Bridging Minds: The Dance of Logic, Intuition, and the Hero’s Journey Across Cultures

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Map.
My guest today is someone who Iwould describe as a
jack-of-all-trades, a maverick,a renegade with a cause, a
nomadic student of life, anintellectual, a creative, a
childlike innovator.
Please welcome my friend JohnnyGunter to the map.

(00:22):
I'm joined today by JohnnyGunter.
My friend, thank you for doingthis.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
All right, all right, and I'm joined today by the
legendary Michael Persley.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Persley.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
The man himself.
Yes, yes, yes, so good to seeyou, man.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, you too.
It's been a minute.
Yeah, where are you at?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
right now.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm in my office in Kempton, Germany, so at the deep
south, the deep, deep south ofBavaria.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
South of Bavaria.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I gave up like kind of the rural country side
of America for the ruralcountryside of Germany.
So I'm living in the same world, just a different language.
More cows than people.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, that's interesting, vibe, yeah, that's
interesting.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Um, and how does Germanycompare to the states?
Because I mean, it's more, it'sa it's it's more homogenous
society than America.
So I'd assume that it uh well,that that it's less tense when
it comes to certain politicalissues, at least in itself

(02:04):
compliant people, like it's acolder culture, but they're more
compliant.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
If you look back over the last hundred years, there
was like five kind of politicalsystems that happened which is
really insane to think about,like shifting from a monarchy to
a kind of democracy that wasmessed up to a dictatorship, to
the DDR, to what we have todaywith the EU, what we have today

(02:26):
with the EU.
And Germans are prettycompliant.
I mean, I think leaders figuredout as long as you give them a
healthcare system and some kindof pension system, they're
pretty content.
So I think, as long as there'ssix, five Germans get five, six
weeks paid vacation, they have apension system and they have a
um health care system that theyall pay into, that they pay

(02:48):
nothing for health care andmedicine and so when those
things are rolling, irregardlessof what the, what the political
climate is like they're,they're pretty content.
Obviously I'm usingbroad-stripping statements.
There'd be some germans whodisagree with that, but I mean
as a whole, versus in america,like people I would say they're

(03:11):
more emotional, like they're waymore overly emotional and
reactive to things, and they'renot.
I would say we used to becritical thinkers, but we even
lost that in the last years webut we definitely never were
critical feelers, like we neverprocessed how our emotions fit

(03:32):
into like objective reality andum, yeah, and we tossed the baby
out with the with the bathwater, and I'd say, like a lot
of people are motivated to dolike they want things.
They want to do things thatfeel good versus things that do
good over the long term, and soin the short term they feel good

(03:54):
, but in the long term it's yeah.
So anyways, that's just anobservation I made, like that's
what I've been.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I mean, it's the difference between left brain
and right brain thinking.
The left brain is really goodat routine, it's really good at
finding stuff that it's good atdoing sticking to that paradigm.
And it's also where thedopamine reward system is
located, like that's where youhave most of the dopamine

(04:29):
receptors and, as you know,that's where we get our kick,
our sense of oh yeah, this feelsgood.
I'm gonna keep doing that.
And the right brain is different.
It's based on aneurodegenerative system and
that has more to do with gettinga sense of reward from

(04:50):
exploration.
So that's trying new things,traveling to new places, tasting
new foods, learning new thingsthat you wouldn't otherwise
consider worth learning.
Maybe it's, you know, anotherreligion, maybe it's another
worldview, a political system oran ideology that you haven't

(05:15):
really considered.
That's right brain stuff, and alot of people don't engage with
the right brain as much as theycould, as much as they should,
because the left brain is allabout that short-term,
hyper-local.
Think of it like Uber, right.
It gets you from you know yourplace of work to home and back

(05:36):
to work and then someplace outat night.
And if you look at your Googlemap, you'll see your little
squiggly.
You know just your path, youknow your little life in
squiggles on a map.
But the right brain is morelike taking a KLM flight and
doing a cross Atlantic journeyto New York or to Sao Paulo or

(05:59):
something like that.
We don't engage it as much aswe should.
In fact, we're very scared ofthe right brain.
This is where we, this is theplace of dreams, you know.
This is the place of the, whereall of that subconscious
activity happens.
Where our intuition isdeveloped, it's long range

(06:23):
thinking.
It's always, you know, it's avery, very different system.
It's always, you know, it's avery, very different system.
And, you know, we didn't evenrealize this until we started
messing around with neural netsand machine learning, and we
found that when, with machinelearning, they had to
essentially separate the twocomponents of what a machine

(06:44):
does when it learns, One is, youknow, it learns.
A machine learns how to do acertain set of instructions, and
then what happens when theinstructions need to get updated
, you know, when there are newelements coming into the
environment and you're learningthings.

(07:05):
They realized that unless thesetwo, I guess, hemispheres of
learning were separated, thenwhat would happen is that you
would overwrite all of the oldlearned information, and so they
had to create two containers.
Then, right, and then theyfound out that our own human

(07:25):
brains are actually structuredin the same way.
So we have hemisphericspecialization for the left
brain and the right brain, andso it's essentially like we have
two different brains in ourhead, all connected by the
corpus callosum, without whichwe would be literally two
different people, or amultiplicity of people, which is

(07:46):
very interesting.
But yeah, america, there's awhole lot of left brain thinking
there and it's funny.
But I mean, it's not justunique to America, it's unique
with any culture that has sortof established itself and is
trying to maintain control.

(08:08):
I mean, just take the fact thatwe encourage children to.
You know, play according to therules, even here in India.
You know, if a kid startswriting with their left hand,
then that's bad because the lefthand is dirty right.
So you know, you tell themthat's bad, that's bad.
So you start writing with, youtrain them to write with the

(08:29):
right hand and, interestinglyenough, the right hand is
connected to the left brainright, just as the left eye is
connected to the right brain.
It's very interesting If youactually look at a person's eyes
when they're speaking, if youwanna know if they're really, if
you actually look at a person'seyes when they're speaking, if
you want to know what they'rereally interested, just look at
their left eye right, becauseyou'll find that if they are

(08:53):
interested, that left eye willkind of, like you know, like
expand a little bit and you gottheir interest, that is, if
you're giving them novelinformation.
You know, because the differencebetween the left and the right
is cognitive routine on the leftand cognitive novelty on the
right.
So the right is always lookingfor new things.

(09:15):
It's always looking for, youknow, something that hasn't yet
been discovered or it hasn't yetrealized, and it gets a kick
out of that.
Yet been discovered or ithasn't yet realized, and it gets
a kick out of that.
But yeah, you know, one funnything is, when people grow old,

(09:36):
the first hemisphere of thebrain that begins to atrophy is
the right.
Isn't that interesting?
Which is why you'll find a lotof old people sometimes just
stuck in their way of thinking.
They're stuck and it's onlybecause they're not using the
right brain to do its job, whichis to discover new things.
And then you wonder why you'redepressed, why you're anxious,

(09:57):
why you know life is meaningless.
Well, it's because there isthis very important side of us
which we must pay attention to,and that is to be constant
learners, constant explorers ofthe unknown, you know.
And so, yeah, I don't know howwe got into that, but man, just

(10:17):
so you know the way this podcastis going to go, we're going to
get very philosophical.
Let me tell you that I'm allabout it, dude.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
I'm all about it, dude.
I'm all about it.
I'm glad you brought it up,because there was a study done
where they scanned the brains ofsmall children and they found
that both hemispheres of thebrain were more or less the same
size.
And then when the childrenbegan to go to Western school
like I'm talking specificallyabout Americans and the

(10:47):
creativity of the children wereabout the same.
But after like a few years inWestern school, they noticed
that the left hemisphere of thebrain actually started to grow.
And then they measured that thecreativity of the children
dropped by the time theyfinished school, that the
creativity of the childrendropped by the time they

(11:07):
finished school.
Man, I'm fudging, I'm fudgingthe numbers, but it was like it
was way below 20 percent um fromwhen they had started.
And then they actually foundthat, like the right hemisphere
had was a lot smaller than theleft hemisphere because of the
fixation on language,mathematics, deductive thinking
and so on, versus um music,intuition, creativity and
imagination.

(11:29):
And when you look at people likealbert einstein, who was a huge
believer in tickling the rightside of your brain and opening
yourself up to imaginativethinking and and creative
thinking, there's what?
What I understand.
There's two main forms ofcreativity.
One is synthesized creativity,where I pull from a lot of

(11:51):
different sources and resourcesand in my consciousness and in
my being I kind of constructthis collage of these different
inspirationsations, so to speak,that I see and bring.
Maybe it's an innovation, butit is a synthesized kind of um

(12:12):
product from all these differentsources.
And then there's another kindof creativity where you're
pulling stuff out of the ether,you're, you're literally
reaching into the heavens, abovethe sun and pulling something
down that has not been inexistence before.
It's very rare.
And what you alluded to is,yeah, that in Western culture

(12:33):
there is this huge emphasis oninsurance, security, safety nets
, backstops, um, to kind ofcorrect our course, to maintain
the status quo, to maintain lifeas it is, and and you see it
most like, you can see itclearly demonstrated.
I'll just give one example.

(12:53):
If there was a factory thatthis is a literal example, but
there was a factory that madecarbonators for cars and they
needed 300 000 workers to createthese carbonators.
And then there was a machinethat was developed that you only
needed 30,000 people to workthe factory.
So, in essence, 270,000 peopleroundabouts lost their job.

(13:15):
And so the people who losttheir job are saying this is
evil, you brought in a machineand it took our jobs, and this
is wrong, and blah, blah blah.
But in essence what happenedhere was something called
creative destruction, where thecreativity of someone to
engineer and innovate and bringthis machine actually freed up
270,000 people to do somethingelse with their life.

(13:39):
And I understand that there's alot of nuance to this and people
could say, yeah, but thosepeople need to be taken care of
in the kind of transitionaryphase and innovate.
Like we're in a phase of thehuman existence, the human
experience, where innovation ishappening so fast, um, and it's
it's compounding so fast and themore we information share
through the mediums like theinternet, that we can't catch up

(14:01):
.
You know, when somebody wentfrom using a hoe to having a
donkey that pulled a plow, therewas a lot of freaking time
between those that innovationwhere you could kind of catch up
to it and and and whatever.
And then when you went to thetractor and then from the
tractor to industrializedfarming, that happened real fast
, like in America there wasabout 30 million farmers at one

(14:24):
time and they couldn't produceenough food to feed just America
.
And then with the innovation ofindustrialized farming.
You went down to 5 millionfarmers but the farms became
massive but they had enough foodto supply America but also
export the food.
Again, it's an example ofcreative destruction and again,
I understand that there's alittle bit of nuances, like
we've come to the point where wedon't need industrial farming

(14:48):
has become like a for profitthing versus feeding people
thing.
And I understand, like,people's upset about climate
change and the way animals aretreated and so on, but I see the
necessity of it in that periodof time where you literally have
people not having enough food,and so that was an incredible
innovation.
But there were a lot of farmerskind of left in the dust
because they could not adapt,because what what took several

(15:11):
generations to adapt to is nowhappening exponentially faster
even than what happened to them.
Like, if I look back at thetech bubble that came, where
there were all these like weirdlittle gadgets, like cameras,
just there was just a littlegadget for everything, and now
we've just compacted everythingonto into onto a smartphone or
onto like, like computer dude iswhat it is.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, it's a super computer dude.
Yeah, I mean we, we, we took ashuttle to the moon back in the
60s with the hard drive of apocket calculator.
That's nuts, dude.
I mean, we take this granted.
Oh man, you know, it's likewe're spoiled dude.
We don't know what we have, wedon't know what we are supposed

(15:56):
to really value.
Um, yeah this is?

Speaker 1 (16:00):
this is something I bring up quite often because and
I've said this before when Iwas a kid I don't know what it
was I wanted to measurablychange the world in some way.
I wanted to leave an imprint inthe world, a kind of legacy or
something to where I woulddramatically change the world in
the positive and leave alasting impression.

(16:22):
And then something just kind ofclicked in my head in the last
years I don't know the name ofthe guy who invented the
refrigerator, I don't know, Idon't know the person who
invented the vast majority ofthe stuff that I use on a daily
basis that dramatically frees mytime up so that I can do things
that I to be entertained, tofind pleasure, to find comfort

(16:45):
or to grow and learn.
And it's like, like you said weare, we are like kindergartners
with nuclear, the access tonuclear bombs, like we have the
internet with a smartphone, islike you have access to, to the,
to the knowledge of the humancollective, and you did nothing
for it.
Okay, yeah, you, you paid.
You paid a couple hundred maybeif you got to use one, but you,

(17:07):
you really did nothing andyou're, you're, you're standing
on the shoulders of theshoulders, of the shoulders, so
many people.
So I find that reallyfascinating.
Um, just in the time that welive and what we have access to,
versus like even a hundredyears ago.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
A hundred years ago, seriously, man, yeah, I, you
know what you said about, youknow, standing on the shoulders
of giants.
I mean, that's something Ithink about a lot.
You know, I don't take that forgranted.
Um, at least when I'm, uh, youknow, trying to be consciously

(17:42):
grateful for what I have, um, um.
And if I didn't do that, if Ididn't take the time to just
spend some time every daythinking about, okay, this is
what I have with me right now,um, I tell you, the days go by,
you know, and uh, and then youknow, I had this very
interesting thought, uh,exercise that I did the other

(18:03):
day and I was just pondering andI just I was like what, if you
know?
There was like, say, thisparaplegic, right, didn't have
any arms, didn't have any limbs,grew up their whole life in a
wheelchair, being pushed aroundby other people.
They could speak fine, theycould think fine, and all that,

(18:23):
but they didn't have limbs.
And what if this person wantedto?
I don't know, like run a race ortry high jump or something like
that.
Well, they just couldn't.
It's just a dream, right?
But then what if one day thatparaplegic wakes up in my body,

(18:44):
right, all of a sudden, boom,he's Johnny Gunter.
He's in my body right.
All of a sudden, boom, he'sjohnny ganta.
He's in my body, right, he'sgot arms and limbs and he's this
skinny dude and he's nimble andat a right age, and what have
you.
And then he'll be sitting in mychair with everything that I
know plus my limbs, and he wouldsay to himself what the fuck

(19:07):
has this kid been up to man?
Like?
I mean, he'd be like yo yo, yo,yo yo.
I'm going to go for a run rightnow.
I'm going to train for amarathon.
You know, I'm going to startdoing weights.
Look, I've got arms, I can dopushups and I can start getting
a chest.
Why hadn't this guy been workingon that?
Like?
What's wrong with him?
You know, that's just the thing.

(19:27):
So it's almost like you don'tknow what we have until it's
gone, or you don't know howvaluable something is unless you
have been in a place of lack,which is why, like a lot of
creativity, a lot of thecreatives.
A lot of the smartest people onthe planet weren't, you know,

(19:48):
just rich people, you know, whojust had everything handed to
them on a platter.
The people that were forced tobecome creative were the people
that were put into a positionwhere they had to become
resourceful.
You know, they had to find away to solve the problem, and
that is the catalyst for themost interesting innovations we

(20:14):
find on the planet.
It's so when people say, youknow, my life sucks, I don't
have enough enough.
You always got to think likewhat, what do I have right now
that I can work with?
You know, uh, I mean, I tellthis to my students all the time
, even if they don't understandit.
Like, um, you know I, you knowI, I.

(20:37):
I love mythologies, I lovestories, I love, um religious
texts, and sometimes I'll sharethe story of moses, who you know
.
He grew up in privilege andthen he is.
You know, he's he, he, hemurders this dude, right?
Um, he's the adopted son ofpharaoh.
He murders one of the hebrewsand now he has to flee egypt and

(20:59):
so he runs off into thewilderness.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
He goes to uh what is the e what are the?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Egyptians Moab, moab or something.
I think that's where he is,anyway, anyways.
Well, he meets his wife,zipporah, and he becomes a
shepherd.
And that's what he's doing.
Man, the son of a king hasbecome a shepherd and he has
this staff right and it's likeone day he's doing his thing,

(21:26):
this Acacia Bush starts burningand he starts to get this vision
.
And the vision tells him yo,you got to go back and free your
people.
And he's like uh-uh, I got tostart up.
I can't do shit.
And they're like the voice islike get your brother.
Okay, aaron can talk, all right, use him as your mouthpiece.

(21:47):
He's like okay, fine, I can dothat, but what else do I have?
I don't have anything.
I can't.
How am I going to?
You know, show them that I ambeing, I am representing the God
Almighty, and this and that.
And he's like what is in yourhand?
He's like it's a stick.
He's like throw it on theground.
All right, he throws it on theground, it becomes a snake cool.
Well, you see, that's thebeginning that that story is, I

(22:11):
think, the reason why you knowyou have such a simple tool in
that man's hand and why he wasstill able to go and do so much.
I think the moral of the storyis to go with what's in your
hand, right.
We're always going to findexcuses for not starting
something, but if you just gowith what's in your hand, right,
we're always going to findexcuses for not starting
something, but if you just gowith what's in your hand, you
will find that that is a way,it's a way of stewardship that

(22:34):
gets rewarded, which happensbecause not enough people do
that, and so if you're one ofthe few that does that, then
you'll find that as insufficientas you are, you know any lack
of education, lack of the rightupbringing or the right passport
or whatever that is, but noneof that matters when you just go

(22:58):
with what's in your hand, asopposed to just saying I'll do
it when I get there, I'll do itwhen I get to the other side,
I'll do it when I have X, y, z.
No Start with what's in yourhand.
See what happens.
Okay, because there's a lessonto be learned there.
The lesson is this of abundance, that you have so much more in

(23:20):
your arsenal than you're even,like, consciously aware of.
Let's start with that, because,consciously, all we're taking
in in any given moment right,while I'm talking to you it's
taking up most of my processingpower, um, which my conscious
mind has.

(23:41):
I think it's something like ahundred kilobits of information
a second that I can process.
As I am talking to you, I'musing up 60 kilobits of that,
and so that gives me very littleroom to actually do some
listening now, which is crazy.
But on a subconscious level,when we're thinking about all of

(24:01):
our senses the sense of touch,the sense of sight, our ears,
smell, taste, right, we'retaking in about 11 trillion bits
of information every second.
Right, where's have moreinformation in hand in our own

(24:31):
brains than we realize.
You know regular people.
They want to go to Padre andsay tell me, am I all right, am
I doing the right thing?
Or you'll go to some you knowwise old woman, you know she's's
gonna pull out some tarot cardsand tell me my future.
Or you'll look up to a teacheror a parental figure and say

(24:51):
like am I good enough?
Am I on the right path?
And the truth is, this issomething that most people don't
do, which is just sit insilence and try and tap into
that part of yourself that'salready picked up on so much
that has happened in the world,and all you have to do is allow
that to sort of come up to thesurface.

(25:15):
Right, you play around with it.
You know this is calleddeveloping the intuition.
You know this is how you getthat.
What some people call like aprophetic ability, for example.
These are merely people whohave learned how to tap into
that intuition system.
You know, which is a verypowerful thing.
And so once you have masteryover the brain and what it can

(25:39):
do, once you have mastery overthe brain and what it can do,
then you will find that you arenot in lack at all.
You have plenty to work with.
And then the question is okay,where do I start?
Because then that getsoverwhelming, because then
you're like well, now there's amillion things I can't do, so
where do I start?
And so the cycle goes like youhave those moments where
everything opens up and the eyesawake and you know you're like,

(26:03):
wow, I see everything, I seethe full picture.
I see I can see clearly now,right, and then all of a sudden
the clouds come back.
You know, it's like you havethat moment of like
enlightenment if we want to callit that and then it's gone
again.
And then we think to ourselvesah, that was just, I just had a

(26:24):
weird moment.
It doesn't mean anything.
But then a few months later itcomes back and you're like, oi,
it came back again, you know.
But then it goes away and thenyou start thinking, you start
losing faith, because you'relike why doesn't it stay?
Why doesn't it just stay?
Because if it's stuck, thenmaybe I do something with it,
but it's not sticking, so maybeI shouldn't, I shouldn't be

(26:46):
serious about it.
You know, I shouldn't take ittoo seriously.
Because then?
Because?
Because, when the clouds come,and when you stop hearing the
voice from inside right, you'rebasically left with the voices
of the people around you, andthat is not helpful at all,
because the people around youare essentially only using you

(27:09):
as a mirror for their own psyche, right?
So everyone needs to bevalidated.
So when they say something,they basically want you to just
reflect back to them what theythink they are supposed to be
doing right.
So every parent's looking forthat validation, every teacher's
looking for that validation.
But when you understand thetruth of how powerful your mind

(27:37):
is and the fact that you areuniquely and wonderfully made
for a reason, and that you knowit's taken all of life's energy
um to go into building you andputting you here on the planet,
at this point in time, when yourealize that, then you don't

(27:58):
need other people to tell youwho you are.
It's still very difficult youknow, because we have these two
eyeballs in our craniums, right.
They're right there with us.
They're right there with us andI can see you with them right
now, michael.
I can see my own eyes, with theeyes that are in my head right

(28:20):
now, but it's only a reflectionof my eyes.
But guess what?
Will I ever in my life be ableto see my own eyeballs with my
own eyes?
Not a reflection, the way youcan see my eyes if you were
standing in front of me face toface, the way you can see my
eyes if you were standing infront of me face to face.

(28:42):
Right, I would never be able todo that for myself.
And so that's a very interestingthought.
You see, so we have all ofthese super organs and yet we
don't know what it is, we don'tknow who we are, and so we just
have to ask someone else tell mewhat you see.

(29:03):
Look at me, what do you see?
Who am I?
Right?
So that's the role of otherpeople in community.
It's to give us a sense ofidentity.
And if you don't have a strongsense, if you don't have a
strong internal compass, thenyou will be, you will move where
the wind blows.
You know, you will be like ahouse on a flimsy foundation.

(29:28):
You know, and that's where alot of people are.
You know, they just get caughtup in the rabble and the ruckus,
and and it's just because it's.
You know.
This goes back to that wholeleft brain thing.
It's like we want things to bebinary, we want things to be
right and wrong, we want thereto be left and right, we want

(29:51):
there to be good versus evil,and all of that white versus
black, right, but what we don'trealize is you can't have one
without the other, and so thenthat's not a binary way of
thinking.
That's the third way ofthinking.
The third way of thinking isthat you need white for black to

(30:14):
exist, you need black for whiteto exist.
Imagine if the whole world waswhite, right?
Imagine if, for example, wecould see everything with you.
Know, I put you into aspaceship, you go out there for
a spacewalk, all right, head,now, they can see this small

(30:45):
sliver of the infrared spectrum,or, sorry, the electromagnetic
spectrum, right Now.
What if?
Now we know that there's morebeyond what we can physically
see.
Right, there's, like all theseother x-rays, gamma rays, this,
this, that, right, which we canpick up with other, you know,
sensors.
But what if your eyes?
We were to give you Supermaneyesight so that you could see
everything all the time, right?

(31:05):
Well, you get out there inspace and everything would
become a complete kaleidoscopeof noise.
It would be like a whole lot ofoverwhelming sensory input that
you would not be able to makeany sense of.
And the same goes for the earsand the sense of touch and

(31:26):
everything else.
If we could taste everything,if we could, you know, hear
everything, the whole range,right, as much as we would love
that and think that that's agood idea, it's actually a
disability, which is why havingthis limited view is actually a
good thing, because I can onlysee this one sliver of the

(31:50):
electromagnetic spectrum.
I now actually have sight Enough, sight that's needed for me to
get from A to you know, and um,and now I can tell figure and
ground.
I can tell one thing from theother, right, because I'm I'm
only seeing what I need to see,right, um, but yeah, speaking of

(32:14):
figure and ground, it's likethat's the, that's the thing
about black and white.
It's like imagine, just purewhite, just pure, pure, pure
white.
Right, a white piece of paper,for example, it's just there
With the moment you put like adot on it, like a black dot.
Now something's happened.

(32:35):
Right, it's no longer just awhite paper.
You got a black dot on there.
What does that mean?
Right, and the same way, if itwas all black.
And now you have a little whitedot in the middle.
Well, what does that mean?
You see?
Because if the only color waswhite, then that black thing
becomes something special.
Now, you see, if the only colorwas black and if all we saw was

(32:56):
black, and now you see one spotof just another color, that
becomes special.
And so then I would say bothsides need to be grateful for
the other, for existing.
You know, in the same way, whenyou have the moment of being
enlightened and the moment ofbeing down in the depths, in the

(33:17):
clouded darkness, you'regrateful for the both, darkness,
you're grateful for the both.
But a wise person knows thatain't going to last forever,
because life is constant motion.
It's constant up and down, justlike a sound wave, just like a
light wave.
You know, it's up and down, upand down, right, crest trough,
crest trough.
And so if right now I'm feelingdown in the dumps, the right

(33:44):
narrative that you want to giveyourself is that I'm not going
to be here forever.
As much as this feels like aforever place, it's not Because
you will come out of it.
And when you come out of it, begrateful, be like oh my God, I
can breathe again, I can seeagain.
Amen, see you again, amen,thank you.
Right, so you see again.

(34:05):
And but just know this, you'regonna go blind again pretty soon
.
So but be cool with that.
You know some smart people Iknow they'll actually um the
stoics do this a lot, like umtim ferris does this a lot, you
know, he know he'll practicethis type of meditation where he
will imagine the worst casescenario happening.

(34:28):
Right, he has to go to ameeting or something.
He's going to imagine it goingto absolute hell.
Right, it's just an absolutedisaster, and he sits with that,
he imagines every detail ofthat.
He sits with that for, like, aminute, right, and then he flips
it.
He flips it to where he thinksof the meeting going.
Absolutely amazing.

(34:49):
It's flawless, his words arecoming out smoothly.
You know the people that he'stalking to.
They love him.
They're like leaning in, he'svery interesting, and now he
starts to feel it.
He starts to feel it, he startsto feel good about that, right,
just as like before he wasfeeling really bad when he spent
that one minute thinking abouthow shitty that could be right.
You see, the way we feel aboutthings is so, so funny, man.

(35:11):
It's so funny because so what?
What tim ferris does is he'lldo, he will, he will, he will go
one minute into a really darkplace.
Next minute he'll go into areally bright place, right, and
then back into the dark place.
Really feel that out.
And then we'll back into thatbright place.

(35:31):
Really feel that out.
How does it feel?
Feel right, and then you'llspeed it up.
You'll flip-flop between dark,bright, dark, bright, dark,
bright.
And then you'll speed it up.
You'll flip-flop between dark,bright, dark, bright, dark,
bright.
So, finally, it's like insteadof this big, long, you know, low
frequency wave of big ups anddowns.
You've got.

(35:51):
It's much smaller now, thedistance between the up and the
down, and that's kind of how yousort of maintain some sort of
equilibrium and then so then itdoesn't matter whether it's good
or it's bad, it's just you havetrained yourself to sort of
switch out of a bad state muchmore quickly than you would

(36:17):
otherwise without that kind oftraining.
Because sometimes bad thingshappen to you.
You get traumatized, ptsd, this, and that it lingers, it stays
with you for life.
In fact bad things have alonger effect on us than good
things that happen to us.
You know, we know that.
But when you train yourself tomove between those two states
quickly, then you won't have asituation where you know someone

(36:41):
comes and tells you hey, man,you know you're dumb ass, like,
you're inconsistent, like whydon't you have your shit
together?
That's not going to weigh youdown for three or four months,
because maybe that word camefrom someone that you looked up
to, maybe that was your mentorthat said that to you, maybe it
was just having a bad day, youknow, because that's actually
happened to me and the words ofpeople have thrown me down in

(37:03):
the dumps like that.
And so you know, that's thepower of the logos man.
It can shape you, that is,unless you realize that you have
that same power, right, andthen you can also shape things.
And the words you speak overyourself are very important.

(37:25):
And then, going back to thewhole, the way we feel about
things, see, it's veryinteresting.
You know, I shared this analogywith some of my students.
Like, imagine you got like adad, right, cheeky dad, little

(37:46):
kid trots into the room.
Dad gives the kid a littlesmack in the butt.
Right, the kid turns around,okay, and sees that the dad is
like he's got an angry face on.
The kid looks oh, I must havedone something bad.
He just hit me in the ass.
It's stinging now, and so nowthe kid starts to cry.
Right, it's now made theconnections.

(38:08):
Okay, I got a smack in the ass.
Dad looks angry and I've donesomething wrong.
I'm going to cry.
Now, same scenario.
Right, kid trots in the room.
Dad gives the kid a littlesmack in the ass.
Right, a kid looks up at thedad and dad has a cheeky grin on
his face.

(38:29):
Right now, same smack in theass, same pain threshold, but
the kid interprets that, oh,he's in a cheeky mood, it's time
to play Right, right, isn'tthat interesting, like how the
mind creates our response to thestimuli.

(38:51):
We get to choose how we want torespond to these things that
happen to us and this is thenarrow path man.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
This is the narrow path, man, this is the narrow
path.
But, yeah, yeah, your, yourendocrine system is not the
greatest.
Uh, it's just a horrible driver.
But it's like dictating whatmost people people are doing,
and Joe Rogan calls itconquering his inner bitch.
Um, yaka Willick and DavidGoggins also would share that
sentiment about um.

(39:29):
There's an internal dialogueand and, yeah, exactly what you
said that there's.
You get to choose how yourespond to it.
But your endocrine system isreal baseline seek pleasure,
seek comfort, avoid stuff thatmakes you scared or involves
pain.
And there you will have tocreate narratives around pain,

(39:51):
around fear, around pleasure andaround comfort, and then your
brain, this big supercomputer,gets to figure out the pathways
of how you do that.
Normally you take the fastestway, the path of least
resistance, as David Gogginscalls it.
But I love what you talkedabout about things feeling real

(40:13):
dramatic in the situation.
I think most of us can identifyto some degree with like
teenage heartache, so like whenwe're like young kids and we
like a girl, but she doesn'tlike us back, or we have a
breakup or something, and thenat the time it just feels like
the end of the world.
You just feel like someone juststuck a knife in your chest,

(40:34):
like to articulate the feelingof it.
It's just like the end of theworld.
You know what you feel and Ithink that that's a real gift,
actually, of how emotional weare, how, I would say, how open
we are to process emotion thattime, trying to find language to
it, trying to find meaning toit.
But it's like low riskprocessing, to say like if I'm,

(40:55):
if I'm 12 years old and I, youknow, I'm dating, dating a girl,
or or 13, 14, 15 years old,dating a girl, and we hold hands
and we kiss, and then she saidI don't want to hold your hand,
kiss you anymore, like thatfeeling of rejection is like
getting able to deal with thatfeeling of rejection and
processing it is way differentthan you're engaged to somebody

(41:16):
or you're married to somebody,but it's like this, this low
risk and this low resolutionexperience will create a kind of
pyramid or steps where you can,you're trained to be able to
process things, where what youjust said about these waves of,
like the highs and lows that wehave to, we have to deal with it
, tim Ferriss, is processingthrough.

(41:38):
We got deep in the weeds, but Ihad a few thoughts that I jotted
down quickly so I could keeptrekking with you.
So, yeah, you, you mentionedsomething about like this flash
of inspiration.
It's the way I took it likethere's this, there's this
feeling where you, your head,comes above the clouds and you
feel inspired, or you or you yousee a glimpse of I I

(42:00):
immediately, when you talkedabout it, I literally thought
about the scene in the thirdmatrix film, I think, where neo
and trinity go literally abovethe clouds and she sees the sun.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, watch that last night, man, I watched that last
night.
Oh yeah, like you know, andthen immediately back down.
Yeah, dude, totally yeah it'sironic he was.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
He was blind, you know, and she had to describe it
to him that just the, just the.
There's so much in that.
Um, but albert einstein, isaacnewton and several guys, they
were brilliant guys, but theyexplained their theories and
ideas coming like this and it'sit's tapping into that intuition
as it comes.
Write that shit down, like ifthat's you listening, like write

(42:44):
it down, like Albert Einstein'stheory of relativity or part of
it was, was he literally wasstanding on a train platform and
he wanted to tell the time.
He turned around, looked at theclock and when he turned back
around, like this just thoughtcame into his head that when he
wanted to know the time, it tooktime for him to turn around and

(43:04):
look at the clock, so the timethat he actually wanted to know
was already gone.
And so, like that's, that's howit came.
It just came to him in a flash.
And there's many, many peoplewho brought innovations, who
they, they, they had a dream orthey had an idea and they just
stepped out onto it and thenthey meditated on it and they
tried to cultivate it, and theydidn't take it as like a brain
fart.
They didn't take it as, oh, Iate pizza last night and then

(43:26):
this is what happened, you know,and the ability that tied into
what else you're saying, theability to cipher or filter out
information and the experiencesthat we're having.
Information and the experiencesthat we're having is when you
referenced earlier the capacityof your brain to take in how
many kilobits of information isreally incredible, because

(43:47):
there's people who have likedefects where they literally
can't forget anything.
They literally have aphotographic memory of
everything.
And so, when, when it's likethat, if you were like that, if
you were able to remembereverything and you couldn't
filter out what you wouldconcentrate on, literally it
would be so difficult, nearlyimpossible, for you to attach
any real meaning to your life.
Because, for example, just usethat, apply that laterally with

(44:11):
something like love or pain,like, imagine if you loved
everybody exactly the same thestranger on the street and your
child, your dad and the guywho's serving you a shawarma.
Like the amount of meaning andvalue that you'd be able to give
to a word like love would belost, it'd be totally lost.
And so our ability toconcentrate and the algorithm

(44:35):
that's running in our head tofilter what's important, what's
not, I mean we'd all be dead.
Because, like, oh, that's atiger Cool.
Oh, that's a tree Cool, noreaction Tiger eats you.
So, like, the ability to likeprocess on the fly, like fast,
is actually a gift.
But a step further, that to beable to process meaning and
emotion and all those things issuper important.

(44:57):
And you alluded to like having apage.
It's all white and there'ssomething eric weinstein said
that was like really simple butreally profound, uh, a kind of
ritual they do.
So he's an atheist but he stillpractices a lot of uh the
shabbat and and differentrituals and in jewish culture
and religion, even though he's aprofessed atheist.
And one thing that they do, um,his family does when they take

(45:21):
uh supper on the shabbat, is hehe?
He opens a wine bottle and hetakes uh a glass of water and he
pours water into the wine.
And they do it because he sayswe've and he's a mathematician,
so it's it adds to it.
Anyway, he has a doctorate inmathematical theory, I believe,
so it adds to it.
He said we become obsessed withpure, with purity, with purism,

(45:45):
with this like what would youtalk about, about this left
brain thinking, about binarythinking and stuff?
And so he specifically poursthe water into the wine so that
everybody observes whatever, uh,perceptions we had about that
bottle of wine before we openedit.
We, we know now it's not pure,let's enjoy it, let's enjoy it.
And it's dude.
For me it's, um, it's so onpoint, and like what you, what

(46:10):
you spoke about earlier abouttrying to communicate with your
students, start with what youhave.
Um, I think it was Mark Twainwho said that gradual
improvement is better thandelayed perfection.
And and so, yeah, like, like,own the fact that you have this.
Well, everything you justunpacked just now, you have this
plethora of gifts and and, andand.

(46:33):
It's so multi-layered that'sinbred into you.
You already have it.
It's, it's, it's engineeredinside of you just to use, but
you have to have eyes to see it,to it.
It's, it's, it's engineeredinside of you just to use, but
you have to have eyes to see it,to perceive it to, to know,
like that, you have this.
And I seen, when I was in africa, I remember just observing once
that there was this little kidand he was wearing water bottles
as flip-flops and I, like, Ijust stared for a long time.

(46:57):
My knee-jerk reaction was being, as an American there, my knee
jerk reaction was I felt alittle bit of pity because I'm
like, oh shit, this kid doesn'thave shoes.
But then I was like, no, thiskid does have shoes.
He actually made these shoes.
He saw they needed shoes but hedidn't have cash to go buy
shoes, so he just made theseshoes.
They're not great quality shoes, but I saw like that I was at a

(47:19):
crossroads there to either havepity and look down kind of on
the situation or be a bitinspired by the fact that
there's a spark of creativity insomebody to improve their
current position and in thatthere's either hope or despair.
I can either partner with likehope and despair for a situation
in a sense.
And yeah, those are my thoughtson what you just unpacked.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Like going back to what yousaid about Einstein and the
train and how he connects thosedots to his quantum theories,
right, that's a great example ofwhat we call conceptual
blending, right, and soconceptual blending is where you

(48:08):
take information from two veryseemingly disparate themes or
streams of knowledge and youconnect the dots right and so,
like we said so, let's premiseit with this, right.
So the brain, as Aldous Huxleysays, is a reducing valve.

(48:31):
Right, it's going to tricklethe information down to what is
essential, what we need, what'sgoing to get us from B to B on
the map.
Right, but you're going to.
You're not always going to.
You don't know if where you'reheaded is the place that you're

(48:53):
supposed to be headed, if it's aworthy enough goal, yet, until
you get there.
And the chances that youdiscover that it's not a worthy
goal when you get there is quitelarge.
And so you continue to sort of,you reposition, and you begin
to circumambulate until finallyyou hone in on something that is

(49:19):
a worthy goal, right, but itall begins with this idea of
being a fool, right?
So when you're starting out ona journey, you know, let's say,
you want to try something new.
Well, there's this veryinteresting archetype of the
fool or the jester, and it's aJungian archetype.

(49:39):
And what's very important aboutthis archetype is that it is
the starting point for everyhuman being embarking on a new
journey.
You start off as the fool, andunless you're willing to be a
fool right, you will never beginthe journey.

(50:00):
So if you knew everything, ifyou knew everything that could
go wrong, for example, thatmight keep you from starting
right.
So sometimes it's better tojust start.
You don't need all the answers,you just start.
And so what does the fool do?
The fool circumambulates.
The fool is like a babblingchild right, interesting to use

(50:21):
the analogy of a child.
But children are brilliantbecause you know they have no
problem.
You know, babbling baby speak.
They'll do that for a year, twoyears, and you know, eventually
they'll start honing in on.
You know words, sentencestructures and things like that,
and then, before you know it,they have sort of naturally

(50:44):
absorbed this language ofcommunication with other people.
But the child didn't care aboutpracticing like an idiot.
I mean, we don't do that right,when you're trying to learn
German, you're not gonna try,just speaking whatever rubbish
German until it gets better andbetter.
Well, you see, a child iswilling to do that because it
doesn't care about what otherpeople think, right, the child

(51:06):
is true to themselves, and sothat's why it's very special,
that particular point in achild's development.
You know, age between age twoto six, where they kind of just
explore the world on their ownterms and the adults in their
lives are just there to guidethem.
But you know, like now,conceptual blending.

(51:30):
How does that come in?
How does that come into thepicture?
Well, conceptual blending iswhere you, you have stepped
outside of your paradigm, right,and you get inspiration from
something that seems completelydifferent, right?
So Einstein's getting hisinspiration from the train, you

(51:53):
know, a kid's gettinginspiration for shoes from
plastic bottles, right?
Someone who?
I mean?
It happens all the time, butit's only when you're willing to
think outside the box, really.
And so our academic systems,right now, we will train
students to think a certain way,to become specialists in this

(52:15):
and that, right.
And if you are not using thelanguage and the dogma of the
institution that you're, thatyou're in, then you, you know
it's, it's like you're not oneof them, you know.
And yet for that institution toactually grow and develop, you

(52:38):
need new information from theoutside to come in, to breathe
in new life into that place.
And so this is why it's I mean,if you just look at just
history, just look at cultures,look at religious institutions,
this happens again and again andagain and again and again you
have usually one individualthat's brave enough to go

(53:00):
outside of the norms and theybring back information, that
sort of challenges theestablishment and once it's sort
of absorbed and accepted,there's a whole revival that
comes out of it, right, and it'sa new life.

(53:23):
But this is what human beingsare made to do.
Like we're made to go onexploratory journeys, not just
in the physical space but alsointellectually, you know, with
what we learn, with the booksthat we read.
Like we're so scared of theother side, right, and then we
just hear like don't go there,bad people, they have bad
practices.

(53:43):
You know it could be evil forall we know, right, but it's
either you're going to believethat or you're going to go check
it out for yourself.
And I found that you know.
You know, when people say,follow your passions and stuff,
it sounds like such a dumb thingon on one level, but I've

(54:04):
discovered how true it actuallyis because you'll find that
there are things that you've putup right, that you've absorbed
remember 11 trillion bits ofinformation coming into you
every second, and yet you decideto focus on one thing.
Sometimes you will distractyourself with with some random
book for some reason.
Right, why?
Why?
There's something there.

(54:24):
Everything in your life hashappened to you, and nothing
goes to waste, and so, for acreative, you have to be willing
to pick up those things thatyou are genuinely interested in
and try and connect it to theproblem that you're trying to

(54:46):
solve right now, and you willfind that the most creative
solutions that you can come upwith are when you are able to do
that.
So my whole philosophy is thatyou know nothing is separate.
You know it is allinterconnected.

(55:06):
Why?
Because it's all a part of thesame system.
It all follows the samepatterns, and if we're going to
talk about schooling and theeducation system, it's just that
we have different words for thesame things.
You know, and so I've learnedto.
I've learned to translate whenI hear.
You know, instead of gettingoffended, because I can learn a
lot from a lot of people.

(55:26):
If I'm not gonna get offended,right, all I need to do is
listen.
They might use the wrong wordsthat I feel is inappropriate or,
you know, not politicallycorrect or something like that.
That doesn't matter to me,right?
They're just using words.
I need to translate that intomy language so that I'm able to
get the best out of what they'resaying and then apply that to a

(55:50):
problem I'm trying to solve.
So this happens time and timeagain, man, but it's all about
disrupting the way you findpatterns in the world.
So if you're feeling stuck, ifyou're feeling creatively
blocked, you know they say gofor a walk, go, you know, go
check out some I don't know aplay or something.

(56:11):
Do something different, changethings up a little bit.
The reason why they suggestthese things is because you have
to disrupt your patterns, youhave to try new things, to get
inspired, and when you are in astate of inspiration like
nothing can stop you.
That's what everyone wants tobe Like.
That's the ultimate goal, Ithink, for people.
Can I be inspired?

(56:33):
Because if you're inspired, man, man, you'll stay up all night
working on a project, you know.
And so how do you sustain that?
You have to constantly go outinto the places that other
people are telling you.
Don't go there, man, don't gothere.
Those are bad people.
Well, for whatever reason, youyou told them that you're

(56:54):
curious about those people.
Huh, listen to why you'recurious about them, listen to
yourself, right, they'll saythey're bad people.
But you're like, I don't know.
But I just, I want to connectwith them.
I don't know, I don't know, man.
So instead of listening to otherpeople who haven't gone to the
other side, you gotta go to theother side, and so that means

(57:15):
that you're gonna have to go onthat journey alone.
Because, again, narrow path,and um fortune does favor the
brave.
But this is the great journeythat every individual is called
upon um to step out of the knownworld, the known paradigm, and
to step into the unknown, theworld of unknown possibilities,
the world of potential disaster,chaos, whatever, and then sort

(57:40):
of come back with an elixir,come back with news from the
other side and then create abridge between two worlds.
But it's something for thecourageous to do, it's something
for the brave to do.
Why brave?
Because chances are, whenyou're on that journey, a lot of
people are going to be tellingyou man, you shouldn't be doing

(58:01):
that, you know.
So the best thing to do is justyou, do you, you do you and you
keep you to yourself.
Unless you're speaking tosomeone that really gets you,
you know there's no need tothrow pearls before swine.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Yeah, do you think that now there's like this, this
kind of paradox where now morethan ever, we have the ability
to pull from people who areobjective thinkers in their
respective fields?
And, like what you said, thatit feels like now there are
people who are trying to bashdown the barricades of terms
specific, like, like.
In terms of like we're talkingabout law or medicine or

(58:50):
mathematics or whatever thatthere is a specific terminology
that makes it exclusive, and itfeels like there's a group of
people who are trying to bashdown and put everything into lay
layman's terms and there isthis cross pollination of
intellects and there's thiscross-pollination of creatives.
That's happening, um, and andthere was a story that came to

(59:11):
my mind where where ericweinstein had his brother brett
on and they talked specificallyabout in the 90s I think, when
he was a student.
I'll cut this really short forthe sake of people listening,
not to bore them.
It's a good podcast, check itout.
But specifically, brett was ina evolutionary biology class and
there's like this rule inbiology where the polymers in

(59:32):
the DNA are longer.
For bigger animals andgenerally for smaller animals
they're shorter, and they foundwith laboratory rats in the
United States they wereabnormally long.
And so he figured out that thebreeding practices of the rats
had affected that and thatbecame a problem because they

(59:54):
were ability to take on moretoxins than normal rats.
And then those tests were infact a starting point for
medicines used on humans.
So, basically, humans werebeing given doses of toxins that
we can't take because we wereusing the polymers of rats and
that kind of equation.
Anyways, the point was is thatin his class it was actually a

(01:00:18):
medical student who just had totake that class, and the medical
student made that observationor brought something of it up.
What you said, if someone comingout from a different sphere of
society or a different field ofexpertise, and they just see it
and they were like well, why isit like that?
Like Henry Ford historicallyasked his team of engineers to

(01:00:45):
create a eight cylinder blockengine in one piece, and they
were like I, can't be done.
He's like that's fine, youdon't have anything else to do,
this is your full time project,do it can't be done.
He's like that's fine, youdon't have anything else to do,
this is your full-time project,do it.
And so he came back like sixmonths later did you figure it
out like, no, it can't be done,that's fine, it's your project,
do it.
And so there's this dude fromthe outside who's not an
engineer.
He's just like I'm gonna puttime and pressure on you and

(01:01:09):
eventually a pearl is gonna tocome out.
And so eventually, yeah, we did, we got this eight-cylinder
engine, and it was something Iwanted to ask you about.
To make a full circle of mypoint, there's this paradox of
we feel like creatives andintellectuals now are pushing to

(01:01:31):
kind of make the perfect stormfor things to happen like what
you just described, that someonecomes from the outside, they
only speak in layperson's termsin your specific field, but
they're trying to translate asbest they can, and that person
actually carries the key or thestrategy or whatever to bring
the breakthrough.
And on the other side of that,more than ever now, because of

(01:01:55):
algorithms on the internet, wehave echo chambers where people
are only surrounded by likeminded people, people with the
same ideologies, the same ideasand whatever.
And so what would be?
What's been your process andwhat would you suggest to people
of how to get out of your boxand like, not live outraged, not

(01:02:17):
live offended, because I wouldalso say that for me, for myself
.
I had to lay down a fence andexactly what you said.
People would say things thatwould like kind of spike that
feeling inside of me.
Well, you shouldn't have saidit like that and that's not the
right word, but I like laid itdown and I was just like I'm
just here to learn, I'm here tobe a student of life, student of
of of what's happening.
So how did you, how did youpersonally get to a place where

(01:02:39):
you like laid down outrage andoffense, and what would be your
advice to people?
Um to go out and be challengedby objective thinkers in totally
different fields than whatthey're um exposed to in their
everyday, normal goings.
So you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Jung once said that it is the darkest point of the
wood that is the point at whichyou must enter.
You know where you least want tolook.
That's where it'll be found.
I mean, think if you were goingto hide treasure, right, where
would you hide this treasure?
There's two places you'd hidegood treasure right.

(01:03:21):
One is out in the open, out inplain sight for everybody to see
.
They're going to walk by it.
They take it for granted, justlike we take these phones for
granted, right, you?
It's just always been there, soit's not treasure.
Or you hide it in a dark place,a place that people say, ah,

(01:03:52):
that's ugly, it's like.
The challenge is not to wasteyour time dealing with people
that aren't willing to go onthat journey with you.
The challenge for a person isto be willing to step away from
the crowd and into their ownlight, right, and, but of course

(01:04:15):
safety first.
Step away from the crowd andinto their own light, right, but
of course safety first.
So we're always encouraged notto step away from the campfire,
because Lord knows what's in thedark wood and what's going to
kill you, correct?
Yes, so that's culture, that'sculture's purpose, that's the
institution's purpose, right, tokeep you safe.
But then, ultimately, when youmake that decision to step out

(01:04:39):
of the known and into theunknown, into the dark wood.
That's up to you.
You do it at your own risk.
Now, of course, if you look atany movie, any hero who steps
out into the unknown, or,whether willingly or by force,
they go through a series ofchallenges, right?

(01:04:59):
So you have Neo, who knowssomething is up with the Matrix.
He knows there's somethingwrong, right, he knows there's a
dude Morpheus that he must meet.
And then, you know, one fineday there's a dude Morpheus that
he must meet.
And then, you know, one fineday, there's a knock on the door
and you know, he sees thistattoo on this girl inviting him

(01:05:22):
out to this club.
But then his computer screenjust said follow the white
rabbit.
So he's like all right, okay,follow the white rabbit, okay.
So he does.
And then he finds trinity.
And then trinity tells him Iknow, you've been looking for
morpheus.
And then, finally, you knowhe's like okay, something,
something's here, something here.
And then, boom, he wakes upagain the next day and, um, he's

(01:05:46):
back at work you know hisshitty cubicle job and
everything.
And he's like what the hell isthat all about?
You know?
it was nothing right.
But then again this externalfactor comes into his life to
push him outside of his comfortzone.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
He didn't want to be there anyways.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
And then so Morpheus steps in as a guide.
You know, as some sort of youknow, the guide is another kind
of an architect that will stepinto our lives many times.
But you don't want to listen tothe information Morpheus is
saying.
I'll get you out of here, man,you just got to do what I say

(01:06:26):
Step out onto that ledge andthere's your exit.
You can escape.
Neo gets out onto the ledge andhe's like to hell with that man,
I'm turning myself in and heturns himself in.
So we have a reluctant herohere, right, but finally,
finally, finally, once he getsrescued and once they pull that
little weird thing out of hisbelly button and stuff, they

(01:06:48):
take him to Morpheus, right.
And so now, finally, he's atthis crossing point, this
threshold, where he has tochoose you can take the blue
pill and everything will go backto how it was, hunky-dory, or
you can take the red pill andyou can see how deep the rabbit

(01:07:09):
hole goes.
So he takes the rabbit hole and, sure enough, his world
completely changes, right?
He's now crossed that threshold.
He realizes, he's now woken upin the matrix, and so he's
actually seen his physical body,his physical condition and
everything.

(01:07:30):
And it is not what he expected,anyway.
So they revive him, they bringhim, they.
You know he takes some time tolike heal and this and that
before he starts his training.
But he's essentially nowuseless.
In the matrix he was a computerhacker.
He knew what was up.
He was good at what he didthere in the real world.
Now he sucks.
He is what we call a fool.

(01:07:51):
Right, he can't even do Kung Fuyet.
Right, he can't do nothing.
So he then has to go on thatjourney and like meander, like a
fool, but like learn who are myallies, who are my enemies.
You know, like you know, don'ttrust that guy.
What's his name?

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Cypher.
Was it the sneaky bastard?

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Yeah, yeah, don that guy.
What's his name?
Cypher?
Was it the sneaky bastard?
Yeah, yeah, don't trust thatguy.
But you can trust morpheus, youknow.
And then there may be varioustests and stuff.
Tests and, um, you know, he hasto fight with morpheus till he,
you know, gets gets good atwhat he does.
And then, of course, there'llbe that first ordeal that you'll
have to deal with, and it'soften that sort of a.
That first ordeal is a sort of amoment where you come out of

(01:08:34):
all of this testing and if youimagine the whole thing like a
circle, you start at 12 o'clockand if Neil crosses takes a red
pill at three o'clock, at sixo'clock is where he is in the
ordeal.
This is the dark cave, this isthe belly of the whale, right.
And so this is the point wherehe goes and meets the oracle.

(01:08:54):
And what does the oracle tellhim?
You're not the one.
Yeah, guess what, neo, you'renot the one, right, okay, all
right, okay.
So what do you do with thatkind of information then?
Right, so the hero mustcontinue on the train.
That's, even neo goes back tohis old life, must continue on
the journey.
Now see, even Neo goes back tohis old life, right, like Cypher

(01:09:17):
, or you keep going.
Thankfully, there's an externalstimuli that forces him to keep
going, which is the fact thatMorpheus's friend needs his help
.
And so now Neo has to make achoice Like, even though I'm not
the one, I'm still going tomove forward to save my friend,
and that's that Great.
So he gets out of the cavedoing that, so he's overcoming

(01:09:39):
that ordeal.
And then, you know, that's whenwe get like the propeller heads
and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
You know all the weapons andstuff, and they go into that
building and shoot everyone upand they save Morpheus and the
helicopter and the jumping scene, and it's just, it's totally
wild, it's totally cool and, yes, you get a reward after that.
Right, it's a kick.
But the story doesn't end there, because our hero has to come

(01:10:03):
full circle.
He has to come back home, tothe place where he started, but
as a transformed individual.
See, he's gone on a journeyinto the dark world.
Now, in order for his journeyto be effective, he has to come
back to the real world to tellpeople what's up.
So now that you've disturbedthe powers that be in that

(01:10:24):
underworld, so to speak, you'regoing to be chased all the way
back home, right, and so likemuch like that ordeal where
there was a death to hisidentity, you get another death
usually in these stories, andthis comes towards the climax of

(01:10:45):
the third act, which is whereNeo actually takes a bullet and
dies and Trini gives him a kissand he comes back to life, right
.
So there's another death andresurrection.
That happens, but really theidea is a very old idea.
The shamans had this idea.
Before they would bring theirinitiates back into the real

(01:11:11):
world, into the village, theywould have to go through some
sort of a purification.
Even the warriors would have todo this.
There was too much blood onthem, and so then they had to
sort of purify themselves andthat was a sort of a death
ritual, because when they cameback to the village they were
not warriors anymore.
They were going to go back tobeing family men and farmers and

(01:11:31):
things like that.
And so you had to put a deathto that warrior identity before
you can come back in, and sothat's essentially what happens.
But ultimately now in the storywe fast forward and we see Neo
is in the same place where hestarted the beginning of the

(01:11:51):
story.
He is in the matrix, but thistime he's not Neo the coder in
his room, he is Neo the Supermanwho is flying around and
defying the laws of gravity andwhat have you?
Right?
We love that shit.
We love those stories.
Why?
Why is it that we can connectwith something that seems so

(01:12:14):
abstract on the surface?
You know, that's thefascinating thing about the
brain, you know.
So stories, mythologies, ifunderstood in the right way, can
tell us a lot about ourpsychology.
It can tell us a lot about ourown, the journeys that we have

(01:12:35):
to go on, both in the externalworld and in our own internal
world.
It's mirrored, right that'ssomething that people have to
always keep in mind that thejourney is it's happening in two
places simultaneously.
So one way of looking at moviesis to understand that all of

(01:12:56):
the characters in the movie arecomponents of your own psyche
and the people you're fightingwith and all that.
There's parts of you thatyou're fighting with, the people
that are there to guide you,those are the better parts of
you that are coming in at theright time to give you guidance.
You have to choose whether tolisten or not, but then,

(01:13:16):
ultimately, when you get back tothe real world, you have to
carry some elixir.
That elixir is proof that you'vebeen to the other side and come
back and you have not beenscathed Right, because that's
what everyone's fear was.
If you step away from thecampfire and if you go into the
dark wood, you might get eatenby a lion, you might not see the

(01:13:36):
yoke end, but you come backwith proof of some sort of
victory.
It's like the Minotaur andAriadne.
And so Theseus has to go intothe labyrinth to slay the
Minotaur and Ariadne, and soTheseus has to go into the
labyrinth to slay the Minotaur.

(01:13:56):
Now, theseus was a warrior.
If he goes in, if he went intothe cave and slayed the Minotaur
but couldn't find his way backout, well, no one would know if
he had killed the beast or not.
He had to come back with thehead of the beast, right, um.

(01:14:20):
And so that's where ariadnecomes in.
She's the one that gave him thespool of thread that he had to
just follow back right and um.
But the the point is, um, a lotof us go on journeys, right,
and we have seen stuff, man, wehave been to the other side, we
have knowledge.
Well, we sort of give up afterthat first reward, after we've

(01:14:44):
conquered the first ordeal andexperienced that reward, like
how Neo saved Morpheus the firsttime.
And you just live in that highand you just remain down there,
but you never like come back upinto the real world to tell
people what you found, becausethat journey is just as
difficult as as as your journeycoming in.
In fact, it's probably going tobe the hardest journey coming
back to the real world.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
You know, and that's where you have to be the most
brave?

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Um, because what if people make fun of you this and
that?
But that's the point of theelixir.
It's the kind of thing which isso good that people see.
Ah, proof of concept, and Iwould say the elixir for many
people would be just with theirown life, their own testimony.
The elixir is your story.

(01:15:29):
Once you've put it to words,once you've made sense of it and
you start speaking it aloud topeople, that is proof of the
journey.
We don't realize that our ownjourneys are very, very special,
you know, because people can gothrough a lot in life a rich
man, a poor man, an Indian, anAfrican American, a European it

(01:15:54):
doesn't matter man, where youwere born or how you were raised
.
But life has its own challengesfor every person, and because we
are human, we have thisempathic ability to see
ourselves in another person,even if that person is white or
black or any color.
That's really cool.

(01:16:14):
This is why we can watch moviesand just see ourselves as these
different characters in a movie.
We relate to the trickster in amovie because there is a
trickster component in us.
We relate to the anti-herobecause there is that component
in us.
You know so when you watch theJoker, for example, you kind of

(01:16:40):
or even like Batman with HeathLedger's Joker, you kind of want
Heath Ledger to win.
Right?
There's a part of you that isalready empathized with that
part of the psyche, and sothat's something that we have to
find interesting, because if wecan empathize with all of these
different people, then thatmeans that there are parts of

(01:17:01):
ourselves that we can empathizewith too.
And so that's what it meanswhen you go on a journey of
psychological integration, whereyou are now realizing that what
you see out there in the worldare all parts of you.
What scares you out there inthe world are all things that

(01:17:23):
are there to scare you withinyou.
And so what do you do when youconfront a ghost in your dreams?
You know, alan Watts says runinto the ghost.
Run into the ghost, becausewhen you run away from the ghost
, the ghost can become whatever.

(01:17:43):
Whatever you want it to be, youmake things up, it takes on a
whole life of its own until yourun into the ghost and realize
that it's just vapor.
It's nothing, you know.
I mean, that's the thing about,like, um, you know, when people
have uh, fears, like you knowfear of, you know, fear of

(01:18:07):
needles, or a fear of, um,closed spaces, or you know a
fear of closed spaces, or youknow a fear of bugs.
It's all the same thing, butit's like you might not have a
fear of bugs, but for that otherperson that does, it's a big
deal.
Do not put a spider near them,right, it will freak the F out,

(01:18:28):
yeah, but that spider is thisbig monster in their head and
the truth is it's a harmlesslittle creature.
If you learn how to handle oneof them, you will actually feel
so liberated, and that'shappened to me.
I used to have a fear of bugs,man.
Yeah, I know it's weird and Ijust grew up that way, right,

(01:18:48):
like, because you know, know,you'll see how other adults
respond to these creepy crawlies.
And they just they swat him orthey step on him, they kill him.
They'll say, oh, it'll bite,you be careful, right.
And so, as a kid, you're like Iwas curious about that, but now
you think it's gonna bite me.
She all, right, I'm gonna touchthat.
Now I don't like you, right.
And so you become an adult andyou have all these weird fears.

(01:19:13):
But then I found that with thebugs, like, and it happened, um,
uh, when I was in college andum, I mean, I don't do a whole
lot of entheogens or anythinglike that, but I did, um, have
my fair share when I was younger, and uh, it was um.
So I was on a trip, it was aninteresting experience.

(01:19:35):
But I was sitting on this beachand there were these
caterpillars in this bush, and Iused to be scared of
caterpillars, man, they were toocreepy.
But I picked one up and in thatmoment I'm just looking at it
and I'm like, wow.
But I pick one up and in thatmoment I'm just looking at it
and I'm like, wow, oh, look atthose little digits, those

(01:19:57):
little bits of engineering, likewalking and crawling, and I was
just blown away, man, I wasfascinated.
I was looking at it up close,up close, and I had this sense
of just like liberation, man,like I was so scared of this
thing and I'm holding it in myhand, dude, I felt on top of the

(01:20:18):
world.
I got such a massive kick fromthat.
I no longer had to be scared ofcaterpillars, and thankfully,
because actually the caterpillarnow for me is one of my
favorite creatures, because theyturn into butterflies and I
love butterflies, like I mean,what is a butterfly dude?

(01:20:39):
Like, what is a butterfly man?
They start out as caterpillars.
They're eating leaves, right.
They only like one type of leaf, okay, which they're gonna
chomp, chomp, chomp all day,grow fat and chubby right Until
eventually one day grow fat andchubby right Until eventually

(01:21:00):
one day they kind of get intothis cocoon and then they become
this complete goo, thiscomplete mush, right, and from
that goo, from that mush, thebody of a butterfly starts to
take form and then it sort ofbursts through the cocoon, a
completely different creature,no longer eating leaves, now
flying from plant to plant,flower to flower, feeding on
nectar and some of these, likethe monarch, you know it can

(01:21:26):
migrate, you know, all the wayfrom Alaska, or you know Canada,
all the way down to Mexico overmultiple generations, not
forgetting that this is thecourse it must take.
What happened to all of thatinformation when it was in that
goose state?
How did it retain all of thatin there?
That's to me.
I don't know.
I love it.
It's magical, it's beautiful.

(01:21:47):
That's what keeps me excitedabout the world.
But my point is this man, Iwouldn't have this love of life
and found this wonderful thingfor me in this idea of the
butterfly, if I didn't conquermy fear of bugs and first learn
how to like the caterpillarright.

(01:22:08):
So that's the thing, man.
You know there's this dude,Darryl what's his name.
I keep forgetting his name, dude.
I think it's Darryl Evans.
I could be wrong, though, butit's Darryl, something right,
okay?
So this guy?

(01:22:28):
There's a documentary onnetflix where he um, he goes and
befriends the kkk right blackdude right, yeah, yeah, I know
this guy, yeah, yeah exactly allof his friends are like what?
what the hell are you doing,daryl?
Like you shouldn't go to thosepeople.
Why would you make friends withthem?
They're like evil, they'reawful right.

(01:22:50):
And yet Daryl goes, knocks ontheir door, you know, sits down
with them, has a cup of tea withthem, gets to know them.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
Daryl Davis.
Daryl Davis.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
Yes, daryl Davis, gee right, and you know so.
He has gone to the dark side,the other side, right.
Well, what happened as a resultof that?
Did anything bad happen to him?
No, in fact, quite the opposite.

(01:23:23):
You know, he was able toovercome his fear of, you know,
people that you know havedeveloped bigoted attitudes and
bigoted ideas about race, and hesort of conquered that by being
brave enough to go to theirhomes and get to know who those
people are.
And then over the course oftheir friendship, his friendship
with those people, they got toknow him and where he was coming

(01:23:44):
from, and a lot of these guyshave never had a black friend,
you know, and so or met a blackguy really, or met a black guy,
yeah, but here they have DarrylShelby, darryl just being cool
with them and sure enough, overtime, you know, after enough
conversations, they're like yeah, you know, darryl, you kind of
changed my, my life, man, Idon't know why I've been doing

(01:24:08):
what I'm doing, but I alwaysfelt like I needed this identity
.
Um, it kept me safe, it made mefeel like I had some control in
a world that seemed so out ofcontrol.
But like in the same way that Ifelt liberated when I held a
caterpillar, that Ku Klux Klanguy felt liberated when they

(01:24:30):
became friends with Daryl, youunderstand.
And then you get that same kickthat, ah, he's not the devil,
he's not out here to kill me,right.
And so then he says, wow, canwe still be friends?
Can we really be friends?
Can we really do this man?
And then they have to be braveenough now to step outside of
their paradigm, to go walk theirown path and take a narrow path

(01:24:54):
, take their robe off and theygive it, they give that old
carcass to Daryl and say, hey,man, you can keep my robes.
You see, that's dope, that'sdope.
And this is only for the few,this is only for the brave man,
the people that are willing togo to the darkest part of the

(01:25:17):
wood when everyone else issaying don't go.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
Yeah, when Morpheus gives Neo the pill, he says just
just to clarify I'm offeringyou the truth, nothing more.
And there's maybe somesynonymacy with freedom or truth
or whatever, and liberationbeing pleasant and like.
What you unpacked about neoactually was the opposite.

(01:25:47):
Like I was at.
All my adequacies and all mytalents and all of the things
that made me who I am in thisworld are gone, and it's yeah to
death.
And now I'm this other personwho I have nothing really to
offer here.
Um, and then from that, that'sthe starting point to learning,

(01:26:10):
that's the starting point toreality, that's the starting
point to uncovering truth.
That's just, that's thestarting.
That's to enter back in on thehero's journey that you outlined
.
I think about the third batmanmovie as well.
When he's in the prison, I meanliterally, he's in the pit.
Literally, he's in a prison, ina hole, and he has to climb his

(01:26:31):
way out.
And if he tries to do it underhis old set of abilities, in his
brokenness, though, sochristian bale is like, like
screw it, I'm just gonna climb.
So he tries to climb out theprison, jumps, jacks up his back
even more, and he has to.
He has to unpack, restructure,recalibrate and then figure out

(01:26:56):
who he is now, and in that hehad to conquer some demons.
He had to conquer his, his fearof failure.
He had to conquer this, this.
He is not the God of Gotham, heis just a man, but like he has
to go back into it.
And so I liked how youparalleled all that to to people
, um, being willing to seekobjective thinkers, being

(01:27:19):
willing to engage with peoplewho might draw a fence by, by
going to the, the darkest entrypoint, the their fear being the
entry point.
This is something that, um,I've tried to integrate into my
life.
It it's not complicated, butit's not easy.
So, to face fear, to face painhead on, and anytime I'm

(01:27:42):
triggered to be like I feel fearof something, I fear pain,
whether that's in a dialoguewith my wife or something that
somebody says, or a failure thatI experienced, or whatever.
To meditate on it, sit on it,stay in it, like.

(01:28:02):
This is one thing that Irealized is like stay in the
pain, stay in the fierce, like,let marinate in it, not not in a
masochistic way, but in a wayof like there's a button being
pushed, there's an alarm goingoff in the basement, just like
there's a smoke alarm going off.
Your reaction is not to smashthe smoke alarm with the hammer
because it's annoying.

(01:28:23):
Your action should be to gofind out where the freak the
fire is right.
So you hear the fire alarm,then you look for the smoke,
then you look, then you startsensing for the heat to figure
out where the fire is at right.
And that's kind of the internalalarm system for pain and fear.
And sometimes it is something astrivial as a lie that we were
told as a child or something webelieved as a child or a meaning

(01:28:48):
that we attached to it, andsometimes it's something that's
going to shift our entireidentity.
Yeah, it's going to break ourmold and our capacity to be like
Neo in his old identity.
He had to become, like you said, a butterfly.
It's going to be a game changer, and that's scary as hell man,

(01:29:11):
Like Morpheus saying, sayinglike I'm offering the truth,
nothing more.
It's like I'm offering you liketo tap into another perspective
of reality.
And there's a picture I recentlysaw which there's many, many
different ways to to depict this, but the picture I saw was um,

(01:29:32):
there was a cylinder and thecylinder, like the circle part
of the cylinder, was blue, andthen the outside of the cylinder
was orange and there was, therewas a corner of a wall, and so
it was depicting two things atthe same time that light.
If light was shining on thecylinder from the outside, it
would cast a shadow of a, of arectangle with orange around it,

(01:29:55):
and if it casts light from thecircle side, then it appeared
like a circle with a silhouetteof blue and the, and it said
this is true on one wall, thisis true on another wall.
And it said this is true, um,showing you basically the third,
breaking the fourth wall ofunderstanding this.
And so, if we're willing to dothat in our own personal lives,

(01:30:18):
like there's Johnny Gunta, howhe sees and perceives and
understands and feels abouthimself, and then there's Johnny
Gunta how I see him, how Iperceive him, how I feel about
him.
But then there's this otherthing that exists outside of
both our our opinions and oursubjective and preconceived
ideas about johnny gunter.
And if we're willing to, um,take this journey and go sit

(01:30:42):
with other people, like ericweinstein alluded to these
parties that he gets invited towhere, uh, he'll be there as a
mathematician and then there'llbe like a UFC fighter there and
then there'll be somebody who isan actor or a musician or
something, and so there's no,there's no pissing match to be
had here.

(01:31:02):
There's no pissing match to behad.
But like it's crazy the kind ofaffirmation that he received
and felt and also theinadequacies and insecurities
that he felt simultaneously inthe space, because if he
measured himself on his abilityto fight, then the ufc fighter
is obviously going to crush himif he he he has an avid music

(01:31:24):
fan, he loves playing the guitar, but if he measured himself
against a professional musicianagain inadequacy.
But if he tried to measurehimself against those people and
their ability to solveequations and mathematical
problems, then he would have afalse sense of security.
And that's sometimes how weengage with the world around us.

(01:31:44):
Is we want to build up oursecurity, build up our identity
within our security, within ourrealm of abilities, versus like
going and just enjoying and andexperiencing people and um, and
in those, in those kind ofdialogues, he would have
conversations that he neverwould normally have.

(01:32:04):
Like if I was going to asymposium where we drink wine
and we talk about all the newinnovations in the tech world,
that would be a very differentkind of conversation versus if I
went to a bar with a bunch ofUFC fighters and had a kind of
conversation with them, and sothe point of that ramble is an

(01:32:26):
ability to zoom out to see theroom, and I've used this analogy
before and it's basically thesame thing as the circle and the
rectangle.
But if I put a, if I duct tapedan X on the floor in the room, I
said Johnny, I blindfolded youand I brought and I said you're
going to, I'm going to bring youinto a room and I want you to

(01:32:48):
describe the room to me and Iand I laid you down on the floor
, stomach face down, and thentook the blindfold off and I
instructed you not to move yourhead or just tell me what you
see without um, anything.
You, you know well, I, I seewood grain, uh, on the floor.
Probably this is a hardwoodfloor, maybe it's laminate.
Um, it's a dark color, whatever.
Blah, blah, blah.
I put the blindfold back on you,take you out of the room, bring

(01:33:09):
another person in, lay them ontheir back and then take the
blindfold off, instruct them notto move their head, explain the
room to me.
And then, oh, it's a whiteceiling, like it's textured.
There's a smoke alarm there,there's a kind of chandelier
lighting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then I take them out of theroom.
Then I bring a third person inthat person's standing upright,

(01:33:30):
but they're facing the side ofthe room with windows on it, and
I could do this with the entireroom, and then I could just
have somebody come and stand inthe doorway or, sorry, allow a
person to turn on the X and havea panoram, so to speak, of the
room and then tell them todescribe room.
So then the description wouldchange from just wood paneling

(01:33:51):
or textured ceilings or windowsto well, there's plants in the
front corner of the room,there's some plants there, and
there's some wall art andthere's a chandelier, and then
there's some storage units onthe left side of the wall and
then there's several desks inhere and so on, and the point is
that's what we open ourselvesup to when we go to these people
who have we would never meet inour normal everyday goings of

(01:34:14):
life, or or experts going narrowand deep in a specific field.
But allow them to give us thenarratives, like the hero
narrative that you justexplained.
Give me the narrative of yourlife, give me the narrative of
the world and, and again, themain thing that's going to to
get in our way.
If we boil it down, when I,when you, when you say something

(01:34:36):
that outrages me, why does itoutrage me?
Because I created a beliefsystem, that belief systems are
created so that we can surroundourselves with similar belief
systems, so we can quicklyanticipate the behavior and
responses of people, so that forthe functionality sake of
society like I'm using broadstroke statements, but that's

(01:35:01):
the point.
The gist of what I'm getting atis that I want to quickly
anticipate how you're going toreact to what I'm thinking and
saying, so that we can quicklywork together, more efficiently.
Work together if I need tomarry my daughter off to you, I
know that you're a good guy, andso on, so on, so on.
If we, if you don't believewhat I believe, then I'm unsure

(01:35:21):
of you.
I'm I'm insecure.
What?
How is he going to react?
And whatever?
It takes longer, but in thattaking longer, I get the
panoramic of the room.
I get a bigger slice of the pie.
St Augustine once said like ifthe world was a book, those who
don't travel have only read apage, and so I apply this kind

(01:35:44):
of reasoning also here, and meand you are very different.
We have different backgrounds,different, different paths that
we've taken in life.
But I would never try to try tocompare myself to your
strengths or compare you to mystrengths and so on, because, in
the words of albert einstein,if you married, if you measured

(01:36:06):
a fish by its ability to climb atree, it would.
It would live thinking it'sinferior or dumb, and so, like
fish were made to swim, and andthere are other animals that are
made to climb a tree, it wouldlive thinking it's inferior or
dumb, and so like fish were madeto swim, and there were other
animals that were made to climbtrees, and so on.
And so I love everything youshared.
I think that it's notcomplicated, but, again, it's

(01:36:28):
not easy to enter into thedarkest point of the wood and I
loved also you shared about that.
There's treasure hidden in plainsight.
It's still hidden, but it'shidden right.
It's there, right in front ofyou, like what you talked about,
like the awareness of havingthankfulness, like there's stuff
right in front of you, youalready have it, you already are
in possession of it.
Have you cultivated the abilityto be thankful for having a

(01:36:51):
refrigerator, having a phone,going to school, learning
multiple languages?
All this stuff it's hidden,right in plain sight.
But then there's other stuff.
You have to find it, you haveto seek it.
And that whole passage inDeuteronomy where there's like

(01:37:16):
fire and smoke on a mountain andthat's where God is and there's
this invitation to people tocome.
And I had a friend who studiedhe has a doctorate degree in
theology and he also has amaster's degree in philosophy
and he studied in Israel and hesat under rabbis, sometimes just
listening, and one rabbi.
The teaching style of the rabbiwas he would ask one question

(01:37:38):
and then leave the class.
So one day he said the onequestion that he asked was why
does God always meet with peopleon a mountain?
And he just left and thestudents were kind of left to
stew and marinate in thatquestion.
So they discussed amongstthemselves but then they left
and, you know, meditated on itindividually, came back and,
long story short was, the rabbigave a really short answer and

(01:38:01):
then left again and he'd comeback a third time and then
unpack it.
But the answer that he gave waslike why does God always appear
on top of a mountain and askpeople to climb a mountain or or
meet people in a mountain?
He's like, because you have toclimb it.
And so there is this entry inthe in the story of deuteronomy.
It's really crazy to parallelwhat you're saying entering the
darkest point of the forest,because there's literally black

(01:38:23):
smoke, thunder like noise, andwhat was fascinating was some
people in the crowd just seenthat and hurt.
They said they heard loud noise, but other people heard god
speaking.
And then there was thisinvitation to purify yourself,
stand in your doorpost, andthere could.
There could possiblypotentially be a meeting, but

(01:38:46):
you had to enter into the treein black smoke, right, and you
have to climb the mountain.
And Vince Lombardi has a famousquote.
He said the man on top of themountain didn't fall there.
And this journey is notsomething that you can be a
passive spectator in as anindividual, and you have to.
There's no blueprint in thesense of for Johnny Gunta

(01:39:06):
specifically to enter into thisprocess.
There's no the hero's journey Icould Google that.
And there's a picture and it'slike I can recognize intuitively
oh, this is me.
And this part has happened inmy life, like this and this and
this, but there's not.
Like no one gave me aninstruction manual and said,
michael personally, like this is, this is how you're going to
conquer fear and pain in yourlife, because when you're this

(01:39:27):
old, this will happen.
And then do this and this, dothis and this, this.
It's something you just have toengage in and surrender to the
process and be present in it.
In the same way, he's like okay, take this pill, all I'm
offering is you, the truth.
And from that point on he's,he's surrendered to the process.
He surrendered and stayingpresent in in that and facing it

(01:39:51):
as it comes.
And just to end on this,thought one thing that Yaka
Wilnick says that I really have.
It's became my mantra Anytime Ifeel super bummed or I feel
disappointed or I'm starting tohave a pity party for myself.
There's a YouTube video calledGood, by Yaka Wilnick in in his

(01:40:12):
podcast and he just talks abouthow, um, his philosophy in the
military was like anytime shitwent wrong, it went bad,
something catastrophic happened.
He just said, good, he's likenow we have time to improve.
You get injured?
Good, now you have time tofigure out what went wrong and
improve.
Um, uh, you don have the,you're not ready for the

(01:40:33):
presentation.
Okay, someone's going to getthe, get the promotion before
you.
You know, you have to take thistime and and recalibrate and
figure out where you went wrong.
You have to figure out whereyou're, you know where the
issues are, and so on, and sothat's, that's.
That's been his mantra and his.
The people who served under inthe military annoyed the shit
out of them because they wouldcome to him.

(01:40:54):
They're like hey, boss, boss,we have a problem here.
And, uh, they stopped doing itCause they're like.
Um, the guy said, hey, we havethis problem, but I already know
what you're going to say.
He's like well, what am I goingto say?
He's like, you're going to saygood, and he's like and so this,
this kind of, has become mymantra of like if shit gets real
uncomfortable, real scary, realpainful, good, how am I like

(01:41:20):
where this is my departure pointI'm.
There's no avoiding it, like,and if I do avoid it, the only
way for me to avoid it is tocreate a whole another set of
problems.
Um, and I come from an area ofthe us that has a pandemic of
heroin and fentanyl use for likethe last probably seven, eight
years, and that that's like notto oversimplify people's process

(01:41:43):
, but I think that that's a partof it.
It's like we want to avoid thefear and pain.
So we, we develop ways to avoidfear and pain, but we that
still is a problem.
And then we've created anotherset of problems because we're
going to become dissatisfied inthe cocoon.
We're going to becomedissatisfied if we're in the
hero's journey, if we're in theabyss, if we're in hell, if we

(01:42:06):
don't choose to figure out a wayout and to push out and we take
the path of least resistanceand stay in hell.
There's a saying there's a lightat the end of the tunnel, but
if you stay in the tunnel longenough, your eyes adjust to the
darkness and it's like in that,like, are you going to navigate
your way out or are you justgoing to?
Just, I already figured out howto navigate here.

(01:42:28):
So I'm going to live here, I'mgoing to stay here.
Those people, when you look attheir faces, they how old are
you?
I'm 35.
Wow, I thought you were maybe50.
Anyway, sorry, that was mytangent on no no keep going,
keep going.
That has been pretty integral ina lot of different areas of my
life, whether that's in personalhobbies I have, like jujitsu,

(01:42:50):
whether that's in my marriage.
I'd say this is probably thekey strategy in my marriage is
just find stuff that's provokingme, that I'm offended by that,
I'm hurt by that my wife hassaid or done, and then meditate
on it, sit on it, figure out.
Okay, I hear the, I hear thesmoke alarm.
Where's the smoke, where's thefire?

(01:43:11):
And how am I going to put thisfire out so that I can have a
greater capacity to communicatebetter, to do conflict better,
to be loved, um, well, or tolove my wife well, um.
And if that's in a profession,it's like failure, like the fear
of failure, I would say, ineurope.

(01:43:32):
One fascinating thing aboutEurope, yes, the difference
between Americans and Europeans,I would say them, the level of
pressure never to make mistakesin Europe is I couldn't even put
a percentage to it how muchhigher it is than in America.
The room for error in Europe isso small and it keeps people

(01:43:53):
paralyzed and fear.
Like to start a business here,to be an entrepreneur.
Most people go and try theirluck outside of Germany.
It's not so common that peoplewould try it here.
There's actually a phrase setthat says innovation is killed
in the crib in Germany, andthere's been many Germans who
had to go outside of Germany andtry to work out how to get
something to work, and then,once it, many Germans who had to
go outside of Germany and tryto work out how to get something

(01:44:14):
to work, and then, once it wasfunctioning and running well,
they would bring it back toGermany and the Germans would
Germanize it.
Maybe it makes someimprovements, but they there's a
saying never break a runningsystem, and so that mentality is
ingrained.
And so, if we live in that kindof thinking like you referenced
, kids learning language likelittle kids are babbling blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.

(01:44:35):
They have no fear of feelinglike a fool or looking like a
fool, and that's how you learnlanguage.
That's how I learned language.
I took a German language coursefor eight months.
Didn't really learn anything.
I learned a little bit ofbasics, but didn't really learn
anything.
I started working in a kitchenand I just mimicked everybody
who was there.

(01:44:55):
I just mimicked like I wouldjust repeat the words that they
would say to get it in my mouth,even though I didn't understand
what they were saying andpeople got annoyed with me, like
they were so annoyed with methey're like, oh my God, he's
like a parrot.
Why does he keep doing that?
But I was like I just said,listen, I have to learn.
And you Germans are the ones who, like I just said, listen, I
have to learn.
And you Germans are the oneswho, like Americans, always say

(01:45:16):
you're in America, speakAmerican.
You know, germans are exactlythe same.
They're like like really reallylike angrily.
Sometimes it's not so much likethat.
In the North, like in majorcities, people are bilingual,
but in the South, here inBavaria, it's like real old
school, like that you have tospeak German if you're in
Germany.
I'm like, okay, americans saythat I wave the white flag, I

(01:45:37):
will learn German.
And so the way that I did itwas, like you said, not worrying
about how I appear, how I look.
But that also has to come withthe meaning I attach to failure,
and so for me, the meaning thatI would attach to failure is
giving up and quitting, notmaking mistakes.
So in that sense, make mistakesfast, make mistakes.

(01:45:58):
Often.
Mistakes are where you learn.
If you succeed, you bypasslearning.
And there's people who havekind of like peaked in their
career, had like fast success,whether that's in sports or as
an actor or singer or whatever.
Like they were really famousfast.
So they were really successfulfast and they never went through
the, to the, through the trial.
What's this thing, the gauntletof failure?

(01:46:18):
When you go through thegauntlet of mistakes and things
not working, that's your bestteacher.
I would say that to anybody.
And if you can not perceivethat as pain and not perceive
that as in a fearful way or beuncomfortable with making
mistakes, if you could totallyembrace that, then you there's
no limit, like literally thesky's the limit to what you're

(01:46:39):
able to, to achieve in whateverfield or whatever you're,
whatever you're seeking out.
And what I'm saying is reallysimple, but it's not easy.
Even I mean I'm saying it butI'm also preaching to myself,
you know, because, like, no onelikes that feeling of ridicule.
No, I don't like it.
It's not that I like whenpeople like that's dumb and and
why do you want to do that?

(01:47:00):
And that's not safe.
And people, people want to likewhat you said earlier.
They want to mirror their,their selves, onto you and so,
like recently I took a job, um,I was working in an industrial
job here and it was really wellpaid Like as a foreigner in the
German economy.

(01:47:20):
I was making more than people,uh, who have multiple college
degrees, who I'm friends with.
I mean, the work that I did wasreally manual labor and it was
crazy shifts and whatever, but Iwas netting what I make, what
comes to my bank, was more thana friend of mine who's a teacher
, right, and I have six weekspaid vacation.
I have all these bonuses andbenefits, yearly bonuses and

(01:47:43):
stuff with my job and I got Ioffered a job in e-commerce,
marketing for Facebook andInstagram.
The point of this is thatGermans around me were so
skeptical of it.
They were like, no, why wouldyou work for an American company
?
And you know your job that youhave has an unlimited contract
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They could not even like manyof them who I talked to this is

(01:48:07):
not all of them.
Other people who are close to meunderstand, but the point is is
that there's people who aregoing to try to like narrate
your life for you.
They're going to try to attachtheir meaning to what's
happening for you, and then youget the choice to say, like, am
I going to believe that, am Igoing to partner with what
you're telling me is true aboutmy life?

(01:48:27):
And am I going?
And for me, I'm always likewhat is motivating you?
And this is the way I perceiveit could be totally wrong, but
there's a huge emphasis here onsecurity.
There's a huge emphasis here onsecurity because there's always
a backstop and a safety net tocatastrophic things happening.
But you know, there's so manycheesy American sayings about

(01:48:50):
this no risk, no reward, go big,go home, all these kinds of
things.
And so that's kind of more in myDNA and the spirit of who I am,
like I would rather try big andfail big than live mediocre,
like a mediocre life and nothave stress and like what, what

(01:49:11):
you were referring to earlier,it's actually that stress,
actually the process goingthrough that pain, actually the
process of going through beinguncomfortable or facing fear
that like reshapes us, that thatremolds us and then injects us
with something that wasn't therebefore.
It's like Johnny Gunter isalways Johnny Gunter, but
there's this amazing thing aboutthe human experience that, as

(01:49:33):
he interfaces with situationsand events, that it actually can
activate stuff in him.
It's there, it's already there,it's already in your toolbox
but it activates it and it givesyou an option to use it, to use
it in actual real life, to useit.

(01:49:54):
To use it in actual real life.
And then there's some ownershipthat comes with that and like
that whole thing that you talkedabout, the caterpillar, that's
just.
That's just a muscle that when,when that muscle gets developed,
you scale up.
When I start doing bicep curlsor whatever, like fitness is a
great example of measurablechange.
Like you, you, you do the bicepcurl with the caterpillar and
you're like, oh shit, this iscrazy.
But you know, you start pumpingthat, that two pound weight and

(01:50:15):
then something else happens um,that's maybe like a five pound
weight, but you have thecapacity and the motor skills
even try it and so on, and youand you scale up and the things
that you're able to achieve, ifyou're willing to go into the
process of doing that is isfantastic, you know, and it's
like you said, it's very youknow you don't even know what

(01:50:36):
you're going to scale up.

Speaker 2 (01:50:38):
You actually have no idea.
You know so, even though theway that we've evolved, like,
for example, the tongue, whichwas primarily an organ just to
sense, taste and eat, right, um,was not developed for speech,
you know I.
I mean, if it was developed forspeech it wouldn't be connected
to the.
You know it's all mixed up thewindpipe and the esophagus and

(01:51:02):
all that.
It's a big problem.
People choke all the time anddie right, but yet this is the
thing that we used to talk, soevolutionary speaking.
Once we develop this ability tospeak with the tongue that we
used to talk, so evolutionaryspeaking we, once we develop
this ability to speak with thetongue, it's what they call
exaptation, right, and so it'swhen you take something that you

(01:51:24):
didn't, its original use wasn'tfor that, but now you have
exapted it for some other use,which now opens a doorway to a
whole new way of thinking thatyou couldn't possibly imagine.
So now, once the tongue andspeech and the logos comes into
the picture, you know, you have.

(01:51:46):
You know we start developing.
You know ways of you knowtrying to keep the to sort of
record what we're seeing.
You know, so you would have youknow back in the day.
You know we had a hieroglyphscuneiform, all of that shit,
right, it takes a very long timeto learn, right?
And this, this is a cycletechnology that was reserved for

(01:52:09):
very few people, right?
But then you know, then there'sa whole shift that comes with
the Axial Revolution.
This is like some 800 BC.
We start developing alphabeticliteracy and numeracy, so it's

(01:52:30):
the development of coinage andthings like that.
But something very interesting,something very interesting
happens once we developalphabetic literacy, because
it's much quicker to learn thanideographic literacy, right,
right?
And so now what's happened tothe psychotechnology is you have

(01:52:52):
the ability to network onebrain with another in different
time states, right and sonow something's happening.
You are.
You're not just having torecord everything in here.
You can reread the words ofsome, you know some sage who

(01:53:18):
lived a thousand years ago andunderstand that for yourself.
Now, this is crazy.
Something huge has happened inthat shift, and so this is
basically what was the catalyst?
Was the catalyst for developingour empathic abilities?
Right, for our ability toreflect.
You know, robert Bella callsthis second order thinking,

(01:53:41):
metacognition, and basicallywhat this means is, through
reflection, we have the abilityto change our mind, right?
So here's the thing about themind.
You you were talking about howyou know the people in that room
different perspectives.
You know that cylinder.
Which way is the light comingfrom?

(01:54:02):
It's different from all sides.
Right?
We have this incredible capacityfor self-deception.
That's number one, right?
See, there's always adouble-edged sword to this
fantastic machine.
One is the capacity forself-deception, right?
See, there's always adouble-edged sword to this
fantastic machine.
One is the capacity forself-deception, right?
So we think everything that wesee is what we see.
Nah, it ain't.

(01:54:23):
You're seeing what you want tosee, right?
This is why I love magic tricks.
I love watching magicians dotheir thing, because it just
proves time and time again thatyou don't know shit, you can't
see everything right, you'reactually pretty much blind.
Really, metacognition meansthat we also have the capacity

(01:54:46):
for self-correction.
Right Now, this one is the key.
The capacity for self-correctionis self-transcendence.
This is that.
It's where metacognitionbecomes metanoia, it's where you
have the ability to change yourmind on something.
And that is huge.

(01:55:07):
Man, this is some deep stuff.
This is some deep stuff.
I mean it's been told by manypeople in many different ways,
but people don't really get this.
They think they need to hold onto some paradigm that they'll
be safe with that.
But the one true constant inthe world is change.
You got to know that unless youchange your mind about some

(01:55:28):
stubborn ways of thinking thatyou've been holding on to, you
will crumble, much like an oldbuilding that ossifies over time
, you know, becomes brittle.
It will crumble, right.
And so there's this one quote inthe Dharmapadaada, and it says

(01:55:52):
the mind is the chief thing,like there is no enemy greater
than your own mind and, at thesame time, there is no ally
greater than your own mind.
There is no enemy greater thanyour own mind and there is no
ally greater than your own mind.
So people got to ally greaterthan your own mind.

(01:56:13):
So people got to realize, likethe war, where does it begin?
It starts here.
It starts right here, changingyour mind about what you thought
was one way of doing things youknow, but then surprising
yourself with things like youknow, you know, like, like the

(01:56:35):
tongue, which is exacted toperform the function of speech,
we had no idea where that wouldtake us.
So if you're going to trainyourself to think differently
about even your own body, like,okay, you start doing biceps and
curls and things like that, Iif that then means you, you, you
know, you're learning a wholenew form of you know, um, body

(01:56:59):
and mind through jujitsu and um,it's opened up a whole way of
seeing the world, a whole newlens, um, that you're now
conceptually blending.
It's giving you answers andyou're connecting dots.
Like those are things that youcouldn now conceptually blending
.
It's giving you answers andyou're connecting dots Like
those are things that youcouldn't have expected before.
I mean, you were just expectingto get healthy.
You know I'm going to be ableto tackle people when I get in a

(01:57:22):
fight, but no, you're learningall the stuff about life and
whatnot.
So it's cool when we try newthings.
But I think the key thing hereis to for the people and I want
to say this to the people thatare stuck in ruts, people that
feel depressed, people that feelanxious about life I want to
say this.
I want to say try something new, go where you haven't been

(01:57:46):
before, know that you have acapacity for great
self-deception, but also knowthat you have a capacity for
great self-deception, but alsoknow that you have a capacity
for self-correction.
And so, while theself-correcting part is harder
and it is the narrow path, thisis that one thing you can do

(01:58:06):
that will liberate you literally.
And so there's a word for thischange.
It's a greek word, it's calledmetanoia.
It means change your mind.
You know and it's a great secret, it's like um for the people
that can change their mind.
They can turn away from one wayof doing things and move

(01:58:28):
towards another way of doingthings that they possibly
thought that they previouslythought was either impossible or
absolutely wrong.
Just change your mind aboutyour paradigm, because your
paradigm right now is keepingyou in a place of anxiety.
It's keeping you in a place ofdepression.
Why?
Why, right?

(01:58:48):
So if you're not finding theanswers there, you gotta move,
got to move, and if you staystill, you go stagnant.
You start to stink.
You know that.
So if you're suffering with thestench of that, best thing to
do is to get up and start moving.
Try new things, talk to newpeople, learn about different

(01:59:12):
points of view, indulge thethings that you've been
interested in.
curious about that other peoplehave told you stay away from it.
Um, and I say that you know inthe in, in the best way you know
, you have a brain.
I mean you.
You, you can be responsiblewith your life and you have to

(01:59:33):
start knowing that there'salways going to be two sides to
the coin.
So, whatever you try right,there'll be good things that
come out of it, there'll be badthings that come out of it, but
obviously, if you're seeking thetruth, then you will find it.
You seek it, you will find it.
But, yes, you don't have to bebrave.
Will bad things pop up on theway?
Yes, definitely.
Will good things pop up on theway?

(01:59:54):
Yes, definitely.
Will good things come up?
Will revelations about yourselfand possibilities about
yourself that you did not knowcome up as well?
Yes, absolutely.
Will you feel good about that?
100%, because that's what beinghuman is all about.
It's about learning that youare literally limitless, and the
whole journey is a journey ofdiscovery discovery of who you

(02:00:21):
are.

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):
I think I'll confess something for me in this.
In the process that you'reyou're talking about one thing I
felt kind of static in myidentity.
I felt kind of I saw myselfreally in a specific kind of way
and in order to branch out andagain do this thing that you're

(02:00:45):
talking about about when I'mlistening to people, not to try
to correct them or be offendedor outrage or whatever I felt
like I was being.
I was deceiving myself or beingdeceptive to myself or not
being authentic.
And one thing that I realizedwas that I was operating out of

(02:01:07):
a mode of thinking where I feltlike I had to be the same person
all the time to everybody.
I don't know if people connectwith this or understand what I
mean, but I just felt like I'dgrown up and I'd seen people
wear masks and they were beingdisingenuous and I felt like,
okay, I would like to be thesame and speak the same, and
like with whether I'm talking tomy parents, whether I'm talking

(02:01:29):
to Johnny Gunter, whatever,I'll be the same guy.
But I was coming from thedeparture point of when I'm
talking to Johnny Gunter, whenI'm talking whatever, I'll be
the same guy, but I was comingfrom the departure point of like
I'm a static person, like I'malways the same guy, and I would
like to quote Bruce Lee when hesaid be like water when you
pour water into a cup, itbecomes a cup.

(02:01:58):
Pour water in a bowl, itbecomes a bowl.
Pour water in a vase, itbecomes a vase.
The water is always water, butit takes on a different form
depending on what the situationis.
And that's kind of how I brokeout of that that mold and
reinterpreted even what Paulsaid about being all things to
all people.
And I don't feel like I'm like,for example, the way that I
would interface and share love,so to speak, with my wife is
very different than the way thatI would share love with you.
And that doesn't mean that I'mbetraying who I am or being
disingenuous or whatever, but Ihad to have that kind of shift
and I think many people arelocked into if we're talking

(02:02:20):
about religious types or peoplewho are institutionalized,
they're like I have to staywithin this paradigm and if I
speak a different way or I'mwith, you know, interfacing with
people in a different way, I'mbeing disingenuous and it's not
that that way at all.
And I don't know, maybe somepeople connect to that, maybe
people not, but that was some.
That was a huge process for meto kind of undertake because I

(02:02:46):
felt like, yeah, that I was, Iwas being disingenuous.

Speaker 2 (02:02:47):
Does that make any sense?
Oh yeah, it totally makes sense.
Okay, I think that's one of theour greatest fears.

(02:03:09):
Man, Like we all, we all craveauthenticity.
We want to be authentic, and agood example of authenticity is
a child just being them, youknow.
But then when the guests arriveand mom and dad say, hey, why
don't you do that thing?
Why don't you just start doinga little dance thing?
That you do, you know.
And now you're asking the.
It is possible for human beingsto retain authenticity and be

(02:03:38):
able to play on demand, muchlike many musicians do you know,
when they really get in thezone.
I mean, they're doing it for ajob, but they're still able to
really just get into the spiritof the song and just, you know,
do their and it's, it's awonderful thing to watch.
But the fear that you are notyou, you know that's what

(02:04:02):
happens when we've had enoughpeople tell us that something's
wrong with us.
You know something's wrong withyou, Just like how you said
about the fish.
Right, the fish, it's like.
It's like someone says ohlittle fish, let me save you
from drowning, you know.
Like some monkey comes to thefish let me save you from
drowning and he puts the fish upin a tree.

(02:04:22):
I've had that done to me in mylife many times, you know I'm a
fish.
I'm a creature of the sea,right but.
I'm supposed to act and performand function in a way that is
defined by them right, and sothat's the thing.
All human beings are uniquelyand wonderfully made, right.

(02:04:43):
It's important for people torealize that, even with your own
children, you can't control theoutcome.
You cannot try and you willfail.
All right, my parents.
We have four kids.
All right, me, my youngerbrother, sam, there's Hiba,
youngest sister, and Divya, eachone of us super different from

(02:05:06):
the other.
Believe me Now, when we grew uptogether, like, we had some
shared interests, but then, whenwe grew up apart, in different
parts of the world, like, we allbecame different individuals.
My parents could not havepredicted that and they've only
now started enjoying their kidsbecause they've come to a point

(02:05:26):
where they're like I can'tcontrol the outcome.
They are so radically differentfrom each other, especially us
like.
In fact, the more we try andlike control, the more we find
that we end up destroying andworse outcomes come.
Come about because of, becauseof our need to control, and

(02:05:50):
their need to control comes fromlike, like most people in
society.
It's like I want to control mykids because I I care about what
other people will say aboutthem.
You got to stop worrying aboutwhat other people say.
You know, that's step one anduh, step two just deal with
yourself first.
You know, if you, if you, aretruly authentic, then honestly,

(02:06:18):
man people, they really can'targue with that.
In fact, when you see someonewho's truly authentic, you just
you're mesmerized, you're justlike wow, they're so comfortable
being themselves.
I want to be like that.
No one has a problem with it.
It's actually a very attractivething.

(02:06:38):
But these people have come to apoint where they just know who
they are and they're going toplay their part, and you know,
it doesn't matter theirpolitical view, religious view,
whatever.
It's a wonderful site to watch,like people in a in a flow
state, an authentic flow state,it's great.

(02:06:59):
Nothing like it.
And so this is kind of like whywe all want to go there.
We all want to be authentic.
Well, guess what?
To be authentic means that you,you might not be playing the
part that someone else expectsyou to play.
So dad wants you to be anengineer and you're going to
play the role of engineer thenand you're going to speak with

(02:07:22):
the engineer's mask.
Well, maybe you're feelinginauthentic because you're
wearing the engineer's mask, butcan you do?
You get what I mean.
You get what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (02:07:37):
Yeah, yeah, I think for me, my, my dysfunction was I
wanted to give people all partsof myself and in in reference
to the engineers mask, it's like, uh, when I show up to do
engineer stuff, I'm talking toengineers, that I'm, I'm just
going to give you the engineerpart, and that's not being
disingenuous, that's just meshowing up to what's happening

(02:07:58):
right now.
And if there's an invitation,like if we met outside of work,
and there's an invitation whereI give you different parts of
myself, I can.
But I think I had an unhealthyrelationship with what you said
of like when I was growing up itwas also the same thing.
There was a big fear of whatwill people think.

(02:08:19):
And so giving all parts ofmyself meant exposing people to
my biggest failures and the likekind of ugliest sides of me
where I would just like, hey,this and this and this happened
in my life, so that, like thatwould be the departure point.
Will you accept me as I am,knowing these things or not?
And then I had to revalue how toshare things, because when you
live like that, it's a huge riskbecause, for one thing, that

(02:08:42):
kind of vulnerability is superscary or disturbing for a lot of
people just to share like deepthings with people really
quickly and it took me a longtime to figure that out like, oh
, especially being here ineurope, in germany, like you
know, things just take waylonger.
Like friendships just take waylonger to develop, um, and and

(02:09:05):
being, having intimacy, beingvulnerable with each other, is
just not a norm of the cultureand you have to like, really be
purposed and and even then itdoesn't happen.
But yeah to, on one side of itit's like none of my business
what you think about me.
But then the more intimate weare, and if I want to love you

(02:09:28):
and respect you, well then Ineed to figure out if I'm
violating you, hurting you or,you know, figure out those blind
spots that we talked aboutearlier.
And if I would subject myselfto the, to the, to the loving
criticism of Johnny Gunter inthe pursuit of loving him.
Well, that's very differentthan like me being estranged
from you, like being anacquaintance of you and me

(02:09:50):
basing my life choices on whatI'm not doing and doing off of
my supposed thoughts about whatyou think about me, and so in
that sense, it's none of mybusiness what you think about me
good, bad or ugly.

Speaker 2 (02:10:05):
Yeah, that took me a while, man.
My whole life, most of my life,man, it was defined by other
people.
You know, if people thought Iwas good at something, I was
talented at something, I'll domore of that right and if people
said, hey, man, you're going tobecome this and that, then I

(02:10:26):
would look at that and be like,well, this is what I'm going to
become, then I really didn'tknow who I was and my compass
was I really didn't know who Iwas and my compass was it was on
the outside of myself and otherpeople would turn the dial and
tell me which way to go.
I found myself then becoming apeople pleaser, and this is what

(02:10:46):
really scared me was because,yeah, I wanted to be all men to
all you know, all things, allmen.
But I found that I wasduplicitous, you know.
I found that I was disingenuine.
I found that, you know, removeall of these people from my life
.
I still I do not know who I amand I have not had a chance to

(02:11:07):
develop my own voice, and it's aterrifying place to be.
It's terrifying when you'reyou're in a dark place, you go
to someone for help and thenthey tell you that, yeah, this
is where you've been going wrong, this is what you're doing,
da-da-da-da.
And it's like especially ifyou've heard the advice before
and you've tried it and it's notgotten you anywhere Like

(02:11:30):
they're missing something, theydon't have maybe enough
information for the next leg ofyour journey, like you have to
be willing to leave the tribe,leave the village and go and
find that thing that you'relooking for outside of that.
But it takes guts to leave thetribe, you know, because you
leave the tribe and then peopleare like, oh well, there, he's

(02:11:51):
gone, johnny's gone, again lost,he's gone.
And um, you know, if youridentity is created by people
that are really close to you inyour community, when that
happens, um, it's, it's reallytough.
But, like with the way my lifeis shaped up, is that I've been,

(02:12:14):
I've moved from differentcountries.
You know, I spent six years ofmy life in the States.
Prior to that I was in aboarding school in South India
just a little bubble, differentworld, right.
America was a different world.
After America, I was in Dubaidifferent world, different
friends, different community.

(02:12:34):
And then, after Dubai, I was inMumbai again different world,
different friends, differentcommunity.
And now Bangalore, right.
And most of these moves werenot voluntary moves In fact none
of them were and I'm thankfulthat they were involuntary, at

(02:12:56):
least up until this point in mylife.
Looking back, I can see I'mgrateful that they were
involuntary and they were sortof forced upon me, because I
wouldn't have made the moveotherwise.
Man, I was too comfortable whereI was, I liked the way things
were, I liked being a peoplepleaser, I liked making people
happy and when they said JohnnyDance, I would be that kid that

(02:13:17):
would dance and do the thing.
You know, but actually thatwasn't me.
I thought it was me, but itwasn't me.
I've discovered now that a lotof my problems happened because
I needed other people to defineme, like I said.

(02:13:39):
Now I'm in a place where I havea very small, small group of
friends.
I wouldn't even I'm quite thehermit man, I'm quite the hermit
.
So I know a lot of people thatsay, ah, community, this, that,
yeah, that's important.
And I have that in my own way,like I teach at a school, my

(02:14:02):
community and my students, right, I'm responsible for them.
My community is my family, mymom, dad, brothers and sisters
and close friends.
So when I talk to, to you, evencatching up after a long time,
it's community, but it's it'srare.
But do I have like somethinglike the kinds of circles of

(02:14:24):
friends that I had in america orin boarding school or in dubai
or mumbai, which were largegroups of friends, have had made
lots of demands of me?
I had to be in a lot of places,be many things to many men and
women.
Man, that was exhausting, itwas absolutely exhausting.
I hated it, like it gave me akick, but deep down inside I

(02:14:47):
hated it, man.
And so now I find myself at apoint where, much like a hermit,
you know, a man of the caves, aman of the mountains I keep to
myself and then I will invest mytime in one or two individuals

(02:15:09):
that are in alignment with whereit is that we're going, where
it is that we're going, where itis that this ship is going, and
if they want to be a part ofthat journey then they can come
aboard.
But I can only really invest mytime in one, maybe two people
max, and mentor them and, in thesame way, be mentored by I

(02:15:32):
wouldn't say one man or oneindividual or anything like that
.
I don't believe in that,because while when I was young I
needed a mentor, I benefitedgreatly from a mentor, as I'm
older, now, as much as I wouldlove a mentor, I find that I

(02:15:53):
still have to go with what's inmy head.
So if that old guy ain't here,my mentor is going to become a
composite of multiple characters, right?
Multiple people whose wisewords are documented.
Right it's.
I'm networking my brain withanother brain in another time

(02:16:14):
state and I'm reading the wordsof lao tzu, jesus christ, right,
um, I can listen to lectures bycarl jung or alan watts, or
even um jordan peterson, rightand, and they all become
composite characters for me thatmake up the mentor, right, um?

(02:16:37):
Because ultimately the mentor'sjob is not to have you be a
disciple for life.
The idea is that once you'vefigured it out, now you go, yeah
you know when, when you, whenyou get, when you get the secret
, it's time to leave.
Then the mentor is a success.

(02:16:57):
But if you need someone to keeppassively sucking at your teat,
you know you're not a mentor,You're in a deep old mother, is
what you are.
Right, the child must fly andbecome their own thing, which is
really interesting.
Because for Jung, you know hismentor was.

(02:17:30):
You know Jung had to.
You know Freud's view onpsychology was quite limited,
you know, although what Freuddid was still.
He still unpacked a whole lotof stuff, Like we wouldn't be
talking about the subconsciousor anything like that, if it
wasn't for Freud.

(02:17:50):
But Jung took it to the nextlevel.
Jung was on a higher way,higher dimension, and so Jung
understood that the psychology,our psychology, was connected to
something much, much greaterand it spanned time and it
connected us across differentcultures, across different

(02:18:11):
generations.
He called us the collectiveunconscious and but yes, Freud
hated the fact that Jung wentoff on his own and so Jung was
excommunicated from theFreudians and which was sad.
But then, when Jung became amentor himself to Eric Neumann,

(02:18:32):
became a mentor himself to EricNeumann, he did the right thing,
you know.
And so when Neumann wrote hisbook, the Origins and History of
Consciousness, jung writes inthe foreword of this book and he
basically says and he basicallysays that this difficult and

(02:19:05):
meritorious task the author hasperformed with outstanding
success.
He has woven his facts into apattern and created a unified
whole which no pioneer couldhave done, nor could have
attempted to do.
I unwittingly made landfall ona new continent long ago, namely
the realm of matriarchalsymbolism.
And as a conceptual frameworkfor his discoveries, the author

(02:19:26):
uses a symbol whose significancefirst dawned on me in my recent
writings on the psychology ofalchemy, the Uroboros.
And he continues.
He basically says in conclusionthat this book is the book that

(02:19:47):
he would have written if he hadstayed alive and gone on to the
next phase.
And so, yeah, neumann alsoforged new territory in the
exploration of the vastunconscious.

(02:20:08):
But Jung didn't hold him back.
Jung was like, because he knewthis thing is so big that it
needs explorers to just keepgoing and keep going, and keep
going.
But yeah, man.
I think this takes us back tothe very beginning of our

(02:20:33):
conversation.
Like technology, you know whatis that?
Is it the enemy, is it thefriend?
Would you make it our wholething?
See, I think it's both.
You know, I think that we havejourneys to make as individuals,

(02:20:56):
but really, the truth is we donot know what the kid that
hasn't grown up with this devicewill do when they get it.
In India right now, you see,they banned TikTok because of
what's happening with China,which is very sad.
But when TikTok was up andrunning, some of the most

(02:21:19):
creative stuff that you couldpossibly see was coming out of
the Indian kids on TikTok, andthese kids were from low-income
families, right, all they hadwas a smartphone at best, and
yet they were doing, they weremaking some really cool videos,
really cool jump cuts, you know,all just done with the apps in
their phone.
Like you might look at some ofthis stuff and be like I,

(02:21:40):
traditionally, as a filmmaker,would have done this on my
computer.
I would have used after effects, you know, I would have used
final cut pro and things likethat to edit that kind of a
video.
But no, they're doing it all ontheir phone, and so that's the
interesting thing about Gen Z isthat Gen Z has grown up with
the smartphone and they havelearned how to use this
technology like from birth.

(02:22:01):
You know, it's just verynatural to them.
And so, as the world changes,like I think we're entering some
very interesting times.
So, like, how you know, uh,when we invented the you know
the alphabet, alphabeticliteracy, and that was huge for

(02:22:23):
us, we now have another kind ofliteracy.
This isn't this, this isanother type of psychotechnology
which it connects us tocreativity on a whole other
level.
People don't realize that it'slike.
So I have a hope.
My hope is this man, that youngpeople and I really think that,

(02:22:47):
especially in India, I can speakfor India.
I know that once India becomesdigitized right, once there are
no dead zones here, onceeducation goes online and kids
in villages can start learningfrom people all over the world,
that's going to changeeverything, man, right, because
it's going to be like they wakeup literally.
It's going to happen so fast asit'd be like them waking up
like no limbs one day, and thennext day I'm a fully functional

(02:23:12):
human being.
I'm going to start runningmarathons.
What the hell was this kiddoing, you know, sleeping when
he had all of this stuff.
You know, this middle class kidhad everything in front of him
and he wasn't using it.
It's going to happen.
Like that man, there's going tobe a revival coming up from the
bottom, from the gutter up, andI know it.
I know it because I sawevidence of that on TikTok

(02:23:32):
already.
So, yeah, the power is going togo back to the children.
Man in this new world, andbecause the kids know how to
change, they are not scared oftrying new things.
They try new apps all the time,whereas us older guys we're
like, ah man, I'm comfortablewith Photoshop, like I don't

(02:23:53):
want to use Procreate.
You know like, screw that, butthat's dumb.
But these kids, they're justgoing to try new things all the
time, like, and more power tothem, because change is
happening at a faster pace thanit ever has.
Right Hawking says that we'reliving in the age of complexity.
Okay, it's only going to getmore and more complex.

(02:24:13):
So the one way to handle theone true constant, which is
change, is to be a constantlearner, to be a constant.
You know metanoia, motherfreaker.

(02:24:34):
You know changing your mindabout stuff, trying new things,
exploring new things connectingthe dots between your localized
ideas and broader ideas thathave always existed from the
beginning of time to now, thewhole left brain and right brain
thinking.
I'm just trying to tie up thiswhole discussion into one little

(02:24:55):
fun bundle.
But um, because we have covereda lot here and there's a lot of
stuff you know, but um uh, doyou have any good books to read?
some?

Speaker 1 (02:25:08):
some recommendations for people based on what we
talked about, or podcast oranything like that um well,
podcast, yeah, I listened tojordan peterson's podcast and I
listened to eric weinstein'spodcast, yakuwa lakes podcast.
Um, books, I would say uh.
Sapiens brief history of theHuman Race, I think by Yuval

(02:25:34):
Haraj I can't say his last nameand Can't Hurt Me David Goggins,
pro-worlds for Life, jordanPeterson, the Way Less Traveled
by Scott Peck.
Yeah, one thing you said that Iwanted to ask you is actually I

(02:25:55):
did jot down some things beforewe start talking.
We didn't really cover anythingthat I jotted down, but it's
been great.
But one thing I did write downwas, for me, what you described
about having like this kind ofcollage of mentors and having
access to them, because we nowhave books and we have media and
we have the internet, so we canhave books and we have media
and we have the internet, so wecan have many different mentors.

(02:26:17):
One thing I do is at my desk, Ipost on Instagram about it, but
I do it.
I post inspirational quotes,but I also just post pictures of
the people who inspire me andlike I kind of try to surround
myself with them, becausethere's this concept.
I've seen this multiple timesbut they're in different streams
.
But there's a book I read byNapoleon Hill called Think Rich,

(02:26:42):
grow Rich.
I was really turned off by thetitle, but a lot of people
suggested to me and anyways healludes to this that he had like
a through visualization.
He would meditate and he wouldpicture himself sitting at a
table and at that table would belike giants in the industry
that he respected or that hefelt would give him good counsel
, and like different people,like abraham lincoln was one

(02:27:04):
person, so they all would becomecharacters of their own, like
in his meditation state, in theeye of his mind, and they would
come and give him.
He would submit his ideas orhis plans or whatever, and then
some of them would eithersupport and encourage him or
criticize and critique the ideasthat he had.
I found this principle also in abook called the Secret Place.
I forget the author's name, butessentially this guy was

(02:27:25):
talking about using your mind'seye to carve out meeting places
with the person of Jesus andbeing mentored by the person of
Jesus, and he said somethingthat happened by accident, not
by necessarily him proactivelyseeking.
It was that other people wouldstart appearing in this space in
his mind's eye, and so therewere, like different people,

(02:27:46):
biblical characters, but alsodifferent people in the world
who would show up and startspeaking into his life, and he
didn't know how he felt about itexactly, but he found that it
was okay because Jesus, in thetransfiguration, spoke with
Moses and Elijah.
So there's this concept ofbeing mentored by people.

(02:28:06):
What you said was so importantthat it transcends time and
space, and so my question I sayall that to ask like my question
to you is is in your, in yourround table, who, who are some
like big influencers for you, ofpeople who are speaking into
your life, who are reshapingyour perspective and helping you

(02:28:28):
get breakthrough?

Speaker 2 (02:28:30):
It's a very good question, man.
Um, you know, I do.
I do have literal conversationswith people, you know, and uh,
um, I find it is.
It's a great way to stepoutside myself and take a
different perspective, and thisis possible because I've always
been a method actor, right.
So it's it's really easy for meto really get into the bones of

(02:28:53):
another person, to startperforming and then, as I do
that, I start saying things thatsurprise me.
You know, it's like, uh, that'swhy method actors, when they
start like uh, doing animpersonation, they love doing
them, because they say differentthings every time, like I
didn't know I could come up withthat, but I did, because I was
embodying that person, right,that's what makes it great.

(02:29:14):
So these are some of the funthings that human beings can do.
Sometimes I step on a jordanpeterson, right, but I have like
I'll be, I'll be honest withyou like, so with peterson, are
we really doing this?
Okay?
So johnny ganta likes jordanpeterson, right.
And then there's my shadow,okay, who is called Antum and

(02:29:35):
Crucible, and he really does notlike Jordan Peterson.
All right, so I like that.
But you see, I brought it outof the darkness and I'm
absolutely clear with how I thissort of thing, this like there
are things that he said that hasliterally liberated me, you
know, saved my soul.
But then there are things thathe said that has has literally
liberated me, you know, saved mysoul.

(02:29:56):
But then there are things thathe says that I feel like Jordan,
you can, you can take it to thenext level, but you're holding
back here.
I wonder why?
Right, and that's where someonelike Alan Watts will come in
and so he'll sort of sort oftake the baton and then, you
know, carry that conversationfurther, right.
And then you know, maybe Wattswill pass on that baton.
And then, you know, carry thatconversation further, right?
And then, you know, maybe Wattswill pass on that baton to

(02:30:16):
Terence McKenna and he'll starttalking about some other crazy
stuff, about, I don't know,language and entheogens and
things like that, but then maybehe will reference Jung again.
So now the batons pass back toJung and then Jung will
reference Eliade, and then, youknow, it's, it's already become

(02:30:37):
a lot of these people, and thenEliade will lead me to Joseph
Campbell.
You know, joseph Campbell willlead me to some, some movie that
I've been meaning to watch.
Now that director and his ideasare sort of, you know, I'm sort
of seeing my life played outthrough that lens and um.

(02:30:58):
And then sometimes, like youknow, some some great fun
character pops in, like camillepalia, um, who, oddly enough,
like I mean, I think she's,she's a, she's, she's, she's a,
she's a riot man, she's amazing.
But yeah, she wrote the bookSexual Personae, which I highly

(02:31:19):
recommend.
It's a dense book, but I meanyou can open any page and just
start reading and even if youdon't understand what she's
saying, she's a maestro when itcomes to language.
But I discovered Paliya on myown a long time ago and then
rediscovered her again thanks tojordan peterson, because that

(02:31:40):
man keeps surprising me withsome of the people that he talks
to.
So, and he did an interviewwith palia and I'm like, hey,
man, that's cool and you know,that's when, yeah, and then you
see, all of the dots areconnected, like I find that,
with this particular crew thatI've mentioned at my round table
.
You know we have palia, but she,she, she gets jordan peterson

(02:32:02):
right, so she's connected to,she's connected to him in some
way.
Now, right, peterson has alwaysbeen, you know, onto this whole
stuff, okay, maps of meaning,right.
So, right, brain, left brain,all of that stuff and mythology.
He's trying to understand that,right, and all of this comes

(02:32:22):
from a place where he wouldn'thave been able to venture there
if it wasn't for this guy whoalso sits at the round table
Carl Jung, psychology andalchemy, right.
And so now, what one mancouldn't do all of these people
are doing together now to createthis composite mentor, right?

(02:32:43):
And so now, jung, thenreferences in the fine print,
like all this stuff that youknow I wouldn't otherwise think
of.
You know, looking up um,because they're thousands of
years old.
But then, like I said, I'll belistening to a podcast.
Some dude like terence mckennawill then bring me back to young
.
He might mention merci, eliad.

(02:33:05):
And then here I pick up eliadforging the crucible and I start
reading that and I realize, oh,my god, this is answering all
my questions about like you knowshamanism, because I was my
questions about like you knowshamanism Because I was super
interested in that, because youknow, for example, I went
through an interestingexperience.
I don't think we have time to gointo that in this podcast.

(02:33:27):
Maybe we'll save that for apart two.
But I was working on an artpiece called Jacob's Ladder and
Jordan Peterson has a lecture onJacob's Ladder and, oddly
enough, he does talk aboutshamanism in that lecture and
how it's connected.
So once I started creating thatpiece, I started reading a lot

(02:33:48):
of Eliad and stuff startedbecoming more clear to me.
And then, yeah, man, then ofcourse there's always going to
be this dude who sort of JosephCampbell, who's sort of like the
left arm to Jung's right arm,who sort of made sense of

(02:34:12):
mythology for normal people.
And now we just use his worklike it's no big deal with every
blockbuster Hollywood moviethat we make, right?
And then, yeah, then there'scertain outliers who I wouldn't
mention on the podcast publiclybecause they're my secret

(02:34:34):
mentors.
Yeah and yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:34:39):
Is there anybody specific who you pull
inspiration from for your artstyle, like the stuff that I
seen on your website, like one.
One person that kind of poppedup into my head like when I saw
some of your pieces wasSalvatore Dali.
Dali, yeah, and specificallythat painting of a dream caused

(02:35:00):
by the flight of a bee around apomegranate a second before
waking up.

Speaker 2 (02:35:07):
It's the longest title ever for a painting for a
painting, but, um, um, no manwhen it comes to art dude.
Oddly enough, I don't have anymentors.
I mean, I know I stand on theshoulders of giants and all that
.
You know I'm gonna say that,but I don't have.

(02:35:29):
I don't have someone that I'velooked up to and want to be,
because my own art keepsshape-shifting.
In fact, I hate it when I getstuck in a box, when people
think that I'm just doing flora,fauna, botanicals and nature in
the Garden of Eden.
That becomes old to me aftersome time.
I eventually that's just therefor a season and then I need to

(02:35:51):
go.
Dark man, I need to show youthe underbelly, the other side
of that, right?
So the serpent in the garden,let's explore that.
Let's explore the dark cavernsof your, the parts of yourself
that you're avoiding.
Let's explore that.
You know some people getannoyed with that.
They're like Johnny, why can'tyou just give me the Garden of
Eden?

Speaker 1 (02:36:10):
the nice happy stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:36:12):
I'm like I'm sorry, dude, but this is this is this
is what I do, you know, and somy, my own artwork keeps
shape-shifting.

Speaker 1 (02:36:29):
I shape-shift with styles, I shape-shift with
themes, but I do believe thatit's all connected into into a
much, much bigger picture thatmakes up a more completed idea
of, I guess, what it is that I'mtrying to discover about myself
when I make this stuff yeah, Iremember like someone recounting
Bob Dylan winning like somefolk singer award, and then he

(02:36:54):
was invited to some musicfestival and then when he took
the stage he like had anelectric guitar and like people
like were violently freaking outbecause it was like Bob Dylan,
like that's not who you are,like you're the folk singer with
string and acoustic instrumentsand whatever.
And he's like picked upelectric guitar and started
playing.
He's like no, you don't get it.

(02:37:16):
Um, and there's a, there's apolish, a polish, um painter.
Well, I can't say painter.
He's obviously artist becausehe he started in photography and
then people like ridiculed him.
Photography because at the timehe was taking these really
obscure pictures from weirdangles and perspectives and at
the time like people wanted likereally clear photos and like

(02:37:38):
straight on perspectives and soit was very artsy what he was
doing.
It's not that big of a deal.
Now, when you look at hisphotography, like it's not that
big of a deal, but at the timehe's really ridiculed by it.
He departed from that studyarchitecture and then later he
just fell into painting and thethings that he painted A lot of
people would say that they'redisturbing, but what I find

(02:37:59):
fascinating about it is theimagery.
There's a lot of hypersymbolism to it.
He was heavily influenced by,like, the German Nazi occupation
of Poland, the concentrationcamps, the Catholic church in
Europe and those kinds of themes.
And he never titled any of hispieces of art, so it's just

(02:38:23):
literally like this is B7.
Like he just just to have atitle on it if you want it, for
the sake of selling it orcategorizing it or whatever.
But there was no like title andpeople like would ask him often
what it means.
He was like figure it out.
He didn't want to, he didn'teven want to entertain that kind

(02:38:43):
of dialogue.
So you see the influence fromthose pastor things.
Like, for example, there'd belike a Catholic looking
cathedral, it looked kind oflike Notre Dame, but it was made
out of flesh.
It looked like it was made outof stretched flesh over like
like, for example, where thestained glass would be, you
would see like the, the stretch,like as if you would stretch
flesh over it and you could seethe points of, like the barriers

(02:39:05):
of where between the glass.
But and it was the color blue.
And so people had to kind ofunpack and decipher his art and
one thing that popped out wasthe kind of blues.
He went through a time where hejust used this really specific
kind of blue, and what's crazyis the kind of blue that he used
.
There's only one way to make itand it's through a chemical,

(02:39:26):
and it's the same chemical thatthe Nazis used to gas people in
the showers and that blue wouldactually appear in the showers
there.
And so there's these layers,even with choosing the colors
that he chose, um, anything.
So I I for one, like enjoypeople diving into, um any

(02:39:52):
aspect of life, um, whether it'sthe good, the good, the bad,
the ugly, and I think it's like,I don't know, maybe we're
conditioned in a way, likepeople who would throw shade at
you for not continuing to dogarden and bean stuff, or like
whatever it's like we'reconditioned by brand recognition
to perceive people in a certainway and they want to brand

(02:40:14):
Johnny Gunta and make it so, so,so, and so when you conflict
with that, people don't know howto interface with each other.
Sometimes they don't know howto interface with art or
interface with what's happening.
I would say the same is truewith, like this podcast.
Some people were like, oh, thisis too long, it's not

(02:40:35):
structured, it's it's.
They give me all these reasonswhy I don't like it and I was
like, well, I never set out todo the things that you're doing.
Like people are treated likethey have no attention span and
they're treated like they'remorons.
They're treated like you don't,you can't listen to anything if
it's longer than four secondsor four minutes.
If it's longer than fourminutes, you don't have the
capacity.
I'm like, I refuse to believethat about people.

(02:40:55):
I refuse to try to conditionpeople like that, and one thing
that I wanted was to haveimperfect conversations.
Like because giving each otherthe platform to speak, and like
in this whole conversation therewas this kind of back and forth
with me and you, you would saysomething and it like all these
fireworks would go off in myhead and so then then I would
come back and you go back.
We never we never sat down andsaid we're going to make these

(02:41:18):
talking points, condense it andlike compress it and then polish
it and then give it to peoplelike that.
There is a place and time forthat and a space for that and a
utility for that, but enabled tohave these imperfect
conversation is a muscle we lost, where we're not going to talk
about religion at the dinnertable.
We're not going to talk aboutpolitics at the dinner table,

(02:41:38):
but we're not going to engage inimperfect conversations because
we don't want to have any kindof possible confrontation or
conflict or difference ofopinion.
And so, like I don't know, likeI feel that I'm like one side
of me is conflicted.
Where I understand people's timeis valuable, so they're
probably listening passively asthey're running on the treadmill

(02:42:00):
, going to work or doingsomething cooking in the kitchen
.
So I don't want to like just benoise're imbeciles and
incompetent of listening to along form dialogue.
That's not this pre-packaged,branded kind of thing, and so I

(02:42:22):
would maybe say that theexplorative nature of your mind
coming out through your art andpeople being able to interface
with it, maybe would be asimilar journey.
I don't want to project on you,but I just sense at the time
that I've known you, I wouldnever be able to nail you down
as something really specific andthat's why I said, when I asked

(02:42:44):
you to do the podcast, I said,johnny, will you be my Alex
Jones?

Speaker 2 (02:42:52):
And have I been that for you?

Speaker 1 (02:42:54):
Dude, you've been Johnny Gunta.
Alex Jones can't hold a flameto you like you're uniquely and
specifically Johnny Gunta, and Ireally, really appreciate you
coming on the podcast.
I appreciate everything youshared.
You tickled my brain the wholetime and, yeah, it's such a joy
to connect with you and here.

Speaker 2 (02:43:16):
Likewise man.
This need to happen for a verylong time.
You know, since you said thatyou had the idea for the podcast
, you know I was very excitedabout it and I knew that we were
like already dabbling in a lotof the same stuff.
You know, and when you weretalking about, you know, your
idea for the design, for theartwork and and even the main

(02:43:38):
maps and stuff, like I knew that, like you know, there was some,
some synergy there would besynergy between the two of us.
If we got in a conversation andI felt that, I felt that
throughout this whole thing,like that, there wasn't like a
pause or an awkward moment, oryou know, I feel like we just
went from one interestingthought to another and we bypass

(02:44:00):
all the boring.
Well, what are you up to rightnow?
You know what do you do forwork and this, and that you know
and I knew that this wouldhappen with a person like you.
You know, I'm grateful for thatand both you and Vanessa have
been a very big part of my life,like you know.

(02:44:21):
I said I am a hermit, right, butthere are very few people that
will always have a very specialplace in my life.
And so you and Vanessa havethat special special place in my
life.
Have that special special placein my life, you know before.
I met you guys.
I was kind of like a like astone man.
I was hard, I was a stone.

(02:44:41):
I didn't think that.
You know that anything.
I think at the time how I woulddescribe it the word I used to
describe it was that you guysopened my eyes up to the
mystical, which was necessaryfor me at that stage of my life.
I needed to know that there wasanother way of seeing the world

(02:45:02):
, and so I'm very, very thankfulfor that man.
Without you guys I, honestly, Iwould have.
I do not know what trajectorymy life would have taken in
terms of my philosophy and how Ithink about things, but a very
important time in my life Bothof you showed up.
Yeah, it was great.

(02:45:25):
It was great.

Speaker 1 (02:45:27):
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate those words, dude.
I appreciate that a lot.
I love you, man, to appreciatethose words, dude, I appreciate
that a lot.
I love you, man.
To wrap this up, where canpeople check out some of your
art?
You're on Instagram.
You have a website calledStudio Ganta.
That's G-A-N-T-A dot com andyou have various things going on

(02:45:51):
there, but there's artwork.
There's artwork is online shopthere.
You check out and yourinstagram is at studio ganta at
studio ganta.
Okay, yeah, and I'll link.
I'll link it.
Um, I'll put a link of that inthe description of the video and
everything so people can clickthrough and have that.
Yeah, cool, thanks for doingthis, dudes.

Speaker 2 (02:46:12):
Thank you michael and uh.

Speaker 1 (02:46:15):
I look forward to uh the second time, dude, there has
to be a follow-up man.
There are so many things Iwanted to cover.

Speaker 2 (02:46:21):
I know, dude so then, when you follow up, I'm, I'm
all for that okay, dude, dude,all right man, cheers, cheers,
peace.

Speaker 1 (02:46:34):
Thanks for listening to the show.
If you would like to check outJohnny's work on his website,
you can find it atstudioguntacom.
Gunta is spelled G-A-N-T-A.
You can find him on the samehandle on Instagram and find him
on Facebook at Johnny Gunta.
And if you want to support thechannel, don't forget to like,
subscribe, download and sharewith your friends.

(02:46:57):
All right guys, bye-bye.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

The Joe Rogan Experience

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Bridging Minds: The Dance of Logic, Intuition, and the Hero’s Journey Across Cultures

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

The Joe Rogan Experience

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

Bridging Minds: The Dance of Logic, Intuition, and the Hero’s Journey Across Cultures

Stuff You Should Know