Riding the Wave with Erick Godsey

[Music] this is synchronicity this is synchronicity [Music] welcome to synchronicity my guest this week features the return of eric godc eric man what a special guy I always leave we we here's a little auxiliary note to this podcast we recorded it I think a month and a half ago and we had an amazing conversation I think we were both micro-addosing that day it was just awesome equally as awesome to this one I'm happy to say but it didn't record and we had also been trying to schedule that one I think for like God I feel like a month at least just going back and forth missing and oh I can't do it oh I can't do it right on the day up but whenever I get to connect with Eric he's just such a refreshing person to speak to I think a lot of it and you know this if you've read his writing ericgodc.com will point you to all the stuff that he's up to but if you've read his writing he's just one of the most transparent and authentic and honest people and you can just tell from his writing there's there's nothing being held back here if he thinks it's going to be useful for other people or himself and he carries that spirit basically wherever he goes and this is a really cool episode because we touch on some of the things that I think this show really is about more than anything else we start off we're talking about some LSD and micro-addosing but we very quickly go into some traumatic experiences people have had with psychosis and synchronicities which is obviously one of our favorite topics on this show and we have some really good thoughts around that and just you know when you're in a conversation I don't know if you can relate to this because of the show I have this experience a lot but sometimes you'll get into a long conversation with someone and you don't really know where it's going not in a bad way like oh I don't know where this is going this is weird in a way like I don't know where this is going and then over time it emerges and you're like oh shit that's what this is very very fucking cool and these this happens multiple times in this conversation with Eric just because I think we're both kind of exploring territory that is just beyond the grasp of our conscious minds but we're interested in finding any tools anything any modality that can help us shed some light on what's going on so yeah this episode is great Eric is great go check him out he just started a new podcast the myths that make us is just a hell of a guy support him on his journey and what he's doing because you know when you find cool people you got to support them speaking of which mind pod network later this month this is April 2019 will be featuring every two weeks a new guest speech for a blarfish we'll be featuring podcasters from mind pod network whatever they have going on with them we're going to be putting up on the site every two weeks so we're going to get that kicked off with something from Romine and if you know I've been doing this on sync podcast calm we're doing a book of the month featured book of the month sync podcast calm if you haven't been there lots of stuff there featuring a book of the month Romine has a book coming out infinite elephants Romine Nazer from the rainbow brain school podcast we know this yes on my pod network excellent dude amazing artists amazing guy funniest shit new book coming out April 10th is when we're going to be featuring it on the mind pod site for a little bit but it's going to be on the synchronicity podcast site the entire time so go and check that out we're just going to be directing people to mind pod network collectively so we can kind of basically signal boost this stuff I found out I hadn't checked in for a while that the site gets a sizable amount of traffic still so why not funnel that awesome traffic to awesome people right it's pretty easy how about that for superlatives for people who don't like them that's it nope that's not even close to it what am I talking about I got a lot of shit going on my mind is foggy so bear with me you I have got the kaksaki virus parents you know what that is yeah sucks hi fever then just weird shit going on for the rest of the week so he's been out of daycare and guess who's been taking care of him I think there's a period here of this podcast I don't know exactly what it is I'd have to review I want to say October three months prior to October 2017 you can hear me slowly lose my mind on the show and you get a little taste of that on this intro because taking care of a small child as your main priority wall trying to do other things including work in a podcast and all these other things I know people do it but man if you can keep your sanity in that you're basically enlightened I think because mine slips away after about five days five days of responsibilities and taking care of a small child it's just going slipping through my fingers so bear with me in the intro because I do have a few other things to get through if you can always skip ahead right that's the beauty of podcast you're like fuck this I don't know this guy who gives a show up give shit about this go ahead fifteen thirty forty five seconds we'll be there let's for sigma let's thank these fellows genuinely because they're just they're they're doing something this show let's be honest I'm not going to be a money driver for for sigma that or for sponsors in general unless they're specifically aligned with what we're talking about on the episode and this show let's it ranges right I love that they're sponsoring it I feel that I've done my part by pointing them to other awesome podcasters and people I know who I'm sure making them money which is great but in the meantime can we can we just if you're going to for sigma that dot com slash sync pick something up I genuinely drink the mushroom elixir had it I like it I've genuinely enjoyed and had their matcha their coffee their cocoa I'm not making this shit up I would I do that so go and check that out again for sigma that dot com slash think there are links all over the place for this stuff on this episode if you've ever thought about it you're like you know what this is the day today is the day I'm gonna do this then use the use the sync code right 15% off your first order it's a pretty good deal they're good people the chances of them re upping this probably pretty slim but they're cool guys I like them a lot all right that's that I think we've gotten through everything that was it by Bitcoin right well cryptocurrency people still a little weird about that when I say that just that we'll see okay without further ado thank you for bearing with me here is eric god see thanks for coming on man thanks for having me on brother this is the quickest shift from what I call pretty off the air conversation to on the air just because when you're like I'm taking LST on the weekends I'm like whoa what up how would you take him I'm doing probably about half a tab so I'm not going all the way in but I'm doing enough where I'm for sure off of baseline right but I'm still able to kind of live the eric ego life and completely obliterating it have you done a higher macro doses yeah I've I've done macro doses of LSD probably only like three times okay and I've never done a corn quote heroic dose of LSD I've done heroic doses of mushrooms probably about eight to ten times yeah yeah yeah before I found real LSD when I was young and dumb and thought I had real LSD I you know I would do like four tabs but right if for sure was not LSD in the moment I did real LSD I was like yeah yeah yeah that was not it that's it that's so what's a what's the I don't know what the definition of a heroic dose of LSD is what is I'm sure what did Terrence define that as so I don't know if you quantify that but I just kind of my intuition it's like anything over 400 oh shit yeah no that's that's definitely a a dosey dose for sure yeah I think the most I've done is 300 and it was the first time I had real LSD yeah yeah yeah I think maybe I've done thinking back of over 400 doses maybe twice maybe twice once on purple both times unintentionally it was my first time much like you where you can dose my unintentional as well yeah yeah which I think are good things I think the people who I know who really just went like full bore all the time like I will say outside of my friend Sean and Cass were like probably the most intentional psychedelic users I know and aspirational in good ways but for most other people who are at least in the college days when I was doing it the people who just kind of willy nilly take like a shitload and know that it was a shitload I'm like how I don't understand that you kind of like that seems nuts to me but the mistake seem to be auspicious in a lot of ways so you're how regularly have you been doing this on the weekends so I started micro dosing LSD probably about a year and a half ago I hadn't actually really done LSD much up into that point I was more into mushrooms but I finally found a consistent really high quality source about a year and a half ago and I started micro dosing and I did the you know psychedelic explorer guide James vitamin protocol where yes you know like one sixteenth of a tab every fourth day and I did that for probably six to eight months and then I slowly moved up to about one eighth of a tab about every other day for probably about four months yeah and then I you know I the work that I do it on it now got more intense and I it became harder to micro dose on workdays yeah yeah and so that's been true probably about the last three months and then basically what I've been doing the last three months is sometimes on micro dose on a weekday like a micro dose today because I have a podcast you know with you obviously to kind of be weird and goofy and creative but I tend to now do more than a micro dose but like a mini mini like a mini I call it's a mini dose yes and I do those on the weekends because kind of like how I like to relax is I just like to you know read the books I want to read hang out with my friends that I love and just kind of not try to do anything but I like to show up and just you know see the world in a weird way which I love that LSD allows me to do that so I've been doing that for probably about the last few months it's interesting it's really interesting you started with the Fatima protocol because that's what I started with when I micro dose for the first time and I did it for three months every fourth day I diluted mine you know I was doing the liquid I like that approach it's a little less I mean none of it unless you're accurate accurately knowing that one tab is a hundred or getting liquid stuff that you know is accurately weighed out it's hard to get it exact but you know 10 to 15 mics and exactly kind of what happened you not exactly but after you go through that original protocol you kind of make up your own and then let your intuition guide you where and when you should be using it it's very it's very interesting I have found that there are times now where I've taken or done a micro dose and I'm like you know what that maybe wasn't the best time to do it nothing went wrong nothing was bad but I was like you know what I was I could have yeah and I find those really interesting and a segue to kind of like what you're slowly becoming not slowly you're becoming an expert on young is I've been thinking about micro dosing related to astrology and yeah it's or just influences that are outside of our immediate subjective perspective which is usually what we use to gauge intuition but there's there's I believe there's something there I'm very interested in which is why like something synchronicic happened today where I I can't tell you the last time I booked two podcasts on the same day if ever today is the first day starting with you and then I have a Vedic astrologer on next oh wow so before we jumped on this call I was like you know what let me bone up on some young because like what's better than just like pop an open or random page of some young and talk me about Eric like you this is the best person so I popped over popped open his this will be the late last thing one of the last things you'll read in his collected works but Mysterium could junkyoed chunk gitis it's the bet the hardest one to say but it was written in his later years it was basically his outcome all of his alchemical wisdom an astrological wisdom is like poured into this thing and the first thing I open up to is this astrological kind of journey that one takes towards individuation and how it relates to the psyche and then I just want to read you something from this because it was like so interesting dude listen to this I got to go to the page I have it here I wasn't planning on this but it occurs to me that it's kind of useful in terms of what we're talking about I just lost the page but I'm pretty sure I remember was one 72 no I lost the page I'll find it later but I'll paraphrase it for you basically he was talking about with the aids of tonics or tinctures one could go through this journey and he references a specific character in one of his like weird readings but I was like that's really fucking interesting to me that were because I know on our last conversation we're talking about microdosing quite a bit because we've both found it to be a very transformative kind of alchemical thing so I'm interested how have you seen this kind of dovetailing with your pursuit into young your for people don't know you're reading his collected work so give people a little overview of why you're doing that and kind of just the influence it's having on your life yeah man so I've always been really into psychology and growing up I was a staunch atheist I you know if it didn't make sense logically or if I couldn't fit it inside of a scientific framework I thought it was bullshit and then I found young and he for me was the bridge between science and spirituality and I started to read a couple of his works when I was in college and I just I really resonated with it and at some point in the last like four or five years I just had the thought like I'm going to read his entire collected works before I'm 30 and I just kind of let that sit in the background for a couple of years yeah and then about six months ago I went to Peru and I did Wachuma and Vilica which are two plant medicines native to South America and it was such a profound experience that when I came back I just kind of had this like what the fuck feeling of if not now when and so I just started reading the collected works and it complete you know it's it's been the most fulfilling intellectual pursuit I've ever gone on interestingly and this is something that we can get into later if you want I've actually stopped reading the collected works because some pretty intense stuff happened in my life where I knew I had the tools from young to process what happened and so instead of reading in the morning I've been writing and this has been going on for like the last two months and I feel like I'm almost done with the writing so I'm actually going to get back into the reading but I so I think I finished book eight of the collected works yeah and then a friend put the red book on my desk and yeah yeah not the not the summary of the red book the real visual with the pictures yeah yes and I started reading that and it fucked me up in the best way and it was right around when I started reading the red book that some stuff happened with some relationships in my life that brought up some really old complexes that then I didn't use writing as a way to process so I've actually stopped reading young but I know I'm gonna get back to it and I still believe that I will finish the collected works for him 30 even though I know that that's a goal that was made out of my ego well I'm not sure yeah but it is something that came up and as it involves LSD when I find LSD helps me do my default mode like way of looking at the world is very rational and scientific and logical and empirical but I know I have the mercurial hermetic winking side of me but it's not my default right right and LSD just and it just takes a super small amount it's just enough to help me click into that mode of being yeah that makes me much more fun in conversation allows me to pun more and be more goofy and just helps me see the world through a Jungian lens just a little bit more easily and like once you start to polish that lens of you know the hero's journey and the you know the one myth that all the myths are trying to get at you just see it everywhere and this is something that I so I like to write trip reports after I do any type of deep psychedelic work so I wrote a trip report about my experience improve one of the first things that I talked about is like and I got this idea from you know and it's that I think alchemy at its core was not about chemistry even though it did contribute to chemistry but that the human the human all right our nervous system is the is where the alchemy takes place and our experience is the lead that we can transform into gold and we consciousness we are the alchemists yes and so you can do it anywhere at any time with any experience you know I have a dude I mean so many amazing things you said there and I kind of want to touch on all of them and I'll do the best I can from the memory because you so many amazing things I highly recommend when you jump back into not just young but anything else related to him is a book written by his translator and disciple Marie Louise von Franz I'm sure I've mentioned it before but alchemy it's a Encino book that book to me is like it's like reading young for the first time in terms of like the power it has over the psyche and you're like well what like what are they saying like why is and it's really really excellent but I also like that you you this is something I admire about you man is your intuitive faculties even though you say you know yes they're they're kind of this hidden layer and my intellect and my logical and analysis is at the front there's clearly some deep connection to your intuitive faculties because you you saw and recognize what I kind of call the consumption production cycle for creating people which is yeah sometimes you just want to consume like dude I'm listening to Game of Thrones on audiobook and I am yeah is fucking I'm I'm loving it like just absolutely loving is nothing to do with any creative by just I'm loving it but sometimes the reverse you just need to produce you need to write or you need to make music or you need to express yourself in whatever modality makes sense for you and being able to tap into that cycle is really really powerful because I think when the disharmony that can come from not being in the right one pushing when you should be pulling that causes people so much stress not just creatively but just internally for their minds and even their bodies and the ability to recognize that it is fucking brilliant man like that's that's really really an important tool that you seem to have cultivated one other thing I wanted to touch on that you said I have a question I mean I think about this a lot because I'm a daily cannabis user so I think of the questions of what are these substances or plants or whatever is going on how much of it is the plant how much is this the synergy between our consciousness and a plant or substance consciousness and how much is it as a placebo how much is this just really just kind of revealing what is naturally there and letting it flow and I think about psychedelics I think about this a lot with psychedelics because we know they have a dampening effect on many aspects of the brain neurologically which is like okay it's kind of like how stuff works default maybe we're confusing it so do you think micro dosing LSD or LSD in general because you mentioned like you know I'm a little bit I can have conversations more easily I can you know if things are a little bit funnier I can see things through a Jungian lens do you think that's the LSD doing it or do you think it's kind of attuning you to who you naturally are what are your thoughts on that yeah so that's a great question I think all of these chemicals do have a biological basis where they are producing some type of chemical that makes it easier for a certain mode of being for their brain to tap into but I like to use in metaphor I like to just use them period because I think that's a thing yes yes and the way that I think about it is whatever chemical you take the first time you take it the experience that you have it's like you're unlocking a new room in the home of your psyche and whatever that first experience is you will wed with that chemical but the door is open now so it's a part of your psyche that you can reach without it but when you take it it almost like it it teleports you to the door mat of that room and it's more easy for you to just go explore that part of the mind but I think you have access to that part of the mind without the chemical and the chemical is just kind of a you know it's basically like a trigger in any habit you know and a lot of our existence are the unfolding of habits and a habit is a trigger a behavior and a reward and you know for me LSD is a purposeful and consciously cultivated trigger that brings me to a room in the house of my psyche that I want to go to on weekends preferably and I love that room you know it's got beautiful windows it's got some really awesome artwork in there and I like to go in there yeah well it's a fun room and I think paradoxically that room can kind of up-end the rooms or the place we are before we enter the room which is why it's like it I think are both revered and feared because that's like a very disturbing not in a pejorative way room for lack of a vet it's yeah man I mean like the light in that room is so bright that it might obscure your vision for a while when you step out of it and all the other rooms look different yeah you're gonna be seeing sunspots for a while for sure yeah man I I think this is really fascinating and I love to hear you talk about kind of the intentional use of microdosing because as you know this is like it's funny when anything it's psychedelics is like new like at least memetically or like in the mainstream of psychedelics which is still underground but microdosing is relatively a new phenomenon I mean for as much acid was getting passed around back in the days and you hear about it with like Romdas and Richard when he was Richard Alpert with Tim Leary like they weren't taking small amounts they were blasting themselves with like 1500 mics at a time drinking from biles of like period so it's interesting to me that we found this kind of other ground up approach more grounded approach and I love speaking to people who are also doing it because I think it's kind of I want to say pioneering but like the web of experiences is just being beginning to be well woven for you know what I mean like it's really absolutely it's fucking cool dude I love that so last time we spoke something that stuck out to me well two things one was uh well I just shifted what I want to talk about my mind I was gonna talk about Jordan Peterson we'll save him we'll save him for the later but I mental illness and psychosis and since we spoke I put out an episode called psychosis and synchronicity which is a rare solo episode that I do and I was blown away like this is one of my most popular episodes ever and I was beautiful yeah it was really cool because I was blown away that it was clearly a topic that people were familiar with and I know from your studying of Jung and his theories on kind of psychosis and what that meant for him personally you've gleaned a lot about this and I'm sure you're constantly kind of watching your own mind because you're reading young enough and you're taking LSC how can you not what are your thoughts kind of on the relationship between psychosis mental illness and you know some of the kind of architectural journeys that people can go on whether psychedelic induced or not this could not be better timing you could say it's synchronicity someone close to me literally yesterday had a psychotic episode and had to be taken to the hospital geez and I talked to them for an hour and a half the day before and all my Jungian reading helped me see what was happening in them yet I couldn't help them which was very frustrating but like I have complete faith that he's gonna be okay but he truly had a psychotic episode where he was completely detached yeah from empirical reality and so and I've been trying because I'm the unofficial office psychologist so everyone's been coming up to me the last day and have asking me to explain to them what's going on with him yeah and you know the first caveat is I truly cannot do what is happening internally with him any justice because it's so beyond my ability to understand but to answer your question is also to answer their questions and I think essentially people who have high IQs and a great ability to be creative they are most likely to have a quote-unquote psychotic episode and I think we need a better word for it yes yes yeah it's it's essentially the psyches a bit so you have two hemispheres and one speaks in language and the other one speaks in images and it's not logical it's it's symbolic and there are people who that part of the brand is very strong and it tries to communicate with logical mind and ideally it wants to work in tandem with the logical mind to help you adapt to reality I think it comes down to adapting to reality and for this specific person and I think that so there's two or something to really articulate here there's the genetic basis of schizophrenia which is a very specific type of thing which just seems to be where the hardware is not working properly and then there is when people have psychotic episodes aren't genetically schizophrenic and so these are two different things I'm not going to talk about genetic schizophrenia because I think that that is more so the hardware not working as opposed to something this psyche is doing to help the individual adapt which I think is what psychosis is so for this person clearly there were things that happened in his life that he was not yet ready to face and it's it could be as mundane as your significant relationship you know should have been ended six years ago and you haven't done it yeah something you've delayed and pushed off and won't face the shadow aspects of the difficult yes yes yes exactly and someone with a high IQ and a strong symbolic brain they will create layers and layers of symbology and fantasy and I don't mean that in a derogatory way right but they're basically symbols that they can put between their experiencing self and the visceral fact of the uncomfortable truth of whatever it is that is in their life and you can get so deep in the symbols that you can lose touch with reality and like when I was talking to him the day before man like he was saying a lot of truly profound things like I think this is something that Jung did that nobody else that I've read about properly did and it's to pay heed and respect to the way the mind becomes psychotic and what it produces in a psychotic state and it's truly like it's the essence of deep art like the things that he was saying were so profound yet they were not put into any type of implementable framework in reality where it would be genius right you know like it it was truly madness but but there was deep truth in the things that he was saying man but I think psychosis is essentially what happens when the individual hits an obstacle in the world or in their life that is so potent that they're not ready to face and the psyche will either try to inflate the self to float above it or will depress the self to go underneath it but neither of those two things work in the long run but there are ways of coping and so that's why I think bipolar disorder is you either that's why I think those are the two fundamental spectrums that the psyche can go to you're either manic or depressive and really what that is is you either create symbolic stories that amplified the feeling of the ego to try to make it strong enough to face the thing or it's depressive where you were the psyche will make the ego so small that it won't try to confront the thing yes and I think both can be helpful in the moment but that the true way forward is to face the thing and this person specifically was manic and I have complete faith that he's gonna you know come back and yeah and integrated and he will be all the better for this well and gone no no you continue please please please so to tie this to synchronicity I think synchronicity is this really beautiful and potent and potentially scary aspect of experience where if you're truly trying to face the things in your life I think the psyche gives you synchronicities to help you but also synchronicity seem to be a thing that if you're super adamant to avoid the thing you need to do it that also activates synchronicities but in a delusional way and I still don't know how you parse between the genuine synchronicities that are trying to help you forward and the ones that seem to be like this by product of a resisting of whatever the obstacle actually is and it's feeding the mania or the depressive this I really cannot thank you enough for that description of a friend of yours and just sharing the story because this is really meaty stuff that I'm excited to talk about I'll offer this kind of additive to what you're talking about where you either go up or down to avoid I went through an extended period of what would be called psychosis was diagnosed as bipolar after the experience and subsequently got undiagnosed I don't know if I'm undiagnosed but I'm not taking any medications for it I'm okay things are going well for a long time now so I can tell you this I think there's a third element to this experience and I think this is we can see this in saints and mystics and people like Jung who can come out of it and it's not the third just two options it's this third thing that is this genuine transcendent your wires are successfully able to interface and integrate in with transcendent wisdom and you can actually coherently speak and transmit and observe in what we call consensus reality I think this is where things get weird in terms of my cosmology of reality is that I believe what we form as the basis of our reality this consciousness that we all agree on this is this is what life is like this is what I think that's transforming pretty radically yeah you could say well this is some long cycle where this is what happens or enough people started doing psychedelics where we're changing the consciousness of the planet or who knows astrologically this is the time for this to happen but it seems like it's happening and I think if you touch that if you touch that from long enough it kind of can fuck with you if you don't know what you're experiencing and this is exactly when those two states you're speaking about happen you go up or you go down and I think it's I think maybe there's something to do with the ego if you can truthfully because from my case when I started tying it up with my ego my experiences my synchronicities my downloads that's when I would say that I moved more into the manic state exactly agree yeah so it seems like if you're able to touch these states with some sense of egolessness there really is for this is the diving down into the ocean and finding the pearl that's within the self and bringing it back that's the key and I think you know it's a very difficult situation especially when you watch a loved one go through these experiences but if there's a framework of support that's there and people can actually come out of this I mean it truly I consider one of the greatest gifts of my life having been able to have this extended experience and then integrate it afterwards into my life and just kind of how I view the world so I mean I think that's maybe the hidden element of when these things happening and it kind of somewhat answers the question of what are the real synchronicities versus the not ones I think they're all real I think that layer of reality exists continuously it's it's it's constantly overlaid with what we process through our senses just logically and Newtonian so when you drift into it and you experience it I think all of those synchronicities are valid it's what you do with it afterwards the the certain alchemical think tool you're trying to use are you taking that lead in turning it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's a very interesting point you just made is that and I do agree with you that from a phenomenological standpoint every synchronicity is real but you make it adaptive based off of how you implement it into the world and what I was seen in my friend yesterday was a complete inability to adapt any of them to reality yes and then I think that that is the you know the foundation of being called psychotic yes yes he said something that was truly interesting that what you were just saying reminded me of and like one of the delusions and I still don't think that's the right word one of the symbolic manifestations that he experienced subjectively that he thought was an empirical fact of reality and it might be but still I'm gonna suspend that for a moment is that he thought that he that this is all a simulation and that the AIs were talking directly to him and we're telling him that he had to build a thing and when he said that like I explained to him like I had a psychotic episode when I was 19 and I just smoked a bunch of weed but I truly had the experience that it felt like I was inside of a simulation that this entire life was a computer simulation yeah and that I was quote-unquote waking up and I could hear what I felt like were the programmers of the simulation they were behind my head and slightly above me and I could hear them whispering oh no he's waking up he can't wake up don't let him wake up and like I I was so scientific that even though that experience felt so viscerally real it had to know the wedding quality to it that afterwards even though it jarred me for like six months I never allowed myself to buy into it enough but I was but the experience was enough to radically transform how I acted in the world like before I had that experience I was failing all my college classes it was my first year of college and I my GPA was a 0.7 but after that moment like it's so radically like changed my orientation to the world that I started to like study and to work and I do think that like I'm super grateful that it seems like I only got a single drop of that part of the psyche and it was enough to radically transform my personality and my friend yesterday he got a gallon yes you know and it was just too much and so I do agree with you that this realm of the psyche if if exposed to in the right dosage yes and completely fucking transforming and so that is the third way absolutely yes yes and I think I mean one of my downloads back in this experience where I was I would describe it as pre-manic and somewhat just lucidly getting information that I didn't know how it was coming is that I felt in the next coming decades these experiences would be reported more and happened with greater frequency and I think that's kind of what we're seeing and we could say there's a level of causality related to psychedelics and consciousness explanations I don't you know I'm I don't know I'm not claiming to know why it would be the case but I think there there is gold in these experiences and that's the key is I think this is what we were talking about last time a little bit too is that the current and you mentioned it yourself the current wins that we look through psychotic episodes is shaped very heavily by our medical institutions that have evolved from many other things and there's a lot of influences here that I think like for instance I read an article a study was just published yesterday saying that people who smoke daily marijuana cannabis or high potency 10% THC or more are like four or five times is likely to have psychotic episodes so the first thing I do with any study like this which is just kind of blanket sounds funny to me I just look and see who did it and it looks like a legitimate study nine hundred seven or so people were studied and it seemed like there was a greater frequency of psychosis but to me the question isn't we're just taking the term psychotic episodes or psychosis as some blanket term right how do you quantify that right or even qualify really I mean you can see someone in a state but what does that word mean what are the the the symbols attached to it in context attached to it and I personally think that rather than labeling these and listen if someone is about to harm themselves harm other people physically emotionally mentally like psychologically these are these are things that need to be addressed I'm not suggesting taking a willy-nilly approach and softening the language we use from that aspect but observing these experiences and looking at them a little bit more I don't even want to say compassionately but just through a different through a different lens I think really could do a lot for people to get through these experiences and also come out with this greatest kind of transformative juice and you know I know you're you're in a little bit of a different place right now than I am when I talk about this stuff because you just saw a close friend go through this and it is just for people who don't know and I've been you know I'm grateful that people come to me a lot when this stuff happens because they know my experience is very disturbing to go through to watch someone go through it they are not it's like the person you knew has transformed into this person who can't communicate effectively it's very scary and I know that from both sides so I recognize that what I'm talking about the transformative power of psychotic breakdowns you might be like oh shit I don't know man I'm just so I want him to get better and I think he will but what I'm saying basically yeah I think you get it man because like it's it's just one of these things that I also think dude that this happens to virtually everyone just to be clear I don't think that's why I hesitate to just buy into this term psychosis because if it happened to young it's gonna wrap you know what I mean like for sure because for four years yeah yeah and like yeah yeah continue yeah I had a different friend who I've known for four years who had a psychotic episode and but he's got so many tools and he called me while it was happening he didn't ingest anything he he was at work he was squatting trying to work on something on the floor and he stood up and he had a head rush and his consciousness shifted to a degree where he felt like he was on LSD and happened it went on for like eight hours and he basically went straight home he called me when he got home he was explaining what was happening to him he was seeing faces he was hearing voices the voices were being really like mean and we're saying that he had to die that he had to go to the jungle in Peru and do ayahuasca and kill himself and like but he he has a lot of tools and he sat with it and he worked with it and he journaled and fast forward a week later he is super grateful for the experience he's integrated the experience he his main takeaway from the experience is that he had to break up with the girl that he was dating because he knew since the beginning that he was dating her out of comfort and complacency for himself and that he wasn't actually doing what was right for her and that this was the thing in his life that he had been ignoring for months and this really intense psychological experience happened that showed him a lot of truths outside the mundane takeaway of you need to end the relationship with a girl that you're seeing in a compassionate way right but his way of showing up and being transformed by the experience was to do that and also his ability now to not judge people has gone down significantly his ability to cry when he sees a good movie or hears a good song goes up and so there's a juxtaposition between my friend from yesterday and my really close friend from about three or four weeks ago that one tried to implement it in a pragmatic way as soon as the first episode happened and my other friend had been ignoring implementing it for like probably over a year and then that's why I believe it it exploded in the way that it did is like I truly think that like this experience has scared a lot of the people that I work with because it was a co-worker that happened to him right and and I think it scares people because people think like the way it happens is you're just completely okay one moment and then everything breaks yeah and truly what I have found especially from reading you and from experiencing a lot of this stuff close-up is it's a slow graduate process you have to say the same no you know dozens and dozens of times for it to break in this way and by it I mean the ego structure and so I just wanted to share that story to say that I actually completely agree that yeah these these psychic floods are invitations to transform and while it can be very chaotic in the midst of the flood I'm completely on board that it is a it's a cult to adventure well yeah and I think also what you're getting to here is a theme that I think is applicable to everything I don't think it I actually know this I'm confident in saying that is this idea of doing shadow work and confronting your shadow and it struck me because I'm dealing with a calf injury and the way you were talking about kind of the cumulative slow build of psychic tension really this is what happened to me with my calf I was doing dumb thing it wasn't a sudden thing but it was a cumulative wasn't eating that well over exertion didn't stretch did a dumb exercise and it resulted in what is now a major wake-up call that you need to be a little more conscious about what you're doing with your body the same thing can be applied to your mental health and your psychological health and that's it's just out there's the macro is always in the micro there's fractals we get it but dude I I think this theme of exploring shadow sides is what effectively keep someone tethered and honest you know like the term like you're keeping them honest keeping yourself honest that is literally like if you want to pursue deep consciousness matters and this just to be clear you anyone can have a psychotic breakdown it does not have to be because you're plunging into young or anything else or something else it can just happen but if you delve into those types of things you're confronted with them more presently and more they're larger they loom larger so if you ignore them I think it has a greater impact psychically than if you like a little noticing a little noticing that's their gift and potentially you would say their curse although I wouldn't refer to it as that but the danger I guess of of propelling yourself into psychosis or a psychotic breakdown but I mean I know for me every time I know I've done something fucked up or I could loosen up here I shouldn't be doing that or I you know should be more forgiving and I ignore it it just it eventually bill sure and you can never really see it that's the thing it's not like a leg injury where it's like oh shit it can manifest all over your life and you know this from like archetypal projection and complex is it's fascinating so I'm curious for you like what what's some shadow work and I know you're I love reading your stuff man I think it's so inspiring and it's great because it's so transparent what's your shadow work that you do for yourself yeah so that that's a great question and just to touch on the whole idea of shadow work I think that the entire quote-unquote spiritual community could directly improve its ability to help people if the teachers and the influencers in this space really studied and shared the findings of evolutionary psychology because I think we come into the world with programming because we have this meet suit that has evolved on this planet in a very specific way and a lot of the drives of our meets suit that are in parent or ego or the core pieces of our shadow like all of us want power all of us want to be able to fuck whoever we want to fuck all of us want to be able to do whatever the fuck we want to do whenever the fuck we want to do it but those are poor animal drives and then on top of that from the moment we start aggregating memories we are instilling the story that our parents and culture have told us we need to put on top of our drives and like the way the brain is structured is your primary drives or at the core of your brain they're at the you know like where your brain stem starts to move into into your actual brain those drives are always on like you're always running those programs and your prefrontal cortex is when it's working properly is constantly inhibiting the drives and transforming them in ways that are culturally acceptable right Freud we call that the super ego yes but our personalities are essentially the cortex story that we're using to inhibit our drives but our drives are where our shadows come from so one of my chord one of my core shadow pieces and this is why I love dreams because dreams will give you symbols that will show you they will use symbols from your actual life to represent your shadow aspects to you and one of my core shadow aspects is Frank Underwood from House of Cards sure and basically what that represents is using my ability to articulate to get what I want even at the even if it's not good for anyone else around me right and so that's something that I constantly like my highest value really is to be in truth and in love with what I say and what I do and I'm not I don't ever go a day where I'm perfect but I know that when I say something that I know is not true that I said in a way to either make the situation easier for me or to get what I want from it I can really feel in my body up come apart one inch like I feel like I'm slightly less together and it's almost like I know like if I get too far apart I need to sit down and I need a journal and I need to look at what the fuck am I doing why am I lying why am I hedging my truth why am I not saying complete truths in my relationships or at work or with myself so a core one for me is using my speech truthfully and the way that I kind of keep a pulse on that is what is my body feel like when I'm talking and if I get too far apart I know I need to sit the fuck down I need a journal and I've cultivated this a bit I've cultivated the habit of being blisteringly honest with myself when I write and so I know that my right writing is a way that I can recalibrate and I honestly I use Instagram as a platform for me to have those blisteringly honest conversations with myself publicly because I know personally that my writing if I'm just writing for me I write more sloppily but if I if I have the expectation that other people will read it I imagine that they're my closest friends and like that me being honest will help my tribe and so I actually leverage my addiction to social media to help me do these things where I try to fucking eviscerate a part of my ego that might be too much in the shadow I mean it's brave work my friend it's not something that most people aspire to or engage with because it's scary it's vulnerable and that especially as a guy just to be clear like I this theme has been emerging from on my show the past couple of months or so which is the the woundedness of patriarchal system that it how it's hurting men that it how it's hurting the male people and the lack of being able to be vulnerable and learning some lessons about emotional intelligence and you know competencies is really a thing it's like this is the medicine we need another reason I admire you and it reminds me what you're talking about it reminds me of the the eightfold path the the doctrine of using speech compassionately right speech that's how you use right speech when you are honestly putting out into the world recognizing the impact of what you're saying which is you're kind of discerning between whether it's for you or for someone else that's really powerful and I think that's also something you mentioned like you know spiritual world can learn from evolutionary psychology and I think you know that's very true Daniel Goldman's written some excellent stuff on that I I really think that we need this layer of transparency if this is going to be real medicine for people if this is going to be a real tool or skill that people can acquire whatever it is there has to be this transparency and this is a lesson that keeps getting presented to me no matter where I try to go I have to assume there's some validity at least personally but I mean it it really is important and I don't think you know we live in a time where it's hard harder and harder to do that I think one of the aspects of social media and just kind of how we present ourselves to the world is we have this opportunity to cultivate and present what we want to and usually the things we want to present are the good things how well we're dealing how great things are how happy we are and I think that's great there's there's literally there's nothing wrong with that attention and desire that's a beautiful thing but what we don't see is all this stuff we try to ignore in our regular lives the fights that this didn't go well the injuries the annoyances the blow-ups you know all of these things and I think sharing those experiences not only engage people in a much more profound way but it truthfully is like that's what you have to do if you want genuine connection if you're appearing to someone as someone who has it all figured out and you don't which is almost none of us you know like that shit is a schism that essentially has to be rectified at one point or the other so yeah man I think that's really I could not be happier with your answer about shadow work and it's just truthfully something I encourage everyone to do I mean it's it's really fucking awesome dude I love that and I'm truly glad that you're as as honest as you are about that and reflecting that back to me and the thing that I really have to be like up front about is that I've I've taken the time to try to integrate my primary evolutionary drives towards behaviors that I believe will help you know the collective like a part of me truly believes that the way I become the most powerful thing that I can be is to be as honest as I can be yes with as many people as I can be because that allows me to get honest feedback from the intelligence of the collective to then use to shape who I am to who I could be and to build on top of that like I truly believe that my potential I think each person's highest potential is their God and I truly believe that that thing is watching each of our lives right now and that thing knows when I'm bullshitting that thing knows when I'm lying yes that thing knows when I'm playing small and I've created such a strong metaphysical story for myself that it's almost impossible for me to have a good day if I feel like I'm not acting in a way that it is in accordance with at least my current self trying to become that thing and so like it's kind of a pain in the ass like if I go on a walk yeah I see garbage outside every single day I want to walk by it and then I feel bad and I can't walk by it and I pick it up almost be grudgingly and like but I think that that's kind of the that's the cost that I think you pay for grace like I really think that grace is your relationship to yourself is so pristine that it's almost like the world kind of transforms to give you opportunities but once you feel grace you know like you are now responsible for acting in a way that keeps it and so like even though I'd really like to say like I'd really like to sleep with this girl that I know that I could right now but a part of me knows that I don't want to be with her long term and she wouldn't expect that so we're gonna hang out soon and I'm going to have to tell her that and I'm not going to get to orgasm inside of a beautiful woman I can't do that now like the story I've made for myself oh I couldn't do that and still be in grace this is so you know there's a cost I again love that you're pulling up these subtle and universal truths that I've thought about but rarely get to speak about because when are you gonna speak about these things luckily podcasts exist and you exist yeah man I know exactly what you're talking about I think because I use psychedelics at a very early age I came in contact with that and every single time I've dismissed knowing better it is costing me something and I think that's a it's a somewhat dangerous game to play because you can psych yourself out you can come up with false narratives to excuse excuse negative or positive behavior so there's there's a whole game but dropping in again I mean I think you sell yourself a little short on your intuitive faculties just because this is a very subtle thing that I think is is present and yeah it gets hard what you're basically saying and this has been my experience too is that it gets harder to do bad shit it gets it gets harder to not fix things that are fixable it gets harder to not recycle the thing you know should be recycled even if you have to wash it out and it's a pain in the ass like those little things they do kind of influence I can say that I think over time like any practice that you do it stops becoming a burden or seeming like a curse and then you can slowly shift into enjoying picking up the piece of garbage and that and when that happens what is that if not grace right it can transform something that you used to hate you know like sometimes like I like I don't know when it happened when I was a kid I never liked to shovel snow I enjoy shoveling snow now like what the fuck is wrong with me but it's because I've kind of like descended out for myself it's like a pleasurable physical activity that accomplishes something and I can see it being removed so yeah man I know what you're talking about there is a cost I think it's a good cost and I think it's a good exchange for humanity and ourselves at the end of the day because I think I know a lot of people who disregard that voice who know better and are aware of it it doesn't typically lead to happiness and fulfillment and for sure that's usually what we're searching for on a deep level so yeah man I totally you're talking about awesome and a thing that I'm that I've been playing with that's a really kind of been fucking me up and I'm not I don't have a resolution to this but like just the last couple of weeks I've started to really try to pray you know because I would sometimes but I've just been trying to lean into like running the experiment of what it would be like to pray but whenever I pray like I can feel myself I feel my ego having a story where I have to pray in almost like a careful way but then I think of like what if whatever you want to call God or source or consciousness whatever word you want to use what if it is so loving that it has no it has no expectations of how we have to be in order for it to give us love but it will take on whatever story we want to project so what if I'm projecting that I have to pick up trash to have grace like what if I'm projecting that I can't sleep with whoever I want and still have grace yes I don't have the answers to this but it's something that like you it's almost like the the source is so loving that it will hold whatever stories we want to project on it's like okay yes if you think you have to be like this to have me love you okay fine you know like I'm I'm always here and what it but I also can't shake the feeling that there are things that feel like universal morals that I can't seem to bring myself to transgress and feel like I have grace but a part of me feels like that's just my programming and that that's okay and that maybe the uniqueness of every person is everyone has their own unique programming that they have to come into accordance with for them to have grace and there's no universal path to it yes I mean I dude I I I love again what you're speaking about maybe it's Dallas D maybe it's just you Eric probably just you but I I think these that love you're talking about I think that is accurate I think that's what a lot of people have built into the symbolic mythology of Jesus Christ in Christ consciousness I think we find this in many other traditions bhakti yoga many forms of Buddhism there's a lot of stuff there and I think and my I don't think in my experience that is accurate now what that means and what the interplay of that is and what the ramifications of that are in your life and your ability to recognize morally right and wrong is the story of a life the truth is is that we're not always going to be able to act from our higher selves things aren't always going to go well so it's often those opposite times when we break down that we can actually see that love shine through and realize that yeah you know what maybe there is maybe when you talk to this girl maybe she's just is into the idea of having sex without a relationship who knows I there are I mean this is something that I think we find out more and more as as we realize female empowerment is like just because we think they're the fairer sex and never want you know casual sex not true not fucking true lately is not true that's not what I want so I reverse projected out into the world and say oh well if this is something I want that's not something they want but you don't know reality is this weird cauldron of people experiences ideas emotions and it's hard to pin down sometimes what is you know the right approach in this but I do think if the internal mechanism that allows you to recognize things isn't brow beating you isn't making you feel shitty that you have to do something then it's a little more valid if it feels like you know I'm not doing this because of some rigid moral code and we're not talking about murder and rape here obviously but like things are reality is quite malleable which is just to tie this again to the psychosis stuff that's why I have a hard time labeling things is psychosis and breaks from reality because my understanding of reality is this is not very solid at all it's like it's quite unsolid therefore that to determine something is outside of the norm is just kind of a risky game to play but I do think that loving presence you're referring to from my experience seems to be the fundamental basis of our reality birth where we live in three dimensions and that's a very comforting thing and just to go back to the prayer stuff too man like prayer is really interesting because I've noticed the same things when I pray is like you're doing your prayer act you're putting on your prayer persona you're getting into yeah but if you do it enough you will get that genuine like prayer like oh my god I'm doing it like this is right don't lose it but it this is really like I just prayed right there that was really me connecting with some divine source and asking or receiving whatever it is and yeah man I liken it to like you know when you hear a song you you for the first time and you love it and it just hits you so deeply and then you hear it maybe like ten times you're super into it and then you go back later and you try to recapture the feeling it's like you're playing the person who wants to like the song you know once you can drop back into it you can have that original appreciation and some level so yeah dude I mean you've just dropped so many bombs of wisdom it's funny because I know we had a conversation for people don't know that we're listening where the whole it was amazing conversation I think I microdosed that day too so we were just like flying and it was awesome but then it didn't record we tried to set this up for like a month but man I'm happy we got this one and I can assure you it is recording and recorded dude you're you're just a wonderful person and I really admire your honesty and transparency and I say that in all truth man it's great I I truly appreciate it brother and again I said this on the last call and there's one or later again I have seen such a tremendous growth in you since the first time we podcast where there's this there's this lightness and this self-confidence and this kind of compassion for yourself and for people that you don't agree with that like I love podcasting and I can see that there's been a lot of transformation that's happening you and it's been beautiful to witness yeah man I appreciate that and I think there's a lot of truth to it too and podcasting can you talk about your new podcast please absolutely yeah so I podcasted for about a year before I got the job on it and it was a metal programming podcast yeah whenever I would say that name nobody knew what the fuck I was talking about I loved being on it by the way it was like truly one of my most favorite experience is really good I would love to have you back on we can debate about Jordan yeah next time we'll get to it yes yes yes for sure but a couple of people helped me understand like even though I like that name I'm not helping people by making it as obscure as it was so we changed it to the myths that make us and it's still kind of the main it's still the same aim which is to help people truly I try to help the guests articulate their myth in a way where anyone listening could reproduce it in their own life and I just find that like I want to podcast the rest of my life I love the depth that you can get with someone when you have the container of a podcast yeah like so many people in my life that I've been friends with for like six years I do one podcast with them and we go deeper and talk about things that we never shared in five years of a friendship and we got to those depths in an hour and it's just it's it's dramatically increased my ability to articulate it's increased my ability to talk to anyone I also love that feeling of you have a new idea in the midst of a conversation like and so I actually do a tremendous amount of learning in podcasting yes of course I come to new ideas while I podcast and it's just I love it and it's something that I want to do the rest of my life yeah the myths that make us dude I think about my part network down the line I I really just appreciate speaking with you let's do these questions that wrap up the show and yeah all right what's your favorite color my favorite color my egos favorite color is green the color that I see the most when I meditate is like this like mix between dark red and purple mmm very interesting what's your favorite number 13 yeah I think I knew that cuz that's my favorite - what's your favorite animal owl yeah I feel like I've seen a couple of spirit animals on when I've done certain psychedelics or holotropic breathing but the animal that I most resonate with is owl I love it last question practical tip that has helped you in your life that you could share with people listening whenever you can speak in as much truth with love as you're capable of doing period period exactly I was gonna say what else what else can be said Eric truthfully an honor and pleasure to speak to you I I really I just keep it up man you're doing great I it's just wonder and privilege to see you evolve and kind of change people's minds as well as your own thank you so much brother all right but we'll speak soon [Music]

[Music] thank you for listening to that episode Eric special guy EricGodsie.com go check them out doing lots of cool stuff writing speaking podcasting just a cool dude go check them out thank you for everyone who listens to the show past music all the stuff I'm gonna get this to say jam this one out there I don't know what the hell that means I'm gonna wrap this one up pretty quickly cuz I gotta get back to dad duties big thanks to Alexis is mom Victoria for coming over to allow me to record this big thanks everyone who listens go write and review and iTunes why don't you for sicmatic all these other things I asked you to know I know life is hard I know life is busy I know it God I know it one of those things pretty good for me if you did all right that's it I'll see you next week poly market is proud to be the world's top choice to trade football you mean soccer right soccer poly market is proud to be the world's top choice to trade soccer know the game better than the market you can earn cash trading on tournament and game outcomes golds assists saves corners and much much more download the poly market app and use code free 50 to unlock $50 free for your first trade trading not available in all jurisdictions check local regulations before trading restrictions and eligibility apply