Third Eye Drop In with Michael Phillip

[Music] This is synchronicity, this is synchronicity.. [Music] Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is Michael Phillip. The third eye drops, the podcast, you know it, you love it, it's the coolest. Michael has this intellectual, it's like a razor sharp intellectual edge that he cuts through deep and meaningful and profound questions that we all ask ourselves about existentialism, what is reality, what is going on. Like just like the basically when I get to the point in the podcast where I ask the guest like, what do you think is going on. That's what Michael's focus is all of the time. If anyone deserves success doing what they're doing with the podcast, it's Michael. I've seen, you know, I have the benefit of working with a lot of podcasters and knowing them, not working with really, but knowing and being friends with a lot of them because of my pod network.

And I know who really is about their shit and Michael is at the fucking top. So he's just, you know what I mean if you listen to his show, just always grind in for the best possible guests and angles and topics and it's been awesome to see him succeed over the years. Just a cool fucking dude. So yeah, I don't got to say more about Third Eye Drops. I'm sure you already listened to it. If not, go check it out. Thirdeyedrops.com. Man, this episode, we talk about a lot of stuff. Of course, the Neville Goddard imagination stuff is still at the forefront of my mind. Something I've been doing recently is throughout the day, I've been reminding myself that waking life is actually the dream and the imaginal acts that we create, whether consciously or unconsciously, most often unconsciously, actually is the real reality. And that's kind of an interesting thing to do. If you try it throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout a month, what it can do to your world and kind of changes your perceptions of what is going on.

So I think this was recorded a couple of weeks ago before I recorded with Mitch and Duncan and man, I'm just saying this stuff is pretty cool. Going to do some solo episodes on imagination coming out, but it was really fun to share this with Michael. And also, I shared it with Corey on his podcast. I'm sure that's coming out soon. We're talking about the imagination stuff. This is pretty fucking cool. So if anyone is going to parse this with intellectual rigor and weigh it against, you know, the empiricism it deserves, it's Michael. And so you'll enjoy this episode. We also talk about something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, which is meditation, and what is meditation? What does it mean? How do you do it? Why do you do it? What's it for?

And if you've listened to this show, I've shared interviewed a lot of meditation people. I've worked with a lot of meditation people professionally and have a love-hate relationship to a lot of aspects of what's pitched as mindfulness in the West. And I think what's really helped me get into kind of embracing a meditative practice is the idea that you don't necessarily need to sit there and clear your mind and just watch what's going on, although that certainly can be useful. But you can also have a directionally focused, intentional kind of one-pointed meditation, where if your mind wanders from something that you are desiring or wanting to create or see aspirationally, you can just kind of snap back to that thing you want and you can catch your mind drifting.

That's meditation. That's one-pointed meditation. You'll teach that in almost any meditative discipline. So that has really changed it for me in a big way. And in this episode, Michael reveals that he's really started a meditation practice. So I think that's great because I do know and I've experienced it when I've meditated classically in different forms, especially the Buddhist ways, I've noticed that there's real benefits in terms of focus, acuity, noticing what's going on. It never really caught and hooked me enough. But when it combined with kind of this imaginal, you know, bringing into reality, selecting what you want, as Mitch puts it, you know, it's pretty powerful.

So those are the two things I remember from the podcast recorded a couple of weeks ago. Again, go check them out. Third Eye Drops, one of the best podcasts out there. That's it. Great and review the podcast. That'd be pretty cool. New website is up. If you've been trying to email me at know@syncpodcast.com in the past week and a half, it probably hasn't worked because my email was down. The operative word there was down. It's up now. Shoot me an email. Also, speaking of imagination, if you want to get in touch, you want me to imagine something for you. You just write me, fill out the form on the websites right there at the front. I will do it. We will see if it happens. It's that simple. It's pretty easy.

That's it. That's it. We're done with the intro. It's a beautiful day. Go out there. Enjoy it. Love it. Live it. Without further ado, here is Michael Phillip. It's good, man. What is up, my man? I'm just, you know, I, so I have Mitch Horowitz on next week. I'm going to his apartment in New York. Sweet. And I got tuned in to Neville Goddard. Yeah, he, I know he's a huge fan of him. I listened to Miracle Club. And we did a pod as well. Yeah, I was just listening to that, right? Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I really enjoyed talking to him. And he, he really recommended him and Napoleon Hill to me a lot. But I honestly haven't dove into them as much as I would like to.

So I, I, for the past two days, have uploaded like 32 hours of Neville Goddard talks to mine pod network. Oh, shit. Yo, dude. This shit is fucking bugged out. Like it is the first thing I have found after my extended period of synchronicity that explains fits within a framework doesn't, you don't have to disregard one thing. It's fucking next level. And what I think I love most about it is it's practical. It's like you can vet this shit. There's no like, it's, it's quite honestly like easier than meditation. Like meditation is hard for me. Like my mind is so fucking active. Even when I start a practice, it's like, I very quickly fall off the wagon because of how active my thoughts are and it's not comfortable.

Dude, all I can say is I have one talk, I think you should listen to from Goddard. Yo, this shit is in two days. My reality has been completely upended. It's amazing. Strong claim. Strong claim. What's the sort of, yeah, what's the sort of nutshell of his, of his like ontological framework for his, his spiel. Yeah, right. Good. Great question. Just get to them. Be cut to the chase. What, why this is so good. So his basic claim through his own direct experience is our imagination, our true imagination is God. That's what we refer to as God. He says every literal translation and interpretation of the Bible and everything is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of people can into it.

But he's like, they are in fact, every character and situation, a psychological state that one can move through. And where it kind of merges with our reality, dude, he was talking about some shit that I experienced back then that I still had not been able to like put into place like feeling like I was walking through dimensions and like switching realities moment to moment. Like I haven't found anyone who encapsulated and he starts talking. He's like, yeah, I was talking to someone who died. They're not dead, but they died. He basically says that that creative power in our minds is what creates reality.

First, that is the only reality. That is God. That is what everyone is referring to. And then the way, like I said, he practically weaves it into our lives. He's like, do this. He's like, when you get into, he starts talking about hypnagogic states. He's like basically as your groggy and going into sleep. Envision yourself. The first step is what you know from Mitch is you have to know what you want. That would really has blown my life apart. Is I just realized that 35 years old, about to have my second kid, I have never asked myself that question deeply. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like I literally never just like I'm smart enough. I'm talented enough to like weave together a life of meaning and happiness, but I've never asked that. But essentially, Goddard says, you live from that moment. You emotionally charge it.

You don't view it as like a screen, a movie, you're watching. You are in that moment and your creative imagination, which he calls God Jesus Christ is what he ends up calling it a lot. Basically actualizes that situation. I've been doing it for two days. Today I had an hour long conversation with someone who hit me up and was like, yo, I've been having unceasing synchronicities. I don't know what's going on. He begins to describe me a DMT experience where he develops this model of fucking this thing. He's in it. He's like in the weed business. He's developing this thing. Everyone thinks he's nuts. He's in China trying to make this work. All this shit is falling apart. It's all falling apart. He looked like a loon. He's out there in China inventing this made up thing.

He invested in it because Philip Morris had put 900 million dollars into this thing, right? Okay. So he's like, all right, I'm gonna do it all. They put 900 million into it, but they abandoned it. It's like a special thing. I don't want to give it away because he's actually doing this thing. Anyway, he's giving up. He's literally at the point where he's giving up. He goes into his room in China and is like depressed, lays down inadvertently. He's telling me this today. On a bed of 900 million dollars. Yeah, yeah, no, he's laying in his bed, goes into what he didn't know was a hypnagogic state, jumps up out of bed, goes to get at this Italian restaurant, runs into this guy he had seen in the gym earlier. It was a white dude, which is unusual in China.

Ask him what he's doing. He's like, yeah, I'm an engineer. I'm a consultant. He's like, who do you work for? And he's like, Philip Morris. And he's like, oh, he's like, that's really weird. Tell me you know something about this. He pulls out this binder of all these CAD designs and everything. He's like, I invented that. He's like, that's my thing. I'm literally had this conversation today. He's like, I invented that. So he then begins to tell him what was wrong with his thing, something with heat. He goes literally from there. All of these things started falling into place. I've gotten weird kind of incidents. Anyway, my whole point with Goddard is, I think you're going to enjoy it because I know you're discerning about what you choose to believe and what passes intellectual muster. And that's like important.

I think I don't think that should be discounted. And you can fucking try this shit every night. It's so fucking weird. It is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what you said too about knowing what you want, that takes some fucking courage, man, because it really, it's essentially, I think the reason people have such a hard time with that is because if you're really going to sit down and take a piece of paper out and say, what do I want? You're essentially committing, you're making like a covenant with yourself. Exactly. You know, you're, you're committing to a deeper part of yourself that you are going to be a being that is dedicated to whatever this thing is.

And I had a moment like, maybe a few months ago, where I decided that I really wanted to pursue something. And I had been sort of preaching a lot of stuff about goal setting toward the beginning of the year, like this big kick kick about it with Eric Godsey. And I was also reading, I had finished reading Miracle Club and all this stuff. And I was thinking, you know, I have a lot of goals, but. And ideas about what I want to accomplish at some point, but like, let's, let's like get it in very specific steps. And once you start doing that and you start saying, or even using language like I will do this, I will do that.

It's this, it really is this crazy feeling like you're forming a covenant with yourself. And the reason why that's scary is because it becomes much more tangible and much more real. And not only is the potential of what you could do scary. It's also scary because you're choosing to say no to a lot of other things. You know, you're, you're hierarchically like putting these goals on a piece of paper, which is, you know, by proxy, shunning these other things or placing them in on a lower part of that hierarchy. And when you do that, it's like, oh shit, like this, this just got hot. And I'm like, I'm like holding this hot potato in my mind now. And if I don't do these things that I said I was going to do, I'm lying to myself I'm lying to all the other people I told.

And that that's the kind of pressure that I personally need to make things happen. And that's not even talking about any of the possible like mind metaphysics, you know, do your thoughts influence reality, you know, law of attraction type shit. I'm not a huge fan of that way of thinking because I think too many people use it as a as a crutch for inaction. But, I mean, I know I know Mitch has more nuanced ideas about it and I think there is some interesting stuff about, because I mean, once you seriously start considering things like synchronicities and you know, unexplainable subjective experiences and states of mind that don't have any not not logical but don't have any empirical condition point. Where's like, how are these fucking things happening? You have to wonder if your mind is playing some kind of role in, in affecting reality but I choose to not dwell on it for that reason because I think it's just, we should.

You know, I was talking to Jamie wheel that one of the guys who wrote that stealing fire book a while back, and it's just like, usually it's the simplest possible thing that you need to do, you know, like peel away like what is he was calling it your minimum viable philosophy is like, what is your minimum viable philosophy? Like forget about all these high flute and ideas, all these different realms, all these different things that you may or may not have experiences. How do you just make the world a little bit better, how do you just make yourself a little bit happier right now and that's what I choose to focus on most of the time, but that said, I do think some.

It seems like sometimes reality starts to conspire in your favor, the more you make these things known and maybe that's just something like an effect of telling people that you have this idea it's an effect of having a podcast and putting ideas out there. It's an effect of talking to the right people, but I don't know, I don't know. Well, I mean, here's, here's what I know, I guess at this point, which I'm comfortable staking my metaphysical viewpoint, at least when you're talking about boiling it down. And this is what hooked me with Goddard as much as anything else was it's the golden rule is the shit that keeps you straight.

It is un, it is foolproof, truthfully, if you follow the golden rule, if you internally are about to do something or say something to someone else, and you would not appreciate it if they said it to them. If you follow that, you're pretty much good, that could be basic, as I see it, my metaphysical point launches from there. You're spooking the fuck out of me right now, you know why. Do you know why? No. So in this exact part of this conversation I had with Jamie Wheel, he talked about Rabbi Hillel, who apparently said, do one to others, you know, before Jesus said it. Yeah. And he, there's a famous story of the Pharisees, you know, basically saying, Oh, if you're such a holy man, stand in one foot and recite the whole.

I just was listening to this. Just now I never heard this literally 15 minutes ago. I love this. Great, great. And yeah, so he, so for people that don't know the story, he, yeah, Rabbi Hillel stands in one foot and says, do one to others as other, you'd have others do to you, the rest is mere commentary. And that was his, you know, sort of like flippant fuck you, but also very true, very deep, deeply resonating, you know, number one way to operate in life. And it would not be, I think it's, we like to analyze intellectual lives creatively play with the infinitude of what anything could be in reality or unreality or beyond.

But going back to the simplicity thing, I mean, that's it. We know when we're about to do something, whether it would bother us. So it becomes a great tool for us to actually rely upon, because like we can at least use our own self reflecting consciousness to be like, is this a good thing to do or not. Dude, I'm telling you, my conception of reality has been altered by this dude, which I can say maybe has happened once or twice previous in my life. And one of the things that I think is important that I would love to talk to you about is this idea of direct experience and knowing when that can crystallize into a sense of faith.

Right, when this is now like, for me, I jumped off this ship of not knowing whether there was something I couldn't perceive with my five senses when I was in an extended psychedelic state for three months. Like that's it, I jumped off doubting whether there's some other reference here because I went through it and I also was able to come out of it and still be like a normal functioning person and not just like a raving lunatic in the street. So that's when I jumped off, but I feel like a lot of people because exactly what we were saying, I felt the same way about positive thinking someone sent me the Napoleon Hill thing.

You're like, this is just nonsense. I loved Mitch because he kind of put a different intellectual rigor to it. And I think, again, we talked, we've spoken about it probably every time we've gone on a metaphysical kind of like speculative, you know, chase is just how do you keep yourself honest in this process. It's through testing it yourself. That's your empiricism. That's the only empiricism. Truthfully, I trust that almost more than anything else as long as you're kind of aware of what you're doing. I mean, I know you hit me up like, was it a month or two ago, you had an interesting mushroom experience that definitely seem to alter your perspective.

What happened? It was a really strong message. Well, I would say that it was, you know how people get the kind of nature message that from, you hear it a lot with ayahuasca, you hear it with mushrooms sometimes as well. I had that, but I had almost a little bit more of like a, like a cosmic tinge to it, where it was the first. So the first domino that fell over in the experience was just this feeling of existential loneliness. And the other thing I kept thinking throughout this trip as well is just how it was absolutely following every bullet point of the hero's journey to a tee. You know, from the, from the being afraid to ingesting, like the, you know, resisting the call to, you know, there's that famous young Ian model of the soul where it's a circle.

And then there's a line that goes across the circle. You know, maybe like 25% of the circle is above the line and 75% is below. And the 75 is, of course, like the subconscious and the things you're not aware of. And in, in Joseph Campbell's model of the monometh hero's journey, he uses that same circle with the line, but except underneath the line. And, you know, it is the subconscious and the hero's journey as well, but it's also, that's the starting point of the adventure. You know, you go below that line, right, you don't know what's down there. You're in the dark. You're exploring. There's threshold guardians.

There's enemies. There's guides. There's all these things. So I, you know, I'm thinking about all the stuff. The perfect state. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. And right away, man, I get below that line of the, of the thing starting and it's just like, oh, shit. It's like just revisiting human vulnerability and just the cold, harsh truth of, hey, if you were out there to fend for yourself. Like in the truth of your physical circumstances, you'd be cold and shivering and freaking out. Good. Good luck. You know, good luck. That's, that's this nature. That's this nature that you've been, you know, worshipping so much.

But then, you know, you start to realize that that's not all there is that there's this fellowship. And then, you know, what is this fellowship? These relationships that we have all, all of the technology and comforts and safe. Not about. And it made me realize that that too. Part of nature and that nature's not just these harsh, these harsh elements are there essentially as a sort of. Evolutionary engine to get us to the point that we're at right now. And the thing that was, I was really faced with is like, what is the point of where we're at right now? And it's, and it just kept being this message of.

You're meant to be a steward, not just me, but everyone's meant to be a steward of everything that's come before so that this process can continue. And then I just kept having this, this, these crazy thoughts of like. Cosmic life, essentially, the fact that Earth itself is like this lonely, you know, cosmic flower blowing in the wind of infinity, like there's nothing around it. You know, you go out into outer space, you look at Earth, that's the pale blue dot. It's, it's the light coming off of it. And everything else around it. Is. Plus. And I mean, if you, you know, you look at a plant in the street coming through, you know, a crack or something, it's reaching out.

It's reaching toward the sun. And that's what light, you know, life on Earth is doing this process. And it wants to reach out. It's like it. And we are the only ones that have the ability to do that. We're the only ones that have the ability to spread that warmth, spread that love, spread that fellowship. And I just kept thinking like this is the point, the point is to life wants to live. Every single bug, single-celled organism, whatever is wriggling around, trying, trying, trying. And it's the same, you know, you can see the husks, the fossils of that on Mars. The same thing, trying, trying, trying and failing.

It's like, you know what? We could actually be the ones. We could be the ones to take that trying from failure to success. And that's fucking crazy. And that's the first time in my life, I think, going into outer space is taking on this weird sacred air to it. You know, this, this, this idea that this is a. This isn't just for fun. This isn't just for like, you know, flexing your technological nuts or, or whatever, like there's something to this. This is part of a ever unfolding cosmic process. If we choose to look at it that way, it's like, it's like a, we could start to look at it as, I mean, no one except for very few people are going to think of it this way.

But it's almost like a, a cosmic temple building, you know, it's like a. It's, it's like in the same way that I mean, I'm, I'm, I've been on a huge manly p-hall kick. Dude, that's the other thing I've been uploading to. Yeah. Yeah. I've been on a huge kick of his for the past few months. So, you know, there's, especially. Of people of a certain mystical persuasion, they really believe that civilization is based off of. A certain type of initiatory knowledge that, you know, you can. It's supposedly stemmed from some law civilization and then it made it to Egypt and then it just kept spreading, spreading, spreading, spreading.

And, you know, there are hints of this all throughout American culture with, you know, the, our architecture with our, you know, if you go. I don't know. With very few exceptions, go into your state capital building and just look at the esoteric, you know, without that. Egyptian Greek. Yeah, the hermetic. Yeah. It's all. Yeah. So, I think we've lost the idea of that vein of transcendent hermetic knowledge spreading, but it still is. It's just looking different these days. And I think, I think that that is one of the next logical steps in this process. We're totally taking a left turn from what you were talking about.

No, no, no, no, this is amazing. That's sort of the conclusion of, of what, of what this trip was, seemed to be communicating or what seemed to keep coming up for me psychologically was that. You're a little tiny pixel. You know, like nothing special about me personally. It's just you are a little tiny pixel of potential progress. And if you don't, if you don't light up that pixel, you essentially failed. You know, you essentially like did not do what little you could do to collectively lift everything up. And that's, that's a kind of scary thing to think about is like, I don't know, you know, I don't know for sure what the point is.

I don't know for sure what my potential is, but like it was like what you said before about when you know if you've done the right thing. It was that same kind of intuitive knowing it was like, I know that I'm supposed to somehow incrementally push this process 1 millimeter in this direction and with my life. I don't really know how I'm supposed to do it if it's indirect direct, whatever, but that I left feeling more sure about that than pretty much anything. I mean, amazing, and I argue that you have been an are in the process of doing that. I mean, just, I'm sure you know this just from our personal growth.

I don't know what's a growth, but just expanding our personal awareness with podcasting. You get the emails that I get, you get the communications that I get. I know this, even though we haven't spoken about it where you're fundamentally helping someone in a place where they don't talk about this type of stuff where they've had these experiences, but have never been able to. Put it into words. I mean, that is talk about spreading like hermetic knowledge, like, even if we're still trying to figure out and piece it all together for ourselves. We're doing it. And this kind of goes into the weird, a very horror with thing too, which is these times time collapses, which is this idea that time isn't linear.

I've been saying this for almost 20 years. It's my true conception of time is that it isn't linear. I don't mean that to be a little shit-tard saying that I can't recognize we age and that we die, but I have experienced things where it defies what we're supposed to know about time. And I think other people have these experiences. And I think a regular way to do that is take psychedelics. I mean, that's a very common feature is this time your whole relation to it is fundamentally altered from the onset. So it begs the question, have you already figured all of this out? Are you reflecting it back to yourself in some way?

I'm not saying you know it all consciously now, but you're going to put it to it, right? 75%, at least in the Jungian thing is below the surface, right? Let's be clear. We like to pretend we're running the show. We're so not. What's interesting about the Goddard stuff again, though, is it seems to be a certain bridge that we can, if not mechanically understand perfectly, it seems to be a way to connect psyche and matter in a way that builds an element of faith that then serves as kind of like a stabilizing point to being like, you know what? I figured out who I am and what my role is. I've gone into the future, embodied that, felt that now.

And this is where I really wanted to get into it with you because I see these ideas of the struggle, right? The struggle is what warps and shapes this ultimate kind of like perfect diamond that we have to go through. And this is something that I've believed my entire life. It's just something that feels known to me. What this then does, this idea of using your imagination to create reality, don't look at it like wishful thinking, look at it like, well, can those things work in tandem? Can I envision a future where this is happening, where I've stepped into my actualized fulfilled self and I'm doing exactly what I know I'm supposed to be doing?

We meet people like this, right? We know people where like you can just tell like, you know, they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. They're doing things falling into place for them. It's just you can tell, right? I am beginning to believe that the only thing that holds people back from achieving everyone achieving that state and thereby making the world a better place. Let's be clear. If everyone was able to just imagine a better reality into reality, the world would likely be a better place is fear, right? And I know that's trite and it's cliche and it's a new age, aphorism and it's a platitude, but I've noticed it in myself.

I think my lack of clarity in terms of understanding or knowing what I want is really just a crazy fear block, right? I mean, I'm curious, like, so where does that fit in? This ability, this idea that we could potentially change external reality or move into a reality that we imagine by doing nothing else but that. Let's be clear. Like, you could do something else, but that's the mechanism that's actually doing that. How does that fit in with your kind of cosmology of you have to have these experiences that kind of warp you into, you know, your eventual state of what you want to be? Yeah, I think the, you know, the question about time in general, time being, you know, it's, I think the big revelation about time that I've had personally is that it's included in Einstein's theory of relativity.

So it's not that time is linear. It's understood that time is not linear, but it's like our experience of time is this relative linear thing. But because of that, it creates this paradox where it's like, well, if time is this complete entity, I'm just experiencing something that already exists. Like, what the fuck does that mean? Potential is that an illusion, or is it just all like a finished, you know, this finished thing that I that feels as if it's novel as it's occurring. And you know, sometimes when I look back on just feelings I've had about things that I've wanted to do. And then, you know, not that I'm in any sort of incredibly enviable position with what I've done, but it just, it feels like part of me knew in a weird way.

It feels like part of me understood that you're going to have this podcast you're going to have significant portions of your life revolve around these concepts and meeting people. You're going to predicate relationships upon these these things and just just feeling this like angsty thirst for that thing that I didn't know what it was yet, but I know looking back now it was like that's what what I wanted is what I am slowly getting now, do I feel like I know absolutely not I'm still struggling I'm still trying to figure out like, you know, it's like what you said really it's figuring out how to ask the right question or decree the right goal.

And it's like you get better and better at sharpening that down to a point as you go through the process and that reminds me of this Campbell quote, where he says like life evokes your character and you find out more about it as you go along or something like that. I heard him say that and I was like what what is what does that mean it means what I was saying before where you don't really know like the interplay between your subjective experience and the larger world larger reality. You don't really know what either one of them are you just kind of know how they seem to you. And then as you go there is this strange.

Nostalgic hindsight is 2020 type like cheesy overtone where you feel like everything had to be that way so I could get here. And I don't know if that's true or not but it definitely has like the the year by year by year it feels more like that it feels more like all I had to do this so I could do that so I could do this. And then you look at all these things that are unfinished and sloppy and it's just like well was that really the way or am I just looking back at it with sort of rose colored glasses. It's so hard you know these are the questions we're always going to be grappling with but I think that's what it is it's this constant interplay between not being sure what control you have and don't have what you know of course these huge cosmological questions we're never going to answer but I think you know to an extent it's like conversations like this and questioning what they are is sort of like kicking the tires in the matrix.

What's this thing so you got time but it's linear but it's not complete but it's like okay. And then you know you try to you just have to walk away from it because it's like a mountain you know it's just like it's like kicking the tires in the mountain it's like alright I can't I can't fuck with that mountain. It's like I feel like and we'll check back in with me in six months or a year I feel like that is how I felt even having a profound what I would call transcendent mystical experience. I would feel like I felt like that until quite recently when I started asking those questions just to be more clear dude I mean like I can't.

I don't know if there are people out there who experience this but I always thought that I kind of knew what I wanted okay. I want this much money I want this even if I'm not that explicit about it I thought like alright I'm doing what I want to do this is what I want to do. It's mind blowing to me that I had never really sat down be like what do I really want like what do I really really want and I'm still figuring this out like as we speak but for the most part I'm getting more and more clear. And as I'm getting more clear I've been doing these daughter techniques at night. I think it's weird how reality seems to conform to that with no I'm not doing anything else I'm not walking around trying to make things happen.

I'm not expecting some weird crazy thing to happen I just do this thing at night I go about my day like I normally do every other day. And within 48 hours to have like a pair of what I would do relatively significant conversations about synchronicity and experience them in a pretty heavy you know amplified environment related specifically to what I was thinking of in these nights. It's fucking weird that's all I can say so if I'm shifting now from saying how much control we're asking the question how much control do we have over external reality process through our own consciousness our individual consciousness and what do we control where do we push it to what reality do we walk into do we want to walk into the reality where we go to space together are you going to jump off into your other reality where that happens am I going to jump off.

We wouldn't know we're an infinitude right we could seriously be going off right now into different directions you can challenge so I let me tell you I don't want to be the one to go to space. I didn't want I wouldn't want to be the one to cross the ocean either but but it's like a it's one of those it's one of those turning points you know it's one of those it's one of those big thematic destinations that's easy to see. You know where I don't I don't I don't want to I don't want to disrupt what you're just saying finish what you're saying it's gone it's in the ether. Okay okay okay yeah so but your question about how much you know control do we have I mean that's and what the mechanism of that control is and implications and implications that's.

Well yeah yeah and it's a very it's a it's an enduring question obviously because even you know from in terms of mainstream science you know we talk about all the time that you know the doctor Donald Hoffman or whomever choose your. Your sage on this one everybody from scientists to mystics say the way we perceive realities not it right but what all mystics pretty much universally say whether they're a medicists cobblest east of eastern origin. Whatever is that consciousness is the real thing in that consciousness builds reality and in the way we perceive it but that's ultimately an illusion. And you know whether we're talking about like Vedantic philosophy Plato's you know notion that the soul or the psyche is just is the real reality and physical shit is just delusional.

You know and also in the hermetic tradition it's the same thing that there's like this you know ultimate reality is this sort of conscious light or whatever so it's it's they all they're all saying the same thing of course I think it's a little bit It's difficult to marry all of that with what we empirically know now about the physical world but I'm pretty hung up on the idea that I'll never be able to dismiss the idea of of consciousness being something real and not just an epiphenomenal biological function. Yeah yeah but but something that's real but then I immediately pull back and then say but but also don't get it twisted and think that your perception as a being is what consciousness is either because I think whatever So you said that you you've been struggling with meditation for a long time and ironically over the last month I've yes finally yes I seem like developed like a daily practice where I'm like I really enjoy it I don't ever see myself stopping doing it and it's not it's not this struggle you know it's not like a struggling thing it's really like you like it's the it's the opposite where it's where it literally is.

So here's your time. This is freedom like if this isn't like a time to where you failed if you stop paying attention to your breath or you failed or you stop saying or thinking of the mantra are you failed when you, you know get distracted it's literally like that's a space for me now where there is no wrong that's like a space for me now to just watch things occur you know watch things come in and out of awareness and then once you do that practice of just watching things come in and out of awareness you start you know questioning awareness itself and you start getting behind while well what is consciousness where is consciousness is consciousness something that's coming from behind my eyes. Yes, exactly.

There's there's like this whole cloud of sensation and then what is sensation and you know all these things and whatever consciousness is it is that it is the most raw and you know source pixel of all of that. Like the canvas of potential for some kind of proto sensation or awareness to occur, you know, and that's like the best that I can possibly define it but still that doesn't mean shit and I don't know what it is. Well, it's words we're trying to pin down with language something that clearly transcended anyone who's just had a small bit of mushrooms can testify to that. So there's there is that difficulty however I do think we have this amazing alchemy with words where we can lead ourselves and others down kind of like a trail towards getting more insight on what's going on and I think part of the reason we have taken to this and it's let's be clear this is kind of it's not meditation.

But the states that border around these intentional kind of walking into an experience in the future or the past even this right around them is meditative right I have to get into a space to allow this to affect you'll notice if you do this at least for me. I have my scene. I'm living it and immediately guess what's coming to play all my other thoughts are trying to intrude I'm like so it is a meditative state that you actually have to get into and I think that state that process you're describing mindfulness for Poshina whatever word we want to use Corey staring at a candle for five hours 15 years ago. These are all things that get us at least closer to the baseline signal that consciousness is putting out we put so much stuff on it which is why I have an aversion to meditation I gotta clear all that stuff off and that's like in decades and God knows how long worth of stuff.

But I do now believe quite firmly and we'll see if it deviates at all that literally everything we see around us recreate I mean that both individually and conceptually and I mean that from like the kind of roll your eyes like well someone had to envision the iPhone and build all the components to make it this ubiquitous thing that we're using but also the circumstances that unfold before us the relationships that come into our lives those weird synchronicities. I feel that we unconsciously are kind of running this script and operating system all of the time. If we start to step in a little bit to the pilot seat which is just to be clear for me scary as fuck.

The implications of this are that you are now taking personal control over everything in your life. That means if some fuck that shit happens your response won't have to deal with those ramifications. I have kind of looking back retrospectively this is a little to your referencing what you were talking about. You feel like you knew this stuff already and it kind of was just like playing out and I think if we move for at least so far for me it's been like 24 or 48 72 hours. If you move a little of that personal power. Let's call power not a word I use very often but power. If you take it test it first don't fucking take some weird guy from Barbados's word or some guy with a weird podcast about synchronicity.

Don't take anyone's word that's like the most important thing but if you test it and your reality starts bending. Then it poses a whole other set of questions and I think at least that would allow us as individuals and collectively to at least imagine a better future for ourselves moving towards things that are more sustainable equitable. Tempering down this fever pitch of polarity that is just like fucking with so many people. I think this is a real distinct possibility of this kind of idea spreads that we have this power. Yeah this is this is why I'm close to being okay with calling myself a platonic of some sort is because to him ultimate reality was a unstained rational place.

It was a place that you know because like we use the word rational law in a modern way to like try to like as a substitute as like a proxy for scientific or something with like data but that's actually not what it is. It's literally you know that the classical kind of binary argument between rationalism and empiricism. The platonic side the rationalist side contended that reality is held in the psyche. It's like it's held in the you know the deepest, purest part of the psyche like that that is our connection to real reality. And like I said before everything else is sort of this perverted like lower base level of the senses and you know hormones and reproduction and temptation and gluttony and all these other things that arise out of being like an incarnated like flesh pod.

And that you know that's a game that we're playing, but if we allow the lower parts of that game to dictate our actions we're like we're losing the light of like the reason we're playing the game to begin with whatever the whatever that is. I think what what what I'm talking about with meditation what you're talking about with you know using your mind to envision what you want and clarifying the question I mean that is this process of catharsis that Plato talked about like the process of you know, like Aristotle gets more credit for the catharsis conversation and he would talk a lot about how media and plays and stories were cathartic for people because they could vicariously like exercise emotions and that's real to of course.

But when Plato talked about catharsis he talked more about you needed to go through this internal process of purification, where you're getting past the junk and the garbage, and that includes asking better questions that includes getting a better idea of what the ultimate nature of your mind is through something like mindfulness meditation, and that's what's really blowing my mind because I was I was reading some, you know, commentary, I don't even remember if it was commentary or if it was primary source material, but it was like an older translation of something Plato wrote from like the early 20th century, and it was like holy shit like this is mindfulness meditation like this is the exact same shit with different words, and it's crazy that we don't we don't think about this in the Western tradition that we've been talking about doing this for thousands of years but we've like lost all of these contemplative practices in the West and we think they all come from the East but we've been doing them to for thousands of years.

But I think that that I think that you're never going to convince me that changing the quality of your mind and the sharpness and aptitude and accuracy of your mind you're never going to convince me that that's less important than doing stuff out there. Get out there and do that it's like because you're not going to get out there and do anything with the right idea the right context, the right tenacity if your mind isn't right and getting your mind right is totally incumbent upon you like you can have great teachers but they're not going to be able to like sit there and force you to meditate with you know it's like it's like being a little kid and having your parent telling you you got to take piano lessons if you're just sitting like I don't want to do it.

I hate the piano if you do that the whole time you're not going to fucking get it you're not going to appreciate it you're not going to like it. So it's the same thing with you know you can go to retreats you can talk to gurus you can do any of this shit but it's like until you're aligned with the right mentality. None of it's going to matter none of it's going to matter and I think that you know and that's why I wrote that. Why it's more important than ever to be your own guru article or whatever I called it is precisely because of this you know it's it's until we realize that the answers are in there and that no one can dig around in there except for us no no one can make those scary decrees that we were talking about before no one can do the scary step of sitting in the driver's seat of reality except us ourselves individually subjectively.

And until we all come to peace with that and actually cross that chasm where we're not like but what is that guy over there thinking right do I have enough followers to be charged you know like that type of thinking that we're all constantly doing it's that it's it's crazy it's like we're asking permission to actually just be what we naturally are some shit you know right and that is where I jump into super meta physical world and say what we are is God. I really firmly believe that I don't mean that I lord over you I'm okay with that yeah I said no men clature it truthly and I do think the creative agency what God or calls imagination the more I've kind of played around with the concept in my direct experience.

I'm comfortable with calling that God too because that is what creates everything we see how did Tesla come up with a seat. Right how do you fucking imagine it how did Einstein come up with relativity he fucking imagined it so if we start taking that idea seriously. Yeah man you're going to become a protagonist I have always found an internal friction with myself in Aristotle. I think he's incredibly smart I think he was incredibly fresh and but I always found this idea of empiricism kind of the more material aspects of his philosophy or of what he spoke about. God's with what my direct experience was which is why I always love Play-Doh because you know even in the favorite right Socrates talking about reincarnation.

One of my favorite favorite favorite things because it's so fucking simple it uses the analogy of going to sleep and waking up which we do all the fucking time. So yeah man that's that's right it's it's truthly like I think there's a lot there and I get the sense that more and more people are kind of waking up to this idea of this is how things work. This is actually what's going on this does not deny also to be clear so we don't just come I don't come up as just metaphysical new age wound up this doesn't deny physical reality. We're not saying that this is just an illusion so fuck it don't worry about it it's that we're creating this for a purpose right theoretically that's why we're doing it so use this when you're talking about this is what immediately came to mind when you talk about piano thing.

I feel like a lot of people are complaining right now in their own way. If you want to live living sucks this isn't fun why want to do this this is where the knowledge and the trip came from because that that you know I was when I when I was feeling that that feeling of being. Of like you know existentially alone and afraid. You know that the very next feeling of like wow I'm so lucky to be comfortable I'm so lucky to be alive I'm so lucky to get a chance and that's exactly what I was thinking is like you don't like living you don't like having a chance. It's just like and you want more of a meaning you want reality to come with more of like an instruction manual.

Can this isn't well laid out enough for you it's like what the fuck are you complaining about you know not to diminish anyone's depression but it's like the point is you get a chance that's the point. Go on in a chance it is like. And that's I personally believe that we as God as imaginal gods. Choose this too I don't think this is a random evolving concurrent situation I intuitively that does not feel correct to me. What's more correct is that we chose to be there so the here's a God or it is. So God or it says this that a lot of people think that Christ was nailed to a cross he's like that's fucking ridiculous that did not actually happen what really happened was his humanity.

Choose as God to pin itself down to suffering to cross this world which the Buddhist have astutely recognized suffering there's a lot of suffering going around no one's going to deny it. And it's our job to resurrect ourselves to understand that we control this fucking thing we don't we don't have to be told something else and I think my hunch is man in like five to ten years. The world is going to be so what a fucking going out on a limb here it's going to be so radically different how we look at how things are created because I've seen people around me. Again I also heard you say it I don't like the word either manifest you said you don't like that word I don't either selecting realities for themselves that not only help them but the people around them.

We have plenty of examples of this and I think if people take this idea of imagination being God and us creating and co creating things. We have a fucking lot of power right like a lot of power and I don't mean an egotistical like I'm going to lord over you again sense or I'm going to accumulate as much money as possible but we have the power to shift consciousness towards something that is better for the majority of people which is not for the majority of people right now at least when we look out in the world so. Yeah man I think there's something a foot to say least I think there's something a foot.

Yeah yeah there's a few there's I'm going to try to cover all these. First thing yeah that that's another weird alignment between Western philosophy and Eastern contemplative traditions is what in the West they called madam psychosis. Like Pythagoras was preaching this like I don't know does he live it did he live like a thousand years before Socrates or 500 I don't know but yeah so he was essentially preaching reincarnation. 2500 3000 years ago whenever he lived so there's another crazy thing that we almost universally associate with Eastern religions that we were also thinking about at the same time or figuring out at the same time.

But yeah man whether whether we literally are God in our imagination or we're just psychologically God it's true. You know it's like either one is true or or they're both true where maybe maybe the human mind is a microcosm of a macro cosmic mind. Maybe it's just a you know the human intellect the human psyche is actually the most like even if it's even if we're totally wrong and it's a material is paradigm. The human mind is the most advanced occurrence in the cosmos that we're aware of at least on the planet that we're aware of. So yeah guess what everything you see created around you human mind everything you see around you is pregnant with the human mind it is it's a signature of the human mind the computer monitor the wall the piece of art.

In the notebook the the pair of glasses it's all pregnant with ideas pregnant with the human mind came right out of the vagina the imagination. So it's like you yeah you're right I mean either we're literally connected to God from some sort of metaphysical standpoint, or it might as well be God because it's the best thing we got. And it's the source of all creation that we can see at least. And so the next question that I have because at least in my mind or I had when I was going through this I was basically like you know what I gotta test this fucking shit I'm not can't believe this full sale until I see some practical external events line up with this metaphysical principle.

I've seen a lot of things work from a metaphysical standpoint over my years like a lot of things from a cult to chaos magic this shit has been proven to work for at least for me. I have been I'm very interested to hear out this conversation with the image goes because dude like this shit ain't normal man like the it's it's just not a I think what it is what I like about Goddard and this kind of thought of imagination of God which we've been mulling over in the small part because I keep bringing it up is that he serves as a good bridge between Christian mystic mysticism Western mysticism and a normal fucking person this dude was like an actor.

And also here's you'll like this I know you'll like this didn't charge for anything didn't sell his books allowed people to grateful dead all of his lectures record them everywhere never made a cent off any of this and purposely did it that way. And I was just hearing in a talk he gave today about Krishna Merti, you know who Krishna Merti for people don't know was at one point appointed kind of Jesus Christ reincarnated by the esophical society which is early kind of society new age stuff. And at a certain point he came out was like nah I'm not this is bullshit and the people revered him for that and Goddard was essentially talking he's like yeah no like people are going to forget that number one number two.

The the esophical society is like most other spiritual organizations in the world and he's like I know this and the way he said it I was like I feel you so hard he's like most people in the spiritual world who are peddling this stuff are just trying to make a block. They don't know any better they don't have any other conception of what they're doing they may believe in it full sale but they don't understand what's actually going on and I think you and I know this. Look out in the world today how many of these people do we see and like I used to get mad I used to get upset I work beyond scenes without the shit.

Now I'm just like God love him God bless these people they'll figure it out whatever it's time for them to figure it out. And I think what you've been alluding to too is this hermetic knowledge this kind of ideas that we're not regularly exposed to. It's proliferating like my Celia web throughout our consciousness I mean how many conversations were you having like this 15 years ago 10 years ago. I wanted to I wanted to I just didn't know how. But now you do you walk into the reality where I can hit you up on a random one day afternoon and be like. What can do it well listen we're talking about a lot of shit here what else is going on with you man I we just haven't caught up in a long time what what are you doing with the podcast everything else like where where's things going.

Yeah I mean third eyedrops has been going strong I've you know put out a podcast every every week since since starting. So I mean yeah that's that's always an ongoing thing. I'm really moving toward the idea, not even the idea toward the actuality of writing a book, and that has been clarifying it's been changing form. So it's really it's it's really like what we've been talking about where it's about sharpening it down to what it really is because anybody who listens to my podcast or is listening to this conversation to an extent even knows like what what are important I think the most important ideas is the most important ideas are rather the ones that compel you enough as a person to want to start following their curiosity more.

And because you know that that's what that's where the disconnect always is between every kind of like teacher or self help author or whatever it's like it's like they're going to prescribe something to you and then you're going to take it like a medicine and it's going to fix your problems but that's not how it works like the I think really the best and this was always like the the sort of overtone of Socrates and Robert Anson Wilson and all my favorite teachers and authors was like, Hey, you are the one with the answers. You are the one who already knows what they need to do. I'm just going to like ignite some interesting ideas and conversations and then get you to ask yourself the right questions.

It's going to imply the right answers you know it's it's the idea of, you know, innate knowledge and that's really what my whole book is going to be revolving around but it's also going to be around something else that we've been talking about a lot. And I just kind of realized this the other day is that the book is largely going to hinge upon the idea of struggle. And you know how much of a scary word that has become like we're how much you know obviously we all try to put ourselves in a cocoon and protect ourselves from struggle and distract ourselves with everything comfortable and, you know, everything vapid and everything that gives us a little dopamine hit and everything that tastes good. But I just like, I just tweeted this earlier today that the more you fail to struggle for the things that you want, the more you get slowly consumed by things you don't care about. And that's the situation that we're all in now is, you know, we don't figure out the right question to ask.

We don't figure out what the right struggle is. So life just keeps, you know, it's like being in a room and like there's like a trickle of water in the room, you know, it's like, Oh, there's barely any water in here. It's fine. It's up to my ankles. It's fine. Oh, it's up to my knees. It's, you know, pretty soon. You're like, Oh, shit, I should have been addressing this a long time ago. And I think whether that's just a metaphor for time, or it's a metaphor for circumstances in life occurring that you longer have control over, it's universally true. And I think the better we can get at identifying the right struggles and the things that we should be battling for and against the closer we're going to get to feeling more fulfilled more quickly.

And what's amazing is I am no authority in any of these things, but luckily, like you, I've been able to talk to hundreds of fantastic people. And I don't need to sit here and talk about. If you're creative, you got it. I can be like, here's what Android Jones, a real fucking creative, like who has blasted his art on the side of the Vatican and the Empire State Building thinks about creativity, you know, so that's what's great about being sort of an aggregator of education, and so somebody who's pretending to be some sort of like teacher or or whatever is like we're just, you know, we're collecting information and saying, Hey, here's the coolest shit I found and that's that's what I want to try to figure out how to do with my book. And what I'm always trying to do, I guess. Let me say this, I can clearly envision that being an awesome book fan, like what you said is is super on point, like you are, first of all, you're an authority on a lot of things just because you've absorbed.

Even if you didn't want to buy osmosis, all of these people in mind, this is one of the things you realize with podcasts, which when we say podcasts, we're just referring to talking to people we wouldn't otherwise talk to as much recording it. That's basically it. But dude, that's going to be fucking awesome. Like, do it. Do it fucking. I will be promoting it. You know that. Let's get to the last question. It's been a blast. It's been too long. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. That's my favorite color. I got to stay with blue. Nice. So my favorite number. Well, three pops into my mind because the other day, our mutual friend Jen Sedini just randomly asked me what my birthday and whatever was and she goes, Oh, you're your master number is a three and I'm like, okay.

So I don't really know all of the significance of that, but three is a good one. It's a very good one. What about favorite animal? Did she also ask you what your master animal was? No, but I got to go with the dog. We got to go with the dog. I love that you say dog and you love cat so much too. It's just I love both. I know, but I just, I love that. That's, that's great, man. Final question, practical tip that has helped you in your life that you could share with other people. It's a very, very close. Tie between, I mean, it really isn't a tie. It's, it's. You have to do something on a daily basis to.

Exercise that catharsis that we were talking about. And. I am no meditation expert by any means, but if you just view. 10 20 minutes a day. As, as what I said before, it's, it's not like a task. It's really like freedom. It's, it's sitting down. And just watching your mind not trying to do anything other than I do follow my breath. That's all I do. Um, or if like the meditation app that I've been using prompts me to think about something I'll do that. I'll play along. But. When you get a better relationship with your thoughts and, you know, start to disentangle your thoughts from dictating how you feel.

And you can even start realizing that you can manufacture feeling. Yes. You can, you know, like literally, oh, put. You know, meditate and literally just put laughter in your mind. Put, put a giant shit eating grin on your face. You can do that. And you can really change the way you feel. And it. And so like this is software that we're supposed to understand. Like we have it right there. Like there literally are is a control panel. Like we can, you know, it's, it's not as simple as move this lever up to make this feeling happen. But you can actually. Yeah. Like like a control panel. You can, you can start to play with these things. And that doesn't mean you're going to be immune to emotional swings.

It doesn't mean things aren't going to piss you off, but it does mean you're going to have a little bit more control. So I definitely think that that's something I wholeheartedly recommend. And I also wholeheartedly recommend you have to move and physically exert yourself because days that I don't do that. It's so like I don't even I don't try to do work anymore until I've like actually I've like physically I did something to physically make myself tired because I'll just sit down and my mind will like race. And I'll get so, you know, I'll just get so distracted by my thoughts. So it's like. And some days I don't even get my shit together. And so like 11 a.m. But.

It's better to get your shit together than not, you know, and I really don't think that I ever get to where I need to be until I've done those two things so. As contrived as they are, they're contrived for a reason. No, no physical activity and meditation. It's, it's just a must. You got to figure out a way to get it in. I love it. Well, if you could please just envision me meditating that would help to make it a reality because man, I'm still super fucking resistant to it. Michael, I am envisioning. Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for coming on man. Let's do this again soon. Yeah, brother. Let's do it.

Peace. Peace. Thanks for listening to that episode. Go check out Michael at third eyedrops.com his podcast, Third Eyedrops. It's on MindPod Network. He's always writing stuff on medium. Let's encourage him to get that book going because I'm sure it'll be great. Just a honest, authentic, genuinely curious person. Those people are good. We like them. Thanks to everyone who rates and reviews synchronicity. I'm making it easier and never. I'm putting it right on the podcast. Super easy to do. Also CBD oil. You think it's a scam? It is for the most part. 95% of this, probably more. It's just total bunk. It's bullshit.

But go check out what the guys at net are doing and you'll see that it isn't. That's why I use it. It's the only one I use. I'm just turning on. Listen, I smoke a lot of weed. I like weed a lot. I didn't do the CBD stuff because I thought it was bullshit. I finally met people who I think are actually doing the right thing related to the plant and just getting it out to the people for the right intentions. And that's really, that's cool. Support those people. So go check that out. If you use the code sync at checkout, it's 15% off. It's pretty cool. Anyway, thanks for your support for everything. You're the coolest. Enjoy this summer. We'll love you. See you next week.

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