coming and this action, our choice I'm making, it's connected. There's no free ride. I know I'll have to face it. And so it's like, I'm going to make another choice in this moment. And so it becomes a walking meditation, a walking path once you, in my mind, or that's at its best, it does, because then it's really, truly holistic. You're seeing, and that's great because then afterwards the same way, it's about integration. It's how does everything I experienced in that journey, how is that now reverberating into my life? And medicine works across time.

It's not like you get a free pass afterwards. It's like, well, it's actually, you know, crosses from future into past to present. So we do this stuff about diet and just trying to be mindful of kind of cleaning out your system. And there's different ways and different approaches to do that. And then cleaning out your mind with having a meditation practice because that's sort of the anchor and the keel of the ship during the experience. So having a familiarity with that as long as possible before, if not many years, would be great.

But even if it's a few weeks, that's better than nothing. And the day of, avoiding stimulants that are going to kick you one way or the other. We talk obviously about medications and that's something that's too specific to talk about in the podcast. And avoiding screen time, just all things to kind of bring you back down to center so you feel when you walk in,

you're very grounded and calm and confident and hopefully in a good place is the ideal way to walk into the experience um and then having some support in it and before and afterwards i think it's great too so you're not just kind of rolling in getting the stuff and then diving back into your life you want to have some time to integrate and to let it settle and have someone or some people to process with some accountability yeah yeah integration that's one that's uh you know as i was mentioning to you about the the impetus for the dose that i had was this man kalindi i.e and seeing him

through all of his pros and cons, seeing that he looked fairly grounded. He looked in his body, you know, and that when I haven't seen that before in ayahuasca circles or even in just everyday life, it doesn't matter necessarily what you get in the medicine if you don't take that and embody it, right? Like you're not going to draw that back in, you know? Yeah. And you see that. You see people who just keep diving in. I feel like it's actually, they get into this megalomaniac type situation

where they're not grandiose ideas. And, you know, it's a tool and it can be abused for sure. That's my opinion. And I've seen it. And I fell into a little bit of conflict myself because I didn't just want to be doing circles where i felt like i was playing for the same people it's like i think there's tons of value for playing for well people who want to be more well and at the same time i wanted to reach more people and that's one of the

impetuses to make the music for mushrooms record because like well then i don't have to even be there it's just i'm just playing a role you. You know, it's a big role in music, but this could open it up to millions of people in the world, simultaneously people versus just one small ceremony at a time. And in my heart, I don't think there's a difference. I don't think it's better that I'm working with someone who's more important

or that it's more people. Because at the end of the day, we all graduate and the single mother caring for her mother who's sick and no one knows about it, that is just as important honorable work in the universe and the scheme of energy as me working with Tim Cook of Apple or Donald Trump or something. I know that sounds, that doesn't make logical sense,

but in my heart, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah, the small work is the work. It's all the work. Paul Selig said that yesterday. He told this story about the guy Brent walking through life saying, why am I here? Why am I here?

Why am I here? And he pulls up and there's a giant tree branch that fell in the middle of the road. So he stops his car. He gets out. He moves the tree branch out of the way and he gets back in his car and drives off. Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here? Well, the lesson is the lesson of the day. The medicine is whatever's right in front of you. And if that's taking care of your sick mom or running a country. Well, the American malaise is that we always have to be famous and doing something more important.

And that's not an Eastern idea. So you don't see that. We want to be the machine. And I think many people in the East are fine being a cog in the machine. They would never think they're supposed to be the machine. And there's a sickness to that because, I mean, come on. We live in a country now at the peak of it where our president is literally famous for being a reality star was basically doing nothing and we have we have people we worship like the kardashians who did nothing

but we worship them for some reason there's something glamour about them and it's a strange time of uh honoring the least important not just honoring it but propping it up and dreaming it into existence yeah yeah it's a tricky space so talk a bit about um you know each of these things obviously layer together you talked about that that pre-mushroom experience with the with the first album and then the post and who you are now how has your life changed in terms of what you do on a daily basis? Like daily practices of meditation, breath work, stillness, how have you grown in that arena? Because I think those are the tools that seamlessly go hand in hand. And again, if you never take mushrooms, all those tools are available to you right now.

But they seem to help us integrate better if we have those practices in play. Yeah, I think practice is there just for that. It's sort of the recognize that we're riding a wave and you're going to fall off and get back on. So you're never at some destination. You're always surfing. You're always, that's what life is. And that's what the Buddha taught in permanence.

So holding on to anything is the suffering, which is a challenging lesson because by our nature, we hold on to life. And I think the ultimate motivation is our recognition that we're going to die. And that inexorable fate is a problem. And so that's sort of, for me, that's what's going on every day. And I think if it is

for everyone, they're just maybe, how awake are they about it? I think Monday Night Football or shooting heroin, they're all different forms of escape. That's not bad. I'm not judging it. But there's nothing else to do. There's only one game in town once you realize what the game is, and that's returning with God in the sense of fulfilling what you already are in the sense of dissolving into it, which my heart tells me is death, which is a boundary condition I can't see beyond. We're obviously not meant to.

Otherwise, the jig would be up. Yeah, what kind of game would that be worth? There would be no game. Yeah. If you were just here to be blissed and knew everything well then it'd just be a soul vacation but there wouldn't were he i've heard that ideas like coming to earth or i should say this whole universe this dualistic binary universe is one of the harder incarnations but one of the faster which in itself is confusing to me like well, well, time's irrelevant. It doesn't matter.

But it's sort of something about like, the work is thicker, you know, but it's the brave souls. And there's other forms of universes that you can do work in that are completely different. We can't imagine them, but not as intense as Earth. Earth is like kind of a place you go to really dive in deep and go quick. Even if that's 50,000 lifetimes, but you know. Earth is like kind of a place you go to really dive in deep and go quick. Yeah. Even if that's 50,000 lifetimes, but you know.

It reminds me of, well, each lifetime is like that. It doesn't feel like it right now, but at the same time it does. Yeah. That reminds me of Alan Watts, the dream. You know, when he talks about that, imagine that if you had the power over your dreams and you went to sleep each night, you could dream a dream of a life where you would experience all your joys, you'd fulfill everything in life, and all your wildest wishes would come true.

And then the next time you went to dream, you'd say, well, that one was so easy, let me add in an obstacle or a surprise here. And you'd go on and so on and so forth all the way down the road until this dream happened. Yeah, right, right. It's so goddamn confusing. That's why I have to stop. The path for me is through creativity or feeling or the micro moments

of just nothingness, of peace. I think peace is the most potent word in a way, almost more than love, because it's like love's inside peace. And that equanimity of perfection, which is, that's sort of what I'm seeking. That's why I started doing that music

is because I touched it at times and I just wanted to be there all the time. And that's when I say return to God. I think that's what I mean. It's the same thing. It's encoded in our sense of faith. You see it in religions. There's different ways they talk about it. I would love to say I'm more spiritual in my practice or disciplined. I'm a very disciplined person, but I'm also like, there's so much more I could be doing. I'm a pretty modern person like with an iPhone

and I have all the problems anybody else has and I struggle. And in some ways I see that struggle as the fuel to allow me to then do what I do. Like I make the music so I feel better. I guess if I felt better, maybe I wouldn't make the music and then the whole thing would be like,

all right, you're done. But I have a lot of problems. I really struggle i mean i was at the ramdas retreat last week there to perform really fulfilling like a dream and i was having a hard time like the first i had to perform on saturday i got there wednesday and up until i had to perform i was a fucking mess like anxious irrit, angry, which is not how I'm supposed to, quote unquote, supposed to be there. Everyone's all blissed out.

And I'm like, I don't feel blissed. I feel like a mess. Fuck that guy. Why are you so happy? Yeah, yeah. I even said that when I was like, well, everyone's telling me they're having, they're on cloud nine.

I'm not, why not? I'm supposed to be. And I was just nervous. And I was just like anxious about playing and the pressure and all sorts of other things. And, you know, it's a head trip and I go on those trips and then I work through it and I go on a different cycle of the wave, just like a sound wave up and down. And right now I'm on the other side of that right now. And I'm feeling really pretty centered. And that was last week, you you know so i have to realize then the cycles

will continue and within those cycles there's larger cycles within those cycles there's larger cycles and it goes the other direction there's smaller cycles and this infinite wave of experience and why am i holding on to any of them they're just states of being and i think what meditation and psychedelic experiences can teach you is the sense of self beyond those experiences, the sense of self beyond the thought. Who is the thought? Who are the thoughts talking to? Okay. I often find myself like having a conversation.

You know, you should blank. I'm like, you? Who are these two people? And I think these things are are interesting and um but just like anybody i you know my practices are music and creativity is the biggest one i know that's like the way for me to keep my head on straight and that's a discipline like if i'm not playing i feel like i'm not expressing a certain energy and if i don't do that it feels like i've put a plug in the stop and then things start to

get really rough. Everything else starts to be like, I get depressed and things like that. And I've dealt with some really serious depression in my life. And unfortunately that's been a fuel to search, but it's no fun. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. And it's something I've been dealing with since I was like in first grade. That's, that's just the path I'm on. I, I would like to tell you that I hope to get to a point where it's all won't happen. And maybe I think it's better,

but, uh, I find life to be challenging. Yeah. Beautiful, immensely beautiful. I'm immensely grateful. And I find it to be challenging. Yeah. Beautiful. Immensely beautiful. I'm immensely grateful. And I find it to be a beautiful, challenging dance.

Yeah, no doubt about it, brother. Boy, am I fortunate. Thank God. But I don't know, man. We're all given gifts and I think the message in the journey is to do the most with them and again there's no judgment

on the public level of those gifts but doing your best to maximize this incarnation I feel like is the work and you just figure out what that, I feel like, is the work. And you just figure out what that is, and then you go do the work. The rest, you're not attached to the fruits, just the labor.

And I just interviewed Peter Krohn, and they put a lot of things in perspective. But I asked him about his practices, and he said, just be in the world. Everything is your teacher, where you're in resistance or acceptance. Yeah, there's nothing else. It's like, just be in the world. Everything is your teacher where you're in resistance or acceptance. Yeah, there's nothing else. It's like, get out of the cave. Exactly. And do life. Yeah, sometimes I think we think

that it's something extraordinary. We're waiting for the extraordinary and actually like God is in the mundane and the moments of true peace and enlightenment happens to us all the time. We just let it pass by. It's a micro moment.

There's these slight moments of like, you see a look in someone's eye. It's in the midst of having to go to the bathroom and these other things going on. But there it was. There it is, I should say. It's always there. It's no further away than your next breath.

And that's a gift. You don't have to go to the ashram for 20 years. You don't even have to take a psychedelic. I mean, I'll show it to you loud and clear, perhaps. And then it's like, maybe that'll help you. Remember, a lot of us, including me, we need some strong medicines these days. But we're all quite hungry.

And that's why you're seeing this explosion of the wellness movement and yoga and psychedelics right now coming back. That's why. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yin and yang to the other side of it, which is the technological revolution, the inundation of information, the overload we're experiencing, the toxins we're experiencing, the political upheaval, the topsoil crisis, the water crisis, the climate change crisis, the go on and on and on. Those are all each individual real crises. All of it symptomatic and mirrored in the personal spiritual emergency that's happening as well.

And we're in the birth canal. There's no more going backwards. We're in it, and everyone has choices to make about their role to play in it and what they want to do, but the answers we're going to have will come from the inside out, not from the top down, from other people fixing this or some new invention. All that may or may not happen, but it will all come from people having their own inner insight

and making individual choices. And everyone has their choices to make, and they're equally important. And everyone graduates. That's not to say that the suffering we experience isn't real. It does sound like a paradox, because it is. But that's sort of what we've been taught in from spiritual lessons, like a Buddhist go on. That's what they're trying to tell us.

It's beyond logic and thought. It breaks the cogs of the machine. That's the point of the koan. So you can all of a sudden feel it. Yeah, it's almost like getting kicked back into that observer state where you witness, I'm not my body, I'm not my thoughts. It's like being kicked in the balls, and there's a moment of like everything stops.

And you're focused on one thing. That's great, brother. What about your experience? I mean, you told me a little bit about, and I was encouraging you to share it because it's like, I mean, how about on this level? You were using the Music for Mushrooms album

three times. And I was curious like each time you used it if being familiar with it was actually a negative or if you don't even know what the fuck is happening it's like it's helping you but you're so in a different place it's just more of an anchor there so it doesn't matter if you've heard it before yeah i was curious about that too specifically with mushrooms because the first time I used it, it was with a troublesome experience with LSD that I mentioned on Aubrey's podcast with all four coaches from Fit for Service. Yeah. You said you had like a milligram, which is like potentially a thousand micrograms,

like way, way, way, way more. And that too, I mean, I don't think there's such a thing as accident, but I thought that it had leaked out from the pressure of the airplane. In fact, it had dehydrated and was concentrated. Right. When I added water, it fucking put me... And you went on a hike. Yeah, in public, definitely not the right set and setting, no guidance. And even though I consider myself well-versed, I certainly wouldn considered in guiding others or working with myself, 911 is a real option.

And I thought, we're going to get fucking medevaced off this mountain with IVs. If it helps, you were like, let's do it. I know that horrible spot, whatever it takes. Yeah, I just didn't want my friend to die who was turning inside out. Yeah, man. And I mean, I've purged hard with ayahuasca. I've seen people turn inside out and need an activated charcoal, Yeah, man. big download from that was I knew I had had enough medicine to tap in either to my higher knowing or to the great spirit of all, the God of all, everything source, and to get real downloads. And I was receiving zero back. Usually when I ask questions, I don't hear a voice. I don't

see words. I just automatically know with a capital K. There's a knowing. And there was zero of that. And it was only until we had friends locate us, move us aside to the shade, and lay down, and we threw on your album. That was the first time I had heard it. And I just took a couple deep breaths, and I looked up at the clouds, and then everything shifted. And all of a sudden, the wave of downloads started crashing in. Thank God. And yeah, thank God, for sure. of downloads started crashing in. Thank God. And yeah, thank God for sure. And God was in everything. Praise God.

My buddy, he just goes, it was funny how synchronous, you know, like when you do ayahuasca, you realize like you can have shared visions and sometimes those take place simultaneously. And so he was like, there's eyeballs everywhere. And right as he was saying that, I was just witnessing God in all things. And I was like, fuck yeah, man. That's what I came here for. Not in this way. It wasn't the how I wanted to get here, but this is where I wanted to go. And it ended up being a beautiful experience, one that I never wished to recreate, just just what i needed and also the realization that subconsciously or

maybe from a soul level i am calling in the ceremony that i haven't given myself and so the microdose in the mountains turns into that when i'm unacknowledging the message the message to go in and drop in a little deeper so we had a few days after that was the first time we properly listened to your Music for Mushrooms album. Hopefully in a better sound system than a headphone. Way better sound system with a full written intention and smudging and all the practices that Aubrey and I have gleaned from the different medicines. And that was one of the most beautiful and grounding experiences I've ever had, which is what I needed. I needed to be grounded post that much LSD. And, you know, so I'm trying to factor in when,

frequency, that's always something that's kind of troubled me because I like listening in stillness to when the next one is, rather than planning it out with like a hedonic calendar, like they talk about in Stealing Fire. I think that takes the fun out of it.

Because then am I just dropping in because this is the due date or am I dropping in because I'm actually... I find I never drop in unless I make a date because I can always find an excuse not to. That's true. I'm the opposite. Some people are... I totally hear what you're saying. Well, to your point, it's funny because I've always scoffed at the hedonic calendar, but

now I see a purpose because I'm never going to wing that dose of the 30 gram mushrooms. Yeah. Now you know. Yeah. Now I know. And this was carefully planned too, though. But I had a friend send me a video of Kalindi IE. And I'll link to it in the show notes for people to watch a YouTube video. And so she sends me this and she's like, have you ever heard of people taking this many mushrooms? And right on the front, says purposely yeah 20 to 30 gram mushroom like even stamets his first time he took an ounce but he just didn't know any better right and never went back that far again so kalindi's been doing this for 20 30 years he's speaking on stage at one of the largest psychedelic conferences and even though i had written the guy's got to be a moron to take that much.

I watched him and I was like, this is actually giving me permission. And I've had downloads from ayahuasca and mushrooms themselves to scale up 7, 10, 14. And the reason for that was I wanted to work at a similar level to the depth I was receiving with ayahuasca, but to have that access stateside because I haven't had great practitioners, you know, blue belts, purple belts, guiding the medicine with ayahuasca is a tricky thing, you know? So I make my trip to the Amazon or to Costa Rica at Sultara and then, you know, stateside, let the mushrooms be my medicine. And, you know, in any circumstance where it goes to be ceremony night, there's usually others in the room that I want to offer some care for. And not that I'm a black belt, but just to have an extra hand at the steering wheel, that kind of thing. And to be of service for others. So I've never given myself space for that. And this was planned and I don't recommend it. In the intro of this, I'm sure I've

already given, because we did the intros after, a very sharp disclaimer. But yeah, I ground up 30 grams of mushrooms. I believe the strain was kosumwe, which is a lot like taikyubensis. It's very loving. But at that dose, again, kind of that. It is what it is. Yeah, those things go out the window. And yeah, I had fasted all day, took them in the evening at 8.30 p.m. And in the beginning, I had a list of intentions that I had written out.

And it was for sure the most beautiful experience I'd ever had in the beginning. I had died for the first time. Our son is four and a half, and he's very much four and a half. And he's my son, for sure. He very much goes against the grain and butt heads with us. And at times he's an asshole. And as kids are, they're feeling out their boundaries and they're seeing what they can get away with.

And I often think of him as this kid who, and I was just talking to Gabby Reese about this, like our fear is not the stage that they're in. Our fear is they become that as an adult. Right. Because we've all seen adults who are assholes. So not wanting that to be the case, that's where you get wrapped up in how do you parent? How do I connect? All those things. And it's been hard. It's been hard for both my wife and I. And now she's pregnant

again, and we're very fortunate to have that. But those are things that I think about with him. And so one of the visions I had of him was witnessing his soul for the first time. And it was like an ancient language that I saw, but I recognized that it is him in this golden white light. And I could see all the traits of a little kid, all the laughter, all the joy, all the anger, all the, you know, I don't love you, dad, like all that too, you know, but I'm seeing him as that, not as this great teacher that he is for me and for my wife, right? So to witness that was so much beauty. And yeah, really, really special and really important.

And of course, I'm asking about the sex of the child that's to be and all these things. And of course, we know now through modern medicine. But I wanted to know things like that. And I was getting a lot of downloads. Like, you don't want to know. It's better to be surprised. And that was cool, how special it is that we don't have everything figured out, that we don't know what the game is that we're playing, not with 100% certainty, because then there is no game. And so all this experience in God, all this experience in the love and the joy and the bliss, and then it slowly starts to reverse. I have this mandala on my wall and I see this dark

caterpillar coming out on me. And I don't want to get too far into the weird stuff because for people who haven't done psychedelics, trip reports can get out there. But I was seeing beings in the room with my eyes open for the first time. I've never had that experience on DMT, not 5-MeO, not ayahuasca, never experienced that. I've had relatives come to guide and to be in my space, but it was usually one at a time. It wasn't like insectoid beings there working on my body. There you go. So I knew I had hit that level Kalindi talks about. You're there. I'm there. And he talks about Pandora's box. You can open Pandora's box and visit this dimension of hell, which is personal.

And I just finished the DMT Dialogues, and one of the common things they talk about, Graham Hancock talks about in his chapter as well, is that when you see darkness, whether that shows up as Satan or a demon or anything that's scary to you, and it offers you to go somewhere, you say yes. Or what can you show me? What can you teach me? If you push that thing away, it usually ends. You come back to your body, and you're like, damn it, I should have said yes. So as this worm crawls up my body, I look into it, and I'm like, oh shit, that's the darkness. And I ask, can I go there? And the answer's, yeah, I can go there. And then immediately go into at least five stages that I recall of my

own personal hell. And these were the gnarliest fucking experiences. And they, each one felt eternal, you know, and it started with like, you shouldn't have taken this much. Now you're fucking dead and you're going to be here for eternity. And everyone I know looking at me like, you fucking idiot. We told you not to do this. Even my wife, like you just had to push, didn't you? You know, so all this blame and guilt and these negative emotions that live in me somewhere you know like that's what kalindi's i mean that is as above so below if the universe is and beyond is fractal and holographic then all is within right there's that roomy quote you're not a drop

in the ocean you are the entire ocean in a drop and i fucking fucking felt that fully. But each layer of hell was so personal and just, it was revealing. It was so revealing for me to come out of that and understand all of these corners live within me. Some of them were fucking super obvious. So I had your music on, right? And at a point I was like, fuck this, I got to fucking turn it off because I felt like it was like a conspiracy to get me to take the 30 grams to get me to get to this point to end consciousness. Oh, it was my fault. I was like, sorry.

I pulled the fucking speaker out of the wall. I turned it off. I lay back in bed. And you would start singing. You would start singing. With the music off. With the music off. And I'd go, oh, how nice. And then it would stop. And I'd hear like a refrigerator buzzing by my ear.

And I'd be like, I fucking hate that sound. And I'd turn and a flashlight would go in my face. And you're like, fucking light. And I'd move. And then I'd get a knife in my back, like right where I have back pain or had back pain. Oh, shit. And so it was like this self-driven motor of all the ways I microdose hell on a daily basis in everyday life. It was showing me every minute thing that I have resistance to. And consciously, I would try to surrender. Consciously, I would try to accept. But it was one until I literally gave up and just said, who the fuck cares? To feel that energetically, and then I'd get to another layer. But hell was by far one of the best things that I've ever experienced in medicine,

because it was the most revealing thing and the hardest thing. And I thought I was dead when I came back to my body. I even laughed for a second and looked at my hand and I was like, that's so funny. My consciousness can't picture me without a body. And I took a cold shower and I looked at this photo of my son and I witnessed the same light going through that energetic signature of his soul and just was blown away. And then it reminded me of the whole experience. So I was like, oh wait, that part happened because I was so fixated on hell. I realized like, maybe I'm not dead. And I looked at my phone and it was fucking 12 or 1 a.m. It was three and a half hours lift off to touchdown. I've never had experiences go that quickly either. So I imagine the fasting and the prep that I had done that day was a part of it.

But rebirth was the last thing I wrote in my intentions. And it was like, I mean, I've never experienced anything like that. You know, I've been taught and shown I'm not my body in ayahuasca, reframed my belief about myself, reframed my belief in reincarnation, or given me the belief in reincarnation, shown me everything is conscious. Everything is God. All is over. Nothing is. Animism is true. It's all fucking animated by the same thing. It's all source. I've gotten all those downloads, but I've never felt like I got to a point where i was gone and i'm not coming back so to come back then was

like wow and i looked in my hand and it looked like captain marvel like blues and golds and i just felt like neo in the matrix like holy shit what do i want to do now so beautiful how do i want to live neo in the matrix that's what i felt like when I stood up. It's like the matrix. Yeah. Yeah, it was like, oh, wow, this is a new thing I'm walking into. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're talking about the hell realms.

And what did you say? It's like that the teachings only came through that or the suffering or something about... That all that lives within me. Some of that was painfully obvious. Like one of the hell realms was my wife, me talking about everybody about this pregnancy and then her having a miscarriage. And like I witnessed the miscarriage

as just this explosion of blood and she blames me for it. You know, like that repeated for infinity. And so that's a very obvious fear. I don't want that. I had a mantra of we are safe, we are safe, calling that in. And what's funny about the mantra is because I had a friend ask me that, and it's like, if the mantra is something I believe, that's a cool reminder. But I don't need to remind myself of that if it's already known, right? If I am calling that in, then there means that some part of me doesn't believe we are safe. And it was shown in exposing all of the ways I don't

fully trust in this experience. Anywhere that I have attachment to outcome and anywhere that I have resistance to something as small as the refrigerator sound. Yeah, the teachings come through the suffering in our lives. And that goes back to what we're talking about, the struggle that we face in our lives, that the grist for the mill is the point in a way. And without it, there's unfortunately no point. Yeah, that's the beauty of polarity. Aubrey talked about that, witnessing the devil for the first time and seeing that choice to hold that polarity so we could experience this life. It's impossible to have good without bad. It's impossible to have up without down.

It's impossible to have all spectrums of the polarity without polarity itself, which allows us to have this experience. Yeah, that's the playing field of this universe is just that. Those are the rules of the game. Yeah. Yep, everything's on off. Everything's one over zero, whether you're asleep or awake

or birth and death, breath in, breath out. It's the language of life. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that story. It's profound. And I mean, I'm happy that maybe the music

was a small tether in it, but nonetheless, it's just there to hold a hand through all of these experiences. It was perfect. I definitely felt your presence in the room. Until you needed to unplug it out of the wall. And you were still there. Maybe that's causing everything.

Nope. Nope, that's not it. I mean, at that point, I'd forgotten that I said yes. Because I didn't write that down. I just forgot how I got there. Like, why the fuck did that happen? Is this just a guarantee when you take that much? But then, you know, I didn't write that down. I just forgot how I got there. Like, why the fuck did that happen? Is this just a guarantee when you take that much? But then, you know, I didn't sleep that night. I just started writing stuff and it all came back. And I remembered the whole trip and I realized

like, oh yeah, there was a point where I said yes to that. So you wouldn't repeat that experience, but you're glad you did it? That was my experience initially. And now, you know, after watching more Kalindi and- Oh boy. This is your problem. YouTube, that's who you're going to blame. There's an invitation there. And I think, not for everyone, you know, 100% clear, not for everyone, but the invitation for me is, you know, one where Kalindi talks about the world needs real life, Dr. Stephen Strange is in it. And the purpose of that is to become comfortable enough in those places. And I'll stop on that just to say,

it's not just exploration. That's for sure something that they mentioned the DMT dialogues as a way to see if there are external intelligences and potentially intelligences, and potentially intelligences like we experience in ayahuasca that may have, I'm not even sure of the way to word this, but a consciousness that sits outside far enough that they can see and help, right? Anybody who sees outside of your purview can see into your life and say, hey, you know, I noticed this thing about you. And if you're receptive to it, you can take advice, right? You can take the criticism and say, you know what? You're right. I have been doing that. But if you're closed off to it and you're like, fuck you, man, you got your own shit, you know, but maybe these external consciousness can give us pointers and help. And again, all that is in within as well, right? So

tuning into that can be the answer too. But the real reason I want to do it again is because I think of hell as my report card. As I go through the school of life and I ask to see the report card, whatever fear shows up will show me right now where I'm at. So if I'm there again in three months or six months and I think I'm doing great in life, it's going to reveal everything at that dose to me. Fear that I'm unconscious of. Fear that I'm doing great in life, it's going to reveal everything at that dose to me. Fear that I'm unconscious of, fear that I'm conscious of, and where can I be in full acceptance and full love and full trust with? What's the hurry? I mean, I see a warrior soul who is a brave soul and you want to slay those demons and it's like slay away i support you and if you choose not to it's like that's just as okay too yeah well i mean i have the almost gratitude and it's not like my cup isn't full it's fucking beaming full this is the best i've felt in a

very very long time the most centered and grounded i felt in a very, very long time. And everything makes sense right now, even though that's a funny thing to say. You know, enjoy that space. There still is the mystery, you know, and there still will be curveballs. That's guaranteed without question. I'm not trying to say, like, I got it figured out. I don't have anything figured out, but I'm okay with it.

Well, you're surfing the wave right now, and you got a nice tube. It's like, continue to surf. Yeah, brother. And then see what's next. There will be more waves. No doubt. No doubt, brother. Well, I'm so excited to be able to sit with you tonight

and listen to your music live. And I'm so excited that you're here with Fit for Service. And you're just a beautiful soul, brother. And you've helped me so much in just this very short time that I've been working with your medicine. And you're just a beautiful soul, brother. And you've helped me so much in just this very short time that I've been working with your medicine. And you yourself are medicine. I love you, brother. Thanks.

Well, ditto. I appreciate it. It's an honor to be here. So thanks for chatting. Where can people find you? You have a podcast, obviously, your music. You know, it's funny. You mentioned Lorenzo.

He was, I think, one of the first guests i had on my podcast that's awesome i love that guy um yeah there's east forest podcast that's easy to find um and then obviously eastforest.org that has all the things to all the different things whether it's retreats or live dates or all my music but you can find it wherever you listen to music spotify apple instagram east forest it's all pretty easy to find i try to make different on music, but you can find it wherever you listen to music. Spotify, Apple, Instagram, East Forest. Pretty easy to find. I try to make different ways for different people to walk through based on what is

the right doorway for them. For some people it's the music, a lot of people. For some people it's a live thing or a retreat. Maybe the podcast is more about words and talking and ideas. And I'm continuing to explore that. The different mechanisms for people to dive inside. Amazing brother. Thank you so much for all your work. Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to today's show. I'm sure y'all will have plenty of questions, uh, around all sorts of stuff. Uh, of course I did a solo podcast where I went into greater detail around my 30 gram journey. It does turn out that that was in fact 30 grams of penis envy mushrooms, which is a strain that's a very concentrated high dose strain. So that kind of puts things in a different perspective in a different light. Again, don't recommend people jump into the deep end that far. And East Forest is 100% correct in that, you know, a gram for some people due to their own neurochemistry and their own biology might be the same as somebody else doing five grams. So it's not necessarily about climbing the ladder, but I do feel that

there's a lot of good medicine to be found as we get into the outer limits of what we think is possible and push ourselves to a place where we're no longer in control. And we have that forced surrender, kind of buckle up and see what happens and really learn to work with the medicine in that capacity. And that's where I've had a lot of my best growth and a lot of my best medicine experiences. And it's one of the reasons I felt called to go a bit deeper. I have made contact with my man, Kalindi Ayi, who was the, I guess, the guy who gave me permission to go that deep. And that's because he had had had experiences for the last 20 to 30 years, where he's gone into the 20 to 30 gram range, and he's now working his way up to the 40 gram range. So we're going to have a lot to discuss. I will have my second absolute heroic dose. I can't even call it a heroic dose. It's

bigger than that at some point before I have him on the podcast, but we're going to fly him out here to Onnit and take a deep dive with him. And I would love to have East Forest back on at some point in 2020 because he's a fantastic human and he's doing great stuff. Thank you guys for tuning in. Check out kingsboo.com. We got a monthly newsletter in January. We're doing two this month. So you're going to get all sorts of cool information on the things that I'm into, books that I'm reading and the ways that I'm changing my life for the better. Thank you all. Love you and see you in a week.