Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #316 Circling and Dialogos w/ Guy Sengstock

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Guy Sengstock (Founder & Co-Owner) is the founder and creator of the Original Circling® Method. He has been facilitating transformation for individuals, groups and corporations internationally for more than 20 years. He has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is the co-founder of The Arête Center for Excellence and the Bay Area Men’s Circle, which is still thriving today.  He is an artist, philosopher, poet, body-worker, and visionary. Many refer to Guy as a genius in both his depth of thinking and in his way of working with clients. His humor, depth and quality of attention allows people to see and hear those things which have always been present yet have never occurred for them. He wakes up every day with an insatiable craving to discover the source of life’s novelty and can’t help himself but to attempt to awaken this thirst in everyone he encounters. Through our conversation, as usual we get a little of Guy’s genesis and what brought him to his current understanding of communication and the healing that this modality can bring. We go through a bit of my personal experiences of working with Guy through Fit For Service and the intentions and ideas behind the specific strategies put forth in Circling. Shoot Guy an email, go to their website, dive in and enjoy yall!   ORGANIFI GIVEAWAY Keep those reviews coming in! Please drop a dope review and include your IG/Twitter handle and we’ll get together for some Organifi even faster moving forward.   Connect with Guy: Website: circlinginstitute.com  Email: [e-mail] Show Notes: John Vervaeke YouTube    Sponsors: Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Manna Vitality To get the absolute number one mineral replenishment in my arsenal head over to mannavitality.com and punch in “KKP” at checkout for 12% off! Cured Nutrition has a wide variety of stellar, naturally sourced, products. They’re chock full of adaptogens and cannabinoids to optimize your meatsuit. You can get 20% off by heading over to www.curednutrition.com/KKP  using code “KKP” Mark Bell’s Mind Bullet This Kratom Extract supplement supports your cognition like no other and that’s not just because Mark’s a homie. Get some over at mindbullet.com and use “KKP” at checkout for 20% off! To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    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.

Tuesday morning. This is awesome. This is one of the rare occasions where I get to podcast with somebody on a Monday, hit my ads and intros on a Tuesday, and then release it on a Wednesday. So it feels like it's all interconnected. I mean, I have done live shows before as a guest. I've never done live shows personally. It is rather lovely just to get it all

within the same timeframe for whatever that's worth. This conversation is fresh in my mind. Guy Senstock is somebody who I first got to meet through Aubrey Marcus at Fit for Service. And Aubrey was just blown away by circling and what Guy had put together. So he actually, having gone through it himself and learned of it, said that we're going to have this guy at our events. Not all of them, but we're going to feature him as one of the experts that we bring in on the side here. And he was so awestruck by it that he wanted us to go through it.

And so he paid for 16 of us to go through this. And I actually, from the fucking very last moment, pulled out. I just had too much shit going on. I think the kids were sick. I had to fucking take better jujitsu, whatever the case was. Couldn't make it in. And so I missed out on that opportunity and some months went by and we actually got to participate in the fit for service event. So we had them out in Sedona and I was just fucking floored.

Then we had them again in Lockhart earlier this year. And again, I was floored. And then in Montana, we had guy come out with John Vervaeke and they got to go into the dialectic into dialogos, which is also its own thing and also absolutely transformative. So today we get to break down what is circling, what is the dialectic and dialogos, what are we creating or trying to create when we set the container for these different programs and Guy's background. I mean, he's just a fantastic, fascinating fucking human. There's never been a dull conversation that I've had with him.

I really feel like the things that he's putting together and downloading, whatever the fuck you want to say, the things that he's coming up with, the technology for communication, for relationship that he has put together is truly in a league of its own. And what it speaks to is something much greater than the mundane everyday life. And it speaks to something much deeper,

you know, at a depth that's much deeper than anything we can get from meta, from the video game, from the online conversation. Like there's, there's something that it's pointing to, uh, that just erupts inside. And I mentioned this on the podcast, but it's, it's pointing to that just erupts inside. And I mentioned this on the podcast, but it's what, when Gaffney speaks about Eros and he speaks about Shekinah and the interior, being on the inside is one of the faces of Eros. And we're gonna have a whole fucking series of podcasts

on the 12 faces of Eros. We're gonna start recording in September. So I'm very excited for that. Maybe that's why it's percolating in my mind right now. But I think about these things at the moment of orgasm, there is no question of why am I here? Am I doing good enough? I should, I'd be doing more. I need more followers. I need more of this. I mean, you don't think about fucking any of that shit. You don't think about how much money you make. You don't think about your car, at least I hope not. You're not thinking about your car payment or what your next meal is or any of that shit

because you're so on the inside, literally and figuratively, you're on the inside to a degree in which it all makes sense. I don't feel like I'm gonna bust a nut when I'm working with Guy, thankfully, but there is something to that level of depth of being on the inside of Eros to where in the conversation, in the circling, in the dialectic, into dialogos, in those experiences, I'm so far on the inside

that life makes sense. I know why I'm there. I know what I'm doing. There are no questions. And that's remarkable because these are sober technologies and I love you all know I love a good time I love party time with the right medicines and I love psychedelic experiences but equal to that I love any technology that gets us there on a different trajectory in a different path because it opens the door for more people more people who maybe can't go that route and they couldn't go that route due to neurochemistry. They might not be able to go that route due to legality. They might not be able to do that route due to finances. I don't know, but I love the multitude of options on things that put us on the inside of the face of Eros. So love Guy. You guys are going to love this podcast.

Help the podcast grow. Share this podcast. Word of mouth is always great. This one was one of my favorite podcasts I've done this year. I've been waiting patiently for Guy, but it just came at the right time. It came after my third time of getting to work with him. We're in Montana and he's like, we never did that podcast swap. And I was like, we need to fucking do it yesterday. Let's go. So it was awesome though, getting to finally get this other piece of the pie. I felt like I would have been reporting on half of Guy, not that he is just the sum of what he's creating, but half of what he's created for sure

without having experienced what I did in Montana. So it was perfect timing. Share this with a friend, anybody that's into any of this shit, philosophy, relationships. If you're a fucking human being, you're gonna enjoy this podcast, you're gonna enjoy this podcast and you're gonna hopefully through the conversation,

you'll begin to grasp the ineffable and say, I want some of that for myself. And I wanna either try this at a fit for service event or I don't wanna wait and I wanna go straight to Guy and go to the Circling Institute. I invite you to do all of it. So check out this podcast, share it with a friend, leave us a five-star

rating with one or two ways the show's helped you out in life. At the end of each month, we're still doing this for the whole year, for all of 2023, Organifi is going to send you my favorite product from them. It's most likely the Organifi Red. It might be the green, it might be Peak Power, and I'll dive into that in a second. Just by leaving a five-star rating with one or two ways the show's helped you out on iTunes or Spotify. Also leave your Instagram or social media handle. That way my team can get ahold of you easily and get you your, your, your free goodies from Organifi. Thank you Organifi for that. Those are all ways that we help the show grow. And then indirectly, when you support the sponsors of the show, that makes the show fiscally possible. Every one of these sponsors I have handpicked.

My team has really over the years starting to get a feel for what I'm into. I think most of you have been listening to the show for a few years. You know what I'm into and you know that I absolutely give a fuck about the things that I'm talking about here. Organifi has been one of our longest show sponsors.

I've had Drew Canole on the podcast multiple times. I've been on his podcast multiple times. I've had the chance and opportunity to hang out with a lot of employees in that company at Paul Chex events and different events. And I love everything they're doing. I love the joy that they bring to the table. I love the quality of people that they're attracting in

on the inside of that company to run it. And I know they're doing great things and I stand firmly with these guys. They're a part of the squad. And also they continue to innovate. Many of their products, I should say all of their products, taste fantastic and combine several different superfoods and adaptogens that really accomplish way more than the sum of its parts. And the one that I want to talk about today is one called Peak Power. And this was part of a partnership they did with Mind Pump Media, my boys, Sal and Doug and Adam and Justin, old, old friends. And they've come up with a really cool, unique product that has the ability to help you with focus, performance, and hydration.

Performance, where do I want to perform? I want to perform in the gym. I want to perform on a podcast. I want to perform as I'm studying and learning, right? So there's a number of ways that this performance, you know, broadly covers that I think they're super important, but you can take it as a pre-workout. You can take it before a big meeting. You can take it before you've got to cram and digest a lot of information. All of these things matter. And hydration matters. And focus matters, right? So if you think of what's going to peter out when we have a long endurance run, or if we

have a long endurance of studying, it's going to be something along the lines of my brain lost its energy. I lost the ability to focus. And that could be due to lack of hydration. It could be due to not having the right neurochemistry. And this really covers all the bases. Just make sure you're hydrated and make sure that you've got some of the gangbusters ingredients like Bacopa, Monieri, and Neurofactor from organic coffee fruit extract. That's going to increase BDNF. BDNF also doesn't just work for neuroplasticity and how your brain works. It

also helps with recovery. So what Drew had told me in the last part of our podcast was that peak increase BDNF. BDNF also doesn't just work for neuroplasticity and how your brain works. It also helps with recovery. So what Drew had told me in the last part of our podcast was that peak, what they've found out now with the science on peak power is that it shortens your recovery time from workouts. That's incredible, especially if you're learning something new. You take this before jujitsu or MMA or Muay Thai, anything where you've got to learn new skills, you're going to retain that better and you're going to recover from the workout faster, which means you can get back in the gym and get back to practicing

whatever it is that you're trying to, whatever skills you're trying to acquire. So Peak Power, absolutely phenomenal. Check it out at Organifi.com slash KKP. That is O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash KKP and use code KKP at checkout for 20% off. We're also brought to you by one of my favorite new sponsors, Mana Vitality. I'm going to have Brad on the podcast, who's a jujitsu practitioner and one of the co-founders

of this company. So we can deep dive everything that they've sought out to put into here. But Mana is a combination of the highest quality minerals, amino, fulvic, and humic acids and nutrients gathered from some of the highest and lowest, amino, fulvic, and humic acids and nutrients gathered from some of the highest and lowest points on the planet to provide a comprehensive and enhanced mineral matrix. Mana combines the wisdom and practices of ancient medicine with modern science to powerfully restore people's health, balance, and vitality. Look, the deeper you dive into the health and wellness game, the more you come to understand that micros are far outweigh macros, right? And that's kind of the point. I don't want to say

that's the point behind it, if it fits your macros. They're not paying attention to micros. They're paying attention to only macros, but you can get shredded. You can get lean and still not be healthy. I think most of us, if you've been in the game long enough, will come to understand that. And really what it boils down to is, does my body have everything it needs? And a lot of these are the micronutrients. And the micronutrients are quality minerals. They're amino acids. They are fulvic and humic acids. They're all the little pieces that my body takes and says, all right, fuck yeah, I have everything I need to be the very best that I can be. And what's cool about this is similar to the way an adaptogen would work. We don't know how the body responds when it's restored, right?

For me, that might mean increasing my energy. For somebody who's really strung out, it might mean calming them. It might mean bringing peace back into their life. And that's a weird thing to say a supplement can do that, but that is a possibility of actually restoring one's own health. And I think monovitality is one of those unique things that covers so many bases at once. It really is in a category of its own. These are super, super convenient. They're in little foil packs that you recycle. You just

pinch the thing in half and it squirts your dose for the day into whatever you're going to drink. You could shoot it right in your mouth if you want. It's not terrible, but I think throwing it in a coffee or tea is the way to go. It tastes phenomenal in coffee and tea. It's not overpowering. And especially when we have something like caffeine, which is a natural diuretic, I want to make sure I'm restoring.

A lot of people salt their coffee these days. That's cool if you're sodium deficient, but it's not uniquely building all of the micronutrients up at the same time. It's leaning heavily towards the sodium, which is necessary, but not always necessary if you salt your foods like I do. And I think monovitality is making sure that they cover so many bases through the micronutrient standpoint. Truly a fantastic product that you will feel. You'll feel in a matter of hours or you'll feel it in a matter of days as you begin to restore your body's equilibrium and the things that it needs. You're giving it all the micros that your body needs. That pays dividends. It pays dividends in your

workouts. It pays dividends in your mental capacity and it pays dividends in your mood. Like how do I feel? What is the neurochemistry that I'm bringing forward? My body's producing. How does my microbiome operate? all of these things function better when we cover all the bases from a micronutrient standpoint check out monavitality.com that is m-a-n-n-a-v-i-t-a-l-i-t-y.com use code k-k-p for 12% off again monavitality.com and code k-k-p for 12% off everything in the store we're also brought to you by my homies at cureditality.com and code KKP for 12% off everything in the store. We're also brought to you by my homies at curednutrition.com slash KKP. I want to talk to you today about the Cured Nutrition Sleep Bundle.

We all know that a full night of sleep is essential when we're working towards optimizing our overall health. Cured Sleep Bundle, which combines their best-selling Zen and most potent CBN, is the answer to ensuring that you get a full night of sleep every night. Zen is a blend of functional mushrooms, cannabinoids, and adaptogens, while CBN is a lesser-known cannabinoid found in the hemp plant. These supplements were designed to support the two most critical stages of your body's natural sleep cycles, REM sleep and non-REM deep sleep. Cured's raw CBN oil contains 30 milligrams of CBD and 5 milligrams of CBN.

Together, the CBD and CBN create a synergistic whole body effect. When it starts to kick in, you'll notice every inch of your body soften into a deeper state of relaxation, as if you're lying beneath the comfort of a weighted blanket. Once you're asleep, Zen is there to ensure that your body is successful in cycling out of non-REM, deep sleep and into REM and back again. Some people can't fall asleep. Others can't stay asleep. And then there are those that fall asleep and stay asleep, but still struggle to spend enough time in each sleep stage. No matter what is keeping you from true rest and restoration, this sleep bundle is your solution. Think of it as the one-two punch for a body and brain reset. Absolutely love these guys.

I've been doing this for close to two months now. There is absolutely no grogginess. There's no melatonin. It's chronically overdosed in the market and it does make a lot of people groggy. So you get the very best from cannabis plants and you get the very best in restoration. You know, we think about a lot of big, a big selling point in the cannabinoid game

is that we have an endogenous production of these on our own and that we have receptors all through our body, all throughout the nervous system, not just in the brain, but all throughout our entire body for cannabinoids. And when we supplement with these from nature, from an organic source, we're actually aiding the body's ability to take this in and restore itself. And there's no doubt, I mean, this is the very best. We've had a lot of CBD companies come and go and cured nutrition is the top of the line. And like Organifi, they're combining a lot of other great ingredients with these things, with their products. So it's not just cannabinoids and things like that. You're going to get all sorts of other good stuff. The Zen has magnesium, reishi, it's got ashwagandha

and passion flower. All of this stuff is folded in to make a concert of the most beautiful orchestrated night of sleep you've ever expected. Curednutrition.com slash KKP. That is C-U-R-E-D-N-U-T-R-I-T-I-O-N.com slash KKP and use code KKP for 20% off. Last but not least, we got my homie Mark Bell's MindBullet. MindBullet.com. Use code KKP for 20% off. I'm introducing Mark Bell's MindBullet, the ultimate kratom supplement for enhanced focus and mental clarity. Are you looking for a natural way to boost your cognitive function and improve your mental performance? Look no further. MindBullet by Mark Bell is here to revolutionize the way you approach mental focus and clarity. It's packed with the power of premium kratom extract. MindBullet is formulated to provide you with sustained energy, heightened focus, and enhanced mental clarity without the

jitters or crash associated with other stimulants. Kratom, a natural botanical herb native to Southeast Asia, has been used for centuries, if not thousands of years, for its natural properties to support cognitive function and provide a sense of calm and well-being. What sets MindBullet apart is its premium quality and unique formulation. Each capsule or extract is carefully crafted with the finest kratom sourced from trusted suppliers, ensuring the highest standards of purity and potency. Mark Bell, a renowned strength athlete and wellness expert and homie to the show and homie to me personally, has personally curated this supplement to deliver maximum benefits for mental performance and focus. Whether you need to stay sharp at work, crush your workouts, or excel in your studies, MindBullet is the ultimate tool to unlock your brain's full potential. Experience the cognitive enhancing benefits of MindBullet with heightened focus and concentration, improved mental clarity and cognitive function,

enhanced mood and wellbeing, long lasting energy without the crash and a general sense of wellbeing. Like this is one of the things, you know, we would talk about enhanced mood and wellbeing. That can't be overstated. You feel good on this. And that is, there is something to that that really makes it remarkable.

Whether I'm using this for a distance run or for a podcast, like it's a way to just say, all right, this is going to feel good right now. This feels good. And I'm going to have energy while I do that. And it's not going to deteriorate or pull me away from my mental capacity. It's going to heighten that at the same time as creating a euphoria. It's like nothing else.

Check it out. Mindbullet.com. That is M-I-N-D-B-U-L-L-E-T.com. And use code KKP for 20% off and without further ado my brother Guy Senstock. Guy Senstock welcome to the podcast brother. Thank you my friend it's good to see you and it's good to see you I'm looking forward to diving in we we connected we connected uh through through Aubrey and some of the courses and stuff like that and just got a sense a sense of you and I'm like that and just got a sense of you.

And I'm looking forward to getting a deeper sense of you through this. Yeah. I mean, I remember when Aubrey first got ahold of you and he was just blown away. And he actually wanted to do a circling exercise with like a few of the key homies, you know, and he had a small group out at the farm and I got super swamped that week and couldn't make it. But I have since had the opportunity via Fit for Service events to dive deep with you and, you know, in stages as well, where we had done circling and then, you know, Vervakey came out with you the last one and we got to dive into the Dialogos and all the cool stuff. So I want to dive deeply into all that stuff. I think it's, I don't know, I love the fact that life can deliver, you know,

at every turn something that I've never heard of before that's also world-changing where it's like, holy shit, like this, how did I never hear about this before? This is incredible, right? So I appreciate that about life. And then at the same time, when it happens, it's like, holy shit, no one's ever heard of this before. Like, this is, this is amazing. Right. Um, talk about life

growing up. What was life like for you and what kind of shit put you into this path that you're on? Uh, now I joke, I joke that I was so excited about like coming into 3d that I forgot to pick your parents' part. My early ADD, right? Pre-birth ADD. Yeah, I grew up, I was born in Chicago, in the state of Chicago, lived there until I was 12. And both my parents are amazing human beings. Um, everyone who meets them thinks so. And they're just super, they're super likable and, and, and, and right and unique in their, in their, in their own unique way. Um, and they suffered from addiction, um, big time. Uh, so all of the, all of the symptoms the symptoms right that in the drama that ensues from that kind of from addiction basically I experienced with them um and at the same time uh my on my mom's

side uh I had an amazing I had amazing grandfather who grew up in Germany. He was super imaginative and creative, and he had a sense of wonder about him. And I think that my grandfather and my grandmother, although they didn't, I don't think that they were aware completely of what was going on with my parents at the time. I think they had a strong intuition. Because my experience is that that in a certain sense, my grandfather just really poured himself into me, right? From that whole time that I was in Chicago till I was like 12. And I think he really,

really both implicitly and explicitly nurtured a sense of wonder in me. I think that's just kind of native soil for me. I got a lot of that just naturally. And my grandfather had a lot of that. So there is like, he just seemed to have all the cousins and nephews and nieces and stuff like that. He just picked me

and he just poured himself into me. And I think that has a lot to do with, in fact, I'm finding out as time goes on that has more to do with, um, like my ventures into circling and what my life has turned into more than I realized. Um, and you know, in, in what I was dealing with, with my parents, right. It was like a lot of, um, and this also had a lot to do with right. Kind of circling and, and, and particular capacities, right. Out of necessity that I, that I developed. I mean, there was a lot of, my dad had a lot of rage and would get, you know, there was a whole period where he would go into blackouts and come home and essentially like, you know, start beating my mother. And I remember really early on, like kind of sensing I would, I would, when they would fight, I would sense into like the point where he would, um, he like things would escalate where I could just tell like he was going to kill her. And I would, I would time when I would cry, right? Because if I cried, it kind of broke up the energy, right? And they would stop and my

mother would come in and comfort me, right? And, and then they, they go back out and they start fighting again, right? And then I would kind of feel the moment, right. Where we'd get really dangerous and I would, I would say something or I would cry and that, that kind of, you know, and then there was the, then there was the whole part of the next morning of like, you know, being with my mother, right. After all of that. And, you know, she never told it never told this is this was like in the 1970s early 80s in Chicago so like you just didn't talk about that kind of stuff so I was the only one that like knew what was really going on with her right and so there was a kind of like an unhealthy merging that happened between both of us, right. That really made my relationships with women really interesting as I grew up. And I, I think, I think in some, in some ways, you know,

cause I mean, we'll talk about this, but circling has a lot to do with like really deeply attuning, right, into a moment, into a relationship, into a person. And I think I had to just attune into my father's mood, right, and anticipate it and respond to it, right, out of survival. Because i used to remember i could tell just by the way he pulled into the driveway what kind of mood he was in right and i think in some senses that compensation right and that developing that intuitive sense of attunement right had a lot to do actually with my capacity to do that with other people, which I think is actually this has, yeah, has a lot to do with like, like in, I think in a lot of cases, right, what we end up becoming good at in our lives, right? For many people have to do with these kind of weird, like these, these survival mechanisms, right? And these compensations and strategies and stuff like that. And when we get

older, right? We can, we can, we can, rather than those being out of the context of fear, right? Oftentimes they, we can use those like capacities, right? From a context of love and they become a real gift. I think that's what's happened for me in a big, in a big way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. It's a weird, it's a weird thing to look back. It takes some time, you know, to, to, to move through life and then to be able to look back on the, every strife and every trouble that we experienced, especially as an innocent little kid and to let that come full circle and see that there's a gift in all of it. You know, there is something there, there was, there was medicine in it, you know,

it's a fucking mind fuck. But at the same time, that is how we – a lot of our gifts come from that as well. Totally, totally. And then I would say like the – and also, I mean, I think for a lot of like – a lot of reasons that would have been the case anyways, but also because of my environment where I grew up, I had the hardest time at school. Like I had the hardest time at school. I mean, I have ADHD and, um,

and, um, uh, I had severe OCD when I was a kid and, uh, I, I like had all kinds of learning disabilities and they would like, I was, you know,

carted from school to school. Right. Cause no one could get me to basically pay attention long enough. Cause I was so in my, I was so in a fantasy land. Right. My imagination was like definitely the place that I, I, I hung out in, right? Big time. And so no one actually could get me to really read until I was, I probably didn't start reading until I was like 11. Um, and I had a, uh, fortunately I had, I had, um, mainstreamed into a regular school and had a special ed teacher by the name of Mrs. Brutches. I got her right before she retired.

And she somehow took me in. I don't know how she did this, right? But somehow she got me to read. She, I think she figured out how to like, basically, teach me how to read with my right brain or something. I'm not sure. I don't know if that makes sense. I've later, you know, now I read philosophy and I'm totally into like really heavy duty kind of intellectual stuff um and i uh and and in teaching people how to circle right i would i started in the early

days i started giving them these texts that ended up like were life-changing for me and they're you know and and they receive it in horror. They're like, what the hell are you giving us? Like being in time and like, they're like, why are we reading this? Right. When we're, I'm like, isn't it obvious? And I think, um, I think, I think I I've come to recognize that something about learning how to read late and kind of orienting to reading, I think through the right hemisphere of my brain, reading just ended up being something that was a real experience for me. It took me a while to realize that not everyone has that experience.

But that was a big part of my life, right, is coming to learn in the way that I can understand to learn. And so that was super important for me. Mrs. Bruch's, she kind of basically saved my life, I think. And then I would say the other formative thing that was early on, the gift, right? In some sense, the breaking point for me and also the gift for me, right, was when my parents got sober when I was 12. And, and essentially, they, they couldn't, they realized that they couldn't stay sober in Chicago. There were just too many triggers there for them. They had lived there their whole life. And so they decided to move from Chicago to this little hoedunk town right outside of Sedona, right? Cottonwood, Arizona. I know Cottonwood. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I lived there for like three years and then I moved to Prescott,

right? Graduated high school in Prescott, Arizona. And I remember leaving Chicago, right? Although I didn't have language for it at the time, right? Leaving Chicago meant leaving my grandparents, right? And going with these crazy people, right? Because many sober alcoholics will tell you the only worst thing that a wet alcoholic is a, is a newly dry one. But my parents, so, so when we moved, I, I actually at like 12 experienced an existential crisis. Like I, I kind of had this, this experience of kind of like the ontological floor just dissolving in some sense. And I, and I would have panic attacks and that's when I kind of started to have OCD things go on with me. Right. And I think,

I think what the OCD part was like, was kind of trying to create some kind of cognitive raft, right. And a sea of disorientation. Um, and so that was really intense for me, right? When we first moved to Arizona and at the same time, my parents really got involved in Alcoholics Anonymous and like 12 step programs. And, and so at 12 years old, I started to be exposed to people that were in a deeper conversation. And I remember specifically right when we moved to Arizona, walking out on our front porch, and either my parents, was they were actually having an AA meeting or they had a bunch of their new AA friends over and they were just talking but I remember walking outside and tuning into the conversation that they were having and it was the first conversation that I think I had ever, ever experienced that wasn't about gossiping or talking about like, like what you have or don't have or what we should have or what you should do or not do. Right. it was the first time I think I ever experienced a conversation that in some sense presenced what

was not in the foreground, but presence, what was in the background. Right. And like people talking about how they felt, right. How they saw things. And I had never experienced anything like that. But I distinctively remember tuning into that conversation and got right away that it was, that it was a different world, right? Whatever was going on in that conversation was a, it was a different cosmos. And I kind of got this sense that whatever it was that they were addressing in that conversation had something to do with this bottom dropping out, like, like anxious feeling in my stomach. Right. And so I just tuned into that conversation in some sense, I, I went in and

sat down and I've, I haven't come out since really. Um, and I think, I think that that was my first like initiation into like an explicitly, um, an explicitly deeper, uh, way of relating to the world, um, in a big way. And, and I, I would say that, that that was super, super formative for me, super formative for me. And, and so I kind of grew up in some, in some senses, those were all the people that I wanted to hang out with, right? Like I didn't quite, I didn't really connect much with the people at school and, you know, junior high and high school, although I played football and I lifted weights and I did all that kind of stuff,

right? Um, the people that I really connected with were the, were my parents' friends. Um, and so I would hang out with them during the weekend. Right. And I would, so, you know, at age 13, I'm like having like deep talks about reality, right. With people, you know, you know, where these people became some of my best friends. And I think that there was a certain kind of wonder I had and interest that I think that was nurtured by my grandfather, that I think that people sensed my listening and

it evoked the best out of them. And so people would just kind of, I had different adults, right. From, you know, in my, in my teen years that would just basically kind of take me under their wing and they would just pour themselves into me. Right. Um, and I always thought, I always thought that that was, I was a super fortunate and lucky to have that, which I still think that. But I've come to realize in the last number of years that I think one of the things I wasn't accounting for was that there was a kind of listening that I had that really drew that out in people that I didn't quite totally understand. Because it was something that was pretty innocent for me. But I would say that like, you know, in, you know, from,

from all through my teens, all the way up to, to graduating high school and then going to art school in San Francisco, you know, all of that influenced like a deeper, like a deeper, you know, a sense of the deeper ground to reality and an interest in that, right? In ways of apprehending that and ways of relating to that, right? From an early age. And so when I moved to San Francisco and started going to art school, I met people that were having an even deeper conversation and they were doing drugs, right? And so when I moved to San Francisco, right i moved to san francisco right i started to realize there

was this whole world i didn't know about right called psychedelics and and so in my early 20s is when i started i like i i did mushrooms for the first time and i did lsd and um i started meeting people that were just in these kind of wild, like in these wild kind of groups and these different forms of therapy and like, you know, all kinds of transpersonal psychology and all of that, I had come to become friends with a man by the name of Jerry Candelaria, who essentially, like, he had been training to become, like, a landmark forum leader. And he had done all of these kind of programs from an early, you know, like, in his early teens. And we had met, and he recognized something in me and we kind of co-recognized each other and became really, really good friends. And then, um, he took me to my first birding man. Uh, well, actually he didn't take me to my first birding man, my first birding man. Um, I went to right after I moved to San Francisco, and it was 1995. And I didn't realize that I had actually gone to Burning Man before when I went

in 1998. Because we just went one Sunday, I went with my roommates. And all I know is it was dark. It was the desert. There was crazy music. And then we left. And when I went back in 1998, I'm like, wait a minute. I've been here before. but, but when, when, when Jerry took me in 1998, um, we ended up having an experience with a group of, a group of friends of ours that I would say was the, was really the first, the first experience of where circling emerged. Um, and it was, it was basically like an experience of, of like a 12 hour experience, um, with this

group of friends that started off with like, you know, a couple of people were, had a conflict with each other. And then Jerry and I just really got, we all ended up, we all ended up, and if you go to Burning Man, you'll kind of get, you'll kind of get this, but we ended up way in the middle of the play, like some, somewhere way out in the distance underneath, like a kind of get you'll kind of get this but we ended up way in the middle of the ply like some somewhere way out in the distance underneath like a kind of fractal teepee thing sitting in a circle right and jerry and i just got interested in the conflict and the conversation ended up going really deep and it it pretty, like within minutes left the level of the conflict and it just started to, you know, went around to each person. And we had this experience of, I would say it was kind of like,

it was kind of like everyone started to relate to that person in such a way that the deepest, most beautiful, inexhaustible element in them got kind of, we drew it out and we all saw it, right? And then we put it back in and then it went to the next person, right? And afterwards, Jerry and I were walking away from that experience, you know, 12 hours later. And Jerry and I in particular right noticed it and and it was something like it was this this feeling of like where we we pointed back where we were at we didn't have a word right for what we had just experienced but it was something like it was something like whatever happened back there was deep and profound in a way distinct from all the other deep and profound things we were experiencing at the time.

And it really caught us. And we kind of recognized it. And we spontaneously just turned and faced each other and spontaneously just shook on it and committed to it. We had no idea what it meant. We didn't know what we were committing to. And out of that handshake, right. Um, circling, circling came into being and, you know, with it, I would say about eight years, um, it's, it started to, it started to happen all around the world. And that ended up, I had no knowledge at the time.

I had no idea what that meant, that that would basically mean, that that would define the direction of my life since. Yeah. Yeah, it's bananas to think of. I mean, my mind's all over the place listening. I'm also trying to just listen and not let my mind wander. But there are many similarities. I've been going to AA meetings since I was three years old. So one of my parents was in. And that too, to me, the moment you said that, there's a different conversation happening here I remember the first time like asking my mom I was like they're talking about like like the worst parts of their their life they're talking about like whatever rock bottom is for each of them individually like you get to sit and listen to that and that's like for a fucking three-year-old's ears you know you're you're hearing you're hearing everything you know waking up naked next to five guys you don't know

whatever that you know like you know those stories go naked next to five guys you don't know, whatever that, you know, like, you know, those stories go. But that was a differentiator from like, especially with how people in general talk to kids, you know, like they keep it PG and just leave it at a certain level. It was like, that blew the roof off of that for me. You know, like there are experiences, profound and negative, you know,

that are just in a whole different category of existence that are far beyond my purview right now. But that was a good, it helped me track, you know, kind of my own, my own numbing. I use that as like a cord, you know, when I was, when I was drinking a lot more and things like that in college, I went to school at Arizona state. So we were, we were partying hard and thankfully got introduced to plant medicines, which really shifted and allowed me to pull myself out of that. I could see clearly like, oh shit, yeah,

I have been numbing for quite a long time and all those things. But having experience circling, it is one of those things, like the first time you have a deep dive with psychedelics or you do holotropic breath work or you go to the darkness and your fucking pineal gland gets lit and you can see everything in the dark, you know, like your visionary state, uh, vision quest, no food, no water for four days.

However you get there into that altered state. Um, there's a, there's a point of recognition. I feel like I, Oh, I remember this place. Like there's something about it that's familiar. It's not like, it could be way the fuck out there, but there's still a part of it that feels like home. And it's significant in that like every cell of me is alive and awake and attuned to this right now. Like I am fully in it, I'm fully engaged. And I think, you know, having had so many

of those experiences and really track, like what are the different ways? Can I go to darkness? Can I go to the breath work? How deep can I go in the breath work? How does, you know, how does that differ from ayahuasca versus psilocybin versus MDMA? And that's been a big part of my life

and a big part of, you know, what we're doing at Fit for Service is trying to find these things and then give that to the people, whatever's legal. You know, like we're not giving them plant medicines, but if we can go deep on the breath, we'll do it. We can go deep in ecstatic dance, we'll do that. We had our first sweat lodge with a beautiful medicine woman from Ecuador who poured sweat on the land. And like, that's a profound experience, a challenging one. When we first got,

when I first got to circle with you and Kathy, I was just like, I wanted to, part of me was like in so present and could feel, you know, that same gauge getting lit up, like was just like, I wanted to say, part of me was like in so present and could feel, you know, the, that same gauge getting lit up, like, holy shit, this matters. Holy shit. I'm here. I'm hearing it, you know? And then, and then if the recognition of that also pulls me out of the flow of being in that. So I've kind of oscillate back and forth between, holy shit, this is a big deal into like just being in the deal. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. But it, but it, it, it, it, it basically for me, it, it drew up a lot of the same feelings, you know, like the first time I had ayahuasca, I wanted to stand on

a mountain and be like, this shit exists. Like, holy shit, this, this exists. Like, wow. You know, and that's, that's exactly how I felt with circling. I was like, I got to call my wife. Like, this is, this is, this is incredible. Yeah, totally. What was the, what, what do you think was about it? Like, like, like we had, I know we did those presence exercises, right? Like being with you, I noticed in the back and forth. Right. And then we did the, we did like, like asking a deepening question and what, what was the thing that like, what was the thing where you contacted the real, like what, how would you describe it? What was it? Yeah. I think, you know, if I had,

if I had a mountain of clothes on that I had put on and you could, whatever, you know, protection, persona, any of these different masks and things, right? That we kind of have as like a buffer. Hey, this is your lane. This is my lane kind of thing. Every round we went through, we just took off a layer of clothing. You know, it's like strip communication.

You know, like we just had to peel off a layer and peel off a layer. And at a certain point, I could recognize the deepening and the knee-jerk response from me to be like, oh no, they're going to see me or, oh no, I don't want to go that far. It was palpable. I could be like, but it was acceptable rather. Like I could feel it coming and I just, and it was like, oh, that's okay. That's okay.

We can go deeper. That's okay. It was like walking into the ocean. You know, it was like, I can walk, I can walk in a little deeper. I can walk in a little deeper until, you know, you're so far in it and it was just like, I can walk in a little deeper. I can walk in a little deeper until you're so far in it. And it was just like, there's something happening here that is really transcending anything. I mean, I was thinking about it from a coach's standpoint.

We've never offered anything like this. And then on a personal level, I was like, I don't think I've ever experienced anything like this. Because even in a group ceremony and ayahuasca, that's still noble silence. I'm still in my lane. I'm in my place. And I may connect to somebody else and may even share a vision with somebody else, but I'm still in my space, you know? And it's, and it's, and it's that way on MDMA, like a couples therapy thing. Like we're going to bounce back and forth on some questioning, but, and, and it, because our hearts are open and because we're

trying to get to the truth, there's a deeper level of communication than we would experience, you know, in everyday waking consciousness. But what this was accessing sober, I was like, wow, you know, like I just, I didn't think that'd be the case. And then what I've loved too, is that every time we've had the ability to go through this with you. And then, and then recently, you know, with, with, uh, with you and Vervakey where we added a whole different element, like that, that to me, I just continues to blow my mind. It was like, again, like, wow. And I remember telling Godsey is like, we had this on day one in Montana. There's no opener we've ever done. We could have started with breath work,

but it wouldn't, it still wouldn't hold a candle to what we had just done together. We had really gone deep with everyone. Yeah, totally. Totally. I think you're pointing to something that I found too, which is interesting. There's something rare right about going deep in relation right because a lot of times relationship and and i think one of the reasons why like in ayahuasca ceremonies they have

you stay in your own lane right there's a certain sense of like you all do it together but there's an element of like this is about you and your experience, right? Like, and we're relating would be something like a distraction. Cause it, cause oftentimes I think relationships are that for us, right? They're like, they're, they're oftentimes a distraction. And I would say a lot of, in many cases cases relationship for us are do nothing but keep going normative if you will right um but i think what we stumbled on was circling right was this this way where it's like we usually think of relationship is is like at the horizontal dimension, right? And usually what people that we call close to us, what that means most of the time,

I think for most people is the people I'm close with are the people in which I share some kind of history with, right? Like we go through time and like we go through this together and we share this together. And the relationship in some sense is given by like a, just a shared history. And that's the horizontal dimension, but there's a whole vertical dimension, right? A vertical, a verticality, an upper or a depth dimension that, uh, that I think is a lot more rare. Right. And, and I think I would imagine in some sense, in some sense, like the kind of the

psychedelic aspect, I've heard that from a lot of people, right. They're, they're struck by like how psychedelic feeling, right. Uh, as like like circling can be or that kind of space and i think i think one of the ways to kind of describe that is because when you start to relate right in not just not just the back and forth right of the horizontal but doing that in such a way that it opens up right dimensions that you didn't understand or you didn't know and circling i would say is really about is really about um harnessing it's about harnessing that capacity for relationship to be not just holding up what's normal, right? But can be transformative.

And which makes a lot of sense, right? When you think about it, especially, you know, it's funny, I have a 20-year-old and I have a two-year-old. So I'm re-experiencing right now, you know, like a little guy. And, you know, doing it older, I saw this the first time, but I'm really seeing it much more this time. What degree, to what degree, like we we are relationship all the way down right like it's funny when you think about when you think about human beings are really unique this way and that we are i can't think of anything more helpless and vulnerable than a, than a human infant. I can't think of anything, right.

More, more dependent, right. On their, on their caregivers. Right. Um, like, cause the human infant comes out and we can kind of, we can, we can, we can maybe poop and, and, and, and suck, but we don't always, well, we have no idea what to suck, right? Like everything, right. Um, everything for us, right. Is about the relationship in the, in, in like the, in provided by that relationship. And I have to say that like watching Teague, my two-year-old this past couple of years, just really appreciated, right, to what degree he is swimming in intersubjectivity, right? Like he spends, I would say between two and eight hours a day on someone's lap, facing them, doing these kind of like weird, playful, kind of babbling, coordinated back and forth, right? This kind of back and forth thing that's going on, right? With me, with his mom, with his grandparents, right? And he's not going to be able, you know,

he won't be able to kind of have any kind of self reflexivity till he's probably like four or five. And but when when he's finally being going to be able to say I and know it's him. Right. When he reflects back on himself and he's able to like say I, that I is literally provided to him through all of these relationships that he's been swimming in, right? Throughout. And, and it's interesting because I, I think I've, um, it's hard to, it's hard to overemphasize um how much relationships in our lives are probably the most meaningful things to us right and both both positively and negatively right we're the most like right we're the most enlightened through like relationships people can like people can can be profoundly positive have in like impacts on us

right like like having a mentor or a best friend and like that deeper connection like can be so forming to us in a positive way and conversely right like when relationships go south it can be the most harmful to us the most traumatic right like if i if if uh you know if a tree falls falls down on me and breaks my leg most likely i'm going to be not happy about that it's going to hurt like hell but i'm probably not going to be emotionally traumatized from it but But, but if, but if my friend comes up to me and he makes the same injury with a, like, with, with, with, with a hammer to my leg, like I'm going to have the same injury and I'm going to be completely fucked up, right. Emotionally and traumatized. Right. It's, it's hard to, it's, it's hard to, to, to overemphasize

like to what degree we are and continue to become ourselves in and through relation. And in fact, I'd say like, I actually heard a study the other day, and I thought this was really, really kind of pointed, it hones in on this point where they did this experiment, they would ask them questions like, who are you? What do you think? What do you feel? Where are you headed in your life? All questions that evoke agency, that you need agency to be able to answer. And what they found is that the longer that people were in isolation, the less that they could answer those questions. It's really interesting to think about that. Because we normally think about like, well, to be agentic is to really is to be solo, right? Is to know who we are in and of ourselves. But I think this really shows to what degree actually

there is no such thing as for us as isolation, right? Or being distinguishable from relationships. Like we recognize ourselves in the I-thou exchange, right? And I think we continue to do so throughout our lives. And I think what circling does is in, you know, all this being said, it's really interesting to me that there hasn't been a practice up until circling that I can tell that makes the vertical dimension, right, of intersubjectivity, of relationship, an actual practice, right? And I think that essentially if you took circling and you just basically boiled it down, right? It just basically makes the fundamental unit of I-Thou relation and turns

it into a series of like metaphorically speaking asanas right or postures right asanas of listening asanas of attention asanas of presence right um that we get together and we go we we practice going deeper into these stretches right and and really really work that muscle, right. And open up in those ways and kind of isolate those capacities. And so that, so that you can, so that you can actually have those kinds of conversations and, and relationships with people by choice. Cause I think a lot of times we, a lot of times people will have deep connections with other people and moments of intimacy that are really profound.

But they don't really know how they got there, right? A lot of times it's like it was just fortunate or by chance. But with Circling, it's like you really develop the skills and the capacities so that you can do it intentionally and that's really the i think that's really the key with it yeah it's a massive key i thought just just as you were speaking i was like i can probably count on one hand how many really transformative talks i've had you know with my wife or with, with, with, with my sister, you know, as somebody that's been close to me and, and, and been with me for a long time, still probably only on one hand. And it is, there's a sense of like, when it finishes, cause the same feelings come up, like, holy shit, this is deep. Holy shit. This matters. And

you know, to use Mark Gaffney's language, like you're on the inside. Like one of the faces of Eros is being on the inside. We're on the inside. We're that deep when we're doing circling. And previous conversations, if I had found myself on the inside, it was almost just like, how did I stumble here? Like, how did I get here?

Holy shit, that was something. And then it's just, it's not forgotten quickly. Like, especially the more transformative it is, the more we hold that memory, but time goes on and there's no real recipe to get back. You know, there's no like, well, you know, we, you know, maybe we had five grams of mushrooms and at the five hour mark, cause it was dissipating, you know, we had a little tobacco and then that opened up a three hour window for the conversation. Let's try that again. That's a heavy investment to try to recreate. Right, right.

Totally. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It took me a long time to be able to even begin explicating, right, what had become really implicit in circling. Like, I'll never forget the first time I realized that Jerry and I had no idea that we knew how we did what we did when we circled was the moment, was the, was the day one of our first, um, facilitator training program that we had started. Like we walked out, right.

Thinking, well, we'll just teach these people. And like, within a few minutes Jerry and I kind of both panicked because we realized we had no idea how we did what we did when we circled, right? It was, a lot of it was just implicit and intuitive, but to try to explicate it, right? So, so we, so for the first number of years, we just circled the shit out of everyone and just hoped for the best. And I'd say, I'd say in some cases that worked out really well. In other cases that didn't work out so well, but, but I would say over about like the five or six year mark, um, I'd been doing it long enough, right. To where

just watching it over and over and over and over again. Um, I started to kind of do what, you know, like what attention does, right. Is it notices patterns, right. And so like over and over and over again, I just started to see, um, some of the underlying logic of the process and, and, and then seeing it and then being able to put language, we go just the beginning of putting language on it. When that happened, I was like, okay, now I can, I think I can genuinely teach this. And those early, that early seeing was the beginning of what is what were to become the seven

stages of circling. Or you could think of them as stages, or you can think of them as like facets, right, of a diamond, which really kind of like circling is a whole, but there's an underlying logic to intimacy. There's an underlying logos to it right and with each stage right um is comes with um you could say invokes and calls forth qualities of being in particular virtues, right? Each stage has its own unique kind of set of capacities, right?

That that stage really demands for it to be done well or being able to, to, to relate in that way. And so our training is we take, you know, we have a year long training to teach people how to facilitate it, and it's a series of essentially seven weekends. And we take each stage and each weekend we dive really deep into those capacities. And then, right, six weeks later we go to the next stage, right,

and then they practice in between all of those things. Right. Um, and it's funny because it's, it's, it's, it's such a pair, like relationship is such a paradox in this way. Um, and I've, I found, I found people learning this is, has a bunch of paradoxes involved because although there are there are skills right to relationship that you can learn right there's like ways of there's ways of communicating and ways of saying things right in ways of paying attention and all that kind of stuff that that um are skills that you can learn. I don't think to my estimation,

relationship and relating in itself is a skill. I think it's a capacity, right? Like, in fact, if people learn all of the, like the communication skills, but they don't develop the capacity to relate, it just ends up looking really weird and kind of creepy, actually. So what I've come to realize in 25 years of training is there are these skills that you develop. However, when you develop a capacity, now you're talking about a developmental process, right? Like a personal development process. And so, so much of learning how to circle well, which is learning how to circle well, which is learning how to relate well, has to do with kind of confronting barriers in yourself, right?

That have you not be able to listen, right, as deeply as you would want to listen, right? right that that don't that that don't like different things that come up that prevent you from really being able to open up to another person's emotions right and not not know where to go with them right like and be able to like to really open up and lean into and relate to those those kinds of things it's like that that capacity to do that is, the process of learning how to do that is one-in-one consistent with the process of self-development. It's a process really learning how to circle well is really a process of personal development big time. Yeah, that makes sense as you expand, you know, what is the self? What is the I? You know, and we understand the relational nature, the interdependent nature of all existence

that makes a world of sense. Even when you were talking about the study, I was thinking, and maybe I'm just stretching here, but I was thinking during the study, you know, isolation in a cell, solitary confinement is probably isolation, different than isolation in nature. You know, you go on a vision quest, you tie your tobacco prayers ties, but you're surrounded by the outdoors, you know, for better or worse, sun, you know, rain, snow, animals, they're all there, but you're also connected. You know, you feel that connection, but their answers would differ if they had spent 30 days in nature with, with where they're at and what their trajectory is in life versus 30 days in nature with where they're at and what their

trajectory is in life versus 30 days in solitary confinement. Totally. Yeah, totally. I have a question for you. How does circling differ from what you put us through with John Vervaeke? Because there are some similarities to it I want to point to, but one of the ones that really stuck out to me was you talked about setting the table. You're not going to light the fire, you're just going to set it up. And I'd love for you to break that down because in many ways, I think that's what's happening in circling through these seven facets. You've set the stage and as you go through them, something beyond that starts to speak through. Yeah, totally. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's interesting because it's like, um, you know, Martin Buber talks about this, you know, uh, Martin Buber is a, a, uh,

he kind of made the, the, the, the phrase I thou, right. Famous. He was kind of a Jewish theologian, philosopher, right? I think he did his work, you know, in starting in like 1920s and up and through the 50s and 60s. And he talked about, right, that there are existentially, right, we are a relationship, right? And he says that we're in one of two relationships. We're either in an I-thou relationship or an I-it relationship. And the way he would talk about it is that like, when we are in an I-it relationship, I'm relating to whatever it is, a table, a chair, a person, as a means to my own end. Right? So I'm relating to you, right, as a means to something beyond you. Right?

Right? You are a means to an end however when i'm relating to and as he would say it's much rare to have an i thou encounter where i relate to you not as a means to an end but as an end in yourself right and he says that and he talks about this that like when you um relate to another in their own intrinsic legitimacy, their own unique otherness, right? It's kind of like in some sense you're – and what that means, I think, another way of looking at it is how to get at that is like, for example, you and I can sit across from each other and for a thousand years, describe everything that we can describe in our experience and everything in our mind. And we can share everything about us for a thousand years, 2000 years. And we'll never get, we'll never exhaust ourselves, right? We'll never get to the bottom of ourselves, right? We are not at the

deepest level human beings, right? There isn't a human being that is a thing or a concept or anything that anyone can possess or sum up, right? This is why I think judgment often hurts so bad, right? Because in judgment, I'm kind of summing you up and I'm kind of saying, this is all you are and I'm the authority to say so, right? There's something about that when we do that, like it's just, it hurts. And I think it hurts because it's not, it's going against, right, what's actually the case, which is, although as a human being, there is this element where, like, there are things I say, there are things that you can understand about me. There's, like, my appearance. There's what I think.

There's what I feel. Right? There's a huge element of me that shines forth right into eminence if you will that I can relate to and point to and have thoughts about and define and all that kind of stuff but there's also right an element of um I shine forth into appearance, but I also, there's also an element that withdraws into the mystery, right? And I would say that like, when you're in an I-Thou relationship,

you really are in some sense in profound relationship with that mystery, right? You're really holding like you are a legitimate other. You are other than me, right? And therefore, the appropriate way to behold you, right, is in your absolute dignity, right? And to directly address you with my words and to directly listen to you

as a legitimate, inexhaustible fount of intelligibility if you will right um and it's you can kind of hear it it's got that sense of that like inexhaustible right inexhaustibleness right it's really easy to see that in our, in our kids, right? Like in little kids, there's, we can tune right into that. Like little babies around, like the whole room, like within an hour is just going to be around that baby, like sinking in. And we, I think we really feel that kind of sense of like, there is something deeply, deeply mysterious and also undefinable,

right? At the bottom of our being that that that we can just kind of we can just dissolve into right and so you know to really kind of relate to you as an i thou right to really listen to you. I think when I really listen to you in that way, I don't think he would say, you're not exercising or you're not demonstrating this skill, right? When you deeply listen to another person in that way, you're, you're, you're, you're evoking an inside of a, of a genuine experience, a genuine encounter, right? Um, and you can comport yourself, right? Um, for an I-Thou relationship, right? You can, you can, you can situate yourself you can you can plant the seeds you can tend to the garden right but you ultimately can't grow the garden the garden just happens right by some kind of grace you can water everything in just the right time put the right fertilizer in all

that kind of stuff but when it comes down to it when the garden grows it's not something you did right you set the conditions of its possibilities right but like there's this element you can't really say like i performed the garden right and in many ways right circling and and in dialectic into dialogos right uh like in dialectic is the thing that we can do it's like setting the container setting up the the positions performing each role that's all like tending to the garden but whether or not intimacy happens or dialogos happens, right, is really, is not up to us in some sense. We are graced with it in some way. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an experience of genuine being, right? That I don't think we could say that like oh i just demonstrated you know

performing dialogos good no i demonstrated my ability to be fucking like struck right and and and um and blown away right by, by something so genuine. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. When, when did the dialectic come along? Because you had talked about, you know, the beginning of circling really needing its time to refine and watching it was the best way through observation that you started to pence out and be able to, to feel into what were these steps that are necessary. And, and at what point did you, cause you, you know, you, you talked about, you know, the books that you were giving out, like, Hey, this will help you, you know, it's self-evident, those kinds of things.

To me, when I think of the experience of the dialectic and even having Kathy, you know, as a partner during that, she said she had always avoided that because the philosophy felt so male, masculine, heavy, right. And then, and then, you know, she's a, she's does circling with you, said she had always avoided that because the philosophy felt so male masculine heavy right and then and then you know she's a she's does circling with you you know she's fucking got it and then she's kind of always avoided that one piece until she went through and she was like holy shit you know like like and that was right there with her holy shit totally yeah totally yeah so do you so do you logo started to happen um So a couple of things to go back a little bit. So a big part of when circling first started to happen,

right at that time, for reasons that I don't quite totally understand, I got completely struck by and obsessed with Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher. And just for people that know philosophy, like Heidegger is probably the most difficult philosopher to read and understand. He's just really, he's really, really difficult to understand. And with me and all my reading disabilities, I don't know, I don't know what got into me, but I, a friend of mine had a book of Martin Heidegger on his table. And I ended up just being really struck

by something in Heidegger and all the continental philosophers and phenomenologists and stuff like that. And so in very early on with circling, I would read Heidegger and then I go out and circle and then I come back and I go to Barnes and Noble and read Heidegger and drink coffee. And then I go in circle and I go back and forth, right. And it, and it didn't dawn on me for about three, so three years later, the connection between the two, um one day, I just overheard somebody talk, and I realized kind of the lingo around circling, right, the jargon around circling was very Heideggerian. I was like, wait a minute.

Oh, oh, I see. It snuck in there. Right. But how it snuck in there was, was that, you know, in some sense, you know, to read Heidegger is very, is like reading a koan in some sense. Right. Like, you don't understand a koan by, by grokking the information presented, right? You go through something, right? It's a wrestling match, right? And you kind of grapple with it, and then something breaks open, and you kind of get it. But it's this kind of thing you undergo in a koan. And very much the same way i think my experience with

with heidegger and a lot of the the phenomenologists um that there was a there was a way of understanding right that was going along these thinking paths and phenomenology, right, is really like an investigation of what is most near. In fact, what is, and oftentimes what is most mysterious to us, right, isn't the thing beyond the horizon. It's the thing concealed in its obviousness, right? It's like perception, like thinking, right? It's like, like perception, like thinking, right? Like, like if you, you know, I know how to think, but if you ask me how I think, this is the first time I realized I have no idea how I think, right? Like, or how I perceive or what perception is, right? These things are, I use all the time. Like my whole life is about that, but there's a profound mystery right to um in depth to these

things that when i try to look at them explicitly i realize i have no idea right what's going on with them and phenomenology is you could say is a way of really hearkening to that like innermost concealed dimension of our experience and teasing it out right into the open. Now, interesting, that kind of starts to sound like intimacy, doesn't it? And I would say that through reading Heidegger and these people was a kind of training in a way of thinking and perceiving, a way of thinking and perceiving a way of thinking and perceiving that when I would like participate in circling right it it helped me evoke evoke this sense of

that the thing that's important is probably the thing that is uh is we're probably looking at right in right at the face and we're not seeing it right like and just being oriented that way right is is is is the realm of intimacy and so kind of fast forward so that's my that's my kind of personal that's my that's my personal um kind of evocation into philosophy and so years later right um i think it's i think i've known john for about i think three or four years um i i basically started a podcast and my i think my second interview was with John Verbeke. And for those of you who don't know, John Verbeke, he's a, uh, he's a, he's a, uh, a, he's head of the cognitive, um, science department at University of, of, of Toronto. He's, uh, he's a, uh, a published and renowned, of, of cognitive science and, and philosophy.

He's got multiple degrees. He's, he's, John's got a mind that's just like, you can feel the fire in his mind is just unbelievable. Right. I think people that we're going to look back and, and, and John's going to be, he's going to be, you know, he's going to be seen in the ranks of like aristotle or plato i think he's that i think he's that profound in what what he's got a hold of um and he's really open-minded right so he just doesn't stay in his academic world right he's really open to, especially in his way, what he's gotten famous for publicly is his work on what he calls the meaning crisis. From John's view, in John's view, we like the world,

and this is, this is a 2000 year process, right uh we've kind of dropped into a profound like especially in modernity a profound loss of meaning right with the loss of the viability of religion and all kinds of things and this like the science that that he's in John's view, the thing that's most important for human beings is having a sense of meaning, right? In fact, we'll give up our own comfort for meaning, right? Like we'll be willing to experience like lots of pain if it's meaningful enough to do so, right? And yet the structures of meaning, right, in our culture and historically have really broken down.

And so he did a 50 lecture series on YouTube called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. And so right, I think he was like an episode 25 of that when I had my interview with him and we just hit it off right away. And he had been doing, he had been doing lots of podcast interviews and stuff like that. And, and, and we had a conversation and at the end of it, he was like, I've done a lot of podcast interviews. So this was really, really different. And he's like, what is that difference? Right. And so we kept, we kept, we kept talking. And then what ended up happening is we would get into these just just incredible dialogues. Right. Where we experienced this kind of profound intimacy that we experienced in circling. But with this kind of philosophical depth and kind of spiritual realization in and through it.

And we kept experiencing that. And then we were having that with other people and then having, and we, then we started having, bringing, you know, more people together and having a four-way conversation with Christopher, Christopher Massapietro and people like Jordan Hall.

And we would start riffing and have the same experience. And along the way, in a text message, I talked about the dialogue we just had, and I said, that was a great dialogue. And John said, I think we need to call it dialogos, right? Playing on really like expleting the word logos, right? Playing on really explet, like expleting the word logos, right? Um, uh, and dia meaning through, so through logos. Um, and so you could say that you could say that, that we can, we can dialogue or have dialectic. We can perform that. We can do that. But at a certain point, right, something catches, right?

And when it catches fire is that moment where we're no longer just talking about something. We're no longer just exchanging propositions. Something's caught fire, right? And we're all lifted. And all of a sudden, we are saying stuff that we don't that we didn't know and we didn't know how we knew right where where the the sum is well beyond right the sum of the parts right does not account for to the degree of insight that's been that starts going on and you could say that like we go from we go from um go from talking about the logos to actually speaking it right

where we in some sense have the experience of where the logos begins to speak through us um and so we started so john and I and many other people started to recognize this phenomenon and we started putting language around it. Um, and then not long after that, we, uh, we started a course called dot, um, circling into dialogos. And I think we've had seven of them so far uh and they're all on zoom and what what that course is is uh it's it's you know john john has a notion of what he calls um an ecology of practices right and it's the sense of like from john's point of view the ecology of practices and in some sense speaks to um where before religion may be right and and so what we do in the course is there's a series or an ecology of practices that end up into what we call dialectic in the dialogos

practice the first the first uh the first set of practices have to do with mindfulness then the second set of practice has to do with um philosophical contemplation um then we go into three hours of circling. Then we go into, um, uh, something called philosophical fellowship. And then we end up in the final day. We do two, two rounds of dialogue, um, dialectic into dialogos. And what we do in dialectic into dialogos and each, so each phase like feeds into the, to the next and so by the time by the time we do dialectic into dialogos right like we're kind of grounded in the sense of

mindfulness right we have a sense of uh um a sense of contemplation where we've contemplated what like what is what is ineffable? To we've experienced this intimacy together, to the philosophical friendship. And then, so by the time we kind of do the dialectic and the dialogos, we are, in some sense, we're fully optimized for that encounter. And so just things kind of just explode from there. And dialectic and idilogos is basically where we start with a virtue or where the group of four people picks a virtue that they want to discuss. And essentially each person goes around and says, they, they have a shot in saying,

um, they make a proposal about what that virtue is, right? So courage is da, da, da, da, da. And then you have, you have the, the listener or the, the Socratic midwife who, as you're making the proposal is, is drawing out the fullness, um, of your proposal, right? And then at the end of that, then the listener becomes the one who proposes, right? And they usually draw, they usually go from like, they usually say, what's still mysterious about that proposal or what's missing? And then they kind of step out and they make a proposal.

Okay, courage is da-da-da-da, right? And then there's a midwife. And you just go around like that in this structured way. And then when it comes back to the beginning, then you just open up into free dialogue, right? And usually that kind of structure, like in a certain sense, that structure affords a constraint intention that

that uh i would say really really exercises and aligns um all of the machinery right of transcendence and understanding and insights right um andes it. So by the time we just start riffing, like it just really explodes and blossoms, right? In a profound way. Yeah. Yeah, it's mind blowing. How profound it is, to be perfectly honest. Like we did, and I wondered that too

when we went through this in Montana because we started with circling on day one and then that was a half day, eat some food, go to bed that night, wake up the next morning and we start right in the dialectic and the dialogos. And so we had a similar trajectory, maybe not quite as in depth

as when you guys put people through the exact program. But yeah, it felt like we had pulled layers, layers and layers, and we had worked our way into a space of intimacy with people, many of which we'd met for the first time, you know? And then from there, with the constraints and with the setting of the table in the exact way, you know, he's like, you don't get to light the fire, but it may catch itself on fire. You know, the garden may grow itself depending on how you set this up. And the feelings that I had when I was doing it, we're just like, wow. And in every seat too, you know, we had, they have a vibe and a scribe as well. So the vibes whole job is just

to feel what is this, what is this drawing in for you? Like, what is the feeling you have from hearing the proposal? What feelings do you have in hearing, you know, the question or draw more out? Like what, how did, how did the whole sense come? And it was really mind blowing for, for my group. Most of us had some visual explanation in the vibe. Like there was a vision that came through on, on, on the vine. I was like, I didn't expect that at all. Especially, you know, anytime I get visions when I'm sober, I'm like, that didn't expect that at all. Especially, you know, anytime I get visions when I'm sober, I'm like, that's fucking rad. That's fucking special.

You know, there's something to that. But it was shared. It was shared in our group before and similar to the psychedelic experience, similar to any great deal of when we're right there. You know, like one of the things I love that Gaffney says is, you know, when you're on the inside, you know,

at the moment of orgasm or when you're in the wave surfing, you know, like there's never a, what is the point of my existence? Where am I heading in life? Like, there's no questions. There's no questions around the future. There's no questions around how good of a job you're doing. Everything makes sense. You understand it because you're on the inside of it. And in that experience, that's exactly how I felt. It's like the moment of orgasm. It was on a visceral field, different feeling than orgasm, but same feeling in that there was a recognition in the power of that practice and a holy shit, we're on the inside. Totally. Yes. Yeah, totally. And you can get there sober, right? Yeah.

Just like you're saying. Totally. Yeah. And I think what we stumbled upon is really the original, it's the original sense of philosophy, right? Whereas now most people think about philosophy, they think about academia and papers and, you know, really dry books. But this is the original sense of philosophy where philosophy was a deep way of coupling, right, with the world in a profound way. And a deep way of getting close to the transcendent, right? And the ineffable. And I just got to say, just, I love that. I just love that sense of where you start getting really close to what can't be put into words right yet there's this there's this there's something there's something about that very thing that can't be put into words that's drawing forth your attempt to put it into words anyways right like there's this it's just it's a way it's a way of getting closer

right to to the the thing that transcends all of us right in in in some way it's so difficult to talk about right but but but i would say that i would say that like i i in my estimation we really live in a world that is deeply deeply lost most of its modes of connecting with genuine transcendence, right? In that way. And this is a way of doing it that is genuinely experiential, right? It's not just reading about it and somebody tells you that there's this thing out there and like you just kind of have to take it on faith or something like that no it's about actually grappling with it and finding finding it disclosed to you right finding yourself in the presence of it right where you feel like you're

you're you're tapped into some receding ground, right. That, that is fundamentally ineffable, right. It draws you closer to it and it draws itself closer to you. Yeah. It's just, it's really, I feel super fortunate, right. In my life that I have a couple, I've gotten to, I've gotten to be at the ground, at the ground level of like essential movements happening to feel super, super lucky and super fortunate. Yeah, well, you carry the mental wealth. Yeah, there's – when I think of existential risk and all the things that are going on in the world and,

and, you know, there's a lot of places you can look and be like, Oh, what if this happens? You know, for 50 years, people had to hide underneath desks and worried about maybe not 50 years, but for a long time, kids were taught that get under your desk, the nukes are coming. There, there, it seems to be that there's always something we got to fucking worry about. When I was 18, we had Y2K, you know, like that was a short-lived thing, but it was a thing, especially growing up in the, in the Silicon Valley. It was a big thing. And I think, you know, there's, there's lower hanging fruit for things that we really could worry about if we wanted to worry like lower hanging fruit, meaning

how much of the things that we do are digital. And even right now, like I love you and I fucking know you and I want to be by you and I want to be in your presence. And that's missed. We're still attaining something greater than we would if we didn't know each other and haven't spent time in each other's field. But to have that face-to-face, there's a slight disconnect. There's another layer, right? And to think of how much is moving in that direction, that's not nuclear stuff going off, but it is going to contribute to the crisis of meaning, right? Video games, all these different things. I grew up playing video games. We got a Nintendo when I was four years old, a regular NES, and then Super

Nintendo, and Sega Genesis, the list goes on, you know? And eventually, I think it was plant medicines kind of snapped me out of that. I was like, oh, I'm playing a game within the game. You know, like in Grand Theft Auto, you could go on mini missions that weren't, that didn't have anything. I was like, why do the mini mission? I want to play the real, the real game. Right. And then I was like, oh shit, I've been in the mini mission. This is not the real game. Right. So I've been in the, I've been in the mini mission for a fucking 15 years right now. So that, that made it very, you know, I just couldn't do it anymore. You know, and it's not just to put people down who like video games.

They're fucking awesome. But at the same time, it was just like, oh, I've got, I'm in a better use of my time. And, but I think of the, there's a draw to these things. They feel good, right? They get certain aspects of those going that we can't get in other ways, right? The dopamine response, the addictive nature of it, whatever the thing is, it's enjoyable, right? And there's other aspects,

like social media is enjoyable. There's all these things that are just there, but they're not drawing us to a level of proximity and intimacy that circling or the dialectic and the dialogos does right and to experience that it's like man this is a this exists just like ayahuasca holy shit this exists from the top of the mountain yes and and b with everything that we see on the horizon of potential pitfalls and and places where humanity can really find itself in a rut you know if we're we're here

right now this can go you know it's not black and white. It's not gonna, it's not like we have two directions or a fork in the road, but getting closer to the meta world, we lose all that. And then getting back into the real game, we gain all that, especially if we have the tools and the technology to get us there.

So, I mean, I am, I'm in love with what you guys are doing. I mean, I think it is so, so special and it's been such an amazing gift to share with people as a coach and fit for service, but just as much, if not more so, an amazing gift for myself to experience. Yeah. And I love what you guys are doing.

I really appreciate you. I'm going to jump on your podcast soon. So we do a little Swapperino. Yeah, in a couple of weeks. We'll just dive deep. Yeah, brother. I'm stoked for that. Where can people find you? jump on your podcast soon. We're doing a little Swaparino. Yeah, in a couple of weeks. Yeah, brother. I'm stoked for that. Where can people find you, listen to your podcast?

I'll link to Vervakey's show on YouTube so people can get into him as well. Yeah. So basically, if you want to go look at circling, it's circling institute dot com. And I'll give you those links to put in the show notes as well. Perfect. Peasy peasy.

With the circling institute, we have drop-in events every Thursday night. We have stand-alone weekends that are open to everybody. And then we have the practitioner training. The next practitioner training starts in November and we're filling up quicker this year than most other years. So if

that's something that interests you, like check it out pretty and get a move on it pretty quickly, cause it's filling up quick. And then if you go on the website, you'll also find when the next dialectic in the D logos circling in the D logos course with with, with me and John Gravecki is, all that will be on the website as well. Phenomenal, brother. Thank you so much, Guy.

It's been an absolute pleasure getting to know you. And thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Fantastic. Thank you.