TrueLife - Dr. Jessica Rochester D.Div. - Self Mastery, Self Care, & Self Love

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester is the Madrinha and President of Céu do Montréal, a Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) Church she founded in 1997 in Montréal, Canada.She is a transpersonal counselor, she trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Assagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof.She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve an Section 56 Exemption to import and serve the Santo DaimeSacrament (Ayahuasca).She is an ordained Interfaith Minister with a Doctorate in Divinity.From 1986 to 2018 she has been a workshop leader, teacher, and in private practice.She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery and Self-Care, Volume One and Two.She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being and personal transformation One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blade.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Okay, hour and a half. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I'm so excited that all of you out in the audience are spending a little bit of time with me and the lovely Dr. Jessica Rochester today. If you haven't seen any of our previous shows,

then let me show you a picture of the book. This is a book one of a two book series. Dr. Rochester is quite experienced in so much. And we plan on getting into some areas as far as, what is the difference between healing and curing? We're going to talk about the, what is new age and is it a problem, and how is it affecting people today?

and so much more. I could go on and on talking about the lovely Dr. Jessica Rochester, but I thought that maybe I would give you a moment to maybe add anything to that introduction that I kind of left out there. Okay. Well, first of all, thank you, host George. It's a pleasure to be back on your show. And thank you for having the deep interest in all the topics that you weekly share

with, I'm sure, a wide range of people who are enriched by. by your various guests and the topics that you cover. So it's a real pleasure to be here this afternoon. For those people listening who don't know me, I just published two books. Recently, Aewaska Awakening, a guide to self-disco discovery, self-mastery and self-care based on 40 years of working with people in the trans-personal field and 27 years now of drinking and

conserving ayahuasca, which we know is Santo Dime. For 17 years, I worked with Health Canada, the Office of Control Substances, to obtain the right to legitimately and legally practice, to be able to rightfully import our sacrament. The plants do not grow here in Canada, and so they must be brought up from Brazil. And so I think that's about, what else can I say? It's been a rich journey in the transpersonal field. that my own profound spiritual experiences kind of just projected me into, I'm sure some of the listeners can relate to this, that, you know, with spirit or your higher self or whatever words you're comfortable with, decides that it's time for you to take the next step.

You only have a few choices, you know, and the best one is surrender. And that will be repeated throughout the journey. Everybody has moments where you hit those. You know, like how runners hit a wall? And sometimes they haven't got far to go, but they just hit that wall, and it feels like you can't do it. You know?

Okay, so on the spiritual journey, again, I'm sure many listeners are going to be able to relate, you hit the wall. And you think, how can I get up this mountain? How can I go down this valley? How can I traverse this river? How can I do it? You know, and that's where we develop the qualities that we need, you know, like any hero's journey, you know, reaching into Joseph Campbell's work.

So today we're talking about curing and healing. And we hear so much about healing. I mean, everybody's writing books about healing this and healing that and healing something else. And, you know, first of all, I want to acknowledge all of the brave people who begin their healing this. journey, okay, and all the courageous and brave people who want to support that journey. And like everything else that involves humans, okay, the species, humans, not dogs or birds or dolphins, but humans, there's always the dark side. There just is, there just is.

It's, you know, I've quoted this many times, but it's such a good line. I've got to quote it again, I attribute Stan Groff. because he can't remember where he got it from. But, you know, it just is what it is when you're walking on the path and difficult and dark things emerge, whether it's within you or around you. You know, it's the dragon in the forest and the troll under the bridge. You know, it's what would Stan say? Why is evil there to thicken the plot?

I like that. It's beautiful. To thicken the plot. So, you know, who goes? supposed to see movies where there isn't a Darth Vader or a villain or where I think is just rainbows and crystals and happy and you know we think

we want that we think we want that oh please could I have some you know unicorns and rainbows and crystals and happy places and safe places and can I please have that okay but then there'd be no journey there'd be no

maybe no learning either like what what do you really get out of a life that's just rainbows and unicorns. I don't know. I'm sure we all want to have that. But once we'd be in it, it's been, okay, I'm now I'm bored. Now, after what a month or three months or, okay, even a year, okay? What happens next?

What do we push up against that's going to give us growth and development? And why are we here anyway? Anyway, we're recycling some of those those questions. Let's, should we come down to curing and healing and what's all that about? So, first of all, we're going to do a couple of definitions. Nice. And then I'm waiting on you for some good questions because you are the count of good questions. What is curing?

Curing is the resolution of physical illness, the elimination of disease. Can we agree on that for today's conversation about this talk? Well, I agree. Well, done. I think that that's a great definition. Yeah. Yeah. So you could have a condition and illness and it could be cured.

In other words, there's no more evidence of that condition or illness. Pure. Healing. Now, this is much deeper and broader, okay? It means beyond a physical cure. So it's a strengthening or a repairing of the mind and the spirit to improve the quality of life, even when there may be no physical. cure.

Okay. There may be no cure. And so somebody may have to live with their condition. But their mind, their spirit, their soul can still

transform and grow and heal. You have your eyes and you're almost got a rapporteur. Yeah. You can see me thinking. Yeah, yeah, I can see you thinking. Go on. I would like to add a little bit to the healing definition.

I would add that it involves a journey that provides you with the intelligence from your experience. I think that there's something that you said about intelligence and experience in the world of healing. Absolutely. Okay. That's all the conversation, what that is about the journey. It's the journey. And this is the piece that people have to understand there may not be curing involved. And that's hard for a lot of people.

Because there's that moment where there's the hope and there'll be the physical cure. And then you find, okay, I have to live with this. And now how does living with this? What does that look like? And how do I transform through that, whatever that means, accommodating chronic pain, accommodating a condition that brings discomfort or whatever it brings, you know? Or even, you know, next stop is palliative. of care.

Yeah. Yeah. So healing and curing to very different things. So I'm going to quote a doctor Lisa Rankin who writes quite a bit about for people who are interested in her journey as a medical doctor of understanding, healing, wholeness, curing all of these different things. She says very clearly, you can cure without healing and you can heal without curing, boiling it right down to the beer balls.

So yeah, healing is something very different from hearing. And we're going to talk a little bit about how that's got confused up into kind of the dialogue, the conversation that's happening in the larger community about possibilities and psychedelics and epigen. Now, just to set some records straight here, what I thought I would do is. is because the plants that I work with and that I serve, because I feel I'm in service to them, if not more than they're in service to me.

I'm serving them. And they're the master plants. And so people who work with these sacred plants understand that. You know? So the sacred plants that I work with, my connection is to Santo Daini, and that is a Brazilian tradition. I brought it back from Brazil.

to my first visit in 1996. So these are Brazilian regulations. So it may be a little bit dry, but I'll try and make them interesting. How's that? And you just pop right in with questions as I go along so that there's nothing that's too blurry or confusing.

What happened in with the ayahuasca religions, which would be the Santo Dwayne, Union de Fishtal, and the Burkina, okay, that emerged and grew out of the shamanic traditions, all of them did. And now I'm dynista, so I will speak about only the santo daini, and not profess to be any expert on anybody else's traditions. Okay. So in our tradition, the shamanic roots are very still present, honored, respected, and present. In Brazil, there's still deep connections between the Santo Dami churches and the original heritage traditions. So Brazil started looking at this in the

80s when all of a sudden, you know, they noticed that coming into the urban centers were these ayahuasca religions. And so they did a deep study on them through the decades, which was then confirmed by a regulatory process in the early, so about 20, 25 years ago in the early 2000s. And this was through Koneji, and it's called the GMT Koneachi. And this is available. Shout out to be a Labardi on her website, the English translation of all of the Konaghi resolutions. And so what they have to say, I boiled it down to the key points, is the ritual used of ayahuasca, so heritage, and then this newer religious use that started to emerge about 100 years ago, but only started to be really looked at, let's say, in the 80s as it was going to the more urban centers,

and then I was part of that first wave out in the early mid-90s when it became internationally known. So the ritual use of ayahuasca, the ancestral traditions and religious, because of its historical, anthropological, and social value merits the protection of the state. So the plants and the practices are protected. You're recognized and protected. No use with other psychoactive substances or outside of the rituals. No use. No commerce. Whosoever sells ayahuasca does not practice an act of faith.

No selling it. Commerce contradicts and assaults the legitimacy of the traditional use which is consecrated by the heritage practices. So no selling it. The prohibition on the commercialization of ayahuasca is not confused with natural expenses within the communities. The payment of expenses involved in the gathering of plants, the sustainability, the harvesting, and the orchards of the plants, their transportation is preparation. So within the ritual communities, there's an understanding that you have to pay for certain things. And so all of these things are governed by wisdom and transparency and no commercialization.

Tourism, what we know is ayahuasca tourism, right? Avoided. Not allowed. That's interesting, right? Yeah. The publicity, this is all in their resolutions. The publicity of ayahuasca has been a motive for deformations and abuses, notably through the Internet. It can be observed principally through this means of communication that there is an availability of all sorts of paid courses and workshops whose central element is the use of ayahuasca associated with promises of transformational experiences that are divorced from heritage ritual, beliefs, and practices.

They say it straight out. Any questions on that one? I'm just reading Brazilian resolutions from Konagyi. I didn't write these. I didn't make them up. I have precede them down. Offers of miraculous cures, rapturing personal transformations,

and the induction of individuals who believe that ayahuasca is the panacee for all ills. Is there not allowed? They're prohibited in the use of ayahuasca. Then it says traditionally, to be noticed, some denominations within the heritage traditions, practice healing rituals in which ayahuasca is used within the context of faith. The therapeutic use that is traditionally attributed to ayahuasca in the religious ritual is not therapy. It is an act of faith.

The same way you could go into many different churches, centers, temples, of recognized spiritual and religious traditions. And they will have the laying on the hands. They will have prayers. They will pray for. They will ask the congregation to pray for, right? So these are part of faith traditions that go back a very long way. Okay, so I have a question here.

Please, please, yeah. So on the topic of it being an act of faith, can we delineate the difference? Like, what does faith mean for someone in Brazil versus faith for someone and else. I mean, that's a pretty broad term. Is there a way to maybe kind of break that down? Well, in the context of this conversation and these resolutions,

they are taking faith in the principles of their practice. Okay. Rather than that much larger, they're saying within the context, okay, some denominations have healing. They're called kuras, okay? Rituals. in which it is within the context of the faith. So what does a Santo Dami Korr look like?

It looks almost like any other work, except there are different hymns that are some, and that there are different prayers that are said, and that there are specific beings that we sing certain hymns to in the hopes that those beings will bless us with their presence, will illuminate some truths, okay? There's no claims of curing none. There's no lectures or sermons about any of this.

In Goras, we are opening ourselves to the divine light. We are trusting that the divine light will reveal to everyone in the work what the divine light has for that person. That's the core of our faith in the Sulta Daini. But we don't know. we're not saying it's not directive prayer we're not saying do this and do that and you know how in some let's say certain evangelical situations you have a lot of directed prayer that does not exist in these traditions not certainly not in the santo i mean certainly not how we practice it in our church

we don't do directive prayer heal this and cure that and stuff all we do is allow ourselves to be channels for the light because we trust that the higher self of the individual knows what needs to be done. It sounds a lot. It sounds similar to the way in which like Isaiah or some of the prophets encountered God or some of the prophets spoke with Jesus or not Jesus, but with God. And it seems to me in some ways the same way you and other people may be interacting with beings? Is there something similar between the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the channeling the

light and seeing the beings that you're seeing? Absolutely. It's all part of the same practices, just different outfit, different words. Exactly. All part of the same thing. Everybody, regardless of their tradition, who has encounters and or faith with of the unseen, realms and the beings that inhabit them. Everyone who has these encounters, however they manifest, will be having similar experiences. I met a being. It was all filled with light. I met a being.

The being gave me a message or the being reached inside of me and did something. And where the light came, the light came, there was a light. This is the most common. There was a light. Even more common is there was a blue light. Okay, Blue is very commonly seen in these profound experiences and encounters with, let's call it, divine might. And then, again, we might have profound healings psychologically, mentally, soul level in our heart and our chakraline that may or may not cure anything physically. Okay?

You know, that's the reality is that people still get ill and people die. You know, and sometimes there are physical changes that do improve and do, it was a very well-known story about a psychiatrist and who came into the Santo Daini all, I'm going to say, like 30 years ago or so. And he had cancer. And he attributes his remission, complete remission from cancer to having drunk the Santo Daini. and he was totally dedicated to it. And he was going to build a center down in Brazil to work with some of the mediums and the de Mistas in the area. And one day he got up in the morning and a couple of hours later, he had a massive heart attack and was gone. This is a very well-known story to people who I happen to never met him,

but I know people who have trained with him and worked beside him. and Jose Rosa was his name. And what was that about? Okay. Can you imagine people standing around going, what? How did that happen? So, and we all understand, I'm a cancer survivor 30 years ago. And I can say I was cured because I didn't have any sense of that kind.

And hopefully, fingers crossed, not any other kind. So what is all about, let's talk about therapy, okay, and what Agi had to say about therapy in ayahuasca. Okay. So the therapeutic use that is traditionally attributed to ayahuasca in the religious ritual is not therapy, it's an act of faith. So they make a complete distinction between therapeutic use of the sacred plant. and ritual use, heritage and ritual use, okay? Maybe can we define therapy for the people in the audience so they can get an understanding?

Well, I think that kind of the, let's just take any classic model of psychological therapy. No, you know, psychology has like 1,000 branches. Right, right. Different tools, okay? You know, you could, you know, it's like a roulette wheel, you know, wherever the ball of box choose. There's lots of places.

So there's many types of different. therapy, but here they would be talking more about psychiatric or psychological therapy. Maybe changing relationship. Not like massage therapy or physiotherapy. Right. They're not talking about that kind of therapy. So they're talking about standard psychological therapy. And there's a lot of people who are doing research and looking into the therapeutic value of.

So this is what the Brazilian government had to say about it. And their Konagji team included, not just the government, it included 12 other seats in which each heritage tradition had their seat. So you had the shamanic practitioners, you had their ritual practitioners, and then you had serious scientists, okay, working in the field. And so you had everybody's voice to be heard on the topic of what could be. So those who use the drink outside of a heritage ritual context are in another condition. This is not related with ritual religious use. Such a practice is not recognized. Any practice that implies the use of ayahuasca with therapeutic ends,

whether of the exclusive use of the substance or whether associated with other substances or therapeutic practices is prohibited. until its efficacy is proven through scientific research carried out in research centers associated with academic institutions following scientific methodologies. Thus, the recognition of the legitimacy of the only therapeutic use of ayahuasca will occur only after the conclusion of research that proves it so. Any questions, my dear? Yes. So, first off, why would you, the fact that you want to intertwine therapy with academia seems to be a red flag to me. Like, anytime you need a set of academics to tell you what therapy is, I think you're mudding the waters a little bit. And I kind of, if I go back to the word therapy, like therapy to me means changing your relationship to something. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

I mean, I think that, I think that it's, we're just getting into a game of semantics a little bit because why can it be a therapy? If you're using something to change your relationship to it, that's a good thing or it can be a good thing. It could also be a negative thing. But, you know, I think it's important to drill down on the words and try to figure out why they're using these particular words. In some ways, it's like this giant guardrail around it to protect it. I guess, but so I guess my question is like what go for it okay I guess my question is it seems to me like they're they're the purpose of all of this is to keep the the tradition of ayahuasca in the in the hands of those who know how to wield it is that is that accurate?

I could say that that is extremely accurate part A on what they're trying to say and what they're trying to call it. Because you have to remember, if you kind of can gather up the threads of it, they were completely alarmed at the internationalization of ayahuasca. They were being held accountable,

mainly by the United States government as to why are you letting this be exported and being used in all of these different ways. So they had other countries. There was court cases happening around the world, in Europe, in the United States, not here in Canada, because I chose the diplomatic going off on the door at hand. And so we didn't go through court cases here in Canada, but there were court cases, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, United States,

those were else, okay? probably forgotten a few. There were court cases and very angry countries saying to Brazil, why are you allowing this to happen? And so Brazil had to look at that and say, okay, we have the heritage use here. The plants are protected under the United Nations Convention, 1971 Convention, those plants are heritage plants,

considered sacred heritage plants, and they are protected. Okay. So people can't just go ripping in the forest, ripping them all out, which is what was happening. And it's still happening. You know, somebody puts up their website and goes in the forest and rips these heritage. So sustainability of the plants, protection of the plant, and then also these plants can create very profound, non-ordinary states of consciousness. And so the heritage shamanic use is respected and respected. because there's years of training in the shamanic use. And the religious use is recognized, the three main religious use of ayahuasca in Brazil.

Those are recognized because they have so proven themselves to be accountable to sustainability of the plants, okay? Their ritual practices, their set of principles and beliefs, their screening of visitors and members, case of health and safety, all of these things have been observed, they've been recorded, they've been researched, there's tons of research on the legitimate Brazilian religions. What there haven't been researched none on was this therapeutic use.

In other words, let's say a psychologist decides to start serving it to people and then let them have these claims, these, you know, claims. of profound personal transformations and instant cures and fantastic voyages and stuff and it was getting out of hand and sensationalized. So they had to sit down and do something. So 20-some-odd years ago, this is what they came up with, which is you want to do the therapeutic use. You have to prove, do your research and prove that outside of the religious, because you have set and setting. So when you go into a heritage shamanic tradition, you have about a week of diet and fasting and all these. There's an entire process that you have to go through that's at least a week, 10 days long, sometimes longer, depending on the individual practices of the tribe that you're working with.

The religious use is very documented and researched. But there's nothing on, take it out of its setting. Take it out of the prayers and the chance and the sacredness and the wisdom of either the shamans or the elders, the senior people in the religious lines. Take it out of that. What happens? Well, nobody knows what happens. So the Brazilian government is not wrong by saying, do some research.

And if your research comes back to us saying, listen, we have evidence that in a psychological setting, in a research, you know, in a psychological setting, that, and then whatever findings they have, okay, whatever findings come up. Oh, I love your cat. I mean I see your cat before, ginger cat. I'm horrible. So they have, they have, this is what they shouldn't be doing because when you serve any substance, it doesn't matter what it is. aspirin, ayahuasca, it doesn't matter. You actually have to have research as the risks and the benefits.

And, you know, this was part of the research we did on the paper we published in April 2021, anthogenesis psychedelics proposal in Canada proposal for a new paradigm. And we said, hey, guys, you know, all of this stuff is happening and people are doing all these retreats and workshops and everything. but hang on a minute. Are you credentialed? What's your education? Who's training you? What are you serving? How are you screening? How are you following up? These are just questions that need to be asked and they need to be answered.

So a lot of people don't understand. So last little note that I, you know, copy-paste it out of Koneji and tried to put it in simple languages. Okay, based on the accounts of representative of the user entities. it is seen that healings and the solution of personal problems must be understood within the same religious context as other religions, as an act of faith. Without a necessary relationship of cause and effect between use of ayahuasca and healing or solution of problems. So what they're saying is divorced of the context, the prayers, the chance, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. the sacred space that gets created, whether it's in the forest or whether it's in the, you know, center, whether it's in the church, okay, whatever it is. Although the ritual of preparation and prayers

and chance and singing and meditating and the opening and the closing and the teachings and everything, take the substance out of that, that needs to be studied. They're not wrong. I agree. They are not wrong because they can't. You know, what's happening is this substance is opening you up. And what if it's opening you up? And then it's the songs and the hymns and the prayers and the sacredness of the intentions of everybody else there that actually is what creates the opportunity for healing. What is what if it's those of us who act as mediums who are working our derriers off, calling those beings to come and help? Okay?

I'm exhausted at the end of work. I'm getting older now. It's hard work mediumship is to know the beings, to work with the beings for years and years and years, if not decades, and then to know how to sing for them, how to honor them, how to open yourself, so that they will consider the setting worthy to visit. Do you understand?

Yeah, yeah. It seems to me if you open yourself up, I'm sorry. When a dignitary comes to visit, Okay, you have to prepare the space. You know, when our prime minister in Canada receives a dignitary, maybe he receives the president of the United States or the president of France or, you know, the emperor of Japan or whoever, there's a whole protocol, right? And they receive and there's a red carpet and there's flowers and there's speeches

and there's a whole thing. And you honor the, okay, well, it's not vastly different. You're just going to go, hey, yo, St. Michael, you want to go? No, you'll probably get what's known as a correction. It's called a PIA. It's called a correction. Marash and Bay will show up and say straight, you know. So, yes, there's a lot of effort and love and support that goes into creating that sacred space, you know, and understanding who can arrive. Now, what the thing is is we're back to the dark side.

Okay? It's, you take away all that intention and the protection. There are beings that guard the line. There are spiritual beings that guard the line. It's like they're the protection, the umbrella protection on the line. And if you take it out from under that, then I don't know what could happen. I have no idea what could happen. Benefit could happen, but it has to be studied.

and you have to understand what you're doing. And then if you're a psychologist who's now done a little bit of a weekend workshop or a two-week training or some three-month certification program and working in non-ordinary states, okay, that's better than nothing. That's still going in the right direction. Okay. But really, what do you do if a being arrives for that person, whether it is an illuminated being or whether it is a difficult, tricky being?

Do you know how to manage that? Do you know how to help the person recognize it and work with it? It's interesting, hey? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so those were all my notes on that, healing and curing. Do you have more questions for me? Yeah, I do. I think that we touched on it a little bit.

One of my questions was going to be the social structures, but I think we kind of touched on that. I think we'd go a little bit deeper. Like, do you think that there is sort of a similarity? Like you say, if you take ayahuasca or you take the, you take that out of the church, is that kind of similar to taking someone out of society? Like when we alienate people from society, they can become a minister to themselves or maybe they can grow stronger.

But I kind of get that same feeling. Like if you take the sacrament out of the setting, are you setting something? are you setting someone else up for failure? Are you setting them up for inviting in negative experiences as much as you are healing experiences? I know we kind of touched on that, but maybe we could talk a little bit more about the social structure. When you're practicing, what does that social structure look like that would be different than, say, a social structure of someone in a clinical setting? Well, you know, and then again, to find clinical setting, you know, all we have to do is look at the horrendous things that happened with LSD in the 60s, you know, where they would put, give people large amounts of LSD and put them basically in a locked room alone and observe them through a window. This could not be more wrong.

And then you compare that to Stan Groff's work at Stanford University and what he was doing in palliative care with LSD. which was he had a team of people who themselves had to experience a minimum of three times the LSD in order to understand a little bit of what the person might experience, just a little bit of what they might experience. And then the person was interviewed as to what's important to them, what has meaning for them. They would create a setting, this is palliative care, remember, a setting that would be in alignment with their spiritual beliefs,

and religious practices. You know, you don't put Ave Maria on for music if you have a practicing person of the Jewish faith, right? So they made sure to understand what were the persons because we can have profound spiritual experiences in non-ordinary states. And so they wanted to make sure that everything was aligned that would be supportive.

So they had music specially chosen that would be supportive to that. There was flowers. They made the sense. as beautiful and as supportive as possible for the person to have their experiences. And so that's a huge vast difference from a person alone or a person alone with a therapist in a room. These are sacred plants that come from nature.

And so being able to be with nature, see nature, even if it's just flowers and plants, is going to make a very big difference to the person's experience, who's there? what's happening when you're there. This is set and setting. And so is there a place, you know, personally, my personal thought, you know, this is not Santadami doctrine, this is my personal thought, okay? Let me be very clear on that, is that I think the entheogens, the sacred plants, okay, I think they're in a completely different category from psychedelics.

I see that there is a very, there's a lot of wonderful research. out now that shows that, you know, something like psilocybin, end of life is extremely helpful. There's a lot of excellent research that's coming out that is showing that certain psychedelics can be extremely helpful for certain conditions in certain situations. And that's where it really needs to go for the governments to be able to give their blessing on it. Once they see that there is enough valid research that says this is helpful to post-traumatic stress disorder or to addiction recovery or to palliative care in assisting people come to terms with the end of their life. So there's a lot of wonderful research that's happening in the field of let's call them psychedelics.

The sacred plants, I don't see, you know, in our tradition, we would have that uniform members who are deignistas, yes, close to death, it would be in our tradition to serve them sacrament as they so wish. But this would be more not as a therapeutic use, okay, but just them reconnecting with the sacrament that they have known and worked with. whatever period of their life, it's not intended to be therapeutic. Then it would be the same as a Catholic priest or an Anglican minister going and serving communion. For example, my mother is 101 years old. Okay? Yes, she's still got all those smarts. She's a lot slower than she was, but she's still going.

She's like the energizer bunny. And, you know, she's been in her residence for the last maybe five years only. She was still in her own home up until, like, what, 95, 96. Okay. And there is, there's ministers and people of faith who go into the residents to be able to give, she's Anglican by practice, her whole life, and to give her communion. And this is normal. This is an act of faith.

There's nothing therapeutic about this. This is the person with the prayers, taking the communion. In that moment, they're having their faith moment that gives them, whatever strength, faith, comfort they've had. And so that is how our sacrament would still be used in a different setting as a sacrament to offer comfort and familiarity of the faith and the practice. It would not be used therapeutically to see if something magically is going to heal at the end of their life. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Or while they're ill. Is that making a clear enough distinction? I think so. I think so. Oh, good. Good. I'm also curious. Earlier when we began our podcast, we spoke about the ability to heal without curing and cure without healing.

And when we bring up the idea of end of life or addiction, it seems that, you know, it seems that when you, perhaps, let's just, for example, let's say you take psilocybin and you're working with yourself coming to the end of a life. It seems to me that might be one of those experiences where you can heal without cure. because you can come to an understanding that I am in a situation that is going to happen and I can come to grips with it. Would you say that's a form of healing without curing? And if so, can you think of some other ones? That's a perfect example. What they, there was a, I can't, I can't source it.

So I can't give a reference on it. I'd have to go back and look for it. But there was a recent study that was done that people who were in palliative care who had the here in Quebec, we can choose MAID. medical assistance in dying, which means that you know that your condition is not going to turn around. And you have the choice in certain health and medical conditions to be able to make that decision. I know that is why should I live in pain and suffering and for another three months or something. I can choose my moment, say goodbye to everybody. Okay. So they did this research study in which they did the

three psilocybin, and it was the three psilocybin sessions. And what they found was quite remarkable. What they found was 50% of the people decided they were not going to do the M-AID medical assistance and dying, but they were just going to go through the experience as an experience. And the other 50% of the people were more deeply committed to M-A-I-D, I choose my moment and go out the way I want. Yeah. Now, isn't that interesting? Almost like 50-50 split. And what each person in the study got was the clarity of their own will to in the face of, you know, a difficult, I mean, we're all going to die, right?

Nobody here's going to go on and on, right? The physical body's done, you know, at one point, the Jessica life will be over. Okay. The George's life will be done. We bow to it. We thank it. it's done and then we go into the great mystery but in the meantime for some people it's really important that i can actually have a say how i go out and for so for a lot of you know in my book i have i think

it's a whole chapter on decisions and choosing and and and willpower and how do we activate our will in our decision-making process and so it's all about discovering that third chakra experience of willpower and on and sometimes the only choice we have is the level of awareness and consciousness in which we will be existing going through the experience. Do you want me to repeat that or did you get it? Yeah. Say I maybe you can touch on the last part again. It's beautiful, but it's a it's a lot to think about. It's deep. Okay. Yeah. Sometimes in life, the only thing that We are best and highest choice is because we can't change anything that's happening, you know. Our only choice is in what state of being will I be?

What state of awareness and consciousness will I be in this? Okay. Will I be terrified and shaking? Will I be at peace? Will I be surrendered? That's sometimes the only choice we've got. Will I go back into denial? I'm sure you have experiences.

Definitely. I do where loved ones have gone deep into denial and sometimes been stayed in denial right up until their last breath. You know, I'll get better. I'll get up and walk. Not happening. Other people say, wow, okay, this is it. I think I'll put my things in order and I'll start saying goodbye and telling everybody I love

them and making sure that my wishes are known. and choosing what happens to my possessions. And it always amazes me that people pass. They haven't even made a power of attorney and they haven't made a will. And it's like, what are you thinking, honey? What planet were you on when you were thinking you're going to be here forever? So that can be our choice. How do I go out?

You know, what does, what's my experience? Do I open to it and surrender to it? and say, okay, this too is simply an experience the way all of life is, happy experiences, scary experiences, painful experiences, joyous experiences, boring experiences. Yeah, it makes me sad in some ways because I, as a delivery driver, I deliver quite often to a lot of older folks homes, you know, and it saddens me to see the the state in which so many people are in, it's, I feel like as a society, we have taken the dignity out of dying. We've taken that choice away from people. And maybe that's in the

hopes of a cure or maybe that's in the hopes for profit. But this taking the dignity out of dying is something that is a disease in itself. It's so sad to see. Well, can we roll that back? Yeah. We've taken the dignity out of aging. Take the dignity out of life in so many ways. Yeah. You know, Western civilization, you know, decided that young and beautiful and rich and how much stuff you've got was what counted.

And wisdom and life experience and mentoring and eldership has fallen by the wayside. And I think that that's a lot of the spiritual, psychological crisis that we're in right now is we lack that and we're looking for it. And even if it's around us, we haven't been taught to value it. And so if we've lived a life focused on doing and having and haven't even looked at being, okay? And our whole life has been about accumulating.

And I have this and I do that. And, you know, that's a trap we all fall into, you know, the having and the doing. Okay. It's an easy one for humans to get into that treadmill. And we forget to be. We forget being, you know. And then we get older. And we're losing our youth and our vitality.

And we're losing our, you know, ability to, you know, jump into that. and we start experiencing things differently because our body's aging. And then our mind gets a little bit slow and we forget, where did I leave that now? I hear what's his name? And it's not quite senility yet, you know, but it just makes longer to check the archives

in the back of the brain. And so, you know, how do we, what are we going to do with all of this? You know, and here's something, you know, so there's all of that is how do we help our young people know that that, you know, that there's value in aging and it's not something to be frightened of and avoid and run and get plastic surgery and die your ear and bill your 90 and, you know, and look at our role models, rock stars and Hollywood stars who are all Botoxed and

air-doid and everything. I'm always happy when I see, you know, a Hollywood star, a woman who's just really got her dignity and not making her face. plastic and this hey aging is okay and wrinkles are all right and great here's fine and this is part of this is what wisdom looks like and what life experience looks like and this is what happens to everybody elephants get old and and eagles get old and people get old too and there's another piece to this is it's this kind of collective guilt you know there's kind of a collective guilt somewhere that moves around with this, that we kind of tuck people into residences, and then we don't have to take care of them ourselves,

which is how it used to be. An elderly parent or relative moved in and lived with and was taken care of. You know, that families lived like tribes, and everybody would take care of, you know, Uncle Terry and whatever, because or a grandparent or a great-grandparent. And even children were taught, okay, take great-grandma, her cup of tea and her, you know, biscuit now and sit with her for a few minutes and chat with her.

And she's going to show you teach you how to knit or how some wisdom about some things that she lived. But when you have lived a life that is devoid of spiritual experience and wisdom, and you yourself haven't been mentored, and all you've done is collect stuff, okay, and watch TV, okay? You can name every plot of, I don't know, name some well-known TV show. I don't watch it, I can't tell you, but, you know, they can tell you every character and every plot of these really famous TV shows through the decades. What do you have to offer to the young people?

that's what needs me said, is what do they have to offer, you know, if that's the kind of life that they've lived. And all the people who live through the First World War and the Second World War and difficult challenges and the people who immigrated against, you know, such difficult and through such difficult experiences and what they learn from that and how they learn to build lives and stuff, a lot of that has just gone by the wayside and left. Because, you know, for most people, it's like, hey, I don't want to hear about that. That I just want to give me that we're into the new age versus the trans person. I think we were going to start talking shortly.

You know, that's all new age. Everything has to be perfect and fluffy and don't bring anything negative that's a downer into the conversation. You know, like you mean reality? Like, real life? And there was somebody, I don't know, they posted on LinkedIn. And it was kind of one of those posts about, you know, just be positive and be patient. And everything that you ever want will come into your life. And I wrote, what about the people who are waiting for help or food or water or medicine or shelter?

What about those folks? You know? So this kind of new age, positive, all you have to do is, you know, the universe is full of prosperity. and but over there there's people dying from hunker and being persecuted and they have no water and they have no medicine and what's with that how does how do those two things reconcile help me out here george i can't reconcile that kind of let's call it new age thinking with reality with the reality of people's experiences all my the planet what's happening to Mother Nature, you know, guzzle, guzzle, guzzle,

flying my private plane and oh, isn't it too bad about climate change? Meanwhile, keep ordering on Amazon and all that. And the phones and the, what we're using right now, the technology. And how do we balance that? Do you have some answers? All I have is questions. I have no answers. I just have questions around this. Where's the bridge to bridge those things?

For me, it's the wisdom, ancestral wisdom, that we need to go back into. We need to support the indigenous people to bring forth because we are guilty of erasing so much of that knowledge and wisdom. And around the world, it was the indigenous people who were close to nature and who honored nature and knew how to only take what you need. and not waste anything, right? And what can we learn from all of this? We need help with this.

Western civilization needs help with learning how to respect nature and learning how to value human life in a way that doesn't stick it on a pedestal. Are we wandering around a little bit here? But do you know what I'm saying? This very species-centric view, there's humans. pinnacle of God's creation and then there's kind of everything else.

So it kind of doesn't matter that there's nearly what, 8 billion people on the planet, but there's only 500 Siberian tigers. I have a problem with that. I know this may be extremely unpopular, but I think that people should look at this and say, what are we doing? Maybe we need to have fewer people on the planet.

Maybe we need to curb population growth, share what exists, so that the people who are here, here have what they need and that that includes all of nature and her creatures that they have what they need how can we rewild how can we ensure that there's space for nature how can we ensure that that all of the migrating creatures that they have a clear path where they need to migrate does that mean asking every farmer to make sure that a quarter acre of their land goes to wildland or bulrushes or wetland or, you know, whatever it is,

the creatures who migrate along that path can have. So how do we do this? And so these, what we're talking about are sacraments, certainly, and, you know, we're talking about curing and healing. And in the Santa Daini, healing is a given. We don't even talk about it, but we're talking about healing our attitude.

What's healing our perceptions. That's what needs healing. Awakening. Okay? That yes, if some kind of cure happens along the way and we have less physical pain or we're more healthy, that's fabulous. Usually it's accompanied with instructions we're given by the dime that we have to make changes in our lives.

So let's talk about that, George. It's people who weren't cured, but they don't do anything in their life. example somebody has i don't know pick one high blood pressure is that an easy one how many people across the united states of canada have high blood pressure okay well basic basic things can bring that right down nutrition nutrition exercise okay changing habits sleep changing how you manage stress okay now a lot of people will still will need medication to start because you you know don't want to bring it down. But then all those other things should be going in.

But what seems to happen is people want instant cures with no effort on their part. You want to talk to that? Yeah, I think there's a lot there. I think that in some ways I think the system is beginning to cure or heal itself. I think that when we look at population and we look at people's quest and thirst for power, that that in itself is a disease. And that is a disease that leads to bigger and bigger destruction. But if you look at the Western cultures, you can see that the average Western woman is having

one child instead of four or five children. And in some ways, it's it's because a woman, a child born to a woman in the West will use somewhere between 10 and 15,000 times more resources than a child born to a woman in a third world culture. Yes. You know, I, but I think that in some weird way, you can see the West dying. You can see the culture dying. You can see the, it's dying in ways.

And maybe that is something that happens when you live a life like a Western culture. Like it dies. It gives itself up. All empires have to invest. Right, right. Look at history. If we don't learn from history, we're stupid.

Okay. Every the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the Byzantine Empire, you name it, empire after, empire after empire, okay? And people are still trying to. There's a war now in the Ukraine because an individual and the people who support that individual want to recreate an empire. That's all that's happening here, is power and territory, and it's the old empire move. right? I will claim or reclaim all this land and people and and raw materials that are contained in the land and everything. This hasn't changed. This is just basic human behavior. How is that ever going to go away? No, that never leaves.

I don't believe it will. I like to think that there will be enough people who are committed to living healthy, respectful lives and respecting nature to the best of their ability, to doing what they can to improve. They're in their community, just not their personal home, but in their community. They contribute something that in whatever way they're able to, that will improve what is the human experience here on the planet. and bring better balance between people. But will this stop?

I don't think so. It's always existed. And much as many of us would love to see it be different, I think we have to be realistic, you know. And what does that look like? What does that look like? You know, what can we do? I think that, and this is something, you know,

I'll tell you a funny story about that. Very, very early up. in the Dami. And I was traveling with the commitiva visiting other churches in other places. And so it was really within the first year. And I was very much apprenticing, as I did for 14 years. And so at the end of the work, I had a chat with a person who was leading the work, who was an elder for me, one of the elders for me.

And I had a very funny, strange work because my mouth kept, I kept getting slum. in my mouth and something kept telling me that I shouldn't be swallowing it. So I found a paper cup and I was doing this a lot. I'm taking my little paper cup and I'm kind of spending all the saliva out. I didn't want to run to the washroom every time and leave the work. So I found this way that I thought would be discreet. I kept asking, what are you showing me? What's happening here? And I got two messages. And so afterwards, the, when this man asked, me, he said, so what was your work? Because we call them works, trivios works. What was in your work? And I said, well, it was very strange. I said that on one level, I said I was being shown that I had

some old amalgam fillings in my mouth. And like there was this kind of healing process of that they were leaking and it was my body clearing everything and that I had to go and have them completely remove these old amalgam fillings in my back molars and replaced with the most kind of natural modern composite. Okay? And he said, yeah, that's a nice healing.

I said, but the second teaching that I got was that my mouth was being cleaned so that only that, which was, this again is very buzz, only right speech would go through it. And he went,

now that's the healer. Okay, so the one physical thing, like, oh, you know, that's pretty good. But, okay, your speech,

really cool. show you how to be impeccable in your word. And those were the teachings I caught while I'm spitting into my little paper cup. And so here you have curing and healing. Right. So. Yeah. I'm not sure.

Do you think that maybe the only thing that we can do is help the people in our community? Like first off, help ourselves understand what it is. we want to accomplish and what we're capable of accomplishing. And maybe once you have achieved that, which is very difficult to do, maybe then you can begin helping the people around you. I think that that's the only thing you can do. And this idea of the new age is a sort of escapism into this idea that you can do these huge things without ever really doing anything.

That's very well. So you can do these huge things without doing anything. Yeah, just slap a photo of it on your fridge and imagine and it'll happen. Okay, well, that is wishful thinking. That is ungrounded, wishful thinking. And we can see what happened. You know, I've been enough decades now and on my spiritual journey that I was part of East meets West. So when the Eastern traditions came and it was fascinating to see what happened,

I jumped right in, went through the Eastern door, loved it. But what happened was it got the same way, how can I say this, the same way immigrants, let's say from China brought Chinese food with them. Okay, and now we have American Chinese food that doesn't look anything like Chinese Chinese food. Okay. Okay. And so there's this natural thing that happens, this grafting into the local culture. And this is normal. This is what happens with everything is there's an adaptation to the local culture.

and then as the local culture brings it in and then these things happen. And we can look at what happened with some of the Eastern traditions as they came into Western civilization and particularly the American culture. And I don't say, the only reason I say this is because, you know, Canada has one tenth of the population. And, you know, who knows what smaller percentage of the gross, you know, financial status. of the power. We were a big country, but most of it's frozen. Okay, no one can live there. So our population is a lot smaller. So we tend, and we do have our distinct cultural differences from, whether it's France or Britain or, you know, like all the countries in Europe have their, they're the European community. But they have distinctions between not just languages,

but cultural things too. So, but what happened was with this richer, bigger, more populace, culture is it changed certain things. It took certain elemental truths, and one of them was about prosperity, and it kind of Americanized it. I don't know how else to describe it. It converted it into something else. And a lot of the Eastern teachers had a problem with this, because they saw that teachings that had been around for thousands of years about simplicity and humility were now being put into something else. And a lot of the teachers fell into that. All of a sudden there's all this money coming at them and power and they're being put on pedestals, which they would not get in their own culture. And so our Western civilization,

our culture did something to these traditions they came, okay, by idolizing them, turning them into rock stars, throwing money at them. And then we're all susceptible to power, money, substances, sex. I mean, these are the usual culprits. Same thing has happened with North and South. The sacrament got taken. People decided, oh, well, I don't kind of want to say prayers. I just want to do my own thing.

So all of these circles developed with the same. people, I don't know, doing whatever they felt. And now there could be some extremely sincere people who have very sincere intentions. I'm not talking about them, okay? I'm talking about the people who come back. I'm a shaman and I'm a healer. I don't need any teaching. I don't need any teachers.

I drank twice or three times and I am now enlightened. Okay. And I'm a healer. And it's like, okay, where do you go with that? Where do you go with that? The world that I live in is no one makes a claim to be a healer. In our tradition, no one, you know, we'll talk about mediums and we'll talk about, you know, they'll talk about curanduras, which are technically healers.

But that's not what they're talking about in this kind of new age idea of what a healer is. In other words, I come to you and I do some techniques. with you and now you're healed. That's a whole other conversation about something that goes deep into the human history of understanding, do people have certain powers to do that? Or is it a lot of pocus, pocus, or what the heck is going on there? And I believe that medical intuitives should be tested. They should work with a team of physicians.

so that every diagnosis they make is tested by natural, normal medical means. And so their gift as a medical intuitive can be profoundly helpful in helping doctors look at certain patients. They're not sure what's going on or what have you. So intuition and spiritual wisdom and all these things have an important place in all. of this, but they can't operate all by themselves in that kind of context. Otherwise, it becomes dangerous. So it makes me nervous when people say they don't need colleagues, they don't need an association, they don't need their team, they don't need teachers, they don't need nothing. They've got it, they have it, they own it, it's theirs. Okay, that's a recipe for

challenges on ethical level, because our ego can easily take over. And in the olden days, you were quoting the Old Testament. You know how the prophets were tested? Did their prophecies come true? If their prophecies did not come true, they're not a prophet. It's as simple as that. And you know what? In olden days, before there was such a thing as medical doctors,

there were curendoras and healers, and these were medicine men and medicine women who learned how to help women give birth and who learned how to help dying die and who learned how to, in a more ancient times, splint a broken leg. And, you know, that's where modern medicine came from. It came from medicine women and medicine men. Women and men who apprenticed with elders and shamans and wise people who knew which plants to use to help ease pain and which plants to use

to help somebody sleep and which plants to use for various and sundry other medical purposes. A lot of the medicines we have today are chemical versions of extractions from plants. So this is where it kind of all came from. Now, if somebody called that person a healer because they knew how to help the dying and they knew which plants, it's because they had all that accumulated wisdom. We might as well call them doctors, right? Yeah, absolutely. But it all got mixed up into powerful people who call themselves healers.

Is this making any sense or is it wandering around a little bit too much? No, I think what you're trying to say is Pfizer are healers. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I don't know. Pfizer offers medications that can really help with the curing and the recuperation. Because we don't have healing and curing. there's a few things in between.

To get to cured, you have to be treated, and there has to be a recovery process, right? Your stitches have to heal. So there's this whole process that happens. And emotional healing and psychological healing becomes more possible in non-ordinary states of consciousness. Now, we're back to other conversations we've had. In Western civilization, there is no cultural,

based non-ordinary state of consciousness doesn't exist. And so we've adopted non-ordinary states of consciousness first from the East with meditation and trans states achieved through practices, fasting, meditation, chanting, sometimes bored from indigenous traditions, vision quests, rituals. rituals, look at all the indigenous rituals of chanting and singing and dancing and all of these puts him into a non-inary state of consciousness. And then came Enthiogenes and psychedelics. So it's the non-ordinary state of consciousness that allows us to do the healing work, that allows us to shift our perception, see our beliefs. And this is what really good therapy does.

Good therapy helps you shift your perception, work with your belief systems, grieve your losses. Okay? So it's opening up to those possibilities. That's why therapy does work when it works. We're getting the support that we need to go into ourselves to make those changes. We have the professional support to help guide us the same way if we were going to go sailing, the first time you sail a sail boat you don't go well i never sail the boat and somebody give me a boat i'll just go up a sail okay or scuba dog no you have to pass courses and you don't go climb a mountain

well you could but it wouldn't be very wise so it's the same with non-hearted states of consciousness we need teachers we need teachers now are they elders are they spiritual leaders are they therapists that just needs to be sorted out. Yeah. I think it's a whole environment. Alternate states of consciousness are like their own environment, and you need someone who's familiar with that environment. Because if you go, whether it's a mountain, whether it's the ocean,

or whether it's an non-ordinary state of consciousness, you can get lost. You can get hurt the same way. Yes, you can. Exactly. And which is why our main focus was, what does the credentialing look like? What kind of skills to the people who are going to be working?

None of us are against the therapeutic use, especially of psychedelics. We're just saying who's going to be using it in what setting, what kind of skills are required, what kind of ethics are required. That needs to be made clear. You know, when somebody comes to a santo damei ritual, they know exactly what they're coming to. They know what they're going to be experiencing. They know what they're going to be taking. They know, if it's our church, they know what they're going to be singing.

They know they can have a look at the prayers. They can read all the history, everything. It's full information, it's transparency about all of that. Their interview, their screen, there's, and there's a full understanding around what could happen in the work and how it's going to be managed, you know? And so there's all these questions that are wonderful to talk about and discuss. discuss and and most of it we don't even have answers yet. Yeah, it brings up a question that I'm thinking now.

When we previously we were talking about how the sacrament is taken out of the ceremony, whether it was daimia in Brazil or ayahuasca. You know, when you look at when we think about how much of modern medicine has just been appropriated from tribal medicine men or medicine women. And it's almost the same thing. It's like we've taken the medicine out of the environment and we've just given it to people. Even in modern medicine today, like if you look at SSRIs, that's a derivative of something like that. And how many people that are prescribing SSRIs have even taken SSRIs?

And I'm just using that as an example. But there's a lot of medicine like that where doctors like, according to the literature, this is right for you. But those doctors have zero experience with that drug. It just goes to show you we almost are prescribing diseases for people. When you're giving people medicine they don't need, what are you doing? Those are all good questions. I'm a great believer, anybody who wants to read my books, I'm a great believer that modern science and medicine has its place. Okay, volume one, volume two.

Volume two is all about self-care and the circle of homelessness. in the circle of Pomas, there's this beautiful diagram that includes everything. And modern science and medicine has its place. But it doesn't take a quarter of the pie. Okay, it doesn't take... It doesn't take... It's been the pie. Okay, there has to be nutrition and exercise and meditation, prayer, sleep, relationships.

Everything. Is there a relationship with nature, with community? So I discuss all of these essential relationships. And there is no point... We were talking about high blood pressure. somebody takes a medication or high cholesterol, is it, everything, whatever. All of these, we have all these millions of medications on the market. Now, I understand that there are people who really need their medication to have a quality of life.

And, you know, they have my vote of confidence and full support. And at the same time, I have difficulty with people who only want a pill to make themselves feel better. And they're not willing to do their part in it. because we have to be willing to do our part. And if that means changing our nutrition, and if that means stopping cigarette smoking, and if that means getting whatever support we need to do that, yes. Okay?

Taking up an exercise program, start where you're at. Start with a walk, 20 minutes every day. If you can only do 10 minutes, that's great. Start with 10 minutes. Work it up. Get someone to give you a program, cheer you on. Okay. And get going.

Join a club, a walk. A walking club, a swimming club, do whatever you need to do. Often things are much better in a group, you know, whatever it is, aerobics in the water, walking club, doesn't matter, find it, do it. Start singing. Join a choir. Start a choir. Sing along to the radio.

Doesn't matter. Find all the different ways that each of us have the power. We have the power. We have to find the willpower to make the decision. like to be well and therefore I'm responsible to a large degree to my own health and some things are genetic you know some things are genetic you're predisposed to whatever it is and but what can you do about that you know does that mean that uh about a year and a half ago my doctor said to me who every year in my medical examination it said to me ah you're like your body's 10 years younger than

your years and you're in fabulous shape and everything's terrific and tick, tick, tick. Yay, thanks a lot. See you next year. Okay. And off ago. And then he said, what have you been doing? Why? Well, your blood sugar has changed.

And it's like, did it? Okay. So I had to look at, okay, is there something that I changed? Ah, I see what I changed. Okay, because of circumstances in my life. So this was a couple of years ago. Circumstances in my life, a tragic accident with my husband. husband had to sell a house, a lot of huge changes and everything. My stress level went up.

And I wasn't cooking for two and have a family and grandchildren and everything. So I was, all of a sudden, every day, I'm mostly cooking for one person, right? So things have changed. Basically, what I was eating was almost the same. But I noticed the things that I really love that are really healthy. I was just eating more of them. Like dried fruit became my go-to snack. And so unconsciously, genetically predisposed type 2 diabetes, there's a couple of uncles and aunts who have it up the tree. Okay, I hit a certain age. I was nearly 70. I'm 72, 73.

I forget how old I am. And those medial dates that I love so much. Okay. And a few raisins here in a medial date. It was just too much. It doesn't matter how high quality they are. Over a span of days and weeks and what have you. he says you're not even you're just on the high edge of normal i don't want you going higher so i had to

start counting carbohydrates of my age can you imagine it's like no i can only have one of your delicious little lemon squares to my daughter and take the plate away counting carbohydrates okay it took nearly it took a good six months before he said to me because he tested me But that's the same is, okay, it's perfect. Whatever you're doing now, you're back to what you were before. Okay. Instead of having an old fruit smoothie, which is what I've done, you know, and I, it's half vegetables now, half vegetables, only a little bit of fruit, done in almond milk or coconut milk or what have you, up the protein. Lowered even the good carbohydrates had to be lowered.

And so all of these changes, we're capable of making them. All the information is out there. We can do it. If we want wellness and health, we have to do our part. And then what I believe is the least amount of medication necessary to manage whatever your condition or symptoms are. So if you lose weight and get some exercise and change your diet, then you probably use infinitely less and then you learn to meditate and some stress management techniques and infinitely less amount of medication can be used.

And then we're in a position to change our attitudes and change our, because we're not so fixated on our physical health anymore. I mean, look at the state of the people in North America. Every commercial on TV, every ad on the side of a bus is, is what? Medication. Huge business, billions and billions and billions of dollars. Do we need all of that? And so we're back to non-ordinary states of consciousness. What do they give us? They give us the gift of awakening. We can start to understand the difference between curing and healing. What am I really healing? How I speak. how I hear, how I perceive, wow, those are really powerful things to heal.

Or am I just in it for the body? Or whatever healing I have of my soul, my mind, my heart's face, my chakra body, that healing, will that carry me through in a karmic transformation? So, depending on what people's beliefs are, let's say you believe in me, incarnation does that level of psychospiritual healing transformation that i'm going to be doing does that now is a very buddhist take me into my next incarnation okay so my awakening may not cure certain things in this lifetime i may have to live with a condition or a situation but what's my state of being yeah yeah it's beautiful

I love it. The ability to heal your speech, your sound, and your perception, I think is profound. I think there's so much there. And I've noticed differences in myself. And when I notice them in myself, I can begin noticing them in other people. And I think that it comes from what you speak, what you hear, what you perceive. And it sounds so, on some level, it sounds trivial. But it is the furthest thing from it.

It's the furthest thing from it. for this thing. Yeah, I agree. It's profound. And when you begin practicing those things, I know, I know your time's coming up, but I got one great story. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So I heard this story about a preacher on the East Coast, and he was a phenomenal speaker. And he was getting ready to make the migration to open up his own church on the West Coast. And he had went out there and visited one time and given a sermon. And the people were so excited to receive him. And the months had gone by. And he, He did it. He went from the East Coast to the West Coast, and he is getting ready for opening day,

and the congregation is so excited to have him there. And they all, it's a packed house. And he delivers this beautiful sermon. People are crying. They give them a standing ovation. And they're so excited for the next week. And the next week they come. And he gets up there and the house is packed. And he delivers the exact same sermon. And this goes on for the third week and the fourth week. And finally, the fifth week, there's some people in his. congregation that are like, oh, excuse me, sir, have you noticed that some of the things you're saying are exactly the same as last week? And he just smiles and he says, great, I'm glad that you noticed. And they go, well, why are you doing it? He goes, well, I'm going to continue to do it until you

practice it. Because it's one thing to preach it, but it's another thing to practice it. So I know you're coming close on time. Yeah, have to live it. If we're not, you have to live it. You know, And sometimes that can take time. Yeah. And that can take, you know, a lifetime, maybe many lifetimes of working on compassion, forgiveness, open-heartedness, okay? Wisdom, the knowledge of what to bring into your life

and what to say no to. You know, how to develop your willpower. And then how to live in that. being human so again those of you out there in the listening public who are working in non-ordinary states of consciousness

and you I invite you to read my books and see how what I have shared after 40 years of working with people more than 50 years on my spiritual path and hopefully the things that I am passing on.

They're very referenced and resourced, and I acknowledge all my teachers and all the wisdom paths that have contributed to, you know, me being able to find my way. And I just want to, you know, thank you, George. It's always a pleasure to spend time with you

and all the wonderful questions you ask. And, again, everybody out there, I wish you health and happiness and peace. and finding your way forward. May you too learn in your life, that there's curing and that there's healing, and what is capable for you? And how can you go forward? With that understanding that it's a great mystery,

and all we can do is open to it. And we're going to have a surprise. and we can't dial it up, you know, we can't dial it up. We have to just be willing to surrender and open and say, I'm here, and I'm putting it all out, and then whatever arrives arrives. If someone wants to buy your books, Dr. Jessica, where is the best place for them to do that? Well, if they go on my website, they'll probably just catch a link and it'll take them right to Amazon or the publishers. So my website is www.

R-W-W-W-R-E-V-D-R-G Jessica, Rochester, or lowercase.com. And those will be in the show notes there. And I would recommend everybody pick up the books. It's really insightful. There's a lot of really good images and graphs. and different ways to consume the information she's put out there. And it's really well-resourced and documented. I've got mine with dog ears and tags in there.

And it's really well done. I'm really thankful. And I'm thankful for your time today, and I'm looking forward to speaking to you again. I hope you have a fantastic afternoon. Is there anything else you want to say before we go? No. Goodbye.

Thank you. Yep. Aloha, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today.