TrueLife - Steven Twohig - Into Becoming

Episode Date: May 3, 2025

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/Steven Twohig isn’t here to fix your surface-level symptoms. He’s not your coach. He’s your cartographer for the unknown. The man maps the subterranean landscapes of the soul—the hidden patterns, the ancestral echoes, the buried beliefs you didn’t even know were running your life like a ghost in the machine.He’s been doing this work for nearly 25 years—not as a guru on a hilltop, but as a man in the trenches. Helping leaders, entrepreneurs, and seekers tear down what no longer serves and rebuild a mind-state that serves the mission—balanced, embodied, and burning with purpose.This ain’t therapy. This is unlearning the lie. This is strategy for the soul. This is rebellion against your inner saboteur. So if you’re ready to stop performing life and start living aligned, then buckle up—because Steven Twohig is about to take us to the rootWww.MasteringChange.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, fear. Fearist 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, gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen. Welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing.

Hope the win is at your back. Got a great show for you guys today. Ladies and gentlemen, some men come with tools, others with teachings, but every once in a while, someone shows up with a torch and a blueprint for burning down the bullshit we call success. Stephen Tuick isn't here to fix your surface level symptoms. He's not your coach. He's your cartographer for the unknown. The man maps the subterranean landscapes of the soul, the hidden patterns, the ancestral echoes,

the buried beliefs you didn't even know were running your life like a ghost in the machine. He's been doing this work for nearly 25 years, not as a guru or a hilltop, but as a guide in the trenches, helping leaders, entrepreneurs, and seekers, tear down what no longer serves and rebuild a mind state that serves the mission, balanced and embodied and burning with purpose. This isn't therapy. It's unlearning the lie. This is a strategy for the soul. This is rebellion against your inner saboteur. So if you're ready to stop performing life and start living a line, then buckle up because we got Stephen Tuhigg here with us today. Stephen, how are you, my friend? I'm doing great, man. I've been excited to be on here.

Yeah, man. I'm excited you're here, you know. Just so I can get your introduction and see the picture and see where this is going to go. If nothing else, the amount of pure genius that comes in through this is, I'm honored. Man, thank you. I see it, man. I see it as a collaboration. anybody that comes on here like i i want to shine a light on the beauty that i see in them and figure

it out and that comes with like that's the introduction is how i see you the end result of the image afterwards is the collaboration of the artwork and the mind state and the feelings and the audience that participates man so thank you for noticing that's i love it man it's i think it's the conversation is in an art form and we're all helping each other through this man so thank you for that excited to be here man i i know you're kind of limited on time a little bit but we're going to power through this thing. I got a bunch of questions already stacking up. But is there anything else? I left out of that introduction that you want to throw in there before we just...

Again, that was a badass introduction. I'm a TV tuner at best. That's what I like to say. At best, I'm a technician at best. But I've learned to work in, my technician is more in the mind now than I spent some while in tech support, working for gateway computers in the advanced export department. So I've taken the structure of all that, and I kept building off of it, and here's where we are so far. So it keeps changing. Talk to me tomorrow.

I might have a completely different viewpoint of what's going on down there. It's interesting that you bring up a background in like systems management and system theory because so much of the world we live in today, and, you know, you could argue that a lot of the psychology leading up to today, or at least in the 20th century, has been sort of the organism as a mechanism. You know what I mean by that? like we have all our metaphors and mechanistic talk and we seem to build systems of education that are more like a mechanism than an organism. And that seems to really be a cross-track in the

work you're doing. What do you think about that intersection of mechanism and organism in education today? That's a great way of putting it. The intersection between mechanism and organism as the mind tries to make meaning out of the structure that it makes meaning out of and at the same time is operating as an organism, boy, that's, that says a lot right there. Like, where we get confused, because we're an emergence, right? The mind is an emergence. It seems to be, it's the result of the universe becoming awake of itself, but it's an emergence.

And I'm stuck inside the bubble of the 50 to 60 bits of awareness that I get to sit on, but it was a lot to get here. It took a lot to get here. So great question. I've never been asked that before. That's just a great question. The emergence between machinery and it's really the connection between machinery and emergence. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. And it seems like at least in my life and so many people that I've spoken to, it's this exact intersection that you brought up and that you're talking about. It seems to be, man, the weight of the world on the shoulders of the people. Like we're trained to see ourselves as this mechanism. And I think that's why we see education breaking down today. And it's why so many people fit into this thing called the DSM.

Like you're not a mechanism. You're an organism. Of course, none of this makes sense. Of course, we're living in these, you know, the detritus of an education system or the detritus of a system that worked as a mechanism for so long. But now we're emerging as this new form. Do you see that in some of the people you're talking to? Does that make sense at all?

That's interesting. So I think the whole disconnect comes from right now if you're just like sit in the in the story called Monty, right? Right. And you're just like your first person perspective has always been through the eyes of, you know, George. You know what I mean? You've never been through the eyes. You're floating down the river of the story called you and the boat called now. And you've always, your body's all my body always seems to be in the boat called now.

but my mind, it's back there, over there, it's got more room to move. And I think it's interesting to note that more can happen in my mind than can ever happen in the physical world. So it's wider, it's bigger, it's more open. But somehow we suggest that when we look at first person awareness, first awareness, second awareness, somehow we've been programmed because we're in the first person, we've been programmed to be externally focused.

So I call that from without. I'm I have this signal inside of me that says something and then I validate said signal externally, which moves me forward, which creates the, and so kind of creates the movement of the organism into reality, and we start to then build. But the problem is, is I'm building it on I've only been from here. And I've only, so it's like I like to say that I am the universe's feature presentation. Like you are the universe's feature presentation and you're not that big a deal. Yeah.

Like you're just not that big a deal. So it's a both and it's I am the first person perspective, but so are you. And so is he and so is she. And so is every person you're all driving in your car, no matter where you're at, your first person perspective, notice you've always been in the river of the story called you, or the river called you and the boat called now. And you've always been there. You've never been in my boat.

So then when I interact with you, I can only interact with you through the river that I've been on. Now, when we talk about the river, everybody in your mind right now just say hello. And there they are, right? And they never shut up. And there's the boat, there's just the words in the river. Then I have the boat itself, which is I call that the subconscious, all the presuppositions. It's the shell. It's this construct, this big, massive picture that I've been chasing for the past.

25 years and then I have then there's the water most people call that unconscious but that's really deep conscious it's all everything that and it's all first person perspective it means you're you but you're not you're also me I'm not God but I'm not not God that kind of thing and it's all that layering has to be adjusted has to be recalibrated because it's all based around first person survival rooted like National Science Foundation suggests that 87% your thoughts are survival rooted. 95% of them are repetitive. We keep thinking the same things over and over week after week.

They may change. The color may change to protect the faded. But at the end of the day, I'm thinking the same thing over and over and over. And 87% of the substance, the water that I'm floating on is survival rooted. First person, we've been trained. And it's all by we were born here. We came through what Stenislav Gross calls the four matrices of birth. We came in here this way.

It was all trauma rooted. Our mind is survival rooted. So it's constantly looking for that birthing process, which is what him and Joseph Campbell got together. And he said, this is the, the hero's journey is the birthing process. So the mind remembers and it automates all meaning. So it just keeps creating this story over and over and over projecting onto it all the hero's journey. And that could happen in a conversation.

It could happen in your career. it could happen in your financial statements. It could happen, but it's happening. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of how am I meaninging? How am I, how am I meaning? Not what do I mean? How do I mean?

Because I how in a certain way. I mean in a certain way that is Stephen and that's an emergence. And we're just constantly doing that. We don't know it, but we are. So I think that's where when we go back and we look at the school system is just half off where we're always looking at the material world and the external and we don't go, okay, but we can only make, I can only make meaning through Stephen. I can't make meaning through you, but all the teaching we have is third person, but there

is no third person, not really. There's somebody's account of first person, but there is no third person perspective. There's only the first person perspective and then somebody telling them what they saw at the end of the day. And that has to be taken into the equation, but it's not taken into the equation, which throws us a half a step off. So now I'm coming from without. And now I'm feeling not enough. There's a part of me that feels not.

Right. I swallow right here. It's caught my throat. It blocks my communication. I take a breath. I go, it's okay, Stephen, you're doing just fine. And then I can step forward through it. Right.

Right. And I could step through that. I have to survive. I'm not a good communicator. That's not true. I hopefully have transmitted something to a few people. that have been listening just now, but in my mind, you're not going to get any of this. It's all crazy because that's my shadow, like we talked about earlier coming in, right?

So it's like it's always happening. That was a lot. Was that too much? No, it's awesome. No, I get it. Your reality is reality, even though it's not reality and actuality. It's a difficult, I mean, it's a lot of words, but at the same time, it makes a lot of sense. You know, we have this whole idea about the world we live.

in, but it's just our reality. It blows my mind. I want to jump in here. We got Clint coming in with a question. He says, what was the first lie you unlearned that set your soul on fire? The first lie that I unlearned that set my soul on fire, April 14th, 2000, I was headed into my first shadow ceremony. And I remember standing at the door. It was 20 here's the thing

It was 25 years ago today Today is my 25 year anniversary For practicing I call it depth work Shadow informed depth work Shadow work is what it is And it was the first time I remember standing at the doorway

And it was Mankind project MKP.org And the guy at the doorway Warrant he said you're about to walk through this door Life as you know it will never be the same again Do you understand? And I said, yes, that was the first lie. I had no clue.

I was so asleep. I'm still so asleep. I mean, don't get me wrong. When I say I'm a TV tuner at best, I bump my head up against any one of these on a daily basis. I'm not some guru that sits up here floating walking across water. No, no, no, no, no. If I tell you you're going to bump your head there, it's because I've done it a couple times. I got the bruise to match it.

You know what I mean? It's nothing like that. And on April 14th, 2000, I walked through the door. And I stepped on the carpet. It was a, specifically, it was a gauntlet process. I stepped through. I'm not good enough. None of this will matter.

And I think, I wasn't prepared to answer this question. You're toxic, I think, is what it was. Those were the first three. But I didn't really step by them. I just got a taste. You know what I mean? It was just enough of a sliver, but that sliver was like, it was like given a blind, deaf, dumb, starving, standing in the middle of the desert, just enough water to keep, to know I was going in the right direction. Yeah.

And I made a decision right then and there that this is going to be the work that I do. And that was 25 years ago today, as a matter of fact. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you for that. That's for me, again, I'm not your. There's a lot of people that they have, they have, their superpowers a lot more. They come and there's people that will, the geniuses I got to work with, they recited poetry would drip from their lips.

If you've seen, there's a movie called The Work, which is about Folsom prison, all those gentlemen I've got to work with. And one of them would go, Zimbabwe, shoot. Man, when he, we would all just kind of, in it, the whole, it was like reality would shake when they spoke. and I just surrounded myself with that, you know, and then I needed more time in the box. I went to go work for Tony Robbins for 10 years. And he interviewed me or he hired me to interview over 10,000 businesses. Like every possible built his business mastery division, like taught them all how to do the, like it was, it was small town Iowa boy should have never had the opportunity that I had.

but I knew that this is what I wanted to do and I just kept walking. I love that, man. Thank you for sharing it. Thanks, Clint, for coming in with that epic question. Great question. Yeah, yeah, I've got an amazing audience. Along that road, like 25 years is a long time to do anything. And you always bump up, at least in my experience and a lot of people that I've spoken to, there's always a reason to quit.

There's always a reason to hear that voice, I'm not good enough. or I'm not strong enough or this isn't me or I should it's too hard you know like when those voices start knocking at your door and maybe some of the people that you you've spoken with what are some ways in which when you really feel the depths of despair when people around you were dying like what are what are some things people can do like that are actionable that they can do right now for free that would help them sort of take the next step and to keep moving down the path well I'm I'm going to tell you the truth so um thank you um Yeah, I was working for Tony and 10 years with the man. And we're talking 16, maybe 1,500 hours of direct study, like a considerable length of time underneath him. And it got to the point to where it got to the point to where I was, I had outstripped the position. Like I knew what I was going to be doing every day, every moment.

Like when somebody would call in, I knew it just to me it got, it was like a, I was like in, college, getting ready to graduate from my master's level university, but I was still wearing the pants that I graduated high school in. It just didn't fit anymore. You know what I mean? And so I left and I started my business. Now, understand that I went and drank ayahuasca. They tell you not to do any major changes with six months. I waited, it took me about two years to know that I need to leave. It was like touch, tap two by four. The universe touched me in my heart, tap me on the shoulder, then hit me in the back of the head with the two by four, that kind of thing.

It was the two by four. And I went and drank medicine because I needed clarity. And the medicine cracked me open. It showed me where I was at. It helped me align. It brought this thing that's behind me farther out into what I was working on in this piece. And so I drank to medicine. A week later, I quit my job with Tony.

Two weeks later, COVID hit. I quit a business that should have, again, I could, all the, all the financial support that everybody got, but I didn't have my tax ID. So I couldn't get any support as being an employee from the federal government. And I couldn't get any support being a small business owner from the government. I was at the very bottom of the very bottom and an industry that had been decimated because I was going to do, I do live events. I do workshops. I want to integrate this stuff. I don't want to just talk about it.

That's why I give so much away because it just knowing it doesn't mean there's a difference between knowing and knowing, right? And I want the knowing. And so I, that's what I dig is the live immersions and I was going to do these live immersions and COVID hits. Florida gets shut down. Like shut down. No, I can't go to the medicine. Can't go to the, oh, it's just terrible. And it was just this moment of utter, you have absolutely, every, again, we talked about this when we came on that threshold moments.

Like the universe said, do you really mean it? Every single, you can guarantee if you're sitting in that hole, I want you to know that keep moving forward. That is your cue that says, do you really mean it? And we will have to be anything worthy. Anything worth doing is worth sucking at. And the universe will, if the universe isn't testing you, you're going the wrong way.

If it's easy, you're not trying hard enough. You're not thinking big enough. You're not pushing far enough because your mind, my mind, growth is always uncomfortable, rarely convenient. And whenever we push against that door, that door pushes back. By design. It's meant to do that. It's a hook.

We all see them in our daily lives where we just get caught on things. That's there by design to go, are you sure? Okay, give us some hooks. And if I get hooked, then the universe goes here and no farther. And that's all the farther we go. And so I think that if you're in that space where, man, you just started something big, good on you, man. And if you're having a hard time, even better. Because that means that you're pushing far enough fast now.

Now the question is, is can I push past that pain? Can I figure out a way? Because consciousness always finds a way through. You think of a seed. when you plant a seed inside the ground, when you plant that seed in the ground, that seed doesn't know that it's going to be growing leaves. It has no idea what it is. It just has the urge to open and go. Now, think about that seed when that seed cracks open. It's got enough energy to push in the dirt. It's pitch black. There is no sun. It can only push for so far. Now, what it's doing is it's spending that energy to get above ground. But it doesn't

know that, not the part of it that's it. Like, you don't know that, but something tells me to keep moving forward. You have to trust, I have to learn to trust the vision, which is inside of me, which is bigger than my sight, which is external, which is without. It's calcified meaning. It's everything out here is calcified possibility. It's stopped. Everything in here is still fluid and it's still possible. This is not possibility. This is what is. And if we base where we're going,

which is the way we've been programmed, on what is, that we never get to what can be, and we're just writing on what is. Most people don't design the ideal. Most people just manage circumstances, which is the calcified, let's call it retarded meaning,

retarded possibility, because it's stuck right here, which is no problem, but somehow we've been misprogrammed to think somehow what is is more important than what can be and that's just not true. There's genius in there that we have to tap into. It's the whole reason this stuff out here is here.

Yeah, that's really well said. You know, I'm so enamored by language. And sometimes I've seen a big shift in my life and I think what we just talked about and what you just said, it reminds me of the like sort of like the fallacy of misplaced concreteness where if you say I'm going to make this I'm going to make this thing happen like you don't really make anything happen things grow and for me that was a big shift in my life and if I can share it with people just change the idea that you made something into that you grew something and I love the metaphor of the seed just look out

in your garden and like look at the way in which nature grows nature doesn't make anything It just grows things. And if you can start seeing your life as an ecosystem like that, if you can start seeing whether it's a business, a relationship, a friendship, whatever it is in your life, you didn't make it. You grew it. And if you can just make that simple shift in language, for me, it releases so much tension because I realize I don't know how I'm going to grow.

And if you're willing to accept that, like, I know how, I know what I want to grow. I know what I think. I know what I want to be. I think I know this, but you don't make it. grow it and it just allows you just that simple shift in language will allow you to maybe get through some of those hooks what's your thoughts on that is that too far out there we think no i think that's it like that's that's the that's the very that's the very substance the problem becomes we've been let's call let me let me build on it a little bit from growth to cultivation love we've been

cultivating you've been cultivating the river of the story called you longer than you've been you 13.5 billion years of survival rooted programming. It took all of that for me to poke my head up out of the water and say, my name's Stephen and I can, and I'm a real boy. You know what I mean? And it took 13.5 billion years. And most of that, we were food. And so all of that is locked in our DNA and we are still operating.

87% of it seems like at any given time is based around. this survival rooted meaning, and we need to start to explore the knowing. And we find out that it's all growing. It's not the law of attraction. It's the law of cultivation. And it's not a matter of if you're doing this. I, one of the shadows, shadow, this is why I call it shadow informed death work, because shadow is the place where we can see it. Imagine if everybody takes, if everybody on the planet takes a flashlight, and they shine it into one spot. You have this giant glow.

If one person takes that flashlight and they move it over, you can see that one flashlight. Well, my shadow is a place where you can see we move. There is part of me. Like the sun is coming up tomorrow that believes I'm going to be rejected. Like I've got this giant and it comes from, I did some work around it. I believe it comes from when my grandma was a little girl. She was dirt poor, like dirt poor, like swept the whole, the dirt and the hole in the floor. And seven kids all slept in one bed and the story is that they're probably going to hear this now.

The story is that the boys used to pee the bed. Now, I don't know. I'm not arguing with any of them. I don't know. They're too old for that. They're my elders. Talk to grandma. You know what I mean?

And she's bath. So she says that they used to pee the bed. And well, think about this. When you get up as a little girl, little boy in the morning, you can change your clothes. but you're not going to get that pee off your skin. That's going to smell. And now you have to go to school because you don't have time to clean yourself now. Now, I did this work where I'm actually handing my mother, my grandmother, these white garments.

And now I can see when my reject, the part of me that's certain you're going to reject me, what that is is that's the defense mechanism that came into play from, I believe that's where it came from. It could have come from lifetimes ago. Where I can track it to is that moment where, and now in my mind, like a tongue going to the tooth, I can feel where that part of me comes online. The problem is I don't know that I'm, again, we project that onto the wall, and now I'm trying to fix it externally, trying not to be rejected. Now, here's the question.

If you had a certainty that you were going to be rejected, what do you think the one job you probably should not do in this world if rejection was a problem. I don't know if you could do anything. Sales was the job that I took. Sales. And for most of my life, I was at most of my adult life that what I worked in is the sales department. Now, why would me, why would I be attracted to a role where I would have to literally face rejection as my primary job? Seems like a test to me.

Seems like the universe trying to help you get past something that's been in your family for generations. Yeah, well, you see that. You see that the mind can now project. That's exactly right. It now has the scene necessary to project it on the wall to try to now projection starts to look like what it is, which is a natural. I think it's a, it's a feature that the mind is developed to allow an evolved mind to expel meaning that needs. that needs to be expelled. And my mind, the Joseph Campbell hero's journey,

my mind is embedded all the way back to the beginning of time. Roy talked about Story Sense, one of your previous episodes talked about, go back and watch that if you haven't heard yet. Like go back, great, great episode. And he talked about story. Well, what is that? That's the structure.

That's the way that we make meaning through story. So now if I can get this person to not reject, maybe I won't maybe I'll be able to let go of that part of me that feels rejection the other piece is because I feel rejected like I'm certain you're going to reject me now about so above so below so within so without now the mind feels comfortable my wife I like to call her the angel of death how does she like that well she's a hospice she's the angel you hope and praise shows up love to die Like she knows getting ready to work towards psilocybin assisted end of life. She's going towards her doctorate like we're not talking just a little bit angel of death. I'm talking about She knows death. She knows that process fractally better than anybody that I that There's nobody that knows it more. I'm certain of that she's on the ground, right? One of her shadows is terrible crisis

why would somebody that has a certainty that there's a terrible crisis in their life, why would they take a job in nursing? Well, because it allows the mind to play the game. The problem is we've forgotten, we've not been trained, that the mind is developed and evolved system to try to cleanse out what's going on so that it can step into the next space. And that's happening. It's not a matter of if people are, you see the world,

And you look at all this stuff and you go, well, we're going, that's why I believe like Eckhart Tolle talks about we're right where we need to be. Like, no, we need to change or else. Don't worry, it's going to happen. It's not a matter of if. It's going to, you could see it in the world. People are waking up. It speaks volumes, you know, and we've talked about sort of, and I know in the people that are around ayahuasca know the concept of purging for your family. It's a lot what we were talking about, how all of these things, these traumas that may have happened.

into your family members, maybe your mom, maybe your dad, maybe your great grandma, like you carry that trauma inside you. And what's really amazing to me is that when just this moment when you were talking about your wife and the things that she has kind of been through, and here she is sitting with people that are sort of taking their last breath, like, I think that these traumatic things that happened to us are in fact the not only the greatest catalyst for growth, but can be the the greatest gift that comes your way because who knows more about something than someone who has had the lived experience of going through it. Like no school, no PhD, no teacher, no one.

There's not a professional in the world whose feet you can sit at that knows more than someone who's had the experience of it. And I feel like that's part of what this awakening is. It's all these people, like all of us are broken, but it's this brokenness that is your gift. It is I think it's Rumi who says the wound is where the light comes in. And I'm hopeful to see this, Steve, I want to get your opinion. This awakening that seems to be happening. I know you're around it. I'm around it.

And so many of us are. It's like awakening to trauma as a gift. And like, is that too far to go? Like I feel like that's what's kind of emerging is people understanding their superpower are the horrible things that happen to them. And what are your thoughts on that? So, first off, I believe suffering is sacred. Let's start there.

Let's like absolutely suffering is sacred anytime. And we have to define that. We have to understand it. We have to really dig into that. But then there's also the letting go of it. Like it's not about, I always like to say shadow work for the safe of shadow work is paramount to masturbation. You're just going down there and you're getting the release.

But you're not like people go to the medicine to try to get the release. It's like no amount of medicine can cure you of your story. Like it's not, it's not how the medicine works. But they just like they pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, popcorn. pop, pop, pop, pop. You're going to have to at some point learn how to integrate that into the 3D world. Those pain points keep getting bigger and bigger. If everything is second rule of shadow work, there are no accidents in shadow work, everything happens for a reason and it serves. And the more I can buy into that, so I made it a rule, the more I can live my rule.

So it's like, well, why would things get worse? Well, we look at the threshold of control. Our threshold of control or the threshold of speed of change is sped up. So what happened in a thousand years is now happening about every 100. What happens about every 100 years is about the amount of novelty, the amount of happenings that are happening. Like more stuff happens in a year. Now we can, one could say, well, that's because we have more communication.

Still doesn't change that in the structure that is me, I have more things, more input, more sensory perception, more movement happening out here that is dangerous, that is new than ever before. Well, if that's the case and everything happens for a reason, what's that for? Well, I think that we are learning to shift our perspective from second, first person external to first person internal so that we can get that subjective experience. You can't, I don't know that, like again, there is no third person perspective. So depth work is a subjective practice. So I'm instantly going to agree with you that you're going to have to live through it.

The only way out, the only way out is through and the only way through is in. Like, that's just the way it is. And we can make all the flat, plain, material wins we want. But at the end of the day, I'm working for Tony. I'm making, geez, I'm making way more money than an Iowa boy should ever make. Like, I didn't know, like, that kind of thing. And I was miserable. And I was more miserable than I'd ever been.

I was changing more people than I could have ever thought I could touch. I was traveling around the world, speaking in front of countless people. And I thought for sure at any moment, I was going to be utterly, an utter. I got a you're going to be a bum than one of my core shadows and it was because I kept going I thought that I could outrun outrun the I'm not enough and it wasn't until I turned and faced it to see that that's not really there's it's not real until I learned how to do that structurally speaking in the story called all of us we all have this hero's journey that we are being called we are being um again touch tap two by afford, right, to manage. And if we don't take that journey, the universe will, I believe, find a way,

it may not happen here. You find a way to solve it here. It's going to happen over there. You find a way to maintain it over there. It's going to happen over here. And it will just, again, consciousness finds a way through. And so the evolution is happening. I don't believe that we're broken, though. That would be the only thing that I would adjust, not broken, uncalibrated would be the word raw uncalibrated like being born isn't living it's just the invitation we've been invited and i think we're just now learning what that means and through that the way in is the wound because i can see where i lie to myself and i tell myself i'm not george is going to eat me he's going to he's not going to accept me he's not going to love me and i can absolutely see

that's not the case man you got you got caring eyes your amazing soul But here I am in a structure that's called me. There's a part of me It's absolutely certain he's going to be rejected and Beginning of time one of the oldest stories of creation God God toiled I think it was like a thousand years and Wanted to create something that could paint everything between heaven and earth and in a moment Doubt entered her heart and in that

moment in the womb of creation, twins were born. This is the oldest story of creation we know. And in light and dark, and God seeing this, she said, whosoever is the first out of the womb shall rule everything between heaven and earth. Darkness hearing this attacked his sister. It was first out of the womb because that's a male violence like that's a male thing. always always right and god hearing this said darkness shall rule for the first 6,000 8,000 years and light shall rule forevermore and the metaphor of that you know what is myth myth is a lie that's meant to tell a story that's the truth and what that teaches us is anytime we create anything if there's anything worthy of sacrifice then there has to be doubt there has to be that i'm going to be

in my house, jobless, wondering why did I quit that job that I made all this money so that I could be homeless and broke and alone and all that. I have to have that doubt because it's part of the very womb of creation. Creation itself requires you can't have light without the shadow. The closer to the light, the longer the shadow. You can't get one without the other. You can only integrate the other, and through that integration, I learn how I am the primary creative force of my reality, not a matter of if, but how I create my reality. And in that, we step into what I call a living consciously, which is a different, it's not so much focused on dealing with the wound.

Now it's focused on, well, what do you want to create with your life? Where are you going? Because if we can create shadow and you can have this in, what I think is amazing, is we had this we talked about these moments where before we got on folks he this i don't know if he recorded it before we got on he talked about how we had some difficulties getting on and and you projected on that what did you project will you project the same story that you always project when you find the the the dmn the default mode network pro projected on it what it thought could go wrong and then you went no no no and that goes all the

the way down and in and there it is right there there's the there's the programming that you've been programmed to survive stop moving it's wrong what do you want well if you can trip up getting through this into stress if you can have this threshold feedback if you could create that the question is how big are you really because you're creating faster your fingertips now we get into the point to where my wife and i have these shadow contracts where i am she gets out of the i can feel we get out and we're going on we're talking about we're talking about where do you want to go on date night and now I feel like she's trying to trap me in the basement and she feels like I'm trying to abandon her and it's all done underneath the water we don't know any

that's going on but we're at the top of it and we feel there's this pull in the relationship where we just can't seem because I project my shadow onto you and you project your shadow onto me like the Jerry McGuire lie you complete me yeah it's that's happening that's happening and that that for me is the very interesting thing it's like you're loading down the river of the story called you and the boat called now i've never been in your boat i don't even know what your boat looks like but somehow we're able to interact and agree that we agree on what's happening even though there's no you're not seeing this is not the same color you're seeing like when i say when i say happy you say happy the mind deletes distorts and generalizes

but somehow underneath the water where we're not connected we're connected because we're agreeing to tell each other's story so that you can go into your shadow and i can go into mine and we can have some kind of a conversation. I can feel like it was my fault. You can feel like it was your fault. Whatever it is. That's going on. And we have to look at that.

So we're being invited to go deeper past the surface, past the material world, into the depth of who we are, so that we can bring the genius out so that the authentic you that took 13.5 billion years for the earth to fruit can sing its song.

And I can say mine. And together we create. this third song that is another layer of the evolutionary construct that we're living out of it. That's what I think is going on. It's deep. It's deep. I love it. I'm a huge fan of relationships and projection.

It really helps us understand who we are by finding people we can argue with. Because how do you know what you know unless someone tells you what they know? And then hopefully we come to these agreements. I got, who do we got here? we got the great Benjamin C. George. He says, he's coming in over here, and he says, this is nonsense and completely wrong. The environment is one of a trinery of comments that are responsible for the unfolding of reality. He says there's no calcification of external reality.

What are your thoughts? What do you got on there? In the story called him, he's 100% right. Right. I mean, that's easy. I mean, you are the sum equivalent of the meaning that you hold on to. I don't know if I can disagree or agree. I don't know that we're saying this.

It's funny because it's like, well, there he is projecting on me. Somehow, I don't, my question would be, well, where is that rooted in? Because it sounds like we're saying the same thing, but there's some kind of there's this need to, I think you're right. Yeah. It's interesting to think that, you know, there's a great philosopher called Grand Priest. And he wrote this book called True Paradox. And I think this is also the evolution of where we are now is that multiple things can be true at once. And at least the world that I grew up in, like there was, and maybe this just speaks to me being

naive and being a kid speaks to this. But a lot of the times we think that our truth is the only truth. But the truth is there's multiple truths happening all around. And I realized when I moved to Hawaii, like I had this idea of history. And like my vision, what I was taught in school was about, World War II, like, well, if there wasn't a Hiroshima, or if there wasn't a Pearl Harbor, there would never be a Hiroshima. You know, and I had this sort of American view of the world, but when I moved to Hawaii and I started talking to some cool Japanese people, we were talking

about different histories, they have a whole different history than the history that I had, and they're both true. You know what I mean? His truth may not be true for me and my truth may not be true for him, but it doesn't change the fact that they're both truths. And so much of this, this is what we're awakening to is like oh i get it you know what they're both true but that's a that's a tricky concept for people to wrap their minds around isn't it like multiple truths being true at the same time yeah that's the thing is like paradox truth sits at the corner of paradox and confusion is the saying right and it's like so it's like well what is true well again we all are shining a flashlight of meaning that we've all agreed i've agreed my meaning is this i've shine my flashlight

onto the external. You shine your flashlight as well. Get rid of there is anything there. But if enough of us shine our flashlight on the external, on this thing that doesn't exist, that thing that doesn't exist starts to take form. Again, that's been happening for 13.5 billion years. So when he says it's not real,

it's like, yes, there is nothing down there. My second ceremony with Mother Aya, mother tells me, I remember I blink. I closed my eyes. I would hear it looked like I went to sleep, but in here, I woke up. And it was like I was more awake than I'd ever been awake before. Like, the only way I explained is more real than anything this is. And she looked at me and we were in the middle of the conversation and she said, yep, it's all pretend.

It's all make, believe all the way down to the gaze of God. And then I woke up again. And I'm like, holy, what was that? And I looked around and the trees had those like on the dollar bill. They have the little eyeball. A bunch of those all over and they were blinking and it was like, whoa, and I closed my eyes again and I went back to sleep or or I woke up depending on which side of the time in the subjective experience of story called Steve and I woke up out here in the calcified 3D world. That's not what happened. And now I'm in it.

I mean, I'm feeling this amount of shame and pain and depth and. and just this raw wounding, right, the suffering. I'm in it. I'm in it. And I'm like, well, then why do we suffer? If it's all pretend and it's all make-believe, all the way down to the gaze at God, then why did I get locked in the basement when I was three years old by my mom? Why did my mom run with bite?

Like, why did this happen? Why did that happen? Why did I watch all my friends down? from drug addiction, like, what, what is all that? If it's all make-believe, then why do we suffer? And she started laughing at me. And I woke up. Now, she didn't laugh at me like she was laughing. It sounds evil. It was more like you, precocious child, like you still don't get what all that is for. And it took me, for me, it took about 36 ceremonies for her to finish that discussion. And so, It's like if I'm holding on to this hurts and enough of us hold on to that, I think that imaginary thing that doesn't exist starts to take on form.

Yes, sure, I believe that I am God having a human experience, but step out in front of a bus. If you don't believe a bus is there, please nobody do that, right? But if you don't believe a bus is there, you step out in front of a bus, you're still going to get hit by a bus because all of that meaning has been calcified. Steve Jobs held on to the idea of this until it became real. He called enough people into his circle, into his container. And they all held on to what they thought was his idea long enough for us to have this. That's what's happening everywhere. It's what's happening in business.

It's what's happening in our lives. It's what's happening in that conversation between me and that great question, right? It brought all this out. Like we couldn't have gotten there any other way. It's awesome. I know we're coming up on that 1030 mark right here, Stephen, and the conversation feels like we could keep going, man. I feel like we did about an hour in about four minutes,

and I still got tons of questions stacking up, but I'll get them all over to you. But before I land the plane here, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? I'm going to give you guys something new. If you guys are on now, then you're getting something for the first. I don't even know if I have permission to give this,

but I'm giving it anyways. Evolvingmindproject.org is a, my 501, we have a 501c3 nonprofit that is, that is committed to my mission is to evolve the collective consciousness through engaging in the innate genius that's woven in the human condition. And we do that through creative and experiential workshops and trainings. And the goal is for us to pluck out the genius and explore what that is. And so if you go to the evolving, not the evolving, evolving, evolving, evolving, evolving mindproject.org, it'll take you to the newer website that I'm just touching up. We're finishing the team is just finishing the touches. You probably might see some links that aren't completely connected yet. Don't worry about that. There's a, there's a community in there now that you can be part of and help me support the growth. This, what was the gentleman's name that asked the, you, Benjamin C. George. Benjamin would be an amazing, I'd love to have him in there to teach.

and show us his genius and share his genius inside that community so that we can all grow together. And it's just time. There's a collective push necessary to get past that Benjamin and I are both seeing the same thing, but we're seeing it. And it feels like he's seeing something different. And it feels like I'm seeing something different. But I think we're seeing the same exact thing. But there's been this Babel, Tower of Babel, which is,

I think what we're sitting in that causes us to feel like somehow there's an inversion. And it's time to get past that. It's time to evolve because I think that I think it's kind of like we've been driving a car. It's like we've been pulling out of the driveway. So we're looking out of the rear of a mirror. It's like driving your car by looking through the rear of your mirror. But we're not in the driveway anymore. We're going down the interstate at 70 to 80 miles an hour.

We can't continue what will happen tomorrow will look nothing like today. there will come a point very soon when a leader will not be able to continue to run their business. A person will not be able to continue to run their life by considering what happened yesterday is the map for what will happen tomorrow. Because we are moving, we will be moving way too fast. So the evolution is happening. It's just time. I love it. I see it too.

I think that not only the change is happening, but the rate of change is accelerating at levels that something we've never really done before. I want to be mindful of your time, man. Thank you so much. Everybody go down to the show notes. Check out the links. Thank you for being here today. Ladies and gentlemen,

I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you realize that you are the miracle. And if you believe in yourself, you can make it happen. You've got to find the courage to stay there and keep pushing forward. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha.