Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Substack Exclusive: Why Spiritual Questions Open You To Risk

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

This week we’re sharing something special that was previously only available on our Substack page: a chat between Jonathan and filmmaker, Mark Vicente, co-director of the 2004 film “What the Bleep Do We Know!?“, and the NXIVM whistleblower whose testimony helped put Keith Raniere in federal prison.Many teachers have real wisdom and profound opportunities to change. Many are resurfacing hidden ancient knowledge that the world truly needs. And some of the teachers are wolves in sheep’s clothing who prey on those who believe there must be more to our often limited experience.If you saw The Vow on HBO, you know one half of Mark’s story.Mark was born in South Africa. At nine years old, out in the bush, he heard Zulu drumming and was overcome with emotions in a way he couldn’t explain. He wept — hit by a certainty that if everyone else could feel what he was feeling, the country he was born into would change. And the senseless injustice could be stopped.Years later, Mark’s film, What the Bleep Do We Know, used the language of quantum physics to argue that the materialist worldview is incomplete. That consciousness participates in reality. That suffering is not only something to endure — it’s something we have some say in. Then the wolves came.When What the Bleep was released, the NXIVM cult began profiling Mark. They read his interviews. They studied what he wanted more than anything — to communicate a spiritual truth that could change how people see the world. Then they built a recruitment around that specific longing. He was inside NXIVM for over a decade.His wife realized what was happening before Mark did. She handed him an article listing twenty things a narcissist does in a conversation. He read it, took a scheduled call with Keith Raniere, and ticked them off in his head as they happened live. When he hung up, he knew he would never speak to Raniere again.Mark’s new film, The Narcissist’s Playbook, is the map he wishes he’d had while under the control of a cult leader. It features self-identified narcissists explaining, on camera, what they do and why they enjoy doing it.Dr. Ramani Durvasula — who appears in the film — estimates roughly one in six adults meets criteria for narcissistic personality traits. Not all of them are dangerous. Some are, and the current consensus among clinicians who study the darkest end of the spectrum is the part spiritually oriented people find hardest to accept: Those brains do not change. Not with love. Not with patience. Not even with the right teacher.If you love someone who is inside a dangerous community and they can’t see it, or if you’re beginning to wonder whether you are, Mark shares this: The deepest trick of narcissistic abuse isn’t the abuse itself. It’s that you come to believe you are the cause of every problem.Upgrade your kitchen with Our Place today. Visit fromourplace.com/BREAK and use code BREAK for 10% off sitewide.Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to https://www.quince.com/breakdown for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive up to 30% off your Helix mattress.Visit https://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN and get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3 + K2 in your Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order.Get your annual IANDS Conference tickets at https://conference.iands.org.Go to https://tidd.ly/4uVltMe and use the code MAYIM50 to get $50 off your Elastique order.Find Mark at @markvicente on Instagram and narcissistsplaybook.com.Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm I'm Biallic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today, we're sharing a conversation with Mark Vesente. He's the filmmaker behind What the Bleep Do We Know. He's also the nexium whistleblower. His testimony helped put Keith Reneering in federal prison. So if you saw the vow on HBO, you know who Mark Vesente is.

He's actually here to talk about his new film, The Narcissist's Playbook. It's the map he wishes he had had. while under the control of a cult leader. One of the most powerful parts of Mark's story is that he was in not just one but two cults. And he talks about the things that make us vulnerable, how narcissists work, and how they use a specific set of techniques to manipulate people. And he outlines them. He also spent a decade inside Nexium.

And so I actually first learned about Mark from that and was so excited. that he also happened to be the what the bleep do we know guy. So this is a really, really cool conversation. He has a new film that he's going to talk about. It's called The Narcissist's Playbook. And it's the map that he wishes he had had while under the influence and the control of a cult leader. So the Narcist Playbook features self-identified narcissists

explaining why they do what they do, why they enjoy doing it. And actually, a friend of the podcast, Dr. Romani Dervasola, appears in the film talking about how one in six adult meets the criteria for narcissistic personality traits. Mark tells you what to watch for, the deepest trick of narcissistic abuse. It's really, really a great conversation. We're so excited to bring it here. If you want to sneak peek on conversations like this, right when they happen, head over to Miami-Ballax breakdown on Substack. Join the growing breaker community. You can get ad-free episodes

and content not released anywhere else. Also, Jonathan has a ton of cool conversation. like this one over on his substack, which is practical spirituality, so check that out as well. We hope you enjoy the conversation, and we'll see you over on substack. Mind Bialx Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep. We can't tell you how excited we were

to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my helix for over five years now, and it helps me sleep great. Jonathan loves his helix. Our kids love their helix mattresses. All of those issues, like night sweats and back pain and motion transfer issues, all of that is significantly better.

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Go to helixleep.com slash breakdown for 20% off sitewide. That's helixleep.com slash breakdown for 20% off sitewide. Helixleep.com slash breakdown. Break it down. Mark, where do you want to start? Where are you right now?

in your life emotionally, intellectually, joining me today. Like, let's do a little check in. How are you feeling? Things are a bit chaotic right now because we're getting ready for the launch of our film, which you saw,

which that's where you and I met. Take us back to what the bleep do we know. And this film was widely credited as the cultural on-ramp for a wave of consciousness and quantum spirituality that followed, including the very, very famous,

The Secret. Do you have that association? Do you know that this was the on-ramp? Yep, yep. I met the director of The Secret afterwards because he was a friend of my wife's. And yeah, he said that as well. He said, like, we started something, you know. And it was, you know, that film, that idea had been in my mind for years.

You know, I should probably go back to my past a little bit just to explain what happened. So I was this kid born in South Africa. At a very early age, realized something was wrong with the country. Like apartheid was just, I thought it was a horrible. idea. I asked questions of the adults around me. Nobody could give me good answers. I knew something was wrong and I saw like a lot of bad stuff as a kid, you know, that I thought was problematic. And everybody I asked just couldn't give me a good answer. My mom, luckily, was a complete weirdo, complete weirdo. She was like Indo-Hinduism and Buddhism and this and that and the other. So she was kind of

of the black sheep of the family. But I do remember having a bunch of very deep spiritual experiences as a child, especially like out in the bush, you know, when I was living with my grandparents as a kid that I couldn't explain. And I kept on saying to my mom, there's something I want to study, something I want to learn, you know, and so she kept on saying, what about this and what about this? And then at one point I thought it was kung fu. So I started, you know, studying kung fu and different martial arts. And I think much later, I sort of stumbled on the new age stuff. And I had this yearning to talk about these ideas. And there was one specific thing. I think that got me going.

I think I was about nine years old. I was in the middle of the bush. You know, it was west of Johannesburg in the middle of nowhere. Close to a place that actually called the cradle of civilization. I was listening to some music from this musical. It was like, you know, Zulu drumming drumming music. And I remember having this profound experience, like this rush up my body into my chest, like out my eyes.

And I just began weeping. And I just felt the beauty of like this feeling that I was having. And I just kept on thinking if people could feel what I'm feeling right now, like the whole country would be different. And I was a kid, you know, so I started thinking, well, if I build speakers big enough, everybody could hear this music, you know. So like, and I lived in this valley between two mountains. So I started imagining like, you know, Jack and the Beanstalk type speakers, like massive speakers because the ocean was like eight hours away and it had to reach the ocean. And I couldn't figure out what the speaker system was. Fast forward.

I was like, I think 12.13. I was in Lisbon with my parents, and we went to see this movie, I think it was cold in that day, get at their stellar Star Wars. I saw Star Wars like, holy shit, I was blown away. And when I walked out,

I was like, those are my speakers, movies. That's how you do it. That's how you touch people. So my obsession from that age was movies, did a lot of stuff in South Africa, worked my way up the film system there, and I finally got my break to come to Hollywood to shoot a film there.

And I was super young. I was like 25 or 26 or something. And I shot this like massive studio film as a cinematographer. It was a big deal to me. And I ended up staying and I worked in a lot of stuff, you know, while I was in Hollywood, but it was a lot of trap. And I had this thought of like, I have to figure out how do I use what I love to talk about the things I love?

And so, you know, fast forward to 2001, you know, when we began doing the project, which I can get into more. But what the bleep was basically my attempt to get everything that I felt inside of me out into the world because as a kid, in South Africa, there was like one new age bookstore in Johannesburg,

and I would go in that bookstore every week. And I thought to myself, these weird bookstores have amazing things in them, like the knowledge, if I could just get it out. And so it was sort of my attempt, along with my team, to get all these weird cookie ideas out into the world, which it did and it I mean it was pretty big I mean 2004 was the first one you know and then 2006 we

released the second one but that was sort of the the genesis you know of why I wanted to like make that film and what what's been you know what I've been passionate about my whole life which is basically getting that kind of message out in the world I love that it starts from a very internal place this sense of disconnection and disbelief in what's happening around you the fact that you have this internal intense emotion that you're like if only people could feel this. And then how do you take an internal emotion and then make it into concepts that can help guide people's lives, right? Like what the film actually gets at is the conflicts in the material world are not all that there is, right? That our perceptions and are

the way that we're seeing, you know, interpreting our circumstances influence matter as much as matter itself. That there is, you know, there's more. There's a lot more. Yeah. You know, that impacts the nature of suffering. It raises questions about consciousness. It raises questions about how we cooperate. And while it's extremely powerful, these are very destabilizing questions because you're challenging the nature of reality. Yeah, and I think that was what excited me. You know, it's funny, I think a lot of people that jump into like some kind of weird spirituality, it's because the status quo isn't working for them. Exactly. You know, right? And so I was a religious kid, you know, I was in the Anglican church,

and then my grandfather was in the Dutch Reformed Church, which was a lot of the fire and brimstone kind of stuff. And something just didn't match for me. The behavior and, like, what was taught, it just wasn't working. And everything was so, despite the fact that there were angels and God and Satan and whatever, I was like, I didn't have the words for it.

It just seemed so materialistic. And there was no sense of, like, you have power. You have agency. Everything was like somebody else has agency. It's Jesus, or it's, God or it's Mother Mary or it's, you know, Gabriel, or somebody else has got the ability and the wisdom and you don't, which is interesting because, you know, kind of to fast forward a bit, that was the sense that propelled me to I have to find the knowledge outside of me. Somebody else has

the wisdom, somebody else has the goodness. I just have to find who that is because it's not in the church and it doesn't appear to be in the Christianity. I was involved in at the time, so it has to be somewhere else. So I went looking for people that I thought were wise, you know, and that's how I ended up in multiple cults, you know, until I finally realized, well, that's not working. But that was the sort of, that was the feeling as a kid. I was like, there has to be some answer to this thing. This, this is not all there is. And the reason I felt this is not all there is as well, I remember when I was in the Anglican church, when you're confirmed, you're like confirmed. And this, the bishop came from Pretoria to this tiny little town where we were at White River, where my boarding school was.

And I remember him going around and the water and the wine and everything. And he touched each of us on our heads as sort of a blessing. And I remember like when he touched my head, something happened. It was just like electric. It was profound. It was like the, you know, the whole piece that passeth all understanding kind of thing just filled me with like light and beauty and softness and gentleness. And I remember going to the other kids afterwards and did you feel that as a

well and they're like feel what I'm like did you I mean when he touched your head I'm what? And the whole day I was talking to the adults I was talking to the kids about what just happened nobody understood what the hell I was talking about they thought it's so cute like he's such a grown up little boy but I had this feeling like there's more there's more to like this experience and my mom was that my mom was that way my mom was yeah there's the reincarnation there's this there's that the other so my mom was the one person in my life that's like yeah no it's way more than than you're being told and we're being told. So there was this constant aching in me, this constant searching in me, you know, which finally

enough, we can get to later. I don't feel the searching anymore, you know. Interesting. Mindy Alex breakdown is supported by Quince. Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday of summer? The perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush. For me, that tends to start with wardrobe. Quince proves you don't need a crowded closet to look incredible. You just need the right pieces. Quince specializes in effortless, high-quality essentials like ultra-soft organic cotton. premium Mongolian cashmere sweaters. They're beautifully tailored, built to last, and transitioned seamlessly from morning meetings to dinner.

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I don't feel like I'm seeking anymore, but I sought for decades. It was interesting because only later did I come to the recognition that that feeling that I had, maybe he had some kind of love and ability in whatever, or maybe not, I don't know. Maybe it was the meaning I placed on the moment that caused this ignition inside of me of some connection to my own divinity or whatever, I don't know. But I did understand later, like, these things are not coming from a religion. They're not coming from a specific system or framework. It seems like it's innate in human beings that we have access to these things. It's just

that I think that people hijack what my wife calls the doorway. They hijack the doorway and they say, this is the door, and then everybody gets stuck in the doorway to their own divinity. thinking like, I don't have access to it on my own. And it doesn't make sense. So well said. And as a kid at that age, from my experience, and maybe it's similar, if you have something that's so outside of the norm in terms of this profound experience, you want to look around to the adults and say, who can relate to this?

How am I not alone in this? If this is real, well, guys, come on, you're living in a way that's so muted and painful. if only you could understand what I've experienced, but as a child, you don't have the authority to share that. And so everyone's backwards and you're like just looking for the people who are of like mind, which puts you in a very external seeking role. There's no way to embody it internally and to know how to navigate it and utilize it. You know, it takes years of integration to say,

oh, I can trust in my own experience. I don't need that, you know, whatever guide through the door in order to help me. Yeah, that's true. And I was seeking that. I was seeking some kind of like, is it just me? You know,

because there was my mom, which was great. But you can't, you know, but she's your mom. My mom. Yeah, exactly.

You know, my mom is like the black sheep and she was a complete weirdo. And I hated that she was so weird, you know, because I just, I kind of wanted a normal mom. I always said,

I wish my mom was normal. She was very sweet. She said, I know, I know, but I'm not. But I was thinking about, But, you know, I was in Cape Town last year, because my mom lives in Cape Town now, I was in Cape Town remembering like the 90s.

Like the year 1990 was my quest to like find people. And I got involved in all these different kind of weird communities, you know, in Cape Town. Because Cape Town was and still is in some ways a very woo-woo kind of place. And I ran into all these like weird characters, you know, and, you know, and I was this young guy. And like a lot of the older women were like really like gravitating towards me, realized, oh, they just want to stoop me. like it's just it just it was just weird and then i remember before i went to america i got a call from a buddy of mine he says ah there's this amazing like astrologer woman you got to talk to her and i'll get to the what the bleep creation and i said okay i'll talk to her and i talked to this woman she says

you have to meet romza the enlightened one like ronsa the enlightened one yeah you have to meet ronth the enlightened one i said okay yeah sounds great anyway i fly to fly to la you know i'm prepping for this film and the film gets pushed two weeks and i think oh, hey, I can go meet Ramtha. So, Ramfah was like this entity supposedly channeled to this woman called Jay Z. Knight up in Washington State. And I say all that, because there's two things that are interesting. When I got there, I was like, these are my people. Like the people I've been looking for my whole life.

There's this feeling of, like, amazing community. And, you know, there's a lot I could get into, but that organization is very, very litigious. So I think I'll just, I'll be kind of careful. But it was a very, very inspiring experience. And it was actually there that, you know, a bunch of us created What the Bleep. So what the Bleep emerged from that, from that organization. But at first I had the feeling of like I finally found people where I'm not crazy anymore and they understand what I'm thinking, what I'm saying, and nothing I'm saying is weird anymore.

So I'm no longer the outcast like I was in boarding school. You know, I went to boarding school in Canada for a while. And I was the weird kid. I was a weird kid wearing like yoga clothes. and all my friends were wearing jeans and plaid shirts. And they were like... What years is? That would have been 1980.

And I was just the weird kid. I wanted to fit in so badly. So I kind of abandoned for a while the whole spiritual thing. Because, you know, who wants to a kid wearing a yoga pants? I mean, that's just stupid. And I don't mean like tight yoga pants. I mean, like, those flowing. Yeah.

Flory, you know? Yeah. So I was an outcast a lot. And so I buried that stuff for a while until it got so intense. I said, this is the real me needs to come out. And so when I went. went to that particular, you know, organization up in Washington State. I was like, these are the people. This is what I've been waiting for. You know, lots and twists and turns,

you know, and finally realizing there's, there's problems in every single organization. There's something interesting about the seekers and this notion of we co-create our reality to a certain degree, but that can be weaponized. And I'm not saying about this organization. So maybe even make it more general. Here's an issue with some teachings. And it's, I had this experience. you know, at Rompso, but many other places. There's this whole thing of, you know, wanting to be divine or contact the divine or even as bold as to you are God. I don't have a problem with any of that, you know, not that you are God supplant the true

nature of the universe and you are egotistically and narcissistically better than everybody. Not that you are God. Like you are part of the fabric of the all. Totally with that. I think the problem comes with the denigration of. of being human. Like somehow, like your ego is shit and your body is shit and being human is shit. And like all those things are shit about you.

And you have to get beyond that as though it's some impediments that if you could just get beyond that, you would finally touch the face of God. That to me is one of the most damaging ideologies that exists. Because then what you're doing is saying, okay, everything that I am in this dimension, let's call it like this density for some people. everything I am in this density is shit if I just wasn't in this density then I would be something better

in essence I start to maybe even hate myself or I'm disappointed in myself and now I'm having a challenge with my own psychology my own psyche as opposed to maybe the place that I'm more in now which is let's assume for instance the all is the all and it's all it's not just pieces of the all

it's everything isn't the ego isn't the body isn't the human experience, isn't the human density, then all part of that as well? And what if we were to accept and incorporate that in the experience of this moment and the isness, as opposed to, well, the human body's shit, but the astral body's good, or the blue body or the fucking whatever body it is? That division, that polarization to me is a huge issue. And I found in many, many different groups, there is the self-hatred. There's the hatred of just this experience and you don't get anywhere then you don't you're so busy reaching for some peak

experience and then when you're not having the peak experience and you're just being oh that's disappointing well now I'm just being yeah what's wrong with that why not incorporate that what if that to use very spiritual terms what if that is god also experiencing itself so you think god doesn't experience itself when it's having a crap what if it's everything it is everything and you know, there's a movement towards a much more integrated experience of spirituality. It's not only the blissful feeling you described as a child who, and that propelled you to need to communicate. That is divine, but so is having emotion and so is having anger and how do we navigate all of it and be present in it. The nature of how this philosophy can be used to manipulate.

Yes. Yeah. And to make people not trust themselves and what you spoke to about that a lot of people sit in the door. You know, a lot of teachers will sit in the doorway and say, I know what's beyond the door, but you can only get a little peek. And actually, if you peek too far, you're wrong. And you've misinterpreted this. And there's a right way to do things.

Yeah, so I love what you're saying. So the whole door metaphor, that's actually my wife's metaphor. So I want to give her credit for that. But it is a big issue because, like, I would see teachers say things like, you know, you are this, you are God, you are divine, you are whatever. I'm going to show you techniques. And then if you do anything else, well, that's, no, that technique will not, that's wrong. And you're wrong for thinking about it.

And you're not thinking of that. And even though you have free will and free choice and your God, I really am the only one that knows the right door. So like, this is the door. And if you don't, you know, then the entire organization turns against you. Like, then you're like, oh, that's a fucking cult. There's a few things. The one is the hijacking of people's natural deep profound. experiences like you know you go to some event or something or i don't know i'm burning man whatever you have a

profound experience and some asshole stands up there and said because of me is why you had that experience or the other people say because of him or because of her is that that that's why you had that experience which doesn't make sense because logically the person sitting next you didn't have the experience and it was the same transmission that was coming at you which means it's not the transmission it's you activating whatever whatever whatever whatever whatever so that's the one thing the other thing is people that are seeking are generally speaking really beautiful, profound souls who haven't been trained to understand

that just because somebody uses the right words doesn't mean that they are embodying the words. My first cult counselor, I was very fucked up when I came up. My first called counselor, this was in 2017, said to me, the first thing I need to tell you is look at what they do, not what they say.

Yeah. Because I kept to saying, but he said, but he said, but he said, and she said, and she said, look at what they do. throw out what they say. And I couldn't quite grasp the idea that it wasn't the same. No, if they say it, it must be who they are.

And then I finally was like, oh, no, wait. I think my mentor is a psychopath. And then, like, it clicked. I was like, oh, shit. So he's just been mimicking everything that matches my, our values. And it didn't occur to me that he's full of shit because if I say those things, I mean them. Yeah.

You know, and it was funny. My wife, my wife was the one that first woke up from Nixium. And we watched a lot of movies. She made me watch movies because the cult ex-counselstor spoke to her first. And she was like, how do I get him out? How do I wake him up? And she's, and the ex-a-counsel said, well, show him this TV show and show him then. And there was one film I saw that I loved by this guy called Vickrub Gandhi.

Have you seen Kumari? I haven't. So Vikram Gandhi just co-directed the Burning Man series that's coming out with my friend Jahan Nijim. Vikram made a documentary about, because he's this Indian dude with like long hair and he looks like, you know, Indian Jesus. Oh, I have seen a trailer for this. It's amazing.

And he goes, he makes a cult. Yeah. And because he has the accent and he can speak the language. It's all performance. It's everything. And I don't want to give it away, but like it's very,

it's pretty amazing and people really buy it. Yeah. We look for these symbols of goodness and we project our own stuff out there onto these people. And if you have somebody that just knows how to mimic, it's very easy. And especially with people that aren't well trained. And I think one of the things I'm seeing with spiritual people is not a bad thing, are not well trained in understanding pathologies. Spiritual people are like looking for that connection, looking for that deep whatever. And it doesn't

occur to them like that a complete psychopath can model and mimic the behavior of some avatar and be lying. Like, it's really hard for good people to understand that. And so that's a huge issue, which is one of the reasons that, you know, I wanted to make this film as well. I wanted people to understand, like, what's the map behind all the terrible things that can happen in spirituality? And people go to events, by the way, in retreats and things, they have wonderful

experiences. But God forbid you get close to the inner circle because then you're going to get burnt. Because that's where the weirdness is. A lot of people will think, I can feel the difference, right? I can feel the difference between someone who is just staying and cosplaying and just saying the words versus someone who truly embodies it. And I don't think a lot of people can because we project, right? We want an answer. We want someone to have knowledge. We want them to have more information than we do. And I think we're desperate also for some solution that we can quickly incorporate into our lives.

And so if they are embodied and if they do speak all the words and have the messages, we're like, oh, I'm going to get something from this. And we don't necessarily consciously think that. But I think we've been trained to believe that ecstasy or some removal of struggle bypassing the human experience in some way is just around the corner. Yeah, you know, that's so profound. So I have a friend, you actually saw him in the film, Richard Grannon. Yeah. And Richard Grannon teaches people, and he's not to anyone, there's many therapists that teach this. Like, if you, if you fall in love with somebody and you have that insane excitement and it happens fast. Red flag. Red flag. Yeah. Run. Yeah. Because it's like lust and limerence and awe and it's all this weird shit. The same thing goes for groups as well. If you go to the group and like within the first hour, you're like, I've found my people. I'm here. I have arrived. My lifelong quest is now over whatever. whatever, whatever, whatever, because what you're experiencing is a profound experience of like love bombing because you go into a group and organization. Everybody loves you. They call you family. I mean,

in Nixium, when I first got there, Renary's second in command, right-hand woman, Nancy Saul's one, she just used that all the time. Your family, your family, you know, your family. And I was like, that's just weird. That's too soon. But I still missed everything, of course. You didn't see the red flags, turned everything pink. That kind of awe on that limerence. that is so dangerous. I'm not saying don't have it. But you are so stupid when you're in that biochemical state. It's like teenage love.

Teenage love is necessary for the survival of the species, but it's stupid. Teenagers start wars, like, you know, over that shit. And you miss all the red flags and you can take your life down a totally different path and you lose a lot of critical thinking, right? 100%. And it's beautiful. I mean, it's beautiful. There was an evolutionary biologist that said to me, that's important, you know, because

what the tribe needed to mix, you need to go fall in love with the girl near the tribe, you know, and you defy everything. Yeah, it doesn't matter what the obstacles are. It doesn't matter if you're going to get killed. It doesn't matter anything. It's just perpetuate the species at all costs. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

But like, for sensitive souls, you know, and I find a lot of spiritual people, they're sensitive souls or good people. It's so hurts. Because what happens is you find out that what you thought was. goodness isn't and it actually hurts goodness. Spotlight. There was one character that said something. I can remember who it was, who was Catholic, I think, and was finding out what was going on. And he said something about it broke goodness, it broke God inside of me. And I thought a lot about that because later on, when I woke up from Nixium, that's what it did. It broke goodness. Like I think, well, if that wasn't goodness and that was evil, then what is goodness?

Maybe it doesn't exist, you know? So I really, really, really. difficult time for me until I was able to start reconstruct, oh, I do know what goodness is. Because in 2017, when I woke up, I didn't know anymore. I only knew one thing. I knew he's done terrible things to my friends and I'm going to destroy the motherfucker. That is the only thing that I knew. What he did was bad. We're going to put him away.

That's all. I didn't know anything else. And it took, you know, two years of like working with the FBI and the trial and everything. And only after the trial was I able to. to go, you know, sit at the ocean with my wife in Portugal and just sit there and go, like, I don't know anything. Because I'd thrown everything out. Like I, maybe Jesus was a psychopath, maybe Buddha was a sociopath, maybe all these people are fuckers. So I threw everything out. My wife didn't. I threw everything out. And I sat by the ocean for months and months and months and months and months.

We lived in the apartment. I went to sleep at night. But I sat at the ocean until one day, I felt the connection again. And I felt something. And I was like, ah, there it is. That's, me and the universe, the whatever, the whatever, whatever, whatever, without the doorways, you know, without the stories, without the templates, without the structures, just a pure, pure experience. And that's when I could begin rebuilding my deeper sense of spirituality and morality with it, you know, because that took a while. Everything in this is just, I feel so emotionally moved. I want to go backwards a little bit, but right before we go backwards, I'll just comment and reflect.

that like going through the evil that you uncovered, it's very hard to reconcile that was there any good at all in that organization that first drew you to it? Right. Like there had to have been some benefit and some either community or insight or spiritual experience. Otherwise, it wouldn't have provided any value to start with. And so, you know, I think it's a very evolved. state of mind to be like there can be evil but also there can be aspects or I experience something that I can still hold on to without the organization. Yeah, but for me I guess I had to throw it away

because I make a distinction between while I was in compared to after. So while I was in, was there good stuff in the in the tech is what they called it? Yeah, it was good stuff. But built into it was the dismantling of your psyche. You know, I still have arguments with people that are still doing the tech, you know, to this day that evaded prosecution. It dismantles you and says it's pulling you more into you, but it actually doesn't. And listen, the tech was amazing, like, in this sense. Everybody struggles with like disconnection and like instead of connecting to themselves, they take themselves, their locus of control. They put it on a person, on an object, on this, on a that. I need the sports car. I need the whatever, whatever, whatever. And so they're

perpetually unhappy. People in the spiritual tradition say, like, if you could pull yourself away from your attachments back to you, you would feel peace. What the tech did is it looked at what was the thing you think you need to be okay? And let's work on breaking that connection so that you no longer feel like you need that thing and you're left with, I'm just me, I'm okay. And the way it did it was actually quite smart. You know, it's a bit like NLP and there's some Scientology stuff and there's some pretty advanced stuff in there that seemed to work very well. I went in my first retreat there, or event I should say, I think on, I don't know, day seven or eight or whatever, they helped me overcome a massive phobia I had that never came back until I left the organization. What I thought

had happened is that I'd actually taken care of that issue. I was having panic attacks. Now what's funny is that in 2017 when I woke up, I spoke to a cult expert and he said to me all the psychological stuff that you thought you resolved, it's about to come out again. Like, that's not possible. It all came out. But everything, single thing I thought I resolved came back out because what they did is they compartmentalized you from, dissociated you from the reactions from the trauma, from those things and buried it somewhere.

And it came back out. But at the time, I remember thinking when they helped me get over the phobia, I was like, this is fucking amazing. Like, I want this for everybody. Yeah. Because it was very mathematical. And I wanted to make movies that could do this. And so like, and they kept this thing at first, like, well, you should meet Keith Renary.

He's the one that invented this, you know. So like, it took me like 10 days and finally I meet him. And, you know, it seemed very profound. We sat down for five hours and I asked him questions because I believed he was one of the smartest people that ever existed, blah, blah, blah. He was actually in the Guinness Book of Records, but it was fake and bullshit. And I was kind of blown away. So I thought this tech, and this is what everybody thinks, like everybody in NLP or Scientology,

They all think they have the tech. I thought this tech would change the world. I thought this tech would make things better. Like all the misunderstandings people have with each other, all the ways that we react to somebody and we're really reacting to ourselves, but we don't realize that we act out on another person because we don't understand what's happening internally and we build meanings about this, that, and the other.

All of that with mathematical precision could be handled so that we could be our full selves and just interact with people as their full selves. and most people who are like spursely inclined or humanitarian would listen to me and go, that sounds pretty good. And they pointed out all my faults. Too angry, to this, to that. And they said to me, so you want to change the world and you're humanitarian, you want to use movies.

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That's a good point. They said, don't you think you should work in that before you make your next film? Yeah. And now they have you. Got me. They got me a few ways. I mean, like, when I first met them, like, they picked me up into Learjet, flew me all over the country, you know, we have the money and the resources and we can

help fund your movies. So to a filmmaker, it's pretty good. That's like, I'm in. Yeah. And then they, so the Learjet's, the money, the whatever. Then they were like, and now we have the tech. I felt like I was going to the X-Men headquarters, you know. Yeah.

You're like, this is the solution to the world's problem. and to personal problems as well. Why wouldn't you want to get that out? They had me. And they had me. And again, I was flying high. I just made what the bleep. It was becoming very successful.

How long after what the bleep did you encounter this group? Interesting. It came out and they, I found out later when the film came out, they began profiling me and built a file on me. And these are people that had the kind of methodologies like people in intelligence might have, you know? Like they could. They listened to radio interviews and this and that and things I wrote and watched me,

and they figured out what made me tick and what I wanted. And they met me there. This guy wants to change the world using film. We're going to offer that to him, you know? Wow. And when you're wanting something that badly, it's very difficult to, you know, like, listen, I had three attempts in my life where intelligence tried to recruit me. None of them worked.

And the second attempt was using something. sex didn't work. You can't get me on that shit. But damn it, you can get me on my art. Or you could at least, you know, I'm not sure about now, because I turn shit down now. But my art. When I hear this, it's, I feel like they're speaking to the nine-year-old still. Yes. You're speaking to the nine-year-old who's having this profound experience and this insatiable desire to communicate to the world that there is something more and that we have this backwards and we're mired and just weighed down in a level of conflict that we don't have to be in. And I can relate to that.

I can relate to it seeing my family struggle and seeing things that I couldn't communicate to them. Hey, you're making yourself sick through this perception. I can't explain it to you. I wish I could. Or some other dynamic. And so it makes total sense to me that someone who approaches you and says, we're going to help you. We have the resources.

And we have this, you know, fancy in the, I almost see it as a black box technology that is going to help you communicate. That nine-year-old is going to be like, sign me up. I don't care what it is. You've actually nailed something that nobody's ever nailed, which is really interesting. Not in a single therapy sessions.

Anybody said that, and I realize you're right. They spoke to the nine-year-old. That's what I never understood. I was like, why? But you just nailed it. That's what they were doing. I don't think they knew that's what they were doing. But the nine-year-old was like,

on fire. And I'd seen bad stuff already. I'd seen, you know, manipulative people. My dad was an intelligence. He told me the world doesn't work the way you think it works. There's a lot of bad people pertaining to be good. So I knew all of that. But it was an infantile kind of response in the sense.

I don't mean that in a bad way. Like this very innocent, beautiful, like, yes. And you've nailed actually what I've never understood, which is it was the nine-year-old responding. That's, thank you. That's cool. I feel bad for the nine-year-old because the intention was so pure.

Yeah. If people could really have that experience that you described in nature, my belief is that most people are either muted emotionally to the point where they feel almost nothing or the things that they feel are mostly on the negative side. Yeah. Meaning that they feel angst and anxiety and pain and just every problem and anger.

And very rarely are we able to pause in the just profoundness of being and be overwhelmed by the sensation of existing. Yes, 100% during the battle against Nixim, I was scared that I'd lost all of that. I was really worried. I thought, I think it's gone. Like, I don't have it anymore.

Because I was so cautious, I was also highly paranoid. for with good reason. It was hacking attempts and PIs were looking for us. And you know, we were, you couldn't find us. We were in the government program that nobody could ever find us, that kind of shit. But I thought I lost it. I was so numb and so angry.

And I threw out all personal growth, all religion, all, everything. And I was very worried. It's funny because you're kind of worried, but also like you don't have access, or I didn't have access to that beauty in that moment. So when later it started to come back, it was amazing to me. Because I am still connected now, maybe even more deeply to what that nine-year-old wants, but maybe I've not taught the nine-year-old a bit more about how the world works. So I've seen enormous evil now.

And people say to me sometimes, like, you spend so much time dealing with dark stuff, and I'm really dark stuff I'm dealing with, not just what you saw. like there's a bunch of other projects. I've seen some just evil shit, you know. But it's funny is I have this appreciation now for the goodness and the beauty that you speak of and the awe, maybe even more deeply than I did before. You know, because now I understand maybe with more wisdom,

the experience of isness is everything. It's the worst and the best of being human. And the best is also really, really, really amazing. Like I've been watching some of the memes about the World Cup and how people are saying, America's actually much more amazing than we thought. We thought it was a horrible place. I'm seeing all these people having a good time. I'm like, wow, that's really nice.

Yeah. So that's a relief for a change, you know? And it really moves me. I cry sometimes when I see these people like, you know, dancing together. I saw the Norwegians in Times Square show. I start crying. I'm like, oh, my God, that's so beautiful. So that has come back more strongly, but I was very afraid I wouldn't be, I wouldn't have that again, you know?

It's really concerned. I would understand the concern, and it's very hard to access that when you're in an active battle, right? Like you have to put on a wall of defense when under attack. Like you've been on the front lines of fighting evil. It makes sense that you would have to sacrifice. The large spiritual questions, why am I here? What happens when I die, which may be the biggest one, what is reality? and can I shape my own experience are the biggest questions that can be manipulated to make you follow someone, right?

Yes. Someone says, I can tell you how to shape your experience. Fantastic. And there are many, many tools that help us get out of our ego, out of our perception, move away from thinking about things only in a very limited way. We know the science of regulating the nervous system and that changes the options that. the options that we see around us. Like there's both very out there spiritual stuff

and very concrete psychological stuff. However, if the answer is always, you need more of my classes, be very careful. Do you have any like quick advice on that? I mean, I just keep on coming back to like go inside. It's all in there. And also what's sad is every single one of those things

that you talked about there, which are beautiful, beautiful questions, they're also tied to some existential terror, like what happens after you die? I mean, our body is terrified of dying. And if we're only our body, this is not making it bad. If we're only that, it's terrifying.

You know, what are we here? Is there free will? Isn't there free will? These are all deep existential questions, but they also lead to deep terror. In the end, inside my meat suit, am I actually all alone? Is there anything out?

I mean, there's all this. Is there anybody out there? Am I alone? And now you have the essential crisis of isolation, all that stuff. So it gets down to our most basic fears. And so my sense is, I don't feel like you can really, your radar works well enough until you actually begin to address those things inside of yourself. Like I feel like you have to go inside and you have to feel your own terror of isolation

and existential, you know, like whatever it is and like never existing again and, you know, all those things. Unless you can go there on your own, I think we become very susceptible to other people using our fears if we refuse to actually engage with them. So my sense is the radar would work better. If we've already not confronted and beaten those things, looked at them and accepted that they're part of the experience of being here. Am I afraid of dying? A part of me is, do I think reincarnation exists? Probably. Do I think that? there's something else, absolutely. I've had out-of-body experiences and, like,

steep paralysis shit and, like, all kinds of, I know there's more. Like, I've been there. I've had the experience of being way out astrally, I don't know, whatever it is, and slowly coming into my body and this very real experience, slowly fading away until I just am in my body with my heart beating, and it all starts to slowly fade.

And I realize, ah, I think this is more real. But that's more real. I've had all those experiences. But there's still terror and there's still fear. If anybody says I am the way and the light and the door and that shit, fuck them. The no pressure, the making us the love bobbing to look out for to make sure that you're not like, this is family. Look, I'm about chosen family, you know. Many people feel isolated.

Many people are disconnected from their actual blood family. I'm not opposed to people recreating and having chosen family. But if there's an organization that quickly is like, your family now, that's a red flag to me. You have to, that has to be a slow evolving process. Even in dating, I've always said, you don't know someone for at least a year. Yes. Because you see someone in a moment of their life. You don't know what happens when the circumstances around them change.

You don't know if they're the type of person that has their circumstance around them change frequently. you haven't seen them get sick, you haven't seen them deal with adversity. You really absolutely don't know someone until you've seen enough cycles of their life. Yes. And especially now when we think we know people, right? Like we're like, oh, I just met this person.

I got the greatest feeling. I followed their content online. Like, I know them. You don't hold them. No, no. It's so true. It's true, right? I think that's the cool thing.

I've been married now for 15 years. I'm terrible because I can't remember, 16 years, whatever it is. my wife and I have seen each other at our best and our worst. Yeah. Like, and I think that's good. I feel like we know each other.

I think we're going to make it, you know, 16 years later. And it took time, though, right? Oh my goodness. It took,

because there was the, the, the, you know, my wife and I never had the like, oh, my God, giddy feeling. Like,

we had this sense of like, oh, I recognize you. And then, you know, we were in a culture while and then, like, you know, coming out of it and all the drama.

But there is something about that connection, which feels, I'm not going to say it is, but it feels almost spiritual. It's more than just what we look like and power and this and the other. Like I sometimes look at my wife and I go like, who's that little soul in there? Because that soul is just so amazing. And sometimes I'll say to her like, who's in there? You know, who's that person in there, that whatever in there, you know? So yeah, I'm a big, a big believer in like taking your time with, you know, with dating and finding that person.

Beautiful. Now we're in the dating world. We are. I mean, I think the other thing that that strikes me is that anyone who says I will give you a way out of suffering, I don't disbelieve them, but there isn't a utopia. Everything is generally a trade-off. No, exactly. There was something else that I was thinking about. Oh, yes, the other thing I was thinking about was, no matter how good the organization says it is or what it purports to do,

if there's coercion there, if there's threats, if you're going to be in the out-group if you don't go along, that's a huge problem. And I think that people in political party should think about this. And I'm not pointing in any particular direction. If you're in a political party and if you think for yourself

and it doesn't go along with the status quo and you're a pariah because of it, I think there's a problem. It doesn't mean you burn the whole political party down, but just understand it's been infected now with some culty stuff. Yeah.

I mean, I think we see that everywhere. In the extremes for sure. In the extremes for sure. One thing I will say about just just wrapping and not to be overly negative about the end of suffering. I do believe there are ways to suffer a lot less. Yes, I agree with you. I agree with it.

I'd like what you said, though. Like if somebody says, I'll take it away, I'll show you the way to take it away. Like, do you feel like with suffering? Because I'm sure there's things you and I both did suffer about but don't suffer about anymore. Did you have the experience like I did of just getting exhausted with suffering? Yes. I'm so tired of it.

There has to be another way. Absolutely. And a lot of it was, am I going to take action on something that's bothering me and then make it worse? I had this experience literally right before we jumped on this. And this is so benign and mundane. But it was an amazing example for me. Someone was coming to the house to help us with a project. And I knew I only had a certain amount of time.

And I started to get annoyed that what actually was happening was I was anxious that I wasn't going to have enough time before I got on this. So I called up Maim and I'm like, the schedule, like, and she's like, what do you want me to do? I just made everything worse by acting on it and not just like taking a freaking beat and dealing with myself. Yeah.

Now, that's just a small example, but not everything that happens in my head I need to act on or I need to rope other people into. Like sometimes I just need to process and be like, there is unknown in the universe. Yeah. And there's unknown in my day right now. And do I have the trust that it's going to be good, manageable, or catastrophic?

Where am I putting my intention here? Yes, I like that. You've actually got me thinking about something else with that, which is like abusive people, cult leaders, whatever, they leverage these anxieties. And I can give you an answer to this. Just ask me. Get me on speed dial and I'll tell you what you need to do. Yes. Yeah.

But there's something about just being like present in the moment, like in this moment right now is everything actually okay in this moment is everything okay and i feel like as long as we have those anxieties we are open to things because here's an example let's say in certain kinds of christianity like you could go to hell if you do if you do this that or the other you know there's some other terrible thing that's going to happen to you if you're in a new age whatever it's like you know if you don't make it you're going to get left behind in whatever church and see if you're not going to be part of the 144000 they're going to be saved there's always some group that's going to get saved and if you do these things you're not going to get saved it's everywhere that anxiety that's

suffering is resolvable if you just stick with now, I don't know if hell exists. I don't care. I don't know if I'm chosen. I don't give a fuck. But they leverage that feeling of like whatever the phomo is that I'm going to get left behind that, you know, God's not going to love, whatever, whatever it is. And that constant anxiety and that suffering is the way in for them. I'm starting to feel more and more like that's the shit worth actually spending time on.

But this is the stuff that matters. Talking about the nature of being, like, I don't know how anything works. The one thing I can tell you that happened is I went from knowing everything to knowing nothing. When I was in the cult, I knew everything. I was smarter than all you motherfuckers. That's a dangerous place.

That's extremely dangerous. So bad. Now I know shit. Like, I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. I have feelings. I have ideas. I have theories.

Like, am I going to stake my life on reincarnation exists? No. Because I don't know. Don't you think that's a more spiritual way of existing because it leaves room for the largest nature of reality connection with a divine? Like if you know everything, where's the ultimate, you know, curiosity in that?

That's so interesting. So, you know, with what the bleep, we interviewed this guy called David Albert, physics professor at, I think, Columbia. And when we had our big event in Santa Monica, we invited David Albert to, come and do a talk and this is what the bleep won. And before he got up on stage, he came to me and said, I'm very angry at you.

And I said, why? He said, because I think what you've done is you've sort of spiritualized quantum mechanics. You've made it like into this magical, whatever, whatever. And I said, yep, probably have to some degrees. And there's something worse than that. You've tried to define it and you've tried to narrow down what it is. You don't seem to understand.

We don't know what the hell is going on. it is so mysterious that we in the sciences are baffled. And you're suggesting you know how it works. You have limited the true nature of reality. And I was like, what? It struck me so hard. And he said to me, so that's my position on your film. You've limited the true nature of reality.

Yeah. So I said to him, okay, I'm going to really sit with that. and he says, well, you're still okay with me going up to talk? I said, yes, please. And if that's what you want to say on the podium, do it. Did you believe him? It struck me so hard, I didn't even know what to think. And then in the years that passed since then, I've thought more and more about it.

Because we took a very simplified view of, you know, consciousness and the nature of reality and quantum mechanics and your body. It was a very simplistic look at things. And maybe some of it's true. but I think I was going so much on some experience but a lot of theory and now I'm more just about my experience you know is something true to me experientially but it struck me because the math the physics I'm using these terms badly and that's not correct suggests that there is a mystery beyond understanding like mathematicians are just crunching numbers finding new kinds of mathematics to try to explain shit you know that

We spoke to an astrophysicist recently 95% of the universe is unknown. They just have no effing clue what's happening. Yeah. And Maim's response is like, is that not terrifying? And she's like, it's marvelous and exciting. And we're on the frontier of like not knowing is such an amazing place. And I think about that on a large cosmic sense. And then I think about it on a very personal sense.

if we can embrace that, which I am not great at. This is, I think, the work of me being a more okay person to be around, to be around myself and other people is the level of not knowing about small things, about timing, about just a lot, requires me to embrace that and to trust that things are generally going to work out and be okay. That's so interesting you say that. You know, I had an experience, I think it was 2021. I'd spent like weeks and weeks and weeks doing certain kind of meditations and things.

And I was on a bus on my way from the coast into Lisbon. And I remember just having this amazing like pop-out experience. And the question that had always been in my mind is, you know, is there free will or not? And I had this experience where I guess I accessed some other level of myself, the universe, I don't know, whatever. And I remember thinking in this place, I was like, there is no free will. It doesn't, it's not even matter. It's not even a question. there is.

And I saw that I had this weird experience of like, I am part of a pattern. I can reference the pattern, but I am also the pattern unable to reference myself without the eye, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I experienced the paradox of like this blackness and emptiness

full of nothing and full of everything. But what I experienced in that moment and actually lasted for weeks was like, I'm not so sure if there's free will. And I don't know if it matters. that thing helped reduce my anxiety tremendously because I constantly thought like I have to make things happen

I have to bend the world I have to bend people's perception I have to make them understand this, that, or the other as though like I have the right to do that or even know how to do that. Maybe I don't, you know? And I was just left for the big like, I don't know. And weirdly, the I don't know felt freeing

because I'd spent so much time in the anxiety of thinking I had to know, which is so, it's so anxious. Like I have to know. I have to find the right tech so that I know how should works. So you know how it works and also does it change the decision you're going to make next if you believe that it's preordained or not? Yeah. And it was so interesting because, I mean, I don't think, and as far as I know,

I don't think that anybody with mathematics has been able to figure out, is their free will or not? it's discussed endlessly. But in that place, it didn't matter. And I was, like, really fascinated at that experience. Like, it doesn't matter whether it exists or not. Here I am making the decisions. Is the decision I'm making preordained?

I've had psychic greetings with people 40 years ago that talked about what I'm experiencing in this decade of my life and what would happen accurately. I had a psychic greeting when I was about 24, 25 years old. And at that time, I had gone to school. undergrad late because I dropped out the first time I went back. I was an older student for an undergrad student and I was in a serious relationship. I was thinking about starting a family. I really wanted to like work and earn money as a writer. That's what I was in school for.

I caught the film bug in undergrad and I went to the psychic who said, you're going to start earning money as a full-time writer when you're 34. And to me that was devastating news because there was so much time left. Between then and now, I'm like, what am I going to do for all that time? How am I going to like figure my life out? Was very destabilized for months afterwards. It felt like I was given information that I just shouldn't have known. And it was very unsettling.

Yes. And forgot about it. Went about my life. Didn't, you know, think about that reading or the parameters set. Went to grad school. When studied film more, started working and was making some, you know, money. working freelance and then saying, but I was doing other things as well,

juggling, trying to stay afloat. At 34 years old, I moved back to Toronto, Canada and started as a full-time writer at an innovation design company, which then took my, and only after I had been there

a few months did I think back to that psychic greeting and be like, what the fuck happened there? Yes, that's so cool. You know, I have a theory, and I know this is, we're going off into weird areas, but like,

I don't think time exists in the way we think it does. I agree with you. I don't know how to explain it, but I agree. Like our equipment takes what we think of time and lays it out in the line, our equipment. So we are astonished when something that we think is remote is connected to this moment here. But the thing is they're not remote. They're all part of the same, that we're stretching out in the line. and so we're astonished.

Because I have that the same thing of like, how did they do 40 years ago? Because it wasn't 40 years ago in the past or the future, our equipment that we're using is decoding it in this way so that we get astonished. That's my theory currently. Yes, but baked into that is the notion that these events are designed, right?

The fact that time can be collapsed, on itself like that so that someone can see would mean that I was going to make the decision, like the decision to go back to Canada or that my life wasn't going to unfold. Maybe it would have unfolded in a way that I didn't go back to Canada, but at that time, like how did they know that those years would be this juggling act versus 34 or something opens? Yeah, I know. And you know what I'm left with is like, I don't know.

I don't know. Because if you take it to the place of it is all designed, then you're also at risk of people then looking externally for someone who can read the timeline and tell you what's going to happen. And then that brings up a whole other range of issues because I do believe we can curve and dodge and pursue things that may not necessarily be apparent. If I had to offer a perspective,

it would be that I think there are major moments that are likely sketched out as highly probable. In between those major moments, there's a high level of variability. What I've gotten to is my framing of everything. It's the way I'm seeing things that makes it hard. And I may never be able to see things in this dimension, in this body, in this framework.

I mean, I know that when I have, let's say, I don't know, let's call them out-of-body experiences, I have a much broader in those moments, if there are moments, I don't know what they are, a much broader understanding of how everything works. Like I see my life from a distance. It's like I pull way, way back and I see it related to like what seems like other lives. Like in my dreams, I'm living other lives, like intimately. Like I know these people.

I am this person. Like it's not just a story. I am her. I am him. I'm like. So I feel like when I'm just here, the first. framing doesn't allow me to to perceive you know all those things so that's why i'm still like i don't know it's really cool it's a great conversation what was it like when your wife left nexium and you

were still in it that was one of the most painful moments for me as the viewer yeah in the film because she's desperately trying to get through to you she's the closest person in the world to you and you to her and yet you're divided in this way that is just almost unspeakably painful. Yeah. One thing I want to say before I answer that, there's a scene in, I think it's episode two, where you see her crying and I'm consoling her. She wasn't crying about us separating. We never separated.

That was an editorial choice. I argued with the editors about it. I said, like, it's not exactly true. And they were like, is there any way you could see this as an emotional beat that feels true? And I'm like, yes, yes, I can do that. Fair enough. I mean, I think that's a nice and honest disclosure, but also I think it still remains true.

Yeah, yeah. You two are now in the opposite spectrum of what happened. For her, it was actually, in many ways, much worse. I was just very confused because I was stuck with like, yeah, but I want to be honorable and I want to do the right thing. And I'm like this soldier, you know, in this militaristic system. And like, what's the right thing to do? because I'm so brainwashed.

And she's like, he can't see the evil, you know? And she didn't know what the evil was at first. It took her a while, and then she started realizing what it was. And then, you know, I don't remember if this is in the vow or not, but she said to me, what will it take? And I said evidence. I said data, because that was the word we used data. I need data, right, like, sciencey language.

And so she sent me, she connected me to two women that I knew, and they told me stories of what had happened to them. And then I was like, oh, shit. Because you couldn't not believe them. I believe them. I believed them. Like I had no reason to think that they would lie. And then it started to like, things started to make sense.

And then I went back to Reneery on a phone call, which I think is in the vow. And I started asking him a bunch of questions. And then he lied. And I was like, oh, what is going on? So for us, it was very hard. For my wife, you know, the way she described it, it was one of the hardest things for her because she realized she might have to leave me. if I never got it.

And because of that, she was going to fight in every way possible to get me to get it. And at first, the way she did it was just very directly. This is bad, he's bad,

which didn't work. You can't tell somebody who's in a cult that their leader's bad because you think you are the same as the leader. Like your values are the same, everything, everything.

So then she spoke to, you know, this exit counselor who told her what to do. But it was in a time of enormous confusion. So she basically left, the organization in January 2017, I woke up in March. She already knew three months before that.

So it's about six months, I think, of her realizing shit is bad and how am I going to get him to see it? And I was so stuck still with the values and the honor and the this and the that and the other that I couldn't see what was going on. I knew there was a problem in the organization. But I was going to Reneery saying things like there's a psychopaths in the organization. He goes, oh, why do you say that? Because this is happening and this is happening and this is happening. And then he said, well, who do you think's the psychopath? And I was like, I think Alison Mack's a psychopath. And he goes, well, that's interesting. I didn't realize he had Allison Mack under his control and he was making her do all the decisions she was doing. And then he distracted me with like, when you say, there's a psychopath in the organization,

do you, do you calculate it or do you feel it? I was like, oh, that's an interesting question. And me and my brain, I'm like, ah, gee, I wonder, he distracted me completely from the point of the discussion, which was there's a psychopath in the organization. Now, the trick was, he was a psychopath. And he was in, I imagine he was enjoying that conversation thoroughly because he was like,

you're so close. You're so close. You know, and the deliciousness, because he loved practical jokes, he would play them for months and years sometimes. I think he enjoyed that moment thoroughly.

So I was still so stuck in, there's a problem, but it can't be him. It's not him. So the break of finally realizing it's him is what she was pushing up against, not the break, she was pushing up against my walls of, I know there's problems, but it's not him, which was

very hard for her. So yeah, I mean, she told me, she said, look, I was recognized that they may come a point. You know, and it was interesting because the cult ex-counselor she spoke to, I won't mention her name, but this woman was an occult and dubbed in her husband who began asking questions. So she really understood how this worked. Wow. You know? Yeah. Connect us. to the narcissist playbook after your experiences. Yeah, leads to this film and what you hope people get out of it. Yeah, so what happened is that as I'm beginning to slowly wake up, she is beginning to give me articles about narcissism.

And there was one day in particular I had to have a call with Keith Reneery. And she handed me an article about like the 20 things the narcissist will do in a conversation. So I read the whole thing and I said, well, that's pretty fascinating. that I got on the phone call with Keith Ranieri and in my mind I began ticking off everything in the list. It wasn't everything, it was most things on the list. And when I hung the phone up,

I realized I would never talk to him again. Wow. Ever. Because I realized, oh my God, this is who he is. Like, there's a map for what he is. So I began studying narcissism, sociopathy, a whole bunch of things. A lot of the reasons because my wife kept him saying

you need to study this stuff. We had studied, by the way, copathy in the organization. He was having a study the way he worked, but we couldn't connect that it was him. So I began studying all these things. And the question I had for so long is, how did I miss it? And I finally realized the reason I missed it is because I had never been trained in how this works. Had I understood how this worked, I probably may have seen it earlier. I probably was still being fooled, but I may have seen it earlier. So I'm obsessed with trying to understand, like, what happened to me? Who was he? I'm mapping it all out. I actually

began watching and reading the work of H.G. Tudor, who's in the film as well, and this was helping me. And so I was so obsessed with this, and I was feeling pretty lost, you know, because I had to stop a project, shut it down, because it was sort of supporting the organization. And it was a cool project. And then my wife said to me one day, so you know, you should make a film about narcissism. I think this was after the trial. I was obliterated. I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. And she said, I said, I want to get back to the project that I wanted to do. And she says, I think you should make a film about narcissism. I was like, that's a good idea.

So 2020, I start, you know, toying with the idea. I bring in, you know, my producer, one of the other producers, who was an exec on the vow. And so we've been working this thing for five years. And the idea of talking to self-confessed narcissists, which you saw in the film,

is because I feel like people need to understand how these people operate. You know, like you need to understand how they think they're not the same. And a lot of good people are like, they just have, they need enough love. They didn't get enough love as children.

And now people think this about dark tetrite individuals, you know, that somehow the sadism will go away if you love them enough or give them enough whatever. That shit's never going away. Their brains are broken. So I felt like I needed people to understand that. So I wanted to make a film that people could go through the experience of being vindicated of like, this is what happened to me. And then listen to the people that do it, very honestly, as you saw in the film, speak about what they do, why they do it and how much they enjoy doing it. you know, which is, which can be pretty shocking, but a lot of people walk out of the film,

they're like, that's how it works. And then as you saw, which I don't want to talk too much about, as you saw taking the audience through the experience of what it's like to be fooled. Because many people that have been abused, whether it's cult or, you know, a relationship or whatever, they get asked the question, like, how did you not see it? Like, why did you not leave, you know?

And so in the film, you go through the experience as a person maybe that hasn't been through it, of being like, oh, shit, I fell for it as well. Like, oh, that's how it works. So that's a lot of what we want the film to do. Like we made it for survivors to be able to go like, yes, that's what happened to me. And I think what will happen and is happening already is people saying to other people, you've got to see this film because like this describes what I've been trying to explain

I've been through. The word playbook and the title is apt because it helps people understand their experience if you've gone through it. And it very much helps people avoid the experience if they're in something that feels confusing. And I think then what you start. with the notion that these people are not going to change. No. I think the hardest part for a lot of empathetic people, a lot of people who are in a

relationship with one of these people or who may have one of these people as their parent. The most shocking statistic. And our podcast has done an episode on narcissism. And I was struck by it then. One in six people will fall into this category. So like, look around you. It's not like, have you.

experience this. It's who in your life are you experiencing this with. Yes. And of course, there's levels to it, right? Like I want to also caveat it. Not everyone is the darkest of narcissists who are going to, you know, ruin your life and suck you down a black hole. But even understanding the darkest part and then walking backwards to say, there are people on a spectrum here who may be exhibiting traits. And if you're in a relationship and seem to be having the same type of of argument over and over and over again. Oh yeah, vulnerable narcissism. Yeah. That one is so fascinating to me because you're like you always like you, the non-narcissist always becomes the problem. You've always perpetrated something against this person. And to me, especially as a man

who often, and this is stereotypical, we are in scenarios where like we have to change our behavior because we're not sensitive enough or aware enough or we've, our tone is wrong or whatever that is, like all these natural things that men often experience in relationships can get weaponized to a point where like, oh, I don't even know what's up or not. I don't even know if my tone is reasonable. I have no idea. Yes, 100%. And as you saw in the film, we also have a man who's been, you know, in a situation of the female narcissist, you know, so we're like equal opportunity in that way. It shows up differently. And the other thing, by the way, that also we don't talk about as much as communal narcissism, you know, is the people that sort of build communities around them,

they run charities, they run NGOs, they run political parties, whatever it is. They have a cause, you know, and they want to bring everybody into their cause. And sometimes these people are not good people. But the language is right. Maybe it's the language of social justice or politics or whatever it is. There are some pretty nasty people at the top of different organizations and it's worth like paying attention to how that works, you know? So there's a whole, yes, there's a whole spectrum, as you say, of people and the way it plays out. Tell us where people can go to learn more about the film and also to follow your work. Me personally, I'm mostly on Instagram, just at Mark Ficente.

The film, the website is Narcissist Playbook.com. We are on every single platform as well. It's either the Narcist Playbook or Narcist Playbook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. We're kind of everywhere. And we put a lot of content out. We're also putting out stuff that, you know, didn't make the cut. So there's a lot of stuff still coming. And we're going to continue this outreach program even once we start releasing the film

because a lot of people are looking for answers and places to go. And we want to design something where people can go like, well, where do I go for legal help? You know, what kind of therapist do I need? Because you can't just go to any therapist necessarily because therapists, by their own admission, are not as well trained in this as they could be. In fact, Dr. Romani is training a lot of therapists in this because you go to a therapist sometimes. You've been in a bad situation. and they say, well, it takes two to tango, what's your responsibility?

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works. Yeah. You know, yes, that's true sometimes when you have two empathic people with conscience, but when you're dealing with a narcissist, it's not, it takes two to tango. It's one person is fooling everybody, and the person who's being abused believes they are the cause of all the problems, as you say. That is probably the most important take-home message. It can be so easy to overlook it and internalize this if you're an empathetic person.

Yes. It's your superpower and your Achilles heel. It's beautiful. The projections of good people and other people, it's beautiful and sometimes foolish in the wrong context. Mark, thank you so much for spending time with us. I just have absolutely appreciated your work over the years and getting to talk with you is just really a special gift. Great conversation. Thanks a lot, man. or two one fiction one now she's gonna break down so break down she's gonna break it down she's gonna break it down