42 | Extraordinary Awakening: A Conversation with Filmmaker Jonas Elrod - Alive Again

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and il podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Things are getting dark, and I think these conversations are
timely and to have some kind of deeper foundation or
understanding will be very helpful. Is a lightnment reel. I
have no idea, I don't care. I'm just trying to
be trumby present, grateful, more loving. I like to make
a couple of things. Hopefully I can make a difference
while I'm still down here. And that's about it.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome back to Alive Again Today. We're honored to be
joined by a truly remarkable guest filmmaker, Jonas l. Rod.
Jonas is a Southern writer, director, and producer who grew
up in Georgia with a deep appreciation for story as
a means for change. His appreciation for personal truth and
deeper meaning has been a compass for his fiction and
nonfictional work. Jonas is the creator of the powerful documentary

(01:01):
Wake Up, which chronicles his own sudden and life changing
spiritual awakening, a moment that opened him to visions, energies,
and realities that are beyond the ordinary world. His journey
has taken him through doubt, faith, and deep exploration of
what it means to be alive. Since then, Jonas has
continued to seek and share stories and perspectives on the

(01:23):
nature of reality, our mysterious place within it, and the
moments of transformation that shape who we are. His work
also caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who brought Jonas's
journey to a wider audience through his series in Deep
Shift on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Jonas and I have
a lot in common. We're both from the South. We
both had to work through some of that cultural programming
while holding onto the many truths and really grounded perspectives

(01:46):
that also come from the South. We are both storytellers
and filmmakers, and we're both of the same generation. Today,
we'll talk to Jonas about his path as an artist
and seeker, how his experiences can shine a light on
the universal human questions that we explore here, what happens
when the veil lifts and when life as we know
it is forever changed. And it's an honor to sit
down with Jenas today and explore his journey, his work,

(02:09):
what it means to truly wake up. It's just such
a wonderful movie. I mean you're you're a really good storyteller.
You're a really good filmmaker, you said at the end
of it. Near the end, you said, he said, I
don't know, I just feel absolutely alive again. I was like, Oh,
there is there. It is at the end of the
Y're doking, really, Oh there is Okay, that's it, that's

(02:29):
alive again.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I did. I don't remember saying that. I mean, it's
been a while.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Well maybe, I mean just a little bit in your words,
just about about that process of how this happened to
you and.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
My experience opening up to a bigger thing was very
phenomenon based. There would make a great scripted film. It
almost sounds like a film. I mean, it was up
to ten with the phenomena I started experiencing. I've always
I've been a filmmaker for years and years and years.
I was making a film on bears. Bears are large
cherry gay men, and that was my first documentary I

(03:03):
was doing. And these large harry gay men, well some
are large sum or not. I don't want if anybody,
but I liked the idea of subsets and cultures or
being double double triple minorities, and so these men would
come out. It's gay in the thirties, forties and fifties,
but they didn't fit the archetype of a twink. So
they would come out and they would get ostracized by
the straight community, and then some were rejected by the

(03:27):
gay community. So they became a community called Bears, which
just you know. I followed these guys all around the country.
They'll get mad at this, but they have essentially what
was called an International Bear Round to do in San Francisco,
which is essentially a beauty contest. All these bears come together,
they go on stage, y'all have community. It's a wonderful,
beautiful thing. I felt honored I got to be part

(03:47):
of that. So I'm following these bears for about a year. Tampa, Atlanta, Portland,
New York, LA. We all go to San Francisco to
do this big thing. And the night before I was
going to shoot the contact, my crew was driving up
from LA and San Francisco. I started seeing things. I
started hearing voices and in the last about nine hours

(04:08):
and my drug guy, I don't judge people do drugs.
My drug guy didn't hit my head against the windshield
fifteen times. It was suffering some trauma. But I'm charging batteries,
make my shot list and starts getting cold in the room.
There's a light in the corner that opens up like
a portal or something, and all these spirits started coming in.

(04:30):
It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It's
this weird dichotomy the feelings I was having. For some reason,
I knew it was real. I didn't think that something
was going on in my brain. And a lot of
just crazy phenomenon happened that night. I was having glimpses
of stuff weeks leading up to it. On my way

(04:52):
up from flying to New York to LA to the Thumb,
I looked out the window. I saw lights moving around,
and then I sat in my seat and look forward.
You see two thousand and one right, Thank god that
would have really deriled the interview if you hadn't seen
two thousand and one. So the tunnel they're going through
at the end of all the lights, I saw my
version of that, just sitting in my seat again, sky
am all on my lap looking straight and I saw

(05:13):
all these vivid colors.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Did you turn into an old man and see child.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
I've always been an old man, just contankerous, even in
when I was little, just crping about kids on the lawn.
But I was having glimpses of this phenomenon, and that
culminated the night before this big shoot. Yeah, so I
would see entities and spirits in the room. I saw geometry.
I saw like it was just it's hard to explain.
I saw an object move in the room. Again. It

(05:40):
was beautiful and wild and also terrifying. Toward the end
of this experience, which this is why I don't do
whyahwa Aska Dmt. I've just I've seen through that veil
very vividly numerous times. I don't really need to keep
doing that or keep pokem my head through the veil.
But I saw a vision which I didn't understand. But
I saw a by sickle like it went across the

(06:01):
room and then it tumbled. And months and months later,
my best friend Dyna motorcycle wreck and what I was
seeing was a vision of his death. I didn't know
that at the time, so all this information was flooding
at me. And then of the night I was told
very specifically to expose what was happening to me. And

(06:23):
that was at the next day my cruise up We're filming.
These large Harry gay men on stage have their beauty contest,
dress up like firemen, and they're having a great time.
And I'm holding the camera trying to keep my shit
together because I'm seeing oars come out of people and
spirits run around. And so you didn't you didn't call
off the shoot? No, No, I'm blue collar man. I mean,
if we're gonna do something, we're gonna do something. So

(06:44):
I'll work playing hurt right and I would see, well,
I didn't know what they were at the time. I
see chakras opening up, and so we filmed for the weekend.
I interviewed about thirty bears, and you know, completed the
film and just fell apart after that. I was very,
very lucky. When I came back to New York. This
artist I'm friends with, I told him about my experience.

(07:05):
We're sitting in the car chain smoking. This one does
in New York. I'm not thinking I'm telling the whole experience.
I look out and he's pale. He's like, I know
you should meet And immediately immediately I met a real
shaman and who would be my co director for a
wake up two days later, and they grounded me, and
they explained to me what was happening. They let me

(07:25):
know is okay, and they validated a lot of things
that was going through. There's an adage of like when
the students are the teacher will show up. I don't
like it just like that, but that was certainly true
in my case. Yeah, so I got confirmation that something
had opened up in my consciousness to access all the stuff.

(07:46):
But there's still lots and lots and lots of work
to integrate that, to ground it, to be a piece
with it, to decide if you're going to use it,
blah blah blah. Yeah, And so when people go see
psychics and shaman and blah blah blah, they're all, well,
a lot of them are real if they don't do
internal work. You know that the gift can be great,
the water can be great, but if it's a dirty glass,

(08:06):
it's a dirty glass. So you have to work through
these many, many stages. So I'll say the whole wake
up thing, it proved two things that love is real,
God is real, spirit's real, Therapy is a good thing,
and getting grounded it's a good thing, And that no
one's special, it's just a unique experience. But that takes
a long time. In my estimation, I'm a slow learner,

(08:27):
so to get there, it's probably a lot to give you.
But that's that's the crux. SOO Spirit said expose it. Okay,
people showed up and we got on the road, exposing me.
Waking up to this in real time. I wish I
could just do films about people that drive real fast
cars and have good looking girlfriends and banks. But I

(08:50):
haven't talked about this in so this is. It sounds
absurd telling you like this, this is the gig man,
this is But it's.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
A calling, right, I mean you feel that it's it's
something that you are compelled to to share.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Without a doubt. Well, but I didn't when they said
expose it, I didn't know they meant they really are saying,
exposed you. I supposed to me. I thought I was
going to do like a Michael Moore thing and meet
people with different phenomenon India. No, no, no, I spose you.
My girlfriend Shirlin didn't know that, so it was supposed her.
So it's exposed us as a couple, and it exposed
us working through a challenge. Yeah, and it's you know,

(09:22):
and so there's layers upon layers. So I didn't know
that at the time, but I let go and disgusted.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
You documented your own transformation, is what I saw.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
In other words, well, that's the kind word transformation. But
I definitely documented my experience of becoming at peace with this,
understand what it is, you know, so and so forth.
So I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
I was really excited to invite you to come talk
to me on this show because I feel like we
are kindred spirits in that sense, like we have a
lot in common. We're both from, you know, the god
fearing South as as you stated in Wake Up.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Oh, I said that, Well, it's it's I like that idea,
or maybe I heard to over say it.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
I don't know, but it's a it's a yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Think it was South. Yeah, that's us.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
We're about the same age, I think, and we're both filmmakers,
we're both storytellers, and like you, maybe I've just always
been compelled with an interest in what the hell is this?
This this human experience, you know, and the idea behind
a live Again is something that hopefully, in the best case,
an area is unifying. We're all experiencing the same human condition,

(10:31):
and that is that we're all going to die. Everybody
we know, everybody we've ever known, at some point will
pass from this earth. And in the meantime we can
look at each other, you know, without have been hard
and hopefully you know, ask the questions of like why
is this, what are we doing here? What is this experience?
But yeah, so I feel like we have a lot

(10:52):
in common with some of these things. And the one
of the biggest or most interesting things to me about
your work is how accessible you are, Jenas. And by
that I mean if the common guy out there or
person out there has some sense of skepticism about the
nature of reality, or you know, we have sort of

(11:13):
a Western box, I like to think about it, and
certain ideas can go in that Western box, and other ideas,
all of the other ideas, like as many ideas as
there are grains of sand on the oceans, there's some
grains of sand in that Western box that are accepted
as truth. And then there's a lot more out there
that's not There's so much more that we don't know.
And if we could just sort of open up a
little bit and be a little bit more open to

(11:34):
the possibilities and the curiosity of that and less certain
about Yeah, in our skepticism and our cynicism in general
in this culture, I guess is one of them.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, it's it's uh. I'd really trying to hard out
to get political or just this new thing about Bravado
with maximum ignorance. Like I try not to speak if
I don't know about a subject, I try not to.
But just we just know everything now. And I don't
want to slag off Florida, but there is a Florida
energy of just like I know everything.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
And I grew up with my parents the God here inself.
They rejected the church, and they grew and they raised
us in a non religious capacity. They're atheists, and it's
taken me a long time to realize that they had
their own dogmas, just like somebody who was in the
religious fervor might have their own dogmas, you know, And
they have their own dogmas in the idea of materialism

(12:26):
and the idea that you know, we're just warm food
once we die, you know. When I would go to
like Camp Cherokee, which is a YMCA camp in rock Yiled,
South Carolina, and kids were scared of me when they
found out that I don't believe in God, you know,
oh wow, and then you were I was probably eight, nine, ten.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah that's you know, that's hard to grow up with.
It was interesting. Yeah, well I assume it is, and
that would be weird, like you're not in our club
and we're scared for it. I'm like, dude, I'm eight,
I want to play with Star Wars figures.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
And like it sent me into a you know, kind
of a punk rock bent where I was like, you know,
fuck all you guys, like, screw you guys with your
dogma and everything. And it's taken me a long time
to go okay, my own dogmas have blinded me, perhaps
to some of the truths, and I just it took
me a while to start to break that down. I
had several inciting incidents in my own story that helped

(13:17):
me to see that maybe that was an arrogance and
maybe I should make myself vulnerable to larger notions about
life and death. And I know that you with your storytelling,
and because this happened to you and you had sort
of a similar background, I just I'll just see you
as a unifier, man, I see you as your story
is one for all of us who are or maybe

(13:37):
don't have license in this culture to believe in certain
truths or to see outside that western box, that limited
western box. Your story kind of gives us license to
do that because you're very grounded. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
It does. That's so much to unpack, and I appreciate
the kind words, and I just don't do this anymore.
And when I first started doing this, the wake up
the phenomenon was still on about seven out of ten.
It was still very very and so I was going
to like, fuck it. I know that this is a
dream within a dream. I've seen it, and so always

(14:17):
the punk rock thing I definitely resonate with. Anger makes
a lot of sense. Anger makes a whole lot of sense,
Like really this fuck that that makes sense to me?
Always has. You know, the kids making fun of you
are like scared about or you're going to liver die.
That's a you know, I don't know how you sit
with it now, but that may have been a gift
that may have planned a seat early on to get

(14:38):
you to where you are today.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
At a very early age, probably when other kids were
playing with storers figures, I was kind of going this
isn't absurd condition we live in yeah, which.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Agreed upon absurdity. This is all agreed upon weirdnesssch We're
just conditioned for this. We're born into this, we're going
to die into this, but we just all agree upon it.
So if you start saying radical shit that could be true, true,
what do we do with that? We lock them up
in the singing song, Oh we dismissed somewhere to become outsiders.
I've got a five year old and a one and

(15:09):
a half year old, and so I'm always kind of
looking at how they're looking at it. And I don't
know if my son's got the thing, he's five, but
I think my daughter does.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
And so.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
My son, unfortunately has been around a lot of death.
I was of late. I hit a deer. It was traumatic.
I hated it. He hated it. My mother died, his
grandmother going to pass, our dog passed, and he's like,
where do they go? He's like, well, I know where
I think they went, but this is up to you
to find out and discover. But I'll give you my opinion.
And so I'm trying to block it where my stuff

(15:43):
doesn't go on to him unless he asks. But then
I'll take them to a private school and I have
to come up and I hear they're teaching all this
religious son, It's like, well, I don't I don't know
how to navigate this. I'll just do as I can
to kind of block it where his channel's still open. Yeah,
he can still kind of connect and he can kind
of figure out himself. Well, but for you not and
raised with religious parents, that was the same way, which
to me is a gift. I wanted to go to church.

(16:05):
I thought it like nineteen, I was going to become
a preacher. Then I went there and we're roughly the
same age. So Star Wars is a big deal. It
was before I can remember them talking about the Force
being demonic. Wow, really yeah, And I can remember talking
about the Halloween is wrong in church and gay people
are bad and I just like, this isn't what I
want to do now. That was my church experience in

(16:26):
the South, So my career kind of went a different way.
So it was kind of fun to me. When I
was young, I either wanted to be a preacher or
a filmmaker. Yeah, some weird way on this odd hybrid, right,
just not preaching a path, but just this is the
experience I've had. Yeah, I don't care if you believe
it or not, but it can be a helpful cool
if not, because and I hate to sell Hallmark taglines,

(16:49):
but I do think everyone has a piece of this,
and I can only get my ass kicked so much
by the universe. Like I had a real swagger when
this all happened. I either felt like I was very
special or a victim. And my girlfriend at the time, so.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Your ego was inflamed around the idea of this.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Not inflame, but I thought I had this special ability,
special thing, not huge ego, but just like a thing,
and that I felt like, no, no, I'm kind of screwed.
This is horrible. I don't I feel like a victim.
I don't know how to turn this off. So it
took me some time to kind of figure out how
to ground it. So I appreciate you saying I'm grounded,
because I certainly didn't feel that way when it came
out or when this started.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
I'll say, not just grounded, but there's a vulnerability to you.
So you were all on that there was a vulnerability
to you, and there was a there was a sensitivity
to you that but you're also you know, you're a
normal dude. You're not a guru. You're now and and
it gives us other normal folks some access because we
can identify with you as a as a human being.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
First. Well that's the point though, Yeah, I mean there
was a time in my career I probably could have
got on that train of these spiritual people that talk
and you like them, and they sell DVDs about meditation.
This bothered me. Didn't want to do any of that,
And so I liked telling his stories and I would
like to tell other people's stories, but I'm weary of

(18:07):
these constructs. And for me, I needed to find other
people that had certain sensitivities like I did. And I
found two great friends I've been friends with over twenty
years that understood this. But I don't need a whole
community of people to see a guru to kind of
do that. Yeah, you know, these are own but like,
if you meditat in a group, that's a bigger wave

(18:27):
to serve. If you sing and acquire, it's a bigger wave.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
But you know, my parents, when I said that, they
rejected the church. Like there was a time in the
sixties when they were deciding whether or not to let
black people be and they're you know, part of the congregation.
And he was rallying for these folks to you know,
to get past to see the teachings of Jesus and

(18:50):
to open their hearts and open their minds. And they
and he saw the he saw their dogma and their fear,
and he said, well, if religion can bring people to this,
then it's dangerous. Only part of it ever again, and
I'll never darken your doors again. Then he left it,
but it left me with this feeling like he rejected

(19:12):
it so completely that it let that I grew up
in this sort of atheist agnostic kind of environment.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, but well, I mean that's I definitely have been
known to clear kitchen table just screw this. But I mean,
being agnostic makes all the sense in the world. To me,
Atheism feels like a reaction, which I've certainly had my
modes and all. In Funner millitsis seems very you don't
want to question some of the stuff. So it's it's strange.

(19:41):
You know, there's what eight billion people on the planet,
three to four major religions. I guess Buddhism is more
of a philosophy. So three major religions and then Buddhism
answer five questions that we all kind of have the
same ones when you're talking about earlier, like what am
I doing here when I die? It's got cool, he's
got a big beard. All those five basic questions we
all have. Yeah, it is absurd to me. A billion people,

(20:04):
three major religions, five simple same questions we all have,
but there's only three major places to turn. So I
like that people are starting to kind of branch out
and have their own experience. Like I resonate with teachings
of Christ, also resonate with teachings of the Buddha. I'm
just not card caring for anyone. I try to go
off my experience. I try to plug in, and I
have myself to blame or credit if things are kind

(20:28):
of on a certain path, right, I think people are
waking up to that. My wife works in advertising. The
girlfriend who was with me when all this time opened up.
God bless this woman's soul, got two beautiful kids and
lives worked out pretty good. But she talks about these
younger generations. I forget which one. That they're all existentialists.
They're all asking these big boy, big girl questions, and

(20:49):
I get it. So let me give you another compliment,
or at least start one. One, You've got a great
speaking voice. And two things are getting dark and now
some goause they don't be po Now things are getting dark,
waters are wet, And I think these conversations are timely
because I think a lot of people are watching buildings
falls like this is what we're doing right now, it is,

(21:10):
and to have some kind of deeper foundation or understanding
will be very helpful. Thanks. Yeah, I mean it moments, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
One hundred percent. I mean it's not that we're not political,
because we have we have a talk back after the
show and the group of people who sit around after
each story that we report on the show and we
all hash it out from our different perspectives and oh nice.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So there is that.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
But by not being political, I just mean that I
want people to unify in the things we have in common, Yeah,
across whatever, at least.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah, we all struggle with anxiety on some level. We
all want to all want to take care of our
children and our loved ones. It's all same, the same stuff. Yeah,
and it's wild to me over this place. I'm very
pleasure and trauma. We're all going to experience some trauma.
Oh yeah, without doubt. So I'm looking at my kids, like, okay,
Like my son is beautiful. He looks like he came
off of point break casting and he's at school and

(22:00):
he's got He says, a class with these two girls,
and the girls apparently mean to him, and I say, well,
maybe they think you're cute. No, it's funny. He has
so much Conveci's five. I said, well maybe, And I
just realized, Oh, he's going to go through all this stuff.
You and I do, all the heartbreak, all this stuff,
and that's the gig he signed up for. That's a
gig you and I signed up for. This is a gig. Yeah,
highs and loves. Otherwise, I don't think we didn'tcarnate. These

(22:21):
meat suits have these conversations trying to figure out what
we're looking at. So I try to be at peace
with that, but you know, it's apparent. It gets tough.
But but people don't want to talk about Like we're
on the airplane looking at sky Mall and outside the
wings on fire. Now now it's not a fire. I'm
looking at sky Moh my god, you can have a
year's subscription to this. It's like, but the wings on
fire were so terrified to look at the damn thing. Right,

(22:44):
But this is what we're doing. And I think I'm
very political or I just want to Yeah, I have
some righteous justice me too. And I would comment on
and they said, well, you don't seem very spiritual because
you're so upset about this. So dude, christ flipped over tables.
What were we talking about here? So I'm not lazy optimistic.

(23:04):
I am optimistic. We'll get through this. I still know when.
But anyway, these are time. This is a good time
to have these conversations because a lot of things we've
put all our belief in is falling apart.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Our conversation with Jonas l Rod will continue after this break,

(23:41):
and we're back in the studio with filmmaker Jonahs l Rot.
This is about storytelling as healing. You set adages, you ease.
This is an adage. But these adages, like parables, like
anything else that they have way, they have meaning. They're
not just you know, even the force right, even everything

(24:04):
not notice says this stuff has meaning and it comes
from a richness of tradition. So you're a storyteller, a
documentary and narrative filmmaker, and it's fascinating through your experience
in searching for these answers, it called to mind these
universal phases of the hero's journey. So there's the departure,
the ordeal, the transformation, the return, the hero's journey. Right,
all of the justse of Campbell stuff. The process of ego, death, loss, grief, trauma,

(24:28):
and healing follows the same structure as these mythic stories,
the archetypal hero's journey. Even the inciting incident, the Dark
Night of the Soul, which was your Bear's documentary when
you're the night before.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
It was dark knight. I mean I saw some stuff.
I guess. Yeah, it was a dark knight.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
That was your inciting incident, as were I guess. The
question is what do you see as the role of story,
in the power of storytelling, especially film, in the role
of healing, or in the role of sharing this message
for others?

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Well, I think it's everything. I mean, music to me
is the greatest way to have a spiritual, transcendent moment.
And I got in a nick cave late in life
and then God I did like I can plug up
to the big light bulb in the sky and just
weep and dance and joy and elation and just that's
a gift. Film is not a country mile second place,

(25:19):
but it's second place. I mean you have more elements
of that. And so men men don't do this. They're
all closed up and so worry about stuff. So I
think what you can tell stories about and being vulnerable
about what you're going through, what you're looking at, what
you're trying to do. From a seeking point of view,
I think everything can be spiritual. Like for me, Fight
Club and American Beauty is the same film, once from

(25:39):
the Divine Mask and once from the Divine Feminine, but
it's about men trying to understand and see can get
there through different ways. I think there's both that this
film come around the same time as a coincidence like
that help people look at a thing. When done right,
these things can be very transformative. I'm not going to
go to a megachurch and do my thing that way

(26:00):
as an audience member, but I watch a movie seventeen times,
Oh wow, the way the sonic wrapped around what this
guy said this, And I think we referenced movies A
couple of times. But for me it gets me closer upstairs,
and the.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
And these movies that come out they hit the cultural
consciousness at similar times. So I used to argue at
the back in the day that pulp fiction and Forrest
Gump we're very pretty much about the same thing, having
to do with destiny, having to do with oh, yeah,
you know, you know, box of chocolates versus yeah, yeah,
other briefcase. Just see the Samuel Jackson journey.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I haven't put that together. I like that, but I
could go on and on on that one. But well, no,
but I think people plug into a thing. It's like
the New York Times crossword, like, no, we can get
the last piece and when you get it, eighteen seconds
on the other side of the planet, I'll get it.
Like we're all plugging the same. Yeah, so it's kind
of rad. This is a Macus and Quentin tarantinog going, Okay,
we're gonna plug into this thing. And it's something does

(26:52):
another thing I should have I should have known.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
About a long time ago because or given more power.
A friend once told me said, you know, don't tell
any out of your story, don't tell anybody of your
film idea, because the many. You tell them there's ten
other people on the planet. They're going to do it
before you do it as well. It was a long
time ago, but but I do have a lot of
experiences in my filmmaking career where the same film that

(27:16):
I made will also be at the at the film festival,
you know, or or I'll have an idea and it's
very specific, and then I'm thinking, I'm gonna have to
see the studio because they somehow they got my script
and they somehow they read my idea. And I'm like,
but or was it just the zeitgeist?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Right?

Speaker 1 (27:31):
You know?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah? No, I I guy was we was writing an inception? Yeah,
and then an inception came out like four months later. Yeah,
he's upsets. It was different. But yeah, listen, I think
big ideas. It's hard being these meat suits and having
your thing, but I think they're going to come how
they come. And I think, you know, inception plays with
the idea of these different layers dream within a dream

(27:53):
within a dream, which you know, there's a lot of
religious ideas. It's one I subscribe to. So I don't
remember where we were. It just goes everywhere. Yeah, and
I thought it might no I know, I appreciate that,
but I was kind of just interested in your take
on these.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Structures, these sort of mythic structures, and these these the
hero's journey as it applies to And so you, as
a storyteller, you're innately familiar with that process and how
to tell a story, and just seeing that is do
you feel like your film has helped to sort of
raise consciousness or helped with other people to heal, or
the films that you've made in the work you've done

(28:31):
since then as a film itself as a power of healing.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
I guess yeah. I mean that's the intent. I don't
want to say what I've done or not done. I've
I felt honored to be involved with things that seemed
to have helped people. And it's a tricky thing. And
that's why I kind of really stepped back from this
because when people saw Wake Up, people were like, oh
my god, I have the same thing or my cousin.
And there's a fine line and I don't have it

(28:56):
figured out between having some sort of sensitive and it's
I'm no casting director yesterday and I'm working on other projects.
Very spiritual and I asked him about his intuition that
you got on offensive. He's like, oh, I don't, I
don't want talk about the spirituality is no, I'm not
talking about that. I could care less what you believe.
But you have to be intuitive on some level or
do what you do on the way you do it.

(29:18):
For me, I I watch films. I listened to music
constantly because on some level it heals me or on
some level it plugs me upstairs. That's the big thing
for me. It brings joy, it brings it. If I
took me a year to agrieve with my dad and
I had to use other things to help move the energy.
And when it started moving, boys started moving. But so

(29:40):
I just there's other people can make film.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Open your brain.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
It should the best stuff does. So that's what I
try to do. And yeah, I figured wake Up would
be absolute career suicide, but that led to other places
and I eventually had a TV show which right took
the wake up template about other people having these breakdown
breakthrough experiences and try to widen that up. You know,

(30:09):
it doesn't have to be the sensational. I'm seeing dead
people and yeah, other levels of consciousness. That's very very
high drama, right, It could be Hey, I got fired
from my job. I don't know I am anymore. You know,
all these things can be a catalyst. So I'm asking
the big questions you are.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
I got interested in genre as a film. I never
thought I would, But I got more and more interested
in genre, and specifically sci fi and horror. But sci
fi as it occurred to me that at its best,
like the best forms of sci fi and horror put
the human condition on steroids, and it's like a jet

(30:45):
trip straight into your fear or into you know, what
it means to be a human being. It really pushes,
you know, the external forces that happen in sci fi
and horror push the internal forces in a way that's
that you can't do with any other genre. Maybe, Yeah,
it's going to deconstruct what it used.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
To be, you know to live in this culture.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, in very specific ways, and to construct elements of
consciousness and in very specific ways that are playing with
your brain just in the framing if nothing else.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, And I debate, and E would say this. So
when I saw the tunnel, like, yeah, I'm probably on
the cheapest airline I could afford me my film, it
reminded me of two colors coming at me, the vibrants
I've seen, and I'd be it'd be ridiculous how to
bring up Lynch. So I was having experiences and like
with lights, and I remember when I was sitting in

(31:40):
a hotel room and things would get altered. Lights were
kind of flicker like, but I know, no one else
gonna see him. They were flicker and that was kind
of touchdown the Lench always did. And he was a
big transgental meditators, you know. So I think that these authors,
these filmmakers see this thing, they don't really know what
it is, they put it out there. And then when
I was having these experiences of going deeper, I would
see some of these things that reminds me of so

(32:01):
and so. Right now, you could argue a very good
argument all day long, chicken or egg. But I think
the best filmmakers are diving deep and putting this out there.
They may not even know what it means, but on
some challenge. Yeah, and then we look at it and recognize,
oh there's a truth to that.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
That's that's the danger I feel that is upon us
with AI right now, Oh lordy, get too far into it.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
But like, yeah, yeah, I'm so very nervous about all that.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Well, and a lot of what we're talking about today
is is, you know, this experience on planet Earth, this
experience in this meat avatar has to do with suffering
to some degree or you know, challenges, trauma, you know,
these ego deaths, these things that are going to continue
to hit us until we to force us to grow
in different ways. And I feel like that's true of filmmaking,

(32:49):
the creative process, and writing. So it occurred to me
when I started doabbling with Ai, I was like, oh wait,
this is kind of scary. This is a little bit.
It was giving me these perfect sort of forms, right
that were generated from all the mass collection of forms,
and I could tell it what kind of form I wanted,
and they would generate a form in their writing. And

(33:11):
I realized that if I don't have if I don't
if there's no struggle for me, you know, or anybody
as an artist or as a writer or a filmmaker
or storyteller, If I don't struggle, if there's no sort
of point when I'm staring at the cursor and there's
a blank page, and if there's no writer's block, then

(33:32):
I then and if I don't have to do the
hard fucking work to find what the story is. Then
there's no POV, there's no there's nothing coming. I'm not
a channel anymore. My channel to all of this zeitgeist
and everything that that that I would be useful for
to the universe is closed or or just cut just
cut off. And so it occurred to me that you

(33:54):
have to do the hard work to write. You have
to suffer in order to grow, in order to be
a channel to these ideas. The good idea is that
the lightning in the bottle, the shit that happens in
the editing room, all that stuff, if somebody else, if
it just happens, then then what are you? Some sort
of curator and of what you know? But I just
feel like I feel like, unless like AI kills the channel,

(34:16):
I can see that that's interesting, the consciousness channel.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
We would go on shoots. I would always prep the
crew up and I would say, embarrassingly, now go look,
this is war, and so we're not going home until
we get it. So I just got a shoot last week,
especially six days we don't have it, seven days don't
have it, ten days we got it. All very intense material.
I can't just manifest the film about butterflies. But I

(34:41):
realized I used to always tell the crew, this is war.
So on some level you could argue, well, I'm manifesting
the camera blowing up and the pitch your car, you know,
going down the street. So it's funny I'll talk about
spiritual stuff. I'm always very boring when I talk about
the career of process. But I mean there's certainly for
my work, and it's been pain of suffering that's been

(35:02):
into it, and I think that you get to a place, well,
I understand this pain of suffering, so maybe I can
translate someone else's pain of suffering, but on the other
side of that, hopefully as a release of joy or
understanding or peace. Otherwise, you know, you don't go through
the dark to get the more dark, right, you want
to go to the dark to get the the light.
And those are the things that get me going.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
I mean, I feel like your movie and your other
work it is a bridge. I mean, I feel like
there's a unique role in not just bridging the gap
between sort of this physical and this spiritual world, but
also bridging the gap between the idea of you know,
consciousness as a big cloud that is not local, you know,

(35:44):
and and all of us who have grown up thinking
that it was does not make sense. I mean, I
feel like you're granting us access through the emotional, not
through some intellectual process. But you're watching your movie. It
was like the heartstrings are being pulled. The confused. You know,
I'm going through with you a medden, fine with what
you're going through, just by nature of the filmmaking process itself.
And it's and it opens up in the end in

(36:07):
a way that makes me, you know, crying, and I'm
feeling like I suddenly have an open chakra and an
access to something that I before was inaccessible.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Oh, I swear to god, it's beautiful, so lovely to hear.
Thank you, you're good.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
You're doing the filmmaking thing that.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Oh I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
My wife's a smart one and the pretty one. And
she kept saying, she kept saying, wake Ups is a
love story. It's a love story. And I didn't realize
I should know it's a love story. And we don't
realize when we got on these spiritual pursuits, even if
we're pull kicking a dragon or someone leaning the charge
on everyone around us. You're kids, everyone, they're going with us.
It took a while because it was a dark corner

(36:44):
for me to see that I went through my things
that everyone around me went through. My wife, mother of
my beautiful children went with me. And now I have
more understanding of like, oh fuck, did she she got
to go through this going? Is he schizophrenic? Is he
an interesting funny schizophrenic? Or is he onto some Yeah?
Or maybe he's onto something? But can we talk about
something else? You know what I mean? Because when it

(37:05):
first hits, there is not nothing else. You're like, you
can't at least for me, I can't understand. And here's
what I want to say. If this didn't happen to me,
I don't know how open I would be to hear
about this stuff. Right, give it enough pants suffering? Sure,
because parent suffering is a great wake up thing. Sure, Okay,
this ain't work and I'm tired of hiting my thumb
with a hammer for eighteen years. Let me look into it, right.
But to me, it's just so normal. I know for

(37:27):
some people's like, really, you full of shit? Like I
have the luxury of being Adam Yack is south By Southwest.
Adam was going to put out the film. It was
a dream cometry to sit there at a party and
talk to Adam about pop product, bass playing and bigger
picture of spirituality. I'm very aware that I had forces
I could have never dreamed upon pushed me to get
me to a place just by me saying yes.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
But yeah, I think now this happened. I mean, no,
I'm good. Well, I don't want to do this. There's
a question I have for you about that. So and
your girlfriend wife now girlfriend at the time, sort of
was skipped goal and she was your sounding word, which
she was also your devil's ad to get to some degree.
It seemed like in the film she's was very protective.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
And so what I found is I think that I
grew up in a bit of a broken home. It's
not a spunctual home. I mean, I don't have a
corn in the market. You were talking about struggles you
had as well. Then on some of conscious level, I
keep trying to pull together family. So I discovered this
spiritual community. Well, I don't really want to have a
religious community that was a spiritual one as well. Communities
are communities. So I think my girlfriend was trying to

(38:28):
protect me from some of the people that may be
in this community that are always on the up and
off right, Well, that's because spiritually is a really easy
place to hide and you can reinvent yourself. Why I
was a waiter, Now I wasn't an actor. Now I'm
a spiritual guru. You can do that, and to me,
that's very, very dangerous, right, And I think that's part
of what I was seeing when I was kind of
coming up and it's like, it's interesting, I'm just going

(38:49):
to go be the weird of to makes films and
y'all go do y'all.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
That's that's where That's where I That's where you got me.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Well, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 (38:57):
That's where you you That's where I was hooked because
I was like, okay, all right, so you have a superpower.
You may have a superpower and that you can see
things that are that are invisible to other people, but
your real superpower is your ability to call bullshit. I
would say, jenis, oh, so appreciate it. No, I'm serious.
And like I used to tell my friends joke with
me that, like what you know, what is your superpower?

(39:17):
And we always have this stupid game of like your
superpower it's it's always something that's miraculous but also lame.
And I'm like, my superpower as a director is that
I can detect bullshit, but only in imaginary circumstances. No,
but I but you are a bullshit detector, Like I
think that. And I had a question for you as
you were making this and as you've moved down this

(39:37):
path with what you've experienced, compared to the things and
the people and the different spiritual folks that you've met
along your journey, were there some people that you came
across that you're like, you call bullshit, like okay, this
feels like snake oil, or you know, or some.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Of them may be unconscious, you know. I think that
people are constantly trying to hustle. I think there's some
good people out there that have some unconscious blocks, as
we all do. I just think I met this incredible
woman named Catherine Yunt, and she's a channel out of Arizona,
and that's my homegirl. And I've met some great people
that have doing incredible work. I know should get highlighted

(40:16):
a little bit more. And then I mess some people
if they're in wake up. I resonate with them on
some level, but now it's my cup of tea. And also,
and I hate to go to like tired outages, but
there is juice in those. It's like some of those
teachers really shift and change my life. But I got
one I need to get. It's time to move on.
And so you may see some of that because there
was a Sufi mystic named leel and bond Lee. He said,

(40:38):
what do you want to do with it? And I'm
very naive and oh, I just want to help people
and you know, be cautious and change the world. And
he's challenging the whole time. He's like politely, He's like, yeah,
that's all bullshit. What do you want to?

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
He could just see through the kind of spiritual searching
one on one, which I do give people a lot
of space for that because you don't know any better,
like you're just free falling, like what does this mean?

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, but if they're in the film, I think they're great.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
But it's kind of when I started getting a little
bit more known and by different rooms and different parties
and different things, I'd started seeing stuff that it's just
on my cup of tea. Because I think if you're
gonna say, hey, I'm this guy that can do this
thing and help you do that thing. You should at
least be in therapy or have some analysis. You should
clean the glass as much as you can clean it, okay,

(41:23):
And spirituality can sometimes be the wild West. Like you
don't want your like if you see a therapist, I'd
want my therapist to be in therapy or at least
have some therapy. And so with some of the spiritual stuff,
which seems dangerous to me, is like you can just
be Wow. I was a bartender, which great me to be,
and now I might be the spiritual guru because I
look really good with this beard and the road works
and my bill looks good. And you can kind of

(41:44):
transform yourself into something without any kind of not much effort.
I think what I want to say is I met
some people that really change my life, made me feel grounded.
I've got friends I met through that experience. I consider
them dear friends I'm still close to. I need other
people to kind of have a shorthand so I don't
feel crazy. Yeah yeah, yeah, but again I'm still sure.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Well I again, well again, that's what that's what it
is attractive about your story and about about you as
a storyteller and as as somebody who's who's had this experience.
Is that I can trust you, you know.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Man, you gotta get me cry. I appreciate the nice words.
I really do.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Well, it's it's true. But I guess this leads me
to some of the people that you did meet along
the way that you know. So you started this with
this experience and then and you've come through and searching,
and in your searching you've met some people that maybe
spoke to you and spoke authentically and you're from what
you saw, and other people who maybe were less So

(42:42):
talk about some of the things you've learned, some of
the things that you've taken away, or some of the
ideas or perspectives that you encountered in your searching to
figure out what the fuck was going on. Yeah, that's
still that that made you go, Okay, I'm I don't
need to doubt this.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
You know. My why my girlfriend at the time I
couldn't have She was a mirror for me, and I
was a mirror for her. And so the drama drama
kid and me of when to go around the world
and go through the big doors and talk to the
Lama and all that stuff. I probably could have done
this a little bit simpler if I just was more present,

(43:20):
more present in my relationship, because seeking can also be addictive,
and so the spiritual seeker, cool, you get the answer,
I'm gonna keep seeking.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
So that becomes a new identity here.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Okay, all this God's stuff, spirit stuff, while the world
stuff is real. Yeah sure, sure, yes real, And so
I would have people reach out to me. He's like,
oh my God, I saw your film. I'm like you,
I've been doing DMT for seven years. I'm like, okay,
you having fun. Well, no, I'm trying to get closer
to God. Well so are you sure? Yeah? Yeah, well
are you trying to or be like I'm trying to
see if God's real and I've seen God's roll and

(43:55):
I keep doing it, and so they're like, I'm doing
the DMT so I can heal. No, No, I feel
like you're doing the DMT because you don't want to
get high now that there's anything wrong with it. So
it kind of helped me to split things apart and
just kind of get to the essence of things. It
definitely crushed whatever identity I thought I had. You know,
I was probably an arrogant little punk at one point.

(44:16):
It kind of broke me of that. It helped me
call myself out more of my bullshit, which we all have.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
It.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
It helped me try to and I would think, so
drop in deeper in love with my girlfriend wife, and
it would it just it brought up a lot of stuff.
I realized I have a lot of work to do
on myself. So it presented this is the way through
the one thing that was hard for me. And I
would talk to these lamas and mystics and shaman you know,
oh my, all these people, and I would tell them
all these crazy stories like yeah, that's cute. So yeah,

(44:46):
but bye bye none, No, that's cute. But don't you
want to know I don't want to talk about it.
I was like why, and I could going, you have
to dismiss this phenomenon. You have to get through this phase.
You're in a face. You're getting high. I was saying this,
by the DMT, you're getting high on the phenomenon. The
phenomenon is on the thing. The thing is God and
then all this. But you're you're distracted. You either getting high.
Had this great experience and this happened. This quiz has happened. Okay,

(45:07):
that's cute gathering and I'm special or I'm different. I said, no, no,
this is is fine. You have to outgrow this. So
maybe it took a year or two longer than I
would care to have meant to. I'll grow it. It
was pretty all consuming. But my patient girlfriend watched me
go through this. He'll get there, he'll get there, or
he schizophrenic. So part of the search was am I okay?

(45:29):
And then when they said I'm okay? Wherever that really means.
There wasn't a tumor or snaps, this weren't miss fire
and blah bah blah. My Mara is her name would
call it the doctor House part of the film. Are
you okay? Exdically yes? And then what's next? And so
you keep peeling these layers and so in my mind,
what is enough to satisfy this itch of seeking? Yeah? Okay?

(45:52):
And then you dismissed with the phenomenon. Okay, Then there's
God okay, Then what does that mean? Okay? Then what
does that mean? There's you get to a point. I
think we kept that on a film. Okay, I'm at peace,
at peace, that's what we're looking for right. We want
to say is happiness, No, no, it's it's peace. So
at the end, I feel like there was a level
of peace, acceptance, integration. But when did I learn I

(46:13):
mean how I learned every pay I mean, it's just
it was such an accelerated experience in education in a
matter of years. It made me look back at shadow
trauma to deal with, Look at how I deal with
other people, Look how I look at communities, look at
how I look at identity. It was you know, yeah,
I'm never going to answer this whole question, but yeah,
it was definitely a whole lot of stuff I was

(46:34):
trying to understand Untie and integrate.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, well you you, I mean bringing that to the
forefront for others to see. I think it's so special.
I mean I keep saying that. I'm sorry, no, I
appreciate it. I mean it's definitely not a vanity piece,
you know what I mean. You look at it like
this is messy, but a spiritual waking is messy. Life
is messy. We just want to show that. So when men,
especially men, was we're way behind on this. If we

(47:00):
can be vulnerable like, well this is how you did it?
Oh Okay, it's messy.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
You know, when I first started doing a live again,
I thought, I'm going to do near death experiences and see,
you know how many people have these these sort of
autibody experiences. And then just because I've always been curious
about that my whole life. But then it expanded very
quickly into like, no, actually, there is something that I
and I recalled this from my time as a culture
and anthropology student, going, you know, there's there's a liminality

(47:27):
to these things. There's a point when the old self
dies and the new self is not yet born, and
there's this in between period when you're fucking confused and
or learning how to walk again, or whatever the trauma,
whatever the thing is that you're having to rebuild. That
could be an Aha moment that happens like that, or
it could be an eighty year process of rebuilding and
finally entering through that new threshold crossing over, whether that's

(47:51):
through death crossing that threshold, or whether it's the thresholds
in life of learning how to rebuild this meat avatar
in some way, or your ego death. You know, there's
these different types of liminal periods or liminal states that
you have to kind of walk through. Yeah, I just
think that your your story follows that those sort of
mythical elements, those storytelling elements that hold true for me,

(48:11):
you know that are not They're not just things that
we used to write scripts, but there are things that
are innately human of the breakdown of the ego and
then and then having to go through this challenge and
then coming out the other side with something that you've gleaned.
So I'm kind of looking at you as the hero
going take that word with it, I going, Okay, what
did what? What are the what are the gemstones that

(48:32):
you got that he retrieved from your journey?

Speaker 2 (48:35):
You know?

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah? No, no, I I mean, and what would you
for other people who are in this liminal period or
other people who are now seeking any advice.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
For these Here's the thing on the Andy thing. I
told her friend I was coming to do this. Well,
you didn't die, I said, Well, but I like how
you put that. Well, in a way, a spiritual awakening
is a death unless you're just doing it backwards. And
then good luck, because you know there is check and balances.
There's this woman I know that did have an NDE.
Her name is doctor Mary Neil. We're working on a

(49:06):
project together. I interviewed her, did a story with her
when I was a show with Oprah. She died kayaking,
she was to every thirty minutes, came back. She's a
scientist doctor. Yeah, sure, and all this wild stuff happened.
It was done on her. She had to integrate that
and figure all that out and talk about a hero's journey.
I mean, this woman was on it. But her big

(49:27):
takeaway was trust to trust. And so I've kind of
I don't know if I coined it, but I would
talk about, well, I'm post faith. I mean, I used
to be a cactus, but I've been surfing the Pacific.
Then you come out of these other characters. I was surfing,
it was awesome, they were playing great music. What are
you talking about? So I'm post faith on that. I
know the ocean is real. The other cactus is not

(49:49):
so much. But Mary, what she taught me was, well,
that's cute. Post faith. You've seen something you know it's real.
But for me, the struggle was but do you try
trust it? Do you trust it? I'm not good emotional
thinking about this because I fail at it all the time.
Do you trust the plan? That you signed up for

(50:09):
that they're engineering and if you want to call a god,
I'm going to call a guy has laid out for you.
Trust it. And so that's the biggest one for me.
It is God real. Of course, spirit world wor yeah, sure,
who cares, you know what I mean? But do you
trust the divine that's going to guide you through this?
No matter when you're walking down the street on fire
or you didn't get the money back on the tax

(50:29):
return you wanted, do you trust it? Okay, it's not
a daily struggle, but it's definitely where I always go
to And I don't one hundred percent trust that, and
I'm working to do that. But I think if your
completely in alignment with upstairs, you're trusting that process.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
I heard someone recently. I don't know if it was
a book I read or what. I'm sorry, I can't
do it justice with a proper quote, but it was paraphrasing.
It was like, once you realize that everything that happens
to you, whether good or bad, is for your benefit,
then you can relax a little bit. Oh yeah, you
can like stop fighting. Well, I'd appreciate the paraphrase because

(51:07):
I can relate to that, and I think that's the thing.
When I would give talks, I would curse like a
sailor always said, what are you doing? I was like, well,
I'm either probably uncomfortable or I'm trying to go. Look,
we don't have to be too holy about our yoga stances.
We're all in these meat bags, you know, doing our business,
so let's don't make it too whatever.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
We're all in this thing together. We all have to
trust it. We don't have to we do what we want,
but to trust it will help get us Sue. This
helps me connect upstairs, so I don't have to just
watch movies or list of music. We can have a
real conversation. We can reflect on things that got us here.
And I think so many people are so terrified and
checked out. I was like, I'm just going to keep
looking at the sky mall. I'm not gonna look at

(51:46):
the plane wing on fire. Zoom out a little bit
and you can see all these million things that had
to come together for this one interaction to happen. You're like,
there's no coincidence, there's none. You can talk about free
will or predestin all you want. I'm not do that,
but if you can pull back. You can see a magic,
you can see a pattern, you can see a thing. Yeah,
and so I think when they hear about your stories,

(52:08):
oh I wish. That sounds painful, but like, man, there's
so many things, and that kind of showed you a
bigger picture. Or mine is that we'll just do it
your own life. Just zoom out a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
trust that that that's the big one. To trust it.
And also, and this is where I seem like a
Hallmark card is really honor the love that you have
and be grateful and just be grateful. So these are

(52:30):
the things I try to work on, but they're boring.
How do you know when when to trust or when
to well I try to do it all the time.
I mean, or how do you know what to trust?
How do you know if it's you know, how do
you know to go? This is a weird question, but like,
when do you know you're in line?

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Or when do you know that you're aligned with something
that is.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Or here's benefit. I got a that's a weird question.
I got a weird story. Okay, so I'm not a
Rush fan, but I'm gonna get us there. So twenty
one twelve is a record they did apparently. Yeah, I'm
a Rush fan, Okay, I mean I think we're still
getting along great, But twelve twenty one and twenty one
twelve has been something I've scribbled on my notebooks as
a kid. They're in pretty much every password that I have.

(53:11):
Twelve twenty one or twenty one twelve. Yeah, really twelve
twenty one. Me and my wife tried to get pregnant
for years. In years and years, I only get pregnant.
Baby is born, and it's a rough berth. He's not brave,
and when he's born, and so my wife is a

(53:32):
bless her heart has been tied in my wagon. I'm
going through all this spiritual stuff, saying all this crazy
stuff that's happened, and still just devoted and loves me
as is my son's born. He's not breathed, and he's gray.
I can fild the top of my head tingling like
I'm just going to jump out of my body because
I'm so such in trauma. We have ten years to

(53:52):
get this kid here. I'm looking at my wife. She's
wide eyed, she's bleeding everywhere. I think that she's in
trouble as well. I look at my son. Not breathing.
He's gray, and I yell, what fucking time is it?
And the nurse says, twelve twenty one. And I've been

(54:15):
writing about that since i was seven. Those numbers pardon
me one second, Yeah, those are the cornets. And my son,
that soul decided to come into the meat sack, to
come into my wife's body, to lay in front of me,
who I thought was dead, twelve twenty one. It was

(54:36):
a miracle. My wife saw it all. She said, oh shit,
like she gasped. She knew what that meant. My son
recovered and he's doing fantastic. But I didn't know that
at the time, but I heard those numbers to trust.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
It was.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
The hardest thing I'd ever experienced seeing my son and
I thought I was dead. He's great, maniac, He's got
great Harry runs around screams yeah six years old, while
I'm at sixth thriving. But that was such a moment
that was orchestrated from upstairs for my wife to see
without a doubt that I'm not mentally ill. I've been
talking about this and my son, who I prayed about

(55:16):
for years, he was laying there gray. He came back,
he started breathing. He's doing great. So that was the
trust element. If I did, if she said three seventeen,
I wouldn't have been able to navigate that moment. Yeah,
I feel like I was trying to pop out of
the top of my head. I was so traumatized by
what I was seeing. But no, we all made it.

(55:37):
We all stayed so without having that foundation of trusting
and these silly numbers, I've been drawn on folders since
I was a kid. My wife knowsits on every passco code.
My son de signed. That's when he's going to show up. Yeah,
that nurse is going to make sure she looks at
that time to tell me that. So that's the element
of trust. I mean, I don't talk about that very
much anymore, but yeah, doubt to me was nothing less

(55:58):
than a miracle. My wife saw it, I saw it,
my son saw it, and in my opinion, we all
signed up for this experience. And so trusting is not easy, man.
You know, having faith you can. I have faith this
will work out. Thoughts and prayers, eh, fuck you, I mean,
that's your half ass in it. I get there. And
trust is like the real feet and uh yeah, man,

(56:18):
don't I don't know why thought I should say this,
but I think that we're all going to go through
unspeakable pain or we're going to go through hopefully boundless joy.
This is a gig we signed up for, and so
having that foundation of trusting upstairs, and whether my son
made it or not, I knew I was in the
presence of God. Yeah, and that's that's heavy duty, man.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
That's thank you for sharing.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Man to this. I no, it's like, this is what
we're dealing with. You thinking this is dress rehearsal or cosplay.
It's like, no, this is what we're doing. And be
able to bear witness. Yeah, this is fucking it to
be able to bear witness to something, you know what
I mean? It's like that resonates with me on two.
I will one add birthing stories. They're traumatic, but I
won't get into this now. But when Patrice died the

(57:06):
ballerina that I talk to my son about, so many
things you know, happened around in and around her passing
that the stories like that that were just and it
was it was just a kind of going, are you
so arrogant Dan that you can't that you believe so
much in this atheism or whatever it is that you've

(57:29):
inherited from your upbringing, Like, are you so arrogant that
you can't or scared that you can't just accept these
things as prompts, as signposts, as like hello, this is
this is not a coincidence. You know, I don't believe
in them. Yeah, you don't either. I don't know, but

(57:50):
you used to.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
I used to taste to write everything fucking off and
right on. I get it, I get it, and I'm
I'm and I finally got the point like well, and
it was and it was scared to let any friends
of mine know that I might have some faith. Yeah,
you know, because everybody's so cynical and dogmatic about their
own shit.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
And I'm so bored though, right, Cynicism like it works
in your twenties. You can get some cool pretty days,
some pretty girls or guys being cynical. The best bands
are cynical. But you get to certain he's like this
is boring, right, and it's predictable. I mean, cenism is predictable.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Well, Cynicism is great if you if you punch it
towards the things that are false and the false ceremonies
and the false politicians.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
And the false.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
It's good, it's good to look at the things made
of man that are fractured and broken and patched together
and stupid. But when you look at the nature of
reality and apply that ship to the nature, that cynicism
of the nature reality, then you're really missing out.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
Man.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah, yeah, I wanna be that guy was angry early
in the sixty four or he was just angry. He's
funny if you're just angry like it seems. Look, man,
I am a reincarnation or whatever you want to call
a guy do these experiences. Yeah, so I would use
to meditate. Yeah, my wife's my hero, she really is.
I'd meditate and I go see her in our East

(59:04):
Village apartment. I call her a different name. She'd be
a different woman, two different names, and she knows I'm
committed to her. But when I would be in these
altered states, I'd pick up on her somewhere else. And
it's not to have this is not to have phenomena
one on one. That's not my point. My point is
for me, it kind of taught me to chill out.
It's a long way around the bin. Let's keep going

(59:26):
around the beIN hopefully getting sharper, smarter, more compassionate, more
open hearted, less mouth breathing, more inclusive. So I take
all that seriously, not just for my own soul's evolution,
but I'm sure that's part of it. But I would
meditate and hear, and I would be in these other
situations with a different name.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
And you know, and what is its as in your intuition,
is that you'd been there before, or that you oh
parallel experience.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
I don't Well, people say there's no time and space,
it's all right now, say yeah, it sounds cute. You
don't know what that means. You know, when people say
that I'm just giving me a spiritual tagline, it sounds good.
I don't know if it's running parallel. I don't know
if it's passing on his future. But what I do
know is I've done this. I'm here in other places.
I'm bigger than this guy in this meat suit. And
if the point is to get sharper and it closer

(01:00:15):
to upstairs, which I tend to believe that's the case,
I like the idea that my pals are gonna be
around every bend, you know, mm hm, and do this
whole life cynical and angry. I don't know that that's
where the next go, but right, people, yeah, yeah, it
sucks mostly attics. It sucks due to my programming my childhood.

(01:00:37):
My mother, God bless her, she passed about a year
and a half because she was an attic. So I
also believe that you keep pulling in situations. This is
some of Catherine's work that she taught me. Did you
keep pulling in situations? That hill the original sin, the
original wound. My mom was an attict, So guess what
I figured out on the female side. My wife is
not an attic. We all the guys in my life,
I'd bring one in and he's an attic, let him go.

(01:00:58):
Another one was I'm trying to heal that first thing.
So you know, some people decide out of my mind
and then some really weird shit It would happen to
them or some bad stuff and I'd be a phone
call and they'd be more open to hear it. Right,
I learned, don't push this stuff, so I relate to
you is like, hey, I don't really want to tell
my punk rock friends. I may be starting to get
a little bit of hope because I'm seeing a pattern

(01:01:19):
or seeing stuff that's beyond explanation. Right, that's a hell
of a good place to start. But what it's I mean,
you've gone through real loss. This is like horrible pain
with the Claudia is Patrice. I'm so sorry, Patrice fun. Yeah,
you know you don't get that understanding easy. You had
to go through real sounds like sorrow, but then.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
You see there was a maximum grief. Yeah, and that's
the word we were living together.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
I mean, you know, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Yeah, well no, I mean, you know, like things she
had hair down to hear a couple of days before
she passed, she cut it all off, shaved her head.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
She went home the reason she was in the car
accident and she went home from Atlanta to Charlotte, North
Carolina to say goodbye to her her her father, who
was an abusive Vietnam veteran and an addict. And she
went home to say and she had gotten the scholarship,
the youngest person to ever get a scholarship to cal Arts,
and she was gonna head out there for her career

(01:02:17):
in dancing. And she drove home to Charlotte to tell
her dad to sit with him and say. And that
was the night before she died, she sat with and said,
I'm no longer gonna enable you. I'm no longer gonna
be you know, a part of this. If you want
to kill yourself, you can, but I'm free of it.
I'm gonna go, you know, have my own life. And
and everybody that saw her that night, she was glowing.

(01:02:38):
She was radiant, you know. And I could tell you
twenty five such stories. And I had my own experiences,
you know, around that that weekend leading up to and
then after that. You know what, I just who am
I to to.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
To like?

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
How arrogant do I have to be to sort of
call that coincidence or whatever?

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Yeah, And it just it just set me on a
different path of looking. It was like re examining the
things that I before kind of said, yeah, well maybe
there's this or that, and I'm going, oh, you know,
this is real. This is yeah, I'm bigger than this.
We're all bigger than this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
But what's your take on her? I mean, that's why
she wanted to go, cut off the toxic relationship and
free herself from that. I mean, I don't know if
you have she had.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
The scholarship that she was. She was beginning to new
I mean, in so many ways, she was transforming in
the physical world. I just know that she was preparing,
you know, unconsciously for what you know was a bigger
a bigger threshold to cross. I just know, yeah, she was,
she was aware, she was preparing, she was doing all
this stuff. You read her journals, she just she just

(01:03:51):
as the days get closer, she was struggling with a
lot of things, and as jealousy and fears and different things,
and she was becoming she was at she waiting, and
as she got closer to it, you could see this
piece started to happen, especially in the final days in
her journal, I had an experience where I was grieving.
It had been about nine months or something since she

(01:04:14):
had passed, and I was just still in the thick
of it, still just I mean, I had a lot
of friends around me, and I was very nurtured, and
I was starting to kind of come back into myself
a little bit, and I'd be so spaced out in
so much in shock. She had this journal that she
had just started, and I didn't know she had started.
It was just an empty journal, and so I started.
I had started writing in this journal. I was writing
in it, you know, just to chronicle my grief and

(01:04:35):
my grieving and everything. And then I got to this
point where I saw there was something on the back
of the page, and I flipped the page and there
was upside down her one and only journal entry into
this new journal of hers. She had started from the
other side, and so and so I turned it upside
down where you know, I flowed flipped it around, and
it was the message was Frau intents and purposes, a

(01:04:59):
letter to me saying that she would love me forever,
saying that she was always going to be a part
of me and with my life as best I could.
But it was on the same date, so she had
signed it, and it was exactly one year earlier. Oh wow,

(01:05:21):
yeah it was. It was the same date as the
date that I was writing my journalatry.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
So it was just like, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah,
you know, and I and it was just like, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
There's there's more, there's more stories, but these are just
some things that and I look back and I was like, well,
I have always been fascinated with life and death. I
took a religious studies course in college that was dealing
creatively with death. It was doctor French. He used to
be a a Methodist minister and became a Buddhist monk professor.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
But yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
But I love so much Jonas that you're you know,
I've said it throughout this interview, but I just love
so much that you have this sort of like yeah,
and so what Yeah, So there's spectacle Aristotle talks about
in the poetics and stories. He talks about the first
and most important thing is plot.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Plot is action?

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Yeah, action a plot at the same thing, there's not
you know, what you choose to do. The decisions your
character makes define them, and whatever happens to them as
a result of their actions has to be truthful. Theme
borders on propaganda because theme, if you go with theme first,
then you're gonna bend your character's actions to fit whatever

(01:06:38):
theme you want, whatever political box you want to stand
on or whatever. So theme is dangerous when it becomes
when it goes first. Theme is something you'd glean later.
But everything has to be action. Everything has to be plots.
And then spectacle on top of that is the least
important thing in your you know, the car crash, the
fire and whatever and I love how it's sort of
you're able to look at your experience to go maybe

(01:06:59):
through the hell of others, but to go, yeah, and
so what well, But that I mean like, Okay, there's
the spectacle of the visions, and there's the spectacle of
the things that are happening to you. But you're I
feel like you're able to help us, the rest of us,
to acknowledge that, yeah, there's more to this reality that
meets the eye, and not to get caught up in

(01:07:22):
the spectacle of it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
I I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
It doesn't. It only took me twenty years to get here.
I wouldn't shut up talking about this. At first, I
credit my wife. I credit Catherine. I credit it's another
person named Carl wood Hall these a great, great intuitive here.
I credit Lama Siriadas. He's his big Lama character I met.
I tell him all this crazy stuff and he's like, yeah, cool,

(01:07:47):
I said, But but is it?

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
No, I get it, but yeah, but you know, what
are you going to do with it? Are you going
to be a service? I love to be a service.
You know, it's bullshit. I was caught in that phenomenon.
So I get it. It's seductive. Uh, it's a roller coaster.
But yeah, you're here for a reason, so I wouldn't
have said this fifteen years ago. But yeah, it's just
a thing. Oh that happened, Okay, cool.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Would you have anything to offer to the skeptics.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
No, I've got a couple guys.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Maybe they wouldn't be able to hear anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Well, I just it's not my job, and I don't
I've got a friend, another friend who has a lot
of anxiety. It's getting older. He wants to have a
drink talk about the stuff I answered, and you don't
want to hear it. I was like, okay, and he
just I think I talked about him earlier. If he's
going to bed with a bunch of anxiety, then we
talk about it. But he's just waiting for me to
sell him something or get him on some kind of
spiritual path. And it's like, it's not my job to

(01:08:36):
convince somebody. And I've got thick enough skin as someone
thinks I'm a highly functional, it schizophrenic or full of
shit trying to play any copin. I don't care. Being
afraid of this thing and having an anxiety around it
makes sense. I certainly still have part of mind. I
just know when I pop out of the meat suit,
then may be fine. H I have no doubt about that,

(01:08:59):
which I need to appreciate what side of the gift
that is. That's a huge gift. I know I'm fine.
I know I'll be with my wife and kids. Blah
blah blah. And if my experiences are any kind of indicator,
we're just going around at a round. We'll do it again,
We'll do it again, We'll do it again. So it
takes pressure off not to have to get five Emmys

(01:09:19):
and a Tony and all this bullshit now, even though
that's fun to play with. But it's just I don't know, man,
I don't understand boredom. Yeah, bored yeah yeah. Board. There
was a book I read called, I think it's called
Journey of Souls. None of these books have great names,
but God bless a guy named Michael Newton, the guy

(01:09:40):
that wrote Many Lives, Many Masters. I forget a guy's name.
He kind of got all the credit. But there's a
book earlier called Journey of Souls by Michael Newton. The
first teacher I had had me read it when I
was telling them all the spinomenon. I'd been going through
this for about a month. I read it and it
talks about, you know, there's a plan where you get
the meat sued. There's a certain range of characters, and
that's probably why you're so in a store and study story,

(01:10:01):
because ultimately this is a story. I'm playing this guy,
you're playing that guy. Pull the camera out. There'll be
a camera crew around us to pull the camera crew,
pull the camera further out than another camera's like a
Fractal's a dream within a dream within a dream. At
least that's my take, and that might be why, I mean,
you know your shit with all these archetypes and how
the stuff lines up, because my thought is that's what

(01:10:22):
we're doing here. I'm just playing this guy named Jonas,
you're playing you, she's playing her behind the glass.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
All the worlds indeed to stage. So yeah, so yeah,
but going around and around, and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Well, I just figure I'll keep doing it until I'm done, Yeah,
until I figure something out. Almost like a Stephen King book,
this next time maybe have an extra piece, or next
time I have less of a piece. So I'm just
not in a hurry. Is a lightnment real I have
no idea. I don't care. I'm just trying to be
in a part of the spiritual taglines, trying to be present, grateful,
more loving. I like to make a couple of things.
Hopefully I can make a difference while I'm still down here.

(01:10:54):
But I'm not a cynic. I am concerned about where
we are is a country and a plan. I'm really concerned. Yeah,
i'd be concerned without kids. I mean, this is what
we're doing. But I also believe just because I can't
see who the wall does, I mean, there's a solution coming.
And so it's not foolish optimism. I just know we
have to get through. We got to dig all the
bodies up so we can look at it, if we

(01:11:15):
can be at peace with it, and then hopefully things
will start to shift.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
That's something I feel like. You know, it's a dark
world right now, and there's a lot of suffering, and
there's a lot more people suffering than ever before. And
I wonder if I wonder if this wake up is,
you know, in alignment with something that's happening, with some
critical level of consciousness that we're all going to break
through or hopefully, I mean that's my dream and that's
a fantasy.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
But I mean I like to sign up to be
on that boat with the ends, like while we're down here. No,
it's it's wild.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
I interviewed Rick Doblin, who's the guy was telling you
about the his maps Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies psychedlic Science.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Does it do the d MT drip to map out
the other world? No? Okay, have you heard about this guy?

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Okay, talk you about off Okay, it's bananas.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
No. Rick is just a guy who's been very much
in the forefront of legalizing psychedelics for therapeutic use. Interestingly,
these days he has a lot more support from the
military and from police because they're so traumatized and they're
finding that these trips to do psychedelics in other countries
helps him with their PTSD. But he has this idea

(01:12:24):
of net zero trauma. So he's talking about all the
trauma that is generational trauma that we inherit from going
back to the Holocaust or whatever, and how these the
generational trauma continues, and he's got this cool idea of
achieving that zero trauma by twenty seventy, which is not
that there's no trauma. It's just that we're no longer

(01:12:45):
adding to the bucket of trauma.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
And you know there are many tools along that path
to do that for humanity. One of them is within
the right satin setting. It's psychedelic, but it's not the
only one. Yeah, by far, you know, breathing, I mean help.
But anyway that I just left his idea of net
zero trauma. You know, our conversation with Jonas l Rod

(01:13:11):
will continue after this break, and we're back in the

(01:13:34):
studio with filmmaker Jonahs l Rod.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
After the week up at a TV show which talked
about alternative modalities healing modalities, I made that with Catherine Yatt,
who I was talking about earlier, where we present em
d R to a woman who has survived a horrific
shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and she'd been doing talk therapy
and the DR was actually able to move the needle

(01:14:02):
and help this woman. So I love that all these
other alternium modalities are showing up to help. The other
one was a brilliant, beautiful guy at PTSD hypervigilance. He
did equine therapy to try to help with his hypervisionance.
Like the horses are psychic as hell, and they were
able to kind of reflect where he was. But I've

(01:14:23):
heard a lot of good things have happened through psychedelics
to try to help people transcend and kind of terms
with ada.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
How do you as far as integration, Like do you
have any daily practices any do you do anything consistently
to help you with How don't you reminders for yourself
on posting notes on the fridge.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Like what what do you? He says, don't be an asshole.
I'm like, okay, I'll try that one. It's a big
buzt enough for me. I gues said. I get this
scutt a really hard documentary with kids that have suffered,
and I just try to be grateful. Yeah. Yeah, nothing
really cinematic or even auditorily interesting, but like I tried
to ground. Like when I came home from this last
document me and my wife fought daily and I called

(01:15:04):
my friend Carl, like, Carl, like I'm out of my mind.
It's like, yeah, your energy is still intertwined with these
people that are suffering New York, and you have to
cook that energy. So you need to go ground. You
need to go you know, get the energy off you
and you should probably go apologize to your wife. I
was like, that's fair. I can do all that stuff.
So I try to be conscious of my energy. If
I need to vent something out of a problem i'm having.

(01:15:26):
I don't believe in this whole. Let's just be love
and light. We're just gonna have love and light, right
and be spirituals like nice bullshit. Yeah, I'll vent it out.
I get out of my system, but I won't make
a prey out of it. I think it's a younger
angry punk. I'd make a prey it out of it,
and I would keep going pushing that energy. But if
we believe in oneness, which I do, we're all connected.
That's how the psycho phenomenal stuff works. We're all connected.

(01:15:48):
We're connected. We're just in eight billion different bodies, different biology.
So right, I try to just be mindful of that.
I know sounds boring, but you know, not say may
not hear you, or but they'll fill you on a level.
You know, you leave the room and I leave the room,
you guys start talking smack about me. It's like, yeah,
that's not who I thought it'd be. I thought it'd
be funny or nicer, or more insightful. I may not

(01:16:09):
hear it, but on some level I will feel it right,
and more people are there putting out there now you
pick it up. Some people were just more tuned than others. No,
I just I try out to be an asshole. That's
what I try to do. I try to model better behavior.
I try not to have grandiose thoughts. I just tried
to show up and do my little bit and go home,
which earlier I was very grandiose. I'm going to do

(01:16:31):
this and then I'll just do you a little bit. Yeah,
and just try not to be hard on myself.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
It's funny. The first time I had an experience with
the residuals of a job. Yeah, I had gone after
the tsunami hit in two thousand and four, run around Christmas.
The tsunami hit Indonesia and the island of Sumatra in particular,
and we went over there to document like what happened
to the children and children were missing, and you know,
I stood it grays where there was freshly twenty thousand

(01:16:55):
people buried and we had I was the camera guy,
and we interview people who had lost eighty percent of
the village, you know, And I got home to Atlanta,
but I just remember the residuals. I didn't know that
I had brought it home with me. I didn't know
I could. I didn't understand how that worked. I didn't
know that the humans were sponges, right, And I had
some experiences when I got back that I was like

(01:17:15):
a very very You know, men, don't we have like
a couple of emotions available to us expressively. We can't cry,
so we can either translate the sadness into anger, or
we can be stoic and be silent.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Well it's but I had all this in me, and
I didn't know that it was in me. And then
I almost got a fight. Yeah, and I had some
other stuff happen. I was like, oh shit, I've I
didn't go to warn and like get shot at and
try it and shoot at other people. But I I
have some PTSD from this experience. Oh wait, sure, Yeah,
but I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
I didn't know what that was.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
I didn't know that that was possible.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
It's so weird. Just you know, yeah, you're pretty sensive.
You're pretty sensitive right these days? Yeah? You were always
this way? Yeah man. Yeah, there's like a joke from
Bill Burr about me. You know, be fine or angry.
That's it. That's it, and like we follow the other
emotions we find or angry. I don't know, it's a
I don't know how people are bored. This is just
endless yea. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people kind

(01:18:13):
of get into it through pain of suffering, which when
the lottery, you have great sex, have a good drink,
go to the best rock show, discover the bigger picture
if you want to call a god, which I will
that way, but it comes how it comes well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
And you I just I love how you show up
in this space with your vulnerability, genas, because it gives
the rest of us access to the extraordinary, just through
the simple process of storytelling, just through the simple process
of identifying as a dude. Yeah, you know, as a
human being, Like okay, you know, it makes me less

(01:18:44):
fearful about that exploration.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
All right through your work. Oh man, that's so kind
of It's cool. And this is what's tricky about spirituality.
It's an easy place to get called taglines and hide behind.
And you're human for a reason. So there is a
US versus an mentality going on. And I could argue
a million points why there is. But on the bottom line,
so some of the spiritual people I know, and that's

(01:19:06):
why I'm just not really in that community, are just like, well,
you shouldn't say anything about anything. You should just go
home and eat couscous and meditate. I'm serious, I like,
work on your vibration. It's a wild thing. And yeah,
all this stuff is so messy. I'm not trying to
slide the spiritual community. I know some great, great people.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
I think that. Yeah, I mean the spiritual leaders, Like
it's inseparable, Like at some point your awareness of the
interconnecting structure of reality is going to apply either through
Martin Muther King or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
You're going to go.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Okay injustice anywhere. Anytime you sense it anywhere, then that
means that there's still a battle.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
This is how it was just funny to me. So
this is me, this is you, this is MLK. That's
really cool, and this is Troup right. Uh so this
is waking up.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
By the way, Jonas is blowing his hand to reveal
that all of the fingers are connected at the palm.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
That's what they say. That's why I believe I just
quickly kind of see it's all the fingers I am.
You see a glimpse, so you can't say fuck that guy, Famplin.
It's like, well you can say I'm upset with this guy.
But trying to recognize our connection with this thing I
think is helpful and I just don't want it to
be the more trauma that we kind of recognize. Hey,
I appreciate you having me on. I just I appreciate

(01:20:16):
the work you're doing. I think that people are really
going to be hopeful something substantial and real.

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
I'm just curious. I'm literally just kiding this. I'm like,
what the fuck's going on?

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
This is kind of built for you though, Like right,
like Quentin talks about love him or hate him, I
happen to think he's great. Quentin says, I make movies
because I haven't seen it. I want to watch it. Yeah,
I have a feeling that you're doing these conversations because
it's not gonna be an allious to one. But I
almost feel like you'd be fine if it's an allious one.
I want to make this because I haven't heard it.
Is that fairly?

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
Yeah, that's that's accurate, that's beautiful. That's why I started
doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
That's so wonderful, you know. Okay, that's good. That's good.
It'll be more than one one.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
And I never thought i'd be with audio. I never did.
I mean, I'm a filmmaker, tru and true. I'm a
visual guy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
I don't know how I thought I could tell a
story without a camera.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
Ever, You're really good at this just all came on
very conversational, you know, it's I mean, I've done hundreds
of podcasts, man, some of it just like you know,
thirty seven more question for uh yes or no?

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
You know so.

Speaker 4 (01:21:19):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming
in here and talking to this, because I feel like
there's a lot that me and our listeners could could
tie some knots together by going, okay, there's here's some
more examples over here that point us towards an openness
to more consciousness.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
All right, is your intend to try to I feel
like you're doing this, which I think is really cool
for you. But are you doing it to try to
get people to open them not be so skeptical or
is that more of just like, let's explore this terrain
as to who we're lucky? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
Right on, I'm just looking around, man. I mean, we've
cut a few stories because they were bullshit. Really yeah,
hang on, the person was making stuff up or it
was just they were just self indulgent as hell. They
were really just getting up on there was just like
the love telling their story and it was a very,
very much, you know, an energy suck for them. And
I was like, I'm not airing the shit and.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
You can feel it. Do you know it right away
or do you know what halfway there?

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
No, we got into the edit room and but a
lot of them are they either feel inauthentic, or they
feel self serving, or they feel they're just I just
I just spell bullshit. Yeah, I don't know how to
put it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
No, I've met some of these guys that, like I
interviewed like one hundred people for wake Up. I think
maybe twelve people were in the cut. Are you optimistic
at all? You think things are going to be going
in the right direction?

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
Yeah, I am optimistic because of what I feel happening
inside of myself. That means that I'm not the only one.
I think that things will get worse before they get better.
I think that things will get much more violent before
and I don't know if it's a cycle that is
going to continue to like have this rise and fall
of fear and hatred and violence as a cycle. Is

(01:22:53):
this you know, in a one hundred and seventy five
year you know, swirling cycle or what. But I am
really curious about why so many people are here. Yeah,
I don't understand a lot of people were checking out
too though, and why so many? I mean, but like
turn of the century, last century, there was one billion
people on the planet. Now there's eight But there's never
been this many people on the planet. And meanwhile, there

(01:23:15):
the thing that worries me most isn't so much about people.
It's about this mass extinction that we're going through. That's
that's something that nobody talks about. That's not visible. And
there's war, and there's so much stuff that relates to
being human being that catches our attention and makes us
more you know, really grabs the spectacle of that really
grabs at us. But this mass extinction that's happening is

(01:23:39):
terrifying to me because if you can imagine and I
don't mean to be reductive about species, but like the
DNA information encoded in the millions and millions of years
of evolution in these different species. Every time we lose
a species, and we're losing massive amounts, like I don't know,
thousands eight of entire species are going extinct every year

(01:24:02):
and it's ramping up. And when you lose that much information,
not that we just need the information to like use
it for science or for you know, pharmaceuticals or whatever,
but just just that information about what it means to
be a being, to be a living creature on this planet,
to information about about the experience on planet Earth. You know,

(01:24:23):
you could burn every library, every digital copy of everything
that a humankind has ever created, and it would be
just a speck of sand compared to the amount of
information that's being destroyed right now. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
Well, I would just say love and light on that
and just go meditate and it'll be fine. Sorry now
it's it's it's a harrowing times. But I do think
about I do think this. I think that you choose
to come down here. So I think we have a
billion people on the planet that made a choice to
come here. Whether or remember that choice or not, I
don't know, but I think I mean every generation thinks it.

(01:24:58):
But I think we're going to see some real shit
coming up that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
I think you and I came through the last half
century pretty unscathed in terms.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Of that stuff. No, I think things are going to be.
How are your goods ten and eight? Okay, five and
one and a half? I think that, Yeah, And.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
That's the thing that we can talk about, you know
as well at some point. But I since they were born,
I've been like, how do I prepare them? How could
I possibly prepare them? But spiritually? If and and maybe
just like some fucking martial arts, you know, I don't know,
like music, you know, like they should you know, how

(01:25:38):
do I help them to find joy? How to help
them to I have I'll share with you have a
list of dad advice that I started. I haven't shared
with them yet. Oh in case I get adooked by aliens.
I've got a list of stuff to share with them about,
you know, lessons that I've sort of learned about reality
and about life and about how to live.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
Yeah, you know, that's wonderful I share with You're interested? Please?
I am interested.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
I keep thinking, at some point, my kids are going
to see my work. I was like, well, hopefully they'll
have an open mind to it, and I think the
dad's just kind of a weirdo which two things will
be true at once? But now I think that and
I do believe this. When you start gaming up and
you're definitely been gaming up by what you've told me,
I believe you know, it's all water, it raises all

(01:26:22):
the ships. I really believe that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
And so yeah, I do think that the vibration of
humankind is lifting. But I think it's like it's going
to cause a lot of it's a trouble period, so
it's going to before he can break through something like that.
I feel like it's happening on a global.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
Scale, yeah, because the old stuff doesn't want to let go, right.
And I guess I was Stergial Simpson. He's a country singer. Yeah, Okay,
I don't really know the dude, but I saw him
give a speech at a concert and I could just
tell he was speaking from a place of truth and
I know that he's a secret on some level. And
he was I was like, Hey, things are horrible, blah blah.
He sah blah blah. But I could hear it in

(01:26:56):
his voice. Things are going to get better. I've seen it,
and we have to get through this darkness, and this
darkness is cleaning for neurns to stick around and just
hearing this guy kind of speaking, I'm sure everyone of
the concert can only see it, but they could feel it.
That changed the vibration, the whole experience, the whole night,
the whole next day. Yeah, and I think these cats
are popping up left and right, So I'm optimistic, but
I'm not foolish.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
So hey, man, put my seatbelt on as well. If
if nothing else, they'll be there. There will be some
sort of social consciousness revolution that has already started, and
there will be just like in the last few there
will be some killer music that's gonna come out of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
I'm good for that. I'm good for that now. No,
I mean, if anything, art, art makes the world sing,
So that sounds great. Hey, thanks for me out.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Thank you so much for joining us, Jonas.

Speaker 2 (01:27:39):
Thank you. I hope, like I said, I hope you
got thirty minutes of something usable. Thank you so much
for out of percent. Next time, I'm alive again.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
When Zoe Cooper jumped out of a plane on her birthday,
her parachute did not deploy.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
It's amazing what your brain will do.

Speaker 4 (01:28:02):
To protect you in moments of real danger, the intensity
with which your brain can zero in on details to survive.
It's just survival.

Speaker 3 (01:28:14):
We've got these little survival machines in our heads, and
it's incredible how easily it can sift out the things
that are not necessary for you in those moments and
distill your experience down into what is necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die,
Nicholas Dakowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali
and Noames Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gearhart's Love,

(01:29:00):
Brent Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben love It
and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host, Dan Bush. Alive Again
is a production of iHeart Radio and Psychopia Pictures. If
you have a transformative near death experience to share, we'd
love to hear your story. Please email us at Alive
Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l I

(01:29:23):
v e A g a I N p R o
j e c T at gmail dot com.

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42 | Extraordinary Awakening: A Conversation with Filmmaker Jonas Elrod

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}42 | Extraordinary Awakening: A Conversation with Filmmaker Jonas Elrod