October 28, 2025 • 38 mins
Zach Bush has guided thousands through their final moments — not as an end, but as a portal to something deeper.
In this intimate episode of My Legacy, he joins hosts Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, Marc Kielburger, and Craig Kielburger with his daughter and plus one, Alissa Bush, for a rare conversation on death, healing, and human potential.
From his own near-death experience to his work with the dying, Zach shares the spiritual insights and revelations that transformed his path.
Together, they reveal how:
- Death can be a teacher — not a trauma
- Releasing judgment can open the door to healing
- Disconnection from nature fuels illness — and reconnection restores us
- Parenting with presence shapes generational transformation
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The complexity of managing a patient with a chronic disease
turns out to be a zero some game you can't
win it.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
He was a doctor trying to save lives from cancer
and chronic disease until he realized the system itself was broken.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I was at a dead end, as was the entire
medical system. When I couldn't find my way out, I
was done.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Then at his darkest moment, a spiritual awakening.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And so I wake up in this river and it's
just white everywhere, and I'm in the deepest state of
peace that I've ever fell, And I thought I died.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
After that moment, his new purpose emerged from fixing the
body to healing the human spirit.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So if we want to plug our children back into life,
we're going to need to grow them up in gardens.
We're going to let them know what real food tastes like.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And then, alongside his daughter Alyssa, he opens up about
the pain and his transformation.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I definitely recognized in my data a shift in perspective
from a rigidity to a real sense of wanting to
be open to everything.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Join hosts Martin Luther King the Third, Andrea Waters King,
Mark Kilberger, and Craig Kilberger for an inspiring conversation about
healing ourselves, our children, and our world again.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
We're going to look back and be like, oh my god,
we took ourselves absolutely to our knees. We destroyed every
last hope. We have created such a complicated.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Before today's episode begins, please be advised this conversation includes
discussions about suicide and mental health. Some of the content
may be distressing. If you or someone you know is struggling,
help is available. Call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
at nine eight eight or text home to seven four
one seven four one to reach the crisis text line.
(01:48):
These services are free and available twenty four to seven.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Welcome to My Legacy. Today, we're joined by a man
whose work asked the big questions about life, death and
what it means to truly connect.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Zach.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
We're really excited, we're honored to have you here, and
as you heard, it's a very unique show because we
want to always hear from a voice as someone who
knows you so well, so closely, and so would you
please introduce your guest, your plus one, who's joining you
here today.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm a little considering may A misunderstood. I thought I
was supposed to bring somebody that had seen my breakdowns,
my breaker so maybe brought their own person.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
But this is my lovely.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Daughter, Alyssa Bush, and it's just a thrill to be
with her.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Thank you for having me well, Zach, we're so excited.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
And I mean this was sincerity because we followed your
work so deeply, because you explore something that is so rare,
so underappreciated, given us a cornerstone of everyone's life. You
have been with people at the departure moment, at the
moment of death, and so what has been with those
individuals taught you how to live life.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
A lot of what I was learning as a doctor
very quickly is the complexity of cancer as a disease
or diabetes or whatnot. We would memorize, you know, cellular pathways,
and then drug pathways, then drug side effects, and then
you know antidotes, the drug side effects, and the complexity
of managing a patient with a chronic disease turns out
(03:13):
to be a zero sum game. You can't win it.
You cannot manage chronic disease. And so my first seventeen
years of academic you know, experience basically proved that. It
is like I was at a dead end, as was
the entire medical system, which is now a five trillion
dollar industry just the United States alone globally nine trillion
dollars nine trillion dollar industry is at a dead end
(03:36):
and realizes now it cannot treat chronic disease. And so
that we were at a I was at a personal
dead end of designing chemotherapy for cancer because I couldn't
fix the problem that was too complicated to fix. And
that's when I began marching upstream of the problem, and
for my path, it was nutrition. Began that journey. My
(03:59):
chemotherapy was a an abstraction of nutrition. It was a
vitamin A compound that I was giving at high doses,
and in the end found out that you have to
go to the original wound before somebody can heal a cancer,
and the original wound is actually super simple compared to
the downstream symptoms. And I feel like this is where
(04:20):
we're now at is we have created such a complicated
mess as humans that is now expressing osteosarcoma is in
two year old children. We didn't used to see that
cancer until eighty We've got two year olds with osteosarcoma,
which means a two year old is living enough stress
in two years to express the disease of an eighty
year old. So we have a compounding genetic crisis that
(04:43):
we call cancer. That is a symptom ultimately of a
compounding phenomenon in humans is that we tend to pass
on our trauma better than we do pass on our
best traits.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
I'm going to turn back to your literal work because
I know that you have guided many people through the
ultimate transition. I was with my mom through her ultimate transition,
which in many ways so many emotions that go with that.
In some ways it was the greatest honor of my
(05:15):
life and the greatest gift, I think, to someone who
gave so much to me. But one of the things
that I would curious about is that, since you've been
with many families through that, is there one particular family
or story that is stuck with you over the years.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I think, y know, they're almost inseparable in the sense that's, uh,
the only thing that we all do exactly the same
way as die. And there's actually quite quite a few
ways to be born in some ways, you know, there's
there's a lot of cultures that you can been born
into which immediately change your experience. Uh, the womb that
(05:56):
you're growing in is gonna change your experience, but the
death you have is not going to change your experience.
The other side is the exact same for everybody as
my my experience and as a hospite doctor, I was
admitting eighty patients a week to die and I did
that for four years. When you've seen thousands and thousands
and thousands of death, you get s to find out, like,
that's the unifying moment of all souls, is we will
(06:19):
all cross to that other side where there's only one culture,
where there's only one language, and it's l It's some
form of love. It's some sort of vibrational frequency of
complete acceptance, which is maybe a more complete version of
this vague concept of we love. We have confused in
a lot of ways anything but acceptance is a maybe
a more profound word. What if you were completely accepted,
(06:40):
one hundred percent completely accepted. And that's what I saw
happen again and again and again when people would have
the near death experience and come back across the veil
again to tell you one last thing. They will tell
you again and again. It's like I am perfect, My
journey was perfect. And they come in with this light
in their eyes of just such joy and such peace
and com with it. But they look every bit the
(07:02):
child that they did when they came in. And I
never saw somebody come across the back from the veil fraid.
There's no fear of guilt or shame over there.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Yeah, that's a that's a wow moment. Maybe in a moment,
but wow. You know, Alyssa, your dad sees deaf as
a sacred transition. What was it like growing up in
home where death wasn't feared but deeply respected.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
For most of my childhood, I didn't really have any
grasp on what my dad was doing, And even to
this day, I have a hard time kind of putting
into words what it is he kind of spends his
time doing. As far as what he communicated to us about,
you know, his work and all of that. It had
more to do with just kind of leaning into the
(07:53):
beauty of childhood, and it really I don't think death
was much of a topic of conversation in our home
so much as it was celebrating life. And I guess
the memory that is coming to my mind now is
in my early childhood, one of my great aunts passed
away from cancer, and that was something I experienced through
(08:14):
a child's experience of not quite understanding what was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I saw the family grieving in a certain way, and
I felt a type of sadness, but you know, not
a true grief that most, you know, adults have a
better understanding of. And my dad's response at the time,
we were driving home we got the call. I don't
know I from this. We got the call that she
had passed, and I think your response was like, oh,
(08:38):
thank God, like she can be at peace. And that
was pretty impactful for me as a kid to see that.
I didn't expect it. I kind of was like, Oh,
I thought we were supposed to be really sad in
this moment, and instead I was like, Oh, that's a
different way of looking at it, maybe a more joyful
kind of quick transition to the celebration of their life
(08:59):
and their st.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
That's beautiful because it seems like what when you're sharing
the story is that it's carved within your memory and
it has impacted So he taught you without sitting down
and having elections and Alyssa, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
When death comes, please you know so like.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
He But he taught you by living and by being,
which is most ways the greatest way. Up next, Zach
shares the near death experience that changed everything for him
and the hope he has for the world.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
Now back to my legacy inact. You have been there
with thousands of people who have passed. What were some
of the greatest regrets, What are some of the greatest moments,
What were some of the greatest memories sitting next to
those thousands of individuals and those bedsides.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
What gives you a hope of That's a book that
radically changed my life. And there's been quite a few
radical changes in my life, I think, and my daughter
and my son have watched me through many death reverse cycles.
But all this that I'm sharing right now is why
I didn't share much with my kids, you know, growing up,
because what do you tell your kids, Like, what do
you really tell them you're doing? You really want them
to know what you're doing, And at no point did
(10:10):
I really feel like I wanted them to know what
I was doing. But the book that really shifted things
from about four or five years ago, thank God, it
came into my life. Is called The Course of Miracles,
and it was a text that was, you know, channeled
by a woman who did not believe there was a
god in the nineteen seventies, and suddenly this, this pure
(10:31):
voice of divine came through her and wrote this book.
And the last I mean, every single page will change
your life. And you probably have to read every page,
if you're like me, four or five times to find
out how many times it can change your life, cause
every page reads different every time you read it. But
the last line, essentially in that body of wisdom is
that it says that the last thing I will do
(10:53):
in this human body is lego of judgment. I knew
that line for quite some time, and then I was
stunned by the first half of the sentence, cause I'd
been so enamored with letting go of judgment. I was like,
that took me quite a while to just wrap my head.
What would the world look like without judgment? What would
I feel like if I didn't have judgment towards myself?
But then I got really excited when I realized the
(11:15):
first sentence, or first half of the sentence, which is
the last thing I will do in this human body. Mm,
not the last thing I will do in human body,
the last thing I will do in this human body.
And so now what I'm dedicated to with my my
projects and everything is can we create the container in
the environment in which we let go of judgment for
a moment, Because if in that moment we do, we
(11:37):
will no longer have this human body, We'll have a
new human body. All of my patients rebirthed at death
and became devoid of fear, guilt and shame. Is it
possible that we could become free of fear, guilt and
shame through the loss of judgment before we die?
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Mm?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Can we have a collective near death experience right now
before we go extinct? We've got maybe a decade or
two to figure that out. And fortunately humans change when
the crisis gets big enough, and we're starting to stare
at a big enough crisis of our children unable to
have children, that we might be able to have a
(12:13):
collective of near death experience and lose judgment on one
another for just that moment. And so that's the the
silver lining of like again, we're gonna look back and
be like, oh my god, we did the journey perfectly.
We took ourselves absolutely to our knees. We destroyed every
last hope until we were at the gates of order
and those gates were opening and the flood of evil
was coming through, and there was no chance that we
(12:34):
were gonna survive. And then we would come up with
that golden moment of forgiveness and we would start a
radical revolution of biology, let alone psychology. Our biology will
change when we let go of that, and I think
it will erase the epigenetic trauma that we pass on tack.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
You speak of the fact that you've had your death
experiences yourself in terms of your spiritual moments of spiritual
breakthroughs one in twenty ten, would you be open to
sharing with us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
That's one that Alicia doesn't know, probably too, like these
are again things you don't share with your kids. But
I had a very strange experience in February twenty ten.
But uh, I mean, you guys knew that something had happened.
But I went off or a highway at a high
speed in uh, February twenty ten.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
But it had it.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It came at an interesting moment because I had been
for the last year pretty depressed and severely depressed, but
didn't feel the ability to talk about that cause my
wife and her family and so many of my patients
were depressed and suicidal and all that. And so as
a doctor and as the oldest kid my my family
and the oldest kid in my church and the poster
(13:45):
child of success, like I actually did come to my
folks at one point and try to explain over at
dinner that I was super depressed, and they understandably kind
of laughed it off cause I I didn't look like
I didn't fit the picture at all, and so I
was desperately at a dead end. This is when I
was experiencing the pharmaceutical industry is kind of shutting down
(14:06):
my cancer research and all that was at the end.
I was a major debt from my school situation from
all those years, and my kids were starting to head
towards college and I didn't have money for that, and
I was I was just like as a male dad
in America, la all of this stuff, like I couldn't
find my way out. I was done, And so I
had come up with an idea of like, well, how
(14:27):
can I get lots of money from my family and
all this, and so I had come up with this,
you know, idea of a suicide where I could drive
off a bridge that was on my way home on
this one highway. I played something out, I'm stuck. My
kids are not they can go do their thing. They
don't need me, My wife doesn't need me. Like I
had this story in my head that's all of us
will create when we're depressed, all of us will create.
(14:49):
And then this car accident happens, and we were hit
by one of the largest storms in Virginia history, twenty
two inches of snow in six hours, which hardly ever
snow's in Virginia, and this huge snowstorm and borrowed my
brother's vehicle cause it had been forecast we'd have a
snow and I was gonna be one of the few
doctors that would make it to the hospital because nobody
can drive in the snow and Virginia and I grew
(15:09):
up in Colorado driving over snow all the time. So
it was like another day at the office.
Speaker 7 (15:13):
So I got up early.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And was topping wood because we had this log home
that we had just built in the woods, and we
heate it with a wood burning stove, and I was
running up the hill with a load of wood because
I was trying to run late and slipped and fell
and piece of firewood and split wood, and I came
and separated my ribs across my left chest and tore
a bunch of the muscles between the ribs. And so
I was having this intense vistral chest pain. And got
(15:37):
all the wood delivered and cursedly cleaned off the vehicle
and then drove to try to get to the hospital.
And when I got past all of the tiny little
country roads and got out to the highway, there's not
a car and sikes and nobody drives and in there,
but they had plowed it. And so I called my
wife and told her, hey, I made it and it'll
be in the hospital ten minutes. And I was on
(15:58):
the phone with her when I passed out at sixty
miles an hour, and the vistral chest pain had created
a situation where the car finally warmed up and my
body relaxed cause I got to the highway and everything else,
and as soon as I relaxed, I vased, dilated and
passed out and woke up seven minutes later. My cell
phone had fallen into my lap, and so I was
(16:18):
sitting there ticking along and there was no cell phone
signal or anything. And I woke up in this car
in a river. And so, in some strange way, the
universe had worked out my death sequence, you know that
I had dreamed up. And so I wake up in
this river and it's just white everywhere, and I'm in
the deepest state of peace that I've ever felt. And
I thought I died, you know, I just I literally
just thought I was dead. And then after some minutes,
(16:41):
like realized I was in some sort of physical body,
but I was in a river that I I one
moment in my experience, I'm on a highway, and then
the next minute, I'm in a river that's up to
the doors in the vehicle, and got out on top
of the vehicle through the window, and there was a
tree like looked like it was made for me. Like
you didn't even have to jump in. It was like
climbed down the branch and go to the shore of
(17:02):
the river. And I thought I was in some other place.
I thought, because the highway just had disappeared, there's no
evidence of anything. So I go clambering up the side
of the snow bank and get to the to the
top of the thing and realize the highways there. I
didn't know there was this little river down below this highway.
So I said, oh, I'm on twenty nine and trying
(17:23):
to piece it together in my head, and then suddenly realized,
kind of coming into the present, that there's a man
standing in the middle of highway, like fifteen feet in
front of me, no cars anywhere, and he's a state trooper.
And so it's now so surreal, cause it's like snow everywhere, white,
You're getting white everywhere, and the state trooper standing there
staring at me, not talking for a minute, and then
(17:44):
he's watching me with a similar face of confusion, and
I get oriented and I stand in front of him,
and I've I realized I must be making this Saint Peter,
because I must be at the gates of Heaven. And
of course I would make him a state trooper, because
what he probably wouldn't make sense if he was in
a robe or something. I feel better with him being
a state trooper.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And at that.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Moment he holds up his hand, he says, son, how
did you get here? So I'm immediately on the soapbox
to get into heaven. I'm like, well, I got to
give this guy my resumee, and so I launch in
only a Zach bush Cat and like, I mean, I
am full on, like this is like Craig getting up
in front of a group, like just like I'm projecting
my voice and I'm like, I did this, and I
(18:27):
did the missions field, and I did this, and I
was saved children and like a doctor, I got two
great kids. They're doing this, and this guy looks more
confused with everything I put on. So I feel like
I'm feeling my tests into heaven. And so I'm getting
more and more persistent. Now I'm like down to like,
well I was reading tutor, Like I'm like clearly like
(18:49):
running on fumes on my ideas on how to get
into heaven. At this point, and then he holds up
his hand again. He says, son, how did you physically
get here? And at that point I lost lost my
patience altogether and I started screaming at him. I was like,
how did you get here physically?
Speaker 4 (19:03):
You know?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I was screaming at the State trooper because I was
just out of all. I didn't know where I was either.
I was dead or alive, or the universe I was in.
And in the end he pieced together that he showed
me what he had found, and my car had actually
gone off the highway, almost a quarter mile off the road,
and it jumped off an eight foot you know, bank
(19:23):
of snow that had been plowed over the rails, and
I'd gone through the air for forty or fifty meters
before he landed on two wheels. And then the vehicle
settled and drove itself around the corner of the highway
until there was a break in the trees. Took a
night de return, went down to the river without touching
a tree. So in the end, I'm here by the
grace of God, by hands I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
And it was the.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
State trooper who named it. And he pieced it all
together with me sticking in his sticking me into his
patrol car to warm up when I was in total
shock from being cold and wet, and he pulled me
back out as I was about to sit down in there,
and he pulled me back out, helped me by the shoulder.
He said, son, God is trying to tell you something,
and so what I can tell you about everything, I
(20:04):
guess in the end is we don't have a freaking
clue what's going on here. Something is happening here that
is so divinely appointment. You cannot come off your purpose,
you cannot come off your road, you cannot get lost
here on this earth watching a thousand deaths, living a
couple of weird versions of death. We don't know what's
going on here, and we need to have grace on
(20:24):
each other for that. And you start holding ourselves accountable
as if we knew what was going on, and as
if the universe had made us to figure things out.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Zach, you described this I I life transformational experience. There's
no other way to describe it. In so much your
work has been anchored because of these life transformational moments,
and from that you've now inspired millions of people. One
of the beauties of this is we get to see
it through your eyes. I I am so curious. You know,
(20:53):
as a young woman at the time, twelve years old,
did you understand what was this transformational moment with your father?
Did it manifest and how you saw him and how
your own relationship was potentially.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Changed not consciously at the time. Truthfully, a lot of
the details of that was first time I've heard right now,
I think subconsciously, certainly, there was a transitional period of
time I was ten years old in twenty ten. In
those couple of years, I definitely recognized in my dad
a shift in perspective from kind of, you know, a
(21:32):
rigidity to a real sense of like wanting to be
open to everything. And that was definitely something I picked
up on. And he never intentionally taught us that, but
I kind of attached onto that mentality of like, let's
actually maybe believe in anything, Like let's open our minds
(21:52):
up to the possibility that things that we can't conceptualize
are true and real. And that's something that I still
kind of like hold on to as part of my
belief system. But yeah, in terms of how it changed
our relationship, I think that at least now our relationship
has kind of shifted more towards these conversations that we
(22:13):
continue to have of you know, what do you think
is possible in the world, and trying to challenge each
other in our own belief systems and ask each other questions.
And I really appreciate how much value you put in
my opinion and thoughts about the world as well.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Which when you're not around again, when we have breakfasts
with Zach. You know he was quoting his listen, my daughter, Lissa,
my daughter. So you and you, I hope you know
how much you are such an inspiration if you will
to your dad when you're not anywhere in the room.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Scrolling won't change your life, but subscribing just might tap that.
But and then stay connected to conversations that can't.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 7 (23:09):
And so we recently all co wrote a book called
What Is My Legacy? And we looked at the issues
facing humanity in terms of what we termed is a
perma crisis, unfortunately a term that's unfortunately well used now.
And we looked to the fact that disconnection, at the
end of the day is where we see so much
of the challenges facing our world. Disconnection from self, disconnection
(23:32):
from others, disconnection from our world, including our natural world.
In Zact, I know you've talked about connection and disconnection.
You've talked about the natural world and how it's a
healing piece. What wisdom can you share with us on
the issue of disconnection, connection and how do we heal
from disconnection?
Speaker 1 (23:48):
So the process of biology is one of the concentration
of light energy. And so the brightest things that happens
in physics is nuclear fission and fusion, so that we
call those a sign or a star, and they're bright,
and they generate an enormous amount of heat, which can
then be generated light energy or heat energy or any
(24:10):
phase the electromagntic field, and it can't great life, and
so despite all of that energy, not a single cell occurs.
What happens is that light radiates through space with representing
just pure potential, but it's all in a wave, and
then suddenly it hits something that's still. And when a
still thing witnesses something moving, when a still thing witnesses anything,
(24:34):
it becomes particle two. And then suddenly, as you start
to turn a bunch of particles into particles and you
start to consolidate a planet, and it's all witnessing itself.
So now this particle is witnessing another particle, and that
becomes a more complex particle in that one witnesses that,
and pretty soon it's self manifesting stacking functions of complexity
(24:55):
or geometry in space time. And then suddenly a miracle
happens where light energy can actually co crate into a
higher level of concentration, and the thing that does that
best is green things chlorophyll. And it turns out that
life is the result of light concentrated at one thousand
x and so a thousand times brighter than the sun,
(25:16):
you'll hit enough energy to actually create centropy, which is
order out of chaos. And so the single bacteria requires
something like a thousand times more energy than physics can do,
and so you have to concentrate light to become life.
Then to get multi cellar life, you have to tenx
the energy field again, and that's what happened when mitochondria
(25:38):
came along. And so mitochondria are specialized bacteria that are
actually two bacteria that are cooperating to tenx the efficiency
of concentrating light energy. And so now the chlorophyll is
collecting the CO two out of the atmosphere and storing
a photon of sunlight in a carbon bond, and then
it builds out a long chain of carbons and lots
of CO twos, and now you got a battery of sunlight,
(25:59):
and that's passage into the soil plant into human and
our mitochondri break those carbons apart and release sunlight. Again,
inside of our cells, we are light beings that are
representing ourselves as particle. Einstein told us we can be
a wave or a particle at the same time. If
you're witnessed, you are a particle. And so this is
what we're all moving to is can we witness each
(26:22):
other enough to recognize that this is ten thousand times
brighter than the sun. This is ten thousand times brighter.
So this concentration of energy that we call life takes
that much energy because life is so complicated to coordinate,
and so it takes an enormous amount of communication to
allow for a multi sell other organism to occur, and
that communication requires a lot of energy. And we are
(26:42):
witnessing this in our cell phones. Your cell phone battery
goes dead in ten hours trying to do all that communication.
You're communicating with the World Wide Web, you're communicating with
your grandmother, you're communicating with the kids. That takes energy,
So you're draining your battery. And so what we find
out in a human body, which is a seventy trillion
cell to organized seventy trillion cells are now communicating, that
(27:03):
takes so much energy to make that whole system coordinate
and cooperate, and so health is this concentrational light energy.
Disease is simply the loss of communication that then leads
to a loss of light concentration. You start to dim
human biology in other word, for that is decrease metabolism,
and you get the whole cascade of disease. The first
thing that tends to happen when you start to decrease
(27:26):
the amount of information or connection as you were asking about,
is inflammation. And inflammation is what happens when an immune
system starts to dysfunction. The first thing that happens when
immune system starts to lose its energy is and therefore
it's the first is im It's the first organ within
the human bye two dysfunction when energy is decreasing, cause
(27:46):
it's the most energy demanding. And if you don't believe
this at just tell me what's the what's taking more
energy in your life? Anything else where would you put
your marriage? Is that taking more energy than anything you've
ever done. Probably if you've had kids, that's probably number
ten behind it. And so relationships are just inherently demanding
of energy. It takes a normal and so in the end,
(28:16):
the first symptom of a loss of communication. Therefore, a
loss of energy is inflammation, and if you look at
human behavior, we follow that at the societal level. Immediately,
when everything's thriving in an economy, everybody's pretty happy, everything's
doing well, you start to decrease the metabolism or energy
available to all the members of the society, you get inflammation.
(28:38):
You get inflammation in our political rhetoric, you get inflammation
in our relationships within the home. And now today we
get to witness the dimming of the lights of a
human species because we started raising our children on food
that is made with antibiotics that kill those little mitochondria
inside of ourselves, such that our children are dimmer than
we were, and we are much than our great grandparents were.
(29:02):
Per cell period, there's not no no human has escaped that,
no earthworm has escaped. This earth per biologic cubic centimeter
is burning dimmer now than it did in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
And that's course corrected by embracing inter allowing the interconnectedness.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
That's the beauty of that whole equation that I lay
down is we created the problem. We know the path
back out and it's reconnection. To soil ultimately, cause it's
the relationship between bacteria, fungi, and mitochondria that concentrate light
energy for life. So if we want to plug our
children back into life, we're gonna need to grow them
up in gardens. We're gonna let them know what real
(29:42):
food tastes like, and they're gonna start to burn brighter.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
So on that same line of generations and this new
generation that is coming forth, Alyssa, I greatly admire how
outspoken that you've been on identity activism and the lbgt
Q plus community.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
I got everything right.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
I asked my daughter that too. It's like, make sure
I get and I would love for you to share
with us. And I'm very curious, is that what helped
you step into your identity with confidence? Particular having you
know Zach Bush as a dad, and what role did
your father play in that.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
I think he's chomping out of the bit because he's
the answer. No, No, I would say that what prompted
me to kind of step into that with confidence? With confidence?
That certainly does have something to do with you and
my mother, who very much treated my brother and I
(30:46):
with full respect of who we chose to be. Very
early on, and total freedom to make choices early on.
So I feel like pretty quickly I established a sense
of confidence in my identity and my choices. I didn't
feel a lot of strain on that. And then I
(31:06):
moved into, you know, my young adulthood here in New
York City. I always wanted to be in New York City,
not here here in my life in New York City,
and that city is such a great place to be
exposed to the multitude of options there are to express yourself.
The beginning of my story of that was I just
fell in love with someone, and I was like, Okay,
(31:29):
let's figure out what this means. I fell in love
with a woman at the time, and I found so
much purpose and connection through it and really started a
personal journey of identity exploration and gender exploration and sexuality
exploration which is still continuing to Choo's day. Yeah, and
(31:52):
just knowing my dad, I never anticipated anything other than
what exactly happened. Was I tell a story all the
time with my friends. I told my dad when I
was I guess twenty, I was like, hey, Dad, I'm lesbian.
I fell in love with woman. What about it? And
(32:13):
he was like, Okay, awesome, tell me more. So I
told him more, and by the end of my long
kind of preamble, he was like, got it. He was
like so serious, He's like, got it. I think I'm
lesbian too. Daddy can't say that. The intention was certainly
(32:37):
that he was just like so truly absorbing what I
was trying to explain to up, like how I love
and experience love. And so that's the role he's always played,
is total open mindedness and excitement to learn about who
I am.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
Yes, great, I know that you've studied so many ancient
wisdom and nature. What is the greatest lesson, the greatest
lesson that you have learned in studying those things?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I guess it's too full. Your first acceptance uh to
heal the original wound, which was this universal abandonment from nature.
We we all walk around with a belief that we
got kicked out of nature. Our religious stories tell us
so we have this universal abandonment disorder, and for that
we have scarcity. The moment you think you got kicked
out in nature, your moment you you're afraid you're not
(33:25):
have enough tomorrow. If you're not kicked out in nature,
then you know that nature's been providing her for itself
for at least four billion years on this planet, and
so probably a good chance she's gonna do it again tomorrow.
And so you don't you have a sense of abundance.
And the indigenous cultures that I've spent time with that
are closest to that history hold on to the abundance
much easier, uh than than our state due. But I'm
(33:46):
also witnessed with fear that it only takes one generation
to separate them from that knowledge. And so it's very
easy to separate a human from their nature, at which
point they get this this root wound of the abandonment disorder.
When you pass push past that one, then you get
to the final heel, which is where you really abandoned
by God, you know. And so is God in nature different?
(34:07):
At this point, I would say they're the same thing.
One's a physical expression of the waves, So God's probably
the the like version that's all in wave form, and
when it's witnessed, it becomes a particle. And scriptures tell
us humans are here to so that God can see itself,
and so that's why we're here, as we're given five
senses to see how freaking beautiful everything is. And so
(34:29):
in some ways, that's my definition of love is love
is the frequency that's generated by human heart once it
witnesses beauty. And that is very reassuring because we all
know what beauty looks like. And you've never had to
teach a child, never how to teach these guys in
our backyard. That's the sunset, that's beautiful. Stare at that
when it happens. This is a piece of art. You
(34:50):
should go create that. It's beautiful. You never have to
teach a child what beauty is or how to create it.
And so that makes me feel like we are very
close to enlightening is because none of us have lost
track of beauty. And it doesn't matter how downtrodden your
economy is, how downtrodden your family history is, or you
might feel right at the moment, you still can look
at a sunset and see it. And so we're that
(35:13):
close to generating unconditional love out of our heart. It's
just simple as witnessing beauty in the simplest ways. And
so if we can generate unconditional love, then we can
probably transmute all of our collective trauma into one moment,
that frequency transmission of a human species realizing its potential.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Wow, what a deeply profound way to close our time together.
As you talk about beauty as love, as you talk
about the micochondria that we have within us, as you
talk about what is on the other side, the great
question that you have seen with thousands of people, and
so so deeply grateful. As we talk about how to live,
(35:52):
how to stay connected to what matters, the people we love,
the earth beneath us, the food, what feeds us. Your
words remind us that legacy hasn't lived it loud. Often
it's quiet hands holding someone in the passing moments. It's
a father and a daughter, and it's the simple act
of love. And so thank you both so much for
sharing and living your legacy.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Thank you, thank you all honored to be with you, Martin.
The way that you smile at people without even knowing
you're smiling. Often I think, but Martin, your smile is
the most disarming thing. You're not like your father, which
is such a wonderful thing. When I watch Selma with
you guys the other day, it captures the most you know,
(36:38):
one side of the man that may be a very
one sided version of who he was. But the side
we got to see, at least in the way the
history tells us, is a man who spoke righteous anger
into the world and said, this is the truth, and
we cannot look away from this until we fix this.
You don't have that voice every time you get up
and you can speak from your own trauma and your
(36:59):
own history. It's with a gentle voice, with a big
heart and a little smile. So just keep doing what
you're doing because it's different than what your father did,
and maybe it's exactly the medicine we need for this time.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
That was one of the most magnificent and majestic compliments
I think I've ever heard anyone give him. And if
we go farther from what you said earlier that some
things we don't know, but we trust that it is
everything is working together for the good. Then what I
(37:30):
believe is what you just said too, is that the
medicine that this Martin Luther King is offering for this
age is exactly what we need right now.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe, share,
and follow us on at my Legacy movement on social media.
And YouTube. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content
every Thursday. At its core, this podcast us honors Doctor
King's vision of the beloved community and the power of connection.
(38:05):
A Legacy Plus studio production distributed by iHeartMedia creator and
executive producer Suzanne Hayward co executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen
on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts
on
The complexity of managing a patient with a chronic disease
turns out to be a zero some game you can't
win it.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
He was a doctor trying to save lives from cancer
and chronic disease until he realized the system itself was broken.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I was at a dead end, as was the entire
medical system. When I couldn't find my way out, I
was done.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Then at his darkest moment, a spiritual awakening.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And so I wake up in this river and it's
just white everywhere, and I'm in the deepest state of
peace that I've ever fell, And I thought I died.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
After that moment, his new purpose emerged from fixing the
body to healing the human spirit.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So if we want to plug our children back into life,
we're going to need to grow them up in gardens.
We're going to let them know what real food tastes like.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And then, alongside his daughter Alyssa, he opens up about
the pain and his transformation.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I definitely recognized in my data a shift in perspective
from a rigidity to a real sense of wanting to
be open to everything.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Join hosts Martin Luther King the Third, Andrea Waters King,
Mark Kilberger, and Craig Kilberger for an inspiring conversation about
healing ourselves, our children, and our world again.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
We're going to look back and be like, oh my god,
we took ourselves absolutely to our knees. We destroyed every
last hope. We have created such a complicated.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Before today's episode begins, please be advised this conversation includes
discussions about suicide and mental health. Some of the content
may be distressing. If you or someone you know is struggling,
help is available. Call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
at nine eight eight or text home to seven four
one seven four one to reach the crisis text line.
(01:48):
These services are free and available twenty four to seven.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Welcome to My Legacy. Today, we're joined by a man
whose work asked the big questions about life, death and
what it means to truly connect.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Zach.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
We're really excited, we're honored to have you here, and
as you heard, it's a very unique show because we
want to always hear from a voice as someone who
knows you so well, so closely, and so would you
please introduce your guest, your plus one, who's joining you
here today.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm a little considering may A misunderstood. I thought I
was supposed to bring somebody that had seen my breakdowns,
my breaker so maybe brought their own person.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
But this is my lovely.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Daughter, Alyssa Bush, and it's just a thrill to be
with her.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Thank you for having me well, Zach, we're so excited.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
And I mean this was sincerity because we followed your
work so deeply, because you explore something that is so rare,
so underappreciated, given us a cornerstone of everyone's life. You
have been with people at the departure moment, at the
moment of death, and so what has been with those
individuals taught you how to live life.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
A lot of what I was learning as a doctor
very quickly is the complexity of cancer as a disease
or diabetes or whatnot. We would memorize, you know, cellular pathways,
and then drug pathways, then drug side effects, and then
you know antidotes, the drug side effects, and the complexity
of managing a patient with a chronic disease turns out
(03:13):
to be a zero sum game. You can't win it.
You cannot manage chronic disease. And so my first seventeen
years of academic you know, experience basically proved that. It
is like I was at a dead end, as was
the entire medical system, which is now a five trillion
dollar industry just the United States alone globally nine trillion
dollars nine trillion dollar industry is at a dead end
(03:36):
and realizes now it cannot treat chronic disease. And so
that we were at a I was at a personal
dead end of designing chemotherapy for cancer because I couldn't
fix the problem that was too complicated to fix. And
that's when I began marching upstream of the problem, and
for my path, it was nutrition. Began that journey. My
(03:59):
chemotherapy was a an abstraction of nutrition. It was a
vitamin A compound that I was giving at high doses,
and in the end found out that you have to
go to the original wound before somebody can heal a cancer,
and the original wound is actually super simple compared to
the downstream symptoms. And I feel like this is where
(04:20):
we're now at is we have created such a complicated
mess as humans that is now expressing osteosarcoma is in
two year old children. We didn't used to see that
cancer until eighty We've got two year olds with osteosarcoma,
which means a two year old is living enough stress
in two years to express the disease of an eighty
year old. So we have a compounding genetic crisis that
(04:43):
we call cancer. That is a symptom ultimately of a
compounding phenomenon in humans is that we tend to pass
on our trauma better than we do pass on our
best traits.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
I'm going to turn back to your literal work because
I know that you have guided many people through the
ultimate transition. I was with my mom through her ultimate transition,
which in many ways so many emotions that go with that.
In some ways it was the greatest honor of my
(05:15):
life and the greatest gift, I think, to someone who
gave so much to me. But one of the things
that I would curious about is that, since you've been
with many families through that, is there one particular family
or story that is stuck with you over the years.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I think, y know, they're almost inseparable in the sense that's, uh,
the only thing that we all do exactly the same
way as die. And there's actually quite quite a few
ways to be born in some ways, you know, there's
there's a lot of cultures that you can been born
into which immediately change your experience. Uh, the womb that
(05:56):
you're growing in is gonna change your experience, but the
death you have is not going to change your experience.
The other side is the exact same for everybody as
my my experience and as a hospite doctor, I was
admitting eighty patients a week to die and I did
that for four years. When you've seen thousands and thousands
and thousands of death, you get s to find out, like,
that's the unifying moment of all souls, is we will
(06:19):
all cross to that other side where there's only one culture,
where there's only one language, and it's l It's some
form of love. It's some sort of vibrational frequency of
complete acceptance, which is maybe a more complete version of
this vague concept of we love. We have confused in
a lot of ways anything but acceptance is a maybe
a more profound word. What if you were completely accepted,
(06:40):
one hundred percent completely accepted. And that's what I saw
happen again and again and again when people would have
the near death experience and come back across the veil
again to tell you one last thing. They will tell
you again and again. It's like I am perfect, My
journey was perfect. And they come in with this light
in their eyes of just such joy and such peace
and com with it. But they look every bit the
(07:02):
child that they did when they came in. And I
never saw somebody come across the back from the veil fraid.
There's no fear of guilt or shame over there.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Yeah, that's a that's a wow moment. Maybe in a moment,
but wow. You know, Alyssa, your dad sees deaf as
a sacred transition. What was it like growing up in
home where death wasn't feared but deeply respected.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
For most of my childhood, I didn't really have any
grasp on what my dad was doing, And even to
this day, I have a hard time kind of putting
into words what it is he kind of spends his
time doing. As far as what he communicated to us about,
you know, his work and all of that. It had
more to do with just kind of leaning into the
(07:53):
beauty of childhood, and it really I don't think death
was much of a topic of conversation in our home
so much as it was celebrating life. And I guess
the memory that is coming to my mind now is
in my early childhood, one of my great aunts passed
away from cancer, and that was something I experienced through
(08:14):
a child's experience of not quite understanding what was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I saw the family grieving in a certain way, and
I felt a type of sadness, but you know, not
a true grief that most, you know, adults have a
better understanding of. And my dad's response at the time,
we were driving home we got the call. I don't
know I from this. We got the call that she
had passed, and I think your response was like, oh,
(08:38):
thank God, like she can be at peace. And that
was pretty impactful for me as a kid to see that.
I didn't expect it. I kind of was like, Oh,
I thought we were supposed to be really sad in
this moment, and instead I was like, Oh, that's a
different way of looking at it, maybe a more joyful
kind of quick transition to the celebration of their life
(08:59):
and their st.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
That's beautiful because it seems like what when you're sharing
the story is that it's carved within your memory and
it has impacted So he taught you without sitting down
and having elections and Alyssa, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
When death comes, please you know so like.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
He But he taught you by living and by being,
which is most ways the greatest way. Up next, Zach
shares the near death experience that changed everything for him
and the hope he has for the world.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
Now back to my legacy inact. You have been there
with thousands of people who have passed. What were some
of the greatest regrets, What are some of the greatest moments,
What were some of the greatest memories sitting next to
those thousands of individuals and those bedsides.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
What gives you a hope of That's a book that
radically changed my life. And there's been quite a few
radical changes in my life, I think, and my daughter
and my son have watched me through many death reverse cycles.
But all this that I'm sharing right now is why
I didn't share much with my kids, you know, growing up,
because what do you tell your kids, Like, what do
you really tell them you're doing? You really want them
to know what you're doing, And at no point did
(10:10):
I really feel like I wanted them to know what
I was doing. But the book that really shifted things
from about four or five years ago, thank God, it
came into my life. Is called The Course of Miracles,
and it was a text that was, you know, channeled
by a woman who did not believe there was a
god in the nineteen seventies, and suddenly this, this pure
(10:31):
voice of divine came through her and wrote this book.
And the last I mean, every single page will change
your life. And you probably have to read every page,
if you're like me, four or five times to find
out how many times it can change your life, cause
every page reads different every time you read it. But
the last line, essentially in that body of wisdom is
that it says that the last thing I will do
(10:53):
in this human body is lego of judgment. I knew
that line for quite some time, and then I was
stunned by the first half of the sentence, cause I'd
been so enamored with letting go of judgment. I was like,
that took me quite a while to just wrap my head.
What would the world look like without judgment? What would
I feel like if I didn't have judgment towards myself?
But then I got really excited when I realized the
(11:15):
first sentence, or first half of the sentence, which is
the last thing I will do in this human body. Mm,
not the last thing I will do in human body,
the last thing I will do in this human body.
And so now what I'm dedicated to with my my
projects and everything is can we create the container in
the environment in which we let go of judgment for
a moment, Because if in that moment we do, we
(11:37):
will no longer have this human body, We'll have a
new human body. All of my patients rebirthed at death
and became devoid of fear, guilt and shame. Is it
possible that we could become free of fear, guilt and
shame through the loss of judgment before we die?
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Mm?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Can we have a collective near death experience right now
before we go extinct? We've got maybe a decade or
two to figure that out. And fortunately humans change when
the crisis gets big enough, and we're starting to stare
at a big enough crisis of our children unable to
have children, that we might be able to have a
(12:13):
collective of near death experience and lose judgment on one
another for just that moment. And so that's the the
silver lining of like again, we're gonna look back and
be like, oh my god, we did the journey perfectly.
We took ourselves absolutely to our knees. We destroyed every
last hope until we were at the gates of order
and those gates were opening and the flood of evil
was coming through, and there was no chance that we
(12:34):
were gonna survive. And then we would come up with
that golden moment of forgiveness and we would start a
radical revolution of biology, let alone psychology. Our biology will
change when we let go of that, and I think
it will erase the epigenetic trauma that we pass on tack.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
You speak of the fact that you've had your death
experiences yourself in terms of your spiritual moments of spiritual
breakthroughs one in twenty ten, would you be open to
sharing with us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
That's one that Alicia doesn't know, probably too, like these
are again things you don't share with your kids. But
I had a very strange experience in February twenty ten.
But uh, I mean, you guys knew that something had happened.
But I went off or a highway at a high
speed in uh, February twenty ten.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
But it had it.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It came at an interesting moment because I had been
for the last year pretty depressed and severely depressed, but
didn't feel the ability to talk about that cause my
wife and her family and so many of my patients
were depressed and suicidal and all that. And so as
a doctor and as the oldest kid my my family
and the oldest kid in my church and the poster
(13:45):
child of success, like I actually did come to my
folks at one point and try to explain over at
dinner that I was super depressed, and they understandably kind
of laughed it off cause I I didn't look like
I didn't fit the picture at all, and so I
was desperately at a dead end. This is when I
was experiencing the pharmaceutical industry is kind of shutting down
(14:06):
my cancer research and all that was at the end.
I was a major debt from my school situation from
all those years, and my kids were starting to head
towards college and I didn't have money for that, and
I was I was just like as a male dad
in America, la all of this stuff, like I couldn't
find my way out. I was done, And so I
had come up with an idea of like, well, how
(14:27):
can I get lots of money from my family and
all this, and so I had come up with this,
you know, idea of a suicide where I could drive
off a bridge that was on my way home on
this one highway. I played something out, I'm stuck. My
kids are not they can go do their thing. They
don't need me, My wife doesn't need me. Like I
had this story in my head that's all of us
will create when we're depressed, all of us will create.
(14:49):
And then this car accident happens, and we were hit
by one of the largest storms in Virginia history, twenty
two inches of snow in six hours, which hardly ever
snow's in Virginia, and this huge snowstorm and borrowed my
brother's vehicle cause it had been forecast we'd have a
snow and I was gonna be one of the few
doctors that would make it to the hospital because nobody
can drive in the snow and Virginia and I grew
(15:09):
up in Colorado driving over snow all the time. So
it was like another day at the office.
Speaker 7 (15:13):
So I got up early.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And was topping wood because we had this log home
that we had just built in the woods, and we
heate it with a wood burning stove, and I was
running up the hill with a load of wood because
I was trying to run late and slipped and fell
and piece of firewood and split wood, and I came
and separated my ribs across my left chest and tore
a bunch of the muscles between the ribs. And so
I was having this intense vistral chest pain. And got
(15:37):
all the wood delivered and cursedly cleaned off the vehicle
and then drove to try to get to the hospital.
And when I got past all of the tiny little
country roads and got out to the highway, there's not
a car and sikes and nobody drives and in there,
but they had plowed it. And so I called my
wife and told her, hey, I made it and it'll
be in the hospital ten minutes. And I was on
(15:58):
the phone with her when I passed out at sixty
miles an hour, and the vistral chest pain had created
a situation where the car finally warmed up and my
body relaxed cause I got to the highway and everything else,
and as soon as I relaxed, I vased, dilated and
passed out and woke up seven minutes later. My cell
phone had fallen into my lap, and so I was
(16:18):
sitting there ticking along and there was no cell phone
signal or anything. And I woke up in this car
in a river. And so, in some strange way, the
universe had worked out my death sequence, you know that
I had dreamed up. And so I wake up in
this river and it's just white everywhere, and I'm in
the deepest state of peace that I've ever felt. And
I thought I died, you know, I just I literally
just thought I was dead. And then after some minutes,
(16:41):
like realized I was in some sort of physical body,
but I was in a river that I I one
moment in my experience, I'm on a highway, and then
the next minute, I'm in a river that's up to
the doors in the vehicle, and got out on top
of the vehicle through the window, and there was a
tree like looked like it was made for me. Like
you didn't even have to jump in. It was like
climbed down the branch and go to the shore of
(17:02):
the river. And I thought I was in some other place.
I thought, because the highway just had disappeared, there's no
evidence of anything. So I go clambering up the side
of the snow bank and get to the to the
top of the thing and realize the highways there. I
didn't know there was this little river down below this highway.
So I said, oh, I'm on twenty nine and trying
(17:23):
to piece it together in my head, and then suddenly realized,
kind of coming into the present, that there's a man
standing in the middle of highway, like fifteen feet in
front of me, no cars anywhere, and he's a state trooper.
And so it's now so surreal, cause it's like snow everywhere, white,
You're getting white everywhere, and the state trooper standing there
staring at me, not talking for a minute, and then
(17:44):
he's watching me with a similar face of confusion, and
I get oriented and I stand in front of him,
and I've I realized I must be making this Saint Peter,
because I must be at the gates of Heaven. And
of course I would make him a state trooper, because
what he probably wouldn't make sense if he was in
a robe or something. I feel better with him being
a state trooper.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And at that.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Moment he holds up his hand, he says, son, how
did you get here? So I'm immediately on the soapbox
to get into heaven. I'm like, well, I got to
give this guy my resumee, and so I launch in
only a Zach bush Cat and like, I mean, I
am full on, like this is like Craig getting up
in front of a group, like just like I'm projecting
my voice and I'm like, I did this, and I
(18:27):
did the missions field, and I did this, and I
was saved children and like a doctor, I got two
great kids. They're doing this, and this guy looks more
confused with everything I put on. So I feel like
I'm feeling my tests into heaven. And so I'm getting
more and more persistent. Now I'm like down to like,
well I was reading tutor, Like I'm like clearly like
(18:49):
running on fumes on my ideas on how to get
into heaven. At this point, and then he holds up
his hand again. He says, son, how did you physically
get here? And at that point I lost lost my
patience altogether and I started screaming at him. I was like,
how did you get here physically?
Speaker 4 (19:03):
You know?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I was screaming at the State trooper because I was
just out of all. I didn't know where I was either.
I was dead or alive, or the universe I was in.
And in the end he pieced together that he showed
me what he had found, and my car had actually
gone off the highway, almost a quarter mile off the road,
and it jumped off an eight foot you know, bank
(19:23):
of snow that had been plowed over the rails, and
I'd gone through the air for forty or fifty meters
before he landed on two wheels. And then the vehicle
settled and drove itself around the corner of the highway
until there was a break in the trees. Took a
night de return, went down to the river without touching
a tree. So in the end, I'm here by the
grace of God, by hands I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
And it was the.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
State trooper who named it. And he pieced it all
together with me sticking in his sticking me into his
patrol car to warm up when I was in total
shock from being cold and wet, and he pulled me
back out as I was about to sit down in there,
and he pulled me back out, helped me by the shoulder.
He said, son, God is trying to tell you something,
and so what I can tell you about everything, I
(20:04):
guess in the end is we don't have a freaking
clue what's going on here. Something is happening here that
is so divinely appointment. You cannot come off your purpose,
you cannot come off your road, you cannot get lost
here on this earth watching a thousand deaths, living a
couple of weird versions of death. We don't know what's
going on here, and we need to have grace on
(20:24):
each other for that. And you start holding ourselves accountable
as if we knew what was going on, and as
if the universe had made us to figure things out.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Zach, you described this I I life transformational experience. There's
no other way to describe it. In so much your
work has been anchored because of these life transformational moments,
and from that you've now inspired millions of people. One
of the beauties of this is we get to see
it through your eyes. I I am so curious. You know,
(20:53):
as a young woman at the time, twelve years old,
did you understand what was this transformational moment with your father?
Did it manifest and how you saw him and how
your own relationship was potentially.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Changed not consciously at the time. Truthfully, a lot of
the details of that was first time I've heard right now,
I think subconsciously, certainly, there was a transitional period of
time I was ten years old in twenty ten. In
those couple of years, I definitely recognized in my dad
a shift in perspective from kind of, you know, a
(21:32):
rigidity to a real sense of like wanting to be
open to everything. And that was definitely something I picked
up on. And he never intentionally taught us that, but
I kind of attached onto that mentality of like, let's
actually maybe believe in anything, Like let's open our minds
(21:52):
up to the possibility that things that we can't conceptualize
are true and real. And that's something that I still
kind of like hold on to as part of my
belief system. But yeah, in terms of how it changed
our relationship, I think that at least now our relationship
has kind of shifted more towards these conversations that we
(22:13):
continue to have of you know, what do you think
is possible in the world, and trying to challenge each
other in our own belief systems and ask each other questions.
And I really appreciate how much value you put in
my opinion and thoughts about the world as well.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Which when you're not around again, when we have breakfasts
with Zach. You know he was quoting his listen, my daughter, Lissa,
my daughter. So you and you, I hope you know
how much you are such an inspiration if you will
to your dad when you're not anywhere in the room.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Scrolling won't change your life, but subscribing just might tap that.
But and then stay connected to conversations that can't.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 7 (23:09):
And so we recently all co wrote a book called
What Is My Legacy? And we looked at the issues
facing humanity in terms of what we termed is a
perma crisis, unfortunately a term that's unfortunately well used now.
And we looked to the fact that disconnection, at the
end of the day is where we see so much
of the challenges facing our world. Disconnection from self, disconnection
(23:32):
from others, disconnection from our world, including our natural world.
In Zact, I know you've talked about connection and disconnection.
You've talked about the natural world and how it's a
healing piece. What wisdom can you share with us on
the issue of disconnection, connection and how do we heal
from disconnection?
Speaker 1 (23:48):
So the process of biology is one of the concentration
of light energy. And so the brightest things that happens
in physics is nuclear fission and fusion, so that we
call those a sign or a star, and they're bright,
and they generate an enormous amount of heat, which can
then be generated light energy or heat energy or any
(24:10):
phase the electromagntic field, and it can't great life, and
so despite all of that energy, not a single cell occurs.
What happens is that light radiates through space with representing
just pure potential, but it's all in a wave, and
then suddenly it hits something that's still. And when a
still thing witnesses something moving, when a still thing witnesses anything,
(24:34):
it becomes particle two. And then suddenly, as you start
to turn a bunch of particles into particles and you
start to consolidate a planet, and it's all witnessing itself.
So now this particle is witnessing another particle, and that
becomes a more complex particle in that one witnesses that,
and pretty soon it's self manifesting stacking functions of complexity
(24:55):
or geometry in space time. And then suddenly a miracle
happens where light energy can actually co crate into a
higher level of concentration, and the thing that does that
best is green things chlorophyll. And it turns out that
life is the result of light concentrated at one thousand
x and so a thousand times brighter than the sun,
(25:16):
you'll hit enough energy to actually create centropy, which is
order out of chaos. And so the single bacteria requires
something like a thousand times more energy than physics can do,
and so you have to concentrate light to become life.
Then to get multi cellar life, you have to tenx
the energy field again, and that's what happened when mitochondria
(25:38):
came along. And so mitochondria are specialized bacteria that are
actually two bacteria that are cooperating to tenx the efficiency
of concentrating light energy. And so now the chlorophyll is
collecting the CO two out of the atmosphere and storing
a photon of sunlight in a carbon bond, and then
it builds out a long chain of carbons and lots
of CO twos, and now you got a battery of sunlight,
(25:59):
and that's passage into the soil plant into human and
our mitochondri break those carbons apart and release sunlight. Again,
inside of our cells, we are light beings that are
representing ourselves as particle. Einstein told us we can be
a wave or a particle at the same time. If
you're witnessed, you are a particle. And so this is
what we're all moving to is can we witness each
(26:22):
other enough to recognize that this is ten thousand times
brighter than the sun. This is ten thousand times brighter.
So this concentration of energy that we call life takes
that much energy because life is so complicated to coordinate,
and so it takes an enormous amount of communication to
allow for a multi sell other organism to occur, and
that communication requires a lot of energy. And we are
(26:42):
witnessing this in our cell phones. Your cell phone battery
goes dead in ten hours trying to do all that communication.
You're communicating with the World Wide Web, you're communicating with
your grandmother, you're communicating with the kids. That takes energy,
So you're draining your battery. And so what we find
out in a human body, which is a seventy trillion
cell to organized seventy trillion cells are now communicating, that
(27:03):
takes so much energy to make that whole system coordinate
and cooperate, and so health is this concentrational light energy.
Disease is simply the loss of communication that then leads
to a loss of light concentration. You start to dim
human biology in other word, for that is decrease metabolism,
and you get the whole cascade of disease. The first
thing that tends to happen when you start to decrease
(27:26):
the amount of information or connection as you were asking about,
is inflammation. And inflammation is what happens when an immune
system starts to dysfunction. The first thing that happens when
immune system starts to lose its energy is and therefore
it's the first is im It's the first organ within
the human bye two dysfunction when energy is decreasing, cause
(27:46):
it's the most energy demanding. And if you don't believe
this at just tell me what's the what's taking more
energy in your life? Anything else where would you put
your marriage? Is that taking more energy than anything you've
ever done. Probably if you've had kids, that's probably number
ten behind it. And so relationships are just inherently demanding
of energy. It takes a normal and so in the end,
(28:16):
the first symptom of a loss of communication. Therefore, a
loss of energy is inflammation, and if you look at
human behavior, we follow that at the societal level. Immediately,
when everything's thriving in an economy, everybody's pretty happy, everything's
doing well, you start to decrease the metabolism or energy
available to all the members of the society, you get inflammation.
(28:38):
You get inflammation in our political rhetoric, you get inflammation
in our relationships within the home. And now today we
get to witness the dimming of the lights of a
human species because we started raising our children on food
that is made with antibiotics that kill those little mitochondria
inside of ourselves, such that our children are dimmer than
we were, and we are much than our great grandparents were.
(29:02):
Per cell period, there's not no no human has escaped that,
no earthworm has escaped. This earth per biologic cubic centimeter
is burning dimmer now than it did in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
And that's course corrected by embracing inter allowing the interconnectedness.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
That's the beauty of that whole equation that I lay
down is we created the problem. We know the path
back out and it's reconnection. To soil ultimately, cause it's
the relationship between bacteria, fungi, and mitochondria that concentrate light
energy for life. So if we want to plug our
children back into life, we're gonna need to grow them
up in gardens. We're gonna let them know what real
(29:42):
food tastes like, and they're gonna start to burn brighter.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
So on that same line of generations and this new
generation that is coming forth, Alyssa, I greatly admire how
outspoken that you've been on identity activism and the lbgt
Q plus community.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
I got everything right.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
I asked my daughter that too. It's like, make sure
I get and I would love for you to share
with us. And I'm very curious, is that what helped
you step into your identity with confidence? Particular having you
know Zach Bush as a dad, and what role did
your father play in that.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
I think he's chomping out of the bit because he's
the answer. No, No, I would say that what prompted
me to kind of step into that with confidence? With confidence?
That certainly does have something to do with you and
my mother, who very much treated my brother and I
(30:46):
with full respect of who we chose to be. Very
early on, and total freedom to make choices early on.
So I feel like pretty quickly I established a sense
of confidence in my identity and my choices. I didn't
feel a lot of strain on that. And then I
(31:06):
moved into, you know, my young adulthood here in New
York City. I always wanted to be in New York City,
not here here in my life in New York City,
and that city is such a great place to be
exposed to the multitude of options there are to express yourself.
The beginning of my story of that was I just
fell in love with someone, and I was like, Okay,
(31:29):
let's figure out what this means. I fell in love
with a woman at the time, and I found so
much purpose and connection through it and really started a
personal journey of identity exploration and gender exploration and sexuality
exploration which is still continuing to Choo's day. Yeah, and
(31:52):
just knowing my dad, I never anticipated anything other than
what exactly happened. Was I tell a story all the
time with my friends. I told my dad when I
was I guess twenty, I was like, hey, Dad, I'm lesbian.
I fell in love with woman. What about it? And
(32:13):
he was like, Okay, awesome, tell me more. So I
told him more, and by the end of my long
kind of preamble, he was like, got it. He was
like so serious, He's like, got it. I think I'm
lesbian too. Daddy can't say that. The intention was certainly
(32:37):
that he was just like so truly absorbing what I
was trying to explain to up, like how I love
and experience love. And so that's the role he's always played,
is total open mindedness and excitement to learn about who
I am.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
Yes, great, I know that you've studied so many ancient
wisdom and nature. What is the greatest lesson, the greatest
lesson that you have learned in studying those things?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I guess it's too full. Your first acceptance uh to
heal the original wound, which was this universal abandonment from nature.
We we all walk around with a belief that we
got kicked out of nature. Our religious stories tell us
so we have this universal abandonment disorder, and for that
we have scarcity. The moment you think you got kicked
out in nature, your moment you you're afraid you're not
(33:25):
have enough tomorrow. If you're not kicked out in nature,
then you know that nature's been providing her for itself
for at least four billion years on this planet, and
so probably a good chance she's gonna do it again tomorrow.
And so you don't you have a sense of abundance.
And the indigenous cultures that I've spent time with that
are closest to that history hold on to the abundance
much easier, uh than than our state due. But I'm
(33:46):
also witnessed with fear that it only takes one generation
to separate them from that knowledge. And so it's very
easy to separate a human from their nature, at which
point they get this this root wound of the abandonment disorder.
When you pass push past that one, then you get
to the final heel, which is where you really abandoned
by God, you know. And so is God in nature different?
(34:07):
At this point, I would say they're the same thing.
One's a physical expression of the waves, So God's probably
the the like version that's all in wave form, and
when it's witnessed, it becomes a particle. And scriptures tell
us humans are here to so that God can see itself,
and so that's why we're here, as we're given five
senses to see how freaking beautiful everything is. And so
(34:29):
in some ways, that's my definition of love is love
is the frequency that's generated by human heart once it
witnesses beauty. And that is very reassuring because we all
know what beauty looks like. And you've never had to
teach a child, never how to teach these guys in
our backyard. That's the sunset, that's beautiful. Stare at that
when it happens. This is a piece of art. You
(34:50):
should go create that. It's beautiful. You never have to
teach a child what beauty is or how to create it.
And so that makes me feel like we are very
close to enlightening is because none of us have lost
track of beauty. And it doesn't matter how downtrodden your
economy is, how downtrodden your family history is, or you
might feel right at the moment, you still can look
at a sunset and see it. And so we're that
(35:13):
close to generating unconditional love out of our heart. It's
just simple as witnessing beauty in the simplest ways. And
so if we can generate unconditional love, then we can
probably transmute all of our collective trauma into one moment,
that frequency transmission of a human species realizing its potential.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Wow, what a deeply profound way to close our time together.
As you talk about beauty as love, as you talk
about the micochondria that we have within us, as you
talk about what is on the other side, the great
question that you have seen with thousands of people, and
so so deeply grateful. As we talk about how to live,
(35:52):
how to stay connected to what matters, the people we love,
the earth beneath us, the food, what feeds us. Your
words remind us that legacy hasn't lived it loud. Often
it's quiet hands holding someone in the passing moments. It's
a father and a daughter, and it's the simple act
of love. And so thank you both so much for
sharing and living your legacy.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Thank you, thank you all honored to be with you, Martin.
The way that you smile at people without even knowing
you're smiling. Often I think, but Martin, your smile is
the most disarming thing. You're not like your father, which
is such a wonderful thing. When I watch Selma with
you guys the other day, it captures the most you know,
(36:38):
one side of the man that may be a very
one sided version of who he was. But the side
we got to see, at least in the way the
history tells us, is a man who spoke righteous anger
into the world and said, this is the truth, and
we cannot look away from this until we fix this.
You don't have that voice every time you get up
and you can speak from your own trauma and your
(36:59):
own history. It's with a gentle voice, with a big
heart and a little smile. So just keep doing what
you're doing because it's different than what your father did,
and maybe it's exactly the medicine we need for this time.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
That was one of the most magnificent and majestic compliments
I think I've ever heard anyone give him. And if
we go farther from what you said earlier that some
things we don't know, but we trust that it is
everything is working together for the good. Then what I
(37:30):
believe is what you just said too, is that the
medicine that this Martin Luther King is offering for this
age is exactly what we need right now.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe, share,
and follow us on at my Legacy movement on social media.
And YouTube. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content
every Thursday. At its core, this podcast us honors Doctor
King's vision of the beloved community and the power of connection.
(38:05):
A Legacy Plus studio production distributed by iHeartMedia creator and
executive producer Suzanne Hayward co executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen
on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts
on
Hosts And Creators
Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger
Martin Luther King III
Arndrea Waters King
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