In a sports world where every word and every action is scrutinized by pundits and bloggers alike, it is rare that an athlete at the top of the game shares the raw and vulnerable truth. On this unprecedented podcast, Super Bowl winning quarterback Aaron Rodgers opens up with radical authenticity about his challenging journey to self love, and the Ayahuasca experience that preceded his back to back MVP seasons. This is a look behind the veil of one of the greatest and most enigmatic superstars of our time, as he reclaims the narrative of his own story.

Among many other topics, we discuss the necessity to see beyond the polarity of political partisanship, his actual beliefs on the pandemic, and what it means to be a leader both on and off the field. I am honored to call him a friend and brother, and grateful to share this podcast full of laughter, tears, and most importantly: heart.

AUBREY: So, we're here today because you have a very special announcement, a great achievement that you want to share with the world. And I just thought it was the moment that you could share this that you beat me in one on one last night. 

AARON: It was not the first time. Set the record straight. Let the record show.

AUBREY: Was somewhat surprising, but nonetheless, here we are. And the world needs to know.

AARON: A lot of chances, a lot of chances. I'm just so glad it wasn't the other way around. Because you are not the best winner.

AUBREY:  I mean, I have so much experience. I would think that--

AARON: That's surprising, because you act as if it's the first time you've ever won something, a rare occasion where you beat me.

AUBREY: Man, here we are. 

AARON: Can't believe it. 

AUBREY: Yeah, this is something that not a lot of athletes do when they're in their fucking prime. This is kind of a new thing. What's the reason that you wanted to come on? I mean, I know you well, we've gotten to be really close friends. And from battling on the basketball court to all kinds of adventures through the cosmos, but we're going to get in here, we're going to tell the truth, we're going to talk about everything that's on our minds and our hearts. And not a lot of athletes do that when they're playing. So what's the reason that you're sitting here today?

AARON: Well, I think that if I can do anything today and through going on the Pat McAfee Show and some of the interviews I've done the last couple years, is to continue to give out a permission slip for people to be unapologetically themselves. And it's not the norm I would say all the time in professional sports. There's ideas out there about just shut up and dribble, or shut up and stay on the field, or just kind of keep your opinions to yourself. Just talk to me about football, entertain me and that's all I want. But there's also narratives out there for all of us that can run sometimes. And it's nice to be able to take back some of the narrative, and let people kind of see beyond the veil into who I am, what I'm about. And as much as it's extremely liberating for me, I think it also is a permission slip for other people, hopefully to feel comfortable, embracing their truth, and living their best life, whatever that looks like, and stepping into their own power. I think that's what the journey has been for me the last, well, in my life, in my career in the NFL, as the self-love has increased, the fears about the, how it's recept by people, how it's received, just continues to dwindle. And I just care more about being authentically myself to hopefully allow people to step into their own authenticity and live out their own name story. 

AUBREY: Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting thing. Because self-love is certainly a piece and also a self-knowing, which is very similar to love. Because if you really know yourself, you'll know yourself as love. You'll know the substrate of the universe is love, and you participating in the universe are love, and you'll know yourself as love, and you'll know yourself. So, that really helps. Because when people love different insults or attacks that are absolutely patently false, you won't be shaken by them. And then, because oftentimes, it's those things that maybe you're a little insecure about that someone picks on, those are the ones that really hurt. And those are the opportunities, that's where everybody's actually doing us a service, if they point out something that's in our shadow that we can take a look at. You've got to applaud that. But as painful as it could be, it's like, alright, that's great. But then there's also another aspect of a sense of injustice that can come even when you know something is absolutely false. And that, I think, is something even different than self-love. Because self-knowledge and self-love will protect you from a lot of those things, the doubting of yourself when someone says something that isn't true, that is a lot of the pain. But the other thing is this sense of like, why are you doing this? I don't understand. That can be also hard. It can also shape your kind of love for humanity itself to be attacked for no reason. 

AARON: 100%. You hit on that, it's the injustice of the false narrative that can get to you. And as humans, I don't think you can ever be 100% immune from criticism or critique entering in your heart and soul. But the ones that kind of made me stick with you are the patented lies or falsehoods or narratives about you that just aren't true. And there's always ones about all of us, but there's been some that just stick with you a little bit more than others, that it's nice last few years to really dispel some of those myths, I think, through talking and then through other people also sharing stories about me, about interactions, about my leadership style, about what's important to me, and I've really appreciated those. But the freedom I've gotten from speaking more about what's important to me is really unsurpassed. 

AUBREY: Yeah, the interesting aspect of it too is that, ultimately, while your career in football certainly is you living your name story, and you actually doing something you fucking love, and it's awesome for you, but it's actually awesome for everybody. An athlete that plays and everybody gets to watch and care, whether you hate that person or you love that person, you're welcome. You're fucking welcome. I don't think people understand that everybody, no matter who it is, if you care, I mean, the best fighters have this kind of notorious aspect, this edge, like Floyd or Connor, a lot of these people. All of these people that get people really excited, there's this edge where some people love them, some people hate them-

AARON: But they're going to tune in to watch.

AUBREY: But they're going to tune in and they're going to care. The fact that people care is a great service and a great favor. And I think when we get that also internally and say, like, oh, I'm getting you to care, you're welcome. Because we really do want to care. 

AARON: Totally. And I think that's the beauty in the sports world, the entertainment world is that so many people are so heavily invested in what we're doing. And so, they care about not just us playing on the field, but they do truly care about the person behind it I think as well. And I think that's one thing I've found and being out and about, and meeting fans. Whether it's in Lake Tahoe or the golf tournament, or we're just out and about or in Vegas, on different events I've been to, or playing the match or whatever it might be, the interaction with the fans have been really meaningful as people, it's not just that I enjoy watching you play. It's, I enjoy the book club, you sharing how important reading has been to you, or I enjoyed your stance last year during the pandemic. Whatever it might be, just those encouraging words as people started to see the person behind have been great. And it also makes you polarizing at times as well, because there's strong opinions on both sides. And I have a lot of love and appreciation for that. But, I got into football because I love the game. It was in me when I was five years old sitting on the floor watching Joe Montana drive the Niners down on the drive against the Cincinnati Bengals. I was dreaming already about doing that myself. And it's through that deep love that my life has been opened up, and so many opportunities have been given to me through this game. And through the platform that I've been given based on the way I've played, it gives me an opportunity to now talk about other things that are really important to me. I feel I can have an impact on people. And like I said, give people the opportunity, permission slip to go out and explore themselves.

AUBREY: By the time I met you, you were already Aaron Rodgers, right? So I didn't get to see the come-up. I didn't get to see what it was. Because there's a lot of 4-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 12-year-olds dreaming about making it to the spot that you're in. But something is different in the ones that do versus the ones that don't. What do you think for you were the keys that allowed you to have that vision and actually execute the steps to get there?

AARON: A lot of the things you can't measure. I have told this story before but I had dreamt about being an NFL player. And before that I had dreamt about playing on Saturdays and being on TV. I've been a huge sports fan my entire life and grew up watching. 

AUBREY: I mean probably even Fridays before that, right? 

AARON: Friday for sure. Yeah, being a starting quarterback on a Friday night, playing high school football--

AUBREY: Cheerleaders.

AARON: Playing on Asgard. Rocking those horns on my helmet, as a Pleasant Valley Viking. But I dreamt about playing on Saturdays, and my favorite team growing up was Florida State. A dear, dear friend, Gil, played at Florida State in the late 70s, early 80s. And would come over from time to time and watch games with us. Florida State was a powerhouse in the 90s, and always a perennial national championship team. And that's where I wanted to go. And when I went to the combine, the point of the story is, I was in the same group with the starting quarterback at Florida State during my time. And we both measured at 6'2. I weighed 223, he weighed, I think 217. We both ran in the 47 range and the 40. We both jumped--

AUBREY: That's why I beat you on the basketball court. More often than not, it's like you're just a little bit slower. Like 464, 47 range. That's why that first step--

AARON: Like I said, we had 466 in the clock.

AUBREY: Well, it's just a little bit fast. It's a game of fucking millimeters really at that point.

AARON: But I've always felt it's the things you can't measure that separated me. The dedication, the focus, heart, mental toughness, physical toughness. Well, that's conditioning for sure growing up and the environment you grew up in, and the focus that you have. And that's decision making, when you have opportunities in high school to wake up early at 6:00 and go work out, or go out and party on Friday nights, Saturday nights. I was waking up early, going to work out. I was staying after school throwing the football. I was always dreaming and projecting myself out. I would go into the library during breaks. And this is in the late 90s, early 2000s. And they had the dial-up internet. When you're at home, you tried to cover up with the pillows so your parents didn't know you were on the internet trying to get on AOL Instant Messenger, and trying not to tell them what your password was. You could have conversations with the girls you're trying to talk to. But I would go on these lists and look at rivals.com, and they had like the top 100 quarterbacks in the country, and the top 25 quarterbacks in California, and I was never on any of those lists. It was the best thing that could have happened to me because I never once had the opportunity to be complacent. And each step of the journey I had a very narrow focus. When I left high school, I had zero Division One offers, and had an opportunity to play at Butte Community college, that was my focus. My focus was on being the best player I could be and winning my quarterback battle that I had during training camp, and then going out and balling. And then when Jeff Tedford came on a Monday to our school to watch me and Garrett Cross, our tight end workout, my focus was be the fucking best I could possibly be. I did the best workout you could possibly imagine that day and he called me on the way back to Berkeley that night, offered me a scholarship. And then when I got to Cal, my focus was on just being an incredible student athlete, and taking care of my business, during 8:00 am to 2:00 pm with my school and then balling. I got an opportunity. And it was just that narrow focus that allowed me to stay in the moment. I think it's important to have dreams and I had those dreams on the wall. I mean I had pictures of my favorite players, and I watched on Sundays and I studied my favorite quarterbacks. But I always had that understanding of, I'm here, and in order to get over here, I got a long journey. So what are the steps I got to take in order to get there? 

AUBREY: I always thought one of the oddest questions that I've received, and I'm sure you receive is like, "Would you ever have thought that you'd be where you are right now?" And it's like, yeah, of course. Like, how the fuck do you think you're going to get here? Unless you actually think that you are able to get here. And knowing that it's a real life situation, you have to take all of the steps necessary to get there. Like no one's surprised to be in a successful position. I mean, it's not the fucking lottery. Yeah, sure, lucky breaks can happen, different fortuitous occasions can play a part in these, synchronicities, different things. But it's not like, "Wow, I never would have thought that I would be an NFL quarterback." Of course, you would. You have to. 

AARON: Yeah, of course, it's self-belief. And that's the route of confidence. I say now, when I take the field, I expect excellence. Why wouldn't you? Going out there to just play good or be efficient. No, I expect excellence when I step on the field. And that's the same thing in my life. I expect to excel in what I'm doing. Because when you develop a level of mastery at one thing, that understanding allows you to take that over to other areas of your life. It's not a mindset that you're never satiated, that you're never satisfied with where you're at, or what you're doing. But it's a deep desire to exhibit that mastery in other areas of your life. And so, why would I expect anything less than excellence when I know I'm capable of it?

AUBREY: Right. That's one thing I've noticed about you through our friendship is, and I think it's something we share in common and probably why this friendship has been so strong is we have this very similar quality is, that whatever we do, we're going to go full out and be as excellent at it as we possibly can. I mean, obviously, the basketball games we played don't actually matter, but they matter to us. I'm like, I got fucking hit in the nose yesterday, wiping off blood, like let's go, let's fucking go for it. You know what I mean? And it's that attitude that I think carries through and allows you to be excellent in the visible areas of life. But for you, this similar quality of looking at mastery in every area, whether it's different books you read, or different fields of study. I mean, I have a lot of female friends that are deeply into astrology. It's not ever been my thing. But they'll start talking in some kind of casual layman terms, and you'll just drop like the fucking third house of Capricorn and lay some shit out. And they're looking at, I don't even know if that's a thing.

AARON: 10,000.

AUBREY: And they'll be looking at you like, "Oh my god, he knows more about astrology than me." It's been cool to see how multifaceted in your understanding of life. And of course, that's got to support you on the field as well. I mean, you're the best player in the league two years as MVP. And people think that's just about fucking throwing balls, like you're out there, and everywhere you go, you have a tire and you fucking tie it up to a tree and just throw balls through the center all day. No, you're becoming a well-rounded human being and drawing in all of that into yourself, which is then allowing you to expand your mental faculties, your physical faculties, so that you could perform at a really high level. 

AARON: 100%. And I think the root of my search for knowledge in all areas is why. It's figuring out the why. And I think there's this football talk, people get up there and motivational talk or coaches. You figure out your ‘why?’. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to be great? That's an important question to ask for sure, in football, but also in life and the acquisition of knowledge. So, in any endeavor, whether it's playing one on one against you, or learning how to play chess, or studying astrology, it's, what is at the root of this? Why does it work? Why is it important? And what about it can be applicable to my life? And also, why are people who are successful at those things successful? What is it about them? What knowledge do they know that I don't know that I can acquire? And I think it's that thirst for knowledge that's led me on a path to try and master more than just my sport. But also, with my sport is to understand why things are successful, and then break them down. Simplify them into action steps that I can take to improve. A couple years ago, in the 2020 camp, and I kind of held on to this entire year because it was deeply meaningful. And also, I just didn't want to get it out there yet. But I went back and watched an old film of myself from 2010-2011. And I was coming off 2018, I had a tibial plateau fracture and a torn MCL in the first game of the year against Chicago. And it stayed with me the entire season. It actually got better, then in Detroit, I got tackled from the side weird and re-messed up the MCL. But in 2018, I was still kind of getting back to my fundamentals that I had before that. But in 2020, I was watching this film, and something clicked and I just remembered a thought. It's like a swing thought and go off, like going to have one or two swing thoughts. I remembered like a fundamental thought that I used to carry with me that was ingrained in me by Tom Clements, my quarterback coach from when I was a young player, and actually he's back with us now, about the hitch of the back of the drop, and the heaviness at the top of the drop that allows you to throw the ball in rhythm. And I watched that in the morning and went out to practice. And we were practicing at Lambeau Field, and I still remember the play. It was hard play action to the left inside zone. And I was throwing a read route, which is like a 20-yard stopper out to the left. And, as I was getting under center, that film was on my mind. And I came up off the back of that and it was heavy at the back, and had this beautiful hitch, and threw just a fucking laser. I'm getting chills now thinking about it because it was so deeply meaningful. And to most people it would be like a throwaway story. But to me, it was the most meaningful thing that happened to me. And that stuck with me. I realized it was like all these memories flashed before my eyes of throws I'd made over the last, at that point, the last 12 years as a starter. And it just clicked. At that moment, everything clicked that I had learned up until that point. And it just kind of came right back to the front of my mind. And I went on to have a fantastic camp, part of the best camp I've had in my career, and went on to have the best season possibly in my career in 2020, won MVP and others we'll get into. There's obviously a lot of other stuff that happened in 2020. But from a pure football standpoint, that moment was deeply impactful.

AUBREY: It's almost like you can get to a point where you're good enough that you can get away with not doing the thing that got you there exactly in the first place. And I think you see that with fighters, you see that with other people. I think you listened to Conor McGregor early. And I don't know Conor, so I'm just listening to what he is saying. But always when his backing for his belief on how good he was, hard work, hard work, hard work. And that gave him the belief and also the training to believe that he was unbeatable. And then I think somewhere that fundamental, then you start to just believe the end product of that rather than the belief that you're unbeatable because you're going to work harder than everybody. Then you get the end part which is I'm just unbeatable, and he's missing potentially that same work ethic. Now, I don't know for sure, but this is just all presumption. But you can see that in many aspects where you can just kind of phone it in and forget that every little tiny step that's required and like the simple thing, that simple idea that you have when you step back, and to be heavy, right? Before the moment that you throw. And it's like because you can probably throw light on your toes and fucking still throw most balls, but it's a difference. 

AARON: It totally is. And I think that's the part I'm most grateful for in my story is, it didn't happen until I was in my 13th year as a starter, this almost complacency that I can do anything on the field. And I still feel like I can. But the realization that what made me great as a young player was an incredible dedication to fundamentals, an incredible understanding of body position at all times. And it didn't just change the way I played, it changed the way I worked. Because I realized in order to do this the way I used to do that, I have to be so incredibly balanced and stable in my lower half. And it changed my workouts, it changed the proprioception stuff that I did, to where I wasn't squatting for years. And now I get under a safety squat bar and I squat 500 pounds, proactive a month ago, which is unheard of. I mean, for me, I hadn't gotten--

AUBREY: Open invitation for anybody listening to put 505 on the bar and just DM him. That's all I'm saying.

AARON: Please do.

AUBREY: That's what I would do. If I could squat 505, for sure. I would squat 501. I would squat 500.5.

AARON: Just put the clamps on there, an extra pound there. 

AUBREY: It'd be like, "Hey, yo." 

AARON: You would. You would. Then I'd put 502 on there. Fire right back.

AUBREY: All of a sudden, our whole lives derail into becoming powerlifters. "You want to beat the man, you got to out eat the man." I show up, I'm 270. Vy is like, "What happened to you?" It's like, "Don't worry, babe. I'm getting 600."

AARON: Please don't.  I don't want to go much past where I'm at right now.

AUBREY: Yeah. One of the things, we had the chance to take a really like, wildly mind-expanding trip to ancient Greece, and see all of these ancient sacred sites, and see this really holistic view of health in Epidaurus. I think that was something that was really cool to see, and actually parlays into some of the conversations that we're going to have. In that, when somebody was sick in ancient Greece. And first of all, the reason I was going to tell that story, and then I'll go into the story about Epidaurus. The reason I was going to tell that is the only condition for you saying yes to going to Greece was like, "We got to work out every day." I was like, "Fuck, I got you, man." So like, on the top of that boat, when the boat was rocking back and forth. You don't have the best sea legs, let's just say. You don't have the best sea legs. But nonetheless, the boat's swinging and banging back and forth, and we're fucking lifting kettlebells and doing skater squats and getting after it. And so, that's like a part of it. It's like the ability to still enjoy life, but still stay focused on that. And that work ethic has been something that I've seen through you, and obviously everybody who's great. That's fucking important, to be able to hold the balance of both. But to go to Epidaurus, which is another area that I want to talk about, they had a vastly different view of how to treat the body. And I think this is a universal lesson that applies and something that we've forgotten, like, deeply forgotten. And the first place that they started treating was the spirit. You would walk the temple steps and you would connect to, I think we think of the gods in literal terms, but I think they actually understood them as divine energies. Like the healing sun energy, the Christ-like energy of Apollo and all of these other deities, and find yourself in both humility and participation in the divine spirit. That was first. And then they had different psycho-spiritual technologies, like catacombs that were dark in different places. And then they moved from the spirit to the mind. And this is somebody with physical sickness, right? So, they moved from the spirit to the mind. And they had this crazy trick actually, where they were working this placebo effect. Where they would get people to go into this area where they had live nonpoisonous snakes. So snakes with no actual venom. So think like a rat snake or a gardener snake. But it was kind of darkly lit, and it was all ritualized. And the idea that snake venom could cure certain conditions was a very strong concept back there, if you get the right snake venom. So people would know what was up, and then they would get bit by one of the snakes. And the priests would be like, "You're going to be healed from this." And first of all, the adrenaline. So if you're in some kind of malaise, like the adrenaline of that experience, but then also, they were working with the placebo effect, in training people to believe that something out of the ordinary happened in this out of the ordinary thing, is going to trigger the belief that you're well. And once that belief sets in that you're going to be well, as we've seen in the hundreds of different examples and clinical studies that Dispenza writes about in the book, "You Are The placebo" from sham knee surgeries that worked and cured knees where they'd just make an incision in the leg, and then sew it back up. And they're like, "Your ACL is fixed." And they're like, "Fuck yeah, I feel great." The crazy shit like that that's happened to people imagining lifting weights with their biceps, but doing nothing and seeing like 17% muscle growth in their biceps from just imagining it. Like they got that in ancient Greece thousands of years ago. So soul first, mind next, and then body. Finally, at the very end, and we saw the surgical tools. They did eye surgery, they had stuff. Like sometimes, you need to get into the body. But we've got that kind of backwards now. And we've forgotten a lot, that I think it's time we start remembering.

AARON: I mean, yeah, I don't know where you want me to go with that. But that's exactly what hit me as well was the process that they would go through with the patients. And it wasn't, "I'm going to rush you into surgery right away and deal with that." It was, no, no, let's put you in darkness. Let's put you in the snake pit. Let's give you body work. Let's put you in the hot springs. Let's pamper you with care, and take care of your mind first, and your nervous system. And then if necessary, and it was crazy to think about, but if necessary, they would then do some sort of surgical procedure. But probably my favorite part about that trip was that as part of their practice of holistic medicine, they made space for miracles. And when miracles happened, they created or erected statues, or artwork to commemorate the miracles. And many of them are still on the walls. Now, the museum that we walked through, was based on whatever god or energy they were connecting with. Miracles happened. Sight returned, hearing returned, limbs were reconstructed. And I just love that because in modern medicine, there's not a lot of space for the miraculous to happen. And a lot of it I think, at the core is that true belief, that placebo effect that it can happen.

AUBREY: I gave you a pre-podcast stack this morning. My usual stack. How'd you feel?

AARON: I feel amazing. Amazing!

AUBREY: We fucking had a good time on that podcast.

AARON: Yeah, we did. We did. I was so clear in mind though. Was that the Alpha Brain?

AUBREY: That's the Alpha Brain.

AARON: It was, yeah. 

AUBREY: That's why me and Joe from the inception of Alpha Brain, it's like every podcast. It's the accessibility to language. Whatever you want to say actually comes through your brain, and out your mouth. 

AARON: It's nice. It's a good feeling. It doesn't happen like that all the time. Oh, I can sound smart. 

AUBREY: Yeah, it's like when your brain has an idea and it wants to, like, force it through your mouth, but the words won't work. So the stack was, Alpha Brain Black Label. This is what I do. Shroom tech. It's going to help this little workout. When it's me and him working out, sometimes he needs a little help, but generally--

AARON:  Who?

AUBREY: What are you being an owl?

AARON: Don't start that.

AUBREY: And some Krill oil. Also good for general information, keep the brain operating right. And some Active B. It's a good stack.

AARON: Great stack. I'm going to embarrass you now.

AUBREY: Let's go! Finish it off with some Protein Bites at the end. That might be probably your favorite thing. Yeah?

AARON: Smores, Cookies and Cream.

AUBREY: That new-new. Y'all don't even know about the Smores and Cookies n Cream. It's going to hit.

AARON: But just wait. 

AUBREY: Every bit of language that we have in modern medicine is actually trying to undermine the presence of miracles. It's crazy. I was talking to Dr. Zack Bush about this when we were recently in Vegas, and he's like, spontaneous remission. The fuck is that? It's a miracle. Yeah, it's a miracle. But we discredited it as spontaneous remission. Some outlier in the statistical probability of what might happen. He's like, "No, that's not it." But that's what we have to write down. The placebo effect, meaning like it's somehow not real, even though it did exactly, and you can measure it to do exactly what you would have wanted the drugs or the surgery to do, which is a positive patient outcome. But even the language itself dismisses the actual healing that's possible. And of course, there's a big medical industrial complex that's supporting this. And I think this was one of the big issues, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this. Because this is one of the biggest issues that I saw during the pandemic is, of course, there's a whole debate about the vaccines themselves. But there's a whole swath of what I believe to be undebatable, horrific medicine, which is the way that the psychology of people was handled, which was the opposite. It was actually creating the nocebo effect. There was actually a doctor that they gave airtime, that said walking outside without a mask is like walking in front of a firing line. That's the message that was going out. And like, that is malpractice actually, when you're looking at it from a holistic sense, right? It's crazy, the amount of fear and the amount of like every upside down way, that they were treating holistic health, telling people to stay away from beaches and things when vitamin D was clearly one of the highest correlations with positive health outcomes. And that's something that Bret Weinstein just keeps hammering, like the suppression of vitamin D. 

AARON: And an issue with our country, 90% of our population has a vitamin D deficiency. And we know the incredible healing effects that Vitamin D has on the body. When you have natural levels of it, the defense against disease, both in my opinion, mental and physical. We also know from Joe Dispenza, and Dr. Zack Bush, and countless others, that things like fear and stress and damage to the nervous system sticks in our body. There's places of bound up energy that are directly related to stresses or traumatic events in our body. I did a deep dive when I had some back issues a few years ago. And a dear friend of mine who is not woo-woo, not in anything, and had back issues when we were kids. And he read a book written by a chiropractor who talked about the referential pain spots in the back don't correspond usually to the issues. And there are traumatic events that happen, there's car accidents, there's major injuries, that can cause structural damages. But so much of some of the issues that we deal with, especially in the back, are traumatic events that the body stores up and gives pain signals to the brain. 

AUBREY: Yeah, I mean, there's that great book, "The Body Keeps the Score". And if you've ever been a part of like some really good bodywork, and I have been fortunate to be on the receiving end of that. And then on also, the giving end of that. Thanks to the apprenticeship with Porangui. But you'll find a spot, and as you work the tension in that spot, with steady, steady loving pressure. Could be in the shoulder, could be in the wrist, or could be anywhere, could be in the jaw, like you'll see a flood of emotion just start to pour out. And Aaron, you pointed to your job, because that was a key moment where the intelligence of my body connected to your body, said that there was something held in the jaw related to judgment and things with family. But it wasn't even about the story about it, but it was about where it was held. And the emotional catharsis of releasing that spot in the body, I mean, we both just burst into tears at that point. We could feel like there was something deep there. 

AARON: And it was released too, which is crazy. I mean, that's the truth behind this is that, when I was on the receiving end of that, I felt an incredible energetic release tied to a deep emotional wound that manifested in tears and emotions. But the energy released from that is as real as the emotion that I felt after it was released which was the true magic. 

AUBREY: It's just, it's angering and saddening to just think about everybody just swallowing the narrative, which is actually completely supported by this medical industrial complex. I mean, I think we've all seen the compilations of all of these new segments brought to you by Pfizer. You know what I mean? This is not like, not in plain sight. It's in plain sight. And again, it's like I think people get myopically focused on the vaccine, which has its nuances, and there's different data points, different things are myopically focused on the mask. But there's such a broader health issue with how we're treating the minds and how we're treating the trauma bodies, and how we're dealing with the people who are really suffering. I had a fucking tragic, like tragic thing that came up from a sister of Vylana and I, who had some deep, deep, deep trauma, family trauma. And her family who was participatory in perpetrating this trauma, as she became aware of the trauma, and as she's healing it, and as she's having difficulty eating, and she's having some conditions in her stomach, where she's been obviously holding a lot of this pain, they committed her to a mental institution. Like something's wrong. And then where they're going to put her on a bunch of different antidepressants, and put her on a bunch of different drugs. And I talked to her right before she went, and I was like, this is your chance to stand up and move. But the fear had gotten in so deep, and the family dynamics and the pressure. And that's really what our system is, it's like, what pill? What shot? What thing can we give to chase this last symptom, this last disease? Well, guess what, we're just getting sicker and less healthy every fucking day. It's not working. 

AARON: It was one of the messages that I tried to portray during the last year as well is, medicine is not a one size fits all. And there shouldn't be a blanket, "Oh, you have this? So you take this." "Oh, you're dealing with this? So you need to take that." It's what we saw in Greece about the holistic approach of not just treating the symptoms, treating the patient. What is at the core of this? And it revolutionizes the idea of mental health in general, that we need to get on an antidepressant if we're depressed, we need to get on this medicine if we're dealing with this issue, if this trauma we need to be on this. And it's just numbing us, I think, at the core to the real issues going on. And until we face those, which, thankfully, through our friendship, and through my own personal work, I've done the work. I got down in the weeds and picked them out one by one. And until we, as medical communities, start to focus on the patient and not treating the symptoms, we're going to be in this loop of a never-ending cycle where we're not actually getting people better. We're just helping people maintain, and helping people maintain at the level they're at is usually either not sustainable or not a process that involves a lot of happiness or growth. 

AUBREY: Yeah, and ultimately degrades health over time. That's the difference between a lot of the typical pharmaceutical interventions, which can be super important, and super, and like, we all have to have also. It's like a yes and, and a deep gratitude to all of these medical advancements that have probably saved both of our lives. From staph infections that you've had, to car accidents that I've had. Like, thank you, first of all Pfizer for keeping my dick hard and all of these different things that have happened, on the party nights, it's not like an everyday thing. But every once in a while, you've had a little too much to fucking party and then little Viagra helps. So, mad praise you, Pfizer. Thank you, I appreciate you. It's not all bad, but chill out. Chill out a little bit. We're going way overboard with this whole system, we need to pull it back. And that's the defining difference between that medical model versus the psychedelic medicine revolution that's happening. I mean, in the Maps studies, there are treatment-resistant PTSD, so all the pharmaceutical treatments don't work. And what they've been showing over and over in all their clinical trials is that with three sessions of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, they're not only curing, curing the PTSD and the associated symptoms, because there's a score. And if you get below a certain score, then you're considered normal. All of us carry a certain amount of trauma. But over time, even after those three interventions, those three treatments over time, the person just gets better and better and better without ever having to take anything ever again, right? That's what we want. We don't want something that you're on for life and generally on a downslope. 

AARON: How do we monetize that though? 

AUBREY: Maps is a nonprofit, and that's the way. They've survived and they've made it from donations. 

AARON: No, I mean the other side of that, that's the question. 

AUBREY: Exactly, exactly. And that's why a new model had to develop for this to even be pushed forward. I mean, Maps gets a lot of credit for being the pioneer in this. And they did it from donations. And, one of the reasons that I got into actually, the reason I got into psychedelic medicine, my dad was hooked up into Maps. Even before Maps, he was tied into Stan Grof, and some of the early pioneers. And then when Maps developed, he got to be good friends with Rick Doblin and was donating in the early 80s for initial study. So, I grew up understanding this paradigm, and saw it really deeply benefit my father. And then that was what led me to the vision quest that I had when I was 18, which took me on my whole journey, was because of that kind of baptism that he had in this other world. But now, the world is starting to see it for real. Like people reporting top life experiences on clinically-studied psilocybin intervention at Johns Hopkins, and reducing end of life anxiety, depression, addiction. We're seeing so many different things that are cures, which is an absolute revolution to the medical model.

AARON: And it's just the beginning. 

AUBREY: It is. It is. We're just scratching the surface. Because when you actually can correct those stories that are astray and the forgetting that's in the body, and in the mind, and in the soul. When you can correct those things, we're miraculous healers. We can really heal ourselves.

AARON: Yeah, the body is intricately put together and incredible at crisis management, pain management and healing itself. 

AUBREY: It's always doing the right thing, even if it's like maybe it's not doing what we want it to do. But there's an intelligence behind everything the body is doing. 

AARON: We just have to find ways to prop that up, and encourage it, and not dull it, and turn it off. We got to turn on those receptors and turn on and make room for the body to be able to heal. And I think it's through mental health probably first. So, we're healing ourselves mentally, and increasing our self-love. And then, going after those trauma sites, those stressors, those fear-bound up energy spots in our body and starting to heal. 

AUBREY: Yeah. This was a part of what, and this goes to actually the first time we met, but this desire to expand your mental and spiritual health was a part of what drew you to having interest in the psychedelic medicine path. And I think we could tell the first story of how we connected, because it was a total surprise for me. And then I'll pass it over to you to tell the story. So, I was doing a podcast with Danica Patrick at Tom Bilyeu's house. And you were there. And I was like, "Oh, fucking cool. Aaron's here. Great." And you heard me just ramble on about psychedelics as I have a tendency to do on the show. And, we finished up, it was all good, had a good show, and it was fun. And then you pull me aside and you're like, "Let me tell you about one of the best days of my life." I'm thinking, all right, fucking Super Bowl, probably some other like, maybe it was a certain game or something like that. Of course, I'm thinking like that. And he's like, "Yeah, one of the best days of my life, I took mushrooms on a beach with my friends." And I felt myself merged with the ocean. And I was like, "Oh, shit. My people. Let's go."

AARON: Yeah, the backstory to that is, I knew about you for a few years at this point. I'd seen a few of your interviews with Joe Rogan. And so I'd know about what you're into and what you talked about. And I was dating Danica, and that relationship was great for me because she is on her own journey. And spirituality is important to her. We both were finding our way, learning about different things, practicing meditation techniques. And she started a podcast, and she had various guests on. There were times where, it was during the offseason, I was working out, I couldn't go. Or just people that I didn't really know and wanted to show up for, and one day I said, "Who you got today?" And she said so and so and Aubrey Marcus. I was like, "The Aubrey Marcus? The guy from Onnit?" She's like, "Yeah." I was like, "I'm coming." Because I had this psilocybin experience, and was just fascinated. Every time I heard you talk, I was like, "Oh, this guy, it's interesting." And I just felt like, I feel like we're going to be friends at some point. So, when I got there I had this crisis of conscious where I was like, how do I seem like I'm not crazy over the top excited to meet you. But also let you know that the stuff you've said has been meaningful to me, and I'm starting my own journey. And so I got to share that with you. You were friends with AJ Hawk, who's a dear, dear friend of mine. And so, I think you came to some games, and I knew about you, we just never met. And that was like, a really fun meeting, and I got your number and tried not to blow you up too much. Because I was like, let me just not scare him away from actually being friends with me right now. But I feel like at some point, our worlds are going to collide. 

AUBREY: Yeah, I mean, I remember an embarrassing part of that story is, obviously I knew who you were, and have watched you play for many years. And I was excited as well. But for whatever reason, when I was putting your name in my phone, I spelled your last name without a D. And I was like, "You fucking idiot. You dummy! Right in front of him?" R-O-G-E-R-S. "Fucking loser. He's never going to call you now." "Doesn't even know how to spell your name."

AARON: Yeah, that stuck with me for a number of years, but just starting to give that up, I think. 

AUBREY: Oh, cool. You had to go deep into that. That is released now. That is released. 

AARON: Okay, we'll move on.

AUBREY: So, we stayed in touch for a while after that, and just kind of went back and forth. And I think it's actually worth sharing that you had an ayahuasca journey actually, before we were really in close contact, which actually for the timing of which, was right before you had your two MVP seasons back to back. So, for anybody thinking like, oh, man, these psychedelics, you're going to do them, and then you're not going to want to do what you want. So many people say that, like, "I don't want to do that. I'm a boxer. I'm worried that if I do ayahuasca, I won't want to box." It's like, no, if you're supposed to be a boxer, it's going to tell you how to be a better boxer. You really shouldn't worry about it. If you're doing what you're here to do, it's just going to tell you how to do it better, and remove the obstacles from you doing it better. You can tell that story, but that obviously was the case of the first time you did ayahuasca because you went out there on the field, had two MVP seasons, back to back.

AARON: Yeah, I don't think it's a coincidence. I really don't. I don't really believe in coincidences at this point. It's the universe bringing things to happen when they're supposed to happen. And there's signs and synchronicities all around us at all times if we're awake enough to see them and to take them in and to listen to our intuition when it's speaking to us. Pounding us in the head, saying, "Hey, dummy, wake up. This is what you're supposed to be doing." And through listening to your podcasts and following you, and hearing you talk about psychedelics and my experience on the beach, it opened me up to the possibility of doing it. I'd heard about ayahuasca. I think there's so many myths and rumors about it. The fear around it is you're going to shit yourself, it's just a big throw up fest.

AUBREY: Both not completely untrue. 

AARON: Right, but the negative framework is that, that is the experience, not the deep and meaningful and crazy, mind-expanding possibilities. And also, deep self-love and healing that can happen on the other side. And a dear friend of mine, Jordan, in 2019, went down to Peru, and did an experience and came back. And we were playing golf one day right after he got back, and he told my whole story. And I was moved, deeply moved. And I felt like now it's time. Now it's time for me to do it. So, Danica and I planned a trip down to Peru with some friends to go do it, and also wedged around an incredible, unbelievable, I'm a deep lover of history, but incredible experience climbing Mount Machu Picchu with a Quechua guide. 

AUBREY: Did you go early in the morning? 

AARON: Yeah, we went at seven and--

AUBREY: Got to catch that first train and get out there. For anybody wanting to go to Machu Picchu, catch the first train, get out there fucking early when there's nobody there because you'll feel the energy wake up. 

AARON: It was unbelievable. And just the magic there. We were up at like 5:00. And I think we got on the bus at like 5:30, 5:45 or so. And by the time I got up there and got out, it was closer to 7:00. We took seven hours, super slow and intentional climbing. There's two mountains there, Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu, that both at the top look down on the ruins. And a lot of people just hit the early bus and go right to the ruins. And it's probably amazing. But we took our time winding up this long path to the top of the mountain with these two incredible shamans, and our Quechua guide, and had a magical experience, just enjoying the nature and the magic and the majesty of the mountain and nature. And then got to the top and stayed up there for a good hour or so, just looking out at the incredible mountains around it, looking down at the ruins, imagining what life was like 600, 500 years before when the Incans were still alive and well and thriving in that environment. 

AUBREY: And they very well may have just kind of usurped whoever actually built it. That's the interesting thing about Incans, they get a lot of credit in the history books. Mad love to the Incans. Awesome culture and civilization, but they might not have built shit.

AARON: Totally, totally, but just imagining life like that. And it was very easy to do in that environment with those people we went with, and then making our way down, back down to the ruins and walking through them. And there was a lightning storm that was going on and our hair was standing up, and there's static all in the air. And it was just a magical experience. We went from that into an ayahuasca ceremony with Shipibo people and hearing the Icaros, and the room filled with mapacho. It was a magical, magical first night of just surrendering to any of the lessons that needed to come through, through the grandmother spirit of the vine. And I've told the story about my trip to Peru, and getting back into the country Argo style, literally taking off a half hour before the entire country shut down, as it was March 8 of 2020 right before the pandemic hit. But it was a very deep and meaningful couple of nights ceremony, and I came back and knew that I was never going to be the same. And like you said, you don't do that and then for me, I didn't do that and think, "Oh, I'm never playing football again." No, it gave me a deep and meaningful appreciation for life. And my intention, the first night going in was, I want to see, I want to feel what pure love feels like. That was my intention. And I did, I really did. I had a magical experience with the sensation of feeling 100 different hands on my body, importing a blessing of love and forgiveness for myself, and gratitude for this life from what seemed to be my ancestors. And I came back and the pandemic hit. So, I went from this incredible bliss in Peru to a pandemic back in the States. And the first part of if you remember a pandemic was actually incredible. Living where I live in Malibu, the skies opened up and were beautiful. It seemed like the ocean was bluer. 

AUBREY: There's a lot of positivity that came from that. We're going to take a pause for two weeks, and a lot of people are coming together. The human spirit was really shining beautifully in that moment.

AARON: That obviously got replaced by a lot of fear and uneasy and death and different things but, I really feel like that set me on my course to be able to go back in to my job and have a different perspective on things. And then to be way more free at work as a leader, as a teammate, as a friend, as a lover. And I really feel like that experience paved the way for me to have the best season of my career.

AUBREY: People often ask me, and first of all, let's just get this out of the way. This is not a recommendation for everybody to go do ayahuasca, because it worked out super great for you, worked out really good for me. I mean, when I did my first ayahuasca it, showed me exactly how to navigate Onnit, to clear up all of the different kinks in the hoses of energy to how to just trust the truth and speak it from the heart, and to reimagine the whole system from how we didn't ask anybody to send their products back if they wanted a return. We would just trust them. It's like the Daoist wisdom, trust them and they become trustworthy. All of these different principles that really allowed Onnit to be Onnit as it was. It showed me that really clearly. But first, before that, so there's lots of positive things, but it's also not for everybody. I've also seen people who were challenged in certain ways. It can be a trial by fire, and sometimes the fire will burn more than you're ready for. So, this is not a recommendation to do psychedelics. It's a very personal choice, and you have to deeply listen, so I want to just get that out of the way earnestly. As much as I talk about psychedelics, I always like to mention it because it's important. One person's path is not another person's path. There is not a one-size-fits-all medicine, as you said. So, with that being said, for me, I mean, did I ever tell you properly the first story of me doing Ayahuasca? I'll tell it, quickly. So I'm with Maestro Orlando, El Dragon de la Silva, who you know, and we'll get to that story, because we shared an Ayahuasca journey this year as well, which was unbelievably powerful with Maestro Orlando, my very first shaman. We go in this small hut, and there's no co-facilitators, or anybody who speaks English in the hut. It's just Orlando. And then we're in the deep jungle. Orlando, and then there's like 10 other people, because there were a bunch of different, there's three different shamans they could choose from. And they basically said about Orlando, this is the dragon. It's the most intense medicine. And if you want to go there, just be mindful. It's going to be fucking gnarly. And it's only like 10 people out of the 60 that were there at this retreat, showed up for him. 

AARON: So, just like me, you love dragons. 

AUBREY: I fucking loved dragons from the start. It's like my whole life was leading me to say yes to dragon guy, easy choice. We go there. And it was the most harrowing experience. Well, not the most, I've had plenty of harrowing experiences since. But it brought me through every possible way that I could die. First of all, there were bugs crawling into my eyes, laying eggs and exploding out my eyeballs. Eating my eyes and exploding out my eyeballs and brain. And I was like, I mean, I'd done enough psychedelics to be in the witness and allow perspective. Like, all right, all right, just witnessing. I'm watching a horror movie where I'm the fucking victim here. And I'm just going to watch it though. This is uncomfortable, but I'm going to watch it. And then there were eels that started, they did this thing, they had like a mouth with teeth. And they burrowed into my sides into my ribs and into my belly, and started eating my organs from the inside out. Like spinning, spinning around, so they're like a saw, like a circular saw that was trying to extract a tube. And they're going inside and just going wild, eating all of my organs. So I was like, "That's fucking horrific." And I was like, alright, I'm cool with that, I can handle that. And then the worst one was, well, not the worst. The second worst one. I was naked, fully naked. And I was bear hugging, I was climbing a palm tree, except it was filled with thorns. It was one of the thorns that have the spikes, the spikes in the Amazon. And I was sliding down it like a fireman pole, naked. And the spikes were just ripping up my genitals. Ripping me from like asshole to belly button, just spikes like coming through and I'm like, "That's fucking rude." 

AARON: And that wasn't the worst? 

AUBREY: That wasn't the worst. And then it was like, because my uncle had lymphoma. So cancer was present and it was like, okay, you've passed those tests, but sorry to tell you got cancer, and you're going to die. And I was like, no. That's what got me. I was like, no way, no way. I started feeling my glands and I was like, fucking no way, no way. I resisted it, resisted it. And right in that point of resistance, the woman next to me, she pukes. Not in her bucket, but on my feet. Right on my feet. So it was on my socks and on the mat and everything. I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me here. So I'm doing that, dealing with this revelation that ayahuasca told me I had cancer. I was like, this is fucking, this is brutal. And meanwhile, Orlando's just in the middle of the room sending this spiral of white snakes up to the heavens, this just big column of light and energy just swirling. I was like, whoa. And then the woman next to me gets stuck in a loop. And in the loop she was in, she keeps going, "I can't tell if I actually shit my pants or I imagined I shit my pants." 30 minutes straight. "I can't tell if I actually shit my pants or imagined I shit my pants." And Orlando didn't speak, hardly any English. He's got a little bit of English now.

AARON: Not much. 

AUBREY: He didn't understand anything. So, everybody's calling for help trying to explain to him what's going on. And he was like, I don't fucking know. So he just kept singing Icaros. So, I'm just dealing with this. And then finally, I was like, fuck it, if I got cancer, and that's my path, and that's what I have to deal with, so be it. And if I die, so be it. Like even then I knew that I'd lived a life where I'd lived, like I'd loved, I'd lived, I'd fought, I'd cried, I'd lived as a poet lived. And that was always my moniker, the warrior poet. I'd lived with a poet's heart, which opens the heart and all the feeling centers to feel. So I was like, okay, and then it was just like, the scene where Awa wraps up Jake in all of those spin rolls of light and just pulls him down into the ground. And I just felt held by Gaia, and just like, held and nestled. And then ayahuasca was like, you don't have cancer, silly. You're so healthy. And we love you, and you're always held. I was like, "Thank you." But that was the first of those three journeys. And I had crazy visions of alien ships beaming light under my tongue and another flotilla of snakes like pulling energy out. And then I popped into this other dimensional reality where I felt like I could manipulate my own health and manipulate future timelines, and I went to go heal. Actually Mechard had just gotten in a car accident. So I went to his body, and started doing work and healing him, at least in my own mind. And according to his story, he felt that experience and of course, this all sounds wild and magical. But this was the experience that happened from that. But then ultimately, at the end of that, it just gave me very specific instructions about how to build Onnit for the next 10 years. And of course, it worked out, just as it told me. The blueprint that I had seen there, gave me the guidance. So people ask me, like, who would Aubrey be without these psychedelic medicines? Like, I don't fucking know. I don't know. I mean, they helped me in every aspect, from my physical health, my mental health, to my spiritual health, to my visioning of my life in every way. So for me, it's been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

AARON: I think there's a lot of wisdom in there. And again, it's not for everybody. I really feel like I wasn't called to it for years and years after I did a psychedelic experience. But after I talked to Jordan, I was like, "Okay, now it's time." And after my first experience, and the disjointed, having to get out of Peru quickly, and all that, it left me with a taste in my mouth that I definitely wanted to do it again, and to sit more times than that, and that there was more lessons to be learned in growth and expansion to enjoy. And that's what kind of led us up to this year.

AUBREY: So there was a key moment, we would keep in touch kind of loosely, but I saw and this is one of those things where I like, give a deep bow to the universe and the unseen forces, and forces that guide things to the way that they're supposed to be. Because, like, I'm really grateful for our friendship, man. Really, it's a big deal. Like Vy and I moved our... For people to know how deep it is, we were going to get our proper spiritual wedding in October. And because you weren't going to be there, we moved it. And it's a very meaningful friendship, like a deeply meaningful friendship. And I'm so grateful. Because of this, I watch a lot of football, and I liked watching you play obviously, and we kind of knew each other. I watched this amazing game. You can probably tell more about the game, but I don't recall ever watching a post-fight interview. I just turned it off at that point. I like the game and it's usually uninteresting afterwards to hear everybody talk because everybody says the same shit. But you came across and there was a look in your eyes that was coming from your heart, like I could see your heart. And you know exactly what you said, and maybe the nature of the game, but I witnessed that and I saw something. So, tell us about that game and what you were feeling in that moment that I saw. Because I saw a warrior poet, I saw someone with that same heart.

AARON: Well, first of all, I love you, and I appreciate your friendship so much. It's hard to put into words what you mean to me. But every time I try and explain it to you, I get so teared up I can't get any words out. 

AUBREY: Yeah, honestly, me too. 

AARON: When you have the ability, like my dear friend Randall Cobb, to be able to talk through tears, I don't have that skill. Randall is a dear, dear friend, and he has this unbelievable ability to have the biggest tears you could possibly imagine rolling down his cheeks, and not break voice or anything. And I'm just like, “man, that's incredible.” So deep feeling and so able to communicate, I want that. Every time I try and tell you how I feel, I'd start crying. But that game was an impetus for our friendship to go from, every now and then, keeping in touch like brothers, which I'm so thankful for them. I'm so thankful Mason made that kick.

 AUBREY: So, tell us about that game. Because I actually don't remember the game, other than it was a fucking epic game. 

AARON: Yeah, we were one in one. I went to San Francisco, a great football team, my team growing up, and played an epic game against them back and forth. Sunday Night Football, which I always loved playing on Sunday Night Football. We took the lead in the fourth quarter, and then they had this big long drive, and scored to go up 28 to 27 I believe it was, with 40 seconds left. And I love those situations too, the opportunity to have the ball in the game and make something happen. I had a lot of confidence. I was doing my box breathing on the sidelines and getting in my right

AUBREY: What do you do for your box breathing? Was it fours? 

AARON: I had to do fours, yeah. 

AUBREY: So that's an inhale of four, hold at the top at four, exhale for four. You hold at the bottom for four too?

AARON: Four for four. And I was given this technique years ago and started implementing it in the locker room before the game, halftime, before a big drive, or if I feel a little out of my body maybe I'll do this. So, it's just a common ritual. Two-minute drive I do on the sidelines and then I'm slapping heads and encouraging guys, "We are going to go out and score." And we went out and hit Devonte like kind of just over the fingertips of Fred Warner for a big gain to get us going, and then hit Devonte to get us in the field goal range. And Spike did and had this just awesome feeling, fist pump around the sidelines, just this knowing like, my boy Mason's going to make this kick. Now before that, ask anybody who loves football, me growing up. My favorite games to watch, Sunday night and Monday night. Because we're not at school, there's nothing going on. I don't have to go to church on Sunday morning. So I missed the 10am games when I'm on the West Coast. But ask anybody who plays in the league, especially older guys like me, our favorite games are noon games. You wake up, you go to the city, and you play, you go home. Then you relax, chill out, maybe catch the end of the afternoon game and then get to watch the Sunday Night game and just relax. So, I say that because there's so much idle time on a Monday night or Sunday night game. You just kind of wait all day long for the game to happen, and try and how do I feel five hours to myself? Well, for me on this day, I was channel surfing and Moneyball was on. And Moneyball, always enjoyed it. And it was on, so I decided to watch it. And my favorite part of the movie is at the end. So they've lost the game. And Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are sitting there, and they're disappointed, because they put in this whole new way of doing things based upon a different way of looking at analytics. And they went through, people trashing them about how this is the stupidest thing ever, he redid his whole scouting department. This is never going to work, you have people ripping them on the radio. Then they win 20 some games in a row, and they end up making this run and go to the playoffs. But then they lose. They lose in the playoffs and they're disappointed about the season, and question everything like we always do. And Jonah shows him a clip of, man, I get emotional thinking about it. But a clip of a minor leaguer hits a home run, and rounds first, and doesn't know it's a home run. And he's trying to get to second, he trips and falls and just kind of crawls back into first base. And the point of him saying it was, he didn't realize he'd hit a homerun. It's about perspective. And Brad Pitt leans back and he says, "How can you not be romantic about baseball?" And it's just an amazing moment of being able to sit with the emotion of disappointment, but still have the perspective that you did something really special. And I've dealt with a lot of disappointment in my career, a lot of incredible moments, highs and great wins and win a Super Bowl and win a VPS. And also dealt with the disappointing losses, some that stick with you forever. But at the core of it, there's such a love for the game. There's such a deep and intense love and gratitude for what I get to do. That's just, you can't measure it. And that's why I keep wanting to come back and play, and literally pour my soul into my sport, and the relationships with the guys, and the Monday to Saturday grind, and the meetings and practice, and the side conversations and the late night texts, and everything that goes into doing what I do. I do it because I love it. Obviously I'm paid like a king. And I'm so thankful for the financial freedom this game has given me. And I'd like to think I'd given this game a lot. But in that moment talking to Michel de Foix after the game, in the elation, I jumped probably higher than I jumped at the combine after that kick went in. 

AUBREY: It’s just not that high--

AARON: Not that high anymore, yeah. Fit a couple of, maybe a ream of paper underneath the jump.

AUBREY: Uses his body well though. 

AARON: Yeah, yeah, but I brought my knees up so the jump looked way higher. That's a little trick for us old guys. You jump normally, like oh fairly vertical, you jump and bring your knees up, man, you are way up there. But I just looked around the stadium, and felt into that feeling of just elation, and love. And I just said, how can you not be romantic about football? And it was a great sign off. And I've done some really fun interviews over the years, especially with Michelle. We've had some epic Sunday night games one year, we were playing 2012, we're having a rough start to the season. We're two and three, we're playing the Texans. They're five and zero. And I went out and threw six touchdowns and we lit them up. All week, had been a lot of chatter about us in the downturn and blah, blah, blah, and I'm not playing good. And I did the famous, what do you have to say to your detractors? And I said, "Shh." So, I'm thankful for Michelle and our interviews, but this interview was really, really special. And then I got on the bus afterwards, like we always do, and the countdown starts to happen, and the adrenaline starts to leave your body, and the fatigue starts to kick in. And I was going through my phone and when you play a primetime game, we play a noon game for me, and we win, I might get 30 to 50 texts possibly. It's a lot of the same people who are always reaching out. This one's like, you play a primetime game and you win and you play well, and you win in dramatic fashion, I might have 300 texts. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

AARON: But for whatever reason, as I was going through them, your name came up, and I was like, "Oh, man, I'm so glad he reached out." And that was really meaningful. And you talked about a warrior poet. I can't say that I've always looked at myself in that sense. But I've always had a deep love for poetry. My favorite poem forever has been "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. And I've always felt like that's been kind of a compass for me that when decisions happen, it's not always the road that's grassy and wanted wear that's the one to take. It's often the one that doesn't get taken as much. And then you look back at the end of that decision, he talks about in the frame of the end of the life. But really at the end of that decision, you have so much gratitude for the fortitude sometimes to make the tough decision. So, I've always enjoyed poetry and thankfully a teacher of mine in fourth grade, Mr. Thomas, would give us assignments to memorize poetry. And that was one of the first ones that I memorized, and can still say it to this day, thankfully. But the idea being a warrior poet, like one of the last lines of Braveheart, there was always--

AUBREY: They fought like warrior poets.

AARON: Has always stuck with me and the idea of the gentleness and the perspective and the thoughtfulness of a poet. But the ferocity and the courage of a warrior is something I've always tried to strive for.

AUBREY: And that's really what I saw, what I saw was a warrior who went out and led from the front and really led his team through adversity. But in the interview, what really shined was the poet. So I'd watch the warrior and then the poet. And the poet is, as I said, it's the one who opens their heart to feel. And so you are allowing yourself to feel the full breadth of that. Not focused just on yourself but a love that transcended the self into the love of the entire game. The romance of the entire thing. And to see you not only open yourself to that degree, but also expand your consciousness to a level where it transcends the individual win. "I'm so happy we won." It was like, I love this game. I love the entirety of the world that's allowed this game to exist. It was including your own love of having won, of course, but transcending it to a greater love of the entire game, which turned the finite game of football, of that football game, Packers vs. Niners, that's a finite game, has an endpoint and a score to the infinite game of I love that, isn't this game romantic? And that just showed me something. And I was like, "Holy shit." So I reached out and expressed that and I think that landed in a different way than, "Oh, fucking great game, man." Which is true, it was a fucking great game. 

AARON: And I appreciate those texts. Those were great.

AUBREY: Of course, but that was a moment where I think both of us, and me seeing you, then you, you saw like, oh shit, I think he actually likes sees me at this point. 

AARON: A deep innate desire in all of us is to be seen and understood exactly how we see ourselves. And to be reflected like that from you, made me feel deeply seen. And to feel deeply seen is to open up your heart to connect with another. And that's what I felt at that moment. Because that moment was such an intense moment of gratitude for me that I wasn't just saying the game of football. I was saying, I get to go on the field and play in front of 70,000 people with some of my best friends in the entire world, compete at something I'm great at and I love doing in front of millions of people, who get at least a minimum level, probably just at least a sliver of happiness, of distraction from anything that takes away joy and happiness in their life. And I get to help provide that. What an incredible honor. I mean, how can you not have so much love and gratitude for what this game is, what it's given me, and it's changed my life. And to be reflected like that. Like I said, everybody reaches out and I can't get back to everybody, especially not after 300 texts in this one game. But it's all deeply meaningful for someone to take the time to reach out, and to reach out and be seen though. It takes it to a different level. 

AUBREY: Yeah. This feeling that we get when, a lot of people might be like, "Oh, sports doesn't matter. It's all silly." And you could say that about life as well, once you understand the unborn, undying, infinite nature of our true self. If you actually understand that, you could actually look, and I think that's a trap that you can get into to say, "Well, life doesn't matter." You can slip into these nihilistic standpoints of like, doesn't even matter anyways. But it does, it does, and it doesn't. And I think the beauty of actually what's available in these sports is not only for the participants, you get to play in something that matters. Because we want to care. The deeper I've gone, what I realized that I really want from life, my deepest desire is desire itself. I want to want. I want to care. The opposite of caring if someone's like, "What do you want?" And you're like, "I don't care." It's like, if you don't want something, you don't care. And that's no way to live. So to be a fan, and really care it's a great gift. It's awesome. It's a microcosm of life. And so, I'm excited about this upcoming season, because now I have a reason to care because my fucking brother's playing. So, I'm going to be watching those games, and those are going to be special moments. Those are going to be highlights of my week where I know that I get to leave all of my worldly issues and challenges and problems. And for that game, I just fucking care about the Packers, and I care about them fucking winning, and I care about you playing well. But I care about what you care about, which is that the team wins. And so I get to come into that. And it's a moment of ecstasy of presence, and feeling and excitement. And so, I think there potentially are some people listening, they're like, "Oh, it's just a game." Yeah, you can say that about life. When you care, it can be something extremely special.

Now of course, there's bounds, you can get fanatic about it, you can get overidentified with it. I think always be mindful when you start saying like, "We should have done this," when you're a fan. It's like, yeah, I appreciate that idea. But it's not really you. It's important to not get lost in it, but do get lost in it. And that's what makes any, anything is allow yourself to get lost. But as the Toltecs would say, let that be your controlled folly. Know that it's folly to give everything and to care as much as you can possibly care for this time. But don't carry it on to the end of weeks or months later, where you're lamenting a loss of your favorite, like it's okay. You can have both, you can care maximum, and also be balanced with it. 

AARON: 100%. I used to have a personal policy I thought was revolutionary and badass and impenetrable. And it was, kill them with indifference. Let me just tell you, that didn't work. 

AUBREY: You'll kill yourself. 

AARON: I was acting. Because what I realized was, I care so deeply, so deeply. And not that I cared about, because my motto was like any detractor or criticism, not going to respond to it, because I'm going to show him that I don't care. That's not what I'm talking about. What I truly found was that I care so deeply about how I show up in the world, and I care about the person that I am, and being seen and heard and understood exactly how I see and understand myself. So, this idea that I was somehow creating this wall of invincibility through indifference was a facade that I had to dismantle, because all it did was rot me from the inside. Because at my core, I care so deep. I care about myself, I care about my people, I care about showing up in the world exactly how I want to show up. And it wasn't about responding to detractors or criticism, because that I give less and less fucks about every single year. It was, what do I really cared about, and showing up, and showing that I care about those things, to those people, to those issues, to those relationships. That was a good lesson to learn. 

AUBREY: Yeah, one of the lessons that came through your first night of ayahuasca when we did it. So we went off to see my first shaman, El Dragon del Silva, Maestro Orlando, fucking legend. Kind of the epitome of the Quechua lineage and that deep lineage tradition of serving medicine. There's three lineages in Peru, mostly. There's the Mestizo tradition, the Quechua tradition, the Shipibo tradition. And he's part of the Quechua tradition. And we went to go see him. Medicine is thick, medicine is heavy. And I remember you had to square off with the double-edged sword of caring and the drive to be excellent and everything, which is really harsh self-criticism.

AARON: Yeah. Going into this experience, I was like, oh, perfect, I got my intentions. I got the things I want to do. I want to call in these people, I want to talk with these people's higher selves, I want to do all this stuff. And night one was like, had a mind of its own. And it was all about a major ego death. It was going to the depths of my soul, and hearing and feeling all that self-criticism, all that doubt, all that judgment that I'd placed on myself, and sitting with it for hours, with zero psychoactive experiences. Nothing happening other than me, and that voice in my head, on my shoulder, in my heart, in my body, saying, "You are not enough. You're not worth it. You're a shitty person, you're all these things." And sitting with the depth of that reality. And it was really, really tough. And it broke me to the core. And I wrestled with it for hours. I asked for another cup. I wanted some other experience other than the one that I was dealing with. And ayahuasca said, "No, no, no, this is the work we're doing right now. You had these ideas about healing this relationship, doing this, going--"

AUBREY: Yeah, big intentions to reconcile some of the feelings with your family, which has been challenging. You had all these noble intentions. Ayahuasca is like, "No, we got other plans." 

AARON: You can't do anything in this life until you really truly unconditionally love yourself. Okay, so that's what I had to do. I had to surrender fully to the idea that everything I was telling myself was true. And that's when I finally broke, as I laid there on that mat, and I made peace with the possibility that all of these lies I was telling myself could possibly be true. And in that reality, and that reality of the worst self-talk you could possibly imagine, feeling like the lowest human on the planet, and not worthy ever in this life of unconditional love. Man, taking me back there right now. 

AUBREY: That's deep, that's deep.

AARON: And we had a group of 22 amazing people and incredible facilitators and El Dragon, and all his magic. I laid there with that reality, that being my reality, that all the things I said about myself are true, and are real. And I said, is there anybody in this room who could still love me? And you came to mind first. And with the connections in the room, I felt like there were a few others who came to mind as well, including your incredible wife. And what came through next was the voice in my head, which wasn't really my voice anymore. And it said, if at your lowest of low, these people can still love you, then you shouldn't be able to love yourself.

AUBREY: Very much like my first story where ayahuasca was like, you have cancer and you're going to die, and until I accepted. It's this interesting thing. In life we find obstacles, we learn especially as men, fight that obstacle. Fight it, resist it, overcome it by force of will. And in the medicine space, it's an opposite skill. How much can you let go? How deeply can you accept it? And in the acceptance is this alchemical transformation that's available. And that's the brilliance, the magnificent brilliance of ayahuasca is, it will keep you. And iboga does the same thing, very much so. Iboga once told me I was the biggest piece of shit on the planet for like nine hours. And then finally, I did the same thing, I accepted. It showed me as this like a bowling ball, where it was like I had this gravitational force, and I would draw people to me, then I would crush them, and their own will would get usurped by my own energy. And I was just like, I was just the worst. And then I was like, "Fine, I'm the fucking worst. Okay, iboga, you win. I'm the worst of the worst." And then it was like, "Nah, just kidding, bro." And it showed that ball lifted up out of the ground, instead of trampling things. It was like a sun and all things were growing underneath it. It's like this is what you really are. With that lesson, it's counterintuitive. It requires us to accept the thing that we're afraid of, or the thing that we're resisting, and in the acceptance is the permission to transform. And you really wouldn't learn that other way of doing things, at least it's hard, without something extraordinarily challenging in your life where you can actually do that in real life. But this is a way to actually not require, because the universe wants us to learn that lesson. So, instead of having to play it out in real life, which is messy and takes a long time, and has a lot of consequences, we get to work through these things in like this Doctor Strange bubble of medicine, where we get to do it for practice, but it's for real for our whole life. What I really believe is that life won't force us into those situations where we have to learn that lesson the hard way, through a near death experience or a cataclysmic injury or something like that. We can actually learn something really important in a space where we're safe and healthy.

AARON: Yeah, 100%. And I think for those listening who have judgment around it or misunderstanding or questions about it, the knowing comes from doing and it's not for everybody at the same time. It's not something that I'm recommending that you've recommended. But for me and my mental health, and we talk so much about mental health. Marshawn Lynch had a classic kind of retirement press conference talking about taking care of your mentals. And we talk so much about mental health. And to me, one of the core tenets of your mental health is that self-love. And that's what ayahuasca did for me, was helped me see how to unconditionally love myself. And it's only in that unconditional self-love, that I'm able to truly be able to unconditionally love others. This is my own belief, but what better way to work on my mental health than to have an experience like that? I mean, the greatest gift I can give my teammates, in my opinion, is to be able to show up. And to be someone who can model unconditional love to them. I mean, obviously, it's important, I play well, and show up and lead and all that stuff. But they won't care about what you say until they know how much you care.

AUBREY: Everybody reads a lot more than the language that we speak. That's the biggest gift we can give. It's what we hold and what we carry. And I think the moment that you say, I love myself because, you're fucked. As soon as you say, because then you're always measuring that because on a scale with everybody else's because. Because in actuality, you're like one of the most lovable human beings I know. For people who don't know what Aaron Rodgers is like, actually, like you came out to our farm out here in Lockhart, and you were hanging out with us. I couldn't stop you from doing the dishes every fucking day and every night. We had 10 people in the house, you're just in there with the fucking towel over your shoulder, doing the dishes, supporting people, being of service in every way. Like, you would think you would be one of those people that everybody's like catering to. No, you were the most of service of everybody, in every way you could. Even the trivial, menial ways of cleaning up other people's dishes. And that's the person who came in and believed that they were not lovable. And of course, all of your accomplishments and all of the other things. There's no amount of ‘becauses’ that we can build in our life that will make us love ourselves other than when we say, I love myself, period, period, period. Which is like saying, as soon as you go I am and then put something else after that, like I am smart, I am blah blah blah, then you're not actually in the ‘I am’. And the ‘I am’ is the field of consciousness, and that I love myself as the field of love. And once you know that, then you actually have the key code to really stable mental health. And I think probably one of the reasons that I came to mind was because in my essence, you understand that I understand the ‘I am’. And I understand the ‘I love, period’. I love myself, I love period. And so that thing that I was able to model through my own journeys and trials and tribulations, you could see that that type of thing was possible. And I think the medicine obviously without me could have shown you in its own way. But to have that modeled was very important. It's the most important act of service that we can give is what we actually carry inside. It's who we be.

AARON: Well, I would expand on that and say that your impact is way more than that. Just coming to mind in a ceremony where I needed to know who could unconditionally love me, it's redefining, I think, what a man is, which is so important. A highly successful entrepreneur, started and sold a company, in shape, manliest of men that I know, and probably the most vulnerable person that I know. And that modeling allows for others, the permission slip to do the same. And I think that's part of the reason you came to mind first. Obviously, our connection. But just to see yourself as flawed and still love yourself, gives permission for everybody else to do the same. And it's a vulnerability to go into those emotional moments and sit with the emotions too. I think as men, it's so easy to compress them. I did it most of my life, to repress and compress them into the depths of our being, instead of just sitting with them. What does this feel like in my body? To be alive is to feel all those emotions, I think. Not just the highest of highs and the elation and the joy of sports or sex or relationship and love, or companionship, friendship, whatever it might be, is to feel the sadness, and the regret, and the frustration, and the depth of all those emotions is what it means to be alive. And that's a gift that you give not just me as a dear friend, but the people that are in your life and your sphere of influence, listen to your podcast. And that's what we need as men, we need more men willing to be vulnerable. And that's hopefully what I can continue to take to my teammates, and in our sport is to open up opportunities to have deep and meaningful conversations. To connect, to be vulnerable, to not have to be, on the outside, you look like the machoest of macho dudes. Although you're not great on the basketball court. Posting your workouts online and Onnit and everything, but on the inside, you're a deeply highly sensitive, vulnerable human who fucking loves with a humongous heart. And that's the modeling that we need. The redefining of the masculine qualities, calling in the divine feminine to balance our lives out. And to raise up like you do so incredibly well, to raise up the women in your life, and to give them a platform to speak, and to lead, and to set the trajectory for the next generations. And I think, as someone who loves you a lot, I just want to just say that to you. Thank you. 

AUBREY: Thank you, brother. I think that's definitely another key piece of similarity that we both share that I noticed is, there's a deep reverence for the feminine. And this is not just the feminine embodied as a woman. It's the feminine aspects and qualities. I mean, a lot of what you were just mentioning, are the feminine characteristics that I hold in myself. And I think this was an old idea, an old alchemical idea of actually, they called it the Rebus, which was the balanced masculine and feminine. Or as Zack Bush describes, it's the bird that flies with a strong right wing, masculine wing and a strong feminine wing. And that's what really allows for the maximum fruition of who we really are. It's really the warrior poets. It's another way to say it. It's the embracing of these things that people have that you got to pick one or the other. It's like, not really, because both of them support each other in incredible ways. And so, celebrating the goddesses and priestesses and women and girls, and everybody who embodies that in physical form, but also celebrating that and cultivating that internally as well. So, I think that's one of the reasons why I'm able to actually step into my reverence for the feminine is because I can feel how much I treasure it in myself as well. And of course, I'm glamored and absolutely bedazzled by Vylana, and a lot of the embodied goddesses, of course. And the form, it's like, wow, that's fucking incredible to see it in form. Whoa, that's a special thing. But also the deep appreciation of where that comes inside and the permission to actually experience that. And I have to give some credit to my parents for that because I simultaneously had the most love for the most aggressive cartoons and action figures, GI Joe and HeMan and swords. I was obsessed with swords since I was a little kid. Actually, you met my stepdad, Steve Big. Hulk of a man, former SWAT team squad leader. I remember I was three years old and whipping my sword around, and I fucking cut him across the eye  with my plastic sword. He was like, "Whoa, buddy, take it easy." I was like, "Oh, sorry." I was just like, slaying the dragon, you know? And at the same time, I had a My Little Pony collection. And my parents just let me, and my step brothers gave me hell. They gave me fucking hell, my three older step brothers. But that they didn't suppress that in any way when I was like arranging My Little Pony’s, like my little harem of horses, like I was an old khan from Mongolia, and like this is my herd of horses and I love them and I'll pet their manes, and I'll smell that cheap plastic that smelled oh so delicious. I remember when I got some My Little Ponies recently, probably, I don't know, what was it Vy? Like, two years ago when I got the My Little Ponies for the first time since when I was a kid? And, I was like, "They just don't smell the same anymore." And I was like, I wanted that memory that came back of like, what they smelled like, but they didn't. But I think the fact that they didn't squash that was also permission that I got from them to also like, it's okay, it's okay. It's okay that you like My Little Ponies, and it's okay that you like He-Man and swords. They really allowed me to be a full spectrum being and so I brought that with me, I think it's my nature. But I think it's everybody's nature, but a lot of it gets squashed. Because they want you to be all one way, all suck it up, cowboy up, rub some dirt on it, and don't feel it, or all the other way. And I think of course, girls have a whole different set of conditionings. Repress this emotion, this is you being "bitchy" or something like that. And we have to deal with the full embrace of both the masculine and feminine within us, and also externally. And a deep reverence for that. And I think that's one of the big cultural problems that we have is, yes, there's toxic elements of the masculine and the feminine. And a lot of the challenges in the world are the result of toxic masculine energy. Masculine energy, where I'm going to conquer, I'm going to do this thing at all costs, which is a toxic representation of what that energy is designed to do, which is to move forward in a straight line. But we can't forget the celebration of the true aspects of both the masculine and the feminine. So, it's not about tearing one side down, it's about absolute reverence needs to be the substrate. And then we deal with the shadow elements of both sides, but you got to really love both of those and celebrate both of those.

AARON: I think that's not a concept that's really embraced a whole lot in an alpha male environment. The NFL is embracing that but I think it could be the cause of some of the rage and repressed feelings that show up from time to time when there's conflict or issues or frustration or poor play or whatever it might be. A lot of it is that inner child that was cultivated in you, is tapping into those that play in that fun. And that's what I think a lot of the feminine can give us is that enjoyment, the beauty, the sensuality, the connection with our feelings that allows us to have that balance.

AUBREY: And when you have that, it changes the way that you approach your relationships as well. I mean, there's not a relationship that I have, that I've have had, where I don't have just deep love for the person that I loved in that situation. And I'm really grateful to still be friends and still have that feeling of like yeah, like fuck, I still fucking love you. Yeah, I'm absolutely completely smitten and obsessed and in love with Vylana, but I still love you. You know, Whitney, and Caitlyn and all of the other people. Obviously, my relationship with Caitlyn has transformed into a best friendship. But so much of that is just my real love for the feminine in general. And I think that's something that is an important message to share without saying that you have to tamper down any of your masculinity either. You don't. It's not a zero sum game.

AARON: I just think it's leaving room to be completed by the divine feminine. I think we aren't whole as fully masculine, just fucking alpha dogs, no pain, warriors. We have to have the poet's side come in, and the feelings and the vulnerability. I think that's what we're probably missing in this world. That's why there is, masculine, it can be toxic. And it's the repression of the other part that allows us to fully be whole. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And then there's also a real importance of community, tribe, a sense of like, everybody's got each other's back, really, really. And both within brotherhoods and in sisterhoods. But I remember and I'd love for you to share some more of, because that was just night one of our three-night ayahuasca. But I remember I went through a really fucking brutal ayahuasca journey and I've told that story on my podcast at Blu. But one part that I may not have told is there was a certain point where I just needed a brother to not say anything, but just to know that they were there. And so, I rolled myself in my bungled mareacion seasick in the medicine dealing with all kinds of cosmic challenges with alien bugs and all kinds of things. And I just reached over and you got that kind of psychic message, and I just reached over and reached out my hand, and you just clasped my hand. And then in that minute or two minutes or whatever we were there, it was like, okay, I got this. I got this, because my brother's got me. And then another night, I reached over the other way, because Vylana was on the other side, and I reached over and held my hand. Like, "Ah, she's got me, okay." Obviously there's some ideas about ayahuasca, just fucking stay on your mat and deal with it. And I get it, I get it. I've done that. I've been there. I've done that. But that's not how life is. Life is ultimately, where sometimes all you need is someone to be like, I got you, man. I got you. I'm here for you. That changes everything.

AARON: Yeah, that was definitely one of the highlights of night three was that experience with you. And even before you reached out, like feeling what you were going through as I was sitting on my mat, and basically sending you the message, I'm here if you need me. And then for you to reach out was so like, oh, yeah. I was tapped in. That was my intuition saying, be ready at all times for your brother. But night two, and I got to get down to the maloca, I was in a way different headspace. I had gone through the ego death, I'd sat with all those feelings and emotions of unworthiness, and felt a deep, meaningful, unconditional love. And it was nice to have a day off in between to kind of start to feel into that and integrate those deep lessons, which I'm still integrating. But night two I came to Matt, I said, you know what, if I have to meditate for five hours and ask about my journey, I'm totally okay with it. I just completely surrendered. I have zero agenda. I'm not coming in with these intentions or "I'm going to have these incredible breakthroughs." It's just like whatever needs to come through, can come through. And I had the most beautiful journey I could possibly imagine where, and the funny part about that is, you haven't told the story, but I had made up my mind. On the way down the maloca I was going to do the house brew, I wasn't going to do the dragon brew. There were a couple of options. And I decided, I didn't journey the first night really. I had this really tough ego death. So I'm like I'm going to smooth sail it tonight, I'm going to take the house brew, I'm going to blast off, I'm going to be great. 

AUBREY: For people to know, Soltara has its own house brew of the medicine that they brew and typically serve that they cultivate themselves. And then El Dragon brought his own brew from his own village, and his own trees, and his own prayers, and his own medicine. But night one, it was fairly diluted, and I went first. I drank first that second night. 

AARON: This is the story I was going to tell. 

AUBREY: Yeah, and it was so thick. It was like, it was like I almost had to chew it.

AARON: But I heard them noises. You went, "Oh," when he started to pout. 

AUBREY: Well, everybody actually. 

AARON: And Jen and Vulko.

AUBREY: Yeah, Orlando, Jen and Vulko, so they're the facilitators. That's Orlando, Jen and Vulko. They pour this particular brew and it just comes out so thick, and I even hear Orlando, which is uncharacteristic, go, "Oh." And then Jen and Vulko go, "Oh" and pour me that full cup. And I was like, "Oh, man, this one's going to be potent."

AARON: And then thankfully, you left, you drank and then you came right over to my mat and said, "I don't know what you're thinking but Orlando's brew is thick tonight." So, I was like, "I'm in." 

AUBREY: First you were like, "Well, what should I do?" And I was like, "I don't know, man. I just got the message." I wanted to tell you that it's thick tonight."

AARON: Yeah, and as I've tried to do, the signs and synchronicities are everywhere. And I said, "Okay, this is too random." Because I'd really been on the fence here, I'm going in. And so I went in. And by the time everybody had finished serving, because I was one of the first ones to drink, I started deep on a journey where the ayahuasca is usually described as a grandmother spirit. And I met her and walked with her through past, present and future lives. And it was the most beautiful experience I could possibly imagine. I literally was able to ask her question after question about things that are on my mind, and have the most beautiful journey I could possibly imagine in that setting. And obviously, down there, Soltara, and with Maestro Orlando, and with Jen and Vulko, and the other incredible facilitators, and just the group of incredible humans we had there made for just an incredibly intentional and energetically connected environment, which I think really was important to set the protection around the space as we did, and the intention. And it allowed for so many of us to have deep and meaningful journeys. And for me night two was enjoying the highest bliss possible that I could even have imagined in my wildest dreams the night before or leading up to the trip. So, deeply grateful for that. Night three, was not quite the same journey. went from the ego death night one, incredible bliss night two, and then night three, again, came with a really open heart, whatever needed to come through. And went on a journey to start and then was told to go outside and do a ritual outside, and then came back in the space and there was a lot of energy going around. And then, as it being the last night, when the ceremony ended, there was a lot of joy and hugs and Mechard was leaving in the middle of night, and there was a lot of stuff going on. And when all this was going on, I was going through it. The end of the ego death, there's a rebirth. But in my rebirth process, I was overwhelmed by the incredible grief of my life, as I knew it, and the rebirth into a new perspective, a new timeline, a new trajectory. And as I've been working on, and you've been a good guide for this and so many other important people in my life, speaking into my life, I just sat with that. And it was very difficult, the overwhelming sense of sadness and grief of what I was leaving behind. I just sat with that for hours, probably two hours as I was begging grandmother to let me purge whatever was inside of me and needed to come out. And she said, "Not yet. Not yet, my son. There's more." So I sat with that and didn't fight it, and just surrendered to feeling into the depth of all those beautiful emotions, incredible experiences from the past; heartbreak, failures, frustrations, deep, deep sadness. And then I purged at about 4:30 in the morning, finally, and laid there afterwards on my mat, and then opened my eyes and it felt like I was opening my eyes for the first time. And as the bat animal card instructs, the death of the ego is followed by the rebirth and the integration of that is a sunrise. So in Costa Rica, the sunrise is very early, and it was only about 45 minutes until the sun rose, that morning, that beautiful morning at 5:15. And I sat there on my mat, breathing in what felt like brand new oxygen into my lungs. And enjoyed the beauty and the mystery of this life and the howler monkeys and their noises in the jungle and the sounds of life waking up. And that's what I felt like happened to me on that third day and I felt like I was kind of walking on air back up to the room. It was very special.

AUBREY: I think people undervalue the importance of allowing yourself to grieve. Because every change is the death of something old to allow something new to be born. Like the myth of the phoenix is accurate. Like you go to ash, and the bird that once was, even if the bird that emerges is better doesn't mean that the bird that once was isn't worth grieving. It doesn't mean that because the caterpillar becomes a butterfly that the butterfly is all better, and is like, fuck that life as a caterpillar. Like if that was in our mind, it would be important to be like, man, caterpillar, caterpillar life was pretty cool. I was just crawling around, moving slowly, eating leaves. Everything was real chill. And, even if it woulda sucked and it was like, man, I was getting picked off by birds, it was fucking gnarly. Whatever it was, it's still worth grieving. Even in a "bad relationship" you leave that and you're like, "I'm on to something new and better." Okay, yes, true. And, like grieve that which is dying, and that which is dead. And that's the proper honoring. That's the way to actually love all of life is to love what was, even if it was riddled with distortion, even if it was riddled with everything else. It's like, send that love through your grief and through your tears and through that gratitude and appreciation for what was, which will allow you to appreciate that next thing that you're becoming. Because guess what, that's just another fucking caterpillar. It's an infinite fractal caterpillaring to the next butterfly. That next butterfly is just the caterpillar to the next thing that you're becoming. So, in every step of the way, just grieve what was and then allow that new thing and celebrate that new thing. And know that one day, you'll grieve that new thing, and then celebrate the next thing and grieve that new thing and celebrate the next thing. This is the cycle. This is how you actually move in that upward spiral.

AARON: And like you talk about a lot, it's not a full transcendence. It's an inclusion, plus a transcendence. It's including the lessons you learned, the experiences you had, the joy, the sadness, the highs, the lows, as you transcend into a different perspective, mindset, awareness, consciousness. To leave it all behind is to truly leave part of you behind. I think that's the catch 22 there is, you're not leaving actually behind. You're just reframing it, and putting a new perspective on it. Because you have to include those lessons and journeys and experiences with you, in order to fully transcend into the next iteration of yourself.

AUBREY: And judgment of those things as an exile is putting something in exile. And when you put any aspect of yourself. However, iteration, it was in exile, you're putting part of your current self in exile as well. And that's the liberation from exile of becoming whole, that's holistic healing, is the including and transcending, like you said, with love and gratitude for all of those things. Even if it means you have a hard boundary and the discretion and you got to, of course, like there's certain things that you'll, I always say like, it's fine to build a fucking wall. “Tall is the wall” in "Game of Thrones," where it's like, this is the wall, nothing crosses the wall. But it doesn't mean that you can't love everything else on the other side of that wall. Because as we expand our understanding of self to include the entirety of the cosmos, the substrate of the force of life itself that moves through us and moves through the universe, then we have to love and respect all of those things. Even if we say, and, I'm on the other side of the wall. That's the lesson. I think you can get lost in, well, just love everything and you'll get trampled. No. But you have your thorns, the rose has its thorns and its flower. The thorns say, don't trample me but if you want to come smell, my fragrant perfumed garden, you're welcome. But if you trample me, you're going to get stabbed. But doesn't mean the rose is out there shooting thorns at other people in this kind of barrier. It's just, it has its flowers and its thorns and we have our walls, but we can still have love on the other side. And I think, one thing that's kind of been out there in the zeitgeist is people have been trying to pick apart your relationship with your family. And, when we've talked about it in different ways, one thing I saw is that was your prayer every night was to find the ways to build the bridges back into a more loving, resonant place with your family. But this is a co-created life, and it's not only up to you. But I can say for certain that I've seen and felt that deep from your heart, that intention to say like, I'm here and I'm ready. I'm ready for the healing.

AARON: Yeah, definitely a perspective shift over the years. It starts with gratitude. Living a life where you count your blessings more than you think about what you don't have. And the gratitude extends way back to the environment I was raised in, the morals I was taught as a young child, the conditioning that we all have, and the positives that came from it, and the lessons that I learned through it. And the patterns I created that are both positive and also negative that I need to unwind. We all have these things. And many people have issues with family and deal with them in their own ways. For me, I've always tried to deal with it quietly behind closed doors. That always hasn't been the case, or hasn't been good enough for a lot of people who want to write about it, or pick it apart or talk about it, or even some things that my family has said or done over the years, that's been public. But at the core, I have deep gratitude and love for the way I was raised, the lessons that I was taught, the environment that I was in. The fact that my dad made it a point to make my and my brothers' sporting events the number one priority. The fact that he was willing to take a chance and go through the poverty that we experienced to make a better life for his kids by going back to school as a middle aged man. At my age, he went back to chiropractic college, to try and give us a better life. I have deep, deep gratitude for that. And really appreciate the sacrifices that were made on our behalf to give us a better life. So, I do believe in healing, I believe in the possibility of reconciliation at some point. But it's a different journey for all of us. And to judge on the outside about what should be or what should look like or who's wrong and who's right, it's just a game I've never wanted to play and still don't want to play. The most important thing is, for me, deep love and gratitude for them and for the lessons I learned and for the way I was raised, and hope for the future. But who knows what that future is going to look like, when it's going to look like, when time is going to come but I have no bitterness in my heart, I have no resentment. I just have deep love and an appreciation for the lessons that I learned, and the fact that if I hadn't been raised that way, all the good and all the frustrating, there's no way I'd be sitting here today. So to not have that perspective that because of the things that I experienced, I turned out the way I did is looking at the glass as half empty, and I just won't do that. I look at it as if they were experiences that were important. I chose to be in this family and to deal with everything that I dealt with; positive and difficult. And I have deep love and gratitude for them, for their journeys and hope for the future.

AUBREY: Yeah, no doubt. There's a saying like you shall know a tree by its fruits. And when you recognize the fruit of who you are from a family tree, and have deep gratitude for that, you have to have gratitude for the tree even the way that it was gnarled and even the way that it struggled to find water through a craggy, rocky soil and the way it struggled to find light through a canopy of trees, and everything that it provided. Ultimately, that gratitude is like, well, fuck, here it is, here's the fruit, it got me here. And when you have that I think it can allow you to love the whole tree without that sense of... And sure, you can have your preference of how it could have been. But you never know if that would have shifted something dramatically. And furthermore, a recent friend for you but a longer friend for me, Sad Song Drew, who's a great musician. He came and performed recently at Arcadia, which he came to, which is this epic festival we threw out in Area 15 in Vegas with a lot of great artists and speakers. And he said people who are talking about you are giving a book review on a book they haven't read. It's like fucking A. But really though, whenever we're talking and judging and commenting on someone, we're giving a book review on a book we haven't read. We don't know that person. We haven't read that, we can't possibly. So it's just a little bit of like, alright, like I see this and I can have my opinions about this, but I haven't read that book. I don't know what that person's going through. I don't know what's actually really true underneath there. So it's all nonsense to a certain degree.

AARON: And insert anything into that, it's the same story. Insert ayahuasca into that, people judging who haven't experienced it, or where they have their own fears, or ideas about what it is, the use of it, the dangers of it, whatever they might think about it. You're talking about something that you haven't experienced firsthand. Should be taken with a grain of salt. I think for me, part of reframing the perspective is something that we all go through. It's when we grow up, we look at our parents as perfect people that can do absolutely no wrong. And that's why when something happens, it's almost more damaging, because you're like, you're this perfect person, how could you, fill in the blank. How could you say, fill in the blank. But as you get older, there's a reframing that goes one of your parents as flawed individuals. And just like me in my first night of ayahuasca, and you in your Iboga journey, there has to be some acknowledgement of the flawed nature in all of us. And it's only I believe in that realization and understanding of the flawed nature of humanity, that we learn what unconditional love truly is. And that really allowed me to see, not just the relationship with my family, but with friendships and lovers differently, by not having this idealism that things should be a certain way, or that perfection is a quality that has to exist in every iteration, in every relationship. It's in the flaws and the scars and the thorns that we actually find the true beauty in each other, I believe. It's in the mundane experiences, the simplicity, the last line of "The Office" which talks about there being beauty in normal things, beauty in the mundane, that we truly are able to, I think, love people and experiences unconditionally. And that's what really helped me reframe, not just my relationship with him, but my relationship with football too. I had some back and forth with the Packers during an offseason. And at the core of it is realizing we're all flawed people, and we all bring our own egos and ideas and experiences to the table. But at the core, there's opportunities to see those flaws, and to find unconditional love for those people, those experiences, those organizations, those families, that have really molded us and shaped us into who we are. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Speaking about parents, it reminds me, and I'm pretty sure I haven't talked about this on a show yet. But we were actually in Sedona. And, I had my own medicine journey right before everybody was arriving at our ranch in Sedona. And I was like, deep in this introspective medicine, and Vy was helping guide me through it. And it was ketamine and cannabis journey, which I've talked about doing as kind of one of my own pathways to self-guided medicine journeys that I've really found a lot of virtue in. And again, it's not a recommendation. I'm not saying go fucking do this yourself. This has for me been a part of my path. And in this path, I realized that there was a part of me that wasn't allowing myself to fully enjoy every aspect of my life. And I was like, why am I stopping myself from enjoying my life? And in the guidance, which felt very clear, it said, "Well, it's because you have a grievance with God." And I was like, "I have a grievance with God. Like, what do you mean? Like, I know, God, I've felt God. I've felt what that feels like, and it's the most unbelievably beautiful feeling. I have a grievance with that force? No fucking way. It was like, "Yes, you do. And here's why." So first, the reason why I stopped myself from enjoying it is because God is a part of all of us. We are participating in the Godhead, we are participating in love and manifest. We're participating in the entire cosmos. We're participatory, it's not God up in the clouds and us down in the dirt. That's an old, old myth. And again, this is my own belief system through all of my journeys. And in this, I was denying God the pleasure of my enjoyment of life as me, and denying the divine as me from enjoying life through me by holding myself back in certain instances. Doesn't mean that I've let that go and not had fully ecstatic unbelievable experiences. But there was some part of me that was holding back. And the reason was a grievance. I was showing like, okay, God, well, I'm not going to fucking, I'm not going to give you this pleasure through me as me, because I have a grievance with you. And when I tracked it, it wasn't a grievance with actually God, or the divine. God's a tough word, has a lot of meanings. But what it was, was that as I grew up, I had deified my parents and deified key people in my life. I'd placed Godness onto other people, and those people are fallible. Even my mom who's one of the most beautiful divine emanations of humans I've ever known, she's still fallible, she's still just a person. So the more that you deify another person, they let you down. And then so in your own mind, then you have a grievance not just with that person, and the only reason you have a grievance with that person is because you deified them in the first place, and tried to assume that they were going to be perfect. So then when they acted like a person, you're like, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" You're like, I don't know, I'm a fucking person. We expect our parents and those people who we deify to act like the divine while they're doing their best. And only the divine can act like the divine, only the divine can look at your story and just say, "Tell me more." Like, that's what we want from our parents when we come home from school. It's not, "How was your day at school?" And meanwhile, they're doing their shit. It's like, "How was your day at school? Tell me more of your story." That's what we want, and that's what the divine actually is, like, "Tell me more of your story." But we don't get that. And so, it was about pulling back all of that energy that I'd placed on all of these other avatars for what I thought the divine were and placing them back to where they belong, which is the actual divine. And then that allowed me to love my family more, those people who I deified in certain ways, placed Godness on top of them and say, like, oh, no, no, it's all just people. It's Kathy, and Michael, and all of these different humans in my life. And it allowed me to heal that relationship with the divine. And it was a significant moment. It's a significant moment to do that, to know that even me with all of my work and 41 years living, and 23 years on the plant medicine path, I still didn't really realize this key insight, which was how much those initial imprints and the ramifications of those can continually affect life. So, I mean, I think it's an invitation for all of us listening to see where we've placed Godness on other people, and then be upset with them for letting us down. And really, everybody's just doing their best. And nobody's going to reach that. Nobody's going to reach that mark. Not ourselves, and not anyone. We're all just people walking each other home.

AARON: Yeah, like Ramdas says, what hits me when you say that is, that when you heal the grievance with the divine, you're really healing yourself. You're healing that spot in you that was led down, that was disappointed, that was hurt, that was wounded. When we recognize the divine in us, when we say we're giving up this grievance with God, we're letting go of this grudge we've held against ourselves. 

AUBREY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think we're all very wary of recognizing the divine in ourselves, because we've had far too many examples of people going, I am the divine and you aren't. The moment anybody says that, you got it fucking wrong. If you're like, "I'm Jesus", I'm like, "Well, that means that you know that you're inside everybody. So you're just saying that you're one of everybody." That's really the teaching. But the moment someone tries to play better than another person, it's the antithesis of true spirituality, which understands the state of interbeing that we have with all beings, and that there is no hierarchy from the highest purview, there's just not. And so, I think we all get weary of acknowledging the divine as us, with us, within us, because of those people who've said, I am this so listen to me and you aren't. Nope, that's not it. It's cool to note to recognize the divine in you, as long as you recognize the divine in everybody. That's the key.

AARON: Which is kind of what Jesus was saying to Peter when Jesus was talking to the disciples about his imminent ascension and death, and leaving the community that he'd established. When Peter's, I'm paraphrasing, saying what are we going to do when you're gone? Like I want to do these things that you're doing. And he basically says, "Everything you've seen me do and more, you're capable of." Now in the church, we often try and set that one aside. Anytime there's any conversation around the ability to do miraculous things, to acknowledge the divine living in us. I mean, the whole tearing of the veil, Old Testament and New Testament was a marker for us to go, oh, we don't need to go through anybody anymore to experience the divine, the divine is in all of us. There's no veil between us and divine, there's no separation. It's the divine living in us. And like you said, and understanding that it's not just in me and not in you. It's in all of us. And when I start thinking the other way, that's when the god complex comes on, and we start missing the entire point.

AUBREY: There's nothing more gross in this life than people who flex their spirituality. Of all the things to flex. Flex your Ferrari, flex your fucking new, half a mil Hublot, flex whatever you want to flex. Fucking, I respect that. But when you start flexing your spirituality, that's just fucking gross. It's like, it's the one thing where and again, maybe this is my opportunity to work on judgment. But that's the hardest thing for me to accept, because it feels like it undermines the real nature of the one who understands, who really gets it.

AARON: Yeah, I agree. I've seen it. I grew up around that for a lot of my life.

AUBREY: It's a big problem, I think it's an undercurrent of the problem that we see now is people who are creating small little value hierarchies, where they get to actually put somebody underneath them for some vector of judgment that they have, which you experienced with the vaccine issues, right? There was a whole group of people who got to be better than Aaron Rodgers for that period of time. And I don't think it's conscious that they realize the impetus. 

AARON: I remember some of them. 

AUBREY: Just this deep desire that they're measuring themselves in relation to other people, and the more people that you can put underneath you, well, the higher you are on that little spectrum, on the whole poll of how good you are. So, it's this mad scramble to put as many people underneath you as possible by tearing them down based on advantages they've had, or based on decisions they've made, or whatever. And sure, you can have your opinions and beliefs about that. But be very mindful of the slippery nature of trying to create a game where that makes you better than somebody else. And it's on both sides. It's like both sides, there's antivaxxers, and then they'll start calling other people sheep, and they're doing the same fucking thing. They're just putting themselves as better than other people as well. And exposing that, bringing light to this desire, that's creating so much polarity, which is fundamentally a desire of not knowing yourself truly, and knowing yourself as the ego knows, which is only in a relative position. The ego only knows itself in relative position, it doesn't know itself as worthy of love, just because it is, I am. That's a driving force behind so much of what's happening in the divisiveness of our world.

AARON: Yeah, I mean, it's ugly on both sides.

AUBREY: It really is.

AARON: I could feel it when I came out and said what I said, some of the interview requests, it was like all the right, it was like, he's our champion now. And all the left was, he's the enemy. Which was people against the vax, and people for the vax, basically. And I said, look, politics is a sham, first of all, I think. And I wouldn't do CNN just like I wouldn't do Fox News. I have no desire to be a part of this. I'm sharing a personal opinion, based on my own health, what I think is best for my body. And you can disagree with it all you want, you can agree with and champion it, but I'm not saying it to gain favor with one side and hate from the other. I mean, naturally, my opinion became very polarizing, because people feel strongly on both sides about it. But I hope at the bare minimum that there was conversation that could be had, civil conversation. And if you still disagree, then it's okay to disagree. But we've taken out, I think in our society, a lot of that ability to have differing opinions, because one has to be right and one has to be wrong. I have to be smart, and you have to be dumb. And it's this division that we see that binary systems are set up all over our society that keep us in opposition to each other. When instead the divine is calling us to connect, to recognize, to mirror each other, and to reflect to each other the beauty inside of each other. and not the fact that I have to be right and you have to be wrong, or I have to be smart and you have to be an idiot, or I have to be the best and you have to be the worst. That doesn't advance us at all in society. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

AARON: And I apologize if that ever seemed like my desire, my impetus behind it. I got COVID, I had to talk about it. And I shared my opinion. People thought that I was lying. I didn't lie to people. There were a million stories out there that I was an endangerment to society. And I'll definitely address that right now. Every single day that you saw me, and you probably only saw me, I'm talking to Green Bay people because that's where I was. You might have seen me in Barnes and Noble looking at a book, or telling the good people there what the next book club book was going to be, so they could be stocked up. Or at the grocery store. Every single day you saw me, I had tested negative that morning. Every single day. Our protocol was for non-vaccinated players, every day before 9:00 am, you tested for COVID. So every single day, as you saw me, I was COVID Negative. Every single day. I didn't endanger anybody. I take my health and the health of everybody around me very seriously. So I do want to dispel that rumor. And when I did test positive, I called our head trainer that morning, said I'm not feeling good. I went into the stadium. I tested. I sat in my car waiting for the results like I did every other day. I tested positive. I went home, I started my protocol to feel better. And I didn't see anybody for 10 days. That's what happened.

AUBREY: Yeah. I mean, it's, I think, great that you got to clear that. Because there was so much energy that kind of swelled up and all the stories, because people are desperate to place you on one team and desperate to, and when I say team, I mean a political team or political side. And of course, that happens with me and happens with so many other people, when really what we're asking is to transcend the game entirely. A game where no matter which side seems to be winning, the game itself is tearing our society and tearing our world apart. The moment we claim that we're on one side, and we're against another side, we're denying the connection that we all have together. And we need everybody to make it through this. We can't leave half of the world out of the fucking game, and win the whole thing. We have to transcend from this finite battling each other into a new infinite perspective. And that can sometimes get you attacked from both sides, or accused of being middling. It's like, no, no, no, no, I have my opinions. And those opinions can be strong. But my reverence for both sides transcends this kind of base tribal, you're red, you're blue, you're this, you're that. No, that can't work. We have to include some of the beliefs that are there but then transcend them if we're going to come together as a world that can actually get us out of this kind of mess that we're steering ourselves into. We need everybody. It's an old idea of permaculture. The solution comes from the problem. If the problem is people, then the solution is going to be people as well. Like, how the people can actually transform and transform the world with all of the eight billion that we have. We need us all.

AARON: I think that's what you do really well with some of your posts on Instagram that I see is, sharing opinions or articles or whatever. And also sharing thoughts about how the first emotions shouldn't be outrage. If we really want to connect, the first emotion should be empathy. Erick Godsey at Arkadia had a really, really good talk on the last day. And one thing that stuck with me was, he talked about his own relationship with his family and how he connected with his mom only after years of back and forth when he went into her grief. And he talked about how instead of waiting with bated breath on how I can combat whatever point you're making, which I think we do as a society, "Oh, you done talking? Okay, now listen to what I have to say." It's this idea of listening to understand and listening with empathy, and going into that grief of that other person to fully understand what that person is going through. And I think in this culture around COVID, there's so much grief. I mean, the patient care or lack of patient care with people dying by themselves, and families being torn apart who are for and against the vaccine, and all the misinformation and good information that was out there at various times. Not many people probably were able to go into the grief of the other person. And even myself at times. And listen to the heart of the matter, because as we know, with arguments with ourselves and others, it's never about the dishes, because I always do the dishes. But there's an underlying issue, right? And it's rarely ever the topical, first part of the conversation. It's ‘what is at the root of these issues?’ Especially around COVID. It can be fear, it can be death, it can be safety, it can be an ideology of greater intelligence, or a greater understanding, or I'm an expert at this. You had experts on both sides saying take the vax. Rogan had McCullough and Malone on his podcast, and numerous others who talked about some of the things to think about. But in order to fully understand people where they're coming from, a lot of times, you have to go into that grief to see that person. And then once they're seen, like Erick talked about, it totally dissolved all the tension, the years of bitterness and frustration, and back and forth, and strife that was just kind of lingering in the air. And I think that society, and I'm going to try and lead by this, to find a way to go into that grief a little more often.

AUBREY: Yeah, and read some of the book before you judge the cover. That's what listening is. You don't get to read the whole book. But at least if you really take patiently, slowly, with stillness, go into that person's story, into their book and start reading the pages, you start to fall in love with the character. Any actor that acts well, we fall in love with them to a certain degree, even if we hate them. There's a way that we're on the inside of their story. And I think that's what listening really allows, it allows us to step into the inside of their story. And once you're on the inside.

AARON: The Joker story

AUBREY: The "Joker" movie was a perfect example. 

AARON: Yeah, you have the empathy and the grief that he dealt with with being bullied, and misunderstood, and dealing with a condition. He had to carry a card around to tell people, I'm not trying to laugh, I just have this issue I'm dealing with. I'm not trying to laugh at you. You feel for that character. That's what the best actors do is they take you into the experience. 

AUBREY: Right, and it's all a lesson that we can learn and apply. And it doesn't mean that when Joker is in his full flower of madness, that Batman shouldn't come and fucking whip his ass. You can hold both. And that's the thing, there is the boundary and also the love and respect that comes from stepping inside the story, and the necessary action that needs to be taken. Both are true. And I think this is an invitation to rewrite a lot of those patterns and conditionings and stories. I'm honored and grateful to have a brother that I can walk through all of these different wild journeys and aspects of life with.

AARON: I feel the same way. My life has taken a number of twists and turns and there's lessons and hardships, and highs and lows, and frustrations. But truly meeting you and getting to connect with you has put me on a way different trajectory. And at the core of it, deeper than the friendship that we share, which is so deep and meaningful to me, is a reconnection back to me that you modeled. We all have people in our lives who can be compasses, and anchors for us, to remind us of who we really can be. And that's what you've been for me. So, I just say, from the core of my being, brother, thank you.

AUBREY: And thank you, my brother. Thank you. One of the great gifts of life is to find true friendship. I think a lot of energy is placed on your romantic relationships. It's like, that's the biggest fucking deal. But it overlooks the real value of that really, really, like​​ deep friendships, the soul friendships that can come. And that's another story that's important to rewrite. So here's to new stories, my brother.

AARON: I appreciate it. 

AUBREY: I love you, man. 

AARON: Love you too.

AUBREY: And I love all of you. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week.