TrueLife - Jorge Padron - The Mind is a Playground for Consciousness

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/http://linkedin.com/in/jorge-padron-618389b4About:I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner in private practice and specialize in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP). I have completed most of the MDMA therapist training under the instruction of MAPS and the CIIS CPTR program. Furthermore, I enjoy working with individuals in need of a unique mental health approaches.Show sponserhttps://www.underluckystars.com/TRUELIFEPODCAST One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies gentlemen, Aloha Friday. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the week treated you well. And hope if it didn't treat you well, that you're excited that it's about to be the weekend. Hope the birds are singing, the sun is shining.

singing, the sun is shining. Got a great show for you today. We're going to talk about all kinds of cool things that you probably haven't heard of. So let me just go ahead and introduce this incredible individual I got sitting right here next to me who's going to be spending some time with us today. The one and only Jorge Padron, psychiatric nurse practitioner in private practice and specializes in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. He's well-versed in the MDMA therapy and has a unique ability to not only under stand, but also has a stellar track record of helping individuals in need of a unique mental health approach. He's been undergoing some incredible studies in an incredible program,

which we're going to get into today. But I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks, Jorge, for being here. How are you today, my friend? I am not too bad. How about yourself? I'm living the dream. You know, it's not often that I get to talk to another George or another Jorge and I'm always amazed at how handsome they are and how smart they are. Thank you. So, you know, you and I were talking a little bit before the show and I know that you have your own private practice. I definitely want to get into that and I want to get into some of the things you're studying.

But you had mentioned that you're currently enrolled in this program and I found it fascinating so much that I had to stop what we were talking about and start the show because I want you to maybe explain to some other people what it is you're doing right now. Can you handle that for us? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, originally when I really wanted to get serious about or a little bit more structured about studying psychedelics, I went to CIS, which is a well-known program. I think it's possibly the first university program for psychedelic therapy. So I am a graduate of CIIS for their psychedelic research and psychedelics program.

And it's a great program. amazing that taught me a lot of the Western view of psychedelics, right? But for me, it was kind of missing a lot, you know, not the program itself, but just I think in America there's only so much we could do because it is such a new field, right? Even though it's been around the legalities and things like that really have suppressed a lot of the research that could have been done. So we're really actually behind, I believe, that a lot of other countries,

especially South America. So this is an amazing program that I found in South America, which is short. It's a psychedelic therapy program, but they're called Awe, and they're run by a nonprofit organization, which is run by this very good gentleman of Lila Vega. And so they really want to provide this experience of true understanding of,

okay, this is what you would be doing in psychedelic therapy, right? So I'm in my second year. year of that program. And I found that to be fascinating because, you know, not only because they integrate you with, for example, if you're going to do a Yahweh tradition, which Yahweh is a lot like ayahuas, because some people use the term, like they interchange the term, although there is some differences. There's a lot of similarities, but also there's some differences. So when you're doing this in these programs, you really actually go and you learn, like we were just in the Amazon not too long ago. And you actually.

you drink medicine with the tribe, you're shown their way of life, not in a tourist kind of way, but really like, you know, you spend an extended amount of time there. So really, this program to me has been one of the best experiences as well as it's been very eye-opening of how much you don't know, right? Because I've been involved in the psychedelic field for a little bit now. And I really thought I knew a lot. And then you start to get peel back the layers and you realize there's so much more to learn, right? That being said, I think they're able to grow that way because one, a lot of these medicines were not really, they never really went away for them.

It's a culture. It's a way of life, right? So they were able to really develop that. And the psychotherapists that work with these populations definitely benefit from the fact that they are able to take them to the Amazon. on. They're right there. They don't have to fly out of the country or anything to do this kind of work. So I've been involved in that program. I'm now in my second year. It's a total three years for this program. And really, you touch upon every type of psychedelic that's possible to work with, which I like, because I think you can't really say that you know how to work with something unless you've actually done it. Like you can understand the theory, but the theory is very far removed,

especially when it comes from psychedelics because there is such a unknown variable. So, yeah, very happy with that program. I myself have been trained previously to that in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy with Phil Wolfson, which is a pioneer in the field. And I was very fortunate to be able to learn from him. He's based out in California in the Bay Area, but tremendous. work. And so I count myself very fortunate to have very good mentors and people to learn from. Yeah, I think it's always an incredible sign of what's to come when people can point to the

lineages from which they've learned. Pretty powerful. I think it's awesome. I, you know, as you were talking, I began, I had this thought that medicine is kind of like a language. You know, When we look back to the roots of language, we can really understand what it is, a culture is trying to say. If we look at the West and we look at the language of medicine in the West, we see a type of healing that is meant to cure symptoms. If we stay with that metaphor, what do you think that the language of some of the people, the medicine of the people you're working with says? Well, for them it's a culture, right? It's a way of life, right? And I think you're right when you say that for us, it's, uh, everything is fine until there's a problem, right?

Like we, we want to fit. Yeah. You know, and we want to fit reality into our view of reality. That's where I think a lot of us get in trouble. Like everybody wants to work 80 hours a week, but somehow feel fulfilled. And at the same time, you know, uh, have all these other things, right? Nobody wants to give anything up. And then so some of these, working with some of the,

these medicines and to really learn them, they require time investment, they require a commitment, and they also require a certain level of sacrifice to some of the things that you like. Something that is not a good selling point, right, to societies that are interested in how can I get everything and give up nothing, right? So it's very different, their perception, right? For them, they're in service to the medicine or they're in service to this greater reality of what they call true reality, right? Yeah. And for us, it's just like, well, how can I use that to improve what I'm already doing?

So it's a very different approach sometimes. Not for everybody. I don't want to generalize, but for a great majority, I think when you start the down on this path, even for me, I can't remove myself from that. I thought, well, oh, my goodness, I'm going to get all this learning. I'm going to be a better person. And, you know, this is not about being a better person, even, you know, which I think is hard to hear for other people.

This isn't about being a better person. This is about being a holistic, an integrated person, right? And an integrated person may not appeal to everybody. You may piss off some people, you know, because when you're speaking the truth, it's not always very well received by everybody, right? Yeah, the truth hurts. And sometimes that means the truth you have to tell to yourself about giving up a life that you're living.

You know, I think that's part of people's journey to, at least some of the people that I've spoken to, it seems that people that build a pretty good relationship with themselves, first off, it usually begins to happen a little bit later in life. They start seeing these things that they thought defined them, whether it was a job, whether it was a certain education from a certain school, or they have these things that they identify with,

and they believe that's their identity. When you start kind of coming full circle, as Shannon Duncan would say, coming full circle here, you know, you start to begin to see this, this sort of merging, I think, of sacrifice and surrender. Like, okay, do you really need to have that title?

Man, everybody looks at me different if I have that title. What happened if you didn't have it? Well, you might not have as much money. Would your wife still love you? But you start coming to these ideas of like, yeah, if you want to be a holistic person, you got to give up some things. You know, and maybe it's not about getting things.

Maybe it's about giving things up, right? Is that too crazy to say? No, I think that's correct. Because I think the more you give up, the more you realize there's a lot of things that you think you mean. Now, this doesn't mean that you're going to go sell everything and go live in a mountain somewhere or anything like that. I mean, that's also an ego thing, right? Like the ego is very extremist. So the ego never does anything halfway.

You could always see where your ego has gotten involved because it'll take something that should have moderation and it'll either put it in black and white or it's either I sell everything. everything and I move to the mountains and I become one with nature or, you know, I need everything that I can buy, right? Like, there's never a middle ground for the ego because the ego is very much a process that's driven by extremes. You know, it's driven by what it can get and it can materialize spirituality as well, right? Like, so that, I think that's a greater problem, really. You know, having a spiritual ego is a trap that I think we could all fall into. Yeah, maybe we could unpack that. What does that mean to have a spiritual ego?

Can you give me some examples of that? Well, right? Like, I think we all have an ego and you need an ego to one point. But when you have a spiritual ego, right? Like, you just replace material things with spiritual things, but you use them in a material way. Right. So, like, I had this experience. My experience is greater than yours.

I drink in Yahweh or ayahuasca 30 times. You've only done it once. Right. I can take this dose. I had this experience. Oh, I really transcended the numinous. Right. And then that's we everybody likes that. Everybody likes to have a numinous experience. Everybody likes us. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But the ego definitely is always measuring itself, right, by what it can have. And it and it can, we need to understand that it's it's not going to go away. You could have a thousand ego deaths. You're still going to have an ego. right uh it's important and it's important and it's actually not something that's bad right if you have a very weak ego it's very hard to even go very far with some medicines right because you'll find that a lot of the time you're not able to integrate the material or it's too much right because reality by itself is too much so i think having a spiritual eagle isn't necessarily bad but it's something that should be recognized that right there's parts of us that are going to take an experience

or they're going to take something and they're going to it's going to make it into something. It's going to try to give it some sort of mean, right? And then the more attached you get to meanings and belief systems, the more you're going to suffer when those are stripped away from you. Because, I mean, how many times have you had maybe an experience that shows you that all the stuff you thought you were doing maybe isn't so important? And maybe the things that you were neglecting were better for you. Yeah, a lot, a lot. What do you think awareness fits into that sort of equation?

I think before you can have true awareness, you have to have compassion, right? And then compassion is also another word that is thrown around a lot. But, you know, compassion. True compassion means that understand that you're just a human being and you're going to be greedy sometimes. You're going to do these other things, right? So true awareness of the shadow or true awareness requires that you acknowledge your limitations first and that you have compassion for your limitations. You'd be like, yeah, I can be maybe a little bit trickster like, right? Or I could do this stuff, which is not bad, right?

Or sometimes it can be bad. But if you have that, that's how you get true awareness. If you don't have any compassion, you're going to hide those aspects from yourself and project them onto other people because that's a lot easy. You know, nobody wants to feel like they're a bad person, even if they're doing things that maybe are not ethical. So if you have very little compassion for yourself, then you're more likely to be unaware when you're engaging in these behaviors. Yeah, that's really well said. I love the idea of the trickster and being aware of the role of the trickster archetype in ourselves. Like when we were talking about that, I'm like, well, what a great way to forgive yourself.

is to understand that maybe that's an archetype that's playing, you know, or maybe it's a way to reel it in when you start seeing the joke go too far or something like that. You go, hey, there's a trickster over there. But it's awesome, man. That's really well said. Thanks for kind of putting it in those words you put it in. It brings this other question to my mind that I've kind of been toying with,

and I'd love to get your opinion on it. And it is this, do you think there's a difference between heightened states of awareness and altered states of consciousness? I think they're both. experiences okay where um an experience you can have an experience right you're having an experience of an outer state or you're having an experience of uh an expanded state of awareness or something like that but um the experience ends right so so i think more so than is there a difference is like what happens when you go into those states what internal process starts to manifest itself

when you go into those states and it could be a very similar process right it could be a process that's that almost seems identical but i think more important like we can never make an experience hours it's there for the moment and then it's gone if you hold on to the experience for too long it actually loses most of its meaning if you see that an experience is a stream of events that continues to happen even after you're out of those states then you can have true integration right because Now, if you separate the holy from the profane, you're always going to, right? You're always going to tend to be like, you know, like, I like that, but I don't like this. Right.

And if you see that it's all a continuation, that even after you come out of one of those states, it's still happening. You're still having this experience, right? I think that's more important to me because that you can change that way. You can't change if the experience is encapsulated in this happened to me and then it ended. Right. There can be very little growth there. Yeah, that's well said. If you're holding on to it like it's an object, then you know, you can't really mold that object.

Now it's become a relic. Now it's become something that's stationary. But if you realize you're part of it, that you're in the artwork, that you're part of the picture, Then you can play a bigger role in the picture. You can pay a bigger role in the movie. You know what I mean? As long as you're willing to venture out or take those challenges in there, it's a fascinating way to look at it. Was there an event or was there something that you experienced that made you come to that conclusion?

Or is that from working with people or both? Well, I have a huge background, which I would be remiss to say in critical care, right? I spent 12 years of my life doing ICU in critical care. almost the ultimate trip, you know, like a lot of death. So a lot of people dying. And that's not a trip you come back from. So if you want to talk about an expanded state or the last few hours of somebody's life, that's the most expansion and contraction at the same time, right?

Because something is ending, which is leading you in a unknown direction. And you're not coming back from this one. Right. So that really was what started for me, the process of, oh wow there's there's something else here you know like like how do you do that and what happens when an experience ends what continues right so that got me started really in my path and i feel some working so closely with death for so many years that really uh prepared me even for for psychedelic work yeah you know i i read a lot of biographies and one thing you never hear

when you read a biography about someone and they talk about their last days, what's never in the biography is that person laying on their deathbed saying, I wish I would have worked longer. I wish I would have had more money. I wish I would have, you know, it's always like I wish I would have been a better father. I've ruined my family, you know, or I wish I would have spent more time doing the things I love.

Is that, so if we take that moment, we just hold that for a moment in a holding pattern. I was speaking with a death dula who told me, me, it's interesting because at times she would be holding the hands of people who are taking their last breath and she felt as if she could see the unrealized dreams and it scared the bejesus out of her. What do you think about those two things? Like someone on there, have you noticed a pattern of what appears to be happening in the minds of people? Or maybe you've heard the words of people who are coming close to the mortality experience. And, you know, is there some Is there some wisdom there that you could give to us that maybe you saw?

Yeah. A lot of the same things that you mentioned are patterns repeat themselves. You know, people have regrets, people have ways that they wish their life would have been. But I also feel like good deaths. A good death is one where you can, again, use compassion. It's the same thing as a good trip or going into a trip with the right mindset. What I would see is people that, you know, in the medical system, especially in the Western world view, we treat death as a problem. We treat it as something to be solved, not as a transitionary stage, right?

Not as a part of actually life. You know, you have to be alive to die and you have, you know, likewise. So there's people that are very, you know, they're looking at death as why is this happened to me. It doesn't matter they lived very short life or they live. with a very long life, right? And then these people are very attached to the concept that death is the end, right? When you have that viewpoint, then you have a lot of regret, you see. If you have a separate viewpoint, which of course requires a certain amount of faith

or it requires whatever you want to call it, you're able to release yourself very much like a, like a journey or a trip. And these people have good deaths. They don't struggle with the process. They are able to go with it. And they also understand that whatever may have happened in their life, I guarantee you even in the worst life, there have been moments that are blissful.

And you could choose to focus on that. Or you could choose to focus on what you didn't do. Either way, you're dying. You're going to die. And I think that's a gift that we were given as conscious humans. that we get to choose at least, well, not all of us get to choose how we die, right? And we don't really get to choose what disease takes us. But we do get to choose how we look at our life in a life review, right?

And although there can be some regrets, even in a bad life, there are moments of bliss. And if you're going to focus on regrets, you should focus on those as well. Or if not, you can't go into past, right? So what are you doing with this? regret. Yeah. I think it's such a key moment right now to talk about this. I know with so many of, you know, I was talking yesterday with a friend of mine.

Zeus, if you're listening, you're an amazing human being. Thanks for the conversation. We were talking about the humanity, especially in, and I think it's worldwide. Like there was this giant generation boom and hence we have the boomers. And there was like, if you just think of the people on the planet as a one organism, as a body. This giant demographic of people in this age group are getting to a point where they're facing their own death. And a lot of them are passing away. A lot of them are moving on. And if we see by the people who have spent time with people who are dying, if we read the

biographies or we all have people in our lives that we have seen get close to death and sometimes we see the anxiety, sometimes we see the dignity removed from it, it kind of seems like that's, that's what's happening in our world. It's like there's just large part of us, like a large part of us that's dying, that's moving on. And so why wouldn't there be agony? Why wouldn't there be anxiety? Why wouldn't there be turmoil? Why wouldn't there be a last stand, a fight, a realization of the unrealized dreams that's beginning to happen? You know, it's, it's this time that that's happening there. And I bring that up because it does seem to me, at least in the West, we've taken the dignity out of dying. I know that my,

My great-grandmother, I remember being a young boy and going to this old folks home where she couldn't, she didn't even know who she was. She had lost her mental faculties, but yet we kept her alive. I don't even know why. Like, I don't understand. Like, why would you do that? Here's a person that is no longer with us, but medically we're keeping them alive, even though it seems to me they don't want to be here with whatever spirit they have left. And it speaks, if you look at just that angle of it, it's kind of fractal. Because you can look back at the whole medical system now.

And you go, oh, we're just doing it for money. We're just doing it for our own selfishness because we want to have our memories or we want to hold on to something. You think that's too much? Is that too broad of a brush to paint it with? No, but I feel like that's not addressing why the system. Because, you know, we do blame the medical system a lot. Sure.

But it's actually not the cause, but it's a symptom of how we are as a society. We are afraid of death. So we demanded that doctors fix it. We're afraid of things that are not good or, oh, my goodness. You know, even with psychedelics who try to do that. I mean, how often is the Western mindset on psychedelics is we want to figure out all the variables so that there's not a problem here. So we know exactly how the experience is going to go. You know, we're going to control the experience.

Right. It's the same thing with the medical system. Right. So why do we keep people alive longer? Not for them. because these people actually, and the few that could talk or the few that could even make motions would say, I want to die. They were suffering. The pain had gotten to that level.

But the family was afraid of death. It was often a child or a loved one that was afraid of death himself that projected it onto this helpless person. Now this person is really under the effects, right? And sometimes doctors, you know, and my wife is a critical care, a pediatric nurse, which is an extremely, difficult job. And, you know, I don't think I could do that. I did it for adults, but I would not be able to do it for children, I believe. But, but, you know, like the, the loved ones sometimes will project it. Even these children, she tells me these amazing stories about the child is ready to go. They're like, I know, and they accept it. They often, sometimes accept that better than the

parents. And the parents sometimes can't accept this, you know, and they're going to have that trauma for the rest of their life. And I don't blame them because having a child die is about the worst thing that can happen to you. But what I'm saying is the system adapted to our demands. We demanded that somebody fixes. And then so the system became a very litigious system. It's a system that's based. So the doctors are practicing medicine to cover their licenses that they went to school for a long time. And then everybody blames them for everything. I mean, I've worked with an incredible doctors. I really could not could, uh, could not tell you that

that I could fault them for anything but they burn out they burn out because of the constant demands we have we don't even give them time sometimes these doctors have 200 300 people they're going from one death certificate to another you lose the humanity in it the doctors themselves are burning out the providers are burning out

and the system yet keeps turning it wants to be more efficient people want to be seen immediately your problems need to be solved now If I have a condition, I want to solve. But then we blame the system when it turns out to be over medicalized. It's over medicalized because we refuse to grow up. That's the truth. I mean, think about it.

Everybody doesn't want anything that could possibly happen that's out of the script. So if you tell them, so that's why all of this good stuff that's happening with psychedelics now is a double-edged sword. Why? Because when you see what is touted to the public, this is going to be. to solve all your problems. You're going to take some psilocybin and that's it. You're going to take some MDMA and that's it. Ketamine? Big for that. You know, you're just taking it. No, you have to do work, but people don't want to hear that. And they don't want to hear that there's any risk. No, you might have a difficult journey. You might confront some aspects of yourself that are not nice.

And you may have to work with that. And but if you put that as a headline, nobody wants to read that. Right. So psychedelics had to to shed their shadow in order to be accepted by a society that doesn't accept its own shadow. Right. And the shadow sides of psychedelics is really where the growth is. Because just like the shadow side is of us is what needs to be fixed. You don't need to fix this stuff that's nice. You need to fix the stuff that's not working. The envy, the need for validation. Those things need to get fixed and they rely on the shadow.

They're not going to be found in the light. So I worry that psychedelics are going to go down the same path. It's going to be good until a couple people have some journeys that are difficult. And then all of a sudden, oh, well, psychedelics work my mind. Yeah, they can do that. Anything that can help you can also hurt you. That's what being a grown-up is, understanding that there is no inherent safety in being alive. Nobody even makes it out of here, right?

So why are we demanding this? This is why the medical system has a problem. It has a problem because the society itself, the fear is what drives it. And anything that's driven by fear cannot be holistic. It cannot really cure you. It could only have cure you. Yeah. It's like the story between the difference between the buffalo and the cattle is the buffalo runs through the storm and the cattle runs away from it.

Right. Like you have to face your fears. Maybe that's what this whole thing is. Because we could broaden that whole argument to, not just the medical engine, we could broaden that whole argument to science. Like we're constantly trying to find ways to shortcuts to solutions without actually having to solve the problem. People don't want to solve the problem. They just want to go right to the back of the book. Here's the answer right here.

You know what I mean? Without trying to figure it out. It's well put. It's well put. Do you think that that is, you know, is that something that is unique to, you know, is that something that is unique to, the Western ideas versus it's everywhere. It's samsara. It's a human trait.

That's also another Western idea to believe that people that maybe come from indigenous cultures don't have similar, you know, not that they don't engage with it, not that they may be healthier about the way they go about it, but it's a human trait to not want to suffer that drives the majority of growth. And it's funny. In fact, it's necessary for growth. But it's also a Western idea that like, oh, you know, because we like to package everything. And then so it's like, oh, the people in the jungle, they're really spiritual. But we're not now looking at them as people.

We're looking them as avatars for our own broken spirituality. And then so when you engage with them, you can't engage with them at a real level unless you realize this is a human being as well. They may have different gifts and traits than us, but they have similar. needs and they have needs for love. Nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants to to suffer a loss if they don't have to, right? So I do think it's a human trait, not just a Western trait, but obviously because we are a less cohesive society and we're less, let's just say we're younger. We're a younger society than most of these societies or cultures that we would be comparing ourselves to. I still believe we'll get there eventually with a lot of pain and issues, but I do believe we'll get there.

But we also have to understand that it's a human condition. Humans, if I tell you, hey, you could walk to get a cup of coffee, it's going to take 10 miles, or maybe you could have a less good cup of coffee, but you don't have to walk. It's like right across the street. You're going to go right across the street. It's a human trait. human nature. You know, a lot of times, you know, it seems that a good pattern for someone growing up is they find a mentor,

whether it's a young man that looks to someone older or a young woman that looks to someone older. If we were to look at our culture, being a younger culture, who do you think would be a good mentor as an older culture for us? I think many of the cultures, you're talking about a different culture than ours? Yeah, or you could take it whatever way you want. I don't think we should be looking to other cultures. We should be looking to ourselves. Who among us is living in our world? Mm, well put it.

And, and, and maybe being a whole human being. And a lot of times you find that these people have, have a split. You know, they're split. Like, you either love them or you hate them. And they're very polarizing figures. And the reason they're polarizing is because they're displaying what a whole person looks like, which is both sides of their personality, the shadow side and the light side, right?

The same way why the Greek gods, like, I mean, if you read, they weren't exactly super holy. They were gods, but I mean, like, they were engaged in some serious stuff. But that is why there was no need for a real devil

in their society, right? Like, even though you had Hades, it's not really the same connotation we give the devil. Right? So in this society, we split that off. So the people that we could be looking towards, we're always looking to criticize.

We're looking to see what's wrong with them, not realizing that they're human. And if they're actually authentic, they're going to actually show their shadow side. It's actually the people that you don't see their shadow side that are the most dangerous. Because those are the ones that appear on the news. I can't believe he was doing that all this time.

I can't believe she was it. Right? But those people appear on the news, why? Because a shadow that's hidden is the most dangerous thing. So the people we should be looking for is people that maybe have something to say, maybe something provocative, not necessarily hate for or anything like that. Of course, definitely not hateful, but maybe something that gets you thinking.

And I think there are many Western thinkers that, I mean, Phil Wilson to me is one of them. He's not, you know, he doesn't beat around the bush, but I like the way he approaches things. Jorge Yano, which is the father of the man that did the course, the course that I'm in right now, is to me a great example because not only does he have the lineage from, you know, working with the Granicero's, which is a Mexican tradition and also working with Yahi and the co-fan. He has, he's a psychotherapist, so he actually has blended both worlds. And I think that that's really what should be looking for. How do we blend the knowledge of the old with the new knowledge and create something that works for us instead of trying to take from cultures and take out the culture, you know, take from the culture of what we want and then, you know, not the other parts, right? Like, we're just going to pick and choose.

You can't do that. You have to create your own thing or it's not authentic. Yeah. It's well said. Maybe that's what's happening now. Maybe that's why there's so much chaos is that. And chaos is just the state in which things happen before a new order is born. It's a beautiful thing that can be embraced if you're willing to accept it.

And maybe that's why it's such an exciting time for so many people, is that the people can see an opportunity to do things different. And it seems while that opportunity doesn't always come around, Maybe it's cyclical, you know, maybe it's a tide or something like that. But it does seem like we're kind of in that area, right? Maybe this is a time to be celebrating. Yeah. I mean, this is a growing pains, right?

They're not called growing pains for no reason, right? They're growing pains. People are going to mess up. We're going to find some things that didn't work. We're going to hurt a couple people, unfortunately. That's something people don't want to hear. But we're going to, you know, all of humanity really has been that, you know, you get it wrong a couple times and then eventually you start getting it right you want to minimize

how many people you hurt things like that and you don't want to justify hurt of people but there's going to be a lot of things i mean there's a lot of growth in the psychedelic field there's going to be a lot of people coming in and there's going to be a lot of people that are not maybe qualified even to really be and but those people will either learn maybe there'll be a little bit more humility right because nobody starts out qualified you get qualified right or, you know, they will hurt people and then we'll look at that as an example of don't do that. You know, we've had a couple of recent scandals in the psychedelic field, right? And I feel like we've learned about being more transparent about having some oversight.

Because it can be put to good use. It's unfortunate that these things happen, but it can be put to good use. If we see, well, maybe we should have like a council, maybe people working in expanded states of awareness should really have a, peer support system so that they're not working on themselves because psychedelics have this ability to inflate the ego the same way they can help you so really i do believe that any provider or any person that's working in the psychedelic field should at least have some peers that are not afraid to correct some things before they really uh get uh out of alignment with what's necessary to heal psychedelics right so i do think that this is going to turn out good but there's going to be a lot of

chaos and if we could just be grown-ups about it and understand the psychedelics can help you, they can also hurt. Right. Then we don't have to vilify things because we do something where we try to control the variable, which is why psychedelics got banned. Well, I don't know. You could hurt yourself, so let's just ban it. Right?

Let's not hold you accounting. How does that teach anybody to be mature? It just teaches you that if you take a dose that maybe was too large for you and you took it in a bad setting, it teaches you that it was a dose that was bad. No, it was your intention, your setting hurt you. So now maybe you can learn from that. But now if I started looking at the medicine is bad, or this is what hurt me. No, it didn't hurt you. Right. It's a collaboration. The same way that when you go into those states to attribute everything beautiful to the medicine is also, I think, wrong, right? Because who's mind, you know, it's mind manifest. Psychedelic. Mind manifesting. So who's

mind is being manifested is most often is more likely yours. So I think it's important to take responsibility also for when good things or good experiences happen to understand that you in some part in collaboration with the medicine actually created that or were the architect of that, right? Yeah. It's deep. It makes me, I got to pause for a moment to think about something. Forgive me for a minute here. Okay, so it's this idea. of self-responsibility that is a really good thing. And we touched upon it earlier.

When we talk about medicine and we talk about death, you know, it seems that the system that is put in control is an attempt to manage liability. And liability is a way to try to make things safe. And at some point in time, the person that manages liability, manages everything

because everybody just gives up their sovereignty everybody just gives up their responsibility to this idea of safety and liability do you think that that we are at the psychedelic community is at risk to giving up a large part of what is great about it

in the name of safety in the name of liability I think that we need to learn to marry both extremes right What happens? We have people in the psychedelic camp that think nothing should be medicalized,

that it should all just be, you know, just humanistic and let's just see what happens, right? But that would be missing a great part of the fact that the medical system does have things to offer the psychedelic field, right? But then, and the psychedelic field, of course, has things to offer to the medical field. So what I would prefer is to integrate both approaches to stop this. needless fighting because it's it's really it's an ego thing again it's the extremes notice that there is in those propositions no middle ground right if there's no middle ground you're you're probably off to your you're on balance the middle ground is the balance right so uh what ends up happening is that yes you do have to know how these medicines worked i first learned how these medicines

work what receptors they they affect oh don't mix it with this and because you know my background in psychiatry, right, like a psychiatric nurse practitioner, right? Oh, well, you know, you can't, there's certain, you know, there's certain medications you can't take if you're taking psychedelic, many people are unaware of that. So to not use that to further and to increase safety, that that's wrong, right? So that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is once you've done that, allow some room for the medicine to work. Allow some variable, the unknown variable is what heals people. You set up the, it's like meditation, right?

A lot of people says, I'm meditating. No, you're not meditating. You're practicing meditation. So that meditation is something that just happens spontaneously. Once you've done the breathing exercises and maybe you set down on a sofa or, you know, a cushion or whatever, right? It's the same, I believe, with psychedelics, right? You set up the groundwork.

You make sure, okay, I'm not taking anything that's contraindicated with this. Okay, I'm in a safe setting. That is part of the medical aspect as well. So that that's not wrong. I make sure that if, you know, like for example, for ketamine, if you have uncontrolled hypertension, it could be a problem, right? So you want to make sure that that's taken care of. You can use the medical system in that way to actually further the safety of psychedelics because that's not what I'm talking about, right? Like that is good.

You don't want to needlessly just hurt yourself just because, right? But then you need to learn to let go, even with an intention. I see people get hung up on. I had this intention, but that didn't happen during my journey. no you're supposed to set up the groundwork and then you're supposed to allow some room not a lot not it doesn't even need to be a lot just some room for the actual expansion of consciousness work it's magic right because if not then yes you kill it if you just know uh if you take five grams you're going to have an ego death and then this is what an ego death looks like and this is how you should feel that kills the magic right what's the magic in shamanism Why does shamanism work? Because it does work, but it works because they allow some room for the actual experience to dictate it. They're not trying to predict everything that could possibly happen.

They're not trying to predict, you know, like, oh, well, you know, what if a dog starts barking outside? They're not trying to do that, right? And then that's what we can learn. We can learn to marry both aspects, get the safety part, understand why these medicines work the way they work to a certain degree, and then leave some room for uncertainty because the uncertainty is what heals people, right? Yeah, yeah. Right?

You can't, like, if you knew what you needed to get better, you'd do it. Right? So obviously, this has to be a process that circumvents what you know and shows you things that you didn't. And for that, you need to allow room for uncertainty, and you need to give a wide margin sometimes. You know, if you really have,

issues or mental health issues. That's a phenomenal explanation of it. And it makes me, thanks for setting it that way. It's well done. I sometimes had a really interesting conversation with a scientist yesterday, and he was talking about mysticism as a pejorative, how it gets in the way of everything. But when I hear the way in which you've described the parameters of uncertainty,

it seems to me that you know you have to allow for the magic to happen sometimes magic can be interchange with medicine a little bit because that's where the magic happens right you have magic mushrooms you have mysticism in there and it does and like you said maybe it's not an either or it's like a both and like why why can't there be room for magic why can't there be room for uncertainty Why can't there be room for mysticism in science? And again, maybe that's what's happening now with these birth pains. It is this sort of amalgamation of the two coming together. Like, what's your take on mysticism in the world of science?

Well, I'll put it this way. I'll try to make it simple, right? When you're going to grade school, right, do they teach you English? Yeah. Maybe if you're right, and do they teach you math? Yep. Right? They don't just teach you one, right?

Right. And if you try to apply mathematic equations to English, does it work? No, it doesn't. And if you try to use English to solve a math equation, does it work? Well, you would have to use English to say the numbers. Maybe, but I mean, can you compute it? You can't, right? You can't.

That's why that's the biggest argument for it. But you need both, right, to actually get to grade school and be a human. being that function. It's the same thing. Whether it's mystics that just don't want to hear science or scientists that don't want to hear mystics, that's missing the complete point because I'm saying, oh, I don't want to learn any English or I don't want to learn any math. I just want to learn this one thing. Cool, but you'll be a one-sided person. You'll be an illiterate mathematician or you'll be, you know, an English person that doesn't know how to put two plus two, right? So to say that mysticism isn't real, that's absolutely untrue because the results that I have seen when you allow uncertainty, I have patients that have come to me.

And I'm fairly Western in my approach because I don't try to do things, but I allow room for uncertainty. I have patients that come to me that I've had, you know, 70 k sessions. And I'm not touting my own horn. I'm just saying I don't do anything different. I just give some room for uncertainty. I literally don't do anything different. And they just in one or two sessions, they, oh, why didn't I get these results before? It wasn't because I did anything.

It's because I didn't do anything. I didn't try to do something. So I do believe that people that don't allow mysticism or mistrust it are very neurotic by nature. And then so, and they're no better. It's a belief system. They're both belief system. So you're saying that one belief system is better than another. Like that's not a rational argument.

That's like saying that an experience isn't valid. That's also not rational. Because if you experienced it, it may not be a shared experience, but it's an experience. Somebody experienced it, right? Like, how could that not be real? It's real. But it may just be a singular experience for you. It may be a collective experience.

Many people may share it, right? But we, I think that that's really my argument against both camps. You need both if you want to actually get somewhere. And why is it that people don't get better with psychiatric medications? Right? If you don't need the mysticism, right, why is it? Why is it the psychedelics? You know, like a lot of psychiatrists initially struggled with like,

why are these people taking these strangers medications? Why are you taking a medication that makes you vomit and poop yourself? But yet, if you take Prozac and it just gives you an upset stomach, you immediately stop it. Right. Have you noticed that? Because Prozac will give you nausea, some nausea in the beginning, but people will stop it. But people will go and defecate and vomit with ayahuasca. Why? Because you know what? You can't use a medical approach to achieve a spiritual means and vice versa. So you need both, right? And then we are giving people medication, but we're not giving them an experience. So if you're having an experience of a depressed. person because that's your experience, you're experiencing life through depression. I could give you Prozac and it could work, but there's no experience. There was nothing there, right? So there's always something missing.

And you see many of these people relapse or you see, you know, if you look at Stardee trial or you look at any of this, Start D is like one of the greatest trials ever done on on antidepressants and their effectiveness. And it was found not to be that great, you know, if any other medication. Or something. Wasn't it about 50%? Yeah, that's not great. It's so silly. Right?

But why? Because we missed the experiential component. If you're having the experience of a depressed person, and I don't give you an experience of someone that's not depressed, it's very hard for you to see where you need to go. So what does psychedelics do very well? They get you out of the experience of being a depressed person, and they put you in a different type of experience. It could even be an experience that doesn't make any sense to you.

It could be a transmutious experience that. I saw aliens, but somehow I feel better. And you attribute that maybe to the chemical component, but how much of it was also that you were able to get out of that narrative? Right? Because it's almost like, have you ever been enthralled in a really good book? And you just forget, and you're just like reading the book. You almost forget.

I think that that's what happens to us all the time. We get hypnotized by our own experiences. And then if you're having a depression, anxiety, that experience hypnotizes to the problem. point that you can't separate from it. And you see it in people where they say, my depression, my anxiety. So they owned it. They don't even, you know, you don't say, right, it's become part of them. Yeah, you don't say that if you get an infection, you don't say my infection. Well, you know, you wouldn't say like, you wouldn't like take ownership, but you do take ownership

of these experiences because they're in your head. So they almost hypnotize into believing that this is what your life is. You're reading this book. You're really. reading the book of the Great Depression of Jorge, right? And you're reading that book and you're not putting it down. So then when you take a psychedelic because they're able to get you to put down the book very effectively, now you see that you're in a library and you get to choose what's maybe I don't want to read the depressed life of Jorge Pedroome. Maybe I want to read the life of, you know, Jorge Pedroon that went to the park and, you know,

I don't know, did something fun, right? That's why they work better, I believe, than what we have in psychiatry. in psychiatry today. This is why people are risking prosecution and they're risking even being harmed to take these medicines, right? Why? Because the medicines that we have are missing a primary component of what it means to be a human, which is the experiential factor. There's no experience in just taking a pill. Yeah, it kind of seems like the medicines we have today force people to stay in this reality. They deny them the daydream. They deny them the escape from the, from the mundane. You know, it seems that whether you're reading a good book or whether you're

daydreaming at work, you're attempting to escape the daily monotony. And if you're forced to live in a monotonous word, if you're forced to read the book you don't want to read every day, you're going to desperately try to get out of there. And if you're locked in there, it's even worse, man. Like, why wouldn't people be depressed? Like, why wouldn't they have anxiety. The good news is we have, the good news is we have more medicine. The bad news is the medicine doesn't work. It works some of the time, but it works if your palms are very, very, very benign or

maybe they're, you know, again, I prescribe medication. I use, I use psychiatric practices, but I always try to give it a holistic approach because that's a component too, right? Because what's going on is like a lot of times I get people and their problem is that they don't want to change the, the unhealthy life that they're living. Like they come to me and so just so, just, you know, it shows disclosure. I do believe that attention deficit exists. It's definitely proven. Attention deficit exists.

But the number of people coming sometimes for attention deficit and it's really, it's really that their life is just hard. hard. They're working two jobs. They don't have the strength. They have kids at home. They're sleeping three or four hours. So they're coming. I'm tired all the time and I can't focus. And then because stimulants work pretty fast and they work faster than other things. And they also have a slightly euphoric effect. They're taking the medicine and or they think that they need that medicine. And really what they need is to know you've got to give up one of those jobs. Maybe you have to see how you can make do. Maybe you have to do something uncomfortable.

But you can't live life like that and expect that you're going to be happy or fulfilled. But we're giving them stuff that lets them be dysfunctional. It's almost like wearing a cast for the rest of your life. When you give someone, when someone is in a bad situation and you're giving them medication and you're not fixing the situation, what you're really doing is you're covering it up. So then that person is prone to get depressed. So how much of it is that the medicine doesn't work, how much is it that people don't want to change their lifestyle? People do not.

They want to keep living in their box. If you want to keep living in your box and your box is not good, don't be surprised that no matter how comfortable we make that box, it's a box. And if it's too small for you, you're going to feel uncomfortable. Yeah. Is it that people don't want to change or is it that the environment around them, I think there's got to be a relationship to the, environment. And it seems to me that from a young age you're conditioned in a way. You know what I mean by that? Like, and so I read a good quote that said it's, it's that people don't resist change. They resist being changed. And it seems like we've been conditioned for so long, now they don't

want to be changed. But even though it's the thing that's good for them. And you bring up such a great point of like, I know, I know what it's like to work for, you know, to give four hours of sleep, to feel inside like you're not being a good husband or a good father. But you have, I've got to earn the money. Otherwise, I can't pay for tuition. Otherwise, I can't pay for the mortgage. Otherwise, my cat's not going to have food. You know, like, it seems that modern society is so wound up in this idea of having that we've given up being in a weird sort of way.

Like, that's a sickness in itself, right? I don't know how we get. I don't think society, I don't think there's a solution for society. There's only a solution for the individual, but that does become the solution for society. if each person can just stop for a minute and be like, what the, what am I doing? What the heck am I doing? Like I'm missing out on everything that's important and I'm trading it in for a handful of dimes that at the very most make me happy for a little bit.

And I've got to take this damn, taking all these stimulus to get through my day. It's kind of, even though I feel slightly euphoric on some level, it's making me callous to the things that I really like. I mean, like, it's, it's really sad, but in a way, isn't all great stories have a bunch of tragedy involved in them, right? Like, and it's that tragedy that forces us to feel the exuberance of the end of that great book. And that's kind of a shotgun out the back. What do you think is a doctor from that particular story there? Is that kind of what you see?

Well, I'm very big on saying that I am a nurse practitioner. I'm very proud to be a nurse practitioner. Yes, yes. And I like to always emphasize that because I think nurses are specifically situated, right? Because nurses try to heal you with what you're, they try to go with the healing process. They don't try to go against it. So that's something that I like about nursing very big, right? Like nurses, I think it's a shame that there's not more nurses in the psychedelic field because nursing is ideally suited.

Nurses support the healing process. They don't try to take over it. Right? And I'm not saying that doctors do, but some can. And then, and I'm not saying there's any better or worse. I'm just saying it's, it's part of just tendencies. So I think that, yes, without pain, I wouldn't be this person. I wouldn't even have gotten any of this training because I just didn't want to suffer.

I also don't want to suffer. But, you know, I said, well, this seems like it's the only thing that really makes sense. and it works and it's not covering up something. It's not pretending that my life is great when it's not, right? So I do think that suffering produces change, but there's a whole lot of people that are suffering needlessly, and they're stuck in a cycle of endless suffering, even if they get out of one problem,

they just get into another problem and it's patterns. You're right. Society has taught us, because it was never the job of society to make whole individuals, It was the job of society to make individuals that go along with whatever, you know, what's good for society. But I think we're getting to a tipping point. I do believe that. With COVID really greatly accelerating the mental health crisis, I think people are starting to realize this is not going to work.

We're not going to be able to do this. Even I see patients that have very little training in psychology saying profound truths. and I don't blame any patient, no matter what they're conditioned or person that comes to me. Because you're right, you're right. A lot of it is the environment conditioning them, and I don't think anybody wants to make themselves suffer. And also there's an incredible amount of compassion

for what I believe to be the greatest tragedy that could happen to someone, which is, you know, to lose yourself, to lose your sense of consciousness, and to live a constricted life when you have all of this. right but that's also part of like whatever you know I do believe that having the human experience is painful in itself and it's necessary it has to be right because that's the only way because that other realm that we we love so much I love it too he's very immoral it's very impersonal it doesn't really care if you notice like some of the messages you might receive sometimes

are not really very convenient and so you need to it's true you know and you need to so you need to So you need to moderate that. You need to be like, okay, well, and that's where the eagle is handy. Because the ego is always going to kind of advocate for you. It's going to be like your manager. Say, hey, no, no, no, no. Come, buddy. He doesn't do that one.

Right. And then if the ego is a great servant and a poor master, the ego was never meant to really, to really be running the show like it is for most of us. And there's a great book I think you may be familiar. It's a famous book, The Master and His Emissary. Yeah. And it talks a lot about this concept. When the servant starts to believe it's a master, it's neurotic, because it doesn't have the skills of the master, right?

And then so that's what's happening to people, right? Like they're living a constrictive life. They're living a life that yes, there's some change can be there. But knowing how to suffer is very important because pain for pain's sake is just mass. It doesn't really lead to growth necessarily. Now, if you know how to suffer, it's like a master gardener. They could turn it into compost and it could produce even more fruit. But you need to learn how to do that.

So it's not teaching people to avoid pain, but teaching people what to do in a painful situation that is what I believe we should be focusing on. Yeah, it's a beautiful way to put it. You know, if you can learn in small steps to sit with suffering, then you can learn how to hold it. You know, and like that's a tough thing to do in the beginning. And maybe that's why life just throws us little things at first. It's like, hey, maybe. And if you begin to think of your life like that, hey, all of a sudden, you can kind of see it from like a third person perspective. The same way on a high dose psilocybin trip, you get to see yourself in a third person or from a different perspective.

if you can see your relationship with suffering from a different perspective, I've found that that helps because you can see yourself holding it. Okay, give it back. It's like a crying baby that's not yours. Like, ah, this is awesome. Okay, let me hand back the baby for a little bit. Good thing. It's not my baby.

You know, but it's interesting to think about it from that concept, and I really like that idea. I also really love the ideas of Ian McGilchrest in his books, which they're not easy reads, but they're really rewarding reads. And if we could talk about that for a minute, you know, sometimes I look at the, that idea of the intellectual scalpel versus the hemisphere of seeing things from a metaphorical point of view or the big picture point of view. And I've used that sort of paradigm to look at at the way in which, at least in the West, I can't speak to other countries because I, you know, I don't. have a lot of knowledge about it, but it seems in the West we have taken this route of specialization, the same way that the intellect tends to specialize with things.

Do you think that specialization, not only in medicine, but in our culture is an issue? It's an issue when you don't realize there's things outside of your specialty, right? It's an issue where it's not an issue in itself. Okay. it's a you know i'm coming from the point of view that i have a you know i'm specializing certain things right but i i am aware of things outside of of my realm um and i am aware how it affects my my little bubble my little specialization right so i think it's for this it's efficiency that's a problem we want everything to be efficient and efficiency sometimes it's like quality over quantity

right efficiency being wanting to be more efficient is I think more of a problem than than being than specialization because wanting to be more efficient you cut out a lot of the fat and then a lot of this fat is actually ends up being important like you know and you look at this in discoveries that initially you know like you look at junk DNA you look at things like that initially thought to not contain anything and oh it contains like a lot of stuff maybe there's something in here And you look at that also with companies that, again, I'm very much for progress. I'm like, well, how could we take what psychedelics do for us? But how can we make it so that you don't really have to like sit there for an hour or so?

And you don't have any, and there's no risk of a bad trip. How can we do that? Because that's more efficient, right? Now you're trying to turn it into a pill. I believe that those approaches will work in the beginning and they will, then you will need to progress to the real stuff. because I don't believe that that is looking at the whole picture. And it's in the name of efficiency. Because why are we in problems?

Not because we specialize, because we want it to be efficient. So spirituality, not that efficient. You know, how does spirituality put food on the table for me? Maybe if, you know,

you're a pastor or something like that or you're very good at, you know, enlightened or something. Maybe you could put some food on your table, but it most likely won't. So then in the name of efficiency, you start to cut out things.

until you cut out so many things that you're not even a person anymore. You're just a machine going through motions with some sense of empathy or something. Yeah, it's interesting. I think if earlier in the conversation when you were talking about modern, I think there's exactly what part, but you had mentioned a phrase that maybe the SSRIs and some of these medicines don't work because it's medication without the experience. And I think that that is a large part of what we see in some of these trials where they're trying to take the trip out of the drug. You know what I mean by that where they're trying to find a way.

Maybe it's for a patent. Maybe it's for efficiency. But it does seem along that same pattern of, hey, how can we give them the medicine without the experience? It was a great, I should have, I don't have my pen in front of me, which I normally have when I was going to write that down. But I think that's one of the best explanations of what's happening is, in society that has happened is that we have tried to take the experience out of the medicine, right?

Yeah, and the experience is what heals. For example, when psychotherapy... I'm going to get my pen real fast. I'm sorry. Yeah, no problem. Okay. My apologies, man. I normally have it right by my table.

Didn't have it. Okay. No problem. All right, carry on, my friend. Yeah, no. I mean, I think that the experience is what heals, right? because it's the experience that's missing for most people, the experience of love, the experience of being forgiven,

the experience of saying something to maybe someone that's passed on, the experience of expressing anger or rage that you couldn't express at that moment, maybe you're too small and something happened to you and you felt powerless. And you couldn't express at that moment, but all this time it's been burning you up on the inside. And now you get to experience what it's like to say no, to put a boundary as an adult. that is why people get better.

At least when I treat people, that's why people get better. They don't get better because I said something really clever or witty. They don't even get better because all of the medical stuff that I do. They get better because they have an experience of what it's like. It's a corrective experience, right? So when you take the experience out of the medicine, I really think it's a disservice. I was in Wonderland, Miami, this past year, and there was a speaker. And I don't want to besmirch anyone, but there was a speaker saying, well, you know, we're getting like, you know, we're really being very respectful.

So we're getting someone from Harvard to inform us that we're being ethical about the way we're making this ayahuasca pill. Yeah, but you didn't ask the people that actually came up with it in the Amazon. You didn't, they're not on your advisor console, right? And then he made the statement. Yeah, because who wants to vomit when, you know, I don't know, have all that stuff. It's like, cool. You just took away the experience. The purging experience is very important because it's something that also happens even without that medicine.

How many times when you're really scared or afraid or something happens you feel nauseous or like you want to throw up? Why? Because there's a connection there. There's a reason for even these archaic practices working. They work because they're using the entirety of you. why does therapy sometimes not work or talk therapy sometimes not work because therapists is not able to get an experience when why do why is some therapists so good at what they do and others subpar because the subpar one doesn't understand that the talk

doesn't help anybody the person intellectually knows what's wrong with them it's not like there many people are very smart especially many of the people that come into their period they're very successful in the visions you think that intellectually they don't understand that they're engaging in this pattern but they don't Don't feel it. They're trying to use an intellectual process to feel. That's like using your ear to eat. You can't do that.

It's never going to work. You're going to get an ear infection, but it's not going to get in your stomach. So when therapy is good, it's because it provides an experience. The person had an experience that maybe between them and the therapist, they collaborated and something came out of that. And then that got them better. Whether medicine is involved or no medicine. is involved. That's really what he'll heal that person. Not because you talk to them every week, because there's people that sometimes I get them and they're like, well, how long have you had a

therapist? Oh, 20 years. Oh, what's the therapist? You're like a friend. Right. Maybe, but that's like a friend you pay for. Yeah. That's not, no, you know, because the reality is talking about the same problem is not going to fix a pattern to produce it. That's like trying to stand. one ant at a time instead of taking care of the ant hill or seeing that maybe there's a crack in your window where the ants are coming through. It's not it's actually you're never going to get there. You may kill one ant a hundred more will come to take its place. And that's what happens with thoughts because thoughts are like ants. They are constantly producing your brain and they're not inherently true or untrue.

They sometimes refer to something that's more true than not or or maybe or may have been true in the past. But they're not inherently true. You should take it to be true. Your brain process is like, well, this thought about stopping at the red light, I am driving. That's probably a good idea, right? So you engage. But you make it true when you engage in the behavior. The thought itself had no substance.

So then what happens when people are engaged in just talk therapy, it's just a thought process complaining about a thought. You're just a thought process complaining about the same thought. There's nothing. So feelings are a necessary part, feeling spirituality or whatever you want to term it. It doesn't have to be spirituality, but spirituality is a, I look at spirituality instead of as its own ends as a system. It's a mechanism that was very effective for our ancestors, for us, and for many of the people that work in psychedelics, because it's a system. It's like a writing system. It just does what it has to do very well.

You know, it creates an experience for the human being that they're able to tolerate suffering. They're able to reframe something that could have been meaningless into something that maybe is meaningful. So to say that I have this term, I don't know if it's, if other people use this term, but I have this term called spiritual gravity. Right. To me, it's like gravity. You don't see gravity. You don't, I mean, there's nothing you can point to. I bet you if you try to fly, you can't or, you know, things fall down when you drop them.

So you can you can deduce that there is a force that is doing that, right? Because it's very apparent. For me, if there is a thing that drives you to it, almost like a magnet, there has to be something there. Maybe it's not what we think, but there's something. So I call it spiritual gravity to say that it doesn't have its own effect. it's ridiculous because there's people that die for their religion. There's people that, you know, so that means it's powerful enough that is able to override the survival mechanism, which is inherently one of the most, or if not the strongest mechanism of human being has. So if something is able to override that, how can you say that there's not something that work there?

It may not be what we call it. It may not be a very poor understanding. But to say that something is not like a gravity pulling you towards a certain pull, you know, would be absurd, in my opinion, right? Yeah. You know, because spirituality is just a way to interact. It's almost like an interface to interact with something outside of yourself. It's not inherently true or untrue. It seems to be to work very well.

Yeah. Like that's, it's beautiful. And it brings this idea to my mind whether, and I know maybe I don't have the, I'm just using the word religion. I know it has lots of connotations to it, but I'll just use the word religion or spirituality. And I'm using them in a broad brush here. But, you know, it seems to me that the psychedelic experience or the religious experience or the spiritual experience and if.

if we use your term of spiritual gravity, it's being pulled to this point where people can find inspiration. Like the gravity pulls you towards it, and the beauty is maybe you can't describe it. The beauty is your experience, your relationship to it, allows you to go back into the world and be inspired by it. That's a pretty beautiful thing to think about when you just take a moment to think about, but just being in the presence of this object,

Maybe that's what Iliad calls the terror before the sacred, but being in the presence of that object allows you to be filled. It allows you to be inspired. It allows you to have some unique opportunities to think about who you are, to reimagine yourself, to inspire imagination a little bit. And I think that that is, that's one of the things that I, it's so mind-blowing to me, but as, as we, we come back from that space. Let's say you're drawn to the spiritual gravity. You have this

moment. You have this experience. Then when you come back, your language plays a big part in that. And that's the question I want to get to is this idea of integrating that experience. Because it seems to me, when I speak to some people who are working at retreats or some people who may think that they're really good integration specialists, and some of them may be, but it seems to me that sometimes integration is a way for people to explain what other people should be thinking. And sometimes that's what talk therapy is to me. It's like, here's this person that's going to explain your story for you. Here you go.

Now you can have it. But doesn't that limit, like maybe what we're not doing is allowing or teaching people to have their own story, teaching people to have their own experience. I know that's kind of wide range. But does that make sense like you have that transcendental object where each person can go and have their own story. Maybe what we're lacking is people learning how to have their own story. Does that kind of make sense that I did I, was there a question in there?

Did you, I tried to make. No, yeah. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, I get the gist of what you're saying, which is, yeah, you know, but for you to make your own story, first, you have to feel like you can, right? So we told people you can't because everything we do is a validation thing. Oh, did you have the same experience I did?

Oh, maybe my experience is wrong. So for someone to be able to produce their own story, to produce their own version of things, they first have to understand that it's okay for them to do so. And you're right about integration. A lot of times integration turns into let's constrict something. Let's make something that's infinite, you know, or let's shrink it into something, right? Integration is a process that's very, very dear to me because, you know, in fact, that's my specialty. I would say it's integrating not just psychedelic experiences,

but life experiences overall. But there is a way to do it. And the way you do it is really more of an art than it is a science because the way you do it is you basically make the person, you challenge them to push against you. You tell them that it's okay. And you also confuse them. I know it seems crazy, but you want to,

confusion. Confusion leads to growth. You want to make it so that they are not able to get from you what they want exactly. Right. Because they want to. The moment you give the someone the answer, you ruin any therapeutic effect that the experience has. But now they find the answer for themselves. It has amazing benefit, which is why you'll see that a lot of shamanic practitioners or practitioners that are really good in that realm. they always have speak.

It's always like a half speech. He's meant something, but what did he mean? Did he mean this? Right. It's almost like you can never get a straight answer for them. Why? People say, oh, that's because they don't really know. No, because that's the way you speak about these things.

You don't approach it head on. You approach it from the side because this is the kind of thing that if you look straight at it, it disappears. If you look at it through your side vision is the only way that you can see it. And it's the same with integration. Yeah. If you give someone. a little taste, even if it seems nonsensical, it will spurn in them.

First, the brain will try to come up with an answer. Maybe they meant this. They'll try to verify their experience by going to Reddit. It's like, would anybody else have this experience? I don't know. And then when they give up and they still have this naggingness about them, then they'll come to their own conclusion. Because inherently, these experiences have no meaning until you give them a need.

Right. Right? You are the meaning maker. And that's a scary proposition. Yes. Yes. That's not what we wanted here. It's like, wait. I made this the meaning. Yes, you did. And that's what being human is about. Because if you think about it, to be a God or to be a reality is to forget yourself. You have to be so vast that you can't be one thing. So to be a human, so for consciousness who have a human experience, it has to constrict itself. It has to make itself into a knot, and then it has to give itself meaning. That's the only way that this can work.

If not, it wouldn't be endless. If not, it wouldn't be vast. It would just be, you know, very finite. And you could get finite results, but you couldn't get what we would turn miracles or whatever, you know, whatever you want to turn it. So, yeah, I think first you have to be comfortable with the fact that your experience may be an experience nobody else has. and the meaning will have to be found by you and not somebody else. And a good integration specialist, a real one, will not give you the answer. They will confuse you and frustrate you a little bit so that you come up with it.

Because on the end of the day, you can't change anybody. People have to change from the inside. Yeah, it reminds me of two sayings. And one of them is you give a man to fish, you'll eat for a day. Teach amount of fish. He'll eat for a lifetime. And then the second one is, in life, you can't. control what happens to you, but you and you alone get to control the meaning of that event.

And that's such a powerful one. Like, it can mean whatever you want it to be. The person you love the most dying can become the greatest gift of your life. And like, if you can understand that, like boom, all of a sudden you, that realization is you're the meaning maker. It gives me goosebumps, man. Yeah, but you see, the danger in that. It's intoxicated. No, the danger in that is, Everything we hear is through the ego. So the ego hears that. I'm like, oh, yeah, I like that. I like that, right?

But this is the extra piece that the eagle hears that wasn't set, right? Like the message is pure. But the ego adds a little, you know, a little extra through the message. Oh, you know, like, for example, someone dying to be the greatest thing ever. But the ego, you know, the greatest gift. not really, right? You will feel pain. But the ego will feel like, oh, but if I learned some level of spirituality, then that means I won't feel pain. Right? It hears that it's going to get something out of it.

If not, it's not interested. The ego is not interested in things that can't get out, right? It's interested in becoming enlightened. It's interested in becoming, it's interested in becoming something, but it's not really interested in just chilling, just being. It's not interested in that. It's interested in acquiring something because the ego is like a very gluttonous and it's I'm not and I'm saying it in a way that I know it seems negative but the ego is not a negative thing. It's a necessary process for all humans and it's not something to get rid of, but it's something to be aware of because it's a more animalistic nature. It's more animalistic nature is it's not interested in having. It's interested in acquiring once it has it, which is why once you have something,

it's no longer as pleasurable. It was only pleasurable when you didn't have it, right? So it's always after that, after that. And then so we want to be careful as we go towards these, these realms that we know that he's coming along for the ride or he or she or whatever you name you want to term the eagle. And I like to preface it a lot like, I think one of the clearest explanations of the ego is the Lord of the Rings franchise is great because Golem is a lot like the eagle, right? It actually drove, is actually what guided Frodo to the mountain, right? Right. And actually bit off his finger. I mean, everybody should have watched the movie right now.

So if, right. And then it burned itself up with the ring, but that's what actually completed the process, right? Frodo by himself would not have been able to make it. Right. And it's just like that. Like a person without an ego is not even able to go into these spaces and come back whole. Because the ego is what integrates you back.

It's like, no, no, we got to put this shit back together. Like, what do you mean? You know, and it, it does that. And in some ways, it's the ego's imperfect nature that actually allows you to progress. There is no progression in a being that doesn't need, crave something. So the ego's own negative traits actually lead to growth, if applied correctly. Yeah, that's, it's beautiful. It's well said.

I love the earlier in the conversation you had addressed it on some level as the trickster. And it does seem like, hey, let's go do this. And we could totally do that. Yeah, hell yeah, we could do that, you know. And it forces you down this road that you probably wouldn't take unless you were tempted down it. But that's the road of change, right? And like, the ego will pull you so far down that road. And you're like, and everybody knows this.

Well, I guess there's no turning back now. Might as well commit to it, you know. And I think that that is, you know, maybe maybe. instead of an ego death, there's ego integration. And that's what the integration is, right? It's like, oh, I see what's happening here. I have this force, this trickster inside of me that seduces me to do these things in order so I can grow. And then if you begin to have that relationship with it, maybe it becomes much more manageable.

But maybe you don't want it to manageable. Maybe you want to have those giant, you know, ideas so that you can grow. I don't know. As I get older, I have less of those giant ideas. So maybe it's a natural progression. What's your take on that? Well, it's also like the, I guess this is not something that can be proven, but it's also the concept of like, is it really your idea or is it just,

are we just a receiver? Right? Right. Like, because I look at a consciousness more as like, like if you're a TV. Right. And you could get great reception. You could get satellite dish reception. But you're not producing the shows.

Nobody looks on a TV. It's like, oh, my goodness, that episode of Breaking Bad was amazing. You know, this TV is a genius. This TV is a genius. It can, how did it write such an amazing conclusion, right? No, the TV can be a great TV. It could be a high-definition TV. It could vary, you know, six feet long or whatever.

But it doesn't really come with it. And I really, for me, losing interest even in my own thought process required that I'm not really the one producing this. I'm just like sometimes a receiver of whatever, you know, and then sometimes I could be very clear, you know, and sometimes I could be, I could look like another fool. And both things are possible, right? Right. It's not really up to me. So I think people that you, that sometimes we term them as people that are very witty or things like that,

they're really just tuning into that frequency. So they're really just a clear TV. They're a TV with great reception and they can pick that up. But the ideas themselves are not coming from that. And I think that that's why consciousness, it's been so hard to find consciousness inside of brain because it may not be something that's coming from the brain. We may just be the receiver of that field.

Yeah, that kind of speaks to the idea of like the non-locality of mind. Have you heard some of like, what is that, is that a similar concept? Yeah, it's a similar concept. I think there can be a mind with no body. And that concept has been around for a long time. Alexander David Neal, which was one of the first to report, she was one of the first women that actually got into Tibet.

And actually back when Tibet was closed, you know, to foreigners. And as a woman, she disguised herself as a man and, you know, like, was able to infiltrate. And she reported the concept of tulps. Topas are thought beings, you know, what they, I'm not saying that it exists or does. exist. I'm saying the concept of it. Right. And then the concept is that they would focus really hard on creating a being made out of thought. And then that being would be like a servant,

but it would have their own independent thought process and it would be completely independent of their own body even. Right. And then you see that that concept has actually been popularized even in modern day times by people that they create a separate personality in their brain for themselves. Not that they don't have split personality disorder, but they have it. that. So how is that possible, you know, for you to split your consciousness in that way, right? I do think that there's something to it. There might be something that maybe is not really in this realm. It'd be hard to prove or disprove that. But I think there's a lot of the term I use spiritual gravity pointing in the direction, you know, shamanic practitioners engage in that realm. Where are they getting their information? It's outside of themselves. So are they tapping in

into what we call the collective unconscious. Are they tapping into other areas? Right? What are they tapping into? We don't know yet. And maybe we don't need to find out. Maybe the moment you find out, you unravel the whole pinata and it doesn't work anymore. Maybe it works because it's unknown, you know?

And even something that doesn't exist can have an impact, right? Yeah. It hasn't existed in itself. Isabel Clark is a very good I believe she's a psychologist and I think she's from England and she has this constant she works with schizophrenic people and she basically instead of just medicating them

she teaches them to interact with their reality and integrate into this reality talk about integration. Yeah, that's amazing. And then she talks a lot about shared reality and non-share reality. What's her name? Isabel Clark. Okay. And, you know, she talks about, you know, shared reality and unshare reality.

You know, schizophrenic people or people are having a bipolar manic episode. They're in a reality, but they're in their own reality that's independent of a shared reality. Right. So it's the reasons that approaches are so poor is because you're trying to tell them that that's not happening when they're having that experience of that reality. So a better approach would be to integrate and be like, okay, how do we get you back into shared reality? If you look at a lot of spiritual emergencies or spiritual crisis, that you are engaged in a process, it's not shared. And then so it's very hard for you to integrate that and interact with other human beings. So the approach is not to suppress that process, but to integrate that process.

And then you can have both, a little bit of both, right? A little bit of both worlds. You know, but it's not efficient. Again, we go back to those terms. we want efficiency. The whole reason why we can't see everything and we need psychedelics sometimes to open our mind and to look at these concepts

is because even our own organism has a drive towards effective techniques or efficient techniques. And so it hides a lot of extra information that it thinks you don't need so that you can make decisions a little bit faster. So maybe you can get out of the way of the speeding car, right? But I think someone that has progressed or any human that has progressed to have technologies that lets you access these other realities or these other consciousness or this other states of awareness, you know, to not use that would be silly because it would be to not see the whole complete friction.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it makes me wonder, too, when we think about, I remember, I don't think Terrence McKenna is the progenitor of this quote, but he was the last person I remember saying it. And it's something like, reality is not only stranger than you imagine, it's stranger than you can imagine. When you start thinking about from that angle, like, wow, you start thinking about communication, whether it's the communication you and I are having here, even though I, there's no felt presence of the other. I'm not next to you. And you start thinking about the way we've, live in the world we live in and some people are isolated you know and what role does fear have in that particular realm of understanding or manifestations of truth like it it really whether it's the monks that seek isolation or the psychedelic experience that allows us to disassociate for just a little bit, there's so much unique wisdom that comes from even a small moment of isolation, you know, be it chemically induced or be it a trip to a mountaintop, just breaking away from society for a minute really allows us, you know, I guess you can hear it in speeches throughout time,

like even MLK is like, I've been to the mountain top. You know what I mean? Like, it's in the lexicon. It's in the language. And that brings us back to the ideas of the receiver and the reception. maybe information or ideas or goals or the nuggets of truth are not learned in a classroom. Maybe they're revealed to us in times of quiet contemplation. Maybe that's what's happening in the world. Maybe we got it all wrong, man. Maybe this idea of schooling while helpful and can do things, it has exercised the lived experience out of it, right?

Like when you go and sit in a class for 25 years or 12 years or eight hours a day, aren't you on some level getting away from the lived experience that is the true teacher? Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, again, it's about the middle way, right? And the middle road is the way. Yeah, the middle road is the way. But it's also, right, part of being human is being wounded. When you come into this world, you're going to get wounded in one way or another.

Some people have very, very big wounds. Yeah. And some people have wounds that, well, they don't hurt so much. So maybe they can carry them a little bit. lighter. But to be human is to be wounded. And then what separates an individual that can have a complete life from an individual that becomes as functional or becomes unable to cope is, can you be wounded and then have that part heal over time? Can you heal that part yourself? Right. So even the schooling system, the schooling system for me was horrible. You know, I struggled with the

schooling system because the way I learned was very different, the way I thought was very different, the books I was interested in were very different in the books that they were teaching me. So I myself, I've been a victim of that system and I did not enjoy that system at all. But at the same time, that system, it allowed me to express myself this way, right? It allowed me to have something to say because I used the wound from that system to further myself. instead of using it to as an excuse of why I wasn't enough, right? And I'm an immigrant. I mean, I was not born in this country.

I came in legally to this country. You know, my parents suffered a lot to get me to this country. And I wasn't always appreciated of that because, you know, I was in trouble all the time, in school and things like that, right? And I did feel like the system didn't understand me, but the system taught me how to communicate. communicate with others. It taught me how to do these things. And then so the problem is that we don't change. Our circumstances change and we don't. Because you find people that are coming into therapy and they're still stuck like when they're seven years old. They're now successful and

very different, but they're stuck there. Right. So the circumstances change, but they never did. So I don't think that it's that we're taught wrong is that we're not taught that we're not taught about change and how change is integral to life and to reality. Reality in life is change. And then so we have this ingrained bias to resist change. And when we resist it, that's when we suffer, right? Because at one point I had to realize I'm not in school anymore. I can choose what I do and I can choose what field I like.

And I can choose to now get straight A's and I could choose to now. be at the top of my class and I could choose to no longer feel like I'm isolated. I am now going to associate and socialize with people, right? But I'm not saying everyone can do that. I'm not saying everyone can do that without help, right? I know I am fortunate in some ways to have found this out at a young age, but I understood that if I did not change, my circumstances would continue to plate me. So you need to change with life. And a lot of times it's like a bad dance. We're out of sync with life. You know, we're out of sync with life.

So like we're taking a step a little too late, a little bit to, to before the time we're supposed to take the step. And then life is a really good dancer. Life is, life and reality are the ultimate dancer. And then we're here, you know, in this dance of life or, and we're just, we got two square feet. And it's not that life wants to hurt us. It's just we haven't learned how to dance.

you know and then so learning to dance is very important even if you got two left feet that's so poetic in nature it's beautiful when I think about a lack of change when I think about mental illness and how a lack of being able to integrate change could result in mental illness I'm reminded of the lack of rights of passages

that we have in the Western society I'm reminded of the you know you you hear echoes of a kinsignera or a bar mitzvah, but for most people, they don't really have a community right of passage. There's not a lot of that. And I'm wondering if, you know, isn't that a form of shared sacrifice

when people can go to that right of passage and learn what it's like to change? And then they can embrace it because sometimes they get to be the person clapping. Sometimes they get to be the elder. Sometimes they get to be the kid that goes through the ceremony. And you get to play a different role in these rights of passage. What do you think about rights of passage?

And is that something you see in the program that you're in now versus what you learned at like CIS or one of these schools here? What I greatly respect about the people that are in the program now is that they're willing to be criticized. They're willing to not cater to your every whim, but they want to give you a real experience. I really like the main, you know, the progenitor of the program, Lila Vega because he is he shows you instead of instead of trying to like tell you you

know he's very quiet individual in fact very hard to even have a conversation with him because he's very quiet but he just knows and you can see it because it's in the little things he does and then so this program is a lot about showing not telling and I like that because you know you have to show show the goods if you really know you know there's a saying obviously this free famous that like you know those that know don't speak and those that speak don't know and you know obviously there's exceptions

sometimes but but I really do believe that you know a lot of times if you really have a certain understanding you can just show it very easily you know it's just natural you don't have to try too hard and if you really don't have it then you have to put on a lot of theatrics a lot of like you know

you got to wear certain things things, you know, stuff like that. And I think that that's missing. You can have all the garments you want, but it's not the garment that makes the magic happen, right? So this program to me is, if it's not the best psychedelic program that there is out there now, it's at least one of the best because they really do put you to your limits, whether it be confronting your shadow or things like that, they really do. And so I have nothing but good things to say it, even though, because the program is hard at the very first couple times, especially the first retreats, I was like trying to bail.

I was like, I don't know. This is too much for me. You know, like I like the Western approach, but, you know, it was very hard for me to integrate the Western approach with this approach. Not to say that they don't have Western viewpoints because they're psychologists as well and they have therapists on board. but a lot of the way that they they even rebranded the program now because the program no longer exists like how I'm taking it.

We were the last class which is we was just called the psychedelic assistant program and the program has now expanded to be called it's I believe it's was a mysticism or

it's a mysticism program or I forgot the exact name they just gave me they just rebranded it. It's the same program but now it doesn't require that you use psychedelics, it also integrates just shamanic cultures that are not using psychedelics, just mysticism. So it's, I believe it's called the program, actually. I just got an email of the

name change. Maybe. Sorry about that. I've heard about that. Not at all, man. Yeah, I don't have the name here, but it's a great program. It's hosted to our way. So I like that. I think that psychedelic or otherwise programs that deal with consciousness should really show you instead of tell you, right? Like nowadays, and again, not disparaging anybody, there's a thousand programs for psychedelic, learn how to do psychedelic therapy, learn how to microdose at home, you know. Maybe it's a start.

It's better than nothing. But it's missing a lot. You know, if you're going to play at those levels, if you're going to take your consciousness to those levels, you can't just go halfway or you can get hurt. You know, you really eventually have to commit to going all the way, right? Completing a process is as important as starting it.

If to go halfway, you could get stuck there, you know, for me, and it's not an elitist point of view, but it's really like if you're going to, do this, if you're going to open your mind in that way, make sure that you understand that it's not always going to be convenient, that you could have periods in your life that you feel unstable. You could have periods in your life where you're actually healing, but it looks horrible. Your marriage is falling apart. You know, things are not working out for you at your old job, your corporate job or something

like that. And then it doesn't look very healing, but there could be a change there. But if nobody prepares you for that, it could be very destabilizing. You know, like any and it's a half completion of a process. So you get hurt by that. It's another trauma to add to the belt. So it's very important that that we have more programs that show you instead of telling you. Because telling is not how this stuff works.

You know. Yeah, I guess that's where the shared sacrifice comes, comes into play there. I wonder sometimes about the, sometimes the question appears that we have an epidemic of mental illness and we need lots of people to help with that. And it seems that one of the answers is to try and educate as many people as possible, even though in that education it might be lacking. Does that, you know, there's kind of a paradox there because you, maybe you're, maybe you're, maybe you're, people as best you can, but some of them may do more harm than good. Is that just a messy process, but we're trying to make it the best we can? Is that the human nature in it?

Or what do you think about that? For this, I have to disclose my bias, right? My bias is obviously I studied a lot of this. I have a lot of experience in this. So I have a bias. If I would say I didn't have a bias, I'd be lying at you, right? I'm very trying to be very straightforward. Sure.

I have a bias. So this is my bias. and this is my guys view. That's a really wrong approach. Is it going to turn out fine? Maybe because I'm comfortable with chaos, but maybe some other people aren't. I think it's a wrong approach with this.

It's like telling a bunch of people that don't know how to swim, that they know how to swim, and then you take them to the ocean and you drop them there, and then they drown. And they're like, why did we drown?

We thought we knew how to swim. No, you didn't. Maybe you knew how to doggie paddle. Right. You're not a swimmer. And then so, again, I can't, I have my bias, but my bias is there's a lot of people that have very little experience.

Or like they say, well, you know, I learned from the medicine. Well, even the tightness in the jungle, they take seven, you know, not even seven, like they take 30, 40 years to say that they can, they'd learn from the medicine. So I don't think you're a prodigy that learned it in a year or two, right, how to how to really speak to the medicine. Most of the things that you're seeing are probably projections of your own ego. First, I think I have a great psychoanalyst, you know, that I, whether I'm doing good or bad, it doesn't matter. I try to show up. And the reason is because I need that. You know, so I do think that it doesn't have to be psychoanalysis, but anybody that's engaged in this field should be really aware of themselves and they should have someone constantly reflecting back so that your shadow traits are not getting in the way of what you're doing with people, right?

because they're not my issues become your issues. Right. So, for example, I know I have this bias. So I have to be able to drop it. If a patient of mine comes in and they are now a facilitator and they have like a year of experience, I have to be able to drop that bias to help that person. Because if I can't drop my bias, I'm going to hurt that person. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah. That's a very overt example, but that's how biases work. And I really do believe we're telling a bunch of people they know how to swim and they don't. And then the psychedelic field is very famous for attracting people that love, the edge. Not so much now because now we're getting more people, but there are people, there are a lot of people in the psychedelic field that they love the edge. So they already themselves are not super balanced. And then now the medicine is not helping them balance anymore. And then they're saying, I'm going to love everyone. And that, cool, that's not the way that it all works,

you know, because you're just not seeing your shadow. I don't agree with that approach. And I think that unfortunately, although people don't want to hear it, if you want to be good at this, you better be ready to make a lot of sacrifice. I am not ashamed to say that I have made a lot of sacrifices to get my knowledge. I have made a lot of,

and I don't know anything. I think I don't know anything anymore. But it doesn't matter. To get this not knowing, it had to be a lot of sacrifice. And a lot of times that I thought I knew, I had to be humble enough to learn that I did not know. And if you're humble,

then maybe even if you don't know, maybe you won't hurt people, but there's nothing worse than thinking you know something you don't. And I think that a lot of people are getting the message that because you took a course or something that somehow you are qualified, and I don't believe so, in my own bias opinion, I don't believe that makes it. So now you can go and do whatever you want because I don't stop people from doing that. But when you hurt people, you know, I get stories all the time, you know, because when some of my patients come to me or something like that or people, I don't like to use the word of patients because I didn't probably say that they're ill. I don't really believe in mental illness. I believe that there's a mental condition.

I never term it as a mental illness because really it's a mental condition. And we can get into that. But really the reality is that, you know, sometimes these people are telling me horror stories like, oh, yes, my therapist says they were really in love with me. You know, or their psychedelic therapist. I'm like, whoa. And we were tripping together and we were in the woods. Oh, that's not like, you know, that doesn't seem dangers at all, you know. But really, like, so the therapist has inserted themselves.

Right. Into the therapy. That's already not therapy. That now you're just catering to someone that has power over you. That turns abusive really quickly, right? Because now you're also thinking this therapist knows something you don't. And they may be actually. worse off than you. They may be more diluted, right? Because at least the person that

believes they're a patient is open to the fact that they don't know everything and then they're getting someone that supposedly knows more. But I'm really hard on therapists. I'm not hard on patients or on people trying to get help. But I am hard on therapists. If you're going to be a therapist, what are you doing? Right? You don't have to be perfect, but what are you doing? What are you doing? Like, who is your accountability? Right. And it's, it's, it's it's going to hurt people and there was a time that I was super concerned about it but as I got him more comfortable with chaos I understand that like for example it's part of nature people will get hurt and then we'll learn how to do it better and then some of these people that

don't have enough experience will eventually either be humble enough to get more experience or they will just not be working a lot right because people are going to be a little bit wiser they're going to be like, oh, no, you're not supposed to just come on to me. And you're not supposed to do this stuff, right? And I feel like what's missing is really education for the public that's not biased. Because we're treating people like if they're babies, like if they can't handle the truth. So we're telling them only the good part of psychedelics cure the mind and they help you. Right.

But we're not telling them, hey, listen, this is how to use them responsibly. because we're afraid that if we told them what it takes to use this responsibly, that people would walk away. They wouldn't accept it. So because these medicines have been ostracized for so long, we're afraid to say anything negative. And that's creating the downfall of psychedelics. Maybe not now.

But it can be a downfall because the public isn't stupid. And when they start having less than stellar experiences, when they start realizing, I thought I would take this and it would help me. You know, there's people that take Jahe, I, and they're not able to work for six months because their process is lasting six months after we took the journey. And they're having to go through difficult emotions. So if you don't prepare people for that, if there's not a system to kind of help this person, that person, you think that person is going to come out of those six months of being unemployed and say,

I love psychedelics. Or do you think that that person is going to be like, this stuff is that devil? It's dangerous. This is horrible. and they were never educated, right? And then whose fault is that? That person? So is it our fault?

Because if we're getting all this knowledge, why aren't we saying it? Why are we so afraid to speak about the entire truth of psychedelics? Right? Why are we pretending that, you know, there's not a shadow side to it? Yeah. And after you say that,

it sounds like maybe that is why there are people with lots of money. that are institutionalized, like some of the pharmaceutical companies that want to take the lived experience out of the brain attenuation because they don't want people to wake up and walk away from their relations. They don't want people to wake up

and walk away from a job, making six figures and go, wait a minute, yeah, the money's great, but I'm a horrible person. I can't do this anymore. I'm done. And do it like in a day or in a week, you know, and just walk away.

Like, there's real consequences from beginning to see glimpses of who you really really. want to be, right? Like, there's some real consequences that come from that. Yeah, and it takes a grown-up to handle it. You know, you can't baby your way out of them. And it's hard, right?

And then so, I mean, I've experienced it. Yeah, I've experienced it in my own life, you know, the fear, the fear of like, oh, I know I need to change that, but I really don't want to, you know, because it's a truth. And then, you know, having it, you know, and then if you're compassionate though, you can be realistic. Okay, I'm probably not going to change that right now, but I can start taking some small steps.

Right. Right. It's not an all of nothing approach. But, you know, it's unfortunate because I believe that people that come and use psychedelics can be grown-ups and they should be told the entire truth. When I tell someone, I don't promise them the moon. I said, listen, you could cry. You could.

This could be like this. I will be here with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I will be. But it will. not, you know, especially, you know, ketamine-assisted therapy I really like because the duration is longer and it's not as destabilizing sometimes. It's as a gentler. Okay. Right. But,

but it can still produce a near-death experience. It's very famous for that. You know, it can produce some very deep profound experiences, especially if, like what I said, you allow some room for the unknown. You account for that unknown variable. People can get really, really far. And they can have really experiences that are not able to be explained by normal means, you know, the more of the realm of transpersonal psychology or anything like that, maybe would be able to deal with that. But it allows the person feels like they got the whole picture. They feel like, okay, I knew that this was going to be hard.

So they don't get hurt. You know, I'm very proud of a lot of the people that I have worked with. To see that, you know, even though I don't have to work with them anymore because they've made so much growth. Yeah. And now they're able to do that. Right? Because my job is also to become obsolete. If you depend on me to always interpret things for you or if I don't give you any tools, it's like what you said about fishing.

You're always going to have to be coming to me to do that. Yeah. And I'm just changing one enabler for another isn't going to help you. So one of the big things I emphasize in the way I approach. things is you're going to grow. You're not going to like it. Sometimes you're not going to like me, but you're going to grow.

I'm not going to push you to the edge, but I'll push you very close to it. Because in the edge is where you find yourself. In the edge is where you find what you're made of. You don't find it sitting in comfort. Sitting in comfort, it's just fine. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just fine. You know, the eagle's not going to, because the eagle has a self-preservation drive. So when you put it on the edge, it's going to jump over. It's going to do something. right but if you make it too comfortable it's not going to move because it's like oh cool I can sit here and do this all day what do you want to do you know the ego always seeks comfort and then so if you make it too comfortable there won't be any change because the ego's job is not it's not going to it's not going to be like oh yes I want to change just for say change it it only wants to change when something's bothering it yeah right if it's comfortable the ego does not want to change a thing it doesn't care it's like no we're we're staying here

right so yeah you do have to push people a little bit and you do have to give them the full picture and it actually allows them to complete the process because for me there's nothing worse in starting something that you can't complete you just it's just you know getting stuck halfway is is is to me my definition of of hell yeah it's it's interesting a lot of when I think about getting stuck halfway, you know, it's, you're right in that people need help because you get places and you get stuck. Like, hey, I just left everything. And now I'm here.

And now my family's upset with me because I'm not bringing in all the money I was bringing. My whole identity has broken away from me. Who am I? You know, you start asking these questions where, you know, you would like to believe that you can find the answers. And maybe they can be. revealed to you, but sure is nice to have maybe a story or have someone around you that you can see went through that or that can ask you some difficult questions so that you can help find the way, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I term it this way, you know, when you need to see angels, you'll never see them. And when you don't need to come anymore, you'll see them everywhere. And what that means to me is that when you stop looking for others for validation, you'll find a lot more acceptance. When you're, when you stop trying to hold on to the rope all the time, then you'll find growth, right? And, but you're going to go through periods of, that everything's being stripped away from you because these things are like parasites. They attach themselves to you. They're not part of you, but they, they look like they are.

and then as you shed them, sometimes you shed people too, because there's people that are interested in keeping that same mechanism, that parasite, that parasite like mechanism. in control. And it doesn't mean that those people are bad people. It just means that they might not be congruent with where you're at right now. Now, there's a very big distinction I make. Everything should not bother you. Like if you are thinking that you're becoming enlightened and people are bothering you more and more, that's a stage of, of, of, I don't say enlightenment, but I say, that's a stage of maturity or growth. But that should be a stage. That shouldn't meet where you're at all the time. Eventually, you should be able to interact with anybody or most people and be like,

that's their opinion. It doesn't bother me. You know, if you can't get there, you have, you still have some way to go. And in fact, this process is never completed. Right. Which is great because, you know, you'll never get bored. You'll never get bored. But, you know, you should not be cutting all ties.

You know, there's a period. There's always like, there's progressions that you cut a lot of ties with things that no longer serve you. But if this is a continual thing that you're doing, That's also a sign that, wait a second. You got stuck in another process now. You came out of one process and now you're in another process because you're continually cutting things and this person is not aligned with me.

This person is not aligned with me. Oh, cool. Like, Bo, how is that? If your inner world is good, how does that bother you? Why is that so bothering you? That's a period in time. There's a period in time that you're very sensitive, especially in the first stages of instability.

Where you're very, very sensitive. So, yeah, you do need maybe isolation. In fact, you'll find during those periods you might not even have anybody to talk to. And that's just to get you to open up to your own experience. A lot of people stay stuck in loneliness because they don't. And again, I'm not trying to blame a victim of a mental health issue or anything about. But what I'm saying is a lot of people stay stuck in loneliness because they don't get the lesson. The lesson is you don't need other people to validate your experience or your life.

And once you learn that lesson, then it's. it's not heavy. You meet people and you're not heavy because sometimes these people are walking around and they're very heavy because they're hanging their entire existence on some interaction. So because they're hanging their entire existence on some interaction, when they come around, people are like, they're draining,

you know, sometimes, right? Or they can be very draining. And they don't see it that way because they're really a person in need of love or affection, but they're very heavy, right? So when they resolve that conflict in themselves, not an issue.

You know, they walk around and they seem lighter and people are like, oh, cool, let's hang out. Right. Yeah. And sometimes when I work with people and they go to that stage, they go like, oh, wow, how come now I have so many friends? And like, I was trying to get friends for like 10 years and I couldn't get any friends. You know, I'm like, that was your process, you know? And once you learn that lesson, you know, it's like you only suffer until you know. And once you know, you don't suffer as much, at least or maybe you don't suffer, you know.

but you really have to see that a lot of the things that we term as bad are processes that are meant to strip away certain conditions from us, right? Yeah, it's interesting. You hear it in the lexicon of the language all the time, hey, why do you guys lighten up over there? Hey, why don't you lighten up? You know what I mean? But like, it's in the language right there sometimes. It speaks to the idea of secrets or ideas or just knowledge being unveiling. to you. It's always there. You know, you just didn't see it, right? But now you see it everywhere.

I'm kind of wondering, you know, as is there some sort of similarity? Because you do ketamine therapy. And is it similar? I know, I know myself, I remember the first time I did mushrooms. And it was like anticipation and I was excited for it, even though it was so long ago. I probably recreated these memories. But I can re-remember the feelings of it. And it seems today when you hear people talking about their first psychedelic trip, they have sort of a nostalgia and they remember it and it was a really powerful experience. I'm wondering, as someone who has worked with psychedelics and giving medicine to people, what's it like? What was it like the very first time you did ketamine therapy for someone else? Was it similar to the very first time you did a psychedelic experience?

No, it was very different. And it was different because I was focused more on the person. when I choose people, it's actually, for me, it's an experience too, even though I'm not on anything. Right. Because the atmosphere changes and I get to focus on that person and not on me. My problems disappear. I love doing therapy for that reason, at least therapy in the way because you disappear. Your problems disappear.

So it's almost like getting a break from yourself for that time. And you could just focus on something else, on this person and it also helps you come back. So for me, every experience is different, but I don't get that nostalgia, you know. And the reason I don't get that nostalgia anymore is because I understand that that experience never stopped. It never stopped. It's still here in some which way or form. If I ever wanted to go back to it, I would. Like one of the things I teach my patients is how to go back to the experience without, I call it dry runs,

how to go back to the experience without the psychedelic. And many people don't do that. You have to use the same eye shades. I sometimes will say if you have a perfume that's not too noxious, just very light or scenting, use the same perfume because, you know, the senses. Yeah. Especially the smell sense. It's very connected.

So you can bring back that and you can create this experience over and over again to the point that it's actually stronger than the initial experience. But that takes some work, right? So maybe I call it psychedelic meditation. I don't know what I'm teaching. I just teach it. But so it. The way I understand that I don't know if anybody does it that way is I will have them do dry runs where I'll have them use the same blanket that they use.

I'll set a set of time. Use the same. And everybody, you know, like a lot of the people that work with me, they'll have like their own eye shade or they'll have their own little nice thing that they have. Some people have things that mean a lot to them, you know, like a tree or a piece of a tree or something, you know, whatever. Whatever they found to be meaningful. because I very much encourage that. Don't leave that experience out there, bringing it in, right? Like if you're longing for it, that means that you left some of that experience out there.

So bring it in. Don't keep longing to go back to the past. Bring it in. Bring in that longing and make the experience there. The experience never stopped. You're off of the medicine, but you're still having your experience. You can integrate it. The fact that you can remember it is the experience is still there.

So what I teach in dry rooms is use the same stuff. If you can use something with scent, use that because that also helps the thing. And of course, if you're using the same playlist and then just try to pick up where that experience left off. And many people are surprised that they're able to go there. And with just a little bit of practice, even people that have never meditated or don't turn themselves as hating meditations, for some reason I trick them into meditation with this. They don't realize that this is basically the same thing. they're able to just create.

It's more like active imagination than meditation. But they're able to create, recreate a lot of the feelings and pick up where you left off. Because remember, that was half of the story. That was only half of the story. That experience was only half of the story. The other half is with you right now. So you need to bring that forward over and over. My first experience was to this day still the best in terms of that, the most powerful,

because I had no expectations, right? Right, right. And but my experience never stopped. I integrated everything about my first experience. And to this day, I still continue to integrate it and informs everything else. So for me, I'm in it. You know, like it's, that doesn't mean I'm like in bliss out or anything. But I'm in it.

It's a part of me. It's part of who I am. You know, it's not independent of me. Because once you start thinking it's independent of you, then you start to have sorrow and long and loneliness. because you think it's independent of you. It's not, you know. Yeah, it's a great way to look at it, man. I love it.

Have you, it seems to me that there is a place for layering. You know what I mean by that? Like some people are taking like MDMA with mushrooms or some people are taking a little bit of ketamine when they come down from a certain type of medicine. Have you noticed that? Yeah. I mean, I don't have anything against it as long as it's safe.

on pharmacology, say. Certain combinations definitely seem to bring out sometimes the best in the medicine or a much different experience in the medicine. There are people that are purists and say, well, I don't do ketamine because it's, it's, you know, it's chemical or things like that. I think that that's having a very constricted approach. Reality doesn't care what you use to get there. It's just me, but it gives you the responsibility.

What we don't like is a responsibility. Listen. it took it, but now you're responsible for this experience. What are you going to do with it? It's just going to be an afterthought? Is it just going to be, are you just going to put it all on the medicine? When I make some DMA and this, this happens. If you're going to do that, that's on you.

And people don't want the responsibility. So they put it right back to something else. If you're willing to take responsibility for anything you do, then anything you do is okay. Right? You know, my psychoanalyst says something that I really like, which is like the wrong means in the hands. hands of the right man can still produce the right this for results right and and what it means is

you know it's your intention it comes down to the true intention people talk about intention that's like oh i want this from the journey i want that but what's your true intention what do you intend to do once you get this knowledge what are you going to do with it how are you going to be responsible for whatever message you receive and if you don't want to be responsible who but then don't expect it to have any responsibility for you Don't expect it to improve your life or feel responsible to improve your life. The process is not responsible for you. Yeah, that's really well put.

It's, I'm going to put that on my notes right over here, man. You're making me fill up these pages over here, Jorge. I love it, man. When you think about the idea of therapy, is it, you had mentioned earlier that you didn't like the word illness. Is that because it has a stigma attached to it? Because if you're ill, you can never get better. And also, because is it an illness? A lot of times depression is not really an illness and now there's anxiety.

If you go to your car right now and you turn it on and the check engine light is on, do you go to the mechanic and say, hey, I need you to turn this light off? No, you say, hey, there's something wrong with my car. Maybe it's the oil or whatever. Can you fix that, right? But people treat anxiety and depression as if it is a problem. And yes, there's chemical forms, like a bipolar disorder and things like that. There's chemical forms for depression and anxiety.

But often what you'll find is it's a symptom of the true disease. So if I tell you that that's the illness, you're going to put all the responsibility, the same thing I was just talking about on that. I just want to get rid of this depression. No, you're getting depressed because your inner nature is saying there's something you need to do and that you're not doing. And you don't like to hear that. So therefore, this depression becomes an inconvenient.

to you. Right? And again, I'm making a distinction from chemical thing, you know, not a chemical imbalance. If we've determined there's not a chemical imbalance, but there's a behavior imbalance that causes you to do this, then, you know, that's not, the problem is not that you're anxious or depressed. The problem is that you're unwilling to look further into why you're anxious and depressed, right? So a lot of times people don't understand that, like, listen, you could be doing the thing you love the most in the world.

You're going to experience some level of anxiety. If you're not willing to handle that, then, okay, you can build up to it. Let's build up to it a little bit. But you will eventually have to handle it. The price of living your life to its fullest is anxiety. Because guess what? You're going to get anxious when people criticize you. You're going to get anxious when you're making a life-changing decision.

you're going to get anxious when you're heading off to the jungle and you might get bitten by a bat and you're like, which is my word all the time. I did think I got bit by a bat one time but it was not. But in regardless of that, right? Like really, you know, it's anxiety is the price you pay sometimes to make something happen, right?

Look at any CEO and things like that. And like, can they really say that they weren't completely sometimes terrified of making those moves, right? It's, you know, even for me, like, for example, you know, I have a license, so I have to be very careful of everything that I say, right? Especially because my license is to treat people and things like that. So there's some degree of anxiety, even of going outside the mold, because there's not a lot of nurse practitioners that engage in psychedelic therapy or that engage in, in really, you know,

being outside of the box, right? Yeah. And it's not because I'm better or anything. It's just because I understood that actually a patient of mine is too credited for this. Because I was always very, in the beginning, very square about it. It's like, well, you know, I wouldn't even terminate a psychedelic. I'm like, no, you know, it's, it's a vision. It's, yeah, that's a part, you know.

Even though I knew what I was doing, I was using my trickster mentality. Sure. To do it in a way that was acceptable. But I had a patient once told me, it's like, well, George, you know all this stuff and you study all this stuff, when are you going to actually like start actually being a little bit more open about it, right? And I understood, you see patients are also or people that come for help are teachers. You should always treat a patient as a teacher because they have a lot to teach you about yourself

and about how to heal people. And then if you look at every person as someone that can teach you something, it also prevents this power and balance, right? Yeah. But this person, open my eyes. the fact that I was getting all this knowledge, but I was afraid to use it. Right. And I was afraid to be out there, to appear, to really say what I, you know.

And then so how could I be a hypocrite and tell people to get over their fear and not be willing to do minds, right? Yeah. So a hypocrite doesn't make for a very good provider. So, you know, I had to, I have to be comfortable with my anxiety and understand that come what may. This is my truth. I've worked hard for it. I've I've dedicated a lot of time and a lot of my life to it. So really, you know, we're telling people that that depression and anxiety is an illness, which is the number one illness and anxiety. But we're not telling them, no, it's not an illness. It's a symptom of your illness. Your illness is your fear.

Yes. Your illness is the fact that you know this relationship, it doesn't work. but you're too afraid to be alone. So you'd rather be in a hostile relationship. You're too afraid to leave your cushy job. Or a job that's not so bad because I never ask people to jump off a cliff. I tell people, just get a job that's like reasonables too.

But like, do you need to work 100 hours in a week? You don't. You know, unless you like it, if you like it, it's a joy. If you don't like it, it's a terror. And it's a worse. So the depression is actually trying to save you. It's trying to tell you, no, man, you're wasting your life. You only got so many more years. You're killing yourself. Yeah. So how can I say that that is an illness? Yeah.

Out of illness. In a lot of ways, it's an ally, you know, and it's society that deem, and maybe that's what the stigma is. Maybe that's the idea that we look down on these people that want to do what's right for them because it doesn't have to do with the greater good or, you know, but it's, I think you, hit the nail on the head when we talk about this idea of fear and how it manifests itself in so many different ways because we're constantly trying to get away from the fear and you can't really have freedom and security at the same time right and then there's fears involved in that somehow because you know if you if you want to at least in my opinion it seems that if you want to become the best version of yourself you have to be willing to walk away from

a secure life. You know, I think that the best part of becoming yourself is being something that's unique. And there's not a lot of security and being unique. People might look down on you. People may say mean things about you. You may find out that you have to change things. And but ultimately, it's that, it's that lonely road to the town of self-happiness that you have to travel. Right.

It's, what do you think is the relationship between fear, freedom, and security? Well, I think it's, it's more than that because it's like, according to your nature is the nature of your God, right? And I use the term God as like the inner version of you. That inner God demands something of you, right? It's saying, this is what I want. And so it's not so much about doing things that are against other people's wishes. as being true to yourself. Being true to yourself, you know, there's a reason they say,

you know, a friend to everyone is an enemy to oneself, right? Why? Because that inner God, you know, I use the term God loosely here, but that inner process that tells you move, no, don't do that. That tells you, that makes you miserable if you don't do what it's saying. Yeah. Right? It makes you anxious even to, like, you'll do anything to get you to pay attention.

It's like, you know, very much like that biblical God, sending calamities on you if you don't do what it really wants. So there's a fear. Again, we go back to the master in his ministry. There's a fear to be something greater than yourself. And then there's the inability and the inability to trust that there's another unknown variable that picks up the slack for you. Right. and it seems to happen, right? Because we're like, have you ever seen the kids that you put them on the on the car seats

and they have that little steering wheel that they're driving? That's us. We think we're driving. We think like we're driving the car, but we're not the one driving is either the subconscious, the inner God, whatever you want to call it. That's really driving the vehicle because guess what? Would you say that you're conscious 100% of your day? No, most of the time you're going in and out of trances.

You're doing things mechanically. most people are unless they're fully enlightened. I don't know. I haven't met anymore like that. Right. So acknowledging that truth is scary to look over and be like, I'm a child and this wheel is fake. This is not even real. This is not really even moving the whole thing, right?

Acknowledging that is a fear. So because we don't want to acknowledge that, then we get more afraid. No. I have to do this. I have to be the one driving the car. the one driving the car, then what is? Because if I can't see it, then I don't want to know it. Right. And if you do that, then immediately, you know, you become neurotic, you become constricted. You become very unable to live your life, right? And then all the illnesses start appearing to you like great calamities, right? And you feel like your life is all of a sudden very, very hard.

It's very, very hard because you're doing something contrary to your inner nature. You're just you're trying to please. you're trying to be good. A lot of people get their satisfaction of, because a lot of us have been conditioned love, even by our own parents sometimes, where I love you when you're good, but if you ever do something that displeases me, then I don't like you so much.

Yeah, then I don't like you so much. And then so you learn very early on to constrict yourself. And that's good because that means that you're not an egomaniac. You're not going around trampling other people. But it's bad when you don't stop the process, when you just continue, The process continues unfolding unconsciously, and you just continue to, to some degree, feel like you need that. I mean, you look at a lot of celebrities, and they felt that they needed the validation until they have it.

And then it becomes a terror because everything they do is looked at, is judged, right? You know, like, there's no worse life than the life of someone that's very well known, because a reputation is a terrible thing. I'm not saying about a good or bad. A reputation is a terrible thing because you feel like you must live up to it. If you have a bad reputation, you have to be bad. If you have a good reputation, you have to be good. And both of those things are very hard to let go of for us as human beings.

So it's all of it. It's a complex problem that creates all of these illnesses. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder too, like maybe it's because I I'm a big fan of reading and thinking about illnesses and probably because people in my family have been diagnosed. They got certification, so they really had something. You know what I mean?

But they embraced the identity that was given to them in some ways. And I always found it fascinating to see how this outside thing, this outside label can become you or you can interchange with it on some level. And you start reading like the DSM and you're like, wow, here's like a catalog. diseases you can have if you want to try that one on you know and but that that led me to this idea and even in the world of psychedelics today like we hear about this mental illness crisis or

this crisis on some level do you think that maybe like we're weaponizing fragility yeah we could be you know um because the eagle will use any weapon it can right you know so fragility before it was you got to be strong. Now you got to, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. But you don't got to be anything. You just have to be you. Yeah. You know, and then that's scary.

I'm like, no, wait a mean, you got to be something. Right. You don't want to be a nobody. Right. If you don't want to be a nobody, you got to be something. You know, like I'm, you know, the more I do this, the less interested I am even in saying that I am anything. And I'm not saying it like that, because it's like, I don't know what I am.

I do stuff. I help some people. And sometimes I go to the jungle or I'll go some. else, whatever, right? But I don't got to be anything. I don't have to be a certain way, right? Therapists also fall into this a lot of times. I am the therapist. I'm going to play this role. You're a human being. You're a human being playing a therapist. You're a something, right? And then not being able to let go of personas or personalities is a problem, right? And we come very constricted. You look at a lot of people that have OCD, have, you know,

is diagnosable diseases, the real manifestation of these diseases. And there is biological reasons for it, but there's almost always something. You see something happened in their environment, make them feel not safe. And then all of a sudden, when they engage in this, because that's also another thing that's missing from our society, rituals. We have rituals. Like you have your ritual of getting your coffee in a certain way, you know, every morning or something. But we don't have rituals that help our mental health.

So then the brain tries to pick up the slack. You can't, you know, we're making it out. to be the bad guy here. It's not the bad guy. It's making up for the fact that we are one-dimensional, right? So a lot of times with my patients that think a lot, I'll have them do something with clay or like, okay, do this and blindfold yourself what you do. And they're like, the horror, because they won't be able to conceptualize it, right? Like, or something like that, right? The horror of doing that, right? And for me, it's the same because I'm, you get very heady so I try to do things that are not related to thought and getting into my mental space

and staying there. But, but right, you have to bring ritual into your life. And it doesn't mean that you need to put feathers everywhere or do that. You have to do something that means something. So your brain can stop trying to obsess about unknown variables. That's why ritual works. Ritual is also a tool. It's a technology.

It's a technology that just works. right and you know why we I know that it works because inherently people that were not taught rituals will go into OCD behaviors and have very effective rituals to deal with the fact that they feel unsafe in the in the in the everyday world you know a lot of the people that I treat yes there's a chemical component to OCD but there's also a component of I always tell them do you feel safe he's like no if you don't do this behavior what do you think oh well this could be really really bad I don't know what's going to happen but it could be really bad so what is the driving fact? factor. They feel unsafe and this ritual makes them feel a little bit safer, right? So I often look at things that nature does by itself. Ritual is natural. Ritual is something that happens with nature. So bringing ritual into your life in a meaningful way that's meaningful to you, not to somebody else. You know, don't go out get another culture and unless you're really been ingrained with that culture, don't go out and use something that means something to somebody else, but not to you. Right. Don't go go.

get a quartz curate, so if that's not what your thing is. You know, get something that's meaningful to you and create maybe a small ritual around it, something that doesn't look weird, something that, you know, maybe if you want to do it like that, unless you want it to look weird, if you want it to look weird, cool. If you don't want it to look weird, it does, nobody needs to know. But ritual, bringing ritual really stops neurosis because the unconscious understands a symbolic act, and it doesn't need to explain it. because there's no need for an explanation, the thought stops.

Because the thought process doesn't stop because you want an explanation for everything under the sun. And there are sometimes no reason for the way things happen. So the human being can't tolerate that. Therefore, the technology of the ritual makes up for that. Wow. That's well said. I never thought about it from that angle. But yeah, it's like having their own little system of things they can be in control of.

thus it translates to the world outside of them and is in control. You know, if I can control this thing right here, then everything's in control. I'm going to worry about it. It's kind of crazy to think about. It's beautiful in a way, and it's, I think it speaks volumes of the way in which our inner world dictates our outer world, right? Like, and you know, you had said something earlier along the lines of being comfortable with chaos, and I think that's a very difficult thing for a lot of people to do.

I've noticed that some people who grew up in chaos is what allowed them to be comfortable with chaos later in life. Was that it for you? Or what was your relationship with chaos? Why is it that you can feel comfortable in that? Well, you know, very early in my life when I was, you know, coming in legally to the States, you know, I found out that you can't die. You know, you can die here. You know, seeing death that up close taught me that it can happen.

Right. And, you know, I have to, you know, if I don't want to die, you know, then maybe I have to do something about it. And I didn't even particularly think that I had it really bad. But I understood very early on in my life that, you know, the world wasn't necessarily responsible for me. You know, that I could die. That could happen. But I don't think it's necessarily even just that. It's just knowing that the alternative to not being comfortable with chaos is constriction and death.

you know chaos is life death is a constricting aspect of it and if you look at the cessation of things death is is a constrictive event that leads to an expansion possibly we don't know you know we we we have suppositions but although the constriction aspect of it is important if you don't allow some degree of chaos in your life you would get very bored very quick If you really did get things always your way, that's hell. Because nothing can shatter that, that, like, what can penetrate that? That's the opposite of being infinite. That's very finite.

So you have to be comfortable with some degree of chaos, also because life is chaos. I mean, a lot of the things that happen make absolute no sense. We make sense of them. We give them meaning. And that is our job. That is our gift and our job to make meaning out of events that may seem random to others. You know, it's like when people say, well, this historical figure didn't exist. You know, like, or this figure didn't exist.

It's like, what do you mean? It doesn't matter independent if the person existed or not. This person is producing an effect in your world right now, right? How could they not exist? They exist in that capacity. but it's it's difficult you know it's difficult because we want to use math to solve an English question and you know that that's why we keep getting it wrong every time so you need to use the right means for the illness right or the condition if you use the right means it cures it but again we

look at a lot of things that we're treating a spiritual something that could be treated with maybe another technology and we're trying to apply something that, you know, which is why we take the experience out of the health, right, which is why our medical system is more based on pathology than it is on. It's also a very authoritarian and parental system. It's a parental system because it's telling you don't know what you're doing. Right. So I'm going to tell you what you're doing.

And then you, you, you, you, because of your own fear, you feed that system because you said, yeah, I really don't want to be responsible for myself. I rather somebody else be responsible for me. And then so you can't complain when you get oppressed. And I'm talking about oppressive people. I'm talking about, you know, I'm talking about oppression of the mind sometimes. And there are some oppressions that are systematic.

I'm part of the system. And there are some, me as a minority, I understand that there are very real suppressions. But there are also suppressions that happen to everyone, all of us, that happen because of our. fear. We gave the power away in exchange for some weird notion of stability. That's not even real. Because the system can't give you what you need. What you need is to take it up for yourself, to get up, to make something of yourself, and to see where the opportunity is for you to do something that's meaningful to you.

Nobody's going to come and knock on your door and give you a bag of meaning. You're going to have to find it. You have to be comfortable that even if it's a rock and to everybody else is just a rock, that to you it could be a deity. It could be everything. If you can do that,

you never need anything from anybody. You'll never fall prey to the lust for material goods, maybe, but less likely. because you won't need external validation. It all comes back to external validation. We like external validation. That's the way we inform ourselves. And when we don't have it, we suffer.

Yeah. Jorge, I don't think I can follow that. That's beautiful, man. I got to tell you, I wasn't sure what to expect coming into the conversation, but this is better than I could have possibly imagined. I really enjoy talking to you. I feel that I've got to learn quite a bit about it, about who you are, what you're doing.

And I think you have a very unique way and a gift for explaining some difficult concepts and make it fun and not only fun, but relatable and intriguing. You know what I mean? Like this is a fun conversation, man. I really appreciate it. But what before I let you go, man, like, do we, is there anything else you want to touch on before we go? Well, I want to thank you first for being an excellent host.

I really like your presentation. program. And I did see the episode with my friend Mariah. And yeah, she's really cool. Really, really wonderful person. And, and, you know, really I guess what I would say is if, you know, look like for people, just look in yourself and you have what you need. You just need to maybe dig a little. And, you know, be willing to be uncomfortable. Be willing to maybe not be this way or that way. willing to be in the middle of things and not in one of the sides or in one of the extremes.

But that's that's it. You know, I hope that your audience got something out of it. Yeah. I'm always available for questions or if somebody has concerns. I'm very accessible. And that's it. Thank you again for having me. Yeah.

I love the way you kind of are very, open and honest about having being trained in the Western world and being trained in this other world. And like authentically on both sides. And hey, here's the good part about this. Here's what I like about that. And I would love to hear more about the training. Maybe in the not too distant future, you can come back and maybe be on a panel. We can have like more voices and kind of elevate the conversation.

Sometimes I feel like when we get more of us together, we can really, you know, bring up some ideas that we could all push back on and try to hammer out something like there. But it was really fun, man. And I really enjoyed this. I hope you'll come back in. Where can people find you? And what do you got coming up? And what are you excited about? Well, you know, I do have a website called the Sisted Integration. And that's just my website. You know, if you want to get in contact, you could get in contact with me there. What I got coming up is I'm going to Mexico in November. And it's with the course as well. And then so we're going to be doing the pilgrimage with the witchels, which is Wittikuta. And then so that's a desert pilgrimage where you basically will walk several days to get to the land of the peyote.

And then so we're able to have this experience with them instead of as a tourist to really have that experience with them. And again, I'm very thankful for this program for providing me that experience. I would also be remiss if I didn't thank my wife and my parents and things like that. And the whole psychedelic training program, which is Awe, I could send you a link later so that it's your audience. And you might even, I don't know if he would do it, Lila Vega. He does speak English and all that. And he's the head of the program. and I really, really resonate with a lot of his way.

He also has a very, very unique point of view on which I respect. I would love to talk to him. I wrote down his name and then you were like, he doesn't talk that much. I'm like, damn it. No, he talks, he talks. Okay, okay. I had inferred that as like he's probably not going to want to do a podcast. But, man, I would love to hear more about anybody who has the,

idea that can put forth help or can put forth a much needed light into the world, man. I want to amplify all those ideas, man. So, yeah, definitely. Please send me that information because I know people listening to this are going to be like, what's this program? What's he doing? Where can I find it? So I don't have that link now, but if you can send it to me, it'll be phenomenal.

Absolutely. Listen, I'm available. Like I said, I'm very accessible. So in any way I could be of service, always happy to help. Okay. Well, that's, hang on for one second. to hang up with the audience, but I want to talk you for a moment briefly afterwards. Ladies and gentlemen, phenomenal show.

Reach out to them. His links will be down below. I hope you all enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. I think we covered a lot of areas that is unique to, I know my show. I don't know that I've ever covered any of the programs in depth like you've covered them and some of the people. And I think there's just tons of nuggets in there that people can investigate. So ladies and gentlemen, I hope you had a tremendous time. I know I did.

I hope you have a beautiful weekend. and we'll talk to you guys soon. Aloha.