TrueLife - Strategic Insight: Eric Postow on Operational Planning in Regulated Industries

Episode Date: February 2, 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/Eric PostowLadies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce the esteemed Eric Postow, Esq. 2nd, a legal luminary and the Managing Partner at Holon Law Partners. Renowned as the Top Operational Planning Voice in his field, Eric's expertise extends across Regulated Industries, First Amendment Religious Freedoms, and the dynamic Hemp Beverage Industry. A graduate of the University of Richmond School of Law, hailing from Annandale, Virginia, Eric stands at the forefront of representing clients in the ever-evolving landscapes of regulated cannabis and hemp beverage markets. His legal acumen extends beyond conventional boundaries, as he passionately advocates for religious freedoms within intentional communities, navigating the delicate intersection of spirituality and the commercialization of psychedelics and natural plant medicines. With a remarkable skill set in Strategic Planning, Public Speaking, and Operational Planning, Eric Postow emerges as a thought leader who delves into conversations surrounding #plantmedicine, #regulatedcannabis, and #regulatedindustries. Get ready to be inspired by a legal mind that not only interprets the law but shapes its future. Welcome, Eric Postow, a visionary in the legal realm!http://linkedin.com/in/eric-postow-managing-partner-holonlawpartners 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, Heirous 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, guess what? I got a beautiful podcast for everyone today. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. Hope the wind is at your back.

I hope that you are ready for some contagious ideas that are meaningful. I've got the one and only Eric Postow. It is my pleasure to introduce him as a legal luminary and the managing partner of Holon Law Partners, renowned as the top operational planning voice in his field. Eric's expertise extends across regulated industries, First Amendment religious freedoms, and the dynamic hemp beverage industry. a graduate of the University of Richmond School of Law, La, La. Hailing! From Annandale, Virginia, Eric stands at the forefront of representing clients in the ever-evolving landscapes of regulated cannabis and hemp beverage markets.

His legal acumen extends beyond conventional boundaries as he passionately advocates for religious freedoms within intentional communities, navigating the delicate intersection of spirituality and the commercialization of psychedelics and natural plant medicines. Eric, thank you for being here today. How are you? That was the most amazing introduction, I think. Anyone's ever done for me in my life. Can you just show up and, like, I walk into a place? And then you announce it like that.

And everyone was going to turn you up. Who the hell is this guy? They just stand up and start clapping. Yeah, Eric, Eric. What did he do? Nothing. Okay. Great.

Woo, high expectations, man. Yeah, man. It is cool to be with you. I appreciate that. I hope I can live up to such a... Sounds like I'm doing a lot of cool stuff. When you put it like that... Well, I talked to you before.

You and I've had a conversation before, and we see each other on LinkedIn. And I think you are doing cool stuff. But more than cool, I think one way to define cool, at least in my life, is meaningful. And I think it's very cool when you meet people that are doing things,

they're passionate about, and meaningful. And I'll just hand it off to you with that. You know, that's exactly right. I mean, if I'm doing anything in my life, I'm living a very intentional life. And because I'm very intentional, I find myself doing the things that matter most, and they are meaningful. So I'm meaning making in the world because I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing, which is to do things that are meaningful, to be at the epicenter of stuff going on where we have to think collectively. our global consciousness has to become aware of something

so that we can see things for the way they are and make choices. Right? To become more intentional globally, I am being more intentional locally, I suppose is the best way to describe that. And because I'm being intentional, I get to work with amazing people and collaborate with terrific lawyers and non-lawyers and think about issues at a really deep level. like, you know, what is medicine mean anymore?

And examining how the changing landscape, because of our newfound Western awareness of psychedelics and plant medicines, is evolving and what that might look like and what might be necessary for some containers and safety and integration and things like that from a holistic legal perspective. So meaningful work is certainly what I get to do, and I'm very grateful for that. Yeah, you should be. I think we both share a passion for language on some level. And it's interesting to think about the world is made of language. And especially someone in your field is a lawyer. Like right now, you are just designed. You are deep in the tapestry that's weaving together.

these ideas of spirituality and law. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit, like the language that's going on right now and the ever-changing language, your passion with language. Yeah. I love language. I love words.

And I also, you know, have a great appreciation for the limitation of words. And I think that, you know, as I grow, learn, evolve, I start to see how limited we can be is a community as a society by the words that we're choosing to frame around us. As a lawyer, this is clear in our laws. What we say the laws are the words that we define,

we exclude things, we include things, all by the usage of words and terms. And this can be extended more broadly to religiosity and spirituality, you know, a great word ineffable, terrific word that means, you know, I can't tell you what it means, right? It means beyond beyond. It means something that can't be explained, can't be put into words. And if I try to put it into words, then I'm going to limit it in such a way that it can't be limited.

Right? Yeah. So if I understand that from the spirit mind perspective, that I want to transcend the limitation of words to connect to source, right? to connect to something beyond, beyond, something here, something present, nature, something that's alive and with me and all of these things, then I have to look beyond what the limitations of words are. And in my practice, I'm working on legal issues that require seeing beyond the limitation of words. and try to help ourselves catch up because legal frameworks are important. Laws are important.

Regulations are important. Safety of the community is important. And we have to have that level of thinking so that we can help inspire what the laws ought to be and what they could be and then beyond that to help our, you know, community evolve with, you know, necessary changes, which can be scary, but. Sure. Sure. And why wouldn't it be scary when you're talking about uncertainty or the unknown, even

spirituality? Like, these are scary topics because we don't know. We have ideas. We have faith. We have the ineffable. But they are scary. right? People are afraid of what change will do. Yeah, that is always the case.

You know, change for a country, you know, in politics. Look how much trauma we are going through right now in our country in the United States. We are a traumatized nation. And that trauma is manifesting in, you know, violence and communication and violence. communication and violence in action and other things and you know I think that I think we got to find people that are Sherpas and guides to to get through this this stuff this phase this time and to bring into the the newness you know things that are healthy things that are healing things that are bringing people back

together connecting folks at that heart chakra you know getting getting back to the the source of humanity and the things that that that make humanity special and good and to be in better relationship and community with you know nature and not just trying to oppress everything around us at all times and I don't win if you don't lose, that kind of mindset. And I think that's one of the things that I'm hopeful for is that we can get to get through this dying era and into a new era. So I work at areas of the law that I think are helpful in shaping that and oriented around friction. I love it.

It's interesting to hear you use ideas like a Sherpa, a Sherpa and a guide. and, you know, it definitely seems like almost like we need a death dula. Like part of us seems to be dying and we have, maybe that's what you're doing on some level. Maybe you're like this death dula that's helping these old ideas, you know, be fertilizer for the new ideas that come out of it. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. Well, I think, I mean, if you think about the name of our law firm, Holon, it's a term that has Greek origins, but it's, it's, it's been articulated well, some recent academic folks. And essentially, you know, the whole on view is that we are in this ever transcending state of hierarchical, you know, relationship.

That there's the whole on of you in relation to the whole lot of me and that together we're making the whole on of true life podcast. And then we're extending out, right? We're transcending and including. and we're going all the way out until like global society and and international relationships and all these different types of things. And then also relationship to plant life and animal life and ecosystems and things like that, for sure. And so we try to take that concept and put it into practical legal application.

We see things as a series of interconnections and relationships. and because of that, we see community where we work with our clients and in the broader space, and we find connectivity between those things to help achieve important societal goals. The human mycelium. Yeah, that's right. In a lot of ways, you know, I think I spend a long time thinking and learning about intelligence, reading a fantastic book right now by Paco Calvo, who is a professor at Mint, M-I-N-T, and what they do is they're studying for intelligence in plants that is akin to human intelligence,

the intelligence that is decision-making, that is orienting. That is remembering, that's anticipatory, predictive. We understand better now than we have in a long time how mycelium works, the fungi network. It's communication. Mycelium kind of spreads and has these ways of communicating with the nature around it, with trees and with plants and things like that. They create symbiotic relationship. They feed, they eat, they decay.

They're part of that system. It's how we've evolved like this. Plants are similar. At least that's what, you know, some of the research coming out of mint and other places is looking at. And I want to learn from that intelligence. Yeah.

I think there's value in that intelligence. And even if there's a debate over whether or not that's true intelligence or it's some sort of adaptive thing, it's irrelevant. If they're building, network underground in the plant world and the fungi world and those networks are doing things and they're working together they're collaborating and they're mutually supporting and they're co-existing and co-thriving and co-creating well then we can learn from that and we can build models that also includes our connectivity in the way we do relationship yeah and we can go and be supportive

as a community network, a web of relationships, and show up for people and show up for communities that need it. You know, that's all my ceiling. Reallocation of resources. That's the way the brain works also. It's no coincidence that the brain and the neurons and that system in the brain of processing looks an awful lot like the root systems of fungi and plants and things like that. we all come from the same place.

We've evolved. That's where ours is. And it's no coincidence. That's what the galaxies look like. When you look at the pictures coming through the new telescope out there, oh, my God, it'll blow your mind. But what you see is those relationships, those large-scale network things that are occurring that look a lot like brain cells. look a lot like the mycelium networks, you know? Coincidence, I don't know, but interesting and worth learning from, you know,

worth integrating that kind of wisdom and knowledge and seeing equality, seeing an equal in plants rather than a subspecies that humans tend to do. we would categorize and then sub categorize and subcategize right so i think uh our minds can be enlightened with the knowledge coming out of some of this research and because of that i think that we can integrate that into practice in different ways business community uh illegal anything i'm rambling but no it's good it's perfect it it it reminds me like I often feel and in I want to read this book too but I was sitting outside my patio a while back and I was just I had taken like a medium like a museum dose and I was just

sitting out there and I was watching this vine that it climbed up halfway up this palm tree and it climbed halfway up and then some I thought to myself like wow what an amazing adventure this thing is on and I noticed like how does it know to do to do so. sprout a flower at a 47 degree angle towards the sun on August 7 at 333 p.m. 3 quarters the way up that tree. Like that's faith. Yes. You're diving right into what the looks about. Yeah. Like, how can it not get? That's what the science is. They've observed this thing and there is something to it. Yes. It's remembering and it's planning and it's doing things intentionally. Yes. To survive and to, you know, get better to grow to.

you know, thrive, have offspring, whatever it's doing, it's not doing it just because it's reacting. Right. It's doing it because it knows that that's what it has to do. And it's planning and organizing. And there's interesting things from the book where they reorient the plant. And then after a day, it finds its way back to finding where the sun is and being exactly where it's supposed to be. So that it can maximize getting the sunlight in for the photosynthesis process, you know, Yes, it's part of evolution, but it's also an intelligence that's doing that,

that knows to do that, that type of thing. And they've got some interesting narrative around, you know, sprouts and bean things, and it's climbing up. You know, I'm not a plantologist. Obviously, I sound ignorant when I talk about these things, but I can take from it the wisdom of that. Yeah. That the plants aren't climbing towards the light just because it's an adapt. thing. They're climbing because they're geared towards intelligence towards this thing.

They, it's thinking about it and planning and then using some kind of a calculus. Like there are plants that have like a lassoing kind of effect. Yeah. And they lasso on to something so that it can climb. You know, we got these climbing vines, but did anyone ever think about why they do that? you know, and how and what's the mechanism underneath that's, that's, that's, that's, potentially an intelligence there. And why should we be so arrogant as to think that it couldn't be an intelligence? That's the other thing that gets you thinking. Yeah, I think we are,

we're children and the world is desperately trying to communicate with us to reveal the answers to us. Like here, look, this is community. Look at all of these. You can go outside your yard and look down and find an ecosystem. It may have like a dandelion, like a certain type of tree and some grass. Like that's an ecosystem right there. It's teaching you community if you know what to look for. Absolutely. Nature does, it communicates with us all the time.

We just don't, we don't listen. We're not tuned in. Right, right. And I don't think that you have to have psychedelics or plant medicines to do that. I think that you can do that in your everyday life just by, you know, slowing down, being intentional, being aware, being observant, seeing, really seeing something and like taking what's happening

and integrating into yourself and saying, well, what does it mean? What's the meaning of this thing? People like to go stargazing and they like to go like the nature walks and all this stuff, you know? There's learning right there because all it's doing is being truth.

It's just truth happening in whatever degree. And the learning the teaching is whether or not you can capture that happening, that essence, and say, oh, shit, there's something happening here. Yeah. And then what? Then your brain, your human brain starts doing things with it and making sense out of it. And it's in that where I think potentially we've got a lot of ability to transcend where we're

currently at, which we need to. We need to get to a place of elevated awareness so that we can see the choice. a new, a fresh lens, if you would. Same facts, just a slightly different perspective, so that we might make different choices. What choices? Choices like whether or not you understand that nature is alive and that it feels and that it's a part of you

and that if you kill it, you're killing yourself. Yeah. And right now we're committing slow suicide and we should probably stop. You know? Yeah, I do. It's, and this is, and this is, and this is, and this is, and this is, This isn't like a wackado thing to say.

This is just an observable fact of the world around us. It's happening. And people are like, oh, is climate, climate, that's not real. You know, we get, we get stuck on the words. Yes. We get trapped by the words instead of the happening, the fact happening, the existence and just seeing and being like, I know what's happening here. I can see it.

Yeah. And then I want to discover why. Well, we're, you know, killing the lungs of the plant. in the Amazon. We've been doing that for a while. We do that for commercial purposes so that we can continue to exist in a certain lifestyle, and it's an unsustainable lifestyle. And so I think one of the interesting adaptations that humans are currently working through is a movement towards sustainability in different ways. And ecological sustainability and living balanced harmoniously with nature is a dire human need right now.

You know, because the consequences would just be the end of it all, you know. And of us, in a nature would continue on. We would melt away and something else would come up, I'm sure. It's interesting to think about the, you know, the ailments of the human race are a direct reflection of what we're doing to the planet. Like when you talk about the lungs of the planet being the Amazon, how many people on the planet have problems with smoking? I wonder if there's a correlation between the amount of people that are dying from certain types of things and what we're doing to the planet. Like, you know, smoking, people dying from lung cancer may be equivalent to us killing the lungs of the planet. if you look at obesity as a problem.

Maybe that's over farming in some ways. Like, you know, like it just seems to make those things are connected on it. Like if we can just pan back and have like a giant collective psychedelic experience, I think we could see the fractal nature of it. Oh, this is us. This is us right here causing this problem. I think that that is one of the potential benefits of psychedelic and a therapeutic model is that, It's the ability to step inside and outside to observe from different angles so that you become more aware of something.

And you drop the conditioning or the false narrative that you're gripped by, the addiction to the narrative itself, whatever that might be about your life or the world or whatever. And I'm not someone that says psychedelics are for everybody, but I do think that. that they present a very powerful opportunity for folks to see themselves and their relation to others and the planet differently. And I think that what plagues humanity broadly right now is a decaying spirit mind. I think that, you know, the spiritual experience has become so contaminated and constrained and toxic in a lot of ways that it repels people. It creates divisions and, you know, very conditioned and rigid minds that are not flexible, that are not malleable, that cannot see beyond, like, programming. And I think that there is the ability to deprogram.

Yeah. Not to reprogram. I think some folks think there's dangers that you're going to use it to program people. I think it's the opposite. I think it's going to deprogram a lot of folks who, in whatever way, you know, degrees, right? Very, very subtle in some ways could just be, you know, an addiction. to a drug, deprogramming the conditioned addiction. And things that are woven around that, you know, that you can see it a little bit

differently within yourself, let go of the grip, and come through the other side, not needing to go back to drugs or alcohol or something like that. It's just one example that I think highlights this. You know, it's interesting on a lot of levels, where we're at right now, and the shift and programming and deprogramming and fear and all these things that we've lived with for so long. And I'm curious, right now in the United States and in Canada and some parts in Europe, we're seeing a lots of people trying to establish a new way for these substances to come in and make changes. Do you think that, like, maybe you could just speak to that a little bit.

Like, is that multiple ways of trying to find the right way or is there not one right way? Or is each one of these potential pattern or is each one of these particular ideas, a potential model for other people to learn from and go from? What's your take on the hot spots right now? I think it's fluid, dynamic, unhealthy, healthy, healthy. I think it's a smorgas for these things. I think there's a lot of experimentation with models, and I think it's beyond the regulated scene. I think the regulated scene is trying to copy the unregulated scene

and replicate it in a lot of ways. There's where you get a lot of misappropriation and some cultural things, stuff like that. I think there is a lot of danger in inexperienced people, claiming to have more experience and not doing the homework and doing the work themselves to make sure that what they're doing is safe and directed at, you know, pro-social, healthy communities, you know. I think some people just want to sell drugs and they want to come up with, you know, methods of doing that that they think are quasi-legal. and I can tell you they're not in those instances. Yeah.

But I do think, you know, there's a lot of learning going on, and I think there is an experimentation. I also think that there's lineage that are thousands of years old of wisdom that's been handed down in traditional and indigenous communities. And I would hope that their voice and their practices and their medicine, are, you know, respected and revered and honored and look towards as, you know, potential collaborative sources of sharing wisdom rather than things to take from and make money off of. You know, I think that there's potential for abuse there.

I think there's a potential for abuse, broadly speaking, in totally uncontrolled environments, a lot of sexual misconduct and things like that that I think are harmful for the broader movement. And I think people have to speak truth to that and hold folks accountable. And, you know, holding the medicine, as I've come to understand, it's a very sacred obligation, a responsibility. and some people are not worthy to do that. And they are doing it. And because they're not worthy and they're doing it,

they're doing it in harmful ways. And that's not a judgment thing. That's just to call it what it is. And great organizations are thinking about this. I think Shrikarren is out there doing a lot of good work and covering down some of these topics. Psychedelic Bar Association, I'm a member of. I know it's got a lot of really beautiful minds.

and committed people that care about these things. I'm very fortunate to be able to collaborate with some of them. And practitioners and just wonderful humans out there that are doing it the right way. But to do it the right way, we have to speak about the things that are not the right way. And when they're harmful, when they're harming people

and not leading to a healthier community for us all, well, that's probably not the right approach. Yeah, it makes sense. Is there something specific that, like, I know you've got a few projects going on right. Maybe you could walk us through some of them and what you're excited about, some of the pitfalls might be,

or what do you got going on over there in your neck of the woods? Well, can't talk about all the things that I'm doing for client sensitivities, but what I can tell you is that I am working on things that are really informative. And I like to work on things where I know I have blinders so that I can become more aware of the blind spots and have that deeper personal work.

And I'm getting to do that. I love examining the language and what do things mean and to help folks find their voice in certain communities so that we can give meaning, you know, a more updated meaning, restored meaning in some instances of some of these terms that are out there.

And hopefully that that helps the broader collective conversation. So I'm definitely spending a lot of time in the plant medicine space from a legal perspective and a historic perspective, just, you know, doing what I can do to support those that I'm working with and learning from that. And then, you know, the cannabis space and the hemp beverage space, those are commercial. And I like them too. And I find them, you know, rewarding. And there's great business people.

And I try to be helpful. And I think my clients have found my approach to be really collaborative, really empathetic and oriented around them and their dreams. And I think they know that I'm a solid foundation to work from. So I've enjoyed that space too. But the more meaningful work to me is in this plant medicine and psychedelic space because I think that's where we're really talking about nerve points for so much more. And then that's honestly where I think you want to change the world, start to understand how intelligence works, how the mind works, how the spirit mind works, how these

medicines work, and why we need to explore it further and develop structures and support mechanisms and on and on. And I think that's where I'm finding a lot of energy for myself. You know, there's some interesting similarities and some differences when I look at the world of cannabis and psychedelics. One sort of similarity that I see that's not just partial to plant medicine, but other things, is that when the instrument becomes the institution, it loses its ability to be functional. and it seems to me that that's kind of what happened with cannabis a while back when it became institutionalized it sort of lost its ability as an instrument and I'm curious if A, do you see that pattern and two, do you think that psychedelics may be going in that direction? You spoke earlier when there's people that just want to kind of extract out of it like the same

extraction mentality that we have for raw materials. I want to extract the money out of this plan. I want to extract this out of there. But maybe you could speak to the idea when the instrument becomes the institution. it begins to be corrupted. I don't know. I mean, yes, on some instances, it's tough because I'm,

in the cannabis space in particular, I think of the social underlying issues a lot more than the medicine itself. I think it certainly gets absorbed into culture stuff and commercialization and you know but the plant is still a plant and it's still saving a lot of lives out there quite frankly and helping a lot of people in really important ways um and from a you know commodity perspective becoming a real driver of you know economy in market and that's that's a good thing um

you know some could say that is the is the commercialization is it soulless well it's the collective of all these different things, these people and their hopes and dreams and all that stuff and belief in the plant. But then it takes on the normal capitalist commercial thing and does it as an entity, it might not look like something that was familiar and comfortable and may have lost the myth or the allure or whatever. But from a medicine perspectives it works pretty good and um you know i think i think that shouldn't be lost you know from from the plant medicine spied and psychedelics i think that there's a really interesting merging point of friction between language and historical circumstance i don't think

that you can really work in the space of psychedelics and not think about colonialism and not think about Western oppression over indigenous experience since the West came to where we are now in the Americas, North America, Central America, South America. So I think that bring awareness to some of those historical things. I mean, these traditions and people often were killed for their medicines and, you know, treated with this sting and, you know, a cultural genocide was afflicted, you know. And that is part of the psychedelic story.

On the other hand, we have the present as a day. is and Western modalities of pharmacology and Western therapy, psychotherapy, so on and so forth. And so there's this interesting balancing thing happening where the states are kind of coming online with these regulated therapeutic models that, you know, look kind of like Western therapy, but also really kind of take from ceremonial sacramental concepts. And I think that, you know, potentially where it will be will come down to will be on the natural plant medicines versus the synthetic pharmaceuticals like ketamine and things like that, which have a tremendous amount of, you know, therapeutic value.

And so do some of these other things, but there's more interesting historical connotation. MDMA is another one that's probably going to be, you know, fully legal within the next, I don't know, year or two. It's close. Seems very close if you pay attention to what MAPS is doing. And, you know, I think that there's a place for that. I think there's an important place for ketamine treatment and for MDMA and even psilocybin and some of these other ones. But then I think it gets murky. And I don't want to see a continuation.

of a Western dominant language, oppressing expression and culture, and trying to act like psychedelics, yeah, 20th century. That was us, right? It's like, no. We're talking about 13,000 years of history here, of historic communal use and reverence in a way that we really don't comprehend and it's hard for Western minds to get get their minds around it. So I think it's an interesting social point. And I know there are others that see this as well. And then there's folks that don't see that and then they're fine too. And they're just working towards, you know, this is important.

And we want access to these types of therapies. And we should have, you know, human rights to these kinds of medicines and and so on and so forth, and they're creating, trying to create, you know, what are the containers for this? What are the structures for this? You know, what would it look like? You know, if you were trying to get a DEA exemption for your church, you have these things, knowing that the DEA is probably never going to grant it, but if you were trying to do that, you know, what would it look like how would you create safety and how would you structure it and how would you do integration before during after to make sure you're taking care of people and not just drugging people right

and i think that there is a difference there and i think that that's part of the experimentation to find who's better at this you know because there are folks that are really deliberate and intentional and they're doing all the right things and they're taking care of people and they're getting they show up after yeah they got paid a year ago they're showing up they're saying hey how's everything going where are you in your life like the follow up you know how are your relationships and and i think that that's that's a really positive and powerful thing and i hope to see more of those types of things personally yeah i like that i one thing that i really admire about the indigenous culture and their use of some of this plant medicine is that

You know, the idea behind ceremonies and rites of passage as a path forward for people, it seems like in the Western world, we have medicine for ailments. Isn't a right of passage a sort of way for you to outgrow the small-mindedness that you once had? Like a young man becomes a man. Like, that is medicinal. Like, okay, now I no longer need to do this. But sometimes that comes with the insights from the plant medicine. Like that seems to me something that the West can learn from is like you need not,

it need not always be in this rigid medical container because a right of passage is also a medicinal act. It is a way to take the limits off of this small mind and this when you're ready or take the training wheels off on some way. That's why the word medicine matters. Yes. Right? Exactly.

Yes. That's why it matters what you say it is. And when we understand that the. medicines have been used for community healing. Yes, well said. Or rites of passage for growing up. I learned about a tribes that, tribes that they went through the, I believe it's the Huscanah, North American Indian tribes.

And they, around the age of 15, there would be a ceremonial kidnapping of the boys. And the mothers would wail and the children are dying. Right. And the boys were taken to the woods. And as documented in historical observations of Westerners watching this in artifacts, part of whatever was going on in the woods, this transition transcending into an adult, this right of passage included the plant,

plant medicine and usage, psychedelic plants, and experience what's happening and whatever. Then they would come back and they would be integrated back into community as an adult, where they would take on an adult role, Mary, do whatever. Some of them would not come back to the community, but would go off into the spiritual world. where they would be the ones that were communicating between worlds so that they could be the continuation of the spirit of this, these people and this happening in this life on earth and, um,

usher people through this process and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, their,

their, their continuation, you know, and this, this is, this is, is not a limited situation. Things like this.

were happening all over North, Central, and South America. And maybe still are in many instances. And yes, the medicine was an integral part of that community's life and experience. And when we said, kill the Indian, save the man, that is what we were killing. We were killing this life, this experience, this relationship to the place that they were That was sacred. That is sacred. And then we fucking remove them from the place.

Forced removals, like tearing you from your mother's arms kind of thing. Yeah. Right? Maybe even deeper because of the relational thing of the connectivity to the land and to the plants and the ecology. All right. And, you know, I think that we need to acknowledge that history. history when we do this kind of work. And there are, they're not dead. That's what the things, you know, tribes of all kinds, indigenous folks, you know, they're here and they're

living and they're wonderful to work with and learn from. And, you know, I think that it's, it's for sure something I observe out there as a very important story that we can continue to share because the story is medicine also, you know, keeping, keeping alive what actually happened and what is happening and what can happen and telling a story about a better, a better way of being. And so, you know, as a storyteller, that's what I do in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's wonderful. It reminds me there's a great book called Black Elk Speaks. And in that book, he talks about, you know, there was a time when he's, I'm paraphrasing,

but it's something along the lines of, the white man came to us and said that he wanted to buy the land. And we laughed at him. If he can't buy the land, the land belongs to everybody. We just thought it was a foreign concept. They did. They did do it. And it kind of makes me wonder, like, in today's world, people want to buy the air right now. They want to buy the air you breathe.

Hey, you have some carbon credits over here. Like, we laugh at it. Like, oh, you can't buy the air. Maybe you can't. I mean, if you want to know what large parts of the government, if they're trustworthy, we should be asking indigenous people. Hey, are government's trustworthy? Like, what are they going to say?

You know what I mean? There's the lessons there. There's real lessons. I think, you know? Absolutely. You know, history is important, right? Agreed. Yeah. And I think, you know, far too often we just have this Eurocentric view of history.

We don't know enough about other cultures and stories. We know some of the famous ones. Like we know Genghis Khan, but we don't really know in the details, right? We don't know the ancient history of China, broadly speaking, and where those people came from and why they view the world the way they do and what's underlying a lot of those, you know, characteristics and things like that. Same everywhere else. We just know our own history and the world started in 1776.

You know? We know the truth, right? That's the what really happened. Well, liberty. It's so silly. It's so crazy. Look, I'm a proud of America. I was a Marine Corps veteran.

It has nothing to do that. I think being a real American means, you know, holding America accountable. Yeah, well said. Saying we could do it better and we should be honest for ourselves. Yeah, it's so true. It's such an amazing time. In navigating the intersection of religious freedoms and the commercialization of psychedelics,

what challenges have you encountered and how do you envision the evolving landscape in this unique legal space? I don't know. You know, there's some... you know there's some there's a lot there's a lot smart people that work um you know work in this space and you know i don't know it's too early it's too early to say exactly what everything is it's all just unfolding in like different directions i think the oregon you know model's going to be fun to watch and you know you know hold on to your your hats right because when you miss big in psychedelics, you know, shit can happen.

So I think that we really need to kind of watch what's going on in the structures perspective and make sure that the licensees that are doing this are doing it well and that the right ones are doing it. It's not just like cannabis, like sell someone a bag of wheat. It's you're taking someone's life in your hands and you're ushering them through a process that's really transformative. You got to be intentional. You got to do it well.

You know, and I hope that we'll see a lot of good stuff there, but I'm prepared for things that are challenging. And then that's going to reverberate in this, you know, political speak-to-myself thing where I was saying, see? See how dangerous this? This thing happened. This thing happened.

And then, oh, it's all, you know. gone to hell. But I do think the conversations where religion meets commercial, where indigenous voices might be not heard enough. I think it's an evolving thing. And I am pleased to be involved and trying to participate and hold space and share thoughts when asked, So once before. Yeah, there's a really great company that I've spoken to Moksha journeys that has Prema and Rose and Sienna over there. And they, I've had them on the podcast multiple times and they have shared with me.

They had a first cohort come through their whole program. And they intermingle the idea of indigenous wisdom and Western talk therapy. And they had some people that came through that were highly addicted. And, you know, it's not uncommon for people in the first week or two weeks of therapy to, you know, still score high on the addiction model. Like, they could still score like at, I don't skip from 1 to 10, like an 8 in the first week. But some of the people going through using psilocybin and the talk therapy and the things that were happening there, they came way down to like a two on the, on the craving sort of documentary, you know, not documentary, but a survey and stuff. So, you know, I do have a whole lot of hope and promise for finding new ways to deal with addiction. And it seems like psychedelics really allow you to set the shame and the guilt of addiction aside and focus on the problem that may be causing addiction.

You know, so a lot of the times it's something that we're afraid of or something that we did that we don't want to talk about it. Childhood trauma, man. Agreed. Generational, yeah. Generational trauma. trauma yeah um you know and in the last 20 years you know we've had some really epic jarring trauma moments yeah we had 9-11 that was a jarring trauma moment huge we had COVID that was a jarring trauma moment we had you know smaller but not lesser impactful like the George Floyd's yeah the you know

the Black Lives Matter movement, counter movements, the strangeness of whatever's going on in the, you know, certain political camps and the voices that are that are heard the most, you know, sometimes like, wow, that's, that's aggressive. Yeah. You know, that voice get out there. How does that so loud? Our voice.

You know, that's one of the things I think that the people, it's like that, That's all of us right there. Scream as loud as I can and tell you how wrong you are. Right? That's us constantly. Yeah. Demonizing the other side. Ourselves.

Demonizing ourselves. We are them. They are us. We are one. But yes, we distinguish and categorize and create, you know, containers of people. That's not me. I'm not racist.

I have a black friend somewhere. I know a gay guy. He's talking about. There's all these things. All of that stuff. It gets in, you know, social communication, privilege and things like this. And people really get animated about that.

And it's like, you know, perhaps if we just explored, you know, the context without it being so animated, and just observed it, you know, more communally, you maybe we might have more awareness with which we can do something about that. You know, I think we have a lot of issues of bias in this country. In the world, your bias is a human-conditioned thing. Maybe not even human, maybe beyond human.

But, you know, the ability to be aware of the bias, that's also a key to unlocking a lot of these things, becoming aware of the implicit nature of the bias that's driving us, thereby making it no longer implicit. Now I have a choice to make. If I'm aware of my bias and I confront my bias in a decision, I can at least stop myself, hey, oh, am I, what's going on here? Am I making a decision out of bias?

I'm acknowledging it maybe I make a different decision I don't know worth a shot you think yeah I do I do think that I think it almost goes back to the beginning of the conversation when we talked about the

the wisdom that we can gain by watching nature like the same way that plant crawls up that vine and knows how to do it I think that that is that thing inside you this is like, hey, this is wrong. I shouldn't do this. Like, that's the innate wisdom we have.

And when you follow that, I think you become like that vine and you know how to sprout a flower at that same angle. When you follow that, that voice, like, that's your divine wisdom. Like, that's nature talking to you through you. And we're so conditioned not to listen to it.

Like, well, I'm going to be one of these four things. I went to this Pavlovian school where there's whistles and bells and I got a hall pass. Yeah, yeah, I never. the past, I just went to the halls. Yeah, I think you're right. You know, I think we have to see outside of our structures right now.

Yeah, yep. We have to be able to observe it, call it what it is, be honest about it, and then see what the choices are. Just becoming aware of choice, man. That's it. You're choosing this every day to live like this as a, as a. a global humanity like we're making phenomenal choices that have unquestionable consequence and we're doing it all the time so we should be aware that we're making a choice and what the choice is and maybe

make different choices where it matters most meaningful yeah you know on some level, there's this right of path. There's a right of passage that a lot of people go through, both men and women, and it's nowhere near celebrated enough or talked about enough. And it's this, this, when you have a child and you're seeing your child grow. For me, my experience was not too long ago. Like, I was, I was a UPS driver for a long time, like 26 years. And I realized, and this is right around COVID, you know, I realized that what am I doing? Like, I'm working like almost 80 hours a week. My wife's picking up the kid.

She's working from home. She's doing all this. I never see my family. I'm making good money, but I never see my family. I'm always gone. And I heard that voice inside me, like,

what are you doing? And then all these questions come up, like, well, you like, you like, you like, I'm telling my daughter

that I want her to live a meaningful life and that she should do the right thing. She should try to live a life that's meaningful. And it hit me. And this is the right of passion moment I'm talking about.

I was like, Listen, if I don't do that, she's never going to do that. So I just want to invite people to look at their families and if they want the best life for their children to start making those decisions inside yourself, maybe that means changing your relationship. Maybe that means leaving a job. Maybe that means making small changes in your diet or going for a walk. But I want to invite people right now to look at their kids and ask the question,

am I being the best possible role model for him? Because I think that that is real power, and that's a little personal ritual that you can do, right? And I think that, you know, when you do that type of exercise, don't hold yourself in, you know, in judgment, you know, just remove the judgment and the shame of whatever. Yeah. Just say, I can choose to do something different right now.

You know, I can choose to tune in and I can stop. was my son once sometimes. Stop working. Stop looking at my phone and just be totally present there. And that's something that I can do. And that little moment, you know, will have way more impact than potentially 10 dad's speeches I might give him as he grows up. Without a doubt. Being present and undivided attention.

And they want that. my son asked me for that and if I'm holding myself in judgment now, you know, it is something that I should work on and, uh, and I do. And, and I will as soon as this, this, uh, this is done. Yeah. It's interesting. Like, I'm a fan of Aldous Huxley. And if you look at his books, like you can kind of see his trajectory where it, in my opinion, I have no basis for this except my own opinion of it, but, you know, you see a move from like the doors of perception to brave new world to the island. And in Brave New World, he sees psychedelics as sort of an escapism, as sort of the soma is a way in which you can disassociate from society so that you can continue on in society.

But then when you look at the island, he tells stories of children that are like 11 or 12 and they have a mentor and they climb this mountain and sit at a church and understand what's possible. Do you think that it's possible that we could go in one of those two directions with psychedelics? Can it become a disassociative that pushes society in the wrong? way versus being something that moves society in the right way? I think all things are possible. Well said. I think that that's why it's important to be intentional.

Yeah. You know, to be aware, be honest with what's happening. You know, I don't think it's, you know, disassociation, while it can be, you know, wonderful, you know, therapeutic process, can also be a harm. consequence if you disassociate from your emotions you know if you don't feel that's that's not living yeah and i i do think that there's a potential for that and you know we need to explore it we need to understand it more and and you know and especially in our western models uh where it's not really integrated into the fabric of of who we really are and we who we've been for forever and ever and ever

it's even more important to follow our Western ways of discernment, right? Yeah. We should study it, collect the data, understand, talk about, you know, pre-existing conditions that might not make this suitable, so on and so forth. And, you know, do no harm. Try not to. Yeah, the Hippocratic oath, right? I, Eric, our hour flew by like that, man.

Boom. That's what happens when you have good conversations, man. It's fun. It's engaging in much like a psychedelic experience. Time is but an illusion in these conversations. It just flies right by. But before I let you go, man, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about?

So I'm very excited about my law firm. A whole law and law partners. We're a cloud-based law firm. We're remote, which really means we're everywhere. And our lawyers are building a community. in this space that's intentional. We want to be at those points of impact in the world. We're not all doing psychedelic law.

We're doing a variety of different things, but we are very intentional, and we're trying to create community within us and outside of us. And, you know, check us out if you need support, but just get to know us even if you don't. I'm on LinkedIn. That's where I primarily do professional stuff.

so you can find me there or whatever. I'm around. Yeah, I would encourage everybody to go and check out the whole on. It seems to me that your ability to be meaningful and intention is going to create a better area for people to dialogue in and construct great arguments and construct great community. So I'm really thankful that you and your team are out there doing these things. So go down to the show notes, ladies and gentlemen, and check it all out. That's all we got for today.

What was the name of that book by Pock? I will get it to you after. I didn't blanking on the name, but I'll get it for you. Okay, and then we'll put in the show notes, ladies and gentlemen. I hope everyone has a beautiful day. Go check out Eric. Check out Hold on Law Firm, and that's all we got for today. Hold on briefly afterwards.

I'll talk to you shortly. But ladies and gentlemen, aloha. Off.