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28. Bridging The Gap Of Life And Death
55 Plays2 years ago
Please help us welcome our special guest on this week's episode, my fiancé Alana. We have been dealing with the loss of our cat, and Joe and I's Grandmother within a 12 hour span. So we decided this week's episode should explore death, and how we try to understand and cope with it.
Rest In Peace Nana and Camacho
_________________
Music By Nathan Willis RIP
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Losses
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pursuit of Infinity. We took the last two weeks off because, as you'll hear in this week's episode, we've been dealing with some death. A few weeks back, mine and my fiance's cat was diagnosed with a serious case of liver disease, and we were tasked with keeping him alive via subcutaneous fluids and a slew of medications to help kickstart his system and liver back into a functional state.
00:00:25
Speaker
All of this proved to be futile, unfortunately, and we were forced to make the difficult decision to end his suffering. Then, 12 hours later, mine and Joe's grandmother passed away.
Coping with Death and Grief
00:00:38
Speaker
So, we decided to do this week's episode about death and how we relate to it and cope with it.
00:00:44
Speaker
We're releasing this episode the day after our grandmother's funeral, which was a military ceremony to also honor our grandfather, who passed a year ago to the date. Featured in this week's episode also is my fiance, Alana, who wanted to be part of this conversation to express her feelings on the subject, along with Joe and I.
00:01:03
Speaker
But before we get to it, if you like what we do and you want to support the show, we really appreciate a follow or a sub as well as a five star rating and maybe even some kind words of encouragement in the form of a review. These things really help to expand our reach and credibility, which is so much appreciated. If you really want to show us some next level love, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash pursuit of infinity, where you can donate as little as $2 a month to support what we do.
00:01:29
Speaker
Also, check us out on YouTube. The channel is up. All of our episodes are there. So if you prefer to put some visuals and faces to the names, subscribe and keep up with us there. We're also on Instagram at Pursuit of Infinity Pod to give us a follow and reach out. We'd love to hear from you. And without further delay, thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this week's discussion.
Reflections on Loss and Emotional Impact
00:02:14
Speaker
The world is a cruel place, but it's also beautiful. And we've been experiencing some of the cruelty as of late. Last Friday, we had to put our cat to sleep. And by we, I mean me, Josh, and our special guest today, Alana. Hi. And then 12 hours later,
00:02:41
Speaker
I got a text that our grandmother passed away and by our, I mean, Joe, you yours and ours, yours and mine. So it's been a pretty potent subject in our life in the last two weeks. So what have you guys been feeling into since these events have transpired?
00:03:04
Speaker
I don't know, it's been a really surreal feeling. And I just experienced death previously back in April too, when my aunt passed away from cancer. And it sounds silly, but the loss of an animal that you spent, I don't know, the last four years with every day, it hit me a lot harder than a family member passing away.
00:03:32
Speaker
And not that I'm not taking away from my aunt, you know, the relationship that I had with her and how much it affected me when she passed away. It sucked. But losing an animal that was your companion, it hurt a lot worse. And it was a lot harder to deal with just to know that, you know, you wake up in the morning and that that particular being isn't there asking you for food or weaving in and out of your legs or
00:04:01
Speaker
You know meowing at you or showing you that affection and it it's still an adjustment and I haven't gotten used to it yet Yeah, we had him for nine years of his life You lived with him for what for?
00:04:18
Speaker
for, but I was the one that brought him home back in 2013. So I've been with him since the beginning and I helped you raise him and train him to use the litter box and gave him affection and, you know, kind of helped carve his personality together. So. Yeah, it's rough. Like you said, losing something that
00:04:45
Speaker
you spend every day with and especially something that you see as sort of a son because it was a boy. Um, Camacho was his name. And if any of you guys, uh, listened to, there were two episodes where he made an appearance just recently. The last episode that we released, um, I was doing an interview with Jay and Lindy Nelson and he made an appearance in the video. Also episode five, he made an appearance in the video and it's just crazy. You know, I was, I wasn't even thinking.
00:05:16
Speaker
When I was recording that episode that I release it and he would be gone, you know, a week or two later.
00:05:23
Speaker
No, it happened really fast. I mean, we knew something was wrong for a few months, but once things started declining, they really declined. And it was apparent within that week that we were going to lose him, despite everything that we did to try and help him. I mean, he was on what, six different medications. We had a very set routine, and we were trying to feed him every day. He had stopped drinking water three days prior.
00:05:53
Speaker
Um, we were giving him subcutaneous fluids, which I hate. It's one of the worst things I think that you can do towards the end of an animal's life. And it wasn't my first time doing it. Probably won't be my last, but I don't relish it at all.
Exploring Cultural and Spiritual Views on Death
00:06:10
Speaker
It was.
00:06:11
Speaker
It's just hard to watch, to know that that's how terminal your animal is and allowing the reality to set in that, okay, we can do this and give him a little bit more time, but it's not going to change the inevitable fact that he will die eventually.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, definitely it's horrible to watch just suffering of something dying. I think it was Ram Dass. I like his quote, he talks about death being like taking off a tight shoe. So it can give you some relief. When you see someone in your family or an animal at the end of their life and they're suffering, I like to think of it that way.
00:07:01
Speaker
that as soon as that's over, it's like instant relief. Like you're not bound to your physical form. And I'm convinced that death isn't the end at all.
00:07:15
Speaker
I'm of the mind to celebrate the life rather than mourn the death, even though it's hard to not mourn a death because that's just like in our nature. And, you know, you know that you're never going to see the person or, you know, your pet, you're not going to see them the way that you're used to. But, um, I find it important to celebrate the life rather than mourn the death. Cause I think our culture kind of,
00:07:44
Speaker
It builds this really rigid idea of what death is, even though we really don't know what it is. And culturally, we think of it as such a horrible thing, and I don't think that's necessarily the case.
00:08:01
Speaker
I think it's as natural as life and it's as beautiful as life in a sense. The only person that suffers in death is the people that are left behind missing the deceased. So I just try my best to think of it that way and
00:08:25
Speaker
It doesn't have to be a horrible thing. Along with the fact that if you think about time in general, if you think of time non-linear, then it kind of changes everything. Your concept of reality is you think time, there's like a beginning and an end rather than all time happening at once.
00:08:51
Speaker
I think, especially from my psychedelic experiences, giving me insights into the nature of time, I don't really, in a sense, that nobody is ever gone at all. We are eternal in our true nature. Also, an interesting thing.
00:09:15
Speaker
kind of just jump all over, but our pop-up, mine and Josh, our pop-up died, I think, at the end of 2021. September 7th. September 7th. So he died and then our Nana died, you know, just recently. So it happened pretty close together to each other. But interestingly enough, like really shortly after his death,
00:09:43
Speaker
I saw him in one of my dreams. It actually happened twice. So I saw him in a dream and it's interesting because he's never been in any of my dreams. Luckily, I was lucid in one of these dreams. So I got to speak with him and it was him post-death. He knew he had died and we talked and he showed me what he was doing and that also helped.
00:10:14
Speaker
I think that we're so naive when it comes to death, especially culturally.
00:10:19
Speaker
My thing is trying to minimize assumptions like made about life. We always take what our culture gives us as fact without ever independently verifying it. So like things that we believe to be true are just faith-based beliefs. And that's, that goes the same with death. And from my experience, which I regard as truth, my truth, whatever,
00:10:47
Speaker
Don't think that it's the end and I think I Think it doesn't have to be this horrible sad thing that makes us all depressed Yeah commonly in culture What we think of death as is Since the body is gone
00:11:11
Speaker
the personality goes with it. And we consider the death of the personality to be a total obliteration of everything that that person was. And I think when you have a deeper understanding of, you know, maybe, or maybe just a deeper curiosity of what death means and what death can possibly be, at least in my case, you understand that you aren't your personality. And when you do pass on to whatever is next,
00:11:42
Speaker
The meanness, the Josh, the Joe, the Lana, the Nana, the pop-up, like that personality, that person that we define ourselves as is not the thing that moves on and continues on. It's not that, at least in my view, that after I die, I'm going to be
00:12:02
Speaker
A like an astral version of myself where i'll still feel. Like josh i'll still feel like a man i still have. The normal worldly desires and needs that i have now because that's all based off of survival the ego itself is based off of survival.
00:12:26
Speaker
The soul, by contrast, is the opposite of that. So in my view, what goes on is that portion, the soul part, not the part that we define ourselves as, our thoughts, our preferences. The vessel.
00:12:42
Speaker
And it was interesting, I was listening to the Ram Dass book that he wrote with Mira by Bush called Walking Each Other Home, which is all about death. Essentially, it's a really cool book because the audio version, it's set up as like a conversational piece where
00:13:01
Speaker
Mirabai Bush will present the question that she asked Ram Dass and then he responds. And in the beginning, he actually at his old age, after his stroke, he recorded the forward to it in the intro. And then she speaks his parts for the rest of the book. But there is this really interesting thing that they brought up.
00:13:25
Speaker
They said there's a very big difference between being with someone that is actively dying and then being with the person's or the animal's body after they passed. And that really brought me back to the room where we had put our cat to sleep. And there was a huge difference between being with him when they were beginning the process.
00:13:56
Speaker
And then being with him after it was all concluded and the entire time I was looking into his eyes the entire time from the moment that they gave him the initial cause they would get, they gave him an initial drug of propofol, which relaxed him. And then after he was relaxed, they gave him the euthanization drug.
00:14:18
Speaker
And the whole time I was looking in his eyes and it's, it's interesting when you see the life leave a body, a body that you once regarded as like a very close companion to you. And I really resonated with the difference between being with something that still has life in them, but they're going through the process as opposed to the aftermath of them actually leaving their body.
00:14:44
Speaker
And it's like when something when that happens, it's natural to feel sad. And it's interesting because like when you see the light leave like a body, it's like it's watching a piece of yourself die. Because, you know, the thing inside of the body, that thing is the same thing that's inside of you. Like we
00:15:11
Speaker
We are like, I like to think of like, if you think of life, like, uh, like a glove and you know, you look at the glove and you see the different fingers and let's say like the fingers would be like all the different beings. Like, Oh, the thumb is me. And like, you know, you see the separation, but that's all kind of this physical reality we're looking at. And what you actually are is the hand inside the glove.
00:15:42
Speaker
like the hand that animates everything. And I think that's one thing. And I think it's the one thing that's inside of all of us, like our true nature, beyond the ego, beyond our preferences, our personality. So when you see something die, it's literally a part of yourself dying. And in a sense, you know, maybe it's kind of
00:16:07
Speaker
when you let that go, it still remains with you regardless. So I think that's one of the reasons why it hits deep too, not just because like you're not going to be able to experience their personality. It's that a part of your life that is part of you isn't there anymore.
00:16:28
Speaker
And also you're experiencing in the most potent way possible, absolute truth. Like this is something that is absolutely an unavoidable fact of life. And it is the greatest taboo in all of culture. And you are forced to witness it and forced to experience it and forced to then cope with the aftermath of it. So to me, it's, it's a form of ultimate truth that you can't experience any other way. And there's a very.
00:16:58
Speaker
palpable difference between the way that you look at your life before and then after you experience some sort of a death. I will say that I do believe that even though the physical vessel has died, I still feel his energy and
00:17:20
Speaker
I feel my aunt's energy and I feel my Nana, your pop-up, your Nana. I feel their energy. It's still here. They're not in their physical bodies anymore.
Philosophical Exploration of Truth and Reality
00:17:33
Speaker
In what way do you feel their energy?
00:17:38
Speaker
It sounds kind of crazy, but I know that other people have felt this too, and they'll find you if you want them to. You know, the day after Kamacho died, we were sitting on the deck, like his favorite place to be.
00:17:53
Speaker
I felt the wind start blowing and like it picked up and it got really heavy and I just started thinking like is this him and I felt his presence and I don't know if it really was him or if it was my mind telling me it was him but I was convinced that he was there.
00:18:12
Speaker
and that he was telling me he was okay and I know there are other people that have experienced similar situations you know I've had friends that have had animals pass on where the next day they're walking their other living dog and a butterfly comes by and they say I'm pretty sure that was you know the animal that just passed or I don't know people have said they see cardinals and think that it's people that have passed like I know that this isn't
00:18:41
Speaker
I don't know if it's true. I don't know if that's really what it is, but I do know that other people have experienced it and whether or not it's valid. I'm not sure, but it's interesting that you said that, like, that you weren't sure if it's true or if it was, if it was just something in your mind. And I think that's something that we forget a lot is that the only thing that exists is your mind. Like the only thing.
00:19:07
Speaker
that you've ever experienced is the mind. And I think one of the reasons we have a misconception of death is because we talk about this before that. We have been basically indoctrinated into a physicalist, materialist paradigm, like considering only that matter is the fundamental essence of reality rather than mind.
00:19:32
Speaker
I mean everything, in my opinion, I would say that everything exists within consciousness rather than consciousness existing within matter. So basically what I'm saying is what you experience through the mind is the truth.
00:19:55
Speaker
We often, in our ego mind, we start twisting things around and ask questions. Does this add up to what we are told is objective reality? Like objective reality being something out there that's beyond us that we can't see. It's some concept of where absolute truth is. And I think the absolute truth exists only in one space and that's in yourself, like actually within
00:20:25
Speaker
the absolute mind, your consciousness, and that's the only thing you'll ever experience. And I think consciousness is eternal and I think it's all linked and we're all one. So when you feel something like that and your gut, your soul tells you something, that's what I regard as truth, not the ego mind barging in after and trying to say it doesn't make
00:20:52
Speaker
logical sense or anything like that because logic isn't absolute. It's relative. I mean, everybody has different logic. There's no, we're just used to one form of logic because of our culture. But if you go into the past, what you said might be regarded as totally logical, you know, thousands of years ago, you might be taught by your culture that
00:21:17
Speaker
your ancestors are the wind or all this other stuff and that would be considered logic of the time. So it's all relative and when the ego mind starts putting doubts in your mind, that's all it really is. It's just kind of, in my opinion, it's just twisting around what you experience as truth.
00:21:42
Speaker
And you have to ask yourself, what set of facts are you measuring the so-called validity of your experience off of? And if that set of facts is something like the scientific method that doesn't leave room for any type of experience that lies outside of what
00:22:02
Speaker
we can measure physically with our five senses, then I think you're sort of asking yourself a question that's just going to put you around in a circle, you know, because these types of things, they're not, they're not measurable. And if you're, if you're asking yourself, is this true? Is this valid?
00:22:19
Speaker
You know, again, what set of facts are you measuring against what you think is true or valid? Because the definition of true and valid is going to change depending on what that set of facts is. And like you were saying, Joe, you're basing it off of a 100% physicalist type of reality.
00:22:41
Speaker
then you're missing out on what the breadth of truth possibly is. And we've talked about this before with like what Jordan Peterson talks about. When he defines truth, he defines it as something that promotes progress in a certain direction. So if you believe in the Christian God and that helps you to progress your life in a positive way, that is a type of truth.
00:23:11
Speaker
But also in that same vein, saying that there's a man in the sky with the beard that looks down on you and judges, whether or not you go to the lake of fire or the pearly gates by some might be considered not true. It just depends on how on, you know, what set of facts you're weighing your validity against. Yeah, there's countless countless truth.
00:23:34
Speaker
And it's interesting with facts, too, because we like to think of facts as absolute, whereas
00:23:47
Speaker
They're really not, like a fact is really your interpretation of a fact. So no two people actually do know the same fact. It's always interpreted differently. And again, back to relativity, it's all relative too. Like we talk about science and you talk, this is the key thing about science. It's never absolute because it's all about measurements. You can measure things with science, but you can't
00:24:15
Speaker
Get to what it actually is that's why science can't tell you what anything is because the only thing science can do is measure things against something else which is. By nature the relative domain so it and it also kind of fails to realize the relativity of everything.
00:24:34
Speaker
So basically, if you think of life in a different way based off of truth only being your experience, like in my opinion, the truth is it can't be given to you by someone else. It's not something that can be taught or like it can only be experienced. Like for instance, what we're doing right now is the absolute truth. It can't be denied. Your hand is the truth.
00:25:04
Speaker
Um, and all the other stuff, like for instance, like when the wind blew and you felt Camacho, that was the truth. And then all the other stuff that we project onto things, that's just ego mind and concept. Like normally when we look at things, we were projecting so much onto them and not just taking it as the absolute thing itself.
00:25:27
Speaker
When we look at any object, we don't see the object for what it is. We don't actually see the object. What we see first is the function of the object. When you look at a can, you can't actually see it. You see something to drink out of. You automatically project all this stuff on top of it.
00:25:46
Speaker
But what the thing was through your direct experience, in my opinion, is what the truth is rather than your attempt at rationalizing or comparing it against something else.
00:26:03
Speaker
Okay, that breeze couldn't have been Camacho because that doesn't fit with the material paradigm that I have of reality because the molecules don't fit there. I don't think that has to be the way that reality is looked at. And through experience, I've found that it's not the way reality actually works. It's more like a dream. And I think like Albert Einstein said, there's two ways you could live your life.
00:26:33
Speaker
One, and this is basically the materialist paradigm, is one, as if there are no miracles, or two, it's as if everything were a miracle. And I think it's actually true that the second one is the case. We've just been so sensitized and just drilled with worldviews and ideas that we forgot to ever figure it out for ourselves.
00:26:56
Speaker
So it's like a big realization to realize that you've never had a true thought or experience in your life, that it's all been ideas from culture or something that you've just adopted rather than found out for yourself. I've never verified the idea that reality is strictly physical.
Theories on Afterlife and Reincarnation
00:27:20
Speaker
It's just what I've been taught and that's
00:27:22
Speaker
You know, that's just how I've lived and I think Realizing that that's not the case it changes the concept of death completely like it's I think that all there is is life and Death isn't the end of anything. It's just there's no physical body. That's it. Well, then let me ask both of you then What happens after death?
00:27:52
Speaker
What do you think? What's your, your theory? What is your, cause with the experiences that we've, we've had with psychedelics and with delving into this world, it intertwines itself with death. So not saying that what you're going to say is right or wrong, or, you know, obviously nobody knows, but if you could put, if you could point to what you think happens theoretically, when you die, what do you think it is?
00:28:19
Speaker
Well, I kind of agree with Joey. I don't think that death is the end of life per se. But I, again, we don't know what happens. This is just my own theory through my experiences is that when you die, you return home wherever that is to that eternal
00:28:42
Speaker
I don't know how to describe it, but it's welcoming, it's forgiving, it's loving, it's not malicious in any way. And I don't know, I think it's just a constant cycle of life and death. At least that's what I've gathered from my psychedelic experiences, like looping in and out of death and life over and over and over again.
00:29:09
Speaker
And at first it was really scary and really unsettling, but once you get used to it, you kind of just sit there and you're like, okay, that's what this is. And I've started to feel like that's what it is. But when death really happens, when it's right in front of you and it's happening right then and there, it's hard to remember that because your ego takes over, your emotions take over, and you're living in that moment and all you're thinking is,
00:29:37
Speaker
they're gone. They're gone from this physical plane and it doesn't matter where they went because, you know, your selfish brain just wants them to be there. And over time, I mean, with other family members that I have lost and everybody says this, oh, they're in heaven. They're with all the other family members. They're with
00:29:59
Speaker
you know, Kamacho had a sister who was adopted by another family member of ours. Oh, and she died before him. So they said, oh, you know, Kamacho's with his sister again in Kitty Heaven. And I mean, I think that's true to an extent, but I don't think there is a separate Kitty Heaven versus a human heaven. I think we all return to that one. Ultimate being, I don't know how else to describe it, but
00:30:29
Speaker
That's what I think it is. We all return home, wherever that is. Yeah, I think it's like interesting. Through my like experiences with psychedelics, I've now I have a completely different idea of death than I used to.
00:30:50
Speaker
Cause like you asked like what happens after death. So what I think is like reality is what we're experiencing is quite literally like a dream. Um, and I think basically you wait, you'll wake up from the dream and realize that there never was any time to begin with. So like after death,
00:31:15
Speaker
is a weird question. I think that we are always in the eternal now and the only thing that will happen is a change of content and consciousness. So I think it might be like a state of realization that
00:31:37
Speaker
that you kind of, it was you the whole time doing it all. And like the thing within you is me and vice versa. So like we were actually one the whole time. So, and I think that you'll experience eternity for what it is rather than the human concept of time. And you'll basically be an absolute love with yourself, which is everybody. Um, I think it's like, it'll be like a realization of,
00:32:06
Speaker
like waking up from a dream like that wasn't and not to say like that wasn't real it's just you'll know how it happened and what it was and it's always happening and it's just a different content that you'll have but you'll still be you and you'll be everyone I guess so it's like it could be like a moment of returning to source but I think it'll be like a release
00:32:32
Speaker
And a realization that, first off, mainly that time doesn't exist. So they're like everything is happening at once, forever, all the time. And I think you'll experience that and yourself as absolute love, yourself as the creator. Yeah, that's what I think happens.
00:33:00
Speaker
Let me ask in that philosophy, who do you think it is that is experiencing timelessness? Because I know that in some of the Hindu traditions of reincarnation, they sort of lay out a situation where
00:33:16
Speaker
When you do pass on, you do sort of keep your faculties as you for, I think it's like 49 days or something like that. And depending on the amount of spiritual growth that you've had in your life, if you, if you like ascend past a certain point of spiritual growth, then you will get to freely explore whatever that realm is.
00:33:42
Speaker
And then you can choose to be what they call a bodhisattva, where you get to come back to this plane of existence and help to awaken the rest of the world. Or in that circumstance, you could choose what incarnation you take, whether it's in a different animal or a different type of a being. Um, or maybe you get to choose a certain level of awareness that your species will, it will
00:34:10
Speaker
inherently start with maybe, but you get to choose what level you go to, which I think is super interesting because it does involve the personality or the being or the person that you define yourself as based off of the things that you've done in your life that continues in that circumstance, which is, it's interesting to me. I'm not sure if.
00:34:32
Speaker
If I quote unquote believe it, but it does feel to me like there's some reason that we're doing the things that we're doing here. And I think that there is.
00:34:48
Speaker
a validity of some sort behind the judgment aspect that all religions have as a part of them, where there's something that you can do here, or there's a direction that you can go in that is going to progress your soul in a positive way. But what I don't think is that there is a way
00:35:12
Speaker
to progress in a negative way, kind of like what you were saying, Alana, about it's always, it's loving, it's forgiving, it's not malevolent, it's benevolent.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I think it's, it's the ultimate form of growth. No matter what your soul does, you are going to grow in some type of way. You're going to learn your soul is going to learn from whatever your lower self decided to do during your life. And it's, you know, it goes along the lines of karma, you know, the definition of karma, not being, I slap you in the face and I'm going to suffer in hell for it. You know, karma being, I slap you in the face and you slap me back. That's what karma really is. It's, it's like a.
00:35:54
Speaker
And it's also referred to as like your, your business, like your life's work, you know, the concept of unfinished business for a ghost, I think sort of stems from the idea of karma, that we have something on this earth that we are, that we've taken this incarnation to complete. And when you pass on, no matter what it has been that you've done, your karma for that incarnation is complete. And then you move on to the next incarnation to complete the rest of your soul's karma. And it goes on and on and on.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, I find those traditions fascinating too. That's also one of the reasons that in those traditions, this consciousness work, this expansion of consciousness is such a big part of it. Because they say if you've never done any of this type of stuff in your life and you die,
00:36:47
Speaker
Because you think if you're doing this work and you understand reality, you should hopefully pass over in a peaceful, quote unquote, like enlightened manner. And like you said, like you can kind of choose your next path. Whereas like they say,
00:37:04
Speaker
If you don't, if you're totally unprepared for death and you die scared and frightful, all you do is you become formless and all you know from your human experience is form. So you just jump and cling onto the first form that you see and then you end up in, you know, maybe a life that you didn't want.
00:37:25
Speaker
Or you just like if you're like if I die scared and have no idea and also on this formless thing instead of being calm and peaceful and choosing a Life that would suit me that I jump to the first body I see because I just need to be in form and I
00:37:48
Speaker
I like those traditions and I think that there's like a possibility to it, but I don't think that it's necessarily like the absolute truth. Like that's definitely what happens because I think basically as God or as the dreamer that there are and always will be infinite dreams to dream. So I think all is possible and
00:38:15
Speaker
but I don't think that's what has to happen. And like I mentioned, what I think will happen, and like as for afterlife, having judgment and like evil or hate or like punishment, I don't buy that either because I think when you pass and you become formless, you're not in the physical realm anymore, I think you have that realization of eternity
00:38:45
Speaker
and the realization of absolute rather than relativity and that all loving that you're talking about that the source is that you are because you're not separate from
Spiritual Experiences and Death Encounters
00:38:56
Speaker
it. You are it.
00:38:58
Speaker
It's true and only nature is love and you'll realize that there never was anything but love the whole time. So all that you've ever experienced was love forever. Like I've talked about this before, like hate doesn't exist. It's a twisted form of love. That's all it is. When you see someone hating,
00:39:20
Speaker
it's them expressing love. So it's either say they hate you or they hate somebody, it's only because they love someone else. Or a lot of the times when it comes to hate of something, it's because they just love their ego self so much and it threatens them. So all this stuff that we project and we
00:39:47
Speaker
we look at in certain ways is all just different forms of love and I think that it's impossible to have anything else when you don't have a physical body and an ego mind to be pushing out all these like survival
00:40:06
Speaker
instincts, like you just want to protect yourself. We just work so hard to protect this physical body. But when there is no physical body and you can look at everything absolutely beyond relativity, then you can see it all for what it actually is, which is love. And it's all it's ever been. And interestingly, I heard you over here, Lana, you brought up limbo.
00:40:30
Speaker
Do you think that limbo is a certain stage in the death process and how do you think you might make your way there?
00:40:39
Speaker
I don't think it's a stage, per se. Not everybody will experience it, at least in my own personal opinion. Like Joey said, if you're not preparing for death the right way, there's a very good chance that you could end up there because if you're frightened, if you're confused, if you don't surrender fully to the experience when the time comes, maybe that's what happens.
00:41:02
Speaker
And there have been I mean I've seen with my aunt for example she was really sick. And about a week before she passed she came to a point where she said you know what.
00:41:16
Speaker
I'm ready. I'm at peace. I'm, you know, I've accepted this and I'm ready to go. And the same thing happened with your Nana too. She said to her daughter, I'm, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to be united with my husband and you know, I lived a good life and this is, this is it. Whereas someone like your pop-op was struggling with it. And I,
00:41:40
Speaker
can't say for certain whether or not that's what happened to him but I, you know, if he had a really hard time accepting it and succumbing to it and surrendering to it like maybe there's a chance that that's what happened.
00:41:54
Speaker
Also think sometimes, at least I've felt this during psychedelic excursions. I know, like you said, everything's done out of love. And I agree with that. But I also think there's this innate moral compass inside of all of us. And we know the difference between what's right and what's wrong. And if you're constantly going against that, maybe there's a chance you could end up there too. I don't know.
00:42:24
Speaker
As our Nana was transitioning, it was probably a week or two before she would sort of like to close her eyes and it would look like she was like sleeping or something. And she would come back and see, and she would say, I was, I was with pop-up, I was talking to pop-up. And that's an interesting thing that people bring up when, uh, when they talk about being with dying people is that sometimes they seem to be able to
00:42:56
Speaker
mentally travel to the dimension of the ancestors or the dimension of the dead and that that's it's very interesting to me because It almost brings the question of validity. There's that word again to the fact that you might
00:43:14
Speaker
Travel to a place with structure where there are your ancestors and you see the ayahuasca shamans of the Amazon, you know, they they call ayahuasca the vine of the dead or Essentially the vine of your ancestors and then they they call the spirits that you encounter in there your ancestors spirits the teaching guides So that it always makes me come back to the fact that like
00:43:44
Speaker
When I think about death being the obliteration of the ego and the loss of the personality. And then you, and then, you know, people are experiencing their ancestors under ayahuasca and they're even experiencing interactions with their deceased pets in some cases too. It's, I mean, obviously you have to ask yourself how much of this is under the control and the constitution of my mind.
00:44:14
Speaker
And the preferences that my ego defines itself as, and how much of this is again, objectively real and objectively valid. And I mean, again, to me, if you're going to use a set of facts that are science and physical based, then it's, it's very hard to put your finger on like the possibility of these things being quote unquote real in that sense.
00:44:41
Speaker
And I find it very interesting too, what you just described during the death process of seeing your ancestors or your loved ones that have passed or people that just aren't there that aren't with us anymore.
00:44:55
Speaker
that that is extremely common in the death process. Like if you're dying of old age and you're going through the process, you experience all this stuff. And I think that, like you said, I don't know what's objectively true. And I don't think that
00:45:12
Speaker
there is objective truth. I think it's true that the experience is true and reaching for some objective truth is my opinion. It's just not the way that reality actually works and it can't really. I mean, because when you think about yourself and your life or anything at all, all you have is your experience.
00:45:39
Speaker
All you have is your consciousness. Anything else that you're thinking of outside of it is just that, a thought outside of it. It's not the actual thing. So I think that it's totally possible to like when they're dying that people are actually seeing these people and not just like a hallucination like, no, no, no, they're not here. Like, no, you're seeing it and it's real. Like it's actually them when you're seeing it. It doesn't have to be objective at all. There's no objectivity.
00:46:09
Speaker
at all. And this is one of the reasons also why I've really started diving into dreams and doing work in my dreams.
00:46:21
Speaker
and trying to get better at it because it's unbelievable. It doesn't always work this way, but you can summon people. If you're in a lucid state and you're aware enough, like a highly lucid state,
00:46:42
Speaker
You know, you can summon a dead person and, you know, you'll wake up and get go. Is that just my mind? Was that real or whatever? But the person when they're there and you're having the experience, like I'm telling you, when I had this dream with pop up, I didn't consciously, um, bring him up. He just happened to be there. And then I was lucid and it wasn't, it was him.
00:47:04
Speaker
like it was him there and uh... like there's no if ands or buts as real as this and he was there and it was him you know speaking to me and then he showed me like what he was doing and he showed me uh... and you know you could say this is an objective reality and i'll say okay what is like that's that's your perspective of what reality is for me this was absolutely true what happened and
00:47:30
Speaker
He, you know, he touched me and then like I blacked out like lost content of consciousness. And then I was viewing him hanging out with Nana and my dad, my uncle and my aunt when they were kids. And he was just like this. He was showing me this is what he was doing for a while.
00:47:52
Speaker
And you can start asking all the philosophical questions like, when someone dies, do they go to an astral realm or this or that? But in my opinion, that's not the way it is. There's only the absolute truth of consciousness in the moment, in the eternal now,
00:48:14
Speaker
And in that moment, that's what was true. It's not objectively true, but it was my pop-up. He was there. It was his personality. You know, we think that we're so savvy and our brains are so great that they can create whole realities that are
00:48:34
Speaker
dead on perfect in our sleep and it's just our brain just firing neurons. And I don't think that's the case at all. I think in these dream states, you can access basically different realities. I mean, you are in a different reality. They have different rule sets and you can do different things. And I think that working in those dream states is really interesting when you start talking about dead people and
00:49:04
Speaker
ancestors and stuff like that, it makes me totally understand and believe that, you know, the death process involves seeing ancestors or people that are physically gone. Because you can do that in your dream. Yeah, I don't see why that seems very far-fetched. And it seems to relate directly to near-death experiences, too.
00:49:31
Speaker
The way that people describe certain things and certain things that they experienced during a near death experience, it's impossible. These things are impossible. And what's really interesting about the near death experience to me, at least with the, the craziest circumstances are people who are not conscious. They are quote unquote clinically dead and they are experiencing what is in the room from a different perspective.
00:49:59
Speaker
Or they're experiencing something that is happening down the hall. Like there was this one story I was reading this book by a Dr. Bruce Grayson. And he was talking to this person who was clinically dead in their hospital bed. And he had in the morning, he had dropped some ketchup or mustard or something on his tie. So he closed his jacket, his like hospital jacket.
00:50:26
Speaker
Uh, like completely so no one could see it, except he had done this after he had a conversation with the person's roommate who was outside in the waiting room. The person's roommate, they were having a conversation, um, and his. Stain was exposed and he went back into, uh, the hospital room with the person who was clinically dead and they had come back and they described the contents of the conversation that they had. And also.
00:50:56
Speaker
The stain that was on his tie. And at that point his jacket was closed. So this to me, again, it keeps begging the question, what connection.
00:51:07
Speaker
is the physical world and the astral or the death world sharing. What, what is it about these worlds that allows us to sometimes experience both at the same time? It's, it's so strange to me. And, uh, you know, again, before I.
00:51:27
Speaker
Um, before I finish, I just wanted to bring up psychedelics as well and how they relate because psychedelic experiences are very similar in content to near death experiences. And of course, when we talk about our views on death, they are pretty much 100%. We'll say with their, their 80%.
00:51:47
Speaker
informed by our psychedelic experiences, maybe 20% informed by, you know, some other type of Eastern religion that we like to look into or some sort of philosophy put forth by Donald Hoffman or someone who claims that consciousness is fundamental or whatever. These things do have a, you know, an impact on what we view death as, but
00:52:06
Speaker
The fact that near death experiences, psychedelic experiences, things that lie outside of the physical world are what really nailed down our, our ideas of death. To me, that's, it's very intriguing.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting that you said like the astral realm or this and that because that story that you told about the near-death experience, that's the same thing that happens with out-of-body experiences.
00:52:39
Speaker
which is astral projection. They're one and the same. Out of body experience is just a different term that Robert Monroe came up with so he could kind of reduce stigma in the Western world of this phenomenon. So like people will sometimes have spontaneous out of body experiences or astral projections where they don't do it. They don't even know what it is, but they'll wake up in the middle of the night floating like 10 feet above their body and they'll turn around and they'll see themselves there.
00:53:09
Speaker
And it's interesting, like you mentioned the connection because there have been people that would like, couldn't have an out of body experience and still they can relay back after they come back into their body. They can relay back that something that was actually happening in the physical world was happening. Something that they couldn't have known, like somebody was.
00:53:31
Speaker
Like, uh, I think I heard, uh, one story, I forget who, who said this, but they had an out of body experience, uh, walked outside of their room or floated better. Uh, they floated out and then went down their staircase and they saw their little sister and her friend sitting on the couch watching TV or something and eating. And he saw.
00:53:53
Speaker
that the friend had like a blue packet of whatever they were eating in their hand. And when he awoke, that's what was actually happening. And it's very interesting, the connection, like you mentioned, same with psychedelics, near-death experiences, astral projections, like what is the connection?
Spiritual Enlightenment and Consciousness
00:54:14
Speaker
And it's strange to think about. The connection between them,
00:54:22
Speaker
Regardless, it's all consciousness, and I don't think that you necessarily have to—well, and we know this through psychedelics—you don't have to physically, quote-unquote, physically die to experience death. That's why the quote, if you die before you die, you'll never die.
00:54:42
Speaker
I think that since our true nature is consciousness, I don't think that the materialist idea that we're limited by our brains, I don't think that's accurate at all. I think that the belief is limiting. The belief of the brain. That's what's limiting you.
00:54:58
Speaker
I think as in our true nature as consciousness, as love, as whatever you want to call it, I think you are capable of experiencing everything and I think it just takes different states. I don't think that you have to die to have an out-of-body experience. I don't think that you have to do a certain thing to
00:55:22
Speaker
to bring on any of these type of like divine experiences or otherworldly experiences. I think it's just in our nature to have them and it's just the nature of reality. The connection to me is that consciousness is infinite and capable of all things.
00:55:42
Speaker
I remember reading or hearing somewhere at some point, maybe it was a conversation that you and I had where you don't even need, like there, there doesn't even have to be a catalyst for some kind of experience like that. Like you could just spontaneously have one at any point and it can change the way that you look at everything. Um,
00:56:05
Speaker
I don't know, I guess people can have astral projections, like if we were just sitting here and I could have an out-of-body experience and come back and be changed forever, like something really wild could happen that, you know, the brain as it is wouldn't be able to grasp, but you experienced it and it was so real and nobody can take that away from you.
00:56:28
Speaker
Those experiences are often pathologized, and then that's where you see spiritual emergency that we were talking about before. This is the Stan Groff concept of a spiritual emergence compared to a spiritual emergency. And if you pathologize someone's spontaneous spiritual experience, it becomes a spiritual emergency.
00:56:48
Speaker
And they don't have a context for it, generally, if they're looking to someone else. But if you do have a context for it, then it becomes a spiritual emergence process where your spirit is becoming a prominent part of your being.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah, and like having those spontaneous experiences, yeah, it could go different ways, obviously. But this makes me think also like about dreaming again, because it's interesting, like you mentioned, like right now, just suddenly like going out of body. And it just reminded me of becoming lucid in a dream. Because like in a dream,
00:57:29
Speaker
When you remember your dream it might seem fuzzy your dream recall might not be great it might be missing pieces but when you're experiencing it it's like this. And it's interesting cuz it i'm just imagine myself right now as if i were dreaming.
00:57:45
Speaker
and then suddenly it might be spontaneous. Some people they'll train themselves to become aware and do like reality checks in their dreams like hold your nose every day in real life and see if you can breathe out of it. So you do that in your dream and then you can breathe through your nose while holding your nostrils in the dream and you become lucid.
00:58:04
Speaker
but sometimes it just happens spontaneously. So I'm sitting in a room like this, just as real as everything is right now. And then I'm suddenly aware of the nature of the thing I'm in. And it's like a spontaneous event that is absolutely insane. And I've noticed like there are different ways to react to that experience. Like the first couple of times that happened to me,
00:58:29
Speaker
I would get too excited and euphoric and it would just be so amazing that I'd wake up almost instantly. And that's like, it's not the same as a spiritual emergency, but it's kind of in the same realm. It's like being unprepared for the thing, not being able to handle it. Whereas after you've had them and you start experiencing it more, you can become lucid in a state
00:58:53
Speaker
And then fully emerge and like just put yourself into it actually. And it's just that made me think of lucid dreaming when you said that. And I like to think of like what we're doing right now as a dream that you can wake up from at any moment and realize the true nature of the thing.
00:59:11
Speaker
And I think that is kind of the state that people like Ramdas are in or like these quote unquote, the quote unquote enlightened people. It's like they're in, they're lucid at all times. And, um, yeah, I just, I think it's, it is very interesting the, how these things can happen spontaneously for people.
00:59:34
Speaker
And you know it can happen just like you know in your daily life walking around maybe look outside and suddenly out of nowhere you realize the beauty of everything around you you could really see it. And you're kind of in a state of just pure awareness.
00:59:51
Speaker
And for some people, that just happens. And maybe they don't even recognize it. If it's somebody who isn't doing a lot of quote-unquote spiritual work or consciousness work, they might just have a beautiful moment. And for that moment, they are purely just in the moment. That's it. There's no loud voice in their head.
01:00:14
Speaker
but it happened to them spontaneously. And I think a part of this work that we do is to consciously pursue that in a way that is natural, if that makes sense. And so you can become aware of those states all the time and then find yourself always in that spontaneous state of, you know, just absolute love. Yeah, it seems the goal being to inhabit
01:00:44
Speaker
multiple or all higher realms of consciousness at the same time. Like some of these spiritual gurus, like, uh, for instance, like Ramdasa's guru named Karoli Baba, when he took LSD, he took, you know, over a thousand micrograms and didn't trip because as Ramdasa put it, he was already existing in that realm. He's already there. He's in all of these levels of consciousness, all of these, um,
01:01:09
Speaker
dimensions simultaneously. So you can exist in the realm where you can appreciate and understand the suffering of the physical being, but then also understand the transcendence of the mystery and the other. And then you can go higher and higher.
01:01:27
Speaker
And, you know, some of these, these saints that are, that are able to exist within these realms at all times. I mean, I guess the definition of that would be really, like you said, you can walk around and you can experience the beauty and the love of, of nature. And then also, you know, you can look at.
01:01:46
Speaker
know, an animal on the road that that's been run over by a car or something like that and feel the pain of that, feel the beauty of it, feel the compassion, you know, that fills you up when you think about the interconnectivity of life and all these things. And that, again, to me seems to be
01:02:04
Speaker
the ultimate goal of each incarnation. And if you put together and you add up what each incarnation for each soul does and what the purpose of each incarnation is, it seems that it's to become a realized being that can inhabit all realms of consciousness simultaneously. So when you have a saint like Neen Karoli Baba, that is a fully realized being in every sense of the word that we can describe it.
01:02:32
Speaker
And I think that seems to be the goal of each incarnation. And in order to get there, you must die. Then you must be born again and you must die and be boarding it. And this cycle must continue. And then maybe like what named Karoli Baba probably is, at least to me is, is the concept of the bodhisattva. He is the enlightened being that in the astral realm decides to come back in order to help the rest of the species or the rest of life.
01:03:02
Speaker
achieve the same goal. And you see like someone like that, that exists. You just, you know, that what that is, is more than just a human and a brain. You know, this is where, in my opinion, that the materialist paradigm collapses and like our cultural view of reality kind of collapses because
01:03:29
Speaker
That isn't possible to happen if you condition yourself to that way of looking at reality. But in order to allow those things to be possible, you have to first admit that the way you think reality works isn't it at all. And you hear the stories about people like this and the amazing things that they're able to do and just the feeling of being in their presence.
01:03:59
Speaker
That's why I found it's so important to kind of deprogram the mind. Because all these things that sound incredible and amazing, I was basically programmed to think that it's not possible to happen and it's just woo nonsense and that guy might have been smart or something, but that's it.
01:04:26
Speaker
But it's so much more than that and I think psychedelics are amazing because it allows you to peek into that possibility of reality and expand what your idea of consciousness is, what reality is.
01:04:42
Speaker
So the deprogramming I think is so important. And that's why I've started to try and only, I try to distinguish what truth is versus belief. And I've noticed that everything in my mind was always belief. And then I think what people like that mastered was living in the moment without all these beliefs.
01:05:10
Speaker
And I think that opens up a lot of possibilities for what you can do, what your consciousness is capable of. I noticed since I started thinking this way, this also allowed me to think that way while I'm dreaming. And then in the dream, since I'm thinking non-materially, that's right, I start thinking that way and then suddenly I'm aware of the dream and I can
01:05:38
Speaker
I can control things in my environment with the mind or I can fly or whatever. I think the deprogramming really helped.
01:05:54
Speaker
It really helped in aiding me in my lucid dreaming efforts. And it made me realize that people like Rahm Dawson, that the things that they were able to do is realer than real in a sense. It's beyond the human experience. How a man could take such a massive dose of acid and just sit there like nothing happened.
01:06:21
Speaker
That is something that is beyond a human being experiencing just a physical material experience, just a brain with a flesh suit. It's something far beyond that.
01:06:34
Speaker
It takes understanding reality in a different way. And that's what I'm trying basically to do. I don't know if I could ever get to the level of some of these guys. Like you said, they might have had to die and be born again so many times and so many times. But in the same sense, that person is me. It's just the nature of reality is very strange, loopy and paradoxical.
01:07:05
Speaker
And that's why, you know, I have such a sense of gratitude for, you know, being in this incarnation on this path, because it feels like this is what an incarnation is supposed to do to go on this path.
01:07:19
Speaker
And I think a large part of being able to be like these saints that are able to inhabit different realms of consciousness at the same time. The key to that is compassion. And what that means is having compassion for yourself while you're in a state of attachment as well. And what deprogramming the mind does is it allows you.
01:07:39
Speaker
to view your system and your situation from outside of yourself so that you can have compassion for yourself while you're in this physical incarnation with your attachments, you know, all the attachments, all of it, all the trouble we get ourselves in, we have to love and accept all of it. Because if you don't, a lot of people, they spiritually bypass.
01:08:03
Speaker
which essentially means like, oh, this physical world, this doesn't mean as much as when I'm traveling the astral. What you have to understand is that in order to exist on all planes at the same time, you have to still exist in this physical incarnation, in
01:08:18
Speaker
All of its glory and all of its ugliness it must be experienced to its fullest and the way to do that is to have compassion for yourself so that you are able to. Comfortably rest in any state and that is the essence of the quote be here now you're here you're in.
01:08:41
Speaker
This incarnation, whether you're putting your cat to sleep, you're here now. You are experiencing the pain. You're experiencing the anguish. And at the same time you, at least in my case, you are sitting outside of yourself as the witness, looking at yourself, experiencing the pain, experiencing the sorrow. So again, it, it, to me, it's all about existing.
01:09:07
Speaker
in a state of compassion for yourself and for all things that are happening around you. Cause that's, that's all it is. It's all happening and it's all happening now in this moment.
01:09:19
Speaker
That's why the be here now is it's just such a great quote. Like it's like one of those teachings that sounds like nothing, but it's really like the hugest teaching of all is like, you know, some people and especially with psychedelics, you know, you can have such an experience of like heightened consciousness, such a spiritual experience that you come down and like you said, people will be like thinking, Oh, this, this doesn't matter. This realm.
01:09:48
Speaker
you know, what that was, that was, that's what I need to go to and that's what matters without realizing that it doesn't, what don't we think that exists is now, being here now.
01:10:01
Speaker
The goal is to be able to see that ultimate beauty from your heightened state of consciousness and everything here and always. Like you mentioned like roadkill on the road and like having empathy for it and like being able to feel its pain you mentioned earlier. And it's like identifying yourself not as the ego but identifying yourself
01:10:27
Speaker
with that also with everything like the witness of all of it so you can have empathy for everybody and everything rather than you know just being self-centered into your ego and just purely dependent on your survival instincts you can have that compassion and empathy
01:10:46
Speaker
for everything around you by recognizing your true nature, not as, you know, the ego, but the whole thing. And then that's how, you know, hopefully the more people that maybe can think that way, that could build a better situation for everyone rather than, you know, our culture right now seems pretty heavy on just me first. It's about me winning and it doesn't matter if you lose, doesn't matter at all.
01:11:17
Speaker
But to realize that that person losing is you losing. It just might not feel like it in that moment and you might not recognize it. But you will recognize it when you realize that we're all one. Like they say, for instance, we were talking about judgment and death.
01:11:38
Speaker
There's no God separate from yourself that's going to judge you after death. Only you can, will be the judge. So for instance, like if, let's go on the real dark, like a rapist, say like a rapist rapes a little girl. Well, when they die or when they become aware of the oneness, they'll be judged by themselves because they'll know that they are that girl.
01:12:04
Speaker
So they did that to themselves. So I think that might be part of the truth and religion that comes with the judgment aspect. If you do something bad to someone else, you're doing it to yourself. Treat thy neighbor as if they were thyself. Because they are, yeah. True statement ever. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's not about being high. It's about being free, which is where you run into problems when, like we were saying earlier, when you look at
01:12:34
Speaker
like the higher dimensions in the astral realms as being more relevant than this.
01:12:38
Speaker
You're, you're attached, you have an attachment to being high because when you go up there and you can see everything, you know, you're on that level and that level is so extraordinary and so much different than this one that you can get caught. And again, that's being caught in your attachment and you're not free that way. But when you come back and you learn to appreciate all the levels of consciousness and all the realms and all the dimensions, then you can start to become free. And I think that's the goal.
01:13:07
Speaker
And to see that like heightened state in this current state. So like, I think it's the, this is the paradox of reality and existence itself. Right now we are living in the relative domain. This is, you know, all relativity around us. We're all comparing. There's dualities everywhere in order to see separation. We have to distinguish everything from an opposite. And so there's all these, you know, dualities in front of us. This is relative by nature then.
01:13:37
Speaker
We're comparing things against each other to see the differences. But at the same time, this is absolute because the absolute is actually all that exists. So it's a paradox that is, it's like the ultimate paradox that the relative domain
01:13:58
Speaker
is the absolute while also not being the absolute. But understanding the absolute can allow you to see the present moment as the absolute because there's nothing else that makes sense.
Introspection, Compassion, and Personal Growth
01:14:14
Speaker
It's cool. Well, you said there reminded me of like, when you compare something or you define something based off of something else, what it's not, it reminds me of like middle school math class. When we were first learning how to plot points. And one of the, my teachers, they would, they, they said you, if you have one point.
01:14:34
Speaker
Like that's, that's there. But in order for you to understand where that point is, you have to have a second point without that second point, which you're looking at, doesn't mean anything. So again, when you look at something and you try to define it based off of its background, when I look at you, I can, like, um, like Alan Watts always says to look at someone.
01:14:57
Speaker
If you didn't have a background to base them off of, to see them in front of, you wouldn't be able to see them at all because we absolutely must have in this physical world, two points, at least two points in order to number one, see something.
01:15:15
Speaker
for what we describe it as, and also to understand and see motion. Because if you have something that's in space, just one thing in space, how would you know if it's moving unless you could see it relative to something else? And that is the, that is the physicalist paradigm brought down to its absolute base. And I think that's an easy way for you to see right through the physicalist paradigm and understand that that's not, that's not the nature of everything.
01:15:45
Speaker
I know that you're talking about it from two physical points, but I wanna throw my own idea in here. I look at my life in two separate acts, like pre-psychadelics and post-psychadelics. And I look back at myself pre-psychadelics and use that as kind of like the background as to where I am now and where I wanna go.
01:16:11
Speaker
and it also helps me to realize how far I've come and how much I've done and how much more I need to do because there's going to be like a post post psychedelic state too where I look back in the beginning of this and and say you know oh I thought that I knew everything and that you know I was the absolute truth but as you get older and wiser the more experiences you have the more present you are and at least
01:16:39
Speaker
me personally I've been working really hard to like be here now to be present in every situation whether it's something really happy or something really sad if I'm sitting out in nature just taking it all in and it it almost feels kind of like that that astral plane like getting to that that particular spot but I know that
01:17:06
Speaker
you know, I still have a long way to go and I just thought it was interesting that I know you were talking about it in a totally different way, but I just wanted to throw that in there. I think the three of us have all looked at it in that kind of way before.
01:17:19
Speaker
I agree, I totally agree, and I think you could probably agree too, Joe, right? Yeah, and I like the way you put it too, like you look at, you know, pre-psychadelic versus post-psychadelic, and I found that that is a really good thing to do because, I mean, for me thinking about my life in that way, it
01:17:42
Speaker
also allows me to have more compassion and especially empathy for others because most people have no idea what we're talking about and that's okay. Like it's not like you know that they have to know this or that I'm right and they're wrong but it allows me to have thinking that way gives me empathy for others because I can't expect this person to think about this stuff and you know because I think back to myself how I used to act I was so self-consumed
01:18:14
Speaker
always in my head about the past or the future. And I wasn't very concerned about how my actions made others feel like, and I'll say psychedelics really was one of the catalysts to change all that. But I know that a lot of people don't have those type of experiences and hopefully, you know, through legalization and education on this stuff, more people will. But I can have more empathy and compassion for people and their behavior.
01:18:33
Speaker
And I was...
01:18:43
Speaker
When i know that's me i was that i act that same way that's you know it there i'm no better than anybody else basically and.
01:18:52
Speaker
I can, no matter how high up I'm feeling or how low I am, I can look at someone else's behavior and see myself in that exact person. I mean, I could see it clearly. And I think when I see someone doing something quote unquote bad or something I disapprove of in the moment, I think back to my behavior before, you know,
01:19:16
Speaker
before I started doing some of this work and taking psychedelics. And usually what I was doing was way worse than whatever this person, whatever disapproving action they're doing, something that I find despicable in the moment. I probably had done way worse than that when my awareness just isn't where it is now.
01:19:36
Speaker
And it seems that where that comes from, where that originates from is in these experiences when you start to feel that we are all connected. And like you were saying that you are that person, you see yourself and everyone because you realize that you are everyone and we're all in this thing together. And again, it's that key that unlocks all of it is compassion.
01:19:59
Speaker
And the key that unlocks door to compassion, at least for me has been psychedelics. It's allowed me to really understand that. Like Rogan says, the worst thing you've ever experienced is the worst thing you've ever experienced. And everybody has their own set of rules and contexts for their own life and their own experiences and their own emotions. And there's always someone who had it worse and there's always someone who's had it better. And you, and these are all equals. We're all on the same plane. We're all on.
01:20:30
Speaker
different paths that lead to the same place.
01:20:34
Speaker
I think that's what a lot of like the integration period is because I never really understood it before. But now I'm realizing like having compassion for other people and looking at them and saying, okay, you know, they're not a bad person. They're just acting because they don't have the information that you or I have. And if they did have that information, maybe they would stop and look at it differently or treat it a different way. Um,
01:21:03
Speaker
but I totally agree with you as far as looking at someone and not passing judgment instead having compassion for that person and understanding that you know the worst thing that's ever happened to them is the worst thing that's ever happened to them and maybe they're acting out of hurt or maybe they're acting out of anger and they don't have the necessary tools to work through that where someone like you or I might be a little more experienced to stop and be like okay
01:21:33
Speaker
Why do I feel this way? You know, that action isn't what upset me. It's my reaction to it. And I need to find a way to react in a different way. And also realizing that the extent of all evil
01:21:49
Speaker
that anybody has within them, you have within yourself as well. So again, seeing the, seeing the, the things you find despicable in other people, understanding that you have that in your heart to, to the same degree that the, the, the child rapist has, you know, every single person, like you always say, Joe, I love this. When you say that people are like a ball of clay and we're molded by our environment, but we all start off as that same piece of clay. Yeah.
01:22:15
Speaker
by nature. I mean, that's just what we are. And see, I like what you said too, Alana, like how, you know, sometimes, you know, the thing to do is to stop and think about why you're feeling a certain way about, you know, seeing someone act. And I found what I try to do is take it a step further and beyond just judging and feeling what I feel about whatever, you know, this act that someone's doing is,
01:22:42
Speaker
try to see the beauty and love in their perspective and ask myself, okay, why do I disapprove? And normally the case would be because it's either like jealousy, I wish I could do that thing, or that it's just not like me. Like that's all
01:23:03
Speaker
Ego based like love of the ego so and then i realize in my head that. If everybody you know if everybody just did what i approve then it would just be a bunch of me there would be no like me as in the ego there just be everybody would be doing what i would do in that situation.
01:23:23
Speaker
That would be so boring. Exactly. So to look around and recognize the beauty in other perspectives rather than trying to shift everyone's perspective to mine. When somebody disagrees politically or something, instead of getting angry and be like, how do you not see what I see? Be like, oh, so their perspective is just as valid and true for them. And it's beautiful.
01:23:48
Speaker
And I can try to, instead of persuade them or judge them, I can try to absorb their perspective and, you know, feel them through it, rather than just wish that they were thinking exactly like me.
01:24:08
Speaker
It also gives your perspective context. If you didn't have an opposite perspective, again, it's at the two points on the, on the graph. If you don't have that second perspective, then you don't have any context to signify and describe your own perspective. You know, if I'm a Democrat and I'm looking at a Republican and I wish that no Republicans existed, or if I'm a Republican, I wish that all the Democrats would go away.
01:24:34
Speaker
You wouldn't be a Republican, you wouldn't be a Democrat if the other party wasn't there. I mean, obviously that's only like, you know, a two party system or like a, you know, a this and that type of black and white situation, but you can extrapolate that idea to any complexity of information because you need the full breadth of reality and everybody's perspectives to create context for your own.
01:24:57
Speaker
Basically what we're talking about a lot here is introspection, which I've found to be like one of the most important things for me to do to sit with your feeling or emotion and feel it and then
01:25:13
Speaker
kind of analyze it and see where it's coming from. And what I've realized about myself is that I can be a very jealous person. I find a lot of the things, and this is where I would also have empathy for others because I'd look to like my pre psychedelic self.
01:25:36
Speaker
And I look at in my introspection think about things that I used to hate like with stick of something stupid I don't know like. Like a jock or something.
01:25:50
Speaker
Like, oh, like I, that guy's stupid and I hate him. And it's just really because when I introspect, it's like, I'm jealous of a certain attribute that they have that they have something that I don't. And I can do that for almost everything. It's either always boils down to like a jealousy or just some weird, uh, love I have for my, my ego. Um, but to,
01:26:19
Speaker
really introspect on all emotions and like where your anger comes from, where your anger comes from and where your sadness comes from to really feel it and then kind of trace it back to its origin point and usually
01:26:34
Speaker
more so than jealousy, it always goes to the same exact place, which is fear. It's always fear. I think that's why on psychedelics, when you have a bad trip, which isn't really it at all, you have to confront your fear. I think that's the stem of all hate, really. Because when you're jealous of someone, you're just afraid that someone else is gonna
01:27:03
Speaker
see that in them and realize that you don't have it basically. It all boils down to a fear and I've noticed through introspection that basically every negative emotion that I feel can be
01:27:19
Speaker
trace back to some element of fear and I've noticed in my life and doing a lot of this work that fear is the number one enemy. It's the hardest thing to deal with and the hardest thing to rise above and that's the beauty of a psychedelic trip in my opinion because
01:27:45
Speaker
You can fight with yourself for hours and fear, but then if you let go and surrender to it, you almost immediately have the most beautiful experience of your life. And the thing is, I know that's true for this moment. Now, also it's true for everything to, you know,
01:28:08
Speaker
instead of like attaching to the fear and obsessing over it to overcome it and allow life to just be. And it's just, I think that's the hardest part of actualizing. Yeah. And that fear aspect of it, to me, it brings up a, like a fundamental aspect of fandom as well.
01:28:32
Speaker
Um, you know, if you're a Philadelphia Eagles fan, you have to hate the Dallas Cowboys if you're, you know, whatever. And that is based in fear. And it's also based in what seems to be a need for approval. The need to be a winner. The need to have your team be the one that everyone's talking about.
01:28:53
Speaker
things like that, this tribalistic way that we look at things. And I think, again, fandom seems to be just rotten with this type of thing. I think it's like a survival tactic.
01:29:08
Speaker
everything that the ego based is a survival tactic, in my opinion, because the ego is fully concerned with survival. That's why the ego stands in the way of like the quote unquote spiritual experience. And that's why psychedelics, one of their fundamental properties is they switch off the default mode network, which is
01:29:33
Speaker
basically the ego, it's the center of the brain that defines itself as its preferences and its thoughts and works off of survival. Well, I think it's hard to come back from an experience like that, at least in the beginning.
01:29:53
Speaker
after we first had a few psychedelic experiences, we were enthralled by it and we wanted to tell everybody, but we couldn't because we knew that we would be looked at and ostracized and treated differently and we were and we still are. It's a constant uphill battle, but I've realized now it's not really
01:30:20
Speaker
about survival like I've learned to separate my ego from it and not think okay I have to stop doing this because I need everybody to like me and you know I need to be adored and I need my people to accept me it's not about that anymore I've realized it's just about what it comes back to is love and compassion and just
01:30:42
Speaker
You know, there are people that don't agree with what we do and there are people that treat us differently and ostracize us for it, but I don't love them any less. That's such a great point.
01:30:52
Speaker
And it's not about survival for me anymore. It's weird. Like, I don't know. There used to be things that I, like, this is a really dumb example, but here we go. Anime, for example. When I was younger, like, it was cool to not like anime and to shit on people that liked anime. And I had a very good friend of mine that I grew up with. She got really into it. And I was like, I can't hang out with her anymore because she's weird.
01:31:23
Speaker
And as we got older and you started getting into certain shows and you introduced me to them and now I realize like they're an art form all of their own. And the storytelling is incredible. The music is incredible. Like the voice acting, so good.
01:31:41
Speaker
And I don't care who looks at me like you're a weirdo. Like, yep, I guess I am. Like, I don't care. And I, if you don't like it, if that's not your bag, that's fine. I still love you and I wish you well. And I don't know, it's really, really interesting how it's made me look at
01:32:02
Speaker
a lot of the things that I used to judge people for and I used to look at them differently for and now I understand, you know, we're not all the same and we all have different interests and that's totally okay because if we all like the same thing, it would be really boring. And it's also interesting because like you said, um, like you don't need any, everybody to like you and this and that, but it's also,
01:32:33
Speaker
good to know that when that person has a problem with you, based off the introspection that you do on your own, you can realize that they don't actually have a problem with you, that it's a problem with their self. So like, I've noticed that it's almost embarrassing for me. I'm embarrassed for others now because every time I see someone putting hate out in the world, it's like,
01:32:58
Speaker
It's clear to me that they don't actually hate the thing they're pointing at. It's themselves that they have a problem with. It is never something external because I know that about myself and I know everybody, it's not different for other people. That's the beauty of learning about yourself. You know how other people operate. So if somebody looks at me and like hates me or sees they're just disgusted,
01:33:24
Speaker
I know that something, some battle going on inside of them. It's not me. It's their, what they see, like their projection of me trigger something in them. So it's not something I have to be concerned with. And hopefully I can, it makes it easier to love them anyway, you know? Um, sometimes it's not always easy. I'm not perfect. Obviously, like sometimes I get caught up in emotions, but I try to stop myself and think about those things.
01:33:54
Speaker
If somebody does something wrong to me, instead of just lashing out and kind of returning fire, I try to realize that they're having an internal battle and I just happen to be in the crossfire.
01:34:09
Speaker
This reminds me so much of when you first introduced me to that guy, Leo Gura. And my initial reaction to him was like, who the fuck does this guy think he is? You know, this cocky bastard going off about how he knows everything and nobody else knows anything. And then like, I realized that my, my problem with him lied.
01:34:33
Speaker
within myself and when I, I got over that, I mean, I still have a little bit of that and I can appreciate the fact that I have that in me. That's still sort of cringes at some of the certainties that he, uh, that he puts out there, but I'm able to now doing that introspective work, I'm able to understand that.
01:34:55
Speaker
This guy has so much knowledge and so much wisdom that I can absorb. If I just get over the fact that like, sometimes he comes off as a little bit cocky. And the fact that like, when you're on YouTube, you have to present yourself in a certain way within a certain character context to get views and things like that. So my initial reaction to him.
01:35:16
Speaker
was just strictly based off of my own little insecurities. And when you can realize that and get past it, you can weave yourself. It's like, uh, like Bruce Lee said, you know, be like water, you know, don't get caught up on the rocks, but flow through them, flow around them. That's how you have to be. Be like water.
01:35:37
Speaker
And it's funny that you, uh, mentioned that cause like I've had, you know, very similar experiences and to realize that it's almost like you're embarrassed with yourself. I'm like, Oh my God, like it's just me this whole time that like, it's, it has nothing to do with the external thing. It's always, it always comes right back to you. And usually it's some, something based on your fear. Um,
01:36:03
Speaker
or jealousy which is just always comes back to fear but it's funny because realizing that now I can still like realize it myself and feel like some of the embarrassment like for instance I think back to like when I was like in middle school or something and like how bad I hated like the Jersey Shore and I talked shit on the Jersey Shore
01:36:22
Speaker
And then I realize it's just like, oh, I'll just never be that big or strong or something stupid like that. And it's embarrassing to admit that to yourself. But it's absolutely true that the emotion is coming from within yourself. Everything, it's all you. It's all your consciousness. Everything you look at is just a mirror. There's nothing else but you. And it can be embarrassing at times. But now, since the more I've done this, I find it
01:36:52
Speaker
More comical than like actually feeling embarrassment. It's more kind of funny and I have more compassion with myself. Like you said, like to be aware of these things. Next move is to, you know, have some compassion for yourself, which I agree with you. I think it's the most important thing. And then you can laugh at some of this stuff and then just try to do better.
01:37:14
Speaker
The ultimate goal I think is compassion and maybe that's why we're here. Maybe that's what the ultimate goal is to just be compassionate for others and show love and spread love and be love. Just be here now because you won't always be here. Or will you?
01:40:08
Speaker
you