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14. Balance of Opposing Perspectives
55 Plays2 years ago
This week's discussion is wide ranging, exploring the appreciation differing perspectives, the importance of music in expressing our humanity, and much more. We always try to dive deep into tour own perspectives, to explore ways in which we can see things clearer.
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Music By Nathan Willis RIP
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Pursuit of Infinity'
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Pursuit of Infinity, a podcast where we try to peer through the riddling veils of thick, palatable ignorance that are embedded in our earth suit. Today's discussion is wide ranging, exploring the appreciation of differing perspectives, the importance of music and expressing our humanity and much more.
00:00:21
Speaker
We always try to dive deep into our own perspectives and try to explore ways in which we can see things clearer. And this thing is a week by week journey to sharpen the tools that make this possible.
00:00:33
Speaker
If you like what we do and want to support this quest, the easiest way to do that is to subscribe. Leave us a five star review on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling extra altruistic, you can visit our Patreon at patreon.com slash pursuit of infinity.
Social Media and Upcoming YouTube Channel
00:00:49
Speaker
We're also on Instagram at pursuit of infinity pod. And I say this every week, but we do have a YouTube channel on the way. So stay tuned for more information on that.
00:01:00
Speaker
I'm currently finishing up editing all the videos and making all that happen. So don't worry, it's coming soon.
Valuing Opposite Viewpoints
00:01:07
Speaker
So without further delay, thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy today's discussion.
00:01:37
Speaker
One thing I've been thinking a lot about recently has been appreciation, understanding and acknowledgement, but not just acknowledgement, like almost admiration for people who have opposite viewpoints as yourself.
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah it's cool that you brought this up actually because I was thinking about this the other day and I wrote some stuff down in my my little black notebook and I don't I'm not sure where I got this but I'm gonna read you this quote. Love your enemy effectively and know they are there to bring out the parts of you that need to be evaluated.
00:02:19
Speaker
It's cool, right? I mean, it's like you were saying, appreciation, but even to the next level. Love the other perspective. And also loving other perspectives also makes me think about surrendering your own perspective.
The Limits of Personal Perspectives
00:02:46
Speaker
Like instead of being attached to it, because I've realized like if you would have talked to me about my outlook on the world, you know, two years ago or even more recently, it's your perspective shifts so dramatically, like my whole outlook on the world. So I've noticed in the past and I still do, but I try not to, I try not to attach myself to my perspective, but rather
00:03:14
Speaker
view, try to see the world as only perspectives and try to gather as many as you can. Like I said, like appreciate others' perspectives and not think that one is right or wrong, but that's just what the world is, is just different perspectives. Because I mean, if you ask somebody,
00:03:37
Speaker
if they believe in God and they say no, from their perspective, there's no God. Like they live that way, you know what I mean? Like kind of going all over the place. But I heard Jordan Peterson say this a lot. Like when he gets asked if he believes in God, he says, he doesn't like to say yes or no. He'll say, I behave as if God exists.
00:04:02
Speaker
So like you could really see somebody's perspective or what they believe in by how they behave rather than just like uttering, you know, a phrase and saying that this is what I believe. If you believe that you would behave that way. So it's going back to the perspective. It's my view now is.
00:04:24
Speaker
to try to understand as many perspectives as possible. This is what I was thinking about the other day when I was writing in my notebook, because when you do think about it, everything is perspective.
Projection and Perception
00:04:40
Speaker
Because all we do is, as human beings, we project
00:04:48
Speaker
our ideas onto everything so if you could see something as many ways as possible it'll give you a better idea of what the thing actually is because i was thinking about this too about how we uh how we project onto things i heard this other quote and it was uh
00:05:07
Speaker
Nobody knows the same person. Basically, no two people can know one person the same because we project onto that person and we see them for that, our projection. And like you could say that about objects, like anything, really. Like anything. Let's say like, you know, a cup.
00:05:36
Speaker
You don't actually see the object for what it is. You project your thoughts onto it. Like we don't see, we see function before reality. Like when you look at a cup, you don't see just the cup. You see, oh, a drinking tool. Or like when you look at a chair, you don't just see the chair, you see the function first. So like.
00:05:57
Speaker
When I look at you, I don't actually see you. I see your function. So like the first thing is brother or, you know, all the thoughts I have attached to you that I project onto you. So like, you're like a secondary character in my perspective and you are whatever I project onto you in my, from my perspective. It was crazy. I was thinking about it like.
00:06:20
Speaker
When you look at a thing, you're never actually seeing it. You're seeing its function first. So like, like I said, like if we're looking at this table here, we don't see it. We just, we see the function. We see like, Oh, a place to eat or a place to sit in front of. I think that's because there is no it things are only defined. Like the definition of something can only be fleshed out by its function in terms of like translating
00:06:50
Speaker
physical objects into like a languageable description. Cause when you said, we don't see it, but instantly came to my brain was like, what is it even? Like what, what is this really even? Like it's not, it's not even a plank of wood. You know, a table isn't even the plank of wood. Like that's still a function, you know, you'd have to look in.
00:07:16
Speaker
So deep that you would see the molecular structure. You'd see the atomic structure. And then at that point you'd even realize that that's not it. Yeah. So then is there even an it.
00:07:31
Speaker
Well, I'd say no, cause then we could go into like, just, uh, we can just go into perception in general. Cause see we, the way we live right now, we're thinking, we think of everything dualistically. So like when you're looking at an it, you're inferring a subject and an object. So you're, you're, there's a duality there.
00:07:57
Speaker
It goes back to this, uh, the concept of ownership that we, that we hold in our minds as a universal property of the universe. Cause like, see, I'm sitting here now and I have my perception and we think about what your, what is your perception? Like you think about that. It's all my senses and it's this bubble around me right now. This is, this is my perception, just this bubble. But see, just in that I'm taking ownership.
00:08:26
Speaker
of it's my perception. And it's inferring through that whole outlook, you're referring that you're the subject and everything else, there's an object. When you're thinking like from a perspective of non-duality, there is actually no object and subject.
Subject-Object Perspective and Non-Duality
00:08:46
Speaker
It's all actually, I mean, you are all that this is. So if you can try to get rid of the idea
00:08:55
Speaker
of ownership, then you can kind of start to collapse the dualities a little bit. Really, we just assumed that ownership is a thing just because it works for our egos and our survival function. But the truth of what is actually happening without the ego is a whole different story. It all comes from the subject-object perspective.
00:09:26
Speaker
If we can boil something down to its smallest parts and still not know what it is, what does that mean for the function of human consciousness to define things? Because it seems that the only reason that we put words onto things, label things,
00:09:54
Speaker
and define things is so that they can be used in order for us to survive. So is there another function of that, that lies in the, maybe a higher level of consciousness?
Consciousness Beyond Survival
00:10:06
Speaker
I don't know. I would say that like you nailed it and it, it boils down to, uh, survival. I think that's, that's what the whole purpose is of us applying a function to thing because
00:10:24
Speaker
Ultimately, if you could just think about it, why do we project any thought onto any object? And it always comes back to survival and the ego.
00:10:38
Speaker
And as far as like boiling things down to its parts, that's also like, you know, I would say like an ego driven pursuit that aids survival because, and again, it's inferring that there are all these parts instead of having a holistic view of
00:11:01
Speaker
just the experience itself, just a pure state. Because when you mention in a different state of consciousness, if there would still be this function, I would say that those functions dissolve into love, and then that's what you're left with.
00:11:20
Speaker
And it's singular and there are no parts. And the final collapse is like, if you're in one of those high states, like this is what happened to me when I had that DMT trip is I experienced this, um,
00:11:35
Speaker
this love that is like beyond explanation, beyond comprehension and it was so powerful and it was this one thing, it was everything all at once and it was pure love and where I had a huge struggle is I realized during my experience that I was going to come out of this experience
00:11:59
Speaker
And this thing was going to be taken from me, this God, this love. And I was, you know, torn apart and it was, it was a horrible feeling all the while being showered with the love of God, like this unbelievable feeling. But that's when it told me that I am you forever. So that's when the final duality collapsed. That's when I.
00:12:25
Speaker
Cause I was still, I saw everything was one and I was saying like, this is the most beautiful thing. Like, how are you so beautiful? Please stay with me. Oh, like I can't let you go this and that. But then it showed me, told me whatever, however you want to say it. It said that it was me forever. And all there during this, I was experiencing eternity. So like the present moment for what it is, not the, the real
00:12:56
Speaker
the feeling of time being so linear. So when you first started saying that, it made me think of the question like, so does the ego take us away
Ego and Unconditional Love
00:13:08
Speaker
from love? And as you continue to go on, when you said that the experience made you feel that this is you forever.
00:13:19
Speaker
That would indicate that no, the ego does not take you away from love. And the ego is, it is like an integral part of love because you includes your ego. And when you're in a DMT experience, you are still you, you're, you're still there. And.
00:13:39
Speaker
When something in that experience, whether it be an entity or just a feeling, when it tells you something, it's telling you every part of you. So in that way, it seems that the ego does have an integral role in our ability to experience love. Okay. I kind of agree. And like, but I'll kind of say this also. It was basically when I said I am you, it was more of like.
00:14:06
Speaker
This is what you actually are. And what I would say about the ego, you said taking you like away from love. I mean clearly there's not.
00:14:17
Speaker
the ego loves as well. But the thing is, I would say it does take you further away from love because the ultimate form of love would be selflessness. And that's the definition basically of no ego, no self. Unconditional love and
00:14:41
Speaker
Unconditional love is an interesting thing because even a lot of what you think is unconditional love, like us as egos, as people, we think like, oh, I unconditionally love someone or somebody unconditionally loves me, or it's still usually conditional. But
00:15:02
Speaker
Real unconditional love is purely selfless. You know, like looking at something and not loving the function of the thing. You know, like I said, like we project the functions onto everything and usually that's what we're loving.
00:15:18
Speaker
But for instance, in this state, it was nothing but love. It wasn't even the function, it was just what it was. And it was so pure and selfless. And that's like I felt unworthy. And I was still, I was able to look at it and experience it and know that that was all there was, and that was eternity, and that's all there ever could be. But my ego was still there, and that's when it had the ego
00:15:48
Speaker
basically ego checked me when I was still sitting there thinking like, oh, you can't leave this is you're too beautiful. And then it was basically telling me like, no, like, this is you, like, I am you. This is what you actually are, rather than, you know, still feeling that separation.
00:16:09
Speaker
which that's why when we say like in higher states of consciousness and like these divisions and all the dualities start to fall apart and even on like a you don't have to have a complete like experience like that even when you're on maybe a lower dose of psilocybin or something like you actually literally with your with your sight you see things melt into each other and
00:16:36
Speaker
things like physically, quote unquote, start to dissolve into one thing. Like it just really, that's a great thing about psychedelics is it just demolishes all boundaries. And that's basically what I'm getting at is I would say the less ego, the more love. You can see it in real life too, like in functional reality as well. And like pure materialism, you know, when you have people who are living in fear for one,
Ego as a Creative Tool
00:17:08
Speaker
When you're living in fear, you're, you're like voluntarily taking yourself out of love or even if you're a world leader or something, you know, that is a prime example of your ego taking the rest of your being out of love. But I do imagine that the ego is.
00:17:34
Speaker
would be a great tool for it as well. Like I'm sure you've heard the quote that, um, the ego is, um, a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. So, I mean, I think I brought this up on our last episode that we recorded together that.
00:17:51
Speaker
I think the ego is the ultimate tool that was produced through evolution by, you know, whatever you want to call God, the power beneath life in order to be able to maybe realize love in a different way. Because if you look at nature.
00:18:10
Speaker
Like nature to me is love. If I sit outside, I can look at a tree and just by looking at it and understanding that I don't really know much about its real function. Kind of puts me in a default mode where I'm not judging it by its function. I can just sit there and I can judge what I'm seeing and resonate with it on a level that goes beneath. Like looking at it as what can I do with this? What can, what does this mean to me physically in my life?
00:18:40
Speaker
That's why I think the best place to learn this, this lesson is from nature itself.
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah, I do agree with that. And I would say also. It's important that you mentioned the ego as a tool rather than what you are. So basically kind of what where I was coming from is most average people's perspective of the ego. They think that's what they are like. Ninety nine percent of people walk around believing, oh, I am I'm Joe. And, you know, I am, you know, this guy, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
00:19:16
Speaker
But if once you realize what we're coming from, the truth of the matter is that's not what you actually are. When you realize that's not what you actually are, then you can use the ego as a tool for love. And I think you're right saying that the ego is probably the greatest tool ever invented.
00:19:41
Speaker
exclusively just to create love. Like that's why, you know, I guess one of the, what you could say is that's why we're here and the ego gives us.
00:19:54
Speaker
the ability to consciously bring love into the world or into existence, I should say, because we, a lot of people who live as the ego and for the ego experience love, but they walk around and to them, love is something that just happens. Like you fall in love or like you feel love. Sometimes it's just like an emotion. But once you understand that you are not the ego,
00:20:23
Speaker
and understand the importance of love and what it actually is, that's when you could use the ego as a tool to consciously create love and bring love into existence rather than just thinking that love is something that you like as the ego. Then I agree with you that the ego is the ultimate tool once it becomes a tool and not your whole being.
00:20:51
Speaker
Or maybe when you, when you learn to make the ego, your servant and not your master, you're able to, let's say, feel into love more because love is everywhere. Love is everything. And it's just the walls that we put up that shield us from it. So if you can put your ego in check and put it in its proper function, then you can more readily absorb the available love that's around you.
00:21:19
Speaker
And then you can put it out there, I mean, for other people. And that's why the ultimate form of love is selflessness, selfless love. I mean, that's when you experience the pure thing of it, which...
00:21:35
Speaker
like I was getting at, I think it's so important for people. And of course, I always have to remind myself of this, that I'm not my ego. I mean, it's just in our nature, it's in our survival function to fall back into the ego and act from that perspective. But if you can always, I always try to remind myself
00:21:59
Speaker
that the ego isn't what I am and try to really feel into myself, not my higher self, whatever you would like to call it. And then it gives me this whole new approach to creating love, like putting it out there rather than just taking it in and kind of just taking it as it comes. I think you kind of have to
00:22:29
Speaker
understand the ego deeply to really use it properly. I'd say that's an accurate statement. Yeah, I agree with that. So that's why I think introspection is one of the most important things you can do to introspect. And what we have to realize is that
00:22:53
Speaker
It is a skill and it's a tool that you have to develop. The more you can start to introspect, the more you can evaluate your ego more and understand it. And it's powerful because it's really important for us to understand why we do things.
00:23:19
Speaker
start doing more is like whenever I feel something like if I'm feeling an emotion, rather than just riding the wave and feeling the emotion. This is where introspection comes in. I look at why it's happening. And it's really like it's really eye opening because a lot of times you feel angry. And then when you look into it,
00:23:43
Speaker
you'll find out that there's like nothing really there. Like a lot of emotions that you feel often, if you just really look into them, you can kind of just dissolve them and get back to where you need to be. You know, it wouldn't be a pursuit of infinity episode if I didn't bring up Ram Dass at least once. But
00:24:05
Speaker
his guru would always tell him, let go of anger. You know, in popular psychology, you hear people always say, you know, you have to understand your anger, go, you know, go into your anger and really feel it and absorb it and understand it. And that's one philosophy, but to just to get rid of your anger, to push it away is plausible because
00:24:34
Speaker
Anger isn't real. Anger is not sustainable. It's similar to fear in that way. You can't sustain your, like your nervous system cannot sustain beer and it cannot sustain anger because anger and fear are not true and real emotions. There are reactions to situations and the more you become aware and the more you become more sound within your own mind and your heart, you're able to not be so reactionary. That, and in that way.
00:25:02
Speaker
you can push away the emotions that are not useful to you. See, that's the thing with like Ram Dass and a lot of these goddamn geniuses is that's like a very advanced teaching that they make it seem so easy or will not even just easy. It's just simple.
00:25:18
Speaker
But the thing is, you tell that to a normal person, or just like your average person, usually what that means to them is kind of burying it. Like you just push it away. So then what a lot of people will do is bury the emotion, then it bursts out at a time very inconvenient for them.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, which is absolutely not what the meaning of that is. And I think like you said, it's like you have to be receptive. So you have to sort of be on this path already to be able to receive like a message like that. Yeah. And that's why I'd say first just introspection is a skill to develop so you can understand the emotions first and then transcend them.
00:25:58
Speaker
One of the intriguing things about being a human is that we have access to a wealth of different methods of bringing love into the world.
Music, Love, and Consciousness
00:26:11
Speaker
And that could be bringing love to other people, bringing love to ourselves. And in most cases, those things work together.
00:26:20
Speaker
And one thing that comes to mind is music. Music is one of the most effective and special ways that we as humans are able to bring an advanced version of love into our reality. Yeah, I agree. Um, yeah, music is incredible that way. And like, that's why.
00:26:43
Speaker
I forget exactly the quote, but Tesla, he said something about thinking about the universe in terms of vibrations, frequencies, and energy. And it's interesting. Like, I mean, what is, what is music? It's frequencies, vibration, sound, whatever. But just when you really break it down, it's really wild to think about just different frequencies and vibrations at the right time.
00:27:35
Speaker
meditation like if you listen to some of these it really actually works and then when you think about the world in terms of vibrations and frequencies it makes complete sense but what we as humans do in music is is absolutely insane when you actually just sit there and think about what's happening it's just there's some kind of congruency that happens and it just I heard somebody say this too like
00:27:35
Speaker
completely alter your state of
00:28:06
Speaker
What happens when you hear like good music and you just, your body moves. It's like, it's so good that the energy is built up in you that you just don't know what else to do. So like you gotta bob your head or you gotta like, it's just, you can't handle that frequency at that time. So you're, you have to release that energy. And it's just crazy to think about.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of funny side note. Sometimes I think about, like, if you think about evolution and you think about like why a hairless monkey can sing opera, like it, it's, it blows my mind. Like think about a monkey.
00:28:48
Speaker
and its ability to vocalize things. And then somehow we evolve a version of consciousness and a version of our physical machinery where we are able to sing opera. Like that's, that takes mouth noises to just an entirely new level and not just a new physical level or a new level of like auditory, you know, ecstasy. It's a new level of consciousness because you are actively
00:29:17
Speaker
inviting vibrations and energies into your body, or you are giving them to someone else and they are altering. The emotional content and the consciousness of the person that's taking it in and the person that's giving it out. It's such a strange interaction of thoughts and emotions and love and.
00:29:38
Speaker
It, it really, it blows my mind when I really think deeply into it. And I have such an astounding respect for people who are able to dedicate themselves to playing music and getting really good at it and creating their own. Cause I, that's something I cannot do. I am well, not that I cannot do it, that I have not put forth the effort to learn. So I have just a vast respect for people who can and do.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the thing you definitely can and you probably should. But that's another beautiful thing about music. Well, first I wanted to say also, that's like something so special about us human beings, this state of consciousness, and a tool of our ego. I mean, nobody would learn music if it wasn't for their egos. And that's another way that we can push love.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yes, using that tool again, using a tool that has to be developed over time and over hardship to create beauty. And also still while we're on the subject of music a little bit, it's incredible when you practice music.
00:30:48
Speaker
that you actually get into these like incredible flow states. Like when you're sometimes when I mean, I play bass and sometimes when I'm playing, it's like my mind goes like my ego, whatever, everything is gone and it's just me and the sound.
00:31:08
Speaker
I mean, it's the definition of a flow state. You know, there's no other thoughts going on in your head. You're just playing the music and all there is in that moment is you and the music.
00:31:21
Speaker
Another thing is, I think I might have told you about this, but one time I had taken a long time off from smoking weed or taking edibles or anything, and then I took a high dose of edibles, like a way too high dose and my tolerance was way down.
00:31:44
Speaker
I was just I felt like I was tripping like it was just way too much. And my body started to like tremble like I was I was uncontrollably shaking. And it was freaking me out. I was like, Oh, this sucks. I like turned my heater on. I thought I might be cold. Then it was like hot in the room and I'm still shaking and like I'm freaking out.
00:32:06
Speaker
and I didn't know what to do so I was just standing in my room just shaking just unbelievably toasted like irresponsibly toasted like I should have not taken that much but I thought I was stuck I was gonna be stuck like this for the next two or three hours I was like this is gonna take a while for this to wind down and I'm just gonna be shaking like an asshole for a while and I you know I was like I can handle this but it's gonna suck
00:32:33
Speaker
but what I did was I just picked up my bass and this was like I was I was peek into it basically I picked up my bass and started playing and dude within 10 seconds as soon as I started catching a rhythm
00:32:48
Speaker
the shaking stopped. It completely changed the whole experience. So I just played bass for like 20 minutes. I was in the zone. I was in that flow state. The music sounded great. I felt good. The shaking had stopped completely.
00:33:05
Speaker
And then I put my bass down a little while later and every it shifted the entire experience. I no longer felt like I had taken too much. I felt just perfectly fine. And that was just one. It made me honestly always I look at my bass and appreciate it so much for that. And that's another blessing from music. It's it's just vibrations. It's just it puts you in a different state of consciousness. Amazing.
00:33:35
Speaker
And listening to music while you're doing any type of plant medicine work, whether it be, you know, cannabis, psilocybin, DMT and anything is so important. The music is so important. And I know that parents McKenna would be rolling in his grave saying, you know, silent darkness, but I can't
00:33:59
Speaker
stray away from the importance of music. It can really guide your experience in a positive direction. Yeah, it plays such a huge role. I wish I knew the name. I'll have to look it up at some point. But it was a guy that Aubrey Marcus had on his podcast that created an album.
00:34:25
Speaker
Because, you know, I think was this East Forest or Johns Hopkins? Both of them. Yes. Yeah. East Forest. So, yeah. So that's something I want to get into. But he talks about it like really well, like the music. It's it's you know, if you think thousands of years ago and just all the shamanic traditions, when you look back, like the music is is a vital part of the experience. It's like it guides you. So I would say that.
00:34:55
Speaker
Terrence McKenna is proud. I trust his word and silent darkness. There's probably a huge benefit to that. But personally, I haven't done that on a high dose of psilocybin and I could imagine it's absolutely ridiculous. But from my experience, the music has always been.
00:35:15
Speaker
It's soothing, it guides you and it takes you places too. So like, depending on what you're listening to, it's going to affect your experience dramatically. So I want to, I want to check out, because I've never really checked out music that was intentionally made for like a plant medicine journey. So I'm really curious to see how that'll work. And that's probably what I want to do the next time I, uh,
00:35:43
Speaker
I take psilocybin. I'll probably take a low dose my next time because it has been a while and I kind of just want to have a meditative experience, but I'll play some of East Forest. That's the name.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, I would look up East forest. He has an album that's called music for mushrooms. It's meant to be started when you start your mushroom experience. And then it's like a five or six hour album goes all the way through, takes you through an entire. Like shamanic birth, death and rebirth, you know, awakening experience. And also John Hopkins made an album called music for psychedelic therapy, which is a similar thing. Um, I don't think it's as long, but.
00:36:24
Speaker
That's another one. That's just fantastic. It's more, um, ambient, like ambient sounds. Whereas these forests album is more. It is ambient, but it has a lot of like nature sounds and like flute music, like a very shamanic traditional traditional. Yeah. And you bring up the, the shamanic use of music. If you go to any credible ayahuasca retreat.
00:36:53
Speaker
they're going to have a shaman that's there that is experienced with what they call ikaros, which are like their, their spiritual songs. That was the word I was looking for. Yeah. And when they start those spiritual songs, like when they start to sing those, that's when the experience begins. And it's completely driven by where they are within their ikaros. And they'll come over to you because a lot of places it's
00:37:21
Speaker
dark in the Maloka. So you have a small light that's above you and you can, you know, crack this light on, which indicates to the practitioners that you need some assistance. You're going through a rough time. Maybe you have to go to the bathroom or something. And if they come over to you and you are having like a rough experience in a hard time, like they will sing you a personalized like ikaro and like bring you out of it. Like they will, um,
00:37:48
Speaker
they will like surf the waves of infinity with you as they call it, some of them. I've heard that referred to using the words and the melodies of these songs. And they're not, there's not drums and electronics and like all kinds of craziness. Like this is just mainly the voices of these powerful figures who are the shamans. And yeah, these Ikaros, it's crazy because I mean, somebody who,
00:38:16
Speaker
might just hear it, you know, just soberly without really knowing much about it might not sound like much because I've heard some of it, you know, like recorded. But wait, the craziest part about it is
00:38:30
Speaker
That's like a scientific thing that they found out through thousands of years. It's not just like some guy making noise and doing a little bit of sound, like shaking something. It was scientifically put together through thousands of years of people awakening. It's surgical. Yeah, it's surgical, exactly. Soul surgery.
00:38:54
Speaker
That being said, all the praise for music, do you feel anywhere in your near future a silent darkness experience?
Psychedelics and Open-Mindedness
00:39:06
Speaker
That's the main goal. That's the precipice. When you can handle a silent darkness experience, that's where, I mean, as much as I push against Terrence McKenna's idea,
00:39:19
Speaker
of silent darkness. The only reason I push against it is because of my fear of it. A hundred percent. That's the only reason. Yeah, that's the because you nailed it. It's like that is.
00:39:30
Speaker
You hear him say it and you know he's right. And you could say all sorts of things about why he's wrong if you feel that way. But that is, that's the final, that's the final boss, you know? It is. And it's wild. Fear is the only reason. Fear keeps you away from love. Fear really is the ego at its finest.
00:39:55
Speaker
When you're fearing something, all you're doing is fearing love. Like for instance, the, uh, you know, five dried grams and silent darkness. Like you fear that, but you know that you're going to get love. Like you're fearing that amount of love. You don't think you can handle it.
00:40:15
Speaker
Everything you fear is just purely ego-driven. And that's where we're saying the ego is purely a survival tool until you can transcend it and then use it for love. When you said that what you're fearing from a psychedelic is love,
00:40:34
Speaker
I think you could replace that word love with reality as well, because when you're on a psychedelic and you're at a deep enough level, it's almost as if it's feeding you what is real. It's it's.
00:40:49
Speaker
taking veil after veil after veil off of reality. And there's a certain point where it becomes too much and there's, it's too much reality. And I think you can equate that to love because love isn't just.
00:41:07
Speaker
Like I love you. Love is like the driving force of life itself. And in my opinion, that's a definition that coincides with reality. So it's like you're fearing reality. You're fearing what's real. You're fearing what your ego is veiling you from. Yeah. Reality, love, synonymous. But also to tie this back to what we started with.
00:41:34
Speaker
That's the importance of not having an attachment to your perspective because that's what people who struggle the most on psychedelics are very attached to their perspective. And when you see your perspective dissolve in front of you and you don't ride the wave, you fight it. That's when the experience gets, well, you know, the quote unquote bad trip. So it.
00:41:57
Speaker
you have to have a very open mind and accept reality for what it is rather than fighting it and just holding on to the attachment that your perspective has given you. So that's why it helps to gain as many different perspectives as you can and love them all because if you think yours is right at the moment and you take a sufficient dose of psychedelics,
00:42:26
Speaker
What you're going to find out is that your perspective is probably not, not what is actually going on. Yeah. Our preferences.
00:42:37
Speaker
give us issues because most people think that they are their preferences. Like you were saying earlier, you know, if you identify yourself and attach yourself with your preferences and like once one of your preferences goes awry, then you will be off balance. Well, and that's going to give you some ego death too. Cause like when you think about yourself, the you with the lower case, why the, the ego and you ask yourself, well, what am I?
00:43:03
Speaker
And you'll discover that all it is, all you are, if you try to explain yourself to someone is a culmination of stupid preferences. Be like, well, I'm a musician and I, you know, cause I prefer music over sports or it's just, you create a personality and just for your avatar and think that's what you are rather than the guy behind the screen controlling it all.
00:43:33
Speaker
And so when you really break it down, all you are as your ego, as what a lot of people believe them to be is just a big cluster of preferences. Yeah. When I was younger, I used to think that what defined me was like the bands that I loved.
00:43:53
Speaker
the type of music that I preferred. The clothes you wear. That's a big one for people, most people everywhere. It's very strange too. But I guess it makes perfect sense that when you are brought up in a society that is driven strictly by materialism, selling things, buying things, then you're going to associate your identity with the things that you choose to buy and that you choose to sell. Yep. That's the end game of capitalism really. I mean,
00:44:23
Speaker
Anything that can show your status, you know, let people know that that you're the best. Your ego can wear, you know, a shiny chain or something. But when you boil it all down, it's kind of silly when you think about it. And that's why, you know, I talk about deconstructing a lot like mental exercises. When you start boiling down everything, it all seems very ridiculous. And you've realized that
00:44:52
Speaker
You've been indoctrinated your whole life into one mode of thinking and you're stuck in that mode and you're attached to it. So as many other perspectives you can gain, you have to respect them also because this perspective that we hold, like the materialist, physicalist, realist, reality, that's like a huge paradigm that we hold onto.
00:45:17
Speaker
We think that it's true just because our culture thinks it's true. So I like to think about like putting yourself, you know, 500 years in the past, you'd be walking around with the same attitude of a whole different perspective. So we're only a culmination of preferences. And we think that we have an idea of reality based on just, uh, cultural preferences. You know, it's funny.
00:45:47
Speaker
But what comes to mind when we're talking about preferences and the materialism and things that don't really matter being a source of value for people.
00:45:57
Speaker
Um, I think of like the car brand Mercedes. So Mercedes cars are known to not last very long. Like they're known to fail pretty easily. And that is an example of a business model put forth by Mercedes where they're acknowledging the fact that we need the new toy every year because.
00:46:20
Speaker
Most Mercedes cars are leased for a year or two, and then they come back and they get another one because they consistently as a customer base want the newer and better Mercedes. And just that's a function of luxury items. So the company themselves make shitty cars so that they don't have to spend time and money on, you know, parts that aren't going to
00:46:47
Speaker
be used more than a hundred thousand miles or so anyway. So right there is a perfect example of capitalism taking advantage of and capitalizing on our own sense of materialism in order to grow themselves and perpetuate the culture. Well cell phones is the same thing.
00:47:08
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. There's a new phone. There's a new iPhone coming out every year. Now, ever since it's funny because Steve jobs was supposedly, you know, for all the ills he may do in the world and may have done in the world when it comes to like Foxconn and you know, all of this, he was known to be a spiritual dude. And ever since he left their business model has changed to new cell phone every year.
00:47:34
Speaker
We're going to make a bunch of models of this cell phone. We're going to convolute the Apple iPhone market, and we're not going to upgrade these phones very much with each iteration. That way people that want the new phone are just going to go buy it the same way. Like you said, the same exact concept as the Mercedes thing. Yeah. And the thing is the only reason that happens is because we allow it.
00:47:59
Speaker
It's crazy that we are really stuck into this mindset and everything could change. There has to be a paradigm shift. Unfortunately, I think the only way it happens for our culture is through science because we're so steeped in it. We've been indoctrinated through it. We look at the world in a scientific way.
00:48:24
Speaker
So science has to start proving some of this stuff. Some of it is unprovable because, you know, truth precedes proof. So not everything that's true is provable. That's why I say all this stuff that we talk about might sound crazy, but the beautiful part about it is the truth of it and the fact that it can be
00:48:47
Speaker
independently verified. That's the only truth. Nobody can show you this stuff. We can talk about it and point you in the direction, but you have all the tools to know it, but the only way to know it is to do it and verify it for yourself.
00:49:04
Speaker
And we're so used to things having to be proven to us. I mean, we'll just take the word of a scientist. We don't have to do the experiment. If you see an article and it says, uh, science scientists discovers blank. You believe it's true because the scientists discovered it and you could read about it and say, okay, it's proven it's true. But we have to understand that just because a lot of facts are proven doesn't mean that truth has to be provable.
00:49:34
Speaker
bringing it back to like, well, we first started with that in itself that you just laid out is I resonate a hundred percent with that, but that itself is still just a perspective. And it may not be, it's not that one perspective is correct and another perspective is wrong. It's that each of these perspectives, all of them are integral to the functioning of the whole piece of the whole thing. You know, because if you, if we didn't have like.
00:50:04
Speaker
an alternate perspective to put our perspective into context, we wouldn't have a perspective to begin with. So, you know, I always come back to that thought when I start to think about like, when you say like, we need a paradigm shift, or like when I start to think about like, what I think the world needs to do in order to move in the right direction. It's like, well, okay, yes.
00:50:28
Speaker
That's just my perspective and Warren Buffett's perspective that, you know, the gross national product and the stock market is how the economy and reality grows. That is just as valuable as a perspective, to be quite honest. Sure. Well, that's the thing is speaking that way, then absolutely. Yes, everything right now is just absolutely perfect. Nothing has to change at all, but basically
00:50:57
Speaker
I'm talking about, when I say that, you probably know this, talking about the collective being aware of oneness. To maximize love, basically, is what I'm saying. To allow people to understand their higher self.
00:51:17
Speaker
Uh, just because of the paradigm we're in, it's really unlikely for like 90% of people to get there. But with science, it that's, I think science is going to have to nudge people in order for a lot of non-believers to get on board. And, but the interesting thing is my point.
00:51:40
Speaker
is that science is God to us now. Science is the truth, not God. It used to be Christian God, whatever, depending on where you're at. But science is the new God. It's the new dogma. It's the barometer of truth. And the interesting thing is, I talked about this the other week,
00:52:03
Speaker
is that science did disprove or debunk basically materialism, realism, like matter being fundamental when I mentioned the discoveries of quantum mechanics.
00:52:17
Speaker
when like all these things that you know just the layman walks around believing through our indoctrination that the world is made of particles and electrons and all that the thing is those actually don't exist so like an electron doesn't exist reality behaves like an electron exists so there's no actual physical thing as an electron it's not an actual thing but our experience behaves like it is it's like an imaginary
00:52:48
Speaker
It's a concept. You know, what I look at is like, I think of like when I was in school and like, when you're looking at a book, when you're looking at like the diagram of like a, of an atom or something like that, what you're not seeing.
00:53:00
Speaker
a photo of an atom. Yeah, it doesn't exist. And it was disproven. It was debunked. You're seeing a diagram that was drawn based off of how we understand an atom to work, you know, relative to what we can see with our senses. But it's not that you're looking at, like, you can't get like, here's a drawing of an atom and here's a photo of an atom. Let's compare them and see what their insides are like. It's not like that at all. If you ask a layman,
00:53:27
Speaker
What like what are you made of? What is reality made of? They're imagining like like I'm looking at this table here. They're imagining if you zoom in close enough, there's going to be a bunch of little balls, little circles that and then you zoom into those and there's more little circles and and and, you know, atoms there as the atom. But the thing is, you can zoom in and out forever. It's infinity like.
00:53:54
Speaker
Consciousness is formlessness. Like there's no end to it. So it's interesting to look at your hand and know that's infinity. Like you could zoom in to your hand forever and then some more, like it'll just keep going.
00:54:10
Speaker
And same with, you know, outward, you can zoom in and out, but still because of indoctrination, that's solely what it's about. We walk around thinking that everything is just made out of little atoms. But that's why I brought this up to the other week. And I find this interesting instead of looking at reality as, uh,
00:54:34
Speaker
you know the material way and thinking of what it's made of like it has to be a physical thing is the concept of holons that reality is made of holons which is a hole made of parts where the parts are also holes made of parts so like that that is conceptually correct but it doesn't feed the materialistic mindset that we have it doesn't feed that craving to know what the material is but nobody
00:55:00
Speaker
We assume that it has to be a physical material and not that physicality is just a property of this state. Like physicality not being like the true nature of something, just a property of the state of consciousness we're experiencing now. Because you can 100% experience a formless state.
00:55:24
Speaker
Like I'm sure like on psilocybin you felt like you were, you had no body and not just like, whoa, like I don't feel my hands, but like you're literally, you can become formless on high doses of psychedelics. Like it. So we assume a lot and that's another big thing that also if you like want to do the contemplation and introspective work is really
00:55:51
Speaker
really analyze your assumptions because we assume so much like we're assuming like all the time about you know every little aspect of our lives we just assume like even something as simple as like when you flick the light switch you assume that the light's going to go on and you're probably right and it probably will but you're constantly walking around making assumptions about everything and thinking that
00:56:17
Speaker
Your assumptions are just true rather than just assumptions. And your current assumption is built off of a previous assumption, which is built off of a previous assumption and vice and just, it goes all the way down the line because everything that.
00:56:33
Speaker
We base our knowledge and information on our basically conceptual in nature, and we are building on top of these conceptual ideas one after another. That's why you can easily break down any one person's perspective and deem it.
00:56:52
Speaker
Um, completely illegitimate because all perspectives are illegitimate and we saw perspectives that come from the human. We can really try hard and we can, some of us can really make a compelling argument and can really describe these things and have a gift for it. But again, as Ram Dass says, these are all just methods and methods. If they're worth anything will self-destruct. Yeah.
00:57:16
Speaker
100%. So I want to get into, as we usually do each week, um, what you've been doing, where you're at in your practice with your dreams, with what's been going on with your reading and everything.
Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection
00:57:31
Speaker
Cause you're on this, you're on this upward path here and it seems to be increasing at a pretty cool frequency. So, uh, where are you at right now these days? Well, like I mentioned, uh, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago is that I'm really.
00:57:47
Speaker
Right now I'm not really taking psychedelics, though I will soon end up not smoking cannabis or any of that. So what I'm doing now is really diving into dream states. I've read some books and hear a lot of
00:58:06
Speaker
experiences from people, credible people that have a lot of spiritual awakenings and just unbelievable experiences through dreams and learning to control your dreams. And then next would be astral projection and out of body experience or a near death experience. Same thing, except I'm not going to try to kill myself. But if you get out of body, that's the near death experience. So
00:58:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've been taking mugwort tea and blue lotus tea, mix them together and take a tea and that's been helping a lot with my dream retention. And so I've been doing that. But the funny thing is I stopped drinking the tea the next day I had a lucid dream. So it's interesting. So in the last
00:58:55
Speaker
two weeks, I'll put it this way. For a couple years, I haven't had a lucid dream. I would have them sporadically, you know, I maybe had 10 of them in the span of my life. And within the last two, three weeks, I've started having like lucid dreams, like legitimately.
00:59:16
Speaker
And I've noticed it's interesting how that happens because I've always been interested in lucid dreams. And I ever since I had my first one, it was unbelievable. And I was like, Oh, I wish I could do this every night. But now what I've done is really, really set the intention. I've really set the intention when I go to sleep. Um,
00:59:39
Speaker
Sometimes I'll listen to different frequencies when I sleep and it does work and I do get really vivid dreams, but strangely enough, I've been having the most lucid dreams just on a pure natural sleep, nothing weird, nothing prepared, more just pure intention.
01:00:00
Speaker
Like, I don't know if you could look, my pillow is over there. I put, uh, I have a little satchel of mugwort there. I heard the natives, like native Americans and ancient peoples, they would sleep with a bag of mugwort, uh, mugwort next to their head. And like, I guess, you know, breathing in the smell of it helps, uh, induce, you know, these crazy dream states. I've been doing that too. But, um, what was it like less than a week ago, I had, uh,
01:00:30
Speaker
just absolutely incredible experience. I found another thing that really helps is
01:00:37
Speaker
getting your sleep, like I'll sleep maybe six hours. And then I always have to wake up to go to the bathroom. So I wake up, go to the bathroom and then stay awake for about a half hour and then go back to sleep. And that's why I noticed what has been working the best. I know there's a name for the technique. It's like called wake and go back to bed. I think that's what they call it. So you wake up for a little bit and then you go back to bed and your mind will
01:01:04
Speaker
Your mind is kind of still awake when your body goes to sleep. I guess that's the idea of it. But like a week ago, I had.
01:01:14
Speaker
like five lucid dreams, like back to back in one morning. And it was absolutely incredible. I'm starting to get the hang of it a little more. It takes like, take some time to understand how to move in that body. And now I'm starting to get it. And it's interesting because like I can fly and
01:01:35
Speaker
At first I was having trouble doing it and then it just clicked and then it's just like moving your hand like you don't have to think about moving your hand like it just happens. So like I'm starting to be able to move my body that way and.
01:01:50
Speaker
thing is, I don't even like to say like, Oh, it feels so real. Like, it is real. This is like as real as the experience I'm having right now. And in my dreams now, I am able to fly and like, dude, you feel your stomach drop. Like you feel the air on your face. Like you're feeling like how we would say you're feeling it physically. But the whole point is, you're not really physical. It's just
01:02:18
Speaker
It's absolutely incredible. So I was having, you know, absolutely crazy dreams and just exploring and I was like able to do incredible things. The interesting part is I think.
01:02:34
Speaker
I was close to an out of body experience. Um, so after I had about like five of these lucid dreams, I was starting to get like creepy dreams and I was waking up in this house, the house that we're in, I was waking up in different rooms and then I would realize I was still dreaming. Like, and I was in like this strange dream loop where I was like,
01:03:01
Speaker
it just I couldn't actually wake up but I was waking up in different rooms of the house like for instance I woke up in my gym room over here
01:03:14
Speaker
And I thought I was actually finally awake. And then our mom walked down the stairs, but she was like 25 years old. And like, she started talking to me. I'm like, what the fuck? I'm still dreaming. And things like this kept happening. I couldn't, I was getting like stressed because I could not get out of this dream loop.
01:03:33
Speaker
And then finally, I don't want to go into too much detail. Nobody cares to hear about dreams. But so what happened is I did, I woke up in my bed and I was stuck in like a sleep paralysis type of state. Like I was half awake, half asleep.
01:03:53
Speaker
Um, and it looked like there was like this fucking weird being at the foot of my bed, but I couldn't move my head. I couldn't move my body. And I was like fuzzy. It was like, I wasn't purely in a clear waking state yet. And it looked like there was something down there.
01:04:09
Speaker
And then I was feeling something on me and I was trying to get this thing off me and I was moving my hands. For lack of a better word, my physical hands were still down at my sides, but I was having these dream hands. Like I couldn't see them, but I was feeling something on me and pulling it and stretching it. And it was like pure real physicality, but my body was
01:04:36
Speaker
was still like I was in basically what you would call sleep paralysis state. But moving what I would call my second body, the dream body, whatever it was, I was moving the arms of my dream body and interacting with something. And I was stuck in this weird state. And I think from what I've researched and what I've read about these out of body experiences, I think I was
01:05:05
Speaker
like still stuck in my body but at the edge of like those out of body experiences like I'm pretty sure my hands were out of body but every my whole physical body I was still stuck in it but I was able to move a little bit and do stuff and I could like I said I saw like a being in my room it was really strange and
01:05:27
Speaker
I think I could have actually got out of body and had a full like out of body experience. But this was after like these really stressful dream loops after having like five beautiful lucid dreams and like experiencing some awesome stuff. It turned into that dream loop thing and I was very stressed. So I just wanted to wake up. And that's when this weird incident happened in my bed with the weird little entity there.
01:05:55
Speaker
and the close to out of body experience. So I think if I was in a better state of mind, if I would have been less stressed out, I could have probably relaxed a little bit and maybe came out of my body.
01:06:11
Speaker
I did experience my hands doing it and it was weird because I was feeling something and all I can describe it as, it was almost like a snake but it was malleable and stretchy and I could feel myself pulling it and pushing it away.
01:06:26
Speaker
And eventually I just, you know, woke up and my mind was blown. And I think I texted you pretty, pretty soon after I was like, dude, I just had a crazy morning. I'll tell you about it. And yeah, it was it was crazy. I'll tell you more about the details of the dream. Maybe another time. I don't know.
01:06:46
Speaker
It's wild. Yeah, it's crazy. And oh, yeah, this is just a side note. But I texted you that picture of an extinct North American lion. These lions that used to live in the Americas.
01:07:02
Speaker
And they were huge, and they look a little different than your standard African lion that we know about today. But I've, I've seen those things in my dream, like dead on these giant lions with these weird faces. And it was strange, like, I got close to them. And this was an elusive dream to
01:07:23
Speaker
And, uh, it's weird because like a couple of days later I discovered that these things exist. Like I heard about them on a podcast. I looked them up and I was like, that's the thing that's been in my dreams. It happened a couple of times actually too. Just really strange coincidence if that's what you want to call it. But yeah, it's been, this has been, uh, really awesome. The, I'm glad that I'm, you know, in this zone of experiencing dream states.
01:07:52
Speaker
I can I can tell dude that there's no limit to this it's gonna be uh it's gonna be amazing once I can
01:08:00
Speaker
get a little better at it. I'm progressing so I'm happy. That's all. All I'm happy about is that I'm actually having lucid dreams now. I thought maybe I'd be stuck for months or a year before I even have one, but now I'm dreaming vividly every night and I've had a bunch of lucid dreams. So it's been awesome. And then also not dream related, but I also, I decided I want to, I'm gonna start fasting
01:08:30
Speaker
I did a 24-hour fast this week and I did it no problem. I was like hungry at one point during the day but I felt good afterward so later on in the week I think I'm gonna I think I'm going to do a 72-hour fast so I'll probably do a three-day fast and
01:08:55
Speaker
After I do that fast, I'm going to try to reset my diet and really start eating just plants, vegetables and fruits. And then every now and then for like a entree, have like a piece of meat. But I think I've mentioned this and it's worth mentioning again. I think that a diet is important, like your physical health and what you put in your body.
01:09:25
Speaker
I think it's important for this type of work and like any type of spiritual awakening, I think you're gonna have more progress if you have a clear head and a healthy body. Yeah, right now I'm 24 hours bastard and I'm about to leave here and get a fucking cheeseburger.