Passion Is the Gateway Drug Playcast Episode 513, "Evolution" with Guest Jonathan Mozenter

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Here we are.

Okay, welcome, Jonathan. This is episode 513 of the Passion Is the Gateway Drug Playcast, where we talk about mental health and beyond, really. And this playcast is in service to a few different mental health-related projects that are going to be interconnecting a transmedium docuseries, a type of DAO that we'll be creating, and then this in-person and online Mad Hatter Summit in the spring that we hope to put on, which is sort of like Live Aid for mental health. But well, I don't know if we'll get to be that big the first year, but in a, in a microcosm, we already have 5 different locations where we're going to run something called the Taste of Wonderland, which is a framework which I'll share a little bit about in our call, Jonathan. So our conversation here today, and of course I'll have to get your permission later, is also could be potentially clips for the docuseries and all different things. So we're kind of working on multiple levels at once. So thank you for being here, Jonathan. Um, I'm excited to talk to you. Some of your— a lot of your background is interesting to me on many levels, um, just from your different interests in different, uh, religions and mystical schools and esoteric stuff, and then the Gene Keys and all that, which I'm a big fan of. So I'm looking forward to hearing about your experience with that. Um, and I was watching a podcast the other day where someone had someone on and they said, you know what, let's do an exercise to show the people like what your process is about compared to only talking about it. So if it's possible, in the— during the second half of our conversation, Jonathan, I'm wondering if you have any protocols or processes or something you could walk me through as if I was a client or something. We don't have to do that, but I'm, I'm just putting that out there in case that's a possibility.

Sure.

Because part of the docuseries in this journey that I'm on personally that I call Transforming Perceived Mental Illness into a Blessing is my own healing process and coming home and dogfooding and reaching my own kind of potential. So part of what I'll be doing is inviting people like yourself to kind of be my team of Rocky trainers or Jedi trainers that help me kind of reach my full potential. And then we're showcasing what you all do.

Yeah.

and you're showing my process live and things like that. So maybe we'll get an opportunity. If it flows, maybe you can think about that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Until then, I'm gonna welcome you. I don't like reading off biographies, so do a little 2, 3-minute thing, not too in-depth, 'cause I wanna also weave in your bio as we have this conversation, but give us an opening, like what—

Sure.

Yeah, about your space. What brings you into the connection to mental health? I know that's not all you work on, but I know you must have been working have worked with people who experience depression or bipolar, schizophrenia, all that. And I know you do more than that. So give us a little bit of an intro in your own style, in whatever way you feel called to share.

Well, first, just thanks for having me on this Playcast. I'm really excited for this conversation. And I just— hearing about, you know, your core mission, I'm 100% aligned with that. I love the word passion. Because one of the main things. I would say my soul is here to help give the planet a soulgasm.

Nice!

And what I mean by that is like, I feel in at the center of my being, I want to help create the systems, the cultures, the protocols, or co-create, not just create, but work with others like yourself. We're on the same mission so that, you know, all individuals can express themselves freely, giving their gifts and receiving other people's gifts in peace. And my My background you're talking about is like, I'm a transformation specialist. So I have many different trainings. So first off, I'll talk about just my— very briefly, my core work, you know, what I've been doing on the planet in training, which is I'm in this field called change management, or some people call it organizational development. And it's a mixture of like psychology and business, but really what it is, is a set of protocols for groups and individuals to change. That's really all it is. And I have worked with mostly in government, but also in some corporate work. And I've done a lot of individual work. And then a brief part of my story is at some point I felt like deep in my core, I was meant to be an entrepreneur who's talking about different tools for transformation. And I couldn't get out of my own way. You talk about kind of mental thing and I found my own stuckness and I had one of these, enough of these moments in which I decided to all my cards into overcoming this obstacle. And that's when I started studying more of the mystical and esoteric stuff. I got really into integral theory, which led me to meditation where I studied like with Dan Brown and Vajrayana Buddhism. And I kept asking this question, how can my soul be useful on the planet and also, you know, meet my own needs, but also be useful to everyone else? Like a win-win. That's, that's my— My kind of spirituality is a spirituality of abundance that I believe everybody can actually win. And so what was— as I started taking the meditation class, I started to get into gnosis or knowing where I was using my intuition more than my analysis because previously I was very like pros, cons, you know, let's analyze something to death and then make a choice. And I was starting to get in touch with my intuition. And eventually my intuition guided me, said like, hey, what would be useful, Jonathan, for you to do is to— because you're so into trying lots of different things and you're so passionate about psychology, why don't you— I'm going to expose you to other ways to achieve the Buddha path by different techniques, energy methods. I've studied with different energy masters and I've studied different methods of doing shadow work. And, uh, and now I have a mission. I'm going to Costa Rica where I'm— my goal is to create a soul activation center where there's a place where people, uh, a center where people can bring these modalities together and, uh, help people get into their soul with the goal purpose of having like a soulgasm on the planet where everyone could reach the mission I talked about.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Um, That's perfect. It opens up a lot of doorways. Beyond the sense of diagnosis in a standard sense, when you had your kind of come-to moment, would you say you experienced some version of any kind of depression or anxiety? I'm not asking to be clinical. I'm just saying to bring—

No, it's a great question.

To feel a little bit into your personal experience.

Yes. That's a very great question. And nobody's ever asked me that question. And I'd say the truth is I probably was a little bit depressed and unhappy and in denial of it, like in denial of those feelings. I'm an Enneagram 7 as my primary thing. And people who know about Enneagram 7s, they tend to explore possibilities.

Mm-hmm.

And my way of avoiding feeling which is one of my core— a lot of our strengths are weaknesses. So it was both a strength and a weakness is to keep myself really busy. I was really good at that. Like, I have a zillion hobbies and I was going deep in a lot of stuff and I just avoided things. But I would say yes, there was some point when I was turning 40. I'm 51 now and this is back when at the age of 39, I was—

40.

Probably some part, some part of me was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't. And so I would say that's kind of like what it felt with. But, you know, I wasn't clinically like— I was in avoidance pattern of that feeling. And as I got closer to that feeling or something, it was like I had to give.

And what—

I've always been an action person. So I don't know that I ever like, like got caught up in like just being like depressed on a couch. I never like that. Never. I never had a long stage like that. I'm like someone who's always doing.

Right. So can you just reiterate for me when that time came, what was the one or two things that helped you the most? Was it taking up meditation? Or just facing the— what was the one or two things that— because what we found, by the way, versus— by the way, one sec. And you could possibly also start weaving in what you've seen in clients. So one of the things we've been exploring in some of these playcasts and in the Mad Hat Summer Facebook group, and which is a really key element to my journey and my observations of people and friends and all that, and that will become part of these innovations like your Activation Center, is that truly there isn't a silver bullet for all of us. There's no one thing.

No.

You can't just tell someone, do yoga, take some vitamins, or do meditation, or take ayahuasca. Like, in my experience, every single one of us, which is the interesting part, of, quote, mental illness or mental health is that it's so personal and it's a soul level thing that we're all talking about, which we're gonna get into, by the way, you know, all these labels and what does mental health really mean?

Yes.

I wanna ask you all about that. But for the moment, I just wanted to— that's why I'm asking you about like, what are the couple— 'cause it's always good to hear every single person's what worked for them because we need to hear from each other, you know, from our peers, what worked for each other.

So I'll answer that in 2 things. Yeah, I'm gonna answer first my own personal experience and then I'll give you, uh, yeah, the thing you're asking about clients or other people, uh, because I agree with you, it's variable. But I wanna— I'll do that in the second part. I'll just talk about my own. Um, we talk about like, uh, Gene Keys and stuff. I have a lot of will in me and I have that Divine Will Gene Key, uh, and I'm a very willful person, very, and very determined. So there was just some force within me, beyond me that just keeps me pushing towards whatever I'm here to do on my planet. And so I just got sick of bumping into the same negative experiences of like, I don't have time to do what I'm doing. I'm just like— it just was like bumping my head into the same thing over and over again and just being like, ah, like almost like self-loathing of like, how can I do this again? You're gonna do it again, Jonathan? You're really gonna do this again? Like, really like getting, really letting myself feel the anger of the pattern of like, this isn't working, Jonathan. You came here to be an entrepreneur. You— another thing I really wanted was like deep, passionate romance. And I was in serial short-term relationships. And I was like, oh, there's something deeper going on. And so again, like, and one of my teachers is Donnie Epstein and he has these stages of transformation. So I had hit in his stage, I think it is like the enough of this moment. It's like when you move out of the discover stage and into transformation, like I can't do this anymore, whatever it is. So for me, it looked like that. And it started off with eating healthy, then exercising in the morning, every morning, and then meditation. serious meditation practice, which was very difficult for me because I have ADD. And so I just stuck with it. Something inside of me said like, hey, if you master your mind, guess what? You know, because there's like a lot of ADD people, when I'm really focused, I'm awesome. But, you know, when I'm all over the place and distracted, you know, not so much. So I was like, wow, if I can only channel that stage where I'm really focused more often, man, my life would be a lot better. So that would— that would— I would say was what happened for me. Now, if I'm working with a client, then, um, I'd say that I want to talk about what, what is— because you're right, there are different modalities, but I want to talk about like what I'm finding is the similar similarities.

I was going to ask you, like, yeah, you must be seeing patterns.

Yeah, yeah. So one of the questions I ask my clients is like, what I would say is, what is— let's find your spiritual edge. And I define spiritual edge as this culmination point of What are you actually motivated to work on of the things, you know, the obstacles? And let's pick something that's high leverage. Like if we tackle this guy, it'll have a domino effect. Now, high leverage also brings you into another term I want to talk about, which is coherent energy. So the idea of coherent energy— so energy, we want to increase our energy, but then we want to direct it towards like what's in our heart, like what we want to manifest in our heart. And we want to align with what I would call like spiritual laws or patterns, just patterns, really patterns that we know in life that work. And we're always discovering new patterns. And, um, but there are different patterns that are known, like, uh, people who've studied Integral Theory, uh, the Metaphors that, you know, Ken talked about and, you know, Hermeticism talks about. But there's a lot of different patterns. And in organizational development work that I've done, Also, there's a lot of patterns for success for change. So that would be the conversation I would have with people like, you know, what are you trying— what motivates you? What motivates you? Like, it's a big one, you know, like what, you know, so then maybe there's a specific short-term outcome we can get it on. And then also a really important— I picked this up from the change world, this idea of quick wins. When I'm having— I like to work with people like long-term. So I prefer like doing like a 10-pack of coaching rather than like a one because I want to show people the momentum and the stuff that I teach builds on itself. Like there are different core techniques or systems and then you kind of learn to deepen with it. And I always ask the question and when I start off a session is like, you know, let's do spiritual brags. You know what, tell me about the little baby steps that you were able to do. Talk about the patterns that were difficult before that maybe you're getting a little bit of a headway on. So the sum of the changes, how has this changed your relationships? How is it affecting your different domains of like, you know, your Your, uh, your health, your, your family, your work, etc.

Thank you. Um, as an— as a note, my wife, uh, has the Divine Will Gene Key, um, as I think— I think it's her life's work or purpose, I can't remember at the moment, but it's quite a popular topic for us. And, uh, oh, as far as— and as far as my personal work, the other day I, I— because I have a, let's say, a 3rd chakra challenge at the moment. I said, I don't know if I have— I think I'm missing it. So we're— my wife and I are quite opposite. I'm— I need to find my will in that sense, and she's got the same. She's like a lot like you in that sense. So, um, it's cool that we have that similar— some similar language to— not everyone, I guess, I know is going to understand. This is something called the Gene Keys, by the way, um, that I'm talking about at the moment. Um, yeah.

So I even have the The one that's got determination or invincibility, and I have that one twice in addition to Divine Will. So yeah, I have a lot of like natural kind of will. So yeah, I know not everybody has that.

All right, right on. I've got the Failure Preservation Veneration Gene Key 3 times, so that's a big, a big one for me is around the failure. Um, I think it's probably connected to my—

That's my— was it the, the second one down? I forgot which one that is, but the Radiance or Evolution. Yeah. I have that one too. That's a good one. I mean, they're all great, but, but, uh, being able to appreciate life is important.

Yeah, good.

It's good for mental health, man. Like, that's what I've learned is, uh, relationship. Everything is, you know, getting into right relationship. And so if you can actually see how everything in life serves a purpose, you have a different energetic about life. And so that's one of the things I, I'm really excited about is talking about the patterns of life and how life actually works. And if people actually see it and it's no longer a mystery to them and they know there are certain steps and stages of which things go through, then I think people relax a little bit more. It doesn't feel as chaotic and as uncertain.

Right. So let me ask you this.

Sure.

So in the spaces I'm in with this mental health, I was calling it mental health reformation. That was kind of my brand or my tagline or whatever you wanna call it. for a while. And then I, as you mentioned, my usual co-partner, Hilly's not with us tonight. We started this project, the Mad Hatter Summit, and this thing called Call to the Mothers. And the big question that came up for us in our spaces is creating new meanings, you know, re-understanding these words and these terms.

Absolutely.

So again, for me, I had my, one of my other taglines was transforming perceived mental illness into a blessing because I, I felt like for me, I needed to put that word perceived there because I didn't actually believe— I came to believe it was detrimental to pathologize our experiences in such a way, like mental health, mental illness, and that it's how you perceive it more than what it is. And again, that's also not to bypass the actual experience. So I would call it the bipolar experience because yes, I had patterns of mood swings and psychosis and and depression. So it wasn't to try to get rid of the reality of my situation. But for me, personally, it was important to make a distinction. First of all, it's not mental because it's your whole body and it's your soul and it's your gut and all that. So it's kind of silly for me to call it a mental illness, number one, just 'cause it's 2022. It's a little bit passé to call it a mental illness when it's kind of a whole body disease or something like that. And then we were kind of making these projects, you know, going beyond mental health, mental health transformation. And then we're like, but it's bigger than that, right? It's bigger than like this mental health, mental illness. We're trying— it's like when you're talking about the soulgasm and it's like we're all reaching for something and we're using the words we're familiar with, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And we often think we need to because they're anchors or people will understand if I come through the portal of saying mental health or mental illness. So I was wondering, And you may have not given this a lot of thought in the work you've done. I was just curious, do you have any thoughts on terms like mental health, mental illness, and how useful they are? Or potentially, for me, they're dangerous to use the term mental illness and to pathologize our ways. Do you have any philosophical thoughts? And/or have you had any clients that come to you saying, I was just diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which is where I want to go with you next. Like, have you actually worked with people who were officially, you know, diagnosed?

And yeah, okay. I mean, like, so I don't really get into diagnosis with people. It hasn't really happened that much. I don't generally— let me, let me address your question about mental health language, because language is really important. I took a whole Class on conscious language. So the language we choose is really, really, really important. And so I agree with you that maybe mental illness or labels is is not not helpful. Like I learned from the Buddhist, like we're all impermanent. We don't want to. I think a lot of one of the main things I help I bring from the Buddhist tradition is to disidentify protocols, processes to disidentify. with all objects other than lucid awareness. And so that's a— that's one of the— that's a big— that's some— there are some things that are like we said, we are unique to people. And there's some people I would encourage everybody to do. And this is one of those things I think is healthy for everyone, is to learn to disidentify with anything other than I am this moment. And these other stories or narratives that we have because of a certain way of doing it, is because of our, you know, our context or what— why it was certain understandings and we don't want to hold on to them too tightly. We don't want to— the Buddhists would call that reification. We don't want to make them solid.

Yes!

So, we don't like push them away either but they're objects, as you were saying, to be perceived through multiple perspectives and that's one of the things I would say that's consistent with all clients and you kind of said this in when you're in your question, which is to get to see people To see all of their perceptions through a different lens. So when I was taking the Buddhism, they call it no reference points. There's a training, they use these techniques called emptiness. Now emptiness really just is another word for open. So what the training is, is there are certain techniques to see your experience from— to allow yourself to stop Doing the same pattern over and over again and allow to have a new energy. So I wanted— this is a, this is a really big meta teaching that I learned from my teacher Donnie Epstein about 2 kinds of energy. There's unbound and bound. Now, unbound is just pure energy. It doesn't have any form, and bound is just anything that has a form. So when you're bringing a story from the past onto your interpretation of future, you're bringing bound to bound, and you're going to create a predictable reaction that you have over and over again. Now, when you learn to quiet the mind and bring just pure energy, pure perception, pure unbound energy to the moment, you allow it to break that pattern and have new thoughts and feelings. So another thing that I like to do with clients is, um, to bring— help them see their wounds as gifts, as through like a longer lens. A lot of it is seeing in the Buddha chakras, is seeing things through a bigger, wider lens. And I have discovered that a lot of our wounds lead to our superpowers, and I believe the Gene Keys and the Human Design are really articulating that well by showing this is the shadow element. So you come in, you have this shadow problem, and then you get stuck in these loops. And then for people who don't know about this, there's these 3 levels: the shadow, the gift, and the city. And city just means like power, the highest level, and they're all kind of in relationship to each other. So if you, if you, uh, Anyone has a certain shadow and they get this desire to manifest a higher version of themselves, they're going to have to learn to transcend that. So that trap allows you— there's— these are going to allow you to go down a certain path in life that's going to learn you to be an expert on going from that shadow to that gift in that city. And then you can be a teacher of that and you can help activate other people's keys who are of that key.

Right on! Irene, I resonate a lot, first of all, just because I have a similar background as far as Ken Wilber was a big portal for me into many things, obviously, because he talked about integrating all the things. So it's a lucky thing to find Ken Wilber, at least in the '90s when you're 25, because it makes you realize, oh, I want to study all these different things.

Yeah.

In that sense, it's the most beautiful thing about it to some degree. And I also, in my own experience, resonate with, if there was one thing I would say was a cure, quote unquote, and that's again, another fuzzy word, it was disidentification, period. That's the one thing I would offer as a cure for bipolar disorder, the bipolar experience, excuse me, from my lens. If I were to be coaching people that have that experience, I would start there. So it's interesting to hear that reflection.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's such a powerful—

I was gonna say healthy detachment.

Exactly, exactly. Which is a gift in the Gene Keys, in my, in my life's purpose. Uh, detachment is a gift in the Celebration, uh, city. Um, also, um, it's really important, the point you made about reification. Yeah, yeah, about reification. Because I think some people, when they hear me talk about The labels and, you know, disidentifying and being prudent around the labels. It would be great and all fine if the medical, the Western medical system understood to hold those loosely. So maps and categories are great when they help us like navigate. So it's really good if, you know, it's good to know someone is obsessive compulsive because they have a different set of experiences that you're dealing with. If they're schizophrenic, they have a different set of experiences. So if you just came in blind, you— and you had the label, it would maybe automatically help me orient to understand what I'm working with. So that would be great if we didn't— if that's all we did with the labels, like you're saying, if we held them loosely.

Yeah.

What have I— what most of us who have been put through the system of psychiatric wards and medications and psychiatrists have noticed is that those labels become weapons. You know, they become They become the identity in the books and the checkboxes and the insurance and all that. And that is where labels become suffocating, deadly, dead-end things compared to being held loosely, and then it's no problem. So in an ideal world, holding them loosely is no problem, like you're saying. We don't also push them away.

Yeah.

But it's the reification of these things that have become has become the detriment to me of Western— of the civilization in terms of psychiatry and these things.

I wanted to comment on the DSM-R because I think what a lot of what it does is it's categorizing symptoms and putting them into like a cluster. It's an archetype of a symptom, right? And that's kind of, uh, but it's not really root causes. Uh, and so I wanted to talk about— because there are— this is again another meta-pattern that I think is not well understood, which is every— everyone's, uh, cluster of symptoms are a defense mechanism. And ultimately what's going on is there's, uh, at some point in some person's life, past life, whatever, uh, they, they, they have an experience where their consciousness goes, I can't— they have a story that I can't be with this. And there's survivor intelligence is what makes up a defense pattern that like, it's like, okay, this person doesn't need to die and or whatever and so they— we need to come up with a way that they can cope. So, these strategies that we're doing are really just defense mechanisms and they save our ass in a moment of helplessness. So, one thing that's important is not to demonize these things even though we might want to transcend them. You know, I definitely using Ken Wilber language to transcend and include these because there's a gift in these different patterns. There's a great book called like The 5 Personality Patterns. I don't know if you've heard of this book but it's got like 5 defense patterns that people— primordial patterns and each one like shows how at different ages and the guy says that everyone picks— has 2 that are primary and they all lead to like strengths and weaknesses. So for example, one of them is called the leaving pattern which is one of the ones which is probably my primary one, which is a leaving, usually like the winds, usually I leave up through the mind. So my leaving pattern is to go into the imaginal realms or other mental realms and leave the body completely. And so that's where ADD is. That's at least my ADD. I'm not saying that's the only expression of ADD, but at least for my ADD, it's like, something about me has a story. I can't be here right now. And I need to go up into these daydream realms or problem-solving realms where I feel safe. And so, but that also makes me a really good thinker and really good at visions because I have a lot of visions. I actually have— the meditation allowed me to get like subtler and subtler, actually see what's going on in my mind. Until I really meditated, I don't— I definitely didn't have quite the level of knowledge of self-awareness that I thought I did. And I thought I was a self-aware guy, but there are parts of the mind you really can't get to without meditation and/or psychedelics is another— can be when used in the right way. Psychedelics are a tool, like any tool can be used for good or to really harm us, but when they're used in a very intelligent way, they can be an amplifier of what's in our mind and allow us— so that's another thing that I help people when they're ready. It's not something I would use with every client, but if I thought they had enough mental stability to where they could go into deep areas, I would help them. use it to amplify what's going on in their mind and it's— once you become more conscious of the patterns of your own mind, then you open up possibilities of changing things. A lot of times, we have very subtle beliefs or decrees that we've made about ourselves or about life that are deep in the subconscious that are driving us and so, it's really powerful is to help people see for themselves, have their own direct experiences about what their stories are and then And you can start reprogramming them. You can start saying different views of life, but you really, in order to do that, you have to see it happening. You have to get, you know, be aware of the old system and then you have to have enough critical distance between your observer and your behavior that you can start to catch yourself, be like, oh wait, I don't want to drop down that pattern again.

Right, right, right!

Yeah! And you got to do that work if you really want to. The really deep grooves, you know, there's 2 ways to make a change. There's the extreme experience and there's like the habit and I advocate for both, you know, because a little both because some things, have different components to it anyways. But the good news is that it's— we know how to do this now, or I mean, I do, to help people transcend these things. And when I'm looking for clients, my ideal client is someone who's really committed. They're ready. They've already gotten to the place where they're enough of this and they want somebody to guide them through that. I haven't worked with a ton of people who've been in that other stage where they're completely— but they're certainly there. I'm sure there are protocols for those people in those states. But right at the moment, that's not the population I'm called to work for.

Right on. There's 2 things, I'm gonna name them both that I want to talk about, just so you can help me remember them. I'm not taking notes. Sometimes I take notes, but right now it's in my head. One is I want to get back with you on the transcend and include and the wound is a gift. I want to talk a little bit more what that means, let's say, in reality on the ground compared to like, oh, it sounds great, but it's not always so comprehensible, like what that even means for someone. That's a great question. Yeah, I'm gonna park that for a sec. And then I just wanted to share an inspiration with you in listening to you talk that I had. So the mental health work that I'll be part of and am part of ultimately is gonna be very inclusive and have a lot of different voices and touch on a lot of different subjects. And it's not gonna be necessarily like anti-medication, anti-psych— you know, trying to be positive and inclusive and transcend and include in a sense. Yeah. And then there's me as a voice, like my own voice, even if I'm part of a movie or a movement or a summit, On one hand, I'm holding space and I'm equitable and I want to hear everything. And then there's kind of like Bret the ego, Bret the avatar. What's my kind of opinion, you know? Or what's motivating me, I guess, to put it in your language.

Yeah.

So what really motivates me, which you have reminded me or elicited, is the basic right now on the planet. I'm sure you're aware from your own perspective, this shift of materialism to idealism, or, you know, that the consciousness is fundamental. Something, first of all, that goes back to the Veda, indigenous and the Vedas. Like, we all know it's not new, um, but—

Right.

It's new as in being newly remembered and newly rediscovered, newly explored. And then it will land, and then we'll kind of be starting to act from those beliefs and those perspectives compared to what we're coming out of with the Industrial Age and Information Age and materialism and all that. So For me, with mental health, the real conversation is about what does even mental illness, like we were saying, or mental health mean from a worldview where consciousness is fundamental? Because it just changes the whole conversation of sickness and health, and those things become so less relevant in a way.

Yeah.

It's about the soul and the spirit and the psyche and the co-creation, like you were saying. And the root, these root causes and all that. So I just wanted to appreciate that we, I'm saying we meaning the movement or people like myself or people that are in my space and my clients, you might say, it's so important to expand the conversation of professionals to address these experiences because most of us are used to psychiatrists and psychologists really. I'm a baseball fan from America. I mean, that's the bullpen. Like, that's the only thing they call in from the bullpen is psychiatry and pharmacology. And it's been upsetting and sad for me.

Mm-hmm.

So it's really exciting for me and powerful to be expanding the, the practitioners and the modalities for people like me who've had these experiences to really— you know, I'll share with you really quick. When I had my first— I had a psychotic breakdown, you know, in the Western terms. Of course, if I was living in an indigenous village somewhere, they would have pulled me aside and trained me to be a shaman, right? But I was in— I was in New Jersey, so they take me to the hospital and then they take me to the psychiatric ward. And when I had my first experience, they put me in a room a clinical, ugly-looking room with a video camera. So they think you're paranoid, then they put you in a locked room with a video camera, as if that's not going to obviously perpetuate. And then they have a 40-inch screen TV, by the way, Jonathan, showing the news. So they already know—

Right.

Paranoid schizophrenics hear voices from newscasts quite often, especially newscasts, by the way. So it's like, so they put you in a room where you're waiting for your blood test, you're waiting for 6 hours, you're waiting to hear your fate, like you're gonna be probably admitted against you, and they put you in a big room with a 40-inch screen showing Tom Brokaw on the news. So it's just complete—

Yes.

And if you asked any of the practitioners there or psychiatrists in a silo, do you think this is a good idea? They would say, no, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. But the group, the system, you know, the groupthink thing that happens where you lose the humanity, you lose the kind of common sense. So I got put in a room, they locked the door. I tried to get out as soon as I realized the door was locked. I start yelling at the door, let me out, let me out. Now, of course, I'm violent because I'm proving to them that I'm a danger to myself or others. So they pull me out of the room, they shoot me up with the thing that they have to have the antidote to because it causes convulsions and all, which did actually happen to me. I went into these convulsions. So the thought of that compared to a Jonathan walking into a room and holding my hand and saying, hey, what's going on?

Yeah.

This— I mean, just that alone changes the paradigm. So I just wanted to, you know, share how important it is for me to, to know that you're out there and people like yourself. And really, for me, the job of people like myself is to make this mainstream, is to figure out how to connect all the— connect all the dots, which again brings in activation centers. And also for me, especially activation centers where the clientele can be people who are actually in let's say more dire straits and not ready yet, but they need somewhere that doesn't cost $50,000 like the Betty Ford Clinic and it's not a jail, you know? And the answer is not just pharmaceuticals, it could be a range of things. So I just wanted to acknowledge how important that is. And it's, maybe you've never looked at your work that way to some degree. Like, I mean, I know you looked at your work with helping people and mental and transformation.

Mm-hmm.

But for me, from my limited perspective, it's like, Yeah, like, you know, Jonathan's not psychiatrist, you know, is— yeah, do you really? I mean, if you want to relate to that or share any reflections.

Yeah, well, thanks for being vulnerable and sharing that. I'm sure you've shared before, but I was touched by that. But also to include, you know, about turning gifts into wounds. Like, you, you seem to be a guy who's now championing this effort. And now you see an opportunity. It's like part of your hero's journey is to help other people so they don't have to suffer like you did. And a system that wasn't ready to handle. I mean, I don't think the systems— a lot of people think the system's bad or evil, but you know, this is the capacity of what human is, you know, that mainstream system. They're dealing with symptoms and they don't have a more holistic understanding of things.

And yeah, um, so I got the chills there because I think what I had to learn, or what I did learn through the study of Ken Wilber, through the study of my own self, through the Eastern influences through studying conscious evolution and more Western, like, conscious evolution, let's say, is not being so angry really and forgiving things. Because I do agree with you, I do agree with you, there always were great people or seemingly great people in these systems. So nobody— it was— it's just very strange. I mean, I always think of— maybe a terrible example, but I'll be stupid and say it and politically incorrect. I come from a Jewish background. So I always would hear about the Holocaust and all that, you know? And I always thought, I always thought like the average person, you know, wouldn't pick up a machine gun and start hunting down a certain type of people. But somehow group things happen, like systems happen and you lose, you lose something there rather than—

Mm-hmm.

So, so yeah, I think it's really important to, to say that that's where I'm at. I'm not angry. It's, this is evolution, this in action right now. People do what they do to the best of their, knowledge to the best of their ability. I mean, there's some reports coming in now, you know, of some psychiatrists acknowledging that they don't believe, you know, depression or whatever is a chemical imbalance, that they've been wrong about that. You know, the studies have shown, and a lot of them have been going by that and medicating people through that worldview for 40 years. And some of them, I have to say, are pretty courageous. And it makes my heart sing that they're actually saying, look, I'm not saying it's my fault, but I will take accountability like I did Buy into this, and I was a perpetuator of this, not because I'm evil or because I thought I was malicious, but I am yet. But I'm not going to also say I didn't. I did. I did it. I was part of this and I perpetuated it. And so it's really important to— I think that you're right to acknowledge it is simply evolution of our culture and our civilization. And now that we know, like you're saying, now that we know, and there's a lot more people like me.

Mm-hmm.

I didn't know because I've been involved in Web3 and all this other And this was my personal project, like you're saying, my hero's journey.

Yeah.

Until the last year or so when I've started thinking, now turn my innovation mind and my Web3 mind and all these things I've learned into actually applying them to maybe a mental health type of innovation. I hadn't, so I wasn't aware in this weird ironic paradox that the world had moved on. And now there's thousands and millions of people who have the same story as me who are talking about going beyond psychiatry and all these. It's amazing. There is a revolution and a—

Yeah, absolutely.

This thing happening in this space with mental illness and psychiatry and all that, and it's really exciting. And, um, to go, to go back to the wounds and all, like, I mean, I have a similar pattern of going mental or, you know, using non-duality, my wife would say, as a, as a reason to get out of my body. And, uh, um, but I, at the same time, it— I always look at it like it's created some kind of version of time traveling. I'm using that euphemistically, but the visionary capacity, the prophetic capacity is because I went out of my body. So I wasn't really here for 10 years, but I wasn't not here either. So where was I? I was imagining a better world. I was trying to figure out how to get better, like you're saying. So ultimately, it was a massive gift, which is why I call it transforming the perceived mental illness into a blessing. So let's tune back into that. What— yeah, even from the Gene Keys, I still, I still work with that, like integrating the shadow. It's like embracing it. How do you see the shadow? Is it like embrace it, understand it, and then integrate and move forward with it? Or like just acknowledge it and then let it go? What is your understanding?

Yeah, in a sense. Well, first off, just to tie into some things you just said, is you— a lot of people who wound and then have to go reflect back on it and make their peace with it, they learn contextual thinking, which is the root of what integral thinking is second-tier thinking to get moved beyond. There's only one dominant worldview. So that, that is another gift into itself of being in that pattern.

Right.

Um, so yeah, shadow. So right, I talk about this all the time with my clients, and the goal is to— you don't want to get rid of things. So, uh, let me explain this. So in the— in Buddhism, you, you win through what I would call digestion. or of experience. You're being with what is. And so there, if you're, if you're, if you're pushing things— go ahead.

I would say the one, my one physical illness that's a manifestation, let's say, of my, my journey is digestion. So the will, my stomach, colitis, willsome. I'm especially listening. I just thought I'd share that in case it— yeah, you can throw me a little bone or something. So digestion. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we're very parallel. I've got the Jewish thing. And I've had Crohn's colitis also. So yeah, well, it's about pushing things away. So pushing, so pushing things away, it tends to make more of it because the— all right, I'm getting a yes. Okay, so I'm gonna get to you really metaphysical. But I want to tie to you, I have a different worldview about like, what, what is this and why this ties in. This is a Jonathan Moses— a lot of things I'm telling you where I got it from. This is my own. Kind of like, you know, how you talked about like getting your own vision. So I kept asking my questions, like, you know, how can anything exist? Or, you know, like, or, you know, which comes first? And then at some point, I realized I'm never gonna understand how— it's impossible to understand, like how something came from nothing, or, you know, so I've kind of accepted existence as kind of the default. But I did, I did come up with this question I asked at some point, I was like, is there a primordial question being asked? And some people like have answers, like it's all about love. stuff. I actually said, like, I actually came to this conclusion, and I feel it was a really powerful insight for me. It was like, the first thing was I came to is like, you can't ask another question until you actually have a first, a direct experience of what it is to exist. Like, words like love and stuff. So to me, there is the— I think there's some primordial urge to just know. and to experience life. And then, so if we're not being with life as it is, then we're not actually fulfilling what I think is a very deep conscious primordial. I'm also an idealist, as you probably guessed from, you know, someone studied a lot of Tibetan Buddhism and Ken Wilber. So I actually think there's a question of like, what will— just what does it mean to exist? And so you actually have to be with experience as it is in order to be able to even provide that answer. So it's so— it's fundamental because there's— that's what the Buddhists teach things is to be with everything. Don't push it away. Don't try and make more of it. So, so that, that's the training is to digest it. So let's get into really what that means. I also think once you start to have an experience of existence, you have a second question. It's like, well, I'd like to have a good existence, you know, find like what that is, you know, whatever. There's other values. That's a more complicated question, but let's just stick to the shadow thing in digestion because that's a really important thing. So in order to work with that, you have to— it helps to, um, first you have to like surface like at deeper and deeper levels, like what is the shadow, you know? And so what I've, I've used, and psychedelics have helped me a lot, is to go deeper and deeper into what is the path. First off, it's just even At some point, you guys have to accept, I've got a consistent problem that I can't get past and then you got to get curious, you know, like, why am I doing this? And then you got to start seeing the pattern. What does it look like from a mental sense, from a behavioral sense? And then what are the traumas associated with this? And then it could be multiple layers of trauma because you might have a patterning of it because something wants— if the goal is to experience everything and digest things, Then you're going to keep rewounding something and almost, you know, it's almost like this unconscious desire to like, hey, you still got to digest this. So you're going to energetically keep having the same circumstances come up. And fortunately, as you start doing the work, they get, they get like less severe. Like they show up in a lighter way versus like totally avoid it. It'll keep getting louder and louder in ways that are going to be really unpleasant. So like, if somebody's avoiding things— you can't avoid it though, one way or the other. These things want to be experienced and felt. So as you start to get to notice what it is, you start to change your relationship with it. So if you start to hate on it and start to push it away, then again, you're not being with what is. So you— what it wants you to do is be intimate with it. Okay, I want to know everything about it. And eventually you get to this place where, okay, I've digested you, I've learned everything there is to know, and now you're just like, I actually Teach people to like, well, you can't— you have to replace something with something else. So when you're going through, um, uh, uh, like a, a pattern, then you turn it into your best friend. He's like, okay, I'm intimate with this pattern, and then what is the— what do you want instead? So a lot of times it's just like presence is always a good one to go back to, just be right here and digest with what's actually happening in the now instead of caught up in these loops. So I'll do— I'll train people to imagine that what their— that pattern is and then tie it directly energetically with going back to what you wanted to be, you know? And so, um, so for example, I'll be vulnerable, I'll share. I have had— I've deeper and deeper I go into my mind, I have noticed that I have this habit of like anxiety Of imagining like possible futures, like almost scenario planning, and then seeing something going wrong and then having to figure out how I'm gonna solve that one, Jonathan. I— and it's like almost I'll start dancing and then I'm like, I'm not even here. And those— none of these possibilities might even happen. It's like almost— it's like a waste of time and energy, but it was giving myself some peace. So like now, as soon as I catch myself in it, I know to— that's a signal. It's now— I've now taken my quote-unquote enemy or shadow and turn it into a signal. It's now my best friend. It's a reminder to do what I want to do, which is like be in my body, you know? So now like, uh, I'm feeling— I'm now I have a new habit of— I'm always like you, like, uh, like trying to go back deeper into my body. And so, you know, sometimes I— at times I'd used to going into presence, but now I'm like actually like noticing my feet, like getting into my feet, or if I'm sitting down, notice my sit bones. And so I have a real practical technique to turn recognizing of the pattern and quickly going into presence, and then I can be my full self.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you want to talk about transcend and include? I think that was another thing that was on your, uh—

well, it's the same.

You want to go another direction, go for it.

No, no, it's the same principle. It's like transcending and including the wound is not pushing it away or holding on to it too hard, too much. I mean, that's the— I guess that's the include. Like, you don't have to forget about it, but it almost becomes more of a celebratory at some point. Like, oh yeah, I did that. Like, I did that. Or how does transcendent include in this—

Right.

This context? I'm not talking about the Wilber one. Like, transcendent includes your shadow.

So yeah, well, you want to, you want to notice the pattern. I actually believe— so this is my— again, this is a Mosenter kind of thing, like another thing that I have, right? Is, uh, I actually see this kind of like— so you get this wound, which is kind of like a defense, you know? You have this moment where you feel helpless, you come up with this defense mechanism, and then you have a new way of coping. Now, this new way of coping gives you some superpowers, and some ways that really make your life not so great at the same time, right? Like the leaving pattern we talked about gives you good visioning, good thinking, but not so great with presence, you know.

Jonathan, yeah, I, I— would it be possible for me to share one of mine maybe? And so you can use me as an example, like, let's see if it works. Because I was just thinking— so I was thinking, right, when I was 16, I was really good at baseball. Not like great where I was going to go to Division 1 But it was kind of what I grew up playing. I loved it. I was good at it. I never was on the bench kind of thing.

Cool.

And then when I was about 16, something happened with my eyesight or something, and I started dropping fly balls and it was embarrassing. And then before I know it, I was benched and I couldn't play. And then I discovered smoking weed, which is cool anyway and fun. But the confluence of that, basically, I talk about my wife with this all the time. It seems like that was the start of a quitting pattern. Right? Like, I suck at this. I can't do it anymore. I don't want to ask for help. Like, I wish I would have went to my parents and my coaches saying, I'm fucking crushed. I love playing baseball and something's wrong. And I didn't consciously, like, hide it. I just was maybe a normal guy, you know, I don't talk about your feelings or something. Like, looking back, I would have wished I would have done that because I love baseball that much. But looking back, because I have a quitting pattern, so I have a quitting pattern when the going gets tough. I'm like, run away, quit. I'll just go get high. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter. I don't really want to play. I don't really want to have a good salary. I don't really want to travel. I don't really want to make this innovation. You know, I'll just like, whatever. And I think it goes back— it might go back to the trauma. I mean, for other people, I know people have had much more what you might call significant traumas, but in my life, not being able to play baseball was a bigger trauma than I actually realized because I quit. It turned me into a quitter in a sense. And that followed me for a long— so I was wondering, like you were saying, you have the— that experience. So let's say that was like a trauma for me and I went into a pattern, like from that point on when things get hard for me, I quit. Um, how would you talk me through that or, or relate it to you?

Um, I used to— I would say like, um, When you're starting to quit, when you start feeling this on, do you— what are the sensations, the thought patterns, the behaviors that go along with that? What do you notice when that starts to happen?

Yeah, I think a sense— I'm still learning to identify my body, so I usually give mental answers, but I usually feel a sense of overwhelm, like a momentum, like a snowball. Like, and I don't wanna even face it. Like, I already know that I'm gonna fail, which again goes to my failure jinky.

Right.

Like, I already know the outcome of this story, so why should I bother taking up a practice? I was gonna ask you about little habits. Like, why should I bother taking up an exercise pattern? Because I know in 2 or 3 weeks, even if I'm getting in better shape, I'm gonna quit. Like, something's gonna happen and I'm just gonna stop doing it because that's what I always do. Like, I know That's what happens for me. Like, I get overwhelmed and I just— it's such a— this immediate thing. It's really quick. It's like, it's so ingrained or so powerful that it's— or unconscious. It's just like, I don't even have to do it much. It's just as soon as it happens, I'm like, I'm out of here. Like, yeah, as a— I, I have to work more on finding it in my body, like people have asked me, but mentally, that's just like, I'm out of here.

Like, this is just Well, you notice that the level you notice it at.

Yeah.

Well, first off, did you notice the path, the stories that are— that you just— they were the decrees or the stories that you're just saying that go with that? Like, did you hear yourself? I mean, just— I'm asking you actually as a question.

Oh, I don't hear— what did you hear? Because it would help me. I didn't.

I kind of— Yeah, I mean, you were like talking about how like, oh, here we go again, you know, I'm headed down the failure, I'm gonna quit eventually. We all know how this is gonna play out, you know, stuff like that.

Yeah, so yeah, it's been coming more clear to me over the last couple years. Yes, to some degree.

But yeah. What if— how's that story serving you right now?

It sucks because I'm— it's kind of preventing me, I think, from reaching some of the things I want, like some better health and some better income and, and some general joy.

What story would you like to— what's the new story you'd like to tell yourself?

The fact that I don't even have an answer, I kind of like— a straightaway answer makes me feel a little sad. Like, you know, like—

That's okay.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm good with that. I'm just— no, that's what I'm noticing, like, that I don't. And maybe I even have an expectation that I should have, like, this immediate, like, oh yeah, my new story is I never quit. But I don't really feel that. Yeah. So my new story is, yeah, I, I get better. I think, I think my new story is I confront, I confront my patterns and continue to do my best to transcend them and find a new story, maybe at the moment.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, so I think you, you asked for an experiential exercise, we're in one.

Yeah.

Um, so, uh, so yeah, so the, the stories that we tell us are real, are really important. So we want So we want something that's like— the way we change our stories is to change them by making something really short, something like almost a 3-year-old. And sometimes there's a few of them. And sometimes— I'm gonna say one of the ones that I think is just good for everyone because I— this is good for you as in this situation, but also we're talking to Clarence.

Right.

is, um, I know you have celebration in your Gene Keys, but, uh, it's actually self-love. Uh, and so, you, you know, really saying this story like, me love me, like something really simple like that over and over again can be really powerful. Because when we're in these helpless situations where they're usually tied to— it's tied to inadequacy because we were not able to be with the primordial mission of life, which is to digest things. We have a story, I can't be with it, and then So there's always— I learned this from taking some Landmark classes that there's like these late— when you have these defensive routines come up, there's always like a nasty story. Like, I have like ones about being like a loser or something. It's always about inadequacy, some sort of— some flavor of inadequacy. So start with like saying the phrase. Like, one thing I would have you say is just start saying the phrase, me love me. Why don't you even practice that a couple times? Just see how it feels.

Me love me. Me love me. Me love me.

How does that feel?

Yeah, it felt good. It felt, uh, it felt stabilizing.

Nice. Yeah, so that would be one. And I'm getting— so I use a lot of, um, intuition because that's one of the things I learned through the practice when I'm doing it. So just my intuition says there's If I— there's 3 decrees for you right now that'll really help you. So, uh, we're gonna discover that right now between the 2 of us. Uh, so the other one, uh, I'm getting to give you a little bit of help with, which is around, um, yeah, we want to get— have a decree that's like truthful, like never giving up. That's, uh, usually in conscious language, we want to talk about what we want to, to give ourselves and not we don't use words like no. Like, the universe is like, well, you're telling me what I don't want, you know? Tell me what you actually do want. Um, so yeah, I'm getting like one thing for— and this is good, again, not just for you but for anyone— when you're going through a tough, deep emotional pattern like this, uh, you know, I am patient is really big because you don't want to trigger— every time you go back into that thing, you don't want to beat yourself up. So you want to love yourself, you want to be patient. So I would recommend— how does that feel just to say, I am patient?

I am patient. No, it resonates. It's, it's— I also, for me, would recognize that as symbolically part of the digestion. Like, urgency, right? I have an urgency to— even some patterns from my family, like, like urgency, like around the way I was brought up. Mostly positive, but it was this weirdo This little peccadillo, like weird character trait of my dad, which was not mean or anything. He just was a very intense, like urgent. For him, everything was an emergency. Like the chicken's gotta go out, the garbage has gotta go out. And it wasn't, it was nothing, not a big deal, but it, I had this urgency, which, and then again, we're talking colitis and, and waiting online and, and all this stuff. So yeah. Yeah. I am patient.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, uh, Yeah, so I'm getting a third one, which is— okay, so I think you like never giving up, like that's, um, like that's not a good thing because sometimes it's actually healthy to give up on things. Like, you don't want to— quitting is not always bad. Sometimes we hit on a door enough times and be like, especially, you know, like, okay, maybe there's another pathway to get there. So really what you want to do is to, uh, you know, love— you love yourself so much and you're patient with the process, but then you want to Because you got a really sharp mind, dude. I can tell you're a really smart guy. You know, people's in the integral anyways. And but if you get yourself into, I am love, I'm patient, and then add maybe I am present, then you can stop and say like, does this really make sense to quit now? Because then you can ask the questions is like, am I just doing the pattern again? Or am I— does it actually make sense to quit? So, um, that would be a third one because that's, again, that's also universal. These are ones that are all uh, very universal to be useful to anybody in your audience. So yeah, why don't you try that one? Like, I am presence.

I am presence. I am patient. Me love me.

Yeah. So my, my goal is— it's the— so the, the guy that's my teacher tells me, it's like, if you say it like regularly, it takes maybe 300 times repeating to really recode it. If you start saying it sometimes with silliness, like, you know, getting all like, you know, get all weird with it. Playful as you like, you know, sometimes it goes faster. But if you got those patterns into you that these are the new ones, I mean, who doesn't want to be love, patience, and, you know, present? You know, that's a beautiful thing, you know. And then when you're patient and present and you love yourself, you're going to make a decision that's good for your long-term health, you know, and wisdom.

Beautiful!

So you could— so you want to stop, stop and beep, stop. You want to interrupt the pattern. and be like, hmm, I don't have to follow that, those instincts anymore, and now I'm free. Like, liberation from the traps of the mind is liberation from the pattern. Like, now I return to presence, what's actually true, instead of moving past karma. Now, karma is a word for momentum. So all you're doing is you've got this deep momentum of quitting, uh, you know, as you said, it's probably in your gene keys, is like the failure. Uh, and then, uh, this is just to throw another bit of wisdom, but if you're Sounds like you have 32, 42. Those are programming partners. If you have them in the first 4, which I imagine you do, as I do, that what happens is, I don't know if you— the gift of one of the programming partners actually helps solve the shadow of the other. So detachment, which is part of 42, the celebration one, actually helps with failure because you start to see it from as a gift, as a wound.

I don't know if we've ever— I don't— I think we probably have. But there's so many things and so many, so So much work. But that's a trim— but that's a trim tab. That's a trim tab thing for me to remember. Yeah. And the programming partners, the gift of one can help with the shadow of the other. That's what you're saying?

Yeah, that's why they're program partners.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I knew that, but I don't know if I've ever at least gone through the practice. Somebody's probably told me that before, but I don't know if I've ever clocked it enough to actually make it, oh, yes, think about that a little bit more. That's awesome.

Yeah, I was just going to say one thing about the Gene Keys because a lot of— I don't, um, I do work with the Gene Keys in the Human Design, but I'm— so if somebody's coming to me with that, I'm not— there's some people who just like will read your chart and those guys are beautiful. I don't— I will help people read their charts, but that mostly what I'm using is for transformation. My, my, uh, superpowers are on the process of transformation. So what I'm helping people is to go from shadows to gifts to cities and giving them practices to do that. And like, how do I want to ground it in their real life as much as possible? Let's look at these charts and how are these patterns playing out for you? And so that makes it real because those charts, they're beautiful and they can be super overwhelming.

Oh yeah, exactly.

People just be like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't need it for a while.

I've only succeeded with the Gene Keys in community. So when there's 2 or 3 or 5 of us that are all familiar and we can check in and get the different viewpoints, to me, that's when it was the most brilliant. Not just on my own, like contemplative on my own. I needed like the feedback and different perspectives.

Yeah.

Number one, number one, it was interesting when you were saying, obviously sometimes it's good to quit. That would, in essence, that, that in In some ways, that's the essence of preservation, which is the gift of 32, of the failure. This preservation is knowing what to let go of and what to build on top of.

Yeah.

So on some, you might say, you could say that's when you know when to quit something. Like, this isn't working anymore. This— oh wait, don't quit this. This is, this is a rootstock. This is something I can build upon. So it was interesting for me to, to make that connection there. So I'm not so black and white, like you're saying, so black and white, like never quitting is silly. That's just silly. It's, it's, it's too absolute. I mean, it's not reasonable, like, to say never quit is silly.

Yeah, that's not— could I also talk about preservation and transcend and include a little bit deeper? Because I think— sure, wait, just to— just, just, it's almost just deepening on what you're saying. Um, so when we, we stop, we persevere to gain— we persevere with presence to gain all the information on it, and then we get a point where we maybe want to like do what's called Transcend and Include, which is like which aspects of— it's almost like don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's like which aspects of this pattern do I want to keep and which ones am I interested in letting go, you know? And so, and so that, that's it. And so in Ken Wilber's world, uh, specifically when you're healthy moving from— uh, he uses it specifically with Spiral Dynamics, but it really can be used with anything any kind of mental model or worldview that you've kind of held tightly that's as part of your ground. And when you, you want to like get to this place where you like ask, okay, there's— I want to describe what is healthy and what is unhealthy in terms of— and by healthy, I mean like optimal. So optimal would be like, first off, thank you, worldview, for serving as stability in my world, and I honor you for that thing. Now, there's certain parts of you that I want to keep and certain parts of you that I'm going to let go. And that's like healthy. That's really healthy. You honor the whole thing as good, you know, like you're bringing the reverence of the gene key in and you're— and you're— and you're transcending it. And the, the two— but a lot of people don't do that because a lot of people do— there's an allergy and addiction, which are the two unhealthy things. So an allergy is like, like the part you're letting go of, you start having hate towards and you start like loathing it. Then you see anyone else out who's doing it, you start projecting that on them, and you've just got a lot of hate energy in you now and you're projecting on other people. When people do it, you're not really present with them because they're triggered of something you didn't like about yourself. You're not really loving yourself when you're doing that, so that's unhealthy. And then the addiction is, uh, you know, more like there's a part of it that was so powerful for you that you can't let it go, and it's— you don't really have presence around it. You're just addicted to something because it served so deeply for you that it's, uh, it's no longer— you've lost all objectivity on what to let go and what to do with it. It's just so— such a part of you.

Yeah, thank you. That's a very helpful little model there, the allergy and the addiction, in terms of letting go and not. And, um, if you haven't seen it, I'll send it to you over Messenger or whatever. My wife and I just found a brilliant Gene Key sheet which has affirmations for the shadow gift and shit. Somebody created these affirmations and they were quite, I would say, accurately helpful, like pretty Pretty well done, I would say. Like, we're gonna— we were like, we were like, oh, that's a trim tab. Like, I don't need to go read the Gene Key every time now. Just go look at this guy, this affirmation for the— for the— because it put it also a little bit of a new spin on, like you're saying, understanding the shadow. So I think the shadow of failure mantra that he said was, I'm afraid of losing my money and dying. Like, that was what the mantra you would have if you were in the shadow of failure.

Oh, okay.

And it definitely relates to my experience with that shadow. So like, I thought it was just really well done. Just so in case it helps you personally or your clients, I'll send that to you.

Yeah, I'd love to see that.

If you've never seen it, I thought it was wonderful as a way, again, like you're saying, to not have to understand the whole book and all the lines. Like, there's these different aspects, tools like you that you've pointed out with the programming partners that can really make a big difference. I want to thank you. I want to thank you. I want to thank you for going through that with me. I felt like you really Well, we both, but towed the line of doing it. It's helpful for me, of course, but like, it's a way to showcase what you do. It's a way I think anyone could have watching will be able to take something away from that. So I hope that was cool for you in that sense. Like, I felt like it was a useful and a good part of the conversation. I appreciate it, man.

Um, yeah, me too.

And I think for the final bit, I want to turn to like kind of what's next for Jonathan. Like you were saying, Coaster, I want to hear more about your passion there. your dream. It happens to tie into stuff I'm into as well, personally, like where I'm going next. Um, but I obviously not want to focus on me. So tell me first, tell me what's next for you. Where, where are you calling from, by the way? And like, where are you traveling to? Like, tell me a little bit of kind of what's, what's real for you, what's next, and like, what's the next thing?

Yeah, I mean, I am just a little bit on my— I'm in Rochester, New York. This is where I grew up. I'm at my parents' place. I'm actually in the bedroom I grew up in. Uh, and I Just, I spent most of my adult life in Boston. I went to like Boston University and was there for 30 years. And then I was in the Boulder area for the last 2 and a half years, and I am transitioning to Costa Rica. That's— I'm leaving in less than a week. Next Tuesday I am off to Costa Rica. Uh, so, so why Costa Rica is, uh, I, I've been there a couple times and I've noticed the energies there are really powerful, and I I was able to touch on transformative transpersonal knowledge a lot easier, you know, there than I have anywhere else. Part of it was just intuition, kind of some part of— I got a transpersonal wisdom that like, hey, you should go there and check it out. And also, I have a philosophy, part of my— this is a personal Jonathan thing. I involved in something called psycho-spiritual stacking. which is taking different modalities and working them together like in a synthesis and an integral model to— for more amplitude and power. So I have a— that's one of my, my gifts is to be able to, and I probably demonstrated it on the call of how I was weaving together different ideas from other people as well as putting in my own conclusions.

Right!

And so I want to have an environment that is optimal for people to have like peak experiences because some people um, have a hard time believing in the transpersonal until they actually have their own experience. So they hear about other people, but then they have other experiences like, well, so I can never do it or whatnot. So I want to, to give that an opportunity, um, because I, I— one of my, my passions is to be kind of a bridge person who can talk to a lot of different worldviews and kind of weave things together, but also to introduce, uh, new transpersonal energies, to bring— to really to show people how they can quiet their mind and use Unbound. Anybody can do this and have— be a better version of themselves. I'm really about like human excellence. I mean, I— if somebody asked me like, what party are you for, Jonathan? Are you a Democrat or Republican? Or I'm like, I'm human excellence, you know? Like, I just want people to thrive. There's good things and bad things. There's things I agree and disagree about both those different worldviews and like, I like to transcend and include. So, yes! What my intention down there is to to find a land, a piece of land, and with other like-minded people and build a community there. That one thing is we're helping each other be higher versions of ourselves to move from— to go from the shadows to the gifts of the city. So there's going to be a community element of supporting each other's growth. But also then I want it to be a place where we can do retreats, where people can have their own individual experiences. But also my background's in organizational, so I want to have it be a retreat center where teams— let's say a leadership team wants to come down and use multiple tools and come up with a new vision. Like, I can combine facilitation with psychedelics and, you know, conscious language and alchemy, different— a lot of different techniques. I like to mix things and I know how to do it in a very intelligent and unique way. I know nobody else has studied all the stuff that you have. I have a very unique background. I've been kind of obsessed with learning for my last— you know, 50 years of my life. And then, yeah, and then also create media. So I see this like intentional community also as a place that's like best practices. I believe that we're in transitional times and I think that all the chaos and polarity that we're having, I know psychically it's causing a lot of problems, but it's actually from a transformation perspective, it's ripe for people being ready for a new story, a new story about what this is.

Absolutely!

I don't actually think it is a negative thing. It's like, ooh, people are ready for something new. And I'm here to talk about like a way we can transcend and include all the different perspectives and still be happy. So my mission would be like, hopefully that community would grow bigger and bigger over time and we could be like a model city and talk about like, what is a second-tier city or a city that's using these higher energies look like? And then we could consult to other cities who are like, okay, we're ready. Or other communities, it doesn't have to be cities. I actually think The next, the next version of reality is going to be a lot more decentralized. I actually think that these giant nation-states and stuff, I don't, I don't know if that's going to last, you know, into things. I think there's so many different worldviews happening on the planet at the same time, and I'd love to work and have international discussions on peace. Like, what is the minimum agreements we can all make with each other? so that, you know, we can all do our own stuff? You know, like, how— what resources do we really need to share? And can we have agreements around that? Can we agree? Like, you know, this is where I do like some of the libertarian stuff, the volunteer stuff, that I do believe that there's got to be— there's got to be a way to resolve conflicts where we can come to some agreements about— that'll just achieve peace and then let people Doing it. I think, I think in some ways we're already doing this right now. You know, there's all these people, at least the people who are more modern, or, you know, they're all into their own YouTube channels or whatever, and they're outside of the national. So there's all these people who are already in their own bubbles, you know. So it's starting to happen already, at least with the youthful kind of things. And people have kind of like not following the national news as much because, you know, some people think that is reality, the national news. And really— So I would love to see a more— be somebody, be someone who wants to work with people to have this kind of global peace and allow people to bring their gifts to the world and be people okay with not having everyone to do their own thing. As long as they're not like stealing, they're not killing anyone, we're not doing anything corrupt, we can get some specific definitions on it. Everyone's kind of paying their share, whatever that means. I don't have all the specifics. These But what I'm really good at is dialogue. I really— facilitator. I'm a facilitator of dialogue. It's one of my talents is like, how can we ask good questions and bring both sides together and like go deep? Let's not yell at each other. Let's have ground rules. Like, bring— like, everyone has to do mixed inquiry and advocacy, meaning you have a certain percentage of time you're gonna advocate for your perspective and another percent of time, you're gonna ask questions about the other ones and let's climb each other's ladder of inference to understand why are they actually coming to different conclusions? Like what experiences do you have? What assumptions are you making? You know, what data do you have the other person doesn't have? Can we like share and get to— get to actually— I'd love to actually have a show where people are getting to actually why they disagree instead of like blasting each other, you know, with energy and just like, you're wrong! No, we don't, we don't need more of that. So that's a bit about where my— where I'm going and some of my visions. And I'm kind of in, uh, I've been doing a lot of training, and the next step is, uh, yeah, going, going live with this and allowing the energies to guide me to the people, uh, that will help me. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, this is something that in theory involves everybody, but, you know, I think at first it'll involve the people who are most ready to hear this message and who feel, you know, to the— who are ready to have the same values, you know, really the same values and some of the same mental models. Um, and then good, like, like good ideas spread.

Well, before I share a final word, I just want to say I wish you nothing but the most amazing success or better with that. And, uh, thanks. I'll get in touch with you. There's a lot of other resonance there and the other work I've been doing is about creating kind of tier 2 technology, sociotechnology, I would say, and learning like you kind of— my friends and I, we've kind of been, um, silly word, slurping. That's why the word slurping— slurping up all— a lot of the new ideas around governance and value sharing and technology and alchemy, like everything, you know, a lot of similar things. And To us, it's all about the online on-life, you know, creating these hubs or villages, whatever you wanna call them. I personally am super interested in documenting, like with the media, I call it fractal impact entertainment instead of social impact entertainment.

Yeah.

Because if you have a full-time kind of crew there, you're not just filming one show in a sense. There's people doing, you know, sociocracy, governance, alchemy, spiritual work. Like there's a lot of material you know, that could be had in one location when it's a diverse integral location. Like, we don't really— like, it's like a whole set with massive different amounts of content all in one kind of location. Um, then I call that regenerative filmmaking. So instead of building sets that cost $8 or $10 million that get torn down or don't really add much value, why don't we use a film budget, you know, to put the aquaponics in, to build the, the cob houses, you know, to install this and that? to take care of people from the Maslowian perspective. And then you would have great content no matter what. You can make any kind of movie or TV show really about the very— so I'm into all that kind of stuff. So I'd love to jam with you sometime about all that. And as a last Gene keynote, my pearl is inquiry. My pearl is inquiry, doubt, inquiry, truth.

Okay.

So when I'm prospering, I'm doing this. I'm inquiring with you and people and And being in conversation and exploring. And that's my wealth. That's my real— this is my zone. That's where my wealth is, I get, in the sense of the prosperity. So, um, what is your pearl? Do you know your pearl? That's the last one.

I think it's invincibility. I think my chart's around here somewhere, but—

Oh, that's okay. I'll catch up with you on that.

Um, I think my life's work though is, uh, Or no, my vocation is abundance or whatever that's the word for that.

Super abundance.

Here to bring super bounteousness, I think they call it, is actually it. But I think my— is the pearl the one that's the second one? I think it's the last.

It's kind of the last one in the sequence. It's like your final 12. Yeah, it's like—

I'm pretty sure it's 9. It's, uh, I have that one twice on my chart. But yeah, it's, uh, it's invincibility, determination, something like that.

Uh, nice.

Yeah, well, I'm actually— that which is, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I'll go there. Um, but yeah, I actually think that where, where we're going is like, how, how can we live in peace for all of eternity? Like, how do we set up the— what I call the Sogasm is like a protocols of love. And protocols, I just mean like pointing out some processes that we can— general patterns that we can all follow to We have the world we all know in our heart. I think everybody— if you said to everyone, you put a gun on their head, like, hey, if you could have exactly what you want and everyone else could have it too, would you— wouldn't you say yes to that? You know what I mean? And if they don't, then there's— they don't have— they have a very unclean, you know.

Yeah, if they don't— that— my theory, that's what VR is for. Go into VR if you want to, like, destroy things and hurt people. Like, like, that's cool. Go over there and do it in the virtual with all your other friends. And like, that's— that might be a little bit of a way to help where technology is a bridge in a sense. It's like it becomes a self-opting-in, like, safe space, uh, for peaceful coexistence.

But yeah, I mean, if people want to do these like ultimate fighting things and they're both agreeing to it, I have no problem whatsoever. It doesn't appeal to me, but if other people want to, want to knock each other out, then yeah, at least it's, uh, at least everyone's on the same agreements, you know?

Totally.

Yeah.

Great. Well, thank you. It's been an hour and 20 minutes. Um, I enjoyed our conversation. I hope you did too, Jonathan.

Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Um, I learned a lot, of course, and, uh, this video will go for posterity. I'll get back to you at some point. I am, in a sense, I'm making my docuseries right now because I'm gathering footage and I'm getting like— I'm— I shifted to like waiting to get funding and waiting to figure out. I was always like, I'll do it later when I get funding. I'll make my docuseries. And then I realized, no, just do it. Just get the footage, do the conversations. And then someday, 6 months from now, 10 months, whatever it is, I'll have hundreds of hours of footage and I'll have, you know, I'll find someone to help me edit and we'll put together a little trailer and then it'll become evident like what my vision is, you know, for mental health and all. So this is—

Nice.

So I thank you again. I promise I will make sure, you know, I won't be using your, you know, the footage in some way without asking you. But thank you for being part of, my story in that sense. And thank you.

Yeah, and thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I see a lot of overlap and look forward to future conversations. And I, I want to point out that I think that what you talk about documenting is super important, that we document this evolution, revolution, or whatever, this transformation. And so people can see it's not just people talking, that there are actually people doing this work and what it looks like. And Also, I really strongly agree with you about the technology component. I, I think I came across you and you were doing something that started with an N or something.

Yeah, New Map.

New Map. Yes, thank you.

We're still, we're still working on the same principles. New, new, new name and evolved thinking, but the same mission.

We need a social media, like something that will— that it's going to be a replace Facebook where it's like going to— can, can have components of like uh, like assessing— you can put in the alchemy piece but also help people connect in an intelligent way. Yeah, you can even like—

that's what we're— I mean, that's what we're doing. We're gonna, we're gonna be looking you up. I mean, we've— New Map was the, the precursor to what we call like whole systems platform. So we've been looking at like dipping our toes in a lot of the pieces like alchemy, you know, social alchemy. So there's individual work, and then how do people do work together? Then how do a bunch of organizations do that, like what you do? You know, there's— and then there's like, how do you share value? Then there's like, how do you get justice? Then there's infrastructure and tech, like that whole kind of wheel of co-creation kind of space.

Yeah.

So our specialty at the end of the day will end up being almost the center, which is how do we make— bring those parts into a greater whole? So co-creation synergy, our specialty will end up being that. But in order to learn that and how we might even consider being whole systems thinkers, we've had to at minimum experiment and try to at least understand bits and pieces of all the different sectors that we're trying to integrate.

Yeah.

For us, it would've been impossible to try to integrate everything in an integral way without at least having some praxis or some version of that. So because of that, we obviously are not experts in any one of those sectors. So our sector is almost the 13th sector of how do you bring those parts together? But we're gonna, Because we're a decentralized— we call ourselves a UFO for fun, which is Unnameable Universal United Fractal Organism. So, so because DAOs are what? Decent DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations. So they've already shown where their limits are. And if you look at, again, if you look at the language or the words, first of all, they're focused on decentralized compared to, let's say, omni-centralized. Omni-centralized is like, what's— when do you need to be decentralized? When do you When do you need to be centralized? When do you need to be distributed? What's the most appropriate tool for the circumstance compared to everything's decentralized, everything all the time? Because there can be issues with that because it can diffuse things.

There's no such thing as decentralized. It's a myth. It's a polarity. It's not a thing. Decentralized is like a polarity. Exactly.

For me, DAOs are a green reaction from spiral dynamics. evolutionary step to have a DAO, but the shadow side of it, it's already shown its limitations. And then you've got autonomous compared to like synergistic. The focus is on autonomy, autonomy, like the I. And then you've got organization compared to second-tier organism thinking like holistic biomimicry, nature. So that's some of the fun. And of course I love the acronym UFO 'cause it's fun to say we're building a UFO.

Yeah.

But the UFO, because it's synergistic and decentralized and distributed and co-creative, and second-tier fundamentally principled, even though it can include tier 1, like the good parts of the baby and the bathwater, obviously.

Yeah.

But because it's that fundamentally tier 2 based, it's going to take all of the different practitioners and people to work together to really give birth to that organism. It's not like we're holding space for a specific set of DNA that would hopefully be Not over-prescriptive where people feel like they're being told what to do, but it's not under-prescriptive where no one knows what they're doing.

Right.

Like, you know, the tyranny of structurelessness and the tier 1 where it's green and everyone just does whatever they want and magically everything's just gonna self-organize if we just keep bumping into each other. So we're not in that space, but I'm very excited cuz we're gonna be looking for practitioners and projects and people who would want to help give birth to that and be kind of part of the UFO. bring their gift in the context of that social body. You know, we say like the social body instead of using that as a metaphor, like the lung section, the heart section, liver sections. Like people gravitate, like you're saying, people gravitate towards where their purposes are and where their roles are in their gift. But really there is a holistic larger context that you can be a part of without losing your autonomy.

Yeah.

But it has to be both. That's like for me the holy grail of the of the DAO decentralized space is actually going into tier 2, where it's both autonomy and synergy. Like, there has to be a bigger— some kind of meta, we might say, like meta context. So, but anyway, that's kind of what we're up to and what we've been doing. So I'm going to be very, really excited to tune back in with you on, on how we can potentially in the future play together on that.

Yeah, I'd be very excited to learning about the details.

And obviously mental health is fundamental to that compared— not the again, not this diagnostic type mental health, but wellness, like you're saying, optimization, thriving. Yeah, that's the real question here, even though I've come through the portal of mental health and a traditional mental illness. But really, it's, it's more about, yeah, the psyche.

I couldn't agree more. I think, I think, uh, I'll introduce one last idea, uh, which is I, I think we need a global metric of, um, secure attachment. And by secure attachment, I mean every soul feels like the, you know, earth, the planet, their environment supports them to be who they want to be. And then if we use that as a measure of health, because I think that's possible. I mean, it's gonna take some peace, but it gets into the mental wellness because it's also a 4-quadrant look at mental health too.

Yeah!

Our wellness is not just what's going on, the systems in their mind, but their external systems too and how do we how can we align that? If we could get people centered on a mission like that and start thinking that is something important, I think good things will happen.

Totally on the same page. You'll enjoy talking to my wife sometime. She's more the engineer of the system. I'm more the poet kind of a journalist, but, uh, uh, coherence is her favorite word. So going back to how we started this conversation, coherence, the principles of coherence. And so we're looking at, yeah, how can the— I would say this, people, this gets me in trouble with people, but you know, you know how the Chinese have that crazy like Big Brother digital whole system. It's kind of like, what if that was turned on its head and we could have the metrics you're talking about, like the metrics and the feedback of how we're all doing on the personal and all, again, fractally? How are we doing? Not using that, first of all, not using it as a token for your life support, which is the big problem in the space. People always tie things to tokenomics. So now the measures of your coherence, like you're saying, and the measures of that secure attachment end up— people, because they can't get past tier 1, think, well, we should tie that to an economy, right? And then it becomes like spiritual coherent meritocracy. So all the people who could be coherent get, get a lot of tokens, and all the people that are struggling, like, but are committed, don't get a lot of tokens because their coherence score is tied. So we're not doing that. We're not going to tie—

Yeah.

We're looking more at what they call it currency, SEE, which we get from the Holochain. And the group is like a currency.

Yeah.

What are all these currencies? And they're just feedback loops, like getting your blood work done, like you're saying, and getting your heart rate valve and your heart monitor and all this stuff. These are like you're saying, they're energetic. We can do energetic signatures and different things to help us see ourselves, like you're saying, as individuals, as communities, as multiple communities, and then use those things to say, what do we want? Look, someone's struggling, like over here, and this group is struggling, this person's struggling. And what do we want? What do we want to do different? Like, so yeah, yeah.

What's a long-term— yeah, I mean, people don't realize that, like, we gotta— there's this whole— I think there's this whole deep psychological wounding that has to do with these traumas that put us in scarcity. But if everybody is like actually being their best selves, then there's going to be abundance everywhere, and that abundance is only going to grow. We don't need debt-based money, you know. We literally could all be super rich. Like, it doesn't— like, it's about energy. We want everyone's healthy energy. Like, this gets into the mental health. You have to— mental health has to be part of it because consciousness is the base of everything, uh, but it includes the other quadrants as well, uh. But if we get everything aligned where everyone's kind of flourishing, then the whole planet's gonna flourish. It's gonna be unimaginably beautiful. It's exciting times.

Yeah, yeah, totally. That's the lesson we learned, which some people— well, we learned the same, the lesson which was what you're talking about, which is when you're nourished when you're well, when you have connection, when you're doing what you love to do, you naturally make products, goods, and services that are helpful for people. You don't just run off and do drugs or buy a bunch of fast cars. There was that whole old theory, like, if we gave everybody UBI, right, everyone would just get lazy and nothing would get done.

Yeah.

It's like we've, in our own world, disproven that. We took the leap, like you're saying, of following our bliss and and, and making fun— health and well-being fundamental before producing the software or the funding. Like, we, we've been pretty awesome at like at least sticking to our, our principles and values, even at the detriment— like, some people would call us poverty conscious and all that. And I used to say, well, for me, you're going to work 80 hours a week and giving us a hard time who are trying to kind of live our dream and make the world better. That's poverty consciousness to me. Like, it's not poverty consciousness for me and To step out of the traditional economy and try to create something new, that's, that's courage. That's not poverty consciousness.

No, no, I agree. And, you know, a lot of people are okay where they're at. We still need some stability in the old system while the other new people are building a new one. So I tip my hat to those people who are keeping that part stable so it doesn't go into chaos. Totally. Why the rest of us build a new world, you know? Right on. Yeah, no, it definitely sounds like we have much more to talk about. Yeah, I look forward to deepening the connection.

Yeah, thank you, Jonathan.

Thank you.

I'm from New Jersey originally, so I look forward to being back on the East Coast at some point. I got dra— I got drafted into the European team somehow, so I've spent most of my time in Europe the last few years. But it's nice to talk to a— nice to talk to an East Coaster. And, uh, have a great time in Costa Rica. I'll catch up with you while you're there and hear, hear all about it, man.

That sounds perfect. Have a great one and take care. Have a good evening.

Lots of love, man.

That's all.