How Psychedelics Are Changing Mental Health & Spirituality

0:00 You know, the FDA is called psilocybin therapy as a breakthrough therapy, right and has fast tracked that through the FT. And that's because there are so many studies. This has been the most studied psychiatric medicine in the history of psychiatry, right in fifties and sixties, of one hundred thousand participants in over a thousand studies and recently studies by John Hopkins, Harvard, Imperial College of London. You name it, over many different psychedelics, over many different ailments, PTSD, depression, even physical ailments. It seems like it's a panacea of such a broad benefit to whatever it is. We get people who are some of the top performing CEOs in the world, right, Silicon value uniforms, Unicorn startups, vcs, et cetera. We also get combat veterans with complex PTSD. We get first responders, we get teachers, we get starving artists, and everybody comes for their own unique reason.

1:06 So welcome to this anther life. I'm really excited to have on the program with me today, Austin Mao, so really really thrilled to talk with you. You're a serial entrepreneur, author, a poet, and a co founder of Ceremonial, which is a spiritual sanctuary out in the wonderful city of Denver, Colorado, which I love very much. And what you offer here is these really interesting transformative experiences that are pulling in a bunch of different kinds of holistic healing modalities and pathways, including with psychedelics like hyahuasca and psilocybin. What brings a lot of these together, I think is this connection between kind of science and spirituality when you talk about kind of pulling in ancient to shamanism and modern wisdom. So all that to say, Austin, excited to have you on the pod, and thanks. For joining me today. Thank you, Adam. Really happy to be here. Yeah, excited to chat with an anthropologist. I was just with a dear friend Eric and Beads, who like was number two to Tony Robbins and he's an anthropologist and just having this wealth of knowledge of how we came to be who we are today, the collective we It was so fascinating.

2:05 Every time I opened up a topic with him, I hoped. It kind of hang in with that that level of cool. I think that you know that idea too, in terms of how do we think about both our own stories and the collective we and the and the individual eye is one of the really profound areas that spirituality helps us think about. And so as part of that, I'd love to kind of get your your own take, you know, sometimes to talk about this as your superhero origin story, but just you know, how do you find yourself moving from kind of tech entrepreneurship into this this kind of space that brings together science and spirituality and then ultimately to opening an up entheogenic church. Yeah, my story is one of happenstance and circumstance. In twenty twenty, I was invited to a retreat in Ayahuascar, retreat for founders, and at that time I already had a bunch of recreational psychedelic experiences, so I had a chip on my shoulder. I remember reading the prep documents and events and I'm sitting there in a restaurant in Mexico and it's like, take this seriously, right, Like do this diet, do this thing, don't drink caffeine, don't drink alcohol.

3:12 And then I was like, this is stupid. I closed the laptop and I took a sip of my Margarita. And so going into the retreat, I was in this frame of mind of I'm here for a networking opportunity, and if you've ever sat in ceremony, let me tell you that is not a networking opportunity, right. So it was in the second ceremony that my life completely changed. Before that ceremony, I had very little recollection of my memory. In a morning workshop, the facilitator said, recollect a memory of you as a child that was really impactful for you.

3:52 And there's something weird about my brain because what it went to is a memory of me in front of an electrical outlet as a little baby and then putting my penis inside of it and getting zapped, and and my and my mom was like, Okay, well he's never doing that again. But everything before and after was like a fog was blank, you know, and and and so I got curious about that, like even a couple months back, and my memory was was really foggy. So under the medicine, I started reliving my my memories in vivid detail. Like I could remember turning my locker combination in school, I could remember the books that I read. I could remember my first kiss and just like, you know, how you're in a dream and it's it's not like you're observing it on his screen and you're like living the thing. Yeah, right, And that's what was happening for me in my in my revisiting of my memory, going back and back in time until I was it was completely dark, I was under sheets, I was a child, and then I felt horny and I popped up and I was like, Okay, this is weird. There's no outlet around here. And then when I went back in, I realized I was sexually touched by someone, my mother's boyfriend at the time, and I was completely unaware. And it was such a huge aha, because at that moment it became clear to me why

5:26 I repressed all of my memory. I threw the baby out with the bathwater, you know, And it was that one traumatic incident that led me to feel guilt and shame and confusion and pleasure and all these things a four year old would have known nothing to do with. And I started going forward in time and seeing how I was a bully as a kid, had sexual confusion as a teenager. I couldn't keep relationships because I just simply couldn't remember all the good times we created together, you know, all the way forward in time to this moment, to that moment where I was on a yoga matt in the jungle, surrounded by forty nine other founders going through their own process. There was some guy that was running around naked screaming, and I was like, Okay, that's weird.

6:11 And I had these tears in my eyes and I told the shaman, the facilitator at the time, what happened. She's like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. And I said, no, no, no, you don't understand. I feel like I was secured of Alzheimer's, like this gaping hole, this black hole of memory that I didn't have. And then all of a sudden came flooding back, and that moment was the beginning of the rest of my life. I started writing again. It's now one of my great passions in life. I repaired my relationship with my bomb, I repaired my relationship with ex girlfriend, and a major ex girlfriend was now one of my closest friends. Like on and on and on, and just who I was before. It wasn't like a new chapter in my life. It was a It was a new sequel to me.

7:07 Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's really powerful. I thank you for sharing that and being vulnerable and sharing that as well, because I think that's something that it strikes me because I've I've both sat for ayahuasca and psilocybin ceremonies as well, and you know, the first time I did ayahuasca too. I just moved to Peru for for Fieldberg actually for for PhD research. You know, I was gonna be there for a couple of years. And and I happened to accidentally move in with with a shaman. I mean, I rented a room from from his mother in terms out he lived there too, And it's also there's the aauska ceremonies. In my living room every two weeks. Uh, you know, it was this uh you know, funny how the universe works sometimes, you know. But there's this moment I remember too, because like I was feeling this this profound sense of loneliness because like I just I'm leaving, like I guess the sequel kind of like leaving this this other world my life that I've lived up to that moment and moving to a whole new space. And you know, that idea around the notions of memories and like who we are and things that we kind of either repressed or put off or like to protect ourselves.

8:10 Is a really you know both on one of the hand, powerful mechanism that we have to help help ourselves heal and to move on. But then at the same time, when we could see plant medicines like this that offer us ways to kind of reconnect or retouch, rekind of revisit those pieces, and I recall something like that too, is that, you know, I was leaving my you know again this this again profound sense of like do I feel very disconnected from my past in this sense? You know? And then I remember at this like the like kind of you know, peak moments there. It was like I was a you know, sitting there in the bathroom by myself, crying, and then my family came to. Visit me as balloons. I don't know why they were balloons, but they you know, they floated by and they're just like my grandfather passed away, you know, came and said, hey, joint, you know that we're still I'm still here with you, and I was like, you know, bowling, but also just like this amazing sense of like unity right as part of the power of the medicine too, of like kids, like, it's okay to let go of those things and your loneliness in like the fear, because we're actually all here with you anyway.

9:04 And so I'm wondering about this too in terms of the idea of your story too, of like the idea of unification or kind of you know, I'll think about integration slightly separately, But unification in terms of bringing our kind of whole selves back is is that something is that kind of how you feel the experience works are, like, that's one of the potential powers of these kinds of medicines is to kind of help bring about our the rest of ourselves back together again. Like how do you think about them? You know, first of all, I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna go deep with that, okay, And I I'm I have an assumption as story of your listeners that they are deep listeners too. So I think of there being three qualities to this concept we know as enlightenment, right.

9:46 Those three qualities are wholeness, nothingness, and oneness slash allness. Wholeness being the complete reintegration of all the parts of ourselves that we've repressed, we've projected out, we've suppressed. Right, So all the all the grief, all the anger, the shame, all the guilt, all the voices inside of us, the parts that carry the burdens of I'm not good enough or you know, I don't matter, or I'm ugly or you know, those like really tender, inner child, wounded, inner child voices in internal family systems we call exiled parts. Bringing those back into the fold in this integration of self. I think of nothingness or emptiness as what Ramdas calls becoming nobody, right, And Ramdas says, you've got to become somebody in order to become nobody. And what that is is it's a releasing of our identity, because every time you interact with the outside world, you're holding an identity. Right, I get into and we're constantly shifting identities. It was just Father's Day yesterday, by the way, Happy Father's Day to you. And and you know you have an identity with your newborn and that's now as a caretaker as a father. Right, you get in the passenger's seat of a car, now you have an identity as a passenger.

10:58 So on and so forth, Right, and The way that we interact with things is we interact through the lens of our identity. So if I'm holding money and I'm looking at the stack of cash in my hands, how I feel about that cash is through the prism of my identity to identify as a poor man or a rich man, a successful man, or a struggling man, et cetera, et cetera. Right, by relaxing our identities, we are able to embrace the world with greater openness. Right. And a very obvious one is let's say Christians versus Islam or something like that. Right, And it's like, okay, if I relax my identity of this religion or Republican Democrat. Let's say I relax my identity as a republican or democrat, then I'm able to embrace the ideas of the other with greater openness.

11:46 Right. And the third level is oneness or allness, which is encoded into our church's belief It's the connection through the divinity of all things. What in Hindu culture they call it my Brahma, the God transcend the God imminent, which is the God or divinity within, the God transcendent, which is divinity without or in Christianity, the Holy spirits, and you know, yeah, the Holy spirit. Right. So these three qualities I think are worked on by different psychedelics. I believe that psilocybin and ayahuasca are really good at wholeness. Right.

12:27 For example, the pathway to wholeness is hard. Yeah, you got to you get to confront parts of yourself that you're like, oh, I didn't know that even existed, and I certainly didn't want to see that thing, right. Ketamine Have you ever used ketamine before? I have? Yeah, Yeah, I think ketamine. That extensively, so I don't have a ton of experience with it. Well, it's a dissociative, it produces out of body experiences. It's federally legal as of twenty nineteen. And I believe ketamine works on the level of nothingness or emptiness, like we get out of ourselves and float in et there in the in the silence between things. And then I think that LSD works particularly well on the level of oneness or unitary consciousness, you know, like feeling this deep intimate connection with all living things and all existence.

13:13 Yeah, that's beautiful and that was a deepest that was great and I love it. Thank you. For showing that because I think that is there there is something there that I mean, I say that resonates, that resonates. A lot in terms of breaking that down, And. It's kind of crazy to me just to think about this this fact too, that like that there are certain substances and LSD is obviously drived, you know, but like but it's you know, came from urgat, I think, right, And so that's interesting, like there's there are these these plants, does kind of meine have a natural or a plant version. I'm not sure if there is a purely chemical Actually it's again I'm not a chemist. I don't I believe it's purely chemical, but I'm also not a that's interesting to kind of to realize that meaningly, like right, that there are certain receptors and pieces of our neurochemistry in our brains that can work with these different subs, is right, that can then provide these these kind of levels of effects that we, on the one hand can't deny.

14:06 I guess because part of it too. Think it's interesting because people you know, I've heard too that where it's like you know, meditation is is there's many pathways to enlighten, right, in many pathways up the mountain, as it were, right, meditation is one way that you can kind of like wend your way up psychedelics. Uh. The metaphor I like sometimes is that it catapults you over the maze right into the center for a second, for a little bit, then you actually back out again, uh, you know, and totally you know, like that's interesting that there's there's not only different modalities, but different speeds at which at which people would go and and I think velocities, you know, is part of that as well. And I think there's there's something like really important about uh, the kind of resurgence I guess of psychedelics into mental health and into approaching questions and things like enlightenment today that we you know, have seen of course all of these we know, psilocybin you know, and has has a long history of practice in uh Central South America, ayahuasca in Peru, you know, in another places like eboge in Africa, right, you know, an LC and kedemine that came through us through some of the magic of chemistry today. And there's really interesting kind of pieces that there's a long history there, but like they're all kind of coming together now, I think in these interesting ways, you know, And so I think the ceremony and the work that you're doing there too is is kind of one pathway in one literal place right where we can help see the different modalities come together. And so I'm kind of curious to think about that. You know, you have different pathways that you work with, folks, So I mean, hey, I want to talk about what what what you do with ceremonial and then we kind of talk to some of the different transformative pathways that you that you work on there, because I'm kind of curious how you integrate different healing modalities, medicines and other kind of practices as part of that.

15:37 So let's start a little bit like what is what what? What is ceremonial to you? And how does it? How does it work? So we recently launched a podcast called Modern Enlightenment, and this idea of it, it's really under the idea that a hundred years ago, if you wanted to reach enlightenment, which is you know, often related to as a as an ex infinite feeling of peace and joy and love and gratitude. Right. Who doesn't want to feel that? Right? But in order to do that, you'd have to be a horny monk on the mountaintop, right, Yeah, and really bold, right for decades, and then with the discovery or sort of the modern discovery of psychedelics versus in the fifties and sixties, and then now in the resurgence in what we often relate to as the psychedelic renaissance. Now like there are more accelerated options, right. But what's what's really interesting is that we're in what's called the third wave of psychology. The first wave was pavlov I ring a bell, dog salivates, Oh, humans are the same way, right, Come here for dinner, you guys. The second is cognitive behavioral therapy, this idea that our thoughts can influence our feelings, right.

16:49 And the third wave is this more integrated model, which is around mindfulness and and the concept of wholeness, right, internal family systems, constual therapy, somatic experiencing, so on and so forth. Right, And what's fascinating is that the third wave of psychology is starting to converge with the thousands of years of ancient wisdom. In fact, we're located between Denver and Boulder in Colorado and just up the street and boulders in Naropa University, which is a Buddhist university that's really mainstream now and has lots of courses in Buddhist psychology. It's something very integrated into our program. And what's so exciting about this is that these like thousands of years of wisdom from various different religions and various different spiritual practices Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, so on and so forth are now starting to like make sense in a way with modern science. Yeah, aka psychotherapy. Right. And there's this great book called The Way of the Psychoonot by Stanis Lofgrowth, and he writes in this in the in the preface, he's like, science is always catching up to mysticism. Right when before Newton observed the apple falling from the tree and was like, oh, that's gravity. Before that, everyone thought it was something mystical that was happening. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Before Galileo realized that the

18:20 Earth is revolving around the Sun, everyone thought that it was the Sun and the planets revolving around us. Right, And so we're in this really exciting time where the old and the new are converging, and I believe it's incumbent upon practitioners to integrate that because if you don't have the ancient wisdom, let's say, ketamine clinics are a lot of that, right, if you don't have the modern techniques, there's a disservice that's happening to yourself, to myself as a facilitator, and to the participants because there's so much wisdom and there's so much technology that is available throughout. Yeah, I think that's that's a really important point in that, like we have a wealth, you know, in like our toolbox is huge, right, and kind of thinking about that, right that there's there's many ways to kind of work in that.

19:14 I think I love that point too, that we're kind of thinking about that. Science is sort of always kind of catching up, and I guess as a tool of discovery that makes sense, right, it's always kind of say, okay, what is you know? And how can we talk about that and how can we make sense of it and see what evidence is behind it is working? And it is interesting too that like at the same time, like those. That kind of you know, modern tool kuld of using using science to talk about what neuropathways work, you know, and how this like how we can have psycho psychedelics, psycho psycho psychosystems, psychedelic therapy, and so hard to say all these things together, right, but having psychedelics along with psychotherapy together and having kind of assisted technologies you know, with therapists and and and practitioners, you know, tells us a really interesting piece that's showing us how they all kind of work together too, and that they can work right.

19:57 So there's an interesting piece it also seems around validating right that that these there's a reason that some of these practices have been around for thousands of years, but then there's also important new information coming about how and why they work. And this is something that that you know, as a sort of side story or side note, that I found really powerful. Like when I was when I. Was working in in Peru, I was working with indigenous Quinewa farmers, you know, Indian farmers in the southern southern region around Puno, and you know, a lot of the work that I was doing was just how do we put on the same par indigenous knowledge that's built over thousands of years in community around ag cultural practices and why this crop goes well with that crop, and why plant here versus there, and like seasonal changes and things like that, Why that's on the same set of knowledge at least we need to put on the same level as kind of new agriculture agricultural like agro scientific knowledge, right, and that it's not somehow old knowledge versus new, but that they can actually help explain each other, and that in one can validate the other one also, and that I mean, it was an interesting point of like how do we because it's a question of power, right, and it's like, Okay, we have new knowledge that's scientific, so therefore we're going to throw out the old indigenous wisdom or knowledge because it's not it's old, right, It didn't it didn't tell us how to explain the world today.

21:05 But it's it's funny that in so much indigenous practice we find it actually does tell us how to explain the world today. We've just forgotten how to listen to it, right, We've like we've kind of tuned into it slightly differently. Uh, and it gott in the sense that we like somehow know better. But then we have to say, there's a reason that it's stuck around you know, and so I'm kind of curious in your thoughts too about like when kind of helping people open up to these the possibilities of you know, when we can seek a form of enlightenment. I guess are folks kind of coming when you're thinking about running ceremonies or sessions. I'm curious do folks kind of pop in say I'm looking for enlightenment or they're saying I'm working through a problem, or I'm trying to figure out like where I'm at, you know, because I know you kind of have you have awaken and transcend the different kind of pathways that folks can go through. So how do folks like find their way to what you what you help them do?

21:56 I guess, you know, how do people show up on the door? It's it's a mixed bag. And it's really interesting because you know, the FDA is called psilocybin therapy as a breakthrough therapy, right and has fast tracked that through the fd And that's because there are so many studies. This has been the most studied psychiatric medicine in the history of psychiatry. Right in the fifties and sixties, over one hundred thousand participants in over a thousand studies and recently studies by John Hopkins, Harvard, Imperial College of London. You name it, right, and it's so fascinating that over many different psychedelics, over many different ailments PTSD, depression, even physical ailments, it seems like it's a panacea of of such a broad benefit to whatever it is. Right. So similarly, we get people who are some of the top performing CEOs in the world. Right, we've facilitated a great deal of founders Fortune five hundred executives, Silicon Valley, uniforms, Unicorn startups, vcs, et cetera. We also get combat veterans with complex PTSD UH, we get first responders, we get teachers, we get starving artists, and everybody comes for their own unique reason. Right, it could be like I we had we had someone who came who was about to start chemo treatment the month after our retreat and was you know, had end what

23:26 what we call in psychology end of life anxiety. I mean, such an extraordinary amount of anxiety you can imagine, right, And and she came and in the process was able to have a conversation with her cancer and actually feel unconditional love in herself and pour that into her cancer, just sitting with that, giving it unconditional love like a warm embrace of a mother for hours. And I just spoke with her the other day and we're on FaceTime and she's going through treatment. You know, her head's bald, et cetera. And she shared like she doesn't believe that she would have survived this without that experience. Meanwhile, at the same time, we had one of the top female founders in the world come. This woman is on boards and you know, very sought out right, can't name names, and she comes and she she almost didn't show up because she gives me a call two weeks in advance and says, hey, I can't make it. Have a double booking.

24:33 I'm invited to a private dinner with Prince Harry and Megan Merkle and I'm It's like, okay, well, let's break this down. You know what's happening for you, Like how often do you delay your personal needs for some business opportunity? And she's like, okay, I'm coming, And in the process was also experienced a level of unconditional love, self generated in a way that she had never experience before. It and has since gone on to found other companies with this intention of spreading that love. And and so everyone comes in the top of the funnel with their own unique what they want to work on. Do they want greater performance in their workplace or do they want to heal from some traumatic incident. But everybody finds the same thing.

25:22 That's the that's the crazy thing, and as WU and there's the WU side of me that I can say it's just love, right, But really the answer is they find themselves. The healing agent is not the medicine or a teacher or a facilitator even a practice. The medicine is to find that you are the medicine, right mm hmmm m And it's it's a very interesting game because we're in the business of of facilitating you to not need us anymore. Mm hmm. Successful if you don't ever need anything like this anymore.

26:03 Does that make sense? It does? Yeah, it's funny. I mean I was. I was thinking about this the other day too, in the sense that I think that the best businesses that should be their model, right, that we shouldn't exist. We don't need like art is to solve the problems. We don't need to exist right, It's an interesting idea of like, rather than perpetuating your need for my soda, like I want you to not need the soda, right, or to get your thirst quench or whatever it is. You know, totally. But by the way, do you know do you know that coke has so much sodium in it and you know, and so much sugar in it because it has so much sodium in it and there's so much sodium in it originally so that it can make you thirsty, so you could want more coke, damn it. See that makes perfmal sense though, right, yeah, I mean, and then but I think I mean that perhaps is also the perhaps a great metaphor for contemporary society too, right, that we build the addiction in to need more of something, right versus versus like let me arrive to me and then let the rest of it, Let the rest of it be, you know, totally.

26:59 Sly something and this field is not is not free from that. There you know something that is unique about what we've do. So tomorrow we're about to start our twenty ninth retreats in two years, okay, And like any good founder, we've iterated every single retreat and what we've kind of honed in on that works. Is something that I think of as content versus process. Right, if you go to a therapist, you go to shaman, you go you know, and and they're holding space for you. You know. Think think of the image of a person sitting on a therapist couch, right, and you're sharing your content. You're sharing your stories, your beliefs, your your emotions, and that person is taking notes and asking you questions and helping you with the release of your content. Valuable experience. Don't get me wrong. Therapy is everyone should do therapy, okay, But what is long term valuable is if you had a process. Imagine if you went to a psychology school and learned how to facilate yourself such that in the future, when life's unknowns throw you a curveball and you are in the suck, right, You're you're in the fight flight or freeze, you know what to do with it instead of fight flight or freezing. Right. That process is the number one thing to learn to practice ahead of a psychedelic experience, because the psychedelic experience is inherently unpredictable. I don't know about you, but you know I've said in

28:30 hundreds of ceremonies now every single time I feel some level of anxiety or fear, I know on the other side is joy and love and peace. But going into it, I'm like, Okay, what the heck's gonna come up right now? You know what I'm saying. Yeah, And so if if you had the process of knowing what to do with yourself, no matter the challenge in life, right, then your capacity to meet yourself, to meet a psychedelic experience is is so much deeper. So you can go deeper with less medicine, or you can hold more medicine without getting into a bad trip. Does that make sense? Yeah, Yeah, I think it's I think it's a great point, you know, because it's like it reminds me that that the the entry point for a lot of folks, I think are more mainstream artists. I guess I would say into into thinking about psychedelic strict was Michael Pollins How to Change Your Mind, And and I think one of the pieces I was glad that he brought up in that book too, is just the importance of set and setting it also, right, it's like understanding that one these are going to be inherently unpredictable experiences. And then on top of that or with that that you know, being with the right place that you feel safe, you know that you feel secure enough to be vulnerable, right, is I think really what that is? And then and then being amongst the right the right people, right whether it's you know, uh, therapists or loved ones or they're a safe community as part of that. And I love this idea too of like I'm just putting that in my head together with the idea of content versus process, right, and like being able to extract or work with the process of that that understanding how you go through something,

30:04 especially something. That is inherently unpredictable. Then it's less about what is it that I'm going to experience, but more of how am I going to go through that process? And it's it's something that you. Know that some yoga teachers have shared with me that I was I found really valuable over the past year in in a in a different kind of practice, but just getting the sense that like simple but a truth for that, like we can't we can't choose what happens to us. But we can choose what we how we react, Right, we can choose we can choose what. We do with what happens to us, and the more we can kind of get a handle on that process to then be able to just I feel an emotion, I accept it as it is, and I'm watching it, and then I can choose what to do with that, and may I then choose in a way that helps me, you know, fulfill my heart's purpose or kind of act out of love in some way. Right, it sounds a bit, but at the same time, you know, it's it's understanding a bit about once on process and that in that piece, and so it's like being able to kind of put some of those elements together with these these other questions of like if you're going into an unpredictable space or adventure or roller coaster, being willing and able to kind of be okay with that processing.

31:04 I think that's that's a really powerful point. And a lot of this, too, I think, is helping folks get a sense of that, like to understand that's that is a bit of what this process is, especially the psychedelic part of it. Right. You know, we may do other hiteing motalities that are not quite as psychoactive, but you know how they can kind of work together. I think it's something that that's really powerful. So I love I love that idea. The thing something I wanted to ask you about with that too, is that you know, I was going through your blog and looking at some other other other stuff that you've written. So you know, I'm glad that you're writing and and that you noted that in. Twenty twenty three years your your burning Man and ending message, and I was that I was at burning Man last year also, and the great burning Man flood right of twenty twenty three has a very strange experience, you know, but I appreciated you know that what you had written about there too is like thinking about you know, you said you kind.

31:53 Of committed doing a sober burn for. Twenty twenty three, and so I want to think a little bit about that too, because like other things that you wrote, you said you wanted to kind of be more in tune in on our signals of your body that it was showing you and like if you're tired of take a rest. You know, this is interest, It is funny, I guess for me particularly this is interesting because this is exactly how I went into twenty twenty three. Also, and you know, I know we didn't know each other then, but like that was also my like I'm gonna go to Bernie Man this year, and like I don't need to take psychedelics if they called me, sure, but like they didn't and I didn't expect them to, and and that was okay. You know, I did a bunch of other I had some other great experiences, and I think in part because of that, you know, but there was this interesting piece. I'm curious, like how you even thought about this too, right, because I know we're I guess I'm asking because we're talking a lot about sadelics. But then also like we don't always have to do that, right, There can be other ways of kind of, as you.

32:37 Said, kind of getting to the getting to the quest of enlightenment. So I guess coming to your like your enlightenment a piece too, I guess of you know, what was that? What was that like for you to kind of say, Okay, I'm gonna go into a typically like psychedelic space, I mean Burning Man psychedelic if you're not in drugs anyway, But you know what that what that process was like for you, and how you how you kind of think about how to listen to yourself. I guess thinking about this process question too, right, like learning how to listen to ourself, I feel like as part of that process. But is that how that that tracks for you in terms of your experiences? Last year was my twelfth burning Man in a row. Right, I got it, that's engaged at burning Man. I got married at burning Man. I had my first LSD experience at burning Man, So you know, it was committing to going into a sober burn was something very new for me.

33:27 The year prior was when burning Men reopened to the masses right after the Renegade, et cetera. And I remember floating around burning Men disembodied. What I mean by that is I was chasing, right, I was chasing after experience, chasing this art car, this party, this event, so on and so forth, and I wasn't being present. And even though that was a really tough burning Man from an environmental standpoint, I don't know if you were there, it was really warm, there was a lot of yeah, the roads were terrible, et cetera. What I ultimately remember is not remembering experience, and that's because I was not present. And so going into last year's Burning Men first, just a caveat like I did a boga two days before burning men started, So that was part of it. That's a that's a powerful West African plant medicine. That's a thirty six hour ceremony. That's a whole nother conversation. But what I have been moving my life towards as a whole is greater intentionality. Right. I often get asked by you know, alumni that come through our program, like do you drink anymore? Like what do you? What is it okay for me to have a glass of wine? And I share a story of how when I first started to do this work, I was like, I'm going super healthy, I'm swearing off everything. I went vegetarian, et cetera. And then I recognized the instances where when I would have a craving, I would immediately feel guilt and then there

34:59 would be a crown of shame. Right, oh, I'm not doing this good enough, or I shouldn't even be craving this thing, et cetera. And and then I I remember Ramdas talking about this Ramdass spiritual teacher, and he shared that for people that are quitting smoking, right, something to I'm paraphrasing, He's like, you're not If you don't die from the cigarette, you're gonna die from a tightness, you know. Yeah, And so what I what I decided is I I'm I'm just going to bring intentionality. So I have a glass of wine every now and then, but I always but as I pay attention, as I bring into awareness, what happens when I want the second glass of wine or the third it's usually because I'm trying to escape something, escape feeling something. You could call it relax I can call it relaxing right after a heart after a long day's work. But the reality is I'm could be meditating, I could be reading a book, I could be present with my experience. Instead I am wanting to not be here right and and so going into Burning Men, I was like, Okay, my intention is to really be here.

36:13 And the rain that happened actually really facilitated that. When it started rating, I was like, this is really nice because all I did is my wife and I were in our airstream and we just camped and we enjoyed the company of each other and our friends next door, and it slowed everything down. I was like, oh, this is what burning men can be when we slow our lives down, right. Yeah, And there's a lesson in that. Too totally that that was beautiful. I yeah, I I feel the same. It is that like there was there's something that's just really important, you know about it was it was my wife's first burn was twenty twenty three and so like, and that was what a burn to start with, because it's like two burning mans in one, right, But it's like that that it was. I think it's powerful for a number of reasons. But I think that was that's exactly right too, where it's like everything had to shut down and actually like for us to have found that because we were we were in a camp of one hundred and fifty people and that that's a lot of people.

37:12 You know, it's like you won't even see everybody in your camp. But then when when the rains came, like and we literally couldn't go anywhere, you know, we had we hadn't yet invented our our trash bag shoes. You know, that came came the next day. You know, there was something about being all together right, and that it was also we don't know what's gonna happen, and then you know, so it's an element unpredictability because we all did not bring up a bunch of rain ponchos and galoshes, you know. But then also we were camping together to your point, and there was there was it was this weird point of like, yeah, this is actually what this could and should be also right, like that we can all be here together in this space and and and I think all of us hadn't realized we were. Not being intentional about spending time together. You know. It's like I wanna go run off with awsto go run out with Adam. I'll run off with Lou over here, like who we can go see. It was like always about getting out versus like being in. And there's something that was very i don't know, cathartic about like stay put stay here now totally.

38:02 You know. One of the the important things that we explore maybe that you could say the underpinning of what ceremonia is is this idea of connection. Okay, and yeah I was. I was just with Esther Perel. Do you know what that is? Oh? Yes, yeah. She's considered one of the top relationship psychologists in the world and a New York Times bestselling author on relationships, and she she's like, she asked the question, what's the last thing you stroke at night and the first thing you caressed in the morning, And it's your phone, you know. And the crazy thing is like, the people that we love the most are often the ones that we most ignore. Right. And and one of the big revelations that people often have coming out of a ceremonia or treat is how can I be experience connection? Here's the thing. Everybody creeps connection, everybody, whether you are a child or you're an elderly person. Right, But a lot of people don't actually know what can a truly feels like if I were to ask ten people on the street, how are you? What's the answers?

39:07 I would get okay, fine, good, okay, great, And they could be miserable, they could be depressed, be angry, and they'll still say fine, right yeah, And it's and it's there's this unavailability of self when we're often interacting with people out in the world, and part of that comes from our own unavailability or misattainment of our own selves. Right. Developing connection begins with awareness. You can only consciously change what you're aware of, because if you didn't have self awareness, if you didn't have mindfulness, fine is an appropriate answer because fine is basically blah, it's neutral, there's nothing, there's I don't know about you. I've never felt fine one moment in my life. I've been pissed off, I've been depressed, I've been joyous and comedic. But what's fine?

39:56 Right? And so by first developing awareness, yes, and then developing the aspects of connection, which are being curious, being compassionate in presence with each other. Do you notice Well, you're an anthropologist, so which is which is form of science? Right? Do you notice like if you're speaking with somebody in your field and they're telling a story of the past, let's say, telling a story of someone you don't even know, do you ever have that experience of like your your awareness is zooming out. You're just like they're becoming a little seback and you're just zoning out. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's away you know the planet exactly.

40:36 That's because you are no longer feeling yourself. Because you're not feeling them, it's hard to relate to them. But if I were to share with you, like I'm you know, I'm feeling this ticklishness in my body right now, and there's this rising energy from my heart to my throat and it feels like inspiration. And I'm just relating to you what it's like to be me right now. That's the basis of connection because we're here together, you in me describing that. I imagine you're feeling me more in this moment, right And if I hear from you the impact of that, like how you feel like, oh, suddenly we have this reciprocity.

41:16 It's something we're really missing in our modern world. Connection. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful point. And I think you're also right, you know that there is there's so much that we're looking for, right And even like you know, as you kind of were talking about how you were reflecting on like Bernie Man twenty twenty two versus twenty three, it's like there's this feeling of chasing, right or always kind of rushing after something also, and like, I think that that reflects this idea too, that we often feel that profound disconnection, right, and that I think it's echoed in this idea of trying to always chase something. And you know, that's where the idea fomo comes comes from too, I think, you know, and like, but I think it's a profound idea for us to even think about. As we describe and even as you said that, you think of this energy kind of cold comeing up fro your heart tooth throat as this like this, you know, this feeling of of inspiration and excitement.

42:07 It's like immediately is like you know, beginning to. You know, empacthtically trying to feel that that that vibe too, and it's like that, actually that feels great, you know. Or even if you if you had said, like I feel super weird or awkward and unhappy right now our stuff, I could say, well, okay, you know, like I'd say, okay, what does that feel like? How do I feel? How do I feel that as well? You know? And so it is interesting too, it's like we almost we do a disservice to ourselves often to just say I'm fine right like on it's it's you know, leaving that kind of wall of this connection up and like both between I think two or more people, but then also between self, you know, and and and what you're expressing, right, because it's often like that this is not even how I feel right, because you're right. I've never just been like, oh, I feel I feel five out of ten right now. You know. It's like that's not really a very common thing that we do, but we kind of have this blase answer because on the other side, too, no one's on the street actually asking how you're doing right, you know. And it's this funny point, like I don't about I always feel a tempted to tell when actually how I do feel.

43:00 You know, I'm having a terrible day, but like you, you want to give them something beside the fine, you know, when when if you if you're passing with someone, like you know, I'm not going to make you stop and talk to me for thirty minutes about my day necessarily, but like you want to be you want to have a more moment of human connection as part of that too. And I think that there's like, uh, I see craving for that a lot, you know, and in both in the clients that I work for. But then then I'll work with but then also you know, yeah again talking to a friend on the street, this this uh, this need, and so I think there's there's something important there that I'm excited to hear the kind of ceremony of finds like and even g like that this is. Like an area of intentionality. Is that like how do we bring that connectivity back in so many it seems like of these modalities too, because I was excited to see that you have Dick Schwartz from from you know, Integrated Family Systems will be on your podcast soon and like, and I think that's there's been such a really interesting uh form of psychotherapy that's come out too in terms of like rethinking about different parts of oneself as integrating into a whole. But like there's different family members, you know, or kind of playing different roles, and you know, I think that like there's these again to come back to your kind of enlightenment models to think with two where it's like this idea of connectivity and wholeness, like are such these important parts that we.

44:08 Can we can bring in? And so I guess, like how can I think about connectivity across like it is of wholeness, nothingness, emptiness and and oneness, Like does does connectivity connect to the three of them together? Do do I feel all them kind of you know, bringing bringing me through all of them? Like I'm trying to think about how I can put connected connectedness with with those other elements. Yes. Absolutely so. We have a window next to our workshop room and it's full of post its, okay, And in these post its we have our participants, right, a memorable line that they heard in our in our integration process in the workshops, et cetera. And their lines like of course or you know, uh, I love myself again or something like that. But a line that keeps recurring in our journey is it's okay to not be okaymm think about that. It's okay to not be okay. When someone says I'm fine, what's happening is there's a blockage to their vulnerability, right, because in that moment, I might not feel safe to tell you that I'm having a really shitty day, right, and I feel and I've been struggling with depression and I've been you know, whatever it is for that individual, right, And so why is it hard for me to share that? Well, you're an anthropologist.

45:33 Maybe the reason why is if I revealed to you that I'm vulnerable, aka, I'm revealing my neck to you, you might be a predator that's going to kill me. Right. That's an evolutionary, like, that's some evolution that happened, right, And so much of the path of adulting is to be okay, knowing that you're going to be okay, right, that the safety that we seek outside is actually we're constantly trying to fill an infinitely deep black hole inside because this because we get to find the safety that we feel inwards. The first emotional psychologist, Plectrick, he made this beautiful, colorful emotional wheel. I used to have it on my as a refrigerator magnet. If you've seen it, it says like here the six primary emotions joy, sadness, or disgusting, right, and then like secondary emotions, et cetera. And he says that love is equal to safety plus joy. Think about that for a moment, right, safety plus joy. In order for you to feel love, you need to feel safe.

46:40 And it makes sense. All of life seeks to create life. In order for life to evolve, it needs to feel safe. Like if you watch a dog taking a shit, that dog is looking every which way for predators. It's the most vulnerable moment for that dog, right, and this and we're not that much different except we hide behind and so so much of the pathway to connection is connecting with ourselves, right, And the first step again is awareness, but the second step is attention. Attention is power. Where you put your attention and how you command other people's attention is your power. Right. And if if there is a trigger that you have where you would normally fight, flight or freeze, imagine what you would be available to you if you were able to put that attention on yourself with loving kindness. So rom Dos tells the story of coming back to New York City after being in India with his guru Maharaji. And he's walking around New York barefoot in all white robe. He's got a long you know, gray beard, right, And and he gets in a car with his father, in a taxi with his father, and then in the back seat and his father looks at him, He's like, Richard, when are you going to get a job? And in that moment, he gets triggered and he and then he laughs at himself. He says to himself in his own mind, oh, oh, rom Dous, you think you're so enlightened, right, try spending an evening

48:11 with your family. I relate that story because these triggers are opportunities for us to see the parts of ourselves that we don't want to see, and wholeness is about loving those parts, giving ourselves love for those parts instead of seeking that externally. Right, Yeah, I think that that's Yeah, that makes me think that there is there's actould a blog post that you've written also that that got that really hit me too, where you were talking about the learning to embrace anger actually as a potential like not not to be angry. But just like to It's similar to the idea that we may. Find parts of ourselves that we don't want to embrace or bring up right, but then the right kind of therapy or medicine are there bodies can bring us there right and kind of help us come back to them.

48:58 And in this post you were talking about this this idea, like this interesting kind of use of anger in terms of like we're able to have a kind of practice like you're working with with three other folks I think you're and your partner and then like figuring out what it meant to like kind of talk angrily like you like, And part of it was not to be mad, but just like to say that we hide parts of ourselves that we that we think are ugly of ourselves, right, and anger can often be one of those which is interesting and obviously in a challenging space because it's like I don't want either want to be aggressive or be seen as angry or whatever it is for to other people, especially to our most loved ones. But I'm curious like about that too, right, And that because something that you said that was really really profound in there in one of your fightings too, is that like, only by not wanting to share that part of yourself or that pathway of expression that you ultimately then we're not taking care of yourself or your relationship, right because by by hiding a part of yourself or like basically disintegrating or keeping something that we thought was ugly out didn't help us.

49:52 And this is a really really powerful thing just to even think about again, in like the broader conversation of the integrative practice, right for kind of bringing ourselves to be more whole. That we can take a psychoedely Liken therapeuticapath, we can also take a like, let's practice expressing anger healthily right in a certain way. So I'm curious to kind of get your experience there to it, and like helpfulks kind of walk through that idea too. Of like that, we can also we can take an emotion that we don't think, we think it's ugly, right, and recognize by doing that if we try to shine it away, we're actually blocking something else important about ourselves in our relationships. Totally. The keyword that you use there is healthily because anger is an emotion. Anger actually, as we're communicating, is a word. Yea. It's a word and words vocabulary or frameworks for trying to communicate an idea. Right, But if you look at what's underneath the idea, the emotion, the feeling of anger, imagine that that is an energy that's trapped in your body. Okay, and anger can come out explosively or it can come out in microaggressions. And I was certainly the latter. I remember with my wife there were a string of days where I was getting more and more upset at having an expectation of like, Okay, we're gonna get out the door at six pm. I don't know how many guys have had this experience. We're gonna get out the door at six pm at six ten, Oh, I'll just be another five minutes, six twenty, just another five minutes. I was like, that was fifteen minutes ago.

51:23 She didn't know that. And then I kept my mouth shut. I kept my mouth shut to keep the peace, keep the peace, and you know, partially because maybe I just want to get laid that night. I don't know, dea so. But the next day I remember like observing myself, I'd be like, hey, hey, babe, did you wash the dishes? I knew full well that she didn't wash the dishes and she had committed to, right, did you let it let out the dog? I knew full well she didn't, and I was merely saying it to generate guilt in her. Right. That's a microaggression. And and you know, I've related this story. I was on a podcast with a half million downloads where I was sharing a letter that I wrote around this story. And it's like so many people could relate, because whatever your flavor of discharging that energy is, it either comes out in a conscious way or an unconscious way, or it doesn't come out. And that's even worse because when it doesn't come out, let's say anger that we have towards our parents, right, And let's say that's something that gets trapped for a really long time, that gets trapped in our bodies, and that energy that gets trapped in our bodies. There's great science, a book called Body Keeps the Score that shows that that trapped energy can lead to ill health, to cancer, to heart attacks, to sickness, to disease, to the degradation of our immune system. Right now, there's a healthy way to communicate anger, and I'll do

52:53 it for you right now. Ready, Hey, Adam, I'm feeling anger right now, and I have this need to feel seen and heard and honored. And when I experienced getting cut off or interrupted by you, then I just I felt like minimized. And my request is that we slow down our conversation and acknowledge what each of us says. By the way, this is hypothetical, You've been doing great. I'm just like, yeah, you know, like that's a form of healthily sharing anchor.

53:34 Yeah, yeah, that's that's really important too, because it's oftentimes we have, you know, that that that fight or flight moment where it's like I get mad and I want to I want to just throw something out because I think exactly as you said too, Like the healthy way is to say, I would like to be seen and heard versus I'm going to snap out so that you see and hear me and can't deny that I'm. Here, right. I think it's it's interesting to recognize that we're seeking to accomplish the same goal there, right, but like the pathway that through which we do that is fundamentally different. And I also appreciate what you said there too in terms of the it can be explosive or these these microaggressions too that we often sometimes don't even recognize, Like we know I'm mad, so therefore'm gonna say the thing, I know you didn't do the dishes, but did you do the dishes? Not because I want you to know that I know you didn't do the dishes, but because I want you to feel guilty about it. And like recognizing that that pathway also think is really really a powerful thing to recognize, Like what what am I doing?

54:28 Right? And it's like can I pause to say, why am I choosing to express this feeling that way? Like why am I choosing to like go down this like sneaky side pathway that like or a think of being sneaky right to get because I want to get something else out and so like it is really interesting kind of piece for us to kind of think about that when we're trying to kind of bring ourselves together. Right, It's that it's that there's there's these parts of us that can be these shadow sides, right, or the kind of shadow work or dark sides, and like they can but they can even be like these entrance points, like these more negative emotions that we or that we call quote unquote negative. Right, But you know, even I think, as you very wonderfully demonstrated there, like there's ways to let those go or to move past them and say and yeah.

55:10 And how yeah, and. How often have we inhibited ourselves from connection because we haven't mustered the courage or or embodied the curiosity to to say or explore what we're actually feeling? Yeah, right, that's totally true. And I think that comes to the safety question, right that I don't it's if part of it is like do I feel safe expressing actually what I feel or not? You know, and like, and I think that's a magical moment there too, of like how can we learn to do that for ourselves? But then also like, because it's always in conversation either with us with ourselves or with with others, right, and a lot of it we like learn society tells us don't talk like that, don't don't don't actually tell somebody how you're how your day is, right, say I'm fine. You know, we get we get all these like subtle and not those little cues of how we're quote unquote supposed to actually that we internalize a lot of those. And then you know, to your point too, like we may take some anger with our parents that we didn't he realized we had when we were sixteen or twelve or ten, and then it pops up, you know, when we're thirty five or forty in a really weird way that we relate with our spouse or our best friend or something. And it's always interesting to have these moments when you when you hear people to come back to you your sequel point from the beginning, right that, like when there's these moments of profound transformation when like we didn't just change the chapter, but like the book ended and now we're in like part two. You know that that you know, are are I think really powerful for us? And then said this is like why am I why and how can I make make a change?

56:33 And so I don't know, I'm just I'm relating this back to the in like this this point, I think it's it's very powerful to even kind of think with your story too, and then how we can take something that opens us up in a way that makes us very vulnerable and then create a powerful you know, new pathway, new wave, you know in new new uh you know, opening for others too. So I just want to say I applaud the work that you're doing. Anythink this is this has been a great conversation. So far, and I'm excited. I did to know that you've got a book coming out also in like that we can we can hopefully dive into that when when that comes out as well too and kind of think and dive deeper into the idea of hondering light makes it's to be such an exciting place. And also like what does it mean to provide new spiritual spaces for folks? You know, I mean and uh, maybe you have a few minutes, I'd love to talk about that too, real quickly, just like this this idea of like how we can bring those about.

57:24 You know the fact that this is you're working with an entheogenic church that you've created like that that idea, like you have to go through these like odd legal structures in the United States and to be able to have a certain kind of business practice, right, but then on top of that, like a therapeutic and plant medicine practice, I get, I don't know, so, I mean, it's like, I don't know my question there is it? Just like it's been such a such an interesting journey to me to the kind of have to go through that that process given the odd structures that we have, and like you know, we are seeing the FDA change their stance slowly on plant medicines and psychedelics. But then also you know that you took that bold step of saying, you know what, well, I've had some found changes to do something new. Let me take this this curious path that is U I don't know, were you following your curiosity?

58:05 Like how did you know in anthogemic church had that become the answer of the next thing to do? Well? Being a church is actually a very meaningful status for us, and it's it's so much more than a legal status. One of the participants that we that came through our container was the president of Unity Church, which is a mega Christian Church on on on the East coast. And I'll never forget such a gracious man he had on his altar. An altar is like just something next to your mats as you're undergoing the the psilocybin. In ceremony, a picture, a framed picture of Jesus, right, and in our center we have religious symbols from all religions, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, hindu Ism, Egyptian like, Greek like all over and and I remember seeing this beautiful smile on his face as he was looking up. And he shared with me later that he felt the greatest connection to Christ that he's ever felt in his life. And what's so fascinating is his story is not unique. One of our co facilitators was a Catholic priest for twenty years, then a zen Buddhist monk, and then became one of the world's top psychologists and IFS trainers. Right and coming through our container first as a participant, he rediscovered his spirituality, which he had lost in when he was running un refugee programs in East Africa for the Catholic Church. I mean, so you know, if you really think about, like, what is a church. As an anthropologist, you must know this, like the church was the safe haven, it was the gathering

59:36 place of community. Right in wartime, both sides could gather in a church and be safe from killing each other. Right in peacetime, people would gather in a church and that's where the community would get together. That's where we would support each other, so on and so forth. So in our church number one, as a we have a beliefs published on o website, Ceremoniouscircle dot org. But we've summarized it into a few points and I'll summarize it even further for you. It's really that when we let go of our protective parts, we are able to feel ourselves more. And when we feel ourselves more, that is what feels like spirituality. Right. And we say that truth is subjective like what you experience as your truth is yours and no one can deny that. But there's also an objective truth there that when it's experienced, feels like love, gratitude, peace, harmony, unity, right, And that subjective and objective truth begin to merge the more that we let go of the things inhibiting us from ourselves, and then these plant sacraments of psilocybin and ayahuasca are accelerants to help us commune with that that feeling.

1:00:51 We gather every Sunday our integration process, in fact, preparation and integration is literally we meet in community every Sunday. First the pot luck that's sharing your challenges and celebrations, than the practice called circling, which is a workshop that we run in our in our program. And so you know, people have this transformative experience, this profound experience which culminates ninety nine times of one hundred in a deep spiritual experience, and then they're able to come back to church, to community, to supporting each other, you know, et cetera. And I love that too because it's that it's bringing all the things that I remember from church as a kid.

1:01:33 You know, it's I guess what, it's a very similar story for many you know, I don't know many folks that like maybe have grown up religious but then found their way out of it for various reasons, right, and then found some sort of reconnections to spirituality through different means, right, but then recognizing that like some of the fundamental powers and social goods of church communities themselves are what you're describing there too right of like that it's a safe place that people can come together to build a community, to build a sense of shared identity, and to integrate right into their lives, those deeper those deeper meetings. I think that that's actually really cool. But Alstin, thank you so much joining me on the podcast. This has been an enlightening conversation and I've really enjoyed chatting with you, and I hope we can do it again, especially when you when your book comes out and deep dive from there.

1:02:16 But thanks again for joining me. That's been been a lot of fun. Thank you, Adam. This has been great. Yeah, I really appreciate you.