Fear of Death, Running Out, Not Having Enough, Not Being Enough

All right, welcome to episode eight. This is fear of death. Running out, not having enough, not being enough. And we had some huge distinctions in this episode, Gay, that are super, super interesting. And one of them is how to get people out of fear. And you've got a whole process for doing that. Super useful. And in fact, some ideas that my son can use right now. What do you want to add? Because I have a few other big ideas and distinctions that came from this one.

Yeah, well, one thing I want to really put in a plug for again is wonder. We talk a lot about wonder in this episode, and we've touched on it before. But one of the distinctions that I live in is that wonder is at the opposite end of the spectrum from fear. And the antidote to fear is to get better at wondering. Really get your wonder muscles right.

And another one is you talked about there are two big fears that exist that drive everything we do. I'm not going to reveal them here, but when you listen, this profoundly changed the way I'm going to think. And I do think already. That was a massive gift. And you also have a great story about Ram Dass and Krishnamurti, which I hadn't heard the Krishnamurti one before, but a really powerful strategy and technique for understanding how you unconsciously make decisions and how they affect you. So all that and more. But what else you got, Gay?

Well, always we come back to the breath we talked a lot about in this session, about the difference between the in breath and the out breath. One is welcoming things in and another one is expressing things. And people get stuck sometimes in between where they're not really experiencing and they're not really expressing. That feels bad. And that's a kind of a creative vapor lock that people need to get through.

Right on. So all that and more. This is episode eight, fear of death. So if you've had that sense and that fear of running out, not having enough, not being enough, or have been struck in a place or put in a place where you've got so much anxiety and are stuck where you are and not sure how to make that go away, this episode's for you.

Well, welcome to another episode, Gay. We're going to be talking about fear of death.

Death, yes. And how the fear of death has a direct relationship to how open you can get to your creativity. They both come out of the same toothpaste tube. And one of the things I think people are really scared of is their creativity. Because creativity, to get to the real good stuff, you have to go down through a Layer of fear. And the biggest chunk of fear has to do with the fear of dying. And we're not just talking about dying like your physical body disappearing, but we're talking about the death of old ideas that you have about yourself and the death of, you know, what they used to call your ego, which is, you know, the. The little ball of activities that goes on in your brain all the time about survival and succeeding and getting to the top and those kinds of things. But ultimately, down at the bottom of everything we fear is that fear of dissolving and disappearing that they call the fear of death. Whereas I want to get people comfortable with that. That's one of my big goals, is I say you can't avoid the void. At some point, you have to open up to the void, because that's where your creativity is coming from. And for many people, void means death. So, wow. Getting comfortable with dying in every moment is. Actually opens you up to living in every moment.

All right, so I had just a couple things pop into my head as you were describing that. First of them is the notes I had for this episode was fear of death. Running out, not having enough, not being enough, which are all. And the fact that you said it's death and creativity come from the same tube of toothpaste. Fascinating. So I'm going to share something here I've definitely never talked about publicly, which was a psilocybin experience.

Okay.

Which is fairly recent, and I did a ceremony with a group of people, and I can remember the experience I had. And just for the record, I had never actually done mushrooms before psilocybin until it was a New Year's Eve experience, other than, like a couple of little stems, what would be considered microdosing, because, frankly, I was terrified of doing it. And I can remember as I eased into this, and it wasn't a huge quantity, but I remember sliding into what I considered the primordial ooze and feeling this release and relinquishing. And the biggest thing that came into my mind as I oscillated between the two realms was this is an old familiar place I felt forever. So I was becoming part of the forever. And I can remember emerging out of it feeling, oh, this is. It's so beautiful to come from forever and still have retained my identity in between. So I didn't go so deep that I lost all of who I am, which was the fear of death. So as you were just going through that description.

It seems to me that that experience of psychedelics is, you know, eliminating or walking Away from your ego itself, becoming part of this bigger thing where you feel like you're part of creation or God or whatever your perception or description is.

But I remember feeling very safe. It wasn't like there was a loss or a true death going on. It was just a movement. And it felt so normal and natural. And I imagine that's part of creation, part of creativity, and again, feeling part of the whole. So what sayeth you, sir?

You know, as you were saying that, I just had a memory of a conversation with Ram Dass way back a long time ago. He recently passed away. And I've been thinking about him a lot because he had kind of an influence on me at one point in my life. But. But I remember one thing he said. I was talking to him about the subject of death, and he says, it's absolutely safe. Just let yourself know. It's absolutely safe. And it's wildly popular.

That wasn't exactly. I was only about 24 years old when we had this conversation, you know, and I was deeply into my ego at the time, but I thought that was pretty profound. And now that I'm in my elder years myself, I think about that from time to time. I think that one of the things that I've discovered, I had a. As you were talking about your psilocybin experience, I was thinking back through my mind of the last big one of those I had, which was somewhere back in the 80s. But I remember coming to a similar realization that there was nothing to protect. There was nothing that needed to be protected in there, that everything was absolutely safe. Because if it could have harmed me, it would have already done so. Yeah. And so there I was, and I guess I was trying to make up my mind about whether to kind of go into the experience or kind of keep resisting it and then letting go and going with it. There's that melting sensation, things disappearing, and then opening up to a whole new source of energy. I think that's a microcosm of how creativity actually works. Yeah, we're going to talk on another occasion about how to tap into your deep creativity. But while we're on the subject, see what I think it's all about getting out of the way of your creativity. Because we come from the factory, really, really creative. And then gradually our creativity gets kind of stamped out of us. Do you know, for example, that children, before they go to school have access to about 3,000 movements of their body? But when they get retested by kineticists and people after they've graduated, they're down to about 300 things that their body knows how to do, movement wise. So you could say that we start out as this symphony of movement and end up with a string quartet 12 years later. And then we go through life thinking that's who we are.

So interesting. Yeah, man. There's a ton of different directions we can go down here right now, but one of them that just struck me was this melting sensation and whether or not to go into the experience or resist it. And I know not too long ago. And you can find these on YouTube. There's a lot of people who've done work and analyzed fractal math. So if you see what's known as the Mandelbrot set and fractals, that's really what the visual side of a mushroom experience is. And where you just keep on going in and in. It starts out with a bunch of paisleys, and then it grows from there, and it's like you just keep on falling and. And resting in here. But the bigger idea is the Mandelbrot set, depending on what segment you're looking at, looks like the universe.

So.

So that your inner space is outer space and vice versa. And when you detach what you call yourself from this experience and you melt into it.

You realize that being disassociated from self and ego, you just become part of the primordial stuff from what we are all made of an infinite space. And there's the distinction between matter and space. I think psychedelics are an amazing way to learn and experience that and be able to do it in a tight time fashion enough where you can experience and remember it. And even the word remember gets more fascinating after a journey, depending on its recency. It's remembering the primordial. It's remembering God. Remember creation and creativity, which again, are fascinating words. It'd be. It'd be fun to be here with an etymologist.

Right?

As an etymology. Not et.

Wordsmith.

A wordsmith. Yeah. Someone who understands language. So. So with that, we pull back to fear of death. Not having enough, not being enough. Let's talk a little bit about.

Becoming comfortable, what you've done to rest into that, and also your many years as a therapist and dealing with high performers who are in their upper limits.

What are the common fears? And then what are the practices that you've used to get people out of panic, out of anxiety and being able to shift and be present whole, creative, high functioning, and remain that way on an ongoing basis?

You have to really start with the basics. Like, for example, think of one Thing that I always do with people when I first sit down with them, whether they're the CEO of General Motors or the leader of the local chamber of Commerce, is I look very carefully at their breathing because in breathing you can see a microcosm of exactly where you're stuck. And I'll tell you where most people get stuck is they get locked in a fight or flight mode. In life, if you think about a person coming up behind you and saying boo to you, what would you do? You'd go, you jerk in an in breath and snatch it and hold it at the top. Well, that's the fight or flight reaction in specific. And so people do the same thing with their creativity. They.

Breathe in, but forget to breathe out. In other words, they take in information and they digest information, but they don't get involved in the expression of their creativity. And so you get a kind of a.

Creative constipation inside if you're not in the flow of bringing in information, expressing information, bringing in new ideas, expressing new ideas. So it's being in that easeful flow of in breath and out breath of that that really makes the difference.

All right, so one of the things that we have had as a value in our family here, and you just were talking to my son Zach in between segments, I always told him in one of our deals, I guess he could say we're not making deals any longer. We just express and communicate with the values of the home are and what is important to us because instead of trying to control behavior, it's been a big shift in how we parent. But what we always said is we are creators in this home. We're not consumers and we value creativity over consumption. And so even when I bought him a good computer, we said, now my value that I want to communicate to you, and I did it in a different way was I want you to spend as much time creating as you do consuming. Because of course he wanted to play video games. And of course from our perspective, you know, we wanted him to understand, look, you've got, we, we can train you, guide you, introduce you to some of the most brilliant creators probably on earth, whether they're musicians or filmmakers or writers or composers. And if we don't have direct access, we're one degree of separation from. So you have the opportunity to get mentored and by amazing people. And.

That has been an ongoing conflict. I'll say, you know, again, because he's a 17 year old boy, he'd rather hang out with his buddies and his friends and be on discord or one of these chat things or playing a third person shooter. But the connection here is when you were talking about breathing in is sort of consumption and breathing out would be creativity being able. I've never heard it described that way. And I can see how imagining just creating a balance, it's a yin and yang balance and being able to exist within that space of it's okay to consume, but also to not create is to not flow properly. And I'm really going to spend some time contemplating and digesting that because I frequently will become out of balance on the other side where I forget to have fun and consume someone else's creativity and appreciate, enjoy it and celebrate it too.

Yeah, I know. I come from exactly that same place too. I've been trying to rebalance myself now for the past 30 or 40 years. So I'm in the flow of breathing in and breathing out all the time. Because it's that participation in the flow where really get that deep life satisfaction from.

Yeah, yeah, that's really good. That's really good. So I'm curious what your perspective then is on. Again I'm going to re ask the same question which is you've been advising and coaching. So if you look at step one, which is pay attention to your breathing. What's the next stage? What's the next step in the process when you've guided these high performers and, and resolving and getting them through to the other side?

I have embedded in the back of my mind that kind of guides every therapeutic move I make is a formula I call fact. Where the F stands for facing, the A stands for accepting, the C stands for choosing, and the T stands for taking action. And if you think about any problem that a person has where they're stuck, first of all they have to face what it is. And a lot of people have resistance to facing what it is. They would prefer to live in a fantasy of how it is. Once you get past that, a lot of people have difficulty accepting something, just being at one with it, saying okay, it's there. So where I come into the scene oftentimes is facilitating the person facing or accepting something. And once they've done that, they have access to a whole new bunch of energy that they've been using and wasting by fighting themselves, they've been resisting themselves. The moment a person goes in and says, okay, let me accept that.

That'S a magic moment. The next thing is to choose and take action because facing and accepting gets you down into that in breath. But then you have to say, here's what I. And here's what I'm going to do to get it. So it's the choosing and taking action that completes the cycle. And so whenever you're feeling stuck, you just have to kind of say where am I in that process? You know, is it something I'm not facing? Is it something I'm not accepting? Is it something I haven't chosen, I haven't chosen yet, or is there something I need to take action about? And if you look at all those dynamics, that's where a lot of creativity begins, is when a person lets go of that action of defending themselves and begins to let things move through them.

So. Good. Again, I think just to reflect back what you said, you said it's all about starting with these really simple fundamentals. I know.

Back when I was going through all my cancer stuff, this is where I became more aware than ever before. My body, because I had lost the ability to control it. And I was at the weakest place I'd ever been. You know, I had very, very little power, energy or strength. And what I did have usually manifested for about an hour a day at the worst.

Okay.

And what I became really, really good at is picking up on the nuances between my spirit and my body or my mind and my body and my spirit and becoming a non judgmental observer. So what I practiced was I imagined myself as a camera observing the body and that allowed that separation, that egoic separation where I could just appreciate the body even though it was weak. And inside of this, you know, now that I'm well and super healthy.

That practice hasn't left. But I know I the usually the more out of touch I am. It's directly related to not being conscious and aware of where I am. But I hadn't ever, you know, you've never taught me this before. So I'm going to practice this daily which is where is the disconnect. And I think.

If there's anything that I get stuck on, it's an unawareness so I can't face. So there's like a pre frame which is a choice to pay attention to what I'm experiencing is required first and just an awareness that you're stuck. And I'd say the one that I probably.

You know, take the longest on is probably the choosing face. That's my guess because most stuff that I'm bothered with now I realize that it's not important enough to even choose right. So what are your, what's your perspective on that?

Well, one thing to know for sure is if you're having trouble with one stage, always look to the one before. So, for example, if you're having trouble accepting something, look at the facing part and find out, what part of it am I not facing? And then down in the accepting, after you finish that, what part of this am I not choosing? How have I not chosen exactly what I want? So you work it through step by step. And where people get stuck is trying to jump over things and take action. And then people come to me a lot of times and say, I tried this and I tried this, and I tried that out in the world, and none of them worked. And so back up one step. What was the choice that you made that created that result, and how can we make a new choice now? So that's the way it works.

Okay. Okay, good. I like that. All right, so the next one then is.

If you look at the.

The tools that you've used to get to where you are and reflect back. I'm curious what the origins of your own. Getting past the running out, not having enough, not being enough, fear of death.

You know, who have your greatest teachers been along the path?

Well, I've had a lot. But I remember one moment sitting in a Krishnamurti lecture in the early 70s that changed everything for me because he said, if you understand one thing, you don't need therapy. You can do it, but you don't really need it. And so 4,000 of us were sitting in the audience, and about 2,000 of us were therapists. And so he said, what is it? And he said, if you understand that the results you create tell you exactly what your unconscious intentions are. So if you're not creating good results, ask yourself, why would have. You know, like, if you launch a thing and it sells 100,000 and you expected it to sell half a million, hmm, where did that intention come from to only sell 100,000? And so it takes you out of the old game human beings play. Is it the world or is it me? Is it the world or is it me? Because in one fell swoop there, you just assume that anything you create is part of an unconscious or conscious intention. And if you don't like the way it went out, that's it. Because it was following an unconscious intention. And that's one of the most incredibly powerful, useful things I ever learned. Because if you think about. Has everything to do with your creativity, too. Because if you think the world is doing it to you, or if we're in a conflict, and I think you are doing it to me, and I'm your victim. What that does is that puts me out of a relationship with my own creativity because I'm not willing to say, here's how I created this conflict. If I think it's you that created the conflict, I'm stepping out of the creative, but only by asking myself, okay, what did I do to create this conflict that puts me back in touch with the creative and has to do with the flow of creativity through you?

Okay, so I'm going to look at this through the lens of a parent, but also through the self. So when you describe this, which are understanding, the results that you've created have been part of the unconscious intention. So all those come down to very frequently are limiting beliefs. So they can either be, I don't believe I'm capable of doing that, or you're afraid of the success that may come along with it. I know now some of what I limit myself on is knowing that I don't want to live with the lifestyle of a certain level of extreme success because I know the stress and the baggage and the expense that comes along with that.

You've met too many miserable people that did it that way.

Yeah, yeah. And I've also been miserable as a result. I know what it's like when my health pays or my relationship pays or the connection I have with the people I love and the time I, I make available because I won't prioritize the people and things that matter most when there's too many shiny objects or too many screaming mice in my, in my pockets. Right. So in your mind.

How do I ask great questions to determine what the unconscious intentions are or how do I teach someone to determine those? So again, going back to my son Zachary, who I can tell you, we just had a conversation about this yesterday and he's a 17 year old boy with all the angst of a 17 year old boy. And he described something to me because I went to him and I said, look, I know for me a lot of my inability to ask for help in the past had to do with, with a sense of shame that I'm not far, as far along as I should be in an area. So, for example, one of my shame categories is I think that with all the work and knowledge and business experience I have, I should have five times as much.

Money in the bank as I have in available assets. Okay. And of course, that's my own story. It's. I know it's bs but I look at it, I go like, I should be worth this and I'm not. And There have been times when I haven't asked for financial support or guidance from leaders because I don't want to reveal that I don't have $100 million in the bank or whatever the number is, right? And then I told Zach this, and he goes, well, that's not what it is like for me at all. He said, for me, I.

Will participate in something, and then suddenly I get completely overwhelmed and then I freeze up and I don't know why. And when I asked him a few more questions, he's like, I don't know when it happens or why it happens. It just happens. And then I'm stuck. And he's in that place of stuckness. And again, through my lens, it's easy for me to project and say, well, it's. There's some bad programming in there. And he doesn't know what his unconscious intentions are or even how to stop himself long enough to get to that place. I gave you a whole bunch of ideas here, but I'm curious how you'd deconstruct that.

Well, blessedly, it's been a few years since I've had a teenager in the home, but I have lots of friends who still have teenagers. But using that example of your unconscious intention produces the root result. So what is a result that you complain about Zach producing? Okay, give me an example.

Okay, One result will be.

I'm going to give you a couple and then you can pick from them. So one of them, for example, is he had a job working at a grocery store. And there's no question about it, in at his school, it's a very high pressure private school that is basically a college prep. He has a lot of work to do and he's not a big studier. I mean, being a student and getting good grades, it's just, he's like me. He's got a brain like me. It's not motivating to him. I don't give a crap what a. What a teacher gives me. Is more pressured by his mother wanting him to get good grades and perform in school. So that would be one example is he was just like, I'm going to quit this job because, a, it's not my thing. The people don't resonate with me. And I've got a lot of pressure from school. And so we're like, okay, but you understand you won't have any money then, right? And he's like, I'll live with that, at least until now. Now he doesn't have any money and he's like, what am I gonna do? And it's like, hey, is there something I can do for you to make some money? And of course, it's, you know, 30 minutes before he's gonna go, he wants to do something with his friends. So that's one example. Another one will be, and this is a real life one. So he's participated in Vivian's foundation for many years, gone back and forth to Ugandan for his bar mitzvah project, raised money, built a library there. And one of the things that we started doing a while ago, two trips ago, is starting to gather footage so he could make a documentary about what he's been doing. So we.

Helped create the circumstance. And then he's been studying filmmaking. He'd like to do film in school. He's got all this footage, and it's an amazing story. It's like something that clearly would differentiate him. But getting him to get that damn thing done took about a year. And ultimately what I did is I took away his computer and said, in our home, our values are such that I can't in good conscience give you tools that haven't been used for the intention, for the creative intention we bought them for in the first place. And you made a commitment to us that you'd have it done, and you've never once corrected it. And you'll end up screwing around instead of getting this done. It'll take you a couple days of focused, hard work. He finally finished it, like a week ago after about a year. And this will clearly differentiate him. It could give him the ability to get into a better college, get grants and get scholarships and get attention for being very unique. But it just wasn't important to him. And I asked him, what's standing in your way? He says, I'm just not motivated. I sit down, I know I need to do it, and I'll just freeze up. So you can pick from any one of those.

So using that one, for example, what would be his unconscious intention there? The result he's producing is.

Parents are on his back. That's one sure.

Absolutely. And I'll own that 100.

And the result he's producing is no movement on a. On a crucial project or an important project that he. Did he originally commit to doing that?

Yes, many, many times over. Hard dates that got forgotten about. And there's always a reason why he can't. You know, you just pile them on. And part of this, too is Vivian and I come from our mentality, our value system is we worked our asses off, we had no Resources. Both of us came from fairly poor backgrounds, and he is a privileged kid who's been granted unbelievable access to people, resources, money, school, education, tools, you name it.

Right? Yes. Yeah. And so keep looking underneath there for what his unconscious intention is.

Do you have any sense of what. Well, let me just put it this way. One of my mentors said there are only two big fears. One is the fear of dying, and the other is the fear of going crazy. And the reason it is because dying involves disappearing into the void and going crazy or losing your mind involves.

Having a lot of energy moving through you explosively, and you don't know how to handle it. And so if you think about both of those things are big factors with teenagers, because they're at a stage of their life where they don't actually have access yet to a lot of the information that you start drawing on in your 20s and 30s. They're down there wallowing around in this big minefield of different unexplored emotions and stuff roaring at them from out of the. The hormonal spigot that's cranking through them all the time. But if you think about it, is he more afraid of dying or is he more afraid of going crazy?

I think his tendency has been towards anxiety, so I would put that in the crazy territory. And another way of decoding that would be.

Loss of control, fear of being judged. To me, one of the things that I know motivates a lot of us is fear of banishment. So one of his concerns is.

It not being good enough. So it turns out, well, our mutual friends Ariel and Brian, who are his godparents, got the video and posted it on Facebook without asking and making sure it was good because they're proud of him.

Right.

And it got a lot of feedback, and Zach got to see the feedback, and all of it was very positive, but his response was, yeah, but no one said it was good.

Oh, wow.

And that, like, oh, I just grabbed both Vivian and me by the heart. And it's like, first of all, we would have. I would have never even thought of that. It's just not in my distinction world. But it's important to him, and it's also in his age range right now, where he's concerned about what other people think of him. And banishment from his tribe is certainly top of mind. But anyway, back to directly answering your question. I think it's crazy over death.

That's what it sounds like. And he comes from your stock where you are a wildly creative person. I don't know Vivian as well, but she seems like a very creative person, too. But you're the kind of person that has creativity bursting out at the seams all the time, and your job in life has been to learn how to kind of manage that and get it focused in certain key locations. Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Well, it sounds like Zach has a lot of those same issues too. So I wonder down under there. Here's how you access that. You access. Access it with a. A wonder you have. What would Zach be feeling right now that's driving this behavior that you're concerned with? You know, what is it under there? What has he not faced and accepted yet that's keeping him from choosing and taking action?

What have I not faced? What am I not facing in my life? A lot of times with teenagers, they're also terrified of going out into the world. You know, they're terrified at being unequipped to go out in the world. In particular this time of the world we're dealing with now, there's a lot of. You know, like, when I was growing up, about the worst thing that could happen to you in my town is you get caught stealing a watermelon or something like that. You know, I grew up in a rural area and. But there's a lot better ways to get in trouble now, especially if you live in San Diego. You can really get in some high class trouble.

I was just gonna. I have to stop and go. Yee haw. Watermelons. Okay.

Yeah.

So back to you.

I've actually personally picked watermelons for 50 cents an hour. It was a formative experience because when I was in the field fifth grade, I got this job delivering watermelons down to the end of the row for the truck to pick up. And the other guy, his job was to pick up the melon and put it in the truck. And at the end of the day, I asked the foreman, I said, gosh, what do I got to do to get that guy's job? You know, because I. My job has been carrying them up and giving him to the guy, and all he has to do is put him on the truck. He says, you want the job? Well, you can have it tomorrow. And so he put the other guy and put me on the truck, and by the end of the day, I wanted to be back on the. Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, that sounds like a horrible, horrible deal. I don't know what got India, but I guess ignorance is bliss until you get what you. You think you want.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, my God. That's. That's good. Well, I, I love the, the model here and the, and going back to one of our other episodes when we talked about the power of wondering what a freaking amazingly powerful tool that is. The, the spark of creativity is wonder.

And it's at the opposite end of the dimension from the spectrum from fear. Wonder and fear are at opposite ends of the spectrum because when you're open to wonder, you're not scared. And when you're scared, you're not open to wonder.

All right, that's a, that's an amazing distinction. So let's. So if we're going to continue down that path.

Oh, I got one, one sideline story on this on the field thing. I can't help it. So my first really big real job in the fields was corn detasseling.

Corn detasseling? Yeah. Okay. I'm not familiar with that.

Okay, so this is. And who knows where we're going to go with this one. But basically what happens is it's important when you've got hybrid corn that they cross pollinate and you basically don't want to create.

I don't know, you want to create a larger.

I don't know, distinction between the corns. Because basically what happens is the tassels, which are on the top part of the corn, they open up and it falls on the feathery corn, the actual corn silk. Okay. And that's what fertilizes the corn. So you get a, A cob. Apparently. I think that's the way it works. Whatever the case is, what they do is line up a bunch of kids. This is before they had machines to do this. And now you don't need it anymore because the way, I don't know, all the corns, all, whatever magic.

Bioengineered to be shuckless.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Whatever the hell was going on. So what we do is you'd have to reach up and pull the tassels on. It's like. So just imagine you're doing. You're like, it's, it's this high, so it's probably six feet high because it has to be at a certain point of the corn and you're pop, pop, pop, pop going down the rows and.

Sounds like an ideal place for a chiropractor to set up a practice would be in that town.

Well, imagine you're a 14 through 16 year old kid in the fields at the time getting paid three bucks an hour. And here's what happens. So in Minnesota, where this is taking place in all these cornfields, you wake up in the morning and Everything's wet and all the corn is covered in dew and you're wearing whatever shoes you're wearing and the ground is muddy, so you're walking through and the first thing that happens from 7 o' clock until about 10 or so is you're just covered in wet and the corn is running by you and cutting, putting little micro cuts in your skin and your eyes. And then you're. Then you start to sweat. So your salt from your sweat's going into these micro cuts and your arms are like unbelievably sore. Your triceps, you develop triceps very, very quickly. And then it's suddenly 110 degrees in the field. So you are wet, sweating, salt covered micro cuts like crazy. And it is the. It was the worst experience I can ever remember. And I had some really crappy jobs growing up.

Oh my God. So I don't know what the hell that has to do with anything we're talking about other than we'll let the.

Listeners turn that into a metaphor for their lives, whatever that is. What is the corn tassel that you've been reaching high to pick?

Everybody right on. So back to wonder and fear. What's the opposite of fear? That's a big distinction. And also, I'd never heard.

This notion of dying and going crazy. Mine for sure is going crazy. And.

Years ago, when I was 18 years old, I smoked weed for the first time and I smoked too much and I got activated. And what happened was I got really excited because it must have been sativa, which is the activator, right versus indica, indicoach. I remember hearing that now. So suddenly I can remember. I like, I understood calculus. I was doing math problems in my head I'd never done before and really conceptually connecting all kinds of dots. And then I started wondering, what is the greatest possibility and potential? And I started activating and I would be like, I can actually feel anything I want right now. So I started activating like, I wonder if I can have like a mental orgasm. Well, that started happening inside my head and I literally spun out of control and I went nuts. I spent like a week and a half on a mental ward when I was 18 years old. I literally went crazy and to the point where I just believed crazy stuff, stuff. And I got activated from a weed experience, believe it or not. So I know for a fact that's where I would naturally go in an untethered state. And I have. Weed is not my friend. I do not like, like the magic marijuana. But anyway, so I I would suspect that my own son probably has my brain type.

So that's a useful thing to know that down into that some of that lurks in him. Have you told him all about your 18 year old experience?

That's a good thing to do.

It is. Stories.

Oh yeah, I, we definitely did from an early stage on. One thing I love about his schools is they did an incredible job of prepping them with drug education and talking about the reality without it being a bunch of fear based stuff. It's like, here's what you need to know. And.

You know, and, and we live in an era where, you know, these kids have access to literally anything.

Pharmacopeia, the whole pharmacopoeia. Yeah, I tell you their lives. Your son's life is so different from what I experienced as a teenager. I mean some of the things are the basics, but golly, when I think of the different ways to mess up these days, you know, there's so many ways to get ahead and so many ways to mess up. And some of the ways are, you know, really tricky these days. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who has a teenager and one thing that I was talking to her about is how in developmental psychology they break the decades down into different developmental challenges. You know, like with adolescence, the game is all about separating, getting on your own two feet, getting out on your own. And a lot of people have a huge amount of fear about that and a lot of teenagers do. And I was, came, came from the different place when I was a teenager because from an early age I was so in a hurry, I just wanted to get out of there. You know, I was driven by that and I couldn't keep my mind on much else, but whatever would I could use as a tool to get out of there. And I went to college for a few years, but then I dropped out because I was so busy and I wanted to do something in the world that actually made a difference. I went back to college and finished later and got my master's and Ph.D. and all that. But after I got turned on to psychology. But in those early days I just wanted to do something that was real. I was so tired of not doing everything conceptual and so I dropped out of college and for a while I became a radio disc jockey. I was a disc jockey for a number of years. And I love music and I love playing music and I just had the time of my life. So in developmental psychology we say your teenagers are about, your teenage years are about breaking free and getting Established on your own. 20s are about experimentation. 30s, you find your life. 40s, you build your life. And in your 50s, you enjoy your life. And so he's in step with what's going on right now. I mean, I appreciate that you. You and Vivian are on top of things with him. That's really good. A lot of parents aren't engaged like that. Well, I wish him well. Most of us survive teenage years. I don't know how I ever managed to survive mine. All the stupid things I did. But somehow life has some grace to it. And I'm here, here.

All I can tell you is looking back at the idiocy. I was telling a friend of mine this the other day, like, I grew up in the backwoods where we had guns. I could go into a hardware store, buy two pounds of gunpowder, cannon fuse, pipes, a hacksaw. When I was 14 and 15 years old, and no one thought a thing of it, I'd go in and buy gallons of hydrochloric acid, and no one thought a thing of it. We were making bombs. I was blowing stuff up. I would be labeled as a terrorist at age 13. And to me, it was normal.

It was normal. At 13, I had what we called the Rocket Club. We were supposed to be building rockets, but what we were doing is every Saturday, building things that it blew up.

Yep. Awesome. All right, well, I think we've exhausted the process of fear of death, but I walked away from some huge distinctions here. And it's always fun, of course, to hear your experiences with Ram Dass, too, may he rest in peace. He was an amazing human being. So. Well, unless you've got something else to add, I want to ask our listener viewer to make sure to rate, comment, subscribe, share this with someone you know. And if you've got a question or statement or you've got an amazing psychedelic experience or something like that.

Psychedelic experience. One or the other. They're all good.

Yep. That you want to share, make sure you rate and review in itunes. It's one of the best places. Or YouTube as well. And once again, gay. This is always a pleasure to create, co create and innovate with you.

Thanks, Mike. I haven't had so much fun all afternoon.

All right. Thank you.