Ep. 38 - Food and Love with Tess Lampert

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This is synchronicity. I want to give you an update on the Synchronicity Generosity Experiment. 100% funded. I'm recording this on Tuesday. I'm going to trip to the New York area, first the city and then somewhere else. But I'm recording this early. In seven days, really six days, because I announced it a day after I started it, 100% funded. That is really, really awesome. I think everyone who has already contributed, this thing is running until the end of August. So you have plenty of time to contribute. If you didn't, anything helps. Listen, if you gave a dollar, that's kind of the point of what this is.

It's not that you need to be giving a sizable chunk. If you want to, there are people who have, that's awesome. But the act of giving, and we don't know who it is who we're giving to. If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me back up. Last week I launched something called the Synchronicity Generosity Experiment. What we're doing is we're collectively raising a sum of money on a GoFundMe page. And there's a link on the website if you go to synchpodcast.com/generosity. You'll go to a page and you'll get a little bit more of an explanation of what this is. But essentially, what we're doing is we're raising money.

And then we're going to collectively vote on where to send that money. I'm thinking towards, and it would be nice to go to an individual that would have a good impact. But really, we're just going to collectively brainstorm and send it to a cool place. So that's running to the end of August. Already 100% funded. That's really great. But I think we can do more. I'm certainly going to give a little more. So that's cool. And really, again, thank you to everyone who's contributed. That's super duper awesome. So I mentioned I'm going to New York tomorrow. I'm going for a few reasons. One, though, is to see Minjor Rinpoche.

I talked about Minjor Rinpoche in a previous episode. He wrote a book called The Joy of Living, which I'm still reading. Totally fantastic. Really great. Not even necessarily. It's an introduction, but it's deeper than that. A great encapsulation of Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana, and neuroscience, and just kind of the convergence of modern physics and Buddhist thought, it's really fucking great, basically. But I'm seeing him give a talk on-- it's called Dying Dreams and Awareness. I like all those things. So that's the talk I'm going. I'm going to be hanging and meeting David Silver and Danny Goldberg.

We're going to go out to dinner, bring an Eli, little baby boy. He's two months old. It's going to be a fun trip. And then after that, we're going to go check out some places to live, looking at Beacon New York, the Red Hook area, some other places, because we're making our move back to the New York area. So yeah, I'm getting this done early. OK. Going to quickly move on. There's a new podcast that just debuted on MindPod Network called The Dow of Comedy. And it's hosted by Kelly McLean, and she is awesome. And the podcast is wonderful. And I know these are super relatives. But go ahead and check that out.

Her first episode with Barry Katz, who's like a very famous comedy agent who I actually didn't know. But he represents people like Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., big, big hitters. But it's such a great episode. It's deep, it's funny, it's great, Kelly is awesome. So check that out. I'm also going to give specific recommendations on episodes, I think, on every episode of Synchronicity of other podcasts that I think you should be listening to at least specific episodes, because there's some really great stuff out there. And this is a good podcast. There's some other good ones too. So yeah, that's it.

Now, I had three other topics that I wanted to talk about, but I didn't want to rush through them, so I'm just going to tell you what the topics are. And then what I think I'm going to do is on a future, somewhat soon episode of Synchronicity, I'm not going to have a guest. I'm stealing this blatantly from Zach Leary, who just put together a wonderful, I haven't even heard it yet, but he put together a short podcast about the Black Lives Matter, the shootings, creating value in the 21st century, and he doesn't have a guest. It's just him talking, laying out his thoughts and speaking about them.

And it's great. I love that idea. So, rather than stretch these intros into 15, 20, 30 minutes of me yapping, I'll tell you what the topics are. And I'm planning on talking about these in some condensed, shorter episodes. The first one is Pokemon Go. We know what Pokemon Go is. Love it or hate it. It's here, and it's probably here to stay for a while. I personally kind of love it. Pokemon Go is an augmented reality mobile app by Nintendo. Where basically you go out in the world, you take your phone and you hold your camera up, and there's a little Pokemon, these little animated characters, you have to be somewhat familiar with the Pokemon series.

So basically, you throw a little ball at them. This sounds insane, by the way, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, but you throw a little ball and you can capture a Pokemon. Basically, it's having a really interesting effect on society. Most of all, it's taken off like gangbusters, gangbusters. Not a term I use frequently, probably won't use it again. But people are really, really enjoying it, and they're hating it, of course, because that's how the world works sometimes, most of the time nowadays. But it's cool because it's actually getting people to go out who would normally just be video game people go out into the world.

So I'm going to talk about that more in depth in a later podcast. I also want to talk about, today, Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton. And a lot of people, again, really, people love it, people hate it, and there's everything in between. My quick take in case you care, I think it's awesome. Think Bernie Sanders is doing the right thing, I think for whatever you think about Hillary Clinton, positive, negative, it's good to show United Front, no one wants Trump, that's for sure. So I'm going to talk about that a little more in depth in a later podcast. And then the other thing, not to truly realize this in any way, shape, or form.

But if you're in paying attention, what's going on in the United States the past two weeks, pretty much forever, though, if you think about it, black people get and killed a lot by police, militarized police. And then there was a retribution killing, really, just to kind of crazy, it really had nothing to do with it. Just a crazy person who, you know, lost their shit, let the anger get the best of them. Obviously had some other stuff going on, took, you know, revenge and killed a lot of police officers in Dallas, obviously this shit is fucked up. I've been lucky enough to know and be friend and remain friends with a lot of people of a lot of different economic backgrounds, races, just from a lot of different places around the world.

And I think the more you meet people, you more you realize everyone's kind of the same. So when you see in a radical injustice, like how people of color are treated in this country, relative to white people, you know, it's just fucking terrible. And it's something to be aware of, of course, but then also, in addition to being aware of it, taking some type of action, whether in your own life, whether just talking to people about it, whether making an effort to understand more about the situation, whatever it is. I think that's a really important thing to do. I'm going to talk about that in a later episode too.

Like you said, like I said, this is a lot of stuff to talk about. I don't necessarily want to ramble in the beginning of every episode. So I'll probably put together some dedicated episodes related to that, you know, 20 minute things. Nothing long. Cool. And like, you know, if there's anything you want to talk about that, maybe I didn't see send me an email at Noah@sinkpodcast.com, I will write back. I do it. Okay. So now moving on to Tess, Tess is my sister. Tess is also one of the smartest, most brilliant tests. If you ever meet me in Tess, like a lot of my friends will say this. They always think she's older, which I know why people think she's older.

She is significantly more mature than me within the confines of the social world. She can, she's definitely like carries herself in a way that is like, oh yeah, Tess would probably be older. I know Tess. So I know where she's immature. She knows where I'm immature. We have had a long and complicated, but ultimately very awesome relationship throughout the years. And Tess is, you know, she's, she's kind of like me. She's very aware. She's, you know, insight, interested in things. She's passionate about things. Right now she writes a ton for various publications. She teaches wine classes at Astor Place.

She's based in Manhattan. We used to live like two blocks apart in Manhattan. And when I lived there, and she is just like one, she is hands down the best cook I have ever met. She can make food, honestly, truthfully, she could be cooking for like billionaires and they'd be thrilled to have her. My mom and her are awesome cooks. Also my, my mother-in-law Victoria is also a great cook. I'm very lucky that I have so many awesome cooks in my life. But Tess is just the coolest. Her friends, you know, you can see how well she is loved by everyone in her life and it's because she cares. She's just a genuinely really awesome generous.

She was probably born a better person than I was, if that makes sense. Like she came in with like inherent natural knowledge of how to be like a loving and caring person. It took me a decade or two to kind of hone into those things. So she, she has that on me. And you know, I tortured her as older brothers are want to do in our young, in our younger lives. And she even put up with that and whatever psychological scarring I've permanently left on her, she knows I'm sorry for. But this conversation is really cool. We talk about food being love, which if you have named Crowley Baba, if you know, anyone who is a famous Hindu guru, Ramdhasa's guru, many other peoples, he basically equates to one of the most important things you can do is feed people.

That is an incredible extension of love because it's a basic need, like it's great to think and talk about all of these spiritual concepts and metaphysical things and all these grandiose things. But if you're hungry, all that shit doesn't mean anything. You got to eat. If you're starving, you could give two fucks about all that stuff. So really, you know, focusing on that base need, but presenting it in a way that extends love is, is awesome. We definitely talk about that. We talk about a ton of other stuff. We talk about ghosts. We talk about contacting beings beyond the living realms. We talk about psychedelics.

We talk about, I don't just listen to the episode. It's a brother and sister talking about pretty cool stuff. It was wonderful having her on test came and visited last week. And basically was our personal chef, me and Alexis is, and Eli, well Eli doesn't eat the food, but you know, by extension of breast milk, I guess he does. And she was, it was like the coolest thing ever. She was making popsicles. She was making ice cream. Okay. Here's a quick recipe. Here you go. Here's a quick recipe. She made this for us. It's amazing how you think you're going to think of bullshitting you, how good this is, but it really is amazing.

Okay. Get some bananas. Just get a bunch of bananas. Let them ripen like to the end, like just before you would be making banana bread out of them. If you don't know what that means, like not like they're so mushy that you think you need to throw them out right before that, lots of spots. What you do is you take the bananas, cut them into slices, right? Cut them into regular little circular slices, then put those slices in a bag in the freezer. Okay. Leave that in the freezer for a day or overnight, put it in a food processor or blender and blend it. Then put, if you like, you put a little bit of vanilla extract and you have banana ice cream, that's literally just bananas.

It blew my fucking mind. Really it's incredible. You can add a little maple syrup if you want, whatever you want, chocolate, whatever you like to add on that, but it's not dairy and it tastes really, really, really, really good. So Tess just does stuff like this on the regular. It's incredible how amazing she is at the food stuff and there's no one more knowledgeable. As much as I know, I don't even know that much about weed, but for as much as I love marijuana, she loves mezcal and lots of other wines and spirits and knows as much as anyone, especially for being so young. She knows a ton about that stuff.

Check out her website, pallettrip.com. That's P-A-L-A-T-E-T-R-I-P.com, especially if you're in the New York area. She teaches a ton of classes. I know she'd be thrilled to meet you. So yeah, I don't got anything else to say about Tess at this point. You're going to love this episode. The reviews. Apparently last week I did something that resonated with some of you because the reviews started coming back in. Love them. Thank you so much. Please rate and review on iTunes. Make a donation on the website if you're so inclined. No big deal, if not. But without further ado, here is my sister, Tess Lebert.

All right, we're recording. Okay. Welcome to podcast. Thank you. That's where you talk. Actually, I'm going to just turn this down a little bit. I think we're going to clip when we laugh, assuming there are laughs. Well, how, what's going on? I thought it might be fun for your listeners if I asked you a question. Oh. Yeah. What's it like being a new dad? It's good. It's really fun. I've say this to everyone who asks that question. It's easier for me or I think fathers in general to, especially in the beginning, be like this is fun. This is great. This is amazing, but it's not easy for the women typically, even if I think you've had kids and make it marginally easier, but it's like a huge thing that is going on that changes your entire life and who you are as a person for the women more so when he gets older and then like starts interacting and you have to, we don't have to, but you know, hopefully provide some guidance, answer questions, like Alexis said today, like, what are we going to do?

Because there's like a kid we're passing at the baby store who's asking all these like Asinine questions, just like stuff you just can't, like there's no answer to. And I just told her I was going to make stuff up and she said that's not okay. So like when you have to interact more, you take on a bigger role, but right now, like he's pretty much tied to her for every meal, for everything, you know, not everything. I do some stuff, but it's pretty good for me. Nice. Are you going to keep asking questions or do I have to now from the show? I have another question. So what do you think, how are you going to approach his diet?

What are you going to feed him? Because I know that you've had different dietary plans before, which is another thing that hopefully we'll talk about. Yeah. Well, since we're going in that direction, we don't have to worry about that for a while. I don't think because it's just mother's milk. It's for a few months. For a while, I think, for more than a few months, I think like for a year almost slowly start. I don't know if that's true. That might be made up. Maybe later. I don't really know. I think I'm going to make him eat better than me and us just because I can control that. It's like Macio, our dog.

He's vegan pretty much, right? The food we give him is vegan dog food, not because it started because, oh, it's good, it's better. But because it's healthier in terms of like where the stuff is coming from, like the slaughtered animals in the regular dog food is just like a shitty thing. That's where it started from, but now it's the only thing that doesn't make him poop weird. So we keep giving it to him, not for like some ethical principle, although that's nice. So I mean, I would like to start Eli with basic good foods that are whole and like, you know, you can name in one word, that would be ideal.

So probably I guess vegan-ish, right? I mean, that's probably what we're going to do, I would think. I don't think we're going to call it that, but we're not going to be weird about it because I've noticed kids who are sometimes raised strict vegans or strict this, as soon as they get any degree of freedom, they're like, give me the meat, give me the shit. I don't care. I need this in my way. They start pounding hot dogs. But I don't, yeah, I don't know how to handle raising a child if that's the question. I'd say that work in progress. Well, yeah, let's talk about the food stuff because that's your job.

What would you describe your job as? I would, there's so many descriptions, but relating specifically to food, most of what I do is create recipes and also talk about food trends. So those are the two main things that I do with food. What I love most about it is cooking for other people. That's my favorite thing to do with food. Yeah. And you're also selling yourself short in the sense that you're extremely knowledgeable, not only about food, but potentially it's history, from what's the right word for Epicurean? What's the right word for being knowledgeable specifically about food and beverage?

Well, for wine, it's on a file. For food, you could say gastronome, but that has a totally different connotation. It sounds like farts a little. I mean, food historian is a real thing, but I wouldn't say I'm a food historian. No, but you like know a lot. I guess for the wine, you especially know, but you know about like where food comes from. It's local history. Like you were saying you're reading this book on the Tiki stuff. Yes. Great book if you're interested in Tiki or cocktails in general, and we'll put a link to it, is beach bumbberries, potions of the Caribbean. It's fascinating. It has pirates and rum and history and cocktails.

It's great. Like the holistic aspect of food as much as the act of making food, it seems. I do. I do like the the spiritual side of food. So food is so fascinating to so many people and it's having a huge revolution in our collective consciousness right now because it's so far reaching. It's something that we do every day for pleasure. It's something that we also have to do every day, you know, speaking from my fairly privileged standpoint, in a lot of places, it's something that you want to do or need to do every day, but you don't get to. And if you do, it might not be pleasurable, but best case scenario is what I have.

I think, I mean, I have access to beautiful fresh ingredients and I can have any type of cuisine and feel free to experiment. And that opens more doors to consider and also achieve nourishing yourself spiritually as well as physically, which often go hand in hand. And theoretically, though, not everywhere, not in like Haiti where they're making dirt pies and eating those. But theoretically, because of what food is, if you're in a place that has water and somewhat, you know, tillable land, it's something that can be sustainable to eating. It doesn't have to be something that is some complicated, like, you know how like we're so detached from the food that we eat, like, you see this all the time when you come and visit or something, you know, we get some prepackaged thing from Trader Joe's and Trader Joe's is pretty good.

But like, there's a prepackaged thing. It's like, we don't really know where that came from, but I don't know how it got there. It's good, but we don't know the whole process of what's going on, but knowing kind of like the influence of food throughout a region's history or cultural history, I think gives it some more, some more significance than usual. Yeah, knowing where your food comes from is a very basic first step that seems to have alluded a lot of specifically the most privileged people. People who are reliant on convenience foods often also have access to fresh foods. Not always, though.

Not always in urban environments, sometimes, you know, and in cities, especially the way that our food laws are tied up with government and everything, it makes it so that two slices of pizza in a soda is cheaper than a bottle of water in a salad, and that's a, that's a huge systemic problem. But if you, that's a great place to start. If you wanted to understand a little bit more about what a holistic approach to food means, simply considering where your food came from. So ideally envisioning it growing out of the ground or on the ground or in the water, wherever the food, the primary source comes from.

And then the steps that it has to take to get to you. Just being able to envision that for everything you eat is really interesting. And there's shows dedicated to it. There are entire, multiple TV shows dedicated to showing you how, you know, certain candies or little convenience wrapped foods are made. But if you can picture your food as it was growing as a primary source, then that's a very good start. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely, it's weird because I don't think most people do that when they eat. And I know like mindful eating is supposed to be something, not supposed to be something. It's a good thing to do.

And you know how I eat like a monster. So I don't mind fully eat much. There was a thing that Sharon Salzburg had for her 2018 meditation challenge for one of the days was mindful eating. So we went to Krispy Kreme. I think Alexis went to Krispy Kreme, it was like by where she was taking a class and brought home 12 donuts of Krispy Kreme and I mindfully ate one donut, took about two minutes. It was great. And then I just, you know, like four more donuts without thinking. So I mean, I think that's part of the process of mindful eating is understanding the source and where it's coming from. So we'll talk about another, another interesting thing I think about food is it.

It's also an expression of love for a lot of people, like even. So Nim Karole Baba, right? He often said, like one of the best things you can do is to feed people. That's like the one of the primary ways. And it's also kind of a prerequisite for appreciating any other, not higher level, but a different level of love because if you're hungry and starving, you can be reading a book about Gandhi or whatever you want to be reading about, but it doesn't matter anymore. Like you need food in your belly to just get to a base level of like, okay, ness, most people like, you know, I go 12 hours with eating or something on my nightmare.

Well, it does not just depend on that, but you know, you know what I'm saying? So can you talk a little bit about that and how that fits in? Absolutely. I mean, I think you have great examples right now because you can even see that your wife, for example, when your baby is crying because he's hungry, she feels the need to go feed him. She wants to show her love by feeding him and sustaining him. Even if it means that she can't sleep, she can't go to the bathroom. She can't eat her food, but she's going to provide food for him. And that is one of the most basic expressions of love that's tied in with food from the moment that we're born.

And then as we develop into humans, those of us who like to cook know that it's not just the serving of the food, right? So you have the preparing of the food, which is often social and, you know, it's cliche, but true, a lot of the best memories are made in the kitchen. Totally. Now, our mother was a great cook. Yes. She still is a great cook. Yep. And she doesn't love the process as much as a lot of cooks. She likes the eating of the food and it being the way that she wants it to be. But she's not all sentimental in the kitchen necessarily. Right. So that's not part of it for everyone, but it is for a lot of people.

And then, of course, serving delicious food, making something you know someone's going to like, that's always been very intimate for me. If I know how to cook what you like, then I feel like we're very close. What's an artistic and creative expression, too, which is gratifying, like if you make a song or you write something and people like it, it's that type of feeling and not necessarily just like an ego fulfilling thing, but it is like a genuine and pure and nice thing to do. It's a great expression. There's not necessarily a ton, although there can be. There can be other things tied to serving and making of food.

Discipline. Yeah. Well, I was thinking negative things. I was thinking like, you know, I'm giving you food. So you know, you have to be, you know, I've been feeding you, so you have to be grateful for that. It's the same thing in like a relative. It's a relative love, let's call it, not unconditional. So like if you're in a relationship with someone and you think you're doing all these things for that person, it's like, well, or even if you're not a relationship, this is a very typical thing. Let's say you like someone, right? Or there's an unrequited love dynamic. And that's going on and like, I'm doing all these things.

I'm such a, I'm doing this nice for you. Like that type of feeling can be attached to food. Like, hey, I make you all this food, I'm doing all this, but I guess that can be attached to anything. Yeah. So you can also use food in place of love, you know, if they feel sad, then they- Oh, yeah. Emotional eating. Emotional eating. Or stress eating. That's an idea. Absolutely. I mean, food that's made with love tastes better. You can tell. And if you can't, then I would be willing to set, that would be a really fun blind tasting actually, to like make food with different attitudes and project different energy and see how it comes out.

Well, I'm sure it would be. It's like the thing where they did the rice thing and they put them in the containers and they labeled one, like I hate you and one I love you and I was after like a week or like they use like molding and gross and the other one like looked really good. Right. It was like a Japanese scientist. I forget who did it. They did it with water as well. Yeah, water. The crystals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's another opportunity to have positive love in your food is if you cook with and for the people that you love, you can get extra love and nutrition into the food. It's wonderful.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And food reaches toward all of all of our aspects of life, basically. Yeah. Because it's a needed thing that you need. What they say in Vedic scriptures, they say we're supposedly in the fourth yoga or like a very long cycle of time and in this one, you have to live off food in the previous ones. I believe maybe I think it's all three previous ones. You could live off like light, then you could live off meditation, all these like a theory sources of energy. But in this age, you have to have food to eat. And also, it's supposedly the least it's harder to like meditate and achieve like easier states of mind with food with anything with anything.

So in this life, well, in this, this particular cycle, there's other benefits to this particular cycle, but that right now, outside of maybe some very interesting people in mountains doing solids, every retreat, it's like, everyone needs food. You have to have it. It's not a negotiable thing like, well, I don't really think I need to meditate. Right. It's like, okay, well, you don't, you don't have to, but food you have to have. So it does transcend all of the kind of basic things. Yeah. It's interesting. It reminds me of the classic view of food and gastronomy from the Western philosophy tradition, which is something I spent a few years studying and writing about, which essentially says that we can't apprehend beauty through our sense of taste, that it's a proximal sense.

And because it has, we have to have it in or on our bodies to apprehend it that we won't perceive beauty, the way that we perceive beauty through seeing or hearing. Really. That's weird. Well, it's weird to us now because our real life experience is contrary to that, obviously we perceive beauty through our sense of taste. If it wasn't clear before, it's now incredibly clear. Why would they clear that? Oh, were these the people who just like denied the body? Yes. Mostly sick. Yes. Exactly. So if it was close to the body, then it was bad and related to temptation or overindulgence, which is absolutely true.

It does have that element. Well, it's like banishing sex stuff because the potential for gender dynamics and sexual out-it would be problems is very great relative to maybe other things in life. So it could also have the same thing with food. Like, oh, you're indulging, you know, devolve into like, colligula-level emergencies. Exactly. Or not even that bad. But you know. Well, that's the one. In the same vein. Yeah. That's a spectrum. If their body's not eating on one side of the other. But yeah, that's interesting that they denied. That's why I always think about the Greek stuff. Like I'm a big Socrates.

Our dad, obviously, you know, was big into Socrates. But there was like a huge denial of the body in the sense where I've at times thought that that's totally accurate. And I mean, if at times thought that words are completely unnecessary too, which I still believe in some ways, but it is not a practical way for getting through life. And I also think words can be used to help on the path just like food can and taste can as it is. I do think you can experience beauty through food, right? That's like a given there. 100%. And if, you know, I would say the strongest case throughout history and the credible cases that you'll find happen with wine.

People can tell you that they've had a sip of wine that has given them the visceral feeling that they get from listening to a Beethoven symphony or gazing upon a Picasso. That's nuts to me. I mean, the only way I understand the wine thing is with marijuana because there I would have like, I love different kinds, different tastes, gauging whether it's better than another time, the comparative aspect of it. So I get that and I can extend that to wine. And I guess I guess smoke some weeds that where I was like, yeah, it's as good as listening to a piece of music. It's the same level of sensory perception that I would get from that.

Yeah. That makes sense. Food's pretty good. Yeah. Food's pretty good. Let's talk about a ghost and stuff and apparitions because you are the first person in my life who knew who had some contact with the reality that wasn't our regular waking reality without really necessarily psychedelics. I know you were taking psychedelics when some of this stuff was happening, but you had contacts with other realms or at least remembered that better because I feel like at a certain age, I can vaguely remember like living in a more magical state and being in contact with other realms when I was younger, but it's like a distant foggy memory that doesn't have kind of the vividness of what was going on.

So what is going on there? Well, I would say first of all, mine in particular were very separate from my experiences with psychedelics in a temporal sense. It's not like I would use psychedelics and then have these experiences and these, those kinds of experiences preceded any sort of experimentation. Yeah. I mean, like a teenager, and I remember things from before that, but they're just distant memories at this point. One of the strongest memories I had, I knew I was, I knew that that there was an opening between my energy and other realms. I was very aware of that and I thought at one point that I should pursue it and look into it and then I went to college and my whole life changed, went up to Bard.

Yes. Yes. Lovely. Yes. So then it continued there and I remember that sometimes I would just say things to my friends. I remember one time we were in a car going to the grocery store and I started saying, oh, does someone have a relative that looks like this and that's their name? And one of my friends got like really upset and he was like, yo, you're freaking me out. And I just said like, oh, well, he says hello or something. And everyone got like a little spooked, but whatever were hippies and upstate New York. So not too crazy. And it was weird because it was like, oh, that, and I had no idea really what happened.

It was just like, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, you know, freak anyone out. Anyway, I went to the, again, I was still pretty. I was 17 and I went to like the psychologist on campus or something and I was like, hey, I was wondering if like, you know, anything about this and they were like, well, the neurologist comes on Thursday and I was like, I'm good. Never mind. Just kidding. Must have been stoned. And then shortly after that, I made a decision to actively close up that kind of passage to those realms because I felt like the energy was overwhelming and that I was being way too inviting and I wasn't really in control of it, which is not a good way to be with those types of things.

It's not a good way to be, you know, you have to be prepared and want it and you want to be in control of it. Well, it's ironic because I think a lot of younger, the younger you are, the easier it is to be in contact with those worlds, but when you start developing a sense of self and it starts conflicting with quote unquote reality out there and what most of us perceive, who knows how we're all perceiving it, but out there, it becomes harder to kind of maintain both of those, especially in a world where typically either disregarded at best mocked often, feared, seeing fear obviously underpins both of those things, but you know, people don't know how to handle that type of stuff or like you said, you specifically knowing, I learned, I don't know when probably in college that like if I was going to a party, you know, I had to be really, really aware of what energy or psychic energy I was taking on from a group of people who were typically young, drunk, you know, all looking to have sex, all just like a crazy energy.

That's like a weird place to be and you're all kind of like in that mindset. And I would notice like, like that doesn't seem like a thought of mine, like that feels like something weird that I don't typically think. And then after a while, you're like, Oh, shit, maybe these aren't just my thoughts coming into my head. I know that you have to be really, I wouldn't say I shut myself off to those things, but I learned how to put up at least like a psychic shield that I knew that if I wanted to, I could delve into that way of being, but typically not going to be the most useful state. So that sounds like kind of like, so what do you think it was like, well, you were just talking to people who had passed, do you think it was a time based thing, do you think it was, because, you know, like, I don't necessarily believe this time is a linear.

I think it unfolds more than precedes along like an arrow path, which we perceive it as just to be clear, proceed, you know, proceeding on an arrow path. Sure. That's our illusion. Yeah. But that all right. I think it's illusion. And you know, the show is called synchronicity. And I think when synchronicity's happened, it's kind of just the quick little blip and lifting of this illusion that we look like that's kind of hard to ignore, even if it's not a constant state of being, which it can be, but if it's not like it's still like, okay, well, what was going on there? That doesn't fit with our understanding.

And now, even with modern physics, they're proving when you start getting really, really small and starting to find the building blocks of reality, it gets a little fuzzy. Yeah. Doesn't work exactly how it's supposed to. So what do you think that was looking back on it? Well, that's a really interesting question. I definitely agree that our perception of time is an illusion necessary to existence as we know it. Correct. I agree with that. And I think that it was definitely a thing that that is a part of who I am. I wouldn't say it's gone. I would say that that part of me is still probably, you know, I don't know if stronger than most, but I notice it.

I think that it was just a little bit stronger because I was not as in control or aware of my psychic personality. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't, I had no idea what my energy was doing. It was just kind of out there and I have a pretty strong personality. So unbridled, it's just kind of like all over the place. But now as a 30 year old adult, like person, I have a little bit more awareness of it and can focus it and control it. So I don't, you know, I don't fight things if they come to me. I don't freak out about them either. I try and stay perceptive and in touch with my own personal spirit guides.

I can definitely notice it around other people. Sure. I often don't say anything. Because you don't want to necessarily freak people out of you. There's no point, you know, most of the time. Most of the time. I use my tarot cards. I was going to say, oh, I'm so, you know, I actually, I had it in the bottom just below my level of consciousness. I wanted to talk about the tarot because I got a piece of feedback for one of the podcasts on my pod network is that someone who I know, hi Melissa, if you're listening, felt that there was not necessarily a good understanding of tarot on another podcast.

Not this one, another one, but what, uh, I have tarot cards that I got. And then I got an interpretation guide, but I don't know really what I'm doing. I like to randomly pull and I used to do the online ones, app ones all the time. So explain tarot to me. Okay. Um, I've always liked tarot cards. I've always been drawn to them and they very much appeared in my life, like, you know, most powerful spiritual things, right, right, right, just appear in your life. It makes sense. So the first deck I found, I wish I knew it was, it might be in the basement somewhere. It's like the ones that used to jump out.

No, I have those. So the first deck I found used to be dads and they were in this big wooden box and they were big, really cool. They might be down there. And then I was at a garage sale because we used to go to a lot of yard sales and I found them and I wasn't, I like kind of knew what they were. I was very young and I bought them because I just obviously had to. And that's the deck I use. I've used a deck that I bought subsequently and it's fine. But the one that came to me is definitely better. There's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding tarot. The first things that I always tell people is it's not going to change your life.

It's not going to give you answers that you didn't already know. It's just, it's helpful. You know, if you're upset and you talk to someone and then it helps you realize what the thoughts are in your head or what the situation is, it's the same kind of thing. If you have your own tarot cards and you can infuse them with your energy, they're going to work better than an anonymous online thing. People who read tarot, you know, you can get someone who, it's not really that connected to you or you can get someone who knows how to tap into that energy. It's luck of, it's not luck of the draw. That's just, there's so many different tarot readers out there, it's hard to generalize.

But I use them for helpful guidance. I actually read my cards right before I came here. Oh cool. And it just described what was going on in my life like specifically and accurately and made me feel a little bit more confident about my decisions and it was nice. Well, also what it sounds like to like a lot of divinatory divinatory divinatory. Divination? Well divination, I know, but divinatory divinatory yeah, but like a lot of those things, it can also be symbols in general, a great way of getting to unconscious processes. So that's like kind of what synchronicities can be, that's what dreams can be, they're symbolic, right things that can kind of get in touch with things we maybe can't think of consciously, analytically solve a problem and try to, you know, provide some reference or perspective on situations, that's cool, you got to do my tarot while we're here.

I'll do your tarot. I have hard. Cool. I have never used them. Yeah, it's, they're a lot of fun, but you know, then again, like I keep them by my bed and I hardly ever use them, but I use them when I'm supposed to. Yeah. And leading up to when I actually sat down and did a proper reading for myself, I was just like, let me pick three and see what happens or let me pick one and I kept getting something I didn't want. Yeah. And it was very specific cards over and over and I was like, oh man tarot cards, not tell me what I want to hear. Yeah, you can't get around that type of stuff. What's interesting because astrology is also like one of those things that can be used to, you know, figure out temporally when something is going on or characteristics.

And I think that's something else that's totally misunderstood because most, I would say most people, I don't know if this is true, again, a generalization, but a lot of people don't look at astrology and say, oh yeah, it's totally legit, but we completely understand that. Right. It's scientific. Most people would not even refer to it as scientific. And it probably isn't. It falls somewhere between scientific and mystical, but I was reading the, the namesake of this podcast is a book called Synchronicity by Carl Jung, which he calls an a causal pattern of orderedness, which most Carl Jung things is not the easiest way to say something was probably the most accurate.

But in the part of the book where he starts going through married horoscopes based on a random matrix of samplings and tries to see if there's patterns that are supposedly noted. And he's like, well, listen, it does, granted this isn't a huge sample size. He's like, my opinion is that you wouldn't ever be able to analyze these things as a data set and get a proven result like you would with other empirical sciences. But that doesn't mean you should discount it as an element that exists and interplays with what's going on. So yeah, I do think. Do you read your horoscope? Not so much anymore. Just because I don't have a good horoscope place to go to.

Yeah. And I don't get the paper anymore. And that's where I sometimes used to read it, which is not necessarily a good one. It was there. And also a lot of those horoscopes, like a lot of spiritual quote unquote new age stuff, they can just be co-opted and just be like dribble. Like if you're already on the fence of believing something like astrology or psychics or whatever it is, and you come across like a Huxter or someone who's putting it out just for content out there or something like that sucks because then you're giving it, you're going to read into it based on your interpretation of what they're doing.

Right, if you're looking at the movement of the planets though and speculating on what that theoretically hasn't influenced over, I think like Mercury Retrograde is the one that everyone knows. Right, right. It's like-- It seems really common. And I don't-- I mean, it's weird for people who know me. Ooh, there's a cat. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, yeah. It's weird for people who know me, but they don't necessarily think of me as really a skeptical person. But I am. I'm very, like I don't just naturally automatically believe something and stick to it. I try to go through direct experience, validation, research, I don't just-- sure, that's it.

But astrology is one of those things that I haven't stayed up with really-- our dad is super into it. He sends me a lot of astrological things. But most of them I don't understand. And then also they just switch the zodiac. What? Like a year or so ago, two years, they moved things around. I think they moved the basic signs, not their rising sign. Do you know a lot about astrology, not really, right? I mean, I remember that vaguely, but it didn't affect me, so I didn't really pay that much attention. Yeah. I look at astrology after, at the end of the day or the day after, because I feel-- I always worry that if I look at it, yeah, self-fulfilling prophecy.

And I don't need that, because if it's bad, then I have an excuse to have a bad day. And if it's good, and it goes wrong, then I'm doubly disappointed. Astrology in me is not always productive. Yeah. But what about those times when you were younger, when you had those dissociative periods? Oh, yeah. What were those? So, and that I would say I feel like is slightly related to a connection with other realms, but not-- it actually feels very different. It's a totally different feeling. So I used to have dissociative episodes, I guess. And because of that, I still have the ability to dissociate. I just know how to manage it better now.

But for anyone who doesn't know what that means, it's basically you dissociate from yourself and your body. So your personality and your sense of self is totally foreign or some degree of foreign to your body and the things around you and the life that you find yourself in the middle of. So it's pretty scary and jarring. And it happened to me and to a lot of people from things that I've read just randomly. Like you can't control it. So I would be sitting in math class and all of a sudden I would be like freaking out that I had an arm and trying to remember my name and address or anything to bring me back to reality.

So a similar thing happened to me. So that was very disturbing. And I feel bad for other young people that happens to because-- Or anybody. Or anybody. Yeah. But especially when you're a teenager, it's really messed up. And I was confused. I thought for a long time that I didn't belong in this reality. I thought that maybe there had been a mix up and that I belonged in some other reality. And naturally I thought mirrors were some sort of portal and dreams were really interesting. And so, yeah, that was super messed up. Then sometime, I guess right after college or during college, I had drank some wine, smoked some weed, was listening to the sun raw.

Oh boy. Yeah. That's all. I don't know. But I've been a little scared to listen to the sun raw since then. And I was at the beach and I was doing chakra, crystal healing meditations. And all of a sudden I felt, what's that spiral energy of energy? The serpentine. Yeah, exactly. Something happened with that. And I freaked out. I remember I called you. Oh, yeah. I drank a bunch of coffee and I drank a bunch of Moscow and I felt a little bit better. Right. So my point there is, you know, you're really dissociated from your body. So you have to find some way to bring yourself back to your body. I've heard meat counterintuitive.

Meat, yeah. A lot of people told me that we, Zach and I, my friend Zach went to a half oars, the fifth dimensional beings made a blatant sound. Right. They sound friendly. They are totally awesome and they're real. And you know, it's, yeah, again, I'm a very skeptical person, but we went to a thing where he's a, he's like a sound healer guy and he's, he basically, whether you believe he's a total huxer or not, which I'm very confident he's not, he's got an incredible voice. And it's like a five, six octave range voice where you go super low, like a guy and super high, like a soprano woman. It's really weird sounding.

And he has these crystal bowls and he does these things. So we went there. My friend Zach. I doubt if he's meditated four hours in his entire life, three and a half of those were at this thing, like straight. So we went to, we listened and this is on the upper west side of New York in like the 90s and we went and there's a break in between like this like a two, three hours and just listen to this guy doing this crazy fucking chance, just nuts. And we got out and I have never in my life felt more high. And I mean, like lifted high elevated, like walking on clouds felt like we didn't even have lower parts of our bodies and like, and we kept looking at each other, we're walking so slow.

I mean, like a new, like luckily separate sides with like people aren't in such a hustle, but like we're really walking like, you know, like mental patients. And we kept looking at each other and be like, do you feel like this? And so we went to a restaurant and we were like trying to eat, it was like kind of trying to like process food when you're on psychedelics, like, you know, it's something you do, but like you don't really necessarily need it and the process is just weird. And the ladies next to us, we're like, you know, you can do if you want to just feel like we weren't necessarily trying to get more grounded with it.

Like if you eat meat, it'll like plant you and I read that subsequently, it's a tantric thing that said meat will ground you because it's more connected with the earth and well, it also takes more of your energy to digest. So it puts more of a physical demand on your body. And I would say that was one of the like scariest things is the idea that I had hands was not okay. That was more than I could handle. Then the idea that someone might touch that hand was like, you were freaked out by having a body than not having a body. Yes, that's it's not like I'm me and then, oh, I can't find myself from out of my body.

It was like, who is this body and why am I here? You go, yeah, obliteration and it felt foreign to have a body. Exactly. Yeah, like when you've never done DMT. Have you done DMT? No. I would try it. I would probably try to at this point. I know a lot of people have done it. I mean, I've had a similar experience when I smoked that salvia, but that was different. I became a quilt. Yeah, I've heard people describe really I was once they ever tell you the story where like I spoke to Salvia with a bunch of people like right after high school and we were at my friend's house or no, some friend of a friend's house and let's do salvia.

I don't know. So you know, you have to like blow torch it and you know, there's the extra whatever. So they're passing around, I think a bomb or a water piece of some sort. So like there's a circle of us, probably about like six or seven people and I smoke it. Maybe I was the second or third person. There's no discernible reaction from the people ahead of me. Nothing. Just tasted bad. Gross. The guy next to me hits it flips out. Yeah. He loses his shit, his, well on fire. Two more people will get passed. My friend Heather at that point, she, she said that she went to India was in a purple sorry.

I'll never forget this because it was like fascinating went to India was in a purple sorry, seemed to be in another time, another place felt incredibly real, like smell things and then she was back. So I know it affects people differently. That's interesting. Someone else on this podcast, Jeremy Johnson, he smoked Salvia and had a very interesting experience where he thought he was basically like either tapping into tree consciousness or felt like a tree or felt like the plant and had it on like a cellular like could envision what that was like. So you had something like that happen when you smoked Salvia.

Yeah. I was sitting in an apartment of my friend who I was in New York with and we, we smoked it with her friend and I had smoked it before and it didn't work. Yeah. This worked. I was looking at the quilt on the bed opposite us and I became the quilt for, I don't know how long, you know, some period of time because we're sensing time is, um, I think it was actual minutes, but it didn't feel long or short. It was just very quilty and then afterwards, I called dad just to be like, Hey, what's up? He's gotten a lot of calls from us over the years. On drugs. Yeah, first time I did an accident, I called him through 18 hours.

First time I did Molly, I called him. I was like, you made the best kids. I love my brother, um, and yeah, after we just went to listen to some jazz and it was, it was cool. Yeah. I don't, I mean, I don't, I don't do a tremendous amount of psychedelics these days, but I do think they're valuable and I never did psychedelics recreationally, even if it was in a recreational setting. Right. It never, the intent was never to be like, let's have some fun and do psychedelics. Oh, I wish I could say that, but I was lying. I definitely was like, let me use some mushrooms and have fun because it's, you know, see, I never, I never, I mean, I've done that socially with people, but at least my personal intent was like, let's get to the bottom of the universe.

Let's figure out, but isn't that, can't that be fun? Totally can be fun. Yeah. But I think some people are like, let's just take some mushrooms, let's take some acid and go to the park and just do nothing. I've tried that. It always doesn't go well because I think there needs to be an intent because it lines up one of the most important psychedelic experiences I had. I was on mushrooms in Boston and college and I remember distinctly being in contact with what I guess Rondas would call the witness consciousness or, you know, some level of consciousness that is able to reflect on itself. And I could converse and it was a clearly something that had always been under the threshold of conscious experience, still small voice in your head and which everyone can contact at any time.

But it was like very clearly like communicating different things and I was like, oh, this is actually what's running most of my life. Not what I think I'm doing, like that's more of a reactive thing and that's more of like interpreting something but this thing underneath is actually what's going on. You know, yeah, it's very interesting. I would classify something that's also a big part of my spiritual and professional and personal life, which is Mescal, the pre-Hispanic Mexican spirit made from agave. I would say that that does have psychedelic properties. The agave is, you know, miffed to have psychedelic properties in a lot of different ways, more with the kind of fermented beverage pool K, which is reserved for the shamans.

And if you have more than five cups, then it puts you in touch with my, well, the agave goddess or the different gods, the different deities. And it's called pool K, so pool K comes from, if you have an agave plant growing in the ground, and there's many different varieties, but only if you produce this and you take out the flowering stalk, which is basically the fruit bearing, the reproductive organ of the plant, but you leave it in the ground, it will produce a liquid, kind of like bleeding. You collect that and it will also form kind of like a scab. You scrape it off and let it accumulate more liquid.

That liquid ferments naturally with just native yeasts and it becomes pool K. You have to have it fresh. You have it at the source tastes different depending on where it is and which one it's made from. More than five cups. Yes. What's that like? So it tastes kind of like a milky beer, I guess, and it can be kind of viscous. But it's good. It's light and refreshing, vaguely sweet. It's alcohol. A little fermenty, like 4%, 5%. So the first time I had it, I was with the person who introduced it to me, honestly. And he thought it would be funny to just keep giving me more and more cups. And you know, it's a natural live fermenting beverage.

So it just kept fermenting in my stomach, which was definitely not a normal feeling. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night and I looked in the mirror and my pupils were gigantic and I felt really weird. And I was like, okay, I guess this is what they must be talking about. So that's what the shamans take? Well, yeah, I mean, the traditions have changed so much. Now I think that Mescal, if you have a really good pure product and you drink five cups of that, same thing, they say that, you know, if it's very popular and it has way more years being of spiritual importance than a beverage than like a trendy cocktail thing.

That I recognize. I mean, you were talking about it, I know, as long before that, but like for five, six years or something like that, right? Yeah. And now it's just, I see it everywhere. And people have Mescal companies and it's a big thing. It's huge. And hopefully it doesn't destroy the culture too much. Yeah. It's a strong culture. It'll survive, but we don't want to do too much damage. But that stuff will get you high in a similar way. And it's pretty amazing. That's cool. Yeah. I don't like drinking alcohol. I know. Well, that was not a good option for you. For people who like drinking alcohol, which there are many, and I have friends who enjoy it.

Never. High school, I could drink a lot. Not anymore. And I just, I appreciate, I don't know. You're able to appreciate it. I'm able to appreciate it. If you have to. If I have to. Yeah. I can do that. I can. And I can tell a discern between like a shitty glass of wine and a good glass of wine. I'm not totally incompetent. You just don't want to drink either of them. Ideally. Yeah. That would be my preference. All right. So I'm going to end it with the question I ask everyone. What are some practical tips or a practical tip that has helped you in your life? That's a tough one. That's what everyone says.

But it's supposed to be. Right. Oh, okay. Well, I could say, no, that doesn't help me personally. I know. It's easy to come up with practice. Practice the theory of a lot of people, but you is the one where it actually matters. Yeah. I'll put the Jeopardy music in here. So you have a lot. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Practical. Something that anyone could do, theoretically. Well, I would say that think of the other fellow first. Think about the other person. And it's something that I've heard from both of our parents independently and it's also called right speech, we could say, but with actions and speech and everything is think about how it's going to affect the other person or think about it from their perspective.

Okay. So specifically right speech, not just looking at it from someone else's perspective, but trying that as a component of right speech, but that application, yeah. Right. And it's like a bastardization of the golden rule, golden rule or karma cause an effect. What goes around comes around. I like, it's a different thing. Well, I wouldn't say that it's what goes around comes around or even that idea of karma because that's. That's the principle underlying. Well, no, that would be that would be a little selfish and weird. What do you mean? If, you know, my goal to say something to you that's going to make you feel good rather than bad isn't so that something good will happen to me.

Oh, no, I know. But that is the underlying, that's how the world works. If you do. But it's not a one for one. I could be very generous and nice to someone and people could still treat me like shit. Absolutely. But from another level, what you put out in the world, you will, what you reap you will eventually sell. That's a fact. Maybe not in this life, maybe not right away, how everyone wants it to work, but at some point it's going to happen so that the extra benefit of right speech or thinking how your words are going to affect someone, you know, there's a way of being selfless, that's selfish, but it's okay.

Because if you know, some people need to focus on themselves to be okay with spiritual things. Some people have really hard times focusing on themselves. It's so easy for them to be compassionate to everyone else, but they can't put it on themselves. There's many different spectrums of what are useful. I've found for enough people, if you start from that, like this is how I use gratitude a lot and this is one of the things I'm doing with these synchronicity experiments. I've noticed that when I've given more stuff away, that when I donate more, when I help people, either with time, money, energy, whatever it is, this weird fucking thing happens where I start getting, whatever it is, business, gifts, donations themselves, whatever it is, this is weird fucking thing and I've heard Alan Watts discuss it, like have you ever noticed people who give away things are like rivers or people who get things are like rivers who are generous and that whatever they give away flows back to them.

It creates a vacuum and that vacuum naturally gets filled, which is a principle of the universe, which I view is just karma, that's what I think is karma in action, which goes into right speech. What are you talking about if it's different? I guess it was just genuinely trying to do something for the other person. Selfless service. Yeah, selfless. Exactly. Selfless service. That's huge. So that makes sense because the food stuff, right? That's an aspect of what you do with food and selfless service through food, which is what we can talk about next time. Thank you. Thank you for going on, Tess.

Yeah, thanks. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Another good episode. I don't know why I did that, but I did and now it's done and I apologize. That was my sister Tess. I hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, I love that you're listening this far past the music. Rate and review on iTunes. Send me an email about anything. How could I improve the show, a guest that could be coming on, some topic I could be covering, yelling at me, calling me names, whatever you like to do. Feel free, Noah@Syncpodcast.com, that's it. I will see you next week.

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