Jaguar Heart The Narrow Gate: Ending Dogmatism

[Speaker 1] (0:00 - 0:28) Welcome back everybody to the Here for the Truth podcast. My name is Yerasimos. I got my co-host Joel Rafiti with me right now. It's always so funny when I do it because I probably intro like three times out of every 50 episodes, if that. But anyways, come hang out with us in Northern California, June 20th to 24th. Joel and I are gonna be hanging out. [Speaker 2] (0:29 - 0:35) He's got his family with him. Sophie will be with me and so many of our friends and previous podcast guests. [Speaker 1] (0:35 - 0:45) Music and Sky, they're doing their sixth event. This is the fifth one that I'm involved in. Joel and I are gonna be speaking on stage for the first time ever together. [Speaker 2] (0:45 - 0:55) I can't wait to be on stage with my brother, talking about some fun stuff, some inspiring stuff. It's just gonna be great. Joel also will be performing music. I don't know if you wanna talk about that a little bit. [Speaker 1] (0:56 - 1:22) Yeah, definitely. I got a new album coming out, hopefully June before Music and Sky. But in my view, this really is the pinnacle of my creative process in terms of where I currently am and something I'm super excited about. This is a part of me that has been on the side and is starting to come more so into the fray. And I'm really, really pumped about sharing new music and rocking the mic. [Speaker 2] (1:24 - 1:32) Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. It's an amazing event. If you haven't been to it, it's incredible. This one's gonna be, I think, more different. [Speaker 1] (1:32 - 3:31) It's family friendly. It's in Northern California, Mendocino, California. There's a river running through the campground where you can just bring your little tubes or floaties and hang out. There's gonna be amazing speakers. There's gonna be opportunities for people to sign up if they wanna sing a song, say a poem, say something inspiring. It's gonna be very community oriented also and just like an opportunity to just tune out a little bit and come into the natural world and hang out and be connected with people that share your values to be inspired and nourish on so many levels. I absolutely love these events. I love them and I really believe this summer, this event's gonna be incredible. So I can't wait. If you wanna come, we have the link in the show notes. You'll get 10% off and yeah, we hope to see you there. Yeah, absolutely. Guys, episode three, we invited our first ever guest onto this podcast after the two incredible solo episodes, if I may say so myself. Yeah. That guest's name was Jaguar Heart and today he returns for his third episode with us a little over three years down the road now. And here we have just an incredible conversation catching up in the time between talking about all things life, how our psyches have evolved through this process, new realizations, insights, what our relationship and thoughts on God are at this point in time. We really get into the debate between religion, psychology and new ageism and we just have a really, really awesome, fun, powerful conversation. So I really, really, really hope you guys enjoy it. I think you're gonna get lots and lots of value out of it. Enjoy this one. [Speaker 2] (3:32 - 3:39) You are now listening to the Here for the Truth Podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. [Speaker 1] (3:43 - 4:22) The return, the first ever guest of Here for the Truth Podcast, episode three, Jaguar Heart. Here he is, nearly three, four years later, his third appearance. For those listening, you're not gonna be able to see this, but I want to share something right now. You have to go to the website to watch this, guys, but what do you reckon? Look at that. Can't even see my face, man. Look at those young bucks right there. Who knew what the future would hold for those three? Man. Also, look at the logo, bro. [Speaker 2] (4:22 - 4:23) Look at our first logo. Look at it. [Speaker 1] (4:27 - 6:08) Good to see my beard hasn't gotten any more tame. No, no, it's good. I like the beard. I just look at this, man, and I think the world is your oyster. The future is so full of potential, so pregnant with possibility. Who knows what can unfold in your journey at any point in time when you begin an adventure, when you start something? How oblivious would I have been, you, Erasmus, back then as to what could possibly unfold, but it's a beautiful thing, man. I think it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, it's so interesting because we're in the public sphere to go back and then start to see. I look at that and where I look at what I was going through then, I think that was three years ago now, maybe even more, where I've gone on a journey. I was teaching a mentorship last year, and then I was reteaching it this year. I'm like, man, this is amateur hour compared to where I've come in one year, let alone three or four years ago, man. It's funny because you think that when you're there in that spot that you're there, and then you look back and you go, oh, wow, I really didn't know shit. Yeah, no, I agree, man. I mean, even just looking at that picture, I think about where we were in our lives, where I was in my life. Yeah, it's just wild to think about, man, regarding time and our personal growth as human beings, as men too, as we go through this process and we evolve and we grow and we face new challenges and what does that mean? I can't believe it's been almost three years since that episode. It feels longer to me, personally. [Speaker 2] (6:09 - 6:09) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (6:10 - 29:11) Well, so much has changed too, and even just thinking about what was the climate in the world too. I felt like I was a little bit more into world events back then than I am now and how I communicated about things going on in the world where now I don't care as much about the things that are happening externally. I mean, to a certain degree, of course, I'm not just sticking my head in the sand, but there's just more of a focus on me and my wife and what Joel and I are and what I'm creating in my life and how I can become a better man on multiple fronts. So, yeah, that's really interesting to reflect on also. Yeah, I agree with that too. Someone asked me a couple of months ago, they said, why aren't you talking about what's going on in the world? I said, well, I do, but I just don't need to talk about everything. And I think all three of us are in a very similar energy. We're connected through this resistance to what was going on in the world. It's like we got to speak up and we got to expose these people. There's this force, almost life-destroying energy behind it, which forms the nature of decay. And it's like, we got to do this. I use the example where if you get your fingers and push against someone's shoulders, the harder you push, the more they're going to resist. So when you're pushing against that force, you kind of start to feed that, and then you become the very thing that you're trying to fight. And so, like you said, I've stepped out of all of that pretty much completely now. And I just focus on, how do I be the best person? How do I show up authentically? And how do I impact the world? Because being in that energy, and one of the big energies that I was up against was the feminist movement. And man, I copped it from that. I was almost burnt at the stake pretty much for that kind of stuff. And that was where it kind of became enough where I was getting a woman I was seeing where women were messaging her saying that her children should be killed because of me. And I was like, man, this isn't a fight that I want to be in anymore. So it got pretty gnarly there for a little while. And then I stepped away from it and I realized I don't need this anymore. And my life has been amazing since then. Yeah, you have to pick and choose your battles. And back then, in what would have been, say, April 2021, it was a very intense period of time. And it's easy to look back and maybe judge ourselves harshly or whatever. But I listened to a bit of the conversation even. And it was more so like, it was still focused on trying to bring the awareness of self-responsibility, bring emotional regulation into the picture, and just speak to the fact that those that aren't choosing to step into self-responsibility, aren't choosing to claim their own power, are actually sinking the ship for everyone at this point in time, which is kind of what it felt like back then. But yeah, I've got to agree. Definitely much more mature now, a lot more experienced. And again, I just consider what is time? How much has been achieved? How much progress has been made in such a short period of time? And I feel like most people's relationship with time is something that tends to be a burden. Whereas for me, it's like, what's possible? How much potential is there that exists? And it's like, so much can happen so quickly when you're on this authentic path, when you're committed daily, when your thoughts and actions are aligned, and you know who you are as a man, and you know where you're going, and you have the vision of what you want to build. And creation beckons creation, and it feels like there's so much support and resources become available when you make a decision to move in a certain direction. And now being on this journey for a period of time, that's such a true thing. Even for me, my understanding and my relationship with what God even is has evolved so greatly as well, because it's like the synchronicities and the alignments that have to take place is every single moment for things to occur and for things to give birth in this world. It's such a freaking miracle, man. Yeah, I agree with that. And it's nice to hear that too, because we look at God from an Abrahamic perspective most of the time. And someone asked me this in a Q&A on the weekend. It's like, what's your relationship to God and your worship practice or something like that? And as I've gone through, which we'll get into, I was in a relationship which was very difficult, but it didn't seem difficult, because it was done in a very gentle way. And I started to experience a lot of really bad health symptoms while I was going through it. And as I started to release that and heal through that, I went into EMDR therapy, which is eye movement desensitization response, because I had pretty bad PTSD from it. And the funny thing was that it wasn't PTSD because of a violent, explosive relationship. It actually wasn't really like that. But it was the subtle psychological manipulation that my psychological defenses were very strong. So my body took the brunt of it. While I was going through and healing, I started to develop my connection with God. So I feel that we come here as innocent children and we get traumatized. And I feel like trauma is like these slides that exist one in front of the other based on events. And as I started to use EMDR therapy with my own therapy, it was like slides with discharge out of my body. And so we come here pure and innocent, we get traumatized, so we can go through a joint journey so we can then remember that we're pure and innocent. And when I started to connect to God in that perspective, it was like someone asked me about worship and I said, I know as I went through that and I became free that I'm a child of God, but there's no worship required. That God doesn't require me to worship it. Him, her, whatever, it doesn't really matter. It's an ever present state and it presents itself in the form of seeing the magnificence of the architecture that we live within and saying everything is an absolute gift, which then radiates gratitude by virtue of the fact that I'm authentic at all times, which is the direct experience I have with God now. So there's no worship required. So what you're saying there, Joel, was very similar to the way that I now see it. Not from like a Abrahamic perspective, but more of like it's a gnosis coming from a knowing that having discharged the lack of innocence, the inauthenticity has got me a direct connection to that now. Like I find some of those beautiful things sitting in my garden watching butterflies fly around, which is very different to where I was a few years ago, which is wanting to fight the fucking world. So it's nice to be here. I mean, dude, you hit the nail on the head there for me. I mean, just spending time in my garden and observing nature around me is I think something that connects me to that the most. But what's been like your evolution with even just the term God? Yeah, because I want to contact this a little bit. I'm glad you brought it up because there was a period of time, I think maybe towards the end of that relationship or whatnot, where even I've personally like, obviously no offense, but I found your content becoming a focused on Abrahamic notions of how to live, how best to respond to life and deal with life, etc. And for me, I received it as, all right, he's on this journey, he's on this path. But I took it as like, I consider that a little bit of a regression personally. But can you speak into that a little bit more? What kind of led to you going that way? And then how things, I guess, dissolved or disillusioned again for you to come to where you are now? Yeah, it's a good question. I remember we spoke when I was looking at something and I can't remember what you said, you're like, you're having a Christian revival or something. And I said, I'm just exploring it. So it was catalyzed. I had a near-death experience in September 22. So because I was having seizures at night and I started having tremors first and then they got more serious as it went along. And I woke up one night and I knew that was it. I knew I was going to die. And I started to feel like I was splitting from my body. And I started to pray. I said, God, if this is it, just take me home. Everything went white. I was in a field of white light, not like the color white, it was a living white. And Jesus was there. Didn't say anything, nothing happened, came back, largely forgot about it after that. And then it kept coming through, that image kept coming through. And it came through in two other times where I was in a And so when I started to strip that different constructs of masculinity at the time, what I found that the masculinity that I was discovering was very similar to biblical masculinity. And so I was like, okay, I'll explore this. And this is why some people message me saying, when are you going to declare that you're a Christian? That's why I never did, because I wasn't there. So it was more of an exploration to say, okay, well, I've gone down this path, which you could probably say, I wasn't full new age, I was more sort of agnostic, I would say, if we're going to put a label on it. And then I thought, okay, well, I'll go this way, because we see there's an attack on the patriarchy, the family, there's things in that belief system, which is under attack at the moment in society looking at from an objective perspective. So I decided to explore it. And then as I started to explore it, there was a part of me that was resonating with it, but also a big part that wasn't. And that's why I never really like declared to it. So I think prayer, God, they're terms that are used in that space, which can easily be conflated as me going down that path. And I was like, okay, I'll take a step forward. I still believe the family is the cornerstone of a healthy society. But I think that must be coupled with deep inner work in order to resolve traumatic events from childhood. Whereas I think a lot of people in that space sort of see that as this obsessively narcissistic pursuit of self, which I don't agree with at all. I've seen in those spaces, they say they just don't have time to look at it. It's like, well, you can sweep something under the rug if you want, but that's just going to fester. Life will come for you. Life will make you deal with it, whether it doesn't matter your belief system, life will come for you and it will make you deal with it. And so as I went through this relationship, it started to build up in the body. And I saw she went to Christianity, but there was something about this. And I said to her, I go, you know, like I said, you've changed belief systems a number of times already and anyone that knee jerks into it, I find that a red flag because it means their beliefs are willing to be compromised very easily. So their beliefs are very malleable, which means their sense of self is very malleable, even which for most of the time, it means they're willing to sell out very easily. So there's a lack of integrity. So I say, you know, like there's a quote, there's none so pious as the newly converted. And so this is why I never declared. I said, I'm going to discover this for a year and I'll see what comes up. And then at about that sort of like six to nine months mark, I was like, yeah, no, this isn't for me. It's just there's something that wasn't right about it for me. So as I started to discharge more of the trauma in the body through the relationship that happened, I was having more and more profound spiritual experience, like full on visionary eye open experiences where I was told I actually saw my ex hitting me in the heart with an ice pick, hacking away at my heart. And God, it was a direct transmission from God said, I sent you an angel disguised as a demon so you could learn what unconditional love is because she broke all the walls down around my heart. So whatever was with her got burnt up in the fire of her exit. And then I was just left open. And when I was left open, I was like, now I can see it. And then I did another EMDR session where I was sitting at a table with my family and they said, we had to confine you like a caged animal so you could learn to break free so then you could free other people in the world. And I was just like in tears of gratitude for this because that's where from that moment on, I could see this world somewhat inverted, but the inversion got inverted. And then I could see the everything from every tiny little event now that happens, I can see the gift. And that was what was given to me through these experiences. And no belief system is going to dictate that. You don't need a fucking belief system for the real shit. You don't need it because it's personal. It's direct experience. It's you living your life and through living your life, through coming so close to death and to scarcity and so all the rest of it, how's things going to work out and through moving and recognizing your co-creation, your co-creating with God every single step of the way and realizing the miracles and the synchronicities and the allies and the friends and the enemies. Now everything's so interwoven and interconnected for you to rise into the highest expression of yourself. I don't need no fucking external belief system for that. I've got the direct experience, motherfuckers. So don't tell me, don't come at me with it. And it's like, even psychology is taboo to the dogmatists. Even Carl Jung is taboo to the dogmatists. He's the king of the new age, apparently. Bro, I'm like, what are you guys on? You are the most fucking asleep. I don't care what kind of lies you saw through in 2020. If you're a religious dogmatist, you are essentially asleep in my view. Yeah, I agree. Because we're talking about consciousness. We're talking about becoming more conscious. This is the exact opposite of what that literally means. A hundred percent. I had one guy write to me and he said, I can't remember the exact thing, but he goes, why do all you occultists seem to not believe in the deception and go to Christianity? And I said, well, I can't answer that because I'm not an occultist, but why do you think there's deception in that space? And he goes, well, tell me, he said, I can't remember what it was, but I said, the better question is not about the deception in the occult, rather tell me where the deception isn't in Christianity. And he never wrote back. Surprise, no surprise. Yeah. Dude, to me, when I think about religion and Christianity and dogmatism, this is the mother psyop. Because what this is at its core is, it is making you feel guilty for the fact that you live. It is put you in an antagonistic relationship with reality from the get-go. It is, I'm living my life as this person who's riddled full of sin, having to spend my life to atone for a guilt that I can't even prove I created in the very first place. And so then to build a king. Yeah, sorry, go on. I was going to say to build a kingdom in the afterlife. That's right. So everything that I do, every action I make now, it's for some unknowable afterlife. It's for something else. And hence, I've tarnished and I've pulled this reality and this experience down a rung. So I've removed the sacredness from the very thing I'm trying to make sacred from the very beginning. Yeah. One of the big things I have an issue with is you're a born sinner. Look into a child's eyes. I'm sorry, but no, I don't agree with that at all. I just don't agree with it. It's rubbish. Yeah. But I agree with you. Everything you said there, if you look at the fanaticism of a lot of people, the most wars that have ever been started are based on religion. My God is more superior to your God. This is an ineffable, intangible experience. You can't prove it, so to speak, with that sort of belief system. Whereas I wrote last night, The Difference Between Destiny and Fate. And all you have to look at is your history where how many things have happened for you to arrive in the exact place right now. Everything in history, which means there's a meaning to everything. There's a reason to it. There's a purpose for it, which is this kind of from the matrix inevitability. It's inevitable. You will be linked with the people that you're supposed to meet. And there's a divine hand that is guiding all of it. And you can't argue with that because your history dictates it. So, there's 100% evidence for it, rather than this sort of blind faith and optimism. One of the things I saw in the Bible as well is a lot of these prophets, they were just having dreams. They're just dreaming. They're just people. How are they different? If I didn't see it, I need to see something for me to believe it. If I don't see it, I kind of largely take it as it didn't happen. So, that's kind of where I sit with that. I kind of went through it because it seemed to be the flavor at the time. And when I look at something, I look at something objectively. So, it's the same way that I looked at the feminist movement or different movements. I don't want things to be true. I don't go into things saying, I need it to be this way. I'm happy to be completely wrong. It's like when I was getting death threats about the feminist movement, most people don't know that it was started in the 20s at the Frankfurt School. You know, be regards to suffrage movement before that. And yes, that's a protest and a demand or whatever. But it was crystallized in the Frankfurt School as an extension of Neo-Marxism. It's right there. You can go and do it. And they had a deliberate agenda to do it. And when people are uncomfortable with this, they clamp onto their belief and they will fight for the very thing that keeps them trapped. And when you talk against that, whether it's Christianity, whether it's Islam, whether it's whatever, it's met with religious fervor that completely contradicts the very belief system that they say that they live by. Yeah, dude. It's met with the most unconscious behavior and responses imaginable from the very people who think they're becoming more conscious. Correct. I do believe, you know, from like a patriarchal model, I do believe that men are the ones that are supposed to lead. We think differently than women. You know, we think vertically, so we can focus on a single problem at once where we're task focused. Women think more horizontally, so they have more difficulty weighting problems from most important to least important. Whereas I'm very much like, give me the more difficult problem, then I'll get rid of that, move to the second, third, fourth, and fifth. So we typically biologically make better leaders because our nervous systems are more dense. So we can focus on things in a more calm and logical way where we're able to analyze the best outcome in a multitude of ways, as opposed to like, you know, a woman's excellent at multitasking. Like, get me to write a text message while I'm talking to someone, I'll start to internally combust. But give me a massive problem to solve that's single focused, and I'll do it better than most people. And so I do believe in that, but it's more about like a balance between patriarchy and matriarchy to create synarchy. But in a natural expression of the two, you know, guess you could say God given talents of that rather than have been crossed over, which is, you know, that is one of the models that I do still believe in relative to that. Cool, man. Yeah, Brad, I appreciate it. I mean, that marriage needs to take place on all levels, you know, like what you described can be described as the marriage between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain, you know, like very detail focused, very oriented to the specific task happening now, you know, and the right brain more intuitive, or more empathetic, more imaginative, more wanting to connect the dots and weave the pictures together. There's so many ways to describe this. I like the conscious unconscious aspects, really. I think for me personally, from what I've seen, the unconscious is where the gold is. Bro, 100%. The unconscious is, you can call that God, in my opinion. That's where the treasure resides. That's where the treasure lives. And that's what you need to welcome to come to the surface. It's not all dark and underworld and cobwebs. That's where you're going to grow. That's where you're going to evolve. 100%. That's the occult. It's what's hidden. Oh, the occult, such an evil world. No, that just means what's hidden. So, I am an occultist. I'm interested in what's hidden. I'm interested in what I can't see. I'm interested in the magic I haven't tapped yet. And that's all that these occultists in the beginning were really curious about were the mysteries and the secrets of life, of psychology. 100%. And I love that as well because it's like, when people talk to me over this, I'm like, if you find something in the unconscious, it goes through a transmutation process to become conscious. What happens is the physics of your body, the biophysics shifts because something that was guiding you and oscillating at a frequency that you couldn't see has now become free. There's an energetic discharge. The world of physics responds with the relative events, the people, the circumstances that are going to show up that represent a new way of being. You cannot disprove that. That's not occultist. That's physics. It's just that occultism and physics, it might be a word that they used back in the day to mean hidden. Physics is just how it works now. But the reason it's hidden is because the masses are never going to be interested in this knowledge. So, it's always going to be occult because it's only the few who are willing to venture to dig up the secrets and to integrate them and to experience them fully. That's the only reason that they're called occult. Yeah, I know. I mean, even that's just a word, right? It's got this sort of darkness and you'd want to black magic, but you want to avoid it because it seems nefarious. It seems dark. It seems bad. But it's like, man, when I discharge stuff out of the unconscious, my life changes around me. And the more I've done it, the less stays hidden, the more comes into light, it gets transmuted into the golden shadow, as Carl Jung talks about. You're free from it. You stop fucking your life up. So, there's a process which produces an outcome, which is beneficial for your state of being. And the more you ignore that, the more you stay inauthentic to who you truly are, I believe. 100% man. Erasmus. I'm just watching you both do your thing right now. Oh, man. I feel what you're saying, man. Even going back to what you said earlier, how does a person reframe the events in their life? Find that the imperfection is the perfection, in that sense. And as opposed to like, oh, woe is me. I'm staying in a victim state. Why are these things happening to me? I can't believe I dated that person and it went completely horribly. Like, oh, my life's ruined. It's like, no, but these are the things that build you up, that are part of your path, that are yours. And I think that's impacted me over my life, is to really look at these things that have happened that I guess, on the surface, one would think are less than ideal, and yet to have deep, deep gratitude for them, because I knew on some level what they were doing to me as a person, as a man. But again, it's like, what does a person need to go through to be able to perceive that for themselves without coming from a spiritual bypass standpoint? You know what I mean? [Speaker 2] (29:11 - 29:14) Because it's easy to want to just be like, oh, yeah, everything's happening for a reason. This is great. [Speaker 1] (29:14 - 34:49) It's for my highest purpose. My eye is good. But you haven't really dealt with things. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I like that because I was talking about that just the other day. Like the statement that everything happens for a reason, there's kind of like this opaque, intangible, unattainable aspect to it. But when you can actually go, all right, so as an example, narcissism is a big one in the pop psychology movement. I actually think narcissists are the greatest gift to the planet. And people are like, what? You don't know my ex. I'm like, no, my mother would be categorized as a malignant narcissist. I could probably diagnose my ex as that, but I don't want to because it's a label, right? So the way that I see it from that is like, what did they come in to show me? So they gaslight me, right? So what does that teach me? Well, gaslighting is, you know, they try to make you question reality. Great. Well, the favor that you're doing me is you're making me confirm my reality by validating my experience. So then they project onto me. So what does projection teach me? Just make sure I don't project onto other people. Then they idealize me. So they build me up. And so it may be a false sense of pride that comes through with that. Okay, cool. It's teaching me humility. And then they start to devalue me. Okay, well, what does that mean? Well, then I'm going to stop devaluing myself to realize my own value, that it can't be dictated by you. Then they discard me. So they get rid of me. So why am I discarding myself by being with someone that discards me? And then they try to hoover me back in through manipulative tactics to say, okay, well, now I'm going to set a boundary to say, you can't manipulate me. So I become stronger in myself. So all of these things that the narcissist does represent our false self. You could even say the egotistical narcissistic aspect that would feed on all of that. So they come in, they expose that. And as you start to heal that, that leaves with them because they represent the fantasy that you're living in based on the false self, which isn't connected to reality. So I see from a spiritual perspective that what they do is they actually come here to have a psychotic break, to be broken, to reveal the false self in others. So it can be burnt up in the fire of alchemical transmutation, taken away because they've agreed at the spiritual level to come in and be so selfless that they're going to break themselves to become selfish so you can learn who you are. And that's a very, very powerful attribute to be able to give to them. Even though if you said that to them, that would play on their grandiosity and then be like, oh, I'm the world's healers, which actually technically they are because they burn up anything that's unconscious. So we could say, everything happens for a reason. When someone actually believes that they can articulate it like I just did in that way where you go, okay, now the piece is fit and that is actually the reason for it. And the gift is what comes after when you're able to, I would say, sniff out similar behavior because you've been through that before. Yeah. I got pulled over a couple of months ago because my rego was out and on my car, it said 19th of the 7th, 24 and I got pulled over in February. But the guy I bought my car from writes a one, like a seven. So it was 19th of the first. So I was out of rego. So anyway, cop pulls me over. He goes, you have to go get a pink slip, which is a safety check basically here in Australia. So I'd replaced the front two tires a couple of months ago and they said all the tires were sweet. So I take it to get a pink slip and my back tires are down to the fabric basically because I drive a Mercedes AMG and I smash it every day in track mode up in Byron Bay and the roads are really bad. I love to drive the thing really hard. So anyway, he goes, you need to replace your tires. He goes, what have you been doing to this car, man? And I said, driving it pretty hard. And he goes, where do you drive? And there's these S-bends near where I live. And I told him that I hit that at like 150, 160 every day. And he goes, if you slip out with tires like this, you're fucked. And anyway, so I ain't got the tires changed and all of that. And then a couple of nights later, a storm rolled through my area and I slipped out. And had I not had new tires, I would have gone over like into someone's house and completely fucked my car up. But because I had the new tires, the traction kicked in and I just missed a straight sign. So when I saw that, I was like, small things like that, that's not a big deal. But I saw the gift in it and I was like, oh man, that's why all of that happened. So I didn't end up having a car accident. Yeah. You know, so I see that in everything, every day, all the time, everywhere and every person in every moment now. And everything's like, it's almost like you could look at predestiny in a way, which I think is fate, which there's a hand that guides all of this and you can't unsee it once you see it. Well, see, when I hear like everything happens for a reason, for me, my experience is that there's no coincidences. Yeah, coincidences don't exist. Nothing is random. And that is the lie of materialism, is that things are random, that your existence is random, that the creation of the world through the Big Bang is random. And I think when you're able to reassure yourself to nature and to yourself, your psyche, you get to know your unconscious, I think it's in this way that we begin to live a moment to moment and look for the gift and look for the miracle in every moment. What is this teaching me? Why is this happening? Why is this person responding that way? Why did this event happen? And then it's like, how can you like shun your existence? It's like, it's something indescribable at that point. [Speaker 2] (34:50 - 34:51) Totally, yeah. [Speaker 1] (34:51 - 38:35) Yeah, go on, you're asking. Sorry, go on. No, I was just gonna relate to that from a personal standpoint. I remember, when was this now? This is about a decade ago when I went through a personal breakup. And it was the first time that I was broken up with, because I feel like earlier than that, I was the one making the decision or ending relationships. And this was the first time where someone was like, yeah, no, this isn't working for me. What an idiot. But it made me realize where I wasn't on solid ground. I had just moved to LA, I had left so much comfort back home, I'd left so much in my life back East in New York City. And I realized I was just seeking connection just so I can feel grounded or good about myself. But the reason I bring this up is that when I was going through this process, and it was definitely a breaking up process that had to open me up to a new way. Even though it was so painful, and there was that part of me, I was like, why the fuck is this happening to me? What the hell is going on? I'm feeling the pain. There was enough space there where I went, this is amazing. This is perfect. This is exactly what is necessary for me in order to take the next step in my life. And I relate it to even my wife now, we've been together nine years, we've been married over five years. And it's like, if I didn't have that experience, I don't think I'd be the man that I am in this partnership and showing up the way that I show up, because I didn't have that. It's like, people have asked me often, what's one of the best experiences of your life? And I'd say that. I actually gave that as the answer. Yeah. You're fucking crazy. It's like, no, it's one of the best things that ever happened to me. That's when you know you've transmuted it. Someone asked me this in a Q&A on the weekend, if I was friends with my ex. And I said, no, I'm not. But from the depths of my bones, I want nothing but so much love for her. And that's not a bypass of like, yeah, she fucking brutalized me. She got me. Her ability to hide stuff was my ability to see things wasn't matched with her ability to hide things. And she taught me that. And she's not deep down. She's a beautiful person. And I wish for her nothing more than just the most amazing life and love. And I hope she's a new guy. And I hope that he just really loves her the way she needs to be loved. Because I couldn't do that. That wasn't our role. But she was my greatest gift because she freed me. Like in the Matrix where Neo dives into Agent Smith and he explodes him and he comes back and he goes, tell him he freed me. And he's not beholden to the rules of the Matrix anymore. That's essentially what she did. It was like, I felt like she went into me and I broke out of it. So I became free. I will remember her until my death, but she's the person that freed me. She gave me the opportunity to live a life that I didn't even know existed. And I'm in the public space, like helping people, healing people, doing all of that. But there's levels to it, man. And she helped me crack that level that no one else could. And for that, man, I love her not in a romantic way, but in a soul way for her that I will always just hold a vision of beauty and love for her because like she freed me. And that's when you transcended it. Well said. So Alyssa, my wife, we experienced a miscarriage with our third child last November. We discovered this, right? And what was healed through that miscarriage, I think is something that may have potentially ended us later down the road. [Speaker 2] (38:36 - 38:36) Mm-hmm. [Speaker 1] (38:37 - 44:29) And I'm so much deeper as a person. Alyssa transmuted the most intense fear of death imaginable. She carried this child for three months while it was already passed away within her body, despite all the information out there, all the fear-mongering around carrying a child after it's already died to the point where it was still ready to birth naturally into this world. And just the immensity of the gift that we were given by this life that decided that I'm going to come, I'm just going to live for 19 weeks, and my job is going to be done. And it's going to impact this family and put them on a trajectory that could not be possible if this experience wasn't to be had. And just seeing who we are and where we are, how deeply connected we are, how much more connected my family is, how much more mature and evolved we've become from experiencing this fully together compared to pre that child wanting to come into this world. I look at that and it's like, there is no doubt. There is no doubt of the deep intention behind every occurrence in our lives. Yeah, man, that's so powerful. I got goosebumps listening to that. And I'm sorry that that happened to you, but I'm also not because of what you got out of it. And very few people on this planet would be able to look at something and go, I can actually see the transcendent gift that that little soul was like, oh, these people need to burn something up. I got to go in and help them and resolve whatever that karma is or whatever journey they're on. And this is where it's like the events you can't dictate or predict or try to control or anything like that. And the myopic viewpoint that a lot of people take is like manifestation is an example. I'm going to manifest this, I'm going to manifest that or whatever. And it's just so myopic and bypassing that there's this force that you don't really have control. I'm almost looking at the aspect of free will as a bit of a farce. I'm like, I can't predict all the things and people and stuff that's going to come into my life. So, how much free will do I actually have? And if my free will, you couldn't have chosen that for yourself, Joel. There's no way. No way would I have picked that? Why would I pick that? For my wife to go through the most intense grief imaginable and for me to be there and hold her and support her for a period of time that I thought never would end. And ultimately, I received the gift from, but I would never willingly choose that for myself. But what is it the free will within that, even from Alyssa's standpoint? Oh, I could choose to listen to these people and follow, let's say, a more conventional path in terms of once I found out that this baby had passed away versus, hey, no, I'm going to choose and trust my body. So, where does free will fall in terms of that? Because I get what you're saying, but it's like, can it be both? I've got a perspective and for me, it is both. I think this is what Jack might be hinting at. But I think with the whole manifestation thing, we think that what we really vision and what we think that we're going to create is all the possibility that exists. But I feel like when you lead life authentically, what's given to you is so much more beyond what you can possibly envision if you sit there and try to have a specific thing or a specific outcome that that's going to come for you. So, I think it's on that level where I think you're talking, but correct me if I'm wrong. A hundred percent. Yeah, because what I would say to that, Erasmus, is like, okay, so we've got the body and how I'm going to deal with it, but where is the choice of that information? What's the origin of that? Is it from doctors? So, then it's not free will, it's influenced by someone else. So, then you make a choice, which might be dictated by something that someone told you that you experienced earlier on. So, it's not actually like, I'd imagine that she just went through a natural process, did she, Joel? So, that's like, I'm just going to let this do its thing. Other people might go, I need to get it removed or however they want to do it. I don't really know the process. Dude, it's the most unconscious thing, man. People have miscarriages, it just happens in the toilet. People are so scared, they just flush it down the toilet. There's no proper process. There's no intention. When the doctors found out, they wanted to do this huge excavation to remove everything there. It's so unhuman, really. Yeah. I mean, that's the medical industry, isn't it? It's a death cult, basically. Yeah, it is. But I think, to what you're saying, Joel, you're absolutely right about the deep belay to free will. And I think the ultimate free will is being okay if we don't have it. Because then I can just let go and just be like, you can bring me whatever I need for my evolution. Because this whole thing is about the evolution of consciousness. Because if you look at the way this is set up, if the game is evolution of consciousness, find me a better reality to do it. There isn't one. So, when I look at it from that perspective, my thing about free will was, well, I do have free will so much that I can absolve the fact that I have free will and just let life bring whatever it needs to for me. Because that force which created me, I'm trying to say that I know better than it. That's through the manifestation process, right? So, I see it as choice, figurative and literal. Literal is like a limited number, but figurative is based on the level of your own awareness, which back to the unconscious. How much have we excavated in that point? Because I feel, from just my personal experience, the more I excavate, the less choices I need to make. And I think that's what I help people with, if I can reduce the number of choices that someone has to make, the more space and freedom gets released in order for them to receive the gift of life. [Speaker 2] (44:30 - 44:34) Can you give an example on that? Now, a short break from the episode. [Speaker 1] (44:35 - 46:46) I cannot simply speak highly enough about our membership community, Friends of the Truth. This is something we started in September 2022. It was a vision of ours to bring incredible, like-minded, on-the-tip, highly integral truth seekers together. And it's really starting to feel like mission accomplished. This is a membership community and a platform that just continues to evolve in the most beautiful ways. And I literally cannot think of anything that I could exchange, I'm being dead serious, that would give me greater value on the premium membership of $39 a month. We have a basic membership worth $17. But when I think about exchanging $39 in the course of a month, and I get personalized guidance on German new medicine, on human design, on astrology, on nervous system, on truth-seeking, on deep understanding, geopolitical and conspiracy stuff going on. Plus, I get to hang out with Joel and Erasmus. Yeah. Holy shit, man. Like the shit that we spent $39 off. We are offering you the ultimate container to accelerate your growth process, to be supported by the dopest fucking community. Like the people that we have in our container. If you're listening to this, you're already dope. I know we don't attract the wrong kind of people. But then to go a step further and be inside this container, I love Friends of the Truth. For me, it's actually my primary form of social media. I'd so much rather interact and engage and catch up on what real people who are on the tip, who get it, are sharing and saying, and are being deep, and are being vulnerable, and are sharing their stories, and are sharing their gifts, and are willing to nurture and support the evolution of the community than I would mindlessly scrolling on anything else. So if this speaks to you, please head to friendsofthetruth.co, or use the link in the bio. The value on this is just simply immense. Only those who come through the other side will really realize that for themselves. [Speaker 2] (46:47 - 46:48) Back to the episode. [Speaker 1] (46:50 - 49:00) So let's say if I want a relationship, and let's say I haven't cleaned up anxious attachment, I'm going to be pulled towards avoidant attachments. Then I'm going to keep playing the dance because I haven't cleaned that up. But then once I'm free from all of that, and I've undone my childhood trauma, what I would sit there and say, well, I don't even need a relationship because the relationship is with me first and foremost. Then I'm complete, I'm whole, and I'm authentic. Someone needs to add, but I'm not in any distortion that that is going to save me from a point of deficit that I'm trying to bring in to release the deficit. Then I just let life bring me whoever I need to encounter. Then I can appreciate that rather than try to go for the same person, the same woman, the same construct, the same situation to resolve it. Then I don't need to choose that. To me, what you're talking about is simply hermeticism. It's as within, so without. There is really no lineman or no separation between self and reality, between self and world. One cannot simply exist without the other. This process of metacism is the recognition that everything I'm experiencing out there is reflective of my internal experience. So when it comes to free will, the free will that we can enact is in terms of how much of my unconscious I'm willing to explore, how much of that inner work I'm willing to traverse, how much of the fear, the doubt, the scarcity, the worry, the anxiety, I'm willing to sit with feel in its completeness so then I can have a clearer mirror when it comes to my experience in reality. Because the experience that I'm able to have is limited by the amount of spaciousness within I've opened up. Yeah, I 100% agree. What I found is when my mirror became really clear, I didn't need to control anything. Because I have the free will to go look at the unconscious, but is that the free will to look at the unconscious or is that the unconscious trying to emerge, to show itself? It's kind of circular logic. It's both. [Speaker 2] (49:01 - 49:01) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (49:02 - 56:56) And so I feel what happens is where authenticity is the key, and I find authenticity is when the bridge between the head and the heart, which is the throat, collapses. So whatever we're speaking or not speaking here, when this becomes open, like there is, sorry to quote Joel, a quote in Bible, which I love, which is like... Bro, there's beautiful wisdom in the Bible. I mean, even just through an esoteric lens, there's so much profound gifts there. I'm not bashing the Bible. I'm bashing dogmatism and I will bash dogmatism until the day I fucking die. Yeah, nice. So there's a saying that I love, which is out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, which is like when all of this is connected from root to tip, whatever, you just become free. You just become free. There's no distortion in your field anymore about who you are, what your values are, what you'll accept, what you won't accept. And then in Adlerian psychology, there's a really good concept called separation of tasks. I don't know if you guys have heard of it, but it's how I show up, how you take that is not my issue. Yeah. And I agree with that. And to me, what comes to mind for me is more than authenticity, it's sincerity of being. I'm sincere in my words and my actions. And I think that's what that connection is as well. Yeah. A lot of people have messaged me about how I just own stuff publicly and you guys do too. And that's why I think one of the reasons where there's a good simpatico and synchronicity between us, because I can look back and go, we're even bringing the photo up, the three of us. It's like, man, look at that. Wow. I look at us and go, we were kids. I felt like a kid there going, wow, but I thought I was an adult. So the humility to be able to look back, which is tied in with sincerity, like you said, and authenticity just emerges. It's not something that you can do or try to do, because if you do, it's a reaction to not being authentic. And then there's still a distortion there. But as you become more authentic, you become more free because you have belonging of self. And when you have belonging of self, that's where you get it with other people. The funny thing about that is that's where you don't need it anymore because it's just there. And you're like, well, I belong to me. So like you're saying, the reflection, it just happens everywhere. The funny thing is, is because I used to be so driven by conflict and aggression and all of that. I'm very good at handling conflict and aggression now. Now it doesn't show up for me anymore. So I don't need to use that tool anymore, because it's not a mechanism of protection that I need to partake in. Yeah. And the reason it was coming up so expressively in your reality previously was because there were lessons that you needed to learn and parts that you needed to integrate. And now that's not necessary. So there's new experiences that are coming to nurture, to intercultivate other aspects of your being. Yeah, 100%. And I welcome it. I was working with a guy yesterday. He goes, where do I stop looking at things? And I said, why would you want to stop looking at things? Then you lose the fun of the game. That is the original sin. It's lack of effort and it's laziness. And M. Scott Peck highlighted this in his book, Road Less Traveled. The original sin is laziness, because that is unconscious. That is fostering unconsciousness. That means I no longer want to exert the maximum amount of conscious effort possible to meet my reality and meet my experience as completely as possible. And what everyone wants is to wipe their hands of that. And that's why Christianity and dogmatism and all other religions is so easy. It's so magnetic. It's so welcoming because, hey, I'll free you from the effort of being unconscious. You don't need to think. You don't need to do. You don't need to try. Lean on my understanding, not on yours. It's got nothing to do with you whatsoever. It's all perfect. For the undeveloped psyche that wants to regress to a womb-like state, oh my God, that's the gold at the end of the fucking rainbow. Powerlessness personified. It's like my ex and I'm not giving her a bad rap. She's perfect. She's great. But there was a lot of bad shit that went on in that relationship. And then when she came to Jesus conveniently, that was all absolved. She's like, well, I've been forgiven of my sins. I'm like, it's not up for me to forgive you, but that doesn't mean that I need to journey with you. And she's like, oh, well, she actually said to me, she goes, your unforgiveness is making you sick. I said, that's a convenient gaslight. I think you could also have a part of you that thinks a person's bad shit crazy and also perfect. I feel like we have different aspects to us. What is the difference between I've been absolved of my sins, no one needs to consider it, and Eckhart Tolle coming now saying, you just need to drop the past. You just need to drop the ego. There's nothing to worry about. It's the same dynamic playing out through different contexts. Yeah. It's like same meaning, different words. Yeah. I'm sorry for my horrible Eckhart Tolle impersonation. That's okay. You had me convinced there for a second, mate. I closed my eyes. I don't even know. Maybe I've heard him talk a few times. I was just never drawn to him. Neither was I. I've spent countless hours listening to those audio books in 2016, 2017. But again, part of my path. You call in the reality that's necessary for you to evolve and for you to grow. And the key is just don't get stuck. Don't get stuck thinking you have the answers. Don't get stuck thinking you have everything figured out. Don't get stuck thinking there's a single model for reality, for being. It's like you're the traveler. You're the adventurer. You're the one constantly traversing. It's just you and your experience. And ultimately, you are the person that's going to decide what works, what doesn't work, how reality operates, etc. And the moment that you decide that someone knows better than me, or some system, or some model, or some book, or some guru has answers that I don't, then that's when regression begins. And that's when you can get stuck. That's when stagnancy kicks in. Yeah. And I find a lot of that stuff, they're more like problem-reaction-solution, whereas as you start to become not necessarily more advanced, but less caught in the distortion, it's just like lessen an opportunity and gift rather than fix the problem. Some people sit with Anthony Robbins and they go through it. All that stuff is pretty basic to me. But then as you get further down the path, more advanced concepts show up. The whole concept of I am, I used to get that intellectually, but it wasn't until where I became free that I was like, oh, yeah, I get that now. That makes sense. But it's not a rigid dogmatism I need to hold on going, you're the I am. You need to be this. I'm just like, bro, everyone's having your experience. Just have a good time and learn your lessons and go through your life. It's not up to me to learn your lesson for you. And it's not up to me to teach you the lesson. All I'm doing is what I feel is right for me at the moment with what life wants me to be doing. And that's a resonance that you will feel through fulfillment rather than an emptiness. Because I think the emptiness and the void that people feel that they try to fix outside, all that is the void is just inauthenticity. It's a lack of authenticity. Because when you're fully authentic, you feel fulfilled. When you feel full, that's when you know you're in a state of wholeness because you're in integrity and integrity. Derivative word is integer, which is a whole number. It comes from the root word entire. The opposite of an integer is a fraction. So you become fractured, the more out of integrity you are. When you're in integrity, you're whole. And that's where you start to be able to live through inspiration and sincerity and authenticity. Thanks, bro. [Speaker 2] (56:56 - 56:57) One of my favorite things you said. [Speaker 1] (56:57 - 57:13) You told us that three years ago on episode three. Yeah. Because I remember that phrase from our first episode because it really landed. Well, you guys have got a lot more followers now, so they can hear it again. No, I love it. [Speaker 2] (57:13 - 57:14) It's great. It's great, man. [Speaker 1] (57:16 - 57:35) The key is, man, which, again, I see is the major struggle and people being able to be growing responsible adults that walk this path and don't need a dummy in their mouth, such as religion or whatever else might be, is just learning to find comfort and grace in uncertainty. [Speaker 2] (57:36 - 57:36) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (57:38 - 58:53) We are so desperate to cling for certainty, to cling to certainty, to cling to answers, to cling to safety. But it's like when you're on this evolutionary journey, when you're truly walking the authentic path, you are the fool. Even the imagery of the fool from the tarot is perfectly... He's stepping off the cliff. He's stepping into the unknown. He's constantly traversing the wilderness to meet new friends, slay new dragons, collect new experiences, become more evolved as a being. That uncertainty, that causes so much regression in so many people. But for the individual who can begin to welcome that and embrace it and sit in the alchemical fires of that and see what's forged as a result, that's where life becomes really exciting, in my view. Doesn't the fool have a knapsack or something like that as well? All the other icons that he's getting rid of, which aren't real or something like that, as he goes off the cliff? Something like that, is it? Well, he's got his knapsack. I mean, there's different interpretations of what that might mean. But yeah. Well, careful, bro. The tarot is demonic, all right? So just settle down. Hilarious, bro. It's so, so funny. [Speaker 2] (58:54 - 58:54) I've recently... [Speaker 1] (58:56 - 1:01:52) In that space. Yeah. I just have zero respect for, especially those that convert from new age to, you know, then dogmatism that go just simply from valuing some of these systems of knowledge and different, whatever it might be. And so all of a sudden, with no process in between whatsoever, no conscious effort of thought or discernment, then this is demonic. That's not your thought, bitch. That didn't come from you. You exerted no conscious effort to make that decision. That is a program. You've just switched a program. And yet you sit here on social media, feeling so enlightened and so head and shoulders above everyone else, because you're just repeating the same motherfucking PSYOP that's been running around for millennia. It's like... Yeah. You know, the whole demonic thing is really interesting because where I actually started to have demonic experiences is when I was reading the Bible. And these weren't dreams. These were like my bed shaking at night, my sheets being pulled, me being grabbed in the middle of the night. I'm like, there's no one in here. And it was a very real experience. And I was like, there were nights, like every night in a row for like a week. And I was like, man, this is like, this is pulling something in. Maybe I'm creating it. I don't know. But it was like, I was like, the only time that that's ever happened is through that. Very interesting, man. It's very, very interesting. You know, the darkest dreams that I ever had were when I was at OSHO Center on an island in Greece. I had been there a couple times before. And then when Sophie and I had just met, she was going there to, she was going to go do something for her PhD program. She was going to take part in something, but they wouldn't let her take part in it and then analyze it. Anyways, we decided to meet there. And the three nights that I stayed in a place at this center, and I had lovely times the first couple times I went, like 2007 and 2008. And it was the most dark dreams of just murder and mayhem and homicide. And it was like, and the thing is, my wife had the similar dreams those two nights that we were there. We woke up and we were like, I'm like, I just had the fucking craziest, darkest dreams I've ever had. She's like, I had the same exact thing happened to me, which I just, again, I don't know how to explain it. You know, and this was, this actually was before the docu-series, the documentary came out, Wild Wild Country. So I knew a little bit about the history, but for me, I had gone there because it was fun and I was on a Greek island and we did some active meditations, but I don't know, I tapped into something, but I don't really, I don't really know what to explain to explain it. It's interesting, man, you know, with, with these kinds of like culty kind of things and that, that, that connection that takes place. I know you mentioned you're watching that Twin Ray docu-series at the moment. [Speaker 2] (1:01:53 - 1:01:56) Oh no, not Twin Ray, it's like Escaping Twin Flames. [Speaker 1] (1:01:56 - 1:03:30) Escaping Twin Flames or whatever it is. Like back when that first came out, there was so much circulation on social media of people sharing that they were having crazy, like demonic nightmares, like while they were, while they were watching that. It's just weird to think about this connection between, you know, like cult stuff and then people having these dreams. It's weird. Yeah, it's gnarly. Like, I mean, even the word demon, I think means to split the mind. So it's like demon, I think, I can't remember. I looked at this a while ago. Mon is kind of like a derivative of mind, I think. I could be wrong there, but it's something around that. And it's like, if you look at the nature and the structure of that, it's like, yeah, that can split you from one side to the other rather than integrating it in a way. And so I started to move away from it and be like, man, this, and I've explored a lot of different channels and read a lot of books and texts and things like that, but it never, ever happened to me until I started reading the Bible. And it was like, there was some serious ones, like, you know, where priests were standing around my bed in the middle of the night, like figures of priests performing exorcisms on me and stuff like that. This is open eyed stuff. This wasn't on psychedelics or anything. You sure it was just exorcisms with the priest around your bed? Oh, man. I was going to leave that one there, because it's like, that was a good, that was a good call. So I'm not going to try to come back with something better than that. But yeah, it's like this sort of imagery. There's something that magnetizes that in on that level. And when I stopped reading it, it stopped happening. [Speaker 2] (1:03:32 - 1:03:32) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:03:32 - 1:03:37) So causation, correlation, don't know, but there's something there with that. [Speaker 2] (1:03:38 - 1:03:39) It's interesting. [Speaker 1] (1:03:39 - 1:06:19) It's interesting for sure. Back to the tarot, there's a connection here because to me, the tarot is like, this is the stake in the heart of dogmatism and of religion, because why the hell do you have, do not behold graven images before murder in your list of commandments? Right. And when you really look into the psychology of our culture, the reason things are so maleficent is because we've excluded artistry, imagery, symbolism. We've pushed it so that we've pushed the right hemisphere to the side. And so we live in this left hemisphere dominated world that is not interested in the bigger picture, is not interested in creativity, in flow, in imagination, et cetera, et cetera. And this is exactly what the sincere person who works with the tarot, that's what opens up within them, is the right hemisphere of the brain, is the imaginative, is the creative, is the what psychology would call the more intuitive, empathic, feminine kind of aspects of mind, so to speak, not literally. But it's like, before murder, do not look at an image. Yeah. It's crazy, right? I've done practices in creative imagination that Carl Jung talked about, and I didn't know this first, but I only read a small part of it about creative imagination. And I would sit there just before I go to sleep and I'll start to, I sort of slip, like I feel myself drop, like it's like a drop into my awareness. And there will be symbols that come up into my awareness that I can communicate with, that will tell me things. And one of them was the trickster. And it was kind of like a half goat, half man, and light got shone on and started to go, no, don't say, I don't want you to see me, et cetera. Because that was a part of me that was still being played out. And then it sort of dissolved. And then I felt a peace leave because it had been integrated in the light. And it was talking to me about things that I wasn't aware of. And then a couple of months later, I was reading, it was actually Paul, I think it was Paul Levy. You had him on with Dispelling Witiko. And that book had dropped into my awareness. After I listened to him with you guys, I actually bought the book on Audible. A day later, my mate goes, I've got a book for you and gave me that book. And so I started to read it. And Carl Jung says in that book, something along the lines of, I could start to communicate with the figures in my unconscious. And they would tell me things I did not know. And I was like, man, I was having that experience. So there's something in that. And I don't really care what any religion says. That's a real experience. And that is how you access that part of yourself. [Speaker 2] (1:06:19 - 1:06:24) Didn't Jung say dreams are messages from God? Was it him that said that or maybe someone else? [Speaker 1] (1:06:25 - 1:09:09) That was Jung. It was also Jung that said, any prayer address to God is a prayer address to your own being. That's true. We were so quick to externalize the gift, to externalize the magic. But really, in my opinion, where I'm currently at, everything is an emanation of my own psychology. Everything is an emanation of my own being, of my own psyche. The separation, the veil becomes thinner and thinner between me, this physically embodied Joel, and this experience that I'm having. There's no freaking doubt that they are impacting one another on such a deep level. And so is there really a separateness on that level? No. I don't believe that there is separation at all. I think that's just the mechanism of the ego to maintain its own individuality. That's all I think it is. Because how many times have you changed throughout your life? So Joel, a year ago, or the three of us young kids three years ago in that picture, I'm completely different to them. Some values are similar, but on the whole, that's not me. It's like if I look back to back in the day, we exchanged a message about a certain figure that we knew from the King's Cross days just before we jumped on here, Joel. It's like, I'm not that guy anymore. I'm not the guy that went to prison when I was 19, or took drugs, or slept around, or was Wolf of Wall Street guy. That's like watching a movie now. I watch the movie, I like the character, but I don't turn the movie off and then think I'm the character anymore. So it's like, am I separate from them? Because they were constructs that I was just made up anyway. So how can there be separation in a made up construct that by virtue of its design isn't real anyway? It's fact. Heraclitus, no man can step in the same river twice. He's not the same man, and it is not the same river. Yeah. I love that quote because it's so true. As you start to dismantle and dissolve certain aspects of yourself, you become less separate from yourself, capital S self, and that's where you say no separation. That's where you don't want to hurt people. You don't want to get into arguments with people. You don't take anything personally anymore. Nothing's like a slight, you're not afraid really of much unless it's like a bear chasing you or something like that. But from a psychological perspective, the triggers start to just go, these aren't really triggers anymore. They're more treasure. And there's something that I need to look at. And if you're willing to look at everything like that, the quicker it transmutes and the quicker that separation or the illusion of separation dissipates. Your last thoughts? [Speaker 2] (1:09:10 - 1:09:15) Well, I'm just trying to get my head around because of these terms, because we hear it so often. [Speaker 1] (1:09:16 - 1:09:27) And I have my opinions on like separation, oneness, we're all one. Even ego is such a fucking word riddle with different semantics. [Speaker 2] (1:09:28 - 1:09:28) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:09:28 - 1:09:49) And I think that's the thing. It's like we get into this game of semantics where it's just like on one level, yeah, sure. Separation is an illusion. But on another level, it's like, I'm not Joel. He's not me in a sense. If someone hits him over the head with a baseball bat, I'm not going to feel that. I'd hope that you would feel that. No, but you know what I mean? [Speaker 2] (1:09:49 - 1:09:56) I wouldn't feel the physical sensations that would occur when a bat hits a head in that regards. [Speaker 1] (1:09:56 - 1:14:04) So it's like on one level, we are separate. So I guess maybe we can explore that term more because it's thrown around often. Separation is an illusion. That phrase is thrown around very often. So I'd love to maybe unpack that a little bit more if you're down. So I think like separation is defined by differences versus lack of separation is defined by commonality. So it's like I look at love and hate, and I don't know if I said this on another podcast with you guys, but love and hate have the same motivation underneath it, which is to unify. So love says, I see the similarities and I want to unify with you. Hate says, you're different to me and I want you to be the same so we can unify. So that's the way I see love and hate. It's two arms, two branches on the same tree. So as we start to dissolve the separation within to the self and we come from a place of authenticity, gratitude, and love, it doesn't mean that I want to be friends with, say a homeless person as an example, but I don't look down upon them as some lesser being. I don't see anyone as separate from a deeper level. Yes, there's the individual through bodies and separation is only there because we're meant to find connection. Separation exists to find connection, and connection implies that there is no separation. And that's what I think we're looking for. And I find that... Does it though? Which part? The connection implies there is no separation, because I think true connection comes when individualism is actually honored. I think ultimately when you get to a point where you're connected that there is no separation and there's a loss of self, which never seems to come out healthy. So I think that you actually honor your capital S self through your individuality, but you don't see other people as separate from you. So you're okay being you, but you realize that others are on their own path. But the contribution to the collective is one of a positive for evolution through wanting to, like all boats rise with the tide, rather than I'm going to be greedy and take what's mine and take from you, which is separation. Whereas individuality through self-expression, because you're not separate from me, if I hurt you, I hurt myself. That's what I mean by that. Does that make sense? I think so. It's a lot to think about there. The phrasing like separation exists, which you said, but then separation is an illusion. So how can it be an illusion if it exists? So again, maybe I'm overthinking this. Yeah. For me, when I was talking about separation, I was talking the individual's experience between self and reality, self and world. When it comes to separation in this experience, for me, where I'm at, that is a real undeniable aspect of my reality. I believe that we are all unique individual fractals or drops of the ocean. And in this experience that we're having, we're separate. And where I'm currently at, even whatever exists beyond this experience, I still feel deeply that I'm going to retain this sense of self. And that's a process that's going to continue as an individual drop. So I can't speak to it any further on that. That's just what I feel at the moment. But to me, there is a single emanation of experience. There's a source that is emanating this entire thing, which we're all sharing and co-creating on some level right now. So yeah, that's where I'm at. So I think, and I get what you're saying, the drop is part of the ocean, but the drop exists separate from the ocean at the same time to express and experience its own necessary evolution to realize it's part of the ocean. It's fractal. Yeah. And maybe that's just the answer. It keeps going around. So I guess what I look at from the separation aspect is, I don't see a person separate from me in the point that I would take from them to hurt them because I feel as though I would hurt myself. Of course. [Speaker 2] (1:14:05 - 1:14:05) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:14:05 - 1:16:07) And that's what I'm speaking to with that. Yeah. And that's rational. That's morality. Because you know, on a deep level, you will be hurting yourself because you're gonna have to deal with the ramifications of the unconscious. You can't hide that shit from yourself. You're creating and accruing more debt for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And to me, that's actually a selfish thing. It's selfish because I don't want to deal with that. I want the best for me. I want a clean hygienic slate, a clean hygienic psyche. So I'm going to make a selfish decision not to infringe upon your right and breach my own morality. Yeah. And settling your accounts is really important around the way that you move through the world back to what you said earlier around grace. You honor through being honest. When you're dishonest, you're dishonoring yourself and another. And so I agree. I totally agree with you. And I think we're kind of saying the same thing, but just in words. And I think that that's important because I used to be very selfish. I used to be very motivated by materialism and greed and self-satisfaction through money and women. And I wouldn't let anyone in. But now I just inherently say it is, if I hurt you, I hurt myself. And that's where I don't see the separation between people, the impact, cause and effect. I think it's a bit linear, but more like potentiality and actuality collapsing into form. So if I hurt you, then I hurt myself. Before I didn't give a fuck if I hurt someone. And that's where the separation lies versus the connection. I think another way of saying this, and perhaps a way that might land better for some, is that everything is interconnected. Yeah. Nothing exists in isolation. Yeah. It's the butterfly effect, right? And that's a statement for a reason. But I think the unawareness and the unconsciousness of people, the more conscious you become, the less separation we see. The more unconscious, the greater the separation. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:16:07 - 1:16:08) I get down with that. [Speaker 1] (1:16:09 - 1:19:40) Yeah. Well, just the more conscious, the more interconnectedness you see in everything. We're saying the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Which relates back to even what we were saying when we started this conversation about the events in our life. How many people make those connections? Not many people do. Very few do. Very, very few do. Yeah. Yeah. Deeply, and not to just give lip service to, but to deeply feel it in your heart, in your bones, and all your cells. These experiences that were so painful were so incredible. Yeah. I'll quote... Am I still here? Oh, yeah. Yep. I'll quote the Bible for you on why not many people experience it. Answer through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction. And many answer through it, but small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. So, what's your interpretation of that? Yeah. Is that the authentic path, choosing to embody truth, integrity, and to walk the road less traveled, i.e. to walk a self-directed path that leads to one's own understanding, that requires consistent exertion of conscious effort on one's behalf, is a choice that not many are going to take. And we see that when we observe the masses, when we understand the psychology of the crowd. It's like, whatever's the easiest, most comforting, whatever gate is most wide open, wherever the majority of people are going must be right. So, I'm going to go that way, even though that leads to my own destruction. Yep. Yeah. And I think people will take this stuff to their grave. They'll take their suffering to their grave before they'll take responsibility for it, but ultimately having to be responsible for it through their own destruction. Oh, yeah. I don't think anything escapes you on your deathbed. No, definitely not. It's like Melissa, that you guys have on Melissa's cell, like Germany Medicine. You can see the conflict shocks that are within people, and when they let go of the conflict or the aberration happens. When the stone drops from their soul, in G&M language. Yeah. When you let go of things. I was a perfect example of that. I was literally like, my blood was super thick. I was having seizures at night. The dendrites in my brain were fucking short-circuiting. I was having stabbing heart pains every day. I didn't sleep for five months. I went colorblind for three weeks. As soon as I dropped the emotional stuff, I was fine. Now, I'm stronger and healthier and never been better. Now, if I'd been stubborn and wanted to hold on to that, I'd probably be dead by now. I wouldn't be far off it. But I was literally killing myself because I wasn't willing to kill myself in the form of the psychological self because my defenses were too strong. So, my body took the brunt of it. I healed that. I dropped the conflict. Even six months ago, man, I was still vilifying my ex. Sort of saying, she should be held to account for this. Now, I'm like, oh no, she was actually the most beautiful gift I've ever received. That's where you drop the stone and you're able to heal. People that walk the narrow gate, there's not many people that would look at that. Most people suffer from that kind of abuse. They never get past it. Never. It's being willing to see God in everything. And by God, I mean a meaning. Realizing that everything is rich with meaning. Yeah. Absolutely. I agree with that 100%. [Speaker 2] (1:19:42 - 1:19:42) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:19:46 - 1:19:48) Love you, bro. Appreciate you, man. [Speaker 2] (1:19:48 - 1:19:50) I was just saying words out of my mouth. [Speaker 1] (1:19:50 - 1:20:50) Yeah. I'm just so grateful for the way our parts are beautifully intertwined and interconnected since the beginning of this adventure, man. And just super grateful for the fact that you're a present force in my existence, and we get to be connected in this way, in this experience. Yeah. Likewise, man. I appreciate that so much in the words of acknowledgment. And the feeling's very mutual for both of you as well. I'm really grateful for the presence and what you bring into my life. You guys make me question my own things too. And thank you, Joel, for not discarding me during my Christian reformation. What did you call it? A Christian revival stage or something like that? I don't remember. Didn't fully go there. But yeah, I appreciate that, man. Because I think one of the most important things is still being able to journey with someone, even when they're at opposite ends of the spectrum and saying, oh, you know what? It's all good. I can allow that for a little bit. And so it speaks to your character, man. My arms are wide open and my children can fully return home whenever they feel cool. [Speaker 2] (1:20:51 - 1:20:51) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:20:51 - 1:22:09) But also too, and I think this has to do with maturity and a person's evolution and expanded consciousness is the reality that you don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water. So like, let's say I agree with something, I agree with someone on, you know, 10 things. And then maybe there's one or two things that like, I'm not really vibing with what they're up to. Like, what am I going to do? Toss this person and everything that they stood for and everything that they shared and all the ways they influenced me and inspired me out the fucking window. Like that's silly. And yet this is the dogmatism. This is the need for certainty. This is the aspect of an individual where they're unable to have that expansion, where they can't hold attention of opposites, where they can't just see like, oh, this is interesting. Let me like explore this further for myself. You know, it's because the vulnerability is too deep within an individual, you know, to be like, wait, I agree with them, but I don't agree with them. What does that mean? Like, no, I have to just toss it all out the window. Yeah. And it's cool for people to, you know, disconnect and go their separate ways for periods of time and have their own journeys, have their own experiences and then, you know, reconcile and come back together and everyone become so much more enriched as a result of having honored that. Like, it's cool. Go have your fucking experience. [Speaker 2] (1:22:09 - 1:22:13) I hear you. That's kind of where I'm at right now when I observe things and people in the world. [Speaker 1] (1:22:13 - 1:22:49) I'm like, I'm doing my thing. Like, all right, cool. I'm down with what you're sharing. You know, 80% of the time, the other 20, I'm not, but you could probably be feeling the same way about me. I can't give all this energy to that internal stress and tension and just like, oh, why don't you think like me? Why don't you have these answers? You have your own identity that you're comfortable with. Your identity isn't threatened by someone else deciding to like go a different way or don't disagree with you. It's like for many people, like that's shattering. It's like, I've got to question my entire existence. And that's been my own journey. [Speaker 2] (1:22:49 - 1:22:50) Because they haven't had it. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:22:50 - 1:27:03) When you walk this path, like I just, I'm just me. I'm just doing me and I'm living my life. And I, I care less about other people and how they're choosing to live their life. You know, as long as they're not hurting me or people I love, like there's 24 hours in a day. Like I'm not trying to spend most of them worrying about other people and their belief systems and how they're choosing to live their life. And that's, that's the difference between having an integrated experience as apart from a programmed experience, right? It's like, you're cool with you. You're cool with the reputation you've built with yourself. You're cool waking up each day and there's this flowers blooming, there's richness, there's meaning, there's things to do, right? It's like your energy, your psychic bandwidth does not need to go to the place wanting to control others. Yeah. And I think like we live in a society now where people are so quick to discard at slightest inconvenience. I had like a dialogue with a mate a few months ago and he was sort of escalating a bit and he was getting a bit offended by whatever, because I called him out because he's not a very grateful person and I've done a lot for him. Made him a lot of money and he never said thank you. Just whinged about a little small loss of like maybe 2000 versus 60 or 80 that he made in a couple of months from my recommendations. And I said, dude, I'm kind of getting over like the lack of gratitude here. I keep giving you stuff and all you're doing is whinging about what's not happening. And he kind of escalated and escalated. And I was like, no, no, I'm not going to work with this with you while you're escalating like this. I said, you've been fucking ungrateful and I don't feel appreciated for how much I've helped you. And it was just, I said it like this. And then he came back and he said, oh man, I really want to repair. I feel there's a rupture. And I said, there's nothing to repair. There's no rupture. It was just a conversation. And he was like, I was going to jump out of the group chat and fuck this. I said, dude, you're like a brother to me. I love you. You just fucking annoyed me for five minutes. And I called you on it. It doesn't mean I'm going to get rid of you though. Like, why would I get rid of you? I'm the godfather to your son. Because what? We disagreed on one thing. Exactly. Like this is where we've gotten to in society where it's just not fuck that, get rid of that person, fuck that, get rid of them. Well, you see that in the dating culture too, you know, especially with all these, you know, apps where it's like, oh wow, this relationship I'm in, you know, it's not what easy and pleasurable all the time. So fuck it. I'm off to the next one. I'm off to the next one. I'm off to the next one. It's encouraged. It's encouraged. No, I think it's just, I think that's weak. It's easy and it's weak and it's immature. I agree, man. I agree, dude. Like for me, you know, like the work of real love only begins when there's discontent. When, when, when, when, when, when, when shit hits the fan. That's, that's, that's when you're being called to step into the growth that relationship really offers you. You know, it's not when everything's fancy and rainbows. Yeah. And that's all people want these days. They want the good feeling so much. So we've developed this term FOMO, fear of missing out. People can't be with like uncomfortable feelings of just missing out on something. So, oh, this person's getting boring. I've been in for three months. Like some other good looking person gave me attention, monkey branch, bam, I'll go to that. And it's like, man. Or keep the one you have and then just have two other people on the side and call it spiritual evolution. Yeah. You mean polyamory isn't the path to higher spiritual evolution? What do you mean, mate? Yeah. You're asking, what's you questioning everything you ever stood for right now? But I agree with what you're saying. When I think about my partnership with my wife, like, you know, when, when we've been able to work through and take personal responsibility for the shit that's come up, like the bond just grows deeper and deeper and deeper in that regards. And, you know, if you're not willing to go through the flames, you know, because what someone said, you've sent the wrong text to you or triggered some childhood wound in you and you can't handle that or deal with that or work through it. And I don't know, man, it just feels pretty empty and meaningless. Fragile too. There's a lot of agility in the world at the moment. And that's why I like you guys. I love you guys so much because you guys just are anti-fragile. And I think we're all on that same path where it's like, this is how it is. I'm not going to call you Z Zim Zah, wait, like, fuck off. [Speaker 2] (1:27:03 - 1:27:04) Yeah. Fuck off, you know? [Speaker 1] (1:27:05 - 1:29:17) And like, we're real, man. Like, you know, I'm on my path. I don't have it all figured out. Like, I'm not trying to put myself up as this like guru or all knowing person. Yeah. I've been through trials and tribulations. I've been on my own path and, you know, but it's going to continue until I take my last breath. Like I love this shit, you know? So. Yeah. And back to that, you know, that death thing where I mentioned like, no, I don't think anyone escapes that death. Like, I think like I'm realizing that I think death becomes less painful in the end, the more that you've integrated and experienced this stuff while you're alive. But I think when you keep letting your unconscious accrue and you keep throwing shit into the dumpster to never be dealt with, I can only imagine that the pain in those last moments must be magnanimous. Yeah. I've heard people share like experiences when their father was about to die, where they were saying he was like terrified that he was going to go to hell. And like, like you think about the beliefs in that. And then my friend told me that when he was dying, he goes, oh, like that, that was the noise that he made just before he was going. So who knows where, what was going on for him at that time, but very different to his preconceived belief system. I'm going to hell. And then, oh, like, it was like this happy sort of like, oh, it's a bit of a surprise, which is kind of telling. Maybe he released like the best feeling fart ever, like just before he kicked it. The greatest release is from that, that from the body, right? It's been so good connecting again with you guys. Oh, dude, this has been, this has been a classic here for the Truth episode. Absolutely classic. Yeah. It's been fun, man. It's cool. It was kind of light. Normally we we've been like fucking bam, but I think we, and I think that really speaks to where we're all at, you know, because it's like, one thing I really think is that everyone takes this shit so fucking seriously that we forget to like be lighthearted about it and make fun of ourselves. And, you know, everyone's so scared of humiliation, but humor comes from humiliation by virtue of humility. And then we can joke around and go, look at those fucking kids just a couple of years ago on the screen. You know, I like that. I think it's cool. [Speaker 2] (1:29:17 - 1:29:17) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:29:17 - 1:29:53) And just think about in five years, you know, let's say we have a future episode and we think we take a screenshot right now, this one, and to think about where we're going to be. But still, like even in another three years from now, looking back at this, like we'd look at these people right now. And again, like you mentioned before, I think that they're kids and not because they're actually kids, but because there's so much more psychological and emotional growth that's going to happen three years from now that looking back at those people, it's like, wow, you know, and this, and this is where I think the power of humility, like you said, where that word really, really lands for me is like, man, I don't have it all figured out. Yeah. You know, and there was moments three years ago. [Speaker 2] (1:29:53 - 1:29:53) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:29:53 - 1:30:24) I got life figured out. And then we'd look back and like, what the hell? And then the same thing is just going to continue and continue. And I think that's where you keep that beginner's mind, you know, you keep it open and the pots of possibility and what can come in and how can it transform you. And, you know, I'm excited. I love this conversation. I also, you guys were on fire. So it was fun just hearing you guys go back and forth as well. Yeah. It just felt like we needed to catch up. Like, I felt like this would have been a conversation we would have had, like kicking it by a fire, you know, like anyway. Yeah, definitely. [Speaker 2] (1:30:25 - 1:30:28) What's, what's, what's like next for you, man? [Speaker 1] (1:30:29 - 1:34:32) Like, what are you excited about? What are you looking forward to? Obviously you've been through this big, big shift in relationship and obviously you've been working, helping people and supporting people for a long time. Like, what are you excited about? What's, is there like a vision that you have or something new that wants to kind of bubble up or like, where are you at? Yeah, there's a couple of things. So I'm teaching how to do my work. That's one thing. But the big thing is I want to help men getting out of prison to transform. Oh wow. That's, yeah, that's going to be in the next 12 to 18 months. Like I spent time in prison when I was 19. It wasn't very long. It was just a few months, but I wish I'd had someone like me to help me back then to say, you don't need to waste another 10 years doing dumb shit. Cause I think like the men that are in prison, they're a strong type of man and they've encountered very difficult environments. And so if I can help them dissolve the layers of the mind, which I can, then they could go from the typical sort of archetype of the bad boy to a good man. And you see like whenever there's a redemption story, it's always bad boy to good man. You know, there's always the man that finds the redemption. So I'd like to be able to help men that are getting out of prison to find that path for them, to help them heal their childhood. So then they can find their authenticity in the world. Because I really feel like guys like that are the ones that are going to change society for a large part, because that's true redemption. And so I'm kind of formulating that at the moment to see how that's going to work. But it speaks to me because my father was in prison, I was in prison and, you know, they won't take notice of someone that hasn't been through it. And I'm a perfect example of what you can achieve if you go down the path and are like, I'm prepared to commit to myself, I could just help them do it in a much shorter time than it took me, which was 20 odd years. So they're kind of the two things that I'm looking at at the moment. It's so interesting, man. Like when you said that, like you just get this intuitive like sense, like I consider like the archetypes of JAG. And that just seems like a perfect fit for like what you do and what seems to be on the horizon. Like it just seems like you're the perfect person to go and do that. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. So would that be something like an in-person thing? Are you planning to like coordinate directly with prisons or what's the mechanics of that? I don't know yet. I'm just going to let that land. You know, so many times I've like, this is how it needs to look. What I'm doing at the moment is just fostering the internal energy to put the intention out there. And, you know, I just like met a woman that is like, oh, you know, like I'm going to start helping men in prison like two days ago. And I'm like, have you been, she only followed me two days ago as well. I'm like, have you been following me? Because I kind of spoke about this a few weeks ago. She says, no, just two days ago. So the pieces on the board are starting to come together. So it'll be, I won't charge for it unless I can get money out government to pay me for it, at which point I will, but it'll be a free service that I'm going to do. I've got enough money at the moment and I've got some investments which should pay out a significant amount over the next little while. So I'm not going to charge to do it. So it's kind of going to be my, you could say magnum opus, I guess, for contribution to the world because prisons don't rehabilitate. They just encourage, you know, and I want to help men break free from that so they can be a force for good rather than deal with the trauma, which got them in there in the first place. So, yeah, we'll, we'll see how we go with it, but I feel that that's where I'm headed. Awesome, man. Cool, bro. Do you want to let our people know, bro, best way to connect and you know, anything you've got going on at the moment, if they want to reach out. Yeah. Instagram, Pure Jaguar is, is the best place to find me. I'll be doing some containers coming up. I'll still keep working with people one-on-one. Main thing is going to be teaching my method so I can create more therapists. So then I don't have to do the therapy work. I can, that'll create a bigger impact. And so, yeah, that's what I'll be doing. So people are interested, hit me up. Epic, man. Thanks once again, bro. Everyone else. Thank you for listening. Take care. Thanks brothers.