On the eve of another trip to the jungle, I talk about the launch of my latest documentary "Ayahuasca", I recap Burning Man, and discuss lessons in love from the latest trials and triumphs of open relationship.

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What's up, everyone? I'm back. Now, I have to be honest, this is the fifth time I've tried to start this solo podcast, so we're going to take a slightly different approach. I got enough coffee in me now, so that's step one. Step two, I'm going to light up this Mapacho, which is Peruvian sacred tobacco, a different plant than normal tobacco. Which I'm hoping is going to help me out here because we got a lot of stuff to talk about. 

I leave for Peru again tomorrow and we launched an ayahuasca documentary today that I've been working on for two years. And so, lighting up this Peruvian Mapacho, I think is really going to set the tone here. I'm going to light this thing up and we're going to have a cool one-sided conversation here, which is always a challenging podcast to do. I have a lot of admiration for those people on radio that can just kind of talk and rant about different things. 

I really just want to fill you guys in and there's a lot to lot to get out there, so let's do this thing. Let's have some fun. Oh, yeah. I think that's going to help. The coffee, the Mapacho, a little nicotine, a little caffeine. I think we'll get through this. 

I definitely want to talk about this documentary. It's been two years in the making and I did not expect it to be two years. There's a lesson in that. I think one thing I've learned over and over in business is anything you think is going to be quick and easy and simple to do. Like, oh, yeah, I'll just put out this documentary, eeeh, wrong. It's not. You better pack a lunch for any project you're trying to birth. Nothing is going to come easy. Particularly when you're talking about one of the most challenging plant medicines and psychedelics in the world, it's going to be hard to birth a project like that. But I found that over and over again and it's a mistake that I think a lot of people make. You underestimate how difficult it is to launch a company, launch a project, launch a product, anything. You really have to commit, you have to have a great team and you have to be ready to overcome obstacles that come up. 

That's certainly been the case. I was expecting to launch this documentary 18 months ago, but different things kept coming up. We kept upgrading the sound, upgrading the visual effects. But finally, we have something that I'm really proud of, a really great product, and it tells the story of one of my most epic ayahuasca experiences, down with Don Howard out in the jungle. A story I've told a few times on the JRE, on my own podcast, on Duncan Trussell's podcast. It was where ayahuasca subtly broke me down deeper and deeper throughout the week until finally in the last session, it took me past my fear of death and helped me explore my fear of being absolutely nothing.

Ayahuasca told me that I was water borrowed from the ocean and the ocean for God. I mean, that was like the depths of the low. Because even when even when I would acknowledge my death in previous ceremonies or just philosophical rumination, you still have this idea of your own importance, the importance of you having lived your life, the importance of your legacy, the works that would be left behind, the impact that you made. You can kind of hang on to that. You can hold on to that and still feel special even in your death. 

But ayahuasca was like, no, bitch, I'm going to take that from you, you're nothing. You're not only nothing, you're the gum on nothings shoe. That was a gnarly surrender to that, to surrendering, to being absolutely nothing. But once I was able to surrender and accept that with these soft, pitiful tears rolling down my face, ayahuasca made a connection with my grandmother. The spirit of my grandmother, or at least the memory of my grandmother, I don't really make a distinction between whether these things are all in my mind or whether they're actual.

But she told me, “Aubrey, get up. Aubrey get up.” She told me that I still had things to fight for. I still had something to do. And I learned something about myself there that's been sacred. It's been like the bedrock. I know that at the very depths when I've surrendered, everything that I hold dear, the last shred of my specialness and importance surrendered all of that, that I'd still be willing to fight. And of course, that fight is metaphorical. It's the willingness to stand up to resistance. 

I had a moment like from the end of Cyrano de Bergerac, where he describes all of his enemies, fear, greed, injustice, delusion, ignorance, apathy. All of these enemies were like outside the door of the Molucca, which is the hut that we were in ceremony. And I knew that I was willing to stand up and fight against those things. And so, I learned something about myself that at the very lowest point I'd be willing to fight. And that's been invaluable because inevitably in life, invariably there's going to be times where you're going to be super low and you're going to be pushed with your back to the corner, like an animal backed to the very brink of destruction. And you'll have to decide who you are then and you have to know.

That's one of the beauties and one of the reasons why we like sports and why we like these other challenges. A great fight, for example, where someone's brought to the brink of their own dissolution, and then they come back and find some fighting spirit inside. It's kind of the plot to every epic movie that we've seen, finding strength when all seems lost. That was a great gift that ayahuasca gave, but an incredibly intense experience overall. And that's not always what ayahuasca is going to do. ayahuasca is going to find what you need to work on. And it's that's really the magic of it.

It's certainly not something that's for everybody. I mean, this is a trial by fire, and it certainly comes with some dangers. You know, not a month goes by now, it seems, without some kind of story coming out of an ayahuasca related injury or death. A lot of that is because of contraindications with different pharmaceuticals or malpractice by the shamans and practitioners. There are a lot of different reasons, but it's an intense process and it comes with some risk. I think it's really important to know that you're ready, that you have a calling to the medicine and that you're going to a place that practices pure medicine with true, impeccable ability.

Putting out this documentary or talking about it and telling these stories is not me recommending ayahuasca to anyone. You know, that is a personal choice, and everybody has to decide that for themselves. I would be incredibly foolish at this point with everything that I know to just say, hey, yeah, everybody go out and do it. Of course, when you first do ayahuasca, and I'm no different, when you first do it and experience how amazing the healing potential in a mind opening, mind expanding capabilities, you want to proselytize it. You want to go out there and preach from the highest rooftops like, hey, everybody, come do this. It's amazing. 

I certainly probably had a bit of that in me, myself in the early days of ayahuasca. But now, as I've drunk 14 times about to go drink my 15th on Friday, you get a little you understand it a little bit more and you understand that it isn't for everybody, and you understand that it does carry some risk and it's not just holy water, this is medicine. But at a certain dose and in a certain time, any medicine can be poison. It's the same with anything in life. 

Tylenol is great at reducing a fever, but if you take too much, it'll kill you. There are over 900 Tylenol related deaths a year. So, is it medicine or poison? I don't know. It depends on the dose. It depends on the person. That's the same with ayahuasca, so that's kind of my caveat. The documentary does a really great job of exploring a variety of different stories; people with different fears, people with different goals, whether it's depression, self-love, doubt or any kind of issues, anxiety, any kind of issues that are coming up and how they've kind of dealt with it following these stories, one of which is my sister, which is really cool. 

She's in the documentary, Dr. Dan Engle, Amber Lyon is in there as well and, of course, Don Howard, Gandalf the White Wizard. So, it's really a cool picture and you can stream it for free just by putting in your email. So not going to charge anything for it. It's got a badass custom soundtrack by Poranguί, which we released earlier, but just weaves through the film really well. You can go check that out at drinkthejungle.com and that'll redirect you to the URL. Then if you want to support the film and download it and have it on your computer, watch it on a plane or whatever you want to do, it's just five bucks to download it and certainly, that would be appreciated because this has been a long, expensive project  no doubt.

Really cool visual effects too. One thing we noticed is that we had so much good footage, but the visual effects that we were trying to use on a budget didn't match. So, we got a really great team, Martin Stebbing and the team from W // DOUBLE YOU kind of shows a bit about the ayahuasca experience can look and feel like. Of course, nothing on the screen is ever going to match the visuals that you'll see when actually on the medicine. 

They did a great job and that was really cool. Also tells a really powerful story from Mitch Schultz, the director of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, who is also the director on this film. And so again, yeah, really cool. Tomorrow, I go back. So, it's kind of interesting timing two years from when I last went and now I'm bringing 17 of my closest friends, family lovers, everybody out there to drink ayahuasca. It's going to be a beautiful experience. 

We're also going to going to have some Huachuma, which is one of the sacred plant medicines of antiquity as well. It comes from the San Pedro cactus, I've talked about it a bit on other avenues as well. But a really great medicine for opening up the heart, bringing people together, unifying you with your mission. It's more the grandfather energy, where ayahuasca is the grandmother energy. You know, ayahuasca is like the grandmother that says, “Come on, child, you're sick. Let me heal you” and “Just lay back. Let grandma do the work.” 

Huachuma, is like grandfather that says, “Here we go, son, Let's go for a walk” and “Let's present you with these challenges.” How are you going to deal with this? How are you going to deal with this? How are you going to deal with this? That's the nature of Huachuma, so it's a more active medicine. You really, by exploring nature and by going through the Masada Ceremony that Don Howard has cultivated, you’re able to face your own challenges in a more active way. And really kind of put effort and intention more visibly and more actively into the process rather than just simply laying back and surrendering to the experience, which is what ayahuasca asks. 

So really looking forward to that. It'll be my seventh Huachuma Ceremony, which to Don Howard means that I'm honorary initiated into the Chavin Brotherhood. Now what’s Chavin? Chavin was a culture that flourished a couple thousand years ago in Peru, pre-Inca. During that time in the Chavin territories, there is no archeological evidence of war. One of the reasons they speculate for that is that the people of Chavin offered Huachuma Ceremonies to all pilgrims and all travelers of the area.

Huachuma is, as I said, a very hard opening experience. It's a serotonergic similar to MDMA, so it really inculcates feelings of love and connection to your fellow humans, to the earth, to everybody around you. In that state, it definitely takes away the delusion necessary to want to kill another person. It really helps bring you to that highest state of consciousness, which is that we are all different perspectives of the same being. That the platinum rule that I described on the Joe Rogan Podcast, where everybody is you just simply living a different life. So, it doesn't make sense to go out and hurt somebody else, because that's you. That's just you living a different life in a different circumstance. 

Now, does that mean that if someone breaks into your house and is trying to kill you, that you shouldn't shoot them? No. You have to protect yourself, I think everybody has a right for that. But the idea that you can hurt somebody without also hurting yourself, I think is a fallacy and is a is a delusion. I think that's one of the things that Huachuma and Chavin and the Chavin culture exemplified. 

It also helps you deal with your fear, and I think that's another thing as well. In Chavin the symbol was a man transforming into a Jaguar. Now, the symbology of the Jaguar that's important is, in the jungle the Jaguar is fearless. It has no predators. It's the apex predator. It stalks silently in the night from the jungle treetops, and nothing is going to hunt the jaguar other than potentially men. But that's a recent development. Until there were guns, he didn't want to hunt a Jaguar. That was a generally a low probability proposition to hunt a Jaguar with some kind of pointy object. But of course, they would do it. They would do it with arrows and things like that. 

But in general, in the natural order of things, the jaguar is the apex predator of the jungle. So, by transforming into a Jaguar, which is an experience that I've had on Huachuma as well, you get to taste that feeling of fearlessness. And when you have fearlessness, that's when you have free will. Because as much as we think we have our own ability to choose, more often than not, our fear dictates which path we go down. 

What we do is we're getting pushed and pulled by our fear, by our lust, by our greed. And so, to get to a point of fearlessness and stillness truly allows you the opportunity for free will and that's one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself, is complete access to choose, to choose our inherent superpower to do what we want with our life. I'm really looking forward to the drinking Huachuma again, especially with so many of my closest friends and family. I mean, it's going to be really an amazing experience. I'm looking forward to that and I'll keep you guys posted. 

They'll be some Instagram posts and some updates, and when I get back, I'll probably jump on with Duncan and jump on with Joe and tell my latest stories, my latest visions. I know you guys like that kind of stuff. And my latest revelations with that. There was a point where I thought I wasn't going to do plant medicine anymore, but then I realized that not only do I like it still and the plants and my friends there, my homies. But it's also like a really special experience for me to be able to share that with the people that I love. 

It's something where I'm very comfortable with it, I understand it, I understand, the travel aspects, the jungle aspects, the medicine aspects. And I can go lead those people I love through amazing experiences that'll help change their life for the better and I enjoy that.

That's one of the things that I probably enjoy the most. It's one of the reasons why I'm here. Being able to do that for people is something that will probably never stop. 

Joe has talked about us opening up a center or doing something like that. I think that's probably unlikely. But I will always let people know which centers that I go to and who I find reputable. Right now, I think for ayahuasca I can recommend Blue Morpho, I can recommend SpiritQuest Sanctuary. Those are probably the two choices that I would recommend for anybody interested. 

I have no financial incentives with any of these guys, and I want to keep it that way. You know, I don't want to be biased. This is a very sacred experience, and I don't like to entangle monetary interests with that. Of course, I will take your five bucks to help support this film. But there's no way that unless this thing goes crazy, that I'll ever get my money back on producing this documentary. And that's fine. I wanted to put this out there and that was my contribution. There are different ways that I've been very fortunate Onnit and has done great and there are different ways that people like to handle charitable contributions.

For me, it's always going to be spending a little more to push out a documentary or support a book or really try to elevate consciousness. That's going to be my contribution, and everybody has theirs. Our friend Justin Wren, for him it's getting clean water and digging wells in Africa. For me, it's helping to expand consciousness and that's where I'm going to put my effort. But I do appreciate everybody contributing by downloading the film for sure. It certainly helps and be able to turn that around to some other project coming up, undoubtedly. I'll keep you guys posted on all the all the plant medicine happenings going on.

One of the things that really has helped level me up significantly is utilization of eating Jambos, which is like a marijuana edible that my friend Jambo Joe, Joe Gananda [ph], that he's put together. And it's really just a cool strain of Indica and sativa that he puts in an edible. Eating it really allows me access to a lot of deeper truths and that's kind of what I've been leaning towards more recently rather than some of the other plant medicine experiences. 

Of course, mushrooms are my homies as well. What sustains all that is daily meditation practice that I try for spending time in the float tanks, utilization of breath. And that's not all about the plants. I have a pretty good relationship with the plants and I'm pretty comfortable there. But plants aren't for everybody 100%. Of course, there's legal implications depending on where you are as well and I encourage everybody to be mindful of that for sure. There are lots of ways to get to those higher states of consciousness. 

But speaking of a good place to do these medicines, I just got back from Burning Man, and I promised you guys that I would talk to you a little bit about Burning Man. And so, let's go ahead and do that now. I was a little nervous about Burning Man because everybody looks at the dust and plays that whole aspect up. And I've been to some gnarly places, different jungles, I've been to the slums in Africa, but I didn't really understand the concept of a whiteout dust storm. You've seen those movies like The Mummy and stuff, and just this wall of white is just coming towards the people, and they all have to run for cover. And I just kind of had that image in my mind and it's kind of what happens out there. There'll be a certain point, you'll be on the Playa, which is called the playa, because Burning Man used to be on a beach, but now it's in the salt flats in Nevada on this, I don’t know if it’s really salt, but it’s this mineral bed. Anyway, they call it the Playa. 

We got out there and it was right in the middle of a storm, so we had our goggles on and our handkerchief on, but the dust just goes underneath the goggles gets in your eyes, it goes underneath the handkerchief, gets in your mouth. And I was a little stressed, I'm not going to lie, I was a little stressed when I first arrived. We had an RV that could shield us from that. It certainly wasn't like camping out in a tent in the in the in the in roughing it which is of course, what a lot of people these kind of Burning man fanatics. They're like, oh you have to do it the rough way. 

I respect that, but I think there's always enough challenges, you don't need to go out and give yourself extra challenges. There's plenty of challenges in your mind and sometimes it's easier dealing with the external challenges than the internal challenges. The internal challenges are really what I'm most interested in. So, I had no qualms with staying in an RV, I was totally fine with that. I knew there would be stuff that could come up and, you know, fun to be had and things to explore. 

The first night, when we got out there, really what impressed me the most was just the sheer expansiveness of it. I mean, it is massive, it's like 70,000 people. I don't know how many miles it is, but it is huge. It took us 15 minutes in an Art car to get from one end of the Playa to the other end of the Playa where we were staying. It's just crazy, crazy how big it was. But you really don't get a full scope of it until it turns into night. And when it turns into night, everything is just lit up. 

I realized at that point, at the first sunset, when all the cars started going and the music and the fire, and I realized that this was one of the modern marvels of the world. That all of this could be created out of nothing was just a sheer testament to human ingenuity and what we're capable of as humans. This is humans doing what we do best, solving puzzles, creating art, building something from nothing. Packing everything needed for survival and to thrive into play and bringing it to the most desolate place you've ever seen in your life.

It was just really a wild, eye-opening experience to see that. Then, pretty quickly, I caught the vibe. This is straight up a ridiculously good party, I think a lot of people play up the spiritual aspects of it, and there's certainly a lot of that there. But it's built on the foundation of just a ridiculously good party. And so, you jump in and start to play. I mean, amazing music, different stages, different people. But underlying this amazing party is this level of consciousness. 

I've been to different raves and different other parties, and you look around on the ground at any one of these places, there's cans and bottles and cigarette butts and shit is just littering the ground. Even in beautiful places, like if you're in a forest or whatever, people are just throwing trash on the ground, people are drunk. That's different in Burning Man. There's not a single piece of trash on the Playa that you find because everybody abides by this code that if you see anything, they call it MOOP, Matter Out of Place. If you see trash on the ground, you pick it up, you pick it up and you pack it out. Even though this is probably the worst place on earth, maybe not on Earth, but it's one of the most desolate, gnarly places, with dust storms and nothing living at all. People are taking care of it like it's the most pristine piece of land in the world, Not a single piece of trash with 70,000 people raging, really, really amazing.

And then the other thing is that, of course, nothing's for sale. People talk about it being like a barter economy out there, you have to bring your stuff and barter. It's not It's a gifting economy. You just give people stuff, and you count on the fact that they'll give you stuff. It's not like you have to have something like you're creating some fiat currency, just devolving back to the barter system, it's just really people helping each other out. If you're thirsty, you need a drink, someone will hook you up with a drink if you need a light, if you need a cigarette, whatever you need, whatever you want, someone is there to help you out, food, whatever. 

Sometimes it's just a hug. There’s a saying that the Playa provides, and it provides because people are in such an open state that they're willing to help each other out. Now, that said, there's also another vibe. There's a vibe of the people who've been there for a long time and are resentful for all of the new people that are coming in. This is a really sad aspect that I think is only going to get worse. I kind of liken it to if you've been to Hawaii, there's certain beaches that if you try to surf on them, the locals will potentially fight you, they'll try to beat you up. They'll talk the yell at you. They'll be mad for you, for you going to their beach, because they don't feel like you deserve it, you've earned it or you're worthy of it. 

While it kind of makes sense, I guess a little bit if it's locals at a beach and they don't want tourists to kind of overrun it and take that from them, it's kind of sad to see that on the Playa because it really goes against the principles of just really humans loving each other and experiencing consciousness and play on the most massive scale. We've seen that vibe. There is that article that came out about some vandalism of some one of the wealthier camps and by some of the other Burning Man people. 

It's a bummer. It's a bummer that there's that kind of resentment building because that's not what this experiment is about. I think it's really important that one of the dark sides of tribalism is this idea that my tribe is cool, but everybody else, fuck them. And that's something that can develop. That's something that leads to wars and leads to the nationalism and leads to racism and leads to all of these different things where you're looking at somebody as different than you and fuck that person for being different than you. 

It's even part of like cultural appropriation, like when someone from one culture looks at somebody else who isn't trying to hurt that culture but is actually expressing themselves in a way that is at least on some small level appreciation for the culture. Then they go out and shame them and get mad or you don't you don't deserve to wear that, you're appropriating our culture and they get so mad instead of reaching a handout to build that bridge. They're just reinforcing the separateness that has been the major problem of this planet for so long.

We have all of the available resources necessary to help each other, but as long as we look at each other as separate, as long as we look at each other as different, as my tribe versus your tribe, I deserve this, but you don't, then we're going to continue to hoard these resources and not share them. We're going to continue to go to wars. We're going to continue to fight with each other. And that's only going to lead to the destruction and pain of our fellow humans, but the Earth as well. The Earth is like the innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of all of this separateness. 

What needs to happen at Burning Man is for everybody there to embrace the new people who are coming and show them the way and the love that that they can feel there. And that's going to make the biggest impression. Separateness and anger and is never going to have a positive effect. It's the last resort in defending yourself. But it's not the best play ever. 

It was a shame to kind of see that, but that was really, really behind the scenes. And I think that that article really got popularity because a lot of people want to find a reason not to like Burning Man. Maybe they feel bad because they haven't been yet and they don't want to think that they missed out on anything. I don't know why, but there's a lot of people who want to pretend that Burning Man isn’t awesome, but Burning Man is fucking awesome. It's like the best party ever, and it has an underlying level of consciousness, which is really cool.

While there is some of that negative stuff that comes from jealousy and separateness and that kind of dark side of tribalism, really, it's a lot of love there and an expression of some really cool stuff. I mean, you'll just be cruising around, and I cruised around, and I saw this like complete Thunderdome model, which is amazing. There are these two topless chicks with these foam sticks and there's playing heavy metal and they're going at each other and battling each other with these sticks. 

Then you'll go to some other spoken word live music, violin stage. This was all in the same night. You're cruising down the strip, the Esplanade they call it, which is like the inner circle. And you go from the Thunderdome to violin spoken word, to meditation to Skrillex playing on a stage. It's just it's just a crazy, crazy explosion of enjoyment. I really had a blast there. And I think one of the best nights of my life was probably my fourth night. We had an amazing crew, I made some great friends out there, actually two of which are going to Peru with me, people who all be friends with forever and just bonding in a way where there's just no judgment, no time commitments.

You just do what exactly what you want to do. You don't have to be anywhere. You don't have to do anything. Your only directive is just to play, just enjoy yourself. Have the best fucking time you possibly can and that's what everybody's abiding by. And yeah, there's dust and stuff, but it doesn't really matter. I had to tow someone like a mile and a dust storm whose electronic skateboard died. And so I towed her, like a mile in the middle of a dust storm and got a bunch of dust in my lungs. But so what, you heal and you're fine. And I actually despite not a lot of sleep and a good amount of partying, I felt fine when I returned from Burning Man. And plus, the art there. God, man, the art is amazing and I posted a bunch of those photos to Instagram. But really incredible what the people there have put together. And a lot of it is, is not even permanent. A lot of it goes up in flames. And that's like the Buddhist sand mandalas and sand paintings. It's just to be enjoyed temporarily, like life. Kind of a reminder that everything in life is temporary. 

That's a beautiful reminder there as well. These amazing temples where people leave memorials and memories and all of that goes up in flame. And you vanish from that place without a trace. So, a lot of beautiful sentiment that comes there on the backdrop of just a really, really dope party. I'll be going back for sure, it's it was just too good. The friendships that I made, the fun that I had, everything that happened there is something that I'm just looking forward to continuing to experience. 

I was a little skeptical of Burning Man, for sure. But I definitely give two thumbs up and I'm not going to get all crazy about it. There's a really funny video about this, about like this guy coming back from Burning Man and people asking about it. People get a little fanatical about that, which is fine, too. But it was awesome. There's just no doubt about it. It was awesome, from the art to the parties to everything there, I really, really loved it. 

Then the other things that I’ve been playing with are just different philosophical concepts and I’ve really been kind of looking into what love really is. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about love and having this open relationship with Whitney, where we do have other lovers, has really put that to the test. At the final conclusion, ultimately love is truly wanting another person's happiness, no matter what, at all cost. That's the real nature of love. But I think we've really lost that concept. There's a lot of societal constructs about what love is. Love Hurts is was one of them. 

That's such a funny thing. How does love hurt? That doesn't make any sense. Why should love hurt? You know, that's not love if it hurts, that's attachment, that's ego, that's your own image of yourself that gets threatened when a lover leaves you. But love doesn't hurt. Real love, clean love is loving somebody so much that regardless of you, you just want them to be happy. You just truly want them to be happy. 

In a lot of traditional relationships, you know, everybody says, oh, yeah, she's my best friend or he's my best friend. Okay, well, does your best friend want you to be happy no matter what? Is that really the foundation of it? Because that's what a best friend should do. That's what your primary ally should do, they should just want you to be happy. So, the ideal for any relationship in my mind and the ideal for love is a word that David Deida, I don't know if he coined, but it's called compursion. And that’s getting pleasure from another person's pleasure. 

It doesn't matter if you caused that pleasure, you don't have to take ownership of it. You're just happy for that other person. So, if that means they're getting pleasure with somebody else or they're getting pleasure, however which way they're getting pleasure, you're just happy for them. That's to me, the epitome of really clean love. And of course, an open relationship really puts that to the test. Because there's a lot of jealousy and possessiveness and things that get challenged in that kind of container. And that's been a beautiful process to be a part of. Super, super challenging. I mean, having the person that you live with, and you love go and be with another lover is incredibly hard, incredibly hard. 

I'm not going to go too much into the intimate personal details of my relationship, you have to face down some of the most challenging demons. But ultimately, the only way out is to just be happy for that person. Be happy for not only your partner but be happy for the person that they were with, that they were able to share something so positive. Now, of course, if someone hurts your lover, well, feel free to snarl the teeth and pull out the claws.

If someone hurts the person you with, that's a different story. But if someone gives pleasure to the person you're with, why is that person your enemy? Why do you want to beat up somebody who gave pleasure and happiness to somebody you love? That doesn't make any fucking sense. It's like they shared a gift and enjoyment together, but you want to hurt them for that. That's not love, that's ego, that's delusion, that's bullshit. 

It's been a really interesting process, looking at that and testing those principles. Testing your ability to really love someone with compersion or what I call mutual altruism where you just really want the best for another person. That's been a really cool process to go through that and I plan on putting that together in a book form at some point and really laying out the failures, the triumphs of that journey. Because I've certainly fallen on my face a bunch of times and trying to discover this and trying to sort out what love really means and whether I can love someone in that way. Really see them as me living a different life. 

Again, it goes back to the same principles of consciousness. Once you see somebody as you living a different life, then you just want them to be happy. No matter what that means, no matter who's doing it, no matter what that takes, no matter if that means that you got to get the fuck out of their life. If that's the move you got to make, you've got to make that move if you love somebody for real. So, it's just interesting, we have these ideas love hurts, love is pain. What? No, it's not. Love is love. Love is fucking awesome. So, if you have any of those other ideas, it's not love. It's something else. It's something else masquerading as love. So that's been fun. 

Another one of my favorite paradoxes is when people say, fear God. Fear God and love hurts. Probably the two biggest fallacies of all time and I don't want to get too deep into the interreligious religious discussion, but we are all God. Life is God. God is all of us. Everything good. Love, truth. Fear that? Why would you fear that? It's just this idea of the judge masquerading as God and delusion masquerading as love, ego masquerading as love. It's not it. If you have to fear God, it's not the right God. And if love hurts, it's not the right love, you're confusing the word for something else.

I think those are two misconceptions that I think bring people a lot of suffering. Don Miguel calls love the Fallen Angel because of everything that people ascribe to love that isn't real. A great book, if you guys want to read that, is The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. Really sets the foundation for this, as well as The Toltec Art of Life and Death, another book by Don Miguel Ruiz. Beautiful explication of what that is. That's been a really cool process of what's going on, exploring that, playing with that and trying to myself, become a master of love. Loving myself, loving others in a truly impeccable way, in a way that isn't entangled with all of my own insecurities and ego and everything like that. 

An open relationship certainly isn't for everybody. It's certainly, again, it's like ayahuasca, it's like a trial by fire. It's going to bring up all the fucking demons and you're going to have to look at those and decide if you're a warrior at heart and willing to face those demons and overcome them with forgiveness and the ability to honestly look at yourself and look at every shadow that you have in your soul.

That's a path that I've chosen to take, and it's been incredibly rewarding. The greatest gifts that I have been have come from finding points of resistance, whether it's the plants or whether it's relationship or whatever it is, and just honestly and humbly looking at that and realizing that, I'm going to fuck up a lot and I do a lot and that's okay. We all do. We don't need to be perfect. I think we have this judge in our mind that tells us that we need to be perfect and will punish us if we're anything less than perfect. But that's nonsense. We’re all just human, that’s all we are. 

Just accepting that, forgiving yourself, and then moving, moving past that. I can't say this quote enough, but it comes from Heraclitus, “No man steps in the same river twice because it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” We're always changing. We're a different self all the time. I've seen people rapidly transform in the matter of ten days after three years of struggle and difficulty advancing past certain principles and then boom, like a quantum leap, they’re a different human being. 

It's not just with the plants, it's just sometimes by choice. So, at any different point, we can be a different self. We are different selves. This idea of self is, I think, another fallacy as well. You have this thing like we're one self. Well, are you the same self when you're sick and tired and emotionally charged as you after a great meditation or a workout and you're feeling great and your life is good, are you that are you the same self? If you took away everything, the tone of your voice and the look of your body, would some strangers say that that's the same person? Hell no. 

We're a different self all the time and I think acknowledging that is important. The ability to change and the ability to choose which self you are and evolve, we all have that ability. That's another thing that I've really been playing with is these human fallacies and that's one of them. The fallacy of absolutes like, we are one self. No, we're not we're many selves. The fallacy of light and dark, guilty or innocent, these kind of judge concepts. 

Take the idea of guilty or innocent. For the legal system obviously, that's important because there are certain punishments that need to make sense. But everything is really on a sliding scale, and we just decide which category and which bucket it goes in. Is someone ever completely innocent or is someone ever completely guilty? Probably not. Let's say someone didn't commit a crime. Let's say the crime was aggravated assault, somebody got mugged or something like that. Let's say the person didn't commit the crime, they're innocent, but perhaps that person at the same token, was super angry and belittled some different people and lived in a way that spread the hate and anger like a virus that led to somebody assaulting someone. There's a little bit of guilt there. 

Now, despite the fact that they're innocent and on the converse, if someone's guilty of something, how much of what they had or how much of the environment and how much of all of the other factors at play led them to that road? In some aspect they're a little bit innocent. But we just decide this light and dark, guilty, innocent. Really everything is on a sliding scale. And it’s important, yeah, I get it.  Some people there should be retribution and punishment for certain actions. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have these symbols, but we make up these symbols so that it makes sense in our mind and then we can function. 

But the symbols really don't apply, everything is on a sliding scale. 

That's something interesting to remember that, you can't just categorize something as good, bad, light, dark, silent, loud. It's all really a matter of variance on a sliding scale. Like the yin yang symbol, everything within the light has a little bit of dark and within the dark has a little bit of light. I think that's important to remember. 

Another one of the fallacies that I think humans hang on to is the fallacy of permanence. We act as if time is not going to strip everything that we love away from us at some point anyways. One of the one of the funny aspects of permanence is, people will be working on a project, working on their house, for example. Their house will be under construction for like 20 years, they'll be constantly doing stuff. 

This construction is super annoying, but it's this idea like they're willing to sacrifice 20 years of their house being in chaos for some payout, some idea that when it's finished, it's all going to be permanently awesome forever and they're going to love it forever. Well, no, they just sacrificed 20 years of time because all there is the journey. All there is the process.

People do that with work, too. They're like, oh, work super hard. Life sucks, life sucks, but I'll get to retire. Well, the retirement isn't permanent. The retirement is just temporary as well, so it's all about the quality of life through the process, nothing is permanent. In relationships too. People break up and all of a sudden that relationship was a failure. What? What do you mean? Or they're working on something with this idea that if they get it right, it's going to be permanently good. Nothing is permanent. It's just all about how many seconds you can enjoy, how many moments you can be present. That's the only thing there is. Nothing is permanent. 

Death will take all the things that we love and every castle that we've built and turn it to dust. That may sound depressing, but it's really not, it's just life. It's why the samurai loved the symbol of the cherry blossom tree, because it blooms so briefly and the bloom is beautiful, but you can't hang on to it, it won't be bloomed forever. And that's like life. 

Really, it's all about how many opportunities to be present, how many opportunities to play. And really that's what it's about. This is the best video game we could ever make, life is. One hundred percent. 

Sometimes we forget that we're here to play like everything becomes so serious. This relationship and what this person said and what they did, and everything becomes all serious and the consequences get all crazy. No, it's just play. We're here to play like, have fun, build stuff, share love. Like, do cool shit. But remember that we're here to play. Don't take it so seriously. 

Put out as much positivity as you can, enjoy as much as you can, but enjoy it. Or else why do it? Why even be here if we're not here to play? And what a hell of a playground we have. This is the best playground we could imagine. Think of all the foods. I mean, just go into Whole Foods or a great grocery store like that. There are just countless pleasures on the shelves from bottles of wine and cheese and food and grass-fed steaks and chips and whatever the fuck you want you can get. And that's just food, that's just one pleasure. That's just pleasure coming into your mouth. 

Imagine all of the other pleasures, the sounds that can come into your ears, the sights that your eyes can see, the things that your body can touch and feel, the activation of the neurotransmitters and various different beautiful substances that the plant kingdom is produced. But we forget to play and I think that's something that's important for all of us to remember, to just play. 

The last fallacy is control. We think that we're we want to have control of everything. We want to have control of ourselves, of other people, of the environment. We can control what we can control what whatever is possible for us to. But understand that there is no such thing as control. At any given moment an asteroid can come and take away everything that we're in control of. And that's okay too. It's okay to not be in control. 

I know it feels it feels like things are risky when you're not in control. But if you surrender this belief that you need control, then you just live. You just live in the present. Again, it just goes back to the present moment. Don't worry about trying to control everything and control what you can and let the rest go. You'll be a lot happier that way. I think there's a lot of people who won't fly in a plane because they're not piloting the plane and they're not in control. Whatever. You're not in control anyways, even if you're driving, some fucking truck and just cross the line and run into you and you won't have time to react. You're not in control. You're not ever in control. So, don't worry about it. Permanence, absolutes and control I think are three of the human fallacies.

Another area that I really get tripped up in is just playing small. When you get caught up in your own insecurities and your own fears, it almost like it makes you small. You forget that you're this cosmic traveler in this human meat suit and this is just one of the many experiences you have. I mean, look back on your life. There's been so many times in my life, I can look back on mine, so many times that I was so stressed out about all kinds of different things, incredibly stressed out. Like world was ending stressed out, heart pounding in my chest and depressed and ruminating and, oh my God, how am I going to do this? I don't even remember those fucking things. I've had a thousand of them. I don't even remember them. Life is good now. What was I worried about? Yeah, premeditate, plan for the worst. Be prepared. I'm not saying don't be prepared, but don't stress out so fucking much, it doesn't help anything. Just come up with a plan, whatever your plan is, do the fucking plan. Everything works out. All of us here listening are virtually batting 100, we're batting 1000.  

We’ve made it out alive regardless of whatever stress or whatever shit was going on, we made it out fine. So, have a little faith. Choose that faith over fear. Chose faith. Even if you can’t understand it, even if you don’t even know how it’s going to work out, most likely it’s going to work out. We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. That’s one of the lessons that I’ve learned with experience. 

It's still hard. Shit comes up and you think it’s going to end the world, but it doesn’t. You just come up with a plan, you figure it out, you do your best. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get unlucky. Sometimes it resolves faster than others. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it’s going to leave a scar. I’m not saying you’re not going to have scars, all of us have scars. But that’s cool too. That’s life. You don’t go to battle and not get scars. If you do, you’re not battling hard enough.

You’re going to fall, you’re going to fail, you’re going to get fucked up. That’s okay. It’s all good. I guess that’s the process and it’s process of remembering and forgetting. I can say all this on the podcast, but you could find me on a given day and I could be in my own funk and depression and everything’s fucked, I’m fucked and I suck. You could find me in that stage, it’s not that I don’t know better, it’s just that at that moment delusion has taken hold and is winning against truth.

But when you have that truth and you have those truths that you can fall back on, you can find your way out a lot easier. That’s what I’m finding. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, right now, at this point. That’s a testament of just building the foundation stronger, having these truths that I can fall back on. Then helping the people around me, with these truths, I can have people that I know who will say something that I said, and say it back to me and just because it’s coming from them, I’ll be like, oh, yeah, you’re right. Or, they’ll have their own way to look at it and their own beautiful way to help me out. 

That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with people who can help you and share that ability to help you rise out of the depths and to help you deal with your own fears. A lot of times, people will surround themselves with the opposite, people who will prey on those from their own jealousies and own real desire to actually see you fail. So many people around really want to see you fail. They’re not even aware of that, but their own jealousies and their own pain and their own shit, they will infect you with ideas and fears like a virus. That shit’s infectious. 

I’ve seen that in relationship too, especially when trying an unconventional relationship, like an open relationship. You’ll see the people who will try to feed into you fear and feed into your insecurity and look for the drama and the destruction that can come. Because it challenges them, it challenges their ideas and they don’t want that. They don’t want to see you succeed. You have to be really careful with that. And be really careful with what you’re watching on TV too. Like the Kardashians and the reality shows and Housewives and all of that shit. Because those ideas are infectious whether you believe it or not.

You might think you’re laughing at them, but in some way you’re going to pattern a little bit of  behavior off of what you see. Surrounding yourself with people of consciousness is going to pay incredible dividends. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited about bringing 17 people I know and love to Peru. Because we’re all going to be able to interact and level up together. 

Planning things where you’re going floating with your friends or doing holotropic breathing with your friends or going to a retreat or meditating or camping or whatever it is bring up your people with you and that will really help things a lot. Because we’re social creatures and it’s really great to have your tribe surrounding you and supporting you in that way. 

Well, I think I’m tired of hearing myself talk, but hopefully you guys have enjoyed this solocast. I’ve got so much love and appreciation for everybody here. I get to meet so many cool people and you all say so many nice things. I’m just honored to be able to do my part. I’m not perfect. Don’t look at me like I’ve got it all figured out or idolize me in anyway. I’m just like any one of y’all. I’m just doing my best and that’s really all you can do. Just try your best, understand that you’re going to fail, understand that you’re going to fuck up. That’s all I’m doing. 

I appreciate everybody out there and hearing from all of you is always awesome. I’ve got nothing but love and I’ll keep you guys posted from the jungle. Yeah, keep up with me on social and love y’all. Talk to you later. Peace.