Dreams Course with Steven and Mikey Kampmann

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Welcome to Synchronicity. My guests this week, guests zuh. Mikey and Stevie can't, Stevie. Mikey and Stevie, no, that's not right. Mikey and Stephen Campman from the Dreams course podcast. You know Mikey and Stephen as previous guests to this, to this show, I'm fucking all over the place. Guys, how are you? By the way, How's life? How's everything going? It's pretty fucking wild out there, huh? Tippsy topsy-turvy Bartos states, that's what's going on. It's cool, fun times, we're doing great. Just hang in there. I've been doing a fair amount of micro-dosing of mushrooms, mixed in with a little LSD.

It's good times. I feel like it's the correct vibe for right now. So hopefully you're doing well. To this episode is fucking great, they're cool people. We talk a lot about how dreams, my interpretation, A.M. mentioned we're all dead. We go over that again. How this is a dream, so anything that we can glean from our nighttime dreams, this world is also reflecting the same type of energy back to us. So there's a lot of practical shit in here. It's cool. I like the vibe, too, the generational vibe between Steven and Mikey and me. There's this cool shit that we get to explore with that. I think you're going to love this episode.

I always know it's a great conversation. With either of these guys having them both together is a real treat. Go check out their podcast, Dreams Course Podcast. Also, if you're interested in what Steven is offering with the Dreams Course, you'll hear more about it in this episode. Go check him out, and there'll be links to all that in this episode. Big shout-out to my motherfucking friends at Ned. Go to helloned.com, use the code sink. S-Y-N-C at checkout. You get 15% off anything you order. Full spectrum CBD, hemp oil. They have this sleep blend, the women's blend for period stuff, which is the worst way to describe that period stuff, I don't know, menstruation.

Geez, geez Louise. They have magnesium supplements now mixed with CBD. They're just cool fucking people. The problem looking forward to the day when they can just sell straight up wheat. That's gonna be amazing. We can just ship it across the country. We get it together, New York. Get it together. Go helloned.com, S-Y-N-C at checkout. 15% off, they're fucking great. I love those guys. They've been my longest sponsor now for almost two, three years, and it's just a really nice relationship. I hear when you guys, I love hearing when you get the stuff and you send it in and you're like, it's fucking amazing, thank you so much.

It's cool when you find. I am someone who's traditionally skeptical of sponsorships, right? It's like they're paying you money to talk about their ship, but I tried their stuff and I had fucking spoken to these guys a couple of years ago. They're just legit amazing people. And if you're gonna be getting CBD stuff, which is notoriously sketchy and kind of like fucking, you don't know what's going on, these people literally are the most transparent I've ever seen. They're playing fucking binaural beats to their plants. They're cool as shit. So big thanks to Ned. Love you guys, keep it going. That's about it for the intro.

Mikey and Stephen fucking rule. Go check out their shit. There's Patreon stuff going on. We have the Q and A's a couple times a month. We're doing some bonus episodes. Gonna get a podcast up there with Ryan Singer soon. We're trying to coordinate that. I was trying to go to Nashville for November, but November just had other plans, huh? Did you have plans in November? 'Cause I guarantee they fucking got changed somehow, some way. It's just how, it's just the vibe. It's okay. Maintain your imaginal felt feeling of knowing that what you imagined is coming because it will. Have you been experiencing more synchronicities lately?

I think a lot of people have. Where this veil is being ever so subtly lifted. And I think we're just coming to terms with that. That's what a lot of the rest of this year is. So stay tuned there. Live readings, oh and Twitch. Go check it out on Twitch. I stream there. It's fun. It's fucking great. Okay, that's it. Without further ado, here is Stephen and Mikey Campin. (upbeat music) Jump in, we can, all right, whatever. What's going on, guys? Have you been, respectively, each of you, this is gonna be fun to record, by the way. Yeah, it's pretty wild to think we're sitting here in all these different locations and talking about the spirit everywhere.

It's weird. I mean, that's, I know where, I mean, we'll just jump right in. People know who both of you are at this point, I'm sure, so I'll do an intro, if anything. But I heard the episode you guys were talking about heaven, I think, and how heaven is kind of a perception of this reality, if you can kind of step into that. And this is certainly something that I feel like I've had a pretty direct experience of like walking through that. It's at several different distinct points in my life, but really like stabilizing that perspective, regardless of what filters in kind of externally has been something that's kind of been my main modality or way I've been approaching the world for the past year and a half, which is a weird fucking time to kind of what you would say, like enter the gates of the kingdom of heaven 'cause objectively shit ain't great.

So I mean, I know what important dreams have had for both of you. I know you both is like very introspective, deep thinking people might get through your comedy, Steven, mainly through the conversations we've had. So like, how are you navigating the terrain? That's like no pun intended with these maps we're looking at, but like, how have you been navigating the terrain over the past of 2020? Let's just say that.

Well, yeah, I think, well, can I say something to--

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. You have my permission to go for it, Mike.

Has there ever been a better time to try to realize heaven on Earth?

Right. You know, if as my dad, as Steven says all the time, you know, the external world is in chaos. So this is a great time, probably the most significant time to turn to the internal world and find that sense of serenity or a sense of decency within yourself and so that you can be that not only for your own perception but for other people in the community that you interact with.

I think it's a moment.

Yeah.

Well, the dreams course which I've been teaching for years, I never felt the timing has been better for the reasons Mikey has said. Because it's chaotic, you can't say to a young person and most of the people that are in my group are young 20s or 30s and most of them are women and that's a separate subject. But the reality is they're looking out of the world when they're young going, "What's it gonna give me?" Climate issues, the politics, the, you know, it goes on and on and on and on. And finally, coming back into the inner world and following your inner path is the secret. It's comforting. It takes away some of the anxiety because you have a certain amount of control of it which you have no control going on in the world.

So, I mean, this is where, yeah, this is where I know our last conversations were about this, Mikey, you'll just be plugged into them. I mean, I've been acutely interested in the connection between how our internal states, states of consciousness, belief structures literally are manifested and reflected back to us externally. Whether in relationships or geography or situation, it's just like what we fully believe in aggregate is what our experience of this particular dimension, slice of time and space that we carve through winnearly or though it appears we do.

Absolutely, like take the analogy of throwing a rock into a pond and it ripples, right? So in that analogy, your energy is the rock. So your internal shifting spaces, those are rocks that you keep throwing out into the world. And those ripples are like a call and response to the energy you're putting out.

Yeah, it's literally what's happening. And I think what I guess what catches us sometimes is when we get those ripples back and they're not what we wanted or they're not what we expected, which expectations can have a lot of this. It's how to recognize that as a calibrating mechanism for our own internal states rather than externalizing or projecting and blaming those ripples that come back. Because I really do think that's what it is. And I think most of, I know you two definitely would agree that like, whether it's in dreams or just in a quiet moment of contemplation or just in like a song or a feeling, whatever it is, there is this very peaceful, calming, loving energy that feels, I don't use the word home explicitly, but it's very like familiar.

It feels like the kind of basis of what we're experiencing. So how to get in touch and calibrate in a world that seems to be so far out of whack is where we find ourselves. I mean, what have you guys been doing over the past year?

Okay, so I'll give you an idea about how things have connected for us. And the last year, the pandemic obviously has changed the calculus of everything. And as it worked out this summer, Mikey ended up here in Maine with us for three months. And it was like a strange blessing because at this age, you don't expect to spend that kind of time with anybody, you know, and your family, your sons, or daughters. And we did and we started to connect and we started to connect on the spiritual thing. And that brought us to the quotes, which I'll let Mikey explain a little bit about that, but basically for the last nine years, I've been memorizing different quotes that inspire me.

And I had sent them to Mikey and he had the idea that, wait a minute, let me get a certain answer. He had the idea that maybe what we should do, 'cause we were having good conversations, is copy those quotes and put them into a hat and then pick one and then discuss it. And we did it, we did a couple. And out of it became really good conversation, not only between about the material, but for us, we've never had these kind of conversations as a father and son. So that's what we've been doing. And in terms of everything else, I have Parkinson's. And so working on these kinds of quotes and thinking about these sort of things has been another blessing for me because it keeps everything active and present centered.

So in a nod way, this time since the pandemic has started has been everyone's healthy, which is good. And it's also been an opportunity for the two of us to connect in a way that we hadn't before, right? So and Mikey had the idea of like the quotes idea, right, Mike?

Yeah, well, I mean, you had memorized these quotes. It took, you said it was, I mean, when you sent it to me, I thought you were insane because you were spending half an hour a day reciting these memorized quotes. I mean, it was like, you know, I was just thinking like, who, why do you miss life, you know? Like, what are you doing with your time, man? And yeah, then we, but then let's say, okay, let's break down each one. Like, why did you select this? Like what's the message in here that you attach to, that you find some sort of, as like a mantra, what is it that speaks to you? And let's use that as a spark for conversation.

And what I think and to kind of get to what you were talking about, like what have we done this last year, is that these conversations have led us to the spirit, this sense of the spirit as a juxtaposition to the chaos and the ego. And we, in one of our earlier conversations, we talked about the five foods of the spirit and how you can feed the spirit on a daily basis.

That you have to.

And that has been like a fantastic guiding light for this time, honoring that internal health, you know, really focusing on that. How, if you can start there, that's gonna set you up for a great day, every day.

And if you do the five things, nothing.

Well, there.

Not the below the whole episode.

I think I listened to you.

No, no, no, but what are the five things?

Each one, I remember just seeing the living room having this conversation and when it was done, I said, you know, we should do some version of this because it's interesting. The five foods and the idea is that the spirit in us has been, is so distracted by all the external events going on, the spirit never gets recognized.

Yeah.

And so we said, well, how would we nurture?

Nurtured, really, that's the key word. Most of the people I'm dealing with aren't nurturing the spirit, they're nurturing the externals of their lives, resumes, jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends, that kind of thing. And so we came up, we said, well, let's, what would be five? And we said, well, breathing, learning how to breathe well is important, the spirit likes that. And the spirit loves seeing any form of beauty. Beauty inspires the spirit as we all know, we've all taken hikes and walks or been on the ocean or seen in a sunset and I have an Instagram that is nothing but beautiful shots. And so that's that.

And then the third thing is do something creative every day. The fourth thing is gratitude for what's in your life now. And five, do something of service to others. Like when you're doing your show Noah, that's, for the people that are listening and the way we're connecting with people, that's a service because it's giving them, and I've experienced it directly because of your show, people then have reached out to me and then have gotten them into the Grims course. So you don't have to create a podcast, but you do need to think, what can I do creative today, somewhere in the course of the day? And our thinking is, if you did all five every day, you'd be in pretty good shape.

That's the idea.

I agree with that. I agree with that the breathing one, I think is one I need to remember more often than not. I've noticed in times of stress or chaos. And I think what we're talking about here, just whether we put it in explicit union terms or just kind of metaphysical terms, it's this idea of this balance between chaos and cosmos. So chaos being this kind of like out of control, it's not a judgmental thing, but like expansive kind of no boundaries type thing, and then an order and structure. Internal harmony to things feel like the cosmos. And I think a lot of what we do is filter kind of this external chaos through our internal perceptive kind of mechanism into an internal cosmos.

And then we recognize very clearly that like, whatever is generating our feelings and our awareness, whenever we localized that, whenever we have those moments of lucidity, we recognize like, holy shit, that's literally what's being reflected back to me. And that's where I think a lot of people, I know as this podcast has gotten like more people's attention, like people are, it feels to me right now, I'm interested to talk to you guys about this, like kind of like a barto state, kind of like this in between point of uncertainty, where like we haven't fully manifested into the new dimension or way of being, but we can sense that something's coming.

It's like we're in the birth canal. And I feel like this could be perpetuated kind of infinitely, but intuitively I know it won't. But I know a lot of people, I do these readings and people come to me and that's been a general kind of feeling that people are moving through. And I'm wondering like how you guys, if you've encountered that, and you're like, how I keep leaving open-ended questions, by the way, for either of you to pick without directing them towards anyone, it's a sign of a true interviewer. But I'm wondering if you guys--

And there's a lot of questions within the birth canal.

Yeah, I mean, I'm wondering when you encounter that type of energy of like shit, I feel like I'm an in-between state. What do you do in those types of moments? What do you like think about? What's kind of like your internal beacon? 'Cause I think that differs from person to person. So whoever wants that can have at it.

I got something. Perception, perception, right? So here's the trippiest thing, is that that chaos and that cosmos are coexisting simultaneously. There is no difference other than perception. And that can be like, that can be a, I don't know, a hard challenging, maybe sometimes frustrating lesson to learn and relearn and relearn.

Especially if you apply to things like morality, yeah.

Well, I want to jump on that perception 'cause I think ultimately the creams course and the creams course podcast are trying to change perception. For example, I was watching a football game last night and my team lost and I was bummed out. And then I said to myself, why am I bummed out? This is just a tape that I've been playing whenever the team is lost in my whole life. I'm responding, reacting to a bullshit.

You know, I'm laughing 'cause I'm a dolphin fan.

Oh, well, I mean, but it's just, I sat there and I go, I'm really feeling badly. Over what? These are millionaires playing a game that do nothing about me. They don't give a shit about me. And I'm sitting here feeling badly. Oh, that's not me. That's the tape I've been playing. And if I change the perception by changing the tape and go, why not be in a good mood? Why not choose a good mood? You can begin in second, like magic, change it. But all my life, I've been playing the tape then reacting to it. So people, you're--

And I'm laughing.

I need to tell you the reason I'm laughing because I have long said that my biggest spiritual practice is being a man you talk to your fan. And I mean this, like people think I'm happy. I'm dead serious 'cause I literally had to learn this lesson over like 35 years, 30 years. And now what's hilarious to me is they're good now. I don't know if you guys have been noticing, but they're like, they're actually good. It's not that they just don't suck. They're actually like winning games. They're good. Here's the thing, football, anything in life will teach you this exact primary lesson that it's your responsibility to dictate your perception and feelings about anything.

What I've found to be particularly cool and neat. And there are boundaries to this are only the boundaries of your imagination limitation. You can basically pre-determine certain states of consciousness by welcoming them in because what feels like happening is like time, everyone kind of acknowledges the time doesn't work the way we perceive it to exist in linear fashion. Like well, enough you do enough psychedelics, you do enough dream work, you do enough internal stuff, you just get quiet enough, you recognize there's, it's not as solid as we perceive it to be. If that's true, we have this ability to kind of quantum leap and change our perception at any given time.

That's realization number one. I think what a lot of people in this birth canal, what it feels like to me, they're learning how to like stabilize certain perceptions, certain modes of being that are more in resonance with what they'd like to see and that beauty thing that's in that five, I think is incredibly important. I had my four year old say to me, this shit, it shook me to my core. Through watching some weird crash show he likes on YouTube or these horrific crashes and fucking animated computer data in reality. He likes it, I don't know, he genuinely likes it. It doesn't seem like he's like sociopath because of it.

But there's just part where like clearly the guy's not surviving, this crash dummy. And we're like, you know, he'll be back or we didn't know what to say and it was me and my dad. And he's like, oh, maybe he just went to go find something more beautiful. And I'm like, oh my God, you're like a fucking genius. Like this is like, this is literally the perspective of a four year old or an innocent kind of child that's like, it's not about the transitory states that we go through, but it's kind of letting the beauty of what we want kind of to populate our minds and therefore our worlds. So the game that I've seen emerge a lot in 2020 is like, when we capture that internal state, how do we maintain and sustain it when we see a world objectively that can be anything but that, that it's completely dissonant with?

And I think that's a calibration for all of us. And I think you guys like to speaking with you now and knowing you guys like, seems like you've done it, seems like you really have solidified this internal conviction and faith and belief in your core being, which to me makes me incredibly optimistic that going forward, like we see more of this in the world, right? Whether that's just from these conversations or people like, I don't know if you guys see it, but I know people are building communities all over the country, all over the world, where people are kind of locking into the primary importance of their immediate beauty that always surrounds them, whether that's the Earth or relationships or just like, I don't know, a good teacher.

A big characteristic of this time, 2020, is we're more fully realizing how bankrupt our way of living has become, right? So these things that shape us through childhood and as we enter the adult world and all the expectations of Western civilization and what it means to be a successful person, these things are material, empty ideas. And so your son who's talking about going to a more beautiful place, he's closer to the source when his mind hasn't been fully halted by this fucked up trash culture. You know, there's trash culture.

I want, yeah, go ahead, Mike, finish.

No, so I just think like, this is a good moment to sort of in the same way that Stephen has to sort of undo some of his tapes that have, you know, that are linked to Parkinson's, we in our, we right now can sort of unlearn, start by unlearning everything that we've been taught from like from the culture.

It's like, you know, my course doesn't, I do one-on-one, one-on-one, I don't do group stuff because it's so much more dynamic. It's like what we're doing now. And you get such a different kind of intimacy and response. But in my course, because of the issue of being hanging on to old crap of ways of perceiving things, we learned in childhood to survive, they're no longer useful to us as we get older. We survived and we're in a different place, but we've held on to those reactions. And in the course, I don't go into the past very much. I go, look, your parents got you here. You're on the planet.

Now how you spend that time is up to you. So don't cry about everything that happened before you. Use that as an opportunity to move forward. And in doing that, what I've created is that like in these things I've memorized, I've brought that into my course, my students, and it's very interesting, like a lot of the females that have a really dynamic people, and they're the kind of people we wanna work with because they're motivated, they have jobs, they have a lot of skill sets, but the one area that they're not strong in is the animus, which is the Jungian kind of male part of who they are. And so I set out, I created what I created, I created with the help of one of the students, 18 quotes from women that are really powerful animus quotes, and they pick out three of the ones they like, and then they add another, I add the poem, The Invitation, and I add one more, and then they memorize them.

And when they memorize them, when they get into a situation where they need their animus to be strong, they can literally say this, the quote, in their head, to remind them to be strong, to stand up to the situation they're in. And I'm finding that what's really dynamic is watching people able to change their perception because they're changing the way they think on a given situation. It's much more aggressive, much more fulfilling of the internal process. Hey, I add an idea, would you?

I was going to read just a couple of things, but why don't we do what Mikey and I do? We've never done that with a third person, you know, where I pick out of the hat and do it, and do it. By the way, my first quote I memorized began with the Buddha quote, all conditioned things are subject to decay, so strive on tirelessly. And then I did follow your bliss and doors will open where walls once used to be. And then I took the monolith, it tells you how different you, everyone is different. So my idea is that every person I work with or that listens to the podcast, they're going to memorize their own mantra that fits the area where they need strength to go against the old tapes and the old perceptions.

So that your mantra would be different than mine, which is different than Mikey's that is different than from my students. It's your personal and it's like taking your mind to the gym every day. And, you know, I have them say it three or four times. And then so one of the ones I have is the Goodwill hunting model scene with Will Robin Williams and Matt Damon where he's saying, you know, if I asked you about art, I bet you'd give me all the skinny on every art book ever written. You know, a lot about him, life work criticisms, but you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel 'cause you've never been there.

Well, I ended up memorizing. So anyway, those were the first three. And I've added, I probably need to do 90 now. So why don't I reach into the book here and I'll pick one and then we'll just discuss that quote in any way it relates to our lives here, okay? You know I'm always into it, you know I'm always into it. You are. All right, here we go.

Dad, you got to put the microphone here, the paper so we can hear them shuffling around.

Okay, I'm gonna hear it rustle.

Yeah, we like to rustle.

Can you hear anything?

Oh, that's good rattle.

Okay, I'm working, all right, let me pick one. Herman Hess, Hessa. All right, and so we'll all read it off and then we'll come back to it and we just take it to wherever it goes. The true profession of man is finding his way to himself. Herman Hess. The true profession of man is finding his way to himself which is pretty much what the course is about because we believe that the spirit has been the underdog, that's why we have the five foods and that the real task of every one of our lives is to figure out who you are really authentically and what's your purpose on the planet and that's the journey to the self and individuation is your particular journey, how you get to the self.

So this quote really is at the core of pretty much everything that I'm teaching. Any responses?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've always kind of thought about that where it's like people ask you what your career is, what's your job? What do you do for a living? And I've always kind of thought about that internal work and as the real work, you know? Obviously, we all have jobs to pay for life to live but especially whenever I have done psychedelics, I always think of that as like, okay, I'm putting on the construction hard hat and the vest and we're gonna start doing some real work here.

To get somewhere.

Thanks, thank you.

So much so that, you know, I said to you, what do you think right now is your path right now to yourself, to your real authentic self? What would you say?

Yeah, I think right now I've been discovering that I've put myself on this path where if I don't honor the creative aspect, like not just out, not based on output but just like getting into the creative mindset. If I don't honor that, everything in my life turns quite chaotic and there's that nagging inner voice that's like, hey, you could fix all this if you just do what you're supposed to do. Even if it doesn't fit into reality and I have enough evidence in my life that when I followed that kind of inner knowing, it leads me to the right places. And right now for me, that's like doing what we're doing now.

It's been giving these readings. I've been talking to a lot of people about what they're going through, making a lot of music, listening to music. I also find myself, you know how like, you have all these plans to do things but then you actually find yourself doing a lot of other things. Like I find myself driving back and forth, whether it's with my kids or to my partners or to my dads. Like I'm just driving a lot and I'm like, what, there's a lesson here. Like I'm supposed to be learning some lesson of like transitions here. Let me try to figure out what that is. So, you know, I'm enjoying, I also like you guys really put a premium on being in beautiful places and appreciating the beauty regardless of where I am, whether that's in a city or in nature.

I found myself being in nature more often than not like three or four years ago. And I find that to be like a constant state of like, I feel like I'm in the right place. And when I feel like I'm in the right place, it's a matter of just like honoring what internally feels like something I have to do. And I feel like that's a way of creating more beauty in the world is just honoring that kind of more than anything 'cause it feels the most honest, just an authentic for me. And sometimes that looks just to be clear, like to other people, like I'm a knuckle or like, you know, I'm making a wrong move or I'm doing something that's, you know, lacking empathy.

But I trust myself, I guess a lot at this point. That's what I learned over this past year. Regardless and like through everything that like I do trust myself and, you know, good things tend to fall from that.

That's huge though, to start to trust yourself is really, really, that's the way that you find your way back to yourself. When you start trusting the instinctive part of who you are and you're listening to those voices, which is why dreams are significant for the course because in dreams, you're communicating the unconscious, visually unconscious, and you're marrying it with the conscious. You're diving deep to go in and get information and then follow that information so that if you get a message, a certain kind of message in your dream life, then it's your job to kind of follow up on that and explore what that means in your real life, your external life.

Now, when you're taking your inner life from the night dreams and applying them into the daily life, you're beginning to live in the inner outer path because you're trusting that the dreams are sending you relevant information you need to know about that may be an area that needs to be nurtured or a part of you that needs to shut up, there's a voice that's too loud and the other voices can't be heard and it's your job as the kind of conductor of the voice orchestra to figure out which voices are speaking the loudest to me and which are the ones that be nurtured and the dreams are giving you that information every night.

So, and that builds the trust.

You know my thoughts, I think the last... So like, I think this world is a dream, right? I think the best way we're looking, like the way I think about it is this, like if we are casting a shadow from a three-dimensional reality, what will appear is a flat depiction of that shadow like on a wall or a surface, right? That's all a two-dimensional being can perceive of a three-dimensional reality. I'm quite sure we're in a three-dimensional reality. You can argue that time is the fourth dimension but there are higher dimensional realities. I think most people have any awareness of themselves. We'll admit that, at least we were listening to this podcast.

My question is, is like, where do we want to go with that knowledge? Like, do we transcend?

Magic. - Right, magic. So this is right, it's magic and also like, here's the thing, like, this reality is the dream. Like, we crossed over from that liminal boundary that like we go to sleep. Of course, there's still a dream world. We process a lot of stuff. Thank God in dreams that we don't have to process in this physical reality, it'd be a fucking nightmare sometimes. Some of us do process it here if we like hold onto it long enough. But this reality seems to be functioning. So what I love about the dreams course specifically now is that this stuff is so directly applicable to the content of what people are experiencing on a daily waking basis, that you now have these two pronged kind of levels of engaging with reality and taking neither at face value, whether it's a dream saying this is the ultimate reality or this reality that we experienced here is ultimately, but only your internal beacon of kind of like what you believe to be true, that's reality.

Tweaking that lever is I think what we're all talking about and trying to find where that is and how that fits into this broader collective thing we're doing here without getting out of resonance with too many people unless that's your thing, which is also okay.

It's funny 'cause when we're, now let me just finish this quick thought that when it's funny you say about treating it like it's a dream that we're in because that's how I've changed teaching the book Damien by Herman Hess, I treat the whole novel like it's a dream and that you're picking up the different Jungian figures in that dream, the animus, the anima, the shadows, the self and all those aspects that Hess himself had learned when he went underwent psychotherapy with Joseph Frank back in 1916 or so and he wanted to write a book on individuation and it came to me this year that I should teach it like a dream, not teach it like it's one, two-dimensional, create it like it's coming to, it's a dream of a man that's undergoing individuation and dreams are a big part of that and it makes it a totally different perspective of teaching it perception of the book and appreciation of the book.

And so I kind of in a way, I guess I'm reaffirming what you just said, Noah, about the dream aspect of everything, magic.

No on it, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I wanna hear Mikey talk about magic.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, as of late, I've been super concentrated on the idea of the magic, a magical universe existing right now and wanting to access that universe as often as possible 'cause it's a lot better than the alternative of not living in that world. But one thing about the quote, the Herman Hess quote that started this conversation is he talks about the self and I think this is another aspect that I think is important to point out is that in that Jungian term of the self, it's often this unified circular thing and one idea that we have struck upon in our conversations is this idea that dad had when you enter this form, when you enter the form of this world as a human self, you're shattered and broken into pieces.

And really that pursuit of getting back to the self is in many ways a pursuit of gathering all the pieces and piecing them back together, making this sort of gluing the plate back together so that you can feel like a unified self. So you can remember what it feels like to be a complete or a somewhat complete human or self or consciousness. And so one part of that magical kingdom is the game of, in many ways, life is a good game, you know? And you have to go around gathering pieces of knowledge and information with the intention of this helping you put that plate back together again.

I think, I think to go on the road, yeah. Go ahead.

So part of that is you have to be willing to cooperate with things that you, with everything really, that as Caroline Casey says, is magic is the willingness to cooperate with everything.

Yeah.

So a lot of times these oppressors that you have in your life are these things that seem super challenging that you wanna, you know, that you try to avoid. Those are oftentimes our biggest teachers and you might need to face that in order to pull out the gem that will help you glue the plate back together.

Yeah, I mean, you do. I would say like you have to face those things in order to get you through. I mean, at least in my life and God knows I love throwing dramatic challenges at myself. Really, I'm a fan of it. But every time you transcend kind of a major belief or fear or limiting belief, I would say, the sense of empowerment and kind of like gratitude and grace and like humbleness that like comes through from that is worth it every time. I'm like, I feel like that's why we incarnate as these beings in seemingly limited form. And I mean that because like, we obviously have some limitations. If you cut away our oxygen for long enough, we're gonna die like physically.

So there clearly are rules to this game. But we have at least to me like that self quote about the Herman Hesse quote, like the self in a union sense or a Hesse and I know they were really like aligned in this. To me, that's what our imagination, our consciousness, our awareness is. Like that's literally the God, the self, the deity, all the archetypes, all the mythological figures wrapped into one. And I think as a conceptual reality, that's all well and good. But as a practical direct live reality, shaping some things before you experience them in this world is pretty fucking cool. I think that's also like the creative ability that more and more people are getting in touch with.

And I think the pandemic is clearly a scenario where people can see this. I think the massive political shifts and polarizations are other symptoms and things that point to this, including environmental stuff where it's like shit. We really got a fucking, if this is true, if this really is just like an individuation journey where we recognize we're the ultimate creative power in our world, what world do we wanna be living in? Do we can we shape that with our kind of consciousness and our belief structures? I've found so far up until the point I'm wrong, that's just how shit works. Always for everyone, all of the time.

Our kind of remembrance of that is what we call synchronicity, what we call flow state, the pleasant experiences of it. People typically can ascribe those qualities too. But when you're like really in the thickest shit, when you're in the middle of 2020 and you're like fucking what the fuck is reality? And you remember this stuff, you know, that's when you're like, oh, thank God. Like think, I see the point of this now. And I just feel like we did, you know, everyone who's alive in this slice of time did like some heavy drugs. We found ourselves in these, these bodies. We're like, what the fuck?

We gotta ride this out until we physically die now? Jesus Christ. So I just feel like we're riding this way, but it does seem to me, and I'm sure you guys have found this too, that like when you recognize that internal generative mechanism, at least you do have some control. In terms of dealing with the chaos, there is an empowering aspect of control, not in a manipulative kind of controlling type of way, but just like, hey, you can direct this ship with your perception. That's how we're in its works.

Yeah, you invite in that possibility.

I think that also the biggest change Noah since you and I spoke is I really now have come to the place where I believe I'm a spirit. And so I find myself drawn to books of the afterlife, of the spirit world. And somewhere in this pandemic, it came to me that I'm a spirit. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna couch it. I'm not gonna try to be cool about it. And what do you really believe? I believe I'm a spirit in form, having a human experience. So when Mikey's talking about that plate, that's the power of the self. That was our source coming into the game. And the earth experience. When we think about it, if you take energy and you explode it into form, into form, earth, people, et cetera, everything, that's gonna be a pretty remarkable moment that something becomes form, that an egg becomes the, you know, turns into.

And that's when the self gets lost because it gets caught up in all the, all the trash and seductions of the earth, which are so many that the spirit suddenly, which was put the whole thing together, now is suddenly the underdog. So I, when we--

It's a practical mechanism though, right?

The mechanism begins with that, I mean, that's why we're talking about the five spirits of the food and why we're talking about the spirit. The spirit is fighting for its life. And our job is to make sure we connect with it. Man's main vocation profession is to find his way back to his self. The self with a capital S. The spirit part of who you are, the authentic part. And if you lose that, you're doomed as doomed can be. And by the way, last thought, individuation applies to the world at large. It too undergoes individuation, getting rid of old ideas and bringing, and we're in the middle of that, clearly, because, and I think that the world or do, you know, United States, America, do we wanna be a material world and it's all about money?

Or do we wanna be a spirit kingdom and all that goes with that? And I think those two are in battle. And I'm, I-

Yeah, I mean, it's a constant. I view that kind of forgetting what leads to potential imbalance is like a practical mechanism of incarnation. I do think what creates this world and our perception of it is a deep and abiding love of who we are at our core. So you believe you're Stephen, you believe you're Mikey. I believe I'm Noah. These are like, we fell in love with this idea of physical form. And enough also that we strung it together in this thing called time. Like, it's a weird thing that we like stitch this whole perception thing together. And when you say you're a spirit, what comes to my mind is I have this sneaking suspicion, not a bad way, that we're all dead anyway, that we're just like facing into this category.

That's like, I'm pretty sure this is what's going on. And it's like, it's not a bad thing. It's cool. And if you can understand that and like project your particular perspective and experience on this screen and be cool and have a good time, as much as you can. And like, this doesn't mean like being detached from objective suffering in the world. But like, that seems to be a very liberating and just from again, practical, direct lived experience is an effective way of navigating reality. For me so far, it's been good 'cause I don't think we ultimately, what we're weaving together here as what we call life is us like phasing in and out of certain emotional, psychological, spiritual states of consciousness.

And these also continue when we've shut the mechanism of the body off and the conscious mind. 'Cause it's clear when people meditate or take psychedelics or just go to sleep at night, like it's going, your consciousness is still going somewhere. You're still that sense of I am, that creative force. God, whatever you wanna call it, exists. Our remembrance of that as an active mechanism is it seems to be to be a game of like hide-and-seek amnesia where we do, we get tempted by the external realities of this world until we slowly wake up to the remembrance that we're kind of pulling the trigger here.

And I think what used to freak me out, I thought when that moment happened, and it happened to me like 20 years ago, is that like reality would collapse in on itself and I'd like die physically. It's not what happens at all. You just like take the joystick of what you viewed as kind of some external thing pressing down upon you. And you're like, oh, I'm like the player in this game, but I'm also like writing, producing, directing this entire narrative. And then your avatar, you hear, waking life, 3D you, does all this shit and you're like, what the fuck? That's my favorite experience in life is when I start doing something and I'm like, how the fuck am I doing that?

Like I don't even understand like where this thing came from. Like overnight sometimes I'm like, this is such a weird phenomenon, but it proves to me that we do have this ability to like phase and tune our perception and awareness. And if we calibrate that towards what we're actually passionate about, what we really care about, what we wanna experience in the world and like really like have faith and conviction that our passion is leading us to where we're supposed to be. But the world does get infinitely more beautiful.

But if you take the ego.

Yeah, you've got the heart of yourself.

What is?

If at the heart of yourself is conscious energy, then you, I don't know, I was gonna just say like, maybe this, maybe this earth and this body that we're in is explicitly just designed to enjoy the pleasures of being in a physical form. Like, like we put all these distractions and hurdles in front of us, these obstacles and lose our way from just remembering what it feels like to be alive and to enjoy that feeling. 'Cause this is a short term, this could be a short term thing, you know? Like, I like how you describe it as the remembrance. Like, I think you could make a very strong case that we already know everything we need to know.

It's ingrained in our every cell of our body. It's ingrained in the conscious energy that is within us. So our job is really just to remember.

Right, I think that's true. That's the thing that's really important because living, being in form, being in our bodies is really seductive. I mean, that's the ego, you know, the Steven, the Noah, the Mikey, you know, it's pretty, pretty, you know, high-minded stuff to think that we're in form and we can taste and we can have sex and we can eat and we can travel and, you know, who the hell gives a damn about the spirit? And it's, that's the awakening. That's the point of the Hess quote. The real job is to get back to that self because you can get seduced into the world that we're in right now and forget the energy source.

It all comes down to energy. And the more you put the plate together in your life, the more you're increasing your energy and you're getting rid of the blocked energy that is all caught up in all the, you know, all the attractive illusions of this life. But when you go to the spirit and you start, in the spirit and following the spirit, my course is not an intellectual course. If you come across a truth in you, your job is to bring that truth into the world. Now, today, if you're not exercising,

Well, don't you know, you know, it's like--

Don't you want to get better at being alive? Did you get older? Don't you want to get better at being alive?

Yeah, you guys are still in the young course, but where I stand, this is the only thing that I got to get right at this point. I got to get this right because that's where I'm at. I'm not going to be in this form for that much longer. And so my emphasis is really on it. So I really think about now these days. And oddly enough, so weird by being isolated by the pandemic, which is terrible for Parkinson's, has kind of forced me into an inner world and a lot of my students that I'm getting are also having to look at themselves more because they're being quarantined. They're being limited connection to other humans.

And in that part of it kind of forces you, or leads the way, or points of signal to you of the inner path.

What stuff comes up there though? 'Cause that's, I think everyone over the past, I mean, I was internationally traveling for a little bit, but I mean, everyone has gone through every oscillation of isolation and just kind of being forced to change their patterns as they've known them. What did that bring up for you, for you guys? Like Steven, you're just talking about, but I like to hear from Mikey too, but like what got brought up in these periods of kind of isolation?

I loved it at first. I mean, because I didn't have to go do crap. Like, oh, there's nothing I can do. All I have to do, I have to stay at home and read books about the spirit. I wish I could go outside and go to Disneyland. Oh, I can't though, I have to be here. And so it was like a relief to not have to, it was like a snow day, do you shit? Yeah, it was like the do shit really takes over your life. You know, the dude's--

I'll tell you about it, my friend.

Yeah, my whole life sometimes is doing shit.

It's just doing like the driving back and forth.

I get it.

And you're doing that. And then so in a way, it's allowed, I mean, I'm up in Maine and it's a beautiful part of Maine and far away from anyone. And I worry about the isolation because of Parkinson's, but I welcome the isolation in terms of reflection. Kind of where I'm at. What about you, Mikey?

Yeah.

Mikey's more active in the world.

I specialize in isolation. I do that, I choice a lot. So it was sort of, it was a very familiar feeling while quarantine was happening, but what I enjoyed was that I had, started having really good conversations, reflective conversations with all sorts of people, my friend, my family. It was this like collective moment to pump the brakes and stop for a second and breathe and say, what are we doing? Because I think so much of our civilization, of our culture is this like incessant need to just keep moving forward, like without, with reckless abandon, you know? With no forethought either. No like, no like multi-generational vision for the future.

Just like, no progress, progress, like development, like, like keep growing as if like infinite growth of that material kind is akin to achievement and success.

Yeah, yeah.

There's actually wisdom in knowing when to not do something, you know, when to pull back. And so I thought quarantine was pretty interesting for allowing this moment for everyone to kind of stop and have some reflective conversations in a way that we culturally haven't really ever had. I'm not convinced because the American machine is so dominant and so willful that I'm not convinced it's gonna, that it's learned very much in this process. But I don't know, at the same time I do continue to have these conversations with friends and family where it's like that feeling of waking up to something, you know?

Yeah, I think that's what a lot of people are feeling right now. I also think it's true. I also like this idea of growth unabated. It's like you're gonna end up with a really weedy garden if you're just growing everything grow whenever. There is a time for pruning and cultivating and things that you actually want to look beautiful. This is a, I love him, Neville Goddard, this mystical paper, the 20th century had this idea of like pruning, oh God, he's so fucking good. It's great. He's so beautiful.

You got me into him. He's amazing.

He's so weird sometimes too. Like, he'll just like he shit on Bob Hope for like 20 minutes for no reason. He's called him stingy. I'm like, why are you airing personal grievances and celebrities? What's going on? But anyway, he has this idea that you basically prune the vine and the vine is your conception of yourself and who you are and therefore the world that you perceive outside of it. And at certain times, you need to like, if you want to control where the vine goes, not out of like some weird kind of control freak thing, but just because you want to make it look like a very beautiful fruit bearing, you know, whatever it is, if that's what it is, you just have to take some cuts there.

You have to make it go this way. You have to make it go that way, pull it back here. Don't just let it overgrow and become this thing 'cause it's not actually what's best for the tree or the organism itself. So I think that's an important idea. This growth mindset, which to me, like the perverted aspects of capitalism, I'm not very judgmental about capitalism now because I do view it as like what you just described, Mikey, is like it's just a symptomatic reflection of this growth unabated mindset. And that's so easily like, it's easy to get seduced by the symbolic representation of what that is, which is money 'cause that's like the primary energy exchange tool of how the modern world works in quotes.

It's easy to get seduced and be like, oh, well, that shit is like the problem or the solution, but it is an internal imbalance. Like that's ultimately, it's like, it's a mindset 'cause like I've, what I've found interesting about the, I don't even wanna say predicament, the situation we're in economically, morally, ethically, just socio, just where we are in everything. This is like the best moment of opportunity to really latch onto the idea of what we want the world to be and what we'd like to see in it. And then actually shape that. There's more opportunity amidst the chaos now than I've ever seen in my life.

I'm only 37 years old, Steven, you've had more life experience than me, but like I've never seen so much opportunity because there's such a pause and how the system has been built up is on such a teetering precipice. It's like, I love that. I'm jumping on, I haven't taken money from the government. I fucking love this shit. This is like, this is incredible.

Yeah, they're just picking it up anyway.

Well, remember in the world, the man's true profession is to find her, what was the quote exactly? It is finding his way to his ego. That's the world. So the satisfy, the needs of everyone's an individual, but can you imagine, and therefore no one cares about the planet, no one takes it. A lot of people care about the planet, but they don't, we're not seriously taking it as a culture. And what would happen if everyone was thinking spiritually, for real spiritually, authentic, not the phony religions, Bill Mark talks about, but what would the world look like if people had awareness that they're spirits?

How would we be treating one another? Where would money fit in? Wouldn't we be more balanced?

Money doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

Yeah, it doesn't exist.

Energy exists in the natural world.

Yeah, money's not a real thing. It's a piece of paper that you, not even a piece of paper anymore. It's just a made up of digital bleep-lop bloop. It's why I have Bitcoin.

But it's literally made up.

It's the ego's way of, it's ego's energy, right? I mean, that's how it measures itself. It's through-

I mean, well, not, I don't think it's, I think it's like in this human experiment, we, you know, as our hive is growing, it became this thing that was useful so that you didn't, so that you could, you know, if you were growing olives, you didn't, you could, you could trade for other things and not always- - It wouldn't be in your immediate vicinity, mostly.

Exactly, but, you know, but this is an experiment. You know, we're in the sand pit. I love thinking of life as the giant sand pit.

Totally.

You know, we're still children in the sand pit coming up with more and more elaborate rules, but it's a land of make-believe. You know, and the joke of it is that humans become so assured in the rules of the game as being reality.

Right. - You get so lost.

But not now.

In, in, not now, those rules are being-

I don't even think it's just humans. I don't, I don't even think it's just humans. I think beings of all kinds gets seduced into thinking of their own innate beingness, which is true, but as part of a collective whole. That's where I think when you look at, so like I'm real gentle with the way I use the word ego because just through a series of like visions, I don't know how to fucking describe it at this point. That's what they were. I, I just saw the ego kind of like a wolf, that if you have a good relationship with that wolf, that's a badass wolf that can help you out and defend when it needs to.

But if you don't feed your wolf and you're a dick to it, there's things fucking rabbit and it's all around. It's gonna attack you and everyone else around you. So I'm pretty gentle with the ego, but I, I do think that when we get into the root that money doesn't exist, of course it exists. I have bills up the fucking wazoo. I totally understand that, that money exists. But as an energetic principle, the feeling of feeling that you have enough, be it money, love, grace, joy, whatever it is, misery, whatever you want to incorporate in there, literally is the, that belief in conviction of this whether you recognize it or not is what shapes your reality.

I therefore love money because it's taught me so many times but I'm on like the fucking brink, but I'm like, what the fuck am I gonna do? I'm running out of money. I don't wanna have kids. I don't wanna do. I fucking employ these kind of what maybe is like magical thinking to a lot of people and sure as shit, this stuff works and it's like you can't turn, it's like a fucking magic trick that works every single fucking time. And you know, I wouldn't have, I'd have to be a piece of shit at this point. I've been saying this a lot. I'd have to be just like the absolute worst person to talk about this stuff this confidently if I didn't actually experience it every time.

Then I'm actually a psychopath. Then I'm actually just someone who's just like, you know, living a whole lot and has to do with that reality but I literally employed this stuff and that's why I tell people to like test this shit out, like test the feeling of having what you want out doing for size as you go to sleep in that confidence and see what the fuck happened.

Or so how do you?

How do I do it? But yeah, how do you employ it when you're in those moments?

Well, first of all, I think the biggest thing is for me in my life, the thing that I think is like the meta belief that allowed me to like experience this, oscillate from it, self-calibrate again, and then kind of stabilize it is that I made a deal with myself, God knows when in time at a time that like I have, I take care of myself, I handle my shit. Like I'm good, I don't fuck my shit up. And it looks like many times I am fucking my shit up. Just objectively, subjectively, it even feels like that sometimes, but I know deep down I don't. So again, that comes back to that trust and this is the only trust that I think exists universally just in your innate sense of like creative knowingness, I amness, awareness.

I also intuitively and through direct experience know that whatever game this is, whatever we're in, the source of it is very loving, it is very supportive, it is not something that is there to like fuck us up as part of the game. I just know that and it's been my experience. Someone else could argue with a completely different experience and they could say no, that's not what I think and I would say that's valid too. That's because that's their firm conviction and belief of what reality is, therefore that's true for them. And for me, whenever I recognize those kind of innate things I've been blessed enough to get external people, relationships and then the internal kind of mechanism of creative expression to like deal with this ship before it totally, totally destroys any semblance of like cosmos in my life.

And so like I've accepted the challenges and difficulties and kind of scariness and fears that can come along with like liberating your mind in that sense. And sometimes it's incredibly uncomfortable and it sucks. And it's totally being a human being is being a disembodied spirit and phasing it and out of reality but if you can maintain, and this is why I think we like Jung, I think this is why, you know, Mikey and I have a mutual friend in Duncan, if you can maintain a sense of like rascality and playfulness and like lightness about this shit, it's a pretty fucking cool place to be regardless of what's going on out there.

And if you have a hand in making it a cooler place to be, that's even cooler. So like, I don't know, I'm having a good time for sure. The cosmos is a joker, you know, always, always very funny, always playing little tricks.

I think so.

And so beware of losing your sense of humor, you know? If it gets very serious, you know you're in the mud, you know?

Or I'll track just a little bit. Just put it back on the tracks and be on your core.

Yeah, vehicle, whatever you've changed.

It's a much lighter energy to carry, to have a sense of humor and self-deprecation within the desire to sculpt a magical kingdom, you know?

Yeah, and it's all there too. This is like, I think this is also the path of individuation. Like you realize all of this exists already, not as a predetermined course of action, but it's like, it all is there and you're tuning in to your experience of it. And I know this sounds preposterous to some people, but like you actually can choose what movie you're writing, directing, and producing and playing in the projector.

Right.

And I mean that not just for your own life, but like for globally, if that's what you wanna do. Most people though, I find, I don't wanna say most people, but I know I made this mistake is like I thought like as soon as you encounter this innate creative power, like you're like world peace, boom, snap your fingers, where's world peace? And then you're like, oh, it's not world peace, I did something wrong. It's like no, it's coming in linear time, but like probably like look at the tea leaves, you can have it much easier to have world peace internally than it is globally. So focus with like what you have in front, what you're working with, which is just your consciousness.

'Cause then you'll learn this whole thing, it's just you, it's you projected outwards. It's literally, you will keep encountering that. I don't know, someone can tell me otherwise. I haven't seen that not be the case.

I've been, what is it? Sam Harris, I've been listening to his meditations and stuff and he's talking about consciousness and that whole topic fascinates me. What is in your mind Noah, what is, when you say consciousness, what does that exactly mean? Is that something that changes, is it shifts? Is the consciousness where the spirit is? Well, I mean, what are we talking about here?

I think it's the same thing. I mean, ultimately what it is, it's that sense of I am, right? It's that sense of when you strip away everything, there is still an innate presence that you seize of itself to be I am. And from that place, everything that is built and structured around that innate awareness, that's consciousness, that's awareness. Everything that's built around that is what we then call our perception, our experience of what usually we call reality, which now people are realizing is way shakier than what we thought it was. They're like, oh, this is reality, this is how it works. You know, boom, looks like this.

And it's like, no, it doesn't work like that. Some of us, a lot of us, had this experience of kind of, I would say probably all of us, this not working and not really being an accurate depiction of what's going on. Now it's becoming more explicit and more apparent for people. And again, this is why I think really identifying that key source, like Neville Goddard uses what I love the term when it really clicked for me is when he just labeled shit so clearly and was like, your imagination, your wonderful human imagination is God. It's like everything you've ever heard about God in any scripture and anything, that's your imagination.

And he's not just saying this as a conceptual reality. He's like, test this shit out. Here's some techniques to prove to you that this is actually true and what you perceive to be external reality is merely a reflection of your internal kind of like machinations. So I was like, all right, this kind of lines up. I also have this weird experience. I think I've spoken about it to you, maybe to you both, but like 20 years ago, 23 years ago or so, I had the experience of like knowing I was Jesus Christ and as someone who grew up Jewish and never heard anything about Jesus Christ, literally didn't know shit about him.

I'm like, this is fucking weird, but I couldn't shake it 'cause it was my felt known experience. Then I heard this dude talk about how every character in the Bible and any scripture are just psychological narratives and all of the characters in them are just you and they're psychological states that you move through that ultimately culminate in this realization, Jesus Christ, that you are everything. You are your father, you are the son, you are the creative force of universe and you're shaping everything. When this dude said that, I was like, oh fuck. I was like, okay, I actually understand now what these experiences I've been having, what this has been leading to.

And now at least I felt like because I had proven to myself through pretty deep fucking work in this incarnation that this is the only thing that remains. This is the only thing that no matter how far out, no matter how whacked out on psychedelics you are, no matter how far, this is you. So yeah, that's what I call religiousness.

Jesus Christ, when you were going through that really is coming back to the quote, that really is the self. That's the spirit self they were thought you were because you are, but you can't walk around saying I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's one version of the story. It's one version of the story that is describing that unified self.

Same thing, same thing we hear it in Egyptian Osiris. It's all the same mythology. That's why Campbell was a genius young. All these people understood that it's the same metaphysical resonance and energy. And it's this constantly shifting balance between those energies and duality that creates what we experience here. What's cool is, and I think this is like a very important thing that I think people are learning. I know I've been learning it. You have the ability to jump up to unity conscious perspective as well. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's not selfish, there's nothing bad about it.

But if a higher perspective on duality is unity, and you'll recognize that even ideas of morality, ethics, horrible objective shit when you're in unity, that shit's allowed, that shit's perfect. And that kind of calibration, I think is what we're perceiving now is these radical polarizations and opinion and weather. I anticipate this will soften probably in the next, I don't know, I hate to give timelines, but I think it will soften.

I hope so. I hope that that sense of attachment to perceive notions of reality softens, because it changes, it's malleable. And it's the attachment that is really the willing, that's when you're not willing to go with the flow. When you get attached, you're no longer in that flow state. I wanna say something about you, you're saying consciousness is the phrase I am. I would respond to that with the idea of conscious, it would be defined as energy is, because the universe is connected by energy. It's all sort of this pulsating energy field or energy fields that are reacting to each other. And so maybe I am kind of says that, hey, well, you know that for certain as you sort of navigate these energy fields, but I really like the idea that consciousness starts with just recognizing that everything in the world is energy, just bouncing off of each other.

Totally.

And physical reality-- - Oh, yeah.

Any conceptual-- - And you can ultimately control what type of energy you wanna be.

And if you follow the path--

That's why I say it's I am, yeah.

Go ahead and if you follow the path to the self, your connection to energy increasing. That the trip we're on in earth, we get blocked from our source energy. And that's why you have to feed the spirit because you gotta keep it healthy because that's the real source of our energy. And we, as I keep coming down to, I have less and less interest in people's early lives and more and more interest in how they're bounded by old perceptions, what Mikey was saying, not giving up the old things that they've been attached to forever as opposed to let them go, let them go. Just be open, be open in all ways.

I love that quote that when you realize that everything you desire already exists, you're in an actual state of surrender. When you realize whatever you want, it's already here. It's already done, it's been done. 'Cause you're imagined it, you're taking to it. And that's what I think about employing that. And I've used some of that from your lessons that I've learned from your show, that when you, I imagined it and say it at night to myself, this, you know, send me this or whatever I need, give it to me, open to the universe, working with the universe. When you're following the spiritual path, you're working with the universe or what Young said, the only thing that's important in your life is to figure out your relationship to the universe.

Is it a friend, is it a foe? Or where do you stand with it, you support it, do you believe in it? And I think the work that Mikey and I have been doing recently is a belief in it, a strong positive belief in it. And if you follow it, it will lead you to where you need to be. It's just truth. And if you don't follow it, you're gonna end up hard lessons. It's, you know, kind of, kind of thing. So does anyone have any last thoughts on the quote? On the quote, one more time, let me read it. The true profession of man is finding his way to himself. That's kind of what--

No, that's right, I go.

Yeah, I would just say the lessons don't stop.

Yeah. Maybe dumpling they do, but not if we're talking like this. They're not stopping there. I don't think they stop. And I think the important thing is to embrace it like, I really like this one character in Tibetan mythology. Who basically Tibetan, by the way, like this shit is only like 1,000 years old. We think of it as some like ancient system. Like there's like grandfathers, grandfathers, grandfathers who remember some of this shit. So anyway, this guy supposedly was like flying around with magical powers. But anyway, he was this dude who would go around to all these like fucked up cursed places like in the Tibetan wilderness.

And there'd be these demons, these rock demons and wind demons and she beasts and all these things. And he would be like, I love meditating in a nice meadow if they do around me and the sun shining down. But I especially love being up in like a very uncomfortable or craggly, dirty, smelly place. Like that's what I love the most. And like what he's saying is he's not saying like I'm a psychotic person. He's recognizing the extreme potential for like, when you really do embrace those types of environments, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually in life, with that type of like perspective, you're good.

Like your experience of this reality will be a okay. You're pretty much bulletproof, not in some like weak egoic sense, but in a full acceptance of the full spectrum of what you can experience as being a human being or being found by certain forms or beliefs, which we collectively believe in. As much as I would like, I do believe that if someone truly believed they could fly just like in levitate, they could do it. And I think people do that. But I don't think most people just are like gonna flip that switch in their mind and be able to do it. But these shared deep collective beliefs are also there to be transcended.

And I think that's part of what the healthy growth is in terms of a collective evolution. And I don't know, until I see signs, I don't know. I guess a lot of people looked at the Trump era and a lot of people could, you could say, argued, look at the idea we have of Nazi Germany before it turned really horrible. But until I see like real signs that our own human consciousness as energy or conceptualizes any other way, isn't the creative force? I don't know, I'm still gonna use that as my, and I get in so many fights with my partner about this. Most of our fights now are like philosophical and they're like real fights.

Like feeling is getting hurt, personal dispersions, being gassed, fraudulent, you're a fraud, all this. So like I really unfortunately believe this to kind of an uncomfortable stance. But I do think that like, it's a very important thing to at least play around with because I know a lot of people want to see this world and their worlds be more beautiful and harmonious. And we learn all the different keys of life and we get to play it like a piano. And the more keys you know, the more chords you can learn and the more sequences you can do. So I feel like that's what we're doing. I feel like it's fun.

Yeah, all good.

Yeah, there he goes. That was waiting for the all good.

Yeah, that's how you know that it's wrapped up, that's it.

Guys, tell people about the podcast and I know we've been talking about it a lot but like where can people find you? I'll have links to everything too but like the best way to connect what you're doing. Also Mikey, I know you did the Shell Jeff thing. I mean, the second part of it, I was, I love it. It's perfect. Tell people what you guys are up to individually and just respectively with everything where they can find you.

Go Mikey.

In terms of the Dreams course podcast, if you just search Dreams course podcast, that will come up. We have, I think 12 episodes out, we keep them between 15 and 25 minutes. So then we try to just kind of boil them down into some, the principal ideas of the conversation. And we have at least five more on the way until we meet up again. Outside of that, yeah, I'm continuing to try to blend comedy with existential philosophy and that's at the heart of Shell Jeff. So if you search Shell Jeff, there's Shell Jeff and Shell Jeff too. Both of those are kind of the, are trying to tap into that idea of the inner thought process of someone who might be overlooked by civilization who's working as a cog in the machine of the big oil companies as a gas station attendant working at Shell.

But he has his own dreams and his own imaginations and--

He's good thoughts.

Yeah.

He's either very stupid or very smart. It's not very, it's not clear.

That's the only way to be just to be clear in life. That's my stance. I'm either a moron or a genius. Those are the only two possible things. It's a fun line to walk.

Yeah.

And so, yeah. So just trying that and continuing to make comedy videos with Doug Pound, we do "To @ Crew." And I don't know. Like, who knows what the future holds? I mean, I'm trying to proceed maybe at most one month at a time right now.

That's a lot.

Yeah, I know that's almost not--

It's going to be him. Jesus.

Yeah. And outside of that, really just trying to keep these processes, these conversations going, and to just keep trying to get better at feeling alive.

And surfing.

I love it. I love it.

And surfing.

And surfing, which is, I mean, surfing is the physical manifestation of all of these ideas. Like, it's like everything we talked about can be summed up in one really good wave.

I met a surfer the other day over the summer.

I'm a good one.

And that was, it was a good thing. It was a good perspective to have on life, so, yeah.

Yeah. So--

I think we lost Mikey, but I'm recording this too.

All right, so on my end, I'm in Maine, and probably we'll go back to New Jersey. And since you and I have talked, and you really were instrumental in getting my course going, my course has evolved so much during this last year, that it's now a real course. It's a real, it has a real syllabus, and there's a real thing you go through, and ultimately it's one-on-one, which I love doing, and it's for people who are serious about the conversations we're having today, who want to put into their lives more of following the inner life, more of an individuated life. And it's for younger people, 20s and 30s, I find this is weird to say, but older people get a little bit stuck to their ways, and they're a little bit more resistant to change.

They can, and they're individuals we all know, like to think of myself as one of them, but it's a much more fluid course for younger people, 'cause they're still open to finding different paths to their individuation. And so I'm gonna continue that, and it's been a blessing, and I don't do it for money, as you know, I do it for anyone who takes the course with me after I interview them and I take them on, they pay out some sort of a fee they can afford to a Parkinson's cause, and that's what the course is about. I've reached my other goals, and now I'm just wanting to be a mentor and a teacher and learn, and I've said this many times, the dream course, I am the teacher of it, but I'm also the student of it.

I keep learning through every person I deal with, and I'm so grateful for that, because it's made a difference in my health for one thing, selfishly. And I just love, don't you love these conversations? I love authentic, you know, all I've said, I've always loved to be in Paris, when life is healthy, seeing a table with smart people.

Yeah, you sound great Noah.

Having all sorts of conversations, drinking good coffee and watching beautiful people walk by and just enjoying the day. So I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing, and I'm grateful to you for helping me with that process.

That's always a pleasure. Well, I'm glad we got to do this, yeah. Yeah, I'm doing well. Let's catch up, all fair, for sure, too. This is, it's always a good time connecting with you guys.

Good deal. All good.

Cool. (chuckles) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thanks for listening to that episode. I like how I thank you for listening to the episode. I hope you enjoyed the episode, is what I should be saying. You already listened to it, you don't need my thanks. Check out Stephen and Mikey on the Dreams course podcast. You can find that everywhere podcasts are. It's their nice little 15, 20 minute short, quick hit episodes, unlike this one where we talk about shit forever. They're fucking cool. What else can I say? Big shout out to Ned again for sponsoring this show. Use the code Sink at checkout. I don't gotta tell you what to do, you know what to do.

It's fucking, they're great. And the Patreon, Patreon is going strong. Bitcoin, I'll mention it at the end, so people don't have to listen. Like just fucking, I've been yacking about it a lot for the past four or five months. It's like 18 grand right now. Get into the Discord server, join the Patreon, check out what's going on there, ask questions, get involved. It's worth it, because I know a lot of money stuff has been coming up for people and start playing with your conception and notion of what money is as a symbolic representation of energy exchange. Cryptocurrency is a pretty good way to change your mind about a lot of that stuff if you want your mind changed.

Okay, that's it. Until next week, happy imagining.

At PC Richard and Son, we don't just sell you a TV. We show you the differences, explain how the features work, and we deliver your new TV fast and free, just in time for a big game or movie night with the family. During our July 4th sale, save up to 40% on premium TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, and more, plus free installation on select models. Great service, great savings. It's kind of our thing. PC Richard and Son, serving the America's homes for generations, free delivery excludes Manhattan.