[EP19] Healing The Heart and Soul With Plant Medicine With Gerry Powell

Foreign.

Welcome everybody to the Jack Canfield Podcast. I'm Jack Canfield and my guest today is a truly remarkable person who I am so excited to introduce you to. His name is Gerard Armand Powell, who goes by Jerry, and he's a conscious entrepreneur whose mission is to transform lives. He's the founder and CEO of the Rhythmia Life and Advancement center in Costa Rica, which is the Go to program for spiritual awakening and personal transformation, where over 97% of the guests who've gone there have reported that they've received their miracle, which we're going to talk about today. That's quite a phenomenal statistic. Now, before this, Jerry was the founder of My Choice Medical Incorporation, a company which he started in 2000 and sold to a public company in 2004 and the sale concluded in 2007, had a dollar value of over 80 million DOL dollars. But through a personal crisis after the sale of My Choice Medical, Jerry was initiated into a journey of self transformation through a powerful encounter with plant medicine, which we're going to talk about in depth today that transformed and liberated his life, where he was inspired to dedicate his life to sharing that same opportunity for others through the work he does at Rhythmia. Now, I first met Jerry when I visited Rhythmia 2017. We've become friends and as I've been back to Rhythmia four more times since then and have recently joined the Rythmia Board of directors with others like Martin Luther King iii, Reverend Michael Beckwith, whom I've had on this podcast, Cesar Millan, Kelly Slater, Frank Biden and Ron White. Because I believe so much in the work and the miracles that is producing and I'm just wanting to help bring this work to the world. That's why we're doing the podcast today. And I've also started to collect stories of these miracles that people have experienced for a book I'm currently calling Ayahuasca for the Soul. The Shortcut to Happiness, Peace and Free freedom. As I was saying to Jerry before we came on, I guess air you would call it chicken soup and ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a little stronger brew than chicken soup. We'll talk about that. Anyway, welcome Jerry.

So nice to be here, Jack. And I'm super thrilled that you would have me for real.

Well, I'm super thrilled to have you. I've been looking forward to this for weeks. Anyway, I want to read a quote you wrote. You said, I'm not a thought leader. I'm a regular guy that had an extraordinary experience and now I've become a cheerleader for a plant. A plant that transformed me from a broken multimillionaire, suicidal alcoholic and drug addict with a lifetime of suffering to a happy, free and purpose driven individual who can do anything but is addicted to nothing. My life's mission is to show others there can be a shortcut to happiness. So let's start a little bit about that backstory and kind of like where you were and what got you to where you are now with Rhythmia.

So the. The short story there is I was. I was a terrible kid in a rougher environment, brought up in a fairly rough environment with a pretty cold father from cold people. But the big problem was me. I was, I was. I had everything. Add, dyslexia, every kind of problem you could have. And I was terrible in school. I was a delinquent. I got in all kinds of trouble. I got kicked out of a couple schools. I wound up in jail. And I really had no hope. I was, I was not. I wasn't born particularly bright or, you know, a great athlete or anything like that. I was kind of just like a regular person with learning disabilities and some psychological issues, I would call them. In an effort to prove myself, I got caught doing something really bad and it could have ruined my life. I could have went to state prison for five years. There was mandatory sentencing at the time. And I prayed to the time of Jesus and I said, if you get me out of this, I'm going to do something with my life. And lo and behold, I got out of it. And the only thing that I knew from that part of my life is that to make something of your life meant you went and made money. And I became okay at making money in an effort to honor my word to God and to prove to people, especially in my family, that that I was worthy of something in life. I became a millionaire in my 20s and took a company public in my 30s and sold a company that you just talked about, Jack, in my 40s for over $80 million.

And.

That was my story. And that's who I was during that time. I got married. I had two great kids. I had a third one out of. Out of marriage. And my life was a wreck. When I tell you a wreck, I really mean a wreck. I was. And the funny thing, it was a wreck. And I really didn't know. I knew something was very wrong because at that time in my life, I think I had about 60 million bucks saved and. And I was super suicidal. Like, super suicidal. So I. I had these beautiful kids I, at that time I had a great wife, beautiful kids, I had all that money. I had planes and cars and everything you could think of. And I was super suicidal. And, and during that time too, I was a drug addict, an injectable drug addict. I was full blown alcoholic and I was a massive cheater. I was a horrible husband and my life was just done. And it got so bad that my wife packed it in and said, that's it. And that was my wake up call. It was my divorce really started this healing journey. And I went to Passages in Malibu and, and I stayed in. I met a wonderful doctor, Dr. Jeff McNary, who's a fellow board member with us, Jack, at Rythmia and just a beautiful person. And this guy saved my life. And after Passages, I had him for five years every day. He was my full time therapist. And I still didn't get better. I, I, I changed a little. And so much as I was doing less, I was doing less drugs, not, not completely. Stop. I was drinking a ton. I was dating everyone. I was, it was just the same thing all over again. And that led me to a point of suicide. And I, I actually said to Jeff, I said, I said, dude, I'm going to give us all a break and I'm going to kill myself. And he said this to me, he said, you can't do that. And I said, why? And he goes, because you're my only client. I was like, well, I better not then, you know, I better not. And he said, why don't you take a vacation? So I took a vacation. I went to the Philippines and I, through this happenstance, I met a woman. And she told me that she knew someone just like me who went and did plant medicine and it changed their life, really changed their life. And at that point, Jack, I think I was $700,000 into my healing journey, huh? And I was like, I was like, I spent 700 grand. What's a few more? That's what my head. And then I said, if it doesn't work, I'll just kill myself. You know, that was my thought. And I went to Costa Rica and I met a shaman and I took this medicine and I, I got shot to the moon. And the moon played a tape for me of when I was a little boy, of a video of me getting molested by my grandfather. And in that moment I re, in that moment I remembered that crazy stuff. I never knew it and yet I remembered it in that moment. And, and that was the start of this change in my life where, where The. The moon made me tell her who I was, and so I had to admit, like, who I was and I was a bad guy had turned into a bad guy. And. And then she showed me that thing, and then she actually merged me back with my soul and then healed my heart. It's a complex yet simple thing. And she actually did this. And then when I was done, she said, now you have to do this for other people. And da, da, da, da. And I went and I bought Rythmia. At that time was a hotel called La Posada. And I invited Jeff down, and Jeff did that medicine. And he said, you know, the funny thing is Jeff was crying that night. And I said, dude, why are you crying? And he said, because my license is worthless. That's what he told me. His psychologist license was worthless after he did the medicine. I thought he, like, saw something when he was a boy or. He said, no, I'm crying because my license is worthless.

And.

And so that started our thing, and we started doing this, you know, in 2016. That journey was in 2014. It took us time to get licensed and buy the place, and we launched in 2016. And since then, 16,000 people have been through the place. And kind of a version of what happened to me happens to not Everybody, but over 97% of the people have some version of that, and it changes their lives for the good forever. And I'm just humbled to be in this thing. I'm humbled to be alive, number one. I should be dead. I'm humbled to be in this thing. I'm humbled to know people like you, Jack. I never. I never would have met a guy like you or Michael Beckwith or Martin Luther King or any of these people in my. In my past life, I. I only knew strippers and drug dealers is the extent of. Of who I knew. So I'm just. For me, this looks like a crazy movie. And, you know, it's just a strange thing. It's a strange thing. It's a strange environment.

Yeah. Talk about this idea. You got merged back with your soul. You talk about. The problem we all have is there's a split that we experience as a child. Can you speak to that for a moment?

Yeah. So what she showed me is that all of us between the time we're conceived and about 6 years old, have an event that happens in our life. It can happen in the womb, it can happen outside the womb, but because of fear, makes us split. So our wholeness, we get schismed from. From our soul. So this little shift happens and then this part of us becomes the doctor, the lawyer, the Indian chief, the janitor, the high school star, the whatever, this part of us. And. And yet this whole time we yearn to. To put this thing back together. So as we're developing this character. The character may need alcohol endlessly, or accolades or academics or scholarships or whatever. It needs diplomas, money, sex, whatever, to fill this hole that feels like it can't be filled because it's not really a hole, it's a. It's a break. And in that break, when, it's when you realize, when you admit who you become, the medicine, who I believe is God, and I don't know your opinion on that, Jack, but some form of God, when you admit who you are, she puts it back to. As soon as you admit that, she puts it back together. And for most people, it looks like a welcoming of themselves as a child back into them. That's usually the visual in the experience of what it looks like. And from that point, she actually. The next thing that happens, because when you broke this, you broke your own heart. And then you keep repeating that break of your heart. So when she heals your soul, the next thing she does is she comes in and repairs your heart. So by the time that you're done this thing, you're like. I mean, I remember. I remember that next day and I really felt. And I watch every week here, people experience this feeling of I'm alive for the first day that I remember in my life, that I'm alive that next day after this happens. And it happens all the time where these people are just like they're alive again. They're back from the dead.

Yeah, you can see the light coming out of their eyes now. It's really fascinating to watch people come into rythmia on day one, see who they are and then watch them leave. They're like little children, you know, and loving and kind and connected and generative and funny. And it's really. It's quite, quite phenomenal. So let's talk about that a little bit. So the rythmia experience includes a lot of things. It includes breath work and colonics and massages and yoga and meditation and these ceremonies at night with the medicine. And there's four nights of ceremony and there's three intentions. And I'd like to talk about that a little bit because I think that four nights are really valuable because I had done first time I did ayahuasca was in the rainforest. There was no preparation. The way you get it rythmia. There were some things, had I known, would have been a much better experience had I had a little bit of preparation. There was a time when I was in this cave and these black Africans were about to stab me in the heart with a knife. And I freaked out and thought, I'm going to die of a heart attack in the rainforest. And I remember the shaman the next morning going, oh, that's too bad. I said, why? He said, because you would have been initiated into a new level of your heart. And he said, but you can come back next year. And I'm there thinking, yeah, I'm going to fly to Quito, take a plane into the rainforest, take a boat down the river into this little village to have my next ayahuasca.

I don't think so, you know.

Then I learned about rythmia when I was there. So, anyway, so these four nights, the first night we have these three intentions that go over often. The first three days, they can happen faster or take a little longer, but the first intention is show me who I've become. And in a sense, I actually nicknamed that night, show me what an asshole I am. Because what I got to see was all the places where I had developed these Personas, like you're saying, that had gotten in the way of who I truly am. I wasn't a great father, I could have been a better husband, I wasn't a great business partner. All these things I had done where I had to confront it, like, you know, really acknowledge this is who I am. And then there's the merge me back with my soul and heal my heart. Talk about the sequence of that, if you would.

So the way that it was explained to me by the medicine, which is. Sounds crazy to the people who are listening to this, but the way it was explained to me is that, you know, the whole thing of our lives, everything that implodes, that gets exposed, is there merely for us to realize what we're doing, to see who we've become in this life, not what made us this way, but who we've really become. In a lot of the spiritual teachings of the day, they create a spiritual bypass by going to the result and never, ever, ever addressing the truth about what's going on. And if you can't address the truth about where you are in that moment, you can't forgive yourself. And nor can you, nor can you be sorry for the things that you've done. You can't. You can only have these obtuse feelings of. Of strangeness, right? But when you really. So the medicine wants you not, not to fix yourself. We run around spending 700, 000 trying to fix ourselves without ever telling the truth about ourselves. So it's this, it's this paradox of, of, you know, that's, it's a circular reference, you know, that's what it is, right. So with the medicine, she said, you know, just tell me the truth and let me fix it for you. Just tell me the truth. And that's the God particle. That's the piece that, that all of us, Jack, that were brought up in tougher times, that we really believe that everything has to be worked for. If I don't kill myself, I'm not going to get this thing. And da, da, da. And in the, in earth terms that's true, but in celestial terms it's not. And this is where Catholics would deem as faith, Christians would deem as faith that it's in believing that she's going to fix me simply from me telling her the truth about who I have become. And yet that's how it happens all the time. And so she said these things have to happen in sequence and not in parallel. So she never heals a heart before your admission. You never have a soul merger before you tell the truth about who you are. It's all this, how quickly. This is the secret to rythmia. When people talk about surrender, what we're really talking about is blowing up our own spot in common day parlance. Like this is we gotta tell the truth of our dirt. We gotta say, this is who I am.

What's exciting about that for me is it's not like I have to sit down and tell the truth. It's like the medicine shows me the truth. There was all of a sudden all these images come up of where I wasn't a great father, where I wasn't a great husband, where I wasn't a good partner, where I was like, you know, faking it, you know, whatever, and you know, over pretending I wasn't afraid when I really was, and so forth and so on and how that got in the way. And it's just like, it's amazing. It's just like these images, these memories, these, you know, one of the things for me growing up is I didn't cry. I had a father who said, if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to really cry about, one of those guys. And so I didn't grieve. And literally I've had these experiences where all of a sudden I just started Crying uncontrollably on the medicine. And then started having all these memories of, like, when my dog died, when the dog catcher took my dog to take it away and kill it, you know, and so forth, and which I had repressed because I had to be a man, you know, so I wasn't living the truth of. Wait, that hurt. That was painful. And so it's like. It's like it's. It really. Surrendering is easier if you just allow yourself to breathe and let it be. And I'll try to figure it out and do all that, but just allow it to happen. It's like the medicine does its work through you, and it's almost like you're an observer, if that makes any sense.

Yes, it's so true. Right. But here's what I found, Jack, with most people. Most people will see that and deny it. So a lot of people will see that and they'll think, why is this medicine making me out to look so bad? That's the thought. Because I couldn't possibly be what I just saw. And they have to wrangle with that a little bit before they say yes to it, most people.

So then the next one is merge me back with my soul. And you talked about the moon merged you with your soul, and what was that like for you? And then why is that the next?

See, because this fissure, this thing that I believe happens in, you know, in many ancient cultures, they would talk about it too, Jack, about this thing. But. But this thing that I believe happens, and I believe we're designed to have it happen so that when you put it back together, it's the quest for putting it back together that makes this coming back together so sweet.

That's the.

The. It's like the key. And we're in the temple of Doom, the wall, you know, all of these images of. Of the end of the hero's journey, the. The dessert at the end of the meal. I finally got a bite of this happens, in my opinion, from this original break. And then the quest is putting this thing back together. And how do we do it? We do it by repeating the hurt that. That happened until it's unbearable. And then we, if we're lucky, get led to the medicine or have some other type of huge spiritual experience that merges us back. And. And then we can taste the sweetness of. Of that.

It was interesting because I remember lying on my mattress in the maloka and I just experienced like, I don't feel like I merged back with my soul yet. And I'm Like. Like, what's going on here? And so I'm talking to my soul. I'm saying, you know, what the heck? We're supposed to merge, and we're not merged. I can feel it. And this conversation Jerry was happening. Like, you know, when you send texts and there's a little bubble of what you're con, then my bubble of what I responded, and then a bubble comes back. So this whole thing's occurring visually like a text. And I said, in my soul, I don't feel like we're merged yet. And the soul says, well, you're not ready. And I said, well, what do I need to do? He said, well, you got to get ready. And I said, well, what? What? What? What haven't I done? He says, you're still too attached. I said, what am I attached to? He says, your house. And I said, I always tell people I have very few attachments, but I really love my house. I always, for years, was afraid, like, if I joined, if I got spiritual, I'd have to wear orange robes, chant Hare Krishna, and give up my house, you know? And so all of a sudden, my soul says, look, I won't ask you, because I'm surrendering. I'm surrendering to my soul. My soul's going to be the person, the entity guiding me now. And my soul says, look, I know you're afraid I'm going to ask you to do things you don't want to do. I promise I won't ask you to do anything for a year that you don't want to do. And I said, okay, I surrender. And then all of a sudden, I get this bubble from my soul that says, sell your house. And I said, you mf. You know, we had a deal. And then my soul, it text back, just kidding. And I said, oh, my God. My soul has a sense of humor. You know.

How cool is that? But that's typical, right? Is that. That is a beautiful merger. That's beautiful.

Yeah, it was. It was full of joy. It was amazing. And then talk about. You have a quote you said, when you reunite with your soul, everything that you think changes, and all the pain goes away. When you merge with your soul, did all the pain go away?

Yeah. And then I developed new pain.

What does that mean?

The funniest thing is this, is that, you know, she gave me everything I wanted and then gave me a job. And I was like, of course I'll take this job. Of course I will. You know, and the job she gave me sometimes.

What is it?

The cure is Worse than condition. The job. The job she gave me is the hardest job in the world. So I did. I. I had. I'm going to say I had two years of very smooth sailing. And. And then the business started. And you know what? It's funny because she's a multilevel marketer. She doesn't reproduce, she recruits. So she's out there trying to get people to help her spread this message of love. But she's a woman, and there's no limit to the size of her ask, you know, hey, did you paint the house? Yeah. Did you paint every house in the neighborhood? Not yet. We have to. Okay. It's just, it's. It's relentless.

And.

And so if you answer the call, what. And this is the. The funny thing with it is that, you know, there's. There's different categories of people come to Rhythmian, have this thing. Some people just live the. The rest of their life with an understanding that. That they're eternal. They never begin and it will never stop. And they adjust their lives and have a wonderful life. Other people get called, and when they get called, they got. They have to commit to really helping. And when you do that, you know, the world is never really kind to the folks that decide to do that. And that's the juice of the thing now because all the beauty's in there, too. It's interesting stuff.

Yeah.

I don't think I answered your question.

Well, I think you did. Let me just try to summarize what I think you said. You said that when you started to then, okay, now I'm going to do the service. I'm going to make a commitment to bring this transformation to the world. I'm going to do it through this vehicle called Rythmia. It's a business. It has all the business reality to it in order to make it work. Staff and recruitment and marketing and taxes and all the kind of stuff that one has to do and that. That has its challenges and that the bigger it gets, the more challenging it is. And whenever you do something big, that is light bearing, if you will, then the forces of darkness, which are huge in the world based on fear and greed and so forth, tend to attack, tend to be resistant, if you will. You know, I have a. There's a wonderful book that I read recently called the what's in the Way is the Way. And the idea, you know, that the obstacles are actually the next step of growth that we have to work with. And I think that I've experienced that and I think you've Experienced that. So you talk about more pain shows up. That's part of the growth process, because the growth is infinite. It's never ending, if you will. There's always more to learn. I remember one of the shamans. Was it arrhythmia? We'll talk about shamans in a minute. Talked about his shaman, who was, I think, in his 90s and had been doing ayahuasca journeys every week or every month since he was, like, 18. And someone asked him, why do you still do it? He said, because I still have things to learn.

And that is the truth, absolute truth.

Let me say what I want to just tell a personal story real quick in relation to this idea of how I was compensating, if you will. You talked about, you can't fill a hole. It's not really a hole, it's a crack. And one of the advanced intentions that what you can get when you come back to Rythmia second or third time is, is to forgive the unforgivable. And so I hold. I held that intention one night, and I thought I'd forgiven everybody. My parents, ex wives, their lawyers, on it goes. And I. I thought it was. I thought there was nobody left, but I just thought I would do it. And all of a sudden, when the medicine comes on, up comes Vladimir Putin's face. And I thought, oh, my God, I have to forgive Vladimir Putin. And I realized I did have judgment about Vladimir Putin, you know, killing people and Navalny and Ukraine and so forth. So I started to have all this awareness of his background and how he felt like he needed to do something significant to be remembered in history, like, you know, George Washington or Napoleon or something, going to put the Soviet Union back together again. And so I'm watching all that and his need for significance. And then all of a sudden, I saw the door to my office. And the door opened, and the first three feet, if you were to walk into my office, is like a shrine. How much significance I have. It's like, there's honorary doctorates, there's little, like, you know, trophies and pictures with presidents and, you know, autograph from famous people, book covers. And it just. And it was like, oh, my God, I'm a little Putin. You know, I have this need to feel significant in order to be okay. And it was such a. Such a revelation that, you know, and that's a hole you can never fill, obviously, because it doesn't really address the issue. And I came home and I literally. And I had sacrificed a lot of my life for those acknowledgments taking jobs I didn't want to do because I knew they'd give me an honorary doctorate, traveled across the country and not spent time with my children that weekend because they were going to, like, you know, give me a award and, you know, like, I don't even have wall space. My wife literally has three boxes of awards in my garage that we don't even have room for. And it's like. And I had sacrificed time and joy and relaxation and all that. And so it's really amazing how. How we do that and the.

How you were Putin.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I think everything we judge in someone else is a part of ourselves we haven't acknowledged yet.

You know, the first three feet of your. The walk in your office is a shrine. That's a killer. That's fantastic. I love that.

I have to send you a video sometime. You'll laugh.

We gotta see it. We gotta.

It's disgusting. Anyway, it's about to be renewed, but nevertheless, you know, remodeled, I guess, is the word I want. So let's talk about ceremony. People come to rythmia. There's breath work. Then the first night we go into ceremony, and in the ceremony, we take the ayahuasca, talk about the shamans, some of the instructions people get. We talk about four types of different journeys you can have, give people a little overview of that.

The medicine itself is a. Is a purgative. It's banisterius, cappy and chakruna and mixed together in a tea and has a. An extremely unique taste, I would say. And prior to Monday night, Monday evening, the people go through about. About four hours of what I'm going to call class work, workshop work. So they're prepared for what happens that evening. They're explained, you know, that there are four types of journeys, and then they get into detail of what. Of what those journeys are or what those types are. And. And one of the most important of. Of those is the physical experience. And that is like, where everything that is being purged is. Is leaving you. So, you know, if you. If you purge fear, which a lot of us do, you know, I'm. I'm a lot of journeys into this thing, and I get scared to death every time I go up there. I really do. And then during that ceremony, I have a lot of fear, and that fear is leaving me. So in life, what's coming is coming. So if I'm a runner and I start running and my shin starts hurting, oh, in life, I'm going to get a shin splint. But if I'm in the medicine and my elbow starts hurting, that's leaving, not coming. The, the medicine acts like an old timey doctor. And I don't know if you remember the Westerns where the guy would get shot and he'd go to the doctor and they'd give him something to bite on and a shot of whiskey and they pull the bullet from him and they drop it in a tin cup and they'd show it to him. That's what the medicine's doing to you. It is actually taking your crap and showing it to you and then pulling it from you. And she does that in a lot of different physical ways that, that one of them, the two, you know, the two ones that most people worry about is, you know, diarrhea and, and throwing up. But there are all kinds of purges. There's sweating, shaking, sneezing, yawning, laughing, crying, pain are all purges, Right? Especially sweating and shaking. A lot of people, you know, sweat and shake a fair bit on the, on the medicine, but when it's pulled from you, the feeling of lightness is. Well, I would say I've never experienced in my waking life a feeling that mimics that feeling after I purge on the medicine. Whether that's throwing up or diarrhea or, or a pain and pain release. I've never, in my waking life, I've never felt anything like that. The freedom and then the realization comes to you of, geez, I wonder how long I've had that. Which I just let go. And usually it's from the beginning, you know, we've had this stuff a long time, you know. Yeah. So that's one of the experiences and, and people are told to prepare for it so that, that when, you know, when something starts to hurt or you get afraid or you feel some pain that that is being healed from you and taken from you. And it makes, it makes the experience much, much better.

Yeah, the last time I was there, my right arm started to shake, just shook it. I swear it must have shook uncontrollably for 30 minutes and I had no awareness of what it was, just shaking. So I just allowed it. And then all of a sudden I had this feeling of I was shaking off all these people that were asking stuff for me where I needed to say no, you know, like just get rid of it, you know, that was about a half hour and then another half hour was shaking off all the resistance to reaching out and asking for help. Because I was one of those guys. This is a. Well, I'M just having this awareness now. When I went away to college, my dad, who didn't have a lot of money and had a lot of kids, said to me, if you need a helping hand, look at the end of your own arm, because there'll be nothing coming from us. And I just thought of that now, as I thought about that. So here I was, like, I never really stopped for help because I had to do it myself. And so I was just letting all that go. And since I've come back, that was in just this last year. I've been asking for help, asking. I've been delegating more. So it's funny how all that just shows up out of the experiences.

It does. And just like what happened to you, Jack, right then, where, you know, the funny thing is, you come here once and for the next few years you'll stumble across something and it will harken back to something that happened and make sense of something that occurred here that really didn't complete yet. But that keeps going on. And even today in our talk, I, I sometimes I get so caught up in the business of this. And when I say the business, I mean the political, legal structure, the making payroll, the hiring and firing, all of that junk. Sometimes I get very far away from what she originally told me to do, and I have to be constantly reminded. And today she. You reminded me that, that, that, you know, this whole thing is simply about listening and paying homage to that merged soul. And if we stay on that, if we just stick with that, we're fine. And when we come off that we're not, you know, it's crazy.

I want to talk about for a moment something that hurt. It happened. We talk. You talk about 97% people have a miracle. And for myself, for my wife, for people I know personally that I've invited to come, and we've all had those. And I want to share one for me and ask you to share some that you've seen so people can get a broad sense of the kind of things that happen for people. But one of the things that often happens, you're talking about the body, are healings and what we call surgeries. And one of the ways they often show up is entities appear, Minions, which I was just shocked when I heard about the minions. And then, because these little characters you see in the cartoons, and then all of a sudden, I'm lying on my back and I had lower back pain for a long time in my life. I had a ruptured disc. And one night, like, have you ever Seen these World War II movies where like a thousand parachutes are coming out of the sky, you know, from the airplanes on D Day. And, you know, like a thousand minions are parachuting down out of the sky in the Maloka onto my back, going into my back and doing all this healing work. And then my back didn't hurt anymore, which was quite amazing. But the last time I was there was post Covid, and I had this kind of post Covid breathing issue. You know, I'd walk fast for a long time, and then all of a sudden, I could hardly breathe. And this one night, and this is hard to believe that these. These praying mantises show up, and people watching this are going, these guys are nuts. No, we're not.

I just thought that.

Go ahead.

But I agree.

This really happens. This giant praying mantis lands on my chest out of nowhere and says, open your mouth. And so, literally, I'm lying there, and I go. And then it says, wider. And I'm thinking, okay, so if you were walking by, you'd see this guy lying on a mattress with their mouth wide open for about 20 minutes. And he sticks his head down into my left lung, and he starts sucking up all this powder coming out, spitting it out, going back in there, sucking it out, spitting it out, and then going over to my right lung, doing the same thing, about 10 minutes on each lung. Then he goes back into my left lung, and he's spraying some kind of liquid, like some kind of healing balm on there and. And in my right lung. And then the next day, I'm walking and I'm not out of breath, and it was amazing. Now the next night, I'm lying there, and this same praying mantis lands on my chest, says, open your mouth. And I said, I thought we were done. He said, open your mouth. You know, like, quit screwing around. Trust me. So I open my mouth, he reaches down into my left lung, bites off a little polyp about the size of a pea, comes out, spits it out, and this is, now we're done, and flies away. That's the weirdest thing on the world in terms of your logical mind. But my chest was healed, my lungs were healed. It's truly, truly amazing what happens. And I know that there have been people that have been healed from scoliosis and all kinds of things like that, in addition to the physical healings, and maybe you have other examples. What are some of the kinds of miracles you've heard reported that people have had?

The ones that I find, well, Jack, I. On my Honor here, a woman had a visible tumor on the top of her breast right here. Visible, huh? And went into ceremony. And I saw her again on day three. So two nights of ceremony, and it was just gone.

Gone. Not.

Not there. Not sticking out, not there. So I've seen. We've seen real absolute, the kind of stuff that big pharma would shut you down for. Like, we've. That happens every single week. Every week there's someone that had something that no longer has it. And usually, you know, like, about 70% of the people have sacred surgery. So. So there's something either preventative or something going on in the surgery side. But the most interesting ones for me are when a lifelong of struggle ends. And Jack, for whatever reason, I've been getting a lot of folks that sold their companies and you hear some of these stories of. We have a woman who sits on our board, and she came from a tough Korean upbringing and the struggle of building a company. And she had the company for 30 years, and she sold it for telephone numbers. And she recalls that the wire came through, it was a cash deal, and she counted the zeros and closed her computer and fell asleep. And what most people who sell a company feel at that point is complete emptiness. Because we all believed that, you know, it starts usually with most of us at a million dollars. Shit, if I had a million dollars, the world would be different. And then we thought, I must have got the number wrong. Maybe it's 7 million, and then maybe it's 20 and maybe it's 30 and maybe it's 50 and they finally get this number and it does nothing. As a matter of fact, it's worse now when I get those people and the look in their eye that in some way they've been sold a bill of goods by society or the game that. That we're playing, that when the reward comes, it's finally. You're finally going to be worthy. And the fact that it never happens that way. And when I see these people get it, this. This subgroup, people that had a capital event and then feel all alone, and then they get it. They're like kids. They're running around like kids. And I see those miracles every week where a lifetime of chasing a rabbit on a stick and exhausting every effort to chase this rabbit, and finally, through some stroke of luck, you got the mechanical rabbit. It's hollow. There's nothing in it. I love these people. And then when they get it, when they get it and they get that, what they went through and the reasoning behind it and Then that the real joy of most of these people haven't lived a day of peace in their whole life. They're usually from families that weren't peaceful. And they lived a life of, of trauma, you know, of self imposed, you know, a race that wasn't even there, you know, a war that they concocted, huh? And to see them walk out of their little casita and, and look at a tree and start to cry, huh? Then I go home and this works, you know, this stuff works, dude. You know, and those are some of the greatest ones. Now, it doesn't have to be business, it just has to be life. When you, when you see that person that lived a whole life under the assumption that life was exactly what they knew, and to throw that whole assumption out to realize they got it wrong and to start over in. The most beautiful thing the medicine said to me is, and this is the truth when I got it, because I'm a selfish person. I, I said to her, I said, I was crying. Most cried right then. I was like, but I wasted my whole life is what I said to her. I said, I wasted my whole life. And she said, in this moment, all of the time you wasted has been given back to you. And I didn't get a check, but it was like there was no want for. I would like to go back to 1963 and get a restart. There was no. I actually felt like I didn't miss a thing. And that when you get that thing and then, and by the way, that's when she starts to recruit. She gets you at your high point. She goes, hey, do you want to help out? It's a terrible thing, Jack. It's a terrible system they have, but it's the truth. And that those are the kinds of miracles that, that you know. And maybe I'm partial to middle aged and older people right now because I'm, I'm watching them. And you know, the New York Times did a story about us getting so many people who are older than 60 and, and you know, Jack, when we were kids, right, if you were 60, you were, it was over. It was like this guy, this guy's dead and he doesn't know it. You know, like they were, you know, you were old. And now 60 is, I don't know, I have somewhere between 30 and 40 years left. Like 60 is a new start in these people who were never trained because they really didn't even expect to live quite as long as they're living and they're here, they're healthy and they're trying to figure out what to do with their life. They're like, I'm not useless. I have things that I still want to give, but the time frames aren't lining up. And when I see them go through this thing and realize what a gift every bit of the whole thing was, I look at these guys that are my age and these women that are my age and older, and when they get it, they go like this. To me, I got it. I got it. Like, they get it. And from that point, there's the big ones for me, you know. They're the big ones for me, you know, they're the ones I love to see.

Yeah, I'm 79. I'll be 80 soon. And so, you know, I had set a goal many years ago to live to be 105. We'll see what happens. It gives me a quarter of a century left if I pull it off right, you know, given that I have less stress in my body because of the ayahuasca and meditation and all the other things I do. Eating well and so forth and consciousness and continuing. And I come to Rhythmia twice a year. And so, you know, it's eight journeys a year to keep. Keep on. Keep growing. Never any. Never any lack of awareness. It just keeps coming. It's quite.

Quite. And you're lucky, too, you have a wife who goes lockstep with you into this stuff and loves it. What a great gift, Jack. That is, too, you know.

Yeah. Knowing is amazing. By the way, she said to say hi to you this morning.

Make sure. Make sure you tell her that I said hi. I love seeing her. She is a trooper.

She is so pretty, much more than anyone I know. She's quite. Quite extraordinary that way. Beautiful soul. I guess I kind of think we're winding down a little bit here, but anything you would like to talk about that I haven't asked you a question about, I would.

There's one thing that's always with me, you know, because. Because when this. When this intervened in my life or I found it, however you look at that, I had such a horrible opinion of. Of who I was as a person. Such a. A dirty, horrible, disgusting view of. Of who I was. What I can tell you is this. If anybody's in that position, you know, if anybody who somehow gets to look at this thing is in that position, I just want you to know that there's hope. And. And it's actually more than hope. There's. There's. And I don't like the word, but the Closest thing is redemption is a real thing. All of these conceptions of ourself that make us feel horrible no matter how bad it was and what you did that you're one thought away from a brand new start, from a completely different life. And look, it happened to me, I think 51 when that happened to me. Not that it's been a perfect life, not that it's been a beautiful, perfect thing, but that day changed my life and got me to start looking at myself in a new way. And when I looked at myself in a new way, my actions started to change in that direction. And my thing to you is that, that the medicine or God or however you look at that doesn't give a about your past. It only cares about what you're becoming and that is it. So, so there's. There's not only hope, but. But it doesn't matter if you're, you know, 7 or 90, that there's this thing within us to renew and there's this God of change that we have access to. And I just wanted to bring that up.

I think that's so true. Many of the people I've met when I was there were coming from places like that, addiction and pain and all kinds of tragic events in their life that led to depression and anxiety and. And then seeing them at the end of the week just be beyond that and realize that they have so much beauty inside them, so much to give, so much joy to experience, and that it's always available to us. It's kind of like you were talking about the people that are chasing the rabbit and that race you're running that we all bought into it somehow. I had this image as you were talking about that, that you're 6 years old, someone hands you a number and it says, oh, there's this marathon you got to run. And so you start running, running, running, running, running, running, running. And then at some point you go like, well, where am I running to and why am I running so fast? And you realize there's a park on the right and the park is full of rides and ponds and geese and ducks and all kinds of things to do. And you miss the whole thing because you're running so fast, you don't know why. To where. It's like, I think that all the things we want are always available to us. Relationships and joy and inner peace and creativity and all the things that emerge that I see happening from people. And it's always there. It's just a breath away. Someone once said it was a guy, he Said, I'm going to update this. But he said, your life changes based on the people you meet, the books you read and the choices you make. And today I would just add in the videos you watch, like this, talks and so forth. But basically, you know, if you're watching this, I really want to encourage people to realize you have a choice. And the reason I asked Jerry to be on this podcast and the reason I'm on the board of Rythmia is I believe this is literally probably the most advanced personal development work on the planet. And you know, I've taken pretty much everything you can never believe that's possible to get certified in. And I shared this with you, Jerry. I had a past life experience where this guy reads your past life and then he basically can take you there. So he said, would you like to have a past life reading? I said, sure. He says, so lie down and I'm going to clap my hand and when I do that, you're going to be in a past life and you tell me what's happening. So he claps his hand and all of a sudden I got my eyes closed and I'm wearing this tweed jacket and I realize I'm a doctor. It's like 1890s, 1900s, Europe. And I've got this woman in front of me who is absolutely. I can't figure out what's wrong with her. And I am distraught as this doctor that I cannot solve her problem. And I made a decision in that moment that I will never be in this situation again. So I'm going to learn every technique, every methodology, whether it's herbology, Western medicine, whatever it might be, so I can be ready in this life. I've read over 3,000 books. I had to add that up for my divorce, how many books we had. So what happens is this guy says he's the past life guy. He goes, can I suggest another alternative? I said, what's that? He said, what if you trusted your intuition to always know what the right thing is, you wouldn't need to read all those books. And I went, oh my God, that's so true. And I think that what I learned on Ayahuasca also is that that's the case once I am in touch with my inner guidance, if you will, and I learn to go into my heart and ask, then the answers are there. And I don't say that I've wasted my life reading 3,000 books, although I probably would have read it, played ping pong or something. But the point being that we have this Capacity to know and in any given situation, what is the right thing for us to do. So all of this to say, by the way, that you have a choice right now. If you're watching this, to find out more about Rhythmia, you can go to rhythmia.com. you have a. You have a website, too, don't you? Trade.

Yeah, website's the easiest. It's www.rythmia.com.

Yeah, and rythmia is spelled R Y, T H, not like rhythm in music. And you go there, find out everything you need to know. You'll see pictures of what a beautiful place it is. I'll answer all your questions. There's testimonies of people that have had these miracles. And I'm inviting you to make a choice that will change your life forever. So, Jerry, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having gone to the rainforest and met Magonda and the shamans and done all the work that you've done on yourself and for bearing the new burdens, if you will, or challenges, I think is a better word of what it means to run a consciousness retreat center and continuing to grow your commitment. You talk about intention and consistency, and that's what creates great people and great experiences. And you've demonstrated that with your life. And so trying to.

Trying to.

Jack, I admire you. I appreciate our friendship. I look forward to many, many years. And I encourage you all to, as I said, reach out, get involved. And if you go to Rhythmia, you'll probably meet Jerry. He'll be having breakfast with you some morning, and you get to have a conversation just like we had.

Fantastic. Jack, thank you so much. I'm putting this picture in my shrine that I was on your show.

Okay. I love you, brother.

Thank you. Thanks, Jack.

All right, bye. Bye.

Thank you.

And thanks to all of you for tuning in and listening this week. And make sure to tune in next time when I have another thought leader, transformational teacher, author, trainer, coach who can help you live a happier, more fulfilling, more peaceful, more productive life. Till then, take care of yourself.