Connection

[ Music ] [ Music ] Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is me. I'm the guest. There's no guest this week. Guests will return next week. As you may be able to tell from the sound of my voice. Got a little cold. It's no big deal. It's not that bad. Just a little stuffy. It's like, you know, shit happens. Who else is ready in places where it's actively winter for winter to be over? Winter is not coming. I'm done with it. I'm hungry. What was it with this groundhog? Wasn't it the groundhog supposed to tell us that it was over soon? Fucking pucks it on a fail. Excuse me. You're probably going to be hearing me coughing.

Hearing me coughing during this episode. So, I've had some very interesting conversations lately with some friends here local in my community. And it got me thinking, how important. You know, it's kind of been, let's recap the past, I don't know, three months topic thematically what I've been putting out there in terms of the conversations I'm having with people on this podcast. Right? We've heard it pop up from other people too. I remember Jens Soudini mentioning it in the multicast we did with Sean and Cass were very ape. You know, this idea of kind of spiritual hucksterism or people getting into a field where, you know, one of the beautiful things about spirituality and kind of the esoteric is they're not, it's not often overtly visible.

But that's one of the downfalls too, right? There's no guaranteed set of criteria that can prove that this person has your best intentions or what their actual intentions are. So, it's up to us as individuals and hopefully collectively to discern who is legit, right? It's a weird word to use for this, authentic, a weird word to use for this. But someone who's just like, let's just use a blanket term as not a shitty person. I've loosened the shackles of my dogmatic kind of right and wrong. You shouldn't do this. You should do this kind of checklist because I recognize like my iPod network has taught me a lot about this.

There's 21 podcasters, myself included on my iPod network now. And there's a range of personalities, a range of perspectives, a range of intentions and motivations. And if I had a very firm, hard set of rules that I apply to every single podcaster, there wouldn't be a group of people who I considered very cool doing cool things because everyone's different. So, I'm loosening like I'm saying the figurative shackles of what constitutes a good person and a not good person, but that said, you know, there are certain things that I think, if your actions don't line up with your words, that schism is I think more what I'm talking about in terms of spiritual hugsterism or, you know, putting on a persona to gain popularity or fame or money or attention or whatever it is.

That's kind of what I'm noticing is that not maybe not at the core or the root of it, but it is a clear kind of hallmark that something is a little bit off. And why am I bringing this up? This episode is not going to be about the spiritual nonsense or the, you know, personas and the teachers and the yada, yada, yada. It's not going to be about that. It's going to be something that I think is a natural antidote to that, which is easy enough for anyone to do, right? It is a, there are clear, positive steps that one can take to kind of disassociate from groups or people who are kind of pushing that other rampant, I don't know if I want to use it.

It's probably a little toxic, but just kind of like silliness. Can we call it silliness people using modalities to kind of big up themselves and their egos? It's just silly more than anything else and paradoxically having them talk about specifically not big upping egos and not, you know, identifying with personas. It's a weird kind of tricky thing. Hopefully I'm not being too vague here, but I do want to talk about something I've noticed in my life that has been incredibly helpful for just feeling grounded and sane and that you're not alone and that you, the thoughts you're thinking maybe aren't as out there as you think they are and people are actually receptive to them is really getting together with other people in community.

And I'm going to extend this to the digital realms because we have a lot of very cool communities out there that we can tap into and create very deep connections too. It's not just the, you know, breadth of everything that's going on with these digital communities. There's really depth there to a lot of them too. And again, it's up to the individual and the people who are part of these communities to make that relationship, but I'm talking more about in the real world, making sure that you get together with people to do things that make you feel like you're doing the things you should be doing.

Does that make sense? I'm being somewhat vague here. For me, I'll give a personal example. When I get together with people and I make music or I talk about life or art or religion or psychedelics or just what in the world is going on? When you hear this often on this podcast, it's nourishing to my soul. I don't have another way of saying that. I recently just met up with a new friend who is about to be launching a podcast class at Bard College in the fall. And I was talking a lot about how podcasts themselves are a form of alchemy that by extending yourself out into the world and doing this every single week, whether there's a guest or not, you're really pushing the boundaries of your social experience.

And it's not really podcasting that I'm talking about. It's just doing that, having conversations with people regularly who you maybe otherwise wouldn't be having conversations or making it a priority to have those types of conversations or think about certain ideas. It's a very transformative thing. And it really changes people from the inside out, and what you begin to recognize is that if you don't do that, you might not be aware of it, but you're cutting yourself off from I think something like just like we need food and water, we need that type of community communication, right? The relationships that we foster in the world essentially feed us spiritually, socially.

I don't know the right terms, right? I'm just kind of winging this on what this is, but I know that it's very important. And I'm someone who I always consider myself an extroverted introvert. I am able to function out in social groups in the world, but I'm also like totally cool and often preferred most of the time being alone, you know, doing my own creative things on my own time and being able to work out my own issues on my own things. So I have a tendency towards that, and I know a lot of people do, it's especially encouraged today by a lot of the tools and technology that we use, and I'll get a little bit about that later, but I understand the tendency to do that, and it can also feel comfortable and good and safe and secure, and those are all good things.

But if you cut off kind of this active community participation, it really does begin to kind of affect your entire life in a not so great way. And I think that this harkens back to the conversation last week I had with Michael Donovan is if you're not plugging in and interfacing with people who have different viewpoints in you or have something that you don't know about or vice versa, you know, there's you're losing a component of being a member of the human race, right? We know we're not a homogenous same person, same ideas, same thoughts, no one even looks the same. Well, I guess identical twins and triplets.

I saw that CNN movie about the triplets where they did the study, where they separated them all. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's fucking crazy. I don't know the name of it. It's very, very bad of me to bring it up and not know the name of it. Go check it out. I think it's on prime. I don't know. Anyway, got sidetracked there, but people aren't the same is my point. And even the triplets, you'll see they're not the same, right? They're no one is the same. So being able to interface with other people and share ideas, thoughts, fears, experiences really is the antidote to getting walled off, being siloed away in your own little filter bubble, not engaging with people, potentially getting deluded into thinking that this is only about you that your needs are number one, and that's the most important thing.

And kind of forgetting the interconnected. We talk about that a lot, right? The interconnectedness of everything and kind of on an esoteric and spiritual level and the web of life and we're all connected man, but like, truthfully, just as a plain fact, we are all connected in one way or the other. We are interfacing with systems, people, organizations, entities that we all are connected in some very real way and the Internet obviously makes that explicit because we're actually talking to each other whenever we want, however we want. So my point is this, my, I think the only thing we can do is people, right?

Because how much I was thinking back about these past few episodes I was doing, I was like, you know, I just keep asking, we just keep ending up like, what do you do? Like, what do you do? Everything is shitty, not everything is shit, I don't mean to say that. But things aren't, I think people are finding it harder and harder to just exist in the world. The constant barrage of communications, the seemingly inescapable levels of debt and financial worry that so many people face just relationship issues, death issues, all of these things, it just is getting to a boiling point, it feels like for people and I feel bad talking about it and not having a tangible route.

And the truth is, I don't feel bad most of the time about this stuff. So I try to analyze like, well, why don't I feel bad? What am I doing that's kind of buffering me against what a lot of other people are feeling incredibly acutely? And I've noticed that community, that sense of staying in contact with people, being able to, you know, just talk to anyone about anything and being that person for other people really is something that just like, it feeds your soul. That's the only way I could put it. It's something that I highly recommend that if you haven't been doing that, if you've been neglecting it in your life, go and do it.

I know just from the people who reach out to me when they hear something on this show where it resonates with them or they have a similar experience, they'll often write very heartfelt letters or letters, Jesus Christ, emails to me. And I know the kind of cathartic healing that can happen from writing it but getting a response and recognizing that and realizing someone else's shared those experiences and is supportive of you as a person, like that shit really helps. So do whatever you can to stay in contact with people. And if you're alone, and I know loneliness is a huge problem across the world, it's probably one of the worst issues that people face, you know, try to do things that push you a little outside of your comfort zone.

You could start with me. If you want to send me an email, I will write back to you because I know how important it can be to just like foster any type of communication and relationship. And then once that better is, I really think if you're extending it, let's say you're not lonely, you're not, you're doing pretty good, you have some positive relationships, you're feeling good, right? Let's say that's where you are in the spectrum of things extended out into your local community. That to me is becoming more and more, it's more and more apparent how critical that is for us to kind of succeed and do well as people, right?

Where we live, what's going on in our immediate surroundings is incredibly important, right? It's the thing that's most important outside of our immediate kind of cohesive social group and family group is where we live and what we're doing all the time. And you know, the places we're doing it at. So that's another thing. And I know people who are kind of pushing in that area in the community, I live, and I just admire and respect the hell out of it because it's fucking important. And I think it's so easy to get pulled away from what's important because there's entertaining shit constantly. There's things we like to do right now.

I'm listening to book two of Game of Thrones, Clash of King, Unaudible, Roy Dotrice is the narrator. It's fucking amazing. Anyway, my point is this is all I want to do is listen to this audio book. It's incredible. So it's really easy to get distracted. It's really easy to get pulled away, but try to come back to the important things in your life. And I know that's kind of corny and it's kind of stupid. But on shows like this, where we can get pretty out there in terms of, you know, talking about weird stuff, it's also important to keep it grounded and recognize that you can talk about weird stuff with people who are right next to you.

And if, you know, maybe your spouse or your partner or your immediate family doesn't really understand or care about what you're talking about, I guarantee there is a group that does. And that's one of the coolest things about this podcast in my podcast and I work in general is seeing these communities kind of blossom around topics and shows and people and ideas. Like that's, that's what this is about. So what we're really trying to do is weave a web of people who care about each other as much as possible. And I will add, be tolerant when people deviate from good behavior. I, you know, I, I only am realizing this recently as sad as that is.

It's almost 36 later this year, but you have to be a little more tolerant of people. I guess having a kid teaches this because sometimes your kid just does some fucked up shit for no reason. It's like, why are you doing that? And you know, you don't do not disowning your kid when they do some fucked up shit. So if people have personality flaws and character flaws or difficult to deal with or offended you or portrayed you or done something else, you don't have to be best friends with them. You don't have to be, you know, furthering and deepening a relationship, but trying to bring in some level of forgiveness and tolerance is helpful.

And just for full transparency, I absolutely still have people who I find it incredibly difficult to forgive and I've compounded the suffering because of that. But I'm not saying like, this is some easy thing that you can do. You just go and say, all right, I forgive you, done snap my fingers, magic potion. We're good. It's complicated world. We live in. It's easy to get hurt feelings. I, I'm thinking of someone in particular today, Colin French is set up. I love following this guy on Twitter, he's, he's been on the podcast recently, really nice guy, just incredibly sweet and loving and transparent and he shared some, a couple experiences in the past week about having his feelings hurt.

Like he, he reached out to someone and they didn't get back and he sees them posting on social media and everyone has had this happen, right? And he noticed that he was getting upset about it and who hasn't had this happen at various times? Oh my God, I reached out to them. I thought we were close. I thought, blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't happen to you. You find yourself getting upset and then you feel bad about yourself. And he's like, he pointed out like you should notice these things as they're happening and recognize that there may be a possibility that you're telling yourself a story about these things and being able to distinguish the difference is really important because you can save yourself a lot of trouble, you know, and the truth is, is maybe sometimes someone is ignoring you.

That happens all the time. You know, that just happens. It's not but to get bent out of shape about it and freak out and recognizing more importantly that you're doing that and it's not productive. It's an opportunity. And I think that's basically what Colin was saying. So this episode, digital, real world, family, friends, community is the only thing that I found at this point that isn't something that you have to do every single day, although it's good if you can, it's not like you have to go take ayahuasca and Peru. It's not like you have to sit and meditate five minutes a day every single day and build up that muscle.

Just connect with people. I really think there's a tremendous amount of power in that. And it's taken me a good 36 and plus, you know, in the three years of doing this podcast, the fully appreciate what that means and how it can impact a life. And I'm not just using my own examples, I see this with a lot of podcasters, I know, or just people who interact, you know, you'll meet someone and they're just, wow, they met a lot of people in the past few years, like you'll see there's something you build up that is very, very important when you do that. So that's what this episode is about. There's nothing else.

I think what I might do is end it with a few songs, probably getting trouble for this. I don't have copyright permission for this. This is acknowledging that if this gets bopped on any YouTube or anywhere else, the eternal forgiveness is requested. These are just songs I like. Here's a cool idea. I'm going to do this. I'm going to start reaching out to my friends. I thought of this the other day. Do you have a song that you're like particularly obsessed with right now? I found one. My friend Mikey Campman posted a little Instagram story and had a really cool song and it was from a video. And I was like, what the fuck is that?

It's a really good song. And it's by Aldis Harding and the song is called "The Barrel." And the intro music and the outro music for this episode, I took a little clip from that and reworked it into something. But it's just like one of those things like, wow, this is a really good song. Another one I like is Mr. DC, Oh Mr. DC, which I found out is all about weed, which I didn't, it makes sense I like it, but it's a really cool reggae song from back in the day. Anyway, my point is this. Do you have a song that you're really enjoying that you're loving? Send it to me. Let's put together a communal, look, I'm a tired episode against how you do it, professional podcast, uh, send me an email with a song or songs that you're liking and we'll build a communal synchronicity playlist.

Now I recognize there will be a wide range of musical tastes and preferences and all of that. My job as host will be to put it together in some type of flowing sequence in a playlist in Spotify or YouTube, either one, whatever. But anyway, Noah@syncpodcast.com, send me an email, we'll do this. It's going to be fun. We'll create our own little community. But really, this is an antidote connecting with people. When I say community, I don't want it to mean just like, oh, you got to find a group of people, one other person, all right? Maybe community is not the word, just connecting, changing it to connecting.

That's the, that's what we're doing. So that's it for this episode. We've got a string of guests that I am so excited for you to hear in the coming weeks that I'm just, just, that's all I'll say about it. There's some very cool stuff coming, uh, big thanks to everyone who supports the show. Like you for listening, uh, give us a rating by us, I mean me, a rating on iTunes or somewhere else, greatly appreciated, otherwise, that's it and I'll see you next. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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