Ep. 42 - David Silver Redux

You're listening to MindPod Network. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. I'm going to try that again, but I'm going to leave it recording here. Welcome to episode 42 of synchronicity. My guest this week is David Silver. David Silver has been on the show. I think it was episode eight. I want to say that could be totally wrong. Don't quote me on that. If you go back and look through the episodes, you'll see David Silver was there. David, this is not hyperbole. One of my favorite people I have ever met. I said the first time he was on the show, he was one of the few people I can speak on the telephone with for more than like an hour and an hour and a half.

I'm not a huge telephone person. It's okay. It's all right. I like it. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I don't like staying on it for that long. But David and I literally will stay on the phone, minimum 90 minutes every time we speak. I said, "David, listen, here's the deal. Let's just record one of these out of the hundreds of talks we're having in a yearly basis." We decided to do that again. We talk about really cool stuff. David has always tipped me off to...if you've ever had a synchronicity book sent to you or you know what the book giveaway is or you know some of the books that I'm giving away, David has tipped me off to so many of these.

The most recent one was "Mind Beyond Death" by Pono Perimpo J. And that book is, oh my god, really fantastic. So just to show you how fantastic this book is, there's a whole section based on dreaming. The Barto state of dreaming. And Padma Sambava, who's kind of like a root, grew teacher in the Tibetan Vajrayana. Yeah, Buddhist system basically prescribes a lot of different things that you can do with dreams. And so I love this example and I didn't write this down in front of me. So I'm going to do it from memory so it might be a little off. But if it's not, it's a good way to go meet from remembering that.

So it's basically described in one facet as there's the example dream, there's the actual dream, and then there is the dream at the end of time. And what that corresponds to is the example dream is when we go to sleep at night and we have dreams. Sometimes we remember them, sometimes we don't. That is an example that we can kind of understand, we know what it's like to dream, we know when we wake up in the morning, we're still going to most likely be in the same place we were unless we're a sleepwalker. But basically that's the example dream. The actual dream is what we refer to as waking life.

You're listening to this now, consciously, awake, then this is the actual dream. And that course, this is different, we know how that's different from going to sleep at dream. This is what we experience, we wake up tomorrow, there's still something going on. And a dream, you don't always pick up right the night before where you were to be a completely different scenario. And so then the dream at the end of time is what we would refer to as death. And then there is also time spans, they categorize by time span, each of those aspects of dreaming, the example dream, the actual dream, the dream at the end of time, which is regular dreaming for us, waking life for us, and death, or the dream after death, which is a bardo state in Tibetan Buddhism.

So the time spans, am I going to fuck this up? There's the middling, the lesser and the greater. I'm going to fuck that up, I'm not going to do it. Anyway, great book, David tipped me off to it. So I highly recommend that if this is anything that sounds interesting to you, I'm fascinated with dreams. I am also very interested in hearing many different perspectives about what people think death is, what is after death, what they think this life is, you know, stuff you hopefully, if you've listened to a few episodes, you know, kind of this stuff that I like to listen to and engage with and talk to people about.

And David is like one of my favorite people to do this with. So that's this episode. I'm going to keep this, I'm keeping these as simply short as possible. So, rate and review, if you're so inclined, you will forever, I love you if you do that, I love you if you don't, truthfully, I know I don't know you, but I accept you, I love you. Seriously though, thank you for listening. Donate to the synchronicity, generosity experiment, which is where we're collecting money. We're going to do this through the end of August, in about 10 days or so, probably less when this comes out. August 17th, we're going to have a poll, we're going to pick collectively where we're sending this money to.

Right now we have over $700 there to send to a lucky person or persons. Well, you know, we don't know if they're lucky, right? All we know is there is some relationship between giving and what happens to the world around you. I don't want to make it seem like you give $5 and you're going to get $50 back. That's a pyramid ski and that's not a real thing. What I'm saying is you start to affect change in the universe as you give from different levels of generosity. I got a cool book, my mother-in-law got me a book or she, there was a book in a box of books that she was giving to my wife called Rambam's Ladder, which is Memonides, an ancient rabbi scholar, Memonides, so he was known in Greek, it was his name.

But he wrote a lot of things on giving and generosity and one of the things he wrote about was this ladder of generosity. And it's really interesting, I just started it, so I'm not going to give a recap of what it is. But hey, guess what? That's this week's giveaway. So if you enjoy this synchronicity community, you can get a copy of Rambam's Ladder. Who wrote it? Solomon? It was a woman, her last name Solomon. I'll have it for you next time. You can look it up, it'll be in the page of this podcast. And yeah, that's it. We're keeping these pretty short, right? Not too shabby. So, and let's just point out, I like episode 42. 42, right, is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it's the answer to the universe, 42.

Mystical number in its own right, very cool number. So, yes, here we are. Finally, at last, without further ado, David Silva. Thank you for coming on, David. My pleasure. You're the second repeat guest. Danny was the first. Good company. But Danny, I had on again partially because when I was recording and I went to his apartment, I had my hand held. And I was like, "Don't worry, there's low batteries, but it's definitely not going to die." And then, of course, it died like 45 minutes in. I noticed pretty quickly, so it was kind of like a two-parter thing. But you're the first, so you're the first official repeat many episodes in between, no correlation between the previous episode.

No. But in that time, we've probably spoken dozens of times about a variety, more than dozens of times, I feel like, definitely more than dozens. Yes, mainly about the world, the flesh and the devil. The reason I bring that up is yesterday, on Turner Classic Movies, they showed this movie called "World of Flesh and the Devil" with Harry Belafonte. I've never seen it. It's an amazing movie. It's about a nuclear strike, which is done with nuclear poison, rather than bombs. So it's sort of like one of those clean, horrible bombs that you used to talk about years ago, whereby they don't actually have to do much.

They just poison radioactive. A dirty bomb. Yeah. And the movie was made in 1959, and I saw it then as a small child, and it kind of ruined my life, because it's extraordinarily scary. So I thought I'd watch a bit of it again. I watched about 20 minutes of it, and Belafonte is a very talented actor as well as Singer. And it was really a fascinating film, because it's not just about nuclear. It's about racism, because the movie is about, he wakes up, he's a minor. Because of that, he doesn't put the poison. He crawls out of the mine. He finds a car, drives to New York City, which somehow or other they managed to make deserted.

A hundred years before CGI. And there he is alone. And then he comes across a blonde woman, which is, again, this racial thing, and they have a very upright relationship. And then another guy appears, who they save from some horrible disease. He turns out to be a bigot and a racist. So it sort of ends up with a duel like in High Noon. It's visually amazing. I've never, I'm on an old movie kick. Basically anything made before 1980, I'm interested in at this point, just because, even earlier, I just watched, I think this is the 70s. I watched The Goodbye Girl with Richard Dreyfus. Oh man, that was really good. I just like any old movie. And then the best movie I've seen in the past six months is on the River Quai.

That movie is fucking amazing. Holy shit. And it's just like, I think about the movies that come out, and I'm not saying there's not good movies now. I'm not like, but relatively speaking, the stuff that's made now and the stuff that makes a lot of money. What happened, this is your, you've been a part of filmmaking for a really long time. What has happened with cinema, not just in this country, but it seems like around the world now, because that's what, that's where really people focus on making money now with cinema, right? Like China. China's a huge market now. They don't care if the movie flops in the United States, but if it globally it does well, then it's a win and it's a good investment. It's a return.

So what is going on? A couple of things. One is the demise of words, of language, because to do an action film with language that's only understood by Americans or British people is a waste of money, because if it's not dubbed or whatever, and even if it is dubbed, it's a drag in Indonesia or Brazil or wherever. So action movies became predominant, not just because people are interested in action movies and so on and we're good. I never thought about that. This has been, this is not a new perception on my part. I remember years ago, probably 10 years ago when these things started happening. It was clear that they wanted a global market and the less words, the better, the more action, the better. And in any case, people seem to want that at that moment.

The Schwarzenegger era sort of started it. And then although those were again pre CGI in the main, even total primitive CGI. Terminator 2 was the first movie, that in Jurassic Park, I think were the first movies where it was like, holy shit. How did they do that? Those two movies, I remember distinctly, because back when I was a teenager, a young teenager, a young kid, in the mid 90s, we were going to the movies all the time. That was an activity. I don't go to the movies that much anymore. But that's like what you did back then. Oh yeah. And you know, there's many reasons why that's sort of archaic now. But one is the price of the movies and for a family, you know, you think about it.

It's $15 or something to get in, parking, dinner, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a $100 journey. And in current, these times, it's not a good thing. But you know, the question is, were they making better movies when there was a more literate sort of thing going on? Dialogue was important. That's why I was noticing in The Goodbye Girl, Richard Dreyfus won an Academy Award for it. And he deserved it. And I remember he went up against Travolta for Saturday Night Fever. Alexis was telling me something else really, really amazing. But I was like, he deserves it. That was like a phenomenal, phenomenal job. And I'm trying to equate it to something I had seen recently.

And I had just some drawn blanks. No blanks, exactly. Well, you know, there's much, much, much different demographic. And, you know, as a lot of them going to Netflix and so forth, there's no stopping people from seeing it if they're 12 or they're 92. But, you know, talking about movies, there is something I kind of know about, which I think has been written about. I'm not sure, which is that, for me, the most interesting American movies, and this doesn't count to everything. They're a great movies all the time. But the most interesting period for me was 1941 to '47. And the reason for that was that America was a war. And as the war progressed, and as the Nazis and the Japanese fascists seemed to be gaining ground, movies were not priorities.

But then as the thing started to turn around a little bit, movies started getting made again, and some very great movies were made in 1944, '45, '46, '47. What's interesting about this is that many of them had spiritual themes, you know, where angels appeared, where there was some kind of spiritual or at least kind of occult component of the films. And there are two things that were going on. In Japan, they were making Godzilla movies, because two atomic weapons have been dropped on their population. And they were literally scared, shitless, for years after they'd experienced this in no one else's hand.

So these huge moths and gigantic lizards and dinosaurs and stuff were very representative of something in the psyche. Here, obviously, that didn't happen. And the war was sort of a distant thing. For most people, I said, of course, the troops had fought in it, and it was not at all distant. A kind of transcendental theme started to seep into many movies. And, you know, some of them were great, some of them were stupid, some of them were just amazing. There's a movie called Between Two Worlds, I think it's cool. And it's about a transatlantic crossing on sort of like the Queen Mary, going from Southampton to New York.

And what it takes a little time to realize is that everybody there is dead. Oh, cool. And it's not giving it a way to say that. No, no. I assume it's the premise, yeah. And Sydney Green Street's in it, and John Garfield, and some amazing actors. And it's all about, really, it's about the bardos. It's about what happens to you based on your karma. And, of course, I doubt that, you know, that the writers have never... I doubt it, but they just knew it instinctively, and it was really... And because of that, I've seen the movie twice, maybe, in the last 30 years. It's not on very often. And when it's on, I catch it, I've never DVR'd it, I'd like to.

I'm going to get it. Because it really affects your emotional body. Because what you're seeing is the result of specific attitudes and preoccupations and desire systems. Resulting in interaction between these people who are now in the spirit world. They don't look like they're in the spirit world. They all look like real people. They have real conversations, et cetera, et cetera. But what you're seeing is the result of karma that's been laid out and lived through in this bardo, which is what they call, I guess, the natural bardo. Well, yeah, between being born and dying. Right. That one, which we've seen between being born.

Yeah, if you are born and then you die, we're in that one. Yeah. And there are some interlocking bardos. Yes, dreaming, sleeping, meditative state. Yeah, they overlap a little bit. Well, you're reading... Have you finished Mind Beyond Death? No, but I'll be reading a whole part of it that I wanted to reread again. Nice. This is the book by Panglup Rinpoche. Panglup is in a lineage, just like he's holding this down alarm and like the karmapa. He's the seventh one, the seventh panglup, I guess. And he's a youngish person that lives in Seattle. Yeah. And throws in like enough references to what's modern times that you know he's not completely detached from it, but it also reads this book, Mind Beyond Death, is such a practical, incredible description.

It basically goes through the... A lot of this stuff goes through Padmasambhavas. It is. It's just like an exposition on all the things that Padmasambhava spoke about, who is, you know, the genesis of Tibetan or Vajrayana Buddhism. That's their Rinpoche. That's like the main guy. One of the main guys, besides Buddha, besides Buddha. But you know, you usually thought I was being after Buddha. Yes. You know, the one that brought, as you say, that brought it to the Northern Himalayan sector. Yeah. And in these termas, which are secret hidden, custom caches, which you have to do extraordinary things like move a mountain to find.

Yeah, or like reach into a mountain and pull it out in front of a bunch of people like a turtan. Yeah. It's somewhat accomplished to find them to begin with, and then, you know, to actually communicate them. But the book is fantastic because, you know, I remember being at a Krishna Das workshop, or maybe just in his living room, I don't remember where, but no, it was definitely a workshop now to think about it, because this wouldn't be the kind of conversation we'd have in his kitchen, where he said that there's nothing like practice. Practice makes perfect. And the practice is the only thing. He doesn't specify which one, you know, kirtan, or meditating, or jigsaw puzzles.

Whatever it is, do it regularly because, and pummel up Rinpoche makes a big point to this, as does, I'd say, all of them. You know, don't expect if you've got five minutes at hour, two weeks, or even three months to live, that you're immediately going to catch up and be able to deal with this thing, this thing called death. So pummel up, and Krishna Das, and many, many others, of course, have discussed that practice is really the key. And, you know, it's hard to do it all the time, and it's very difficult. But no matter how distracted you are, and I am a distract master, myself, you know, you have to somehow do it all the time, so that when the moment comes, when you know this particular incarnation is closing, which he does for it, it has done for over 7 billion people, and will for all 7 billion.

We have more than 7 billion problems. No, let's say that 7 billion people have lived on the planet. Oh, that's it? Yes, and it's coincidentally almost exactly the number that are extant on the planet right now, which fits in with the concept of the Kali Yuga, in my opinion. In other words, everybody comes back to this Yuga. It's a rotational cyclical thing. This is what Socrates said too, and Plato said it. He said Socrates said it. Yes, yes. Well, you know, when you get to the, you know, be ancient, like myself, this becomes an issue, you know. And every moment to me, I have to say this has been a result of only about a year.

I'm sort of examining moments, not to avoid the present, but to deeply invest in the present and understand that there isn't going to be too much of this incarnation left. And I'm not being morbid or self-destructive or anything, which I am, by the way. But what I'm saying is that what K.D. said and the great masters of all said is please rehearse this. Rehearse how you're going to, your attitude, disposition, mental loca, emotional body are already by, now you could say, well, what, what, what good is that to someone fighting in Afghanistan and just get shot through the head and dies in a microsecond.

Sure. You can't even give it that. You know, the horrible enigmatic and somewhat cliched truth is that everyone has their individual karma. But if you're given the gift of comfort on some level, it seems to me that practice makes perfect. And, you know, to me, it's analogous to musicians. No matter how gifted a musician is, Yehudi Menuen, who is the greatest violinist in the history of classical music, or at least once at a recorded and 20th century, was the greatest on earth. And I don't know why I don't know enough about Beethoven and Bach and Brahms to know why, but he wants the greatest and I saw him once, and he was amazing.

And when asked if he's still practiced, he broke into this sort of almost demonic laugh and said, do I still practice? He was about 80 at the time. He said, yes, not much, four, five, six hours per day. Right, right. And that was to maintain the ability that he'd learned 70 years before as a child prodigy. And, you know, I'm in Aries, so I have to watch out all the time for loving something for 10 minutes. Yeh, okay. And, you know, loving something else for 17 minutes. And it's all right in the realm of taste, movies, cars, music, vibes. But in the realm of spiritual development and evolution, it is a bugaboo.

Yeah. Well, you can't, I spoke to Lama Somo about this and she said, you know, when you're talking about, I was saying, you know, the many paths of the mountain, but the view is the same. And she's like, yeah, but you have to remember also that you can't circumambulate the mountain. You have to actually pick a direction and go up if you want to get to the top of it. And that's, this comes down to focus. This is a huge, huge, and what we're talking about to be clear is focusing what happens when you're in the process of dying. And who knows, maybe you get shot in the head in Afghanistan and that's it and then boom, you're transported.

But maybe it's not that simple. Maybe there is still a subtle yet significant withdrawal of senses in a way just because brain activity or heart activity ceases to function. That could still be going on. We don't know what it's written. None of us really, I haven't spoken to anyone yet who consciously remembers dying in a previous incarnation. I've read now because of these books and a lot of lineages that I trust and if they're making it up and it's all clever ruse that I've been had, but I don't think it is. So there's stuff that happens and that's why I love this book, Mind Beyond Death, because what you're saying is true.

It is all kind of practicing for when you leave this incarnation because one of the reasons that I know it's good to meditate is yes, so I can have a more calm and spacious and not be as reactive in this life when something bothers me. But I'm typically not in a life and death situation present consciously in every given moment, even though that's probably debatable. But when you're dying, that's going to be for most people when you're most reactive, when you're most attached, when you're most diverse. So if you can somehow practice some type of awareness during challenging times here, which is a great training ground to be honest.

It's an easy place to get reactive. We'll talk about some of the things that get us to react a little bit, but that ultimately is going to be one of the best things you can ever do for yourself in life. And I also love that in this book they talk about what I think is fascinating, fascinating stuff. A big dream person is that they talk about dream yoga or dream practices that you can do, where essentially the general premise is you train yourself to lucid dream, then when you lucid dream, you're in a state of awareness, you can start basically working through karma and meditate in your dreams to get double time and start working through shit in another barto state and maintain awareness of it.

And that also is very much described as a very excellent training for death because they basically describe death as kind of like a dream state. It's very similar to what is going on. There's no corporal body that prevents you from going somewhere when you think about it. Like when you're in a dream, maybe you think about a friend's house or something and you are magically there. Everything is all around you and it actually feels really vivid and real. They describe very much like the barto state after living death. Yeah, I think that's totally point. Practice makes perfect. And I don't think there's ever a time to stop it regardless of what your practice is, too.

Right. I mean, I'm going to some lecture next week about psychedelic experience. And it's astonishing to me that I'm going to it because, you know, it's been almost half a century for me of psychedelic experience. And I still am intrigued by how people articulate it. And particularly this one is in terms of passing and death that, you know, my old friend, George, who had a band called Little Feet and was a genius. One of my closest friends when I was in my twenties, unfortunately, he died young, very young. But he knew Aldous Huxley, strangely enough. They were both cohabiting and not cohabiting.

They're both living in LA at the same time. And I guess it was Huxley who's famous for taking, I believe, masculine when he knew he was about to die. I heard it was LSD, but it might have been masculine. Okay. I'm not sure. Lowell told me it was masculine. No, I probably believe him then. But you know, the truth of the matter is I could never do that. I know I could. No. It would just be two. I know way. So given no way on that, you know, meditation is many things. And we know mindfulness is all about, I think it's not particularly about bliss and ecstasy. And it's about noticing what's going on there in your little apartment of the universe, you know, and seeing what you can do or not do about it or at least to be aware of it.

The reason I love this book by Paul of River shame mind beyond death, it's because it's a practical thing, but it's not off putting now bed and book of the dead is off putting, you know, and so the actual Tibetan button of the dead is like one of the craziest things I've ever read. And I didn't finish it. It's very hard. Like I can only read so many times about this demonic, Debbie that has 10 heads severed around her at the North gate, then the West gate, then the, the direct, it's like the most insane thing. It's, it reads like a dream, you know, I can see why when, you know, Rhonda's time Richard Albert, Tim Leary and Metzer, when if you're taking a bunch of psychedelics and reading this, it's perfect.

It reads like some fucking crazy dream mystical, what the hell is going on? But if you're just like reading it like a book, it's like, the freaked you out because it's so detailed, you know, you get with the red light and get with the yellow stream and get with this. And I, when I was reading it, I wasn't tripping around, I just went, okay, well, that's it for me. Yeah. You know, because I can't even remember, you know, this morning and what, what am I going to remember when I'm, you know, at death's door that I must go up the red channel or it's not. Yeah. It's a wrong fucking way, but I mean, you know, we think about the Dalai Lama and how normally is in so many ways as well as being, you know, a master and visionary, profitable kinds of dimensions of things.

He's never freaked people out about, you know, how to deal with illness and death. Right. It seems to speak very, in a way that is very healing, you know, and the newer rimpages, including Ponglop, I think are aware of the fact that if they're going to speak to Western audiences and people are not going to be living in the higher Himalayas in a cave or even in a monastery or even in a retreat or even anything, right. He and his cohorts are extremely sensitive about what people can hear. Still challenging, not allowing it to just be, you know, sort of pable him or pandering to a dumb, down population, but for those that are interested and will go in this direction, they're beginning to talk in a way which is really incredibly incredible gift to all of us.

And they're just, they know who we are. And they're also, they're genuinely interested in, and not only use the word placating, but integrating in with the forefront of Western neuroscience and medicine and epigenetics and all of these things that are starting, starting to come to the surface, like we went to the talk with Minjor Rinpoche and Richard Davidson in New York. And you can see just how interested Minjor Rinpoche is in approaching this from that angle, not only out of his own curiosity, which he talks about, really, but he recognizes that this is how you interface with a skeptic of someone who hears maybe Buddhism means life is suffering.

So it's a nihilistic, terrible, you know, bleak outlook on life or that it's some reincarnated fufu nonsense, new age, non, you know, poppycock. So I like that they're, they're hitting it from a lot of different angles and a lot of different places that I think ultimately casts a very wide net and provides what I am such a famous, I love this term, just creating a spectrum, a wide spectrum of entry points into Buddhism, to Vajrayana. And they're making it, I don't want to use the word secular, but they're allowing people to approach it with their own cultural and religious or philosophical backgrounds.

And that is awesome, that's being receptive, that's being open. But listen, I want to switch gears a little bit. I do, I do want to switch. I mean, this is where we're going deep into the feel good Buddhist stuff. I want to bring it way back down to shitsville and talk about first, last week was the Republican convention. We're talking about U.S. politics now, so just, and just so you know, so like when we met, we were two weeks ago, we met in New York at dinner with Danny and all significant others and Alexis and Eli were in the hotel, but it was still a really great dinner. And you were a little, not down in the dumps, but you were like, you know, I think Trump's going to win.

And I was like, nah, don't worry about it, it's going to be fine, it's going to be okay. Since then, just to be clear, I also, whatever wave is moving through everyone's consciousness, I also got extremely freaked out and was basically borderline convinced that Trump is going to win as well, because just seeing what's going on, we saw the Republican convention. It was horrible, it was terrifying, it was the worst of the worst. And then the DNC started last night and a lot of great speakers, really great speeches, obviously night and day in terms of what they're talking about, who they're talking to, what they're hoping to do.

But then, and I was a Bernie Sanders supporter, and I still am, but I'm going to vote for Hillary now for one reason, basically, at this point, and I want to talk about that a little bit, which is Michelle Obama's speech, I thought, was fucking one of the best things I've ever seen in my entire life. And whatever you think about the Obama's policy, what's happened under his presidency, she's amazing, she's incredible. But the other thing that happened last night that was blowing my fucking mind, because I didn't believe there were people actually like this, were the Bernie Sanders supporters, the Bernie or bus people who were shouting over people the entire convention because they're angry, because what they feel is dirty politics, where the DNC basically colluded against Bernie.

And listen, if you're going to be angry at anyone, this is the way I feel if you're a Bernie or bus person. And I love Bernie Sanders. I really think what he stood for in the revolution that he was talking about wasn't just some made up thing to garner support. I really do think he was touching on something important. I do think he believes in it. Do I think he has an ego? Of course. Do I think that's his primary motivator? I don't. Maybe I'm wrong. But these Bernie or bus people, what the fuck are you doing? Like you're yelling over people. You're angry. I understand that. But, and it's not like you have to be thrilled with Hillary Clinton as a candidate.

She's far to the right of him. She's somewhat of a warmonger. She will definitely say go with whichever way the wind's blowing. I think all of those things are true about her. But when you're a candidate, the guy you loved is telling you, listen, here's the fucking deal. We got to go with her. These people are booing Elizabeth Warren, right? I mean, this is someone who's fought for literally probably 90% of what you believe in if you are Bernie Sanders supporter. And they're shouting over her, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. And it was a weird thing that I hope his speech, you know, did some type of unity building.

But the people who just want to see all this stuff burn to the ground because they don't feel like they have an adequate choice, like I don't, I'm not, I don't think it's pessimistic to say you want Hillary Clinton to be president over Donald Trump. I like Jill Stein. I, if Jill Stein was a viable candidate and could get enough of the percentage of the vote, I'd vote for her. I love her. I think she's great. But I can't do it at this point. So I want your take on all of this stuff. Give me Trump. Give me Bernie. Give me Hillary. What the hell is going on? Russian hackers. Everything. I think Bernie is the most acceptable politician in the United States at that level.

Yeah. There are many equally compassionate and politically sophisticated people at lower levels, right? But at his level, I'm amazing that he did what he did. And he has had an effect and will continue to have an effect. And I think that's fantastic. And I wish he'd have got the nomination personally. Yeah. You know, when passion and politics meet heresy or the concept of heresy, then becomes immediately jumps up like a monkey, you know, you're passionate about a particular viewpoint of how to heal the world. And then the world, it doesn't work according to your plan, exactly as it did with Bernie.

And then heretics is a word that comes up, you know, apostates who are no longer pure. So on Facebook this morning, I noted to my great dislike, a lot of people calling Bernie a sellout and all of a sudden, you know, it's like calling Joey Ramone in 1984, you know, a sellout for having selling over a hundred thousand units and Joey just smiling, but a lot of people being bitter and angry and grumpy about it. And it's sad, but you know something, I have to say that I've never been a person for speechifying and for conventions. I'm just, you know, they completely, I just, I'm usually boring and terrible.

Yeah. And also deceptive because people get swung by their emotions. Yes. Yes. Well, that's politics. Isn't it though? Well, I'm trying to figure out what it like, because this is what I mean, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. I think politics at this point, and I'm not sure it's been anything different at least since 2000. I think it is emotions. I think because that's what I'm saying. Listen, I'm telling you, I woke up yesterday thinking I'm voting for Jill Stein. Fuck it. Hillary so unpalatable. There's no way. Then I watched Michelle Obama basically deliver a speech with real. She believes what she's saying.

She's not a liar. She believes what she's saying and she's saying I've known Hillary Clinton. She's a good person. She really believes this and listen, she doesn't know her top to bottom. She doesn't know what everything is like, but she's saying this is someone who as long as I've known or has fought for this, this and this, you know, that is she has dedicated her life to this. I do not get the sense that she is just a power hungry, crazy person. Maybe there's some backdoor crazy shit that is really at the root of this that I don't understand. That's totally possible, but like that was enough to sway me and it's like what really sways me more than anything is the Supreme Court appointals.

Hillary's foreign policy has been flawed and even though obviously the Republicans hyperbole and lies and spreading poison about it is unacceptable, it's kind of weird that a lot of the Bernie or bus people were speaking the same language and I know that the two people in the last month quoted from Fox News and then they put it from a daily telegraph in England probably not knowing that the telegraph is a conservative Tory propaganda channel for 120 years and I thought what the fuck are they doing these people? They're just, you know, they are the right-wing conspiracy again. Now I think the vast majority of Bernie fans are totally reasonable and understand that this will be step-by-step, that he's already had some influence, hopefully the fracking problem that she just sort of doesn't see has got to be solved.

That's got to be, you know, if she becomes president, I believe that the Bernie Sanders people and himself will be relentless in making that. They're already doing it. And an email went out right after his speech last night because I was a donor and he says, listen, it's called our revolution now. We're going to focus on grassroots things related to the TPP, related to fracking, related to all of these things that we spoke about in the campaign and I think it's incredibly smart and I think that is, you know, I also am a firm believer that the national stuff is important, especially for things like Supreme Court justices, but if you're really politically inclined and you really actually want to see change, go fuck with your local offices.

Go talk to congressmen, you know, go start at a more close level where you can actually see things being done because that ultimately is what's going to change what's around you. Like as I hope social programs and welfare and all of these things last for as long as they can because I think they are ultimately good for society, a fair society. But you know, go, go, start on a smaller level and I think that's what they're catching on. I think that's what they're catching on. So you read 7,000 people have made moves to get local to involve themselves in local contests, including a friend of mine, you know, yes, his effect has been marvelous and I love him.

And I have forever, you know, he's just one of those great new England, well, he's a Brooklyn man, but you know, one of those people who from Vermont, New Hampshire, all these places where there are conservative elements, but people who are progressive there are just from the heart. And I'm so happy that he's done what he's done and he did the right thing by endorsing the hell else he's going to do, we're facing a narcissist, con man bully, proto fascist, you know, nightmare. And by the way, anyone who thinks that Donald Trump isn't smart, wrong. I know. Why do people think that he's a reactionary and privileged and ego maniacal, but the fact that people think he's just a one dimensional dummy, like I'm, I don't listen, yes, he got a head start with the shitload of money and his father grease the wheels.

But like he's, he, he's not an idiot. I'm sorry. It'd be easier to believe that he's an idiot. What he's doing is he's pandering. He's pandering to people and that's effective, unfortunately. I think there are many, you know, things to say about him, we probably don't have to because then almost anybody who's listening to this knows that this man cannot be, you know, in charge of the nuclear codes. That's not going to happen. And I don't worry about the new, you know, the nuclear codes to me. I mean, you know, here's the thing. It's something that ever, even Michelle Obama brought it up last week without mentioning him by name where I, I think as crazy as Donald Trump is, as much as the Russians are interfering and trying to get him elected because they think he's going to be bad for us, I don't think he would do anything quite to that level of irrationality.

What scares me most about his presidency or the, the prospects of his presidency is all of the people who have been surround him, who have agendas, who have things, who they can basically learn how to work with Donald Trump to get what they want done. And then like I said, the Supreme Court justices, you do not want Donald Trump putting two, three people who are going to last for the rest of their lives on the court bench. Like that is, that's fucking scary. That's, that to me. And I don't, who knows what he does. You know, who knows what he does. I don't think he has any idea. He's, I think he's a multiple personality person, because when, when Sandra and I met him, it would be almost impossible to imagine someone being more gracious than he was.

And it seemed quite not what I thought he was. And other people have said the same thing. You know, it, it, whatever it is or it isn't, it's not suitable. And in terms of the nucleus thing, the world is so incendiary right now, all it would really take would be a Russians, well, okay, let me tell you, a scumbag of some kind, to have nuclear information and to be broke and with two mistresses and a lot of bad vodka habit or other drinks from other countries. So there's no political incorrectness here. And one sale of one tactical nuclear weapon to one set of terrorists in one place. Sure. The destruction of Ruhan or even Paris or Munich.

And that would be it. Whoever's in charge in the United States would have, would have to be the calmest, most balanced person. You want to, you want a Kennedy. You want to come. Yeah, you do. So you're saying Donald Trump isn't, isn't a JFK type? No, I, what I do think is that it's interesting that he, that he manifested. We can all, we all know the story. You know, he had 12 million viewers each week on celebrity apprentice. He was very successful, people knew who he was, he had instant name recognition, he had the money. If he'd have been a cool guy, it would have been great because the system is definitely constipated beyond description.

Yeah. Whereby obvious things like single pair universal healthcare, obvious things like that infrastructure, bridges, jobs, stuff, hospitals, compassion, free state universities, all these things need to be done. And not being done by these lazy shits in, in Hollywood, in Washington, you know, they're just not doing it. They're, they're playing within a political bubble and doing shit and whatever they do, whatever they do, whatever they do, we don't even know about it. I just, I mean, I, I need someone to knock it around. We need Bernie Sanders. I know. Well, that's, well, let's go to the convention.

You'll Bernie Bernie over Elizabeth Warren. That's how you do it. My feeling is after seeing the first night of the convention and I don't drink the Kool-Aid. I don't like oratory. I thought Cory Brook was shouting too loud and I thought, I, I, I, I, I use grade. I love it. I liked, uh, even when Gloria's speech was actually, I thought pretty good. Yeah. I, yeah. I liked. I liked Sarah Sullivan. Yeah. She was, she called them ridiculous. I thought that was fun. You can see she was the most, oh, but you know who got, I feel bad for is Al Franken. Yeah. He had the worst speech I've seen, maybe even out of the Republican convention too.

He's out of practice. And he's out of, but I mean, like this guy used to be kind of funny on SNL. Oh, God. Yes. Still went smelly. I mean, come on. He was. He's had to prove for fucking 10 years that he's really a serious guy. So he's forgotten that. I thought he was okay. But I mean, honestly, Michelle is a wonderful, amazing woman. I remember in 2007, I'm a bit of a C-Span freak even now, um, and I switched on C-Span sort of randomly and a certain Michelle Obama was giving a speech either to Harvard Law School or some very prestigious law plays, and I watched her 70 minutes speech and was astonished.

Yeah, she's incredible. She was the smartest person. I, I, in terms of everything she was talking about that I'd seen ever on television. I wish she was running. I really, that's the feeling I got right afterwards. I hope at some point she does because I mean, I don't think she will because this is a dose that she got of, of right wing poison and filth and birth or isn't. You know, with Trump, to go back to him, when he started the word of the thing, I knew he was a maniac and I knew that he was a smart maniac like some kind of Superman villain, some kind of comic. Yeah. He should be a comic on right now because that's who he is.

But the fact of the matter is he's no, he's no fool. So he can use this sort of weird dark energy to do something that will make him give him what he doesn't have. He has everything else. He has wealth. He has fame. He has. He wants power. He wants the proof. He wants power and you know, he just wants it. He'll give the actual details to other people. I just, we can't have this. We cannot have this happen. So Hillary, you know, I met Hillary at Danny's house and sat at a little table with her for about 25 minutes and occasionally somewhat in trouble. She was once she's in a conversation. She's not the kind of person looking over your shoulder.

She didn't know me from fucking Adam. She's engaged. But there I was and you know, I asked her the first question I asked Hillary Clinton was, when you were in the White House, what was the greatest thing on the worst thing? Mm. Damn to you. And she was very quick on the draw. She let me straighten the eye. She said, that's a great question. The greatest thing was being able to do something about health care. The worst thing was failing. And she said, the vitriol that came at me really hurt my feelings all the time. Holy shit. I hope she's gotten when was this? This was 1993 tonight. Oh yeah. I hope she's gotten over it.

To whatever it is. Well, she said that it was very painful because she was so passionate about it and believed that it could happen and realized a very early point in the deal when she turned to Bill Clinton and said, this isn't going to happen because there's so many haters. She didn't use that word. But anyway, so you know, and then she said, you know, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, I think it should be like in Britain, only better or like in Canada, at least as good as Canada. And it should be like in Denmark where it's unfortunately the Texas is so high that it seems like a burden on everybody.

But that's what I think. And she smiled. She said, you've given it some thought. I said, well, yeah, yeah, I get ill sometimes. Yeah. Everyone has to deal with this shit. I had to go through a health care nightmare. So she was incredibly warm. It's like everybody has said in the last three months, she was warm and focused on a real person. There's no question in my mind about it. She didn't know me. She didn't have to cultivate me. And yet other people who are famous in that room, she didn't go near them until she'd finished the conversation with me and others that had the same experience. So I liked her enormously as a woman.

And I thought she was very, very intelligent woman and had a depth to her. So she's got to bring that out and she's got to stop drinking the Kool-Aid of militarism and corporatism. That's hard. I mean, you know, that was in '93, you know, that's 23 years ago, which is nuts. Things a lot has changed in the world now. I wonder what's scariest to me about the whole Trump thing without demonizing him as a person, which is really way too easy to do. He gives a lot of fodder for that, is figuring out how to engage with what scares me about it is he's clearly identifying what authoritarian and fascist leaders do, which is what is the problem?

Who is affected? Who do we tell them that problem is because? Like who created that for them? And what do I say? I have the solutions. Don't worry about what they are, but I have them. These people are responsible. Liquid Obama did. Liquid these people did. Liquid's going on. Your country's going to shit. What freaked me most out about the RNC is either, and I know there's a large swath of the country that I don't understand. I haven't bid to. I don't know what it's like. I don't know how the economy has affected them in the past 10, 15, 20 years. But they were painting a picture of like imminent doom.

Like it is coming. It is at your door. There is a Mexican about to rape you around every corner. You are going to be stolen from your Barack Obama's going to come in with his black hands and rob you of all your money. It's like the craziest shit I've ever seen. And listen, I don't know how to approach. I want to have people on this show and like if there is any Trump supporters listening to this, please get in contact know@sinkpodcast.com because I want to figure out how we get to that place as a collective society or at least, I feel like this country is constantly painted as two different countries.

And it's not really. There's factors and systems that are totally fucked up and need to be restructured and rethought about in a lot of different ways. But I don't think it is such a fractured fucked up crazy place. And I think Donald Trump is a painting that picture. The Republicans are helping to paint that picture too. And then really kind of manifesting destiny in that sense. They're making it a fucked up place. It can become a horribly fucked up place. We're not on the verge of race wars. But this summer has been fucking brutal for police brutality, for against minorities. I mean, this is more visible than ever, which is part of it, but I mean, it is really getting fucking bad, so you know, the crime rate is going down and the violent crimes and the police shootings, they're going down.

That's what I'm saying. So however, yeah, I, you know, the thing that I know why Trump is correct about, I hate to say it, is the condition of people everywhere in America where, you know, I think he's a hypocrite and a liar. I'm never doing anything about it. He is right that when people are having foreclosures and can't afford to pay their rent or their child's school, private school or anything, and I have food stamps and et cetera. He's got no sympathy for those people. But he doesn't care. That's why they're voting for him. They think he's the billionaire savior and that he will actually shake things up so badly and bring, you know, manufacturing back here and the coal mines and stuff.

I see now my question is this, but that's what I, that's why I want to speak and understand specifically why people are willing to believe that. I understand there's a whole wing of the media that is complicit and participatory in making people believe that and that's very effective. That goes back to curable, you know, I mean, there's, there's plenty of evidence of propaganda being an effective mechanism for consciousness. You know, there's even Facebook, you know, they gotten a little hot water a couple years ago, a few years ago, because they were only showing people negative, some subset of people negative stories in their feed and they said it had a positive correlation to those people posting more negative things about themselves and their lives.

So we know it's an effective mechanism, but I think it's just also we're in this weird transition period with a lot of the baby boomers and the generations where everyone is aging rapidly. The world is changing. It seems like I'm only 33, but it seems like as fast as it ever has at any point in history, just in terms of the technological advancements, the access to information, the access to different people, you know, and ideas. And it's just creating this crazy fucking stew of like mania. That's what it really feels like. It feels like the country and the world to some extent is in the throes of like a manic episode, which the next if you're anyone knows anything about being bipolar, the next natural thing to that is being depressed.

You don't maintain the manic state. It can't be in this frenzy thing. So I'm hoping collectively we can somehow not transmute, but you know, change, uncover the mania into a more calm, balanced state of what's going on because I think it's essential to the survival of us as a species and the plan, the plan is going to be fine. I believe George Carlin staying the plan to self correcting mechanism is going to be fine until the sun blows it out. It's going to do what it needs to do. We might not be a part of those plans, but I think like it does seem like we're in the in the throes of a transitional state that I don't know how long it'll last, but I think we have a tremendous ability to change what's going on by changing ourselves.

That's essentially what I'm saying. Well, yes, that's step one, I guess. I mean, it depends which sort of perspectives you want to take. I mean, if you take the perspective of the Kali Yuga and the Satya Yuga, which I do, then time becomes an abstract form that does little meaning because you could say that it will all change for the better. That the Vedas basically said, and the Navajos and the Mayans all said that the spiral will spiral out of control and that's that. And then out of that will come Phoenix like an entirely different approach to living together. Now that's taken it from a vading point of view.

And is that end? There's two ways to look at that. Yes. That could be the macrocosmic view on that. So that's our collective society, our world, or it could be the microcosmic, which is in the midst of the Kali Yuga, you can personally create that consciousness rebirth in yourself and go through the throes of things. I mean, that's also, I think they're as above so below. So, yeah. Well, you have to be, I mean, it has to happen to you. You have to encounter, I mean, you know, Sai Baba said, there's only two things to do in the Kali Yuga. One is to meditate and the other one is to chant, which is, you know, therefore that cuts out, you know, buying cars, you know, restaurants, Netflix, and pets.

I mean, it's just, you know, that's what he said, you know, if you want to actually transcend this, you're good, you know, you got to do that. But taking it down a little bit back to it's complex because, you know, I'm poor Trump and I've been writing long Facebook pieces since last August and I'm not bragging, but he only announced it July. Other people, you know, sort of thought he was a clown. I did not think that ever. I thought he was a shrewd operator who could do this. Yeah. I still think he could. But it's interesting because people buy the Kool-Aid from both sides. That's what I... Well, people really like to bomb him, Michelle, for good reason.

But you know, there is actually, in the world, a poisonous violent cult. We know that. And I'm not saying that I care what Obama calls them or the radical Islam, that's bullshit to me from the Republicans, but it exists and it is not easy to just control. And the Trump-esque, and he's just a creature of the Republicans, you know, Jeff Sessions and all these pals of his, they've been incubating this for 30 years. They have created a bugaboo which grew to be a nightmare and now is almost uncontrollable. So they control whole cities in Iraq, Mosul, for instance, Fallujah, for instance. And it's going to be enormously difficult to change things around and may take forever.

What is bad about the Kool-Aid of these conventions is that, you know, generally speaking, if you want to win, you either say it's like, "Doom is around the corner" or we're really cool. We will rise. This is why I slightly object to the point where it's a little bullshit to me. I mean, it's like, okay, you know, fine. But, you know, every day now we are reading about atrocities all over Europe. So literally what I mean here is because they can't get here. Well, that's what I'm saying. It is an issue. And it must be correct. What do we think? And how do we do that? Because this is something that I oscillate on and more probably towards the out of sight, out of mind thing.

Like, I pay attention every time there's a terrorist thing where someone's radicalized or there's shit, man, they were showing on CNN yesterday a knife attack in Tokyo, you know, in case, yeah, I mean, just nuts. So what do we believe that these things are increasing issues? Are they manifestations and different permutations of pre-existing issues? What influence does the media and the accessibility to these things have on our perception of what's going on? And then if these things are increasing, or even if they're not, what do we do about that? What is the next step in terms of an individual being able to take a step to be like, okay, that's going on.

What do I do? I know what I do, which is I hope an unselfish thing to do, but I go listen. As long as I see something out there and immediately mine constructs in us versus them paradigm, which is how we interact with the world. And I'm not saying like ISIS is me and we're all one and I do believe that, but I recognize the inherent dangers and evils and things are going on around the world. But my natural reaction is just to say, okay, I still am going to go back to my practice, go back to my daily thing, try to be a better person, better father, better husband, better friend, better person to being generous, all of these things.

If I do that, eventually, I'll create the conditions if necessary and if it's my karma to do it to try to have an impact on a wider scale than my immediate surroundings. That's always what I come back to. I also see weirdly, like I know people who are activists, social activists and extremely high levels and have done tremendous things in their lives, but one of the somewhat discouraging things that I notice is the people who have done this their entire lives, I wouldn't necessarily call them calm, optimistic, happy people. Even people who are steeped in meditative practices and various traditions, like they can be just as uptight, neurotic, scared, reactionary as everyone else.

So I always try to stem it at the spigot, right? Like I'm trying to figure out, I don't want any type of real world engagement that I want to be doing. And this podcast is probably my biggest access to many different consciousnesses, right? And I try my predominant advice, if I ever am offering any, is work on yourself, figure out the tools, learn about things that are going on for yourself, do that and then you'll be in a better position to engage with whatever you're engaging with. That's all I can come up with at this point, you know? Well, that's what John Lennon, that was his main thing in his life.

You know, I mean, he changed the world with that concept, you know, and others of course, Yogananda and all the great gurus and yogis and advanced beings. Okay, simultaneity is part of this, you know, I think you're absolutely right, you can't, what are you going to do? I get obsessed about a mass attack somewhere, you know, in the years before television and the internet and cable and all of that, people wouldn't have known about that for three weeks afterwards. Six weeks or never or never, but there is an increasing problem and that's why Trump can get it that he can get the traction is because people are afraid.

And in the United States, it blows my mind that they're afraid because almost nothing happens here. It's unreal how little it will happen. Well, after now, unless you're, unless you're black, unless you're black, then it's happening every day. It's a nightmare there, but it's not a, it's a different kind of terrorism, you know? But in terms of the United States where it's it's an easy here because they just, you know, these, these radical inspired or actual militant soldiers can't get in here where it's extremely easy. That's why it was Brexit. All this crap about being controlled by Brussels was wrong.

I've been following Nigel Farage and the extreme right on what they've been doing for the past 10 years in Britain. And it's obvious to me that what they didn't want was any longer free access with one passport to come from Syria to Turkey or to Greece to Turkey, to Romania to Germany, to France, to England. They didn't want that. And this is why that happened. And anybody who says that isn't the root of it doesn't know what the fucking talking about because that's been going for a long time because Britain had an extremely liberal immigration policy for the last 60 years. And many people from the empire out of this enormous collective guilt that Britain had, you know, wanted Indians and Pakistanis and West Africans and Congolism, whatever to come to Britain and West Indians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadans and so forth.

It was an enormously enriching thing for so many decades. But then, you know, in the last 10 years, there's been these movements, ones headed by Marina Le Pan in France by the, you know, whatever they call the blue star, whatever it is in Greece, all these right wing anti-immigrant things. And it's because enormous amounts of immigration is three million has come out of Syrian Iraq and they can't handle it. The infrastructure doesn't allow for something to discern a whole new subset of a population coming into a country with a border around it. I mean, it's just, yeah, it's natural. It's just broke lies like Trump is saying, we've got to make it hard.

You know how hard it is to immigrate in the United States from the Middle East? It takes two years of interrogation and vetting now. So that's it works. And it has worked. And the only time it didn't work was before 9/11 when, you know, there are all kinds of weirdness. Well, there were signs that all that stuff was sitting on. There were signs that Condoleezza Rice had letters saying that there was going to be an attack upon. Well, there are those things that were released that guys buddy, the Saudi Arabian guy, would be near and played for their trade. Yeah. It's then that should came out. We don't even want to talk about that.

Yeah, we're not going to get into that. All right. I would say this, that there is this growth of this malignant thing where people want to kill themselves and kill others because of really, you know, abstruse interpretations of the Quran. It's been proven beyond doubt by linguists and translators of Arabic and that the word virgin and the word raisin are incredibly similar. And when the real scholars go back, and I've read a lot about this in the last few years, they find that in the original Quranic version, they were talking about a certain kind of luxury and comfort that would come to those.

So we, Marta's and others eating raisins and drinking care. So you're telling me that if I blow myself up, I only get 37 raisins. Yeah, 37 raisins. Oh. And I just crossed this off the list. Hold on. Yeah. It's disappointing. I like raisins, but I guess they're not that good. Also, I don't understand why they call raisins raisins when they're dried grapes because they call dried apricots, dried apricots, dried peaches or dried peaches, but they call dried plums prunes. It's like, you know, you call up and young people youth and you call old people prunes and dried up youth, you know, I don't, I don't get the linguistics of linguists.

The fact that the Wahhabi philosophy that was generated and created in the addresses in Saudi Arabia grew is the most cynical thing I've come across in my entire life, that we all knew it was happening, and that the Saudis were actually incredibly anti-American and anti-European. Yeah. And Mahdi philosophy is basically the first stages of this madness of people killing themselves and killing children and the worst. And that's what Trump is most dangerous about, because the more terrorist attacks are out between now and November this year, the stronger he can become, because he can say, these are softies.

Well, he's a strong man persona. That's it's his whole stick. I don't know. I mean, but he's not entirely wrong about the threat. I don't know. I just don't know enough. This country, like you said, feels relatively insulated from what's going on relatively speaking. I think there will probably be attacks in this country during the course of my life, but it doesn't feel like abject terror or panic compared to like how you must be feeling in France on a Friday night or a Saturday night. Like it's scary as shit there. It's a small country compared to us and shit goes wrong seemingly every few months at this point.

It's very scary. Yeah, I get it. I mean, on the higher level, you could say that in the spiritual war that exists somewhere between human life and the universal soul, in that spiritual war, there are very bad vibes coming down occasionally in the history of humankind. So I... That's what's going on now. That's what I mean. I have a guy who I like who's like a sound healer guy who believes in these, and I also believe in them. They are just to destroy any credibility, anyone who's kind of with me at this point, there are these fifth dimensional beings made of light and sound called the Hathors, and he gets...

He's basically like a medium/channel guy who gets these things, but whether they exist or they don't, I personally believe they do, the way he writes about this shit is so fucking brilliant. Like, and it's not bullshit. It's not like pseudo nonsense. It's like really, really, really well thought out, and one of the things the Hathors have been saying for a good shit, 10 years now, is that we're going through these periods called chaotic nodes, where essentially these vibrational energies are moving through our collective consciousness that are disorienting for people, it increases emotional reactivity, and this is essentially a transitional period, like at a fulcrum point, where we determine what's going to happen in the immediate future.

And now, obviously, this is taken with the knowledge or assumption that time isn't linear, that this stuff, again, like you said, from a Vedic standpoint, is unfolding from a central point. It's not like, "Oh, this is going to affect the sea species, and then we're all fucked, and it's a terrible thing if we do the wrong thing." On a relative level, that may be true, but ultimately it's just this kind of playing out of what's going on, and I've noticed that I think personally, collectively, relationship-wise, society, it does feel like we're going through a very chaotic time, but I think, and I wrote about this in an email that went out this week to the Synchronicity Community, which is the title of the email was called "I'm a Failure."

And I was pointing out that I fail all the time on a lot of different levels, but what's amazing about those failures is sometimes, if I actually would have succeeded, "I wouldn't be where I am today in a lot of different ways," and I am very happy where I am today, so failures can actually be a good thing, and they also can provide a tremendous opportunity for change and growth. So I think with all of this chaos and kind of chaotic shit that's going on, we have a tremendous opportunity not to get too spiritually woo-woo, but at least evolve our consciousness to get to a point where we're not just getting into the same aggravated, us-verse-them paradigm, which is so fucking easy to get into, which is why I was saying, that's why I was so dismayed about the Bernie or bust people, if you really think Donald Trump, just because he's going to tear down the system, this guy is diametrically opposed to everything you believe in if you are Bernie Sanders' supporter, like literally everything.

So it's not like Mr. Robot on TV where you take down the world, this is real life, this is actually kind of what's going on and it does have a matter on going, all right, but listen. I think they're getting a lot of play from the media, other people tell me that a good majority of Bernie people are not burning a bust, I mean the weight is very robust, because it's the first signs we've had of life from these conventions for years. For so long, they've been so boring and just terrible. I'm not one for great speeches, I'm not one of the people who, after the Graham Park speech or whatever it was that Mr. Obama gave, I did not suddenly start crying and go, okay, the future is groovy, I don't believe in speeches.

To me, they're great, I guess, to get a certain demographic, you know, like roused, I roused, but for me, I just want to hear sober stuff about it, because what are governments for? They're supposed to make it so that the social contract is extended to a some degree of comfort with each other, and that demands a certain degree of sacrifice now, a tremendous sacrifice, and a lot of people make it, you know, who don't want fortunes and are willing to invest their money in good things. I mean, if you ever wore a shark tank, which I do, I confess that, I watch it, not often but I do watch it. A lot of the people with things like face creams and various forms of food and whatever are environmentally friendly.

Can you imagine this is an ABC network and a CNBC, you know, licensing on one of those successful programs and television, just as successful as Trump shows. Yeah. A lot of the people who are looking for investment, it has a reality to it, because I've studied it, are very conscious of not hurting the planet more than it's already been hurt. This is fantastic. Yeah, that's what I mean. You know, that's fantastic. That's what I say. And that is great. That's what I say, like the people, if you start with your own self and motivation for doing something, you can do it. And I think one of the weird things that gets lost in people who are Republicans, who they're not all shitty and not all of their ideas are terrible.

But one concept that I think has been warped is this concept of self-reliance and bootstrapping and believing in something and doing it for yourself and hard work paying off. Now that only works if you're given the same opportunities as everyone else. And I think that's something that a lot of Republicans have forgotten. But I think that's an incredibly useful and positive outlook, right? There's a Walter Russell quote that I love, which is, he says, "Genius is self bestowed." What is it? "Genius is self bestowed." What the fuck? Hold on. I'm looking this up. It's that good of a quote. And it's really simple.

Walter Russell quote, "Genius." You can see how much I remember this quote. Shit. I'm going to edit this out now. Hold on. That means I can call. That means you can call. Yeah. I'm editing it out because I actually want to find this. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you three questions at the end, rapid fire. And then we'll end this. I'm watching my cat right now. She's so incredible. She's become so incredible recently. She's just such a Buddha everywhere looking at me. Anyway. Here we go. I wish I could just show you her. I'm going to do that. I'm going to take a picture and send it to you as to what she's doing while we're doing that.

Here it is. Mediocrity. All right. One, two, three. Here's the quote. I found it. Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self bestowed. And I believe that. I really do. I think everyone has the potential to realize whatever it is they want to realize. David, we've hit the end. I want to ask I'm doing a new thing. You're the first guest to get this three rapid fire questions. I think as little as possible about them. What's your favorite animal? I have three. Okay. One is my incredible cat. The next one is a mountain lion that I actually bumped into in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. And the third one has to be all elephants.

Okay. That's awesome. What's your favorite color? And now I'm going to have forever to stump you asking super simple questions. All right. A deep royal blue. Oh, I love it. I also am a blue fan. And what's your favorite number? Seven. Oh, good. That was my first favorite number. Now it's 13. All right. That's it. Go on stage doing this. Yeah. It's basically guess what people are going to say while looking at it. Awesome. Well, thank you for letting me on your thing here. Yeah. It's going to be good. People have been asking about it. So I'm really thrilled to. You think you actually said anything in this way.

It's just all like. Yeah. I think it's pretty good. Pretty cohesive. I mean, I don't want to to my own horn, but I feel like, especially if we listen back to the first one we did together, I'm better at keeping people on topic. Like I have more of a sense of what topics we're speaking about. Not always. Sometimes I totally get off an attention, but you know, this is the, I don't know, close to the 45th or something I've recorded and probably it would be like the 43rd or 42nd episode. You know, after you know, you did a shitload of mind rolling. So after you do a certain amount, you're far more comfortable in conversation, recognizing that other people are going to be listening to it.

So yeah, I do think people are going to listen to it. Yeah. It's a great mix of being completely yourself and also projecting somehow. It's very different from anything else. I guess radio was a bit like this, but not really. There's an essential difference between podcasting radio, which we can talk about. We will. Thank you, David, for coming on. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you. No, thank you very much. Bye. And that's the end of the show today. I hope you liked it so much. I like, I think I just intuitively want to microphone is in front of you. I mean, I think I naturally want to seeing the NBA on NBC theme by John Tesh.

You know what? I'm going to cut in a part here. So you're going to be able to hear that. John Tesh, what a brilliant, brilliant genius. So brilliant genius, David Silver, how about that episode? So good. So nice. Um, written review, synchronicity, if you enjoy this podcast, tell your friends about it. Don't even rate and review it. Fuck that. Set it a million times. Who cares? But tell your friends, tell your family, say, Hey, you know what? There's a podcast. I like it. I like this type of stuff. Maybe you'll like it too. That's a script. You can have that free of charge truthfully. Thank you so much.

I want to donate to the podcast or donate to the synchronicity generosity experiment. Do so syncpodcast.com. That's all I got this week. I will see you next week. Hey, there. It's Wayfair here where delivery and set up are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too? All right. Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast expert set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier.

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