My Ayahuasca Shaman Has A Podcast: God, Religion, and Entrepreneurship #WednesdayWithWyan

Dare I say that ayahuasca saved my faith rather than led me away from it.

Hey, capitalists, it's time to crack open your favorite beverage. I like Zevia. This is Wednesday with Wyan on capitalism dot com.

Hello, this is Zach with Lafamy Ayahuasca, and I'm sitting here with Ryan Moran. Ryan, how you doing?

I'm very rarely nervous for podcasts, but a little bit nervous and honored to be hanging out with you, Zach.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so on that point, our listeners may not be all that familiar with you. They may also know exactly who you are. So can you give us a quick rundown of your background?

Yeah. So professionally, I am the CEO and the founder of capitalism.com which trains and helps entrepreneurs build businesses and invest the profits. I run a podcast called capitalism.com with Ryan Daniel Moran with a fairly sizable following of entrepreneurs. And personally, my background was actually I was raised in the. In the Baptist church and I thought I was going to be a pastor for most of my life. It wasn't until I went to school to be a pastor that I started to question that path. And I'm sure we're gonna go really deep into that. But the way that you and I met was that.

Entrepreneurs have kind of turned to different modalities to deal with a lot of what goes on under the hood because we are hard chargers and we are.

Alone. We feel alone and we feel did. And so there has been, you know, a demand for going deeper. I think, especially lately, there has been a lot of success without fulfillment. And the result is looking for something deeper. And 25 years ago, that was met through personal development and going to Tony Robbins conferences. And today that is kind of the new world that is happening in psychedelic research. That was how you and I got connected. And so former pastoral student, current leader of capitalists, was doing. Was doing his first ceremony with you, and I'm excited to do my second upcoming soon.

Yep. Second round. Yeah. Because we just want to point out, for those who don't know us all that well, is that we actually really do not like it when people just do one off ceremonies unless they have previous experience. We prefer to have people do at least three and we put forth retreats with four ceremonies at a time. But yeah.

I think one of the things that really connected us during the retreat that you were on was your background in your understanding and education around Christianity, the Bible, specifically, because I have lots of questions or had had and continue to have lots of questions around how Christians view their path. I was not personally, I was not raised Christian. My first exposure to any type of spirituality was actually the Lakota spiritual. Some people call it the Red Road.

I lived on the Rosebud Reservation, and so that was my first exposure to any kind of spirituality was Lakota Sioux spirituality, which is Native American.

And I think that was very lucky for me in the sense that I didn't go through any pressure from other than cultural exposure. There were no parental or familial pressures around any particular path. Even when I was participating in Lakota Sioux ceremonies and so forth, there was never any type of dogma around that. And so it's allowed me to really look at various spiritual paths without having any of that baggage. And that's one of the things I wanted to talk about with you.

Maybe going into what happened to you in regards to.

Your own relationship with Christianity. I think you use the word losing your faith and then coming back to your faith and then how ayahuasca may have helped that. And I think it has. We haven't had. I've heard that you've had some progression, personal revelation, so to speak, subsequent to our retreat. I heard via your podcast that I listened to a couple of those episodes and love to hear about that, but maybe we should before getting into that. What was your experience like working with us that particular retreat? And you were coming in with some pretty big questions, if I remember correctly.

I don't remember what questions I came up in with, except my intention was to leave behind the fears and anxieties that have kept me from being everything that I could be. And.

I remember.

The first night.

Feeling no.

Special experience except the chatterbox in my brain going.

And then, am I feeling anything? Am I not feeling anything in my head? Because I'm feeling. And just kind of an exhausting chatterbox going over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. All night long, until hours in, there was like.

A sense of, God, this is frustrating. And then kind of chatterbox going, I thought you wanted to be free of all your fears and anxieties. And it was, yeah, yeah. So would you shut up? And then voice may be like, well, nice to meet you. I'm your fears and anxieties.

And so it was a cleaning out of all that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I shared this with Jess the next day, and her saying, you know, something to consider, Ryan, is, are you okay living with the fears and anxieties? It's almost the resistance of the fears and anxieties, which is what gives Them fuel. And that was one of the really big realizations that I had throughout that. That. That round, if you will, you know, that those ceremonies was that what you resist feeds the other side. And it is just true across the board. Whatever you are resisting, you are giving energy to. And that has been a lesson that has been hard to integrate and yet has also been very profound. Mm. So there has been a lot, Zach, that I learned or discovered or took away from the experience that I would say I am aware of, but have not yet integrated in the sense that I had this idea going into Ayahuasca that you have these very psychedelic experiences, and then you kind of come out on the other side a little bit of a different person, because I've heard that then how it was described. Whereas it was more like, if we talk about it in the Christian sense, in the Christian sense, I think there was also that portrayal of, you are saved or you are baptized, and you're a different person. You're a new creation, but it's the beginning journey.

You have come to realization, and now the journey begins. And that has been my experience with ayahuasca so far. Again, I've only had the one series of ceremonies, but I kind of expected to come up on the other side different. And it was more like a baptism. That is the beginning of a journey where I now have the lessons, but it still takes practice for me to integrate those. And one of the, you know, our mutual friend who led. Who led some of the guys during the ceremonies was saying, I've discovered that sometimes I have to go back for the experience again, and it's okay.

It is not like a. It is. And again, in Christianity, it was often the fallacy was once you accepted Christ or you came to. Came to salvation, you were done. And now you had your get out of jail, get out of your hell free card, and you would cruise on to streets of gold. You were just, you know, counting out your days. There's the experience, and then it was over. And it's more like, no, this is at the beginning, and it's a lifelong journey. And sometimes you go back to church and you get charged up and you stay on the path. And I. And I don't intend to draw a ton of parallels between Christianity and this experience, but I look at it the same way in the sense of it was the beginning of something, the beginning of a deeper realization. And now the work begins, or not even the work now, but almost like the blossoming or the uncovering of what has been loosened up Inside. And I've had a lot of those types of instances where something has been awoken or something has been revealed. But it is still a process of integrating and practicing. And remembering is probably the big one, is even just remembering the insight or remembering who you are or remembering what you discovered. But it does not mean that everything is suddenly different.

I would actually, I don't mean to flip the interview back onto you, Zach, but I would love to know if that's normal.

Yeah, I mean, that's.

We. I don't know if you've looked at our content extensively. You're a busy guy. But we do, we're really careful about saying, hey, ayahuasca is not a magic bullet by any means. And at the end of our retreats, if you remember, we do say, okay, yeah, this series of ceremonies.

Challenging. There are a lot of shifts, really noticeable, big shifts during a short period of time. And guess what? Now the work begins. Now the real work begins. It says we go out and it's the proverbial integration time, remembering, practicing, and so forth. And it's your analogy of the Christian analogy of baptism and so forth. Spot on. Because Christianity has its practices. I wish there were more to be offered and we can get into that later. But you know, you have prayer as a practice, you have going to church as a practice, you have reading scripture as a practice. And it's all part of this post.

Conversion, for lack of a better term, in a Christian sense, post conversion practice. It's not, and this is. We can get into a little bit here, what some of my.

Frustration not with Christ's teaching, but rather Christianity in general as a generalization is there seems to be a lack of, oh, I'm Christian. And.

At the same time, even though I've gone through this, may have gone through this conversion experience or had this direct relationship with Christ in some way, I still need to pay attention to what Christ said and taught. And I don't know that. And maybe you can help out on this point. I don't know that in church or churches they say, hey, look, Christ is an example to live up to and to emulate rather than just go to church, pray, ask for forgiveness. Because if one, one my sense around Christ's teachings is like he's trying to teach us something and it's our responsibility to practice that. And I just, I don't know, I don't see that or I don't get the sense, unlike, let's take Buddhism as an example, there's a people who are really into Buddhism and practice meditation and they practice keeping the precepts and that sort of thing. By and large, there's a big difference than general mainstream population. I don't necessarily see that so much in Christianity. And maybe that's just.

It would be easy to stereotype Christians or Christianity. And I can tell you from being in it for a long time, you can tell the difference. And here is my interpretation of that. Zach.

I believed and was really. This was kind of ingrained into me, is that the point of the path, the point of the faith was to reach a certain set of beliefs and logical conclusions that would then determine where you spent eternity. That was the point. Right. And that is the case when you're operating from a place of fear.

Mm.

Primary belief is I'm afraid because I'm going to hell. Then you will do whatever it takes to get out of that fear. You are running away from something. And so we can logically think our way through it of I'm sinful and I'm going to hell. I need a Savior. This is my Savior. I pray the prayer, I do the things I know. No longer have to be afraid. I'm done, I'm good. Right.

But.

But Jesus was not operating from a place of fear. He was operating from a place of love.

Exactly.

It was a, it was a. It was an example of love, of service, of grace, of judgment out of.

Protection and love.

Judgment to make the right decisions. Right. Is that correct?

Well, even if you look at Jesus and the turning over the traitors, turning over the tables.

Tables.

I mean, there is. There was an angry judgment between right and wrong, but not a judgment of people.

Right.

So there was, there's like, I think there is a responsible form of judging and then there is the logical fear based judging. That is, I am judging you because of who you are or because of what you do. And I'm labeling you. I'm treating you a certain way because of what I judge you to be, which says something more about myself if I'm judging you than it does you. Whereas as I think more responsible or loving judgment is.

More of a protectionist loving judgment. And I think when you're place of fear, then it's very hard to live up to the example of who Jesus was. And you can tell that person because.

They'Re debating the nuances of Christianity rather than following the example and they think that it's the same thing or that the point is reaching the set of logical conclusions. And I know because that was me.

I believed you had the. You had the get out of hell free card. And so the rest of your life was supposed to be getting other people to believe the way that you believe as a way of saving them from hell.

But at the same time forgetting to work on themselves first and be an example.

Right, right. Because it would be easy to think that we're human. So we're flawed. We're always going to be sinful. There is no point in working on ourselves. We must depend upon our faith and the sacrifice of Christ to save us. And we must bring other people to that same conclusion, a way to save their souls. But there is never really a transition into this was done for me, and now I will serve man to follow that example. And that was.

That black and white difference is what led me out of. Out of the church. In fact, I remember I was fishing with my older brother once, and I was kind of confiding in him in this struggle. And I was in my early 20s at the time. And I said to him, his name's Kelly. And I said, kelly, you know, I just have this problem with this idea of the conclusions that you reach in your brain by the end of your life determining where you go and spend eternity. And he's a few years older than me. And he said, ryan, you're a very deep thinking young man. When I question these things, I go, oh, I gotta play Xbox so I can stop thinking about this stuff.

Yeah.

Just like the rest of society.

So.

I think that.

Set of black and white principles is what led me to look for something more, look for something deeper. And so.

I don't even like to say that I left Christianity. I like to say that I graduated from Christianity. It served its purpose for that stage of my evolution and my depth as a human being. And at some point I felt that I had to leave the church in order to find God. I had to move on in order to find a deeper meaning. And.

Part of that path led me to meet you.

Totally. So this is classic, or not classic, I should say this is perfect because when you came to us, you were dealing with a lot of anxiety and fear, right?

Yes.

Yeah. And not to say that that's fixed because we all. I don't think that's ever going to be totally fixed, but. And this is.

A couple of ways that one can approach that from this view is through meditation and taking somewhat of a Buddhist view and. Or ayahuasca, because both are saying, hey, there's this fear here. Take a look at it. You better get comfortable with it because it's part of life. Does that resonate in terms of.

So it's not a removal of the fear, because I think that's almost impossible, but rather getting comfortable with that. And this is, like I said, a Buddhist view as well, where through meditation you have the fear come. It's just going to come up if you're a regular meditator and just be able to sit with it. And it's very similar to ayahuasca. And so with that, there's a more mature approach to one's experience around fear. And then through that maturity, one can approach God or Christianity or what have you from a more mature viewpoint as well.

So, Zach, I will answer your question by telling you.

What happened in my final ceremony together.

Cool.

And I would say that, you know, you said the fear and anxiety isn't gone, and that's. And that's definitely the case. Like, I still have fears and anxieties, but they've been jostled in a way. It's like they.

Have been pierced in a way. And the last night of my ceremony, and I'm. If you hear me flipping through pages because I'm looking at my notes.

Man, you do this terrible thing in the ceremony.

That is that we call the gong.

We don't always have the gong, but, yes, no one can escape the gong.

So there is, there is. I mean, each morning when I would kind of come to, I would kind of suddenly go, did not care for that gong. You know, it's the rough part of the ceremony for me anyway. And the gong.

I don't know its exact purpose, but it seems to elicit fear, darkness, like pull out some negativity.

And the first up until the final ceremony for me, I would just lay down, get under my blanket and kind of wait for the gong.

But on the final night for me, I got. I had the sense very quickly that this night was gonna be work. And it was like as soon as I felt the medicine, it was, get ready to work. It's like, oh, okay. You know, it's. It's nine o' clock at night. I usually just laid up. It's gonna be work, Ryan. Okay. That was just kind of, you know, the kind of the message that I received very quickly. And it became kind of apparent to me that this was my coming of age ceremony, that that night I went from being a boy to being a man. And when you started playing that horrible gong.

I went to my normal pattern of wanting to lay down and kind of wait out the gong. And there was like, inside, I was like, no, a boy. Lays down, a man protects. And so I stood up during the gong and felt all the fear and felt all the anxiety kind of being pulled out of me. And, and, and to me, it was the sense of the fear and anxiety was there. It was there like it was there every other night. The difference was that I stood through it. The difference was that I was there with it. The difference was that I. It was a part of me. And I acted. I acted in protection mode. I use it as a signal of how I needed to act, not as a way that forced me into a subservient action. It made me rise to the occasion rather than to cower in fear. And that was the difference for me. It was. It was my relationship and my reaction to the fear, anxiety and anxiety, rather than the need to avoid it. And so part of my work has been when I feel those things come up, remembering to feel them, remembering to.

Be aware and present in them, rather than to try and deflect them. And I am not perfect.

I would say I'm about 40 to 50% the way to.

Avoiding the deflection. You know, I'm about, about halfway to where I would like to be when I feel those feelings. But that was just kind of a ceremony for me of this is what it looks like to operate as an adult, as in a man, as a healthy person, when you feel things that you don't want to feel.

Mm.

And that, that was that experience of not getting rid of the fear and the anxiety, but to still feel them and to feel fully and then allowing them to pass when the work was done.

Yeah. Which is exactly one of my big frustrations with society, but in general, and then Christianity, and it just doesn't have a practice for that. Right. Whereas. And that is the practice, particularly in Buddhism, is to fully feel those things that come forth.

So, yeah, I'm curious.

Post your experience. We talked a lot about Christ's teachings and so forth and.

Yeah. So where are you at around Christianity as it relates to your experience with ayahuasca? I put forth the idea in our early conversations a couple months ago. I think that ayahuasca could be a great way for people who have been.

In a Christian environment and had to leave to find God, as you say, or went straight to.

Atheism out of that response. And I'm just curious your thoughts on how ayahuasca might. You know, maybe people shift and are able to look at Christianity in a new way. Maybe they're just able to get out of the atheist box. So to Speak. Sometimes that won't happen. It'll just be something less. Because I think there's a lot of resistance around the word God in general in our system, particularly around the atheist culture.

Yeah. And I understand why there is kind of resistance to that word now post Ayahuasca, because it feel God to me is the. Is like the end point. It's like the who is at the very end.

And now I see everything that I learned as. As a Christian as part of the route that took me to something much bigger. And I feel like I've had a glimpse of what that much bigger is. So the way that I would describe it is that my perception of God up into this point was kind of like going up to the ocean with a cup in your hand and dipping the cup into the ocean. The ocean is God or consciousness or whatever. And raising up the cup and going back to your tribe and saying, this is God.

Saying, everyone, look, God. This is what God looks like. This is what God tastes like. This is what God is. Let's worship the cup. And it becomes about this very, very, very small container that is the ocean. Is the water. The ocean? Yes. Is it all of the ocean? No. It is such a small drop in all that exists.

And we have, in religion, worshiped the cop rather than gone and taking a swim in the ocean.

Idolatry. Isn't that right?

I think so, yeah. And so I. My experience with Ayahuasca was like taking a cannonball into the ocean and realizing, well, a. I'm never gonna be able to see all of this. There's just. There's just.

But I now see how small the cup that I had been worshiping or even the cup that I had walked away from, how small that was in this infinite display that is what I would call God or consciousness.

The infinite nature of it all. And to try and personify that or to try and capture that in.

One viewpoint would be. Would be impossible and would cut off all that existed beyond that. And.

I came to that night and looked to the person next to me. And as someone I know very well, and it's hard to someone who's never done Ayahuasca, it's very difficult to describe the experience that is the morning after.

Where it feels like everyone has gone to the same place. And.

It'S like we turn to each other and our eyes met like. Like we both knew, you know, whatever you were thinking of, the other person knew. It was this very unique experience. It's very beautiful. And I just said, without any prompting, it was like we had been talking about it all night. I said, I used to think that God was outside of me, judging me, and then I rejected that God and I felt alone. But now I realize that I am or I am in that God. So I wasn't being judged by God. I was judging myself. And I didn't reject God. I rejected myself. And so of course I was going to feel alone. Of course I would feel judged or judgmental.

And when you. When you think that it's outside of you, rather than you are in it, you are the. You are the cannonball in the ocean.

And you. If you think that it's outside of you, then you can reject it, but you are rejecting yourself, which was. Is my experience. And so what I have concluded, or what I believe to be true now, is that God or consciousness is the precursor to everything. It is the. It is the all. It is the up, the down, the left, the right, the select start. You know, it is. It is the. It's the default. It's the ocean.

And that nothing exists.

Without that because it is the creator, if you will.

The Book of John says that nothing exists of the world that did not come from God. And I get that passage now. God is the precursor. God is what exists before any matter, time or space. That's what consciousness is. That's what God is. And we're swimming in that.

Mm.

And you said something to me on our. On one of the ceremonies when I came up for the. Do you call it the Dieta?

Oh, the ventiada, which is where some people call it Olympieza. It's. It's essentially we sing an Icaro medicine song specifically for you, really focusing only on you, for you kind of thing.

And you said something and kind of. When you're coming to. We made a couple, like, jokes to each other. And I would come up to that which. The laughter on Ayahuasca is the most wonderful, beautiful experience because there's so much. There's a lot of work and heaviness that can happen, and the hint of laughter is just the most beautiful experience. But I came up there for the ventiata, and you said. You kind of leaned back in your chair and you said, it's time for us to call on our gigantic friend Jesus Christo.

And that meant. You have no idea what that meant to me in that moment, to call on.

To call upon the help of our friend Jesus Christ. Because in that moment, what I was experiencing was a deeper understanding of God, a deeper understanding of consciousness, a deeper Understanding of spirituality, of faith, and now understanding that I had seen a glimpse of it through my understanding of Jesus Christ as a child, as an adolescent, as a young adult, not no longer feeling that I had to reject it or walk away from it, but that I could integrate it into a much deeper understanding of all that God is. And so it was. It was now part of my experience, not a previous part of my life. And so in that moment, it was like I. I finally got to bring together my old beliefs with where I was going next, and it. And it connecting the dots rather than me trying to run away from the dots or reject the dots. And as a result of that, I feel like I understand Christianity and I understand faith so much deeper. And I have a much healthier respect and admiration for the faith of my childhood rather than a angry atheistic or agnostic rejection of that. And I would say, as a result, I would have never said I was a Christian. I would now be comfortable saying that I am a Christian as a result of doing ayahuasca. Whereas most people would say, most people from my faith growing up would tell me to stay away from.

Anything psychedelic in nature, especially ayahuasca, because of the belief in demons and spirits and dark.

Forces of this world, which is ironic because the Christians tend to believe in those things anyway.

Yeah. So we can go into that if you'd like.

But the. Because of that belief, there would definitely be a. A caution against doing ayahuasca. And what I discovered is that as a result of doing ayahuasca, I am now okay, if someone labels me as a Christian, because what I understand now is that Christianity is the context through which I can understand and practice what we call God.

Mm.

And it. It is my cultural and contextualization of finding that spirituality that I think Jesus was pointing us to.

Mm.

And.

You could, dare I say that ayahuasca saved my faith rather than led me away from it, if you ask me. I don't say I'm a Christian mostly out of respect for those who are.

Who are, who are actively practicing, but I would have no problem with that identification. Whereas before I would flat out say, no, that is not who I am.

I have a little bit of a rebrand that actually I think Christianity or a certain type of Christianity should go through a rebranding.

I like to call myself a devotee of Christ because using the term Christianity has all the baggage associated with mainstream.

And.

Even not so mainstream fundamentalist and evangelical churches. Whereas a devotee of Christ is saying, in my mind, maybe I'm crazy, but which is entirely possible.

In my mind is like, I'm devoted to understanding, learning, understanding and emulating that which Christ taught. I'm not. I would not call myself.

I like to call Christians Biblians because there's a big chunk of them of Christians, not all, obviously, but who get caught up in the Bible. And it's kind of like that proverbial story of.

The error around spirituality and teachers is that the teacher is pointing to the moon and we make the mistake of looking at the finger and worshiping the finger instead of looking at the moon.

It's the cup, not the ocean.

Exactly, exactly. And what's interesting as you're talking about your new understanding of your. Your past faith or past version of your faith and how you look at things now, and I'm not a biblical scholar, but you are.

What you're saying is, I would imagine, not in any contradiction to what Christ taught nor the Bible taught. Is that correct? Because you were citing scripture that you're like, now I understand that part of the scripture.

Yeah, yeah. I'm yet to find a contradiction apart from.

Some warning against.

Dark. Dark forces or dark spirits.

And depending on how you interpret that or play with that, is the only place where I find maybe some. Maybe where some people would find it contradictory. But I feel like it has just illuminated a new understanding of Scripture in my faith rather than.

That's an interesting question. Okay, so.

You'Re saying that Christians would want to avoid dark forces, and yet there's a recognition that in that dualistic view, that they exist. Right.

And in the traditional shamanic, dualistic view.

They also exist.

And in the traditional shamanic view, particularly for Quran delros or healers versus those who practice witchcraft, which we are not, you know, we also are as healers, are avoiding those dark forces. So does that remove that contradiction? I'm kind of going down a road here. Yeah. You know, ayahuasca has been proven scientifically. As long as you're relatively healthy, it's actually healthy for you. So you're not crossing that precept around Christianity of it's not. It's a quite healthy substance. It's a medicine for the body. And if we have the intent of removing the dark forces in this dualistic view, which is another big conversation, then how is it. How would that be? Conflict versus just a misunderstanding.

So the cultural practice of this, at least in the American church, is to stay as far away from this stuff.

As possible, but it's not based in Scripture. Then.

Depending on how you Interpret it.

So there is definitely a rejection of fortune telling.

Which we don't do.

Go down the list. This is the thing that I like to do is like, okay, that thing where he says, jesus said, drop the use of soothsayers. Well, we're not soothsayers. Drop the use of. I guess fortune tellers are the same thing. We're not that. We're not doing witchcraft and we're healing so we can walk down that piece of scripture and go, nope, nope, nope, we're good.

Oh, I can tell you several instances from my ceremonies in which I thought Ayahuasca was telling me a glimpse of the film future that did not come to pass, which are kind of fun stories.

But.

And now I have to real quick is right before my first ceremony, I discovered that I'm going to have a second child. And so I asked Ayahuasca when I was really deep in what is my child's name? And it said Violet. And the next day I texted my partner and said, what do you think of the name Violet? And she said, I love that name. And unfortunately, a month later, we found out it's a boy.

But anywho.

Christians, I think, would be a little bit guilty of lumping in anything in the spiritual realm all together as the same thing. Yeah. So there is. There is a caution about staying away from really any play in the spiritual realm, which is also, you know, it's interesting, Zach, is there's also kind of a.

I remember desiring growing up to have what we would call the Damascus road. Experience.

Experience. Mystical experience.

Yeah. When Saul becomes Paul, he sees Jesus in the sky, speaks to him. He has scales on his eyes, and he's blinded for three days. And that's when Saul becomes Paul. So there's a definitely kind of a desire. There was a desire for me to have my awakening, my Damascus road experience. But yet, in the church, anything of spiritual nature is warned against. So how. Even if you had it, there would be like a hiding on that.

So that's the only. It's more of a cultural contradiction, I would say, than anything.

Which is interesting because.

I just. After our retreat together, I ended up going to a church.

On a visit to some family in the States. And in that sermon, I was shocked to hear the, I guess pastors, what you call them.

He said he was talking about how he thought that when people read the Bible, they sit around say, oh, what does that verse.

Mean to you? What does that verse mean to you? And he was quite upset with the freedom allowed to interpret the verse personally and that there was only one way to read the Bible and that was the way God wanted you to read the Bible. Which then he kind of back end implied that he knew how God wanted to read the Bible and he was the one to tell you how he was the representative of God, which would imply a mystical experience. Yeah, you see my point? And I saw and I was like, whoa, I'm out. This is. This is. This is. I'm. This is not my guy. I will sit through the service and thank you very much.

But no one else caught it. You know, I looked around the room and everyone's like, yeah, hallelujah. And I'm not literally, but figuratively. And I was like, wow. Okay, so this is. This is a really interesting power play going on here around mystical experiences and authority.

Well, it feels good to have the right conclusion and to be able to judge the world for until it comes your way. It feels really good to the ego to be able to feel like you have the right answer and anyone who disagrees with you is gonna burn forever.

Mm.

That can feel really good in the short term.

Yeah.

So that doesn't surprise me. I also think that's why we have.

So many deep, passionate disagreements within Christianity, even to the point of splitting off and starting your own branch of it. Because.

It is dangerous to be wrong and it feels really good to be right.

Yeah, it's. It's so ironic because from my understanding of the teachings of Christ is one of the big ones is don't judge. Don't judge. And it's not.

Yes, go out the gospels. Tell the good news. Well, the good news is that you're forgiven and God loves you. Right. I mean, that's. Is that a complete understanding?

I mean, I think if that's all you got, that's pretty good.

Yeah.

And then everything else is kind of.

Actually quite. Can get in the way very easily. And I think that's kind of what's happened.

Well, let's, let's, let's go there for a second. Because I think where it gets dangerous is when we start creating rules for which we are forgiven and loved. So if we take that as you're forgiven and God loves you, like that's the point, the debate often becomes. Well, hold on. It's actually that Jesus died for you and that's how you're forgiven and why God loves you. And then it's like, well, well, well, let's go. And now we're in a logical debate versus. No, the point was like, you're forgiven. God loves you. Well, only if you accept it.

The point is, you're forgiven. It's like create these rules.

In order to get the point.

And we forget the point as a result.

Yeah. It's again, looking at the finger, not the moon or the cup and not the ocean.

Yeah. And, I mean, we could go back and forth about this all day, and it would be a lot of fun. But.

Getting back to.

How you gave an example of how ayahuasca helped you recontextualize your past. And I want to make it very, very clear that our work at La Familia Ayahuasca is. We are not trying to proselytize anyone, particularly into Christ teachings or Christianity, specifically Christianity. To be clear.

I consider myself both a devotee of Christ and a devotee of Buddha as my two main teachers. My wife grew up in Kashmir Shaivism and is also Buddhist practitioner as well. So we definitely do not come at this as a way to find Christ again or, you know, to proselytize. But that said, you know, do you have any other view on how this. How working with ayahuasca may be helpful for those who are particularly damaged, maybe even traumatized through this dogmatic approach around Christ.

And how there may be some healing that can come forth? That is a big question. I may be laying too much on you.

That was a layup, Zach.

Softballs all day.

I do one series of ceremonies, and you think I have the answers.

What I discovered or what came to me, and I'll see if I can find it in my notes while walking through it. But there was a sense of what?

That God is the unicity of it all, that God is.

The. You know, in physics, they say that all matter, time and space came from a point of infinite density at the beginning of the universe. Like, what the heck does that mean.

Point of infinite density?

What.

What is that? And so what where I am on that is that. That unicity of it all, that is. That's source, right? That's. That's God. That's the beginning, if you will. That is where it is all contained. That's where we're all coming from. And that the.

The.

The pain that we experience is the separation from that, or what we call in Christianity, separation from God.

Mm.

And. And you know what? What has been interesting is I've kind of synthesized my experience on ayahuasca being like, wait, that sounds exactly what I thought about in church, just a completely different context. So idea of we experience pain from the separation of that Unicity or consciousness, separation from each other when we fight one another or judge one another, because you have that and I have that. And so by us battling each other, I'm separating from myself. I'm separating from that source that is in all of us, that isolation that is painful. And so the reason I say all of that is because the scars that often come from religion are really the scars created by broken, hurt, separated, isolated people.

Who are not really.

It was never about the. The. It was never about God that was the problem. It was about the. The messengers who were hurt that was the problem. And that. And. And then in shedding all of that weight, I now feel like I can be present in the faith that I believed as, as a young man without having the baggage of all of the necessary checkboxes of what has to exist in order for me to be loved and forgiven. That's a beautiful, freeing experience.

Talk about healing.

And this can take one, I think, in your case, obviously, kind of full circle back. But least at a minimum, I think working with ayahuasca and going through that healing can just allow one to accept and forgive those experiences around religion, spirituality. And it doesn't have to be Christianity. It could be other traumatic religious experiences.

And our views is that, you know, at least just let that be healed, let that go particularly, and forgiving and accepting the people, for they literally did. They knew not what they were doing at the time. They were. Everyone's trying to do the best they can. And ayahuasca does a wonderful job of recontextualizing those types of experiences, and that opens a big space for healing, which is the whole point of this podcast, you know, because we have so much of that in our society, and it comes out sideways in ways like anxiety and fear. We don't want to look at this internal anxiety and fear, and we want to go play Xbox instead. Right. And ayahuasca helps us go inward and really look at it, experience it like you did, and then comes to terms with it, such that when it comes up again, we're more skillful and hopefully there's some integration practices that are. We're big proponents of meditations post retreat, so that the work can continue. It doesn't have to be meditation specifically, but there are those sorts of things.

Meditation has been my practice because it's almost Ayahuasca for me was like, yeah, I got be beamed up to a different level of consciousness to where when I look down on my fears and anxieties, it's like, that's so small in the grand scheme of things. And then back, back in my body, if you will.

It feels so real. Meditation is almost like I can beam part of the way back up and look above it or look down at it versus being caught up in it again.

So that has been my practice. Integrate and make that more of a consistent thing.

Have you heard of Ken Wilber or spiral dynamics?

Yes, I don't know why, but I do know this name.

Okay, so Ken Wilber took this idea of spiral dynamics and expanded levels of.

Consciousness with the colors and.

Yeah, exactly. And so what's interesting in your case.

There are different levels of development that both individuals and societies go through. And you know, so. And everyone starts at zero in the. On an individual level when they're born. And then from like 0 to age 5 or 7, something young, young part of life. Everything is magic. Everything's magical. I cry and suddenly there's food in my mouth. I, you know, I make a noise and my parents give me something. It's like, wow, this is magic.

Then we, we go through a rule based.

Period of life which is called the mythical level.

And that can. So the magic level can be equated to the spirits need to be appeased. We're afraid of the spirits. Very, very, very much. Kind of indigenous shamanic level. Witchcraft and magic and that sort of thing. Magic again. And then you get to the mythical level, which is probably ages 5 to early teens, wherein the rules come into play. Everything is very rule based. And culturally that can be kind of the fundamentalist Christians now you have one God, but you got a shit ton of rules to follow and if you break them, you're screwed. That kind of thing. And you notice kids when they're in that rules are really important when they're at that age. And then in the teens the rational level comes into play and that's when we start to connect the dots. Science, mathematics, that sort of thing. Culturally, that's technology, that's Wall Street. That's.

A very rational stage. And then you have this plural next level up as pluralistic, which is inclusiveness, including everybody. That usually happens in college. You go and you suddenly be a left wing liberal in college.

They're different expressions that this is generalization, of course. And so we have that as well. And in our society that pluralism has been the latest level. There's been some definite pushback lately. Right. Which then that all started in the 60s and 70s and gained some significant power up until recently and start to get a bit of a swing back. But then There's a level above that called integral. Okay, integral. They're able to look all the way down into the. When we were a child and say, oh, there's value in that magic. Magic's cool. It's not good for everything. But there's some value there. Oh, there's some value in that mythical level. Those rules, those laws have value.

And there's also, at each level there are problems, right? So when you're at the mythical level and there are rules and laws, there's a lot of judgment, persecution as a result of that. That may not be as helpful. When we get to the rational level, all we care about is money or meritocracy, merit and so forth. We, we don't care about how people feel. But then as we go up and up and up at the integral level, which is kind of the next level up, we're able to look down and see and go, oh, these guys are cool. These guys are cool. This level is cool. Whereas if you put a rational person at the rational level in with a pluralistic person, a far left person, they're going to hate each other. And same on the way down, all the way down. You can't put, you put those different levels, people from different levels in the room and they'll not get along. However, the person at the integral level, they may not love.

Each other, but they'll be able to get along because at the integral level, we can at least talk and communicate. And I can see value in.

In.

Your view, around law, so to speak, or in your faith. Wow, having that kind of faith around Christianity, that's amazing. I don't prescribe that, but that's, that's great for you. And so there isn't a lot of conflict. And so with your story with ayahuasca, it sounds like you were taken up to this integral level where you're able to look back down at your childhood and up through college experience with Christianity go, hey, that's actually good. And instead of rejecting it going, which was what you'd gone through before, you're now able to accept it and integrate it. So this is, I think, a really cool thing to look at and consider when one approaches ayahuasca as well. It's just like, oh, this. Working with ayahuasca can allow us to kind of pop up in consciousness. We may come back down, but we pop up and get a higher consciousness view such that we can, instead of rejecting previous levels of development, we can appreciate them.

Well, what my experience has been is that.

When I'm popped up to that level that I stop seeing things as good and bad. So for example, a lot of my fears and anxieties.

I can trace back to my parents divorcing and me feeling like I was on my own.

And now manifests a lot through work where work is kind of the source of a lot of my emotional needs and physical needs. And so when things are going well, I think I'm Superman. When things are not going well, I think I'm gonna freakin die. And I have had.

Kind of, kind of a tough couple years work wise where I haven't been killing it as much as I would enjoy killing it.

But still killing it.

High quality problem in the last year I took. In the last few years I took some.

Strategic risks that have not gone the way that I expected them to. And so I have that, that has, that has really stung. And so when a lot of my anxieties have come from like you know, the thought of I thought I'd be further ahead. I thought that this business was going to pan out. I thought that relationship was really going to mean something. I thought that.

This partnership was going to create this result. I thought the money in the bank would be there. I thought that, you know, all the expectations of what I thought were going to happen. And when I get beamed up when post ayahuasca there's more of a sense.

Of.

None of those things are good or bad. None of those things are right or wrong. Even the wins that you think are so great aren't necessarily good and the bad things aren't necessarily bad. They just are like they're just what is. And it's our own internal judgment that determines how we feel about them. So we've, we've said this phrase a lot about do not judge. We've used it a lot in the context of other people but we have not talked about it much. My big takeaway was the judging of the facts that I have any idea or understanding of what is good and bad or right or wrong. You know, this, us recording this together may end up resulting in me being put in the loony bin or me, you know, inspiring Elon Musk to go on his own journey. Who knows to try and, and make any scenario good or bad or project what could happen or even your own role in the unfolding of it all is all selfish ego. When you realize that it's an like we are not a. There's no self like that's an illusion by its own like us. Our understanding of our own identity is an illusion, and that it's all just kind of a big ocean that we're swimming in temporarily. You know, you. You lose the.

The. The idea that your own assessment of something makes, means, or matters, anything. It's like you realize how infinitely small and stupid we would be to make those judgment calls. And so for me to judge where my bank account is right now and determine that as like my overall value or how big my audience is, or how big my company is, or how big my reaches, or how many podcast downloads I have, or any of that meaningless stuff is. Is an incomplete, very incomplete picture of all that's going on because we're like in inning one of a nine inning game.

And that idea of making those assessments, those judgments about what's good or bad was. I remember having the experience, Zach, I think it was in my first ceremony where I was. No, this was night two. It was night two. I remember having the sense of.

Having all of my identities pulled away and pulled out of me. So all these words, these adjectives coming to my mind, where it was like, successful. Okay, well, what would it be like if I lost all of what I consider to be successful? And then it was, what about healthy? I pride myself on being healthy. What does it look like if I'm on my deathbed? Well, I'm still me, still here. I'm still this person. And then it was my name, you know, if I lost the identity of Ryan, and I'm just this, you know, I'm just this consciousness connected to it all, and I started having an out of body experience at that point of. Of if you're not, if you're not in this incarnation, if you're not, if you're not called Zach or Ryan or whatever, who are you? And then it was then I had the sense of, okay, what about the thing I pride most? And it was. It was being called dad. What if my daughter was taken away from me? And I. And I watched kind of like a movie, we watched a play out of me losing my daughter and feeling the pain of that, but also realizing that my resistance to losing her and that projection was the source of the pain judgment that. That I could determine how long my daughter lived or how long my daughter was in my life. My resistance, the idea that was her path and her journey was the source of that pain. And so in that sense, it was the resistance or the judgment being the problem, not the reality of what exists.

I have written down in my journal from that night. If anything happens to anyone or anything, the problem is just the resistance, there is still pain, but there is no need to resist the pain. And so that judgment and resistance, I think, are kind of cousins.

They're the problem, not the reality of what it is.

This is a good little pivot into that. You do a lot of work with. With entrepreneurs and post this understanding with ayahuasca, as an entrepreneur, how is it. And I don't want to put it in that, like, how's it up, Leveled your business? Or what have you, you know, question it, how are you crushing it now?

But rather, I have a sense, and I guess technically I'm an entrepreneur as well, although in a different way. And I have a very different business in the sense that I'm not selling widgets and I can't go about it that way. It's a very different deal, so to speak.

So my sense, I'm kind of looking in at the entrepreneurial world, the mainstream entrepreneurial world, that there are a lot of things that drive entrepreneurs to a certain point.

And allow them success, but then it kind of turns back on itself and creates either.

Less material world success or just unhappiness or both.

So I have two questions, like, do you agree with that? And ayahuasca being one of those things that can loosen up that outcome, or those identities that can get in, that actually get in our way, even though we think that they're helpful.

And because there's some. I remember I worked in Wall Street. It was like always money, hard, hard.

Hard driving.

More and more and more. And I'm. I mean, I never did it. I never really. I'm interested in experimenting and going back after now 10 years and going, hey, I wonder if I'd be good at this now. Because I don't give a shit. I mean, I give a. I care. I sincerely care about the job because that's a commitment and it can be fun and all this sort of thing. But would I do better because of this newer, broader perspective of just like, really, you know, if someone loses a bunch of money on a trade or I lose a bunch of money on a trade, is it that big of a deal? You know, there's still life to be lived kind of thing?

I don't know. I kind of. That's a big. Another big question.

But, yeah, well, let me. Let me go back to my journal. Here. Here's what. Here's what I wrote down. I thought of work and how I feel the need to always be doing something or always be hustling, always killing it. And I wrote down next, the next Time someone asks me what I'm up to, I will say, I am practicing being happy.

And.

There is this need in entrepreneurial circles to just always be up to the next thing, which is really all ego. And yet what. At the top of this discussion, we were talking.

We're talking about how the integration part is a practice. So my practice, and this is a muscle that is atrophied and is sore every time I use it.

Is doing less.

And it is.

Allowing room for consciousness, if you will, to bring about good work.

Mm.

We edge so much of it out with the constant hustle and grind. And I am so well practiced at doing more and more and more and more.

And it is my work right now of actively doing less. And I am so bad at it.

And in fact, like, I have to play this mental jujitsu game with myself of what can I do now so that I can do less.

What can I add in? Like, let me create.

You're crushing it at doing less, man.

You know, what I can do is I can create a rigid schedule that I can follow. Like, I can hustle the schedule. And I have really had a hard time with this one. Yet. It was the.

It was very clear that that was what was needed for me if I wanted to crush it again.

If I want to get back to the point in which I'm back on top making millions of dollars, inspiring millions of people, or whatever we define as successful.

I, for a little while, have to do less.

And if you don't do that actively, life will do it for you, which is a lot more painful.

Yeah, it usually involves illness.

Right, Illness. Or. Or you over training or you burn out or whatever it is. Life has a way of forcing you to do less if you don't choose it. And, man, Zach, if there's. Like, when we do our next series of ceremonies, if you can put a little extra juice in that part of my cup, I need some help there. But I'm recognizing that that is. That's my practice. It's being. If we agree and recognize that it's all okay, there's no good or bad or better or worse, then.

Doing nothing or doing less for a while is okay. It's just as good as crushing it. I have to be in that mode in order for the next great thing. Thing to manifest or show up.

You have to have space available for it.

And so that has been. That has probably been the biggest thing that has spilled over from me into other entrepreneurs, is when I work with other entrepreneurs. I can now see this in other people of them just edging out all the goodness, trying to fill in all the space to hold all the balls. And they have no room for good work.

And that's a really hard pill to swallow.

Have you ever heard of the Taoist term wu wei? It's active non doing.

Yes.

I don't know if you've revisited that lately. That may be one. It's a tough, It's a conceptually challenging one. But it is doing without.

Trying to push, without the resistance. So.

It is the flow state. Right. Because you're doing in the flow state, there is action, but there isn't a lot of effort or there's. It's optimized energy usage, which is counterintuitive and sense that you don't want to try to crush it.

The Eastern philosophies, they're hard to understand. Once they lock in, boom. I think the west can learn so much, particularly around this wu wei concept and entrepreneurship entrepreneurs rather as well.

Zach, if I could flip the script for a second, I. There, there are, there's a lot of things that I'm saying and that you are saying that are wonderful lessons that I understand and I think a lot of people who have gone through any spiritual practice or a psychedelic experience might be aware of. But I have self admittedly said that these muscles are weak for me. Sure. And you know, I'm gearing up for my, my second round with you.

About a month. Right.

And I'm just curious if you would speak to the. Those who are aware of a lot of these lessons and yet feel atrophied in their practice. How would you speak to that?

It's hard. I will, I will admit that I still have these. I still have anxiety, I still have fear. I still have to work on the. Constantly doing something. I'm like.

Oftentimes like a shark, I gotta be moving and I have my sitting practice and all that sort of thing. And so I don't have an answer. Man, you just gotta keep practicing. It's, it's.

And in the practice, watching the cultural conditioning of self aggression or self hatred, there's a great teacher, Sharon Salzberg, who has a great quote. She says, look, the healing is in the return. And what she's talking about is when we sit to meditate.

We will sit and say, focus on the breath. We focus on the breath. Focus on the breath. And then we're starting to think about baby shark videos because I have a kid baby shark.

Our mind wanders. And so.

In that moment of recognizing, oh, I'M no longer focusing on the breath, but rather I'm thinking about this video.

How do I treat myself in returning to the breath? Do I go, oh, I am not focused on breath anymore? Okay, let's go back and focus on the breath. Nice and easy, nice and compassionate. That's one way. The other way is to beat oneself up. I'm not meditating. I'm not doing it right. And going back. So the practice is the practice, and the healing is returning. It's not getting to. Holding a flow state or holding a meditative state is not going to happen for a long, long time. It will happen momentarily, and those moments will get longer and longer. And it's how we deal with ourselves. When we step off the path or when we lose focus on the breath, or. And it's a metaphor for life, we start getting wound up and anxious. I gotta get this done. I gotta get this done. Oh, shit, I'm doing it again. Okay, back to it. Do I treat myself compassionately or do I beat myself up for beating myself up? Right. It can be. So the healing is in return. And I think that's. That would be the best advice. And there's no quick fix. There are no shortcuts in the spiritual path, whatever path it may be. And as you would probably say, there are no shortcuts in entrepreneurship and being successful. Right. You have to put in the work. Some people have better capacities in certain areas, but steps have to be taken. And it's how we treat ourselves during those each step. Do we treat ourselves with compassion? Do we get back into the flow when we're out of flow, or do we beat ourselves up? Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally.

All this stuff is easy said, easier said than done, super simple. All the concepts are very simple, but they're very challenging to implement. And they can be super easy as well. And let's not get caught up in that concept that they have to be hard to be effective.

And there's also. I remember Jesse describing the joy of remembering.

The reason why we forget is because we have the joy of remembering. And if I could describe my ayahuasca experience in a sentence, it was remembering what it was like to go home.

It was just remembering. It was like no new information got processed. It was like I was remembering was like, I've been here before and I'm just going back and knowing that I would forget again and knowing that I could practice remembering.

And so there's. It's like kind of this bittersweet part of it where it's it's that I get to remember, and I can practice remembering, but the other side is that I have to forget.

Mm.

I have to forget in order to remember again.

And the joy of remembering is absolutely ecstatic. Well, yeah.

There'S nothing. While Ayahuasca is relatively new to the Western world.

The spiritual concepts around truth with a capital T, there's nothing new. Right? We're swimming in the capital T all the time. We just forget, and there's no new information to be had.

And I'm guilty of this. I check out various spiritual paths and, oh, this practice and that practice. It's like, yeah, but you're not going to get. There's nothing new that's going to come forth. It's just do the fucking work and practice and remember.

The healing in return.

It's over and over again.

There's nothing new out there. From a spiritual standpoint. Truth needs no argument, needs no support, no defense. It just is.

That will be my meditation until I see you again.

The return.

The healing is in the return. Cool. Right on.

With that said, you wrapped it up nicely. You must have done some of these podcasts before.

Once or twice.

Well, thank you very much, Ryan. Can you. Can you. I have been really happy to learn more about you in the context of your podcast, and you've actually helped me become more comfortable around money. And for those who are listening to this particular podcast and would like to learn more about Ryan, where can they find you?

Well, I would love to hear more about what you're describing, but.

My website is capitalism.com which is fairly easy to remember. My podcast is Capitalism with Ryan Daniel Moran. I'm not hard to find if you Google my name or capitalism.com, but I essentially teach entrepreneurship, and I teach money investing and business with the occasional political and religious rant.

That's my work.

Cool. Well, thank you again. And for those of you who are listening, thank you for taking the time to do so. And if you like our content or are interested in our retreat, you can find us@ayahuascafamily.com if you're listening to this on SoundCloud. We're also on itunes and Stitcher under Ayahuasca Family, and feel free to reach out at any time. We're@infoyahuascafamily.com so, again with all that said, thank you very much for joining us, Ryan, and thank you all for listening.

Hey, team, real quick, shameless plug here. If you've ever seen my company logo for capitalism.com, it's a red sea with a flame at the end. And the reason why that's the company logo is because I believe that our purpose as a company and my purpose as a leader is to light other fires. And that means creating content for entrepreneurs who go on to build great companies, working with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs to help them break through their plateaus and to invest in companies that really have a shot at breaking out teaching this stuff so that more success stories get created. I like to light fires. That's what I'm here to do. One of the ways that I do that is inside of our monthly membership which is called the 1%. And inside there we send out a monthly newsletter which features case studies of success stories, what's working right now from some of the best people in the world who are doing this stuff or building businesses and investing the profits. And we feature business ideas that you can literally rip off and steal. We often even just throw keyword lists at you and say, go for it. Hey, we might even invest in this post. In the community. You'll probably find an investor too. And the idea is to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, influencers in one place where we can light fires really, really quickly. We also have a year long curriculum that is made to help you build businesses, invest the profits, increase your profits, create the change you want to see in the world. You can't not change as a result of going through this. So you can find out more@capitalism.com 1. If you've been listening to the podcast and your missing community, you're missing opportunity, you're missing connection, you're missing being a part of a movement that is going to make you a better entrepreneur. This is going to fix that for you. It also gives you discounts on our events and our other products and it's more than worth $10 for every dollar we charge. That's my rule as an entrepreneur. I don't collect a dollar unless I know I can provide 10. And this absolutely meets that. So that's@capitalism.com the number one hope to see you inside.