We're back, bro. We're back, brother. We're back. We just.

What a pleasure, man. We. So we just recorded me on your show

just for the listeners. So you've, you've been on the podcast before, but not

since the rebrand. So now we're the king within. I was

just telling you a few minutes ago, and like we talked about

in depth on yours, there's so much life that has happened for

both of us since the last time we got to connect in the last three

years. And I know you shared a bit with when I was

first walking in, but there's so much to unpack today

and. Well, first off, just thanks for having me in the house, man. I was

telling you, I almost got, I did get emotional when I saw you and Tosh

because I felt, you know, me being a father

these last three years has been the most rewarding thing I've ever done.

And also, I don't want to say taken so much

from me, but just has required

so much, like, at every level,

talk about every level being tested and

stretched at the heart level, at the physical level,

at the mental level. And so you and

Tosh are truly people, friends, teachers

that I hold so dearly to my heart. And Lauren and I talk about

you guys more frequently than you probably know and can imagine.

But I've got so much love for you. So to be back in your new

home, which I haven't been to before, and to just see the

smallest glimpse because I've never been to the farm. I've never seen

any of this. To see, and then to see Wolfie, like, I, I, I knew

Bear since he was in diapers 2 years old. And then

there's just been so much life in Wolf, how big she is. So

one man. Thank you for having me. This is just. Feels so good

to be with you. And I just appreciate you, man. I appreciate you, brother. This

is awesome. And yeah, it's, it has been too long, but it's also perfect timing

and like I told you earlier, shouldn't feel bad about it at

all because you're doing the exact thing you're supposed to be doing. You're knuckling down

and focusing on your family. And any other dad or mom would understand

that, you know, we did. We get it, too. There's lots of times where things

just. Years go by and the people you really care about, when

you see them again, they get it, but they only fully get it if they

have kids. You know, then, then there's like that whole, I mean, Aaron Alexander, great

friend. We could go a year without seeing each other.

We're going to be super pumped when we see each other, and he'll want to

see the kids and we'll have a great time. But, you know, you

being a dad now, it does. It opens up that, you know, the.

It explains the unexplainable. Right. It's like if you've had

a high dose of Ayahuasca or have never touched the stuff. Right. There's kind of

no in between. You know what I'm getting at? So it's cool that.

It's cool that you're part of the club now. You know, you get it, brother.

You get it on every level. Yeah. There's not even much that needs to be

said. It's just like, I could just nod to you or nod to another parent.

If we're at a park, kids having a meltdown, like. Got it. Got it.

Yeah. So, I mean, we definitely got to do a bit of a

timeline, catch up. So

I know in our last episode, and I'll definitely record a

proper intro for this. Your background, obviously, you

played college football, ufc fighter. You've done a lot. You were the head

of human optimization at on it. And for the time

that we have, as much as I would love to go back into that time

frame, what I really want to focus on is you being

papa. Because they're. Yeah,

there's few. Yeah, there's few parents

and people that Lauren and I not only look up to, but draw

inspiration from. And I just

love how I've not only seen you, but experience. You know, when Bear was young,

I was coming to Austin frequently, and you would always welcome me into

your home. You were with Tosh as well, obviously, at the time. And the way

that you guys show up for each, through the challenge, through the beauty,

now through kids. So I would love just to start

even before coming to the new property, all of that. But

what was it like? What was the man that you were

before, right before Bear came? And how did it

shift in child number one? Let's just start there. And there's a bunch that

I want to dive into. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, these. I

like. I like the questioning where it's headed. And it's also kind of where. When.

When I was asking you similar questions that are loaded.

There's, like, gray areas, you know, where it doesn't happen all at one

period of our time. It's like a, you know, things. Things take time to unfold.

But I think, you know, before

I had retired from the UFC as a 32 year old right early.

And in part that was because I had teammates only a few years older than

me that were starting to slip mentally. And I could see, you know,

the cost of the sport taking its toll on guys that were 35, 36 years

old. And of course, I was living in my mom's garage with my wife for

five years. Three, three or four years at that point. But

it ended up being a five year stay and, you know, working weekends, working,

bouncing and bartending just to make ends meet. And so it wasn't

really paying out. It wasn't paying out what I thought it would be to be

a professional athlete. And there's a lot, you know, there, but

I just knew, I knew we're going to have kids at some point and I

knew I wanted to be able to read to my kids, right? And I also

knew, like, I, I. Thanks to guys like Paul, I really enjoyed reading.

I enjoyed my cognitive faculties. When I retired,

that kicked off a whole rabbit hole on

longevity, how to heal the brain, you know, a lot of plant medicine work, breath

work, fasting, ketogenic diets, all those things. And that was like a, a

really cool second mountain to climb educationally because it had all been

performance optimization prior to that. So they extended that open.

We, you know, my wife and I first started working with ayahuasca together

in that period and we had a vision of Bear together where I

was, I was, I mean, it's literally after the ceremony, they go around in sharing

circle. She's like, I had a vision of

Kyle holding a baby and me holding the two of them. And I was

like, I wanted to say, get the fuck out. But it's, you know, ceremony just

like church, right? So I was like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. I had the

exact same vision. You know, I read about that in the

Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby, that you could have shared visions. No other medicine has

that happened. And so we're like, wow, that's interesting. All right, it looks like we're

going to have kids, you know, and we joked a little bit about it. And

a month later we went and sat in the same place at a Native American

reservation. And that for us was like

the, oh, this is happening. Like it's now, it's not later,

right? And I got to talk to the soul of our son, who, you know,

was bodyless and not male or female. Tell me,

I'm going to be your son. My name's going to be Bear. And I could

see him As a kid at different stages and you know, full floodgates,

just really opened us up to it. And I think a month after

that second vision, two at the most, we were pregnant with Bear.

Like it was just boom, you know, but every fear that I had, you know,

I had to deal with that in the ceremony, that second one. I have no

savings account, I have no 401k. I don't even have fucking medical insurance.

I live in my mom's garage, you know, what am I doing? And

I just retired. Didn't know what I wanted to be when I grow up, you

know, but thankfully I had the medicines guiding me to follow the things that I

was interested in, like, keep reading, keep doing this,

things will open up. And a lot of doors did open up. The same year

Bear was born, I got invited on Rogan's podcast that led to me starting a

podcast that led me coming to Paleo Effects and meeting Aubreyman. All the things just

kind of fell in place. A lot of people would say I'm very lucky. I

think that, you know, there's no argument there, but,

you know, I think those are all synchronicities showing, you know, the co

creation of my reality tunnel and, you know, all things

through God, there's no question about that. But I think that there's

so many gifts in that period, you know, and

really I was, I was. I remember the first thing. I'll tell you this from

a mindset standpoint. I had Bear when I was 33

and I had so like a holy shit moment thinking about my parents

because my mom was 21 when she had me. Oh. I was like, I'm 33,

I'm a kid raising a kid. And it was, there was

no, it wasn't like a, you know, kind of like a saying type thing. I

was like, I'm still a kid right now raising a child.

And when it hit me like that, I had so much appreciation for my parents.

My dad was two years young, he was 31 when he had me. And I

was like, there's no way that these guys were more dialed

than I am now. And I could still grade myself and say, wow,

I'm a kid and there's no playbook, you know, so that, that really

helped shift, you know, my memories of growing up. And

so much of that is kind of a mind fuck. When you become a parent,

you're like, okay, I could see when my dad spanked me, I'm not going

to do it the same. But I see why you did it. I see why

you did it. You know, if I. This. If this was, you know, everything he's

doing right now is what I did. Okay, I get that. You know,

and it really is a pressure

cooker in many ways, because there's the lack of sleep.

Your relationship is stressed, right?

You have. We have. I had my relationship

with stressed in a way that it hadn't been before. I had

tons of pressure not to provide. I was making good money at the bar twice

a week, so I had five days off to be at home, to be, you

know, to take the kids out to the. Take Bear to the beach with my

wife, to go for hikes and put them on my chest, you know, and it

was. It was a rad experience. I didn't really,

you know, things started to take off after the podcast started. We had moved out

to Vegas to be by her family. And it's cheaper than the Bay Area.

Also, California just passed SB 277, I think, where,

like, all kids were mandatory vaccines if they were gonna go to school.

I'm like, I don't need that. We're definitely not doing that. And

so we got out to Vegas. We were only there for four months. We

moved twice in 2017, so we get to hang

at PaleoFX. I meet Aubrey Marcus. We share the same flight back to Vegas. We

trade war stories for three hours. It was a Southwest flight, so he saved me

a seat and say what people will say about

Aubrey now through the podcast and things like that. But I know his heart, and

he's a fucking great guy. And he's my brother till the end, and he saw

in me the potential and he created the position for me.

Director of Human Optimization, because he knew all the shit that I was into, from

fasting to plant medicines to human optimization. He's like, you're going to

take over the Onnit podcast and you're going to create supplements with me, and

you guys are going to move to Austin. And it was like, okay, that's what

we'll do. We had all of our stuff in a moving

truck while we're at Burning man for the first time, moving from Vegas to

Austin. And Austin really, for me was the first

time where I had a corporate job. I never wanted a cubicle here. I

do have a cubicle now, but I'm surrounded by Eric

Godsey and Caitlin. I mean, these are people. Right next to my desk, 20 yards

away is jujitsu mats behind a wall with a key,

you know, that I can open up, digital key that I can open up that

door and go out on the mats anytime I want. There's a sauna, there's an

ice bath. There's, you know, the whole weight training and everything that they're into, and

it's all functional stuff. Stuff, you know, and I'm just like, this is a dream

job. It's not a regular job, and I do have a cubicle, but there's no

requirement to be at my desk. I can go work outside in the sun all

day. And I did often, you know, bring the laptop out. But I still

made the mistake of feeling the

pressure of past failures. I wouldn't

call them failures, but they, you know, the

abruptness of loss of job. Right. So, like, when I was able to move

to Vegas, I had one sponsor for the podcast that was part of paying me

90k a year. For those that aren't in podcasting, that's a lot of

money for somebody who has less than 10 episodes. I still don't have

sponsors paying me 90 grand a year. And I have 430 now.

So it was a lot. Company took a huge, huge

risk betting on me. They had heard me on Rogan's. They wanted to support me,

and we were living off that podcasting full time, still training and being a father.

And, you know, I had a severance

package of 30k and a bunch of other things in case, you know, they had

to. That had to shift. Well, while I'm in the airport to fly to

Austin for my interview for the ONIT position, I

got a call from the CEO of the former company, and he says, hey, I

hate to do this, but we're out of money. And I was like, what do

you mean you're out of money? He's like, we're out of money. They're going to

force me out as CEO and there's nothing I can do about it. Basically, the

board's going to force me out, and they're not going to honor your severance.

90 was a great, great pay, but it was also for,

you know, two dependents. Everything we had wasn't like I was stacking money aside.

Yeah, I was going to pay the rent that was paying. We spent all that

food, whatever, like, it was just gone. There was no savings. And, like, in my

mind right then, I'm like, holy shit. No severance.

And the vision that came up that I didn't want was me having to borrow

money from my mom for a U haul to

pack our shit and drive back to her garage in California that we had

been in for five years. And Bear's now two years old. So one thing, when

you have a newborn, totally different scenario, being in a studio

with a two year old, right? And he's like, no,

I can't. No, I'm not gonna. Not gonna dive into that. You know, heart's racing,

anger, all the emotions, you know, like, fucking leave me out to dry kind of

thing. And I just meditated for three hours on that flight. And when I got

off the flight, I was in such a better position. I

was elevated in a way that was better than before

hearing the news, right? And so that's what I brought through the three day

interview process. And at the end of, you know, totally hitting off, I was

like, when? If you're in, when can you start? And I go, funny. You

ask and I tell them about what had just happened on the way in. And

he's like, holy shit. Like now, now. All right, cool. And

we made it work. You know, one door shut, the next one opened

automatic. And when

I got to Onit, I didn't want to, you know, I had that pressure leading

me to, like, it can end at any moment, right? And Onit's

pay was good, but Austin costs more than Vegas, so same scenario. Every dollar we're

making is going to good organic food and the best that we can afford.

Kids cost a lot, right? That's not news to anybody, but that's always

going to be the case. And so that money was stretched thin,

no savings. And I had that pressure within me to

want to perform. You know, my dad said, like, become so good at everything that

you're indispensable, you're indisposable, right? Like, you're not just good at that job, but you're

good at everyone else's job. And so, like, I kind of got this virus in

my mind of over committing,

overworking, showing up in different ways. And I didn't hold that for long. I actually

had gone out. You know what was great when I first met abhi's like, show

me all your teachers and I'll show you all mine. And I said, okay, awesome.

Number one is we got to get Paul check out here to be on the

podcast, right? And so that really helped the Czech Institute, having him go on

Aubrey's podcast and the Onit podcast. And,

you know, that started our relationship. We went out and did a journey with Paul

and my wife and Dr. Dan Engel and Aubrey. And that was like one of

the biggest journeys of my life to this day. But I remember

seeing Paul at his house at one point while I was At Onit. And I

just felt so stretched thin, you know? And my wife would tell me, like, you

know, is there a way you can get off early? Is there a way you

can do this? You know, you're. You're just gone all the time. Bear really needs

you. And he was used to me being home five days a week. Even though

he was only two years old. He was used to Daddy being around five days

a week. And now I only have two days a week

where I'm around. And so Paul looks at me and reads me like

a fucking book. And I'm asking him about, you know, tell me about

Lao Tzu and tell me about this, you know, all the spiritual stuff. Tell me

about these masters. And he's like, have you read Essentialism? And I was

like, no, what's that about? And he's like, it's Greg McKeown. It's

because I put that first on your list. I had six books. All of them

were. I can't remember the list, but they were all game changers. Essentialism

absolutely was a fucking directional shift in my life

because I could recognize that I was committing to things that weren't

making me better at my job, and they were pulling away from all the parts

that actually matter in life. And from there, I started to shift.

I said no for the first time, you know, to people I that weren't

used to hearing no, you know, but that

was a big one. And then I started to. You know, that was my first

seed planted and realizing if I can make a million

dollars a year, but it Requires me working 40 hours a week

or 50 hours a week or 60 hours a week, I don't want it. You

know, if we're comfortable and we can travel and do the things that we love,

then I want as much of that time back right now. I want as much

of that time back for me to be able to tend my own garden, fill

my cup first through meditation and all the practices, and then share that

with the kids, be with my wife, right? Be of service around the house,

you know, Another thing that dawned on me as a father is, you know, reading

Native American literature and things like that. Tribal life.

There's no point in human history where it's been this hard other than right

now for moms, right? Because in a tribal setting,

most of the women were all sharing the same cycle. They get pregnant at the

same time. If one lady got mastitis, you'd have six other

breasts to pass it to, right? Or six other women with 12 other breasts

to pass it to, right? It was a large group of people there. There was

elders that had been through it all that could help and lean on for support.

You know, you weren't fighting bills and all sorts of shit that we do as

modern householders. But there was support for the ladies that aren't. That aren't there now.

Even in, you know, I used to laugh looking at, like, all the Asians.

I was 70% Asians in the high school that I went to. We were. White

people are a minority. And now I look back at how

they're three generations deep, and I'm like, that's brilliant. And I don't want to live

with my parents, but it is brilliant, right? It is brilliant in the way that

it can help. And even that three generations in a house

doesn't equate to what it was in a tribal setting where you had all these

people to work with. And it does take a village.

But that really showed me, you know, like, the lie that so many men tell

themselves of. I'm the provider, you know, if I got to

put food on the table, I got to be gone for X amount of time.

Some people do live that reality, and it's real. It's not a

lie for them. Right, because they've engineered it in a way where it becomes

their reality. But I didn't want that to be the case for

me, you know, And I've. I really started to position myself

differently, to double down on the things that mattered most, what was most essential,

and let go of the things that didn't. And, you know, I could feel

the difference in our household when I started being more engaged with Bear and having

more energy for him and being around more often, and it was night and day.

Was it hard letting go of some of those things, saying no or

what was that? Yes. Because, you know, even though Aubrey understood

it and, you know, one of my best friends, he would understand, even though as

much as he could, not being a dad, sure,

the other powers that be didn't see it that way because they were hook, line

and sinker corporate guys, you know, so it was only a matter of time before

that job was going to end, you know, and. And thankfully fit for

service had already started. You know, I helped found that with Aubrey, Eric Godsey

and Caitlin. And that was like, I love supplements, I

love human optimization, and I loved having the podcast and helping to design

shit like it was a dream come true for one part of me, me.

But I really love the effect you can have on a person who's

hungry to learn. And you've got some. Some wisdom, some experience

that can shift them rapidly. If there's a yes, if there's

a. If they come with a beginner's mind and actually take it in.

And there's been some, you know, some of the greatest experience of my life have

been taking people, you know, through four months of education

and then having an event like Fit for Service where we go into deep breath

work and things like that, and you can just see him crack open and then

hold them through the whole thing. That was more

palpable. That was like, here's the sweetness of life. This is the

juice that I'm looking for. Direct impact, you know. And so I love

the podcast because you can reach potentially way more people than you would face to

face. But face to face is like, I can

feel the difference, right? And there's so much gratitude for

those six years of what we created. And it is a

total bummer that it's gone. But that has opened the door for something else. One

door shuts, another one opens. And, you know, that

takes us up till now with, you know, the birth of Wolf five years ago,

we've skipped a whole bunch of shit from a family standpoint. But I think from

a, you know, if you ask, why do I stand where I do today with

like a Gary Vee, when in the first three innings talk that we had on

my podcast, the reason I see differently from that is

because part of me lived that way and it wasn't working right.

And I saw the fallacy of

continuing that path at the expense of getting to be a great dad, at the

expense of having that relationship with my son. Hold on to

your kids by Gabor Mate is a great book. Talks about the child parent bond,

the child parent necessary attachment and how that gets

divorced due to public school and a bunch of other shit, but also

from dads being gone, right? And so that. That's such a big one for

me. And I'm so grateful that I could figure that out. You know, like, the

firstborn has to take one on the chin for the rest of the kids, you

know, like the. All the mistakes I've made with Beryl never make with Wolf, you

know, I was. I was just laughing like when she was around especially.

Cause this little girl, you know, I was like, she could spit in my face

and I would be like, honey, like, my heart would be like, oh, you know,

I'd want to give her a hug. Whereas, like, if Bear had done that, I'd

have been like, what are you doing. And it exploded first and then softened.

Sorry for yelling, but why'd you do that? You know, and so I

think that there's such a great education, especially in the time apart, because

Bear was an only child till he was five, you know, so I really. We

both got to hone quite a bit. We got to determine where's our stance, where

do we draw the line, what is, what we're willing to do, what works and

what doesn't. And, you know, all my

appetite for human performance and. And the like, and in

spiritually as well as physically, Tasha's had that

to be a better parent. Right. She's. She's turned me on to

all these different books, you know, Kim Jong Paying the Soul of

Discipline. Just great books that would help shift us as parents,

and some not great books, you know, but she'd read the ones that. She'd read

all of them, and then tell me, this is one that we got to read

and we got to agree on and see if we can do that. And so

I've been always super appreciative of her as, like, the best mom

I could ever ask for, you know, like, that's her passion, is that it's.

It's not a. It's not a hobby. Right. It's

her. It's her vocation right now. Right. And it's not always going to be that

way, but right now, as a mom with young kids, nothing is more

important than that. And she also is the homeschool teacher, and nothing's more important than

that. So I give her a ton of credit because,

you know, I. I still have a podcast to run, a job to do and

all these other things, and it's like, I can't. As much as I'd love to

get Kim Jong Pain on the podcast or Leonard Sachs, who's one of my favorite

authors in the kids space, it hasn't happened yet, you know, so

I get to continue in the lanes that I appreciate and pause for

some of these great big books that come along that are like, oh, okay, I'm

going to read everything Leonard Sacks writes. That's how important he is. Wow. How

has your. Has the way that you and Tosh handle

conflict, has that changed from when bear to now, Wolfie

and your guys's dynamic as a couple? Immensely.

Immensely.

Yeah. It's funny, I haven't talked about it much. I did talk

about it on Nathan Riley's podcast, but there was a point, you know, where

we decided to open our marriage, and

I have tons of gratitude for that. But that, you know, we have been for

the last five years happily monogamous again. After experiencing that for a

couple of years, we learned a lot from it. But that pressure

cooker of what that created, especially. Especially having a child and

understanding the responsibility of raising a good child,

there's been no pressure greater. I mean, imagine your hardest ayahuasca journey, but

you don't come out of it in eight hours. It's just there when you wake

up, it's there when you go to sleep. It's. That pressure cooker lasted for two

years. And so in that, I

realized I wasn't great at communicating with her.

I still had patterns that I hadn't dealt with that didn't show up for me

in plant medicine journeys, you know, that I had to work through that were becoming

more and more obvious through conflict and so that.

Well, I'll share with you one that's super funny. Yeah. And

really pertinent, you know, was I had never

fled in any argument with Tosh, never left. But I had

that habit. So in my previous relationship of six and a half years, if

we got in a fight, I would drive from Phoenix, Arizona to

LA or San Jose in a night while

steaming, right? Just. I'm out of here. Don't say a

word. She's at my house, you know. You know, turn my phone off, drive

there, talk to her a couple days later, hey, I met my mom's in San

Jose. Really? Yeah, I met my mom's in San Jose, you know, like, let's talk,

I'll fly you in or something like that, you know, And. And. But

that I could never figure out, like, why there was such a

strong impulse to do that. Like, I gotta get the out of here. And I

would do it and I'd feel better with the space. And it just kind of

worked. So that became more habitual than I wanted it to be.

Never happened with her. The first big argument we have,

when she first started dating a guy, right, it was all me. But the first

big argument we had, I got in my Prius

and started to leave. That was my getaway car. She

comes out, oh, it's midday. There's a lady walking around a

stroller with her baby. Across the street, one of our neighbors, she's like, you get

the back here. Oh, hi. You're, like, waving at her. And

I'm punching it like five miles an hour is my getaway

car. And I make it down the street, and I'm like, holy shit. I

used to do this a lot. Why am I Leaving. I've never lived here before.

Why am I leaving? So I turn around at the turnabout, I come back. I'm

really sorry. Let's work this out. We sit with

bufo, which I have mixed feelings on, but we sit

with the right dose of bufo. And I had a vision. It's not very visionary,

you know, it's more singular, like in the oneness of God

dissolving into a star. It's vibrational, that kind of stuff. Less visionary. For me, that

time was visionary. And I could see. I was brought back to

my parents arguing a series of their arguments where my mom would leave

almost every time. Big argument. Love you guys. I'm out of here. And

she'd leave for three days. She'd go stay at a friend's house. Oh, wow.

You know, I hadn't even thought of that. Like,

couldn't really connect to that because it was just buried in there.

And, you know, at the time, as a

kid, like, how do you process that? You know? And in many

ways,

In many ways, my mom was always my

defender.

So her leaving hit

home hard in ways that I hadn't really thought of.

And I understood

it. Like, in that experience, I understood the

why behind it instantly. And had

was while processing the pain that that caused.

Zero judgment towards her, because I understood it, you know,

and I had oddly lived it without ever tying the two together.

So that was. I mean, that was a big holy shit

moment, you know, like, wow, dude, wow.

And in part, you know, I had a lot of

help from Mary Margrave. She was in one of the intuitives that I've told you

about that said, we have a big surprise coming in 26. But

I had on my nightstand for three years. And this was all

during that time, I had on my nightstand for three years the book. King, warrior,

magician, lover. And everyone was telling me, you got to read this.

Godsey was always, have you read it yet? No, I haven't read it yet. We

talked about Robert Blay on my podcast, but this was just as probably more impactful

for me. Kingwear, magician, lover. And, you know,

she's like, have you read it? And I was like, it's funny you ask. It's

been on my nightstand. I only put something on my nightstand as the next book

I'm going to read, but I can't pick it up. Every time I go in

to read it, something else comes along and I just read that or I listen

to something else on audible, but this has been three fucking years on my nightstand.

And I leave it there because I know the importance of it.

And she goes, you're going to read it twice, read

it once, all the way through, just take it in, then you go

back and you're going to take inventory. So for people that haven't read that

book, I think it's a masterpiece for men's work. It's also a great,

you know, archetypically, you can substitute out and apply that to the

female archetypes. These are master archetypes, right? King becomes queen,

warrior becomes huntress, you know, magician

becomes high priestess. Same fucking language, right? The same thing.

And within these, you have a light side and a shadow side to all these

archetypes. And you can kind of see where they're at. So, you know, I read

it, I read it in three days, blown away, I go back through and she

goes, you know, your, your ego and Anahata said the same thing.

Your, your people talk about shadow work. Anything that's

in your shadow is in your blind spot. Meaning you

can't see what's in your shadow. There are things you could take like plant

medicine or things like that that will illuminate that on occasion, if you're willing to

look at it. But you can't just say, all right, ego, let's sit down and

sift through this. It won't allow you to see it. That's why it's in the

shadow. It's outside of your purview. One of the ways you can

trick yourself into allowing that is you go back in time. Ego

doesn't care about back in time. That's not who you are today. You're different now,

right? And so could I catch patterns of things, ways

that I used to be, right? And if I had those patterns in previous

relationships, maybe, just maybe, they're still around, right?

And so that course corrected a ton of shit in marriage.

I realized, you know,

if they, if, if she was in a fight, my, if my wife was in

a fight with her partner, her boyfriend, I would turn into a little

kid. Like how I reacted to my parents fighting. Just

shut down, super quiet, you know, be invisible.

I'm a rock, I'm a rock, I'm a rock. It'll all blow over soon. That

was, that was my take as a 38 year old

man, you know, 30, 35, 36 year old man, right? Like,

wow, that's still going on. And in doing

so, outsourcing the kingship to my wife, which

is way too much pressure on her, not how the design's supposed to work,

right? So fixing that in.

In a. In ways where I now had. So this was starting to give me

the templates, right? Archetypically, of things that needed work. Big work

and years worth of work. Not just. I read this book and it solved everything

but big fucking work with plant medicines, with my wife, in the

crucible of this, you know, walk on fire. It was

a walk on fire that. There's a painting right behind you that Paul painted for

me right when we started Open. I hadn't told him yet. It's a

triangle of fire dialed in, dude.

Super dialed. And so

communication was a big one too, that I wanted to work on. I

completely dissolved. Like, just try to digest, process, and

take in nonviolent communication as best as I could, you know, and just

constantly circling back to that. Okay, okay. She's really pissed. You know, I'm getting

triggered right now. What can I do if I'm triggered? Oh, if, you know, mastery

of love. Domigo Rees. If you trigger me,

it has nothing to do with you. I'm triggered because of me. Right? So, like,

let me have extreme ownership using jocko's words relationally,

the trigger's mind to fucking handle. It has nothing to do with what you did.

Right. So let's. All right, I can agree on that now. How do I do

with that? Well, wait a minute. If I can take a deep breath and not

be triggered for a second. Something happened in her

mind. This is how it made her feel.

And there's a need that's not being met. And can she make a

request so even if she's yelling at me, I can start to sift through that

and say, what is the need that's not being met here?

How, you know, can I. Can I offer something? This is what I'm

hearing. Is that correct? Okay, Can I offer a way to

change that so your needs are met? You know, and that bridge

so much for us. So much. It was wild to see how well that

worked and continues to work. I mean, that's real

warriors work. The ability, like the honed,

sharpened ability to as much as possible. And we

train this to stay hard open when every single party

wants to collapse. The ability to still stay with

it, still stay in the fire. And what I'm hearing too,

is it's not an overnight thing, but the more rep. What do

they say? The. Paul says the repetition is the mother of all skill, provided there

is skill in the repetition. So as you're bringing new new

tools to the table around emotional mastery, etc. Deeper

connection. Yeah, I would imagine. Again, we could use the word fail or

what, but you're going to f up multiple times. But what I'm hearing is

the desire, the willingness, the desire to

still step foot in the arena of that crucible

and. And to. With the best tools that you can and be

relentless in that pursuit, you know, long term.

You show up enough with that intentionality, like, things will

shift. And so it's so neat to hear that

Arc. One thing that comes up is, you know, you shared a bit

about your mom, and obviously, our parents are largely our

greatest teacher, whoever played that role. You know, a lot of

guys that come to men's work, like, we all have issues with mom and dad,

right? We all have our own experience of that. Not to blame it, but to

own our experience of it. What would you

say your father either played what did he teach

you or not teach you on what it means to be a man?

If I was to sum it up, and I'll say this, you know, like, I've

kind of gone full circle. When I first got into podcasting, I was an open

book on the. That I didn't appreciate, you know, the. That I didn't want.

Yeah, me too. And, yeah, you know,

also talked about, you know, our relationship while we were in the ceremony of it,

you know, which is a huge. No, no. Like, I was still. I'm talking about

this shit. You know, it's like, if you're three hours into a medicine

journey, you don't start telling people about what you experience. You're still in it, dude,

listen. Right? And so I was still in it when podcasting about it,

and, you know, should, should, or shouldn't, I'll stop shooting on

myself. But lessons were learned from that. It has

come full circle. I've done medicine with my dad a bunch of times. I've healed

so much beyond the medicine, just in conversations with him and connecting with him

and. But if I was to sum up the.

The number one thing as a man that I saw problematic was.

Was his short fuse. Okay? It was a complete lack of patience,

and it was an ability to go into rage very quickly. Right?

And when my parents would fight, it was like watching two rams butt

heads. Like, no one back down. No one knew when to hit the

brakes. No one knew even if it started with a fucking joke, you know,

but one person takes offense to it, and they're like, hey, I'm 7 years

old. I can see so and so's just trying to make a joke, but you

took it the wrong way, and now you guys are fighting. Again, right? It's like

that doesn't matter. Explosions are happening and

the sorrys would always come too late. That was another thing that I noticed, you

know, no backing down from each other.

I think it was Ram Dass that said, and I'll butcher

this. Well, paraphrasing, like, when you're

angry, there's a. There's a sentiment of how dare you.

There's a sense. It's an egoic thing right now. Anger is a. Is a. Is

neither good nor bad, right? It is. And it is an emotion that we should

have because it tells us when something is wrong or if we're being transgressed.

And as Mary Margrave explained this to me, transgressions will happen your

entire life. The ones that hurt the most are the ones in which you agree

to. Right. If some guy cuts you

off in traffic, you know, you can say, ah, big deal, he transgressed on

me. But I'm not upset, I've been late before or whatever. Right. You can make

an excuse for the guy, but when you welcome that in, it's a different kind

of transgression. And you know, when I think about

their inability to communicate with one another

and just the not backing down, you know, I was like, damn. I could

see that as a young person and the impact it had on us was

way worse than getting spanked or anything. It was way worse.

You know, your parents mold for you the kind of relationship, you

know, it takes work to not relive your parents relationship, but

they're molding for you what it's like to be in a married couple.

Yeah, right. In many ways. And I'm so grateful for my friends that had

working marriages. I could see their parents on the weekend or I could. You know,

my girlfriend in college, her parents were awesome. They had been together the whole time

and never talked to each other like that. I was like, this is weird, dude.

This is how working families are. I didn't know this existed, you know,

So I. I'm very appreciative of my life path that it unfolded. It showed me

working ways in which of that. But

yeah, I would say, you know, and. And what? That one of the gifts, right.

Anahata did a. Anahatanan is a phenomenal woman.

Out of Sedona. And early on, when I first got to on it,

Aubrey would send all of his employees out to a spirit ranch, his place in

Sedona, and he'd have us work with Porangi in Anahata. And so I'm

right out there. It's like, 2017, I bring tosh out. My dad's watching Bear. I'm

like, this is fucking cool, dude. Let's do it. We're gonna learn music from

Purangui, and Anahata's gonna take us on a shamanic walk and all this other

stuff. And she did a consciousness relationship

workshop or conscious relationships workshop. I'm like, awesome. I'm here

with my wife. What could be better than this to build us? And she's like,

all right. You might be thinking the relationship piece has to do with your partner.

And I'm like, huh? She's like, no, it doesn't. It has to do with who's

your greatest teacher. And so similarly, she says, that's generally a parent. It might be

an older sibling, but most of the time, it's a parent that's

taught you the most right and the most wrong, the most good and the most

bad, but they've taught you the most period, right? And in those things,

when you see through it, this is happening for me, not to me. You can

see there's a gift there, right? And so the gift of my

father's impatience and short fuse was

patience for me. And I. I could see that

from a young age. I had patience in a way that most

kids don't, you know, and that was. Became a. It was illuminated

to me in that, even though, you know, that. That conscious relationship

workshop had more to do with my mom than my dad. You know, funny enough,

that was. That was one of the big gifts I got from my dad

was patience. And I think now, you know, through

tending my own garden, right. Like, I can. I'm night and day

different than when I. When we first started with Bear, 43, it's been 10 years.

He's 10 now. Wolf, he's five.

I feel like I can withstand. I don't want to invite this in, but I

feel like I can withstand some pretty heavy shit, some pretty hard stuff,

and hold that with mountain energy, you know, that just holds it, grounds

it, feels it, and then, okay, cool. Let's see through this and see, you know,

where. Where is the need that's not being met and work through this and. And

to not get lost in, you know, an

argument or. You're looking at me this way. It's not

me, you know, like, in defense, and. Which is such the common reaction is to

be defensive. But, you know, 10 years

of working, a couple kids, and the right tools, the right people, the right

teachers, the right books, I think, has really helped that immensely. Wow.

And also I'm just feeling into like, what.

What an incredible experience to have a father who's open

to that work because not, you

know, I really believe that, you know the saying that our

work carries on where our fathers left off and Luca's work

will carry on where mine leaves off. And so for

you to have the experience of your father with whatever challenges, short

fuse, etc. But to actually have him be willing to meet

you today and to repair some of that stuff and go through some

of the plant medicine work like holy.

Like that just speaks volumes to me about, you know,

whether it was met with resistance or not, I don't know. But the openness of

his mind and is of his heart and that is

like that imprint of continuing again to show up,

to be in the arena, to

face some of that stuff. That's so beautiful. There was one thing, and

I know I'm jumping around, but this is. I just don't want to forget it

because it was something that you said. And I'll paraphrase because

I can't recall the exact words, but when you were on the plane to on

it, you said something like

it wasn't. I don't know if it was a fear, but I had a fear

that it would be taken away or I had a fear that it would end.

Yeah, right. The. And I think that's also a really

common sentiment for, I mean, people in the world, especially men

of. There's the fear that things of getting too

good or what if these things get taken away? Or what if this

won't last? Whether it's money, whether it's love, whatever.

Because you glow. You said that and then you said you were

able to get yourself right and you showed up dialed, you

know, when you got off. Can you share what it was?

You know, what was it like shifting that belief or

transmuting that belief over time of, you know, actually

either enjoying the good things or feeling like you deserve the good things. But

what was that belief? What was the impact and how did that shift?

I'd love to hear. Yeah, well, first I'll just say, you know, like, I hadn't

had a ton of experience with something being taken from me

abruptly. Okay. You know, it was in that moment with the loss of this

only job, only sponsor, and the lack of severance, where I'm in the

holy shit moment of this is the next. The next thing is

I have to borrow money for a U haul to move back. Right. And.

And the shift was, you know, I had

done some entry level work with Dispenza stuff at that point. But it was

to hold the. Hold the. The.

The dream, what you're creating, hold the manifestation as if it is already true.

Right. And so, like, well. Well, I have to. I can't just think that. I

have to feel it. What does that feel like? Well, it doesn't feel like fear,

and it doesn't feel like embarrassment of calling my mom be like, hey, I'm

really sorry. We're out of money. Can you fucking loan us cash to get a

U haul? It doesn't feel like any of that. Yeah. So can I focus

then on what is the feeling of freedom? What is the feeling? And

Dispenza talks about that abundance, financially.

Abundance. Time wise. Freedom. Time wise. Those don't necessarily

have a feeling necessary, but freedom can match that,

right? Financial freedom, freedom of time. Freedom to take off whenever you

want. And what does it feel like to be free? Well, there's.

There's a sense of gratitude, there's a sense of joy. There's a sense of peace.

Right. It's not just peace. Right. There's some elation in

recognizing the free that. The freedom that you have. Right. So, like, can I experience

those in the meditation and hold that vibration?

And the more I can hold that, the more clear this dream that

I want to make manifest actually comes to being. A lot of people call that

hocus pocus, but like I said before, I've dispensed my wife, I

dispensed this farm. I've dispensed so many jobs. I

dispensed a job at the strip club, bouncing. I was working

with Kane and John Fitch at a little dopey bar in Campbell for 50

bucks a night. And Kane's about to have his first fight in the ufc. Cain

Velasquez. And there's a group of, you know, dudes in there that are getting rowdy

and like, all right, Kane and I go in, and I see from the side,

this guy goes to crack a beer bottle over Kane's head. And I turn

and get in front of him and take the beer bottle on the head. So

I always tell Kane that's. You have your UFC career to thank for me

taking that beer bottle. But it was just like, we're getting hit in the fucking

head with beer bottles for 50 bucks cash. Really? Is that as good

as this gets? You know, while I'm. While I'm trying to make my way onto

the Ultimate Fighter and do this shit as a sport and

at the time, living in Sunnyville at my dad's There was only two strip clubs

in Sunnyville. They stuck out like sore thumbs. One was full nudity, no

alcohol, and one was a bikini bar with alcohol. And I

just, I thought it would be really cool to work at a place like that

because those guys just deal with perverts. You kick them out, no one fights back.

And you're surrounded by beautiful women, you're listening to cool dance music,

whatever, you know, it's an easy, much easier, much less

violent than the fucking the position I'm in right now. And they make

way more because the girls tip them, you know. And so I just held onto

that. Bobby Southworth, who is a Strike Force light heavyweight

champion, one of my mentors, he taught me how to cut weight to make light

heavyweight from heavyweight. He maybe like two, three weeks later comes in and he's

like, listen, I'm looking for really good guys,

he said, specifically that can keep their dick in their pants. And

not like, you got to keep your dick in your pants,

but guys that'll do a good job. My reputation's on the line, so if you

mess up, I'm coming for you kind of deal. And I raised my hand, I

said unknowingly, I thought I knew what he was talking about, but I was like,

if this is a bouncing job, I'm in, man, you know, I'm committed. Never cheated

on my girlfriend, you know, I need the money.

And got hired at both those strip clubs in Sunnyvale that were like. One was

walking distance from my mom's garage was a quarter mile away. And for

some seven years, that put food on the table. For

seven years, I could wear. I, you know, I was working four or five days

a week and then just narrowed it down, narrowed it down and eventually left the

full nudity, which also came with

its own unique bag of worms. Like, just briefly, I couldn't get an

erection seeing a woman naked for a year. Interesting. From that,

it was. I was so immune to it that that just went on. Normally, if

my wife gets stripped down naked for me, I'm ready to go. And that's still

after 13 years of living together. Like, it's, it's game time.

And it just didn't work that way. Only touch would be the only thing that

could get me going. Like I was, you know, just. It numbed me.

So I go to the bikini bar and there's alcohol there, and I

learned how to bartend. And, you know, I could crunch it For Saturday, Sunday,

11 hour shifts from 3:30pm to 2:30am

and walk away with seven or fifty bucks. A thousand bucks each week in cash,

right? Like that. That supported us through the MMA career. It supported us when I

had fractured eyes and could only fight once in a year.

You know, in many ways, my mom was supporting us by letting us pay 500

bucks to live in Northern California in her detached garage. Right? Like, 500 bucks

a month in rent doesn't exist in Northern California.

But yeah, I dispensed that, you know, like that. And that was like the first

little tidbit of like, oh, if I hold that, it'll come

to me, right? And obviously there is ranges

of how this works. You know, if you're 5 foot 5, you're probably not going

to play in the NBA. That's a common one that they say, check

brilliantly says, if you haven't earned 50% of what you're

calling in financially, good luck. Because if your psyche is in disbelief,

if you make 30,000 a year and you say you're going to make a million

dollars next year, there's a part of you that knows.

It doesn't believe. It knows you're not going to make a million dollars next year.

And you don't manifest that because you haven't realized at least half. Half of what

you're asking for, of what you're creating. And I like that. As a general rule

of thumb, I'm sure it's been different. You know, there's always an exception to the

rule, but I like holding on to that. And so anywho.

And I really didn't have a great meditation craft at that point,

but I fell into such a brilliant meditation just holding those feelings.

Then when I got off, I was literally beaming. You know, like, I'm ready to

go. I know who I am. I know what I could bring to the table.

Let's go. You know, and we had a blast. We had so much. It was,

you know, one of the most fun three days. I remember calling Tosh me, like,

dude, this is awesome. Keep an open mind. We're going to move to Austin. You

know, it was just. It was awesome seeing the world unfold for us like that

and continue to unfold, you know, through. Through our understanding

of how, you know, the quantum works or how reality works.

Wow. So holding that vision fiercely and

feeling it at every level and believing it as if it's already

happened. With where you're at now, would you have ever thought that you

would be a farmer? Like, would you, like. Because now let's talk about the

dream of where you're at now. Family Wise, the land that we're on. Did

you ever think, was this ever something that you wanted? I don't know. Tosh grew

up on a farm outside of Vegas, 45 minutes outside of Vegas. She delivered

pigs, she lamb, all sorts of cool shit. So she was the only one here

that had experience with it. And, you know, I thought

I could see us in the future, you know, in retirement, living on

land somewhere, just tending the cows, whatever, just kind of

returning to earth. You know, if ayahuasca has given me anything

repetitively, it's the connection to nature. There's always a touch

point on, like, I'm your mom. Play with me. You know, show me love, show

me respect. You know, engage with me. And you can see in our house, you

know, there's plants everywhere here. We put 400 fruit and nut trees

in on this land. But again, that was always down the road.

2020 happens. We're

three years into fit for Service, and it's our

my only job, right? Aside from the podcast and coaching people one on one. It's

the breadwinner. And I'm realizing the shit we

teach can't be done on Zoom, right? These events that we

have three times a year are everything. They're everything to the container of

this growing. They're everything to the experience of someone

actually being moved. You know, transformation may or may not happen.

I'm sure there's plenty of people that came through that weren't transformed by anything, but

for those that were, they gave it their all and they came to the events

and, and, and opened up and, and that they got what they put in.

So, you know, Covid happens. And I'm. Our

kids are unvaccinated. Not a single one. So I'd read

Dissolving Illusions long before the COVID jab was even

talked about. Susan Humphreys md Fantastic book

for people that are considering childhood vaccination or not.

And, you know, there's been many since. I've got them right behind me here. Brian

Hooker, PhD, just did one. Bobby Kennedy called Vax Unvax. There's charts to show you

the difference in health here. So it's not like we have to wait. Some guy

was arguing online about, well, in 20 years, if

people like you and Bobby keep doing what you're doing, we're going to see a

revival of all these diseases like polio and measles. And it's like,

we don't have to wait 20 years. There's already been a group of people that

aren't doing this. They're the Amish community, and we can study them, never

vaxxed. And we can also add in a ton of people that also were hip

to the game or stopped after one, seeing the problems it

caused. And so anywho, let's just say that even though

I was patient in my judgment on what

was happening in the world, the fact that they kept pointing to this savior,

which was brand new technology, to me was like a hard no. Yeah.

And the fact that they were shutting everything down. Like, I was camping with Bear

when they kicked us out of the state park. What? We were in Texas here.

Like, if they're shutting down state parks, this has got to be real shit. You

know, like something's big is going on. But as it unfolded, you know, you're a

health guy, you understood very easily. Like, no one's talking about sunshine. No one's.

The businesses that can't be closed are McDonald's and all gyms and

churches are closed. Like, none of it. None of it made sense. But the thing

that stood out to me was in 2020, 21, and

I told you this before the podcast, Florida and Texas were the first places to

have live sporting events. Happen to be the ufc. UFC in Jacksonville, UFC in

Houston, if there ever was a word, super spreader or a super

spreader event, that was the place to test it, Right? These are not

healthy, sorry, UFC fans. Not healthy drunk guys

spitting in each other's face, rooting for their favorite fighter. Nothing wrong with that.

But if there was a contagion that was going to get passed around rapidly, it

would have happened there. We would have seen 20,000 people dead, and we didn't.

Florida stayed open. Texas stayed open. And so, you know, I was really in

Aubrey's ear, like, hey, we need to have a place where we can raise our

own food, where we can hold events no matter what. We already have Sedona. We

need a place here in Texas. And so with the sale of

Onnit, we were able to get this place here. And at the end of 21,

I put 400 fruit nut trees in. You know, my family became stewards of the

land. And our house was built a year and a half ago. We've been

here ever since. So it has been a dream come true. And I

didn't have the money for this. You know, there's no way I would have had

the money to make this happen. So unless it was in me to buy a

lotto ticket, which I never do, that's not how it was gonna work. And one

of the pieces dispenza really harps on you for is let

go of the how and the when it takes place. So hold it as if

the vision is true, but let go of the how and when. The how is

very important, right? The speed, specificity. If you say, you

know, this is what I want in a woman and you detail attributes and

characteristics and you start to mirror those in yourself, thoughts of that happening

are greatly enhanced. If you say it's going to be

Candace Owens or somebody that is in total, in particular, that

doesn't leave spirit with a lot of options. Right? So surrendering

the house, surrendering the win and holding that simultaneously

loosely, but as if it has already happened, that's this place.

There's no doubt about it. I have zero doubt in my mind that that's exactly

how these things started coming. I talked with Aubrey about it. I was like, this

is what I want to do. And we spoke a lot and

in many ways that was his

eye opening thing. He knew about 9 11, but this is when it was like

a, oh, okay. The world isn't what we think it is

and. And we need to do what we can to make sure that we're

prepared for what's coming next. So I have incredible

gratitude for this place, for the land itself, for the fact that even with the

dissolving of Fit for Service, though, we can still have events here, we can still

bring people in and do transformational work. We can still do sweat

lodge. We had our first vision quest, our second year of Vision Quest, my first

year just recently. And there's so much

medicine in this land from the love that we give it. My goal when we

got this place, place was I want. We called it Gardeners of Eden. I want

to recreate the Garden of Eden and I want it to be so

palpable when you enter here that, that when. You'll feel it when we get out

there. I don't want to pre program you with anything, but it may be there

yet. It might not be there yet. But when you go to Sedona,

I'm not a sense. I'm not a super sensitive energy guy. You know, I can't

really like, oh man, I feel this WI Fi or any of that stuff. But

you go to Sedona, you're like, there's something different here. Yes. It's vibrating different. Lake

Tahoe, something incredibly different there. All the freaking pine trees like

antennas. The spirit. Right. Grounding in those mountains and in that lake.

There are places on Earth where, you know, the energy is different and in

large Part that's what we're trying to recreate here. We want to, through wholeness, through

regenerative agriculture and permaculture practices, bring up

the vibrational frequency of this entire space, you know. And one of the great things

about regenerative is you have attention to detail

on all things holistically. So as the soil improves and the microbes

improve, the nutrient values improve, the grass improves. Now all of

the ruminants that eat that are black buck, our red deer, our whitetail,

our sheep. We don't do cows anymore because of the drought, but

all the sheep there's incredibly healthy. And then that becomes the best

food we can put in our body. Right. So it's full circle and we give

that back to the land, you know, through the septic. That's going back out on

the land. We are going back out on the land. You know, people might say

that's gross, but that's. That's exactly how it's intended to be,

you know, and through our compost, all

these things are just working itself back into regeneration

and lifting everything. So that's. That's been, you know, the short of

it here at the farm is like this long term, that's what I want to

see. I want to recreate the Garden of Eden. And in that

we're never going to be like a highly profitable farm, but we want to be

able to shift consciousness here. Yeah, that's the best gift we can give back to

the world and to humanity is when people set foot here. Is there a

palpable feeling that opens them enough to then go through these practices

that will. Will hopefully crack them open a little wider, give them an

altered state and give them the gift that they're looking for. I'm so excited

to get out there and because the only. Truly, I would say I'm similar to

you in that regard. You know, sensitive for sure. But the

only play. I haven't been to Sedona yet, but the only place that I've

felt that so deeply has been Mount Shasta. I was just gonna say

Shasta, which. Is why all the unreal. All the men's retreats that I've ever

run. Yeah, all of them have been in Shasta. Outside of the

collabs with sacred hunting, that's all been in

Shasta because there's. It's literally where I'm the happiest,

I'm the most grounded. I will, as soon as I start pulling up and seeing

that mountain, it's five hours north of me. There

is something that shifts. And I'm like, God damn, if we did

nothing other than sit around the fire and have legit

straight up conversations with men and just be on

this land, it would be healing in and of itself, 100%. So I

really resonate with that. That's the only place that I've been

that I've felt something similar to. That. You picked

one of the, one of the places. Oh, God. It's kind of hard

to say. Like, there's no pecking order, but Mount Shasta is certainly, you know,

in, in the top, whatever, three, top 10, whatever, whatever your

top is. Mount Shasta is definitely on the list. It's. And you know, you've got,

I mean, just the history there and all the work that's been done. You've got

actually one of the two Tim Corcorans there who runs Headwaters Outdoor

School, which we do the lodge with. Like, there's just so much

depth and you walk on it, it's palpable.

But as we close, I would love to hear from you.

I mean, whatever's on your heart. And what would you say for you

as a father and you got two beautiful kids, beautiful wife. What

if there was one? If you could distill it down to one

lesson that you would love. We talked about, I think it

was Legacy on your podcast a bit. But if there's something that you want

to leave, a teaching or something as a part of you, not a monetary

thing, but something that you want to leave them, what in this

moment speaks most to you?

Well, you know, as I look down the rabbit hole of dark stuff, one thing

that's been a very positive reminder, you know, because you can rabbit

hole a lot of dark shit in the world these days and find truth in

just about all of it, is that the equal and opposite must be true. Right.

And so growing up, going to

church and leaving and things like that, I never really felt super resonant, but I

didn't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. And it's taken some

time and medicine journeys that connected me with Christ consciousness

and the Buddha and different things to really open those doorways for me to explore.

But, you know, I've been trying to

learn about Christ from a non Christian.

Just say that bluntly. And you know,

it's a lot of the teachings from the Eastern mysticism has really resonated

with me. And so I found this book, the

Second Coming of Christ from Yogananda, and it's two, you know, it's a

two. Two big ass books. And It's Yogananda

channeling Christ to read through the passages and. And give

him what Christ's original intention was with. With those

words. And it's mind blowing. It's mind blowing. And

autobiography, Yoga. Autobiography of a yogi is mind blowing.

I'm gonna do his next one. Krishna talks to Arjuna

or God talks to Arjuna. I forget that's his take on the Bhagavad Gita.

But, you know, in those. The greatest thing there that I could leave for my

kids is that God exists. It's not a.

There's no question, no question at all in my mind.

And understanding that, where does

that leave us? It leaves us with how do I build my connection? How do

I rebuild my connection to source so that I have that on tap?

No matter what I see in the world, I can trust that I'm being

guided and held at every turn. And

you could call that Christ. You call it Buddha, you call it whatever you want,

Great Spirit, it doesn't matter to me. But the relationship with that

thing is what matters. And there's many paths

up the mountain, right? There's the ayahuasca path, there's the meditation path, the

yogic path. To me, it

unfolded perfectly. I had a lot of yoga teachers saying, like, you could just get

there through meditation. It's like, I would have never meditated. Ayahuasca didn't

tell me to meditate. Three trips in a row, I was told, do yoga and

meditation. I was like, why you keep telling me the same shit? I was like,

oh, I haven't started this yet. And it took me a long

time. Just like, it took me time with how to eat, move, and be healthy,

like, understanding the power of the zone exercises. It took me a long

time to desire communion with God via

meditation and to know that was even possible. Michael Holt, have

you met Michael Savage and Saint? Yeah, he's been on my. Yeah, great guy.

So Emily Fletcher first gave me a Vedic meditation with a mantra

that was able to take me deeper than I'd ever been before. And

I had Michael on the podcast. He was sitting right in that seat, and he

just intuitively said, listen, I'd like you to help me with some optimization

stuff, and in turn, I'll help you with meditation. And I was like.

First I was like, my meditation's good, though. And then I was like, just accept

it. You know, I was like, okay, sure. And, you know, dudes

trained under Shinzen Young and Dan Brown, you know, before he

passed away. And it's just such a Wealth of knowledge. But his guided meditations are,

like, put me into a totally different category

of meditator. And, like, now, there may be some

days where I don't get to just due to the busyness of being a father,

but most days I'm getting up first thing in the morning and meditating, and I'm

getting another one the afternoon. And that has created more space

in my being than anything. There's. You can't do drugs

every day. It doesn't matter how good the aya is. You know, like, eventually you

got to go back to the real world. And that's what being a householder is

all about. If you're going to have a job and have a wife and have

kids, you can. You can have one foot in the

astral, but you'd better be grounded here, getting your done and taking care of business.

And I feel like the meditation has

moved me in a way where, you know, over the years, my

calling to plant medicine has become far less than it was. There was a point,

you know, when I first got into this and I was still fighting, where, like,

I would write down on a list, this is what I'm going to ask Ayah

in December when I go back, you know, and she's going to give me the

answers that I need. And I really believed that, you know, and then at a

certain point, somebody's like, you know, I was always with you, right? And I was

like, yeah, but it's not really the same. Same as, you know, when I'm. When

I'm drinking the ayah. That's a whole different experience, right? And,

you know, finally it did click through, through meditation that

I'm always a thought away from being

with spirit. That happened on my. On my vision quest. I

had, you know, done some pretty big journeys, and

I had to throw in the towel 25 hours in not even two days.

You're supposed to go four days if you can, but two days is kind of

the minimum. And we had some schedule

stuff that made us go earlier in the month. It was 91 fucking degrees here.

The four days we were out on the land. Supposed to be out on the

land and, you know, you start with two rounds of sweat.

We go out on the land. We've got our places picked. 407 tobacco, prayer

ties. Can't leave that space. You use the restroom next to it. It's dug in

the ground. But the thing

that really came through, I had many experiences of unity consciousness in

that oscillation between, this sucks. What am I doing here? To

wow I sense you. I can feel you, God, you know, and then that main

piece that came through for me was, I don't have to beat my ass to

make communion. You know, I'd already been experiencing that meditation, but it was like,

I'm always here. That was just the very clear message was, I'm always here.

I'm waiting for you. Meet me. You know, and it

doesn't take any effort, right? It doesn't take me

eating 30 grams of penis envy to get there. You know,

it doesn't take me traveling to the Amazon to get there. And I love those

experiences. They gave me the experience of meeting the souls of my children before they

came. They gave me a lot. They course corrected me on alcohol and so many

other things that I give credit to that for. Spirit

speaking through the plants. But, yeah, I

think that connection, if I can

leave that for my kids or show them the doorway for them to walk

through on their own and make that connection for themselves, the single most

important thing they can have. Wow. Thank you, brother.

Yeah, Mic drop on that one. Kyle, thank

you so much again for your time for having me, man. That piece right there

that you just left with has. And we'll chat after the show, because

that is a reminder

that when I needed to hear, because I feel like I'm

right in that place personally, with coming to that recognition

through meditation and the reminder that. And

it's changed everything how I interact with clients, how I show up in the

family, that something greater

is holding me at all times, like, physically, as I'm being held by this chair.

It is something that's right behind my heart, lifting me up.

And so to model that and to give that door

or window open for your kids for them to walk through.

Yeah. Incredible, man. So I appreciate you so much, brother. Love you, my man. I

love you, brother. Thank you. Hell, yeah.