In today’s podcast I am joined by my brother, Erick Godsey. A few years ago, Erick was working at Chipotle, wondering what the hell “guacamole is extra” had to do with his purpose. Then he took a leap of faith and decided to take the course, Go For Your Win, which he credits as the catalyst for living the life of his dreams today. 

A week ago I was restless, and wavering between anxiety and depression. Without being fully aware of what I was doing, I went back to the map provided by Go For Your Win. I found my mission again, and everything changed. 

This podcast tells the story of how to discover your purpose in these trying times, and the immense sacrifice that comes with changing your mind. If any of you are frustrated with friends or family that think differently from you, this podcast is essential.

For anyone interested, enrollment in Go For Your Win mastermind community will be open for a few more days. Sign up here!

AUBREY: Erick Godsey, my brother.

ERICK: Aubrey Marcus, my brother. 

AUBREY: These are the most interesting times that I think I can speak for the both of us and say that we've ever been in. And for most human beings of our generation, at the very least, this is the most interesting time we've ever been in. 

ERICK: Yeah. 

AUBREY: When we were looking out at the world, and there's a lot of things that we have going on. We're starting to figure out our role, how we can actually play a role that speaks to our spirit, speaks to our heart, is really us going for our win.

ERICK: Ay, I see what you did there.

AUBREY: In the world, what is the thing that we want to offer in this time, because the landscape has changed, the game board has changed. We've gone from checkers to one of those, what is it, Go, or something like that? I don't even know how to play that. It's like fucking really complicated. We're playing Pai gow, not Blackjack anymore. And there's a whole another set of rules and new characters and a whole different environment that we have to function in. So, a lot of things are in flux for a lot of people. And one of the things that I wanted to bring you on to talk about was how to use this map that we've created and cultivated and led hundreds, I guess, thousands of people by now, through this program of Go For Your Win, how it applies to the dynamic nature of the time that we're in right now. Because the map still applies, but just giving people a little bit of support, and figuring out, okay, I understand, there's a lot of shit going on. But these core principles are applicable in any different epoch, in any different time and how so, how they apply now, and how different things may need to be thought about. But the same rules apply.

ERICK: Yeah, I was thinking about this yesterday, when I knew that we were going to do this podcast. And the poem that came to mind was Yates's "The Second Coming". And I wish I could remember it by heart. But there's a part of the end of the first stanza, and the ceremony of innocence was drowned, and the best of us lacked all conviction, while the worst of us had passionate intensity, or something like that. And there's something about that that really resonates. The fact that he wrote this, like 100 years ago, and he thought he was seeing the second coming, and the beasts slouching towards Bethlehem. I wonder what poem he would write if he were alive now.

AUBREY: Same poem. This is new to us,  but it's been in every different time period. In all cultures, there's been these moments that have arisen. And so, this is just our version of it.

ERICK: Right. And when I was feeling into this map, the thing that was coming up for me is it feels like what has happened the last two years has demanded absolutely for me, and I feel for most people, like there is the strongest call that there has ever been to look out into the world, and try to do something significant that is beyond just you making your money for your family to have your things. Because something feels more wrong than it's ever felt before. And people are also going through this at the time where our stories seem to be the most fractured as they have ever been. A really weird thing to feel into is that a couple of decades ago, a single source of information could produce a story that the majority of the Western world would receive at the same time in the exact same way through the same medium. And there was like a pulse that people could track. There was like a narrative or a story that people could either resonate with, or actively fight against. But it was like one clear dragon. Now, with the rise of social media and the algorithms that oversee how those stories get to us, it's a fractal hydra in every type of way, reflecting back at you the things that make you the most angry or the most afraid, because that's what the algorithms have figured out will keep you on the platform.

AUBREY: Yeah, just like porn when we were kids, or at least when I was a kid. Maybe you slipped into the internet era by the time you were still a kid. But when I was a kid, you knocked a magazine from your dad, Playboy, or if you got lucky, found a Penthouse maybe, or something like that. And that was it, and you coveted that thing, and you hid it, and then you could maybe trade it with a friend. But now, there's obviously all of the tube sites of unlimited amounts of porn, right? 

ERICK: I don't know what you're talking about. 

AUBREY: And before, you said, there was that one more singular narrative, and then now there's just a cornucopia of every different narrative. And it's really allowing confirmation porn. Whatever you want the world to show back at you, you can find it.

ERICK: And the algorithms are programmed to give that to you. What people don't recognize is the thing that, there's the Emerson quote, I don't care what you say, I'll believe what you do. That's what the algorithms are. They don't care what you say you believe. They will show you what you care about, because of what you tap on, and what you watch. What you're getting back to you on the social media websites are very likely not the more beautiful world your heart knows it's possible. For me, it's thick thighs and basketball. For other people it's going to be like police shootings. Or, for other people, it's going to be like how something is rigged, and this part of the game that really triggers you. And it can give you this warped sense of what the collective story is. The reason why I brought that up for the map that we're offering here is everything that I've ever studied in psychology, the thing that I keep coming back to over and over and over again, is all the greatest teachers or therapists or healers, or philosophers that were into psychology, they all agree that there's, whatever you want to call it, there's this force inside of you that seems to want you to sing or be a certain way in the world. And people have called it a soul, the daemon, the genius, your higher self, whatever. But there's something inside of you that is trying to actively communicate with you about how you should grow in the world, and what you should grow into. And it seems that people are really disconnected from their ability to make meaning out of these incoherent stories because of the way the algorithms and the platforms and the technology are operating. But if you could start with an authentic computer, that there is no in between AI, trying to optimize it in a way to sell your attention to advertisers. It's your nervous system. It's your dream. It's your goal for the world. It's for how you feel when you're doing the things that give you flow, and how you feel when you know when you're out of alignment. And that this map is our best attempt to help people cultivate at least that connection to a "real story." And then maybe from that base, you can look out into the fucking pandemonium and maybe be able to do something other than just become paranoid, or crippled, or cynical or contributing to the noise.

AUBREY: Or verbally violent in different ways. It seems as if part 14 of this course is a section on ignorance. And it seems as if it might make sense to just start with that in this discussion. Because the recognition of our own ignorance is really important even before determining because the course starts with determining your mission, determining your profession, your connections, whatever. But the mission may be actually tainted by a lot of false premises, and a whole bunch of bias that's actually making you believe that you need to be this thing; anti-vaxxer, pro-vaxxer, liberal, conservative. But all of this is so kind of manipulated on both sides. Like this is not me launching a criticism to either argument. I'm just saying the system itself is designed as you suggested in this idea. And this was something I got from John Vervaeke. We're in a world where we don't love the pursuit of wisdom, we love the pursuit of victory. It fills a Nikea, Nike, like your shoes, like the goddess of victory, like the love of victory, being right, is more important than the love of understanding the truth. Because our ego is attached to being right, we want to be better than someone else, we want to be right, we feel like we're worthy of love if we're right. That's just one of those many cognitive biases that go all the way back to evolutionary biology. Our attitude towards the other, our attitude towards disgust, and our fear of different things impinging. There's so many factors that we have to consider, that the very first thing before charging ahead with your mission is really, as they say, know thyself. Really start to unpack the level of ignorance that we're really, all of us, all of us are in, and at least get to a comfortable level where we say, okay, there's a lot of things that I may be right about, I may not be right about. Let me get to a comfortable place and use all my faculties, intuition, intellect, sensing, knowing, all of these different things to really sort through what I feel. And it seems like we need to start there.

ERICK: Yeah, there's so many things that come up. But one is, the depth of that rabbit hole of our ignorance almost crippled my brain to the point that if I had had people around me who could see how I was living when I was studying philosophy and psychology in college, very likely would have been put into a mental hospital, no exaggeration. I can feel my eyes watering as I feel into it. And I think it's because we recently did ayahuasca, and ayahuasca showed me a vision that helped me reconnect back to the, there's almost, if you study cognitive psychology and evolutionary psychology enough, you can get to a point where if you hold the truth, you can't live. You can't muster the conviction to do almost anything, so you almost have to willfully, like I acknowledge this but, and I'll come back whenever I get too hubris, but it's because of the level of ignorance, we could do a six-hour podcast on what cybernetics has taught us about how our perceptual system has evolved to lie to you, and that everything that you perceive is actually a simulation from your nervous system taking what the objective reality is, which is like an atomic swirl, condensing it into useful icons that make sense to bodies that have hands like this and grew up in the type of environments that we grew up in. And that you've evolved to think that you're smarter than the average person, that you're more attractive than the average person, that you're actually more important than the average person, that you're actually less susceptible to bias than the average person. And there's all sorts of studies in psychology.

AUBREY: There's actually a name for that bias. It's like the overconfidence bias.

ERICK: Right, that's exactly what it is, yeah. 

AUBREY: Yeah, and we all think that. We all believe like oh yeah, people are biased. But we're like those people, not me included in the people thing. And just holding that gently. Like it's okay, it's okay. We all have biases, and we all have things. And the willingness to hold those loosely, is really what's required here. To really understand, okay, let me really engage in this other opinion, let me really look at it and let me see, and let me not run to all of the different tricks and hacks that people do ad hominem, attacks and references and conflating different concepts that actually aren't related, and going for the most emotional triggering thing. Let's just hold this lightly and try to unpack this as calmly as possible, and understand what really matters to me, what really matters where I'm at. We need to go through that with patience until we can then say, okay, now I have a good enough understanding of myself and a good enough feeling, and I feel where I'm going, that I can actually decide what to charge forward as my mission.

ERICK: One of the ways that I see is, you have radiuses of competence that if you don't get mastery in the first layer, you can't do anything to layer out beyond that. What the current environment has done for most people is it's bringing them out to the outermost layer of competence that they have absolutely no ability to act in. Who among us have really earned the right through competence to be able to claim what the entire population should do? I would make the argument that probably no one. And how many people are talking about what should be done at that level? And if you asked anyone who knew them intimately about what is their level of competency over their smallest fear, the answer of them being oh, yeah, they for sure have that down, is almost zero. And the tragedy that I feel when I'm with my friends who, they're good people, they have good hearts, and they fucking care, and all they want to do is talk about the fifth layer of competence about what should be done for the country, or what should be done for a state or for the world. And I can look at their body and see the pathology unfolding from either the diet, or from the way that they work out, or from the way that they abuse drugs, or whatever it is. Or I can feel how they just cut people out of their life as soon as there's any conflict, because it's love and light only, baby. #5DLightworker. There's this thing that we do in our own self-deception, where it's uncomfortable to look at the things that we actually have the power to do a thing about. And so, we'll go to this fifth layer of competence, and we'll fucking go on someone's Instagram account and say something in the comment section that we don't even have the courage to say to someone in person. There's no one in anyone's comment section throwing hate who's going for their win.

AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, that's very true. It's interesting, even with people, we were recently with a gathering of some of my favorite people on the planet, and some powerful women in the group. And during this process, Texas passed a law that outlawed abortion beyond six weeks. And the general sentiment was outrage. It's not about my opinion, and it's just not the point of me bringing it up. But just in the Socratic style, asked them, said, okay, I hear your outrage, and I feel where that's coming from. And I see what that means to you. But if you were going to say, what is the cutoff at which you would say this is unethical to abort a fetus? And the answer that I got was, eight weeks, actually unanimously, it was eight weeks. And then when they realized that, they would actually draw a line at some place too, but their line was just two weeks later. Then all of a sudden, the outrage was like, oh, well, we're a little bit off. But it's not what you think it might have been. And I'm not saying that, I'm not trying to make the claim that people shouldn't be outraged about this, or whatever. Some people might say zero days. And I honor all of the feelings and all the opinions. That's not the point. The point is, is that very often, our actual beliefs are not that different than what is out there. However, we get emotionally wrapped up, and we go to a state of outrage. And really, if we're a little bit patient and say, okay, well, what is the amount of weeks that makes sense? Certainly not 40. So, where is it?  

ERICK: The thing that I feel there that actually feels super poignant to what we were just talking about is, I would imagine that these women that you asked, none of them would even have 1% the audacity to think that they understood this idea well enough, and the repercussions of it well enough that they'd be willing to pass a law that would make people be compelled to act under their belief about it being eight weeks. And that the outrage is that there's old white men that they've never met, who for them likely represent a lot of people who have treated them less than an equal because they were a woman, telling them, I have the competence to be able to claim how all of you should use your body. I think that gets to the crux of this. How many of our politicians can we see just by looking at their meatsuit? You don't have this shut down. You do not have the first sphere of competence down. What you'd have likely done is found the cheat codes to get some type of power that you probably inherited a decent amount from your parents, and you're riding on their coattails. There's all sorts of ways. But I think that that is the core there is, what is your level of competence that you've earned the right to express power or force over? Go For Your Win is about working on that first core, because it doesn't matter who you are. If you're trying to do that fifth layer, and you haven't got that first layer down, I don't trust you.

AUBREY: And that's a great way to describe why this is so important, that we get so lost in what we would do if we were president. It's like the ultimate armchair quarterback, but it's armchair president. Like, "If I was president..." Okay, have you even been fucking class president? Have you been a team captain? When have you made a decision for a group, let alone the whole fucking country. It's this interesting thing. But what we can always get back to is, alright, let me figure out myself in a way, let me get competence in how I can take aim and hit the fucking target. Hit the fucking target. And the process of taking aim and hitting the target, this is going for the win, which is the win. It's really saying, okay, here's my target, here's the way that I line everything up. And I figure out what it is, I figure out what support I need, I figure out how to cultivate the mindset that's going to allow me to get there, and then overcome the resistance that's naturally going to come up to get there. And then you can apply that to some larger scale thing.

ERICK: To everything. Because it's literally how your nervous system has evolved to propel your body through space. Like, the rise of cybernetics has caused us to have to basically--

AUBREY: What is cybernetics? For people who don't know. 

ERICK: So, once we got technology to a place where we were like, oh, we want to create intelligence like us, they thought that they could first do it in a computer. And then after enough scientists tried to solve these problems, they realized, oh shit, in order to even begin to do this, we have to have a body too. And so, the course of cybernetics is basically there was the goal of creating AI. And then through the process of trying to do that, they realized, oh, we need this type of constraint, we need this type of constraint, we need this type of constraint. And it's like, you need a body. Intelligence is somehow embodied. And then once you have a body, it has to have filters on it in a very specific way, in order not to require that it weighs 1000 tons in order to process. So, basically, our bodily intelligence is like we are going to ignore 99.99% of what's out here. Because we have instilled inside of us emotions and instincts. We're going to go look at something that we're instinctually compelled to go try to get. And then we begin to move through the world and try to do things. And if we fail, that's actually where we learn the most. And then when we get it, we get reward chemicals. It's like, oh, good job. You've evolved to regulate your nervous system by feeling like you're progressing towards a goal, and then getting that goal. If your level of competence is not mastered in the first sphere, and you're trying to do something in the fifth sphere, your nervous system is going to be fucked. Because the goal, the piece of food that you're hunting, you're never getting. And the compassionate other half of why this is important is it's like, do you want to heal your nervous system? Make the goal today to be to go to the store. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

ERICK: To fucking mow your lawn, and you actually teach your body that you're doing something successful. And that starts to regulate your nervous system and your emotions. You're probably going to sleep better, all sorts of shit. And then you might get to a point after like 10 years where it's like alright, what we're doing with these power plants, I want to try to improve it.

AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are many steps in the process. I've found for me recently, there was a massive dysregulation that I had in my entire system throughout this whole year. One, I transitioned from Onnit, which is a significant thing, a beautiful thing. Then, the whole world is a brand new world. And everything that I was working on from book deals to other things, all the sudden, seems to need to shift to correspond with the world. I'm not doing it in a vacuum. That's why there's no attained perfect state of being because you're always in conversation and a dialogue with your environment, the field that you're in. And, the field was moving more rapidly than I was moving. And I'm trying to figure out what the fuck am I doing? What am I really doing? I'm uncomfortable, I just had this discomfort, and I would share some of that discomfort, like my Revolution poem or something, like I'm really uncomfortable with what we're choosing to spend money on, versus, okay, I can put that out. But there wasn't anything that could really bring it all together. And all of a sudden, everything else that I was doing started to have less and less meaning to me. And so, I was less and less satisfied with my contribution to the world. And so, I became more and more depressed. And it was this process. And then I would, of course, reach my great allies of plant medicines, and did ayahuasca eight times this year. No, that's not an accident. I'm fucking trying to figure shit out. Help, help, help. And finally, I fucking get it. Now I have a mission again. And that mission came out just recently this week, as this concept of united polarity, which is really what I see. Because I have my own opinions about the vaccine, but I know they're just opinions. And I don't want to get into, I don't feel qualified to declare something. I have stronger opinions about something, especially about free speech. I have stronger opinions, I have stronger opinions about mandates and things like that, forcing people to do things. I do have very strong opinions about that. But nonetheless, the biggest thing that I want to stand for is reverence for all people, truly having that reverence for all sides, and finding again the humanity so that we quit pulling apart and creating this dichotomy of warring factions left, right, black, white, red, blue, vax, anti-vax. All of a sudden, everybody fucking hates each other. And meanwhile, the world is burning. That cannot be, otherwise like the Dalai Lama said, we've got 30 years on this bitch and we're out. That's what the Dalai Lama recently said to my friend Lesley Schofield. That's potentially a reality. Unless we can come together. So, what I really figured out, oh, what do I really want to stand for? It's like bringing everybody back together. That third group of people which can be a part of the other groups. It can be Democrats or Republicans or vaxxers or anti-vaxxers. But they come with reverence for all beings and listening. And so, I came up with that idea, united polarity. And then all of a sudden, I had my mission. Aha, aha. Then life is colorful again. I'm excited, I'm energized again. I wake up and instead of this crushing anxiety and feeling of lost and hopeless, I'm like, okay, I fucking now know what I'm doing. And now everything else makes sense. Nothing else made sense before because I didn't fix that cornerstone, that lodestar, that thing that helps me see through the dark. I hadn't had that fixed yet. It was nebulous. So, what should I do with my fucking staff? What should I do with my podcast? I don't know. I guess, grow it. Grow it for growth's sake. Might as well.

ERICK: That's the logic of cancer, by the way. 

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. It's like there's no purpose. I mean, I'd rather think it's a healthy cancer, but nonetheless, it's the same idea, right? Nothing had a purpose. There was no deep enough why. It was all, yeah, alright, it's to help people but it was so abstract. And now, it's like, okay, I'm here to unite the polarities. Not to change the polarities, not to move everything from one side to the other. That's not the point. We need the polarities. We need those people who are conservative, and we need the people who are liberal. We need all of these different ideas, these constructs. The people who want to push away the stranger, the people who want to welcome the stranger. These are all necessities. Can we love that all of these things exist and love each other through that? And then choose an even bigger aim, like, hey, let's keep this infinite game going. And with that, like fuck, man. My life is back.

ERICK: There's like eight threads in there that--

AUBREY: I know, I'm sorry.

ERICK: No, that I'm really excited to try to pull and I'll probably get four. But the first thing, I think that it's really important to highlight there is, you literally made this map. You're 40, and you are proof that you will lose the thread even after you have found the thread, because life is not static. Life is dynamic. It's like trying to learn to be an archer, but the fucking target is like embedded into a wave. 

AUBREY: Yeah, it's like Schrodinger's cat. 

ERICK: It's never staying still. There's so many people that take this course. And they think that their aim has to be the right one, as opposed to an authentic try. And that hearing that you felt that at this age, I just really want to make that poignant for anyone who feels like there's no way that I have any idea what my thing is. It doesn't have to be right. You have to fucking take the shot. The other thing that I think is really important, and there's so much scientific data on this. And it's that, if you don't have a clear aim for your life, you're going to feel depressed, you're going to feel anxious, you're more susceptible to disease, you won't sleep well, you're going to have trouble in your relationships, and all of that shit condenses, and aligns itself when you feel like you have a clearer thing, even if it's wrong. As long as you believe that you have a more beautiful world that you're moving towards, and the actions that you do, whether or not it's true, if it feels to your nervous system as if it's successful, all of that shit is going to feel better. And so, this is almost like a prescriptive thing. Do you want to feel better? For sure try this. And then the other six threads all had to do with the content with which what you shared. And the first thing, the most poignant thing that comes to mind is we are the product of evolutionary forces that have selected for groups of lineages to compete with each other for finite resources, because there could eventually be another land that you could go to. It was always an increasing border for where more resources are coming in, eventually. Or this doesn't go out. Or if we really fuck it up with this group, we can just go over here. That logic will not work anymore, because we are for the first time in history, a global tribe whether or not we want to admit it. And our evolutionary biology does not want to admit it, but our consciousness can know it. We got one Earth. And we now have weapons that can end the game for all humans if one part of the earth tribe decides that they're upset enough. And if we don't learn how to allow ourselves to disagree yet still cooperate, we very likely won't have an environment where our grandchildren's grandchildren can drink the water. It's so interesting, but if you ever played a sport, someone on your team could have been a fucking racist, or just a fucking asshole, or who just believed wild shit. Like, the government is trying to help you. But you guys can disagree and still cooperate within the game. And I think that that's the big thing that is missing in the current dialogue. And I think the reason it's missing is because people are trying to compete at the fifth layer of competence, and they don't even know what the fucking game is. Like, the people who are in comments, or who are reposting stories or whatever. That's not for most of the issues, the type of game or the arena where meaningful change is being made. And so, I think there's just this massive confusion. The image that comes to mind is it's like, fuck you. And I turn around and I walk around and because it's a globe, I end up back in front of you. There's nowhere to go.

AUBREY: Yeah. One of the things that I think, what you were talking about brought up was, it's prescriptive to have a mission. It's very important for us to have that. And so, when we take a look at people who are really passionate about something, but we strongly disagree, we can actually, and we want to change their mind. To understand and have compassion that for them to change their mind, they have to go into a mission vacuum--

ERICK: It's an existential crisis. 

AUBREY: It's an absolute existential crisis. It's not only an ego death because their egos are attached to their mission. I am the one who is for this. Well then, if you're not for that, then the I am shifts as well, because they're inexorably linked in that way. But it's also, in that vacuum, this aimless purposelessness, and all of the study, it's depression, it's so many things. So, what you're really asking, if someone is passionate about that. What you're really asking is for them to go through a massive crisis. I can't believe you believe that. Okay, yeah, yeah, I get it. But remember that for them to change that it's going to be incredibly painful.

ERICK: This is such a good line.

AUBREY: The phoenix has to die before it's reborn, and the death process is not fun.

ERICK: Are you confident enough in what you believe and passionate enough about it, that you would have the person in front of you go through the hardest psychological experience of their life? Are you? 

AUBREY: Yes. Exactly.

ERICK: And it's like most people, I think, myself included. I've never connected to this until right now. But what you're saying completely resonates. And it's like, do you realize what you are asking when you're trying to get someone to change their mind? And what makes for a good leader is, I'm never going to ask you to do something I haven't done. So, then the question is, have you ever totally revolutionized the way that you look at the world because you've got new evidence? For a lot of people, it's no. And if you haven't had a revolution of your view of reality, I don't respect you as a leader if you're asking me to do that. So, it's almost like a requirement, if you're ever going to dare to ask someone to change their mind, what have you changed your mind on?

AUBREY: Yeah, I can think. I mean, you were asking a hypothetical question, but I'm thinking about that. What are those moments for me? When I was an angry atheist. And I did that MDMA, psilocybin, guided shamanic vision quest journey when I was 18. Oh, shit, my body evaporated and this thing that exists, the only thing that makes sense is to call it a soul. Well, I guess I'm not an atheist anymore. But it forced me to do, and there was this massive shift, like holy shit. All I got in my library are Christopher Hitchens books and, "Why I Am Not A Christian" from Bertrand Russell. And, "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" by John Shelby Spong. And I'm like, well, I mean, I understand some of their points about the religiosity of it and some of the faults, but there's God. I know that now. So that was a huge moment. But the plant medicine was the catalyst for that. And there's been many times where plant medicine was a catalyst for these big changes. And I think that's why these transcendent experiences are so important because you can't argue with them. You just go through the process of the death and rebirth. Ayahuasca does that reliably. One of the times that I can say where I really dramatically changed my mind was in the polyamory journey. And it wasn't plant medicine related. It was from reading Chris Ryan's book, "Sex At Dawn" because I had an entire relationship with Caitlyn, in which I was quite happily believing that it's in the masculine nature to fight to the death to prevent any other men from getting close to their lovers. But for men, it's just natural. We're like lions, or we're like bulls or something, where this is just the evolutionary biological nature, and we can't fight it. So it's okay for me to want to accumulate more women. But for women, it's my innate nature to fight to the death. And then I read Chris Ryan's book, and he's like, nah, bitch, you're more like a boner ball. And here's all the drives that acted in completely different ways. And I was like, damn, I got that way wrong. And then that was what spurred this open egalitarian polyamory where both Whitney and I were allowed to see who we wanted to see. Brutal, but it was a massive change of heart. A lot of times those things happen gradual, but it's an interesting question for people to look and say, okay, when are those moments for me? Was it graceful? How did I handle it? What happened in that process? How tumultuous was it? How could I be better supported through that process?

ERICK: This is such a whole new field of interesting questions to feel into, because it's almost like one of the most sacrilegious things that you can do with plant medicine is to give someone a psychedelic without their consent. And what we're doing when we're trying to change people's minds through arguments is we're trying to give them the same type of death and rebirth experience without their consent. And it's like, have we both agreed to enter a space where this is the type of experience that's potentially capable of happening? I think the really important question, like the really interesting question for people to feel into is, have you done the due diligence on your belief where you believe that you have the confidence to ask someone to actually change their mind? Because in my experience, almost no one that I know who has a belief about what Bill Gates is doing, or what the why is, where the who, and the blah, blah, blah. They haven't done it with the type of earnest--

AUBREY: And rigor. 

ERICK: For their own exploration that would justify them saying, yeah, you know what, when I really soften into it, I do you believe that I've earned the ability to ask someone to have an ego death for my idea. I haven't met almost anybody.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's powerful for people to realize. And ultimately, what that does is it brings back some compassion, and it brings back some like, okay, I understand, I understand where we're at, and I understand why you're so vigilant about this. You're defending your ego life. You're defending your ego life, and I get it. And whatever I'm proposing is an attack on that. That's why the bias is so strong, that even in the face of factual new evidence, people are reticent to accept it. We've talked about this on different occasions. In these different cultish or conspiratorial circles, they'll make a prediction, this thing is happening. It doesn't happen. People double down on their conviction, because their belief, their whole identity is wrapped up in that story, and in that belief. So, they just have to transfer it immediately to this other thing. I mean, I don't know how many fucking times I heard that Trump was going to be the president this time. It was like one after the other. Somebody in some tangential circle would be like, "Well, enjoy it while you can. Biden because..." I'm like, how many times are you going to say that? Like, how many fucking times? And I think they're probably still out there. It's like, "Ah, it's just coming, the swamp's going to get cleaned now." No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not happening. The fucking recounts are not happening. And I'm not even that sure about that. But just based on the evidence, that's not the way people act. People act like, doesn't matter what the world is showing them. Their belief will supersede reality. And again, it's confirmation porn. They'll find the thing that feeds that desire to stay alive. But to have compassion, oh, you're just trying to stay alive. I get it, sweetie. I get it, babe. I think you're trying to stay alive. It's all good.

ERICK: The thing that arises when I, like really feel into those types of people that you're articulating is, I think maybe the greatest psychotechnology that humans have ever created is the scientific method. And I think people really misunderstand or conflate the scientific method with scientism. And they're not the same thing. Like the essence of the scientific method is, I'm going to generate a model of how I think something works. I'm going to then test it to try to disprove my model, like the essence of the scientific method that most people don't really connect to is, the reason I experiment is to try to prove my intuition wrong. It's to try to break my model. I am seeking to break my model. And then whatever lasts after the rigorous attempts at breaking it, I hold that as a potential theory. Like that's how you even get to the point of a theory. And what's a lot of spiritual circles, and then a lot of conspiratorial circles. And then this new thing that's arisen in the last couple of decades, because of the rise of corporations, hijacking a lot of scientific institutions is scientism. Where it's the appearance of science, but we don't tell you how we find the answers. We just tell you that it's science and then we give them to you, and then you become, the people who believe in scientism are not scientists. They don't follow the scientific method. It's a type of marketing.

AUBREY: It's a religion. I mean, people say, there's literally shirts and hats because science, period. That's the same as the church was saying when they were burning people for saying the world was round and revolved around the sun, instead of vice versa. People were getting killed for that. Why? Because God. Their interpretation of God obviously. That's not science that's making, it's deifying this thing and providing this certainty when it's not. Like you said, it's a method.

ERICK: Right, it's a process, and the facts that the scientific method unveils is not science. They are the facts. Science is the process that creates them--

AUBREY: And they are the facts while the time--

ERICK: This is exactly the point that I was moving to, because if you look at the history of science, every fact has its death day. But that doesn't mean that science isn't, it means that science is working. One of the things I think is super important for our time is this like reconnection with the scientific method. The process, I generate models about how I think things work. And then I actively seek to the best of my ability to disprove my model. And there's almost no one on Instagram, or Facebook or Twitter who's talking about any of the politically charged issues, who has genuinely spent an hour trying to actively disprove what they believe. I will put that on the fucking Vegas bet line. I'll bet everything that I own that less than 0.1% of the people who are allowed on any social media have spent even an hour trying to actively disprove what they want to believe.

AUBREY: Yeah. And you look at history. There's been scientific consensus, and then there's been people who in the dissenting, like everybody believes one thing. Oh, ulcers are entirely caused from stress. This is this famous one. Dr. Barry Marshall was like, no, it's caused by this bacteria, H. Pylori. And they was like, get the fuck out of here. Like he was excommunicated from all of the scientific world, right? Because of consensus reality. It got to such a degree, and he was so outcast, by all of his peers, and by science in general, that he eventually brewed up a little concoction and drank it himself, and erupted into gnarly ulcers and documented the thing, right? 

ERICK: So much respect.

AUBREY: There was a theory, he had an opposing opinion to the theory. And now everybody knows, oh, yeah, H. Pylori, ulcers. But it is the process, everything evolves. Whether it's physics, or whether it's medicine. We're uncovering more and more nuance, and more and more information. And this is something that I feel like is one of the few things that I can stand for, which is, no, we need to open up the discussion. We need to look at all possibilities. We can't squash these doctors and these scientists, we have to hear them all in a chorus, and try to make sense out of the questioning of these things and give, okay, is this a viable hypothesis? Alright, well, let's take a look at it. Let's take a look. There are some preliminary indicative studies that ivermectin may be helpful, these clinical studies have come out. They're not compelling yet. They don't have the power to show. But it's like, alright, there's enough evidence there. Let's take a look at it. Let's really take a look at it. But is that what the world is doing? No. And again, I'm not saying I know that it works. I don't fucking know. There's enough of a credible hypothesis that the world should be like, fucking cool, how can we get some of these resources together to study this? What if it works? What if it works? Wouldn't that be amazing? But that's not the attitude. Why? That's the interesting thing. That's where for me, I get a sense of, and again, it's not certainty. It's not an epistemological certainty. There's always epistemological humility. Maybe I'm thinking about something wrong. Maybe the pursuit of this is actually going to cause some other harm. I'm open to that, I'm open to being wrong. But I do believe that we're in a world where we have to look at all of these different possibilities, and really analyze them with patience and see, okay what is this? Okay, this is an indication that looks good? Alright, let's double down and see. Let's do whatever it takes to see, honestly, if that's helpful or not. And that's one of the criticisms I have, is that people are so biased, and there's such a strong desire to stick to one narrative. And then there's the counternarrative. There's not the discourse that's allowing this information and the method to actually work as science is supposed to work. 

ERICK: The thing that comes to mind when I listen is, well, two. One is, I always have this instinct inside of me to try to steelman whatever the position is that the other person is talking about. And God bless my family, specifically, my mom while I was growing up, because they felt that it was me actively trying to be annoying. But it's almost like there's this instinct in me, oh, we're starting to get away from the middle. Like we're starting to get away from balance. Even though I don't actively hold this, what's something that I can say to bring it back? And the thing that was coming up was, for our most recent Fit For Service summit, I was responsible for creating a dance for like 24 people. And we only had like two or three days in person to do this. And on the first day, we come up with some good ideas, and we start moving through the ideas. And then this thing happened where like everyone started to have an opinion. And then everyone had an opinion about someone else's opinion. Then it just got to a point where I could feel as the leader, after an hour, it's we were losing the thread. And I could feel, I don't know what the right thing to do is, but I know I have to pick something and we have to do it now, and then we'll go from there. And if the microcosm was like the macrocosm, and we steelman these groups and assume that they're genuinely good people trying their best with what they have, with where they're at, and that they're not a comic book level style evil thing, which is an anthropomorphization of the devil, that is an illusion anyways, if you really understand the true nature of God. And it might be like that dance move, where it's like, no, we've found this, it works well enough, we don't want to hear the other things. We've just got to do this because people are dying, and so, that's a steel man thing that comes up. 

AUBREY: It's important. It's important to understand that that is, like the Occam's Razor, the principle of sufficient reason. That's most likely what the majority of these actors, these people who are doing, it's probably where it's coming from, honestly. It's like, no, no, no, we can't. We've got one thing, we've got to focus on that one thing, we've got to clear all the other things out. 

ERICK: Exactly. Because it doesn't mean that in business. 

AUBREY: Doesn't mean that it's right now, but it means like that motivation doesn't necessitate a huge evil conspiracy. It doesn't. Now, does it preclude that there's collusion between big tech, big pharma and politicians? There's certainly a lot of money that's circulating between them. You have to be open to all of those hypotheses. Maybe there is no collusion, maybe there's self-serving bias in certain cases. And maybe there's this just genuine, I believe that this is right for. And there's epistemic hubris, where they're saying, I know what's right for the world, and it's the fucking vaccine, and everybody else, shut the fuck up. Okay, but that could be, because people just want to help people. And really like understanding all of these things that we are, all the judgments that we have about people, probably not right. Most people want to do the right thing, most people want to be good. Very rare to find someone who's intentionally evil.

ERICK: Right. I haven't met someone yet. 

AUBREY: I mean, the argument of whether Hitler himself was intentionally evil, or whether he thought that creating a master race was somehow beneficial long term. I don't know. I don't fucking know the guy. But there's enough evidence to say that it's possible that he thought as the arbiter of some of the greatest evil the world has ever seen, he might have thought he was doing good. Thought, doesn't mean he's right. And I'm not trying to...

ERICK: This will be taken out of context for people. If you want...

AUBREY: That's the thing, though. It's very rare to have someone who's intentionally evil, and that's why I understand also, why people are saying, it's the fucking reptilians. Why? Because we can't even imagine. We can't even imagine ourselves, that people would be this evil. Because it doesn't make sense because it's so weird to think that people would be so evil. Like, well, it's the reptilians are possessed by this fucking aliens that do it. But then you're going, where you're really kind of stretching it. And it doesn't mean--

ERICK: Occam is having a seizure in his grave. 

AUBREY: It doesn't mean that it's impossible. And that's again, epistemic humility. Okay, maybe, maybe. I believe in aliens, maybe there's bad aliens, maybe the fucking bad aliens. Maybe.

ERICK: The thing that I can feel like, I love how ayahuasca can connect me to my body in a way that I'm not used to being connected to, but I could feel as you were going through that, my body was getting hot. It was starting to become overstimulated because I could feel like there's a veil that you can move beyond where you're starting to try to make sense of things that are beyond your direct experience. Once you move beyond that veil, you can drown out there, you can lose your goddamn mind, you can be "possessed" but I mean that metaphorically or psychologically. But it's dangerous territory. And to anchor this back into Go For Your Win, there's a way to cultivate your direct experience, which is your world inside of that veil, in such a way where it feels like home. It feels like it nourishes you. You know how to cultivate meaningful relationships, you know how to do things that give you flow. Like if you're spending all of your time beyond the veil, trying to make sense about what the world is, or whether or not aliens might be good or bad, and they're possessing. And you don't know how to get flow from working out, or from doing the type of art or music that you love, you will not last, you will have burnout at best. And at worst, you might have a psychotic break. There are things that need to be done to maintain the home that will allow you the resources to go fucking spelunking, or whatever the fucking word is into the abyss of the--

AUBREY: Spelunking.

ERICK: Spelunking into the epistemological chaos.

AUBREY: Yeah, I think this is the long roundabout way to talk about the map, but ultimately, what we're talking about, which is something we talk about is, these surrogate missions can be very dangerous, because they can be very harmful. But the impetus to have that mission makes sense. One example would be joining the military for a cause that you realize, is fucked up. Like you're doing this for the wrong reason. I think that happened to a lot of people in Vietnam. Now, again, I don't have the expertise to decide whether Vietnam was good or bad. I tend to believe that it was bad, but I don't fucking know for sure. But a lot of the people who came back, this is for sure, a lot of people were like, "What are we doing here?" And that kind of idea of, okay, you join this thing, you think you're on a mission, I'm going to fight for America, I'm going to fight for freedom. When you get there, and you get disillusioned, and you're actually killing people as part of this, and this can happen in gangs, this can happen in mobs. This can happen. Everybody with pitchforks and fire went to burn a witch. They were fired up for a surrogate mission which was probably just healing people with herbs, which is something we're like, oh, great. Granny's healing us with herbs now. We don't have the same mindset as we did back then. But those things that can be dangerous, but the impetus towards them, we can have compassion. Like, okay, I get it. You want something that matters, and you want to tilt yourself, tilt your lands towards something that you think is productive. But, again, going back to ignorance, be careful. Be careful what you attach yourself to, in case that it's very dangerous, in case that you're leading towards whatever future dystopia this is. Some 1984 dystopian, authoritarian, totalitarian scheme in believing that you're doing something that's helpful. Or, conversely, maybe you're leading to the rampant and unnecessary spread of disease agents. I have my own opinion, but nonetheless, be gentle. Be careful about the missions that you're so certain about. And that's why ultimately for me, the mission that I could for sure be certain about is, I'm for sure certain that we need to come together as a people, and that's why united polarity was the thing. I was like, okay, okay, I fucking, I know, I know this. I know that we need, and it doesn't preclude the fact that if someone breaks into my house, and tries to rape my wife and kill me, I'm going to shoot him. I'm going to shoot him. I'm not going to try to unite my polarity with them, and kumbaya. Like I understand there's boundaries and things like that. But in general, we all have to come together. And that's something that I can really stand for. And so, this is the roundabout way to get to one of the key principles. I mean, it's a reason why it's part one of the course. Like, find your mission, know your mission, know the draw towards the mission, know the importance of the mission. And try to do your best to make sure it's a good mission.

ERICK: The thing that arises is there's this beautiful little book, "The Lion's Trackers Guide to Life". And it's like a modern day "Tao Te Ching" that's hidden inside of a really "simple" story that perfectly captures the essence of what going for your win is. And one of the things that stands out the most in that book is the utility and beauty of discovering that you had gone down the wrong path. And how that's essential to finding the right path. The only way you're not going to find your win is if you don't try, if you earnestly seek. Congratulations if you fail, because that's actually moving you significantly closer towards what the angel inside of you wants to dance through you. And that when you do it, we should give a name to it. But there's moments where you're in the just right place, doing the just right thing that's having the just right effect, where there's this instant feeling of everything that I've ever gone through has been worth it because it has brought me to this moment. Those are like the bread crumbs that you get for going for your win. You and I have talked about this, but when you experienced that once, and you go back to your daily life, you can kind of explain it away. If you experience it twice, maybe you get curious. But once you experience it like three times, there's this part that starts to arise where it's like, I know you're going to forget, I know you're going to be upset, you're going to be frustrated, you're going to bitch about this person, about how they're driving. But at the depth of your weeping, when things are the hardest, you're going to remember that a moment like this is coming. And when you talk about it, if you can make hindsight, foresight. And that really feels like that's the ultimate boon of going for your win is that it allows you to be able to be in hell.

AUBREY:  Yeah. So ultimately, once you have the mission, then we go into the profession. This is how you make your money, these things if you're lucky. And if you're skilled, you can put those things together. Your profession is in service of your mission. However, it's always in service of your mission, because it's always providing you the resources that you need to survive, and you need to survive to be on your mission. So, it's just carving out the difference between your mission and your profession. Sometimes it's exactly the same thing, and you're earning money doing exactly what your mission is. Sometimes it has to be a little bit separate. We go through that, the importance of connections, I mean, we have to accomplish everything we want to accomplish together, and how to forge these strong connections. I talk about the difference between squirrel wealth and bear wealth. I'll tell that story real quick. So, I had this really interesting, metaphorical download about how squirrels are always hoarding their wealth in different little nut piles. They harvest some nuts, they dig a little hole and they put their nuts in a pile. Well, they could forget where their nut pile is. 

ERICK: And they often do.

AUBREY: Yeah, or some other enterprising squirrel could go discover their nut pile and take it away. And this is like our money. There's lawyers that are out there for our money, there's things that happen. Money is not a safe place of resources. However, then there's the bear. The bear doesn't hide anything in a hole. The bear fattens himself up with all the berries, all the salmon, all of the things that the bear can possibly eat, and the bear becomes robust. And that wealth is with him. And if you want the bear's wealth, the bear's not going to forget where it is. It's him. If you want the bear's wealth, you've got to fight the fucking bear. Good luck. That's the reality of the bear. Bear wealth for us is our connections. It's the people we know, and the people who love us, and we love them. Those aren't as fickle. Yeah, alright, there may be a falling out or something may happen just like something may happen to a bear. But nonetheless, they're solid, and they're there, and we can count on them. And, they're so important too, and many different reasons. And in many ways, more important than the wealth that you acquire in any other way.

ERICK: 100%. The highest correlation to all-cause mortality is not how much money you make, it's not what you weigh, it's not what you eat. It's whether or not you feel lonely. And that, you personally know billionaires. And if their connections aren't good, their lives aren't good. Period.

AUBREY: And, I would venture to say that it's so many people who've been really successful with their mission. Like you talk to anybody who's really good, it's going to be an athlete, "All my credit goes to my coaches and my teammates." I was talking to John Vervaeke, he's one of the most brilliant philosophers and I reflected that to him. And he's like, "All the credit to the giants whose shoulders I was standing on, who've come before me, from Plato onward, and to all my colleagues and even to my students who I'm constantly learning from." It was immediate. It was like, he knows. He knows why he's so fucking good. Myself included, yourself included, who are we without our connections, without our allies? 

ERICK: Dead. 

AUBREY: Yeah, truly, truly.

ERICK: One of the things that I try to softly recommend to people when they say that they feel like they're lonely, or people don't care about them, or if they're having a hard time connecting to gratitude. And it's that, wherever you are, in order for you and I to be in this room talking into this microphone, probably you can make the argument, billions of people over the course of hundreds of years had to do all of their just right thing for the inventions to be made, for the technology to exist, for the infrastructure to be here, for all these parts from all over the world being mined and alchemized into shapes that weren't naturally what it was to get to the point in this room. To be upset is because you are in a nest of thousands and thousands of people having done the just right thing at the just right time in order for you to even be alive to be able to feel uncomfortable or to feel alone. 

AUBREY: Yeah. So moving into the second segment, because we also talk about passion, we talk about vibration, those are all important things. But what I really want to get into is, what you were talking about is discomfort. And we live in the most comfortable world. Despite that it's been internally very uncomfortable, our mentally--

ERICK: Our Conference.

AUBREY: Yeah, our Conference through the fucking roof. 

ERICK: It's making us sick. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Internally though. Higher rates of depression, lower rates of happiness, more mental disorders, suicides, all of these different indicators, these canaries in the coal mine of how we're really doing are all shit. And one of the things that I really recognized going through this last ayahuasca cycle with El Dragon Del Silva, the dragon of the jungle, it was so fucking hard. It was so fucking hard. Like, probably one of the, actually, the most important thing that I got out of that was dealing with how fucking hard it was. Like it was absolute, I mean, there was a lot of beauty to it too. But I had to create adaptations to the difficulty of it that will serve me for the rest of my life. Night two I declared was the most profoundly difficult experience I've ever had. And it was up until that point. It was like, I was a 100 watt bulb, and there was 500 watts of God energy coming through, and I was barely holding the glass together. It was like, I'm going to fucking burn and burst. I was speaking in this insectoid language, and shaking my body and tapping and breathing and vomiting incessantly. It was like, whoa, this is hard. And so, I started to learn. I started to learn all of these different. And number two, I learned all of the physical ways to get more comfortable. And those were all the things that I was talking about, the ways to offload energy. Fortunately, Merchard was right next to me, he had a fan, and I would use the fan to move energy. I was offloading current, so my light bulb didn't fucking explode. I was really valuable. And I was like, man, that was some shit, that was hard. And I trust them. I made it through, I made it through. I fucking made it through. My feet at the end of that night were on the grass. I'm looking up at the moonlight and the stars and I'm like, goddamn, man, you fucking made it through on your own, on your mat, in the dark. You made it through. Hell yeah. And there was a sense of, I can make it through anything. 

Then night three. Night two, he has his own very strong brew that he brought from home that I was privy to, and he gave me a third of a cup of that in night two. And I had that type of night. And then night three, he fills it up to the brim. And I was like, oh no. Oh, wow. Oh, no.

ERICK: That feeling of right before drinking where you feel your body go, "Oh, no."

AUBREY: I was like, what is this going to be like? And sure enough, that then took the fucking cake of the most difficult experience, different though. Because in that ceremony, it was like a four-hour bufo 5-MEO journey. And for anybody who's gone through that journey, there's this rush and this expansiveness of like into the god space, into the void of just, whoa, right? That moment of, holy shit. And then there's the tough, coming back into your body moment. Oh man, I'm like, whoa. I'm somewhere in between and I'm uncomfortable and I'm thirsty, and does someone have blankets? And I need to puke, and I'm cold, and like, help, nurture me. Well, in the bufo ceremonies, there's always people to do that.

ERICK: And it's like 10 minutes. 

AUBREY: Yeah, there's like loving angels who were there through this whole process helping you, moving your bowl, helping you with blankets. They're there for you. And this one, it was just me in the dark for four hours going through that in cycles. That was the most difficult thing I'd ever gone through. And through that all, there was this massive liberation. Wow, wow, if I can make it through that. And again, some people are like, "That's not hard, bro. I'll show you hard." Hardest objective, right? So, for me in my life, and I'd venture to say, if anybody else wants to try, it's also objectively hard. But subjectively, it was the hardest thing I could possibly imagine going through. And, with that, there came this new sense of self that developed. And the adaptations that I developed. I developed the sweetest, kindest, most loving voice in my head. Not the suck it up, suck it up, you fucking pussy, get it together. Oh, this voice, it's been patterned, and I know that's not proper PC language, but my inner judge doesn't give a fuck. It'll call me whatever shitty name it wants to call me to try to get me to buck up, and be a man, and deal with it, and suck it up. That voice was not helpful, and I could not have survived it. So, another really sweet and loving voice came through, like it's okay, baby. I know it's hard. It was talking to me like I was a little child. "It's okay. It's okay. I know. I know. I know." And that was sometimes lowly, like verbalizing, and sometimes just in my head. And that self-soothing, like the process of havening, where you rub yourself, and like, I know--

ERICK: I really like that. Havening.

AUBREY: Yeah, creating that inner haven, like, I know, I know. I know it's hard. I know. I know. Going through that, that voice is now with me permanently. I forged a new ally, a loving, kind, compassionate mother. And I have both voices. Sometimes then you'll be like, suck it up, just fucking step in the coal punch. Don't be a bitch. Again, that's my judge. It's not very PC. But that's what the judge in my own head will say, right? And now there's this other voice. And so, now I have another like whole ally. So, the point of this long story is that, in going for your win, which is a challenging task, which is, in some ways preparing me I think for my new win, my new mission is I had to go through some hard shit. I had to learn and cultivate that. And that's one of the things, it's one of the segments, it's chapter nine of this. But there's many others. But each one of these things is like an infinite depth of importance in how you get to where you're going. There's hardly anything that I can talk about that I've been through that's significant that isn't really reflected somewhere in this map.

ERICK: The image that comes up that I think is super powerful here is the man who wrote "Antifragile" I forget his name. He's an economist and an incredible philosopher. And he wrote this book "Antifragile" and he explained, there's three types of systems. There is a fragile system. There are systems that can be rebuilt if they are hurt by stress. So, there's fragile systems break from stress. There are systems that can be rebuilt after stress. And then there are systems that get stronger because of stress. And those are antifragile. And the three mythical archetypes he used to explain those are fragile systems like the sword of Damascus. If it hits something harder than it, it's broken, and it's gone. Then the second type of systems like the phoenix. It can be overwhelmed, but it can be reborn, but it comes back at the same level of strength. And then there's the hydra. And the hydra is, you can fucking cut off its head and two heads come up. The human nervous system is antifragile. It's one of the only, like the human nervous system and nature, are some of the only things that exist that are truly antifragile. And that your nervous system and every aspect of your existence will get stronger by going through damage. That's how your muscles grow. That's how your immune system grows. That's how you learn new things. And that there is a line that if you cross you break in a sense that it can't fix. But we have evolved to believe that that line is hundreds and hundreds of feet closer than where it actually is. Like the point of cold baths, and saunas, and really hard workouts, and purposefully making yourself do shit that you're afraid to do, is that nothing will make you grow as exponentially as doing the things that you don't want to do that are in alignment with your mission. For me, that's the gift of ayahuasca. Yeah, there's beautiful visions and things that feel super good in my body, but it's the pain. There's no way that I can handle this. And then afterwards, I come back to the 3D reality and it's like, I can handle my email, I can go have that conversation that I was afraid of before, because I fucking was on the god rocket ship for four hours feeling like I was going to explode from the inside, and I somehow managed to get through it.

AUBREY: Right. Yeah, that can't be overstated, the importance of that. It's essential. And there's so many other things that we talk about harnessing your belief, how to use that, how to weaponize your belief, how to practice stillness, a place from which you can have real insight into what's going on internally and externally. Because if you're moving and the world's moving at the same time, everything's going to be a little bit blurry. Wielding choice. I had a great conversation today with John Vervaeke. And that podcast will come out in a couple of weeks from this release. But one of the things we were talking about is, he was talking about the difference between hot flow and cold flow. And hot flow being like the classic example of surfing down the face of a wave, like hot flow, like everything disappears. It's just that thing. But cold flow is what can happen in a discourse. I would venture to say that we're in cold flow right now, in a podcast, or an interesting dialogue, or his method of actually circling and then going through different socratic methods of questioning, and mirroring, and reflecting back and forth. You can get in this kind of cold flow state. I was talking to him about how in polyamory when I was, for people who don't know, which most people do. I was polyamorous for close to eight years, my former partner. And, in the state of novelty with a new person, those first few dates are like, have such rapt attention, both of you. It's so magnetic, it's so exciting. You're telling your stories, like you're telling them for the first time. You're listening to their stories with rapt attention. That's what draws so much of the magnetism and the energy of those is that novel experience, and with that novel, that reverence in the presence of that. And I realized that a while ago, not understanding, that that is actually what he would call cold flow. And of course, it feels so good. Flow state is activating all of the chemicals that actually, in our internal pharmacopoeia that make one of the most pleasurable states on the planet.

ERICK: How would you define the difference between the two? Just to help me, what are the qualities that are different?

AUBREY: Yeah, cold flow is much more sustainable and elongated. It's rapt attention, but it's not like being absolutely in the zone where there's like nothing else. And, like one of the classic states of Csikszentmihalyi flow state, there's a certain amount of risk there, right? There doesn't need to be risk. Like if you're in one of these dialogos conversations, there's not a lot of risk. I mean, there are stakes, I guess. There's a podcast. But even if there wasn't, if you're in a really good conversation, then there's no risk. So, it's sustainable rapt attention. And it can happen, even like when we've gotten into that, just talking about stuff. When Charles Eisenstein stays in my house, we'll just sit down at a table and we'll start talking. And we would be in cold flow, like nothing else really matters. We're right there with each other. Podcasts just do that reliably. 

ERICK: 100%.

AUBREY: So, the wielding choice to bring it back to that, which is one of the modules here. I was talking about how with Vylana, now I'm in a monogamous relationship with Vylana. So, we have to intentionally create situations that create that flow state. We don't have the novelty or the reclamation urges from polyamory that bring about these kinds of force majeure effects that cause us to be in flow. We have to intentionally choose it. And that was one of the things you're saying, that's exactly it. Like you can get to this by intentionally choosing to recognize the inherent novelty of any situation. No situation is the same. And choose with reverence, and choose to make it sacred and choose to go deeper. But it's a choice. It's a choice. And that choice requires practice. You have to choose it and practice it over and over until you can get to that where every situation can be like that. Every cup of tea can be like your first cup of tea. Like Don Miguel Ruiz, every sip of wine was like his first sip of wine. Every sunset was, how did he do that? He's enlightened? No, he probably chose. Somewhere he chose. He chose that. And that's the fucking power of choice. But we think, choose this, whatever. Choose gratitude. Ooh, that's a fucking powerful choice. Can you choose gratitude? Of course you can. It's just hard. Can you choose to love yourself? Yes.

ERICK: Yeah, one of the really interesting things to feel into is, I can feel that when I'm in a certain mood, there's something in me that knows that I can choose gratitude. It's like no. That is clearly an indication that there is a part of me that wants to be upset, or wants to be sad, or wants to be ungrateful. And the other thing that came up from what you were saying that perfectly fits into the comfort zone thing is, it is almost a 100% certainty that if you choose to do something beyond your comfort zone, you will experience novelty, you will find cold flow. 

AUBREY: Yeah, that's it. Find that area where it is a little bit uncomfortable.

ERICK: Try not to be present beyond your comfort zone. It's going to bring your full apparatus to it.

AUBREY: Totally. So, going into module three, which is overcoming resistance, one of the themes is using fear as a compass.

ERICK: And that is such a fucking game changer, man.

AUBREY: Right. And it's not like, and differentiating, important to differentiate fear and danger. Alright, there's real danger. I get it. But then there's a lot of fear that we have that is not actually dangerous to the organism. It's just the perception of danger to our culturally indoctrinated, conditioned ego structure that believes it's only good if it does this one thing, or this other thing. That is where the comfort zone is. Or sometimes it has to do with conditioning. Wim Hof, I've been doing a lot of cold plunging lately. We did one the other day. But I was--

ERICK: It destroyed me, the part of me that gets self-worth from comparison and numbers, did not leave that feeling like he was worthy.

AUBREY: I really started to understand. Because I've been doing it so much, my attitude, and so consistently. I mean, I've done it for many years, but it's been inconsistent, but I've been every day. I mean, I haven't missed a day. Sometimes a couple of times a day, I've been doing it, and always with deep head immersions. Wim Hof would always say, cold is an emotion. And I'd be like--

ERICK: I just got goosebumps. 

AUBREY: I was like, yeah, that's kind of a cool gangster thing to say. But then I realized, what is the difference? Why is now it's not cold? I don't even experience it in the same way as cold. I know it's cold, but I don't experience cold the same way. It's a sensation. But what made it cold to me was my feeling about the cold, my emotion about the cold.

ERICK: Your like instinctual reaction that if I feel this sensation, stop, or get away from.

AUBREY: Right, and so, it was this fear emotion that was linked in, and this aversion to the discomfort, and my preference of a different type of sensation. But now as that's softening, the experience is changing, and I'm rapaciously looking forward to my cold plunge. It's like, "Oh, should I do one now or later? Both." I'm in this whole new state, and this is the thing that we can recognize is, you start pushing through it, and then things radically shift. Things radically become different.

ERICK: Yeah, the example that's coming up from me is one of the greatest reframes, is connecting to physiologically, excitement and anxiety, right before performing a task. It's the same physiological reaction. It's your frame about whether or not you feel competent in the actions you will have to perform in the thing that you're about to do, that then creates the lens about whether or not you think it's anxiety or excitement. But physiologically, it's the same. And the more that you go do the things that give you that feeling, the more that you can train your body through repetition, that it's safe to feel this and still act. Because one of the things about anxiety is that if you feel that feeling and then you choose to not act because of that feeling, it reinforces that that feeling is something to turn away from. And then your sphere of competence gets smaller and smaller.

AUBREY: Yeah, generalized anxiety is a bitch. It's interesting. It is also linked with depression as well. And I've experienced both of these. It's anxious, anxious, anxious, fuck it, hopeless. And then the anxiety leaves, doesn't matter. Doesn't fucking matter. And I take the pressure off because it's hopeless. But somehow the anxiety is like, if I just do it a little bit better, if I do it right and if I don't make any mistake, if I just get it right, things will work out. And then if I stay in that state too long, I'm fucking completely burnt out and exhausted. So I'll just be like, nope, fuck, it doesn't matter anyways. And then I'm depressed, which is awful. I hate that feeling. But it's like--

ERICK: It's the only way to get relief.

AUBREY: Thankfully. And then the other side is when I'm inspired, and I feel on purpose, and I feel like I do now. And ultimately, like a lot of work, I've actually hired Peter Crone as a coach. Did I tell you that? Yeah. A lot of what he's talking to me about is how changing all of my relationship to the external and of course, focusing in on internal, and so not relying on the fact that I have this external mission that's now made me internally comfortable, because this is going to work for now, and it's very important, and it's very good. But a lot of the important work is that, to work on myself internally, to kind of mitigate that as well. But I have the deepest compassion for people who are between those two different, Scylla and Charybdis, anxiety and depression, and I fucking get it. I get it. And for me, now, at my level of mastery, the thing that gives me relief is to know that I'm absolutely on a mission. I have a clear mission for one. And then I know what to do. Then once I know what to do, I'm competent in executing what I need to do. And so everything starts to work in alignment. Ideally, I'll get to a level of mastery where even if my mission changes, because the world changes, because of course, united polarity won't be my thing forever. Maybe it will, who knows. But can I not go back to the place that I was without that? And that's the deep work.

ERICK: And the thing that has been, like we were talking earlier about the things that you've changed your mind on. For 10 years, my motherfucking mantra was, if you have depression, if you have anxiety, all we've got to do is fix your stories. Let's just fix your stories. We'll do it with the mind. And it took me 10 years of studying psychology and seeing how it wasn't working in specific ways. And then studying trauma in the last two years where I realized, oh, the only reason it feels like that to me, is because I don't have a massively traumatized dysregulated nervous system. And so, I can operate in the illusion that all it is, is stories. But really connecting to... If you have stored trauma in your body, it doesn't matter what story you choose, it doesn't matter what you're saying with your mind, you're going to be afraid, you're going to feel anxious, you're not going to sleep well, you're going to have like immunological disorders, you likely will be depressed, your memory won't work very well. And it doesn't matter what the fuck I say to you. But if we do breathwork for two hours, and you trust me, and the music is right, and you feel safe, you're going to start shaking, and you're going to start crying. You might start screaming. And then we might not have talked about anything, but for the next six months, you're going to feel like a completely different thing than you've felt for the last 15 years. And I was wrong. And realizing that I was fundamentally wrong about what I thought would help people. Anxiety and depression might have nothing to do with story, and might have everything to do with a traumatized physiological nervous system.

AUBREY: Yep. And I think that's where, as you shrink your ignorance ever so slightly, and can open up to these different possibilities. And then also, to go back to that first thing, the more that you can identify as not your ego, but as the one who's learning, as the one who's not winning but the one who's going for their win, the one who's just on this continued pursuit of knowledge, in the Filozofia, in the love and the pursuit of more wisdom that we can carry and embody. As that one that's the journey or not the arrived, then at that point, it's all good. 

ERICK: Hell, yeah. 

AUBREY: It's all good. We'll just reflect and keep going, and we'll do it together. And that's another big part about the Go For Your Win, is the community. I mean, that's a huge element of it, is just the community support. Everybody pulling together. So, I mean, I hope people find this map helpful. You don't have to buy the course if you don't want to buy the course, but it's a lot of powerful shit in there. It's a great community. But if not, hopefully, this podcast was helpful. And also, you're offering some select spots to work with, what? Up to 20 people? Which I cannot more highly recommend. EG Young here is a fucking gangster. So, snag those spots while they last.

ERICK: And I really think that the best testimonial is, Go For Your Win brought me here. I have pictures of what I looked like when I started Go For Your Win, and I know who I am now. And it was the map that catalyzed all of this. And so, it really is an honor to be teaching it and to be sharing it with other people. Because, it worked for me.

AUBREY: Yeah, man. Everything is making more sense with that mission clarified, understanding that this is helping to give people a map. And then Fit For Service, helping train people really through like hands-on training, all of the experiential practices. I mean, what we're about to do in Sedona is fucking ridiculous. I don't think we've ever had more experiences than that. Breathworks, ecstatic dances, vision quest soul wanders, all of the mirroring and process of Steph and Chris. I mean, it's just fucking insane. Paul Selleck, Mattias, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing. And a music festival. But the point of this whole thing is that that's the training arm. Like, alright, let's train ourselves to be capable of serving the world and ourselves in the best way possible. Become fit for service. What are the things that are going to level us up? What are all these experiential practices? I mean, it sounds like it's going to be a ball. But these things go deep. I mean, these things go deep, deep, deep. People have really profound experiences. So we have this, create this initial map, this overview of how to get your sight straight, understand your mission, fit for service. And then the Fit For Service Academy for those people who don't want to join for in-person things and have that community, that Fit For Service Academy app, Fit For Service, and then now, united polarity. And a couple of other things that are in the works. But no need to worry about that. But everything starts to fucking make sense. And now, I can breathe deep. Like I get it. I get it. I fucking get it. 

ERICK: You've earned it, man. Congratulations. 

AUBREY: Yeah, thanks, brother. And thanks for all your support through all of this, and it's only getting deeper. 

ERICK: Amen. 

AUBREY: Amen. I don't know. Tell people where to dive in more besides Go For Your Win.

ERICK: My name on Instagram, Erick Godsey. And then also my website, and then the podcast is "The Myths That Make Us".

AUBREY: Hell, yeah. I love you, brother. 

ERICK: I love you too, man. 

AUBREY: And I love all you. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.

ERICK: Peace.