TrueLife - The Purpose of Tragedy: Unleashing Psychedelic Healing to Defy Suffering

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

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/“The road of life is Ricky & you may stumble too...” Bob Marley  Have you ever had to deal with a life lesson that brought you to your knees. It seems to me that everyone has or will be blindsided by tragedy. For me it was the death of my son Ocean. This is not a story in which I seek sympathy from the listener, nor is it a story of sadness. It is a story of relationship. A story of rebirth. A story of a father who’s son gave him the gift of a life worth living One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Aloha, everybody. How's it? Just coming to you guys here on a beautiful Friday. It looks like we made it. Friday, did you guys make it to Friday? you guys better better than you were on Monday looking forward to the weekend

spending some time with your family and friends I know I am but uh just in a little walk-and-talk we're down here a white man give you guys a little view of what we got going on over here and I just want to talk a little bit today about a teachers leaders mentors maybe a little bit about loss of life keep it kind of surreal You know, I'm going to tell you a story about a teacher I had in fifth grade. You know, one of the first lessons I learned from one of my teachers, Mr. Smith, me and my buddy Josh, we were setting up this soccer team. Mr. Smith said, okay, we're going to divide up the class and we're going to divide it up in half.

And whoever wins this soccer game, you're going to pick teams and whoever wins the soccer team, whoever wins the soccer game, they get no homework. And he told us that on Monday, and the game was going to be on Friday. So me and my buddy Josh, we decided that, you know what, we're going to pick the best team possible. So we went to all the best soccer players. We went to David Pinder, one of the best guys out there. Then we went and hit up Jennifer Mons, hands down, one of the best girls soccer players. And we started developing this team.

But I was kind of a lippy kid, you know, and probably a little bit irrational, like all kids. And Mr. Smith kind of got wind of it. He kind of saw what we were doing. And he saw we were stacking the dead. and he saw how it made the other kids feel that didn't get picked on our team. So when Friday came, it was time to pick teams and Mr. Smith went, okay, you know who the captains are going to be?

George and Josh, he split us up. And I was kind of heartbroken because I had my whole mindset on winning this soccer game and being the cool guy and doing what I'm supposed to do. And it was going to be so much fun. We're going to win, not have homework. And so I was like, all right, all right,

we'll just have to figure it out. And so he goes, Josh, you get to pick first out of the boys. And sure enough, Josh picks David Pender. And I'm like, oh, man, that's a tough loss right there. So I'm like, that's all right. I'll probably get first pick out of the girls. I'll just pick Jennifer and we'll even it up. But then Mr. Smith threw me a curveball.

And he goes, Josh, you also get to pick first out of the girls. And I was like, what? Wait a minute. This is not fair. And then he threw me another curveball. And he let Josh pick twice for the guys and twice for the guys. girls and so I you know I picked my team and at the end of the class I was pretty upset so I waited till everybody left after class and I went up to Mr. Smith's desk and I said Mr. Smith

and he looked at me kind of yeah George is there a problem I go yeah there's a problem I you know what I don't think it's very fair that you let Josh pick from the boys and the girls twice it's not very fair and Mr. Smith just looked at me and he goes well you know what George life's not fair he's like I did that a reason. I saw what you were doing and he's like, that kind of attitude in life is the wrong attitude. So I hope that you can learn this lesson. Now go home. And I was so mad. I was so upset for so long. But as I got older in life, I realized how much of a lesson that guy taught me. Like that was a great teacher. That was a teacher that cared about not only the kids in class, but, you know, he cared

about what kids were going to be later in life. And I think that there's a lot of those good teachers out there. And, you know, for guys my age or girls my age, you know, we've, we've been lucky. And I think all of us on some level have been luckier than others, but we've all had some heartache and some troubles. But for those of us that are older, I think it's our time to start being good teachers. You know, it's our time to try to think about those lessons that we learned when we were younger. You know, think about that teacher that inspired you. Think about maybe was there a neighbor or a teacher or was there somebody that did something for you that was totally unexpected that maybe you didn't like at the time but later in life you

figured out wow that person really cared so if you could think about that you know try and try and relive that memory and once you've relived that memory try to remember how you felt at that moment and once you've done that start thinking about how you can do that for somebody else You know, I've also been reading a lot of biographies lately. And, you know, it's so interesting. If you find somebody like an author you like or somebody's life you were inspired by, and they've written an autobiography to read that book and understand about the trials and tribulations, and if it's a good one, they'll really go into depth about some of the losses they've had

and what shaped them as a person. But one thing that I have found when it comes to, the end of life and all these autobiographies or the biographies I've written. You know what the one thing? There's one thing that people never say on their deathbed. There's one thing that people never talk about when their last breath. You know what that one thing is? That one thing is, I wish I had more money.

They don't ever say that. Never, never, never do they say that? What they say is, you know what? I wish I would have been a better father. You know what? I wish I would have spent more time with my family. You know what? I wish I would have been there for my daughter.

You know what? I wish I would have been a better husband. I treated people horrible. You know, at the end of the day, when you're laying on that bed, all the biographies I've read, you know what they say? I wish I would have done this thing better for people I love. You know, and it brings me to my point that, you know, there's so much, there's so much like pain right now in the world. And it seems to be centered around money. It seems to be centered around materialism.

But money has a discount rate. And what I mean by that is the older you get, the less money is worth to you. Think about it. The older you get, the less money's worth. Right? And you're going to spend your whole,

some of us spend our whole life chasing this, this dream. Like this, the media tells us like, hey, man, you want to be cool? Drive this Tesla. Hey, you want to have this girl? You should drink this beer.

You want to be a man, you've got to smoke this kind of cigarette. And if we don't take time to think about, ourselves, if we don't take time to think critically about life, there's a lot of people who are paid lots of money to think for us. And that's what the whole media is kind of doing right now. You know, they're telling you what to think and how to think. And it's easy. It's easy to listen to other people and go, well, that's probably what's happening. But that's not what's happening. Only you get to decide what's happening. You know, I had written,

After reading a lot of the autobiographies, I had written down this little part of a poem. It says, do not go gently into the good night, but rage, rage into the dying of the light. You know, I hope that everybody gets an opportunity. They say the first 40 years, things happen to you. In the next 40 years, you get to kind of reflect on those things and see what you learned. But if there's some of you out there right now that aren't quite satisfied with what's going on, I hope you take a chance whatever you've been dreaming of

whatever you've been thinking of just take a chance at it you can make it happen I know that for a fact also too I know I've talked a little bit about Father's Day about how important relationships are and how

important our fathers are and how important it is for a father-daughter relationship or a father-son relationship you know for some of those for some of us maybe they didn't have a father around or the father's deployed or something like that, a lot of times you can be a mentor,

especially as a, as someone with experience, whether you're a man or you're a woman, there's a kid out there that's probably waiting to look up to you. There's probably a lot you can teach them. And when you teach somebody something, you just get this feeling of like, and the kid learns it, you can ask any coach or any teacher or any mentor.

When you show somebody a lesson and they learn from that lesson, the feeling you get is, it's worth more than anything you can think of. It's just awe-inspiring. Yeah, I saw a post today from this guy I know Darren Mosley. This guy just driver used to work with. And he put this post up about his son and made me want to cry.

You know what? So inspired by so many people that I see on Facebook. And speaking of that, I want to say thanks to everybody. I've been doing this for like about a month. And I've got some people from the Ukraine calling me. And, you know, if you go on Facebook, they'll show you your analytics and stuff. These videos have reached over 50,000 people. That's so mind-blowing to me.

And I love you guys. In fact, do this exercise. Stick your hands out, like, as wide as you can. Right? As wide as you can. Are they all the way out? Because see, that's how much I love you right there. So I've talked about a little bit about teachers and mentors and leaders.

And, you know, I wanted to tell you, this story right here. And I'm going to tell you guys a story, but the story, I don't want sympathy for this story. It's a sad story. It's going to be sad, but it's not meant to make you feel bad for me because it's going to be sad, but then I'm going to show you how it inspired me. So when my son, Ocean, January 3rd, 2011, you know, my wife and I, and all you guys know this, your first kid, right? You're, you're prepping, you're going to the babies are Russ, and you're getting the new stroll and you're looking at the $1,200 bugaboo,

being like, oh, I wish I could afford that. You know, when your friends are buying you these new napkins with maybe you're monogrammed on there and bibs and you're picking out baby clothes and you're trying to figure out, hey, are we going to find out if it's a boy or a girl? You know, you're going to get that ultrasound or do you want to know?

Are we going to wait? What are we going to do? And so my wife and I, you know, we were kind of just joking about it, just doing what people do who are about to have their first child. And I'm like, oh, I can feel it. It's going to be a little baby boy.

I know it. I know it. My wife's like, no, it's a girl. I can totally feel it. And so we go to the ultrasound and, you know, we had to go a couple times. And the doctor's like, I just can't get a good read on it, you know. And finally one day he goes, he gets a, ah, I can't get a good read, but it's a girl. It's a girl.

Like, I didn't care, you know, as long as the baby was healthy, that's all it mattered to me. And so, you know, when you're first going to have this child and you're, you're, waiting for like you're totally waiting for the water to break you got the car packed you're you're on edge and your wife's nervous and you know she's you see your wife just glowing and she's carrying this life and you get to feel the baby's bump in the stomach and you're like oh it's my kid kicking i can't wait to like teach this kid to serve or get them out there teach him some lessons and you're just thinking about how beautiful life is hopefully that's how it is for you and so nine months in my wife and i went to go grab like some food and like she's like hey george i think some

that's happening. I'm like, really? She goes, yeah, I think we should go to the doctor. Like, it feels kind of weird. I'm like, all right, all right. So we shoot home. We grab the bag. You know, we have our little go bag in the car. And then we shoot down to Queens Hospital and we go to like the emergency room. And like, I'm talking to my wife. I'm like, are you sure this is ready? I didn't see your water break or anything. And she's like, there's, there's something happening. And like, like, it was weird. It was like the whole energy in the room changed a little bit. And so we're in the emergency room and they bring us into the office. We're like, we had our own delivery room.

Queens is a great hospital and we go in there and they call the doctor and like my wife's, you know, they hook up the ultrasound and stuff. And then like, so our doctor wasn't there. They had to call the doctor, but the emergency doctors come in and like, the guy comes in and he hooks her up to that, to like the sonogram where you can see the baby. And like, he starts like, you can see his face change. and I look at him and the whole air came out of the room. And have you guys ever been in a situation where time stopped? Because that's what happened to me. And like the baby's heart's beating, right?

And the baby's heart stops beating. And it stops beating. And the baby's not moving. And my wife's looking at the, you know, she's looking at the sonogram. And I'm looking at the sonogram. And I My wife and I watched our son die Whoa

It's hard to talk about this Hard to talk about it But it's important because I'm going to get somewhere So stay with me And so The doctor comes My wife starts crying I start crying

The nurse comes over and starts talking to my wife And the doctor pulls me aside And says Mr. Monti I'm sorry But Your son died or your child died, you know, I'm going to give you some time, but what's going to happen, Mr. Monti, is your wife's water's going to break, and she's going to deliver the child,

and you need to start making some hard choices about what's going to happen. And I can't even hear, like, I can barely hear this guy's words over the voices in my head screaming to me, like, are you kidding me? Like, every dream I've had, everything in my life that I've ever thought about, Just gone. Everything. Like, can you imagine? Like, imagine losing something like that.

And so I go, what kind of choices? What are you talking about? And he's like, well, when the baby's born, would you like us to incubate the baby and put the beanie on them and bring them in here for you guys to hold so you can spend some time with them? I gotta take a knee for a minute.

Like, think about that question. You need. No, like I know my child's dead and you want to hold your dead child? Yeah, hell yeah, I want to, you know? Is it morbid? Maybe? I don't know. And so, you know, my, sure enough, as we're talking, my wife's water breaks and then the contraction start.

And, you know, my, we went to LaMau's class, man. You know what? You know what? You know, like you count the one, two, three, four, five, six, and then you breathe. And so, you know, I grabbed her hand and we start doing the Lamas and the contractions are coming faster. And I'm like, breathe, breathe, you know. And for anybody that's been lucky enough to see in the miracle of childbirth, like, all of a sudden you start to see the baby emerge and like, you know, it's such a fucking goddamn crazy thing. Like I know my child's dead, but I still see him being born.

And like, you know, I told you earlier we weren't sure if it was a boy or girl. So the last push my wife got sweating. You know, the baby comes out and it's a baby boy, you know. We named emotion. And, you know, we held them for like, man. Felt like 10 hours, but it was, I don't even know. It was hours. And then finally the doctors came in and they're like, hey, we, I'm sorry.

But, you know, it's been a long time. We need to, we need to take the baby. and that's the sad part, okay? That's the sad part. But here's where you can learn from adversity. Here's where you dig down and you find some strength deep, deep, deep down. First up, there's no, one quick tip. There's no words, there's no emotions.

There's no nothing that will ever, ever, ever feel that void from somebody who's lost a child or, you know what, even a loved one. lost someone close to you, there's nothing that will ever in the world fill that void. And so if you find yourself in a situation where you lose somebody, this is a tip before I get to the good part. If you find yourself in that situation, there's no words that'll help you, but this will help you. You tell everyone you know, all your contacts on your phone, all your Facebook friends, all your family, all your family's family, all your family across whatever. Every single person you know, you call them and you tell them. Not to help you, he's, he's,

not to help you get your sorrow out or not to talk about it because what will guaranteed happen guaranteed is that someone along the way in a year or two years or five or 10 years when you begin to heal someone you didn't tell you're going to run into them and they're going to ask you about that loved one that died and you're going to be you're going to be have you're going to be past it a little bit and that person's going to hey how's how's your son ocean doing and the emotions are going to hit you like a ton of bricks like you've never been hit before like you've just been had the world dropped on you and everything comes flooding back and you have to relive that experience but if you tell everybody you know

you can't stop that experience from happening but you can mitigate it you can make sure that it happens very few times because i could tell you i can tell you from experience that's a tough point. Okay. So sorry to bum you out there. A couple years ago, it was a guy at my work. This guy named David, his daughter died. You know, and I hadn't seen him around for a while. And look, I know a lot of you guys and girls, you're like me. Like, you go out and you talk to people and you make friends with them and you connect with them on a unique level. And I hadn't seen David around for a while, so I started asking around. And this girl Lisa told me, hey, David's daughter died. And there was this big box where everybody at work was, you know, writing condolence cards and,

you know, saying things and just trying to spread their love and aloha to them. And I wrote down what I just told you guys, like, to tell everybody you want. Tell, please tell everybody, because here's what's going to happen. And sure enough, you know, he spent some time out because it's a, it's a heavy blow. But about a month and a half later, I seen him at work. The guy comes running up to me, Dude almost tackles me and hugs me. He starts crying. I started crying. And he's like, dude, George,

so many people told me so many things. So many people. And I love them all. And they try to help. But what you told me, George, about telling everybody? It's the only thing that really made a difference. He's like, don't get me wrong. I love everybody.

I know they're trying to support it. But he's like, before you had talk to me, I already had one person come up and ask about my daughter. And so it was a conversation that me and my wife had about telling all our contacts and all our friends and all the people in our lives about the loss that we had. And it was a powerful moment. It was a powerful moment.

And sometimes here's where it's going to get, I hope even a little bit more uplifting. In moments of tragedy, in moments of incredible loss, that's when you find out who you are. That's when you find out what you can overcome. That's when you find out, out all the lessons you've learned in life, that's when you find out if they mean something

to you. That's when you find out, dig down deep. How much do you got? How much can you take? And you start thinking a different way. You know, that's the, that's the rebirth. On that day, I died and I was reborn. My wife died and she was reborn. And I was reborn better. And so was my wife. And our relationship's never been better, never been stronger. Because what can hurt you after someone, what can possibly hurt you after you've lost everything. Nothing can hurt you. Not somebody's words, that someone's attitude, not a loss of money, not a loss of your house, nothing.

You're almost invincible. And in a way, that was my son's gift to me. My son's gift to my wife was like, look, I can't be here with you, but I'm going to show you what life is. I can't be with you. You don't get to see me grow, but I'm going to give you a lifetime of, lessons in a day. And that's what happened. And one of the revelations I've had is that everything that happens to you in your life, everything, even the most tragic things, that's because there's

some bigger force out there that believes you are the person to handle it. Not only does the world or God or Muhammad or whatever bigger force you truly believe in. Not only did that force make this tragedy or thing happen to you, but it made it happen to you for a reason. And that reason is so that if it happens to anybody else, you can be an ambassador and make that other person heal. The world, when it forces you to have tragedies, is telling you how much it loves you. It's saying, look, I believe you're strong enough to go and help people. I'm going to let this happen to you so you can overcome it and teach other people how to do it.

And that's why I shared that story with you guys today. It's tough for me because I don't really talk about that too much. And listen, that story is not for, I don't want, I'm not asking for sympathy like that. But what I do want is for each one of you to understand that the tragedies that happen to you in your life happen to you out of love. They happen to you because the world thinks you're strong enough to handle it. And not only that, but the world thinks you're strong enough to go out and teach other people how to handle it. So the next time you get hit with something hard, hey, take a knee for a minute. sit down for a little bit, really think about what happened.

And after you overcome all the grief, start thinking about how you can help other people that might go through that. Start thinking about what you can do, what you've learned from that. You know, just because someone's gone doesn't mean you got to, you can sit around and not make them proud. Like that's still my son. I still got to make them proud. I know some guys that recently lost their mom.

Guess what? You still got to make her proud. Right? she's still there. She's there in here and in here. You know what I mean? She'll always be with you. My son will always be with me.

And you know what? I love you guys. Thank you for everything you do and I'll always be with you. All right? That's kind of a deep one today. So I didn't mean to get too deep. But I see the world right now kind of changing. And I think once we get through this,

this is going to change for the better. And it starts with all of us believing in ourselves and kind of dying and being reborn a better. person. I love you guys, man. And I've learned so much from each and every one of you. All right. So take one last shot of the bay right here and know that this weekend is your weekend. Know that this weekend, whoever's in your life, do whenever you see them today, just go grab them and hug them, kiss them on the cheek, tell them how important they are. Start writing in your journal about all the people you love. Be a better mentor. Help someone today. Help a stranger.

Help your son. Help your daughter. Help your mom. Help your dad. When someone asks you for help, even if you ain't got time, just do it. Just help them. You know what I mean? If you see somebody that's afraid to ask for help, go help them too. All right?

I love you guys. Aloha.