Exploring The Mystic Arts with Sean Coan

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Welcome to Synchronicity. I put that song back on 'cause everyone keeps asking me what it is. And so I'll just get it out of the way. It's a remix I'm working on. I've tabled it for a little bit 'cause I'm working on my album, but it's a remix of a song called Owl, of course, by She Keeps Bees. So if you wanna hear the original, you can find that on wherever you listen to music. If you wanna hear my version, you gotta wait. And so I finish it. It's good, I know, it's fucking great, but I gotta finish it. And I got other things I can do with me in town. So, ugh, today's guest. We have a guest, Sean Cone.

Oh boy, oh boy, this guy. This guy who's taught me a lot about a lot and specifically in the realm of tarot, deckins, kabbalah, astrology. I know Sean from Crypto Sync. I, this is not an ad for Crypto Sync. Welcome to the new members who joined this week. It's a weird place that a Discord server. It is shifted through many permutations, a hardcore, incredibly active, money-focused crypto server, which I'm sure I can sense that's coming back to an imaginal exploration of people's psyches and shared psychic phenomenon. It's just a really weird place. But throughout that, Sean has emerged as a consistent voice of reason, sanity, and understanding.

And it's just been a pleasure getting to know him. And yeah, you're gonna hear why in this episode. So I actually hadn't spoken to Sean via the phone or audio that much 'cause the server is like, you know, it's mainly chat, text-to-chat. So, but I've been getting to know him because I have encouraged him and I am the one to blame if this goes poorly for him and it won't, it's a joke. He started tarot, I basically was like, dude, you know tarot and kabbalah. And just these other like divine art paths, like on a level that I just haven't encountered and I've seen a lot of people talk about this stuff and there's a lot of different ways people weave it together.

And this is, listen, I read tarot too. I read astrology too. I do all this stuff too. And I was like, dude, you gotta start a business. Like your shit is super legit. Like you have to acknowledge that and even if it seems hard and scary and you don't wanna do it, you need to do it. So he did it. And I, listen, make your mind up at the end of this episode what you wanna do, but go check them out, book a session at arcanehearts tarot.com. It's a, I booked my session. I had mine, what was it? Tuesday? Did we do it Tuesday? Holy fucking shit. So earlier in that day, I was like, you know, I really, I'd like to know more about Kabbalah.

Like I know it's very rich. I know very cursory things, but I wish I had a teacher, you know, someone who could teach me about this. And then immediately following that, I'm like, yeah, I don't need a teacher. I'll just learn it some other way. So then that was that. And if you believe in imagination, when you have those thoughts, you are setting up your future. So the time came for the reading and I'm like super into exercising and this David Goggin shit. So I'm like, let me just push this back. I don't want to do it, but I didn't. I was like, ah, fuck it. I'll do it specifically. Cause I was like, oh, I'm pushing back on it.

So I did it. And I told him this afterwards. So he knows this. And, oh, holy shit. This reading was fucking incredible. And of course, like readings with me, if I'm the person getting the reading, I won't shut the fuck up. I just talk so much, but it's a way of processing the information people give me and provide and the insight and just what he was saying alchemically and the cards that came up just made way too much sense. And more importantly, not more importantly, equally as important. He gave me like a huge introduction to Kabbalah related to the tarot. And we don't get too much into the alchemical inner workings of the tarot.

And we're about to head into some tarot heavy episodes with gas. I went over to the guy who designed the alchemical tarot deck. He lives in Saugert. He's not too far from a Robert place. And so I had him on. So that'll be out next week. So we're going to go deep into this stuff and we'll get a more of a comprehensive overview at times. But this is really Sean's journey to the mystic arts and embracing that. And I'm super stoked to be able to introduce him to you because he's someone who he holds space, like he heals in a very. So let me tell you this. This is what I've noticed about crypto sync.

And I've never spoken about this before. And it's nothing to do with the cryptocurrency aspect of the server. It at a certain point, the types of people who were attracted to cryptocurrency tended to be men. They tended to be men who were looking for a variety of things. That was just a big, it was a primarily male dominated sphere. That was just my impression. I know there are women who are into it and I introduce a lot of women to this and they fucking love it. However, it was primarily men and is primarily men. But since these people came from this podcast, 'cause that's the only way you would have heard about it from the podcast or my Twitter, it was a certain breed of man.

It was a certain breed of male. And at a certain point, it turned into kind of a support group. But like a mystical, I don't know how to describe it, but it became a place where guys were sharing like problems in their lives, things they were going through, feelings, but openly and transparently, but also like very vulnerably. And you know my axiom, vulnerability leads to invulnerability. And I've watched a lot of these people in various degrees of despair and myself in that server too. Work through shit in a very safe way. And that's what Sean really has embodied as much as anything since I've known him.

He really is capable of holding space and providing perspective on what you may be experiencing in your life and how to practically implement that. You can tell like he's a friend. So that's it for this intro. Go book with him. That's the only ad I'll do. I'll encourage you to join the synchronicity community as well. There's a link on this episode. And the final thing, tomorrow, October 18th, 2019, whittmalive.com. Well being in the modern age, that's what Whittma stands for. Guess who came up with that name? Mm-hmm, so go check that out. I think it starts at three, I don't think. It starts at three p.m.

It goes to 10 p.m. The real panel discussions kick off about five p.m. with Jen and Anna opening it up. And then we got Sean and Cass leading a panel. Then it's me. Then it's Jen leading a panel. No, then it's, yeah. Jen and then Michael Phillip throw it out. Anyway, it's fucking gonna be awesome. It's gonna be cool. If you're in New York, stop procrastinating. Just get your fucking tickets and come hang out. And then afterwards, okay, so listen to what I'm doing. I'm gonna book a hotel, but there's this app that gives you deals on hotels, like if you book at the last minute. So I'm not booking a place to stay.

I'm gonna use this app and imagine like a fucking bomb ass place. And I'm going Lux, like fuck it. I'm not, I don't know, this is a shitty hotel in New York. I'm fucking going primo. So I'm trying to get like $1,000 a night hotel for like 400 bucks. That sounds good to me. So imagine that for me, please. Staying at the pier and a luxury suite, that'd be amazing. Although that's way more than $1,000. So yeah, that's what I'm doing. So come to Whitma, check out Sean, arcaneheartstero.com. There'll be links to this, of course, everywhere. That's it, officially loving this new mic. Without further ado, here is Sean Com.

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Welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks, Rob. (laughing)

So let's talk about a lot of things in this. I mean, we're gonna keep it pretty transparently real. You stop me if I impose on your Virgo moon. (laughing) But I wanna talk, start with them. Just tell me a little bit about who you are, how we know each other. I'm gonna do this shit interviewer question where I make you do all the work at the beginning, just 'cause I trust you.

Oh, no, man, that's cool. You know what? I like an origin story.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I'll tell you an origin story. So I was newly moved to Montana from the Bay Area. I had made a decision that I thought was gonna be real good from my career.

Where'd you grow up? Where'd you grow up?

Oh, well, you wanna go back to that one.

Yeah, man. (laughing)

I was born in D.C.

Oh, shit.

Yeah. - Did I know that?

Yeah.

Okay, well, I got it. And then I know.

That's cool. (laughing)

Yeah, so I was born in D.C. My parents, you know, they met while they were at the University of Maryland, and they had me, you know, I was born in Georgetown Hospital, and we lived in, we lived in Odenton, Maryland, which is right by Fort Meade for about four years. Then we moved out to Idaho. My dad was an agricultural scientist. He's actually an entomologist, but he worked for the USDA. And, you know, he made a weird career decision, then decided to move us to Southern Idaho, right? Which is, you know, it's an agricultural area, you know, fields everywhere, culture shock, for real from now.

From D.C, man, yeah.

Yeah. (laughing) Yeah, 'cause my dad grew up in D.C. He grew up in Silver Springs.

Oh, that's my hometown.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, he's an urban guy. My mom was an urban girl, and, you know, we moved out to rural Idaho. Yeah, huge culture shock for them. But I always maintained that East Coast connection, like we would go back every year.

Yeah.

To go see my grandparents and, you know, spend about a month and go do summer stuff at Ocean City, you know. So, it was kind of, kind of, by coastal in a way. You know, it was good. Like, I got that exposure to, you know, old world.

Yeah, yeah. (laughing)

Two different versions of the country.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know.

So, you know, I grew up in Idaho, southern Idaho, and just northern Idaho at a later point. We moved up here, and I did my high school in Moscow, Idaho. So, after that, I was working. I got out of high school, and I was working here. And the people I was hanging out with, man, I started getting into Bethlehem, Vietnamese, right? I started, yeah, people started to crank around me, and it was real weird. But I had a buddy who moved on to Eugene, was going to school at the University of Oregon, and I was talking to him, and he was like, "Hey, man, we've got a spot in our house. "You should move down here."

Yeah, I get fucked out, yeah.

Yeah, fuck out, indeed, man. So, we, I moved, I moved to Eugene, and went to college at the University of Oregon, got a geology degree, and ended up getting married to my beautiful wife, Rose, who was also from Moscow. But, a few years younger than me, she was friends with my sister. So, yeah, it was kind of, it was faded in a way, I guess.

Yeah.

You know, we meet each other in Oregon.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we got together, and then moved to, moved to Southern Oregon, where I did some work as a land survey technician. But I had this geology degree, and, you know, thought that that was, that was something I knew to pursue. Ended up interviewing for a job in the Bay Area, move in town there, and we lived in Walnut Creek, California for a while, which is over the Berkeley Hills from Oakland.

Cool, I love East Bay.

Yeah, I just love Northern California, like that area, it's just so, there's something very magical about it, in its own special way.

For sure.

Yeah. - For sure. Yeah. I did a lot of interesting work there, you know, kind of working around in industrial areas, around the Bay, including even like the South Bay, you know, had some jobs right around the, right around the Googleplex and stuff. (laughing)

So you were, so, yes, from California, you got married. Where did you get married?

Oh, we got married in the Redwoods, but we were living in Oregon.

Cool, though, very cool.

Yeah, it was amazing. There's this kind of cheesy privately owned Redwoods part called the trees and mystery. It's out there on the North Coast, and they have this, the Redwoods, they do this thing, it's kind of like a rhizomatic action where like there's a, there's a mother tree, but then her roots start sending up spikes of trees and they always end up like in this kind of semi circle.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, it's called a cathedral tree. So we got married, this, this beautiful cathedral tree and the tree's mystery.

That's cool. I didn't know, that's really fucking, it's like Zelda. It's like the forest in Zelda, I'm with it. Okay, I didn't mean to interrupt, I just got attracted by those Redwoods that I was clearly psychically picking up on.

Man, if you've never been, you've got to go and see some of that stuff.

Yeah.

Those trees are.

I've seen the Redwoods there. I just haven't seen that cathedral, like I can envision it and it's like, "Yo, I gotta see that."

I'll send you a picture sometime.

Yeah. Okay, yeah, but continue with your origin story, moving through the Redwoods, California to Oregon.

Yeah, yeah. So, like I said, Oregon, you know, I was feeling a bit displaced professionally. So, you know, I was looking for different work. I ended up moving to the Bay Area and you know, things were going pretty well. We had my son, Sheamus and my daughter, Harper there. Couple of years apart. And I was kind of interested in doing something else. You know, we'd been to Montana for, you know, for vacations and jobs and stuff and thought that seemed really cool.

Yeah.

So, move to Montana.

The Gary Shandling Dream from the Larry, you ever watched the Larry Sanders Show?

No.

Oh my God, dude, watch the Larry Sanders Show. It's like, oh my God. It's, yeah, it's HBO. I mean, dude, it's very accessible. 100%, it's like amazing. It's hilarious. His thing is, like, he's a talk show host. He's like, you know, like a Jay Leno, David Letterman, but he's Larry Sanders, he's Gary Shandling. And he always is talking about like moving to Montana and then like one of the seasons, he like does it and fucking say he's like, they're fishing and no one's around. He's like, it's fucking suck. It's a great show. Watch the show. It's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll check that out. Anyway, very similar experience.

Yeah.

The Montana experience, man.

The Montana experience, yeah. I mean, especially like not being a hunter, not being a fisherman, not being a skier.

Exactly. It's a weird place to be. (laughs) But yeah, man, our son, he reacted very poorly to it. It was, yeah, it was like a really traumatic incident in his life and he started developing all these behavioral problems. And so like my life was just kind of taking a shit. Yeah. So, you know, and as people do, you know, kind of look for the external agents and, you know, so the job, right? That was what came up and I was like, fuck. So anyway, I talked to somebody who was going through some similar professional upheaval and he was like, hey, man, I've got all these audio books and you gotta check this out.

And he had a huge collection of new thoughts, actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

Something just to be clear, I thoroughly discounted like for most of my spiritual and intellectual pursuits through books, like the people had sent me like Napoleon Hill stuff and like, I'm sure, I don't think I ever really came across Neville Goddard, but like, I was like, nah. Just never peeped. Obviously it didn't, this shit does not hit you until it is meant to hit you. And then when it hits you for people like me, at least it's like, it hits you hard. But yeah, keep, all right. So new thought guy exposes you to fucking secrets. What's going on?

Yeah, yeah, he does. And, you know, so the two books that I listened to right off the bat were for our work week. And are you still there, man?

Oh, I'm still here.

Yeah, for our work week. And Napoleon Hill's thinking, bro rich.

There you go.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, plan a big seeds. And so I was like, well, now's the time to, you know, try and change the way that I think and harness this energy and, you know, all this stuff. And anyway, massive flop on my part because I was so destabilized by all this, you know, this stuff kind of coming up with my son. What gear is this?

That would be 2011.

Oh, yes, right before everyone died. Of course, of course, of course. Of course, that's like, that was for a lot of people, like peak, peak, like disarray, like a lot of, like, and we didn't know it at the time. It just felt like life, but like clearly, a lot of people were going, I don't even know exactly what I was doing in 2011. No, I don't remember, but it was a huge shift, I'm sure. I'm sure it was. I think I moved, my sister and I were living together. We moved into different places. I had one of my very good friends who became like basically like a brother to me, can move it in, but shit was crazy.

So, okay, continue, I just got sidetracked, yeah.

Oh, no, man, that was it, dude. Shit was crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so like I said, I felt like the universe was kind of starting to move, you know, as I was trying to adopt these Napoleon Hill techniques and, you know, feeling very inspired by Tim Ferriss, but his book, "The Four Hour Body" came out around that time, his biohacking tone. And so I was like, "Oh, wow, this is really interesting," you know, 'cause it's sort of like, you grew up in the '80s and '90s, you know, and so the kind of personal health and wellness was, you gotta strive, right? You gotta work real hard, you gotta jog every day and eat low-fat food and whatever, you know? And that book--

Work harder, work harder, yeah.

Yeah, work harder, you know? And, you know, Tim, his way was like, no, no, no, it's not it, right, you know?

I loved "The Four Hour Work Week." I implemented a lot of the strategies immediately and saw positive benefits, but as the macrocosm of Tim Ferriss' experience after he wrote that book, which led to depression and suicidal thoughts, I didn't leave there for me, but it collapsed almost as quickly as I implemented it within a week or so because I love that he was trying to shortcut people, but he hadn't stabilized what the implications of that "Four Hour Work Week" and "Four Hour Body" were, and what I view as kind of the dark side, not in terms of negative, but not looked at side of the human optimization movement is like, what are you optimizing for?

Like, what's then, where is the goal? Like, what is the goal? Why do you want the best body? Why do you want all the time in the world? Why do you want all the money in the world? Why do you want all the people who love you in the world? Like, what's the function here? And, but that was a big shift back then, right? I mean, that was like 2011, 12, 13, 14 vibes. Like, you know, like, let's get fucking right to it. Like, how do we become dubious? That was still the goal.

Yeah.

Interesting, yeah, continue, continue.

Yeah, yeah, well, for our body, I started to get real into, you know, biohacking stuff, you know, kind of a quantified self, you know, sort of stuff and ended up finding Dave Asbury. I don't know if you're, are you familiar with the bulletproof executive?

No, I know the term bulletproof and how it's used, but no.

Yeah, like bulletproof coffee, you know, the coffee, with the unbutter and MTT oil and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I was listening to him. And, you know, I should say that I had been sort of a meditative aspirant for a long time, but, you know, I didn't really get it, you know, the whole follow your breath instruction didn't really, didn't really sit very well with me. You know, I just, I couldn't figure it out. Anyway, so he started talking about a biofeedback technology called HeartMath. And he's like, you know, you can use this and it will show you how to meditate. And I was like, well, that sounds amazing.

I was, I was in counseling at the time and, you know, synchronicities abound. It was, it came up during our counseling session, great counselor, you know, full on into, hey, let's, let's figure out a way for you to manage your stress right now, you know? Or yeah, you have problems. Okay, that's great. You know, so what are you gonna do in a moment?

Right.

And so you started leading me through this exercise and, you know, at the end of it, I was like, hey, I've heard of this stuff, HeartMath, you know, and she was like, yeah, yeah, this is it.

Awesome.

Oh, this is amazing, right? So, yeah, I bought the HeartMath sensor and I had amazing amounts of space open up. You know, starting to get in touch with, with my heart. Now, I have to say, prior to this, I'd been sort of under the impression that, you know, the body is a, is a vehicle and, you know, we live behind our eyes and I was completely disembodied, you know, just, well, you know, like you said, I'm a, I'm a Virgo moon. Pisces Sun, though, so.

Jesus, you really, you're all fucked up in the end, Jesus, right? What's your, what's your ascendant? What's your ascendant?

Taurus.

All right, well, at least you have some, I mean, still, it's a lot of earth. (laughing)

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, that's a lot of earth energy, but also, you know, the broad, you know, wide, expansive, Pisces.

I think I have your chart, I'm gonna pull it up while we're talking. - Yeah.

Keep talking, keep talking.

Yeah, for sure, so, so I got the sensor, started using the, using the software, and I was able to start feeling my heart, you know, I was able to actually start going into my body, but I had to do it through my eyes, through my, my cognitive processing, you know, this is biofeedback, you know, you're getting these real-time data on your heart rate variability and stuff, and so you can go, oh, wow, you know, I can, I can manipulate this. That's great, you know, it's one part of it, but then start to go, oh, shit, there's sensations involved, right?

Right.

So, yeah, opened up enormously, and I got super stoked, I was like, fuck it. I've got to tell the world, you know, even a classic heart math guy, yeah, so, I went through their, I went through their coaching program and got certified as a heart math coach, you know, thinking that was going to be the, that was going to be the golden ticket.

It's the Holy Grail, of course.

Oh, yeah, yeah, and definitely it was, you know, in a lot of ways, but--

Everything is, 'cause you are.

Right?

Indeed, yeah.

That's a good point, you know, you are the vessel, for sure.

And the light, and that's what I've been telling people, like, just let me know when you figure out you're the light at the end of the tunnel. Like when you're like, no, that's you, you're good.

Yeah, yeah, man. So, I started implementing this at home, you know, had a lot of success helping out my son. You know, he'd been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and yeah, so we did a lot of hard math together. I ended up practicing with her daughter, her two, you know, and it was really good. You know, it was really good, but I was always uncomfortable with selling myself and that kind of thing. So, I did some coaching pro bono for some people with some profound trauma, and it was awesome. You know, I really, especially one lady, I really helped her make it a big shift in her life, and it was super...

Rewarding, I'm sure.

Rewarding, yeah, just, you know, I felt like something had been fulfilled in me. But, you know, at the same time, I had a stage job. Yeah, so anyway, fast forward to the big year, right?

Well, what's the big year?

Yeah, what's the big year?

2016 is the big year, but we'll fast forward to 2015, 'cause that's when stuff really starts to get good. You know, Rose gets pregnant around the same time as I found a Zen Sangha in Helena. And yeah, I'd just like to say, if anybody's in Helena, you know, look for Flowing Mountains, Zen Sangha. Those people are amazing, great community in the Tic Nhat Hanh tradition.

Classic, I mean, there's, there's, I have, you find lineages and Plum Village and Tic Nhat Hanh is one of those guys just, no, there are no bad stories. There's like not one to be found, and like it, not that one is better than the other. There are many different paths and there's really no bad, even if it seems horrible within a certain community. I'm sure we'll get to that, but like, you know, Plum Village and Tic Nhat Hanh, man, a dude. This shit, he's still alive, right?

Yeah.

He's finally survived, what a beast.

I mean, yeah, what a beast indeed. Yeah, he had a pretty profound stroke a few years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was kind of the rhombus.

I was thinking the same thing. Here's your chart, I knew I would get it. This is how I knew you were from BC, too, and I knew I forgot it.

Okay, yep, so you found the Zen Center 2015, this is?

Yeah, yeah, and you know, in that summer, as I was practicing, I also found chaos magic to the degree that, you know, the feeling is the secret, right? This is a massive part of chaos magic, you know, like taking things seriously and being a sincere practitioner.

Can I ask you something about chaos magic? Because I really don't understand, I never formally approached chaos magic. I looked at it as a lens in which people were getting a glimpse of what reality actually was and ways to manipulate it. But what I found, or I didn't immediately find me because I wasn't looking, or I was looking for it, and I didn't find it there was the why. Why is this working? What is the operative principle? What are the limits of this? What are the potential pitfalls you hear about a lot? Crowley was like such a, you know, great specter of what's great about magic and what's not, and like, you know, everything that's stemmed from like the Golden Dawn and all these other occult traditions that I've asked, you know, subsequently unpacked.

But I always felt like, you know, some of the most capable practicing chaos magicians or people who really have been in steep in this stuff for a long time, seem to get stuck in this like magical like loophole of like, like it's you, everything is, of course chaos magic works. If literally if you just get good at jumping into a feeling and faith, and like assuming something's gonna happen, it always happens. But I feel like a lot of chaos magicians believe that up into a point, and then they're like, here's the threshold of where this works too. So if I believe like I'm gonna be president, no way.

Like I'm curious if Yang is a chaos magician. That'd be so interesting. Trump is, he doesn't know it, but he is in his own way. You know, he believes and feels what his world and then essentially imposes it on everyone else's like, wait, no, what's happening? And they're like, oh shit, how did he do that again? Like, I don't know. It's just the, I don't know. It's a very interesting phenomenon. Okay, sorry, sorry to reject it.

Oh, no, no, definitely. You know, and I certainly want to get to Trump. But you know, I wasn't necessarily taken with the practice of chaos magic, but the idea that the sincerity was the key, that really rang true to me. And I was like, okay, cool. You know, 'cause you know, growing up in America, we kind of have Christianity on the Judeo-Christian tradition as sort of like the model for what spirituality is, you know? And so when I started pricing with these guys, I have to say, you know, had a real distaste for religion, right? 'Cause it's got this external force, religion, right? Not spiritual.

Yeah, and isn't it fun when I keep yacking about the Bible all the time? (laughing) Just fuck people up. Because yeah, you know, it's none of it's literal. People take it literally and teach it literally and they fuck everyone up. It's a, it's not even a travesty. It's kind of like an amazing story in script, you know? It's like, let's take this actually best possible tool that really is a blueprint for waking up and like understanding the map of this world, especially. But let's fucking read it literally and teach it literally to people. And we're clearly there's like discrepancies within like the first 10 pages.

It's like, what the fuck this shit doesn't add up logically. And like, let's convince people this is what's going on and then mediate it. And then it fucks people up and then it's a shame. And then you have to have jackasses like me trying to talk about the Bible all the time. But it is, you know, it is, it's a shame that the way it was filtered down for the past. It's not even a shame. Like I said, it's part of a fun story. But it does have this, it does promote an engender this reaction in people where it's like, yo, fuck out of here with that noise. Like not into it. All right.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that was the attitude that, you know, I was bringing into into this saga. You know, I was like, oh, what is this with the bells and the bowing and, you know, all this stuff.

The ritual, the ritual of it, yeah.

The ritual of it. Yeah. And I was like, I was kind of freaked out, you know, like, oh shit, do I have to subscribe to something here? Like what's the, what's the deal, you know? But, you know, found this, this sincerity piece. And I was like, well, fuck it. I'm going to be sincere about this. And you know, when I, when I go in, I'm going to believe that this is changing my state of mind. And...

Well, it'd be home.

There you go. Well, it'd be home. Indeed, yeah. I found an amazing amount of internal peace from that. I mean, I shouldn't say peace. That's not a, not necessarily what was going on.

Equanimity, equanimity is good. But I mean, equanimity isn't that far off from peace. Pieces may be like the added dimension of like the warmness of the heart. Equanimity can just be the stability of mind. And like, you know, like, oh, no matter what happens emotionally or otherwise, like I'm good. The peace is like, okay, not only am I good, but like I'm feeling at home everywhere I am all the time. That's, I guess that is a distinction. Yeah, I get it, I get it.

Yeah, and that's an important one because you know, I don't want to give people the impression that, you know, things that even out for me, I mean, you know, stuff was still totally, totally insane, you know. But Rose was pregnant. We found out it was twins. Which is, you know, that's a whole other deal. Very, very interesting turn of events there, you know, that had us kind of on the road, driving to the bigger city in Missoula, to go see specialists and all this, all this stuff. And so 2016 rolls around January 23rd. And I'd eaten some edibles and Rose went into labor.

Oh, yeah, it's always like that. It's always like that, right?

Yeah, that's always--

Did you kind of know it before like you had taken them, had you had the thought that like one time I'm gonna take edibles and she's gonna get pregnant or did it just come out of the blue?

Oh man, well, here's, she woke up and she was like, Sean, I think today is the day.

Oh, yeah.

And then like in the afternoon, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna eat this sucker. (laughs) And then that evening, you know, her water broke. We went and we had the twins. Once again, man, massive disruption for my boy Seamus. And, you know, he ended up having a real bad turn and we had to take him to psychiatric hospital. And so like, this is, you know, meteor number one, meteor number two, right? Just smashing, smashing the gates open. And then, oh my God, he had another trip to the hospital later that year in the summer and we were like, oh shit, you know, this has gotta be it, right, this has been like, you know, we've got these little babies, we've got this boy who's, you know, having these emotional problems.

This has gotta be the end of it. Now, you know, I don't wanna be like too serious, but you know, what ends up happening is that this is a very significant day for me, October 10th, actually. 'Cause it is kind of the last day of somewhat normalcy because my sister died overnight on the 11th, 2016. Yeah, of a drug overdose.

Wow.

Yeah, opioids. Yeah, she struggled. Oh man, you put me on the spot, I heard you'd choose 32. And, you know, she'd had lost struggles with addiction but had really turned her life around, actually, and had been clean and ended up wanting to have one more party. And man, that didn't work out too well. So, there it was, dude, bam. October 11th, 2016, you know, we're on the road coming here, you know, to Idaho and had her funeral and stuff. But I had this practice and that was the lifesaver. The practice, the family, the twins. I mean, they held us all together, you know, just passing around babies and, you know, we were dealing with it.

Yeah.

And then the election. (laughs)

Yeah, you have, you know, I mean, you know you have Saturn in Leo in your fourth house, which is the house of home and family. And Saturn is opposing your Mars in your, yeah. Yeah, I mean, Saturn is the teacher of lessons, right? He's the one who, like, most people, when they see him somewhere doing something, if there's red lines and an astrology chart, they're like, oh, yeah. And I, you know, but you know, having, you know, kind of gone, well, Jupiter probably was right there too. Gone through this, like, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Hopefully, I mean, he still have transits and stuff.

All right, continue. I'm just saying it's like, I'm looking at your chart when you're, I'm like, we're Saturn. I'm like, where is the teacher of karma and like lessons? Like, where is it? Oh, it's in your home and family. It's like, no shit, oh, it's in Leo, a fire sign. It's like, fixed. Shit is movement, fucking energy. I pulled cards for you. We'll go over them after your origin story. I'm, I'm, thank you for being so honest and transparent with this shit, man. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you know, it's, it's important. I don't want to, I don't want to paint like a rosy picture. Yeah.

You know, I want to be, I want to be honest. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, and then, and then the election was just the next month. And it was like, holy fuck, what has happened? You know, the whole world is ending. (laughing) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. And so, you know, I got, I got sort of obsessed as I think a lot of people did. You know, especially maybe those of us with progressive sympathies, you know, I was like, oh, you know, the rise of the right. Oh my God, you know, the alt-right, the white supremacists and, and I was buried in Twitter and read it just like kind of ruining my, my sanity.

Yeah. Oh, there's a, as I'm, as I'm trying to, I'm trying to deal with all this, you know, this crazy shit going on. (laughing) Having these new babies, have my sister dead. You know, I have my son, unstable. And I went to a retreat with, with the saga. And I ended up taking the five mindfulness trainings transmission, you know, which I, I had a lot of problems with some of the, some of the verbiage. I'm trying to remember which mindfulness training it was, but there was one, you know, Tic Nant Han who had like, you know, rewritten the precepts for the modern age. And this one was like, you know, so you got to abandon websites and TV and stuff.

It's not, you know, it's not feeding you. And I was like, fuck that. You know, I felt rebellious. And I was like, well, because I'm rebelling against this, it must be important. So I took the transmission, and when I got home, dude, you raced to Reddit, got off Twitter. And all of a sudden it was just, you know, like free of the, of the political malaise of the time. You know, and it was, once again, it was that sincerity. Now, you know, the feeling is the secret. It was a beautiful ceremony. I, you know, don't want to cry yet. But, you know, I was there like, you know, with all these people I'm prostrating and like the sun is beaming into the, you see, it's overlooking a flathead lake up by Glacier, which is really one of the most beautiful places in the whole world, you know, Glacier Park in Montana.

And yeah, it just, another shift, you know. And that was great, man. That was great. But, you know, the time had come to move on. You know, my mom lived here in North Idaho still in the same town. You know, she and Jenny, you know, always wanted to live, live near each other and you know, Rose and I and our family, we were just traveling around doing whatever. But we moved back to the area to help out my mom and all that stuff. So, you know, here we are, Eastern Washington and I'm with out of Sangha.

Well, not in a physical location.

Not in a physical way.

Right, but definitely, or not in a mental way, but definitely physically, I'm separated from these people. And, you know, I ended up finding somatic meditation. And we, you know, I'll just go ahead and be, you know, super forthright with this. But, you know, I practiced in the Darwin Ocean Foundation, which is, if anybody doesn't know, Reggie Ray was a student of Chogam Trunka, who, you know, for years was in Shambhala International. He was a real senior student and he ended up having a mystical experience, you know, where he was kind of delivered a death sentence and some kind of cancer that was gonna kill him within a couple months.

And, you know, he had, Trunka came to him and was like, hey man, you know, and he decided to go his own way and the doctor was like, oh, you know, I never make these kind of mistakes, but, you know, apparently you're not sick.

No, and my bad dude, the thing that's gonna kill you right now is all good. That's the power of, that's like the blessing and curse of a strong imagination. And that's what, I mean, I know a lot of Trunka disciples, personally, and much like everything else in life, there's a spectrum of people who stayed with him. There's a wide spectrum of people, some of them, I wouldn't give my kids to, you know, and I'd be like, you're good enough, you can take care of my children, some of them. I'd be like, you know what, like I'm good, I'm good on that, I'm gonna do that, but like maybe like, let's hang out and have, you know, some fun talks.

So, I mean, it's interesting that like he really was, and I mean, Trunka, I don't know if this is like, publicly come to light yet, but like there was trauma, not just from the sense that he had to escape and go over like a mountains to escape his homeland, but like the monastery lifestyle and the things that have emerged in the Catholic priesthood, that's not just the only place it happens. Like that, when you force people to be together and self-flagellate and restrain themselves from pursuing sexual desires, Yiddesh is gonna pop out. Like it's gonna pop out. And in ways that like, probably society at this point is gonna be like, that's not okay to do.

So don't do that. So, you know, it, it, it, those reverberations really permeate everything. And I think part of this guru relationship that I'm understanding more and more of, and Milarepa, who I have behind me now, has always reminded us, 'cause like, Milarepa's the coolest, right? He took all the song, all the Dharma and then he turned it into song form and he instantly would just go from place to place, like casting spells, being like, "Yo, here's the truth of things, boom, here you go." And they're like, "We love you." And they're like, "No, like you don't love me, it's you." Boom. So he's the coolest, but every verse he sang, he would start every song he sang.

He'd be like, "Thank you, Marpa. I love you, Marpa. "You're the best Marpa." And Marpa was his guru who was a dick to me. His Saturn basically is just like shitting on him. Relentlessly, but to teach him that it was a hymn and that like, he had to purify and transcend these things until he understood, 'cause he had a propensity to misuse them in the past. That's the allegory of Milarepa and Marpa. But I'm feeling like the guru relationship is also flipping, not just in terms of the elimination of, but also the healing retroactively. Like a lot of Chogum's disciples, whether they were physically disciples or students of the lineage, they have to go back and help there.

They help their teacher too. Like that's part of this process. So yeah, yeah, continue with the Dharma Ocean stuff.

Oh yeah, man. So once again, I decided I was going to practice very sincerely and it was amazing, right? I mean, this kind of spark that I'd found finding my heart, it's radiated out as I laid down the neuronal, work in my body, to really start to tap into the hidden wisdom of the unconscious and start to resolve that kind of stored trauma and karma. The Dharma Ocean works not only based on, Trunka, it's also based a lot on Pugh Levine, who developed somatic-experiencing therapy, and his hypothesis was that trauma is stored in the body as tension, because as people with a regulator, when things come up and we're afraid, we'll tense down and try to hold it all together, and it actually creates a kind of knot in your body.

I know you've talked a lot about Sarnell and the healing your back, right?

Yeah, my neck shit, my unconscious rage. He came from what convinced me was that I was so anti-froyed and his whole shit is Freudian, and it was working, and I'm like, oh shit, I'm like, oh, okay, all right, I guess it was on to something. Yeah, no, that's accurate. I've been listening to this David Goggin's book, which is both really great and really challenging for me to listen to, 'cause he's so, he's like, "You need to be a bully to yourself." Like, sometimes bullies are right, and to hear the wisdom in what he's saying is actually a really, really great exercise for someone who considers themselves, 'cause he's like, the world is too soft.

You have to be able to take what he's saying, but also he's really giving you a very clear path towards recognizing that you do transcend any experience, and it's not like you're mean for being mean sick. It's kind of this, you know what it is? It's like the emperor card, you know? It's like, no one, I feel like a lot of people in this age don't love seeing the emperor, 'cause it's like this paternal wisdom and stuff, but like, you know what? Like, sometimes you do. You're a dad. I have to like, and like, I don't wanna say yelling, like, unhinged screaming. That's not what I'm talking about, but like, sometimes I have to yell at UI, 'cause he's a toddler, and he's doing some wild shit.

And like, sometimes he reacts poorly, and like, the first 300, 400, 500,000 times, I was like, maybe felt bad, and then I'm like, no, I don't feel bad. You're about to like, stick a fork in a fucking electric socket. Like, I needed to yell at your ass, what do you mean? I don't wanna get it when you fucking crazy, yeah. All right, back to the somatic stuff, yeah. Oh yeah, so back to the somatic stuff. Anyway, it really opened up my practice. Once again, like I said, I started out totally intellectually, you know, a bird o' moon, right? Everything's coming out of my mind, and then I learned, oh, hey, the body's there.

You know, I started feeling that, and man should start getting even better. Yeah, yeah, you're putting the pieces together, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I went through their, they call it the foundation, Yana, because Hitty Yana is now considered, sort of, you know, improper word. But, you know, the Tibetan path, they talk about the three different vehicles, right? The personal vehicle, which is the Hitty Yana, the foundational vehicle, you know, which is getting your shit straight, and, you know, the first turning of the wheel of Dharma. You know, learning about how to dissect your sensory inputs and, you know, sort of see the fluidity of, you know, who you are, right?

And then natural extension, I moved on to the Mahayana, which was great for me because it was kind of a return to the heart, you know, the Mahayana is all about, all about the heart meditations, you know, the metta and the bodhicitta. Yeah, amazing, amazing.

But the Vajrayana, let's get to the fucking weirded out fucking wisdom scientists of Tibet.

Yeah, which is Vedic, which is Vedic. Like in Vedic, and I mean, the cool thing about Buddhism, I don't know how familiar people are with the etymology of all this stuff, which is more of like a whimsical pursuit for me at this point, rather than like trying to be like, "Where did it all come from?" 'Cause it's like, I don't know, irrelevant. But it is interesting that, you know, at least in the Tibetan tradition, you know, Milarepa was the first fully Tibetan yogi. Marpa learned, and he was trained, I mean, he was, Marpa was Tibetan, but he went to India, like a lot of the other Tibetan, I mean, Tibetan, people think of Tibetan Buddhism, they think of like, "She's been around for thousands."

It's been around for like 800 years. It's like not that old. It's like pretty new, so like you can trace back these lineages to like, "Oh, they used to go to India "to study with like so-and-so, who was a yogi?" So, Milarepa was the first Tibetan born and trained and raised in Tibet. So, it's like, I only bring that up 'cause we're going through the vehicle. It's like, you know, the Tibetan path, which is what a lot of people, I think, because of the Dalai Lama, think of as Buddhism now, is really new, like really new. Like, people don't even, it's like, way newer than Christianity. Like, it's interesting, it's very interesting stuff.

Yeah, well, so the Vajrayana is Buddhist Tantra, right? For people who don't necessarily know. And the tantric style of practice is to erase the boundary between the sacred and the mundane. So, you know, we're talking about the lineage of people who had families, you know, and also people who did weird stuff like live in the cremation grounds and be human flesh and meditate on rotting corpses.

Hey, man, don't knock it till you try it. (laughing) So, I mean, you know, a lot of that, trying to erase the fear and erase the boundaries. And, you know, we'll get to this a little bit later, but I think that in the Western tradition, the alchemical path is, is kind of the Western Tantra in a way.

Yeah, it's the left-hand path in the Vedic tradition. It's definitely, I mean, alchemy by, I mean, here's the truth. I think it's all the blueprint for what most of us have signed up for in this day and age. If you incarnated in a time, which doesn't exist, but let's say it does, in a time and place where you have not just psychic accents to like all the Akashic records and everything, but like physical access and digital access that you can find whatever you need to find on a whim in your hand, chances are you did that for a reason. And chances are you did that because you've subscribed to, especially if you're listening to this podcast, you've subscribed to the left-hand path.

You are a Vajra Yogini or Yogi, like you're going into the world. You are interested in alchemy. You are interested in astrology and divination because what all those paths eventually lead to is like there is quite literally no difference. There's quite literally no difference between what one considers sacred and mundane. And the easiest way that I've found to realize and experience that is just know that you actually have quite a bit of control over this lucid dream reality we're in here. And by proving that to yourself, questions begin to dispel themselves rather than trouble the mind, the Virgo moons inner conflict and feeling because like honestly, it's like, you just keep proving you're like, "Oh shit, what, what, what, what?"

Like, "Oh my God." And it doesn't mean that everything is always smooth, although I do think we're moving into smooth ville for people who want to jump on smooth ville. It doesn't mean like nothing quote unquote bad or uncomfortable ever happens, but it means that we have all the tools and resources to transcend them at the rate we decide to. Like it's not, we're not faded is basically, is what I'm saying in terms of like what we experience. We do, we're fated to wake up to who we are. That's the only thing that I know is destined. The means and the rate in which we do that is totally up to us.

It's totally up to us as individuals to experience that. Okay, again, got sidetracked.

Oh, not at all, man. That's exactly the point, right? And the kind of culmination of the three different vehicles of Tibetan Buddhism, right as either the Zogchen or the Mahamudra, which is the nature of mind, right? That comes back to, you know, that it's all, it's all coming from inside, you know.

Everywhere you go, there's always some imaginal narrative and system that says that, someone can say call it father, Neville Goddard called it father. There was the Holy Trinity. It's all the same, they're talking about the same thing. I just find the quickest vehicle is to quite literally just go up and realize that and realize it doesn't mean death, doesn't mean obliteration. I think that's a huge existential fear that a lot of people have about enlightenment or the awakening process is like, you're gonna just like it. You're not gonna be here anymore, like you die. Like, I've had psychedelic trips that are like that.

Like, whoa, I'm figuring it out, I'm figuring it out. I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. And like, that's just a part of you dying. Like, you're still here. It's the whole function of being here is to wake up to this. You think you're just gonna play evaporate as soon as you realize it? No, let's suck. Okay, yeah.

Yeah, well, let's get into that a little bit 'cause I think that something that I feel needs to be addressed, because I've chosen this kind of Buddhist direction is the question of ego and stuff and how we in the West have kind of turned that into a neurosis of its own. (laughs) What does ego, why don't, you know--

Just the question of hate this.

What do you do with it? Yeah, we're like that's a neurosis now, of course.

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Roy.

Thanks, Roy.

Well, you know, and as Mitch Roberts and you pointed out, you know, it gets in the way for people because they kind of self-flagellate and think that it's something that needs to be destroyed. But what I'd like to just point out to everybody, you know, who's who's read Buddhist philosophy or, you know, read Vedic philosophy, this needs to come out of practice. The truth is, I mean, what the Buddha was pointing to is that there is a fluidity, right, within us, that we, like me, I am not concrete. And so when you get into deep practice, you see that, yeah, it's shifting around, you know, and that there's all kinds of inputs and all this stuff, you know, and that part of you that wants to take it all and assimilate it, that's good.

But that part also remembers the past and is, you know, concerned with the future and feels like it's solid. But when you can slow down and slow it down moment by moment, then you realize, no, no, it's not solid. We are like an ever-flowing river, you know, just emanating out of our body mind.

So here's where I think Westerners misinterpret the truth of that. I think that's something that becomes relatively apparent to anyone who's taken a high dose of any psychedelic because it's just like, oh my God, there's no real me. Like Noah is just the concept, clearly just the concept. Like to meet a latch on to anything. I think from my own personal experience and seeing how other people follow that realization, that fluidity, right? The Hinayana, the kind of that realization is they, the Buddha is you, the Buddha is an allegory of you saying, hey, I'm not doing anything special, I'm just awake.

But the Buddha, we know about him because he was the Buddha. He created, he branded himself in this allegory, the person who wrote and said this is a metaphor for someone waking up, branded someone. There was Siddhartha, has said did it even more explicitly. We need to do that for ourselves too. So there is this to deny, this is kind of like, some of the Socratic, I think Socrates, the way he was at least explained by Plato was one who kind of like denied the body also in a similar way. This is kind of a Piscean thing too, I've noticed, is to like, oh, well, the body is just an afterthought. This world is kind of like an illusory thing.

The mind is the only thing it's creating everything. So I don't need to pay attention to the body. It's a failure to integrate that truth with the fact that we're fucking here, right? Like we have physical form. So in the same way that this Hinayana like proves that there's a fluidity of mind and just sense of self, sure, but we've stabilized it and we've stabilized it for a very specific purpose. And that purpose, as far as I can tell, the only purpose is to wake up to the ultimate nature of this unity consciousness, what in Tibetan Buddhism is the merging of emptiness and bliss, right? That is the culmination of what they refer to as this, perceiving the clear light of enlightenment accurately and knowing yourself to be it, right?

And how the manifestations of that happen. That's the whole point. Outside of that, man, it's all fucking offensive, aw. That's the only thing that's important. And I think identifying the fluidity is the necessary first step to being able to build the stability of self and recognize the value of building the sense of self and also being willing to completely destroy it. Like that's the thing, you want a strong enough, like what I love about this David Gogginship is like he's really teaching people how to build this incredibly tough, persistent, fulfilled sense of self. But you also, he says, can't hurt me.

When I hear that, I say, no, you wanna be able to be hurt. Like also be able to open up that exterior, get stabbed in the heart so you can feel it because that allows you to do two things. One, if you can do it, you really are tough. If you have the strength to be hurt, holy shit. You're fucking even stronger than someone who can't be. You're like Wolverine strong, you can actually be hurt. He just keeps growing back. So if you can do that, you also get the power of being able to show other people how to transcend that pain. If there's someone who just never is hurt and maybe they have the blueprint but you can't get to the point where you can follow the blueprint, that's not as helpful as someone being like, yo, let me come down to like the depths of despair with you.

'Cause I know what that's like, I'm just gonna dip my toes in. I'm not a living there like you, but I'm gonna come in. All right, here you go, pull you out. All right, got it? Here's the thing. Here's how you do it. You can pull yourself out now. That to me is a very powerful aspect of being. And one of the reasons we incarnate is to feel that depth of experience once we open up to it, which is really a great synthesis of all this heart math and Buddhist pursuits now. Like I said, this diminishing of ego and desire, I've already seen another kind of, I don't see it, but I see ripples of it 'cause I don't really believe in it, but the people who have this weird aversion to desire again.

Like it's like, whoa, like we shouldn't, like it's bad. Like we don't want this and I'm like, okay. Well, I'm seeing this out in the world because there's probably some aspect of me that wants to like pressure test this. I am so full on soul as the vehicle of realizing who you are the quickest way as your desires. Like there's legitimately, Andrew is gonna call, hold on. I gotta take this call for one second.

Yeah, no problem.

I'm recording a podcast. I can't talk.

Every time someone, a woman in my family calls me as my wife, my mom, it's just, it's always something. So anyway, but yeah, I forgot what I was saying.

Well, we were talking about desire.

Oh yeah, the best.

Yeah, yeah. We know there's the whole thing about clinging and fulfillment and then this attachment and this kind of thing. Once again, misinterpretation because this stuff comes from practice. You know, I think there's a, the people get fucked up when they start looking at a practice and philosophy that comes out of it and thinking that the philosophy is what makes the practice.

No, no, no, no, top observation. What they were really getting at is that there is like an urge to move, right? You know, you are fluid. Also, you were dissatisfied, right? Otherwise nothing ever gets done. You know, otherwise you just sit there in a puddle of your piss and shit on your cushion.

And see this. - You know, and slow, we got, you know, and you see this with asceticism, you know, people.

I think that's a message.

I have to interject and say, I think that's a mistranslation. This idea of dissatisfaction is not the best vehicle for people who can't handle that word as a movement starter rather than a state of mind where it's bad or judgmental or negative, right? Like the Dalai Lama didn't understand when someone was like, hey, like, what are the Tibetan Buddhists say about self-hatred? He's like, what? He's like, what? And they had to explain to him that people in the West like hate themselves. He's like, whoa, why in a second, what? So like, the thing is, is that dissatisfied for most people, the way I talk about dissatisfaction is now, there's that tension point.

There's that thing, you want something, you don't have it. That's the only thing that I refer to as dissatisfied. And if you know how to pursue it and know that it's worthy of pursuit, if you actually like, you don't have to contemplate forever, but you practice that. Here's the thing that always fucked me up with the meditation and other vehicles that were working. A is on the type of person where you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to be enlightened for me to follow you. However, if I can find people who throughout history were like mystics and you just look at them and saw what they are like, oh, that person, like they know what they were living in.

That means there are people like that. So if you're teaching something and you're not the living bodyman of what you're teaching in every way, it's not that I think you're bullshit. I used to think you were bullshit. That was stupid and that was judgmental and it's holding me back. I don't think you're bullshit, but what it shows me is like, there must be something you're still looking for as well. And what that thing is, is always something inside of you. So here's what I've learned with practice. Here's what I've learned. I've turned my entire life into my practice. I've turned my waking. You know, like people in like the yogas of Naropa, they'll be like, hey, like you get into this dream state and then you're in the lucid dream state and that's where you start working through your own karma.

This is the fucking lucid dream. This is the fucking lucid dream. This is the barto state. I mean, I don't even mean this like, yes, this is earth and there are other barto states. What I'm saying is like, this is where you work through this shit. This is the place where you actually have the ability to malleably change things. That's why they refer to it as a precious human birth. It's so rare in their minds and it's not that rare actually. Here's the truth. They're doing that to them. Say like, hey, take advantage of it, wake up, wake up. It's not that rare. Here's the truth. You keep doing the shit over and over and over and over and over and over as you in this life, it's just like a little bit off dimensionally.

It's like the same fucking thing until you wake up to this reality of what's going on. And then it's like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like this is incredible. Now I get why one would put themselves through these infinite loop of suffering and dissatisfaction because like they now have the tool to wake up to how to not be dissatisfied. That to me is what's going on right now. And I really do believe just by virtue of me having a podcast and the ability to like speak to people, this is the proof to me that this is actually what's going on. 'Cause a lot of people are tuning into this shit and they wouldn't have incarnated and been able to hear that this isn't just like a crazy talk if it wasn't what was going on here.

And I think that's pretty miraculous, you know what I mean?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so there's so many problems with semantics, right? You know, the words that we choose are.

But it fucks people up in the syntax because what it does, you know what semantics do? They carry with them the resonant tone of what the person is feeling as they're saying them. So if I say fuck, someone can know that I don't say fuck like I wanna fucking kill that guy. It's different, it's like a lovingly, it doesn't matter. Some people are like, yo, you say fuck too much. Why are you saying it so much? I'm like, when you're talking about this, I'm like, I don't know, I like it, it's fine, it's good works. Like good phonetically, it's good. The resonant intention of it is totally fine. But whereas another person says it, it's just like bad.

It's bad, bad, bad. So I think that's really what most people, I just feel like the word dissatisfied carries with it a resonant tone because we've imagine only given it that. Same thing with like ego and attachment, aversion, grasping. They're like these things we try to move away from. And like the whole point of them is so you don't move towards or away. Not in like some like, let me do nothing kind of way, but just like, you know how to handle shit when it comes towards you. You don't freak out. You've taken this like equanimity, like everything is great. And I think the key mechanism here is that you can prove to yourself that this world is a dream and that it's not just like conceptually a dream.

And that to me is you wake up to that to the degree, it makes sense. You know what I mean? (laughing)

Indeed, indeed. I mean, if there are any doubters in the power of the imagination, I'm on synchronicity, so. (laughing)

Yeah, there you go. You did it.

Funny it works.

Let me, let's shift to tarot 'cause we could talk, I'm pretty sure for about endless hours. And we will, we're gonna have to do this YouTube stuff. Watch how I get it set up, it's so amazing. Tarot, man. You got me tuned into this alchemical tarot. You know about deckings. You know about shit that I didn't know about. You put me onto fortunes. Wheelhouse, this podcast, I gotta get them on. I gotta go visit them. How did you get in to tarot and all of the alchemical? Like what sparked your interest? And then we're gonna talk about what you're doing, which I love.

What sparked my interest? You know, I guess I've always been been interested in the occult. You know, as a kid, I was kind of an intuitive magician. I mean, I remember, I'm thinking specifically of one thing, my mom had a daycare center. And like, there's this old garage in there. And like, you know, I was like seven or something like that. And I took a couple other seven year olds into this garage and, you know, we were like, it started doing like a sance. It's kind of impromptu, you know? Like I was, you know, making up some chanting and, you know, like a beams of light are coming into the whole thing.

So I mean, I kind of, you know, I had this.

You know, your Neptune is in your eighth house and Sagittarius. Do you know what that means? Is that just your first to you? All right, so I can hold the thought with your seance and it just makes sense. So Neptune is your unconscious. It's the mystic arts. It's kind of the occult. It's witchcraft. Your eighth house is ruled by Scorpio. It's reincarnation. It's kind of all that stuff. That's cyclical past stuff. And Sagittarius is, you know, it's just like, it's just straight up fire expansion, like movement, travel, philosophy. So the fact that your Neptune is there in your eighth house with Sagittarius is just like, it's a very good explanation for why at a very young age you would have been attuned to this type of shit.

Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, culturally though, very dicey back in the '80s. I mean, you know, as you remember, the satanic panic and, you know, there's a huge, you know, kind of intellectual witch hunt, I think, you know, for the occult and onward into the '90s, but, you know, once again, the culture is largely Judeo-Christian. And so that's frowned upon, at least in my childhood, and, you know, so I pushed it away. But, you know, as a grown man, right? I'm, you know, doing this Buddhist path. And, you know, I found the chaos magic, ideal of sincerity. Well, you know, I wanted to explore the Western tradition a little bit more.

So I started to hang out in some occult discord servers, you know, and there was something about the cards, you know, that just, it called to me. I downloaded an app and started doing digital readings for myself, you know, and went through all those kind of early tarot pitfalls with getting the scary-looking cards. Oh, no. Oh no, the tower, the ten of swords. Oh, fuck. But yeah, so I started learning the tarot this way. And I have to say that the app that I use is hilarious. I mean, it's like, you know, probably designed around that, you know, 2010, 2011, you know, pretty-- - I'm pretty sure I had this.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I had the same app. And I honestly had it back in like 2008 or some shit and I don't think they've changed. I mean, I have way better apps now for it, but like, I'm very, it was like purple-y and like, I just kind of remember this app being like, so silly, but it worked.

Oh, it was silly, but it worked. And I mean, that was a great intro, right? 'Cause the deck art is terrible. I mean, that's not true. There's several decks, but there's a lot of really bad decks in there, you know? So I got a taste for, you know, the way the different cards looked and the way that the different artists interpreted the symbolism and all that kind of stuff. And my brother-in-law, he ended up getting me the alchemical tarot. I heard Bob Place on the Vroom Soup podcast with Gordon White and Gordon said it was his favorite deck. And I was like, well shit, man, if Gordon likes it, I'm gonna check this out, you know?

And I looked at the cards on the internet and asked for it for my birthday. So, yeah, Jordan, shout out, man. He got me the alchemical tarot. And then I started reading for him and reading for myself, you know, pulling cards all the time. And then at some point, I just had a tingle and I started offering on these occult servers, you know? For card reading and their reactions, no one were really what empowered me. You know, that these people were like, oh shit, dude, this guy is fucking on. (laughs) You know, and like, you know, it's not like I'm, you know, doing the, doing spreads for housewives.

You know, these are legit practitioners working with all kinds of magical systems, you know? And they were impressed with me. And I was like, fuck. That's what happened with me. And I didn't know any of this stuff. I just like know that like what you were posting in the Cryptosync server and just like, I was like, yeah. I don't 'cause like the Kabbalah stuff too. Like I don't know any of, like everything I learn about feels like remembering if I'm being honest, which is why I think I can very quickly like, you know, I know I have, I don't know. I'm sure there are people who are in my circles who are like, no, I didn't know shit about tarot.

Now he's charging money for tarot. Who the fuck does he think he is? All I can say is I didn't understand tarot. I didn't get it at all. I used it, I knew there was a power. They're the same thing with astrology. But once I fucking pop that key open, holy shit, did I start? And I, it was like, it's a thirst and it's a hunger. I listened to the stuff about this. I read stuff about it. It's like, it just comes pouring in and when it starts to make sense and you get it, it's like, whoa, it's like, I just know from my quick deep dive into it, I immediately, you know, and the shit you were like, dude, fortunes wheelhouse, the water trio, like all these, all this stuff, like those people are so fun and smart and like amazing about this and they tie so many things together.

I don't even know, like honestly, my sense is, like they kind of know what they're doing, but I don't even think they really realize like the power of what they're doing in terms of like tying together. Alchemy, mysticism, history, astrology, astronomy, tarot, it's fucking nuts. It's so cool. But you also do that in like these condensed readings and Yemen, explain, explain your particular take on tarot and just kind of how this unfolded for you.

My particular take on tarot, I see the cards as a reflection of the spiritual journey, you know, more so than fortune telling, you know, you know, say like you get death or something like that, you know, which means a big change. That doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, stuff in your life is going to fall apart. I mean, it certainly could and is definitely evident, but it's more about, you know, what happens inside, you know, how do we rectify our internal struggle? You know, like, I'm gonna leave it there. I like concise. How do we rectify our internal struggle? You know, the tarot lays it out pretty well.

We're pointing out where it is, potentially is, I mean, so I spoke to Bob Place, Robert Place, who designed the alchemical tarot. I didn't ask him any of the questions at all. And I also had to use the XY, 'cause he's like, I'm not holding that. He didn't say it, but it was like, yeah, you gotta hold him like, he's like, you gotta hold him. I'm like, no, we don't. So I just laid him in front of us and used the XY. So I haven't even listened to the quality yet, but he was very interesting. And, you know, he said something to me 'cause he has so many cool decks that he has designed. I'd had no idea.

I'm, you know, I'm like, relatively, like, I'm relatively schmucky when I interview people. Like, I get what they've created in my hand. So I did this with Mitch. Like, I listened to the Miracle Club before I had him, which was amazing. And I've used the self-chemical deck now for at least a few weeks before I went and saw Robert. And, but like, I didn't know shit about him, really. And so I was like, finding all of this stuff out. And he's like showing me all these, like, antique decks and cards he has and, like, telling me the history. And, you know, he's really as much of a historian about Taro than anything else.

And I didn't know that. So I'm gonna hear, like, I'm like, time doesn't exist. And, like, he's like, he's like, I don't know, man. And he's, like, it was a practically pretty good conversation. But, you know, we were talking, I saw one of his things, I was like, there's a bird. Like, people should know that, like, the bird, you know, what the bird needs, like, yeah, but sometimes it's just a bird. And I'm like, yeah, but, but it's not, you know what I mean? And I do know that it's just a bird in life. But it also, I do believe the reason these cards work, and he broke it down historically, 'cause they're not what we thought.

Most people imbue this, like, ancient mystical wisdom in them, and it's not. And, like, how chemical Taro proves that, 'cause he came up with this shit and, like, you know, the '80s, in the '90s. So it's not, like, this ancient thing. And he knew the history of this stuff. So, yeah, the Taro is just, it's fascinating to me. My only thing I've realized about it is it's always the querent. The cards are always the querent, like, anything else in this world. And we just, we have this ability to hone in on them, and dice them, and make them make sense for people. And that's what I love about what you do, because you do use these deckins, and you do use the alchemy.

So, like, walk me through your process as you're giving a spread in terms of, like, how do you, like, are you noticing intuition, impressions? Are you referencing? Like, there's infinite ways to do this stuff, as I'm sure you know. But, like, what's your process for, like, pulling cards? You don't use reversals. Bob doesn't use reversals either. You don't. - Yeah.

Right. - No reversals for me.

Right, right, right. So, like, what's your process like?

My process.

You know, I guess if we're talking about how in practice I do it, you know, usually I take a moment and, you know, do a bit of personal banishing. You know, I have a visualization that I do where I breathe up from the center of the earth, and, you know, there's a lotus in my heart and project it out in front of me. You know, this may sound familiar to anybody who knows the lesser ritual of the pentagram. But, you know, I project out in front of me a yellow lotus for air, you know, I'm always facing east, you know, to the south, I project out of red behind me blue and to my left, to the north, you know, a green.

And then I imagine, like, you know, just this huge blast of air, you know, and I see the clouds coming out, you know, in front of me. And, you know, just a sea of fire to my right. And, you know, like an endless ocean to my back and, you know, like a, you know, landslide, you know, it's spreading out forever. And, you know, at that point, I know that my shift cleared out, right? And then I use my heart math and my boat at Chitti, my boat at Chitti training, where, you know, I breathe in my heart and, you know, sort of picture, picture the querent, you know, and try to occupy their space. And I draw the cards rapidly and then sit there in a very spicy way, you know, kind of go, okay, you know, intuitively, what does this mean?

And then I let the bird go, mine, take over and go, okay, you know, what's this shit? What's the breakdown, you know, here? What are the numerological and astrological? And, and, um, probabilistic, you know, kind of, kind of meanings here, so.

Yeah, I think that's what I like about it, that I, uh, I probably could benefit more from in my readings too. I mean, I do always try to keep it practical, but my sense of practical is like, your imagination is reality, that's practical to me. That's, that's like, it's like, what do you mean that that's the most practical thing? But you do have a way of synthesizing, and I know you, Kate, are your readings to me, you know, to, for who I am, but like, you do have this ability to kind of bring these concepts down to earth, right? That's the Virgo Moon aspect of it. I, I love this, so explain your, your business is just getting off the ground, you're doing this.

I forced you to do this in some regards, but like, you're, I forced you to do it because A, you're really good at it. B, I think, not I think I know that this is, for the people who wanna know the connections between these things, like these seemingly disparate, but very much connected modalities, like alchemy, astrology, tarot, and Buddhism, like you have a way of kind of like, you study this, you're the Virgo Moon in you has dissected this. The Pisces Sun in you has dissected this. And you're doing a really special thing that I haven't encountered. Like I've gone pretty deep into tarot world and they've come across a lot of different people who are doing different things.

All many, many, I should say, amazing in their own rights and all offering something unique. But as someone who does this now, professionally, I like have a strong endorsement for what you've been doing. It's like, I'm glad to hear other people have had that reaction too because it's just very apparent. So like, clearly your feedback is, you're supposed to be doing this. So, why don't you talk about two things here? Why don't you talk about your aspirations for what you're doing? And why don't you talk about some of your fears too? So people can understand that this is like, I think a lot of people are opening up to the mystic arts as not a job, like, hey, this is like what I do to make money now.

This is my career, but like has, you know what? There's some energy exchange here that makes sense. And if it involves money, so be it. I'm not gonna let my conception of what that is stand in the way. So like, can you talk a little bit about your aspirations and your fears, you know, in the Celtic cross, your ninth card position? Talk about what's going on there for you with this. 'Cause it's very powerful and I want people to know that.

Well, clearly I feel called and not just, you know, not just from you from the crypto sync server. I mean, which you and I both know, we somehow set that up for each other and we would dream each other alive here. But yeah, man, I so much want to be able to help people, you know, leave them homes themselves, you know, and help them to find those places in their lives where they can erase that line between the sacred and the mundane, you know, and really, you know, in alchemy, there's an acronym, vitriol, right? I still remember the Latin, but essentially what it says is enter into the earth and by rectifying what you find there, you will uncover the philosophers now.

Yes, so that's what I'm all about, man, is, you know, like I said, I wanted to be very real with, you know, kind of all the issues that I've had in my life because, you know, I want people to know that, you know, I feel where they're at, you know, I feel it pain very, very much so, you know, the suffering is real, the struggle is real here. And, you know, when I can make that connection with somebody and help them see stuff within them that they need to see, that's a boy, that's quite a gift, you know, I guess, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's something that I very much know exactly. We were talking about having done this now for a month and a half or so.

It was something I would not have known could be so rewarding because I never, something it's commoditized, but I never set a structure around this particular form of like energy exchange and there's something so fucking, 'cause the person who you're giving the reading to, totally, like I'm always, at first I was like, like, wow, like, who would do, like, but now it's like, oh my God, like they get this shit. It inevitably turns into a longer reading than it was intended to be, so all the times are all, are always wrong. And more importantly, a connection that it's like, holy shit, like, A, these cards told them or their chart told them exactly what they needed to hear.

B, by me being this vessel and just like, delivering it to them, again, to fuck out of the way and just interpreting the signs here that they've laid out for themselves, like what are another rewarding position to be in? So, yeah, I love it. So what are you afraid of with watching a business like this?

Oh man, nobody's gonna come. (laughing) Which, you know, has not been the case, right? I've had good friends from the server and, you know, from the outside world, tap me and utilize my services.

Yeah, you know, I'm afraid that what I feel are my true gifts to be able to help people directly are going to go unused, you know what I mean? And, you know, 'cause, like I said, with the HeartMath coaching, helping other people to find themselves is, that's number one for me, you know? And I feel like, you know, as a Pisces son and as a person who's gone through, you know, a lot of different sorts of things and had a lot of crazy fucking life experiences, you know, I can empathetically occupy somebody else's position, you know, and help them out.

Well, I will say this, you're Jupiter, the Boongiver Zeus is in your first house and that's your house of self. And it's not just your conception of self, but it's, you know, your ego, it's how you find worth. And that transcends all other, you know, aspects 'cause that's really what you're projecting out in this world and so, you know, well, he is in square with your Mars and Aquarius, which means that movement may be a little more difficult to get through, it does mean forward movement is happening and through your friendships, through the house of friendships where your Mars is, I think that's gonna be pretty powerful for you.

And I would imagine anyone who would be coming to a reading for you would feel as though they're talking to a close friend, which is how I've always felt, man, as we've gone through this process too. So where can people find you if they're like, okay, I'm sold? This guy was just super vulnerable. Noah also said he knows, and I really, and I'll make this clear in the intro in the actual like, you give me a text reading every day, and I'm just like, holy shit. I'm usually showing someone next to me and like, look how fucking crazy on point this is. Where can people find and book a reading with you?

I am on arcaneheartstero.com. And I'm also on Instagram at arcaneheartstero. So, you know, hit me up on Instagram, DM me, and, you know, we can discuss some things there, come and schedule with me, and we can do a reading. Also, I'm constantly on crypto sync. So definitely, if you're interested in pointing that, man, folks, family, please, come and find me. We can talk, we can be friends.

I have obnoxiously gated it. But it's such a, like, I've never felt more secure about gating anything before, because A, it's crypto. B, it's like, you know, the sanctity of what is crypto sync is because of the caliber of people who are there, and like, if you pay, even if it's not that much over the time you're in there, if you have to pay to get in, like, you keep the rip back out, you know what I mean? And it's also like, the, the, the mountain is like, cheap enough that like, I will totally refund your money if you're a dick. So like, I don't care about like, there's no like, oh, I spent it on a lap.

It's like 50 bucks, and you got that shit. I'm gonna give it back to you. But anyway, yeah, it's a magical place. I'm gonna keep that threshold up. But you do not have to be a member to experience Sean's reading. So go to his website. Let's end with the three and then bonus question, foundational questions. What's your favorite color?

Green.

What's your favorite number?

Nine.

What's your favorite animal?

Sharks, but I want to talk about that for just a second because my favorite animal is the great white shark, right? The big guy with the, with the awesome face. But the one that is like my spirit animal is the hammerhead. Yeah. Now, now check this out. Forgo, moon, Pisces, sun, hammerhead. They have, you know, that, that weird shape of their head. Actually, they, they have sensory organs all along the bottom of that. They pick up the, the magnetic frequency of the earth. And so in schools, the hammerheads will follow the lava. The lava flows.

Oh.

Yeah. - Interesting.

Yeah. The water in the earth now.

Very interesting. I'm going to also, before we leave after we get from your practical tip, I'm going to tell you the cards I pulled for you. What's a practical tip that's helped you in your life that you could share with people listening?

Breathe into the heart.

That's good. That's practical. It's really like a breakfast. I actually really do. It's very rhombosian, too. All right. So I pulled the page of, I do three cards. Page of wands, two of cups, seven of wands, which to me is like pretty classic here for what you're doing and what you're experiencing, right? So page of wands, and I also look at it up chemically now. You taught me that as much as anyone else. Wands, fire, cups, water, wands, fire. So page of wands, right? You're starting this movement into a whole new domain. You have the three pyramids behind you. You also have the cloak emblazoned with salamanders.

I'm using the writer link here. And you have a yellow cloak, symbolizing intellect, creativity, innocent joy. It's like the sun personified and also boots there as well. But you also have orange pants or stockings, they look like, nice. And that symbolizes orange as a blending of the red and the yellow, of the movement of the fire and the creativity and the intellect. So strong foundation, your page, Robert and the chemical right, the ladies. So that's an amazing platform in which to launch yourself from. You also then have the two of cups, right? We all know what the two of cups is. It's fucking on my Instagram with the future, you know?

Mask off. It's the harmony between the masculine and the feminine. It's the hermetic symbol. What do they call that? Katakis, Katakis? Is that what it's called? Caduceus, caduceus. That's what it comes when you only read shit and don't hear it. Caduceus with a lion coming at the top. So you have a water sign ultimately culminating in a fire sign with Leo there. And then Seven of Wands is like my new favorite card in the Rider Weight 'cause it shows this guy. He's staked out his mother fucking position. Like, and now he has to defend it from himself and everyone else, ultimately it's just himself.

He's wearing the green tunic symbolizing that he's got growth. Still gotta grow a little bit, but that's great 'cause there's room to grow. There's so much more to experience. Underneath that is again the yellow. Yellow is big. If you're into like color magic and any of this stuff, you got it all over these Rider Weight. Again, that's intellect creativity. That's your guiding touch zone. And, you know, the Wands aren't touching anything. There's nothing going on there. There's just like a defensive posture. You just have to defend the ground that you've staked out for yourself against anything else.

Internal doubt, external situations. That is what ultimately leads to the fulfillment of what you're trying to do. So good cards, man. All upright too. I do reversals with the Rider Weight, but none came up reversed, so.

Perfect. There you go, man. All right, dude, this has been awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, it's been awesome, Noah. Thanks. Big love to your family. Big love to my family. And a big one to the Cinco-Micity family.

Yeah, Cinco-Micity, I'll be with them, man. Peace. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thanks for listening to that episode. Reminder, go check out Sean at arcaneheartstero.com. Go book a session with him because you're smart and you like good things and you know that doing good things is smart for you. I listen, speaking from direct experience, I've gotten a lot of readings from a lot of people, especially in the past few months, but this one near to the top friends. Right in review this podcast. Join the Cinco-Micity community. And what I mean by that is the email list. And let's all welcome Jake, my new assistant. He is fucking awesome. He's already coming up with like the best idea.

Shit is just gonna get like, when things start to get way better, know that it's like basically his ideas and like him executing shit that I didn't have the bandwidth to do. So thanks Jake. That's it for this week 'cause I will be in the city with Whitma tomorrow. I hope to see you there. I will see you next week with some other episodes and more guests. Bye bye. Oh yeah, and happy imagining.