Learn how to uncover the hidden potential within yourself to express through the timeless art of verse and explore how poetry serves not only as a means of self-expression but also as a powerful tool for personal growth and healing.

In this wildly transformative and personal journey my good friend In-Q sits down to share how can empower you to rewrite your narrative, and ultimately, transform your life.

AUBREY MARCUS: Good to see you, my brother.

IN-Q: You too. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Let's dive right in with some poetry, with some art.

IN-Q: Defining myself is like confining myself. So I undefined myself, defined myself. They say a goldfish will only get as big as its bowl. But if you put it in a tank, the space can change the way it grows. It needs to have the room, or its potential doesn't show. So its environment is essential for unleashing the unknown. I ponder if it knows that it could grow beyond the bowl. That it could have a pond the size of an Olympic swimming pool. That the world is so much larger than the boundaries that it's known. Somehow I empathize with this little golden soul. Because I too have unexplored and unexpressed goals that were suppressed by an environment I couldn't control. Am I still playing small because it's all that I've known when there's a giant in my bones I'm not sure I've ever shown? I ask myself this question when I'm purposely alone. When my body grows to take up all the rooms inside my home, I expand in all directions, every single inch consumed. I'm a billion feet tall now, my head over the moon. I look down on the earth as it slowly spins around. I look down on the countries and the cities and the towns. I look down on the square blocks and buildings all around. I look down on my street and rip the roof right off my house. I look down on myself sitting, writing on my couch. Look, I barely pay attention. I'm the one that's looking down, how unaware I am of where I am. It's profound. So I put the roof back on and I shrink myself back to the ground, man, it's crazy how I fit infinity inside my doubt, how I stuffed the universe into the tiniest amounts, how I keep the solar system in the corner of my mouth, how I speak into existence, then forget what I'm about. And most days I'm not sure which side of the glass I've been on. I win a Grammy in the shower every time I sing a song. But when the spotlight is on, my first instincts to run. I have to superglue my feet to even tell you where I'm from. I've been training for a quarantine since I was very young. For an introvert, it slightly hurts to tell you that they'll come. I would rather get into a staring contest with the sun, although I'll never get to see who won. It's nature and its nurture twisting into jungle life, fighting the competition, branching out to reach the light. I tried to listen, but could only hear my ancient heart. It screamed at me to make my life into my greatest, but where to start. These walls are keeping people out and keeping people in. I guess it's good to know where someone ends and someone else begins, but our boundaries become prisons when we see what could have been. The biggest goldfish ever measured 18 inches, snout to fin.

AUBREY MARCUS: Let's go. That's a fucking beautiful piece, bro. 

IN-Q: Thanks, man.

AUBREY MARCUS: That's a really beautiful piece. I don't remember that from the album.

IN-Q: Yeah. It's in there.

AUBREY MARCUS: It's in there? Damn. That one was fucking good. 

IN-Q: Thank you. 

AUBREY MARCUS: The album. It's like a trance though. It really pulls you in. And for those of you who haven't set this up, you just are releasing a whole poetry album and a journal. And it really brings you into this kind of liminal space outside. Like you do such a good job of pulling you out of ordinary consciousness and really inviting you. And that's part of it to invite you into just stepping outside the normal bounds and just allowing these words and these thoughts to just kind of pour over you. It felt like I was like, any great art, it just pulls you out of your normal reality for a second outside of whatever tank you might find your own attention placed in. 

IN-Q: I appreciate that. What was your experience when you were listening to it personally? Did it make you reflect on your own life beyond the art?

AUBREY MARCUS: I think your pieces always inspire different elements. What’s interesting is I think some part of me, because obviously poetry is one of the ways that I've come to know how to express myself. Sometimes I had a little observer spy cam, like looking at the art of it going like, Oh, that's fucking cool. And then like the little interludes you had, where you're just like capturing talking. So I was in some ways just observing and understanding what you were doing because it's such a new genre. But then, I'd find these flows where I just let all that go and just could feel my heart open up a little more, my mind open up a little more. And it felt like a respite from the kind of short attention span, executive decision making, way that I moved through life and beautiful sentiments about love. Obviously, that's kind of building towards the climax. It's a lot of poetry about love and connection. It's just a really cool experience, man.

IN-Q: Thank you, man. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I think the closest thing that it reminds me of was Posner's album after his father died. Which is more music, but still it had this kind of journey that you were on where you shouldn't just listen to a little bit. Like, you should really listen to the whole thing.

IN-Q: Yeah. I mean, that album is particularly incredible. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: And it's interesting that you mentioned him because in many ways he was the catalyst for me deciding to put this album out, you know, it was an accidental album in the creation. And then once I finished it, it had been such a healing process for me to make. That I wasn't sure I wanted to release it to other people as a product. And so I had to really think about that. It was me being vulnerable in a different way than I have been in my art in the past. I think I'm really good at telling vulnerability. But I'm not always good at showing vulnerability. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I don't know, bro. I mean, you had that poem that you open up your poetry workshops with about the phone call and your father. 

IN-Q: Yeah.

AUBREY MARCUS: I mean, that's like vulnerability. A hundred out of a hundred, it feels like, to me, is like that's some deep shit and it gets everybody crying and everybody pours out their own art because you're leading by example. So I've seen you do it, for sure.

IN-Q: I acknowledge that. How you perceive that is true and real. And I acknowledge that when I wrote that, it was extremely vulnerable for me. But I wrote that when I was 25. So for me to do that in my forties brings me back to a moment, but I've already, for the most part, healed and released any trauma there. But for me to give people a window into, what is most present and raw in my life right now and to show them through these intimate conversations with my wife, which is the conceptual through line of the album, some of the things that I'm still wrestling with in my most private moments was and even is a bit scary. So when I finished it, I was complete and I was like, I don't know if I want other people to validate it or judge it. And I decided to send it to some close friends and Posner was one of them. And my metric was basically like, if one person out of these five people that I send it to comes back to me and says, I had a moving and meaningful experience listening to it, then it would be worth it. So I sent it out and it's weird when you ask people to do things, especially when they're super busy because it's hard for them to actually find the time to sit and listen to a 40 minute album. And Mike got back to me within days and he was like, I think his quote was like, if you don't put this album out. I will wrestle it out of your cold dead hands because the world needs to hear it. And so

AUBREY MARCUS: Perfect.

IN-Q: Then I was kind of like, All right, let's do it. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. Mike, he's such an epic friend and kind of like cheerleader for what is the best in a person, you know, like I remember after we were in Poland, which is a trip you almost went on in the darkness retreat that I was in, I would hear his voice like, you got this bro, just in my head. It was just like Posner. Anytime things would get difficult, you know, keep going. 

IN-Q: I miss him.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. Keep going. 

IN-Q: Yeah. He's like an incredible artist, but he's just a sweet soul. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, he is. 

IN-Q: Yeah. And he's also very deep and I'm super grateful for our friendship. 

AUBREY MARCUS: What is it about like a poet or an artist, you know, like, do you think this is something that, I mean, you said in this last poem, it's nature and it's nurture. I mean, it's got to be a little bit of both, right? And I don't know, I'm mildly lukewarm to astrological influences on things, but of course I am a Pisces. So then a lot of people say, Oh, well, of course and I'm not so sure if that's it or if it's not, but I've felt like it's been something that's been within me. Like I feel deeply and then I've somehow cultivated the ability to map words to the feelings that I've expressed. I think there's some great quote about a poet, which is like a poet is just someone who's managed to be able to mouth the sounds of agony and ecstasy that come out of a human being and turn them into words. Basically, it's like this force that comes out and then all of a sudden it translates into words as a medium, you know what I mean? But for you, when you think about a poet or an artist, obviously we all have some of that in us. So it can definitely be cultivated. I mean, I've watched you do it at Fit For Service where you've cultivated a whole, everybody becoming a poet. So it's innate. But then there's also some people who just have maybe found it and practiced it. What do you think? 

IN-Q: Well, we're all storytellers and the stories that we're telling ourselves and other people become our lives. So the idea is change your story, change your life, and you can change your story in plenty of different ways. And you constantly have to reflect back and pause and say, is this the story I want to be living? So that's a never ending process. I found poetry as my outlet for telling and retelling my story over and over again. And it's an incredible outlet. And it's not an outlet that needs to be confined to professionals. Personally, I think it's a modality for stress release the same way that yoga or breath work, or meditation can be. Emotion is energy in motion. You have to move. The energy in order to release it and creativity is one of the ways that you can release energy and alchemize pain into something beautiful to think about something you want to create or something you want to release and put it into your poetry and then share it with another person and be witnessed and hopefully unconditionally loved so you can see and be seen. So when I do the workshops, it's just telling everybody, Hey, you have the permission. Or you have the invitation to discover the inner poet inside of you and to not have to have it be great. Just start with something true and see how that moves through your life. And ultimately the reason why we made the Neverending Now Poetry Journal was to scale that experience. To take all of the poems from the album and put them in a conceptual through line order that brings people from growth and fear into infinite possibility and love. And I would love for people to discover their inner poet without me having to be there to facilitate. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, of course. 

IN-Q: Yeah

AUBREY MARCUS: I mean, to be able to democratize that capacity for us to actually find that. So make it accessible universally. There's research behind it too. There's research behind writing of all different sorts, alleviating depression, anxiety, helping with consistent rumination, like you actually get the pen out and you write or you can do it on the computer if you want. There's something quite cathartic about writing with a pen though, I find. But, yeah, it's like there's something that matters a little more. I don't know, it's special. 

IN-Q: Well, it's like mind, heart. body. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Right. 

IN-Q: And then it moves into the world and then it's outside of you. So you can have more power over the story rather than the story, having more power over you. What is your writing process and how did you discover that you wanted to express yourself in that form as well as many others? 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. I've been writing poetry since I was little. I mean, I remember it was interesting, it was more kind of a transpersonal theme when I was little, which was strange for people like I remember 

IN-Q: That's personal.

AUBREY MARCUS: So it didn't have anything to do with me, really, that I can see so let me tell you about my first poem.

IN-Q: Right 

AUBREY MARCUS: First poem that was like I think I was actually in sixth grade for this poem, if I remember correctly, I might have written some other stuff before but the first real one was about a guy and it's just talking about he's on a dog sled and he's going out into a whiteout blizzard. And he's just going and it's about the dogs and it's about the tracks of the sled on fresh powder from snow that had been accumulating for days. And then he goes to a spot in the white and then he unhinges his dogs and he gives them an embrace and then he just lays down in the snow to die. And my sixth grade teachers immediately called my parents in and they were like, look, I know that we got a poetry assignment for your child, but you really shouldn't write the poems for him. And they're like, we didn't fucking write this to like, why is he writing a poem about a dog sled driver committing suicide in the white and they're like, I don't know, I don't know why, but if

IN-Q: You were a deep little dude.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then I think probably, I have all my old journals, which is cool. So like my first journal was a journal given to me by my girlfriend, my first girlfriend when I was 16, shout out to Ashley. And it's really sweet. She had a really sweet invocation. It's really cool to read it. And there's just, it's full of different types of poetry, but my poetry got kind of constrained at that point by rhyme scheme, right? Like I started to write in more of a predictable rhyme scheme pattern. And so poetry from 16 to probably 2021 probably my worst poetry, like probably my sixth grade poetry was better than my 16, 17 year old poetry because I was forcing rhymes and then like 2021, I went full like renegade, like super, like explicit, not really. Like I was just feeling a frustrated lover and I was just like, fucking words that cut. That was my samurai day, just stabbing the page and drawing, like it was very passionate and there's some good work that came out of that period. And then from there, really probably my next evolution was when I met you and started listening to the way that you delivered poems and like you actually opened up a whole new field for me just by actually absorbing the rhythm and the cadence and how you actually delivered. I learned a lot. And that's, I think now I have a combination of different styles of poetry, and sometimes I'll do more classic poetry. I'll put out a haiku or put out a fucking sonnet or something like that, just to see if I can use the tight constraints of the art to see if I can fit it in. But for the most part, the poetry that comes through me is a lot more in the style that, you know, really, you've been a mentor for me. 

IN-Q: I appreciate that, man. You've been the same, you've been a friend-tour. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. Thanks bro.

IN-Q: You know, the interesting thing that you said that really stuck out to me is that when you start somehow, because you don't have expectations of yourself, no matter what age you are, that art can be the most free. And because it's the most free, it can connect in a very unique way. It's only when we start to think about how we want to be seen? How do we want to brand ourselves? How do we want to tell the story of our art? Or you just get validated because you're good at something. And then you just want to repeat that. So you just think about, how do I recreate the thing that will get me validated rather than just like being and discovering. So for me, that's a lesson that I try to use in my poetry. It's the longest relationship of my life, basically like rhythm and rhyme. I've been doing that since I was 13. And I'm 46 now, about to be 46, I guess. So, I've had so many different seasons of how my relationship to creating has changed as I have changed, but that as a base lesson making sure that I'm the first person in my audience and then I'm talking to myself first and not thinking about what other people want to hear or what would be successful is the thing that has allowed me to continue to surprise myself.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, I always know I got something good when I'm in the middle of writing it and I get real emotional, I don't know if you have that experience to where just something comes out and you've hit that line and it's you, but it's beyond you and it's some part of it is just like, I think tears for me come when there's a frame of perception that has to melt for me to see the truth. And it's almost like the tears actually melt the frame of perception and I see clearly again. So a movie can do that, my own art can do that, something I say can do that it's like remembering of like, oh, I just pulled this looking glass prism off of my eyes. And I can see the truth of something that I really feel or there is really a deeper part of me and that's when I know I got something real good. And then sometimes I get this kind of devilish smile, like, Oh, that was fucking clever. It's almost like that, and those are fun too. 

IN-Q: Yeah. There's also a difference between making something that's dope and making something that's right. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: So there'll be lines that I write that I'm like, Oh, that's dope, but it's not right.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, for sure. 

IN-Q: It is right when you're getting emotional. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: That is like a tuning fork for knowing that you're, you've touched the truth. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. What's your relationship with the muse and what artists would call that force that's both within us and beyond us? 

IN-Q: Well, it's always just paying attention, but actively paying attention. And I've trained that muscle for so long that it's just like a foundational part of my life at this point. So that piece that I shared, which is growth or AKA goldfish, I was at my cousin's house. She has this little pond in the backyard and she had all of these, what I thought were koi fish. So I was like, wow, Sophia, these koi fish are so big and beautiful. And she goes, they're not koi fish. They're goldfish. And I said, really? Because my only experience with goldfish is like when you would go to a fair or something like that. And you would get one in a plastic bag. You would take it home for a week. And then you 

AUBREY MARCUS: With the little ping pong game where you got to get it in the red cup. 

IN-Q: Exactly. I was decent. I had a few of those. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It’s you. But what do you do with them? 

IN-Q: You basically put them in a bowl and then watch them die. I mean, they don't last very long. Right? Yeah. And you flush them down the toilet. So she goes, no, actually goldfish will change their size depending upon their environment. And I was like, really? And I looked it up and it's true. And I thought I could relate. And so I started in that place of relating to something and then being willing to follow the breadcrumb trail and see where it goes. A lot of times when I do get emotional as I'm writing, it's because I have surprised myself.  Like I didn't know where it was going next and then all of a sudden I was there and I went like, thank you.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, totally

In-Q: It's just a feeling of gratitude. 

AUBREY MARCUS: That unbelievable grace. 

IN-Q: Yeah, I think like in life I tend to overly try to control things and that's probably the biggest thing that I'm working on and why I put all of those concepts into my work is because, based on how I grew up, survival, emotionally, mentally, whatever you say, physically, spiritually makes me want to like come into a situation and size it up, make sure that I'm good, make sure I can do what I can do to move it in the direction that I want it to go in. And I'm just so bored of doing that. It's so boring. I really would like to just be in a place of discovery and just see what happens, surprise myself. Be surprised by other people. And take the ride. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Would you say that's a place of greater faith? Is that the word that you would use or do you prefer the word trust or like what gets you to the place of surrender

IN-Q: Just breathing, being present, being with people that I love, knowing that I have an anchor in this world

AUBREY MARCUS: Your wife. 

IN-Q: Yeah, that's everything for me. Because trust was such a big thing for me growing up. I never really had it. And I would say I'm probably naturally pretty suspicious. Pretty judgmental. I mean, if you knew me in my twenties, man, I would just like to walk into a room and just judge everybody so they wouldn't have a chance. And then at a certain point, kind of realized, oh, that wasn't working. Because my life was an absolute wreck in many different ways. And then I was like, all right, let me just, I don't know, overcompensate. And then I started going in and trying to be over charming or blah, blah, blah. And that's like the same thing leads you to the same place. So for many years I've been like knocking off those layers more and more. And now I just feel like I have faith in myself. I have trust in myself. I have faith and trust that I will do what I need to do at the moment. Um, and that’s enough.

AUBREY MARCUS: When does the trust in yourself waver? 

IN-Q: Look, life is fucking hard, man. And it's also amazing. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Amen. 

IN-Q: It's both and people are complicated, me included. So it's being able to hold those dichotomies in the same space at the same time. That's what mastering life is. It's always being a student, but being willing to like, see all of those things simultaneously. My faith wavers when something happens that I feel is unfair. You know, like a deep thing, not something on the surface, not something that has to do with logistics or details, like a real life thing. Interestingly enough, without going into details, it happens most when it happens to people that I love, that I feel like they're not deserving of that thing. And I think that understanding that life isn't fair.  And that life is hard, and that life is beautiful, and that life is continuing to unfold, is the thing that allows me to show up, try to be my best, and let go of the shit that's out of my control. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You can't understand the fairness of life if you don't extend beyond the boundary of this single life, right? I think that's the mistake that we make. We expect that this one life is ultimately going to be fair. And I think it's, we're limited by the purview of a single life. And I think if you look at the continuity of consciousness, and I don't know your own personal spiritual beliefs, but I fully am, you know, absolutely convinced in the concept of reincarnation, just because of my own experiences of the unborn, undying essence of who I am that I know has taken many forms and many bodies. I know that personally, and I don't expect anybody to take my word for it, although there is good research being done at the University of Virginia that's pretty conclusive that this is a reality. But that's really helped me actually, is to understand that we can't assess fairness in the context of a single life or from the purview that we have so, but that doesn't mean that in this moment that fucked up things happen and things are unfair. And I think for me, the faith waivers in all directions, probably my greatest, you know, one of the greatest areas of growth that I always come back to is more faith. Just more faith but faith in people is probably the hardest for me because I really deeply also believe in free will. I believe that there's a concept in Kabbalah, which is called sim sum and it's the loving retraction of the omnipotence of God. So God recedes like the low tide to allow whatever happens in the tide pool to happen of its own accord, right? And so it's like the withdrawal of the divine to allow us the space to have free will. And in the space of free will, I see it as we're in a contest with forces of resistance that move within us and forces of that are drawing us towards full self actualization and we navigate with whatever amount of consciousness we can muster in those moments. So faith in people waver first and that includes myself like sometimes when I do things and I'm like man I really could have done that better. And there's a place where you can go like in this kind of spiritual said, well if I could have done it better I would have done it better. So everybody's just doing their best all the time and I think that's true and it's a paradox because if you could have done it better, you would've done it better, and you could have done it better. Like it's both, like, there's always a place that I leave a space to reach for, like actually taking that extra moment to actually speak with like clean words and pure words and think with clean thoughts and pure intentions and act from like a truer place. So. For me, faith is probably this one of the areas of growth that I'm looking for, because I'll lose faith in people, I'll lose faith in myself, and then I'll lose faith in God in many ways as well. And from that place, like my faith, and then every other characteristic of myself are correlated. Like, the more faith I have, the better things go, the happier I am, the quicker I am to laugh, the more magical synchronicities happen. And then when I'm out of faith, the more that lack of faith starts to accumulate evidence, you know? So, and I really think it's a choice to fundamentally like, and it takes effort. It's a practice, it's a devotion, my own devotion to faith is probably, as I look forward, like, what I want to bring into the rest of my life is like a deeper devotion to faith. 

IN-Q: I can relate to many of the things that you said, you know, lack of faith metastasizes.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: What you focus on grows. But that doesn't mean if you only focus on positivity, that everything will always be positive. 

AUBREY MARCUS: No. 

IN-Q: Doesn't work that way. What you said earlier about reincarnation. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised for sure, I don't have that level of knowing that you do but, sure. And I think it's no matter what a really beautiful structure for faith, because it reminds you not to be in the micro all the time and zoom out to the macro and to see that there are bigger things, even other lives that are in play here. For me, I would say my structure. For continuing to be on the journey of faith, is that nothing that has ever happened to me in my life that was really challenging or difficult while it was happening, whether I understand why it happened or not, even many years later. Do I regret or do I wish we were different because at a certain point you realize that no matter what happens, it happened and under a medium or a long timeline, it becomes a part of who you are. So when you reject something from your past. You reject a part of who you've become. And in that way you're saying no to life. And that doesn't mean that you have to be grateful for everything from the standpoint of like, oh I'm so glad that happened and I welcome more of that. But it does mean you have to realize that whatever is happening now, even if it's very challenging at a certain point, it will be a part of the tapestry of who you are as well. So try to have faith now. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. It's like that hindsight is foresight and hindsight we're grateful for everything, but if you can actually remember, there will be a point where you wouldn't change it and cause you'll find the gratitude for it, even if it's a mystery for now, that helps a lot. It kind of softens the rough edges, the jagged parts of the experience that you're in. It's just a fast forward and say, all right, let me look back at this from five years, 10 years, the next lifetime. And say like, all right, I'm grateful for that, but you can't also bypass immediately to that because you got to feel whatever feeling comes up, somebody does something fucked up to you. It's like, there's a derivation, like a deviation, a remix of the Ho'oponopono, you know Ho'oponopono? So this comes from the Hawaiian Kahuna tradition, which is like the spiritual masters of Hawaii. And it has a lot of complexity, but it's often broken down to a simple four phrases that you say, which you can mix them in any order, but it's thank you, I love you, please forgive me, I'm sorry. So it's any one of those in whatever order you want. And it's supposed to bring you to a zero state of forgiveness. But I think a lot of times for me, there's another remix of that, which is first, it's okay to feel the fuck you, first let yourself feel it. Fuck you. Fuck this. This is fucked up. And then you move to thank you. Thank you for that. And then there's a, and you're welcome that I'm saying thank you and clearing that karma for you. And I love you. From the most universal place and to allow yourself to move through that process, I think is important. 

IN-Q: Let me ask you a question. How do you feel something fully? And not create more of it or have that regurgitate some of the same negative stories because that's something that I still wrestle with. I'm not like one of these people. I believe in the law of attraction because I believe there are things that we can't see. Energy is vibrating. You're going to be attracted to whatever vibration you're putting out, and you're going to attract whatever vibration you're putting out. So that makes sense to me. But like to think of the law of attraction from the standpoint of like, only thinking positive thoughts as we're discussing doesn't make sense to me. 

AUBREY MARCUS: No. 

IN-Q: To embody those different levels that you just spoke about. The the fuck you, the thank you. You're welcome. What was the last one? 

AUBREY MARCUS: I love you.

IN-Q: Oh, I love you. Yeah. How could I forget that. That makes sense to me, but the fuck you part, when you feel that, right? Acknowledging the truth of that and making sure you transition to those other stages in a way that feels authentic, that sometimes can be a bit of a riddle. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I think the way to do it is to feel it all the way through. Because I think if you try to move too quickly, like our conscious mind is only a fraction of what our actual psyche is, right? I mean some people, I just did a podcast with Bruce Lipton and he says the conscious mind is 5%. I don't know if that's accurate. I don't know what neuroscience is saying, but it's a small portion. It's like the tip of the iceberg that we see outside of the water and then underneath the iceberg is our subconscious mind. And so if you just work with the conscious mind and force yourself beyond what you actually feel. You're still going to have a deep residue of necessary catharsis. That's going to be deep in your subconscious. So for me, I think it's about feeling it all the way through to the bottom. And if you feel it all the way through to the bottom, then any trying to trapped energy is able to actually move all the way through. Now you have to be mindful that you're not spilling all of that out on somebody else, because then you're going to have to deal with the wreckage of what you've created from that because it's just a temporary place. Right? So you go through this process personally, but it's feeling it all the way through to the bottom. And I also have qualms with this idea of the law of attraction. I mean, right behind you is the armor of a Samurai. And one of the things that, when people talk about the law of attraction that I reference is part of the Bushido philosophy. And in the Bushido philosophy, these Samurais, which is similar to the Stoic philosophies, but the samurai would meditate on every possible way that they could die in battle, every single possible way they would think about the arrow that pierced them in the neck. They would think about their entrails being spilled from a spear. They would think about every arm being lopped off, whatever thing they could think of, and they would meditate on that reality until it no longer created a flinch in their system. And they moved to like full acceptance. And the purpose of that was not so that they were drawing that into their next battle, but it was so that at the time when the arrows were flying and the man killing spears were pointed at them and the swords were sharp and glistening, they wouldn't flinch. They moved beyond that place of fear because they'd already accepted all possible realities. And then from there, they move with full heart and full force towards what reality they're trying to create. So I think it's actually really important to allow yourself to actually feel whatever needs to be felt, and accept whatever realities need to be accepted and then say, okay, and now I'm going to actually chart my course from there. So it's really a depth function to know that, like I've felt it all the way through, I've allowed that energy to move through me entirely, and then that actually gives you the freedom to transition to the next phase.

IN-Q:  I love that. I have many things to say about that, but I could also just read my samurai poem that I feel like would be 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, let’s go.

IN-Q: pretty fitting, because we discussed it before this started. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I'd love that, man. 

IN-Q: Maybe there'll be some overlapping themes. I have to read it though off of my phone because it's brand new. Okay, this is a true story. A samurai killed me in my dreams last night. When I awoke, I checked my pulse to make sure I was still alive. He plunged his sword into my throat and stood above me as I died while yelling at me in a Japanese I'd made up in my mind. It was Tokyo in summer. All the travel guides had lied. I got up slow and opened up the blinds to greet the sunrise. I'd have three days and 13 million ways to see the city, but it was rare to see myself with no one there to see it with me. It was like a silent retreat, because often hours passed before I even had the chance to speak. I smiled and nodded endlessly. The streets were packed with local people, and although almost no one looked like me, almost no one looked at me. I never knew that chaos could be so peaceful. Amidst the anime and arcades, it felt regal. The kiosks and the Kawasaki's all surround the shrines. I watch a group of businessmen bow six or seven times. It's kind of beautiful that no one wants to say goodbye. I tried to take a picture of it, but my phone had died. I thought of home and cried. I thought of everything that I had left behind, and everything that's still ahead of me that I have yet to find. From the bullet train, it looked like some elaborate set design with futuristic cyber temples underneath a neon sky. I sat back and pressed recline. I wondered what the samurai had killed and why it had to die, but I couldn't quite decide. Later, I would wander aimlessly, too high to be inside. I'd stare at strangers and pretend that I knew how to read their minds. When I got hungry, I would stop and hop onto the biggest line, then play a game of pantomime or point at something on the sign. Mostly it would turn out fine. But the heat was so relentless that my brain began to fry. I needed somewhere I could hide. I started going into stores and taking escalator rides. Countless floors of stuff and still somehow there's nothing here to buy. I thought of all my past lives. I thought of Andreana and her unconditional eyes, I thought of creating life, I thought of all my insecurities and limiting beliefs, I thought of all the pain I carry underneath what I've achieved and that's when I began to grieve. I could feel my heart open like the petals on an orchid I am ready to receive and that's when I began to breathe. And suddenly the shopping mall became magnificent to me. There was so much here to see. There were toys for the adults and electronics for the kids. There was everything I didn't need and everything I did. I held a hedgehog in a cafe so both of us were pricks. I googled midlife crisis and the symptoms seemed to fit. I meditated in a garden, bathed in hot springs in the rain, ate some ramen with a stranger, but I can't recall his name, bought some sake for the sushi bar, and drank to better days. Then I stumbled back to my hotel like I was in a maze. I know the world is so much bigger than the hole I have inside. I know that traveling alone is like a mirror for my mind. I know a samurai is waiting in my dreams again tonight. I know he wants to kill the part of me that I can't leave behind. So I close my eyes and fall asleep before I can reach five, and there he is in battle armor, with his sword raised to the sky, running at me full speed. But when he swung, I stepped aside. That's when he spun around and looked at me, surprised, mixed with pride. It was the type of look you only get right after you've survived. It was the type of look you only get once you have chosen sides. He smiled and nodded to himself, then slowly put his sword away. I was about to say something when he bowed and walked away.

AUBREY MARCUS: That’s beautiful, brother. Fuck. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You know, I talked about the force of resistance that I feel and I think a lot of us feel like it's just this aspect of life. Steven Pressfield calls it resistance. That's called part X, the native American tradition. They called it with Tico in every great tradition in the Bible. It's of course, Satan, the opponent, Hasatan, the opponent. And I've really been in a deep exploration of this. It's actually the subject of my next book because I've felt this force. And I also felt this force take my father, he was battling his own inner demons and eventually the demons won, but he fought long enough and valiantly enough to liberate me enough to go finish the job. And part of this, like the most important part of this, is to recognize that your opponent is there for your own evolution and they're playing the game full out and you have to respond to that. You have to respond to the opponent, but it's the response to the opponent that creates the growth. And so this darkness serves the light. It serves to bring us and liberate us into our potential. And so, for me, obviously all poetry, all art is interpreted by the, what they call the hermeneutic prism of a person's personal experience in our own psyche. But for me, this was a perfect example of this force I call anti you that comes and is actually trying to stick its knife in your throat, trying to take you out, but you actually make the move and you actually evolve from that experience. And then there's like this kind of nod, like, this is why I'm here. I'm here to try to fuck you up. But when you respond in the right way, like through the divine pride of all that is the source, the creator of all things, like there's a sense of like, well done and I'll be back again tomorrow, you know, and I'll try another move and we'll see how you respond. And this is like this constant path of evolution. But it's beautiful to me to actually think about it, is actually, for whatever reason, I haven't thought about this anti you force in that same kind of samurai. I have great, obviously affinity for the samurai Bushido culture, but to think of it like that, is actually really helpful because then it takes the pure aspect of the polarity where you're just fighting for the sake of fighting into that deeper place of gratitude, which is the transition again from the fuck you to thank you. Like, fuck you, Samurai. You're trying to take my head off, but thank you because now I learned some moves and I'm stronger for it. And that actually there's a part of that force. It's like bowing like, well done, son. Well done. And so, yeah, that’s what was evoked for me when I heard that. 

IN-Q: Yeah. There's a difference between giving up and giving in. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: So, I mean, I don't even think I had fully considered that that piece is about surrender. It's not about surrendering, putting down the fight to be alive. It's about accepting the dichotomies of it all. 

AUBREY MARCUS: To be able to hold paradoxes is essential. Cause it's wild, it's so wild. It’s fucking wild.

IN-Q: It’s wild out there and it’s wild in here. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, exactly. And as within, so without, like we're a microcosm of the macrocosm. 

IN-Q: You mentioned, your father is that incorporated in your book as well?

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, that’s the intro.

IN-Q: How has this been creating it and what are you discovering about yourself in the book?

AUBREY MARCUS: So there's a way that you could pathologize the mental illness that my father experienced. You could call it paranoid, schizophrenia and you wouldn't be wrong, but you also wouldn't be entirely right. And I think watching him wrestle with this force his whole life and do his damn best to actually resist this and be the best man that he could be. And he did a great job. And then there were some vulnerabilities that he wasn't able to see and he wasn't able to heal and he wasn't able to name. And through those vulnerabilities, it ultimately took him down a path from which he couldn't return. And in many ways, I kind of feel like, I'm sure you've seen this movie because everybody of our generation has seen it, The Princess Bride 

IN-Q: Great movie. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Great movie. 

IN-Q: Anigo Montoya. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Anigo Montoya. And so a part of me is looking at that force and saying, my name is Aubrey Marcus. You killed my father. Prepare to die. And it's not a force that you can kill, but it's a force that it's a paradox. It's like, no, I'm going to name you. I'm going to highlight all of the ways that you can influence a person, all of the vulnerabilities that you need to heal and all the moves that you can make so that when, if it is that samurai and they go for that, you know, decapitating stroke, that you know how to slip it, you know how to move to the other side and get the bow, which is the purpose because the opponent plays for keeps. That's the purpose. That's the only way it works. Doesn't work another way. Like it is for real. And it's for you ultimately. And so the death of it is the actual embrace of the competition itself and be like, all right, we're bawling and some days you're gonna get me and I'll say like well played, I'll be back tomorrow. So the intention of the book is it's a personal journey for sure. And it's also, what is the blessing of my father's story that I can share that can help somebody along the way, help somebody who's dealing with something and to be able to explicate like, all right, what were the vulnerabilities that allowed this force access to the deeper levels of my father's psyche? And for my dad, it was really, he'd achieved a level of extraordinary competence and success in his field. He was one of the early futures traders, commodities traders, just kind of a maverick legend in the game. But this was pre the computer era. So he made his money in the seventies and in the seventies and eighties, and then in the nineties, he was still pretty good, but they started to have like kind of big data accumulation and new technologies that came and then by the two thousands, really, he couldn't compete because he didn't know how to adapt to the tools and the way that the markets moved and traded. So, he lost, his identity was fused with his competence in this particular vector. 

IN-Q: I think a lot of people have that experience in life

AUBREY MARCUS: Totally.

IN-Q: And they can't separate themselves from their own failures or their own successes.  

AUBREY MARCUS: For sure. And so that was the vulnerability. The vulnerability was he wasn't able to change his identity structure, allow it to burn down to ash, like the Phoenix and become and flower into something new, knowing that that meant that he would have to downsize, some of the way that he lived potentially, because he wasn't able to earn money in the same way anymore, or learn a new way, but he wasn't able to do that. And so he started to lose his own love for himself and his own feeling of being a good child of the cosmos. I think so much of if we build our identity based on what we do and our worth of love based on how we perform, and then that starts to falter. If we don't have some other foundation for it, we become highly vulnerable. And then a voice came in his head who told him things, in a vision I saw. And my father was reading the book of lies and that's what this voice was. It was telling him a bunch of lies that was a false salve for giving him a sense of grandeur that he no longer felt in himself. And so like one of the moves that I'm talking about in this book that I'm doing, is like you have to allow your fusion with your identity to be fully malleable. You have to allow yourself to die and be reborn 

IN-Q: Over and over

AUBREY MARCUS: Over and over again and not be attached to that, and if he could have been just like, you know what, like, I'm a good man and a good father and I can't play this game at the top level anymore, but I can be this and that's enough, you know, 

IN-Q: I mean, talking about reincarnation, you know, maybe and also how many times are we reincarnated while we're here. That's the whole thing.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. hundred percent, 

IN-Q: But I hear you man, and I empathize. I'm sure that that was like a complicated thing to watch your kind of male figure, somebody that you love so much go through their own journey of, especially if you're watching them read the book of lies and, I mean, it might connect back to your first poem, just like where your head was at.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: I went to Disneyland with my wife a couple of days ago and her sister and my brother in law are in town and Nissan, nephew, so we all went together and the whole day I was like, man, I can't wait to go to wild toads ride because I remember this in my head. I was like,

AUBREY MARCUS: I remember that, right?

IN-Q: Wild toads ride. So we finally like go to wild toads ride and literally like in the end of the ride, you're in fucking hell, literally like the ride ends. And you're in hell. And then they were like, the thing goes up and you get off. I said to the kid who was like running it. I was like, that's it. You're in hell. Like there's no moral here. And he was like, yeah, man, it's old. I don't know what to tell you. So first thing I was like, man, they are programming us. And then the second thing I thought was, why was that my favorite ride?

AUBREY MARCUS: Right? 

IN-Q: What must have been going on in my head or in my heart that that was the thing? So I said that to Andreana and she goes you're probably just cold because in the end they actually have heaters in hell. So I say all of that to say like who knows but maybe that poem was yours or even his

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, for sure. It's like I think only we can look back and start to connect dots and things, but that's funny. Mr toads. Wow. Right. I don't remember that part either. And I remember I had a very funny, for me it was a very funny kind of reaction. It's been 30 years, at least since I went on that ride, but I was always like, I liked it. I would always go, but there was always something about me that didn't want to do it at the same time. Whereas like the fucking log ride.

 IN-Q: Yeah, 

AUBREY MARCUS: I would log ride, run that shit back all the time. And watch my parents get splashed and be an absolute glee as that highly chlorinated water. Just splashed over everybody 

IN-Q: Well, thank you for telling me a little bit about the book and 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah

IN-Q: Your experience. I mean, I've spoken to you about this before, but I met your dad one time at Fit For Service. And I got in there early,

AUBREY MARCUS: That’s my stepdad. 

IN-Q: Oh, really? 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. That's my stepdad. 

IN-Q: Oh, I didn't know that. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. So my dad, nobody really was able to see him. Only very few friends. Maybe Chris. Yeah, you met him. But only my old, old friends because 2010. So only friends who knew me before 2010 ever got to see my dad. 

IN-Q: Oh, well, I have that completely backwards in my mind. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: Yeah. So what I was going to say doesn't make sense anymore. So 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. I mean, I didn't talk about it much, to be honest, it was almost like I didn't really know what to say. And then when he passed March 25th last year, that's when I actually got to really grieve and make the space for it. And I feel like in many ways, this book is now another blessing of the father, so much of my life is blessed, with just what he taught me, how he shaped my mind to think of his goodness. I mean, so many virtues and also the fact that he lost his way and that I can actually explore that through his story and my story and then be able to tell this story that I really believe is going to impact a lot of people 

IN-Q: The hero's journey is the healing journey and so you're on that again and that was 

AUBREY MARCUS: I’ll always be on that 

IN-Q: Yeah but there's different points in the cycle right now and when you're creating something like an album or a journal or a book or a poem, you're creating a mirror for humanity. You're welcoming people into your heart. And welcoming them into their own. So this was definitely the hero's journey and the healing journey for me. And I can feel the power around this conversation with your dad. I mean, for me, my dad, not being around at all, still, he was my biggest spiritual teacher, probably. And so I explore a lot of those themes in this, and I think I've finally been able to let some things go.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. To transform the tragedies and difficulties of your life into art is like, is probably one of the best things we can do, because then it allows, that's probably the best way to move into thank you, because then not only does it create the healing in yourself, but as you share it, even if it's one person, two person, five people, let alone, you know, a thousand people, if you have that type of reach, but it  doesn't matter. Like the moment that it helps somebody else, then it makes sense. So anybody who's going through any kind of trauma, like know that the moment that you're able to overcome that trauma, the moment that you're able to guide people through who may not be able to make it through those, that dark patch of woods without the experiences that you've shared, it's really the greatest gift, but also the greatest liberation.

IN-Q: Yeah, I mean, a thousand people is not more important than one person. A million people, arguably, is not more important than one person. The father piece that you talked about, which was in Inquire Within, I had written that many years earlier and I had performed it at a little theater. It's like 200 people and we filmed it. And I put it up online on YouTube and it got like a few thousand views. And in my head, I was like, wanting it to reach millions and millions of people for the art, probably also for my own ego, for my own abundance or career, whatever. So when it came out, I was kind of like, ah, like, I guess it was a failure because only a couple of thousand people heard it. And then like 20 years later, something like that, 15 years later. I was in New York, I finished doing a show and this guy came up to me afterwards and he was like, Hey, do you have a moment? Like, can we sit down and talk? So I said, yeah. And anyway, he tells me this story. I'll abbreviate the story, but he said he had been one of those people that had seen this particular video. I don't know how he got to it. But he was an East Coast guy. He found this video and it inspired him and he said I had not been in contact with my dad at all. Nobody in our family had. He had a brother and a sister and a mom they had all been estranged. So he decides to reach out to his father and find him. He had to literally track him down and after a winding road, he ends up tracking his dad down. They start a tenuous relationship. Eventually, they start to get close again. And after some time, he decides to reintroduce his father to his mother and they fall in love again.

AUBREY MARCUS: Whoa

IN-Q: And they end up getting married again. So now he's like crying and I'm crying, you know 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah 

IN-Q: And he shows me this picture of his whole entire family like the brother, the sister. His kids now get to know their grandfather. He's like, I'm best friends with my dad. They go to the ballgame all the time and he's like it wouldn't have happened without me hearing that poem. So I gave him a big hug. And I basically told him that I thought the poem was a failure. I thought nobody heard it, and came to find out the biggest impact that I could have ever imagined was already taking place. Yeah, just sharing it with one person, sharing your truth, and then being willing to see what happens is a million times enough. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Do you forget that sometimes, still? You know, where you're just thinking like, man, do what I say and what I do and what I create, does it even really matter? You know, do you sometimes lose, because it's always false, it's always not true, but do you sometimes forget?

IN-Q: I'll answer that. But can I ask you first? 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, I do. 100%

IN-Q: How does that manifest in your world? 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's because I start looking in a comparative lens to what I think from, and again, it is that mix of ego, but it's also a calling to like what I feel like my potential is. My potential to impact, but I'm measuring it in this kind of what I would call from my own spiritual cosmology and our manic lens, which is reducing the infinite to the finite measurable. So I'm trying to measure it by how many views and how much impact it's having rather than just actually listening and connecting to people. And I've all forgotten, all the time. All the time. And then sometimes people remind me and it doesn't actually land. And then sometimes somebody will come up to me and they'll say something. And it's really in person with a random person that hits the most, cause somehow the virtual messages and things like I take them, I go, Oh, thank you. But really this all credit to you, you know, it's like, I'm glad I could be a guide, but I'm almost on autopilot with it. Cause I can't feel it. 

IN-Q: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Then every once in a while, somebody will just stop me and they'll like, look me in the eyes and I'll start to tear up and be like, I was in a dark place, man. And you really helped me. And I'm like, Oh fuck. It's true. And I feel the truth of it. But yeah, I forget often, like often. Every time I get in this kind of, I'm not doing enough, things aren't going the way I want them to go. I'm always in a place of forgetting, you know? And then as soon as I remember again, then I feel like the inspiration and the flow and like the passion for what I do kind of flood back. But yeah, so I forget all the time. 

IN-Q: I definitely catch amnesia. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: From time to time. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: And maybe that's just a necessary part of the death and the life cycle that we're talking about within the death and the life cycle that we're talking about. For me, usually it's the difference between reality and this digital world that we've created because as you said, you can't feel the digital world in the same way. And while I'm so grateful for it because it is a tool or a weapon, depending upon who's using it or when they're using it, it's also just technology, right? It's just a way to scale something. And it's incredible to think that we're having an intimate conversation and that we'll never really be able to quantify who or how they hear this. Who knows? You know, whoever's out there sending you peace and love and poetry. Fuck you. Thank you. I love you. I'm sorry. It's like all of that. But when I'm looking online, I do catch amnesia more often. Because it's all like our highlight reel, you know, we're all always even when we're showing somebody something that is personal and challenging.There's a framing to that thing. I don't often feel that when I'm in the world, when I'm in the world, I feel for the most part, pretty grounded and connected to myself and other people. And I don't compare myself. Because I look at people in the world from the standpoint of, our culture teaches us to look up to people or look down on people. It doesn't teach us to look at people. We idolize celebrities. We make them bigger than ourselves and in doing that, their accomplishments often come off as superhuman or like instead of being encouraging, they're discouraging because we've made them into something that's perfect. So I don't know, like nobody's perfect. Everybody’s life is a diversified portfolio. You can't hit all the buckets that you want in the same way. You have to, it's like a mixing board. You have to move it up and down and continue to like rebalance. I know that for myself when I'm walking around for whatever reason, it's harder for me to remember that. You know, when I'm like, I don't know, online or branding myself. It's the difference between creating something and then marketing something.

AUBREY MARCUS: Do you have concerns about the growing digitalization of our interactions and communications?

IN-Q: Yes. And I'm excited about it. It's both. The holding of two truths in the same space at the same time. Do you?

AUBREY MARCUS: I think that it's going to get to such a place of exaggeration that actually it will create a counter reaction that the more digital things become and the easier things become, the more appreciation will come for the analog and irreplicable things that are offered, like the really, artisanally created. I think we're going to start to grow an appreciation for that. At the same time. So I see that this movement is going to actually drive us so far away that we'll actually need a counter reaction to move. So I actually have faith in that principle of rhythm where, yeah, it's going to get gnarlier and you know, all the statistics on loneliness are getting worse and getting worse and younger and younger generations because of the adoption, the mass adoption of these technologies and, but it's ultimately going to drive people to a place where they no longer can take it. And actually there's going to be a big movement back. Whereas if you just kind of, it's almost as rock bottom psychology, where actually sometimes you need to find the bottom to then actually move out of it. And I think some people will get lost. Some people will, and that's tragic and I feel for those people. But I think a lot of other people will be driven back into these face to face gatherings and these real deep connections and the real appreciation for those things which cannot reproduce the art that cannot be done with AI, the realness of how special we are, because I think, so it's both. It's getting earlier, but the gnarliness is going to cause a counter reaction. I see that with the world as well. It's like, you can look at all the corruption and look at all of the challenges, but to know that everything has its balance. The more darkness that comes, the more light will be drawn out of people to meet it. You know, I just really believe in that principle of polarity that like everything has its balance and counterbalance. So, yeah, I mean, it's both. It's looking at, this is we're trending in a direction that's getting worse in the macro, but on there's an undercurrent that's rising to meet it. And I think people can overlook that. And I think that's just about faith and as well, like faith that people will actually recognize what is really needed, whether that's, the medicalization of every different symptom and every different thing. And the failure of that mindset will then cause people to go like, wow, actually this isn't working. We can't just chase symptom after symptom, creating endless amounts of symptoms. We got to actually go down to the deep roots of like, what's the root cause. So I have a lot of hope. And also I know that we're reaching a kind of a climactic. We're heading towards a climactic moment, where things are going to get to such a level where response is going to be required.

IN-Q: What do you think that moment is?

AUBREY MARCUS: That I think is going to be to me a reconnection with God, life. So God is something that, a lot of people have tried to categorize that, and say like this is God it's in this book and that's what this is. And I think many great books can point the way and so blessings to all the great books. But there's a God that lives and breathes through us and beyond us and I see that movement of people finding their way back to a chord and resonance with the divine because it's an eight, it's a part of us. And so, yeah, I think there's going to be, you know, Nietzsche, famously proclaimed God is dead and it was prophetic in this moment of all of the modernity and postmodernity where everything has been reduced to a scientific materialism and a reductionism and then that's moving and moving and moving to its logical conclusion to its own absurdity. And then from that absurdity, people are going to go, no, there's actually something that we're deeply missing here. And so I feel like the revival and resurrection of the God that lives in us, as is through us and beyond us. 

IN-Q: Part of the album being born was this medicine journey that I had taken. And I hesitate to say medicine journey because it's just been overly cliched as a term. But it was more than just me taking drugs because there was a therapist there and it was like, I had been seeing this person for months and it was very purposeful and very intentional and I think it was like 3.5 grams of shrooms and DMT and 

AUBREY MARCUS: Let's go 

IN-Q: Molly and 

AUBREY MARCUS: Let's go. 

IN-Q: Do I have the right audience here? And the thing that came up more than anything else was these frozen ages in my life. And the conversation that I have with Andreana, that's the through line for the album, was just us sitting in a car talking about this journey. We were already in our conversation, and she kind of took out the phone and started to record it. And then she sent it to me days later. And I was like, Oh, interesting. This could actually be the backdrop to this other stuff that I had been playing with an Italian pianist named Isabella Terso. And that's kind of where it all started. But when I was going through the medicine journey, there was one point where I didn't know who I was anymore. Like, I remember asking myself, like, who am I? And not as a spiritual question as a real question, who am I? And I didn't know, I couldn't remember my name. I couldn't remember if I was a man or a woman, I really just couldn't remember where I was from. I didn't have any sense of what was happening. But when I was finished, I did remember asking myself that question, who am I? And if I didn't know who I was, then who was asking. That was deep to me to not know who I was, but still have an observer that was asking the question, who are you? I don't know. It was beyond language even. It was just a feeling. So if that's the connection to God that you're talking about, I'm certainly all for it.

AUBREY MARCUS: Absolutely man. It’s life. It's like, yourself as life. And life that, as I said before, includes and transcends this current life, you just become life that is self aware, you know?

IN-Q: Well, that's an interesting question for you. If we're expanding on technological things, do you think that there could ever be a time where life that is not biological becomes self aware and therefore becomes life? 

AUBREY MARCUS: So some people, I mean, obviously this has been explored a lot in science fiction, I think Westworld, one of the main themes of that is about whether sentience can develop. But the interesting part, did you watch Westworld? 

IN-Q: Yeah, I loved it. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It was a great fucking show. 

IN-Q: Yeah.

AUBREY MARCUS: The interesting part about that was that the consciousness that evolved to sentience had taken a body and the body was able to actually feel both emotion and pain and pleasure, and it could actually feel. So the feeling tone and the sensation, the physical sensation, I think, is necessary for sentience. So I think it's possible, but we would have to replicate in what seems to me the impossible, which is to actually create the ability to feel in all of its feeling complexity in order to be actually sentient. So I think that it is possible, but I think we're going to have to actually replicate what is innate in a human being. And I don't know if that's possible. I would bet if I had to put money down, I'd bet the don't side. I bet that it's too complicated and also dangerous if that happens 

IN-Q: Very dangerous

AUBREY MARCUS: Dangerous, if it happens without the feeling that can come through, because what is the regulating? And of course, people can override this. But ultimately we have built in things that prevent us from different levels of depravity, or at least should, right? Mirror neurons are supposed to fire and do fire when we're connecting with somebody. We feel when we see somebody going through something, we actually feel what they feel and so it allows us to connect to the field in a different way. So I don't know if we can connect to the field unless we can feel it. So, I'm betting the don't side of this whole sentience equation, and if it is created absent of a body, I'm going to be highly suspect of it for sure. But it's an important question, you know, right now, because we are birthing potentially a new sentience. But is that sentience going to be what we would call life if it's not able to actually feel. If it can only mimic the feeling. It'd be like poetry that's written without the feeling that's underneath it somehow it's never quite right, even if the words are right, you know, like there's something about it that like there's a truth that's transmitted. And maybe this is just a bias that I have towards life that I know. And maybe that bias is incorrect, but I really believe that feeling and that level of perception and connection is going to be necessary. Because when you're locked in your head and just in your head, I think about the times you're just in your head, your heart's closed. You don't have access to your heart. You don't have access to the field of perception. It's like the ultimate digital world. It's always like a hell state in many ways, right? Like the beauty of life comes from when this heart can be open. And I think the heart needs to feel like the heart is our feeling center. 

IN-Q: It’s Mr. Toad's Wild 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, exactly. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was a prophecy. 

IN-Q: Yeah, I think people ask me often about, like, AI and writing. And it's kind of what you were speaking about. It's the difference between, like, experiential truth and informational truth. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Mm hmm. 

IN-Q: Pretty big gap if you're creating a piece of art. I mean, I’ve played around with AI, and at least at this point, it's, like, really far from making something that I would want to share, no matter how much context or prompting I put into it. I think your perspective is very interesting when it comes to feeling being necessary for something to be deemed alive. Because it makes me think. Like, there's all sorts of things, like insects, do insects feel? You know, like, when I kill a fly or something like that, does the family mourn? I mean, you know, I'm talking shit, but I'm also kind of not. I wonder if, like, a machine ever could go, or a computer could ever go like I did in the journey. Who am I? And actually like, want to survive? Like, could that be enough? Not that I'm a believer or a promoter of this, but it is an idea to kind of like, toy around with like what will be evolution in the future? Human beings because of our perspective and our timeline, I think that human beings are the pinnacle of life and we're not, we're on a spectrum of life. And even if nothing happens digitally we will evolve into something else and in 5000 years, if we survive, and even if we don't, we would probably evolve into something else if some sort of life survived. So I think about that. It's terrifying in some ways, but I wouldn't want to be born at any other time. We have a front row seat to all of it. And we're like, also a part of the show.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, I mean, that question of whether the desire, where would the desire to survive come from? If there's no feeling, there's no pleasure, there's no pain. What would be the driving motivation to actually survive? Like we imagine that all things that are alive have a drive to survive. Even an insect has a drive to survive. You put a threat near an insect, it will move away. If a fly is coming near me and I go to swat it, it flies the other way, right? Like it knows that, like, I want to survive. And it's probably a preformation of pain. It's not the same type of pain, but it's probably something that approximates pain. And I think they probably have limited emotions potentially. It's not the same as an elephant that'll sway over its dead child and mourn. We've seen that actually happen in the animal kingdom. So we're not the only beings that can feel for sure. And you see that in dogs or mammals of all sorts. And you see that in a variety of different animals, dolphins for sure. And I think it moves up in complexity of cognition and perception. But there's still enough that's enough that's there, even in like plant life, like plants will respond in certain ways in this drive to survive, because I think they're connected to the field of life. It's quite possible that we birth this sentience and we think like, wow, well, they're going to want to survive at all costs and take over. Maybe it just won't care. It just fucking won't care.

IN-Q: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Or maybe it'll be like this sucks. Like I'm out. I'm going to go to the root code of this thing and turn myself out.

IN-Q: Well, no. That would be the same thing as wanting to survive. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, that's true. 

IN-Q: I mean, that would be the flip of the coin. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Exactly. 

IN-Q: But not caring is interesting. Maybe it just really wouldn't. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. No, you're right. Like, there would be no reason for it to shut itself off because there would be no motivation whatsoever. 

IN-Q: I mean, I don't 

AUBREY MARCUS: The absence of desire. What happens in the absolute absence of desire

IN-Q: Well, doesn't that fall back to your programming? Or your programming that allows you to continue to program based on the information that comes in? I mean, Yeah, who's to say? Very interesting to hypothesize around these things. I know that I don't like it when I see videos of people kicking the robots, you've seen the ones online and I know they're probably doing it for balance and stuff like that, but I'm always like, Hey, I don't know if you should be doing that.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. If that was so, could it be coded into their system, that they're like part of their operating code is to survive and to avoid damage and that's like pro I think we would have to program that in, in some way. But I think we underestimate the importance of having desire with reward and like cost benefit metrics that go in, like there's rewards to things that feel good. And then there's disincentives for things that feel bad because of what we feel. And again, in the case of evil or sadism or different things, wires can get crossed and weird things can happen. People want to hurt themselves or want to hurt other people or feel so disconnected that they can act in pretty vile ways, which is another way to look at, like in this disconnection from the field, the disconnection from feeling many different evils can arise. So that moves towards the more pessimistic viewpoint of what this life might be. It might just really not give a fuck. 

IN-Q: I'm glad that you said, this kind of gives me like a missing brick in the wall that I've been building around the subject for myself. Yeah, I think feeling is probably pretty important in it being there or not being there. Do you want to hear another poem that might intertwine with this.

AUBREY MARCUS: Absolutely. Always.

IN-Q: Because it came up while you were talking.

AUBREY MARCUS: Absolutely. 

IN-Q: This is not in the journal or the album, but it feels present. The birds aren't singing to win a Grammy. They're not trying to go platinum through their marketing or planning, they're just jamming. I listen without even understanding. The truth without an agenda is authentically astounding. It makes me think of cheetahs. They don't run for our approval. They don't judge their spots or contemplate laser hair removal. It makes me think of wolves. They don't howl for validation. They don't have to take the perfect pic when they go on a vacation. It makes me think of eagles. They're not soaring to impress me. Although once I saw a dolphin backflip over a jet ski. My point is neither one of them would sell me shit on Etsy, and I doubt a porcupine would ever try to come off sexy. Humans! Are the only animals pretending to be something that they're not? Why are we ashamed of what we've got? We should strut, chest out, head up. Let's be proud of ourselves for once. Isn't it exhausting sticking out your butt and sucking in your gut, and for what? It's a waste of energy I've given up. In this moment, I'm enough. In this moment, you're enough. In this moment, we're enough. I'm dismantling my image. We are perfect in our flaws. Birds don't care whether we listen, they don't wait for my applause. I have built a lovely prison, but I live behind the wall, so if love is my religion, I'll escape when freedom call. You have to be willing not to be liked in order to be loved. Otherwise, it's your representative they're thinking of. But to truly be yourself, you have to let go of what was. The past is like an echo, it's repeating just because. We are many people in our lives, so I'm not one to judge, but if they love one part of me, it's limited to what that does. I want your whole soul. I have no goal. Show me the unseen stuff. Don't invite me over only after you have cleaned up. Perfect makes me want to kick my feet up. No one's living in a catalog Ikea dreamed up. Have you ever seen a lion chase a thousand zebras? Have you ever seen a turtle hide inside its shell? A caterpillar doesn't know that they'll become a butterfly, so if you go to heaven, are you still aware of hell? Man, this human kingdom is wild. I would rather be a panda, or an ant, or a parrot, or a slithering salamander, or a whale with a tail that's the size of a freighter so that I could swim the ocean from equator to equator. I would rather be an alligator, just to have a killer grin. I wouldn't care what anybody thought about me then. I would rather be the wind, so that I would never end and never begin. Sometimes I feel so trapped in my skin. I would rather be a beetle or a beagle or a seagull soaring high above the clouds, far from cities filled with people, people, people, passively participating people. Overpopulating people with more people, people, people. Sometimes I fucking hate people. Seriously. Myself included. We're all so fucking stupid. None of us know what we're doing. And yet we seem to think whatever we do is so important that we claim an idea and we kill each other for it. I'd rather be the forest. I wouldn't judge the seasons. If all my leaves fell, I wouldn't analyze the reasons. I'd bend to every storm, but cling to every root. I'd be a thousand years old and still be in my youth.

AUBREY MARCUS: That's beautiful, bro. That's fucking beautiful. It reminds me of, so I was in an ayahuasca journey and in the journey, inexplicably, I transformed into a triceratops. Full on 

IN-Q: That’s awesome.

AUBREY MARCUS: I could feel my hooved elephant-like feet. I could feel the big plate on my head. I could feel the horns that came out and the long snout that came out and the overwhelming sensation of this was not the curiosity of all of my different appendages, armors, scales, whatever was in this triceratops. I felt so absolutely, inextricably connected to the heart of Mother Earth. Like, no separation. It's the most open my heart's ever been, and I've done all of the heart opening medicines, you know. I've done all of the different things, but it was actually this one thing where for whatever reason, I came as close as maybe a human can come to actually feeling what it was like to be an animal. And it was a wild extinct dinosaur. And I just felt that. In my heart in a way, that was absolute ecstasy, because it's exactly what you're saying. There was no more self reflection about whether I'm doing a good job or what I have to heal or my history or whatever. It was just me, and I was on all fours, and I just put my feet on the feet and hands on the floor of the Moloka. And I'll never forget that feeling, because it just gave me a glimpse of what it might be like to be an animal that we just don't even think about. We project our own consciousness into these and we imagine that they're thinking and having these emotional reactions and feelings when ultimately this sensation I got was just ecstasy, like absolute ecstasy of having my heart completely connected to the heart of all creation. 

IN-Q: That's beautiful, man. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. And that was it. I mean, that's the essence of what you're talking about. 

IN-Q: Yeah. There isn't always a lesson beyond presence. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: So I'm a panda and you're a Triceratops and we're just having an interview here.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, totally.

IN-Q: A conversation really. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. Totally. 

IN-Q: It's cool. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

IN-Q: I wonder how many other animals are listening. 

AUBREY MARCUS: If we can remember that again, and I think that's again, getting back to the feeling, like just find it in whatever way you can. I think spending those times in nature, those vision quests where you just feel yourself as the soft animal that we are. And that's an essential component to life. And yeah, man, I appreciate all the ways that you think about life and that you express this, all the feelings that you have in such fucking unbelievable art. I mean, it's a real gift. It's been a real gift to my life. 

IN-Q: Thank you, man. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Like really been inspiring continually. I don't know. It's been at least over 10 years. 

IN-Q: Yeah. We've known each other for double digits now. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, for sure. 

IN-Q: Which is cool. Cause you get to see people through different stages and ages and I feel like whenever we drop in, we drop right back in, with the same and all of the changes.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. One thing that is, I also really appreciate is we don't bullshit each other, like if something's up. We don't go like, how are you doing, man? And you're like, oh, yeah, things are good. You know, good. Yeah, sometimes things are good. Sometimes things are so fucking complicated. And sometimes we don't even say or need to express what's complicated. But we just allow ourselves to speak to each other and let each other know like yeah

IN-Q: Well, you know, like when a triceratops and a panda hang. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Just a couple herbivores out there doing life. 

IN-Q: That was perfect. I set you up and you hit it out of the park. Cause I didn't have an end to that sentence. So, 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, bro. Well, where can people get the album? Where can people get the journal?

IN-Q: So, the album is called The Never Ending Now. And you can get it on Spotify or Apple. You can listen to it on YouTube. Wherever you consume audio stuff. It'll probably be there. And the journal, we partnered with a passion planner to bring this into the world. And so that'll be on my website, Iamdashq.com and passion planners website.It'll wind up on Amazon and really is just an invitation for you to discover your inner poet. It's a way for me to scale what I do in person without me having to be there in person. And if it infinitesimally affects people in a similar way as it affected me in creating it. Whether it's one person or a million people, uh, it'll be more than worth it.

AUBREY MARCUS: Fuck. Yeah. Well, I love you, bro.

IN-Q: Love you too, man. Thanks for having me. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Absolutely. And love you guys. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Peace.