RAWTALK - HOW HE DATED THREE GIRLS AT THE SAME TIME...

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Take a trip with us to Miami as we spoke to Aubrey Marcus. We adventure to the many business ventures, life experiences, mind opening perspectives and the jungle with jaguars... It is a wild ride so buckle up and brace yourself for the adventure of Aubrey Marcus.SUBSCRIBE HERE: https://www.youtube.com/c/REALRAWTALK?sub_confirmation=1LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rawtalk/id1294154339FOLLOW RAWTALK PODCAST:INSTAGRAM | https://instagram.com/getrawtalkTIKTOK | https://vm.TikTok.com/TTPdQbEqVX/FOLLOW BRADLEY:INSTAGRAM | https://instagram.com/bradleymartynSUBSCRIBE TO RAWTALK PODCAST CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvzSBNBOK599FqzrTZS8ScQ/?sub_confirmation=1SUBSCRIBE TO LIFE OF BRADLEY MARTYN: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTQG2aMDYKGDqYEGqJb1FA/?sub_confirmation=1SUBSCRIBE TO FITNESS CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/bradleymartynonline?sub_confirmation=1RAWGEAR: https://www.rawgear.com (CODE:RAW)

We're up? What's up? Why are you filming? Come on. It's my guy right now. There you go. Thank you. You got the Miami Shades off?

Yeah. Got you. Thank you. It's an internship. It's a free employee. Yeah, it's an internship. No, there's, because there's no... College credits.

No, there's no job offer after. There's no college. Something, right? It's just, it's free work. No, actually, I would totally hire you. Not interested. I would hire you. But only if Steve says it's okay.

I don't think he'll approve. Proof. See ya, bro. See ya, bro. Good day, thanks. Hey, hey. This is Jacob. What's going to meet you too?

This is Jacob. How are you? How are you doing? How are you doing? Do a little blog, so. You don't do any blogs on? Not really. Well, I did for my book release.

What's the name of the book? Do you have one book? One book? Right. It's taller. Yeah, holy shit. You look at the same height. I think he's a little taller, dude.

Yeah, it's kind of fucking me up right now. What the hell? Not normal. It's not normal for me. Like watermelon with my bare hands. Okay, we're live. So listen, I don't really have like an official intro or anything like that. And everyone watching is going to be like, where the fuck are you right now?

But I have a very, very special guest. And I'm actually a fan. I was a little nervous before I got here. He could attest to that. I was like, damn. Like, I've never actually been nervous to get on a podcast with someone. And I think you're the first person. I was like a little bit.

Yeah, I'm fucking. Damn it. I'm proud of that. I'll take it. There's no reason, though. There's absolutely no reason. No, for sure, for sure. Aubrey Marcus, everyone.

And I really appreciate you. This setup is actually his. Like this whole setup is his. So again, you guys are like, where are you? This is, he booked this venue clearly. Obviously, he's staying here. But welcome back to another episode of Rothok, very special guest, Aubrey Marcus. And the first thing I kind of want to bring up is, like, what is it that you do specifically?

For my audience, who doesn't know you, I know that you are the founder of On it. Obviously, I know you write a book. You just told me about it right now. You are very, very, I guess I would consider it spiritual or connected to yourself and it seems to be like others. But what is it like, what would you say that you do most of your time besides podcasting? I know this is like, I think this is the main thing you do. But like I'm really curious about your journey because the, the on it thing to me when I found out. about it I was like I'm directly like in that similar industry sure like the fitness

space a supplement space I think you also sell workout equipment I know because we bought those the kettlebells yeah oh yeah yeah the primal bells but like how did you get started in all this I think ultimately I just like to solve problems I like to figure out puzzles and figure out better solutions that help people with those puzzles so on it was solving a bunch of different puzzles. How were you when you started it? 30. So 10 years ago. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And you I know some stuff. Maybe I shouldn't know. I don't know, but you, because I was here. That's foreboding. Yes. Did you recently sell the company? I did. Yeah. Did you sell for a lot of money? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You could say that. So I've heard obviously I don't know. I'm not going to,

we're not going to talk about your finance or anything like that. But in 10 years, that's really impressive, at least from what I think it is. Yeah, I mean, it was a beautiful epic ride. I mean, my only thing, I wish I would have had a little more confidence and enjoyed it. The thing about being a founder and a CEO is you're constantly stressed out about that next lurking problem right around the next fucking corner. So even through this meteoric rise, yeah, it was fun and I enjoyed myself for a lot of times, but so much just stress and anxiousness of this next threat that was coming. And they did come. And there were challenges. And there were moments. And there were. moments where everything looked like it was going to collapse. But, you know, we held true to our values of really like being of service to our customers, putting out the best products we can and just treating people really well. Like, no matter who it was, whether it was, you know, our mutual friend, Brendan or, you know, Joe as a partner or anybody like cowboy or whoever was working with us. It was like, no, no, no, you're, you're a partner, you're a friend. Like, we love you. Let's do this a different way. Let's just revolutionize the way that we interact with our influencers, with our

customers with our employees everything how did you get a foothold though in the industry because 10 years ago on social media social media isn't wasn't then what it is now today yeah like completely different because I started on social media about the same time like 10 years ago so it wasn't like Instagram everyone was readily with all these influencers and all it's like because your brand is not like the most popular brand on social but I know that it does very very well yeah you know what I'm saying it was podcasts so it was podcast like we were right there from the drop with podcasts and with joe and with the whole network of other people how'd you mean joe i met joe for coffee because when he first started

his podcast he had no advertisers so we're talking early early jere no advertisers like what episode jaree i mean i was listening from episode one like he can like i was a fan you know of not only joe because I was a huge UFC fan. I watched UFC from UFC 1, like literally with my parents ordered it on pay-per-view UFC 1. Yeah. My dad actually tried to start a fight organization himself totally failed. But he was in the, he had the right idea, you know. So I knew him from that.

And then I watched his comedy and I was like, fuck, this guy's talking about the same thing that I, same things that I care about. Yeah. So I arranged a meeting to talk about getting one of my clients. I had a marketing company. and one of my clients was Fleshlight, which is like... Fleshlight. Yeah, one of my clients is Fleshlight. Yeah, exactly.

And I approached him. And I was like, hey, man, I know you don't have any advertisers on your podcast, but Fleshlight will pay you to advertise on the podcast. So wait, wait, you use the, like, so you're using a client to, like, have this conversation about... Exactly. Just to have a conversation. I was like, I'd love to meet for coffee. We'll talk to you about, you know.

Sorry, when you say client, you mean, like, were you doing some sort of management? Marketing. You were doing marketing for that company. which is the easiest job in the world because it's just getting horny guys to try to fuck something for the fleshlight for the fleshlight yeah okay and then so you met you you met him through that connection and so yeah i hit him up and i was like look we want to advertise in your podcast or my client wants to advertise in your podcast i'll just meet you for coffee we'll close the deal and the coffee that was supposed to be like 20 minutes where i was going to meet him and just kind of finish the deal

turned into like a four hour coffee to dinner talking about super volcanoes and psychedelics and we became friends. He invited me on his podcast. I did a couple podcasts with him. After one of the podcast, I asked him, I was like, hey, man, what's the number one supplement you would like to take more than anything else? And he was like, I'd like to take an all natural neutropic. Yeah. And I was like, okay. He said that how many years ago? Fucking 11 years ago. Which is so crazy because that's not one of the most popular products today. I know. I know. And so he was, he was really early in it. And I had a background. So my stepmother was the supplement and nutritional doctor for all of Pat Riley's teams.

So Lakers in the 80s for that huge championship run, Knicks in the 90s with Patrick Ewing and everybody, the heat in the 2000s won championships there with D. Wade. Damn. And so that, you know, she really understood supplements for performance. And so when I was growing up, I was a basketball player myself. So there'd be a stack of supplements on a paper towel, you know, for game day.

This is in the 90s, right? like supplements were not what they are now and there'd be a stack of supplements for test day for my brain so i understood that there was things that i could take that would alter my performance in a really positive way so i went back to some of my roots of the things that i used to take and then went out to the went to the science just buried myself in the literature found some other doctors some neuroscientist dr martin lazar dr dan ingled some other different doctors put together a formula and it was strong as hell like so strong that it like made half the people nauseous but but Joe fucking loved it.

And he was like, and I knew that we had something cool. So we just scaled it down a little bit so that. So the fleshlight conversation goes into like talking about maybe being a part of this company. No, it took it was a whole other two, maybe two years or a year and a half before even we had the conversation. We were just friends. Yeah.

You know, so yes, fleshlight was the first advertised. If you go back, if you go back to like JRE like 70 or whatever, you know, you'll hear him do fleshlight rates. And his management team apparently was like, Joe, you can't do this.

You can't advertise for Fleshlight. And he's like, the fuck I can't watch me. He's like, that's just the way he is. He's like, if someone tells him he can't do something, he's like, still like that. Really? Yeah. No, totally. And that's like one of the things I admire the most about him.

But yeah, we were friends for like a year and a half. And then we'd play pool and hang out. And then it was after one of the podcasts that I asked them that question. And then ultimately the partnership just came organically because we created Alpha Brain. I created Alpha Brain. And I was like, how do you like it? And he's like, I fucking love it.

And then we started selling it. And then eventually we were like, well. I still see this ad like all the time. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I was like, so I so we're partners. We're partners in this, right? And he's like, yeah.

And it was like, all right. So, uh, you need some equity in this company. It was like the most organic conversation. Yeah. And then ultimately he ended up being, you know, really a full partner in the company. That was early on this stuff, right? Yeah. So do you think that was the main like podcasting that, that, that,

like you said was the main thing that drove the sales for that absolutely was Joe a big part of that Joe was a big part of that you know there was a lot of other podcasters we hit the podcast market really hard right from the start we didn't do the social influencer thing that well yeah we still probably haven't done it that well we have some you have influencers just what I've seen yeah that that that's never been the way that we that we went about it but we did the podcast thing right like we rode that wave all the way up I mean there was we would spend five thousand dollars to advertise on somebody's podcast and we would get returns of like 60 70 grand like that's impossible that's impossible now because everything everybody understands the value of podcast now and there's

podcast advertising networks and there's i mean you're lucky you spend five you're lucky if you get seven you know seven five back yeah right you're like all right well repeat customers you know lifetime value will make this thing work do you think because you were like an early adopter that that's what that's part of the reason why i did well absolutely yeah nobody understands to the game yet. You know, nobody understood like how valuable podcasts were. Everybody was sleeping and it was hard for podcasters to get advertisers. You know, it's like we were approaching. We're like, we will advertise. They're like, great. I have none. Yeah. And the return was so high is what you're saying. So high. Yeah. Like astronomical. You think nowadays the return is not as high?

I know for sure the return is not as high because we've, you know, we still advertise. I say we, even though I sold the company, it's still mine. I'm still. Yeah. Are you still like, I'm not officially involved in anything, but it's, it's like all my people that I hired. It's all my ethos. Yeah. I mean, I still have my office there in the headquarters and I walk around and I say hi to everybody. And it's, nothing has changed on it is just as beautiful as it ever was. And I'm really happy about that.

But yeah, I know the, I know all the advertising metrics. And like I said, you know, we spend five grand. We're lucky to get seven, five back. We spend 10 grand. Maybe we'll get 15 back. And then just hoped that over lifetime. value because that's a bet's basically break even with their product cost you know so but with just attracting new customers it's just a different game have you always been into working out yeah

like your whole life my whole i've been in shape my whole life and that's like that's just one of the things that you know i there's a lot of people who you know have this big journey about like yeah i got really fit i was like well fuck man i've been fit since i was like 12 like you you you came out it's the same yeah i mean i was always playing in sports, like basketball, martial arts, volleyball, tennis, whatever the fuck. I was always really good, but not great at anything. You know, basketball is my best sport, but I was good enough. I think you're great at this podcast up, though. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, so the working out journey, like, when did you know that you wanted to start like that company?

Obviously, we talked about the, you know, the success of it, but like, when did you know that that was for you? And what were you doing prior to that moment? Well, the, the interesting thing about on it in the workout space is it's all unconventional fitness so it's kettlebells steel maces steel clubs battle ropes Bulgarian sandbags you know these different and 10 years ago too yeah exactly which was like no one was kind of talking about no no so I'll tell you how that started so my the first investor in on it was my best friend at the time boadie miller sorry I got to pause you you were the sole owner sole owner founder and you had investors I took I took on 110,000 dollars of seed investment and that was the only investment that I really took into the company ever so ever yeah we started on it ever yeah we started on it with 110,000 I mean there was little chunks of equity I sold the friends and different things but as far as like an official investment that was it 110,000 60,000 was my friend Bodie Miller who was the first one to show up and he was the Olympic Olympic champion world champion skier you know has a had a notorious record for partying and skiing and skiing and skiing and

and doing both exceptionally well and I watched him do both exceptionally well like said good night to him at 5 a.m. Oh shit. And then watched him win a world championship downhill race at 8 a.m. the next morning. Yeah, like he's his fucking savage. And so we were, he was my best friend.

And but I watched how he trained and he trained different. The reason he was able to do that and do what he did was he trained different than everybody else. Like he trained unconventionally. He used different tools and different mechanisms. And also at the same thing, same time, one of my other best friends was Roger Werta, who was a UFC fighter and, you know, had a long career in the UFC. And he trained different too. And so I was around these guys

who were doing things in different ways. And I thought, all right, well, there's tools that we can bring in, some of which they were using. They were all using kettlebells. But the maces and the clubs were just kind of an extension of that. They were using ropes as well. It was like, there's tools that elite athletes are using that the general public are not using yet. You know, so I mean still. So I wanted to bring those into the forefront. Obviously, Joe was a big fan, particularly of the kettlebells. But I think through the MMA community, through like the extreme sport.

So that was that's where the idea kind of started. Totally. Totally. It didn't start with supplements right away. It started with supplements and then moved. The idea was that like I knew that supplements aren't enough. Like you got to eat right. You got to take the right supplements and you got to train right.

Like so total human optimization became on its moniker. That's what we're all about. So we had to hit those major categories, including like your mental fitness, right? Like the way you think about things, the way that you look at your life, the way that you look at your transformation, your growth, your goals, all of that is also crucial. This is what I want to get into. I was just, I was just, I just wanted to set up this like for people who didn't know like where you kind of come from.

But the thing that I find the most interesting about you is the way that you've manifested so many other things in your life and the way that you've connected more deeply with yourself and, you know, the community and the communities that you're trying to. you know create um what got you into that like at what point in your life were you like because i i always joke because i have i have a friend who's like really into the same things i'm like i always like it's like hippie shit but but it's so i'm not saying this and it's it's it's such a good thing yeah i mean like i fully like i see eye to i obviously i'm not as deep in that community as i believe you to be or what i can see sure i love it and i'm just

curious at what point along in your life were you like oh this this is for me was it along the same time or was it after yeah so i'll tell you that i'll tell you that story too so i grew up my family was more like agnostic didn't really believe in anything but didn't not believe in things weren't like hardcore atheists or whatever are both your parents alive uh yes my dad my dad actually went went crazy actually lost his mind in about 10 years ago i don't talk about it that much but so he's alive but our relationship is severed like uh like a psychotic thing yeah like an actual one an actual one my father took his life when i was six he hung himself fucked up stuff yeah i'm not trying to say that to compare anything i just i find it interesting yeah i mean i feel very blessed that

i had 30 years of of a relationship with him so like you don't you don't have any conversation is he like in a like a home or the mental health the mental health you know kind of institutions that exist are just piss poor so he's been in and out but it's he's unreachable you know he's kind of like hold up in his house oh shit yeah so but yes my parents are live i have a great relationship with my mother i had i had a beautiful relationship with my father and i still hold out a hope did you see that coming in hindsight there were certain things that you could see but it happened it happened like there was a tipping point where it happened and uh and once the tipping point happened there seemed to be no turning back but like as I said like I still keep a candlelit and

of course and like and hope that maybe someday that'll shift that's so interesting yeah is it like a genetic thing like could that happen to you do you ever worry about that I've actually had I've had to deal with that fear but I think um you know he he started getting into different practices where he was you know where he was trying to hear voices you know through like a spiritual practice like of it would be what you would call channeling yeah so he was trying to hear voices and he was trying very diligently to hear these voices and uh ultimately the voices came but they weren't the type of voices that you wanted like consciously trying to make this happen not like in a psychotic way no like wanting this yeah you know and some people have that channel that's available to him some

people can hear wisdom from the universe and um you know he he wasn't one of those people but he created a situation where voices came yeah you know and you just you can't have any sort of interaction with them anymore unfortunately not yeah yeah so it's that's been an interesting story and actually you know it's um there's a a documentary that um that i'm that i've released the first you know the first version of it's called awake in the darkness recently yeah about my time spent in absolute darkness and it tells the story uh more of you know things that went that happened at that moment you talked about this on the podcast with mccanay right yeah so what did you do you just like you just sat in a room a dark like no sound like

where that was crazy so let me let me back up the story i'm sorry i got i got a little like there's a lot there's a lot to go so i'll back up the story to family largely agnostic you know yeah kind of phoned in some judaism on my dad's side and and phoned in christmas on my mom's side but nobody really and And had some Native American type spiritual beliefs, which I really resonated with that came from my grandma. The grandma's tattooed here at my arm. But nothing really that stuck. And then I moved to Texas from California.

Moved to Texas from California. Great idea. It was. It was the right. I was the right. I was early. Wow. But I didn't know how good of an idea that was.

I didn't know how good of an idea that was. So I get there and I see a bunch of people and I'm in high school and a bunch of people just so guilty about their desire to have sex with each. because they were Christian and I was like what is wrong with you like of course you want to fuck yeah you mean you're in high school what what is like what is going on human nature I was like this is bullshit and so I started getting angry at religion I also got honey dicked into some fucking church ski trip one time oh my god they were like you want to go skiing bro and I was like yeah I love skiing like you just got to worship god and then every day I was like what the fuck I just

want to go skiing yeah so I started to get mad and then I went to Italy and I went to the dungeons of the Inquisition. So the Inquisition was where the Catholic Church started torturing all the people they called heretics. And I saw that 80% of the fucking torture devices involved people's genitals. And I was like this is some sadistic, fucked up

shit. And so I got really mad at religion. So I was actually a hardcore atheist. I thought like, my purpose is to rid people of the superstition of capital R religion. That was, that was me. Right? Like, that was me going into like when I was 18,

18 years old. This is so interesting to me because I don't obviously see it the same exactly way, but there was definitely a time in my life. I grew up Catholic. I went to a Catholic high school, all-boys school in San Francisco. And, you know, they come in the, you know, you go to church, they want the money and all these things. And I did all this for so long. And it never felt super genuine. Like it felt like, it just, I don't know, very early on, I was like, this seems like a business. It seemed like it was like they were trying to, and I'm not knocking anyone's religion. It's just, I noticed early on, I felt really disconnect. from like the practice of Catholicism and how they did it not not on the like the

spiritual sense with like you know the idea of God but the way that they like the way humans created all these things you have to do I agree man I mean and that's ultimately where I arrived so 18 years old I go in and one of the beautiful things about my father is he understood in like a lot of indigenous traditions and one of which is vision quest with psychedelics so he hooked me up with a shaman who took me to the mountains in New Mexico and I did a full vision quest where I was out in a hut by myself overnight drinking a mushroom tea and I think there was actually some MDMA in the mushroom tea too so it was like extrapotent it's not ayahuasca though no

all right I'm gonna ask you the mushroom tea yeah so I'm 18 this 20 22 years ago and I drink this MDMA and mushroom tea out in the mountains and this is fucking storm and this lightning storm and I literally feel my body evaporate and then the only thing that remains the only word I had for it at the time was soul and I was like what the fuck I was like I thought all of these religions were complete bullshit but now the only thing that I can feel is my soul like that's the only how could you describe like how could you describe that to someone like obviously your body's not actually gone right you where did you feel it was like in your chest that's the interesting thing it was it was it was out of, it was full out of body experience. It was literally like my body evaporated and pure

consciousness remained. And it was, I, I wasn't even conscious that I was breathing. It was like, it was an absolute evaporation of everything corporeal, everything involving the flesh. So visually, you, you weren't like, oh, I can see my hands. No, everything was gone. Everything was gone. And I was in a vision space, but the vision space looked more like, you know, that scene, when, you know, that scene, when Russell Crowe dies in Avatar and he's like walking through a wheat field and his hands are like caressing. That's where I was literally there.

But you were sitting in a hut. But I was actually sitting in a hut. But that's where I actually was. And that moment changed everything. Because that moment I felt something real that I could not deny the realness of what I felt. And then that's what sent me on this path to continue to explore.

like what the fuck is that what did i experience what does that mean about the world what does that mean about god what does that mean about consciousness and that led me to ayahuasca and aboga and eventually that dark room yeah okay so damn it's so interesting to me man because i when growing up uh after losing my father i spent so much time like not you know i wasn't taking mushroom or anything i actually related drugs because my father like dealt with some drug abuse before he took his life to being like part of the reason why he took his life. So I was very like, you know, growing up in high school, people like, you want to smoke. And I was very against it. Because I was like, oh, if I do that, I'm going to end up like my father, which is one of my

biggest fears, which was also one of my biggest fears, which is interesting because I've been seeing you lately, been talking about the fear of death. But I had a similar feeling like when I was, I don't know, maybe 12 years old. I'm walking. Like, whenever I'd walk to school, I, every single day I would think about my father and his passing and what did it mean and what did my life like what's the purpose like why did he do this who am i like how am i going to die like why did this happen why does all exists like and i remember thinking like do other kids think about all these things do they complicate their mind with all these thoughts i would i remember thinking about every day thinking about what other people thought about and like is this normal that i'm

thinking about these things very early on very very early on and um i think that's part of the reason why like i don't know in my life i i i have perspective on a lot of Maybe things that I've been through because I've been thinking about all of them for so long. Yeah. But I find it so interesting when you talk about this, like you, you know, at 18 years old, I don't think it's normal for most people to experience these things. Not in our culture. Not at all.

And so you, you experience this and then like at what, but at what point were you like, I don't know, like fully involved in it, like trying to figure it out. Because obviously, I mean, it's right out of the, kind of right out of the gate because you experience something that's so different than anything you've ever felt and everything that you even think is possible. Like I couldn't. It's not like a dream where I was like, oh, it was a crazy dream. It was like the whole world is different than the way I look at it. Right. Like everything I've ever thought up until this point has now shifted because I've experienced something. Nobody told me anything. I experienced something that was so real that everything afterwards. was changed. So I stayed curious about this and on this path for ever since then. I mean, there wasn't a year that went by that I didn't explore some other different type of ritual. Yeah. You know, and so all of the great rituals around the world of all of these medicine carriers, I started to explore. Do you think these things added to your success?

Fuck yeah. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I mean, in my first ayahuasca journey, so ayahuasca was actually timed My first time I did ayahuasca was timed right before I launched Alpha Brain right before on it actually like came in came on to the scene Alpha Brain was on its first like real so how long ago was this time this was I'm afraid to take Iwaska This was like early 2011 so early 2011 that's like right this is literally right when I started Instagram this is right when like Instagram started Yeah so early 2011 and I Waska did many things I mean it had me confront my fear of death in every possible way. I mean, I had visions of spiders crawling in my eyes and laying eggs in my brain and spiders crawling out of my ears.

I had eels eating up. You're making me not want to do this right now. My inners. Man, the gnarly one has, I had a vision of myself sliding down a vine made of thorns. And it was, I was naked and it was ripping me up from the genitals up, like just shredding my ball sack. Like, what the fuck? Yeah.

Yeah. And then it was like, okay, bro. And I was like, okay, I'm cool with this. I'm cool with this. How long did that last, though? Hours? Not the vine one, though. No, the vine one was like five minutes.

The vine one was like the fucking jacking the beanstock five minute vine of evisceration of my nutsack. But then eventually it was like, you have cancer. And I was like, no. And that was what I was really in the same experience. Yeah, in the same experience. What was all negative? The point of it was to get me to finally accept this fear, like get beyond my fear of death. So cancer was the one.

that really got me iwaska was like you got cancer i was like no i don't i'm fine i'm healthy i'm strong it's like no you don't you got cancer you're gonna die you're gonna die you're gonna die you're gonna die just like your uncle you got cancer you got bob and i was like no no no no no like fucking freaked out and then finally i was like you have some anxiety did you have some anxiety like of course yeah i mean it's fucking intense i no but i mean like prior to doing this did you have anxiety not that i not that i really identified i think i think we do like I actually think people think that cannabis gives you anxiety, but I think cannabis just reveals the anxiety that we already have.

Yeah. You know what I mean? So, yeah, if I smoke weed, I would get anxious. So yeah, was I anxious for sure. Yeah. And in the ayahuasca, you know, I think it revealed that I had a deep fear of death, as most people do. I do.

And the way that I was most afraid of dying was most afraid of dying. By the fucking giant thorn cutting your balls. Well, that was one fear for sure. Death by fucking ball sack. Holy shit. bleeding out of my balsack. Ball evisceration. But eventually I just accepted it.

I was like, if that's the way I'm going and it is my time to die, so be it. Yeah, so be it. And as soon as I accepted it, ayahuasca, like lovingly, it was almost like a scene from Avatar where like AWAC comes up from the ground and I could feel like mother ayahuasca and the whole earth just embrace me in this warm hug. And she just like whispers in my ear, you don't have cancer. You're perfectly healthy. Like, and basically like, good job.

like you accepted your death and you made it through the other side so like that was my very first ayahuasca experience i mean it was also also a crazy shit show we're in this hut one shaman maestro lando who i still work with today he's unbelievable but he didn't have any helpers he's speaking spanish his lady next to me gets stuck in a mental loop where she's saying like i don't know if i imagined i shit my pants or i actually shit my pants smelly and i was like yeah you actually shit your pants for sure and she puked on my feet it was fucking mayhem in there it was like absolute mayhem no it was like 11 people in the hut and then we got out of there there was jaguar tracks like fresh jaguar tracks right outside the hut we're like deep in the jungle and crew so anyways another

he probably smelled the shit he was like what's going on okay for sure he's like someone's dying in there someone just shit themselves they're dead i'm gonna go eat them uh but then you know ultimately my second journey. It was a much different, beautiful, ecstatic journey. I had spaceships downloading information to my tongue and like pulling smoke out of my body and it was fucking wild. And all, but also at the same time. So describe this to me. You say the spaceships download information to your tongue. What does that look like? Okay. It looks like it looks like this. It looks like there's this gigantic three football field long. Is everything else? triangular spaceship. Everything else is black. Okay. And it's silver and it has all of these like intricate carvings or looks like runes or hieroglyphs on it like intricate hieroglyphs over the entire thing. And this thing moves over. Imagine three football fields just fucking moving over silently moves over and I'm like whoa. And then all of a sudden pretty much involuntarily my head goes back and my tongue touches the roof of my mouth.

like this. And so I open my mouth and expose the bottom of my tongue. And this beam of light comes beaming down from this spaceship, this fucking three football field long spaceship. Beam of light comes beaming down and it's like beaming underneath my tongue. And I get start, I start getting filled with the most ecstatic energy. It felt like an orgasm in every cell of my body from my toes to my head. I was not just down here. No, yeah. Just the whole thing. Yeah. The whole thing full body and I was like squealing with like delight it was unbelievable I was like convulsing it was crazy but visually it's so visually it's that thing and then this like beam and then because I always wonder I haven't done eyewasca like I'm looking I'm afraid of it is it are these things

that you've already seen no no like that you're now creating this I mean maybe I'd seen some kind of idea of a spaceship in a movie or something like that but this was a this was an organic vision i've never seen it since you know like that's the this is my one and only encounter with that that anything even close to that even in i i've i've seen some crazy shit in iawaska i've done over 30 journeys now but that was really unique and after that to get to your question did it help me in my career yeah i actually saw how on it i saw the entire journey of on it i saw it as i saw its success. I saw the way that all of the products needed to come out. I saw that. I saw everything. And I saw all of the things, all of the ideas that I had that were wrong that wouldn't

work. And I was able to correct them like in my own in my own psyche. I was like correcting all of the problems that were that I hadn't even made yet. I was like solving I was solving future problems. Yeah. Okay. Then are you saying then those things actually became did they actually come to fruition and you were like whoa I remember this no way no way yeah because I had ideas I had ideas about how to market things and how to because I came from a marketing back I was again I was marketing fleshlights right like I had a I had ideas about marketing that were all fucked up knew about fucking plastic yeah exactly yeah but and this was like no no no on it on like all of the things you learned they don't apply to this new company like it showed me

the whole way that I needed to build it and it showed me if I did that all of this energy would flow in and out and it would be like this heartbeat and it would provide like infinite resources and it all fucking came true like would you just surrender to that like I don't how do you I don't it's so it's so non-ordinary it's so unusual but and it's just one example of that was a very literal example of how these the medicine journeys have helped me yeah but in every other way it's helped me with my own ability to manage stress, my ability to look at different situations and challenges and solve problems and just become a better person.

And the better I became internally, the easier it was to affect the external world in a really positive way. But that one experience was fucking nuts. Oh, bro, I'm like, I'm so afraid to do it, but I want to do it so bad. Like, even more now after talking to you about it. Like, I got to do it.

Well, we can go? I got to do it. All right. I'm dead serious. I've been talking about doing this for like two years. All right. So, okay, let me ask you a question because this comes up a lot with my audience. And I get asked this question so much in person and so much in DMs.

People trying to find, like, their way to something that truly fulfills them. You know, a lot of people work, like maybe a job. They don't want to work or they do something that they see someone else doing like, I want to do that, but they don't know how to get there. Or they have an idea, but they don't know exactly how to like make it a part of the reality, what would you recommend for someone trying to like to figure it out? You know, because I always say focus on the actual journey and the process of trying to figure out while trying to like do more of the things that make you happy and you do feel

fulfilled in, obviously making enough time for those things because, you know, if you have a nine to five, it's not exactly easy to also, you know, do 10 other things that you think you want to do. But what would you say to those kind of like young men and people think? Because I know I have a much dominant, much more dominant male audience, but to figure that out to figure that process of like what is truly for me you know what I'm saying I get asked that so much and I again I've given my advice but I want to hear from you like how you figured it out and what you would tell someone who's trying to figure out what they not necessarily

should do but um the thing that they really want to do like they'll have an idea but they don't know how to get there I think uh if you're really going to only focus on one thing you got to be so fucking good at that one thing to really stand out right so like if you're going to be a basketball player well all right there's a couple hundred people in the NBA and then maybe a couple thousand people playing pro ball around out of the barriers huge and barriers huge same with everything even if like you think podcasting wants to be a career all right there's maybe 500 or a thousand podcasts that make money you know like it's it's it's hard if you're just going to do one thing but if you're great at it if you're great at it and you dedicate yourself to it, you can win. But it's a lot easier to win

if you take two things that you're really passionate about and really good about and you combine them. And this is what Robert Green calls the Da Vinci effect. Because Leonardo da Vinci was good at many things. Yeah. He was good at drawing. He was good at sculpting. He was good at math. He was good engineering and that's what made him Leonardo da Vinci was he was good at many different things and that's what created him into one of the great masters of all time what's the idea of two things so by at minimum combining two things so let's say you are a yoga enthusiast and you also love mountaineering yeah so if you combine those things and you offer mountain you offer yoga on the top of mountains that people have to climb yeah then all of a sudden anybody else in this wide world of

the internet who also like yoga and mountains are going to be like yo this is my dude yeah you get you get a larger net you get a large and it's something specific that people haven't seen you know or if it's like so if you at least have two things that you can combine that you're really good at like you're really good at mountaineering and you're really good at yoga and you combine those two things, then you got something like really special. And I think that's what I always give people the advice of, like become a master, not at one thing, because that's really hard. And some, some elite people are able to succeed there. But if you become a master at many things and then combine them, then you're going to have an opportunity. I mean, it's kind of reminds me

of your brand, like the total human optimization. That was it. It was mentally, but also physically. Yeah, it was, it was my ability to know, to be good enough at many things that I was, was able to bring them all together and that's what allowed me to create on it it's also what makes for an interesting podcast or just an interesting friend or person yeah you know I mean one of the reasons why like how did Joe Rogan and I get to be friends well because since I was 18 for 12 years I was doing interesting shit yeah I was like really doing interesting shit reading interesting books living an interesting life doing shamanic journeys out in mountains and places and it's crazy how everything kind of comes down to like those

two things, networking and conversation. Yeah. I mean, that's how obviously we learn everything we learn. We know everything we know. We experience it. It's all through that. Yeah. It's so crazy to me.

But people don't realize that like it's not that somebody just, everybody just wants to be your friend if you meet them. Some people will. You'll have that natural resonance. But the more interesting person you are, like, and the more interesting things you have to offer and the more you know yourself, so you're not projecting some bullshit or talking when you should be listening or all of these things

then when you meet somebody it's sticky they're like oh fuck I like that guy yeah I want to hang out with that guy like I want to have a drink with that guy how do you really learn that though because this is something that like you can't you can't say hey this is how you do it you know what I'm saying you can't say you know listen you know when you're supposed to listen

I fully understand that and then like talk when it's a good time to talk but how do you think someone could learn that for themselves because there's a lot of people who just don't get that is it just do more experience of conversating. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's just really the art of listening, which I think some kind of stillness practice, meditation or sensory deprivation tanks or breath work or something that allows you introspection. Obviously, psychedelics are great for that. I'm not recommending psychedelics to anybody, but they really help with that. I'm your ability.

Not like, not like a, I love microdosing. Yeah, for sure. Something that allows you to get to know yourself is really important and then the other thing so get to know yourself some way step one step two do really difficult shit like i if anybody does really difficult shit i'll have a conversation with them and that's actually what lured me into the darkness that darkness retreat that we're talking about where i was six days in absolute pitch black yeah the reason was is there was this with this guy that i had on my podcast and achshay his name is oxshay he comes on the podcast he built his whole kind of mentality, he's an ex-marine, about doing the hardest shit that he could figure out and find. So he creates like really hard things and finds really hard things to do. He was telling

me about this one. And I was like, oh, this one sounds fucking cool. Because always like to challenge yourself this way. I have. Yeah. It's, it's, this is an old technology and it's a technology of initiations. All the tribes had initiations. Initiations that are hard. Some jungle tribes have created this bungee jumping thing where you jump off this fucking platform and high as you can and then you have you're tied on the feet with a vine and you hit the ground but the vine like keeps you from smashing yourself completely from dying from dying and then some people put their hand in a glove full of bullet ants and the bullet ants sting the hell out and it's like one of the most painful stings there's initiations that happen that we that we're used to that

teach us something about ourselves and I think that's why people are attracted to ultra marathoners and in different like people who do difficult stuff obviously Wim Hof all of the cold immersion sweat lodges and different things hot immersion all of this is like really important so that you get to know yourself and you get to trust yourself sports can do it too you know challenging for a really hard fucking workout can do it look at gym has done it for me for sure absolutely like there's those moments where you want to fucking quit but it's still a different degree don't quit then like this this being somewhere for however many days of complete darkness is like fucking terrifying to me. Yeah. Well, that means you're a little scared of your mind.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I will admit that. Yeah. And that's a very interesting thing. It's like having a monster that lives under your bed, but you don't want to look under the bed to see what monster it is. So every night you jump, you jump into the bed and you're like, I hope the monster doesn't get me. But that's what it's like. And I was the same way, man. I mean, I'm the same way. I was like, fuck. Like, what's the monster that lives in my own head? Also, my dad went insane. So that's in my back of my head. Like, is this going to do this? I better, I better go confront my mind head on.

I better see what's up here. And yeah, six days in absolute silence, isolation, and blackness. Now, I'm not talking about darkness. I'm talking about absolute black. When did you eat? So they have another blacked out hallway, absolute black, double doors, no light, that they drop off food at various times of the day. They mix up the times and they ring a little bell.

And that lets me know that there's a tray full of food in a blacked out hallway. just like, I feel my way over there. Your eyes don't adapt at all? There is zero light. So there's nothing to adapt to? There's nothing to adapt to. Okay.

Like literal zero light. And actually, the funny thing is just show how sensitive your eyes do get. So I didn't realize this, but I had a, there's like a crystal that I had on one of my necklaces. Yeah. It was an ayahuasca necklid.

It had a little ayahuasca thing. And they had a crystal on it that glowed in the dark. I didn't know it glowed in the dark, but it glowed in the dark. natural glow in the dark crystal that's cool but i've never seen it before but then i had it in a medicine in like a cabinet above the sink i had a little tiny room cabinet above the sink and then like six hours in in the absolute black i'm like this is some pulp fiction shit my fucking cabinet is glowing like what is going on is like is there a soul trapped in there

oh my god what is it then i look in and they dose me they dose me yeah i look in it was my necklace but yeah you you so i had to like put that in like a couple things of socks and then get rid of it because there's literally zero light so you adapt to nothing there's not there's not a fucking photon that's bouncing around anywhere there's no light so you're in this and you you like what are you going through in your mind what are you experiencing fuck man well first you're just in there with your mind and your mind tries to solve all of your internal problems externally so i was thinking of all of these things that i needed to do you mean in this moment or all the time do you think I think all the time.

I think we're always looking for an external solution to an internal problem. Oh, that's a fact. Right? That's a fact. Yeah. Like whatever it is. Oh, maybe if I get a new girlfriend, maybe if I get a new thing and job, or maybe if I buy this new thing, maybe if I have this coffee or this nicotine or this other thing,

or maybe I need to go work out and I need to. Like, yeah. Yeah. There's a way that you deal with with all of the different situations that are all external. But really the source of the problems are internal. But I didn't really realize that because a day and a half in, I was going to fucking move cities. I was going to change relationships, was going to change careers. And then finally, like, at the end of day, too, I'm like, what the fuck?

Actually, everything is perfect. All of my problems are internal problems. Yeah. And so I really started to confront the root of these different things, which involved, you know, ultimately my fear of allowing myself to love my life fully because I know that I have to die. and it was this hidden cowardice that I think we all have where it's like if I don't love my life fully

if I die or my life changes then it won't hurt so bad it won't hurt so bad that yeah it's deep man it's deep it's like you can look at this and just say like oh yeah it's cool but if you really look at it and really see how beautiful it is how beautiful your partner is

how beautiful your friendships are then you have to confront the terrifying fact that you may lose them and you will lose them because time takes everything from us but the true horror the true the true horror of horrors is to go through your entire life never having loved fully and and this is the this is the lesson that ultimately came out of that like fuck that even if I lose everything I'm going to live and I'm going to love the best I can like a fucking warrior poet how is it that you like how do you think that because i know very clearly that love is the most important

thing in life and it's like it's the thing that drives everyone like in some form and i i can't fully accept that like i can't fully accept that thought the thing that you're saying even though i know it to be true yeah why like why do you think i mean you wouldn't know exactly why but i guess the better question is how the fuck do i figure that how do i come to that really like i know it but I'm not allowing it to be my truth. Yeah. It's like I feel like I need to go into dark chamber or something. Yeah, it's, it's the darkness, the darkness can help.

But that's the thing is. These transformational things can help. It's, it is fucking difficult though because I learned that lesson so deep. Man, I pulled, and you'll see this in the documentary. And anybody who wants to watch the documentary, it's free. You can go to Aubrey Marcus.com. Check it out. It's called Awaken the Darkness.

Yeah. But I pull my eye mask off. for the first time so they led me outside there's a very good eye mask called a mindfold that blocks out all light so it still keeps you in total black it's not like a normal blindfold where you can see shit out the sides um they led me with this minefold out onto the porch and it was sunset and it's this beautiful place in germany and it's overlooking like this long stretch of meadows and on the other side is France and this beautiful scene and I hadn't seen any light not a not a single site for or heard a single sound of nature or felt a breeze on my face nothing for six days and i take my eye mask off for the first time and i look out at the world and i just start fucking crying and bawling because i realized that i had taken the whole world for granted my whole life all of these beautiful sites all of these beautiful relationships everything that had been so amazing amazing in my life, I'd take it for granted. And in that moment, I realized it. And I realized not only

how beautiful it was, but the grief and the tragedy of not having loved it fully for the entirety of my life. Fuck. That's heavy. It's heavy. And I try to remember that as much as I can, but you know what? I still forget. I still forget. And it's still, it's still difficult to remember that so i have to you know i have to intentionally choose to remember that like choose to remember that and i'm probably go back to the darkness to remember it again because i i remembered a little bit of it like i got to i got to a hundred percent right then and then slowly over time at war back down so it has to be a habitual thing some kind of way to get yourself back to that state and and uh and that's that's the quest because i want to feel that way i want to feel like i want to feel gratefulness yeah i want to

feel that radical gratitude and I have practices that help me one practice that that helps me with this is it's a it's a breathing practice very simple it's very simple I breathe in and I say I love myself myself in my mind and then I breathe out I am grateful or thank you I can say love myself I am grateful and I think about all the things I'm grateful for I love myself and when I say I love myself I just start to remove all the judgments because I'm so fucking hard of myself man so hard of myself

me too and so I just try to just remind myself like hey man you're doing a good job like you're doing your best like I love you for that and be that voice of that good parent that a lot of us never really had maybe some of us did and we're lucky my mom was like that but that voice of like no

you're fucking doing it you're doing your best you're doing a good job like I love you but you say it to yourself like I love myself and then then move into the gratitude like yeah I'm grateful like thinking about all the beauty of my life and just life in general you know what I find interesting I think there's a stigma around this kind of talk and speak to yourself um as a man yeah I think there's a stigma around like it being weird or normal or like oh still today I mean I know that like people are like pushing that narrative forward more but I still think the general population and and what you're saying I fully fucking know it helps because I do it to

myself and I do it for myself not in the exact same way you're talking about it right but for sure when I first started I was like the fuck am I doing like almost like judging myself for something that I know it's actually really beneficial to myself yeah I just think it's so interesting because in in the world today like it's still still somewhat of a stigma that like oh it's it's weird or it's it's different or it's like why are you doing that you know you you you got to be you should just be tough. Yeah, suck it up, pussy. Yeah. And I don't, I, I, I, I just wish there was more people who would listen to stuff like this or would listen to people like you and, and see that, because dude, you're like a massively successful human being on tons of

different scales, right? And you're actively going inward and trying to figure out what's going on inside. And like, I guarantee since that 18 year old journey, the thing that you were talking about, like you've been on that. And this is probably why you're at the point you're at in your life where you have all the success that you have, you have the financial. freedom that you have you have a beautiful wife like because you started early trying to figure those things out yeah i think that's so essential and i'm just talking to people now like if listening whether you're 18 or 30 the thing that i want to say is don't be ashamed or don't be shy to try to start some of these things now even in the smallest way yeah you know because i know when i first

i was like like like i said i'm looking i'm saying it and then i'm like the fuck am i doing like i have this weird sure and and and i'm becoming more and more comfortable with it and even more comfortable speaking about it but I really appreciate you sharing this and and I just think you can help so many people man yeah so that's one of the ways right what are the other ways that you practice because I always try to figure this out with people how like what they're doing to actually have their you know obviously mental clarity but their success because these are little kind of like what do you would you say these you do these weekly you do them daily daily depending what's going on daily daily I mean it doesn't take long the breasts like those little those little breaths

even if you do 10 of them what is that a minute it takes them one minute of time and you'll be surprised like I challenge people to do that for 10 breaths watch how your mind will try to wander watch how your mind at not at at breath six you'll start thinking about some other shit like what's on my phone yeah you'll your mind will start to wander it's almost like your mind doesn't want you to to get to that which is so weird which is very weird and this is and so we're in conflict with different aspects of our own psyche and this is a way to help train I guess why it's not weird though makes sense to me is because we probably trained ourselves the other way totally yeah and it's and we've learned the other way you know all of a lot

of our male mentors and coaches you know it's it's a different idea it's like if you love yourself too much you're not going to be motivated it's the opposite and you start to see this now coming out in you know really good coaches like I love watching pete carroll coach yeah because he's like so fucking enthusiastic it doesn't matter of russell will throws like I remember a playoff game Russell Wilson having a fucking horrible game through like four interceptions or whatever every time you know Pete Carroll was like

clapping and like clapping and like clapping them and clapping them on the back like you got this yeah and then they ended up coming back and beating the uh beating the Green Bay Packers in that playoff game where you know the other coach for the Packers McCarthy was the opposite throwing the fucking clipboard down yeah like fucking you do losing his mind getting mad at people and it was just

like no this is the way like you show people you give people this kind of love and encouragement and then they'll perform their very best because they won't have fear like fear is a contractive force yeah so if we can move beyond fear in every way one by doing hard shit and two by being that encouraging loving voice to ourselves it's like being our own coach being our own team captain and doing it the right way like encouraging with love why do you think for men there's such a stigma around that though like the love the freedom and like the because like it's it's it's involving the you know the feminine into it right yeah it really is there's such a stigma around it i think there's this been this kind

of hyper masculinity that's that's really trying to create hard men and and really what i think we want is men who are so strong so fucking strong they can be soft like hard is brittle you know hard is like calloused and armored, you know, and that means that you're always prepared for some kind of, you know, attack that's going to happen. But if you're really strong, like really fucking strong, then you're not worried about anything. So you don't need armor, right? It's like, like, you know you're the fucking dragon. You're the dragon. You don't need to like, you don't need to be snarling around the place. You're like, I'm a fucking dragon. I got this. I can be soft. Like, curl up next to me. You know, like, I'm a lion. Like, I'll lick you on the

fucking ears like nobody's gonna fuck with me i'm a lion right like there's a softness to the strength that i think is the new man that needs to emerge rather than the hard man i'm hard i'm fucking hard yeah well that's not the way like be so strong that you can be soft and i think that's the new model you know it's not just be soft right that's not going to work you got to be so strong that you can be soft a great example of that is tim kennedy tim kennedy's a bad motherfucker and all categories with his bare hands or with a gun or with a knife or with whatever one of the baddest dudes on the fucking planet but you meet him he gives you the warmest hug he wears little tiny short shorts and he's got a big old smile and you feel like like if if like you needed somebody to like

cuddle up with him would be your guy you know and he's the fucking strong it's like toughest dude in the world but he can be that way because he knows how strong he is it's but it's almost more about yeah like being comfortable with who you you really are right and not having like have this front of like I'm tough or I'm strong or because it I mean it's kind of just a facade it's fake it is when you really know your strength you don't have to put on that show like the the worst people to hang out with are like amateur MMA fighters with like a fucking eight and six record and fucking tribal tattoos they're the toughest they're the toughest but then you hang out with a world champion like a real world champion yeah and they're so chill they're so fucking relaxed

knowing really what they're capable of. They have nothing to prove. Yeah. You know, they know that they're a bad motherfucker. And they're not like trying to flex on you. You know? It's like just how do you get there? You know?

It's doing hard shit over and over and over again. And that's, you know, one of the reasons why Tim and I are friends is we do hard shit in different ways. Sometimes there's an overlap. We'll both like hit it hard in the gym and push ourselves that way. But I do hard shit that he's really scared of. Like the ayahuasca journeys, he's scared of like the, like the, darkness journeys, he's scared of that, going into a sweat lodge where it's four hours in a

fucking steaming hot, pitch black hut where you're just praying and burning sweet grass and he doesn't want to do that either. This guy sounds like me. Yeah. Mine is like the, yeah. But, you know, so we've done hard shit in different ways. So we look at each other and he's like, I respect you. And I look at him and I'm like, I fucking respect you.

Yeah. Because the shit that he does, I'm like, nope, nope, thank you. You know, I will die will die. I will literally die. And he looks at me and he's like, yep, I will fucking go insane. Yeah, I want to do that dark thing so bad. Yeah. Because that sounds terrifying, but that's why I want to do it.

Yeah. And what's interesting is around day three to four, you start having visions. Like, uh, as if you close your eyes and you saw things or open eyes and you saw open eyes closed eyes doesn't make a goddamn difference. So, but what, I mean, what can you relate it to? Like right now, obviously you're not in a dark room. Yeah. It's the only thing you can relate it to is a DMT.

journey. But it's not as intense as ayahuasca DMT, but I mean, I was having fucking visions like Buddha, like a golden Buddha showed up. I had different fucking, I had more spaceships. I have a lot of spaceships. But when you say these things, is it super like clear and vivid or is it like, you know, smoky? It's kind of like, it's kind of a little bit hazy. Everyone, there's certain medicines where, where visions will come really clear. Iboga is one of the medicines where visions come like, holy shit. It's in like hyper-realistic five fucking D like

unbelievable unbelievable detail in the visions but that's really rare usually on ayahuasca or any kind of DMD visions are a little bit fuzzy they have varying degrees

of like but this was definitely a little bit fuzzy so I saw this golden Buddha figure and you kind of see it and then it gets fuzzy and I saw I had all kinds of fucking visions in there. But what happens is is that the process, as far as we understand it, it hasn't been studied sufficiently. But when you shut off all photoreceptors in your body, your body releases

a bunch of melatonin, which we know that happens. That's for fact. But there's photoreceptors in your skin, in your inner ear. So even blind people are still receiving light, even though they can't see. So it's not like blind people having visions like this all the time either, because they're still getting photoreceptors. Okay. We're still releasing melatonin based upon the light that it's being sensed by the entirety of their body. But in this case, you get dumped with melatonin because there's no light. And the absence of light is what creates the triggers the body's melancholy then. Yeah, it makes you really sleepy at first.

So you're sleepy as hell for the first two days. But that excess amount of melatonin, they believe, has some kind of chemical pathway that ultimately results in either the production of DMT or the production of the chemicals that inhibit the breakdown of, DMT but in either case you get a surplus of DMT and with that surplus of DMT you start seeing shit and so not only are you dealing so for the first three days you're dealing with your mind and absolute blackness and then the next three days I was dealing with my mind and being in a vision state for three days where I was seeing visions for three days that's so gnarly and some visions are

beautiful I had like beautiful visions of like flowers and cherry blossom trees that went on infinitely in oceans with fish swimming and coral and beautiful fucking visions and then other times I had this one vision that lasted two hours and it was like you know what a wheat thresher looks like yeah the big so it was like a big wheat thresher except it wasn't wheat that it was threshing it was human bodies babies and children and men and women and they were just getting churned and bloody angry that was my vision I just make sure that the Thorne thing and then these fucking babies and sometimes this is this is the thing about this is why it's hard fuck like you don't know and it's gnarly and I know enough that I'm like

mother fuck like I don't like this vision I hate this vision this is this is terrible but the more you try to change it the longer it persists yeah and like the more you try to because even if it's a vision you can still kind of like look away with your mind and try to change it and think of something else and that's why it lasted so long it's because I resisted it so much because it was so horrifying. Dude, you know what's crazy about this conversation right now? I have to pee so bad

and I've been resisting it for the last like five minutes. I swear to God. Let's do it. Give me one second. I got to pee real quick. Oh my God. Holy.

Holy shit, man. When we started talking about resisting it? Mm-hmm. I didn't get worse. Oh, my God. Yeah, Ryan just went to go do it with, uh, we have a shaman down at other. Recently? Yeah.

For me, it was great thing. I don't always have good things about that. It's been a lot of meditation lately, so for me the whole thing is like, like, at the same time, someone else is like in space. Having a great time and then this other person, like your brain is going to be at super you need. So when you hear people explain it, it's never going to be what you do. Yeah.

So it's the difference? Yeah, and you go in thinking like, oh, I'm going to see dragon. You'll never see a drag. No, it's just different for everyone. Yeah. It happens. I talked to someone I met, too. It's really terrible.

It gives you your memory, it helps you through your shit, but at the end of the day, if you feel like it's going to be something positive, it will, you know what I mean? That's it. It kind of is, and it shows you that, too. Like, basically, it showed you that, too.

Like, basically, it showed you, if you saw, if you said, it's like, yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's. It's like, okay, that's what you wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I was scared, too, but I don't want to check me. Because they let you take more than more touch.

Oh, my God. I'm scared. I was too, basically. Then I'll want it. So we can add it off the other things, you know? Holy shit, that was a pro. Dude, that's, he was like, that's a dog too. They say, you think you're calling.

What? Do I have to. I have to talk about. I have to do it. Are we live still? Okay, dope. Oh my God. So that pee, I swear it was like I was fighting a demon and it was, that was amazing.

That was one of the best peas I needed it. Okay, so I want to talk more about this, the darkness experience. So you said the third day, you're seeing things now. It started with like flashes of light. So you're in pitch black, but all of a sudden there's these flashes like a stroke white. Right. And then that evolved into like what I could only describe as polyps. Like there was these like droopy drops of that which was like glow in the dark green like gack.

Like someone had like glow in the dark goopy shit that was coming from the ceiling. Like slime stuff? And like yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like kind of like stalactites. Nickelodean slime. Yeah, exactly.

Like slimy gack looking polyp things, which was very weird. It was like it looked like glow in the dark. And that was when the first vision and then eventually the flashing stopped and the polyps ended and then it was just like these fractal. But how long did it last for? Like it's there. It's like five minutes. I mean the whole like hours. Holy shit. It never stops. Once the, once the visions start, they don't stop. They just shift. So whoa. They transform from that into these different fractal patterns and these giant like blimps. But hold on, but hold on. Okay. You know you described earlier about taking the thing on. off and then you saw it and then you broke down they didn't start all they didn't stay all the way up until that yeah oh shit yeah that is crazy yeah it was so as soon as you so then it's a vision straight

so as soon as you took the thing off did that all to go away the visions went away oh wow this is this is not actually actually the visions went away as soon as I went into the light oh so it's touching you here yeah got it yeah like as soon as I went into the light yeah that fast yeah your body's aware that's so crazy it was crazy yeah what the fuck and you so you knew it you're like I'm outside and then uh and then the visions I never actually I never actually thought about that till this moment but the visions were consistent all the way through until I got outside into the light and then even before I took my blindfold off the vision stopped that is because I let my blindfold I left it on for like a good 10 15 minutes because I wasn't ready to take it off yet I had to like

get prepared for this moment it was a big fucking moment so yeah and then but the visions would stop okay so third day so you get this and then what comes next what else is there well like I said the the vision of the Buddha came and that was fucking cool

Buddha comes I was having a tough time I was towards that the very end of a long polyamorous relationship with my partner with my partner with my partner Whitney and man that was hard like we had a lot of love and a lot of laughs but fuck was that hard because so the people listening to polyamorous is like multiple partners yes both of us yeah we're able to have multiple partners and we were absolutely

honest so one of this whole journey came to at the end of that it was eight years eight years eight years in relationship six years were polyamorous and so you're talking about like your girls with other men like yes other men I will tell you bro other like hold on other other other relationships like yeah dating that guy like yeah and look i had look i had this is fucking crazy to me by the way i had two or three other girlfriends so like i i i mean i'm living my life and i'm fucking totally honest we're honest about everything and that was the beautiful part was the honesty the honesty was a beautiful part and any little any little bit of dishonesty was fucking devastating because it's already so hard like it's how the i just so all right let me tell you i thought so i'm sorry the

darkness story we're going to get back to that but this is so i got to know about this yeah this is this is deep so ultimately i realize like man i love women i love women amazing and i love the they're amazing yes it's like man holy shit i love i feel that i love women and it's not like i love them to use them i love women i love their smell yeah i love kissing them i love looking at them i love fucking them the energy everything i love everything about them so ultimately i was like fuck i don't think i can do this monogamy thing so what's my other option i can cheat like a lot of the lot of the guys i know and i don't have any judgment towards cheating i it was not an option for me that level of dishonesty and created far too much anxiety yeah and it just was not an option it's not the way i wanted to live

my life yeah we we have a package at the door um we'll wait for that to wait for the package to arrive and i'll go into this this is so interesting to me man like this is so crazy i'm going to I want to have a lot of questions about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Package has arrived.

What is that? I don't know. Something from Amazon probably. Yeah. All right. So I realized like, what are my options? My options are either continually be, you know, single-ish, have short relationships and then- Were you waiting these options before you got into this relationship?

I was in a relationship, a monogamous relationship with Whitney, who's a badass? She's a fucking badass. Whitney's incredible but I was still like fuck I like I can't I can't be monogamous so after a year and a half we broke up I was like listen I can't be monogamous I would be with you but I think I have to try being polyamorous I think I have to be able to see other people yeah and she was like fuck you like I'm out and I was like respect like I get it yeah you know no worries but then like three months later she's like man I still love you and I was like I still love you but I'm seeing this other girl so if we do this like it's

I'm going to be seeing this other girl and you. But you're the queen, but like, this is my girlfriend. Yeah. And she, it was brutal for her. How old were you? I was 32. Okay. That's how old.

What are you? Yeah. What are you? Yeah. And, uh, and so at that point, she was like, all right, I'm going to try it. So for a year, she was just in hell because I would be like, I would be like, all right, babe, I'm going out with my girlfriend tonight. We're going to get a hotel room and I'll be back in the morning.

And she would just be crying, just. crying in the living room and I was pretty insensitive to be honest because I was like babe you agreed to this like I told you I told you like this is what is what's the what's the deal and she was like I know but it's so hard and I was I was kind of a little callous and she didn't see anybody for like a year I remember the first guy she started dating first guy she started dating was this guy who was working out in the on it gym okay and I saw them kind of like flirting and I was like yeah fuck what the fuck what the fuck almost that's Yeah, and I was like, okay, okay, it's cool, it's cool, it's cool.

But she didn't end up having sex with him. It didn't end up working out, you know. But he was like better at this one particular exercise in the gym. I know. So one of the tests that we do is we have this medicine ball. We take a medicine ball and we throw it for distance over our head to see how far we can throw it. This guy just hugged that shit. And I had the record in the gym.

Oh, and he beat me. He fucking beat me by like six. I was like that motherfucker. So I was in there every day. throwing balls trying to mark it. I never beat him. He was always better than me. But she didn't end having sex. So I was like, all right, all right. They made out or whatever. They kind of like, you know, felt each other up. But they never had sex. And then she was like, I'm not into him. I was like, oh, but I got a little taste of it. And then she starts dating a legendary professional

UFC fighter. And I won't mention who it is, but legendary professional UFC fighter. And ultimately like they're they're feeling it and but they still hadn't had sex yet and I'm about to go off on another spiritual journey where I was going to be three weeks in isolation not darkness just by myself meditating you know just kind of doing it's called a dieta like in a jungle no it was actually uh it was in uh British Columbia near Vancouver Island okay it was out in the islands there so I was just going to be by myself no phone contact no anything just kind of being like being coming back and she's telling you so I'm leaving and it was like I see say goodbye to her and she had just finished like dating this guy seeing him but he was supposed

to leave the same time than I was and I'm literally in the airport I'm literally I'm literally I was like literally in the airport and I hear them get on the PA announcement and they announce his name they say so and so you know last call you're going to miss your flight so and so you're going to miss your flight and I was like what the fuck are the odds of this shit what are the odds of that and I was like that motherfucker stayed the mother he fucking stayed because he's gonna fuck with me. And I knew it. I fucking knew it.

And I'm like, and it's like, kids killing me. I'm like so like anxious to my stomach, but I was like, maybe not. Maybe he just missed his flight. Maybe he's gonna catch the next one. Yeah, yeah, nothing serious. So I eventually, I was supposed to be in total isolation for three weeks,

but like 10 days in, I couldn't take it anymore because I just kept thinking like, did he stay? Did they have sex? Oh my God. And then so I call her. And I was like, hey, I know I'm not supposed to call you and I'm breaking this like spiritual

commitment that I made but I gotta know like I gotta know did he stay and did you guys have sex and she's like yeah he stayed and we had sex and I was like okay I need a minute I just hung up I hung up the phone and it I've never felt the feeling like that I felt like I wanted to cry I wanted to punch a wall I wanted to vomit yeah I was like absolutely wrecked and I was wrecked for like hours and everything every time i would think about them having sex it was like i could okay okay they just had sex and then i'll imagine them just like missionary having sex then i was like oh god damn it oh god damn it i was like oh fuck you probably spanked her too didn't he probably did she probably liked it too oh you know what they say when it's like you when it falls out and then

she puts it back in too it's like the worst you know that it happened i was like oh yeah she's probably sucked his dick after you pulled it out and I was like thinking of all these things there's devastating it was absolutely how the fuck can you ever be okay with that I never really was okay I never really was and that was the that was the challenge of it I mean you get used to it in a way like you you get tough really this was the thing like yes I got stronger but I also got harder like I got like a little bit of callous and a little bit of ways that I dealt with it and it only got harder from there it only got harder from there because she then got to even more like aggressive sexual partners that

one fucking destroyed what do you mean aggressive people like people were into like bds am or something shit oh fuck yes so i actually that specifically the thing i just said okay okay yeah this is fucking gnarly so she explored that with another partner that that was that was i mean i can't even that took me years to get over that was a short relationship she was in this she she she saw this like three or four times but like I could see I could see the roadmap of everything that they'd done like on her body and I was like what the fuck yeah it was absolutely and it's not something that like I get it I like playing in those waters too like I like I like being freaky and she likes being freaky so it's all good it's all it's all her playing

but even even though it was three years later so if we go back to the darkness like it had been three years since she'd seen this guy yeah and I was still like dealing with the fucking pain and trauma of that experience in the darkness. So there was that experience, which was brutal. And then she then at Burning Man one year, we were all at Burning Man, she fell in love with somebody. She fell in love with somebody else. And that was fucking brutal too.

And so all of these different things were, she told you I'm in, I think I'm in love with this person. That was a challenging moment because I could, I could feel it. And I was like, yo, like, you're in love with this guy. She's like, uh, uh, uh, and I'm like, I can tell. And she's like, yeah, I'm, you know, we're in love. How long were they dating for? They dated for all the way up through. That was Burning Man like 27, 2018. So two years they were dating from 2018 to 2020. They were still dating when I was in the darkness. So it was like, it was over two years. They eventually broke up after, after we broke up.

But she was still with him when I was in the darkness. And we were still kind of, we were still seeing each other but it was it was fucking brutal man so all these partners knew though that you were there as well right they were aware that it was oh yeah and I knew them all I would like we'd go out and we'd have lunch like I met every single one I don't get it bro I met every single one of them and like fuck it was it was hard it was hard as hell but you know I had my freedom I had some amazing beautiful relationships you know Stephanie and Savannah and all of these other amazing women that I got to spend time with in Maya and all of these beautiful, incredible women. So I had my, I was doing the same thing.

Yeah, I get it. And she was dealing with it on her end, but it was so hard. It's, I just don't, I don't, I understand the concept. It's just like so much to me, like the trust and then it's like trying to move forward. I don't, I'd have such a hard time knowing that. Like I think you say that seriously, the sexual stuff, like the position, you know, she's sucking is, all these things. I'm like, I can't look at you. same even if i was doing it too i know i just can't and and it's not like you don't i loved her

she was my sweetheart like she was my fucking sweetheart like i loved her so much i know how you did it i know how you did it it was really really hard it was really really hard and to be on to be honest i gave it everything i had i did the best i fucking could and i was never good enough or conscious enough or whatever it would have taken i never i never made it And so I can talk to people who want to be polyamorous and I'm like, listen. You mean with her or just with polyamory? With polyamory. I ultimately failed at polyamory because I couldn't ever deal with it.

And so you did that up until 2020? Up until 2020. And then when did you meet your? So I met Viola. I met Viola in 2016 and we became really good friends. Got it. And then she was transitioning out of a relationship then. I knew that I had really strong feelings.

This is why I don't believe girls could have guy friends. because they're just waiting for their time I just want to talk about that real quick it's like you met her in 2016 and now look you're fucking like married dude it's like you're together together and I knew it as soon as I saw Vailana and we were polyamorous so

I was free to date Vailana but she just wasn't interested in being polyamorous to me so like there was a lot of attraction there and we'd actually hooked up one time in like a threesome situation which is fucking great but ultimately ultimately like

you know she was in another relationship but that relationship was ending and my relationship with Whitney was ending polyamory didn't work and so it just kind of all came together and uh and do you think girls could have guy friends serious yeah yeah i mean of course they can but do you think that like it's it you know you have to it's interesting like and i and you get to be i think with the amount of introspection that i have and also the sensitivity i have to read people's energy yeah you can tell when there's another another motivation and another thing that's going on and you have to be mindful like one of the great lessons in of polyamory is you get very very acute at sensing whether your girl has energy and with somebody else and whether somebody else has energy with your girl

because everything is everything is talked about and everything is free so everybody is communicating freely there's no reason that they don't communicate so you get really good feedback and so then you're talking about then body language and all the stuff that is unspoken you get good at understanding because you get to ask because you get the verbal yes and knows yeah yeah so it's like I would see something and I'd be like hey you you kind of fucking you kind of fucking into that guy and she'd be like yeah I am I see and I would like swallow hard and be like okay cool you know and those there's many of those different situations and and obviously we were still practicing getting good at that and both sometimes we would feel something and not share it it's obviously better if you shared it

i mean the guy that she ended up falling in love with i could tell that there was energy between them but she hadn't told me yet and he was being super weird with me like super weird and we're all out partying and i'm like what the fuck is this guy's problem yeah he won't even look at me we won't look at me in the eye and i would look at him right in the eye and he'd be like watch he won't look at me and she's like and then whitney was like stop stop stop like we have feelings for each other but i was like oh all right yeah yeah like i can fucking tell so then i pulled them aside and i was like hey bro like it's okay like you're like that's my girl fuck off no that's what i would have done god damn i know but you can't i get it now i get it because she could have done this and she would do the same to me

so i was like it's all good you know like i know i know you and whitney have a thing like this is our relationship like this is okay like it's all good and he's like oh wow and like he was cool he was actually he was actually really cool but it was really awkward for him um because obviously like i'm i'm a big guy and i'm yeah you're way taller than i thought you were going to be i was like holy fuck yeah so like it's it was intimidating and also you know i'm very successful all these things it's intimidating so i always did my best to be noble in those situations and be a gentleman and be like it's all good yeah like you know just be honest treat her well and everything is everything is going to be fine and uh but doesn't mean it wasn't

fucking brutal. Yeah. Doesn't mean I wasn't crying in my pillow. So can guy and girl be friends without, because I swear to a guy, because you know guys are like, I want to fuck this girl. Like there's no guy that's like, I just think she'd be a great friend. There's, it just doesn't, you don't see a girl and you're like, man, I just really want to get to know her.

I swear. I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about like that comes after. You know what I'm saying? I'm thinking about Valana's, you know, guy friends. And most of her guy friends are kind of my guy friends too. And there's like enough. And there's like enough respect there that like and there's also like yeah of course you want to fuck she's a fucking she's beautiful dime beautiful yeah so like but but I don't I don't hold that against him and I also trust them not to be sneaky yeah you know but that's because they're also your friends yeah yeah that's the difference right like that's how it works like if they're really your boys like you know you know okay there's a different like Jacobs with my you know my girl or whatever it's like I know that that's my guy and he's not like being weird if they go out it's like I I know that like for the most part if it's really my boy

but when it's some random guy that like you not you don't have some any affiliation with he's like yeah oh we're just hanging out he's my friend it's like that dude wants to fuck that girl and a lot of I think a lot of times you're right and I think for me I I learned enough through this journey that I can trust when that's not the case and I can I can see when that is the case and so sometimes it'll feel perfectly clean it'll be like no that's clean Because even with Whitney, she had guy friends, but I knew that there was nothing there. Yeah. I was like, because I could tell.

I could tell the fucking difference. And I trusted her to be honest. So I knew that there was nothing there. And sometimes there was something there. And I'd be like, yo, that guy is like, he's scheming. And she'd be like, no. And then eventually it would come out. Right.

You know, but so it can, it can work. You know, and it can just be one of those things. But obviously if you're with a gorgeous girl, men are men. There's going to be an impulse. So there has to be, they have to be. they have to have an ability to self-regulate that to a certain degree or some certain kind of honor that would prevent them from engaging in that and but sometimes girls you know like women are women have funny taste you know like vi for vi like for example like viana no matter how

much i wanted her to be into me like just wasn't fucking into me when you first met her yeah yeah i was like so into her i was so into her and she just like wasn't fucking into it so i trust vi because she was so devoted she's so devoted to her partnership that she just wouldn't look at somebody else and that's that's just her character yeah you know so i i i mean i have with vi i have like the supreme amount of trust with whitney she was interested in a lot more different types of guys so i had to be very more fine-tuned with that yeah aware of that be yeah i'd be really aware but it's uh i mean it's a it's an interesting it's an interesting world because ultimately

bottom line is life itself is organized around the desire to fuck. Yeah. Like that's life. And love, that and love. Love two things. Union.

Yeah. Like union. You know, it's like how do you merge? And one of the ways you merge is through sexuality. And there's also a big part of the journey that I've been on is understanding like the layers of sexuality. There's a superficial layer which is attraction and lust and pleasure and the sensation of things.

But there's a lot more. there's a lot more depth that can be involved in there. And so exploring like, okay, how far can you take sexuality to cultivate the subtle energies of union where two become one and the new energy emerges? That's where, that's where like the magic is. No, sometimes with, sometimes without. Okay.

But you can use both combining like breath and intention and these different, you know, old, ancient tantric practices, sex magic practices. I mean, people have been using, sex as a technology for consciousness for thousands of years. And so now that's one thing that Vailana and I are starting to explore is like, how do we use this as a technology to get us closer to God? Closer to source.

Closer to source. Yeah. So like what are those things though? Like like different types of, are you talking about like different positions and shit? No, no, no. I mean, those are all fun or whatever. But you can really what this is. You're talking about, like, setting your intention before you go into something.

Like, is that kind of stuff? So the map that I'm, that I'm working with is, it's a whole, I call it the rainbow sutras. And it's many different types of energy that I've given colors to. Okay. So some of them are very, like, very, like, pure energies, like the white sutra, for example, involves, like, eye-gazing, breathwork. Oh, shit. And, like, in ways in which you're just, no sex, just like, just, like, looking.

like until you're until your eyes get soft and the vision becomes fuzzy and you start to see things and you're breathing together and you start to create this white energy that goes between you wow so that's on one end and then on the other end you know then then there's all kinds of other different energies yellow and green and blue and red and purple and black and black being the intensity of the energy of power exchange sexuality again like bdSM things submission and domination where one person who's in the dominant role gets to feel what it's like to have absolute power over another being and to trust themselves in that power. And the other person gets to feel what it feels like to be an absolute surrender, to be an absolute trust, to surrender their will to another

person. And then that energy is incredibly strong. And it's very sexual. It is. Yeah. But done very intentionally, not just like we're going to get kinky, but like we're going to actually use this a technology to understand what it's like to have godlike power over another person and to trust yourself with that godlike power and what it's like to surrender entirely like you're surrendering so when you're saying this like using it in a specific manner do you mean because the intentions of which when you go into it that's how you're getting that out of it yeah and there's you know there's obviously it's still sex it's still yeah physical yep and it's some of this is happening We're just not aware of it, but when you become aware of it and you, you add, you know, you add the writing, the poetry, the intention, the visualization, the buildup, the ritual to it. It just gets stronger. It magnifies. And, uh, and that's what we've been like playing with is like how do we magnify this energy that already exists. This is like everything by the way, which is like you're subconscious. You're doing things all the time. You're thinking of things. Yeah. Being more aware of those things is whether this is sexually activated or not. This is, this is,

we're still doing this. So a lot of times, so the red sutra is very like visceral carnal sexuality. Like imagine, imagine that moment where you just wanna tear each other's clothes off and devour each other and it's so fucking passionate. One of my favorite moments. Yeah, of course. Amazing.

So that would be what I, that's really the red sutra. But it's happening and we're feeling it. And that energy, if you wanted to give it a color, I gave it the color red. It's like red energy is moving between you guys. Yeah. And it's happening automatically.

But if you go in, knowing that all right we're moving into the red sutra which is going to be the most carnal passionate sexual experience that we're going to have and we're going to intentionally feel this red energy build between us and we're going to magnify it you want to pull them close you want to yeah exactly like full devouring of each other it doesn't matter which was just them on top you on top behind whatever right you just want to snarl you know I love that feeling yes that's the best all right so the energy is there yeah but then you add the consciousness and the awareness of the energy

and then it just becomes stronger and then you can visualize it as red energy and you don't think sometimes thinking about it though takes you out of it? If you think about yourself like you're watching yourself do it, it'll take yourself out of it. But if you're in it and you're just seeing

and feeling the energy and becoming aware of it, it won't. It's just presence. It's really just like it is the opposite of thinking. It's being very present but present under the construct in which you're feeling an energy that you're that you're looking for yeah it's fine this shit's so interesting it is I love it

man life is so it's so much more complex and interesting when you go a little layer deeper yeah when you try to be more aware of it when you try it's it's the game is awareness like the more aware you are and all of these energies are energies we've felt I mean the green the green suitor for example is this energy of union that you can feel with nature where you just feel like you're getting like the ocean is making love to you and the sun is making love to you and the and like the wild is making the the smells of honeysuckle or flowers it's like you become aware of the energy that you're feeling from the earth how do you teach yourself to surrender to that so that you can feel it like how do you become because i understand

what you're saying yeah and the people listening you know we could understand it but how how would i go and practice that like if i was like you know out in the ocean right now how would i be like instead of me just going and standing the ocean being like i'm wet the water's cold right so imagine the earth as a woman imagine that we call her mother earth right yeah he's like imagine the earth is a woman if you and i guess even if you're a woman i guess it's a lesbian affair you know whatever but you imagine the earth as a as a female lover and so as the waves caress you it's like a lover caressing your body and you you imagine like like feeling like she's caressing you and the sun is like feeling like she's giving you a hug and the smells are like this I mean I love the smell of a pussy

or an armpit or something of a beautiful woman but like you imagine the flower of a rose you know smell of that and you're like oh wow you are a beautiful woman like like and you just feel that same feeling to earth and you do that intentionally and then you allow that to build until it's like wow I'm being made love to by our planet it's just in a different way it's not like it's just a different way yeah but it's and so you cultivate that like practice makes the master whatever we're talking about practice makes a master whether it's self-love whether it's gratitude whether it's tantra whether it's any of these things like the more you practice it with intention the more you'll feel it we feel love for ourselves we feel gratitude but if we practice it

we get better at it and it becomes more natural we feel like the earth is a lover but we're not aware of it so we don't practice it. Yeah. Awareness and consciousness. Yeah. That's it. So, so with with Vailana you, you met her the 2016 and then you guys got serious after this whole polyamorous. Right after the darkness. After the darkness. And that was at the that was at the end of the polyamorous thing. Yeah, that was everything was coming to a close. And there was one final in the darkness. There was one final kind of chapter. I had to heal a lot of my wounds. And I had to recognize that there was one final thing that I had to offer to Whitney. And that was I'd always loved her for what I wanted her to be, not for exactly who she

was. Fuck, dude. That's so, that's like the most common thing. I know. I know. And it broke my heart. It came to me in a vision. And she came to me in a vision in day four, day four, day five. And and I saw her and I always wanted Whitney to be as you know on the spiritual path with me and she was but just not to the same degree that I was yeah she it wasn't as interesting to her the spiritual path it was interesting to her but not the same way that I wanted it to be right and I wanted her to reach her spiritual potential so I saw her in this vision and she had all of these like this crown of feathers and she was like in her full spiritual garb and like attire and she was like this spiritual being and then she looks at her feathers and looks around and she looks at me and she goes am i doing it right oh my god am i doing it right it's funny how you created that and i was like fuck babe like you're always doing it right like i'm so sorry you know and i like i had that moment of like god damn it i've been loving you i've been loving what i wanted you to be instead of just loving you as you are this wild firecracker you know whiskey drinking table twerking you know beautiful comment of a being and i just didn't

it didn't fully love you exactly as you were and so i got out of that darkness and i i just wanted to you know it was only for like a month but i wanted to do my best i don't know if i succeeded or failed in that but i wanted to do my best to love her exactly as she was and just show her like you know what you're fucking perfect like i'm so sorry for all of the ways that I judged any aspect of you and loved some other version of you, like, I love you exactly. Why do you think it's so common for people to, like, in relationships in general, this is a lot, like, why a lot really don't work out is because we have a perception of someone

or how we, like you said, how you're loving her, how you wanted her to be. Yeah. Or how, and you're like trying to like look for her to be this, almost like this way for you when it's not really exactly the way for her. Why do you think it's so common for, for that to be our reality? Like, because I have so many situations I could think of where I'm like, I looked at, like you said, you looked at all, I would look at all like the, I had eight year relationship and I would look at all the things that, um, like were really good in that relationship. And I would look over all the things that were really, really bad, no matter how many things there were. And I was so focused on like, but in these moments, it was, it was so good and it was like this. And I felt like, I felt so deep and connected. And then all the other things, it was like, oh, I if I had just said this or if I had just done that, then like I won't, you know, it'll be better next time.

And it always had this feeling of never enough. Yeah. And it was because it was like me wanting to love this person, like how I wanted them to be. And I only wanted to focus on those good moments and never look at the things that were also actually happening. Why do you think it's so common for people to do that with like their partners and not even just partners,

but also things they're going after in their life? Because we do it with ourselves. we do it with ourselves we love ourselves conditionally we love ourselves for the person we want to be for that thing we're striving for for the thing we achieve and we love ourselves in brief moments we love ourselves based on the idea of what we're striving for not the actuality of who we are and what we are moment to moment and so of course if we love ourselves that way we're going to love our partners that way yeah you know like as as within so without and I think this is the this is the fundamental lesson is that of course I loved Whitney that way because I love myself that way yeah

I loved myself when I was more in my spiritual power and when I was more successful and when I had a bigger impact on the world and I only hardly loved myself then so I think that's the that's the trap and I think the way to learn is you can learn with a partner but it's really important to learn with yourself. So how do you learn then when like you know your your current situation like how do you know that okay this is the this is the right way like how do you know now this is the right way is it still a you know an everyday habitual thing to make it the right way or is it like did you just feel like oh man it's just different like how do you draw that line? Yeah it's practice it's again it's practice like I wish man I mean I do have all of these profound experiences

even like the darkness. Yeah. And I wish I could say like after that, everything was different. No, it's just a little bit different and I have a little bit more awareness and I have to put it into practice. I mean, last night even,

there was, I wrote a, you know, I write poetry and I wrote a poem about it. And it was really like just recognizing that I can make the choice to love her absolutely fully and completely and be absolutely,

overwhelmed by that love that I have for her and and just make that choice like make the choice so it's interesting to me though you say this if you knew that the way that you knew it now right now today when you met Whitney could it have been the same with her that is a very interesting choice and that's a very interesting thing to say now I think that yes I could have and yes that could have, that could have transformed that relationship. And I wish I would have had that knowledge. But that's not how that works. Yeah.

However, I also think that even though you can do that with any partner and you should, there's certain people who are meant to be with you for different stages of your life. And Vailana is the person that's meant to be with me for the rest of my life. Whitney was perfect for the stage you're in. How are you like sure of that? I would have never believed that I could be sure I was one who was like

I proposed to I proposed to people twice actually the other the other girl that you met is my best friend now Caitlin I had proposed to her The one who came in here Yeah

I'd propose to her We were together for six years I proposed to Whitney That other girl Yeah yeah The one who was in here Yeah yeah What the fuck?

Yeah yeah Yo he's like What the fuck Yeah she's my best friend Okay And she was also best friends With Whitney There's not like a

Weird. It's like, it's so many years ago. I mean, it was like 12 years. And we never, even in my polyamory with Whitney, like we never had any kind of sexual thing. So it's been 12 years since that happened. So it's pretty comfy now. Yeah. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's, I, but I was never sure. Like I proposed, but after after every time I proposed, I was like, what did I just do? Damn. What did I just do? Because I wasn't sure. But when I proposed, but when I proposed to Vailana, I was like, how quick can we get married? Oh, Elvis is still doing your marriage? Yeah, fuck yeah. We got married by Elvis in 30 minutes. You know, it's like, how fast can we do this? Because I'm, I've never been more sure of anything in my life.

Like, how, but how, though. It's just because that's how much you learn up to that point, your perspective is enough self-awareness. Yeah. And enough trust in, I knew Vailana for long enough. I trusted that she would be willing to go into the deep that was necessary to you know to journey with me wherever I was going so she she I think because my own spiritual life and my plant medicine path and all of these things are so important to me I needed someone who is equally passionate about all that and I know I know that if somebody's willing to go with me into the deep deep deep waters that we'll be fine like we'll be able to figure it out together because as long as there's no fear into going into the hardest rituals

and all the deep, deep waters together, we're going to, we're going to be fine. Yeah. Damn, it's beautiful, man. Yeah, it's special. It's special to be certain. It is really special to be sure. And it's rare.

I can't even say that, you know, wherever you are, somebody out there, you'll just be sure. When you know, you know, I think it's a bunch of bullshit still. It happened for me. Yeah. And it can happen.

But I think it happened as a result of 40, you know, well, at that point, 20, you know, 20, you know, years of 21 years of personal growth yeah this is the same thing I asked you a question earlier about like knowing what direction to go in your life this is the same concept that when you said that it resonated with me I didn't have when I started all this there was no examples like just in social media it didn't exist I was just doing things that I love and doing things that I enjoyed yeah and I found myself in a position now that like I would have never been like oh I'm going to

go there and do that then because it wasn't a thing that was happening when I started and I was just doing the things that I loved and I got there in a way that it was like oh, it's just through all these things that I really enjoyed and really loved and I learned and I got better and like I took up my life and I'd look back to when I was six years old

and my father took his life and all that time I talked about like, you know, thinking about when I was 12 and all these moments and all these things like that's what led to that moment when I was 26 years old and I had spent I don't know, was it five years at the time on social media

just doing things that I was genuinely passionate about and cared about. I was like, yo, this is really who I am and what I love. And then I was starting to, I got on YouTube and I started to share like my more of my voice and speaking about my journey and what I've been through and who I am and what makes me sad and what makes me happy and relating that to all the things in my life. And then when I was 26 years old, I would get so much feedback from the, you know, in the last like four years leading up to that that I was like, oh shit, this is what I'm

here to do. This is what my purpose is. This is what makes me feel fulfilled is sharing and giving back to, basically, Basically a version of myself that I felt like I needed that like, you know, a younger version of myself looking for a father figure that I never had right so I find this so interesting because obviously this is in a relationship setting, but I'm talking about now this is in my like life path setting and like my business setting. Like I didn't know like that that was ever going to come through that darkness in my in my childhood. Shit. But like the beautiful thing is and I'm saying this to the people listening there, there's. is there is power in like just the unknown in like your journey in trying to figure it out is part of you i know it sounds silly but like literally figuring it out is just trying to figure it out yeah and that's all that's all i was doing i wasn't like oh these there's a guy in social media

and i'm going to do that because he didn't exist i was just doing things that i genuinely cared about and i was giving back how i like felt like i needed and then i got to a position where people are like yo i love the things that you're doing i didn't kill myself because i listen to the story about your father and you know where you're at in your life you motivated me or i lost my father and you show me that I could have this power to do these things because you did it. And it's so like, it's so interesting how this is how humans like we don't, we don't know and you're not supposed to always know. It's like until you know. And you went through all those other experiences until you're like, oh, okay, now this is it. And I, and you know now. You're like,

oh, this is for sure. And I just find it so, so crazy. Like into the people listening, there's power and it's okay to not know, to okay to not be like, this is exactly the steps I need to take. because you're not going to know that. It's always hindsight. You look back and you're like, oh, fuck, wait, this all makes sense now. Yeah. So I'm just saying that. I just thought it's super interesting because, like, you know, the relationship thing.

And I'm assuming the bit, I mean, actually, I don't know, the business thing. It sounded like you got some divine intervention from Ayahuasca. And you're like, wait, I have all the answers, which is, dude, I want to do it so bad. I had an idea and Iwaska clarified it. But still, it was an idea, you know, and it wasn't like it could fill in all the details. I still had to make a bunch of different fucking choices, a bunch of, didn't solve, all the problems, but you're really, you're really on, you're really absolutely right in what you're saying. And I sometimes think about this phenomenon. So a lot of us have seen the movie Rain Man

with Dustin Hoffman. And in that movie, he has what's called Savant Syndrome. And Savant syndrome is a real thing. And certain people have it to different degrees. And that's where they can calculate things that are almost impossible for us to imagine. So in that movie, they give an example of a bunch of toothpicks dropping or something like that. I forgot what it was. Do you know what it was, Ryan, in that movie? It was toothpicks. All right, a bunch of toothpicks dropped, and he knows exactly how many toothpicks dropped. Well, how the fuck do you know that?

You couldn't see that. You couldn't, but he knew that. And what I think it reveals is not that they have superpowers, but they have access to a part of our subconscious, a part of our mind that knows way more than we think we know. Like our conscious mind is like the tip of an iceberg, and our whole mind is like the entire iceberg that's submerged. emerged underwater and we're not aware of what that what that is that we know so I think

actually we know way more than we know and we have to just trust that we have to trust that we're actually making decisions that make sense even though we don't know that they make sense yeah you know that that some part of us knows something like some part of me knew that violano was the right person even before we got together and some part and then it became I became aware of it as soon as we got together. Yeah. But I knew. I always kind of knew.

It's almost like surrendering to that, too. I was, I was listening to one of your podcasts that you did with Joe Rogan. He was talking about, you were asking him about this is, I think this was pretty early on. And he was, he was explaining how, like, he said the podcast chose him. Mm-hmm. And he felt like it got to a point where it was so, like, almost like autopilot. He'd show up and it was just like, it would just download straight. It was just easy.

It was like he didn't have to think about it. Mm-hmm. And I felt. I feel like that in a lot of the content that I made over the years. Like I've gone through something and I've gone through things in my life for sure like every other person. But for some reason, I always had a good way to just like share it. I don't know, almost in a way that I wish it was shared to me. Yeah.

And again, I don't know if it's like, because I never tried to be that. I never tried to figure that out. I never tried to be like, oh, this makes sense. And let me learn how to speak about these things. I just was like, this is literally just me. The secret, one of the secrets to on it, people like how did you do it well i just made shit that i wanted like we all everybody tries to imagine like what is the world want what is the market want what do what are people want don't

worry about that what do you want yeah what do you want this is a very common thing with social media yeah like trust trust that if you provide what a younger version of you want or what the current version of you want that there's going to be a lot of people who are just like you want the same And just like what you used to be who are going to want the same thing. And that's the only thing that you'll know for sure. Like it fucking boggles my mind. And some people can do it. Some people are really clever and successful.

And they'll be like ahead of a fitness company, but they don't fucking work out. You know, that shit's gnarly. It's crazy. It makes zero sense. They'll make like fucking pre-workouts, but they'll be like, you want to work out? And they're like, nah, I don't work out. I'm like, what the fuck? I don't like that.

I don't either. I don't but it works sometimes but that's not the game I want to play and I don't think that I don't think that works as much anymore I think that game has expired because there's enough people who are authentically doing these things that they're truly passionate about that that game has run its course yeah I fully agree with that like that's so relevant in the social media space nowadays in in a lot of industries but also specifically in the fitness industry there's every like everyone does the same thing now and it's like I always get ask this people like oh but I want to succeed how do I do it it's like I'm the same thing we're talking about I say the same thing every time it's like be your fucking self because like there's no competition there and if you're constantly looking at what someone else is doing to try to figure out what you're going to do next and you're constantly a step behind and you're constantly looking for like a different source of than other than what's really genuine and what really matters to you yeah and it's like you know at some point yeah maybe you like the first 10 ideas that the person

you were following oh he did that so I'm gonna do that he does that so I'm gonna do that but then at some point like you're you're you're it's not genuine you're not really going to be happy in the things that you're doing and also the game has changed like if you had a nice ass and you were a girl on instagram 10 years ago you were famous yeah oh you're famous you i see i see fucking profiles of girls sometimes i'll be cruising around they still show up in my feet a lot yeah yeah and i'll click it and i'll be like god damn yeah she is beautiful and i'll look 5500 followers And I'm like, that was not the reality fucking seven years ago. Yeah.

Well, it's harder as a platform. It's harder as a platform. That game is, that game has expired. Yeah. I mean, there's so many. There's so fucking many. And that's the thing. Like, if you're trying to follow, you're too late.

Yeah. You're too late if you're trying to follow. That's a fact. It's, the game is up. And I think that's a problem that a lot of people face is they're like, oh, I see this other person doing this thing. Yeah, it's too late. They did it.

And it's, it's also like, why would you want that to be your play? It's like, he did it, I'm going to do it. Because it's just like, do you really want that? Yeah. Or is it? Because that's the thing, too, that people, I don't think they realize it until, like, it's too late. If your intention is just to do something because you think you're going to get some effect

from it that's like monetary, then it's like, you're already approaching that the wrong way that someone and those people that you're trying to find some sort of monetary game from, they're going to feel that and be like, this is disgenuine. And they're going to fall, be like, I'm going to go over there, that person that I feel like actually gives a fuck about what he's doing so it's like just it's so weird like there is no competition with yourself it's just your own competition with yourself be yourself share what matters you share what hurts you share what makes you happy and and continue on and try to like connect the people who are aligning with that it's the only thing that you can do better than

everybody else in the world is be you yeah the only you have no competition yeah you can be yourself better than anyone in the world. And it can always work. It can always work. Because that's the thing. And I'll even tell people, I have these conversations about, like, the business I have, it's like, if you can get a thousand people to believe in you and care about what you care about and, like, be engaged with what you're giving them and taking the content

that is, like, helping them, like, and let's say you sell a product, like, if you can get a thousand people to buy a product for, like, you know, like a year or a few years, like, you can be a millionaire. People look at it like, I just need all the followers. I need all this because that guy has it. I need the car, I need all these things. And it's like, it's, you're just going at it the wrong way. It's like, create real connections with real people.

And like, you'll be unstoppable. Connections are so valuable. And again, connections go back to being an interesting motherfucker. Be the person that someone meets and they're like, I don't want to fucking hang with that person. Yeah. Like, and then people, that's one thing that'll never change. People want to do stuff with people they like.

Yeah. And you can't fake it. You know, if you're trying too hard or if you're, people will see through that. shit you know and it won't work like be just be a bad motherfucker be a bad motherfucker and other bad motherfuckers will want to be be around this makes me ask a question do you think everyone can be that way i think so everyone has that i think so but it's required it's not easy it requires like it requires going into the deep it requires doing those things that you're fucking scared of over and over again like for you you're you've done an exceptional job at being authentically yourself

and exploring things and becoming a master at being fucking Bradley. Yeah. Like you've crushed it at that. But there's another level waiting for you on the other side of the darkness retreat. On the other side of an ayahuasca retreat, there's another level of what you can be. And I see it in your eyes and I feel it in your heart. Like that's a part of your path because that's going to reveal another layer of who you are, of who Bradley really is that's going to see.

stack on top of this Bradley that you've created who's a fucking bad motherfucker already and it's going to be like oh shit oh shit and so many people are doing this and sometimes they're keeping it quiet. I mean I know a lot of people like Super Bowl champs and you know Stanley Cup champions that I've sat in ayahuasca circles with and I've done these things who are doing it quietly but they still don't talk about it but a lot of these people that we see are not only being incredible at what they do, but they're also quietly, and sometimes publicly, going into the deep, going into the deep and revealing that next layer. And I think that's the case for all of us. Yeah, I've been, I've been, it's now like repetitive in my life over the last year, like,

constantly being called to experience this. Yeah. So I, I think I'm going to do it. I've been so afraid to do it. I just, I know I deal with such like severe anxiety and moments in my life that I'm like, I could just imagine me. Maybe it's what I need is to go knowingly that it probably is going to happen, let it happen, and go through it. The only way out is through. Yeah. The only way out is through. You have to confront it and you have to, you have to, it's a different way.

You don't fight it. You surrender to it and you let it completely overwhelm you until you're like, I'm okay with this. I accept it. And then it dissipates. Yeah. God damn. I need to do it, man. Fuck.

I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm serious. Yeah. Well, when you're ready to do it. it let me know because i got i got all the i got all the connects i got all the hook up so that'll be dope man um i think that's it for today all right yeah i feel amazing do you have any questions for me man it's been a fuck this has been a great conversation yeah i really really enjoyed this

conversation i appreciate you going we covered all the different things and uh i mean i look forward to the friendship that's one of the beautiful things that we talked earlier like podcasts are amazing because no matter what we did whether we had lunch or whether we had drinks or whether no matter what we did we would never have gotten to know each other like we just got to know each other over the past two hours yeah and like i look at you now and we'll look at you now for the rest of my life and be like yeah bradley's my brother i appreciate it man and i and before this moment too i want you to know that i was a fan big fan i'm still a fan i appreciate that brother i appreciate that brother like i'm not kidding i came into this being like yo i'm kind of nervous

and i'm never nervous never ever nervous to talk to anyone man never there's not a single person but like you know I like I like your content I enjoy what you do I enjoy the energy you put out there and I enjoy the person that you are and the things that you say and the fact that you're not afraid to confront certain topics and it's just beautiful man I think we need more people like that in this world 100 fucking percent so I appreciate you coming on my podcast but also I appreciate you let me use this entire setup that I did not pay for so thank you so much it means a lot to me and I'm I'm dude I'm I'm fucking proud of you and all your success and you deserve every bit of it and thank you all the more that's going to come likewise my friend likewise fuck yeah much love everybody yeah subscribe to the channel turn the post notifications on all that good stuff drop a comment uh if you're on itunes leave a dope review if you're on youtube subscribe you know all that good stuff i love you guys i'm out of here thank you man yeah yep oh that was dope let's go that that's a good you're fucking dope man you're really really good stuff damn that was sick thank you for the help

no course by that yeah my pleasure it's all like two hours it was amazing man He's so bad. It was like, oh man. Yeah, we do marathons. I'm not kidding. When you were talking about resisting it and all that stuff, I was like, holy shit, he's speaking about me having to pee right now. This is the moan.

I was like, dude, I was so locked into. I was about to just piss my pants. Imagine peeing my pants on the podcast. I didn't want to fuck the couch thing, though, because I knew it was going to be a lot of pee. You're like, I got to let it out. Yeah, man, you're fucking, you're like, you're crushing. Yeah, man. Things are all lining up.

And it's interesting. You know, I feel like I'm still feel like I'm just getting starved. What you don't on it in 10 years like really impressive It's also just not necessary too. I heard it and I was like oh fuck that's crazy. It's crazy to be rich It's it's crazy It's a weird thing But it's something you're rich though and you like actually like are doing so much good with it Yeah, like that's the best thing I got and I got rich doing good. Yeah, so helping people like fucking inspiring them and giving them tools and yeah That's beautiful. I'm so proud of the not that I've made money but that every step

of the way like how you made the money yeah treating people really well and like they felt good in their bodies and they were inspired and the fact that I got to do it that way it's like it's the ultimate blessing of blessing but it's still fucking blows my mind you know what blows my mind this this is the first time this is Louis the 13th conia yeah I can buy this and drink it and it's delicious yes and it doesn't matter yeah it's like I can just do this yeah