TrueLife - Geoff Woliner - Comedy; The Key to Living a Life Worth Living

Episode Date: July 7, 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/http://www.geoffwoliner.com/http://linkedin.com/in/geoffwolinerGeoff Woliner- Author, Comedian, Speaker, & lover of life!When Geoff Woliner was 10 years old, he was asked to deliver a toast for his grandfather’s 80th birthday. A few years shy of his first Toastmasters meeting, he didn’t have a clue what to say and had to wing it. So he delivered a Dean Martin-style roast that had his grandfather and everyone in the room in stitches. And on that cold, snowy November day, a comedian was born.Geoff went onto a comedy and speaking career spanning nearly 20 years, being named Stand-up NY’s “Funniest Person from Queens” and leading public speaking workshops for hundreds of organizations throughout North America. He’s currently the Founder and CEO of Winning Wit, a speech writing and presentation coaching service that helps others unleash their inner performers and light up the room. 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. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. Happy 5th of July. I hope the world is singing. Hope you got to see some fireworks last night. I hope that you got to wake up close to the person.

person that love you. I got a great show for you today. We got an incredible guest, Jeff Walner. He's an award-winning writer, a satirist, spiritual commentator, an avid barbecue enthusiast. He's the founder of the not-working experience, a community built to bring people together on a soul-to-soul level where no one is judged by their story of what they do for a living. You've seen him on. He's been featured on Fox 5, New York Newsday, and other outlets as a leader in this and that and the other. He's also the author of a series of books. Get Better to Get Better. The Adventures of Super J. The Gen X Code. Christmas in New York, Montreal, a journey through La Belleville and Path to Perfectia,

as well as a comedian, a performer, and so much more. Jeff, thanks for being here today, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, brother. Aloha. Yeah, man. There's something to be said about living in Hawaii. It's so beautiful here. It'll fundamentally change you. It's changed my outlook on life. And it's brought me somehow moving here to Hawaii, helped me set up this show, which allows me to be talking to you today.

I'm glad you moved out there, man, because I don't think this is happening if you moved to North Dakota. It's just a hunch. I don't think that's happening, man. Just call it up. And nothing but love for your North Dakotaans out there. I'm just saying, I don't think this happens.

It's, yeah, I agree. I agree. It's a beautiful place. You know, I was reading your newest book right here that I have a copy of people that are for watching. You can see the newest book right here, Path to Perfect you. Dude, I was laughing my ass off, man.

got it's got more punch lines than potholes on the New Jersey turnpike. How did this thing come to be? It's crazy, man. So last November, I had a moment of just utter surrender. Like I literally felt like the French forces in World War II. You know, I'm seeing the pandas come out and me. I'm like, I just take it. Just take me.

I'm good. Like, there's no fight. There's no resistance happening here. Like, I'm all yours. And it came after that this year long dark night of the soul that I had. you know it's very as you know very common after you have this awakening to immediately be kind of dragged right back into this like 3D dense thing and suffocated in it like you're working in sales and a little bullpen and like you can't move and you can't breathe and you just feel

stuck in it and it's like it's this world's way of reminding you yeah that's great that's great you had this experience you're all commune guess what you're still human we're going to remind you of it now in a real bad way so I had all that and then after a year of fighting and struggling and trying to like just dig out of that. I said, universe, I'm all yours. Like, I'm done fighting. I'm done struggling. Take me where you're going to take me.

And that is when this book was born. And I'm on the road. And I have this another moment of this like communion moment. But this time it wasn't a, we're going to drag you back in. This is a we're going to let you out. And here's a story we want you to tell based on what we're giving you. And I don't know who they are.

I don't claim to have that answer. but it just started pouring out onto the pages and it took me a few months and then honestly man once it was done i looked at it and i looked at it up and down inside and out and i said who the hell wrote this book because i had no idea how this thing came together man it's you know it's not uncommon to hear a story like that where you know whether it's some of the great writer like stephen king or yourself that have found a way to create an artistic outlet where you just capture the spirit or maybe the spirit captures you and you're you're transformed or you know you've conjured some sort of spirit that that just makes you through is was it

like that for your other books or was it primarily this one or is it something that happens in your life all the time or yeah this one yeah it's a good question this one really was the one i would say was really channeled like truly channeled the other ones came from different levels of consciousness and and and I can see kind of the evolution of my own thinking my own being through each one of these different books like my first one was called get bitter to get better and uh you can tell that clearly came from a place of like deep deep magnanimity and love for all creatures out there and that one was was really more of a self-help book and the the core message was still the same actually from that and all of them which was the idea of transmutation of energy if you're struggling

with something, here's how you get through it and to the other side of it and conquer it. In this, that particular one was about people's fear of performing during the big moments of life. So if you're giving, you know, a speech at your daughter's wedding or you're giving a big sales presentation or you're going on a big date you've been anticipating or a job interview. And the reason we don't win these moments is because we don't feel we're worthy of winning these moments. And where that comes from almost all the time, if you really dig in. into it were people who had these, quote, villains in their lives who planted this in their head.

You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. You're not sexy enough. You're not that. You're going to blow it. And that just never leaves. And then the moment arrives and that voices in your head, they're like, well, shit, maybe they were right. And then that's it. Peter out. And so this was a seven-step process. This book on how to take that negativity, how to take those villains in your life and actually use that energy as opposed to running away from it. But use it as your freaking jet fuel to propel you into those big moments and to grab that one. I can say, yeah, I can't do it. How do you like me now? And then just lay the room. Yeah, it's a great way to take that energy and change it. And I love the idea that it gives you the, it seems to me

in a way it's it's controlling the meaning of the event. You know what I mean by that? Like in life, you can't really control what happens to you, but you and you alone get to control the meaning of that event. Like, you know, there's people that go through horrible accidents and they say, oh, because this happened, I'll never love again. And then there's people that had that same thing happen. And like, because this happened, I'm going to love more than I've ever loved before. Kind of sounds like you're just changing the flow of that energy. That's it. Yeah. One of the great lessons I took from Taekwondo when I took it in college was my, I'm not to forget this. My sense say, said, there are three ways to respond to an attack.

And only one of them is going to be effective in a fight. He said the first way to respond to an attack is just to run away. Like, they're just coming at you and just turn and run. And so that will protect you in that moment. But ultimately, you've not neutralized the threat because it's still going to come after you. The second is to just stand there and just take the punch. Well, great.

That's not going to be a great freaking idea. You either. It's going to land in the ER. Okay. Let's not do that. But the third is to change the relation of the attack. So now this energy is coming towards you. This attacking energy is coming towards you.

And instead of running and instead of standing and taking the hit, you simply, you deflect the attack and now you have a changed relation to the attacker because now you have the drop on the attacker and you can counterattack. So it's using that and judo uses it even better actually. I think you know, uh, judo particularly has mastered the art of changing the relation of energy. It's that idea of you use the opponent's momentum against them. So they're coming at you you shift your body weight, you shift your angle, and then you have leverage on them and you can immediately get them to the ground. And a lot of MMA fighters, are absolute maestroes of this.

So when it comes to stepping into a big moment in life, if you have these doubts and this negativity that's been seething inside of you for all these years that were planted by other people who had their own insecurities, who are just spewing them out on you, then take that it's energy.

So don't run, don't hide. Don't let it kill you. Take it and use it. Use that energy. Change the relation and say, all right, now I have all this energy that I didn't have before. It was given to me by somebody else.

I'm going to take it and use it as fuel. I'm going to put it in my gas tank and I'm going to friggin soar. So that, yeah, no, that's fascinating. I'm curious, do you use that same methodology when you use wordplay and comedy? You know, like sometimes you can use like the double entendre or, you know, I grew up in a, I grew up in like a mostly Mexican neighborhood and we had a joke about judo. I know Mexican judo. You don't know if I got a gun or judo know if I got a knife.

You know what I mean? But like, you can use different words. to flip people's minds and I can make you paint or I can paint pictures in your mind if I use words as a paint brush to just to change a color here change the background change the foreground and in a lot of your books man you have tons of like one-liners and and just funny little witticisms but that seems to me a changing of energy by by the interplay of words man is that a similar pattern you've used in judo and life that you do with wordplay and comedy 100% it's pattern interruption and that's how you get people to really pay attention because like anything else You know, think about building up tolerance to something, right? And for the reason, you know, particularly like, you know, with alcohol, they say you build up a tolerance and microdosing. They say don't microdose every day for six months. It will completely lose its impact. You have to have that pattern interruption to kind of reset and again, change in relations.

So, you know, even when I'm writing something very, very heavy and there's parts of the book that are heavy for long stretches, there's, there are pattern interrupts in there. So people's like energy shifts and their perspective shifts in there, they kind of stay with me on this. And I do that with everything that I do, with all the comedy that I do, you know, to set up in the punchline. It's the same idea is that you take them this way and then you pull the rug to go that way. Right. And any serious speech I've given. And, you know, when I write for clients, I do a lot of ghostwriting,

when they're giving very serious keynotes about like big topics, I say at least every couple of power graphs you need like a great one-liner to just keep their attention and have that pattern interrupt. Yeah. Yeah, it's like having a, I don't mean this. is a pejorative, but I mean it's almost pornographic in a way in that you want to flash something in front of them to keep their attention. Oh, like shock them a little bit. You know, it's a, and this brings me to an interesting question. Because you have mastered different modalities of

communication, what I mean by that is you're able to stand up and perform. You're clearly able to write books that keep people entertained. What do you think is the the power of sense modalities? Let me unpack that a little bit because I know I'm using these funny kind of bigger words or whatever but you know if I read a book I am reading your story and I'm creating the movie in my mind

of you and a girl that you meet at a funeral and you're wearing a pink shirt or you know if I'm standing watching you do a skid up there now I'm seeing you do something but it's still sort of I have to paint the picture in my head versus like a movie where I would go and sit down and just have it put in my head.

What do you think are the pluses and minuses about thinking for yourself while reading a book versus watching a movie and having that image put in your head? I think the cool thing about reading a book is you can filter it through your own perspective. And you can start bringing in people. So I've talked to folks who read the book, and it's so interesting how each one of them has a different idea

of what these characters look like, even though the physical description is given for all the characters, at least on some level or another. But each one of them looks at it a little bit differently. Like, oh, I think she, if she were cast, if this becomes a movie, which it will, by the way, I'm manifesting it, but it's not there. Nice.

This, they say, okay, so like Diana, for instance, Diana will definitely be cast by this person. And then someone else will say, oh, I think she'll be cast by it. And they look totally different. They look like completely different people. Like, they're not even like the same, like, ethnicity. It's wild. Like, they look, they're radically different.

And the characters described the exact same way in the book, read by two different people. Where in the movie, it takes that away from you, and it just gives it to you. So I think when you read a book, in some ways, you become a co-creator with the author. Right. And when you're watching a movie, you're really just kind of becoming a consumer of the entertainment. And that's fine. I think there's merit to both, but I think they're very different experiences. Which one do you think is a better experience?

Honestly, I don't know if there's one better or the other, and it's kind of a cop-out. I love them both. And I think they both serve different purposes and functionality. So I think people consume information in different ways. Like personally, it's interesting because I don't love to read fiction. I love to write fiction. I don't love to read fiction. I love to consume fiction on TV.

I love to consume it in movies if it's really good and it's suspends disbelief. Part of the reason is the way my brain works is that I don't suspend disbelief that easily. So if I read a book, there's too many. is that I can take on my own time to dissect it and unpack it and nitpick it to pieces. But if it's just being fed to me, it will just kind of suck me in and take me in. I'm like, all right, here we go. It's like when you're strapped in the roller coaster, like, let's rock, you know. And like the roller coaster is going to take you where it takes you.

And it's not up to you anymore. And I kind of like that in some ways. It gets me out of my own head. Yeah, it's almost like a little mind vacation. You get to sit back and relax for a little bit and just kind of put it on autopilot. But I love what you said about, yeah, I love what you said about auto, like, or co-creation. Because I really think that that is more of a fulfilling and rewarding thing for people to do. And if I think we've gone too far into the world of consumption where, you know, if you want to watch a movie now, it's probably going to be a superhero movie for some reason, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that, do you think that speaks volumes of where we are as a society when the major, platforms and the major things we see is a fantasy about someone coming to save us? I think it's huge. I mean, it goes back a long time. I think all pop culture is a reflection of who and where we are in the zeitgeist. And I think it just kind of, it just puts that onto the screen just to reflect back to us who and what we are at that time.

I don't think that we have a whole, a whole lot of art that's disconnected from where we are, which is why when that happens, it's so extraordinary and it's so revolution. It's why I think the Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite movies of all time. Aside from the fact that I played the 10 men in sixth grade, I didn't give a shout out to my 11-year-old self. Like, well done, little man. The Wizard of Oz to me, and there's so many different interpretations of it, but to me it was the greatest, the single greatest allegory of our journey as humans.

And it was put in such a way where it had a deep resonance with people, and movies like that were not made in those days. This was like, you know, the Charlie Chaplin here was silent. films and, you know, just like dancing around and, you know, the hats spinning around, this and that, you know, and then before that, you know, you had birth of a nation, which was extremely controversial. And that also was a mirror of what the society was at the time. Wizard of Oz was not a mirror.

It was an insight. It was a glimpse into something much deeper that we knew, but we weren't experiencing consciously, which was this idea of we're constantly searching for the wizard. We're searching for this magical myth. thing that's going to save us. And it's always out there. We're searching out there for something to save us. Meanwhile, we had the ruby red slippers

all along. We've gone home any time we wanted. We went on this journey. And along the journey that we take here, we're going to meet lots of friends. We're going to meet people who love us. You know, she'll meet the cowardly lion and the scarecrow and the tin man. And we're going to meet adversaries who are trying to thwart

us every step of the way, the wicked witch and the flying monkeys. And we're going to have all these things happen as part of the journey, you know, it's like the, you know, it's like the odyssey. Yeah. The day you realize what you were looking for was what you already had and always had. And there was not entertainment created in those days that had that message, which was extraordinary at the time.

Yeah. When I look back on that movie, I see the people trying to send us a message. Like, look, if you follow the path of money, it leads to some dummies that don't really create anything. give you the illusion of creation. And you know what? You are a tiger. You do have a heart. Don't let these dummies tell you that you don't have these things because you have the power all along if you're willing to take it back. You know, I didn't really understand that until I got a little bit older. And I started, and maybe that speaks volumes of how I see the world. But, you know,

I just, it really begins to beg the question of, you know, how much heart do you have? How much courage do you have? Are you willing to walk the path and pull back the curtain on these illusions that you were fed. It's awesome to kind of look back. And now I begin to say, yeah, maybe movies are pretty good on that level. But yeah, it's fascinating to think about how the world that we project under the screen,

whether it's the screen in our mind or the big screen in front of us, how it does imitate the world we live. And there's that saying that says art imitates life. And I don't know, what do you see on the horizon, man? If we just stay with this idea that art kind of, you know, imitates life, like what do you? you see on the on the big screen right now it well the big screen right now is you know they're well assuming this rider's strike ever ends and we actually get anything new created so that's a big if who knows right right

i think we're going to see we're going to see something which is going to i think reflect where we're going consciously which which i which i see is this this polarization this like we're seeing a polarization and everything now but i think right we're going to see an increasing polarization of consciousness itself so and you're it unfold with different people in your lives. So think about the people who are, what I would say, are on the path of like doing the work, the people who are finally taking stock of their lives, who are finally creating a circle around them, of people who support them, who love them, who encourage them, who see their dreams and believe in their dreams and underwrite their dreams versus others who are stuck in a cycle of this hard negativity, of everything sucks,

the world, I hate my life, I hate everybody, I know this and that, and you're like, And they dig down and they create a world around them which reflects that back to them. And they associate with other people who reflect that back to them. And they get deeper and deeper and deeper into that hole. I think what we're seeing is, and that's always existed on both sides. But I think we're seeing a polarity of it increasing now where those who are trying to bring more light into their life are doing so exponentially. And those who are in their darkness are also doing so exponentially. So I think in terms of the art we're going to see, I think it's going to be reflected on both levels.

I think we're going to see the highest of highs in terms of luminousine art in terms of things that are being drawn, things that are being created, things that are being spoken, interacted with that are going to reflect our greatest angels. And we're going to see other art that's going to reflect our deepest, darkest demons. And I think we're going to see more of that. I think the days of like just the really basic stuff is probably going to be coming to an end of the next generation. So I think we're going to just see this just increasing mirror of polarization. in art. But what the hell do I know? I could be totally off.

No, man. I can see that. And I think there's something to be said about the faith. There's something to be said about it almost sounds to me like you're speaking about a spiritual nature that's happening. And I love the idea of spiritual nature. And I think that there is something to be said about faith and spirituality and becoming the best version of yourself. And if you have that relationship with spirituality, which in the psychedelic world, we see this giant return to a spiritual nature, not necessarily Jesus or Buddha, but this all-encompassing force that is just like a wave pushing people up higher and higher to heighten states of awareness. And you can really begin to see people emerging out of this space, whether it's through mental health, whether it's through, you know, I've noticed some people that are finding ways to use psychedelics to better women's health specifically or men's health.

specifically and it's just it's fascinating to think about what what's your take on the idea of spirituality man how much time to get i got all day but i got all day man so that's a load of question so i think in a nutshell and we well of course we'll unpack and dive in but i think if you were looking at this of a 30 000 foot view okay i think spirituality in one word is just understanding okay it is just a a coming home to ourselves and um and I don't, I'm not a big believer in what I've called spiritual avatarism. So in terms of it being represented, and I, and I say this with a caveat and an asterisk. And I have a lot of very, very dear friends and people I admire a lot who do what I would call

the spiritual avatarism. So, you know, tarot card reading this, that and the other crystals, you know, meditation, yoga, all of that stuff, right? I think there's a place for all of that. I really do. but I think a lot of times, if that's your only entry point into it, it can obfuscate what the real truth is. And the real truth is our whole nature connected with everything, being one with everything. There is a, you know, the singular consciousness representing itself in all these multitude of ways as George, as Jeff, as this laminate brick behind me, as that map behind you, as this computer in front of me, as this freaking beautiful water bottle like you hydrated every day. it's manifesting it's all these different things and to me spirituality is just the understanding of that

it's a deep it's a knowing of that not even a think but it's just it's just knowing it's this recognition of aha that's right and this is all experiential but i think sometimes we get so lost in the avatarism of it that it becomes this like woo-woo kind of thing that turns a lot of people off and it seems a lot it seems weird and like ah come on there's no evidence for that crap and you know and i was on that that train for a long time like get out of my face with that stuff not happening you know And then I think, you know, then there's a religious component of it. And I think for a lot of people, religion is a pathway to that understanding. I think for some people it turns them off.

But for some people, it allows them to have, I would say, a track. And that's the train that takes them to that place where otherwise they'd be lost in this kind of worldly illusion of what we consider to be real, but isn't, at least on its fundamental core. And for many people, religion can be that gateway into that. So I don't like to bash religion and a lot of people do. And I'm just kind of in vogue these days. But I think religion could be an extraordinary tool for a lot of people. But like anything else, could be also used for a lot of harm. So I think it's what you believe, how you believe it, how you apply it, how you integrate it.

It's like anything else. Yeah, that's well said. I was thinking along some similar lines of, you know, I think that I guess I would say consciousness and spirituality, are tied a little bit. It seems to me like a good definition of consciousness would be the lived experience of the individual that's translated into the other. I'm kind of working with it there, but it seems to me that I'm having the George experience, you're having the Jeff experience. There's a guy in here named Paul Faye, who's got some absolutely funny jokes that's breaking some stuff down in here. Paul, thanks for coming in here, man. I'm going to put up some more comments

later, but I just wanted to put them up here to talk about scripture stuff. But when I think about the idea of scripture and consciousness, I see this return happening. And when I think about consciousness, it makes me think of lived experience. And even though I have my own lived experience and you and I are communicating and we're having some similar ideas about things, like, I can never see things through your eyes. I can never exactly see the world the way you see it. I can get close. I could sit in that exact same seat you're sitting in. and look at stuff, but it would be the wrong, it would be a different time. And I think that that is the unknowable mystery that takes us to spirituality. Like, it's so beautiful, but also such a

tragedy that I will never, that no two people will ever see the same thing. You know, and that's why we have like these, sometimes we fight about things or we agree with things or we think we see the same things, but we never will. And it's both the beauty and the tragedy. That's spiritual in nature, right? I totally agree. It's a really good, really good comment here from the No Absolute podcast. I love this here. Really, really good, really good question. I love to talk about this. I wrestle with this a lot, too.

So if it's one experience yourself, then what's the point, right? And if it's infinite, we'll experience, why the array of life, why consciousness? And I think that's too big of a question for any one fractal of consciousness to answer authoritatively. But I will just say from my own perspective, and I love yours, George, too,

I just really see, you know, the idea of the universe and all of creation, and consciousness is play. It's this idea of, you know, what's the point? The point is the point. You know, as Alan Watts, one said, the purpose of life is to live. It's just that simple. You know, think about a bunch of kids who get together, you know, and they're playing

in the middle of their street and, you know, they get a football out there and they're just throwing it around and they're tackling each other. Like what you could honestly say, what's the point? It's fair to say. This game is not going to lead any of them into an NFL contract. It's not going to be televised and it's not going to get any of them a deal with a brand partnership that's going to make them six figures. There's no, quote, point to any of it.

And yet the joy that it brings them just to throw the football around and just beat the crap out of their buddies and tackle them to the ground and line up again and do it again is the point. The point is the point is the experience that they wouldn't have played that football game had they not all made a conscious decision to experience what it would be like to just play the football game with their buddies that afternoon. So is it fair to say then? If you want to live a life worth living, you should embrace the experience and not worry so much about the monetary gains.

I mean, I think the monetary gains are, you know, they're part and parcel of this 3D reality, right? We have constructed this reality where it's at least for now. And that may change. The paradigm may change. Certainly hoping it changes. Getting boring, be honest. But at least right now, you know, that has to be integrated into it. I think one thing that we, where we go wrong a lot, and it leads to a lot,

And it leads to a lot of misery. And I don't say this to be preachy because, you know, you could fill a in the universe I think that I don't know. This is just observational from what I've seen people struggle with. And they struggle on both ends. You know, let's call it the 3D spectrum and then a 5D spectrum. Okay. Where you have the 3D spectrum where you are just this apparent matter and this flesh and blood

and this need to procreate and reproduce and the drive to do that and all the problems that creates and this need to eat. and to clothe yourself and to be all this stuff right and you have to work in order to get the money to do that and you're stuck in this dense reality where all of reality is is surviving in the meat suit and that's it and then it creates a whole set of value systems you know like the immigrant comes to the country like you've got to go to a good college to get a good job and make money because that's all that matters in this world right okay survival so it leads to a lot of misery for a lot of people they're like this is it if this is it this sucks yeah then you have the other end

of it, which is that 5D consciousness, this idea of like, well, everything is, I'm a spiritual being. I'm just having this human experience, but I'm connected to everything all the time with everybody. And the reality is that we're just all up, you know, it's like this endless creation all the time, but that doesn't pay the bills. And you get lost up there. And that can create a lot of misery and it felt because then the reality of being in this meat suit, having this experience, while your consciousness is out there, can be unbelievably stifling. extremely stifling. And I think actually, and it's a different conversation,

but I think it's actually one of the prime drivers behind suicide. And what I think the real magic is, is that 4D integration. How do you meet these two in the middle? You know, there's a Buddha called the middle way. How do you meet these two in the middle? How do you have the understanding of consciousness of that, that oneness, of that connectedness, of that infinite field of potential?

While also understanding you're in this dense reality as this character, playing this character in this role, in this time, space, and matter. And how do you fuse the two? That's where the magic is. And that is freaking tough. Well, I think that takes us back to the idea of your latest book, The Path to Perfectia.

You know, is it all a dream? Is it, are you, did you write this story before you came in here? That seems kind of dancing around that premise a little bit. Yeah, it definitely talks about it. It's idea of, you know, so you're coming here for the experience to play this character and to have this experience.

And while you play this character and have this experience, you're going to get dragged into that 3D mud. You're going to, and I use this in quotations, you're going to lose people. At least here, it looks like you've lost somebody. At least here, it looks like you'll never interact with that consciousness again because they die. That's it. And the pain associated with that as you're a human and as your perspective is limited

to just being a human is going to be excruciating, excruciating. And you're going to have other experiences that painful for a lot of other reasons. You're going to get sick. You're going to have all kinds of things that happen to along the way. But the path of perfectia is how do you find your way back home as this character? How do you find your way back to that 5D consciousness while you're still in this character? That's where the real magic is. How can you do that while you're still here?

I think the implication is, you know, once the lights go out, okay, you're back home. It's great. Like you're reconnected with everything like, oh, okay, cool. But that's not where the juices because you were already there to begin with. You know, how do you achieve that while you're still here? what an experience that could be if you could find your way back home while you're still here. Yeah. It seems that some of the characters in the book,

they really lean into some of the heart-wrenching parts of their life, you know, and sometimes they're even, not coached, but, you know, sometimes they have people in their lives that are pushing them to lean into the anger, like lean into the pain. Isn't it beautiful? Yeah, feel it. Is that a technique you use in your life?

You try to lean into the skid? I've had to. What do you mean? Can you give me an example? Can you give me an example? You'd be asking about it. Not particularly, but, you know, the more I tried to, and last year was a great example of that. Last year, I had a lot of health problems last year.

That was these, like, nebulous health problems that I eventually had to go to a functional practitioner to get to the bottom of. And the more these problems started compounding on top of each other, the more I tried to, you know, turn against the skid, the more I try to control it and go to like yet another doctor and do yet another test and try yet another diet and yet another vitamin and yet another supplement and yet another and I kept fighting against it. Like screw you body. You're not playing ball over here. So like I'm going to manipulate you into being what I need you to be for me based on the expectation that I set. And the more I did that is you can imagine the misery compounded and compounded and compounded. So eventually I had this, I was telling this moment of surrender where I was like,

all right, I give up. Take me what you want to take me. And funny enough, my man, what happened when I surrendered? I started feeling better. Imagine that. Imagine that. You know, it's a funny word. I've had some interesting conversations with people. You know, sometimes in the world of psychedelics, there's this idea of people go to a retreat. You know, yeah, let's go retreat. But in the West, it's such a loaded term. Like when I think about retreat, I think about the French soldiers you brought up, you know,

or I think about what kind of a giant coward retreats, man. Shouldn't it be like, should maybe retreat be changed out with confrontation? Or is that just the ego talking? I think it's the ego. I mean, I would guess. I think it's the ego.

I think particularly in the Western world, we have this notion of, we are the masters of our own destiny, we can control everything. And therefore we must control everything. And there are things that are not beyond our capacity to control. And if they are, we will one day control them too. Yeah.

Like can't control the weather. Well, not yet. You know, we'll control everything. We will eventually have a vaccine for every disease. We will eventually forcibly end racism. We will do that. We will forcibly end homophobia. We will forcibly bring these things to an end because we can.

we will. This idea we can control every, not only every event, but every heart. We can control every person's heart. We can control that. And this is what I love about it in that it is, it's a very religious belief in that sense. It's very Old Testament stuff. It's like, you know, it's like the all powerful God will come in and control this. And we've taken that upon ourselves to be that all powerful Jehovah and be the ones to control everything. And boy, do we get pissed off and we can't control something or somebody. Yeah. Man, when that happens. We'll create an army to, we just need more weapons. That's all we need.

We've got to scare people and they'll finally, if we can threaten them, if we can't threaten them, we'll get their families and then they'll do it because it's the right thing to do. We're doing it for them. It hurts us more than it hurts them. Absolutely. They would get on board. Yeah, and it's not unique, not unique to the West. And I'm pointing fingers here.

This is a human phenomenon. Right. It just seems that there's, I think, in some Eastern cultures, and not all, not all. They're not a monolith by any stretch. But there seems to be a bit more of an acceptance to kind of like, the rhythm and the flow of life and kind of leaning into that versus no no no no this can't we're going to control this because this can't it can't happen we've set a parameter of what is allowed to happen and what isn't this is unallowed therefore we will fight against it for everything

we've got okay so this brings up i've been reading like one of my favorite philosophers is marshall mcclouin and he was big in like the first wave of like the psychedelic psychedelic sort of explosion that happened in late 50s and 60s. And he wrote a book that I highly recommend to everybody. It's called the Gutenberg Galaxy. And in that book, he talks about how the printing press fundamentally shaped the world we live in today. And one example he gives is that he says that, you know, the idea of exact repeatability.

Like just, I'm going to say it again. And I want people just to mow it over in your head for a minute. exact repeatability, exact repeatability, exact repeatability. Imagine if that didn't exist. Imagine if I told you something and then you went and spoke to a group of people

and told them what I said. It's kind of like that game telephone. Like you could get close to it. And the further away we got from the source, the more it would change. The more time something is repeated, internalized, and then put back out to the rest of the people, the more that idea can shift

and change and become something else and have a little bit of freedom to itself. But when you bring about the idea of exact repeatability, you lose, even though it's translated exactly, you still lose a little bit along the way. You lose the emotion. You lose the context. You lose it,

even though it's exact repeatability. And it does, it does a number on society because now you're trying to create this vision of something else. But it's kind of mind-blowing to think about. What do you think about the idea of exact repeatability? I think like anything else, it all comes through the lens and the filter of our unique experience and consciousness. So you can repeat the exact same thing over and over and over again.

Even one person will look at it differently in 2023 than they look the same thing in 2019 because of the myriad of experiences they've had between then and now. The exact same thing, the exact same word, the exact same concept, phrase, ideology, whatever you want to call it, everything will be changed. a little bit on the margins because this is a constantly shifting and evolving kaleidoscope. And everything that moves through the singular point of now is always going to be changing and shifting and morphing and whatever you want to call it. So now take that writ large. They do that with everybody.

And it's constantly changing and it's the nature of all things to be constantly changing, shifting in motion. So exact repeatability can only give us, I think, some kind of guidelines and parameters about a general idea. but that general idea is going to change. It's like the cosmic game of telephone. It's going to change so, so much over time. It will almost be unrecognizable when it's all said and done. Yeah. Yeah, I like that.

It brings to my mind this idea that, you know, the idea of a literate culture. And by literate, I mean, you know, somebody that has the phonetic alphabet and, you know, all the measurement systems that go with it, it kind of seems the more that we, the more literate I become and the more literate society becomes, the more detached they get from reality.

You know, it's a weird thing to think about because the more we try to measure things, the more we leave stuff out because, okay, we can't measure that, so let's just leave that out. You know, when you look at science today, and who doesn't love science? I'll probably think of a few people,

but, you know, when you think about science, we're constantly trying to measure everything so that we can get it right. But we leave out all the factors we can't measure. Like whenever someone does a science project, they never say, okay, I did it on a Tuesday at 4 p.m. Like that stuff's left out. But that might be relevant.

You know, it's kind of crazy to think about, right? Oh, my God, 100%. I mean, I, you know, personally, I think that what we call spirituality and mysticism is just the scientific frontier that has not yet been measured. Agreed. So I don't think there's this dichotomy. You know, you think of all the things that are in our modern, world a thousand years ago how a hundred years ago right would have been considered magic right

all of it i'm certainly not the first person to have that observation but it's it's very true the more i think about it everything that we this conversation you and i are having right now tell tell somebody a hundred years ago just not a thousand forget that 100 years ago that someone in virginia and someone in hawaii are going to be having a real-time conversation where they can see each other so that's magical there's like that's the laws of physics as we understand them can't support that like okay cool as you understand them that's great and as a lot and as we understand things in 2023 there's a whole lot that would make no sense to us right now that we consider magical and mystical and woo that's the stuff of fiction writers and that's

an interesting story you know jules verne was certainly an interesting character in the 19th century when he was talking about going to the moon that was considered the realm of mysticism and woo and this that and the other great fiction right yeah yeah okay I think everything eventually comes into the realm of science, as long as we have an open mind to it, and it all starts to make sense. I think we just have to be open to it. Just because we don't understand it yet,

yet is the word, give ourselves the grace of yet. Doesn't mean it's not real. Yeah, that's fascinating to think about. And when I look at it from that angle, you know, when I look back at the idea of time, and humanity, it seems like one of the constant things we always do is get it wrong. Like the planets are not in spheres. We're not the center of the universe.

And if you look back at that angle, you even take history, for example, and you're like, history is just a written opinion of somebody else. It's, you know, and there's all these different dimensions of truth, whatever the hell that is. And if you can just take all that and set it aside, you go, okay, no one really knows where we're going. But as disturbing as that can be, it also creates a really beautiful freedom for you to create your own future. Be like, okay, look, why am I living by all these people's books and rules and stuff and ideas? Why don't I just try to create my own? And that thought is a new fire that begins to burn inside of you, right?

Oh, without a doubt. I mean, then you realize the entire world is a blank canvas and you've got a paintbrush. Yeah. And how cool is that? And you realize, you've been staring at the other paintings forever, painted by other people at the time of their own consciousness. And you realize, why in God's name, it might be hold into that painting? I can look at it. I can study it.

I can understand it. But why does that have to be my roadmap and my guide? Yeah. Why? I mean, you think about some of the things that were encoded into, and not even just talking, you know, religious morality, but law, just law itself that are horrifying beyond words now to even comprehend based on our own evolution. consciousness. Hell in this country, the land of the free, there was a time when black Americans were considered three-fifths of a human being. I mean, you talk about that out loud today. And aside from like a very thankfully fringe minority, that is like a shockingly like, you're like incredulous

even listening to that. Yet that wasn't codified into law. That was a paintbrush written by people at a different consciousness. We thankfully have our own blank canvas every single day. Every single day we have it. And we have our own markers. We have our own paint brushes. So, and create new ones, man. That's exciting. Okay, so do you think, I've had this realization, and it's been, first off, for anybody that doesn't know me, like, I'm a huge fan of psychedelics. I think that for me, maybe it's, if you asked Matt Zeman, he would say psychedelics are for everyone, even though his new book doesn't, it kind of talks about that. We should check out that book. It's an awesome book. But I believe that the psychedelic experience can help you shatter paradigms.

It can help you become the best version of yourself, and it can help you see the world in a way in which you may not have seen. That may be by changing sense ratios, but for me, it's something that I use to see the world differently. And it's also something that helped me begin to understand that I am an artist in this world of blank canvases. And I do have my POSCA pens, and I do have all the resources are here. And so does everybody else. And for me, one of the greatest epiphanies that I had came through the death of my son in a tragedy. It seems that tragedies, as horrible as they are, can be the catalyst that propelled. you to begin writing your own script.

Was there something that happened to you that that made you do that? It was a tragedy. Now, how do you think tragedy is related to it? Man, it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot for sure. I would say one of the key things that really, there were a number, I would say, of kind of checkpoints in my life that kind of each, you know, kind of were points in

the road where I could have turned inward or I could expand it. And I've done both at different checkpoints. I mean, I've thankfully, and I'm glad I did actually because I've been able to experience what it's like to have life kicking the teeth and to go inward when that happens. Yeah. And to look at yourself as a victim and say things didn't work out the way I wanted. So I'm going to lose my shit. And I'm going to, you know, this socks and this and that.

And that person did it to me, screw them, you know, and all that. And then I've also experienced the other side of it is how do you, how do you transmit that? How do you use that as your jet fuel? How do you say, okay, this is what happened? What do I do with it now? How do I use this as a catalyst for growth and change and expansion and all that? I think about my, I've had two jobs in my life, which were my absolute favorite jobs. And I love them.

And I was living in complete flow. And I was in my zone of genius. And every day, I look forward to going to work. And I was unceremoniously shit-canned from both of them. Oh, it's beautiful. It's such a dark sense of humor the world has. I'm telling you, man. And I, you know, I will be the first to admit when I screwed something up.

and I'm not good at my job and I've been not good at lots of jobs I've had. I was freaking really good at both of these jobs. There's a lot of people on LinkedIn watching this who know how damn good I was, at least that one of them. And then I was just, I was, and for different reasons. Right. And neither of them were justified, but I don't say this like in a victim blame thing. It's just like real talk here.

But I, I've come to understand why that happened because I got really comfortable in both of them and I was never going to grow. I would have worked in each place. the rest of my life. I had no impetus to grow, to change, to expand none. Like, it was a universe stepping in, like, all right, you gotten too comfortable. You didn't come here to have a life of comfort. That's not how this works, dude. So we're going to kick in the ass, and you're going to hate us for it. And get, get ready, buckle up because you're in for a treat. And then each time I went from the polarity of doing something I absolutely loved and was in my zone of genius doing something I

viscerally despised and was in my zone of hell and contraction and limitation. And those are mostly sales jobs. And man, misery does not begin to begin to contemplate it. About 12 years ago, I was at my lowest point. And it was after one of these jobs that kind of shuff me off the side. And I ended up doing a sales job, which I, the people were wonderful. And I love them. The people were the best people that ever met. And they were extremely helpful and supportive. But the job itself, I would have rather than working in a goddamn coal mine. Legit. Like, I mean, I couldn't begin to tell you how far from alignment with my own soul and my own passion and my own talents this was.

And I did it like a lot of people just to pay the bills. That's it. Yeah. Got to keep a roof over your head. And it got me in such a dark place. I went into the deepest depression in my life. I was, I used, I had something that I called. the triple S, which was, how the hell is it?

The, the suicide subway strolls. That's what I coined. Wow. Triple S, suicide subway strolls. And it was subway sandwiches, actually, not the actual like train. Okay. And it was a subway by where I used to work. And it was like the worst job of my life.

And I used to go there a couple times a week. And I'd go there and I'd get a sub. And I would eat it while I was walking around. I didn't want to go back to the office. And every day I'd walk around and I contemplate how to end my life. while I was eating like, you know, Meatball Mariner. Yeah. By the way, if you're going to end your life,

meatball mariner is not a bad last meal. I'm just saying that. I'm not encouraging anybody to like end their life by their own hand for LinkedIn. Don't ban us. Don't do any of that. Right, right. Not, yeah, this is just like real talk over here, you know. Uh, so I realized only in retrospect,

I had to experience that too. I needed to be in that place. I needed to understand what extreme contraction felt like. Energetic when you just go inside. and all routes of possibility and light are cut off from you. And you're just, you're lost in your own darkness entirely. I'm at this point in my life back then and I felt there's no,

there's no reason to get up in the morning anymore. There's no joy left. All my best days are behind me. You know, that's it. I'm stuck in this goddamn job that I hate. I am living a life I hate. I'm not me. And if this is all life is,

then I don't want to do it anymore. I'm not interested in it. Like I'm just not, period. Not interested in it. And I, you know, I didn't, I didn't want to subscribe to this whole, well, life is supposed to be hard and it's supposed to be this and it's supposed to be that. You know, what I call pain porn. You know, a lot of people glorify the suffering a lot. And at the time, I don't want to hear it because I also didn't believe I was connected to anything greater than myself.

I believe that was different and separate from the world around me. And because of that, you see yourself at odds with the world around you. and you don't see yourself moving through experience, you see yourself as a victim of experience. And the ego is completely in control. It's like your value. And this was also when I internalize the value that was given to me by others,

which is what is a man supposed to be in this world? A man supposed to be somebody successful doing what they love. And I was making good money too. That was a thing, but I was miserable, miserable. And I internalized this message of, well, guess what, man? You failed. You failed. You were supposed to be,

this and you blew it. You failed. And everybody would be better off without you because of that. So something interesting happened, which was it brought me right to the brink and then it walked me back. And I don't exactly know how that happened, but it did. It walked me a little bit back, but it still kept me like one foot in. I never totally left. And it was the pandemic, which was the catalyst to propel me out because the pandemic actually brought me to my wow i can't believe i'm saying this on a live show this is incredible i never told this story publicly but what the hell here we are right yeah um so long story short i had a lot of um PTSD from childhood experiences this that and the other and it led to some very extreme somatic experiences when that would be triggered so a lot of

veterans dogs loud noises anybody who has PTSD can tell you loud noises sudden loud noises extreme loud noises slamming that kind of thing. Explosions, not good. It triggers you, get to in like a fighter flight space. It was early April of 2020, and it was during the height of lockdowns. So, you know, no one's going anywhere. You were thankfully in Hawaii at the time. Yeah, I was. I was. So you were in a pretty good place to ride this out, man.

And God bless this floor. Yeah, yeah. I was not. I was a half a mile away from the Pentagon. So we were like, we were in the, you know, we were in the belly of the beast. and it was extremely it was a bad situation where we were. There were constant noises coming from all

because everyone was at home all day long. So there were doors slamming and balconies slamming constantly and people arguing and fighting in all directions. So my fight or flight reflexes are up and up and up and up and up and up to the point where I am drowning in this sense of like extreme hypervigilance. And I'm in this combative relationship with all my names. and with life itself and we're in the middle of lockdowns. And I'm an extroverts.

I'm being locked down. Not good, brother. Right. Not good. So I look out, I look out of my balcony window. I'm up on the 13th floor. And I said, okay. All right.

It has until the end of April. If I can't get this sorted by the end of April, then I can't do this anymore. Can't live like this anymore. It came back to that whole. I didn't think I was part of something bigger. I didn't think I had written this story for myself. I thought it was just separate from the entire experience. So what really catalyzed me was when I had that moment,

I felt I felt something divinely step in and say, there's a way out of this, but you have to be open to it. I said, all right, all right, what do you got from me? And that's when I started writing a book called Leaving 2020. And it took me and put it in a way. character in the book who was in New York and went to the top of his building also in the beginning of April in 2020 and was going to jump and he actually did jump so I took myself through what would happen if I actually jumped what would the next stage of that story look like and in this

character he did jump he got halfway down and while I got halfway down he got transported into a world which was a halfway portal between life and death And he met people from all around the world who were also in the throes of 2020 and desperately trying to escape. And they had to find their way out together. So it became this metaphor for what life was like on earth in 2020, how we felt cut off from each other, cut off from the light, cut off from hope, cut off from luminosity. And how the hell do we get out of that? because we're all in this together. And the process of writing that book

started opening my eyes to what this whole story really was about. And it really, in some ways, saved my life. And then it really opened my eyes to the nature of things. And it kind of came through me in that regard. So I'm really grateful for all those experiences that brought me to this point because now I have a lot of empathy for people who are still in that place.

I have deep empathy for people who are there. And I don't like any discussion. dismissive language around them of, you know, just, ah, what the hell? It's all in your head. Get out of it. Well, yeah, but it's much deeper than that. It's a disconnection from the light. It's a perceived illusory disconnection, but it has still lived disconnection.

Man, dude, thanks for sharing that. That's a dark, dark spot, man. And, you know, is it, do you feel that like while you may not, I've found this to be with people who have experienced. experienced deep tragedy is that it never really leaves you like you could always go back there you may not be at the precipice and want to jump again but you can walk right back to that cliff and look over and be like yep that's where oh yeah that's the scene of the crime yeah man it's it stays with you it's yeah it's like the um it's like it's like it's like a stain on a white

dress you know it's wash it out still there it'll always be there and there comes a point that where you integrate it into your experience and you don't try to whitewash you don't try to, you know, move beyond it as if it never happened. Because the minute you fear it, it will come back. You have to just have to see it. And when it comes back, you're like, oh, there you are again. All right. Sit down and have a beer.

Let's do this. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's interesting to sometimes where something dies becomes fertile soil for something to grow, whether it's someone you've lost or whether it's a spot that's something you lost or some part of yourself. But it seems to me, maybe this is the idea of growth,

but if you want a new life to grow, something inside you has to die. And it's so freaking sad to think about because we love these things. And when part of something we love dies, whether it's a part of you that you love, a different version of yourself, and the world's like,

hope you had fun with that one. We're going to have to kill that off now. What are you talking about? I'm going to kill that off. That's my favorite part. And they're like, yep, that's why I'm going to kill it. You got to go. It'll keep you stuck there.

It will, you can love it. And it could be a person. It could be an activity. It could be whatever. But like if it, if it's not helping you move forward, it will one way or the other, it will die off. And sometimes it will be easy and most times it will not be. Yeah. It'll be a bitch.

Yeah. It's interesting to think, like if you put it in the perspective of if we don't kill this thing, you love, then it'll kill you. Like, that's crazy to think about, right? I had it, I had it, I had it, um, there were a couple of, a couple of friends in my life over the course of the years that this manifested in in different ways. And they were very, very, very, very close to me. And the relationships had to end.

They had to. And each time, a very painful catalyst was the thing that caused it. And at the time, I hated it like anything else, you know, painful catalysts are not fun to endure, no matter who you are, no matter who you are, no matter. of what you're going through. However, in retrospect, I'm grateful for those catalysts because those friendships, not only were they not good for me. They were not good for the other person. Right. And, you know, they weren't. And, you know, when you're in it, you don't, you don't see it. You have to get that space from it to really see it for what it was. You know, one of them was with a,

just a horrendous, malignant narcissist. And I realized, you know, because I'm an empath, narcissism and impact, you know, the whole dynamic. Yeah. You know, you know, like the leach on the sap tree, you know, so not good. But I needed a catalyst to have that happen. Another one was, you know, a very good friend. And we were caught, I would say, in a cycle of, you know, the word commiseration. You know, it's like co-missory.

That's what it was. It was like, co-missory. Each feeding and fueling the other's misery, each feeding and fueling the narrative of being victims of a hostile universe and screw the universe and all that and like in and feeding each other that all the time whenever each one of us was going through something the other one would step right in with this message of support like hey I got you yeah life sucks doesn't it yeah sucks that happened to you you'll never yeah it sucks that you just can't get out of this no matter how hard you try and neither can I and the other one was like yeah that really sucks doesn't

it and you keep feeding each other that you're eating from the same table and the table is feeding you both poison. And you're eating small doses of the poison every day. You don't realize what it's doing. It's killing you. It's killing you. But you don't realize it because it's like a small doses. And you think you're there.

You think it's an act of love. You think this person's struggling and I'm helping them out because I see them and I'm there with them while others are like, ah, snap out of it. Like, no, no, I'm there with you. I'm not going to tell you to snap out of it. Like, I see you in your pain. You realize you're not doing anything to help them out of that pain. You're just fueling the narrative, but the pain is never going to end.

And we were doing that to each other horrendously. And it needed a terrible catalyst to come in and ultimately drive us apart. But in retrospect, it had to happen for both of our sakes. Do you see relationships in that manner as like a mirror? Like when you're in that, like that person that you're with or maybe the group of friends that you find yourself in or are mirror image of who you are? Without a doubt, without a doubt. They say, and I really believe this. I've come to see it in my own life.

You really are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And the universe will mirror back to you who you think you are. And, you know, if you think that you have no value, you will attract people who also think they have no value. And you will also attract people who also think you have no value and we'll take advantage of because of that. So, but if you stand in your own power, you will attract people who stand in theirs and recognize

and respect yours and will simply be in your circle to uplift you, to inspire you, to help you grow and expand. And you will want to do the same for them. And the more people like that you bring into your circle, the better you're going to feel about yourself, about life, about possibilities that are out there, with the expansiveness that exists, about your connection to everything out there. And that will then beget even more people who will find their way into their circle like you shows up last week, man.

This is what happens, right? It's this exponential growth impact. You just put it out there and you just keep attracting more and more people into your life that are aligned with where you're going versus where you were. And then the real magic is at that point, you start realizing how distant you now are from where you were and how you are never going back there. It's just not happening. You're never going to allow it to drag you back in, period.

You know, it's, I love, I love the conversation because it, it mirrors an echo so much, not only in my life, but so many people I've spoken to who have had a tragedy, like a major tragedy in their life that was a turning point for them. And it starts off as like, you know, there's a lot of the why me? God damn it, why me, man? Why? And I'm fair. You know, you start there. But then you realize, you know, okay, maybe I can go back to that thing. But then life's like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. you don't get it yet. Like, we, that tragedy was necessary. You can never go back. Like once you've seen, I've ripped the scales from your eyes.

I'm sorry, it's painful. You can never go back. You can try. It'll be, it'll be fun for you to watch. You know, it'll be humorous.

It'll be like our friend Angel in the movie Path to Perfectia. Yeah. But you can never go back, man. Can't go back. You can't go back. And that was one of the lines in the book Leaving 2020 was,

you know, the whole world was pining for a return to 2019. And remember that, like especially in the first, half of 2020. Yeah. There was just like, all right, fine. This will come and it will go.

It will pass. And then life will just be back to normal. And all will be well again. Remember that? Like all we wanted, man. It's like we've been shaken out of our boots. Let's just go back to normal. And only after that, again, that retrospect, you realize it got normal sucked.

Yeah. Normal wasn't that great. And there was nothing great about commuting an hour and a half each way in the work. Like, what was great? about that. What was great about it being okay to show up to a party sick? Like what the hell was ever okay about that? Now, in fairness, I never thought that was okay. A lot of people did. Not saying this pet myself on the back, but just, you know, being level with you here. I was always like, come on, really, like you've got a cold to go home. What are you doing? But now at least

there's a consciousness around maybe if you have a cold, you shouldn't go out to a party and maybe you shouldn't get other people sick. And maybe there should be a conscientiousness about that that there didn't exist beforehand. And maybe somebody shouldn't be forced to commute an hour and a half each way, particularly if they have kids at home and they're spending every last dollar they earn here on child support. And what if somebody has an inflammatory condition and they need to be close to home to tend to that? And what if a lot of different reasons? What if they don't have a car that works particularly well?

You know, what if they are at high risk of contracting a disease? Maybe they shouldn't be taking the metro every day with 10,000 of their closest friends. and they can do the job just as well from home. And guess what? Maybe it's better if somebody can get an extra 10 hours of sleep a week. Maybe that's a good thing, you know? Yeah. Maybe they'll be healthier and more productive and happier.

And so all these things that came into consciousness because of this shift, why would we want to go back to a time before that? Yeah. I can't understand why now. Yeah. So this is an interesting concept. I often find myself using this phrase that's something, the lines of as above so below.

And you and I have already spoken about how the relationships we have are sort of mirror images of ourselves. We've also spoken in sort of a meta fashion about how each of us and probably a lot of people listening to this have had this crisis of consciousness, be it a tragedy, a near death, a potential suicide or, you know, something in their life that brought them to the precipice of disaster. And it seems to me, if we just look at just the two of us talking right now, now we've spoken about our stories a little bit and then we bring up COVID it's almost like

the world our society has had its own precipice like the world itself was standing the precipice like i'm going to do it it's going to end everything yeah and if we look at it like that might it be that the world that consciousness COVID was sort of core COVID was sort of the consciousness precipice where things that was the tragedy for all of us and now it's slowly beginning to make its way into a better world for everybody. Is that too positive of a spin to put on it? I don't think so. I think what it's done is it's accelerated that consciousness polarization.

Okay. So I think there is this mass consciousness rising, and you've seen it in the ether. I've seen it in the ether. I've experienced it, and it's palpable, and it's everywhere. And it's so cool. You're seeing people from different backgrounds in different countries and different religions, and they're all, there's this thing that there's this,

it's happening and you can feel it subatomically it's happening. Conversely, there are those who, for one reason or another, they don't want to get on the train. They want to stay stuck in that narrative of life sucks, everything sucks, screw everything, screw the universe, whatever. I'm not saying this to judge them, you know, I have deep, deep compassion. I have dear friends of mine who are in this place. I have deep compassion for them. But their own acceleration towards that negative polarities is increasing as well. And I think COVID drew a wedge on that.

So you're seeing people who are nastier online. They're, you know, the trolls and, you know, this deep isolation that's taken root with a lot of people. And they've lost a lot of their friendships and human connections. And they've just gone deeper and deeper into themselves. And you're seeing this with the rise of certain figures who speak to these people. So Andrew Tate is a great example of that. You know, he's developed the following with people who are right in this ballpark who've developed this incredible hostility toward women. They develop this incredible hostility toward life, toward civilization itself.

And they see somebody who's coming with this message of, you know, you do you, you do you. Fuck the world. You do you. And like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to do me. And this gets internalized. So this negative polarity of isolation and kind of self-centeredness is increasing too. So you're seeing, like, I think you're just seeing it.

And COVID blew a hole open in it. Blew a hole open in this kind of mushy middle. And you're seeing in politics, too. There's no moderates anymore. It blew a hole in all. of it. So it's like you're going in one direction or the other in almost every facet of life right now. So I'm not trying to opine on it to judge it, more just kind of like take a step back and like, huh, isn't that something? Yeah. Isn't that interesting? It is interesting. And I, do you think

that demographics plays a role in that? Like, there's a really good book called The Fourth Turning by I think Levi Strauss is, maybe that's a pair of jeans. I think there's a guy named Strauss is the author, but got, we don't know. It's very tough book. It's like denim. But in the book, they talk about demographics, and they talk about the way in which generations churn, and there's this pattern of life.

And it's interesting because if you look at how many, the swollen generation of baby boomers, and you see so many of them, I think there was a stat that said, there was 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day for the last 10 years. Yeah. And it wouldn't make sense that if we look at our, if we look at the human body as all of the bodies together,

a large portion of our body is dying off. And, you know, there's something to be said about the unrealized dreams of those facing the mortality experience and the angst that comes at the end of life. And if there's a large part of our body that's on the precipice of death, like why wouldn't there be so much?

Oh, I got to get mine. We've got to go do this one last thing, man. One last beer run, man. We can do this thing, you know? have you thought about it from a demographic point of view? I've given a lot of thought to this. I have a lot of clients who are baby boomers. And so writing for them and having to write in their voice

has been an interesting experience for me, having to kind of learn from their perspective about things. And one thing I found, and this is, you know, I say everything generally, of course, there are many exceptions to this. But I feel like baby boomers writ large are the first generation who've yet to accept their own mortality. And you see this manifested in a million different ways. And I think a lot of it,

there's a lot of baby boomer messianism, kind of in their heyday of, you know, we are the ones we've been waiting for. And this world is a cold, dark, backwards place, but we are the saviors who have come in to shed the light and to show you all the path. And well, it's weird when a light giver has to push daisies, isn't it? It's like a strange thing. It's like, well, wait a second. Now we're supposed to save the damn planet. We can't leave this joint until we do that. And we have a war in freaking Europe and we got a pandemic. We got racism. We got all this stuff. We can't leave and the list is fixed. So we're not going anywhere. Give me the pill. Hook me up to whatever you got to do. Like, I'm not going anywhere until this is done. So whereas, you know, the greatest generation like,

hey, listen, you live, you die, you do your thing. And that's it. You know, and before that, that was just the fate of completes is how it is the circle of life the boomers like hell no uh-uh nope that's interesting to me it's but and interestingly right behind them you know as a couple of extras i think we can appreciate this totally like no we're totally going to die it's cool yeah all right yeah yeah yeah i agree i have that same exact you know it's so interesting to look at the the the you call propaganda that we were brought up on like you know we had like Top gun. Like, you know, you're going to go out there.

You're going to get the girl. You got to fight for yourself. You know, you're going to stand up to bullies. I remember when Mike Brady had to pull Bobby aside. But hey, man, don't let that bully talk to your sister like that. You're going to punch him in the face. Yep. Karate kid.

I mean, the zeit guys, like, those years, it's like you stand up, you know, Revenge of the nerds. You kick the bully in the ass. It's like, you don't, you know, that was just, that was the, that's the culture back then. Yeah. It's, it's, I'll send you, you should, I'll send you the title of this book because it gets into all of that. And what the guy talks about is like, look, these are themes that happen. And they happen repeatedly on a schedule. And it really brings out the question like, okay, if we were brought up on this certain ideas,

then what is the responsibility of our generation? And he talks about for Xers, look, your job is to like, okay, you know, we're the bridge between the boomers and the millennials. And part of the job is the Xer is to like help the boomers go great. You're like, listen, you guys were given a lot of stuff. Okay, but I know you're the messiahs. Yeah, yeah, population. Yeah, that's happening.

It's you guys, right? Greatest, I get it. But these millennials are not lazy. They're actually probably smarter than all of us, okay? And you guys got to figure that out. And then our job is tell the millennials, yeah, yes, yes. They have everything given to them, but not all their ideas are bad. You know, and it's just this weird sort.

And it just spoke to me like, holy crap, this book is just laying it out there, man. And it talks about the gin Xers like, yeah, you guys. You guys got your own problems too, but it's a really fascinating idea to step back and see the world through the ideas of demographics. And it's almost psychedelic in a way, the same way that like a really big dose of psilocybin or LSD will put you in the perspective of a third person. So too does this book or the idea of demographics go, oh, I'm just part of this thing. And my role is over here. And maybe my role is not to have that. But your role is definitely, and I think for Xers, it's to step out of the system and be like, okay, I'm going to step out of the system because I was a victim of it.

And I'm going to try to help some other people not get in it. But it's a fascinating idea, this whole idea of their end. I bring it up because when I, when I'm reading like the path to perfectia, I see that you're painting a picture for people to create a new paradigm or a new way to see the world of like, hey, maybe it is a dream. And if it is a dream, what are you doing with it? If you're the self-author of this life, get to it. Let's go. Start writing some things down, man. Let's go.

You're here to create. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, we, especially in this LinkedIn day and age and social media day and age, we've, I think, falsely created the world into this division of the creator and the consumer. And a lot of people believe that, well, I'm not a creator, you know. The hell you aren't. You are not just a creator. you are creation. If you are creation, how could you not be a creator?

By essence of being part of creation, everything you do, every word you say, every experience you have is taking part in the greater creative story. You are a creator within creation. So why not take that to its logical conclusion? This idea of like, well, a conversation I had at a coffee shop with my friend doesn't count as creation. Of course it counts as creation.

Everything you do say and think is. creation. So why would you feel disconnected from that? And this is, I think, one thing that I try to impress upon people in my 40 going on four podcast and some other stuff that I do, it's this idea of you are creation. Lean into that and that is where you're going to find your creative and happy flow. Like what's the secret of happiness, right? How do I get happy in life? Be creation. That's it. Be creation. Lean into not simply what you, want to do, lean into who you are. You are creation. To get back to the example of the kids going out and playing football, what is that if not just an act of creation? You've created a football game.

You've created the experience of a football game with your buddies. That's it. And they're in a state of pure bliss and joy and presence. Just doing that. Yeah. Do you feel like learning to lean into the act of creation takes away the resentment that maybe you had in life? Without a doubt. Without a doubt, completely. Because I didn't feel like, you know, when I, when I was fired from like the job that I love more than anything, and I felt like my purpose in life was done and over and I was just some cog in the wheel and some spoke on a machine, you know. Yeah. Honestly, actually, I screwed those two up. Whatever.

I feel like I was separate from everything. And I was a victim of a larger creation. that was using me rather than a co-creator within it. I felt all my agency was gone. And when you feel all your agency is gone, you will find yourself in a very bitter and hateful place in life. And this will happen to people in all different facets of life. This will happen and you see it every single day on social media.

People who feel like they've been screwed over by somebody or by the world or by a structural this or that. And I'm not saying any of this to minimize what they're going through. Right. This is their battle to fight and this is their experience to have. And I wish them well and I wish them joy and peace and love and inspiration on that journey, always. But when you see yourself as separate from that thing, then you will always see yourself in conflict, not only with that thing, but with the world around you and then ultimately with yourself. And you'll never find happiness in that place. Never, never. Because let's say you beat the thing. Let's say you do it. Let's say somebody who, is a, you know, I'll use the example of, you know, child trafficking. And I use it in an article I wrote the other day. Let's say you were a crusader to end child trafficking. And if you are, God bless you. Seriously, you're doing, that's like, talk about God's work, man. That's such a good stuff. Let's say you devote your life to ending child trafficking and you do it. I guarantee your work's

not going to be done. And I guarantee you won't find happiness. Happiness is going to be, all right, well, I got to find the next thing to fix. We got to cure leukemia. Because like my aunt died of leukemia, we've got to fix that. It'll be a crusader to end leukemia. Unless you find a cure for leukemia, it's going to be the next thing. There will be no happy moments at any point in this life. This is not to say people should not try to end trial trafficking or we should not try to find a cure for leukemia. Just saying, though, that if you tie up your happiness in the outcome of that thing happening, you're never going to find it. Never, the happiness has to be into doing. The happiness is like, you know what, I'm happy that I have now reached

the consciousness where I am a person who is striving to end this versus a person who, with actively aiding and abetting it. I'm happy that I've now reached a place in my own development where I see this for the problem that it is and I don't go along with it. And I'm trying to raise the consciousness of the world to bring this to an end. That brings me happiness every day the doing,

the doing of that versus like the thing being done. And I say this, you know, as an author, once the book is published, that's when the misery begins. Every time. Every time. Talk to an actor who is on a movie. They'll say the same thing. long hours,

just that and the other, but the juice and the magic was in the filming. It was in the camaraderie with the other people on the set. Talk to an athlete who just won a championship. That high goes away real quick. And then you talk about it years later,

what do they talk about? What do they miss? They don't miss a tick or tape parade. They don't miss the interviews from ESPN. They don't miss hoisting up that big freaking ball and saying, we did it. They don't miss that. They miss those times in the locker room

with the guys, just shooting the shit, going from one game to the next, struggling through adversity. That's what they miss. It was the doing, not the achieving. That's where all the goodness was. You know, it brings up this idea that maybe it's maybe I hear it in the language.

Instead of it being a thing, it's a process. And if we start to look at our life in that way, you know, the goal, the thing is it's almost past 10. but the process is now. You know, if you, if you, if you, like, if you look at love, like just use the word love. Don't think of love as a thing. Think of it as a process. I guess you can use that for life in your life. Like the idea of seeing the world as process, it forces you to live in the moment in a way.

It forces you to see clearly that all you can control is the meaning of now. And it's already passed. But now, now, now versus the goal or the, you. I wish I had that. All these trappings, like, you know, depression or anxiety as the past or the future. But shoot, all you have is right now. And right now, things are pretty good. Right now you don't have any problems.

Right now, you're not struggling. Right now, it's beautiful. And if you can harness that and if someone figures out to do it, let me know. But there it is, right? Yeah, that's a great point you brought up. And I was thinking about this today, actually, in my morning walk, about the concept of love and particularly romantic love. Okay. So one thing a lot of people, most people I would say, what do they say a lot, right?

I'm looking for love. And all the wrong places. All the wrong place. All day, yeah. You obviously been in some of the bars I've been from back in the day, man. Yeah, no doubt about that. It's so prevalent, though, this idea, like, I'm, you know, on the dating sites, this, that, I am looking for love.

Let's, let's unpack this. Let's, like, actually get into this. Okay. What you're really saying is you're looking for a romantic relationship that will make you feel loved. That's what you're really saying, because there's something in you right now that does not feel loved. There's like some love component that feels missing. There's some hole that you're looking to fill. So you're looking for love.

What if you are love? What if you shift the whole paradigm to, I'm not looking for it. I am love. I am love and I am going to manifest that in every interaction I have today. Whether or not I meet the person of my dreams today, doesn't matter. I am going to show love to the Amazon guy who's dropping off something. I'm going to show love to my barista. I'm going to show love to the person I'm on the LinkedIn Live with.

I'm going to show love to everybody in the comments here. I'm going to show love to everybody. Now, who do you think you're going to attract into your life if you are love versus if you are looking for love? You're going to attract somebody else who's also looking for love. and they're not going to see you as love because they don't see themselves as love. And then if you go out on this first date together, you're both coming from a taking energy rather than a giving energy.

You're both like, well, I am looking to fill a hole in my life that I'm hoping you can fill. Because I don't really give a damn if I'm filling it for you. I need you to fill it for me. And they're both coming at it from that perspective. They're both trying to sell each other, you know. and they're both trying to take from each other rather than give to each other. By the first dates that are really magic and the conversations that are magic, they're both giving to each other.

I'm here because I want to make sure you have a great experience. Whether or not it goes anywhere, whatever. I want to give you a great experience. And if that person comes with the same energy, I want to give you a great experience to. You know, I want to laugh with you. I want to share some fun stories. I think you might enjoy it, you know? Yeah.

I want to, I'm going to order this on the menu. I want you to have a bite because I think this is so good. I think you really really might. like this. I'm going to order this cool cocktail. You've got to have a sip of this. This is really awesome. Let's do that. Let's go see this band. And I think you're going to love this band. I love this band. Let's go see them because I think you might love them too. It could be a great experience for you. I've been to this really cool art museum. They have amazing exhibits. Let's go there. Not so like I can impress you with what I know, but I, it's lit me up in the past.

Let's go because I think you will enjoy that. And then all that's awesome. Let's go to this ice cream place I know because I've had the most amazing Sundays over there. And I think you'll really enjoy it too. And you're just giving love, just like letting it pour out of you. They're both going to come back and say that was the greatest date I've ever had. And you know what? It may not become a romantic relationship because there may be points of just incompatibility, but there's nothing to say that that can't become a robust and beautiful friendship where somebody says, this is the most amazing person I met. And there's just a few things that are, they're not going to like romantically be compatible. But oh my God, do I have a friend for you? And I will speak the world of you to my

friend because I think you're amazing and the what that can open up so it's like you're looking for love you're never going to get it be love and it will be everywhere and then you'll also be able to see those who are not coming from a place of love if you are coming from that place yourself you'll see it and it will be so clear to you in a way it wasn't before it's like when you wake up and then you realize everyone else is still asleep you'll see people who are coming from a self-revely place you'll see they're coming from a standoffish materialist that you'll see it you'll feel it and you're not going to be duped into it you won't be roped into it like i energetically i'm not aligned with this at all so we're good we're good no drama no nothing we're good wish you well

we're all set we're good that's it yeah it's beautiful it's it's i i had a long talk with a a friend of mine dr jessica rochester and we talked about self-love and the way she defined Love is we were talking about definitions and she said that there was one that she used. I forgot who she quoted. Forgive me for not being able to document exactly who it was, but it was something along the lines of. Love is building a space in which everyone can grow. I had never heard it like that before.

I was like, wow. That's pretty good, right? Man, that's good. Yeah. Because it's true. It's like, let's build this space where everybody can succeed. And it sounds a lot like what you were saying. saying where, you know, it's, it's co-creation. It's sharing. It's finding, it's ordering something so

someone else can enjoy it. It's coming from selfless. And it's, it's back to Alan Watts that says, the only reason that you don't have the thing you want is because you want it. What was that? Like, dude always nailed it, man. He had the greatest one-liners. Like, he just, yeah, he had the greatest mic drop moments like all the time. He was just amazing. Yeah. Amazing. And that's, that's it. nailed it that's you're looking for it so you're not going to because when you're looking for it you're telling the universe you're telling yourself i don't have it yeah i'm not loved i'm not loved so i need to find it to go out and get it go search for it you know come and get me come and i

and i know that because i've been there i know what it feels like yeah i know what it feels like to not feel that like at least romantic love you know and and i know what that does to you you you feel unmoored and it can drive you nuts and you can become a whole different person when that happens and not a good person and not somebody you look back on and say, I want to hang out with that person at all. And you realize because there's this hole in you that you thought this thing was going to fill. And maybe it did for a while, at least on the surface, but when that left, then the hole appears again. That's why one of my favorite episodes, are you a Seinfeld fan at all? Yeah, of course. All right. One of the greatest Seinfeld moments

ever, ever. And I think this was so profound. was they were at the diner and Jerry broke up with his girlfriend. Oh, no, sorry, she broke up with him. She broke up with him, like, you know, we can't see each other anymore. And he's like, okay. Like, wait, what? Yeah, no. It's been really nice dating you in.

Good luck. He just gets up, takes his coat and leaves, and she's just sitting there. Like, what, what the, what? And it was just this, like, he was good. Like, he didn't, he didn't need her to fill this hole. He didn't have a hole. Like, he's, he's, he's, he's, I felt he's good he's just good like in another episode i think it was a deeply spiritual show

masquerading as a comedy where i think you had jerry and george as the great protagonist both showing different manipulations and manifestations of energy whereas jerry just had this very like go with the flow kind of energy of i am whole i have everything i need i'm good i'm all set like everything is working for me everything's all right no matter what happens like even step in that episode right like, Elaine takes it when he throws it up the window, he finds it in his pocket. He's like,

everything evens out for me. I'm fine. I lost the gig here. I got a gig here. I'm fine. George, hilarious, best character in the show.

But he lives in constant opposition to reality. Constant opposition to himself, to other people around him. There's like this, this classic neurotic New Yorker. And, you know, George is getting upset.

You know, and just like, everything is pissing him off all the time. Because he thinks he lives in this hostile universe that's out to get him. And because of that, he mirrors that back to himself in every single interaction. And like the comedy that the universe is playing out as it shows the example of George and example of Jerry is just masterful.

And I wonder if, like, greater forces that were working through the writers to really paint that out there and just to show what that dichotomy looks like in real time with real characters. Yeah. I think that you could even step back a little bit and say, not only are greater forces working through that show, but they're working through each one of us. And if we just take a moment to step back

and see those characters playing out on ourselves, all that's left is to have a good laugh. And that's where Kramer comes in. Yeah. And that, I think it was the universe saying, like, you know, something in life are just so ridiculous. This whole thing is just a giant playground that stop taking it so seriously and just laugh.

I'm going to give you a character like Kramer, so where you will step out of your like, oh my God, everything is so serious place and just freaking laugh and just appreciate how much of a preposterous playground this really is. I think some people are sent it to our lives for that purpose. Yeah. I think some people are given the gifts to do that, just a complete irreverence to just remind us that it's all a dream. And that if it weren't a dream, nothing this irreverent could take place.

if it weren't just all a big show on a stage like a character like this wouldn't exist I think that's why Florida man exists the whole state of Florida exists so we realize like this is like you have like a shirtless dude who's like 18 beards deep in a hurricane wrestling an alligator

that can't happen in a serious universe it can't laws of physics won't allow it oh it's so true it's so true and it just it does bring about you know, the gift of laughter. In the darkest moments, you know, you hear people at a funeral start laughing, you know,

and like it's it's the gift that keeps on giving. Absolutely. Like smoothing Diana in the book. You know, they're at the funeral and they're just cracking. They're cracking each other up the whole time. Right. And angels there kind of reminding them like, yeah, it's all good. Like you didn't actually lose her.

She didn't actually die. Her energy is still here. She's here right now in the room. You just can't perceive her, but she's here. So everyone else getting really heavy and crying. It's all, it's like a joke, you know, so you can laugh and it's okay. And everyone else giving you the glares because you're laughing. They're the ones who don't get it.

Where you two are the ones who actually get it. Like on a deeper level, I would say people who laugh at funerals really get it. Yeah. They really get it. Do you ever get people in your life, Jesse, like, man, I'm sick of you, Jeff. You don't take it seriously, man. Jesus, all the time. You know, but you know, I really, yeah, I tell you where I really,

get it from. Okay. The activists. And I know this because I used to be an activist. That was a freaking hardcore polarized political activist. And I got to tell you, man, it was an interesting place to be because my world was very binary. And there's not a lot of room for laughter in activism. I'll tell you that. Because the world is a really pretty serious place when you have like half the country are a bunch of

assholes who you need to conquer. Yeah. beat them over the head until they're right about the things you know that they ought to be right about. And there's no room for irreverence. There's no room for any of that. Because if you're an activist too, everything is life or death. Right. Everything.

Everything. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's your issue, it's life or death. And therefore, it's not enough for it to be life or death for you. Because it's life or death for you, it has to be life or death for everybody. And that's why, you know, I wrote a piece about this the other day about, how like aggressor versus ally, you know, and this idea of like if you give well-meaning wishes, most people will reject it and say, well, screw you're not doing enough. You need to be

an activist like me to fix the problem or else you're complicit in it, this, that, and the other. And people who tend to be really passionate activists, the humor ratio, it really decreases the more the activism goes up. And there's a really diehard, inverse relationship that you see with this. And I say this, and I know I have the caveat this, but I really mean this. I don't. say this to as like an attacking way. I don't I don't think less of people who are activists because some things I guess anything that needs to be changed needs the energy of change behind it so there's a role for activism but within the activism there has to be that space for like but it's all still a freaking dream and it's all

like it's all show and it's an energy play and while I can work really hard to try to like fix this thing and that's my life's work maybe that's the mission I came here to do I cannot take it so serious where I start demonizing 50% of the people out there who don't agree with what I'm doing and think of them as like just walking devils. Because then I'm coming from a bad energy. Right. And I'm not going to put love behind fixing the thing I'm trying to fix.

I'm putting hate behind it. I'm putting resentment. And I'm because if I'm at odds with them, guess what? I'm at odds with me. Because they are me and I am them. And if I'm at odds with me and nothing getting done. Nothing getting done. So I look at the greatest leaders who,

made the greatest, greatest impacts. And they never came from a place of, it's us versus them. And it's always a place of it's us. And we're going to shine a light. And the them who are over there, they're going to see our light want to be part of it. And that's where all the magic was. And they also had a good sense of humor about them, too. Gandhi had one of the greatest senses of humor ever.

Fantastic sense of humor. All the great Irish Revolutionaries have great senses of humor. You have to. Like because that's sometimes that's all that all that you have left is is to laugh, you know. And I, um, I recently had an interesting experience where, you know, I was a UPS driver for 26 years. And I found myself and to shout out to all the UPS drivers, the truck drivers and anyone stuck in a job that you, that you love, but you also hate. And I, I found myself in a position where all I had, all I had left was to laugh. Like I'll give you an, I'll share this quick story with you.

So I found myself being in a world where all that mattered was production. Like I love parts of being a UPS driver. And like I really enjoy being out on the road and staying in shape and meeting all these cool kids. And for people that don't know as a UPS driver, like I like to see myself as like a sort of like a white blood cell in a neighborhood. Like I get to know all the kids, man. I got to know all the people. And you get to like open a door into people's lives that you would never see. I got to meet so many cool people that I never would be for.

And I'd carry around in my backpack, I'd carry around little magic tricks or little trinkets. And all the kids on my route, man, I would always have like a magic trick to show them. And I would see them grow from like the age of eight to like 15 and get to be part of their lives. And so, but as UPS has changed, as I went from a private company to a public company, I really got to see the level of service be eroded. And all of a sudden, all that mattered was money. And all that mattered was production. And I worked hard to fight against that.

And in the later years of my career as working from 19 to 48, all of a sudden I saw the level of management change. And all of a sudden, my managers got younger and younger. But the argument stayed the same. And I found myself to the last meeting I had was we were talking about production. And I had a meeting with my manager who was like in their 20s. God rest, they're so a great kid. and they said, George, we don't think that you're living up with the production standards. And then I started laughing.

I'm like, really? You don't think that? And I'm like, why not? And they're like, well, according to our numbers, George, you're not hitting this mark. And I'm like, oh, do you think that maybe you're not measuring all the variables? And they just stare at me. They're like, what do you mean? And I start laughing.

And I'm like, well, I don't think that you're accounting for all the variables. Let's look at your metrics here. And I like, okay, that's a good idea. Let's do that. Well, we're measuring. stop count. We're measuring miles. And according to ours, we plug this in, George, you're, you're not doing enough stops per hour. Okay. What about road conditions? What about the weight of the packages? What about the amount of time it takes to talk to customers to solve problems?

Because I don't see that in your variables. Yep. Do you just stare at me? What? I started laughing. I'm like, okay, you're familiar. You guys graduated high school math, right? Yes. I have a college degree, George. Do you have one? I'm like, I don't have one. I'm like, well, this would be perfect then. What is the Pythagorean theorem? A squared plus B squared is C squared, right?

Okay, I'm with you so far. Well, if we don't count all the variables, are you going to get the right equation? They just stare at me. They're like, George, I don't think you're taking this seriously. Beat him up the head with reason. Dude, I'm just crushing them. And then so I back them into a corner and they're like,

okay, I see what you're saying. I'm going to have to call my boss in here. Let's meet tomorrow. So a month goes by and then I meet with like his boss and we go through the whole thing again and I'm sitting there like okay well how does that make sense? God damn it George. You're not taking this seriously and I'm like no I am. That's why I'm having this conversation with you. So then I meet like this goes on for like a year and a half and finally I meet with like the building manager and like the whole conversation.

I'm like okay what you're saying doesn't make any sense. And so long story longer, I figure out it's not a bug, it's a feature. And I meet with the district manager. And like this guy is, he's hardcore. He's telling me all this stuff. I pointed all the flaws in the argument. A month later, I get fired. You know, and I'm like, oh.

And they bring me into fire me. And they say, you know what, George, we've just had enough. Like, you are not taking this seriously. And we're going to have to let you go. And in that meeting, I just start dying a laughter. And they're like, what's so goddamn funny, George? We're firing you right now. I'm just laughing because that's all I can do.

Like I've pointed out everything that you guys have done is wrong. What else are you going to do? But here's the kicker. I'm like, what are you firing me for? They're like dishonesty. And I'm like, dude, you're firing me for the very thing I'm pointing out to you. It's so hilarious to me. Awesome.

That's amazing. Right. But you figured it out, man. You are on the wall. Like, that's, that's the deal. It is. It is. And that's all that's left sometimes is to have the courage to laugh because that's all you can do.

What was going to happen to me was going to happen to me regardless of that. Here's the flaw. And I'm not going to back down from it. And it's funny. And they're like, it's not funny. And I'm like, it is funny. It totally is. But they're sharing you share that story.

No, I love that story. I think it speaks to like humor is the great equalizer. And it's the great transmuter of energy. Yeah. And it can take really top. things and you know I perform with a lot of comedians back in the day who man they went through some shit in their lives and they they transmuted it through humor on stage like they were able to turn that pain into a source of laughter for them and for everybody in the audience and granted

didn't fix their problems or didn't solve their state of mind but at least it it was like a release valve when it was overheating it was a release valve like just kind of let it out and you need good release valves because man if you don't have good release valve you're going to find some other ones. Yeah. But everyone's going to find one at some point. And when that gasket blows, man, you don't want to be anywhere near that situation.

If they have not found ways to healthily release it. This is where, like, the guys and the trench coat with the frigging high-powered rifles go on the tower. And, like, it's, I mean, this is what happens that they don't have those release valves. So these are also people that don't tend to laugh a lot. I've never seen a comedian behind a mass shooting. I'm just saying we're not always the most pleasant characters to be around, but we're also not the ones you see in the 11 o'clock news.

So for whatever that's worth, you know, humor is important. And if more people laughed, less people would die. How's that for a tagline? Man, that's a great tagline. If more people laugh, less people would die. Yeah, it's so, it's, it's, I think it's the ultimate idea is that don't take it so, don't take it personal. take it so seriously, right? Yeah. Anybody who does anything calamitous in this world is somebody who takes themselves and the world around them very seriously. There's just no, there's no irreverent

people who lead invasions of other countries. There's no, you know, whimsical, comical people who go shoot up a school. Like it just, it doesn't happen. Period. It doesn't. Now, people can say, wow, you don't take it seriously enough. Good. Good. I'm glad that person doesn't. take it seriously enough and shit i wish everybody else didn't take it seriously either because what a better place this would be we're we don't make problems better by taking them seriously because the more playful we are the more we're actually going to find problems and i'm going to say more find solutions to the problems like we're going to find the problems but find solutions because of that the playfulness creates expansive connections that same thing you're tapping into

with lSD and every other psychedelic you're you're you're now created you're tapping into the field the more you laugh, the more open you are, the more closed you are, the more shut off you are from it. You know, the more seriously you take the problem. I always said, you want a piece in the Middle East,

just get them all sitting around, have a lot of cannabis and have a lot of cartoons. Yeah. And like really funny cartoons where like anvils are falling on people's heads. Oh, hash that shit out in an afternoon. I'm telling you, like they will.

And anything else in the world where people are taking, both sides are very entrenched. Like, this is very serious. Well, this is more serious. It's more serious. and you'll never ever come to a place of magnanimity that way you have to just release the valve like maybe it all's just just a freaking dream maybe it's just a game and if it's a game like let's let's not be assholes the way we play it you know how about that how about that for a concept let's just

let's have fun with it and like i'll play and you'll play and we'll play them well i'll play them to have fun that's what comedy is it's having fun with it that's why i do satire like several times a week on LinkedIn about everything under the sun that a lot of other people take really seriously. I've satirized Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I've satirized COVID. I've satirized DEI issues. I mean, you name it, stuff that everyone is taking seriously of the help. I have no sacred cows.

I will satirize everything. A lot of people like it. A lot of people don't. God bless them all. It doesn't matter to me. I'm going to still do it. Yeah. You know, I love the term hash it out.

Like, what does that come from? I'm just smoking a lot of hash. That's what it is, man. It's literally hash it out. It's not hash browns, although you could hash it out over that, too. You could. I mean, hash powder are awesome. Right.

Yeah. If we take the idea of satire, like, it seems to me, you know, do you think that being in Hawaii, like you're subject to a lot of different cultures? And it seems that satire seems to be something that comes from the West. Like, if you use satire with a particularly Asian culture, they don't, seem to really get the idea. Maybe not, now I'm not painting with such a broad bush,

but different cultures have different ideas of satire. Have you found satire to be something that's uniquely Western? In some ways, I tend to find that it's mostly appreciated by a Western audience,

although I actually have had quite a few people, particularly in Africa and in India, really appreciate it too. I have not found an appreciation for it in East Asian cultures. And I think that that's just something very unique to the kind of the cultural fabric. I don't think satires is there's a history of it.

There's a history of there's different kinds of humor in different East Asian cultures, but satire really doesn't have a cultural route the way it does. I mean, I think the satire here really has its cultural origins, particularly in England. And then there's, you know, there's different kinds of comedy. What I love about the American comedy tradition is that it is so blended from different traditions. So you have that you have a great self-deprecating comedy tradition, which comes from the Irish tradition and then also the Eastern European Yiddish tradition. And they're both extremely funny. And they're both born of a lot of struggle and a lot of pain for both communities.

And they're really woven into like the American comedy fabric really well. Then you have like that really kind of saucy, satirical highbrow kind of comedy, which is very English in nature, which kind of passed down here. And then what you have, which I love, which is a very uniquely American expression of comedy. I feel like it's an indigenous kind of comedy here. Is that just like in your face physical slapstick comedy? Like America's Funniest Home Videos were like from the 90s, remember that the father is there. And like his little daughter has a whiffle bat and just blast him right to jewels. And it just and he just, you know, just hunches over.

And we're just, we're rolling and laughter. You know, rolling. And we see people. And we also have a lot of people who do a lot of really, really dumb shit here. And that's just, it's just the nature, I think, of how our cultural DNA, we love to jump off of things and crash in the thing. We just love doing it. And we think it's hilarious.

I think we're just a very playful people because of that. And I think that manifest. And we think it's funny when those among us do that playful stuff and like calamitous things happen because of it. Like, I think of it, turkeys, every Thanksgiving, the fried turkeys that just light the house on fire. It's hilarious, right? Someone just lost their house, but we're laughing at ask them off.

It's great. So I look at that as it's a very indigenous American comedy, and I love it, and it's great. And that just shows it's so fun to just be playful about everything. Because slapstick is just being playful. Yeah, I'm reminded of like the naked gun movies back in the day with a hundred of ten. Yeah, I was just going to say that. I was just going to say that. I got a great problem.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were so many great examples of that. Right. And we just love that. It's just, it's hilarious. Right. It's just, and airplane is, I love that movie so much.

Naked gun movies are incredible. Yeah. Like the best line ever from Naked Gun was the first one where, where the Ricardo Malteban, he goes over the edge and then he gets, and then he gets flattened out by the steamroller, and then a marching band over him, you know, and then his partner, Ed starts crying. And he's horrible. That's just horrible.

My father went the same way. Oh, man. That's just not comedy. I don't think you're going to see anywhere else in the world. Right. Right. That's a uniquely like American slapstick kind of comedy. And it's just because it's so irreverent.

It's so irreverent. Man. It's great. I think it's the universe is having fun like through the mechanism of American storytelling. Yeah. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I love it.

That's something like you don't hear too often, or at least I don't, is the idea of American storytelling. Yeah, I think we have such a unique story here. Right. And it's informed by so much from so many places in the world. And yet it's all come together like in this stew, this kind of goulash, you know, or in the Caribbean, this sancho. And it's this amazing expression that it all bubbles up.

And you have each one, each element of it has its own kind of unique flavor, but it all melts together in the pot. It's a true melting pot. So you can taste like the British influence, but you can taste the West African influence and you can taste the Latino influence and you can taste it in these different manifestations, but it's uniquely American in its expression.

And the whole rest of the world has taken on American storytelling. And you see it in every kind of filmmaking. You see it in music. You see how big hip-hop has become the world over. How, you know, you see French rappers and you see, you know, the K-pop phenomenon in Korea. Right.

And it's just, you know, our expressions of storytelling have just become a sensation globally. And the stand-up comedy is an American art form in its manifestation. And that is taken on around the world now. You're starting to see a big stand-up scene in India really taking off right now, just really cool to see. And you're seeing in other countries where it's pretty freaking dangerous to be a stand-up

comedian, but ads taking off too, which is awesome because stand-ups are the great tellers of truth in every society. You know, they've been court gestures in antiquity, but the uniquely, uniquely expressive art of stand-up comedy itself really was born in New York. And it's kind of current manifestation. And it came from the immigrant communities in New York, telling their stories to an audience who was, like, experiencing it with them. And they were just satirizing, like, day-to-day life. In the past, the gesture would satirize the king.

That was the thing. You know, if you, you could push the king a little bit, but not too far else you'd be hung. But in the stand-up, you could talk about relationships. And you could talk about, like, the cost of living. And you could talk about the garbage piling up on the streets. And you could talk about all the other things people deal with in a way it had never been talked about before. Only like in living rooms with family. But now somebody's on stage telling your story back to you.

In a way, you're like, ah, I feel seen. I'm going to laugh at this. This is awesome. Thank you for the release. It's what I love about stand-up. I loved it, man. That's what I loved about it. Well, how come you used loved in the past tense?

It's not easy being a stand-up comedy, a stand-up comedian in 2023. I'll say that. A lot of people, they come with their phones and they will record you. And you say something that kind of, you know, to use a politically incorrect term these days, if you go off the reservation and you use any kind of comedy, somebody finds objectionable, you can go viral pretty quickly and that's going to be the end of you. And then you wonder what's the risk reward? of risking everything for one joke

that may not even be that good. Now, if I think I have a story to tell that's important, I don't give a damn who records me, who shares it, who makes me viral, whatever. But if it's just some cheap joke that maybe one person loses their mind over, you have to weigh that in a way that,

I don't say you never had to because you did way back in the day. But we had a golden age in comedy, I would say from about the 70s to the early 2000s, about a 30-year run where comedians could really just be comedians and say whatever they wanted.

and be good. You had that hardcore McCarthyism that happened before that, where if you said anything that was considered to be dicey, maybe seditious, not in line with the zeitgeist of the day, you could be arrested.

Lenny and Bruce spent many a night in jail. And George Carlin was the first to kind of call that out in his comedy. And now the pendulum has kind of swung back to that where we have an accepted dictat of what group think is and what it is allowed to be and what you're allowed to think and what you're allowed to say.

And as long as you color within those lines, you're okay, but the minute you step outside of that, like the hounder is going to come down on you. So, you know, I was lucky. I got my start when it was still an open and free comedy scene, but it's not fun anymore. An audience has come in now with a feeling of, can I even laugh at that?

Like, is that even okay to laugh at? And they censor their own laughter. And you really feel that energy in the audience and feels it's very closed, constricted energy. The real magic of stand-up comedy is a room where everybody's open. People, you show up as a comedian to entertain and they come to laugh. And that's it. They also come to drink, but they also come to laugh.

And it's just open. And you know the beauty of open energy. When everybody in the room has open energy, the magic that happens there. But when there's a closed energy from the crowd, the comedian will mirror that close energy. And then the comedy just sucks. and you're just telling a bunch of people what other people deemed acceptable for you to say. And then the fun is gone.

Then what's the point? Hmm. Yeah. Do you think it's like a, you know, the world seems to move in cycles. And if we just look at the comedy cycle in which they had, you know, you had Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Robin Williams,

and then it kind of exploded and then closed off to where it kind of narrowed again. And do you think that maybe we're just in a cycle where we're just in a narrowing phase before it explodes again? Always. Yeah. I think the universe is, as Alan Watts said,

come back to our guy, universe is in a constant game of hide and seek with itself. Right. Yes. And so you can't have expansive cycles in anything forever. Eventually there will be a recalibration. And within that recalibration, there'll be a contraction.

And then from the contraction will be born again, a new cycle of expansion, which will be even greater and more radiant and more luminous. in the last cycle and you look at this in the stock market, it plays out that same exact way. Expansion, then a recession, then a greater expansion,

than a recession, greater expansion, always, always, always. Same thing with art, everything else. It's constantly doing that. I think we're on the cusp of a golden age of new comedy, but it will be born from the censorious era

that we live in right now, this neo-McCarthianism that we're experiencing right now. I'm glad I'm experiencing it, though. I don't say this to rag on it or to have like a, what was me thing. I'm blessed to where I came up in an era where I experienced the expansion. And now, like, as the universe kind of flowing through me, I'm experiencing the contraction. And I now have an appreciation for what it was versus what it is. And more importantly,

what it will be again. Yeah. Okay. So do you think with that comes a sense of responsibility? Like, if you look at some of the world of comedy day, like you see some of the unknown grates that, like, you know, whether it's Dave Attell or Colin Quinn or there's all these people that, you know, they're on the fringes, but they were the ones that helped pioneer the way forward for some of the younger guys that got to explode into it, you know? Yep. And you know what I mean by that? These guys laid down the foundation and they didn't think they hardly got any of the goddamn credit they deserve, you know? I'm sure that a lot of comedians know who they are and they are there, but they didn't get the goddamn headline gig to Charlie Murphy it. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. Something like that. Yep. So on some level, it kind of excites me to be in a position where I'm not a comedian, but being a podcaster and like, you know, maybe maybe it's a being a generation Xer is what it is. Hey, you got to see it. You got to live through the contraction. And you probably never get a giant fucking slice of the pie.

But you are just as important as everybody else by bringing up the next generation and creating the conditions that helps someone else explode into it. You feel like you get to play that role? To some degree, I think the way you can really play that role is to be yourself and to be as authentically yourself as possible. And the way I try to do that is understand where my audience is and where my medium is. I don't have a place in stand-up comedy anymore. And I'm good with that. I had a place in it. And it was a time and it was a place and it was an audience.

But I'm self-aware enough to know that those days have passed to give way to a new era. My audience now is on LinkedIn primarily. And my audience is a satire audience. I've channeled my kind of comedic wills, if you will, away from standup and into satire. I enjoy satirizing this crazy world around us. And by doing so, I give others permission to do it subconsciously. I feel that that's kind of what I'm doing for a younger generation that wants to come up. And I've had younger comedians reach out to me and they appreciate that kind of thing.

And I'll keep doing it. Because I won't shy away from the sacred cows. because on social media it's different. It's a different kind of audience. People, you can curate your audience better. In stand-up, it's all of a, it's a gotcha thing, you know? It's gotcha comedy. It's like they're waiting, they're waiting for you to say the wrong thing.

And then it goes viral. And then you have to go on a public apology tour and it, you know, and it's, and it really becomes like a Salem witch hunt. It really does. You have people that will go to comedy clubs for the expressed intention of a gotcha moment with a comedian. They're not even there to laugh. They don't want to laugh.

they're like they're literally like these um like these stasi squads like in east germany where they would go to like these meetings and they would just wait for somebody to say the wrong thing about the government and then the middle of the night they'd just be snatched up and disappear and that'd be it and we have a new stasi right now and it's like a so it's like a twitterati which is our new stasi you know and and and and to their credit they see themselves as the heroes that's the fun part about yeah different perspectives in the universe right everybody everybody everybody's a hero their own story and And if you ask the Twitterati, I've spoken to many of them about this, you know, they'll say, look, you know, it's not okay to say these things because they lead to real harm and to a lot of hurt feelings. And, you know, you really, you create a lot of discord and, you know, it can lead to violence. And so therefore I'm going to snuff you out before you have an opportunity to be heard and before somebody, to come back to the idea of taking things seriously, before the joke you tell gets out there and maybe gives the message that this thing is not to be taken as seriously as I deem. it should be. I'm going to cut you off at the knees and make sure you can't get it out there.

And this is where they become self-appointed crusaders. Like, I'm going to fix this thing. That's wrong. But in order to fix this thing, and this is the root of it, this is where the root of this Twitterati, all of it, this is the root of the stasi. This is the root of all of it. It all comes from this idea of control, not trusting the universe, not trusting the goodness of the universe, this idea of I'm in a hostile relationship with reality. Therefore, I must control it. and in order to control it, it must fit my vision of what it ought to be and what we ought to believe

and how we ought to act. And if things don't conform to that, then I'm going to forcibly make it conform to that. But in order to do that, I need everyone on board with me and everyone's got to take it seriously. If they take it seriously, they're going to behave as intensely towards it as I do

and then maybe we can change it and I can feel safe. But if one person out there doesn't take it seriously and they make jokes about it, It means that maybe somebody else won't take it seriously. And then maybe somebody else won't. And if enough people don't take this thing that is everything to me, seriously, it won't get change. And if it doesn't get changed, I won't feel safe. And we can't have that.

Nope. And it all boils right down to that one little rock. All of it. Man. How much of the Twitter-Roddy and how much of the. The world that seems to be oppressing people from laughing is real versus just propaganda. Oh, I mean, it's real is in the eye of the beholder, right? I mean, so.

Yes, absolutely. I can only speak from my own perspective because I'll never, I know the motivation of the Twitterati like at their core. And I know this because I've spoken to them. And this is from their own words. So I'm not putting words in their mouth. Like they told me basically, like, I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe. why like and I've always asked them and I drill down these questions like why do you want to fix this

and it always comes down to this one thing I don't feel safe whether they're safe or not objectively doesn't matter if somebody doesn't feel safe think about a fear of flying it's not a rational fear but people don't feel safe on a big flying aircraft at 30,000 feet that they're not in control of so it's a feeling of insecurity it's a feeling of not being safe that that way And anything you're doing to negate that feeling is construed as an act of war fundamentally. Wow. I cannot. It's almost like it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like they're trying to, they, whoever they are. It seems to me the narrative of people that are consumed by feeling unsafe are trying to propagate the narrative of uncertainty as the enemy. Absolutely. Without a doubt. I mean and that's why it always it always leads to totalitarian regimes anywhere in the world you look whenever enough people feel unsafe and this leads to totalitarian regimes on the right and the left either way when people don't feel safe and when enough people don't feel safe they feel they need to control reality so they will manifest that in a government that will control every last thing that it possibly can from how much food people get to where they're allowed to. live to what they're allowed to say to what they're allowed to think. And ultimately, what happens as they end up feeling less safe because you can't, you can't control reality. You can't do it. You try. And every one of these regimes ends up in absolute misery for everybody who lives under

there. Because the more you try to control it, the more miserable. It's like in life, the more you try to control your life, the more miserable you're going to get. So imagine doing that writ large. And is what we see, which is why you'll always see an outflow of people from the place where there's the most control to the most free flow. That's why you don't see people risking their lives to get from South Korea into North Korea. Nobody risked their lives to get from West Berlin to East Berlin. Nobody ever risked their lives to build a raft to go through shark-infested waters from Miami to go to Havana. Never happened, ever. And if there's one case in any of these countries, please let me know. I'd love to be corrected about this, but I don't think there's ever

been one. And it comes down to that one thing. It's this idea of control. And freedom is our natural energetic state of things. And the more you try to constrict that, constrict the flow of energy, it will flow around it. But you'll be miserable if energy gets boxed in. And I think this is what comedy is up against right now. It's people who feel unsafe. And they're trying to control the entire world around them. And COVID has only made people more neurotic about that because it's just reinforced in their mind. Well, shit. Yeah, the world is not safe. look at what just happened. Of course the world's not safe.

So we've got to control it even more. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting idea on COVID on so many levels. Like, you know, my daughter, being in Hawaii,

like you're surrounded by so many different cultures. And I was at a PTA meeting. I use PTA as just as the idea for school government or whatever. It was a parent teacher conference or something, something along those lines. And the teachers were up and they were asking, you know, to a, I don't know, there's probably 30 parents in the room. And one of the teachers got up and they had asked,

what is it that you would like to see be instilled in your children as they go through the school? And one of the ladies, very proper, intelligent, beautiful Japanese lady stands up. And she says, I want my child to be obedient. And I'm just aghast. Like, fuck, that's the last thing I want. And so, you know, of course, I have. to stand up as the, I'm like, hmm, you know, I'm not sure that we're talking, maybe we should

define what obedience is, you know, like that. I thought that was a good answer. Like, maybe we're not talking the same language. Obviously, we're different cultures. And she's like, yeah. She was, well, you know, I would like them to, you know, honor and respect the, their elders. And I'm like, okay, I'm with respecting your elders, but I cannot get behind the word of obedient.

The last thing I want my child to be is an obedient word. But it opened up this conversation of like, wow, there's two different worlds. And even though we're communicating in English, she probably speaks three languages. I speak maybe Spanish a little bit. And we get into this idea of definitions and, you know, what the hell is on? What is obedience? And no wonder why we can't even move down a path to success when we're a group of people that definitely prefer in-group preference.

and not that we hate each other, it's just that we have different ideas of what things should be. And, you know, it's amazing that things even work as well as they do. Like, it's, I don't know, it's kind of shocking at the back, but yeah, right?

It's crazy to think about. I think a Japanese culture is a really interesting case. Absolutely. So fascinating by Japanese culture. I think a lot of the obedience comes from, you know, traditionally the makeup of society there, but I think really after you look at that, society after World War II in particular.

Sure. And this really was a we have to all pull together and be extremely disciplined and be diligent. That's another. And cross every T and dot every I to rebuild our destroyed country and our destroyed civilization from the absolute rubble. And it's going to take all of us and there's no room for error and there's no room for fucking around. Like we have to all pull in the right direction and we got to be tightened up when we do it. And then you look at the country they've created from the ashes. It's the marvel of the world.

And that will get ingrained in you over the course of generations, like discipline, obedience, this is the way forward. Look at other countries that don't have the same discipline and obedience we do. And look at the basket cases that they find themselves in, you know, constant strife and poverty and hunger and this and that and the other. Because they don't have the discipline and obedience, but we do look at what we've been able to accomplish. So I think when you look at that, there's not a lot of room for nuance.

if you let go of the reins a little bit, say, well, we can just fall into chaos now. And this is where the fear comes back in it. We can't go back to that. Like, we were traumatized by that. We're never going back to that. So how do we keep what we have now? How do we keep our prosperous free discipline society

by being obedient and disciplined and buttoned up? This brings in, okay, so this brings up a whole quagmire of like, I was recently talking to some people about, like, generational trauma and how some of the things that you go through in your life you may respond to because something happened to your grandfather, your grandmother. On a side note that I think underscores this idea is that there was a, I can't quote the exact people that did the science project, people can look it up, but they did this project with worms where they would take the worms and they would shine a light on them

and then electrocute them. Shine a light on them and electrocute them. And they got to the point where they conditioned the worms where they all they had to do was shine the light on them and then they would clinch up. You know, it's sort of like the idea of a Pavlovian dog where you blow a whistle and they salivate. Okay.

If that's true and those patterns hold true genetically, that is a fucking boom. Oh, yeah. Right? Now you could say like, okay, well, maybe, maybe that from the Japanese culture comes this, idea of obedience from World War II. Or maybe it comes even further back that when they saw the emperor as a manifestation

of God. Absolutely. It flows all the way down. And then you start looking at, you look at the American culture where they're like, fuck obedience, man. I'm doing what the fuck I want to do. Right. You could do about it.

Yeah. All of a sudden you have a mixing pot of all these cultures coming together. No wonder there's like a disaster, right? Of course. How could it not be? I mean, this stuff is absolutely generational. And it gets, it gets passed down DNA also in the creed, you know? you have this country that was literally born on the idea of go fuck yourself i'm not doing it i mean

that was like our little founding credo was go fuck yourself no i'm not doing it and that's it and no other country has ever been formed on that before but we were that was our founding principle yes everything else was window dressing and it was great window dressing but it was window dressing like that's the core principle right and that will attract a certain kind of person from every corner of the world who's like, hell yeah. Yep. I'm all about that. And it doesn't matter if that person is from Greece or from China or from Nigeria or

from Argentina. It doesn't matter. They're going to come with that same credo of, I'm going to do me, I'm going to chase my dreams, my destiny, and I'll be damned if you or anyone else is going to stop me. And they teach that to their kids and then their kids and their kids. And that bleeds into everything. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, now we're back at the idea of Amera. And like you don't have to be, you know, if you live in South America, you still be American. If you live in China, you could still be American. Like, I think that that is what is needed to create a life worth living. And I think that this is a fundamental dichotomy because now we have this idea of the Twitter. I like, listen, goddamn it, you can't have that, all right? Because there's not fair and this is going to happen.

And even, I mean, I can see the dichotomy in my life where part of me is like, dude, you guys can go fuck off. I don't care. I'm going to do this. And you might not like it, but I'm going to do it anyway. But it is that same attitude that's like, oh, you're going to do that, George? It's going to shit on all these people over here. You know, it's kind of a weird sort of dichotomy in ourselves, right?

Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this a lot last year, actually. And I almost wrote like a whole book on this. You should do it, man. I would totally read it. I know. And it was all about like political movements in the backdrop of a greater spiritual truth in context. Okay, okay.

And how it manifests. So the core thesis was basically this, that, what messianic collectivist movements on earth try to do is to recreate our divine condition in earthly manifestations. So if you look at our divine condition as there really is no George and there really is no Jeff, we're all the exact same strands and fractals of energy. We're just manifesting differently. But fundamentally, we're all the same. We're all connected. We're all equal. There's no above or below. These don't exist. And these messianic movements on earth, they feel that energetically.

They know that that's the fundamental truth of who we really are and what we really are. And because they feel so afraid and disconnected from that here, cast off in this 3D reality, their way back home, at least in their own minds, is to recreate that condition of home right here in a human context. of so we're going to have we're going to have so all think about all the elements that make up home or perfectia in the book whatever we want to call it you know so think about the element of of sameness we're all the same so communism comes along say well we're going to impose that here to bring us home so we can experience home here because it's not right that you have five billion dollars and that guy sleeping on the street that's not how we really are so we have to forcibly create a system where that's how it is And then you look at, okay, safety. Here's another one, right? Back home, I'm always safe. I can't be harmed.

But I feel unsafe here. There's, you know, muggers in the street who can get me. There's a neighbor next door can rob me. There's an invading nation next door that can come in. So I'm going to create a fascist situation here, a fascist dictatorship to keep me safe. And therefore, if we have complete fascism, if we have troops on every single corner, guarding everything all the time, we will be safe. And therefore, we will be home.

And the same people now who are involved in, you know, when they say, you know, and particularly anti-racist activism, right? This idea of it's not enough to be not a racist, you must be an active anti-racist. And this comes from the same, that same impetus of there is no racism at home. There are no races at home. There's no concept of bigotry or discrimination. These are anathema to us. But therefore, we cannot allow that to exist here.

So we must create a situation where you have to. to be an active anti-racist. We have to stomp it out in every heart for me to feel safe and to feel home again. And here's where the problem with all these movements comes in. I believe that we have come here to experience the contrast of these divisions and of these things and of these apparent different manifestations interacting with each other to better understand each other through the contrast. Therefore, there can't be a human experience without poverty and wealth. There can't be a human experience without different races. There can't be a human experience without different genders. There can't be a human experience without different political systems and languages and ideologies.

This is not a bug. This is a feature. And in order to try to go home, because they're feeling incomplete, they're trying to recreate home here by eliminating all the features of the game and trying to eliminate the game itself. And this is why these systems and these processes and these parties and these governments, they always fail because the purpose of the game was to experience the contrast within the game and to try to transmute the contrast within the game, but try to make it better, but not eliminate it. It's not good to look at racism and say, that's okay, fine. Like, no, how do you become an anti-racist in your own life? How do you show people love and grace and harmony and magnanimity and support and shine a light for others to do the same,

but not how do you forcibly force everybody around to do it because you won't be able to and you'll make yourself crazy trying how do you try to make sure everybody has economic opportunity to not live on the street but you can't force everybody to not live on the street can't force everybody to have the same income and the more you try to force it to get home the further from home you actually become that's the great paradox the more you chase home the more home runs away from you and you end up further in this shit I love it that's such a great perspective to try to try to try and find a unique way to comprehend the real problems that exist in this form. That's a beautiful way to really dig into it and look at it. And it's such a way to bring about the idea of interdependence from codependence. You know what I mean by that? Yeah, they do very much. Yeah. And we're all in this game together.

We created this construct. And I think part of what these movements get wrong, and I know I'm going to shit on them a lot today. And I don't mean to. It's just more like I use them actually as a point of contrast in illustration more than anything is that there's this idea that like the game itself is wrong. And by saying the game itself is wrong, you stand in opposition not only to the game but to yourself. Yeah. You're a co-creator. So if you say this world sucks, you know, people have these bumper stickers, people suck.

Well, you're saying you suck. You are people. like what are the odds that everybody sucks but you what are the odds that like every other person out there sucks except for the person who has the people suck bumper sticker pretty slim i'm going to go on a limb and say if everybody sucks that person probably sucks too that i mean so and that's it's subconsciously what they're saying and guess what if you have a people suck bumper sticker then if somebody sees that and they're driving around you you need to merge that person's not going to let you in right like we'll screw you too that's it

And it's going to reinforce your belief that people suck. And you'll treat somebody nastily because of that. Who will treat you nastily right back? And you'll say, see, everybody around me sucks. Everybody sucks. I was right. On the topic of merging in cars, I've found a little trick that I use is you always merge in front of someone who just merged in front of the line. Because they feel guilt like they're like, let me in, let me in.

So they let somebody in then you put right in front of that person and then they'll let you in. But it's back to the mirror. You know what I mean? Like you're just finding yourself. And then when you merge, you let someone go in front of you. You do. And I always do. Somebody's like kind enough to let me in, which is really great.

I always give them like the hand wave. Yeah, totally. And then like, all right, that's cool. You know, the next guy's trying to get on like, I got you. Come on. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's such a. And then that person is going to let somebody else merge. Yeah. Simple as that. It's interesting to see the world play out in your actions. Because you can actually see kind of karma unfolding in front of you when you allow it to happen like that.

Man, it's like, it's that golden thread. It really, it's a real thing. And this is where the magic of life comes in if you allow it. Yeah, I agree. Allow it. Like, allow yourself to interact positively with one person today. Just give yourself the grace to do that. Allow yourself one good conversation.

Say it doesn't matter where I go today. I'm going to go to a coffee shop today. All right, great. Be a little extra nice to the. barista just a little bit you don't have to go over the top they're going to look at you weird yeah a little extra nice ask them how their day is going ask them how the family's doing maybe give them like an extra dollar tip yeah a little bit extra that's it if that's the one thing you do today do that and then do it again tomorrow and then do it again and then see how your life changes yeah watch your life

change and i'm not talking subtly watch your life dramatically change if you stack that up every single day and then eventually stack it up in every interaction you have. And even if some people you can't be nice to because some people just don't allow you to be nice to them. There are things they do like, I just can't. I can't with you today. Then just walk away. See what that does too.

Not feed it. Not feed the energy. Like there's people who send me these sales DMs and I want to rip their heads off. I do, man. It just drives me nuts. And every time I got to catch myself, like, you know what? You're harassing me. You don't deserve a kind message.

but I'm not going to give you a nasty one either. It's going to walk away. I'm not going to fuel it. I can say super biting and cutting and hilarious to cut you down aside for what you just wrote. It's not going to make me feel better. Maybe a little cathartic for a second, but it's going to bring bad juju into my own field. Yeah.

It's boomering. It just comes right back to you, right? Yeah. And if I want something from somebody, they're going to be snarky with me too. Yeah. So I'm not going to do it. Yeah.

Another good one I use, too, that like, this is super awesome. Everybody listening to this, you totally do this. Wherever you go, whether it's a barista or whether you're at a checkout counter or whether, whatever, when you see someone working, just say, hey, man, I just want to say, thanks for working today. And watch them go, watch them go from, like, checking stuff out and be like, what did you say? Yeah, right? That's amazing. Yeah, it's so awesome.

That's a pattern interrupt. It is. And it snaps people out of everything, and they will stop what they're doing and smile. It happens 99% of the time. And they're like, hey, thanks for coming in today. You see them change, man. You do. It's so awesome, man.

That's awesome. It is. It works well. It works really well. That's wild. Yeah. I can't thank you enough for having me on today, man. This has been awesome, seriously.

Yeah. It's been really cool. Yeah, I appreciate you, brother. Well, before I let you go, man, first off, thanks for spending so much time with me today. This is really awesome. Everyone should check out the book right here. And you've got, this is just the one I have in my hand, but you have a suite of books that sound pretty sweet to me.

And I think people got to learn a little bit about who you are and what your message is. But before I let you go, man, where can people find you? And what do you got coming up? Yeah. So I'm launching a brand new networking group around the country. It's called the Dreamers Cafe. And you can check us out, thedreamerscafe.com. And what we're going to be doing is offering a space for people in midlife who are ready for their second act,

who have made a decision that I'm not done yet to come together and have a place where others will greet them with love, brotherhood, magnanimity, support, and unconditional encouragement. You'll meet other people in the same place in life that you are who are not ready to mail it in just yet either. And you may not be getting that at home. You may not be getting that among your family or your friends or your circle or your coworkers, but you will get it here. That's a promise. Man, it sounds amazing. So when you go there, what can people expect to do? So we're going to have a local event in the D.C. area, July 27th. So if you're anywhere in Virginia, Maryland, D.C., east coast, you want to pop down for that.

Hit me up on LinkedIn, connect with me. I'll get you the invite. It's a free event. So there's no skin in the game, no requirement of anything like that. That's not what this is about. And we also have a 24-7 Discord community where you'll be able to connect with people who are having their own events in different parts of the country. We're going to come out, exchange information.

Just let us know, hey, you're in a place of love. And we got you. Simple as that. You still have a dream in you. You've got a breath in you. You've got a dream. You've got a place here to talk to people about that dream. Help them with theirs.

They'll help you with yours. Maybe make an introduction. Give an encouraging word. Place for you to air out your thoughts. Place where dreams are going to still come alive, no matter where you are in life. I love it, man. It sounds beautiful. It sounds beautiful.

So the Dreamers Cafe. You got this spot on LinkedIn. Is there? And where can people find your books? Is mostly Amazon or do you have another site where you know? Yeah. Honestly, you could just Google Jeff Wallen or Amazon. It'll take my author.

page it'll take you at all the stuff i put together so you can check it out there and uh if you want to want to connect with me you can just reach me directly on lincoln connect with me shoot me a dm love to chat and uh thanks for tuning in man this has been awesome ladies and gentlemen thank you so much today for everything check out his books check out the dreamers cafe hope you enjoyed the conversation hang on a a second jeff i'll talk to you but i'm going to hang up with the audience yeah ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for everything that's all we got for today aloha aloha