In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, the boys talk about the recent legalization of hemp in Canada, and how they plan to grow it here in the United States. They also talk about what it's like to be the CEO of Onnit Academy, a human optimization website that helps you get the most out of your time, energy, and money. They also discuss the new buffalo protein bar that they are making and why it's the best thing they've ever made. This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom and Onnit. If you like the show and want to become a supporter, you can do so by becoming a patron patron of the show or become a patron supporter of the podcast. You'll get a 20% discount when you enter the referral code "Rogan" at checkout and save 20% on your first purchase. It's the perfect gift to yourself and your significant other. Just pay the 2.95 postage and you get 20% off your first box of boxes. Also, you'll get an ad-free version of the entire show on the website, so you don't have to pay for the show on Apple Podcasts. or other third-party platforms. Thanks for listening and supporting the show! Cheers! -Joe Rogan and the boys! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Music by my main man, Joe Rogans and edited by my homie, John Rocha. Music by Ian Dorsch Thank you so much for making this episode so beautiful and beautiful, beautiful and soothing, beautiful, and I hope you enjoy it. -Jon Rogan Podcast Podcast. I'll be back next week with a new episode of his podcast, so don't forget to leave us a review on Anchor.fm/Rogan Experience Podcast. I'll see you soon! . We'll be listening to this episode on Tuesday, July 31st, July 4th, 6/19, 7/5/19th, 8/6/19/19 & 7/7, - Thank you for supporting the podcast? -Rogan Podcast! -- Thank you, Jon Rogan & the boys -- Thanks, Rogan Jon and the Crew -- Jon and The Crew? -- The Crew is -- Will be back! -- Jon & the Crew? --
00:01:57.000And right now, you get a special discount from listening to this podcast.
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00:02:14.000We are also brought to you by Onnit.com.
00:02:16.000That's O-N-N-I-T. One of the new things that we've added to Onnit that's really pretty cool and fascinating is we have a gang of motivational, a gang of instructional videos, of blogs,
00:02:36.000You know, things that you can look at, rather, to get you fired up for training, things that can put you in the right mindset, and things that will show you the correct form, the correct way to do certain exercises, and just demonstrate what Onnit is all about.
00:03:07.000With this idea and this mindset of creating something that we would wish was there for us.
00:03:13.000Selling things that we would use, selling things that we do use, and stuff that we used long before we ever became involved in the company.
00:03:22.000Things like strength and conditioning equipment, like the best kettlebells we can find, the best battle ropes we can find, the best Steel maces, steel clubs, weight vests, ab wheels, all great equipment for functional strength.
00:03:37.000And then on top of that, the best supplements we can find, the best nootropics for alpha brain, the best protein powder and hemp protein, hemp force protein powder, which we still, as of right now, still have to buy from Canada,
00:03:52.000but we are hoping that these laws are changing, and it seems to be they're changing pretty quickly.
00:03:57.000It seems like the house of cards has fallen down on the whole...
00:05:44.000And it's so good because you're eating it and it's like, you know, you don't have any guilt.
00:05:48.000You're completely guilt-free as you're eating it.
00:05:50.000You're like, this tastes good and it's not a candy bar.
00:05:53.000Yeah, Lakota recipe, Lakota tribe, it's still making it up there in the Dakotas, and it's just carrying on an old tradition with new, fancier packaging that allows it to stay fresh for longer.
00:07:45.000An acquaintance who I met through actually the Aboga world, he had gone down here and done this Wachuma experience, which is the original way that you describe San Pedro before it got Catholicized from the missionaries who came in and freaked out that the native people were doing these ceremonies with this San Pedro cactus,
00:09:00.000And obviously the peyote came up through the North American tradition more frequently, and then the San Pedro huachuma was carried on through the South American tradition.
00:09:10.000So this place that you're going to in Peru, is this like a center?
00:09:29.000Someone sent me a tweet saying, you know, something about because of your spreading the word, you know, look at all these different things that are out there.
00:09:50.000You need these kind of review systems, especially if they're of integrity, because this is pretty powerful medicine.
00:09:57.000You're dealing with internal processes that are very intense.
00:10:00.000Ayahuasca alone is a very powerful MAOI, which can interact with a lot of things with your health, but it's also dealing with very deep spiritual...
00:10:09.000You know, issues, traumas that you may have, things like that.
00:10:12.000So getting a really good shaman, a real master, is so key.
00:10:17.000So having good review systems and really even better is knowing people that have been there and talking to people from experience and finding them that way because they're popping up just to make money.
00:10:28.000And just because you're a shaman and just because you have ayahuasca doesn't mean you have any integrity at all.
00:10:33.000Yeah, Amber Lyon was telling us about a shaman that was feeling her up.
00:10:47.000Maybe they put a bunch of toei, which is datura, in there.
00:10:51.000And so you're getting more of like that Batman 1 hallucination instead of the...
00:10:56.000Instead of like a really powerful DMT experience, there's a lot of things that are going on there that are not great.
00:11:02.000But if you get to a real ayahuasquero and a real center with really good medicine, Obviously, as I've described in previous journeys, it can be incredibly powerful.
00:11:29.000This was the single greatest thing for me that I've done.
00:11:32.000And I've done, you know, I've told all these stories.
00:11:34.000The ayahuasca, the aboga, riding the back of a dragon, seeing the flotillas of snakes popping into the eighth dimension, doing, you know, exploring this advent calendar of past souls on aboga.
00:11:47.000Nothing was as dramatically, positively impactful as this experience down there.
00:11:53.000And it was a combination not only of the medicine, but of the integrity of the place and, of course, being held by Gandalf the White Wizard himself, which was something I was surprised at.
00:12:24.000Did you actually have hallucinations that you were hanging out with Gandalf?
00:12:27.000No, just describing that kind of benevolent, friendly, slightly humorous archetype.
00:12:33.000Someone who has access to great power but can just sit around and...
00:12:37.000And, you know, smoke a pipe with you and tell stories.
00:12:40.000Or when he's timed for work, you know, he can step up and do some pretty amazing things, as I'll kind of probably get through into the story.
00:12:48.000But it just really follows that archetype, you know, to a T. Obviously, no direct links to Gandalf.
00:13:27.000You know, some of your dark material that'll start to come up as if it's almost getting ready to surface.
00:13:32.000And then there'll be a serious amount of resistance.
00:13:35.000Like what Steven Pressfield says, when you go from something, you know, something lower to a higher place, there's going to be intense resistance.
00:13:43.000And for me, it was the fact that I was going down to the lower Amazon in rainy season, which means there's going to be fucking mosquitoes everywhere.
00:14:05.000And that's going to come up for everybody.
00:14:07.000Anybody listening who sets their intent to do this, you're going to find at the 11th hour some serious resistance, some fear, some material that's going to come up that's going to tell you, nah, don't do this shit.
00:15:25.000There's a lot of what you would call in Thailand, you call them tuk-tuks, those little bikes that have a big backseat, motorized bikes, and just kind of a sprawling, really dirty, stinky place.
00:15:37.000So you cruise through that place, and then we met up with Don Howard, who runs the center down there, the Spirit Quest Center.
00:15:45.000He's got the long white hair and a big friendly smile.
00:15:48.000So as soon as I saw him, I was like, okay.
00:15:51.000So he's Kentucky-born, the grandson of a root doctor, a Kentucky root doctor, which is like an old natural medicine doctor, and a half Native American as well.
00:16:01.000So his journey, just to talk briefly about it, I learned kind of on the boat ride, because we hop in a boat to go to the center, because his center's on 200 acres in the jungle that he's been preserving.
00:16:12.000So his journey, at 19, he got called to start working with peyote, and went and did the kind of traditional Native American, as with his ancestry, that kind of path.
00:16:22.000To do peyote ceremonies for about 20 years, both with himself and with, you know, leading other people.
00:16:29.000And then he got called to go down to South America and start working with the San Pedro cactus, the Huachuma, and got kind of initiated into the Chavin way, which is C-H-A-V-I-N, and understood, you know, kind of the old recipes, the old ways that they used to make the medicine,
00:16:44.000and not only with the Huachuma, but the Vilca.
00:16:47.000Which is the second medicine that we did.
00:16:50.000And the Vilca is the most potent DMT experience on the fucking planet.
00:16:55.000Like nothing else, and I've done many of the other ways, can come close to that.
00:17:00.000It's a combination of NN-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and bufotinine.
00:17:14.000So much farther than even ayahuasca or anything else that I've done.
00:17:18.000So he got called to start working with those medicines along with ayahuasca down in the jungle and had been doing that for 30 years.
00:17:24.000So he'd had 50 years of experience working with these plant medicines.
00:17:28.000And as you can imagine, that's a long time to...
00:17:31.000You know, to be on the path and just be following, trying to heal as many people as possible and show them the medicine.
00:17:39.000So awesome guy and someone that usually with these shamans, they don't speak English.
00:17:44.000So you kind of get a vibe from them and then you do the medicine and it's all kind of magic.
00:17:49.000With him, you know, not only is he leading the ceremony in that way, You can just sit around and bullshit with him.
00:17:56.000Talk to him about crazy females that tried to take him to the dark side and all kinds of these stories that you would find from a guy like if you're hanging out with Gandalf in the fucking Shire and eating supper and smoking his crazy dragon pipe.
00:18:11.000It had that kind of feel to it when you get there.
00:18:33.000So we go into this screened-in place, but I'm still extra paranoid, so I set up my mosquito net, and I'm completely doused in bug spray, just wet with bug spray, because I'm still super paranoid.
00:18:44.000So we get in there and end up talking, go through the initiation, get to a pretty good degree of comfort, and we're going to do the medicine the next day.
00:21:02.000And I guess to me that was just a metaphor of the mud being the jungle itself, you know, and the mud being what's me, you know, what's inside me, this flesh, this life, this everything all being connected.
00:21:17.000Trust that it's not going to fuck me up.
00:21:19.000Trust that some mosquito's not going to come in or some millipede's not going to crawl up my butthole and sting me and I'm never going to shit again.
00:21:27.000And you hear these stories too, like don't pee in the water because then this fish will crawl up your urethra and spread its spines and explode your dick.
00:22:19.000I just felt like a sick person going to get some medicine.
00:22:22.000So we get in there to the ceremonial hut and laid out is what's called the Masada.
00:22:26.000And that's a key part of the Wachuma ceremony is this kind of mesa that they set up.
00:22:32.000And on it is these six skulls, three female shamans, three male shamans.
00:22:39.000They're actual human skulls and set up.
00:22:42.000And then there's jaguar skulls and then there's artifacts spanning all the way back to Shavin, which is 4,000 years old.
00:22:48.000There's a piece of the moon that's on this altar and How'd they get a piece of the moon?
00:22:53.000In doing the medicine, you interact with a lot of people who've done and collected a variety of things.
00:23:00.000And one of the things after you're done is you feel compelled to give something back for what you've received.
00:23:07.000So a lot of these, most of these are just gifts that have been accumulated over 50 years of work.
00:23:13.000I don't know exactly where that piece came from, but somebody had that given to them, whatever, and then they say, holy shit, you changed my life.
00:23:21.000Here's this fucking piece of the moon.
00:23:23.000Maybe it wasn't a piece of the moon, but it was given as a piece of the moon.
00:23:31.000But anyways, the skulls were real, the jaguar skulls, all this.
00:23:35.000And they have a big centerpiece in the altar called the Lanson.
00:23:38.000And that's like an ancient kind of shavin central pillar, which acts as like the center of this altar, called the axis mundi, which, you know, transforms kind of into ceremonially into like the center of the universe, is what that's supposed to be.
00:23:55.000So we're sitting there, and he starts going around, and the medicine in San Pedro is the liquid medicine.
00:24:01.000I didn't even know if it was liquid, if I was going to chew it.
00:24:03.000I really had no fucking idea what was going on.
00:24:06.000I knew that it operated on the same serotonin receptors that mushrooms and some of these other things, 5-HT2A serotonin receptors.
00:24:17.000I kind of knew a little bit of the mechanism of action, but I didn't really know anything other than that.
00:24:22.000And he starts going around the room and he's got, you know, kind of a warm smile.
00:25:02.000So anyway, he opens up these things and it's actually covered in the skins of the San Pedro cactus, these little vessels.
00:25:08.000And he starts looking around the room and he'll look at you for like five seconds and then kind of get a read on you and then pour a certain amount into a cup.
00:25:21.000So I was seeing, and he's pouring little bits in the cup.
00:25:24.000And for me, I wanted to project, you know, like, give me the fucking mother low dose.
00:25:28.000But I decided I was just going to trust what he was going to do.
00:25:31.000So eventually, you know, I watch everybody drink, and it looks like they're drinking maybe two ounces based on what he's pouring.
00:25:36.000And he gets to me, and I just bust out a huge smile.
00:25:40.000You know, I was like, all right, let's do this.
00:27:29.000Like the medicine is going to change and that the first part is going to be very exuberant and may even result in uncontrollable hilarity, you know, in the first part.
00:27:57.000So everybody's kind of getting chatty, and then we hop in the boat, and we cruise around, and you can start to feel that energy start to build.
00:28:05.000Very psilocybin-y, you know, as that kind of, you feel something start to come on, and you want to stretch out your spine because there's some energy coming up through you.
00:28:14.000And we start to feel that in the boat.
00:28:16.000But then by the time we landed on this little inlet, and you're cruising through the jungle in these rivers, and it's crazy because you'd have no idea how they know where they're going because they're going through these small little openings in the mangroves and the trees.
00:28:30.000But whatever, 35 minutes later, we end up in this really isolated landing that looks like nothing.
00:28:36.000And these little bare-chested children come out and run out to meet us.
00:29:13.000And then from the mental side of things, everything just starts to open up like the most beautiful...
00:29:19.000We just landed in the most beautiful place in the whole universe.
00:29:22.000You know, you just start to look around and it has this kind of...
00:29:27.000Looks similar, but the lighting is a little bit different, and it's just kind of glowing to you like you just landed in fucking Pandora on Avatar World.
00:29:35.000And the only way I can describe the feeling of that was some combination of the best MDMA, like what MDMA wished it could be in its ultimate form, and a bunch of mushrooms at the same time, just smashed together.
00:29:51.000So you had this kind of energetic side from the mushrooms and this kind of visionary clarity and this just pure ecstasy of, I feel so fucking great that I can't even stand it.
00:30:02.000You know, which was not at all what I expected from the medicine.
00:30:05.000You know, I was expecting something much more visionary, kind of head down, visions, stuff like that.
00:30:11.000So we get out there and we start interacting with the tribe.
00:30:13.000The kids come and then the little kids start playing with people in our group.
00:30:17.000And the kids, you know, because Don Howard only brings the Westerners out there to this tribe when they're blasted on Lachuma, you know, the whole tribe thinks that we're the coolest fucking nation of people ever, ever in the history of the universe.
00:30:31.000Because we're just fucking hugging everybody.
00:31:01.000If you hug your friend, and we had some good friends down there, or hug one of the people in the tribe, it just feels like this amazing connection you have with them.
00:31:11.000And if you eat a banana, it's like the best tasting thing you've ever had ever before.
00:31:17.000And so they come and they meet us and the men were off in the jungle doing some work.
00:31:22.000So it was just the women from the tribe.
00:31:24.000And they start playing some songs and leading us around and some dances and we're stomping around.
00:31:29.000And they have a few handcrafts that they had made and we're cruising around and we picked up a few things to kind of support the tribe, dropped off the mosquito nets.
00:32:04.000Maybe that's why the pink dolphin called you.
00:32:08.000So anyway, so we're hanging out there, and at that point, I started, you know, we actually had a crew there with us that was documenting this, which we'll get to see at some point when this comes out.
00:32:19.000But they were asking, you know, about, well, how do you feel?
00:32:22.000What about all the things you were worried about?
00:32:24.000And it wasn't at that point like I had any solutions to the problems that I was concerned with.
00:32:29.000It was just that all of it was meaningless because life was so fucking beautiful and so good.
00:32:35.000I didn't have to figure out any of these problems and worries and concerns, loneliness, fears, everything.
00:32:41.000It was just such an overwhelming feeling of everything was so amazingly good that it just didn't matter.
00:32:47.000It's like we're alive and that's enough.
00:32:49.000Every breath was so amazingly positive and And such a gift to be in that you couldn't even worry about something else.
00:32:58.000And that was kind of the nature of that first little stop off in the jungle.
00:33:05.000But then it started, so we were there for a couple hours and just laughing and having fun and screwing around and thinking about things and smiling and eating little snacks like the banana.
00:33:17.000And then it starts to get dusk, and so we go into another boat ride.
00:33:21.000And slowly before that it happened, kind of the hilarity of things and everything started, the energy started to drop.
00:33:27.000And I remembered back to what he was saying, how the medicine's going to change.
00:33:32.000And certainly that's when it started to change.
00:33:34.000Everything kind of got quieter and a little bit, you know, still very powerful, but in a different way.
00:33:41.000Kind of that ecstatic energy where you felt like you had to run around or had to stretch or had to do something just to release this energy that was in your body.
00:33:51.000And so we're at dusk on this boat ride, and the way that the shadows were, it was like very difficult to distinguish between the jungle and the reflection on the water.
00:34:02.000So we're cruising in this canoe, and it looks like we're cruising right through the divide between, you know, air and water.
00:34:09.000Everything is just really difficult to discern what we're doing.
00:34:12.000It's a really kind of cool visual effect, obviously made stronger by the Wachuma.
00:34:16.000And I start to have my first visions from this experience.
00:34:20.000And I start to have visions of just what I identified as the true nature of life and that kind of feminine, life-giving, birthing energy.
00:34:33.000And it was just this crazy, ecstatic vision of life within life within life, like looking at a human, not only as a person, but then a collection of cells filled with bacteria, filled with parasites, filled with life, just teeming all the way down to the level of the flagella that are moving around,
00:34:52.000And then there was visions of the octopus tentacles flowing and changing colors.
00:34:58.000Even in the dirt, the dirt itself was alive with different bacteria and insects and things.
00:35:04.000And everywhere you look, there was just life bursting through every seam.
00:35:08.000And with that, I saw three women with these long, venomous fingernails and Big, voluptuous tits and amber skin and amber hair, dark, dark eyes.
00:35:19.000And you could see the venom dripping from their nails and they're smiling at me and waving me forward, three of them, waving me forward like this.
00:35:28.000And it was the most irresistible sight I've ever seen.
00:35:32.000Just this life everywhere, tentacles and...
00:35:35.000And I realized that that energy, that polarity of that extreme, life-giving, material, feminine energy was what was completely irresistible to the other force, which is that life force, that source, the non-creation consciousness that has no form and seeks order in all things.
00:35:56.000And so this polarity of masculine and feminine were just irresistibly attracted to each other.
00:36:01.000And that's what made the balance between the earth.
00:36:05.000And the phrase, which I still don't really understand, but I kept saying it over and over in my head, was that existence is the ecstasy of dichotomy.
00:36:14.000And I think what that means is just that balance between this life-giving, feminine, succulent, seductive, sexy, ecstatic, chaotic presence of the feminine and the other dichotomy of consciousness itself,
00:36:31.000which has none of those attributes, none of those physical attributes.
00:37:16.000Even these women with these venomed nails were completely irresistible to the place that I was in, which was this very kind of consciousness, spiritually centered place.
00:37:27.000And that was completely irresistible to me, and I could see how it would be to consciousness itself.
00:37:33.000You know, because that's the dichotomy that creates this, the polarity and the interesting parts of life.
00:37:39.000So we get finally, everybody was silent on this boat ride.
00:37:41.000We took it a little bit slower, so it took us about 45 minutes to go back.
00:37:45.000And then my friend Daniel was there, actually the guy who recommended it right before we pull it up.
00:38:42.000If you want to actually bring up a picture of that, because it's almost impossible to describe what this actually looks like, it's pretty incredible.
00:38:49.000There's some at night, and you'll see the candles, and you'll see this mesa table.
00:38:53.000And we're just kind of waiting there, and waiting for Don Howard to come in, and everybody was kind of getting cleaned up because we were sweaty from the day.
00:39:00.000People took showers, which was a little weird because you're pretty fucking blasted at this point.
00:39:25.000I was kind of interested in doing that.
00:39:26.000But for some reason, I felt weird just grabbing it off the altar without giving anything back to the altar, even though he'd been passing them out.
00:39:33.000Yes, that's what it looks like kind of from behind.
00:39:38.000But so I'd look through my bag and I was like, well, I got to give something to get this mapacho.
00:40:13.000I said, do you mind if I borrow some fire?
00:40:16.000And just clear as another voice, as if I was talking to somebody else over here to my right, it says, sure, because you're going to give me some smoke.
00:40:56.000And I heard the voice come back and say, even when it's fair, make sure to ask permission.
00:41:01.000And it was the fucking craziest thing.
00:41:04.000And what it was, was it was teaching me the principle of reciprocity is what is one of the biggest fundamental core teachings of the Shavin people.
00:41:14.000And the idea is that even if you don't have anything to give, at least give your gratitude.
00:41:19.000And that's one of the core reasons and ways that we've gotten off from these kind of old teachings in that whatever you do, there's a give and take.
00:41:28.000When you take an animal, at the very least, give you gratitude for the gift of that animal.
00:41:41.000And as the earth in general, providing a home, providing us a place, materials, the principle of reciprocity would be to do your part to protect that, or at the very least, just be grateful for what you've kind of got.
00:41:54.000And that, in itself, that gratitude is enough.
00:41:59.000But it was funny how that kind of came up in this kind of very back-and-forth verbal teaching from this altar.
00:42:08.000I mean, it's mapacho and fire, you know.
00:42:10.000But that was kind of the example that it used to kind of drive that point home.
00:42:14.000And really, you know, stuck with me as something that, you know, I'll always remember, like, alright, you know, the give and take of things is something much older and more sacred than even just an idea that we have.
00:42:28.000You know, there's like, that is a fundamental principle that should be abided by.
00:42:35.000You feel like when you see someone who doesn't tip, you get this weird feeling when you're with them.
00:42:42.000Or someone who is in a similar vein, rude to someone who's in the service profession, who's trying to be kind to them, and they recognize this imbalance because the person's trying very hard to be nice to them, so they feel like they can be shitty to them.
00:42:56.000You see that as an observer, as an outsider watching that.
00:45:15.000Even the Incas, which people credit as this great, highly civilized people, which they were to a great degree, but they were still fully militarized and, you know, kind of I think?
00:45:50.000So we get in there, and the first part of the night ceremony, on his altar, on his table, he has these ancient whistling vessels that are somewhere between 500 to 2,500 years old.
00:46:12.000What does it look like, life and death as friends?
00:46:13.000So one is this skeleton and the other is this voluptuous woman and they're holding each other like this and as life and death as friends and all of these vessels and you blow through the top and it creates a really unique whistling sound.
00:46:31.000And so he asked us all to the altar and he says, well, why don't we try to wake this up a little bit?
00:46:36.000And he always has that kind of wry smile because he knows, he understates what's going to happen.
00:46:42.000So we all start blowing on these whistles and together, you know, it sounds discordant at first, but then ultimately it locks into this frequency that feels like it's going through your entire, like just penetrating straight through your head.
00:46:58.000It's just wiping you clean of any kind of frequency that you might have.
00:47:02.000Like a really strong, resonant sound that just goes straight through your whole body, which was kind of a cool experience in itself.
00:47:11.000And what they used it for was that, you know, aligning...
00:47:15.000Just kind of sound and frequency and getting you basically back to that clean slate so that anything you have going on in your head, maybe you've got a song stuck in your head, maybe you've got a beat stuck in your head, maybe you've got some latent programs kind of going on.
00:47:28.000It just kind of wipes straight through.
00:47:32.000A cool experience, nothing crazy more profound than that, but just kind of awesome to be a part of this, blowing these vessels that have been Used for this purpose, like ancient consciousness technology, you know, 2,000 years old from the Mochi people and some other people.
00:47:49.000That's something, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but that's something that seems to resonate in a lot of these ancient shamanic cultures is the need for music, the need for song, songs that carry you through ceremonies, songs that take you through, whether it's a mushroom ceremony or ayahuasca,
00:48:05.000the ayahuasqueros and their icaros, those songs that they sing.
00:48:09.000What is there, when you talk to them about that, what's the connection?
00:48:15.000The Ikaros are kind of their own special thing, but almost every single shamanic tradition has rattles.
00:48:28.000You know, for them, they can see these energetic forces.
00:48:31.000And for them, they talk about the rattles breaking up this kind of frequency field around you and kind of recalibrating it to a certain degree.
00:48:42.000The rattles are used completely ubiquitously.
00:48:45.000And then there's other things like singing bowls, which you'd find in Tibet.
00:48:48.000And in Peru they had the whistling vessels.
00:48:51.000And other things that make kind of other shrill sounds.
00:48:53.000And then of course there's the drums, which make a beat, good for dancing or good for that.
00:48:58.000The Icaros themselves are just these songs that the plants teach you and are very kind of DMT-oriented, as I kind of found out, because I found myself singing one of these songs out of the fucking blue when I was snorting the vilka, but we'll get to that in sequence.
00:49:15.000But yeah, it kind of just breaks up the auditory field, and also in a lot of cultures it calls in I don't know.
00:49:55.000If they can't show you, they won't tell you.
00:49:58.000It's like, this is truth and you have to go find it for yourself.
00:50:03.000You know, whereas religions, by and large, are like, here's the truth, it's written down in this book, you better follow it, whether it makes sense or not, or we'll burn you, or kill you.
00:50:20.000Because everybody, you get to that same conclusion, different people to different degrees, but it's reproducible, you know, and it's reproducible in every individual.
00:50:29.000So you don't need to go talking about it.
00:51:19.000And you tip it into the other nostril, and then it fills your body with this kind of fiery, kind of lightning sensation that you feel.
00:51:32.000And it's almost like, you know, you're just holding on to the stake because it's burning as it's going down, this liquid that you've just tilted down your mouth.
00:51:40.000But it didn't have any kind of great physical psychodynamic effects other than just to kind of like really align you with the altar.
00:51:49.000So there at the altar, Not too much happened, but one of the interesting things was I was the first one to go and I was waiting for Don Howard to tell me like when my experience was up, you know, because I'm up there at the altar, everybody's watching me.
00:52:05.000And one of the great things about how he worked is throughout the whole session, he never did that.
00:52:10.000When you had your turn to go up, he would never tell you like, okay, you're done.
00:52:14.000He just completely trusted you that you would move and you would take action at the right time.
00:52:22.000And that, to me, instilled a great degree of trust in Him, which is something that I haven't had immensely in a lot of people, is this ultimate trust that...
00:52:32.000He's got this thing kind of figured out.
00:52:34.000And you get that from the trust that he puts in each other individual.
00:52:39.000So I'm sitting there, and really the only takeaway from that for me was, you know, a communication with the altar that said, basically I said to the altar, I said, you know, I'm going to protect you.
00:52:52.000And the altar, you know, I could hear it again, clear as day, and said, I'll protect you too.
00:52:57.000And that was kind of the end of that encounter, and I looked back, and Don Howard smiled, and I gave him back the stake, and everybody went around the circle, and that kind of closed off night one, the end of the Serpent Masada.
00:55:28.000You always write off sociopaths, but is it possible that could ever be cured?
00:55:33.000I mean, I don't understand the human mind enough from a scientific standpoint.
00:55:38.000The medicine is, and Don Howard was really forthright about this, that the medicine by itself is neither going to do good nor bad without the intent of the user.
00:55:49.000Because the intent of the user, you can use this medicine for, you know, Brujo, bruja, sorcery, you know, is what they call it.
00:58:01.000How many people are really going to do that?
00:58:03.000It seems like they only do that if there's a bunch of other people around them that are doing the same thing, and the power of suggestion takes over, and then you really believe, like the Lord is talking through you in gibberish.
00:58:15.000Like hypnotists, you know, there's that hypnotist kind of idea that the more people who are there and the more people who are watching, the easier it is to hypnotize you because of the whole dynamic and the other people and the power of suggestion.
00:59:09.000Like, comics would come from, like, if we knew Frank Santos was doing a show, like, at Nick's, we would go across town, drive over just to watch.
00:59:16.000Because you couldn't believe it was real.
00:59:18.000You would watch these people, and all of a sudden they believed they were having sex with Madonna.
00:59:43.000His son's probably like, he never fucking said that.
00:59:45.000My point is, he would have like, I would say, abracadabra, and he would touch someone on the forehead, and the woman would just go, oh my god, and people would be dying laughing, and women would be embarrassed, and there's people that would be convinced that they're naked, like, oh my god, like they have their clothes on,
01:00:02.000There's people that were convinced that everyone in the audience was naked, I mean, they were looking around and laughing, and they really were.
01:00:34.000That is one of the main reasons why it's super difficult to take someone's word in account of an event.
01:00:42.000When someone starts talking about an event, like something that happened, whether it's watching a car accident, participating in an accident...
01:00:50.000How much of what you actually see in any sort of traumatic circumstance are you really collecting?
01:00:57.000Like say if an asteroid was to slam into the ocean near Long Beach and kill like a fucking hundred thousand people.
01:01:05.000And you were there and you saw something happen.
01:02:58.000But I believe that what they've accomplished so far is they've attained this rudimentary ability to introduce artificial thoughts.
01:03:05.000At least in concept, and at least in concept on a Less complex mind as humans.
01:03:11.000But they can do it through tactics with a person, through counseling.
01:03:17.000If someone particularly tries to bend your mind and bend your version of the past over a long series of things and reinforces it with your friendship and alienates you when you don't follow the script.
01:04:00.000You know, I'm seeing people saying, this is an amazing thing, and then I'm also seeing people saying, you know, hey, why doesn't he just fucking keep it to himself?
01:04:46.000Where people, what is really going on here?
01:04:48.000It's just this masculine story that's been told.
01:04:51.000I mean, you gotta figure, somewhere between the stats are, like, in Germany it's 10%, and in other places it's 2%, but a certain percentage of men are gay.
01:06:50.000Like, he associates that guy now, instead of being with his friend, it's being his friend that says crazy shit when he has a couple of drinks in him.
01:06:58.000You know, where it's, like, he starts, like, psychological warfare him.
01:07:03.000He's trying to say things like, look, no one is born gay.
01:07:42.000I mean, we're all working out life We're all working out life from the information that was given to us, but people didn't know what the fuck they were doing.
01:07:52.000We are working out life based on what we figured out over the course of our lifetime, and we had to de-learn and de-program a lot of shit that was talked to us, a lot of nonsense that was spoken in our ears.
01:08:06.000And reinforced every fucking which way you look, from movies to songs to unconscious people.
01:08:26.000They don't have any ability to be themselves.
01:08:28.000That's an interesting thing when you look at world religions.
01:08:31.000It's the heredity and region is the absolute, hands-down, number one deciding factor about what religion you are.
01:08:40.000If it was like you're just finding the truth, you know, and you're looking at everything and finding the truth, it'd be fucking interspersed everywhere.
01:08:46.000But really what it is, it's just you're in an area and that's what's fucking taught to you and that's the story.
01:08:50.000And so that's why you're in that religion.
01:08:52.000It's not that that's the best one, it's just that's the one that's been fucking taught to you.
01:08:56.000Eddie Bravo and I both had very similar childhood revelations, and we were having a conversation one day about the moment we realized there was more than one religion.
01:09:08.000That's how we both kind of realized it was bullshit.
01:09:26.000They said, well, you know, Uncle Sal, Uncle Sal, that's who it was, is going to change religions.
01:09:33.000We're like, okay, what does that mean?
01:09:35.000Well, he's going to become Jewish, so he's going to have to go through this whole ceremony and learn a bunch of things, how to learn about the religion.
01:09:43.000You have to take lessons with a rabbi.
01:10:23.000When I was six, I guess, five, six, whatever it was, which was first grade, I guess it was six, I went through one of the biggest changes in my entire life as far as my understanding of the world around me.
01:10:37.000And it was caused by one year of Catholic school.
01:10:40.000And being in that school, seeing the darkness of that place, and all the evil of those fucking people, and all the kids who were just like constricted and yelled at in that place, I knew, I knew it was bullshit.
01:10:53.000I was like, this and Uncle Sal together?
01:12:27.000And then in renaming that, they allowed it to kind of still exist, but they completely Catholicized the whole thing.
01:12:34.000They changed the nature of the altar, it became more religio-centric, and then reconstructed the nature of the ceremony, so it was like communing with St. Peter and taking a glimpse of the gates of heaven.
01:12:47.000Changed the whole framework of the ceremony and kind of watered down the medicine a little bit and then used it for their own religious purposes.
01:12:56.000That way it kind of changed the whole nature of what this was, which was these guys...
01:13:02.000And if you look at the keystone of art for the Shavin people, it's this tapestry called the Estella Ramundi.
01:17:00.000I want to puke, but I don't want to puke, because I know if I puke, I have to open my mouth, and then the water's going to get in my mouth.
01:17:32.000And if you ever had noni fruit, it's really kind of a nasty fruit.
01:17:35.000It's good when they make it in health preparation.
01:17:37.000But it's all rotting on the ground, and it smells like a jockstrap stuffed with cheese that's been sitting out in the sun for eternity, just baking and microwaving over and over again.
01:19:13.000And that pain forces more people to reject them.
01:19:17.000Because that sort of negative energy that they give off forces more people to shun them, which sort of reinforces their bad opinion of people.
01:20:24.000And so I started to get more and more isolated and different things would come up and an opportunity to walk in here and, you know, experience this part of the forest.
01:20:33.000I was like, fuck that, there's probably bugs there.
01:20:35.000So locked in this place and I just got worse and worse and worse and it was like the universe was providing me these opportunities to do something and I kept failing to pass the test.
01:20:44.000Until finally, I see this tree that looks pretty good for climbing.
01:20:49.000I'm like, I'm going to climb this tree.
01:20:51.000And I'm thinking about it forever, and I'm like, how am I going to get up there?
01:21:14.000I just hop a few branches and I get up in the tree.
01:21:17.000And then for the first time in that whole session, that whole ceremony, I felt like I passed a little test.
01:21:22.000Like I did something that I was supposed to do.
01:21:25.000I made a choice that would lead to my happiness.
01:21:28.000So I started to feel a little bit better.
01:21:30.000But then we go back up to the tribe and they start dancing around.
01:21:34.000And, you know, I really had this strong urge to take my shoes off and just kind of dance around because I had these big hiking shoes that are all muddy and stuff.
01:21:41.000But I didn't do it because I was worried about the mosquitoes.
01:21:43.000Well, little did I know, I found out later, the mosquitoes were fucking biting me through my shoes anyways.
01:22:28.000All you really are doing is just completely surrendering to that hell.
01:22:32.000You just lie on your back like, okay, hell, come on.
01:22:34.000This one is such an active medicine that you're presented with these challenges and asked to do things in a much more active way.
01:22:42.000Which is great, but if you start getting on the wrong side of it, it can be really challenging because you have nothing to stop your mind from really running rampage other than just this kind of gentle guidance.
01:22:54.000So, tough experience in the heart of the jungle.
01:23:00.000I at least passed one test and I climbed the tree, so I was like, oh, at least I did that.
01:23:03.000So we get there, and again, it starts to be dusk, and that's when the visions start.
01:23:08.000And then that was probably where I got one of my most powerful visions.
01:23:15.000So I close my eyes, and I just bury my head in my hands, and immediately I see this demonic face that was made up of fires that were burning.
01:23:29.000And then I noticed that it's plastics that are burning in the fires.
01:23:32.000And I looked at that and I'm like, oh shit.
01:23:35.000And then I see that laid out on the skin of what feels like a woman.
01:23:42.000And it didn't have all the features, but I could see like the jungle was this woman's I think?
01:24:11.000And there was oil that was being drawn out like someone was taking big syringes, like a malevolent doctor was pulling oil out of her skin and then adding it more to the fire, and the fires kept burning.
01:24:24.000And it was kind of this horrific image of this, you know, almost rape of this beautiful Mother Earth that was presented to me.
01:25:18.000And then what I saw there is what she showed me or what I saw was people, you know, I would touch somebody and there was a bunch of people and they would just be kind of running around all haphazard, like kind of just doing these robotic motions in circles, like a windup toy that was just haywire that was off balance or something.
01:25:36.000And I'd reach out and touch one of these people and a light would turn on in their head.
01:25:41.000And instead of moving around randomly, they would just stop and then look around.
01:25:45.000And then they would touch another one of these wind-up humans and they would stop and look around.
01:25:50.000And then slowly it started to connect and what it was showing was We're good to go.
01:26:13.000All of these lights started going off in people's heads and connected.
01:26:16.000And I got this image of the utopia that the world could be, where we as sentient humans, kind of aligned through consciousness, are working to help prolong life for as long as possible.
01:26:30.000It's going to take a little time, but I think within probably the next 20 years, we're going to see a completely different version of culture.
01:26:44.000It's moving in a way that's just never had an opportunity to move like this before.
01:26:48.000The ideas that got passed word to mouth by fucking hippies and poets and The beat players of the 1960s, what they were so terrified of, what they squashed, the acid and marijuana movement.
01:27:00.000What they squashed, they didn't have a way of communicating back then.
01:27:06.000This is the craziest shit of all time.
01:27:08.000This internet in conjunction with this newfound awareness of these psychedelic experiences...
01:27:16.000And the lessons that can be learned from these psychedelic states, there's a wave of change in consciousness that I've personally experienced.
01:27:43.000You know, you can get it into your head if you really choose to that the world is this terrible place of awful people and it's more likely that there's just a momentum going on that was created by people who didn't know what the fuck was going on and we're awake and we woke up Like,
01:28:00.000we're on a spaceship that's headed towards an asteroid or something.
01:28:03.000I woke up going, okay, who's flying this thing?
01:29:01.000And then the other guy was like, well, first of all, I think his attitude was like, we don't know exactly what it's doing and what you're saying, like these regulations could harm business.
01:29:13.000Like, that guy for sure doesn't do mushrooms.
01:29:18.000Because if he had ever done mushrooms, he would realize, like, that is, you just said a crazy thing.
01:29:23.000You just said, we need to make money so we'll keep poisoning the earth to make money.
01:29:27.000I mean, I know you didn't say it that way, but that's essentially the equals, you know, if you put them in a mathematical computation...
01:29:34.000What you're saying is, even if it does poison the atmosphere, we need it because we need the jobs.
01:29:40.000And your considerations of the idea that regulating something that's poisoning the very earth we live on, that that could be somehow controversial because that poisoning is profitable.
01:29:51.000Not, we need to find other things that are profitable or substitute it.
01:29:54.000Like, yes, this is obviously something we need to stop, but we need to find a substitution.
01:30:01.000That same mind that can put together that screen that's showing you the HD version of those people having that ridiculous argument, that same technology, that technology is there is a reason to figure it out.
01:30:16.000They wanted and needed a reason to figure out how to make this gigantic LCD screen with incredible resolution and just vibrant resolution.
01:30:26.000They wanted to figure out how to do that.
01:30:27.000If they wanted to figure out how to get rid of the garbage that's in the ocean, that giant patch of swirling, deteriorating garbage, if there was an incredible amount of need to do that, if people decided to focus all of their scientific aspirations on fixing all the problems on Earth in a profitable manner,
01:30:48.000it would be the biggest industry of all time.
01:30:51.000We would run out of polluted places because we'd be like, shit, we used up all the polluted places because we figured out some new awesome shit that turns pollution into clean air that gives you enlightenment.
01:31:04.000We found some new air that'll let you read each other's minds and you make it by burning out nuclear fuel rods and some sort of a hygienic process with dirty ocean water.
01:31:59.000It's humans who could figure some shit out to like that fucking movie Armageddon, blow that thing up, split it in two, I don't know, dematerialize it, whatever the fuck could happen.
01:32:11.000Just keep going back in time to five minutes before it hits.
01:32:14.000We have the opportunity, potentially, to use technology to protect the Earth and humanity at large, and that's what I think all of this whole technological thing, why it's good and why it's necessary.
01:32:25.000Otherwise, we're just completely at the mercy of these other forces.
01:32:29.000The problem is, is that as Albert Einstein said, it's become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
01:32:37.000Like, both of those things were supposed to ride together like homeboys, you know, a motorcycle and a fucking sidecar.
01:32:42.000You know, both of them ride together and that shit got split off by these oppressive forces.
01:32:47.000You know, state forces and religious forces that have kind of gone through and...
01:32:53.000Kicked out any of these knowledge centers, made illegal any of these knowledge plants, and reinforced this crazy idea of putting business above something like the Earth.
01:33:10.000Is that this all has to be in place in order to move forward with this process that's going on right now, this process with people connecting with technology.
01:33:22.000That all these forces, they seem to be moving.
01:33:26.000When you move warfare, what you move is extreme versions of technology.
01:35:13.000And all along the way, we're working on technology.
01:35:16.000All along the way, you could take the dumbest motherfucker out there and he's holding on to a Samsung Galaxy S5. All along the way, we're giving birth to artificial intelligence.
01:35:29.000I really like your idea of needing that resistance.
01:35:32.000And I think there's a great, great wisdom in that.
01:35:36.000The fact that things maybe are exactly as they're supposed to be.
01:35:42.000Yeah, and that's definitely a cool thought.
01:35:45.000And then the other thing about technology is, a point that I try to make as often as possible is, these medicines, that's exactly what the fuck they are, is their technology.
01:35:54.000Yeah, so it's alcohol, that's technology too.
01:35:56.000Yeah, you know, like every one of these things is a technology.
01:36:00.000Yeah, alcohol, it causes this kind of blood.
01:37:01.000And that these ideas or this idea of an entheogen or what we would call a drug being a technology and being a method of enlightening or a method of opening yourself up to a whole new...
01:37:28.000Your values, your ideas of human beings in general, all those change.
01:37:33.000And they change in this really drastic way that's kind of unavoidable.
01:37:37.000Even if you become a dick and you get mad that the mosquitoes are stinging your feet...
01:37:41.000You're still, you know, who you are is not who you would have been in those same exact frustrating circumstances three years ago, four years ago, five years ago, a month ago.
01:37:53.000I think it was on, you know, when you came on my podcast that I said that quote, you know, no man ever steps into the same river twice, for he's not the same man and it's not the same river.
01:38:02.000And that's the case with these psychedelic experiences, even more so.
01:38:12.000But you go through one of these ceremonies and you just have this overwhelming feeling that the person that you were prior to doing it is not the person that you've...
01:38:30.000Yeah, and I think that the word is out.
01:39:31.000You have conversations with him, and you're looking in this dude's eyes like, oh, you've seen some shit.
01:39:36.000He puts on ayahuasca ceremonies for MMA fighters.
01:39:39.000He'll take them for a retreat in the mountains.
01:39:42.000They have this spot that he goes to, and he cooks up the ayahuasca, and he thinks it's important for being a fighter.
01:39:49.000He thinks that a fighter, to really truly get in tune with who he is as a man, that a psychedelic experience like an ayahuasca experience will get rid of all that extra baggage he's carrying around, that he doesn't need, and it'll allow you to perform as an unhindered soul.
01:40:04.000I mean, you may not even want to continue MMA anymore.
01:40:49.000I mean, it's a total ridiculous thought.
01:40:51.000I mean, it sounds like a cop-out for not trying to be more enlightened, but it was a legitimate thought.
01:40:57.000Like, I was thinking about all the people that I think are really funny, and what is their comedy?
01:41:03.000What kind of comedy do I like that they do?
01:41:05.000And there's all this, like, crazy, ridiculous, drunken, you know, these tirades and stories that were just the most ridiculous sexual escapades.
01:41:16.000Those are the guys that I thought were the most hilarious.
01:41:19.000And I'm like, well, you've got to drink.
01:41:21.000You can't be doing yoga and eating vegetables.
01:41:28.000And I remember thinking that there was no way that you could be on the path, even thinking about enlightenment, and still be funny.
01:41:38.000I think the way to think about that for me is, and I think part of this experience opened it up, is being on that path to enlightenment and restricting yourself from drinking or having to be in a certain way is kind of like that shaman that's playing shaman.
01:41:56.000Like the truly enlightened individual can decide, and I think the Toltecs had a word for it, they call it your controlled folly.
01:42:03.000You can decide to get wasted and do something like that, but do it in a conscious way.
01:42:08.000I mean, obviously, doing something to hurt somebody, that's probably going to be a problem with your thing.
01:42:39.000Well, that's why there's a big issue with people who are trying to combat what they seem to be a negative behavior, a negative attitude, hate maybe perhaps, that they're combating it with hate.
01:44:19.000But then when you got there, you maybe said something that explained your side a little better, and he said something that explained his side, and then you hug.
01:45:32.000But when you're on ecstasy, it felt totally normal.
01:45:34.000And then I remember thinking after it was over, like, I know he's not gay, and I'm not gay, but how come in normal life I would never let that happen?
01:45:43.000But in this state of ecstasy, when you're on MDMA, it's totally cool.
01:45:49.000Hugging your friends is totally cool, and it's completely non-sexual.
01:45:53.000And it made me think, like, man, we're really insecure in, like, the strangest ways, like, and that we don't even recognize as being insecure.
01:46:01.000Sexually insecure, physically insecure, mentally insecure, insecure as to whether or not people really like you.
01:46:08.000There's people out there that are living their lives wondering if people actually like them or if they're just pretending to like them and they're going to turn on them at any moment.
01:46:23.000These experiences, that was one of the things with the Wachuma too.
01:46:27.000Just hugging somebody who you don't even hardly fucking know, but it's just another human being and it's like at the end of the ceremony night, you're just like, hey, that was cool.
01:46:37.000You feel this connection with that human being and it's so weird that we become dull and we close ourselves off to all of these possible expressions that are available and these medicines are a great way to kind of open that up.
01:47:44.000Trying that thing is creating a language or whether it's figuring out that psychedelic medicines allow you to get a better grip on your ego and how much your insecurity and the futility of life itself becomes a focal point instead of life.
01:47:57.000The futility of life becomes your focal point.
01:48:51.000So we go through and the night of the earth ceremony was his kind of big clearing night where he's working on trying to clear the energies out of different people, much like an ayahuasca would.
01:49:03.000So it gets to be my turn and he whispers, he comes behind me and he says, you're pure Shavin, brother, heart to heart.
01:49:22.000And I'm just sitting there and for about 30 seconds nothing's happening.
01:49:27.000And then I notice my chest starts to lift like more and more until my chest is so far forward that I'm not consciously doing this at all.
01:49:35.000My chest is so far forward that I can't help but tilt my head up to the sky.
01:49:42.000And I realized at that point what the message of that was, was that So often we lead with the cerebral part of our mind, just thinking constantly, thinking, thinking, thinking.
01:49:52.000But really, the best way to do it is to lead with your heart.
01:49:58.000Lead with that deeper knowledge that doesn't require the magnificent calculator that we have.
01:50:03.000Because it is a magnificent calculator.
01:50:05.000It's great for computing, innovating, things like that.
01:50:08.000But to chart the course for yourself, for your friends, for humanity, charting that with that deeper, you know, empathetic intelligence that you have at your core center, which we call heart, you know, whatever you want to call that, that's the way to really lead.
01:50:26.000Through my head and help me understand what all these, you know, graphics, these tapestries were without ever having to say a single word.
01:50:34.000And that's, you know, some of the cool things about working with a real master like Don Howard is he could have told me that, yeah, they all have their head up because their heart's forward, their head's connecting with source, and their heart's leading the way.
01:51:10.000Do you believe that you experience, you co-experience other people's trips?
01:51:15.000Do you believe that trips are contained?
01:51:18.000That was one of the ideas that McKenna had about any psychedelic, that when you're taking it, you're not just imbibing in this one psychedelic.
01:51:27.000You're actually experiencing all the trips of all the people who've ever done it.
01:51:36.000What you're doing is literally, or figuratively, connecting to some sort of another dimension.
01:51:42.000I feel like that, because I feel like there's a spirit of the plant.
01:51:45.000Now, I will say, with non-plant medicines, which I've done a couple, I actually told some of those stories in the last podcast, I did not feel that with non-plant medicines, and I haven't had a good experience.
01:51:55.000With smoking DMT? Well, that comes from...
01:54:05.000As you're saying it, I guess it would be English more than Canadian.
01:54:09.000That this, somehow or another, when it connects to your bloodstream, when it passes the blood-brain barrier, whether it's psilocybin or whether it's any of these other psychedelic compounds that you take in, that during that trip that what's actually happening is you're changing your frequency and your mind,
01:54:30.000whatever you call your consciousness, goes to another place.
01:54:34.000What happens in the place where it's at while it's happening?
01:54:39.000The idea that you have to be in another dimension, your mind's in another dimension, your body's here, that doesn't make any sense.
01:54:44.000It does make sense, because it's a big, crazy soup.
01:54:47.000But it's a soup that seems like you can only...
01:54:50.000You can only access certain areas of it when you hit this certain frequency that you get by imbibing these plant cocktails and whether they're synthetic because they're based on the plants or whether it's the actual plant itself What you're doing is you're tapping into that next door neighbor.
01:55:09.000You're just stealing cable from that guy.
01:55:32.000Yeah, an infinite onion of infinite layers.
01:55:34.000And doing these medicines just move your consciousness, which is like a dot on that shish kebab, move it up and down through those different layers.
01:55:43.000And that's really kind of what you're doing.
01:56:36.000And then, boom, he starts drinking water every day, and he quits all the soda, and boom, he starts eating fresh vegetables, and then, boom, he starts fucking lifting weights and working out, he does jujitsu, he loses 70 fucking pounds, he becomes a blue belt.
01:56:52.000That is a guy, how are those in the same world?
01:56:56.000And how many of those little changes that happen during the day, pro and con, are this constant river-shifting thing and the idea that time is this linear thing and you're going to get to 65 and you're going to get a 401k back and you left Social Security and you're going to go into a box.
01:57:12.000Life of the unconscious robot versus that life lived on the bleeding fucking edge of free will.
01:57:17.000And that was what my last ceremony was about, the bleeding edge of free will, the Air Masada.
01:58:33.000And it made me think, man, I might like doing that more than I like doing the UFC. I don't want to say it, but it might have been better because I could talk shit and be completely free with my language.
01:58:46.000We were talking about the fight podcast last night.
01:58:49.000It was one of the most fun fight-watching events ever.
01:58:52.000Because we got to just talk, you know, hang out, have fun, laugh, joke.
01:58:56.000Brendan Schaub told us all the various ways in which he's shit himself.
01:59:12.000It's a real pleasure when you meet someone, and the more you know them, the more they constantly surprise and delight you with what they have to say.
01:59:51.000It can be that, I got a big old truck with big old tires because I have a little tiny dick kind of mentality, you know?
01:59:56.000Is there anyone out there, I would think that if you have a big old truck and big old tires, girls would be like, come on, let me see that dick.
02:00:02.000If you want to call as least attention to your dick as possible, you would want like an old golf, a VW golf.
02:00:09.000If you had a little dick, you just would not want to peacock it out so strong.
02:01:38.000You know, because your body is like, oh god, here we go again on this fucking crazy roller coaster into the cosmos.
02:01:44.000But anyways, I choke it down and right away, like, the nausea's not there and I'm just starting to feel good.
02:01:52.000Not in that same kind of uncontrollable way as the first day, but just in this really kind of positive, good momentum kind of way.
02:02:01.000I started playing this Native American flute, and I'm not very good at it, so I was super self-conscious the whole time about playing it, because there's nowhere to do it privately, and everybody would listen, and I kind of suck.
02:02:20.000I was self-conscious about it, you know, because I'm not good, I guess.
02:02:22.000But anyways, at this medicine, I was like, I'm starting this fucking test game off because last time I failed like every test in the heart of the jungle on my second ceremony.
02:02:30.000I was like, this time I made a vow to myself.
02:02:32.000I'm like, I'm gonna pass every fucking test.
02:02:34.000So we go there and we take the medicine, all good.
02:02:38.000We get ready and we're going to go on a long hike this time instead of a boat ride.
02:02:41.000So we have some time and I brought the flute out and I started playing the flute.
02:02:45.000And I could tell as I was playing it, yeah, I'm not great, but people kind of dug it because I was playing it as authentically and as good as I possibly can.
02:02:52.000And so that kind of, for me, started off this first...
02:05:45.000The cacao pod comes and I'm like, alright, this is another fucking opportunity to just not be stressed and eat like all the rest of the people.
02:05:51.000So you dig your fingers in this kind of gooey, placenta-y fruit and then pull out this pod that's kind of like an embryo.
02:06:11.000And I start to realize that life is just a series of these choices.
02:06:15.000And you can either let, you know, fears that you've had prevent you from doing this, like Howie Mandel, like constantly living in a world where he's afraid of all kinds of shit.
02:06:25.000And that's making him choose this thing over this thing.
02:06:28.000Or you can kind of go the other way and choose not to be afraid of those things.
02:06:34.000I'm not saying don't recognize danger.
02:06:36.000But to separate the fear from danger, which will allow you a broader spectrum of choices, which will give you gifts of things like the ability to eat a cacao pod fresh out of the jungle when you're blasted on Wachuma, which is something I was afraid of doing the last time, but I wasn't afraid of this time.
02:07:03.000I mean, you hear stories, but I don't know what in relation to how many people go down there, those stories...
02:07:08.000You know, I don't know the statistics, and obviously there's some risk, but there's also, you know, tons of people who are going through, a bunch of people in our group that did it and were fine, a bunch of people go down there all the time and do it and they're fine.
02:07:20.000It's not like if a lot of people were getting sick from that, they'd cut that out of the program.
02:08:11.000When you're around a bug that can kill people, like a flu that feels like a flu that's so much more powerful than anything you've experienced before, you're like, oh shit, I might not get out of this one.
02:08:33.000And obviously it's a week out and I'm healthy as fuck.
02:08:35.000And I made assuredly the absolute right choice and it worked out.
02:08:41.000But again, so that was kind of the message that you just have a bunch of these choices and accurately assessing danger versus your fears and everything that you pile on top.
02:08:52.000So we're approaching the place we're going to do the afternoon landing spot, which is this kind of sky deck overlooking the jungle.
02:08:58.000And I wanted to take my shoes off as I walked up there, so I just fucking did it.
02:09:02.000I took my shoes off, didn't worry about the mosquitoes.
02:09:04.000And that felt great, just feeling the grass and the mud on my feet.
02:09:07.000It was a short walk, so there wasn't any crazy shit going on in the brush or anything I had to worry about.
02:09:14.000We get up there, and I go to lie down.
02:09:17.000And I had taken, again, I had taken the most wachuma I'd taken at any point ever.
02:09:22.000So I'm more blasted than I have been the whole trip, because I got eight ounces instead of six.
02:09:27.000And I go to lie down and I'm pondering this idea of choice a lot and fears and, you know, feeling pretty good because everything that's happened, I was past these tests.
02:09:35.000And I see this little ant crawling towards me to my right hand side.
02:09:38.000And I look and I go, oh fuck, there's an ant coming.
02:09:41.000And so I totally broke my train of thought, stood straight up.
02:09:44.000And then I look back at that ant and I just realized, holy shit, I just let that little fucking ant have the power over me to make me sit up, lose my train of consciousness, and completely move on his behalf.
02:09:57.000And it wasn't like a deadly poisonous ant, it was just an ant.
02:10:01.000And then I thought to myself, how many other of these little things that are truly ants in our existence?
02:10:07.000Fears, worries, paranoias, relationships that you feel crunchy about in a certain way or like something that's uncomfortable to you in a situation or that you're projecting and your simulator is worried about.
02:10:20.000These little things that when in reality are no more than these ants which are harmless.
02:10:25.000What caused you to choose actions that aren't in your best interest?
02:10:31.000Because we give them power, we give them the power over us to make us move, they do have power.
02:10:37.000Well, I think it's what we were discussing before, that it relates to this, is that you truly can't appreciate your freedom unless you're in some sort of a struggle to maintain it.
02:11:08.000There's lessons to be learned in conflict in that you realize the futility of conflict.
02:11:13.000And I think without those lessons, when people are trying to nerf the world and avoid all the conflicts, we lose the actual lessons that are available in these life experiences and these lessons of understanding the repercussions of shitty behavior,
02:11:28.000understanding what true violence is really all about.
02:11:32.000Understanding how it can be turned around.
02:11:34.000Watching guys hug it out after they have a fist fight for fucking ten minutes and respect each other for it.
02:11:39.000I'm not saying you should do that, but there's a reality of them hugging it out.
02:11:44.000They're like, okay, well, on a microcosm, this works.
02:11:46.000Why can't this work for the whole human race?
02:11:49.000Because if we go to war, there's no hugging!
02:11:51.000You know, but sometimes after you duke it out with each other, you realize how ridiculous it is.
02:15:44.000From listening to your story, listening to your depictions, Coinciding them with their own instincts and feelings and maybe a few experiences they've had and then choosing an ethic.
02:15:53.000And that idea and that choice of choosing an ethic can change the future, can change the experiences that people have.
02:16:01.000If you look back on history and you look back at the horrific things that the Romans did and the Spartans did and All these people did when they were going to war with some other people.
02:16:12.000If you look back at just the mounds of awful stories that we could just go back and find out about all the different slayings that the Mongol Empire took part in, that the Romans took part in, that the...
02:16:27.000I mean, just over and over and over again throughout history, all these horrific, terrifying acts of humanity.
02:16:33.000And think about what it would be like if we didn't know about those.
02:16:38.000Think about what if they happen and we didn't learn.
02:16:41.000Think about what, well, it's terrible that they happen.
02:16:44.000It is definitely terrible, but that we know that that can happen ever is important.
02:16:51.000It's important that we know that this whole thing is just this chaotic scramble for recognition of the state of consciousness we're in.
02:17:08.000And then new bodies and your genes pass on to another new meat vehicle that's carrying consciousness and it tries to deal with all the stupid shit that you taught it and like, oh my god, this motherfucker was wrong about almost everything.
02:18:11.000It's just consciousness expressing itself, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, and trying to make some sort of an account of all the things that are going on around you all the time.
02:18:32.000You can do that in a medicine journey.
02:18:34.000You can do that in good meditation or even yoga.
02:18:36.000But in order to properly chart your course at any level, you have to find that stillness.
02:18:41.000But then the next level beyond that was right where I'm at here in this story.
02:18:46.000So Don Howard comes over to me and he starts doing his thing, asks me to kneel, and he starts using the feather over my head.
02:18:53.000And I could feel like a weird transformation happening in my body this kind of invincibility that I started to feel at that moment and it was This strange kind of feeling of I was kind of crouched over the top of the jungle and I started to feel kind of like a rumble in my throat,
02:19:32.000Nothing at that very moment could actually harm me.
02:19:36.000And I realized at that bleeding edge of invincibility, at that bleeding edge of fearlessness, not that a bullet couldn't kill me, I'm not trying to be crazy, but how I felt then was completely without fear for the very first time in my life.
02:20:12.000I was completely fearless at that point.
02:20:14.000And that was the very first time I had complete free will.
02:20:17.000And that feeling is something I'll never forget.
02:20:20.000And I realize that all of these people that talk about the determinism of life, oh, it's genetics, oh, it's environment, there's a place that you can get to where you have absolute choice.
02:21:21.000I know this is a retarded version of the actual events, and I know that they're scientifically proved in some form or fashion that your decisions are decided for you before you ever decide them.
02:22:54.000Are you free of genetic memory, fears, all sorts of phobias that may or may not have been passed down through your fucking DNA and you don't even know why you're crazy about them?
02:23:18.000I can understand what you're saying about there's some things going on in the brain.
02:23:22.000That determine decisions before the person believes they decided, before they actually have consciously realized they decided.
02:23:31.000But isn't that like how a decision works?
02:23:34.000I mean, obviously, and I keep qualifying this, but I am almost retarded.
02:23:38.000But if you're having this sort of conversation about anything else other than the human mind, like if it was about a computer program, it'd be pretty traceable.
02:23:48.000You'll be able to see where the sequence takes place, where's the variation, what's going on where you could, you know, watch this deviation or this path.
02:23:56.000But with a human mind, like, god damn, there's a lot going on in being a person and making decisions, changing your mind.
02:24:08.000The thing these neuroscientists are failing to recognize, that'll be a meme.
02:24:13.000Well, I think maybe some of them do, but I firmly believe, and I've experienced this, that there is the mind, and then there's another thing called consciousness.
02:24:22.000And that consciousness, it works through the mind, and it's interconnected with it, but it isn't just the mind.
02:24:28.000And it's the consciousness aspect of you where the free will resides.
02:24:32.000So the neurologist or neuroscientist may be able to prove via the mind all of these different facts, but the consciousness is ineffable.
02:24:42.000I have a similar take on it, but slightly different, in that I do believe that the issue might be in just labeling it something with these feeble human words.
02:24:53.000I think that might be the issue in calling something consciousness at all.
02:24:57.000I think whatever it is that you experience in the psychedelic state, you're not qualified to describe, and you're not qualified to cast a judgment on what revelations that your little puny mind makes when you're over there.
02:25:08.000Because you're in the face of something that's so impossible to believe.
02:25:14.000So impossible for the imagination to conjure up that it defies all your silly little words.
02:25:20.000So when you start saying things like, you know, we start using consciousness in a sense that we use it to sort of lay down a scaffolding of ideas so I can understand what you're talking about.
02:27:21.000We just have compartmentalized our biology.
02:27:24.000In these very specific ways in our attempt to understand what the fuck is going on as we wake up at the front wheel of this spaceship as it hurls into the sky.
02:27:43.000And we figure out how this little biological creature works.
02:27:46.000Well, this creature is just a reacting part of the soup of the universe, slowly getting to try to understand itself during this very brief, finite, and obscure existence that's a part of the infinity.
02:27:59.000And it's all just popping off while you're trying to figure it out as it's happening.
02:28:46.000And at this point, I had just such immense faith in what he was doing that I was like, all right, this is going to be pretty significant.
02:28:52.000Walking into the hut, I put into practice what I'd learned up there.
02:28:55.000Usually on the way to the hut, I was like someone scurrying from one foxhole to the other because I was worried about mosquitoes.
02:29:02.000I was like, I'm going to just walk into this fucking hut at my pace when I want to.
02:29:06.000I'm not going to let the mosquitoes bother me.
02:29:08.000And little choices like that were already ways that I was putting into practice this knowledge that I got, which is why I love the wachuma so much.
02:29:16.000So I take my time, walk into the hut, take a seat, and he brings out the snuff tray and the snuff...
02:29:28.000But the snuff tube is not just a normal snuff tube.
02:29:30.000It's a 4,000-year-old, what looks like a human metatarsal bone, like a bone from the knuckle bone from your foot, that's hollowed down the center that the Shavin people themselves had used to snuff the vilka some 3,500 years ago.
02:29:44.000And the tray itself that held the vilka was 3,500 years old, used for exactly that purpose.
02:29:52.000And he smiles to us and he says, Now, this thing is used.
02:30:38.000So it's like a knuckle bone, but it's longer, and it's hollowed straight down the center of it.
02:30:44.000And so you put the knuckle in your nose, one knuckle in your nose, and then the other knuckle has been cut off in a certain way that lays flat in the tray.
02:30:52.000And then it's this bunch of brown powder that's all in there.
02:32:57.000Except occasionally things would happen to my body.
02:33:00.000I'd be like, okay, body's still there, but it was in this weird, like it was in another room or something like that.
02:33:06.000So that happens and I kind of pass through that section and then I find myself in this, you know, that whole nexus of light, the chrysanthemum, whatever, that DMT thing is gone.
02:33:16.000And I find myself in this room with a bunch of different spirits.
02:33:19.000And one is like this hairy hippopotamus looking frog man with a staff.
02:33:25.000And then there's these other figures in hoods.
02:33:28.000And then there's these figures all around me.
02:33:30.000And I feel like I'm in this neighborhood bar and everybody's kind of looking at me like, what the fuck are you doing here?
02:34:04.000And I asked her, I said, Grandma, are you here?
02:34:08.000And to my left, she started approaching in the most familiar, you know, way that I remember probably from when I was, you know, 10 or 12 in that kind of form.
02:34:19.000I remember the clothes she was wearing and her face and now everything was.
02:35:56.000It might be a hallucination, but it's the same experience as if your grandmother came to you.
02:36:01.000That's a really weird thing for people to adjust to, that the idea that there's more than one possibility going on here, and the idea that you don't have to debunk this.
02:36:10.000You don't have to debunk something, first of all, that you haven't personally experienced, and two, that it doesn't matter.
02:36:34.000I understand you're trying to be all scientific and everything, and I understand that, you know, I take offense with these pseudoscientific explanations for what can be Easily explained by modern science, the workings of the human mind.
02:37:51.000The catalog of possible events is infinite.
02:37:56.000And the universe of DMT dimension, the DMT experience, when you tap into that, what it really truly represents is something you had no idea you could ever even think up if you're just thinking it up.
02:38:09.000You had no idea it was there, and it becomes infinitely more complex the more you pay attention to it.
02:39:48.000One of the things that I have going on in these psychedelic experiences is I have kind of like a recorder, almost.
02:39:55.000It's like a shred of consciousness that I... Consciousness is another weird word to use, but a shred of mental capacity that I keep open to record this and store this information.
02:40:05.000One of the reasons why I can tell these stories.
02:40:07.000I remember as I was coming back from that place, I could feel that thing.
02:40:12.000It was almost like knowing that these microphones are on or something.
02:40:15.000You just have an awareness that it's on.
02:40:17.000And I remember consciously being like, I've got to shut this off now.
02:40:20.000And so for the first time in any of these psychedelic experiences, there's a good period that I don't even recall and I couldn't even talk about here.
02:40:28.000But what I can recall is as I was coming back even closer, I could see a lot of these attachments onto my body as I was kind of from a bird's eye view.
02:40:37.000Different things, different relationships, different other things that had, you know, attachments to this form or attachments to this idea or attachments to that.
02:40:46.000And I just was able to just clear them all away.
02:40:49.000You know, just kind of move through with my breath and my hand and And just kind of cut all these little hooks that were in my body.
02:40:55.000And then just found myself coming back in and just marveling at the magic of this machine that we have.
02:41:02.000You know, like hands that can squeeze.
02:41:21.000Total nonsense, gibberish, but it just started to come out and I was singing that as I was getting back into my body and I remember I was still singing and maybe I was singing a little loud and I saw this vision of this woman in this kind of crystal-y gown comes up and she smiles at me and then puts her finger to my lips like,
02:42:17.000And I sat and he asked me to sit in his chair and look at the altar.
02:42:22.000And I remember just looking at the altar and just kind of merging with one with the center of the altar and realizing that the core of my center, that kind of that principle of non-duality that you talked about, touching every part of the universe.
02:42:32.000The core of my being really started to merge with the core of that, the Lanzone in the middle.
02:42:38.000And I just felt unbelievably connected with the entire universe at that point, realizing that within me is that same connection as within that.
02:43:13.000And really the last kind of words from Don Howard is he's, you know, he told me as I was leaving, he says, you know, it's renaissance time.
02:44:13.000And for me, because of how active this whole ceremony was, knowing my way back to that feeling of fearlessness, knowing my way back to that connection with the center of the universe and the lessons about reciprocity and all of these things, I just have the fucking roadmap to find my way out of any kind of maze or worry or concern or situation.
02:46:12.000Like, you have a bank of bullshit in your body, and if you could blow that out in the gym, Man, and that's a lesson.
02:46:19.000If you want to talk about something that I need to learn over and over and over and over again, although I know it, although I've espoused it, I still need to see it in action.
02:46:28.000Because sometimes your ego and your body get a little tricky.
02:46:32.000And you take a few days off, take two, three days off, like...
02:47:47.000And they don't want to be misconstrued as being vain or they don't want to compete.
02:47:52.000They don't want to acknowledge the fact that being physically attractive or sexually attractive is beneficial because then it'll hold weight over them and then they'll judge themselves on not chasing after that.
02:48:04.000So they sort of take pride in being a fat fuck or joke around about, you know, being lazy.
02:48:13.000Some of those people are my favorite human beings on the planet, but the reality of it is, if you took better care of your meat wagon, you'd have a funner ride.
02:49:25.000And Octavia Bourdain, I don't know what the source of it is, like where you can find it online, but if you Google it, she wrote an article about Anthony Bourdain getting into shape and doing jiu-jitsu.
02:49:57.000She's a 57-year-old man, was a frequent smoker until he was 38. She names off all the different drugs and how little exercise he gets and all these different things.
02:51:20.000Enjoy what's around you right now, what you're experiencing right now.
02:51:24.000And I think that whether science can determine that free will is an illusion because of your circumstances, your genetics, your life experiences, that's all well and good.
02:51:33.000But it's not empowering to whoever's listening to this and it is actually affecting you.
02:51:40.000You, whoever that is that hears that me saying you, you can alter this thing.
02:53:30.000Louis spelled Louis, and he did some fantastic documentaries on the Westboro Baptist Church, the God Hates Fags guy who holds up those signs at funerals and shit.
02:53:48.000Nature of these hunting camps is that because of these hunting camps, these animals are more healthy, their populations are healthier than they've ever been.
02:54:50.000The Louis Thoreau documentary was goddamn incredible.
02:54:54.000I would love to hear someone who's trying to save those animals, what it's like.
02:54:58.000If you really pay attention to a really good documentary on Africa, like there's a great BBC series called The Congo, the diversity of life there is so stunning that it's almost like you're watching something that's a window in a forgotten time when these animals existed.
02:55:15.000Because they don't seem like they should exist.
02:55:22.000Like these shoebill birds, these gigantic birds with this enormous long beak thing that looks like a giant canoe coming out of its face and it's like five feet tall and it's prehistoric.
02:55:36.000Fish that climb out of the water and walk until they get to the next pond and dive in.
02:55:41.000There's antelopes that have evolved to swim underwater and eat fish.
02:55:45.000They have an antelope that eats fish, man.
02:55:51.000There's rhinos and elephants that are trapped inside this rainforest because the grasslands turned into a rainforest and all these plains animals just got stuck there.
02:56:01.000So you see these herds of gazelles running through swamps.
02:56:14.000That come down off the mountains, you see them walk through these little dirt roads, walk across these dirt roads, and a family and the male gorillas looking out.
02:56:26.000We have to do something to save those fucking things.
02:56:29.000I mean, I don't necessarily think it's keep them in fences and shoot arrows at them either.
02:56:34.000I mean, I think this is a crazy thing.
02:56:37.000Like, you have the most incredible diversity of life, of exotic life in the world, all coming from the place where life, human life, apparently was originated.
02:56:47.000And when people are conscious, they'll want to enjoy those things, because it's part of the fucking magic of this crazy blue rock that we're on, you know?
02:57:19.000Like we said, there's hiccups along the way, there's blots of negativity, but there's lessons to be learned in all those things, for me, for you, for all of us.
02:57:28.000And I think one of the most important things about having these kind of conversations is you get to highlight these things, and we all get to think of these things together, and we all get to acknowledge that these are, you know, we're all experiencing life in this weird, strange, figure-it-out-as-you-go-along style,