Ep. 82 - Material Girl, Mystical World with Ruby Warrington

(upbeat music)

As humans, we exist in our physical body and maybe part of our lesson is to get comfortable with that and to be satisfied with that.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. (upbeat music)

Welcome to episode 82 of Synchronicity. My guest this week is Ruby Warrington and Ruby has a brand new book out that's out today. May 2nd, 2017, called Material Girl Mystical World. And I've read this book, not all the way through. I got an advanced copy. It was like, I got a lot going on. But I read like, actually I'm up to like 70 pages now. I skim through it to see and get the gist of it. And I gotta say, she refers to it in this episode as her Trojan, my little pony. And I think that is a perfect term for what this book is. She is dealing with some really cool and deep inner stuff that spans the gamut from mindfulness to astrology to plant medicines, to just really trying to figure out how to navigate the world but also have this connection with the newmaness.

And speaking of the newmaness, Ruby also runs a lifestyle website called the newmaness that is focused on kind of merging the seemingly disconnected worlds of the day-to-day life that we kind of go through and have to navigate as ourselves but also this kind of unified interconnectedness more mystical aspect of the world. And she's doing that in a really cool way. And I think more importantly, she's normalizing some of these quote unquote spiritual practices that can seem a little foreign or maybe a little too woo-woo or weird or not practical. She's making it clear that it is. So I had a pleasure speaking with her.

I went over to her place in Williamsburg, this past Friday, lovely place. It was a beautiful day outside. It was having a great time. We got into some really cool conversations and we also, there's a little synchronicity we discovered. Ruby's brother is Jay Shepherd and I was like, she's like, you know this 'cause I was mentioning at the end of this after we were done recording that I liked electronic music, super into it and she's like, oh yeah, my brother makes. Do you know? I'm gonna say, yeah, that name rings a bell. She showed me and then I did a little research before recording this and of course I know him.

He's collaborated with one of my favorite producers of all time, Martin Dawson, who unfortunately passed away not too long ago, a few years ago and really just an incredible producer but I know her brother's stuff too who's a good producer in his own right. So another interesting little synchronicity that was going on. But this episode I think is really kind of at the nexus of what this podcast has turned into. When I started this back in what, 2015, I didn't really not. I just wanted to talk to people about stuff, the conversations I was having offline but what has become clear from the feedback and the emails I get and it's clear that people want to hear about things and experiences like episodes of synchronicity or transcendental moments but they also recognize that they still live in the world.

So that's what this podcast kind of is if I were to put it in a nutshell and that's what Ruby's doing too. She's what I referred to in the beginning of this episode as a bridge builder. She's connecting worlds and that's super important. There's so much in this episode. I don't even know where just listen to it. I'm very confident you're gonna love it. Also you may have noticed this is coming out on a Tuesday. I usually put things out on a Wednesday. I think I'm like 80% sure I'm gonna start doing two episodes a week. So if you like this show, you have double the amount of episodes to look forward to.

That's partly in thanks to my new Patreon page which you can check out at patreon.com/synchronicity. If you wanna kind of crowd fund this show, you can contribute there. There are low levels. They're doing some hangouts, giving away some music. There's a lot of stuff going on there. So check it out. That's it, it's my only pitch. That's all, let's get to Ruby. Check out her website, The Numinous. Also, I put together a special URL where you can purchase her book, which is out today. Go to Synchron up, about to fuck that up. Synchpodcast.com, that's S-Y-N-C podcast.com/mysticalrooby. You know how to spell, okay.

You know, I'm gonna assume you know how to spell the words mystical and Ruby. Again, synchpodcast.com/mysticalrooby. You know what, I'm gonna make it super easy. Also, minepodnetwork.com/mysticalrooby. And that'll redirect you to a page with the book. If you were interested in what she was talking about or what we were talking about, I highly recommend it. She mentions Carl Jung like eight times in the first like 15 pages. It's really a substantial offering. I think it's gonna help a lot of people and kind of clue people into some different maps of the terrain that we may not be familiar with. So, that's it.

Gonna stop rambling. Thank you to everyone who subscribes, donates, whatever you do to support the show. You're awesome, tell a friend, rate and review. The ratings are going up, you're the best. That's it. Without further ado, here is Ruby Warrington. (upbeat music) Thank you so much for having me and for coming on. I'm super grateful to Sa as always. You know like there's people who just connect you and you know like implicitly whenever they introduce you, it's like a good thing. It's my favorite type of people. Sa is one of those people. So, thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you very much for inviting me on and I also am very grateful to Sa, who interestingly has been on a very similar journey to me over the past five years.

We met when I first moved to New York and he was still working at Bullet Magazine in this kind of like very fashion, fashionista glamorous world. When I first moved to New York in 2012, I'd come from London where I'd had this like long and prestigious inverted commerce career in fashion magazines. And met Sa, our mutual friend briefly then who was still working at Bullet Magazine and we kind of like met for cocktails and it was all fabulous in this village and then he kind of disappeared and went off on his spiritual path. And I started the newmaness and we came together again sort of the end of last summer, both having been on this like almost simultaneous and very similar spiritual journey, I guess.

And have reconnected in a much, much stronger way and we're actually hosting loads of workshops together now. I saw that. So he's fab. So I got introduced to Sa by my friend Michael Donovan who's a fashion photographer. And he said, you know, this guy's going around the world. He's in India right now. He's doing all this stuff. He came from the fashion world. I'm like, that's an interesting place to come from to get into spirituality. I mean, not that there's any prerequisite. And when we connected, it just became abundantly clear that this is someone who, while he had come from the mainstream world, was clearly penetrating deeply into kind of the unseen world, the newmaness as you might put it.

And since then, we've just stayed in contact and every single time I speak to him, it's just, I feel better after the conversation. Every time I see his Instagram posts and everything else, it's just like he's a beautiful soul. Like I don't say that term very often, but he really is. So this is the Sa appreciation part of the podcast.

Exactly.

So I'd like to talk a little bit. So you have this book coming out, right? Material Girl, Mystical World, which I love the name. And obviously I'm probably not the target audience for the book. I was tweeting right before I came over that, you know, wearing jeans is my idea of getting dressed up. I am not a fashionista, not even a Maxanista. I'm none of that. My wife is. So I find it interesting that you've come from this world that I don't want to be too pejorative, that it's not just a superficial thing. Fashion has a very clear and functional place in our culture. It's not just some hobby thing that people shouldn't care about, but it's not typically associated with kind of the deeper levels of spiritual inquiry.

So how did you go from kind of having this prestigious job in the fashion world and the magazine world to starting the new menace and kind of penetrating deeper into these mysteries, so to speak?

Well, a couple of things first on the background and fashion myself and Sartre. Actually, there are, I've encountered many people on the sort of what I call now-age spiritual scene who come from that background.

I love that term, by the way. I love that term, by the way. It's so awesome.

That's one of my faves too. So I've actually encountered many people who are in this scene now who have a background in fashion. And I've really done some thinking around why that is. And I actually think that fashion, in its purest sense, is an industry which attracts people who are very interested in investigating what it means to be a human and investigating identity, investigating how we show up in the world, how we project ourselves, how we relate to others. 'Cause clothing is a medium for us to do that. And so in a way, I think that it does, it does merge quite well with a lot of the subjects that kind of lead people down a more spiritual path.

And for myself, I suppose that may well have been the case. I was always interested in fashion and always felt really drawn to close as a means of self-expression and what that really meant, like who I was expressing to my clothing. However, going into the fashion industry, but it becomes a completely different thing because essentially you're feeding into the capitalist system and not really, it becomes the opposite actually, of empowering people to dress for themselves as individuals. And it becomes all about, no, you must wear this so that you can fit in, so that you can conform and so we can sell you more stuff.

Right, well, it's, what you're saying is a universal story. So I look at it through the lens of music. I'm a musician and music to me is like one of the purest art forms. You're, it's some esoteric thing that doesn't actually have physical existence outside of vibrations and I love it. But when you get into the music business, it's the same thing. It gets commodified, it gets watered down, it gets often in the realm of serving people's egos, which is clearly not what we're trying to do. So I love that you put that fashion really is a form of kind of expressing yourself and your personality in the same way that our body is kind of our two, right?

Like our bodies are expression of this deeper part of ourselves. So I love that you, you've kind of connected those dots. So, so what was the transition for the new, first of all, explain what the newmanist is for people who don't know. So the word newmanist, when I first heard that word, it was one of those moments that I can pinpoint as a kind of like light bulb going on in my soul, sort of moment. I was like, this is just everything. And the word then was described to me by an astrologer friend is meaning that which is unknown or unknowable.

Yes.

There's a dictionary definition, I can't remember off the top of my head right now, but I can give you that too. And to me, in terms of our human experience, it really speaks to me to anything that comes within the realm of human experience that we can't necessarily articulate with words that we can only know or sense or--

The direct experience.

Yes, that have the direct experience of and are unable to perhaps express only to feel. And so for me, yeah, I use it in my work to cover all things mystical, all of the esoteric arts, that are essentially tools for excavating that part of ourselves and for connecting us to those human experiences, facilitating those human experiences. Which also, and I do think in the now age, it's important to say that those are the experiences which cannot be synthesized by technology. They are what define us as human beings and which is why I think they're becoming more appealing to people and people are feeling the need to connect more to the numinous part of ourselves.

Because essentially, our daily life is being more and more integrated with technology and we're having to act more and more like computers, so--

Whether we like it or not, too.

Whether we like it or not, it's just the way of the world and I'm not anti-technological progress at all, I think how wonderful, but let's please balance it and counteract the implications of that with an embrace of these practices, these ancient human technologies, as I've been described to me.

So, a theme that emerges very quickly when I was reading your book and just kind of tuning into you is that you're one of my favorite types of people which I would call the bridge builder. You're bridging to decemingly disparate worlds, right? This kind of mainstream, how do we get it? This is brought up very quickly in your book with astrology stuff, right? Most of us think of astrology, we're thinking of our sun signs and we're thinking of what's in the paper for maybe like some pop culture astrology person, which is my initial kind of, and I'll tell you this, this is on the side, not to get too often to tangent.

Astrology has been showing up so much in my life in the past two months, I have never actively seeked it out. It resonates with me, I get it, but I just had a conversation with another astrologer on my podcast, it's like popping in. I'm a Carl Jung fan, so I know that he was a big time astrologer. When I'm reading the book synchronicity and he has the whole charts of like all the married couples and their astrological signs, I'm like, I don't know what this means. Amazing. But what I'm saying is, you're a bridge builder. You're basically trying to normalize and destigmatize certain aspects of quote unquote spirituality or mysticism and show people that this is omnipresent.

This is around us all the time and it's more of a job of not going out and acquiring something but kind of uncovering what's already there. So have you always been someone who has been aware of kind of, when I say world, I mean kind of area, facet of the world we live in? Have you always been kind of aware and have you always had a desire to kind of like connect in that way or is this something relatively new? I think I have, I mean, I pursued a career as a journalist which is essentially about investigation, right? It's about uncovering and investigating and making connections and so yeah, I've always been intrigued by life's mysteries, I suppose.

And back to your point about like, how did the new, how did I make a transition? Following that part, following my natural aptitude for curiosity and uncovering of life's mysteries and investigating the world around me as I saw it and also seeking to make connections between, I loved my favorite pieces to write what was this kind of trend pieces, you know? Social trend pieces. But eventually I find myself in a job having succeeded at a high level in this world and utterly unfurfilled, like completely just like, devastated.

And had you heard stories before that happened to you of other people, 'cause I mean, this is something that always strikes me in this, you hear a lot of stories of people reaching the top of their field or they got their dream or they're in their perfect relationship, but still, there's that thing and it's missing. Had you heard stories like that before or are you just like forging your own path? Boom, I'm here, what?

Yeah, not really, that's not something I'd been very focused on just, and I'd been loving it. You know, it's kind of a, you know, it was kind of fabulous. The freebies or the travel, or the kudos or the great, all the nice things. But then yeah, I get to this point where I'm like, I guess I had read, I think around 2008, 2009, I'd read Eat Pray Love by Liz Gilbert and that had had a real impact on me in terms of like, maybe just like turning on an interest in like meditation. What is this? What is this in a world? But again, then I started this job and it was 2011, I was really having this kind of existential crisis.

(laughs) But it was astrology that I initially turned to as a what can I bring into my life to kind of like bridge the fulfillment gap, bridge the meaning gap, you know? And I knew that astrology was something I'd always been super fascinated by. And perhaps I could study this for myself as something to kind of, yeah, bring some sort of meaning on the side. Her connected with this astrologer, heard the word numina, she kind of led me down a path into looking at all kinds of other mystical traditions. And like you said, it wasn't like I was like discovering anything new, it was more like going back to me as like a five-year-old child, just kind of in awe of the world and so excited to.

That's for the filters.

Before all of the filters started being put in place, exactly. - Yeah, yeah.

So exactly, I kind of, I was talking to someone the other day about a lot of what I write about. And the book is about finding ways to tap into your own intuition. - Yes.

And to be able to turn up the volume on your own intuitive voice. And was describing to her and it relates to this really because I was kind of saying like, we all have a strong intuitive voice. It's just that there's so many shoulds and so many message and so many expectations and so many confusing pieces of information or conflicting pieces of information that we're bombarded with that it gets drowned out. It's not like it's lessened, it's just, there's so much on top of it.

I can't hear it, yeah.

I described it as almost being like, there's like a choir boy and he's singing in the middle of Times Square. And only when all of the traffic has gone and only when all of the lights have turned on, only when all the crowds have gone home, can you hear this beautiful voice?

I love that analogy and that's totally true. Intuition for me as a man is always an interesting concept. I consider myself relatively speaking very intuitive just because I see a lot of my guy friends and I don't even think they know what it really means. Obviously everyone has intuition, but I have seen and I have a theory about this and I've got a little weird space here, but I think there's a re-emergence. Well, let's just accept the fact that for the past 2,500 or so years, the feminine has been completely suppressed, ostracized, relegated to lower than, if not completely, cut out of religion, culture, philosophy, professional everywhere, it is subjugated.

That's the term that comes to mind. I have noticed, for the past 15, 20 years, a slow but steady re-emergence of the feminine divine, for lack of a better term, kind of percolating through culture at large. And when I say culture at large, I'm using my own Western culture, that's what I say. I have a few theories on why this is happening. I think A, it's about time. I think this is just long overdue and the kind of de-harmonization of what has happened because we've completely forgot that this whole other half of what makes a world a world. We're seeing it emerge slowly. I also think, fundamentally, it actually has a lot to do with marijuana.

I think that the part of the plant that we ingest or smoke or imbibe or whatever is female. It's the flower part of the thing. And I've come to this conclusion over many years because when I was a kid, I was intuitive too. Before I started using cannabis, I kind of forgot that part. And I was relatively young when I discovered. I was my teenager, but it was gone. I didn't know where it was. And I noticed a lot of my friends who are guys who regularly consume cannabis, they also start to develop these intuitive faculties. These more compassionate, empathetic mindsets, even if they're totally still like Western males who drink beer and watch football, they still are opening up these channels.

And I think this is kind of, as we see the tipping point hit with marijuana in this country and around the world, I think there's a real interplay of this divine kind of feminine energy coming back. And I think it's a beautiful and wonderful thing. But I hope it doesn't get subjugated again too because there's always this friction of these opposing forces is what kind of shapes our world. So not to cut you off, but that is kind of my, when you say intuition, I perk up and the book clearly deals a lot with it. And for my life, professionally, personally, spiritually, intuition has been the guiding beacon, it's the only thing.

Yeah, absolutely, it's all we really need.

Yeah, yeah. - That's what it really is.

Or we really, well, not all we need. But in terms of our decision making process and choosing the choices that are gonna guide us down the path that's for our higher good, but also for the collective good, then yes, your intuition is key. I think it's really interesting. I love your theory about the cannabis, but there's, I mean, there's a couple of things for me that really play into that. So there's a chapter on plant medicine.

Yes.

And obviously cannabis comes under that umbrella as with the more kind of like extreme or healing plants. Like I always go pay your tea, et cetera. And while I was writing it, I kept finding I was writing planet medicine by accident, but here we go. So I actually think that, yeah, I think that actually, if we're seeing a reemergence of the divine feminine force, I kind of feel like it's the planet herself going, "You guys, what the fuck?"

Do you wanna live here anymore?

I mean, seriously? - Yeah.

It's intervening. I even say this in the chapter on plant medicine. I was like, it's kind of like those plants in the Amazon. They've got together. They've had a pow wow. And they're like, okay, we need to do something about this. Let us seek out the hearts and the minds of the most influential individuals we can find, which is why you see like company CEOs and--

So kind of alley.

Yeah.

All these people going to do iOS because ceremonies, coming back with a huge awakening about themselves and their role in terms of what they're here to contribute to humanity. So I mean, this is the thing, it's like material gone mystical world. It's all pink and fluffy, but it goes deep.

It's real deep. I mean, and what you're saying is totally true. I mean, my mom met my stepdad down in Peru in the early 2000s. So before this huge wave of ayahuasca is taken off, but I mean, it's pretty insane if you look back to 15, 16, 17 years ago to realize ayahuasca was known by almost no one, there's a few people who had gone there, but they were probably like hippies. It's like people just didn't know about it. And now ayahuasca, who doesn't know about ayahuasca at this point, whether you're in an urban area like this where they're doing them up all around here or in the Hudson Valley, it's a thing now.

And I love what you're saying is it is Mother Earth, going through the tools she has available to be like, listen, you can do what you want. I'm gonna be here, and this is like a George Carlin quote. George Carlin's like, the Earth's gonna be fine. Like, we are gonna maybe be dead, but the Earth is a self-correcting mechanism. So this is, it does feel like this kind of paternalistic attitude, this logical, rational mind, which I think does have value. I'm also not someone who just wants to annihilate the ego for the sake of annihilating my ego. You don't want it to bump up and rule your life, but it has a function.

Like, we developed an ego evolutionarily if we're going into the neuroscientific world. Like, if you saw a lion, your fight or flight kicked in, you're like, I want to live, I'm gonna run. So there is a function to it, but it's just dominated. Our culture for so long in every possible way. And it really does feel like the Earth is kind of calling out and saying like, listen, I want to give you an opportunity to kind of like, get the message.

I can only leave it, but.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, but I mean, I think that's the big, I mean, material girl, mystical world, it's all about that balance. And I'm not saying like, we don't need, but like, just like I'm not saying, it's not fantastic to have access to beautiful things, like.

Yeah.

You know, in some of the most ancient Hindu spiritual scriptures, the pursuit of pleasure is right up there is one of the four chief aims of life for living a holistic existence. I'm not saying we have to kind of like cut off.

That's right.

All of the material pleasures that bring joy and wonder and fun and excitement to our lives. What I am saying is we weigh our balance, weigh our balance, and we need to do some serious work addressing our internal needs as much as our external needs. And that kind of, that can be applied to any area of life.

That's exactly right. I mean, this balance, so a term, this term balance gets thrown out a lot, right? And I'm trying to, I don't think there's anything wrong with the term, but I'm also beginning to enjoy the term harmony because sometimes balance implies that like if you think of the scale, like the Libra scale, a balance would be that things are equally proportional so they weigh the same. And sometimes they shouldn't weigh the same. Sometimes we should be using our intuitive faculties way more than the analytical part. So this idea of harmony, whereas, you know, if it's a chord played on a piano, one note sometimes rings out more and gives it a different tonal quality.

And I start to try to think about how we can position these conceptions and ideas of spirituality, mystical, whatever it is. How do we find kind of that, not bouncing that harmonization point with what, you know, situations are different in life and our lives, collectively, globally. And this gives us a little more breathing room. I think which is important because like, I know you can relate to this is when things get dogmatic and rigid and kind of calcified, that's when problems can crop up because you don't have the flexibility or space. I mean, this is the biggest lesson of any mindfulness meditation or any practice you do is you start to cultivate this space.

So you can choose how to respond rather than reacting. So not to jump around too much here. You went down to Peru or you, did you have you done ayahuasca?

No, I haven't. - Neither have I. Have you done DMT?

Oh, it's seven? - Yeah, yeah. Have you done DMT?

Oh, I've got seven in the kitchen.

So this is really funny. I, and I have so much access to it. Why haven't you done ayahuasca or DMT?

I write about it in my book. I, growing up as a teenager in the UK and through my early twenties, I had a lot of drug experiences. And I've really built some very kind of like deeply ingrained associations - Yeah.

Between what it means to get out of it.

Yes, yes.

And as much as people, as many times as people say to me, it's completely different experience. I'm like, I don't know if it's gonna be that different. And the times when I had experimentally used LSD, for example, which is probably the closest comparison I can make in my mind, which is really, really frightening for me and really not empowering. And I'm, and I'm afraid to go back there.

That's totally valid.

And I'm like sticking with it. I called the chapter Feeding the Plant Medicine peer pressure 'cause it's the same, exactly the same feeling I used to feel when I was like 15 and everyone's doing the stuff.

Cigarettes or something, yeah.

Should I do it? I should, I must be part of the gang. And actually a big part of my, the teachings of the book are like, if something's a no in your intuition, it's a no. I also feel like I have had some incredibly psychedelic experiences through things like breath work or Catalina Yoga.

Yes, yes.

Or like, there's a healer I know who actually, she's one of the only Western women to have trained with the Chippippo Peruvian, Chippippo tribe.

Cool, very cool.

So she has been leading our vascular ceremonies for like 12 years. She doesn't work so much with the plant now, but she's so familiar with the teachings of the plant that she can channel it into her energy healing work.

It's like a shaggy plant.

So I had a session with her, which like, took me to such a deep place in terms of healing a wound from my childhood. I'm like, I don't think, I don't know if I need to go through the fearful experience for me to have that kind of enlightenment. I feel like I'm kind of like on the, I'm pretty much on the way already like.

You got the message, you hung up the phone.

I think I forgot the message. It's funny because most people who would know me, I mean, who would think they would know me, would think that I had done ayahuasca, DMT, I also haven't done it. I also recognize that the people who have done it, who have credit it to many a transformational thing, talk about a calling. They say, listen, you're gonna have a calling if you wanna, maybe not so much with DMT, but with ayahuasca, and I am aware enough to know when I have a calling and I don't, and I'm not gonna force a situation as spiritually, not jarring, but profound as it seems where it is where a lot of people, I'm gonna force that.

So I just don't have any interest in it right now. I don't rule it off in the future. It could be a thing. DMT is a weird thing for me because, and I've been reading a ton about it recently, which usually means it's right on the corner, but one of the aspects I don't love about DMT is how quick it happens and how it seems, even if people are like, you know, I feel like kind of it was a spiritual enema or something like that. I like to know how these things can be integrated into our world here. So while I recognize that Noah may just be a conception of my mind and it's not as real as I think it is, I still gotta get up and take care of a family and do things.

So if a psychedelic or any substance or anything you're gonna be doing, whether it's Kundalini or anything, it doesn't have a practical, integrative application, it doesn't interest me as much. It sounds cool.

Yeah.

It's DMT sounds amazing. Like that sounds so cool. And I know it's like probably scary and weird, but it sounds amazing. But that's not why I do these things now. That's not why I would have a plant ally. And I think it's very important when these things get popular to really internally filter all the things you may be interested in doing, whether it's astrology, whatever it is, like this resonance that's created when something is really true, where you're talking about when you have something in your stomach and it's not right, that, you know, it may seem like a trivial or little thing, but it's ultimately, that's your guiding beacon.

Exactly.

That's what's letting you know. I think that's so interesting you haven't done it. I, you know, I skim, I read probably like the first 50 pages and then I was skimming the chapters to get a feel for it and I didn't know if you had done it or not.

I list all my pros and cons.

Yeah.

And kind of, yeah, so you'll see.

Yeah.

Again, I'm a never-say-never kind of a girl. So, you know, it's what the future holds.

Right.

Maybe when I'm 60, I'll feel called, but it's like for now, at this time in my life, I like being really in it. I have had plenty of lessons the past five years to integrate and I'm trying to, I'm living those now. And like what you say with the DMT, it sounds so cool in a way, it's kind of like, but it almost sounds like just going on a roller coaster. You're in, you have this like exhilarated like five seconds and then it's out and you don't know what to make of it and it's like, that doesn't appeal to me. That's like, and I know maybe it's like the intellectual part of our minds trying to wrap our heads around this concept and I imagine I'll probably do DMT before I do ayahuasca if I do either, but yeah, it's, it's just, there's something about if I'm doing anything in life, I want it to really have like serve me.

And this goes, this is a good connector to kind of, I think what your book is about and what your life is about now, it's this idea of service, right? This is what people really tap into and I've met a lot of people who have hit the pinnacle of their profession and their career or their dreams or whatever it is. And yes, you get the epiphany that you're not happy, that things aren't, still something is missing, then you start to discover these other aspects of life, but what inevitably starts to weave its way in is this idea of service. If not only serving yourself, so you can serve other people, but serving a global community, your immediate community, your family, and this is the connective glue.

This is the same thing that I think that ayahuasca, meditation, astrology, yoga, all of these things slowly, what emerges from this is this interconnectedness idea and you begin to fundamentally realize that we're all part of this. Like there's no escaping that. Even that person you don't like on the street to cut you off, unfortunately, there you do. So how did that kind of percolate up in your consciousness kind of once you got tuned into these more numinous aspects of life? When did service start to weave its way in?

Well, on a very practical level, it was about six months or so after I'd launched a numinous, I began to get emails from people who'd found the site writing to thank me because they'd read something and it had already helped them. And I was like, wow, that wasn't the plan. But how great. And I realized that getting that kind of feedback meant so much more to me than anything else that was occurring. I was just like, wow, this is why I'm doing it because it's gonna have a really positive impact on people's lives. Wow, that's so cool. I always thought service meant going to volunteer and it was doing all this stuff working for free or whatever.

And I was always, I guess, selfishly, kind of like not particularly drawn to that for whatever reason. - Sure, sure.

And now I realized that by doing something I loved and felt truly passionately about, I was still serving in some way. And now I do volunteer and all those things.

Funny how that happens, isn't it?

But on a more mystical level, I think I had never, I was brought up in a completely non-religious household. There wasn't really any talk of like connection to a higher power or the universe or spirit or anything. An astrology, I think, even as a child, kind of opened that door for me and helped me to build that bridge to the idea of myself as connected to, or as part of, the universe that I inhabited. And I actually hadn't really articulated this until last night, I was speaking to someone, I was like, I think once you develop that connection to the divine, whatever that looks like or whatever your path to that comes with it a responsibility because on some level, you're like, whoa, if I'm embodying this like source energy, like life source energy, what am I gonna do with it?

I gotta do something, I must be here to do something with it. Like, I can't just like, like, take it to brunch. I mean, like, oh my God, I gotta do something with this now. You know, and I think for me, that wasn't even a conscious understanding of how spirituality connects to service, but it just kind of crystallized for me last night. I think in a conversation, so I think that's what it's about. It's like, once you kind of go, oh yeah, I'm a being of spirit, I'm connected to every, then I'm, spirit wants to use me for something, and what does it want to use me for? But to facilitate the evolution of humanity, you know.

Right, and these are big things we're talking about here in relatively casual terms, and this is one of my favorite things to do, which is hold these very lofty, kind of cataclysmic, you know, mind-altering theories, but talk about them as though, this is just how it is. Like, and this is something that I think is very important when we touch on this, when you get a revelation from whatever channel, it's like, it looks whatever it is, it can be exhilarating, it can be fascinating, it can be overwhelming, and that's usually the early four rays into this stuff. It's like, oh my God, this is actually how the world works.

Like, this is really what's going on, it's not like how I had been told. And that's your early kind of early stage reaction, but at a certain point, if you continuously get fascinated or caught up, two things can happen. One, you can start to go to the Togeum Trunka Spiritual Materialism Route, which is, unfortunately, some ways even worse, and if you just didn't even know it existed, 'cause now you're making an identity out of this stuff. The other thing that can happen is you can really just lose sight of what this is all for, and it can be like, kind of getting lured by the cities or spiritual powers that can evolve from this stuff, because what we're talking about, let's just be clear here, we're talking about recognizing that we are part of a divine source energy, whatever you want to call it, which Ipsofacto means we are that too, which means we have access to all of that if we want to, which is an amazingly profound concept.

It takes you out of this limited kind of victim scarcity model and puts you in the driver's seat, which is a terrifying thing if you've never driven before. But this idea of coming to grips with this is the truth of our situation, and then figuring out how to practically evolve ourselves and the people around us, not in a heavy-handed way, and that's the big thing about this, and this is why I think religion has been knocked for so long and spiritual, all this, is because it's not a top-down thing. It's not like you're getting something from someone else, it's an integrative, inside-out process, yeah.

Exactly, and I think in a way, the fact that I wasn't brought up, like, worshipping at any particular religious deities is something that's made me able to approach this from a very kind of human perspective.

Yes.

I'm not saying that because I feel embodied, that I'm embodying source energy, I'm any bigger or better or loftier than any other human being or living thing.

Just the opposite, right, yeah.

Just the opposite, it's the big leveller for me, you know.

Right, right.

And if anything, I guess I see the planet, our mother, is the higher power, I suppose, and us all just as her servants. You know, but on an equal footing, on each other.

Let me ask you this, do you think you're familiar, I'm sure, with the terms of Maya and Samsara and the illusory nature of the world, what's your kind of take on Earth 3D reality that we live in? What's going on here? (laughing)

Oh my God, I don't really know where to begin with that. (laughing) Can you get a bit more specific?

I can, so I'll give you my conception, I guess, is you hear of the world being kind of more like a dream. It's not as solid as we like to agree, and this is, people talk about this one, you pierce the veil. You can actually kind of see the true nature or the truer nature of what's going on. And this is a weird concept because as much as we want to say this is illusory, and it's not real.

It still feels very real.

It's real, like we have to walk through it, and I don't think it's also like a arbitrary, no reason behind that. I think there's a function to this 3D reality, and I heard a really interesting take on this the other day at a conversation between Alex Gray and this guy, Dr. Raymond Moody, and they were talking about life after death. And Dr. Raymond Moody, he's like a, he's an empirical scientific minded guy, but he's also studied a lot of near death experiences, and so that'll change a little bit. But he doesn't really speculate. He's not one who's gonna be like, "Yeah, like this is all a dream."

And it was like, but what he was saying is it's like, he's come to the conclusion, I think he's 82, that this world serves as kind of a consensus background in which we can play out our stories, our karma, our spiritual lessons that we're supposed to learn in a way that we can all agree. Like, okay, we're here, this is existing. And then these bumping ups, relationships, struggles, hopes, dreams, all these things, this is where we actually work it out. So my conception of the world is this. I think it's a training ground. I think this is actually a place that we choose to go to, and we're not thrust into this screaming and kicking like we didn't wanna come, even if we don't remember that.

I do think it's a conscious choice, and this is a speculation too, I'm not sitting here knowing this stuff. But I do think it's a training ground, and I think if you look at the issues that most people on the planet face, they're very similar. It's not like someone has a completely different problem or issue, even if they on the surface look a little bit different, like, we all wanna belong, we all wanna love, we all wanna be loved, we all wanna feel safe, we all wanna feel secure.

And we wanna avoid pain.

And we wanna avoid pain. Yet, we live in a reality where if you just look at the Buddhist and the First Noble Truth, life is suffering, and that doesn't mean life sucks. It means that this is a function of this reality we live in. So I do think again that using a Rambas quota, suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It smooths out the areas that we need to work on, and we will keep getting those doses of sandpaper and friction until we kind of learn those things. So that's a weird concept because what I'm basically saying is I don't think this is real. I don't think it's as real as we think of, but on the other hand, I'm saying, this is absolutely real, and we do need to live here, and we have to know our names and our zip codes and our bank accounts and who we're taking care of.

So when I ask the question, what do you think this world is? Is it a illusory? That's kind of what I'm getting at. So what do you think about that?

Well, I think you're definitely a material guy, mystical world or something. I mean, I think that as much as we're embodying this source energy and we're here for a purpose, and like you say, I think that our life purpose really is to evolve and to become stronger and to become more aware and to become more compassionate as a result and to learn the lessons that we're here that we've been gifted with in carnation. But I also think that as humans, we exist in our physical body, and maybe part of our lesson is to get comfortable with that and to be satisfied with that, you know? So yeah, and I think a lot of my kind of spiritual awakening has been exactly that, the idea of kind of just getting really comfortable with accepting the multifaceted nature of being a human and having a human body and having an ego and having human needs and pains and fears and desires, you know?

This is a tantric approach, right? This is going into the world and you alluded to this a little bit before with the detaching thing is, sometimes you get like a blast of spiritual, whatever. There's this tendency like, I want to be a monk, I want to go live in the Himalayas and detach from the world. It's so, I don't need to do this. And I think if maybe you're born in India or Nepal, maybe that's good. But if you were born in a Western country, probably not your path, probably you were probably here for something else, and I think this is like, this fits in line with your book perfectly. It is, and I love what you're saying about inhabiting your body.

I was reading, I'm reading for a book club I do called, a book called The Toltec Art of Life and Death by Don Miguel Ruiz, who I didn't know before. And there's this part in the book where his ancestors are these kind of apparition-like ghosts and they've been dead for hundreds of years. And they're intervening for some spiritual purpose in this book for some reason. And what they're saying is, it's like, man, remember when we had bodies? Do you remember how awesome it was to have bodies?

I didn't know how much body it was.

Like, I would do any--

Did you forget it foul?

Exactly, and I think--

We could probably pin this on Socrates a little bit who had very low regard for the body. He just really thought it was like some second shit that we shouldn't be scared. But I do think what you're saying is like, when we're getting into this mystical stuff, the idea isn't to detach from reality and go off into space and drop our bodies 'cause there's some useless artifact that we have to deal with now. It really is like, the sacred is in the mundane, which means that our bodies, our lives are that too. And this is a really big thing that I don't think a lot of people talk about because I think when you start moving into the mystical traditions, the wisdom traditions, plant medicine, there is this tendency to separate from your body because maybe that's more true of who we are at the end of the day after we die.

Who knows? But yeah, the tendency to kind of just, you know, pejoratively put down the body or existence in our real world happens.

Which for me, in a way, is almost like another form of escapism. Like, we might use substances to escape our body. And in fact, I have addict friends who would say that's exactly what it is. I use substances because I don't like being in my body.

Right.

So yeah, I'm a little bit wary about that kind of mentality, I suppose. I think that whether you studied these things or not, the kind of natural response, if you think about, well, where do I go after this body is to, I don't know, some kind of, I become some sort of a light being and I'm just pure energy and I'm thinking about whether I want to be in another body or I'm like existing on a completely different dimension.

Right.

And kind of, obviously, that's where we go. We're brought up to think about, to believe in, well, think about angels.

Right.

Whatever those kinds of things mean. So I don't know, I think I'm, I think there's a danger actually in seeking that in this life and in this incarnation and perhaps our being, having chosen to incarnate as a human, then that comes with the responsibility of interacting with other humans, with not trying to escape from this plane, this earthly plane, you know.

Yeah, you're giving me goosebumps. This is so important because this is what happened, this has happened to me in my life. I had a psychedelic experience where I took LSD when I was about 22 and didn't come down for three months. And I don't mean like, I was like, I was kind of tripping like, it was in another world. Like for three months, it was insane. Everything I experienced was one giant synchronicity and I don't mean that in like some esoteric sense. I mean, if I thought of a person, I would see them within five minutes. If I dreamt of someone the night before every single time, if I thought of a TV show, I'd see a bus come by a minute later with it on.

So this is a very overwhelming experience.

Yeah.

What happened was, is I basically, if I'm putting this in kind of Vedic terms, I popped open at least a couple of the upper chakras and I couldn't close them. I was getting downloads every day. It was overwhelming. I woke up one day and knew all of the Sanskrit names for the chakras. Having never even knew what a chakra was, there was some Willard Horace, I was insane. And that really was a very psychically disturbing experience. I think, you know, I eventually at that point, I crashed three months later. It's an impossible state to maintain, especially if you don't know what you're doing. And I was diagnosed as bipolar.

Right.

I was put on lithium. I was on lithium for two years. And I was certainly like, I don't like a bipolar. Stopped, got off with the help of my psychiatrist and my mom. It was, you know, very, very beautiful blessing that I could get off this kind of allotropic drug path. However, five, 10 years after that experience, I started realizing the very real dangers of getting to the spiritual, airy, kind of less tangible, grounded aspects of reality. And I came out of it okay. I came out of it with perspective. I came out of it with a deeper understanding of what those states meant and how to use them in my regular world.

But I mean, you see this all the time with people who get caught up, not just with psychedelics, with a yogic path or anything. And what you're talking about is incredibly important is don't disparage and put down the regular aspects of the world we live in because they're not separate. And that's a little quick spiritual bypass that can go overlooked when everything's so sacred in your whole life before was meaningless and it didn't mean that's not true. They're still connected. I love that you're bringing this up because this is something I don't think I've ever touched on this podcast before.

And it's something that whenever people are getting kind of the lore of the mystical side of things, that becomes a very real pitfall potentially for people.

Yeah, absolutely because there's so much, there is so much pain and suffering and difficulty with being a human with having this clunky flesh suit, you know?

Yeah.

And yeah, if you find a way to escape that through a spiritual path, then that can be very tempting. I mean, your experience sounds absolutely petrifying to me. And I mean, I'm sure it was amazing too. I'm sure it was amazing too. And how fortunate that you, it sounds like have people in your life who could care for you and make sure that you were able to come back from there. But there are so many people who don't have that who are more intellectually and mentally and emotionally fragile who might never come back from an experience like that. And I don't know, I think it's a danger. But not to say like, don't have fun out there.

You don't don't explore.

Thank you for bringing it back to another key point. Whenever things get too serious or seem a little too daunting, every great spiritual teacher, every great wisdom master, every tradition that is steeped in this stuff, they all have this idea of lightness and levity and having fun. And it is not just about being this holy spiritual being. No, that's not, that's really not what it is. It's like the people who I know who really like study, who really are doing the inner work, whatever way, they're some of the most optimistic, happiest, easygoing, fun loving people I've ever met. And that is the unifying factor between all of them, which should be a very encouraging sign for someone who's not there yet.

Exactly, agreed. Like one of my favorite teachers that I've had the privilege to work with his Bob Roth, who's the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation. I learned transcendental meditation with him. And he's just like, he's must be in his 60s. I guess he's been teaching meditation for 40 years. He learned with the Maharishi in the 60s and like, this is after working for the Kennedy family 'cause he thought he wanted to go into politics.

It's a little switch there.

Went into politics thinking he wanted to change the world, realized within a year that was not how he was gonna do it. So he studied meditation and has been teaching meditation ever since as his form of spiritual activism. And anyway, he's just like hanging out with a 10-year-old, like extremely wise child 'cause he's just so curious and fun loving and sweet and playful and yet has all this incredible wisdom, you know? And I guess, yeah, he's a mentor and a guiding light for me in that respect.

It's just, it's something that again gets overlooked. I mean, this stuff, a lot of these thoughts and ideas and experience are cataclysmic. They radically change the way we perceive ourselves, the world, people around us. And that can very quickly move into an overwhelming and kind of scary situation. So we look for things to buffer against that. You know, fear is a motherfucker, right? I mean, it's just such a confusing thing for a lot of people because we all try to avoid it as much as possible. But sometimes when you can lean into it and push past it, like what happens after that is incredible.

Yeah.

But it's not an easy thing to continuously. I had a kill, not kill. I actually got it out of my house. Okay, there was a bee got into my office the other day. And unfortunately, one of these things happens when you really get deep into the inner work, but you don't wanna kill things.

Yeah.

But I fucking hate bees. I do not wanna get stuck and I love bees. Of course, bees listening out there, I love you, please don't sting me.

So cute, the fur and everything gorgeous.

Yeah, the good outfits, they're good. So my wife and I, we attached a Tupperware container to a Swiffer so I could trap it on a wall and get it. But I bring this up because for how I like to think of myself as a relatively open-minded aware person, I was terrified of this bee. And I couldn't get like just like clicking to the mode where like, I am one with the universe. This bee won't not harm me because I love it. And so like, it is just this, I'm bringing it up to show that like, fear isn't something that I think any people do master it, of course. I haven't met people who have mastered fear completely in all aspects of their lives.

So, but what we can do is relate to it in a different way. We can say that, you know, fear is showing us something. It is shining the light very clearly that something is going on. And we can kind of use it as like a mindfulness opportunity to be like, what is this trying to teach me? So I do think it has a function that way. And it makes me think of your kind of aversion, potentially to Iowa skin stuff, which might not just be fear-based. That might just be like a deep knowing on your part. Like, that's the famous Alan Watts quote. Like when you get the message, hang up the phone.

Yeah, right.

You're doing this anymore. And that's a very real thing.

Yeah.

So I wanna get back to your book a little bit. So it's coming out in a couple days. But when people are hearing this, it will be out today.

Yes.

She's a Taurus.

She's a Taurus, yes.

So what, so my son who's born main ninth is a Taurus.

Oh.

What's it like on the precipice of having this go out into the world? I'm sure you must know from what I've read of it, it's gonna change people's lives. And again, it's such, it's like you're sneaking the medicine in a treat. I love it. I love it, Rivey. That's what you're doing. You're sneaking the medicine in a treat. You're really, you got the pink cover. You have the material girl. You're talking about all these fashion things. I had no idea what they meant in the beginning, but I know people do. It's very, very cool. And for me personally, what it's signified is that this is really happening now.

This is really happening. The mainstream, the media, the worlds are colliding. And you can see this coming for a while, but we're really in it right now. So what's it like for you to kind of be like, really, you're gonna have a big part in this. I know you're humble. I know.

It's very exciting.

I funny you said that about sneaking, putting the medicine in a treat. I have been known throughout the writing process to describe this book as a trojan, my little pony. (laughing) It's like glitter and rainbows and like planet medicine.

Yeah, I mean, 'cause there's stuff in there, yeah.

There's stuff in there.

Talking about Carl Jung in the first few pages, right?

Yeah, I guess, yeah, I'm super excited. And I really, I, it's been, I am very humble about it to even say that I'm humble, sounds like strange, but.

I'm sitting here with her, she's humble. I can see what she's doing as she's saying that, so.

But no, again, I think that my favourite parts of the process of having it come out and having people read it have been the responses I've had from early readers, friends, mainly who are like, this has made me think completely differently about something, it's made me really question why I'm here and what I'm here to do. And I'm like, wow, it's working, it works. I have no idea. I just wrote what I needed to write.

Right.

I wanted to make it as entertaining as possible and just to be an expression and a kind of, wow, guys, look, here's everything I've learned, isn't this amazing?

Yeah, yeah.

But the fact that I've had that feedback already from people is just so fulfilling. So I hope that it, I hope that it, I hope that it's, when I first got the deal, I'm an Aries, super impatient. (laughs) And I think it's another reason I'm enjoyed being a journalist 'cause I'm like, love to be the first to know about something and the first to tell anyone about something. And when I first got the deal, it was back at the beginning of 2015. What was it? Yes, 2015. And I really wanted the book to be out like, at least within that year. 'Cause I'm like, this needs to be as soon as possible. Gotta be like, quickly get this out there.

'Cause otherwise it's gonna be over and like--

Yeah, it's done. The moment is passed. And now it ages over now. (laughs)

Yeah, exactly. And I'm actually really pleased that it took longer for it to come out 'cause I feel like people, the mainstream conversation is still very much catching up with it. To the point that in the UK, for example, where the conversation is not as advanced as it is in a city, thankfully, as progressive as New York, where I'm now based, obviously. There's been very little press. And I think people are still very kind of, oh, it's a little bit weird, isn't it? You know? So we'll see. But I think that I'm hopeful that they're, well, I mean, you're here. This is fabulous to be having a conversation like this with you. - Yeah.

And I think that there are journalists who are, perhaps because of the way the media has been recently subjugated, I'd say.

No, everything's fine. What are you talking about? Everything's fine. We're good.

But perhaps there is some, I'm hopeful that there are some more pioneering journalists like yourself who are really willing to go there with the message and actually talk about, look, see beyond the pink and the fluff and kind of get into the deeper message.

Don't call me a pioneering journalist. (laughs) No, I'm not joking.

What I was gonna say as you were saying, this is something that I have the privilege of seeing. Been a new media strategist as my day job for the past six or seven years. There is now a complete, I wouldn't even call it underground. There is an alternative consciousness media that exists that isn't like hippie, weirdo. No one can actually identify with it, but this is naturally evolved over the past five years. Aidan abetted by social media, aidan abetted by podcasts, all of these things, and it's a force to be reckoned with and it's past the point where it's gonna be pushed back down by any other media corporation or anything.

So that, I think when we're talking about kind of the divine or cosmic timing of your book, I mean, it really does feel timely.

It feels timely.

I'm sure you can sense that too. I mean, even in the past three to four months, I've seen this stuff ramped up. I've met in the past six months, 50 people who, I would put almost all of these people, like some of the best people I've ever met in my life. That's weird to me. Like, I meet a lot of people and there's a lot of cool people in it, but like, something is happening. This stuff is coalescing and I think this book is gonna be a gateway drug for a lot of people. And that to me is like, that's what we need more of. We have people talking about this stuff steeped in traditions and lineage. And if you wanna go to a meditation place and get indoctrinated in that, 'cause you're at that point in your life, and I don't see indoctrinated pejorative late.

That's cool, but we do need this stuff kind of coming from regular places. Like, I talk about, you know, American football and spirituality constantly because I think that those things aren't mutually exclusive 'cause none of this stuff is, and I'm hoping that people who read this are inspired to like really investigate some of these things, and you've given such a wide array of potential maps of the terrain that I'm sure people are gonna be able to.

Exactly, I wanted there to be really something for everybody, and I actually cut five chapters.

Oh really?

I filed 108,000 words.

So you know what's up, I get it. I get the little wink wink don't, don't think I missed that. I get it.

But I had to cut five chapters 'cause it was way more than the publisher thought people could probably handle. And one of the chapters was called rebranding the C words on cults, covens, and conspiracy theories. And it was really talking about how these three quite fearfully kind of like packaged ideas are actually coming very much into the mainstream consciousness, but as community.

Yes.

As kind of the truth and whistle blowing, you know, and it's like what we perceive before is for a fringe and kind of out there, and this is like, oh no, hidden, the occult.

Yes.

These are actually coming way more into the mainstream consciousness. Because of the darkness we're seeing in the world, I really do believe that there's enough surgeons of this seeking of the light to harmonize.

No, please don't.

Harmonize the overall terrain.

Yes, yes, I mean, this is my Donald Trump populist, globalist type of thing. I was one of probably the few people who didn't see it as a terribly catastrophic, I think he's the avatar for a hopefully dying way of thinking. I don't think we were probably not in our lifetimes, but, you know, maybe my sons, maybe his sons or kids, you know, we now have an opportunity. I look at, let's use Donald Trump as his avatar. I look at him like a vaccine, all right? If we're gonna get a vaccine, if we're gonna be immunized against something really vicious that would destroy the world, let's be clear, if this was just allowed to run rampant, mm, not good, not good in game there.

This gives all of us an opportunity to look at it in the face and be like, okay, we don't want that, like, we don't want that for ourselves, we don't want that for the planet, we don't want that for the kids. You know, I voted for Hillary. I was a Bernie supporter before that. I don't identify too much with the Democratic Party anymore, but one of the fears that I had of Hillary, and I woke up that day thinking she was gonna get elected. Like, me and my wife, you didn't, do you know? Did you know?

Do you know?

I went to bed at nine p.m. I was like, I can't even watch.

Oh, no, but when you woke up that morning, you knew, like, before, before the election day, like we're, I woke up, yeah, you know.

Well, I just, I just had had a sense, I think being British, I felt much more connected to the Brexit.

And the Brexit thing, oh my God, I know.

So I think the fact, I was so shocked about the Brexit.

Check out, that I think prepared me for, this is by no means a landslide for Hillary. I mean, seriously, I'm not even, I mean, and it could very easily go the other way. So it's kind of in that mindset.

You had it.

I was like, a lot of my friends, just totally, like, I was like, oh God, this is crazy. And I had a week, the first week after I was, I was subject to the same kind of vicissitudes that everyone else had, like just getting, oh my God, what he's doing, what, Muslim? Oh my God, what? After the first month, I kind of developed, I think a more healthier relationship to it. But what I, what I was gonna say about Hillary is, if Hillary was elected, and I like Hillary, there's things I don't like about her policy and what she does, I feel like we might have missed an opportunity to deal with this, like really, like Brexit, the same thing.

All of these things, like we, sometimes in this world, we need the shit in our face.

The sandpaper?

The sandpaper, exactly. You know, what's interesting now is there's not two camps, but two ways of reacting to this is, one is just this pessimistic, we're in a free fall, this shit is bad. The other, which I'm very encouraged to see, a growing number of people taking is like, okay, let's just build the shit we want. Like, let's not focus on this system that clearly ran out of gas, like, a long time ago, why don't we just start building community structures, paradigms that are actually gonna help? And I love what you're saying about the community and kind of this whole like, cold to, you know, but maybe it would have used negative terms before.

You know, TikTok haunt says something I love, which is the future of Buddha is the Sangha. It's the community. It is not some Jesus popping up from the ground and be like, I'm back, guys, you're cool, you're cool, fuck you.

Do what I say.

Right, so I do think that we're seeing this kind of communal emergence, this resonance between people, which we can't actually see with our eyes, but it's there and it's happening quicker and quicker. And I also look back to 2012. A lot of predictions at the end of the world. I do think it was the end of the world. I really do, I do think that the world we had been living in flipped a page. And I don't think many people have even realized at this point that that happened, but look back.

Oh yeah.

I mean, you're, I mean, it's crazy for us. Like we remember dial tones on phones. Like you remember, like when someone called you didn't know who was calling and you picked it up and you're like, oh shit. Like that doesn't exist anymore. So the world is moving so quickly. And I think we had this radical consciousness shift that people are still kind of reacting and responding to. And I think people who intuitively can kind of tune in to what's going on are a little buffered against some of these transitions. People who are still very much stuck in, this works the same it did in the 50s. My heart goes out to them because it is a very rough and rocky, scary situation.

But I don't think it has to be, so.

I agree. And I, yeah, I felt the same. I mean, coming out of the election that's used that example, I was kind of going around and I think I, I think actually to my detriment because I might have upset a few people kind of like, but then how's the time? Now this is like the opportunity.

You definitely upset people because I did too.

I really upset people and it's a bit like, oh, yeah, not too soon, too soon. Damn you, Mercury and Ares. (all laughing)

No, it's so true that I did the same thing. I had a podcast called Donald Trump in the future that came out the day after the election.

Oh my God.

And I actually got some really positive feedback for friends, but then some people were like, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Like this is the worst thing. I did a podcast with a guy who ran a column in the New York magazine called The Ethicists. And it was all about like ethical questions and I had a podcast with him and the entire podcast was just telling me how fucked we are. And I'm like, yeah, but, and he's like, no, this is bad. I'm like, it's not really a productive way to look at things, but I hear your point. Is there anything, I have three questions at the end that I ask.

Is there anything that I didn't, we didn't touch on that you'd like to touch on related to the book? Do you, anything else?

This has been really fascinating.

It's fun, right?

Yeah, all right. I have three questions that are quick at the end and then one larger type one. What's your favorite color?

Pink.

Oh, makes sense. What's your favorite number?

I've had me to think about it.

That's okay.

I think nine.

So nine is this thing. Nine's a very mystical number, 108, all of these things. I can't tell you how many times that pops up when I ask this question.

Really?

Very interesting. Three and nine seem to be the most. What is your favorite animal?

Cats.

Oh, that's great. Me too. My wife never listens to this part of the podcast. I'm a cat person too, even though we have a dog. Last question, out of the cat closet, exactly. Last question, what's a practical tip that has helped you in your life that you could share with people listening? It could be anything. This is the first thing that always comes to me and I don't want to sound like a downer and it's not meant to say that sound that way at all. I stopped drinking alcohol and I can't tell you the impact, the positive impact that has sat on every single aspect of my life, every single, 100% positive.

To the point I run an event series now called Club Soda.

Yeah, yeah. With be it so good, sober or debating abstinence. So I'm not 100% sober myself and I'm a part of the sober community. But for me, stopping drinking alcohol, it was just so practical and yet so profound in terms of just facilitating the daily, strong, true connection to who the fuck I am.

So Hippocrates basically said you are what you eat and alcohol would go in there. I find it very difficult to drink alcohol. I do it incredibly infrequently and typically almost always regret it. I am a daily cannabis consumer and I find those two things are also difficult to maintain together. I agree with you. I mean, I wouldn't, if you're someone who has integrated alcohol into your life in a way, but I mean, some of the substances that our culture has put up on the pedestal, whether it's alcohol, caffeine, sugar, salt, these things affect our consciousness and they absolutely put up filters on how we view and perceive reality.

And then I think the biggest thing what you're talking about here too, is like just try to recognize how you feel after you do it. And if you like it.

Exactly.

But if it's not working, reassess.

There is like, there's one situation where alcohol is, it feels to me like the appropriate substance to use and that is dancing in a field to like my favorite music. Then I'm like, I am so connected, I feel so connected to the cosmos that being out of my body in that way is like, this is feeding me on a different level. That situation happens maybe like once a year, twice from lucky. So like--

But that wasn't the sense. What you're talking about, what you just described there, let's think about where alcohol comes from, right? It's fruit that's rotted and turned alcoholic. That's in a field outside. That's where you'd find it. So that makes a lot of sense. Ruby, no, no, don't. You pointed at me. What do you want to say?

Well, no, it's very interesting. So I was, like last night again, was speaking to this woman about who, who's done a whole thing about the sugar detox. And she was talking about, well sugar is so rampant now in our diets and it's contributing to so many health problems. Like so many things go back to sugar. When you think about how we get sugar in nature, it's in a beehive. It's in the middle of a cactus. It's behind tree bark. It's very, very hard to come by. So the times that we would actually have that intense of a sweetness in our diet are like, so rare. It would be a lucky accident, actually, to come across it in nature.

Right. And you would be like--

And yet to every single can of anything in every supermarket aisle.

Not to mention, when we're talking about sugar specifically, it is the foundation upon which the slave trade was built. That is literally where all of this stuff came from. Like that and we talk about--

Oh God, synchronicity, yeah.

Ruby, this has been awesome.

So good.

I am definitely going to spread the gospel of your book and anything I can do truthfully to support you in the future, let me know. I'm happy to--

So rad, likewise.

This is awesome.

I can't wait to share this with my people.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thank you for listening past the music. You are my favorite type of person. One who listens past the music. How cool is Ruby? She's doing a ton of stuff. You actually may remember a previous guest, Biet Simkin. She does something called club soda with Biet. Every so often. I think it's quarterly in the New York area. So if you want to find out more about Ruby, go to the Numinous, check out her stuff, Google her. But more importantly, if you want to get her book, which I highly recommend you do, you can go to two places really easily that you can remember. There's syncpodcast.com and minepodnetwork.com/mysticalRuby.

That'll take you to her book, material, girl, mystical world, super awesome. That's it for this week. Reminder, if you want to support this show by pledging a small amount of money every month, $3. I think it's the lowest tier we got. Call that feel, that's the feel good about yourself tier. You can go to Patreon, that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/synchronicity and you can pledge, that's a really great way to help the show. Special thanks to Patrick Nemchik, who is an avid supporter of the show. One of the coolest people he chose to get the show out into the world tier on Patreon. And for that, he is awesome.

If you don't want to pledge in money units, that's also understandable and totally acceptable. Tell a friend, give it a rating on iTunes, whatever. I figure I got you here at the end of the episode, I can ask you to do some extra stuff. Thank you so much. I alluded to this in the intro. I think I'm gonna make this a two a week show. Got a lot of interviews, I'm eager to get out and I wanna do that, so we'll see how that goes. Thank you as always and I'll see you next week or sooner.