HEALING Core Wounds & FEAR | Luke Storey, Cal Callahan, Dr. John Lieurance@WellnessAndWisdom

If I honor my sadness and I'm not trying to get away from it, and I feel to the bottom of my sadness, there's really just gratitude that I even get to hold my son. That is an extreme recipe for living life fucking well. If I can just honor the sadness that's living. That's fucking living. Honoring the sadness is living. Being in fear is not l. Well.

This has been on the books for a bit, and we finally. We actually made it happen.

Yeah, here we are.

We got Dr. John Lawrence in town. Josh Trent, and Luke's story. All three have been on my podcast, just not all three together. So there's a lot of different ways to go with this, and we kind of toyed around with the idea of, like, asking each other questions, and I think that's definitely a part of this. I want this thing to be free flowing, but there are things that I'm curious about with each of you that I would love to hopefully get into. And if we don't, I'm okay with that too. So there's not really going to be a particular format. I think what's top of mind for me right now, the timing of this. When Josh came on my podcast the first time, he had just come back from a vision quest, and as it turns out, he just came back from another vision quest. So I would love for you to just drop in with how it was, maybe different. You probably had, I'm guessing, some expectations because you have some experience there. It really, like, what did you. What did you pull from it?

Wow.

Well, in exactly that order, I wonder, right?

Hold me to that. Well, maybe just start here. You know, for people that don't know what a vision quest is, it was done in the Native American tradition, but it wasn't a full blown Native American quest. When you do a Native American quest, you basically have a blanket and water, and that's all you have. So I got like the Americanized version, but, dude, it was just as potent.

Did you have trail mix?

No trail mix.

Did you guys used to call that gorp back in the day? Yeah, good old raisins and peanuts.

And I used to pick all The M&M's out and eat those first and then suffer for the next three days.

Yes. Yeah. You would need some extra support on the quest then. There's no trail mix. Yeah. So it's. It's three days of ego stripping. And so we've all done emotional work, but at the core of it, it's. What are you. What are you withholding? You know what Are you withholding from yourself? What are you withholding from your partner? And what are you withholding from God? And so three days of that. Tim Corcoran, Mark Tollefson, an intro from Aubrey Marcus, who's a friend of all of ours. And this second year was potent because I actually got a really wicked sinus infection, like right before I left. So the quest is 10 days long. Before you do the three days, there's a lot of prep work you do. And then after the three days, there's four days in nature. And all you get is a sleeping bag, a pad and a tarp and water. That's it. Nothing else. No distractions, nothing. And then after you get back, there's three more days of unpacking what nature showed you, essentially what you learned from, from God. And so the quest for me started a week before. So I feel like I did a three week vision quest. That's what it felt like. And I went out there and the night before I left, there was this like, ambiguity of am I even going to go do this quest? Because it's very physically and emotionally demanding. And so the night before, I got on the phone with Tim and I was like, I have a pounding headache. I know the quest is very physical. Should I even go? And we prayed and I cried and. And I said, I'm going because the best thing I could ever do for an infection is fast. It's the best thing I could ever do. So I get out there, I'm going through my journal and I'm thinking about, like, what am I really withholding? And it is this addiction to stress. I have been addicted to stress for a long time. Just this, you know, Dispenza calls it like the roller coaster. And all these neurons that fire together, wire together. And so that's what I share with the group, you know, in the ego, in the ego destruction phase. And I get out to the site on the first day and there was just this incredible peace that I really can't describe. I can, I can feel it right now, looking at all the beautiful trees in your. In your yard. And I just asked God like, you know, please relieve the stress, this addiction to stress that I have. And I looked down within an hour or two of actually being out there, and there was this rock that was just staring me in the face. And the rock have it at my house. It was shaped like a pentagon. And I. For a long time, I've been learning and teaching about wellness as physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. But I had been neglecting financial, I really, there was this deep money wound in my family lineage about, like, money is bad. Money's the root of all evil. Just insanity around money. That. Fuck. How many people can identify with this?

And by the way, you and I had a conversation about that before you left.

Before I left?

At SunLife.

At SunLife.

Wow.

So I picked up this rock and I just started crying because that was literally God showing me, like, this is all you need to focus on. Just focus on these five things. I changed everything on my website. I changed the name of my podcast before I went out there to Wisdom. And it was emotional. And I had this conversation with my grandfather that just cracked me in half. He's been gone since 2002. And I just. I just wept because he. He left my mom money. My mom's manic bipolar, so he left my mom some money. And I just thought, you know, what a gift for him to. For him to care so much about my brother and I that. That he would take care of my mom so we didn't have to carry her burden. And I was just. I was just fucking washed with gratitude. You know, I really. It was a very special. A very special moment. So I started to go into the actual fast. And I'm sure you guys know when you fast, your heart rate elevates at night. So I was laying in the sleeping bag and I could see the sleeping bag moving. By the third night, no matter what breath work I did, no matter how much meditation I did, like, my heart was just pounding. And on the very last night, I just said, fuck it. I just ripped everything down and I just said. I screamed. I was like, I got naked and I was like, I will not live my life in fear anymore. No more fear in my life. I took down the tarp and I just slept. The last night out under the stars and the very last night of a vision quest feels like a fucking week because it's just. It's your fourth day of no food. It's just been you, your thoughts and your breath for four days now. It's 100 hour plus fast. And a couple hours before the sun came up, I was just. I was just started crying and I didn't even know why I was crying. And this is the magic of the quest, is that you will release a lot of stored emotions that you didn't know you had, and you won't have a definition for it. It's fucking mysterious. It's very potent. And I just realized that, like, before I go on podcasts or before I speak or whatever, it is. I have this tension in my body and I don't know exactly where it comes from. It's like this fear of not being perfect. And I just prayed to God. I was like, God, take away this quest for perfection that I have, because it's not loving, it's not really who I am. And as the sun finally came up, I cleaned up my sight and I, I went back and there's a threshold and they cleanse you and they put all this smoke on your body. And I just held Tim and I cried. And it was like, it was like a 50 pound weight vest had been removed from my body. And then we spent the next three days sharing about that. And so, yeah, when I came home, I just really, I felt like an ease to myself. But I was met with an immediate test of modernity. Like, and you know, this, I don't know if anybody's ever done like a Tony Robbins or any Joe Dispenza. Like, whatever, whatever wisdom you learn, you will be ultimately tested when you return back home. And that's what it was. It was the ultimate test of like, patience and business and conflict with my woman and just in a lot of, a lot of really hard things to deal with. But I'm proud of myself because I have this, this bedrock of peace where I recognize what I had created as a dynamic in my relationship. I had created with my addiction to stress the way that I communicate with my woman from that same addiction. And so the road ahead looks like if I want wisdom, I have to be prepared that God gives me certain challenges so that I actually fucking embody that wisdom. And so, I mean, I've cried so much in the past two weeks, I don't even know if I have any more tears left. But the ultimate gift of the quest was presence that I'm loved, I'm supported, I'm on the right path. That was the ultimate gift of the quest. No matter what transpires in my life, I have truly everything that I need. I don't need to be perfect. And then many things have unfolded since then, but that was like the tip of the tip of the iceberg. And they say when you come home from a quest, like, it'll unfold for a year or more, and that's what it feels like is going to happen over this next year.

Thank you for sharing that. What, what are you withholding from Carrie?

We went through a lot of birth trauma, my son. We spent 10 days in the NICU. And so there's still, there's still healing that we have to have as a couple around that birth trauma. I mean, I, I can't really share too deep to her, but I mean, you put your finger right on it, right, like that's it was, it was birth trauma. And, and also look like we all have capital T, lowercase T, trauma that's either felt or let go of. And, and the very last thing I'll share is this. I, I, I wrote a poem to myself that truly was an upload. We have all these spiritual people that say, I got a cosmic download. And I'm like, that's how I know you're full of, because, because you say the word cosmic download. But I got this upload from the Earth and the upload was I picked up this handful of pebbles and I just, I made this clear connection. I thought, okay, every single pebble that, that is all around my feet and that I hold in my hands, every single pebble represents a time that I've chosen to close my heart every single time. And there's an uncountable amount of them. And so my job is to literally hold each pebble, put it against my heart, let each pebble melt through me and actually feel whatever trauma I've occurred. And it could be anything. We're traumatized by the media, we're traumatized by parents, God bless them, they do everything they can. We are so traumatized as human beings and we're either looking at it or we're not looking at it. And I just felt like, okay, for the rest of my life, like as long as I am doing the honor of actually taking each pebble one at a time, putting it into my heart, doing the work to feel that pebble, let it melt through, then at some point in my life, I'm going to have a more open degree of my heart. And that to me was like the ultimate medicine because I think I wrote down on the journal, which by the way, the journal was lost three days ago. So how's that for the ultimate fucking lesson in non attachment? But on the journal I wrote, as long as I have pebbles in my hands and pebbles at my feet, I'm on the right path. As long as I'm actually looking at the pebbles that I hold on to that are at my feet, then I'm doing the best that I can to be fully, fully embodied man.

Beautiful. And just like last time, I'm, and I would say even more so this time I'm totally inspired to have this experience. And so what would you, like, how do you prepare for something like this like the four day fast or.

I don't think anybody can fully prepare for a four day fast other than just fasting. You know, like maybe a one or two day fast, but you're going to meet parts of yourself because you know, when, when the cells have nothing, when there's no glycogen, when the liver is empty, whatever is being withheld, like in a breathwork ceremony or a psychedelic ceremony, it's the same kind of dieta that people do when they prep for plant medicine. Whatever's there, without distraction of food or stimulus or TV or media, it's going to come up. So I would say float tanks, Vipassana, loving kindness, meditation, breath work. Like before you do a deep quest or a deep fast like that, you need to like truly prepare yourself on a mental, spiritual, emotional level. So I would say all of those things that I mentioned and also be in tune with the mystery. You know, be in tune with the mystery, because mystery is going to come and serve you and you have to be okay with completely not knowing what's going on.

John, talk a little bit more about fasting, give us a little more of the science behind it. And you have some amazing protocols at mitozen for that.

Yeah, thanks. So, beautiful story. One of the things that is kind of coming to me is that you're taking enough time to process all that and take it all the way through to a level that you wouldn't normally be able to do and you know, a situation with normal everyday life, like everything that you talked about, most of which I've touched on to some degree myself at some point. Right, but to put it all together and then to be able to integrate it. Right. So like you go and do plant medicine or a psychedelic experience and then a lot of people begin to start to integrate this over, you know, usually long periods of time, but you're able to just compress all that into. I mean, I think it's beautiful. I've never, I've not done one I'd like to. It is a big commitment and I, I can see the preparation as being super important because, you know, it kind of goes in lines with this whole idea I have about the three legged stool. I know you and I talked about it on the podcast. I think Luke, we talked, we probably talked about it on, on the one we did as well, Cal. But it's, it's, it's this idea of the vitality of the body, the mastering of the mind. Right. And within that I talk about forgiving those filters that we filter Life through and then the direct experience of God. Right. And so within that, that leg of the stool, with vitality of the body, to be able to improve that, that vitality of the body, you're going to be happier, you're going to be able to process information. There's going to be parts of your brain that's going to be able to communicate with each other. Right. You're going to be able to make sense of things, you're going to be have a more powerful divine direction, connection to the divine, so everything is going to work better. And I think that when you talk to these really, these Ascended Masters, they will say, oh well, once you get to a certain level, there's not as much of that that's necessary. But I think for most of us, when we first start out on this journey, getting that vitality of the body is super important and particularly the vitality of the brain and nervous system. So fasting is one of the things that we did when we were a thousand years ago, or it's like we were hunters, we would hunt and we would be starving. Were we full a belly full of pizza when we were hunting for food back when we were cavemen?

Hence the elevated heart rate.

Right.

It's almost like nature telling us, go eat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's the ketones that are produced that's an alternative form of energy that are way more of an advanced fuel source for the brain. So if the brain is able to run on ketones, it's going to be a lot more efficient than if it were to be running on oxygen and I'm sorry, glucose. And so that would be carbohydrates and, and such. So becoming fat adapted is the idea of starting to do fasting so you can intermittent fast where you can restrict your feeding window, you can start doing. In our clinic, we often will have people do a 24 hour fast once a week. One thing that we're doing new that seems to be really easy for a lot of people to execute is just one moderate meal a day for two straight days once a week. And it's fairly easy for people to kind of wrap their head around it and to actually do. But the point is that you're giving yourself a lot more time to go into that default of extracting ketones from fat and protein.

Quick question, in your opinion, 24 hour fast, what things break the fast or what things can you consume that you would say, ah, it doesn't really break the fast.

Well, so there's two considerations with fasting. One, is that you're in ketosis. And the other one is concerning something called autophagy, which is this cell, this cleaning, recycling mechanism. So if you were to say fast and then you were to take some proteins in, you're still going to be in ketosis, or if you're to eat some, some fat, you're still going to be in ketosis, likely. But you, you might not be heavy into what's called autophagy. So the both of those are actually really important. And it's a. And it's an important part of why you want to fast. Some people want to do it to do. To lose weight, right? So if you think about getting your body wanting to utilize ketones where ketones are stored in fat. So, like, that's going to be an area that you know where the, the body's going to start looking at its fat storage as a viable source of fuel. So, yeah, I think for anybody doing any spiritual work, I think just the idea of really efficiently taking energy as a fuel source from ketones is a big key component. One other little hack that I've been working with at the clinic that seems to be working really well is taking exogenous ketones for a week or two and just doing everything the same. Right. They're just keeping their diet the same.

Do you have a brand that you like?

There's a lot of different brands, right? I don't think it really matters. I think that there's some that might be better than others, but there's a lot. Even just on Amazon, I've used the.

Hvmn, I think it's called this kind of looks like it says human. Anyway.

Seems it's like a ketone ester. So ketone esters are going to be a lot more expensive. They are going to work a little bit better. The ketone salts, they're less expensive. But the point is that you want to train your body to see ketones as energy. This is a hurdle that a lot of people have a hard time getting through, which makes the fasting so difficult. So by just taking exogenous ketones at any point during the day, you take it a couple times a day, you're going to start training the body to see ketones as energy. And then when you start dipping into longer fasting zones, I found my patients are a lot, you know, it's a lot easier for them.

I never considered that. One other important question for a lot of the listeners out there, does feel free break the fast? Please say no.

No, I don't know, not at all true.

There's very little carbohydrates in it. It's like five calories. So. Okay.

No, I think it's a safe fasting product. And you know, the kratom, that's one of the ingredients in there, actually suppresses appetite, so can actually be somewhat helpful to fasting.

It completely suppresses appetite. We don't really kind of market it that way because I guess there's some. Some we don't necessarily want to be out there as like a appetizer present.

Yeah, well, you can't make claims either.

And you can't make claims. I can say it.

Because I don't have any interest in the company.

Yeah.

For. I like to use the product.

Right.

But yeah, it can be a great crutch to get through fasting and partner.

Let's call it a partner crutch. Feels. I don't like that. Yeah.

It can be a good partner support.

Yes. Thank you. Perfect. Luke, been quiet over there. We haven't really involved you in the conversation. I know you're taking it all in.

This is the quietest I've ever been on a podcast.

Yeah, it's true. How does it feel?

It's nice, actually. I'm over here just kind of around, you know, petting the dog. Got my.

What do you call this volcano? You. Get a bag.

Get a bag.

Got my bag. Got my. Feel free. I'm just enjoying listening. What do I have to say about any of that? I have to say something on the note of fasting that I found interesting. There was a point many years ago when I first discovered bulletproof coffee. Coffee used to make me super kind of edgy and I didn't really like it. And then I heard Dave Asprey talking about putting the grass fed butter and MCT in your coffee. So I started doing that every morning. And I was really excited because I didn't feel like eating for a long time. I mean, like 3 o' clock in the afternoon, everyone in the office would be like, we gotta order lunch. When's lunch? I'm like, why is everyone so food obsessed? It just crushed my appetite.

Yeah.

It started annoying me that people ate. You know what I mean? I'm like irritated. I'm like, what's wrong with you? Just have a coffee. Anyway, all these years later, I'm always trying to find kind of homeostasis and I do different experiments. I get a bit extreme when I do so just to kind of push the edges. But I really find these days I do much better if I eat breakfast and then I have a coffee. In other words, like, I didn't realize because of that intermittent fasting that I was doing with that coffee, that I had much more anxiety was way edgier. For years, without even realizing it. I think it was Jack Cruz I heard talking about a guy that I've interviewed a few times talking about, like, how idiotic it is to not eat breakfast and especially to drink coffee on an empty stomach. I forget why, but I started trying it out. So now lately I'm kind of more doing a fasting window. Just from after dinner until the next morning. I feel a lot better. And then I wake up and I'll do a few chunks of raw beef liver and I'll do like an aloe vera juice and sea salt chaser, kind of a quasi adrenal cocktail. Put a little maple syrup in there, a bunch of different protein powders, and throw all that in. Not the liver. I do the liver just like shooting back an oyster. But have a really fatty, high protein smoothie and then I'll drink a bulletproof coffee out of that. And I feel amazing. So I think, you know, every person is so different in terms of your eating windows and what feels good for you and, and also at different stages in your life. I'm a few years older now and I just find like, God, it just feels so much more relaxed when I just get a lot of nutrition right when I wake up, because I usually wake up in sun gaze, I watch the sunrise. And then right after that, you know, I'm eating kind of all day, but yet I'm still not that hungry because I'm getting so many calories, I think, and so much fat in the morning, whether it's in the smoothie, a couple raw egg yolks I put in there too. So I'm just going for like high nutritional density. And then, and then at night, you know, it's easy to kind of taper off eating. So that's my current thing.

What.

But I do see value in like what, what these guys are describing and, you know, having dedicated times where you're totally fasting on purpose, especially in a, in a dieta kind of situation.

So for like a spiritual reason, I think it's amazing. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna piggyback on what you said because I, I heard from Krista Arecchio and I've heard from a lot of people that, that when you challenge the nervous system with caffeine, depending on the health of your adrenal glands, and that can vary at Certain times in our life, intermittent fasting might actually be hell for you. It might actually raise your cortisol. It might actually have you gain more weight.

I think that's what was happening. And I've also just had a lot more stress in my life over the past year than I. Than I have previously, or a different type of it. Maybe a more consistent stress.

You had a steady drift, dude.

There was, like, stressful events in life prior to. To moving to Texas, but after I moved here and thought I was going to renovate a house in three or four months, which is now like 14 months, you know, there's like a steady drip of cortisol. So, yeah, the fasting, I'm like, it doesn't work with my current life style. But also wanted to quickly piggyback on the. The vision quest. You know, I was thinking about your experience, and when I was 14, I was having a lot of problems with drugs and police. They often go together. And so I was sent away to this therapeutic boarding school. And this was. I guess they still exist, actually, but this is early 90s, and I got sent to this school. And I've been looking into it recently because I'm in the process of writing a book, and I want to include some of the things that I went through. And now this school, it was called Rocky Mountain Academy in Northern Idaho, and it was the sister school to a school called Sidu. And I didn't know it at the time, but they were basically cults, and they came out of a literal cult, one of the most dangerous cults in American history, called Synanon, which was like a drug treatment program who were involved in all of these heinous crimes. And some of the people defected from that and formed this boarding school. So I'm sort of unpacking if I have Stockholm syndrome, because I think it was a largely positive experience for me. But now that I'm studying more about these schools and some of the things that they did, there was definitely a lot of brainwashing and mind control and different oddities that took place. And I think it was probably more traumatizing than I realized, because people other than myself don't consider themselves graduates or alumni. They call themselves survivors. So I'm looking into all that. Yeah, it's. It's wild shit. There's a bunch of podcasts about it. I mean, it's a whole thing about this school that I went to. But the point I'm getting to is one of the things we did was a vision quest. I would have been about 15 at the time. And it was like a wilderness survival thing and they called it a solo. And so you'd hike up into the mountains with a 60 pound pack, which was a lot for a scrawny little 15 year old like me. And it was arduous. You're on snowshoes, you know, you're not like, can't walk up there, you need snowshoes, the snow's so deep. And we spent three days alone in a snow cave. So we built a cave in the snow with a tarp. I think we did have some food. We had a little Sterno and then like a can of beans and some trail mix. Yeah, some trail mix that I ate all the M M's out of the first. But it was one of the more positive experiences there. And I was totally unconscious of some of the things you described, I think just due to my level of maturity and understanding. But it was immensely character building in terms of building self esteem and just self reliance and that underlying fear of death and abandonment and all of those things that go hand in hand with being alone. And I think I definitely walked away as a stronger person, a stronger kid just from being out there and being afraid and working my way through it. Hearing strange noises at night, it's a weird thing to be out alone in nature. But now when I look at it, it's interesting to see how disconnected we are as a society that just going out in nature is scary. Isn't that weird? Right? Like, I've talked to my dad who's a, you know, lived his whole life in Colorado, hunting and fishing and stuff. And, and he used to do these long treks, you know, for a couple weeks just by himself, out hunting, on a horse or whatever, and, and I've asked him on a couple occasions, like, if you just go out into the forest alone and just spend the night by yourself, are you scared? And he looks at me like, what? What do you mean? He doesn't even relate to being afraid because he's just lived his whole life in the outback. You take a city kid like me, 32 years in Los Angeles, I mean, even now if I'm on someone's property that's outside of town and it's dark and I gotta go take a piss in their yard and I hear a little noise, I think, like, I don't know what's gonna get me, right? Watching horror movies when you're a kid, like Friday the 13th, these type of movies, you know, where like you're, you're at a Cabin in the woods and there's murderers out there watching you and if you step outside, the bears are going to kill you. It's just so strange that it's so terrifying for us to a be alone and be in nature where it's probably safer statistically speaking than being in New York City on any given day or night. Right. So I'm encouraged by your story and kind of going back to that time in my life and I would like to do something like that too, you know, to, to be able to acclimate myself into being a natural human being that's integrated into the natural environment.

Did you know what comes up for me there is this, this phrase rite of passage. I don't know for the two you guys, it sounds like you went through a huge one, but rite of passages are just simply missing from modern culture. You know, you look at king war and magician lover, you know, Green and Gillette talk about this where like there's really no ceremony for 13 through 18 year old young men or young women. It just like doesn't exist, you know. And so the sadness around that for me is like we're in a society that's so connected, we have all these trappings, all this digital tech where we're quote connected. But no, it really makes me sad that no young man is being put through an ordeal. Like the hero's journey starts at some kind of tertiary point later on where they get a job and they learn how to pay bills and all this stuff. But there's no understanding of nature, there's no understanding of who they are in that self reliance. It just doesn't exist. And it's definitely a loving call to arms for us, especially with what's coming in the world right now with food and with potential future lockdowns and all this bullshit that we all take it upon ourselves to go through a active rite of passage. You know, it's missing. I know you're a father and maybe your sons have done that in some way, but holy shit, are we just looking at a cavern of space that's missing? You know, the rite of passage is gone. So I think beyond just the spiritual benefits of, of doing a quest and the ordeal of being on the mountain, you guys, like we really have to take a high level look at our society and go, where are the rites of passages for young men and young women? Because they're going to grow up traumatized and then you have like the Donald Trumps and the Joseph Bidens running the country and they've never themselves actually Looked at their own self reliance. They're just in a system that feeds them whatever they want to hear. And that's the danger of unintegrated men and women and men and women that have not been through this ultimate rite of passage. It's super necessary.

I think it's a beautiful insight. And what comes up for me is this whole dynamic between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. And the insights that you got on your vision quest was I'm so adrenalized all the time and I'm kind of addicted to that dopamine rush, that adrenaline rush. And you're not alone. I mean this is like, I think the problem of modern civilization. It's the modern day sickness and it's almost getting the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. You look at a lot of kids, they're all adrenalized, right? And as we get older, I think we get more comfortable with being quiet and calm. And what comes with that is the insights of what's in a still mind. It's like the stuff that's actually there versus just covering it up and focused on all of these other things. It's like Joe Dispenza talks about that high beta. It's that brain that is focused on a single point and it allows us to get stuff done. We're focused on doing that. We're focused on doing this versus this idea of this brain broad focus, right? We're focused on, you know, the space around our body. If you've ever been to a Joe Dispenza seminar, he talks about, you know, imagine the vast space around your body and you're, you're diverting that attention. Instead of being at a point, it's broad. And I could just imagine being out there in the forest and just, you know, getting quiet and it becoming a broad, you know, like letting everything in, right. And it's that deep dive into the parasympathetic nervous system that is so needed. And I love that.

Yeah, I do too. And that's something that I've been tracking, I'd say in the last whatever year is really pulling away from that single point focus. Trying to be present with what is and just see what is coming into the field, right? And really like with the idea of having to get things done, like having an aim and just going in a direction with your head up and paying attention versus I mean there are times when you have to put your head down and focus in, but unfortunately that is really held in high regard in our society. And I think we miss so much of what is there to support us on wherever we're trying to go. And I think sometimes we think we really know where we're going and we don't. And if we can just like head in the right direction and just see who comes into your, you know, into your space and the things that are going to be there when we're paying attention.

But you know, we're trusting in the process, right? We're, we're trusting versus the fear. Fear has got the cortisol, it's got the adrenaline right where the trust and, and just being in process, not necessarily knowing exactly where things are going to land, but trusting that you're going to be okay. Right? And that's an important spiritual evolution for me anyway, was just getting to the point where I remember there's a song that was like, jesus, take the wheel. And this was early in my evolution. I remember hearing that song, it just resonated with me. It's like, okay, you know, I don't have to be in control here. I can just let things unfold and everything works out.

Being on the jet, just like being on the journey, it's not about that destination, it's about. Because when we get there, we've all experienced it, we get there, it's like, fuck, that's it. Now what? So we kind of miss everything that happens along that journey when we have that singular focus. At least in my experience, I had.

Something come up really fast around fear. We've heard, you know, forget everything and run. And on the quest, I had something that I wrote down in my journal that I'm practicing non attachment to because I lost my journal. But in my journal I wrote, fear is for everyone's attention responsibly, for everyone's attention responsibly. Because there's irrational fear where I'm like, oh my God, Luke hates me. It's like, no, he doesn't. Or there's like, oh, I'm about to fall off a cliff. That's rational fear. So it's not forget everything and run. It's, it's, it's for everyone's attention, comma, responsibly. That's really what fear is. That's something that came through for me there. Because, man, does my brain take me to places sometimes where I'm like, dude, what are you saying to yourself right now? Like, what is this Responsible focus? Yeah, is this story real? And then I connect the dots back to my own trauma with my father and my Mother and my upbringing and being overweight and being bullied. Like there really is a lifetime of work to be done responsibly, lovingly, when it comes to fear.

I got a cool piece on fear that came to me. So I used to do all these word studies on principles like positive attributes, negative attributes are ones that we perceive to be negative. So I was really diving into fear and I noticed that so many people use the words fear and anxiety interchangeably. And so I thought, well, why does there need to be two words? Is there a difference? And then. And started looking into it, like, because I used to say, especially when I, when I first got sober, I was just consumed with fear. But as I started to unpack it, and this helps me to be able to kind of define that is fear is when a wolf walks through the door and your life's in danger. Totally natural, healthy response to be in fear and to get away anxiety is you're sitting here, there's no wolf on the property, and you're obsessively thinking about what if a wolf walks through the door right now? And so fear is in its truest sense for me is something that's immediate and righteous and appropriate. Of course the response to it matters. But anxiety is imaginary and always future based. If I have an underlying sense of anxiety, you say, what's wrong, man? You're uptight. I'm like, I don't know, I'm worried about the thing. It's not fear per se. It's really just anxious energy about something that has no basis in reality. And so I've given myself kind of a pass when it comes to fear because it's appropriate, right? If there's a car coming and you're about to get hit, you need fear. So it's not like, oh, if I evolve enough, I'm never going to experience fear. Then it becomes like, how can I really work on uprooting that anxiety? And how much kind of, as John was saying, that open awareness can I have that keeps me grounded in this slice of a moment that we perceive to be a now and then. If I'm watching my awareness and my attention and consciousness drift into something that might happen, oh, boom, there's a label for that. It's anxiety. I'm fantasizing about something that's not actually happening.

When I like that, that word fantasizing. And it just brings up, this past weekend I was away on a trip with some of my buddies and one of my buddies, and you nailed it. It's like, he just has Anxiety about shit that it's like looking at all the possibilities and just really honing in on the ones that have negative consequences. And his kids are four in one and he's like, well Cal, what happens when he's talking about teenage shit? It's like, dude, what? Like why are you even considering that right now you have a four year old and a one year old, like just be in that, you know, that part of that, that journey without, I mean that's, that's, that's been his, unfortunately has been his orientation. It's like, how do you, you know, and, and I've reflected that back to him a number of times. But how do you move someone through something like that? I mean, I think bringing that up as, look, this is just anxiety, fantasizing about some sh in the future that probably has a really low likelihood of happening. But what would you say to someone that that is your orientation in life is to look for all the bad shit that can happen versus staying on the positive and everything that's going well and paying attention to the things that are coming in. Like, do you guys have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, to me it's a matter of mind training and discipline because there's a difference in planning for the future and anxiety, right? Anxiety is when I'm projecting my emotional state into a fantastic future. Whereas planning is actually taking time set aside in this moment now with absolute presence to consider the variables that are possible in the future even though it's unknown, right? So like in that scenario, to me, a plan and be like, hey, I'm going to talk to a dad with teenagers and I'm going to say, hey, you know, what do you do when this or that happens when they're 13, 14, 16. But that's different. That's planning and sort of just building an awareness and perhaps educating oneself versus being in a constricted sympathetic anxiety about the future, right? It's like humankind doesn't progress unless we're forward thinking. We have to plan and think about the future and envision. But it's like, is my consciousness being taken into that future or am I able to stay here in my body in this moment and contemplate the future? Contemplation versus complete abandon into something that is not real, right? Because a lot of this idea around, oh, you just have to be in the now. Be in the now. Well, that's great, but you also have to envision what you want in the future, right? So for me, and I'm only speaking for myself in my Own internal practice. There's an emotional sense. When I start to feel the tension in my body grow. It means that my consciousness is leaving this moment now. Because it's living emotionally in a perceived future versus me being grounded in this moment and going, hey, I want to look into the possibilities and set my rudder in the direction of the direction in which I head or that I desire to head. So it's like it's kind of just that present moment awareness for me and how I know where I am is what's going on in my body. If I'm not breathing, for example, I noticed this a lot. I'll be driving around. I'm like, oh, I'm not breathing at all because I've left my body. I'm projecting. I'm not planning. I'm worried about something or obsessing about something that hasn't yet happened. Trying to unpack all these variables instead of really just taking conscious time where I'm setting the intention to sit, be with myself, feel whatever's coming up and plan for the future, envision the future without actually being taken there. So it's like not being in that present moment, but preparing for it and then letting it go. You know that that's, of course, the hard part, right, Is how do you. How do you not completely get lost in all these scenarios that you create in your mind? The only way to do that for me is to have a separation between the observer of what I'm thinking about and planning versus being in it.

Right?

It's like watching the mind versus being the mind. And that isn't something that most of us can just do on demand. That's where meditation. And you mentioned float tanks. It's building a practice of otherness, awareness of the observer so that you're not just completely a victim of where your mind wants to drive you. Right? It's like getting in the driver's seat. Having a partnership with the brain, with the mind and all of its brilliant thinking, but not allowing it to be the boss.

And I love the breath being a real cue because that really resonates for me when I'm not breathing. I hadn't put that together that I'm probably not here and projecting some particular outcome that doesn't feel really, really good for me.

Well, not only that, it's like a threshold. Like, you have the vitality of the body, leg of the stool that we talked about. So it's like there's certain physiological things like eating junk food.

Right?

Not breathing correctly.

Right.

And you guys are familiar with some of the cranial work I do, not having that circulation and the central nervous system having the fuel that it needs and the oxygen. So there's a lot of different things. It's a whole conversation we could have on, like, ways to set it up. Because I think some people are going to have mental issues where they're going to be focused on a wolf walking through the door, right? I mean, most of us and most of the people listening to this probably aren't having problems like that. It's probably more of that. There's this feeling of not being enough or not being worthy, not being loved, feeling alone. And so these are the things that I think you were connecting with in the vision quest. And I've connected with some of the experiences I've had. And so it's the fear of death, right? The fear of annihilation. That's what I got to at the very end. End, end. End of, like, okay, well, what does that mean? And I kept digging deeper and deeper and deeper, and I went into this incredible terror. I was doing breath work one night just at home by myself, and I finally got to that deep, deep core. I'm like, show it to me. Show it to me. And it was this. This fear of being annihilated. Like, I am no more, right? So all these events that we might look at on the superficial, you know, at face value, it's like, oh, well, that person looked at me strange. Or, you know, my, you know, my favorite grocery store ran out of my favorite food or something. It's like we have this anxiety or this fear. Are they going to get it back? But we start to look underneath that, like, what's really driving that, that fear, right? And so, you know, I would offer that you have that type of work to do where you start realizing that you're not alone and that we're all connected, we're one, that you don't die. You drop your body, but you continue on and you drop that fear of death. But then you start working on the vitality of the body, and you start getting the body able to dive into the parasympathetic nervous system and enjoy it, right? Like, swim in that and that stillness and, like, love it.

Did you bring up for me this huge concept that I've been exploring this year, and it's this allostatic load. So if I'm getting toxins from my environment, I mean, look at how many products that you use. You know, like, our libraries are filled with products, but at the core of it, it's like breath, water, movement, sunlight, connection. These are all basic things. So when Luke was talking, all I could think about was broke. So much wisdom. And you've had 20 plus years of practice to, like, do the things to.

Actually apply what you've gathered.

And for embodiment to happen, there has to be a true ownership of this allostatic load. Like, if I have deep trauma and if everything that comes at me is perceived as a threat, then it doesn't matter, like, how many biohacking tools I have or how many supplements I I use.

That red light works for that.

Yeah. But I'm curious because, man, you meet with people, some of the highest people in their games, in their lanes, they still deal with everything that a housewife or an everyday human being deals with, this allostatic load. And it really came to me when I was coming home and I was at lax. I had been in nature for, like, two weeks, and people are wearing masks and they're shouting at each other, and I'm just like, I don't like coming back to this reality. This is not good for my allostatic load. So I wonder if you could speak to that, because in your book, God know you, you have so much wisdom about sleep and melatonin, but holy shit, the angles that modernity and that modern life throws at us on a continuous basis. It's almost like in our society, there's no room for healing unless we decide we love ourselves enough to heal.

And the book is called Melatonin.

Melatonin Miracle Molecule. Yeah, we just came out on Amazon last week and hit the bestseller list.

Let's go. Because of my review, I left you.

Here we go.

Yeah, let's get a little shot for everyone watching right now on YouTube and on Luke's feed.

Get your copy. It's a big book. There's a lot of stuff in there. And one of the things I love about melatonin is that it's the primary supporter of the parasympathetic nervous system. So this entire conversation is really. We could kind of dovetail melatonin into it because when we sleep, we go into this very quiet restorative phase. And this is where the parasympathetic nervous system is most supported. And it flourishes and it gets strong. Right? So it's your autonomic nervous system that has these two sides of it, this yin and yang, this sympathetic parasympathetic. And heart rate variability is a great way to measure that. For anybody that is listening to this, get a heart rate monitor or I'M sorry? Get a sleep monitor. Monitor your sleep. I like the Oura ring, but it'll tell you what your heart rate variability is. And, you know, we're. We're obviously using melatonin. Yeah, I've got this.

We all have aura.

This is my aura ring.

That thing has got some serious aura.

That was blessed by.

It's only about.

That's a different type of aura.

Yeah, that's dope.

John's got alien technology.

Yeah. Nice.

I have the black one.

I went with matte black. Yeah. So.

But tracking your sleep and tracking your heart rate variability, these are metrics that I think are super important because sleep is more important than diet and exercise, in my opinion. You got to get that worked out. So you can take higher doses of melatonin to start actually supporting this dive into supporting your parasympathetic nervous system. This whole idea of dropping fear, which is cortisol. The exact opposite hormone in the body is melatonin. So melatonin and cortisol are like the two horsemen that are, like, kind of, you know, opposites. So. And that's what heart rate vertibility is really testing is the. Is the balance between those two sides to your autonomics. And the other thing I wanted to mention is when. When. When you were talking, Luke, you were talking about a wolf walking through the door, you know, or anxiety, you know, that something might happen. Well, your. Your system doesn't know the difference. So if you were out in the woods and you're being chased legit by like a. Like a bear, right? Or if you're sitting in your living room and you're thinking about, wow, what if I was being chased by a bear? Like, the same physical things can happen. The chemistry, and it's very corrosive. It's destructive. Like in short birth. Hurts, bursts. It's okay. It's healthy. We need it. But what happens is people get locked into a chronic state of this, where they're cortisol, and you can do tests on it. We do these different adrenal tests where we can look at cortisol and how it curves. It's supposed to be higher in the morning, lower at night. And some people have an opposite bell curve where they don't have cortisol.

I've had that before, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, they don't. You don't have the adrenal gland. You've. You've burned them out. You don't have the adrenal glands to make the cortisol in the morning. So there's nothing there. So you know, this, this conversation I think is, is an incredibly important conversation and it spiders into so many great other conversations.

I want to touch on what John was saying about the fear of death. I think this is, this is such a useful tool and some of these experience like vision quests and different plant medicine ceremonies, et cetera. But if you do an experiment, anyone listening or any of you guys, if you do an experiment about anything that you're afraid of and you just keep following the thread, what happens next? What happens next? What happens next, always at the end of that is death. It's this body we have, this nervous system in our psyche is wired into this negativity bias in order just to keep us alive. And what part of it is us that wants to keep us alive? It's the ego, right? We think of ego as, oh, we have to get rid of the ego, smash the ego. You know, we're not supposed to have one, but without that, then there's no personal identity. There's no differentiation from consciousness or from other things, right? So it's like this beautiful gift we have as this ego whose job it is to tell us where the danger is and to tell that I'm different from you and from you and from the dog. Right? It's a really interesting thought game to think about something you're afraid of or having anxiety over, you know, say the check didn't come. You know, I was supposed to get that check today, it didn't come. Well then what happens? Well, if the check doesn't come, then it might not come tomorrow. What if it doesn't come tomorrow? Well then next week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. I miss my rent, miss my mortgage payment. What happens then? Well, after a little while they're going to kick me out of my house. What happens then? I'm going to, I'm going to go have to live at a, you know, one of my family members house. Well, what then? Well then eventually they're going to put me out. Then what? Then I'm going to end up in a homeless shelter. Then what? Well, after a certain period of time and end up on the street. Then what? Then what? Then what? I'm going to be attacked, you know, or I'm going to catch some disease, predation, something, right?

Totally.

It's like you can trace everything down to death. But what if we could just die right now? Meaning, like there's a saying, I might be from Greek philosophy or something. I wish I knew the origin of it. But if you die before you die, you never die. Right. And that's getting in touch with that part of ourselves that's eternal. Not the personality, not the ego, not the intellect, not the body, not my life story, this artifact of a person that they call Luke. But what if I could get to the core? Like that fear that night you had John, of like. Oh, the fear of non existence. I'm sure there are a number of ways to get to that. I've had many experiences, specifically with 5 Meo DMT and I'm not telling everyone to do this. This is just my story where I've been at the turning point of non existence, of having the opportunity not for me not to exist. Really what it is is the ego not to exist. You know, that part of ourselves that, that creates the identity that we perceive to be us, but the real us is sort of sitting there in those situations. And when time is slowed down with the assistance of, of those different plant teachers, et cetera, or amphibian teachers. Actually I think a toad might be a reptile and a frog in amphibian. So say this reptilian teacher. That sounds weird. We have enough reptilians in the world.

Sounds like David Icke, but really yeah.

But to be, to allow oneself to be taken to the precipice of non existence and to. Then it's like a near death experience, right? People that recount near death experiences, their body dies for however long, but yet they're still there, they're observing this whole phenomenon, this whole experience and then they come back into the body and there they are with an ego again. Right. But there's a part of them that is actually experiencing that. And I've experienced that on a number of occasions where I'm like at this terrifying turning point, but my soul is not the one who's terrified. It's the ego that's afraid of non existence. And if we can find ways to allow ourselves to pass through those gateways, those thresholds and really die unto oneself. What's happened for me that's been so life changing in terms of this whole topic is to then reemerge and know that I actually died. That part of me that's striving to stay alive, that part of me that thinks there's something out there trying to kill me or that if the check doesn't come that I'm going to end up dying. And it's allowing oneself to experience the those depths of beyond fear, existential fear and being willing to say yes to non existence which is the most terrifying thing any of us could ever imagine. And it's absolutely the most terrifying thing to the ego and in any deep work that I've ever been through, the part of me that is afraid and the part of me that doesn't want to let go and the part of me that resists the experience at depth is the ego. And playing with that and getting to know that. And for me, building a loving relationship with that side of me, with the ego. And rather than trying to get rid of it, to actually get into alignment with it, in agreement with it, and a gratitude for it doing its job with absolute perfection to make me afraid of letting go because it wants to stay alive. And why it wants to stay alive is because its job is to keep me alive in this body so that I can see the human experience as an embodied soul to its fruition and its final destination. So this idea of like all of these fears being threads of fears of death, what if we could just surrender the core of that fear and continually surrender the fear of death and let go of our attachment to being here in the way in which we experience ourselves as being here. Now, I love that. To let go of the need to exist.

It's almost like you're going there. If you could just dissolve that fear of death, right. If you could just click your finger and say, okay, I know, I'm going to continue on. And you know, they've actually done studies with people where they found that they can legit, like their, their, their consciousness actually leaves the body. Like there was a study I was listening to recently where the woman who was, who was, you know, known to be able to do these, these, these out of body experiences. And there was something that was written on the ceiling way far away from her that she couldn't read. And then when she came back, she was able to say exactly what was written there. So to basically to do this where you just absolutely know 100% that you're going to continue on, that your awareness is going to continue and there's no fear of death. But then on the back of that, realize that it's all thoughts, right? That you're just the observer. You're going to sit back and you're going to watch the machine, which is the ego and the brain, that's just, you know, it's not even real. Right. It's just thoughts. That's a great recipe, you know, for, I think, the cure of this human disease that we're talking about.

Yeah. And to your point, Luke, and again, not for everyone, and I'm not encouraging everyone to go out and do this, but my experience with five MEO and psilocybin journeys and, and even I'd say to a large degree, my ketamine experience have, have allowed me to let go to a large degree, this fear of death. I mean, I, up until, I'd say my first experience about four years ago, there was a real fear. I don't want to fucking die. And then the more I worked with these different tools, I. I just, I started to let go of it and just understand that there's so much out there, you know, kind of, I mean, just what, you know, what you experience in those spaces. Like, I have no idea what's out there. And you know what? There's nothing I can do about it. And so just to let go and surrender to whatever this thing turns into. And I, I'm with you. I, I'm a believer that, you know, there's reincarnation and the soul is the soul. What am I going to do about that?

You have children. It's not, I want to reframe on everybody's, what everybody's saying, your children. It's not that you fear one day never holding them. It's that you would be sad that one day you would never hold them. So I don't know if it's really. I mean, for me it was like four years ago. Unlike Ayahuasca six or seven, where I was like, oh, I'm actually not afraid of dying either. I'm more just sad. And I didn't have Nova at the time. I'm more sad that I won't be able to make love or eat an orange or hold my son. It's honoring the sadness. And I think there's so much more realism there for anyone on any level of their spiritual journey to go, okay, am I really afraid of death? Am I really afraid of dying? Or is it that I can actually just honor my sadness that one day, you know, you won't be able to hold Alison, I won't be able to hold my son. I won't be able to live this life.

And so I think about this all the time.

There's a deep sadness there that needs, like, genuine honoring. And in turn, and this is so fucking wild in turn, if I honor my sadness and I'm not trying to get away from it, and I feel to the bottom of my sadness, there's really just gratitude that I even get to hold my son, that I even get to like, rub, sit between two bookends of wisdom. You Know, like, that is an extreme recipe for living life fucking well. If I can just honor the sadness about that. And in a way, we all feel that. I know we all feel that. Like, you know, I don't think we need to bathe in it or saturate in it, but one day we won't get to podcast anymore.

That's.

That's. That makes me sad because this is so meaningful.

That's making me super sad.

Our conversation right there won't be any more unlearning to do because we will have unlearned as much as. As much as God intended. So I. I think the reframe on that from a practical level is like, hey, every day can I meditate on death? I'm not saying we need to bathe in it. I don't need to, like, start my day going, I'm going to die. Or maybe I should. Maybe I get to. But if I. If I tell myself, okay, I don't know when I'm going to leave, I'm going to hold my son. I'm going to be with him as much as possible. I'm gonna do my work here in this world to be the best man I can be. And not in an intellectual way. Like in a really embodied, visceral, somatic way. If I can love my woman, love my son, lean into the blade, cry together, whatever. Whatever the fuck we need to do. Like, that's living. That's fucking living. Honoring the sadness is living. Being in fear is not living that sadness for me.

I know exactly what you're talking about. There are times I. In a special moment with my wife, which is a joyful moment hanging out, just a feeling of connection looking in her eyes. And sometimes I'll be overwhelmed with this deep sadness because I know that those moments are fleeting and I know that there's only going to be so many of them. And I love the falling on the sword. That's a great analogy. And these are the things I think so many of us and. And myself included, at different times, spend so much energy running away from, right? And at the core of that, what there really is is there. It's an attachment to form, right? So there's that part of me that's limited to form, that's sad about someday, that form, not interacting with this form and acknowledging that that's part of the way that we're made and really feeling into that. And for me, it's just. It's always just a letting go of attachment. It's a letting go of that attachment in that moment. And that's the sad part, is that I know that at some point the attachment that I have emotionally to that person or that experience is going to have to be surrendered. It's all transient. But then there's such a depth and a richness, as you said, of gratitude and appreciation, because in that moment, I have the opportunity to surrender that attachment, but actually still be present to the pleasure and joy and love that I'm experiencing in that moment in an unattached way. And when it comes to a relationship, specifically, man, that's the golden key. That's the secret sauce. Because if I can truly be with someone and really be bonded in healthy intimacy and stay aware of that attachment and continually surrender that attachment, so much of the tension in that bond is released just by having that awareness. That's sort of the division between infatuation and attachment and actual true love. Because true love doesn't have any expectations. Unconditional love has no conditions. It's not dependent on how many more of these moments we have to have or how you're behaving in the moment that we're experiencing together. It's truly unattached, unconditional. There's no conditions on it. And within that, man, everything gets really, really greasy, you know, smooth, it moves. There's so much less tension and friction.

Let's teach this in schools.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's codependency, really. It's codependent on people place things, circumstances, for your happiness. And the other thing that comes up to me, Josh and Luke, with what you're talking about is this almost like this emotional maturity, right? It's like you have these things come up for you, and it's like you're teasing it out to realize what's really your truth behind that. Instead of going into that knee jerk reaction of, oh, I'm sad. I had a patient that I was treating last week and this fellow had flown in. And as you guys know, I do this balloon treatment, right? And this guy just has ever.

I remember the hotel room where you did it to me, I was like, whoa, that was.

I still haven't done it.

Yeah.

So this cranial release using endonasal balloons is called functional cranial release. But so I did this. And this guy was just beyond himself. He felt so amazing. He was so grateful. And he was talking about how he was having these moments where he would just start crying, but he wasn't really understanding those emotions. He was trying to process this. And I said, I would offer to you that this was tears of gratitude. And I could almost put myself in that same place where I've been having tears of gratitude. And I was kind of checking myself because the body, the physical body is going through the sad program almost on the outside, but inside I'm super joyful and grateful, but it's showing up with just that emotion. And so how would you ever be hopeful to get that emotional maturity if you weren't able to dive into that parasympathetic to that quiet, that stillness? If you were in high beta, you know you're adrenalized, you know your adrenals are. It's like you're just going to immediately jump to that. Oh yeah, I'm just sad. I'm just this. And so I just thought that was beautiful. And you know, the yoga of emotions and the beautiful practice that you had mentioned about actually contemplating death, I actually did that in a, in a Buddhism retreat one time and it was an open eye meditation, which for anybody that doesn't know what that was, this is basically just gazing into someone else's eyes for a long, extended period of time and then just contemplating your own immortality as far as the physical body anyway. And the tears were just rolling down in this particular experiences I was having. And it was really helpful. And I think that that could be a really good daily practice for someone, even if it's just for five minutes. Just contemplate death.

It's easy for us to forget. I think we get caught up in the rat race and the tumultuousness complexity of this modern world. And then somebody wakes up and they're 79 one day and they're like, oh yeah, I forgot to live. I forgot to fucking live.

I read a crazy tweet a couple days ago. It said something to the effect of, you know, imagine Your dad is 80 years old and you could hope that he's going to live till he's 90. How many times a year do you see your dad once a year? You're only going to see your dad 10 more times. You know, it's fucking crazy.

Yeah.

You know, but. And that would make one sad, right, because of that natural attachment. But what if we could just be in constant acceptance and surrender of that reality and go, holy shit, maybe I could make it 12. Or maybe in those 10, maybe it can really matter and I can be present and put my phone down and ask those questions that I've never asked before to talk about those things that are challenging to talk about, to resolve what may need to be resolved, or just to express A deeper level of love and appreciation. I think these are the things my whole life I ran from. I was a drug addict. Just to not think about any of the shit we're talking about right now. La la la la la. You know, don't want to hear it, don't want to think about it. Just living in that really in a purely survival kind of animalistic, instinct driven place of just everything is about acquisition and avoidance, attractions and aversions. You know, everything's just threatening or you want it, you don't want it. Everything is based on that sort of valuation rather than just an acknowledgment of the temporary transient nature of everything and flowing with that. But that requires a really open heart and a heart that's willing to just break constantly.

How do you guys keep your heart open even in the deepest triggers? I remember once we were talking and you're like, with my woman, I do everything I can to just never close my heart. And I was like, wow, that's a tall order, right? The complexity of why we close our hearts is unique to each person. But.

Nothing good ever comes from closing your heart.

True, true. Yeah. What's that practice look like, Luke? Just consciously as your heart's wanting to close?

I think it's building a practice of having that awareness. When I start to feel that sense of resentment or even worse, resignation maybe of just not caring like her. I've really never gone there in my current relationship. For me, it's more like the first clue that I get from my nervous system that I'm threatened, right? It just feels attacked. And then any sense of defensiveness, that's that protective mech and you know, God given natural mechanism of emotional protection, like it's, it's really catching it in its inception and starting to tune myself for again when my breath gets short, you know, things are getting tense. To really just allow myself to feel everything that I'm feeling. But there. I think we have much more of a choice of closing our heart than we give ourselves credit for. Because I catch myself often, like I should just walk in the other room and shut the door and like not talk to her anymore. But there's, there's a sort of a premonition before I actually act that out, I have the thought, you know what I'm going to show her, I'm going to give her the cold shoulder. Whatever kind of games you play, right? And again, like through meditation and just mindfulness and spending time with, with oneself and building that witness, observer perspective and living from that more of the time than living as the subject of it. There's an awareness of acting out those behaviors. First there's like a feeling in the body. Then there's the idea. I'm going to say this, I'm going to say that, right? And catching it before you do it. That's my thing, you know, and going, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just. And also it's just refusing. It's just a non negotiable. I'm making a commitment not to her, but to myself because I'm the one that suffers when I close my heart. I have a commitment to myself in my relationship. No matter what happens, I will not close my heart. And I don't think I really have in the past couple of years that we've been together. But that's only because I've experienced the pain of so many years of doing that and having that done to me. Right. And just, you know, it's that part of ourselves that. That wants to seize up and close and protect again ignorantly, the ego thinking that it's protecting me, but all it's doing is actually hurting me in the process, you know. Now that's easier to say if you're in a relationship, I think with someone who is conscious and awake and has done their work also and isn't going to take those opportunities of me not closing my heart and putting a dagger in it. So there's a trust that is built, I think, in my relationship now where I know it's safe to not close my heart because I know and trust the person that I've opened it to. And I didn't have that kind of discernment in earlier in life where I know that it's safe. And even if there's a little emotional storm that takes place, usually not my storm, but if they're because I'm so cool, calm and collected. But seriously, I just hold, I don't know, I hold my emotions in a different way and my storms are more about like the contractor up the tile. That's how I freak out. I don't really freak out because what did you mean by that comment at the party or whatever.

But.

But when I feel the emotions starting to get hot, that's, that's like. That's when I lean in. That's when I lean into more love and more openness and, and a lot of it for me is my body language too. I really open my body if a conflict is starting to arise again with someone who I deeply trust that I know is not going to Take advantage of that openness. But if I start to contract my breathing and my body and especially my physical heart center, I open my body language and I breathe slowly and deeply and I just take it in and I just remove any conditions to my love and listen. Listening for me is everything. I mean that's like if you're a guy in a relationship with a feminine energy being, you can solve 90% of your problems by just shutting your fucking mouth. Not because what you have to say isn't valid, but it's not time yet. It's not time yet. The feminine, whatever type of body, gender it's in, the feminine heals by expressing what's inside. For me, when I'm more in my masculine, how I heal is by going inward and being quiet and thinking about what I want to process and how I'm going to work through it. So just getting that dynamic of that polarity between think and feel and giving open hearted space to the feeling that needs to take place and how I do that is by refusing to close my own heart by keeping it open no matter what.

Yeah, I love the fact that you, it's like Tony Robbins would call that a pattern interrupt, right. So like the emotion came up and then you had physical cues that you would do, which is when you were talking, I was thinking in my head, like how do I handle it? And similar, you know, like the breath opening the chest up. One of the things that I would do a lot of early on was I would almost pull my fists and hands in like this and just extending my wrist and extending my hands. For me that's a good cue to kind of relax and then focus on other people with gratitude. And so taking the focus away from me and like what does that mean to me? Or you know, it's like this almost selfish, self centered idea. Like if something you feel is being done to you, right. Where nothing's ever really being done to you, right. So you're interpreting that reality with an internal filter. And it's things that happen to you over the course of your life and experiences that you had that form our filters. And then we project those things onto other people that are really just triggers to our own filters. So we have the ability to respond however we want. It's a personal decision that you make if you're going to close your heart. And it's based on these filters that we have that we've built from children and possibly even from generational stresses. And it for, for those of you listening to this that don't believe like in, you know. Oh, they're talking about generational type of, you know, stressors or emotional. Well, think about this. And this is what really got it for me as I. I have, you know, I have a dog like yours. Like, mine's an Australian shepherd, but, like, she was. I got her as a puppy, and she had these traits right out of the gate. And I'm like, how did they. How did she learn those traits? Right? And you look at animals, they. They come right out of the womb and they seem to, like, already know what to do, right? So there's behaviors and emotions, all that's wired in to us animals, and it's passed on generational. And so there's things that have happened to our ancestors, terrible, terrible things that are wired into our DNA so that we could survive down the road.

So.

Good.

I. I have to go. I have to tell you this. Like, I was having this conversation yesterday, and it was with a friend, and I said, you know, it's so fascinating to me how some people could refute the emotional epigenetic transfer of our lineage and our pain. Everyone knows if someone's born with type 1 diabetes, it's not their fault. They got it from their genetics. How could you argue that physiologically, we get passed on things from our lineage that we also don't get emotional things passed on through our lineage. There's really no argument. You know, there could be an argument for this. And a really quick story that brings us home is this on the quest. I buried my father, but I didn't bury him from any fuck you energy or I hate you. I've done a lot of work on my dad, and when I buried him, I said, I'm burying you with kindness. I'm burying you with kindness. I've tried. You still haven't seen my son. You've made no attempts to see my son. And for all the people out there that have had really challenging family experiences, sometimes opening my heart looks like me opening my heart and crying and admitting to the person that very, very well may try to stab me again as an act of closure and saying, all right, I'm bearing you with kindness. And this is how the generational trauma stops with me. Not because I'm special, not because I'm the chosen one, but because, fuck, I have the awareness of it. I'm not better than my father. None of us are. These conversations we're having were not had in the 60s and the 70s. They were not had. So when I buried my dad, I had a ceremony and I cried And I kissed the dirt and I buried him. And I said, I'm burying you with kindness. And the only way this is going to heal our family, because it's on both sides. My Italian side, there's a lot of trauma. My English side, there's a lot of trauma. The only way that this lineage is going to heal is if I take the ownership to bury it with kindness. But it doesn't happen like that a lot. Sometimes families end because someone will say, well, fuck you. And it was an argument over a hat or something, you know, and there'll be 40 years where people don't communicate. But it's different when you bury something with kindness. Because when I bury my father with kindness, there's an open door for him to come home and be kind back. And that's a way that we heal. This generational stuff, you could, you could read Mark Wolin's work, you could explore family constellations, you could look at Richard Swartz stuff. But at the end of the day, like the decision to heal isn't coming from my parents or someone else, it's coming from me. It's my decision to bury it with kindness and leave the door open. But also, and this is a big one, keep my heart open and protect the young man and the child inside of me that I don't knowingly put myself in the line of fire with someone that's going to disrespect my open heart with someone that's going to stab my open heart. So I buried him with kindness. And honestly, it was another ten pound lead vest. You know, I'm here when you want to be kind. But I'm about to be 42 years old. I don't have room in my way of being for family or friends just a bit that are going to knowingly hurt you even after you've admitted it.

I'm glad you added that caveat. And I want to emphasize when I'm talking about not closing my heart, it's with the discernment, the earned wisdom and discernment to know who is safe to do that with and who's not. Right. And you know, you don't always know that people have their moments, right? Even the best of us might harm someone that trusts us. But yeah, that, that discernment is super important. And, and you were talking about the codependency, you know, finding that self love and self worth is the only way that I've been able to feel the safety and security to open my heart and also to have those type of Boundaries where I don't. Just because I. I didn't know what a boundary was most of my adult life because I wasn't taught that. And mine were invaded so repeatedly as a kid in so many different ways, as many of us have experienced. But growing in maturity and growing in that self. Love is the way that I've built boundaries. And those boundaries are different for different people, depending on our level of intimacy and depending on how much trust has been built. But once trust has been built and I know that it's safe, then that's when I have that sweet opportunity to deny my ego of the temporary pleasure of trying to punish someone or shame someone or shut them down or what I used to call putting them in an ice cave. Back in the day when I was less conscious, if someone I was a relationship with did something I didn't like, I would literally be like, I'm putting them in the ice cave. Like, I would intentionally become cold and closed off to hurt them because I was so hurt. And I didn't know how to process it, and I didn't know how to have a better method of selection and have, you know, different degrees of intimacy that I was willing to explore with people. But that's so, so important, I think, for people to. To build an awareness around is the boundaries. Man and codependency, man is so prevalent. And I used to kind of being a recovering alcoholic, if somebody talked about codependency, I was like, you guys are weak sauce. Like, what? It's kind of a thing in recovering addicts and alcoholics are like codependents. They're like the weak people that we trampled over when we were drinking and using. But I think that addiction is really largely rooted in codependency because how we relate to our environment and our experience and other people, some of us find relief, albeit temporarily, in numbing ourselves with drugs and alcohol. And that's the trap of addiction. You're so codependent that you have to anesthetize yourself to blunt the sharpness of how much your inner experience is on depending dependent on the external life that you're experiencing.

And then you.

And then for some of us, you get sober and you think, oh, I'm all good now. It's like, no, now you're just a raging codependent.

It's funny, but it's not funny. But it is funny because you can.

Become addicted to anything. I mean, dude, give me anything that has a potential for addiction. And if I don't watch it, I'm going to get addicted to it, including human beings and the feeling that certain human beings give me, you know.

Well, this is why I love being a podcast host. Because this isn't, this isn't. I mean it is for the people listening, but for me, I do the podcast, so I get the nuggets and I've already picked up stuff, particularly this, this practice of, you know, having this meditation practice about death. And then on the other side of that comes just a deep gratitude for those people in my life. And because of that it's going to. I'm, I'm, I'm imagining that it's going to be much easier for me to keep an open heart when I'm in those tension filled situations because it isn't to your point. It's not as simple as just turning it on and turning it off. There needs to be a practice. And I can see what you share, Josh, just like really sitting with death and owning that and then feeling that sadness and then allowing that to really feed into just gratitude that we get to experience these people, all the things that we get to. That feels really, really powerful for me. So thank you for.

And surrendering like you were talking about the addiction to stress in terms of conflict with other people. We have the opportunity in that. Staying open hearted and not wanting to win. Even when you're right, there's a juice that. There's a juice. There's a nectar that the ego gets out of conflict and out of winning and being right and showing them and teaching them a lesson. And I'm not going to be, I'm going keep to keep the upper hand. Right. There's all, all these false perceptions.

It's a bath of self righteousness.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, acknowledging the perceived benefit in that and how we're milking those emotional interactions and roller coasters, thinking we're getting something out of it, you know, and there really is like, I know so many times I experience, I'm. I'm on the edge and I see the temptation of that thing, of that feeling that I'm going to get and that's like, that it's a precipice, it's a turning point at which I have the opportunity to surrender my attachment, my addiction to that feeling that I think I'm going to get. And then it's like with just a choice of words in a conflict I'm thinking about now in just a choice of words and just the energy with which I express those words. Something that could have turned into such a Shitstorm can be so quickly and easily diffused into nothingness, and it's just back to love, you know?

But what I'm.

What I have to let go of is that it's that juice that I'm getting out of the fight and the win and being right and, you know, putting up my defenses and all of those games. It's just. It gets to be almost comical to see what the ego goes through just. Just to stay alive. Because again, back to that. What it's afraid of is dying. And when the ego feels wrong, then it feels less than. Then you're more than. Then I'm on my way out. Going back to Twitter. It's like you look at people bickering on Twitter with all this indignation and self righteousness and one upmanship, and it's just like, you watch the war of the mind, right? This mind is attacking that mind, and back and forth they go. And it's so entertaining and engaging to my mind that I'll actually watch them. I don't engage. I'm a little bit above that on a good day, but just the juice I get out of, like, the drama, Right? It's like all it is is just a bunch of egos fighting for survival.

Well, here's a thought experiment, right to your point, Luke. We get to, in those situations where we want to be right when we, quote, unquote, win the argument, how do we feel right after?

It's like, ugh, that hungover.

Yeah, yeah, you're like that. I. I got what I wanted. I proved myself right, and now it's a complete shit show. It's. It never delivers on what we think it's going to, yet we still engage in those practices.

Dude, think about how much domestic violence, and even domestic violence that ends in homicide, that starts out with, you didn't do the dishes, Right?

Yeah.

And it could have been squelched right there. You know what? Maybe you have a point. Yeah, I'll see if I can do a better job next time. I mean, just think about how. I mean, that's just in a domestic situation, but think about world affairs. You know, how this plays out on the grand scale. Because you have people as Josh described that are. Have jostled their way into positions of power that are still operating from that base nature. And these guys have their fingers on.

The trigger, like Putin.

I mean, all. All of them.

Yeah, no, it's true.

I'm ready for the big purge. I don't know about y'. All. Yeah, I'm ready for the big purge. I don't welcome violence. I'm not a violent person. But don't you all feel somewhere in your soul that we are, as a collective society, as a collective consciousness, we are kind of wobbling our way towards destruction. And also, how beautiful is that destruction? Because what's going to be after the destruction? I mean, it's. It's a wild time. You know, there's talk of food and firearms and war and all this famine, and there's still beauty in this world. So it's the ultimate duality. You know, I've had people on the podcast like, oh, that, you know, non. Duality is a thing. And yeah, that's true. Inside of the singularity, there's. There's a dark and a light. That's why the fish eats its tail in the yin yang. But I am welcoming in my lifetime, and it's not from my ego. It's. It's from my soul. I'm welcoming this. This war to have some type of a culmination, this existential war of consciousness where everyone's trying to have the most missiles, the most. This, the most, that we are so childish. We are so fucking childish. And I will own that. That childishness lives inside of me. You know, that's really, I think, where we are. And the more conversations we can have like this. I mean, my. My dream is that somebody listens to this and they're like, wow, I'm gonna sit with my friends and we're gonna speak about these things that matter as well, how amazing that would be and how much healing that would be also. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Well, there's this collective.

There's this collective consciousness, right? And so us getting out on a platform like this and talking like this, sharing satsang, that's important and more people need to do that. And one thing I'd like to circle back on. You were talking about your father when you were on your vision quest and you had released him. And one of the things that we were talking about, generational emotional stress and trauma that is passed on. There are absolutely these traumas that are passed on. And there's also traits that are passed on. And so there's a way that. That your grandfather raised your father, that your father took to raise you, that created this less than loving relationship. And so then there's the kid that's like, oh, if I don't get my peanut butter and jelly sandwich from my father, I'm going to die, or whatever. They make Up. So this idea that the father, you know, because the father issues, this is like the main male, you know, I.

Know I'm more wound for the masculine.

Well.

Or for just the man or the little woman.

Yeah. For a lot of people. So I think it's an important subject to touch on. And so the idea that we're looking at our father that, you know, well, he didn't love me.

Right.

And he's a bad guy, and he did this and he did that, and he made me, you know, the way I am, or he made me sad, or he made me afraid. Well, so it's. It's the filters that were passed on.

Right.

And when we start to sit back and look at it from that viewpoint, that it's these. These thoughts and ideas that are filtering reality, that then are giving us that response, that emotional response. Those are the things that need to be forgiven. That's true forgiveness.

Right.

Versus I'm going to let my father off the hook because he did all these things to me, made me feel this way, versus like, oh, wow, I've got these internal filters. Maybe I've got some filters that I inherited. And what are those? Let me, like, sit in some quiet meditation or go on a vision quest and understand what those filters are and then deeply forgive those. In other words, we're going to acknowledge them in a mindset of love and acceptance and gratitude. And it dissolves in that sense. And this is the work that my friend Michael Rice has done a lot of with. He wrote a book called why Again? And you can find him@whyagain.org why is this Happening to Me Again? I think was the full book, but it's this whole idea of, in the original Aramaic Bible, what Yeshua or Jesus literally came to teach. When you look at the original scripture, what he really said, and it interpreted based on basically factual interpretation, is this idea of forgiving those filters. And the projection of all of the projections is what's making things. It's what's creating all the hostility. And so this hostility is coming up because people aren't owning their truth. And so I would offer that if you are having issues with your father, that you start looking at what is that bringing up for you, and then taking ownership of that and then living that, making it bigger, swimming in it in gratitude and love. And it'll dissolve. And maybe it won't happen the first time, but you do this over time. It's going to soften quite a bit. And then that's how you dissolve that so that the Kids don't pick it up and it's going to squelch the generational glitch. Right. So all of that's going to be improved.

You know, it's something that's rad, is finding there's so many things that are rad. I just so curious what to say. One thing that's super radio is exploring the pain that we've experienced and specifically the perpetrators that were at, you know, at whose hands we experience trauma. And this is tricky to say because I'm thinking about. Okay, let me just be more specific. When I was a kid, I was groomed and abused by multiple pedophiles. And it colored my entire life and really destroyed me, you know, as a. As a kid and as an adult in many ways. And there was these different stages of reconciliation and facing that and feeling that and finding my way through it, which I probably still am in some ways. And there were these stages of forgiveness, right, where I would kind of put myself in their shoes and imagine their generational trauma. And it probably happened to them and all of those things to just kind of create a framework where it made some fucking sense. But through those different levels. And this isn't to condone any behavior, but rather to find a way to not condemn the soul of the perpetrator. Right? So condemn the actions, the behavior, but the soul behind that. I mean, this is going to get super far out at the different levels, but at the next level from the forgiveness is as I've grown to love and accept myself and really cherish who I am as a person, as a man, you know, with a lot of the kind of work we're talking about, I've explored the reality that I wouldn't be the person that I am today sitting here, that I actually am beginning to like and enjoy a little bit. It's taken a long time. It's a slow process. Had I not had those experiences, the generational stuff, the shortcomings of my caregivers, the abusers, the perpetrators. Not to say that I would invite those scenarios back into the experience again, or that I think it should have happened or shouldn't have happened, but the fact that everything that did happen, happened and made me who I am today, I find solace in that. I find peace with that only because the chain of trauma and dysfunction is being interrupted in the lifetime that I'm living now. I'm very consciously aware that through conversations like this and conversations within my own heart and mind, that that system within my family and my inner circle is being interrupted. And it's not continuing on. And so that takes from me so much of the blame and resentment that I've had for people in my life that have harmed me or people that I've perceived to have harmed me is just going, man, that was all necessary for me to get to where I am right now. And I would, I think, have less depth to my experience, you know, less empathy, less depth to the degree that I can love people and care about people and just the empathy that I have for suffering, Right? It's like when you've. When you've really explored your own suffering, then there's just such a deep level of empathy and compassion for other people. And out of that is born this desire for service and this desire to help people heal and, yeah, a sense of purpose. So it's like, I don't know, maybe if those things hadn't happened to me and I had this idyllic, leave it to Beaver, nuclear family life, I mean, maybe I would have had a good life. But perhaps the impact, the positive impact that I'm learning to have would have been to a lesser degree, right? I might have been happy just working at 9 to 5, coming home, watching football, eating a burger, going to bed, repeat, repeat, repeat. But having this thirst for God and this thirst for understanding and this thirst to take that understanding and to serve, I think is born out of that original seed of suffering and all of the suffering from the ancestors that came before me in the lineage.

That perspective is so beautiful because you've got the perspective on your own evolution, which has been enhanced by that, your pain to purpose. So we have these struggles that we deal with through life, and then we figure out how to solve them or we adapt to them, and then we learn and we're able to contribute to other people, right? And so then the other thought that I had while you were talking is the. This idea of how do you really. How do you get past, like, some of the trauma some people have had? Like, I mean, to be sexually abused, like, it's unimaginable. I didn't. I don't have that story, right? But I've had friends that. I've heard stories that are just incredible. I mean, like, fathers sexually abusing their daughters multiple times with the brother watching and the mother knowing and just crazy, crazy stuff, right? And I've actually been in a place of support with a number of people like that. And I think that this conversation is really relevant with that because it's a perspective aspect of the perspective of how that's improved Yourself. But also the other flip side to that is how do you view that other person and soften that hostility that you have towards them is understanding that they have their own filters, right? What created someone's mind to get to that point, how miserable they must have been to do something that awful? And is that their true nature? And realizing that all of our true nature is love, right? This is our true nature. And so when someone veers off of that, that's not them. That's like these generational traumas that are showing themselves. That's like all of these experiences that are creating that filter that makes them just so terribly suffering that they're going to do something that awful. And when someone that has gone through something like that starts to look at things from that perspective, I think that that's a really important aspect of healing through something that severe.

It is so easy to intellectualize this stuff. Like, we are afforded this beautiful space to have this conversation. But if someone's watching and they're present with us, just know that, like, what I'm about to say might seem esoteric, but I've heard it from so many masters, ancient and contemporary. If God wants to experience God's self in all forms, then in some way the abuse was an act of God, otherwise it wouldn't have occurred. And there's an ultimate mystery there that is a beginning path for peace. I'm not saying you have to be at peace with it right away, but just knowing that there is a grand mystery to this universe and the meaning that Luke made, where if the things didn't occur in the way they occurred, he wouldn't be able to hold people in meditation, he wouldn't be able to be a podcaster, he wouldn't be able to be of service. And the cap is, you know, I think about John Wineland losing his daughter. And he said, well, my wound is where I serve from. That's where I serve from. So that's the ultimate meaning of the mystery. And we are meaning making machines that we can take some solace in and begin the peaceful path.

You just solved the atheist's biggest gripe, which is, if there's a God, why does evil exist?

Well, it makes.

But this is. I always got to bring it back to Bufo and, you know, sorry, bring.

It back to Bufo, Bring it in.

Bring in the reptile.

I mean, to have to have even a brief experience of. Of true non duality, right, where you're really not there anymore in the sense of being a single expression of consciousness, you're just in the great scheme and web of omniscient consciousness, right? In those moments, on multiple occasions I've had. And it's something that I've carried out of that experience and integrated is really seeing that. And it makes it so trite to even try to describe it or talk about it. So it's embarrassing because it's like if you've been there, you've been there. I guess I just have to own it. It's not like I went there, I was taken there. But in terms of why does evil exist? This was such a fucking huge relief to me. Okay, if, if, if God is this eternal everythingness, right? It's just everything all at once, which is kind of what the experience of Bufo and I'm sure other potential human experiences have. Imagine that there's. That all there is is you and there's no other. So therefore you can't experience yourself because there has to be other, right? So in order for God or consciousness or creation to have the experience of itself, it weaves this vast tapestry of such a broad spectrum of what we perceive in the world of duality to be good and evil, dark and light, right? It expresses itself as everything, every potentiality, all at once, including the pedophile and the serial killer and the rapist and the mass murderer, the Mao's, the Hitlers, the Stalins. It experiences itself as all of that. And to Josh's point, so that's all God. So you can't take anything out and go, okay, this is good, this is evil, and the good is all God, and the evil is not. If it's experiencing itself in that way, the gift that, that provides us is this broad spectrum of consciousness as an incarnated soul. Where we have this school with this depth and width that allows us through our karmic propensities, some of us are driven more toward one end of that dualistic expression than the other. But imagine what a gift it is to be in a world where we have the potential to be the most depraved evil perpetrator of harm and destruction all the way up to the angelic realms of a mystic. And you can do that if your karmic propensity leads you to that in one fucking lifetime. I mean, most people, we probably don't, but the potential is there, right? Meaning the world doesn't need to change. We don't need to eradicate evil because it's set up perfectly as an earth school. And if we didn't have the opposite end of the spectrum and have evil, then there would be nothing to work with. We would be in a.

There's no contrast. Yeah.

We'd be in a celestial, angelic realm. And maybe those realms exist somewhere else. I have a feeling they do. But we volunteered and signed up to come here because we have that great expanse of opportunity to progress. Like, the world couldn't be more perfect. And that thing right there is what helps me with the pandemic and the pedophile rings and just all the crazy shit in the world that I think I got to go out and change this. I have to save the world. I have to change the world, the environment. It's like, no, it's all exactly how it's supposed to be. How do I know that? Because it's the way it is. And if it wasn't that way, I wouldn't have the opportunity to grow. We would just all be at a single level. It's like if you wanted the world to be utopia, it would be like being a postgraduate student going back to kindergarten. It would just be easy. And there'd be no opportunity for growth and expansion and elevation of consciousness. But since there's such a broad scope of consciousness, we get to play in there. And we accept the consequences of every little thought that we have and every deed or act that comes out of that thought. And so then everything gets pared down to this. I'm sorry, this is my favorite topic.

It's like, awesome.

Then everything gets pared down to this razor's edge. Right. So it's like I can monitor each thought, each feeling, each behavior, each word. Anything I do in this play of reality is going to have the consequence, the instantaneous karma loop of the decisions that I make and going back to like, not closing my heart and punishing. And so this is the gift of free will. You wouldn't need free will if there were no choices. We have to be given choices. Therefore, where I'm arriving at this moment is that all of the evil in the world is supposed to be there. And that God did in fact create it all. And there's nothing that's not God.

Yeah. And you know, I think about when I imagine these angelic realms and we just live there. Well, okay, so that becomes the baseline. So it just is. And there is no contrast where we get to experience that real open heartedness. Like, if that's all we did, like, that would become the default. And then we don't get to really have that experience. But one of the things that you were touching on, Josh, that I loved is this idea, and I brought it up before, about the wounded healer. I mean, that's the one who carries the real medicine. You get to share that with others, you know, and beyond that, what I really loved about what you shared is you took yourself out of victimhood and you took ownership of your life. Not that you, you know, called this in necessarily, but that you're able to.

Yeah, it's just like it's.

When we play victim, we're just at.

The world's mercy, totally powerless.

Yes. There is something to be said here, too. You brought up the ancient Bible earlier, and with what Cal and Luke just spoke about, it's already written in Isaiah 45. 7. I learned this from my mentor Paul.

Yeah.

Isaiah 45:7. I, the Lord, create good and evil. I, the Lord, create light and darkness. I, the Lord, do all these things. Think about what's being said there. I might have butchered it a little bit. You can look in the new King James version. But the words, the energy of what I'm saying, whether I use perfect words or not, is there. If God, through God's word in the book that has been translated over millennia is saying, I, the Lord create good and evil, I create light and darkness in Isaiah 45. Seven, how could anyone with a Christian faith deny the fact that all is God, even the evil? If God, God self is saying that in the new King James Version, you.

Know, it's like, if this mic wasn't.

On a stand, I would drop it for you.

Yeah, beautiful. You know, it's this whole idea of projection. Right. And so if I were in a place of projecting how I feel and put projecting it to a people place and things outside of myself and I were to look at the evil in the world and want to have a good excuse of why there isn't a God or there's no divine force creating this reality, then it would be a lot easier for me. Right?

Yes.

Because I'm going to. Basically, I'm going to look at all of these negative things as a projection of this is making me unhappy. This is creating hostility within me or whatnot. Whereas when you start to really appreciate the idea of owning it and that it's filters and what we're perceiving reality, I think it softens the idea of this concept that we're talking about. And I'm an artist, so I think about painting, it's like, how boring would my paintings be if I just did white color? Like, I didn't, you know, it's like, you don't know you know, or food. You know, I'm thinking about cooking. Like, how would you know a great meal if you never had a really bad meal?

No doubt.

Right. And so, you know, from the place I sit right now, it makes such clear sense. But I know there's people that are out there that are listening to this, that it's going to take you a little bit of time for this to sink in. But I think with enough contemplation and start thinking about things in the terms that we've talked about a little bit with regards to the projection and that nobody's making you hostile. These are your own filters within yourself. And then start thinking about this idea that there has to be this. This black. You're not going to know black versus if there's no white, there's no light, if there's no darkness. So it just has to be that way, and it's perfect the way it is.

I love that thing. You've mentioned this a couple of times of someone else not being able to make you feel something. This is a really great communication tool that I use and I just observe in relationship dynamics. Well, you make me feel this, you make me feel that, and that, that's a really good one to learn how to surrender and let go of. And I was thinking as you were talking, John, I was like, I wonder right now if I could make John feel anger, if I could make John feel joy. No. No one can make me feel anything. I can't make anyone else feel anything. It's that filter I like. You keep using that word, right? It's like I take a look on your face or something from your emotional body, your body language, your posture, your words, the tone of your words, the cadence of your words. My filter takes that. And then within my own being, I'm creating the feeling absolutely. That is called rage or called ecstasy. Right? It's like that sense. And back to the victimhood thing. It's taking responsibility for my inner state, how I feel.

One tool that Michael Rice shared with me that is really cool is when that comes up is instead of saying, hey, you're making me angry, right? Instead of that projection, it's more of enrolling your. Your partner, your friend. And hey, when you do that thing or when you say that thing, it's bringing up some things for me. And I was wondering, would you support me through this? You know, and. And basically, like, it's like a yes, that's good.

But you have to regulate your nervous system and have the practices to be able to articulate that otherwise you're going to be like, stop telling me the trash isn't taken out.

So go take a deep breath, you know, relax, and then circle back and hey, when you did that thing.

So that's, that's the, the witness consciousness, right? When you have two human beings that have a little practice at that witness observer perspective, then an interaction like that becomes so different because of. And it's all in the verbiage, right? I mean, and the verbiage comes from one's understanding and awareness and perspective. But like, let's say you and I have a conflict and you, you know, made a, what I perceive to be a snide comment about my work, right? You're like, well, I listen to that podcast and you know, it's whatever. I could communicate what I'm feeling by simply saying, you know, John, I want to talk to you for a second. Can I be honest with you? Do you have a moment? Can I just really tell you what's on my heart? It was really interesting. I observed when you made that comment about my podcast, I felt this sensation in my body. I started to feel tense. You describe whatever the feeling is. It's like acknowledging and taking responsibility for what I'm experiencing. Whether or not you are being a dick or not actually doesn't matter because imagine if you're walking down the street and there's a mentally ill person and they start berating you and, and calling you names. It's like you would probably just feel compassion for them. Oh, man. Poor, poor guy. You know, it's like, ah, man, he must have some problems, right? But when we have the, you know, a deeper level of intimacy and there's, there's more trust there, and I know you, then I'm going to take your words to mean more than that insane person, even if you're just as insane as they are. Right? Because I'm going to create a context around it and I'm going to create meaning out of what you said. But it really doesn't matter if what you said was meant to be hurtful or offensive or not.

So, Will Smith, if you're out there watching this, listening to this, first of.

All, give us your address. We'll ship you some.

Feel free to respond to Chris Rock. Right? This is an alternative. Some tools.

Imagine if he would have grabbed the microphone and done the nonviolent communication framework, how that could have shifted the way.

The world is, that non violent communication.

Yeah, I mean, I've heard that word.

I've always curious.

Communication is where you, you first reflect. Then you say, you know, like, John Gray tells us this on your podcast and mine. Shameless plug. Listen to Luke and my interview individually.

I've learned so much from that with John Gray.

I mean, oh my God, dude. So. And then after you have, after you have validated their emotion, you say, hey, you know, okay, tell me more about that. Then you provide empathy. The third phrase must be really challenging. It must be really challenging for you to feel that way. And that can like solve. Like, Luke was talking about 99.999% of conflict. But there has to be, I mean, just like breath, work or anything. There's just, there's got to be this groove. We have this mutual friend and she talks about like the Axons and the Dendrites and the neuroplasticity. We're half beast, half spirit, y'. All. We can't just read a book and hold it up to our partner. Like, I've got to actually wear this nonviolent communication in my physical body and then I can provide it to my partner or my people. So there's a key differentiation between like, you know, us sitting here and talking about this and my prayer. Like my ultimate prayer is that I can embody what I'm saying, what you guys are saying. That's my ultimate prayer. Especially in the state of trigger, right? Because that's when, that's when the default programs and the grooves that are created in the brain, they tend to take over.

That's what makes life fun, you know, is you learn about some of these tools and then you get busy applying them, practice. And then you just, like you, you forgive the transgressions of other people or how you perceive them to be. Also, when we fall short, I mean, that's what's fun, is just kind of going, oh man, you really fucked that one up. So much for Mr. Non violent communication. You know, you just got totally passive aggressive, tried to punish them. But it's, it's, you know, it's, I think oftentimes, you know, when we, when we want to be like a spiritual person, we're focusing. Oh, I need to be more compassionate, loving, understanding to other people, which is really short lived and short sighted. If we're not learning how to do that with ourselves. I think that like that ongoing spontaneous self forgiveness is what makes it possible. Like you said, to understand we're part spirit, part animal, is to like pat the animal on the back and go, man, thank you, you know, for helping me be such a dick in that last interaction. I know you Were doing your job. But there is the higher part of myself that's going to now forgive you and we're going to move forward and we're just going to keep steadily improving. And also man noting the winds, not letting it go to one's head. But this is a practice for me that's been really slow, is actually stopping to just, just honor myself for when I do things well, you know, when I did take a higher consciousness route or diffuse something that could have potentially become volatile, etc, I think like those of us that are working on ourselves as I'm assuming most people listening to this, you know, are always kind of looking for the next thing. I need to work on my anger issues, I need to work on my phone addiction.

That's my attachment style.

Yeah, it's like, you know, we're always kind of, you know, as David Hawkins said, it's one of. I mean I could quote this guy all day long. But said spiritual aspirants and seekers are often looking at the big pile of coal in front of us that needs to be shoveled. But very few of us look behind us at the mountain that's already been moved, you know, and so there's a, a dance there of not patting yourself on the back. I did all the work, I'm enlightened, I'm done. But like, yeah, man, if you'd look any of us, you guys sitting here, anyone listening, I mean, look, if you're working on yourself, look at where you were five years ago. I mean, I was a fucking infant emotionally, especially in relationships. I mean, oh my God, just patterns and trauma and just dysfunction and just nuttiness. And it'll probably be so that when I look back at 51 year old Luke sitting here today, five years from now, I'll remember this conversation go, oh man, look at you, you know, look at, you know, whatever in a loving way, just, oh yeah, you were full of shit in that part. And you know, whatever you're trying to front you do, you know, whatever games I am playing that I'm not aware of in the moment, right. So it's like that striving for humility, a realistic appraisal of who and what we are and a desire to get better. It's a paraphrase of Bill Wilson, the co founder of aa. You know, it's like, man, just owning your brilliance and your beauty and your love and honoring yourself and also going, yeah, that's true. And you know, there's some nooks and crannies that I could, I could work into and start ferreting out some of those things that, that are not of the highest part of myself.

Yeah, dude, it's it giving. You know, I had Adam Roa, our friend on the podcast and huge takeaway for me was just giving myself grace.

Yeah.

And you know, he used the analogy of, you know, Cal used to run a 10 minute mile, you know, in your relationship and now you're running a six and a half minute mile. But if you don't give yourself grace every time there's a misstep, you take on all the things you've done in the past that haven't been good versus, oh look, I actually recognize this 10 minutes after it happened versus six months later it gets brought up and I didn't, wasn't even aware of it. And I think it's just. Yeah, I love that you brought that up, Luke. And just to think about how far we've come and that we are just on this exploration, this journey of trying to better ourselves and there's always going to be new levels, new devils, there's going to be new things that come in that are a challenge for us. But we've all, and I think everyone listening here, we're intent on, you know, working through this stuff. But it's, it goes hand in hand with giving us, you know, ourselves grace in those moments.

One prayer that I've been saying a lot that I've felt during the quest was I just put my hand on my heart and I say, God, what do I most need to learn and how can I be most humble to learn it? And if we could ask ourselves that and just make that part of our prayers, God, however, however you relate to God, like, God, please show me what I most need to learn and how can I be most humble to learn it? Because when I'm humble, I might look back at the mountain of coal and feel good. But when I'm not humble, all I'm doing is just striving for the coal. I'm just more coal. Oh yeah, I'm shitty. And then, you know, this, the shame spiral kicks in. So, you know, whatever faith anyone has, and this goes to people that travel the world, like Jason Prall, who, who did the documentary where they went to the blue zones, right. Faith, higher power was like part of the equation to live to 100 and beyond. So if I don't have some kind of prayer to God, whatever, God, not a bearded dude in the sky. But we need to. Well, we don't need to, but I feel for me that having that prayer of asking the question. And also, how can I be humble to learn it? It brings me all I ever need all the time. It's constantly bringing me humility. I'm humble all the time, and I'm.

Probably the most humble person in this room. I just want to stay for the right cookie's pretty.

Humble cookies pretty.

You guys get that? You guys, like, didn't know I was joking for a second?

No, I got it.

So. So look, we're. Let. Let's. We'll come in, we'll land this one. There's a few things that I wanted to hit on. Luke, you just did a podcast before you came over here, and it's around the. Is it Leela Quantum?

Leila Quantum Tech? Yeah.

Yeah. So for practical purposes, when people see my quantum block, is that what infinity block or.

Yeah, there's the quantum block and the infinity block. The one you have is three levels. That one. The infinity block. Yeah.

Okay, so what exactly is it?

I think Josh and I both have.

Oh, that's from there, too. This is the Leela necklace.

Man, this. This stuff is so interesting. All right, so it's challenging for some of us that are more analytically leaning and skeptical to acknowledge that there are. Are technologies that work outside of the realm of the senses in the quantum, like in the world of wave, pre matter, pre particle. So there are devices that are able to enhance or transmit or increase quantum energy. Just life force energy.

Right.

And I believe that to be true, and I believe that the Leela stuff does, in fact, do that. But it's really tricky because. Because companies, brands, devices in that realm are using energies that you can't interpret with your senses. There's also a lot of room for snake oil and bullshit little silver quantum stickers that go on your cell phone to help with the emf. And some of them might work. Most of them probably don't. So I'm always weary of stuff that's like quantum because it just inherently means that it can't really be proven. But on the other hand, how can you prove love? Like, you just. I look at my dog, I know I love her. Could I prove it? No. I feel it. I just know it's love. Right. So Leela Quantum Tech has figured out a way to sort of imprint different physical devices with quantum energy. And so the thing you have, the quantum block, essentially enhances the field of consciousness in your environment to varying degrees, depending on your proximity to the environment device. So some of the things that you can do with it is harmonize the EMF fields. I mean, after the conversation today, I was almost like, maybe I could have WI fi in my house if I have that thing there. Really? And I'm super EMF aware slash paranoid.

Didn't you paint your floors with, like, a special paint I made?

All of the bedrooms in our house are Faraday cages. You're in, like, a Faraday cage when you work, you walk in, that's Luke, your shit is dead. There's no signal. It's all Ethernet, but. But anyway, having worked with this particular brand and their stuff for the past couple years, I'm absolutely convinced that it's legitimate and has the desired effect. So what you'll feel subjectively with that thing sitting on your desk is just a more harmonic field, more inner peace, more vitality, energy clarity, less interruption of the chaotic, discordant fields of emf. So there's two ways to deal with emf. One is you block it, right? And that's possible, but then your stuff doesn't work because you're blocking the wave. But waves of EMF are very chaotic and discordant, right? They're not a harmonic wave. So some of these technologies can actually harmonize those waves and make them more biologically sympathetic or compatible. What's interesting about those guys is that they're constantly doing studies and research, double blind studies, all sorts of stuff, where, for example, they'll do live blood cell analysis with a blind study. So they have a participant that's kind of immune to placebo because they'll put a WI fi router on the other side of the wall in the other room, and they take that person's blood, they look at it in a dark field microscope, and their blood might look pretty decent. Then they turn the WI fi on right next to them. Then they take their blood, and their blood's all coagulated and misshapen and super shitty and unhealthy looking. Then they put the Leela quantum block in the room with the WI fi on, they take their blood again, and their blood's beautiful, better than it ever was before when they first walked in, you know, so all sorts of ways that they're kind of. They're observing the effects of quantum energy in the physical realm, thus proving that it's having a beneficial effect. So I kind of am very weary of. Of things like that that don't have some sort of, you know, empirical data that indicates that it is, in fact, having a positive impact. And in their case, they're. They're nuts. They also work with the nuts in the best sense. I mean, they're like, really into the research. They've also done some really great research with the Emoto institute in Japan. Dr. Masorumoto, since deceased, his run. His son, Hero, runs this lab now. And they do things with water where they flash freeze it and photograph the water crystals to detect the impact of different environmental influences. And so those guys, they shipped them some of the Leela stuff, and they were so impressed that they actually want to start selling the devices for them in Japan, because they've never seen anything that has that kind of positive and instantaneous impact on water. And your bodies are on a molecular basis about 99 water molecule for molecule, so. So I'm a huge fan of Leela. That's why I wear this necklace all the time. And there's a lot of these, like, quantum necklaces that are supposed to block EMF and stuff. And some of them might work, some of them might not. But this is one that I really enjoy because they can show you some proof.

So that's awesome.

Yeah.

Super cool stuff.

Someone comes over my house, I pour, you know, some water through my vortex or. And then I put it in the infinity block.

Yeah.

And they say, what are you doing with that chart?

You're charging that water with quantum energy. You're energizing that water. You're bringing vitality and life force into that water. Perfect. Absolutely. And structuring the water. Like you have your water and structuring unit. Right. So water will have varying degrees of order. Ordered water, which is structure, the way that water would behave naturally in nature, unimpeded by human or industrial influence. So your water structure is probably already doing it. And one could guess that you're adding a deeper layer or a further level of order to that water by then putting it in the Leela. But I put all my all. I mean, sometimes I forget, but most time, if I make a smoothie, a drink, a bone, broth, coffee, water, food, I put it in there for 30 seconds before I eat it. You might be able to achieve the same thing by just praying over it, too.

I was going to say, what about quantum entanglement, where we've all experienced this? You're thinking about someone and all of a sudden, bam, they text you or they call you. Like, how do we. How do you explain that? That there's no explanation for it yet it occurs pretty frequently for me.

Yesterday I'm like, oh, I'm interviewing Philip from Leela Quando tomorrow. I better listen to one of his recent podcasts and get up to speed, press play, sit in the car. Two seconds later, he texts me. I mean, there's a little maybe, you know, the fact that he's coming the next day, the probability of him texting me is more likely than someone I haven't seen in 20 years. But, I mean, this kind of stuff happens to us all the time. And, you know, think of how many times that happens, and you don't actually make the connection. I'd be curious. Events.

I'd be curious if you. If you prayed or you put the quantum on your altar and you specifically, with pure heart intention, prayed for someone, dude. And would that intensify your prayer?

Well, one thing that you can do with those blocks, too, is you can put intention in them, and you can also put photos of them. People. Like, when my dog was sick, Philip told me to do this. And, like, this sounds nuts. And, you know, I don't know how much this contributed to her healing when she had this tumor recently, but I printed out a little photo of Cookie, and I put her in that quantum block, and it's actually still sitting there. And I also put an intention related to revenue that I put in there, too. Use spirituality to make money. But that is. That is something I'm working on. But. But because of that quantum entanglement in the quantum realm, there's no such thing as distance. So my dog sitting right here and her photo being in that block at the quantum level, they're both in the same place. So it's like I'm having her in there because there's an energetic frequency imprint of her in that secondary location.

You know, One other way to look at it, too, is like, for instance, we do a lot of stem cell therapy in my clinic, right? And so we may take bone marrow, which is a common treatment that we might do for rotator cuff or a spinal injury or whatnot. And we laser it, right? So we laser it, which is kind of charging it up. And so laser, you know, it's not a physical thing, right? It's just pure energy. So this is another way to imprint energy into a physical, you know, physical matter. And I was thinking about. Because we have a friend in common, all of us is Khalil, right? He uses these at his smoothie shop. So they put the. They put the smoothies, you know, in the. In the Layla. So I had. When last time I. I went to the smoothie shop, and. And after talking to you about the technology, I was thinking about, you know, what is the potential if we put the bone marrow, you know.

He told me something interesting today in that you don't want to put pharmaceutical medication in there. At least, you know, you can put an aspirin or something like that, but the medication would be potentiated to unsafe levels potentially.

Or you do an IV and the IV tubing goes through the Layla, right? And so like we do ozone therapy where we ozonate blood, you know, and we run it through a box that imprints like UVB and red light and ultraviolet and all these things that really charge up the blood before it goes back into the body. So I think that there's a lot of room for advancement and our further understanding of ways that we can enhance health through some of these technologies. And I think a lot of doctors may listen to what's being said here and really, you know, think this is really foo foo. And, you know, if it wasn't for the things I've experienced to know that this is legit, you know, this is a legitimate conversation. It's actually very real science and it's been proven. And I think, you know, anybody that might be listening to this that's skeptical, you know, you start thinking about, you know, WI fi is not physical, right? But you know, it works because your phone works when you're not connected. So there's a lot of information that's all around us and that information is there and it can be. And it's going to land on basically like a receptor, right? So it's like each one of our cells has a cell membrane and those are receptors. So it's like life begins and ends at the cell membrane. And so when you start running these frequencies and these different currents and these different energies through the cell and it influences the way that the cell is going to adapt to stresses. Basically, that's the secret to health, is the adaptability of the human.

This is why I have hope for humanity. Because the more people that are doing conscious prayer and conscious connection, the more that things will change. Just like the monkeys on the island, right? The monkeys on the island, half the monkeys there were 150, 75 of them, started washing coconuts. But they were miles and miles and miles away from the other monkeys. And then, wouldn't you know it, the other monkeys, through this quantum, started washing the coconuts because they could eat more. So it's like, it is scientific and.

This, this is why it in, in my, from my perspective, we don't have to try to change the world externally, right? It's like we do the work ourselves, elevate one's own consciousness and the Rising tide rises, all the ships. I mean, this solves the whole social justice warrior problem, hopefully. Clean up your fucking room. I'm not a huge Jordan Peterson follower, but I like the fundamental. I mean, I'm not a. Not follower, but he's not like my guru or something, but. But just that one message from him, like, clean up your room, that has such deep implications of just taking care of oneself. And the hundredth monkey, the quantum entanglement. Once there's a critical mass of enough human beings with elevated consciousness, the duality that we live in will reach higher levels.

Right.

And we don't know if we'll have the same contrast, but there'll definitely be an elevation of consciousness because there already has been. You look back on the Dark Ages, you look back on, you know, the Viking hordes, the Inquisition, like, all of these times in history where, you know, even. And this is going to sound weird, but from mass murder, slavery was even an elevation in consciousness. Right. And then we hit a point where everyone. Well, many people in the world, it still exists, unfortunately. But most people can agree, like, yeah, slavery's not cool. Right. And there'll be a time at which so many of the things we experience now we'll be looking back on going, oh, my God, we were so archaic and brutal. Remember when we used to yell at each other on this app called Twitter or whatever? Right, Right. And it is. I'm firmly with you on the hope for humanity and also knowing that the only way for us to get there is for each of us to just do the work within ourselves. Imagine, like, if you could just put ayahuasca in the water supply. No, I'm kidding. But imagine what a different world it would be if people were healing their generational ancestral trauma and the trauma in their own lives. Just imagine the lesser degree of reactivity and hostility and egregious behavior we would experience as a society if people were just individually, one at a time, inspired to do their own work and their own healing and that those hundred monkeys over on the other island are going to catch it whether they want to or not.

Yeah. It'll be in the field.

Yeah.

I do want to wrap up with a red lights and kind of the benefits of that. You obviously. They're called mitolites. Okay. And then how can people work with you?

Yeah. So we hooked you up with some panels, Right? You got it on the cart out here. You've been using it?

Yes. Every day.

Yeah. How's it feel?

Great.

People ask me about it. I'm still like, Kind of I need. And just like with the water, I put like, I need a little, little elevator pitch.

John, tell them about getting the red light on your nads.

Well, it enhances testosterone, like with that mini light that I gave you. Hey, you know, why is it going to be mini down in the private.

See how John does it? Just because I'm Irish, he raises your testosterone with the red lights and then convinces you to put things in your rectum.

Clarify the. We manufacture suppositories, the red lights. So red and near infrared light penetrates through the skin. So our skin is designed to protect us from the sun. So not a lot crosses through deeper into the body, but the near and infrared light does. And that light is used by something called a mitochondria in your cell. So this is where we make energy. And those mitochondria have, like, the main job is to move electrons. They call that the electron transport chain. And the process of moving electrons, it produces energy, right? In the form of heat that the body then uses to make this currency of energy called ATP. Right? So there's four proteins inside of the mitochondria that move the electrons, and the fourth one that's just really critical is called cytochrome, cyto cell, chrome light. So literally, we are designed. Our energy metabolism, the way that we are able to do all the work in our body, relies on light to perform. And so we make that light naturally. We actually make red light. Each mitochondria does, but we don't get enough near and infrared light. We're not out in the sun enough. A lot of us may live in areas where we're not getting enough of that as well. But we had a conversation earlier about, could you just go out in the sun for a couple hours every day? Well, certainly that's going to be better than nothing. But a. A lot of people don't have the time to get out in the sun. And if you work like I do, I mean, I'm at work at like 8, you know, 8:30, you know, there's not really a lot of sun in the morning. And then I'm. I don't take a lunch. I'm literally like working all day. But I will get in front of my red lights in the morning for 15 minutes, you know, so what, what the red lights are doing, they're. It's really good for your skin, right? So it's very helpful for your skin because it's support, it's supporting the energy in the skin, at the skin cells, but it's the blood that's running through the capillaries and the skin that gets activated through the red light, that then carries that energy throughout the rest of your body. And NASA originally did a lot of the research where they were able to show a lot of health benefits and also some life extension applications with use of a red light.

Great. And where can people buy the mitolites?

So mitozen.comm I t o z e n.com we have the mitolites there. We have a few different options where there's a cart that you can buy, where you can put the lights on, you can just buy one panel and just hang it behind a door. You know that, that would be a good place to start. And, and then, you know, another really interesting thing to consider with that is the methylene blue.

Right.

Because you have, there's, there's a substance called methylene blue that super enhances this energy and it happens to have some really amazing research behind it. You know, we don't have a lot of time to get into it, but.

The product that, that they can refer to our earlier podcast, we went deep on it.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So the, the lumital blue, you know.

And by the way, you crushed it with that product. Those things are so freaking awesome. Yeah, I did one of those yesterday and I had so much energy and I'm only doing like the 60 milligram ones. These are, these are the. What do they call? Luma.

Lumital blue.

Yeah, these are the suppositories for you guys listening, which sounds weird, but it's, it's really not a big deal. You can listen to John's prior podcast on the Great Unlearn. I'm sure you guys talked about that. But just, you know, rather than trying to mega dose methylene blue to get that slow drip as it's going into your bloodstream without having to go through your digestive system, they just work, dude. They give me so much energy. And also the antidepressant kind of mood elevation.

Amazing.

Yeah, you want to be in a happy mood and have a lot of energy. I don't know of like any type of supplement that does that.

They've done huge human studies on depression with methylene blue, like large ones. And the, the company that was doing it was trying to patent some process where they had lithium in combination with it. But I, I think the results might have even been better without the lithium. But point being is that the results were incredible. And I would agree when I take methylene blue, I feel really happy, really upbeat. Really optimistic.

There's no side effects. Like, can women who are pregnant or is there anything from like a safety standpoint that we need to talk about?

Well, you know, anything, you know, you. Almost anything that you look at, it's going to be a contradiction if you're pregnant, because there's just unknowns there. Right. There's actually one study that was done with methylene blue with pregnancy, and the researcher came out and thought, and they stated that it's safe with pregnancy. Right. But online there's. There's just controversy. So my opinion is, you know, unless it's absolutely necessary, that you'd have to take it. You know, why take. Why take the chance? There's probably very little risk.

Yeah.

Okay.

But you don't want to take it with SSRIs, and you don't want to take it. Like, if you're doing psychedelic medicine, you're taking heart openers or something like that. Anything that's going to kind of work on serotonin, you could have what's called a serotonin storm. So you probably want to avoid it, you know, kind of that day at least. But the day before, the day after. I've actually got heard a lot of reports back that it's a really good blues remedy. So it's like, you know, the. The blues that you get from some heart openers. Doing some of these journeys, you know, can be quite profound. So things like methylene blue might be something to consider.

Great recovery. And then remote coaching, distance coaching, is that opened up?

Yeah, so we're doing a lot of remote and distance coaching. And as you mentioned, maybe folks are interested in kind of understanding a little bit more of what we do and what we're up to. And Advanced rejuvenation in Sarasota. Go to that other podcast. But we offer distance coaching. And so that process involves us evaluating each individual, going through and performing labs so that we have a good idea as to where people's status are. And then we'll have them be retested when necessary. Usually, like every month, we do a more thorough kind of re evaluation, but we put together protocols for them, you know, specific protocols, and then they have access to contact us regularly so that they can stay on on point, you know. And these coaching plans run from three months to six months to one year.

Great, great. And you changed your Instagram handle.

I did.

And what is it now? Remind me.

It's Dr. Spelled out Mito Zen.

And we'll link to it in the show notes. But yeah, that was. That was Luke's suggestion, right?

Yeah. It was hard to find him. I kept trying to tag him. I'm like, he has three companies plus his, his name, his last name. I always have a hard time spelling L U. I always think lie. Was that the trick?

L, I, E. Oh my God.

Not that he's a liar.

No. But that just. I always spell it out when I'm.

Lie down and relax.

I appreciate that.

Parasympathetic.

There you go. Nice. Josh, where can people find you?

My Instagram, which I'm taking a huge break from. Don't go there. Go to wellnessforce.com or you can go to joshtrent.com I'm, I'm rebranding myself, which is kind of fun. It's an interesting place to be. I love it actually. I'm like, there's a new part of myself that's coming from a deep place of not trying to be a showman or showboat and just like, yeah, Josh Trent dot com. Because that's the only thing in this world that won't change is me until I die. So, Josh Trent dot com. Go there. Wellness Wisdom podcast that we've all shared space on.

Yes.

This has been so amazing. Amazing.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for being here, guys. Thanks for coming into town.

This. You really are. Ever since I met you a year and a half ago, you're just this kind hearted connector. You know, that's one of your geniuses is you have this ability to, to connect people and, and to bring out the best in people. So I appreciate the space you have.

Thank you.

Welcome.

I love that in Luke's story. Where are they going to find you?

Luke story.coms t o R E Y and all my. I got a web store there with all my recommended products, all the stuff that I explore and experiment with and. And I also have a blue blocking eyewear company called Gilded.

I wear them at night when I watch tv.

That's some cool. Yeah.

Yeah.

Right on.

Yeah.

I finally got some samples so I can turn my friends on. But thank you for buying them while you're waiting for the free stuff samples. But I'm, I'm a huge advocate for light hygiene. So I'm, I'm really big on the no blue light at night and found a pretty fashionable way to do that. And then my podcast is the Life Stylist and been doing that for almost seven and a half years.

Damn.

Yeah. Which is just my. I don't know, I just keep going. I just keep doing it. Sometimes I think Dean should. I still do this. But then I sit down with someone brilliant and I go, oh, my God, what if I hadn't had that conversation? You know, so it's a vehicle for my own growth and evolution and get to bring a few listeners along the way.

And you were just given an award for your podcast as well.

Nice.

Yes. You know, I was. I don't know if it was an award, but I was featured on the COVID of podcast magazine last time.

That's amazing. Congratulations.

You deserve it.

It was nice. Thank you. I appreciate that. That. Yeah. You know, sometimes when you have podcasts, especially, like, well, at least two of, you know, like, you're doing your intros and outros and kind of doing the behind the scenes recording work that isn't the interview that everyone sees or hears. And, you know, sometimes you think, like, is anyone listening to this? You know, like, who am I reaching? What impact is it having? And then you hear from people that listen, they go, oh, thank you so much. I learned this and that, and I get a lot of those messages. But there's not really an industry, per se, for podcasting. So to get recognition from, you know, I guess one of the officiators of that industry was really sweet. Yeah. And helped me kind of think, all right, I'm on the right track. Just keep going. You know, it was nice, especially because I've been pretty outspoken since the beginning of 2020 about my opposition to the. The largely accepted narrative around current events. And I probably lost a couple people along the way because I just thought it was bullshit from day one. Actually, it took me about two weeks to figure that out. I did wear a mask for, like, two weeks. What's going on? People dropping dead in China, supposedly, and all that. And then after that, I was like, wait, hold up. This makes no sense. So that was nice. Also because I'm not really a mainstream podcast, even though it's fairly popular show, I definitely, like, took a turn there, but it seems like there were enough people that came along that they threw my ass on the COVID So it's cool.

Amazing.

Congrats, man.

Yeah, it was fun.

Yeah.

Well, great, boys. We did it.

Oh, my God. See, this is the kind of conversations I want to have. Like, if the forests were just hanging out, we would probably have the same conversation.

Yes.

If we kind of had the discipline to say, hey, let's sit down, have a conversation.

That's true. This is like a common conversation that we'd have at dinner.

Totally.

Yeah, totally.

So it's. It's nice. I much prefer this over, like, going to a huge party where you kind of chit chat with a few people.

Yeah.

It's nice to be able to get to know folks and experience their gifts and share yours. So thank you, Cal. I appreciate it, man.

Thanks, Cal.

Yeah. That's a wrap.

Sam.