Kind: captions
Language: en
ebook is a fascinating medicine because
you can have people addicted to heroin
decades long go through one treatment
lived in an ashram for two years the
jungle for a year you've done a lot of
drugs now I want to know what did you
learn from all of that that you would
bring back if you had a chance that your
sister unfortunately committed suicide
if you could take what you learned in
that time what would you tell her to try
to save her
good question
I think it's
the title of the book a dose of hope you
know there's always hope there's always
opportunity for growth
relief reconnection what so what given
the way that so talking about
psychedelics the way that you come at
that work
seems to be that people get well let me
ask are they coming from they're stuck
in a neurochemical pattern or are they
stuck in a frame of reference problem
where it's not even neurochemical it's
just the way that they think about
things I think it's both I think the
experiential side drives the
neurochemical side it's like the
software experience drives the hardware
experience and suffering is really
individual but it's also ubiquitous it's
kind of our dance with life so to speak
it's part of the contract when we come
in life's going to include suffering
uh and it happens individually and
collectively
and we are going through a massive
opportunity for growth and acceleration
and major transformation on a global
scale
so no one's immune to that level of
discomfort
but if you only had three minutes with
your sister
would it just be
hey there's hope because I have a
feeling that that will feel like
rhetoric to somebody in that space
how do you punch through like is what I
want to be true maybe different than
what is true what I want to be true is
that there's to your point about
suffering is ubiquitous but I think
there's probably also elements that are
universally understandable even if it's
not the exact same thing that we're
going through
and that I want there to be wisdom
that's being ascertained by the plant
medicine
that can be passed on do you think that
there is an amount of it that can be
metabolized by one person and shared
with another or is this only you have to
experience it again I think it's both
um the experiential sides necessary
otherwise it's just information
uh so what would you tell her that you
think would make her give it a shot I
think first and foremost we have to
connect anybody that's going through
that level of suffering and I've been
significantly depressed I've been
suicidally depressed
so I understand the
contemplation of cashing in the golden
ticket
and that generates a degree of empathy
and kind of like I can have a sense of
where you're at I mean everybody's
experiences individual so I can never
know exactly what that person is feeling
but if I can have some degree of
understanding and empathy and connection
then now we've got some commonality now
we can
have a relational experience
and so for me it's not so much imparting
information although that's part of my
Dharma so just because part of what why
I came back from the jungle is to be
able to be in the position of education
and advocacy of the right place for
medicine work not everybody's ready for
medicine work and it's not a Panacea
ultimately at the end of the day I don't
even think medicine work is here to fix
anything it's just here to reveal truth
and ideally to be able to show more
clearly what is our relationship with
suffering what's our relationship with
the events that lead to a particular
experience of suffering how can we
understand it and in order to understand
it and gain some more wisdom around it
oftentimes we need a little bit of space
space from it and that's sometimes what
the medicines help us do it's a great
space from the trauma it secretes yeah
like MDMA does that
all the medicines to a certain degree
will offer both a bit of the witness
perspective as well as with that
separation for just long enough because
they're they're neuro neuroplastic
agents in their egoplastic agents so
they allow the ego to relax a little bit
from the experience of suffering in
order to get that witness perspective
understand it a little bit
and then through that understanding then
to be able to if facilitated well go
into it and through it to the other side
so that there's healing and then there's
integration so it's not a bypass
like the medicine work is not here to
kind of bypass trauma and just get
straight to healing and everything's
fine
I think there's so much opportunity for
the growth of that person's kind of
evolutionary development so to speak to
be able to understand what created the
suffering in the first place
and then how those really intense
experiences are actually potential
catalysts for growth right most of our
best teachers are our most uncomfortable
experiences
and if we can why do you think that's
true the the uncomfortable experiences
they have a a way of slowing us down
and
helping us get present
and in such a fast-paced culture today
it's hard for people to get present the
beauty can do that ecstasy can do that
for sure like suffering isn't the only
way for learning is that the only way
for slowing down and and getting in
touch with who we are asking the deeper
questions about life
what is most important if I think about
like near-death experiences
there are consistent themes on those
kind of processes that people will go
through we could even talk about
potentially that medicine work is
depending on the medicine a bit of like
a small controlled near-death experience
it helps people slow down
understand the most important priorities
of life does it do that though in the
same mechanism is it a sense of Terror
dissolution of the ego in a way that is
death like or is it just that it slows
you down and gives you a witness
perspective again I think it's both it
really depends on the medicine
let's talk about the terror aspect so I
have a hypothesis so if I had three
minutes with your sister I've never done
psychedel I've micro dosed and we'll
talk about that later but I think it's
so wildly different than a macro dose my
gut instinct is to be different animals
but if I had three minutes with your
sister I've had people come to me and
ask like hey I'm I'm in a really dark
place or I know somebody that's in a
really dark place what should I do and
even though I've not done psychedelics
given what I've learned from Maps I will
tell people hey if you haven't tried
psychedelics you certainly haven't tried
everything and so you at least need to
give it a shot my outside Observer just
regurgitating what I've heard headline
reading assessment is that what it's
doing is disrupting your frame of
reference so violently that you have
nothing to Anchor onto during the
experience and because you become
completely unmoored you're now seeing
things from a radically different
perspective
in fact
there's the Sam Harris quote which you
I'm sure know uh but I find this this
quote more than anything makes me want
to try macro dosing uh psychedelics so
this was Sam Harris at a podcast after
doing the heroic dose of mushrooms so
it's five grams if I remember right uh
and he said the fact that there are
Landscapes of mind this vast lurking on
the other side of a mushroom is simply
Preposterous it's as though we lived in
a universe where if you just reached
into your right pocket with your left
hand rather than pulling out your wallet
you pull out the Andromeda Galaxy
and that to me is
is exactly like that feels like the
right description for what's happening
it just batters you out of the way that
you see the world
and as somebody who wants everyone to
understand that frame of reference is
everything the there is nothing either
good or bad but thinking makes it so and
so somebody who's on the precipice yes
there really is a neurological problem
it probably has to do with marinating
and negative thoughts a lot having a
frame of reference that makes you feel
like you will never experience Joy again
there will never be anything uplifting
or hopeful again it's all wrong that's
just a frame of reference and the reason
that mdma's psilocybin LSD whatever pick
your
um psychedelic of choice the reason it
works is for a brief moment 50 minutes
if it's DMT
six hours if it's psilocybin whatever
longer I know in some cases you are just
battered out of that frame of reference
it just doesn't exist anymore and so
you're you are forced to realize oh my
God I was trapped inside of a bubble
that I didn't realize was finite I
thought it simply was the truth and once
you're walloped out of that again I'm
using words not as somebody who's ever
used it but once you're pulled out of
that you now
have experienced that there are other
perspectives with which to view life
that's my gutancy that would be my
speech to your sister or anybody else
that's like on that so it's like hey
before you do any of that all you have
to do is take this little thing and
effectively be teleported to something
else might be worse but it'll show you
that there's difference
so let me respond on a few different
levels of what you mentioned if I had
three minutes with my sister or anybody
standing on the ledge ideally first and
foremost we make connection right
empathic so they trust you right
because otherwise they're not
maybe going to trust any recommendation
that I have moving forward
so connection
then to offer what you're describing a
potential solution
to alleviating momentarily that degree
of intensity so that they can understand
it heal it integrate it and become more
whole on the other side
so that's part of the framing around it
um
in regards to neurology and psychology
maybe we could call that hardware and
software
they're they're bi-directional but in
regards to trauma
the the psychological trauma because you
can have neurological trauma as well
head injuries will drive psychology so
that's a neurology driving psychology
kind of directional but what we're
talking about here is on the
psychological and emotional trauma side
where the psychology drives the
neurology to what you're describing
frames of mind that are driven by
neurochemical
Cascades and kind of like entrenched
beliefs so there's this
bi-directionality
where if we're offered a momentary pause
that egoplastic neuroplastic kind of
space that that Gap
widens a little bit and we can talk
specifically about MDMA and how it does
that and many of the other medicines
work very similar it doesn't have to be
a violent
reframe it can be a softer reframe it
can be an easier reframe
uh depending again on the medicines
Ayahuasca tends to be
both beautiful for many people and a
little confronting for many people what
are people confronted with usually it's
like whatever was just behind that veil
of knowing so like Sam describes and I
haven't heard that quote actually it's
kind of Genius instead of pulling out my
wallet now I see the Andromeda Galaxy
whatever was right behind the veil of
awareness
oftentimes it's subconscious material
that I didn't have access to maybe I was
too well defended to access that trauma
maybe it was too early for me to create
a narrative
like in that kind of in those formative
years in the three to five kind of year
window of life when we're just really
getting solidified with our beliefs
about ourselves and the world
the majority of kind of like the
psychological imprinting really starting
to solidify our blueprint for how we
move in the world
a lot of that is pre-verbal and
therefore it's hard to access even in
therapy because we haven't connected the
centers of the brain for language and
memory
so in therapy there's usually a gap that
people aren't able to access on their
own and oftentimes medicine work is able
to to reveal that just like hypnotherapy
would be able to reveal that whatever
was kind of right behind that veil of
awareness and sometimes that's kind of a
confronting process because we've
potentially
developed these really sophisticated ego
strategies to keep ourselves safe and
whatever was really significantly trauma
inducing at the time maybe we
conveniently wall that off and protected
ourselves against it
so in a loving container in a in a
therapeutic container that's why there's
a difference between working with
medicines in a recreational Space versus
in a clinical space or a therapeutic
space because in a therapeutic space the
intention is to go deep
to be able to look and get curious
to see what's behind the veil versus in
a recreational space it's usually to
uh have that ecstasis experience or that
um that celebration of life and both are
beautiful and important are we going for
celebration of life are we going really
to get under the hood and to see
how maybe yet we have not become whole
with all of our parts
the parts that we would have shamed
gilted
tucked away the things that we don't
want to put on our Instagram
or Facebook kind of you know
front-facing social media page
and when we get to bring all of those
parts back and we get to bring all of
the things that maybe we weren't
comfortable with or proud of or
or
didn't even know we were disconnected
from Once those become more kind of
in in front of our awareness now we can
work with it and see okay what is that
here to teach me how does that hear to
grow me
how does that help me become more of a
full person with with all my
shortcomings and misgivings and can I
learn to appreciate all of it can I
actually learn to love all of myself
that's actually possible and yet in our
culture it's harder than ever
because we have these ideas about what
success is and who we need to be in
order to get the love and adoration that
all of us want so I hear you
describing psychedelics and one word
comes to mind tell me if this is if you
were going to sum up the way that
psychedelics give you a dose of Hope is
it integration I think integration is an
excellent term I think there are other
ways that I might describe that process
of becoming whole
an integrated person is a whole person
and integration
to your point using a very sophisticated
term integration is where
the medicine work becomes real it's
taking the peak experience and making it
like real and and implemented in the
day-to-day to try to put a hypothesis to
what you're saying it sounds like okay
people become fragmented because
something happens young old doesn't
matter but something happens
you create emotional defenses so that
you don't have to deal with that but the
way that we do that is by Walling it off
or closing ourself off from the outside
so I'm going to try I'm thinking out
loud here so bear with me but um I
recently had a breakthrough with my wife
where I realized that I had developed a
tool that was helping me in business
which is that I could completely kill
off emotion and just deal with something
like what are the facts and how do we
get to the desired outcome and she kept
saying I don't have my husband and I
could not make sense of that phrase
because I was so proud of my ability to
do that so I'm like this is amazing this
is giving me everything that I want
except I'm getting this weird signal
from one part of my life but she didn't
have words I could understand
and so finally I was like what could she
possibly mean and what I settled on that
seemed to click into place for her is
that I was no longer when I would go
into that mode I was no longer
broadcasting or receiving love and so I
was like oh word okay now I get what
you're saying like I'm I'm doing
something that's actually really
effective on one front but it becomes a
a Walling off to to compartmentalize my
thinking to make sure that I'm not
confounding the issue of what the
business needs I had learned don't make
this decision based on emotion make it
Based on data really effective but it
put me in a position where she could
just feel me getting harder it's
probably the right way to describe it so
okay I put defenses up that's one way
that we then separate ourselves we
become disintegrated in that way I'm not
integrated with my wife or integrated
with a part of myself that's
broadcasting and receiving love has its
function and by the way I actually think
it's useful to be able to step into that
mode but then there are other ways where
we're blocking ourselves from ourself
where it's like hey I don't know how to
deal with that and so I'm going to put
it in a box I'm going to lock that box
and I'm going to pretend that that
doesn't exist so it might be distraction
it might be drug use whatever but people
find ways to never confront that thing
and it's it's like a little demon in a
box that's been closed but the box is
still moving and uh so
that's disintegration now I honestly
don't know if there's more but listening
to you it feels like
that's the problem you've become
disintegrated in some way
and the the Psychedelic is going to help
you unlock that trunk whether you want
to or not the thing that you need to
deal with is going to pop up
but I want to know what dealing with it
is if it's integration then I understand
meaning I have to in some way integrate
that into my narrative about who I am
and how I move through the world if it
isn't integration or it isn't just
integration then I don't understand yeah
good question so you're kind of wanting
to know what's the value
like what is actually like one of the
questions I wrote down that I wanted to
ask you is when somebody is guiding you
what are they doing what are they what
words are they saying are they like
you're gonna be okay are they like hey
there's it there's a dark presence in
the room right yes go towards it like
what's what does it mean and those
pieces will help me understand
what is the thing that happens to us
that makes psychedelics necessary and
why do psychedelics work so facilitation
is oftentimes about being a guide and
not doing the work for somebody or even
trying to rescue them from the work
so it may not be my or the facilitator's
job to say you're going to be okay
unless that's necessary because the
person is in such fear
that they're having a hard time
regulating their own system in order to
be present to the work that's here
and so if if somebody's standing on a
Ledge it may be time to say
find your breath
let's just slow things down
come back into presence I've got you
this is a safe space
and and can we just get to a place of
Regulation
just bringing it down a little bit and
if that helps to say
it's going to be okay
I know it hurts I know this has got
going into the emergency room with a a
broken arm that didn't heal well you
know it's kind of like a spiral fracture
and it's deformed a bit you're gonna
have to re-break that
it's like I know that's gonna hurt I got
you it's a part of the process
it's not always going to be this way you
know some some words of kindness some
words of Hope
but there's a fine dance there with not
wanting to necessarily rescue the person
from their discomfort
because like one of my teachers said to
me a long time ago rescuing somebody
from their suffering may just be robbing
them of their greatest teacher
because what do they need to learn
it's really is it integration or or is
it something different the truth is
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description alright my friend back to
today's episode I'm hesitant to say it's
all about integration
um
because integration is is more of like
an endpoint
in that moment I think it's more around
truth
and seeing does that mean to you seeing
the larger aspect
because sometimes when we're in trauma
it really Narrows our Focus
like suffering can do that can narrow
the focus it's like being so in the
trees we can't see the forest and when
you say the truth do you mean to be able
to see something from a broader
perspective from a broader perspective
and again this is part of what the
medicine work can do and other practices
too
medicine work is just one tool in the
toolkit it's not a Panacea and as as
mentioned not everybody's ready for
medicine work and part of the Alchemy
too is to understand which medicine to
work with which person
at what stage of their development in
the midst of everything else they're
going through not everybody will respond
equally to a given medicine at a given
dose at a given time so that's part of
the Alchemy
and then to
frame it as a process of self-discovery
and self-awareness
so to be able to have a little bit of a
pause or a little bit of momentary kind
of space from the suffering to be able
to see that larger truth perspective or
that larger wisdom perspective
sometimes it happens immediately
oftentimes it does and sometimes it
happens over time
and it may not necessarily be like the
truth shows up and you know kind of
gives you your life
Dharma path and tells you everything
that hasn't gotten people that don't
know Dharma is that a synonym for fate
um no it's more like your gift purpose
okay like what you hear to offer and
provide the word like the gift that
you've come into
to offer the world that's only your gift
to offer
sometimes it's just about feeling
what hasn't been felt
and it may have a narrative and it may
not it may have a story and it may not
it may just be like
we need to have a cathartic process
engaged
sometimes the body is holding the trauma
in a pre-verbal state
and that maybe that was around
grief and anguish and sadness and loss
or confusion and Annihilation like Mom
and Dad
being
are kind of like pedestals and kind of
you know God figures
perhaps they weren't able to love us in
the most compassionate caring safe way
because they were dealing with their own
things so that that can feel really
confusing or perhaps something happened
and there was a loss and I wasn't able
to not only agree that I wasn't able to
cut you know rage against it rage
against that thing that happened ask all
the questions you know get get messy
with it sometimes it's just about
feeling that process so oftentimes it's
not necessarily an intellectual process
it can be
but in my experience both happen
kind of equally important
because the true the traumas connected
to some kind of energetic
and so if I can understand the truth
around it wonderful
because now I can engage it now I can
learn from it but if I'm if I'm only
going for the truth I'm only going for
the information I try and bypass the
feeling of it
then I might not be moving it through to
a process of resolution
it's like the in the energetic or the
emotionality of it comes up and it's
uncomfortable and I'm like I don't want
to deal with that I just want to get the
truth
then I'm still fighting against that
thing that I walled off in the first
place
it's interesting is there such a thing
as letting go of an emotion or do you
think that we have to embody it to
process it and be done with it I think
it's more of the latter
I think it's it's not if we try and Let
It Go without processing it again it's a
bypass it's like oh I don't want this
thing I just want to let it go let's
process another word for go through it
yeah
be present with what's here
find a way initially that's why part of
the preparation and and kind of like the
building of a Readiness for experience
is to help somebody self-regulate
initially
how do they come back to Center in the
midst of Challenge and and stress
many people don't know how or we're not
really taught that
breath work is really helpful
mindfulness
can be helpful although sometimes
mindfulness is kind of
just uh a title for trying to get
present with what is but if you're
asking somebody who's stuck in trauma to
get present with trauma then you're just
recapitulating the trauma
so it's it's a way okay can we find a
way to help regulate the nervous system
the body in the midst of the psyche
being willing to
get intimate with something that was
highly uncomfortable have you ever had a
brutal time on the Psychedelic yeah for
sure like are we talking starting to
panic kind of brutal time
there were times when I experienced
panic in the midst of medicine what did
you do
breathed just came back was that just to
find something here and now that takes
your mind off of whatever's causing the
Panic no it's it's for me it's a way to
get Center in the midst of it it's like
if I'm hitting you know a big wave
there's so much there can be so much
energy that's starting to get unlocked
there can be so much kind of like a
Reclamation of a lot of energetic input
that I was walled off from that can feel
like
a lot to handle
a lot to be present with and so if I can
if I can in the midst of feeling all of
that energy if I can come back to breath
because that's usually the first thing
that gets cut off when we start to get a
little freaky or a little challenged and
overwhelmed as we cut off our breath
okay so can I come back can I just first
and foremost be aware
that we're starting to redline come back
to breath and then work on deepening the
breath widening the breath slowing it
down the breath conscious breath
practice is the best and most efficient
way to regulate the nervous system and
when you're having a moment like this I
don't know how much you're willing to
share but by all means give us as many
details as you're good with yeah but
like is there a jaguar in the room
that's about to bite you are you
literally reliving a trauma where it's
like both psychologically and physically
I feel like I'm back in that moment yeah
good questions uh all the above's
happened reliving trauma
that I knew and reliving trauma that I
didn't know I didn't know where it was
coming how does it manifest
like if you if it's something pre-verbal
it doesn't come to you in pictures and
you're actually seeing the thing or does
it manifest like
um an archetypal that's not the right
word but it gets us close enough like
something like like it shows up as a
snake but it really just represents evil
yeah
that all can happen
um I haven't had visions of what we
might call like Spirit helpers or some
people would use the term totems and
that could be like a jaguar
condor
uh a bat a raven
the the the evil quote unquote demon
coming at me uh I haven't had those kind
of visions that are overwhelming and
freaky
mine have been more along the lines of
like the trans-personal collective
trauma
and what I mean by that is like I'll
just give you one example and this was
when I was living in the jungle and I
was going through deep dietos and a lot
of a lot of work in isolation with
Ayahuasca because I was on an
apprenticeship path and
and the medicine that I was working with
particularly is is known for kind of
opening up the psychic space and getting
in touch with like the collective
um what Peter Russell might call like
the no sphere or the wet sphere or sorry
Peter Russell would call the the global
brain uh deshardan would describe it as
a no sphere it's like no o sphere yeah
the group Collective mind
um Rupert sheldrick would call a bit
like the morphic field and that all
species have a group field
so like just a bit of a bite
Side Story real quick so Sony and I were
just down in Thailand recently hadn't
been there in a long time had the
opportunity to dive I hadn't dove in
four years or no 20 years 24 years
and so I'm down there with Fish And I'm
watching
you know what I've been hearing more and
more particularly with Rupert
sheldrick's work on morphic field and
morphic resonance the group field and
all these schools of Fisher you know
they're they're turning instantaneously
as a part of a larger kind of group
field mind and so each species has this
group field mind
and then to bring it back to the story
we're talking about
there was an there was a time there was
an experience that I had in the midst of
Ayahuasca uh in the maloka in the kind
of the temple space powerful experience
beautiful
the ceremony came to conclusion I went
back to my tombow or my Hut and I'm
laying in the hammock and usually with
Ayahuasca work for me I'd end up staying
awake till dawn so there's usually like
this 2 A.M to 6 a.m just window of just
silence and meditation which is really
beautiful I love that kind of quiet
space
and I'm in my hammock
and somewhere around three four in the
morning
plus or minus
um I start feeling this this
really heavy intense for lack of a
better term dark black energy
coming up my this surrounding the soles
of my feet
and then gradually working its way all
the way at my body
and over the course of probably four to
five minutes so long enough to get a
little freaky with it like what the hell
hell is this I've never experienced
anything like this before
was like I was slowly being lowered into
just the pit of nasty goo
and then it comes up and kind of like
you know wraps around my head and I'm
just
okay well this is the ride we're about
to go on finding breath and finding just
can I Surrender into this while I'm
still pretty freaked out
and then as it kind of like you know
envelops my face and hits my forehead
I just saw
um
the best as I can describe the
the collective
pain
and
human to Human
suffering that we have imparted on one
another
so genocide rape torture child torture
child molestation
just that
butchering is just
all in my Visionary space just like
right here not only see if I could feel
it
super overwhelming
because I'm thinking like and that went
on until dawn
so for like I don't know
90 minutes two hours or something felt
like a lifetime
and then when Dawn came just
slowly washed away
and so in that moment I'm thinking like
is this my stuff I've never even seen
this stuff or thought about this stuff
where's this coming from
and
in that moment
and those moments over that you know the
course of that time I find myself
holding my breath and can I come back to
my breath and can I be present and as
much as I try and wall that away it's
just here it's like it's like my eyelids
were you know glued open and I'm just
watching the screen of Butchery
and I didn't know what to make of that
so you're actually seeing images of all
this horrendous stuff yeah and I don't
know what to make of that
and
the next ceremony wasn't for two more
days
and so I'm just like for two days just
thinking like what the heck was that
I'm not sure I want to go back to
ceremony if that's going to happen again
um but I was committed to a d at the
this process of an isolation where you
were working with one primary teacher
plant
and next ceremony comes and okay let's
see what is here I mean with trepidation
let's see what's here and so same
process go in a ceremony in the maloka
ayahuasca ceremony concludes nothing
major happening ceremony go back to my
Hut in my tombow in my hammock
and around the same time probably 3 A.M
same process happens but this time the
feeling tone is totally different
starts with the soles of my feet works
all the way at my body comes back around
my head hits me in the forehead but the
feeling tone is light
it's effervescent
it's like
feathers and butterflies and joy and
and when it hits my forehead the
Visionary space opens up and it was the
complete compliment
it was like Jesus ministry
it was like watching healing and Grace
sunsets new Dawns child being birthed
into the world angels singing it was
like the whole compliment and it was
just so radically
kind of confusing but also exhilarating
and and curious making
and then about the same time
at dawn it kind of resolves
so both of those just two days apart
were like the complementary experience
of what we have
the opportunity to be a part of because
we have free will Choice how am I going
to use this one precious life where do I
devote my energy how do I want to
experience my life and how do I want to
engage with with the rest of my brothers
and sisters all having their own shared
experience of living
and so we we're capable of all of it
Hitler on one side Jesus on the other
and you could you know there's there's a
Litany of names on both of those sides
and so I just offer that because we
don't necessarily know what's going to
happen in the medicine space and I was
deep in Iowa work
and and that was after a couple of
hundred ceremonies
and so I offered that that's not going
to be
you know if it took a thousand people
through a medicine space I doubt
anything like that would happen except
to maybe one or two
for whatever reason we don't ever know
what's going to happen in the medicine
space but
if we can Avail ourselves to recognize
that we are the complementary totality
of human potential on both sides of the
equation
then when we go through that process the
Veil
gets like like in The Wizard of Oz the
curtain comes back and you see the
wizard or you see that thing or whatever
those things were from the subconscious
that are here for us
that are here to support our Evolution
because that's why we come into a body
is to evolve our understanding about
ourselves and our understanding about
life
all of it's here to support that
Evolution and sometimes it's really
uncomfortable
and sometimes it's really intense but
whatever you went through there is a way
through
and that's the facilitation and the
facilitator's jobs to be able to hold
that container and sometimes that means
intervening if somebody's standing on
the ledge and they really need a
lifeline
great I can be there
or you know the facilitator can be there
it's kind of like the facilitator's job
is
one of my teachers would say the
facilitator's job is to be the waiter
you know just serving the main course
and saying like you know do you need
anything else with that do you need some
extra ketchup or water or a new napkin
um or sometimes it's being a sherpa and
helping the person up the mountain and
if you have a load that's really hard to
carry then I'll carry that load for you
for a little while but I'm not here to
do your work for you or save you from
what your work is my my job is to try
and create as much safety in the
container
so that the person can be present with
whatever comes up
and then through that kind of process of
self-discovery if we can stay with it
for long enough and the maps trials are
also three sessions so it's not like one
session is a one and done for people
that don't know what's Maps
multi-disciplinary Association for
psychedelic studies
Rick doblin founder of that organization
non-profits they've been around for 35
years maybe 40 years principally
promoting
the legalization of mdma's supported
psychotherapy
and their success rate is phenomenal
MDMA Psychotherapy for PTSD
post-traumatic stress disorder like
veterans coming off of the battlefield
and still re-experiencing it or anybody
going through a really intense process
my sister had PTSD
and so many people do have PTSD that's
why there is hope you know we're working
as best we can towards legalization as
rapidly as we can because people are
still dying
knowing that this therapeutic is
available which is still a travesty
that's taking so long but it's it's in
motion
and sort of just bring it back to that
one example I mentioned that the maps
studies are for multiple sessions not
just a one and done so we don't expect
that
just one session is gonna like fix
everything or it's even just going to
give the person enough space so that
they can go on with their life usually
it happens that way usually the first
sessions is enough to kind of like back
off the ledge if somebody's on the ledge
and then it's a process and so we see
what's revealed each time
honor that
work through it consolidate it integrate
it to your point in your word integrate
it integrate our understanding around it
but the maps trials too it's not just
MDMA therap it's not just MDMA in
isolation it's MDMA therapy
it's with a psychotherapist it's with a
guide a facilitator
and
the when we have a foundation of trust
and connection
when we have the understanding and
appreciation that we're gonna we're
gonna look under the hood we're going to
do our best to bring all of our parts
home
we're going to honor whatever comes into
the space and we're going to work
through it
when when all of that is kind of set as
the foundation along with
self-regulation
safety kind of a Cadence of the the
process so a person kind of knows what
to expect
then the medicine work is just to
catalyze and kind of like accentuate the
therapeutic relationship in the
therapeutic process medicines are just
catalysts so they stimulate the process
to be a bit more efficient and a bit
more effective but the medicine doesn't
do anything
by itself to quote unquote fix the
situation I think they they help to
clarify the truth of if it's trauma or
whatever that kind of uncomfortable
thing was or is or how it's still
working in our lives or whatever we've
been disconnected from like catalyze
that currency it's a term that I use
kind of like with this work is we get
current with a lot of the stuff that's
been unresolved in the back
in the back of our own minds and the
subconscious
bring that forward
work through a process of
discovery and then towards healing and
then towards integration I need to begin
categorizing this stuff so I can
understand it better now you quoted
somebody I forget their name I have a
feeling you'll remember this is a
paraphrase but we need experiential
spirituality not intellectual religion
nice yeah so it's uh I understand that
I'm sort of dragging you into
intellectual religion territory but it
will really help me to to understand
sort of what is breaking and what we're
trying to fix so I I am very curious so
you refer to it as a plant teacher
but my view on it is that the plants
basically have come up with a mechanism
they can't run so they've come up with a
mechanism to effectively poison the
things that try to eat it as basically
as a way of saying [ __ ] off
um
do you think that that's happening and
we just re-contextualize and go out you
might be trying to tell me to get lost
but there's actually something really
useful here or
is there really something where you
think it has a specific and message yeah
much better way of saying a specific
intention
intention and intelligence
and an intelligence that might be in
service to an intention
so Stan Groff was the one who offered
that kind of wisdom um it's important to
not only have an intellectual religion
I think it's helpful to have an
intellectual religion like to understand
like Buddhism is not necessarily a
religion it's more of a spiritual
practice but it's very much about
understanding the intellect and the
nature of life and suffering and how we
work through a process of self-discovery
with our minds to be able to come into
state of
peace joy and happiness so there's an
intellectual understanding of religious
context that can be helpful but we also
have to have an experiential
spirituality
an experience of spirit experience of
some kind of divinity some kind of
connection with the source of Life
otherwise what's it all for why are we
here
and why would we have an inclination
towards
Divinity if Divinity didn't exist
oh well let's get into that because I
have a potential answer for you okay
great so let me let me pause because I
want to come back to the second part of
your last question yep
so if I'm talking about plants I think
it's helpful to distinguish between
natural medicines and synthetic
medicines
natural medicines
psilocybin
cannabis
Ayahuasca peyote San Pedro
five Meo DMT from the Cerner and
desotoad Ebola
and synthetics ketamine MDMA LSD
and in a variety of different analogs
similar to each of those
natural medicines have evolved with an
intelligence
with some kind of earth-based wisdom
like the book
um The Secret Life of trees
the things that we wouldn't necessarily
see because of the way our nervous
systems work and the speed of our
nervous systems
we might not necessarily see the
communication between plants but it
happens or other species
and there's an earth-based intelligence
that's built around
[Music]
what we might and I think there's a
Buddhist term but Joanna Macy kind of
coined this and she was one of the like
mothers of ecotherapy
is this dependent code Rising like
everything evolves in Synergy and
complementarity to one another
over thousands and millions of years
we've evolved with this complementarity
all life is important because it's
evolved as such
and as such the natural medicines have
this earth-based intelligence kind of
programmed into them just by the nature
of being earth-based
that is an imparted intelligence that
can become imbued in the medicine state
not always but frequently so if you have
somebody going through Ayahuasca process
or a psilocybin process or cannabis
process oftentimes there's an experience
in working with those medicines of a
reconnection with nature
and an appreciation where we have a
really important role on this floating
water rock that we all call home to kind
of Steward it in a good way we're the
most creative creatures
with this vast intelligence sometimes we
use it well and sometimes we don't we
constantly make a lot of decisions
against our own Survival so I don't know
if that necessarily makes us the
smartest one but we're certainly the
most creative
and we have these sophisticated levels
of
resiliency that we can co-create in the
midst of challenge new experiences and
new Solutions just like these amazing
problem-solving machines
nature is too but we have this like
special kind of
knack for it
so the natural medicines can imbue that
with our reconnection with earth-based
intelligence
the synthetics don't
tend to do that as frequently they can
because it's important for us to
remember our correlationality
the fact that each of us is sharing this
one life just from different lenses and
experiences
but because of causes and conditions
and and kind of how like how we came in
with our own Persona and and character
there's never going to be another time
Bill you there would never be another
Dan Engel before or to come I mean
there's a radical level of uniqueness
it's helpful to recognize that so that
we can have a shared
um appreciation
and ideally reverence and
respect and responsibility the
generations to come so that this whole
thing continues to propagate because if
it's just about us in this one life then
why keep it going
and so the synthetic medicines the ones
that I mentioned they can oftentimes
imbue that more like downward Focus
um but it's not built in as as directly
as the natural medicine so if I'm
talking about a plant medicine
it's also helpful to recognize that if
we're talking about medicine work in
general
it might be more
um accurate to just talk about it from
my perspective about medicine work in
general versus just plant medicine
because the synthetics have very strong
therapeutic
potential as well they tend to be more
kind of what would be described as like
constructionable or directionable
um because they don't have that kind of
like earth-based intelligence built in I
can construct or kind of preempt
an idea about what's going to happen and
oftentimes it does happen this is
oftentimes seen in the LSD trials
meaning that you can control the trip
more no it's more like if somebody is
going through an LSD session and they
think it's going to be a hard session
oftentimes it's a hard session
if they think it's going to be a light
session they're going to go meet God
then oftentimes that kind of like
expectancy is revealed and that won't
work with Ayahuasca or something like
that it can but it typically doesn't
like what I uh particularly
um if you were in a thousand ceremonies
and you made an attention every single
time what was what you thought was going
to happen might happen a handful of
times just like trying to predict a
dream so what's the intention going back
to the idea if it's a plant teacher uh
that there is intentionality to it what
is the intention I think it's don't eat
me you think it's
you think it's don't eat meat eat me I
think plants are trying to it's
interesting so as I was researching you
I thought okay every species has has to
choose on an evolutionary time scale but
they have to choose what path am I going
to take right so your typical animal is
going to be mostly
um
it's imprinted in their DNA so they're
going to do things by Instinct and one
horse is going to be like another horse
is going to be like another horse so you
come out 20 minutes later you can do all
the things that a horse is going to do
humans on the other hand ride on the
back of culture so
um depending on when and where you're
born you're going to be able to adapt
that so Steve Jobs in the modern era
makes the Iphone Steve Jobs 2000 years
ago would not obviously have been
dreaming in Vain about the iPhone would
have been something completely different
um
so I was thinking okay are the plants as
a strategy are they saying oh I'm going
to make a toxin so that people will
leave me alone or like so is wheat the
most successful plant of all time has
wheat actually domesticated US versus US
domesticating wheat there's actually a
really interesting argument to be made
that wheat domesticated us since it's
now the most prolific plant on Earth and
we have built our houses in a way that
we can take care of it and raise it well
and get it everything that it needs work
around the clock on its schedule it's
pretty crazy so
was that wheat's evolutionary strategy
was to hook humans not knowingly but
just as an evolutionary strategy and
then is it that psychedelics are like
hey I'll become meaningful to you uh and
maybe in the beginning it started out as
a poison but over time it became oh wow
like people are really protecting I've
actually heard you talk about we have to
be careful not to let these plants get
diminished so that they're no longer in
their natural habitat and all that and
so I thought oh my God like they've
convinced you to take care of it so it's
like was that the evolutionary strategy
which were then and again I believe in
the blind watchmaker where it's not like
the plants like oh let me think about
the best way to manipulate a human it's
just that's that ends up being the thing
that works and that's why people grow it
and cultivate it and all that stuff but
that's the angle I come at it from do
you come at it from that the plant has a
knowing intention like it's a plant
conscious with a knowing intention or is
it just sort of blind watchmaker I
believe
at work yeah good question I think it's
probably somewhere in the middle they
have Consciousness but it's different
Consciousness than we have so it's hard
to
transpose our direct awareness into that
um field
but that field is present
so plants will also Orient to survival
do they get bummed out when things don't
go their way
um it's a level of consciousness
right so rocks we can make the argument
rocks are sentient they there's an
there's an intelligence like most of our
computer chips are made of quartz
there's an intelligence that's going to
be imbued
plants have intelligence
animals have intelligence humans have
intelligence
do dogs get bummed out when their
masters don't come home or die yep
different level of sadness or maybe an
expression of sadness then a human might
but still sad
do plants have that same level of
connection
to the humans
good question
I do believe there is a relationality
to all species on the planet because
we've all co-arised together
I do think to your point that there are
defense mechanisms because we're all
built for survival
but we're also oriented towards growth
and evolution
it's the thing that keeps this whole
living ecosystem propagating and moving
forward because we do evolve over time
and we have these primary needs at times
that can be a little
um
disparate or going in different
directions our need for safety and
survival and our need for growth and
evolution
and I think all ecosystems share that
same base binary
differential and kind of uh inclination
and so if we bring it back to medicine
work that's oftentimes a framing
that's helpful
like whatever comes into the space that
feels really freaking scary and maybe we
want to hold that down because of
survival
maybe that's actually part of our growth
and our evolution
is to get current with that is to bring
that close and to learn from it and grow
through it
so as to become more mature more whole
and ultimately more in service to a
shared ecosystem
do you think there's a universal meaning
to life
well that's a good question
I like the nature of your questions
um I do believe we're here to learn and
grow
so that's the purpose
I think that's the ultimate purpose and
was that put into motion by a deity
including having the like if we're just
talking about from the human perspective
if we're here to have a human experience
I do believe that growth and evolution
is our primary drive because everything
in the universe evolves consistently
what do you mean by it it evolves
everything is is in the process of like
in a darwinian evolutionary sense
I wouldn't use just that kind of like
singular conception I think there's
truth there but I don't think that's the
whole truth
now if if we're going to look at it from
a transpersonal lens
then we might get into the conversation
of soul
yeah I don't want to get too lost but
I'm trying to understand what your
organizing principle is so I can sum up
my organizing principle in a single word
physics now I don't know what put the
physics in motion I'm perfectly happy
for it to have been a what would seem
like to me a completely disinterested
deity but isn't that curious to you
isn't what curious what put this whole
thing in motion it's the most
interesting question on Earth yeah
so
if you're interested in the physics
is it easier to just focus on the
physics because the question about what
started the physics in the first place
is just unknown like you can never prove
that I think so what I hope is true is
that God is knowable now I don't think
that God is anything like a person and
in the same way that
I I don't believe in pan Consciousness
or whatever it's called I don't think
rocks have anything remotely approaching
Consciousness or intelligence
not in the way that a human would grasp
because we're so used to it being
interpreted through a nervous system now
but at the same time I'm not the guy
that solved the hard problem of
Consciousness so there's clearly
something I don't know and understand so
I'm just operating from how I organize
my thinking so I I want to believe that
God as I'm defining it here is knowable
effectively you can call God the laws of
physics or whatever put the laws of
physics into motion but because I cannot
conceive of absolute nothing and I
certainly can't conceive of at one point
there's absolute nothing and then
suddenly laws of physics there's
obviously something I don't get but it's
a wonderful organizing principle if
you'll give me the miracle that at one
point physics came into being cool now
from there I feel like everything is
knowable from there when I start
playing it out so that I can
come up with a frame of reference that
is effective
now one has to Define effective so
what's effective
the next sort of miracle that I will ask
for is
it's not a miracle but it is an axiom
that I can give you no
non-subjective reasoning for but I take
the Axiom that we ought to organize life
to minimize the suffering of humans
that's a very human-centric approach but
that's the Axiom that I operate under so
when I'm looking to understand physics
I'm trying to understand it so that I
can have a frame of reference that
maximizes the what I'll call fulfillment
of The Human Experience and minimizes
the suffering of The Human Experience
from that I have come to believe in my
non-psychedelic using whey that
we are
an evolutionary creature that was
created by a blind process born from the
laws of physics so we start as you know
a single celled amoeba is just trying to
stay alive and to your earlier point
it's really about survival and you get
this ever branching fractal of
evolutionary Paths of trying to stay
alive and so if we all have one common
ancestor
everything that we see and I agree with
you very much that this all happens as a
as a collective and as you were talking
I thought oh he'd never want to go to
Mars
which is interesting and I suppose I
should ask rather than just tell you but
I have a feeling that that wouldn't be
ideal for you anyway so it's life nature
whatever word you want to take is going
on these incredible fractal Paths of
what are all the ways that we can
survive
against each other
now would you use the word against
probably not but that like kind of
language really speaks to me and so this
red and tooth and Claw sense of like
um
laws being put in place and then you
just see what happens and it is the most
astonishing it is the greatest show on
Earth it is the most Astana on Earth in
in the known universe yeah Universe has
like whatever that ends up being totally
unbelievably cool to me yeah and so all
of that is utterly fascinating but you
and I even though I find you interesting
and I'm so intrigued and you've you've
been to a planet psychedelic that I have
not been to and so I sit at your feet as
a student trying to learn but we come at
this from really different angles and so
I come at it again as the man standing
on the shore who's never been wet I come
at it from the perspective of oh this is
all a blind process that is just the
fractals of all these different Paths of
how do you survive in you know an Ever
sort of expanding population on a a
finite water Rock traveling through
space forget how you said it but that
was so cool
um and so to me it is it is not a guided
process there there is only the purpose
that you assign it there is no
um deity you had said wow God what's the
purpose of the impulse to Divinity if
there's nothing Divine or there's no God
that's directionally accurate to what
you said
and for me it's
it's all the things that I've just been
saying there is no like
person-like thing that's like oh I want
good for you and I've created this plant
medicine to help you like reverse
engineer your trauma and figure out what
it is and finally release it but it's
utterly fascinating that there is a
plant that you can take that makes you
feel like if you reach into your right
pocket with your left hand instead of
pulling out your wallet you pull out the
Andromeda galaxy like that is so
interesting to me you can reboot your
life your health even your career
anything you want all you need is
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today
so you and I share this deep Fascination
and
I really have to try it so I can have
any credibility in this conversation
whatsoever but it's interesting that we
see it from such radically different
perspectives which is why and I I feel
like maybe uh you feel like I'm trying
to force you into a box but I still
don't understand like how you
conceptualize like to break it down into
a really
small number of words what is it that
breaks in a human and what is it that
this fixes if it isn't integration I'm
still lost like what are the other but
you have to categorize it for my
unfortunately I'm I'm on land and you
have to describe what it's like to be
wet but I need to understand
or I'm a colorblind you have to describe
red even more impossible
but what is the category of break and
what is the category of healing
excellent question
and everything you just said in regards
to like the blind watchmaker could be
true
100 percent
we we still pale in
uh potentiality for proving the unknown
proving the godhead or like you know
whatever we describe as the source that
created all life we don't know we have a
lot of really creative
numerous theories and hypotheses on it
But ultimately at the end of the day
um I think your your points are really
good one like well I think was Henry
Ford whatever it is that we believe is
true
yeah whether you think you can or you
think you can't you're right totally
I want to just honor everything that
you're just describing
and if I was to give you my kind of
world view and Zeitgeist on what gets
broken and what gets healed or revealed
or integrated
it's going to be a story that goes on a
little bit of Journey if we have a
little bit of time
we have time as long as I can track it
because if it starts to feel mystical
then I'm unmoored again and I don't know
how to use it is it hard for you to
track the mystical
uh uh without defining mystical which I
introduced it and didn't Define it
without defining that I don't know so
here's how I approach the brain
dear Black Box I don't know what you're
doing none of us do but I can give you
certain inputs and get certain outputs
that are remarkably predictable even if
I can't say oh I'm going to go into this
trip and it's going to be positive or
whatever I can
I feel like you've described red to me
so well that I can re-articulate it in
my own words which just from researching
you in this conversation I feel like
psychedelics are that you are trapped in
a frame of reference
it is blinding you to the truth to use
your word which is you are you've become
so myopic to the pain that you've lost
sight of the uh Myriad states that the
human mind can produce and because Henry
Ford is right and if you believe you're
in pain you are in pain
you've become so myopic on the pain you
can't get out of it and so all a
psychedelic is doing and you use the
word Veil all a psychedelic is doing is
lifting the veil of your frame of
reference so that you can see there's
something else and so now as you get
sober again and the veil drops you know
there's something on the other side of
that and that realization alone when
coupled with therapy allows you to
integrate oh there's something beyond my
veil and
it is I believe I haven't done it but I
have a feeling that this is the exact
emotion I go through when I get trapped
in a failure and I'm thinking I am a
failure and then I remember no no you
value yourself only for Learning and you
can learn today you can get better and
suddenly it goes from constrictive to
expansive and I feel different in an
instant and I'm like whoa just changing
my frame of reference I'm a failure to
no no I can learn and get better and and
that thinking this way is not valuable
and thinking this way is valuable it it
changes my neurochemistry [ __ ]
instantly man and the number of times
that I do that I'm just like this is
insane that just shifting my perspective
changes my physiology 100 and so I'm
like this is psychedelics is my guess so
even though I'm colorblind I've
experienced this thing called red we
might be using different words but I can
categorize it right so it's like to me
that moment even though I don't
understand the brain and you could say
that the brain is Mystical
I can categorize what's happening even
if it's wrong like objectively nothing
that I just said is what's going to come
out when you scan my brain or test my
blood or whatever but as a category that
allows me to move in a direction I'm
like word that makes sense and so I'm
I'm here for mystical stuff if it can be
categorized and thusly it's integratable
which I know I keep forcing that word
and you've been very clear that there's
something more than that but the more
than that part is what I'm failing to I
can't figure out what the threat is that
I can grab to hold on to to go oh I get
that yeah
and we may be talking and I agree with
everything you just said
uh
and
I want to bring it back to what we were
describing earlier about the
differential between an intellectual
religion and an experiential
spirituality
so it may be hard to grasp that aspect
of the mystical or the
the effervescent kind of like you know
thread that's hard to grab as directly
because you haven't had the experience
can we Define mystical as something that
comes from a place beyond you with
intention oh God that's my best grasp at
what I think you mean by mystical
yeah and I think that's a that's a
starting place I like the the beat kind
of beyond the small self
into something larger than our egos
maybe that has an intention maybe not I
think there's that's not an important
part to me that's like the core of it
that there's intention
I firmly believe that there is does it
have your best interest at heart or is
there dark mysticism
um I think it includes everything just
like I
I uh was referencing in those two
different experiences that happened two
days apart
if I'm only experiencing the hell realm
or that deep darkness that we all have
the potential to engage and impart on
one another
all of the crappy things that we've done
to one another and are still doing to
one another
complement that to all of the BD all all
of the beauty and and the love and the
generosity and the the the glory that is
our potential I think it's it's all of
that
and so if I'm
gonna start pulling on that thread of
mysticism part of what I just want to
also kind of re-reference with a
foundation of data
is that the majority of novice
psychedelic voyagers going through their
first
threshold macro dose of psilocybin said
they had had a mystical experience
that's Johns Hopkins research
and they Define mystical well there you
have scales of mysticism there are
literally scales that look at okay tell
me about your mystical experience what
kind of flavor did it have what degree
of depth and kind of profundity did it
have
there are ways to to try and
make objective the
the
the more kind of um personal experience
of divinity it's it's hard to
completely measure a totally spiritual
and subjective experience so we try and
do that with these subjective measure
scales these and and one of those is the
scales of mysticism or a scale of
mystical experience
and if we start to pull on that thread
of mysticism and like what are we
getting into what are we starting to
talk about
the
moment that I
started pulling on that thread
unexpectedly
was in my third year medical school I
thought I was going to do pediatrics as
my profession
uh and I I thought I was going to do
pediatric surgery so because I wanted to
work with kids but I also wanted to have
the you know the Hands-On kind of
process that surgery uh allows
and so I did a rotation on the NICU the
neonatal ICU where you see little ones
come in to the ICU setting because
they're sick or infirmed or injured
they're not having a good day
and
oftentimes they're preemies or children
that have been abused or in an accident
and I would see these little ones come
in
and oftentimes die
um
and it was just
the big kind of turning upside down of
my apple cart
and I couldn't figure out who was the
puppet master in charge of this
um
and so I started asking the those kind
of questions like what is this whole
life thing about and what's the meaning
of this little one coming in and having
a six-month suffering experience and
dying
and what's the meaning for their parents
and and just trying to wrestle and grasp
that I almost quit medicine
and because you had no good answer
because I had no good answer
and it was it was too overwhelming
literally I wrote down as soon as you
started talking about surgery and kids I
was like what about kids dying like I
just couldn't be around that yeah it was
too [ __ ] heavy man it was heavy and
and I couldn't understand it there was
no meaning for it
and therefore I took a pause uh didn't
end up going into
uh surgery or Pediatrics I ended up
going into child psychiatry
interestingly enough to try and
understand like the nature of the mind
but also to still work with kids
and
but what it did is it sent me down this
kind of rabbit hole of trying to
understand
what's the what's the meaning of a
suffering experience
the only thing that makes sense to me
is that our souls come into a body
through an evolution evolutionary
process of learning and growth to
continue the
the thread of
awareness
so that if the soul line comes into a
body
and it's a bit of a sole line why not
just Soul what's Soul line so the soul
experience has this Arc of recurrence in
a human form it's a bit of a Buddhist
orientation to reincarnation
reincarnation okay it could talk about
past lives future lives parallel lives
multi-simultaneous existences we tend to
think of things in linear timeline just
because it makes more sense
kind of how we live our lives
um but that might not be the way it is
it may be parallel maybe everything's
happening simultaneously in multiple
ongoing threads like you know in
interstellar when
he's journeying down the Tesseract and
you can find any of these wormholes to
any other Myriad un innumerable parallel
experiences
so
ultimately after just trying so many
different schools of thought so many
different religious understandings
spiritual understandings
um traditional kind of ecosystem
understandings like people that live
close to the ground that have noodled
around with Consciousness like what are
the commonalities and the commonalities
with most traditional cultures
is that there is consciousness outside
of a body
and that Consciousness has an
evolutionary Arc
and so when I say the soul line or the
soul thread
it makes the most sense to me that if
somebody is coming
have you seen recent do you watch any of
the Pixar movies of course so that
movie's Soul yep
pretty brilliant depiction of a
potentiality of the soul level
experience
so do you feel like there well let me
ask it a different way what
what evidence did you encounter that
made you go okay it's probably something
like this I know you're not saying it's
exactly like this it's a potentiality
I was recommended by one of my uh so I
had a A very wise maybe an oracle-like
um attending physician those are the
like training teacher Physicians
and in the midst of my pause and being
like I don't know if I can continue
medicine
and I was just wrestling with this
existential crisis
and we started talking about and really
noodling on it she just happened to be a
transpersonal psychologist
who was able to see things from multiple
perspectives and she wasn't imparting
anything she gave me a bunch of
different books to read and just kind of
like other schools of fun and
philosophies one of those books that she
recommended among many others was Brian
Weiss
Many Lives Many Masters
and this was a psychiatrist head of the
Mount Sinai Psychiatry Department fairly
reputable position
who was using regressive hypnotherapy
predominantly for anxiety so
hypnotherapy
where somebody anxious about a
particular thing or a phobia or it could
be depression too but I think the
predominant client's help he was working
with was anxiety
he would put them in a hypnotic State
and regress them to the original point
of the trauma or the inciting event
and then work towards resolution of that
in order to heal the anxiety in the
present moment
and he had great success and
hypnotherapy has been around a long time
Erickson Milton Erickson is kind of like
the Godfather of hypnotherapy
and
one client in particular
who was having a very suffering
experience he regressed her back to the
the original event and it just happened
to be in a previous life
and he had no concept of divinity or
previous lives
and it was really destabilizing to his
world view but he was why did he believe
it so a lot of this stuff my
understanding because it was helping
that's very different than it being true
he didn't he didn't know that it was
true and he said it was destabilizing to
him well it was destabilizing because he
didn't even have a concept of
hypnotherapy going into past life I made
him believe it so if I encountered that
I'd be like this person is making it up
utterly fascinating and she believes it
I'm not calling her a liar and she's
saying right so through the serial
investigation gradually
started to believe the potentiality of
that and then gradually started having
more and more clients coming through
this process of being regressed
backwards debating him and Abstract is
this something that you also agree with
so I because I know you've studied
hypnotherapy
aye nice good homework so I was
radically curious about that like oh wow
that's somebody who's fairly reputable
position sat on it for a while I don't
think he published that book until like
10 years after the original client
knowing that he was going to be
blackballed by Psychiatry and booted
from his position and he was
and he still got
people well so he continued through a
process where people were able to not
being directed by him to go back to
you're going to go now back to past life
it was like let's go back to the
original event and then consistently
that started happening more and more so
Brian Weiss is one of the guys Michael
Newton is one of the guys
his kind of um
clinical uh synopsis is in a body of
work called Life After Life
and 40 years of experience thousands of
clients he researches everything mad
takes copious notes and started creating
this clients would spontaneously create
this architecture of the Soul so these
were the guys that I just started
getting really curious about so I wanted
to learn more architecture of the soul
the past lives yeah okay yeah we could
talk about like what happens before and
after a body
and so I started getting just curious I
wanted to understand is this
can we validate this can we get under
the hood and is there any way to see the
the truth in it quotas you know so to
speak
and then that led to a variety of other
kind of Investigations one of which was
the University of Virginia's
uh department on psychology and past
life recall with children they were able
to accurately
describe previous lives
that could be verified
with people that they had no contact
with and the family had no contact with
something like 3 200 case reports
and when we when we start getting into
those kind of numbers
then it starts to beg the question like
okay is there something here that is a
different question for me which is
um there's something going on but what's
going on
good question we don't know
there's an so that's that's where we're
going to continue to kind of create our
own world view to make sense of
something outside of this life and I was
with you until you said outside of this
life so we are gonna construct a world
view we're gonna come up with a story
which is exactly what I think about when
you describe that so they've done really
amazing tests
the brain will come up with an answer
for everything no matter what question
you ask and so if you have somebody
whose short-term memory is damaged so
that they're unable to transfer it to
long-term memory you can come in meet
them leave three minutes later come back
and meet them again and they won't
remember meeting you and they did this
test and they put a pin on the doctor's
hand the doctor reaches out to shake
their hand they shake it it stabs them
they're like yo what the hell they leave
they come back in hi it's nice to meet
you they stick their hand out the person
won't shake their hand but they don't
remember why and so then they ask why
won't you shake my hand and they'll make
something up oh I've never shaken the
hand of somebody in a white lab coat oh
I don't shake hands on Tuesday whatever
they come up with some reason and they
just make it up
and we that's a well-documented
phenomenon so if you've got somebody
asking you like no go back like remember
remember and they're like I can't
remember okay go earlier maybe it was
before the before that before that and
I'm trust me I'm not impuning that they
did anything intentionally wrong but if
you get two humans together and they
have a world view if you have one person
especially if they're good like I'm
really bad at at being hypnotized so if
I do like the eye trick and all that
it's like no you're not very
hypnotizable and then I'm probably a
nightmare because I want to be
strong-willed and so I'm sure I'm very
combative so I had somebody try to
hypnotize me he's like yeah you're not
going to be hypnotized easily anyway and
so and huberman's talked a lot about
this they're he's hyper hypnotizable so
you've already got people that are very
open to suggestion and so you can use
hypnosis on them wonderfully and it
works and it's I studied this I was
really interested in hypnosis for a
while because I really I was having
trouble sleeping at one point I wanted
to hypnotize myself and also I went
pretty deep down the rabbit hole
could be an amazing therapeutic tool I
haven't tried it so again don't know but
in terms of like researching it there's
there is a very easy way to construct a
world view based on Research that's been
done that these are people that are
highly susceptible it was
unintentionally given to them like take
the kids that are describing something
that they couldn't have possibly known
uh they could know it because it's
something known in history which is how
we can validate it so how did they end
up picking it up why do they remember it
when other kids don't I don't know but
but slow that part down
if there was
the opportunity to document
a previous life
connected to and that could be a handful
of years ago it could be a handful of
centuries ago
some time ago
with no connection between that past
experience and Incarnation and this
little one
like totally different cultures kids
that aren't on the internet and this was
also a good portion of this started
becoming uh kind of
data tracked in in the database
decades ago before the regime in the
internet
how do you Rectify that
for me it's very easy so Occam's razor
all things being equal the simplest
answer is usually correct to me it is
far more simple that that kid heard
something that the doctor gave something
away in the way that they were framing
the question kid wanted to please and
make them happy the doctor didn't mean
to lead the witness as it were but they
were and that the kids then gave them
back the information responded to them
getting excited about something so
they've documented this both real fast
they've documented this with horses that
can supposedly count and the second the
horse can't see the owner they can't
count anymore it's because the owner
even though they don't mean to they leak
off like yeah yeah you're going in the
right direction oh you should stop there
and so what the horse is really doing is
picking up on cues same thing with kids
and what was the 80s with the um devil
worshiping like uh oh God where kids are
being taken care of I forget what day
cares and the kids were being hypnotized
and like yeah they were doing all this
demonic [ __ ] and parents were freaking
out like oh my God there's this epidemic
come to find out it's not true these
kids are just hyper susceptible to
suggestion and positive reinforcement
and so they ended up saying back the
things that they wanted them to say and
then one more piece to put on this you
had
um Houdini said I guarantee all these
people that are looking into a crystal
ball whatever like they've either
somebody doesn't remember saying
something to somebody else about this
thing that nobody could possibly know
and so he went and he put for the time
it was like an unimaginable Amendment
like 10 million dollars and said I have
I've thought of a word only my wife
knows it if anybody gets it right she'll
pay out of course nobody got it right so
it comes down to I think very and I am I
want to fully acknowledge I have a world
view
and for anything to come into my world
it has to like my world view is very
stable and so you can attack it from a
thousand different angles and it's like
oh that actually makes sense boom and I
can adopt that new thing and my world
view stays stable but when something
comes in that for me to take that one
thing my entire world view
would have no anchor not even that I'm
anxious about it just I wouldn't even
know how to reconstruct it
so
this feels like
it requires somebody to have a world
view of like either I know nothing about
how all of this works and so it's all
mystical it's like turtles all the way
down
or I think that's it like that's the
only I don't see how to incorporate that
into
certainly my world view which
is built on a foundation of there is a
point at which I don't understand I
don't know I need the miracle of and now
physics exist and so man if there's like
if somebody could give me the data layer
versus like the intuition of like and
this is what I'm building this on top of
like nothing would be cooler for me than
all of that being true and that we're
this is all mystical and that you can
contact the Divine like that would be so
rad like I want that to be true because
it's way cooler than my sort of very
grounded and that I know that there's a
miracle that I'm asking for so if
someone could can like penetrate that
miracle and help me like get to it I'm
keenly interested so I get accused
sometimes because whenever I hit
somebody that has the more mystically
oriented world view
that people think I'm being walled off
ah I'm super open I just have not yet
heard something that aligns with all the
other elements in my world view that
makes me go ah that fits yeah if you've
got it man I I am truly all ears well
what I heard you say
is that nothing would be more cool
but it also sounds like it might be
quite threatening
see I I it's not threatening because you
said you said your world view but it
doesn't make me anxious I just I don't
know how to reconstruct it with some
because remember I'm about efficacy so
my worldview is predicated on that there
really is a an ultimate good which is to
optimize for human fulfillment minimize
for human suffering and that I think
that laws got put out again I don't know
how that's the miracle I'm asking for
but then after that if you knew
it's all that's when I say that God is
Noble that's what I mean if you knew all
of the the exact unifying laws of
physics that you would be able to go up
you send that billiard ball and now I
can predict everything so
I feel like okay the world view that I
have have accounts for everything that I
see and know and all that now I'm aware
that I can't I certainly don't know the
unifying law of physics so something we
don't understand for sure for sure for
sure but man like the the way that I
view the world takes us down to
um GPS which is pretty [ __ ] hard to
create and requires you to actually know
the laws of physics whereas kids knowing
a past life doesn't predict anything for
me it doesn't allow me to do anything so
now I'm like okay this isn't efficacious
so if I'm going back to for this world
view to make sense it has to make
predictions and then I have to be able
to test those predictions
and I don't yet
I'm not able to experience so again it's
not stressful to me
it's just my worldview makes all these
predictions allows me to do all this
[ __ ] that's [ __ ] incredible and
I don't see anybody else
proffering a world view that makes
predictions that I can leverage to my
more fulfillment less suffering
what if there was a world view that
incorporated mysticism but to your
degree of productivity I love it [ __ ]
yeah
what is it that's actually the thing
that makes the most sense for me if I
start talking about soul and
evolutionary course
because that means the Soul's kind of
productivity is to continue to move
through learning and growth over time
and say I'm born
into
a horribly traumatized
experience
that gives me a particular
early imprinting versus being born into
an incredibly privileged experience
those two
being so different
if it's only kind of random chance
then I don't have as much of a
foundation to understand my productivity
in an evolutionary cycle
because those two early experiences a
person is going to go through Evolution
and productivity and they're going to
learn and grow over time for sure but
say
I'm back in the NICU
and that little one
or or you know we can say like okay
somebody would say ego doesn't really
consolidate until we're you know
somewhere around like two three maybe
four years olds and we start to
myelinate and connect all these
different brain centers that give us
more of a self identity so say it's not
even a NICU maybe say it's just a picu
pediatric ICU
four or five years old this little being
starting to make their own sense of the
world and then you just smashed and dead
and gone like my world we have a hard
time grappling with it so I may and I'll
also just
um own my potential bias I may be
grasping for something to help me make
meaning of that [ __ ] yeah it's
interesting as you were talking I was
like God do I even want to be right so I
have thought a lot about this
so okay I have a world view that is
optimized for efficacy
but the thing that I want to reduce
human suffering may actually be helped
by your world world view and so this is
where you get now into deep philosophy
the problem of evil this is what made me
turn away from
um Christian religion so for when I was
probably 13 14 I was devoutly Christian
so I got to 1516 I became devoutly
daoist
and really went hardcore down that path
and I would say those two things
together really
[Music]
um
they've had way more influence on my
frame of reference probably than even I
realize and I realized that it's very
deep but definitely rejected the
specific manifestation of the Bible
which to me feels way more like a
metaphor that's grappling with the human
condition but the whole God works in
mysterious ways is how you hand wave the
problem of evil and
while my worldview really forces the
brutality of tragedy will befall you for
sure you're going to lose the people you
love you already have I've lost people
that I love and will continue to lose
them all until I die or they die
that is
brutal now I'm going to assign meaning
to it because it is the path forward
and I think where you and I just have
chosen a different path and in no way
shape or form do I want to invalidate
yours because [ __ ] if it works man go
for it but the thing that I have grabbed
is I get to assign meaning to it I get
to learn something from it the the most
terrifying thing I can imagine is the
death of my wife
I am stopping myself from getting
emotional in this very second because
a I was thinking about it earlier today
for some weird ass reason and then B
like I just don't wanna I I'm not even
interested in that world
it's it is a level of human suffering
that I don't want to go through but the
death of a child to me is the worst so
going back to the the NICU
I think you have to assign meaning I
think it is just tragedy and I think it
really sucks and I think somebody who is
born into just unimaginable amounts of
trauma that's ruthless I don't think
there's a reason for it I think you need
to assign meaning and purpose or it will
consume you but I I don't think that
there's any purpose or intention I think
Hitler was evil and I think he killed a
lot of people and I think it was an
unimaginable tragedy that I I really
can't fathom the extent
of that and if you've read Mao the
untold story if you've read the gulag
archipelago
it's just evil [ __ ] man there's just
evil [ __ ] people do evil evil things and
you and I share a love for Victor
Frankel
but we may be taking different links
from it what I took is that hey there's
a gap between stimulus and response and
it's your job to put meaning there God
isn't going to do it for you past lives
aren't going to do it for you
Ayahuasca is not going to do it for you
you have to assign that meaning and if
you fail to do that you're in real
trouble yeah
yeah the things that you mentioned May
support developing a meaning
But ultimately it's ours to choose
the last of the great human freedoms the
ability to choose one's attitude in any
circumstance
and when we do imbue that meaning I get
curious on your side like how in
in the totality of that potential to
experience suffering loss of your wife
loss of a child unimaginable suffering
that we're born into how does your world
view make sense of that
it it really is as simple as what Victor
Frankel said
your living life you have evolved your
brain works this way and there happens
to be a gap between stimulus and
response and based on your value system
and your beliefs you get to assign
something to that that will give you
energetic I'm trying to use your words
but like uh it will manifest in in a
very strong physiological response and
so in Victor Frankel's Man's Search for
meaning he says you can predict with
within 72 hours when someone will die
within a concentration camp because you
see them give up and once I give up 72
hours later they're dead and I was like
whoa so that means like and we how we've
heard countless stories of okay I need
you guys all to to let go so I can let
go now and that but people can fight and
fight and fight until they're like
please like let me go I I need to let go
but I can't if I see you holding on to
me and then once you let go like they're
dead like that's really interesting to
me
now what that says to me is that once
you don't have any meaning and you're
like well this doesn't make any sense
anymore then you just stop and you're
able to consciously communicate to your
unconscious
cells and
and you let go and that
I would co-opt your word divine to say I
am so enthralled by how the laws of
physics play out that even if this is
all preordained and even if I couldn't
stop myself from saying these questions
and having my world view and that I am
literally just an automata and that you
could
know ahead of time my every thought
motion flake of skin everything
it doesn't diminish how rad this is and
I
am given so much
relief
in my suffering
to know that that I get to
have a value system that feels like it's
my choice even if I'm an automaton it
feels like it's my choice I get to
choose the things that I believe they
feel like my choices and based on that I
get this really amazing energetic
response just by shifting my thinking
and going oh my God my wife died but I
can assign meaning to that and I can now
fight in her honor or I can uh honor
everything that she gave me by loving
again whatever but I get to now assign
that meaning and it will really give me
a strong feeling
based on that yeah
yeah it's beautiful you're describing
this this
glorious
um Free Will opportunity to create our
own world view
to put meaning around our experience and
without that meaning there is emptiness
absolutely
and
the the Growth work that happens through
those challenges life challenges are
going to happen tragedies are going to
happen we continue to iterate our world
view
your world view
sounds like it shifted from where you're
at with a relationship with Christianity
then a relationship with taoism and to
where you are now in your teens to where
you are now like our truth changes Our
World Views change over time
and I think that's part of the
evolutionary process that happens in
just even one live stream is we get to
try on things and see what makes the
most sense see what helps us make sense
of the world
and that's a little bit different for
everybody
um ultimately at the end of the day
I I get inspired so much by people that
have gone through just so much intensity
so much suffering and been able to find
meaning in it I think that's why
Frankel's just such a hero of mine
uh and other people in similar
situations that went through unspeakable
tragedies that I'll never understand and
never know
and found a world view that made sense
found meaning through that it's like the
it's like the Triumph of our spirit
it's like the the the the the greatest
Glory that we have
to go through such intensity
and some people's intensity is different
from mine and mine's going to be unique
to me but you know really go through the
grinder
and come out the other side
with something to share
and and the desire to continue to still
make the world a more beautiful place
let's bring it back to psychedelics for
a second so if each of these is a
medicine then to each problem there is
the right medicine
um
anxiety depression those are running
rampant yeah is there
um is there a particular plant medicine
or synthetic that is particularly
helpful with those two things kind of
depends on the underlying
issue because we all have different
constitutional
Expressions so if you and I went through
the same kind of tragedy you would
express it differently than I would
and some people would Express a given
trauma on the anxiety Spectrum others
might experience it on the depression
spectrum and and many would experience
it in kind of both in a mix of the two
um
the ex so the underlying
traumatic kind of event
ideally that's investigated over time
and then kind of how that's layered on
environmentally
and then the symptoms and the style of
its expression
so anxiety can express itself in a lot
of different ways it can be phobias it
can be generalized anxiety can be PTSD
it can be OCD
there's certain medicines that are
researched for each of those
if we bring it back to trauma we know
mbma is a very good and effective trauma
medicine
however for some people on the
depression side who have a sensitive
serotonin system there can be a drop off
on the back side because MDMA is such a
serotonin surge
it also works on the other receptor
profiles too but particularly with
serotonin
um
and so if I'm just talking about it so
all of that was kind of a Prelude to me
just answering the question more
specifically or I'm sorry more generally
um depression does really well with
ayahuasca
and there's a variety of different
theories about why that is it seems to
rehabilitate the serotonergic system
it seems to also clear out
the metabolic load and toxicity in the
GI system which is where most of the
serotonins made most of Serotonin is
made in your gut and then it's
transported to your brain so Aya has
this so weird it's pretty fascinating so
weird Michael Gershon wrote a book
called the second brain and it's all
about the gut brain access and that kind
of like neurochemical Highway
and so Aya may have the Dual effect it's
working physiologically literally to
repair the search Energy System as well
as GI systems that's the hardware it's
also working on the software side it's
working on the trauma sites working on
the psychology it's working on like what
that underlying inciting event was or
the series of events
on the anxiety Spectrum if PTSD is
technically under an anxiety designation
where the system is constantly hitting
sympathetic overdrive because it's
re-playing a traumatic experience I
believe that the system is trying to
come to resolution that's why it's
replaying it
right so that's just kind of what we do
we we hit a challenge and we learn from
it and we learn through and we grow
ideally
uh
kind of along with the incorporation of
its lessons
I mean that's what builds resilience
it's like the ability to adapt to
challenge over time
and so if we're taking that kind of
uh more like constitutional designation
of anxiety Spectrum disorders you have
OCD under there you have PTSD under
there
um so if we're looking at medicines that
are really good for that anxiety
Spectrum
MDMA particularly for PTSD psilocybin is
very good for OCD
uh and even some interesting so
psilocybin is the one that I micro dosed
I think I took a gram does that sound
about right uh probably 100 milligrams
okay 0.1 grams way smaller yeah uh so
okay a gram will start getting you into
a threshold macro experience well so I
felt intoxicated but I did not have any
brightening of colors no hallucinations
nothing I literally felt like I was
Tipsy is the right way to describe it
um
could have been a grand that was it but
typically micro dosing is sub threshold
dosing so you shouldn't really notice
much is on board I kept increasing the
dosage because I was like I don't feel
anything I don't feel anything I don't
feel anything okay and so you don't
really want if it's a micro protocol you
don't really want to notice that much is
on board interesting I felt like if
there's no difference like even so take
caffeine uh
even though if you're a habituated user
like you at least notice if you don't do
it I noticed nothing and so I'm a big
titrator so I I got a capsule and was
told take the whole capsule I was like
[ __ ] that so I took like a quarter
capsule nothing half capsule nothing
full capsule then I started to feel like
okay I feel pleasantly buzzed but I felt
like well
this because I wanted it to make me more
creative because this was during a phase
I was writing a lot and so I was like
well now I just feel like I'm drinking
at work and I'm like it's not making me
feel more creative so 100 milligrams can
make some people feel a little buzzed
the micro dose range for most people is
somewhere between 75 milligrams and 200
milligrams okay
so if you're sensitive and like you're
really aware of your neurochemical and
cognitive state
and you notice that 100 milligrams is
kind of like on board and if it's one
capsule then that's probably 100
milligrams
depends on the size of the capsule and
the strain of the psilocybin because
they have different strengths the the
micro dosing kind of regimen this is Jim
thalamin's work and also Paul stamina's
work and Paul stamets has a fascinating
kind of History being resolved of his
OCD after a heroic dosage why why
psilocybin and OCD do you know what area
of the brain is disrupting turning on
turning off I don't know which that's
still being researched kind of as we
speak it seems to be working on multiple
different receptor profiles in multiple
different areas of the brain
uh and it seems to also give enough of
this kind of neuroplastic and egoplastic
reset especially going through a
threshold experience he took way more
than even a heroic dose according to his
report
um what freaked out crawled up into the
top of a tree and kind of waited the
night out and was really freaked out but
the next day or like very shortly
thereafter didn't have any stuttering
interesting right
iboga is kind of like that iboga is a
fascinating medicine
because you can have people addicted to
heroin decades long go through one
treatment
and they don't have withdrawal symptoms
no withdrawal no crazy so weird
fascinating possibly could be resetting
what what yeah I'm you're gonna say that
it's being studied but I don't
understand how you can knock out because
people get violently ill totally
it works we don't know it works on so
many different receptor profiles it's
the most complex psychedelic that we
know of what's it made from
the the Ebola is the whole plant
ibogaine is the chief alkaloid of that
plant kind of like if you took mescaline
out of peyote or mescaline out of San
Pedro cactus it's the chief alkaloids
the chief psychedelic alkaloid
and what the benefit of taking ibogaine
out of Ebola is that you can has a more
specific dose range it doesn't last
quite as long and is therefore easier to
use in the clinical setting to help
somebody with severe addiction go
through a detoxification
iboga by itself can last anywhere from
like 18 to 24 hours even up to 30. you
did Ebola did you literally eat Leaf
bark and they call it eating the wood
yeah so you masticated bark yeah
interesting okay well it's already
ground up and you take it dry and shoot
in the water and take it dry and shoot
up the water take it dry and shoot it
with water
interesting so no wonder that that takes
so long to then work through the system
yeah well it can also take that long if
you're taking the concentrated extract
and it encapsulated it's the half-life
of the medicine interesting to your
point it does work a little slower when
you're trying to when you have to absorb
it from just dried bark but not that
much in my you're talking about a couple
hours over a 18 to 36 hour kind of
window so it's a fraction of a increase
but not much
the bug is a long one it's a long one
it's beautiful it's an amazing medicine
it's a national treasure and cultural
heritage in Gabon
and many of the local people's Japanese
people will work with ebola because it's
so well known kind of like if in the
Amazon River Basin the majority of
people working with Ayahuasca right or
the majority of the people in northern
Mexico working with peyote and with the
wicholas
um that was part of what was happening
in this like what's known as the golden
era or this kind of thousand year of
Peace in the Northwest shoulder of South
America when so many people in that
entire region were working with San
Pedro cactus so there are times in you
know kind of human history where there
might be an organized group of people
working with a concentrated medicine
culturally in in in a community that has
effect in that Community ecosphere not
just individually but how does the
community work with medicine
uh and when we understand more of like
the background of traditional medicine
we realize that all medicine
was also done in community not in
isolation
and so it's part of what we're still
trying to rehabilitate in our current
psychiatric system is to recognize that
healing ideally doesn't happen in
isolation we're born to bond and that
the best and greatest healing happens in
community and so what does it look like
when we start to bring these psychedelic
therapies into community and group
experience
doesn't necessarily mean like
everybody's healing has to happen in a
shared room but when we're going through
a process when we're experiencing the
togetherness of brothers and sisters who
are also going through a similar process
then the group field lifts it it
becomes a healing container
and like the rising tide lifts all boats
everybody's going through healing
process and and and that level of
communality end
mutuality starts to be also its own
therapeutic
Force
if you had somebody let's say a world
leader who was just hell-bent on War
what
drug would you want to give them first
drug yeah first right out of the gate
Putin yeah MDMA
that's the one safest bonding connection
love appreciation
gratitude for Life ease
togetherness
yeah just like let's let's
kind of round out the edge of that
aggression
and usually that's from a place of
scarcity or threat you know maybe that's
stimulated from trauma like let's just
lace the space with love and and build
from there
uh as long as
there's not a major contraindication and
and there are contraindications to MDMA
uh somebody has a heart condition or
uncontrolled hypertension
um there's a like the two biggest that's
not an exhaustive list at all
um as long as a person doesn't have
contraindication and they're held in you
know safe space with really good
facilitation it's kind of hard to screw
up MDMA therapy
it's very interesting it's something
I've long wanted to do with my wife I
think that that would be amazingly
enjoyable
um yeah something I have to think about
so how do people assuming that they live
in a country like the US where this
stuff is still illegal how do people
experience this in a way that doesn't
end them in jail
that's the million dollar question and
part of what we're doing right now in
the education advocacy Arena which is
just trying to drive public awareness
so that we can demand that
it's a travesty that MDMA is languished
in schedule one designation it doesn't
belong there at all
schedule one designation means there's
no therapeutic potential and is highly
addictive
well the therapeutic potential is
evident you can make a case at MDMA
therapy is addictive all right cancel
you can make a case that MDMA is
addictive the effect can be addictive
like people want to continue to chase
that high okay we'll put it in schedule
two at least make it prescriptive
opiates are scheduled to
I mean those are that's crazy
phenomenally addictive and killing a lot
of people
um so it's a travesty that MDMA is not
yet available it's been a 30 plus 35
year campaign
and saludos and and major props to Rick
doblin and the entire Maps Organization
for just holding the candle and vigil
now it's kind of sexy and a lot of
people are excited and there's a lot of
times since the 80s that's crazy crazy
like 40 years his campaign Jesus and
others around him
um and now India May and psychedelic
therapy is the sexiest thing in medicine
not just Psychiatry but medicine in
general for good reason because its data
is so good its promise is
is valid
um for how it can help rewire and heal
people's internal psyche and help us
come back to a state of togetherness in
our community so we can have more
Harmony amongst the people
and
MDMA I would put in the level one
medicine there's a level two medicines
level three medicines that's one way to
think about it you have synthetics you
have natural medicines it's one way to
think about it and you have medicines
that can go alongside MDMA therapy as
well and there's going to be more of the
Alchemy not just singular medicine
agents but combination medicine agents
right like ketamine and cannabis right
now those are two legal medicines and
some people are using them together
already interesting I tried ketamine and
oxytocin yeah
so again that's a great combination it
just made me feel again a little bit
drunk so I'm not sure what I was
supposed to feel and I certainly wasn't
in a clinical setting uh but again it
was one of those where it's like if I'm
gonna do a drug there better be like
some real Advantage well you have to
it's that could be a dose thing if you
don't take enough then you're kind of
sitting on the rim so to speak I was on
the room for sure yeah so if you take
enough you will have a threshold process
particularly with ketamine you can't
fight that one off I mean it's a
surgical anesthetic people you you get
you get enough on board and you're gonna
go to sleep now if you wrap around a
therapeutic process to that and that can
be laced with music somatic therapy
guided visualization talk therapy or
just you in the in the process ideally
you have at least really good music
because particularly with ketamine it's
a dissociative so you really don't have
your senses about you
and it and without some kind of input it
can just feel like you're just floating
in space and that can not be super
helpful for some people
um especially if it's if it's their
first time
um so that's just an example of two
medicines that are legal that are
starting to meet these together so when
MDMA and psilocybin become legal individ
independently and individually
then there's going to be natural Alchemy
and when do you work with both of those
simultaneously
and when you work with them individually
and there you get into the Alchemy kind
of what you were describing about before
which is like okay you have somebody
with depression which is your go-to
medicine and so that's where you get a
history of the client's experience what
they're like what they're going for
you get kind of a sense of which
medicine to work with at which dose
you don't want them sitting on the rims
so what's their metabolic profile what's
their psychic structure what's their
level of guarding there are medicines
that you can shake off so to speak
particularly if it doesn't feel like a
safe environment
um but if you give if you give enough
ketamine you're going to go to sleep if
you give enough 5mio you're going to be
out of your body
some people start with five Meo from the
Sonoran Desert too that's a level three
medicine and at least in my book you
don't start there like what what happens
if you low dose
5ml
you have a pleasant experience to be
kind of like effervescent but it won't
be necessarily a crossover
and if you're a crossover there's a
reason that 5ma is called a god molecule
tend to cross over and you're back to
the source code whatever that source
code is and wherever it came from but
you start seeing that fractal landscape
connecting the entire
holosphere multi-universe kind of
fractality
origination
and for some people that's a really
scary experience to have your conscious
Consciousness just shot out of your body
kind of immediately because that's what
phivomia will do when it's smoked there
are other ways to work with 5amio
uh that don't come on people when people
are doing 5ma are they yelling and
screaming like what's it take me in the
room that kind of depends as well
especially if a person hasn't had any
alter State experience and they start
with 5amio and they start with a
threshold crossover dose of five meal
that's super freaky
for the majority of people you're in
your body you have no experience with
Altered States and all of a sudden your
Consciousness is way outside of your
body you don't know where it is that's
pretty freaky so most people are going
to have a bit of a oh [ __ ] moment
interesting to me is that one is very
time constrained because it only lasts
like 15 minutes right right yeah see
that's interesting it's one of those
like God do I want the like intensity of
that but at least if I hate it it's only
15 minutes long yeah but it feels like
15 lifetimes
that's not very helpful because time's
so irrelevant when you're back to the
source code you're out of your body like
that's a no time space is it useful in
the ways like other ones give you like
these Keen insights into yourself
does going back to the source code just
seeing sort of fractal visualizations
like are people coming back with like oh
I understand myself better now or
oftentimes yes it's helpful even if
people don't exactly know why have you
had experience with it yeah what was
your takeaway
uh it was beautiful
uh I don't like the effect of my
Consciousness getting so quickly shot
out of my body
it feels a little too abrupt uh too fast
I've had other fivemeo forms that were
not the Sonoran Desert toad like vilka
what do you think snort and desert toad
um sorry good question so noren Sonoran
like the Sonoran Desert got it that's
where the toad comes from so it's called
the Sonoran Desert toad not the snorting
desert toad God thank you
um and that's oftentimes uh inhaled or
vaporized because of the secretion that
uh it expresses once dried
you can vaporize that and smoke it
unfortunately there have been a number
of videos showing how to milk the toad
and now you've just got novice people
[ __ ] around with toads and it's
horrible
um they're sentient being there's
it's like just random people going to
the Peyote fields and picking all the
Peyote that it grows really slow it's
already endangered
so it's really important to just have
class have respect
many of these medicines grow really slow
we we over harvested the global
population the global source of iboga in
a very short time in like a 10-year
window 90 of the BOGO was harvested wow
and it takes like 20 plus years to
propagate to like its fullness
and so all that's harvested without
replenishing
Ayahuasca grow slow peyote goes slow
iboga grows slow
and we need to be mindful of the natural
medicines and so because of that there's
a there's a supply issue with the
natural medicines you can make a good
case for going to the synthetics because
you can produce them in a lab psilocybin
is easy to propagate
um mushrooms just grow pretty readily
but you can make a good case for other
than psilocybin let's use the synthetics
because now you you solve the supply
chain issue um
with 5meo
because it it happened so fast
it can be a bit disruptive but
there there are other forms of for
example insufflating
a seed called vilka or yopo from South
America they they have a really similar
profile to the fava meal from the toad
because you're snorting a powder as
opposed to inhaling a vapor it's a
slower onset and a longer experience
like a 45 minute experience
so it comes on slower has a really
similar kind of fractal profile
historically the communities working
with vilka also worked with San Pedro
the cactus it's a very different
medicine 10 to 12 hours versus vilca
like 45 minutes and they would use that
to cross the veils and literally like
black panther
with the heart medicine
or the purple flower medicine which I
forget what they call it he crosses over
and goes to have a conversation with his
ancestors with his dad literally that's
what they were using vilca for in the
catacombs in chavine so you have this
kind of like cultural
usage and historical uses are these
different medicines for me five Meo was
beautiful
in that it felt like a retort a return
to kind of like where we all come from
and that was uplifting
I didn't get any huge messages uh like I
will typically get with something like
Ayahuasca or iboga
and it's similar to ketamine and how
ketamine was first appreciated as
a psychotherapeutic agent
when ketamine was used in the 70s and
80s as a surgical anesthetic
many surgeons and their patients with
chronic severe depression who went under
surgical anesthesia with ketamine
oftentimes came out of anesthesia
feeling lighter and better that's really
interesting like their Depression had
kind of lifted a bit or was at least
interrupted without any Psychotherapy
without they were asleep and woke up and
felt better I was wondering that with
Ayahuasca if there's a cleansing thing
that it's doing literal cleansing in the
gut or something would it still be
beneficial if you weren't conscious for
the intervention obviously not as
beneficial because you're not going to
take away the insights that's a really
good point because with Ayahuasca there
is benefit to just taking the Vine
and so Ayahuasca is a combination of two
plants
the bark
and the leaf the bark of the
banisteriopsis Cappy the leaf of the
trichunaviridus
and so the chakruna is the DMT
the vine is what inhibits the breakdown
of the DMT
and so take the DMT take the trakuna out
and work with the vine itself which is
legal
to just work with Ayahuasca just the
Vine it is beneficial there is a
cleansing effect that happens
in the GI system but there's also a
neurochemical effect because that
Ayahuasca works as what's called an MAOI
monoamine oxidase inhibitor so it
inhibits the breakdown of the
catecholamines and their
neurotransmitters in the brain it works
like exactly like the first generation
of antidepressants that came on the
market
so you have this physiologic kind of
Hardware issue
at play that is having a neurochemical
effect and to your point when you change
your neurochemistry you change your
feeling tone you change your world view
change in neurology you change your
psychology well it also works in the
other way around when you change your
psychology
you change your neurology that's what
hap you were talking about before is
like you just keep coming back to
re-referencing meaning that's changing
your psychology that's staying in this
kind of free will choice we get the
opportunity to choose our world view
whatever that worldview is that makes
the most sense of us that makes us have
some relevance of understanding this
crazy monkey suit experience
we just keep coming back to that just
keep coming back to meaning and that
will that will change our stress
hormones that will affect our
neurobiology and our neurochemistry so
we get to play it both ways and the
medicine work often happens
simultaneously that's one of the reasons
I I'm just so fascinated with medicine
work in general is it affects both our
neurology hardware and our psychology
software simultaneously
and depending on the person depending on
the medicine it may be more neurology
like you put somebody to sleep with
ketamine
they wake up feeling better you can make
a good point that that's really just
Hardware that's just affecting
neurochemistry
and it might be the in in nmda receptors
it might be that ketamine works as like
a
uh neurologic anti-inflammatory
you're kind of decongesting the
glymphatic nervous system which is where
kind of like body has a lymphatic system
brain has a glymphatic system so you
oftentimes particularly after TBI and
Trauma traumatic brain injury and Trauma
you hold inflammation in the like
cerebral structure ketamine seems to
relieve that so you anytime you relieve
inflammation you're going to feel better
that's hardware and when people feel
better now they have a little bit more
space maybe they can actually pick up a
new habit
and then propagate that new habit
because they're not just so stuck in
like the the suffering maybe they have
more understanding about the pain but
less suffering
five meal is kind of similar
at least in my belief system
you have somebody that goes through a
trans personal experience like straight
back to Source oftentimes they come back
some people don't even remember what
happened
like I have that five Meo experiences
with the toad I didn't remember exactly
what happened it just felt like it was
like I could have been there for days
but I came back feeling lighter my
initial kind of like that's way too fast
kind of like a slingshot like here's my
consciousness
and then like you know as it finally
floats back down I feel better my five I
haven't worked or experienced 5ma that
often because that feels too fast but
for me if I'm gonna understand the
different medicines and understand how
they work in association with one
another and when to use them like I was
the medical director of an ibogaine
Center in Mexico for about a year and we
would work with
addicts that were addicted to a variety
of different substances but primarily
opiates
and what like what we were talking about
with iboga before and we'd have people
addicted to pain medications or heroin
daily for 10 plus years
come in with one ibogaine session it's
crazy done
and then four days three four days later
we would offer them 5meo from the toad
so it's interesting how those two work
really well together because I began
kind of clears the Slate of all the
addictive neurochemistry
and it kind of resets the the system
and then you can rebuild a connection to
Source whatever we language source to be
with 5ml
I wouldn't recommend that
for the average person outside of a
controlled setting at all
but it was amazing to see in a
controlled setting where it was legal
um the the efficacy of those two done in
a really concerted thoughtful way
so then we get into the Alchemy again
these different medicines like we have
level one medicines what I would say
cannabis ketamine MDMA LSD psilocybin
level 2 medicines Ayahuasca peyote San
Pedro
level 3 medicines 5meo Ebola
and so when we look at these different
medicines that's not an exhaustive list
at all but say like those are the top 10
or so being researched
how do we know which one to work with
which person at which time because that
I just gave you an example of a person
maybe never had a psychedelic experience
and we went to both of the level three
medicines straight away
you have to do that carefully it's kind
of like going to the gym and just trying
to get another squat rack at 300 pounds
without doing stretching or getting your
form right or even be able to do 100
pounds so there's kind of a progression
and so this is where the Alchemy and
this is where the research and this is
where the Field's growing now into that
direction is recognizing the power of
these medicines
who's safe and ready to work with them
how do you prepare them really well to
get ready for that experience how do you
try and optimize the efficacy of the
experience itself excellent facilitation
healing environment understanding the
need for self-regulation Preparation
work setting intentions and then
integration on the other side how do you
use it
how do you take that gold use that
Clarity use that experience and make it
workable and and effective for Life
moving forward
I love it man this has been so
interesting where can people follow you
um
there's a couple of different websites
and things I'm I'm up to but uh the
thing that kind of is the most apropos
to our conversation
um because it's what we opened with and
it's what we just closed with is
um access to care
where can people start working with
medicines in a legal fashion that are
available well we're we're doing
our job as best we can to educate and
advocate for people's use of the
medicine and we want to recognize that
cost and and a person's ability to pay
should not be the primary barrier to
entry like with people dying on the
streets people need the medicines that
are available so ketamine is the one
that's available now
MDMA and psilocybin will become
available shortly
um I would direct people to our
non-profit that's helping to scholarship
people
that would benefit from medicine work
who are cleared to not have
contraindications and are ready for
treatment
we
work with scholarshiping them for
therapy towards trained registered and
vetted providers in the country that
organization is called thank you life
and it was essentially the kind of the
complement to the book dose of Hope
um because I looked at the two things
that you know to your opening question
if I had three minutes with my sister
it'd be like okay there is hope
there are tools
uh that can support the healing of a
severe experience of suffering and we
know that price and and cost should not
be a bear to entry so there are Avenues
to support people to access those
treatments so I wrote uh with a
co-author dose of Hope and wanted to
point people to uh a system and a
non-profit that's goal is to try and
remove that barrier to entry being cost
and that's thank you live so
thinkulife.org
is the thing that I'm uh kind of most uh
championing these days otherwise Dr Dan
Ingle and a variety of other things that
are in the hopper love it awesome guys
if you haven't already be sure to
subscribe and until next time my friends
be a legendary take care peace
if this episode about psychedelics
resonated with you check out this next
episode about dopamine with Andrew
huberman then what you realize is your
capacity to tap into dopamine as a
motivator not just seeking dopamine
rewards that is infinite and I I can say
with with great certainty that this is
how you were able