Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #168 Aubrey Marcus

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

My brother Aubrey Marcus returns to the show to talk about his recent marriage, his new book and the Fit For service Fellowship. Fit For Service Fellowship | https://www.aubreymarcus.com/pages/fit-for-service-fellowship   Head to https://sovereignty.co/kyle/ to grab my favorite CGN/ Nootropic. There is nothing like this product for energy and cognitive function!   Check out Dry Farm Wines and get a bottle for a penny | DryFarmWines.com/Kyle Dry Farm is 100% organic and biodynamic grown wines from all over the world with about 1g of carbohydrate per bottle! Keto wine with none of the garbage- it is truly the healthiest wine on Earth and the only wine I drink.    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 20% off Lucy Nicotine Gum at Lucy.co using the Promo Code KKP at Checkout   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          

All right, y'all, we're back. Aubrey Marcus, my dear friend and brother, has graced us with his presence and a return to the show to discuss many, many awesome things, many changes in his life. If you've been following his podcast or his social media, many of you are aware of his recent marriage and switch to monogamy. So much to discuss there. And a lot on community, a lot on tribe, a lot on fit for service, and this program that he's created and his upcoming book. So keep this short and sweet. I know you guys are going to dig this one.

It was an excellent one. We got into deep resonance and flow like we normally do. So tons of good gems in this podcast. I know you guys are going to enjoy it. There are many ways to support this show. So leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life and also support our sponsors. They are really what drives the show. So check out my friends at Sovereignty. They have a product that is pretty much a nootropic and an energy drink all rolled into one. It is one of the greatest supplements I've ever taken in my entire life. It's called Purpose. And it's the first to my

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All right. You got less than an hour. So thanks to me. Thanks to me showing up late oh look at that we got the old timepiece going we got the hour clock the hourglass it's been a minute before i've seen that hourglass go i mean well it's a 60 minute hourglass but it's been a while since i've used that i thought that thing got retired no it's in effect well we're back i feel like uh i mean we've seen each other a handful of times

in the past couple of months here that's unexcusable it is unexcusable bullshit but they've all been great no question and we've been doing a lot in the meantime absolutely yes we have particularly well actually both of us there's no question you know like i was gonna say oh yeah but i got married you got married like a significant thing. That is a very significant thing, especially considering your past, right? Yes, indeed. That's a big one. Yes, indeed. I mean, I want to talk.

Obviously, we've reopened for the final part of the year, Fit for Service. And I definitely want to dive into that. I want to dive into community. I want to dive into everything that's happening in the world right now. But definitely, let's just jump right in let's catch people up i know you just released a podcast with violana on aubrey marcus podcast for my listeners speed people up here because this is uh for a lot of people that have been just watching through social media or not quite getting you know the full picture bring us up to speed well i think this really starts i'll start when i was you know i was monogamous for most of my life and i'm just not one of those

individuals that has the temperament that i can be unfaithful like cheating on my partner is just not an option now part of it is kind of my moral stance but part of it is just the absolute anxiety and stress i feel from having to hold something secret. I mean, I've done it one time in my life and it was a fucking nightmare. It was such a nightmare that I was like, that's it. Never again will I ever hold a secret in because I was just, it was burning me up. It was like tearing me up inside. So understanding that I would go through these cycles of kind of serial monogamy. i had other relationships with other you know that lasted a little longer but for the most part you know i just needed that kind of novelty and that frequency of somebody new partly because what i ultimately ended up finding is that i needed that validation i needed somebody who didn't love me to start

loving me so i could be redeemed through their eyes and say oh wow i am lovable i'm a real man you know and i needed that from other people and part was just the enjoyment the enjoyment of meeting somebody else i love people so understanding that i read chris ryan's book and i'm sure you've talked about this a bunch i understood that philosophically in a tribal culture they had a lot of different ideas about sexuality and things were shared everything from the food was shared the wealth was shared the kill of the of the buffalo was shared and many times the sexual rights were shared and that's something that goes on to this day so i was like all right fuck it like i'm going in and so told whitney who was my partner then we were monogamous for about 18 months i was like look i gotta do this you know

and i would love for you to join me on this journey she's like fuck you peace peace out i started seeing somebody she was seeing a couple different people but we realized we loved each other gave it a go no respect for polyamory at all i thought like philosophically i understand this love should not be contained love should not be owned it's free nobody should control anybody else's pleasure i got this and then i would see somebody and whitney would be fucking torn up inside and i'd be like what is wrong with you you know like we agreed yes you said yes and then fast forward she starts seeing somebody i'm crawling around on the ground not knowing whether to vomit or punch a wall or cry for days on end and i'm like oh i get it this is harder than i thought it was

that continued in various different stages with us not only having you know the ability to explore people sexually but with our hearts and loving each other which was actually even harder so that goes on that entire learning experience and that just the the beauty the beauty of it and also the deep deep challenge of it and I wouldn't change a minute of that. I mean, I'm just so grateful that Whitney had the courage to join me in that journey and also the sovereignty to actually allow me to sit in the challenge and in the struggle of it. But then I started to kind of feel, as I started to love myself more, need validation less, I started to feel a calling for instead of spreading that energy outward to many different people to just see if I could find a person and just go deeper. And when I met Vi, you know, who's my wife, Vi Lana, that was like, it was just really clear.

We did a ketamine meditation together. It felt like our souls merged and it happened fast i mean it was as somebody i'd known for four years and we had a really deep friendship so it wasn't like i didn't know her at that yeah you had a deep friendship there's obviously attraction there you know no doubt about no doubt about that no doubt about that um but yeah the soul merger is kind of when things set off the the rapid pace to we can no longer ignore this like taking the red pill no and i was never i've never been more sure of anything you know and that's the thing it's like takes me oftentimes a lot a lot of time and you know analyzing things and looking from the outside but when i'm sure i

go and i go all the way and that was just what i did here i was like i'm sure and i'm ready and she was ready as well and And it's been unbelievably beautiful. And it's had its challenges. But ultimately, it's been one of the most healing things that I've ever experienced. So for me, I think the polyamorous journey was one of the most instructive things. It was one of the things that taught me the most about myself and revealed the most about me and tempered me, you know like like steel and the forge with the hammer of every person Whitney was sleeping with and every person she fell in love

with more heat more fire and I got stronger and I started to forge a blade where I could really handle my own emotions a lot better but there was a lot of damage as well you know like all of that heat all of that pressure and with this container which is just this deeply loving partnership and union so many of these other things have healed things about my physical health have healed my mental emotional health i've never been happier and it's just it's really like one one way has been the absolute best way for me to learn and this has been the best way for me to heal and i genuinely believe the best way for me to give the rest of my gift to the world with that kind of support now will it have its challenges of course it will you know like i still love people you know it's not like i'm gonna be looking out and be like oh yeah all

other people suck no they don't all other people are. No, they don't. All other people are awesome. But this is worth it. And it's just about deciding what's worth it for whichever phase of your life. And I'm confident for this next phase of my life. This is the way for me. Yeah. I love that, brother. And I remember talking to Duncan Trussell, who i had heard had an open or an open

marriage and they had a child on the way and at you know when we when we sat down a podcast he was like oh we're not open now you know he was like and fuck all these labels you know like that was the thing we were doing and then now we're monogamous and and i don't even fucking care to say that we're monogamous now like we don't have other partners now we're just it's just us and then in the future who that'll fucking change and then it did change in the future and it's like this just ever flow of of what they're doing now and who gives a shit about what that label is you know i'm sure you've heard that in ancient greece they didn't even have a word for homosexuality if men fucked men it just fucking happened it was sex it wasn't you know this is dude on dude this is

dude on girl this is girl on girl it was none of that it was just this is making love you know in ancient rome who they also had a lot of man-on-man sex but there was a slur for the guy who took it in the butt like you could call somebody that guy and i remember like it would be scribbled on the walls like when caesar came in and like claimed the emperorship of Rome, some people were mad, you know, they were mad that he did. So they would write the slurs like Caesar takes it in the ass on like those graffiti on the walls. Caesar's a bottom.

Caesar's a bottom. And that would be a slur, which is also totally silly, you know, but there's like, it's funny how, so Greece had nothing. Rome had like, yeah, yeah, it's all cool. But you know, if you're a all cool but you know if you're a real man you know you're the top you know so it's all these just like sequences of biases and then like you have somebody like jason ellis who's a lot more enlightened and it's like yeah not being the bottom is like surfing and saying like no i don't want to barrel the wave yeah i was like oh

okay well that sounds like i'm gonna boogie board and stand i think it's cooler that's like a way more enlightened perspective but i think there's so much shit that's attached to all of these things when it's just people loving each other and experiencing pleasure and i think the world would be served by just removing all of these labels and containers and biases and slurs and judgments just being like let's do this let's fucking do human and figure it out yeah it's it's it's funny to me how much my experience has mirrored yours not in the exact timeline but pretty fucking close yeah really really close you know we through the influence of chris ryan and others and then of course through you you know being my best friend

like we're like yeah all right this makes sense And then actually through the push from psilocybin and the journey we were in together to start open relationship for our own growth and, you know, to create tribe and you've got our tribe beads on right now. And it's something I want to talk about as we dive into community. But really I didn't, know in my mind it's funny as you think about things like i'm sure when you started on it you thought you'd be ceo until the very end or maybe you didn't right but you have like a picture of how it's going to look and that shifts over time and i thought like all right this is what we're doing now and we're not going back and there's no right or wrong path they're both good they're're both fine, but this is what we're going to do until the end. And, you know, fast forward two and a half years later. And it's like, no, I'm good.

I'm good. I got all my lessons. I got all, it's almost like fighting. I was the hammer and the nail enough times to realize that I've received 90% of the lessons. And if I want the, the a hundred percent of the lessons, I'm not going to have a brain by the end of this. Right. So if I want to get the other 10% of the lessons I can extract from open relationship, I might not have a wife. You know, I might not have a lot of things. And I just think about that. Like we also were forged in the fire, you know, and what's so comical is Paul Chex.

There's a, I don't know if Ryan can see that. There's a beautiful mandala that he sent you and he sent me one around the same time and you know Paul's a special human he just tuned into us at that time but it was we hadn't spoken it was right when we started open relationship and he goes see if this see this painting I made for you guys resonates and it's a it's a 12 pointed star but in the middle it's just logs and a fire burning it's just fire and he titled it being together and i was like get the fuck out of here man so i was like we got to talk now so i i let him know you know hey we just started this and it's well beyond what i thought i was signing up for oh yeah and just uh you know and and that's just i'm just

saying that to say that it's, we didn't stop doing it because of the challenges involved or the fact that it is harder than we thought on paper. Through doing it, we actually got better at it. We not only got better at being in relationship with others, but we got better at being in relationship with each other, which is really what it was all about to begin with. But in seeing that the, the desire for others has really fallen away, you know? And I think about that, like the purpose of us doing open relationship was really to bring us together further and to help us understand, um, where are the cracks in our own relationship? Where are the cracks in our own psyche? Like how can we navigate the world and and what is what is the stress and the pressure and the thing that's actually going to cause us to grow that nothing

else can really touch on something you mentioned to me like ayahuasca you know it has an end point iboga has an end point and that pressure of those is is unmatched arguably in plant medicines but maybe set aside the 30 gram dose. But when you think about that, they always have an end point. This thing just keeps going and going as long as you're in it. And that pressure keeps building. And I think about that.

Thankfully, we had people like yourself, people like Dr. Dan Engel, people like Chris Ryan, that it's a loaded max effort negative. It's more than we can handle, but we've got people on both sides of us lifting that weight back up when we come up. And I think that's been a critical piece in our journey, but very much, we're right in line there.

Like, let's get on this divine union. Let's see how deep we can take this within each other. And let's practice some of this cool shit Jamie Wheal's talking about. Let's talk about that and start thinking about different ways we can create these um altered states of consciousness upon orgasm marrying sex magic with tantric you know and see where that takes us for novelty for you know reaching god consciousness and altered states you know in sex like all kinds of cool stuff on the table there but it's been a fucking wild ride

dude no doubt a wild ride no doubt you know i think one for anybody who's looking to try it i think i i still recommend it you know i still recommend it as like one of the greatest learning tools that's available it's a fire but if you're ready for the fire like i i strongly recommend it my my advice would be that really you still have to have just an unwavering commitment to your primary in order for it to be like productive because of everything you're doing with the end goal being this is going to strengthen our primary relationship and i think you got to get to a point where you're willing to fold all other cards to the ace and if you're in that place i think it's also

going to be incredibly strengthening for the relationship where you know that at any given point that either one of you guys could throw up the towel and or throw up a finger and be like i'm not feeling it you're like cool everything else is done yeah and respect that and respect that and just know that the the primary reason that you're doing this is to strengthen the partnership i think in that case it can be even more productive for the relationship container as well and then i think looking ahead to the future this is something you mentioned as like tribe and community gets strengthened and really you have that sense where you really are mimicking what anthropologically and what a lot of other tribal cultures have which is everybody collectively working towards a common goal sharing everything collapsing these boundaries

through all the rites of passage and all the vulnerability that you share i think in that kind of container i think polyamory is going to be a very common thing but in the in the wide world where we are now where there is no real sense of tribe and then people are just kind of sussing out whether the person they're with is their partner whether they're 100 in or not it's uh it's treacherous still incredibly valuable to learn but it's going to be really difficult to pull off you know if you want to have that sustained union yeah yeah it's a tough piece i think uh i don't know if it was i think it might have been tim ferris he was talking about the fact that

everyone that he's that he's ever seen go through this has failed in some way to make it work right and and while that it's easy to sit on the outside and say that can be true certainly if if my marriage had ended with tosh i would consider that a failure on some level to some degree, right? Because that was the thing that we had in mind of keeping. And so had that failed, had we had a broken home where kids have to split time with us, yeah, I'd call that a failure on some sense.

But at the same time, everything's a win if you're learning from it. If I'm not holding onto the bitterness of what once was, but I'm actually drawing from the bitterness of what once was, but I'm actually drawing from that as, damn, that was the hardest thing that ever happened and it ended this relationship and now I have all these pieces to pick up and move forward.

As long as I pick them up and move forward, I've actually transformed that into a lesson that I can take with me. So I'm not sure that failure exists in any of those things, right? Certainly we could qualify the ending of the primary as failure, but thankfully that hasn't happened with us. But I just think, you know, if we reframe everything that we're doing into what is my draw from this? What have I gained from this? Not what can I gain, but what actually did I gain from this? There's always something there. You know, even the hardest ceremonies, there's always something there you know even the hardest ceremonies there's always something there if you're open to it absolutely reminds me i saw a poem from in q recently and he's saying you know one day my wife is going to send all of my former lovers flowers as thank you for making me the man i am today you know and that's really the really the case like i can send

all of violana's former partners and all of actually whitney's other partners because of this polyamorous construct like they were they were teachers for me you know so thank you you know thank you for all that and via the same way to whitney and to everybody else like those proverbial flowers and maybe actually physical flowers at some point. It's not a bad idea. But that just gratitude for providing the forge so that I can be the man I am today and the Vi can be the woman she is today, that you can be who you are, Tosh can be who she is, that everybody can be who they are.

If you look at it like that, everything is gratitude. Yeah, there's in the notes a book we've read more than once but in the fifth sacred thing they talk about that water blessing bless all the sacred streams that flow into this river who have made the river yeah right like every person you've ever been with is a stream that flows into your river right and there's they're talking about that from a sexual standpoint and beyond but really it is it is the beyond it's all the ways we're influenced it's all the ways we learn it's all the ways we grow from one another that contribute to the stream that is uniquely you and that's such a cool way to to kind of

recapture you know what what it's been and what it is within yourself yep and you know i think the the key thing here and i know we're going to bridge into community but you also you have to have a strong community you have to have people that you could just open up and share vulnerably and when you're wrecked you'll be like look i'm fucking wrecked and hopefully someone who can really see you and hold that and have gone through similar things like that was so essential for both of us like how many times did we walk a walk around the building together even if we had almost no time during the day you were 107 degrees outside whatever it doesn't matter

doesn't matter let's throw in a banger you know throw in a snooze we'll take this walk and we'll like share what's on our heart and it wasn't even so much that either one of us were giving each other great advice all the time just but we could hear it hold it like see it and just that feeling is so essential to have and like we need that for any challenge that we're dealing with whether it's a professional challenge personal relationship whatever like having people who can be there i mean i don't know how i don't know how you go through life effectively without it i don't think you can we're not meant to you know and i think that's one of the biggest draws from sex at dawn for me was understanding like hey collectively we did this differently right and we did it

differently not only from a sexual standpoint and it wasn't always the case for that but we did it differently from like you said you know everything shared. Everything is gift economy, you know? And even beyond that, like parenting, like anyone's a fucking parent. They're like, how does this work? I don't understand. Well, it's not supposed to work this way. The nuclear family isn't supposed to be nuclear. It's not supposed to be two parents and fucking three kids. They're supposed to have grandparents in the mix and aunties and uncles and everyone around.

And, you know, tribes like the Hopi wouldn't even let the parents parent that was they were too close the grandparents taught the kids and the parents were able to go out and work and do the things that they still didn't lose that part of themselves so when they could return from their work of the day it was for play it wasn't for teaching or being the guidepost for your firstborn, secondborn children. It was to be simply the playmate, the person they could love, the person they could teach in different ways. But the bulk of that responsibility fell on the elders, the aunties, the uncles, and everyone was the parent. Plenty of tribes have one word for father and mother, and everyone, all the elders are called that you've got

eight dads you've got 10 moms that kind of thing you know and everybody possibly could have been dad you know so you think about that and it's just a different it's a different way of looking at it and i think it's not to say hey we need to go out and fuck everybody and all live under one roof and start a commune or any of that stuff it's's just to say like, how can we show up for one another in a way that's meaningful where our shared experiences can be the leverage point to give people new perspective and help them out in anything that they're facing. And I think that's where community really is a difference maker, not just for those that are trying to traverse open, but for those who are in a rut in a fucking 19 year monogamous marriage, for those who have trying to traverse open but for those who are in a rut in a fucking 19

year monogamous marriage for those who have their first born and have no idea because there's no fucking script on how to raise a kid in a modern world for people that lost their job during covid and fucking don't know what they want to do next you know i mean there is every possible angle for what we're going through as a culture right now, can you support all of it can. And the best support is people who have experienced that it's people who not only have read about it, but actually walk the walk. And I think that's the beautiful thing that you've created with fit for

service is something that not only, you know, it's not just a kind of a Jack of all trades, but an ace in none. We've got aces in all trades and the ability to help others. And you think about, you know it's not just a kind of a jack of all trades but an ace in none we've got aces in all trades and the ability to help others and you think about you know what they're doing what's the prerequisite when rick doblin is is teaching people how to be licensed nbma therapists they have to fucking do it yeah you know you've got to have to go through that it's not just read and learn with all the things to say you have to bend on the other side of that coin and experienced it for yourself. So with the people that we're pulling in, the like-minded individuals that have become members of Fit for Service, I think that is one of the ultimate offerings as a part of community. But I want you to touch on this more because you've got a lot

going on with your writing right now. And I definitely want to touch on that, but you're wearing our tribe necklace. Let's talk about what you had in mind when you wanted to recreate tribe and let's see how that pertains to the community that you've really fostered here with fit for service it's interesting because as i'm writing this book i'm talking about the importance of having these true allies in a community that's one of the 12 steps of the mind on this journey like we have to find our allies and whether that's a romantic partner or a true friend whether it's a mentor whether it's a community it's it's absolutely essential because that's the person that's going to hold up that

mirror for you and also be able to hold whatever else that you're going through right and and hopefully provide that expertise that you're talking about like be that ace in that in that particular category that you can reach out to and be like all right what's going on you know like if i have a something i'm you know trying to figure out with my diet or with like human optimization it's an easy first call to you and i'm like hey kyle what's up and then there's other multiple different calls maybe it's dr conover or maybe it's dr saladino or maybe it's you know there's so many different people we have we have aces and then we also just have our ohana our chosen family and i think back to some of the hardest times in my life and then that was just when i didn't have

that you know you have i had actual family like biological family you know i could talk to my dad but he's from a radically different generation. And so we could talk philosophically and logically about things, but he didn't really know what I was going through. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't really hold that. He did his best. My mom, for sure, even more different. Although sports, she was a great athlete, so I could talk to her about sports stuff. But that ended pretty much out of high school unless I was stressed know stressed about some intramural basketball i was playing which i

really wasn't it was just fun so and then and then what else and then i had like a couple other friends that i partied with and like but i didn't have that and so i felt fucking hella lonely and i was surrounded by a ton of people but just so lonely and so it was so hard because i didn't feel like anybody could see me and then i made that one first true ally that was bodie miller and that's when really my life changed radically i had like one individual who could really see all the way through all the layers and see me and wasn't afraid to call me out on my shit or like provide another perspective and that was like the first thing that changed it and then slowly more and more people started to go but not but really slowly you know it was slow at first and then eventually things started to pick up momentum you know the more

that you put out your message it becomes like this lighthouse and the lighthouse attracts more people who are interested in the same thing interested in personal transformation interested in all this and then i think the culmination of that was when i was down doing wachuma which is the san pedro cactus and with don howard and it's of all the psychedelic medicines it's perhaps the most tribe engendering the most communal like ayahuasca you're on your mat going through your own shit and there's some stuff in the collective field for sure but the lights are off you don't see anybody you're not interacting you really just talk about it the next morning you know after you're done purging closing circle closing circle yeah so you you don't really

get to connect in the in the medicine in the process wachuma is totally different and so you're going from the moment you take it in the in the middle of the day you know and everybody's going through that ceremony you're there with each other you go out explore the tribes go swim in the sacred stream come back on the boats go back into the maloka experience like the second part of the ceremony around the mesa and you're just looking in each other's eyes and participating together and the sense of community that i felt with the people that i was going through that wachuma with really made me realize like okay like i see now how these different transformational tools can then expand the opportunity to bring people who are kind of close to a lot closer

together and that's when this original like seed of the idea for fit for service came to get came in my mind like we can get people who are pretty close and then go through a journey together and at the end of the journey we're not going to be pretty close we're going to be really close and then there's going to be a tribe and maybe that tribe doesn't all live in the same city but they're there and i think that's the advantage of the digital communication we have certainly it has its its downfalls but we have the ability to stay in touch with people all around the world at all times just with some intentional effort so as we see with the fit for service crew it's the whatsapp channel it's going to be actually the the native app that we're developing as well, where people can communicate at all times. The Slack channels, the private Instagram pages,

whatever else you can do, Facebook groups, however you want to do it, or just text chains. I know we all have different groups of text chains where you just stay in touch. The group that I went through those initiations in Poland with, going into the cold, doing the breath work, and breath work is a way to bring out so many emotions as well it's uh probably the most psychedelic of the non-plant medicine non-substance rituals and the easiest to access right absolutely free you always have it said you know it's just a matter of not only knowing the entry point but having someone to guide you through that and it's awesome you're bringing that up because that is what's on the table

here in our final summit for the year in Sedona, with Anahata, one of our beautiful teachers. The maestra of breath. Yeah. And it's such a powerful experience. I mean, I've seen, and we've both seen and facilitated some of the most radical transformations of any ceremonies honestly you

know people like where their hearts just absolutely crack open and people who haven't breathed in that kind of shamanic breathing and wim hof taken to the extreme if you haven't gone there you may be like yeah yeah whatever breath all right i was i was like all right okay okay people are saying like john wolf people i respect they like, they say it's dope. So I'm going to do it. But I'm still looking at it kind of like, you know, now I get to roll with a blue belt instead of a black belt. You know, like the ayahuasca is the abogas, the large, you know, mushroom ceremonies.

Like that's going to remain in its own spot. And breath will be cool. It'll be cool because I'll get to learn about it and talk about it for people who maybe don't have the balls to go where I'm going, right? And then it's then it's like oh fuck like i'm having full-blown visions here yeah full-blown visions yeah and like you know shaking crunched up and then releasing and just the tears and the and the re-experiencing of you know your own sense of self-love and identity and any trauma that you've carried it's just the ultimate shakeout of the entire system and that allows everything that's been stuck in the

cracks and your psyche and the shadows to just burst through and come out, whether that's anger, some people howling like wolves and screaming in rage, some people crying, some people silently in the peace and joy of the moment there's so many so many things that happen in that experience so knowing that we could create these without having to go down to peru and take a bunch of plant medicines you know maybe someday when it's all legal you know we'll all be able to do that but for now there's so many powerful transformational experiences from the temescal you know the sweat the heat the prayer the breath the ecstatic dance all of the different practices that we layer in for the community the result is

you know i'd hoped that it would that it would yield this but it's been so much more i mean the group that starts it starts off like yeah all right these people seem kind of cool then by the end it's like fuck this is family like this is absolutely family and we've been in the room when people have shared some stuff that's like holy shit like you were carrying that and they'll just open up and share these things with the entire group and the whole group will rally in love no matter if they were perpetrator or victim of something that from an outside perspective from that casual judgment we're like wow that's fucking heinous but the group is there

to receive it and then hold that in love and doesn't mean it's it's absent of either condemnation or you know excusability or justification it's absent of either it's just the that kind of non-committal like we love you no matter what and that's what provides the healing just seeing people go through these different healings it's been really fucking phenomenal man i mean it's and that's why we were talking before this podcast like fit for service for me is it's a forever thing you know it's like it's so valuable not just for the people but for us to be a part of that and to know that there's this revolving group that's ever expanding because once anybody who's been in it they're still they're still the same way they're still in touch

with everybody they're still communicating it's like we're creating this larger and larger network and they're starting their own groups and it's creating this kind of ripple effect and when i look out with optimism at the world like this is one of the big things is that people starting to form tribes again you know groups where they can just absolutely feel like this is this is my chosen family and that's uh that's the beauty of what this is it's that proof of concept from that thing that i'd kind of felt and needed when i was younger intuited and understood when i went through the wachuma with don howard and now we've actually created at relative scale with fit for service and of course we're limited to that 150 person number that dunbar number which is like the maximum amount of people you can really feel bonded in a tribe so it's can't be for the whole world but hopefully it gives people this

inspiration to form their own 150 and that 150 every person there forms their own 150 or whatever 12 it doesn't even need to be 150 right it can be whatever scale you want to develop it could be fucking three but either way like feeling that sense of belonging and that sense of tribe that's going to change that's going to change everything you know that's that along with all the transformational practices and medicines so yeah as fucking gnarly as shit may look out there in the world there's some really powerful ways to kind of correct all of that as it spreads and i see that happening yeah it's it's it's uh it's funny how paradoxical life is in in the land of duality you know but as we see shit hit the fan and probably every facet externally in tandem i've never felt better

internally and i know that you that resonates strongly with you and i know there's a lot of people in our group that resonate with that as well because of the community you've formed. One thing Fit for Service has done for me is it, you know, fighting for me gave me a burning desire to learn more and, and because it would show up in fights. Like if I don't learn this thing, it's going to result in me possibly getting my ass kicked. And I just went wherever intuition took me into mobility, into cold therapy and Wim Hof breathing, into all these different avenues, largely based on performance, but also breath work led into meditation and different aspects of how do I

quiet the monkey mind when I've got someone trying to kill me, those kinds of things too, right? And I've never really experienced that since. I mean, both of us have podcasts, both of us enjoy sharing via the podcast as we are right now, because we know it's touching people. We know never really experienced that since. I mean, both of us have podcasts, both of us enjoy sharing via the podcast as we are right now, because we know it's touching people. We know it's getting through to people and through the comments we get on Instagram or on, you know, whatever pod bean, we can see that it's working or, you know, we run into somebody in Santa Monica and they're like, dude, the episode you did on blah, blah, blah, completely changed my life. And I lost a hundred pounds or this happened and that happened. And it's like okay that's cool it is working but that's a little bit

delayed compared to what we see in fit for service and that to me has been the single thing the single spark that has ignited me to to passionately follow anything that i'm guided towards you know and it's not i want to learn everything to spit out everything that's not mastery anything that's you know mastery of everything is mastery of nothing something like that i'm butchering that makes sense to me but um you know the i think what i'm getting towards is in fighting i just let my intuition guide me to what was the next important thing and fighting was the fire that made me do that and fit for service is the fire that keeps that going right now. And it's not that I need to, oh, people are having problems with this, so I'm going to read this book and try to digest it for them. No, it's not it at all.

In a way, it is very much my own self guiding me towards stuff that I want to know. But in doing that, and in you doing that for yourself, and Godsey doing that for himself, and Caitlin doing that for herself, that medicine trickles out into this community at a rapid pace and the beautiful thing is to be able to see that ripple in real time it's to be able to see and not just hear about it but feel it in the hug but know it in the in the the whimper in the communication and the cry that comes out as people open up to actually see that very viscerally and feel it deep inside us that knowing that whatever we're working towards and whatever we're collectively working towards it actually does matter it actually is changing lives and that's that's exceeded my expectations tenfold

yeah no doubt you know i was talking to vi and you know she's gone through and anybody listened to my podcast whether i'm up on my show she'd gone through a lot of hardship, a lot of challenge in her life. And she'd kind of kept most of that to herself and really kind of held that held that to herself. And as she's been exposed to the fit for service community and started working with people and also through the podcast and different people, I was explaining like the ultimate alchemy the thing that makes anything that you've gone through worth it step one you learn for yourself and you have the gratitude for what it taught you but the step two of this alchemy that really makes it complete and makes it really worthwhile is when you can share all of the lessons of every pain that you've gone through and someone else can look in your eyes and be like i experienced the exact same thing oh that sexual violation that happened to me and like you can hold that for them and be like i went through the

same thing and then hold that for them and see how your experience can make them feel seen and and connected and not alone and like that's the ultimate alchemy is and that's i think one of the reasons why being of service is so valuable and so important is because it provides the alchemy is and that's i think one of the reasons why being of service is so valuable and so important is because it provides the alchemy of every hardship that you've ever gone through because when you can go through it and you've made it through then you can help somebody else make it through their own and you know they're gonna you know help somebody else make it through their own and it becomes this chain this chain of events that's incredibly valuable and you know every different thing whether it's

actually literal the exact experience you went through or just the the forging from all of those cumulative experiences that you can bring every set of skills you have and it becomes like something that i think is the most pleasurable thing we can access we like we think of the most pleasurable things well for my birthday this last year i decided i was going to facilitate breathwork with anahata because why because is that because like i was being absolutely altruistic no that was a part of it but another part of it is it just feels the best for me when i can be a part of someone else's growth and transformation like what that does for me like there's no way to give a gift and not receive at the same time it's not possible so like if you think that you're being

selfless like yeah in a way you're helping somebody but it's the absolute greatest gift that you can give yourself is to be of service it starts again and that's why we call it fit for service starts with you but the act of being of service to somebody else is going to be the thing that is going to be the greatest gift to you as well so that's like that's another aspect that i think people are denied you know you can get so locked in this thing where you're not offering nearly a fraction of your gift to the world so you're not receiving nearly a fraction of the reward back yeah Yeah. There's a brilliant article that someone just wrote on the Rolling Stone. I'll link to it in the show notes or Ryan, I'll send it to you and have you link to it in the show notes. Yes. I love saying that.

It's been a hot minute. We will have show notes for this episode. And they talk about the breakdown of America and that's stemming really from an idea of the 50s that may or may not have ever really taken place to the pushback against the 60s and the 70s and the push for individuation, the push for the individual, the push for self-realization and not in the sense of the self-realization we're talking about, the self-realization they talk about in the Vedanta treaties, self-realization in the sense of like all the accolades of being wealthy, all the accolades of, you know, whatever success is measured by the Western model mind can put around that, then that push really was what drove us away from community. It's what drove us away from

having multi-generational families and shipping off grandparents to elderly homes. It's what broke down a greater sense of purpose. And Paul, I'll link to this as well, since I got Ryan here, the I, we, all model of love, which he has, I think a four-part series on YouTube that absolutely expanded my mind. Kids go through this I phase and there's a lot of kids that grow up and wear adult suits that are still fucking big kids. And they still look at it through the I model. How can I be served? Me, me, me, more, more, more. And you shift that consciousness grows to the we model. Who is my one-on-one relationship right now that I actually care about just as much as I care about myself. And if we continue to

develop, that consciousness does shift to the all. And then all can mean very different things. It can mean the all of my extended family. It can mean the all of my community and where I live. It can mean the all of the nation that I'm in. It can be the whole world. It can be the entire cosmos, the multiverse, however far you stretch that all, that's what it can encompass. And I think the more we start to touch on service to the all, the more, not only do we develop personally, but the more meaning and purpose our life has. Like it's so fucking gratifying to have something that matters more than yourself and to have a means of how to affect that, right? It's not enough to say the world is broken this is all going to shit what's going to happen to the economy how are we going to die

next it's it's to actually have like-minded people that are doing the work to spitball ideas off of and to come up with real world solutions that affect people on an individual basis right now you know to be the change you wish to see right yeah it goes against some aspects of human nature to expand it to everything and i think not against but it's a stretch it's a big stretch because i think we are wired to care about that much about our chosen family our ohana our tribe right and that's why that dunbar number exists it becomes a lot more challenging you really have to have an amazing spiritual grounding and an imagination to really see everybody as you beyond the judgments you know as our our friend ted decker says like the love that holds no record

of wrong like there is no judgment in love and like paul selig is always talking about like don't put somebody in the cave of your judgment because you're just going to be there right there with them the moment that you're judging them because at the universal truth that person you're judging is you living a different life it's still you so you can't judge you and not be in judgment yourself it's not possible but that requires like just a big leap from what we're like wired and programmed to be and that is i think the ambition of you know that we all should have is to get ourselves to the place where we transcend our biology like our biology is great let's celebrate it but we can also intentionally work to transcend it with our spiritual understanding and our philosophical understanding of the world and i think that's

what very few people that we can look at have it feels like they've really achieved ram das is one of them you know i was able to see don miguel ruiz and and know that like wow it is possible i've seen somebody who lived like that and that's a it's a great goal to have but at the at the baby steps just feel that way about anybody you know like use any single relationship you have and it's another thing that ram das talks about use any relationship you have where you can look at them truly the same as you look at yourself and look at them without judgment you know practice all of that unconditional love with anybody use that as a lever to pry you into the ability to start to practice i i got it with my

wife cool now let me try with a slightly larger group okay cool i'm kind of getting it and then a little larger group and then a little larger group and i think that's the progression progression is just find it with somebody if you don't have anybody of course start with yourself i don't think you can achieve it without actually having that same unconditional self-love it's hard to have that with anybody but you can also use an individual to help spring you into that radical self-love for yourself as well like sometimes easier to love another individual more unconditionally than you love yourself especially i imagine with kids you know like like you can really love them without judgment but when you look at yourself

you have judgment but anything that you have that you can love in that kind of radical unconditional way like know that that's an incredibly valuable thing because that can be the lever to spring you into this more integral level of consciousness i love that and i love the example you use on kids because it's funny we don't you know as many have stated you can only love someone else as much as you love yourself the same is true for compassion you can only have as much compassion for someone else as you have for yourself and when my inner critic is strong i'll have to remind myself because my inner critic comes out to critic others, to criticize others. And if I'm super hard or just on bear's ass about anything and Tosh is like, Hey, is everything all right?

And it's like a gentle reminder of like, Oh yeah, here I am being ultra strict and like, Oh, Oh, wait a minute. He's only five years old. Like, yes, of course he's a five-year-old, but what, what, Oh yeah. Like there's like a wake up a moment of and then why all right let me meditate on this oh my ducks aren't in a row internally my mind is fucking all over the place right now on the inside and i've got a lot of inner judgment going on too so maybe if i start to unpack that and surrender to all that is and move from the mind down into my body then that'll be reflected upon him and everyone else that i'm around and you know it is you know there's an old football quote yard by yard life

is hard but inch by inch life's a cinch and i love that because it's you can read a book you know any of these great spiritual books and they talk about you know one of my favorites from the bhagavad-gita is and turn into a state of samadhi as many times as necessary until you begin to see God in all things, right? But you can bridge that. Because it's very hard to just go from, all right, I love my wife, and now I'm fucking one with everything in the sacred hoop.

All my relations, I see it all. You don't quite make that jump in one whack, right? It does take time, but i think with what you're organizing within this group and how that continues to evolve and continue to manifest in very real world practical experiences that we bring to people not just on paper not just through word but through self-experience and direct experience, direct knowing that that is starting to change people in a rapid way. All at the same time, you've been writing your next book,

which is a fucking- Hypothetically writing my next book. Talk about that. Talk about what's going into that and really how that's mirroring your thoughts around what Fit for Service is and what it's becoming. Well, writing this book is really interesting because when i wrote my last book i had so much ego motivation that was still present like i wanted to be a new york times bestseller i wanted to make more money i wanted to you know have this big book tour and it was like right in the throes

of polyamory i had three girlfriends and i wanted four at least i'm gonna everybody you know like give me on tour yeah so like this motivation was a good part of what got my butt in that seat and was like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna crush it i'm gonna kill it when people read these pages you know they're gonna like they're gonna learn so much that they're gonna just be filled with this passion for me but it was about me a lot and yes it was about serving with the right information because that was the vehicle that i could reflect so much of that you know adulation back upon myself and that was a lot of that happened subconsciously too it's not like i was thinking about that but i could feel that being the motivation. Things have shifted. My ego is not as hungry for validation anymore. I love myself so much more radically that it's not dependent upon these external things like you talked about in the 50s.

It's not dependent upon what I accomplish and what I do to make me feel better about myself. Now that I'm in a monogamous sacred union, it's not going to get me laid this book right and on it is doing incredibly well it's not about the money that the book is going to bring you this so it's a purity of purpose with this book which is great which is the which is the way this is the future this is the rest the way that the rest of my life is going to be organized but it's like i have a dirty coal burning fuel source of my own ego and my own desire for the sensual pleasures of the world and now that engine's like okay that engine's offline now you only have like the solar powered love generated altruistic desires to create the best book for

the world period you know and i'm sure there's still a little ego and there's little sputtering coal engines that are flying in like guardians of the galaxy and giving me a little push here there but for the most part it's like a real purity of purpose and for a while there i was kind of wrestling with that because it's just an it's an adaptation and i'm just settling in to settling into engaging in this giant project with that in mind and the most valuable practice of that is to just imagine the reader and really make it concrete because i think one of the issues is when these are the just an instagram handle or kind of a nameless faceless person it's hard to like really give a shit about them enough of course i care but if you don't know anybody it's like if you watched

a movie imagine you watch braveheart and you didn't get to know murren right william wallace's first wife and was his only wife but you didn't get to know murren before she was killed right you didn't get to know what you wouldn't really have that same visceral reaction that set you up in this revenge lust for the rest of the movie like get him wallace get him you know you wouldn't feel that unless you really like got to see murren and you got to love her and all all good movies know that like you got to like get inside somebody and really see them and know what they're about and then you really care about helping them so for me what the practice has been is just every day when i sit down to write imagining a different reader and I'll give them a name George, Ashley, Zach, Lauren, whoever else and I'll just think about them reading the book and think

about them in their life and everything they've gone through and know that my words in some way have to be medicine for them and that's the the only way that I've been able to to get through the writing that I have so far and it's the only way that I'm've been able to to get through the writing that i have so far and it's the only way that i'm going to be able to get through this book and it's absolutely the right way it's this is this is the way as the mandalorian you know says like this is the way is to is to really write with that purity of purpose and so you know i'm grateful to be in the spot that i'm at it's definitely has its own set of challenges again because i'm i'm missing that you know, I'm grateful to be in the spot that I'm at. It's definitely has its own set of challenges again, because I'm, I'm missing that, you know, dirty fuel source, that push where I can be like, well, all right, but you know, someday I'm going to be sitting

on top of a nightclub somewhere and just be like, yeah, what's up everybody. You know, like that's, that's gone. And, um, but again, it just goes back to that, goes back to that radical love, radical love for those that you're serving. And if you have that, there's no greater motivation than that. Like any of these other motivations that you have, they can be temporary. They can give you a little push. And I'm not saying don't use them. I used them.

I used them to great success, especially when they're bent to noble means, you know, like you're doing a noble thing and you're trying to gain the accolades from those noble things that you're doing but nonetheless it's still an impure fuel source like the purest fuel source is that radical love and to get to that radical love for the people you don't even know then that's you have to use your imagination you have to create that story in your head about who you're serving and care about that person so much that you almost are ready to cry for their story that you've made up in your own head and if you're ready to cry for them and you're ready to bleed for them you'll sit your ass in that chair and you'll put those words out or whatever your project is or whatever you're trying to offer if you're creating a product like think about

that person that that product is serving any post that you make think about that person who needs that more than anything that day and that's going to give you the motivation and overcome all of that resistance and um and that's really kind of what i've been practicing and learning through this book writing process but it's been a a beautiful beast man incredible brother well i know you're out of time uh let's talk here real quick a Aubrey Marcus podcast. Obviously, I'm sure everybody listening to my show listens to yours. Outside of that, aubreymarcus.com slash FFS.

Is that right? Fit for service. Fit for service. All spelled out. We'll link to that. It'll be the first thing linked to in the show notes. So you can just one click it there. Open enrollment right now for the next couple of weeks.

So make sure you sign up if you want to be a part of this. And if not, continue to draw from both of us via our podcast. And when your book comes out, what is the title going to be? Master Your Mind, Master Your Life. I love it. Beautiful. I love you, my friend. Easy.

Simple thing to cover. Just mastery of the mind. No big deal. Phenomenal. All right. We're out. Yep. Fuck yeah, bro.

That's awesome, man.