August 5, 2025 • 52 mins
What if the universe is trying to become aware of itself through your experiences? What if your most devastating loss could become the doorway to profound transformation?
Louis Dorian's story will stop you in your tracks. After his partner's accidental opioid overdose, Louis spiraled into grief and heavy drinking. But something unexpected emerged from this darkness – insights that would transform his understanding of consciousness, trauma, and healing.
This conversation goes far beyond typical discussions of psychedelics and mental health. Louis shares how he developed his "eight root fundamentals" of growth after discovering that many of our deepest struggles stem not from our thoughts, but from the automated beliefs anchoring those thoughts. He challenges our society's obsession with thinking, explaining how our Default Mind Network (DMN) operates like computer software – often with contradictory programming that creates suffering.
"True love never seeks reciprocation," Louis explains, describing how his relationship with his partner taught him that love is maintained regardless of how the other person responds. This perspective asks us to take radical responsibility for our reactions rather than blaming others for our pain.
Whether you're curious about psychedelics, struggling with grief, or simply seeking a deeper understanding of consciousness, this episode offers a roadmap for transforming pain into wisdom. Louis's journey reminds us that sometimes our most profound growth emerges from what seemingly destroys us.
Out Of The Blue:
For more: outoftheblue-thepodcast.org
For exclusive content: patreon.com/podcastOOTB
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome to Out of the Blue the podcast, where we
share real stories of people whofaced life-changing challenges
and found their way forward.
I'm your host, Vernon West,joined by my co-host and
daughter, jackie West, oursocial media and marketing
manager, a professional musicianand Reiki healer.
(00:43):
Thank you for tuning in and ifyou find value in these
conversations, please like andsubscribe to help spread the
word.
This week, we're honored towelcome Louis Dorian, founder of
Psychedelist and a powerfulvoice in the growing
conversation around mentalhealth, psychedelics and healing
(01:04):
.
Lewis's journey is one of deeptransformation, rising from a
childhood shaped by trauma,through years of extreme
exploration, personal loss,incarceration and a near-death
experience.
Out of that crucible, hediscovered the eight root
fundamentals of MES growth andlaunched Psychedelist, a
(01:28):
platform for education andhealing.
His story is raw, honest anddeeply inspiring.
Join us for a conversationabout truth, transformation and
the journey back to life.
Hi Lewis, and welcome to Out ofthe Blue the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Hello Vernon.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Great to be here, nice to see you, lewis.
So tell us, lewis, let's startright, you know, at the
beginning of our narrative.
Basically, it would be probablyright around that time when
you're the aftermath of deeppersonal loss, including losing
of your partner Laurel Nicole.
You know when, what, what, whatwas that about the issue when
things started to turn for you?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So, um, yeah, it's, you know the name of your
podcast and everything, and Ithought about it as time went on
and it seems like, uh, uh,there's so many moments in my
life that would fit under thecategory of out of the blue, um,
but Nicole's death especiallythat, uh, even though there were
issues, there were indications,nicole died of an overdose, a
(02:30):
tragic, accidental overdose.
Opioids were a factor and itwas unexpected.
It was extremely unexpected andthe reason was, you know,
obviously I was very aware ofher issues around substance
abuse.
You know she had this substanceabuse issue, but she had told
me that she disliked opioids andshe tended to lean towards
(02:53):
stimulants and things like thatin a binge fashion.
She was a lot of things.
She was very talented.
She was a dancer, a personaltrainer, a very physical,
physically engaged person,extremely talented.
She could do almost a Cirque duSoleil act on a Pilates ball
where she would stand on and dothis whole float thing.
But then in her dark momentsshe would disappear.
(03:13):
I would have to go hunt herdown in CDO hotel rooms and
places like that and find herand pull her out of her deep
dark you know, darkness thatwould just pervade her being.
And then I would take herplaces.
I would take her to Puerto Rico, I would take her to Costa Rica
.
I would take her places forperiods of time where she would
(03:35):
emerge from that and become justher beautiful self again.
But she never admitted toopioid usage, said she disliked
them, and then, out of the blue,we found her body December 10th
2014.
So that, yes, that was themoment when some of the biggest
changes happened.
(03:56):
That was when a lifetimestarted to turn into something.
It didn't happen right away.
It was about a year of drinkingfor me.
I was drinking heavily,damaging my body completely in a
state of misery and grief, andthen, eventually, things started
to emerge.
I started to receive whatpeople sometimes in the space
(04:19):
call downloads.
Right, I'm a surfer.
Uh, the ocean is sort of likemy church, uh, my my place,
where I go to uh kind of communewith spirits, I pray, meditate
out there.
Uh, I I surf for very personalreasons, and out in the ocean is
where I started to receive somedownloads.
(04:41):
I I gave uh a eulogy at herfuneral and that was a download
that was straight, just camewhile I was in the ocean.
And so, yeah, that was theturning point where the prior
experiences that I had and thenthe experiences I started to
have after through the healingprocess, where I started to
(05:02):
develop the eight rootfundamentals and I started to um
, you know, do my own healingand emotional and trauma process
work, that, uh, that reallyhelped me, uh, you know,
integrate the wisdom that wasthere but that I didn't have
access to until I started doingthe trauma work.
So when you start to processtrauma and really start to make
(05:34):
headway, that's when there'sthere's deep's deep wisdom in
all that experience and thatpain and then transforming it
into wisdom.
Psychedelics is a um is amanifestation of that, as well
as uh.
Just sharing this, these, these, you know, things that I
learned, these lessons that Ilearned and working with people
in uh, in one-on-one sessionsand talking to people about um,
(05:58):
what I see when it comes tomental health, which was became
a very nuanced thing.
I I think that one of the issueswith society that came out from
Nicole's death you're nevergoing to hear me demonize drugs.
A lot of people go throughthese type of tragedies and say
we got to get rid of all thesedrug dealers, we got to put away
the fentanyl dealers, we got todo all this stuff.
I disagree with all that.
(06:18):
I think it's not so simple,it's very complex and gray space
.
It's not black and white.
I think that when we start tolook at things from a very black
and white perspective, we'reactually in a somewhat juvenile
or immature mindset.
So substance abuse became oneof the important things I talk
about a lot and it certainlyties into my kind of ethos
(06:43):
around psychedelic usage and theproper use of tools.
As you mentioned in the openerthere, I've experienced both
positive and negativeexperiences with psychedelics
and that helped shape my ideasaround the proper engagement
with these powerful tools and itexpands beyond that.
The way I look at substances ingeneral is that they are
(07:07):
powerful tools, oftentimesvehicles for different types of
engagement and travel, dependingon what it is, and they each
have their own set of skills,including opioids, including
stimulants, including othercategories of substances and,
unfortunately, includingstimulants, including other
categories of substances.
And unfortunately, I think oursociety, because of the immature
(07:31):
mindset we've had aroundsubstances this very black and
white perspective we haven'tengaged our population enough
with the ideas of skilldevelopment that is very much
rooted in mental, emotional,spiritual growth and healing.
So that was what emerged.
Was this far more, I would saycomplex view of the world and
instead of, you know, leaninginto bitterness or anger or rage
(07:57):
or judgment around, you knowsubstances.
Some substances are bad andsome are good.
No, it's a very nuanced skilldevelopment journey and that was
the big thing that came fromNicole's death, including so
many, so many lessons.
You know, while Nicole wasalive she was a very complex
person because of the traumasthat she experienced and had not
(08:19):
processed, and I was not who Iam today, of course, and didn't
have all the skills andperspectives I have now.
So I was doing the best I couldat the processed and I was not
who I am today, of course, anddidn't have all the skills and
perspectives I have now.
So I was doing the best I couldat the time and I was learning
and I began to understand thingsthrough this lens of root
fundamentals.
And that came from martial arts.
That came from, particularly, amartial arts mentor that I had,
(08:42):
a man named Roy Harris.
That is one, one of the I thinkonly the second american in
history to receive a coral beltin brazilian jiu-jitsu.
He, uh, he's one of the besthands-down teachers generally,
not just in martial arts but inanything I.
I went to school and uh wasworking on a phd in mathematics.
I didn't finish.
I got a master's, uh, and thatwas around the time when my
(09:04):
father passed away and that'swhy why I didn't finish the PhD.
You know, and I've had manyexperiences with higher learning
and education and teachers, andnone of the teachers I've ever
had were as good as Roy Harris.
He's the one who helped mestart to see the world through,
when you engage with a newconcept, a new idea, a new skill
, that there are importantfundamentals that lay the
(09:28):
foundation for going down thatjourney effectively, and and
implying that I began to learnand that was what I learned from
Nicole.
One of the first lessons Ilearned from Nicole was what
true authentic love is, and thatuh was mind-blowing because I
had a lot of different mixed upideas in my head and and took
things personally when she washurt and going into her dark
(09:50):
places.
After six years and all thistime together, you know I
learned a lot and and and I gotto learn that you know love is
actually three root fundamentalsand it would align more with
what you might call authenticlove or even, like Buddhists,
might refer to it as noble love.
It gets complex when we start totalk about romantic love and
(10:13):
different types of love, and Ithink that there can be
confusion there.
Right, it's similar.
All these concepts start tomerge into a similar theme of
complexity and understanding,nuance and not looking at things
as black and white, and thenreally starting to become
granular.
You're looking at things likelook at how far the study of
(10:37):
physics has come because of thispursuit of the granular, the
tiniest particle in the universe, right?
What is it?
And we've never even reallyfound it.
And in that pursuit, though,look at all this wisdom that's
come from it.
Look at how far quantummechanics has come, and I feel
like that's the way that I'veapproached a lot of things.
(10:58):
Once I was exposed to this ideaof fundamentals, I started to
look at things much moregranular not that that granular
approach is always, that's oneparticular side of it and then
it becomes this cohesive biggerpicture where you start to try
and integrate the things thatyou're understanding and looking
at.
And so that that was thejourney.
And and what happened is priorto that.
As you mentioned, I had allthese other experiences, so I
(11:20):
had the psychedelics experiencesof my earlier days, you know,
like late teenage years to early20s, and that was a result, as
you had mentioned, of theviolent environment that I was
growing of.
And that's the journey isawareness, and that's another
thing.
Foundationally, fundamentally,I believe that the real and
(11:52):
ultimate purpose of our lives isto gain awareness, and that
comes down to almost a quantumidea of what is the universe's
purpose, and I believe itspurpose is to become, uh,
simultaneously aware of all itsparts that's, that's a, that's a
big number there right there tobecome aware of itself.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
The universe wants to become aware of itself and I
love that makes a lot of sensebecause, um, that's when you get
into the granular.
Really, what you were talkingabout is so much space, you know
there's so little actual ummatter.
Everything is sort of you knowwaves and, uh, you know
(12:32):
particles.
Maybe, I mean it depends ifyou're watching it, you know but
, um, so that's that, this, it'san issue that's gonna, it's
definitely ongoing and itdefinitely goes down to that, uh
, that granular.
When you, when you were talkingabout um, so this, this, this
major event, of course, you withhaving to do with love, that's
(12:55):
obviously to me, hits me reallyhard because I know that's one
of the most powerful things youcan deal with in this world is
love, and interacting with lovein your life is going to make
those changes.
So another thing you said waswhen we talk about out of the
blue, the whole thing with outof the blue you said earlier the
first thing.
You said so many things fromout of the blue happen to you in
(13:16):
your life and I mean that's soaware of you, you know, because
I think that awareness of allthe blue things happening in our
lives comes from experiencingthem.
Experiencing them, and then youstart seeing that there's so
many of these things coming outof the blue to you and then it
is this universal mind trying tofind its identity.
(13:41):
Really it's evolving through us, our own experiences.
And when you said that, it mademe see it like clearly, for
like a first time actually, thatthe web, the network of all
these out of the blue thingsthat go on interpersonally, all
different people everywhere inthe world and the planet, it's
all working together for thatconsciousness growth.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's been, yeah, that's, that's been
my experience, that's been myexperience.
That's, and that's what turnedthe corner for me is seeing that
and also the prior you knowphases of my life where I and
(14:27):
you know self-reflection and somany efforts before maybe it
starts to coalesce into somesort of understanding that works
for you personally.
I talk about this stuff.
For some people it willresonate and mean something and
for some it won't, perhapsbecause they don't have aligning
(14:50):
experiences or they haven't hadthe time to do enough
self-reflection or spend enoughtime marinating to reach that
point.
That's one of the things Ireally like about certain types
of reading.
For instance, the book that TaoTe Ching is a book you read
your whole life, because in thebeginning it's sort of gibberish
.
Some things might make somesense, but ultimately, as you
(15:11):
get older and mature and change,you start to glean more from
the short poems that are inthose writings.
There's deep truths hiddenwithin the poems but they don't
reveal themselves right awayuntil you kind of have this
moment of.
You'll have an aha moment, andit usually takes years.
You know it takes years well,one author that really helped me
(15:34):
tie some ideas together thatcame from northern mexican.
Toltec shamanism was actuallyeckhart tolle, believe it or not
, which is rather strange, ohyeah I'm reading the Power of
Now.
Yeah, yeah, eckhart's amazing.
He is explaining something Ithink is extremely fundamental
to our world.
And then I I did not start withhim, of course, and in fact
(15:55):
when I first started reading hehadn't written his books yet.
I was reading about Toltecshamanism in northern Mexico,
and they talk about some thingsthat, because of a cultural
barrier for me, I didn'tunderstand until I really read
Eckhart, and it tied it alltogether.
The Toltecs talk about somethingthat they call cleaning the
island of the tonal, and whatthey're talking about?
(16:16):
They're saying that you need todiminish your sense of
self-importance and diminish itfrom what they're calling this
island of the tonal, and thatthere's this other side of
ourselves, that there's aduality within us that's called
the nagual.
Well, I don't.
For years was trying to figureout what the heck they meant by
all this.
What is the nagual?
What is the tonal?
They reference the nagual as aplace uh, that is, uh, outside
(16:39):
of the mind.
That's infinite.
That's this human experience,or or not even just human
experience, but a consciousexperience that is infinite and
beyond language based.
Mind is really what it is.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And so this is where right.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
This is why the world is so confusing If you look at
our society.
One of the things that in myearly days of you know
mainstream schooling, going topublic schools and the
philosophies and things thatwere taught to us One celebrated
philosopher was Rene Descartes,the philosopher and
mathematician that said I think,therefore, I am.
He was actually incorrect.
(17:15):
It was just flat out false.
It's not true.
And yet an entire societyadopted and celebrated what he
said there.
And language-based mind is not anecessity for having a
conscious perceptual experience,uh, and yet that seems to be
exactly what renee de kart wassaying and what was adopted by
(17:35):
our society.
In fact, that, I believe, iswhat's led us to a society that
is full of sick people becausewe're overly obsessed within
mind.
We're overly obsessed and mindis deeply rooted in dopamine
release, constant dopaminerelease and stimulation.
Right, and that's wheremeditation and beginning to slow
(17:56):
down the mind and getting awayfrom that is when we start to
find more inner peace andharmony and balance, and not
constantly releasing thatdopamine and going into that
constant stimulation and andbeing obsessed with thinking.
An obsession with thinking iswhere we're at, I think, in this
society, and it's one of thelessons.
(18:17):
That comes from psychedelics,but it's not to say that
thinking is negative in some way.
It's just that we've overusedit, overdone it.
It's it's it's like anaddiction.
It's the same thing as what Iwas saying about substances.
Right, you can use substances,you can use psychedelics.
You can use other substancesappropriately and properly and
have positive results.
(18:37):
You can also use themimproperly and have terrible
results, and I think to somedegree we've done that with our
actual thinking minds.
And this is what the Toltecswere referring to with the tonal
.
The tonal is the rational mind,it's the place in which our
personalities reside, ouridentities reside and our ego
resides.
And that's the crux.
That's where that word is aloaded word that in certain
(19:02):
circles people have differentdefinitions, and this is where
it gets tricky.
I have to put a lot of prefaceon it and delineation, otherwise
people have this strongdisagreement with this.
It's because they have adifferent definition for the
word ego.
My definition is aligning withEckhart's and Eckhart, if you
notice, never defines it.
(19:23):
What he does is he describes itand he describes it in detail
through anecdotal experiencesand explanations and
descriptions of people'sinteractions, and you start to
see a picture.
In that picture, ego iscompletely negative.
There is no positive side tothe ego he's talking about, and
that's what's important is thatparticular side of ourselves
that we might call hubris, or wemight also call self-importance
(19:46):
, to use the toltec uh term.
Of course, that's subject to uhtranslate, language translation
, which also adds a barrier whenwe're talking about cultural,
you know, trying to understandanother culture.
Uh, that part of ourselves, Ibelieve, is the stumbling block,
the evolutionary obstacle toachieving our higher level of
(20:07):
potential as a species.
And that's tied into what I wassaying about this idea that the
universe is attempting tobecome aware and almost kind of
like a panpsychism model.
All of these things that we'retalking about, by the way, are
things that supported my lifeand made my life better.
In my understanding, one of theroot fundamentals actually the
fourth root fundamental isauditing one's beliefs, a full
(20:30):
belief audit.
When you really reach a pointwhere you say, hey, I'm ready to
change, you stop blaming theworld entirely and you start
looking at yourself and youstart trying to figure out how
to find your peace and innerbalance and harmony and heal,
and you reach a low point inyour life.
You eventually have to turninward and not look at
(20:50):
everything as external andsomeone else's fault.
In that process, there becomesa point where you start to audit
your beliefs and this becomes adiscussion that's very
pertinent to the term defaultmind network that Michael Pollan
brought up in his book.
You know how to change yourmind.
That was when that term, Ibelieve, really became more
mainstream.
People started talking about theDMN.
(21:11):
The DMN is deeply affected byego.
The DMN is affected byautomated beliefs.
That is what the DMN really is.
It's this network of beliefsthat are all functioning in
automation.
They're allowing us to assessthe world at a symbolic level so
that we can ascertain things ina practical way.
(21:33):
I need to go to work, I need toanswer emails, I need to, you
know, pay the bills, I need todo certain things.
At least that's in our modernworld.
In our older world we didn'tneed to do those type of things
and so we actually had less mindgoing on and probably a much
less developed DMN, which Ibelieve was probably a more
positive experience.
The DMN if we aren't careful, webegin to have a bunch of
(21:54):
beliefs that become automatedand then, if we don't do an
audit, some of those beliefs areactually contradictory to each
other and we won't even realizeit.
And some of those beliefs areactually contradictory to each
other and we won't even realizeit.
And some of these beliefs causeharm and they're all operating
very much like computer softwareand that was mind-blowing for
me.
I began to realize that afternicole's death is that there
(22:15):
were automated beliefs andduring her life that was what
was hurting me at times with ourrelationship, because she was
damaged and she had pain thatwas really affecting her life
and having this ripple effect.
I was taking things personallyand then I would do things out
(22:36):
of judgment, out of beliefs Ihad.
That damaged the relationshipfurther and eventually I
realized that it was causing meharm, it was causing her harm.
It was that there were beliefsthat were not positive and they
were within me and automated.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
What is DMN?
What does that stand for?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Default Mind Network.
This is a term that reallyshowed up in Michael Pollan's
book how to Change your Mind.
He was a journalist, ascientifically minded I believe
even atheist and started to hearrumbles and reports of people
having positive psychedelicexperiences and doing all of
this deep dive research intowhat was happening with
(23:15):
psychedelics and, of course,then started experiencing them
himself and he had come acrossthe term default mind network.
He had come across the termdefault mind network.
Default mind network is ourlogical mind, is operating at a
symbolic level through languageand what's happening is, as we
get older, we're assigninglanguage to objects and concepts
(23:36):
and then we take them sort ofsort of for granted.
It what it is, is it's apractical thing when I say the
word tree?
If I, if I say the word tree,is it's a practical thing when I
say the word tree?
Uh, if I, if I say the wordtree, it's a conceptualized idea
and you might get a quick flashof an image of a tree in your
mind and it represents something.
But an actual tree is, issomething extremely profound and
(23:56):
of course you realize that yeahand you're almost limiting yeah
, well, it is limiting and it'sintentionally, and it's
important that it's eliminating,because what it's doing is this
is what I meant aboutaccomplishing practical tasks at
the practical task level offeeding your children, you know,
(24:18):
getting from point a to point buh, ascertaining a threat
versus, uh, you's benign, thesetype of things.
We need these things to beautomated, and very fast, and
that's a part of how our kind oforganism and our system works
to manage our world in apractical way.
The problem with it is thatthis becomes this overbuilt,
(24:42):
just giant structure that's fullof a bunch of programming and
and for many people, much ofthat programming is really uh,
can be very toxic and and evencontradictory.
There can be all types of umit's it's like broken code, but
what it is is.
It's this development of the.
(25:03):
It happens from a very youngage when we're when we're
infants and then toddlers andlearning to speak, we're being
taught to develop our defaultmind network and then we're sent
to schools and we're sent,we're taught to read and we're
taught, you know, all thesebasics.
We're taught arithmetic andbasic math.
With all these things it'sdeveloping that default mind
network so that we're able topractically interact with our
(25:24):
world on a, on just a practical,uh, you know, basic, uh, uh,
physical realm level.
I gotta I gotta be able to feedmyself, I gotta pay my bills, I
gotta, you know, be able todrive, I gotta be able to manage
in this world.
And that when that starts totake over too much, that's when
the world becomes very mundane.
And the world becomes very, itcan become a really dry, mundane
(25:48):
, boring place with not a lot ofsubstance.
And this is where, when peopleare completely trapped within
their default mind network then,and that that coding becomes
larger and larger, and then youstart to see that there are
these issues within theautomated belief systems.
That's, that's the weird part,is the automation of belief, and
that's what's happening withwith thinking and thoughts.
(26:10):
They aren't the problem.
So when people talk about, well, I have all these really
negative thoughts in my head.
It's driving me crazy, I'm veryunhappy, I'm depressed, I go
through anxiety.
I have these thoughts in myhead.
It's not the thoughts of theproblem.
What's the problem is thebelief, is that anchors the
thoughts.
The thoughts don't have anypower until you believe them.
Once you believe a thought, nowyou're anchoring it in power,
(26:32):
and that that is where the issueis, and it's the actual beliefs
.
This is something that michaelpoland does not talk about.
This is something that I've I'msure other people probably talk
about it, but but I've, forwhatever way, kind of invented
the wheel for myself.
It's really the beliefs thatare operating the default mind
network and what the Toltecswould call the tonal.
So the tonal and the DMN arebasically the same thing.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I would love to see a diagram of this, so cool to
just like look at and like,really just look at my scan, my
whole self, and and be like, ok,this is the belief that is that
is weighing these thoughts soclosely to me.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, you're right, a diagram would be great.
And we're only talking aboutone side.
When we start to talk about thenovel, we're talking about the
non-language based side of ourconscious experience.
I won't even call it our mindsyou might be able to refer to as
mind, but now you're, then itstarts to muddy the water a bit.
It's a conscious experiencethat's outside of language-based
(27:35):
thought, and there are somepeople probably a good amount of
population out there whobelieve it's impossible to have
a conscious experience withoutthought, and they're actually
incorrect.
There is absolutely a way toexperience conscious perception
without language thinking, andonce you do, it's an extremely
powerful experience and for manypeople it's very rare that they
(27:57):
have that experience.
It's even rather rare for me.
I've, throughout my life, hadthe experience of meditation and
psychedelics and differentthings where I've slowed down
language-based rational thought,but it's been rare that I've
seen it stop completely whileI'm fully awake, and that is.
That is a rare moment, anextremely profound moment in
which we step into another sideof ourselves, the side of
(28:21):
ourselves that's infinite, andit's the side of ourselves where
we feel the connection to allthings, where we feel that
quantum level of connection, andso on that side of things, this
interplay between ournon-language based perceptual
consciousness and ourlanguage-based rational mind.
That's where there's someactual danger involved when it
(28:43):
comes to psychedelics and thingslike that.
When we force ourselves intoheading towards that language,
that non-language basedperceptual consciousness
experience, that's when our egosbecome threatened.
And this is where you'll hear,in the psychedelic experience,
people talking about ego deathand these things.
This is where people can slipinto psychosis and people can
(29:04):
have negative experiences, uh,through their interaction with
psychedelics.
We have to be very careful.
This is why meditation, breathwork, these type of things are
far, in my opinion, more safeand, uh, more attractive way to
approach this.
From my perspective as afacilitator, before I ever
introduce anyone to apsychedelic, I want them to
experience breath work, I wantto experience sitting still.
(29:26):
Uh, the second root,fundamental mental, emotional,
spiritual skill development, iswhat I call not doing, and
that's actually a term.
Uh, we might call it meditation, right, we might use that word,
but meditation, in my mind, hasthis idea that we're still
doing something, and and I don't, I don't want people to think
that they're doing something.
The idea is not to do anythingand in not doing anything, we're
(29:48):
actually attempting to achievea point where we're not even
thinking and you're just beingnot doing for people who are
wrestling with past traumas thatthey haven't resolved, and and
those types of things.
Not doing is very difficult.
Paul Stamets made arecommendation when it came to
(30:09):
his advice around hey, how willI know, how should I gauge
whether I'm ready for a macrodose, a large dose psychedelic
experience?
Paul Stamets said go intonature.
Don't bring a book, don't bringyour phones or electronics,
don't bring anything, don't evenbring food, just bring water.
Sit for three days and donothing.
If you can do that fairlycomfortably without freaking out
(30:31):
, you're ready.
If you can'tic experiences.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I might have done mescaline or something.
And I remember saying to myfriends I don't think in
thoughts.
I don't think in thoughts.
And they say what do you mean?
You don't think of it.
I think in clouds, I think inspaces.
(30:58):
I actually felt that that's howmy mind was.
I was thinking in clouds and Iwas just interpreting whatever
it was.
I mean I was definitely.
I think I was experiencing thenon-language self there at that.
I mean it was really prettyintense and I think that stayed
with me.
It's still with me.
I still think that way.
(31:19):
But the other thing I wanted tosay was when you mentioned how
people are just not mature.
You know you said that aboutpeople not being mature enough
to understand all the differenttypes of drugs and they can be
good or bad.
It depends on how they're used,and then that goes right to
even thoughts.
Thoughts can be good or bad.
It depends on how they're used,and then that goes right to
even thoughts.
Thoughts can be good or bad,depends if you believe in it or
(31:40):
do it or whatever.
You know, it's the same thingwith everything and it's like
it's funny that you say thatabout not being mature, because
I feel like that is the what'sgoing on really, why this
trouble's happening in this.
The world of division that'sgoing on now is a lot of people
just holding on to their I don'tknow, maybe they're must be
their dmn, they're holding on tosome really wrong thoughts and
(32:04):
they're just not getting out ofit.
If you think about it, if youbecome a little bit mature or
evolved enough to see that thedichotomy of things that good
and bad and hot and cold, it'sall relative I mean it down to
the granular level, really,what's hot, you know it's it
(32:26):
depends on where you are in thespectrum.
So, um, yeah, those are twothings I wanted to mention, but,
um, we can go in any directionyou want.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
This is sort of this talking about this, the
operation of the mind, and youknow, this is where it gets
really interesting, becausewe're seeing in the psychedelic
community and within mentalhealth in general and we've seen
it in, you know, health care ingeneral and a lot of areas of
life where if somebody doesn'thave the letters at the end of
(32:55):
the name the certifications, thelicensing uh we sort of dismiss
them and and it's become reallyinteresting.
We're seeing that, um, in thisworld of psychedelics, we're
seeing that there are uh,there's a, there's a movement
here, unfortunately, uh, wherepeople are looking to take
financial advantage of somethingthat could really help and heal
(33:17):
people, and in that we'reseeing that this isn't
completely linked to necessarilythat side of it, but there's an
arrogance sometimes with peoplethat have the letters at the
end of the name the MD, thedoctor, the PhD, the, whatever
it is and that's that's where Ithink there's a.
(33:38):
It points back again to thisego that we've been mentioning
and this idea that immaturity.
When you talk about immaturity,in a way, what this becomes is
when we look at our species.
Our entire species is immaturefrom an evolutionary standpoint,
if you think about it, if, ifthere are intelligent species on
(33:59):
other planets, around otherstar systems, which it seems
likely, that probably are basedoff mathematics, just pure
probability theory alone statesthat there probably are and
there probably are intelligentlife forms that are beyond our
place that we're at now.
I've thought this through and itappears to me that in science
fiction writing we've now I'vethought this through and it
appears to me that in sciencefiction writing, we've noticed
(34:20):
that I've seen that thesescience fiction writers are
almost like modern day prophets.
I mean, look what's going onwith technology, look what's
happened with SpaceX, lookwhat's happened with, you know,
cell phone technology, cameratechnology, drone technology, I
mean AI, you name it.
These are things that sciencefiction writers were writing
about 50 years ago and it'samazing how prophetic they've
been.
But in one area I think they'vebeen consistently wrong is this
(34:43):
idea of a predatory, maliciousalien species.
And let me explain why.
Uh, if an alien species were toachieve interstellar capability
through technologicaladvancement, right where there's
some people and even even theToltecs would talk about this
that there's a belief that youcan actually transfer your
consciousness through some formsof meditation or psychedelic
usage where you could experienceanother planet.
(35:04):
Let's say, some people talkabout this and through their
experiences at DMT, you couldmaybe travel and actually see it
for real.
We don't know, we don't have away to verify it, but if you
were to technologically acquirethe capability to go to another
star system, the advancement isso vast from where we're at, you
know obviously Elon is talkingabout going to Mars and things
like that we're so far away fromthat, from making that a truly
(35:28):
practical, pragmatic endeavor.
Think about going to Alpha,centauri, any star system.
It's so far in the future.
So that trajectory oftechnological advancement is
going to many, many multiples oforders of 10 times over.
We will create technologiesthat can destroy us, that can
(35:50):
ruin our environments, that candestroy each other, can actually
wipe out our entire species anddestroy our entire ecosystem.
That is part of the trajectorytowards achieving this
capability.
So what that means is we haveto overcome our baser, more
toxic, you know things aboutourselves, the flaws within our
(36:13):
species, the things that I wouldsay are rooted in ego.
That is what we must overcomein that endeavor, and so what it
becomes is this idea of thedefault mind network and these
things we're talking about withmaturity and immaturity, and and
these things, is that theentire species evolution towards
this.
What I would say is the goal tobecome stewards of our own
(36:34):
environment, stewards of our ownplanet, and then be able to
explore who doesn't want toexplore and see another planet.
That is the goal, but in orderto achieve it, we will have to
overcome the things that areholding us back and threatening
us existentially.
We will have to eliminateborders.
We will not have borders.
We will not be engaged in aneconomic system of currency
exchange.
(36:55):
We will be one species with ahive mind and the ability to
have an individual uh, you know,prefrontal cortex experience of
knowing who I am, but alsobeing completely connected and
kind of hive mind driven in sucha way that we are completely
harmonious with each other.
And we have to overcome ourarrogance over our other fellow
(37:15):
species on the planet.
That we believe we're somehowso superior to other species on
the planet is a part of our egoand beliefs.
These beliefs are harming us,and that's the number one metric
for me.
If your beliefs, if you can sitand do a belief audit and you
are able to ascertain that abelief that you're holding on to
is harming yourself or harmingother people.
(37:37):
That is the metric in which youneed to abandon that belief at
that point, once you see that itis harming you or others.
And I went through this withnicole when nicole was alive and
she did things out of her ownpain and I would take it
personally.
I would believe certain thingsabout, for instance, uh, loyalty
and romantic love very complexpeople.
People think it's simple.
It's not simple.
(37:57):
Just because she went and leftme in a state of confusion and
had some fling with another man,did that mean she doesn't love
me?
Well, if I hold on to thebelief that she doesn't love me
and I'm going to harden thatbelief, guess how that makes me
feel.
I start to feel negative things,I start to behave negatively.
Next thing you know my actionsand my thoughts and my words
(38:18):
towards her negative.
Was any of that positive andhelping anyone, or was it
causing more harm?
No, those beliefs I was holdingonto, these very judgmental
beliefs, were actually harming.
They're harming myself, they'reharming her, they're actually
probably even harming peoplebeyond that.
And that was when I began torealize that I needed to abandon
certain beliefs and choosedifferent beliefs that were not
(38:38):
harming people.
Once I did that, I started tosee a far more positive
experience in my life.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I love how you are taking this situation as an
example, because it involvesanother person and their actions
and how those actions affectedyou, and then you're mostly or
almost entirely, talking aboutwhat you can do in yourself,
(39:04):
like you're taking a lot ofresponsibility for yourself in
this dynamic, and I think that'svery rare for most people to do
.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
It's an enormous amount of self-responsibility.
In fact, it does almost becomeall about the self and it turns
out that love itself is a verypersonal journey in truly
understanding it, and it doesn'tseek reciprocation of any kind.
True love never seeksreciprocation.
(39:38):
It doesn't matter what theobject of love does.
Love is a frequency that'smaintained and expressed and
does not matter even if someonespits in your face, because the
understanding becomes back tothose four agreements.
It's not personal, it's theirjourney, it's their issues, it's
their problems, it's theirbaggage they're carrying and so
(39:59):
then, as you begin, to elevatethis vibrational frequency.
that's when you'll start to seethat it has this very powerful
effect.
When we take someone, people,you know this is interesting
because it starts to relate tothe criminal justice system and
all kinds of things, becausewhen you take a person who's
done something that we see asmorally deficient, right, and
(40:19):
then you punish them and youshame them and you isolate them
and you do all these things tothem, does that have a practical
effect on improving their stateof mind and changing their
behavior and their beliefs andaffecting their default mind
network as we get back intousing that terminology, or does
it increase their pain?
Does it further harden theirnegative ideas and thoughts that
(40:43):
led to the actions that gotthem in trouble in the first
place?
Does it actually have anegative impact on them?
And I would argue, just from theunderstanding of human nature,
that it does not help thesituation.
It doesn't.
We need to in certain cases,when we're talking about violent
individuals, we will have toseparate them from circumstances
where they can harm or hurtother people.
(41:04):
But in the way that we punishthem, the way that we see this
punitive experience with people,is actually it doesn't work.
That's the real issue Punitivemeasures do not work with human
beings or with anything anyorganism when you are punitive
with it you only harden moretrauma, harden more negativity
(41:26):
within their psyches and theyjust become really even worse.
It's not the way to approachthis, and so experiencing love
and understanding truly what itis, and then understanding the
interplay between boundaries andlove, is where we need to head
as a society.
As we see, what's going onright now politically and
socially, and there's all ofthis unrest taking place,
(41:48):
there's still an enormous amountof immaturity, and it's coming
down to the lack ofunderstanding of what really
works First of all, what'spractical, what's pragmatic,
what's going to build a bettersociety, what's going to make a
better world and what isn't.
What do we want as a society?
Do we want to live in a lovingsociety and a society built on
cohesion and harmony and balance, or do we want to live in a
(42:09):
society that's constantly atodds and friction and potential
for violence and things likethat, and potential for violence
and things like that?
And if we're going to choose,you know, the former over the
latter, which I would hope wewould, I think yeah, you would
think right.
Then we got to start doingthings that are practical and
pragmatic, and those things donot involve heavy judgment of
(42:30):
others, heavy handed punitivemeasures.
Those types of things don'twork.
I'm not saying that we don't inthe cases of violent criminals
and things like that put them ina place where we protect
society, but you don't do it ina punitive way.
You need to treat these peoplelike human beings, even the
worst of them, even the workthat have committed?
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Yeah, no, I believe that for sure.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
And that's where you know.
That's why sometimes, when Italk about, for instance, the
fentanyl crisis and I'm ananti-war on drugs proponent, a
big-time anti-anti-war on drugsadvocate I'll have people who
have experienced the loss ofloved ones and they're furious
about fentanyl, they're furiousabout these things.
They want to throw around thishatred and I'm like, look,
that's not going to work.
The reason we have fentanyltoday is because how we treated
(43:14):
heroin in the past, and that'sbecause of how we treated the
laudanum in the past and opiumin the past and those things.
That's how we ended up here.
You keep doing the same thing.
You're going to keep gettingworse and worse results, right,
uh, you know, and and so stopdoing that.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
We need to start looking things in from a
different way, you know that isthe definition of insanity to do
the same thing over and overagain, expecting different
results.
Yes, the basic thing about thatis that immaturity comes back
to the front of the subjectagain.
Now.
I think that you, when I'mlistening to everything taken
(43:51):
into the out of the blue idea,like you were saying how you've
been aware of a lot of out ofthe blue things in your life,
and I think that, because youare evolved in a sense that
you're able to, I think thatalso equips you to take what
happened to you and turn it intosomething positive.
(44:12):
I mean, we actually had a younglady on the other day who has
got cerebral palsy and she saidsomething really profound.
She said, just becausesomething is tragic doesn't mean
something good can't come outof it.
We just want to start thatconversation that positive
things can be happening, eventhough you might think of it as
(44:32):
negative.
It's like this is what the outof the blue I think is here to
do.
I mean, as we go through ourlife and this stuff starts
happening to us that we don'tknow why it's happening.
Well, there's a reason why.
It's the universe trying togrow to us, smartening us,
giving us a smack.
Hey, pay attention, you knowwhat I mean.
(44:54):
For me, it was like taking awayeverything that I thought was
important.
So I had to stop and take stockof everything and build my life
from the bottom up only on whatI know is important and real,
which is basically love.
And um, you know, it comesright down to it.
It is love.
I mean and that is a tough oneman you talk about describing
(45:15):
what is love.
I mean, and that is a tough oneman.
You talk about describing whatis love.
I don't know, it's a tough one.
I like to hear what you thinkabout that.
How would you think of thatplays into the Out of the Blue
network, so to speak, or thejourney that we're kind of being
ushered on?
Speaker 2 (45:31):
I think you brought up some extremely important
points, and so, before I talkabout love, I want to talk back
about the, the tragedies of lifeand what, what they represent
for us as, uh, consciousexperiencers, perceptual beings
in this world.
Um, I think that what we'rewrestling with and where
(45:51):
religion comes from spiritualityand our early, early hunter and
gather ancestors that wereusing psychedelics in a natural
setting as hunters and gatherersin a primitive world is that
what we've all been wrestlingwith is the idea of death, and
in the Toltec traditions theyhave a term called using death
as an advisor, and when youunderstand what using death as
(46:12):
an advisor means, becomesextremely potent and powerful.
But that journey is not easy atall.
Uh, what I would say is thateven when you look at religions,
organized religions, who claimto have the answer to what
happens after you die andtherefore are providing some
sense of security around this,you'll find that often, many of
(46:34):
the parishioners within thoseideological frameworks do not
act as if they are secure withthe idea of death.
If they did act that way, Ithink you would see different
mindsets and different types ofactions and words that came from
these people, but oftentimesyou find that, no, they're very
insecure and very frightened andvery concerned about what
(46:55):
happens after they die, and then, in some way, are kind of stuck
in a contradictory place.
What I would say about tragedyis that it is pointing, these
are signposts towards the ideathat this life is not as
important as we make it out tobe, and what I mean by that is
(47:16):
that this is a transientexperience we're having, that we
don't even own these bodiesthat we think we own.
They're really just vehiclesthat we're renting for now, and
then they run out of, you know,battery life and things start to
fall apart and the vehicle isuh begin, is recycled, basically
(47:38):
, and it doesn't mean that weare, uh, eliminated of the
conscious experience ends there,it certainly doesn't.
I think psychedelics are one ofthe powerful tools that we can
utilize, and this is why end oflife, uh, uh, you know,
preparation for people sufferingfrom cancers and things like
that why psychedelics have beenenormously powerful for them is
(47:58):
they get to experience a bit ofunderstanding of what's going to
happen to them, and that'sextremely helpful, because
there's a lot of fear andinsecurity there, and so we are
placing too much importance onthis physical experience of life
, and so tragedies seeminsurmountableountable.
And yet, if we're able toachieve higher and higher levels
(48:20):
of perceptual frequencies andperceptual experience, we start
to have a feeling ofconnectedness in which we
realize that nothing is lost, noone is gone.
The consciousness of the, thepeople and ones that we loved
are here with us, they're in us,they pervade everything.
(48:42):
I had an experience in one of mypsychedelic emotional process
journey work sessions where Ispoke to Nicole after her death
and she was in this experiencerepresented.
What her spirit was at the timein this experience was a planet
.
She was an entire planet, agaia spirit around another star,
in another galaxy, and shehoused life forms on her.
(49:02):
She had forests, she had oceans, she had early uh, almost
hominid like life forms.
It wasn't very developed, butthat was her and she was
speaking to me as a spirit, asthe spirit of this planet, and
so that whether that's a realityor not doesn't matter.
The point is she was right,there with me.
I could feel everything abouther essence.
(49:22):
She was there and present.
And when you look at moreindigenous ideologies around, uh
, their spiritual experience andthey look at the salmon as
their ancestors, as their greataunts and great grandparents and
great uncles and great warriorsof the past and look at the
buffalo the same way, thesethings.
It's an interconnected networkin which it's it's a transient
(49:43):
life, in which there's a cycleof life.
So we're placing too muchimportance on this physical
experience of life and that'sout of kind of insecurity.
That's the default mind network, that's the ego, that's an
attachment to identity asourselves, as this, of this kind
of physical life experience andthat creates an enormous amount
of suffering.
(50:03):
And this kind of comes back toeckhart and what he talks about
with ego creating suffering.
We're identifying as this is it,this is all there is we're able
to get to outside of that.
That's when we're able to, uh,you overcome those limited mind
spaces and then see thisexpansion, that that the tragedy
(50:24):
itself isn't so tragic in theend.
And so when people say, oh well, why does it always have to be
negative, like you said, itdoesn't have to be, but there's
nothing more powerful than thatbe, but, uh, there's nothing
more powerful than that.
If we're stuck in a physicalexperience, what's going to be
more powerful than thenobliterating that physical
experience and forcing you tothen fate?
Now, what right?
(50:44):
The universe is very powerfuland say now, what do you think
you better?
you better have some ideas thatovercome and transmute that.
It is an alchemy, it's a, it'sa transmution of that.
Now, that being said, that doesstart to lead into what love
really is.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
So I'm going to say this to lewis, because I think
we're going to have to doanother episode with you yeah, I
don't think we'll finish itbecause there's too much stuff.
We need to talk about if youdon't?
Speaker 2 (51:11):
if you don't mind, we'd like to have you again,
yeah, yeah, I'd love to be backanytime, because this is.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
this is the beginning of some serious development of
the human race.
Let's face it we're working onhuman race development here.
Yes, exactly.
And this is so important.
It's such important work.
I mean it really is.
Thank you so much for joiningus with Louis Dorian on this
incredible journey.
I encourage you folks to do adeep dive with Louis and because
(51:39):
he's going to be back and we'regoing to talk some more about
all this stuff.
Thank you so much, louis,really so much.
I can't thank you enough.
You made my day a really greatday.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Really nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Absolutely great to meet you both.
Thank you guys.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
Thank you very much.
Okay, Bye-bye everybody.
Thank you for joining us on Outof the Blue.
Out of the Blue, the podcasthosted by me, Vernon West,
co-hosted by Jacqueline West,edited by Joe Gallo.
(52:16):
Music and logo by Vernon WestIII.
Have an Out of the Blue storyof your own you'd like to share?
Reach us at info atoutoftheblue-thepodcastorg.
Subscribe to Out of the Blue onApple Podcasts, Spotify or
wherever you get your podcasts,and on our website,
(52:37):
outoftheblue-thepodcastorg.
You can also check us out onPatreon for exclusive content.
Welcome to Out of the Blue the podcast, where we
share real stories of people whofaced life-changing challenges
and found their way forward.
I'm your host, Vernon West,joined by my co-host and
daughter, jackie West, oursocial media and marketing
manager, a professional musicianand Reiki healer.
(00:43):
Thank you for tuning in and ifyou find value in these
conversations, please like andsubscribe to help spread the
word.
This week, we're honored towelcome Louis Dorian, founder of
Psychedelist and a powerfulvoice in the growing
conversation around mentalhealth, psychedelics and healing
(01:04):
.
Lewis's journey is one of deeptransformation, rising from a
childhood shaped by trauma,through years of extreme
exploration, personal loss,incarceration and a near-death
experience.
Out of that crucible, hediscovered the eight root
fundamentals of MES growth andlaunched Psychedelist, a
(01:28):
platform for education andhealing.
His story is raw, honest anddeeply inspiring.
Join us for a conversationabout truth, transformation and
the journey back to life.
Hi Lewis, and welcome to Out ofthe Blue the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Hello Vernon.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Great to be here, nice to see you, lewis.
So tell us, lewis, let's startright, you know, at the
beginning of our narrative.
Basically, it would be probablyright around that time when
you're the aftermath of deeppersonal loss, including losing
of your partner Laurel Nicole.
You know when, what, what, whatwas that about the issue when
things started to turn for you?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So, um, yeah, it's, you know the name of your
podcast and everything, and Ithought about it as time went on
and it seems like, uh, uh,there's so many moments in my
life that would fit under thecategory of out of the blue, um,
but Nicole's death especiallythat, uh, even though there were
issues, there were indications,nicole died of an overdose, a
(02:30):
tragic, accidental overdose.
Opioids were a factor and itwas unexpected.
It was extremely unexpected andthe reason was, you know,
obviously I was very aware ofher issues around substance
abuse.
You know she had this substanceabuse issue, but she had told
me that she disliked opioids andshe tended to lean towards
(02:53):
stimulants and things like thatin a binge fashion.
She was a lot of things.
She was very talented.
She was a dancer, a personaltrainer, a very physical,
physically engaged person,extremely talented.
She could do almost a Cirque duSoleil act on a Pilates ball
where she would stand on and dothis whole float thing.
But then in her dark momentsshe would disappear.
(03:13):
I would have to go hunt herdown in CDO hotel rooms and
places like that and find herand pull her out of her deep
dark you know, darkness thatwould just pervade her being.
And then I would take herplaces.
I would take her to Puerto Rico, I would take her to Costa Rica
.
I would take her places forperiods of time where she would
(03:35):
emerge from that and become justher beautiful self again.
But she never admitted toopioid usage, said she disliked
them, and then, out of the blue,we found her body December 10th
2014.
So that, yes, that was themoment when some of the biggest
changes happened.
(03:56):
That was when a lifetimestarted to turn into something.
It didn't happen right away.
It was about a year of drinkingfor me.
I was drinking heavily,damaging my body completely in a
state of misery and grief, andthen, eventually, things started
to emerge.
I started to receive whatpeople sometimes in the space
(04:19):
call downloads.
Right, I'm a surfer.
Uh, the ocean is sort of likemy church, uh, my my place,
where I go to uh kind of communewith spirits, I pray, meditate
out there.
Uh, I I surf for very personalreasons, and out in the ocean is
where I started to receive somedownloads.
(04:41):
I I gave uh a eulogy at herfuneral and that was a download
that was straight, just camewhile I was in the ocean.
And so, yeah, that was theturning point where the prior
experiences that I had and thenthe experiences I started to
have after through the healingprocess, where I started to
(05:02):
develop the eight rootfundamentals and I started to um
, you know, do my own healingand emotional and trauma process
work, that, uh, that reallyhelped me, uh, you know,
integrate the wisdom that wasthere but that I didn't have
access to until I started doingthe trauma work.
So when you start to processtrauma and really start to make
(05:34):
headway, that's when there'sthere's deep's deep wisdom in
all that experience and thatpain and then transforming it
into wisdom.
Psychedelics is a um is amanifestation of that, as well
as uh.
Just sharing this, these, these, you know, things that I
learned, these lessons that Ilearned and working with people
in uh, in one-on-one sessionsand talking to people about um,
(05:58):
what I see when it comes tomental health, which was became
a very nuanced thing.
I I think that one of the issueswith society that came out from
Nicole's death you're nevergoing to hear me demonize drugs.
A lot of people go throughthese type of tragedies and say
we got to get rid of all thesedrug dealers, we got to put away
the fentanyl dealers, we got todo all this stuff.
I disagree with all that.
(06:18):
I think it's not so simple,it's very complex and gray space
.
It's not black and white.
I think that when we start tolook at things from a very black
and white perspective, we'reactually in a somewhat juvenile
or immature mindset.
So substance abuse became oneof the important things I talk
about a lot and it certainlyties into my kind of ethos
(06:43):
around psychedelic usage and theproper use of tools.
As you mentioned in the openerthere, I've experienced both
positive and negativeexperiences with psychedelics
and that helped shape my ideasaround the proper engagement
with these powerful tools and itexpands beyond that.
The way I look at substances ingeneral is that they are
(07:07):
powerful tools, oftentimesvehicles for different types of
engagement and travel, dependingon what it is, and they each
have their own set of skills,including opioids, including
stimulants, including othercategories of substances and,
unfortunately, includingstimulants, including other
categories of substances.
And unfortunately, I think oursociety, because of the immature
(07:31):
mindset we've had aroundsubstances this very black and
white perspective we haven'tengaged our population enough
with the ideas of skilldevelopment that is very much
rooted in mental, emotional,spiritual growth and healing.
So that was what emerged.
Was this far more, I would saycomplex view of the world and
instead of, you know, leaninginto bitterness or anger or rage
(07:57):
or judgment around, you knowsubstances.
Some substances are bad andsome are good.
No, it's a very nuanced skilldevelopment journey and that was
the big thing that came fromNicole's death, including so
many, so many lessons.
You know, while Nicole wasalive she was a very complex
person because of the traumasthat she experienced and had not
(08:19):
processed, and I was not who Iam today, of course, and didn't
have all the skills andperspectives I have now.
So I was doing the best I couldat the processed and I was not
who I am today, of course, anddidn't have all the skills and
perspectives I have now.
So I was doing the best I couldat the time and I was learning
and I began to understand thingsthrough this lens of root
fundamentals.
And that came from martial arts.
That came from, particularly, amartial arts mentor that I had,
(08:42):
a man named Roy Harris.
That is one, one of the I thinkonly the second american in
history to receive a coral beltin brazilian jiu-jitsu.
He, uh, he's one of the besthands-down teachers generally,
not just in martial arts but inanything I.
I went to school and uh wasworking on a phd in mathematics.
I didn't finish.
I got a master's, uh, and thatwas around the time when my
(09:04):
father passed away and that'swhy why I didn't finish the PhD.
You know, and I've had manyexperiences with higher learning
and education and teachers, andnone of the teachers I've ever
had were as good as Roy Harris.
He's the one who helped mestart to see the world through,
when you engage with a newconcept, a new idea, a new skill
, that there are importantfundamentals that lay the
(09:28):
foundation for going down thatjourney effectively, and and
implying that I began to learnand that was what I learned from
Nicole.
One of the first lessons Ilearned from Nicole was what
true authentic love is, and thatuh was mind-blowing because I
had a lot of different mixed upideas in my head and and took
things personally when she washurt and going into her dark
(09:50):
places.
After six years and all thistime together, you know I
learned a lot and and and I gotto learn that you know love is
actually three root fundamentalsand it would align more with
what you might call authenticlove or even, like Buddhists,
might refer to it as noble love.
It gets complex when we start totalk about romantic love and
(10:13):
different types of love, and Ithink that there can be
confusion there.
Right, it's similar.
All these concepts start tomerge into a similar theme of
complexity and understanding,nuance and not looking at things
as black and white, and thenreally starting to become
granular.
You're looking at things likelook at how far the study of
(10:37):
physics has come because of thispursuit of the granular, the
tiniest particle in the universe, right?
What is it?
And we've never even reallyfound it.
And in that pursuit, though,look at all this wisdom that's
come from it.
Look at how far quantummechanics has come, and I feel
like that's the way that I'veapproached a lot of things.
(10:58):
Once I was exposed to this ideaof fundamentals, I started to
look at things much moregranular not that that granular
approach is always, that's oneparticular side of it and then
it becomes this cohesive biggerpicture where you start to try
and integrate the things thatyou're understanding and looking
at.
And so that that was thejourney.
And and what happened is priorto that.
As you mentioned, I had allthese other experiences, so I
(11:20):
had the psychedelics experiencesof my earlier days, you know,
like late teenage years to early20s, and that was a result, as
you had mentioned, of theviolent environment that I was
growing of.
And that's the journey isawareness, and that's another
thing.
Foundationally, fundamentally,I believe that the real and
(11:52):
ultimate purpose of our lives isto gain awareness, and that
comes down to almost a quantumidea of what is the universe's
purpose, and I believe itspurpose is to become, uh,
simultaneously aware of all itsparts that's, that's a, that's a
big number there right there tobecome aware of itself.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
The universe wants to become aware of itself and I
love that makes a lot of sensebecause, um, that's when you get
into the granular.
Really, what you were talkingabout is so much space, you know
there's so little actual ummatter.
Everything is sort of you knowwaves and, uh, you know
(12:32):
particles.
Maybe, I mean it depends ifyou're watching it, you know but
, um, so that's that, this, it'san issue that's gonna, it's
definitely ongoing and itdefinitely goes down to that, uh
, that granular.
When you, when you were talkingabout um, so this, this, this
major event, of course, you withhaving to do with love, that's
(12:55):
obviously to me, hits me reallyhard because I know that's one
of the most powerful things youcan deal with in this world is
love, and interacting with lovein your life is going to make
those changes.
So another thing you said waswhen we talk about out of the
blue, the whole thing with outof the blue you said earlier the
first thing.
You said so many things fromout of the blue happen to you in
(13:16):
your life and I mean that's soaware of you, you know, because
I think that awareness of allthe blue things happening in our
lives comes from experiencingthem.
Experiencing them, and then youstart seeing that there's so
many of these things coming outof the blue to you and then it
is this universal mind trying tofind its identity.
(13:41):
Really it's evolving through us, our own experiences.
And when you said that, it mademe see it like clearly, for
like a first time actually, thatthe web, the network of all
these out of the blue thingsthat go on interpersonally, all
different people everywhere inthe world and the planet, it's
all working together for thatconsciousness growth.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's been, yeah, that's, that's been
my experience, that's been myexperience.
That's, and that's what turnedthe corner for me is seeing that
and also the prior you knowphases of my life where I and
(14:27):
you know self-reflection and somany efforts before maybe it
starts to coalesce into somesort of understanding that works
for you personally.
I talk about this stuff.
For some people it willresonate and mean something and
for some it won't, perhapsbecause they don't have aligning
(14:50):
experiences or they haven't hadthe time to do enough
self-reflection or spend enoughtime marinating to reach that
point.
That's one of the things Ireally like about certain types
of reading.
For instance, the book that TaoTe Ching is a book you read
your whole life, because in thebeginning it's sort of gibberish
.
Some things might make somesense, but ultimately, as you
(15:11):
get older and mature and change,you start to glean more from
the short poems that are inthose writings.
There's deep truths hiddenwithin the poems but they don't
reveal themselves right awayuntil you kind of have this
moment of.
You'll have an aha moment, andit usually takes years.
You know it takes years well,one author that really helped me
(15:34):
tie some ideas together thatcame from northern mexican.
Toltec shamanism was actuallyeckhart tolle, believe it or not
, which is rather strange, ohyeah I'm reading the Power of
Now.
Yeah, yeah, eckhart's amazing.
He is explaining something Ithink is extremely fundamental
to our world.
And then I I did not start withhim, of course, and in fact
(15:55):
when I first started reading hehadn't written his books yet.
I was reading about Toltecshamanism in northern Mexico,
and they talk about some thingsthat, because of a cultural
barrier for me, I didn'tunderstand until I really read
Eckhart, and it tied it alltogether.
The Toltecs talk about somethingthat they call cleaning the
island of the tonal, and whatthey're talking about?
(16:16):
They're saying that you need todiminish your sense of
self-importance and diminish itfrom what they're calling this
island of the tonal, and thatthere's this other side of
ourselves, that there's aduality within us that's called
the nagual.
Well, I don't.
For years was trying to figureout what the heck they meant by
all this.
What is the nagual?
What is the tonal?
They reference the nagual as aplace uh, that is, uh, outside
(16:39):
of the mind.
That's infinite.
That's this human experience,or or not even just human
experience, but a consciousexperience that is infinite and
beyond language based.
Mind is really what it is.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And so this is where right.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
This is why the world is so confusing If you look at
our society.
One of the things that in myearly days of you know
mainstream schooling, going topublic schools and the
philosophies and things thatwere taught to us One celebrated
philosopher was Rene Descartes,the philosopher and
mathematician that said I think,therefore, I am.
He was actually incorrect.
(17:15):
It was just flat out false.
It's not true.
And yet an entire societyadopted and celebrated what he
said there.
And language-based mind is not anecessity for having a
conscious perceptual experience,uh, and yet that seems to be
exactly what renee de kart wassaying and what was adopted by
(17:35):
our society.
In fact, that, I believe, iswhat's led us to a society that
is full of sick people becausewe're overly obsessed within
mind.
We're overly obsessed and mindis deeply rooted in dopamine
release, constant dopaminerelease and stimulation.
Right, and that's wheremeditation and beginning to slow
(17:56):
down the mind and getting awayfrom that is when we start to
find more inner peace andharmony and balance, and not
constantly releasing thatdopamine and going into that
constant stimulation and andbeing obsessed with thinking.
An obsession with thinking iswhere we're at, I think, in this
society, and it's one of thelessons.
(18:17):
That comes from psychedelics,but it's not to say that
thinking is negative in some way.
It's just that we've overusedit, overdone it.
It's it's it's like anaddiction.
It's the same thing as what Iwas saying about substances.
Right, you can use substances,you can use psychedelics.
You can use other substancesappropriately and properly and
have positive results.
(18:37):
You can also use themimproperly and have terrible
results, and I think to somedegree we've done that with our
actual thinking minds.
And this is what the Toltecswere referring to with the tonal
.
The tonal is the rational mind,it's the place in which our
personalities reside, ouridentities reside and our ego
resides.
And that's the crux.
That's where that word is aloaded word that in certain
(19:02):
circles people have differentdefinitions, and this is where
it gets tricky.
I have to put a lot of prefaceon it and delineation, otherwise
people have this strongdisagreement with this.
It's because they have adifferent definition for the
word ego.
My definition is aligning withEckhart's and Eckhart, if you
notice, never defines it.
(19:23):
What he does is he describes itand he describes it in detail
through anecdotal experiencesand explanations and
descriptions of people'sinteractions, and you start to
see a picture.
In that picture, ego iscompletely negative.
There is no positive side tothe ego he's talking about, and
that's what's important is thatparticular side of ourselves
that we might call hubris, or wemight also call self-importance
(19:46):
, to use the toltec uh term.
Of course, that's subject to uhtranslate, language translation
, which also adds a barrier whenwe're talking about cultural,
you know, trying to understandanother culture.
Uh, that part of ourselves, Ibelieve, is the stumbling block,
the evolutionary obstacle toachieving our higher level of
(20:07):
potential as a species.
And that's tied into what I wassaying about this idea that the
universe is attempting tobecome aware and almost kind of
like a panpsychism model.
All of these things that we'retalking about, by the way, are
things that supported my lifeand made my life better.
In my understanding, one of theroot fundamentals actually the
fourth root fundamental isauditing one's beliefs, a full
(20:30):
belief audit.
When you really reach a pointwhere you say, hey, I'm ready to
change, you stop blaming theworld entirely and you start
looking at yourself and youstart trying to figure out how
to find your peace and innerbalance and harmony and heal,
and you reach a low point inyour life.
You eventually have to turninward and not look at
(20:50):
everything as external andsomeone else's fault.
In that process, there becomesa point where you start to audit
your beliefs and this becomes adiscussion that's very
pertinent to the term defaultmind network that Michael Pollan
brought up in his book.
You know how to change yourmind.
That was when that term, Ibelieve, really became more
mainstream.
People started talking about theDMN.
(21:11):
The DMN is deeply affected byego.
The DMN is affected byautomated beliefs.
That is what the DMN really is.
It's this network of beliefsthat are all functioning in
automation.
They're allowing us to assessthe world at a symbolic level so
that we can ascertain things ina practical way.
(21:33):
I need to go to work, I need toanswer emails, I need to, you
know, pay the bills, I need todo certain things.
At least that's in our modernworld.
In our older world we didn'tneed to do those type of things
and so we actually had less mindgoing on and probably a much
less developed DMN, which Ibelieve was probably a more
positive experience.
The DMN if we aren't careful, webegin to have a bunch of
(21:54):
beliefs that become automatedand then, if we don't do an
audit, some of those beliefs areactually contradictory to each
other and we won't even realizeit.
And some of those beliefs areactually contradictory to each
other and we won't even realizeit.
And some of these beliefs causeharm and they're all operating
very much like computer softwareand that was mind-blowing for
me.
I began to realize that afternicole's death is that there
(22:15):
were automated beliefs andduring her life that was what
was hurting me at times with ourrelationship, because she was
damaged and she had pain thatwas really affecting her life
and having this ripple effect.
I was taking things personallyand then I would do things out
(22:36):
of judgment, out of beliefs Ihad.
That damaged the relationshipfurther and eventually I
realized that it was causing meharm, it was causing her harm.
It was that there were beliefsthat were not positive and they
were within me and automated.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
What is DMN?
What does that stand for?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Default Mind Network.
This is a term that reallyshowed up in Michael Pollan's
book how to Change your Mind.
He was a journalist, ascientifically minded I believe
even atheist and started to hearrumbles and reports of people
having positive psychedelicexperiences and doing all of
this deep dive research intowhat was happening with
(23:15):
psychedelics and, of course,then started experiencing them
himself and he had come acrossthe term default mind network.
He had come across the termdefault mind network.
Default mind network is ourlogical mind, is operating at a
symbolic level through languageand what's happening is, as we
get older, we're assigninglanguage to objects and concepts
(23:36):
and then we take them sort ofsort of for granted.
It what it is, is it's apractical thing when I say the
word tree?
If I, if I say the word tree,is it's a practical thing when I
say the word tree?
Uh, if I, if I say the wordtree, it's a conceptualized idea
and you might get a quick flashof an image of a tree in your
mind and it represents something.
But an actual tree is, issomething extremely profound and
(23:56):
of course you realize that yeahand you're almost limiting yeah
, well, it is limiting and it'sintentionally, and it's
important that it's eliminating,because what it's doing is this
is what I meant aboutaccomplishing practical tasks at
the practical task level offeeding your children, you know,
(24:18):
getting from point a to point buh, ascertaining a threat
versus, uh, you's benign, thesetype of things.
We need these things to beautomated, and very fast, and
that's a part of how our kind oforganism and our system works
to manage our world in apractical way.
The problem with it is thatthis becomes this overbuilt,
(24:42):
just giant structure that's fullof a bunch of programming and
and for many people, much ofthat programming is really uh,
can be very toxic and and evencontradictory.
There can be all types of umit's it's like broken code, but
what it is is.
It's this development of the.
(25:03):
It happens from a very youngage when we're when we're
infants and then toddlers andlearning to speak, we're being
taught to develop our defaultmind network and then we're sent
to schools and we're sent,we're taught to read and we're
taught, you know, all thesebasics.
We're taught arithmetic andbasic math.
With all these things it'sdeveloping that default mind
network so that we're able topractically interact with our
(25:24):
world on a, on just a practical,uh, you know, basic, uh, uh,
physical realm level.
I gotta I gotta be able to feedmyself, I gotta pay my bills, I
gotta, you know, be able todrive, I gotta be able to manage
in this world.
And that when that starts totake over too much, that's when
the world becomes very mundane.
And the world becomes very, itcan become a really dry, mundane
(25:48):
, boring place with not a lot ofsubstance.
And this is where, when peopleare completely trapped within
their default mind network then,and that that coding becomes
larger and larger, and then youstart to see that there are
these issues within theautomated belief systems.
That's, that's the weird part,is the automation of belief, and
that's what's happening withwith thinking and thoughts.
(26:10):
They aren't the problem.
So when people talk about, well, I have all these really
negative thoughts in my head.
It's driving me crazy, I'm veryunhappy, I'm depressed, I go
through anxiety.
I have these thoughts in myhead.
It's not the thoughts of theproblem.
What's the problem is thebelief, is that anchors the
thoughts.
The thoughts don't have anypower until you believe them.
Once you believe a thought, nowyou're anchoring it in power,
(26:32):
and that that is where the issueis, and it's the actual beliefs
.
This is something that michaelpoland does not talk about.
This is something that I've I'msure other people probably talk
about it, but but I've, forwhatever way, kind of invented
the wheel for myself.
It's really the beliefs thatare operating the default mind
network and what the Toltecswould call the tonal.
So the tonal and the DMN arebasically the same thing.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
I would love to see a diagram of this, so cool to
just like look at and like,really just look at my scan, my
whole self, and and be like, ok,this is the belief that is that
is weighing these thoughts soclosely to me.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, you're right, a diagram would be great.
And we're only talking aboutone side.
When we start to talk about thenovel, we're talking about the
non-language based side of ourconscious experience.
I won't even call it our mindsyou might be able to refer to as
mind, but now you're, then itstarts to muddy the water a bit.
It's a conscious experiencethat's outside of language-based
(27:35):
thought, and there are somepeople probably a good amount of
population out there whobelieve it's impossible to have
a conscious experience withoutthought, and they're actually
incorrect.
There is absolutely a way toexperience conscious perception
without language thinking, andonce you do, it's an extremely
powerful experience and for manypeople it's very rare that they
(27:57):
have that experience.
It's even rather rare for me.
I've, throughout my life, hadthe experience of meditation and
psychedelics and differentthings where I've slowed down
language-based rational thought,but it's been rare that I've
seen it stop completely whileI'm fully awake, and that is.
That is a rare moment, anextremely profound moment in
which we step into another sideof ourselves, the side of
(28:21):
ourselves that's infinite, andit's the side of ourselves where
we feel the connection to allthings, where we feel that
quantum level of connection, andso on that side of things, this
interplay between ournon-language based perceptual
consciousness and ourlanguage-based rational mind.
That's where there's someactual danger involved when it
(28:43):
comes to psychedelics and thingslike that.
When we force ourselves intoheading towards that language,
that non-language basedperceptual consciousness
experience, that's when our egosbecome threatened.
And this is where you'll hear,in the psychedelic experience,
people talking about ego deathand these things.
This is where people can slipinto psychosis and people can
(29:04):
have negative experiences, uh,through their interaction with
psychedelics.
We have to be very careful.
This is why meditation, breathwork, these type of things are
far, in my opinion, more safeand, uh, more attractive way to
approach this.
From my perspective as afacilitator, before I ever
introduce anyone to apsychedelic, I want them to
experience breath work, I wantto experience sitting still.
(29:26):
Uh, the second root,fundamental mental, emotional,
spiritual skill development, iswhat I call not doing, and
that's actually a term.
Uh, we might call it meditation, right, we might use that word,
but meditation, in my mind, hasthis idea that we're still
doing something, and and I don't, I don't want people to think
that they're doing something.
The idea is not to do anythingand in not doing anything, we're
(29:48):
actually attempting to achievea point where we're not even
thinking and you're just beingnot doing for people who are
wrestling with past traumas thatthey haven't resolved, and and
those types of things.
Not doing is very difficult.
Paul Stamets made arecommendation when it came to
(30:09):
his advice around hey, how willI know, how should I gauge
whether I'm ready for a macrodose, a large dose psychedelic
experience?
Paul Stamets said go intonature.
Don't bring a book, don't bringyour phones or electronics,
don't bring anything, don't evenbring food, just bring water.
Sit for three days and donothing.
If you can do that fairlycomfortably without freaking out
(30:31):
, you're ready.
If you can'tic experiences.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I might have done mescaline or something.
And I remember saying to myfriends I don't think in
thoughts.
I don't think in thoughts.
And they say what do you mean?
You don't think of it.
I think in clouds, I think inspaces.
(30:58):
I actually felt that that's howmy mind was.
I was thinking in clouds and Iwas just interpreting whatever
it was.
I mean I was definitely.
I think I was experiencing thenon-language self there at that.
I mean it was really prettyintense and I think that stayed
with me.
It's still with me.
I still think that way.
(31:19):
But the other thing I wanted tosay was when you mentioned how
people are just not mature.
You know you said that aboutpeople not being mature enough
to understand all the differenttypes of drugs and they can be
good or bad.
It depends on how they're used,and then that goes right to
even thoughts.
Thoughts can be good or bad.
It depends on how they're used,and then that goes right to
even thoughts.
Thoughts can be good or bad,depends if you believe in it or
(31:40):
do it or whatever.
You know, it's the same thingwith everything and it's like
it's funny that you say thatabout not being mature, because
I feel like that is the what'sgoing on really, why this
trouble's happening in this.
The world of division that'sgoing on now is a lot of people
just holding on to their I don'tknow, maybe they're must be
their dmn, they're holding on tosome really wrong thoughts and
(32:04):
they're just not getting out ofit.
If you think about it, if youbecome a little bit mature or
evolved enough to see that thedichotomy of things that good
and bad and hot and cold, it'sall relative I mean it down to
the granular level, really,what's hot, you know it's it
(32:26):
depends on where you are in thespectrum.
So, um, yeah, those are twothings I wanted to mention, but,
um, we can go in any directionyou want.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
This is sort of this talking about this, the
operation of the mind, and youknow, this is where it gets
really interesting, becausewe're seeing in the psychedelic
community and within mentalhealth in general and we've seen
it in, you know, health care ingeneral and a lot of areas of
life where if somebody doesn'thave the letters at the end of
(32:55):
the name the certifications, thelicensing uh we sort of dismiss
them and and it's become reallyinteresting.
We're seeing that, um, in thisworld of psychedelics, we're
seeing that there are uh,there's a, there's a movement
here, unfortunately, uh, wherepeople are looking to take
financial advantage of somethingthat could really help and heal
(33:17):
people, and in that we'reseeing that this isn't
completely linked to necessarilythat side of it, but there's an
arrogance sometimes with peoplethat have the letters at the
end of the name the MD, thedoctor, the PhD, the, whatever
it is and that's that's where Ithink there's a.
(33:38):
It points back again to thisego that we've been mentioning
and this idea that immaturity.
When you talk about immaturity,in a way, what this becomes is
when we look at our species.
Our entire species is immaturefrom an evolutionary standpoint,
if you think about it, if, ifthere are intelligent species on
(33:59):
other planets, around otherstar systems, which it seems
likely, that probably are basedoff mathematics, just pure
probability theory alone statesthat there probably are and
there probably are intelligentlife forms that are beyond our
place that we're at now.
I've thought this through and itappears to me that in science
fiction writing we've now I'vethought this through and it
appears to me that in sciencefiction writing, we've noticed
(34:20):
that I've seen that thesescience fiction writers are
almost like modern day prophets.
I mean, look what's going onwith technology, look what's
happened with SpaceX, lookwhat's happened with, you know,
cell phone technology, cameratechnology, drone technology, I
mean AI, you name it.
These are things that sciencefiction writers were writing
about 50 years ago and it'samazing how prophetic they've
been.
But in one area I think they'vebeen consistently wrong is this
(34:43):
idea of a predatory, maliciousalien species.
And let me explain why.
Uh, if an alien species were toachieve interstellar capability
through technologicaladvancement, right where there's
some people and even even theToltecs would talk about this
that there's a belief that youcan actually transfer your
consciousness through some formsof meditation or psychedelic
usage where you could experienceanother planet.
(35:04):
Let's say, some people talkabout this and through their
experiences at DMT, you couldmaybe travel and actually see it
for real.
We don't know, we don't have away to verify it, but if you
were to technologically acquirethe capability to go to another
star system, the advancement isso vast from where we're at, you
know obviously Elon is talkingabout going to Mars and things
like that we're so far away fromthat, from making that a truly
(35:28):
practical, pragmatic endeavor.
Think about going to Alpha,centauri, any star system.
It's so far in the future.
So that trajectory oftechnological advancement is
going to many, many multiples oforders of 10 times over.
We will create technologiesthat can destroy us, that can
(35:50):
ruin our environments, that candestroy each other, can actually
wipe out our entire species anddestroy our entire ecosystem.
That is part of the trajectorytowards achieving this
capability.
So what that means is we haveto overcome our baser, more
toxic, you know things aboutourselves, the flaws within our
(36:13):
species, the things that I wouldsay are rooted in ego.
That is what we must overcomein that endeavor, and so what it
becomes is this idea of thedefault mind network and these
things we're talking about withmaturity and immaturity, and and
these things, is that theentire species evolution towards
this.
What I would say is the goal tobecome stewards of our own
(36:34):
environment, stewards of our ownplanet, and then be able to
explore who doesn't want toexplore and see another planet.
That is the goal, but in orderto achieve it, we will have to
overcome the things that areholding us back and threatening
us existentially.
We will have to eliminateborders.
We will not have borders.
We will not be engaged in aneconomic system of currency
exchange.
(36:55):
We will be one species with ahive mind and the ability to
have an individual uh, you know,prefrontal cortex experience of
knowing who I am, but alsobeing completely connected and
kind of hive mind driven in sucha way that we are completely
harmonious with each other.
And we have to overcome ourarrogance over our other fellow
(37:15):
species on the planet.
That we believe we're somehowso superior to other species on
the planet is a part of our egoand beliefs.
These beliefs are harming us,and that's the number one metric
for me.
If your beliefs, if you can sitand do a belief audit and you
are able to ascertain that abelief that you're holding on to
is harming yourself or harmingother people.
(37:37):
That is the metric in which youneed to abandon that belief at
that point, once you see that itis harming you or others.
And I went through this withnicole when nicole was alive and
she did things out of her ownpain and I would take it
personally.
I would believe certain thingsabout, for instance, uh, loyalty
and romantic love very complexpeople.
People think it's simple.
It's not simple.
(37:57):
Just because she went and leftme in a state of confusion and
had some fling with another man,did that mean she doesn't love
me?
Well, if I hold on to thebelief that she doesn't love me
and I'm going to harden thatbelief, guess how that makes me
feel.
I start to feel negative things,I start to behave negatively.
Next thing you know my actionsand my thoughts and my words
(38:18):
towards her negative.
Was any of that positive andhelping anyone, or was it
causing more harm?
No, those beliefs I was holdingonto, these very judgmental
beliefs, were actually harming.
They're harming myself, they'reharming her, they're actually
probably even harming peoplebeyond that.
And that was when I began torealize that I needed to abandon
certain beliefs and choosedifferent beliefs that were not
(38:38):
harming people.
Once I did that, I started tosee a far more positive
experience in my life.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I love how you are taking this situation as an
example, because it involvesanother person and their actions
and how those actions affectedyou, and then you're mostly or
almost entirely, talking aboutwhat you can do in yourself,
(39:04):
like you're taking a lot ofresponsibility for yourself in
this dynamic, and I think that'svery rare for most people to do
.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
It's an enormous amount of self-responsibility.
In fact, it does almost becomeall about the self and it turns
out that love itself is a verypersonal journey in truly
understanding it, and it doesn'tseek reciprocation of any kind.
True love never seeksreciprocation.
(39:38):
It doesn't matter what theobject of love does.
Love is a frequency that'smaintained and expressed and
does not matter even if someonespits in your face, because the
understanding becomes back tothose four agreements.
It's not personal, it's theirjourney, it's their issues, it's
their problems, it's theirbaggage they're carrying and so
(39:59):
then, as you begin, to elevatethis vibrational frequency.
that's when you'll start to seethat it has this very powerful
effect.
When we take someone, people,you know this is interesting
because it starts to relate tothe criminal justice system and
all kinds of things, becausewhen you take a person who's
done something that we see asmorally deficient, right, and
(40:19):
then you punish them and youshame them and you isolate them
and you do all these things tothem, does that have a practical
effect on improving their stateof mind and changing their
behavior and their beliefs andaffecting their default mind
network as we get back intousing that terminology, or does
it increase their pain?
Does it further harden theirnegative ideas and thoughts that
(40:43):
led to the actions that gotthem in trouble in the first
place?
Does it actually have anegative impact on them?
And I would argue, just from theunderstanding of human nature,
that it does not help thesituation.
It doesn't.
We need to in certain cases,when we're talking about violent
individuals, we will have toseparate them from circumstances
where they can harm or hurtother people.
(41:04):
But in the way that we punishthem, the way that we see this
punitive experience with people,is actually it doesn't work.
That's the real issue Punitivemeasures do not work with human
beings or with anything anyorganism when you are punitive
with it you only harden moretrauma, harden more negativity
(41:26):
within their psyches and theyjust become really even worse.
It's not the way to approachthis, and so experiencing love
and understanding truly what itis, and then understanding the
interplay between boundaries andlove, is where we need to head
as a society.
As we see, what's going onright now politically and
socially, and there's all ofthis unrest taking place,
(41:48):
there's still an enormous amountof immaturity, and it's coming
down to the lack ofunderstanding of what really
works First of all, what'spractical, what's pragmatic,
what's going to build a bettersociety, what's going to make a
better world and what isn't.
What do we want as a society?
Do we want to live in a lovingsociety and a society built on
cohesion and harmony and balance, or do we want to live in a
(42:09):
society that's constantly atodds and friction and potential
for violence and things likethat, and potential for violence
and things like that?
And if we're going to choose,you know, the former over the
latter, which I would hope wewould, I think yeah, you would
think right.
Then we got to start doingthings that are practical and
pragmatic, and those things donot involve heavy judgment of
(42:30):
others, heavy handed punitivemeasures.
Those types of things don'twork.
I'm not saying that we don't inthe cases of violent criminals
and things like that put them ina place where we protect
society, but you don't do it ina punitive way.
You need to treat these peoplelike human beings, even the
worst of them, even the workthat have committed?
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Yeah, no, I believe that for sure.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
And that's where you know.
That's why sometimes, when Italk about, for instance, the
fentanyl crisis and I'm ananti-war on drugs proponent, a
big-time anti-anti-war on drugsadvocate I'll have people who
have experienced the loss ofloved ones and they're furious
about fentanyl, they're furiousabout these things.
They want to throw around thishatred and I'm like, look,
that's not going to work.
The reason we have fentanyltoday is because how we treated
(43:14):
heroin in the past, and that'sbecause of how we treated the
laudanum in the past and opiumin the past and those things.
That's how we ended up here.
You keep doing the same thing.
You're going to keep gettingworse and worse results, right,
uh, you know, and and so stopdoing that.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
We need to start looking things in from a
different way, you know that isthe definition of insanity to do
the same thing over and overagain, expecting different
results.
Yes, the basic thing about thatis that immaturity comes back
to the front of the subjectagain.
Now.
I think that you, when I'mlistening to everything taken
(43:51):
into the out of the blue idea,like you were saying how you've
been aware of a lot of out ofthe blue things in your life,
and I think that, because youare evolved in a sense that
you're able to, I think thatalso equips you to take what
happened to you and turn it intosomething positive.
(44:12):
I mean, we actually had a younglady on the other day who has
got cerebral palsy and she saidsomething really profound.
She said, just becausesomething is tragic doesn't mean
something good can't come outof it.
We just want to start thatconversation that positive
things can be happening, eventhough you might think of it as
(44:32):
negative.
It's like this is what the outof the blue I think is here to
do.
I mean, as we go through ourlife and this stuff starts
happening to us that we don'tknow why it's happening.
Well, there's a reason why.
It's the universe trying togrow to us, smartening us,
giving us a smack.
Hey, pay attention, you knowwhat I mean.
(44:54):
For me, it was like taking awayeverything that I thought was
important.
So I had to stop and take stockof everything and build my life
from the bottom up only on whatI know is important and real,
which is basically love.
And um, you know, it comesright down to it.
It is love.
I mean and that is a tough oneman you talk about describing
(45:15):
what is love.
I mean, and that is a tough oneman.
You talk about describing whatis love.
I don't know, it's a tough one.
I like to hear what you thinkabout that.
How would you think of thatplays into the Out of the Blue
network, so to speak, or thejourney that we're kind of being
ushered on?
Speaker 2 (45:31):
I think you brought up some extremely important
points, and so, before I talkabout love, I want to talk back
about the, the tragedies of lifeand what, what they represent
for us as, uh, consciousexperiencers, perceptual beings
in this world.
Um, I think that what we'rewrestling with and where
(45:51):
religion comes from spiritualityand our early, early hunter and
gather ancestors that wereusing psychedelics in a natural
setting as hunters and gatherersin a primitive world is that
what we've all been wrestlingwith is the idea of death, and
in the Toltec traditions theyhave a term called using death
as an advisor, and when youunderstand what using death as
(46:12):
an advisor means, becomesextremely potent and powerful.
But that journey is not easy atall.
Uh, what I would say is thateven when you look at religions,
organized religions, who claimto have the answer to what
happens after you die andtherefore are providing some
sense of security around this,you'll find that often, many of
(46:34):
the parishioners within thoseideological frameworks do not
act as if they are secure withthe idea of death.
If they did act that way, Ithink you would see different
mindsets and different types ofactions and words that came from
these people, but oftentimesyou find that, no, they're very
insecure and very frightened andvery concerned about what
(46:55):
happens after they die, and then, in some way, are kind of stuck
in a contradictory place.
What I would say about tragedyis that it is pointing, these
are signposts towards the ideathat this life is not as
important as we make it out tobe, and what I mean by that is
(47:16):
that this is a transientexperience we're having, that we
don't even own these bodiesthat we think we own.
They're really just vehiclesthat we're renting for now, and
then they run out of, you know,battery life and things start to
fall apart and the vehicle isuh begin, is recycled, basically
(47:38):
, and it doesn't mean that weare, uh, eliminated of the
conscious experience ends there,it certainly doesn't.
I think psychedelics are one ofthe powerful tools that we can
utilize, and this is why end oflife, uh, uh, you know,
preparation for people sufferingfrom cancers and things like
that why psychedelics have beenenormously powerful for them is
(47:58):
they get to experience a bit ofunderstanding of what's going to
happen to them, and that'sextremely helpful, because
there's a lot of fear andinsecurity there, and so we are
placing too much importance onthis physical experience of life
, and so tragedies seeminsurmountableountable.
And yet, if we're able toachieve higher and higher levels
(48:20):
of perceptual frequencies andperceptual experience, we start
to have a feeling ofconnectedness in which we
realize that nothing is lost, noone is gone.
The consciousness of the, thepeople and ones that we loved
are here with us, they're in us,they pervade everything.
(48:42):
I had an experience in one of mypsychedelic emotional process
journey work sessions where Ispoke to Nicole after her death
and she was in this experiencerepresented.
What her spirit was at the timein this experience was a planet
.
She was an entire planet, agaia spirit around another star,
in another galaxy, and shehoused life forms on her.
(49:02):
She had forests, she had oceans, she had early uh, almost
hominid like life forms.
It wasn't very developed, butthat was her and she was
speaking to me as a spirit, asthe spirit of this planet, and
so that whether that's a realityor not doesn't matter.
The point is she was right,there with me.
I could feel everything abouther essence.
(49:22):
She was there and present.
And when you look at moreindigenous ideologies around, uh
, their spiritual experience andthey look at the salmon as
their ancestors, as their greataunts and great grandparents and
great uncles and great warriorsof the past and look at the
buffalo the same way, thesethings.
It's an interconnected networkin which it's it's a transient
(49:43):
life, in which there's a cycleof life.
So we're placing too muchimportance on this physical
experience of life and that'sout of kind of insecurity.
That's the default mind network, that's the ego, that's an
attachment to identity asourselves, as this, of this kind
of physical life experience andthat creates an enormous amount
of suffering.
(50:03):
And this kind of comes back toeckhart and what he talks about
with ego creating suffering.
We're identifying as this is it,this is all there is we're able
to get to outside of that.
That's when we're able to, uh,you overcome those limited mind
spaces and then see thisexpansion, that that the tragedy
(50:24):
itself isn't so tragic in theend.
And so when people say, oh well, why does it always have to be
negative, like you said, itdoesn't have to be, but there's
nothing more powerful than thatbe, but, uh, there's nothing
more powerful than that.
If we're stuck in a physicalexperience, what's going to be
more powerful than thenobliterating that physical
experience and forcing you tothen fate?
Now, what right?
(50:44):
The universe is very powerfuland say now, what do you think
you better?
you better have some ideas thatovercome and transmute that.
It is an alchemy, it's a, it'sa transmution of that.
Now, that being said, that doesstart to lead into what love
really is.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
So I'm going to say this to lewis, because I think
we're going to have to doanother episode with you yeah, I
don't think we'll finish itbecause there's too much stuff.
We need to talk about if youdon't?
Speaker 2 (51:11):
if you don't mind, we'd like to have you again,
yeah, yeah, I'd love to be backanytime, because this is.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
this is the beginning of some serious development of
the human race.
Let's face it we're working onhuman race development here.
Yes, exactly.
And this is so important.
It's such important work.
I mean it really is.
Thank you so much for joiningus with Louis Dorian on this
incredible journey.
I encourage you folks to do adeep dive with Louis and because
(51:39):
he's going to be back and we'regoing to talk some more about
all this stuff.
Thank you so much, louis,really so much.
I can't thank you enough.
You made my day a really greatday.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Really nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Absolutely great to meet you both.
Thank you guys.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
Thank you very much.
Okay, Bye-bye everybody.
Thank you for joining us on Outof the Blue.
Out of the Blue, the podcasthosted by me, Vernon West,
co-hosted by Jacqueline West,edited by Joe Gallo.
(52:16):
Music and logo by Vernon WestIII.
Have an Out of the Blue storyof your own you'd like to share?
Reach us at info atoutoftheblue-thepodcastorg.
Subscribe to Out of the Blue onApple Podcasts, Spotify or
wherever you get your podcasts,and on our website,
(52:37):
outoftheblue-thepodcastorg.
You can also check us out onPatreon for exclusive content.
Popular Podcasts
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.