Life is Psychedelic with Michael Phillip | 106

This is what all of Western esotericism and magic is about, transmuting your will into action into something that goes from being a nothing to a something. Welcome to episode 106 of Synchronicity. My guest this week is Michael Philip, host of Third Eye Drops, a wonderful podcast. You can find it on MindPodNetwork.com. Go check it out. Thirdeyedrops.com. He's one of the smartest, brightest, nicest people I've met. He stayed with us when we did the Wellbeing in the Modern Age event in New York City a few weeks ago. Got to hang out, got to introduce him to micro-reduce. That's not a thing. Micro-dose solution, which he enjoyed and got a little introduction into our good friend Jimi Hendrix.

We wink, wink, nod, nod, Michael. So that was cool and it was always great seeing him and this podcast, honestly, I usually listen to him before I do intros, but I'm not for this one. And the reason I'm not is I'm going to listen to it right after this. I'm going to experience the whole thing because I don't really remember exactly. I know we did some Wim Hof breathing right before we recorded this. I smoked a pretty sizable doobie and we were on micro-dose solution. So I vaguely remember what we were talking about, but I know it was pretty fucking cool. So I can't tell you much about this episode.

I want to say a big thank you to everyone. You know what I'm going to do? I am going to in the middle of this intro. Right here, I'm Googling. I'm not Googling. I'm putting in the URL, I want to say thank you to all of the patrons who are supporting me on patreon.com because honestly, it's cool as fuck that you guys do this. So thank you big time to Kelsey. Kelsey, thank you for pledging this month. You're on the music level a little above. That's totally fucking cool. I really appreciate it. Thank you to Denise. Thank you to Patrick. Thank you to chameleon. I know who you are. Thank you to Andrew, Brandon, Frank, Matthew, Axel, Jeremy, Matthew.

Well, let me, there's two Matthews here. I got to specify Matthew Pankone, Matthew Smith, Kathleen Hawes, Kath. I know you. You're the best. Tess, my sister. You also rule. Yassie, James, Sean, Otto, Daniel, finger, Melissa, Amy, Danielle, Kristen, Kirk, Mark, Jeremy, you guys all rule. Thank you for supporting synchronicity this way on patreon.com/synchronicity, that's so fucking cool. I support some people on patreon. I find it, you know, it warms the cockles of my heart when I do it too. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. Anyway, I don't want to take up too much time. This podcast is a doozy.

Michael Phillip, go check him out. Subscribe to his podcast, third eyedrops, third eyedrops.com on the Facebook, on the Facebook is something I just said. What the fuck? Go check him out everywhere you can. He rules without further ado. Here is Michael Phillip. It's well. Good to go. All right. Recording. All right. Do you feel the microdose? I got to say, man, so I remember at some point I heard someone in the psychedelic community bring in and forgive me, everyone listening. If I sound slightly hoarse, it's been a and even more intensive mouth noise filled 48 hours than usual, but I remember someone in the psychedelic community saying something to the effect of he wasn't sure if microdoses were placebo effect or not and may have been Dennis McKenna.

It was Dennis McKenna and I think I relayed that story to you and I was just like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's on this podcast. I think. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Because so I've I've microdosed quite a bit with psilocybin and for me, maybe I'm just taking too much, but it's there's no possible way it's placebo effect. It absolutely has a pretty profound effect on my mood on the my body, whatever. But this time, I kind of see how it could possibly be placebo effect with LSD. This was Alexis's takeaway. When she first did it, I mean, I did it for three months. Every fourth day and some days where I kind of felt like that.

But the truth is, is I am also incredibly sensitive to all of these things like to to a crazy degree, which I know is baffling considering how much weed I smoked. I just be. I think baffling is the perfect amount of the perfect word to describe the amount of weed you smoke to it is it is baffling, but and the truth is is it's not like I it's my threshold and I'm not getting high, I'm blitz, I just know how to function in that realm. So I still am very sensitive to all things. I don't think I've ever taken the LSD microdose where I've questioned whether it's working. I do think it took me probably a solid month to become familiar with how it was affecting me relative to the days where I knew like it was like a third day and I was just totally off of it.

It was out of my system completely. It's super subtle and I could see how people would be like, I don't know if it's actually doing anything and I know people have said that to me, it's it's pretty. I know what to look for now, like the hallmarks. I totally agree that the psilocybin is like, you can't miss it. Like that's that's unmissable, you know? Yes. Yes, I completely agree. I completely agree. I think with and I was discussing this yesterday with some of the people that we were Julia and Kelly, people that were involved in the event that just happened, which we definitely have talked about.

No, no, that's not allowed. We can't talk about it. We can't talk about it. That's that's fine. No, we obviously aren't. But to my to my shock, I was initially shocked that Kelly had never done it. And then Julia showed up and she had never done it either. And I was like, neither one of you ever experienced psilocybin. No, no, Julia has she said, she said she threw up. So she didn't she didn't yeah, doesn't count. Yeah, no, doesn't count. So which I mean, I get it because there is a there's the anxiety of what am I about to go through, which already gives you the the rumbly tumbly. And then once it hits, there is what I, you know, have just come to call the adjustment period of like this sort of like wave of reorientation that occurs because I've heard a few different explanations that make sense to me.

One, obviously, bonds to your serotonin, ERGIC receptors, and you have quite a few of them in your gut. Yeah. People think of it as just your brain, but you have quite a few in your gut. So that could be part of the nausea. And I also think it's because it has such an effect on your visual acuity, you're sort of recalibrating, you know, like, and, you know, balance comes into play and all of that stuff. So whatever it is, that's sort of how I think of it. And so I get the, I get the nod as my point, um, however, afterward that's as everyone knows, listening, that's when, you know, you get the, you get the benefit and the you experience everything.

That's worth experience. I think the anxiety is worth experiencing too, but, um, I would be scared if there wasn't anxiety. Right. That's when I would actually be freaked out. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Like that would be like, this is something is a miss here. I think the healthy dose of whether you want to call it anxiety or just anticipation. Like that, if that doesn't happen or I'm about to take anything, I might be addicted, truthfully. Uh, but even when I smoke, like I still kind of know if it's something I'm familiar with that maybe is a little more satv and paranoid, I'm like, all right, I'm going to make sure that contextually, this is the right time to be doing this.

Um, but yeah, I totally know what you mean. So that what I was going to say, my whole point of this, this too long ramble that is in my hallmark is, um, that I feel like with micro dosing psilocybin, I still experience all of those, those little steps, like the, the anxiety that, okay, I hope this is the right amount. And then the initial like slight wave of reorientation and nausea, but then just kind of being at that nice little hum. When's the last time you macro dose LSD? Um, never, so, yes, so here you go. I don't know if I've ever admitted that before, but I mean, no, that's a huge, that's that.

So here's been my experience with, uh, macro dosing LSD. And the first time I took it, I took the most. I, I, my guess is it was at least 600 micrograms. Okay. Um, but, uh, it was presented as each tab was 250 and it, and having taken it many times since then, um, it was a lot. That's all I know. It was more than I had ever taken. Um, I still found it to be a highly subjective, how you're describing it. Once you get past like, you know, 2030, you're going to have noticeable mental and psychological effects, visuals won't be kicking in, but, you know, um, I've taken tons of LSD with no visuals whatsoever.

So it is one of those things that can kind of like subtly penetrate what's going on. That's why I bring it up. Stylocybin has never been subtle and anytime I've ever taken it. Um, you know, from the giggly euphoric phase right before everything starts kicking in, um, it shifts you out of this dimension of reality pretty. The elves come out to play. Yeah. And whether it's one elf or 50. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's an elf. Um, LSD is different. We were talking about before the story of doc Ellis and he pitched a no header, hitter. Um, maybe a no header is a better term for it. No hitter. Uh, um, Major League Baseball.

I've been on quite a no header street. Yeah. Yeah. It's the best way to be. So he did that. And like, you know, everything you hear about LSD and for people who have experienced psilocybin, that would be like, how could you function at a professional athlete level, especially one that requires such delicate focus and attention, like you have to get your muscles to do something that like a very small percentage of the world can do for a very specific thing. And how do you maintain that? Let alone do something that's like vaunted and the status of the sport. So, um, LSD kind of works like that, like you can take a tremendous amount and you know, you can be having very different thoughts than you might be, but the world doesn't necessarily radically change your perception of it does.

So I wonder if that has some, um, impact on your initial experience. The first time I gave it to another friend who had never done any LSD ever, um, said the same thing. He wasn't sure it was working. Um, after doing it 10, 15 more times over the course of a few months, he was like, I don't know. I get it. Duncan referred to it as my favorite term. Uh, when I asked him if he had done it, he called it spiritual Adderall and I was like, I was like, that's actually not a bad term. I mean, we haven't been outside yet. Just so everyone's up to date. It's been about an hour, maybe an hour and a half when you go outside and just kind of go through the days experience, you know, you're good at noting what's going on.

See if there's anything. You could make the case that maybe we're just settling into the moment because we've perceived we've taken a substance. Um, that's why I do think the regularity of consuming micro doses is like a, is a necessary thing. This whole like 48 hours has been a bit of a, a tweaking reality type of set of circumstances anyway, just because it's been like, this is the kind of stuff I want to be doing with my life full time. So it's like, it allows me, you know, as anybody with a creative project knows that they're not making their living from, it's sort of like you're occupying these adjacent realities to an extent, a reality where you can just disappear and plug into what your passion is leading you toward.

And then one is an, I mean, sure that can be an obligation as well, but you're also on the leash of, you know, whoever's giving you the points you need to put food in your mouth. So that leads to this sort of, you know, tug of war for your attention. And for the last few days, since I've been in New York and we've been doing this Whitmer event, I've essentially been living in the, like, this is what I want. This is like where I want to be at all times, mind state and that that's already reality altering. And then also just, I mean, is there anything more psychedelic than connecting with other human beings that are on the same wavelength and it's like you're augmenting and enhancing one another's like my, it's like you go from having whatever your little micro super power is in the way that you can influence other people positively.

And then you're like collectively coming together to exponentially increase that thing in that moment. And it is powerful, man. I think I told you that, you know, and this is going to sound so like cliche and wooey, but, you know, we started the whole event with a setting and intention and a meditation. And you know, of course, I'm going to like play along in whatever parts you're like, I don't know if I want to do a matter, real meditation right now, you know, that, that all kind of sinks away because everybody's doing it and you're the dick. If you're not. So I'm like, all right, I'm doing this, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this.

And then we have these fantastic musicians there. Yeah. I am Tyler. Yeah. Oh, my God, man, like, so she, she's just a, she's just one of those like fairy-like beings who's just, you know, so yeah, she's very ethereal. She's just perfect to get people a visual. They're sitting on a floor. All my sisters cushions. Yeah. You had to bring those from us. We brought those over. Yeah. Some, some very nice colorful pillows and the male of the two, would you say his name was Tyler? Tyler. The male of the two. The male of the two. He was the man behind the noises that were not vocally induced. Right. And you know, he had his synth plugged in and his, his Mac book and whatever.

Um, and he just playing kind of ethereal pad type sounds. But then she starts doing these like, is it a language or is it just? Yeah. She was singing, um, a, a chant. The first one was a suria chant, which is like a sun chant, heart center practice. Um, I don't know what the second one was more like a composition, probably something, but I didn't hear discernible words. Yeah. Yeah. And then she starts harmonizing with herself, like looping her voice. Yes. That's what just like when the harmonies kick in, I don't know what it is, but harmonies just always like kind of hit me right in the, in the vagus nerve like in the, in the throat.

And it's like, I had a moment where I was like so moved within two minutes that I had to like actually open my eyes from the meditation. So I didn't start like having like a moment, a blubber. I don't want to like be sitting there crying in front of like 300 people. So so yeah, those moments are very powerful and being able to visit those moments more regularly over the course of, you know, 48 hours starts to really make reality feel different. Yes. It does. And I think a lot of what we talk about in our respective podcasts are different modalities and tools we can find that allow us to get into those moments or feel those moments when they're happening.

And the basic contention is those moments are always around us. And it's kind of like if someone you're passing on the street is talking about a topic that you know something about, you're going to recognize it and maybe have some input or thought related to it. Whereas if you're walking by someone is reading, they're talking about something you don't know what it is. That's not going to be important to you at all. So it's a, it's a process I think of not adding and learning more, but getting more in tune with what's around you. So you can kind of intuitively understand it even if you don't rock the whole concept.

And I think this is something that people naturally do as they kind of open themselves up to the world, right? They just get better. We were talking about it too. I mean, how comfortable we felt being moderators at this event because of the podcasts we were doing. But also anyone who's dabbled in any type of public speaking or any broadcasting stuff, over time you just get more comfortable speaking with people naturally in life. And I think that is something that is not just this process of like practice makes perfect, but it is this kind of evoking this feeling of connection, interconnectedness.

That's interesting. I didn't know you were so moved by the, I was too just to be clear. I heard them, you know, through a SoundCloud link and I was like, wow, this is really awesome. And I was blown away how good they were in the space and how it worked. Yeah, very, very good. It was flawless. Especially knowing, I remember we were talking about like, no, and I are, you know, know is very experienced in sound arrangement and making electronic music. I've been a musician and stuff as well. And we've worked a lot of electronic stuff and looping stuff into my former band sets in the past. And we're kind of discussing whether she was doing it live or not.

And she was, right? Like she really was. Yeah. We were debating whether there was a harmonizer on her thing or if she was just harmonizing with her own looping, and which is the second of the two is significantly harder to do because you actually have to be on pitch live while you're doing it to be able to layer things because if you fuck up, you have to do it again. It's not like an easy process. And I originally thought it was a harmonizer and you could preset that up. It would be like a decent amount of work, but that's what I thought it was. And I asked her afterwards. And she's like, no, I was layering them live and like, that's really awesome.

Timing was perfect. The pitch was perfect. It was, it was well done. I mean, that's like, I don't know, I would love to hear kind of your overall impression. I got a little bit of it of what the event was. I look at these events too, like these are events that are meant to pierce the veil. That doesn't mean it's going to pierce the veil for everyone. But I think if that's the intention that was my intention with them, that is available for people to tap into most of the events. Let me ask you this. You were at both of them energetically. And I know this is kind of a subjective word, how did you think it compared to the LA one?

I think it was actually pretty similar. And I think that that trickles down from the people who are involved. I think everybody who's in attendance subconsciously is going to pick up on whatever, for lack of a better term, is the vibe that's being put out by the people organizing it. I've been to other events that said where that was clearly not the case. And I've been fairly public about borderline shit-talking those events because they're a scourge, man. They are a boil on people's very earnest, rightful desire to go look for answers. And when you run into people who are immediately carving up hierarchies by saying they're channeling, you know, I don't know, some globe-glab 69 from the Alpha Centauri Star System.

How do you think they get to that point? And what do you think- I have several theories. I would like to hear them. Well, the most pure theory, of course, is that they really are in contact with something and they really believe what they're relaying to you. Or they're lying to themselves and they're letting something that's more likely a dream or a weird trick of their own mind. I mean, you've probably been in those states where you wake up from a dream and you feel like you were just talking to something, but you're able to be like, "Okay, well, that was really interesting." And maybe that was significant or maybe it was just a dream.

But there's no, like, maybes with these people. It's very like- concrete. It's very like, "Yeah, I'm actually from this star system and I'm, you know, whatever." And, you know, I would start telling you about the whole dimensional part of it because this is a 13th dimensional thing, but trying to, like, really explain what the 13th dimension is when we're in the third dimension, you know, you've got to go from up there to that. That's the type of language that- This is an actual conversation I've had with people. And it's infuriating because if you are seeing an event like this online and I talk to several people like this, you talk to several people like this, you see an event like this online, you buy a ticket, you go to it.

You're going because you are an existentially restless human being and you want to connect with other human beings who are earnestly going down this path and you want to make real quality connections. That's not a real quality connection. Telling someone you're from the 13th dimension and blah, blah, blah, buy this crystal for me for $250 is- It's not real. It's not real. And that doesn't mean there's no real metaphysical ontological meat out there for you. But if someone's presenting themselves as something that sounds like a character from a fairy tale, they probably are unless they can demonstrate to you something very real in that moment to the counter of that.

But anyway, so- No, no, these are- That's to say that I thought the event for the most part was beautiful. I thought the people there were very earnest and kind and I thought the people involved in the panelists and the moderators and the people that you work with to produce the event all very sweet, all very overwhelmingly well-intentioned despite all the, you know, I mean, I'm sure as everybody out there can imagine if you're trying to set up an event in Manhattan with a considerable amount of overhead, there's stress involved, there's a lot of people who need to show up, there's a lot of things that need to work and the things that could have gone wrong, by and large, did not go wrong.

Yeah, yeah. I've been thinking about that and it's this idea, so I put up a quote that day and I never really know what the quotes mean if I do them in advance and I did this one in advance and it was an Eckhart Tolle quote and I'm not like an avid, you've never heard me like really, I don't mention him a lot or anything, but I do think he is a very legit teacher and he has a media business too, which I think is very interesting too, but he does have some real truths and he was talking about this concept of you can't change someone, you can't change yourself, but what you can do is create a space, either internally or externally, that allows what he calls grace to flow in.

And what was weird about this event and you haven't been around me for an extended period of time, but I am a spas, that's my MO, I spas outage, I've probably seen little moments here and there since we've been back home, but I didn't spas out this entire time and shit was going wrong on multiple fronts, it was not going right before the event, but I had this weird sense that everything was going to work out, but not in an idealistic careless way and I always, I look back to other events in my life where that happens and it does seem to be like a hallmark, like it's an actual sensed feeling that is qualitatively different than another type of intuitive sense.

That just always makes me, those are the synchronicities and felt experiences that I particularly pay attention to now because those tend to center or be around very transformative aspects, not only in my life, but for the people around me and even just broader than that. So I felt the event definitely was a, that was the weirdest part of it for me, it did go well, it went great, it really, but that I didn't freak out, yeah, it really did. And the more I look back on it in hindsight, it did go very well and in your mention of the Eckhart Tolle grace really reminds me of the Trungpa Drala idea too because he talks about that in, I think several of his books, but I'm sure he talks about it in Shambhala that you really need to create a vessel and you yourself need to become a vessel to invite what he calls Drala in.

He also calls it magic, which I think is a little bit like potentially problematic because it's, it's like a shiny word that like perks people's ears up, but they have, it's such a loaded word. You hear Kelly use it though, often Kelly McLean and you know, she grew up at Naropa. She's way more knowledgeable about it than I am. And she's, she's mentioned the word Drala for me. She actually mentioned the word Drala, I believe when I first told her about the event the last time she was in the city, which was a few months ago and she was like, that's kind of what this is. It's funny you mention it now.

I completely agree. I think if you with the correct intention create that space, I mean, and he even talks about it as like you have a room, like, you know, you have a room, let's say, like your studio. Right. You can create it like by having it, by doing intentional actions to organize it, to clean it, to set it up in a certain way, to only enter it with a certain mindset and like treat it as a sacred space, you are inviting Drala into that space. Right. And I try to think of that sometimes with my own home when I like don't feel like cleaning yours, I'm totally, but it's certainly not a 100% success rate, I'm not the cleanest person in the world.

Me neither. But the idea also that that can apply to ourselves, right. That's absolutely to link this together. What we're talking about before, which is, you know, people who are saying they're in communication with Zimzom 72 from Planet Exerbius, like, like, I always, and we've spoken together about this. I've spoken to people, not a lot for synchronicity for the podcast who very, very rarely, I will get off and I'll tell Alexis, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know about that. Yeah. Yeah. You've been like, nope. Yeah. Just like, just that isn't adding up. And what you described as a process of talking to some people are like that.

I think there's something in there that actually can really be a good indicator that something is right. If they're saying they cannot explain something to you because you're not going to understand it and they don't offer any attempt to kind of justify that claim, they're either truly an enlightened master, which I think energetically is felt. When I get around, like, for instance, at the event, we were speaking about him. I'm sure he'll listen to us. Love you, John. John has this, John of Simon has this presence about him. Yeah. It's like, oh, he tap, he's encountered something, whether we call that the archetypal, you know, the self that Jung referred to.

He has stacks of work, man. Yeah. Stacks of work. And if you think this shit just comes to you without, like, by some divine intervention and just like trickles into your pineal gland and blasts your third eye open, maybe, man, but I've not seen it. It always comes with something when John of Simon, for people who don't know, has a book. He's been doing everyday art for 20 years. And that has changed this man profoundly, spiritually, intellectually, and it's very obvious. Yeah. And it's equality. And that's what I was referring to. Like, if someone's around you and they're saying they're talking to some crazy beings and that is felt, it's not saying believe them, hook, line, and singer, but it's least like, all right, well, maybe you can explain more.

And very often, like John, if you ask him, we'll tell you how he did it. The funny thing is, is usually when those people tell you something, it's a very ordinary thing. Like, well, I make drawings every day. It's like, okay. Yeah. But really, what are you doing? It's like, no, I make drawings every day. And often, I think this is why mindfulness is emphasized so much. Having a regular practice, whether it's meditation, drawing, whatever it is, gives you that reference point when the oscillations inevitably happen in just living life. And you can see like, where am I in relation to this thing? I do all of the time.

What is emerging from it if John was talking? Yeah. That to me is kind of what life is about, right? We wake up every day, like that word. That's our pattern. So like, where do we look in our own lives to get the insights that can, you know, I like the term flow state and live in the flow state. But I think that gives this kind of other connotation that if you're not in that flow state, then you're out of the flow state or you're fighting against it. And I don't think that's necessarily what is happening. I think those out of sync phases are also necessary experiences that we have to go through, not some mistake, not like we're doing something wrong.

Yeah, man. So let me ask you this. You said you want to be doing this. We've spoken about this too. So this isn't like anything. You want to be doing this full time, like how malleable do you think reality is at the end of the day? That's the question. You know, like malleable and kind of implies that you have the ability to mold, which I'm very open to, but I'm also sensitive to because I don't want to get too much into like the secret type thinking where I think I can manifest things because bad shit does happen. And if you want to pretend that it's not going to happen to you, it's going to hit you.

It's going to be like take the wind completely. I don't know, man, because you you see these people like, you know, let's just keep picking on these, these Alpha Centauri channel or type people like what do they do when their cat gets hit by a car? Like what do they do when, you know, their friend gets cancer? What do they do when they get, you know, some illness, do they like, and it just doesn't fit into the mythology that they've built for themselves, you know, like the, these are real falsifiably tested parts of the human condition. They're the reason spiritual systems like Buddhism exist because Duka suffering is one of the three, like pillars of Buddhism, you know, so that's the first right, right, right.

So that shit's real and that is part and parcel with existing as an incarnated being. So I think if you're not doing a regular practice like we were talking about before, you're, you almost shouldn't even be like talking about some of these concepts like, like not you personally, of course, but people who, you know, people who are talking about like manifesting shit to them, but they have like no practice, they don't understand what their subjective realm is at all and how that flows into reality, and they haven't done work to be like, I'm going to transmute this potential in my mind to something that exists externally.

They don't know what they're talking about. They're talking about like, you know, like this is a world of relationships and like cause and effect. And if you believe that you have free will, which you must believe if you believe reality is malleable, you need to utilize that will in a John F Simonesque way to do an action mindfully, willfully. I mean, and this is what all of Western esotericism and magic is about transmuting your will into action into something that goes from being a nothing to a something. And that was actually the name I think of one of our last podcasts is like transmuting and nothing into a something.

And if you're not doing that, like, shut the fuck up about like manifestation and shut the fuck up about like shaping reality, because that is how you shape reality. That said, I don't think that doesn't mean there isn't some sort of metaphysical magnet that can kind of emerge as an almost like epiphenomenon of all of that effort. And I mean, dude, you and I being friends is an example of that. Me and Corey Allen being friends as an example of that, being part of this event that just happened is an example of that, the people that were drawn there by the energy that was flowing out of that event are an example of that.

So in that way, I believe it, right, here's, and I pretty much agree with you almost 100%. Here's where I disagree. I think maybe not even disagree, but have a different viewpoint on it. I think I've met people who are maybe not common sense smart or certainly not well read or really don't even know anything about spiritual practices per se. Some are good people. Some are people who I would be like, I wouldn't do that. And they manifest it continuously and nonstop and insanely like just that's what they do and they manifest it. So it brings up. Well, I have friends who will, you know, talk about, you know, wanting a lot of money or a certain job and then they meet the person or they'll mention a celebrity just offhand and they'll meet them the next day, like continuous instances.

And they'll be like, yeah, like most of them at a certain point will have read some metaphysical thing, not all of them. And they'll be like, yeah, like, you know, I manifest these things sometimes. I don't know how I'm doing it. It makes me, this is where I think I kind of start to disagree a little bit with what you're saying. First of all, there's two levels of this. One I really do like Jim Carrey don't think we're inherently real. That doesn't mean I don't function as you've seen. I function like a normal human being for the most part minus the weed smoking. But I don't really believe we have solid existence.

I think that's the same almost as believing that, you know, someone is talking to aliens. It's obviously a different reaction to that. But let's just play along with the game that we are people and we exist fundamentally. I think the vast majority of what we experience is done well below the conscious level. Well below. Like, no doubt. Almost everything. So it makes me wonder where below the threshold is the work being done. And I think when you do develop a link consciously to some elements of the unconscious or metaphysical principles, whatever we want to call them, then it gets very interesting because now you have this bridge that you can't really go from conscious to unconscious so well.

But it does seem to work the other way. Unconscious stuff can create and can service to your conscious mind. It's like, oh, I know that's an archetype. That's a symbol. I recognize this. That's a pattern I recognize. So I think there's this level of where our conscious personas maybe transmit, we're talking to Alphys and Tari or maybe we are, maybe we aren't, who knows, but there is something going on there. And I think most people who, not all of them, not some of these people are just hawksers. Let's be real. And some of them are just crazy, man. Some of them are. They just are. Like, they can't all really be in contact with something.

Well, I don't think that they can have the specificity knowledge of what they're in contact with. I think this is like, when I, I've spoken about it. And maybe there's a kernel within those and I'm trying to be nuanced here because I'm, I'm a very open-minded person. If you haven't heard me speak before this, I probably sound way more skeptical than I really am. But I feel like it's like in the scenario of me and Noah, I have to be the one. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of times, I mean, I've definitely had the thought like, whoa, there is something in that schizophrenic person's mind that's on to something, but there's a lot that's off.

Like it knocked down, like, instead of, instead of the dominoes falling in an orderly fashion, like something just came in and fucking like kicked the whole thing over. And it left a lot of like some sort of weird, almost loop happening. It can be a rasa. It can be scrambled, it can be wrong inputs and outputs. There can be a surge of something that comes into someone that their hardware isn't capable of processing. There's any number of kids. I mean, I was going to say I'm glad you brought it up. When I, what I refer to usually is going off the deep end where I just plunged into just the other layers of reality for a substantial period of time, see it's a friend of people in the street in Boston, in DC, the places I was at most would come up to me and start having conversations and relatively lucid ones for how deranged they were.

And so that certainly led me to believe that a lot of these things that those people are experiencing, they're tuned a little differently. They haven't and the unfortunate thing is I think with support and if that was acknowledged as like that's what's going on, a lot of those people could actually be helped and learn how to function with or without any other, you know, substance entering their body. Unfortunately, we look through, you know, we have a name for it. It's schizophrenia. We have a name for bipolar. We have a name for these mental illnesses. Yeah. We have a name for everything. And names obviously limit once you give something a name and especially when it's a psychological state that we have a process for treating or whatever, that can become a pretty bad problem.

Yeah. Yeah. That's sort of objectification of a person and actually me and Dr. Michael Dain spoke about this on my show who I want to kind of do it. But he is a, you know, an analytical psychologist and in the Jungian tradition, for the most part. I mean, he's not just to just call him a young man, it's a little bit to sell him short. But I asked him, I'm like, you know, do you use a DSM-5 type, you know, diagnosing people type of paradigm in your treatment? And he's just like, no, like, cause for that exact reason that it turns this person into this mental illness, not a human being, and it's just not his treatment modality at all.

And, and this isn't coming from a guy who's never, you know, he's only just done things this way. He's worked in hospitals. He's like chaired, you know, various psychological organizations throughout his, his career. So he's been around the block, and I mean, of course that's just one opinion. But I, I think that is part, taking an analytical approach to the human mind is very difficult because it's just, like, and I know that that's, that's actually Jung's word, right? Analytical psychology. Yeah. So it's almost weird because I understand that you're doing some sort of analysis. But when I think of analysis, I think of like spreadsheets, right? And the DSM 5 is more like that.

It's a very, you know, here are the features of this illness. And if this person's doing this, this and this cross-reference that with this and they're probably narcissistic and they're probably depressed and they're probably schizophrenic and they're dead at that. So that to me almost seems more analytical than young, but young is using different systems to describe young, young also, like, you have to understand this man. Like, isn't too different. Talk about like bifurcated, like this, he was one of the world's leading psychologists who was in a contentious and popular feud with his teacher or Sigmund Freud.

But on the other hand, where he's having his clinical practice and, you know, writing his papers for medical journals, he's having a psychic schism. He's literally thinks he's going insane. He's also an incredibly talented artist, just unfortunately not a great writer, but just brilliant, but also is coming to terms with, like, am I going insane? Those characters in history who are able to come through that and then communicate the experiences are like, obviously that to me is amazing. Like, that's, that's the validity. That's why I think he, you know, would say that it is analytical in some type.

But then on the other ones, he knows that synchronicity is not an empirical verifiable phenomenon. We have to experientially go through it and how much validity do we lead, you know, how much is that? Can we take in relative to the other aspects of our lives? I asked the question, how malleable do you think reality is? I don't. I didn't give you a straight answer. Some would say a five. Yeah. Five out of five. No. I know. I just was fucking around. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we necessarily create our reality the way that some others in the new age scene would say that. I don't know. I do believe we possess some elements of free will.

But I think the way we like to think of it, like our ego maybe has some aspect or control over what we do is totally wrong. I don't, I don't think so. I think that's the illusion. Sorry. Sorry, rephrase what you just said. Okay. I don't think that we as Michael and Noah really possess a tremendous amount of influence on how our lives take shape that said, our deeper levels of our self, what Jung would call the self, Vedic would call Atman, that I do think is in tune and what, when that starts to kind of unveil itself, that very much feels like free will or destiny or like divine intervention. And I think that's what this is because all of these traditions that we like to bring up and glean from and take things, none of them say that we're separate from what whatever the state of enlightenment or perfection is, none of them say that.

None of them say you have to go do this to get this. They say here are some methods for arriving at what is already there. So yeah, I just, you know, I think it's very malleable. I think we see that every day, obviously reality changes in terms of our control over it. I think it's the same process is everything else. Try to get to our real selves and then maybe we have a little more not control, but insight into how this stuff works. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's tricky because at a certain point you hit a speculative wall, but we do know that objectively we're just born with a certain genetic hand that is extremely powerful, extremely extremely powerful.

And that there's only so much you can do with that hand. Like I heard that Jordan Peterson guy talking recently about some study with twins that are separated at birth. And you know, like what? What happened? They're genetic, genetic copies of each other, but they live completely different lives. And they're like, when they when they followed up with these people like 20 years later, their IQs were like identical and like certain things about them were like biologically and you know, whatever identical still. So I believe, of course, that what happens to you in your life has an impact trauma clearly has a very huge impact on your life.

I'm sure, you know, I'm somebody who has practices and I'm somebody who tries to at least work on myself in various ways and I think those things of course make a difference. But I do think you're playing with a certain, you know, deck of cards. And there's a lot of different things you can do with that deck of cards, but the deck is kind of the deck for the most part. I mean, I want to check myself because I do think that there are things you can do to disrupt and change a lot about yourself through the course of your life. But yeah, so anyway, like whatever those like metaphysical threads that influence that deck of hand, that deck of cards or that hand you're dealt beforehand kind of turns into speculation.

But it certainly seems to make more sense than it's just a completely random crapshoot. You know, a random crapshoot of like, like semen hitting whatever and this is what happens. Oh man, have you ever seen the footage of what happens in that flash when the when the egg becomes inseminated? No. Holy shit, dude. I got to show you this. What is it? Because, you know, I mean, there's a name for it and there's a well, that's that's the egg like letting go of whatever, whatever, but it's looks spiritual as fuck really like a flash of light. It's a flash of light. It's a flash of light. And it hits the egg and it goes, it's crazy, man.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's Tibetan Buddhist would say that would be the moment of the soul or being incarnating your, that's why we're anti-abortion. Yeah. Yeah. No, I often bring that up, but I know not to get into a huge abortion thing on a podcast. But that throws a little mind bender in for us liberal progressive minded people. Well, anybody like kidding themselves into thinking that abortion's like, Oh, it's great. Totally fine. That's awesome is like, come on, it's not a great fucking thing. I'm not saying it should be illegal and hey, live your life. Do what's best for you. Do what's best for your family.

Do what's best for that potential child that sometimes that potential child coming into the world's not have a great go of it. Right. A lot of time. Right. And, you know, there's that now famous overly talked about freakonomics study of like there is a huge, you know, there's that really famous crime wave that was going across New York and like, I think the 80s, 70s, 80s, and, you know, then they elected, I don't, I think it was Giuliani and he started to do the whole tough on crime, and, you know, like just throwing tons of people in prison and doing all this shit and mandatory minimums and really, really stiff penalties and then over the course of the next decade or whatever, crime did start to go down.

So he started to, you know, claim like, yeah, my policies objectively have influenced this, but the statisticians on like, freakonomics in this documentary or book realize that, well, actually what happened is a whole generation of crime committing humans were not born because Roe v. Wade passed, so you had all of these like really impoverished people with really, really bleak outlooks that were just not born, right? And is that best? I don't know. But it's, that's, that's an objective reality. I mean, this, this, you've heard this, I'm sure you've had enough guests on your show that you've heard people talk about soul contracts.

Have you heard this? I can not in that exact terminology, but you know what it is, it's like you kind of consciously choose to experience a life in which to learn certain lessons. Yeah, it's like you chose a difficult, you picked a game and chose a difficulty. What do you think of that? You know, again, it's, it's, it's speculation, but I do find it compelling because a lot, so in a lot of these existential circumstances, we're, we're sort of left with a, a blank. We have no, we have no vision into what that process was. We have no objective vision into like, I can't recall doing that. But there are systems on earth where I think, so this kind of gets into the simulation theory thing a bit.

Sure. And I'm attracted to that idea. I find it interesting, but I don't subscribe to it for the same reason that I would not fully subscribe to like, uh, like Maya, like explanation of reality either. Because I think even though they're clearly onto something and the most bleeding edge science is telling us the exact same shit, right, that the way that we experience reality is just not real. It's just not the way our senses interact with reality, not real. But to start relating that to a human concept, like a simulation, which I think problematic, because yeah, that's the most advanced vernacular we have to talk about something right in a similar way, but I'm sure it's an incomplete picture.

But that said, if there is consciousness involved in human incarnation and consciousness that when I say consciousness, I mean, like a, you know, non local kind of panpsychist logos, not bound whatever, an unbound consciousness that permeates the decision making process and then the human brain and et cetera, et cetera. If that exists, it would make sense that there's a process of decision making and how that being is going to incarnate. And that could be karma. That could be something similar to karma, but not exactly karma. Or just a proper like, uh, that could be, there could be some sort of like, like think of it this way again, like a saved data from a previous lifetime.

It's like a new game plus, you know, for anybody that's ever played an RPG. It's like, yeah, yeah. You get to go into the next life with a certain amount of accomplishments or like whatever that you've built up over the course of however many lifetimes. So it's fun to think about it's certainly fun to think about the whole soul school idea. I, it's something I've heard enough and I think it resonates with a pretty broad cross section of people, even if they're not like just like, you know, yeah, that's what it is. Oh, that's what I've been trying to say. I think it does seem to resonate with people where most of the time they won't outwardly dismiss it unless they're physical materialists.

So I mean, I do think that there's something there and I also think that it makes a lot of sense in my life. When I can kind of put my ego to the side, I don't mean like, you know, not being pride for something. I mean, just like, actually just let it hang out next to me and not have it dictate or filter my experiences. It certainly feels like that's an accurate statement. It feels like meaningful connections. And I know a lot of people would argue that these are chemicals in your brain based on familiarity and patterns. And part of it absolutely is, of course, my take on that is, of course, it is.

It would be weird if it wasn't. If physiologically, we weren't having indicators that this was going on, that would be weird to me. So I think that is a manifestation of something that's a little more subtle. And that also seems to be the 10 tends to be the game or concepts or theories that most of the mystics say to they're saying, listen, what you're perceiving, you know, and your gross senses is just like you're getting like really dumb down shit, you know, like, and of course there's a function. It's not like this is dumb. Like you're, you're here, but I do think that we incarnate for specific reasons.

And I think if we investigate our own lives starting with those, we can usually figure out what those reasons are too. Like all of us have recurring issues, recurring fears, recurring anxieties, recurring patterns and relationships that aren't healthy. So in a lot of times, I think to the best way to encounter those things, if you're hearing that and thinking, well, what are mine, do like, if you have a regular practice, you're, you would be able to kind of be embarrassing if I went through all my podcasts and just try to define what the things that I continually push as far as subject matter or, or things that are really like could be related back to therapy because, you know, I'm, if I'm sitting there asking 75 people the same weird existential question that says way more about me than it says about whatever their answer is, you know, I know.

So yeah, I think, I think doing a practice and keeping track of what thoughts you run into or I mean, it's a lot more direct if it's talking or writing because it's, you know, it's right there spelled out in language for you. Right. I'm not sure I abstract if it's art, but I'm sure you can still make the connection there. But I don't even know if you really asked a question or if I just kind of hijacked it. Either way. Oh, but you know what I really did want to like put out to your audience because I've been rambling about it on my show and other people's shows, but I do think it's like, it's worth exploring because when I said bleeding edge science is, you know, telling us these things, of course, everybody knows about the weird quantum physics shit, everybody knows that atoms are mostly empty space, everybody knows that, you know, nothing is actually still and it's all moving.

But I mean, bleeding edge in terms of like the Dr. Donald Hoffman conversation I had recently. Everybody go watch his TED talk. Do we see reality as it is? It's fucking fantastic. It has millions of views rightfully so and he's a mainstream scientist, tenured at UC Irvine, who like makes other like materialist scientists like stand up and be like, yeah, you know, like what's his general basic contention? Our senses don't see reality as it is at all. Yeah. And they're not even supposed to because from an evolutionary standpoint, if you run game simulation, it's like in a lab and you're like, all right, we're going to make this population with like a super high level of like perceptive fitness and they're just going to perceive everything as it is, they die like instantly because they're not tuned to survive.

They're tuned to survive. So what do you think that points to? Well, the death in particular, the death of the non-existence. It's like information overload. I mean, imagine like running through reality on like a heroic dose of psilocybin, like all the time. You know what happens? And this is what I think why the simulations would bear this out. My theory is is that if you're getting unfiltered reality, bye bye, this isn't here anymore. We get popped out while other people around us face us die, but we're not here anymore because that's not this isn't reality. This isn't unfiltered. We know that.

That's why quantum physics, all of these things. We know that for sure. Even the theory of relativity, like if we look at it, it fucks up a whole notion of time from the beginning. That's why people were so against it when it came out because they were like, this doesn't know, this ruins everything, this doesn't make sense. And that's what quantum physics is doing now. I always look at the people on the side, just kind of like grinning when you know, or science comes up with something. And I do, I know he's used far too much in these types of conversations, but I love what the Dalai Lama's take on all this shit is.

He's like, listen, if modern science proves any aspect of Tibetan Buddhism wrong, we'll change it. We'll fucking change it. He says that for two reasons. One is showing that they're not dogmatically holding on to anything. The real reason is he's like, this is what you're examining is not reality. Yeah, the physical realm is not what we're like dealing with. We're dealing with the subjective repercussions of our like, of the physical realm in a lot of ways or of the repercussions of just being a suffering incarnate being. But to finish the, you know, oh, one more and the other one I started to ramble about during the the Whittma panel, and I believe it's emergence theory where essentially, and this gets back into the mother fucking Jim Carrey in the zeitgeist right now for his like little dickish rant on that red carpet that everybody like, apparently it means you're super woke if you speak in like, like highfalutin platitudes about being nothing in whatever note, note that is high platitude and kind of what we agreed just to be clear in case anyone's wondering, we kind of thought he was being a dick to that woman and just in general, and I've not been that person, but I've been inappropriate in terms of sharing my metaphysical beliefs, the wrong context. I thought he was being a dick, but nevertheless, things he's mentioning, do seem to calculate for us doesn't mean there's not knowledge in what he's what he's saying. But, you know, it's like what we were talking about before, whenever you are around somebody who's like very earnest and transparent and genuinely on a path of self betterment and trying to help other people do those things, they don't come across like a dismissive, oh, what you're doing sure is dumb, like they don't they don't come across that way typically not, but I also know that if you catch anyone at the wrong time, they won't do that. I'm sure if you caught Chogyam Trungpa when he was pissed off, he'd yell at you, you know what I mean? Like for no good reason. I feel really weird about Jim Carrey. So for in case you didn't know, Jim, I'm going to invite you on the third eyedrops to just speak your side of it, man, this is a great opera. Well, he would be an amazing interview. He really would be because he is tapped into something. I think celebrities, the reason they carry a lot of weight for us outside of the, you know, the archetypal impact of those vaunted figures would have is the ability to go into different projects and act and incarnate as different people. I think it's probably a very, very genuine spiritual practice. That's such an interesting thing to do. I hope this isn't something we've specifically talked about on your show before. But on that note, that makes me think of, is it a blessing or a curse to be born in a high position? Depends, right? Like, you know, sometimes I think, and I know I've said this on someone's show before, but it wasn't mine. Sometimes I think you're way better off being born in like a third world country where like the Dharma or some other good meaty practice is right there for you, then you would be if you were born in the West and you got to go through the whole, you know, material, cavalcade, obstacle course of just like make a living, care about how you look, worry about getting all of this societal acumen that is just forced upon you. If you were just born in the East and you didn't have to jump through any of those hoops and they're just like, yeah, you got no prospects, doesn't nobody cares what your name is. Nobody cares about who you are. Be way easier. Just be like, I'm just gonna go be in punk. It is. I mean, again, I don't always pop it up, but the Dalai Lama, like when the question was asked to him, when Westerners were getting to know him, like, you know, what do you do about like self-loathing and like self-hatred?

He was like, what? What? They aren't unfamiliar with the concept because these social constructs and cultures aren't created around them, especially in Tibet, where they were an isolated nation state for hundreds, thousands of years, like people trying to touch them. They had no access really to the outside work, which is why so much of Tibetan Buddhism is like kind of the macro-cosmic version of going into a cave in the Himalayas, like as a society and culture. They did that. Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting question about how to engage with the world in Western culture. I particularly think of it as more like the left-hand path, more like the tantric path, more like if you're born in the West, surrounded by all of these potential vices and things like, that's for, that's for a reason. And maybe it is my very clever, tricky narrative making mind that wants to put everything in context and put the puzzle pieces together. But I see in the West as a culture and society, even in just in this country, people have like really similar problems, you know, like really similar problems.

Some of them I believe are socially and culturally, that's why we have them. But it also seems like a lot of people are born with a lot of these things. So I, I, it could be a grass is always greener if you were in a place where identity wasn't built up so much, it'd be easier. But I also think there's so much to be learned by going into this shit. That's why the well-being in the modern age event was about to me. Like that's like, yeah, we're all on the path of being semi-normal humans. We're not going to be the people who go into the caves and do these extraordinary things. And, you know, as you do that, then you can be like me, we're trying to figure out how to collectively and individually.

It would almost be nice if someone did portray it that way. Like, yeah, man, you can be just like me. If you be an ascetic and go meditate nonstop for a year, but it's never that. It's never somebody who actually did the work. They never say that. No. They never say that. And even if they did do the work, usually they're like, you can come this way if you want. Oh, and look what they're not going to like. They're not going to, you know, like people from any, do any people from any mystical tradition really evangelize the shit out of their path? Like, I'm not seeing like cobblists or Sufis or, you know, only internally where they would be familiar with the validity of that. They're not trying to sell it. They're not going door to door. Like saying, Hey, come do this. I'm sure I will ask a door to door sales. I mean, just show them. They're not like you got to come drink ayahuasca. It's always like if you're called to do it. Right. And I think that again speaks to kind of the energetic principles of, you know, what is going on at a deeper level. If we're acknowledging that maybe our senses aren't seeing reality as it is, what is then what, what tools do we have to actually come closer to perceiving? Even if it's just a shadow cast off a tetrahedron, what can we use to get a better idea of what the original figure looks like?

Well, then, you know, unfortunately, there's, you know, one of my go to rants is how we're, you know, at the nexus of all this information that's ever been presented. And in a lot of ways, that's really fascinating and useful. But it also has the like, you know, being perpetually in the middle effect as well. And so if I analyze the question you just asked, you know, how do we then measure reality better? That the answer depends on what reality is, like, is it material reality? Is it society? Is it a reality where all of that is illusory and the only thing that's real is consciousness? Because if it's that, then what's important than their business? Well, then consciousness is the only real thing and everything else isn't real. And then so you can't, you can't perceive it or you can work on yourself to maybe get more in touch with it. But it's funny because when people are talking about reality and influencing reality, they're assuming that that's outside.

That's why I always write, right? It's not. It's our internal. This is a very almost impossible concept to fully grok. I can only get it on some level that words aren't going to capture. But there are the connection between inner and external psyche and matter is very real. That's why people who are not aware of how they're manifesting things can manifesting things. I've seen it. I've seen it too much. Like I've seen the person who more often than not, if they're playing a lottery ticket, will win. Call it karma, call it whatever you want, call it their intention setting and achieving it through the secret or whatever it is. I've seen it. Yeah, man. I think it points to, okay, so let's say, let's go back to the thing. Let's say consciousness. We'll go with that theory. Consciousness is the stuff. That is what creates what we're doing. Okay, so to fully define, is this a disembodied, all pervasive, like animating field? Is this a consciousness with an intention? Is it multiple consciousnesses? I believe there is a quality of support for this consciousness. Tibetan Buddhist would call it this and I don't, you know, just using their language. It's the union of bliss and emptiness. Emptiness, not as a void. Emptiness as a template, blank template or a canvas. That sounds very similar to quantum physics. Of course, that's why I was saying it's that he says it tongue in the cheek, because that's what it is, which means we have two things there, right? We have a template. Neither can exist without the other and their entangled. Right. And then we have this weird word bliss. That's another loaded motherfucking word. We could probably reference experiences we've had and categorize them as blessed, bliss is the best to the best of our ability. But to me, we're having two things as our pillars of reality, actual reality, observer observed and yin yang, correct. Right. And what I would even go to give them qualities, if we want to go to the qualitative elements of them, I would call the emptiness wisdom or clarity. That's just clear, emergence potential for something. So there's no colored perspective or subjectivity there. And then we have bliss, which I would refer to as unconditional love if I want to get real woo or compassion if we want to get more practical. I believe that's the support of our reality. I don't mean that our reality is more light than dark. I mean, those two things are the basis of actual reality.

How that integrates in with our reality here, of course, there's a profound effect on it. But I don't think it's as simple as like, there's good and bad, and you need to be good. And then you won't be bad. That is definitely not what it's about. And people who play that game inevitably come crashing back down to the truth that that's not what's going on. That's why to me, it can be looked at as an escapist attitude. But I do know this deep in my heart, the best thing I can do is get my shit as straight as possible, especially if I'm going to interface with our 3D reality. That's why whenever, and that doesn't mean that everyone's path, just to be clear, working on yourself doesn't exclude taking action out in the world or doing something. It just means that has to be going on too. And I don't think that process ever ends as I do believe enlightenment is possible. I do believe that people can get to that state. But I also know that if you believe in the concept of Abhauti Satva, that you're going to stave off that state as long as possible. So you can clue in other beings, you'll be like, no, you don't have to suffer. It's not a pre-determinate.

Suffering isn't a dukkha, isn't a prerequisite for existence. It's a hallmark and pre-rec for this type of existence. It does not necessarily extend to all universes everywhere. The Buddha has even had concepts of pure land and Buddha realms where that doesn't exist. That's something that I don't explicitly say and communicate that often, but that has been experientially in my own life validated enough with crazy weird synchronicities, practical down-to-earth relationship stuff that that is my metaphysical viewpoint. And I haven't found anything that to date shakes me or off of that or doesn't have a way to fit into that. So either I found a very clever way to feel comfortable most of the time, or I think there is something too with that pops up in a lot of different places.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, down in your own heart how much of that is like real or how much of that is confirmation bias. All of us have a degree of confirmation bias that attracts us toward a certain viewpoint. Of course. I mean, I talk about consciousness and panpsychism and logos and all these concepts all the time, even though I don't know if they're fucking real. I don't know if they're real. The materialists may be right. I may be wrong. I may be attracted to it because it's an existential wriggling and I'm afraid to die, which of course everybody is. Yeah. But if you dig deeper, that's what that aspect of digging deeper.

I think there's an ability to question that that can last forever. But once you get familiar with, you know, who are really good at this naturally for the most part of generalization women. This is why most men have incredibly difficult time interacting with women in most situations in relationship situations is because they naturally are able to know things better than most guys in my experience. Careful. If you're going to broad brush women, you better do a positive. It's both positive and negative. I've lived around women for the majority of my life and homes with them. I have some observations. I actually came out of one.

Yeah. Me too. Weird. But I think they naturally can slip into this intuitive knowing state. Now, the danger, as we know with ourselves, is emotions can color that intuitive faculty because we're not using our senses or logic to necessarily get at the answer. However, I think when you're talking about panpsychism or some of these things, there is always that part. And this is what I think is probably, David Nickton told me this. And it was just in passing, but I felt it carried weight when he said it. And he said, you just have to learn how to listen. That's what it is. That's what the skill is. Learning how to listen to what is really real. If you've ever prayed, and you know when you want to pray when you pray for something, and you're putting on the prayer, and you know it, I can't get around.

And then sometimes there's this deep level of like, I'm praying for this, and I'm really connecting with it. That's the differentiation. I think if we can cultivate that skill of getting to that place by clearing away a lot of the other stuff, that becomes a hell of a fucking beacon. And that allows you to kind of maybe move from the speculative, putting it in the speculative aspects of being like, this is an experience. This is a thing that, and just like you said, never holding anything up that comes from your mind as an absolute truth. It needs to hit a lot of different thresholds for it to be like, okay, that's that's something I'm really yeah. Yeah. And that reminds me that Kierkegaard quote that it's like prayer isn't to change the mind of God. It's to change the mind of the person, right? I mean, because obviously any God that you can pray to and change its mind is like some sort of, you know, at best like King who's like whims change at like one, that's ridiculous. It would not be a good situation.

That's of course ridiculous. But if you think of it as you're putting out an earnest cry to the deepest part of yourself that is connected to that ocean of consciousness and you're trying to change your fundamental intention, that is very profound. And that is very like in tune with the sort of overarching goal of any spiritual practice, right? And that and that has an immense amount of practicality that that's the whole point is to change yourself into this being that is on the path of self realization of helping other people of decreasing suffering. So I think in that way, like prayer is just one of the most beautiful things and in the child, like, you know, please give me 50 Ninja Turtles toys, it's like it's almost like endearing in a way, but it's not it's not the practical value of it.

I mean, I think prayer touches on the concept of surrender, right? That is kind of what you're doing. And whether you believe you're surrendering to a higher power or source or yourself, it's kind of the same process. Like psychic castration, man, it's like psychic neutering. It's like, help me shed this bullshit. Help me shed this frontal lobe searching, you know, for the best deal of like sports car, like with a cool with a big engine in it, help me stop caring about this material nonsense and just focus the majority of my weight on that more noble path. That was Chogum Chogum Chunka's whole process for cutting through spiritual materialism is every time you put on a piece of armor or think you're uncovering something, you have to identify it and take it off until you're just there with no expectations, no beliefs. That's why everyone talks about being present, right? Totally. Yeah. And yeah, and I'm glad this is going back in the direction of meditation, because you know, you and I just did like the thing that I think is the most unbelievably grounding things possible, which is just like letting your breath take over your body. You know, like if you do like a pranayama exercise or a Wim Hof style, like, you know, just for people who haven't done it, like taking a slow deep but strong breath fully in like, and then you let that breath go and you just keep doing that over and over and over again, very soon you will enter a state of mind that is ancient. It's it's older than language. It's, you know, at the core of like your physiology before before before everything, all the layers that have been pushed on you by culture and by history and by genetics, you're going to like dig into that autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, all of that stuff, you're reconnecting with all of that. And if you're not doing that, you don't understand yourself. You don't understand you're living in a new part of your brain all the time. And I think to get to that part, that place that we're talking about, that place of like spiritual castration or a more pure path or whatever you want to call it, it's basic. It's really, really basic. That's the problem that I think with a lot of these things is as time moves on things inevitably, at least where we are right now, get more and more complex, right? There's more connections to be made. There's more neural nets to integrate into the whole and the collective. And what we don't, you know, if you're a beginner or just getting into this stuff, you want to seek out, you want to find every possible thing, you want to, you know, adorn yourself with the physical or mental or psychic things you can put on.

And then you come back to this very natural truth, which is, this shit is really simple. And we tend to constantly overlook just how simple it is. Sometimes because it's hard, sometimes because we're lazy. Yeah, simple doesn't mean easy. Yeah, yeah, simple doesn't mean easy, like you actually sound very simple, but like, okay, do the breath that I just described 50 times and see if you thought that was super easy. And then see if you can keep it up, which is this idea of a regular practice. And I can tell you, when I've let my regular practice wane, I feel less stable. Yeah, when I when I look back on it, I feel significantly less stable. And that, again, could be a placebo, it could be a mental contract. But I can say with Ferris, a degree of certainty now, when I started it back up earnestly. So my regular practices, I champed the Hana munchalisa either in my head or externally. And I've done it for four years now. Every day, thereabouts probably missed like a couple of weeks in between. But it became rote at a certain point, it became like I knew it, I could do it, I did it, I'm done. And it lost kind of the living yeah, being it had. And I think that's the other actually when we're talking about a regular practice, like, that doesn't mean it lost energy itself. It means that my connection to it wasn't there. And once I kind of reestablished that, and it took time, I couldn't just will that to happen, it began to kind of have this energy, this living presence to it, which I was able to identify. And I just recently happened the past two months. It's kind of interesting. And I would be interested to ask somebody who is deeply entrenched in one of these traditions, a question like this, is it supposed to become that? Or is it supposed to become? Because that is kind of the point of a mantra is to be an inert noise, right? Like if you're just something like, I know like if you do TM or something, or you get a mantra, that's just like a sound, they don't tell you like here's your mantra, and this is what it means, they tell you this is just your mantra, it doesn't mean anything.

It depends. Mantra is like anything else, you're going to have different functionalities for them. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't, I started doing the Hanuman Chilisa, not because someone told me to do it, I thought I would get something, I was at a Ram Dassertree. I didn't know what the fuck these were, I smoked a joint. I'm surprised. Went inside, had a probably one of the most insane experiences of my entire life was not on any psychedelic outside of the weed. And immediately knew that I would be basically doing this, and I learned it, and then did it. What it became to me is 40, it takes about minimum like five to eight minutes to do the whole thing. It's just the mindfulness right?

Does it look like on paper? How long? Three pages. Wow, okay. Yeah, it's fucking long, man. And what is the content? I've never heard of it. Okay, so the content is, it's a chant written by Tulsi Dass, who was a scholar, a Vedic scholar, and he wrote it in praise of Hanuman, who Hanuman is the monkey god in the Ramayana, or I don't say that right, I know, but whatever. He was essentially a devotee of Ram. So it's a very long chant, basically extolling the virtues of Hanuman, and also the best afficities of what he did. The functionality of it is it's supposed to open up your heart, and I can say without a doubt for someone who comes across it and really gets what it is, it does that without a doubt. And it's borderline uncomfortable, because you become kind of not a mushy person, but you're open-hearted, which is sometimes a dangerous thing to be in our modern world, but the impacts are profound. But over time, and that's why one of the main images of him is like ripping his own heart out, right? So no, what he's serving, like he's living to serve.

Yeah, so this is actually a funny story. So he goes through this whole thing, Hanuman saves Sita, who is Ram's wife, consort, Ram's wife. So he rescues her through this whole crazy thing, and one of the cool things about Hanuman is this is why I love the character of Hanuman. He is a divine being with all these crazy, he's like a basically like a super god, but he fucked around with the sun at one point in his adventures when he was a kid, and the sun is like, fuck you, man, like you're a little rap scallion. You're not going to remember this shit unless someone reminds you that you have all these powers. So he goes on this whole adventure, he has all these powers, he saves the day, and then someone accuses him of being a phony.

So you don't really love Ram, like you're just doing this because you're really so he, what he does is he literally rips open his chest and shows inside of all his bones and his heart, he literally has Ram and Sita in his heart, and he's like, oh, okay, maybe you do care. You're like, okay, okay, all right, I'm a step back. But yeah, I mean, the prayer itself, like the chant itself really is just an opportunity to identify and interact with the energy, but it becomes a mindfulness practice. You very quickly realize as you're doing either an external or internal chant that takes five to eight minutes, how many different thoughts you can have as you're doing this in another language, and how many observations you can stack on top of that as you continue to do this, which really just over time starts to like show you that there's a lot more going on than we typically can tune into. Yeah, and that's why I like the breathing too, is because you obviously still your mind is going, you're having thoughts, you're wondering if you're doing it right, you're kind of counting, you're doing all these things, but it's still overwhelmingly about continuing to do the breath. So even though there are still other things stacked onto it, I find it to be one of the more clearing practices. Oh, it was incredible, man. I haven't tried this, but another thing I've enjoyed in the past, and I guess the the validity of binaural beats has been called into question by like, I had this guy, Dr. Andrew Hill on my show, and he wasn't shy about telling me that he thought they were bullshit. However, what isn't bullshit is the fact that by having them in your ears as you're doing a meditation and for people who haven't heard it, what you're doing is you're putting two slightly different frequencies in your ear, so in one ear in the other ear. So you're hearing like a kind of an overtone that's created by the the dissonance in the two pitches, which is like, yeah, kind of thing.

Something's added to and that's what it's supposed to, you know, emulate whatever brain wave you're going for. So if you want a slower, more meditative brainwave, you're going to do a slower wavelength, you know, data deltas. Yes, yes. And if you're trying to be focused and people use binaural beats of focus as well, you're going to do a beta like faster moving brainwave. So anyway, regardless of if it works or not, it's nice because it's kind of consuming another sense that can distract you. So it's just a constant, you know, tone in your ear that's just just doing the womb thing. And it kind of helps to add another layer of like, I'm just doing this. I'm just doing this. Dude, I imagine we've probably been talking a pretty long time. Yeah, holy shit.

This is awesome. Yeah. Have I asked you the questions before? Probably. Again, let's see if they line up. What's your favorite color? Blue. What's your favorite number? Three or five? What's your favorite animal? Dog wolf dolphin. Oh, those are all amazing. Okay. Dog wolf dolphin is a great answer. It's actually one animal. What is a practical tip? Yeah, practical tip. Yeah, that's helped you that you could share with other people. Like it's the soap and ended. It could mean anything. I know. It can be as mundane or as sacred as you would like it to be. Donate breakfast. I don't eat breakfast, really? And yeah, because and don't eat breakfast and don't eat after eight p.m.

What if I don't eat breakfast but eat lots of junk food after eight p.m.? So the whole rationale behind that is you're going into an intermittent fasting state and you're giving your body a chance to recover from just constantly being in the digestive process. And I mean that it is a cellular stressor. So by giving your body that break, it heals. And the main thing is you can consume things but don't consume like large amounts of calories basically. So like I'll wake up and I'll have bulletproof coffee style thing which does have calories in it but you're not processing any carbs, you're not processing solid like loads of food that are like going through your digestive tract. And plus then you're getting a lot of nutrients into your brain through the MCT oil and stuff like that. I love it. Next time we're going to have to pick your brain about the health health stuff. Sure. Yeah. Dude, thank you. Relay what little knowledge I have. This has been great.

Yeah. If people I don't know like no and I've been hanging out with the last. And we're still not sick of each other. We're hanging upstate at its place with the pup and the baby and life's fun. And we're going to cause them tonight. Yes, we are. That's going to be really fun. Really you should bring this. We'll see. Bring the backpack. Yeah. Have some other fun stuff in there. Cool. Cool, man. Yeah. Let's go eat some food. All right. Thanks for listening to that episode. Michael, go check them out third eyedrops.com is podcast on mine pod network.com. Really interesting guy. He I think the episode with Evan Alexander is out.

If it's not, then I just spoiled his little surprise for this week. But that's a good one. I know I haven't even heard it. I just know those two guys pretty fucking cool. So go check him out. Thank you to all of the Patreons. Patreons. God, this Patreon is a weird word. Thank you to all the patrons who support me on Patreon. That's easy to say. That's it for this week. I have a huge back load. Also came out weird getting weirder. I have a backlog of episodes and I'm debating what to do with them. I do not want to make episodes exclusive on Patreon, but I think I might do a level because I have so many where I release episodes a week earlier. If you become a certain level of Patreon, subscriber. So I'll let you know the details of that. But in the meantime, just thank you for listening. Tell a friend, subscribe, whatever you want to do, whatever.

I don't even care anymore. I just like that you're listening. I really appreciate it. So I will see you next week.