#193 - Altered States of Existence w/ Matthew Pallamary

Matthew Pallamary is a Multiple award winning author Matthew (Mateo) J. Pallamary's historical novel, Land Without Evil, received rave reviews along with a San Diego Book Award and was adapted into a magical stage and sky show, which was the subject of an EMMY nominated episode of a PBS series,“Arts in Context.” Matt has eighteen books in print in multiple genres and has taught a Phantastic Fiction workshop at the Southern California Writers’ Conference, the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference, and numerous other venues for over 25 years. His memoir, Spirit Matters, detailing his shamanic adventures took first place in the San Diego Book Awards Spiritual Book Category.A popular returning guest on the Coast to Coast radio show and numerous other podcasts, radio, and television shows, Matt lectures about shamanism and visionary experience throughout the United States and frequently visits the jungles, mountains, and deserts of North, Central, and South America pursuing his studies of shamanism and ancient cultures.


Find Matthew and his work here: https://mattpallamary.com

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to Ascension of the Chessman,diving into the esoteric, occult, spiritual,
and conspiratorial aspects of life, focusedon solutions to the problems we face
in our everyday lives. Let usascend above all differences. Let us be
the light in darkness, a breathof fresh air to those who can hardly

(00:23):
breathe, and together awaken into greatness. This is Ascension of the Chessman with
your host Andre Mitti. Ready,Edi, Welcome to the Ascension of the
Chessman podcast. I'm your host,Andre Middie. Today's guest is an author,
editor, shamanic, explorer and allaround awesome human being. Ladies and

(00:48):
gentlemen hobbitson fairies, give a warmwelcome to Matthew Palamari. Thank you very
much. Yeah you did. Iyou got it right. Any Palamara is
a palamine. You get points righthere. I appreciate you pal well.
I usually kicked my show off withthis first question for every guest, So
Matthew, for those who aren't familiar, can you explain what it is that

(01:10):
you do? And I guess whatwoke you up to realize? And maybe
there's more to this life than youoriginally taught or thought, well, that's
a good question in a nutshell tostart off in many respects Terrence McKenna.
Yeah, but there are a lotof other things that went along the way.
So I call myself a perspiring writer. I've been at it for a

(01:37):
long time now. We you andI were just chat a little while ago
about my newest book. I justfinished. That's my twenty first book.
Yeah. I've always been fascinated withshamanism, and I've always been fascinated with
the Altered States especially. Yeah,and to make a long story short,
and I can go off on anytansion you want, oh yeah, take

(01:57):
it as long as you want,brother, But to make a long story
short, when I fred Terrence mckennon'sFood of the Gods, yeah, and
I thought the whole idea that alteredStates and spirituality could be, you know,
yeah, interwoven the same thing youreally rutterbacks right, Literally, it

(02:21):
blew my mind. Yeah, AndI had had extensive altered States experiences prior
to that, but I took,I actually took. I was a vegetarian
for twenty three years, and Ispent thirteen years totally baseline. I mean,

(02:42):
I wouldn't even freaking drink coffee.I wouldn't even take an aspen if
I had a headache, and Iwas a vegetarian. Well, that was
after a youth of lots of alteredstates, and it was a lot more
of the Wild West in many respectsin its own way back then. Yeah,
But I did that and went baselineand then after reading and making that
connection with Terrence, and there's tonsof stories behind that, but I didn't

(03:07):
tell anybody. I went out andI spent a thousand bucks and I bought
all this stuff and I grew myown mushrooms. Oh wow. It took
a few tries. I lost thefirst couple of the molds and then I
and then I was producing. Itwas so much work, yeah, But
with that worth it though, Yeah, because I started having fun and started

(03:29):
turning on people. And then Idon't know, if you've ever heard of
the Antiobotany seminars. Yeah you have, yep, Oh yeah, okay,
so yeah, okay, so sookay, so awesome. So I went
to the first one in ninety sixin San Francisco, got to meet the
Shulguns, met some other people,and that was my first, for lack

(03:53):
of better words, my first connectionwith the with the tribe. Wow.
And then I went to auschmol inninety eight Antheobotany seminars where I met Terrence.
I gifted him a copy of myfirst short story collection, which was
out at the time, called TheSmall Document of Soul. He does it

(04:13):
because you know, Terrence always hadthat literary event right, Oh, yeah,
we had yeah, yeah, sowe had yeah. So he really
liked me. He invited me outto this place in Hawaii. I never
got to go. My friend actuallytook care of it for about six years
after Terrence died. Wow. Soanyway, I met him, I met

(04:33):
the Shilguns, I met with thetribe. Then I went in ninety eight
and they got to know everybody.Paul Stammitz was there, Ralph Metzner who's
passed away, Christian Reich, I'veever heard of him. He was awesome.
He passed away about a year ago. I've heard the name. I'm
not super familiar with him specifically,but of definitely he came. If you
ended up plants, yeah, hewas brilliant and he wrote some of the

(04:58):
best most informed books on psychedelics andplants. And he was Germany's leading expert
in shamanism. Wow, it wasa It was a gas. He was
so much fun and smart. Anyway, I got to know all those guys,
and through that, the guy whoorganized all that was taking groups down

(05:18):
to the Amazon and he presented onayahuasca. This was way ahead of the
curve, like, oh Eve,even I didn't even know what iowa was
back then, they didn't. Thiswas so my first jungle experience. My
first ten day shamanic dieta was inOctober of two thousand. Wow. My

(05:46):
first time drinking ayahuasca was in ninetyeight, soon after the Ushmahl and Theobani
seminars, and that was when Idid My first five EO was in May
of ninety eight. Oh wow,and we used we would get changed from
oh totally. This is all inall of this first parts in my memoir

(06:08):
Spirit Matters, and it's also anaudiobook. But anyway, I got into
that that really changed my life whenI started being regularly going back then,
we would go every October for aten day plant diet dieta with aahuasca and
all kinds of other plants, andthen the shamans at the time they would

(06:32):
come up Easter week and Thanksgiving week, so we would do three ceremonies Easter,
go to the jungle, do threeup here Thanksgiving week. And then
I got involved with other groups.And then I did a two year shamanic

(06:55):
study program, and there was Iwas looking back and figuring out the numbers.
And I went for two or threeyears where I was doing ayahuasca like
thirty times a year. Wow.Yeah, plus everything else, plus everything
else. And was it hard tostay grounded throughout all that or were you
just so immersed in it like itwas like a nature almost? It was

(07:20):
my mission aside from the fact thatI'm a writer. I was fascinated and
I had to know. I researchedayahuasca ten years before I found it,
right, I was researching for oneof my books, So probably nineteen ninety

(07:41):
I was going. I was goingto UCSD. I'm in San Diego.
UCSD Library has a half massive,amazing library. Yeah, and I'd spent
thirty bucks on a copy card andI went through there and I found all
this work by Richard Evins, Schulte'sTerns, all these medical all this time
research. It's a ship out ofit, right. And then and then
I read oh, shit. Uholy, not on the air, so

(08:07):
I can say shit, right,Oh yeah, I've gotten in trouble on
radio shows. Now you're good.You can say whatever you want. Brother.
Anyway, I did all that researchand then when I finally found it
and I read The Vine of theSoul and the Vine of Death. As
soon as I read those two,I was like, I gotta try it.

(08:30):
Yeah. And people would say tome, you're you're so brave.
You went into the jungle and youdid that, And I said, got
nothing to do with bravery. Icould not. I had to go to
the jungle. It was a soloistto it, right. I had to
do it with the calling yeah,yeah, yeah yeah. So little side
story. My mom she's been she'sbeen going twenty years now. But my

(08:50):
mom at the time, she saidto me, wait a minute, you
mean to tell me you're going togo down to the middle of the Amazon
jungle and you're gonna loosen And Iwas like yeah, and she's like,
oh my god, and she wasreally worried. Well, then I was
on I was on a radio Iwas on a PBS radio show out here
and now this is back in ninetyeight. I was on a radio show,

(09:16):
and the host knew me, andhe was picking my brain about visionary
experience and stuff. And I gota cassette tape of the show, so
I sent that to my mom andthen she felt a lot better. She
realized that I was knowledgeable. I'vedone research totally, and I was fascinated
with the whole thing and cultures andshamanism in the old ways, and it

(09:43):
was it was for me, it'sthis is it, you know. So
I mentioned it did that two yearshamanic study course. Every two months we'd
go somewhere. So we'd go tothe Amazon for for a couple of weeks,
then we went down. We didthe whole mutual peyote hunt, uh,
the all night ceremony, the pilgrimageTamont came outo. We did that

(10:05):
whole thing. Wow. We wentup into the Andies and worked with Watchuma,
uh you know San Pedro right andall of that. And during that
time, those four or five yearsat the Antheobodani Seminars, I got to
know Since then Paul Stamments and andso I've got to know them all really

(10:26):
well. It's amazing, is it. Tribe? You know, a trajan,
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, wellI'm carrying the torch. Yeah,
the last little piece, I'll tellyou, and you can pick my brain
more. What's in there. Youcan have one of my two brain cells.

(10:48):
So the last little piece is myvery first novel, Land Without Evil
as a historical novel, mm hmmm. It's about the first contact we the
Jesuits and the Indians in South America, but it's told from the Indians point
of view. Terrence McKenna got theabsolute very first copy from the first printing

(11:11):
of that right that was delivered tohim by our mutual friend, the guy
who I first did FIVEO with Wow, And it may have been the last
book he ever read on the rightnow, right, I knew he was
getting ready to check out, butmy book was coming out. There's no

(11:33):
way I could go to Florida.His last thing was the All Chemical Arts
Festival. Yeah back there, right, But that, but that led to
lots of other stuff. When Igot a picture somebody took a picture of
Terrence carrying the book and he wasreading it. Yeah, didn't he like
show it in a lecture or somethinglike that at that festival? Or he
may have. I had a lotof friends there, but I was,

(11:56):
and I was totally wrapped up withmy book coming out, and you know,
first novel and all that. Itwas a big, a big to
do. So yeah, yeah,but then it was then the last little
two cents of it, aside fromTerrence, is that the book got turned

(12:16):
into an amazing stage show. YeahI saw that. Yeah, but I
saw the Yeah, awesome burners Mandown in Austin. We sold out opening
night, two closing nights. Wow. Wonderful group of people. Fifty people
in the cast and crew, videoprojection, feathers, costumes, aerialists.

(12:43):
Yeah. It was a psychedelic experiencein and of itself. Oh yeah,
it show is like a ceremony,totally. Yeah, they structured it that
way. It was really a greatthing to be a part of. Anyway,
a lot of this I wrote about. I have two memoirs, Spirit
Matters, and the second one isSpeak of Flora. So Spirit Matters ends

(13:05):
with my first plant dieta in thejungle and it was a profound changing point
in my life there and then PikaFloor is the next twenty years. So
I've now done I've done thirteen extendedplant diets. I've also been down there

(13:26):
a bunch of times with the ChappeboIndians doing the work all time together.
I mean I have six six orseven months in the jungle and maybe a
couple of months in the Andes,maybe a month and a half in the
Andes, you know, total,right, two weeks here, three weeks

(13:46):
there. You still love in thejungle, don't you. It's home away
from home. Oh no, stayin the States. No. I I
had been for a number of yearsbecause of COVID and money and other stuff.
Yeah. And a year and ahalf ago I went back. It

(14:07):
was my first time in seven years. Wow. And I blew my knee
out five minutes into the trip.Oh no, Yeah, it was quite
the adventure. And I said I'mgoing anyway. Yeah, And I told
a seaman, if you got todrag me through the fucking mud, you're
not stopping me. Yeah. Butuh, that's committed. It impacted the

(14:30):
trip, I bet. Well,those guys are our family. I've been
working, you know, it's twentyfive years now. I've been these guys
from the very beginning of a lotof stuff. And like you were saying,
a little while ago, nobody knewwhat ayahuasca was back then. Oh,
no nobody. And I was alsotapped in through Sasha Shogun and his

(14:52):
his protoge's when you would go tothe Antiobandi seminars, Yeah, they were
bringing lots of free samples of whateverthey were working on. So there was
you know two C B and twoCI and two CT seven and you know
those are in plentiful supply. Soit was also that kind of an experience

(15:16):
for that. But the jungle isto me changed my life. Yeah,
It's really set me straight. Andnow my mentors are passing away, they're
leaving, the Shamans can't come uplike they used to, so I'm carrying
the torch totally. Definitely are mybrother accepting. I'm accepting being an elder.

(15:39):
I love it. You're definitely myelder brother. Yeah. So originally
when you were young, like thoseinitial experiences you had before going back to
baseline, would you say it wasa totally different shade of experience from the

(16:00):
later years when you got reacquainted twentythree years later. Well, yeah,
because in the beginning I thought Iknew everything and I didn't know anything.
Right when I got older, Isaid to myself, you don't know anything.
Maybe you'll learn something that's what wisdom. Yeah. But you know,
when I was a kid, Iremember hearing three and loved going on the

(16:22):
Merry garround thing at the playground andgetting dizzy. And then when I got
a little bit older, yeah,and then when I got a little older,
I found out about hyperventilating. Soyou put your hands behind your knees
and you squat up and down abunch of times, and you breathe deep,
and then you stand up and yourbuddy grabs you and squeezes you,
and you pass out right. AndI love doing that. And then then

(16:45):
I found out about sniff and glue. Sniff and glue was good training for
psychedelics. And then that kind ofstarted getting out of hand, and then
we came a lot, and Ifell in love with weed right away.
Yeah. And then acid came along. The first acid I got was in

(17:06):
I think seventy one. Wow.Yeah, I think it was seventy one.
And back then it was it wasfour way right, and it took
like it took me doing it likeeight times before I handle a wholehead of
it. Wow. And there wasthere was none of this trip sitter guidance.
Shit. It's like best luck totake this employee brain's out and maybe

(17:30):
you'll survive, you know. Yeah, But I fell in love with that,
and I went through some months oftripping pretty much every other night.
Oh man, you got to giveyou a debt day in between. You
know, it loses its effectiveness exponentially, right, and why waste all that

(17:52):
good ship? Right, So,like, you know, a day in
between a good night's sleep to recoverand hit it again. And I did
that for like you, three orfour months in a whole summer. Wow.
Yeah. And then then I wentinto the Air Force. Had lots
of encounters there because I was stillvery active in my altered states and substances

(18:15):
and helping to get it from myfriends. So I had lots of close
calls, and they tried to setme up a couple of times, and
blah blah blah and all that,right, And then when I came out
to California, which was in uhseventy three, I think, no,
I'm sorry, I take that back. I think seventy six or seventy seven

(18:36):
for the first time, and Iwas exposed to peace and love and vegetarians
and I'd never heard of any ofthat, right, So I got really
into yoga and stuff like that,and I decided I wanted to go baseline
and see what that's all about.Yeah, and I recommend that to young

(18:57):
people all the time now, likepeople are doing this that six and Sunday.
I said, when you when you'redoing ship like that all the time,
then going baseline becomes an altered state. Couldn't agree more? Brother,
Well, yeah, so you reallywant to experience and and well, everything
I say is the absolute truth inmy in my universe. Yeah, nobody

(19:21):
else has to accept it, soI have to. I have to qualify
that in my universe, in myreality. This is how it is.
People can agree or not to reality. Yeah. So you know, like
indigenous tribes. Okay, so inWestern culture we separate sleeping and dreaming and

(19:42):
waking and visionary states and indigenous cultures. There's no difference. You're all the
same. It's just to continuum,right. And the more I've done this
work, and maybe partially because ofthe older I gets, the more dream
like my life is. Yeah,and that gives me an interesting, wonderful

(20:07):
and sometimes terrifying sense of freedom.Well said, yeah, but you've been
through tho way experiences to make thatyour everyday experience. Yeah, well that's
you know, that's a good pointI tell people like that. I'm I'm
in an author state twenty four toseven, and I'm in a constant state

(20:30):
of integration twenty four to seven.Whether I take something or not right,
it doesn't matter. If I nevertake anything ever again, it doesn't matter
because I'm constantly tripping twenty four toseven. Yes, dude, that's the
truth. Yeah. Usually when Itake something now, it's because somebody wants
me to join them or a guidethem on a journey, or I'm very
serious about the ceremonies that I watch. Got I follow that pretty strictly,

(20:55):
right, So got the message andhung up the phone. Yeah, and
I was actually almost ready to stopthat when I got pulled back in because
I really needed to be there tolead. Yeah, and I had been
there longer than pretty much all ofthem. I felt that. Dude.

(21:17):
It was it's like, you know, after all that was given to me,
I have to get back. Yeah, how can I not pass it
on? It's the same thing inthe in the writing world. I've been
teaching fiction writing for for thirty fivethirty six years. Now, are you
familiar with Rat Bradbury at home heardthe name. I always have to ask

(21:38):
you, I always have to askyou younger folks. Ray wrote uh Fahrenheit
four fifty one, something wicked theMarshall. He was one of my mentors.
Wow, all right, Yeah,he never gave off blurbs and he
gave me a blurb for my firstshort story of collection. And then Charles

(21:59):
Schultz Charlie Brown Peanuts, he wasanother mentor. This is all through the
Center Barber Writers Conference. And ChuckChamplin at the time, who was the
leading La Times film critic for twentyfive years. And then Barnaby Conrad who
started the conference. So it wasa famous Gringo bullfighter and he was the
best seller at the age of twentynine, writing a novel about the last

(22:25):
day in the life of Spain's mostfamous bullfighter. Anyway, all these guys
took me under their wing. Wow. I called them my writing uncles.
And there were a bunch of otherones that you know. Jonathan Winners was
a regular. They all just theyjust took me in right place for a
time. Yeah, and now they'reall gone, and I'm really carrying all

(22:49):
that from them. I phil onthe next chest yeah, it's my time.
You know, I ain't no springchicken nomo. Oh, but I'm
keeping in shape. Yeah, anduh, you know, taking my spot
where it's it's my turn. Itup the bat. You know, I've
been met during people for years anyway. Yeah, so's it's important. It's

(23:15):
important to the reason why I doa lot of these shows and things is
because I want people's eyes to bewide open. Don't agree more. You
know, I'm not going to saydo this and don't do that, but
I'm gonna say, if you're gonnado it, is what you should know,
right, you know, it's important. Yeah, yeah, and this
is good dope and that's bad dope, you know, and this is good

(23:37):
but that's you know, the spellfrom that one. Yeah. So anyway,
so uh yeah, I'd love tojust kind of get into an overview
of you know, some of youryour books and how they came about,
and just writing itself, how yougot into write to start at a young

(24:00):
age. And I think i've heardyou stay you know, it is a
psychedelic experiencing of itself. At leastyou found it in that avenue or looked
at it that way. Yeah,writing is my favorite altered state, and
it's a sophisticated method of communicating withyour subconscious and letting it do the work

(24:29):
to come up with what you needto do to be a creator. Yeah.
So it's the process of creation,which is why I can see there
can be some uses for AI,But overall I think AI is bullshit.
You can't that experience of letting thisstuff come up from your subconscious and forming

(24:52):
a story and putting it together andall of that stuff. You can't replace
that. It's therapeutic. Yeah,Oh, it's totally therapeutic. I encourage
people to write no matter what.But I was always fascinated with reading,
and then I actually started writing.I was writing a little bit of nonfiction

(25:17):
for inspirational magazines and then liked whatI was doing and they were publishing it.
And then I took a creative writingcourse and the assignment was to write
about a personal experience and then typeit up, have a conference with the
teacher, make the changes, edit, type it up again, and submit

(25:45):
it. Well, I wrote longhandabout the first time I jumped out of
an airplane, Oh wow. AndI wrote about how my mind split intwo
and I just wrote, I justI just let it writ Yeah. And
I brought it up to the teacherand written, and she read it and
she was blown away and she said, you're done. You get an A

(26:07):
And I was like, whoa,I could maybe be a writer. Wow.
So that kind of inspired me.And I was doing the inspirational stuff.
And then I realized that when Iwas writing for inspirational magazines, I
was preaching to the choir. AndI came to the other realization that real

(26:32):
quote unquote truth or real teaching,it's done by storytelling, wise words.
You know. Jesus spoke in parables, and Buddha, you know, and
Muhammad and they all told stories.Storytellers. Yeah, yeah, all storytellers

(26:52):
literally. So and then I waspretty young, this is in the early
eighties, and a good friend ofmine got killed on his motorcycle, a
guy that I rode with. Wow. So that shook me up and I
couldn't shake it. I had alot of friends died growing up. I
had friends electrocuted, shot stabbed.Where I grew up it's a pretty tough

(27:17):
place where before you I grew up. Yeah, I grew up in Dorchester,
which was in Boston, Okay,so you know, Micky mack Wahlberg.
The actor is from Dorchester opposite Couse. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I spent six years working onthis book about a guy who gets

(27:38):
killed on his motorcycle and wakes upoutside of his body and gets taken in
by these darker spirits and they teachhim how to hang around bar rooms and
wait for people to get really drunk, and then when to get really drunk,
they would slip in and possess themand just raise ou and go crazy.

(27:59):
And then was the next day ofthe people who got drunk don't remembory
anything. Wow and powerful. Iedited and I published it a few years
ago, but it was my firstand it's interesting because now I've gotten some
new readers who are really digging onit. Yeah, that one intrigued me
when I was going through your books. That would really intrigue me. Yeah.

(28:22):
That was the first one out afterLife. Yeah yeah, But nonfiction
is easier to sell, and somenonfiction books I had to write. But
I've been teaching, like my workshopthat I teachs called fantastic Fiction with a
pH so pha and ta SD Isee love it and it's literature of the

(28:45):
visionary supernatural metaphysical, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. And I've been
teaching that for thirty five years atthe Santa Barbara Writers Conference in other places
too. So as I was writingnovels, I decided to take a short
story writing course, just to learnthe form and learn how to write,
type and this and not. SoI started doing short stories too. So

(29:10):
I have three short story collections.I just published my third one about six
months ago. And back in thosedays, if you could get your short
story published in a magazine, thebig editors, we're looking for new talent.
Yeah, so you were like almostlike spreading out business cards, you

(29:30):
know. Yeah, that was theway you got recognized back then. Back
then, Yeah, especially in horrorand science fiction, which I've written fare
amount of that. Yeah. SoI lose track these days, but I
don't know. I may have tennon fiction books and ten fiction books.

(29:52):
I have horror, I have sciencefiction, I have horror science fiction.
I have the historical novel. Theysay, two memoirs, a book on
writing, which has done very well. It got a first place in International
Book Awards and Writing and Publishing category, and that was distilling everything I learned
from Bradbury and those guys, Ijust did. I just published another one

(30:18):
called I Am Consciousness Incarnate, whichis an in depth examination of consciousness.
This sound a little word, butit's from the point of view of consciousness.
Wow, that's the truth. Andthen I have another one similar called
Death a Love Story, and it'sthe voice of death. And I'm paraphrasing

(30:40):
here, but it's like, Hi, I'm your death and I'm here for
you. No, wait, don'trun, don't freak out on me.
I'm not. I'm not here foryou that way, at least not now.
But I will be here for youand we have a date, whether
you like it or not. Andactually, everything that you have in your
life is not really yours at all. It's all mine. I'm just letting
you use it. Wow. Soinstead of painting me as an ugly guy

(31:03):
carrying a sickle as a skeleton,I wish you'd make me nicer because I
love you, and my love foryou is all consuming and I really can't
wait for you to come back hometo me. And then I get deep
into death practices and cultures and beliefsthroughout the world, and it's a whole
thing of death, love it andaccepting it. So that one was that

(31:26):
on. That one kind of wroteitself, and this newer one is science
fiction with genetics, and when they'rereally good, they write themselves. And
when you learn to understand the processof engaging with your subconscious and trusting it

(31:48):
to deliver even though it's very mysterious, right, that's the best part.
That's the magic. But like youknow, it's yeah, but I mean
it really. It's been a fulltime job for me now. And when
I was working on this book,it was a lot of days. It
was a real grind. And sometimesI get stuck on a plot point for

(32:09):
a couple of days and I climbingthe wall, you know, right,
And then a lot of times whenI get stuck, I took a couple
hits, A weed opens the doorsup. I was at the flow.
They call it writers crack creativity.Yeah, coffee and cannabis. Man,
writer's crack. I love it.I was just going to say, does

(32:30):
writers block exist in your reality?No, people don't understand writer's block.
And that's the difference between a professionaland I diletance. Sure. Sure I
get stuck all the time, right, but it's learning how to get out
of it, learning how to getunstuck and sometimes knowing that not doing any

(32:53):
two days is exactly what you needto do, right. And I've realized
that the stuff I got the moststuck with and the most frustrated with it's
turning out to end up turning outto be the best stuff. Right.
So you get to a point andyour subconscious is always behind the scenes,

(33:15):
making connections and putting things in.I can't tell you how many times people
would say to me, oh,that's really brilliant the way you did this
thing in your book with the blahblah blah, and I'm like, oh,
thank you very much, And thenin my head, I'm thinking I
didn't do that, you know,I wasn't meaning to do that. That's
just how it came out, right, right. So it just blows through

(33:37):
you like almost like a channel,like yeah, yeah, absolutely, it
is beyond me. Yeah, itreally is from the collective. Yeah yeah,
fuct of consciousness. Yeah. Andof course I'm very unconventional, like
they can't. They first said Iwas a horror writer. Okay, you

(34:00):
oh, well he's science fiction.Okay, no, he writes historical novels.
Okay, oh no, no,you know, he's just a story
writer, right, And in somerespects it's a publicist nightmare, I bet.
But in other respects, I'm marchingto my own drum respect and I'm
doing I'm doing well. My hearttells me what moves me to write.

(34:24):
I don't care. All are whatyou want. I do know then I'm
a good writer, and I wouldhope i'd be a damn good writer after
thirty five years and teaching and everythingelse. But I got I've got,
like I think i've got. I'vegot well over forty awards, forty six

(34:44):
awards. I'm not bragging about theawards, but the awards are validation that,
yes, you're a good writer.And the people who give them out
don't know me, for madam.They don't give a shit who I am.
They like the writing, right,So I get that validation, just
like getting a really good book reviewfrom somebody you never heard of. That's

(35:04):
so I know. I got myjobs and they've been paying me to teach
it for thirty six years, soI must know something. And if I
don't know something by now, Ibetter give it up, right, you
know. And then all these years, you know, you refine it and
you get better and you keep workingat your craft, you know, they

(35:27):
keep coming. Yeah, yeah,yeah, I mean it just blows me
away, like your life's work andyou know all the books you've compiled,
but like you said, like youcould hardly even take credit for it because
it's beyond you and you're just avessel forward to come through and pour through
on the paper. Yep. Yeah. I had this experience the first time

(35:50):
years ago, and now it happensa lot. But I'll read something or
whatever, and then I'll pick itup like months later and I look at
it and I'll go, holy shit, this is really good. Who wrote
this? You know, I'm notthat smart, but there it is,
and I'm like, wow, thisis good. No. Yeah, Have
you had experiences where like books cameto you in a sense too, or

(36:14):
like your books came into your experiencesat all? My books came into my
experiences or like they were like predownloaded in any of your journeys oh to
something? Yeah absolutely, Yeah,Okay, that's a good question. Not
so much the stories. But Ihave one called the Infinity Zone and it's

(36:39):
about sacred geometry, okay, andperfect form in motion, and that one
took first place in San Diego BookAwards. Wow, and I think it
took place in the International Book Awardsand it took first place. Yeah,
I did there too, amazing.And I was to say that I learned

(37:00):
everything that I know about sick geometryfrom myahuasca and then I followed up with
the other books to see what they'retalking about. But I kind of already
knew because I was already shown right. So that book did come out of
that, And then maybe a coupleof years ago I published one called Holographic

(37:22):
Cosmic Man. Yeah. That waslike the Infinity Zone on steroids and the
Infinity Zone. I co wrote witha tennis coach, but I wrote like
ninety five percent of it and hepaid me, so energetically speaking, it
was a It was a decent collaboration, but he said when he saw me

(37:45):
starting to go with it, heknew better to just shut up and get
out of my way. Terrence's coach, you said, no, he was
a tennis coach, Oh, tenniscoach, tennis coach. Yeah, no,
Terrence was his own coach. Heasked to say he didn't need a
coach. Maybe the plants yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Yeah, So those things happen,and some of my best short stories

(38:13):
jumped out and wrote themselves just likelike that. But it's also similar to
giving birth. It's a struggle,right. There are plot points, and
then as the story unfolds, morethings pop up and other opportunities and something
you thought was a great idea andit's not going to work anymore, you

(38:34):
get rid of it, you know, And it's a it's a process.
It's like the greatest ideas have tocome out like a birth. Yeah,
it really is. And you evengo through a postpartum depression when you finish
a book. Really, yeah,you don't know what to do with yourself.
You've been living with these characters andliving this story in your head and
you've been you know, you thinkabout when you go to bed at night.

(38:55):
I mean it's like an obsession.Yeah, it is an obsession.
And so I'm on a project.Yeah that's all I do. When I'm
writing a book, that's all Ido. And when I finished Lamb Without
Evil, I literally finished it ina fever. I was getting up four

(39:19):
to thirty every morning to write beforework, and then the last few days
it was just I went and Iended up in a fever, and I
would like pass out for like threehours and wake up and write like three
pages or two pages and pass outagain like that. Wow. And when
I finished, there was a pileof books next to my bed. There

(39:42):
was the pile of books on mykitchen table, pile of books by my
couch, and the pile of bookson my computer in my office. And
I had been going around the housefrom place to place to place. Wow,
and my fingertips were sore, andI was like, Wow, what
happened? Did you get the numberof that truck? You know? Like

(40:02):
that? Right? So the wholecreative process, I think when you do
it and you understand it and yousurrender to it, yeah, then you
just really become the tool of it. It's the same thing when leading,

(40:25):
Yeah, when leading I Wascar ceremoniesand singing ikaros and just all that's you're
just following directions from my you know, right exactly. Yeah, So all
of a sudden, Yeah, yeah, they did a thing. I don't

(40:46):
call myself a genius or any ofthat bullshit. I'm a legend in my
own mind. That's as far asI'll go, right, But they did
it years and years and years ago, they did a survey about and they're
asking all the people that in theworld they considered to be geniuses what they
all had in common, and everyone of them said, it's not me.

(41:08):
So that's very inspiring for me allof a sudden. Then, Yeah,
I think everything is just recrafted andrebranded, like it's it's already here
where it's just ours to you know, make our own, but it's still
not ours, like it's like borrowedbut given given out in a different way

(41:31):
almost. Yeah, yeah, weredefine it right. Yeah. Yeah.
Historically speaking way back before the writtenword, there were storytellers and bards and
shaman's storytellers also, and they wouldperpetuate the culture through the myths of the

(41:52):
stories that they told. But everytime a new generation came along, they
would take the meaning a little bitto fit. There are times, right,
and it would evolve. It's crazy. Yeah, I always got to
kick out of like Terrence talking aboutlanguage itself and how you know it's just

(42:14):
mouth mouth noises and you know whata trip languages in it of itself and
how that came to be. Butyeah, so what were some of your
most impactful books on you as aperson, and also some of your most

(42:37):
impactful journeys if you don't mind sharing. I could go on forever about the
journeys. Yeah, let's let's talkmore about the journeys. Uh, some
of your most impactful ones, Iguess, ones that really created a shift
in your life one way or another. Well, I had this is the
end of my my one of thefirst ones. Actually, when I was

(43:00):
twenty one. You'll appreciate this.Yeah, when I was twenty one,
I was in the middle of apond outside of concol Bluffs, Iowa.
Okay, I was on a bigtire tube floating in the summer obviously.
Yeah, and I ate thirteen Hawaiianbaby wood row seeds. Wow, and

(43:27):
I had this. I call itthe cosmic flash. Are those the morning
glories? There's they're related to morningglories? Okay, Okay, their cousins
or whatever. Yeah, wood rows, it's either Hawaiian baby wood rows.
I think it's Hawaiian baby wood rows. Sometimes I get the order of the
words mixed up, Okay, Butthey have the highest concentration of L sergic

(43:50):
acid in plants right right up bysergic acid. Wow, it's different.
Yeah, anyway, I was floatingin the middle of that way. I
was twenty one, and all ofa sudden it hit me and I was
at the center of the four elementals. The sun was shining down on me.

(44:15):
I was on the water, thewater I met the shore and at
that point I was at that point, I was in the middle of it
all. Wow, it was likethis big revelation. It's words, don't
even right? Do justice? Yeah, we don't. And I had been
struggling up to that point with mylife because I grew up It's like everybody

(44:37):
else where I grew up. Igrew up as a criminal, you know,
stolen stuff and lots of lots ofdrug deals and you know all that,
right, And I had been strugglingon which direction I wanted to take.
And then I said, well,why don't you try to be a

(44:58):
good person. That was not simple, Okay, I could about a bumper
sticker, yeah, but I wasreally deep with some heavy duty stuff at
the time, with drug deals andstuff. Right, people got shot,
My drug dealing partner got pistol whippedin front of me when my bipe was

(45:20):
broke down. So even though Ihad already chosen to get out of it.
There were the ways to go beforeI was going to get out of
it. Right, you were alla bad path, yeah, yea yeah.
But I worked and worked through itover the years and got better and
better and better. And then thatfirst jungle diet, I had a life

(45:44):
changing, profound experience, m andI had a vision of a and I
went in there, like you know, I bailed on the Catholic ship when
I was about six, right,you know, I never I used to
sit there in church as a littlekid and looking around and going, all
these assholds are going to Heaven,send me to Hell. I don't want

(46:05):
to do any of them. I'mfalling asleep. Yeah yeah, So I
went into the jungle expecting to geteaten by jaguars, and you know,
let's have this pagan experience. AndI'm spoiling the end of my book a
little bit. Spoiler. Lord.I had the most profound lucid dream ever.

(46:30):
And I woke up in the dreamand I was aware of myself and
the dream, and I was awareof myself sleeping in the jungle, and
the dream was more real than thejungle. Wow. And it was all
about Teressa, Teresa this and Teresathat I didn't know what the fuck I
meant. And then at the endof it, she kissed me. And

(46:52):
when she kissed me, I wokeup suddenly like I just fell wow.
And I was walking around like torresta, what is Teresa? No mind you,
this is in the middle of thejungle. The diet's been going on
for a while. That night,the following night or that night, after

(47:13):
I woke up, she came tome in my visions and I was in
rapture with her for about four hours, and she was speaking to me in
Spanish, and I didn't know Spanish, but I understood everything right. And
it went on for like four hours. It was the most beautiful thing you

(47:37):
can imagine. I never thought anythinglike that could be possible, it says,
So here's the kicker. I startedasking some friends who Terresso's, but
I said the Avila Avida. Shewas the fourteenth sixteenth century mystic anyway,

(48:01):
patron saints of visionaries and epileptics andblah blah blah. Oh wow, now
here's the kicker. I had todeal with my mom. As soon as
I come out of the jungle,I'll call her. No, I'm alive.
So I called her when I gotout of the jungle and I said,

(48:21):
my you got to think I totallylost it. And I don't mean
to freak out, but I hadthis most amazing vision and experience or something
that I said the obbul and Idon't even know who she was, right,
And my mom got real quiet.I'm like, Okay, I did
I really freak you out? Shesaid to me, I've never told anybody

(48:44):
this ever. And you know yourgrandmother was hard court Catholic and when we
were kids, she has signed ussaints to pray too, and she has
signed your aunt Saint Johan, andshe assigned me. And every time I've

(49:04):
ever prayed, that's what I prayedto. Wow, that made a believer
arotomy. Yeah, totally. Howcan you argue with that ship? And
it's interesting because some experience, Yeah, and I I had no feminine side
or the first part of my lifethat was a tough guy. I never

(49:28):
cried, only thirty years without cryingall that and after that experience, I
reconnected with my feminine mm hmm.And some of the weirdest, stupid ship
would just start me bawling for noreason at all. Right, just feel
vulnerable and my intuition, my intuitionwas like that I found that balance.

(49:54):
Yeah, so that was one ofthe most profound. There's of other ones,
but all that one sticks out.Wow. Yeah, No, that's
why I ended. I ended mybook with that. And at the time,
I was missed her researchers, soand ended a jungle and I recorded
everything on a cassette, so Ihad a whole box of cassettes of the

(50:17):
whole experience. So when it cameto writing the book, I got to
listen to it again firsthand from whenI was there, and it made it
even better, you know, allthe details and all that stuff. Wow.
Yeah, and you just feel likethis overwhelming sense of peace and like
nurturing that she was presenting you with, and that experience almost the nurturing.

(50:44):
And then you know, I startedgetting erotic feelings and I got embarrassed,
but she basically says, Oh,don't worry, that's quite natural. You
know, you shouldn't. Don't feelashamed at all, you know, part
of anywhere. Yeah, yeah,yeah, it's part of part of being
human exactly. So that that reallyhelped me get get more aligned. In

(51:10):
the end, aahuasca is all aboutpurification. And in the jungle they call
out the purge. Yes, sowhen you do ayahuascar and then you do
the ten day diet, it's allabout purification. So every time I've gone
down, I've gotten more and moreexcuse me, fine tuned. Yeah,

(51:34):
hit the reset button and go intoit, go into the shadow, because
shadow work is what the real workis all about, hundred percent. Yeah.
So in fact, and Shulgin gotme pointed toward the shadow. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, it's been abig, big part of the work.

(51:57):
I think I think I mentioned iton that roundtable I did with you
and Brandon. But uh, youknow, like I always heard like Terrence
would recommend people do or people toread Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Jung before
embarking on an ayahuasca journey, andmakes complete sense, like to understand the
shadow and the deeper reaches of thepsyche, so you have a frame of

(52:22):
reference when you know through those nightmarish, terrifying scenes that can come up,
so you're not altered forever after,so you can actually integrate those lessons that
were brought forth to you. Youknow that it's important to integrate what you
learn exactly, So can you tellme about some of the dietas that you

(52:47):
did do? Like, I knowit's traditional to do what you do,
like a month with one specific plantand that's all you can consume for that
whole month. There are those,but I've never done one like that.
Okay, you're just the one likerefined diet beforehand and all that. Well

(53:07):
is that. But the ones Ido in the jungle are ten days okay,
no salt, no soap, shampoos, no sense, no toothpaste of
any kind. Wow. Every dayyou get twice a day you get either
a keen oatmeal or rice boiled,a baked or boiled plant on all which

(53:30):
are the non ripe bananas, anda piece of chicken or fish twice a
day. That's it. Wow.Every day you get a full picture of
a plant or plants that's a teacherplant, so you have to drink the
picture throughout the course of the day. And then roughly every other night you

(53:54):
do an aahuasca ceremony. Wow.And if you get to be an old
dog like me, then they alsobring it to you a couple of times
during the day. Also, Ohmy gosh, so what the experience.
It's well, it's it really endsup being a ten day I want ska

(54:15):
trup right, and you get reallyclear and your senses get super fine tuned
and your ship comes up. Now, other than going to the ceremonies,
you spend most of your time alone. You see my back screen there,
that's my tombo mm hmm, yepwith the metal roof on it. Yeah.

(54:37):
Yeah, I used to be thatched, but then you get rats up
there and all that, so theybrought in the metal, right. I
prefer the thatch. But I likebeing primitive, right, modernizing things,
yeah, I do. I'm reallyI want to do it like they did
it thousands of years ago, right, I pretty much do keep it traditional.

(55:02):
Yeah, and then when I leadceremonies, I do the same thing.
I stick with what the guys taughtme, you know. Yeah,
And I recommend doing a clearing updiet about a week before, just regularly,
like I'll be doing, right,I'll be doing a few ceremonies here

(55:22):
in the very near future. Mmhmm. So the week before I won't
smoke anywheed, I won't drink anycoffee, right, I'll clean myself out,
and then we'll do three days ina row boom boom boom. M
hmm. But when I lead,I only drink. I always was a
kama COSI full on dose, sometimesmore every time. Wow, while you
were serving. No, that's justthe point I was making. When i'm

(55:45):
when i'm when i'm serving, Iusually take maybe a third, right,
I was gonna say, And Iwant to be in the zone, but
I want to be functioning because I'mresponsible for everybody in that room exactly.
Yeah, so I can't I can'tfly as high. Right. I'm also
working with a couple of solid bros. So we always got each other's back
because every once in a while,the brew might be stronger than you think,

(56:07):
and the doors a right to bea little harder than you thought.
Everybody's everybody's got each other's back.That's smart a problem. Yeah, we
and we always have sitters too.We never take We have sitters who don't
take anything, right, volunteers.Yeah, and they watch out, you
know, watch out for everybody,help them go to the bathroom, help

(56:30):
them change their pants if they shipthemselves, or you know, right point
up their puke if need be.Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so
we do that. But every yearit's a different plant our plants. So
like one year it was bobing sanaand it's chu CHUWASI who when you nagato
chiksanango. And then there are differentrituals to go at some plants, like

(56:52):
one of them Yaguatapanga, which wasn'tmy main teacher plant. I did that
twice. As soon as you getthere, you drink about half a glass
of some crush up leaf and water. You drink it, and then you
puke for about five hours non stop. God yeah, drink water your puke.

(57:13):
You drink water, your puke orin my case of drink water,
puke running. Take a ship,come back, drink water, puke running,
take a ship. Oh my god. Cleaning the aye, yeah,
it cleans you out. And thisis before you start the regular ten day
things, at the beginning of it, right right at the beginning of it.
So then you can have cambo inthe sun. It's very similar.

(57:35):
I think they're the same course ofaction. Frankly, I've never done combo.
Okay, I have a few times, but I think it's the same
thing from everything I've heard, right, But anyway, you do that,
and then you go through all theceremonies and sometimes you won't puke at all,
you won't pudge it all during theceremonies because you're already clear, and
it's like a head start. Yeah, I'm getting going because I wantska clears
out everything. Oh yeah, youknow, not just the psychist. Yeah,

(58:00):
exactly, exactly, exactly. SoI've done combinations of plants. I've
done some rare plants I was luckyto get, and they all have different
effects. Some of them are alittle visionary more than others. Not all
are right, you know, differentreasons, but you get really energized.

(58:25):
I was going to ask you aboutgoing back to the morning glorious seeds I
brought up earlier, Like then theystart like spraying those with chemicals or something,
so because they that people were consumingthem back in the day. Yeah,
they have. I don't know aboutnow. I thought, I remember
Tart's talking about that the lecture.Yeah, end of the day. I

(58:46):
you agree. When we were downthe effect when I was down there with
Uchman when I first met him,mm hmm. Somebody paid off the guards
and we got to go to theruins all night. Oh wow, And
so we and we found one ofglory seeds there. Wow. Which weren't
you know, they were natural right, And and somebody had some acids,
so we had some acid in somemorning set and we spent the whole night

(59:08):
raging in the pyramid. It wasawesome. Oh my god, what a
time. Yeah. Terrence was kindof behind it too. Yeah. Yeah,
I'd love to hear any Terrance storiesyou're will to share that you guys
shared together. There's uh, Ihave a mutual friend. He was the

(59:30):
one who took care of Terrence's houseafter he died in Hawaii, lived there
for about six years, took careof it. Wow. And he's the
one I had hand delivered my novelto to Terrence, and I helped him
edited and published this book for himcalled Nature Loves Courage and it talks about

(59:53):
his experiences with Terrence and five Oand all of his psychedelic experiences. Interesting
the other little side story about him. Yeah, I was finishing up that
death book. Yeah, And hewas up in Orchest Island playing in a
festival, the Imagine Festival, Andhe was on stage with his ukulele performing

(01:00:19):
right, and he was singing asong by David Byrne called Lazy. I
don't remember exactly how the words go. But it's like, I'm wicked and
I'm lazy. I'm lazy as alover. I'm lazy when I work,
you know. Blah blah goes allthat time. He's singing the song and
he gets to this line and hesays, I'm feeling so lazy. I
think I'm going to stop. Rightwhen he said that, he literally dropped

(01:00:45):
it on stage. Oh my god. Yeah. A nurse was in the
audience. She ran up, shebroke two of his ribs trying to resuscitate
him. Wow. And then theparamedics came and they hit him with the
paddle six times and they brought himback. Wow. So holy. He's

(01:01:07):
the guy that I first hit fiveO with And you were there present,
like, well that happened? No, No, I heard about all that.
Wow. But it was it wasright when I was finishing the Death
Book because she and I, ohWow, had this weird, weird connection.
Yeah, that's a secret isity ifI heard was yeah? Yeah.
And it was also right when COVIDhit Wow, and the Death Book was
one of those that needed to bewritten when it was written, right,

(01:01:30):
you know? So anyway, Yeah, fine, divine timing, Yeah,
yeah, That's why I pay attentioneven more so now. I mean,
like I said, the fact thatI finished this last book twenty minutes before
the actual hour of the solstice,right, I wasn't planning that, right,

(01:01:50):
But it's an awesome synchronicity to me, very powerful spirit out other plants.
Hyah exactly. So anyway, let'sget into what inspire the newest book.
And you know the topics you coverin it. The hummingbird whisper.
Yeah, thank you. I've justbeen working on the cover. I have

(01:02:14):
this whole thing of hummingbirds because theycome to me and I watca visions and
in Peru they call it pika floor, which means to bite or sting a
flower, and people in Peru,many of them know me as peaka floor.
Wow, because the humming bird cameto me. First, the condor

(01:02:36):
came, and then the humming birdcame, and my whole body was going
a mile a minute. Wow.Yeah, I was the first time,
just like a hubbing bird. Yeah, I get who oh no, yeah,
well the first time I second youin the jungle condor came to me
and in my visions, first Isaw a butterfly and then I saw our

(01:02:59):
birds who oh wow. And mylegs I was crossed like and my legs
just started flapping wow. And inmy vision and I wasn't making them happen
wow. And in my visions Iwas flying through these mountains. Wow.
So the next day I saw oneof the older Shamans. He was the
mentor to the guys I was workingwith m and I said, Germam,

(01:03:22):
Chaos lev Whela, you know itwas the And he looked at me in
the game in his big grint andhe said, hell, Condor. As
soon as you say that, youdo who's it? Wow. So I
was Condor for many years, fouror five years, and then I was
in a ceremony and all of asudden, my fucking legs started going a

(01:03:45):
mile a minute. My head wasgoing like this, and if I didn't
have the experience I had, itwould scared the ship out of me.
I mean, it was really goingfaster than I they did even move it
myself and my visions were all thesebeautiful high frequency Neil pastel and I was
said, oh, you know,flapping away like crazy. So the next

(01:04:08):
day we're integrating, and one ofmy buddies said, I knew it was
going to be a good ceremony justbefore it started, because just before the
ceremony, a hummingbird came up andbrought right in my face. And right
when he said that, I realizedI was the hummingbird. And right when
he said that. When I realizedthe hummingbird, at the same time,
my girlfriend, who was with meat the time, said, you were
the hummingbird. Wow. And Ihaven't all at once. Wow, you

(01:04:32):
know. So when I have flownthe furthest so to speak, it's always
a peak for him. And nowit's really, really, really strongly become
my primary totem. So the otherthing is one of the main reasons I

(01:04:53):
reluctantly read the news is for storyideas, right, and I wrote.
I read an article about babies beinggrown in pods outside the womb, right,
and I got a great short storyout of it. I called it

(01:05:13):
fetal Fantasies. And you can goin and pick all the genetics you want
for your baby, blue eyes,blonde. Here, I wanted to have
a high IQ, you know whatever. Whatever. So in the short story,
the parents raised the baby in apod and they, like everybody else,

(01:05:34):
they want him to be perfect.Right when he goes through the first
couple of years of his life,and all he does is throw tantrums until
he gets the breastfeed, and that'sthe only way he communicates. And the
parents are really frustrated. They don'tknow what to do, and they're worried
about his development, and all ofa sudden one day stands up in his

(01:05:57):
crib and says, perfectly, I'mparaphrasing again, you have brought me into
this world, and now you mustbow down and worship me with all everything
that you are and all that youhave. Mm hmm. And that's where

(01:06:19):
the story ends, the short story. And of course every baby is a
narcissist anyway. They have to beright until they can start to figure things
out right. Anyway, in thestory, he develops and it turns out
he's genetically perfect mh and he's andhe's he's perfect in every way, but

(01:06:44):
he appears artistic mm hmm. Otherhe can stand them well, he he
when he starts to communicate more,he communicates with his parents through visions,
like when they go to sleep atnight, he starts toning and singing and
they go into this visionary state thatyou can Then when they're in the visionary

(01:07:04):
state like that, he communicates withthe teleopathically. Wow. But he does
it not only with words. Hedoes it with imagery and emotions and colors,
and he communicates like that and startsto teach them some things. And
in essence, what he says is, you're you're all your humanity is destroying

(01:07:27):
the planet, and you have areally bad habit of developing technology and throwing
it out of there before you haveany idea of what the consequences might be.
And now you're killing each other,you're killing these you're killing yourselves,
you're having wars, you're destroying theplanet. You're not responsible, you're destroying

(01:07:48):
everything. Right, So we haveintervened me the ancestors have intervened at this
point because you figured out you're geneticcode. That's the point we've decided to
step in. Wow. And we'vebeen guiding you with mushrooms and plants to

(01:08:12):
expand your consciousness. Right. Butnow there's a need to step in.
So they open up a clinic thatbecomes free and they start having these I'm
jumping ahead, it's his nobels,right, but they start miraculously healing homeless
people. Wow. And they're lightingup and they're healing them miraculously. And

(01:08:40):
this online church called the Praise theLord Cast. But I ought about them
because they get on the news becausethe reporters show up when they see the
homeless people, you know, right, and they ask them to go on
the podcast. So they go onthe podcast and they want to make a
part of the church and all thisstuff because they've gotten the greatest donations ever

(01:09:03):
with these people on the show,who are these miracle healers, right,
But they basically say, I'm sorry, but we don't belong to any churches.
We are all our own churches,and our bodies are our temples,
yes, and we don't associate withany religions or any things of that nature.
Everything we put into our bodies isan ourfor to Divinity. And you

(01:09:30):
should all be bowed down and worshipingus. Just that we about done and
worship you. That's like the lesson. It's powerful. Well, it progresses,
and then they try to turn thekid into an online Jesus. It's
the cyberchurch. Cyber christ Church.Oh yeah, that's that. And they
don't go along with the Praise theLord Cast, people who had given them

(01:09:55):
a big donation by the way,right up front, kissing their ass right
that they don't go along with it. So then all of a sudden,
the FDA steps in, and thenthere's a lawsuit over some of the stuff
that they're using, and then theFBI shows up, and then the I
R. S Shows up, Theyget sued. They end up in civil

(01:10:17):
court for fraud. All this andthe FBI. They're in jail, and
the lawyer shows up and says,I represent the church. They put out
your mail money and we can makeall this go away, And of course
they go fuck you, right,and it escalates, right, so all

(01:10:44):
they ever try to do is comeinto the world and do good to help
people, and every aspect of societyis against them. And then people are
calling them satanic and devil worshipers,and all this stuff goes on and right,
it evolves to its inevitable conclusion,which I'm not going to tell you
what it is. That's yeah,go buy the memoir. Oh yeah,

(01:11:12):
so relatable, man, Such apowerful message in that, and yeah,
I think we can all take somethingfrom that about you know, where we're
at, but also what's happening onthe planet right now. I do think
consciousness is expanding at a vast rateright now, and there's a massive shift
going on, and you know,we'll remembering who we are once again.

(01:11:34):
You know, maybe there was atime previously where we were there, maybe
there was it, but I thinkwe're ultimately getting back to that, and
I think that's only going to youknow, grow from that point going forward.
It's chaos, and chaos proceeds birth, right, And I believe if

(01:11:58):
you're paying attention, then you canChaos presents wonderful opportunities that didn't have been
there. But you got to reallybe paying attention, right, And that's
a sort of a shamanic principle,is to take something that seems to be
absolutely totally against you and turn itto your advantage. Yeah, sounds like

(01:12:20):
alchemy too, Yeah, that's exactlywhat it is. That's what I want.
I wants considered a fire medicine Mfire as you well know, along
with the other elementals, but fireespecially just you know, purification and transformation,

(01:12:41):
all right. Yeah, And ifyou think about fire in the essence,
what is fire? Speed it up? Energy? Right? Right?
Yeap? Just smot lodge last night, I feel oh yeah, oh,
I haven't done a sweat in years. That's great. Oh yeah, I
love it. Yeah. I wasgoing to ask if ever done a boga
or sat with the boga. I'vestudied it. I wanted to do it.

(01:13:06):
I had an opportunity, but itwas very expensive at the time.
Yeah, there's I'm in San Diego, so there was some clinics down in
Tijuana. Mm hmm. But Ihaven't done it. I really wanted to
do it. Now, I don'tknow desire to do stuff much because I

(01:13:26):
mean, I really went to thegauntlet with ayahuasca. Yeah. No,
I don't blame me, brother,you I just I don't. It's not
it doesn't like before I had todo this, I have to do that.
I have to get my hands on. I don't feel driven like that
anymore. I'm getting to that spottoo. I've I had journeys. But
I'm sure i'll you know, sita few more times in the future.
But I'm in no rush, andI've done sober here for a while now,

(01:13:51):
and it's I like where I'm at, you know, yeah, great,
yeah, you know exactly. I'mpretty much at peace. It's I
mean, I have my moments likeanybody else. But but but generally speaking,
they come in, they go I'vealways said life is a trip,
and enjoy the ride. That's likemy bodger, Yeah, exactly, exactly.

(01:14:14):
So integration is a big part ofthat. Yeah, at pastor to
this, and you know, there'sone iahuasca session as a journey. When
you do three in a row,there's an arc to it all. It's
almost like a novel for a secondand third act. Well, when you

(01:14:36):
do a ten day one, there'san arc to that. When you do
a number of ten day ones andthe other ones, there's a bigger arc
to that, right, and itcontinues, it continues. Well, sometimes
you'll realize something from you know,twenty of journeys, go, oh that's
what that was. Oh my god, you know like that right, It's

(01:14:56):
like the whole linear versus cycle coldtime idea, Like time isn't linear,
it's happening in cycles. You knowa lot of periods. Yeah, yeah
to me, to me, everything'smultifaceted, right, alt type cyclic,
cyclical for sure, yeah, cyclicaltotally yeah. Yeah, but yeah,

(01:15:19):
for you know the young ones thatare curious, you know, maybe never
journeyed in their life, you know, looking for the right way to go
about it. Any words of wisdomor advice you'd leave them with, Yeah,
a couple of things. This stuffis not for everybody. M hmm.

(01:15:43):
I'm a komic coze. I grewup in a violent neighborhood, the
life of crime, so to speak. That was the norm. Yeah right,
yeah, and me God, assoon as I could even hardly talk.
My one of my biggest ambitions inlife is to try everything I could
get my hands on. But that'sme and where I came from and part

(01:16:09):
of my personality and all that.Right, But some people just don't need
to do the work, and itcan be done in other ways. I
agree, But anybody who wishes toindulge should be very sure that they're working
with someone who's qualified, who hasgood references, brought in through a friend,

(01:16:32):
somebody who can be trusted. There'sthis thing I go barkers and I
probably rage about too much, andI call it guru whitish. Well.
I love it. You know,you see somebody who has food three ayahuasca
ceremonies and they had profound experiences,no doubt, right, But suddenly they're

(01:16:53):
a guru, you know, andsuddenly they're going to lead everybody to Promised
Land, and I see some ofthem and I want to reach through the
screen and grandma on the neck andshake them up and shut up. Lots
of learn Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll get hubbled. Yeah yeah.
So I was fortunate. My primarymentor died a couple of years ago.

(01:17:15):
He was a ninety. He tookme. He took me into the jungle
nonemously for everybody. Took me intothe jungle for the first time in two
thousand and I spent all those yearswith him, and the guys who he
found are impeccable. He had togo through his own sorting through and bullshit

(01:17:36):
to find good people, right,but he connected me with them. And
that's the tradition I work in.So my point is that anybody who's going
to do this work, make sureit's somebody who's can be vouched for,
who can be booked up or evenjust through friendship or have friends you can
trust. Be really careful because there'sa lot of people who have no clue

(01:17:59):
what are doing right. And thenof course, every once in a while
years somebody died, right and andfor me, before I'll let anybody drink
Ayahuaska, I've got a whole questionnairethey have to fill out, right,
and I list all the contraindications andthen I'll talk with them. If they're

(01:18:21):
really new, I might talk withthem for a couple of hours. Right,
Sometimes I talk them out of it. So it's got to be right.
But if you're if you're inclined towardit, I think it's the best
psycho analysis the world has to offer. Agree more. Yeah, So that's

(01:18:41):
my story and I'm sticking to it. Love it, brother, It's been
great talk to me, mo Man. Yeah, thanks, brother, thanks
for having me on all the questions. Yeah, I guess, like what
has been just to end off on, like what has been the big practice
your daily life that's kind of helpedyou integrate the experience the most? Would

(01:19:06):
you just say writing or something else? Kind of all blurred together. Yeah.
I went years and years in yoursmeditating religious lean. Now I meditate
sometimes I don't. It's mostly allabout self discipline. It takes self discipline

(01:19:29):
to write a book. Oh yeah. So on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays,
I go to the gym and Igo to a class called body Pomp.
It's aerobics with weights, and I'musually the only dude in the class.
It's not so bad. No,So I go at the back and

(01:19:53):
I'm admiring and they're not seeing meswating or whatever. And I'm highly motivated,
you know. But I do thatand working out every other day,
So Monday, Wednesdays and Friday's Ido that, right. And then I
get back and you know, aswe used to stay in the air force,
shit shower and shave and all that, right, and then I would
hit the writing, love it.Sometimes I'd have to procrastinate with the writing,

(01:20:15):
just battling it, battling it.Other times I jump on it.
But I went for quite a grindthere for a while. Five pages a
day, wow. And it takesa lot out of you, sort of
energetically, emotionally. It really takesa lot of focus. So I do
that. The secret to writing abook is disciplined. The secret to getting
it done this is showing up atthe same more or less place every day

(01:20:40):
roughly the same time. Your bodylikes rhythm, and then the working out
and the physical and the mental theywork off of each other. They feed
each other. It's like a it'sone of the things. It's one of
the things that prevents writer's block,right, I agree, man. Some
of my best poems I write poetry, and some of my best some of

(01:21:00):
my best poems I've ever wrote,or on the bike at the gym.
I just love writing on the bikebecause it like gets the brain stimulated or
get your blood flow going. Andyeah, just the creativity flows through that.
Yeah, and that's a good thing. Yeah. Well, thank you,
Thank you again, Matthew. Thishas been beautiful. Thank you all

(01:21:24):
for listening out there. Is thereanything you'd like to share with the listeners
where they can find you? Oneof the new books dropping and all that
good stuff. Yeah, the newbook will proably be in the fall,
kind of got a few more revisions. I'm going to record the audiobook of
it. Also, I'm working onthe cover design right now. About my

(01:21:45):
web page is matt Palimary dot com. Well, all they have to do
is google my name and the firstthing that comes up to my website.
There's tons of podcasts, radio shows, some TV shows, there's Limb without
Evils shows on there, different thingsabout shamanism. There's tons of content there.

(01:22:05):
And then if they want to uhget my books, which they're they're
available is uh ebooks, Tree books, and a lot of them are slowly
becoming audio books awesome. So they'reall They're all on Amazon. And then
I have Mystic Ink Publishing m YS T I c I n K p

(01:22:28):
U B l I s h In G dot com. All my books
are there, so if anybody wentthere, you know that they wanted books.
People go there if they want bookspersonalized that I can send them directly.
Otherwise they're on Amazon. Perfect.I appreciate you having me on brother,
appreciate you, uh, thank youall for listening out there. I
hope you gained something from this conversation, found a moment of presence throughout it.

(01:22:51):
I send you all peace and love, and I hope you have a
beautiful rest of the week. Thanksfor listening.