Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #199 Dr Ted Achacoso

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

Dr Ted Achacoso is legit the smartest person I’ve had the pleasure of getting on the pod. He may also be one of the dialed in guys ever. This one really is basically a TED Talk so, jus like I did, sit back and relax while Dr Ted cranks this one out of the park. Connect with Dr Ted:   Website: www.homehope.org  Troscriptions.com biobalanceinstitute.com   Facebook: Dr Ted Achacoso  Show Notes:   Life Stylist episode #227 lukestorey.com  Apple Spotify   Ben Greenfield Fitness bengreenfieldfitness.com  Apple  Spotify  Sponsors:   Lucy Go to lucy.co and use codeword KKP at Checkout to get 20% off the best nicotine gum in the game. C60 Purple Power Fight inflammation and oxidative stress with C60. It’s 100% organic, made in the USA, and has proven efficacy by third party testing. Follow the link and use code word KKP at checkout for 15% off your first order. C60purplepower.com Bioptimizers To get the ’Magnesium Breakthrough‘ deal exclusively for fans of the podcast, click the link below and use code word KINGSBU10 for an additional 10% off. magbreakthrough.com/kingsbu  Silentmode is hands down my favorite sensory deprivation tech out there. Head to www.silentmode.com/KKP and punch in promo code KKP21 at checkout for 15% off and 6 months of Breathonics for free.    Connect with Kyle:   Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. We have my dude, somebody I've been trying to land for probably three years, I want to say, Dr. Ted Achikoso. I believe I'm saying that correctly. First learned about Dr. Ted through a number of mutual friends at Paleo FX, many of which had told me he's the smartest guy I will ever meet, possibly the smartest guy on the planet. And I was like, all right, cool. Yeah, sure. And after listening to him on a recent episode with Ben Greenfield,

and of course he's been a guest multiple times on that show, as well as my buddy Luke Story's Lifestyle is podcast. I've heard him cover a lot of ground, but I finally heard Ben Greenfield break this down with him. And so I had to ask on this podcast, he's one in a billion in his IQ. He was studied by intelligence agencies. I'll let you fill in the blank on that

at a young age and literally one in a billion. At the time, there was 4 billion people on the planet. He's a little bit older than I am, but of course these are all estimations, but there was four of him, four people like him on the planet. So they estimate there's eight. I think they found the fifth now. We don't really dive too much into it on this podcast, but there was four of him, four people like him on the planet. So they estimate there's eight. I think they found the fifth now. We don't really dive too much into it on this podcast, but that was where I was like, oh shit, I'm actually going to communicate with somebody that's possibly on a different wavelength right now.

The beautiful thing about Dr. Ted and one of the reasons I love him is he's so down to earth and he can explain things in a way that's very easy to grasp. And we took this guy, I don't know if you guys have heard him on other podcasts or not. I'm going to link to the one that he did with Ben Greenfield most recently because I find it quite fascinating. If you're into methylene blue and biohacking, a lot of the things that I've talked about early on on this show, back when I was on it, back when I was with on it, you're going to find a lot of the great Q and A that you'd want to from that on Ben Greenfield's podcast. And you get to learn

quite a bit about Dr. Ted in this one, as well as the other one. We had only, I think, an hour and 15 minutes to riff. And when I say this is a different kind of podcast or a different kind of type of conversation, I think I might've asked a single question and Dr. Ted gave one of the most brilliant lectures and I'm not saying lecture like a parent lectures their child. I mean, lecture like a professor stands at the podium or gives a Ted talk. Like I don't say a fucking word in this podcast and I'm just sitting there chomping at the bit for more. I can't wait to have them back on. I got my fingers crossed that I'm gonna get to see him face-to-face

later this month. So please stay tuned. Hopefully we can make that happen, a face-to-face interview, because as you'll find, Dr. Ted has so much information and so much wisdom and so many practical tips. It's not just airy-fairy.

It's not just book work. It is real. It is potent and it many practical tips. It's not just airy-fairy. It's not just book work. It is real. It is potent and it is pure medicine. And I absolutely love this guy. And I know you guys are going to as well. There's a number of ways you can support this podcast. Number one, leave us a five-star review. I know you think it's a pain in the ass. It takes you 30 freaking seconds with one or two ways this show has helped you out in life. And it really goes a long way in getting other people to tune in and listen. Also check out our sponsors. They really do make this show possible. Like this, my ability to travel to guests, to pay the mortgage, all that shit helps.

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That is S I L E N T M O D E.com forward slash KKP and use the promo code KKP 21 upon checkout specifically for the Kyle Kingsbury podcast listeners, silentmode.com slash KKP promo code KKP 21. And you're going to get a huge deal. And without further ado, my man, Dr. Ted Achikoso. Dr. Ted, thank you for joining the show, brother. Thank you for having me, Kyle. Yeah, we've been going back and forth for, I don't know, two or three years, it seems. I first heard about you from some of the members of the Paleo FX community. And I know you've been a guest on luke stories podcast the lifestylist podcast

multiple times and i've listened to ben greenfields i revealed too much in there with uh luke now i'm gonna have to link to it in the show notes because there's too much revealing that's that's the juicy stuff we got to give to the masses yeah things that was revealing revealing came out there. And I said, look, I think I said too much. And he said, no, we'll do it again. That's a good thing, though. It's a good thing to take the deep dive.

I want to take the deep dive. My podcasts typically have a trajectory of background. You're a very, very unique individual. And anybody that's heard you on other podcasts, I think one of the first things people bring up is your sheer brilliance. People talk about the IQ. It always fascinates me to think of that. There are people like you that exist on the planet. We can kind of rationalize and we think back to an Einstein or somebody like that. But talk a bit about how when you

first discovered that you had some gifts that most people don't and what that looked like? Well, this is the scary part, Kyle, is that it's done by probability, right? So on a good day, I'm one in a billion. So I could still understand people. On a really bad day, you're one in eight billion. So you're really, you're 16 standard deviations away and you really could not understand anyone. So that's a bad day for me. But realizing this actually kept me very quiet because most of my friends were accusing me

of the I told you so syndrome. I saw what was going to happen way before it was going to happen because you could see what sort of trajectories particular choices make, right? And so the first thing that you do is to acquiesce to your friend's requests to please allow me to make my own mistakes. And that's lesson number one.

So you stop. The other thing that makes you do is it makes you step back and take a look at yourself, right? And what do you have in here? And what's important, right? And you see that it's not only the fact that you can identify patterns and see what other people don't normally see on a longer time period. But how can you use that to better your relationships with other people? After all, life management

is really about management of relationships, relationship with yourself, relationship with your people near and dear to you, relationship with your job, your house, your pet, your livelihood, and so on. So having a point of view like this gives you more of a network-centric point of view of how you are connected with everything else. And even if you realize that early on mathematically, and then later on with the use of certain

molecules, you realize it in the gut, right? You get the feel of it in the gut. And that, you know, I keep on saying to my students that we are yoked to the sun. You know, we are yoked to the environment. We are not separate from it. We move in it, et cetera, and we are open to the environment. And I think what has happened to us lately is really that we think of ourselves as separate, right? And it doesn't, you know, I try to get back to the science. I try to get back to the science and say, look, you know, the carbon dioxide that you produce,

the oxygenated breath is coming in from outside, you know? The food that you eat is, you know, maybe physically closed, but you're energetically open. The food that you eat, everything else is coming in from the outside. And it still doesn't, you know, because it doesn't feel better. Right. So that's the kind of realizations you get. You know, my mother got mad at me actually several times for, she was teaching me how to tailor. You know, she said, if you really want something bespoke,

you have to learn how to make your own patterns. And she started teaching me the same thing, lesson that she taught yesterday. So I said, mom, you already taught me that yesterday. And she really got mad at me. She said, you know, you've always been this way. She said, you know, when your classmates could see the letter C, you were already at letter Z and you were forming words. And so I was just quiet about this, you know, and then she cursed me.

It was a good curse. She said, may you be in a profession that requires patience. And true enough, I became a doctor with patience. I became an educator with students that you have to be patient with, right? So, and it's something that I think a lot of people, you know, if only they had enough patience for a lot of things, especially when you're younger, you're very impatient. So I learned that lesson early. So be patient and shut your mouth are the two things that you realize.

Because you realize that people, things, events have to unfold at their own time. There is the beauty of the unfolding of things at their own time you neither rush nor nor delay things they will just unfold you know uh at the wrong time you you you learn this stuff uh you know early on and i think that was um very uh useful for me uh right uh you know when i was you know i was a college graduate when I was 18 years old, Kyle, I was a biology major. And then I was a doctor of medicine when I was 22 years old. At 25, I was holding faculty positions in pharmacology and toxicology, neurology, and interventional neuroradiology. At 28, I was holding a faculty position in medical informatics.

And my research was on artificial intelligence and consciousness, right? At 30, I became a science and technology advisor to investment funds. 35, I was running my own company and produced the first wireless groupware for telephones. At 40, I said, I am going to retire from humankind for a while.

And I basically retired for five years because I knew nothing about money, right? How is money? How does it go around, et cetera? And I basically traded currencies using artificial intelligence methods for five years. And then a friend of mine who started the whole socially responsible investing movement in the world came to my house and said, Ted, you know, I have all these huge monitors and stuff. I said, Ted, you're doing a zero-sum game. So come back and give value to the world. So I went to Europe and actually got board certified there in anti-aging medicine and nutritional medicine. And then from there, you know,

from there I started a whole nonprofit called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice because I saw that, you know, we're basically locked into a disease model of things, right? And everything is like, you know, my frustration was, you know, there are young people who could afford, right? My mother has hypertension.

My dad has Alzheimer's. And the illness medicine doctors would give them like two different preventive sets, right? So I said, well, is there a maintenance for the body? And there is, right? And the maintenance, that's why I called it health optimization medicine, it's because it's just the detection and correction of imbalances in the body, right? So instead of diagnosis and treatment of disease, you detect and correct imbalances with the metabolites. And here's the interesting part on why I say that is that when I was lecturing health optimization in San Francisco, a brilliant psychiatrist, you know him, asked me the question. He said, so Dr. Ted, I like your model. It's very simple of detection, correction, and balances.

And the technology now exists to be able to detect those molecules that can be imbalanced, right? And he said, how do you include spiritual health in your model? And I looked at him, oh, come on, you've taken so many ayahuasca journeys, you know that DMT is a spirit molecule, right? So I said, spiritual imbalance is take me and experience what it is. But I was only half kidding because when I was doing my research on the mathematics of consciousness, I think I made a mistake. I mistook consciousness for the self, you know, the self or what we're commonly calling the ego. And I don't like to call it the ego, really, because the ego has been defined as, you know,

really badly as one sense of inflated sense of self-worth, and which is not exactly the definition that we want. So I call it a self-referential system, right? I was working on a worm, Kyle, and the worm had this number of neurons and I mapped out the entire database of the connections. I called it a neural circuitry database. And then now I was called by one of the researchers, oh, don't you know what you did? You created the first connectome. Oh no, there's an ohm for it. It's perfect. But I was basically disassembling the nervous system and saying, well, is there any network

that gets left behind that says, now I feed, now I mate, now I move, et cetera. And when I took out all of those subnetworks, I found that there's no one system where the self-reference to the organism exists. And so fast forward to, I think, 2003, when the default mode network in the brain was accidentally discovered. And they found out that when they were using fMRI, which is like an imaging system of the brain, and they were using BOLD, meaning these are oxygen studies, right? When your brain portion is active, then it consumes oxygen and you could detect the flow of blood in

there. And they were thinking that when the brain is idle, then the brain must not be doing anything when it's quiet. But turns out that when the brain is idle, the default mode network is actually active, right? And they basically showed that it is a seat of the ego or the seat of the self-referential system, right? And when I actually enjoyed your interview with Luke and, you know, the ego is necessary in evolution, right? Because it's protective towards us. But what I would like to emphasize there is that it is an illusion, meaning it is not what we think it is. Rather than a noun, it is actually a verb, right? So it's not a self, but rather selfing. You're selfing all the time.

As you interface with another person, I'm interfacing with you, I am selfing, right? And as I interface with other things in my relationships, so that self comes out because it has a useful purpose, right? It's just that it doesn't exist as a noun or an object. It's a process that occurs all the time. In fact, James Fadiman just wrote a book, the dad of microdosing, right? Just wrote a book on multiple selves that you're having all of these multiple selves all the time. And I was saying, well, maybe we have all multiple personality disorders.

We just don't know it yet. But that actually, the research actually prompted me to take a look at the default mode network because right now the way we study the brain is by networks, right? Before we used to say, oh, this structure does this, that structure does that. Now we have the tools and I'm big on tools, right? Before we used to say, oh, this structure does this, that structure, that, that. Now we have the tools and I'm big on tools, right? So what brings science forward, right? Is we can see now

which network is connected to what. And what's interesting is that the central parts of the brain, right? The ones in the midline where the default, most of the components of default mode network resides, is the one that's where we have our autobiographical rumination. So this is me,

and this is my story, and my name is Kyle. I was born here. This is what I believe in, et cetera, et cetera. So that has the story in it. And it refers to yourself. Opposite that is the task positive network. And on the whole, it's opposite the default mode network, right? When the default mode network is on, the task positive network is off. And what it is, is externally focused, right? For example, when I was doing surgery before, like minimally invasive brain surgery, you would lose track of time, etc. You're externally focused.

And that's a flow activity. There are many activities now which are recommended that will induce flow, the flow state, etc. And that's really the task-positive network basically decreasing the activity of your default mode network. Now, the task positive network, since they're cross-wired, actually has two components. Again, this is at the side of the brain rather than at the center.

And there is what's called the salience network. And salience means knowing what is relevant for your goal, right? And there is a central executive network, the one that says, I am the central executive, I'm going to do this, right? So that's the task positive network. And the suggestion is that, and they're looking at this, is that the salience network actually is responsible for switching you back and forth, right? Switching you back and forth from your central executive to your default mode network.

So that was very interesting to me because my research was on consciousness. And they were proposing that it's probably the flip-flopping of these two networks that's actually causing consciousness. But of course, the more interesting part of it would be, you know, how, so I said, if the default mode network, say, is hyperactive in people with depression, for example, or in people with mood disorders or dysphoria, the default mode network is hyperactive. Is there a way of actually decreasing it? And that actually led me to the psychedelics, the classic psychedelics, for example, like ayahuasca, which is DM say, on psilocybin, right, it shows that your default mode network actually has decreased blood flow and your task positive network has increased blood flow.

And those networks that don't normally communicate with each other are able to communicate. That's why you get creative, right? Creative solutions during the time. Because the ego or the self-referential system is like a conductor. It cannot possibly get all inputs from your senses. It's going to say, no, that's relevant. It's going to say, yeah, these are the things that I consider relevant and this is what's going to come up to consciousness. And what I usually say to people is like, your consciousness is actually delayed by about either 350 milliseconds or seven seconds. You know, my computation in 1992 was about two pi seconds.

So we are actually living in a delayed consciousness world, right? So, and if you look at the brain as a prediction organ, say if you're catching something, right, like a ball or something, the brain is actually continually adjusting and adjusting to that delay, right? And it's as if everything is going on seamlessly, but when you look at it under the seams, you see that there is that particular delay. And so that kept me wondering, I said, so what's underneath that delay, right? So what's going on before it's presented to you into consciousness? And that made me actually delve deeper into what consciousness is about. So I said, well, we're looking at two different things here, right? So on the one part, we're looking at what I call medical consciousness or physiologic

consciousness. And I think there's a reason why we have so many disagreements of what it is, is because we don't have any really good definition of what it is. So what I did is I separated what we use in medicine or what we use in normal language as either physiologic consciousness or medical consciousness. And essentially, it is very simple. There are three components. When you ask a medical student, is the patient conscious?

The medical students will say, sir, he's awake, alert, and oriented. So awake means it's internal, right? When you wake up in the morning and you're not waking up by any sound, you just wake up spontaneously, that's your body feeling internally. So it's what's called interoceptive, right? So that's interoceptive consciousness. So that's awakeness. And then alert, meaning you are responding to light, sound, you're looking around, right? If you're in the hospital, you're looking around. So you're alert're alert. And then oriented, say I ask you, do you know where you are? Do you know your name? What day it is?

What happened? So just oriented. And that already uses symbolic language, and that's what's called abstractive consciousness. And this is what I call physiologic consciousness. And this is useful on the basis of formulating a Glasgow comma scale. So when you see the comma scales that are being developed for patients. So I put that aside. And then taking a look now at consciousness for what it is, for me, it's a different discussion altogether, although the patterns may be the same.

So when you look at consciousness, you look at two things. Either it's emergent or it's emerging from the computations of the brain or emerging from the computations of something. And there are two competing theories right now that are being tested. And it's called an adversarial competition, but they have a $10 million grant, meaning they agree to the same methods, but they will try to disprove each other, right? And so the first one is that, well, it's an emergent property of a brain that's computing, right? So the first one is what's called global workspace theory, meaning when the inputs come into the brain, the brain has to apportion it to the processors, right?

And the moment it sends it out for processing, you feel consciousness, right? And that's the assertion of that. The other one is actually more interesting for me because of my experiences with psychedelic experiences, right? The other one is that it's an inherent property rather than emergent property. It's an inherent property of the universe. And in the brain, the model is called integrated information theory, meaning that there are sub-networks which, if they combine to each other and feedback on each other, they produce something called consciousness. So it means that,

you know, depending on how much information is being exchanged in the networks, you know, even, say, a thermostat would have its sort of kind of consciousness, right? And so our subatomic particles brought the conscious and you begin to look at it that way. And that's why for me, it's inherently more interesting. However, Kyle, there's something that's actually missing from the discussion, which I actually am putting in the equation. Do you have to be alive to be conscious, right?

And so we need to have a definition of life. And, you know, the Chilean scientists Maturana and Varela already took a crack at this a long time ago. And, you know, I'm monitoring the works of these guys who are probably pre-Nobel in status, right? And essentially, if you take a look at the models and say, what constitutes being alive, right? So there are many, many ways of looking at it. And so does consciousness arise only when you're alive,

or is it there already, even in all of these inanimate objects? So, and I think those are the points. So, you know, I'm not taking any sides here or anything like that. I just find things more interesting because in the end, Kyle, we have to be able to rest in everything that changes, right? We basically sit and be comfortable in everything that changes, right? We basically sit and be comfortable in everything that's changing because it's the only thing that's going to be constant

is how this changes. But what's important here is taking a look at it from the way I teach, for example, in the history of medicine, right? So in the history of medicine, you take a look, say, of disease causation. How is disease medicine, right? So in the history of medicine, you take a look, say, of disease causation. How is disease caused, right? And in the olden times,

it was a magical form of perspective, right? And I remember growing up in the mountains in the Philippines, and one of the farmhands got a urinary tract infection. And the village healer, who was a female, said, Oh, you know, you peed at a mound in the forest and that had the treatment is actually to go and make a food offering to those elves or dwarves that you actually offended, right? And it's still done in some parts of the world. You know, they do that because they do believe in magical things, right?

And then when you look at, we came to the magical things, right? And then when you look at, we came to the religious phase, right? And the religious phase said, well, okay, you're having a seizure when the seizure is actually, oh, you're having demons inside your body. And so we are going to put a trepanation, we're going to bore a hole in your skull,

we're going to trepan you in order to let the evil spirits escape, right? Or the demons escape. So you could see that the mode of treatment is that way, right? And then you move to the empirical point of view, where you say, oh, okay, oh, that person's having hyperactive foci of electricity in the brain that's causing the seizures. And you know what? You know, pure CBD that actually quiets down that. And, you know, now you have these molecules from cannabis or hemp that actually is able to quiet down the seizures, especially those born with, for example, the Lennox-Gastaut syndrome or Gervais syndrome with uncontrollable seizures, right? And then you go now to the rational mode, which, you know, we are very, very poor at doing, right?

We don't think statistically and rational thinking is statistical thinking. So when we do this, it's like, okay, now come the seatbelt loss, right? When it's like, you have to put on your seatbelt because chances are when you get into an accident, this is what's going to happen to you. Well, you know, that is rational thinking. And that's why I've been pushing, right? For example, the teaching of statistics and probability earlier, like, you know, late grade school or high school, right? Because this is a mode of thinking or a mode of viewing the world. I'm not saying that any one of them is wrong, right?

For me, I look at them as all like facets of a jewel, right? So if you look at, you know, you stick your head on the empirical mode and you're a scientist and that's how you view the world, you pull your head out, right? And then you stick yourself in the religious mode and you see all of these concepts about reincarnation and everything else and you pull yourself out right and and you know you look at all these magical practices etc you know and and pull yourself out and they are for me they are all valid points of view of the world right the points of view the world the important thing

is that does your point of view make you suffer so so that's the point of you make you suffer because if it does then change your point of view right as as a mentor to students i tell them you know the uh really the only gift that a mentor can give to you is perspective right a point of view and the rest you can Google yourself, right? Because you can see all the actual information out there. So, and when you're looking at it that way, and I'm approaching, you know, the whole view of, for example, psychedelics, et cetera, from the point of view of, from an empirical rational point of view, right? And then from doing that, you go back and then you go to the

religious part of it and go to the magical parts of it, which makes it more exciting, right? So, and because that's the track that I took, you know, I wish I were like some people who took ayahuasca when I was 13. I probably didn't have to go through this difficult a journey to do so. But no, I had to come back that way around because what really convinced me, Kyle, and I think what convinces other scientists right now, especially when I do my lectures, is that why do we have receptors for this? Why do we have receptors, for example, for the endocannabinoid system? Why do we have an endocannabinoid system?

What's the adaptive value, right? Why do we have an opiate system? And so why do we have five HG2A receptors that bind not only serotonin, but these other psychedelics? So it basically provides a bridge or an entree, right? An entree to the whole exploration. And, you know, you probably have, I don't know whether you've interviewed Stan Grof,

but, you know, he's the one who said that, you know, psychedelics are to the mind as the telescope is astronomy and the microscope is the biology so uh and that's that's a very uh useful way to to look at it so and um i i know you guys are are all big and buff etc etc so one of the things that i say one of the things like like i'm i'm a wispy 140-pound guy, right? But I tell them that when you go to the gym, you do a certain set of exercises. If you really want to get big fast, and I know how to do this because I've done this for a few clients, right? You go on short bursts of anabolic steroids, right?

And then you go, get it, right? And then you go get it, right? And then you maintain it. If you know how to use it, then you're fine, right? Psychedelics are that way. So you go to your mental gym and I don't know why people ignore their mental gym, right? You go to your mental gym, you meditate, right? And then you go take your psychedelics as your mental gym steroids. You take, you know, I heard you took a 30 gram dose. That's insane, man. I was granted permission by one of the legends, Kalindi Ayi.

Please continue, brother. It's like, wow, that's really fear extinction right there. And the key there, as I said, Carl, if you're going to take this, for me, the useful thing is to get blasted off yourself, blasted off the self-referential system, so at least you know what it feels to be outed off yourself, right? Blasted off the self-referential system. So at least you know what it feels to be out of a self, right?

To be out of that constant voice, constant chatter that goes on and on. If you take those slower than what will blast you into space, man, you're brave because you're going to see your fucked upness and going have to work through it and going to have to go through

the fucking integration and so on. It has to be done, right? And as people who are between these worlds say, is that either you do that with

psychedelics that are below the threshold for blasting into space, or you go seek psychotherapy, right? Or you integrate both. That's hard work, right? That's very hard work. And I remember doing the inner child work when I was 40, right? That's very difficult work, man. You know, when you get into, I was a depressive, you know, for the longest time because I didn't see, you know,

Kyle, when I was 16, I was already a junior in college, right? I was 16 and junior in college graduating with top honors and all of that. And I found everything easy. Life was boring, right? So I had this existential crisis.

What's the purpose of my life? It's like, what's the point? And I found my reset button, right? And I said, whoop, okay. But, you know, I remember having to go around the campus at night. And I sat down by the lagoon and it was, you know, there was a typhoon and there was this beautiful hibiscus plant right beside me. And I just looked at it, you know, and here I was bandaged in my wrist and, you know, and I was looking at this beautiful hibiscus and I said, look at this. It's being pelted by the rain and yet it's just there, beautiful.

It's just standing out there. It's like, here, look at me. And at that point, I said, you know what? I really don't care about all of this fucking stuff. I am going to live life the way I see fit. And that was my first insight into letting go of what the ego is expecting of you because of the stories that it has heard from teachers, parents, religious leaders, and all of that. It's just all of these expectations of you. And then you let go and you feel a little bit freer. But somehow, you know, when you're in that environment,

you still feel very restricted, right? You still feel very constricted. And you're still expected to follow some path. And my thinking before I did that is like, okay, you know, I'm going to graduate college. I'm going to be a doctor. And, I'm going to graduate college, I'm going to be a doctor, and then I'm going to be earning this stuff, and I'm going to have a wife and kids and all of this stuff.

And I said, that's all been done before. I said, boring. So I had to find a reset switch. Until I realized, I've been meditating heavily since high school, and I was a concentrative meditator, you know, breath and mantras and so on. It was not until actually when I did contemplative meditation where I saw the importance of actually

seeing the self arise from your consciousness. The way I teach this to my students is when you wake up in the morning and there's nothing else. You're not looking at your schedule yet. So you're just waking up slowly and gently the

way you should, right? There is this, you're just looking at all of this light and shadow and sound and so on before the ego just snaps in and says, oh, you fuck, you're late for work, right? And you have to do one, two, three, four, five. And I said, is it possible, you know, to basically stay in that state, you know, while observing what the ego is doing or what your self-referential system is doing, right? It will do what it does, right? But can I at least sense when it's coming on right so instead of being reactive to things i can be responsive to things right and i explain reactivity is that yeah you're programmed to do these things right and responsive responsivity or responsiveness is counting one two three should i open my mouth before i say this right like uh i i Like, I have a dear friend

who was giving a speech in the Davos Economic Summit. And, you know, he quoted me on his first line because when he woke up in the morning, he would look at what the markets was doing, right? And the markets were tanking and saying, holy shit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he was so mad. And for the whole day, he would be mad at everyone else, right? And I said, why don't you stop doing that? I said, before you start blaming other people for the way you feel, I said, why don't you ask yourself, am I hungry? Did I poop yet? All the things that would make you, you know, I need to pee. You know, all of the things that pertain to maintaining your avatar,

maintaining your, the organic robot needs its own maintenance, right? And when you don't give it, you know, it will give you all of these signs that you have to take care of it. So that was, that's actually, you know, he said, Ted, you know, I quoted you in this, but it's actually, for me, it's like, these are the simple things that we miss, right? By not paying attention to the current moment, because in the end, what I realized was doing is like, how do I decrease suffering in myself, right? And in so doing, decrease suffering in others, knowing that there is no other, right? So you and I are basically the same, right? So when I looked at that, and so that really took me deeply into Buddhism, right? And I was lucky enough to be, when I was here in D.C., I was lucky enough to be taught, actually, Buddhism before it was a pre-Buddhist religion, a Bon.

A Bon is, in its pre-Buddhist state, is another religion unto itself. And it's where the practice of Dzogchen or the great perfection comes from. And I regard Buddhism as this big predatory shark, right? And it's big and it's going to prey on all of these smaller religions with shamanistic legacies and so on and so forth.

So at the time that the Dalai Lama actually protected the Bon, there were only about 2,000 genuine practitioners of Bon, right? But what was nice about Buddhism, what they did is they did classify what Bon people did. Of course, there's, you know, the nine ways of Bon, and people have probably heard that, or they can just Google the nine ways of bond, people have probably heard that, or they can just Google the nine ways of bond. And you could see that the first four of those all have to do with magic, right?

They all have to do with things like soul retrieval, you know, energy work, magic, et cetera, et cetera. And then the five and six will be, five will be if you are actually a married person who is going to get into the Bon tradition. Six is for actually people who would like to get into the priesthood of Bon and wouldn't be raising children and so on.

And then seven, eight, and nine is a classic. It's Sutra, Tantra, and Dog Chan. children and so on and then seven eight and nine is uh as a classic you know it's the um uh sutra tantra and dog chan so seven is uh you know uh the various sutras or various teachings right and the way i summarize this is really very simple um uh kyle is that um sutra is like rejecting the poison. So you see all of these practices that they basically become very austere in their living. They push away all of these worldly things, etc. That's basically shunning the poison. And tantra is basically using the poison as medicine. So basically, you incorporate

these little bits of this poison in your life, right? In order for you to be able to get to observe the self from arising. And the whole point of this is, what's the whole point of this is what's the whole point of this and um you know it's when you get to jog chan which is a great perfection that is basically ingesting the whole poison you know to liberate you or to free you and i didn't understand what that meant until actually i had a a clear understanding at least in scientific terms, of what that is, right? That's the self or the ego, essentially, that's both doing the clinging and aversion to things, right? It either wants something, pushes something away all the time, right? That's all it does every time. And when you get to a certain stage of meditation, you could even see your desire for a cup of tea arise or your desire for a cup of coffee arise, not just like stand up and get

coffee, but you could see the desire actually come up and you can actually say, can I act on this? Right. And so the famous Dzogchen meditation, of course, is the open sky meditation, right? And the sky has lots of clouds and these are your thoughts and emotions and everything else that surrounds you, what you see, what you hear, and so on. And the clouds are always changing, right? But it's still always the entire poison, right, is actually your liberation, you know, it becomes very freeing because you don't cling to any thought or feeling, etc. They're just arising and they're just, you know, they move away, right? And they move away and the next thing goes. And, you know, as I i say you know the the fight that

you had with your partner last night and you're still ruminating today i should have said fucking this instead of that you know that's already gone i mean that's just in your memory that's how you're wired this is the wiring of of uh of the avatar right so we're just coming up there and what's what's bad about it is that it has does the the self or the self-referential system or the ego has a way of grabbing this. And the way I teach this is that, you know, you have a thought, right? So imagine you just have a memory and they're usually stored with some sort of emotion. So say, let's just agree that there are eight basic types of emotion, you know, for argument's sake. Those are just the flavors that are available to you at any

one time, right? I teach that emotion is simply energy, right? And all the anger, fear, etc., all of those are the flavor of the ice cream, right? So whatever it is, there's energy underneath, and it's how you use that emotion, right? It's how you use emotion. Unfortunately whatever it is, there's energy underneath and it's how you use that emotion. Right. It's how you use emotion. Unfortunately, you know, your memory, when you grab it, like, say, say the memory of your argument. Right. It will get different flavors and mix them up for that particular memory. And that's the reason why it basically overtakes your sense of awareness, right? Basically, your whole ego or your sense of self takes over. There's no space around your sense of self.

And I like the way Sam Harris actually says this. It's really simple. You have a dear friend and you run to him and he says, I don't believe that you fucking did that to me. And you go, what? What did I do? At that particular moment, you are actually consumed by the ego, right? Because there is no sense of that arising before you said what. there is that moment when you could feel that arise and say, okay, this is another person who is running his own programs and his own memories, et cetera, et cetera.

And then this is what he's perceiving it to be, right? And you could, right at the moment that you actually realize that, that's when you can change your response. And therefore, you could have a more harmonious relationship. Or if you really hate this person, totally shut him off. That depends on what lesson he has to learn for the day, right? Or for the year or whatever. I do agree with you. You know, I've heard most of Ram Dass' podcasts.

And, you know, there's a joke between me and him that I'll just tell, I cannot tell on air. But the thing that he says is actually very interesting. He said, you know, you have a curriculum, right? You're given a curriculum and this is a curriculum that you have to make. You're thinking that you're deciding all of this, but actually this has already been pre-decided. That's actually a very interesting way to think about it, right? But for me, Kyle, these are all stories, right? There are magical stories,

religious stories, you know, empirical stories, rational stories, evolutionary stories. I tend to view the lens as a scientist from an evolutionary lens, right? How did these things all develop? But, you know, the interesting part of all of these lenses is that if you are going to be looking at these different facets, make sure that you're able to pull your head out from them and see that there are other points of view. I remember when I wrote my book on the connectome, there was a poem in there on the blind man and the elephant, a Hindu fable. You've heard that one, right? One blind man touched the trunk and it's very much like a rope. One touched the leg and it's very much a tree. And touched the side and very much like a wall.

And our perspectives are very much like that, right? And what psychedelics can do is they blast you out to see the whole elephant, the whole jewel that you're basically looking at or putting yourself in. However, for me, the more important thing is these are nice concepts, right? These are nice stories that we tell ourselves and so on. But what is most important, I feel, for me at least, is the cessation of suffering, right? How do we not suffer? And that's done moment by moment. It's not done in long time spans, right? It's done right now. Each moment that you are aware, it's born anew. It's always new every time, right? And that's how, you know, it's been said that, you know, the brain never really, you know,

stops from planning the future and remembering the past, right? Because that's how we were able to survive as a species, right? You remember that that tiger is going to eat you, and therefore you're going to plan around your hunt, right? And so on. So that has an adaptive value to us for survival. But what it is, it's really maladaptive for our peace of mind or for our happiness. And I define happiness very simply.

I mean, you know, people, for example, say, Dr. Ted, I want to be happy. I said, how do you define happiness, right? And for me, it's really very simple. It's essentially a sense of your dynamic equanimity, right? And by that, I mean, you know, there are people who are addicted to emotion right they like tidal waves of joy they like deep whirlpools of sorrow and they they do that i i'm

not like that for me it's like i'm i'm okay with gentle waves right i'm okay with gentle waves of of uh of things and you know if if you if you like you know floating at the rough side of the river, that's fine with me. I'll float by the quiet side of the river. It's just each to his own way of having to navigate this, or where you're actually pushed to go. It's like, oh no, you're not going to be here in this little quiet segment of the river. There you go. You need like, oh no, you're not going to be here in this little quiet segment of the river. There you go. You need to navigate those rough waters. And that's how I think about these things. It's more like, how do you not suffer moment by moment? And you realize that the suffering is actually... And that actually is very much tied in with the neuroscience of enlightenment or what enlightenment is all about.

I mean, you were talking about consciousness, the self, right? And I have a very simple definition really of enlightenment. And enlightenment is a freedom from the illusion of the self, right? I'm not saying it's freedom from the self because the self has adaptive value, right? It is there. But freedom from the illusion of self, and it all comes with the definition of illusion, right? Illusion essentially is, it's not what it seems to be. And the way I say it, it's not a noun, it's a verb.

You're selfing all the time. So the self is not what it seems to be. And if you look at it, like, for example, if you have circular lights, right, and you don't know they're circular, and so they just flash out one by one, right? But when they flash out in sequence, right, and you see the circle out there, and that circle is actually the illusion of your self, right? That's the conductor that's conducting everything. That's the one that's going to say, what the fuck did I do to you? But when you are actually pure consciousness or pure awareness, right? You basically have a meta-awareness that your self is arising. the meditation, what it does is actually slows down those signals, right?

So you could see them coming up really independently. So you could basically hear the sounds, you could see the sights, you could basically see your thoughts and hear your inner thoughts. They all arise within the same space of consciousness, what I call your meta-awareness. If you don't like to call it consciousness, you call it your meta-awareness. Because your self or your ego has what's called self-awareness. And the way you can induce this in someone is really very simple.

You look at someone, stare at someone longer than is socially acceptable, right? And the person will suddenly become self-conscious, right? That, my guys, that's the ego, right? That's a self-awareness, like, holy fuck, you know? And then you start thinking, what, do I have something stuck between my teeth? You know, whatever it is that you're not happy about yourself, it starts coming up and all the stories come up. And that is the self-awareness.

And you could see the coming up of the ego or the self in that way. So, and, you know, for me, consciousness or the sphere of awareness has what I call the meta-awareness. It's the one that you cultivate, right? With meditation, it's the one that's that that is that you cultivate right with meditation is the way you cultivate with various practices right um various magical practices regional practices etc this is the one that you cultivate that kind of awareness and for me you know seeing it arise you know and non-judgmentally seeing it arise, right? And seeing what it does, you know, is essentially, you're basically freed of the suffering because, you know, who was it that said

that that who's observing the pain isn't in pain, right? And so that who is observing the sadness isn't in sadness. So you could see all of these things. And it's easy to remember this stuff, Kyle. For example, you got infectious mononucleosis, right? And instead of like, okay, this is infectious mononucleosis, it has to be treated, et cetera, et cetera. It's like you go and attach a story to it that makes you suffer.

Why the fuck did I kiss her? It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I knew she was pretty good blah and so that's the suffering right because the story will cause you the suffering instead of just letting that go and uh focusing on it that's just one signal right okay you you got this and this is what you need to do right rather than inventing all of these stories behind it right uh and for me you know i i tend to teach this in like uh really very simple terms that you encounter in daily life right uh from the time that you wake up to the time that you relate to your family uh time that you relate to to your job to other people uh and the you know

the the big thing is how you relate to the earth uh the environment, to the universe around you, right? For example, you know, how do you respond to, okay, we have to catch an asteroid so we can mine it. And it is basically a multi-trillion dollar industry. It's like, what mindset do you think that is, right? And so you start thinking about, well, you know, if survival and reproduction is all that we do, and then we overrun the earth, right? And so we run off to Mars, we colonize it, we survive and reproduce, right? And then we overrun that again and go to another planet. It's like, what the fuck are we doing? So where do we want to bring our species, right? Where do we want to bring ourselves. And that's, for me, a very bothersome thought that if we remain

unawake, right? And waking up can be many stages. Everyone has experiences of waking up. They say, well, it's difficult. No, you have that experience every time. When you, for example, watch a beautiful sunset and you're in awe, Awe is that experience of not having a self. You basically have an awareness that's larger than you, right? Another way of doing it is like you're trudging up a hill, you know, you're doing a hike up a mountain. And then when you reach the summit of the mountain, there's that moment when you actually accomplish your goal

and you're looking around and there's nothing there in your head, right? Except just fully enjoying the view. And then you can, there you could see the ego come back in. It's like, next time I'm going to climb the higher mountain. So I have a better view. You know, you could see the ego come and set in. The key part of it is really just one word, is a recognition, a recognition of when it arises. So when you have little bits of this recognition in a day, you have micro-enlightenments going on every time.

And then what you do is you basically try to lengthen them and lengthen them and lengthen them. And it's only the Dzogchen practice, Kyle, that requires for enlightenment to be stable. So it's the only practice that requires enlightenment to be stable. Other practices don't. And that's one of the differences of Dzogchen, for example. That's why people have a hard time actually with it, because it's a different, it's more of a contemplative path altogether and it's actually done not by concentration, right? You know, those focus types of meditation, etc. Those are concentrative types of meditation. It's done by appointing out instruction by a master on the true nature, you know, on the true nature of the mind or the true nature of the self, right? It's done by various pointing out instructions in a very traditional way, but in a very, very pointed way that provokes insight.

It's like, you know, you can do koans for, you know, for as this, because there's no answer, right? Then your thinking mind disengages from the whole thing but this is something more like a continuous thing and zen has his own quirks like they have this testing method and so on and so forth what i've been trying to do uh kyle and i know your your your uh listeners actually um would respond to this is that what I've been trying to do is, are we able, you know, is there a way that we can point out these instructions such that you have a continuous recognition of the self as it arises, right? Which is enlightenment, um is there is is there something that you can do that will do that for you right uh uh in in terms of uh so so you can you know you can do that um

uh you know one that i'm looking at uh essentially is can we take a look at a class of molecules right that has the right balance between your task positive network and your default mode network and basically give you at least eight hours of not screaming at your dog or your wife or anyone else or being envious of someone's race or something like that, or regretting something, right? You can just see those arises. Is there something that we can do that way?

The other thing is that, well, others are devising machines that can quiet down particular centers of the brain and activate certain centers of the brain. You know, B-day magnetic simulation. I was just reading up on a book where they were able to induce psychopathic behavior with transcranial magnetic stimulation. But that's another story. It's actually quite scary and funny.

But, you know, can we have these machines? And if you look at it now, this is looking at it first from a scientific point of view and then going back to the perspectives that are available to you. And I said none of them is wrong it's just that we you know uh there was someone who said that uh humans are really one of the worst uh species on earth um and i call them it's the most pernicious species on earth right because um we're the only ones who are willing to die for our own beliefs and and you know we pillage plunder nations we go go invade other countries, etc. Because we believe in our might and our right to do that. Or we believe that, you know, we have to make more profits and grow our companies. So we're going to pollute plastics in the oceans and we're going to use child labor and we're going to do sex slavery and all that stuff.

You know, that's a kind of thing that you get examined right when you're listening like what do you really believe in and um for me beliefs are if if you have programmers in your uh among your listeners they will know this for me beliefs are just like global variables when you create a program, right? When you set something to true, then basically a set of routines, subroutines, actually go to action. So you can think of it like, if Jesus Christ is true, then do the following.

If Buddha is true, then do the following. But the thing is, you could actually set that to false, one, or you could set that to, my favorite is that if you don't know what to set it to and you want to quiet it down, say one of the sayings that my mother used to tell me is the early bird catches the worm for promptness, right? So I basically put a semicolon in the saying

by putting in the early bird catches the early worm. So, you know, you could see immediately how you can get rid of these kinds of things that are programmed inside you. And this, you know, Socrates said that unexamined life is not worth living. It does allow you to examine what's in there, and then to see whether or not you will react or respond to things. So that's the way I see the melding of this. What I'm doing now is, can I now do a neuroscientific pointing out instruction for you guys no now knowing that you have a dmn no knowing that you have a meta awareness

you know can i point out to you that the self is illusory and it's a process it's a selfing process every time is there a way to actually poke different parts of that in the empirical or the scientific sense, right? Can we do that and still come up with the realizations that a traditional Dzogchen master, you know, they're really good at this, you know, they're really good ones. They're able to provoke in you these kinds of insights. You know, so far it's been easy for me and for people who are in the scientific world and who are actually exploring, you know, meditation and all of these others, the illusion of the self and so on, it's easier for me to explain it this way, right? They know that I've been in this area for a long time and it's easier for me to explain this way because they have a model by which they can cling to right as i said it's very hard to to

basically pull your head out of the scientific ass right so the whole world's got their head stuck in it yeah yeah yeah and uh um it's it's uh, you know, what's the reward? The reward is seeing the entire sparkling gem, right? It's right there. And it's for you to rest on, right? Because it's always changing, right? The whole thing is always changing. The light always hits it in a different way and so on.

Or in the sky, you know, it's always changing. So that's how I basically, why I'm doing this from a scientific point of view, because that's where I came from. And then I got trained in Bonn and Togchen. And I said, well, is it possible to point it out in a scientific way? You know, so people who are not, you know, so poor people like me who did not, you know, have mushroom journeys or ayahuasca journeys when we were teenagers or in our 20s, you know, can actually go. And actually, you know, the tendency, our tendency as scientists is to try to make sense of things, right? And the whole thing is that to be comfortable in things that don't make sense, right? It doesn't make sense and that's all right.

That's one of the things that you learn and you see change all the time. One of the, if you're going to use it as your mental gym super steroid, right? When you take a high dose, like I did for early ayahuasca, it's more like there are certain gifts that you take away from. For example, I understood what unconditional love of the universe was all about, right? It's like it gets to you, you wake up and, you know, I used to wake up at four in the morning and writhing in this orgasmic pleasure. And this is already two, three days afterwards.

And just this reassurance that it's the full security of the universe. There's nothing that you can do where you're not taken care of. There's nothing that you can do where you're not taken care of. There's nothing that you can do, say, or whatever, you know, that is not covered but by that unconditional love that's there. And for me, that's a gift, right? And immediately, of course, my ego says, well, you know, so essentially,

you are now conflating this with faith. I said, I'm beginning to suspect that those who preach about faith don't even know what it is. Right. So, and there was also someone who said that, you know, in the beginning we had no word for imagination. So we used the word faith instead. So, but that's, you know, these are gifts that you get, you know, from, for example, the Hopkins people who are doing lots of research on psilocybin, right? You know, the people rank psychedelic journeys as one of the top five most significant experiences

in your lives, right? And 10 years later, it still hasn't changed. So you could see how this really affects you. For me, it's like, you do this with someone, you know, all the usual caveats, you do this with someone who knows what he's doing, where it's legal, blah, blah, blah.

But, you know, I think you did not live a full life if you have not experienced, even at least for a few hours, you know, the total dissolution or the disappearance of the self. And how does this feel like? And I'm asked all the time. I said, it's really very funny.

I said, when I see my patients, he said, Dr. Ted, I want to be happy. I said, okay, play the happiness game with me. I said, it's very simple. I said, I am going to set my watch right now when I say start. I said, it's very simple. I said, I am going to set my watch right now when I say start. I said, stop thinking about anything, not a single thought. I said, stop thinking. Let's see how long you last. And I said, that's the happiness game. I said, so? I said, when you're standing, waiting in line or doing something, I said, play the fucking happiness game. See how long you can stay without any intrusive thought in your head.

And you find that it's fucking impossible. So the whole point there that I'm making is that it is a wrong thing to assume that this means that you don't have any thoughts and emotions anymore. It means a recognition, right? For me, the key word is recognizing that they arise and they arise independent of the conductor, independent of the self-referential system. They just arise there. And when you feel it, really the feeling is just everything is just arising. And one of the ways that you can experience this is that when you're walking and you're walking rapidly, right? And you're looking at your things in front of you and you're looking at your basically have a slightly downward gaze

and you're walking, you feel, you start feeling like you're not actually walking, but it's the scene that's moving across you. So that's the way you feel these things. I'm just talking about it on a practical matter, right? Because everything tends to become very esoteric. The key is to be in the moment, right? When you're in the moment, what is the primary experiencing? Not experience. Experience is a noun, right? What is the primary experiencing, right? Without any concept, right? There's no concept that you're walking. There's no concept. You're just basically feeling everything for the way it is, right? So, you know, when you're in deep meditation, for example, you feel that the dissolution

of the boundaries of your body, right? There is no skin, because you have no concept of what it is. All you feel is that the pressure on when you're seated, or if you're lying down, the pressure on your back, you know, the sounds basically appear where they are. They don't appear at a distance from you. They just appear in just one space where all your thoughts are appearing. So the difficult part of this is that

it's an experiential thing, right? Until you actually experience it, you basically won't know what to look for right um so i i i uh and that's the i think the utility of high dose psychedelics low dose psychedelics probably can maintain some of that stuff uh like a microdosing right but i really don't like the trend where there are experts uh there are like the microdosing experts who will take you on a hike on the San California Trail, right?

And say, okay, now, how do we increase the profit of your company? So it's a totally different repurposing of what it is. And it's a different search for a different game, right? So it's like the level, if you look at this as just one dimension of the multitude of dimensions out game, right? So it's like the level, if you look at this as just one dimension of the multitude of dimensions out there, right?

This is what you're equipped with. This is your tools, right? And then I actually love it when Dennis McKenna, with whom I had a chance to work with on a few molecules, said, he said, you know, I said, these are plant teachers, right?

These are molecules. This is the way they communicate, right? And for me, it's like, just because they can talk in symbols like we do doesn't mean that they can communicate to us and that we're any superior to them, right? So we just have, you know, I look at the evolutionary tree more as a bush, right? And we're just like in just one of those bushes, there's no ladder going up and we're the epitome of things, right? And so there's a way if they have, for example, dimethotriptamine,

they have cannabinoids, they have ergot and so on. Well, this is the way that these other species can communicate with us, right? And so we have receptors for them. So it behooves us to actually examine, and to Dennis's point, right? What do they have to teach us, right? Because they have been longer here than any one of us. The human species as it is, is only 250,000 years old, right? And these trees and fungi have been here for millions of years. So for me, that openness

of mind is also one of the things that you get. Because one of the things that, you know, Kyle, right? It's like falling in love, right? Falling in love is a very constricting feeling, right? It's a very constricting feeling. You feel like you're on top of the world, but when your boss assesses your productivity, it's actually down, right? And it's that constricting feeling. And science can be that way, right?

And any religion can be that way. Any magical system can be that way you know any rational system uh that's used by economists can be that way right but each has his own use right and so what this is due to you is to actually um blast you open right and and uh make make sure that you're able to see the other perspectives or other dimensions of what's around you. And if that particular perspective works for you and makes you better at being one of the better species in this planet and makes you think about things like non-reciprocal altruism, no, you help without any expectation of being helped back, which is one of the things that we can do that other animals can't, for example, then that's where we want to be, right?

So I'm thinking, Kyle, about what are the tools? What can we do in order to determine where we want to bring our species? Where do you want to bring our species? And you can do that only by decreasing the suffering of each person one at a time and give them the tools for decreasing

suffering. However the tools may be. They may be magical tools, religious tools, religious tools, you know, scientific tools, rational tools. And they get into this realization that, and for me,

as I said, it's the clinging and aversion of the self that usually causes you to lose sight, you know, to basically lose sight of the ego that's doing the conducting.

You become, in other words, you become the identity. Your identity becomes that of the ego instead of the meta-awareness. And that shift in identity is actually the thing that's crucial, I think, that we're looking at. Because there have been books like Adyashanti and all of these people, right? Locke Kelly and all of that. And they get into shift into freedom and that shift is a free shift into freedom from illusion of the self right

um the shorthand way is a shift in identity right shift in identity from your egoic identity into that meta aware identity which is a non-judgmental thing that just, you know, sees, basically accepts everything for the way it is. And that's what I mean by dog-shen, basically consuming all the poison in order to liberate itself. Everything, all the joys, sorrows, you know, laughter, fears, you know, self-deceptions, attachments, etc. All of those, they are you. They arise in real time, and you have to accept them for the way they are. There's no pushing them away.

There's no clinging to them. They just arise there. And once you get there, it's a very liberating position. So that's my journey. Yeah, my journey from that. And I think from this mini lecture that I did, Kyle, I think I have lost all my credibility as a scientist now. No, hell no, brother. Hell no. Well, this was the easiest podcast I've ever been

a part of. I don't think I, this was just great. I love it when online interviews, I can serve a softball or two and let the guest run with it. But that was fantastic. Definitely want to have you back on. I think this is super pertinent information in our times and very pertinent for me. Very pertinent for me as I've come to understand and seeing through the lens of what the fuck are we doing right now in medicine? What are we doing with the world? Why are we locking ourselves down from the boogeyman, which we have a 99.73% chance of surviving? There's a lot of question marks that I've had to sit with, but I think this offering that you've brought to the table, really, I can track it back to me and what's the cause of my suffering. Well, a lot of that is in the ability to surrender to what is. It lies in my ability to take all of the things as they are with acceptance and know that I'm

just along for the ride. There is a certain part of this that I'm not in control of. And just remembering what I am in control of, this physical entity allows me to have a greater degree of grace and allow me to flow with life as I travel through these interesting times that we're in right now. Hey, you just gave your audience all the entire keys to their liberation, Kyle. You could have just done it in that minute rather than for me expounding for you know uh over an hour here no i absolutely absolutely loved it brother um where where where can people where can people find more of you where can people see your work where can people dive into your books yeah um my uh essentially i have a non-profit to teach uh physicians and practitioners the

non-physicians um on how to practice health optimization medicine it's after all relieving suffering right um which is the detection and correction of imbalances that's at the in the metabolome that's at homehope.org, we offer courses in there and modules. And for those, for example, who are interested in being able to prescribe cannabis, there is a newly new course that was just put up there on cannabis. Because we're clinical, right? So it's essentially if a client is in front of you, what the fuck do you do? You know, we leave the didactics.

So, okay, you're a nerd. So here are the rabbit holes for the science, right? But here's your client or your patient. So what do you do? So that's the zeitgeist of that whole home hope and the balancing is always on a clinical basis, including sympathetic-parasympathetic balance and all this kind of stuff. The other one is prescriptions.com. That's like prescriptions, but with a TRO. Prescriptions.com is actually the brand of the company Smarter Not Harder. And that's snhlife.com.

And we're smarter not harder. And my joke is we're not a condom company, man. And what is in there is actually a nootropic that I devised for myself. It's a buccal trochee, meaning it's like a lozenge, but you insert it between your gum and upper cheek. And it contains essentially nicotine, CBD, caffeine, and methylene blue. And I actually made that for myself and people liked it and I did not expect it to be

the runaway hit that it is. And then people begged us to just put in a pure methylene blue. And if you take a look at literature and I'm not advertising this for that purpose, right? If you just take a look at literature for methylene blue, it's now being used in studies to boost cognitive performance of people with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

Because it's an MAOI by itself. And then coming up will be additional products that will contain the lesser known cannabinoid molecules. And the first one that's coming out is for anxiety. And then the rest coming out will be for pain. The pain will have some kratom in it. The anxiety will have some kava in it. I'm big on plants. And there's one that's coming out also for insomnia.

So if you are in Asia, I am in Asia 30 days every quarter, except for the past year, because they wouldn't let me in the countries over there. Except for the past year. You can find me at biobalanceinstitute.com. And I also spearheaded the construction of the

commercial metabolomics lab in there. Because these things are, although they're 40 years old, there are very few of them around the world. And this metametrics.com is actually intended to serve the metabolomics needs of the ASEAN region. So all I'm going to do here, Kyle, and it is I'd like to really encourage your listeners, you know, by decreasing suffering in yourself, you decrease suffering in others. And, you know, one of the things that you should do is not think locally, right?

For me, it's like always think of the global ramifications of the changes that you make within yourself, right? There's a saying, think globally, act locally. No, for me, it's more like act globally, right? And think locally. So because now we are actually at a stage where we cannot afford any more damage or losses to the only organic spaceship that we're in. So, you know, much of our wants, desires, etc. are actually tied in to the bigger picture

of how we are actually united across the board, connected to everything else. Beautiful, brother. Thank you so much. It's been an amazing hour and 20 minutes with you. We will 100% run this back in the near future. And I'll link to, of course, everything that you've offered in the show notes. We didn't even dive into any of the biohacks.

I mean, I wanted to rabbit hole methylene blue with you. I've been a fan of it for many years. But of course, people can try that on for size for themselves at Troscriptions. We'll have all that in the show notes. And it's been a real pleasure and an honor to chat with you, brother. And the pleasure is mine and the honor is mine, Kyle.

Thank you.