TrueLife - Gv Freeman - I Help Leaders Unstuck Themselves

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.gvfreeman.com/meet-gv-landing/Gv Freeman is a Transformational Guide who's coaching and sacred medicine practices represent a Venn diagram of entrepreneurship, mental health, and psychedelics. After 20 years as a serial entrepreneur, G started following his true dharma by helping successful leaders find the success, satisfaction, and inspiration they deeply crave. 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, furious 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 I hope everybody is having a beautiful day I heard a quote recently that I want to remind everybody of, mainly because there's a giant storm bearing down in the islands of Hawaii. There could be a power outage. I don't know. But the quote that I'm reminded of is, you're either getting ready to go in a storm,

you're in a storm, or you're coming out of a storm. And when the world is affecting you this way, who else could you possibly want to talk to except my next greatest guest, a great show for you today, the one and only G. G.V. Freeman is a walking Venn diagram of entrepreneurship, an author of, author, a leader, a transformational guide. Most people are familiar with the tagline. Unstuck yourself. This is the guy that created it. We're going to get into his new book, The Psychedelic Field Manual. We're going to get into transformative change and strategies to make yourself the best, most authentic version of yourself. GV. How are you doing today,

my friend? Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I don't know anybody else who I've see, I don't know if I've met anybody else who can be so excited to have a hurricane bearing down on them. So I appreciate your. energy. I appreciate you asking me to be on the show. And I will just start this with maybe one thing. Here's the one thing that I've learned about being in the storm. The worst part about being in the storm is the uncertainty of not knowing when it's going to end. And, you know, there's a, I think it comes from the Native American traditions, the difference between cows and buffaloes. cows run away from the storm.

So when the storm on a big thunderstorm on the prairie is bearing down on a herd of cows and buffalo, cows run away from the storm. And eventually, like the storm catches up to them. You can never outrun a storm. So really, cows are making themselves, making their lives even more difficult. Buffalo's on the other hand turn around and run into the storm. And knowing that when we run into the storm, the storm will pass us faster is the way that I live my life.

And while you're pretty much stuck in Hawaii waiting for the storm to approach, if there's any way to just lean into it, I would say that is the best path forward. I love it. Yeah, I think it was Robert Frost who said the best way is through. And I'm also reminded of Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump, like, you call this a storm. Please, if you can get a camera on the boat when you're doing that, like that is a great, like invite me to that podcast. I will definitely attend. We could have some taglines going underneath. Right now, he's really using his focusing

power on, he's really meditating here and getting into the reality that is him. But yeah, it's a great metaphor, though, because in our lives, it need not be a storm. It just need be that uncertainty. I'm sure that you talk to tons of people. That has to be a common denominator in the level of stress and the level of failure and the level of uncomfortableness. And the level of uncomfortableness that that really bears down on all of us as individuals, right? I think that uncertainty is one of our greatest enemies. I think if we talk about 100 forms of fear, which is sort of comes from the 12-step recovery tradition,

they talk a lot about our lives are controlled by 100 forms of fear. And most of our fear comes from uncertainty of the future, what's going to happen in the future. So yeah, I think that, and I would say the work that I do in psychedelic work, the work that I do in coaching, all of it, the time when fear comes up, most people are wondering, when is this going to be over? And the best advice I can give them is to just breathe and pray and also realize that if you can learn to be comfortable inside of the discomfort, the discomfort goes away really quickly. Is the antidote to uncertainty surrender? 100%. Yeah, the letting go, surrender, whatever you want to,

however you want to call it. The challenge is I don't think humans inherently know. We're not taught how to surrender, let go. We're not taught how to forgive. There's a lot of things. We're not taught how to love ourselves. There's a lot of bull stuff that happens in the spiritual community that we're told to do, but nobody ever really shows us how to do it.

And letting go and surrendering are two of those things. I think that it requires a lot of practice to just fall into the arms of the universe and say, well, let's see what happens next. Yeah. It's, you know, you can hear echoes of it in the mythology spoken about by Joseph Campbell. Or if you hearken back to the days of the Homeric verses or you like, you get into that stuff, You can see the hero's journey or Nietzsche's camel to the child and you can see this roadmap of surrender. But where I grew up like surrender is a weak word.

When I think of surrender, I think of some French army with like a white flag or I think of people marching back from a battle somewhere. And we're almost conditioned to think of surrender as something that you should never do. But it's it just has a negative connotation because that word can mean lots of different things. And I think the surrender we're talking about is understanding there's things you can't control. And the more you try to grasp something to control it, the more it slips away from you. Like think about a relationship, but one person's super controlling and the person can't wait to get away. You know, it's just a, it's a really interesting exercise in language and how we think and how we act on the world. What do you think?

So I'm going to say that in this game, in the game of waking up, in the game of self-understanding. So my definition of spirituality is simply knowledge of the self. It's in chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita. That's the easiest, simplest definition that I know. In the game of spirituality, surrender. It's one of the only games where surrender means to win. So surrendering in this game is winning.

And here I think is where the two halves fall. when you surrendering means I'm going to lose you're playing in a game of scarcity when surrendering means to win you're playing in a game of abundance so if I'm playing

if I'm on the football field and I surrender I have now lost like only one person can win but when I play in a game of abundance and surrender means the faster both of us can surrender the faster both of us win

Like we both get to receive all of the abundance as soon as we let go of the need to have it. That speaks volumes of the world we live in today. When I think about the world that, you know, the hundred kinds of fear that are surrounding you, be it on TV or social media or on the radio or in relationships, like all that fear. What's the, you think that there's that same relationship between fear and scarcity? Are those things hand in hand? I think that scarcity is a big cause of fear for sure. I think that we're, well, if we look at whether it's Advaita Vedanta or Buddhism,

the Buddha says there are two causes of suffering, craving and aversion. And if I want something that I don't have, I'm going to be unhappy. If I want to move away from something that has caused me pain in the past, I'm going to be unhappy. And both of those are fear responses that I don't, want to be in the present moment. Yeah. It's, do you think that maybe

the lack of, it seems that in the West, we have had a lack of spirituality. We have religion, but it seems like an empty container at times. And this is just my opinion. I can't, obviously, I can't speak for everybody. But it seems like in the West, we have, we have given up

spirituality for science. And they're both similar in a lot of ways. I think they're opposite sides of the same coin, but it seems at least in the West, we have gone without spirituality for so long that we're thirsting for. What do you think? I think that we have abdicated our personal responsibility

of self-knowledge, and we have abdicated that to government, we have abdicated that to religion, we have abdicated that to science. we are so desperate for a large percentage of our population is so desperate for someone to just tell them what to do so they'll be okay that when we do that when we accept other people's premise on how to live we abandon our need for self-knowledge so spirituality for me is incredibly experiential so to experience something i have to go experiment. I have to go run experiments in my life and say, wow, does this work? Does that work?

Does this not work? But the minute that I choose to run experiments, I'm also opening myself up to vulnerability. And vulnerability can oftentimes be painful. Let's give that the flip of the coin. Sometimes vulnerability, we get great joy. I think Brne Brown said fear and, excuse me, a joy and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin. So the more joy I want to experience, I have to take a step towards vulnerability first. Specifically related to spirituality, I think that religion

can be spiritual if it so chooses, but they are not the same thing. So religion is a group activity. Religion happens in a specific place. Religion happens with a leader. Religion happens with doctrine and dogma. Spirituality doesn't have any of those things.

Spirituality, it can be performed in a group, it is an individual activity. There is no leader in spirituality. There is no dogman or dockra in spirituality. You can be spiritual on the mountaintop, in the temple, in your bedroom. So there are ways that religion can be spiritual, but it doesn't have to be. I think people have to really choose to bring spirituality back into religion, which is part of one of the beautiful things about psychedelic churches.

I think that Christian churches in the West are going to get a run for their money as people start to realize where spirituality really exists and it's all inside. I love it. I have this idea that I've been working on and I'm going to throw it out to you and I want you to break it into a million pieces. So my idea is that you can never find spirituality. Spirituality is something that can only be developed in you. And it usually comes at the precipice of the worst tragedy of your life.

And I am not here to say what anybody's worst tragedy is. Maybe it is losing a pet. Maybe it's losing your son. Maybe it's losing a relationship. But whatever the greatest tragedy in your life is, that's where you can look down and begin to develop spirituality. I think it's something that develops inside of you versus finding it. What do you think? So my teachings and my teachers would say a couple of things.

So if I look down the Advaitavadanta route, the Buddhist route, or excuse me, the yogic route, we are already whole and complete. So spirituality, we are perfect human beings at our core. So in yoga, we would say there is the Atma, the Jiva Atman is a part of the Brahman, which is a part of truth, consciousness and bliss, it lives inside of us. We are given that as a birthright. And that pure truth,

consciousness and bliss is already inside of us. And then what happens is the world, layers shit upon shit upon shit. Like layer upon layer upon layer of stuff, get thrown on top of this pure being on the inside. So we say in yoga, there's the riddiam or the heart cave. It's in the center of our chest where our heart chakra is.

It's the size of a thumb. and that's where our true self, self with a capital S, exists. And now we have a rough childhood. Now we, like, I don't think anybody escapes puberty. So nobody gets through puberty without a little bit of trauma. Then we go into like dating and we go into, you know, sexuality and relationships. And we layer trauma upon trauma upon trauma. So it can be big T or little T trauma.

the spirituality still exists inside of us. But to get to that spirituality, I don't actually need anything. I need to let go of all of the layers of stuff that have separated me from my true self, from the authentic self. We have the true self or the authentic self is always there. And then over time, we have this adapted self that has been created to keep us safe. And I think that the finding of spirituality is simply a turning inward of consciousness and intentionally letting go of the stuff that we no longer need. So to your point, do we have to go back through and experience this really traumatic issue?

I think that that is a Western way of looking at healing. psychology says that there is no solution to a problem. Spirituality says there was no problem to begin with. So I think that we can, my teachers in Peru would say healing can absolutely be sweet and easy. We approach healing in these big gestalt moments of tears and breakdown, but it doesn't have to be like that if we don't want it to be. Yeah, that's well said.

Thanks for that. It's interesting to see spirit as a connection to your authentic self. It's a great, an awesome way for me to take a moment to think about that. You are already as spiritual as you need to be. You've just forgotten. This is the concept of Maya in yoga, this illusion that we are separate from God. We have forgotten that we are separate from the divine. That's what happens when we come into this incarnation. We just, we forgot. And every time we remember, Ram Dass used to say the best part about forgetting is that we get a remember. And every time we remember, we get to be a little more spiritual. Yeah. Would you say, it seems to me that we're operating on two models, or at least

from what I have read, and I am primarily educated in a Western world. It seems that we have like the ceramic model of the universe, like Jesus, the son of God who was a carpenter, he, you know, he breathe life into us. You've got to go out and make your way on the world. That's the ceramic model. And I'll think a lot of Christianity and a lot of the Western world is based on that. But then there's like the fully automatic model of the world where like, you know, you don't really need God because the world unfolds in front of you. And it just seems to me like we're operating on two different operating systems. And I'm curious to what you have to say about that. In my opinion, I don't think we come into this world. I think that the world grows people like an apple tree grows apples.

What model do you think we're working on here? I love that. Hold on. Let me think about that for a second. The world grows people like an apple tree grows apples. Okay. So I think this comes from the Bible. I can't remember where. But I think there's a quote similar in the Bible that says a good tree will always grow good fruit and a rotten tree will always grow rotten fruit. You can never get good fruit from a rotten tree or vice versa. So, first of all, I would ask like, what kind of world do you think that we're living in? Are we living in a good world or are we living in a rotten world? And what kind of apples are, is the world willing to grow?

I would say that you don't come into this world. out of it. And that's what I mean by the metaphor of the apple tree. And I, I don't, you know, it's interesting that the apple, every single seed in an apple grows a completely different apple tree. I mean, I don't know how that fits into it, but I would stay with that sign. Like, I don't think that there is rotten fruit or good fruit in the eye of the beholder, right? And you may take an apple and take it and I may take it and be like, I don't like the granny Smith. I like this one. So I don't think there's good or bad fruit. I think it's just a. matter of taste, maybe.

To direct, more directly, address your question outside of the tangent. I, my, my view again, comes from a more Eastern philosophy, from a Vedantic perspective. We are, there are three planes of reality that are operating simultaneously. And I think this is where a lot of people, including myself, had been confused for a very long time. I had studied with a Venanta teacher since 2016, which is non-dual philosophy. meaning that in some ways, I am God.

And then the Christian philosophy, or even a lot of the South American traditions who believe in good and evil, they believe that we are in some ways separate from God. Christianity believes that I am me, God is God. And when I die, I'll go up there and meet him. So those two different thought processes bring up two fundamental realities. So we have the absolute reality, which. Everything is God. This is where people that are like experienced like really high dose ego death DMT journeys, they go to this place of absolute bliss.

That is the absolute reality. In that reality, there is only one and it is God and it is love. Then we have this empirical reality that you and I are talking in right now. This is the waking state and this one has good and evil. So in the absolute reality, only good, only love. In this reality, the empirical reality, it has good and evil. And there is, in theory, God, but it was all created by this substratum of energy, which would be called the Brahman in a Hindu tradition.

So we do have this plane of reality that's operating at the same time. And then there's a third plane, sometimes referred to as the illusory reality, where when you're in a dream, I'll ask you this question, when you're in a dream and somebody's chasing after you with like a weapon, are you scared in your dream? Do you think that it's real in your dream? I would say yes. Yeah.

And then like maybe the dream gets so intense that you wake up. What's the first thing that you do when you wake up? I look back to make sure he's not chasing me with a weapon. And when he and when you realize that he's not there, you say, oh, thank God, it was only a dream. We negate everything that happened in the illusory reality when we come into this empirical reality. And I would tell you that we can do the same thing when we move from the empirical reality to the absolute reality. We can wake up from the dream that you and I are talking in right now.

And when we wake up, we will. look back at this reality and be like, oh, thank God, that was only a dream. You just really think that it's real right now. Do you think that sometimes in a heightened, like a really high dose psychedelic trip that that's what you're getting to experience is a sort of waking up from that dream? 100%. Yeah, that's when we drop the default mode network truly offline. That is, so the default mode network is where science is going to approach it from. Ego death is where the spiritual people are going to approach it from. But when we bring that element of our brain off, yeah, we are entering into absolute reality.

It's also hypothesized that every night when we go into deep sleep, we can't remember our dreams. We are not in a waking state. We merge back with divine consciousness. So we enter into absolute reality every single night. But when we come back through the dream state, we, we, we, We disregard the absolute state. We forget about it. And then when we come back into empirical, we disregard the dream state.

Man, it makes me feel a little bit better about my life sometimes to know that you're just reconnecting. Yeah. It's when people say like I can't meditate, I say, well, you're meditating every night. When people say, I want to be enlightened, I say you're enlightened every night. It's just a lot harder to be enlightened in the waking state than it is in the deep sleep state. you think that that's why so many people have found creativity or found a new sense of self or authenticity in the in the relationship with psychedelics is because they're finding a way to reconnect yes and i think that so many people are finding it in so many other ways like whether

you're in low state and you feel like you're connected to the divine or to sores or to Pachabama or whatever you want to call it when you are in deep meditation. My most profound, I've set with ayahuasca 30, 40 times. My most profound healing experience happened on day three of Apasana meditation. And there were no substances involved. It was just me and my breath. So I think there is huge opportunities for healing in lots of different ways. Psychedelics are not the answer.

They're just the rocket fuel. that helps propel us a little faster through the process. It's interesting that you say process, because it seems to me that one way to help, for me, one thing that's really helped me change my life is instead of seeing things like nouns, you know, a person, place, or a thing, instead of seeing that as a thing,

I begin to look at them as like a process, like I'm a process, or a book is a process, or a table as a process. And I've really found it to be really helpful in my life. Like it just, it keeps you in the idea that you are moving through something. I thought it'd be pretty grounding. What do you think about things as processes? I wouldn't call them processes as much as I would say that you are experiencing a subject-object relationship with the reality that you're living in.

Let's say I say something to you that makes you really angry. Now, you can, exactly. You can be the anger. You can let the anger like take over you. We get flooded, adrenaline, cortisol, all the things pop up. And when you, when you are the anger, you have no separation from the anger. So it is you. If you can take a breath and pause, take a step back, emotionally, mentally, take a step back,

use the witness consciousness and say, oh, wow, there's a. anger. There is anger. The minute that I can observe something means that it is not me. So in, in, in, Vanté, we would call it netty neti, not this, not that. Everything that I can observe in this world is not the true self. So when you are having an experience and you can observe it, it simply means that it's not you. And it can always bring, it's the fastest way to bring yourself back to the present moment is to look at everything as outside of you and you're always just coming back to the self. I love it. It brings up the idea of the subject-object relationship. And I was, I've been, there's a really cool book like, I'm just going to show everybody.

It's called metaphors, figures in the mind. It really just blows your mind. when it comes to the world of language. And in there, I was reading about the idea of, like, if we look at our alphabet, especially in the West, we have this phonetic alphabet where there is the subject-object relationship. And if we're using that language all the time, how can we not see the world in those terms? Like, we are the words we use to describe ourselves. And if we're constantly talking about the subject-object relationship, we're calcifying or atrifying that part of us that is bigger than that, right?

Like it's all in the language, it seems like sometimes. I 100% agree with that. And I would go so far as to apply it to our model of health and wellness in this world. That when we again, I said it earlier, the psychology believes that there is no solution to the problem. Spirituality believes there's no problem to begin with. When we can shift our perception, the problem disappears. This is what probably the biggest teachings that I have.

have learned from my teachers in Peru. They just look at things in a completely different way. And when we have been indoctrinated into language, into ways of thinking in this country, into maybe I'll say modern society, we just fall into the trap. We're a fish swimming around that doesn't know what water is because it's just always been there.

Yeah, I think it speaks volumes to sense ratios. And that's another thing that I think is fundamentally changing when you're in a heightened state of awareness, be through breath or psychedelics or a tragedy or pick your poison as far as heightened states of awareness. However, the ratio of your senses changes. And it's like gears, right? If one of them changes, that changes the whole thing.

I have never even thought through that. It makes sense, though, right? Like, just, yeah. Yeah. That would be why, yeah. I think, is it synesthesia? Is that when I can, when you can hear colors and sounds? Stuff like that.

I think that when the ratio of the senses change, we get a whole, we get so, such a different perspective on how we experience the world. And sometimes I think that that's enough to pop somebody out of their reality, whether it's breathwork or meditation or psychedelics, whatever you're using to move into an expanded state of consciousness, changing the ratio is really like shifting the brain in a way that says, wait a second, I don't understand this.

There must be something going on here that I don't understand. And sometimes that's enough to pop people out of their current reality. I had a long talk with chat GPT about this, about what would the world look like if we change one of, of the sense ratios, if we changed our vision sense ratio, to be a little bit less than our hearing. You know, and we had a, I should post it up, but it was fascinating because what it told me back

sounded so much like a psychedelic trip. And then at the end of it, it was just like a, like a, it was so beautiful. It was like, perhaps if we were to change our sense ratios, humankind would live in a completely different world. And I just started thinking like, that's what's happening right now? What if we are?

What if this process of waking up? What if this process of height, states of awareness is us as one body, like the human beings being one body, beginning to shift their sense ratios. That would be disturbance. It would be chaos. It would be beauty. It would be tragedy.

It would be all these things. It would be a fundamental shift in the way we operate and see and be in the world. I'm hoping it's true. And I guess what I would offer is, yes, I 100% agree with that. And I want to, like, include another sense in that. in that we have the sixth sense of intuition. And one of the things that I like to tell people is we don't transmit what we say. We transmit who we are.

And that who we are comes from a place of like energetic resonance. It's a frequency. And the slower people go, the more subtle people get, the calmer their nervous systems begin to react, they begin to sense a different kind of energy and a different frequency. And what if we all started to shift the energy that we're operating in the world? And we began to perceive that. We would know who to do business with without having to worry about price. We would say, huh, I just want to work with you.

And I know that you're not going to charge more than you should because I can sense a part of that in you. So. Yes. Yeah. 100%. I love it. I love it. I do think that I've experienced examples of that in my life where you just gravitate

towards someone. Like this person gets it. They get it. You know, like, why wouldn't that be something? Like, why wouldn't that be a form of communication that we already do? Like, right? Like, it makes sense. That's beautiful. It only doesn't because it's not part of our primary five senses. And it's also, like, it can be really unreliable or sometimes inaccessible. And in fairness, like, I've been on

this journey for about 15 years. And it's only been the last, really, since I set with Vipasana in 2020, that I started to develop a deeper, more subtle sense of awareness. And I can't count on it all the time. But it definitely. It definitely. shows me what I need to see a lot of the time. Would you say that subtle sense of awareness can also be heard in a voice? I think that the, hold on just a second. Yeah, take your time. I think that the energy with which we are speaking, it can come through the voice.

It can come through our actions. It can come through inaction. We can simply like, you know, if you've ever been in the presence of an enlightened being or just somebody that's incredibly grounded, they can just simply be sitting and they can lower the energy in the room. So I think that it is a, the vibration can be transmitted in all different ways. So yes, it can be transmitted through the voice. I don't think it's our hearing that receives that vibration. I think the, are my ear, my ear drum receives the voice. The energy is like, it's my nervous system.

It's my subtle sense, the, you know, one of the five coaches. Like it's coming in through a much more subtle avenue. Sometimes I, I love that. And it's really well said. I'm curious, though, that in a world that is becoming vastly more dominating, by the awesome technology we have today, like you and I getting to talk today, are we maybe, do you think it's,

do you think maybe that that sixth sense of intuition is atrifying because we no longer have the felt presence of the other? You know what I mean by that? We're not in the same room. And so that there's not real, while we're communicating beautifully, like we're still, there's still something lacking

because I can't reach over and slap your shoulder. I can't, like, be next to you. You know what I mean? Is that atrophical? in this world we're living in? I think that we're talking about a couple of different planes of reality again. I think that in this empirical reality,

being close to someone, especially when maybe you're not as sensitive to some of the energy realms, being closer to someone allows you to share their energy in a much more palpable way. On the other hand, my teachers do energetic work with me all the time from thousands of miles away.

People do pranic healing and rakey remotely. I can feel your energy through this, like am I feeling your energy through this little pain of this little window on my computer screen? Or am I just seeing the visual representation of your energy? And am I actually feeling it? Like could we shut this all off? And could we try and sense each other's energy? energy again. Some people probably could. I don't know if I can. But I honestly, right now,

I think that we are moving to a place where we're refinding, we're rediscovering some of this energy. I think that all the technology. And I've been in, I was in corporate for 25 years. I was in product sales and marketing. I was building software companies and growing them. So I love technology. and I think that it's only a matter of time before people begin to realize that it can be beneficial, but it's not really helping. And from a chat GPT standpoint or just AI in general, if I believe that everything is created by God and God is truth, consciousness and bliss, AI is just truth consciousness and bliss. So I'm not overly concerned with humans' ability to screw up the planet.

The planet is going to be just fine. Like the planet can't wait for us to get out of here. We might struggle in the final years. I don't think Mother Earth is going to have a problem with us leaving it all. Yeah, it reminds me of the old George Carlin line where he's like, the planet, are you kidding me? the planet just sees us as like a surface nuisance. He's like, the planet's fine.

The people are going away. And it's interesting to think about the hubris sometimes. Obviously, if you clear cut a forest, like it's a huge problem. But the planet's got all the time in the world. You know what I mean? We should be good stewards of it. Don't get me wrong, people. I love the planet.

I feel like I'm part of it. And I want to help plant beautiful gardens and produce fruit and be my own fruit of the planet. But, you know, G. We've been talking a lot about some awesome stuff, but maybe I'm often curious to to understand how people got to be where they are. Like, how did you find yourself on the path that you're on now? I had a friend a couple of years ago, ask me, did you ever think that you would be doing this? And every time I hear it, think of the question, it just makes me laugh.

I grew up in a town of 700 people in the middle of central Nebraska. We were like high school was surrounded by cows on one side and cornfield on the other. I went to a high school, middle school and high school, a little bit larger. And honestly, you talked about kind of a severe trauma incident. I got outed as a gay kid when I was 13 in a small Nebraska school in the mid-90s. And it was a very unpleasant experience for all sorts of ways that we won't go into. But what happened for me is I became a foreign exchange student. So I lived for 11 months in Belgium when I was 15 years old.

So I became very self-sufficient. I really realized that if nobody else was going to do it, then I should just do it for myself. So that's the way that I've lived a good portion of my life. And it suited me very well in 20 plus years in corporate America. Then the law decided, you know what? We don't think you should drink quite as much alcohol anymore. So for the second time in 2007, I got a 2006. I got a DUI.

And I ended up spending some time in jail. And the whole thing was really uncomfortable. But it was so uncomfortable that it woke me up. I spent, I'm now 15 years. sober in a 12-step recovery program. I found yoga and therapy in 2012. I did my yoga teacher training in 2013. That led me into shamanism, and I landed in Peru sitting with ayahuasca in 2015.

And that really opened up a whole new door of healing for me. So for the better part of 15 years now, I've been working on myself. At the same time, I was operating in this path of technology and the corporate world. And then COVID hit. And it blew up my tech startup that I was running. And I said, okay, well, this is the universe telling me it's time to like jump off the cliff. And I sent an email out to my entire email list. And I said, hey, I'm burning the boats.

I'm never going back to corporate. And today I'm in the business of helping people wake up. And most of the time in the coaching world, that's business leaders, folks who are oftentimes, say success addicts, people who have a financial and professional success, but they're really unhappy. I work with a lot of those people. And I work with other folks who I put in the suffering bucket, OCD, PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, all sorts of mental health challenges and trauma. And we started the Church of Universal Consciousness to help people do work with psilocybin.

using the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, practicing in a very spiritual, in a very spiritual way. And I bring a lot of teachings from the lineage that I study in not only in South America, but also from the east as well. The Swami that I study with is in Rishikesh. So how I got here from being a kid growing up in the middle of central Nebraska is who knows how it happened. But the more I just turn everything over to the end. universe and say, just show me what to do today, the happier I've become.

What a long, strange trip it's been. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You know, so this is something that I have, there's a, first off, thanks for sharing Nessor. It's awesome. And I love to hear stories like that because I think that people listening can find themselves in stories that are genuine.

You said something, though, that I don't hear very often. And that is someone moving from a sober program. and then moving into psychedelics, even though Bill Wilson, who started that, had talked about LSD, it seems to me that there's a stigma sometimes, especially with alcoholics, that like, hey, you could never do anything again,

and psychedelics falls into that camp. What say you about that relationship? That's a, it is complicated. Yeah, it is. It's taken a number of years. Okay. I would have never gotten sober without 12-step recovery. I,

I 100% believe in that program. And even somebody who had some pretty strong prejudices against God and religion, I found spirituality in that program because it truly is a program of spirituality and of self-knowledge. And today, it depends on who you talk to, whether or not I am sober. So I might say I'm sober from one person might say well you're sober from alcohol another person might say you're not sober I would also say that the one of the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous is the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking I have not taken a drink of alcohol since November 12th of 2007 so I am fully qualified to be an active member of that program.

The variability of sobriety is very interesting to me. Psychedelics somehow are very healing for me. I use them in a ceremonial healing fashion. And that is somehow looked negatively upon. Now, there's a lot of people in 12-step recovery programs who are addicted to sugar, who are addicted to caffeine, who are taking, you know, benzos that are prescribed from their doctor. And at one point in time, I was having trouble sleeping. And it was okay for me to go to my doctor and get a half milligram of Xanax to sleep.

It was not okay for me to go to a dispensary and get a two milligram gummy of THC. Even though they could have done the exact same thing, the fact that one was prescribed and one wasn't is somehow some of the dogma that I think the 12 step programs are coming to reckoning with. I think that a lot of the medical research that's coming out right now, I have more people coming to me from 12-step recovery all the time who have been suffering in a lot of times in silence with severe depression. A very dear friend of mine has just started realizing how much trauma he experienced through the process of detoxing. the really difficult process of going into a hospital and detoxing from heroin and being left

alone to sweat and vomit and be miserable and to have delusions and all of these things. It creates the detox healing process creates new trauma. And I think that more and more people in these programs are starting to realize that there's, when used to appropriately, they can be very advantageous to the point where even in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson talks about the Belladonna treatment. Beladonna is a hallucinogen. It's literally in the big book. But if you get into an argument or let's call it a discussion with somebody in the program,

I would just encourage you to just keep walking because there's some very firmly held beliefs and it's not my it's not my job to try and change anybody's opinion and I feel a heck of a lot healthier and happier today as the result of what I've done with psychedelics. So that's a really long answer, but it's complicated. Yeah, it is. But I think it speaks volumes of the growth that we're doing as a society. And what I mean by the growth is it seems that we're beginning to have a more mature relationship with the substances.

And I'll give you not only in the example. example that you shared about, yeah, I went into this 12-step recovery, and now I'm using this particular plant medicine over here, or this substance, or this psychedelic, or this entheogen, and it's helping me do these things. Like, that's a mature relationship with a substance, it seems to me. Also, in conjunction with that, we're seeing people move away from, like, White Widow or, you know, the names of, like, of marijuana, and they're moving into this particular strain has X amount of terps. It has X amount of this. The same thing with psilocybin. It's no longer the famous strain made by Dominoosia called Tidal Wave. Well, even though that's a beautiful

strain, if we should probably check it out. And Dominozio by chance. That guy is amazing. But it's more about the contents that's in there. It's more about what's in there. And then that gives us a true understanding of how it can affect us. But I'm just using as an example of maybe our relationship with the things we're using is maturing. What do you think? I'm going to go back. the language. You pulled up language before. And I think that that's one of the fastest ways that when we can begin developing a different relationship with these substances. So instead of calling it weed, we say cannabis.

Instead of calling it acid, we call it LSD. Instead of calling it tripping, we call it a journey. there are all of these subtle ways that we can begin to show intentionality and show a relationship with these substances that are different than the old relationship that we may have had with the substances because when I was getting drunk and high, I had a relationship with LSD when, excuse me, with acid. Right. As I have gotten sober and started doing my own work, I have a very, very different relationship with LSD and with the teachers to come along with that. So I do think that we have to become more mature in our languaging around all of this stuff. And not that using tripping is a bad word,

but for people in the recovery space, I found it to be very helpful to offer them another set of language that can help them differentiate. some of their behavior. Yeah, I think it speaks volumes to not only our relationship with the substances, but now we're starting to talk about the same language we use in our conversations is the same inner dialogue we have, right? And that can be an incredible, that can be something that propels you at the next level or that could be a negative feedback loop.

It's like you're staying right down here, right? That is absolutely right. Whatever we are, so our thoughts get spoken, our spoken word gets acted upon. So every deeper layer, we are just adding more and more energy. And when we act upon something, we're solidifying that in our mind even more. You know, there's a saying in 12 step recovery that you cannot think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking. So our actions really affect our neural pathways.

And the fastest way to develop a new neural pathway is to develop a new habit. And especially if it's healthy, then we're we're making good progress. We can also develop some really bad habits. I have, you know, I think it's great that we are eliminating a whole bunch of legislation and laws around cannabis. So I think that they are paving the way in a lot of ways for opening up the doors to psychedelics. I also think that whether it is cannabis or whether it's psychedelics, I see people, I call them the experiential journeyers. They have one foot in the recreational side. they have one foot in the healing side.

And depending on which day, or depending on which set and setting and experience or who they're around, they decide, well, today I'm going to be a little more recreational or today I'm going to be a little more healing. And I think that for some people, that can be a big challenge. And we can find a lot of people who are saying,

oh, I'm using sacred medicine to do my work and to do my healing. And really what they're doing is going to, a music festival and taking two and a half grams of mushrooms and having a really good time. And not that having a really good time is not healing. And I'm not judging people for using substances recreationally. I just think that it requires some nuance and some, it's where psychedelic bypassing and it's where our shadow work comes into to play. And I think we need to get real honest about what we're using medicine for and the change

that happens after the fact. If you're going to use medicine intentionally, then there should be a desire and an action for change after the fact. Integration and activation, I think are required for you to be able to use psychedelics or any other substance like that intentionally. If you're just using it and then blowing about the experience and going to the next one, I think it's probably closer to recreation. Would you put an age on that? Because it seems to me so many of us began our relationship with psychedelics when we're young in the recreational world and there's tons of like I'm not going to a laser show for the first time and seeing like laser Floyd I'm like whoa man with my friend and like there was definitely some therapeutic value to that in that I felt you know I felt what an 18 year old kid would

feel on three grams of mushrooms at a laser show it was phenomenal and I was with a friend and it was cool and we bonded and talked about all kinds of silly beautiful things but it seems as we get older now we have this now we have a shadow to do shadow work with now we're understanding of the mistakes we've made so maybe there could be like a right of passage or maybe that there should be something that marks the relationship with the medicine as we go through life first place i think of right now is karl young's uh i think it's four stages of development four stages of life and the third stage is called individuation okay and ramdos would have said we have to become somebody before we can become nobody or that's

And I think even Young said that individualation was a privileged stage of life. Not everybody gets to go through individuation, but it is really a turning inward. It's learning about the self. And it is letting go of the belief that we have to be like we were told to be. So letting go of our parents' structures, letting go of society structures, letting go of the structures of the structures of the workplace. and becoming more in touch with who we are as a true individual. So I don't think it's about age, although there is, I can't remember,

it's like Saturn return or something that happens when you're 28. I think it's 28. And again, I'm not an astrology guy, but something around the 28 to 32 year old range is when people usually start to shift into this. you'll find that most of those people are finding therapy, they're finding psychedelics,

they're doing more consciousness exploration. I personally, my whole 30s and now into my 40s have been about self-awareness work. I could have never done this when I was in my, especially in my drinking days, but even in my 20s, I don't think I would have had the maturity to do that.

So I don't like to bucket it by age. And I do think that, like what, you said. Actually, there's a, the article, the guy's name was John Hall that went to a, a concert, went to a jam band concert in Colorado and he was paralyzed and he took a bunch of mushrooms and the next day he was not paralyzed anymore. And something about the mushrooms at this jam band concert, string cheese band or something, I think was the name of the band. But he, but he became unparalyzed.

taking mushrooms in a very recreational fashion at some concert. So I think we can have eye-opening, life-changing experiences that were intended for recreation. For me, I think it's a little bit about frequency. And yeah, maybe I'll just, maybe I'll pause with frequency before I get myself into trouble or piss too many people off.

Yeah, I love it. We should talk about that frequency. One of my favorite books is The Island by Aldous Huxley. And in that book, I'm reminded of a scene where a young child at the age of 11 is with a mentor. And they climb like this, they climb this rock face to a church. And they go up under the church and that's the first time the child is introduced to the Mokshah medicine with his mentor. And it's a spiritual journey. It's like this right of passage.

And I'm not advocating that kids that young do that. I'm just talking about the book. But it seems like a beautiful moment where there's a right of passage for a child. to understand that they are more than a walk from the hospital to the graveyard. And you have friends in different parts of the world that practice different ceremonies and rites of passage. And I'm wondering, what is your take on rights of passage for people coming of age? And do you think there's a lack of rights of passage primarily in the West?

Yes, 100% that we have, I think, rights of passage were built into maybe ever, every indigenous culture. I am not a historian, so I wouldn't know. I don't focus a lot on that level of depth of history, but I can tell you that whether you're in a lineage, whether you're studying with a teacher, whether you're just becoming a man in an indigenous culture, there is absolutely a rite of passage.

And with that, I think is a shedding of a younger self and the responsibility of becoming a more mature person that is now the keeper of knowledge is the keeper of responsibility. And we have 100% lost that. Like the closest thing that we get to in the West is prom, which is, you know,

17-year-old going to a dance and losing their virginity on prom night doesn't seem like a very healthy right of passage for us. And I think that we could go a long, long way to building that back in. Also, it's really hard because now if I build in a right of passage into somehow build it into my work with clients, now I have to be really careful about cultural appropriation or taking something that's not mine. And it's a hard walk. That's a, I think that my path in life, the work that I'm doing today is standing on the center of a

bridge and trying to bring people from the scientific community this way and people from the spiritual sacred community this way and finding a way to the best of our ability to work together because I think that there's so much that we can learn from each other if we just open up our hearts and our minds a little bit. Yeah, that's really well said. And not only am I glad you're doing it, I think you're doing a good job of it. And it always comes back to language. But, you know, in the book I was reading about metaphors, they say that how is it possible to get radically new knowledge out of anything? And they say that the foundation of new knowledge is based on knowledge of the old. My grandpa used to say, if you want a new idea, read a really old book.

And it seems to me that both science and spirituality are on the same operating system of language. and they're constantly using metaphors to say, oh, well, this is like that, or this is the thisness and that, or the thatness and thisness. But it's an interesting idea you use of standing on a bridge and trying to bring the two together. Like what do you think is possible if those two things do come together? I'm going to first address this idea of knowledge because I think that knowledge, most knowledge has a half-life.

Oh. So if we look at physics, for instance, what we knew about physics 20 years ago is now sort of obsolete knowledge. And I'm to understand, I don't know all of this for sure, but I'm to understand that there are half, there are known half lives of knowledge within almost all of the fields of study. So if we say that physics has a half-life of knowledge of 20 years, 20 years from now, all the things that we thought that we knew about physics are gone and we're learning new things.

The traditions that I study, and I make it a point to do this, the traditions that I study don't really have a half-life for their knowledge. Advaita Vedanta has been around for 3,000 to 4,000 years. Yoga, 4,000 years. Buddhism, thousands of. of years. Same way in the shamanic traditions and the lineage that I study in in Peru, thousands of years. The knowledge is still the same. It's incredibly, usually it's a very simple knowledge. So that's how I skirt around this idea of how I use knowledge. Now, to answer your

question, I'll give you a really specific example of how building the bridge has worked for me. I met a neurobiologist at a leading university who is working on a psilocybin study. And I was introduced to him and his team. And I come from a very sacred tradition. And I walked into the room and we're sitting at this conference table. And I just kind of like flippantly said like, man, I sort of think that you're the devil. Like you are squeezing all the spirituality out of psychedelics.

And I so believe in the spirituality and the healing potential of psychedelics that don't require science. Now, that was a couple of years ago. Today, based on some of his research, I know that there are higher levels of neuroplasticity in the brain for like five to seven days. if we're talking about psilocybin and increased levels of neuroplasticity for around maybe 90 days, long tail. When I work with clients, I make a really strong attempt to do deep integration work with them for five to seven days because that is the highest area of neuroplasticity. Now, my integration work comes from a very spiritual place. I'm not using science to do integration.

I just am using science to inform how long I integrate that process. So I think that we can come together and have our own truth and use our own rubric, but we can use other people's information and get much better and provide more positive outcomes if we listen to each other. Yeah. I love it. It brings up this idea of integration because it seems to me that it's a term that's thrown around quite a bit.

And I love the idea of it being over a large portion of time versus maybe an hour after a psychedelic trip or the day after for two hours or something like that. But it seems like a slippery slope on some level because how much priming is going on in a lot of these psychedelic things? It seems it could be a problem for someone doing the integration work. to be putting ideas in other people's heads. What are some of the techniques you use to stay away from that? And what's your take on integration being thrown around so much?

Well, I think there are as many integration coaches as there are microdosing coaches. And I think that that says a lot about the number of people who are really interested in getting on board the psychedelic train. those are the two lowest barriers of entry. So I think there's a lot of discussion about integration, and I think that it should happen. Daniel Schenkin from Tam Integration, I think he was on my podcast, and he said the best,

I can't remember, I'm going to butcher his quote, but an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of integration, I think is something like that. So the more preparation that we can do, the easier it is to integrate the experience. Now, here's my approach on the whole thing, is integration is the process of understanding what happened in my expanded state of consciousness and how it relates to my current 3D reality.

So how do I bring back these sometimes ineffable experience? experiences, how can I bring them back into my current state and understand how they affect or inform each other. I oftentimes think that the psychedelic experience rarely solves any problems. The psychedelic experience only gives us awareness and the problems are to be solved during integration, during our life. We have to come back to this 3D plane of reality and integrate our experience, or rather, I'm going to say, activate our experience. So if integration, is understanding what happened, activating is actually taking that knowledge and that understanding

and changing our behavior, changing our thoughts and behavior in this world to improve the quality of our lives. And if I improve the quality of my life, I'm going to improve the quality of lives around me as well. Yeah. It's such a unique time to be alive because you can see the explosion happening.

And there's so many people that are so interested. And there's so many people that have, have had the lived experience of change and they want to help other people do that. You were recently at the psychedelic conference. Did you see, like maybe you can explain some of the things that you saw there, some of the things that you really enjoyed and some of the things that you were given you pause. Were there both of those things there?

I went with, I went to the conference with this expectation that I was going to go learn a bunch. And I don't want to take away from the incredible learning opportunities. On the other hand, there was a lot of sessions that were 30 minutes long. And I don't know if I could tell you what I'm going to talk about, let alone actually teach you anything in 30 minutes. Right. So there was a part of me that really appreciated within the first day, like, oh, this is

a little less about me learning a whole bunch. And one, it was a great big PR event. And I think it was a fantastic PR event for the efficacy of psychedelics. So I think that in that respect, it was awesome. And I think that to MAPS credit, they got so many people involved and they involved so many different kind of tracks of knowledge and thought. And they had so many people show up. I think that they, I mean, Rick Doblin in the last closing seminar said that they lost money.

Maps lost money. So I think that in some respects, it was. a big PR event, but it worked. What I loved about the experience for me was the ability to connect with a bunch of people. I, since I started posting about psychedelics on LinkedIn, LinkedIn has absolutely pigeonholed me. So I don't get business information anymore. I don't get marketing advice. I don't get anybody talking to me about sales funnels or sales processes anymore. Everything is about psychedelics and mental health. So I had connected with a, ton of people on LinkedIn.

And it was amazing to be able to show up and not feel alone. Because as a as a facilitator who does work in the United States and also in South America and Central America, it can be a lonely thing, like helping people through some of their darkest moments without other guides, without other facilitators to surround you. and for you to be able to openly share some of the challenges, it's a lonely experience. And that was the best part of the conference for me. I met so many people that I had connected with online and new people

that I felt like it was not quite so lonely anymore. Yeah, that's beautiful. I didn't get to go and I saw so many cool things about it. And I got to talk to so many people that have been there and experienced it. And it seemed that there was a wealth of knowledge there. There was a lot of people who are publishing papers that got to present those papers in front of an audience. They may never have before.

There was recognition for that. And I think that's a big part of the world of entheogens and psychedelics is all these young people that are working in psychedelics now. Like universities around the world and they have the ability and the freedom to investigate things that may have been taboo five years ago. go. It's really fascinating to think about. I love that so many people got an opportunity to share so much wisdom and knowledge. And I was able to pick up a lot of that stuff. I found that a lot of the information was either highly scientific or medicalized. Also, maybe more for the, maybe the newcomer or the, or the kind of entry level.

There's a lot of like 101 content. As a practitioner, it's really hard. That's why we started the psychedelic IQ podcast was to try and provide grounded and practical wisdom for practitioners. It's really hard to share information about how people are doing their work

and to help each other elevate all of our work. Because the more we work together, the more people were going to help. And I think that it was great and it was also a lot of hype. And the psychedelic landscape in and of itself has so much hype in it right now. And we're going to have a lot of facilitators coming out of traditional Western methodologies, educations. Oh, I just went and took this $10,000 psychedelic facilitation course. Let's go do this now. I haven't taken any psychedelics, but I'm ready to guide because somebody gave me a certificate. And what's going to happen is we're going to have a lot of people that come out of those training

programs. They will do it for a while, maybe. And at then some point, they will just be like, yeah, that wasn't really my thing. So if I could say one thing to any of, considering becoming a guide out there is if you my teacher says to me if you think you should be guiding you shouldn't be that's pretty good advice if the if your teacher is asking you if the community that you're serving in is asking you if you are being called to this work then listen to the call if it is an ego play stay away because it's teaching dangerous. Yeah.

You know, there's something that comes up sometimes when we look at the integration process or we look at the language in the spiritual or psychedelic experience. And a lot of people explain it in different ways. And it could be difficult, I think, for someone who's trained in the Western world to sit with somebody who talks about an entity spiritually raised. them or an entity that goes into their body. And I'm not sure, like, you don't hear a lot of those stories, but I hear a ton of them, but it seems to me that if you, on the surface, on the idea of psychedelics helping PTSD,

like you don't ever hear those kind of stories. Do you think that those are potentially being pushed to the side? And if so, that's kind of a problem, right? Yeah. Yes, yes, it is, it is a problem. and I do think that it is happening. Yeah. And I think that there's a couple of things that often get left.

Some of the negative outcomes get left out of scientific studies. This has been happening since Timothy Leary in the prison experiment that they ran, I think, in the 60s of the 70s. It must have been the 60s. That there was data left out of that. In fact, Rick Doblin was the one who went back and did a whole bunch of research and went back and found all of the inmates that had done that prison study. realize that there was data that was really significantly skewed. So I think that scientists today are

sometimes using data to their benefit, not only to help, let's say, reinforce and support the Renaissance. I also think that they're probably producing really good data so they can get additional grant funds for their next study. I think that we're now finally starting to get, I'm going to use the term unhealthy brains. I think it's people, people tend to, I think this, the studies say, we're doing a research study on healthy brains. So no bipolar, no schizophrenia, things like that. We're starting to do more research on brains with, with other symptomology. And I think that that is fantastic. We've strayed, straight away from that for a long time. Yeah. Because if we introduce somebody with bipolar or schizophrenia into a scientific study, that could

potentially skew or or give us negative outcomes. And I don't think anybody wanted negative outcomes. That's why we've been working with old people and veterans. Who can argue with old people and veterans? That's where the research started. And I think it's broadening now, which is fantastic. Yeah. Sometimes I don't disagree that there's a lot of people that have a lot of trauma that needs to be healed. But when we look at the rhetoric that's coming out of all the headlines, this mental illness, epidemic. You know, sometimes I worry that the world of psychedelics is being used as a, as a hammer to talk about how fragile we are. You know, maybe psychedelics are something that could be a tool for optimization because those two words can almost be synonymous. Someone who is working on

their mental health is sort of becoming optimized. But you have that negative connotation with, with, you know, like just the mental illness versus optimization. Do you think that we're leaning too hard on fragility or maybe that the mental illness is causing us to have the epidemic of fragility? That's a really good question. I think that I don't know if fragility is the word that I would use because I think that some, I have experienced trauma. Sure. And very few to any person in my life would call me fragile. So my trauma manifested in perfectionism, in overachievement, in making sure that I wasn't going to disappoint anybody in codependence.

So my specific brand of healing has been becoming in some ways more fragile, becoming softer and more vulnerable. Right. I do think that we are in a really challenging state in the world right now, even if we just focus on the United States, the amount of little T trauma. So I lump neglect into little T trauma. And this is for kids that grew up in the 90s, latchkey kids whose parents both worked a job.

And we got up in the morning and we made ourselves breakfast and we got to school. And we came home and did our homework. and I think that there was a lot of emotional connection that our generation needed from biological caregivers that was never offered. And sometimes the only way we can get that is, well, we have to get it from somebody who already has it. And sometimes the thing that already has it can be a psychedelic. We can tap into a divine healer that gives us the felt sense of being loved in a way that we were never loved when we were a kid.

So I don't think that's always fragility. But I do think that we have a big problem to solve. I do not think that we should rely on psychedelics to solve it. Yeah. I love the way you said that. I do think there's a huge problem with neglect. I think maybe it's a societal way of life that was we found ourselves in. It's not so much, it doesn't seem like it's fair to blame your parents or your grandparents

or even the generational trauma. It just seems that maybe something we're working. But that does kind of lead into the idea of generational trauma. What's your take on that? Yeah, it absolutely is. I think it is generational little T trauma, neglect. has been handed down from generation to generation if I think my mom did the best that she could, but we can only love someone to the depth that we have been loved or that we feel love.

So if my mom was only loved a certain amount, then she can only love me a certain amount. And therefore, I can only love the next generation a certain amount. So if we follow that all the way back up, there was there was a disconnection and this i think where the indigenous wisdom comes into play and where their their true focus on love and connection rather than solving PTSD or rather than looking at it through a disease model the indigenous practices are really like love and forgiveness and compassion and all of these trust like those are four words that my team teachers say to me every single call that I get on.

You know, my teacher Roberto says, brother, just enjoy. Like whatever, whatever you're doing today, just enjoy. And living a life that we actually enjoy rather than striving for perfection or achievement is so opposite of the model that we have grown up in. And it's something that I'm still trying to understand and transition into today. Yeah, that's really well said. It, it, sometimes it makes me think of, and maybe it's just, maybe it's, it's, I think this is happening on a level, but I can only say that from my point of consciousness is that being aware of generational trauma is a pretty significant fact in changing what is possible for you later. Just the fact that you're aware, like, hey, it's not me. It's all of me forever.

You know what I mean? Like it really kind of puts things in perspective a little bit. And it makes that giant mountain more of a molehill or more of a foothill made. A lot of the work that I do with entrepreneurs, they come in, maybe first generation, second generation, they come in and talk about a legacy that they want to create. They want to build some business. They want to hand it off to their kids. Or maybe their parents have handed them off a business or generational wealth.

and I think somebody said to me, the only thing, the only person that's going to remember that you worked 60 or 80 hours a week are your kids. And if we as entrepreneurs began looking at legacy, not by how much money or business or net worth

we hand down to the future generation, but how we take care, emotionally take care of the next generation. Changing the definition of legacy could radically change the mental health of the world. When we realize that everything that we've got was handed down to us, and if we take responsibility for that, then we now have responsibility not to hand that stuff down to the next. next generation. So that's one of the things that I work on.

I work on legacy planning with my entrepreneurs in a lot different way than a financial advisor is going to. That's beautiful. I'm going to make sure I clip this part because I think that's such an important message for people to begin to understand. I was recently having a conversation with Melanie Waterfall and she had spent a lot of time as a death dula. And she had said something to the effect of, you know, as you're sitting there,

holding someone's hand and their dying breath, you could sometimes see their unrealized dreams. She said the dead aren't talking about buying a Tesla or going to Costco. They're talking about, I should have been a better father. Or should have spent more time with my kids. I should have been a better mom. All the window dressings fall away at that moment. And while none of us may know what will happen to us in those moments,

we can take those words of those people, their last words or last breath's dying and see that as the infinite wisdom that it is and try to apply it to our lives. Like, yeah, what are you doing? Do you, you know, you read a biography about someone and they say the same thing as like, you know, at the end of their life, it doesn't matter what they built.

It doesn't matter how much money they had. It doesn't matter how many cars they had. Their kid doesn't come in to see them. That's all that matters. And like I get goosebumps when I think about it. And I hope that people can take what you've said about legacy and create their own legacy of a better world in the eyes of their kids or the next generation or make the world a little bit better.

And it's probably not going to be through money. As important as money is and as important as lifestyle is and our personal achievements and our goals, those are beautiful things and we should work on them. But maybe there's more to it. And I hope people will resonate with what you said. It's beautiful, man. Thank you for that. You're very welcome.

I, yeah, money is important. And I don't, you know, I spend a lot of time working with folks in the spiritual world, both worlds. I work with folks in the spiritual world changing their relationship with money to say money is not evil. And I work with folks in the entrepreneurial, more capitalistic world saying, yeah, money is important to do certain things, but it's not as important as you think it is. Again, it's bringing people from both sides of the bridge over here into the center. In the Eastern traditions, there are portions of one's life where in the Hindu tradition,

there's a portion of your life where you are intentionally going out and making as much money as you possibly can for the intent of giving it to the ashram, paying for the priests and the sados and the swamis to live and eat in the ashram. So I never say that money isn't important. I think a friend of mine said, money can't buy happiness, but it sure is hell buys a loaf of bread. And I think it's important that we honor the energetic component of money. I also think that if we are using it for the purposes of freedom, we will only experience

external freedom with money. I stitch together a whole bunch of experiences. So half life of happiness rather than the half life of knowledge. I graduate high school. I get a little bit of happy. And then I, oh, I get accepted into college and I get a little bit of happy. And then as I get older, like, oh, I buy a house. And now I'm happy for a little while.

And as that begins to tail off, then I got to buy a new car. And then I got to go on vacation. And then I got to have a kid. And it's this roller coaster of stitching together discrete moments of happiness or external freedom that make my brain think that it's free. But the minute that you run out a thread, the minute that you stop stitching together, this quilt of external freedom, you become really. unfree. You become really unhappy. If we shift from a model of external freedom to internal freedom, internal freedom lasts forever. Internal freedom is spirituality. Internal freedom is experiential. Once you wake up one little part of yourself, once you realize that there's a little part of you

that is God, you will never forget it. And it didn't cost you a dime. Yeah. And once you remember it, your body remembers that sensation. You will never forget that moment. And that's again, whether we're talking about prepossina meditation, whether we're talking about psychedelics, these experiences have an opportunity to teach us something from within that is irreplaceable. And we never have to ask for it again because it's always ours. And actually, it's always been there. It's just helping us. remember. Yeah, that's, that's beautiful. It speaks back to the beginning of the conversation when you talked about our spiritual nature and the one idea that we're born perfect and all these things are layered on top of us. And money is definitely one of those. We're conditioned at a really early age to see this as a connection to happiness. Some people saw their parents get divorced. I think the majority of divorces are because of money. And if, if you don't think it affects you, then walk away from your job and see how you feel. So much of our identity is tied up in what we do.

And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's true. But we, we believe it. If you've been somewhere for 26 years or 25 years, you almost become that pattern of this thing that worked at this place. And you're, you're so far away from yourself, man. It's, it's a, yeah, we've been suckling at the teet of, yeah, we've been suckling at the teet of capitalism since we were born, at least for for most of us in this country and then the Western world. Yeah. And again, it to what you said again, and I'm going to bring it back to the fish in the water.

Sure. Like when, when a new fish gets introduced into your fish bowl and swims up to you and says, hey, water's warm today, don't you think? And the first fish says water, what's water? That's, that is the model of validation that we have always. lived with. So if we've only lived with one model of validation, it is so hard to break out of that and appreciate a new model because there is a great deal of safety and importance around that model of validation, having money, having things and using things to feel good and letting that stuff

go. In fact, I work with my clients and say, I'm never going to take anything away from you. All we have to do start to turn towards you when you begin to learn about yourself. If I am God and God is inside of me, if I shift my consciousness from external to internal, the more I know myself, the more I know God, the more I know love. And the more I know all of those things, the less I need externally. So at some point, I don't have to have anything taken away from me. I simply, it will fade away. Like my relationship with alcohol, my relationship with substances, my relationship with food have dramatically changed, not because I tried to change them, but because the desire for them was taken away. When I realized that I didn't need them anymore because the things that they were giving me were actually coming from myself from inside, I just let them go. Yeah.

So this speaks to this idea of transformation. Like let's say that somebody has begun this. understanding and has begun to experience the unfolding nature of this new world around them, all of a sudden, their relationships begin to change. And people they love are still have both feet in the, I don't know what water is camp. Their whole life is in that camp. But this one person is like, hey, it's different. Can you see it?

Like, how does someone navigate that space? That is a, I think a trick question. The speed at which someone pops out of that world determines the speed at which they navigate, I think. This is the difference. There's a subtle difference between spiritual emergence and spiritual emergency. And you can have a profound experience in meditation or breathwork that move you into the spiritual emergency category. or you can begin to slowly develop a spiritual emergence and you sort of code switch one day depending on the person that you're with you sort of have to like for me for for many years I acted

even though I had come out as a gay man at 19 until I was 25 probably I was still operating in the corporate world as a straight man. And I walked into work and I acted like a straight guy. And then I would go to my personal life and I acted like a gay guy. Now, there wasn't a significant difference between those two. But I think that sometimes when we're making the transition in the spiritual world, we sort of have to do that, especially when we're, when we live a spiritual life and then we go back to corporate America, there has to be some code switching until you have reached a level within your company or somebody else's company where you can start to be honest. Fortunately, the last three or four jobs that I worked in, I could tell them that I was going to go to

Peru and sit with ayahuasca. And they didn't mind. So I think that it's the most helpful part. I'm going to maybe all of that, I got to the answer of your question. I had to, I had to rack my brain for a little while rambling. Here it is, community. How do we experience this? How do we get through the emergence of spirituality in our life, community. We have to find community that understands and supports us. You can pay for it if you want to go to a spiritual director or a therapist who understands transpersonal psychology. But there are other ways.

We created a space in St. Louis called Conchishala. And it is a spiritual community center. And it is an all denominational center. So we have folks from all different traditions that are showing up, bringing their magic. And in this case, we charge $20 a month for people to show up and have us a safe space to ground into with spiritual community. Yeah, it's a beautiful idea, this lost art of community. You know, earlier in the conversation, you had mentioned about leaving the corporate world and burning the bridges. I know that I've done that in my life. And sometimes when you mention

that to people, you can see the fear in their eyes, like, what have you ever? to go back on that boat. Oh my God. How dare you burn the boats? But it seems to me, at least in my life, it got to a point where it had to be done. Like, I had to. There's no, maybe someone else wouldn't have had to,

but I had to. Maybe you could talk to the idea of burning the boats. I was in corporate for 15, let's say 13 years. And it wasn't until the universe like tapped me on the shoulder a few times. The universe like flicked my ear a few times. And at some point in time, the universe was done

being soft and gentle. And then I got a kick in the ass. And that's what I knew for me. And it was not without some really challenging the last few years have been an unraveling of

20 plus years in corporate America. A lot of feelings of lack of safety. A lot of me practicing trust that the universe was actually going to have my back. It's not for everybody. I swear, you know, the Ram Dass talks about soul age. So if we are the first time that we're incarnated into a form, we start at 12 o'clock on the soul clock.

and for millions and millions of lives, we go from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. And from 12 to 6, we're living in the dark. Now, from 6 o'clock, for millions and millions of lives reincarnated, time and time again, we begin living in the light. And finally, when we get back up to 12 o'clock again, we have like our seed is cooked and we begin to merge back into divine consciousness. I think that there are,

like there are people, like I'm probably at like seven o'clock in soul age. There are enlightened people. And for the record, my definition of enlightenment thinks that there's probably like five to 10 people walking the earth right now in this moment who are truly enlightened in the way that I view enlightenment. So that's 1159.

That's their last incarnation, in their last body and then they disappear. That soul disappears. I think that if you're at 3 o'clock on the soul clock, you're probably not going to even feel any urge to burn the boat. And at 6.601, you might feel such discomfort in your working life. but you still don't have the urge to burn the boat that maybe in the next incarnation,

you have to say like, oh, man, this really sucks. I'm going to think about it now. Right. I think we have a certain amount of transformational fire of Agni that has to transmute all of this energy that we have around the old way of living. And it has to get so uncomfortable before we finally, decide, okay, now it's time to grab the lighter fluid.

I love it. I love it. It's, it is a, I love the way you describe the universe playing with you, like, hey, it's showing you signs, like a gentle nudge here and there. But of course, you're like, nah, not enough, not enough. It's got to be so uncomfortable that you hate it. You know, like the passion is to leave. There's a great quote. I don't, man, they say I have to have it right here. And the day came. when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Yeah.

In 12-step recovery, we say we only change when the pain begins to exceed the pleasure. Yeah. And now, now that I have burnt the boats, I'm a little more sensitive to pain. So I notice, I hope I'm noticing a tap on the shoulder and an ear flick, a little faster.

Not all the time, but the more sensitive I get, the more I deepen into my practice, the less energy it takes for me to change. Yeah. Do you notice that there's like a dark sense of humor that comes with a psychedelic experience? And you know what I mean?

And even the burning of the boats results in a sort of maniacal laughter because it's all you can do. You know what I mean? It's like that, that, I best described as sort of a dark humor that is palpable, I guess.

But how you experienced that? Or do you think that, is that a real thing? Hmm. I think that psychedelics are a amplifier, not, I mean, in science,

they say a nonspecific amplifier of what is inside of us. Right. I posted something on LinkedIn or on social a while back that says, do psychedelics lie? And I, the question that I pose is if psychedelics are a nonspecific amplifier and I am a dishonest person, will psychedelics in the journey lie to me?

The number of people who I have heard say, oh, I took mushrooms one time and I was told by the mushrooms that I need to be a guide and now I need to go move to Mexico or I took ayahuasca and it's time for me to move to Bolivia or Peru. my hunch is that in those instances there is a there is a period of time where I think in every journey psychedelics are telling us the truth and there is a period before that and a period after that where it's sort of like like we're in that liminal dream space where we can kind of be affecting our dream and we can sort of have some conscious awareness of what's happening. And I think that what is happening in those moments where psychedelics are either, whether it's the dark humor that is really showing us a piece of ourselves or whether we're getting a message. And it's the psychedelics are amplifying part of an ego desire.

So if I just had a powerful, beautiful journey on ayahuasca and I see the ayahuascaro singing this beautiful Icaro and I'm like, Oh, God, that would be so amazing to do that. And then a little bit of psychedelics and a little bit of ego come together and manifest this new thought that is happening in this liminal space where I can say that the medicine told me to, but the medicine just amplified my personal thought. So I don't know if it answers your question and specifically addresses it from a dark humor. I think that we experience a lot of what's already inside of us.

Yeah, it's a great point. I like the idea of it amplifying that which is already in us. Sometimes that amplification, maybe that's what seems like a new perspective. It's something that you are just now becoming aware of, and it's something that you've held for a long time. As I said before, spirituality is self-awareness, and all we need to do is just change our orientation of consciousness is from external to internal.

And if we shift the orientation to internal and we add a psychedelic, which is just an amplifier, rocket fuel, magnifying glass, spotlight, however you want to talk about it, or maybe all of the above, we're just getting a much deeper view and perspective of what is inside of us.

And with new awareness, then we can begin going back out into the world and changing our behavior, changing the way that we speak, speak and talk and act and all of those things that is in more alignment with our true self. The more actions that we take in alignment with our true self, the less friction we will experience in the world. It's really well said.

What besides the psychedelic field manual, what are some of the books that you turn to to change the way you see reality? any good books that you would recommend to people as of recently? Be here now, definitely from Ram Dass. Probably one of the ones that I provide as an assignment to a lot of my clients is the four agreements. I think it's such a simple, such a small and simple book that leads people down the path. Honestly, the last one, which is not the easiest one to get through.

and I think it requires some assistance would be the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita especially, if you want to skip to the really good part, skip to chapter two. Find, so Arshaboda Ashram. It's a Swami who studied with Diananda Saraswati. And he runs an ashram. He's a westerner and runs an ashram in New Jersey. Arsha, A-R-S-H-A-B-O-D-H-A-D-H-A-D-H-R-G-R-G-I-R-I-R-R-E-A-R-R-B-H-A-R-R-B-A-R-R-B-A-R-R-B-A-R-R-B-A-R-R-B-A-R-R-B-A-R-B-R-E-R-B-E-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B- God is in me.

And if I am in service to God, I'm in service to myself. And it doesn't matter what we do. You can be cleaning toilets and be in service to God. You can be serving psychedelics and be in service to God. You can be a podcast host. You can be a financial broker, a CEO of a company. And you can be doing all of those things. It can be your Dharma, your purpose to be the CEO of a company.

You can do it with an attitude in service to God, spirit, divine, whatever word doesn't trigger you. And the Gita is probably one of the most powerful texts that has ever been written, in my opinion. Yeah. It's, I think it's really powerful to have something to fall back on when we find ourselves in times of despair or times of crisis or just times of curiosity. And I always like to ask that question because it's, it is something that we all need. We all, we all ride this wave of highs and lows. and a lot of the times you'll hear people say that it's not it's not the clarity at the top of the

mountain it's the process of getting there you know it's it's interesting to think about right yeah and i don't even think of it in mountains anymore it's just one it's one big mountain and it's we're just we hit a plateau every now and again and we and it feels pretty okay and then we get far enough on the plateau and i was like okay it's time to climb again and it is absolutely a process the, like I said before, the best part about forgetting is that we get a remember. And I forget all the time. And fortunately, I have teachers and mentors in my life that help me remember that it's all temporary. We can't teach particle physics to a particle. What do you think, in your opinion, like, why should someone want to come and study with you? Like, what do you think is unique? Like, I really love this conversation so far. But I, wanted to give you an opportunity to explain, you know, what do you think is unique about the practice that you're doing is different than other people? I don't know how different my

practice is from what other people do. I can tell you that I am devoted to helping people wake up. that is my personal Dharma on this planet. I am a spiritual dilettante. So I don't care if it's Buddhism, shamanism, Christianity, Invite Vianta, I make space. My cosmology is large enough to make space for almost anything and anyone.

So what my, My specialty is is helping successful people break an addiction to usually some form of success. It's popping themselves out of the old world and beginning to experience a new sense of peace, joy, and freedom in a different way. Here's the unique value proposition, I guess, if I'm going to use some old language. I play at the intersection. I want people to be successful, have a satisfying life, and live in inspiration. So success, satisfaction, inspiration. And I do that through three modalities of entrepreneurship, mental health, and psychedelics.

So I do coaching work with individuals. I do psychedelic work with individuals. Some of it is in the U.S. I'm taking people to Peru in November to study with my teachers. So I bring a very unique mix of new world and old world. I can speak the language of a CEO and I can also speak the language partially of an Eastern, an Indian Swami and also of a South American, you know, shamanic master. Yeah, hence the Venn diagram there where you're able to move through the different worlds like

that. I do. I think that someone who has the ability to be humble and, be constantly in contact with teachers who have so much more to teach them is a good person to learn from. And I really enjoy our conversation, Jimmy. It's so fun to me to get to meet people and talk to people. And for those that are just listening, like, we just struck up a conversation. And it's amazing what can happen when you're willing to put yourself out there and be honest and vulnerable, like you say.

Man, I really enjoyed it, man. It's been the the fact that there's been no game plan, the fact that we have, we have followed each other in such a natural way has been a beautiful opportunity for me. And I just got to tell you, like one person, I had LinkedIn popped up over here. And one person just sent me a message in the middle of our conversation that just said, enjoying, you know, hearing you give so many answers. they can help so many people. And I don't want to be, I don't want to take too much credit. Yes.

I don't want to take too much credit for giving anybody any answers. And frankly, if I said something that you disagree with, keep disagreeing with it and go run an experiment in your life to prove whether or not it's true. Because if I said something that is true for me, that's not true for you, then you should absolutely not listen to me.

This is, and, you know, humility and humbleness are something that I, my teachers constantly remind me. Like, we have to be humble when we're doing this work. We're just, we're here to serve God and to work for our clients. And sometimes that might trigger people in and of itself. God is a, God, universe, spirit, whatever you want to call it, is a part of the work that I do because that's where true peace, joy and freedom actually happens. So however you need to find your path to get there, that's great. Go do your thing. If you want a smooth entry ramp onto the path, that's what I'm really good at. Yeah, that's an amazing thing to have.

I know coming up on two hours, I got maybe another question. Are you doing okay on time? I got about 10 minutes. I think I got a client coming up not too long after this. I'll make it like five minutes then. It's all good. Okay. So it seems to me, much like a high dose of psilocybin comes in waves, so too does this sort of psychedelic moments that we're having. And maybe the 50s and 60s were like the first initial come up.

And now we're like on this second one right now. But sometimes I go back and forth between my metaphors. Do you think maybe is it a wave? or is it a tsunami? If you had to, or maybe it's a both-and, but what's your take on that? Wow, that's a really good question. I love the idea that I love the visual picture of waves.

And to your earlier predicament, there's a storm rolling in. I don't know if I would call it a tsunami yet. And this is something that I don't know anything about. I'll tell you, the reason why I went to psychedelic science, and I didn't realize this until I got there. I met an incredible, I went to do the Groff breath work. I did a two and a half day graph breathwork exercise. And I met an incredible human being who ended up being my partner.

His name is Scott. He's from Canada. And he really introduced me not only into the Groff Breathwork technique, but also into the Groff Legacy Studies. and he introduced me to the concept of archetype, archetypical astrology. And I don't know anything about it, but it was at the end of Groff's career when he started talking about some astrological elements

that are changing our culture, that when we are in specific signs, change as a foot. And, somebody sorry somebody just popped up I lived in Carney so whoever that is I don't know who it is a LinkedIn user is talking about

Carney Life that's where I went to school so yes we are in a period of transformation right now so I do think that it's a wave but I think that it is a wave that could be predicted I think it's the same wave actually it's the same an astrological occurrence that is happening in the six 50s and 60s that is now happening.

I heard Joe Rogan, which I'm not a huge Joe Rogan fan, but he was talking about like the beauty of a Ford Mustang in 1969 versus the atrocity of a Ford Mustang in 1980. And if we look at music and culture and design the years and the decades where we were using psychedelics where the music was better, the culture was better, the design car design was better. And then when we during the 80s and Nancy Reagan and like, here's your brain on drugs, like look at the Ford Mustang then. It was remarkable when I pulled it up and looked at these two cars and said, oh, shit, he's got a point. So we're in something and I don't want to be the person to make any predictions.

And here's how I am surviving life today. I swear to God, the only way that I can survive is wake up and say, what am I supposed to do today? Because if I try and plan too far ahead, the fastest way to make God laugh is to create a plan. And I've done it. That's what I did for 20 years in corporate. And I've just stopped. And as a result of that, the right people are showing up. So maybe somebody hears this podcast and they hear something that they needed to hear.

And they're like, huh, that's what I need to hear right now. And they reach out and we have a conversation and we do some work together. And there's going to be a lot of people who are like, man, that dude is crazy. And that's okay too. Nice. Well, this is a beautiful conversation. Hold on. Before I let you go, though, where can people find you?

What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Where can people find me? I would go to meetgiv. V.com, M-E-E-T, the letter G, the letter V.com. That's sort of a landing page of all of the stuff that I've got going on. You can also find a lot of content at Instagram.com slash just Jeeves. So if you're interested in more of the type of content that we've been talking about today, there's a good stash there.

What's coming up and I'm excited about? I'm taking people to Peru in November. So if anybody wants to work with a true master medicine carrier, that quite literally speaks to the gods. My teacher Roberto Flores Salis and his brother Renee will be taking us through 12 days in the valley, sitting three nights with Wachuma or San Pedro. And then for those who are interested, we're going to do six nights in the jungle,

three nights with ayahuasca, really, really profound, powerful medicine. So if anybody's interested, you can go to meetgiv.com, and on that page, there's a link to get more. more information about the journey to Peru. Fantastic. Everybody, go down in the show notes, check it out. Check out GV.

If you're interested in anything he had to say, reach out to him. He's a really interesting and compassionate person to talk to. I had a great time. Hang on one second. I'm going to hang up with everybody, but I want to talk to you real briefly afterwards. And I was just going to say one other thing, psychedelicfieldmanual.com. If you're a newcomer to the psychedelic space and just want like an encyclopedic, it's a short book.

It's only about 80 pages, but it's sort of an encyclopedic overview. of what you may experience as you step onto the path. It's free psychedelicfieldmanual.com. You can go to that page, download a copy at no charge. Yeah, well done. And thank you for that. It's a great resource for people to have. Thank you.

All right. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha.