How much do our expectations contribute to our reality? Today’s podcast is with my former fiance turned best friend and soon to be ‘best man’ at my upcoming wedding, Caitlyn Howe. We discuss the arc of our relationship from the beginning and Caitlyn’s personal journey to becoming the empowered poet and medicine woman that she is. We dive into the topic of expressing your unique self through taking your unique risk, creating space for synchronicity and miracles, and the methods that can work for getting God’s attention and connecting to your sacred Why.

AUBREY: Caitlyn Howe. 

CAITLYN: Aubrey Marcus. 

AUBREY: Let's tell everybody a story. Let's tell the story of the first time we met. You tell it from your perspective first. 

CAITLYN: My perspective. I was a young woman living in San Antonio, Texas. And on the occasional adventurous weekend, I liked to get out of town and go party it up in Austin, where everything was more exciting. And on one special weekend—

AUBREY: No offense to you San Antonio. 

CAITLYN: Yes, love you, San Antonio. 

AUBREY: Also, true but no offense. 

CAITLYN: You know you do it too. And one special weekend, I came up and I had the pleasure of making a bunch of new friends that lived at one of the condos downtown which was very exciting to me. And we went to a nightclub called Grüv. 

AUBREY: What year was this? 

CAITLYN: 2007. 

AUBREY: 2007. 

CAITLYN: Way back, 2007. So, 15 years ago. 

AUBREY: And it was G-R-U with an umlaut. Or was it one of those bars? 

CAITLYN: Oh yes. 

AUBREY: It might have been an umlaut. Umlaut and a V. 

CAITLYN: To be honest, I never knew what it was called until right now. You are correct. Two dots. Umlaut. And I was giving it hell on the dance floor. Dancing and just full of—

AUBREY: And by dance floor, she means the top of the couch with the little hard area for high heels. 

CAITLYN: I've always had a thing for getting to the highest point in any establishment. 

AUBREY: Everybody has a thing for that. Actually, the greatest thing I did when I was in, I was the social chair at my fraternity at the University of Richmond. I was a Kappa Sigma. I actually don't know if I've even mentioned that on my podcast before. It's so long ago. During my two-and-a-half-year reign as social chair, I built this gigantic pyramid that was like Tenochtitlan or something. And it was a dance pyramid. The most audacious, best dancing, best looking people would just climb naturally to the top. 

CAITLYN: They would take the summit. 

AUBREY: They would summit it. 

CAITLYN: Seize the glory. 

AUBREY: And the top piece was like a 3 by 3, 4 by 4 thing. So it would just be like two people up there getting it, often me and somebody else. 

CAITLYN: He built a pyramid that he could summit for sure. And only the fittest would make it to the top. Oh my God. I didn't even know that. 

AUBREY: Put it right in the lodge. Right in the Kappa Sigma lodge. 

CAITLYN: He has some epic stories from college. This guy has been making history for years. It's true. It's true. 

AUBREY: So, I graduated college 2004-ish, I think. 5-ish, 4-ish. 2004. So this was like only a couple years out of college. 

CAITLYN: You were 26 maybe. You were 26. You might have been 25. I was 23. I'm 39 now for context. And Mickey Avalon came on the speakers. And I knew all the words to every song by Mickey Avalon that was popular back then. I have an interesting thing where I take a lot of pride in the wide range of genres of music that I can recite the lyrics to. And so I was belting it out. I felt so free. I didn't know anybody in Austin. I was like, I'm here to just burn down the club. I'm dancing and I'm singing. And across the crowd over all the bobbing heads, I see this man with a chain on his necklace, it had like a naked woman. 

AUBREY: It was like a rosary with a naked woman. It was really a vibe. 

CAITLYN: It was pretty epic. I was like, he's got style. And we were both singing the lyrics to Mickey Avalon. And nobody else was. And from that moment, we were like, I see you. I see you. And we moved our way—

AUBREY: How did I know Mickey Avalon? I don't even know. But I did. And I was like, nobody else knew it. And you knew it. And Mickey Avalon gets a little bit of the credit. But also, that was just a really good excuse to go off and start dancing with you. 

CAITLYN: Exactly. So we did that primal mating dance where you dance your way through the crowd and somehow end up in each other's radius. And that was the beginning of a very long journey. 

AUBREY: Didn't I invite you for tea? 

CAITLYN: Yes, you did. 

AUBREY: Would you like tea? 

CAITLYN: He invited me for tea. 

AUBREY: You said yes to the tea. 

CAITLYN: Yes. Yes, to the tea. 

AUBREY: You stood me up for several snow cone dates. 

CAITLYN: Snow cone dates. Yes. So thus began the courtship from afar. And I was very intimidated. For all of my bravado in the club, he seemed like a really cool guy. And I was really comfortable in my ordinary world of San Antonio and moving through a really nightmarish, slow breakup with an ex. And I was intimidated by the snow cone invitation. And so I was always busy when it was snow cone time. 

AUBREY: Why I was inviting you for snow cones, I'm not sure but that's what it was. 

CAITLYN: It was such a sweet invitation. 

AUBREY: It was, right? And it's perfect for you. 

CAITLYN: It's perfect for me. 

AUBREY: It wasn't the snow cone's fault that I got stood up. Eventually, I was persistent. We had some other lingering partners and things that we were both clearing out. But eventually, we did that and stayed persistent. And I got you to go to Vegas. 

CAITLYN: Our first date was in Vegas. 

AUBREY: Our first date in Vegas. 

CAITLYN: What an interesting spiral full circle as we land back from Las Vegas in a totally new timeline and relationship. Yeah. Our first date was Vegas. Gosh, was it my first time in Vegas, I think? First time in Vegas, it was so special. 

AUBREY: Like a fish in water. 

CAITLYN: And this man, at 25, 26, whatever age he was, he was a Casanova. He really, really was. He was wise and seasoned beyond his years and really showed me the most epic time. And so, we took our dance moves, our capacity to summit the pyramid of the dancefloor to—

AUBREY: I got really lucky. I got really lucky at that age, because I met this guy named Dave Pappas. And Dave Pappas, who was friends with Shawn Chester. And it was just super lucky because I was out there with a client. He saw me kind of entertaining and doing my thing. And then he was doing his thing being a VIP host. And he invited me over to have a drink and we got to be friends. And he was much older. And so, I had a hookup in Vegas at 26. And Dave Pappas's name was like magic. And Shawn Chester, you just whispered it if you were in Vegas at that point. I've done a podcast with Shawn Chester. But yeah, we got kind of hooked up in Vegas. So, it was a pow of a gig. We got the best sushi, the best club, whatever. 

CAITLYN: I just was so impressed. Because everywhere we went, it was all dialed. And I'd never had that experience before. I was a bartender in San Antonio. Still just finishing up college myself. Really had never experienced anything. I'd never traveled out of the country. There was so much that was brand new to me. So, I was very impressed. But that wasn't the only thing that got me to continue to go on dates with you. It was a very solid first date, but no. But that was the beginning of our magical journey as romantic partners. And ultimately engaged.

AUBREY: And so, for those people who are confused at this point, obviously, and we've talked about this at different various points and in different podcasts and things. But Caitlyn and I made one of the most magnificent transitions from having the arc of an entire relationship journey. You were with me when I actually started Onnit and this whole relationship journey. I proposed to you. And it was a beautiful moment. And we had so many beautiful moments in our relationship. And then, at a certain point, it no longer was a fit. And we separated gracefully, but painfully. And Whitney entered the picture quickly, like kapow! As Whitney does. Burst onto the scene, boots blazing. And then it took a little while after that period for us to really find our friendship groove, even though we were always good about staying in touch, and sending love, and etc. But let's go a little bit into that. But just so people know, we've made it all the way through that journey, many other iterations of that, and now have become the very bestest of friends. And when me and Vylana do a non-pandemic wedding, which will be the actual wedding ceremony, you're going to be my best man. 

CAITLYN: That's right. That's right. 

AUBREY: And you and Vy are like bestie, bestie friends. And you and Whit were bestie friends. 

CAITLYN: It's really been an extraordinary journey, an extraordinary journey that's taught me so much about the strength and power of love and unconditional love and allowing transformation and evolution to happen. It's a scenario that a lot of people haven't understood. And I've fielded a lot of skepticism. I know you have too, in some ways. And it's been so magnificent arriving in this place where we are absolute allies, and on a mission together, and just continuing to dance the dance of life together, as best friends. My best friend in the entire world. 

AUBREY: If people want to know how good a friends, I think we are. I had a vision and a journey and I told you about it. But in the vision, I saw Caitlyn at a book reading. And she was reading a biography that she wrote, the story of my life. And she said, Let me tell you about Aubrey Marcus, as I knew him. 

CAITLYN: Quite knows ‘cause I know you. 

AUBREY: I know. That's the truth. And that's the beauty of a relationship that transitions in the way that it has like us. Because when you're intimate with somebody, like we were, there's things that just friends don't know about each other. Even your homies that you talk about anything to, they don't know, really. Nobody but a lover will really know you. In some way, at some vector. And we got to go through that. And you got to know me and see straight through, all the way to the inside. And know me as my closest ally, friend, confidant for all of the years subsequently. 

CAITLYN: Yeah, it makes for the most rich and deep level of friendship. Because I can feel you because of the time our psyches and our nervous systems know each other and just have that foundation forever. Where I can feel you in a crowd across the way and I can sense where you're at. And I can check in and tune in with you and be that confidant that you can share anything with that's alive in your heart. And I know you're that for me, and you have been that for me in ways that I can't even express. And so when you shared that with me, that vision, it was like, of course I will. Of course, I would be the one to tell your story. Reminds me of Hamilton and that song "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story." And our stories are important. And the story that I've witnessed is one hell of a story. 

AUBREY: Well, I got some more work to do to make sure it's a story worth telling in a sold-out book tour. 

CAITLYN: I think you’re pretty ready. But do carry on. 

AUBREY: Carry on. But carry on. Now you guys have got the beginning, and you've got the end of the story. But there's some points in the middle that are, I think, important points. And there were some dark years for you in Las Vegas as well. And we were in touch, but not close. It needed space after we broke up and you moved out to Vegas. So, let's talk about those times and talk about it in a way that can reach people who've been to dark places themselves. 

CAITLYN: Yeah, definitely. I think one of the magnificent aspects of this masterpiece of life is that when you get served to your unexpected, greatest challenges and obstacles, heartbreaks, losses, you end up moving through something that people, if you allow yourself to move through it and share it, can help guide people and help be a light for people. I really feel I've been into the underworld of the human experience in a very deep way. After we split, I was a young woman, and like I shared, there was so much of life that I hadn't experienced until we were together. And the soul wants to grow. And so, I grew with you. But for my soul, I was not enough to just grow with you and be the queen in your life. My soul had bigger plans and a bigger initiation for me to really learn how to be in life in myself. 

AUBREY: You remember that one poem that you wrote that was foreshadowing that we wouldn't—

CAITLYN: Yeah. Oh, and this is something worth mentioning. We had a legendary relationship. 

AUBREY: We did. 

CAITLYN: We didn't fight often. We had some definite—

AUBREY: When we did, they got feisty. 

CAITLYN: They were fierce. I'm a fierce one. I'm a handful. So, when they happen, they happen. But generally speaking—

AUBREY: We got along amazing. 

CAITLYN: Amazing. And so, I didn't see it coming necessarily because I was so content, I was so happy. But I wasn't really living by my own compass. I would say in hindsight, I could feel I was living in my love, which is very, very big and wants to love and wants to support my partner. I was very much in this enthusiastic compass of yours. And on a higher perspective, I had a knowing that, like a little glimmer in me that took me a while to own, that was like, I want my own adventure. And I want to follow my own compass. And I know now that that's what my soul wanted for me. And simultaneously, I knew you well enough to know that you weren't ready to get married then. You loved me but you weren't, you did the thing. It was like we've been together for three and a half years now. We're happy. It makes sense, right? We're almost 30. That felt really old back then. Let's do the thing because it makes sense. 

AUBREY: And also, I like the romantic nature of it. 

CAITLYN: Casanova, you guys. He was a poet. 

AUBREY: It was a whole thing. The buying of the ring, and the kneeling, and the poem. I think I've, twice, gotten carried in the romanticism of the idea without being fully ready. And then by the time I was fully ready with Vylana, it was like, fuck the romanticism. Where's Elvis? I'm so fucking ready. I'm ready immediately. 

CAITLYN: I've been practicing for years to be ready, and now I'm ready. I'm ready. This is it. This is the one. Yeah, totally. And so I wrote a poem and I don't have it on me or I'd recite it. But it was basically a feeling that I could feel in you, which was this yearning. And is probably able to feel it because it was in me on some level too. But I was just really disconnected from it. I likened you to a pirate. And it's funny because the last time I was on the podcast, I read my own pirate sailors’ poem. And we cheers sailors. Savvy at sail the stormy seas. And there was something in both of us that really still wanted more adventures, wanted more passion, wanted more love, wanted more lovers, all of these things. And I could sense it in you. I remember on some level, if I'm really honest, like at the end, kind of pushing for that. Saying, I don't know if I'm the one. You had met Whitney at that point. We were all just friends. But I said, like I could see you with someone like Whitney. And I look back now and it's like, ah, of course. My soul knew. My higher consciousness knew. But for me as the young woman that I was, who planned to be married and lived with you and all of these things, it was devastating to end our partnership. And my reaction at that point, because I hadn't cultivated and developed the things, the experiences and practices and ways that I enjoy my life that sing my soul alive on my own. A lot of what I knew back then was partying, and the fun, the thrill of dancing, and the thrill of intoxication, and the festival, and all of these things that I knew in their shadow aspect because I was very much in this young, immature kind of hunger. This hunger for life that loved those things. And my coping mechanism for the pain of separation was to go deeper into those things. So not knowing what to do next, as the future kind of got wiped into a clean slate, I decided to move to Las Vegas. And I proceeded to try to figure out who I was in ways that did not serve me anymore. And it was a lot of like, alright, I'm going to go back to the club and I'm going to dance. And that wasn't the conscious choice. But looking back on my behavior, it was like, well, this is what I've been doing. And I knew my light on some level, but I was masquerading pain with these behaviors. And so I went kind of deep into hyper socialism, running around and trying to meet people and create a new life for myself as a way of coping with the life that I felt like I'd lost. And it doesn't work out very well after some time—

AUBREY: No birthday guy doesn't. Let's give one lesson from Caitlyn who was always hyper social. One, Caitlyn was the person and still is the person. If you have a party, you want Caitlyn at your party because Caitlyn at your party ramps it up at least seven degrees of fucking fire, that gets ramped up minimum. So, if your party's like an 85, it's like a fucking 92. Just one person alone. And sometimes if it's a small party, it could be more, could be like 21 degrees better. There's variance depending on the size. But because of that, everybody wanted you on their birthday and planning their birthday. At one point, we had probably 70 friends or something like that. And there was a birthday—

CAITLYN: Every weekend. 

AUBREY: Every weekend. 52 weeks a year, you got 70 friends that all want you to plan... And I was like, Caitlyn—

CAITLYN: Sometimes there's two. When we're working with those statistics, I'm going to have two birthdays a week sometimes. 

AUBREY: I was like, this is unsustainable. It's unsustainable. But at that point, you were a birthday guy.

 CAITLYN: I was a super birthday guy. And so, I went out into the world to find more birthdays to bless with my enthusiastic presence. I did have quite an adventure. I traveled a lot. I met new friends. I got into the Vegas scene. I was running from what I left behind and trying not to feel what I was really feeling. And there came a certain point where I remember, I was living in this really dreary Las Vegas condo. So beautiful but so dark feeling. And all of these things kept happening around me. Like I saw a girl kill herself. And I was having a lot more pain and heartbreak and betrayal. I began, being out there, getting treated really badly by men. I got more and more alone and isolated feeling. And I remember a morning feeling like, I'm killing myself. I'm killing myself. I can’t, I'm dying inside. And in the rare moments I had lovers that treated me badly that I just put up with it, I was really, really grasping and really suffering. And it's a whole story. 

AUBREY: One thing that we're clicking on is I think people think that, well, some women are just attracted to abusive men. And if they had a reference for this or that, then that wouldn't happen. Like there's some idea that there's a type of woman that's attracted to those types of men and not attracted to other types of men. But all three of my deepest relationships, well, four if you count Angie, all of them, we were in deeply loving relationships. And also, they had a history with deeply abusive men. All of these ideas that people might have about, it can and does happen to every great woman that I've ever known. Truly. 

CAITLYN: I think a part of that is there are certainly some cases of very characteristic relationships that repeat and certain behaviors of abuse that you can track in a pattern. But generally, in my experience, this is not about a type of woman. It's more about a type of self-perception that seeks to allow itself to be proven through relationships. And so we're dealing more with wounds that when they're active, and don't believe that they have worth. And this can show up in anybody. This can show up in anybody, male or female. And those wounds will allow behavior to come up, even from people who don't necessarily behave that way all the time. But there's this sort of unconscious permission slip that's given that's like, I feel this way about myself. And I'm going to seek to confirm that in how I allow you to treat me. And we get locked in these really unfortunate dynamics of wounds matching wounds and this—

AUBREY: And the groove of the wound can just get deeper and deeper and deeper. And that's something that people don't realize. It's not even that the wounds have to come from prior to the relationship. But the relationship can create a wound. And if you have a manipulative or manipulative, seductive type of person who can actually deepen the wounds and then deepen the codependency, there's some pretty nasty spirals that can happen. Because even after, what five, six years? Five, six years together? 

CAITLYN: Almost six years. 

AUBREY: Of a loving, and sweet, and supportive relationship where I just put you as my queen on the highest thing with the shiniest light and the most love. And of course, just to let people know, our separation was hard for me as well because the love was very deep and real. And actually, it came to me in an iboga journey that we shared, where iboga told me very clearly, this isn't the right dynamic for you and Caitlyn. And I argued with the iboga for like eight hours about it. And it was a 24-hour journey. And I was just wrestling with the iboga. And the iboga was finally like, just trust me. 

CAITLYN: And he was honest right away. 

AUBREY: Yeah. I told you that. I told you after that was done. 

CAITLYN: Right. In the ocean the next morning. And I had been through my own iboga. It was sort of like it unlocked Pandora's box. We went to go do iboga and this was my first big psychedelic journey ever. I had these issues with binge addictions. So, I would consume and then after a while, get really excited. And I would get in the flow of a party or the environment that was giving me that encouraging feedback. And then I wouldn't stop, and I wouldn't stop. 

AUBREY: Like a shiny, glittery, happy, beautiful Hunter S. Thompson. 

CAITLYN: Oh my God, that's exactly right. I will put a pin in that because, yeah, that was very much that. We used to joke about it and be like, there's a little demon inside me. And in my iboga journey, that was my intention, was to kind of “slay the demon”, that felt like it took over my freewill at a certain point. But what really happened is it opened an initiatory period that would last years for me to liberate myself from these kinds of behaviors. And that's the way the soul works. It doesn't happen in one fell swoop as much as we want it to, sometimes. There's all these ideas that I can go do ayahuasca or iboga and it's just going to be one overnight thing. No. The lightning bolt that struck was your codependency on this to feel good about yourself is going to go now. And you're going to go through your dark night of the soul, and it's going to take a long time. But you will rise. You will rise. And it reminds me of that book that I read. The "Path of the Warrior." It says, you will be obliterated. The warrior suffers, is the passage. But when you land, there will be one thin red line of dignity that you will maintain. And when you hit the bottom, you will rise. And I held on to that passage as I moved through that time period in my life because I had to go deep into the darkness to want to save myself, naturally and patiently, and with devotion and commitment. And it was that moment where I realized I'm dying inside that I started to seek something greater. There were two things I did. One was, you had been on your path, which you had already gone and sat with ayahuasca and launched Onnit. And we stayed as these remote friends. But you invited me to, if I ever felt called to go down to Peru and sit with Don Howard and have my first journey with ayahuasca. And it took me getting to that place where I was really like, yeah, anything. Anything. I'm scared, it's the Amazon jungle. I'm going to go by myself. But I want to do it. I'd rather be terrified and seek to save myself than to continue to go through this here in Las Vegas. And the other thing was, I had... It's funny, I feel emotional talking about all this stuff, because it just opens this really tender place in me. But I'd always wanted to be a writer. And at that time, the only way out of despair was to write the truth about how I felt, and to just start documenting it. Very much like Hunter S. Thompson. Like the journalist to the wild savagery of life, I'm going to not get gobbled up by it. But I'm going to sit here like a fierce investigator of the human experience and the human condition and I'm going to make art from it. And so I found a writer's group in Las Vegas. And I went in there by myself and just kind of knocked on the back door. And I sat with this motley crew of people from all different walks of life, and I started writing poetry. 

AUBREY: I get this image of like, this white deer and the glorious white hind. And the wolves are just eating and biting its legs and tearing its flesh. But the white hind is just recording all of the gnashing teeth and the blood, and the whole thing. And in this interesting way, I think many poets and many artists are like that. They're willing to put themselves in a place where they're being just tumultuously devoured by life so that they can share that truth of that experience for everybody else going through it, and for yourself. It's some kind of interesting calling that the poet's heart has to feel. They just feel all of the feelings on both sides of the spectrum. 

CAITLYN: Absolutely. I remember being struck by one of Lena Dunham's stories in her book, "Not That Kind of Girl." She talks about an instance where she has this encounter with a man who's like hitting on her. And she said, I did it for the story. I'd never did things specifically for a story. But once I realized the story that was there, that was my story, that only could be told from the gut-wrenching perspective of what I was feeling and experiencing, and the humiliation and the pain, and the doubt, and all of the fear that arose, and the way that I kept finding compassion and kept finding that thin red thread of dignity in me, it helped me hold it differently and with appreciation. I am here and I'm willing to tell the story. And I'm willing to see it through the lens of compassion that comes from being strong enough to stand in it. And when I do that, I get to make art. And I get to reach out to people who have been here too and say, I was there. I felt this way. How did you feel? Did you feel the same? What was it like for you? We had to create this bridge. And I saw so many other women. I say women even though I know it's everyone in their own different ways. And this isn't just about women being victims, which is definitely a part of it. But there are men that are victims too. The wolves come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. And there's innocence inside of all of us. And so, I remember making that shift where I was more conscious and more committed to being a writer, and just being in the experience with curiosity so I can make art. And I would see and feel the white hind behind the eyes of the fiercest looking wolf woman that was across the table from me who had her arm wrapped. And I wanted to tell my story because I want people to find the compassion point where if you meet somebody, a woman, a man, anyone in a certain environment where you've decided that it's all wolves, or you decided that it's all that kind of woman who attracts that kind of man, and all of these labels that we put on people. If you get to hear one woman's story about where she came from, and who she really is, and what she really went through behind the veil of the makeup, and the glitter, and the smiles, maybe you can treat people differently and love them differently. And that's really what was the impetus for me really taking on what pulled me out of that space, was I'm going to write my story. And I began that journey. In 2015, I started working on my first book, not yet published. But that was what really brought me up out of “hell”. The hell that I had created. 

AUBREY: "A Shiny Room in Hell." 

CAITLYN: "A Shiny Room in Hell," the name of the book. And I remember, actually, the title for that first manuscript came from a conversation we had because you were always my, you've always been, for anyone listening, the most magnificent thing about our relationship is not that it's transformed to me, it is so cool that it has. But it's also, of course, it has. Because you are like my soul's guardian angel. And you've never left me. And you've never given up on me. And though we had periods of distance, and separation, and silence, you never lost faith. And I remember one day on the phone you said, I'm not giving up on you. I'm going to haunt you till the day you die. And at this point, I told him that I wanted to be a writer. I was working at this hotel at that point. I had fought my way up from bottle service waitress to a dignified position, in a suit with an earpiece. And I felt better in that because I was clothed and I wasn't being objectified by sweaty drunk people at the pool all day. And he said to me, Cate, it's just another shiny room in hell. You got to get out. And I knew I had to get out because I knew that even just my lifestyle was killing me. And I told my mom, I want to write a book about my life here and what I've learned. And I told my mom what he said that it's just another shiny room in hell. And she said, Caitlyn, that's the title of your book. And I knew. I knew then it was. And I was brave, and I left and stayed in my sister's guest room in her backyard for six months. And I just learned everything I could about the writing process and got all the story down. And I fell in love with becoming a writer at that time. And then I got hired by the World Poker Tour to be a poker presenter and I pressed pause. And the journey continued. But from then on, it was all rising. And it was all seeking to nourish my soul gradually, gradually, gradually, until I arrived here, with my guardian angel in a completely new life expression as a mature woman. 

AUBREY: It's interesting how it's flipped in some ways, in that, I think of you now as now my fiercest guardian. Our lives have transformed an impossible amount, both from the many psychedelic journeys and adventures we've had and just life and love and everything. But so much has transformed, including your gifts as a woman, as a medicine woman, and so many things that have come online. I think some of the moments of my greatest joy, I can remember moments where I see that thing click in, where Gafni would call it your unique self-moment. Where you're living your sacred name story, the thing that really only you can do and that you're here to do. You're taking your unique risk. The risk that only you can take that will yield the story that only you can write. And it's very important that we all embrace our unique risk. 

I think I had an understanding of this when I was writing "Go For Your Win," which was the first course that I wrote. Which is basically like, take your own unique risk. Fucking go for it. That's the only way you will ever feel alive. Otherwise, some part of you is a little bit dead if you don't take your unique risk. And you're in a shiny room in hell. However shiny it is, you're a little bit dead inside because you're not living and taking that risk that only you can take. And I remember for you, it was in Sedona and Fit For Service was young. And that's obviously the platform that we created together. And I was always the ecstatic dance teacher, having learned from Porangui and Ashley 10 years prior, and had practice. And I was always good at making playlists, and speaking poetic words, and firing people up, and getting emotional, and all the things that are required. And I encourage you to like, “Katie, why don't you try it?” And we were just me and you when we were in the living room. 

CAITLYN: It was the greatest. 

AUBREY: It was just me and you in the living room in Sedona and you created a sacred rage, ecstatic dance. 

CAITLYN: For women too, mind you, it's me and Aubrey alone in the living room in the ranch in—

AUBREY: A sacred rage dance for women. 

CAITLYN: And he's such a great friend. He's like, put me through it. It was great. I'd had it in my mind that it's for women. It'd be great for anybody. And I was so nervous. And it's just the two of us. 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. I had to realize, come on. We can do it. You got this. And I remember you started, and you were nervous. You were saying things, but your heart wasn't in it. But I was dancing anyway. And then like song two, or three, or something, something just clicked in and a whole other version of you that was like, holy shit. There's a lot of Caitlyn holy shit moments, but not in this kind of directed arrow way where the union of the masculine and the feminine came together. And the masculine that was projecting something to actually impregnate people with a different idea. And the feminine that was there, receiving the exact right words and the exact thing. It was like that locked in. And I think that was kind of a piece that was always kind of, if I were to assess that masculine ability to actually go in a line, in that line consciousness of I'm going to impregnate this moment, this idea, this brand, this thing, this experience with my essence. That was the thing that you were missing, because you always had the chalice, the feminine aspects. And at that moment, it both came together and I just started crying because it was like, holy shit. You did it. 

CAITLYN: It was a beautiful moment. You said that to me. You did it. You did it. It felt so good to just have that invitation and allow it to come through. And that really was the piece for me, I think the past few years, as I've stepped into my path as a facilitator and a guide. And Fit For Service, it's forced me to bring in that masculine aspect that wasn't there in the past because I was often flowing with that receptive feminine, who's cueing off of the feedback of the world around me. Like am I doing a good job? Waiting for the direction of social feedback. That was my story before. And I got put in enough situations where it's like, you have to serve your medicine and you have this opportunity to help people. And flexing that muscle and just exercising the permission to let the masculine come in and direct that energy has created such an extraordinary energy in my body that I never really knew. It's the union of self. And I think there's such a synchronistic and magical correspondence with the themes we've been working on in Fit For Service, which a couple of years ago was the masculine, the feminine, and union. And there was just something that really got stepped in over the past couple of years. It's allowed me to exercise that enough to where I know myself. I know myself enough to stand in confidence that the medicine I am serving is of value and it's helpful. And I don't need those crutches anymore of anyone giving me social feedback, or having a substance or anything to feel more confident in who I am and what I have to say. So yeah, ecstatic dances. Now the evolution of what I used to do in the club, when I would stand on the “pyramid”. 

AUBREY: You were inspiring ecstatic dance just by dancing, like a maenad. But now you're really doing it like a maestra. 

CAITLYN: Like a ceremonialist. 

AUBREY: From maenad to maestra. 

CAITLYN: That could be my memoir now that we're talking about it. From maenad to maestra. It's been an incredible journey. And I think that's one of the most exciting pieces of aging and maturing and seeing the way that the themes in your life from when you're younger, they're promising you something. 

AUBREY: The sparks. Yes.

CAITLYN: Like when you talk about the unique risk and the unique story, the blueprint is there. It's right there and it always has been. But you have to recognize, what were these pieces that are my unique gift that I'm meant to give in my unique way through my unique risk? That's the elixir that people need to receive from you. And getting out of your own way. For me, getting out of my own way was a part of that journey of saying, I know that this helps people. And I know that they need it right now. And who am I to play small and get in my own way when I was given this blueprint of how I can be of service to the world right now? And it involves dancing and costumes. Awesome. Let's do that. 

AUBREY: We'd just got back from Arkadia, which was the festival that we threw, which is a real full circle moment for us because both of us went to our first rave together. Like all the first festivals, crazy experiences. We got to hang with Zedd and Sonny Skrillex. And we got to like to do the whole thing. And we were fucking festival kids for a little while. 

CAITLYN: We were.

AUBREY: And then of course, you were there. You went to Burning Man even a year before I did and then convinced me to go, me and Whitney to go. And now we just threw a fucking epic festival. But seeing you in that environment, I remember at the end of the festival, I was exhausted and depleted and also deeply satisfied and moved by what we created. And I remember I called you into the room and I just started crying. And part of the reason that I was crying was to, one, just release all of that energy that had built up. But two, because I had watched you navigate it and you did it so impeccably that I knew that, yes, my own unique Aubrey contribution is a unique Aubrey contribution. However, if there was no unique Aubrey to contribute to that, you could have just ran it. Like if I would have gotten some fucking bad strain of whatever, monkey pox or something, you could've just taken it and delivered in your own unique way, but such a equivalent way to what I was able to do. And it was so cool to see you and the way that you gave your speech, and the way that you addressed the crowd, and the way that you navigated it. It was really a cool moment to see like, alright, fuck yeah. 

CAITLYN: That's so meaningful to me to feel that. And I felt it too. It was an arrival moment, a glorious arrival moment after a lifetime of trying to figure it out. For so many years, to realize that part of my destiny is this. It's very much the beautiful union of transformational experiences, and human connection, and full expression, and dance, and reverence, and all of these things that come into the festival. And to be able to co-create that with you and realize, this is part of what our souls do really well together. And I am not afraid of anything anymore. To go back to Las Vegas. This festival was so difficult for us in so many ways. And it just had almost like a will of its own and wanted to be the way it wanted to be and kept showing us what it wanted to be. And it ended up wanting to be in Las Vegas of all places. Where our story began, where my story was written. And there's just this gorgeous giggly wow factor to it, where I was going like “ha”. I get to go back to this place where I doubted myself and bring love, and bring healing in such a big sonic boom kind of way. I remember feeling that on the flight as we were descending and just saying, I'm coming back for you, Las Vegas. I'm bringing this. And I remember I used to be really hard on myself after I wrote that first manuscript of "A Shiny Room in Hell." I was like, I never finished it. And you would always say to me, maybe the story isn't written yet. 

AUBREY: Yeah, write the ending. Got to write the ending of your actions. 

CAITLYN: How about that for an ending? 

AUBREY: Fucking A. There we go. 

CAITLYN: There we go. 

AUBREY: There we go. 

CAITLYN: I had that feeling. 

AUBREY: Well, now you got to write the book. You wrote the ending—

CAITLYN: Now there's that whole middle section that spans eight years or something. But yeah, it was profound. And with that, some kind of magic just synthesized in me. It was like, I've arrived. I've arrived. 

AUBREY: It's interesting because you can track these things. With Whitney, I could tell that it was singing. I could tell that it was singing. But she was so absolutely terrified to sing. And all I would ask every year for Christmas was for her to sing me a song. And I think I got it like, one and a half times out of all of the eight years because she was just terrified even to sing to me. And ultimately, obviously, with Whitney and I splitting, she just went straight into it. And I remember the first song that I heard from her, the first country song that I heard from her, it was that same thing. I hit her back and I was like, you did it. You fucking did it. There's a thing that you can tell where somebody is doing the exact thing that they're here to do. And I'm sure the completion of that is going to be when she's on stage somewhere doing it. And same with Vylana. Vylana came and she did her holographic sound healing and she gave a sound healing. And I wasn't even with her at that point. But the sound healing was magnificent, but I couldn't even pay attention. I was just looking at her and just smiling and crying. We were very close friends at that point because I could tell like, holy shit, you did it. You did it. You unlocked your unique self-code. You're absolutely on your sacred name story. The one that only you can write. And I think there's many ways that you can actually do that. It combines all of your unique skills and talents. It's not like you have a destiny. It's like, you have all of these unique combinations of skills, and talents, and attributes, and qualities, and you can put them into something where all of them get to shine, and come alive, and co-mingle, and create something greater than the parts. And I saw that with Vy. And I've watched that journey. And our Arkadia as well, when she sang her song "Phoenix," which is going to be releasing soon, I think actually, in August, that was that moment as well. This moment of, okay, I saw it start and then I saw it like, okay, now you're fucking really doing it. And there's this little interesting gap. But yeah, it's cool that both of you got to have that moment at Arkadia. 

CAITLYN: Yeah, absolutely. And it's exciting to realize these things and to get to really celebrate how your unique gifts co-mingle into this original gift that doesn't look anything like anyone else's exactly. And I feel like that's just unlocked for me this year. But it took all of the purification of doubt, self-doubt, those wounded stories of rejection, that trying to do it like other people. That was another big piece too, for me. For me, I think writing for a long time was a way to hide behind my writing. I can say something that's really difficult to say, or I can confess something that I've done, or that I feel without having to have the vulnerable spotlight of saying it with my mouth on stage or something like that. There's a magnificent catharsis in that. Writing is an incredible outlet of art to do something like that. But with every opportunity that I started to use the other gifts like getting on stage to do ecstatic dance and allowing the poetry to flow through moment to moment in whatever my guidance was, or doing a guided meditation or any of these other things that I've been facilitating, it's clearing away and purifying all of those stories that keep the voice inhibited, and say, well, I need to hide behind my writing. I want to be quiet. I want to go into a cave and then put that out there. And so I'm getting a lot more excited about, okay, what does this look like when I take the part of me who dances in a costume and the part of me who hides behind some of the fiercest or most savage poetry that I have and then I pair these into everything that I'm here to express and everything that I can give? I had an experience recently watching our friend Emma Lou May get up on stage in Bass Concert Hall here in Austin and speak poetry. I was such a shy little girl. I never thought I'd want to get up or I'd be able to get up and tell my story and speak my art. And I didn't ever see anything like that for poets either, where you could get up and have that kind of flow experience, where you are serving your medicine to a huge auditorium full of people. And I was like, oh, this is how athletes feel when they go to a sports game or something. I just never knew that that kind of pinnacle existed. And so, I'm getting a lot more excited to weaving together these gifts in a way that feels like the full expression of who I am. And I can help people do that. To live that passionate life, that's loving everything that you feel and everything that you're here to serve. Yeah, it's fun. 

AUBREY: One of the things that has happened along the way is going to sound weird for people. And this goes back to where, to me, you've become, in some ways, my guardian. You have dreams about it all the time. First of all, one of Caitlyn's most consistent dreams is someone's trying to kill me. Caitlyn stabs him in the fucking neck. That's like over and over. 

CAITLYN: Let it be known, that's my go to. Stab in the neck. 

AUBREY: The thing that came online for you is, it's an energy that comes through you. And there's a lot of labels that you could use about energy. Is it channeling, or is it light language, or whatever? It doesn't matter. It's an energy and it's a frequency that comes through you. And it's a frequency of the fiercest compassion. The fiercest compassion. A compassion of I will feel everything that you're feeling and I will amplify it so you know that not only am I with you, but that even if you go deeper and darker and more painful, I'll feel that too. And I love you so much that I'll feel everything you're feeling and even more. And I'll keep feeling so that you'll never be alone. And so many times, it's actually one of the most powerful pieces of medicine that comes through. It can come through with a hot bay, it can come through with a ceremony. Or sometimes if it needs to come through and I'm going through something, there's this thing that you can click into that's really spectacular. 

CAITLYN: Yeah. So I'll share a little bit about that. Something extraordinary has happened for me in the past two years, really. There was a big turning point that I won't pretend to understand or diminish by trying to pretend that I understand because I'm still learning about it and I think I will be for the rest of my life. But it feels as though, I've said yes to enough initiatory challenges and sat with some medicine over many years, done a lot of inner work. And I had something unlocked in me in 2019, very faintly, where I started feeling this language come through. Just like my own language, just like my own art, I would second guess it, and doubt it, and say that doesn't mean anything, that's so weird. All the old stories were still very active back then. And I would kind of suppress it and quiet it. And with time, my father passed in 2020. I went through a big, big, big reckoning with myself and just what kind of life I want to live. What kind of relationships I want to keep. How I want to spend my time here. And how I want to do my very best not to live a tragic life, which for me, would mean I enjoy myself and give it everything that I've got. And with that reorientation to life, I started getting a lot more curious about who I really was. Not the persona who sought the adoration of her environment, and not the maiden, the perpetual maiden that I had been for so long, who needed to make people happy in order to feel good about herself. But who was I really am, what am I here to do? And that started a beautiful new opening for me. And as that opening unfolded, a lot of things happened in my life. Relationships changed. I built a really passionate, new lifestyle and really living in a rapturous ritual, with the guidance that comes to me. So I pay a lot of attention to synchronicity. I pay a lot of attention to the symbols and the messages that I get from the divine. And I bring them into my waking life in a way where it's sort of like, like my house is covered and altars. I treat my life like an altar to my soul where I'm just bringing in the guidance that I receive and making it fun, playful, and bright. It's really, really fun. But as I started getting more interested in who I was on the soul level, and started feeding the altar of my life with the mana of my passion, and my excitement, and my interests, and my curiosity, that channel began to get a lot more comfortable and open up more and the language would come through more. And there's a mysterious and beautiful relationship with that energy that seems to be of me but beyond me. And also my own purification of my ego and settling into this confidence in who I am. It holds hands with it. So, as I get more comfortable allowing what comes to me intuitively to come through, everything else that I know gets more comfortable coming through. So my work as an ecstatic dance guide, or my work as a poet, or my work as a space holder. And with that, there's one frequency that is absolutely of me in that energy that comes through. And it's always been there. And that's the compassion that is this fierce love. And if you think about compassion and empathy are very similar. So if I'm able to cue off of my environment and feel what people want from me, it's because I'm connected to their feelings. So the shadow aspect of that is to modify my behavior to meet the sensing that I'm getting. And the superpower of that is to be able to respond to them, and acknowledge them, and feel them, and connect with them, and be in their experience with them, but not lose myself. And that feels like this new relationship, this new horizon that I'm on, where I can have both. I can be empathetic, and compassionate, and still really know who I am, and just respond to the world around me and give back. 

AUBREY: Yeah. So, let's go into some pragmatic advice. We've told a lot of your story now. I give a lot of advice, the gender is what it is, but specifically speaking to the young women, and, of course, it will apply to young men as well who are drawn to living a life like you've lived and being able to access what you're able to access in your poetry, and what you're able to offer the world in your art and your, I mean, everything's coming online, songs and it's crazy what's actually happening for you right now. It's magnificent. What is some advice that you would give somebody? And we meet a lot of these young women along the journey. What is some advice and what are some caveats? Give some wisdom that someone could take from this. 

CAITLYN: Cool question. First and foremost, I was working with a coach earlier in the year. I went through a big initiation, which is kind of a played out buzzword. But it's true. It felt like very much an initiation of rebirth at the beginning of the year. And I worked with a coach, invested in that for a little while. Shout out to Stefano Sifandos. He said, what would it feel like to be enthralled with yourself? I love that. And I realized that was a piece of what was happening for me. I started to get way more interested in what was happening in me and in my relationship to the world than the relationships that I had or the stories. Enthralled as in, passionately curious. Ooh, me. What's happening here? What's so special about this? It sounds a bit selfish, but it's important, I think, for a lot of women to become enthralled with yourself as a starting point to get to know who you are. 

AUBREY: It is the best opportunity that any of us have to understand any human being. What are you going to do? You're going to learn about humans from another person? Fuck off! Studying yourself. This is what every mystic tradition will point to is, no, look inside, look inside. Because this is what we have absolute access to. Everything else, we're looking through screens upon screens upon screens and filters. Even if the person is as wide open as possible, we're still not seeing. 

CAITLYN: It's the only thing we can see. 

AUBREY: Exactly.

CAITLYN: We can't even hope to see clearly. We can't even say we can see it clearly. And that becomes the most fascinating, and exciting, and informative study you can do, is getting really, really curious, passionately curious about yourself. And with that, honoring what you discover. So for me, I use the altar as a place to honor myself and what I find, and honor God, and honor the divine. But one of the things I did was I went for a stroll in a toy section and just picked out the toys that my inner child loved. And I made an altar to my inner child. It has a Candyland board game floor, it has a little Barbie Corvette just 'cause I had rainbow wheels, it has like a glow sign that says Love. 

So giving myself permission to not be ashamed of anything that I find and to celebrate it. It doesn't have to become my life, it doesn't have to ruin my life, but to acknowledge it, and honor it, and allow it to come through in some way has been just fun. It's been a fun way. And with these pieces of curiosity and celebration, which I think are two of the codes that are really accessible for me that really support me, I start to integrate and love myself more. Because I'm just giving attention. Our sacred attention is the most valuable currency that we have. And so if I'm giving that to curiosity and celebration of me, we actually get to start to love ourselves in a way that's more fun than that, you've got to love yourself. You've just got to love yourself. How can we do this in a way that's really fun? So, there's that. The other part, in terms of advice that I would give is, it all really boils down to permission. But having a radical commitment to have an outlet to say what you need to say no matter if it's “conscious” or “fair”. There's so much that needs to be alchemized in the feminine, that is, we have been oppressed historically in such a way that we are carrying the residue of so many generations of, you're not allowed to say that, you're not allowed to do that, you're not allowed to express like that. We have to find every opportunity, we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to other women to find every opportunity to create outlets of radical permission to just say the thing that needs to be said, or do that thing that wants to be done. We can do that. For me, poetry is an incredible outlet for this. And it's one of the reasons my poems are often so dark and gritty. It's my place for me to take an energy, or a feeling, or an emotion, or an experience that feels really true for part of me and free myself of it really. I'm going to hold this somewhere in the shadow of who I am until I give it a voice. And as soon as you say it, you're free. You get to feel what comes next after it's said. And I think for women collectively, having scary conversations helps. It's cool. It's really, really empowering. And it can be really healing for relationships that we want to evolve. But we don't always have the opportunity to say everything or to evolve those relationships that we would like to evolve. And we can get so stuck in wanting the relationship to evolve, when really, what we need is just to say the thing that allows ourselves to evolve. And when I get to really say an uncomfortable truth in a poem, or just sit in my living room and strum my guitar like a total amateur, and just belt out whatever's on my heart, often, I find that something else comes through after that clears and moves that's even more true. But I won't get there unless I let it out. And so all of that to say, it all really boils down to radical permission to just say the unsaid thing. And do the thing that you crave. 

AUBREY: Expression as the antidote to repression that potentially was caused by historic and systemic oppression. 

CAITLYN: Yeah. And to have fun while you do it. 

AUBREY: And to have fun. You said you have one poem that you have memorized. 

CAITLYN: Oh, man. 

AUBREY: And that was one of these moments, right? It was this feeling. And I don't even think the poem needs a story. It's a feeling that you have, and the poem is about a feeling. And I think you'll get the gist of what the feeling is. But if you're up for it, why don't you lay it on us? 

CAITLYN: Yeah. Totally. I have one poem currently memorized. I have a couple of memorized but this one is the freshest. I've never said it. I was in a moment of feeling really triggered and I didn't know what else to do with how I was feeling, other than to write a poem. And I did. And I memorized it because it was cathartic for me to say it. And I was going to take it to an open mic night and I never got to. 

AUBREY: Mic's open. 

CAITLYN: Mic's open. Oh, funny. So funny how I can be like, I'm not scared of anything. I've totally integrated my voice. And then you invite me to do this and I'm like, oh, okay. 

AUBREY: Man, when I have to read a poem, it's the most nervous I ever get right before I start. Then obviously once it starts. 

CAITLYN: It's nice, respectful trepidation, I guess. Okay. I was once just like you. Dragon was my first name, baby. That was me. The real deal fantasy. Flying everywhere and shooting fire. Blazing wings of desire. Until I burned too many bridges and got tired. Decided to land under the sun on the sand and become the whole damned planet. Took a mountain range for scales, earned ocean eyes and city tea. I made a house for you to heal in, a place for you to eat. And roll my esophagus red carpet out for your parade. Let myself fade back into the scenery that I grow and have a front row seat to your new show. I applaud and nod, but wave a friendly reminder to remember that your sweet giggles are echoes of the belly laughing maiden and dancing forever in the heart of the great she-dragon called us. We are one body through trust, lineage, and ligament. So when I asked for your respect, what I meant is you can be her seductive breath, if that's your chosen throne. And I will stand for what I am and her well-formed backbone. And the sacrum cradle of the womb cave that gave you birth. You can play stardust and I'll be the earth. We are the same thing. And I am proud to call us kin. It's not a sin to emulate me. Recreate me. I'm flattered when you do. But forget me not because I was here for eons before you. I lived through dark ages that became morning bird songs. And I'm the tree soul in the pages that you write your lines on. Pain, pleasure, envy, elegance. It's all good, dry tinder. Please have some of mine, light up the world. I will sit back and plant my roses, sing to my cosmic eggs and pour some wine to thank you for your service because now I can recline and watch the mood dress of my red thread Marionette fingers spin you on and on, twirling out is more creation. That's poetry's proliferation. And like the Cheshire Cat, smile, child, we are attending the same great fire. Our work is one love born through hearts torn in two. I'm grateful for your part. And you, you are welcome for the flame out to start. 

AUBREY: Get 'em. Get 'em. Wow. 

CAITLYN: Fierce, right? 

AUBREY: Fierce. Fierce. 

CAITLYN: Fierce. It's wild. It's wild. So, I wrote that in a moment of feeling betrayed, a little bit taken advantage of. And I was jealous. The truth is, I was jealous. And I saw someone I was jealous of write a good poem about what I perceived to be a transgression to me. And you can't really come out and say that. It's awkward. But you can give it a voice. And so what I did was I was like, I don't know what to do with this feeling. I know it feels a bit petty. I know I don't like the way it's sitting in my body. And I was all restless and worked up. And so, I wrote that. And then when I wrote it, it was like, oh, I like that. I like what I just wrote. And it felt good. And then I could feel this click of gratitude. Like this exchange of, okay, I made some art with what I was feeling. And what was really interesting too is the frequency of the ferocity of it actually felt bigger than the moment. I named the poem "Dragon Mother" because there's something about this older, feminine, almost righteously jealous kind of frequency that's like looking at the young maiden who's trampling all over her and is like, don't forget that we're one. And that felt really cool because it felt like it gave a voice to something that was archaically big. And there was something about the feeling of the great feminine mother, the dragon mother of the earth that's like, young woman, tread lightly. Have some respect. 

AUBREY: It's the most gangster way to approach that I've ever heard. It was fucking fire. 

CAITLYN: And it's so out of character for me to write. It's like I'm using poetry, and art, and dance, and all these things and I think this is so important for women. We know better than to go around shooting the arrows and the fire of our jealousy, and our pettiness, and all these things. But it doesn't mean that we're not holding it. And so we need outlets of expression where we get to give that a voice. And what happens is, you get your power back. I get to feel my body, the charge of being in the powerful mother that's youngin'. And I'm talking to myself too. 

AUBREY: You know what's funny is, I'd completely forgotten about this, but I wrote a similar poem once. I was hopelessly smitten. You told the story of when I was 26. 26-year-old, at that point, Chris Marcus was different than 20-year-old Chris Marcus. 20-year-old Chris Marcus had never, ever one time gotten the girl that he was smitten about. Not once. I had lovely girlfriends and things that we just happened to kind of, I was looking one way and she was looking at me, and I was like, getting rejected over here. So I was like, yeah, alright, we'll do this. And it was beautiful, but never the one that I was really going for. And that carried on into college until like, later half of my 21st year. I remember the start of the poem was, I wish you were a better man. Strong like Jameson and smooth like James Dean. And then I just go in to say how much I wish he was, but he's not. Goes through this whole thing. I wish you were this, and this, and this. And then the final one is, but you're not. And then I twisted it around. I don't know which girl I was smitten with at that point. I have a whole list of them, their names etched in my memory in one very pained journal that I still keep from that time period where I was writing in cursive like an old poet. Shout out to Miranda and Sally. 

CAITLYN: Oh, I love you. Shout out, ladies. Look at him now. 

AUBREY: There's something really powerful about, poetry was my outlet then and it still is now. In the pandemic, when I felt like I had so many things to say that I was choking and I couldn't get them out because anything that you said, you would just get attacked for, I just put them all into a poem. And just in the poetry of it, I was just able to like release it on. It felt like I could breathe again. And there's something really special about wrapping emotion in art. Because, emotion, it's almost better that way in an art, than it is in words that can be dissected and taken apart and whenever. There's something really cool about that. 

CAITLYN: Yeah. I think the art of it speaks to everyone. There's this levity that comes in. Levity in the sense that you're really lifting to the inspiration of it, being lifted by spirit. I love writers that just lay it all out and create, like Nabokov is one of my favorites. His book, "Lolita," could a subject be any cringier? And it's fiction. Although you read it and you couldn't imagine that he isn't just the living, breathing Humbert Humbert, the psyche of this man who has this fetish and obsession with what he calls nymphets. Being able to look at the human condition and not look away, and not flinch. Even if it's aimed at you, there's some levity that happens where you're like, respect the art. Respect the art. Serve it to me. I want that arrow. And we become companions in creation from that plane? 

AUBREY: It universalizes it in a way and also makes it somehow palatable even if it's vicious. You know what I mean? Even in those old rap, hip hop songs. Even in the songs from Biggie and Tupac, you listen to those, they're fucking vicious. 

CAITLYN: Hit 'em up or something. Also, Mickey Avalon, I know all the words too. And I'm like, first off, fuck you, whoa, whoa, how do I know this? But you're just like, okay. That's true. 

AUBREY: They were so raw. I think it was like, I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker or something like that. Savage. Was that the one, Ryan? 

CAITLYN: Yeah. Just like goosebumps for some reason. Why am I grabbing this reaction to this? Yeah. And the Tupac song, "Me and My Girlfriend." It's all about him and his gun. And there's, like a heaviness to connecting to that now, especially with everything that's going on with gun violence, all these things. But as an art form, it's like everything he's saying about his girl, he's talking about his gun. And when you listen to that, you go, wow, you're a genius for making up some of these lyrics. You can't tell because he's built that intimate relationship. And so metaphors are this gorgeous way to play with relationships to everything that makes it into art. You're painting a picture of something universal with your unique experience, which is really special. 

AUBREY: And this is how, and this is one of the things that you've been working with, and that I love. This is how you get God to notice. Tell us about that download. 

CAITLYN: So I'm on a real rampage of just having fun with life right now. Because there's something really special that I have realized through my personal experiences recently. We went and did another journey with El Dragon in Costa Rica, sitting with Ayahuasca in May. I had already been having these interesting, synchronicity happen very loudly, for me in my life, as you know as one of my best friends, and a lot of people reflect on me. And I think it's because synchronicity is basically a moment of magic that surpasses expectations, and also connects to something familiar in you. So you go like, oh, I notice. You notice it, you notice it amongst the monotony of life. Some little magical moment happens where you think that seems magical. That doesn't make sense. That feels like a little miracle. The epiphany of a miracle and a moment where God gets you to notice. And so, we're in Costa Rica. And what happened for me was this masterpiece of synchronicities that started as a lot of the same symbols coming through in my journey. And what happened in that moment was basically I had the most profound awakening, self-reclamation. The medicine showed me everywhere that I wasn't myself and I purged it out all night long, emotionally, vocally. And started to fall back in love with who I was from the very beginning. Birthday guy, the girl that was in costume and loves celebration, and all of it. And I could see the majesty of my soul, and like, this is what you're here to give, to help change the world, to help save the world. And as I moved through this experience, it was so meaningful to me and so profound. And I get back to my room and it all synthesizes on the toilet. And I'm having this like, oh my God. Even the toilet paper roll fell off the toilet paper dispenser and rolled across the room and I thought, I hate that because it kept doing it the whole week. And then a part of me said, no, you don't. You love that. It reminds you of a party streamer. And as soon as I started clicking and taking ownership that there was a part of me that liked everything I'd ever been through. There was a part of me that liked the chaos, and the weirdness, and the goofiness. And it was like, reclaiming in love all of these pieces of life that were of me too. Not happening to me but created by me. And allowing myself to play in that sphere of co-creation and participation with the masterpiece of life. The dawn began to glow through the window and I saw the sky turn to a rainbow. And I could hear the architect birds outside begin to kind of start their sonar orchestration of a new day. And I felt this is the dawn of my life, where I never forget that I'm participating in it. And I felt this sudden gratitude for the toilet and how it had never been appreciated by me and by all of us for everything that it does for us, making our shit just disappear and feeding it back into the world, and creating new life from it, really. And I started to have this freakout moment of gratitude. Everything's beautiful, everything goes full color. I'm just like, I'm in love with life, everything's amazing. And I begin to leave the room to run out and see the dawn and I see the toilet and I don't forget to thank it. And I turn over and I look at it and I'm like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. With all my heart. And that's the key. It was like a wholehearted appreciation for what's happening around me all the time. And there was a little sign on the back of the toilet that suddenly just flipped over. And it's written by the hotel staff. But the first thing I see is thank you with an exclamation mark. And then the toilet starts to go. I am not kidding. It was one of those moments that you can't describe unless you're there. But Eric, my partner, comes in the room and he tries to fix it. And I said, no, I did it. And then I described to him what happened. And I say with my whole heart again, I say, thank you, thank you. And it goes, calms back down. Stops. Never did it again. And I get home and I begin to embark on 40 days—

AUBREY: I was up that same night, and my toilet was doing the same. So, you did it for all toilets. 

CAITLYN: No, but it was only me. 

AUBREY: Your room was in the middle, but I still think it's you. But it transferred to all toilets because I remember that sound. 

CAITLYN: Wow. You could hear it? 

AUBREY: Yeah. And we also saw the same dawn. The dawn was fucking spectacular. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. 

CAITLYN: It was a masterpiece. It was a masterpiece. This was the beginning of my marveling at getting God to notice. I get home and I commit to 40 days of dawn as a devotional gratitude practice for what I had felt that morning and to anchor it. And this is an example of ways that I take this guidance and I apply it to my life with radical trust. That I might not understand, it might exhaust me, but I felt the call to do this. And I trust that it's for me and that it's serving me in some way that I can't necessarily understand until I move through it. But my dawn devotional and I have another moment like this with my alarm clock, where I had this magnificent moment with a hummingbird. I'm connecting to the majesty of life. And then my alarm clock goes off right as I have this moment of epiphany. And instead of being upset at it, I turned to my phone, and I said, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I felt something happen around me that I could never do justice trying to describe. But it was as though everything collapsed. And I felt a sentient presence enveloping me in the most radical mind-bending way that felt like it responded to me saying thank you by being there with me. And I had this sudden connection that when you do something novel like that, something out of the ordinary, something that no one ever does, you get God to notice. And when God notices, then you open the miracle frequency. Then you're playing in participation and dialogue with the divine. And I immediately gaslit that notion. You don't need to get God to notice. God sees all. God notices everything. And that's when it really dialed. My thought was God is not busy. And then I realized, God is busy, because we are God. Have we ever been less busy as God than we are at this time? Completely consumed by our devices, and our busy schedules, and our calendars, and this idea that there's not enough time. And da, da, da, da, da. And it goes on and on. God's busy, because we are God. And we have to participate and do something different to break that bubble of story, that there's no time and that we're so busy. And when we break that bubble of story by doing something novel and disruptive, we're basically creating the synchronicity frequency through our actions. We're doing something that gets God to notice, the same way God gets us to notice through the synchronicities that we're given. And so we start this fascinating dialogue with the divine, where we're suddenly playing in the creator frequency. We're here. I'm here with the divine. I'm not here in this, what's beautiful is being radically present to the moment. But it's also zooming out of the tunnel vision of the one specific story that you have about it. 

AUBREY: There's a lot of things that I'm currently and currently been digesting that support this. Number one, the Kybalion, which is the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus, known in ancient Egypt as Thoth. And if you talk to Matías de Stefano, like we did, he was an actual being. A being that lived a thousand years, who had very pale skin, more robes and lived in ancient times. And it was an actual being that Mathias remembers. But ultimately, recorded this information. Went through mystery schools. There's the Emerald Tablets that were, there's a whole different lineage of ways, but it reemerged in like 1906 in the Kybalion. And the first principle, this first hermetic principle, which I'm hoping to talk about all these hermetic principles with Robert Grant, which will be a lot of fun. But all is mind, the universe is mental. That's the first principle from Hermes, from Thoth is, all his mind, the universe is mental. And I discovered this when I was trying to write the book, "Master Your Mind, Master Your Life," and I got to 60,000 words three times and failed on all of them. Because I could not extricate the mind from everything else. I couldn't separate, adequately separate the mind from the body, the mind from the spirit, the mind from the field of all minds. So it's either all part of the same thing, all interrelated and interwoven in a way, just different densities of the same substrate. And so one way to look at it, it's all just language, but all his mind, the universe is mental. Or all his light, the universe is fucking radiant. Whatever. You could say it a different way. But saying it mind and mental, I think, is really key. And I think it's also been echoed in this recent book that I'm reading by Neville, who is really talking about that everything in the Bible was written as an allegory of God being our own mind, God being mind. And all of the stories and just the psychodramas of the mind realizing itself and realizing itself in fullness. And then of course, Gafni who's writing how the universe is a universal love story. And it's all one story. So, he uses story as the substrate. That it's a story that's being written. But in all of these different things, they all mesh with what you're saying, which is, do something that actually gets you to radically notice in a radically unique way because you're participating in mind. And then the whole field itself, as you discover something novel, the whole field discovers something novel, because it's novel through your lens. And so it's never actually been seen by the universe. If you see something new, it has never been seen by God, because you are seeing it as God. So it's you seeing or experiencing something. And there's a delight in that. Just like there's a delight in us. Of course, the entire mind, the entire God, the entire consciousness field, the entire I am field delights in that moment of radical newness. And what creates the radical newness is your unique self having a unique perception or living a unique story? 

CAITLYN: Once you have that little pearl, it's really powerful, in my experience, when it is emergent and wholehearted. And usually, that happens without any planning. The potency and the power of a moment that you don't expect and you aren't engineering in any way is so powerful. And you can use that awareness to create choice points for yourself where you do the novel thing. So, what is Anti-novel? Addiction. This is like a different frequency than like, oh, I've got to stop or I shouldn't do. This isn't about shouldn't. This is about doing something unexpected. Starting to just play with that instead of being so hard on yourself that it has to be this way or shouldn't be this way. But starting just play with that as like, what do I expect to happen? And this, I think, comes back to the all is mind thing. I would venture to say that a lot of reality is generated off of what we expect. I'll just venture to say that and just leave it there. That's why it's so exciting when something unexpected happens. But if we can lay that down and just start to open that something completely unexpected might happen, we make room for it to become possible little by little, by little. One god, as one of us, makes room for the unexpected to happen. Then we're again, being able to call for those forward quantum leap miracle moments into potentiality just by saying it could happen. I think that's why it's so exciting when these things happen that feels like magic because it blows away our expectations. And then it gives us hope that maybe the thing that we hope could happen for the world, that doesn't make any sense. But maybe it could happen now because this little thing just happened. And then we're actually creating the space for that to be possible. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah. There's so much energy. And when you actually carve into fresh powder, into a fresh new story, we did this with Arkadia collectively. And this was like the big invitation that I had for everybody was like, we're in fresh powder. We're in a new story and we get to be a new iteration, a new evolution of ourselves in this new story, in this new place, in this new community, in this new way of looking at things. A completely donation-based festival with all of these opportunities and everything that was there. It was like, we're already in a new story, so let's take it as far as it can go. But in every little micro moment, we get those chances. And those are the moments that, even in a party setting, when you and Vylana get up and dance to "The Look." You just go for it or you do your Michael Jackson thing. Or Sariah does her "Mambo No. 5" or like these things that are always available. But you can just catch it, you can just catch a buzz of like a moment where you're into something and you'll feel the energy swell. And sometimes you want to cower back, because it's like, oh man, that's a lot. But when you step into it, there's so much energy that's released in that. And it's like, that's when you know that you are in full presence, and you as God and participating in the collective capital G, God, yeah, they're really paying attention at this point. And then everybody else around you is like, oh, shit, look at that. And it's really special. So I think all of us can practice finding and getting to these moments when we feel that energy of oh, maybe I shouldn't. Unless it's something dangerous or stupid. Do it. Fucking do it. 

CAITLYN: I felt that at the end of my talk when I was speaking about "The Wizard of Oz," and I suddenly felt like singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." And a part of me was like, “no. Don't.” And I was like, “just do.” Everyone paused and centered and started singing with me. That's a novel. That's surprising. So, it doesn't always have to be not doing a thing. It could be doing even better. Just do the thing. And this, I think, goes back to, it's in our intuition for all of us, male, female, doesn't matter. We have those little Inklings like, oh, I should do that. No, that's crazy. That's too much. I don't know how. That was my story for so long, I don't know how. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Well, this is a ridiculous masterpiece that we're living in here, Caitlyn. It's a ridiculous masterpiece. And I cannot fathom doing it without you in any way. I just can't fathom. It just doesn't even make sense. So, I love you and thanks. 

CAITLYN: I love you too. Thanks for not giving up on me. 

AUBREY: Now the tables are turned. No, don't give up on me. 

CAITLYN: I got you. I will stab someone in the neck. I'm here for it all. I'm here for it all. Yeah. Thank you so much for this adventure that we're on and what we get to do together. And I'm really honored to be on your podcast today. Look at this life. Look at this. It's really, really exciting to walk this journey and walk each other home. 

AUBREY: Follow her @thepoetqueen on Instagram. For now, that's the best place, I think. But there's going to be many more things. 

CAITLYN: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Many more things? Dances, workshops, events, more Arkadia—

AUBREY: Yeah. And if you want to come hang with us in Sedona in October for Fit For Service, we'll be out there. You'll be leading an ecstatic dance. Well, maybe Porangui will do that one out there. But maybe we'll do too. Who the fuck knows? You'll be leading something awesome. 

CAITLYN: I'll be leading something novel. And we'll be getting God to notice. It's going to be great. I'll keep you guys posted. Yeah, thanks for having me and helping me become the woman that I am today. 

AUBREY: Thanks for helping me become the man that I am. Love you, everybody. Bye, bye. 

CAITLYN: Love you.