Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #160 Mansal Denton

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

We take a dive into conscious hunting, rights of passage, plant medicine, and Mansal's attempting to only eat meat he has killed.    Help support the podcast by visiting our sponsors: Check out https://primalfusionhealth.com/e3/kyle/ for a free gift and more information on Aleks and Sara's coaching. Aleks and Sara are Chek professionals who have taken a deep dive into all matter of life and can break you through whatever sticking point you may be experiencing!   Check out Dry Farm Wines and get a bottle for a penny | DryFarmWines.com/Kyle Visit paleovalley.com and enter code word KYLE at check out for 15% off you ENTIRE ORDER. These guys made the best 100% grass fed beef sticks and much more! Ancestral Supplements - Grass-Fed Colostrum  https://ancestralsupplements.com Use codeword KING10  for 10% off / Only Valid through Shopify Option. For the best supplements helping you eat nose-to-tail and getting the most nutrient dense and bioavailable nutrients in your diet.  OneFarm Formally (Waayb CBD) www.onefarm.com/kyle (Get 15% off everything using code word KYLE at checkout). Check out the BRAND NEW night serums and facial creams and (as always) the best full spectrum CBD products.    Get $100 off the Chek Institute’s Holistic Lifestyle Coach Level 1 online course by using KKP100 at checkout |  https://chekinstitute.com/hlc1online/ HLC changed my life and offered a deep dive into Paul Chek's amazing wealth of knowledge.    Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Instagram | https://bit.ly/3asW9Vm   Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY      

Hello, hello. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to today's show. We got my man, Mansell Denton, in the house. We recorded this a couple months back. Mansell and I met on a hunting trip that was, I think, what's the best way to word this? The carnivore doc, Paul Saladino, has been on a couple of times. He put the hunting trip together with a local hunting guide, somebody out here in Texas that I'd heard a lot about, but hadn't met yet. And we dive in all sorts of cool stuff from plant medicines to conscious hunting. And I know this is a big topic for a lot of people because most people who get into, I mean, it's just a weird thing to talk about, but a lot of people get into a spiritual path or into plant medicines or yoga or fucking any of it.

Immediately, they have this idea in their head that killing animals is wrong and we should only eat plants and a lot of that stuff. And of course, if you've been following me long enough, I disagree. Doesn't mean that certain people shouldn't eat that way. If that's what they're called to do, then by all means, go for it. But to really unpack that and to learn, you know, what is this conscious hunter look like? How do we hunt in the ways that the Native Americans and different ancestral cultures and indigenous cultures hunted with respect, with reverence, never taking more than they needed? We unpack a lot of this stuff. You know, he's a guy that I've learned from and will continue to learn from and will continue to hunt with. Just a phenomenal guy. And I hope to

sit in ceremony with him at some point. He introduced me to Dr. Will Tagel, phenomenal guy who I have on the podcast. I've spoken a bit about his book. He has eight books, I believe, but one of my all-time favorite books, Walking with Bears, is just incredible. And Montel has been working with Dr. Will Tegel out in Wimberley, Texas for about six years. So a lot of wisdom, a lot of good stuff in this episode. Thank you guys for tuning in. That's it, really. Support our show by supporting our sponsors. And we've got a really cool one here. this episode is brought to you by grass-fed intestines with tripe by ancestral supplements ancestral supplements makes new zealand source nose to tail organ meats bone marrow and intestines in simple convenient gelatin capsules

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that create beauty and love. Two of my absolute favorites. Check them out last week if you haven't heard them, and go over to https://primalfusionhealth.com forward slash E3 forward slash forward slash primalfusionhealth.com forward slash E3 forward slash Kyle forward slash. You're going to get a free gift and more information on Alex and Sarah's coaching. And if you don't want to write all that stuff down, just look for it in the show notes. You'll be able to click it and open the link. We're also brought to you by OneFarm. OneFarm is the very best CBD company on the planet. They're taking the best of organic CBD and turning it into many useful products from organic tinctures, which I've taken, my son and my wife take, all the way into beautiful facial creams and night serums that are

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word kyle at checkout for 15 off and without further ado my man muscle denton is in the house oh shit and also check out in the show notes my boy roy matts my podcast producer who replaced the late great ryan giles actually ryan giles is still alive and kicking, but Roy Matz, who's the podcast producer now, is also a musician, and he has a dope song. It's what we play in the intro-outro music. So to get the extended version of that on Spotify, just click it in the show notes and check it out. Much love to you guys.

Thank you for tuning in. Mansell Denton is in the house. Am I saying that right? Yeah. Sometimes it's funny because Tasha always gives me shit, but I was talking about learning how to paint mandalas with Paul Cech. And at some point in the podcast, I called it a mandala. And she loves to point it out to me.

We're at the house right now, for those of you just listening. And she's in the background painting and smirking at us all right got my snusarino we're ready to rock and roll um we got to meet on a hunting trip that our buddy the carnivore doc himself paul saladino uh helped to organize and um even though the trip itself wasn't the exact, the exact hunt and I'll unpack this later, but the exact hunt that I felt called to do, I know there are no mistakes. And clearly, you know, when we met, I felt a very deep connection form with you and just knew like, okay, this is somebody I'm going to hunt with for all the hunts that I am really called to do.

And somebody I'm gonna learn a lot from while I'm here. And that, that definitely was the case in our three days together, getting to know each other. So it's a true pleasure to have you here in our home and on the podcast, brother. Thank you so much for having me and showing up the way that you did. I felt that instantly too when we got together.

It was like the combination of exploring conscientiousness and hunting together is so rare and such a beautiful combination yeah that does and that's something i want to i want to kind of unpack for people because i think um and this is by no means to say that there aren't uh you know conscious hunters or anything like that that's certainly not the case um there are a lot of hunters with the idea that the animal they kill is just an animal and doesn't have a soul. And I think there are just, and not even hunters,

there's a lot of people in general who believe that. And we're kind of taught to believe that in Western culture through Christianity and different belief systems that have a separate God than only soul is in mankind and that the rest of the world is not animated. But as we study ancient cultures and have tapped into plant medicines, you can have direct experience with source and direct experience in that understanding that animism actually is really what's going on here. The same soul or the same thing that animates you and I animates all beings, all things, all is God or nothing is, you know, and that's such a powerful

thing to come to understand. One of the, I think one of the deepest lessons people get in plant medicine work, but let me rewind and stop rambling. And, you know, I always start off the podcast with background. So tell us about life growing up uh what got you into hunting what got you into medicine work and and what brought you here today big questions loaded well what what i remember looking back at growing up was a lot of, well, raised upper middle class from Texas, saw hunting around my entire life. But it was always attached to a kind of a context of being in a certain group or being a part of something. And I struggled a lot with my race growing up because I'm half white, half Indian.

And that's not feathers. That's a quote from Goodwill hunting. One of my favorites. Yes. And, and especially given what I'm interested in good clarification too, but that feeling separate from, or less than growing up was something that kept me looking into hunting but never really feeling what it meant to hunt either

on the experiential level or at a at a really really understanding what it meant to do so. I always just kind of perceived it as being part of the cool kids club. And as I grew up, those insecurities and those patterns growing up led to some pretty challenging experiences going to prison when I was in my mid-twenties. And coming out of prison and coming out of prison with a lot of burdens of shame and guilt, questioning what it meant to be a man. You know, I, in the absence of really understanding what masculinity was and having like really strong masculine role models, I kind of defaulted to a man as someone who gets a lot of women.

And my inability, my perceived inability to get women caused me a lot of shame. And it's what put me in prison in the first place. It's what, you know, self-destructed a lot of aspects of my life. And that inquiry of not really understanding what it means to be a man put me on a trajectory to try psychedelics, to open up, you know, explorations around plant medicines. And then it wasn't long after that where I started to question the fact that I ate meat, but I only ever considered grocery stores and restaurants. I never considered where it actually came from. And so I had my first hunt and I was incredibly lucky that because I'm a felon, I couldn't use a rifle. So I had to do archery and that created the perfect storm. You know, as well as anyone, how universe intends for things to happen. So I did a really significant ayahuasca retreat one month before hunting and then one month after hunting for the first time

and that series of three events is really what like changed the trajectory of my focus and my attention and belief in hunting in a sacred way yeah talk talk about that those those first experiences with hunting with an eye with ayahuasca. I think for, it's not universal and I, you know, I'm not trying to paint a broad picture of hunters. I'm not trying to paint a broad picture of Christians. And I'm certainly not trying to paint a broad picture of first time ayahuasca users. There are exceptions everywhere. And, you know, these things don't apply universally, but one of the things that I want to make a comment about now is that in my personal experience and with the personal experience of the people that I tend to gravitate towards, they have pretty

fucking profound initiations when they go through their first three or four ayahuasca journeys, you know, their first three or four nights with it, if they sit for a week. And again, that's not universal. I have people very close to me that have come to do the medicine and, you know, they had very basic understandings about what that was and what it was for them and very basic life changes came from that. Nothing really profound. Not a lot of the deeper downloads that I was talking about through separation,

animism, you know, and the things that I've come to understand, which I really was gifted, you know, those data points and downloads pretty early on. But talk a bit about your initial experiences and how profound they were. Well, yeah, my first experience in the context of the hunt was a month beforehand, and it was a men's retreat. So, even more ironic, it was all men. Most of them I was very close with. And the shaman we were working with definitely wanted to push us. And I was going through some heavy stuff at the time. And I just remember this, the first night and the second nights were really challenging. Yeah. The first night I let go of a

ton of stuff. But one of the things that at the time I didn't consider to be super important, but now I realize how valuable it was. I knew that I was going hunting in a month, and I saw the animal that I was going to hunt, and I just immediately started weeping and crying. And in that moment was the first time I ever asked a higher power for support. Because I, my parents are not religious at all. I grew up essentially atheist. And in that moment, crying, I just asked God, please let the arrow that I shoot go straight through the heart of the animal. And I remember journaling it out and it gave me a huge sense of commitment to that animal, to practice. And I remember, you know, when I went back,

it was just all about the practice and consistency and practice and consistency. And the experience as a whole just completely shaped my relationship with a higher power. I mean, I think that would be the biggest takeaway because I was surprised at myself that I speak about my relationship with a higher power, it doesn't really, for me, it never came from a book or somebody teaching it to me. It came from a feeling. And I know that feeling now, and I know the practices, plant medicine or not, that can bring me back to that feeling. And that's to go from not having a relationship

to a higher power to a higher power is a big one in one's life i think yeah yeah that's that's powerful and so talk about your experience in your first time because my my i had been on hunts as a kid and had gone hunting with a rifle was was unsuccessful. And then had my first kill on my eight, or not my 18th, my birthday a couple of years ago in 2018. And, you know, we were with a great group, we're out in Hawaii and that was a spiritual experience for me, you know, no doubt about it. Of course I had been, you know, been using plant medicines effectively for 10 years at that point. But so my understanding around it all was shaped long before the hunt.

But talk about your first hunt and what that was like for you. Yeah. Well, the first hunt was very similar to the hunt we went on together. And I was doing a lot of waiting. It was the first day we went out hunting. It was the first day that I had snowed in the hill country in 20 years. And so, a lot of the hunt was just about endurance and patience. And being with myself and with my own thoughts and seeing as they came and they went and also just

observing the incredible beauty that comes with being present to nature in the way that one does with hunting and that was my first taste of what presence actually feels like in nature. And I don't, for those who are listening who don't really get that distinction, there's something to me about being a hunter that embeds you in nature. You can't feel separate from nature in the way that we've been taught or trained to be. You are a part of it. And that comes with subtle understandings of the wind and the leaves and the plants and what the the animal's behaviors are and that awareness is just such a heightened and fulfilling level of presence and i experienced that for the first time and i took four five days of failure really before i finally had an opportunity and I remember pulling the trigger one arrow, the animal jumped and bucked as they do, and then ran 40 yards and fell over. And I looked at it with,

uh, with the binoculars and I could just see it writhing around in its final throes. And I could see the other animals that were family members. I feel a little bit emotional even talking about it now. The sisters or mothers that would sit there and look at her and smell her and wonder what had just happened. And that was powerful to see that, to see that with my own eyes, with my binoculars and just wait. And to later find out that the arrow went straight through the heart of the animal, and to find out that for a first-time hunter with archery, that's very rare, it's very challenging to have that experience happen.

For me, it was confirmation that I had guidance of a higher power. And that was another major milestone that kind of locked it in and locked in that relationship for me yeah the carl jung talks about the synchronicities as things are just they're too in your face they're too obvious to deny that it's there is no coincidence in that in that moment you know you're drawn there these things start to events start to take place in your life that fit seamlessly with one another. And you realize like, maybe there is something here that's working on a greater level that I can comprehend, you know, and that's definitely

a beautiful example of that. My first kill was a boar and it was probably at 27 yards. And I had, I had made that same prayer, that same ask, you know, for guidance and that, that it would be clean. And it was, and I remember just walking up and laying my hand on the animal and it passed quickly, uh, didn't run and jump. And, um, I felt super connected in that moment and I knew what it was all about. And it was like, wow, what a fucking experience. What a beautiful experience. And then maybe an hour or two later on the high of thinking I'm a fucking great archer and a great hunter. And this is how it's going to go. Took a shot at a moving, moving group. And they were about 43 yards, which I was comfortable with. And I led the second

animal by about, I don't know, a yard or two. And I stuck the sow in the guts. And the sound she made, I'll never forget. It's impossible to forget. And I had to run up and finish the kill with a knife and, um, to put it out of its misery. And it was just something that really was, it was, uh, like harder than I would ever think it would be, you know, not, I mean, I knew what I had to do at that point. The, the knife was not the issue that the issue was that this animal suffered because I did not take the right shot. And, um, you know, the rest of that four was two little, I don't even know what you call them. Piglets to, to, uh, baby boars and, you know, presumably her partner. And it was like, fuck, you know, my wife and I have a son and she's pregnant with a little girl

right now. And it was just, you can't help but see that in your own life, you know, and to personify that, those beings and to know like, damn, mom just got taken out in front of her whole family. And perhaps they don't look at it the same way we do, but if you observe nature enough, you come to understand that there are feelings. There is a connection. There is a way of communicating that's without language, you know, and that they are highly intelligent. All of them. All of nature is intelligent. And that was powerful.

And that was my lesson. And I'm not going to do that again. You know, and that when I do go to hunt, I'm going to be well-practiced, be well practiced well trained and take the craft seriously so that that isn't an issue yeah and i've had experiences that didn't go as well as that first one that were straight through the heart i've had you know a bison that i hunted that needed three shots because she was just such a tough animal. And I've had, you know, multiple experiences of stabbing animals in the heart and just whispering and petting them. And those are moments for a long time. I struggled with those moments and actually wanted to repress the idea that there was any kind of

trauma i just didn't want to associate hunting with trauma in any way but but when i really look at it and and see that it's a part of my body for a reason so i always had that connection and it i imagine for you as well it just changes the way you eat that meat and, and, and how your body receives it. Yeah. And even buying, you know, store-bought meat now, I'm, I have a different layer of gratitude on the hunt we went on. Uh, there was a lot of cattle and being, you know, up in a tree blind, which is not what I necessarily expected when we got there, but that, you know, sitting in there, it's, it's funny how, and I want to, I don't mean to ramble and take up your time, but I want to paint a picture of what this

meant for me because it, again, it wasn't what I expected, but, you know, using hindsight as foresight knew there was a reason I was there. And it was paradoxical in a lot of ways because I am called to spot and stalk. I'm called to track. I'm called to learn through those means of hunting rather than sitting and waiting by a feeder. But I'm fucking buying meat at the grocery store and there's nothing wrong with any of that. You know what I'm saying? As long as it's high quality meat. But in the sitting, in the waiting, I was so connected to nature and so much peace washed over me.

That's a feeling that's unforgettable. And having been in Hawaii, I just associated it with the fucking scenery of Hawaii. I'm like, here I am in this sacred land that's absolutely incredible. I'm watching the sunrise and seeing Maui in the background. And I was like, wow, just gorgeous and breathtaking and silence there. You you're certain you're in paradise, but here in Texas, like I was getting those same emotions, the same feelings, the same deep inner stillness. And I had so much gratitude for that. And it carried for weeks you know just being in that medicine but um and i totally forgot where i was going with that

uh shit maybe it'll come to me but um what were you just saying before i i started rambling this is great this is what happens when you do multiple podcasts in a day. Yeah. That's beautiful. What was I saying? Well, I was just talking about the, maybe the embeddedness of nature. Yeah. Oh, the cows, of course. So the cows are there. And, and, and like that, having hunted now, when I eat store-bought cattle and it's, it's,

you know, pastured and, and a hundred percent grass fed, grass finished. But when I eat that, having been in the tree blind, dead silent, and I'm, I get to watch their behavior. I get to watch them rub their back like a fucking cartoon bear on a tree. I get to watch them licking each other and playing and the fucking calves frolicking and jumping around and acting like goofballs, just like our son does, you know, like to see that, to witness them without them having much idea of my presence was truly something that connected me to the sacred cow, you know, in a way now where I haven't hunted cattle, but now when I eat it, like there's a way deeper level of gratitude, a way deeper level of connection

to what I'm consuming, having, just having witnessed them in that. And I knew that was a huge part of my medicine because we eat beef more than any other food source at all. Like not just meat, but any food source we consume, you know, grass finished cattle, grass-finished beef. And I think that was a very important thing for me to witness, was seeing that connection to them and seeing them in their beauty, in their intelligence, in their nature. And such a fantastic thing that I think hunting gives you. It gives you that connection to your food that's lost.

And they talk about it in the documentary Food Inc. But you don't fully, it's like Ted Decker. And I've, I've said this a fucking million times, but he says, you can describe an avocado in a million different ways, but you don't know it until you eat it. That's when you know the avocado, you could argue in theogens and plant medicines, give you the knowing of what sources, what God is. And I think hunting your own food gives you a connection and a knowing of what that means to consume food in a whole different way. Absolutely. It opens up so many doors, or it to use them, how they're potentially food.

And even just the connection that comes with the farmer's market just feels so much richer to me because it's of the same land of the same soil and it's most impactful for humans i think because when we hunt we're hunting something that's anthropomorphized to some degree it's it a mammal. It's similar to us. We can relate to it in some way that we can't necessarily relate to a tree or a plant. Or spearfishing a squid or some shit like that. Not that you would spearfish a squid, but maybe you do. I don't know. Very little experience doing that than at once. But yeah, a squid looks like an alien or a tree.

You can see that it's different. And even though they do communicate, and science is now showing that they do communicate just like an avatar, it's done differently than we do. But yeah, yeah, I think that's a big one. It's a big one to understand that. You, for a while, and I think you're still on this track, I have decided to get all of your meat, 100% of it through hunting. When did that start? Well, that started in the second ayahuasca experience after my hunt.

Well, it's a month after I went hunting. That was down in Mexico and at that time I was very interested in exploring my relationship to death. And that obviously came from the fact that I had just killed this animal, but I was exploring all different types, like my death, family's death. The whole retreat was about death. And I remember I brought the skin of the antelope that I had killed with me on the retreat, had it next to me. that that animal i called i named her lupe she was literally becoming a part of me i would eat her and it would literally be a part of me and i could like feel her spirit and feel a level of gratitude and also joy from the fact that I could alchemize this and she would live on through me, not just I'm taking her life. And I had just at the time I was reading this book, fantastic book,

the body keeps the score. And I was in that place checking in with how she lived a wild life, a free life, trauma-free life, and how animals in factory farms don't have that. And how if trauma is stored in our body, it is also stored in the bodies of these mammals and these other animals that we're eating. And if I'm so enthusiastic about Lupe becoming a part of me, then I do not want these other animals to become a part of me. Very karmic, like kind of what I generally imagine the phrase karma and the concept of karma in Eastern philosophy to be. And then I was at that point that I was just decided, I don't want to have anything to do with that. Yeah. And that's something I brought up to you right when we met,

because obviously you're our guide on this hunt and i think a common trip report for people especially among earth-based medicines like ayahuasca is you see how we're destroying the earth you see how we what factory farming looks like and what it you know how it it impacts not only the planet but it impacts just the life of that animal you're connected to all of them. You're connected to the sea of beings that are being mistreated. And for a lot of people,

they get that vision or that download and they go vegan. And it's, you know, I'm not certain that that's the way. It's the way for some people, but to understand that there is a better way and that regenerative agriculture is one of the ways we will heal this earth. Like there's, there's a lot to that. Um, but yeah, I just, I found it fascinating to me that you, you know, had had those similar visions

and came to understand it in the way that you did. And obviously the hunt made a big impact on that. So it wasn't just, all right'm off meat all together right you know yeah it's i think really what it is whether it's plants or whether it's animals or whatever the case may be is just is the connection piece and it's quite easy i could see a path where I could have gone down the road of deciding that I didn't want to see the impact that I was having. Which, it's very clear. If you have a piece of steak on your plate, something had to die for your food. And if you just have vegetables, it's less clear, but probably just as likely that there's some death contributing to that food, whether it's animals or plants or whatever

the case may be. And it really just comes down to the connection piece. And for people who are hunting, that's why I think it's such a rite of passage. Because it's an experience they can draw back on that forever paints the picture of where their food comes from to some degree. And the further we remove ourselves from the food, the, the, the scarier, I think we're, we're going, the scarier our future looks. Yeah. We start talking about cell-based meats and beyond burger and all sorts of bullshit created in a lab. Um, yeah, it's not, it's the, the, John Berger and all sorts of bullshit created in a lab. Yeah, it's not.

Some of the ideas scientists are coming up with on how we solve these issues are comical at best. But especially when you start to understand the vibrance and energetics of something that was alive, that soaked up sunlight its whole life, that lived, who had joy and a family and ate grass and threw photosynthesis of the grass and took in all the greens from that. I mean, you are getting that plant material in your food, but it's done in a way that is way more bioavailable than if you were to just eat grass, right? And so I think of those things as like that miracle of the orchestra that we live in. It's done in a way that is way more bioavailable than if you were to just eat grass. Right. And so I think of those things as like that miracle of the orchestra that we live in, you know, and how beautiful and sacred those animals are and how good they are for us and good for the environment they are for us. Like just the list goes on and on. a lot of the indigenous beliefs, there's an argument to be made that, for the example, the bison in Lakota culture

offered itself to the people to survive. The buffalo were the first beings and the reason they don't move very quickly or at all is as an offering to the people. And that's what most of the Plains Indians survived on. And that was part of their mythology, part of their gratitude that they had for this animal fulfilling its part in the cycle of life. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so drawn to the indigenous perspective because of the relationship, the more holistic relationship to the beings that they're consuming of all types.

Yeah. Talk, unpack a bit of that because, you know, I, the first guy who got me into plant medicines was my boxing coach and he had Mayan ancestry and Native American ancestry. And he would bring me to the reservation to work with traditional sweat lodges, Temez Kals and Dineepis and eventually plant medicines. And he would talk a lot of it about some of the native wisdom and that would trickle down into me and wanted me to learn more, you know, and I've, I've gravitated towards anything and get my hands on it. I just got a book, something, summer moon, empire of the summer moon, empire of the summer moon. Yeah. And that's on, on the tribes right

here, right? Yeah. Yeah. The Comanche right here in Texas. So I'm really excited to dive into that. But what kind of got you to start paying attention to that wisdom and understanding the value in it? Well, the simple answer is I have no clue. When I was 23 years old, before I went to prison, before I had done plant medicine, before I really knew much about what I wanted in life, I was already drawn towards Native American cultures. And my spiritual teacher, Will, was the first place that that started.

When did you start working with Will? When I was 23, so six years ago. Okay. Yeah, so I spent a long time working with him. And what I've come to realize over time is the beliefs resonate so much with me because many of those beliefs, there's an element of wildness that is embedded in their view of the world because they were hunter-gatherers. If you look at almost every other wisdom tradition, whether it's Christianity, like Abrahamic religions,

or even Eastern philosophy, etc., they all came after agriculture and civilizations. So, it's just a different level of conditioning there. But with the indigenous of North and South America, there's a wildness that embraces a lot of things that don't typically get embraced in other philosophies. like the fantastic book, Lame Deer Seeker of Visions. And he talks about sexuality and joking around. And there's just an element of, you can't be a wise person without being kind of a dog in, in these,

you know, indigenous cultures and chasing women around and stuff like that. It's just kind of like, it's like, we're, we're, we're all human. We've got both.

And even if you look at the gods, a lot of the gods that are non Abrahamic gods are very, you could catch them on one day and they're super just and giving and catch them on the wrong day and they will totally mess you up. So, there's kind of an understanding of life as it is in, in my judgment, a little bit more of a well-rounded perspective. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. I'm diving into a lot of Paul Selig's work and in his latest Beyond the Known Realization,

he talks quite a bit about that braiding we have from the high self, soul, the divine within, braided with the small self, the ego, and that they're not, even though we can temporarily turn off the small self, the ego, and that they're not, even though we can temporarily turn off the small self through plant medicines, breath work, meditation, whatever, they are intertwined and locked in as long as we're in a body and that's on purpose. And it's not that one's better than the other. It's learning how to work from the higher octaves so that we are in accord and alignment with a source to be source to be here for the good of all.

And then it's a different outlook than for the good of myself. But yeah, that definitely makes a lot of sense when you begin to see that medicine in native cultures and the understanding that play is just as important as any other teaching, you know, the trickster, the coyote medicine of play and fucking off and celebration, there is wisdom there. You know, I forget the quote. It's like God's happiest when his children are at play, something like that. I think that that makes a lot of sense. And a lot of my medicine journeys have circled around,

you're taking this way too seriously, you know? And not just that ceremony in particular, but paralleling out and expanding into all of my life. And I had a great deal of seriousness growing up, you know? So it makes sense why it's easy for me to slip back into that mode, but play and laughter. And, you know, Aubrey always says that quote, you can tell the level of spiritual master by the sound of his laughter.

And it's like, that's it. That's it right there. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that component, I just thought of will and him laughing when, when you said that. And yeah, another piece that I love so much is that interweaving the animistic components of the world into spiritual beliefs in relationship to a higher power. I think there's a lot of, with Abrahamic religions,

I don't mean to be overly judging, but what I get sometimes is kind of a disconnection. Separateness. Separateness from, you know, humans have free will and, you know, there's a just God that's separate from the devil and all that. It just kind of creates a separateness and the indigenous beliefs are just, it's so embedded.

The deer is the animal that I eat, but it's also the animal that provides, you know, it's a God, it's elevated to God status. All of them are, the plants are too. And it just feels more intuitively right to me.

And it allows me to explore intuition a lot more. The indigenous beliefs, there's tons of intuition-based practices, you know, like speaking to the spirit guides and all those kinds of things. These are very intuitive practices. Yeah, and I think just to unpack that, there's a knowing. You may not be hearing spirit guides talk to you. Maybe you can tap into that, but in the tuning in or the prayer in the NEP, in the Tammuz call, the carrying of prayers, and those are ceremonies

of themselves in their own right. That connection to your ancestors, the connection to the earth, the connection to all the intermediaries, all the guides, all the seen and unseen that are here to help us out is made. And it's a lot of times made with tobacco. And that was something that stood out to me was that you had a tobacco round in the opening of our hunt and you had a tobacco round in the middle of our hunt and you had a tobacco round at closing circle. And when I heard that, I was like, oh, fuck yeah, dude, game recognized game. I'll bring the pipe and some organic tobacco as an offering. And it was a really cool thing to, to feel into, you know, but that's, that's, you know, native culture has changed my look on tobacco. It's changed my, obviously we grew up with a certain type of

tobacco and we know all the fucking horror stories that come with that. But my relationship with organic tobacco really started, you know, with Wheatsie and learning about native cultures. And it is a fantastic teacher plan. Fantastic, yeah. as an offering as a as a totem of value recognizing the the value that i'm taking from the land and and desiring to give back to the land so tobacco was oftentimes it was a mode of exchange in with indigenous cultures because it was such a powerful teacher and they would often use tobacco as an offering back to the land for taking something off of the land. And so to me,

it's, it's kind of like having those whatever mantras, let's say I have a mantra when I'm deep in the medicine and I'm like, this is getting intense. I'll just say like, I love myself and my whole body just like, Oh, right.

Yeah. Okay. And the tobacco, it kind of acts as a type of a totem or mantra, so to speak, where it's just like, I'm grateful. Oh yeah,

that's right. I'm grateful. Thank you so much. And just holding that tobacco and feeling that and letting that, you know, go with the animal, with the land, such a powerful practice. Anybody can do it with, with anything, but yeah, I, I, I love that. Yeah. That's, that's beautiful, brother. What, what are you, you were working on a documentary is that coming out what's the status on that tell us about what's what's going on there yeah well the trailer just just came out and i'd love to share that with you but the trailer or the documentary it's called below the drop and it is two years in the making

universe works the way that it does the first ayahuasca experience that i did the men's group the person who was sitting next to me was a sundance award women winning filmmaker and he resonated with what I was experiencing on the trip but then many months later very much resonated with the path that I was taking and I hunted for elk in Idaho on public land archery in retrospect it was a big jump going from hunting in the blind in texas for my first animal to a full-on public elk hunt but i took on that commitment and we put together a crew to do that and shot the whole thing which by the way the crew did that on film, which is incredibly challenging because, you know, it's all kinds of old equipment that's clunky and heavy. And they were just amazing. Cause you know, I did like 50 miles up and down mountains in the

span of like a week and they're, they're just following with the cameras and stuff. So anyway, that hunt and doing more of the production in the last year has finally culminated in, you know, we finished production for the film. And again, I feel super, super grateful and very much this something Will says, like the plants chose you, the plants chose me to have this message come through. And I do believe that this documentary will shine a completely different light on what it means to hunt and what it means to have a relationship with the food that we eat but also just a relationship to death a relationship to

you know higher power so i'm excited for the crew that we've got you know somebody who's helping who worked on free solo somebody who worked on jiro dreams of sushi wow just like a really team yeah it's like a really great team and and couldn't have asked for any better uh you know co leads the guide was is a great great guy and the the woman who was there is a badass i mean she lived for 10 years in the wilderness with her goats, like just survived on the land and goat milk. Wow. Um,

yeah. So she's like an incredible character in the film, but, but yeah, we're piecing that final pieces together and going to hopefully get that in Sundance 2021. Oh, that's incredible.

Well, we'll, we'll link, is the trailer available online? Can we link to it in the show notes? Yeah, we can put some stuff in the show notes. Awesome. Fuck yeah. Um, we'll talk about Will because, you know, I, I, I'm certain now, I haven't verified this, but I am certain that we have a couple of friends here and this beautiful medicine woman named Samantha that I was introduced through my homie Gunter. She was talking about him and then Gunter and Vi got to go meet him. And, you know, Wimberley, Texas isn't, plant and animal husbandry, permaculture, the fucking list goes on and on. It's just like, I got to meet this guy. And everybody that I've met who's met him, they understand that he's a wizard.

He's a master, a master of his craft and just somebody you want to get to know. And I'd love to just to learn more about him, what he's, some of the things that he's gifted you with his knowledge and, and you're working with him. Yeah. Well, he's such a great combination of teachings in one person. He's 81. He was, he's, he's born in Northern Texas and he is an ordained minister. So, he initially in small town Texas was called to the, whether I think it was Southern Baptist, some type of, or maybe Methodist Christianity. And so, he, at an early age, was called in some way to serve, but he lived right next to a lot of the canyons where the Comanche were not more than 40, 50 years before him.

So, he always had this call to the Comanche kind of way of life, the wisdom traditions, etc. And he went into, his schooling was in psychotherapy. So he got all the Jung and Freud and all that stuff. And at the same time, his spiritual teacher was Bearheart Williams, which was Lakota and Muskogee Creek medicine man. And so, he just brings all of that into what he calls our, he always says, let's counsel. And it's really just a kind of a one-on-one mentorship but he does sweat lodges and he brings in not only the native american but also the the scientific he's he's really into quantum physics so he brings in this kind of the piece of quantum physics that is actually pointing to a synthesis of so many different traditions.

And I feel like there's nothing like him, really. And definitely every male could so benefit from having some kind of mentorship and some kind of wise elder in their life. And I imagine you had some of those with Don Howard and things like that. Yeah, and Huit see was an elder, you know, he was, uh, my first maestro, my first teacher, you know, my first medicine man that I worked with that got me into plant medicines, but also a lot of these concepts that we're talking about today, animism and, uh, native traditions and, and how to work with the sweat lodge, how to work with plant medicines. Uh,

my first introduction to psilocybin in a ceremonial way, and my first introduction to ayahuasca in a ceremonial way. And he was just a fantastic human. And he still shows up in ceremonies. Now that he's passed, he's still with us. And Paul Cech has been that for me as well. You know, he, as you describe Will, Paul's the first guy I think of, you know, as very few people on this planet have taken the deeper dive into plant medicines and also the deeper dive into psychology, the deeper dive

into quantum physics, the deeper dive into all things awareness around consciousness, the structure stages of consciousness and Ken Wilber's work and so many, many others. You know, his library is one of the most fantastic things I've ever seen in my life. You know, at the Heaven House, it's a really special place to be. But yeah, to your point your point you know like that there somebody told me frank shamrock said this i don't know necessarily and i always fucking caveat it with that but i like to give credit where i hear these things um everybody needs a plus a minus and an equal and so the plus is your mentor that somebody you learn

from you draw from the equal is somebody that you see eye to eye with, and occasionally they're your plus, occasionally they're your minus. It goes back and forth. It's not always just even Stevens, but you give and you receive. And then the minus is somebody that you mentor. And how important it is for all of us, especially men, but all of us in general, to have those throughout our lives and to have the, at least one in each category, you know, to really get the most out of life. And, you know, I think that parallels with the, the, I don't even know if it's a paradox, but you know,

the best teachers are always students. They never stopped being a student, you know, to keep that student mentality of learning and learning from everybody and learning from everything as you teach is such an incredible piece. That way you don't become stagnant in the teaching and you don't have everything figured out. And I think so many of the layers of what plant medicine and other entheogenic compounds show me is not just how little I know, but that it's impossible to know everything. You don't need to figure it out. Some things are done on trust. Some things are done on an intuitive process of just putting one foot in front of the other

and going forward on the path that you don't see is there. Yeah. There's a listening that I find in that space that becomes so important because obviously plant medicines are really great at kind of showing you the truth there. But then over time in the, in the space that we have in our day-to-day lives,'s you know just out and about so to speak it's like what are we learning and that that that listening that like intuition listening is such uh an important skill that i've only started recently finding that can figure out those lessons and of course i'm talking oftentimes mostly from the perspective of like

lessons that i'm learning from nature that for me that's my greatest teacher of course people and interactions and things like that are very important too but the the subtleties of you know even just in your backyard and and the live things there is such a gift. Yeah, we had a, we were, we recently, but we got, it was my wife's birthday on Valentine's Day. So we went to the great outdoors and got a bunch of plants and in part because we want to plant stuff as our first home, but also in part because these houses are stacked on top of one another and we wanted some, you know, a little privacy. And so we got bamboo and we got a couple

apple trees for bear cause he loved apples. And we got a avocado that grows here and a couple citrus and we planted wachuma in the ground and a lot of really powerful plants. And, um, but we get this on the ground and I was, and I was, you know, thanking the trees, which sounds funny, but I'm thanking them. I'm welcoming them to their new home. And, you know, I get the bamboo in and I keep thinking about how that's a plant that generates more oxygen than most plants. And I have gratitude for it. And then the, you know, the small self or rational mind is saying like, that's not going to change a damn thing. You know, like it's not going to fucking impact oxygen content or CO2 on any level for fucking bamboo plants.

And I was reminded of Charles Eisenstein's fantastic book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. And one of the downloads I've had in plant medicines, as well as what's illustrated in that book, is that anything, however however small in the right direction impacts the all. It sends a ripple through space time. And whether that's energetic or physical or not, or both for that matter, it's important then. And so as I was doing that, you know, the rational mind chimes in, nah, it doesn't mean shit. And then I remember that a red Hawk. It's a, it's a, it's a weird thing. It's a weird thing to get choked up over, but the red Hawk

started circling right above us and just called out and that was one of those instant synchronistic moments where it was like oh okay it does matter you know it's not just blocking out the neighbor's view of us in the backyard and speedos you know it does matter and every little thing does count and not just the hey everyone should plant a tree but no like it every little thing does count and not just the, Hey, everyone should plant a tree, but no, like it, every little thing you do that's positive matters, however small. And that was really fucking obviously a powerful moment for me personally, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I feel that. And I've had those moments and I'm also so grateful to Charles Eisenstein from his teachings from afar, just that in that moment, especially when it comes to nature, being able to recognize that this whole earth is a living being,

and that it's all worthy of our love and attention. And feeling that, and sometimes I'm just going about my day and I don't have that perspective, but when I can really like tap into that and hear the birds chirping and seeing my cats behaving, you know, licking themselves and walking around and things like that, there's, there's a sense of like wholeness. There's a sense of wholeness with being on the planet, just one cell of many of this planet and being present to the nature feels like being present to the higher power, like feeling it in that moment.

Such a special thing. Yeah, brother. Well, what's the name of the documentary? Where can people find you online? And then we got to get on your podcast next year. Yeah. Well, somehow I managed to snag the domain sacredhunting.com.

That's a fucking good domain. Yeah. $9. Not sure how it wasn't registered. That's a fucking good domain. what that reflects about us as individuals, about us as a society, and kind of helps answer that question, what's the right way to eat? The documentary is Below the Drop, and for anyone who wants to find out more information, they can just go to sacredhunting.com. Awesome, brother.

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for all your guidance and wisdom, and it's a real treat to become friends with you and to have you on the podcast, brother. Yeah, it's an honor. Very, very grateful to be here and very grateful to have met you on that hunt as well. Okay. Thank you, brother. Thank you guys for tuning into the show with my man, Mansell Denton. Be sure to hit us up on at living with the Kingsburys on Instagram.

And also check out my dude, Roy Matz, the new podcast producer. His song, which is played in the intro and outro in its full version over on Spotify. Just click it in the show notes and you can give it a listen. Love you guys. See you all in a week. Been a tickle, then you changed my baby, now I'm free