Ep. 29 - Sah D'Simone

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

Welcome to episode, what episode is it? Uh, 30? I'm gonna go with 30. Episode 30 of synchronicity, uh, just had a baby. Two days ago, yesterday? No, it was yesterday. I have no fucking idea what's going on 'cause I've slept three hours in the past 72 hours. Uh, also babies plu, poop, black stuff. They didn't tell me that. I don't think they tell anyone that, but when they're born, they poop black stuff for a couple of days, and it's gooey, and it's like chocolate sauce, but it's not like chocolate sauce in the important ways. Um, I guess today, episode 30, synchronicity, doing this, uh, Sa De Samoon.

I love Sa. I'm going to shortchange Sa, unfortunately, because my brain is not functioning. Sa is, however, one of the nicest, coolest people I've come across in the past, year or so, two years. This is another Michael Donovan special. Michael recommended I get in touch with Sa. I think a couple years ago, when Sa was going around India, kind of going on this pilgrimage to all of these different places, including, um, Dharm Salah, to see the Dalai Lama, all of these, he was going and doing a whole tour, but in a very authentic, cool way. I mean, you'll hear, um, in this episode, how cool of a guy he is.

He's just incredibly authentic, genuine. There's not a lot of spiritual materialism. There's no spiritual materialism with him. He's doing it. His intention is lined up with his actions. It's really awesome to meet people like him and interact with people with him. Did that, was that a sentence? Did it make sense? This is, it's gonna be the worst intro of all time, sorry. But yeah, this episode's great. Sa also is, I'm gonna direct you to his website, where he does a lot of different, like, holistic coaching type things, but especially for vegan food, like nutrition stuff. He's just got his, like, incredible degree.

He's, like, a certified. Sa, I'm sorry, I didn't look it up. My brain is just not in the right place today, but he is basically just, like, a master of food and nutrition, and this whole mind-body soul connection. And it's really, it's really awesome. So he's good. This is the worst intro ever. I don't care. I have a baby. His name is Eli. He's really cool. He's a baby, and he does baby stuff. I'm actually not even back from the hospital yet. I stopped back home at my house to take a shower, and I was like, fuck it. I had to get this podcast out, so I'll record this. So I had to go back to the hospital now.

Everything's good. Baby's super healthy. He's adorable, and he's cute, and he's awesome. My lovely wife Alexis did an amazing job giving birth to the baby, who is our baby. So yeah, enjoy this episode. Sa's great. Don't let this intro be any indication of how good this episode is. You'll hear how awesome Sa is. So without further ado, here is Sa. December. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Hey.

How you doing?

Good. How are you?

Good, nice to see you.

Nice to see you too.

You're in Florida right now?

Yeah, in Madera Beach, and my parents place.

Very cool, very cool.

What about you?

I'm in Silver Spring, Maryland. I'm actually in the house I grew up in. We're here, probably for another six months, I'm having our first child, our son in a couple of weeks.

Okay.

So that's gonna be crazy. So we're doing that here, and then probably gonna move back to the Hudson Valley area, like a little hour, two hours north of the city.

Okay.

Because we miss New York.

I'm actually, I just sent two messages to two different friends about getting a place upstate New York too.

Cool.

Catskills area, yeah.

Very cool.

That's awesome.

It's just really nice.

Having lived in New York for so long, it's still kinda in our blood, and we miss it, but we also appreciate nature, and don't necessarily wanna be smack dab right in the middle of the city.

Yeah.

I think it's kind of, my mom was in Rinebeck about two hours north.

Yeah.

And the Omega Institute is there. It's just like a nice way to get kind of the both, the best of both worlds, so to speak, so that's right.

Yeah, I love the Omega Institute, that's awesome.

Me too, oh, I totally love it.

Sweet.

Cool, all right, so let's, we'll just get started.

Okay.

Thank you, by the way, for coming on.

Yeah, of course.

Appreciate it, I'm excited for this conversation. So typically, I have like a whole list of questions, and like I have everything written down, but I purposely didn't wanna do it for this one, because I am fascinated, I wanna hear about your journey, like how you got to where you are now, because we're in the fashion industry. We're connected for the listeners. Michael Donovan was our virtual connection. I just went to him for an hour today.

Nice.

I just got, let's start there, and I just like curious and interested to find out more about you, so if you could--

Okay.

Yeah, sure. So I moved to New York when I was like 21, and then I started this magazine in my living room, and six months later, we had a batch of investment, and then a year later, we had a big investment, and then we moved into the 10,000 square foot office, and we hired 40 people, and the whole thing just took over, and it became a really cool hub, because we were doing, we were working with these celebrities in a completely different way. We had what we call the bullet consultation, where we would give them a voice, really, and every issue had a more spiritual, I like to call it spiritual, overarching theme, for instance, we had the cosmic issue, we had the sin issue, and we had the alchemy issue, so every issue had a thing that people could explore in a more, we try to humanize fashion, but also bring this deeper layer of the human experience into a fashion store, which it wasn't there, so we got really lucky, and we got so many doors open, so many people, so many of these big, I guess you'd say A-list people, wanted to work with us because of that, because of that opportunity that we're giving them.

And fast forward three and a half years later, I started to go in a different direction, and my best, two of my best friends were also my business partners, we started to slowly fall apart, where, you know, I wanted to continue on that route of doing the cool, the fashion, and the more we started to reach a level of, I guess, you know, status within the scene, you needed to continue to work, you needed to bring in more of recognizable names, rather than work with the undiscovered British photographer, or the guy from New Zealand, you know, we wanted to keep that fresh perspective, fresh new energy all the time, and then I left the magazine with a chunk of money, which was great, and then I came to Florida, and I started to write and blog about, like my, about the things that I wanted to do, and travel and experience sustainable living, and eat better, and meditate, and do yoga, and, you know, all the things that I've intrinsically knew, I always wanted to be part of it, but never, because I was so caught up in wearing all black and going to events, and, you know what I mean, New York's like that, I was so in that matrix that it was so hard for me to take that leap, and, you know, the closest thing I did while I was at the magazine was I would go to Kabbalah every Tuesday, but which was a funny thing too, because the more I established a connection with them there, and the more things decided to happen in a positive way for me, the more my personal teacher wanted me to, you know, to, it sounds really sad in a way, but the more donations they wanted, you know?

Of course, yes, yes.

Which was so disheartening for me, and especially when we got the big investment, he was like, well, so now you have to give this much, and I was like, all right, am I going to Kabbalah because I just want to see my daughter on every Tuesday, or am I really here, you know?

I couldn't figure out, like, what was my motive at that point? - Yeah, sure.

But I got something amazing out of it, you know, a few things we can talk about it later. Overall was a great experience, and then came to Florida, and, you know, like I said, started writing, and things just started to be great, and again, another idea started to blossom in a really fun way, this website called Oracle Talk. Me and my brother started, and within six months, we had 4.2 million unique visitors, which was crazy.

That's satisfying.

And then we had Oracle, the big tech company, Sue us, because we were coming up on the Google search before them, so I was like, you know what? Again, I'm just going to take their check for getting rid of the, you know, to selling out the name to them, and then I'm just going to go, and go to India, really take on that life that I really, I always looked at the, you know, it sounds really cliche, but I always looked at the hippie life as like, oh, something, I don't think I can do it, because it's too much of a cliche, but then you realize that it's really a state of mind, and it's nothing to do with how we've been conditioned to perceive, and, so I watched the Krishna Das documentary.

Great.

Yeah, and I watched the documentary, and then I packed my bags, and went to India, and now fast forward three years again. Almost, it's going to be four years in November, since I left the magazine, and took on this whole new journey. And, yeah, and, you know, went back to India three times now, and all together pretty much lived there in the last year and a half, for a year and a half, in the last three years. And I miss the fashion industry, only from the aspect of self-expression of, you know, just going out, taking on this additional layer to express yourself, which is, I find it really appealing.

And also, you know, there's art, and where there's art, there's beauty, when there's beauty, there's light, and where there's light, there's change, and there's potential for love, and that's where I met Michael Donovan, pretty much.

Of course, Michael's such an interesting guy, because he is, he believes so many of the things, I think we both believe, but he also firmly places himself, right in the epicenter fashion world, and I know he's been wrestling with this for years, but he really seems to have a very good perspective on it now.

So let's talk about kind of your transition period, and then we'll get to your actual travels in India, which is when we connected, you were actually in India, where you were in Darm Sala at that point, you were somewhere, yeah, you were somewhere really cool. But so that's awesome that you found, and you did this, you're doing this at a pretty young age, because I, by virtue of working with a lot of people I work with, I get to benefit of seeing people at various points in their lives, engage with quote unquote spiritual things, you know, not just success, not just money, not just all of these things that people kind of look at, it's like, that's what we need to do, and that's what the culture kind of fosters.

You're still relative, how old are you?

29.

Yeah, you're young, you're younger than me, I'm gonna be 33 in July. So you as the benefit of kind of going through these experiences at a pretty young age, which is great, you're essentially ahead of the game, you didn't have to accumulate a whole life from experiences, be like, hey, this isn't it, I'm not happy after getting all of these things, but I see it also the seeds of that were already there because you were trying to bring, whether overtly or not the spiritual mindset, I mean, you described it being built into bullet, right? That's why I think people really liked it and engaged, and then you talked about how that kind of got co-opted in some way by the outward manifestations of success.

So this is a very, very, very interesting thing to me because I am constantly dealing with this in my professional life, and you'd be surprised how a lot of spiritual organizations, people that's rounded have seen exact problems, they're not isolated from the things that go on in the quote unquote, "regular business world" or the entertainment industry, they're still grouped in. So what were some of your observations? Like, you got through this, you obviously got compensated financially for it, but what was it like going through the actual process of basically realizing, I guess at some point that you wanted this to be still a spiritual, communicate like a deeper message, and then recognizing that people around you maybe didn't have the same ideology as you.

And what was it like working through that internally?

It was tough, I mean, you ended up taking it out on different things, drinking, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes, coffee, eating really poorly. I think we take it out on these external ways and time goes by and we don't really realize how much damage we've done to ourselves and supplementing with a lot of trash, really. And I feel like the worst part for me was like the deep sarcasm that people have with life and the lack of appreciation and gratitude for how beautiful and mystical all of this is. Because everyone in that industry has so much money. I mean, very few people, but we somehow managed to be around young people that were either hustlers and were trying their best or the really wealthy young kids who had all of it from a young age.

So they didn't have to struggle very much. And it was now looking back, all the work I've done the last three years has been just like healing all the traumas that have created imprints in my mind. And I think that's what we really come to this lifetime to do essentially. One of the big parts is the healing, right? Until we get to the core of who we are and then we can start to see and blossom into our authentic self as this really big cord at the moment. And I think, yeah, it was hard. It was hard, but then I look back and I'm like, oh, it was really fun. But it was such a blur because I was so intoxicated so much of the time.

You know what I mean? It was just, it's a big blur. I can pinpoint, I can probably tell you a few big moments where we were working with XYZ person or doing something, but it was all really related around very vain things that really at this point for me have no, yeah, completely. The characters of the ego that really didn't have a, we were just, you know, totally living in the matrix and the most extent of the way where everyone, we thought everyone looked beautiful because they were so thin and we thought everyone was beautiful because they could go to Paris or to London and Milan. And then you realize once you visit this place, how much of from that perspective, right?

Now going back to these places with the new fresh, completely changes, you know, but I don't know if I answered your question properly, but that's, you know, that's kind of like.

You did, you did actually answer it properly. I mean, you also spoke about the shift in perspective and how that seems to have had a bigger impact on your life. And then you talked about the healing aspect of this because I fundamentally believe, I agree with you. We come on here, I believe, ultimately, we can't recognize this, but it's a conscious decision we make before we come back. And we come back to, as Rhombas would put it, the sandpaper, the life is the sandpaper that whittles away all the bullshit and that eventually we can get to be, like you said, the buzzword, our authentic selves. To me, the after that, and I see you doing this too, and I want to get to this, is after you really are tuning in to what's actually going on internally and how that affects external reality, then it's usually like, how do I extend this out?

How do I start helping other people? That's the natural one-two combo of what happens. So talk about, all right, so you sold your stakes and two businesses that you helped create. You were trying to inject some level of spirituality in through mainstream media, which I think is such a noble cause, and I think so incredibly awesome. And I'm hoping that that table can be intensified over the next few years, because I think it's possible.

It is, yeah, exactly. So talk about, so you're at the point where you transition, then you're going to India, and you're learning, I'm sure, amazing things. When I was speaking to you, you had, I think you had just studied, you were on like a 10-day retreat, and then you did some Buddhist studies. So what did you learn from that experience? Being in India for a sizable period of time, like what was that relative to your experience having just worked in the world very specifically in the West?

Wow, that's a huge question. (laughing)

I think there's a couple of times that were really very telling and slightly traumatizing more than healing. One time was, I was at this meditation retreat in Dermshala up in the Himalayas at the city where his home is the (mumbles) lives. And another one was in Nepal at the home of Lemo's Open Rinpoche in Kathmandu. Both great masters with huge important messages. And I think both times what happened, I was able to, all the shit that I've done to myself and to others had been served to me in the super platter. And I had the opportunity of looking at it and being like, wow, I can either choose to continue carrying on this baggage and all this multitude of stuff that keeps dragging me back into old habits and old patterns and old friendships and old environment.

Or I can drop off this bag here and start to do the work of cleaning this up. Starting with myself and everyone around me. And then it's really amazing how little, how little, how, you know, it's like how much in autopilot we are and how much of the conditioning of our parents and everyone around us takes such a toll and how little time. And then, you know, some scientists talk about that we are on autopilot 96 to 98% of the time. And I realized so much of the fear based behaviors that I've had that cause pain, other people's and myself had come from the way my mom was raised, you know? And how my dad was raised and then moving us into America without speaking the language and how that created such a, such a fear and guilt and then shame way of a virtual life.

And, you know, you realize that a lot of the stuff, one, it is in ours. And two, we have the opportunity to change if we take that, if we acknowledge that, if we take that step, right, to look at it as I said. And for me, it was like a super platter. I just saw it myself. I saw it myself at this, you know, being of light. And then I just saw all these sides of me as these like, almost like these statues around me. And they were just there. And, you know, I was able to once and for all finally, not just look at them from the front, but really walk around them. The 360 of each one of those aspects and these hypnotic behaviors and parts of myself and be like, wow, I've lived through this.

I've experienced all of it. And I've caused so much stuff into myself and people because of all these external factors that weren't really me. And now I feel like the work I've been doing, you know, once I realized that the deeper layer of the work started to be the scrubbing and the deconditioning and the unlearning and the lift, the veils to get to again, the authentic self that's filled with, you know, creativity and love and compassion, you know.

Yes, yes, yes. That is super well said. I think it's incredibly important to when you talk about clinging to stuff that isn't ours. And there's a couple of ways to look at that. One is, you know, neuroscience is improving that. There is no real us. Like we like to think about it. We have developed these systems around us that are all these moving, these complex layers of webs and things that we put around it to say, oh, well, this is Saa, this is Noah. This is whoever, this is me. And that is even as real as we think. But let's, that's absolute reality. Let's talk about relative reality where we do have to walk around and think of ourselves as something most of the time because you need to.

This is how you function in the world. I've noticed this and I think people who get very clear at some point, not that I'm very clear, but this is something I've always had kind of intuitively built into me. If you ever walk into a room and you really pay attention to what's going on to your room with a lot of people, like a party and you pay attention to what's going on with yourself internally. When you walk into that room, you can actually perceive a lot of different energies, not even speaking to people anything. And those have an impact. So this is why what you're describing about getting straight and looking and doing the three sixths around your statues is so important because if you don't know what's really you're bringing to the table, you can't kind of draw that boundary between what is me and what's not me.

It's very hard to operate and kind of a wise skill for me. So what do you think it was in India that allowed you to see so clearly, as you put it on a silver platter, those aspects of yourself? Was it the practice you were doing? Was it just kind of a right timing type event? Like how did that come about?

Great question. I think learning to sit with myself, like a lot of people now that I've taken on that role of guiding people on this journey a little bit. It's really telling how hard it is for us to just like close their eyes and stuff. And we can't really put in the time to just acknowledge all this shit, give my language, all the crap that, all of the fuck that are, you know, that comes up into our mind. It's like so terrifying. And I think Eckhart totally talks about like, it's 190,000 bucks a day and 95% of that is trash. And you sit with yourself the more you acknowledge that it's all so real.

And I think for me was one sitting, a lot of sitting, a lot. We were meditating for eight to 12 hours a day, you know? And then when we got to, and that was only for 10 days. And then when I did co-pun, that was a month long. And it was four hours of lecture. And then I think was six hours of meditation and some were guided and some were just, you know, just do your, you've learned the practice, just do your stuff now. And of course, the more you are ushered to that space where none of this reality makes a lot of sense. And then you're so curious about that other aspect of reality, that you're that pinnacle of mystery, right?

Of where it's all love and beautiful and light. And what we're talking about, all those spiritual wooing stuff, we walk up to that little part, right? You're ushered there by meditating long hours. You wanna, you want more of that. And India, you're so, you know, the more authentic you are about your purpose in India, the more the right people will just come up to you as happens, you know, I had this amazing opportunity in Vindavan, I was at the Iscon Temple, the Hare Krishna Temple, and I was living there and I only planned on staying in Vindavan for a week because I was like, okay, it's Kartik month, right?

Where it's 24 hours of chanting for an entire month and it's the holiest days for the Hare Krishna people happen during the month of the month of November. I was like, this is great, I'll, you know, auspiciously one thing happened that led me there. And, you know, just, I was, you know, there and one thing led to another ended up meeting this amazing teacher who again, it just proves that like the more authentic we are, the more we become like these magnets for more beautiful and telling and I think for curiosity, curiosity is authentic. I think the right tools would just like really come to us.

This is, yes, that is a key principle that I found in my life. I think it's the basic principle of like attracts like and also again, being able to make the decisions about what you wanna do. Like you pointed out, so many of us, myself included, continue are guided by things that we're not even, aren't even showing up on our radar, right? Carl, one of my favorite thinkers, one of his famous quotes is, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, "you'll look at it and it'll direct you "and you'll call it fate," right? And you'll just say, oh, well, these things are happening and I don't know why, whether it's karmically, whatever it is.

So really, meditation is a wonderful way because when you're being still, it doesn't mean, like, I think this is a huge misconception with meditation is people think when you meditate, you're gonna be serene and calm and nothing is gonna come up and your mind's gonna be empty and maybe that happens at some point or for little bursts or if you're doing it for decades, maybe for a little longer, but it's really just getting comfortable with the things that are floating past your mind and not attaching on to them. So I don't find it surprising after your spiritual journeys in India, which I'm sure wasn't all hunky-dory all the time.

It's a very, from everyone I know who's gone there, that's a crazy place. It's a very intense place, especially depending on where you are, but I feel like you definitely got the lessons that you were supposed to get there and I'm sure you feel like that, too. So talk about coming back and some of the stuff you're doing now because I see you on Instagram and I see you on Facebook and I love it. You are a hardcore vegan. And I was vegan for two and a half years, primarily at first for health reasons that just became very clear for everyone. It's great. But then I'm not a vegan anymore and I went back and it's very--

What happened?

What happened was this is actually what happened. So my wife and I went on our fancy honeymoon to Turks and Caicos, which is not a trip I would typically take. And while there was vegan cuisine, it was the type of vegan cuisine where they're not really putting in as much effort as they are to the regular stuff. So I fell off the wagon there and I had a hamburger for the first time in two years and all of my pleasure senses started getting activated again and I realized my initial approach to veganism had been not the right way to do it. I was bringing all of my bullshit along with veganism and I was talking about it all the time, putting in people's faces because I wasn't comfortable with how I had been and what I was doing.

I still vegan regularly, like there are days where I want meat or cheese very much. We get a food delivery service, Purple Carrot, which I love, which is producing skills to make vegan. But I don't know, there's this oscillation that I think happens with a lot of people, myself included, where I go through these kind of waves of being very engaged in some type of practice and then something happens and it kind of knocks me back into regular reality. And I think that is somewhat built on who I am as a person but also the work that I'm trying to do. I'm trying to normalize a lot of this stuff as I'm sure you are.

We don't want this stuff to seem esoteric and woo-woo to people. We want veganism as I was vegan. It's super easy to do. It's actually more delicious. You feel better, it's great for the planet and it's just obviously a better way to be doing relative to what we're doing as a culture. Intellectually knowing that and implementing it on a regular basis is something that I struggle with and that's what happened. I fell off the wagon. So could you just talk about for you, the relationship that you've noticed between mind, body and especially veganism? I'd love to hear about that. You're gonna inspire me to do it again.

I think what happens for a lot of us and at the beginning for me, it's what you said. It's this cognitive dissonance where we believe we have to be vegan, but when we see all these beautiful, quote unquote, condition mind to look at a cheeseburger and then think it's beautiful and delicious or, you know, we, and there's that space, that gap where, as you're saying in Cara Young, it's the merger of the subconscious and consciousness and finding the glimpse in there. I think for me, it started with, I started to get these like, drop down, drop downloads in my meditation that I needed to, you know, quit smoking, quit drinking, quit eating meat, so I can like, starting to go to the next level and the next level and the next level.

And, you know, I quit certain aspects, but started back with certain aspects and I think what's, what happened is, I think what happened, what happened to me was, I just started to feel so good, you know? So good and so clear and the more I talked about it with people that have been doing for a while and, you know, I was recently living in Bali and I met a birtharian and, you know, she's been, she was, she had been drinking cucumber just for two years. She would eat occasionally, but it was very rare and there's another guy Victor Rose or something who are also thus transitioning for people that want to live more plant-based and then, you know?

And also the deeper you get the more clear you start to feel, the less you want to engage in, in this harmony with earth and with, you know, everything that goes into our body. And I think I was able to, we're able to purify so much of our spiritual body by cleansing of our internal organs. And that was a big part for me is, you know, this might sound totally crazy, but sometimes you take a shit and you feel like you cleanse your soul, you know? It's sure. Like it's, you know, you've heard this. People have said this, oh my God. But there is an, there is a, I guess we could say this an esoteric meaning to that process of cleansing of the body, you know?

And then the more you read, the more you realize that a lot of the mystics, yeah.

Yeah, pretty obvious.

Yeah, a lot of the mystics, you know, started with eating meat and then they went to the forest and then they're eating fruits and veggies and they're eating herbs and they're drinking water and then they were doing nothing and then they became realized. And I'm not to say that I'm close to any of that stuff. Maybe this lifetime I'll be able to help just enough people that I can, you know, purify some of my karma that I might come back as a human next time.

Right, or not, but I think it just, it makes a lot of sense, you know, you feel lighter and the lighter you feel, the more you have lighter energy to put out and then it's, I think it's such an amazing, amazing tool to create harmony with earth and yourself, you know? And you start to have more energy and, you know, the basic stuff that people talk about, more energy and more and for me, it was the biggest thing who I have struggled with depression and OCD, HAD, anxiety, all the chronic mental illnesses I've struggled with before and my mom too and then her mom committed suicide. So that's running in my emotional DNA, you know?

And I feel like within my 23 little ringlets in there, half of it's very traumatic based, anxious based, imprints that I found that by eating cleaner, it was a way for me to continue the detoxing, continue to heal, continue to clean. And now I'm inspired to bring people into that journey and, you know, I'm coaching a couple of clients at the moment about, you know, who are heavy meat eaters and I always recommend this book by Mark Bitman, he's a New York Times writer, yeah, vegan before six.

So Mark Bitman is actually one of the founders of the Purple Carrot, which is my food delivery service that I...

Oh my God, amazing.

Yeah, and I just got this text message from my client today and I was just like, wow, she's like, I just ordered vegan before six. I was, you know, I'm so inspired to change and she's been eating vegan into six for the last week and she's like, "Sama," if you need mine, "America Cleaner," like she's giving more emphasis to the dinner plate, you know, when she's having a piece of animal protein and we started to take things for, you know, more appreciation for that moment. And I think it's what's lacking for me, was growing up in Brazil with meat three times a day. You don't think about it once, where did that come from?

None of it, you just like, you expect the rice, the beans and the beef, you know, you expect that. Yeah, so I'm struggling with it a little bit now because my mom is, I would say, 90% vegan and my dad is still asking for, you know, we're having barbecue at the house on Saturday and he's asking me if I can cook meat and I was like, "Dad, you know, we're gonna talk about it." But you know, yeah, I...

Yeah, and that was also, I was gonna say a big component and it influenced my behavior is, you know, you're talking about growing up, eating meat three times a day. There's an nostalgia that we attach to eating very much. Like, it's a pleasurable thing we do. And, you know, like if you, that's why some people get so angry with vegans or say you shouldn't be eating meat for this reason, that even if it logically makes sense, they're like, you're attacking who I am. I'm a meat eater, this is what I do. And to further elucidate the points you're making about meat, I'm able to believe that whatever you get, I'm a big believer in this.

So whether it's meat, whether it's marijuana, whether it's anything, the karmic influence of everything that has started from the beginning of that, including the people who brought it to you, has an imprint that resonates. So when you're talking about that trauma that you experience that's in your emotional DNA, when you take something from an animal who's slaughtered in a way that was filled with fear and terror, and that eventually gets to your plate, maybe from people who didn't like preparing it, this is why fast food can be such a bad thing. But when it gets to you, that resonates with all that fear-based stuff internally.

And I think-- - Constantly.

Yeah, so I think that's why you also see when you read the mystics, you don't see a ton of people advocating for the eating of meat. I do know that there is Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism, they do eat meat, but I think it's for a different reason than we all eat meat. And Native Americans, obviously, they were very respectful of this cycle of life. And that is a different way of eating meat. And I think if you choose and are consciously aware of it, that's okay. I've said this many times. Like, if we had to kill everything that we eat, I think people would be eating a lot less meat. Most people probably wouldn't want a slaughter, a pig or a cow or a chicken just to have that sensation of eating it.

It's your matic experience. The Tibetans, though, based on where they are geographically, at least when they were there primarily, you didn't have a lot of options.

Exactly. - And that's a different thing than just being like, hey, I just got this burger from this place, or I just got it from the store. So this battle of conditioning and culture first kind of authentically knowing logically and rationally that maybe this isn't the best thing there for us, for the animals, certainly, and also for the planet. I mean, talk about, you know, environmentalist. This is a huge thing. And most environmentalists who are not vegans don't want to hear it. But as great as it is, is reducing carbon emissions, the biggest carbon emissions come from factory farming. It comes from this huge perpetration of, you know, you can hear my old veganness coming out, but it's so true what you're saying.

So could you talk a little bit about how you're trying to get this out? Because I see the way you're doing it, you're not a pushy vegan. You're just highlighting really amazing looking stuff, giving basic recipes and like, I'm like, oh my God, that looks amazing. This makes me want to actually go make this stuff. So can you talk about your approach now with veganism and how you're navigating those waters?

Sure. So I signed up to become a health coach a year ago, which I'm actually graduating this week, which is really exciting, yeah. Thanks. So we studied over 100 different diets there. And, you know, the more you started to realize that it's, you know, it is how you wanted to go about life. And it is about the imprints you want to create in your mind stream and yada, yada, all the stuff that we talked about it. But I think essentially my message is to get people to eat 70% of a plant-based diet and, you know, whatever way they can. 'Cause the more, the better they feel, and this is what something that we were taught in school and something that we also know is, intrinsically we all know this, which is the beauty of it, the more, the better you feel about yourself, the less you're going to want to create this harmony with everyone else.

So you're not going to, and the more in tune with your feelings you'll be, so the more you're going to be tapped into your heart into the electromagnetic field of the heart that, you know, all the scientific research is now matching up that 5,000 times more powerful than the brain. So your intellect is not as smart as you thought it was, you know? So it's all this amazing stuff that really gets me to want to continue on this path and just to getting people to eat, you know, simpler. And I think ideally the message is to eat whole foods and look at your plate and know I'm eating X, Y, and Z. I know exactly what's each and each one of these elements.

I know exactly how they all came about here and I know how it's seasoned. And try to eat the least amount of packaged foods and the least amount. And when you look at something that's packaged, try to see if there's five or more ingredients. That's a rule that I tell my clients. If there's more than five ingredients, you probably shouldn't be eating that. And also all the chemicals that we can't even pronounce, you know, that's the crazy part.

You can all pronounce tomato.

Exactly, and potatoes, and kale, and spinach, rubula, and dandelions, you know, yada, yada. You know, something that I read recently that shocked me is apparently 92% of the time you eat anything, your body goes into a shock. Like, oh my God, what is this? And immediately thinks it's something bad and then it starts to work itself back. Although you might have devocados every day, and every time you have it, the body shocks itself. It gives itself a mini heart attack, and then it starts to work itself back. You're like, oh, it's actually good and nutritious, and then back and back and back. So imagine if you have, you know, certain things that you have 20 to 30, sometimes 40 ingredients on some packaged food, or, you know, there's a million things we can look at that has so many ingredients, even peanut butter, you can go and get that.

There's got, you know, 20 ingredients in it. Imagine how the body reacts with every single one of those ingredients. So my whole message with what I'm doing is simply, simple is better, and that's what goes with everything, you know, and that's just what it is. And the cleaner we eat, the better you feel, and it's not something you just need to read it, but something, it's an experiential practice, and the more you, you, and get people to cook too. How crazy is this that we grow up? We grow up, we go to school, and we don't even learn how to take care of our bodies, how to nurse our mind, and how to eat.

It's like the basic things that get people all, excuse my language, but all fucked up these days. We don't know how to take care of our anxiety, or how the mind works, or how the body works, or how to eat. Like the basic human needs to like live and coexist.

Yes, yes, it's true, man. And I think that is a product, you know, ultimately of the culture and society that has just, you know, been dominant for probably a couple thousand years at this point, which is growth at all costs, at all expense, and it puts us out of tune with the way of life. And when we get those, for some of us brief glimpses of what it's really like, most of us don't have the skills or tools to kind of examine it, and then go back to that place, and then live from that place. So let's, can you tell me, like, so you obviously, 'cause going back to Bullitt, you had this in you, and you were able to at least express it in some way.

And when I say this, I mean, this desire to help yourself and clearly help other people, and live authentically. Where do you think that came from? And then follow up to that is, what specifically the teachers' wise or, you know, paths, have you looked at and said, "That's been really helpful for me. "This is something that has helped inform my decisions."

You mean, like, in terms of when I was at Bullitt, how was I expressing?

No, no, I mean, I look at it as the common thread between you have this in you when you are working at Bullitt. Even though you weren't, you know, advocating a vegan lifestyle, and you're traveling, and doing meditation, and all these spiritual pursuits, you have that seed in you. And when the conditions ripened, and you put yourself in position, and they started to flower like it does for most people, but you must recognize, I mean, you've worked with these people. I've worked with these people. I still work with people like this, and I come across them. There are people who, what we're saying to means nothing.

Like, this does not make sense. It sounds like a lot of navel gazing and totally made up stuff, but you obviously had it in you. Like, when I examined for myself, like, it baffles me that I picked up the books that I did at the age that I did. I don't have an actual explanation for that, but I can tell you, well, I picked up these books, and they made a lot of sense to me, and then the next thing led to this, and it led to this led to this. So anything that kind of would illuminate that.

Oh, okay. Sure, yeah. You know, I was playing with the Ouija board at, like...

Yeah, cool.

Ten years old, you know, and really thought myself as some kind of like, I always wanted to have superpowers, and so I was always...

X-Men and everything, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Like, X-Men for me was like, something that I knew deep inside of me that it existed somewhere, you know. So that layer of me was, it was still so alive, and it became more alive once you go to India, and you experienced some really crazy things that you can't really talk about it with a lot of people, because they're like, all right, you're on some next level. You're like, what are you on? Let me get them on that, you know?

That's good. - But I think... So yeah, I started with that, and then I went to... I always felt like such interesting energy when I would be in church, not that I related to what they're saying, 'cause I felt like it was just too, too like institutionalized in a way that felt like I needed to. You know, it didn't give me like a sense of freedom that I was looking for. It tapped into my, you know, our most necessary, our most powerful need, I felt like belonging to something was good. And then I think it was moving to America, I started reading Alistair Crowley, and dabbling to that sort of the occult, and then that led me to study his teachers, and then these were people in Africa, and then those people in Africa, were people that the mother, you know, Shira Rubindo...

Yes, of course, of course.

Yeah, the mother was studying with them in Africa, too, and then her, when she went to India, to started to build Oraville, she realized that these guys were, quote unquote, though, quote, studying dark magic, were talking about the same things that the Hindus were talking about, and one thing just sort of led to another, you know? And I can't even tell how I came across Ram Das, but I think it was through Krishna Das' documentary, and I think it all sort of like started for me with the Maha Mantra, you know, like hearing that a few times, something inside of me said, "Oh, you've heard this before, "this is something that's part of you."

And in terms of books, I'm reading "The Seekers Guide" right now, which is by Elizabeth Lester, but the founder of the Omega Institute. I'm actually gonna be teaching there this summer, which I'm so excited.

Really, when?

Yeah, August, September.

Oh, cool, well, yeah.

If I'm up there, 'cause we're planning on making a trip to upstate New York, if I'm up there, I would love to come by. I love Omega.

Yeah, I would love for you to come.

Yes.

It's gonna be on Saturdays, so there's six Saturdays that are starting on mid-August through mid-September, and it's gonna be called "The Happiness Equation," where it's a lot of science, so you get the ego to be calm and understand that there is rational, they're standing, like, chill the fuck out, this is real. What the mystics have been talking about for thousands of years now, you can actually have the vocabulary to understand it. And then a lot of nutrition, obviously, and then all the spiritual practice that helped me relieve anxiety and depression and OCD and all that stuff. So it's a mixture, it's a three-hour class where we, for six weeks, where we talk about all this stuff, but to go back to your point, I think, yeah, I think it started with Alistair Crowley and then wanting to be a witch or a wizard, whatever you call it, a wickin' and connecting to that sort of magic and then working myself back into the light, and I think India, and studying with the mystics there, and finding yourself, walking up different paths.

And I think, honestly, my practice right now is very rooted in Tibetan Buddhism.

I'm so happy you said. I have, this podcast is called Syncredicity. I just had a conversation with the Vajrayana Buddhist, Lama Somo, who just wrote a book, Why the Dalai Lama is Always Smiling. And before I actually started working with lobster from Ember, I have right in front of me. (indistinct)

Yeah, yeah, it's nuts. There's something about Padma Sambhavana. I get the chills, whatever I speak about it. There's something about that Tibetan path that resonates so strongly. It's like the wisdom, whatever it is, something that I know intuitively has guided this path. I'm sure there's something to do with past lives, and God knows what, but I love that you said to bet Buddhism because I've found that this is slowly underpinning so many of my interactions, especially on this level. So that is, that's awesome to hear you say that.

Yeah, I mean, his wholeness, the Dalai Lama, the first time I saw him, I just knew he was the man with all the answers for me, you know? It was just like, okay, you just, and I think what's, what, you know, Buddhism, they say from Living with the Heart of Christians that Buddha came at a time when the Hindus needed the least amount of dogmatic information, and then when Buddhism was gone from India, Padma Samvava came to bring it to Tibet where there's all the killing happening. So it feels like it keeps coming at the times when we need the most, when we need to like strip away all the dogmatic, you know?

And it's, I mean, it's changed my life, really, to say the very least, you know?

Yeah, it's mine too, I couldn't agree more. And just some of my favorite wisdom teachers, Jogam Trunkla have just come from, Pema Children have come from this lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, which is, I will say this, I very rarely advocate that on the podcast, anyone listening to it, for this Lama Somo episode, you're gonna love.

Okay.

Oh, she had one of the clearest--

I'm writing it down.

Yeah, Somo, T-S-O-M-O. She is, she had one of the clearest and most direct explanations of Buddhism, Vajrayana, and just more importantly, how to practically apply this to our lives, it was revelatory.

Wow.

Yeah, you're gonna love it. Okay, so we're at the end here, we're gonna do this again because I have a feeling we're gonna, our paths will leave in and out very often. But I would love for you, I leave most of these podcasts asking my guests for a practical tip, or tips that have helped them specifically on their path. I know we've spoken about many of those things already, but one that you're like, "This will give you the help." Simple, it can be complex, however you wanna approach.

Okay, cool, yeah, no, this is what I share with everyone. Cleanse your internal organs, so that way you can have a clear mind, and once you have a clear mind, you can drop into the heart. So that little motion is what's helped me so much. That's really important too, because I think there's a tendency, especially with a lot of the new age stuff, is people just wanna do positive part-based work all the time. But if you're not coming at it from a clear place, you can get what Chogong Trump will reverse you is, idiot compassion.

Yep.

Not using compassion in the real way you're supposed to use it, not to the detriment of yourself and other people. So that's a huge little switch there, and that's so very important. So this has been awesome.

Cool. Thank you, thank you so much, Noah.

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

Thank you for having me, such a pleasure, and I hope to see you again.

Yes, and thanks for having me.

Okay, cool. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Great episode, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm still, I'm recording this, you know, after the baby, my brain is still discombobulated, but I very much enjoy talking to Saa. Really great guys, you can see. I'm going to direct you to his website, SaaDissamone.com. Links to this on syncpodcast.com. Book giveaway this week. What am I giving away this week? I gotta pick something to give away. Let's go with cutting through spiritual materialism. How about that? By Cho Giam Trungpa. Another Cho Giam Trungpa book. One of my favorites, going to give that away. So if you want to be entered in the giveaway contest, all you do is go do sync podcasts.

That's S-Y-N-C, podcast.com. Great job for me. Still spelling that correctly. Go there, join the community. There's a little pop-up thingy. There's also something on the right side. Join the community automatically entered. Super easy. That's it. See you next week. I have episodes recorded. So episodes will still come out regularly, even though my brain is not working. So thank you. I'll see you next week.