Speaker 1: You know, the FDA is called psilocybin therapy as a
Speaker 1: breakthrough therapy, right and has fast tracked that through the FT.
Speaker 1: And that's because there are so many studies. This has
Speaker 1: been the most studied psychiatric medicine in the history of psychiatry,
Speaker 1: right in fifties and sixties, of one hundred thousand participants
Speaker 1: in over a thousand studies and recently studies by John Hopkins, Harvard,
Speaker 1: Imperial College of London. You name it, over many different psychedelics,
Speaker 1: over many different ailments, PTSD, depression, even physical ailments. It
Speaker 1: seems like it's a panacea of such a broad benefit
Speaker 1: to whatever it is. We get people who are some
Speaker 1: of the top performing CEOs in the world, right, Silicon
Speaker 1: value uniforms, Unicorn startups, vcs, et cetera. We also get
Speaker 1: combat veterans with complex PTSD. We get first responders, we
Speaker 1: get teachers, we get starving artists, and everybody comes for
Speaker 1: their own unique reason.
Speaker 2: So welcome to this anther life.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to have on the program with me today,
Speaker 3: Austin Mao, so really really thrilled to talk with you.
Speaker 3: You're a serial entrepreneur, author, a poet, and a co
Speaker 3: founder of Ceremonial, which is a spiritual sanctuary out in
Speaker 3: the wonderful city of Denver, Colorado, which I love very much.
Speaker 3: And what you offer here is these really interesting transformative
Speaker 3: experiences that are pulling in a bunch of different kinds
Speaker 3: of holistic healing modalities and pathways, including with psychedelics like
Speaker 3: hyahuasca and psilocybin. What brings a lot of these together,
Speaker 3: I think is this connection between kind of science and
Speaker 3: spirituality when you talk about kind of pulling in ancient
Speaker 3: to shamanism and modern wisdom. So all that to say, Austin,
Speaker 3: excited to have you on the pod, and thanks.
Speaker 2: For joining me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Adam. Really happy to be here. Yeah, excited
Speaker 1: to chat with an anthropologist. I was just with a
Speaker 1: dear friend Eric and Beads, who like was number two
Speaker 1: to Tony Robbins and he's an anthropologist and just having
Speaker 1: this wealth of knowledge of how we came to be
Speaker 1: who we are today, the collective we It was so fascinating.
Speaker 1: Every time I opened up a topic with him, I hoped.
Speaker 2: It kind of hang in with that that level of cool.
Speaker 3: I think that you know that idea too, in terms
Speaker 3: of how do we think about both our own stories
Speaker 3: and the collective we and the and the individual eye
Speaker 3: is one of the really profound areas that spirituality helps
Speaker 3: us think about. And so as part of that, I'd
Speaker 3: love to kind of get your your own take, you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes to talk about this as your superhero origin story,
Speaker 3: but just you know, how do you find yourself moving
Speaker 3: from kind of tech entrepreneurship into this this kind of
Speaker 3: space that brings together science and spirituality and then ultimately
Speaker 3: to opening an up entheogenic church.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my story is one of happenstance and circumstance. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I was invited to a retreat in Ayahuascar,
Speaker 1: retreat for founders, and at that time I already had
Speaker 1: a bunch of recreational psychedelic experiences, so I had a
Speaker 1: chip on my shoulder. I remember reading the prep documents
Speaker 1: and events and I'm sitting there in a restaurant in
Speaker 1: Mexico and it's like, take this seriously, right, Like do
Speaker 1: this diet, do this thing, don't drink caffeine, don't drink alcohol.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, this is stupid. I closed
Speaker 1: the laptop and I took a sip of my Margarita.
Speaker 1: And so going into the retreat, I was in this
Speaker 1: frame of mind of I'm here for a networking opportunity,
Speaker 1: and if you've ever sat in ceremony, let me tell
Speaker 1: you that is not a networking opportunity, right. So it
Speaker 1: was in the second ceremony that my life completely changed.
Speaker 1: Before that ceremony, I had very little recollection of my memory.
Speaker 1: In a morning workshop, the facilitator said, recollect a memory
Speaker 1: of you as a child that was really impactful for you.
Speaker 1: And there's something weird about my brain because what it
Speaker 1: went to is a memory of me in front of
Speaker 1: an electrical outlet as a little baby and then putting
Speaker 1: my penis inside of it and getting zapped, and and
Speaker 1: my and my mom was like, Okay, well he's never
Speaker 1: doing that again. But everything before and after was like
Speaker 1: a fog was blank, you know, and and and so
Speaker 1: I got curious about that, like even a couple months back,
Speaker 1: and my memory was was really foggy. So under the medicine,
Speaker 1: I started reliving my my memories in vivid detail. Like
Speaker 1: I could remember turning my locker combination in school, I
Speaker 1: could remember the books that I read. I could remember
Speaker 1: my first kiss and just like, you know, how you're
Speaker 1: in a dream and it's it's not like you're observing
Speaker 1: it on his screen and you're like living the thing. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what was happening for me in my in
Speaker 1: my revisiting of my memory, going back and back in
Speaker 1: time until I was it was completely dark, I was
Speaker 1: under sheets, I was a child, and then I felt
Speaker 1: horny and I popped up and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is weird. There's no outlet around here. And then
Speaker 1: when I went back in, I realized I was sexually
Speaker 1: touched by someone, my mother's boyfriend at the time, and
Speaker 1: I was completely unaware. And it was such a huge aha,
Speaker 1: because at that moment it became clear to me why
Speaker 1: I repressed all of my memory. I threw the baby
Speaker 1: out with the bathwater, you know, And it was that
Speaker 1: one traumatic incident that led me to feel guilt and
Speaker 1: shame and confusion and pleasure and all these things a
Speaker 1: four year old would have known nothing to do with.
Speaker 1: And I started going forward in time and seeing how
Speaker 1: I was a bully as a kid, had sexual confusion
Speaker 1: as a teenager. I couldn't keep relationships because I just
Speaker 1: simply couldn't remember all the good times we created together,
Speaker 1: you know, all the way forward in time to this moment,
Speaker 1: to that moment where I was on a yoga matt
Speaker 1: in the jungle, surrounded by forty nine other founders going
Speaker 1: through their own process. There was some guy that was
Speaker 1: running around naked screaming, and I was like, Okay, that's weird.
Speaker 1: And I had these tears in my eyes and I
Speaker 1: told the shaman, the facilitator at the time, what happened.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. And I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. I feel like I was secured of Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: like this gaping hole, this black hole of memory that
Speaker 1: I didn't have. And then all of a sudden came
Speaker 1: flooding back, and that moment was the beginning of the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. I started writing again. It's now
Speaker 1: one of my great passions in life. I repaired my
Speaker 1: relationship with my bomb, I repaired my relationship with ex girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and a major ex girlfriend was now one of my
Speaker 1: closest friends. Like on and on and on, and just
Speaker 1: who I was before. It wasn't like a new chapter
Speaker 1: in my life. It was a It was a new
Speaker 1: sequel to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's really powerful.
Speaker 3: I thank you for sharing that and being vulnerable and
Speaker 3: sharing that as well, because I think that's something that
Speaker 3: it strikes me because I've I've both sat for ayahuasca
Speaker 3: and psilocybin ceremonies as well, and you know, the first
Speaker 3: time I did ayahuasca too. I just moved to Peru
Speaker 3: for for Fieldberg actually for for PhD research.
Speaker 2: You know, I was gonna be there for a couple
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 3: And and I happened to accidentally move in with with
Speaker 3: a shaman. I mean, I rented a room from from
Speaker 3: his mother in terms out he lived there too, And
Speaker 3: it's also there's the aauska ceremonies.
Speaker 2: In my living room every two weeks.
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, it was this uh you know, funny
Speaker 3: how the universe works sometimes, you know. But there's this
Speaker 3: moment I remember too, because like I was feeling this
Speaker 3: this profound sense of loneliness because like I just I'm leaving,
Speaker 3: like I guess the sequel kind of like leaving this
Speaker 3: this other world my life that I've lived up to
Speaker 3: that moment and moving to a whole new space. And
Speaker 3: you know, that idea around the notions of memories and
Speaker 3: like who we are and things that we kind of
Speaker 3: either repressed or put off or like to protect ourselves.
Speaker 3: Is a really you know both on one of the hand,
Speaker 3: powerful mechanism that we have to help help ourselves heal
Speaker 3: and to move on. But then at the same time,
Speaker 3: when we could see plant medicines like this that offer
Speaker 3: us ways to kind of reconnect or retouch, rekind of
Speaker 3: revisit those pieces, and I recall something like that too,
Speaker 3: is that, you know, I was leaving my you know
Speaker 3: again this this again profound sense of like do I
Speaker 3: feel very disconnected from my past in this sense?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And then I remember at this like the like kind
Speaker 3: of you know, peak moments there. It was like I
Speaker 3: was a you know, sitting there in the bathroom by myself, crying,
Speaker 3: and then my family came to.
Speaker 2: Visit me as balloons.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they were balloons, but they you know,
Speaker 3: they floated by and they're just like my grandfather passed away,
Speaker 3: you know, came and said, hey, joint, you know that
Speaker 3: we're still I'm still here with you, and I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, bowling, but also just like this amazing sense
Speaker 3: of like unity right as part of the power of
Speaker 3: the medicine too, of like kids, like, it's okay to
Speaker 3: let go of those things and your loneliness in like
Speaker 3: the fear, because we're actually all here with you anyway.
Speaker 3: And so I'm wondering about this too in terms of
Speaker 3: the idea of your story too, of like the idea
Speaker 3: of unification or kind of you know, I'll think about
Speaker 3: integration slightly separately, But unification in terms of bringing our
Speaker 3: kind of whole selves back is is that something is
Speaker 3: that kind of how you feel the experience works are, like,
Speaker 3: that's one of the potential powers of these kinds of
Speaker 3: medicines is to kind of help bring about our the
Speaker 3: rest of ourselves back together again.
Speaker 2: Like how do you think about them?
Speaker 1: You know, first of all, I'm just gonna say, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go deep with that, okay, And I I'm I
Speaker 1: have an assumption as story of your listeners that they
Speaker 1: are deep listeners too. So I think of there being
Speaker 1: three qualities to this concept we know as enlightenment, right.
Speaker 1: Those three qualities are wholeness, nothingness, and oneness slash allness.
Speaker 1: Wholeness being the complete reintegration of all the parts of
Speaker 1: ourselves that we've repressed, we've projected out, we've suppressed. Right,
Speaker 1: So all the all the grief, all the anger, the shame,
Speaker 1: all the guilt, all the voices inside of us, the
Speaker 1: parts that carry the burdens of I'm not good enough
Speaker 1: or you know, I don't matter, or I'm ugly or
Speaker 1: you know, those like really tender, inner child, wounded, inner
Speaker 1: child voices in internal family systems we call exiled parts.
Speaker 1: Bringing those back into the fold in this integration of self.
Speaker 1: I think of nothingness or emptiness as what Ramdas calls
Speaker 1: becoming nobody, right, And Ramdas says, you've got to become
Speaker 1: somebody in order to become nobody. And what that is
Speaker 1: is it's a releasing of our identity, because every time
Speaker 1: you interact with the outside world, you're holding an identity. Right,
Speaker 1: I get into and we're constantly shifting identities. It was
Speaker 1: just Father's Day yesterday, by the way, Happy Father's Day
Speaker 1: to you. And and you know you have an identity
Speaker 1: with your newborn and that's now as a caretaker as
Speaker 1: a father. Right, you get in the passenger's seat of
Speaker 1: a car, now you have an identity as a passenger.
Speaker 1: So on and so forth, Right, and The way that we
Speaker 1: interact with things is we interact through the lens of
Speaker 1: our identity. So if I'm holding money and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the stack of cash in my hands, how I
Speaker 1: feel about that cash is through the prism of my
Speaker 1: identity to identify as a poor man or a rich man,
Speaker 1: a successful man, or a struggling man, et cetera, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 1: by relaxing our identities, we are able to embrace the
Speaker 1: world with greater openness. Right. And a very obvious one
Speaker 1: is let's say Christians versus Islam or something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's like, okay, if I relax my identity of
Speaker 1: this religion or Republican Democrat. Let's say I relax my
Speaker 1: identity as a republican or democrat, then I'm able to
Speaker 1: embrace the ideas of the other with greater openness.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And the third level is oneness or allness, which is
Speaker 1: encoded into our church's belief It's the connection through the
Speaker 1: divinity of all things. What in Hindu culture they call
Speaker 1: it my Brahma, the God transcend the God imminent, which
Speaker 1: is the God or divinity within, the God transcendent, which
Speaker 1: is divinity without or in Christianity, the Holy spirits, and
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, the Holy spirit. Right. So these three
Speaker 1: qualities I think are worked on by different psychedelics. I
Speaker 1: believe that psilocybin and ayahuasca are really good at wholeness. Right.
Speaker 1: For example, the pathway to wholeness is hard. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to you get to confront parts of yourself that
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I didn't know that even existed, and
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't want to see that thing, right. Ketamine
Speaker 1: Have you ever used ketamine before?
Speaker 2: I have?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I think ketamine.
Speaker 2: That extensively, so I don't have a ton of experience
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a dissociative, it produces out of body experiences.
Speaker 1: It's federally legal as of twenty nineteen. And I believe
Speaker 1: ketamine works on the level of nothingness or emptiness, like
Speaker 1: we get out of ourselves and float in et there
Speaker 1: in the in the silence between things. And then I
Speaker 1: think that LSD works particularly well on the level of
Speaker 1: oneness or unitary consciousness, you know, like feeling this deep
Speaker 1: intimate connection with all living things and all existence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful and that was a deepest that was
Speaker 2: great and I love it. Thank you.
Speaker 3: For showing that because I think that is there there
Speaker 3: is something there that I mean, I say that resonates,
Speaker 3: that resonates.
Speaker 2: A lot in terms of breaking that down, And.
Speaker 3: It's kind of crazy to me just to think about
Speaker 3: this this fact too, that like that there are certain
Speaker 3: substances and LSD is obviously drived, you know, but like
Speaker 3: but it's you know, came from urgat, I think, right,
Speaker 3: And so that's interesting, like there's there are these these plants,
Speaker 3: does kind of meine have a natural or a plant version.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if there is a purely chemical Actually
Speaker 3: it's again I'm not a chemist. I don't I believe
Speaker 3: it's purely chemical, but I'm also not a that's interesting
Speaker 3: to kind of to realize that meaningly, like right, that
Speaker 3: there are certain receptors and pieces of our neurochemistry in
Speaker 3: our brains that can work with these different subs, is right,
Speaker 3: that can then provide these these kind of levels of
Speaker 3: effects that we, on the one hand can't deny.
Speaker 2: I guess because part of it too.
Speaker 3: Think it's interesting because people you know, I've heard too
Speaker 3: that where it's like you know, meditation is is there's
Speaker 3: many pathways to enlighten, right, in many pathways up the mountain,
Speaker 3: as it were, right, meditation is one way that you
Speaker 3: can kind of like wend your way up psychedelics.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The metaphor I like sometimes is that it catapults you
Speaker 3: over the maze right into the center for a second,
Speaker 3: for a little bit, then you actually back out again, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, and totally you know, like that's interesting that
Speaker 3: there's there's not only different modalities, but different speeds at
Speaker 3: which at which people would go and and I think velocities,
Speaker 3: you know, is part of that as well. And I
Speaker 3: think there's there's something like really important about uh, the
Speaker 3: kind of resurgence I guess of psychedelics into mental health
Speaker 3: and into approaching questions and things like enlightenment today that
Speaker 3: we you know, have seen of course all of these
Speaker 3: we know, psilocybin you know, and has has a long
Speaker 3: history of practice in uh Central South America, ayahuasca in Peru,
Speaker 3: you know, in another places like eboge in Africa, right,
Speaker 3: you know, an LC and kedemine that came through us
Speaker 3: through some of the magic of chemistry today. And there's
Speaker 3: really interesting kind of pieces that there's a long history there,
Speaker 3: but like they're all kind of coming together now, I
Speaker 3: think in these interesting ways, you know, And so I
Speaker 3: think the ceremony and the work that you're doing there
Speaker 3: too is is kind of one pathway in one literal
Speaker 3: place right where we can help see the different modalities
Speaker 3: come together. And so I'm kind of curious to think
Speaker 3: about that. You know, you have different pathways that you
Speaker 3: work with, folks, So I mean, hey, I want to
Speaker 3: talk about what what what you do with ceremonial and
Speaker 3: then we kind of talk to some of the different
Speaker 3: transformative pathways that you that you work on there, because
Speaker 3: I'm kind of curious how you integrate different healing modalities,
Speaker 3: medicines and other kind of practices as part of that.
Speaker 2: So let's start a little bit like what is what what?
Speaker 2: What is ceremonial to you? And how does it? How
Speaker 2: does it work?
Speaker 1: So we recently launched a podcast called Modern Enlightenment, and
Speaker 1: this idea of it, it's really under the idea that
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, if you wanted to reach enlightenment,
Speaker 1: which is you know, often related to as a as
Speaker 1: an ex infinite feeling of peace and joy and love
Speaker 1: and gratitude. Right. Who doesn't want to feel that? Right?
Speaker 1: But in order to do that, you'd have to be
Speaker 1: a horny monk on the mountaintop, right, Yeah, and really bold,
Speaker 1: right for decades, and then with the discovery or sort
Speaker 1: of the modern discovery of psychedelics versus in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, and then now in the resurgence in what
Speaker 1: we often relate to as the psychedelic renaissance. Now like
Speaker 1: there are more accelerated options, right. But what's what's really
Speaker 1: interesting is that we're in what's called the third wave
Speaker 1: of psychology. The first wave was pavlov I ring a bell,
Speaker 1: dog salivates, Oh, humans are the same way, right, Come
Speaker 1: here for dinner, you guys. The second is cognitive behavioral therapy,
Speaker 1: this idea that our thoughts can influence our feelings, right.
Speaker 1: And the third wave is this more integrated model, which
Speaker 1: is around mindfulness and and the concept of wholeness, right,
Speaker 1: internal family systems, constual therapy, somatic experiencing, so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. Right, And what's fascinating is that the third
Speaker 1: wave of psychology is starting to converge with the thousands
Speaker 1: of years of ancient wisdom. In fact, we're located between
Speaker 1: Denver and Boulder in Colorado and just up the street
Speaker 1: and boulders in Naropa University, which is a Buddhist university
Speaker 1: that's really mainstream now and has lots of courses in
Speaker 1: Buddhist psychology. It's something very integrated into our program. And
Speaker 1: what's so exciting about this is that these like thousands
Speaker 1: of years of wisdom from various different religions and various
Speaker 1: different spiritual practices Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, so on and
Speaker 1: so forth are now starting to like make sense in
Speaker 1: a way with modern science. Yeah, aka psychotherapy. Right. And
Speaker 1: there's this great book called The Way of the Psychoonot
Speaker 1: by Stanis Lofgrowth, and he writes in this in the
Speaker 1: in the preface, he's like, science is always catching up
Speaker 1: to mysticism. Right when before Newton observed the apple falling
Speaker 1: from the tree and was like, oh, that's gravity. Before that,
Speaker 1: everyone thought it was something mystical that was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Before Galileo realized that the
Speaker 1: Earth is revolving around the Sun, everyone thought that it
Speaker 1: was the Sun and the planets revolving around us. Right,
Speaker 1: And so we're in this really exciting time where the
Speaker 1: old and the new are converging, and I believe it's
Speaker 1: incumbent upon practitioners to integrate that because if you don't
Speaker 1: have the ancient wisdom, let's say, ketamine clinics are a
Speaker 1: lot of that, right, if you don't have the modern techniques,
Speaker 1: there's a disservice that's happening to yourself, to myself as
Speaker 1: a facilitator, and to the participants because there's so much
Speaker 1: wisdom and there's so much technology that is available throughout.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's that's a really important point in that,
Speaker 3: like we have a wealth, you know, in like our
Speaker 3: toolbox is huge, right, and kind of thinking about that,
Speaker 3: right that there's there's many ways to kind of work
Speaker 3: in that.
Speaker 2: I think I love that point too, that we're kind
Speaker 2: of thinking about that.
Speaker 3: Science is sort of always kind of catching up, and
Speaker 3: I guess as a tool of discovery that makes sense, right,
Speaker 3: it's always kind of say, okay, what is you know?
Speaker 3: And how can we talk about that and how can
Speaker 3: we make sense of it and see what evidence is
Speaker 3: behind it is working?
Speaker 2: And it is interesting too that like at the same time,
Speaker 2: like those.
Speaker 3: That kind of you know, modern tool kuld of using
Speaker 3: using science to talk about what neuropathways work, you know,
Speaker 3: and how this like how we can have psycho psychedelics,
Speaker 3: psycho psycho psychosystems, psychedelic therapy, and so hard to say
Speaker 3: all these things together, right, but having psychedelics along with
Speaker 3: psychotherapy together and having kind of assisted technologies you know,
Speaker 3: with therapists and and and practitioners, you know, tells us
Speaker 3: a really interesting piece that's showing us how they all
Speaker 3: kind of work together too, and that they can work right.
Speaker 3: So there's an interesting piece it also seems around validating
Speaker 3: right that that these there's a reason that some of
Speaker 3: these practices have been around for thousands of years, but
Speaker 3: then there's also important new information coming about how and
Speaker 3: why they work. And this is something that that you know,
Speaker 3: as a sort of side story or side note, that
Speaker 3: I found really powerful.
Speaker 2: Like when I was when I.
Speaker 3: Was working in in Peru, I was working with indigenous
Speaker 3: Quinewa farmers, you know, Indian farmers in the southern southern
Speaker 3: region around Puno, and you know, a lot of the
Speaker 3: work that I was doing was just how do we
Speaker 3: put on the same par indigenous knowledge that's built over
Speaker 3: thousands of years in community around ag cultural practices and
Speaker 3: why this crop goes well with that crop, and why
Speaker 3: plant here versus there, and like seasonal changes and things
Speaker 3: like that, Why that's on the same set of knowledge
Speaker 3: at least we need to put on the same level
Speaker 3: as kind of new agriculture agricultural like agro scientific knowledge, right,
Speaker 3: and that it's not somehow old knowledge versus new, but
Speaker 3: that they can actually help explain each other, and that
Speaker 3: in one can validate the other one also, and that
Speaker 3: I mean, it was an interesting point of like how
Speaker 3: do we because it's a question of power, right, and
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, we have new knowledge that's scientific, so
Speaker 3: therefore we're going to throw out the old indigenous wisdom
Speaker 3: or knowledge because it's not it's old, right, It didn't
Speaker 3: it didn't tell us how to explain the world today.
Speaker 3: But it's it's funny that in so much indigenous practice
Speaker 3: we find it actually does tell us how to explain
Speaker 3: the world today. We've just forgotten how to listen to it, right,
Speaker 3: We've like we've kind of tuned into it slightly differently.
Speaker 2: Uh, and it gott in the sense that we like
Speaker 2: somehow know better.
Speaker 3: But then we have to say, there's a reason that
Speaker 3: it's stuck around you know, and so I'm kind of
Speaker 3: curious in your thoughts too about like when kind of
Speaker 3: helping people open up to these the possibilities of you know,
Speaker 3: when we can seek a form of enlightenment. I guess
Speaker 3: are folks kind of coming when you're thinking about running
Speaker 3: ceremonies or sessions. I'm curious do folks kind of pop
Speaker 3: in say I'm looking for enlightenment or they're saying I'm
Speaker 3: working through a problem, or I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 3: like where I'm at, you know, because I know you
Speaker 3: kind of have you have awaken and transcend the different
Speaker 3: kind of pathways that folks can go through. So how
Speaker 3: do folks like find their way to what you what
Speaker 3: you help them do?
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, how do people show up on
Speaker 2: the door?
Speaker 1: It's it's a mixed bag. And it's really interesting because
Speaker 1: you know, the FDA is called psilocybin therapy as a
Speaker 1: breakthrough therapy, right and has fast tracked that through the
Speaker 1: fd And that's because there are so many studies. This
Speaker 1: has been the most studied psychiatric medicine in the history
Speaker 1: of psychiatry. Right in the fifties and sixties, over one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand participants in over a thousand studies and recently
Speaker 1: studies by John Hopkins, Harvard, Imperial College of London. You
Speaker 1: name it, right, and it's so fascinating that over many
Speaker 1: different psychedelics, over many different ailments PTSD, depression, even physical ailments,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a panacea of of such a
Speaker 1: broad benefit to whatever it is. Right. So similarly, we
Speaker 1: get people who are some of the top performing CEOs
Speaker 1: in the world. Right, we've facilitated a great deal of
Speaker 1: founders Fortune five hundred executives, Silicon Valley, uniforms, Unicorn startups, vcs,
Speaker 1: et cetera. We also get combat veterans with complex PTSD UH,
Speaker 1: we get first responders, we get teachers, we get starving artists,
Speaker 1: and everybody comes for their own unique reason. Right, it
Speaker 1: could be like I we had we had someone who
Speaker 1: came who was about to start chemo treatment the month
Speaker 1: after our retreat and was you know, had end what
Speaker 1: what we call in psychology end of life anxiety. I mean,
Speaker 1: such an extraordinary amount of anxiety you can imagine, right,
Speaker 1: And and she came and in the process was able
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with her cancer and actually feel
Speaker 1: unconditional love in herself and pour that into her cancer,
Speaker 1: just sitting with that, giving it unconditional love like a
Speaker 1: warm embrace of a mother for hours. And I just
Speaker 1: spoke with her the other day and we're on FaceTime
Speaker 1: and she's going through treatment. You know, her head's bald,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And she shared like she doesn't believe that
Speaker 1: she would have survived this without that experience. Meanwhile, at
Speaker 1: the same time, we had one of the top female
Speaker 1: founders in the world come. This woman is on boards
Speaker 1: and you know, very sought out right, can't name names,
Speaker 1: and she comes and she she almost didn't show up
Speaker 1: because she gives me a call two weeks in advance
Speaker 1: and says, hey, I can't make it. Have a double booking.
Speaker 1: I'm invited to a private dinner with Prince Harry and
Speaker 1: Megan Merkle and I'm It's like, okay, well, let's break
Speaker 1: this down. You know what's happening for you, Like how
Speaker 1: often do you delay your personal needs for some business opportunity?
Speaker 1: And she's like, okay, I'm coming, And in the process
Speaker 1: was also experienced a level of unconditional love, self generated
Speaker 1: in a way that she had never experience before. It and
Speaker 1: has since gone on to found other companies with this
Speaker 1: intention of spreading that love. And and so everyone comes
Speaker 1: in the top of the funnel with their own unique
Speaker 1: what they want to work on. Do they want greater
Speaker 1: performance in their workplace or do they want to heal
Speaker 1: from some traumatic incident. But everybody finds the same thing.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the crazy thing, and as WU and
Speaker 1: there's the WU side of me that I can say
Speaker 1: it's just love, right, But really the answer is they
Speaker 1: find themselves. The healing agent is not the medicine or
Speaker 1: a teacher or a facilitator even a practice. The medicine
Speaker 1: is to find that you are the medicine, right mm
Speaker 1: hmmm m And it's it's a very interesting game because
Speaker 1: we're in the business of of facilitating you to not
Speaker 1: need us anymore.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Successful if you don't ever need anything like this anymore.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? It does?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. I mean I was.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this the other day too, in
Speaker 3: the sense that I think that the best businesses that
Speaker 3: should be their model, right, that we shouldn't exist.
Speaker 2: We don't need like art is to solve the problems.
Speaker 3: We don't need to exist right, It's an interesting idea
Speaker 3: of like, rather than perpetuating your need for my soda,
Speaker 3: like I want you to not need the soda, right,
Speaker 3: or to get your thirst quench or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know, totally. But by the way, do you know
Speaker 1: do you know that coke has so much sodium in
Speaker 1: it and you know, and so much sugar in it
Speaker 1: because it has so much sodium in it and there's
Speaker 1: so much sodium in it originally so that it can
Speaker 1: make you thirsty, so you could want more coke, damn it.
Speaker 3: See that makes perfmal sense though, right, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: and then but I think I mean that perhaps is
Speaker 3: also the perhaps a great metaphor for contemporary society too, right,
Speaker 3: that we build the addiction in to need more of something,
Speaker 3: right versus versus like let me arrive to me and
Speaker 3: then let the rest of it, Let the rest of
Speaker 3: it be, you know, totally.
Speaker 1: Sly something and this field is not is not free
Speaker 1: from that. There you know something that is unique about
Speaker 1: what we've do. So tomorrow we're about to start our
Speaker 1: twenty ninth retreats in two years, okay, And like any
Speaker 1: good founder, we've iterated every single retreat and what we've
Speaker 1: kind of honed in on that works. Is something that
Speaker 1: I think of as content versus process. Right, if you
Speaker 1: go to a therapist, you go to shaman, you go
Speaker 1: you know, and and they're holding space for you. You know.
Speaker 1: Think think of the image of a person sitting on
Speaker 1: a therapist couch, right, and you're sharing your content. You're
Speaker 1: sharing your stories, your beliefs, your your emotions, and that
Speaker 1: person is taking notes and asking you questions and helping
Speaker 1: you with the release of your content. Valuable experience. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. Therapy is everyone should do therapy, okay,
Speaker 1: But what is long term valuable is if you had
Speaker 1: a process. Imagine if you went to a psychology school
Speaker 1: and learned how to facilate yourself such that in the future,
Speaker 1: when life's unknowns throw you a curveball and you are
Speaker 1: in the suck, right, You're you're in the fight flight
Speaker 1: or freeze, you know what to do with it instead
Speaker 1: of fight flight or freezing. Right. That process is the
Speaker 1: number one thing to learn to practice ahead of a
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience, because the psychedelic experience is inherently unpredictable. I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but you know I've said in
Speaker 1: hundreds of ceremonies now every single time I feel some
Speaker 1: level of anxiety or fear, I know on the other
Speaker 1: side is joy and love and peace. But going into it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, what the heck's gonna come up right now?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Yeah, And so if if
Speaker 1: you had the process of knowing what to do with yourself,
Speaker 1: no matter the challenge in life, right, then your capacity
Speaker 1: to meet yourself, to meet a psychedelic experience is is
Speaker 1: so much deeper. So you can go deeper with less medicine,
Speaker 1: or you can hold more medicine without getting into a
Speaker 1: bad trip. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I think it's I think it's a great point,
Speaker 3: you know, because it's like it reminds me that that
Speaker 3: the the entry point for a lot of folks, I
Speaker 3: think are more mainstream artists. I guess I would say
Speaker 3: into into thinking about psychedelic strict was Michael Pollins How
Speaker 3: to Change Your Mind, And and I think one of
Speaker 3: the pieces I was glad that he brought up in
Speaker 3: that book too, is just the importance of set and
Speaker 3: setting it also, right, it's like understanding that one these
Speaker 3: are going to be inherently unpredictable experiences. And then on
Speaker 3: top of that or with that that you know, being
Speaker 3: with the right place that you feel safe, you know
Speaker 3: that you feel secure enough to be vulnerable, right, is
Speaker 3: I think really what that is? And then and then
Speaker 3: being amongst the right the right people, right whether it's
Speaker 3: you know, uh, therapists or loved ones or they're a
Speaker 3: safe community as part of that. And I love this
Speaker 3: idea too of like I'm just putting that in my
Speaker 3: head together with the idea of content versus process, right,
Speaker 3: and like being able to extract or work with the
Speaker 3: process of that that understanding how you go through something,
Speaker 3: especially something.
Speaker 2: That is inherently unpredictable.
Speaker 3: Then it's less about what is it that I'm going
Speaker 3: to experience, but more of how am I going to
Speaker 3: go through that process?
Speaker 2: And it's it's something that you.
Speaker 3: Know that some yoga teachers have shared with me that
Speaker 3: I was I found really valuable over the past year
Speaker 3: in in a in a different kind of practice, but
Speaker 3: just getting the sense that like simple but a truth
Speaker 3: for that, like we can't we can't choose what happens
Speaker 3: to us.
Speaker 2: But we can choose what we how we react, Right,
Speaker 2: we can choose we can choose what.
Speaker 3: We do with what happens to us, and the more
Speaker 3: we can kind of get a handle on that process
Speaker 3: to then be able to just I feel an emotion,
Speaker 3: I accept it as it is, and I'm watching it,
Speaker 3: and then I can choose what to do with that,
Speaker 3: and may I then choose in a way that helps me,
Speaker 3: you know, fulfill my heart's purpose or kind of act
Speaker 3: out of love in some way. Right, it sounds a bit,
Speaker 3: but at the same time, you know, it's it's understanding
Speaker 3: a bit about once on process and that in that piece,
Speaker 3: and so it's like being able to kind of put
Speaker 3: some of those elements together with these these other questions
Speaker 3: of like if you're going into an unpredictable space or
Speaker 3: adventure or roller coaster, being willing and able to kind
Speaker 3: of be okay with that processing.
Speaker 2: I think that's that's a really powerful point.
Speaker 3: And a lot of this, too, I think, is helping
Speaker 3: folks get a sense of that, like to understand that's
Speaker 3: that is a bit of what this process is, especially
Speaker 3: the psychedelic part of it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, we may do other hiteing motalities that are
Speaker 3: not quite as psychoactive, but you know how they can
Speaker 3: kind of work together. I think it's something that that's
Speaker 3: really powerful. So I love I love that idea. The
Speaker 3: thing something I wanted to ask you about with that too,
Speaker 3: is that you know, I was going through your blog
Speaker 3: and looking at some other other other stuff that you've written.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm glad that you're writing and and
Speaker 2: that you noted that in.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three years your your burning Man and ending message,
Speaker 3: and I was that I was at burning Man last
Speaker 3: year also, and the great burning Man flood right of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three has a very strange experience, you know,
Speaker 3: but I appreciated you know that what you had written
Speaker 3: about there too is like thinking about you know, you
Speaker 3: said you kind.
Speaker 2: Of committed doing a sober burn for.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three, and so I want to think a
Speaker 3: little bit about that too, because like other things that
Speaker 3: you wrote, you said you wanted to kind of be
Speaker 3: more in tune in on our signals of your body
Speaker 3: that it was showing you and like if you're tired
Speaker 3: of take a rest. You know, this is interest, It
Speaker 3: is funny, I guess for me particularly this is interesting
Speaker 3: because this is exactly how I went into twenty twenty three. Also,
Speaker 3: and you know, I know we didn't know each other then,
Speaker 3: but like that was also my like I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: to Bernie Man this year, and like I don't need
Speaker 3: to take psychedelics if they called me, sure, but like
Speaker 3: they didn't and I didn't expect them to, and and
Speaker 3: that was okay. You know, I did a bunch of
Speaker 3: other I had some other great experiences, and I think
Speaker 3: in part because of that, you know, but there was
Speaker 3: this interesting piece. I'm curious, like how you even thought
Speaker 3: about this too, right, because I know we're I guess
Speaker 3: I'm asking because we're talking a lot about sadelics. But
Speaker 3: then also like we don't always have to do that, right,
Speaker 3: There can be other ways of kind of, as you.
Speaker 2: Said, kind of getting to the getting to the quest
Speaker 2: of enlightenment.
Speaker 3: So I guess coming to your like your enlightenment a
Speaker 3: piece too, I guess of you know, what was that?
Speaker 3: What was that like for you to kind of say, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go into a typically like psychedelic space, I
Speaker 3: mean Burning Man psychedelic if you're not in drugs anyway,
Speaker 3: But you know what that what that process was like
Speaker 3: for you, and how you how you kind of think
Speaker 3: about how to listen to yourself. I guess thinking about
Speaker 3: this process question too, right, like learning how to listen
Speaker 3: to ourself, I feel like as part of that process.
Speaker 3: But is that how that that tracks for you in
Speaker 3: terms of your experiences?
Speaker 1: Last year was my twelfth burning Man in a row. Right,
Speaker 1: I got it, that's engaged at burning Man. I got
Speaker 1: married at burning Man. I had my first LSD experience
Speaker 1: at burning Man, So you know, it was committing to
Speaker 1: going into a sober burn was something very new for me.
Speaker 1: The year prior was when burning Men reopened to the
Speaker 1: masses right after the Renegade, et cetera. And I remember
Speaker 1: floating around burning Men disembodied. What I mean by that
Speaker 1: is I was chasing, right, I was chasing after experience,
Speaker 1: chasing this art car, this party, this event, so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, and I wasn't being present. And even
Speaker 1: though that was a really tough burning Man from an
Speaker 1: environmental standpoint, I don't know if you were there, it
Speaker 1: was really warm, there was a lot of yeah, the
Speaker 1: roads were terrible, et cetera. What I ultimately remember is
Speaker 1: not remembering experience, and that's because I was not present.
Speaker 1: And so going into last year's Burning Men first, just
Speaker 1: a caveat like I did a boga two days before
Speaker 1: burning men started, So that was part of it. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a powerful West African plant medicine. That's a
Speaker 1: thirty six hour ceremony. That's a whole nother conversation. But
Speaker 1: what I have been moving my life towards as a
Speaker 1: whole is greater intentionality. Right. I often get asked by
Speaker 1: you know, alumni that come through our program, like do
Speaker 1: you drink anymore? Like what do you? What is it
Speaker 1: okay for me to have a glass of wine? And
Speaker 1: I share a story of how when I first started
Speaker 1: to do this work, I was like, I'm going super healthy,
Speaker 1: I'm swearing off everything. I went vegetarian, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: then I recognized the instances where when I would have
Speaker 1: a craving, I would immediately feel guilt and then there
Speaker 1: would be a crown of shame. Right, oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing this good enough, or I shouldn't even be craving
Speaker 1: this thing, et cetera. And and then I I remember
Speaker 1: Ramdas talking about this Ramdass spiritual teacher, and he shared
Speaker 1: that for people that are quitting smoking, right, something to
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, He's like, you're not If you don't die
Speaker 1: from the cigarette, you're gonna die from a tightness, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so what I what I decided is I I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just going to bring intentionality. So I have a
Speaker 1: glass of wine every now and then, but I always
Speaker 1: but as I pay attention, as I bring into awareness,
Speaker 1: what happens when I want the second glass of wine
Speaker 1: or the third it's usually because I'm trying to escape something,
Speaker 1: escape feeling something. You could call it relax I can
Speaker 1: call it relaxing right after a heart after a long
Speaker 1: day's work. But the reality is I'm could be meditating,
Speaker 1: I could be reading a book, I could be present
Speaker 1: with my experience. Instead I am wanting to not be
Speaker 1: here right and and so going into Burning Men, I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, my intention is to really be here.
Speaker 1: And the rain that happened actually really facilitated that. When
Speaker 1: it started rating, I was like, this is really nice
Speaker 1: because all I did is my wife and I were
Speaker 1: in our airstream and we just camped and we enjoyed
Speaker 1: the company of each other and our friends next door,
Speaker 1: and it slowed everything down. I was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is what burning men can be when we slow our
Speaker 1: lives down, right. Yeah, And there's a lesson in that.
Speaker 2: Too totally that that was beautiful. I yeah, I I
Speaker 2: feel the same.
Speaker 3: It is that like there was there's something that's just
Speaker 3: really important, you know about it was it was my
Speaker 3: wife's first burn was twenty twenty three and so like,
Speaker 3: and that was what a burn to start with, because
Speaker 3: it's like two burning mans in one, right, But it's
Speaker 3: like that that it was. I think it's powerful for
Speaker 3: a number of reasons. But I think that was that's
Speaker 3: exactly right too, where it's like everything had to shut
Speaker 3: down and actually like for us to have found that
Speaker 3: because we were we were in a camp of one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty people and that that's a lot of people.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like you won't even see everybody in
Speaker 3: your camp. But then when when the rains came, like
Speaker 3: and we literally couldn't go anywhere, you know, we had
Speaker 3: we hadn't yet invented our our trash bag shoes.
Speaker 2: You know, that came came the next day.
Speaker 3: You know, there was something about being all together right,
Speaker 3: and that it was also we don't know what's gonna happen,
Speaker 3: and then you know, so it's an element unpredictability because
Speaker 3: we all did not bring up a bunch of rain
Speaker 3: ponchos and galoshes, you know. But then also we were
Speaker 3: camping together to your point, and there was there was
Speaker 3: it was this weird point of like, yeah, this is
Speaker 3: actually what this could and should be also right, like
Speaker 3: that we can all be here together in this space
Speaker 3: and and and I think all of us hadn't realized
Speaker 3: we were.
Speaker 2: Not being intentional about spending time together.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I wanna go run off with awsto go
Speaker 3: run out with Adam. I'll run off with Lou over here,
Speaker 3: like who we can go see. It was like always
Speaker 3: about getting out versus like being in. And there's something
Speaker 3: that was very i don't know, cathartic about like stay
Speaker 3: put stay here now totally.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the the important things that we
Speaker 1: explore maybe that you could say the underpinning of what
Speaker 1: ceremonia is is this idea of connection. Okay, and yeah
Speaker 1: I was. I was just with Esther Perel. Do you
Speaker 1: know what that is? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: She's considered one of the top relationship psychologists in the
Speaker 1: world and a New York Times bestselling author on relationships,
Speaker 1: and she she's like, she asked the question, what's the
Speaker 1: last thing you stroke at night and the first thing
Speaker 1: you caressed in the morning, And it's your phone, you know.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is like, the people that we
Speaker 1: love the most are often the ones that we most ignore. Right.
Speaker 1: And and one of the big revelations that people often
Speaker 1: have coming out of a ceremonia or treat is how
Speaker 1: can I be experience connection? Here's the thing. Everybody creeps connection, everybody,
Speaker 1: whether you are a child or you're an elderly person. Right,
Speaker 1: But a lot of people don't actually know what can
Speaker 1: a truly feels like if I were to ask ten
Speaker 1: people on the street, how are you? What's the answers?
Speaker 1: I would get okay, fine, good, okay, great, And they
Speaker 1: could be miserable, they could be depressed, be angry, and
Speaker 1: they'll still say fine, right yeah, And it's and it's
Speaker 1: there's this unavailability of self when we're often interacting with
Speaker 1: people out in the world, and part of that comes
Speaker 1: from our own unavailability or misattainment of our own selves.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Developing connection begins with awareness. You can only consciously change
Speaker 1: what you're aware of, because if you didn't have self awareness,
Speaker 1: if you didn't have mindfulness, fine is an appropriate answer
Speaker 1: because fine is basically blah, it's neutral, there's nothing, there's
Speaker 1: I don't know about you. I've never felt fine one
Speaker 1: moment in my life. I've been pissed off, I've been depressed,
Speaker 1: I've been joyous and comedic. But what's fine?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And so by first developing awareness, yes, and then developing
Speaker 1: the aspects of connection, which are being curious, being compassionate
Speaker 1: in presence with each other. Do you notice Well, you're
Speaker 1: an anthropologist, so which is which is form of science? Right?
Speaker 1: Do you notice like if you're speaking with somebody in
Speaker 1: your field and they're telling a story of the past,
Speaker 1: let's say, telling a story of someone you don't even know,
Speaker 1: do you ever have that experience of like your your
Speaker 1: awareness is zooming out. You're just like they're becoming a
Speaker 1: little seback and you're just zoning out. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's away you know the planet exactly.
Speaker 1: That's because you are no longer feeling yourself. Because you're
Speaker 1: not feeling them, it's hard to relate to them. But
Speaker 1: if I were to share with you, like I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling this ticklishness in my body right now, and
Speaker 1: there's this rising energy from my heart to my throat
Speaker 1: and it feels like inspiration. And I'm just relating to
Speaker 1: you what it's like to be me right now. That's
Speaker 1: the basis of connection because we're here together, you in
Speaker 1: me describing that. I imagine you're feeling me more in this moment,
Speaker 1: right And if I hear from you the impact of that,
Speaker 1: like how you feel like, oh, suddenly we have this reciprocity.
Speaker 1: It's something we're really missing in our modern world. Connection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful point. And I think
Speaker 3: you're also right, you know that there is there's so
Speaker 3: much that we're looking for, right And even like you know,
Speaker 3: as you kind of were talking about how you were
Speaker 3: reflecting on like Bernie Man twenty twenty two versus twenty three,
Speaker 3: it's like there's this feeling of chasing, right or always
Speaker 3: kind of rushing after something also, and like, I think
Speaker 3: that that reflects this idea too, that we often feel
Speaker 3: that profound disconnection, right, and that I think it's echoed
Speaker 3: in this idea of trying to always chase something. And
Speaker 3: you know, that's where the idea fomo comes comes from too,
Speaker 3: I think, you know, and like, but I think it's
Speaker 3: a profound idea for us to even think about. As
Speaker 3: we describe and even as you said that, you think
Speaker 3: of this energy kind of cold comeing up fro your
Speaker 3: heart tooth throat as this like this, you know, this
Speaker 3: feeling of of inspiration and excitement.
Speaker 2: It's like immediately is like you know, beginning to.
Speaker 3: You know, empacthtically trying to feel that that that vibe too,
Speaker 3: and it's like that, actually that feels great, you know.
Speaker 3: Or even if you if you had said, like I
Speaker 3: feel super weird or awkward and unhappy right now our stuff,
Speaker 3: I could say, well, okay, you know, like I'd say, okay,
Speaker 3: what does that feel like?
Speaker 2: How do I feel? How do I feel that as well?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And so it is interesting too, it's like we almost
Speaker 3: we do a disservice to ourselves often to just say
Speaker 3: I'm fine right like on it's it's you know, leaving
Speaker 3: that kind of wall of this connection up and like
Speaker 3: both between I think two or more people, but then
Speaker 3: also between self, you know, and and and what you're expressing, right,
Speaker 3: because it's often like that this is not even how
Speaker 3: I feel right, because you're right. I've never just been like, oh,
Speaker 3: I feel I feel five out of ten right now.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like that's not really a very common thing that
Speaker 3: we do, but we kind of have this blase answer
Speaker 3: because on the other side, too, no one's on the
Speaker 3: street actually asking how you're doing right, you know. And
Speaker 3: it's this funny point, like I don't about I always
Speaker 3: feel a tempted to tell when actually how I do feel.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm having a terrible day, but like you,
Speaker 3: you want to give them something beside the fine, you know,
Speaker 3: when when if you if you're passing with someone, like
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not going to make you stop and
Speaker 3: talk to me for thirty minutes about my day necessarily,
Speaker 3: but like you want to be you want to have
Speaker 3: a more moment of human connection as part of that too.
Speaker 3: And I think that there's like, uh, I see craving
Speaker 3: for that a lot, you know, and in both in
Speaker 3: the clients that I work for. But then then I'll
Speaker 3: work with but then also you know, yeah again talking
Speaker 3: to a friend on the street, this this uh, this need,
Speaker 3: and so I think there's there's something important there that
Speaker 3: I'm excited to hear the kind of ceremony of finds
Speaker 3: like and even g like that this is.
Speaker 2: Like an area of intentionality.
Speaker 3: Is that like how do we bring that connectivity back
Speaker 3: in so many it seems like of these modalities too,
Speaker 3: because I was excited to see that you have Dick
Speaker 3: Schwartz from from you know, Integrated Family Systems will be
Speaker 3: on your podcast soon and like, and I think that's
Speaker 3: there's been such a really interesting uh form of psychotherapy
Speaker 3: that's come out too in terms of like rethinking about
Speaker 3: different parts of oneself as integrating into a whole. But
Speaker 3: like there's different family members, you know, or kind of
Speaker 3: playing different roles, and you know, I think that like
Speaker 3: there's these again to come back to your kind of
Speaker 3: enlightenment models to think with two where it's like this
Speaker 3: idea of connectivity and wholeness, like are such these important
Speaker 3: parts that we.
Speaker 2: Can we can bring in?
Speaker 3: And so I guess, like how can I think about
Speaker 3: connectivity across like it is of wholeness, nothingness, emptiness and
Speaker 3: and oneness, Like does does connectivity connect to the three
Speaker 3: of them together?
Speaker 2: Do do I feel all them kind of you know,
Speaker 2: bringing bringing me through all of them?
Speaker 3: Like I'm trying to think about how I can put
Speaker 3: connected connectedness with with those other elements.
Speaker 1: Yes. Absolutely so. We have a window next to our
Speaker 1: workshop room and it's full of post its, okay, And
Speaker 1: in these post its we have our participants, right, a
Speaker 1: memorable line that they heard in our in our integration
Speaker 1: process in the workshops, et cetera. And their lines like
Speaker 1: of course or you know, uh, I love myself again
Speaker 1: or something like that. But a line that keeps recurring
Speaker 1: in our journey is it's okay to not be okaymm
Speaker 1: think about that. It's okay to not be okay. When
Speaker 1: someone says I'm fine, what's happening is there's a blockage
Speaker 1: to their vulnerability, right, because in that moment, I might
Speaker 1: not feel safe to tell you that I'm having a
Speaker 1: really shitty day, right, and I feel and I've been
Speaker 1: struggling with depression and I've been you know, whatever it
Speaker 1: is for that individual, right, And so why is it
Speaker 1: hard for me to share that? Well, you're an anthropologist.
Speaker 1: Maybe the reason why is if I revealed to you
Speaker 1: that I'm vulnerable, aka, I'm revealing my neck to you,
Speaker 1: you might be a predator that's going to kill me. Right.
Speaker 1: That's an evolutionary, like, that's some evolution that happened, right,
Speaker 1: And so much of the path of adulting is to
Speaker 1: be okay, knowing that you're going to be okay, right,
Speaker 1: that the safety that we seek outside is actually we're
Speaker 1: constantly trying to fill an infinitely deep black hole inside
Speaker 1: because this because we get to find the safety that
Speaker 1: we feel inwards. The first emotional psychologist, Plectrick, he made
Speaker 1: this beautiful, colorful emotional wheel. I used to have it
Speaker 1: on my as a refrigerator magnet. If you've seen it, it
Speaker 1: says like here the six primary emotions joy, sadness, or disgusting, right,
Speaker 1: and then like secondary emotions, et cetera. And he says
Speaker 1: that love is equal to safety plus joy. Think about
Speaker 1: that for a moment, right, safety plus joy. In order
Speaker 1: for you to feel love, you need to feel safe.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense. All of life seeks to create life.
Speaker 1: In order for life to evolve, it needs to feel safe.
Speaker 1: Like if you watch a dog taking a shit, that
Speaker 1: dog is looking every which way for predators. It's the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable moment for that dog, right, and this and
Speaker 1: we're not that much different except we hide behind and
Speaker 1: so so much of the pathway to connection is connecting
Speaker 1: with ourselves, right, And the first step again is awareness,
Speaker 1: but the second step is attention. Attention is power. Where
Speaker 1: you put your attention and how you command other people's
Speaker 1: attention is your power. Right. And if if there is
Speaker 1: a trigger that you have where you would normally fight,
Speaker 1: flight or freeze, imagine what you would be available to
Speaker 1: you if you were able to put that attention on
Speaker 1: yourself with loving kindness. So rom Dos tells the story
Speaker 1: of coming back to New York City after being in
Speaker 1: India with his guru Maharaji. And he's walking around New
Speaker 1: York barefoot in all white robe. He's got a long
Speaker 1: you know, gray beard, right, And and he gets in
Speaker 1: a car with his father, in a taxi with his father,
Speaker 1: and then in the back seat and his father looks
Speaker 1: at him, He's like, Richard, when are you going to
Speaker 1: get a job? And in that moment, he gets triggered
Speaker 1: and he and then he laughs at himself. He says
Speaker 1: to himself in his own mind, oh, oh, rom Dous,
Speaker 1: you think you're so enlightened, right, try spending an evening
Speaker 1: with your family. I relate that story because these triggers
Speaker 1: are opportunities for us to see the parts of ourselves
Speaker 1: that we don't want to see, and wholeness is about
Speaker 1: loving those parts, giving ourselves love for those parts instead
Speaker 1: of seeking that externally.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think that that's Yeah, that makes me
Speaker 3: think that there is there's actould a blog post that
Speaker 3: you've written also that that got that really hit me too,
Speaker 3: where you were talking about the learning to embrace anger
Speaker 3: actually as a potential like not not to be angry.
Speaker 2: But just like to It's similar to the idea that
Speaker 2: we may.
Speaker 3: Find parts of ourselves that we don't want to embrace
Speaker 3: or bring up right, but then the right kind of
Speaker 3: therapy or medicine are there bodies can bring us there
Speaker 3: right and kind of help us come back to them.
Speaker 3: And in this post you were talking about this this idea,
Speaker 3: like this interesting kind of use of anger in terms
Speaker 3: of like we're able to have a kind of practice
Speaker 3: like you're working with with three other folks I think
Speaker 3: you're and your partner and then like figuring out what
Speaker 3: it meant to like kind of talk angrily like you like,
Speaker 3: And part of it was not to be mad, but
Speaker 3: just like to say that we hide parts of ourselves
Speaker 3: that we that we think are ugly of ourselves, right,
Speaker 3: and anger can often be one of those which is
Speaker 3: interesting and obviously in a challenging space because it's like
Speaker 3: I don't want either want to be aggressive or be
Speaker 3: seen as angry or whatever it is for to other people,
Speaker 3: especially to our most loved ones. But I'm curious like
Speaker 3: about that too, right, And that because something that you
Speaker 3: said that was really really profound in there in one
Speaker 3: of your fightings too, is that like, only by not
Speaker 3: wanting to share that part of yourself or that pathway
Speaker 3: of expression that you ultimately then we're not taking care
Speaker 3: of yourself or your relationship, right because by by hiding
Speaker 3: a part of yourself or like basically disintegrating or keeping
Speaker 3: something that we thought was ugly out didn't help us.
Speaker 3: And this is a really really powerful thing just to
Speaker 3: even think about again, in like the broader conversation of
Speaker 3: the integrative practice, right for kind of bringing ourselves to
Speaker 3: be more whole. That we can take a psychoedely Liken therapeuticapath,
Speaker 3: we can also take a like, let's practice expressing anger
Speaker 3: healthily right in a certain way. So I'm curious to
Speaker 3: kind of get your experience there to it, and like
Speaker 3: helpfulks kind of walk through that idea too. Of like that,
Speaker 3: we can also we can take an emotion that we
Speaker 3: don't think, we think it's ugly, right, and recognize by
Speaker 3: doing that if we try to shine it away, we're
Speaker 3: actually blocking something else important about ourselves in our relationships.
Speaker 1: Totally. The keyword that you use there is healthily because
Speaker 1: anger is an emotion. Anger actually, as we're communicating, is
Speaker 1: a word. Yea. It's a word and words vocabulary or
Speaker 1: frameworks for trying to communicate an idea. Right, But if
Speaker 1: you look at what's underneath the idea, the emotion, the
Speaker 1: feeling of anger, imagine that that is an energy that's
Speaker 1: trapped in your body. Okay, and anger can come out
Speaker 1: explosively or it can come out in microaggressions. And I
Speaker 1: was certainly the latter. I remember with my wife there
Speaker 1: were a string of days where I was getting more
Speaker 1: and more upset at having an expectation of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get out the door at six pm. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many guys have had this experience. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get out the door at six pm at six ten, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'll just be another five minutes, six twenty, just another
Speaker 1: five minutes. I was like, that was fifteen minutes ago.
Speaker 1: She didn't know that. And then I kept my mouth shut.
Speaker 1: I kept my mouth shut to keep the peace, keep
Speaker 1: the peace, and you know, partially because maybe I just
Speaker 1: want to get laid that night. I don't know, dea so.
Speaker 1: But the next day I remember like observing myself, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, hey, hey, babe, did you wash the dishes?
Speaker 1: I knew full well that she didn't wash the dishes
Speaker 1: and she had committed to, right, did you let it
Speaker 1: let out the dog? I knew full well she didn't,
Speaker 1: and I was merely saying it to generate guilt in her. Right.
Speaker 1: That's a microaggression. And and you know, I've related this story.
Speaker 1: I was on a podcast with a half million downloads
Speaker 1: where I was sharing a letter that I wrote around
Speaker 1: this story. And it's like so many people could relate,
Speaker 1: because whatever your flavor of discharging that energy is, it
Speaker 1: either comes out in a conscious way or an unconscious way,
Speaker 1: or it doesn't come out. And that's even worse because
Speaker 1: when it doesn't come out, let's say anger that we
Speaker 1: have towards our parents, right, And let's say that's something
Speaker 1: that gets trapped for a really long time, that gets
Speaker 1: trapped in our bodies, and that energy that gets trapped
Speaker 1: in our bodies. There's great science, a book called Body
Speaker 1: Keeps the Score that shows that that trapped energy can
Speaker 1: lead to ill health, to cancer, to heart attacks, to sickness,
Speaker 1: to disease, to the degradation of our immune system. Right now,
Speaker 1: there's a healthy way to communicate anger, and I'll do
Speaker 1: it for you right now. Ready, Hey, Adam, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: anger right now, and I have this need to feel
Speaker 1: seen and heard and honored. And when I experienced getting
Speaker 1: cut off or interrupted by you, then I just I
Speaker 1: felt like minimized. And my request is that we slow
Speaker 1: down our conversation and acknowledge what each of us says.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is hypothetical, You've been doing great.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, yeah, you know, like that's a form
Speaker 1: of healthily sharing anchor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's that's really important too, because it's oftentimes
Speaker 3: we have, you know, that that that fight or flight
Speaker 3: moment where it's like I get mad and I want
Speaker 3: to I want to just throw something out because I
Speaker 3: think exactly as you said too, Like the healthy way
Speaker 3: is to say, I would like to be seen and
Speaker 3: heard versus I'm going to snap out so that you
Speaker 3: see and hear me and can't deny that I'm.
Speaker 2: Here, right.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's interesting to recognize that we're seeking
Speaker 3: to accomplish the same goal there, right, but like the
Speaker 3: pathway that through which we do that is fundamentally different.
Speaker 3: And I also appreciate what you said there too in
Speaker 3: terms of the it can be explosive or these these
Speaker 3: microaggressions too that we often sometimes don't even recognize, Like
Speaker 3: we know I'm mad, so therefore'm gonna say the thing,
Speaker 3: I know you didn't do the dishes, but did you
Speaker 3: do the dishes? Not because I want you to know
Speaker 3: that I know you didn't do the dishes, but because
Speaker 3: I want you to feel guilty about it. And like
Speaker 3: recognizing that that pathway also think is really really a
Speaker 3: powerful thing to recognize, Like what what am I doing?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And it's like can I pause to say, why am
Speaker 3: I choosing to express this feeling that way? Like why
Speaker 3: am I choosing to like go down this like sneaky
Speaker 3: side pathway that like or a think of being sneaky
Speaker 3: right to get because I want to get something else
Speaker 3: out and so like it is really interesting kind of
Speaker 3: piece for us to kind of think about that when
Speaker 3: we're trying to kind of bring ourselves together. Right, It's
Speaker 3: that it's that there's there's these parts of us that
Speaker 3: can be these shadow sides, right, or the kind of
Speaker 3: shadow work or dark sides, and like they can but
Speaker 3: they can even be like these entrance points, like these
Speaker 3: more negative emotions that we or that we call quote
Speaker 3: unquote negative. Right, But you know, even I think, as
Speaker 3: you very wonderfully demonstrated there, like there's ways to let
Speaker 3: those go or to move past them and say and yeah.
Speaker 2: And how yeah, and.
Speaker 1: How often have we inhibited ourselves from connection because we
Speaker 1: haven't mustered the courage or or embodied the curiosity to
Speaker 1: to say or explore what we're actually feeling?
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's totally true.
Speaker 3: And I think that comes to the safety question, right
Speaker 3: that I don't it's if part of it is like
Speaker 3: do I feel safe expressing actually what I feel or not?
Speaker 3: You know, and like, and I think that's a magical
Speaker 3: moment there too, of like how can we learn to
Speaker 3: do that for ourselves? But then also like, because it's
Speaker 3: always in conversation either with us with ourselves or with
Speaker 3: with others, right, and a lot of it we like
Speaker 3: learn society tells us don't talk like that, don't don't
Speaker 3: don't actually tell somebody how you're how your day is, right,
Speaker 3: say I'm fine. You know, we get we get all
Speaker 3: these like subtle and not those little cues of how
Speaker 3: we're quote unquote supposed to actually that we internalize a
Speaker 3: lot of those. And then you know, to your point too,
Speaker 3: like we may take some anger with our parents that
Speaker 3: we didn't he realized we had when we were sixteen
Speaker 3: or twelve or ten, and then it pops up, you know,
Speaker 3: when we're thirty five or forty in a really weird
Speaker 3: way that we relate with our spouse or our best
Speaker 3: friend or something. And it's always interesting to have these
Speaker 3: moments when you when you hear people to come back
Speaker 3: to you your sequel point from the beginning, right that,
Speaker 3: like when there's these moments of profound transformation when like
Speaker 3: we didn't just change the chapter, but like the book
Speaker 3: ended and now we're in like part two. You know
Speaker 3: that that you know, are are I think really powerful
Speaker 3: for us? And then said this is like why am
Speaker 3: I why and how can I make make a change?
Speaker 3: And so I don't know, I'm just I'm relating this
Speaker 3: back to the in like this this point, I think
Speaker 3: it's it's very powerful to even kind of think with
Speaker 3: your story too, and then how we can take something
Speaker 3: that opens us up in a way that makes us
Speaker 3: very vulnerable and then create a powerful you know, new pathway,
Speaker 3: new wave, you know in new new uh you know,
Speaker 3: opening for others too. So I just want to say
Speaker 3: I applaud the work that you're doing. Anythink this is
Speaker 3: this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 2: So far, and I'm excited.
Speaker 3: I did to know that you've got a book coming
Speaker 3: out also in like that we can we can hopefully
Speaker 3: dive into that when when that comes out as well
Speaker 3: too and kind of think and dive deeper into the
Speaker 3: idea of hondering light makes it's to be such an
Speaker 3: exciting place. And also like what does it mean to
Speaker 3: provide new spiritual spaces for folks? You know, I mean
Speaker 3: and uh, maybe you have a few minutes, I'd love
Speaker 3: to talk about that too, real quickly, just like this
Speaker 3: this idea of like how we can bring those about.
Speaker 3: You know the fact that this is you're working with
Speaker 3: an entheogenic church that you've created like that that idea,
Speaker 3: like you have to go through these like odd legal
Speaker 3: structures in the United States and to be able to
Speaker 3: have a certain kind of business practice, right, but then
Speaker 3: on top of that, like a therapeutic and plant medicine practice,
Speaker 3: I get, I don't know, so, I mean, it's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know my question there is it? Just like
Speaker 3: it's been such a such an interesting journey to me
Speaker 3: to the kind of have to go through that that
Speaker 3: process given the odd structures that we have, and like
Speaker 3: you know, we are seeing the FDA change their stance
Speaker 3: slowly on plant medicines and psychedelics. But then also you
Speaker 3: know that you took that bold step of saying, you
Speaker 3: know what, well, I've had some found changes to do
Speaker 3: something new. Let me take this this curious path that
Speaker 3: is U I don't know, were you following your curiosity?
Speaker 3: Like how did you know in anthogemic church had that
Speaker 3: become the answer of the next thing to do?
Speaker 1: Well? Being a church is actually a very meaningful status
Speaker 1: for us, and it's it's so much more than a
Speaker 1: legal status. One of the participants that we that came
Speaker 1: through our container was the president of Unity Church, which
Speaker 1: is a mega Christian Church on on on the East coast.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget such a gracious man he had
Speaker 1: on his altar. An altar is like just something next
Speaker 1: to your mats as you're undergoing the the psilocybin. In ceremony,
Speaker 1: a picture, a framed picture of Jesus, right, and in
Speaker 1: our center we have religious symbols from all religions, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity,
Speaker 1: hindu Ism, Egyptian like, Greek like all over and and
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this beautiful smile on his face as
Speaker 1: he was looking up. And he shared with me later
Speaker 1: that he felt the greatest connection to Christ that he's
Speaker 1: ever felt in his life. And what's so fascinating is
Speaker 1: his story is not unique. One of our co facilitators
Speaker 1: was a Catholic priest for twenty years, then a zen
Speaker 1: Buddhist monk, and then became one of the world's top
Speaker 1: psychologists and IFS trainers. Right and coming through our container
Speaker 1: first as a participant, he rediscovered his spirituality, which he
Speaker 1: had lost in when he was running un refugee programs
Speaker 1: in East Africa for the Catholic Church. I mean, so
Speaker 1: you know, if you really think about, like, what is
Speaker 1: a church. As an anthropologist, you must know this, like
Speaker 1: the church was the safe haven, it was the gathering
Speaker 1: place of community. Right in wartime, both sides could gather
Speaker 1: in a church and be safe from killing each other.
Speaker 1: Right in peacetime, people would gather in a church and
Speaker 1: that's where the community would get together. That's where we
Speaker 1: would support each other, so on and so forth. So
Speaker 1: in our church number one, as a we have a
Speaker 1: beliefs published on o website, Ceremoniouscircle dot org. But we've
Speaker 1: summarized it into a few points and I'll summarize it
Speaker 1: even further for you. It's really that when we let
Speaker 1: go of our protective parts, we are able to feel
Speaker 1: ourselves more. And when we feel ourselves more, that is
Speaker 1: what feels like spirituality. Right. And we say that truth
Speaker 1: is subjective like what you experience as your truth is
Speaker 1: yours and no one can deny that. But there's also
Speaker 1: an objective truth there that when it's experienced, feels like love, gratitude, peace, harmony, unity, right,
Speaker 1: And that subjective and objective truth begin to merge the
Speaker 1: more that we let go of the things inhibiting us
Speaker 1: from ourselves, and then these plant sacraments of psilocybin and
Speaker 1: ayahuasca are accelerants to help us commune with that that feeling.
Speaker 1: We gather every Sunday our integration process, in fact, preparation
Speaker 1: and integration is literally we meet in community every Sunday.
Speaker 1: First the pot luck that's sharing your challenges and celebrations,
Speaker 1: than the practice called circling, which is a workshop that
Speaker 1: we run in our in our program. And so you know,
Speaker 1: people have this transformative experience, this profound experience which culminates
Speaker 1: ninety nine times of one hundred in a deep spiritual experience,
Speaker 1: and then they're able to come back to church, to community,
Speaker 1: to supporting each other, you know, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And I love that too because it's that it's bringing
Speaker 3: all the things that I remember from church as a kid.
Speaker 3: You know, it's I guess what, it's a very similar
Speaker 3: story for many you know, I don't know many folks
Speaker 3: that like maybe have grown up religious but then found
Speaker 3: their way out of it for various reasons, right, and
Speaker 3: then found some sort of reconnections to spirituality through different means, right,
Speaker 3: but then recognizing that like some of the fundamental powers
Speaker 3: and social goods of church communities themselves are what you're
Speaker 3: describing there too right of like that it's a safe
Speaker 3: place that people can come together to build a community,
Speaker 3: to build a sense of shared identity, and to integrate
Speaker 3: right into their lives, those deeper those deeper meetings. I
Speaker 3: think that that's actually really cool. But Alstin, thank you
Speaker 3: so much joining me on the podcast. This has been
Speaker 3: an enlightening conversation and I've really enjoyed chatting with you,
Speaker 3: and I hope we can do it again, especially when
Speaker 3: you when your book comes out and deep dive from there.
Speaker 2: But thanks again for joining me. That's been been a
Speaker 2: lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Adam. This has been great. Yeah, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you.