Ep. 71 - Community, Curiosity and Optimism with Zach Mack

But I am someone who really covets his community and I firmly believe that like setting the right energy in place is something that is vital for having a place like not just a bar become what becomes like an extension of your home or living this this is synchronicity welcome to episode 71 of synchronicity my guess this week is Zach Mac Zach is awesome super another in-person podcast that's two in a row like I said I'm gonna be doing more of these there's clearly some type of dynamic that emerges from the in-person ones that doesn't necessarily come out not that they're in any way worse they're just different than the Skype or phone recorded one so I'm really looking forward to doing more of these in-person ones and I think you'll see why in this episode and if you didn't hear last week's with Sean you can check that one out too but I'm gonna devote the majority of this intro to the March 18th live mind pod network event we're calling it mind wave there's a whole reason for that besides the fact that it sounds super cool mind pod network mind wave event in Los Angeles Saturday March 18th we're gonna be doing live podcasts we're gonna be doing performances we're gonna be doing some meditation stuff but not like weird meditations cool meditations we're gonna be having a party there's gonna be a dinner if you want to do that so I'm teasing this now in the coming days I'm recording this I think it's what February 23rd in the coming days there will be links and I'll have direct links to the places where you can get tickets for this event and find out a little bit more about the guests and who's gonna be there and what we're gonna be doing but I want to plant the seed now for people who are in Los Angeles Los Angelenos or the surrounding areas get ready we are expecting this to sell out relatively quickly I think there's maybe like 200 spots tops and we're really expecting them to go because a lot of people not me who live in LA have friends and audiences and fans who are probably gonna want to go to this thing so I'm giving you the tip you're getting the exclusive tip that this is going on March 18th so there you go I said it that's done thank you to everyone this synchronicity Facebook group is is really morphing into something beyond what I possibly would have expected it continues to grow which is great growth is good but more than that the people who are interacting and getting involved those people are really cool too it's morphed into we're also doing something for book club we're doing the second live webcast for chapters four through six for the Don Miguel Ruiz's Toltec art of life and death even if you haven't been reading the book you might want to come in listen to what's going on I'll tell you what the first discussion I didn't really enjoy the book but after the I was I was playing I was like I don't really like this what did you guys think and then people started giving different perspectives and a lot of other people were like yeah that's not what I expected but as we started talking and kind of discussing what was going on I started to like the book a little bit more and then I gave it another chance reading it this week in the past two weeks and I really like the book now so you know what better endorsement of a book club or experience can there be then it changes your mind I'm stubborn and when my minds change I pay attention to that so if you want to get involved again you can go to the Facebook group that's on the website it's like a little breadcrumb trail of getting to the thing I'm sure you can figure it out it's not too hard so let's get to Zach alright let's get to Zach that's why you're here Zach Mac Zach is roommates with my sister in the East Village of New York Zach also has one of the coolest establishments I've ever been to in my entire life in its ABC beer and I really I'm not a beer drink I drink beer I'm not like a go out and drink beer as much as I enjoy marijuana my sister and Zach enjoy the beverage world and but they do it in like a super classy not weird way you know like it's weird if you're in the beverage world it's a weird place I know that for a lot of different reasons but they've created both of them my sister and Zach not that she's in the business with him there at ABC but they have this way of making talking about either food or wine or beer or spirits bringing in this communal element and this energy behind it that I think is the glue like that's that's why we like food so much that's why we like sitting down yes it tastes good but that environment of community whether we're drinking whether we're smoking whether we're eating whether we're just hanging out and talking that's that's what I'm beginning to learn is the most important thing in life you'll hear me say it in a few different podcasts this one and some other ones I'm guests on coming up that I've come to realize for me the biggest transformative practice that I do is just talking with other people that's why this podcast has been so good for me personally is yes I like meditating when I do it yes I like my spiritual practice of smoking marijuana and dressing marijuana yes I like psychedelics when I do them yes I like music and art but I think I've learned the most from just talking with other people whether one-to-one or groups or whatever it is and I think ABC beer is a place it was voted best bar in East East Village lower Manhattan and there's no surprising there's no it's not a surprise basically it's a really awesome place so for New Yorkers if you're there go check it out it's not really an ad for it I just think you'll you'll get what I'm talking about and you can experience it Zach is also just one of the coolest people I've met and I really do mean that he's incredibly optimistic he's incredibly knowledgeable and he's incredibly curious and when you combine those three qualities together you kind of get an exceptional person he's done a lot of different stuff we barely scratched the surface and I'd be remiss if I didn't point out this conversation was recorded relatively early in the morning like 9 30 or something in the morning and we were both a little bit tired so you'll hear that in our voices but we're gonna do another one of these two but Zach you'll hear in this conversation touches on a lot of important things he talks about the energy behind ABC beer the his bar that he built and he talks about water in the beginning and this is kind of a merchant ongoing conversation that we've been having about kind of the water and the relationship to the unconscious and Zach dreams of whales and I dream of dolphins often also whales and how that fits in what that means and what those things you know what what's going on there we talk about that we also talk about just the importance of being curious in life and how if you're curious it kind of protects you from being closed-minded and that's really important because being closed-minded is is not good you could still be on the totally right track doing everything right but if you're closed-minded you would have no way of really even knowing that right you don't have any outside perspective so we talk about that and then also you know not that some of these podcasts here are talking about Donald Trump have been pessimistic I don't think they have but we talk about being optimistic in times you know when things are looking kind of shitty I also want to bring up something that I read from Bruce Damer I guess on this podcast guess on many other fine podcasts yes his own podcast the levity zone he put a cool analogy I'd been using this cancer analogy he used like kind of Donald Trump is like a vaccine you know again some horrible form of government and politics and this is our dose of the vaccine and it kind of sucks it's a little bit of the virus we have to kind of you know maybe get a red bump and it hurts for a little bit but ultimately it vaccinates us against you know something much much worse and I like that analogy not everyone agrees with it another guess of this podcast they saw commented on what Bruce put Michael Garfield and he says I totally disagree I don't think that's what's going on I think we're fucked I don't think this is as good as what you're thinking but we'll see so who knows but I do kind of subscribe to the theory that this is kind of an opportunity for us to learn Zach and I also touch on that really just a very pleasant conversation like I said I'm going to do this again with Zach when I go into the city typically to record podcasts I stay at my sisters I sleep on the couch for a night and Zach has always been nothing but gracious when I'm there he's a super cool guy go say hello to him at ABC beer go say hello to him on Twitter he is Facebook I think got hacked by someone in Syria but I hear it's coming back soon say hi to him there that's all I got thank you to everyone who's subscribing rate and review the podcast guys listen I know there's a lot of you out there let me put it this way if everyone who downloaded an episode of synchronicity just gave a rating or review on iTunes I have like 40 50,000 reviews I got 68 step it up we're one away from 69 that's cuts an achievable goal that we can hit let's set the target at 69 I would love it if you guys could do that I know it's kind of a pain iTunes is quantity throw throw me a bone here throw me a bone uh okay that's it officially without further ado here is Zach thanks for coming on man thanks man thanks for having me I'm really I'm here with Zach Mac I usually don't do that FYI so like that just so you know I would say 90% of my podcasts have been via Skype or remote so they've not been in person with people they never really sound that way I know always because I try to make them sound yeah I was yeah I know I try to make them sound good but they all most of them are done on Skype so when I'm in person I do like weird little like I'm here with Zach Mac which I never do I just say thank you to the person and get started but I am here and I'll point out that we're in your apartment which you live and share an apartment with my sister yes um so that's cool um and we're here so I want to thank you again though for coming on because seriously I've been meaning to do this for a while and and uh I'm glad we got to do it now so my I listen to this podcast all the time and I don't know I feel like it's something that I don't get to do a lot of all the time you're on a podcast yesterday though yeah but it's different like I own a beer bar and I write about beer and and food and travel and I get asked to go on the shows all the time and it's always like talking about that realm of things and like you know I like talking about other stuff I know you do that's why I was really excited to talk to you this time because every time I come here every time we talk we talk about like 10,000 different things and I learn little bits and pieces about you through our conversations like where you worked all your kind of job trajectory your kind of philosophical views did you finish the book on water no oh my god that the the blue blue magic yeah oh my god I'm dying I have it sitting on the top of my stack of books the last that we're just talking about this but the last few weeks last few months I've just every time I sit down with a book it just gets like ripped from my hands and I have to do something dumb but the oh my god the blue water book like we we were talking about this last night like that's something if you're going to bring up one concept to me and like you want to say irrefutably like this has a huge effect on you personally as as your psyche as a developmental thing it's looking at the ocean or being near the water yeah is super important yeah it's it's one of those things where whenever I'm by the beach it's weird last night when I couldn't go to sleep we were talking about it we were thinking about um financial little financial little things that was oh did I get that paid did I was supposed to do that one of the things I never do this and it's interesting you just remind me of this to go to sleep I was thinking and imagining the sound of waves which I've never done before although when I'm by the ocean and waves and stuff like it always is one of the best things it's yeah I like you you we've all slept near the beach of the windows open and that sound and the smell of it makes me really happy like but there's something about yeah like waking up and I can get pretty much anything off of my mind by thinking about it it's I grew up by the water and I don't know if that has a lot to do with it but I know people who were you know grew up in the landlocked state and they feel the same way yeah no there's a primordial we'll we're 98 percent water well first of all we're like 99.9 percent space yeah what we're actually made of in terms of physical matter like fits on the tip of a pin which is always blows my mind and you know it's a concept we can't really yeah I brought my head around that but yeah but it's true but water one of the things I really like about I think we spoke about this before like last time I was here maybe but it it relates to the psyche yeah it's typically the what is known as the unconscious like if you have a dream where you dive into water or you go into a pool or something that resembles going into the unconscious part of your minds and we spoke or I was speaking at length last night about that mentalist who was you know got everyone to draw a star on the James Corden show and he did it by subconsciously and unconsciously you know using symbols yeah to spell out star which we thought were pictures and then everyone did it so that shit was blowing my mind because I think what it points to is that and how this relates to water is the depths of what we can't perceive yeah something we relate to and are prompted and kind of resonate with in terms of water which is our unconscious in this metaphor but that can be used consciously in in many different ways yeah it's I it's it's weird that you mention like the depths of things you don't understand like there's something about like how drawn I am to the ocean but how much that terrified yeah at the same time and I grew up you know before like I was swimming before I can remember and like you know just jumping in the waves things like that you get too far out or you get to a part of the ocean where you can't see beneath your feet and the same thing scares you it's yeah I I have a lot of recurring dreams about being in open water I think that's like a common thing yeah I would assume um one of my big recurring things is there's always whales swimming beneath me I think so I've had that too it's in in a non-menacing way no I actually dolphins and whales in my dreams have always been something that are like wow like a majestic or like a magical thing yeah they feel safe yes cetaceans are are very very interesting I'm a dolphins fan obviously yes as I know of yeah I love uh cetate whales and dolphins are very interesting um john lily do you know john lily knows so john lily it was the basically the modern founder of like float tanks like the central deprivation tanks sensory deprivation float tanks so what he used to do back in like the 60s like early 60s he was like he wrote extensively about like the brain and people being supercomputers um he took he took a lot of lsc and ketamine um and basically went into these float tanks but he also um believe that dolphins and cetaceans were like higher advanced life forms and would communicate with them and he had these dolphin tanks and they would do all this stuff but uh he he was a really fucking was he trying to he was actually trying to communicate back to dolphins oh yeah yeah and he was saying they could so well what's really interesting about him is zach leery my friend who from the wonderful it's all happening podcast he knew him personally because that's him leery so like john lily and timler hanging out and he was like he was like one tok over the line at a certain point like he eventually got oh it gets weirder he got like breast implants oh like he was like one of wow like this is like you know the burgeoning psychedelic but he was a scientist so he wasn't just like some great I mean he was but he was a scientist who was like really trying to study um set a cetacean uh human contact and understand and I think if I'm not mistaken he was the person who discovered the dolphins had language like he was making like advances in the field like it wasn't like he was just like I think I can talk to dolphins man I'm gonna drop some ass and although it probably was part of that yeah so there's there's definitely a link between because we don't know how smart dolphins or whales are we don't I just read the other day this this amazing article that we've long known about like the different like communication habits that they have that there's regional dialects that whales that different pods have from different parts of the world yeah but now it sounds like they've actually got names for each other and I was reading something on courts about how they've done a bunch of research into them being able to but they can communicate from so far away obviously but they can remember names from um they can remember names from pods that they haven't seen in in years just from their accent or from their basics because they can remember and they have like full language and recognition which yeah it's one of those I've always respected that have you ever have you ever actually gotten in the water and like swam with them no I always wanted to but I have there's like there's a right and wrong way to do it I think the first time I did it was that like I got in the water with dolphins at like some park down in Florida but after that I I was in um Mexico and there was like this this nature reserve that they had taken us into and I got to swim with them without like the you know the trainer to like go to the monitor what to do and it was like the most surreal moment um people say that it's not real people say that when you swim with dolphins it's like one of the most magical things it's like it's a different like uh like people who are close to their dogs or whatever I guess get that like connection with animals or close to the cats but there's something about the mental connection between the animal and you then you're in water and you're in water which is like completely removed from your element but usually that you know that might terrify some people but there's something specifically about being close to dolphins as someone who spent a good chunk of his life in the ocean where I felt completely different in the water than I've ever felt so all right I don't want to shift gears too much but I do want to find out how can you explain to me how you became so interested in so many different things because you you have a lot like I you know I talk to a lot of people and you know usually people have like you know three or four or five set number of things that they're like really into and they've attached that to their identity and they said okay this is what I'm doing um and you certainly have those and aspects of those but um you pretty much know about like almost everything I'm talking about and if you don't you're like oh yeah that's really interesting you learn you process so like do you remember a certain point in your life where you're like hey I'm really interested in things I'm gonna find out more or you just kind of always naturally been into finding out more about stuff it's I my dad always told me like that I was curious from like the second I could pick up a book or figure anything out and I guess that's like something you could say about anyone who you know is like willing to learn something but I just remember as a kid like getting a lot more joy out of like knowing about what was happening around me whether it was like the name of all the characters on Star Trek the next generation and their back stories or like why it was easier to catch fish when it was raining out and and different things like that and like as I got older I just like took pride in being able to know like the traditional educational route like learning like being into history at school and being into English and like and and understanding like the overlap and the the subjects at school I just kind of growing up I became I became pretty pretty adamant that I like I keep a broad perspective on things like being aware even if I wasn't good at making music like being aware and appreciative of music which is only interject there yeah this is every way everyone is not everyone believes this but everyone can make music and be good at music because I mean I was talking about this yesterday with my friend Sean Dunn and because he he was at the point I mean he had been taking many psychedelics but he was at the point where he felt like he heard enough music in his head when he listens to music he felt a strong enough connection that he felt like there was music inside of him that he wanted to go but he wasn't sure I mean he was at the point where he wanted to get a keyboard or a guitar but he wasn't sure that he could do it you know he sees how hard it is and like you know the whole thing what I basically was saying to him is this is like music is a very it's my preferred art medium I gravitate towards it I feel like it's taught me more about the world and the universe and myself than any other medium for me personally there's a really really really awesome book that I highly recommend I've mentioned it a million times and it has to do with music it's not going to teach you how to play music it's not going to teach you any musical theory or anything like that it's called the mysticism of sound and music by Hasra in Aot Khan and the reason this book is awesome is he was a Sufi mystic and a Sufism is a branch of Islam I don't know shit about Islam what I know about Islam is that it's an Abrahamic religion that there's probably some really great parts in the Quran and there's probably some really not not great parts because that's how the Abrahamic religions seem to have exactly the interpretation so I don't but that's it I don't know very much about Islam Sufism however I do know more about because that's the more mystical kind of that's the kabbalah to the Judaism I had a friend working on like he was basically implanted with a Sufi yeah yeah there and there's a bunch of them in New York of course yeah no it's a huge thing and there's um I forget the exact name but there is like there's an organization that if I don't you don't get accredited in a traditional sense but you basically move up the ranks of being like a Sufi master yeah it's like a very esoteric and a cool type of thing it's mysticism but in a house right in an icon I don't think it was the sitar I think it might have been a special instrument and I should know this he was like the best at this particular instrument in the world like the best player of this devotional music um and he was universally acclaimed and he gave it up and he's like now I'm good I'm good on that and like incredible like stuff that would like bring people to tears if they heard it because it was so amazing and he gave it up and only began to teach about you know Sufi principles related to music and his whole thing was with in relation to music and sound is that music and he said this this is a book I was reading I think it's from the 70s a book I mentioned he's talking about modern science is finding and is in the process of finding um you know it might have even before the 70s it's like an old book modern science is in the process of finding that when you begin to drill down into matter everything is made up of vibrating vibrating like things exactly that's what it is and that's items of vibrations exactly which is super strength theory for quantum physics that there's actually just space and we really start drilling down these these little vibrating things so his then principle is that music is the origination of everything in the known universe that's why if even if you go in the bible or you know any of the Abrahamic religions the word first there was the word the word is god if you go into um Vedic and Buddhist religions you know oh is a primordial sound that creates everything my my my highfalutin point here with all this stuff is is that music is less a product of talent like if you're born with like a proclivity for playing and being good at music um and it's less of an idea of like being technically proficient right any let me just to be clear anyone with basic motor skills can develop muscle memory and become technically proficient at music right it makes stuff that sounds good the real connection is if you feel just even listening to music that you enjoy it taking the next step and like tapping out a beat with your hands or picking up a guitar or getting a basic keyboard and playing some notes like that's something that anyone can do and it's pre and in what it's really predicated on is just whether you feel that connection because my my general premise here is that music and sound is what creates our physical world that is actually how it works even if we don't see the principles of play yeah i that's what i have always felt like like good music and understanding music comes mostly from just awareness like i always said that the best musicians i've ever seen perform live or it just seemed like the people who like you say it's not muscle memory just like anyone can technically be a good piano player guitar player or sitar player by remembering the the physical movements of their their fingers but there's something about people who are more enveloped than that never we you and i both understand from a musical perspective what that means yeah like someone like prince right you're literally who i was gonna say yeah of all the people you could have pulled up yeah someone like prince who uh just was he transcended like the physical art of creating music to become something much bigger than that right um also like with bowie or just anyone like that who whose ideology and and persona becomes wrapped up in it not in a nagatistical way in um like a mystical like bob marley stv wonder there are people who can communicate something ineffable and very ephemeral in a lot of ways to people that is really a difficult thing to do with words or words alone or some other form of communication that we use because music is symbols in a way but they're not visual symbols which is is how we get i think that's how we get most of our information now especially if you factor in screen time and things like that like we still hear everything around us whether we're processing or not we smell a lot and that's a very strong sense we touch things but i think visually is like that's where most of our input comes from these days but music doesn't engage that specifically it can with music videos or you can be walking out in nature and be listening to something and it can sync up and it's great but it's not something that is our primary sense of and i think that goes to the awareness thing like it tweaks our paradigm for how we typically process things um and that that alone can really have a profound effect on our consciousness and how we kind of interpret the world it took me a while i didn't realize until i read that article that's everyone quotes i guess now but the the idea that only like ten percent of the population gets chills and they listen to music there's like some things like yeah only ten percent is that true yeah i guess i don't know i was one of those people always just assumed everyone did okay well can i tell you what chills are so i have this is i have i'm sorry for energy again but i have to tell you chills um i used to get i still get them but not as intense i get extensive chills from the bottom of my spine that go up through my head out through my arms and down through my legs when i had a few transcendence psychedelic experiences that lasted longer than the dose of the drug that was in me um i i would get what i would describe as borderline overwhelming non-stop that so imagine the chills but imagine it for like five minutes at a time and like just being like with like friends or like chilling at home like you know like not like so so i was freaked out for not i didn't think anything was physically wrong with me i never got the sensation that like oh i'm there's some problem we're freaking out yeah but it was like okay what is this so i went ended up at a mega institute um and there was a sound healer guy who i didn't know anything about it tom canyon for people who know he is now he's far more famous than i ever would have thought or popular i know that name tom canyon yeah yeah the hathors so uh he he was he seemed like he knew a lot of shit like i rarely had met someone who was well versed in neuroscience and like eastern philosophies and like shamanic stuff like he really seemed like he knew a lot of stuff i didn't think he was like a guru or anything but he seemed like he had some fucking knowledge of what was going on so i there's a q&a session in this thing and he's like what what is the you know i was like all right i have a question he goes all right what's your question i was like listen does i know what everyone gets the chills like and he's like he's like yeah and everyone seemed to concur like there at least that makes sense they're listening to like you know fifth dimensional beings right you know he says they get the chills so uh but i asked him like what is this and he's like what it is or what you know an in Hinduism or Vedic stuff they would say a chakti and it is a manifestation of kundalini energy which is a serpentile everyone's heard the current yoga and kundalini at this point but it's a serpentile energy that sits at the base of the spine it represents you know chakti the female energetic principle that kind of makes the world into a thing it's the thing that creates everything um and i was like oh shit so i started learning more about kundalini and trying to understand and i then began to be able to control and understand exactly what it was and it is the same exact thing that happens when the chills yeah i wonder if 10 percent of the people you're saying when did you read that that's not a while ago this was like i want to say like in the last three or four years and it just stuck with me because i was like i thought there was something that everyone enjoyed it is not that like why you like queued up music that you loved all the time it wasn't just like yeah there are songs that like i like even something stupid songs they're like no you just get into them and all those it just it's one of those things that can sit with you for your entire life as far as i'm concerned i have songs i've known since before i can really remember that still give me chills and i it has like i had no i had never heard it described as beautifully as you with the chakti and i'm gonna start looking into that because i i think nothing about it revolutionized kind of a physical sensation that like you i assumed everyone experienced to some degree but i clearly knew there was some correlation to something else because it was like either i got that that valve is too loose or something or like i gotta figure out what this is well yeah it makes sense that some people would be more susceptible to it than others just like how you're emotionally predisposed and and how you interpret things i think some people i think might get more moved and get the chills by seeing something beautiful it is an emotional response for sh and it definitely engages the emotional aspects of that is the trigger for a lot of times but sometimes there are emotions that sit in between ones we can easily identify or label like when you hear like a really great piece or like if i have really great like dj set that's like two hours long there's the individual emotions of the transitions and the songs himself but there's also the cumulative emotion of like this thing is a whole and what that involves and then when you start digging in deeper to like the psyche of the person who created it like you prince is love like here's here's the deal with prince at least for me i love prince prince probably has like 10 to 20 songs i really enjoy prince has like hundreds of songs thousands thousands truthfully i went through one when i did this uh like four years ago i went through his entire discography chronologically oh my god that must have taken forever it took i think like three and a half four months like legitimately and that was listening to like you know like four albums a day and i was doing it as a thing and what i realized quickly is a prince is insane yeah he's actually like he's in the same person and be like i don't love all of prince's music but what makes prince go to the next level besides his technical proficiency besides being able to write amazing songs is his what he embodied is a person and the more you hear about who he was and what he did in terms of film film philanthropic things he that is imbued into everything he made so even if it's not your favorite song you can sense that going through the music which to me also points to this is what we do in life right this is how's about any accounts whole music is life thing life is music everything we do in life is just like that it's not the thing that the final product that's actually created or the thing but it's the energy and momentum and intention behind it that is actually being communicated that i mean you know let's let's talk about like this you were what was it new york mag or was it time out that so time out your your beer bar uh with david hichner who went to bcc um uh my high school got voted uh best bar in downtown manhattan and i've been there now it's right around the corner from where we are and there is and i was saying alluding to this earlier today but it was like there is a special energy in that place that makes it popular i mean there's a million places you've obviously put a lot of love and care into the aesthetics of the place but there's an energy there that i think draws people that so that's what i'm kind of alluding to with the music life connection thing and i think that's important i was talking about that with your sister the other night um just like how there's when we were angling to open this place we didn't want it to just be someplace it's a bar you know what i mean they're doing not trying to reinvent anything crazy here but i am someone who really covets his community and i firmly believe that like the setting the right energy in place is something that is vital for having a place like a become not just a bar but become what becomes like an extension of your home or a living room totally that so we uh i'm glad you feel that way about it because Tess was saying the same thing she's like i feel like there's like something good planted in the ground beneath it or something that just it brings people i i feel very positively about it when i think about it it's the intention it's it's the intention behind any project work relationship experience that dictates its overall value or what is being communicated the energy behind it and i think that is always something we have the power to kind of imbue whatever we're doing we we can put that intention and awareness on whatever we're doing because i noticed this from my career working with you know spiritual organizations like everyone is trying to do something helpful in a spiritual organization you know like a Buddhist temple or like a teacher you know like no one's like i'm doing this to get really rich and be an asshole that said there are so many different lines of intention in every project and everything that like we were talking about this before when i was saying like you know i'm not gung ho about client work it's not that i dislike any clients or have any issue with it it's that i realized the more people were involved it's harder to set the intention when it's not your own thing right yeah absolutely oh the hello synchronicity listener what a weird place to stumble into you in the middle of an episode of synchronicity i'm here to tell you about an extension of the podcast that i'm pretty excited about have you heard of an app called slack if you have then you know what i'm talking about there's a slack group for synchronicity if you haven't heard about it um let me tell you what slack is really quickly it's a group messaging app a lot of businesses and teams use it for internal communications but i like to use it kind of to communicate with a lot of people to join the slack group go to synchpodcast.com/slack that's it that's really it's that simple okay getting back to the episode right and so you can kind of guide it when you're working with someone else or for someone else but when it's your thing if you've got your shit straight for the most part no one has their shit straight here but for the most part if you kind of know what you're trying to create like with the bar you mentioned like community that's a huge aspect of it being a part of the local community having a family sense you know of community there is something you imbued it with everything can stem from there and that's like kind of your guiding principle in a lot of ways so my point is is that there's this aspect of what we imbued things with if you can get that straight almost any projects you work on that's like your flowchart if it stems from there then it's really easy to do stuff so then I want to juxtapose this because we definitely have to get to the flip side of what's going on in our reality here everything is a hunky door you don't just have beers and talking about prints and having to get time we live in relatively dark times with the administration Betsy Davos was just confirmed by Mike Pence doing the tie-breaking vote and we're talking about this last night and I realized after our conversation when everyone sounds like man I was kind of like a Debbie Downer yesterday I am very optimistic about the future of this country and our communities and people primarily because of people I meet in like every day I sound like a politician but in everyday life like the more and more people I meet everyone seems like really fucking awesome and not just people in my immediate peer group and social like people far outside of it where different circumstances completely there's a general sense of like I'm noticing people are kind of waking up in a lot of different ways not spiritually or anything like that but they're more aware of things I'm optimistic about the future but I also would be remiss if we didn't point out there's some dark shit going on right now so yeah I'm curious to hear your thoughts because you're super plugged in you pay attention to this shit I know we're probably not to similar in how we consume our media and can be overwhelming so I'm curious to hear your thoughts and like what's going on right now to touch on where you started with this with like the whole idea that I too I have I have hope for the future I'm an optimistic person but yeah sure and I don't I don't think it ever helps anyone to assume death and like be aware be well because the kids would say whatever make sure you understand that bad things can happen in the short term but like I'm someone who believes through personal experiences that there's always the potential for such great good and humanity and and I think this is actually the the kind of situation that puts our country at an angle or in a position where we can galvanize a lot of disparate communities and mindsets into one great unified beautiful population of of people who are looking to get the right things kind of right things done I yeah I when we're talking about this last night like it's easy to feel like immediately everything is kind of like a Debbie Diner mode yeah it's like you don't want to be that guy who's like posting everything to Facebook and like getting involved in these like kind of what I viewed now be kind of useless arguments primarily yeah like you're saying we're like we're talking with your friend about how it's like you you see a lot of political information and then just like some kind of banal statement on like when pulling into social media has changed for me lately and for everyone I think everybody this is this is something we were talking about with like uh like when this whole thing happened I was like the workforce is going to be depressed not in like the emotional sense but like there's no way in the first two weeks of this administration people weren't talking about everything that was going on yeah that affects business you know raw getting someone needs to set up a meeting someone needs to do this and I spoke to friends who work at places who are self-employed and work from home and they all were experiencing the same problems like we're like oh shit we got to watch this train wreck yeah I've had friends talk to me but everything from like just general this May and then all the way through like intense insomnia because they they can't get their head around it I I find the um the last few weeks though it kind of reminds me of like any dark time in my life I've always been like I said an eternal optimist and not in not in the corny hokey way but just in the in the deep lying sense that I think deep down we all just want to help each other out maybe that's the New Yorker and me who's seen who's seen some stuff go down that you know and for me it actually rang through most when we were going through all of our junk with sandy right and we had complete strangers show up to help us do things and that forever changed something in me about like viewing the way people react to being in a bad situation that's the so that was the that was the thing for me that when when everything that's been going on with our government became a stark reality it started to feel more and more like people were helping each other out like we were helping each other out after that very physical storm this is something that we're now seeing you know very real world consequences and but mentally helping each other out has been a huge part about this even though it's only been two weeks in change well that is a huge point because psychologically I think people more we're dealing with a lot of coalescing things at the same time we're dealing with this not really we can't call populism this isn't populism what it is is its crony ism under the guise of populism where we've basically put in at least in this country by all appearances some type of kleptocracy they're gonna steal all the money they're going to set up a kind of a shadow government that is kind of and you know what's very disheartening and why I was kind of a deputy owner yesterday is because it looks like the GOP and the Republicans for the most part are just willing to be a party to this to get some of their agendas done that they think is going to be helpful now I don't want to get into the whole political ideological debate there but it does seem like there is a rising tide of like the government corporations we have long suspected they didn't have the peoples whatever that means interests at heart we are now getting confirmation of it and one of the things that I think is really encouraging like you're saying like when you see sandy you're reminded me of that mr roger's quote that is on social media often where it's like you know when something shitty goes down look for the helpers look at the people who immediately come and help they're always there those are the people you pay attention to don't pay attention to that thing yeah I think that is important and I think that's ultimately a lot of the reasons I talk about this both on this show and with other people is because you know we want to be aware of what's going on like you're saying but to dwell in the state just just play with the concept of what's going on in the world right now make it something that's just going on in your head pretend it's a situation where you've done something bad you know you found yourself in a bad situation you know unless it's literally life and death and we could argue in some way it's life and death but tomorrow the world isn't going to end because of Donald Trump that's not going to happen maybe in two days but not tomorrow but not tomorrow but if it was just your personal issue you know you wouldn't want to just consistently non-stop dwell on the severity of the situation you literally would not be up that's called depression at that point and also at that point doesn't it just become like a like a slog or a state of being if you if you constantly dwell on it then you can't possibly overcome it or work against it yeah and I think it's hard enough for us to deal with regular interactions where bad shit happens but when you amplify it with social media and technology and then you recognize that some of these tools and services and products are being employed against you like one of the things that really freaked me out about the election and also I think the other reason i've been a debbie downer is as i've pointed out i've watched like non-stop black mirror for the past few weeks which really will put you in a very i don't think it's bad overall psychologically but as you're watching all of the black mirrors it's certainly not like making you like a more optimistic person and it's it's i don't think we're really i would like to believe it's a society we can somehow but it's only like five percent tweaked from where we are now that's also disturbing about it it's not like some futuristic dystopia it's like oh this could be in like five years i think that's why it resonates so much with people and scares most people because it it is so believable it's so fucking believable but like i was saying like you need tools to be able to combat or at least not get sucked into the vortex of holy shit everything is going to fucking chip because i do fundamentally believe if you me 50 other people got together and said hey here's what we have is resources here are the things we believe in that could be built up into something that helps i don't know maybe not a million people but maybe like a hundred people 200 people 500 people i think this is now our opportunity where we basically have to be like listen maybe at one point in the future government and corporations will help people maybe hopefully because of the planet you know hopefully doesn't look like that's the trajectory they're on but maybe that's going to happen but for now let's just assume that that shit's fucked yeah let's just assume like it's fucked like let's continue to fight let's be aware let's do the things we need to do but let's not focus all of our energy on just saying this thing is fucked let's start to create these systems that actually allow like i was having this conversation with my friend um we're buying a house and she's trying to look into buying she's like how did you get a house and i was like completely honest i was like my mom is like helped us buy the house in terms of like being on the lease or the lease jesus so where i am the d the title she had to use her assets um to say that we had enough to do it and i was like the scam is is that since 2008 if you're self-employed if you have or playing yourself or getting on 1099 it's like a lot of people we know this like my sister and me like a lot of people get paid you a lot of people get paid on 1099 it's being so fucking want to give you a loan so what do you do you have to go pay rent that's like 50 percent to 100 percent higher than a mortgage at a place where you're eventually owning like this is going to create an entire system and class of people who are competent responsible people who can afford to pay for the mortgages they'd be getting but can't get homes but now are being drained from taxes uh you know trade tariffs um you know high rents and things like this to me that either means we are descending into chaos in the next 20 to 30 years because people my age is they start to have kids and have families like money will become a thing and money starts to get tight and resources start to get tight that's when bad shit happens in populations um this to me means we need to start figuring out the systems now about how to utilize things like crowd funding communal activism you know mission causes for communities and local things this is the time to start thinking and planning those seeds so in 20 30 40 years we're gonna have some system that isn't dependent solely on people that's susceptible for someone like Donald Trump getting into office because that ain't gonna work for the future they don't understand tech mount Rudy Giuliani's our fucking cyber security my god god i can't wouldn't so i'm generally concerned about him i've been meant to well-being in general not just they hit the fact that he's got that job but yeah i i agree with you i have this conversation a lot with with people are aged about how the we really need someone who's sensitive to the the change in how money the money landscape is laid out between our generation and our parents generation and the one in between um and the the professional landscape where there's a lot more of our our generation is self-employed uh the i always say that the bottom line kind of killed what used to make this country great which was you know getting a job with the company that you probably stayed with for 30 40 50 years when you got your gold watch your retirement and they took care of you they give you the benefits you needed that and you it'll add you to get a house and pursue this great american dream that these days seems like is stacked against anyone because we are saddled with debt from whether it's college or just getting out of college and having to take on a lot more credit card debt than our parents would have had to and it comes time to uh to go and do the the next phase in life which is start a family by house and you're like oh my god what like what kind of financials like standing don't need to be in it's crazy i mean it really is one of these things where the system isn't it's an extra dive global economy there's a great book um by douglass rush cough throwing rocks at the google bus which basically lays out um the premise that back in the day there were the bazaars and free marketplaces and there was no you know maybe there was a local currency the people exchanged essentially is like iou's you know like i purchased some meat from you or i got some grogg from you and here's an iou for this um eventually what ended up happening is the lord of the realms the kings developed a coin of the realm and if you were caught using any other currency or any other coin you're off with your head when you can't do that this is the official coin now so that put the fiat currency in the hands of a primary institution which then you know as we get into trade and commerce and adam smith you develop banks and the idea of lending money to get interest and all these other things which is now which just to be clear works on kind of a small level if everything is accounted for but when you extrapolate it onto a global scale with multiple nation states and things like that it doesn't really hold up that well so now when you add on this layer of digital economy and i have fucking bitcoin so don't know we can tell me money is what people think money is because i have bitcoin and that shit i don't have a lot of bitcoin but i got enough that i made money with bitcoin and it's like holy shit this doesn't make any sense this idea of an economy um with an extractive principle behind it is kind of what runs everything and it doesn't create value or sustainability right in the communities or world at large what blows my mind is that people in power positions to dictate this stuff either are incapable or refuse to acknowledge that this is the state of wherein whether it's related to fossil fuels or whether it's related to just you know currency manipulation or whether it's related to that like you know fifteen twenty percent of the world is in abject poverty yeah there's and just to be clearly there's enough resources in the world where everyone could be good yeah that question it's not even not even close to a motherfucking question we throw out more food here that could feed like you know multiple nations like i was my mind yeah and we do it like i do it like we they're all guilty it's it's a national past yeah it's just the thing that it happens here so um the basic premise is that if we are working within the confines of an extractive economy that is predicated on really also selling a shit that we don't need and making us feel like preying on kind of the human condition of right not feeling totally complete right we're not totally complete as human beings we know there's something out we can sense it you can be really happy you can be really fulfilled but this is clearly an existence that is fraught with suffering in different forms mild like oh i'm too hot i'm too cold to like oh my god you know my parents that like there's the whole range of suffering here or oh my god like i'm gonna die right those types of things the question is is how do we navigate the current landscape of technology making problems exponential or solutions potentially exponential and how do we deal with our current kind of awareness revolution or evolution in terms of being more aware that this is happening knowing we can't just detach from society immediately but kind of build here's what i really think our generation and the next generation and probably the next generation need to be if our species are planet we need to be the bridge people we need to be the people who understand the context of our current paradigm but also have an idea of what the future can look like yes and work when the president to build the bridges between them so i think that's where we are yeah part of this like keep smacking back to me or what you're saying anyway of whatever it keeps bringing up which is that and very much within our lifetimes we're going to see a huge shift in what it means to labor and what technology means for like our day-to-day life when we lose you know truck driving jobs and train jobs first right and all manufacturing jobs to machines and robots who you know who will do a better job for for no money we are then left with a depressed workforce or depressed labor force and we're also left with a lot more time on our hands and that's always the great conundrum everyone says it's like when the great labor force has nothing but time on its hands to think about things it's it's the greatest philosophical question for someone who studied economics um that's the that's the great philosophical question that you can't really can't put numbers at you can't you can't really predict anything outside of what we've seen in the past um and it to me it seems like we're it's an exciting and horrifying time to be alive sort of the precipice of all this it's like you said it's like suffering is real um the and this the type of suffering we're seeing is gonna gonna change in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years and I I wish I had more insight onto where I think this actually goes but a lot of and I'm not as naive to think that one presidential election would have changed everything right or would have saved the world saved all of us but I also think that the the role of government and what comes in the next few years is gonna be it never thought that government had solutions but I think that they always have the ability to help I and that's kind of where like people's mindsets needs to rest not assuming that they have all the answers but they can certainly help us towards cultivating the best human proficiency and knowledge to to help people and and help make things better and which is kind of the the recurring theme that I think if this episode has anything it is the the idea of helping other people I think at a certain point um if you have any type of happiness or fulfillment or reach any kind of like universal truths at a certain point you're like okay this is great now how do I get other people to feel good how do I make sure that people have the opportunity to learn and understand and grow and you know how do they also help me as I'm on the path too it's a mutually beneficial thing um community yeah let me ask you this and then we're happy with the end questions but do you have like a belief in like a universal energy or god or something like that oh man um hey I'm we were talking about this last night I suppose as someone who was raised like as an institutionalized Catholic yes like something that as a child you had the the idea that like something had to be there that's changed for many reasons for me as I've aged and discovered more about how other people worship or other people view the universe but I I certainly believe in talking about what we're saying before like his Boston particles or just like basic physics that either is something that unifies there's there's a great power that's maybe not sentient maybe not all all knowing or all understanding but there's something that unites everything and the constant thread that I very much believe in um but it's something for me that I that evolves almost on a daily basis yeah I mean yeah I try to be a spiritual person in the in the very pedestrian sense that like I want there to be some great thread that brings us all together but uh I also I feel like the more I think about it uh and just random moments of thought not even sparked by something I'm reading or watching just I have a realization based on like like intuition or something that there is something that I I'll never fully understand at work um and I wish I had a better answer to that no no that's like probably the right way to approach this stuff in a lot of ways because you know what you realize like I look to people who seem to have had far more insights than I've had in my life you know mystics really people who were able to communicate like stuff that I'm like oh wow yeah I get that but I wouldn't have been able to say it like that um and they a lot of them eventually say like listen the truth is when you really get it you realize that everything is that everything it doesn't mean like only when you're reading or praying or doing something means this table is god it means this energy that holds that is the exact same thing as you which we can't dualistically understand and appreciate it's just not how our minds are built in whatever our nature so all right well we don't have to get into the whole metaphysical act because we'll do it again too because I mean the beauty now of me living so close and you know it's gonna be it's gonna be fun um so let me let me ask you um the rapid fire questions and then that the end question so what is your favorite color um my favorite color is like blue-green aquamarine like so yeah it's it's interesting there's a lot of people who fall into that palette range and blue-green I don't know why maybe it's water watercolor I think water looking like sky and vice versa that's what I always told people I like elements yeah okay what's your favorite number um 15 15 why 15 I haven't there's a lot of me just there I have I'm not a superstitious person out right but in certain instances I am there was that's how it started but I've found in just too many instances in my life that like when I follow that that grouping that number there there's something right about it awesome I I I've had it like it pops up at any like random moment in my life like that was the like with addresses or like specific dates or like flight numbers things like that and obviously that all strings through the coincidence but no no secret and also really we's von Franz referred to numbers as primordial archetypes that they were actually the basis of all other archetypes and how we kind of which fits nicely in with math she also is just you know she's so smart um I that's interesting I've never heard 15 that's cool man there's also two it's very it for me I I don't know I didn't feel the need to pick a favorite number of course it's just one of those that's why it's someone asked us what I say well that's it is that if you have to think about it you know um what is your favorite animal oh man on a companionship level at night no I was just saying like I dream about whales a lot and there's something I feel connected to these like I feel similarly to manatees but like whales in general the the fact that they inhabit the water the the way that they are you know outside of certain species just like incredibly peaceful benevolent creatures no you should you should definitely read a few a little John Lilly yeah the crazy stuff I mean he really had some thoughts about that and I know in other wisdom traditions they have you know some very deep archetypal meaning um that's cool man yeah there's a connection and I don't know there's there's something about that that I I feel more connected to that than I do a lot of you got a water thing that's for sure yeah I feel that for sure that's that's strong throughout drinking some more water yep okay last question what is a practical tip that you have helped used in your life that has helped you in any capacity the practical tip I and I think it was actually sprung forth by what we were talking about right before we started recording which was it's really easy these days especially as a self-employed person or someone who may may wish to be more than what their day-to-day job is to maintain some sense of structure and focus and for me the best advice I've gotten recently is remember that like focus is all internal and it's something that is completely 100% up to you things can be thrown in your face and come up but it's it's all about how you react to the things around you and that defines who you are as a person a business person a friend a family member and my advice to people is always run through your checklist of priorities as as often as hourly and and make sure that you're following a path that feels right to you because other if you start regretting if you start regretting your your path of action and you can figure that out immediately as opposed to five years down the line you'll be better off for it so that's awesome I want to say two things one is when we do this again two two things I want to do one I'm going to talk way less and I feel like I talked a lot in this one and I'm realizing how how awesome you are number two it's 10 10 the morning dude we started this at nine I was tired I barely slept last night I know I was tired I know how it goes then the next one also I want to talk about more of this entrepreneurship too because I it occurs to me that's another vein that we could talk a ton of stuff about that's directly applicable because one of the things that I'm working on in a lot of people this is resonated with them is that trying to figure out the creative professionals how to like launch in a real way because I think we've seen over the past I don't know five to ten years like there's this whole personal branding movement that people do and that's cool and that's your thing and that's what you want to do that's great but for a lot of people it doesn't sit well with who they are authentically yeah and I think that's going to be we have a shitload oh yeah we have so much we could talk about there all right dude dude thank you so I'm so glad we got to do this we're gonna see it again soon it was early in the morning for me I'm I'm so glad that we got to do this this is one of my earliest podcast reports ever so all right buddy [Music]

thank you for listening to this episode I was especially weird way to do this outro thank you thanks to Zach go check out his place if you're in New York ABC beer I tell him I sent you I guarantee that I'll get you something good thank you for listening to you you listen are listening to this now thank you very much if you could and you haven't already rate and review synchronicity on iTunes that would be fantastic for everyone involved also especially my ego really really good for that we want that as big as possible so when the inevitable downfall happens it's really painful and we can all point and laugh so please if you could rate and review that would be great thank you to everyone who is donated got in a some some nice donations this week keep can we keep it going it's helping let's just say that really thank you to everyone who's listened I have some fun episodes coming up that live event March 18th in LA seriously if you've listened this far and there's any way you can make it come say hi to like every mine pod network podcaster some extra people I will be there you know maybe we'll smoke a little bit who knows we'll see thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week