Ep. 90 - Turning Nothing Into A Something with Michael Phillip

Hi, I'm Kelly McLean, host of the Dow of Comedy Podcast on MindPod Network. Following the sudden death of my brother, I found myself in need of a major existential search of the meaning of life and death and everything in between. I turned to some unlikely authorities to help. Comedians. I've had the honor of interviewing some of the best comedians in the world, like Pete Holmes, star of Judd Apatow and HBO's Crashing, Daily Show creator Madeline Smithburg, Bert Kreischer the Machine, and podcasting guru Duncan Trussell. There is a living force in the universe that is completely in love with you.

It pines for you, and the more that you turn in its direction, the more synchronicities will happen in your life. My nana smoked a pack and half a salam a day and dropped it on her kitchen floor at the age of 80 on her way to Bingo. That's kind of what I'm going for. I believe that the world is kind of a mirror. I believe in time travel. I believe in magic. I'm a miracle. I'm a goddamn miracle. I'm a Christmas miracle. The podcast is available on mindpodnetwork.com and taopodcast.com, the Dow of Comedy, because every comedian is a secret sage. There's this reconnection with the fact that you're this crazy, you know, jewel of consciousness with free will and the ability to transmute nothing into an idea into a something.

This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. Welcome to episode 90 of Synchronicity. My guest this week is Michael Philip from Third Eyedrops, which is an amazing podcast. It's on Mindpod Network. Michael has quickly become one of my best friends. I know I say this all the time, but truthfully, I've met a lot of amazing people through the podcast and Michael is one of them. We've known each other for about a year. We finally met in person at the Mindwave event in LA earlier in March of this year. We're getting ready to do another event in New York City. You guys have been waiting for it. It's here.

There's going to be a Mindpod Network Live event in New York City, August 17th. That's a Thursday and it's going to be from 6 to 10 p.m. It's going to be a whole big panel of stuff. I'm really excited to let you guys know about some names that are going to be participating in this. It's going to be a pretty big thing. I'm really excited about it, as you can tell. All of your favorite Mindpod Network podcasters will be there, so don't worry about that. But there's some other cool people who will be stopping by too. I'm teasing that with this Michael Phillip podcast now. If you're here and you don't know that this is part of a double cast, which Michael and I recorded two podcasts back to back a few days ago, the first episode, the first part of this is on third eye drop.

Go check that out. If you're listening now, you don't know what I'm talking about, they technically stand alone. If you want it to jump in here, it's not like we cut it in the middle of a conversation. But go check out that one on third eye drops. Then come back here. If you haven't heard it yet, then you get the whole picture of what was going on in our conversation that day. Michael, truly one of the most gifted orators, thinkers, philosophers, you'll hear he's got a brilliant way of approaching all of this mysterious stuff from a very personal and authentic way in an authentic way. This concept of authenticity is something that I've been thinking about more and more.

And a previous guest on the podcast, Mikey Campman, went on kind of like a Twitter. I don't want to call it a rant. That sounds pejorative, but really just like drop some wisdom and some knowledge and some really cool thoughts on Twitter about being an authentic person and just dropping the bullshit, really just not trying to put on errors or masks or personas and just dropping it and being like, listen, I'm fucked up in this way. I'm dealing with this. It's hard. You know, this is what I'm good at. But just being straight up honest about as much as you can in all of your interactions in life. And that something that emerges in this podcast conversation with Michael is that's what we feel like we're doing with the podcast.

Now, obviously podcasting and just putting out an audio file into the ether could be anything, right? Like we all know of like serial the podcast. There's plenty of different ways to do this. But I think one of the things that's kind of uniting the people on MindPod network is this ability to kind of approach whatever they're dealing with in their lives or what we're dealing collectively with in an authentic way. And that's the only qualifying factor. And I've been thinking more and more as we put together these live events and you know, get to know each other better as a collective here. What is the unifying factor?

And to me, it is that idea of authenticity. It's a weird word, right? And we can play tricks on ourselves and we can think we're being authentic and we're not and then we can discover it later. That's okay. That's kind of the whole begin again thing. When you notice you're playing a game with yourself, you know, you're like, okay, I'm playing a game with myself. Let me hit the reset button, see what's really going on and see if I can approach it in a healthy way. So that's kind of what's going on. Also, this event, I know I'm jumping back and forth here, we're playing around with a few names, but it is looking like the title of this event, August 17th, there'll be links to all this stuff.

You'll get a month before. So in July, stay tuned for that. All the links don't worry. I'm not going to leave you hanging. We're looking at like well being in the modern age. And originally, just some here's some background information for people who will be attending this. But spirituality in the modern age, which has got a lovely little acronym, SITMA. But spirituality is such a loaded word. It is stigmatized beyond belief. It means so many different things to so many different people, depending on your perspective, depending on where you grew up and how you grew up, you know, it's just a very loaded word.

And Michael and I talk about this a lot because we try to figure out how to not let language get in the way of the actual essence of what we think we're talking about or what we're interested in. So we get into some, you know, explanations and explorations related to that. I don't have much else to say, really. This conversation stands on its own. Michael just truly, go check out Third Eye Drops if you haven't. Get in the group on Facebook. Check out his Facebook page. He's just a very talented guy. I'm looking forward to when he is doing this podcasting thing and his explorations full time. That's going to be a really magical time for him and I think for everyone else too.

A massive thanks, I have to say. It's been taking off the Patreon patrons. Thank you. There's been an influx. I think we're up to like 15 or 16 now, just launched it not too long ago, so I'm very happy with that. A reminder, one of the things you can get if you support on Patreon on a certain level become a patron of this show, you can get all the music you hear in any episode ever. And if there's something I link to a Dropbox file and if it's not there, you can say, "Hey, I like this. Where is it?" And I will send it to you. I'm also going to be releasing a ton of new music, starting in the fall, some official stuff, try to get it on iTunes and Spotify, all of these places.

I'm coming out of my cocoon, so to speak, and I'm really going to be releasing a lot of music because I just love doing it. I love it. It's going to be electronic stuff, I'm picking up the guitar lately, I'm recording stuff, I'm not letting these things just kind of stay in the confines of my head or my personal space. So, if you like music and you're like, "Why music? Stay tuned for that." So, that's it. We're going to get right to it without further ado. Let me get this up. I said we're going to get right to it. I've just talked for how long. Let's see the recorder here. A good six, seven minutes.

So when I say we're going to get right to it, it's relatively speaking to the ones that are like 15, 20 minutes in shows I'm talking about, without further ado, here is Michael Philip. And I mean, right off the bat, I had this feeling earlier today where I started to really consider the whole cliche money doesn't buy happiness statement. This idea that because now that I'm super wealthy, I can still dwell on all of the existential voids that I haven't figured out a way how to transmit all of my fiat through the liminal boundary between here and my existential searching. Yeah. Well, the money doesn't buy happiness thing.

I mean, the thing we're rolling now, we started a little bit ago, I just decided, we'll fade it in. It'll be nice. It'll be music before it. The money doesn't buy happiness axiom like that idea. I think the study that I usually throw about, I don't know if it's totally accurate, it's to a point, like if you make in the western world $70,000 or something, you're pretty much good. And then every increase of like a million dollars or something has only a marginal, it's like diminishing returns. It really doesn't make you happier, but you still do need base level things for most people. So you're not fearful, which is the immediate thing that pops up.

And I know, you know, not everyone I know has had the privilege of being wealthy their entire life and most of the people I know have oscillated, you know, in varying degrees of dramatic stuff. So people can relate to this is what I'm saying is when you have money, you're comfortable, you can maybe make up problems or things to be upset about and you'll fill your space with that. But when you don't have money and your immediate needs aren't being met and the responsibility and pressure start to creep in, it is a damn it's so fucking hard to like maintain any sense of equilibrium. Even though that's when you could benefit from the most, which is speaking of this.

And I think this is a great kind of jumping off point for this. I found to be particularly troubling, you know, when the shit hits the fan, how do you deal with it? But I think from your perspective and what your situation is is also fascinating and probably equally frustrating in a different way, which is you have the security of a job that you're good at, you've had, it pays well, you know what you're doing, but you also have third eye drops. You also are part of MindPod Network, you have these other avenues that are maybe a little less off, they're off the beaten path, but still exist as real possibilities, maybe not for you to become a millionaire tomorrow, but to say that no, I'm sorry, I'm undermining our goals, but truthfully, like that you could realistically make a living and hit that base level of happiness that we were talking about through things that you love to do, like this is what your passion is.

You love doing the shit, you have everyone I know through MindPod Network, pitched me more ideas in a short period of time of stuff you've been thinking about relative to the podcasting space, to just like a content space and that's so what I can tell. You care about this shit. So like we're coming at it from different angles, what are we trying to get out of here? Let's figure this out together. Well, I mean, I think the easiest way to talk about it is, you know, everybody knows about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like that pyramid shaped thing, or at the bottom, you have your physiological needs, your safety needs, your, you know, emotional relationship needs, all of that kind of stuff.

But I remember at the top of the pyramid is self actualization. Right. That's amazing. So if you're, yeah, of course with a day job and with, you know, corporeal things and means you can build those base layers really significantly and take care of those. But that capstone, there's not a direct line there, right? There's not a direct line between being financially comfortable and achieving self actualization. Like, yes, you may argue that having those means makes creating that capstone and constructing that sort of existential capstone more realistic and you might be able to start to pull things together to start beginning that construction project.

But it's still a separate project, you know, it's still something. And I think that dichotomy is very obvious in my own life. You know, I don't feel a direct connection between the two most of the time. And it feels strange to be putting the capstone of that engine of self actualization, which is third eyedrops, which is the creative stuff on top of something else. It's just like, it would, you know, it's like, it's like putting like a catch up frosting on top of a chocolate cake or something. It's just like, what the fuck are you doing? These two things don't go together, you know? But are related in the sense that they're both food, maybe just not meant to be specifically, you know, conjoined in a delicacy, which sounds truly disgusting.

I love chocolate cake. And you made it seem. That's good. It sounds bad. Pretty proud of pulling that one out of it either. It sounds so gross. And I love chocolate cake. And I think that, you know, that that's where, that's where a lot of, you know, and this feeds back into this other hour of talking that no one I just did on my show, but I think that feeds into this postmodern angst that is the hallmark of our generation, right? I think we are as, as generations go on, of course, this is a giant sweeping statement. But I think our challenge is that we are firmly at this self actualization point, we're at this point where we want to cut through the shit and get straight to that, like millennials by and large are looking for something, like the typical vessels for meaning that people we're, we're filling themselves with are granting us diminishing returns, right?

I mean, you see people leaving traditional religions and droves, you see people, more people going to school, but more people dropping out, you see, you know, I'm sure unfortunately things like, like certain diseases, certain mental illnesses on the rise. I think there's this, there is this persistent angst that, you know, think of the statistic that I'm sure everybody's heard, then the new average for different careers is like six or seven careers, right? That people go through in a lifetime these days, it's bonkers, that's clearly pointing to people being uncomfortable and having that kind of dull thing, propelling them forward or at least jostling them out of their current situation enough that it's just extremely uncomfortable to remain there.

And I think that's what all of this is pointing to. And I think my own, you know, journey is leading me toward is that, is that fuck it all? I got to work on the self actualization. It's an it is well, it's an uncomfortable truth. And it's funny you mentioned Maslow and his self actualization because I remember in high school in psychology, you know, it's not paying attention to a tremendous amount of things in high school, but I remember being like self actualization, like that is a brilliant way of kind of talking about something that I think is potential of everyone. And I think at points I had experienced Maslow also had, what was his other famous term that I'm forgetting right now, peak experiences, right?

And that also Maslow, where these experiences that kind of transcend our regular level of reality. So, you know, epiphanies, synchronicities could fall on your peak experiences passage, maybe exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So it's funny you mentioned that. And then yeah, like how do we get, how do we get, and it's inconvenient, right? Isn't it? It's two different paths. We're on right now, right? Everyone never went professionally to the traditional office. I'm not never. I did it for a little bit and I hated it. And I said, "Fuck it. I'm going to work as hard as possible so I don't have to do that."

Which was fraught with just as many challenges and probably somewhat more if I would have went to an office job or just said, "I'm going to work for this company." But we're at the same place, we're being forced to confront what we really want to do and what really means a lot to us, even if it doesn't fit right now into this cultural paradigm that says, "Hey, you have avenues to making money. You have avenues for being comfortable. You have avenues for really having every need that a human could want physiologically." Like you said, met at any point in time. Like we have everything. We're at the point where we can try things like ice baths or meditations or ayahuasca or whatever it is we want to try.

This is at our fingertips literally. So how, not ayahuasca, I don't have ayahuasca, I just want to be clear with it. There's no ayahuasca in my house. If there is, you'll be the person nobody. But, truthfully, we're at this point where we're all having to confront this angst you're talking about and it's this maybe cognitive dissonance that a lot of us live in where there's something missing. We're not pursuing what our inner journey is. We're not following our bliss to go back to the Campbellian stuff. Why do you think we at these different points are being asked to confront this particular truth or what feels like a truth that is outside of us in some ways, right?

What the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a societal issue. I mean, our society and our economy is built off of the backs of a few people's ideas and the rest of us are basically consciousness batteries for the rest of those people, right? It's like you're a worker bee for all of these kind of large initiatives on the part of society, you know, and that was much more true earlier in the 20th century during the industrial revolution, but it's still totally true. I mean, the vast majority of people, I'm sure, work for a huge Fortune 500 conglomerate type companies with thousands and thousands of employees.

And when you're working in that kind of a paradigm, that's probably more often than not. I don't think that self-actualization in that type of a lifestyle are mutually exclusive. I totally think there are some people who are really happy in that paradigm and maybe I could be happy in that paradigm under the right circumstances, but there's a certain something innate within self-actualization requires self-confrontation, right? It requires the deep parts of yourself and really knowing yourself and heading in a direction mindfully propelled by your own free will, not being pulled along by the forces of society and by what other people want for you, but achieving and watering the garden of your own ideal self, of your own watering your potential until it feels like it's blossoming.

And we're also speaking before about dissonance, just the gut feeling of knowing when something is off versus the idea of, I guess we can call it some sort of internal harmony or harmony that reverberates from the inside out. And I think it's very obvious when you're partaking in activities that do one or the other, you know, hugging your son an obvious example, contributing to the community surrounding synchronicity or in my case, third eye drops, obvious example, working on creative projects, building something for the betterment of ourselves and the betterment for the people that would partake in those things, definitely harmonizing.

It's really clear what they are. And it's also really clear when you get that pit in your stomach when it's not something that's contributing to that ultimate reality. And I guess a real quick caveat is, as you and I know, sometimes it's hard to go through those exercises of doing those things. Sometimes finishing that podcast intro is like you'd rather, you know, like sit on, you just rather like dump out a whole, a whole case of thumbtacks and just like roll around in it or something. I can't stand listening to my fucking voice anymore, you know, or whatever. And, or you just, whatever the case may be, you get down on yourself or something.

You're not needing a goal or not, not feeling like things are going in the direction you want them to go as quickly. So you do, you do have to fight through those plateaus and, and navigate those obstacles, but you have to know, you know, your higher self has to know that this is in pursuit of that, um, sustained harmony that I'm after. That's right. That's right. And that's tricky. That can be tricky. And what you're talking about sounds a lot like what Chogem Trump, uh, what he had in mind when he talked about Chambala, this kind of enlightened society that was this creative kind of ever supportive thing and not that it was going to be kind of this utopian nothing is ever wrong, even though it had aspects of that thinking, but that it was going to be a community and a world community that could support what's going on.

It sounds very culty, but it really could be, that could mean anything. Any permutation where that's happening, whatever that looks like is okay, whether that involves technology, you know, going back to the earth and farming sustain, it doesn't matter. It's just whatever is serving that greater kind of evolutionarily evolutionary call towards harmony. That does feel like kind of the emerging game, but it also does feel as you know, and everyone else knows like we're still kind of like the 50s wasn't that long ago. That's what we were using as the term, you know, I think in the other one for like so long ago, like the 50s, you know, like our grandparents, you know, great grandparents, whatever it is, that was the 50s.

That's not that long. It was 60 something years ago, but yet when we think about the progress that's being made just like doesn't 2005 feel like forever ago, like go look at a recording, go look at a YouTube thing or something or 2005, you'll be like, holy shit. Well, it truly was another universe, this one because there was no iPhone in 2005. Think about that, the iPhone came out in 2007. I worked at an Apple store when it came out. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, God. I mean, seriously, seriously, try to consider your life before smartphones. It's so wildly different. Let's talk about smartphones for a little bit.

Let's talk about smartphones because I had something, so as people know who listen to this podcast, I had kind of my breaking point around the beginning of June, surrounding this creative course, but just my general direction relative to everything that I do. And one thing that became immediately clear and my wife also pointed it out is that as I got more and more upset and despondent and kind of hopeless, I spent more and more time on my phone. And I get depressed, I get down on myself, but I don't say this is a bragging type of thing very infrequently, but when it happens, it hits me like a ton of bricks and it really takes a tremendous amount of internal fortitude to kind of claw myself and I have an amazing support system.

I'll point that out. But what I noticed, I bring that up because I know when it happens, it's such a dis, it's like if you were covered in honey all of a sudden, you'd be like, what the, what the, this, I remember what it feels like to feel in honey because that shit was weird and it felt gross and I couldn't get off. Disphoric rotten honey. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So I just remember being glued to my phone, like normally if I'm on my phone and I'm spending too much time, I'll be like, oh, I got to go on Twitter. Oh, I got to check my mentions. Oh, I got to go to Instagram. Oh, maybe I'll do an Instagram story.

Oh, I'll go to Facebook. Oh, I'll listen to a podcast. It's like this kind of constant one thing to another, but what was happening is I got more and more upset is I just kept feeling the impulse to go away from the feeling, go into the phone, go away from the feeling, go into the phone and I'm like, holy shit. This is probably what's happening at a, you know, lower my, under my conscious radar. A lot and not just to me. And that was kind of like a frightening moment. And I've definitely tried to be more mindful since then. This was a few days ago of how I'm using it, but I also am a believer and I think you are too, that these things are neutral at their core, right?

We can use the phone to save someone's life, you know, make a call or let someone know that they shouldn't kill themselves or we can use it to totally drill ourselves into a depressive hole. So I don't know, it just felt like this overwhelming tendency to focus into this device as another way of like kind of engaging consciousness. And it was just like, Oh, shit. What the fuck? Yes. Yes. Lots of thoughts there. Lots of thoughts there. One, yes, I agree. It's inherently neutral, but it's also packed with a ton of baggage and a ton of things that people want you to do, right? So again, we're getting into this scenario where people want to use you as a means for something, right?

And they use you for attention for dollars for whatever the case may be, right? So that's a reality. I mean, that is part of that as well. And this is also another classic example of looking outside for answers, right? Right. When you know in your gut, when you've got to deal with something or when you're procrastinating on something or when something's making you feel like shit, but still the easiest way to smash it down is with a lot of pretty noises and colors and dopamine bumps. And that's what these things are, man. They're an engine for candy coated information. You know, they are that that's what they are.

And that's what they're good at. And that's what the people making content and putting it in front of you are good at that. I mean, that to an extent, that's what we do, right? I know. I know. That's what we do. So don't you think there's a qualifying difference in terms of like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there are certainly levels there. And you know, we talked again recently about the low hanging fruit and all of the people out to appeal to your base or natures out there and, you know, promising you the moon and the stars for like some low price or whatever. And that is rampant, obviously.

So that's another challenge. But I think too, we're also realizing the limitations of our bandwidth as people through these things, you know, because it's so easy to get overwhelmed. It just overwhelms you, man. I do it too. I go through this. If I could, if I could fast forward my own life, I'd probably puke. If I could just gain a third person perspective and fast forward my life, it'd be a series of my, you know, head going down, pacing around the house, head going back down to the phone, pacing around the house, eating something. I mean, we're like, you know, one, one brief glimmer of a hope.

Like, oh my God, I did pushups or something like something like that. But yeah, it's, I mean, more often than not, man, it's, it's like pulling teeth and it gets to that I walk myself right up to the edge of, of doing nothing and being a complete sack of shit. You know what I'm saying? I walk right up to the edge and like, and now I'll do it, you know, like right, right when it's almost too late or right when it's right, whatever. And I've, I have been that way, but I am trying to work on that. Me too. And I think technology has both exacerbated that and helped that. Well, and then I also try, I mean, 100% agree with every single thing you're saying and walking up to the edge specifically, I mean, you're, you, you seem a lot healthier than me, but that's also how I approach my diet.

Like there's a, there's a limit where I hit with my body. I'm like, all right, fatty, you've hit the time where you can't get any fat in this because this is disgusting. Like we all know what's going on here. This can't be okay. And then I'll work out like seriously for like a month, then be like, all right, back to the weight where I can eat like shit again. Like that's literally like the script that's going on in my head and once in a while I'll transcend and be like, you know what? Maybe I shouldn't be so gross and I'll really sustain something, which I've done now for a decent amount of time.

The point is this is, this is a tendency that I think isn't human nature. A lot of us would look at this and say, Hey, it's our nature to crave these things, to engage with them in a way as a distracting thing. And I don't think that's really what's going on. I do think we're dealing exactly with what you're talking about this candy coated. Like the reason I love McDonald's, even though I know it is the worst possible thing I could potentially ever put in my body and call it food, man, those fries. But this is what I'm saying like, dude, I have the childhood psychology aspect of them giving me toys when I really was had no defenses against this shit.

I have the food scientists engineering specific textures and flavors to trigger every possible like dopamine rush I could get when I eat it. And I have all of these other things, you know, working in to create this perfect storm events. What you're describing is totally true. I noticed this with my phone, whether it's a platform for social interaction, where our awareness is kind of co-opted and commoditized, or it's a game, like I started playing Sim City three weeks ago. Holy shit, I can't stop playing Sim City, but it was becoming a destructive force, not that like I was spending all my time doing it, but I was spending my time playing it rather than dealing with some serious shit I had to deal with.

So that line and being aware that this stuff is going on, even when we don't have these dramatic events, like this is a big fucking thing. And like, I like that you bring up like to an extent, we're talking about this, and this is like, this is like the behind the scenes, mine pod network stuff, but like we're talking about going to advertisers, we're talking about figuring out how do we get sponsorship. And we ask ourselves these questions all the time, like, do we just try to go after people who are flooding the space? We want to make sure that the people were going after first and foremost, have some inherent value to the audience who would be, we don't want to just be like, hey, we have this bucket of people, fuck them, let's feed them this shit, because we can get paid to do it.

Because what we're talking about, what you're talking about a third eyedrops, what everyone else is talking about on their podcast is, how do we get these tools or inner resources or uncover really is the better term. These inner resources to make us feel okay with what we have and where we are more importantly. And as we figure it out and we talk about it on our podcast and figure out what paradigm we want to live in, like, I just think like it would behoove us always to reflect on the intention behind this stuff. And to me, like one of the reasons I consider one of my best friends here in a very short period of time is like, the intention to help other people as we're helping ourselves as the primary motivator for why we're doing this is the qualifying difference than someone who's starting a podcast or doing something, any business endeavor where it's to make money.

And maybe it's to make money to fulfill their personal needs. So they feel comfortable and they feel safe and secure. I've been on both ends of the spectrum. I felt safe and secure, been miserable and happy on both of them. At this point, I firmly know that like, I want to help other people so my life can feel like it has like a good amount of meaning, whatever that means, that could be foolishly optimistic. But that's what it is. And I know for you too. I mean, like how do you, when you think about this stuff, obviously we wish we could snap our fingers and just like make a lot of money from doing what we love.

What do you think is kind of the operating system that's running under your level of consciousness that's like having us go through these kind of trials and tribulations to kind of eke out what we want to do here? I think it's so the underlying motivator behind why we're doing the things we're doing. I think there's a lot going on. I mean, I think it's a pretty stochastic arena of influences. But I think the thing that we need to anchor ourselves to, both you and me personally, but also people in general, is remembering the amount of power you wield as an individual with free will. I mean, you can literally, I was reading a study about how doing mindfulness meditation literally shrinks your amygdala, like it shrinks it physically.

Like, think about the fact that you have the ability to shrink or grow the areas of your brain that like these things we're talking about, right? And every time you're engaging in feeding one of those like base level desires, we're giving it fuel literally, we're literally growing that part of ourselves, which has all sorts of reverberating effects throughout our biology and our mind and all, you know, whatever. And then it manifests into reality because we did or didn't do a thing, right? And it's just so much power. And I think there are a handful of things you can do to come back into contact with that power.

Those peak experiences are key. I mean, those peak experiences that you alluded to earlier, I mean, have you ever felt more existentially powerful on like the right dose of like psilocybin? Because I don't, I haven't been that, I mean, I mean, yeah, you go through something, you're a terrified little nothing for a while in the face of the all the other the the this torrent of information that will completely and utterly melt everything you've got every dictionary you hold inside your mind to try to place meaning on you that will all get melted away. But in the face of that, in the reintegration period afterward, there's this reconnection with the fact that you're this crazy, you know, jewel of of consciousness with free will and the ability to transmute nothing into an idea into a something, you know, and that right there is just like that that right there is it and we've all got that we've all got that, you know, and every time I come back into contact with that, it's so reaffirming.

It's so motivating, you know, and there's a lot of people like who who who rally around that man, like that's that's what mine pod network is is built around is is really that right this this idea that we're all on this, you know, quest for for meaning for mindfulness of self actualization, self exploration, all of the stuff and it's it's right there and it's simple. It's not it's not it's not making a career out of your passion like yeah sure that's that's an eventual step on that, but it's like, it's whatever you want it to be it's taking control in the moment it's putting your hands in the steering wheel and making a mindful decision to sit down and meditate or not eat that thing or do the cold shower or do the dose or jump out of the airplane or whatever it's like it's those moments where you take control.

That's right. Right. It's it's where you man the helm, not somebody else not like letting the the salty sugar rush of civilization like just, you know, we're we're buoyant on top of that shit. We're going to float downstream because there's so much there, right? It's easy to do it's easy to do you can you can get those first three levels a lot of times of that hierarchy of needs just by just by going limp in this civilization. We're lucky in that respect, but you never gonna get you never gonna get up to the top of the pyramid that way and and eventually you're gonna fucking hate yourself if you if you operate that way.

I know I do it's like it's like a daily microcosm version of that battle. You know, well, let me jump off that analogy, which is fucking amazing, which is buoyancy of salt of the culture that we can float on, which is really the tendency. If you just lay about the culture or culture around you will as Terrence McKenna put it again was the cudgel, right? It'll beat you down and you'll just flow along this stream. But where the really good stuff is is below the surface, you gotta go deeper, right? You're using a pyramid, which is another symbol I fucking love, but I'll let's use the the the symbology of the unconscious right here we go and it's reverse and it's upside down.

My point is is that when you go underneath, you have to use your muscles and it's way more effort and you're probably your eyes are gonna hurt. It's salty. We know that they're salt in it. That's why we're floating. It's gonna be kind of a struggle, but when you get there, there's something there and that's something there if we want to call it meaning, if we want to call it fulfillment, if we want to call it unconditional level, we want to call it just like, you know, a nice sensation of warmth. We want to call it enlightenment, whatever it is, it does exist, but it exists within us, which is why this and I've heard you talk about this a lot on your podcast.

This idea of kind of like self-help culture that we have to go somewhere else to get these things that they exist outside of us that we don't have kind of this inner agency and this idea of doing things and this I remember specifically coming up when we were talking about Donald Trump, like right after he got elected, you and I were saying similar things, which was not the popular opinion, which was, this doesn't really change your day-to-day reality so much, totally admitting that this is gonna change everyone's reality. Some people more than others, day one, not like being like, oh, this isn't gonna affect things if you're an immigrant or if you're at all these other things, Muslim or something else, but that when you wake up every day, you still have the ability to make the choices you wanna make in any capacity and recognizing like when you're on a macro dose or a heroic dose that you're nothing and that everything is interconnected and you aren't even you and the self doesn't even exist, well that is terrifying, typically at first, that's our reaction to it, it's also the most liberating thing possible.

It also gives you tremendous amount of freedom to operate in any direction you want and I think at this point to say that like the meaning of life, what's the meaning of life, I don't view that as a difficult question at this point, I'd be curious to hear if I ask you that question, what do you think the meaning of life is though? Well again, you know, we're in this situation where we're oversaturated with ideas about the answer to that question, right, I mean, is it to procreate, is it to get married and be financially successful, is it to live a good life and be a good Christian, is it a mixture of those things, is it, am I born in India of the, you know, of a low class where it's supposed to be my job to wash toilets, am I, you know, it's like, I mean, pick your poison and most of us aren't in that linear of a path where in this path of like fragmented splinters of ideas, which makes things that much more complicated, right, which again, what's the onus on us to really sit down and decide and do the exercise of deciding what the meaning of our life is, right, and if you don't believe you've got free will, you're completely fucked, if you're if you're in the materialist camp of that, you're a slave to all of your biological hormonal, you know, predilections, then you're, then that's what you are, you're a slave to your endocrine system, and that's it, you know, but I can't believe that I can't operate according to that, if you can somehow twist all of that into I decided to start a podcast, I decided to do these things, then I'm just not, you can see reality on a deeper level than I can, but but yeah, I mean, I think, I think one thing that everybody can fundamentally agree on is that we have some really unique capacity as human beings, and one of them that we we already talked about in the pre, you know, on my show, and we hinted at here is creativity, man, you have the ability to do a magical act and you you can pluck on you can pluck something out of nothing, and you have all of the tools physically, mentally, whatever to do that doesn't matter if you're not a great artist, I'm not I can't draw I'm not great at drawing pictures, but you know, you just you do something you fucking do something and start there like if you're if you're doing something and you're down a path, you're gonna see the light you're supposed to be going toward if you're just sitting there refusing to get started, well, then the point of your life is to get started, you know, that that's the point of your life, right, and then you'll know and then you'll know the next thing and you'll know the next thing, it's the only thing and then this let's let's totally fuck with that and play devil's advocate is when you start doing things, sometimes actually doing things and knowing things and learning things all ultimately lead you back to this point where you don't know shit and that's a very interesting paradox that happens almost every time you start trying to stack knowledge on top of each other, right, that's on top of itself.

I love knowing things just to be clear if that's I if that's not clear to listeners of this podcast at this point, I love knowing about things I think it's knowing about things gives you a relational kind of not advantage but ability to connect with people in a wide spectrum of areas like I love that I can talk NFL stuff with people I love that I can talk Rudolph Steiner with people I love that I could talk psychedelics, however, this knowledge ultimately can get in the way if we start intellectualizing it or identifying it as conceptual things rather than just experientially putting into practice what we uncover and this is the whole socratic thing that I love this is the fate this is my favorite thing that Plato ever wrote about Socrates is that learning and discovering things is really remembering it's not that we go out there to get something else and bring it into ourselves even though you and I both use that language all the time and when we're talking about dualistic universe that is what we're talking about but really that this stuff is in us that it already exists and that in many ways and I think Moody went into this on your podcast to a little bit that we're playing out our own narratives here we're writing this story whether we realize it or not at a quantum Deepak Choprian kind of nonsensical metaphysical level that's what we're doing we literally shape our reality whether we believe it or not I don't know why at least in my life maybe you can relate to this when really shitty things happen to me there's enough people around me and I have the ability to latch on to the good in life that always pulls me out of it I'm so grateful and happy for that to me that is where I base my kind of what this world is it stems from that and I wonder how if someone experientially was experiencing the opposite so when they hit their lows they don't feel like they had that level of support whether it's financial or familial or social or whatever those people I've noticed I mean go throughout history those people often come out with the most tremendous insights of out of anyone the people with the least the people without the myriad amounts of choices and decisions to be made and it doesn't mean that we can't achieve that with all these things but it means like there's no situation that eliminates the possibility that you get to create your own reality and that goes from like the Tibetan people who are getting imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese who are like now I love you I wish you well like there's no situation in life and it's just amazing to me how you know we forget that we talk about this so much I forget this 70% of the day truthfully like 70% of the day I think I'm at like the will of the universe and things are happening because this person's an asshole like that's that's truthfully how I consciously perceive the world so you know what what are some of the things I guess in in your life that have helped you remember that at times when you really can need to remember it yeah I mean I like you and I tend to be more optimistic I tend to think people have good intentions I tend to think that people trust people you know I mean there there's I mean I tell people about ideas that maybe I shouldn't tell them right let information out that maybe I shouldn't let out but that's just that is the way that I am for whatever reason and I don't know I don't know if that's nature or nurture or combination of both I mean I can see both I had early tribulation in my life and I had I was lucky for the vast majority of things in my early life so I don't know where that stems from or how that perspective has emerged and I think I don't want to presume anything about anyone else and tell them like fucking suck it up and get over the shitty things that happen to them because I don't know what that's like but I mean look at look at the the stories though of rock bottom like there's so many people that have been at complete an utter rock bottom where they're just like fuck it I give up I'm a heroin addict I'm a whatever I mean fill in the blank I have PTSD I tried to kill myself whatever and there are plenty examples of people that went through the closest approximation of hell in existence and now they're doing wonderfully right you know and and again you know I think I think if you're at that sort of a juncture in your life all you should never you shouldn't sit there and say I don't see a path there I don't see a right there's no there's no connection between where I'm at and in that ideal situation and it again comes down to taking action I guess you know I don't know it's like when you're stuck somewhere you're never going to get out of it by just sitting still right you gotta start walking in a direction well and it's also this idea of impermanence I think also really helps at that point so you always whatever state you're in knowing that it will pass at some point and just remembering that maybe you don't maybe if you're like me like if you're really angry or you're upset and you have that thought like everything is impermanent my natural response will be fuck that doesn't mean shit to me so like I'm not saying you just remember it and all will be well but over time knowing that like as angry as you get or as upset as you get or as sad as you get it eventually passes and that also means that as happy as you get as ecstatic as you get as blissed out as you get that passes to and neither of them are that big of a deal and trying to kind of like swing the pendulum as it goes back and forth and this is the like the idea of karma right as it goes back and forth and you have this really shitty experience maybe it goes to a really positive experience I think the idea is to allow the experiences and situations to happen around you but get that pendulum to not swing as far in either direction and your experiences can be just as diverse and just as rangey but just to know that internally your reaction to them and how you respond to them is kind of still to a certain point and the only reference point I can give to this shit is me watching dolphins games 10 years ago I would have lost my fucking shit every single time I'd be upset for a month after each loss now literally after the game is over one minute I'm done I don't I cannot expend the same amount of energy so I'm looking forward to the point where I figure out how to do that with everything in life because then I'll be telling everyone but I do think what you alluded to at the beginning this is for us as individuals and then collectively to figure out it's that's how this works yeah man well what okay let me ask you this what we had a we had a cool conversation at the mind wave event in LA towards the end of the night where we were talking I think I was talking about Bartos States and reincarnation I was telling you about I think you had already saw the I recommended the book about the turt what was his name turton fearless oh oh yeah I got it and I never read it it is that one's my that's my move I get a book and I'm like hmm so glad to have this book that's my move I have a whole library of books that have not even been cracked or have been cracked like past the preface and I'm like yeah I'll get to it later but like what do you think about these more kind of fantastical aspects of what we hear in these mystical traditions or anything like people walking through walls people pulling out de keenies scrolls from mountains and reading them like how do you relate to that type of stuff because correct me if I'm wrong since I've known you maybe this is incorrect I feel like you're willing to believe many different things in the metaphysical or esoteric realm but you also have this sense of practicality where you're like you know I want to see some level of evidence that this isn't total bullshit so where do you fall where do you would you say you fall on the spectrum of I'll believe anything to know I only see what I believe with my own two eyes and all that where are you on the spectrum now where do you sense your moving I'm straddling the center man I really am I'm really straddling the center because it's there's such a tremendous opportunity for confirmation bias and fuckery and taking advantage of people with anything that places you in some sort of hierarchically superior position to someone else clearly having supernatural powers puts you in a little bit of a a little bit of an elevated position compared to people or does it or does it that's the question it does I think it does I mean that I mean Phil even if you're okay even if you're a known charlatan like a magician right people know when they go to a magic show they're they're not seeing something real but yet David Blaine still makes millions of dollars right so if there was a real David Blaine who and that guy's pretty he's pretty goddamn sensational and really be an amazing so maybe maybe he is tapping into some who knows but yeah I mean you know what are you gonna do like you you hear a story about somebody and are you just gonna go like prostrate yourself at their feet immediately I don't understand how anybody could come to that conclusion especially now with all that we know however it certainly seems like a lot of people are extraordinarily eager to do that because you know you just see all of these media channels and you see these books and these like talk show psychics and all of these things where you know that it it can't all be real and in fact it's probably knowingly not real or these people have to like come completely to their confirmation bias right where they're like they you know we're talking about this before you have an interesting dream or you feel like you encountered some sort of otherworldly entity in your dream you could just assume you really did and you really came into contact with you know the McKinney and UFO or the the dreaming emissary or God or whatever and now you're pretty goddamn special because the most people haven't done that or you could come out of that experience and say hmm that was odd I wonder if I experienced some part of my own subconscious or some part of my ego or you know if it was just some crazy dream that didn't mean anything like there there there's so many different ways to go with it so to me I just you know I'm firmly in the the playful camp I'm in the the Robert Anton Wilsonian belief is the death of intelligence camp where you got to engage with all this stuff and play with it and try it for yourself and see what works and what doesn't work and what does resonate and what doesn't and leave behind the shit that doesn't or seems too sketchy and dig deeper into the stuff that does right and I mean that couldn't be said any better in terms of like that's what the Buddha basically said he said don't take my word for it don't take anyone's word for it take your direct experience take your own inner faculties pass it through there and see if that is going to ultimately change your reality and the the reason I said I you know interjecting said does it place you above people if you have supernatural powers so the general thinking from the mystics and saints of the world's people who had been written about did magical things most of the time those types of things whether you're a David Blan or just a person they're viewed as hindrances because if you suddenly have the power to psychically spy on someone or remote view or walk through a wall or be in two places or once or do all of these things in the dualistic universe you have some level of knowledge of how things work right you've got these special skills somehow to be wasting it on like parlor tricks or some you know I'm gonna egoically elevate myself would be a very foolish thing to do so the idea is that many of the people who maybe can do these things wouldn't a talk about it in public or be really have any desire to do it because this shit is more of an illusion than some playground where we can kind of do crazy things like fly and also just is something that a lot of people can relate to going back to the dream stuff a lot of us have flown in dreams a lot of us have jumped up and down and floated in dreams and hung on walls and done all this stuff we can now remember as I'm talking what that felt like we may have well done it just because we didn't do it here as we're awake in 3d reality doesn't mean we have not access to those things on some other level where maybe we're not totally sure what's going on but I don't know like I always ask myself that question to because at certain points in my life I think I would have believed anything and that's even despite that I think I've been lucky enough to not get suckered in to anything truly nefarious or just like oh my god how did I believe that and to this day still believe in totally bonkers shit where I don't go around telling people on the podcast I'll talk about the Hathor's but you know there's shit that I just do not talk about with people on the street because they're like oh my god like this guy needs to go on his meds what the fuck is going on that well all you have to do all you have to do is do like a slight qualification though some people think do some kind of you know that that kind of a thing that that's all I do that's all I do because I just take take myself out of the equation I mean clearly by even engaging like choosing to engage in certain types of conversation you're saying a lot about what your predilections are you're not you're not like in a vacuum suddenly pulling out rasa crucians it's like it's like you have to like be interested in in like these esoteric mysteries and stuff like that to even of course go down go down that path but then you've got to meet your how revved up you are with a little bit of a check in balance and being like okay am I am I just really wanting this to be true or is there like really is there really something substantive there you know that's and I think and I think that on the point of the metaphysical things I feel like that's a little bit of a more money more problems type of of problem you know like more more metaphysical feats more problems you know like oh I can I can walk through a wall but now everybody wants a piece of my like you know X men powers it's like relatively speaking of course I'm saying the karmic implications of wasting some type of transcendental knowledge like being able to walk through walls on actually walking through walls like you should probably like be dedicating yourself to like you know going and doing the work of all sentient beings for the benefit of them you know what I mean like that's that's where I say like listen people do it listen if we don't if you don't think people don't have superpowers like people have superpowers all around us they're incredibly intelligent people they're incredibly beautiful people there are athletically gifted people they're creative emotionally intelligent like there's the whole spectrum of everything around us yeah I'm not talking about levitating yeah I'm not talking about putting our hands through walls yeah I'm not talking about manifesting things out of nothing in physical reality although in the 60s and the 70s you hear all of the stories and you hear the conflicting things and a lot of people get caught up in that stuff just like a lot of people get caught up in conspiracy theories and that's happened to me at certain points too I think there's an energy behind that that is serving something else that's not ultimately productive I guess is what my point is relative all that thing what about reincarnation where do you where do you stand on that again you know it's it's like very very open to it hope I mean and I guess this points to the fact that I've got a lot more lifetimes to go because I hope it's real you know I don't want to cease to exist after this lifetime like I I want to experience more you know I feel like there's a lot of you can just start to feel like as you as like the decades pass that there's a lot of life juices out there you know you can't you can't go on every trip you can't meet every person you can't do everything in a single lifetime so I think it's really hard for me to conceive of an alternative I think if there is a metaphysical reality that is a much higher likelihood than just kind of something like the traditional Judeo-Christian paradigm of you know you get one body and then you either get like you either get an eternity of like hot pokers in the asshole or you get you know eternal bliss I mean that I find I find that to be a lot more unlikely for you know just for whatever my own tendencies are but and also you know there are tantalizing overlapping philosophies among mystical traditions like basically every mystical tradition believes in something approaching reincarnation like I didn't know until fairly recently that even cobbliss basically believe in an idea very very similar to the ottman like that this you know this source of the all basically shattered into kernels of consciousness which we all have within us but then also that that thing in the Noah suits and in the Michael suit really is just dressed up in a suit that's right it's not it's not like a I don't believe there's a similar idea to karma or anything like that it's just kind of like it's just floating from one incarnation to another which which is also tough to wrap my mind around obviously but well think of it like this this is why I asked because I heard an idea of reincarnation that really appealed to me that I hadn't thought about we all like to think of reincarnation typically as a linear event when we die we will reincarnate in the future as someone else the more we learn about quantum physics and time as an entity or construct we should say really because it's not this thing but it reacts and we can observe its impact and we know that future events can affect past events which doesn't make any sense but yet lo and behold in the quantum world that's how things are working the idea of reincarnation kind of being when we die when we kind of dissipate from this bodily existence we then have an opportunity to reincarnate at any point in time along this whole whether we want to look at it as a circle or a linear thing we can jump from place to place so each incarnation we could theoretically incarnate as each other at some point in history in a different type of relationship which opens up this kind of idea that if you crave additional experiences in any body in any form in any dimension that is something that will be self propelling and that's kind of this idea of karma that the mystics spoke about too which is your last thought before you die ultimately propels you in the direction of your next birth if you're on the cyclical existence track so I think that's like a very cool I love that idea of reincarnation because it kind of fits within the context of this scientific forefront that we're at that like how does the future impact the past how do these energies like non localized things interact in the same way and like of course we experience time as unfolding in a certain direction but like I've had events in my life that transcend time like clearly sometimes space typically time it's much easier to transcend where like you learn about something or you had a word in your head when you were young and then suddenly that word makes way sent more sense later on you're like holy shit that's so weird like that shit happens to people to me that kind of allows this flexibility and freedom where I think you like to sit which is I don't disbelieve any of it but if it fits into what we're learning and this is what the Dalai Lama says if science modern science disproves any aspect of Buddhism will change it but he says it tongue in cheek because he knows like this isn't the going out there to study in there is not necessarily the way to do it right right right and there's been this false dichotomy between those two things for so long I mean all of Western knowledge in the last hundred years has been this like aristotelian outward facing hands on objects type of of science right where where that that is absolutely contributing to the existential void and long longing that we're all trying to wrap our minds around it's like we have poured all of our resources in that sort of exploration and very very little in the inward facing which has left such a like a chasm right and there are very few people that are working towards some sort of reciprocity it's like you have and the problem is once again on the subjective side you can really say whatever the fuck you want you can write down whatever crackpot shit or or ounce of truth wrapped up in a bunch of marketable jargon best-selling stuff for zero truth whatsoever and just talk about blue bird aliens all day long which is a real thing by the way what is blue bird aliens just look it up blue avian it's a blue blue bird alien it's a it's a it's a real thing so it's a real it's a real thing people talk about for some reason so I mean yeah the problem is is how do we gain some sort of empirically valuable subjective practice without pinning dogmaw all over it or pinning outdated ideas all over it and I think that's that's what we need to somehow do and it would be great if you could somehow bolt it on to empirical knowledge like if there was some way that these things could fit together and the only person I really know is our whimsical PhD friend Bruce Damer who's trying to do this you know like he I heard him in a recently actually a Cory's podcast talking about how he's trying to create dialogue between these two camps of people and how he's really tried to come up with a theory of what he calls a genesis engine that actually allows for you know something different than than just physics and billions and billions of years of random chance and then finally the right combination on the lock of infinity goes off and then all of life starts right which is just intuitively seems so hard to accept and take us right yeah big and not only that but it needs to happen again and again and again and again you know it's it's not just like it happens once and then everything set off to create life it's it's first first the big bang happened and then it happened at just the right rate and just the right temperature just the right you know smoothness or whatever they call it right it's just it's so many so many things that just seem too far fetched to swallow and then of course there's all the problems on the other side of the conversation we were just talking about so for their to some in a way I sort of feel like he's he's an agent for cloaking logos a little bit and trying to like reenter some sort of unseen organization or unseen it's so all these words are so loaded you know it's like immediately sounds like I'm trying to make a teleological argument which I guess in a sense I am but it's it's it's got to be a new way of looking at all of these old things and I think that's what what I don't even remember the question you asked me but you you know where I'm going I do know exactly where going and I'm what I'm super happy brought up Bruce because I remember hearing something he said I forget where where he was talking about as he was doing work for either we see either NASA or some some space mining company where he had the military I think was the military the Air Force where was coming up with this schematic of how to potentially use like terrestrial mining out in space right and it was something he wanted to pitch to NASA yeah something he wanted to pitch NASA and then he was talking with all of these people but then he was also going to Burning Man and if you go to Burning Man like you I've never been but I know enough people go I know it goes on there right that is not where you're talking necessarily about logistical things related to space travel in a you know analytical way and what he described it as is kind of like persona shifting and this is this idea that you have this malleable skin that you don't change in kind of like a shifty scheming way but you recognize that this awareness underneath the persona that you construct in any given scenario is shiftable and to not get attached to it too much you then have the fluidity to move through different kind of levels or sectors of culture or reality if you will where you can start creating this inner relational dialogues between things which is the crux I think of what how this kind of new paradigm we're talking about is going to emerge which we could just say this is conceptual and intellectual masturbating but it's not I think there is an intuitive felt dynamic to what we're talking about that is very real and that something is emerging and having this ability to talk to a lot of different people in a lot of different spaces and not have some rigid dogmatic viewpoint that only this way is corrected and it can only allow that in much that's like that's the secret sauce that's what will allow this to emerge in a way that's going to be functioned on who knows how long it takes we have no idea but the ability to do that clearly is like some critical skill that we should be cultivating and that does have a lot to do not to smash or destroy or you know bemoan the ego but to soften it to the point and we were talking about this the other day like you know if people are doing things that kind of wrinkle us or get us upset being able to say oh there's my ego but also being able to say okay well this is the time where my ego is trying to point something else that is actually helpful like this isn't a productive thing this will lead to disharmony at some point so accommodating this kind of judging awareness in a way that softens it so we can make decisions that are going to benefit what our real aspirations are which ultimately to help other people and that includes ourselves they're not different things let me ask you this did we do the questions last time you were on did I do the color and animal and thing I don't think so I don't recall we'll do it again I don't recall let's do it again and see if that's it that's going to be even weirder if I that's what I was going to say I really hope they are what's your favorite color I guess I've typically been a blue person what blue or I mean if you if you catch me in in meat space there's a high likelihood I'll be wearing just dark colors yeah so I guess I guess blues grays blacks typically sums up my color palette it's a good color palette with flair I like I like little splashy flares though I like I like to just work in some like electricity in my socks and stuff like that's cool man I like it listen I'm a as I've mentioned many times I'm a dolphins fan those are the loudest colors you could ever doorn yeah man I get it what's your favorite number yeah I don't know I'm just gonna say three I'm just gonna say three great just get something animal favorite animal shit I really should have said 69 the biggest new opportunity I make that joke as much as I possibly can because aside from the like stupid middle school angle to it it actually very closely resembles you know both the yin yang symbol and it also very closely resembles the like the astrological symbol is it cancer yeah I'm a cancer yeah right right so I mean it has it has these very like ontologically weighty overtones yeah well as like the stupidest most base level cosmic giggle associated with it it's my favorite number I mean it not really I love their team but like 69 for those exact reasons is that it does transcend both the most base level ridiculous adolescent ideas and that it's totally totally impact with so many heavy mythological undertones I love it perfect that's that maybe it's my favorite favorite answers so far what is your favorite animal I love dogs I love dogs and I also like I mean I guess I also again getting back to the trickster thing you know like foxes and dogs are very like foxes especially they have that that's sort of sly aspect and they're also associated with the trickster archetype totally so it's it's hard it's hard again not to identify with that you're the second person who has mentioned fox and the other person just came on Jen was the other person who said fox yeah no no one else has mentioned that and that's a it's at a like 90 or something last question practical tip for people listening that has helped you in your life I think the thing I've done the most consistently is cold exposure because it's just so it's just so undeniable you're doing it or you're not doing it you know you're either in the cold shower and it's hitting you and you're ripped into the present moment or you're just not like you're you either did it or you didn't do it and there's very few things like meditation there's so much wiggle room there's so much just kind of I think it's inherently benefit to just sit down with your eyes closed and breathe for sure but there's I saw a really great representation in an article once about how if there's a series of dots let's let's say there's 20 dots and each dot represents a minute that you meditated and each minute that you were focused is a green dot each each minute you weren't focused as a red dot right yeah so you have all those red dots which I like I said I still think it's it's all beneficial and all leading towards somewhere in cold in cold exposure it's all green it's all green here because you're you're you can't escape that right you're breathing through it your nervous system is directly dealing with it your mind is clear and it's it's incredible and it also has a whole host of positive physiological benefits and like anti-inflammatory benefits so obviously if people haven't heard of Wim Hoff yeah Google him I know there's videos out there that take you through his breathing exercises and just kind of the the basic idea behind the cold shower and if not you can't find it shoot me a message and I'll I'll sum it up so I've been waiting to do it I'm going to take a shower right after this and I'm totally I'm going to think of you in the shower Michael and do the cold exposure ever gotten a better compliment in your life yeah I mean that that is awesome though I mean it's I don't I mean your your water will probably still get pretty cold because you live in an environment where we get well water right right and once you get down deep enough that water is probably still pretty cold so I mean you you kind of have to make that that choice like the you know you're I'm doing this I'm doing this I'm doing this you're doing the you're going through the deep breathing right and you're just keep like the I'm doing this mantra and then when the water hits don't don't scrunch up and stop breathing you know you got to just keep you got to keep going like and just like let it and have a little goal you know 15 seconds 20 seconds whatever and and soon you'll be pushing way way past that no problem and you'll and you'll only be stopping when you're like okay I'm done now and I just feel like stopping that's awesome and it's it's pretty incredible because it's it's such a huge I mean I can clearly remember back to what it was like to just get hit by cold water or cold air and do that immediately start the whole cascade of of nervous system behaviors where now I'm tightening up now I'm shivering now I'm doing this now I'm doing this and you can completely turn that off right you can get you can get past that and it's it's pretty incredible yeah that is incredible dude thank you I'm going to go do it and thank you for coming on I love the idea I love that we did this double cast thing this is awesome anytime so you man I love this one I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it thank you for listening to that episode Michael Phillip go check him out third eyedrops.com third eyedrops his podcast it's on mine pod network just a super cool fun awesome guy so purlatives I think from now on instead of just actually using superlatives I'll just say the words of purlative because I know I use them all the time massive thanks again to all the patreon speaking of patrons who support me on patreon Patrick Nemchik producer level credit that's that's the level he's choosing choosing not even close to a word he's chosen the level of get a producer level credit go check it out patreon.com slash synchronicity you will find all of these levels I'm gonna be thinking of some other stuff I can offer you guys up there in terms of rewards that's it I will see you next week unless there's a bonus episode before then mmm bye bye