Maura James from Unbroken Chain

[Music] [Music] Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is Mara James. She, I've mentioned her before. She's got a podcast now on MindPod Network, Unbroken Chain. A lovely human being introduced to me by Sean and Cass, who from the very eight podcasts, just wonderful people, wonderful people introducing other people to wonderful people. I got to say, Mara is a very special person. You can tell she's living her way from an open-hearted and open-minded perspective without kind of being delusional about things, which is the dance you kind of have to live, if you want to live your life like that.

So, very great open-hearted conversation we had. There's some amazing synchronicities that you'll hear about relating to her life, specifically related to ayahuasca and other psychedelics. And just, it's a very refreshing story and kind of narrative to hear, especially for people who are kind of like down and out. If you've been down and out in the past, I don't know, ever, you know what it feels like and you know that it can be really difficult to just pull yourself out of that mind state. So, whenever you hear a story like Mara is where she was kind of at her, not kind of, at her literal bottom, and then have such a swing back, right?

Listen, no one cares except me, but the only thing, and I was actually talking to Mara about this as I drove her back to the train, she's like, "What are you doing tomorrow? This is on a Saturday." I was like, "Oh, I'm going to watch football because I'm an idiot." And I started to justify how I can still watch the NFL and, you know, gave some explanations. And one of my explanations was that it, after a very difficult period of my life where I became somewhat untethered from our consensus reality, football, of all things, was something that kind of tethered me back to reality. It grounded me. It's such a archetypal, ridiculous kind of cultural thing that is so earth-based, so not mystical in so many ways that it was really useful for me in terms of, you know, getting back to the world, so to speak.

And the next day, the Dolphins beat the Patriots in one of the best places, to the point where the only reason I'm bringing it up at this point, I know no one really cares about football or the Dolphins. But it was so miraculous that people who I haven't heard from in years started texting me. My mom, who really knows nothing about football was like even I heard about the Dolphins. It was just a magical kind of amazing finish to what had been a pretty crazy game. And I truly mean that. It was incredibly magical and I think people would agree. And it, to me, was the kind of cap on what had been a very magical weekend and meeting Mara and kind of talking about these things.

And to tie this back together to her story is when you have this pendulum swing from the absolute kind of darkest worst possible scenario you can go through in life to really starting to begin a very swing back to light and love and positivity and realizing there's amazing people in the world and they support you and you support them. That's a really special thing to be reminded of. And it kind of was like the theme of the weekend. It is carried over quite well into the week for me. So I think you'll really appreciate this episode. I don't know that all episodes will be helpful to everyone, but this is one that the frequency that's kind of being sent out I think will be beneficial for your life.

This is one of the true joys of running a podcast called Synchronicity. You get to see the synchronicity is kind of develop around it. One of them I noticed on Mara's latest episode, episode 13, I believe it is, which is both of our favorite numbers. Or was it 14? Am I making that up? Am I making synchronicities up? That's not right. This wasn't even a synchronicity, but I might have just made it up on my head. No, it's episode 14. God, I got to hold yourself to a standard here for just going to be making up synchronicities. However, the song she chose for that episode is a song I actually remixed a few years ago, which you will hear at the end of this episode.

So it's just, it's just, I'm just saying. When you talk about this stuff, when you really connect on this level, and you're not hiding anything when you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable, that's when the kind of magic of synchronicities can actually happen. So what I recommend for you is please go check out Unbroken Chain. It's the podcast I'm most proud of right now, proud of all of the podcasts on MyPod Network. But the one I'm most proud of right now is Unbroken Chain. It's the newest edition. Also, did you know that John Simon has a podcast drawing your own path that is now on MyPod Network too? We're getting the episodes up, but you can find that on the podcast page.

We're trying to add stuff that I think is useful. And when you connect with artists and people who are earnestly trying to help people and share good stuff, we like to do that type of thing. So yeah, Mara is awesome. You will hear in this episode, no fake ads, no nothing. I appreciate everyone supporting the podcast, reviewing, rating, support MyPod Network. That is what I'm going to keep saying. I would love to be able to pay the people who get the actual episodes up, put them up, do the social media. I'd love to be able to pay them something not comically small. That's the only way. There are amazing people they do it for slave wages, essentially.

Every month, I'm not overstating that. Well, not slave wages. Slaves don't get paid, but slightly more than slaves. But they're very nice people, and the money that comes in via donations to MyPod Network goes to those people. Once we cover the cost of all the other web servers and things like that, it goes to those people. I have no problem. You may have picked this up on my podcast. I have no problem soliciting funds and money for other people, helping other people make money. I have a harder time doing it for myself. So if we're going to turn MyPod Network into some type of self-sustaining entity, donate to it so I can give that money to the people who are actually doing a lot of things for it.

All I'm doing is finding podcasters and adding them. That's super easy. Shouldn't get paid for that. But let's do that. So MyPodNetwork.com, go to the support page. You can put in your information. That would be amazing. I've rambled on far too much, and I know I'm getting some emails from a lot of you saying, "I don't mind your rambling." But sometimes I'm like, "You know what? Let's just get to the guest, right? Let's just do that." So without further ado, here is the lovely Mara James. Nice. Welcome. Thank you. You've been here for an hour and a half or so. You got in. But now we're actually getting your upper adventure.

Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. I like saying yes. Yeah. That's a really good. I don't think I possess that in spades. I am usually more cautious and reticent to go places. But when I do do it, I'm always happy, and it's always like a great thing. But I have that kind of initial kind of resistance. So it's cool that you don't -- here's what I want to know. First of all, for people who don't know, and I've mentioned it extensively on my podcast, so I know they know if they've heard it before. But your podcast, just joined MindPod Network, Unbroken Chain, is my favorite podcast.

Oh, man. Yeah. I genuinely mean that. It's the one I don't miss. It's so good. Thank you. Yeah. But one thing -- I'm not just going to feed your ego in the entire episode, but I -- one thing that I did came away with very impressed about is how you casually mentioned -- I forget who it was. You were talking about ayahuasca ceremonies, and I think it was a woman who facilitates them and had obviously done hundreds and a lot of them, and you're like, oh, yeah, I haven't done that many. It's like 14. Or something. I was like, whoa. For me, I've never done ayahuasca. I've never done DMT. That sounds like a very high number of experiences to have.

We'll get into your background, but how did you get connected with ayahuasca to the point where you're casually saying you did it 14 times like it's not a lot? Yeah, sometimes I ask myself that, too. It's been a really beautiful journey over the last four years or so, I would say. And yeah, I have a funny route into psychedelics because unlike a lot of people I know who did it in party contexts first, I had done mushrooms once and did not feel it very strongly, and my next psychedelic experience was drinking ayahuasca in the jungle in Peru. What was the gap in time between those two? I want to say maybe three months.

Okay. Okay. But I just went straight to the full thing pretty much with psychedelics from the very beginning, and I've been really grateful for that because it's given me a really... It's given me a great container for psychedelic experiences that I've had by myself and with other friends to always be intentional about the setting setting and my own desires going into the trip, and I've been really grateful that I learned it from a ceremonial context. So it seems like that's really cool, too, because it's true a lot of people. I did psychedelics very young at like 15. It did a lot of acid, and it was life-changing and completely life-changing when you're that young.

Your brain is still evolving and changing, but it's cool when you get a chance later in life to kind of intentionally approach it because it does set that kind of stage for how you're going to be using things to be very clear. That's how you should be using these things. Truthfully, I usually don't like to say, "Hey, this is how you should be doing something," but I do feel with something as potent and powerful as psychedelics or any plant medicine. You want to be very intentional. It changes your consciousness right then and there. It's not like a slow kind of gradual putting signposts in the ground like meditation or something.

It's the real deal. That's cool. So it sounds like mushrooms kind of opened the door for you even though you didn't really feel it and led you. What were some of the catalysts that had you go like, "All right, I'm going to go down to Peru and really do this?" Actually, no, the thing. Friends that showed me Graham Hancock's "The War on Consciousness" TED Talk and in it he talked about going down to the jungle and I was definitely seeking at that phase of my life. I'm always so curious about people that do do psychedelics as teens because I didn't and I wonder how that would have affected my life because I had to go kind of through a lot of, I don't know, challenging times in my early 20s and kind of not helpful relationships with alcohol and food and my body and my own thoughts and just pretty serious depression and it took me going through that to get to the place of being like, "I'll do whatever to try to feel some magic in my life."

When I watched that video, I just thought, "This is it. This is the thing." She immediately texted a friend of mine and said, "Hey, do you want to go to the jungle with me and drink Ayahuasca?" She texted back immediately and said, "I'm going with my sister in a few months, come with us." That was all that I needed to just execute. Right, right. Right. Amazing. You were definitely tuning in to the frequency of getting down to Peru. When you went down there initially, I am fascinated in the way you are people who did psychedelics early on, I love hearing people's ayahuasca stories, in particular, a lot of people in my life.

Gosh, it feels like the majority sometimes have had many ayahuasca experience and pivotal ones, which is cool, so I always love to hear about them. The first time you went down there, what was it like? Yeah, yeah. I went to the Temple of the Way of Light, which is a really beautiful retreat spot in northern Peru, and they specialize in female shamans. Cool. So it's a group of 22 people who drink together seven times over 10 days. It's not a little. It's not a little. For your first time, especially. Yeah, and it's a really good thing because if somebody would have offered to helicopter me out of the jungle after my first night of drinking, I probably would have taken them up on it.

So the fact that I was there and just had to show up again the next night was a really beautiful gift that taught me so much about the infinite capacity inside me. So I'm really grateful that I ended up in that situation. What are the, you know, difficult experiences and surrendering and kind of witnessing what can come out of that is one of the biggest lessons I think anyone can learn ever. So that's, that's a, I probably would have helicopter it out too. I mean, I don't even helicopter it in the first place. What, what were some of the things you kind of processed during the course of those 10 days where they're recurring themes that, you know, you, you found light was being shed on.

What was going on? Yeah. Um, well, one thing I should say is that, uh, my mom really did not want me to go down to the jungle. And she kind of called in what she said was the first and only thing she would ever really asked me for in life, which was that I didn't get. Wow. And I mean. So that might have some influence on what. Yeah. It was big. Um, it was kind of the first time in my adult life that I'd really chosen to do something for me and it, again, it's, I just have a lot of gratitude for ayahuasca for that because for some reason she knew and she called me to her and she's become, you know, the muse of my life, basically, but, um, I definitely dealt with some of that the first night because I felt like I experienced unconditional love for the first time.

And I also, you know, was born and died and born and died. And I was in like the beginning of civilization in Africa at one point and I just had the realization, you know, that, oh, maybe my mom wanted to protect me from this and just got tremendous forgiveness and compassion for that part of our relationship and also just my parents in general, just enormous love and gratitude and bigger context for my life. And I think context is definitely one of the things that I've taken away from psychedelics overall. It's just when you come in contact with something that infinite and all knowing and all loving, it's just, it's so deeply humbling and it's made me so aware of how little I know and also how held I am in my humanness, you know.

Yeah, I love that. And it sounds like you had the classic kind of broad perspective shift or witness of different perspectives in the context you're referring it to. And that just, it does, it put things in perspective, right? I mean, it really changes the way you kind of view your role in everything, how other people's roles are, how I think naturally, you know, one of the best things about psychedelics, if you can get this out of it, and for people who did take him at a young age like myself, it just recontextualizes how most of us grow up, especially in the West. We don't ever want to say that we think of ourselves as the center of the universe, but that is how most people are taught to function in this culture.

And it's not even like you're an egotistical, narcissistic piece of shit like terrible person, but it's that you go through with your perspective being the center of what's going on and when you can get very present reminders that there's relational things going on, it's very powerful. That's so cool that, well, it's really interesting your mom was so vehement for not letting you go. And it does sound like a protection thing. And what's very cool, and this is something I pick up in your podcast a lot too, which is one of the reasons I very much enjoy it, is honoring kind of the divine feminine and how amazingly nurturing and open and wonderful it can be, but also that it can be fierce too.

It's not just like this like passive, coy kind of, it's like can be a very strong energy, and it might be natural that your mom, who's a part of that and so are you, would be naturally protective of experiencing that. And you said it yourself, you wanted to go, like you would a helicopter it out. So you kind of just kept plunging yourself into it over and over. What was there a specific point where you just kind of gave in? And we're just like, all right. I mean, that specific point I feel like happens, you know, infinite times within a minute when you're inside of there, but yeah, I developed a mantra for myself basically.

I just kept repeating to myself, I'm safe here, take my fear, I'm safe here, please take my fear. And that was really the only way that I knew to come back and sit down and not just live in that space of being afraid that I would be infinitely lost someplace. And you know, you can tell yourself all kind of stories about how like, oh, I definitely should not be a person that does like, that looks like this means I'm crazy. And repeating that mantra just allowed me to drop. I always when I tell the story, like put my hand beside my head, like I'm actually turning a knob, but it turned the volume down in my brain and turned it up in my heart and in my body.

And so that was the space that, I mean, there have of course been challenging moments since then, but that was the space that I started working from with the medicine. Yeah, I think that that seems to be one of the biggest takeaways I have that shift from up here in your mind, which is a very cool place and you can learn lots of stuff. And if it's over, if it's tuned up, it's like not very fun because it's omnipresent. It can just rule everything. And I see people and myself go through that and it can, it's worse forms being intense anxiety and horrible depression. That's what happens when you live up there.

It does seem like ayahuasca and kind of the divine feminine qualities that it really seems to embody does kind of at least give people at worst a glimpse that you can live from the heart and at best it does kind of heal or it does an integration thing, which really I mean, you know, one person at a time, if that's happening to has a tremendous impact culturally, you know, in groups and tribal settings of small people. And it really seems like ayahuasca has done a tremendous job of kind of calling people to it and really just bringing that out in people. And you know, you, like you said, did you, okay, did you set yourself up for this unconsciously before?

Like had you changed your diet, were you like being more, so what were the steps leading up to the initial mushroom experience and then the ayahuasca, like personal mushrooms was very little. It was mostly like talking to other people about their psychedelic experiences and totally setting up for myself set of expectations about what mine would be. But going into ayahuasca, I followed the diata that the shippebos do, which is a minimum two week cleanse of any other substances or plants, alcohol, caffeine, no sex, no masturbation, minimize your inputs from, you know, listening to music and watching screens.

No sugar, no salt, no spicy food. Have you done any of this before? Like a full? Yeah. I've done like a three day yoga retreat where we drank that lemonade drink. Yeah. No, no, it was totally new and that's the kind of thing that you do because you're told to do it, but not necessarily because you understand why. For the first time and it's been really cool to learn sense, you know, that it's not just yes, it is ritual and it is a ritualistic container for this experience, but it also serves the medicine in such a huge way, they say that she's a jealous lover. And so if you preserve yourself for her, you have a deeper experience and what's so interesting is that a couple months ago, I drank ayahuasca in Mexico with a shaman from the Colombian tradition.

Yes. And he's like the rebel shaman. Yes. No rules, doesn't care. And he's like, you could show up, you know, hung over to his ceremony and it would be fine. But I think the keys that he says do what feels right to you. And so for me now, I think probably forever, like that diata feels like part of my path with that medicine. So well, it's cool that you can recognize that after basically given the path to do like whatever you want, it's like, yeah, you could do it. That's like the chill young trunk of shamans, like break all the rules, the crazy wisdom joke. But I think it does make a lot of sense when you realize you're dealing with, and he probably knows this as a shaman, you're dealing with individual consciousnesses here.

They're not all going to function the same, right? Yeah. Like it's just, it's like, I'm listening to this Ulysses S. Grant thing. And one, people know him as a drunk and kind of like a dilapidated person, a tragic figure. But he just was an alcoholic. He wasn't someone who had a drinking problem. He abstained and eventually didn't drink for the rest of his life at a certain point. But something in his physiology made him completely susceptible. He had a few drinks. He would just get blistering drunk for like the next few days. And just hearing that in a historical context, someone, you know, turned out to put this wonderful biography together, like just clearly honed in that he wasn't just like a bull.

He didn't just like drinking. There was something in his physiology that kind of changed it. It's his kryptonite. Yeah, it's his kryptonite, exactly. So if you're thinking of that, like when you're doing something as potent as ayahuasca, it is about what finding what levers and kind of knobs work best for your particular. I love that approach because I think what seems to happen a lot in the West is people want to be told what things to do to get this result, A plus B equals C. Please give me C. And that's, I can only imagine, okay, what other psychedelics have you done besides ayahuasca, if any, during this period?

During this period being my life. Since you started four years, you said? I go, yeah. How about that? I mean, I've tried, I've been lucky to try many. I haven't done any of the, you know, five CR ones, you know, that come out of the lab, but I mean, I love acid and MDMA, I've had really good experiences, but I feel like that's a very special, like, only a couple times one for me, and I've smoked DMT in various forms, and yeah, that's, I guess I can't think what else. Do they reinforce for you a kind of single idea or themes, or do they each have their own kind of distinct flavoring to them? Do you know what I mean?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're all definitely portals, but yeah, they very much have different characters to me. Do you have a favorite of the ones that you've done? Well, I mean, Ayahuasca is my biggest teacher, for sure. It's kind of funny to call her a favorite, but yeah, I mean, I hope I have a relationship with her for the rest of my life. That's really cool. It's very interesting to me here, people, but I, like I said, I have a lot of people in my life who are doing it, but I've never felt the exact call to go and do it, and I know what it would feel like. It's not that I'm just like, I don't want to do it.

I know what it feels like to be called to something, it's a poll. It's a very clear signal that you're getting, and I always find it fascinating when people get that call, answer, pick up the phone, and go and have a conversation, and my mom is one of those people, and a lot of people in my family, and it's just incredible to see how it really does just help people, and can be such a supportive ally, and I think it's gotten into even the lexicon, not just in psychedelics, that of a plant ally of something, and then people looking at mushrooms and other things as allies too, even though they're not always pleasant experiences, it really is amazing how it just helps people.

So one question I definitely have, how, what was the impetus for you starting your podcast? I know this is kind of a highfalutin question, but what was the goal? You asked me this earlier, did you have a goal with starting the podcast of what you were trying to do? Well, I started the podcast this summer in tandem with a trip that I took around the country, making a little documentary, and I think that was born out of, I went through a really dark time this spring, and got out of a relationship in a way that left me pretty broken, and I'm unsure if I would ever make art again, let alone, like, whatever feel love, so for me, making things feels like the return to, you know, selfhood, and it was pretty much all I knew how to do, and so I wasn't even sure what the project was beyond that I wanted to seek out medicine women, and that was obviously a Trojan horse for my own healing, but I also have recognized in film, in documentary, on the internet right now, the world is really dysfunctional, and it's really easy to talk about that, and we should be talking about that because that's how you fix things, is by pointing to what's broken, but instead of being part of that conversation, I wanted to see if I could shine light on people who are doing shit that's actually going to take us forward in better ways, and like you've said, I think the define feminine is a huge part of that, and I think there's just a lot of wisdom already around us, we don't need to reinvent the wheel, because there are ancient traditions, and there are people that have held that signal through, you know, industrial revolution and patriarchy, and he was keeping that knowledge, it's, you know, a tiny flame right now, but I think it's dying to explode, and I wanted to see if I could talk to people that are keeping those practices alive and who are building communities outside of institutions, and reclaiming education, and food, and just shine the light, so that's how I built the trip, and then out of that, I just realized there were so many beautiful people that I wanted to start collecting stories this way too.

And you do such an amazing job of it, and it really does shine through that, that I think is probably what makes me like it so much in your presentation of it, is it is solution-oriented, it is how are people actively helping, how did they help themselves, and then how did they extend that into a broader act of service, which I also love the contrast you pointed out, I don't think I think about it enough, I comment on it, but there's so much chatter around negative or the fucked up things that are going on, and of course, you and I are clearly not saying I tune in to the shit that's going on too, I'm not turning a blind eye, but at a certain point, what does that do for a collective psyche, I mean, is that going to immediately lead us to taking action, it doesn't seem like it hasn't happened for a long time, so it really is important to focus on that, so what are some of the main kind of takeaways you've had from really having these amazing conversations with people who are doing so much, like are there some recurring themes that you've noticed along the way?

Yeah, I mean, I know this is a mirror in so many ways like everything is, but I definitely learned that everyone is wounded, and that's actually where our power of healing comes from, and I think that's partly why I'm so in love with people, is because I just, I love hearing the stories of how people can, you know, you meet people in a specific moment and we so easily think that people are fixed as we meet them, you know, but I think it's so interesting to see, you know, the craggy places in people that everyone wants to feel not alone, and out of that comes our collective healing if we let ourselves be vulnerable, so I think that was huge for me because as I healed, and it was healed by all of these people that I was meeting in this journey, I just really saw that that's the way forward, so we have to be willing to share our broken parts and our fearful parts because that brings them into the light and makes them powerless, you know?

And it couldn't be more true, and unfortunately, it's a very difficult thing for a lot of people to do, it's something that I think about, I often call it shadow work, and I find people who have really put in the hours into investigating themselves and those places in themselves that are not pretty, the petty jealousies, or overt jealousies, or disloyalty, all the things that you don't want to really talk about because no one's presenting their worst, it's like, I always say there should be an Instagram for just the bad, terrible moments of the day, you know, you're like a huge fight, you drop something, you yell, some horrible thing, but we don't ever advertise those things, but you can tell the people who have went to those depths and really kind of pulled some cosmic thing away from it, and they carried along with them because they're sharing those aspects of themselves, and they're willing to go there.

And I think that's one of the cool things I've realized, I wonder if you have two, with podcasting, is it's very easy to tell when you're in conversation, a pre-flowing conversation whether people are willing to go to those places too, and it's just like immediately, I think that's why a lot of people, and I hear them say it to you too, will walk away from something and be like, wow, I feel like really good, that was really great. And it's not because we're coming with great questions, even do ask really good questions, it's because you're holding a space where people can be vulnerable and they can tell they're not going to be judged, and that's actually serving a purpose, I think part of that is because they know other people are going to hear it, so they know this is getting out.

But you can live from that space, and that's become the pleasure of my life, is to try to practice that and try to practice, like offering people the gift of vulnerability, because not everyone wants to meet you there, and that's okay, but you could be standing in an elevator with someone who, if you give them a real smile and a real moment, that that could shape their entire energy when they step off into whatever universe they're about to enter. That is so true. And it doesn't have to cost you anything, the source of that inside of you is infinite, and you can always offer the world your presence, you always have the power to offer your presence.

You know, absolutely, and I think one of the things, and speaking from personal experience in the past, and figuring out how to kind of reintegrate this, the world doesn't play along with that type of approach, if you can't find the balance between being present and available, but not overextending past into trying to actively shape a love, because that's something that I think a lot of people get into, you know, you experience the light, you experience the love, you recognize the unity of everything, and then you try to go out into the world and spread the gospel, and you're like, "Whoa, do people not understand what I'm saying?

Like, if you were just a little bit nicer, think how better?" But it does, it's absolutely true, and I get the sense, and this has been the real pleasure of my life over the past, really, I guess, a long time, but especially with podcasting and meeting people through this medium, is that you find people who are carrying that along with them more and more, and you also get, you know, a little more tuned to the people who aren't carrying it with them as well, and doesn't know judgment there at all, but that there is a qualitative difference of someone who is going to show up and allow you to be who you are and recognize they're there to help.

It's interesting, so the consciousness shift from Pre-Iowaska and how you were dealing kind of with your own image of self, what were some of the recurring themes that you kind of, could you recognize that there were things that were hindering you or self-patterns that you could see? Because I think this is something a lot of people, including myself, experience, still, that you can sense there's something holding you back, you don't know what it is, is that stuff you were encountering? Yeah, I mean, it definitely showed me how many frequencies and how much bandwidth was being taken up with shitty stories about myself, you know, and sometimes I was able to really intentionally, especially when I would purge, I would try to sometimes know what I was purging out and be like, "Goodbye, body shame," you know, which is funny because, you know, some of that comes out almost every time I trip, so I guess there's a lot in there and you just try to get cleaner and cleaner, but when I was like, "Oh, man, there's a whole story line going about how I'm super lazy," I was like, "Just flipped a switch," and with that when I was able to flip a switch, they just shut off, you know, and so in that way, yes, I think I was able to see some of the things that were not working and a lot of my habits changed afterwards, the way that I eat changed, my meditation practice changed, so it definitely showed me how to sustain that and that you don't have to keep going back to the medicines over and over again, and you can choose to go in with intentions that change, I think, but that's not the point, and that's not what the medicine wants either.

Well, because that would just be a kind of habitual thing that would, again, stagnate growth if that was dependent on that. That I think is the real difference between a very effective and kind of altruistic teacher is one that doesn't want you to be dependent on what it's giving you, it wants you to take the lessons and it doesn't mean you can't do it, it doesn't mean there's no function, but it means recognizing that what this is for, that's incredibly important. I love that you said the light switch thing. That was my first LSD experience when I was 15, you know, easily 500 to 750 mics of sunshine acid in Boston on a five-week program at Berkeley.

I was beginning to recognize that there were aspects of this experience that could turn negative, that things could be going in direction and the first thing that occurred to me is like, oh, there's a light switch and you can just flip it. Any mood, you have that malleability to do that. That's one of the reasons I love LSD so much is I do think it, if you can kind of ride with it, it really, you have some conscious control as opposed to something like maybe mushrooms where that's doing you. You better just buckle up, but I feel like LSD is the blank canvas that's just like come play, however you want.

Oh, man, it is a magical thing. Have you micro-dose LSD? A couple times, but never done a regular thing. I love it. I absolutely love it. Yeah, I think the danger is it can make you think that you don't need any larger doses. If that's something that's going to be useful for you, because it really, it's like right on that liminal boundary between an LSD experience and regular reality. And when you shift those kind of boundaries just a little bit, it changes obviously your conception of what reality is, but doesn't push you to the place where it's like, "Oh, God, I see. It's anything. It can be literally anything."

So, yeah, I very much enjoy micro-dosing LSD. I got up on a tangent there just because... That's a quality tangent. Yeah. It's a very cool thing. I mean, it's worth... I always encourage people listening to investigate it if they can, just because it seems to be able to shift things ever so slightly for people, which sometimes, people like you and me might need a slap in the face to wake up and where we need this, but a lot of people don't want to take that first plunge, especially if they're older, and they think if they change their entire mind in a bad way, which it will, but not in a bad way.

Exactly. Yeah. So, growing up... I heard you mentioned to Alexis downstairs, you grew up in Portland on the other coast. Then you went to Columbia. What did you study at Columbia? I was an English major. An English major. Why did you choose English? 'Cause I love writing, and I love reading. So at Columbia, and I also heard you intern at Sesame Street? I did. Yeah. What did you do at Sesame Street? I actually worked on a really cool project. I wasn't working on the TV show side of it. I was working on their special projects, and at the time they had something to teach children about the death of a parent.

Oh, my God. And I had one for military families specifically, and then one for civilians. That's really cool. Yeah. It was amazing. I didn't even know Sesame Street did. Stuff like that. They're incredible. They support childhood in every single way, and I have so much respect for them. That's... We just recently, as of a week ago, just made the decision that you can only watch Sesame Street at this age. Yeah. Because... What about Mr. Rogers, though? Well, of course. We don't think it's on any of the streaming services. If it has, I haven't found it. It's limited to that. We don't have TV anymore.

I get one dose of tea commercials every week. Holy shit. Who exposes themselves to that anymore? Like, every once in a while, I get in an Uber, and I'm just like, what? It's insane. Are you torturing yourself? It's insane. I watch football because I have a mental problem, and it's still very much culturally addicted to it. But for what I view as somewhat mystical reasons, I'll justify it, but I do get commercials if I'm not watching a dolphins game, and in between, and I'm just like, whoa, we're actually doing pretty good if the world isn't blown up by now, because this shit is the worst. It's just an attack.

It is. I've never seen it. I remember that, I think the first time I was probably in LSD experience where I just had a long trip, and then someone puts on the TV and it's like, "Holy shit." Yeah, it's no, it's no good, but so we were watching with Eli to get back to the Sesame Street thing, and we used to watch YouTube with him, don't, YouTube is bad. It is a very bad place. There was a children's animated kind of like, they took these 3D characters, like Spider-Man and Captain America, and they drive these cars around, like cars from the movie Cars. So yeah, it's not offensive, they're going down these shapes and stuff.

Spider-Man crashes his car into the ocean, it's not like violent, gets out, runs up to the beach, and takes a shit and screams. I Instagrammed it, because I was like, "Yo, this is insane, number one, number two, what the fuck?" Like, Mike Toddler is watching this, so we banned it, and watch Sesame Street, so I'm glad. Who is uploading this shit? It's fucking weird. You know what it is? It's cute. People who are like... I'm gonna talk to that guy. Well, they're probably like, "You know, like, I'm making this amount of money to make this for my job, I got to do this, I'm putting this in." You know?

I mean... I mean, good for him in that case, but... It was funny, but just not appropriate for children who are clearly the intended audience. So you make documentaries, though, too. So how did you get into that? You didn't go to school for that. So what was the kind of transition for you getting into that creative medium? Well, I was an actor since I was five, and I acted through college, and then on the other side of college, I was not at a terribly great place in my life, so I don't think that was translating very well, probably, in auditions, either. But I also just felt a lot of resentment, I think, that I wasn't able to perform and express myself at the level that I had for most of my life, up to that point, and I felt really entitled to a certain level of collaboration and access.

So I had to walk away from it, and I ended up on the other side of the camera, and learning filmmaking from an independent filmmaker in Brooklyn, and just kind of getting shoved into positions that I didn't think I was qualified for, and he was just like, "No, no, you're a producer, no. No, no, you're an AC, no. No, no, we're working on a television show for six months, and you can do it." And so I was really lucky to learn a little bit of every part of filmmaking, and we made a documentary together that we edited together, and so that was incredible. And I just felt really grateful to be creative and be able to practice my heart, I guess, without having to wait around for someone to give me the opportunity to.

I really love that about documentary filmmaking, especially. And that's awesome, and also one thing that I've learned very acutely with documentaries, people who make them, is you're really seeing a reflection of that person if they're making a documentary in the right way. Sure, yeah. You can do your Ken Burns stuff, and stylize, and do something, but if you're really making a documentary, that's the person shining through their lens on a specific situation, which, to me, is fucking amazing. I just think the art of it is something I have a deeper and deeper appreciation for. It's just amazing.

What have you learned from making documentaries about other people? Because that's what it is, right? I mean, it's a subject or a person. So what have you learned from that medium? Well, I guess learning to approach people that I don't know, and to shoot strangers, has been, I mean, I've certainly learned a lot about myself in that process. But I think what I've learned from other people the most is just that everyone wants to feel seen, and everyone wants to feel heard. And if you create a space for people to do that, that's where the magic happens. And those are the documentaries that I love the most.

And I learned a ton from making films with Sean Dunn last year, and he taught me a lot of magic that was in myself, but he really showed me how to, I think when I went into shooting strangers, I felt like I was taking something away from them, and I felt like some kind of violation. And from working with him, I really learned about how if you offer your vulnerability to other people, they're offering theirs, and that's a holy moment that you're sharing. And I think especially traveling alone this summer, which was like deeply psychedelic, and I only spent two nights in motels in that whole time, because people just met me with this incredible generosity and openness, and welcomed me into their lives, and into their psychedelic ceremonies, and to their children's worlds, and I think that was such an incredible way to see the world right now, especially when there are so many stories about how disconnected we are from each other.

So to see that side of humanity and to touch that current of love and care that does run through everyone, it just reinforced that people are good and beautiful. Yes, and that is kind of a default setting, despite what you may think by looking out and seeing narratives take contrary. So how did you weave this trip together over the summer, because I've pieced it together from episodes of the podcast and from things we've spoken about. So how did this begin, what happened, I want to hear all about, it's like the super fucking cool thing. Yeah, yeah, I am, so before the trip kicked off, I was at a really low point, and just really was feeling that heartbreak moment of like, will I ever feel connected to good things again?

Yes. And I walked to the park, I was going to take a walk around Prospect Park, and I live two blocks from the corner where there's a drum circle, a pretty regular drum circle. So I walked over there, and I, you know, the vibe there is pretty great, so I was like, I'm going to soak this up for a minute, and I squatted by a tree. And I started crying, and I was just sitting there quietly, and this man separates himself from the crowd and walks up to me, and he's talking to me, and he's saying something very directly to me, but he's not speaking words. He's communicating with me, and he's like communicating with my chest.

And he gets closer, and he sits down next to me, and he takes my hand, and he puts like a piece of hair behind my ears, and it was like the most tender thing that anyone's ever done to me. And he says this thing to me again, and I realize what he's saying, not in English is lady, what do you remember from the time before, or what do you remember from Africa? And he keeps saying this to me in this very playful, non-English, non-literal way, and I just looked at him, and I repeated it back to him, like this is insane, I don't know what you're talking about. And the second I said it, I gasped, and I realized what he was saying, and I jumped up because I have this kind of swamp guru guy in South Georgia, who I see a couple times a year, and hang out with, and he told me that I would meet this native guy, and described him, and he was like, "When he speaks, trust him," whatever he says, trust him.

And I just realized like, "Oh my God, this is the guy," and I have been in Africa before, and like that night that I wask a night popped back in my head, and the whole thing connected, and I was like, I don't know what this means, except that there's magic in the world. Like there's no literal message here for me, except that someone is looking out for me, and I'm part of something bigger, and even though I don't feel it right now, I'm gonna choose to trust it in this moment. And that just kicked off unbelievable magic for this whole journey, and I think I definitely tried to put myself around people who would, you know, click on that vibe, a lot of medicine people, and a lot of plant people, but it showed me, it completely showed me.

That is so fucking cool. That is one of the craziest things that ever happened to me. I mean, it's got every component you would want of like a classic mythological significant start to a journey. I mean, especially that you were at your lowest point, like that, you mean, to remind, that's the lowest point one can experience, not knowing if you're ever gonna experience, or even capable of being loved, it's like the worst thing, as a human one can go through, it's the depths. So that's insane. So what happened next though? So I gasped, and he just jumped up, he's like this little trickster spirit, he just jumped up, did this literal cackle, and then just danced off and joined them off again, and I couldn't have picked him out of the crowd again if I tried.

That's nuts. So at that point, you've now just been completely reminded and are opened up to that the world is magic, which is such a, whenever you get in sync with those stretches of time, if people, if you've been lucky enough to have that, had several, it's just incredible. It's a visceral feeling too. It's not just an idea or a conception of what's going on. The whole physical realm starts to feel like magic too. So that kicks off, you're at your low point, you're now beginning the journey, you're about to leave the forest. What happens next? Where do you put this together? So I reached out to my friend Maddie Luntz, who I had actually just been in Thailand with.

She'd gotten male to female gender reassignment surgery, and I said she had this transit van that she was going to make into home for a while, and hadn't started working on yet. And I was like, what if we quickly pimped out your van, and we hit the road, and I make a little film about your friendship and our love in this time, and I'm going to go find medicine women to talk to. And she was like, it's on. So I went to Vermont and helped her build out this van in like two weeks, very DIY, but very impressive. That was all her. And we, I just reached out to a bunch of dope women, and unsurprisingly now, but at the time I was just blown away that people were so open to me, but now I'm learning that that's like what dope women do, and it's so cool.

But yeah, we headed to Asheville, and I spent time there with a really beautiful herbalist named Alana House, and she opened me up to kind of this beautiful circle of goddess earth women down there, and then we drove to Detroit, and Maddie and I split ways at that point, and I kind of launched the solo part of my trip then, and I went from there to San Diego, New Mexico, Northern California, Portland, and then back to New Mexico for a while. I'm picturing the lines in my head. It was a very strange route. Yeah. It's like some geometric triangular thing. That's so cool. And so each place you're, you're kind of like picking up.

It's like a real medicine journey of your own where you're like taking the feather from here. Totally. You're taking the things. So that's so fucking cool. But obviously, I don't want to say favor, but what were some highlights of the experiences kind of going around and meeting these different women and kind of getting exposed to this thing that, what, just a few months before you were on a bench crying. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to backtrack for one second. Yeah. I just tell a little anecdote that actually is one of the things that my swamp guru told me because I spent some time down there during that broken period, and he kind of sussed me up, and he was like, "Mara, here's the thing about you.

You go through the world picking up all these shiny little rocks and putting them in your pocket, but you don't know what you're looking for." And I really internalized that, and I was like, "God, am I fucked up? Like, I just like surrounded by gold and all I'm seeing is coal, you know? Like, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I such a seeker?" And then as I traveled through this journey, I was like, "It's not fucked up. I am a seeker, and that's just part of what I am here to do in this life. And if it's possible for me in that process to share some of the rock collection, that's chill, and I'm down with that."

And it doesn't mean that I'm missing out on something just because I'm not dialed into the one thing. The one thing. Yeah. I want you to get a story, but I want to interject here, too, because this is something that I personally-- this is something that I've noticed, and I think you mentioned it before, it's this trickster archetype. If you have an identification, whether willingly or not, with that kind of lineage, it does seem that those types of people-- I put myself in this camp, too-- they asked themselves that question when they noticed that they've kind of been picking up different things from here and there.

Because, like I said before, in our off-air conversation, I was speaking with someone that you can go around the mountain. Yeah. Oh, is that bad? You know, I'm not getting to the actual summit, but some of us really do go to different peaks of different summits and say, you know what? This is amazing. Let me go compare it to this other one. Not because we're accruing and trying to pick up all this other stuff to show people, but to see the kind of hidden threads between them that can be communicated to other people. That's really, really important you said that, because I think, yes, many people, you should pick a specific path, and that regularity will keep you on that thing.

But if you have the capacity to attune to different frequencies, don't give that up because you're told you're not supposed to. I'm really happy you pointed that out. I mean, it just has become clear to me that that's part of why I'm here, is that I am the person that does want to say, yes, that will come up on a train that will do the thing. Because that's how I end up in the jungle doing the most magical thing that I didn't even know was possible. That's how I end up in the Himalayas. That's how I end up making a film with these beautiful sweet people that I met on the side of the street. That's my portal to the magic in my lifetime.

Why did you go to Himalayas? A couple of years ago. What were you doing there? I went trekking. And I was like, I'm going to do this with a woman, god damn it, and there's an amazing agency that specializes in female trekking guides. And my guide was leading her first one. She was 19 years old. Holy shit. And she did not speak English. And two of us spent two weeks trekking. It was incredible. Oh my god. Highly recommend. You have such a apparent and deep connection to the divine feminine that manifests in many different ways. Has this been a theme in your life for a long time? Or is this the ayahuasca?

When did you know? I'm sure you noticed this connection too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely grew up with two sisters and a single mom. And she was really incredible about, like, right now in my apartment, actually, I have a whole bookshelf of strong female character YA lit. And I've actually been rereading a lot of this lately. I saw some of your tweets. They're really good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was just a huge part of my inner landscape was just so much time reading. Literature was huge. And we also didn't watch TV growing up besides PBS.

Yeah. And so I just have a lot of good shit in me that's, like, built out the architecture of my personal mythos that's about, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt and Beverly Cleary and... And, like, strong figures in history and arts that that's really, really awesome. Because, I mean, that's not something that was available to the majority of people. You're going to be... I know. Which is really crazy to come into the world and realize. Yeah, it is endemic to society that those voices are pretty much stamped out pretty regularly. And that if there are exceptions, they're notable. And most people know those notable exceptions, which means many people are being not heard of.

Yeah. It's obviously been a theme for, you know, a couple of millennia, a little more. It's very, very apparent. It's weird to me that more people don't recognize that it's apparent. I mean, there's cultural conditioning involved, of course, and we've had a narrative. But, I mean, some of this stuff just seems so plain. You know what I mean? It's just like, "Well, why do you think there aren't more women?" Well, and then you have people like Jordan Peterson, who I don't want to get up on the tangent, who just, like, can give some weird psychobabble justification why there shouldn't be an equal pay rate.

Just a simple thing, with common sense, dictates, like, you know, the same, like, you pay the same. But it's, yeah, it's really very, very odd. But it's cool that you kind of internalize that and have that strength because it's reflected out in what you're putting out into the world. And to me, at this point, I had a big download psychedelic experience in early 2000s, and it was a precursor to what I eventually retroactively impact is the antidote to the patriarchy and just things that are not working well is we need a resurgence of the divine feminine, not to overtake, not to consume, not to be the only thing around, but to rebalance what is clearly out of whack, clearly out of whack.

So reintegrating it back into your story, so you, what, who were some of the other people that you met along this way? And what were some of the themes that kind of, this was a summer, just a summer? I turned into about five months. Oh, no. I was going to say, how do you limit that? Yeah. It's true. I'm totally addicted. I think I may be kind of wrapping up New York life because I want to be able to immerse myself in storytelling in that way. Well, there are a couple people that I'd love to acknowledge. I met an incredible herbalist in Albuquerque named Bernadette Torres, who I think is my favorite podcast that I've done so far.

First one I heard. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's dope. Yeah. And she, in her own right, is an incredible medicine woman, but she also works with her partner, Ashinika Minow, who's from Peru and he does tobacco healing. And the two of them are just so beautiful. And she very quickly taught me some basics about herbs and intuition that really changed my life. So she was amazing. And I also spent a while with this guy named Patrick Brady in San Diego, and I'd actually met him in New Mexico last year on the side of the gorge bridge. And I was just talking to people and he kind of appeared out of nowhere. And we hit it off and suddenly he was like, "My children are in my car.

I'm going to introduce you to my children." And I was like, "Okay." And then he just kind of opened me very quickly into his entire world. And then I was like, "I'm going to find you one day." And then I went back to New York and yeah, I found him. And he has this really cool vision for saving what he sees as a generation of opiate addicted teenagers and he's been in alcohol recovery for 25 years. And he has a really big beef with the institutional rehab situation in this country as we all should. And he wants to basically specifically for young boys who he sees as needing a connection to the divine masculine.

He wants to take them back out into the land basically. His movement is called the Axis movement. He wants to teach them to make knives and to hunt the boar and to build log cabin. And yeah, he needs resources and he needs support to help actualize this, but his signal is incredible. And he's a true gypsy man. He's been to five different states since I left him and he's now in Texas and he's incredible. So I hung out with him for a while and lived in a tent next to the little camper where he was staying at some people's property and we took baths in the ocean. It was amazing. That is so cool. I mean, when you're so open to experiences and you're putting out this frequency or tuning into the frequency, whichever it is, the same probably, it's amazing the depth of relationships that can be formed in such a short period of time.

And then this, I felt naturally leads itself to kind of questioning the validity of time as an thing. I think, yes, of course, I always have to acknowledge this feels silly, but yes, we know we get old our time moves in a linear direction. No one is arguing that, but it also is wrapped up in itself. It does. It flows both ways and that you can have those connections and people can say it's a past life and the remembrance, but sometimes you just meet people and it's like, yes, like there's a depth to that relationship already that I just met this person. There's no way I didn't have spent 10 years getting to know them and their details of their lives.

And I think, again, that isn't this kind of infinite power you've alluded to that is within all of us. Yeah. It just gets. We all know each other. Yes. Yes. Yes. You don't have to go back that far. I love it. I love it. I'm going to ask you my last questions here. Okay. You did pretty damn good on an hour. That's your favorite color blue is a good one. A lot of people. It's blue is my favorite too. What's your favorite number? 13. Oh, my two. Nice. I love 13 favorite animal llama llama first person to say llama 160 something I have a really good llama impression, but it involves grapes. I'll show you why why llama because of this impression, I've just done it for most of my life.

It's good. I'm pretty quiet person that takes a minute for me to, you know, people to feel like they really know me, but I like to bust that out or just really confuse people. That's awesome. Last question is what's a practical tip that you can share with people listening that's helped you in your life and can be anything be kind to yourself. Say sweet things to yourself, give yourself patience and love and the hard stories that you tell yourself are not actually helping you and you don't need them. Like you will accomplish whatever you need to accomplish and maintain the relationships that you need to maintain in ways that you never even imagined if you let go of telling yourself about what a bad dog that you're doing right now.

Yeah. Be kind to yourself. That's so important. I think I was lucky enough to learn that as a teenager. I think because of psychedelics, it really helped me recognize the kind of fleeting tangibility of thoughts and that can be very helpful when you're telling yourself not great thoughts. As many teenagers do tell themselves what the fuck is going on. That's so amazing to tell people where they can find, where can people go to find more about you? You do a lot of other things. You have seen your drawings are fucking awesome. So where can they go to find out more about you? My website is Mara James.

That's M-A-U-R-A-J-A-M-E-S. I'm an Instagram too, same thing, Mara James. My podcast, Unbroken Chain, is on Noah's group network. It's seriously, I say this in all earnestly. It's my favorite podcast. It's the one. It's because of that specific signal that you're putting out that when I read through the mystics and stuff, one who always caught my eye very early on from the very beginning was Ramakrishna. And the reason I found out later that Ramakrishna, all of his parables made sense to me. This is an Indian guy from the late 1800s, early 1900s. Not really relevant stories. But he was one of the few people who was a prominent mystic who worshiped Durga, who was a female deity.

Most of these people, it's Krishna, Ram, Hanuman, and all these male things. But he had an absolute connection to Durga, the mother presence, this fierce presence. And I was like, yeah, I get it. And I've felt that in my life, even as a male, that the divine feminine is best. That's my thing. So when you put out that signal, it's recognizable to people who really tune into it. So I love it. Well, I love women. And it's the honor of my life to be able to amplify that signal in whatever way I can. And I just am so grateful for everyone who's let me do that. I love it. Keep doing it. I'm going to support you every possible way that I can because it's so important to get this stuff out there.

I know we were talking about the commercial viability before podcasting and all that stuff. The main conclusion I've come up with right now is just find a way to keep doing the important things. The other stuff will be supported the way that it should. And I'm sure once you tap into something so special, it's kind of hard to stop it. Trust me, I've wanted to stop at times when life circumstances get in the way, but you recognize the kind of universal validity of talking about these things in a specific way. Yeah. It makes me feel less alone. Yeah. That's like all right. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming up here.

Thank you so much. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to that episode. That was a remix. The original song is by Fos Veracen. It's called Song for Zula. I remixed this a few years ago. It's not official remix. I should point that out. I just took it and jacked it and did what I wanted to do with it. But that is a remix of that song. And Mara chose that for her, her song, intro song for her latest episode of Unbroken Chain, her podcast, which you should definitely go check it out.

So that's all I got this week. Big thanks to all of you who have been supporting the show. Like I said, go donate to MindPod Network so I can pay some wonderful people a little bit more. Give them a little holiday bonuses. That would be cool. And that's about it. Go dolphins. And I will see you next week.