TrueLife - Jason Sheffield - Telling Secrets

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Today we speak w/Jason Sheffield. He takes us on a wild, psychedelic ride from seeker, to adventurer, to journeyman. You can see Jason’s work here: https://www.experienceintegration.com/ Music: https://youtube.com/channel/UCYQVuBQEJwKViT4yIDoCMFQ

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with the one and only Jason Sheffield, an entrepreneur, a podcaster, a writer, a friend of mine, and so much more. We're going to get into it today about a few different subjects. Before we do that, let me give Jason an opportunity to introduce himself and what he's got going on. Jason, how are you?

I'm well. I'm doing well. Good to see you, George. Pleasure's all mine. Yeah. Good. But it's a big year, man, 2023, getting into doing more and more coaching with men, launch a lot of the work I've been doing around dad balls, putting it into practice, seeing it come to love.

seeing it come to life with these men that I've been doing work with and the transformation has been beautiful. So that's been taking a lot of my energy as well as the podcast that Tiffany and I run called Telling Secrets, where we're continuing to dive into the secrets of the universe, which is just always a joy. And yeah, just honing the craft of coaching. I think for me, 2023 is all about going pro and what does it mean to approach this craft as a professional and beginning the process and giving myself an entire year to really figure this thing out instead of like thinking it just has to happen in a moment. So excited to be diving into that stuff. Yeah, that's a huge part. We should talk about that for a minute. I think that when people

begin a new beginning or when they start a new journey, sometimes they set unrealistic goals. I know that I have fell into that trap before where I was like, okay. And maybe it's maybe it's not setting unrealistic goals as it's just not being honest with yourself. But you got a lot of stuff going on. You got multiple podcasts. You're doing some coaching. And you have seen the rubber hit the road. You've begun to see some traction. So maybe you can help people understand what it goes into to have a big year or to what happens when you begin seeing some traction. Well, the first thing to do is throw out the idea of a goal. Honestly, it's been one of the things that shifted my money. mindset in thinking about this stuff is that I think goals, we have a pretty heavy attachment

and a weird relationship to the idea of goals. And the reason why is, if you think about the idea of a goal, is a goal as a finite ending. And so what we end up doing, and I've seen this for myself, especially like in the fitness side of things, is I'll set a goal to go after something. And then I will, everything is in service to the goal, not one, the journey. So the journey doesn't matter at all when the goal is the only thing that you're focused on. So you don't think about how you're getting there. It's just about the goal. And then the other problem that I've seen in an experience and I see this in business all the time is you hit the goal and you can never repeat it.

It's not a sustainable practice to set goals, achieve them and then set more goals. Because inevitably what happens is all of your energy goes into that goal. You hit it. And then you don't have anything sustaining you for the journey or to the outcome that. you were trying to go after. So first of all, my mindset is what is the outcome that I'm driving, not what is my goal. Now, my goals could support an outcome. Sure, you can have little goals. You can do stuff. But at the end of the day, I actually think goals are not great and don't really support us in anything that we're really doing. And again, you can hit the goals, but rarely do you

hit goals twice in a row? I don't know. Have you seen that in your experience, Joe, like, especially like either in the business world, but like you see like everybody like drives towards a goal. They hit it. And then like there's a there's like a couple months where you don't, you can't repeat it. Or maybe you hit a couple months in a row of hitting the goal, but then it falls off. Like I think we need to change our relationship to the idea of goals. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm going to try to take it one step further. I think that that mindset is so 90s. You know, we everything in the 90s. was goal oriented.

And if you look at video games or look at the way in which people today are brought up on the world, it seems like we're living on yesterday's fumes. And if you look at video games, everything's goal oriented. Although you have begun, maybe 10 years ago, you've begun to see some new games or some new ideologies put forth into society, like these sandbox games. Like I think Grand Theft Auto is this one where you could just run around and steal cars or you could run around and make things. And I think that, you know, culture is or society is downstream from culture,

something along those lines. And the culture is changing. And in that changing, so too are we changing. And you can see it happening all around the world. But I like the way you put that about it being more of a processed, more process-oriented idea than a goal-oriented idea. I think, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, to your point, I think like so much of what was,

the past and our old way of doing things is like all about doing right what are you doing doing doing and goals really support doing goals don't support being right and as we make this shift as we have had this awakening to more of like how am i a human being not a human doing my goals don't support my being um but the the outcomes my being can drive in a certain direction it can have a trajectory that I'm focused on. And so how do I, how do I live in support to the trajectory that I want versus the doing that I, that, that's happening? I think games is a great example because, you know, my mind went to like, I used to play like, you know, especially like the old Nintendo games like Contra or games like Mario, right? The goal was to save the princess. The goal was to

beat the bad guy. But like one of my favorite games on like the Nintendo Switch that I got my boys into, and now my daughter's coming into it. She's a little younger, so she's not into video games quite yet, but is Zelda Breath of the Wild, which came out maybe five, six years ago. And that game has objectives, but it is a universe that you can get lost in. You can play that game for hundreds of hours and still not do everything that's available. And yeah, it has outcomes, and it has things that you're doing and it can have a goal. So that's some of that structure. But yeah, these sandbox games where it's no longer. about the goal, it's just an experience, is definitely shifting society. We are wanting more

experiences and less like outcomes, like a goal of like doing this one thing. We want the experience. How like if you were to look into your crystal ball, and I know no one can tell the future, but how do you think that it, this sort of shifting ideology, this way of human being, versus human doing. Like if you look into your crystal ball and you can kind of see things moving in that direction, how do you think that shifts society? I think one of the biggest things we're feeling right now

is just this work from home thing that's happened over the last two years in this shift because people are much more, like we're struggling to figure out our being, our beingness, because now we're being in our homes. Now we're, the idea of going into the office, and the drive and the commute and the like everything that had that very much doing energy has shifted.

And now it's interesting to see how we're navigating. How do you like they're talking. A lot of studies are coming out saying, you know, we're more productive from being at home than we are being in the office. And I think, you know, when we look at big shifts in society, how is it going to begin shaping culture? To me, that's an interesting one to pay attention to because people are now far more they're sinking into their beingness, right? In the sense that I don't have to get up and get dressed the same way when I'm working from home like I did when I went into the office, right?

It's always like business on the top, party on the bottom. Like you never know what kind of pants someone's wearing on a call. They might not even mean wearing pants. Like that's, you know, we all probably put on our, we put on our work from home 15 where it's like we stopped paying attention. The elastic pants come on. You know, we're not thinking about that stuff because we can just kind of be in our space. Now, does that have some downsides? Absolutely. I think we're going to start seeing that stuff come out. But I think people are carrying less and less about what are the societal structures that we're taking their energy and they're beginning to call that energy back to what is my authority say. And this has been one of the biggest lessons for me in the last year. And one of my biggest areas of growth is my own personal sovereignty. What is my yes? How do I be and how do I live in alignment to my yes?

Because if I can live in my alignment to the yes, then I believe I'm living in alignment to the universe. And that to me is the shift from being in the doing structure, which is the structure is telling me it needs to look this way. So therefore, I'm in alignment to the structure versus saying, no, I'm in alignment to me and my yes. And I'm going to restructure everything else in my life to what my yes is. Yeah, I like that.

It sounds, it seems to me. mean like it also has a profound effect on relationships, not only to society, but to other people. You know, when we are speaking on on Zoom or streaming platforms and when our meetings are, people are going to school more and more over the internet. And our relationship to the workplace is changing. Like you said, more and more people get to work from home. And that changes the idea of not only leadership, but I can't think of the right word, but it changes the way authority can constrict an individual. I think that people are really, and some of us, some people are having a difficult time

trying to come to grips that they are their own person, they are their own being. A lot of people, and this saddens me to say, like being told what to do. They enjoy that structure of like, please tell me what to do. And I think that's so for me, and I'm sure for you and a lot of other people, it's so confining and so constrictive and kind of depressing sometimes. What do you make of that? Well, I actually think this is where understanding yourself and the various tools that are out there to be able to peel back who you are is really what's most important about your

relationship to authority and being told what to do. I actually believe some people are great with that. And again, whether you want to look at it from a perspective of like maybe an astrological chart, like what are the energies that are there or using other tools that are out there, like one that I've really been diving into of human design. But when you begin to look at these things, you can begin to understand that, wow, you know what? I actually work really well in service to the tribe, right?

So there's the tribe energy. And in, you know, specifically looking at human design, there's this circuitry. to your energies and the circuitry serves one of three modalities. It can be individual. It can be ego. It can be tribal. You're going to have a mixture of all of these. Every person will.

But some people are really more energetically driven to serve the tribe. And that's great. Maybe they should be told what to do. And they live in that because that's in alignment to their design. I have a lot of individual circuitry in my human design. And what I've realized is I have to be the individual. I have to go do the stuff that's for me. And when I do that, I'm going to inspire people that are in the tribe mentality.

And they're then going to take what I gave them and take it to the tribe. I'm not the one that can transmute my energy and my lessons and whatever for the service to the tribe. I almost need a middle person or I need someone that's more, you know, has that energy to then take that and live it out. So I heard someone else kind of talking about recently Jordan Peterson, right? Big guy that's out there. He's got his like 12 rules for living and this stuff, right? When you look at like Jordan's astrological chart, I'm sure there's people out there that know this far, far better than I do. But basically, his energy, his tourist's specific space is really designed for having being told what to do.

These are the 12 rules. And if your astrological alignment is the same, good for you. Jordan's 12 rules for life are exactly what you need. But if your energy is like in Scorpio, fuck what Jordan Peterson says. You need to be doing it a completely different way. And that to me is the beauty of all of this. We need all of these various voices that are out there. We just need to be able to understand ourselves.

And this is the paradox. But I believe that when we actually are living individualistically with our own yes, we're in support to the bigger system because we know our part. And people may not be like, well, I don't want to have a part. Great. Then your part is to not have a part. Good for you. Some of us do need a part.

Some of us, like, but we need to shift to this idea of one size fits all, one methodology fits all, and begin to give people the freedom to be themselves. I don't know. Does that, what does that spark in you? Well, it makes me, it makes me wonder about the relationship between the physical environment and the individual. It makes me, when you start talking about different charts and different energies, it makes me see. myself as part of the planet, as part of the environment or, you know, as part of the whole. And I'm wondering, maybe you can explain a little bit more about that relationship. Well, I think when we think about who, like, if we're part of this ecosystem and the energy of

this world and we hold this, this energy and this is the first thing I think people need to, to begin to just like sit with and understand for themselves. But is that, and again, you can get like the quantum physics of this stuff. There's so many various ways you can slice and dice looking at how we fit into the whole. But I think it's important that we first have to just acknowledge that that's even a thing, that there is the quantum physics world, that there is the spiritual energies, that there is, you know, whatever terms we want to put to it doesn't really matter, but that there's something outside of ourselves that's just a purely materialistic being and that we are part of an ecosystem, we are part of an energy structure that is of

a different realm. And we can learn to tap in and pay attention to, but it's a practice to open ourselves up to that. And there's hundreds of practices. There's never to me to say, oh, this is the only one. You get attached to it and then all of a sudden it doesn't serve you anymore. We can't get attached to these things. But they can serve us to realize like, okay, yeah, like when we, again, the principle of as above so below is something that drives so much of my understanding of the world. And so when we look at this, the ecosystem and how, you know, this plant serves this specific purpose and it does these things and this plant, like, the diversity of our ecosystem is massive. And it's also highly individualistic. And that should be,

I think, us as human beings. It's, you know, we're part of an ecosystem. We're part of a whole. And yet we're highly individualized. And we have our specific pieces and roles. And our, you know, you want to call it your Dharma, your life's work, your mission. whatever that is, the sooner we can tap into living into that, the sooner we start to live that purpose. And I think so many of us are often asking that question, you know, what is my purpose, what is my direction, what is my mission, what is my life's work? And sometimes I think our life's work is to do the work, to figure out what our lives work is. So that brings up an interesting point. I know that you have a background in Christianity

and that you've studied quite a bit about that particular ideology. And it sounds to me, the way in which you're speaking now about as above, so below, and different charts and energies, it has some religious aspects to it. What do you think are, in some ways, it sounds as if what you're talking about now goes beyond religion. And I'm wondering if you can maybe try to pull on that thread a little bit. Like maybe if you can talk a little bit about the difference between what you've previously studied in Christianity and what you're leaning towards now. And does it go beyond religion or does it go beyond ideologies or maybe you can pull on that thread a little bit? Yeah. I mean, it's been interesting to look at these beautiful religious traditions that are out there.

And you got the big ones of like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam. What is the, like, what did I? There's another one that I'm thinking about that slipped out of my mind. But we got, you know, these, these beautiful traditions that have shaped various parts of our world for a long. And then, again, the tribal, the tribal energies, right? I just feel like the tribal religions don't ever get the, because they never got to the mass scales, but they served their unique, like, communities in these really beautiful ways. And, and so you have these traditions that have been passed down as a way of understanding the divine,

as a way of understanding God, this thing that is ultimately un-understandable. Like, it's even in the Bible. Like, when Moses met God for the first time, he couldn't look at God because he would literally be destroyed. So this idea that you can't even see who God is, you can't even access the divine. Like, we can't handle it. It would literally destroy us. And then what ends up, I think, sometimes happening is we get attached to systems and we get

attached to certitude. And what ends up happening is we get attached to like maybe a symbolic theology of who God is. So for example, God is love. Great, beautiful statement. But we don't actually know that God is love. We don't know what God is. We can't see God. We don't know. Because if God is love, then God also has to be hate. And if God is hate, like God has to almost be it all, which is such a big concept that we don't ever really have a full understanding of what these things are. So what I see happening is often religion drives assertitude. And specifically to the Christian tradition, which is the one that I know the most, you know, it drove a specific strategy for how to live your life. And really, religion gets tied to the afterlife. And this is something that I see consistent in a lot of religions is you do these

things so that you can have this type of experience in the beyond. We don't know what the beyond offers. and we have no idea. And I offer that most of these religions don't actually tell us anything about the beyond. They're always just telling us about the now. What we can see in this moment, what we can experience in the now. And so religion gets attached. Religion gets attached to certitude. Religion gets attached to It is this way.

And for me, it's been a shedding of the religion and an opening to the possibilities, an opening to the wonder, moving beyond the religion and saying, what is there in the Christian tradition that's beautiful? There's some things that I really deeply love and hold beliefs. We have to have a belief structure in some way. We've got to believe something. But it doesn't drive all of my beliefs, right? Astrology, these other things, inform other areas of belief.

And my beliefs are evolving and they're always changing. I'm never attached because at the end of the day, I really believe, again, in a non-dualistic approach to all of this, that it's never this or that. That is what I would say is the illusion. And every religion is always trying to drive some concept of the illusion, right? We want to call it the matrix. You want to call it sin. You want to call it these various things.

It's the illusion of this or that. And enlightenment, and again, whatever tradition always has some sense of alignment to it is being able to tap into freedom of yes or no. And that is the pivot. That is the spiritual journey is, can I come out of a reality of this or that? And can I step into a reality of yes and no? know. I can I find my own personal freedom? And I actually think a lot of these gurus and teachers, the Christ, that is what they're offering us, is a path to yes or no. I like that. It sounds

so liberating when you explain it like that. And at least for me, and I think that there's a lot of other people that would identify with this, it seems that the longer religions seem to become calcified. It's almost like the corruption. of a religion equals the calcification of the religion. And it becomes stringent and it becomes brittle. And then you break off and you have these offshoots. But, you know, at the end of the day, who is that serving as my question? Yeah, nobody.

The guy at the top. Serving the people in power. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, you look at the structure of even just Christianity, right? This really funky, weird thing gets started with the narrative of the Christ. And again, not even to get attached to. did he actually show up or did he not? Like, we can just let go of some of that for a little while and just say, okay, great.

Let's look at the narrative for what it is. This guy shows up on the scene. He starts saying this crazy stuff. We have some of this stuff that's been written down around it. Clearly, it was a pivotal moment in history because we're talking about it 2,000 years later. So something around that took place, whatever it was. But then you fast forward 300 years and you get the empire who's crumbling at this point, right? like Rome has been around for about 800 years.

Rome has become this massive power structure within the world. And they're beginning to crumble. They can almost see the end coming. And so they say, you know what? Let's institutionalize this religion thing. Let's say that we're now going to become a Christian empire. We're now going to bring together these people that are going to tell us what's in the Bible and what's not. We're going to institutionalize the church.

And what they basically set up the grounds for is if we can't control as an empire physically, how can we control as an empire spiritually? 200 years later, Rome crumbles, but the church doesn't. And Rome continues to have a power structure for the next thousand years, really until about the 1500s, when then you get the Protestant movement that says, fuck Rome, we're doing it this way. And then what happens out of that? Well, another thousand years, or what now we're at 800 years of the Protestant energy driving it.

And what is America trying to do? Freaking institutionalize the religion with the Christian national. Like, it's insane when you start looking at how history can kind of repeat itself. That's the pattern that I see. Now, I'm sure there's theologians and people that absolutely disagree with me. But that's the narrative that's really become to emerge in my mind. It's all religion. It's not the truth.

It's just religion. It's fascinating to me. It brings me to this idea of the sacrament. I had written down a quote here. I think it was from Alan Watts. And I'm just kind of paraphrasing here. But it's something along the lines of when you think about a sacrament, be it in Christianity or in any religion or if you have a sacrament in your life,

just think about the word sacrament. And you are changed by what you consume. What I consume, I am changed by it. And as a consequence of that, my belief structure is completely. restructured. So if you think of the sacrament as the word of God and you consume that, then your belief structure becomes aligned to what you consume. And I think the same thing works for a world without spirituality. Let's just say that materialism has replaced spirituality. What you consume, you are changed by. And as a consequence of that, your belief structure is

completely restructured. And I think in a weird sort of way, like the breakdown of a lot of religions, the breakdown of spirituality has led us today to a point where what we're consuming, which is a lot of bullshit, is an exact replica of what's happening in the world, a lot of bullshit. Does anybody really believe that this trillions of dollars we're sending to Ukraine is going to the Ukrainian people or even help the Ukrainian people? You know, and it seems that we, but here's where I get kind of excited. You know, you would spoke about the breakdown of Rome and how they instituted.

religion as a way to keep the empire together. I think we can see a similar pattern. And I think if we take that same pattern with my definition of sacrament, I think that we can see some opportunities for individuals like you or me or those listening to create a path to freedom in their life. I think that we're seeing a sort of same rhyme going on in society right now. And there is a lot of freedom to be had right now. What's your take on my idea of sacrament?

100%. So let's just look at it in the tradition of Christianity. You look at the Jews and Judaism, they had a very set religious process of the sacraments, right? So for anybody that doesn't know some of the stuff, right? Like they were, the Old Testament often describes all of these methodologies of how to experience the divine, right? So whether it was their temple and how they designed the holy of holies where God dwelt within the arc of the covenant, you know, all these symbolologies or symbolism of the, of the, connecting with God and the sacraments, right? So they had a sacramental process of sacrifice to be able to access the divine.

They had to literally slit the throat of something. They had to let it bleed out. And blood was deeply, deeply important to the pathway to accessing the Holy of Holies. And blood for the Jewish people was seen as unclean. So you would not deal with blood, right? If a woman was on her cycle, she was unclean. Blood was something that was seen as the life force that only God had access to. And we had to clean out the blood to deal with anything.

So if you were going to eat the meat of something that was sacrificed, no blood, right? Christ shows up on the scene and says, I am the bread of life and I am the blood. And he introduces a new sacrament. He introduces the idea of the communion. He introduces the idea of the flesh and the blood. And he says, you know what? All of it is available to you. Eat of my body.

Drink of my blood. That was so deeply like revolutionary that a Jewish person would drink blood and have access to blood was something that would have totally shifted their entire reality because now that means they have direct access to the life force that is in the blood. A brand new sacrament was born. a brand new sacrament of freedom breaking people out of the religion of Judaism. That's what the Christ offered. And I think we're in that same thing where people need to start realizing there are sacraments

that you can get so tied to that the sacrament is in service to the religion. And we need to find new sacraments that bring us to the freedom. The sacraments of stepping back into we have access to the blood. You have full freedom. You have full freedom to these things. And that's what's so paradoxical to me sometimes how Christianity has done the same thing that the Jews did and saying, oh, the only way that you can do this is with this little thing and this, like they've built an entire structure around something that has zero freedom at the end of the day. And to me is completely not in tune at all to what the Christ offered. So sacraments are all about freedom.

And that major sacrament that the Christ offered with the idea of. of communion and blood was so, so significant that I think most Christians have no idea that people would have never, like, it was just a completely different society, completely different world. And we miss that if we don't tap back into some of those traditions and those roots. It's fascinating to me, because on one level, we're talking about the rigidity of religions and how they can be an agent of constriction. But then we're also looking back to some parts of religion that freed us from that same constrictive behavior. But that wasn't religion.

That would be my one caveat. I don't think the Christ showed up on the scene to be like, hey, I'm here to give you a new religion called Christianity. That's manmade. We did that shit. Right, right. And again, I think you see gurus and Christ consciousness or God consciousness, whatever term we want to put to that,

show up on the scene in various ways throughout history to remind us of these things. things. And the pattern is too consistent. You see it happening in Hinduism. You see it happening in Buddhism. You see it happening in the East. You see these stories of people that show up that are so in tune with the divine in these various ways. And they bring these lessons. And I think that's part of our own journey is tapping into saying all of this is accessible to you as well. There's nothing special about a guru. That is to me one of the most beautiful things about the concept of the Christ is the manhood and the godhood, the combining of these two things. So the mystics would often look at that as an idea of as above so below.

So the Christ was an example of being 100% divinity and 100% man as this beautiful picture of this idea that these two things can merge. And this is accessible to us as well. so it's it's it's like a it's like a a truth bomb comes and just pulls the rug from the institution is like you guys are all full of shit

and that's what people are the red it makes a lot of sense when you look at it like that you know I think another way to maybe explain it is to or try to explain it is to try to understand man's relationship with his ideas, his symbols, and images. And if you look at those three things, like, you know, if you can look at the images, whether

we're anthropomorphizing animals and then trying to figure out how that image becomes a symbol and then how that symbol becomes an idea, you know, so much of those three things, religions are based on images, symbols, and ideas. And it seems to me that because those teachings were so long ago, those images, those ideas and those symbols, we still use so many today, but we don't thoroughly understand how the people in the past thought of them. So we're reinterpreting these symbols, ideas, and images. And they don't mean the same thing. So if they don't mean the same thing today as they did back then, it's a different message. And sometimes I think that that's why, you know, whether it's religion or its old belief systems, I think,

that that rule still follows. And when we're following these old ideas and images and symbols, they don't make sense today. And so we see the solutions of yesterday, not working today. And it seems like that's what's happening. We keep trying to institute these old ideas and they don't work. And so we find ourselves running in circles. And maybe that's why they call it the cycle of life because you're just recycling these

old ideas. But I think every now and then, maybe every millennium, maybe every 500, years or, you know, 700 years, you have this real opportunity. You have this catalyst to evolve. And it's, I can't help but think that's where we are right now, Jason. And I think that maybe, now I might get a lot of heat for this, but I think that the psychedelics are that catalyst. The psychedelics are the new sacrament. And if you just think about what psychedelics are, and you could think about, if you think about as a catalyst, you know, like the psychedelic experience is Moses going to the mountaintop. The psychedelic experience is MLK going to the

mountain top. Terrence McKinney spoke a lot about the invisible landscape and an archaic revival. And when I think about all of those things combined, I think about the psychedelic experience and what you can learn in that psychedelic experience. You can have information revealed to you the same way mystics had visions. You can have information revealed to you in a way that no college professor could ever explain anything to you. It's a knowing. And I really see what's happening right now in this space as a new sacrament, as an attempt to evolve into a new sort of being. Is that too crazy? No. But my one push back, I think on that is that I don't believe it's new. Right. There's nothing new under the sun. This is all happened before.

great. And frankly, I believe that the Christ offered up the psychedelic experiences as a way of experiencing God. And shifting from a, there's like I love the difference between knowing and knowledge, I think is really important. And we look at words, right? Because we, we, there are a lot of people that have a lot of knowledge. I had a lot of knowledge about the Bible. You know, when I worked as a pastor, I had a lot of knowledge. I would read and I would study.

but I did not have experiences that were in alignment to that knowledge. So I didn't have a knowing. Now, did I know God? Sure, in these immature ways and I would have these different spiritual experiences. But my knowing now through the work of these entheogens and these medicines and these calling backs has given me a far deeper wisdom and a far deeper knowing that transcends knowledge. I actually don't know how much knowledge I hold about this stuff. And sometimes I worry about the concept of trying to attain knowledge around it.

You know, like we get so tied up on the science of what's happening in the brain so that we can have, we can create knowledge. And then we can, we can institutionalize it. And then we can turn it into a course. And then we can go teach people like, hey, when someone's on psychedelics, they're breaking down their ego. I forget the, what's the term they've started using the natural reflux state or, no, that's not right. Um, anyways, there's something they started to put like name that's in the brain that kind of goes offline when we step into the psychedelic experiences. And it's like the scientific term for the ego at the end of the day. And so it's like, great, we can now have not, we've mapped that.

Does that give you knowing? I don't know that it does until you've actually had the experience. And so experience leads to knowing, study leads to knowledge. And I believe we need far more experiences than we need study. Yeah. I think you can see. that in kids coming out of college today that are having a difficult time getting a job. You can look, you can look at a, say, an Ivy League kid that come. I think Peter Thiel spoke about this. And I bet you it's a story that's spoken about in many books today and in many boardrooms today and in many warehouses today. When somebody comes directly from school into a leadership position, that person sucks. They don't have any experience. And what they've learned from a book,

And I think that this translates into not only school, but someone from your home library or anything you're passionate about. If you learn from a book, you're learning someone else's opinion of it. And those opinions, that type of knowledge can be seen as a roadmap. But, you know, it's important to understand that maps are out of date and a map is not the territory. So if you're using a map, it's at best a guide, at best. And you yourself are going to have your own experiences and your own experiences are you, unique to you. Maybe we should be rethink. And maybe this is what's happening. Maybe this is what's changing the face of education. Like the old system doesn't work. It's coming down to experience. It's coming

down to, you know, or maybe it's coming back to know thyself. You know, it's, it's an interesting concept. Well, I think it's, you know, two, two things I want to come back to, I want to go back to the symbology piece really quick. Yeah. And talking about, because what I think that was born out of was art. So any symbolism, any iconography, that was an artistic expression. And when we think about creativity, creativity has this a beautiful ability to tap into the spiritual. And sometimes transmute the spiritual to this physical plane. And that is happening through the experience of the artist. And we're all, I believe, at the end of the day, called to be artists. It's not about, are you an amazing painter or not? Like, we're all artists. We're all artists.

in the sense that we were working to transmute our unique perspective of the source into this physical plane. So as people are having those experiences, we had some really, really beautiful and profound art that was taking place, that told us story, that gave us information, that did give us these beautiful downloads. But then the problem was people stopped the experiences and they got attached to the art. They got attached to this one thing or this one symbol. And then we stopped creating new because what happens with the new is we get scared and people don't like new. So art is always pushing the edge because it's about the new, beautiful art that changes the world does something that nobody's ever done before. And that is a deeply spiritual experience.

That is, I believe, source coming through that person. They're channeling something. They're able to do something because it's an alignment to themselves. And that's, again, our practice of being these artists is finding that alignment, finding that ability to whatever your unique expression of source is, and how do you bring that out? Now, sometimes we come around and we're like, oh, my God, like, that's beautiful. I see the divine in that. But I see it because I can attach it to my experience in this unique way or whatever.

So it speaks to me. Other times you look at some forms of art, and you're like, I don't get it. That's fine. That's just not part of your experience. Like, don't get hung up on it. But I think in church and in religion, we stopped making art. We stopped really seeing the art. Because again, you look at how did all this stuff happen?

Well, the rich religious people were paying all these artists to do stuff. And I think these artists were like, awesome. We're going to figure out all these really subversive ways to tell the story. I was just reading the other day. I believe it's called the psychedelic Gospels. If you look up that website, psychedelic gospel.com, they have this beautiful blog post of five different old pictures of basically telling the stories of plant medicine, of the mushrooms throughout the Christian experience.

And again, I think it's just something that you see that's all along there. And again, opening people up and awakening to that experience at the end of the day. So we just need more art. We need more people living as artists to continue to awaken up the rest of us. Yeah. I like what you said about the creativity. And I was just speaking with Dr. David Solomon on a topic of creativity. And one thing he mentioned to me that I thought was brilliant was that creativity is dangerous.

You know, and it, that's where it stems from. You know, I think Kurt Vonnegut had a quote that said, in order to see if you can fly, you have to jump off the cliff. You know, and it makes sense. And when you start talking about psychedelic gospels, creativity and danger, one of my favorite images is the image, I think by, it's the one. It's the one where God is touching, they're touching fingers. You know what I mean? Yeah, the Sistine Chapel, right? Thank you.

Yes. Yes. And if you look at that picture, God is floating in a brain. Like the image around, around God, it's a literal drawing of a brain. If you took a brain and you transpose it over that picture, you'd be like, dude, God is in your head. Like, that's what he's telling you right there. It's a fascinating look. And when you start looking at the people that were drawing these things, you know,

How amazing is it to put a message that God is in your head in the Sistine Chapel and have all the priests just like, wow, that's a beautiful piece right there. There's so much in there that if we do get back to art, if we do get back to creativity, then we do get our freedom back. I also was curious about your thoughts when you spoke about the idea of symbols and how they communicate. One thing I find beautiful about the symbols, and I'm curious to get your opinion on this, is that you and I could see a symbolic. representation. You and I could see a beautiful piece of art. And you and I may see two completely different things in that image, but we both come to the same conclusion that it's inspiring, it's divine, and we're enthralled by it. Like what, how, that seems odd to me, because we both see the beauty in it, but we both have completely different ideas of what's beautiful about it. And

do you think that maybe what's happening? happened is that we have allowed ourselves to, to, um, accept the opinions of others instead of seeing what we really see in there. And is that a problem? Yeah. That's again, going back to living in the illusion of this or that. If, if we live under the reality that you see this and I see that, then we're tied to one is wrong and one is right. Yes. And, and again, I think that's, That is, to me, we talk about the matrix and all these different things. Like the way I began to really look at how we live in this, if we want to call the 3D world, right? There's all these different ways we can look at this.

The spiritual communities are talking about this in various ways. But the way I look at it is anytime we are attached to this or that, we're living in the matrix because we don't have choice. And so when we come at a piece of art and you see something and I see something and it's completely different, the only right answer is yes beautiful yes yes like you yes yes I don't I don't care like yes I affirm whatever your experiences of the divine however you were moved yes and yes is sometimes that really powerful place that we have to begin to get to versus I'm now I'm I'm I'm I'm maybe I'm wrong. Maybe George's right. Maybe George's interpretation is better than my interprets. Well, my yes is now being influenced by George. So it must be that and not this. I'm back

in the illusion versus yes, George. Now I see it a different perspective and can you can you say yes to me? Right. Can you say yes to this? But yes. That's how I think we need to begin to shifting into the yes. and when we tap into that, we break out of the mold of having to be this or that. And art does that. Art does that in some really, really beautiful ways.

You can go and be inspired. And that's what I love about whether it's looking at paintings and going to the art museum or experiencing a concert is my, okay, total nerdy. Like, I love live music. And I had a chance this summer to see Jack Johnson, right?

Kind of like sometimes cheesy. People look at Jack. He's done a lot of different stuff over his career. But for me, Jack came into my life when I was in high school. And he opened up something in me that I just deeply, deeply loved. And the first time I saw him, he was opening for Ben Harper at Red Rocks and Colorado, a beautiful venue, beautiful experience. But I was 18.

And he was the opener. Nobody really cared if people were talking and I was really upset. Like, I'm here to see Jack. Like, Ben Harper wasn't even as much of a, I wasn't a fan of him. I was there to see this guy. Fast forward 20 years later, we go see them and I have a deeply moving emotional experience. Like I'm in tears over Jack Johnson, like songs that most people would be like, what? But it was, I saw my own journey.

I saw my own path. I saw who I am at 38. I was proud of myself. I was proud about how I've evolved. I was thinking back to 18 year old Jason and how would he feel about 38 year old Jason, a very different person than he was on the path for. And it was beautiful. So was that wrong?

Did I like, no, it was my experience with the art of music from Jack. And Tiffany was just laughing at me. She's like, why are you crying at banana pancakes? And I'm like, this song, you know, like, but that's it. That's the beauty of art and creativity and how it influences us and the beauty of the yes. And she didn't need to have that kind of experience. She just had a good time. It's fun live music.

That's what I feel like more and more of us, that's the opportunity that, art offers is the ability to find that. Wow, I like that. That's powerful to think about. And I think it's even, from my point of view, it's even more powerful to think about how an experience in an artistic setting or hearing something that profoundly moves you, whether it's a piece of music or whether it is an actual piece of artwork, how that can have long-lasting effects in your relationship because what you described is a way of seeing yourself in a different way. And once you do that, it's difficult to hold that old idea of you in the same way. And that changes the way you interact with everybody around you. And when you're growing and changing and

becoming a different person like that and you were able to see your reflection in the art, that fundamentally changes your relationship with everybody around you. Absolutely. And I think sometimes to me great art is again the way I would define great art is not by whether or not I like it or not but is it can I see where the artist was able to say yes to themselves and I think you see this a lot in music and specifically certain artists that maybe have really pushed things forward in unique ways so I mean you can look at the greats like Dylan right and Dylan going from from acoustic, fulky music to the electric, right? That shift. He did it for himself. That was a yes for Dylan because he said, I got to start doing it a different way. You know,

the folk thing had started to get big and he shifted. The Beatles, that was a yes. The beetle, you don't get the second half of the Beatles decade of a career without them saying yes. And again, did the psychedelics play a factor? I think so. You know, they found a yes to break out of the mold of being the guys that were in a suit and tie and played a certain way and their fan base of five years and these incredible five records that they produce, then all of a sudden to shift and come out with something like Sergeant Pepper, like come on. That was them saying yes to something inside of them. Any great art is where the artist has found, and I believe it's a yes to source, the creative energy and I, the collective genius, the collective creative genius is all giving

us downloads if we're open to it. And again, art isn't just in the traditional modes, the art of how you live your life, the art of how you show up to your job, the art of your parenting, all of this. We are artists. And we get these downloads and we can say yes to them or we can say no to them. And when we say no to them, you see those things go to other people. Elizabeth Gilbert, great person that I love, right? She wrote eat, pray love, major art or author. She tells this, she wrote a book called Big Magic where she talks about she had a story that she was trying to write, couldn't write it. And then about five or a couple years later, somebody came out with almost exactly the same story. How? How does that happen? Right. Well, she said no to it.

The creative genius said, okay, great, I'm going to go find someone else that will say yes. And then someone else said yes to it and move forward. So we have to pay attention to this stuff. If we are living our lives, like when we get downloads or we get those inspirations or we get the thing, I'm like, ah, should I do that? I believe that's the creative genius. asking us, are we willing to say yes to what it is? And sometimes we struggle. And if we don't, if we don't move on it, it'll go to someone else. Yeah, I heard it put like, if you don't listen to that little voice inside your head, pretty soon it stops talking to you. And the more you listen to it, the more you begin to interact with it, even if it seems like the idea it's telling you to do,

it might be a little rough at first. It's moving you in the right direction. And the more you listen to it, the clearer it comes, and the more you listen to it, the more adjectives it begins to use to explain to you how to do things better. You know, I'm curious to get your thoughts on, you know, when we talk about some of the great artwork, you know, or some of the great artists that we listen to, do you think that there is intention behind artwork? And if so, what do you have to say about the people that have a negative intention that create art? I, yeah, I absolutely believe there's intention. I believe that great artists will often not be attached to the, that their intention is your intention. So, you know, you look at some people and, you know, lyrics, right, Dylan,

why did you write this lyric? Well, it meant this to me, but it'll mean something different to you. Like, a great artist has to be willing to be, quote unquote, misinterpreted. And I believe artists that are attached to a specific, like, it has to mean this thing. They often, can get a little bit hurt when people misinterpret them, right? To me, like that tells me, you're too tied out, you're tied into the end product. A great artist cannot be attached to the outcome. They have to be attached to the process of whatever it is that they're creating. And sure, some of that could be considered negative.

But my question would be negative to who? If they're trying to be destructive or like, you look at the punk music and the aggression and the breaking down of the system or, the hip-hop movement of the 80s and especially the 90s and the fuck the police and fuck racism and all this energy the those of those those of us and i would consider you know being a cis white male um yeah that was a power structure that i was a part of that they were saying fuck you on and what did we do we we demonized it right i mean again i love kendrick lamar kind of a current stat like when he came out with all right in 2015 as it became the anthem for the BLM movement you have

have quote you have like on like fox news people saying he's dangerous he's doing evil things he's saying fuck the police of course he is because the system is oppressing them and he's using his voice so danger to who is my question and if if you feel triggered by it you might need to look a little bit deeper and be like why am i being triggered by this piece of art that feels negative so would the same be true for like some white nationalist that were creating artwork that were like they they they may think it's beautiful but other people would be like fuck those guys, man. A bunch of white racists.

We're creating this beautiful artwork. Well, again, my question then would be, what is this? So here's an interesting question. It's propaganda art. That's exactly where I was going to go. The intention of the K Street to advertise, which I think is a form of propaganda, we should talk about this more.

So, you know, you can make the argument that some of the greatest artists today work in advertising. There's some brilliant pieces of advertising that go out not only in print but also in media. And they have found a way to distill Edward Bernay's book propaganda into a few pages and hit you like on every single level. And I think that you have to say yes. I think you have to say that that is artwork because it's conveying a message. It's conveying emotion. It's getting you to, it's a.

call to action in a lot of ways. So I would say, yeah. And that gets me back to the idea of intent in artwork. Like if someone is paying you to create artwork that is going to make other people feel horrible about themselves, I think it comes down to the artist's ideas and insecurities more than the art because someone, art can come in ways that we can't imagine, be it beautiful or be it horrific, you know, look at some of the Nazi propaganda that came out.

Like, you could look at some of those articles and be like, did I get what this guy's saying right here? And a lot of people were swayed by it. You know, and there's people that probably collect that artwork. And, you know, it's interesting to me. I would say, yeah, I would say the propaganda is artwork. I'm not proud of that, but I would have to say that it is. What do you think?

I think propaganda uses mediums and tools that can influence people. but at the end of the day, I don't know that I would consider it great art. I don't know that when we look at the spectrum of things, that the intent, like, again, you could say the Sistine Chapel, right? And Michael Angelo's Lurik, the idea of God and man touching. Was that meant to, was that a propaganda tool of the church? Of, like, right?

Or was he trying to communicate to us this idea that you were previously, your interpretation of it, right? So I think a lot of it is propaganda has a desired outcome that when you release a piece of propaganda in your mind, you know how you're trying to sway the opinions and feelings of people to a specific outcome. And I think at that point, it loses its artistic expression because it no longer holds it to the interpreter. That true art is open to a various mode of interpretation. But when you limit that, it then becomes a medium for influence, which feels different than art. So music, right? Music can be the beautiful, that it can be creative, it can be vast.

But it can also be turned down into a jingle that you can't get out of your head. Is a jingle that's in your head great art? I don't know, right? Like Gilgan's Island, was that a great theme song? Nope. Right? Like, that's not in the top 10 greatest songs ever written, right? But it became a jingle.

So I think sometimes, again, we look at this stuff on what spectrum are we working on? And again, I think art can get pulled down into the this or that. Is it going to be, do you like this or do you like that? And if we can put everybody into the this category, we can all agree, it loses the beauty of art. And that's often then when you see the revolutionary moments where all of a sudden, so like you've been doing it this way, I'm going to do it. that way, right? So the movement of rock and roll. Music had been this way, we're going to do it that way. Hip hop emerges. You've been doing it this way. We're going to do it that way.

Jazz, right? You've done it this way. Oh, we're going to understand type signatures are totally different because we're all smoking weed. We understand time differently. So all of a sudden, that time difference is going to get translated into jazz, right? Jazz movement wouldn't have come without the use of marijuana. The beauty and the understanding of that is absolutely insane. But you look at New Orleans and what was happening in that space and how the jazz movement and this creative thing. It came out because again, an oppressed people started thinking a different way and this beautiful art form gets born. So I don't know. I don't know that I could get to the place where I could say true propaganda is art. I think it's that it's using the modes and modalities of art for a way of

influencing people. Sort of sort of defiling the structure of it. Which I think right now, like you look at the movies that have come out in the last five years, most of it's propaganda. And so it's pushing a narrative. And so right, like, I look, because I love movies. And I'm like, man, I haven't seen a great movie at a while. Like, you know, like a really, really good. There's been a handful. But like, it all feels like now when I'm watching stuff, I'm like, God, they're pushing

this narrative really hard. They're pushing this thing really hard. They're pushing, like, it doesn't feel like it has the freedom of like maybe some of the great movies we saw come out of like the night like again there's this this cycle so we're in a cycle a lot of propaganda in the states we're being highly propagandized right now we don't even know how much propaganda we're absorbing we think it's art but we realize it's all serving a narrative and when it's serving the narrative it doesn't most great art isn't serving a narrative it's basically often saying fuck the narrative yeah yeah it's it's fascinating to think about you know

that gets me thinking about the idea of artwork as something that frees you from propaganda. But then it just depends on, like you said, who is interpreting the artwork? To the people in positions of authority, the propaganda is helping them achieve their goals. So it seems like poetry and motion to them. So from that angle where they're standing,

I could see how they would interpret that as artwork, you know, social engineers that are trying to get people to live in pods and eat bugs. Maybe they're doing their own thing, you know, sure but it's fascinating to think about and i guess it gets us back to the idea of behavior artwork and you know it ties into everything behavior religion sacraments artwork it's it's fascinating to think about and and the breakdown of of what's happening now i think is leaving open a tremendous opportunity for new artists you know if i go back real quick i just

had a thought on you know when you look at the manufactured band out there, especially like it seems like boy bands and were really manufactured in the 90s and stuff. And they found someone that had a high voice, someone that had a low voice, someone that had a low voice, someone that had that. But all these manufactured bands, none of them hold a candle to the bands that came together on their own. Like we still listen to the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac or, you know, these bands that found the doors, these bands that found the people that they're supposed to be around versus a middleman going around the world and picking out, picking and choosing.

while the music does sound good, it still rings hollow in a lot of ways. It's interesting. I actually just saw something the other day about a guy in the industry talking about how artists need to be aware of AI music and that like right now in China, like five of the top 100 songs

that are like in cycle there are 100% AI. No human was involved. AI is writing the music, the lyrics, the things, voices. So artists, it's like we're going to start seeing a we start talking art and again like a lot of people have started to see this is an interesting one is is AI art right because like we've all gotten really fascinated about like our avatars and how you can put your picture in and then the AI system will go and create art around what you could look like and all these various things and so now

computers and AI is generating art I listen to a lot of comedians in their podcasts and I don't remember specifically who it was. It might have been Tom Seguura, but they were talking about an AI comedian. Like, could it, could you have, like, because again, all you have to do is feed it. Like, have you played with chat GDP yet? I haven't, no.

GPT. Yeah, I haven't. I've seen it around, but. Man, it's wild. It's wild. You can just put stuff in there and it'll spit out stuff. So it's writing jokes. And they're funny.

It's a funny joke that an AI. I think. So is that art? This is going to be, this I think is the the real precipice of what we're going to be feeling in the near future is what is our experiences with art and what about AI created expressions? Is that art? Is it not? I don't know. That's the frontier. And how are people going to use it for good or use it for bad? But AI is going to be the thing that I think, you know, you look about new expressions of art forms. That's going to be. a really interesting thing because artists will never be able to hold a candle to what a computer can create because it's infinite right infinite possibilities and that's the scary thing is like

the skill of the AI and what it could create versus what a human can create different you think it's like john henry versus the steam machine exactly i think that's not a far stretch gosh like it seems so bleak to me like i want to believe that that's the that statement, artists can't hold a candle to what machines can create. Part of me just wants to rail against that, you know, but if you look at a computer, and my logic was this, and I don't know that it thoroughly makes sense, but I'll just throw it out there. It seems to me that a machine is not creative.

A machine or chat GPT or the AI artwork is merely a compiler. It goes and it finds different. pieces that fit the puzzle. But I guess you could apply that same argument to the human imagination. Basically, right? I think, I don't, like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying with that idea. But isn't there something that's innately human that allows us to create?

Like, can a, can a computer make a conscious decision to be dangerous? You could ask a computer to give you a dangerous idea. Mm-hmm. But it seems that most criminals get caught because, they have someone else's idea. Like the real criminals. There's a book called Mastermind that came out. This guy was a real criminal.

And I highly recommend everybody to check out the book, Mastermind. It's this guy, I think his name was Tom Leroux. And this guy backdoored the pharmaceutical industry, started his own army, moved to Brazil, and was like going to start an army by impregating all these Brazilian women. And like, the guy was a lunatic, but a fascinating read. Here's a guy that came up with his, own ideas that were not compiled. And while not everybody can be a mastermind, I got to think that

people that are functioning on the highest level will always find a way to exploit the inability of a computer to be random. What do you think about that particular take? Well, I think it comes back to the difference. And maybe again, like the conversation of like propaganda versus art. And again, what is the the piece? And I think it all comes back to again, that for me, art is an expression of the artist's ability to channel source. Source gave them something. Source showed them something that hadn't been in existence and that they were able to pull that through

and create something that was true to their understanding of the divine. An AI system can't do that. I don't believe AI will have connection to source. So you can look again at, you know, was the Backstreet Boys or in sync or the, you know, these manufactured bands, were they creating art? or were they creating something that was in service to the system? Did they generate millions and millions of dollars?

Did they sway the youth and all of these, like, like, were they expressing the human emotions of love and breakup and all these things? Sure. But are those songs going to hold a candle to like a Rolling Stone from Dylan? Like, you know what I mean? Like, again, it's all opinion. Some, you know, someone might be like, oh my gosh, no, in sinks, bye, bye, by, by changed my.

life the same way that someone might be like, yeah, like a Rolling Stone, changed my, okay, great. Yes, right? On some levels, AI, I don't believe will ever be able to pull down source. Will AI art generate revenue? Will AI art be stuff that people enjoy? Will AI art create experiences that will be meaningful? Might those experiences maybe help you connect to source? Maybe.

I don't know. I don't know that it's worth holding an opinion there of yes or no. but in its creation, I don't believe it can have the thing that truly great art has, which is its connection to source. Okay, this brings up a great point. And I'm glad that you said the word source because that brings me to this idea. And I think it ties it together. Let's look at the source of chat GPT. Let's look at the source of AI.

What is it that those who created this machine want it to do? They want it to make profit. They want it to alleviate the job. of the people that work for them so that they don't have to pay those people. And in doing so, they're putting out a message that says that, this thing is going to replace all of you. They're trying to get out in front of it and say, this is what it does.

This is what it does. Look at this tool. It's going to replace you. It's way better than you. But I think they're in line. That's where my bullshit meter begins to go off. Like, oh. And in some ways when I look at it, I go, look, these guys created a tool.

And it really doesn't do anything. So they release it to the public. Like, why would they release it to the common man if it's such a brilliant tool it's going to replace all these people? Well, the argument there is, oh, it's not finished. You know, we need to, we need to retrain it. We need to get you guys to, you know, the same way they got the people at Disney to retrain their replacements. So too are they trying to get humankind to replace their robot overlords or this chat GPT. But I think it's going to fail.

And I'll tell you why I think that. if you look at the promise of artificial intelligence or if you look at the promise of technology for the last 50 years, it never shows up. You know, it's this, it's this brilliant kid in a boardroom explaining to these greedy, self-righteous, fat chumps how they're going to save all this money. But it never shows up. They write all these algorithms. And then the algorithm is kind of patchy. It doesn't really work. And they fire all the HR team.

But they're like, ah, shit, we've got to bring half these guys back. this thing doesn't really work. You know, we were supposed to have self-driving trucks 20 years ago. Where are they at? You know, if you look at the room you're in right now, Jason, as I look around your room, if I took out your microphone, if I took out all your screens, that room would look almost exactly like it did in 1950. We're talking basically over a high-powered telephone with imagery.

But, you know, what else is there? If you take away all the screens, what do you really have? Like, I don't think the promise of technology has deluge. the way in which we were told it was going to deliver. Hey, we're going to break this technology. It's going to free you up all your time so you can do creative things. I think we're still stuck in this lie that technology is doing things for us, but it's not. In fact, society is crumbling or maybe being reborn in a way we didn't think possible.

So I think chat, GBT, I think AI are going to be tools that we can use to make our lives better. but I think the money used to create it has a different idea of creating more money for those who created. I think it's kind of a false promise. I think, I mean, the reality is though these promises are trying to predict the future, which none of us know. So I think that's one of the falsities of like or the like, again, like the idea of like future land. Like often these things are all about distracting us from the present moment. So you look at these times of like where technology is going. going to make your life better in the future is to distract you from the shit that's going on.

So what was happening in the 50s and all this stuff about the future, right? Weird stuff was happening in the world. Power structures are shifting. We're coming out of World War II. We didn't want to be in the present moment of what was happening. And so it was like, oh, technology and look at these tiny things. You'll have a self-driving car. You'll have a microwave.

You'll have all these things. I do believe, though, like when we look at the 100-year span, like I've been watching 1923. I don't know if you are into that, but like Yellowstone and it's a fun show. 1923, they're like in Montana and they're just talking about the idea of like a gas stove and a refrigerator in your home and how much time that's going to save you. Think about this. We're so, like it is saving us a shit ton of time.

We don't, we don't hunt anymore. We don't have to like keep our stuff cold anymore. We don't cook over a fire anymore. So on some levels, if we look at it on a hundred year span of where we were at in 1923 versus where we're at in 2023, our world is vastly different because of technology. We fly places, right? My partner's in Mexico right now. She got to Mexico in a matter of four hours, four hours from a flight and a freaking

thing that is traveling through the air at 500 miles an hour. Insane. Insane. I think the thing is we saw this massive explosion over the last 30 years from 90 to 2020, where we went from not having any screens to then having an eye. iPhone that was being updated and new things that were happening pretty quick. That's a pretty short amount of time where we saw some pretty significant. And I think what part of the lie that we got attached to was that that was sustainable, that every year we would see leaps and bounds of technology.

And we've seen a slowing down. We've seen a slowing down over the last 15 years because I think we got, we've had to let some stuff really evolve, but it's happening. And so, you know, by the time that I'm the end of my life and I look at from being, you know, 1983 or four when I was born, so maybe I'm dying, you know, at 2050 or 2060, right, 60, 70 years old. What kind of stuff is going to have advanced? So I do believe technology is delivering, but we don't know the future. So we get attached to a specific future, like a flying car or like these different things. Oh, this hasn't happened. Technology is not not at play. But I think what we don't see happening is the technology that is controlling power and what's happening of really, you know, social media and

some of the stuff that's starting to come out and the way that the government has used social media to control the narrative over the last 15 years. Why did Twitter win? Why did Facebook win? Why did Google win? Why did Apple win? Like, how did these things get the biggest? They all had backdoor shit to the government. Like that there's stuff like that's now coming out. This isn't conspiracy shit like this is the stuff that we're seeing so we know that these advancements of technology have been deeply connected to power and then that power probably holding stuff back like what is being held back sure really do we have a true sense of like what technology can do like I don't think we have any idea like certain like what's happening in that tube smashing particles together like

that's some crazy technology it is it to does the general public know Oh, no, no, we're going to distract you by the screen. We're going to distract you by consumption. We're going to distract you. So I don't know. I think it's kind of like I agree, but I think there's this underside of technology probably has advanced far greater than we have an understanding. Yeah, that's an interesting concept. And I can totally see that aspect of it.

You know, when you start listening to some of the robber barons or even some of the monopolies we have today, you know, they say things like competition. is the enemy. There should be no competition. And when you look at a world with no competition, then you look at a world that's stagnating. And that seems to be where we are. Like, you know, maybe one of the, maybe one of the bright spots could be that if indeed AI does come and begin to replace people, it seems like the targeted people aren't the ones that we said. We, we were told that it's going to target these low paying jobs, but it seems to me that AI is going to take out the lawyers, take out some doctors. take out the financial industry.

Like how many how many people's 401ks are traded by an algorithm now? You know, how many people, you know, someone was telling me there's going to be the first ever case tried by a digital lawyer. I heard like you. Like what are the like and these are people that have are really specialized. Like they have, they have educated themselves in the law. And what is the law, but just, you know, I'm not a lawyer. And I'm sure there are some creative lawyers.

but it seems to me the most creative lawyers are the ones who are most knowledgeable about cases and who's more knowledgeable than a compiler that has access in a split second to every case law that's ever been. But, okay, what does that mean for judges then? Wouldn't a robot judge be a better judge? At least on some level, if you had a judge that was a robot, you would have the same judge robot judge Jeffrey Epstein as, you know, George the crack dealer. You know, so there would be at least. Or like how the Supreme Court can't find the, the,

the source of these documents are now like, like, oh, okay. Yeah. So it's interesting because I think you look at the trends of specialization. And that really over the last, again, 30 years, you've watched education drive specialization. So, you know, you don't become a heart doctor. You become the left ventricle expert, right? You don't become a brain neurosurgeon. You become this one part of, like, so even our medical system is so highly specialized that we don't really understand how it all works together because we're so specialized, that the heart person doesn't understand what's going on with the leg. And that's why so much of the medical, the Western medical system focuses on the symptoms and never the root. They don't ever get

to the root. They don't ever look at, oh, the reason you're dealing with this is because of inflammation. And why are you inflamed? Oh, because you're eating shit. Oh, why are you eating shit because we just told you that Lucky Charms is more healthy than meat. Why did we do that? Because we were trying, like, right, you just go back. And it all goes back to where is the money. Money is driving this highly specialized thing because that's far more profitable than healing people and letting the body do what it can do and actually heal itself in the way that it is ultimately designed to be able to do. And so I think AI will continue to drive the specialization. And it will, I think you're absolutely right. it will destroy the industries that have become so heavily specialized because AI will be far more

specialized. You can get far more like understanding of that stuff. So what do we have to do and how do we sit with this is I don't believe like the doom and gloom of it all. I believe we we have to keep coming back and and be willing to actually peel like zoom out. We and all in the part of our practices in our life is again, how do we zoom out of not the this or that but the yes and no. Zuming out. How do we live in a world where we're not so deeply attached to some of this stuff? And we can sit and we're not attached to what the system is telling us to do. And we can think for ourselves. And as more and more people awaken to that, I think this is where we're going to see that

parallel reality start to come where those that are going to be tied into the specialization are going to be living their lives. And those of us that have woken up to our yes and no are going to be living in a parallel parallel world. And again, that parallel world is happening right now. I live a parallel life to the other people that are around me because I've chosen my yes and I'm saying I'm not buying into those narratives. I'm not buying into that stuff anymore. So I live a parallel life around people all the time.

Yeah. And with parallel life comes parallel payment structures and parallel economies and, you know, own little city states probably and all kinds of developments, you know. And, you know, in some ways, in some ways, it seems that. we have created this, this giant chaos around us. You know, when you look at programs and education like standardized testing, you know, it's in some ways, you could see the hallmarks of the social engineer that wanted to bring together a country. Hey, let's teach everybody in this country, this thing.

Even though this country is so massive, let's try to get everybody on the same page. The only way to do that is to, you have to pick and choose what you're going to teach. And that means you have to pick and choose winners and pick and choose truths and pick and choose falsities. You know, and in some ways, this would be a fun experiment with chat GPT is like, you know, chat GPT. Can you tell me why the Pfizer shot has caused so much mildcarditis, you know? And, you know, that in lies the problem right there. Maybe chat GPT could replace everybody. But the fact that they refuse to program it with the true answers of what's really happening is going to be.

be its drawback. Is chat GPT going to be able to construct a narrative the same way a thousand or the 300 top social engineers that work in the White House do? You know, is it going to be able to do that? Or is it going to be democratized? Is there going to be the same way there could be the branching off the internet and have five different internets? Could there be five different chatbots that tell you five different stories? You know, it's in some ways it's it sounds similar. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I again, I think at the end of the day, it's going to be, it's, it's, the cycle of master and slave has never gone away. Yeah. We want to believe it has, right?

And we want to believe that we've been free. But like, you look again at the human history, you always see there are the masters and there are the slaves. And I believe like over the last 100 years, the power structures that we've seen arise, again, the Rockefellers, like all this stuff that came out, like all, like, once you started to really see wealth coming into a handful of people. And you started to see this country, especially after the Civil War, we kind of come back together, we figure a way to kind of be united in this thing. And all of a sudden, you start seeing these people rise up in the private sector

that had a lot of money, a lot of power and how that stuff starts to influence the government. You start to see structures of masters and slaves. And so the question becomes like, when are we going to wake up to realizing we're slaves to this system? You're a slave to this thing. You're a slave to having to do it this way. The education system, standardization, that all creates a mindset that it has to be done in a specific way. And if you break out of that, oh, well, you know, you don't fit into our system. You're not going to be successful.

You won't be able to make money. But then the paradox of it all is we look at the people that do break the system and they're like, that's the American dream. You should be like that guy, right? Starting companies out of garages, like all the tech boom of the 60s and 70s. And again, these were free thinkers. I truly believe that. In their beginning, these were people that were willing to break out of the system and do something new. But then the system will always find a way to take control and serve it, you know, drive it to how can we continue to drive this as the master and continue to drive that we all have to live in support to it.

Yeah. And some like, you know, if I if I put on my more conspiratorial hat, you know, and I look at the world of demographics and I know that there's like 10,000. baby boomers retiring a day for the next, you know, seven or eight years. And the amount of people that are no longer going to be working vastly dwarf the amount of people that are working. Like it sets up a pretty crazy economic situation. And then you factor in, oh, well, it's a good thing. We have this automation coming in, you know, and then you start looking at the world in which we live. I remember prior to COVID, there was the yellow vests uprising in Europe.

There were, you know, in the Middle East, they had the riots. And it seemed to me that the world was exploding in chaos in ways in which I had never seen before. Maybe it's a cycle. Maybe it's the economy. Maybe it's demographics. But COVID kind of put a stop to that. It forced, it was a worldwide lockdown.

And you could argue that it gave the people. positions of authority time to breathe and time to come up with a plan. And so, you know, if you look at the paper today, I was reading, I think I was reading on Zero Hedge that there's a million people that have erupted in France because they have raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. In the United States, we have just seen a railroad strike. United Parcel Service is getting ready to strike. You know, the amount of- Nursing strike in New York, right? Yeah, they're everywhere. And it's, it's continue. It's almost like, okay, lockdown's over, right back where we were, only because you held it back, now it's been intensified. And I think you're going to see more and more chaos.

You're going to see a stronger will of the people erupting. And it appears like it's chaos. But in some ways, it's it's the tearing down of the aristocracy. It's the revolution of the slave master or maybe a redefining of the slave master relationship. You could argue that the richest people in the world, whether it's Gates or Musk or, you know, pick your billionaire, these individuals have more resources than some countries in the world. One person has more resources than an entire country. And if you looked at a corporation's employees the same way that a country looks at its citizens, the structure is similar.

And there's a lot of rhetoric out there that talks about how more, how better a company is run than a country is run. And when you start looking at the ways in which all our, like, we have been trained to look at our politicians like big dummies that hate everybody. And we've epitomized the CEO. Look at Elon Musk. This guy is so great. Or look at Tim Cook. You know, like you can almost, and we filter it back to this idea of propaganda. and all these things coming out.

You could see maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not intentional, but it seems to me the ideology is tending towards a corporate structure of society versus a country structure of society. And that would be redefining the slaves and the masters. It would be almost a hostile takeover of countries. It's crazy.

Is that too much to think of or what? You think that's too crazy? No. I mean neither. So like because the way like again, I like to like again observe history. Yeah. Look at these ways of these trends of what we see, right? So you look at the civil rights movement of the 60s and you see a group of people and

you know, we just celebrated Martin Luther King day on Monday. You see these things that we hold up where individuals and obviously Malcolm as well during this time of rising up. And we saw this massive shift happen where a group of people were able to. punch through the ceiling that was over them. They did something deeply, deeply revolutionary and deeply, deeply meaningful in that movement of the civil rights activities of the 60s. At the same time, you then see just after this group of individuals and people coming together and then protesting the war, right, all the sorts of protests, all the pushback, you saw them

punched through and actually affect real change in the government. We saw the actual movement of truly recognizing another human being for who they are, regardless of their skin color. Beautiful. And then right after that, you see a clamping back down, right? You see how all of a sudden, like, what happened? The drugs get taken away. What happens? Like, oh, all of a sudden, these substances like mushrooms are these scheduled one dangerous things, right? You see the movement of Nixon. And what I believe begins to happen is you start looking at the rise of the 70s and in the last 50 years, corporatocracy really begins to take a hold. And you start to see this blending of these big movements of companies and government. And all of a sudden it's like,

okay, great, you guys can have your civil rights movements, but we're still going to keep you under the system in this way. Right. And so what ends up happening is over time, just like how Rome saw its future, that it was going to crumble, and it had to shift its power structure into the church to continue on its legacy. And again, I think every big, the kind of like Britain didn't figure this out. Right. You look at like Britain was this massive world thing. And then what ends up happening is America comes along and we knock them off the map

as being the biggest country or the power structure that's controlling this world. Because they didn't figure out how to take colonization and shift it into the next thing. they just try to keep their power structure. And I think, again, we got to know these people are playing the long game. They're playing the 100-year game. They're playing in centuries. They're not playing in years like the rest of us. And so you look at the shift of saying, okay, great, America can't stay number one forever.

Come on, let's just be honest. Like, nothing stays number one forever. So if America can't stay number one forever, what's going to be the next thing? And I think they realized, oh, we can break all sorts of boundaries with moving shift to corporatocracies. right the W.EF and the movements right now like even again stuff happening in Davos they're meeting and what's the number one thing that's coming out right now all the conspiracy theorists are telling us that you know they're going to own nothing and be happy about it and they're backtracking and basically saying it's all been conspiracy when it's the very things they wrote five years ago

so this shift is happening and I yeah again this might sound crazy and put my tinfoil cap on but is the shift in America not going to be the church but corporate autocracy, you know, is it going to be the ability that we're no longer going to see nation states and boundaries of physical land, but more about the control of who, what screen you're looking at or how this information is coming to you. And then that and of itself becomes its own religion in ways you know, like it becomes another way of controlling people, which ultimately, that's all religion is, is let me tell you about God versus let you experience God. Yeah, I think you're right on the money. I think that what's being attempted is the breakup of the United States.

And you know, you can see it with all the policies being put forward. The red team and the blue team, the gaze and the straits, the, you know, every policy being put out there is being put out there to divide people. And you can easily see propaganda be used to unite people. I'm not saying that this particular example I'm going to use is act is something that was done from a place of, you know, integrity. but after 9-11, all of a sudden, all the propaganda was like, we're all Americans, they ran out of flags, you know, and now it's the complete opposite. It's like, all the flags are a piece of garbage and these people hate each other and tear down all these things and these people are going to get money and you're not going to give money and we should have these in schools. Like, every policy is put out there to divide people. But the truth is, I don't care if you wear a blue tie or a red tie or you're a hippie from Northern California or you're a redneck that lives in the deep south.

we have way more in common than we do against each other. Most people want the government to leave them alone. Most people want their kids to go to a better school. Most people want to be left alone and have the pursuit of happiness. And these are all things that we have already that are given to us. We're just being, you know, it's like a giant red herring. Like we're just being thrown off the trail. And I think that that is so when you look at Bill Gates buying the most farmland,

like he's kind of mapping out a little area that is going to build something right there. when you look at Arizona being a smart city. That seems a lot like the Chinese model where, hey, let's try this city right here. And you know what? While we have a smart city, why don't we just use Apple Pay? Everybody in the city can only use Apple Pay.

And pretty soon you're in a position where you earn a company dollar that's only good at the company store. You know, and it's crazy to think about, but I see it happen. And I think it's, again, I think right now, and again, I can't reference this, unfortunately, but I was listening to someone that was deep into this side of things. And they were talking about basically the idea of getting into like a digital ID, like a government digital ID and attaching that to our access to the internet. And at the end of the day, like, the things will not stay open for long.

And again, for long, you know, 50 years, right? So when we started looking at the shifts of how things begin to move, you know, I think we are going to begin to see limitations on some levels of like. You want access to this thing? You've got to have your digital ID. You're going to be tracked, right? Why is it so important? Like on some of us, I feel like they've sold us this idea that like, oh, personal tracking of your bio hacking and you can wear this watch and you can always know and it's got all these benefits, right? Okay, great. There's some benefits for me, but ultimately like, what am I giving up? Like really, what am I giving up when I tap into these things? And what am I willing to give up? And this is part of what I feel like people need to begin to, again, to awaken to is, what is my yes and am I comfortable being tracked 100% of the time? Oh, I'm not doing anything bad, right?

Like, whatever. They're not tracking me. I'm not a terrorist. You're valuable to them. Your data is valuable. You're being tracked. You're trading something for something. So at some point, I think they're going to call everything in on that.

And then we're going to have some real interesting, like, what is the parallel what is a parallel you know internet look like you know like what is some of the stuff because it is going to they need to control it at the end of the day that's how they maintain their power yeah you know and if they're taking everybody's data like obviously that data is worth money if you're going to be tracked all day shouldn't you get paid for your data like you know you should know but i have free i free access to the internet we're going to give you something you already have. Exactly.

How about that? Cool on. I was watching a credit card commercial last night. I was watching basketball. It came on and it was with Kevin Hart and it said it was about getting your points back. And it's lined with something along the lines of get more of what's yours. Get more of what's yours.

Think about that. I think it was Chase. The idea of like getting points back on going into debt is connected to me getting more of what's mine. Really, really like a weird. I heard it and it like triggered me. I was like, whoa, that's weird. Like that is a weird line to say that I'm paying for something that again, if we just look at the credit model, I'm paying for something that I don't actually have money to pay because I'm not using an actual currency for it.

and then I'm going to get money back when I make my payment on that thing so that I make more of what's already mine, which was my money in the first place. Just a weird subliminal messaging of like how does credit and this idea attaching us to like getting more of what's mine? I don't know. It was that that came to my mind as it was a while. Well, the more you spend, the more you save. The more you, exactly, right? The more you spend, the more money you get back, right? It's yours in the first place.

God, so. And hurry up, hurry up and do it. Hurry up. You got to do it now. When last I heard some stat, something like 60% of people right now are living paycheck to paycheck and basically are being able to exist because of credit, like living on credit cards and have crazy amounts of debt and credit debt. And all of us have our own experiences of our relationship to money and what that looks like.

But it's a thing. Like it's a definite piece of the puzzle of how they're looking at digitizing all of this. and what is money, right? We're really going to be getting to ask a lot of those questions. Yeah, that's a great point. And that's something that definitely needs to be asked. It's fascinating to me how, you know, the people on the top, and by top, I mean, like, say, like, the Federal Reserve, I would say a large number of people in Congress who are allowed to do insider trading without any consequences.

I would say the majority of Fortune 500 companies and a large number of people on Wall Street. you know, they're able to borrow money at zero percent. And then they park it at the Fed and make an interest rate on it. Like that's free money. When we had the bailouts, I remember the first bailouts in, oh, wait, like the country was in an uproar, like, do not do this. And the bankers just fly up there and they're private jets. And they're like, look, man, if you don't do this, we're going to shut down the entire

country and everyone's going to suffer. And then the Congress is like, okay, we'll give you. I think the first was like three pages. He's like, I think I forgot the, um, the actual guy that did it. But, you know, they presented them with like three pages. And like, okay, we need a blank check. We want to spend as much money as possible.

You know, and when the financial crisis hit, John Stewart was on Joe Rogan. And he, I guess his brother is a really big banker, big on Wall Street. And he, John Stewart was saying that he had sat down with a bunch of, you know, high and mighty financiers and had asked them, you know, when this crisis hit, when the subprime crisis hit, why didn't you just make the people's houses that were underwater? Just make them whole.

Like, we spent so much more money. Why not just make their, their mortgage is whole? And the guy said to him, well, John, we don't want to incentivize bad behavior.

But meanwhile, they gave themselves a bailout. Everyone got bonuses. And like, for someone to sit there with a straight face and say, we don't want to incentivize bad behavior. Like, that's the epitome of corruption.

Like that, the system at that point for me, it was over. Like, oh, I get it. These guys privatize all the profits and they socialize all the loss.

They want to talk about how a income for everybody will never work, but it definitely works for them. You know, and it just seems to me like that illusion of any kind of integrity and finance was broken a long time ago. And they've been trying to repair it since 08. And it's probably been happening since 1978. Oh, yeah.

Or back when Rockefeller had a bunch of money. Again, this stuff doesn't, it hasn't changed on some levels. I feel like you can just see the cycle and you look at the current redistribution of wealth. And it's even on a far grander scale, right? Like what? All of a sudden like Pfizer, who was like the fifth rated pharmaceutical company three to four years ago, they're on their way out, they were struggling and they weren't making money. All of a sudden starts making $36 billion in a year because they, you know, of the shot and the privatization of pharmacy, like the pharmaceutical industry.

Like again, you just don't, you don't. So often I feel like people hear this stuff and they think it's conspiratorial. And it's, you just have to start looking at the money trails. Right. You just have to start looking at how you, you know, the far like the FDA is, you know, supported by lobbyists and who has the money in the lobbying and how is that lobbying money funneling into Congress and who's making the laws? Like it's just, it's right there for us. It's right under our nose. And again, it's like the old principle that the most dangerous stuff happens in plain sight. It's happening right in front of us. And so we know, and again, I think a lot of this conversation is around how do you begin to interpret the world around you and begin to

see the see with eyes, clear eyes of, oh, why is this happening? Why is this happening? And becoming questioners, right? And to me, that's part of this path of being able just to start to see the illusion for what it is is by asking questions. And anyone that's listening, like, you know, don't listen to George and I on this stuff. You got to go do your own work. You got to go start looking and following and paying attention to. And my goal is to never convince anybody of any of this stuff. My only encouragement is go look at the money. Do your own, do your own research. Get out there. Start paying attention. And if you can see the dots, great. Maybe you see different dots than I see. Tell me about the dots that you see. But it's, yeah, I think we're seeing.

a massive, massive transition happen. And I have a lot of optimism for it for the people that are going, like, there's going to be pain and there's going to be suffering. But at the end of the day, the suffering only lies because we're unwilling to let go of the story that we had told ourselves. But if we're willing to let go of whatever that is, whatever future my children hold, there's a wild time to be raising children right now. Like I have no, you know, you think back to like, there was a plan for my life, right? go to school, go to college, get a good job, all this stuff. And at this point with my children, I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, I have no idea what the plan of your life is.

I don't even know if I'm going to believe in college that that's going to be the structure that you need to go through. Like, I have no idea ultimately what the path is going to be for you. So for me as a parent and any other parents that are listening, like my biggest encouragement is that we give our children the tools to understand themselves. to navigate this world. That is the only path that I can invite my children into is the internal path. And trust that then whatever the world brings to them, whatever decisions they need to make, whatever a career looks like,

whatever a job is, whatever that they know themselves. And if I can teach them that as a parent, is there in the small amount of time that I have with them, then that's great. But I'm not going to have them attached to a specific path because it's, I have no idea.

It's a wild. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems for so long, that's what culture is done is it has made these little cookie cutters for people to fill themselves up in this particular shape. You can be a fireman. You could be a banker. You could be this. But the truth is, by the time, you know, it almost seems like culture plays this trick on people.

Like it buys you off. By the time you hit the age of 45 or 50 and you're dangerous, you're smart, you have experience, you know how to disrupt things. You're making just enough money not to shake the boat. You make it just enough where you can get by. And on the topic of doing your own work and asking questions, one question that I asked myself that really got me thinking different was, why doesn't this thing work? Like, I'm working so hard.

My wife is working so hard and we have so little. Like, how can that be? Like, how can I work this hard and have so little? And I see these people around me that have so much. Like, it doesn't make sense. And once you just ask yourself, If that's happening to you, if you're listening to this, if you find yourself in a position wondering, like, how can you work so hard and have so little? Just ask yourself that question.

And all of a sudden, the signs will be made apparent to you. You may come to a different understanding than I did. But I wish more people would ask themselves that question because everybody is working harder. We get this rhetoric like everyone just stays home and they don't work. But that's bullshit. Everybody I know is working as hard as they can. They got kids. They're trying to go to school. school. They're trying to be a good parent. We're trying to keep their job. They're trying to move up. They're trying to improve themselves. We're doing more now than we ever have before. And there's all this rhetoric about people that are lazy. They're fat. People are having a lot of problems because they're working so hard. And the harder you work, it seems like the less you have. And that's supposed to be the

opposite. Because come full circle to our conversation. It comes back to being a doer versus a being. Yeah. Right? Because I believe that, again, as parents, are my my my the greatest work that I have in front of me is raising children that is the most important work that I see that has been been given to me that is on my radar so how I raise my children how you know the and again it's a long game right you're playing this game for a while ideally um and so no guarantees right kid can be taken away from you in any moment but ideally we're playing this game game for the long run at the end of the day My goal is to help teach my children to do the work that matters to them, that gives them life.

And that when we do work that is, that we're aligned to, then it doesn't feel like work. And again, that's the big weird paradox that's out there. But right now, I believe people are doing so hard is because they don't see another path. And it takes a lot of courage to break out of the system. It takes a lot of courage to encourage your children to be like, you know what, son? I don't know if you're going to go to college. I don't know. You get to decide that, but I'm not going to tell you when you're 12 that you got to start figuring that stuff out or that your grades are going to matter. You know what? My son was struggling with like typing,

right? He's learning computer and starting to type and he was getting frustrated about a grade. And I was just like, buddy, I don't, I do not care about the grade that you get. What's important is that you start figuring out how you can type because it's kind of a key thing about how you can communicate in this world and how you can connect. And so don't worry. about the grade, just start figuring out for yourself, like, why is this important? You know, like math. Yes, you can make the argument. You're never going to need to use your math again because you can look it up online anytime you want. Perfect. But how can it serve you? How can you learn this thing to help you get to something bigger? Do not worry about the grade. I'm not concerned about grades.

And again, from a parenting perspective, that's the opposite of what everyone's like, no, got to get good grades. Like, I don't care. If you get an A and you feel proud about that, I am. proud of you for doing the work that got you that A. But do not strive for that because it's not serving you at the end of the day. Like do what that again, as parents, we got to be the ones to start in giving this stuff to our children to get them out of the system because that's where I see the future at the end of the day. That my ceiling will be my children's foundation. That is my biggest hope for my children, that how I grow, they're going to use and be able to build on top of. And that's an evolution.

From where I am, from when they were born to now, like my oldest, who's 12, like, my ceiling is growing. So hopefully his foundation is growing with it. And at some point, he will then step off of that. But that is the path that I hope for and desire for our children. So sorry, I don't know how I got on to that rabbit trail. But that's it. Like to me, this awakening, this shift in society, it happens for us as parents who start

waking up and start challenging our children to live a different way. Yeah, I like that. And, you know, there's a, I'm a huge fan of mythology. And there's an Arthurian myth that goes along the lines of, you know, the King Arthur and Percival and all the people are sitting around the round table and they're getting ready to have this giant feast. But King Arthur says, before we have a feast, I pray that we see a miracle. And all of a sudden, like this apparition of the Holy Grail pops up on the table like, oh, And at that point in time, like all the knights are just blown away and they decide the image tells them the story that before they can continue on their feast, they have a mission. And their mission is to go into the dark woods and find the Holy Grail.

So they all get up from the tail. And there's a specific thing they have to do, though. When they find themselves on the perimeter of the dark forest, all the knights go their own ways. And it's told to the nights, each one of you must find the darkest, scariest, most dangerous spot for you to enter into the dark forest. Only then will you find the Holy Grail. And I always look back on that and think, like, that's, that is food for us. Like, that is knowledge for us.

Each one of us must blaze our own trail. You could start off on a trail, but when you come to the dark forest, you must find the darkest spot. You must find the most challenging area because that's what. the grail's at for you your specific grail and if you as a parent are willing to challenge the status quo a little bit maybe you're maybe you're a uPS driver maybe you're a dental hygienist or you know but it doesn't mean you can't be searching the trail of darkness for your own holy grail when you're not doing that thing and i think that when you do that you teach your kids to do the

same thing you teach your kids that they can go it alone if they need to and you give them the tools You give them the machete to cut the way and blaze their own trail. And when you do that, as difficult as it is, I think you find who you are when you get to the middle of that forest. But those are the tools. Those are the ways to find yourself is by blazing your own trail. And it's scary. Like you said, it's difficult to do. And in fact, the education system encourages not to do it.

Exactly. The education system encourages just be part of the crowd. Don't rock the boat. But the truth is a life worth living is a life where you. research things that help you find out who you are. You know, so what else were, yeah, what do you got? Well, it's just one, I know we need to wrap up. I just want one thought to build on that is I also believe, though, that part of going into

the dark forest is you have to go into your shadow. You have to go into your darkness. You have to go into your darkness. Whatever that is, we all hold that thing in us. None of us, like, we all have darkness. And so the only way you will find the Holy Grail is if you do the work with your darkness, if you learn how to integrate your, ego, your thinking mind that keeps you in the this or that reality and integrated into your true

self of who your intelligence actually tells you who you are. That once you do that, you will find the Holy Grill of being you, of being the fullness of who you are. And that every parent, if you're not willing to look at your shadow or willing to look at your darkness, your children won't be able to go there either. So part of our paths parents is to do the work, to look at the shadow, to deal with the darkness, to integrate the darkness. Because our children will have to do their work as well. They have to integrate their darkness. We cannot create perfect children. If we had, we'd have perfect societies. Every individual has to do their work. The only tool that I can do is not protect my children, but to equip them for when they have

to walk into their dark forest because at some point they will. Yeah, that's well said. That's really well said. I like the idea about the shadow and integrating that. So, Matt, Jason, I feel like these two hours, they go by too fast. Man, I can talk to you for another two hours. They go quick. It is fun, man. I really enjoy talking to you and I'm really thankful that you're willing to share and spend time with me, man. It's fun for me. As we're moving forward, though, what do you got coming up? Where can people find you and what are you excited about? Yeah, people can check out my website, experience integration. If any of this has sparked something in you or you're looking to do some of your work, obviously hit me up. I'm doing coaching with people, taking people through various, you know, either a one month program or three month process, depending on the type of work that you're looking to do. So I'm available for that one-on-one coaching. Check out my podcast. A lot of these ideas we talk about. My partner and I, Tiffany, we explore these things. We talk about these secrets. We talk about what we're learning, our stories. So you can find that either on Spotify or Apple Music. And then if you just want to see what I'm up to you from

the day to day, check out Instagram. Experience integration is where I'm posting stuff, telling my story, doing the things that you do on social. So those are the three main ways to find me. but experience integration or telling secrets and I'll come up. Fantastic. And I'm sure we'll be back here probably in a month or maybe before. So thank you to everybody. Or one of the roundtables. Or one of the roundtables.

You can catch us on Sundays at the psychedelic roundtable. And yeah, reach out to Jason. He's fun to talk to and he's got a lot of information and he's helped a lot of people. So thank you very much for your time, everybody. I hope you have a fantastic day. That's all we got. Aloha. All right.

See you.