Shamanic technology has been developed for thousands of years in countless different lineages.Now as we move into a global civilization with global existential threats it is time to weave together and evolve the best of these technologies in order to serve the surTHRIVEal of humanity. 

Jen & Valko are triple initiated shamans, serving ayahuasca, tobacco and iboga. They are some of the most powerful and accomplished healers I have ever had the pleasure to sit with. They also gave myself and Vylana the honor of facilitating in our own medicine lineage utilizing our unique blend of medicines nicknamed “The Godbomb”. 

If you are interested in the psychedelic medicine path, this podcast is a must listen. They also have a facility open in Columbia where they serve medicine, and offered a powerful dieta to Vylana. For more information check out www.WyrdPharm.com

AUBREY: Alright, let's just drop into a little prayer. Understanding that the highest purpose of our life is dedicated in service to all life. for the good of all, My teacher, Don Howard said. And so may these words like the medicine that we receive, and the medicine that we serve, be medicine in whatever form for those who hear, whether it's laughter, inspiration, opening of the heart, the expansion of the mind.
VALKO: And let the words come from the heart, whatever we're sharing.
AUBREY: Yes, indeed. The seed of wisdom. All right, here we are. We've got a little tobacco in the space, which is quite fitting, because we're here with Valko. And wherever Valko goes, tobacco goes with him.
VALKO: Yeah, actually, that's a Peruvian mapacho, which is medicine tobacco from the Amazonian jungle.
AUBREY: I've got some southern draw Manzanita cigar tobacco here. So, I'm going to go, since we're talking about tobacco. We've worked a lot together in Costa Rica, and we've been in Ayahuasca ceremonies together. But one of the interesting ceremonies that we went in together was a tobacco ceremony. And tobacco does involve smoking a lot of sacred tobacco. In fact, so much sacred tobacco that this little mapacho that Valko has, when you're in a tobacco ceremony, you don't just smoke a mapacho. He will bundle together a bunch of tobacco, a bunch of mapachos with a hair tie. "Anybody have a hair tie?" And then you get a roll of like six of them. And he's like, "Smoke all of these." I'm like, "All of those?" That's a lot. But actually, that comes after you drink tobacco. So explain this practice, because I don't think everybody who I've shared with are like, "What are you talking about? Holy shit. This was intense." And I have to say, I was prepared for the kind of intensity of the experience in a way, but not really. But not the subtle beauty of what the experience offered. So yeah, we're going to talk about ayahuasca, we're going to talk about the lineage traditions that you guys have studied with, and we're going to actually talk about a ceremony that Vy and I facilitated for you guys as well. But I want to start with this tobacco ceremony because it's pretty unique and it's a deep part of both of your medicine bags, and particularly yours, Valko as a tabaquero.
VALKO: Yeah, it's interesting, right? When we think about tobacco it's mainly smoking. And not much people think about tobacco drinking it. But actually, that's one of the ceremonial ways of ingesting the tobacco. You prepare a tea with the tobacco--
AUBREY: Like tobaccoasca.
VALKO: Tobaccoasca, yeah. And you put certain other plants inside, just to activate it, and you drink it.
AUBREY: And then there's one particular certain other plant, which is not just like a certain other plant. Sometimes in ayahuasca, they're like, yeah, we've got a certain other plant in here. There's like a little bit of this little lovely flower that's just accentuating the brew, because the shamans died at that plant or that tree. No, this is not subtle.
VALKO: No, tobacco is not so much of a sexy experience. Tobacco is like hardcore work, cleansing the pipes and cleansing the body. That's one of the main usages of tobacco. And actually, when we went in the jungle, before they gave you the ayahuasca, they put you on a strict diet, a cleansing diet. And one of the cleansing diets and one of the classic ones is tobacco, just like a week to 10 days, just really hardcore drinking it and smoking it, like you're saying the bundle one. And the idea is just to provoke a purge and to cleanse yourself, to cleanse your consciousness and prepare yourself for the intake of other mind expanding plants.
AUBREY: Yeah. So, the plant that I was alluding to is a very familiar plant. It is garlic. Tobacco is intense enough when you ingest it in its liquid form. But then you squeeze the good healthy portion of fermented garlic into the brew, which you're drinking out of like an ayahuasca gourd type of situation. And it's brown like ayahuasca, it's tobacco that's been soaked, I suppose, right?
VALKO: Yeah.
AUBREY: And then with fermented garlic.
VALKO: Yeah. Garlic is a really, really, really healing plant.
AUBREY: Unless you're a vampire.
JEN: That's the idea, why it's part of the brew.
AUBREY: Killing the vampire part, the redemption of vampire.
VALKO: Exactly, you combine the both of them and drink it, and you just go. Tobacco is a dreaming plant, that's one of the powers of tobacco. You have your ceremony space. Or if it's not so much in the ceremony style, can be like, you just drink it on your own. And you do your thing, you provoke some kind of cleansing the body. Can be like vomiting, or the lower part.
AUBREY: No doubt. No doubt.
VALKO: And after that, you go to the space, which is like opening the dream world. And tobacco is known for a dream plant world.
AUBREY: Yeah, and so, tobacco creates nicotinic response in the brain, which is very similar to a cholinergic response. And I'm familiar with this, because the flagship supplement that we had at Onnit was Alpha Brain. And Alpha Brain is particularly targeting acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter in the brain. And they found in different studies that acetylcholine enhanced the dream state, and enhanced the lucid dream state, and the nicotinic and then cholinergic responses are very similar actually. What's happening on a neurotransmitter level is very closely akin to each other. So, it makes perfect sense that this would be also a dream medicine because it kind of allows your mind to enter into those dream states. But that was not what I was thinking about when I drank the brew of tobacco and garlic. Within 30 seconds, I was on all fours and I was just grabbing the ground. I was like a panther trying to birth something out of my stomach the other way. And it was one of the most savage purges, just irresistible. Like my claws digging into the floor of our little maloca type of space that we were in, our makeshift maloca and we were, I was just fucking digging in, I have the purge bucket there. And I'm just letting go of, well, perhaps some vampiric energy that I'd put in and perhaps just some of whatever wasn't resonant to having the cleanest vessel possible. But it was an amazingly powerful experience.
VALKO: Yeah, it's really interesting. We hold so much stuff in our body. We close to so much of life. And when tobacco enters in our body, it's a really good cleanser of the subtle body, or if you want to call it in another way, the chi energy. Then it goes where the chi is blocked and starts working in these areas. And that can be like a little bit more of the challenging part. And whenever this part of the body is worked enough, comes with the vomit, comes with the, taking it out.
AUBREY: And one of the practices that you employ is some very intuitively targeted bodywork, where you'll actually push on parts of the abdomen, or the chest, or the back, or wherever there might be blocked chi, and it's almost like an acupressure kind of situation where it's not like shiatsu. It's like, I'm going to find this point, and you're going to send your own ka, your own chi, your own kind of medicine into that spot, adding energy, so that the current can start to flow is really what it felt like.
VALKO: That's the idea, mainly. That kind of technique was presented to me in dream space on a diet. I didn't know how to do it. I was dieting certain plants. And actually, in one of the dreams, it was shown how to do it. I wasn't even sure what they were showing me in the beginning. And after a few months after this dream, I started doing it intuitively.
AUBREY: Yeah. So, you apprenticed with a kind of master, a very famous master tabaquero named Ernesto. And I believe that I was in a retreat with Ernesto, and Maestro Orlando way back in the day in 2010. And I didn't sit with Ernesto. We haven't confirmed whether that's true or not. But I believe that I did.
VALKO: That's a suspicion.
AUBREY: It's our suspicion for sure. And you studied in apprentice with him for how many years?
VALKO: Around 10 years, more or less.
AUBREY: 10 years.
VALKO: Yeah, I started like in the wild years, and it came in the more civilized years.
AUBREY: And I'm sure there's a lot of stories about the difference between the wild years and the more civilized years. And he's from the Mestizo lineage?
VALKO: Yeah, he works predominantly with tobacco. That's his medicine. And when I went to live in Peru, basically, that was my first medicine that I started with. There are different medicines that you can go and do in Peru. One of the most famous ones is ayahuasca which is drawn intuitively to tobacco. And stayed with him, and just like dieting, dieting, learning in the lineage that case, transmitting.
AUBREY: Now, was there a point? And I think I asked you this question. I'm going to ask you it, again, though, for the podcast. But is there a point where your teacher says, okay, now you can serve? Is there a moment? Because in the Lakota Sundance tradition, at a certain point, after four years, typically you get your chanunpa. And once you're blessed with your chanunpa which is the sacred pipe, then you're able to serve lodge. So our sister Huaira was blessed with her chanunpa after a four-year initiation. So now she can serve lodge. There's like an actual moment where they're like you can do this. But in a lot of other traditions, it's kind of like, well, you're ready when you're ready. And you don't get like a blessing, to say, like, you are now a maestro, and you can do this. Did you have that moment with Ernesto?
VALKO: It's interesting that you're asking this question. I don't remember actually sharing this story before, and I certainly don't remember sharing it with you. There was a moment, yeah. After doing a bunch of diets, he was like, let's go and experiment and do your thing. But I always felt that this guidance should not come from me and my desire to do it. And actually, I had a dream that was really significant. And after contemplating, you know how this dream space sometimes can be really direct. That's what you're dreaming, that's what's going on? This one was like, how directly have not, but after a quite while meditation, I took it like yeah, party's open.
AUBREY: Yeah. So, I remember asking you this question, Jen. Because you've apprenticed and studied in the Shipibo lineage. And I asked you and I believe I recall the answer, but I asked you the same question, after your many diets and your many years, was there a moment where there was a gathering of the Shipibo elders, or whoever your specific teacher was, and I think from my understanding, you've had several different teachers where they were like, "And now, Jen, you can serve Ayahuasca."
JEN: Wasn't quite like a council or that. There's a kind of general in that tradition where you need more or less something like five years of dieting in order to be ready. But there is no one recipe for any person. It's just, it's such an individual thing. I have a dear friend who started apprenticing and after less than two years, he started working because he was just ready. The plants came to him and he went, he spread his wings. For me, it was a little over five years of time doing diets before I actually started to run ceremonies on my own. There was encouragement from my maestro at that time, and I have had a few different maestro's. But it's kind of like, you're ready to this level, you've reached this level. And there's always more to learn. Even if you're an 80-year-old onaya in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, you still have more to learn. It's infinite.
AUBREY: Yeah, that's the sign of actually a master, is to recognize that we're always students. Because we're approaching what's called the mystery for a reason. Like, we're not supposed to have it all figured out. We can't. It's infinite perspectives, it's infinite intimacy, with all beings in life. How are we supposed to have figured it all out? And so, that's one thing I really appreciate about you guys both, is not only that willingness to be both master and student simultaneously, but also the kind of audacity to have learned, and deep respect and reverence for the traditions where you come from. But also, what my lineage, the Hebrew lineage teaches is that the lineages are meant to be evolved also. It's meant to apply things like what you were doing with the bodywork, that's an evolution of the lineage you were taught. And so, that willingness to take the wisdom of the lineage and with all reverence and respect and understanding of the genesis of all the ideas of where it came from, like the reasons not to eat pork in the Hebrew lineage, right? Trichomoniasis and all of the different issues that came with pork, which may have been why this was ordained as a divine order so people would actually listen to it. And like, oh, no, I got it. But, I'm going to have my hand pasta, my mom's been making it since I was three years old. And just because of now in the Hebrew lineage. And also, like, if I'm on dieta, I also respect the fundamental ideas around that, that this is a very sentient animal, and the energy is very dense. So, I don't have my hand pasta from leading up to an Ayahuasca ceremony or coming on the back side of it. So it's interesting, I think we're in a world that requires both the wisdom of the past and a deep reverence for it. And also the willingness to evolve as we actually see and feel, as we like to say, anthro-ontologically, knowing in our own body, where we know that the wisdom lives within us, and say, like, I see and respect all of this. And let's see how we can evolve this and adapt this to a world that was very different from when these lineages began.
JEN: I mean, our modern ontological crisis, I would call it that, is very distinct from what it looked like in the Amazon hundreds of years ago. It's very distinct from, that goes throughout many different of these wisdom traditions, not just medicine traditions. Even if it's ancient Tibet, what it looked like there versus what it looks like today. People don't have time for four-hour sadhanas, or attention span to do really elaborate visualizations anymore. So that evolution I definitely think is needed.
AUBREY: Yeah, and to create a shared context that can allow and celebrate our diversity, and also the flexibility of what our lives are actually demanding, and what collectively our lives are demanding, right? Like, how can we show up to serve the world in the best way? How can we use these tools in these lineages and the keepers of this wisdom, to actually liberate ourselves, heal what needs to be healed, and then adapt and apply that to a world that requires at this point, really all of us to show up, and to help build this new story for a new humanity, a new way that we can move forward. Because if we keep operating at the same level of consciousness that we have, which is extraction of everything precious from the earth, isolation from each other, strong ethnocentric and nationalist boundaries, and then rivalrous conflict between those different nation states. This whole dynamic that we're in with the exponentialized risk of everything that's going on, it's time. Like, if everybody's sitting on the sidelines, like, wonder when the time is when we got to really come together, it's now. It's yesterday. Let's go.
VALKO: Yeah, just like, how to bring back the ego mind in connection with the body, which--
AUBREY: You say eagle or ego?
VALKO: Ego, which is language linearity, and logic. Just like how to bring it back and embody it. And I would say that exponentially the separation is growing in the culture that we're living. 200-300 years ago, the people that were living in the jungle, they were the jungle, they were part of the jungle. Then they had one certain need in that culture. That was, how to navigate the jungle, how to navigate the animals, how to navigate their life over there, but they didn't have the separation. If you're not in contact with your instincts 200 years ago--
JEN: You're dead.
VALKO: You won't last too much.
AUBREY: For sure.
VALKO: If you're not in connection with your instincts right now, you will have difficulty but you will survive definitely in the culture that we're living. Then how to bring these incredible medicines to embody the mind and the body.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a connection. One of the things that you get in ayahuasca and many of these medicines, is an undeniable connection to what I call the field. There's many names for it, but it's the field of energy that's around you. You feel it, you can even see it when you're on the medicine and you're going, let's say for a stroll to the bathroom, or find yourself wondering, which I often do in Soltara. And somebody gently has to say, "I love that you're enjoying the nature out there, but please come back inside the maloca." But ultimately, you'll see and feel energy in the field. And I think, I can imagine that when you were part of this landscape, that you were tapped into this, not just in the medicine space, but as a daily waking reality. So, it wasn't like, did I see that snake because I was vigilant? It's like, you could probably feel it, especially if it was, they're hostile in any way. Is there a jaguar out in the trees where you're not supposed to see them, but if you're tapped in, you could feel it.
VALKO: You know, there is this research that is going on, which is our body knows a lot before our mind even registered the thing that is moving. Our body needs to know what it is, and if it's like something that will harm us or something that will not harm us. Then, in this case, you need to rely on your body telling you what's going on way before your mind can elaborate the strategy of what to do. And this idea of the tree mind, one of the mind is like the cognitive mind, the body mind, and the field mind, what you're talking about. And going back to the culture that we're living for, not only North American, just European and just like global culture, which are, we're so much more enclosed in our mind than in our embodied consciousness.
AUBREY: Yeah, and we think of our mind as what's between our eyes, but actually our whole body thinks. From our stomach, which they're now at least calling the second brain, because of the neurotransmitters that are created. But there's the ability to actually receive information and process information through the entire body. And this is one of the problems that I think people on the cutting edge are posing with artificial intelligence is its intelligence that's disconnected from a somatic experience, where so much knowledge, wisdom, actually comes from. We think with our whole body. And if anybody has any questions about that, then take six deep breaths and watch how your thoughts and your consciousness changes. There's studies that actually show that. Go for a run, see how that changes things. Get in the shower, and let the water fall on you. See how that changes things.
VALKO: Go in the cold plunge.
AUBREY: Right, it's all connected, and it's all a continuum. So, the split between mind, body and spirit is just false. This Cartesian split, it's bullshit. It's all the same thing just at a different density. And that's a lesson repeatedly found in these medicine journeys is you start to dissolve the boundaries. And yes, there's a locus of identity where alright, there's a lot of flesh here, alright, there's a lot of thought here. alright, there's a lot of spirit here, I think, but actually, the elemental scale makes more sense than mind body spirit. It's like, alright, we got the ether part of us, even when we actually step outside of our mind into like, the greater mind of quantum possibility, the void. And then we have our air mind, which is thinking and thoughts. And then we have our water mind, which is the turbulent emotions, the fire, the Eros, the energy that moves through us. And then we have the Earth, which is the density, but all of them inter permeate each other. And so where there's elemental beings, that really, one of the gifts and blessings of the medicine is it reminds us of this truth. That's another thing about medicine, is people are so worried that the medicine is going to tell you something, like it has an agenda. "It's going to tell me to be a yoga instructor." No. If you want to be a yoga instructor, you'll tell yourself that you want to be a yoga instructor. It doesn't have an opinion. It's not like everybody who does ayahuasca, ayahuasca always telling them to be a yoga instructor. No, it's not how it works. It's working with you. It's a conversation.
VALKO: I think it's opening my way to see it as opening spaces inside of us that we don't have so much contact with, or we haven't like actually, or we forgot to listen to. That's my particular way of viewing, of seeing it.
AUBREY: Yeah, I agree. So let's go for a vignette from inside an Ayahuasca ceremony. It was night two. We were sitting with El Dragon. I mean, his brew is strong. We were down in Soltara, where you guys were kind of the lead facilitators who are in support of the space as well as Maestro. And that was opened up partly because he did a diet with Maestro Orlando at an earlier time, so you had a relationship. And typically, he conducts all of the songs, all of the icaros, and sometimes a harmonica. But typically all the icaros for the space. And so, I've heard his icaros, for now, 12 years in different ceremonies. 12 ceremonies, I've sat with him. And then I hear this one. And I was like, this must be the most magical thing he's ever done. He sounds like a woman. And I thought for the whole ceremony that he transformed into a feminine spirit, and sang this radically new icaro. I'm talking about it, and somebody's like, "No, that was Jen, fool. What are you doing?" I was like, "Oh," but it was so powerful. It just hit right at this moment where the medicine was like cresting on the precipice, and we call this that when the medicine kind of sets collectively in the field, the mareación when it opens up. And it was right about to open, and you just lay this song, and it just burst the field open in this incredibly powerful way. So I guess, just talking about that in maybe that moment, but using that moment is just an avatar of the general, of like, how you use your medicine songs to actually adjust the collective space, what's called the mareación and what that feels like to you and what that feels like kind of collectively.
JEN: Well. And I can't speak for all traditions, but certainly within the Shipibo tradition. You were asking before, how do you know if you're ready to run a ceremony and kind of what's the initiatory process? Part of that is in the training, it's learning how to bring the mareación up, and learning how to bring it down. And if you can't do those two things, then you shouldn't be running a ceremony. So, I mean, in that particular moment in that ceremony, that was what I was coming in and doing in the collective field. So generally, when I'm running a ceremony, I drink the medicine and I'm waiting for the mareación. So, mareación for anybody who doesn't speak Spanish, it just means seasickness, literally. But it's the term that refers to the effect of the medicine. And so the effect of the medicine isn't just one thing. It's not just visions, it's not just a sense of nausea. It can be a collective of all of those things, or it can kind of just be like, you feel the spirit moving in you, in your body, in your energy body. And so whenever I feel the mareación starting to come on, I start singing. And so, I think in that particular ceremony, Orlando, he'd been saying to me the ceremony before, "Sing! Sing! Sing!" And I was sitting there like, "This isn't my ceremony to run." And at the end of the ceremony he was like, "You didn't sing, why?" I was like, "It's your ceremony." And so, that ceremony was like, okay, my mareación is here. And I was feeling into the collective space. Okay, let's bring it up and even it out. Have it be like a ship at sea that's found its balance and has the wind in its sails in this journey. And so, that's in that particular moment, what was going on. I can't remember everything that was going on, because it's myriad, and it's too much to articulate.
AUBREY: Yeah, of course. Even though it's collective, everybody has their own particular lens that you see through. So, from my understanding, I've sat with many different traditions. Well, many of the Peruvian traditions, the main ones; Mestizo, Quechua and Shipibo. So, what I find is that in the Quechua and Mestizo traditions that I've sat with, there's particularly one shaman who's kind of conducting ceremony for the whole space. And in that space, they are adjusting the collective mareación, the collective energy. And being like, for lack of a better words, the DJ, or a maestro of the symphony, where they're actually conducting what's happening in the energetics of the space. In the Shipibo tradition, it's a little bit different, the way that I've experienced it at Soltara, in that everybody is getting individual icaros. So it feels a lot more like instead of individual cocoons in a very strongly established collective cocoon, because everybody has their own prism, their own experience and I call that like a cocoon, it feels like the strength of the individualized cocoon is stronger in the Shipibo tradition. Because each song is individual to you. And maestro or maestra will sing you the song, often the same song, but sing you the song that you need at that moment. And then the collective space is this kind of swirling energy of all the individual songs, but they're not conducting necessarily the collective. They're conducting the individual.
JEN: They actually are.
AUBREY: Okay, so that's what I don't feel as much.
JEN: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different strategies and styles of running a ceremony. And again, I'm mainly speaking to the Shipibo because that's what I've experienced, obviously Quechua, Mestizo, a little bit of Ashaninka as well. But Shipibo, there's always a coming back to the collective. So, I can speak for myself, but I can also speak for having been in thousands upon thousands of Shipibo ceremonies, with anywhere from one to eight Shipibo maestros and maestras working at the same time. And so, when you have one, it's different as to when you have two. Two, generally there's a balance between a male and a female. When you have eight, it's an orchestra or more than two really. But there's always kind of a coming back to the collective, because whenever energies are moving... Say for example, there's one person receiving an icaro, and some energy moves out of them, then that energy is in the space. There is a collective field that that energy can go out and start affecting other people. And so, anyone who's a good healer, or a good space holder in that realm will be able to clean that energy, move it out of the space. Or for example, if I'm working on somebody on one side of the room, and I'm feeling something happening on the other side of the room, I might start in the middle of that icaro for one person and work on somebody--
AUBREY: And with your consciousness, just actually be working on...
JEN: Yeah, it's with the intention. Like one of the main distinctions between the Shipibo way of working is that the intention of doing dietas, so a plant dieta where you're focusing with anywhere from one to a number of plants that you're ingesting for anywhere from a week to a year, two years, it can be different lengths. The intention of that is to open the body, mind, to open the sense stores to be able when the aspirant, the Apprentice sits in front of a patient to be able to open to that person and take them in, feel what they're feeling, experience them from the inside out. So it's a co-creation, it's a symbiotic like dance that's happening. I have a very, not very, but I have a different take on this than a traditional Shipibo would. So, I also want to speak to that, because part of what I noticed in the Shipibo tradition is that there's a lot of focus on defense. So it's like, okay, I'm here, I'm in front of you, I'm working on you, there's some energy that I'm considering a bad energy. Maybe it's evoking my fear, or my aversion in some way or another. I have all these plants that can step forward, that can just get it the fuck out of the way, just, you know. For me, when I'm working with someone, if something comes forward and says, it stimulates my fear, or it stimulates insecurity, or it stimulates sadness, it triggers a different feeling in me, I take that as my own integrated place that I need to work on too. And then I get the opportunity to work that with you, as I'm working with you, not just on you.
AUBREY: Yeah, I think this is an evolution of these lineage understandings, which is also a part of the understanding that I share as well. It's like, it's a position of non-aversion in a way. It's a position of almost Christ-like radical acceptance. And, certain times the energy has got to get the fuck out of there.
JEN: Definitely, definitely.
AUBREY: It's like, it is both, but the ultimate overarching is not defense. And I think, the terminology, if I'm using it right, is, so I was speaking with Americo and he was talking about booman which is like the negative energy that can come from a plan, a person, yourself or whatever. Booman this negative energy. And then if you're not careful, you can get choke hard, you can get blocked up by someone's booman. So you've got your shields up, you've got your defenses there. But in that you're creating a strong duality dynamic.
JEN: Yeah, exactly.
AUBREY: So, while it's not wrong, it's not like we're saying, "No, you're wrong." We're saying there's another way. There's another way to look at us as a being that spans the entirety of a complicated and broad polarity. And then even this negative energy, one of the ways that you can transmute it is to see it, to witness it, to love it. And this is something that Vylana shared. She went down to Colombia to work with both of you individually. What a treat. And a diet plant called marosa. And she expressed the stories of how you guys worked with these things and energies that were coming through, including this energy that had bothered her in her neck, which actually felt a bit like a vampiric energy. And she told the story, and I'll let you carry on if you remember the story about what you guys told her about how to approach the energy. Because you could have taken it like, all right, I'm going to call in my badass plants here. We're going to fucking destroy this booman that's here, and then go to battle with anybody who placed it on you and let's fucking fight. let's, let's tape the tape the hands, attacking master plans and defending master plans and destroy. But you guys had a much different approach. And it really worked to liberate her from this thing that probably would have come back if you guys even expelled it in that one moment.
VALKO: If you want to say it, and after that I will say what I want to say.
JEN: I mean, yeah, in that moment of that work, it was interesting because we kind of have a combination of working in a way of processing and speaking, and then also doing the shamanic work so it's kind of a fluid dance between the two of them.
AUBREY: Vylana loved that by the way. She said it was just such a treat to be able to not have to deal with all of your own thoughts all by yourself the whole time, but to be able to both step into the trance, the mareación trance that ayahuasca can give and process individually, but also, check in like, "Hey, are you doing? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?"
JEN: So I mean, she let us know that something was really strong for her, and I came over, I started working on her. And when I was working on her, it was like what you're saying about there is a time to step in with a level of fierceness and force. And there's also a time to step in with doing a little bit more of a tricky dance of like, okay, how are we going to work you? Do I have to dodge and get you from this side? And I was trying all kinds of things with this energy and it was not responding to pushing at all. What it was responding to was gentleness and love, and a kind of a quality of inquiry. And that was in the song with these different plants that were coming through. They're small, aromatic plants. They're plants that are filled with love, plants that are filled with light, plants that have a more subtle nuance, delicate way of working, which marosa is one of. And after doing that work, it's like it loosened, it got space, and then kind of another round of it came back. Then we started this inquiry of just really having her make contact with the feeling itself. Because a lot of the time when there's a feeling that elicits a reaction, just that, it elicits a reaction. And the reaction has a charge of I don't want this, get this away from me, fuck off. That's a really good indication that there's something there and that the pushing against is only going to create a further pushing back. That's the hook--
AUBREY: That's what it wants. It wants to fight.
JEN: Exactly, that’s its food.
AUBREY: It's like, good, gotcha.
JEN: Exactly.
AUBREY: If you get in a fight with a demon, demon's, like, "Perfect. I'm here all day."
JEN: Yeah, and we can call it a demon, you can call it, I think a really good way to call it is just simple aversion. That's the simplest, most universal--
AUBREY: And I'm not claiming that this thing was a demon. I have encountered actual demons and still the response. like the last response, the last thing, option, is fight. Because if you do step into a fight, you better be damn sure that you're a good fighter, and that you're going to win. You have to have supreme confidence because a lot of it is a confidence game. It's a belief game. You better trust your diets, you better trust your skills, you better trust the moves that you have. But love is going to be a much better, much more powerful tool to use. It's the most powerful tool in the cosmos. So it's like, you can fight with your aggression, but actually, if you meet it with love, it's the greatest chance for alchemy or just creating a field of energy, a vibrational field, which is no longer resonant for that entity or energy to be there. However dark it may appear.
VALKO: And ask the simple question, what do you need?
AUBREY: That was the question that really blew Vylana's mind.
JEN: Which is exactly what we asked her. First it was just making contact with the feeling. And then just like what is this feeling needing from you?
VALKO: You know, just going, dropping under the level of like, that's bad or that's good, and just feeling the vibration of this space. And we all have these kinds of spaces inside of us, which is, our needs hasn't been satisfied. Like our matter says really well, something that shouldn't have happened happened. Or something that should have happened didn't happen. And that's like, basically, whatever shouldn't have happened, happened, or whatever that's it, small parts of our soul just isolate, and its needs are not met. Then what kind of space we can open in these powerful medicines and just reconsider again, the needs of that space. Because it's been tried, Aubrey. I tried personally for so much years to vomit my fear, or to vomit my tender spaces that are being violated from whatever happened in my personal history. And I will always say that whenever we get together with Jen actually, another level of my healing starts, which is the level of healing, which is like to start putting attention to my needs, and eventually satisfying them. I couldn't do it before on my own. And sometimes I could do it, and sometimes I cannot do it. But a little bit of help from friends can be a really, really good way to approach it. Yeah.
AUBREY: And we'll get to that. And I just want to let everybody know, if Valko was unable to vomit his fear entirely, he is the best vomiter on the planet Earth. If you hear Valko vomit, you will realize there's levels to the game, and he's the ultimate vomiting Black Belt. It's so goddamn impressive when you hear you vomit. So if it doesn't work for you, it's not going to work for any of us. Maybe temporarily, maybe take a little pressure off, but it's not going to be the only tool. So, going back to, you asked, sorry, what is in and Vy of course doesn't mind me sharing this. We've shared it as well openly. She's really proud of this moment, and really in great praise for you guys. So you asked, what does this need or what does it want? And she said, power. She said it wants power. And then I believe it was you Valko the way she told the story, you asked her a very interesting follow up question.
VALKO: If it has power, what will give her power? Actually, why you need power?
AUBREY: Why does that energy need power?
VALKO: Yeah. Or if you have power, what will happen?
AUBREY: Yeah. And ultimately, the answer that emerged from the field was, safety. So this energy, which you could look at is this attacking booman of some sort, all of a sudden, you realize, oh, it just wants to be safe.
VALKO: The quality of the energy depends on the quality of relationship that you establish with energy.
JEN: Exactly.
VALKO: That I think, is really, really good way of saying it.
JEN: Like, if ever you're in a situation where there's conflict, and someone in the midst of that conflict softens, and brings in some aspect of their vulnerability, opens to some tenderness or love. In that moment, it shifts the whole dynamic. Maybe it doesn't change it immediately. But it brings more space in rather than this tension, just brings a kind of a softening and an opening.
VALKO: I just want to give you a personal example of works that we did in some moment of time. A guy was just like, in the midst of Ayahuasca ceremony, and he's like a bear. He's just basically becoming a bear. And we look at each other with Jen, and Jen's like, "Go and check what's going on over there." I go over there, and like, "How are you doing? What's going on?" And I'm just like, dropping under what he's saying, and just feeling him and I didn't feel something that was actually bad, or something that we need to take out, or whatever. I was like, "Okay, let's feel. Let's feel in some moment." I just hugged him. And we stayed like four or five minutes in the hug. And after that, I just felt his body getting relaxed, a little bit more relaxed, a little more relaxed. That was it. And the next day we're speaking, he's like, "I need to tell you what's happened." I was like, "Tell me what happened." He was like, "While you were hugging me, I was seeing this..." He was calling it a demon. "I was seeing this demon. And in some moment, it just converted itself into an angel." I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." That happened quite a while ago. And reading a little bit more books and going deeper in my own needs and my own personal work, I just understood that. this energy inherently, they are energy without content. The content is how we relate with these energies.
AUBREY: Yeah, I mean, in my own interaction with these energies, in 24 years of medicine work, I've encountered plenty of them. And I've started to recognize that there's a very special and beautiful role that when an image, a vision appears to you in its demonic form, which we know what that looks like. We see it in movies and stuff. I don't know what came first, the visions of these or the movies, or art imitates life. However these ideas were planted in our minds like--
VALKO: Is it the chicken or the egg?
AUBREY: Exactly. But there's often horns, it's often red and black, it's often kind of gnarly, skulls. Halloween doesn't have it too far off, right? You'll see these things. But there's this beautiful opportunity where you can imagine that that's appearing to you to test your unconditionality of love, to test the Christ consciousness that's within us all. And it's almost like the darker the being, the more it's asking you, can you love me too? And almost like it's asking that to God and us as participatory in the field of the divine. It's asking us and the divinity within us, can you love me too even when I'm dripping in blood, even when I have fangs, even when I have horns? Can you love me too? And that's this beautiful, beautiful invitation that all of this "demonic energy" is offering is just saying, can you love me too?
JEN: I would also add to that, that all that those energies actually want is love at the end of it.
AUBREY: Yeah, and anybody physically acting out in ways that are demonic in real life, right? Like, a lot of the pathology there is they've crossed a threshold where they no longer feel that they're deserving of love, they've never been given love. And so, they are switching the name of the game and they're embracing the opposite force of that which is power to feel safe because they don't feel loved. And so often, there's this unworthiness of love, this shame that we hold inside that says, we don't deserve love, we aren't worthy of love. But actually, all we really want is love. So even the demonic actions that we see played out are played out precisely because of an absence of love. Even if someone claims like I don't want love, I want power, you're like, no, you don't, you just don't feel like you can receive it, and feel like maybe you've crossed too far or you've gone, but this is the lesson and message of that ultimate availability for redemption and love that can come to anybody or anything.
VALKO: And in the ways of self-protection mechanism too. I don't want to open myself, because I know what will happen.
AUBREY: It'll get taken away, my "heart" will be broken.
VALKO: Exactly. And that's really interesting what happened with me recently in ceremony, which was I got spun to, like, really deep spaces where I felt unloved. And a big part of the ceremony was like how I can open my heart again to love. And in the midst of the ceremony, I was just having this implicit understanding of, this heart is made to be broken, and it's made to be mended. And that's basically the intrinsic process of how human beings grow, which is throughout the pain of feeling the brokenness or the loss, or whatever it was, and just coming back to this feeling and letting the organism and, what's the word? The natural process of the organism, basically reinvent what was broken. And we all have that. That's the process of becoming a human being.
AUBREY: And when you have that larger context for understanding us, then even in your brokenness... One of my favorite songs is Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and he talks about the holy and the broken hallelujahs. That it's all a hallelujah, it's all a hallelujah, which is the expression of presence of the divinity, right? It's all about hallelujah, in your holiness and in your brokenness. It's all there. And if you just have that thread of faith, and don't get tricked by the voices that will say, it's all gone, it's all lost, you'll never recover, now's the point of no return. Just don't listen to that and say, like, no, no, I understand it's always holy and broken hallelujah, and it's always going to be that. All of those parts are going to be inside us. But to just trust that the love is always there, even if you can't see it. And don't listen to those voices that try to tell you otherwise. Because that's what really spins you out. This is the journey. You can hear this, right? And you can listen to us, and you can kind of get it. But you're still going to have to go through it. That's the thing. We don't learn by listening to people on a podcast. Really? I mean--
JEN: It's an experiential journey.
VALKO: I have a friend from Barcelona that always says like, it's one thing to put your fingers in the wall circuit and experience it. It's another thing to hear the story of how somebody put their fingers in the wall circuit. You need to do it. That's the beauty of life. We're alive over here, and we have this short time. We don't know how long is this short time of just seeing the marvelous and the beauty of this world, and why we will not participate into it. And one of the processes of participation is just revisit the spaces that are being deeply wounded.
AUBREY: Yeah, amen.
JEN: And if you don't know what those spaces are that are the deeply wounded spaces, it's just what are you resisting? And go towards what you're resisting rather than away from it.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, I have to give you guys an immense amount of credit for saying yes to receiving facilitation from Vylana and I for our signature ceremony, which is the godbomb. Now, I've been a sitter in ceremonies for I don't know, probably 18 years because I started 24 years ago. And if my buddies wanted to experience mushrooms, I would just be there with them taking some mushrooms and kind of keeping the rails on, but never facilitating. I didn't feel like I really had the proficiency. I didn't have the inner voice inside my mind that said like, "No, no, you're ready to facilitate." That took 22 years to develop. And it actually took a particular stack of medicine, which is the ketamine and cannabis. Fortunately, as a blessing, those both happened to be legal in most states in the US. And finally, it was like, all right, you're ready to step into facilitating this medicine. But of course, we're young in our facilitation journey, and you guys are veterans, having done so many diets and so many ceremonies. So, the first bit of credit is you guys were like, "Yeah, we'll do it with you guys. We'll do it." I was like, "Yeah, amazing!" And also, like, wow, I'm going to find out real quick if we have our shit together. Or if they're going to come out of that and be like, "That was a circus. What are you guys doing? Stick to podcasting, bro." So, it was kind of a big moment when you guys said yes to that. And it was such a beautiful experience because what my experience is, so I apprenticed with my brother Porangui in a particular type of bodywork, and also just trusted the intuition of stepping into this shared field. And my experience of the ketamine and the cannabis is the ketamine, I call it star medicine. It opens us up to really the void of all possibility, kind of removes the locus of attention from our own body and mind into this larger field of cosmic field, if you will. But the cannabis actually anchors and brings alive elements of the body, the way that the body actually, and the somatic experience and the lessons it have, and the same with the body work. The body work then moves as you do in the tobacco, moves to find areas where things are blocked, or where there's old trauma that's being stored in the body, or whatever it might be, or joy or giggles or laughter, wherever it might go. And of course, it's only one person at a time, and the other person is kind of on deck and sharing the field. But it's one person on the table at a time. So, first of all, I guess we'll start with, why did you guys say yes? What was it about? Was it something about Vy and I or just curiosity? You guys are just down with whatever? What was the reason?
JEN: I would certainly not say, and this is to give you guys credit that we're certainly not down with whatever. It's been many, many years since I've worked with cannabis. Never taken ketamine before in my life.
VALKO: It was the first one, yeah.
JEN: But it just felt right. That was it. It just felt right with you guys.
AUBREY: Beautiful. So, I'll share some of the things that without trying to step over anything too personal, that you guys share the experience. But trying to recall this, I believe it was you who was on the table first, Valko. Is that right?
VALKO: Yeah.
AUBREY: So you had the kind of first opening into the experience. What did it feel like when this particular type of mareación, this particular type of medicine opened for you?
VALKO: First of all, like you said, I'd never done ketamine in my life. And it was really interesting, because it was like the substance taking over. And it's been years and years and years. I haven't done marijuana either. What for me was, it was the directness. Just it went directly to the part of my being that I've been working so long with, which is certain feelings and certain emotions that are still, I'm just peeling the layers with this one, and just went straight into it. What was the surprising part was what you guys were doing, and especially with the smells, and just visions of--
AUBREY: So, we use essential oils to kind of open up worlds, and energies and ideas.
VALKO: And definitely felt like that. It was opening the worlds that were coming.
AUBREY: Yeah, there is one particular scent that I use, and it's from a company called Floracopeia. And we're actually making our own sense now, which I'm really excited about. But I love this sense called Forest, it's a blend. And I remember taking you into the forest. This is actually an experience that was with both of you. I could feel all of your plant spirits, all of your plant diets that were there with you. So, as the space opened, it was an invitation, because I always invite all of the guides and allies to be there. But as the space was opening, I could just feel that the plants were there, present, and so I wanted to give them an invitation and say like, you're welcome here, all of you. So I was like, las plantas, las plantas, and I could just feel the space getting richer and pulsating and intermingling for both of you. Like all of your diets, kind of opened up into space. And then with the forest, which is not a jungle which is where most of the plants are that you've dieted, but It's still a concept. I don't have a scent called Jungle. I don't know if that would even smell good, if it was a scent called Jungle. Maybe, we could figure it out. But, the scent was called Forest. And I used that to just call in all the plants. I remember that was, for me, one of the first kind of remarkable experiences was just to feel how very real the dietas that you guys have been in. These plants are inside your own spirit body. Yes, they're available to call externally as their own beings and their own spirits. But they also live inside both of you. And it was just magical to behold how the plants showed up.
VALKO: You need certain states of consciousness to see all the diets and all this work that has been done. And for me, it was a surprise, actually feeling it in combination that was the marijuana and the ketamine. I've had experiences where I felt it and saw it with ayahuasca, with tobacco, with another mind--
JEN: Like with iboga.
VALKO: Yeah, with iboga too. And just one part of this work that for me was really, personally, really significant was like, the male energy that you represent. I probably mentioned it back then, I don't remember. But now it's just come back since we're talking about that experience. In my personal experience, the masculine was really represented dysfunctional masculine, then that's still a part that I'm working. And just being able just to grab your hand, or just to put my hand on your shoulder was really like a central pillar.
AUBREY: Yeah, I mean, I remember with you, a lot of the journey was, sometimes there's a lot that has to be done somatically. I definitely did my spiral and worked the different parts. But so much of it was a sense of brotherhood, and a sense of a restoration of faith in the masculine that I was going to be this. So my head, my cheat, I'm behind your head. So you're on a massage table, and you're facing upwards, to give people a picture. And then so I'm just leaning in, and my head's like right next to your head, my hands on your heart, your hand like over my hand, and we're just there together. And it was this feeling of like, I'm here with you, brother. I'm really, really here with you. And whatever struggle, whatever challenge you're going through, I'm here. Even if I'm in another state, another country, another state of mind, whatever, I'm always here. This is brotherhood. And I really, really felt that. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm applying this therapeutic thing called brotherhood. No, it's real. I still feel it. When I saw you outside of this podcast place, it's like, there's my fucking brother, Valko. We use the wolves as kind of a metaphor, and we still have a group text called The Pack. Because it was like, because of this relationship with the masculine, I think there's a part of you that's been a lone wolf in a way, especially as it's related to other masculine wolves. And of course, you have the deep bond with Jen, which is obviously representing a deep connection with the feminine. And of course, I'm sure you have other beautiful male relationships. I'm not saying this was the only one. But there was a way in which it was like having another brother who was there with you, just felt like kind of that really key element that was really established in that ceremony.
VALKO: And in that moment, exactly that part activated, which was like unintegrated masculine. And then having integrated masculine to support and integrate the masculine, it was like wading down under language processes that I cannot even think about it, but I definitely could feel it.
AUBREY: Yeah.
VALKO: But, I really liked the ceremony, Aubrey. It was a good one.
AUBREY: I remember you saying that. "Oh boy, that was a good one." So, you were up next for the table, Jen. And, I remember this, I've never done this before. And I had no idea why I was doing it. But before I did anybody work on you at all, my hands just moved gently to your hair, and you have very long hair. And it was like a way in which, because I'm, particularly with both men and women, it's a slow process. It's not like you're going in for rolfing where it's like I'm immediately going in and it's going to be elbows, and it's going to be heavy body work. It can get intense, but it's building trust with the energetic field and with the body field. And however long that takes, sometimes that's an hour and a half of just building trust, depending on whoever's on the table. But the first place that I was directed by the spirit that was moving through me, was to welcome your hair into this space. And I forget exactly the words that I was saying, but it was just like this deep honoring of your hair. And then you expressed, actually, that there's an aspect of what the hair means in your own kind of lineage, in your own tradition. So if you wouldn't mind sharing what the hair actually symbolizes. I thought that was really interesting.
JEN: I mean, it's not just one tradition, but firstly with the Shipibos, one of the maestro's who I dieted with, he shared with me that this isn't as much a common practice now. But ancestrally, it was a practice for both the men and the women to grow their hair, and that if they were onaya, a medicine person, that the energy of their diets are stored in their hair, very similar to other Native American tribes who believe that there's energy held in the hair. And also, similar to Eastern traditions, the tantric yogic traditions, tantric Tibetan Buddhist traditions as well have beliefs like that, that energy of practice held in the hair. So it was like, I have a lot of Shakti in the hair.
AUBREY: Yeah, no doubt.
JEN: It was really deep when you started in that way. It made it immediately clear that your connection, first of all, to whatever you were channeling, was very clear, and very precise. Because when you started in my hair, and just, I don't recall all of the words that you were saying. But it was kind of like, I do remember, like, this hair has seen a lot, it's been through a lot. And kind of just the way that you entered in that way just really helped me to open and soften right away into a space of total, like, okay, you have permission, come in.
AUBREY: Right. And that's what it always feels like, taking the time to get full permission, especially with the feminine, right? Especially because there is a lot of predatory masculine. And masculine by itself is not predatory. Nor is it by itself violent. And I think it's important to disambiguate this because we get toxic masculine as if those things are always equivalent. I think even James Cameron had a tweet where he was like, testosterone is a poison that needs to be purged from the collective. No, it's not. This is like a part of the human organism.
JEN: Exactly, it wouldn't be part of us if it was toxic.
AUBREY: Right. It's really disambiguating that. However, many of us, and some to a greater degree have experienced toxic masculinity, have experienced predatory masculinity. And so, particularly in the feminine, it's like, I will never move without, it's not about verbal permission. It's not like, "Alright, can I touch your shoulders now?" I could ask that, if the words were really necessary, but it's not that. It's legitimate conversation with the body and the spirit, and waiting and just waiting until that invitation is there. And that was definitely a part of what was guided for the hair, and it started to build that sense of trust, which is really so necessary in the field to do the deep work.
JEN: Yeah, exactly. And so that, what Valko expressed of going right there, just no beating around it. Just right to the core material of what's there. And certainly as you were working your way from one arm to one leg, to the other leg to the other arm, it was like each of the pieces somatically in my body that over years of doing this work with medicines, not just medicines but psycho spiritual work as well, and medicines also being a tool of lighting that, noticing ah, bringing those things to the surface. It was like each of those key pieces was right on the surface with you as you went throughout my body.
AUBREY: In the meantime, Vylana is doing this incredible combination of space holding, magical work, applying her feminine energy. And there's a real kind of combination of both of our energies, which also intermingle in the space, this Hieros Gamos, kind of energetic of the masculine and feminine that works. So, I'm speaking from my experience, because I'm the only one here. There's no secret Vylana under the table, like, "Here I am!" But she of course has her own--
JEN: No, wait, there she is.

AUBREY: And then, of course, she goes into the sound healing and the singing, which is absolutely stunning.
JEN: It is amazing.
AUBREY: So, as you said, we moved around the body, and there were different emotions and different sadnesses in different places and different catharsis that was available, which is, that's another big part of many of these medicines. It's just like, what is stored? Where are the wells and reservoirs of tears that haven't been cried, or other emotions that haven't been felt? Alright, so then, there's one moment in particular, and I think it was, again, I'd made my way around, spiraled around the body and I was back. Similarly, to Valko, kind of like ear to ear with you in a way, right by your ears. And there was another feeling of like, an alliance is what I felt with kind of like the gentle divine aspect of the masculine, which, of course, Valko embodies in such a beautiful way. But to feel that it's not just, this isn't just Valko. This is an energy that's out there. It seemed like that had played some part of the role in a kind of release for you as well. And then there was another energy that came on the backside of that, but let me just see if I'm tracking, if that resonates for kind of what you were feeling in the moment before.
JEN: Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think similarly to Valko, the way that you held space as a man, and in that gentle way, but really steady, and I can't remember the exact details of it. But I remember there was a really, really tender, deep moment between us where I was just like, thanking you for being there. I can't remember what you said.
AUBREY: I wish I remembered what I said honestly.
JEN: Because whatever you said--
AUBREY: Because it's not exactly me. It's not not me that's saying it, but it's the best version of me. If it's me, I mean, I'm down. If it's me, fantastic. But it's like, damn, I wish I remembered what I said. Because that was really poignant.
JEN: But it's still salient that quality--
AUBREY: Yeah, it was felt, and it was experienced. And then I remember there was another energy. After the tears, there was something underneath the tears. And it was an energy of feeling like my experience of it was that some part of you had been kind of squashed, and some part of you had been, oppressed is a strong word, but kind of squashed and diminished by what felt like the masculine. The masculine saying, do it this way, you're not ready yet, all of this. This is what I felt. And what emerged was one of the most unbelievable dialects that I've ever heard, which sounded like an African priestess, Orisha, who was speaking in. And I only say African, not because I know the dialect, but it just had that sound.
JEN: That's what it was. That's what I was experiencing.
AUBREY: Yeah, and you just start going. You just start laying into it. And then what's crazy is, I could understand you, at least what the energy was saying. Not what every word was, and I started kind of feeding it in a way, and almost preempting it right at the start by going, what came through, and I remember this very clearly, it was like, "On what authority, Jen?" So I'm playing the voice that was like that voice that told you to stay small. "On what authority do you have to do what you do?" This kind of masculine questioning and judging and not recognizing, actually, you as a woman of the earth, and all of the work and all of the master. It was like, "On what authority?" And then I took your side of it and I go, "On God's authority." On God's authority. And at that point, that Orisha African was like, "Yeah, that's fucking right." Like, "How dare you, all you fucking men."
JEN: Kind of like a bomb exploded in his face.
AUBREY: It was unbelievable.
JEN: It was ebullient, ridiculous, audacious.
AUBREY: And it started like that. And then as I was like, "Yeah, I hear you." I hear you, because you were kind of laying in to the men. And not even any particular men, but just the zeitgeist of, you're not ready, you're not good enough, what authority do you have? This kind of almost the fundamentalism, which exists in all traditions, whether religious or spiritual. And then at a certain point, as you kind of could feel it, I could understand you, and it was like, "Yeah, for sure. I agree." And then you started laughing, or that voice through you started laughing. You were both connected, obviously. You started laughing and I started laughing. And then you would still say a few things, and then we'd laugh. And then Valko’s laughing and then Vylana is laughing. It was just such a magical and powerful moment, one of those experiences that's just unforgettable. So, do you think that the connection to that African voice is potentially because of your initiation in Gabon with the Bwiti people? Or was this more just cosmic?
JEN: I don't know that there was any connection there necessarily. But perhaps. I mean, I--
VALKO: They're a really good representative of the base.
JEN: Yeah, I mean, I feel a very deep connection to Africa, especially to Gabon, to the Congolese basin. But this felt like something distinct. So I don't know what it was. I don't know where it came from. And it had never quite come through like that before. But I'm very glad it did.
AUBREY: Yeah, it was really cool. I've had those experiences where I mean, this is the origins of humanity. This is our shared commonality and source, which is why the racism that's been prevalent in the world is so absolutely preposterous, because it's the forgetting of our history. We all emerged from Africa, we were all of that skin color. It's just how many generations you want to go back. What are you even talking about with your fucking racist ideas? It's so absurd. It's just so stupid, fundamentally. And also, the kind of ethnographic religious differences that we have, where do you think it all came from? At a certain point, we were all, before the flood, an advanced civilization, call it Atlantean. Call it whatever it is. But we're all sharing a commonality of source of our connection to the divine. Maybe we spread out to different places, but I think recovering this commonality of source of where we come from, which must include the original humans from Africa, where we all originally came from. That's come through in journeys before, where it's like, I remember I forgot, actually, that I had an iboga microdose when I was going into a journey. And I was like, man, this shocking journey is, wow, it's unbelievably powerful. And then I see this African, like, priest shaman, and being like, "You forgot about me again. Well, guess what, I've been here the whole time." You forgot about me, but I've been here the whole time. And he's like pounding his chest. It's like, I've been here the whole time. And it was not only reminding me about iboga that I forgot about, but it was reminding me like, don't forget where you come from. You may identify with the Hebrew lineage, which has spent quite a bit of time in Egypt, which, of course, is Africa, but I don't think of it as African. But then it's like, go deeper, son. Go deeper, son and see, the first spirits and the first energies of the first land. It all goes back, it all goes back to the same spot. And it's just a beautiful opportunity to kind of experience that. And of course, you guys have both gone through initiations in Gabon, with the premier African medicine, iboga, which I've had my own experiences. Many micro doses and three flood doses, which is a bigger dose. And I'm definitely called to experience that medicine again. But that's got to be just an unbelievably beautiful and powerful experience to go to the source. And with the Bwiti people who have held that tradition and to the source land in Africa and experienced that. It's got to be one of the highlights of your own path.
JEN: Well, we got stuck there over the pandemic. We got stuck there right as the world closed down.
AUBREY: You got to spend some extra time.
JEN: Yeah, we got a bit of time there.
VALKO: We went for three weeks and spent five months.
AUBREY: Africa is like, we're going to keep you for a while.
JEN: Yeah, but I mean, it's an amazing tradition. It's an amazing technology that they have going alongside them. There's a lot I could say about iboga. Probably less I could say about the tradition, because I'm still young in that tradition. But one thing I deeply love about that way, is that Bwiti, there's always two. There's always two, you can't practice it alone. It doesn't exist. And even if you look at the plant, an actual iboga tree, the way that it grows, it's like, it splits off into two, and it splits off into two, then it splits off into two. The leaves grow that way. And it has this form that's always two. It's not just black, it's not just white, it's both. And it's kind of, I feel like it's the best medicine for really unpacking the nature of duality. The depths of the primordial darkness of it, and the vastness of the luminosity of the light of it, and everything in between.
VALKO: What you're saying that it's technology, I definitely subscribe to it. It's a technology of consciousness.
AUBREY: In my experience, it's very direct also. Very, very direct.
JEN: It's very literal.



AUBREY: Very literal. And also, it knows it has time with you. I think that's one thing about the intelligence of medicines is it works with your body. So, smoked DMT, mimosa extract, extracted DMT, N, N-DMT for those who want to get technical, which is different than 5-MeO-DMT, a very different experience. But I spent many years practicing the vaporizing of N,N-DMT and having those experiences. Those were in years where I was super close friends with Rogan at the time. And this was something that we were into. Myself more, so I'll speak more for myself. But of course, Joe did DMT the spirit molecule with Mitch Schultz, and he talked about it. And that was definitely influential in me getting this path. But really, I mean, you're talking a 20-minute journey max. Oftentimes, you're talking 15. And then there's a beautiful kind of sunset area where you get to integrate ideas. But the medicine is only really strong for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, something like that. It feels timeless, so it can feel like a much longer journey. So, where it always took me and I've done over a hundred of these ceremonies, and always in ways that are like, I treat it very seriously and very respectfully. And that's I think one of the advantages that I've had of starting with like a shamanic practice rather than, it was never like Aubrey just doing psychedelics with his college buddies. Until I was well out of college, every single experience I had was in the shamanic context with a teacher of some sort. Whether it was mushrooms or whether it's whatever. Eventually I got the confidence to lead myself, and people close to me through these DMT journeys. Because what I found was the content that it would give you knowing that it only had 10, 15 minutes was like, here's one pearl, and here's an expanded version of what's out there. Give you a glimpse, here's an entity you might encounter, it'll tell you one thing. Here's a revelation you might have. But we're going to button this up, because you don't have much time in this space. Iboga, it's got like 18 hours. It can have a long conversation. You can argue with it for eight hours. And then it'll win at hour nine, you're like, "Fuck, what have I been doing for the last eight hours? You had me the whole time. It's been a checkmate from the start." And iboga is like, "Yeah, but it's good for you to argue."
VALKO: And actually, initiation is more even, it's days.
JEN: Initiation is weeks actually.
AUBREY: So, there's levels. There's microdose, there's flood dose, and then there's initiation.
JEN: Yes, exactly. And there's different ways of serving it. But typically doing a death ceremony, which is a flood dose, and an initiation, whatever branch of Bwiti that you're doing the initiation in, where we were, they basically gave us as much iboga as we could eat. So it's just like, here are seven big spoons at a time. And then a couple of minutes later, here's another seven big spoons at a time.
VALKO: They just basically come with a bucket for the Ibogas
JEN: It's just a big tray.
AUBREY: They call it wood, because it's basically like sawdust.
JEN: It's the root bark of the shrub.
AUBREY: Yeah, dried out, ground up.
JEN: Yeah, ground up, it's kind of chunky. It gets stuck in your teeth, it's extremely bitter. And when you eat that kind of a quantity of it, literally, I didn't take a shit for a couple of weeks. It's just like a ball of, and I didn't vomit in that experience either. So it's just like a ball of wood stuck in my gut, slowly moving its way down.
AUBREY: And then when you finally did shit, it looked like a horse, just making wooden hay pallets. Actually, like, really?
JEN: But it actually has an amazing action on your digestive system to actually eat the wood, because it's antibacterial. I mean, it's good in so many ways. Just the action of it on your body, you're in a really long experience where you might feel like you can't walk or you're dizzy when you stand up for a period of 18 hours up to 72 hours, it can even be depending on how much you have. And it kind of just lays you down and goes to work on you, really deeply reprogramming, really deeply giving you a tremendous amount of neuroplasticity. It gives more neuroplasticity than any other psychedelic, any other plant medicine.
AUBREY: It's working on more receptor sites.
JEN: All of them.
AUBREY: It's like, "Which one should we use? 5-HT2 receptor? No, we'll use that one and everything else.
JEN: So it's like, it needs that much, this is my take on it is that in order to do such a thorough job, it needs that much time. But you come out of that feeling really consolidated. In the sense of like, I feel deeply fortified in my body, I feel really well. I feel like my nervous system has just been ironed out.
AUBREY: Oh, yeah. The feeling coming off iboga, I mean iboga, the experience was hellish for me every time. It's not very uncomfortable for me particularly. So, feeling tired is a euphemism for how I felt. But also it was like, oh, gosh, so uncomfortable. So much energy, so much nausea, just trying to wiggle around on my mat to find a slight bit of relief or comfort. It's very intense, but also can be psychically so blissful because of revelations that were coming. So it's just interesting. Again, duality, like, you're going to be physically uncomfortable, but your mind is going to be surfing and dancing in a way that you've never thought possible. And so, it was this beautiful combination of those two experiences. I mean, there's a lot of initiations that I'm like, one part of me is drawn to and another part of me is like, no, I don't want any parts of that. Just imagining that. And I wonder, I'm curious, because as I've learned about part of the initiation, there's an extended period in many traditions where they leave you in front of a mirror, on the peak of it. I mean, I can imagine what the purpose of that is, but I haven't done it before. What's the purpose of this mirror work? And how is that like for you guys?
JEN: Well, I think that's obvious. It's, be with yourself, look at yourself. Again, it's literal. It's like, here's the mirror.
VALKO: So much stuff can pass in front of the mirror. Your masks, your ways of seeing the world, your ways of seeing yourself. We don't question that kind of state. Normally, in our awake state, or our normal state of consciousness and just shake a little bit, just normal state of consciousness and see yourself from a different perspective. It could be the mirror work. And just to say about iboga, it's so good for intentionality. Whatever intention you have with that plant, it will take you there. You want to work on wherever you want to work and the set is really prepared, and the people that hold the ceremony is really there for the person to be able to relax itself in the medicine. You go there.
AUBREY: The facilitation that I received, the maestro had me write out a list of questions that he would ask me, when the medicine was strong. I remember writing them out and just went one by one. So, it's not only like, a lot of times you'll write in your journal, you'll set an intention. But in the middle of an Ayahuasca ceremony, you're like, you have to remember. So simpler intentions are usually better. Or maybe you have three different questions, but you've got to focus. And usually, you'll sublimate them, and they'll come out subconsciously, as soon as you write down your intention. But in iboga, again, it was literal. It was like, what questions do you want to know? And I was like, I don't know. He was like, "Write them out. I'll ask you." So all of these questions were written out. And then, asked to me, and then I got to actually answer these questions, but not as the limit itself of my normal waking state. But as this hyper, I almost call it hyper sobriety.
JEN: Yeah, that's actually a really good way of naming it.
AUBREY: Yeah, it's like the hyper sobriety of clarity. And then from that position, I got to answer all of these questions. Some more simple answers and some were complex.
JEN: Yeah, it's like it lends a tremendous amount of brightness to whatever amount of clarity you've already cultivated, to the extent that you've cultivated your own awareness body. It's like, it just adds brightness to that and a tremendous amount of brightness. And so it's not to say that it would be that for everybody. It's not to say that anybody could come to that medicine with a list of questions and get really clear answers, because that's certainly not the case. It's like any medicine, it's so different depending on--
AUBREY: And a lot of people I know have gone in, and I've shared this, and they've had a bunch of questions, and they just go into what's called, in common tongue, a whiteout. Which is not a blackout. It's a different thing.
JEN: Where they come back from it, and there's not a lot of recollection of what actually happened in that space. But they're left with kind of the aftermath of what that's done for them. Which, yeah, it works in different ways, just as any plant medicine. But iboga, my take on that, I think if somebody has a lot of sincerity, like, I really want to look at this, I really want to see it, I'm ready for the truth of that, please, in like a genuinely humble way. Then the medicine comes forth. And it's like, alright, okay, this is how it is. And there's an ability to receive that. I think if there isn't necessarily a full humility there or an actual willingness, maybe there is an idea of a willingness, but there isn't the actual either willingness or resource. It might not just be willingness, it also can have to do with the resource of if you're actually ready to see. Then sometimes I think that's why experiences like that can occur with a plant.
AUBREY: Yeah, it's scary to actually because iboga is really, to me, it's truth medicine.
JEN: Very much so.
AUBREY: So if you're not ready for the truth, it's very scary medicine. I actually had an experience where in my own journey recently, I had an experience where I felt like I was in contact with the truth. And then I had the ability like with iboga to actually discern the absolute truth. So, I was there, and it was basically like, "Well, what do you want to know?" And I was like, "Fuck, I don't know. I didn't know I was going to end up here." I was going to be here in contact with the ability to get the truth. And I was like, so I started going through and I'm like, well, alright, I know everything's good with Vylana and I love her so much. And it's like, "Well, are you sure? You don't want to ask?" And I was like, "No, I don't want to ask. I know that." It's like, "Why? Are you scared to ask?" And I go, "Fuck you." There was a moment where I was like, "How dare you?" But I was like, "Alright, fine. I'll ask." And then I'm asking and it's like, "Yeah, you fucking love her so much. She's everything to you." I was like “ha!”. But there was that moment where truth was actually playing a game with me. Like, you say you're this sure, but if I wasn't sure, I would have flinched at that one moment. But in that experience, it was like, alright, well, here we go. You know what I mean? Like, here we go. And even though it was something that I was sure about, and it was ultimately confirmed, when you have access to that much truth, even these things that are deep core beliefs, you recognize, like, oh, I'm in contact with another level of truth and something could appear that could just shake your whole reality. But that's also the trust of the medicine and the trust of the space and trust that you're not interacting with some Heyoka, reality is a trickster energy that's trying to fuck with you, which can happen as well. So it's the discernment of what voice and what space you're in. And also, because that's important. Because you can also get, I've definitely experienced reality as a trickster. It tried to trick me in many different ways. But through the many years, I've been able to discern like, alright, this is the real thing, versus this is trickster energy.
VALKO: That's a training, right? At least for me was a training, which is like, what I'm perceiving is like actually going on, or am I just making it up? Which is the big questions that I've been trying to respond for myself.
AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah. So you guys have this beautiful center down in Columbia. Not the easiest to get to. You've got to take a couple of flights, got to ride a burro.
JEN: Or do a two-hour walk.
AUBREY: Do a two-hour walk or a walk next to the burro, and let the burro carry your bags. Burro is a donkey. Or a meal?
JEN: Or a meal.
AUBREY: Either way. But, stunningly beautiful. I mean, I saw the pictures of what you guys have created down there. And, it seems that what you guys are really feeling is that you want to kind of anchor a space where you can serve medicine, and you have been blessed with multiple lineages and many different medicines. There's tabaqueros, ayahuasqueros, ayahuascera, and then initiated also in the Bwiti tradition to serve iboga. So, you really have a huge arsenal of tools at your availability, as well as the ability to lead dietas, which are the plant dietas which often involve ayahuasca as a way to more deeply connect with the spirit of the plant, like Vylana did with marosa. And some people out there, I just want to like address this in the field, some people out there are saying, "Valko, you're from fucking..." Where, Romania?
VALKO: I was born in Bulgaria. I grew up in Spain.
AUBREY: Bulgaria and Spain. You're from fucking Bulgaria and Spain. Jen, you're fucking Canadian.
JEN: Oh, yeah, aye.
AUBREY: "What are you doing serving medicine?" And again, it's that how dare you voice. So, how do you address those voices that come in, that are trying to say like, no, this medicine is only for these people in this way, nobody else should serve it and nobody else should take it. How do you address those voices that can emerge from what I would say is a small part of the population, but it is a voice that is consistent?
VALKO: Go ahead, after that I can give my take.
JEN: I mean, the kind of theme that you're touching on is definitely one of like cultural appropriation in terms of going to the places where these traditions are from, which we're seeing a lot of. Cultural appropriation is one way to name it. Another way to name it is that we're coming from generations and generations and generations of, we all have an indigenous soul.
AUBREY: And indigenous roots.
JEN: And indigenous roots, where all of us have ancestors who were indigenous to somewhere. There's been a lot of immigration and displacement and movement on this planet. And, for me, personally, I'm from Canada. From the time I was a young, young child, I had a deep resonance with the way of the Lakota, where I was born in Canada. And, I don't see it as a matter, and I'm saying this as a white person, obviously. I see it as my indigenous soul is an orphan. And that part of my indigenous soul that is an orphan has found parents, has found families in various different parts of this world. And I felt very welcomed in you know, I lived in the Peruvian Amazon for almost a decade. I have numerous friends who are Shipibo. I am not fluent in their language, but I learned to speak a lot of their language. I really respect their culture, not only respect it, I love it. It's not to say that their culture is idyllic or perfect, or any culture is idyllic or perfect. We're all humans, we're all fallible. But there's a kind of a universality below all of the cultural nuances. That's something that my soul, my soul was hungry for. And I didn't find that when I was growing up in Canada, necessarily. They didn't teach that to us in school. There weren't spiritual guides that actually helped me to find that direct connection when I was going to church as a young teenager child. So for me, this has been a spiritual path. I don't know what more I would say to it. I don't give it too much energy. I feel like I've given a lot of--
AUBREY: Maybe that African priestess will come out and give you a little bit of energy. Saying, oh, where do you think we're all from?"
JEN: Exactly. And this is another thing. In Gabon actually, one of the things that some people there believe is that, there's a lot of westerners initially from France, because Gabon was a French colony. So the French were the first to really come there. But nowadays, the majority of people who are coming to initiate are westerners. And actually what they believe in Gabon is that the people who are really called to come and work with iboga when partake in Bwiti have past lives as Africans. That's what they believe. And they believe that they've come back to kind of pick it up. But because culturally, there is this interest, it is slowly being lost, which is actually true also in the Amazon. For example, you just spent some time with Americo and Olga down at Soltara. They're one of the few Shipibo onaya. Onaya are their healers. So Shipibo term for a healer. They're one of the few onaya couples that has one child. Actually, they have together one child who's interested in that path. Otherwise, there are very few young people who are actually interested in picking up the reins that their ancestors are leaving there or offering for them. And so, I mean, it's not to say that I have any kind of idea that I'm carrying forth some kind of ancient ancestral knowledge in that traditional way, because I can't possibly do that. I can't possibly gain even half of that knowledge. I can embody it in the way that is me, that is Jen, in this particular body, this particular race with my particular history, and that's it. So, yeah.
AUBREY: Yeah, well said. Valko?
VALKO: I would say just like the same what Jen was saying, when I was growing up, what was offered? In my case, football and--
AUBREY: Beer.
VALKO: Bulgarian. It's close. In Bulgarian culture, it's rakia, which is alcohol drink, basically. And that was the solution--
AUBREY: Is it like fermented mare's milk or something? What are we talking here?
VALKO: How to describe rakia, Jen?
JEN: Rakia is basically like a strong distillation. It's often made of grapes. It could be made of roses, it could be made of apricots or plums. It's moonshine essentially.
AUBREY: Are you a Dothraki?
VALKO: Basically, that was the offering. This culture didn't have the lineage of grieving and this is so, so needed. We, western cultures, and it doesn't matter if the United States or Europe, it's all the same train of thought that came up from Europe. That has been so much put it aside, the grieving process. And I see myself participating in this wave of like, let's revive these so powerful rituals. And first of all, for me it was personal. I didn't start it like I wanted to carry this medicine. That doesn't even cross my mind. It was, I just want to be a little bit more free and a little bit more in peace, please. And when I got to the level that I'm a little bit more in peace and a little bit more free, just going deeper and deeper and deeper. And people started showing up and just like the same people from the same culture, I have my way of seeing it, and my way of expressing it, is so to resonate with that kind of people. Then I'm basically seeing myself like I'm carrying something that is a lineage, which is old lineage, but in a new way, with my own embodiment of this lineage. That's how I see it, Aubrey.
AUBREY: When I asked this to Maestro Orlando, who's from a deep tradition of the Quechua lineage, which is also one of the oldest lineages in Peru. From my understanding, it's a deep lineage. And I asked him, what are your thoughts about this question? And he just kind of laughed in the way that he does. One thing I will say about every good teacher, healer, maestro, maestra that I've ever met, they got a great laugh. Like, if you don't have a great laugh, I don't trust you. You'll get it. But he has a great laugh. And he says, right now, the Earth is in danger. He has, maybe not the complexity of the understanding of the existential threat, but he's been there in the jungle, in the selva. And he knows that things are being destroyed. Trees are being slashed and burned, the resources are being extracted. He sees it from potentially more of an environmental lens, rather than the proliferation of the access to make biological weapons, with CRISPR becoming democratized, whether it's AI that's unregulated in a certain way, all of these other things. He may not be aware of that, but he's like, yo, the Earth is in trouble. And these medicines, when I asked him what ayahuasca was, he said, "This is the spirit of the Mother." The spirit of ayahuasca and the spirit of Gaia are to him the same thing. Maybe there's subtle distinctions, but at least in the way he expressed it to me, it was like, this is the Mother speaking. And the Mother wants her children to wake up and to heel. And I think for me, the thing that quiets all of that noise is, one, understanding the deep pain and recognizing and not trying to whitewash the history of colonization, and really rape of culture that's existed for all of us. I mean, throughout every place at a certain point, it just depends on at what point were we ripped from our culture. Was it when the Romans came to the druidic forests and slayed all the druids and the Merlins and buried those traditions? Or was it when they destroyed the Temple of Solomon for the last time and tried to eradicate the Hebrew lineage, and burned all those books? Was it then? Or was it when--
VALKO: The Spaniards.
AUBREY: The Spaniards came in and the conquistadors and, when did it happen? Because it happened to all of us. All the lineages, most of them were broken. And it's still happening in certain ways. The deep pain and the recognition, first of all, feel that in the heart first, and understand where the genesis of this is coming from, which is like, fuck y'all, you've taken too much already. And I totally get it. And then, on the other side, agreeing with all of the reasons that you guys shared, but also saying, like, now is the time where we all have to come together. And we see this happen in our movies, and in actual reality. Like, the movie "Independence Day" for example. The aliens are coming to fucking eradicate the world. All of a sudden, all of the national borders dissolve, all of the armies work together, all of the religions work together, everybody's like, "Shit, we've got to come together." All of these differences. It's not like, oh, you're a Syrian rebel, and I'm an American, we can't work together. It's like, no, no, none of that matters. And we're facing this moment where the world is going to need every bit of medicine from every corner of the world, and every lineage to come online and open up, to recognize our shared humanity. So that collectively, the only way that we're going to get out of this mess that we're in is collectively. And to get out of the mess, we collectively need all of the collective medicine. Just like if we had a collective war against aliens, we need collectively all of the armed forces, collectively of the world. That's obviously the violent way to look at that. But it's still the same thing. We need either all the weapons or all the healing to actually respond.
JEN: We need all the help we can get, that's the simple way of saying it.
AUBREY: It’s the bottomline, that’s it.
VALKO: The mess is pretty deep.
AUBREY: It’s deep. And it's more complicated than we even realize, because we don't have optics on what's actually happening. Maybe every once in a while somebody will show you a picture of a fucking 20-mile wide flotilla of plastic in the ocean. But when I go to Miami, it's not like I'm swimming in the flotilla. I just have some vague idea of what's happening there. These giant landfills or these strip mines that are poisoning water somewhere, it's like, we don't get it because we're not seeing the global impact of everything that we're doing. So it's very difficult for us to grok what's actually happening. But let it be known, it's happening, and we need to respond with the urgency of recognizing what's happening even beyond our own field of vision.
VALKO: And certainly, plant medicines can help in that.
AUBREY: Absolutely.
VALKO: On a personal level with our own woundings and our own traumas that we carry. And on the collective level, the mess that you just expressed. And I just want to share a vision that I had 17 years ago or something like that, when I was, like my first experiences of ayahuasca, I was in Spain. And I drank the brew, it was incredibly strong. And basically the vision was, I just lay in my bed and I just disappeared in a vision space. And we have seen the movie, what was this blue people movie?
AUBREY: "Avatar".
VALKO: "Avatar" that's the one. We all seen the movie "Avatar'". You remember the scene where they emerge from the forest and the forest is cut. Everything was cut in the first movie. And the female would start crying directly. And basically, my vision was like that. I was seeing just like the Amazon forest all cut. And one enormous tree was standing. There was a person that was cutting the tree with a chainsaw. And in that moment, I just felt the tree. I was the tree. I felt the earth. I felt all the animals that doesn't have any more shelter or home over there. And his voice was telling me, we're all sick. And the worst part is that we don't even know what. I think plants has really a place in the mess that we're right now into.
AUBREY: I wouldn't be who I was without it. I wouldn't be able to make a claim like I'm all in for all life unless I had a tool that helped me connect to all life. And that's what the medicines, and yes the plants, but ketamine has been a big ally for me. It's obviously synthetic. Although they did find it in nature in a strange nematode parasite. So there was a big win for the naturalists in the ketamine front when they isolated this in a nematode. But ultimately, these medicines have expanded my heart, expanded my consciousness, expanded my field of intimacy and care. And many of these concepts that I'm sharing are tenets of cosmo-erotic humanism that I've been kind of, my teacher, Dr. Marc Gafni has helped me really unpack. So I just want to give credit to the field of cosmo-erotic humanism, which we're working on publishing books and sharing more broadly. A lot of those ideas come from that. But it's the medicines that brought me to him, and brought me to that understanding where I understand this space of interconnectedness. And it's both my greatest inspiration and my greatest strength, in this to be willing to stand. Because when you feel it, when you feel it all yourself, as you said, when you feel the tree you care about the tree. When you feel the earth, when you hear her speak, you care about the Earth and you'll fight with everything you have, which doesn't look like kinetic fighting. It means standing in the resonance of connection. You'll fight with everything you have. And I think that's an essential part of how we're going to make it through this. All hands on deck, all tools available with maximum respect and reverence and trust and faith and laughter and love and all of the things. But it's time. It's time
VALKO: There is something why these medicines keep coming, especially right now it's like just keep coming in the collective consciousness.
AUBREY: Yeah. And that's also in great part to people like yourselves who are, they're serving the medicine in the highest integrity, and evolving the practices to incorporate your own individual unique medicine, everything that's come online, like it's been spectacular and a deep honor to both serve you both and also receive from you both. And I look forward to this relationship, and this alliance continuing in all worlds, in all dimensions, in all timelines. I'm all in.
VALKO: Likewise, Aubrey.
JEN: Yeah.
VALKO: Likewise.
AUBREY: Yeah. I love you guys.
JEN: It's so good to be here with you, Aubrey.
AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Thank you everybody for tuning in. If you're interested, let's say somebody wants to come sit with you guys and experience some medicine down in Colombia. How do they find you? What's the way?
JEN: Well, so we're in the midst, we're actually right in the middle of really building our center right now. So, we are hosting work. Like we're hosting a number of retreats in a year, private works, etc. We do have a website. If anybody's interested, it's still in the process of being built. It's got very little information on it up to now but we're working on it.
AUBREY: So, when you email them, just be super judgey of their website. Hold them to the highest standard.
VALKO: Actually, we don't know even if the name of the website will still be the name.
AUBREY: Well, you have to create a redirect, because we need a name.
JEN: Everything's in the works. So the website is, it's wyrdpharm.com.

AUBREY: And what is the meaning of wyrd?
JEN: Yeah, that's the question. So weird, the word weird that we know in modern English, it comes from an old Anglo Saxon word which the original spelling is W-Y-R-D. And if I were to encapsulate it, which it's impossible to encapsulate, it would be the most synonymous with the concept of the Tao. It's a concept, it's that which is occurring in every moment, that which has come from the past is flowing through this moment into the future. Oftentimes, when it's translated or defined, it's defined as destiny or fate. But it's somewhere in between destiny and free will. It's like, that which the activation of our own agency is waking up to align with the flow of that which is, to become that which we already are. Something like that.
AUBREY: Right. In cosmo-erotic humanism, in the Hebrew lineage, Gafni and I, we would call it the field of Eros or the field of Shekhinah, which represents that. The Tao is another word for it. Again these things are very hard to understand, but it's just cool that so many different cultures, perhaps in our first nation sculptures, Wakan Tanka would be a description of it, although it has, the nuances of these understandings, they're all different ways, different prisms to look at the same thing. But it's the structure. It's the structure that animates everything. It's the thing behind the thing. It's the hands behind the hands. Efface the uniqueness of your hands, but it actually infuses it rather than eradicates it.
JEN: Yeah, exactly.
AUBREY: Yeah. Wyrd Pharm.
JEN: So we're trying to grow more of that.
AUBREY: Yeah, let's go. Get people in touch with their weird. Here you are in Austin where we keep things weird.
JEN: It's kind of perfect.
AUBREY: All right, beautiful. Hopefully many people who feel called will find you and find your work out there, because I cannot recommend more highly the opportunity and privilege it is to sit with both of you in your mastery.
VALKO: Thank you.
JEN: Thank you, Aubrey.
AUBREY: For sure. Thanks, everybody. We love you, and I'll see you next week.