Psychedelics, Finding God, Plant Medicine, Entheogens, Spiritual Awakening & Drugs Q&A

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, I don't think that setting up a scenario in which we rely upon plant medicines as the only way to truly and fully experiencing God is a good idea. I think it alienates a lot of people, and especially for me as a Christian, it means that that free message of salvation, like, you know, Jesus Christ as a deity, dying, being buried and resurrected, and the simplicity of being able to, to have that as our out, have that as our salvation, totally free, without any means or requirement for anything else, all of a sudden it almost like flips a big middle finger at God because, hey, I guess we didn't need this salvation through Jesus Christ thing because we can come to know you through these, through these plants, through these medicines.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

So today's episode is interesting. See, I got invited to be on a Twitter space, spaces. It's like, it's like a Q and A. The topic of this one was psychedelics, finding God, plant medicines, entheogens, spiritual awakenings, drugs, just that whole shebang that has kind of been a topic of late since I announced earlier this summer that I really thought plant medicines were a big problem. And that after a lot of thinking and studying up on the topic, I decided to put up some big old warning signs against the use of mind altering substances, especially considering their widespread abuse and potential for psychological harm.

Harm.

But perhaps of more concern, the increased trend of people to put their faith for things like healing and trauma and relationship work and self discovery and divination and talking to God and a spiritual awakening and anything of the like in drugs instead of in God, which I think is dangerous if you got to go like, take mushrooms to be able to be spiritual or to find God. I didn't read that anywhere in the Bible. Personally, I realize not everybody listens to this podcast, is a Christian, but it just seems kind of weird that if you're a special select person who's able to go out and journey, bro, and find yourself, you're all of a sudden on a spiritual fast track that other people who might be less advantaged or might not have access to that stuff are just not going to be able to experience. And I think there's obviously some psychological dangers as well. But I think the bigger issue is just where we're putting our faith in. And I wrote a lot about this in the articles that I'll link to in the previous podcast that I'LL link to if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Twitter plants because it was on Twitter. When we talk about plants. BenGreenfieldLife.com Twitter plants. You're going to learn a ton. We get into the new age model whether or not plant medicines and psychedelics are evil. Why it's difficult to experience the mystical in our times. If mushrooms open your soul to something, could you say they're demonic? My own background with psychedelics and a whole lot more. So show notes again are going to be@Ben greenfieldlife.com Twitter plans.

So, Ben, can you elaborate on what your beliefs are on psychedelics? Are they evil and how did you come to the conclusion where you are at the moment?

Yeah, my background would be that, like, I was. I was a freaking pretty clean kid growing up, you know, like, like soup to nuts. I was homeschooled. I grew up in, like a pretty.

Strict Protestant Reformed Christian family.

My idea was drugs was like taking an extra ibuprofen when you had a headache. And so I knew a little bit about marijuana, I knew a little bit about alcohol, but really did not touch.

Barely anything aside from like some beer and wine until I was, gosh, like 30, 31, I'm 40 now and, you know, began to, as marijuana became increasingly legal, dabbled a little bit with the use of cannabis and then had had my first journey, I suppose you could say with Ayahuasca and DMT when I was 32, and for the subsequent seven years experimented with a wide variety of psychedelics and theogens and plant medicines, from Ayahuasca to DMT to Wachuma to LSD and LSA to psilocybin to a whole bunch of random chemicals from Sigma Aldrich and beyond that I would kind of psychonaut with in my basement and experiment with the incenses and oils used by the Levite priests to burn and apply those. And just basically used a wide variety of medicines for everything from personal development to relationship, not therapy, but I guess relationship enhancement and sexual enhancement to dissolution of the ego to simply journeying and calling upon God to see what his next steps or his voice was in my life, to enhancing prayer, meditation, worship, you name it.

So basically that's kind of my background.

In this stuff all the way up until about two months ago, at which point I kind of swore off most of it or at least started to kind of reinvent my thought patterns around all of it. But, yeah, that's my background and it's always been incredibly transformative. Me, I've never had Any bad trips? I've never had any poor experience. It's always been light and love and purity and some, some really, really fantastic personal and professional breakthroughs.

I messaged you earlier. We have similar paths. You're raised, well, a little bit Christian, but you didn't get most of it and then you venture into the, to the new age stuff. So. Yeah, I've been through a similar experience Eastern way. Can you share some background on yourself?

Yeah, so I'd say I'm definitely the youngest of the group. I'm about to turn 20 in like probably a week. I definitely don't have the background as Ben, but I do have a lot of experiences with psychedelics already, mostly cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms and I have also experienced acid a few times. Yeah, I also just, I love like diving into the topics of what psychedelics can do for you and like to your mind. And so for the past maybe year or year and a half I've just been kind of just going down the rabbit hole and, and seeing. Listening to people like Terence McKenna and Alan Watts and what they have to say about psychedelics and, and it's just really interesting. I've had plenty of transformative experiences with them. I have had a few bad trips as well and I have seen people with really bad trips and that kind of changed my viewpoint a little bit on it because I used to think I used to kind of overweigh the benefit and underweight the danger of them after a few experiences. And what I've seen, that kind of shifted a little bit for me. But I guess we can get more into like how you have shifted a little bit later. But I guess that's just my like, quick background on, on the matter.

All right, thank you, man. That sounds very interesting for later because it's kind of different from my experience as well. Arnold, can you share something about yourself?

So I started smoking cannabis when I was 13, nearly 14. So that's mature. Part of the story was actually watching Bill Hicks, his Revelations stand up show when I was 13 and he talks about psychedelics and whatnot and that kind of got me intrigued in that whole world then I was probably 18 when I got into MDMA and LSD and.

Then from there I tried ketamine and.

Then various other drugs as well. When I turned, I would have been about 30. I did an Ayahuasca ceremony and that was incredibly transformative to me. I was in a really bad place at the time, living in London, really depressed and just not feeling good about life in general. And that, that first ceremony in particular was really transformative for me, incredibly so. I'd always been interested in kind of like Eastern spirituality and I'd done some meditation, sort of having traveled through Southeast Asia, in Nepal and whatnot. So I've done a bit of meditation.

But when I came back from the.

Ceremony, it kicked me off with a serious meditation practice and going on silent retreats and stuff like that. I then did a couple of ceremonies over the following years in, in the UK and then didn't attend any ceremonies for a while for various reasons. Probably since then, since moving to Australia like seven and a half years ago, I did attended a few ceremonies when I first moved over here, and then probably over the last sort of year, 18 months, I've attended about six or seven. So all up over the years, like 14 years, I've attended maybe 20 ceremonies. So not huge, but, you know, it's a significant amount still. It's probably in the last 18 months or so that the attending the ceremonies have been particularly beneficial, apart from the first time. Besides that, over the last six or seven months, I've been occasionally microdosing with psilocybin, which again, I find incredibly helpful for creativity and just like shifting mood blockages. But again, that's very, very occasional use, really. Oftentimes that's just as a creative boost mainly.

So, yeah, that's my.

That's my general background with it. I'm sort of very interested in what, what you guys are saying about Ben's article and listen to his podcast episode and what Vril had written about it. So it's definitely, definitely thinking about it a lot the last couple of days. I'm generally in favor of restricted or limited use of plant medicines, but, yeah, we can get into all of that. So that's where I'm at.

All right, cool. Well, I'll share something about my background on psychedelics. I grew up in a fairly atheistic agnostic family. I was baptized as a Catholic, but never had any of the things of the church in my life. So that was a quick slippery slope, I guess you could say, into atheism. I became a hardcore atheist. And after that I was finding something, well, more meaningful in life. Something. There had to be something more. So I had two friends from my high school that were into the LSD and the LSA and the magic mushrooms. So they invited me to do some shrooms, like a small microdose. And I said, well, why not? I joined them in. I was 22, so I'm now 28. So it was six years ago. And it made me realize there was something more than just the material world. I think that it opened my. They say the third eye, they opens up your soul to something more. But I realize now, I think it's. It can be dangerous to open these kinds of portals with the magic mushrooms. And I did them maybe five, I think five times with the magic mushrooms. And the last time I puked it, it was actually really disgusting to still trip out on it after I puked them out. So I think you could say that was a bad trip because it makes you completely docile if you are tripping out. And I just didn't like that feeling of not having control over your own conscious. It's like you're getting raped by demons from a spiritual realm. It's. Yeah, it's not a pleasant experience at all. So shortly after that I had a relationship of two years with my girlfriend and I broke up after I found out about Jesus Christ and the Bible and our 2000 year of years of tradition and culture in the European, well, western hemisphere that we had this culture. And I believe now that is the, the true way of becoming a spiritual person. Instead of just these external pieces of spirituality. It's like a shortcut to spirituality. And I. And that's why I don't like it anymore because it takes no effort to become spiritual. That just sounds demonic to me. So what are your guys thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean something you said there I think is really important and is maybe a really good way to contextualize this because it is possible to experience God through plant medicines in a very, very profound and what is often interpreted as meaningful way. Meaning that I don't think anyone would deny that, for example, an atheist on a heroic dose of psilocybin, gosh, sometimes.

Even a synthetic, like you know, ketamine.

For example, or LSD or Wachuma or ayahuasca might emerge from that experience with a complete inability to deny the existence of God. And often that person who might have been atheist or not religious or not spiritual, winds up being transformed in a pretty remarkable way. And so I think that's one of the uphill battles we fight in terms of the emerging popularity and often the misuse and abuse of plant medicines and entheogens is this idea that, gosh, there's just so many good things that have happened to people. And yeah, there are bad trips and elements of psychosis, et cetera, and schizophrenia and violence that we could perhaps get into later. You know, even sexual abuse. But for the most part, you Know, the tricky part is saying gosh, if that's what happens, you know, in a good scenario, in the proper set and setting, with the use of plant medicine, gosh, that's like, that's amazing. And I think that's the first issue that is actually a little bit scary or at least disadvantageous is this idea that one can pop pills or get an intramuscular injection or sip a brew and experience God in this really, really, arguably even more transformative and impactful and meaningful and, and throw away than one might experience when say, fully sober, on their knees in prayer or in a church worshiping or sitting cross legged, meditating, or even through something like breathwork. And when you have an experience that's that meaningful, it can become relied upon as a crutch for the spiritual experience and begin to be viewed as the only path to enlightenment. And that's kind of the issue is that when you look at conversations between like Aldol Huxley and Timothy Leary, it's this idea that gosh, like these things are only available to a select few, you know, for enhancing their spiritual experience and for, you know, becoming closer to God or experiences in God's love and light. And, you know, we should figure out a way to make these accessible and available to the entire population so that they too can come to know God in the same way that, that we have. And the problem is that you then set up a scenario, in my opinion, that dictates that the only real way to experience God is through drugs, is through plant medicines. And all the billions and billions of people who might not ever be able to afford it or have the proper container for it, they're just kind of screwed. They're never going to be able to be on the same path to spiritual enlightenment. And I don't think that setting up a scenario in which we rely upon plant medicines as the only way to truly and fully experiencing God is a good idea. I think it alienates a lot of people, and especially for me as a Christian, it means that that free message of salvation, like, you know, Jesus Christ as a deity, dying, being buried and resurrected, and the simplicity of being able to have that as our out, have that as our salvation, totally free, without any means or requirement for anything else, all of a sudden it almost like flips a big middle finger at God because, hey, I guess we didn't need this salvation through Jesus Christ thing because we can come to know you through these, through these plants, through these medicines. And so I think that's the problem is that rather than experiencing the Suffering and the pain and the hard work and the chopping wood and the carrying water and the blood, sweat and tears of the spiritual disciplines of fasting and prayer and worship and dietas and meditation and perseverance and endurance in a sober and awake and alert state. We instead have this option to take the easy route. And life isn't just about the easy route. And spirituality isn't just about experiencing God. It's about knowing God. And knowing God includes putting into practice all of the laws of God. You know, loving others, loving yourself, loving God, you know, not stealing or lying or coveting or murdering, etc. And when we instead say that we're just going to experience God and then the goodness of ourselves, the goodness of us as a human race, is going to accomplish what God desires, well, you know, we see what happens in socialism and communism, in Nazi Germany and beyond, when we assume that people are good and they're going to make the right decisions. And so I think that that's one of the first issues. So obviously, like, I won't go on as long as I could because I just published a whole article about this. You know, it's on the front page of my website right now. And I also just published a podcast. I think the article's better because I go into more detail than I do in the podcast, and I think it's. You're better able to click on resources and articles and references and books and things like that to take a deeper dive.

It's just@bengreenfieldlife.com somewhere you can find it.

It's probably still right on the front page. But anyways, when a few months ago, I really decided to kind of take a deeper dive, especially as a man of faith, as a Christian, into what the Bible, which I would consider to be the absolute source of truth, says about the matter of plant medicines. You know, the Bible brings up this concept of pharmacia. And specifically in the context of the Bible, that means using drugs to commune with God. You know, big G God or little G gods, right? And that would be like divination, astral projection, witchcraft, sorcery, you know, attempting to become possessed by a spirit, attempting to possess someone else with a spirit. You know, curses, hexes, and that would even include white magic. You know, a lot of what I just listed might fall into the category of black magic, but that would also include like white magic, right? Like divining with God to know where to hunt or what God's path for you in life might be, or the next decision. God might want you to make or, you know, calling upon God when deep in plant medicines and saying, you know, God, what would you have for me to see? What would you have for me to bring back to the people? That's all actually forbidden in the Bible. And so then I step back and I say, well, why the heck would God say that? Because, you know, like, you could read like, whatever, like in the book of Leviticus, right, it says, don't eat pork. And you're like, oh, why would God say not to eat pork and shellfish? Well, if you look at that contextually, it's like, because those are dirty animals back in the day, they concentrate a lot of toxins in their fat tissue, you know, or in their other tissues. And when you consume them, you're more likely to get sick. So it was a good idea, you know, and, and now since then, things have changed a little bit and we have cleaner farming practices and, you know, cleaner water practices for harvesting shellfish. And like, I'm not a no pork, no shellfish guy. I think there, there are certain elements of, of that old law that have since passed away. But then pharmacia appears in both the New Testament, you know, the New law and the Old law, the New Covenant and the Old Covenant. So you can't just say, well, it was old thing that was banned by God and now it's safe. And so when you look at scripture and it says these things like, why does it say that? Well, then if you step back and you look at it, you know, plants, plant medicines in particular, altered state of consciousness, entheogens, psychedelics, hallucinogens, have all, for the eons of time, you know, for thousands of years of history, been the spirit world's preferred method of communing with humans. Right. Occasionally you see God, like talking to prophets in the Bible, you know, through wind and earthquake and fire, or, you know, Moses with the burning bush, or just speaking to people through dreams and visions, et cetera. But for the most part, especially from a pagan standpoint, the gods talk to people through plants, right? And yeah, plants have two types of intelligence, right? There's plant intelligence. That's like the mycorrhizal network that connects all the plants and that's how they communicate to each other and spread nutrients and bacteria. And of course, plants also release neurotransmitters and neurochemicals, such as when a giraffe is chewing on the leaf of a tree in the savannah, that leaf will produce a neurochemical that then travels to the other trees. And causes the leaves to close or them to upregulate their productions of bitters and antioxidants that would cause a draft to become more nauseous upon consumption of that leaf. And plants are pretty cool. They have this whole intelligent network built into them. But then there's a second plant intelligence, and that is the fact that spirits and gods of the world like to communicate to people, people through the use of plants. You know, I think anybody who has studied, you know, shamanism or many elements of plant medicine or journey themselves, while there still are some people out there who believe it's just neurochemicals and neurotransmitters in our brain and a soup of serotonin flooding the synaptic cleft or, you know, dopaminergic transmission being upregulated or whatever. I think people have really had a meaningful journey, know in their hearts that's not the case, and have seen and experienced entities and spirits and visions that dictate that there is a spiritual world out there. It's very real, it surrounds us. And one of the prime methods via which it communicates with us is through plants. And so then stepping back and looking at that, I think, okay, well, why the heck would God, like, kind of frown upon that? Like, why would I, as a Christian, be advised by God not to use plant medicines to divine with the gods? Well, it's because, yeah, you could talk to big G, God. But your entry into a spiritual dimension in which you're susceptible to being influenced by a wide variety of. Of demons and angels and spirits and entities, and considering that, like, your soul, your spirit is the one everlasting eternal part of you that forms your entire consciousness and will go on to live for eternity, you're kind of playing with fire when it comes to putting your soul on the line, entering into that environment in which you could be possessed, in which you could be influenced by, you know, demons masquerading as angels of light or even, you know, Lucifer, who is technically the light bearer. Right. A lot of the bright lights and the light entities that people see, you know, I'm convinced aren't even God and angels. They're actually Luciferian entities. And the problem with that is, of course, I think, carriers. The biggest problem with it is that these entities are able to not only possess you, which occasionally happens, like psychosis, schizophrenia, violence, you know, you know, sexual issues. Like, you know, I've seen guys coming out of Ayahuasca and cutting off their dicks and just all sorts of crazy stuff. Those are pretty Few use cases. Let's face it. We don't want to say, well, psychosis is a good reason not to use plant medicine, because that could occur with a lot of different things. However, the problem is that when you're entering into that spiritual dimension and being possessed by a lot of these entities, typically the takeaway message, and this is the confusing part for a lot of people, is like, holy cow. Like, love is all you need. We are love. I am love. You are love. Sometimes I am God, you are God. We are good. We can change this world. We can do this, people. Kumbaya. Let's gather around the campfire and change the world. Because we've been on our mushroom trip and all the world needs is love. All we need to do is love each other. We're good people and we could change the world together. Let's do this. Well, that's like the very, very, very best argument against, like, Christianity and what God knows to be right. And that is the assumption that we don't need God, right? If we're good, we don't need God, right? And if we don't need God, then the devil and demons and all these things that can operate through plant medicines have kind of won because humans are inherently good. And all we need to do is love each other, which works out for a little while. But again, when you look at it from a socialistic, communistic standpoint, like, we have to have some element of absolute morality. We have to have some element of absolute truth. We have to know that, let's say, like, killing a person is wrong. Like, it's not like, don't kill people because people don't like that or because you don't like. It's like, no, don't kill people because it's wrong, you know, or don't steal, you know, your next door neighbor's lawnmower and take it for your own. Not because, like, he would like you to not do that and you would like to not do that, but because it's actually legitimately wrong. And the fact is that if there weren't those absolute moralities built into nature and built into law and built into not only our country's law, but into God's law, the world goes to hell in a handbasket pretty quick when we all of a sudden assume we don't need God, all we need is love, and we're all good people inside. And so that's kind of like one of the problems with the seemingly noble and laudable end result of plant medicine is this, technically, can Kind of create like not only an apathetic society that's easily susceptible to influence from the government, authority, et cetera, but also society that believes it's good and that we don't need God. Long story short is I think when it comes to plant medicines, if we're using them, and we're using them to divine with the gods, and we're using them to talk to God, or little G God, big G gods, whatever, and we're using them for divination, sourcecraft or sorcery, witchcraft, astral projection, anything of the like, that would traditionally be considered the use of them in a pharmacia like sense. I think we're playing with fire. Do I think that those specific plants or their synthetic variants exist for a reason? Absolutely. I would say that there are some use cases for, like couples therapy, using mdma, right, where you're not journeying with an eye mask and music and divining with the gods or entering into a spiritual world. You're like sitting facing your partner, eyes wide open, talking to each other. Another example would be trauma therapy. Sometimes it does take some of these compounds to shift the brain into a state where it can relive epigenerational trauma and where some of that can be processed. I think that there are use cases for that and use cases for addiction in a medically controlled set and setting, not with some shama down the Amazon who could technically possess you, own you, you know, even cast, you know, the type of spell or curse upon you that would make you just keep coming on back for more to pay that shaman money, which. Which honestly happens, you know, money or sex. So I'm not talking about trauma and addiction therapy in that sense. I'm talking about medical, you know, such as in like a medically controlled set and setting an academy clinic. I think there's use case for that. I think that there's a use case for microdosing, creativity, productivity, focus. I don't really think that you enter anywhere near into an altered state of consciousness of the level that you would subject yourself to spiritual entities if you're microdosing. So I think that's okay. I think cannabis, like for pain or for sleep, you know, that type of thing. I think there's an appropriate use case there as well. Right. Sometimes you need to step back instead of saying, you know, all or nothing, black and white, like, what's the thing we actually avoid? Well, in my opinion, the thing we actually avoid is entheogenic hallucinogenic psychedelic substances that shift one into an altered State of consciousness specifically for the purpose of finding yourself, dissolving your ego, divining with God, etc. And then the last thing, and then I'm going to shut up because I probably didn't cover everything, but I covered a few things I wanted to touch on is this whole idea of end of life therapy, you know, cancer therapy, near death experience simulation, et cetera. And I'm kind of on the fence about this one because this returns back to the life is meant to be both the pain and the pleasure, both the easy pill popping route and the suffering. And I sometimes wonder if this whole end of life therapy thing is yet another attempt to be immortal, to not face the pain that comes with death. And you got to wonder sometimes like, well, if you experience pain through death, will the bliss in the afterlife be all that better? Will heaven or the afterlife or whatever experiences we experience on the other side be all the more meaningful? Because we didn't try to like make death easy by trying to simulate it over and over again so we never had to feel the pain. And so I sometimes wonder if some of this end of life therapy is potentially removing some of the benefits of what a true death experience for a human is supposed to be like. And that's something I'm still just kind of thinking about and rolling around in my head. I haven't really reached conclusion to that. But. So yeah, so long story short is there's some appropriate uses of these plant medicines, both synthetic and natural. But I think we're playing with fire. Once we're laying flat on our back, slobbering with our tongue hanging out the corner of our mouth, sometimes with a shaman standing over us, sometimes self administered in a totally different spiritual dimension, totally open to entities, demons, angels, whatever it is that wants to talk to us or possess us or shift us or deceive us. And even if everything goes perfectly right, if the end result is us coming out of that and saying, oh, hey, I'm a good person, all I gotta do is love other people. Well, I got news for you. Humans aren't inherently good. Love is not all the world needs. We actually need God and truth and absolute morality. And if it's just about humans and our ability to be good again, history repeatedly shows that stuff goes south fast in a scenario like that. So I'll shut up now. Those are a few of my thoughts though.

All right, thank you, man. I wrote down a lot of notes. One thing that came up for me was what I seen in a lot of new age people and even Agnostic people, even atheists, they say, we are all one, dude. I am you, you are me, and we're this tree and we're the sky. We're gods. We're all just one. What do you think about that?

Well, yeah, it kind of returns to what I talked about earlier. And again, I don't want to hog the conversation. I would welcome anybody to jump in who wants to. But, yeah, that. That's. I guess, like, my quick thought on that is it's a little bit of like a pantheistic philosophy, right? Like, I'm God, you're God, God is in the plan, God is in everything. It can lead to a little bit of what I suppose for a Christian especially, would be considered to be idolatry, like worshiping things other than God, including ourselves, and negating the absolute greatest gift that humankind was ever given. Whether you believe in it or not. I think that there can definitely be made a historical argument for the existence of and the death and even the deity based on a lot of the miraculous things that occurred during his time of Jesus Christ. And that's either true or it isn't. The whole story of Jesus Christ and his deity and his burial, et cetera. But let's say it is true. Just for a moment, let's step back. Say that it is true. And if you believe that story and you turn your heart over to Jesus Christ, that you'll live forever and all your sin, all your guilt, all your suffering, all your shame to be laid at the foot of the cross, then we say, but there's this one other thing that could also fix the world. Plant medicines. Because, you know, we're all gods and all we need is love, bro. Then, you know, it does create a scenario, a very tricky scenario, where all of a sudden really, you know, like, Jesus isn't necessary. And I think for a lot of religious people, particularly people of not just Abrahamic religions, but specifically Judeo Christians, religions, that can be a pretty big pill to swallow, an unpleasant pill to swallow.

Yeah, absolutely. Eastern way. What are your thoughts on that? On the oneness thing?

It's definitely a unique feeling that you can really only feel when you're on a plant medicine. And Ben did talk for a while. There's a lot to digest. I don't think anyone can deny that plant medicines are dangerous. They're definitely very powerful.

They.

I do agree that they take you to realms that we don't really understand. Psychedelics just really show you that. They show you how little you understand about life. But I think Problems arise with the misuse and abuse of them. Because in my opinion, if a psychedelic trip does its job, you don't really want to do it again. You don't really get addicted to psychedelics. Cannabis is like a whole other thing. I think you can get addicted to cannabis. I have certainly been addicted to cannabis. I know friends who are addicted, but that's like. I kind of put that in a separate category. But if we're just talking, like, pure psychedelics, like LSD or. Or mushrooms or mdma, I think if it does its job, you don't really want to do it again. They really just kind of throw you against, like, the walls of your mind, and they. It's like a journey into your unconscious. So if they do really do their job, you don't want to repeat, like, it's very rare that you get hooked on, like, mushrooms or lsd. So it's really just people being stupid with psychedelics, playing with fire. These are not a party drug. You don't do them at festivals or near negative energy because you're definitely open and susceptible to spirits, as Ben said. But I think if you do your research and you're smart with it and you. You just kind of, like, know. Well, no one really knows what they're doing, but you just aren't, like, misusing it.

You.

You have to respect the medicine because at the end of the day, it's a medicine, you know, you don't get hooked on. On a medicine you don't get. A medicine is supposed to do its job, and then you kind of leave it alone. It doesn't become a diet. So that's kind of my two cents on, like, using psychedelics for specific purposes. In terms of, like, the oneness thing, it really. You can't. It's like a transformation of consciousness. So you really, like when you're tripping on shrooms, like, you just feel one with everything. But if. Is that the truth? Like, is that. Are you really one with everything? Like, who knows? Psychedelics just show you what you don't know. It's like just a whole nother realm that we don't understand. So it's definitely playing with fire. They are dangerous, but does that make them inherently evil? I wouldn't say so, because I would say saying that they're evil kind of overweighs the risks and underweighs the benefits.

Real quick, I was gonna say I don't think they're evil. Like, I don't think plant medicines are evil. I think there are tools via which evil can interact with us, right? Like, I don't think like a magic mushroom or whatever is, like, inherently evil or has, like, you know, it's probably got actually pretty high, like, like energetic frequencies. If you were to map it on, like, David Hawkins, you know, map of consciousness or something like that, I think these things resonate at pretty high frequencies, you know, which would be like, peace and love and joy, et cetera. But, you know, where the last speaker is at currently is where I was at probably like a year ago, where I'm like, okay, well, yeah, these things are, like, powerful and they're being abused and we got to put them in the right set and setting and stop people who don't know what they're doing from using them. And, you know, stop, like, the, the sexual abuse that's occurring, you know, that was recently in the big New Yorker magazine podcast series, Expose. I don't know if anybody saw that, but, you know, you go download all these podcasts, and I'm sure you guys have heard of a lot of the abuse that happens in the sector, and that's just one example, of course. And so, you know, I used to think, well, let's just make sure it's all protected and in a medically appropriate set and setting. But, you know, that makes the assumption that, okay, as long as we control the container, everything's going to be okay. And again, this gets kind of woo. But if you do believe in spiritual dimensions and entities, then believing you can somehow, like, control them and have them at your beck and call, you know, including God, and be able to take, like, these ancient entities. We're talking like, you know, things like, you know, I read about in the Bible, like, baal, you know, and Dagon and like, old school, like, you know, India, you know, Krishna, Shivna, like, these are like super powerful gods who have toyed with human beings since the dawn of time, who existed before human beings. Do we really think that if we say, okay, well, if I take shrooms, whatever, in my basement with my friend who's a doctor versus down in the Amazon or at a party, that I'm going to be okay? And so, like, where I've changed my philosophy is like, oh, wait, these things, like, have the capability to put us into a very exposed state from a spiritual standpoint, no matter where they're administered. And because of that, even in a properly controlled set and setting, a properly controlled container, I am still of the opinion that in that container, you'd still want to play it safe and go with something that is not tainted with this Dark energy or hasn't traditionally been used for things like witchcraft and sorcery, et cetera. And when I say that, I'm talking about, you know, something like ketamine or mdma, for example, you know, And I think that some of these synthetics carry with them a little less of these dark energies. But, yeah, I, you know, I used to think, oh, just keep it safe. But with some of these plant medicines that, you know, that the little G. Gods have traditionally interacted with people through, you know, now I'm of the opinion that's why I recently wrote that new article that's, you know, it's. It's playing with. With. With fire, especially when it comes to your eternal existence.

Do you mind if I jump in there, guys?

Go ahead.

Yeah. So, yeah, there's so many points to cover off there. I mean, I think that I. Look, I agree with. Particularly with ayahuasca, which is what I've got more significant amount of experience with. You definitely are opening yourself up to spirits. Like, there's no doubt in my mind that you are opening up to another dimension and entities, which for me, have always been incredibly welcoming and positive. So there's definitely something there where you're opening yourself up very widely to a.

Completely different dimension of being.

And whether that's like, in the Islamic concept of, like, jinn, and they're like.

Disembodied spirits and there's good and bad gin.

And like I said, my experience has always been incredibly positive with the sort of sometimes, occasionally with the sort of entities that I've experienced. But I could really see. I kind of. I do agree that you're definitely opening yourself up to something that it's not just a brain chemistry experience. There's something far deeper going on now. Have I ever, like, communed with God or anything while journeying? No, I don't think so. Like, I've always actually been very disappointed because that's what I've kind of been looking for in a way or part of it, as well as the sort of personal development side of it and helping deal with depression and addiction and stuff, which it has helped me incredibly. But I would say it's a step away from big G God for sure. It's more of a spirit realm. And there's definitely a sense more recently when I've used the ayahuasca that you cut, you are communing with the. The spirit of ayahuasca itself as well, which is a very distinct one, aside from the other spirit. So it sounds, if you've never experienced it. I'm sure it sounds really woo woo, but it is definitely something. There's no doubt in my mind after the journeys I've done that there's something going on there. And I think like, like Ben said that that's the, the, the importance of the set and setting is definitely none of this stuff is party drugs. Like, you know, I did it as a kid, LSD for example. And it'd be like me and like 50, 60 friends would go out into the woods and have a big fire and whatnot and just sort of spend hours and hours just laughing and talking shit. But I think the real transformative stuff comes within the right set and setting. So you are as protected as you possibly can be. But as you say, you are definitely incredibly vulnerable. I think one of the things is that it does become, from a lot of people I've met, it can become a lifestyle where like the Shaman Bro article which I've just retweeted that Ben put into his article really made me laugh because there's definitely people who do plant medicines and then that becomes their, their lifestyle and their whole reason for being that they're just experimenting constantly and constantly dosed up and microdosing and they're living in that realm a lot of the time. And there are people who do that certainly. And the people who do that and then wonder why they're not changing as a person. It's because they're, they're receiving all these messages and getting these insights about themselves, but just refute plainly refusing just to do the work. And I just think that the, the medicine is magic. It's like a magic bullet. It's going to fix all my problems. I drink this stuff, I go on a journey and then everything's going to be great. And that's, in my experience that's just not the case. You have to do the work afterwards and it takes time to integrate. I think one of the problems, I believe is that there's a lack of leaving aside you open yourself up to entities and stuff is that there's a lack of integration. Coaches or people aware that they need that. It's more beneficial to when you go through an experience like this to actually have someone to coach you through the integration process afterwards. Because oftentimes in my experience you do the plant medicines over the course of a weekend and then you go back home and you just kind of left to go back to your normal life and you've seen all this stuff and it's brought all this personal shit up and you feel very aligned. It's like a factory reset. But then you're left to kind of go back to your normal life and kind of make sense of it yourself, which I think is problematic. And I think that's probably what draws people back to doing the medicine repeatedly in close succession. Because of that, they haven't had time to integrate the insights and just move on and use the medicine in a, in a very sort of more limited capacity and then moving on quickly, if you don't mind, just. Oh yeah, because in terms of like the, the dimension shift and stuff like this, like you say, like you are opening yourself up, but I mean, I would argue that things like alcohol is just as easily open itself in a different way. Because if you, if you consider that the, the reality that we live in is like the spiritual warfare going on, then that transcends just the plant medicines and will appear and manifest itself in lots of different areas. So, you know, you look at like general degeneracy, like pornography and alcohol abuse and general drug abuse. Like things like in Australia there's a big problem with like a drug called ice and all those other drugs as well.

They are part of a bigger problem within society, which I would suggest that they're part of that sort of demonic attack as well.

By the way. Quick, quick thought on that. You know, it is true, like there's these chunks in the Bible where it says, like, oh, these are the most evil of evil things, you know, and yeah, murders in there and like child sacrifice. But three that do appear are drunkenness, pharmacia and porneia. Right, pornography. But it's interesting that the three aren't all lumped into the same category. Right. They actually are differentiated. And I think the reason for that is that although like alcohol and porn are two other things that have the potential to kill your very soul. Right. They're like some of the more mortally damaging things that you can fall into. Anybody who's been addicted to those knows that. I still think that the reason that pharmakia is differentiated from alcohol and is differentiated from porn is that it actually of anything has the highest potential to cause you to be susceptible to dark energies and dark spirits and dark influences. And I think that's why traditionally it versus alcohol or graphic imagery or breath work or anything else has been used for like possession, astral projection, witchcraft, sorcery, etc. So I think there are some, like, some subtle nuances between pharmakia and then alcohol or porn.

Yeah, I can see that. But I mean, at the Same time you look at the impact that alcohol has on society and the damage it does in terms of people abusing it and causing fueling domestic violence and violence in general. You've only got to go to most city centers on a Friday or Saturday night to see the impact that alcohol has and the sort of the direction.

That it sends people.

Yeah, I agree. Like, alcohol's. Alcohol is horrible. Or like, you know, I have a glass of wine every night. But yeah, like, alcohol abuse is horrible. The problem is, and here's. Here's what I think, like, the reason we might be having this discussion anyways in the first place is there's not a whole lot of people bragging to their friends about how drunk they got on the weekend. Well, maybe in college, but there's not a whole lot of people bragging about their drinking habits and their addiction to alcohol. There's a whole lot of people talking about their plant medicine trips and their ayahuasca and discovering themselves in spiritual enlightenment. And so I think the problem is that the plant medicine, especially compared to the alcohol, is considered like, noble and laudable and worthy and often safe with very little danger. And so I think it has more potential for abuse and misuse because it's so kind of like lauded versus the vilification of alcohol in today's society. I think both have their downfalls. But I think the problem is like, you know, plant medicines are kind of like they're the darling of society right now.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely take that point. I mean, it's definitely something that's become increasingly trendy over the years since I first did ayahuasca, attended a ceremony. So, yeah, you can definitely see that it seemed to be sort of the non plus ultra in terms of spirituality, which I agree, I think is wrong. I think that it's a limited view on the potential that, as you said, I think you said in your article that psychedelics are like a booby prize for the. What was it, the fall of the Western Christendom? And I think that's. That's largely true. I think it's probably a reflection on society as a whole that people are looking for quick fixes and ways to be spiritual or to touch into spiritual realization, but without having to do the work to get there. The first time I did it, as I said, the ayahuasca was the one thing that got me deeply into meditation practice. And then for like maybe eight years after that, up until we had kids, it sort of changed. But I was meditating for like two hours a day. Now, some of the biggest realizations and shifts I've had are actually through meditation alone, with no substance, just sitting on a cushion in my living room meditating and doing that practice now.

So I do believe that spiritual practice and contemplative prayer or whatever form of meditation, you have to do the work outside the ceremony. And I do agree that there's a limited use of medicines because they are. I think they can help people shift from stuck states or deal with past trauma. But to then keep going back and back and back just as a lifestyle thing, I don't think. I don't see that as being incredibly beneficial. I think it's more moving from there to installing a more rigorous spiritual practice in your life. But and I think as a side comment I'd say that, or as a separate thread, I'd say that the spiritual aspect of Christianity, let's say, kind of got downplayed significantly.

So you've got people like Father Thomas Keaton and Thomas Merton and what's his name, Thomas Maine and various others within the sort of mystic tradition, Richard Rohr, who have kind of started to promote the more spiritual aspects of the balance of the spiritual deeper aspect of Christianity. And I think that's sorely lacking generally because like when I've been to church within my local area, I've been to.

A few different churches.

They're very functional places that people go in and go out and the ritual aspect has been taken away, the spiritual aspect has been taken away. Now I know there are some trad Catholic churches and obviously still the orthodox church with its theosis etc. And it's more mystical theology. And I just wonder if that's a. I know Richard Bishop Barron talks about this, that the church kind of let itself down by allowing a focus on rationality and trying to adapt itself to modern society when it wasn't setting a bar high enough for people to reach towards and have a deeper emphasis on the mystical and the communion with God directly outside of any substances, which is which I do believe is possible. And as I say, some of the most transformative experiences I've had have actually been meditating.

You're totally right. Like the. And this might. This leads into something I kind of wanted to say just because I can't stick around for too much longer. But I think you, you kind of laid things out perfectly for just like the last thing I kind of want to bring to the table here. But I want to address one quick thing here and that's like you are correct like post reformational Logical, rational, theological, liturgical religion, particularly in branches of Christianity outside of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, have dictated that it's very difficult to experience mystical knowing and experiencing of God similar to what the desert fathers and mothers, many of whom you just named, would have experienced. You know, and there are, there are certainly many of them who have detailed in their writings the visions and the prophecies and the deep experiences with God. And these occurred in the absence of plant medicine, by the way. That is largely absent from our current experience. And I think that is because we've lost some of that sacramentalism. We've lost some of these spiritual disciplines that are a key part of Christianity. Prayer, fasting, silence, solitude, meditation, chanting, humming, incense. All these things that are now considered to be like, a little bit woo. Like, you don't, you don't walk in your average church where there's like a PowerPoint projector and people playing electric guitars and, like, have those people leaving and sitting on their butts on meditation cushions in the morning for 20 minutes, like burning incense and praying and experiencing God in a deeper way. Like, I agree, like, church has been kind of bastardized in that sense. And I think that if we will return to like, a more like holy, reverent, nearly mystical experience from a religious standpoint in Christianity, we would actually probably see a lot of people who would normally turn to plant medicine turn to that instead because it doesn't carry with it a lot of the risks and the cons of plant medicine, which kind of leads to, like, the last thing I kind of wanted to say. And, you know, because it's like, what do I tell my kids, right? Because they've seen me grow tremendously via my use of plant medicines over the past decade. Not only me, but me and my relationship to my wife. Well, here's what I would have to say to them, and here's what I would have to say to others. I've been there. I've been deep into journeying states and deep into plant medicines. And yeah, it has changed me. It has been a path that drew me into a deeper understanding of the spiritual disciplines and a deeper yearning and thirst for God and knowledge of God. But I was playing with fire like, it isn't the only path. As a matter of fact, there's a better path. And that better path is these old spiritual disciplines that the Christian desert fathers and mothers use without drugs. Prayer and fasting and meditation and silence and solitude and scripture study and singing and all of these things that allow God to reveal himself to you without demons being on board. Too. And so I would say, yeah, plant medicines can be fantastic, but there's such a dark energy and there's so much room for deceit and there's such a better, better, better way that I wish, wish, wish. Oh, I wish I'd known before I got into plant medicine what it really meant to truly experience the mystical experience of God in a fully sober state, on your knees in prayer. If I would have known that, I never ever, ever would have gone into that realm, especially knowing what I know now and the dangers of it. But I didn't know. However, I can tell my kids, hey, look, kids, you know what? My sons, my twin 14 year old sons, all you need is just like your faith and understanding that God will reveal Himself to you and understanding that he's real and you can, you can taste and touch and feel him and you don't need drugs to do so and so, so yeah, I guess I'll, I'll shut my yapper. And those are, you know, if I do drop off, I'm, I'm sorry, I just, I, I have some other things going on today, but that's, that's, that's kind of my, my thoughts and I guess the last like important things I'd want to say.

Yeah, I did just want to jump in real quick. I wanted to backtrack a little bit. To what, to what Arnold said when he was talking about his ayahuasca trips. Now I personally don't have any experiences with like DMT or, or ayahuasca or anything of that sort, although it is on the bucket list. Maybe in the future, who knows. But one important point I think he noted was not taking the insights that you get from the medicine and applying it to daily life. I think that's, that's definitely a problem most people face when they try, try and toy with the, with the plant medicine. They'll get like a download of information. Maybe they're something like a toxic behavior that they, that they're doing that they weren't aware of. It's kind of brought to the light, but they don't change it. They kind of just say, oh, like I was tripping, like I'm just going to go back to how I was living. I don't want to change anything. And for me personally, when I was on my heroic doses of mushrooms, the mushrooms kind of told me like to like kind of stay sober. I guess I didn't really have a problem with like alcohol or weed or anything, but they just, they just, I didn't want to be in an altered state of consciousness after that, like it was enough. They just told me to put your head down, focus on, on, on your work, focus on your writing and just keep building without the distraction. And so that's what I did. I took the insight that it gave me and I brought it to my daily life. And that's where I think the real benefits come now. The problems lie. When you take a drug like that, like let's say you do mushrooms, you see everything that you're doing wrong. You kind of have a bad trip. You can't just write it off as a bad trip and you just say, okay, I'm not going to change anything. I just had a bad trip. Like we'll move on maybe next time. So I think that's definitely important now in terms of what you guys are saying with like the church and Christianity and mystical experiences, I don't really have a lot to say about that because I personally am not a Christian. So I'm not too informed on like the Christian church and all that. But what I will say is that people are just looking for a way to communicate with God. And so when they don't have anything to believe in, they kind of turn towards other practices. Like an atheist will take mushrooms and he'll become a full blown believer. And I think that's pretty amazing personally. But when people are just lacking faith, they'll look for anything to like kind of, they'll look for anything to look for to follow. And so I think without religion society can get very dangerous as we see. But that's kind of my two cents on it. I just wanted to touch on like grabbing the insights and, and applying them to daily life.

Yeah, thank you. I want to point out that you don't have to do something bad in order to receive something good. And that's experimenting too much your psychedelics and hoping you can believe in God. I mean, and some people believe turn out to believe in Jesus Christ. But how many people are those? I mean, I think it's a tiny percentage that believes in Jesus Christ at the end of their psychedelics psychedelic journey. So I don't think it's necessary to experiment with such a dangerous drug and especially the synthetic kinds like LSD and lsa.

Yeah. And by the way, speaking of atheism.

Yeah.

Like there's atheists like I mentioned earlier, you know, who do take a heroic dose or who do have a plant medicine experience and wind up knowing God, as you just astutely noted, not knowing Jesus per se, but knowing God and I guess where my mind goes is like, would I rather have an atheist who doesn't believe in God, or would I rather have an atheist who believes in God, believes God is at his disposal, his beck and call, believes that he can be God and believes that he is inherently good? And I think that the latter person could actually go on and do a great more damage to the world than the former person because of some of the things I was talking about earlier. The potential for the complete dissolution of moral absolution as an atheist develops spiritual enlightenment. But, you know, you kind of, instead of awakening a really good empathetic person, you can kind of potentially awaken a Hitler. And so that's my concern.

I guess just a kind of an afterthought.

If I can just jump in there as well as I'm listening to this, it's like, you know, the genie's at the bottle now. Like, this stuff is. There's. You can. It's possible to do various different ceremonies all over the place. So, I mean, this is out. And as you said, it's part of becoming increasingly part of popular culture, really. Certainly over the last, you know, 10, 14 years or so, I've definitely seen a big shift and hear about more celebrities talking about their ayahuasca experience and stuff. So I guess the question leads on to then is like, well, what do you actually do about that then? Because if you tell people, oh, this is evil, it's opening up to demonic spirits, if they've not done it, they won't really get that. You kind of almost have to do it to go, yeah, okay, I can see how I'm communing with another realm, a different sense of reality. And as we said, I certainly believe that integration, making integration coaching more available for people, which is something I've never had. You have to kind of figure it all out yourself. And I think if you can, if you've got someone who's going to help coach you through the integration process, I think you could probably. That would certainly help. A lot of people who've gone through that experience can then make sense of it and put action to the insights they've had about themselves and about their life that they need to address.

Because we're not going to stop people doing it now. It's going to have to be, what's the. How do you create the conditions that people become aware of alternative options and also willing to do the hard yards? Like, for me, with my meditation practice, it took me years of dedicated practice before I experienced anything. Well, I had One very, very profound experience which lasted for like two days, which totally shifted my perspective and produced a belief in God, which I didn't have before. And that was just through meditation. But to say to people, okay, don't do plant medicines, but I want you to meditate every day, twice a day for the next couple of years, and then you will be able to connect.

And have this transformative experience. It's quite a hard sell. So I don't know what the answer is. I think integration coaching is a big.

One to help people make sense of their experience so they don't feel like they need to keep going back. But do you know what I mean? Like, the genie's at the bottom and then just to say, well, if you, if you believe in Christ or God and salvation, you'll be saved. But people do have some incredible testimonies of their transformation by being both through grace. But there's a lot of people out there who don't have that experience. It might be alcoholics or might be drug addicts or depressed, and they aren't. They haven't had that transformative experience. Experience.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. My fear is like, okay, so if these things are lumped into the categories of things that are scarring to the soul, or you could potentially lose your salvation through them or turn your soul over to the devil for them. I'm talking about porn and murder and the so called pharmacia. Then we're talking about something different than somebody who has celiac disease being told, dude, gluten is going to f you up. And that person can leave and go the rest of their life and not eat gluten and just kind of like, trust that. Okay, well, gluten's. They said gluten's gonna F me up, so I'm not gonna try it. And then maybe somebody tells them, you know what? This pizza place is the best on the planet. You gotta add this to your bucket list and do it before you die. And that person with celiac disease then goes and has the pizza and they've got whatever, explosive diarrhea the next day, and they're painting the back of the toilet seat and life kind of sucks for a few days. And they're like, huh, okay, I went and experienced it. Turns out that person was right. It's not so great. And so they learn, they move on. But the thing is, gluten isn't a battle for your soul, and digestive distress isn't a battle for your soul. And so if one of My friends comes to me, and me being a married Christian man and says, dude, sex at the Bunny Ranch down at Reno is amazing. You can pay three girls to bang you all at once and. And you get like a 12 hour experience for like 3000. This is amazing, dude. And like, for me as a married man, I could be like, oh, well, I guess I'll just go kind of do it and figure out whether it's for me. It's like, no, that's where I draw the line. That's like, oh, wait, I could lose my soul doing that. Like that's a mortal sin for me as a married man to go down and do that. And then when you look at plant medicine, it's like, oh, this is like amazing. It's a way of knowing God. But then I flip open to the Bible and it says, this is how your soul gets damned to hell. I'm just like, for me as a Christian, I'm like, gee, I don't know, even if it is that great, is it necessary? Is there another way? And am I just basically out of curiosity's sake playing around with something eternal and the fate of my very soul could be in the balance. And so that's where I think there's some subtle nuances, especially for somebody, obviously somebody who's not a Christian. A lot of my words aren't even gonna resonate. But for somebody who's a Christian, you know, they might.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that's the difference, isn't it? Because if you're talking to Christians, you're talking on the same playing field. But obviously a lot of people wouldn't even identify as Christian or have got no interest in Christianity like we say, because the various denominations of the church have completely sold out and are more interested in, you know, social justice or the environment or, or the latest fad thing that they want to jump on the back of just to try and appeal to more people, which seems to do the opposite and just pushes more people away. So there's obviously a message there for Christians for them to contemplate, certainly. And then I think there's a different.

Thread there of like, how do you.

Then take that message out to people who are Yashama?

That is the tricky part. And I guess, like, for that I'd say you can't say don't do it because the Bible says it's wrong. Because if you don't believe that the Bible is the absolute truth, that really just falls on deaf ears. But what you can say is, okay, if you really are doing this, you really believe it works, then you do believe in a spiritual world. Unless you're one of those very few.

People, and there's very few of them.

Who believe it's just neurochemicals and neurotransmitters. And therefore, if there is a real existence of a very real spiritual world, and some of it's good and some of it's evil, then I would say proceed with great caution, because you're opening yourself up to both the good and the evil. And if I were you, I wouldn't do it. And that's all I can say, right, is like, you're messing around with something that's possibly more powerful than you think. Please, please, please, please, please be careful. And if you'd, like, come find me and I'll tell you a way you can get the same stuff without doing it. That's pretty much like as far as I can go, right? Yeah.

It's like getting the message out there. And I think making the.

As we touched on previously, I mentioned.

Things like contemplative prayer and kind of like the everyday mysticism taking that message.

Out there that there are. There's meditation, there is benefit to ritual. You know, like people like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pugeau, they do a great job in raising people's interest. Like, I wasn't interested in the Bible, but I heard Jordan Peterson maybe like five years ago, and then it kind of opened up my mind because I was of the view, as a lot of people I know growing up were like, yeah, the Bible's stupid. Who gives a shit about the Bible? There's nothing in it. It's an old book.

Who cares?

Let's move on.

And then people like Jonathan Peugeot and Peterson have completely opened my eyes up to reading it, and I think, so.

Then maybe there's something there about bringing that the contemplative tradition and making it raising people's awareness that they don't even.

Know that that's there.

And they think that they have to.

Live in the monastery or become a monk for them to be able to.

Live a life of meaning or communion with God.

Right?

Yeah.

So maybe for some people, I mean, that might even be like, just like a, you know, like a secular, like Joe Dispenza meditation retreat or something where they can be like, oh, wait, there's a way to an altered state of consciousness that doesn't require this.

Right?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I still think there's.

That room for people who are struggling with addiction or trauma and those kind of things.

Like, you know, as we said, it's.

Got to be very carefully handled.

I mean, all of this is a general commentary on society as a whole, really. I mean, we're talking about the lack of the kind of society that's producing all that mental illness and all those societal problems.

Hey, I gotta actually pop off. This has been such a thought provoking discussion. I love to learn from folks like you guys and your experiences. So I personally gotta drop off. But thank you guys so much for putting up with me hogging the mic.

For the last little bit.

Cool, man. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for joining, man.

Yeah, for sure. Thanks you guys. All right, God bless. Later.

So there's two events coming up. You can go to both of them. I'm going to go to both of them. Obviously I'm going to fly to Texas, then fly over to Lexington. The Texas event called larunga is October 13th through the 15th. The wild health one is October 22nd. Go to both.

I am.

Obviously. You can also check BenGreenfieldLife.com calendar for all of the events that I'll be teaching at this year. So I hope to see you there.

More than ever these days. People like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. If you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.