How does a man prepare to become a father, and how does fatherhood change a man? Today’s episode is with the prolific host of the Wellness + Wisdom podcast and new father, Josh Trent. We dive into the deep lessons and transformative potential that comes with fatherhood including a deeply challenging ayahuasca journey, his recent vision quest, porn addiction, depression, authenticity, and service.Connect with Josh TrentWellness + Wisdom Podcast | JoshTrent.com/PodcastWebsite |JoshTrent.comInstagram | https://instagram.com/joshtrentofficialBREATHE Program |https://Breathwork.ioM21 Wellness Guide | JoshTrent.com/M21

JOSH: So you never experienced rage or the fear or you did, but it was quick.

AUBREY: I felt a stifling suffocation when I wouldn't express what I really wanted to say. That's what I felt. And so I eventually released a poem, I think a time for a revolution and it was like a revolution of consciousness, not of action, but of a way to rethink about our place in the world and what it means and how we're allocating resources and how, with the money that we spent to pay for the lockdowns, we could have ended world hunger and provide a clean water for the entire world, like 12 times over or something like that. So there was some sacred anger that was coming up through that. But the biggest thing that I experienced was feeling shut down, suffocated, like I wasn't able to speak. Because I remember early on, I made a post basically saying, I miss gathering together, I miss being at concerts and hugging someone and seeing a stranger next to me, and I miss being at Burning Man and sharing a puff of macho with somebody on the playa. And it was just an expression of my heartfelt desire to be in communitas. And then I just got fucking lit up for that. Like, how could you even be thinking about that right now? Like just so much venom that came to me for that. And it kind of shut me down a little bit from expressing what I really felt. Because I did, I missed people, I missed gathering, I missed it. And that's all I wanted to say. Fundamentally, it was like, fucking missed so much. And to be attacked for that, then I was like, well, fuck, I just can't say anything. And so I retracted and I just talked about other subjects that were safe and until I started becoming more outspoken, I felt like I had a paper bag or a plastic bag over my head. 

JOSH: Yeah, I felt that in a big way. And I was actually shocked at how many people didn't speak. I was like, Oh, you're all just kind of complying now. But there's so many people that have massive platforms, like millions of people follow these people. What if we were all just to speak our truth and even in the fear of judgment and just go for it and we can lose revenue, we can lose followers, we could lose whatever. How powerful that would be. How amazing that would be. And I really feel like we called this in. I feel like the COVID theater and all this stuff, we welcomed it as a collective because there's a part of us. We're still kind of like teenagers in society. We're still learning how to drive the Ferrari. We've been given a Ferrari here. This is the most beautiful experience. Like, look at all the stuff we get to do all the time. It's so beautiful. It's so amazing, but we are behind the wheel and we're kind of like, what would happen if you gave a Ferrari to a 13 year old? They'd probably fucking crash it. So we're kind of there. And I feel like God, the archetype of the father, whatever you want to say, is teaching us. I feel like you and I are on a page in a book. And we're just doing the best we can to honor all the people that are going to be written on the page after us. That's it. I used to feel when I would wake up in the morning, I'm like, “I got to grow my audience.” I will put this pressure on myself all the time. And it was exhausting. And I was like, Oh, I'm actually doing that because my ego doesn't want to fully express itself. So I'm going to get caught up and overwhelmed and all this other stuff where I'm trying to “save the world.” But meanwhile, I'm not tending to the full world in me. I'm not actually taking care of all of my world. And that was like, I mean, that was a double bomb drop on the quest, but definitely in every ceremony I've ever done. The last ayahuasca ceremony was like the ripcord of me jumping out of the plane where I knew I would never go back. It was down at a place in Costa Rica. I think we know the name of that place. I'm not going to name their name just because I used to consult with them and I don't want to slander them, but not every space is sacred. Not every ceremony is sacred. I just did a podcast with Ben Greenfield. I don't know if you know this. He's come out against plant medicine. He's no longer a proponent of plant medicine. And so I wanted to bring them on and I'm like, “well, tell me the real story. Like what's, what's really going on.” And at the core of it, he said that it came to him from scripture that there was this Pharmacia conversation he had with himself, but I feel like it was something deeper. And I tried the best I could to really get it out. But I think Ben in this limelight of sharing like, okay, I'm done with medicine. But then at the very end, he changes tune. He's like, well, maybe there's certain cases. There are certain cases where this medicine can be powerful. This medicine could be healing. And I feel the same way. I feel like medicine can harm. Or it can heal from my own experience. I had to go through the darkest night of the soul around porn. 20 years plus porn ruled my fucking life. And even when I got with Carrie and I knew it was coming, I was like, I have to let this go somehow. How am I going to let go of porn? I literally didn't know how I was going to do it. And I go into therapists and talk therapy and EMDR and all this stuff, because for me, like it wasn't a drug for me. I used to smoke and drink and all that stuff, but porn was so viscerally embedded in my psyche where when I didn't want to do something or when life got really hard, I would go to porn. 

AUBREY: It's an escape. 

JOSH: It's an escape. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

JOSH: But ayahuasca where ayahuasca showed me what my life would be like, if I were to continue to be a slave to porn. And that was like the ultimate. However, there was some dark energy that came in. So I understand what Ben is saying, like it's not 100% safe. And I'm not sitting here saying that everybody should do plant medicine, but I think there's a more sacred ramp. Like a sacred on ramp to do medicine because a lot of people that go to medicine, they could end up like an experience that I had. And they might not fucking come back. They might actually go through a unique psychic shatter.

AUBREY: It’s a trial by fire, and you don't go straight into the hottest part of the fire before you dip in the waters. It's like, don't go into the lava until you know you're made of dragon. Like, be made of dragon before you go fucking into the dragon fire, for sure. And test yourself every step of the way. And I've been tempted to make that kind of escalation pathway. And I always talk about it, but I never will tell someone to go do medicine until like, well, have you been in a float tank? How many times? Like at least 6 to 10 times in a float tank before even thinking about it, have you been in shamanic breathwork? Okay. Like go take that. Not just like some Wim Hof breathing before your cold plunge, which is great. Like go fucking deep. Like go there, like go all of these places first. And then if you still feel called after starting to unpack that, then if I can go for it, you know what I mean? But there's, it is important to let people know, like there's many, many pathways and you don't need medicines. Like people will ask me like, do I need ayahuasca? I was like, no, of course not. You probably want some significant changes in your life and potentially ayahuasca could be one of those tools, but you don't need it. It's not a matter of need, in certain cases it can be really helpful, but there's many, many ways up the mountain. And so never feel compelled to do anything on the plant medicine path. However, also don't feel a compulsory negativity towards it because of some strange interpretation of scripture. :ike, I don't know how you have herbal remedies in your tinctures and supplements, but these particular herbs are somehow the devil ones and these ones are the God ones. Like that whole concept to me is fucking bonkers. All respect to Ben and those who believe it, but that doesn't make any sense fundamentally to me, but also at the same time, like if you don't want to do them for sure, don't do them.

JOSH: I think it's awesome that he's out in public with one of the biggest podcasts out there sharing his experience so we can all learn from it. Like, he's trying to find the middle way. All of us are. I mean, Lao Tzu, it's easy for me to quote Lao Tzu and be like, Oh yeah, the middle path. The middle way is the way. My mind gets that, but my body still tries to figure it out. My body is always like, what exactly is the middle way? What is the middle way for Ben? What is the middle way for you and I? And how can we like, I think we talked about this earlier, just I'm going to fumble through it. I'm going to be honest. I'm going to fumble through it so that eventually I do find the middle way, but it's not something I think we get right out the gate. The middle way is like, it feels like a moving target. It's like a Goldilocks zone that I'm always trying to live my life through, but it's never the same any day. 

AUBREY: What the middle way is trying to say is that the truth, it's the true way. And the true way is often in the middle, however, it's not always in the middle. And I think that's also a trap to finding the middle way. Sometimes the true way can be very fucking extreme. Sometimes the right thing to do is to defend your life with lethal force. It's not a middle way. It's like, that is the right thing to do at this point, because it's either kill or be killed. Someone breaks into your house and they get a gun and they come with lethal intent. Like there's no middle way. There's a way, and that's the reality of that situation. So I think, it's like a general maximum that's usually helpful, especially if you're mediating a discussion, like assuming that there's a truth that's in between. Sometimes though, one person is just honestly expressing the truth and the other person's fucking lost it. Like I've been in those situations. I mediate a lot of different conversations because intuitively, I can find the truth in between, which is often in the middle, but I've been in some, where I'm like, yep, like pretty much the sounds like you got it right on the nose, and there's maybe some fine points, but it's really about the truth, like, where's the truth. And then you get into ideas about objectivity or subjectivity. 

JOSH: I was literally just going to say that. Like who’s truth. The truth that we all like, if I drop this cigar, there's gravity. But who's to say that the way you lead your life is the truth, or the way I lead my life is the truth? I mean, we could pontificate that so many ways.

AUBREY: Well, that's far too much of a fuckin amount of time to actually say anything's in the truth, because we're always dancing between truth and delusion and distortion. I mean, we're coming into, I'm coming into awareness of my own distortion fuckin constantly. I did a recent exercise to excavate shame. I wouldn't have thought I was ashamed of anything anymore. And then I go to excavate, go through this process to uncover my shame plexus, as Rabbi Gafni calls it and go complete this exercise and I'm like, holy shit, I'm ashamed of like so much still. After all of this work and all of these years, I started writing my own shameography. And just understanding it. So of course, there's an infinite amount to learn. But there are certain cases where things map to what a general consensus objectivity of reality would be. And that's what our courts are trying to get to. They don't always get to. But that's the idea. The idea is that there is some justifiable right or wrong that somewhere at least maps a little bit more closely to reality. For example, as much as people might want to believe that men can have a baby and we have a male baby emoji. It's not happening. 

JOSH: It's not happening. 

AUBREY: It's not happening. So that's not a truth. Now, from a metaphysical perspective, can a man birth a work of art that lives and grows from the womb of his creativity in his divine feminine? Yes, but his belly is not going to get distended. Like it's not going to be another human life that comes out. And so it is this balance between subjectivity and object objectivity for sure.

JOSH: There's no way that I'm going to be part of a world or a narrative that is contributing to dysphoria of any kind. Specifically gender, and I think it comes in like a wolf in sheep's clothing. I'm not here to like, be against the transgender movement at all. 

AUBREY: Of course not. 

JOSH: But I am, exactly. If you want to do something, great. But when you live your life, you want me to use a specific language, specific way of being, and you want me to believe something is real when it's not? I mean that is actually like a hallmark of communism. I'm going to tell you a truth, but it's not the actual truth.

AUBREY: It's post modernity to its most illogical conclusion, which is everything is a story. There is nothing that's real. And if everything's a story and there's nothing that's real, then then men can have babies like so. And that's obviously we know that that's not true. So there's another transcendent. And it's good to include that and understand, as you were saying, like, well, fuck, everything is subjective and there's an objective first principles, first values. There's a real cosmos and real earth and real things, and it's both. It's like we have to both include the post modernity of there's infinite amounts of genders that people can express. Yes. And there's infinite ways that you could imagine birth and creation, but there's only one way that it's actually going to happen with the body. It's the balance of both. It's an including and transcending. And I think we're still stuck in this place where we haven't transcended this idea of everything being subjective. 

JOSH: I get why there's this movement for people to put she, her, they, them. I think there's over 150 pronouns and they're now like these neo pronouns. Have you seen the neo pronoun conversation? 

AUBREY: I tend not to follow it. 

JOSH: Okay. Well, I don't spend a lot of time there. 

AUBREY: I think I've said this before. I think there's 8 billion genders, 8 billion unique genders, and they are well summarized by just calling someone by their name. You know what I mean? Like, for sure. You're not a man or a woman. You're a billion other things actually. So I actually could never even get it accurate by any label. So how about we just go with a name? How about that? That's really the only thing that makes sense to me because I think they're right. Sure. If you don't feel like a man doesn't work for you, then there's another one, but no label is really going to work for you because you're fucking irreducibly unique. Completely irreducibly unique. So I think the impulse to make 150 is right. They're just stopping too early. You got to go all the way to 8 billion and at 8 billion, you've got it right. And then at that point, you're like, well, fuck it. Might as well just go back to two. It's a lot easier to communicate. 

JOSH: Wow. Talk about finding the middle way. Holy shit. I'm thinking about like, I get both sides. I get the empathetic side because I see why people are being compassionate, having empathy for people that, in my opinion, right, this is just my opinion. This is not the objective truth. I think, well it is objective truth for me, I think that we care about each other. I think that I want people to feel accepted. I want somebody to feel safe in their body, at home in their body. And there's a limit to us having empathy and also truly calling out mental health disorders. True gender dysphoria, a four year old, a five year old, a thirteen year old, a young child that like, they don't even get to pick their dinner. But we're gonna try to say that they can pick their gender? That doesn't make sense to me. And that's not from a judgment place, that's more from like, okay, my curiosity is very fascinated by the way that our society is describing that all is welcome. All is good. All is here. All is accepted no matter how crazy it is. That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make rational sense to me, to my mind or even to my heart. Forget about the mind, my heart knows what's going on is we're still learning how to play. We're still learning how to be in the sandbox and understand each other.

AUBREY: That's I think the meta framework that to me, like if I had a kid who was like, I had a boy and was like, “dad, I feel like a woman.” And my advice, if I'm going down into the real practical, would be like, “okay, well, just know that lots of things are shifting and you're welcome to try this on.” Like, try it on, see what you think, see how it feels, like, I'll respect you.

JOSH: Would you buy your son a dress? 

AUBREY: Sure. If I felt like this was coming from, not because he saw something on TV or his friends, but if this was a genuine thing, I'd be like, let's try this on, but just know that we're trying this on and playing and we're going to play this out. And we're in the constant questioning and exploration and curiosity and don't worry. However, if it stays like this forever, great. If it shifts, okay. But I think that would be generally where I was with just to put a meta framework of let's be real curious and also the radical acceptance because I think the problem would be is if he actually through his own desire, there's lots of kids want to dress up in women's clothes, and like put on lipstick and just see what it's like, if the parent shames you in that moment, and it's an expression of your life force. And here I am radically alive and the parents like, “no,” then all of a sudden you get shamed. And when your aliveness is shamed, then part of your goodness, which is related to your aliveness, is shamed as well. And then you carry that shame with you. So I would be really mindful to just allow this to go through and it's like most mental stuff that people go through, instead of trying to fix it immediately, let's just trust that it's a season and a current and like, okay, here we are. I love you. I love you just as you are in this space and I'm here to support you. And trust that this is a season and stay curious and stay open to the evolution of yourself through time.

JOSH: There's so much new. I mean, I love the way you put that, that was poetry and there's so much nuance there. Like if I am in agreement with maybe some psychosis that my child is having or some dysphoria that my child is having, yeah, if my son really wanted to have a dress, I'd probably buy him a dress too. I'd be like, “hey, that's, you're expressing yourself.” But if I saw, I have to be very careful about who he hangs out with and who's around him and what YouTube is telling him. So there's a bifurcation there, but within that, there are so many little tennis matches back and forth. And I think that's like the challenge that, we're here smoking cigars, right? Like this is my father's cigar.

AUBREY: Let's get real. This isn't a very interesting one because porn is ubiquitous now. It was difficult to find when we were kids, and I'm a little older than you. So it's probably easier for you than me

JOSH: I’m 42.

AUBREY: No way. 

JOSH: Come on. 

AUBREY: Good job, bro. 

JOSH: Thank you. Thank you. 

AUBREY: You're older than me. Look at you go. 

JOSH: Let's do it. 

AUBREY: I'm fucking impressed. 

JOSH: Thank you. 

AUBREY: Youthful spirit. 

JOSH: Yes. 

AUBREY: All right. So when we were kids 

JOSH: I love wellness. 

AUBREY: But you're living it. So when we were kids, porn was hard to find, you get a magazine. And you share. Yeah, whatever. 

JOSH: It was hard.

AUBREY: Or you hoard it like a selfish prick. Like I didn't share–

JOSH: It was always like a secret box.

AUBREY: Yeah. I got some, you got none suck it. Like I didn't care. No, it's not true. I probably shared, but fundamentally, like it was difficult at that point to find it. Now it's ubiquitous. And actually what you did find at that point was like a playboy or something, or it's like, maybe you could score a penthouse or something like that. And like, holy shit. And your whole body would be lit on fire. Now it's a fucking different game. And so we have to address it. And I think as both you and I know, there's a very kind of, you can tell by the aftertaste of the porn that you consume that some particular types of porn, you get a really gnarly poisonous aftertaste after you're done. And then there's some that are like, especially when you're really using fantasy and there's certain situations, you're like, actually, that was pretty cool. Like that felt pretty good. So I think it's dangerous to lump all public erotica into the same category and call it porn. I think there's a whole spectrum, but anyways, our kids are going to be wide open to the whole fucking spectrum and they're going to be drawn just like we were to public erotica. So how to deal with that is the interesting question. And I have some thoughts, and I've been really kind of curious about this, but I think when I have kids, it's going to become even more interesting because, okay, yeah, that’s what I want to get to.

JOSH: I have some big thoughts on that. 

AUBREY: Let's go. 

JOSH: So after two decades of using porn, any addiction, no matter what, you have to keep ramping up to get the same dopamine hit, the limbic brain needs to be satisfied. So we got to this place where I did, I was watching some really gross shit. I mean this is like three years ago. So thank you to plant medicine. Thank you to breathwork. Thank you to Paul Chek, like truly. I mean honestly, like I really feel like those things healed me. But when I was in the depths of addiction like way down there. I was watching the worst things you could imagine. And like you said, I would almost have this nausea as I was watching it and after I watched it. And I realized that it was because there was some part of me that I was at war with actually being responsible. I knew that my mission, my podcast, my future woman, I didn't have a woman at the time. It's easy for men, I'll speak for men because I don't know what it's like to be a woman. Men, we get easily wired into porn because it's visceral. Like, we have balls. We like to orgasm. Like, this is a very different thing. Like, men and women are different in that way. I believe. 

AUBREY: Well, they're different particularly. I think you can certainly say it's not a matter of desire. I think that's actually been proven categorically incorrect, especially by like Wednesday Martins book on True and the whole revolution, the sexual feminine revolution is to reclaim the desire, like the Lilith that has been made a she demon because of her sexual desire to be equal in into Adam in her sexual veracity and intensity has been then demonized and then women's sexuality has been demonized. And now there's a big reclamation of that. I think that's there. However, one thing that is definitely true, as far as I understand it from the literature, is that men are more visually stimulated, like what we see, is actually what allures us, more so than women are interested more in story or sensation or like there's a whole other thing that it's not just purely visual, like the visual has been over index really high, for men as compared to women in the aggregate. Now this is obviously different. I think 25% of Pornhub watchers are women now. So it's not like women aren't stimulated visually. Of course they are. But I think statistically in the aggregate, men are more enticed by the visual. And I think Aaron Alexander was just talking to me about a beetle in a beetle in Australia, that's Attracted visually to their mate. It's like a golden orange beetle that's attracted visually to their mate. But an empty beer bottle actually appears to them like what allures them to mate. And so they've almost gone extinct because they just swarm around the tops of beer bottles and just do whatever fucking insect ejaculation they do to try to inseminate beer bottles. And they're not actually having sex with each other anymore because the beer bottles are around. So it's like a fucking problem. 

JOSH: It's like their porn. 

AUBREY: It is. It's their porn. And it's the visual stimulation. So I think. At the very least, that's one of the big differences between men and women.

JOSH: Yes, I was talking about the limbic brain, so yes, that makes sense. Visual cortex, limbic brain, dopamine hit. But after a while, there's like, the law of returns goes into effect, where you take twice as much, you get 50% less reward, and then it just goes on and on and on. This is why you see perversion. It's really easy to have perversion pervade in society, because people just don't know they're on the addiction train. And so there has to be some kind of soul reckoning. Like I've shared with you where I had the entity, which actually was for my good. I know it was really shitty. I don't wish it upon anyone. I'm not sitting here blaming ayahuasca, or even blaming the center. There's no one to blame. It happened. Otherwise, it was supposed to happen. Otherwise, it wouldn't happen. But when I look at Pornography like my learning curve did not have to be so long. It did not have to be so long, if I would have come across Gary Wilson's work earlier, your brain on porn. Or even listen to some of Jordan Peterson, I could have shortened the curve. And so it's all perfect. It's also, as we've talked about, like it's painful at times but I think when it comes to me guarding and being a shepherd for my son from 24/7 365 porn at all times, the only way I can do that is by who I am. I can tell him to not watch porn, but if he gets an energy from me at all, like that is still in my life. Then I'm out of integrity, then I'm not being honest and like I said earlier, kids don't necessarily do everything you say, they watch who you are, they watch your beingness and so that's the way we do it. I don't think we're ever going to be able to block our kids' phones or block their iPads or whatever crazy thing is coming in the future. 

AUBREY: The forbidden is always even more appealing, right? So my thoughts on this, I don't know what the fuck to do with kids. Cause I believe you, I buy it. And I think that's a good step 

JOSH: It's got to be real. It has to be in you.

AUBREY: It's got to be absolutely authentic. I'm with you a hundred percent. They can sense out, like you said, they sniff out so much more than we give ourselves credit. We think we're fooling them. We're not fooling shit 

JOSH: And our women.

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. So all of that true given agreed. Yes. And I think that the allure of the pornography is its such a strong drug. I find that it’s probably going to be difficult to not say, I don't do this drug anymore. So you won't. And they're going to be like, I don't know. I just took a hit of this drug and it was fucking crazy. My whole body got on fire. Like I know dad. So what I think is that ultimately the way that you change a system right is you don't attack the system or block the system or cancel or censor the system, you create a new system that makes the old system obsolete. You create something new that's better, that actually makes the old way something that no longer is appealing. And I think what needs to emerge is a whole new class of public erotica called porn 2.0. This new class of public erotica that needs to replace the existing one, but still allows for that impulse to be expressed, but done in a healthy way without the toxicity. And one of the ways, and again, this is what I've been talking to my Rabbi about as well.

JOSH: Like you have a Rabbi. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

JOSH: Cool. 

AUBREY: And fundamentally, the idea is like, all right, what does that look like? Well, certainly, in my own experience of the aftertaste, which I think is the feeling right? Like when you know, like you did see like fucking a and then it sticks with you. 

JOSH: It’s the fruit of the war inside where you shouldn't, but you do anyway, that's what it feels like. 

AUBREY: And you just know it's just ash in your mouth when you finish like, man, that was not healthy 

JOSH: Or even unconscious sex. It's the same feeling. 

AUBREY: Of course, of course. So finding ways to create something that actually allows access to that to step into that erotic fantasy, but without that kind of poison now, what I've experienced is if I'm watching anything that I filmed with my wife, for example. No bad aftertaste. Doesn't matter how freaky we got. You know what I mean? We could fucking gone for it swinging off the fucking chandelier. Doesn't matter. And I use that as a metaphor. Obviously, that's not how freakiness actually goes in the bedroom. Nobody's trying to be, maybe people are trying to be Tarzan. No shame to those trying to be Tarzan. 

JOSH: You're walking to somebody's house and there's like a sex swing in their living room. 

AUBREY: For sure, for sure. So whatever your aftertaste to anything I've filmed because I've known that the way that it was engaged was with love. It started with love and it ended with love, no matter how freaky it got, no matter what waters we explored. Like, I remember the laughter that came afterwards. And I remember how much we loved each other and how we held each other. So that experience changed my interaction with that content, even though the content could appear very similar to something that I would have watched online and had a horrible taste, but that's difficult because at that point. I mean, that's just you and your own. And again, so many minefields here to look at and so many caveats. So I think erotica that's engaged with genuine love and respect and honoring of both the feminine and the masculine, particularly the feminine, because like the degradation of the feminine is a common thread in this erotica and it can be accessed, but it has to be accessed with the willing submission of the feminine, the desire of the feminine to be that based on a container of love, safety, trust, admiration, worship. So it could be visually depicted, but the thing that's been really interesting to me is like fiction, like erotic fiction, like written word 

JOSH: Like with Fabio on the cover with his hair flowing, 

AUBREY: Similar idea, but you think about like what Fifty Shades of Grey, when Fifty Shades of Grey hit, I remember I would go through the airport and I was in one particular plane and I looked around me and there was like, five different women of different ages and different genders, creed, not gender, different races, different creed, different whole, like, you could tell the whole vibe was different, all of them reading Fifty Shades of Grey at one point. And it was like, and they're kind of squirming in their seats as I was like, oh shit, like this must be something like, it's really getting people excited. And in that, I think when the imagination is activated rather than just seeing something that actually literally happened and you tell a beautiful story, even if it's really like erotic and graphic and visceral, then I think that's another healthy way to experience erotica without it being “porn” and leaving that nasty aftertaste. So I've been actually, myself, dabbling in writing erotic fiction. And I think that whole category could. And of course, it's not going to eradicate porn 1.0, they'll always be there. Just like there's always going to be, I think there's a lot better drugs than cocaine and you know a lot of these other really drugs that have a, yeah they work but they leave you with a really bad aftertaste. There's just better drugs out there, and there's gonna be better drugs out there, and I think my goal will be to teach my children, like, look, I know you're gonna want drugs, you're gonna want the Eros drugs of public erotica, these are the ways that you can do it healthfully, and these are the ways that you can do it unhealthfully, same with actually your diet, like, you want something really sweet, like, this fucking keto cookie tastes delicious and you're going to feel good when you're done and this fucking hostess cupcake thing, you're going to feel like shit when you're done. But you're going to be accessing a lot of the same stuff. It's just the whole aftertaste and your whole life is going to feel different if you go this way.

JOSH: But the way you're accessing it, it's more real, it's more organic. It's more life accessing it. Like when you and I were growing up, we had to work really hard to get porn. So if somebody, I love this, because it's like this return to somewhat of innocence. Like by reading something, there's a whole different faculty that comes on in the brain. You might not get as much dopamine. You might not get as much activation of the limbic system. And so I actually think that's a really good thing. I think that's a beautiful thing. Especially in our world where you're right. Like, I don't know exactly what it's going to look like for Nova to have whatever his devices, it'll probably be like a patch that he wears and he'll tap the patch and it'll just boom, come up. I remember Gary Vaynerchuk was like, you guys got to watch out because eventually people are going to put those lenses on their eyes and they're not going to want to come out. They're going to want to stay in there, which is what the whole fucking metaverse bullshit is all about. And I do mean bullshit. I understand that people think that it's this great way to connect and all that, but it's actually connecting in a fake world. So if we were to read erotic stories, or if we were to just like, I'm just really feeling this right now because wow. I mean, I really feel like my woman saved me honestly. Like I was in the throes of addiction really bad. And so I just want to say, I love you, Carrie. Thank you for saving me because I didn't have a way of navigating that world. And so I'll share that experience with my son about the lessons that I've learned and hopefully, because I can't control any outcome, but hopefully my way of being and my honesty about what I've been through with him and the way I relate to her and the way our union feels and the way our union is, he can do whatever he wants because he knows what realness feels like right? He knows what the real thing is. So I never have to have fear of him getting caught up in that world because he knows my story and he knows our way of being. 

AUBREY: He's got a living model 

JOSH: Dude, that's the greatest gift I could ever give him. That's the best thing I could ever give him, is that way of being. And that is on a daily basis. Because there's lots of trappings. I don't know what it's like to have built a company as large as you, but I'm building my podcast and we're growing. And so for all men, there's lots of energy and with notoriety comes distractions, comes lots of other things like female attention and whatnot. And so that is always something that, myself, as a father. I have to tend to. Am I being emotionally lazy? Am I having little moments here and there where I'm enjoying the cooling of feminine energy? That's not my woman's is that okay. And to what degree is that? Okay. These are all things that I think about quite a lot, especially with my background So I think my son is gonna feel that, my way of being my truth and he knows what it feels like to be in the presence of a mom and dad that actually love each other that have been through a lot together that have been kind of bruised and battered and we have our scars we have our stuff, but we have a way of being that he can connect to. I think that is the ultimate teaching tool for him. That no porn guard where I'm trying to like look at his URL, me telling my child not to do something with my finger pointed, like that has no bearing in the world of distraction that you and I are stepping into. My son is one year old. I can't even imagine Aubrey, the world that he's going to be in when he's 10. I mean, 10 years ago, where were you? Where was I, can we even conceptualize in 10 years, the level of distraction and the call to you and I to be strong enough to withstand that distraction as fathers and also to be able to articulate that to our children, holy shit, what a journey we're about to go on. I mean, it's going to be fun, but it's also going to be intense. I feel like the intensity is going to ramp up actually. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And I can feel too that when I do have kids, it'll just really cause me to take a look at all of the different patterns and the different things that I'm experiencing. And I know that at the very least radical transparency and honesty is going to be key and like helping them understand to the same degree that I understand it. But for example, and I said, I was going to bracket this and talk about it. I had a really depressive episode last night, like really, just in the bleakness of it and no reason for it. I had no real. And I actually forced myself to write and I'll actually share what I wrote. But it was like, yeah. It just fucking came out of nowhere, man. And it's not like it was something new. I've had this for most of my life, like periods where just the depression comes in and I have my own techniques to try and overcome it. I know, but sometimes nothing's working and sometimes I don't know where it's from and I don't know why it's there. And if that still comes when my son's around, like it needs to be addressed. What cannot happen is my son or my daughter, I believe I'm going to have both if they witness that and they're just like, what's up with that? And then, it has to be like, we know we talk about it, and just like express from the heart, like this is something, I don't even have all the answers to it, but this is what it feels like for me. And this is this pattern, it doesn't, maybe sometime you'll feel like this. Maybe you never will. 

JOSH: Hopefully not. 

AUBREY: Hopefully not. But I think that radical honesty, but also the impulse to like, all right, let's fucking get to the bottom of this. Let's figure it out because I don't want you. I don't even want to have to go through all of those explanations unless I need to. And I will, of course. But I'd much rather rectify and find the answer to this riddle. And it's a riddle that I haven't quite solved. And I'm curious, like I'm curious whether I've started to make strict, because it's come on more frequently recently. So I've started to make a bit stricter dietary decisions because I know that proinflammatory cytokines going to the brain is one of the big triggers and correlatives to depression and 

JOSH: You gonna watch out for the barbecue here then, it’s hidden shit in there 

AUBREY: Well and also the smoke is also something that I've noticed too, really ramps up my inflammation. When meat is smoked, you're actually thinking about the smoke. And again, obviously we have smoke coming out of our mouth now, but we're not inhaling it in the same way. And it's tobacco and I'm sure this has some inflammatory process as well, but it's chosen. But when you're eating meat that has been slow smoked for days, I can feel the difference of smoke, even if I have smoked turkey versus regular turkey. So lots of little clues for me about inflammation that I have to be really mindful of, cut out. I've noticed a correlation between gluten foods and non gluten foods. I'm not celiac or anything like that, but just one's a little bit more inflammatory like raw milk versus not raw milk homogenized milk, big difference there. Fried foods for sure. I just fucking hard stop on all fried foods, even though they're goddamn delicious. That contributes to me having more depressive episodes and I don't even like calling it depression. It's just like a depressive period like depression is moving through me. I think when you pathologize something it becomes even greater than what it is. And it can be helpful, but it's not like I think it's also problematic. So like, as depression was with me last night, or moving through me, like a depressive fog, and I'm just doing my best to figure it out, but some part of me is wondering like, do I need to go fucking straight carnivore? Or do I need to go like, full keto? Cause I know when I fast. I know when I fast. I don't get depressive episodes when I fast. That's one thing I do know. But I can't fast all the time. I like being fucking athletic and shit. 

JOSH: You have lots of headaches if you're fasting all the time. So two things came up for me like, one is just, and I know you've talked about this and I know you know how to do this on an intellectual level. I still struggle with it. Holding my heart and like laying on my bed and actually letting it move through, there's something in me that sometimes I'm good, sometimes I'm not good, sometimes I don't want it to move through. Is that what you experience sometimes? 

AUBREY: Let me express. I'm gonna read this. So I also know that writing typically helps. 

JOSH: That's the only way I can be cathartic is when I write things down. 

AUBREY: And when I write and know that potentially I'll share it. There's some part of me, and I think it's that acts of service are one of the clearest correlations and all the clinical research to actually eliminate depression is when you're in service to others. So by expressing what I feel, then it's not only expressing it for me, which is helpful, which is also another proven way to actually help with what you're moving through, but also the fact that I'm going to share it also makes it feel like, okay, maybe this was worth it. It kind of reifies my purpose and like part of what I'm here for. But man, it was fucking tough last night. And again, no reason just like, and it just hit heavy. So this is what came out. So I brought my computer out and I was like, I just got to write, and this is not like a great poem or anything cause obviously, but whatever. The words slump onto the page. A labor to release them. I pull them out of me like lodged cactus spines. I don't want to write. There is no poetry in my heart. My words are not light, and my pain has no art. I have no story to tell. No raging grief, blazing jealousy, or blackened shame. Absolutely nothing to blame. But still I write. Because I know each new word is the stirring of fight. A bleak ray of sunshine in the fog of gray. I hear my queen humming in the next room. Like a bumblebee milking a flower. Or sweet honey on the lips of a bear. Yet I have no humming beak, nor the fluttering wings. To drink from her pool of petals. My darkness is an old friend, a very old friend. He comes to stay for a while, neither cruel nor vile, just persistent. Am I resistant? No. But neither can I surrender, nor can I accept. What am I to do? It's not a secret I have kept, nor tears unwept. The lesson is a maze. The teaching is a riddle. Why can't I see what is here for me? I am tired, weary, dreary. Neither warrior or poet, nor drunkard or addict. Yet here I am. I am here. And that's all I can say. How long will I stay? Blessed Am I for tomorrow is a new day. Today is a new day.

JOSH: What are you here to teach me? That's right, that's the voice of it, right? What are you here to teach me? When the icy hand, like the war of the Worlds comes in, because the honey's there, like I actually was like, wow, the honey would taste really good right now. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

JOSH: But damn that question, I don't have the answer for that, but I know that when I do ask that, it's easier. It's a lot easier. There's inside of me just this dark hole for the majority of my life. I don't exactly know where it comes from, but it makes me fawn. I have a tendency to fawn, it's one of the trauma responses. So I fawn with people when I start to feel that uncomfortable with that darkness, with that depression. And so here I am talking about it, right? Like it's a good thing to talk about it. And I think that's so beautiful, man, it's so fucking great that you have this place where you can share. Where other people around the world can be like, wow, I'm totally not alone. Yeah, I'm totally not alone. I land on my bed last night to Aubrey and fuck it really sucked. And I feel like that question that honestly, our friend Paul taught me three, four years ago. Like, what is it here to teach me? When I was going through all the OCD and like my psyche broke from that medicine serum, it took me almost two years to heal that. I mean, I was having crazy shit go on, like weird sexual stuff coming up. I think it was a clean out from the porn, honestly, because every time I watched porn, I would microtraumatize myself. And honestly, it was here to teach me that, there's some contrast that I'm not looking at, there's something that I'm not looking at, not out of shame, I'm not shaming the shit out of myself for not seeing it, like, oh, I should see it. I just think it's beautiful that you have a reflective practice where you can write for catharsis, and you can wonder, you can be curious, like, okay, what are you here to teach me, and not bat a thousand, and not have to, like, beat yourself up if you don't get it, because next day is coming. It feels like that at the moment, but you seem to me like I know it's your show but I gotta ask you a question because I love podcasting too. What is it about your drive to create like Arkadia and Fit for service and all these things? There's love there. But then do you also feel the drive because there's the dark, because there's that unanswerable question of what are you here to teach me? Why does this old friend keep coming back? In other words, does that fuel you too? And if so, how much love fuels you versus how much of the dark?

AUBREY: It's difficult to say. I think, there used to be a lot more justification for egoic motivation to do things. But to me, it was always very simple, and I've talked about this on a podcast too, it was very simple for me. I love the world. One. Motivation. One. Truly. I do. I want to help and like, that's what I'm here for. And the more that I help, the bigger my platform, the more successful I am, the more likely I am to meet women who love me too. Like it was always about the feminine. It was always about, can I find my queen? And if I was polyamorous, can I find the next Paramore that's going to thrill me. And so much was kind of, it was very reductionist in my mindset. Like I never really cared about, even though I'm very competitive in sports and stuff like that, that wasn't the thing that drove me, that what drove me was like, man, I want to be like the most awesome, so that I could attract the most awesome woman when I meet her. And then I fucking, I did it like here I am with Vylana. She's like my dream woman, top to bottom. And then, that part of that motivation died off. So now, I'm moving, I have to fuel myself from love. So that's definitely been a recalibration. The part of me that's trying to give myself purpose to actually combat the darkness is certainly there as well. And that's what I was saying. Service to others is a way to actually help modulate my own depression. So in some ways that is self serving and that the more I help the world, the better I actually feel inside. Like I've been an apprentice with Porangui in a particular type of body work. And so I can bring people into a body work journey. And when I'm doing that there's never been a moment where I was depressed nor any day that I've offered that I've been depressed because I know that I just showed up in devotional service to somebody for two three hours. And it feels really good to me. So there's definitely another part of me that's doing that to fight back the darkness to say like, the more I serve the less dark I feel. And so one of the inquiries I'm in is, I'm in a transitional stage of my life right now, and I think part of the darkness is pointing me towards potentially there's an even another level of service that I could reach where I'm offering something even more potent. Or not more potent. I don't want to be comparative to that, but like something else I'm being called to do that I haven't been doing. And maybe that's what it's trying to show me. Maybe it's the universe saying like, you feel like you do now because there's more that you know, I know inside that I can give, that I'm not giving. And maybe there's some part of me that's still afraid and potentially it's maybe that is. Like what we've been talking about, with sexuality here, like I just revealed on this podcast here for the first time, I'm writing erotic fiction, but I'm like, no way am I going to share it, you know what I mean?

JOSH: Depending on who the characters are. 

AUBREY: It's the exploration of fantasy and power exchange and all of these different things. And maybe this is a similar experience to what I was experiencing when in the pandemic where it was like, there was things that I wanted to say and share that I wasn't sharing and that was causing me to feel this suffocating feeling, maybe not, maybe it's a false flag and that has nothing to fucking do with it. And I'm just still in the curiosity and the listening because I didn't write the fiction for anybody but myself, I just wanted to write it because it was a way to explore a whole different world. In a healthy way to explore the different world rather than, cause I've looked at porn in my life too. So rather than doing that, let's explore it through this, through the creation of characters and story and all of this, and maybe it has nothing to do with that. And maybe it has more to do with spiritual slash religious ideas that still are like a little, I kind of keep to myself. It's possible that this is part of my knowing, like now's the time to just stop giving any fucks about how many haters I get or how many people come after me for my truth. And maybe that's it. I don't know. All I can say right now is I'm just in the listening and trying to figure out what it is that this is trying to tell me and what it's trying to compel me to do. What next level of service it's trying to compel me to because service is the only thing that fights off the darkness 

JOSH: I feel the same way whenever I'm doing something for someone else. This is why I love podcasting. I'm never thinking about my darkness. I mean unless I'm asked then I'll share but whenever I'm serving or helping to serve someone else's mission or putting someone else in a spotlight. It lights me up. It makes me feel like, from my whole life I wanted to be a DJ, like an old school DJ. Like Adam Carolla, Dr. Drew, I used to listen to them when I had the cassette tapes behind me when I was a teenager. And I'm like, oh one day I'll be on the radio. I found the radio. And all the people were drug addicts and alcoholics, like being a DJ ain't that great, y'all. So when podcasting came around, I was like, wow, there was a part of me that started to heal because of it. Podcasting saved my life. Carrie saved my life. But podcasting saved my life too. I don't know what the hell I would be doing in this world if it wasn't for this. Like true communion at a table where we get to share each other's messages. Like that is the everything to me. So I think that catharsis comes in many forms. Like you're a writer. I write too. I've never written the mystery stuff or the sex stuff, but it's interesting, but I think that catharsis is like the key. It's like, if we're not getting it out, if we're not letting the decaying snake skin die and we're holding onto it because it has to be a certain way, it makes me reflect on my life. What am I holding onto that has to be a way that my mind is telling me it has to be this way. Versus how fucking amazing it could it be for me to just like, let the skin peel off, let some things die. I mean, catharsis is the only way. And there's a catch there because catharsis could also mean unchecked hedonism as well. Where I just go left field and I'm constantly partying cause that's my catharsis. What I'm saying is, there's a healthy way for catharsis. We talked about the middle way sometimes catharsis might look like, doing a bunch of drugs and partying in Vegas or sometimes it might look like just–

AUBREY: If the confines are a little too tight, sometimes blast through the confines and be Hunter S. Thompson for a day. And then find your way like, okay, fucking did that. Don't need to do that again. 

JOSH: And then sometimes catharsis might just be like having your wife hold you. And so you can just cry for a moment. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's beautiful, honestly. I mean, in the beginning of my journey when Carrie and I first got together, she probably held me like once a month. Just let shit go. I think it's really beautiful. Now to many people watching, they might be like, what? My wife's going to hold me while I cry. What the fuck are you talking about? But it's powerful, man. It's really powerful. And I think the more we can be honest with each other and honest with ourselves. The better we're going to be as a society, but if it's up to me, it's going to be and vice versa. If it's going to be in the world, it's got to be within me first. I fell into that trap many, many times. So the world needs that, the world needs people who are willing to. Get fucking real and throw down on a table and say, this is what's going on for me. This is what's actually occurring in my life. And I'm curious what you feel might help me assuage that pain, might help me understand my pain more. And just like Bruce Lee said, “take what resonates, leave the rest.” Sometimes I get a lot of people that come on the show and I don't agree with what they say. And I really challenged them because one person's catharsis is not everyone's. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And also having a podcast and being a public figure in any way is both incredibly liberating and self actualizing in a lot of ways, but you have to be careful that it doesn't become a prison.

JOSH: How so? What do you mean?

AUBREY: Well, you know, in some ways, and I've done a pretty good job being kind of boundary lists in my content. But I could have very easily been like another human optimization guy, I wrote Own The Day, I ran the company Onnit. And there's a lot of people who would, when I would post something about a relationship or post something about, especially when Own The Day really popped and became a bestseller and all that. Where people who didn't know me from my podcast with Rogan or didn't listen to my show, like we're following me for that. And they're like, I just came here for the kettlebell workouts, bro. What the fuck is all this? 

JOSH: Do I put a red light on my balls now? 

AUBREY: Yeah. Or other stuff, I'm talking about self love and relationship healing and all of these like deeper. They're like, I didn't fucking come here for this. I came here because you're the Own The Day guy. You know what I mean? And I think you can get stuck in different lanes, that actually become prisons to a certain degree, where it's like you have to show the same thing and it works. But also, if it's not your true expression then it's also going to become like a gilded cage for you to live inside if you have an identity or a brand that has to live up to certain standards. And that's the thing like you do create a brand and the brand has certain parameters. Like the brand can't constantly evolve. The brand is not even going to make sense. You have to really focus a brand, so that it penetrates the market to the degree that you want. And you do that with product brands. And that's what we did with Onnit. And that's what you do with a product brand. But when your brand is yourself. You have to be really fucking careful. And we do this even in our social circles, where our own brand, even if we don't try to make a brand, people are putting us in this kind of category themselves. Like I remember I used to party a lot in my 20s. And me and Caitlyn, we were good at partying. We'd put out a lot of energy. We'd stand on tables and dance and fucking let it rip. Some days I just didn't want to do that. I just wanted to sit around and let the party happen. And people would come up like, what's wrong with you, man? What's wrong with you? Why aren't you on the tables? Because my brand was the guy who's wild and parties. And so that became like a prison for me. So I felt like I was letting people down if I didn't do what they wanted me to do. And I think, wherever this next chapter goes, it's going to be about deepening even more than I already have my full spectrum authenticity and being like, sorry, y'all, I know you want me to talk about mindset and physical optimization and all this, but I'm just going to be writing poetry and erotic fiction for the next three months. So. That's what live for me right now. It's not that I don't love the rest. It's just, this is the season I'm in and that's what I want to talk about. Or this other thing, this other topic, this other season, like I'm going to talk about that. And I think that freedom is something that I can see, for me is going to be important. And I don't know what that freedom exactly looks like. And I am very free, but I think part of my nature is I want to be completely free, like truly, truly free. And of course, I'm bound by my own internal ethics and my own internal morality of constantly seeking the truth, radically willing to admit when I'm wrong. All of that has to be in place seeing through everybody else's. I'm not going to violate those things. That's who I am. But if I did, I would surely want to, it's part of my responsibility to share that as well. And also receive the feedback of like, it's fucked up, bro. Damn, man. I didn't see it from that perspective. 

JOSH: When something's not working, the soul will create chaos so that it eventually works. In other words, this year, February, on 2/22/22, I completely killed wellness force as a brand. The word force, the etymology of force, like it can't always be trusted, like a force of nature. And I always felt like for the past two years that I wasn't really in 100% integrity on my show. Like something was off. Something just didn't feel right. And Carrie and I did a mushroom journey on New Year's Eve and she rolled over and I was sharing with her like, I don't feel like I'm in alignment, like something's wrong. She's like, well, why don't you just get rid of force and replace it with wisdom? And I was just like, ah, that's it. Like wisdom is what I'm always seeking. And I'm imperfect in the way I seek it, but I'm always seeking more wisdom and wisdom isn't just information like I think I got caught up in the game where a lot of podcasters, they just interview people. It's like, Aubrey, what's the five ways that I can biohack my body or what's the five ways that I can do it? And honestly, when I made that shift, Damn, I felt better. Like now the podcast is wellness and wisdom instead of wellness force, and I'm like, oh, okay. It opens up this bigger cavern for me to explore. Where I can share about my addiction. I can share about my stuff I can just be my fucking self, that feels so good compared to what it used to feel like. Because I was doing it. Because it was what other podcasters did to be successful.

AUBREY: Yeah. 

JOSH: And that was a massive turn. Since then, everything has exploded. I have a private studio now, I work out of the house, like, things are good. And I know, like you, there's something else too. So there's like this muse calling me forward. I don't exactly know what it's gonna look like. 

AUBREY: Just staying on the scene.

JOSH: But I'm gonna enjoy it, right? But I'm gonna enjoy it, from me sitting here with you. Just being honest, even if it's crunchy when I share, like, there's been multiple things that we've talked about where I'm like, should I share that? Should I fucking share that? Like, with all these people? And it's like, the answer is always yes. The answer is always yes for me to share.

AUBREY: That's what really liberates us. I remember why I switched my podcast from the Warrior Poet project to the Aubrey Marcus podcast, because–

JOSH: When was that?

AUBREY: That was six, seven years ago, early in the game, seven years ago, maybe. And the reason was, well, Warrior Poet is a brand and I have to live up to a certain brand. And sometimes I'm resonating with that brand and sometimes I'm not. But if I just call it my name, then that pretty much people can expect. I'm going to talk about whatever I want to talk about. But the slippery part of that is that it doesn't really matter because fundamentally people are going to put Aubrey Marcus into a brand anyways. And now it's about actually evolving the brand of Aubrey Marcus to be the full spectrum human that I am in its most radical extension. And I think now is also a period, I think we went through a period where all of us had to encounter what it was like to have an opinion that we weren't comfortable sharing, like the 2020 gave us plenty of opportunities to go that, and the world we're in now has plenty of opportunities to do that. And I think that was kind of the forging of a certain type of courage. And I think that courage is going to be necessary. As we continue to go through this next period where you're just willing to share what you feel and and then deal with the consequences. It's almost like there's a part of me that's actually going back to the warrior poet ethos, like, all right, what is the warrior poet do? The poet feels everything to the fullest extent that it could possibly be felt. That's the code of the poet. Share it. That's also the second part of the code of the poet. Feel everything to the depth of the feeling possible and share it. And the warrior is the part that is willing to go into the darkness and willing to take the arrows and willing to stand up to whatever challenges come their way. And use that as a forging process to alchemize their strength and teach them courage. So, it's an interesting and beautiful journey we're on here, brother.

JOSH: I feel like after courage comes peace, cause a lot of times people are like, well, what comes first, peace or courage? Peace is always, in my opinion, after courage. Because courage is uncomfortable. To have courage is not really peaceful. Like, if I'm having courage to stand up to anything in life, I'm gonna go through a period of compression. Like, it's gonna suck for a moment. I'm gonna have to like, feel my value, feel the love for myself and have the balls to stand up for whatever it is I believe in. And I think after courage comes peace. It's like, don't we all just want peace. I mean, isn't that what this game is all about? We just want to feel peaceful. I know that's been my story. How do I feel peace? Well, I have to go through sometimes where I have to summon the courage in order for me to feel peaceful afterwards. 

AUBREY: I think we want to feel both. I think we want to feel peace. And I think we like a fight.

JOSH: What's the split on that? 70-30? 

AUBREY: Yeah, I don't know. 

JOSH: 30 percent courage, 70 percent peace?

AUBREY: I mean, I think if things are too chill for too long, we'll be like, man, I miss when it was heated, when it was difficult, when it was challenging. I'm watching a show right now called Sandman, and it's a big show on Netflix. I have my gripes with the show, but also there's some beautiful parts of it. 

JOSH: What's it about? 

AUBREY: It’s about these divine beings that are also very flawed and anthropomorphized. But that represents like the main character represents sleep. So it's the God Morpheus and then there's the goddess desire and then there's the despair and death and all of these different, they call them the endless and that's the world that they're in and how they interact with people. But in the show, and I won't give spoilers, he basically finishes one of his quests, a deep quest. A quest that took him through a deep period of darkness and deep period of failure, and he accomplishes the quest. And then I was surprised where the episode went. And it was like him in despondency because he was more powerful than he'd ever been, but he'd finished the quest. And he was like, I thought this would bring me happiness. I thought my world was in order. My kingdom is in order. Everything is calm. And he was just absolutely despondent because like when he was in the quest, he had like a clear, hot burning purpose and a fire that was lit inside him. And when that ended, then he was like, well, what do I do now? I miss it. I miss the fire of that experience. So I think it's both. I think like being able to enjoy and truly enjoy the rapture of peace and then also know that some of us are just built, we're built to go into the fray. We're built to have a quest and difficulty and challenge. And I see that in the world right now. I see that with a lot of the people who are preparing for potential cataclysmic situations. Some part of them, even though their compassion and their kindness and the love in their heart doesn't want anything bad to happen in the world, some part of them is craving something bad to happen so they can apply all of their skills of foraging and self and protecting their family and dealing with all the things that are coming up.

JOSH: Earlier you said that the middle way is sometimes killing someone. Well, that's, I think, what we're leading up to. This is just my experience. It doesn't have to be everyone else's. I'm actually welcoming the disruption. I've felt it ever since I was a little kid, like, why do y'all treat each other so bad? What is this all about? Like, when I was super young, I used to ask this question, how come life hurts so much? How come things hurt so much? I think it's because we see each other as separate and we're pitted against each other by who knows, you could call it like the top of the spider, like David, I don't really know what it is, honestly. Like, is there a room of 50 old white men that control the world? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not for me. 

AUBREY: To me, I think it's likely an anthropomorphization of an archetypal force. And actually people are just participating in that force to varying different degrees. I find it hard to imagine a group full of fucking old white guys who are trying to plan everything out, but it's possible.

JOSH: Well, there's evil in the world for sure but

AUBREY: As an energy. 

JOSH: Absolutely. 

AUBREY: No doubt. You can't deny that archetypal energy and certain people participate in that energy, whether they are the absolute embodiment of that energy. 

JOSH: Yes. 

AUBREY: I don't fucking know. 

JOSH: There is the warrior inside of me though that's welcoming. I don't want people to die. My grandpa was a brigadier general. He was the first Sicilian in the Marine Corps. Like the 20s, like he made it. They gave him a key to the city so that's within me like I have deep reverence and deep love for my grandfather like I've had many conversations with him. He's been gone for over 20 years. I still talk to him. There's still an honoring there. And I know he did the best he could. He fought in many wars where maybe there wasn't an imminent threat, although World War II there absolutely was. I mean, we were very close to losing World War II for all the history buffs out there. So I do think that we're coming, even if you look at that book, the fourth turning, I'm trying to digest it right now. It's just really cold reading the fourth turning. I don't know if you've heard of it or not, but supposedly we are coming into one of the darkest times now after the dark is going to come to light. So I am welcoming this because I want to feel more peace. I want us to all have more peace. And in order for us to have that, we have to be summoned into courage right now. I don't want it to be that way, but fuck. I'm like, please, can we stop the charade. 

AUBREY: See, some part of you does want it and some part of me does want it.

JOSH: I want it because I want peace. 

AUBREY: Yes. I think that's a yes, and that also is potentially a slight justification for actually wanting the narrowing of focus and the aliveness that comes from being in contact with imminent threat. There's a radical aliveness that comes when you are in contact with an imminent threat, like for anybody who's competed in martial arts, like when you're in an intense martial arts match, you're not thinking about shit. It's like, this is the only thing that matters. There's this one person who wants to hurt me and it's my job to hurt them first. And there's a bliss 

JOSH: It's the deepest primal experience one could ever maybe experience 

AUBREY: Right. I'm rewatching Game of Thrones because it's Vylana's first time to watch it.

JOSH: I've never started dude 

AUBREY: It's so fucking good. I appreciate it even more now than I did then. And I loved it then. But there's a character Daario Naharis and he's played by, in season three, by my friend. Ed Skrein, and Ed’s he didn't carry on the character. They had some disagreements with HBO or whatever, but in season three, he gets to play this character and he's pretty quickly upon getting introduced, he says this line, he's like, “I am a simple man. I like to fuck a woman who wants to fuck me. And I'd like to kill a man who is trying to kill me.” And when he first said that, I thought like, like 10 years ago or whatever, when I watched that, I was like, that's a bad ass thing to say. But now I'm like, Oh, I fucking get it, man. Like those are the two points in your life where you feel the most radically alive and like, that's what you live for. You live for the radical aliveness. So what you stand for at the core level is the most radical aliveness. So that man in peace, he would just have sex with a lot of women who wanted to have sex with him. And that was in contrast to the kind of whore culture. That was pervasive in Game of Thrones. He's like, no, not for me. I will never do that because I don't feel alive when I'm paying for something. Like it has to be the allurement, the desire. I have to be met in that desire. And then I feel alive and I don't also want to kill somebody. I only want to kill them, if they also want to kill me, that's what makes me alive. And I think there's a part of us. And obviously this is an extreme example of two different types of what Rabbi Gafni would call Eros, like the kind of narrowing of your life into this radical interiority and presence of the moment. So yes to peace, I think it's something we all want. But we also all want to feel like we're right here in the moment and there's nothing else in the whole world that we're thinking about or doing and that's also what we crave. And if that means that there's a big conflict I think, part of us craves the conflict because that will bring us to that state I was thinking about that, last night. Like if I was in the middle of that depression and somebody tried to break into the house. Would I be depressed five seconds later? Fuck no, I would have grabbed the gun and I would have like enacted the plan. All right, Vy, you go here. Where are they at? This is the vest. This is your backup weapon. This is my primary weapon. This is where we go. It would have just been straight like fucking action execution. Here's how we protect ourselves. Here's how we get out of this situation. And the depression would have been gone in like a fucking instant, but in this kind of lavish piece. There was this deep darkness that was in there. And actually what pulled me out of it is Vylana and I made love and that helped. So I guess there is a little Daario Naharis in me as well. But yeah, I just see that. And so it also gives me another perspective on everything in the world that, perhaps things have been so peaceful and we don't know how to deal with that piece in enough of a way that we want some conflict to actually bring out our higher virtues and our valor and our courage and our bravery. And at least those of us who have that archetype within them. 

JOSH: I think I definitely do. I just had a spiritual growth moment here, just sitting with you because I'm thinking about like, that's in my DNA. So if my grandfather was truly a warrior for his time, it's activating in me when I feel threat.

AUBREY: Yeah, totally. 

JOSH: It's coming online. 

AUBREY: Some part of you is coming alive. 

JOSH: Some part is like, oh, you want to fuck with me? Okay.

AUBREY: Yeah. 

JOSH: And I think to some degree that's healthy. I think that's good. Now unchecked, not cool, like unintegrated anger, non sacred anger. Like, obviously, I'm not a proponent of violence. I'm not like we should go kill China. Let's not even talk about what's going on in China. But truly, like if death or if something comes to me, if the threat of death comes to me, I'll do everything in my power to live. I'll do everything in my power to live, and we need that, and I think that's being trained out of a lot of men. There's a lot of feminization of men right now, and I'm not saying that we all should like, have an American flag everywhere in our house and have lots of guns and like, Eat barbecue for every meal and drive a Chevrolet, like, even though I'm getting a Chevy truck, which is so interesting. I'm just realizing that right now. But I think there's a natural harmony of life and I think sometimes that harmony leads us to violence and leads us to uncomfortable things. I mean, that's why the snake eats his tail. That's why the Yin Yang exists. Like, we're always flowing. We're always going on sides. And I feel like right now we're in a big crunch phase. But to quote Kelly Brogan, the healing spiral. It's like, right now I feel like we're in a contraction. And eventually we're gonna be an expansion. I think I welcome the expansion too.

AUBREY: I think peace is a skill that needs to be practiced, trained and sought with the same tenacity that the skill of war is practiced, trained and taught, right? Like to be really good at peace, you need to go through the same type of Tim Kennedy fucking preparation for combat and conflict. 

JOSH: He is the real deal. 

AUBREY: He is the premier example of what kind of mentality, physicality, everything that you would need for war of any sort, hand to hand or whatever the fucking conflict is. Like he's trained himself for that. And I think peace is an equal challenge to master. And I think that's somebody like Ram Dass. Ram Dass is like the Tim Kennedy of peace. Like really. Like he trained himself to that degree to be able to hold peace with that level of mastery. And I think both are likely to be fully robust humans in this experience, train yourself with the same tenacity for both sides, both the warrior, the poet, the peaceful monk, like trained to be all these archetypes, practice makes a master. 

JOSH: Well, since we started this podcast with fatherhood, that is exactly what being a father has been for me so far.

AUBREY: Yeah. 

JOSH: Just what you just said. Sometimes I feel like I need to protect and be at war. Sometimes I feel like I just need to soften and just be at peace right now. And it's a constant, I guess you could say calibration for me. And it's beautiful. I mean, I really do love it. Like having a life that I'm responsible for is so beautiful. It's so beautiful. Like even before I came over to the studio, I was like, Hmm, what am I even doing this for? Why am I even coming on the Aubrey show? Like, what's this all about? Oh, I'm doing it for Nova. I'm doing it for my family. Like, that's what it's about. It's about, like you said, being both, being the protector, being the warrior, being the dad that can hold my son, and lightning just struck. So that's what it's about. 

AUBREY: It's a good sign. Brother, this has been a real pleasure, man. Thanks for coming on. 

JOSH: Thank you for the cigar. 

AUBREY: For sure. 

JOSH: Thank you for this awesome conversation. Really appreciate what you've built, man. And there's a huge part of my heart that's grateful to be here in Austin. And you were very kind to me when I first got here and a big part of my life unfolding in the way that it has is because of your intro to Tim. So huge gratitude for you for that. 

AUBREY: And big shout out to your podcast, which is now wellness and wisdom. And one thing I always appreciated, kind of the start of our relationship was, I was doing a lot of interviews for Own The Day at the time. I think that was the first show we did. 

JOSH: Yeah, you're on a laptop in New York.

AUBREY: Yeah, and I was on my book tour and I got a lot of shit interviews, I had to say. But your interview was one of my favorite because the fact that you care and that you're willing to do the work and do the research and like actually dive in, read the fucking book, get the right questions, go in deep and really explore the topic thoroughly. I was like, this dude is legit. And so just big shout out to you and your podcast for anybody listening, because you have a hell of a hell of an interview and hell of a conversation. So lots of good, lots of good stuff there. 

JOSH: Thank you very much. It feels good to receive that from you. 

AUBREY: Of course. Of course. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We love you. Bye bye.