TrueLife - Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester D.DIV. - The Circle of Wholeness # 2

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

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/Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester is the Madrinha and President of Céu do Montréal, a Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) Church she founded in 1997 in Montréal, Canada.She is a transpersonal counselor, she trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Assagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof.She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve an Section 56 Exemption to import and serve the Santo DaimeSacrament (Ayahuasca).She is an ordained Interfaith Minister with a Doctorate in Divinity.From 1986 to 2018 she has been a workshop leader, teacher, and in private practice.She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery and Self-Care, Volume One and Two.She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being and personal transformation.https://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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

maze, lights my war cry born from the blaze. The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. It is the first Tuesday of the month. and for all of my incredible listeners and the audience out there,

and to all the people who may be joining us for the first time. The first Tuesday of the month is when we have the incredible Reverend Dr. Jester Rochester. She's the Madrina and president of the Sioux de Montreal, a Santo Dime, Ayahuasca church. She founded in 1997 in Montreal, Canada. She's a transpersonal counselor. She trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Lassadioly

and trained with Dr. Stanislav Graf. She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017, to achieve a Section 56 exemption to import and serve the Santo Dimey Sacrament. She is an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in divinity. From 1986 to 2018, she has been a workshop leader, a teacher, and in private practice. She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening, a Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Discovery, Self-Discovery, Self-Discovery, she continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being, and personal transformation.

It is her mission to inspire and empower those who seek the adventure of self-discovery, those who hope to awaken consciousness, to rediscover authenticity, to find meaning in everyday life, and cultivate deep connections with oneself and others and with nature. Dr. Jessica Rochester, thank you for being here today. How are you? Well, thank you. It's always privilege and a pleasure to hang out with George. We always seem to, at least on my side, we get into deep, interesting conversations. Hopefully we won't disappoint today. So we've been walking around what I call the circle of wholeness.

And for the last couple of months, and what that is, is we are, you know, we began the journey a while back, you know, based on the work that I presented in my books about self-discovery, who am I here, you know, where I come from, where do I go when I die, where was I before I arrived here, you know, all these existential questions that everybody asks and sells at one point or another in their life. And sometimes it takes a, you know, kind of a big issue, a big change in our life to start questioning. It may be some illness, a change in our career, studies, our family, the loss of a loved one, an accident, you know, a financial change. And then we can just have to stop and say, okay, what's my life about it? And so this section, which is part two in volume two, it's called the Circle of Holiness,

is all about, you know, the areas, I divided it up into the areas that we are connected to in life, that we have a role in, but that it plays a large role in our lives, our individual lives. And so we've been walking around the Circle of Wholeness and, you know, the Circle in most traditions. represents wholeness. So if you look at most, you know, spiritual, religious traditions, you know, deep cultural, long-term heritage traditions, you're going to find that that's what the circle represents. And so it's the circle of homeless. How do we find homelessness in our everyday life? And how do we find balance in the things that we've been talking about? Now, today we're going to talk about modern science and ancient traditions, okay? And, and, you know,

This is an area that really kind of fascinates me because I love to see what remained in, what are the heritage teachings, and what are the rituals, and what are the beliefs that remain, and how are these being looked at examined by modern science? And what can we learn from this? And the one thing we're going to see in common is that which is true lasts. And one of my hymns, I see one of the verses talks about the truth making room for itself. Okay? And in the end, that's what it does.

The truth makes room for itself. And all this sea of misinformation and misdirection and the us upspiration and all of these things that seem to be designed to drag us deeper into illusion. Okay? those of us who seek truth, authenticity within ourselves, and around us, need to, you know, look sharp on the main teachings of awareness. Okay, and that's part one, you know, and self-awareness, self-love, self-respect, and self-responsibility, all of that is in part one of volume two of the books. So I just want to take as a jumping-off point, something that I really find super interesting.

And I'm actually going to read it, for those of you who are interested, it's going to. And what are the maladies of our time? I think if we look into, you know, there's so much happening around the world all the time, whether it's advances or whether it's armed conflicts or whether it's, you know, new rockets to Jupiter or whatever it is.

There's just an immense amount of things that are happening. And we need to find a balance of informing ourselves, which is that which we're either quite interested in of that which is pertinent to our health and well-being. I'm trying to leave all the rest of the chatter. All the chatter on one side. But what is in our hands and what do we have a say in and choices about on an individual personal basis?

I'm not talking about trying to control and change things outside of ourselves, right? I'm talking about what we can actually do in our own lives. So if we look at the last century, the rates of physical, mental, emotional, diseases, illnesses, syndromes are escalating. Would you agree, Joel? Yeah, absolutely. Like quantum leaping. Now, part of it is, part of it is improved technology that creates greater communication

and a better ability to assess and gather and assess information. So part of that is better reporting, better gathering of evidence, okay? So that's a part of it. But a big chunk of it is what is happening and why is this, okay? We can see that the following factors absolutely according to science and research play a role. Poor food choices. Excessive food intake. We eat too much.

Sorry. It's reality. Obesity is becoming close to the top of the syndrome's, melody, illnesses, processed, and refined foods in the last century. It's artificial food ingredients and additives, lack of exercise, insufficient sleep and rest. It's fascinating if we look into each of these things and see the science, on it. We're going to see that there's enormous value in us to paying personal attention to the options and choices that we have to improve our healthy well-being. Insufficient sleep and rest is huge. You know, I'm going to just drop out there for a moment at the list and come back to it,

and I'm just going to give a little bit of research all this you can find in these chapters here, okay, on sleep and rest and the importance of it. And what they're finding out now about the brain, about health and about longevity and about the illnesses that we have, the level of dementia and Alzheimer's and, you know, is astronomical compared to the population base far, far beyond what was happening. And so we have to take all of these things into consideration. What people don't realize is that in research, they took a group of people, and it's often like graduate students, okay, and undergraduate students because they could always use a little extra money. And they put them in a sensory deprivation environment in which they didn't know day, night,

time of day, nothing. They knew that. So they're in that level, but that's a level of sensory deprivation. They had life so that they could turn on. They had things that they could do, okay, but they had no access to phones, televisions, nothing. So they had no contact with the outside row and they had no idea it was day or night. And what fell into was four-hour cycles. They fell into four-hour cycles of activity and then some creative rest, some quiet meditation, reflection. Okay, because they didn't have all those things to distract

and no phones, no TVs, no nothing. And so what they found was that they fell into this natural bio-rhythm cycle of sleep and rest, when they examined it to our lifestyle, our current modern lifestyle, they said, yeah, people might be getting seven or eight hours sleep. Technically, that should be enough. What they're missing is rest. That quiet, reflective time that we used to have in earlier days,

where we would just go and sit on the front porch and a rocker and look at the stocks. We'd go and lie in the meadow and smell the grass and listen to the little crickets or whatever. We'd go for a walk quietly, a meditative walk. We weren't immersed in sound and noise and light all the time, okay? All of which is a kind of pollution to us when we can't get away from it or turn it off. Carrying on in the list, the repercussions of smoking and substance abuse. We all know this is huge, right? Pollution of air, soil, and water.

I mean, funnily enough, it took the catastrophe with birds, especially the predative birds, the falcons. They couldn't understand why they weren't nesting, why their eggs weren't hatching, why the eggs were fracturing, and they found it was pesticides, right? DDT, so that egg called them. We can only wonder what the accumulation. my daughter's that sent me something the other day and it says the amount of microplastics that we ingest every day that probably stays in our body

those every month, sorry, is about the size of a credit card. Watch that in your brain. See if that's going to do you any good. Now, here's another one. A few more on the list. Insufficient daylight and excessive exposure to artificial light. It's a reality. And the artificial light, if you're going to, we all have to use it, but try and make it full spectrum.

The whole section on light and how it affects our body and why we need it. We're like plants. Plants can grow. If you go give them enough light, we, you know, what's really strange, George, is we know enough when we're doing hydroponics and growing stuff. I mean, ask any, you know, before cannabis legalization, ask any marijuana grower. They knew what kind of lighting you needed in your illegal greenhouse. Okay?

They knew exactly what kind of lighting was needed. How are we so foolish that we don't realize that we need, that we need water and air and sunlight and or full spec from lighting? Why are we so short-sighted? Electromagnetic field smog? Again, there's a question mark on these things. There's, you know, the earth has an electromagnetic field, right? We have electromagnetic fields. Our bodies are electric.

You know, don't talk about Montreal winters. Static electricity is a commonality. We snap, crackle and pop our way through the winter, you know. Noise pollution. It's pollution, you know, people who live in downtown New York City. Now they have a honking ban. But before that happened, I don't know, did you ever go to New York when they didn't have a honking band?

It all night, honkitty honk all night. It was crazy. Okay, last two. Insufficient contact with nature. This is shown to be really important. And the last one, which has, of course, five bells on it, a managed stress. Now, this list is all something that we can do something about. There's nothing on here that we can't personally do something about.

We can change our diet. We can take our supplement. We can get more exercise. We can go outside in the middle of the day if we live in a northern climate. And, of course, like George, you might get a door with your flipwaltz on. Remember, we got a dress, so there's only this much showing, you know, when it's minus 20 and minus 30 and what have you. So all of these things. And then let's add some other things, okay?

Prescription medications. How many millions? I'm just talking to count on the canon now. I can look it up and refresh the numbers. Okay, and it's published in here. How many millions and hundreds of millions of prescriptions are written for medications to try and offset the list I just read? So you have insufficient sleep and a poor diet

and too many chemicals going in your body and not enough sleep and rest and you're not getting enough exercise. So you get all kinds of symptoms. So you go to the doctor. doctor so you get medications for them. What do you have to say to that, George? I'm sure you got you have the, I'm thinking about it and I think I have something to say expression on your face.

I feel like we've been conditioned to give up our authority to live our own lives. It seems like so much of these things, you know, whether it's in fish, it's the, it's the processed food or insufficient sleep. It seems to be this sort of overbearing. idea of being productive in society. I think that stems from giving up your own authority, from not believing or being self-aware, loving yourself. It comes back to self-awareness, I think.

Well, yes, always it comes back to self-awareness. And now we're going to segue into more self-awareness. So thank you for giving you that wonderful drum roll entrance. Okay. Did you, you know, were you thinking in my mind and hearing my thoughts? You've read my books, so you kind of know what. So, yes, awareness. Are we aware of what we're doing when we go in the grocery store and we make our choices? When we go to our doctor. If our doctor is not asking us about our lifestyle, well, you know, our poor GPs, they're overwhelmed. We don't have enough of them because who wants to do that, right? You know? And, and, and, get paid not enough money to see too many people who refuse to take self-responsibility for their own well-being and health. Now, you know, I don't want anybody to think that I, in any way diminishing the real impact of genuine conditions because I am not. And I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying that all conditions are as a result of the list that I just said.

Okay, I'm not. You know, I have arthritis, I have assisted my hips, I know all kinds of things going on. I have a congenital deformity in my spine. No diet on the planet is going to change any of those things, okay? But I can diminish my symptoms. I can manage my symptoms. I can keep myself flexible. I can keep myself a good weight.

I can use positive mental attitude. Okay. I can use the absolute minimum amount of medication. when needed to manage symptoms that sometimes can get unmanageable, especially long plane flights or long car rides or something, you know. So it's using the least amount of medication that you need, having done all the other things that you can do. Does that make some sense?

Yeah. And so, you know, I don't want anybody feeling offended or slated, just thinking that I'm pointing a finger at anybody saying, hey, all you have to do is do A, B, C, and your illness will disappear. No, it won't. Possibly or probably. But the same way somebody with, for example, type 2 diabetes, as soon as it starts happening, you can actually, with diet and exercise, you can actually reverse it.

Modern research is showing us that we can actually neuroplasticity. We thought the brain was kind of cast them as concrete, you know, that it didn't change. Well, there's some things that you can't, you know, that you can't. With sciences, we know it today that we can't do certain things that they can't recover. But other things we're finding that, wait a minute, epigenetics is showing us that we can do some things that we thought we couldn't do in the past. Okay. Anything you want to add about that or any questions you want to ask about that stuff? I think it's a good point.

Yeah, I'm curious to hear when we move forward. I think that there are definitely things that we can't control, but maybe that's where grace comes in. Yes. The serenity prayer. Grant me, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And so here we are, and it's deciding the culture, and we're all trying to find our way. And so now let's look at, you know, having dealt with kind of the, what can I do for myself on that kind of physical well-being because the more well we feel in our body, actually the more well we feel emotionally and mentally and the more well we feel, you know, spiritually, let's call it, on the soul level.

So the better our body is balanced, then automatically we're going to be in a better position on a soul, mental health level. You know, for example, in Europe, some of the very first approaches for people who are depressed is regular exercise. Diet change in regular exercise, you know. And I'm not just counting the very important use of therapeutic support, group or individual as needed to look, you know, whatever it is that's, you know, going on. But in the end, it's the individual decisions that we can make that help us feel empowered, more well and then coming from that place we can manage infinitely better whatever is ahead of us

whatever challenges we face now we're looking at kind of ancient traditions in modern science and where we did that little segue to see okay well where are we as a culture and society as individuals and the options that we have to get more well so what do we learn from ancient traditions and i want to you know bring back in non-ordinary states of consciousness because That's, as you know, key to so many things. If we look at ancient traditions, we will see that they had a wisdom. They knew which plants not to eat. If you look into nature, you'll see the monkeys go and check out the tree or the figs right yet.

And, you know, every creature on the planet knows when the plant's ripe, when the berries are ready. the birds, the bees, every, you know, they all know, okay, because generations upon millions of generations have taught them, this is the good moment when the day length is like this, when the hour is like that, when the tide is in, when the tide is out, okay? Now it's the time to gather your food, lay your eggs, find a mate, okay? And so they move in, this is kind of what, one of the pillars of this conversation, they move in harmony with nature. We don't do that. We lost our way on that one. And so we look at nature and you see it's still trying despite human activity and despite the repercussions of too many humans on the planet and human activity

and our arrogance to assume that we can do what we want with nature. Let's just ground it in and do what we've conquered it over. And we see that what's happened is we have completely lost touch, most of us, with nature. And how do we return that? So that we understand that heritage wisdoms, the indigenous people around the world, they tried to hold on to those traditions and wisdoms and teachings, which has, of course, been battered by, you know, invasions. whether it was European invasions or whether it was, you know,

eastern invasions, turn the corner and go on the other side of the world, they had the exact same thing going on. So, you know, the movement of humans around the world with our aggressive territorialism and our tribal instincts, you know, whatever I believe, whatever I think is the right, the only one way, right? and are the conqueror's position of dominating instead of working in harmony with. And so it's brought us all to where we are right now that so much heritage, wisdom, and tradition has been lost.

Unfortunately, some of it is trying to be recovered. And one of the things that is helping that is the non-ordinary steeps of consciousness and the use of sacred planets. As you know, of course, I have worked now. 28 years with the sacred plants that I work with, and which are a precursor to non-ordinary states of consciousness. These plants are used sacredly for divination and ritual, for rites of passage, traditionally for thousands and for millennia upon millennia.

We do not know how long they can use, because written records. We only have stories and mythologies and traditions and teachings that are passed down on all these sacred plants. And so it seems like the current use of sacred plants, which is escalated in this last, what, 25, 30, let's say 30 years. 30 years ago, there was almost no conversation about it. Basically, there was almost no conversation 30 years ago. Now it's everywhere. Okay. And the question I have for you is, would be enough, will the use of these sacred plants, how modern science and modern society is hoping, they're trying to use them.

And will it be enough to help awaken enough people to understand how really take care of themselves and how to reunite with nature in a way that brings a harmony, not just the individual, but hopefully the community, nations and worldwide? because if that doesn't happen well we're up the creek all of us together in the same boat right yeah

we're gonna go deep on this one right yeah yeah I think it I think it will be I I mean when I look at the cycles of life and the cycles of the planet how can it not be I mean I think the earth has its own rhythm

and its own harmony and it has its own infinite wisdom and it knows what's going to happen. It just depends on the severity of the situation. Will it be a culling to the point of a few people left over or will be, will their awakening be enough for more people to survive? But I think that the earth has all the time in the world. Well, millions of billions of years, okay? And I'm reminded of, as you were talking, I'm reminded of this wonderful. Do you know the cartoonist Gary Larsson? Very well-known cartoonist. And it's a very old cartoon that he did,

and it's a doctor's examining room, and on the examination table is the Earth, and the doctor's standing there, frowning, looking at the Earth, and says to the Earth, you have a severe infestation of humans. I've always, and that's from like 20-something years ago. I've always loved that because it's like,

boy, he didn't even nail it. Just absolutely nailed it. When do we wake up? When do we wake up? What will it take? All these great teachers have come, trying to wake us up in so many different ways, you know. And then, you know, in this last century, a few scientists, you know, Chappot Al Gore, you know, our wonderful David Suzuki, you know, who for, is it 50 years? He just had an anniversary of the nature of things. David Suzuki, the wonderful Canadian scientist who has been trying to wake people. up on TV programs for I think it's 50 years now. And just to understand nature, to understand our connection with nature, to explore nature, to, you know, and so we have these, you know,

Professor Brian Cox, shout out to him, you know, the particle physicist from the University of Manchester, please, everybody listening. Please, please, please, please watch his show. If you like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, you're going to love Brian Cox. He's just in a whole universe as far because he's so spiritual. At the same time, he gets the spirituality of behind and with and, you know,

enfolded within the mystery of the universe. Okay. And so here we have modern science that is actually confirming, confirming the things that the ancient traditions have been saying. You know, you speak to any indigenous group of people. they're going to tell you nature, you know, me, you and the tree, we're one, we're all connected. Anything we do is going to affect the birds and the bees and everything. So around the world, people have understood through the millennia, the importance of staying in right relationship,

in right relationship with nature. And when we're in right relationship with ourselves and then we're in right relationship with nature, you know, that is an automatic given that within our small circle, we can have a positive influence, you know, we can't, unless we have some calling like Martin Luther King or Gandhi or, you know, name any other person who's taking a prominent position on this, whether it's peace or whether it's, you know, take care of nature. But unless you have a calling for that, then we really only have our little small circle but we can try and educate and teach and be the role model for.

So we look at where they're needing. And if we look at the history of this, we can see that, you know, you know what's really interesting is we can see in all these ancient traditions that how they merge their relationship with nature from the cosmos and their spirituality. It was never separate. It wasn't separate. For them, spirituality was present in everything. And their spirituality respected this and unfolded this.

Now, I'm not trying to at all romanticize, you know, past cultures and traditions. Yes, of course. And we need to, you know, just name that piece. There was a lot of things that were superstitious. There's things that today we call it, of course, sorcery. Okay. You know, there was all kinds of things that were through superstitions that became practices, you know, God's angry, Papa Virgin down the volcano. And so, you know, a lot of things happen that we could look back and say, what? You know, they thought somebody had evil spirits. They actually drilled holes in their hands so the evil spirits could escape. You know, they did before they understood about malaria, a virus being transmitted through mosquitoes. They used to think. that it was some kind of strange swamp spirits that made you sick. And so there's a lot of things that we just have to name it that we're there as humans stumbled

along moving forward in understanding things. And yet, how do we treasure the good, you know, the truth that shines like gold through all the millennia and the centuries that we can say is a long. and right today. And how is it meeting the research and the science, the modern science of today? And it is, and that's what's fascinating. You know, I had a vision once. It happened in a meditation, actually not in a work, so I wasn't.

But since I'm a child, I have a lot of visionary dreams and visions and things that I didn't understand, but I just accepted that doors would open and I would experience. things. And I, in my meditation, it's as if I saw this tapestry, this, I don't know if you've ever been in, you know, see, museum or, you know, traveled and gone into cathedrals or, you know, ancient stately homes and manor houses and things, and you'd seen these gorgeous, intricate tapestries. And it's supposed being shown that the human civilization experience was like this story told on a tapestry. And, you know, this giant tapestry was in front of me, but what was extraordinary, it was this tiny spark from the thread of gold that bowed swayed all through

the tapestry. And I was fascinated looking at this thread of gold and asking, what am I looking at? What am I seeing here? You know, and it was shown to me what I was seeing was the history of the human race and how busy we were and how much so much of what we do and think and want and get attached to took so much things and throughout all of it was spirituality

was the presence of the unknown the great mystery, the divine it was always there glinting away if we look for it you know and so what's really fascinating is that modern science is confirming

so many of the things that ancient tradition said about the nature, you know, great spiritual teachers, the gurus and the saints and everything. Even Einstein said, what? I'm never alone. There's the collective unconscious. I'm surrounded by the collective unconscious. For me, he was using a language to describe his experience, no different from the guru

who would say, God is all around me and God is within me, you know? You know, there's no difference. It's just a language difference. slight conceptual and language difference, but that's it. We're all saying the same thing, you know. So here we have modern science, which has been, you know, thank you to all the scientists, thank you to the current scientists and researchers

who are doing such good work trying to understand the mysteries of the known or not ordinary student consciousness. The challenges that are existing right now in the research that's being done with anthogen's secret. of plants and psychedelics. So thank you to all of those who are reporting faithfully and honestly. And thank you to those who are dedicating their master's thesis and their doctoral studies and their post-doctoral work to trying to understand what is this and how does it, you know,

what does an unordinary state serve and how can these things, how are they affecting our income? And so we can see that if you look at almost everywhere in modern science in the last 100 years, okay, we can go back to early biologists, okay? An early biologist 100 years ago, we're talking about morphic resonance. Okay. And I'm going to tackle from Cheldrake and his work. I refer to him quite a bit in this section.

and about how, you know, the energy bodies and how the mystery, the biologists were trying to figure out, okay, how come if 98% of our genetic material is the same as chimpanzees, okay, how come it turn out so different? That 2% can't be making that much difference. Like, what is it? And, you know, what I love about how these folks think is they say, it must be like, you know, there's an architectural plan somewhere. There has to be. That's what they call amorphic resonance.

There has to be in morphic fields. There has to be some kind of architectural plan somewhere. And that plan works through the genetic material, the same way when an architect designs a building, there's the architectural design, and then you have to have the contractor to actually take the building materials and do the building. The architect doesn't do that. the architect draws up the plans, okay?

And yes, we contractor can truly bugger it up if they use the wrong materials and if they try to cut corners on the quality of the materials and stuff like that. And that happens in genetics too, right? And so these are just questions. We don't have answers for them yet, but aren't you have fascinating questions? And we can go back also because there was a great curiosity that started to have. And we can genuinely shuffle to all of those early researchers and scientists who had these inquiring and curious minds who were just deeply determined to try and discover whether it was the mysteries behind gravity and the universe and magnetic fields and chemistry and biology and just about every field and physics and going to, of further out in the telescopes and smaller down and the in the microscopes.

And so all that information, how does it help us? It helps us understand the nature of life. It helps us understand the cosmos and the nature of things. And it helps us to understand our facing it, are connected, our interconnectedness with it. And so about the same time, about 100 years ago, that all these different researchers were asking such fascinating questions, okay? We find that some researchers were doing what they called psychic research.

And they were trying to explore phenomena, which up until today, we have to say we can't really understand. I encourage people to look into the work of Larry Dawsey. He's done quite a bit of reporting on it. And of course, so has Robert Shelby and others and others. And so what do we find? We find that, of course, there's a section in my book's on this. And so we find that early researchers were trying to figure out, is there a spiritual life?

Are there realms? How is it that somebody over here sitting in your living room has an instant understanding of something that's happening hundreds of miles away or thousands from hours? How does remote healing happen? How do people, you know, they did a study, for example, on remote healing, they did a study with post-cardiac surgery patients and recovery time. And what they had was a group of people, and this is all, you know, about prayer. And they had one group of people praying for the people who'd been post, who were post-chardiac surgery.

and they had a group of people post-cardiardia surgery who were not being prayed for. Now, the prayer, you'd be praying, all they knew was the name, I think even maybe a first name, and they didn't know much else, and they were using non-directive prayer. Do you want me to take a moment and make a distinction between directive prayer? Non-directive, okay. So in all research, directive prayer doesn't work. Non-directive prayer works spectacularly. An example of non-directive prayer would be the work that they did,

the research that I'm just going to finish telling you in a second, was the research they did with plants. We had people who had a strong prayer life of non-directive prayer and go and pray over it. The way they used to always have priests and the shamans pray over the crops, okay? And all the people were doing was going and sending good positive energy. They weren't through beseeching any individual. and the astral to do anything specific on their part.

Okay, they were just simply sending positive, good, loving energy to the plants. The plants that received that grew beautifully, okay, compared to the ones who didn't get it. And that the same happened. So that's non-directive prayer. We're not telling anybody or anything. We're not saying to the plants grow. We're not asking some divinity being, make these plants grow. all the doing is being the channel for light and love and good vibrations.

That's non-directive prayer. Directive prayer is telling God what to do. That's very different from asking, praying and asking for courage, asking for faith. That's very different. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you tell God what to do. Okay. That doesn't work.

Back to the cardiac post-cardiac surgery patients. So the ones who were prayed for in a non-directive way, in other words, just sending light and good vibrations and viewing vibrations. Their recovery time was extraordinary. They had a much faster recovery time. They had infinitely less depression. They had infinitely less complications. In other words, post-infections, post-surgical site problems.

Now, that's worth doing. Okay. When I had cancer and I had to have a surgery and I went into surgery not knowing if I'd come out with a leg or not, you know, I didn't know how I agreed with my surgeon, you take what you need to take, you know, so I had no idea what they were going to be doing while I was under for six hours. Okay, I had two dear friends who made it their business to hold me in that kind of prayer the entire time. And they sat in the hospital sending good vibrations to me. Now, they were the first people other than my surgeon when I came. out of my um the anesthetic I came out of the anesthetic they said they never seen anybody

come out of anesthetic like that I wasn't sick I wasn't throwing up I was nothing I just like I was gently waking up and I woke up in the elevator coming where I came to in the elevator coming from the surgery ward heading towards the post recovery ward and and my two friends were there and my doctor was saying to me you know I'm really happy and I think you're going to be great it's going to be fine. And then he smiled and nodded to my two friends. And he says, it's okay, you can just say hi to her. And so they said hi.

And he said, I haven't quite seen anything like that before. This is how you came out of, you know, out of surgery like that. And I said, those two people were praying for me all the time. You know, and I had such an easy recovery, no complications. Now, you know, it doesn't, all it takes is. is your love and your good intentions. And if you're not sure how to do it, ask someone to teach you how to do it, you know, if you're not sure how to do non-directive prayer.

Okay, wandering back to, so a hundred years ago or so is when they really started getting very interested in trying to do science and research on what we would call today the non-ardinary state of consciousness and what we experience in expanded states of consciousness. this. Okay, I talked a lot. Do you have some questions? It just, it's interesting to me to see on some level, I think science has gone awry. Like they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. They've decided that if you can't measure it, it's not important. And I see it kind of swinging back. On some level, it seems to me that, you know, they, when, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that until recent,

The science has decided that non-ordinary states of consciousness, whether it can be telepathy or prayer or these things that were not measurable, that they decided we're not going to talk about them because we can't measure them. It's sort of just like throwing everything out. And it saddens me a little bit. And I think it's kind of coming back. Is that? Well, it's always been there. It just doesn't make money. Yes.

Sorry, I'm sorry, but it's just. It's so true. Reality, there's no money. And so it's really hard. It's really hard for scientists to research in the areas where there's no money in it. And so all the big backers are looking for the next product. I mean, it's just how our culture is gone and society's gone. I mean, it's just a reality.

We need to name it. I'm not. I'm just naming it. It's by design, I think. Do you think it's by design? I think that there's a force bigger than us that is like you're on the wrong track. So you know what? Go ahead and spend all your money over here.

You're on the wrong track. And you will sit down on the road at a certain point. Yes. And you know, I, you know, I, there's a wonderful thing about fighting your way up the ladder only to find your way that is pressed up against the wrong wall. That's a joke, you know. And this is the reality. You struggle down the road to find out this road doesn't lead to inner peace or inner contentment or health or anything else. This is this leads me to the Sea of Lost Souls in a hell realm, you know?

And literally, it's like, why did I turn right at that intersection? Yeah. And so we all have to learn. And if we're smart, we learn quickly and we don't. We're still going to make mistakes. Yes. Hopefully not the same mistakes over and over again. That's the piece.

is we're never going to, there's no end to making a mistake, okay? But we don't have to repeat them over and over and over and over. Okay, back to the dialogue, ancient traditions, modern scholars. Okay, so one of the things you're seeing, okay, is all of the heritage traditions, which have so much to offer in the way of wisdom and teachings and ritual and what works and what doesn't work, okay? And about their, you know, many of them have their own, especially those, you know, those peoples who have been using sacred plants for thousands and thousands of years and the teachings passed down about the beings and the realms that they connect with and how to manage, how to prepare yourself, how to manage the afterwards, how to work when you're in that state. You know, that's an accumulation of millennial wisdom, ancestral knowledge that has.

has to be respected. But for usual, okay. And, you know, then you have the human race, and what we want, we'll come to that in a moment. Then you have modern sciences trying to kind of catch up, you know, because it's sort of saying, okay, well, you know, and part of the, part of the, you know, challenge is, is, you know, I named it a minute ago, is there many in it.

And so we can see in the psychedelics that, you know, there was a lot of clinics that popped up and a lot of marketing and a lot of fast trainings that got put into place. And, you know, you want to get your certificate to be able to do this. And I'm not putting a finger at anybody here. I'm just saying that this is what's happened. Okay. And these are realities that we just simply have to address is, what's driving that? So you have your researchers

that are genuinely interested and curious who want to explore what's actually happening when people take these substances and what happens, you know, when we compare it to other experiences and etc. Okay? And then you have the people

who are all excited about it because it looks like a way to heal. You know, because it's all about healing and healing trauma and healing, you know, wound. and, you know, that kind of personal healing, you know, category. And so there's a big kind of percentage of people who are focused on that. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong.

I'm not making any comment in about anything. It's just what I'm seeing, you know. And then there's the people who are in it for the money. You know, how fast can we get that clinic open and can we get a big name to sign off on it? And can we get X, Y, and Z to be on our board of advice? advisors and how many clients can we see. And that's what some of the researchers who are looking into this is some of the conscientious

journalists who are writing about it are trying to do a deeper dig on these things. And so that's the current reality. Have I left anything in? There's the entheogen heritage practitioners. There's the, you know, say like the Santadiami, which is about 100 years old now, So we have a hundred year track record and research and community, et cetera, based on millennial traditions. Okay, because that's where our roots go. You have other traditions that are still trying to keep their niche of their heritage, rituals, and traditions.

And then you have these other things that are happening. And, you know, what do you see as the future of this? You look like I'm the great teacher and I'm a teacher. I've just asked you a complicated math question. Well, I think it was... Step to the board. Complete the formula. Okay, I'm tapping.

You know, I think it was Yogi Berra who said predictions are hard, especially predictions about the future. And I'm hopeful that the people that are... I think it's upon the individual. I think the individual finds the healing, they need if they're willing to do the work. And I don't know that a certificate can certify you to do anything, you know, especially in this realm. I think that you coming from a lineage and understanding tradition, I think there's real power in that. And I don't see that is something that a lot of people

are embracing now. It seems that there's the McDonald's of transformation that we see happen. Oh, I love that. McDonald's of Transformation. I think that's Nicole Butler. Oh, you're quoting somebody, okay, chapeau coal. Yeah, we've always got to give the shoutout. Yes. I agree 100%. You know, first of all, we can't predict what's going to happen. All we can do is look at human nature and see that happened in the past,

so that's likely to happen in the future. Industry will come in. Industry will try to make it big. You know, there'll be some conscientious people. The thing will either blow up and disintegrate or hopefully, good continues to be halfway. And so we can look at what is the possible best outcome of ancient traditions and modern science as it pertains to non-ordinary states of consciousness. What are the best potential outcomes here? How do we understand and how do we build that bridge? Now this is a

conversation for me that goes back 35, 40 years, conversations I've had with Ganga, okay, about building the bridge between science and spirituality, between ancient traditions and modern science, and building that bridge. And he always felt that transpersonal psychology was the bridge because we could create a language to speak to both sides. And most people who are in transpersonal work understand the science and embrace it and understand the heritage traditions and even modern spirituality. You know?

And so it's a question of how do we continue that dialogue so that it doesn't polarize? And there's benefit that can come so that we can respect the heritage traditions. We can respect the apprenticeship. How many times if I sit on your show, I was 14 years in the apprenticeship under the elders until our church went independent. We sat down, made our discussions and made the decision as members to vote to become independent, which is not in the church, with great respect to all the teachings and everything that we'd received. And so it's difficult for me to see somebody does two or three months in a course. Calls himself a shaman.

Now, at the same time, so yes, there's the people who are apprenticed in the heritage tradition. the recognized in theogen spiritual traditions. So that hopefully will continue. Those will be respected. The value that people have to contribute to bring their voices, their teachings, and their wisdom,

that there will be a space for that, that will continue. And at the same time, there is this, you know, that was one of the categories included was what do we do with, you know, modern science, journalism, research, all of that, they're doing your thing. Okay, and please continue doing your thing by it.

We need the research. You know, in 2013, at the end of the MAPS conference in Oakland, California, it's a funny story. Do you want to hear it? Yeah. I had a vision. The MAPS conference was going to be, I don't remember, I think it was like really spring, like majoring and something like that in Oakland, California. And so the information came around, and I'm sitting.

either in meditation or work I forget. And I got shown that I need to be at that conference and that I need to make a little meeting. I need to make a little meeting to open the conversation. So this is 11 years ago now. Open the conversation about the need for norms and standards because I could see all of this, that our sacrament was starting to be used

in what I call hybrid ayahuasca use. This is not a criticism. It's not a judgment. It's just a term to kind of, describe. It's not the recognized heritage indigenous use and it is not the recognized spiritual tradition use, the recognized ayahuasca religious use. Okay. It's none of those things. It's other things that people are doing with it. It's not science. It's not research. It's people making, let's call them, ayahuasca circles where they're doing whatever they're doing, a form of retreat, a form of healing,

a form of meditation or prayer or something, who knows why. Okay. And so I felt the need to speak to this topic. And so I called up a few colleagues. I'll give a shout out to Villavari and Jeffrey Bronfman and Kent Huppert. And I said, hey, what do you think? Maybe we can make a little meeting. You know, are you going in the Maps Conference? Could we make a little meeting?

And can we talk about this? The need for people to recognize the need for norms and standards and legalizations. Otherwise, they're going to screw it up for everybody. Okay. And so it was a very sensible, what I thought was very sensible and realistic conversation. And so within almost overnight, okay, almost overnight, they realized, I think something's happening here. I just kind of thought that, okay, it was going to be meeting. I envisioned maybe 10 people around a table having dinner together and having a chat and doing a little think tanking or something.

And before I knew it, it kind of was like a wildfire and it kind of took over. and people were contacting, so a colleague offered to keep registration. The next thing we realized that there was a serious number of people who wanted to be part of the conversation. They were writing to me saying, hey, I hear that there's a meeting happening. I want to be part of it. And so we rented the last available meeting room

in this enormous conference hotel, okay, that the hotel said to me, you could only put 45 people in this room, and it was the last room. on site. So we said, we'll take it. Okay. So we had 45 people, standing room only, door open, people collected outside, okay? We had to do a meeting the next day of another 45 or 50 people who were cranky that they didn't know about the meeting and hadn't been invited. And some of them were really very, you know, Dennis McKenna, were kind of cranky. I had dinner.

I went from him. He was a little cranky. I didn't know it was going to be a meeting. I was not invited. So here I am with this Poof meeting, and we called it the Alliance 204 because soon is everybody there. I mean, there's absolutely everybody that didn't come there. And at the end of the meeting, it was where I met Brian Rush, who's the, you know, Dr. Brian Rush is the, he's the senior scientist, Emeritus, in charge of the research facilities at one of the largest, University of Toronto, one of the largest. research center in Canada. And so that's where I met him. And he came up to me and he said, what can we do? We introduced ourselves to each other. And I said, Brian, did you do some research? And that's where a research approach started because there was researchers there in that room

from Europe, from Brazil, from the United States. They all showed up. And it was just amazing. It's what happens when you just follow a simple direction. I would. show you did the meeting call these few people and the next thing I knew that happened okay an enormous amount of contacts were made in that meeting and that's for some excellent research the only thing was is what can we do and I said to the research was to research they called it atop and it's one of the it was one of the first researches done in ayahuasca that included non South American or Brazilian researchers, which actually is important to do

because it's a diaspora of the sacrament. And so you have to have European and or American and or Canadian researchers involved in this, you know, because believe it or not, and I know you're not going to be shocked by this, but in academia, there is a certain level of snobbery. You know, the research is out of Oxford or Harvard or, you know, is somehow more posh.

then there's a there is there's a hierarchy in academia and that's one thing that academia has to own you know it has to own that that's there you know we can't be blind to our dogs like and and so how important is the research on this and how important is the willingness to meet and and speak about what's going to happen and so you know my part in that in that exchange in that meeting was simply telling people, if you're going to be doing this, if you're going to be popping up with your kind hybrid ayahuasca circles, I don't have an issue with it.

It's up for the governments to decide. This is what I have to have a lot of people who contact me. They want to get legal. Your people, I want to get legal. Well, okay, what are you doing there? What kind of hybrid a Alaska circle? And the first things I really should be saying going for, you don't pretend you're this number going to be.

Jeffrey Bronfman many years ago told me about after they had their Supreme Court win in, what was it, 2006, you know, in a short order afterwards, it was a couple of groups who pretended to be uniono-de-vischel to be able to. And they just went, no, you know what, you can't do that. And so, you know, of course these things are going to happen, and the realities we need to be mindful that. that it's not okay. You need to, what I've been telling people is you have to be able to stand on your own two feet and you have to be willing to stand up for what you believe in

and you believe that what you've learned and you are condensualed and doing and what you are practicing is if you believe in truly in what you're doing, then you need to have the courage to go in front of the government. Judge, I'm not wrong here.

You can't hide under the radar. All right. What does that say? about what you believe in. You know, I've been in the face of our government since, you know, since the year 2000, preparing from it from 1996. When I came back from Brazil, it's like, oh, God, from one point I'm going to be standing with my hat and my hand knocking on the door.

So we have to be willing to stand up for what we believe in, which you agree. Without a doubt. So a lot of the people who are practicing under the table and doing their own thing and thinking that they, you know, you spoke about credentialing. Say more about that. What's your philosophy on that? Who has the rate to serve? Who has the rate to serve?

Who has the credentials to serve? Who has the ability to serve? Who should be serving? I don't know that I have the authority to speak on that. Like I, I, I, I, I, I, I know intuition. Yeah. I got to think about it for a moment. That's okay.

Yeah. It's a big question. I know. You know, while you're thinking about it and you can put your hand up when you've got an answer. Yeah, I will. The, you know, a gang spirit told me to do a few things, do that conference, right, you know, sit down with a couple of colleagues and look at writing a little paper, doing a little research, which turned into anthogens.

psychedelics in Canada proposal for new paradigm we address all of this it's right there in the paper anybody who's interested go to my website you can get it download a free PDF or if you're a member of the of the Canadian you know the second any order really I think American 2 could easily yes American or Canadian order of psychologists in your state or province then you can access through the into the journal of Canadian Journal of Psychology we published there. And we address all of this. And heritage traditional people who have been apprenticed by elders

should have the right to continue without any form of persecution under the norms and the standards of their traditions. What happens is when they go rogue. We can talk about that. We may not have time today, but ask me that's another huge conversation John's going to rogue, okay? But, you know, for the most part, okay, they should be respected and not harassed

if they're traditional elders in their community who have done their apprenticeship because that's how these things worked is you did your apprenticeship. And it was the elders in the community who recognized when you were ready for the next step. And this is around the world. You know, this is a wonderful story

and it is a Jack Cornfield story about the individual who's apprenticing in the Buddhist tradition and he reached the moment where he thought he was ready to graduate to the next teacher. Because that's what we do. You go from teacher and then your teacher will you usually tell you, I've taught you and now you're ready to be taught by my teacher. And that's how it goes from kindergarten into high school and beyond.

Okay. And so there's this wonderful story that he tells about this young man who's been studying and training with this one teacher for years and he really thinks he's ready. You know, he thinks he's ready. And so he goes to meet and sit with his teacher and they begin their, you know, salutations and their greetings. And then the teacher smiles at him and the student says, if he thinks he's ready to take the next step, you know. This teacher looks at him and says,

It's raining today. on which sign of your shoes did you place your umbrella? Student can't answer. So he went away, rather humbled. And he spent another four or five years with that teacher until a teacher said, now you're ready. So it was almost the same when we were training with Stan Groff. Stan Groff had a flexibility.

It was a minimum number of years. You couldn't do the training in less than those years. And that was, you know, that was breakneck, foot to the floor on the pedal speed. Okay, that was hitting every module and devoting yourself full time to it. And that was the, that was a, you couldn't do it in less than that. And then there was a maximum if you still hadn't finished after X number of years, if you didn't completed all your modules, if your supervisors were feeling you're not ready, well, then you can't do the practicing.

I'll certify you, but it only as in teaching, not in practicing. And so he learned from his elders that that is true apprenticeship. I think one of the biggest problems that happened in education in this last century was the good intention but misguided doctrine of Barbara Bush, the first lady of President Bush, who had this policy. child left behind. And so every child was promoted grade by grade, whether or not they learn their skills.

Instead of every child needs a good education, okay, and those who need extra help, we'll make sure they'll going to get the extra help, which I would be on board with that back in. It gets my vote. Not, no child gets left behind. So the quality of education, the standard of teaching dropping, and the level of education dropped. I think that's a huge problem of which we are still seeing repercussions. How can any child go through school and then not be fully prepared to go into any higher training or certification or university? They don't have the learning skills that they should

have acquired. And so apprenticeship is essential. And in our modern day, the whole education process, completely other conversation. But, you know, so much has happened in the education process. You know, I have colleagues who are professors at university, and, you know, they're weeping into their dinner when they're talking to me because they can't just teach anymore because so much of academia is swept up in what I would consider to be cultural issues or social issues that have nothing to do with education. You know, seriously, another conversation.

Back to apprenticeship. So we're looking at apprenticeship. Now we're looking at credentialing because we have all these psychedelics on the market, which are, you know, being used for research, totally. Got my vote. Keep researching guys. Keep reporting. Journalists, keep writing up.

You know, keep presenting the reviews and everything. Please keep doing that. Keep looking into everything that you can look into and report fairly and honestly. good reporting. And then you have, you know, that middle bracket that I was talking about. And we can break that down. And it's important to do this, okay? Here we have people living in Canada.

We were working with the organization of spiritual care providers. I want to give a shout out to them. These are really good people. These are people who are trained here in Canada as spiritual care providers, which means that they are their pastors, their reverence, their rabbis. They come from their own spiritual traditions. There's anthropologists, there's social workers, there's people who are trained to be spiritual care providers

and who work mostly with the ill and in palliative care with the dying. And they have a beautiful gift to give because they are trained. They have a calling to sit with people who are ill, who are suffering, and who are dying. They are trained to work with them. And these are the people, whose hands, I really believe that the, you know, in Canada, we've had a number of exemptions released for psilocybin for end-of-life care, you know, and, and I think that this is, this is the work that Stan Groff did. He was working in palliative care. He did three LSD

psychotherapy sessions with his trained staff in certain ritual settings and found that people were able to complete their lives and face their death in a completely different way. once they have these experiences. And so I'm really very supportive. So I think that these people working in that field in that particular way where they are trained to work with. They're trained to work with these situations and to offer these spiritual tools and support and compassion

that they should have the right to be able to sit with people who are taking substances. Would you agree? Yeah, I think so. Because most people, if you look at the science, most people are going to have a profound psychospiritual experience in the non-ordinary state of consciousness. That's what they're going to have. They're going to have some kind of, it may be a profound, difficult psychospiritual experience. Okay.

You might genuinely enter into dark realms and difficult passages. you know, all the maps for that are volume one. Okay, the territory is not the maps, but the cartography really helps when we go deep exploring. And so, yes, you can have a very difficult passage, but based on my years of experience, I can tell you, it's the difficult passages, being able to understand them, be prepared for them,

get supported going through them, and having an understanding of how to work with them so that they can resolve and you can work with yourself in the passage so that you can gain for the higher good in it. There's a lot of skills needed to support people to do that. They need a lot of skills. So the heritage traditions have that

because they've been taught that and all their apprenticeship. The people who work in, let's say, spiritual care providers, they just need a little extra, some extra, you know, maps on the transfer. personal work and the kind of experiences people might touch into. So a little bit more education, and there's two universities in Canada offering that now.

University of Ottawa and Vancouver Island University, and I believe the UFT, University of Toronto will be launching something similar. And so there's possibilities for that. And then you have a whole group of people who are medical professional, psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera, who have kind of the background and training that you would automatically assume would be helpful for that. And yes, they have an enormous amount of training, and most of them understand ethics and, but their maps are a bit small.

Their maps of the human psyche are bit small. Are they going to be able to help understand profound spiritual experience and help people know how to work with those? the mythology that we enter into, the realms that we enter into, into the beings that we might encounter, the experiences that we might have. Do they have sufficient training in that? And if so, you know, again, this is something that we addressed.

How do we support the fact that gets added in? So credentialing is a really important topic to just keep discovering. Did you have something you wanted to, remember, we're going to come back to you to see what you were thinking. Yeah. It seems that there runs a problem of corruption. You know, when we look at governments, be it in a school or in a country, too often the integrity becomes eroded.

And then that gives way to credentialing that doesn't hold to a standard that should, that it should be held to. And that's the problem for me. When I start thinking about who should serve or who should be the person that allows the people to serve is how do you stop the corruption from seeping in and being a degradation? Yeah, yeah. You know, yes, to all of those, those are all really important points to keep in the conversation. And, you know, I said I used the, you know, except when they go rogue. Yes.

Shout out to Kylia Taylor, her work. Shout out to Jack Cornfield. After the SEC Laundry, his book, Kylai Taylor's The Ethics of Caring. I hope everybody working in the field should read those two books. And my books, of course, because I cover all that stuff to. But these essential understanding of vulnerability, caregiver vulnerabilities,

as long as we are only, them and addressing them, they have much less power to take us over. If we understand that working in non-ordinary states amplifies the risk of transference and countertransference and vulnerabilities because it does, okay? Then if we work with that and the, you know, the suggestions that they have was to make sure that you have colleagues that you feel able, that you can discuss your vulnerabilities with

and discuss the areas of problems. And for God's sake, get supervision when you need it. You know, that's the main problem, I think, is human arrogance. We won't say, you know what I'm not sure if I'm handling this okay. I'm having difficulty with this. And this seems to be what's happening. happening to me. I had a beloved friend for decades who was also had a private practice and he worked with his wife who was a psychiatrist, he was a psychotherapist, and and he and I would

have lunch almost every week. We'd head down to Chinatown, we'd order up our favorite dishes, and we'd sit there for hours tossing around everything about our challenges. We did the course of miracles, a course, some miracles together one year. We went through the daily things. We had a course call first thing in the morning, so we'll support each other through that. So that's what people need. You need to have at least one colleague better if it's two or three where you know that if you have a challenge, if there's something inside of you that you're not understanding. Now, for some people, that could be a personal psychotherapist. You take it to your therapist. That's good for me. You know, if that's, if that's, if that's, you know, if that's,

you know, at least you're discussing it, you're working with it, what's coming up for me, what my countertransference is in this situation, what my vulnerabilities are, what I'm scared of, okay? I mean, I think I've told you when I first brought the Santa Dami back. I mean, I had past lives coming up from me, and it was like everything was in fast forward. It was coming up so quickly. I mean, I was having a hard time like integrating it, okay? And so I was still doing breath work almost every week just to try to integrate what was coming

up for me in the dining for that first at least two years. I was using holotropic fratworth as a way to, you know, I had a colleague who would sit with me and we'd sit with each other, you know, when wanted or needed. Because what was the main thing coming up for me is how many lives I had where if I followed my spiritual path, I got killed. And literally, okay, killed, okay, literally, literally killed in not very pleasant ways. Okay, burned to death, you know, all these kinds of different things. stone. So for a while, I had to tell myself they can arrest me, but they won't kill me.

They might put charges against me, but they won't kill me. And I literally had to use that mantra until there was enough energy work off, you know. But thank God I knew enough to explore my vulnerabilities. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. So what do people need? You know, we're talking about the people, about the, the, the, common human shortcoming that we all share. You and I aren't sitting here saying they have a problem.

No, we're saying this is a human vulnerability that we all share. We all have shortcomings. We all have personality glitches that become our little areas where we can trip up, where we can screw up. And we need each other. We need a supervisor, colleagues, a support, something in which we can share these things and own them and gain the support to find, you know, something that I'm always discussing in our church on our board of directors with our senior clergy is what is for the higher good? What is the, what are the options here and which one is for the higher good? And if we're all willing to do that, then we'll be able to find our way forward. But we need to

sidestep around our arrogance and we need to do what Jesus said when he got to death of Satan and say, hey, get behind me. I never even just did that. Why would he want Satan behind him? I'm what he's doing quite frankly. But it's like I'm so confident in going forward in my path. I don't care if you're behind me. You know what I'm saying?

It's like, oh, okay, I think I'm getting it now. I think I'm getting it. You know, and then Buddha met Mara. And all those wonderful stories that they became friends afterwards and would have tea and complain to each other. My job's harder. No, my job is harder. People hate me. People love you. No, it's too hard. I don't want to be loved. I don't want to be hated. So, you know, if we keep the sense of humor, if we own our vulnerabilities, if we recognize if we do or don't have the correct training or credentials, I think that's also the repercussions of entitlement that comes from children being told their special.

Well, there's a vast difference between Honey Bunny, you're special to me, which most parents should be saying to their children, okay, and their grandchildren, you're special to me. What, you're special, okay? And you're special and this other one. If you can do anything that you want, well, actually, no, we can't. We can try and aim for it. We can try and work towards it, but I think it's much healthier if we teach our, you know, our young ones that take your strengths and develop them. Be open-minded and curious. Go where your heart feels like it's pulling you.

You know, recognize your shortcomings and learn how to master them. I think that's a much better message, quite frankly, than you're special and you can do anything that you want and you're entitled to have anything your little heart desires. And that's been the message that's kind of worked its way into a North American Western civilization mythology about being up in you. Does that particular... Does it make sense what I'm saying? It does.

Just the way that I see it. No, I'm curious, does that also have... It seems to me that, you know, if we look at the split in religious ceremony sometimes, where the child of the person who serves or the child of the highest priest is in line to become the priest versus the person who might be better acclimated to become the priest. Like if you look at the Muslim religion and use the Sufi versus, is it the individual who may be best suited or the child of the person? That seems to be whether it's in business or in religious ceremony sometimes

that we have this problem. And that's the same thing. It's just special, right? Well, and it's just part of the human experience. It's part of the human experience. Now, if we draw from the wisdom of heritage traditions, this is what it looks like. Okay. It generally looks like that the community itself, the tribe itself, okay, and let's call it community,

the community itself would keep the elders and the shamans in check. The elders in the community felt every right to call out the shaman, if they were, if the shaman or shaman asked or medicine man or woman was doing something that was not in alignment with what the community believed as a whole. They felt it was that every person had their right to speak up and be heard. Okay, now again, maybe this didn't happen everywhere and not in every culture, but I'm thinking the best of this. Okay, if we take the best of this and say that each person needs to be heard in a community, each one needs to have their voice, be respected, okay? Then there's much less possibility

when you have the elders looking at the shaman, shamaness, medicine, man, woman. There's much less risk of unethical behavior. That's not happening now. Who has their eye on what's happening? Who has their eye on it? Nobody. If you're in a heritage tradition,

such as I am, then I did my apprenticeship. I had my guidance from the elders. I reached the point where I was now an elder, training the people, right, and teaching the people. And so, but as an elder, I'm smart enough to know that I don't do this alone. Okay. And hopefully I keep all the good teachings. And everybody in our center knows that I'm always saying it's a team.

It's a community, the team. It's not an individual cult here. This is team. This is our particular, the Sandhledaini, is a team. It's a community. You know, everyone has their place. It's not one person in a cult. It's not the priest and the congregation kind of thing.

So each different setting needs to look at in the science and the research settings, you have your supervisors, you have your peer reviews, you have your double checks on what's going on. And so it's in that kind of in-between realm. You know, if we were talking about spiritual care providers, they're going to have their code of ethics, they're going to have their supervisors, they're going to have their organization

to be supporting them and hopefully keeping them and reminding them of their norms and their standards. And it's just a big question where all of this is going. So how do we keep the dialogue open? You spoke about that, you know, science seems to shut out spirituality. That we can trace back to when, you know, the body was owned by doctors. It goes back a couple hundred years. When the body was owned by doctors and the mind was owned by this burgeoning psychiatry field.

Okay. And the spirit was left to the clergy. And so we had this separation in three different directions. And, you know, many people have been trying to bring. that back together that my soul doesn't belong to a clergy my soul belongs to myself you know but dominant religions especially the patriarchal ones will try to possess your soul it's a whole other conversation anyway is do you have anything you want to add it's been wonderful having this conversation with you today it's always a wonderful conversation thank you my pleasure

There's so much in depth to learn about this and to discuss about this. And hopefully people keep conversation rolling along and understand the importance, going back to where we started. But when we take care of ourselves, again, this whole conversation, maybe we'll talk about it another day. But if we take care of ourselves and if we are aware of ourselves and what we can manage and take care of that list I've read up front. We're being as well. We're making all the positive,

healthy choices that we can to get ourselves well. And then when it comes to our spiritual life, we have the same checklist about who we go and surrender our soul to. Okay. We have an advisory for external events up on our website and in our visitors information, which is if you're going to go, it's up to you to see where you're going, who you're doing it with,

what their credentials are, what you're taking. All of this is essential. This is on you. That's a big conversation right here. Yeah. For another day. Yeah. For another day.

It's always a pleasure. And I hope that everybody who's listening or watching to this today or tomorrow in the future, I hope you go down to the show notes and check out the two-volume set, Iowaska Awakening. Go down to the show notes and also check out the website. It's full of information. You can reach out to Dr. Jessica. yourself and inquire about what the information on the website or order the books on Amazon.

I highly recommend everybody to do it. I have both, and I think that they're a wonderful set of knowledge that you can turn to from time to time when you're seeking some questions. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have a beautiful day and aloh.